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Even though she knows that it's physically impossible, for a moment Abby feels like she's forgotten how to breathe. In the next moment, she takes a deep breathe and tells herself that it's her lungs that ache with the effort of working again, not her heart threatening to collapse in her chest.
She closes her eyes and takes another deep breath, exhales a question with an approximation of calm.
"Gone where?"
She forces her eyes open and stares directly into Marcus's face, searches for an answer she already knows he won't have.
"I don't know." He stops and steps closer to her. Continues on, quieter than before. "I don't think even she knew." He says slowly. There's an apology written on his face that she wants to tell him she doesn't need or deserve but her eyes begin to burn and her throat closes up so she says nothing instead.
The ache in her chest is back and this time she's sure it's because her heart is trying to turn itself into cold plated steel. Or else it's trying to grow twice its size all at once to take in all the pain that's coursing through her right now.
She closes her eyes and wants to laugh at the thoughts racing through her mind, but her throat is still tight and her heart seems to have other designs because a strangled sob emerges from her instead. The whole moment feels unreal and magnified in a way she can't remember ever feeling before. She's never been the type to be prone to hyperbole. The Ark left no room for excess and her life had no time for grand proclamations. But she thinks of all the things they've had to give up on this poisoned ground, all the dead ends they've run into on this expansive land, and wonders if perhaps now she can afford to be.
She tastes salt on her lips and realizes that she's crying; the ache in her chest expands and her breath starts to come in short, staccato bursts. She wants reach out and grip Marcus's other hand but finds herself unable to; her hands have both gone numb and cold.
"Abby," Marcus calls out, and her eyes snap open at the sound of his voice. There's a blaze of worry in his eyes but his voice is calm and even as he says her name again.
"Abby, focus on me, ok?"
He takes the hand that's twined in his and places it on his chest. He takes a deep breath and nods encouragingly at her.
"Just breathe, Abby. Breathe with me." He takes another deep breath and Abby wills herself to stop her short exhale and gasps for air in time with him. He smiles crookedly at her, though it looks fragile and brittle, and nods again.
"That's great, Abby. You're doing great." He takes another deep inhale and she tries to follow suit. For the next few minutes, she focuses on taking deep breaths and the sound of Marcus's reassuring voice, until her breathing evens out and the feeling returns her hands. She takes one last deep breath and breathes out a shaky, "Thank you."
She untangles her hands from Marcus and pushes herself back on the bed, slowly bringing herself up to a sitting position. Marcus grabs the pillow and pushes it against the headboard to support her. He makes a move to hang back, widen the gap between the two of them to give her space to think. But space, she realizes, is not what she wants. There are already too many gaps in her life as it is: the gap between the mother she wanted to be and the one she ended up being; the gap between the daughter she'd said goodbye to and the one she found once more; the gap between the fantasy of the ground and the reality of it all.
She frowns at the space between them and it seems to be all the invitation that he needs because he quickly closes the gap between the two of them, standing next to her bedside but being careful not to touch her. She almost rolls her eyes, because trust Marcus to suddenly bend to rules of propriety right when she doesn't want him to, but instead grabs his hand and laces her fingers with his own. She tugs him down and he takes a seat on the chair next to her bed.
She takes a moment to study his face and quickly realizes that he's hours past due for sleep. His eyes are hooded and shadowed; his entire body is slumped with weariness and worry. The beard on his face is longer than she's ever seen it, patches of white peeking through the dark brown scruff. She's momentarily overwhelmed with a desire to reach out and cup his face just to see if it's as soft as she always imagines the hair on his head to be. She shakes her head to clear it, looks up into his eyes instead.
"How do you know she's gone?" She says hoarsely, and she's proud of the way her voice barely quavers.
"Bellamy." He replies and she nods. Of course it would be him who would know.
He hesitates a moment and then continues.
"He asked her to come in but she couldn't. Said she...said she couldn't bear the thought of having to look her people in the eye everyday knowing what she had to do to get them here."
Abby can feel tears burning in her eyes. She flicks them upwards in an attempt to keep them from falling.
"I can help her. We all can. She doesn't have to do this alone." Abby whispers as she looks at Marcus, her voice pleading with him. Pleading for what, she isn't sure.
Marcus takes a deep breath and Abby can tell by the way his eyes tighten that what he'll say next will hurt her. But he'll say it anyway because he's only ever been honest with her.
"She said that she bears it so that others don't have to."
Whatever Abby wants to say is lost; the tears she's tried in vain to keep from falling begin running down her face and a sob tears itself from her throat. Marcus wraps her in his arms, tangles on hand in her hair and moves the other in slow circles on her back. Every part of her wants to say that Clarke shouldn't have had bear it all, but even as she thinks it she knows that it's a futile, useless thing to say. She's tried so hard to protect Clarke, has made terrible choices and cold-hearted compromises to do so. But she knows, at last, that this is something she cannot protect Clarke from. That the weight of her decisions is something that she will have to bear.
Just as they all must.
So she cries for Clarke. For the daughter who she sent to Earth to live but who died on impact all the same. For the child who shrugged off her innocence for the calculating mantle of leadership. For the girl who bears the burden of all the things that she’s done.
And she cries for herself. Because she could not save Clarke, could not protect her, could not keep her young and innocent. Because she once again put her trust in the wrong person: herself.
She weeps, great, gasping tears, because there’s no escaping now the bitter truth spoken under that brutal mountain: there are no good guys.
There are only choices and the people left to live with them.