The Graveyards We Leave Behind

Raven, Finn, and Jasper successfully blew the bridge, and that has kept the grounders at bay. It's saved them from immediate death, but Nyx has figured out that no matter how fast you run it will always catch up. Monty, Clark, and Finn are now missing. They went for a hunt and haven’t returned since. Nyx insisted that she should go with them, but Bellamy wouldn’t hear it.

In a way she is glad, because Murphy is holding Bellamy captive in the drop ship, and if she wasn’t here and came back to camp to find him…She wouldn’t think about that.

Nathan is watching Nyx pace. If no one knew how she felt about Bellamy before, then they do now. Her anxiety is so high it's probably visible from the grounder villages. When shots are fired from inside, her feet freeze and her heart drops. Her mind is going to the worst place possible, and she feels like she's going to have a panic attack.

They receive confirmation that Bellamy is fine, and she allows herself to take a ragged breath. Then when the hatch finally opens she is the first person on board. She is mentally reminding herself to thank Raven later because Bellamy is hanging from a noose inside. Her eyes meet his for a split second before she cuts down the rope meant to kill him.

"MURPHY!" she shouts. Her anger echoes through the ship as she fights her hands from shaking with rage. "YOU FUCKING PROMISED ME, MURPHY!" She is too blind from the fury to realize that he never did agree not to do anything stupid. She wanted him to be her friend, but it seems that none of her friends remained that way for long.

When she manages to break the seal of the hatch to the second level, she finds that Murphy has blown a hole in the wall of the ship and ran like Bellamy had two years ago. Another coward.

Outside of the drop ship the siblings are reuniting, and Miller is opening the gate for Clarke and Finn.

Her ears listen to Clarke's warnings of grounders coming, and her eyes watch as Bellamy carries an injured Raven aboard the ship. Her head is crowded with people, and thoughts, and feelings. Finally there is no emptiness, but she had gotten so used to it that this flooding on her senses is too much. There is nothing she can do to help so she retreats to Miller's tent for a moment of peace.

Miller follows taking a seat next to her. It seemed to her that Miller always followed. Their lives as they knew them are once again being flipped upside down. At least last time when she was hurtling through the force of the atmosphere Bellamy was holding her hand. Now her hand is holding Miller's cock, and there doesn’t seem to be any atonement for any of their sins because the world is in a perpetual state of ending, and atonement was unnecessary.

Nyx doesn’t say a word until he is done fucking her. This is the first time she isn’t exploding with desire. She thinks she has achieved pure emptiness now as his fingertips dig into her hips, and his pelvis seems to want to penetrate her whole body, but she doesn’t feel a goddamn thing. Those emotions that flooded her moments ago have disappeared, and she is desolate.

Miller stops, and she doesn’t realize that he is not finished. She sits down absentmindedly, and his brows furrow. He has never seen her this way.

"Nyx," he sits down scooping her naked body onto his lap. Her legs wrap around his waist, and her subconscious wetness drips down his thighs. "Nyx, tell me what's wrong," he pleads with a whisper, his hands cupping her face.

"He could have died, Nate," her words are hushed, and she seems lost.

"But he didn’t," he reminds her.

She knows, but this vacuum that sucked the life out of her showed her how she would feel if he had. When the wave of fear strikes her she is pleased. She didn’t enjoy being so bare on the inside.

"We're all going to die," she tells him, her eyes looking past his head refusing to make contact.

"We could die happy, you and me," he tells her placing kisses on her jaw.

"We both know this isn’t happiness, Miller," she utters, and he stops when he hears her use his last name. There is nothing he can do for her when she goes down this spiral.

"So then go where your happiness is," Miller tells her.

"The last of my happiness died on the Ark almost three years ago," she reminds him. The nostalgia laces her voice as she attempts to envision her hand running through Bellamy's curls. The image quickly floats away like a vision in smoke, and she stands to dress.

Outside the group is preparing to leave. As they cross the dirt where the gate stood closed arrows fly towards them like rain. Screams of retreat echo through her ears as her people begin to fall, and before she knows it they are trapped back behind the wall again. There really is no escaping death, she thinks to herself in confirmation.

"Maybe, since we're all going to die-" she begins to confess but is interrupted.

"Dying is too easy. We always think we're going to die but we don’t. Maybe we're all already dead in purgatory, we just haven’t finished suffering our sins," Bellamy adds without looking her way.

She listens as his voice travels to the radio in his hands next. Mines have already been placed to protect the west wall. Now the plan is to hold off the grounders long enough for Raven to blow the reserves of the hydrazine below the ship, but it would not be fast.

Nyx decides it is too early to judge Bellamy again. She thinks back to Murphy running away and decides that she cannot judge him either. The mistakes she has made nightly for the past two years in the attempt to survive the ache in her chest are weighing her down in that moment, and she wonders if Bellamy's are too. When he moves to join a foxhole she follows him. If this was him hitting the atmosphere of death and the next few moments were their judgment, then she would be right next to him this time. That would be as close to happiness as she could get. Miller follows her again.

Their time in the foxhole seems to pass slowly. It feels like she has been standing there for hours, her bullets colliding with cascades of grounders that seem to have no end. They are almost out of bullets. What is taking Raven and Monty so long?

Suddenly Octavia is hurt as she kills a grounder that has knocked her brother down. There is an arrow in her thigh as her screams echo through Nyx's ears. Bellamy and Nyx carry her back to the ship, but the grounders are close to breaching the wall. They won't be able to hold the camp much longer.

After what seems like hours Lincoln comes for Octavia. Finn is right behind him. They have led the reapers to the camp. The enemy of my enemy I my friend, she remembers that Finn had said this one. Bellamy gives the couple blessing. He has to admit that Lincoln has grown on him a little. He watches the grounders and reapers fight in the distance, thankful for the distraction. Then, surprising all of them, what looks like the Ark falls from the sky and erupt into flames.

The wall is being overwhelmed, and the last thing she remembers is Clarke closing the door to the ship, leaving her, Finn, and Bellamy outside. Nyx does not blame her. Three lives for 80 others is a logical choice. She catches a glimpse of Miller, and a sense of relief overcomes her knowing that he is safe.

Nathan, on the other hand, is beating himself for leaving her alone. She would need him, if she made it out alive. If she didn’t, then she died alone. He deserted her. He goes to open the hatch again, but Clarke stops him, "I'm sorry, Nate." A sense of devastation overwhelms him.

Outside Nyx grabs a hold of the boys and runs past the west wall, reminding them to be weary of the mines. If they wanted to survive they'd better be far from that ship when the rocket fuel blows. Before they get too far there is a blast of light and behind it a thundering boom leaving her bones shaking. Finn turns to go back, but she stops him when she sees the red smoke surmount the wall. Slowly closing in she peaks through the gaps of the fencing to see walking hazmat suits gathering everyone up. Bellamy stands, but she yanks him back to the ground unwilling to risk his life. The trio watch helplessly as their friends are carried away.

They seem to be having continuous moments of judgment, Nyx thinks to herself. Are these the mountain men? No one has ever returned from the mountain men according to Lincoln's stories. Lincoln did warn them that they were coming. She should have told Octavia to go with him when the couple talked about leaving to live with Luna. She is regretful.

Are her friends going to die now? When the camp is clear Nyx walks in, and her lips frown at the site of the smoking remains of the grounder army. Her stomach churns as her eyes climb over each set of brittle bones. No. Bellamy is right. Her friends would not die at that mountain. They still have to atone for the graveyard they left behind.

"What now?" Finn asks.

Nyx turns to look at him, his face covered in ash and dirt and blood. There is a new emptiness in his eyes that gave hers a run for its money. If she didn’t know who he was, she would not recognize him as peacekeeper Collins any longer.

"Now we find the Ark," she concludes. Her words leave her lips with anxiety, but they are also their last hope of surviving this judgment day.