Work Text:
The concept of fear is not foreign to you, in such a short life span you have already feared it plenty of time.
When you were excluded from the world for simply being born, your only point of contact your mother, brother, a raged doll and the hole under the floorboards that you had ceremoniously been stuffed into. It’s dark and confined space looming under you, taunting like a coffin ready to suffocate you alive.
When you finally have a moment to be included in the world, only to release that hidden hole on the floor was better than a room with a lock on the door and that space doesn't look so beautiful when you’re well aware that your mother lifeless body is out their floating somewhere.
When you’re floating in the water with danger hurtling towards you, afraid not of the creature in sight but of the thought of your new found freedom being ripped away from you only hours before you had finally grasped at it, lost before you got a chance to soak it all in.
When you are taken away and trapped underground your mental coffin replaced with soil and dirt; and as the darkness swallowed you, the silence other than your screams deafening and the chains locking you in place taunting you recall panic seizing at your throat as history repeats itself.
When you’re almost lose your brother, the only soul you have to keep you anchored, twice in a measly few days. The thought of blood and a rope clogging his throat and stealing his breath, the vision of a virus entering his blood stream or oxygen's failing to pass his lips haunts you when you close your eyes.
When you have an arrow in your knee and the battle around you seems blurry and disorientated, while you are carried away from your friends- your people- and the buzzing and pounding in your head is accompanied by the terrifying thought of never seeing any of them alive again.
When Lincoln goes missing, the multiply times he goes missing, and the only other person beside your brother and who has fought his way into your heart disappears while betrayal and death still clings to his skin like a fur coat.
When you almost lose Lincoln forever, the stillness of his body and the stillness of his heart feels like a wave knocking you off your feet and dragging you under, the idea of him being another idea of him being another addition to your list of those lost feeling like a bullet to the heart.
You know fear well, you can almost welcome it like it’s an old friend returning from its vacation. Everyone you have come to care for seem to know it almost as well as you do now, being on the ground with threats smothering you from all directions can do that to a person.
You know fear. You welcome fear. You understand fear.
So when the words "it’s worth the risk" fall from Clarke Griffins lips you know what you are feeling in your gut is something much more powerful than fear. It is a panic attack that seems to be drowning you in a sea of things you never thought you could feel.
And when you hear the man you love talk of directions to a cave with a determine expression and see your brother take the map with a stubborn scowl you have never wants to drain a person of life as much as you want to of Clarke Griffin right at this moment. Because she is the one that planted the seed of a completely preposterous plan into the heads of those who follow her. She is the princess, the farmer who leads the flock and she has just decided that the two people who you have dedicated sections of your heart to are not worth the air that they are breathing. And the rage you feel towards her, a rage that succumbs over the respect you held strong, is unlike any rage you have ever breathed.
-(you have never really been scared of yourself before, but as anger leaks out of your eyes like lava leaks out of a volcano, you know that has finally changed.)-
Now the thing that is consuming you, is the knowledge that the two people you care about most are plotting a plan that screams danger and self-sacrifice, an unspoken whisper of the lives of others being more important than their lives floods you ears.
You have never felt pure and undeniable terror until the day in which you can do nothing but watch as the two people you cannot replace walk further away from you and closer towards the risk of a stilting heart and a last breath. And you want to scream at them, to ask them 'what are you doing' and 'why are you leaving me' and ‘you don’t need redemption for what you have done why does it have to be you whywhywhy.'
You think about throwing yourself at their retreating figures and sobbing and whispering 'please don't go please don't go please don't leave me please please comebackcomebackcomeback' because while your body is strong your heart weakens the further they get.
-(in a fleeting moment of nostalgia you wonder if this is what it Bellamy felt when he lost the two people he lover all at once, one to the sky and one to a prison.)-
When they disappear from sight you wish you had told them that dying the death of a martyr isn't as brave as people believe and that losing your life as a hero doesn't make the pain of adding them to the list of those they have lost in such a short amount of time any easier.
You know fear. You know fear and it makes you human, makes you know that you are not turning into an empty shell of a human being. You know death. You know that death is daunting and terror filling and that fearing death is not weak, as death is easy while surviving is hard.
You are Octavia Blake and you know thought you knew fear like the back of your hand.
But as you turn away and walk into the other direction of both the people you truly wonder if you can live without, the fear of the underground and darkness and confined coffins and deafening silences seems like a thing of the past, something pathetic and childish.
And as the night falls and you the stars shine down in you, wonder if every ounce of fear you have felt before was simply and allusions.
And in that single moment you begin to remember all the times you have told yourself that you are not afraid, and you begin to wonder if you ever really knew what fear truly was at all.