Chapter 21
“Okay. I am going to put my weapon down.”
“Lexa, no!”
“It’s okay, An!”
“No, it’s fucking not! He’s going to kill you!”
Lexa ignored her and put her weapon onto the ground. She lifted her hands and moved away from it.
“Roan, the police are on their way. If you leave now, you might have a chance.”
Lexa knew it was pointless to try to persuade him, but she had to try and buy them some time. It was the only way. She glanced at her sister. Anya’s left eye was almost swollen shut and her lips split. Tied to that chair she looked more fragile than Lexa had ever seen her. Lexa vividly remembered the day a man had broken into their house when she was ten. She remembered the vicious smile when he held the knife to her throat, telling her in no uncertain words, that he would maim and kill her. She remembered the panic and the embarrassment when she peed her own pants. But the thing she remembered best was the look on Anya’s face when she entered the kitchen. The rage, the determination. The man was hurting her sister and Anya wouldn’t have that. Lexa remembered the man turning around, threatening Anya. And she still heard his scream as the big knife her father used to carve the Thanksgiving turkey with entered his body and the sound his body made when it hit the floor. She still saw it in her dreams.
She tried to guess the distance between her and Roan, calculated the speed needed to get between him an Anya. She knew it would be her last hurrah. If she failed they’d both be dead. She tried not to think about Clarke.
“There’s no need for you to kill us.”
“Oh, really?”
He laughed.
“To be honest, I’ve been thinking about selling the two of you to the highest bidder instead, but that would be some dumb Bond villain move, wouldn’t it? You might come back to get your revenge.”
He pointed the gun at Anya.
“I think I’ll better make this quick.”
Lexa was fast. She was on him before he could pull the trigger and she fought him with everything she had. When the gun went off it was a stupid coincidence. The bullet hit her in the upper leg and she instantly knew it was bad, because the blood was already wetting her pants. Next Roan hit her in the face with the gun barrel. Lexa heard Anya scream, then she fell and lost consciousness.
Roan wiped some blood from his lips where Lexa had managed to punch him. He smiled.
“It’s sad really. You would have mad a great sell. People always pay more for the once who have some fight left in them.”
He directed the gun at Lexa.
“Pity.”
Another shot echoed in the empty hall and Roan’s expression changed from smug to surprised. His eyes wandered down his own body, stoping at the red stain on the left side of his shirt that grew bigger with every heartbeat. He stumbled backwards until his back crashed into the wall. His knees went week and he slid down, leaving a red streak on the white paint. He coughed up blood. His arm went numb and his hand with the gun rested in his lap. A few more breaths moved his chest until his body finally went slack.
Clarke stared at him and then at Lexa’s gun in her hand. She had never fired a gun before. In fact she had never even touched one. She had always been afraid of them, of their power to destroy. She didn’t understand the notion of feeling safer with a weapon in the house. How could anyone be safer with something so deadly close-by?
The recoil had been harder than she’d expected. If she had expected it at all. She knew about it of course, but experiencing it, the way one’s arm was jerked back, because of a tiny metal piece leaving the barrel, was almost shocking. The sound of the shot was still ringing in her ears even though she surely must have fired it ages ago.
Her arm grew heavy and she lowered it, slowly, trying to get the world back into focus. She heard the sound of metal falling on concrete. She must have let go of the automatic. She was lucky that it didn’t go off on impact.
She looked at Lexa’s lifeless form lying only a few feet from her, on her side, a little bent, her eyes closed. Her chestnut colored hair was tainted red and a small pool of blood had already formed next to her. Her beautiful girl, not moving. Clarke blinked.
She had never taken a life before. She was a doctor, sworn to do just the opposite. She had taken an oath to save lives and still she had fired the bullet. She wasn’t sure if she had even hesitated. What did that make her?
Now that it was relieved of the weight of the weapon her body went into shock. She was a doctor. She knew. But the feeling that she was watching herself from a distance was weird and unsettling nevertheless.
“Lexa?”
She heard Anya’s voice from behind her, shaky, scared … desperate.
Clarke couldn’t move. Her feet seemed to be one with the floor, her hands white-knuckled fists.
It was only when Anya ran past her, hardly acknowledging her presence and half knocking her out of the way, that life finally found its way back into Clarke Griffin’s veins.
The first thing she noticed was the taste of blood from where she had bit her lip, the second the metallic smell of gunpowder. She took a breath.
Anya was kneeling next to her sister now, frantically searching for the source of the bleeding.
Clarke was sick. Most of her stomach content found its way to the floor.
“Clarke?”
Clarke was retching.
“Clarke!”
She jumped and stumbled when she felt Bellamy’s hand on her back, but he seemed to have expected something like this and caught her by the arm.
“Clarke!”
He shook her a little.
“Come on, Griffin, you can’t freak out now. Lexa needs you!”
He looked past her at Anya who had started CPR.
“Clarke! I know you’re in shock, but your girlfriend is hurt. She’s dying, Clarke!
Lexa. Is. Dying!”
Clarke took a shaky breath. It felt like the air was on fire. But the pain made her mind clearer somehow. Or maybe it was her instincts kicking in. She wasn’t sure. She pushed Bellamy away. Anya was still doing CPR on Lexa. Clarke knelt down next to her and checked her girlfriend’s pulse and her pupils. She was breathing, but only just.
“Stop.”
Her voice had a mechanical sound, but she could worry about that later.
“What?”
Anya stared at her like she only just realized that Clarke was there.
“She’s breathing. Give me some room!”
She checked the bullet wound on Lexa’s leg. It didn’t seem like it fully severed the artery, but it must have graced it, because there was a lot of blood already.
“Give me your belt!”
Anya handed it over without asking and Clarke put it around Lexa’s leg, building a make-shift tourniquet, trying to minimize the blood loss.
“Bell, your shirt!”
He took it off and handed it to her. She pressed it onto the still bleeding wound.
“Anya, press this down.”
Clarke checked Lexa’s pulse again.
“Don’t you dare give up now, Lex! You’re not going to die on me!”
She carefully pushed Lexa’s hair from her face and looked at the head wound. It looked superficial enough not to worry her for now. She pressed her ear onto Lexa’s ribcage and listened to her heartbeat and breathing. Everything was regular, there were no unusual sounds. Good.
When she looked up she saw Roans body. He was still sitting against the wall and could have been sleeping if it wasn’t for the unnaturally white color of his face and the large pool of blood on the floor around him. Clarke swallowed the bile in her mouth.
When she looked back at Lexa she made a decision.
“Bell, get the car.”
He looked at her, hesitating.
“The ambulance should be here in a few minutes.”
Clarke got up.
“Bellamy, I am a doctor. She needs a blood transfusion. The ambulance won’t make it in time. Get the car!”
“Bellamy? Do you copy?”
Lincolns voice sounded distorted and Bellamy tapped his earpiece.
“Lincoln? Lexa is hurt. We need a car. Now!”
“I’m right out front. I’ll be there in a second.”
It took him no longer than thirty. He didn’t stop to look at Roan’s body, he didn’t ask any questions. Instead he carefully lifted Lexa up from the ground and carried her to the car while Anya proceeded to apply pressure to the wound.
Clarke stared at Roan’s body.
“I shot him …”
She wasn’t sure if she was talking to anyone in particular.
Bellamy touched her arm, bringing her back to the moment.
“It was self-defense. Go now. Take care of Lexa. I’ll deal with the police.”
Bellamy was right. Roan would have killed Lexa. He would have killed Anya. Clarke turned around. She would deal with it later.