Author's Note: Hello all, back at it again! I have had this gem saved on the computer for over a year now and was originally hesitant to post it, but after a year and some later, it feels right! (Sorry about that, by the way). COVID-19 quarantine has given me a lot of free time, so I have the next chapter about halfway written as I write this note. So stay tuned!

We're taking a little break with this chapter to check in with our favorite little sister of the group - Octavia! Spoiler Alert that I do NOT have plans to make her into a Bloodreina-type in this fic... we already have Pike for that. :)

Per usual, drop a favorite/follow/comment/PM. Title of the chapter is from Five Finger Death Punch.

Enjoy!

Chapter 13: I Apologize

Octavia POV:

Meanwhile…:

"Oh my god, Jasper! How many times do I have to tell you?!" I screamed across the room to my extremely aggravating boyfriend.

His normally calm and humorous eyes now sparkled with anger and a hint of annoyance. "Octavia! Think about this!" he began frustratedly.

"On the contrary, this is ALL I've been thinking about!" I yelled back to him, effectively throwing his argument back in his face.

We stared each other down, equal parts love and loathing.

"All I'm saying is that Clarke and Bellamy are trying to rally a whole army. You wouldn't even need to be on the battlefield. Not you, or me, or Monty, or Ben or any of us.! They'll have it covered!"

"You don't get it, do you?" I asked him, deflating for what was soon to come. "You really don't…" I muttered while sitting on the edge of our bed, sheets still strewn about from our morning's excursions. Who knew such fun could turn sour so quickly?

"Please just tell me, I want to understand you," he said calmly this time. Jasper sat on the bed as well, but left enough space in between so as to not scare me away, as if I was some abused animal.

I looked into his pleading gaze then, sensing nothing but innocence and his spoken desire to, indeed, understand.

I turned my head towards the ground willing my hair to mask my face. "My… mother was killed by the Progressives. No, not even the Progressives. That was all Pike. That piece of shit…" I seethed. "But we all knew that."

I had to pause my monologue as the day began to re-imagine itself behind my eyes. I could almost smell the chicken that mom was baking when everything went to shit. "Bellamy had just gotten home from work. His boss had been cutting his shifts from work because of Jake Griffin's announcement. It wasn't every day that rich kid Clarke Griffin preferred the company of us… well, lower class, so everyone knew of the weird Griffin-Blake relationship, as I'm sure you remember," I nodded to Jasper. After all, it had only been the talk of the century at school for weeks on end. "Mom just… looked out the window and told us to get in the bedroom and hide. She gave Bellamy this look. It was… God, I couldn't even describe it properly. Haunted… yeah, haunted. Bell fought her for a few minutes on the topic, but stopped when he realized what exactly was coming. He grabbed me by the arm and shoved me under the bed as fast as he could. He didn't have time to shut the door before running to join me underneath."

I felt the tears start to run down my cheeks, recalling the day fully now. Once a repressed memory, now a full-fledged nightmare. "The Progressives entered the living room. Of course, uninvited. I had never seen so many at once in a group. I didn't know they were programmed to… work together for lack of better words. And these ones were different. Taller build, leaner, somehow more versatile. Bellamy thought I couldn't see. Mom told them that we had already ran away and gotten the hell out of Arkadia. I guess that wasn't the answer they were looking for," I breathed out. "I remember turning towards the wall, away from Bellamy, away from the door… but I still heard the, uh, one g-gunshot. They left. For what it was worth, they must've believed mom that we had already skipped town cause they didn't check the rest of the house."

I sighed deeply, recalling the rest of the late day. "Bellamy held my hand the whole time and when it was finally dark outside, we packed as much as we could between two knapsacks and ran," I finished, wiping the damp tear stains from my cheeks.

"We tracked Clarke down a couple days later. There was this one tree that her and I used to climb…" I smiled at the now fond memories her and I shared climbing up and down the sturdy tree, sometimes falling but never too far from the top. It was as if our bodies knew when we were too high up to fall down, so we just didn't. If nothing else, I had a kickass instinct to brag about. "Near the top, we built something like a perch and kept a few blankets under a tarp up there. She was fast asleep when I got myself pulled up, and was almost fully awake when Bellamy got himself onto the perch," I laughed, remembering him struggling to get up to the top, not used to the physical strain of climbing trees with misplaced balance.

God, I hoped they had made it to Polis in one piece.

"I'm sorry Octavia," Jasper said sincerely, bringing me into his warm embrace. If I was being honest, I had nearly forgot he was there. It just felt good to say everything aloud - therapeutic even.

We sat in silence, the weight of my words settling over the both of us. I was beginning to calm now, relaxing into his arms, completely worn out by the previous emotional turmoil. "But just because Clarke got you into this mess, doesn't mean you have to put yourself through any more hardships. Just stay here, stay with me," he plead now, holding me tightly.

I pulled away fully from him now and stood. I angrily wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and pushed my hair behind my ears. "You still don't understand," I said, astonished.

And then I walked out the door and through the hallways, not giving much attention to where I was going.

At one point, I was certain that I saw Ben in my periphery but ignored him nonetheless.

Outside, I need to go outside.

I wasn't just running and fighting for my damned life simply to appease my friend. Although I loved Clarke like a sister, it wasn't the only reason I had joined her in her rebellious quest against a treacherous republic; or at least, that's what I hoped we would be remembered for if we all died. Or maybe we were just a bunch of stupid kids throwing a fit.

Surely not, I thought while taking an exit outside. The air was fresh with the scent of the rain shower from minutes ago. The clouds up above were a dark grey that promised for even more rain to come. The stark chill in the air helped to cool my feverish skin.

I walked around the large courtyard, passing very few people as I went. The few there shied away from me mostly and one mother even shielded her child from my view. The action left me with a pang of guilt for simply being a treacherous Arkadian. I had personally done nothing to any of these people I hadn't met before, yet I felt compelled to apologize. But for what and how, the question remained. So I remained silent through their disparaging and spiteful expressions.

Back in Arkadia, we viewed ourselves as the most dominant group – now – on Earth. It was something to be proud of. We were innovative, healthy, civilized. But the more villages that our group passed through, the more I realized: so were they. Whereas Arkadia was more modern and created new technology for everything, Grounders had manipulated their land and surroundings to benefit them.

If anything, Grounders were the smart ones and Arkadians were the fools to think so highly of themselves.

In the furthest corner of the courtyard, I tossed off my jacket onto a bench and laced my boots tighter, preparing to run through a few sets and drills.

It was something that Marcus Kane had taught me and Clarke. Her parents had forced her into the self defense lessons with Arkadia's chief of security after the first Grounder sightings. When she told me about her lessons, I had begged her to take me with, and in just a few months I had surpassed her skills. She worked harder, as did I. Our sparring sessions always left the both of us bruised to some extent and worn beyond belief. I was proud to admit that I won seventy percent of the time. The other thirty percent, well, we wouldn't talk about that.

Per Marcus' instruction in my head, I spent nearly twenty minutes running through my old drills that felt more like muscle memory now. Right hook, left hook, right uppercut! Left hook, right hook, uppercut! Side kick! Left knee, crush their toes, elbow to the cheek! Roundhouse! Right hook!

I felt that familiar rush I always got when fighting, even though I had been under-practiced these past couple months. I hadn't much time to recondition myself and upon going up against Progressives, that hardly gave me enough time to correct my stance if I messed up. I wasn't dead yet, so that was something to go off I guess.

Keeping my mind on this did wonders for keeping my head out of other areas currently plaguing my life, like Jasper. I thought I had made myself perfectly clear that I was going to help in the liberation of Arkadia – my home, my people, my responsibility. But it wasn't just Arkadia I was fighting for or to avenge my mother. Jasper was my family now, surely more intimate, but family just as much as Bellamy. I wanted to protect him – all of them.

And he wanted to protect me. Just me and him away from the mess. Didn't he see that I was just trying to protect us, too?

And then there was Bellamy. Surely he wouldn't want me marching off into battle, but that's hardly what worried me when thinking of my brother.

The fact that there was no communication set between us and Clarke and Bellamy worried me. Anything and everything could go wrong and neither party would know it. Hell, I could only hope they had made it to Polis and not gotten eaten by… God knows what. Or killed by Grounders.

Right hook, left hook, right uppercut! Repeat! Keep the bad thoughts out, focus, repeat.

I was in the middle of a half-assed side kick when someone pulled me from my concentration.

"Center yourself. Don't put your weight on your toes, try the ball of your feet instead," an unknown woman called from behind me.

My alarm bells were going off just knowing that someone had snuck up on me so easily.

I did as I was told, focusing on shifting my weight onto the ball of my foot instead of on my big toe. And it worked.

"Uh… thanks," I said. The statement felt rude on my tongue as I gazed upon the lean black woman who stood in front of me. She was beautiful despite the raised scars that marked her face and collar bone. And the way she held herself almost demanded respect. "Thank you," I said more humbly, releasing tension in my shoulders.

"You are not from around here," she deadpanned.

I looked to her armor-clad body, now wondering about her origins. If she was in the area, she must be Trikru, right? But from what village, I did not know or recognize. "Neither are you," I shot back.

"I've not met a Skaikru… human before," she said while sizing me up. I wore my dark blue tank top and black skinny jeans today – not a threatening combination by any means.

"We're really not all that bad," I said sheepishly. Her eyes betrayed her briefly, looking apprehensively to my own, and then falling back into her previous stoicism.

"So it seems," she replied ominously. Was that a compliment or just an insult to my skill?

"My name is Octavia," I spluttered. Was it rude to not have introduced myself before? Or was it too much to give a stranger my name?

"Octavia," she looked to me contemplatively, scanning her eyes over my whole profile. "The same Octavia kom Skaikru who stole food from her own clan to give to a starving Trikru village?" she instigated. She knew her answer, but I still felt the need to explain.

"My people actually gave me the food to give them," I explained briefly.

"But haven't they exiled you?" she asked, baffled.

I chose my next words carefully. "My clan's Chancellor has exiled me, but the people – or at least some of them, possibly most of them – have not. They believe in what we're trying to fight for."

"And what is that?" she asked knowingly, a new twinkle in her eye.

"What is what?"

"What are you fighting for?"

I paused once again. What was I truly fighting for? Didn't I just give Jasper a whole back story of why I wanted to actually fight the battle when it came to that. But as I looked to the unknown warrior in front of me now, that same answer didn't feel right on my tongue. "My people… they deserve better than what they're getting as far as leadership is concerned. This needs to happen," I told truthfully.

I saw something akin to pride in her features then. Even if I had just met her mere moments ago, I felt as if I was looking into a distorted mirror almost.

"A healer once told me: 'We are all separated by clans, but we are all one… Wonkru," she finished with a somber smile. "A healer told me that… could you believe that? Changes the philosophy of a warrior," she laughed.

"Yeah, I could." I smiled, thinking of my own 'strong willed healer.' "And what happens when the time comes to become Wonkru?" I asked, the unfamiliarity of the word prominent on my tongue.

"When that happens, we will do what is necessary to bring balance to the clan," she said with a certain finality that left no room for argument. "Just remember what you are fighting for Octavia, and you will be just fine," she said while walking away.

It was then that I saw the noticeable limp and how the warrior woman carried herself more so on her right foot than her left.

My decision, just like before had been made; although now my head was significantly clearer and without conflict. Even though there was no doubt in my mind that I loved Jasper Jordan with all my heart, I needed to fight if only to get a glimpse of this utopia called Wonkru. It was something worth fighting for.

Note: Nice little filler chapter here. We get to see what's going on with our quickly maturing Octavia before getting back to our poor Clarke and Bellamy. Thanks for tuning in guys. Leave a comment or send a PM what you think. Keep it classy everyone!