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chapter eleven!
ARES, UNLEASHED
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( warning: somewhat graphic depictions of torture. the chapter title says it all. )

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THE AIR IS stifling in the dropship, every movement increasing the temperature of its southernmost level until Ares is certain he can feel the moisture in the air. He almost wonders if he could pull a droplet of water from the air around him. It's suffocating, threatening to drench his entire body in sweat as he sweeps his damp curls off of his forehead and exhales a slow breath through his chapped lips.

His head is pounding. He knows that ticking his hand against his jean-clad leg is only adding to the problem, but he can't stop the restless energy that's trapped inside of him like a wild animal thrashing in its cage. Ares props one elbow onto the metal desk in front of him and presses his forehead into his palm. Christ, it hurts. It's like some paranormal entity is taking a hammer to his skull over and over again, giving him no break between hits. He squeezes his eyes shut and wets his lips. It probably doesn't help that he's dehydrated– although it's still pouring buckets outside, he hasn't had anything to drink in hours. That's another reason why his mouth feels tight.

The storm continues to pummel them full-force. According to Abby, a hurricane is currently right on top of them, which is just peachy. It truly couldn't have picked a worse time to come knocking at their door. They've had minimal progress with Collins. Clarke is still giving her mother the full run-down of his condition from his breathing pace and texture of his skin to the color of his lips and fingertips.

"The blade is at a sharp upward angle between the sixth and seventh ribs," Clarke informs her mother.

"Okay, how deep?"

Clarke paces around to Collins' left side– also known as the one that the blade is still protruding from. She peers at it, squinting, but it doesn't seem to help her gauge its depth. "I can't tell how deep it goes."

"That's alright. Just don't remove the knife yet."

Raven hurries back and forth restlessly on the opposite side of Collins' unconscious form. Her tank top is soaked with sweat, especially where the fabric meets her collarbones, and her eyebrows are pinched with worry. Every passing second with him still in imminent peril looks like a second in hell for her.

Clarke, noticing her nerves, hands her a thermos of Monty's homemade Moonshine. "Here. Sterilize your hands."

Raven removes her fingerless gloves and tosses them carelessly onto the table Ares is sitting at, making him jump when they land with a soft plat against the metal. She unscrews the lid and takes a gulp of the alcohol. A grimace twists her features at its presumably burning taste, then she dumps some of it over her hands.

"Clarke, do you see any fluid?" Abby's voice asks, still crackling from their poor connection.

"Hey, watch it!" a disembodied male voice shouts from directly behind Ares. He turns around to see two boys shoving each other back and forth.

"Dammit!" Clarke exclaims, voice hard with frustration at the distraction and petty feud. "Clear the room."

Ares flicks out Raven's knife and stands, ignoring the pain that shoots to his head at the movement. His glare fills with enough fire to ignite hell as he brandishes the blade at the two fighting boys. He'll be more than happy to get rid of these nuisances and get some damn peace.

"Upstairs, now, or I'll cut you to ribbons," he threatens lowly in a voice that would make the devil proud. When nobody moves, he starts forward as if to jab the knife into the closest boy's side and the two jump away, scurrying toward the ladder with haste. His eyes sweep across the bystanders with a challenging eyebrow raised. "That counts for everyone! Upstairs, now! Let's go!"

With grumbles of distaste, the mass of people standing around and being unhelpful migrate toward the second-floor ladder in a pack. A few stragglers have the unfortunate circumstance of meeting his gaze. At the venom they find there, they shuffle faster toward the rungs and pointedly avoid his eyes.

"He feels a little warm," Clarke reports.

"That's alright," Abby responds calmly, voice steady and supportive as a means to calm her stressed daughter down. "Fever sometimes accompanies trauma. Clarke, I need you to tell me if there is any fluid leaking from the wound."

"Uh..." She bends down to inspect the mass of blood on his skin that Ares has been trying to ignore. "No."

Abby sighs in relief. "Pleural membrane's intact. That's good– actually, really good. He got lucky."

Raven smiles, leaning over Collins' head and brushing a section of hair back from his sweating face. The action is so tender and full of raw adoration that Ares has to turn around and tick his jaw when she says in a voice filled with sugar and honey, "You hear that? You got lucky."

Ares feels a pang that makes his gut turn sour. He doesn't remember the last time anybody had spoken to him in such a soft manner. Scratch that– he does. It had been his mother. She'd always looked at him as if he was her pride and joy, like just watching him exist had melted the sharp edges of her roughest days. She used to smooth his unruly curls back from his forehead and plant a kiss on the smooth skin there.

Too bad all of that attention was a fucking lie, because not only had she traded his father for some other man, she'd took off without a trace immediately afterward. Now her memory just brings him a tsunami wave of grief and longing that crashes into him, making the soft tissue of his temples throb with more intensity.

Collins had something so good going for him. Raven clearly still loves him even though the tracker isn't deserving of an ounce of it, and he'd taken that love and bottled it into the airlock on the Ark, sending it hurtling into space to be gone forever. He'd taken her affection for granted. And for Ares, who hasn't experienced a shred of raw, unadulterated endearment in a fucking decade, he's not surprised when he feels jealousy begin to rear its ugly head.

Because even though the dropship's lowest level is pretty much empty, even though he'd been surrounded by people only minutes ago, only Kiernan had asked if he was okay. Only he and Nate had expressed some concern for the state of his well-being. And yet, he still craves intimacy like a goddamn heroin addict is addicted to the high he experiences when he's on drugs.

Ares leans his elbows on the desk and curls his hands into fists, bending down at the waist until his head buries itself in his arms. Pulse, pulse, pulse of pain. It's only a matter of time before he grabs onto the wall of the dropship and slams his own skull against it. The only way to rid himself of the agony is to knock himself unconscious.

He's been so wrapped up in his own swarming thoughts and mind-melting suffering that he hasn't been paying any attention to what Abby is saying on the radio or what the girls are doing behind him. He only jumps when the dropship rumbles at the force of the wind, nearly knocking his unsuspecting form off balance. It stops just as quickly. Ares rights himself by gripping onto the edge of the desk, turning around so he faces the procedure.

Clarke exhales a steadying breath through her mouth. "Okay. Extracting now."

Ares must be truly delusional for looking at Collins' body. One moment, it's the tracker who'd come down on this very ship with them, and the next, it's Merritt Santiago with twenty-four stab wounds on his body. His flesh is marred and mangled, so much blood oozing from his lacerations and dripping down his colorless flesh, splattering onto the floor in gentle plops of crimson.

He barely stops himself from screaming, "What are you doing? There's no hope! Can't you see he's dead?" but then he blinks and it's Collins again, and he's still breathing, and there isn't nearly as much blood as he'd thought. Still, it's enough to make his stomach lurch and averts his gaze before he can hurl onto his boots. He clenches his jaw so tensely it aches as his molars grind together. Keep it together, Ares.

"He's waking up!" Raven cries, followed closely by Collins' cry of discomfort as Clarke attempts to move the knife out of his chest.

"Hold him steady," the blonde commands frantically. "Ortega, come help! Finn, I'm gonna get that knife out of you, okay?"

"Good plan," Collins croaks.

Ares' shoes are stuck to the floor. He couldn't move toward that table if he tried, even though he knows Collins is alive, especially because of the fact that he just spoke, but some part of his brain freezes his legs in place. If he moves, he'll wake up in that puddle of blood again, but this time it'll be Collins' body–

"Finn, you can't move," Clarke tells him, voice rising in time with her panic. "You got it?"

Abby's voice guides her over the speakers. "Slow, Clarke."

"Hold still!" She's shouting to be heard over the sound of Collins' pained cries. "Almost got it!"

Ares releases his iron grip on the desk the moment the ship shudders like an asteroid had just struck it, causing him to lose his balance and fall backward, slamming his spine onto the table. There's a scream from Raven as Collins is thrown off the table at the same time Clarke snaps back against the wall. The blonde's body smacks into it, creating a human-sized dent before she lands in a heap on the ground.

The electricity flickers through the stars in Ares' eyes. He stays put for a moment, awkwardly bent backward over the desk and with his back aching like a mother. A shooting pain makes him gasp and collapse back down when he tries to stand. Shit, shit, shit– he can't move.

He's barely aware of Abby asking what happened; he can't even find it in him to be relieved that the radio is still connected through the panic roaring in his mind.

Clarke's bewildered laugh catches him off-guard. "I got it. It's out! Ortega, can you help us get Finn back up?"

Ares grunts. "Can't – move – slammed – back –"

While Raven makes sure Collins is okay after literally having a knife yanked out of him, Clarke hurries over to Ares and places a hand on his shoulder. She examines his position – laid back on his elbows, which had barely caught his fall – and the way that his breath comes out of his mouth in short, rapid bursts.

"I'm going to stand you up slowly," she tells him. "It's going to hurt, so you need to keep breathing."

She braces her other hand on his abdomen and begins to steadily move his body upright. Ares' breathing increases its intensity, eventually turning into a scream as the pounding agony mixes with the one in his head. Raven turns toward them in concern at the terrible sound. She holds pressure to Collins' wound so he doesn't bleed out, watching as Ares' face turns beet-red from the strain this is taking.

Years seem to pass, but, eventually, Ares is standing upright. His chest heaves with heavy breaths, face burning with the heat of a thousand suns and coated in a thin layer of sweat. Every slam of his heart against his ribcage sends a pulse of pain to his lower spine and temples. It's like his body is a drum of agony and God doesn't know how to play.

"You okay?" Raven asks him, giving him a once-over from her crouched position on the floor.

Ares nods, drying his sweating palms on his jeans. His voice comes out tight. "Fine."

"Try not to bend your back for the rest of the day," Clarke advises. "You could be out of commission for a while if you aggravate the injury."

Great. First a minor concussion and now he's slammed his back onto the edge of a table. Whatever sadistic son of a bitch has his voodoo doll needs to tone it down a few notches.

They've succeeded in getting Collins back onto the table. Ares stands with his back pressed against the nearest available wall, spine ruler-straight and a cringe on his face when he so much as shifts. The ache slowly begins to dissipate the more time passes as Clarke steadily stitches Collins' wound. He's unconscious again, skin pale and gleaming with sweat. That's a good thing– him being awake while Clarke had given the stitches without an anesthetic would have caused more problems for them in the long run.

He's bored now. The radio is faulty yet functional, and since it's just the three of them on the lowest level of the dropship, there's a lot of tense silence. It appears to increase the temperature of the room by tenfold. By now, Ares' curls are nearly soaked with sweat, his shirt close to showing dark stains around his collarbone as well. Any bodily movement feels like swimming through a thick stew due to the humidity that makes every surface slick.

"Okay, I'm done," Clarke announces as she leans back in her chair with a sigh.

"Good." Abby's voice comes out crackling with interference. "Do you have anything to cover the wound?"

The blond shakes her head as she wipes her hands off with a gray scrap of cloth, eyebrows pinched. "We'll make do. Like always."

"Should he be this pale?" Raven asks the doctor. "Warm, too."

"He's lost a lot of blood, Raven, but if your boyfriend's anywhere near as tough as you, I'm sure he'll be fine."

The reassurance makes Raven's lips pull up in a small smile, but Clarke averts her gaze despondently and lowers her head. Ares' jaw ticks. On second thought, maybe they should just let Collins die.

He snaps himself out of it. As much as he loathes to admit it, the camp needs Collins. They need an experienced tracker. And, despite his cheating nature, Collins is one of the mediators and well-liked people around. Letting him die would only result in chaos– chaos they don't have time for. With the Grounders picking them off for sport, it's clear that this has become something more than Jasper being speared and used as live bait.

This? This is war. And this ragtag group of delinquents has taken its first prisoner.

Clarke gently lays the back of her hand on Collins' bare chest. "Wait, mom, she's right. He's feverish and his breathing's uneven."

"You need to give him some time to recover," Abby says patiently. "Let me know if he gets any worse, but I think– I think he might just be out of the woods."

"Well, down here, there's nothing but woods," Clarke drawls sarcastically, tossing the rag aside and brushing stray strands of hair away from her face with the sides of her hands. Her palms fall to her thighs with a slight smack as she sucks in a breath. "I need a break."

"Clarke?" Abby calls over the radio, voice sounding slightly perplexed at her daughter's abrupt need for a departure. "Clarke, wait. Uh, Raven, Ares, could you give us a few minutes?"

"Sure," Raven replies at the same time Clarke replies, "No." Ares' brows shoot up his forehead as she continues, "Stay with Finn."

Clarke retreats up the ladder, the sound of indistinct chatter breaking through the tense silence as she opens the hatch to the second level. Once it slams closed again with a groan of rusted metal, Ares and Raven find themselves alone.

Ares hadn't been lost on Clarke's haste. Abby's confusion and wish to speak with her alone, coupled with Clarke's apparent lack of desire to even converse with her more than necessary, informs him that something must be going on between them. It's strange to consider. From what he remembers, the Griffin family has always been close. It seems strange for things to be going awry at a time like this– when the delinquents hadn't been sure if they'd even be able to contact the Ark. At a time when talking to her is the difference between life and death.

Ares slowly peels himself from the wall and shuffles toward the table that Collins is laid on. Raven leans over him, hands grasping the edge of the table and elbows rigid. Her eyebrows have a chasm between them. A frown of worry pulls down her lips as she softly brushes back a strand of Collins' hair from his face.

"People thought I did it," he says too quietly for the radio's microphone to pick up, not even sure why the words are even coming out of his mouth. Raven turns her head to look at him.  "We brought him back to camp, and the first thing that anyone says to me was, 'Was this you, Ortega?'"

"That's bullshit," she declares more forcefully than he'd expected her to, voice quiet yet firm.

"Not completely." Ares shrugs. "I guess it's only fair. After all, everyone thinks I killed someone."

Raven tilts her head forward in puzzlement, furrowing her eyebrows even more as she begins to question, "Thi–?"

Collins' body jerks and cuts her off immediately. Raven immediately returns her full attention to the unconscious boy laid out on the table before them. What starts off as a strange series of twitches turns into a full-blown seizure within seconds, his limbs thudding against the metal table.

"Abby, he's seizing!" Ares exclaims, jolting upright so quickly that a slice of pain runs down his lower back. "What do we do?"

There's nothing but silence on the other end. He whirls toward the radio, noticing with dismay that the red light is blinking again, meaning that the stupid thing is searching for a signal.

"Mierda," he curses under his breath as he rushes toward the radio. Picking it up in his hands, he smacks it a few times for good measure and messes with a few wires to test their connection. "¿Por qué no puedes funcionar?"

"Clarke, he's seizing!" Raven shouts in hopes that she can be heard through two floors.

Luckily, Clarke shows herself in a matter of moments. She appears from the hatch in the ceiling, carefully climbing down the ladder before deciding something like Fuck it and jumping down the rest of the way.

Raven now stands a few feet away from the table as if she can't bear being close to Collins like this, which Ares can't blame her for because watching someone seize is a terrible sight. "He was fine, and then–"

"Get my mother on the radio now," Clarke commands, fear edging into her voice. When Raven's body doesn't allow her to move, she yells, "Raven, now!"

"The radio's dead!" she exclaims back. "Interference from the storm!"

She reappears by Ares's side, fists clenching and unclenching due to her body's inability to function properly with her terror. It's clear she's hoping for a positive answer. Ares can't give her one.

"Everything is connected," he says, showing her all of the wires in the back. "Like you said– it's the damn storm."

Raven whirls around and approaches Collins' still-seizing body on the opposite side of the table from Clarke. Her voice sounds all kinds of defeated and desperate when she begs, "Please don't let him die."

Ares glares at the blinking red light with every ounce of his being, sure that if his eyes had lasers in them, the thing would have caught on fire immediately. Why can't just one thing go right? Why?

"Okay, it stopped," he hears Clarke say from behind him. "Quick, help me get him on his side." Raven presumably doesn't move again, because she sharpens her voice. "Raven, there is fluid in his lungs. He could choke. Quick!"

Ares drops the radio and turns toward them, hurrying to roll Collins on his side. They had been right about his skin temperature– he feels hot and clammy. He isn't totally convinced that these symptoms are as normal as Abby had continually let on. Fever sometimes accompanies trauma, sure. But does seizing?

Clarke checks his pulse. "God, he's burning up!"

"Fluid in his lungs," Raven repeats, voice cracking in near-hysteria at the news. "Does that mean that the knife hit something?"

"No," Clarke responds as she wipes away a foam that's leaking out from between Collins' lips. "This isn't blood– it's something else. I did – I did everything she told me!" Her eyes clear as she forces herself to focus, a feat that's commendable due to how much pressure she's under. "I've seen this before. Shortness of breath, fever, seizing. It's poison."

"Clarke, you sterilized everything," Raven reminds her. "I watched you do it."

Clarke throws the rag back onto the table as her gaze catches on something. Her eyes fill with realization. "Not everything. Stay here."

She snatches the knife from where she'd set onto a tray, heads toward the ladder again, and doesn't look back.

"The poison was on the blade," Ares whispers, hands still placed on Collins' burning biceps to steady him as the fluid leaks from his lungs. It makes sense that the Grounders would have something like that to make quick work of an enemy if they couldn't mortally wound them with the blade alone. But if the Grounder had poison... he must also have the antidote.

Raven releases a muffled, barely-restrained sob that wracks her shoulders forward, veins popping in her forehead and tendons prominent in her neck from the force it takes for her not to burst into tears.

"Hey," Ares says to her, staring at her until she lifts her head and meets his gaze. Her brown eyes are glassy and hold enough pain to make him feel it in his gut. "If the Grounder had poison, he has to have the antidote, right?"

His words seem to penetrate through Raven's cloud of hopelessness. She blinks as she processes his words. Then, she nods, a bit of the tension released from her tightly-strung shoulders as she glances back down at Collins.

The hatch opens with a creak. Kiernan's head pops through it, blue eyes widening as he assesses the scene before he remembers himself and shakes his head. "Uh, Ares, Bellamy wants you at the top level."

Ares' forehead creases. What could Blake possibly want with him when the kid down here is seemingly on his way to the pearly gates? Raven appears to be wondering the same thing; her expression of confusion mirrors his.

He removes his hands from Collins' arm and wipes them on his jeans before placing them on the rungs of the ladder and heaving himself up step by step. Kiernan disappears back into the throng of people waiting around on the second level. People stare as he makes his way to the other ladder, finally reaching the third floor and shivering at the tension that cuts into him like a knife as soon as he pushes open the hatch.

The sight on the top floor is certainly one to behold. He first takes notice of Clarke standing apprehensively off to the side, lips pulled into a frown and muscles tense. Then his gaze meets Nate's as he rubs at his bottom lip in a nervous habit. Nate appears to be holding back a disgusted-looking Octavia. He doesn't see the others until his entire body is through the hole, seeing Blake with a murderous scowl on his face until his eyes ultimately land on the Grounder.

He's already been beaten up. That much is certain by the fact that one of his eyes is swollen shut and a metal spoke is embedded in the palm of his right hand. The man has been discarded of his external armor and shirt, leaving him in just his black pants and boots. Sharp tattoos line his collarbone and end just above his muscular chest. They appear to have chained him by his hands and feet to keep him at bay; Ares wonders if it'll even be enough. The man is ripped. Sweat makes his dark skin gleam, pronouncing the lines of his abdomen.

"To what do I owe the pleasure of your summons?" Ares asks Blake, pretending like he's not completely and utterly lost.

"He's staying quiet," Blake explains darkly, voice rough with something sinister. "I thought that you might have some methods of getting him to talk."

Ares raises an eyebrow. Blake wants him to torture this man into giving them an answer?

He feels eyes on him and flickers his gaze to Octavia's at the back of the room. She's begging him silently, shaking her head as if she can somehow instill some last-minute morals into him by just the expression on her face. Seeing the blatant desperation in her eyes doesn't sway him one bit. It's clear she hardly knows a thing about him if she thinks a pouty face will work.

"That's the second time you've asked me for help, Blake," Ares drawls to the older man with a smirk, slipping a knife out of his back pocket. "Careful, or it might start seeming like a habit."

He turns toward the Grounder with his eyes blazing, twirling the blade carelessly between his fingers as he nonchalantly takes a few steps closer. The man doesn't react. He doesn't even look at the knife even though he has to know what's about to happen, choosing instead to glare at Ares with an iris so dark it's almost black. Ares knows any rational person would be afraid of the Grounder despite the fact that he's restrained. He's much taller, older, and muscular enough that Ares wouldn't stand a chance at an arm-wrestling contest.

But he isn't afraid. There's no ounce of terror or shyness that creeps up in his bones. No, he's had too rough of a day to feel any fear. He closes his eyes, allowing himself to register the throbbing pain in his head for a moment before exhaling through his nose. Every drop of rage, desperation, and pain in his body conflates into a massive coil of chaos in his gut. It begs to be set free. He can feel it writhing, gnashing its teeth like a wild animal in a too-small cage.

Ares opens his eyes and lets the beast loose.

It's a shame that the Grounder doesn't have any hair, or he could have grabbed it and used it to hold his head back as he takes another step closer and runs the tip of the blade along one of the tattoos on the right side of his clavicle.

"These are cool tattoos," he muses, tilting his head to the side. It doesn't matter if the Grounder even understands English or not; he'll get the gist of what he's saying in a moment. "I bet they hurt. Maybe, they even felt like–"

Ares shoves the point of the blade into the Grounder's skin, right at the straight edge where ink turns to unblemished brown skin. The man bobs his head forward at the sensation that must be sending bursts of fire throughout his entire body. His jaw clenches, preventing any screams from passing through his chapped lips. A barely-restrained grunt forces its way out of his throat as Ares drags the knife through his skin ever-so-slowly. Crimson rivers of blood trickle down his chest. Ares' vision turns at the sight, but he's too far down the rabbit hole to fully process one of his triggers.

The first tattoo is shaped like an upside-down "L," with the shortest end lining his collarbone and the longer side reaching the bottom of his pectoral muscles. Ares finishes the outline on that one with minimal results. So, gritting his teeth, he jabs the knife into the side of the other one and creates a deeper cut– one that's surely going to leave a scar. The Grounder thrashes in place, a guttural groan rising from deep inside of him as Ares twists the knife. His restrained body shudders in time with his rapidly-paced breaths.

Once both markings are outlined in fresh cuts, red pouring out of them and mixing with some of the half-dried blood on his bare abdomen, Ares pulls back and assesses the damage. The Grounder's head is bent downward as he inhales trembling breaths from the bleeding lacerations on his chest. Although he's clearly in agony, he doesn't appear to be any closer to giving up information.

Ares reaches up and seizes the metal spoke in his hand without warning. His palm shakes uncontrollably as Ares twists the blood-soaked rod around and around, angling it from side to side to cut deeper into the skin. The Grounder's jaw still stays locked against noise, but the eyes are windows to the soul. Ares can see every glimmer of pain reflected in the dark pools half-obscured by shadows and the remnants of a kohl mask. The chaos inside of Ares is pleased by this. The more pain he's in, the closer they're going to get to breaking him.

The curly-haired boy takes the metal handle of his knife and jabs it in the pressure point between the man's knee and groin with all of his might, making that leg go slack and the Grounder to teeter to one side. The only thing holding him up is his restraints. Ares had been taught a thing or two about pressure points during his time with the Underground. If bestowed correctly, a hit there could leave a well-trained man down for the count.

"There are twenty-two pressure points on the human body," Ares informs him in a gravelly voice that isn't entirely human. It's rough, low, and possesses something sinister that he didn't know was lurking inside of him. "Would you like me to show you where the other twenty-one are?"

He supposes he should feel some amount of guilt by doing this. There shouldn't be a thrilling rush of satisfaction that makes his blood sing, nor should there be a sick twitch of his lips threatening to form a small smirk. But these things exist and there's nothing he can do about it now, so he caters to the darkness and lets it spill out of him in waves.

Down here, it's you or me. Collins or this Grounder. And if Ares hadn't been sure that they couldn't let this guy bleed out, he would have spent more time carving up his abdomen like Blake apparently had. Maybe he would have even sliced off an ear or gouged out an eye.

Just as Ares is about to strike down on the sensitive place between his neck and shoulder, Raven's voice calls up the ladder, "What's taking so long?"

Ares lets his eyes linger on the Grounder's to let him know he isn't done with him, yet.

Raven swings up the ladder and pulls herself to the floor. "He stopped breathing."

"What?" Clarke demands, surging forward to head down to the first level, but Raven grabs her arm and keeps her in place.

"He started again, but next time, he might not."

"He won't tell us anything," the blonde tells her with a resigned sigh.

Raven's eyes drift to Ares and the Grounder, who's half-doubled over from the waves of pain still crashing into him from the pressure point in his thigh. Her gaze rakes over the gruesome carvings around his tattoos and the spoke in his right hand. Then, her face turns stony with determination.

"Wanna bet?" she asks, brushing past Ares to grab two blue-colored wires connected to the solar panels on the roof. She connects her boot to the wall for added leverage, muscles in her arms bulging as she pries them apart. They snap with a crackle of electricity that makes Ares shuffle back.

"What are you doing?" Blake questions.

Raven taps the two ends together, creating a sizzle. "Showing him something new."

Ares backs up even further to give her space. Sparks fly as she brushes the open wires together once, twice, three times, before surging forward and pressing both of them to the Grounder's abdomen and chest. A real scream of agony bursts from his mouth this time. The dim lights above flicker as the electricity transfers from the dropship's system to his body, causing him to hunch over until she pries the wires off of him.

"Which one is it?" she demands in a wrath-filled scream. When he doesn't answer, she urges, "Come on!" and slams them back onto his skin. The lights flicker again, the entire ship going dark for a few precious seconds. The Grounder's body jerks from the voltage. Veins pop in Raven's forehead in time with her stress, voice going desperate. "He's all I have!"

Something dawns on Ares at that moment. It's clear that Raven considers Collins a vital part of her life– a central organ, a piece of her that, if ripped out, would leave her feeling incomplete. He clearly doesn't share the same sentiment. While a part of him clearly cares about Raven, Collins doesn't consider her as important to him as he is to her. That much is evident by the fact that he'd pursued Clarke as soon as they'd landed.

She deserves better than the piece of shit dying downstairs.

Octavia appears out of thin air, standing in the center of the room with the knife from Collins' body clenched firmly in her hand. Her raven hair is matted with grease and oil. That, coupled with the fact that it hangs in her face and nearly obscures her face, makes her look significantly less like the innocent girl she'd been when they first got to Earth. 

"No more!" she cries vehemently, loud enough to bring all attention to her.

"He's letting Finn die!" Raven exclaims in a half-sob.

There are tears in the younger Blake sibling's eyes as she shakes her head. "He won't let me die."

And then she cuts a vertical line down her forearm with the tip of the poisoned blade, allowing it to enter her bloodstream. The Grounder gives an abrupt jolt of protest.

"Octavia, no!" Blake shouts a moment too late, rushing toward her. "Octavia, what did you–?"

She pushes past him and falls to her knees in front of the Grounder, spreading a small pouch full of different vials open on the floor. The glass containers roll and clank into each other as she messily organizes them into a line. She taps the knife on the ground in front of one, questioning, "This one?" in a whisper. When the Grounder doesn't answer, she moves onto the one to the left. "Good?"

Octavia picks up the vial and raises it up to the Grounder's face so he can get a better view. They all wait for a few precious seconds, Ares tapping his hand on his thigh restlessly, until he ultimately nods. The younger Blake heaves a sigh of relief before passing the small container to Clarke. The blonde immediately rushes to the ladder with Raven hot on her heels.

Ares glances down at his hands. They're covered in the Grounder's blood, both from the carvings and from twisting that metal spoke. Now that the threat has passed, he can feel the simmering rage folding back inside of him. He wonders if it'll ever fully disappear or if it'll always be tucked in a pocket of himself. Waiting. A weapon to be unleashed at opportune times.

Now he feels the full effects of the day. He registers the thudding ache of his skull again, his head throbbing in time with his heartbeat. His back aches. Eyes pulsing with fatigue, his hands tremble with exhaustion as he tucks the knife safely back into his pocket.

He glances up from the floor to meet Blake's eyes. The man gives him a nod with a glimmer of – is that gratitude in his eyes? Whatever it is makes Ares hesitate. Then, the movement so small it's nearly imperceptible, he nods back.

Afterward, Ares sinks back into his mask, rotating his shoulders with a cringe and raising his chin. "That was eventful," he says, wiping his hands on his black jeans. "I'm gonna go take a nap."

_______

a/n:

poll: should i start making content warnings at the beginning of every chapter? it occurred to me that certain people may find things like parental infidelity triggering and i would like to give a warning about that stuff as often as i can. it wouldn't include things like violence because that happens in every chapter, but it would mention things that are more gruesome/serious (like this torture scene). let me know what you guys think and certain triggers/warnings you would like me to include! (or, if you're not comfortable sharing in the comments, you can pm me and i'll create a warning in future chapters that contain the subject matter.)

i'm sorry that this chapter took so long for me to write, but college really kicked my ass this month. i've had twelve weeks of nonstop class (my university doesn't give a fall break) so basically i'm dying lol. things are winding down before exams though, so i should be able to write a little more often

i'm so excited for the next episode! day trip is one of my favorites of all-time and it's going to be awesome in terms of ares' dynamic with raven (it was hinted at in here!) and a revelation about himself

–kristyn

TRANSLATIONS:

Mierda: Shit.

¿Por qué no puedes funcionar?: Why can't you work?

( word count: 6.3k )