mount weather log; lincoln & octavia WHO: Lincoln & Octavia WHEN: Thursday, April 7th, mid-afternoonish WHERE: The Winchester apartment WHAT: No one is left behind to clear out their stuff, so Lincoln and Octavia step up to do it. They get to chat, they’re cute together, they’re sad for Sam and Kate, and there’s a bunny. WARNING(S): Feels? Feels.
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Since no one had stepped in to clean out the Winchester apartment, it came down to Lincoln and Octavia instead. They went in with big boxes, ready to sort out what they could and store what they couldn’t. The newly missing Podkru had been gone for a week now, and it was time to admit they weren’t coming back. Whatever personal issues Lincoln and Octavia were having, there was work to do.
There was no one there, but Lincoln still stepped through the space as if they needed to be quiet. Almost immediately they were met with some kind of crunching noise coming from the corner of the living area, and before they could check for some hole in the wall or some nuisance animal that had snuck in, a very fat rabbit stuck his head around the edge of the couch, still chewing a little bit of hay. There were bits of the stuff scattered all over the room, making a vague trail of hay from one of the rooms, and the rabbit hopped right through it to get to them. He was only eating with his right head, because the left was damaged by radiation, the jaw malformed and the tongue flopping.
“I forgot they had a pet.” Lincoln lowered himself to kneel on the floor, offering his hand when the rabbit came close enough. He kept a record of everyone who came in and out of the mountain, and the animal would have been a surprise if Castiel hadn’t been carrying him around so often before Lucifer had come into it. “We should try to give him to someone else.”
The idea of pets was foreign to Octavia. Either they were food or they were useful. A two-headed rabbit who did nothing but eat and eat was neither. She could only conclude that it was something like that doll her mom had made her when she was little. Something of a comfort when things got scary — and they often did on the Ark.
Fear didn't drive her so much anymore. Survival did. Finding her place in the world did. There'd been a brief shining moment down in the tunnels under Mount Weather where Indra had called her Okteivia kom Trikru. She'd found her place. She found her family — with Indra and Lincoln — and she had earned it. Then it was so brutally snatched from her the next instant.
Octavia had been floundering ever since. She hated the Podkru for their strange powers and the way they came in and enforced their rules on everyone. They could afford morality, but the way they constantly harped on the Skaikru about no killing and blah blah blah really got on Octavia's nerves. That's why she preferred Adaar. She understood that sometimes putting down a pest was something you had to do. That life was fucking rough, and just because you had to kill from time to time didn't make you a horrible person.
"Should cook it in a stew." These damn magical symbols were everywhere, and the bedroom opposite the rabbit's was covered in way too much purple. The bedsheets were a tangled mess, and there was the stale air of sweat in the room. Sex, she guessed. She dropped a box on the end of the bed and began picking up clothing from the neat piles in the corner of the room. "Send it over to animal husbandry."
“It’s someone’s pet. You don’t have to cook it.” Not that Grounders had rabbits as pets, but they had dogs and horses, usually trained to do something. Most of the pets that had shown up in the last pod drop had been dogs, now that Lincoln thought about it; one of them had even been a machine. But there were softer animals here than would necessarily survive a Grounder community, and Lincoln didn’t see the point in being harsh with something when they didn’t have to.
Despite the fact that Mount Weather creeped him out, Lincoln liked the Podkru. He’d like them better if they lived literally anywhere else, but despite all their assorted issues, they were softer people in general than the Grounders or the Sky People. They could afford a morality that let people live, even live in comfort, they talked things out instead of stabbing each other over everything or skittering around the possibility that they’d be jettisoned out an airlock, they were quick to defend each other but slow to judge other people. They weren’t all the same, but he’d never seen them torture each other or advocate war, at least not in a way that was approved by the general public, and it said a lot that that was a relief.
Lincoln didn’t say as much to Octavia, mostly to avoid a fight, but he was happy not to make someone’s pet rabbit food just because it had the bad luck to have its people taken away. So he picked up the animal just to get it out of the way, putting it into the other bedroom and shutting the door.
Returning to Octavia, he let her handle the clothes while he started picking through the weapons. Half the room had been turned into something of a gym, framed by a purple costume and a set of bow and arrows. Lincoln picked up the bow out of curiosity, turning it over to get a close look at it. He’d seen it before, but never up close, and it was made of sturdier stuff than his. Not metal. Plastic? Something Grounders didn’t have access to. Whoever got their hands on this for hunting would be lucky.
He set it on the bed and put the arrows in the box he’d brought (helpfully labelled “Winchester room - weapons/etc.” in heavy marker by someone else). “We’ll have to come back for the weights.”
There was the usual load of clothing, some of it ratty with holes and others had obviously been made recently. The girl was taller than Octavia, the guy even taller than Lincoln. Broader too. Nothing for them to really commandeer for themselves here. Except maybe some of the weapons. Most of it was bizarre stuff. Iron and salt from the kitchens. Or maybe sifted out of the bottom of the river.
But the whole place was incredibly neat, save for the unmade bed. It seemed stupid to Octavia that two people could have been there one moment, and the next poof gone. Even if they came back, they'd have no memory of this place or what they meant to one another. That was the worst thing of all. In this world, there was always the chance of losing someone you cared about — Fox, Atom, Finn, Sterling — but there was always memories of them to fall back on. Atom had been her first kiss. Fox had been her first friend. If either came back and had no memories of who she was? That would be a nightmare.
"Azgeda. The Ice Nation. You think they're gearing up for something with the border disputes? Lexa seems to think that we shouldn't jump into it, but something doesn't seem right about that." She'd slowed her packing. She hated disputing things with Lincoln, and she valued his insight too much. "Why would she tells us to stand down if it's just a dispute between Azgeda and Trikru?"
“Because if Mount Weather helps without being invited, Lexa looks like she can’t handle it on her own. Azgeda’s always been trouble.” Even when he said it, Lincoln was trying to sound neutral about it. He was Trikru himself, but wasn’t sure just how much he wanted to (or could) still identify that way, and his relationship with the bad blood between clans was complicated at best. “The Ice Queen probably looks down on Lexa for how the Mountain Men were handled, and other clans thought of us as weak for making an alliance with the Sky People after how many times you mistakenly declared war or killed us up until then. It’s complicated political trouble. I can’t think that Lexa wants new opinions in the mix.”
Lincoln picked up the handmade teddy bear that had been left behind, lost in the sea of purple blankets. These people had been here for a year and came from different realities. If they went home and stayed there, they would never see each other again, but if they came back, they wouldn’t know the difference. Which was worse?
"I just meant why would she assume we'd jump in? Their border's nowhere near ours." It was a few days journey away, and no one spent any time at the Dropship anymore, except on full moons. And Arkadia was just getting fired up again. Still a good day or two's walk. They'd had enough snow and ice for a while. "Seem's like maybe we're not being told something to me."
What did she know though? She barely had any experience in the world, except through books and hiding under floorboards.
"They out for our blood or something?"
“Your people aren’t very good at staying out of other people’s business. After the werewolf thing, I’m surprised Lexa hasn’t pushed you away harder.” Lincoln shrugged, wishing he didn’t know enough about this to even give an opinion. The constant war was exhausting. “But Azgeda might also have it out for us. My people believe that killing something powerful gives you that power. Killing someone like Clarke or a number of the Podkru would give the Ice Queen an advantage with the Coalition. Lexa may be trying to keep us out of her hands.”
That got Octavia's attention pretty quickly. She turned, sank down on the edge of the bed. "You think she even knows about Clarke and the Podkru? She knows she doesn't stand a chance against most of them. Even the ones with the least powers could easily take her out."
“Everyone would know about Clarke and the Podkru by now. Word travels faster than you think, especially once it gets to Polis.” To the Sky People — even some of the Pod People — the fact that they easily passed information without electronics probably seemed odd, but traders talked, loudly and often. “The Mountain Men didn’t just kidnap Trikru, we were just the easiest targets. With everything that’s happened in the last year, I would be surprised if the Podkru didn’t have a really interesting reputation in Polis, especially after Lexa herself saw the fight with the dragon. Azgeda won’t hesitate to lose warriors taking down someone like Clarke or Erik Lehnsherr if it meant a victory for the Queen.”
"Good luck trying to take down Erik. All their weapons are metal." Sometimes in this new world with the Podkru, Octavia felt like her training was a moot point. All the work she'd done just meant she got to let other people take care of it because powers.
When Indra was here some months ago, Octavia tried to talk to her. The warrior woman wouldn't see her, but she'd overheard her talking about Octavia in a way that made her think that she had not given up on her. The Podkru's arrival made one thing abundantly clear to her: she still had no place in this world. Except by Lincoln's side. He was her home, and if he wanted to stay here, she would. She wouldn't like it, but she would. "Watch them piss themselves when Adaar steps up. Might be good for a laugh."
“If she comes back,” Lincoln added, feeling guilty for saying it out loud. He saw the very edge of a strap on a bag coming out from underneath the bed and crouched, dragging a heavy duffel out into the open and plopped it onto the bed. “Did she even meet Lexa while she was here? I know Adaar was trying to keep her distance.”
"I think they were trying to keep the whole 'we've got super superpowered people here' thing on the quiet. Not sure she met her, but it's possible she saw her. Intimidating if you've never seen a giant person with horns." If she comes back. Adaar was one of the few Podkru that Octavia had identified with. The Councilor had offered to train her with a staff. Octavia thought she'd been doing pretty well, but nowhere near secure enough in it, and now there was no way to thank her for that.
She hated how they just disappeared. Just winked out of existence. She'd seen it happen a few times. Middle of a conversation, no warning. At least in the Grounder World you usually got some sort of warning, some time to say goodbye. Yu gonplei ste odon. There wasn't a fight here. Just… poof. It made Octavia angry that she'd lost one of the few people she'd gotten close to. Again. "I guess she really is gone, huh? Sera's devastated. Haven't seen her around. I'm gonna go check on her when we get done here. Make sure she's — I don't know. How the hell could — She'll never be okay. Not without her wife."
Lincoln left what he was doing to sit next to Octavia on the foot of the bed and wrap his arm around her. At least neither of them were at risk of just disappearing, but it meant a lot of being left behind by anyone they dared to get close to. “How are you doing?”
"I'm fine." She leaned against his shoulder, though, which obviously meant she wasn't fine. Deaths hit her hard, ever since her mother had been taken away for the crime of having her. She still had moments when she was so pissed off that her mother was stupid enough to get pregnant a second time, that she'd carried the pregnancy, and then forced her daughter to live under the fucking floorboards for most of her life. There were times when Octavia couldn't sleep and she wondered what kind of life she'd have had if her mother had lived out her life. Would she constantly have stayed under the floorboards? And when her mom died? Would she had lived under Bellamy's floor?
Losing people just made her realize just how alone she really was. She wasn't a Skaikru, not really. She wasn't a Grounder, Indra saw to that. She wasn't a Podkru. She had no place anywhere.
Except here, leaning against Lincoln's shoulder. This was the only place she felt like she belonged, and she kept arguing with him. Why? "What about you? It's been a long time since you've gotten to be with your people."
“I don’t know,” Lincoln said honestly. It had been over a year now and he should have had an answer to that question, but he’d never managed to find one. It should’ve been an easy question. He readily rested his cheek on top of Octavia’s head, breathing in the smell of her hair. “I miss them, but I never fit there. It was like trudging uphill every day and never reaching a peak. It’s easier here.”
"Your people aren't your people. My people aren't my people. Not really anyway." The more she got to know herself, the less she felt she had in common with most of the people here. They argued about petty, trivial things that made no sense to argue about. They cared about things like coffee, like it was a necessity. Even her own people were growing complacent. "That's why we fit."
“I love you.” Lincoln kissed the top of her head and tightened his grip around her shoulders. Octavia was the only person he’d found a home in, who actually liked him exactly the way that he was. He sat in silence for a good few moments, just sitting, before he looked around the room at the remnants of someone else’s lives.
Then he gestured, catching a glimpse of the teddy bear’s ears over the top of the box. “This will never happen to us. I don’t know what I would do if you just disappeared one day.”
Octavia felt herself stiffen. "This will never happen to us because we fight together. We go down together. I'm never leaving you."
“Our people may not approve of us, but we can say that the universe isn’t literally tearing us apart. If you were just gone or you forgot who I was…” Lincoln shook his head, finally pulling away so he could continue instead of just sitting in what was starting to feel like a grave. “It’s almost kinder if they never see each other again.”
"How long you think this stuff'll sit in storage?"
She refused to even think about never seeing Lincoln again. What Indra had taught her about a warrior's way was to bury your feelings until you were able to get vengeance. Then you could finally have peace. You shut down your emotions, all of them except rage and determination.
"So many of them are gone now, we're not fighting for the space or rations anymore."
“I’ll miss the ones that disappeared,” Lincoln admitted, unzipping the duffel bag he’d found. It turned out to just be some kind of survival pack, full of clothes and water and some food he didn’t recognize wrapped in plastic. He took out the clothes and handed them over to put into the box of clothing. “Looks like they were paranoid. Probably smart, too.”
"Maybe we should do something. Feels like a funeral's too much, but that's essentially what this is, isn't it?" Octavia dropped to her knees to check under the bed for more clothing or gear. Nothing but some dust bunnies. "I know no one wants to talk about it — or do this — but it feels wrong not saying or doing something."
Octavia picked up the phone that was hidden under a pillow. Purple, of course. It was plugged into the wall. The lock screen was a group of people at some kind of gathering. She recognized Teddy Altman, Billy Kaplan, and since the owner of the phone was in the pictures, she assumed these were all her friends from back home. Noh-Varr was in the picture too. He'd been gone for a long time now. The screen dimmed. She unplugged it and carefully placed it inside the box.
“Do you think other people would want to?” Which meant that Lincoln did. This wasn’t like the last disappearance. Those forty-something people were missed, but most of the groups had stayed intact. This disappearance had left people as drifters. “These people were here for a year, we can’t say they weren’t part of this place. It wouldn’t feel right not to do anything.”
"I think so. Councilor Organa made some comments about taking a moment to remember people." Octavia didn't know her story, except through bits and pieces that she'd heard other people mention so she didn't understand the gravitas in Leia's words. Or just how much she could identify with the situation. She grabbed the end of the pillowcase and gave it a tug. She tossed it in the laundry box with a shrug. "I think it's worth a shot."
“It’s getting warm enough for a bonfire. We’re not rationed, we could definitely make enough food.”
Stripping down the rest of the room wasn’t exciting, but it was easy. Sam and Kate had been well-organized, so even when they were finding things that Sam had stashed into corners, it never seemed scattered.
The other room was… not the same. At all.
Dean’s room just looked like a tornado had ripped through it. There was hay on everything from the rabbit tossing it around (though for now, he was contentedly crunching in the corner), the open area left when the extra bed had been taken out now cluttered with scattered puzzle pieces, books that had never been returned the library, clothes that were probably dirty. The bed was unmade and the mattress was hanging off the frame, almost touching the floor, and there were bottles of smuggled liquor next to the bed that had probably been under it before it had been moved (or kicked).
“Skrish.” Lincoln let out a breath. “At least it doesn’t smell.”