#survie out of spite

[underworldqueen13]

SURVIVE REGARDLESS

Keep the fight going because we're not giving up

This is a safe space. I will stand up for the side of justice and equality.

[not-him-someone-else]

If I was in a survival situation

And my loilty to the group I was in

was called to question I'd go out of my way to make sure the one who questioned it survied because

They probably wouldn't do it again if I was always jumping in to protect them

It might make them feel bad

Spite

If I was betraying the group it would drop suspicion off me because the person who opposed me would not end up mysteriously dyeing right after

[momo-de-avis]

So, as per @insanityisfine ‘s wishes, here is the story of how a hardcore catholic member of the Opus Dei repressed his homoeroticism with sexism and plagiarized Harry Potter thus teaching me a valuable lesson about writing.

So, let’ call this guy C.

C, as I said, was a hardcore catholic. By that I mean, of course, that you couldn’t actually tell until you actually met him. Though he kind of dressed like your average beto (but not so much, since he was kind of poor), he kind of came off as a regular dude who you could have a conversation with. Except, of course, if you were a girl. In which case you’d get a huge creepy vibe just from engaging with him shortly. He touched a lot, he leaned in, he smiled way too much and he had a really, really weird way of going about women.

First of all, a little background. C was like, the sixth brother of like, I don’t even remember, 10? 12? His mom was a super, hyper devote catholic and his dad—surprise, surprise—was a locksmith atheist who he venerated. The two—MOST SHOCKING OF ALL—were actually divorced. I know. The scandal.

They weren’t really poor, but they weren’t middle class either. They were adrift, you know. Which makes you wonder—how the hell does a family of like, 10 children and one single and stay-at-home mom manage to get this entire progeny into private schools (so Private they didn’t follow the regular, state-issued high school program, they actually had a list of banned books: I cannot tell you how much he despised Saramago lmao) and into high-end universities (like Católica)? Well, that’s where Opus Dei comes in. I never really understood how the fuck that works, but if you’re a member, you basically got a green card to live as a king even though you gotta mend the holes in your socks yourself.

The thing was, this guy was peak Mommy Issues. His mother was a goddamn viper. From what I gathered, because of her religion and the fact that she was divorced with so many fucking children at home, she was desperate to control her children. So the way she found of doing it was by simply playing mind games with them. She pitied her kids against each other. She clearly had a favourite one, and she compared all others to him. C was treated like waste, like he would never achieve the primal status of perfection his older brother achieved, and his sisters were constantly getting into fights because she used hearsay to pity them against each other. I also vividly remember him saying things like a kiss were banned from his TV, and his grandmother would smack whoever if they even dared to glance at the television when something as dirty as that came on. Mommy here would particularly pick on C. She specifically had him share a room with his youngest brother, who always went to bed earlier, specifically so she could complain about how late he got home, and she often hid his laptop away from him. She never even gave them a single phone, they always had to buy it themselves, with their money.

So you see, lovely home already. Which I would have accepted as an excuse, if he hadn’t grown up to be a huge dick. But you know, trauma or not, life in the end is made of choices, and boy, C chose to be a spiteful, humongous dick.

I met him in my first year of college. He was in this group with two other girls and another guy (C on the list I mentioned, let’s call him Z, cause he will be important for the story as well). We got together first because we were all, in 2010, some of the few who had been born in 1989. We were the ’89 group. And damn bitch, that was one fucking weird group. It was like Friends on a budget: they all tried to sleep with each other like there were no cast members left to fuck.

Initially, I thought he was nice, easy-going. We bonded over our passion for writing, mostly. You know the snippets I’ve been sharing of my WIP, with Selena as the protagonist? At the time, I was working on it, it was my second draft, and he was helping me construct the story, along Z (actually, Z is an even bigger dick, but he was the one who provided me the key ingredients into shaping the story. Literally, if it wasn’t for him, that WIP wouldn’t exist). We would sit for hours at this local café talking about it, and let me tell you, I hesitated, yeah, but C was quick to share his WIP with me.

Now, that WIP? When I explain to you what it was about, it’ll throw you off because the premise is actually cool as fuck. Basically, it’s about a young man who finds himself a victim of a curse. The curse causes his skin to fall off, and the only way he can survive is by killing other people and perform a skin transfer so his own skin can regenerate.

Sound rad as hell, doesn’t it?! Except this is C. And C really has a way of masterfully destroying things that look cool to the eye of the beholder.

Well, this cool ass premise? This how it kicks off:

The protagonist is a young kid, I don’t know, of 17 or 18, who’s hanging out Cais do Sodré at 4AM and somehow—somehow—that is weird enough for a police guy to approach him. For those not Portuguese: let me tell you as a person who lives across the river form Lisbon. Cais do Sodré is a liminal space, and the shit that happens there between 3 and 5AM? It stops being weird after a couple of months. Literally no police come near you unless someone’s fighting or someone’s pissing in broad daylight. So I really don’t get wtf this guy was going on about, but moving on.

This dude’s skin’s falling off, so he kills the police guy. Then, he takes off and sees a guy sitting on a public bench wearing, and I quote, «the habit of a monk» (yes, I have the document open right now). That guy tells him, literally, ‘I am a wizard and you can’t hurt me, my name is Cedric’ and this begins the long line of plagiarizing HP. Wait for it, it gets better.

Also, if you’re wondering if this is set in Lisbon, despite there being exactly one Portuguese name? Yes it is. In Sintra, too.

THEN it skips to summer (I have no clue what the fuck that intro is supposed to tell you) and we’re in Sintra, specifically Galamares (the story gets oddly specific). This guy’s out partying with his beto friends and shit, and one night he meets a 25 year old French dude called Goulage who invites him over to his mansion for the weekend and what does our protagonist do? He goes, of course.

This already feels like a premise for a horror story that will inevitably turn into an erotic romance, but remember: this dude’s hyper catholic, and to him homosexuality was not just… a Sin. You see, for it to be a sin, you actually have to think about it. Thing was, this guy pushed it down so far he was deepthroating that denial. He avoided it at all costs. And naturally, what happens when you do this, is your story gets an unnaturally homoerotic subtext that jumps off like a dildo slapping you across the forehead. That’s exactly what happened here.

It gets obvious in the way he describes this French dude: he mentions that going over to one of his parties was ‘a privilege’ for merely ‘a lucky few like [protagonist]’. When he gets to his physical appearance, it gets really neat: he had a smile that went ‘from ear to ear’, ‘glistening eyes, dark and full’ and his hair ‘could be described with one word: confusion, or in another: revolt’ because he had hairs that ‘turned against each other like someone who doesn’t comb their hairs after getting off the shower’. And then, the exact next bit of text says some of the funniest things in this piece of shit: ‘if I were an aspiring psychologist I would say there is a very profound reason for his hairs to be like that, perhaps an inner confusion’. He also says he ‘moves with extraordinary lightness, seemed to be everywhere and spoke with great expression coordinating his words with his gestures. He would be a great professor, if he were ever up to that’.

Two paragraphs later, the love interest, a girl, shows up. Her description? ‘She would look great in a bikini’—a direct thought of the protagonist

There’s this incredible exchange where Goulage snaps his fingers and fire spits out of his finger and he does this to light the protagonist’s fucking cigarette and the protagonist is like ‘wow you gotta teach me that’ and the dude’s reply is ‘I can teach you many tricks’. So the French dude promises a class that night, and off they go to ‘the basement, that was entirely dark’ lmfao. Goulage then prepares a drink for him and the protagonist slams down on the floor, unconscious. Yes, date-rape drug. When he comes to—and by god, bear with me on this one cause I fought against this little shit for this scene—he touches his neck and realizes there are two small wounds there.

What does this genius think?

‘I was bitten by a snake’

I remember SO WELL the conversation I had with him about this bit, because at this point the snake comes off as very, VERY evident homoerotic symbolism because in no fucking world would it make sense for a snake to bite you in the fucking neck, what are you talking about, and I tried to make him see that but boy—lost time.

When summer ends, our protagonist realizes the date-rape thing was actually the French dude’s way of cursing him with his skin disease from hell and the two get into a fight.

Now, if you’ve been following me for a while, you know there is a maxim I live by: there are no bad ideas, just ideas that need working. C was actually the one who taught me that, because he actually had a really, REALLY fantastic idea for a story that he completely fucked up because he refused to do any work besides sitting at his laptop and shitting a few words together. He did no revision (he thought himself above that), did no research (he couldn’t understand why that was needed, when he could simply copy it from existing books) and he did no fucking work on his plot—and if you tried to show him, he would take your criticism to heart.

Because not only is this a story about a protagonist who lives under a curse that causes his skin to fall off and his only way of survival is killing so he manages to make a new skin transfer, this is actually the Friends to Enemies trope, which I fucking adore. But he fucked it up completely by somehow—somehow I have no clue how exactly—doing it in light of the entirety of Harry Potter. (My favourite sentence in this WIP is—and I remind you, I quoting this shit: “I am going to the suburbs, so many people disappear there they won’t notice my presence”. Absolute fucking poetry, this little gem. Love it.)

This is set in a wizardry school and this somehow relates to elves in Lisbon (lmfao). Cedric dude from the beginning? He’s from the Ministry of Magic (YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN). They teleport to some fucking city that is like, magically concealed behind a barrier or some shit in Sintra (LMAO). Also, wizards are divided in Orders like, First and second and shit, which I understand also comes from HP (remember I never read HP, these comparisons were actually made for me by an HP aficionado I used to know who pointed them out for me, yet even I could see the plagiarism lmao). And what’s even funnier, most of the names are lifted from somewhere obvious: Gorbachev is there, so is Oskar Koskoshka (yes, like the painter) or Gorbunov. And guess what non wizards are called lmfao.

Also, the spells are exactly like HP: stupefy, stritia maxima, accio fogo, incarcerous and invicta are some of the few I caught eye of here.

I remember there’s a Brolyk somewhere in there as well, and someone called Polidoro, even fucking FREEZER is here (if you’re not Portuguese: that’s our version of Frieza lmfaooo). Oh, and Marowak as well (that’s a pokemon isn’t it?) The protagonist at some point is recruited to work for the, idk, FBI of the wizardry world? Or the Wizard Police Department or Wizard CSI or some shit?

I remember the climax of the story is a sword fight between he two former friends, totally-not-gay-nope dudes and the way he did it… It was in a poem that sounds like a DDR recital. Like, first he gets this swarm of anger that, as it always goes, propels him to be the Best There Is and the weirdest fucking modern poetry ensues, and then the fight scene is like this: “Step forward, attack through the right / step left, attack forward” etc etc. Just this fucking SHIT.

So yeah, when this guy showed me this my reaction was pretty much

Now, I TRIED to be critical in a constructive way. Because, as I said, his premise is actually super fucking original and, being well worked out, it could have been actually incredible. But C refused to take criticism. When he approached anyone with his ‘would you like yo read my story and tell me what you think’ mumbo-jumbo, he didn’t mean criticism, he meant praise.

So what happened was he did to me what he thought I was doing to him. He put me down constantly.

Joke was on him. He was so excited about my story, he actually went on google sketch to project some scenarios from my story. The School, where the story starts and introduces Selena to us, he actually fucking drew the whole thing, so I don’t really know what his problem was cause he was actually more excited about it than I was.

But he just couldn’t take the fact that I was being critical of his work. I started noticing that most people around him hesitated when it came to giving him real opinions. When he asked someone what they thought, he didn’t say ‘what do you think?’ He’d say ‘it’s good, isn’t it?’ and that left people cornered. But I just.. don’t take shit. And my friend back then, who knew HP back and forth, he jumped in as well because he could see that like, if this thing would ever see the light of day, JK Rowling would have a field day suing his ass (though it’s way too bad for it ever to reach publishing, trust me. He doesn’t know how to accent prepositions. He writes “fui áquela casa” or “vou á casa de banho” by fucking hand).

He constantly nit-picked my work. “Swords don’t wheeze, Ana” he said. “I know, C, it’s called a fucking metaphor”.

“This looks too much like the Chronicles of Narnia, I think you’re risking plagiarism, because of this Tiger symbolism”; “C, the Chronicles of Narnia has a Lion passing for Jesus, the Tiger is literally just a symbol of a god, what do you mean”.  

“This is too much like the Mists of Avalon”; “have you even read the Mists of Avalon?”, “no, but it’s celtic paganism all the same”, “???????????????”

Now, here’s another thing about C: he really had no fucking clue how to deal with women. They were alien concepts to him. And one thing he really believed (I mean he really believed this) worked wonders in conquering a girl’s heart was basically put her down and annihilate her self esteem. Call her ugly, say she’s fat, tell her she’s got ugly teeth—and then provide the compliments! So he was a professional sexist. And I remember when he started picking on me because I dared criticized his masterful magnus opus of a fucking piece of shit book, he went in for the looks. At the time, I was about to go on the table for my jaw surgery, and he actually said this to me: “Finally men will look at you, Ana, and you’ll look decent!” He would ell other people “Ana? She’s not a girl, to me she’s a guy—she’s even too ugly to be a girl”.

He really went fucking hard.

It didn’t take long for me to just… fuck off.

But I kept his fucking first and second draft

What’s outstanding is how a hyper-catholic dude who wasn’t allowed to see kisses on TV and who was a virgin at 24 years old out of religious beliefs but bragged about getting a boner for his female friends on the beach managed to just… Become my prime example of everything you shouldn’t be as a writer. I am not kidding. C was my life lesson. Whenever I can’t write, I go back to his first draft and like… It’s so fucking bad, I get a boost. IT’s not just poorly written, everything about it is bad.

But then I remember what’s so bad about it: he made it bad by being a shit person. C thrived off of attention, negative or positive, it didn’t matter, so long as he was the subject of the conversation. He used others to aggrandize himself, by putting them down and treating them like shit in front of others—specifically, in an environment where others couldn’t control but he could (his brothers used to make jokes in front of me—as well as literally everyone else, whether I know them or not, about how C was fucking me—he wasn’t—and say things like ‘is she the one you’re eating?’ in public). He hated women because of his mother, his mommy issues were down to his marrow and man, he projected that onto every girl he ever met. He specifically sough women with little initiative, little impulsivity and who submitted so he wouldn’t be challenged. For friends and girlfriends.

But I challenged him, and that wouldn’t stick. So he treated me like shit, constantly. So much at one point I stopped showing up, stopped talking, just.. walked away.

But those shitty first drafts? Oh, my friends… you wouldn’t believe the shit I have here in my computer.

[astrorgy]

The Signs In a slasher movie...

Aquarius: Yelling "Hello?" into an basment staircase

Pisces: The virgin protagonist who survies for the sequel

Aries: Currently fighting off the slasher, ends up being killed in a spiteful way

Taurus: Token character with any common sense, gets killed to further the plot

Gemini: Finds out the killers identity and gets close enough to catch him, only to be stabbed in the back by a friend helping the killer

Cancer: Killed in the exposition to introduce the killer

Leo: Secretly helping the killer, only to be murdered in the end

Virgo: Proposing the group to split up

Libra: Gets sacrificed to temporarily save the rest of the group

Scorpio: Suspected to be the killer, gets slaughtered out of the blue

Sagittarius: Spends last breath trying to bargain with the killer not to murder them, dies in vain

Capricorn: The killer, secretly leading the group to their doom as they pick them off one by one

[targsdaenerys]

show me the sun ch (5/20)

SUMMARY: Clarke, the princess of Arcadia, had been imprisoned in immortal walls by her own mother. Four Thousand years after her release date, she is found by those of the new world. In the orders of survival, she is forced to stay in the home of Bellamy Blake, a new guard in a mystery industry. between adjustment and hatred, Clarke needs to see what exactly is meant with imprisonment.

WORDS: 2,482 / 12842

PAIRING: Bellamy Blake x Clarke Griffin (The 100)

TAGS: princess!clarke PrincessClarke guard!Bellamy Immortality Imprisonment Wrongful Imprisonment Alternate Universe - Fantasy Bellamy Blake is a History & Mythology Nerd Rapunzel Elements of a sort clarke loves to read Hurt/Comfort Angst Heavy Angst Angst with a Happy Ending Fluff and Angst Sexy Protective Bellamy bellamy saves clarke 

READ: Ch I / Ch II / Ch III / Ch IV / Ch V

Clarke believed it was probable that her keepers both thought she would have taken the offering on dinner; being in a lab for no doubt days without any actual nutrition would lead any sane person to do so. But she knew she wasn’t, nutrition-wise atleast, and she had been lasting on no food for weeks at a time for centuries on more.

The smell was luring; she had to give them that. There had been some new spices  found, she didn't need to speculate that with any brain. But their scents were devine.

She had rubbed her chest raw. In her thoughts she had been reaching for her necklace absently, for comfort, and disbanded the fact that it wasn't there anymore. Bellamy had taken it, and his sister had probably taken her book -

Sister.

She didn’t know why she hadn't seen it before, at the first sight of the girl. Maybe it was the period of isolation, and she forgot what to look for in the distinctions of relatives. The only conversations she had been having were with the imagined faces of story characters.

To cut herself some slack, they didn't look that much  alike. Same high cheekbones and near-black hair,  sure. But his was unforgivably curly. And her eyes were a hard green, with his a soft brown… she would cut herself a second slice.

Still, despite her spite, Clarke’s stomach growled. It had all the time in his first prison, but everything there was the same. Everyday. In this new place, nothing was like she’d ever seen it. Or heard, she inquired, because her stomach screaming wasn’t getting droned out as it usually would. If she would press her hands on her stomach, maybe it would rumble under her fingers.

She doubted it, and didn't do it.

Instead, Clarke stayed where Octavia left her. She had lost feeling in her right side long ago, but that was only the beginning. It was only so long until Clarke ran out of new things to do all that time ago, and it’d be a game; how much of her body could go asleep. It was fun.

Here, not so much.

The carpet was scratchy and the room was hot, even though most was pitch-black save for the mysterious light diving between the slit in the door frame. Bellamy had said it was July - which, from what she remembered, was summer, where it was hot during the day and frosty during the night. This contradicted her memories, as she probably laid in a sweat-puddle.

It was very unlady like. Unprincess like.

She kind of wanted to cry. But really, Clarke didn't know why. Maybe it was because she had finally been let out, and for some reason all those years there was a thought in the back of her mind telling her that her father would be there somewhere to greet her back into her life, her new one, with her mom or the people who were on her side.

But her father was dead, and her shard from his vase was gone. And with Clarke’s luck, her mother probably survied the god-forsaken disaster -

“Are you ever gonna come ou-” It sounded like a question, until Bellamy’s voice from the background interrupted.

“She’ll come out or she starves, O.”

The odd light disappeared a minute before Octavia started talking, but it was back. She walked away.

+

When Clarke woke up, all she could feel was the crink in her neck. It was  nothing but blackness around her, and she thought her eyes were asleep like her whole body was.

But the slight glare on the table with compartments told her that no, she had not gone blind, and after a few attempts, her body started to gain feeling in it again. The first thing she felt was the slight sting from where her knees kept collapsing onto the scratchy Hell’s-damned carpet. But the pain was no surprise, since for some reason these days pain outweighed any other feeling when it came to which was dominant.

After balancing herself on the edge of the bed, she straightened. The blanket had fallen off during one of her first attempts to stand despite her nerves being unresponsive. Clarke felt around the bed, looking for the end of it. It was no doubt night time, and it was her best chance to seeing what these people really intended.

That was only if they slept at night anymore. If anything, it would be most probable that they had switched their sleeping arrangements somewhere down Earth’s timeline. If it wasn’t the case, Clarke would feel...disappointed. Doing the same thing for so long is boring, and she knew that better than anyone. But because of that, Clarke was also the first to know that boredom is cured with change. Simple, but the key to much.

Soon Clarke’s hand came in contact with a hard surface, and she knew it was the smooth walls. But now that she felt it beneath her finger tips, it wasn't as smooth as it was grainy. She couldn't find much that it reminded her of that maybe tiny, crushed pebbles upon pebbles adheaveed to a canvas surface.

Clarke gilded her hand across it, now not really liking that feeling it was giving her. It made her want to grit her teeth. But she reached a section in the wall, something she knew was the door frame,  and found the edge of the door. It was still open.

She stepped through the space it provided. There wasn't much to see, nothing at all, really. Everything was still black, and she reached blindly in front of her, now unfamiliar with the area.  Turning in a circle had to be top of the listings for her worst idea yet, because now she was lost, without even a direction she knew she could back away into. Trapped, without any surroundings to go off of.

Trapped. Seven Hells. Trapped again, because that was her only accomplishment she was supposedly allowed to make now. Trapped, trapped, trap -

“I was hoping you’d come out eventually.” Clarke jumped out of her own skin as a voice boomed out from her right, quiet, but equivalent to screaming her awake in the silence that otherwise overcame the black room.

The black room boomed into a warm glow of something Clarke remembered with a click. It was the same room Bellamy was in when he opened her door when she knocked. Was Clarke acquiring brain damage? Of course it was that room. She had only taken a few steps out of her door.

Her door. Like always, not her anything.

She looked to where the speaking came from. There were only two possibilities of who said it, and the higher voice did not match Bellamy’s deep, intimidating one.

Octavia hand her hand under a vase with a canvas covering. The plant the vase was holding seemed to be... glowing. Before anything, Clarke’s feet drew to it. The canvas was warm to the touch and more taut than what she used to use. She looked inside, and there was a  - small sun? Was the world so advanced that candles had turned into pieces of the sun itself?

Octavia, who stood still throughout Clarke’s observing, spoke up. “Not many lamps where you come from, huh.” From her tone Clarke thought she may had been smirking, and when she brought her eyes away from the glow she was proven right. “What made you come out?”

Clarke’s response was her tense expression, eyebrows drawn in confusion, eyes probably too wide for it to look like she was calm. Octavia took that as her answer. Her smirk turned into a friendly smile, at least perhaps as friend as one could get with an odd girl imprisoned in her home, and pushed up off the cushioned seats she looked rather comfortable in.

Clarke’s eyes followed but the rest of her body remained kneeling next to the vase - lamp? She looked back at it.

“Lamp?” She’d had a lamp in her library, but it never gave the same amount of light that this one had. This was magic, like the spark of it that flowed under h -

A hand grasped her elbow. She was pulled up to her feet with a laugh from Octavia, who started moving towards a marble surface.

“C’mon, I made sure to leave leftovers.”

+

Clarke was sat at the marble on a chair with no back. It was like the chair she had at her vanity back at the palace, only higher.

There was too many different tools Octavia was working with, so Clarke kept her eyes down on the patterns of the rock in the table. Frankly, Clarke was hesitant to look up, anyway. She was so, so thankful for so many new noises around around that she could pay attention to, but her excitement was making her hyper-aware. All the humming and clicking and clattering these shiny boxes were making was getting to be too much, and Clarke just wanted it all to settle. She wanted to go back to that room, actually, believe it or not. But that would be giving in to being imprisoned in there, and they would be able to use it to their advantage one way or another.

The china dish made a familiar sound as it appeared in Clarke’s line of vision. It was something Clarke hadn’t ever seen; a stack of two things, one around another.

“Sorry if you are vegetarian. We've been low on vegetation supply recently, so a hamburger has to do.” Clarke continued to stare at it, now seeing there was bread surrounding something in the middle. It was brown and thick,  and truly, it smelled absolutely flavorful. Octavia’s voice came up again, farther away this time. “Do you like ketchup with yours? You probably don’t need it, anyway. Bel out does the seasoning.”

Clarke looked for knives or forks and found nothing. With Octavia so preoccupied, it off-hand told Clarke she didn't need any utensil. Even if she did, more so than not she would have ignored that factor. Washing forks in her prison for such a small amount of food became tedious quickly, and she hadn't used that of which in a very, very long time.

She picked it up with her one hand. It would be blandly too unhygienic to use her bandaged one, and for once Clarke wanted to avoid the pain it brought when she did. With more trouble than expected, Clarke was able to grasp it and brought it to her mouth.

The smell got better as it got closer, almost giving her a headache in comparison to the food shed had been eating.

Her cheeks were sore as she opened her mouth wide. And as she bit into her first real food in... well, a long time… her teeth tightened and her lips burned in the most delightful way. There was a clear comparison, of her mouth that was so tasteless and the burstings of flavors separating that wall. It was like she’d been sick for a while, nothing but the extract of sickness in her taste buds, and she finally was able to go to the dining hall again. Times one hundred million.

Clarke was then able to recognize the texture as meat.  Even her palace food was dry in comparison. She took another bite once she swallowed, and then a bigger one following.

Her stomach...she almost felt it filling up. Her skin stretching, her organs moving out the the way for her stomach to expand. But she took another bite, and another following that one, until her fingers were the only thing left. Somewhere within her eating Octavia had slid in next to Clarke with a cup of water. She took it from where it was  and took a gulp.

“No ketchup. Got it.” The plate disappeared from infront of her and Octavia left her side. She put her hand to her full belly. It almost felt human again.

“Do you want to take a shower or anything?” Clarke looked up at Octavia. She was leaning against a table across from Clarke, hands braced behind her. “I mean, you can do it tomorrow, but I assumed since you were up…or a bath, you can take a bath, to.” Bath. It was no surprise that the offer startled her, and Octavia realized. She smiled, the same one as Clarke first saw from her earlier. She circled around, grabbed Clarke’s elbow again, and pulled her into her room.

The door she had noticed before during her observation of the room they had put her in was, in the end, the bath chambers. But there was much more additions to the last time Clarke had been in a proper one. Like there was in the main hall of the palace, marble tiles expanded on the floor and smaller versions lined the walls lined on one side was, what Octavia vaguely explain, was a sink and toilet. Covering the whole far wall was a bath that was smaller than her old one, made of what looked like the same material of the plate she used. Attached were gadgets of a strange sort.

Clarke was wondering where their well was, or where they put the fire to warm the water, when Octavia twisted on of the tools and water poured out from underneath. The loud noise startled Clarke a bit but she regained herself quickly. Soon steam rose, deflating her heating question, and as soon as the water was turned off, Clarke broke her phase of amazement before Octavia was able to see.

“Okay. I’ll be right back, since Bel is as protective over his soap as he is with me. You can get in, if you want. I’ll knock before coming in again.”

Before Clarke could answer Octavia was gone, the door clicking shut behind her.

Next to Clarke was a mirror, above the...the sink, if she remembered correctly. She turned to it, wanting to look in.

She hadn’t done in in a while. Between the amount of dust in her prison and the limited supplies she had available, cleaning her singular mirror became too much a chore. She let the dust collect on it, too much to the fact that is was impossible to wipe off without scratching it.

She closed her eyes. She didn't want to waste it by glancing really fast. Clarke made sure her feet were planted firmly in front of it, her eyes forward under their lids. Clarke opened them.

It wasn't as far off from what she expected. Sure, now in this new light she could see her face was gray like those starving children were in the winter suns, the ones she made sure to leave some bread when they passed. But the hollow cheeks and jutting collarbones were nothing new, not since the last time she saw herself. Years ago, sure, but she was just as starving then as she was looking at herself now. The grayness contrasted with her red eyes, and pale, stringy hair. It was out of the braid, hanging loosely around her, ready to be easily tangled with it’s excessive length.

When she removed her shirt, it was no surprise either. As long as she could, Clarke kept contact with the ghostly eyes that stared back at her. The blue of them looked painted. The color seemily the only alive part of her whole being.

Looking at her torso, Clarke was disappointed more than anything. She’d always been aware that her new figure would never fit in her dresses ever again. But her shrunken breasts, her tipping ribs, they wouldn't look good in any dress, no matter how small of fitting. And she never looked good in high necks, but the scars from the rawness on her chest would force her to.

Octavia returned not much later. Clarke was admiring the bandage on her side when she came in, a halting step back once she opened the door. Although she tried to be genuine, Clarke knew the smile wasn’t exactly true as she brushed past Clarke, placing the soaps at the end of the bath.

“Good thing you didn't get in yet. I just remember that Maya doesn't want you to wash without taking the wrapping on your side off.” Octavia moved to do it herself as soon as she turned. As Clarke looked down at the girl’s dark head of shiny hair, she finally came to her senses.

Not more than a few hours ago the girl didn't even want to talk to her. And yet she waited outside the room Clarke was in, and then fed her something she was unfamiliar with. Now she was undressing her wound, letting her lay vulnerable and naked in the strange advancement of a bath. There was nowhere in the situation in which Clarke should be trusting her. Without a poison tester… the girl might as well had drugged Clarke, and as soon as she’s weak enough to not fight back, trap the fatal sir in her lungs as she chokes her to death.

Clarke jumped back. At the sudden movement, Octavia backed away as well, hitting her head against the edge of the table behind her.

“Ow…” Octavia winced, and reached a hand to her head. It came back with crimson glistening the tips. Clarke was against the wall by then, in the corner right between the bath and the wall. Not her smartest move. If Octavia were planning on killing her as painlessly as Clarke’s envisioned plan, Clarke had just ruined it. One revengeful shove and Clarke would be in the bath’s steaming water, bloodied and cornered.

She surveyed her surroundings. Octavia was still sitting back on her heels, examining her wound. The shirt Clarke was given lay beside Octavia; farthest from Clarke. Shed have to cross her to cover herself. Dammit, dammit, seven Hells, dammit.

She was completely susceptible. Her torso was naked and her stomach didn't feel right, and there was water deep enough for her to drown in. Clarke's heart thudded in her ears when Octavia looked at her at last, her face strewn in discomfort.  Her own reflected with plead, begging, begging her not to kill her. Clarke couldn’t die - not in a bath chamber, the farthest from the sun shed ever felt in this white light blinding her. She needed to see it before flooding into darkness forever; because she surely had outlived the deadline for a good afterlife.

Clarke melted to the floor - partially because her stomach clenched so hard - and just...guarded herself. Shaking, of course - her arms shook uncontrollably as she sank into the cold, cold corner of the two walls. She held them in front of her, hoping they would do any good.

A hand moved her hair over her shoulder, and the place itself there lightly. The thumb ran up and down her shoulder blade.

Clarke didn’t know exactly when her eyes shut, but spots constellated her vision as she loosened them, and opened. There was nothing in front of her, but through her cloudy periferals she saw the wisp of dark hair, a bent knee propped out.

“I’m fine, don’t worry. You’re okay,” Octavia’s voice was softer than before. Clarke let one sob escape before she got her breathing back in order. In, out. That’s what her riding coach told her. In, out, and the horse will breathe with her. She wished he used that tactic when her mother executed his for teaching Clarke such activities. She thought, maybe the rope would have listened like the steed had.

Her eyes drifted to the bath as a disturbing feeling climbed her throat. Looking at it now, she could see it was pretty. The water was clear and bubbled foamed throughout it. Clarke’s head dizzied, and then the taste of the meat hit her tongue - but much more disgusting than seasonful.  Whatever taste it was, nothing about it was delightful, and Clarke needed it out of her mouth. Not the bath’s water, not when it was prettier than a lagoon -  the bowl shape across from her  looked like a better match. Clarke rolled to her knees, bent over the toilet, or whatever Octavia called it.

What was in Clarkes mouth wasn’t the end on it; she just got there in time for everything that she ate to be emptied. As she heaved, wisps of hair were pulled from her line of sight.  A hand ran up and down her spine, which probably felt weird considering how close it was under her skin. But it continued, even after she spit up nothing but water and air.

She rested her head at the side the bowl. The smell was pungent, almost enough to make her throw up things shed ate decades ago. The hand on her back moved to her ribs, gentally signally her to sit back, and so Clarke did, heavy with exhaustion. Octavia reached up to push a lever on the side, and the bowl made a noise that would usually scare her, but Clarke was too spent to react.

“You’re okay,” Octavia said, returning back to Clarke. “Let's just get you cleaned up.”

And so, together, they did.  She was able to slip out of her bottoms, and allowed Octavia to help her, skin and bones and all, into the bath.

The girl washed her like her maid would, soothing little Clarke after a long day chasing beavers in the woods.  She closed her mind and imagined she was back there, submerged in warm water, keeping her dinner down even though she engulfed it in short minutes.  But then she would open them and Clarke would be back, with a girl not much older than she herself looked, cleaning her in water that was just past her jutting hip bones. Clarke missed the women's’ tunes and rhymes they would hum to themselves, the soft candle light. She missed it alot.