Clouds

"You got five minutes."

Funnily, five minutes will never be enough for them to catch up on what could have been.

Abby doesn't want to believe how fast the tide has turned. The moment she last saw him – the gap between now and then seems to have stretched the days into ages – Marcus was still a free man. A rebel, but without handcuffs. The ideal sound of those words hardly match up with the severity of the situation – with Pike in control, everything they have built, everything they have abandoned sleep for... It's all crumbling, with an earthquake awaiting on the clouded horizon.

It's all crumbling, and Abby's heart continues to be hit by the dusty rubble.

The biggest rock to smash her chest is, at last, standing a few metres away from her. His hands are restrained and his hair, including his beard, looks rough, a testament to how long he has sat in prison. She refuses to believe he's going to end up like Jake, with his soul dancing in heaven, free of physical ties... Abby would rather have an imprisoned, but living Marcus on Earth than a free, dead version. Him staying alive would be more than enough. It's selfish, perhaps, to want to be in control of his current state... Yet, it's obvious he cannot do anything against his awaiting kiss with death, so she will take matters into her own hands.

He has saved her life on so many more levels than one, and even if he hadn't, she would spend her last breath still trying to save him because she loves him.

She cannot, cannot, afford to be shattered a second time by the loss of love; she will shatter if nobody's left to stitch the tatters of her heart together (somehow, she has lost Clarke along the way). She may be a doctor, but he is her saviour, in some romantic perspective, and Abby could barely find strength in her tired soul anymore if it weren't for him... It's dangerous, love, because it makes you dependent, and she has been a blissful fool to walk into that trap; nevertheless, she minds being trapped far less when it's being trapped with Marcus.

Marcus isn't Jake. He won't die, like Jake. Not if she can help it.

Their brown eyes meet. In this very moment, some goddamn key appears in Abby's mind and locks the door which would enable her to look away. She's almost hypnotized by staring a possibly-soon-dead man in his possibly-soon-empty eyes – eyes which, at the moment, pass mountains of unspoken words and apologies over to her, gently pushing that misty information into her brain although they are still standing too far apart to touch.

Abby takes two rushed, yet hesitant steps forward, lost on what to do. What does he expect her to do? Run over to him, hug his malnourished body and press him to her to create a unit in wishful thinking Pike won't be able to separate them? In fact, she wants to do nothing but bind him to her somehow, but she knows it isn't possible and his execution will stand no matter how crushing and desperate her hug is. There are also the hidden cameras to think about.

They continue to stand apart from each other for a few seconds, shifting from leg to leg, plagued by the weight of what is to come. They both have waited for this, yet when they are positioned face to face, heart to heart, none of them wants reality to be true.

Abby is still speechless, at a loss of how to act, what to say, because this man, Marcus Kane, is the embodiment of her hope, even in his rough and leashed state; he is the quell of water he has allowed her exhausted lungs to drink from, unintentionally drowning her to be her anchor; he is the sun continually bestowing the crown of her spirit with light, brightening her path so she doesn't trip, simultaneously growing branches to make her trip only to catch her from falling; he has, somehow, become her everything since they have fallen from the sky – and he is going to die.