@waratlas hit the heart for a starter
Bellamy Blake doesn’t look to himself all that often. She wonders if there’s some kind of complex behind that, the avoidance of mirrors, of the way that he’s allowed facial hair to creep in and overtake EVERYTHING, though it doesn’t take a leap for Toni to know it has to do with the fact that he’s always looking out for calls into space, for a voice of a girl who’s maybe dead, maybe not. It’s hard to tell from way up here, it’s hard to know anything, really, until the world comes crashing down all over again, and Earth is there to receive them readily.
It’s hard to watch him as Octavia devolves - or maybe that’s always been a work in progress, one that they could never stop, even if they poured all their hopes and dreams into it. O’s had to DO THINGS that they couldn’t have done, even if they’d the stomach for it. It’s wildness and horror, all rolled into one, and watching him from behind, the bend of his spine, Toni knows he’s gonna take that on too, just another piece of sadness to weigh his shoulders until they break, a straw upon the camel’s back.
None of this feels like poetry, writ, instead it’s just one unfortunate event after the next. Bellamy Blake, throwing his love into women that love him back, but can’t fix what’s broken because only he’s got that. And she’s there too, a soldier by nature, now, forged by the events that they’ve been made to live, as she breathes, unsteadily, looking at him from where beneath the dirt that smudges against her cheeks, where they hear the volley of gunfire above, where maybe they don’t make it, and she smiles for him, because someone has to. “Worried?”
