We're only getting older, baby
And I've been thinking about it lately
Does it ever drive you crazy
Just how fast the night changes?
- Night Changes, One Direction
*****
Mountain Men all look the same.
They march through the trees in identical dark green suits, faces obscured by small, lifeless masks, as if they aren't men at all but soulless machines built for destruction. Even from this distance, Ash knows exactly who they are. Thirty yards ahead, crouched behind the underbrush, her fingers twitch around the worn hilt of her knife.
She doesn't need to see their suits or their masks or the gloved hands wrapped around sniper rifles to know they are Mountain Men.
She could recognize them by the sound of their feet alone.
The memory of it—pounding feet on the dirt, chasing her and Monty through the forest—twists around her brain, making her stomach tighten. They shot her twice and left her bleeding out in the dirt like an animal. A few miles east of here, she almost died. The pain lingers throughout her body; the slight hitch of her movements, the way she adjusts her weight when she crouches lower.
They were hunting, just like now. She, Smith, and a handful of other Grounders and Sky people had set out to track food, not enemies. But the moment they spotted the two Mountain Men, everything shifted. They'd waited, muscles tensed, breath held, blades ready.
"They're getting ready to shoot," Smith mutters behind her.
Ash flicks her gaze to him. He stands poised, a bow raised in his arms. She's never seen him use one before, never even noticed him carry one, yet he handles it like second nature. The observation is there and gone in one beat. There is no time for awe, no time for anything except the kill.
She steadies her blade. Feels the cold metal against her palm. Readies herself to throw it if necessary.
"Fire."
The twang of a bowstring cuts through the air. An arrow pierces one of the Mountain Men clean through the chest. The other stumbles, scrambles, turns on his heel and bolts. Two more follow him.
With their cover blown, there is only one option.
They run.
Ash's feet pound against the forest floor, heart hammering in her ribs as they give chase. The wind whips against her face, catching loose strands of hair that have slipped free from their braid. A thought, quiet and unexpected, creeps into her mind.
Do they think I'm one of them?
With her dark clothes and war-torn boots, she hardly looks like a Sky Person anymore. Gone is the green leather jacket she once wore, caked in mud and useless. Now, in black fabric partially from Skypeople and partly from Grounders, she looks like one among them. Like she is Trikru.
And the thought does not unsettle her as much as it should.
Octavia sprints ahead, moving with lethal precision. When she catches up to the fleeing Mountain Men, she is merciless. Her blade sings as she slashes through one without hesitation. The second barely has time to react before he meets the same fate. The third is not so lucky.
Sword pressed to his throat, he gasps, eyes wild.
"Octavia! No!" Clarke's voice pierces the chaos.
She rides in atop a brown horse, breathless, urgent.
YOU ARE READING
somewhere | b.blake ✔️
Fanfiction"somewhere there's peace, they just have to find it." in which a girl whose smile is the brightest of them all finds herself falling in love with a curly haired boy on a planet that isn't supposed to be survivable. [SEASONS ONE TO TWO COMPLETED] hig...
