It's Such a Shame For Us to Part

Chapter 17

For a moment, the world stopped spinning. The time to absorb the information that Octavia had said. The time for Abby to suddenly understand a lot of things and get angry. For Clarke, to be shocked and disgusted. For Bellamy, it was the little moment he needed to realize that he no longer knew his own sister. That he did not know this version of her anymore.

Then the world began to spin again. Abby stared at Octavia a long time after she let go of the first sentence that would become a bloody story.

"It's my fault they're all dead." She had said after claiming to be a monster and deserving to die. "The disease. It all comes from me. I killed them all."
"What do you mean?" Clarke had asked, glancing at Bellamy.
"The disease was wanted. Desired. They died because I wanted it. Because I asked for it."

Abby had wanted to throw up. She thought back to all those dead, to all the dead children... Something had inevitably degenerated.
But she had killed them. Each of them.

The world had started to turn again, but they were still frozen. Octavia stared at the floor, unable to look at the others around her. Clarke looked at Bellamy, who was looking at Octavia as if he saw her for the first time.

"Explain." Bellamy demanded.

Clarke thought that right now they should probably concentrate more on getting out of this perilous situation in the hands of the Miners. But on the other hand, she was also curious to know what could have caused Octavia to voluntarily kill the people she had sworn to lead and protect.

Octavia sighed, and reluctantly told the story.

---

It was a particularly painful evening. Everyone in the bunker was in a pitiful state. Completely mad. A man had gone crazy and killed his 10-year-old child. He had stifled the poor girl in her sleep, then wounded two guards when he had tried to open the doors of the bunker.

Abby was busy trying to resuscitate the girl with her assistants, to no avail, and Kane was talking to the injured guards. Octavia felt lonely, unaware of exactly what to do. She wanted a proper execution, but several people in the bunker were protesting. Mostly the friends of the man, actually. They said that he was not a bad person, that he had made a mistake and deserved to live... The remarks were ridiculous, given the situation. There were mistakes that could be forgiven, then the premeditated murder of a kid. It was not quite the same thing.

The problem was rather that the man and his friends had a good social position. They had a very good influence and more people every hour rallied to them, without really understanding all the details of the murder. Many thought it was just an accident or a mistake when, in fact, they had found evidence that the man had been thinking about his action for several weeks at least.

Octavia was alone in the office, wondering what to do. She should not have been there, making that kind of decision.

"Clarke and Bellamy were better for that!" She said to herself unceasingly.

She especially missed her brother at this time. He would have known what to say and what to do. All that... It was their role. Bellamy and Clarke, they were born leaders. They inspired people. They were something about them that made people follow them without a second thought. Not her. She wasn't a leader like them. Not this way, anyway. They were too different. Yes, Octavia could lead people. She could guide them. But not the same way. And she needed their way to lead right now, she thought. If at least Abby and Kane had been near her at that moment, it would have been perfect, almost as if Bellamy and Clarke were there... But they clearly weren't the people that came in the office.
Indra and Jaha entered, followed by a young man she didn't really knew. She thought his name was Kilhorn. Or Klihorn? No, Klhoirn?
Okay, she had no idea.