FROZEN STARS
THIRTY SIX

warning: this chapter contains slightly triggering topics, please take care!

THE DARKNESS WAS A CONTRADICTION. It stretched around her, infinite and expansive, yet it crushed her, shrinking and suffocating. At first, she thought she was dreaming, that it was just one of those strange dreams she had where there was no sound and no people. Dreams where it was just her, stood in the middle of nothing but black. It was like she was stood in a starless night sky only it was lifeless and terrifying. In her dreams, she'd stand there for what felt like hours, unable to move, the darkness would suck the life from her bone and she'd lose herself, for a moment, in the blur of dreams that were meant to be her safe haven. But the second Marley opened her eyes, she knew this was different. It wasn't a darkness born of dreams but a darkness born of nightmares, of something out of her control. The kind of darkness that seeped into your soul, clouding your eyes as you fell under and into its grasp.

Her eyes cracked open and in poured the light; dull and red. It wasn't the same light of her, and eventually Elijah's (when Abby finally let him out of Medical), compartment she'd grown used to over the past few days. That was a bright light - one that flooded the room at exactly 7 am, an alarm clock to wake camp for breakfast and their morning duties.

Marley squinted with a groan, rubbing her hand over her forehead. There was a throbbing pain there, hamming inside her skull. She'd felt that pain before, a few too many times and the fear crept into her heart, begging that she wasn't right about its cause. When she finally ran her fingers over the source of the pain, trembling hands terrified of what they'd find, she had to bite onto her lip to stop herself from crying out. The tips of her fingers came away coated in crimson. Blood. She could even feel it running down the back of her neck, matting her hair, small red rivulets pooling onto her shirt and jacket.

She wouldn't have been nearly as terrified if she knew: one, where she was. Two, why she was even there. And, three, what had even happened to lead her there. All she could see was shapes and colours behind the blur obscuring her vision. The world was topsy turvy, like she was being spun endlessly. Nothing was coming into focus so it was nearly impossible to answer her questions until the dizziness subsided and she felt normal again. Marley blinked furiously, trying her best to regain some semblance of normality in her vision. After a few seconds — seconds which seemed to drag on for hours — the world came back into focus. It was as if she'd slipped on a pair of glasses. But even then, much to her distress, she still didn't really know where she was.

She was surrounded by dinted, dirty metal, great swooping arches of the stuff. But at least she was still in camp and not lost somewhere in the trees outside. It still didn't bring much relief; if her brain wasn't so hazy, maybe she'd had been able to figure it out exactly where she found herself but her thoughts wouldn't form into coherent sentences, they were just awkwardly yelled words that made no sense in her current state. Tools she didn't know how to use littered the benches, strewn beside jagged metal contraptions that she didn't know the use of. The scent of oil lingered thickly in the air. She knew she was in engineering (even with her muddled thoughts, that much was obvious) but she didn't even really know where that was. Marley had no need to be down there - she was pretty sure she'd be hopeless at all that mechanical stuff - so she hadn't even bothered to learn its location. She knew where her room and the food hall where she worked was - and that's all she needed to know. Engineering was about as unfamiliar to her as the Earth had been the first time she'd stepped off the dropship those few months ago. So why was she there?

"You're awake," Someone whispered, obscured by shadows, a phantom looming in the corner. She should have known the first time she'd felt the blood. She should have known the moment she'd woken with the most horrible headache and squinting out at an unfamiliar room. It was always him. He was always the one responsible. It was like he had some sick, twisted obsession with her and all the ways he could cause her pain.

Tate's pale face appeared from the darkness. Scarlet light hit his high, bruised cheekbones, an oddly fitting hue for the boy who stared at her from across the room. "I was worried I hit you too hard." His voice was quiet and almost timid; sometimes, he did this, his voice shrinking back so much that he sounded like a little boy who'd just woken from a nightmare, all teary-eyed and snotty-nosed. Marley could never tell if it was intentional or not. She'd spent so much time with him on the Ark - he barely let her out of his sight - but still, he managed to cast doubt into her mind.

It wasn't that it was Tate who was responsible for her current condition, with blood gushing from her head and her mind so jumbled that she couldn't think straight, that surprised her the most, it was that she wasn't surprised that he was to blame. She was so used to the bad things that happened to her being traceable back to him that it was no longer shocking to learn that he was the catalyst for something else.

Silence struck Marley as it always did when she was around him. It imposed on her like a lingering raincloud over her head. Before, on the Ark, when she was wide-eyed, naive and terrified at every knock on the door and every approaching footstep, she'd cower away, caught in silence because - if she spoke - it might push him too far and she'd end up sprawled out across the metal floor. The raincloud would implode and shower her in water, drenching her in terror and mind-numbing pain splitting through her entire anxiously aching body. Now, the rain never came. The cloud blocked out the sunshine, its golden rays still blocked out by darkness. Marley sat silent out of obligation, familiarity. She was silent out of habit more than fear. Her hands still trembled and her breath hitched in her throat when she saw his expression twitch and the hint of a smirk pull at the corners of his mouth. She was still that young girl deep inside - that same fifteen-year-old who laid curled up in bed just begging that she'd just die in the middle of the night so she didn't have to face things again in the morning.

Marley no longer wanted to die. Earth was terrifying and she was in a state of agony all the time but there was one thing she'd realised after more than her fair share of near-death experiences and that was that she wasn't ready to die. She wanted to die on her own terms, not because she was scared or because someone selfishly chose to snuff her life out. But because it was her time, rightfully, when she'd done her living.

Tate took Marley's silence as a prompt to speak. There was no way that she was going to initiate a conversation after he'd attacked her and likely dragged her from wherever she'd been. "I wanted to speak to you, properly this time." His voice was still quiet and timid yet still somehow stoic and unreadable. "I want you to forgive me. I need you to forgive me."

Marley blinked back at him and tried to move, to run from the room, but she was so dizzy that, when she tried to push herself away from the wall she was propped against, she almost passed out. She teetered on the edge of unconsciousness.

"Just let me explain." Tate strode towards her, leaning against the wall she was sat against. He looked down at her like he was a king and she was one of his ever-so-faithful subjects. Marley kept her eyes on her hands; she wasn't going to dignify him by looking up as he toward over her. He was tall — much taller than her, in fact, and this was just another one of his subtly intimidating tactics to trick her into giving him another chance. She'd had enough time for reflection in that godforsaken hell hole of a solitary confinement cell to know that he was just playing games.

"What are we doing in here?"

"I couldn't get you out of camp, there were too many guards." His face betrayed him and a smirk cracked over his lips. He disguised it with a brush of his tongue over his lower lip but it was too late. "I had to hit you so you'd come with me, you wouldn't otherwise."

At least he was right about that. She would never willingly go with him, things always went wrong when he was around.

"What do you want from me?"

"Just to talk."

She knew he was lying. Marley chose her words with caution. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Have you not been listening to me?" He scoffed. "I need you to forgive me." He stressed the need like his life depended on absolution.

"For what?"

"All those things I did-" His voice practically oozed deception, even as he tried to make it sound soft. "-I feel terrible. It was wrong."

Tate sat down beside Marley. She could feel his blue eyes burning into her temple as sure refused to look at him.

"I do love you, you know."

Marley's breath hitched; her entire throat had closed up, painfully. He was trying to pull her in again, trying to lure her back to him with empty promises and whispered I love yous, only to break her again the next day. She couldn't breathe, not when Tate leant forward to brush her blood matted hair from her shoulder and not when he pressed a kiss against the bare skin that was left poking out of the neck of her t-shirt. With trembling hands, as he continued to press unwanted kisses against her neck and his hand trailed up her thigh, she shoved him away from her the best she could. She had next to no strength; the dizziness overwhelmed her every time she moved her head, even slightly. She couldn't scream or run or yell because he'd just catch up to her and it would probably make things works. But the push of her hands flat against his chest was enough to get him off her, especially when he was caught off guard. A flush of anger crossed his expression but he masked it. The facade he was wearing was so obvious if you paid close enough attention.

"You loved me once." His voice was stoic. He'd dropped the falsely timid tone he'd had when she first regained consciousness. He pushed himself back against the wall, arms crossed over his head; he looked like a petulant child who didn't get his way, like he was about to start crying and stamping his feet. All because Marley didn't want him touching her. Not like that. Not at all. The thought of any part of him touching her repulsed her. They reminded her of hell and his lips and fingers burned like fire was licking at her skin. "I know you loved me."

She wasn't sure if he actually believed what he was saying. It wasn't even the first time he'd insisted that she had loved him, he'd mentioned it in passing before.

"Please, let me go."

"No."

"Tate, please-" She didn't want to beg but she'd be damned if she let him hurt her again.

"Not until you forgive me!" He yelled. He practically leapt to his feet and began pacing, hands tugging urgently at his curls. He looked frantic and impatient, charging back and forth, his footfalls heavy against metal grating. "Or until you admit that you loved me, at least."

Marley curled her arms around herself and shrunk back against the wall. "I can't do that."

He glared at her.

"You want forgiveness and-" She swallowed thickly through her fear. Her throat was crying out for water. "-I can't give you that."

He paused for a second, seeming to gather himself. "Oh, really?" His lips curled into a smirk. It came out of nowhere, the smirk, and here she was faced with the Tate of old, the one she was used to. The one without emotion or vulnerability. The one with empty, soulless blue eyes and a permanent smirk hiding bared teeth. In the red light that illuminated the room — far off, like a warning, the still warning light of an alarm — he looked the way she saw him in her nightmares. There was something about the purple bruises scattered across his face, still healing from whatever had happened before he stumbled back to camp, that made him look truly terrifying. They almost looked like black war paint.

Tate leant over her, forboding in the crimson. He was grinning madly, wickedly; he looked like the devil himself. And yet she'd never seen him like this, madness practically oozing out of every pore. His hand grabbed at her chin roughly and long fingers dug into the skin painfully. His tongue darted out over his lower lip like a predator weighting up his pray, ready to land the killing blow. Marley gulped. Even if she'd tried, she couldn't hide the fear that he stirred inside her.

Somehow, despite everything he'd done to her in the past — how he'd made sure not to hurt her bad enough for her to end up in Medical, how he'd made sure to stop the second she passed out and check that there was still blood pumping through her veins — the situation she found herself in felt far more terrifying. Before he'd been restrained, measured, calculated. Now his eyes were those of a maniac, blazing with an angry blue fire, and she was as sure as anyone could be that he was going to do something horrifying to her.

"How's Bellamy?"

"What?" Marley's eyebrows pulled together. "Why do you care?"

He exhaled impatiently. "I see the way he looks at you, like he owns you." Tate shook his head and pulled her closer to him, eyes piercing into hers. "Have you been cheating on me with him?"

"What?"

"Have you-" He leant and his breath hit her ear — rapid, uncontrolled and angry — and she shuddered. "-been cheating on me with him?" He questioned sternly, punctuating every word.

It was like they were back on the Ark, when he'd be convinced that she was seeing someone else behind his back. Like that time she dropped her books while she was hurrying home and a guard helped her pick them up, only for Tate to see and immediately accuse her of something.

"No."

"Liar," he spat. He searched her eyes once more, the part of her that was betraying the most emotion, and stood up, letting go of her chin with a jolt. "I could just leave you here to rot."

"Someone will find me."

"Like who? Your new boyfriend isn't even in camp. Or that cripple kid who can't even walk? Do you really think anyone cares about you enough to notice you're gone?"

"I-"

"See, you learn a lot about someone when you're trapped in Medical with them. He wouldn't even care if you died, wouldn't even notice. Not with that Raven chick and his mom here."

Silence.

"I'm the only one who cares about you, the only one who loves you, and you just- you push me away!"

The irrational part of her was always screaming that no one cared. But she'd always done her best to push it away; it was irrational, a symptom, nothing more than an intrusion that plagued her a little too persistently for her to just brush off. Still, part of her had never believed it but hearing it from someone else, even someone for who lying came so easy, the irrationality became rational and it's screaming drowned out everything else in her head. No one cared, Tate was right, for once in his life.

She'd been avoiding Bellamy. He'd probably just assume she was very good at hiding. Her schedule barely crossed Elijah's. He'd probably just assume that their paths had diverged a little more than they'd anticipated.

"You hurt me, Tate."

"They're not all saints, you know, all those people you put your faith in." He started off his sentence irritated but grinned once he noticed Marley's confusion. "You learn a lot when you pretend to be asleep."

"What are you talking about?"

"Elijah, is it? There's some pretty dark demons there, and I thought we were bad." He began to drum his fingers against his hip idly, staring at something behind Marley, just out of her view. "I'd say ask him but-" Out of nowhere, from the waistband of his pants, Tate pulled out a gun. It was like she was dreaming; guns didn't just appear out of nowhere like that. It was like, if she squeezed her eyes closed really tight and pinched herself, she wake up in her bed and feel comfort at the blanket tangled around her legs. But, sometimes, people were just really good at hiding guns. The weapon shone like a ruby in the dull red light; dangerous and glinting as he twirled it around his fingers. "-I don't think you'll be able to."

Tate stared down at her, a stoic glare and relentless smirk. Marley gasped. A sickness rose into her throat, terror threatening to spill past her lips if she didn't keep them pressed tightly shut, a thin line of resistance. The heart was pushing its way out of her chest, hammering so hard against her ribcage that she was sure it was about to burst open.

Tate pointed the gun in her direction; the telltale click of the safety latch releasing sent her mind hurtling, her stomach flipping and the tears stinging the backs of her eyes as they pushed forward. Marley didn't want to die, not anymore, not really. And, even though she'd stared death in the face what felt like a thousand times — so close, once, that the darkness had almost stolen her away — this time was different. This time, he was professing to kill her, a determined look set into his jaw. Mostly he just rationalised his actions by saying he didn't want to hurt her but that she "left him no choice".

"They're going to need engineering soon. I might as well just kill you now, put you out of your misery." Tate worked his jaw and readjusted the gun, shuffling on the balls of his feet.

"You won't kill me," Marley whispered.

"What?"

"You won't kill me," she repeated, louder this time.

Tate scoffed. He bent down, eyes blazing, glinting in mischief. Even now, to him, this was normal. This was all just a game. He pressed the gun against her forehead; she flinched away at the feeling of the cold metal, ice against her skin, but Tate had a vice-like grip on her arm stopping her from running. Not that she could; her head was still spinning from the pain splitting through the back of her skull and fear was anchoring her body to the floor.

"Oh, really?"

Marley shook her head a little. She didn't want to make any sudden movements in case Tate got spooked and pulled the trigger. "If you wanted me dead, I'd be dead by now."

He gave her a puzzled look, brief but still noticeable, until she elaborated.

"You'd have killed me by now. You had your chance on the Ark and you didn't, you framed me and got me sent to lock up instead. You would have killed me but you didn't, and that's why I know you won't now." Marley didn't believe a single word she was saying, not really. He was unpredictable and reckless and, if he ever wanted to kill her, she knew that he would. He was capable of it. But a few minutes before, he'd told her he loved her. He didn't — she wasn't sure he was even capable of love — but it was something to grasp onto, the tiniest thread, that she could tug at to try and stop the bullet before it even left the gun. He seemed to still be clinging to the delusion that they were somehow meant to be in the end.

Tate's brows knitted together. "I never framed you." He cocked his head to the side, scoffing. He hummed thoughtfully.

"You're lying."

"No, I'm not." And, for the first time, he wasn't. "Why would I want to do that? I could never lose you." He hummed, running his free hand over her cheek so softly that it almost felt like a loving gesture.

"But the blood and the knife- you had a key-"

"Huh-" a leering smile tugged at his lips. "-either you're not the saint you claim to be or someone has it out for you, Mar."

"Do you- do you know who did it?" Her voice was shaky.

"You know what? You're right, I can't kill you." Tate lowered the gun away from Marley's forehead suddenly. His free hand brushed some of her limp brown hair out of her eyes as he leant forward to kiss her; he managed to capture her lips in an unrequited kiss before she turned her head away in refusal. "You don't deserve that."

He stood back up then, tucking the gun back into the waistband of his jeans. He didn't need it now; he was the gun. Each word was a bullet, hitting her chest and rattling around inside her ribcage. He was taunting, amused, grinning now like a Cheshire Cat at the way her face had twisted in confusion and dread. "Besides, I think I'd miss you too much."

‣ ‣ ‣

a/n: and here is our finest example of why tate can and never will be redeemed because he is a piece 👏🏻 of 👏🏻 shit 👏🏻

this took me so long; i've just started back at uni so coursework is full on and i've had terrible writers block because my mental health is just draining every ounce of creativity from me ... if any parts of this are missing i'm sorry but i really struggled to get this up and i've checked it over a little but i've probably missed something