CHAPTER FIFTEEN
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     THE AREA WAS ALL BUT EMPTY except for Octavia, who sat in one of the dismantled chairs with her arms crossed tightly against her chest and a sour look on her face. Taylor sighed as she entered the ship, knowing that Octavia wouldn't budge so easily.

     "Still?" she questioned the girl quietly, aware of the answer before she had even spoken. Octavia nodded fiercely.

     "Yes, still. You know that this isn't -" she started off angrily, anything having to do with the subject possessing the power to set her off on a furious tangent.

     "I know," Taylor interrupted, avoiding Octavia's glare. She felt as if on some level she blamed her, but not nearly as much as she did Bellamy. They hadn't spoken for days and when they did, it was nothing but arguing. The tension between the two was affecting Taylor, the one who was always stuck in the middle when they fought.

     "Do you believe me about him?" Octavia questioned, her voice gaining a calmer tone as if she hoped that would help her case.

     "I do," Taylor admitted. "But I still stand with Bellamy and Clarke on this. We can't let him go."

     "At least let me see him!" Octavia protested, but Taylor was already climbing the ladder to the next level. The last thing she needed was to argue with Octavia and escalate the anger between everyone. Octavia's shouts quieted and Taylor heaved herself up through the already open hatch to the third level.

     She stood up and her stomach twisted at the sight that she had been avoiding. Ever since the day of the storm, she had refused to see what they had done to the man. But now looking at him, she felt even worse about the whole thing. He looked like he was going to fall asleep at any moment, the constant standing proving exhausting for him. Bruises, cuts, and blood covered his shirtless chest and arms. A crimson stained rag was haphazardly wrapped around his hand.

     "We're not killing him," Bellamy was saying to Miller, who stood next to the Grounder while Bellamy sat on a few boxes in front of him. Taylor let out a sharp sigh, causing both of them to look back at her. "What are you doing here?"

     As Bellamy asked her this, Miller dipped his hand in some sort of berry mush that was on a table nearby and smeared it across the man's face. He said something to the man that she couldn't quite catch over Bellamy's voice.

     "I came to tell Miller something. But it looks like he's pretty busy," she replied bitterly. Her steps echoed through the small room and she picked up the first remotely clean looking rag she could find. Before she could reach them, the man hit Miller in the head roughly with his own, causing him to collapse to the floor with a groan.

     Miller scooted away quickly, holding his head in pain. She rolled her eyes and stopped directly in front of the man, hesitating before wiping away what Miller had just smeared on his face with one fluid motion.

     "Taylor -" Bellamy began to protest, but she was already throwing the rag on the table.

     "He's tied up. Just because we're not letting him go doesn't mean we should treat him like an animal," she snapped, sending Miller another ill-disposed glance. "It's still not who we are." Bellamy looked like he was growing tired of the Grounder argument, one that she was sure he had had with Octavia many times over the past few days.

     Sighing, she offered Miller a hand and pulled him up from the ground. He mumbled a thank you and furrowed his brows when he looked at her closely. "Are you okay? You look..." he didn't finish his remark when he caught sight of her slightly raised eyebrow.

     "I'm just tired, that's all," she answered flatly. "Anyway...I'm taking over your guard shift today since you're in charge of the Grounder." Miller nodded firmly and she spun around on her heel and marched out of the room, already down a few rungs of the ladder before she realized that Bellamy was following closely behind her.

     They reached the first floor, where Octavia was still waiting patiently. "You're still here?" Bellamy asked, his question similar to the one Taylor had asked her earlier.

     "I'm not moving until you let me up there to see him," she affirmed in a cold tone without giving her brother a second glance.

     "I let him live. Isn't that enough?" Taylor mumbled something about needing to go, not wanting to get in the middle of another argument between them. Well, she already was in the middle of their arguments, but she didn't want to have to witness another one.

     She pushed past the tarp and hadn't realized how fast she was walking, only coming to be aware of it when she nearly bumped directly into Clarke. She stopped quickly, her shoes skidding across the dirt in order to avoid a collision.

     "Sorry," she breathed absentmindedly.

     "Are you okay?" Clarke questioned concernedly, examining the stressed look that Taylor wore.

     "Do I really look that bad? Everyone's asking me that. But I'm fine," she dismissed. She turned her head slightly back at the dropship. "If you were planning on going in there, wait a minute. Octavia and Bellamy are at it again."

     This seemed to click with Clarke as the obvious reason as to why Taylor looked so all over the place. "Would you be up for a trip?" she asked Taylor suddenly. "The council thinks that there's a supply depot near here that we could spend the winter in and it may have supplies. I was going to check it out."

     "I can't today. I'm stepping in for Miller while he watches the Grounder," she explained, the two exchanging a distasteful look at the mention of the man they had locked in the ship. Taylor wished she could go and didn't have responsibilities that tied her to the camp and sighed. "Ask Bellamy, though. I can tell he's pretty stressed. He needs to get away for a while."

     Clarke nodded reluctantly, it being quite apparent that Bellamy was the last person that she would want to bring on a day trip. The two parted ways and Taylor weaved her way through the busy camp.

     They had mostly recovered from the storm and now delinquents were bustling about with assigned tasks, stations assigned to each job. She took pride in the order that had settled upon them and was extremely glad for the fact that nothing had gone horrifically wrong for such a prolonged period of time; even if that prolonged period of time was a mere few days.

     Raven was about to enter Finn's tent, but stopped and smiled widely when she caught sight of Taylor. "Hey," she greeted cheerfully. Her spirits had been much higher since Finn had been saved and she seemed eternally grateful to those who had made it possible. Shortly after Finn had narrowly escaped an imminent death, Raven had practically tackled Taylor with a hug and thanked her for all she had done for him. It warmed her heart to see how much Raven cared about Finn.

     "Are you sure you don't want to use the radio?" Raven questioned, one she had asked Taylor many times since she had been successful in installing a working camera with the radio so that they could see people on the Ark as well as talk to them.

     "I don't know...my mom might not even want to talk to me," she responded lightly, trying to end the discussion there. It was more like she didn't want to face her mother after leaving her so abruptly.

     "Wait," Raven blurted, her eyes indicating that she had come to some kind of realization. "Your last name's Flynn, right?"

     "Yes..." Taylor trailed off, not sure at all where Raven was going with this.

     "Is your mom Elara?" she questioned further. When Taylor nodded, Raven laughed loudly and smacked her hand against her head. "I know her! I don't know how I didn't realize before..."

     "Wait, what? How do you know my mother?" Taylor started firing off questions before Raven could even take them in. "So she's okay? She's not in trouble because of me?"

     "As far as I know. When Abby asked me to get parts for that pod I was digging around in Factory Station and your mom offered to help me. She and Abby are the reason I'm down here," Raven elaborated, Taylor stunned into silence because of the sudden bombardment of information that she had just received. "Why don't you want to talk to her?"

     "Like you said, everyone's looking for me and Bellamy up there. They probably think I have some hand in what happened to Jaha, too," Taylor sighed, the complexity of that problem weighing down on her once again. With every other conflict they had, this one was one she hadn't thought about in a while. "I don't want to cause problems for her or drag her into that mess."

     Raven nodded understandingly and shot her a sympathetic look. "Well, let me know if you change your mind, I can make sure you're on the list. I need to get back to Finn." She disappeared into the tent, leaving Taylor alone with new thoughts of her mother. At least she could be fairly certain her mother was alive and well if she was working closely with Abby.

     Trudging over to the position she was meant to take guard, she attempted to shake away all of the thoughts that crashed around in her head. It was getting overwhelming.

     Her knife was tucked in her pocket, though she couldn't see that doing any good if a Grounder approached their camp at a distance.

     She seated herself on the small platform that had been built aside the wall, the damp wood chilling her slightly. Wrapping her jacket around her body tighter, she hoped that this bunker would pan out for them. The dropping temperatures didn't spell out easy survival for them and she worried about keeping an entire camp full of people alive, with those conditions especially.

     She heard the gates open and watched as Bellamy and Clarke disappeared into the foliage together, smiling at the fact that Clarke had actually taken her advice and asked Bellamy to come along. The trip could either much improve their dynamic or ruin it. A make or break situation. But Taylor decided to hope that the resentment would end soon. Lately she had been growing far too tired of the high running tension that surrounded so many of them.