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"Tell me to go and I will, but if you ask me to stay I'll never leave you again."
Raven’s eyes were wide and tired when she focused them on Marcus. She shook her head.
“No change.”
Marcus didn’t bother trying to mask his sigh. He pulled a chair up to the other side of bed where Abby rested, unmoving and unconscious. The medical bay was peaceful around them; at a little after two in the morning, most of the camp was asleep.
“Clarke?” Marcus asked.
Raven shucked her head in the direction of the wall opposite of the bed. Marcus glanced over his shoulder and found Clarke asleep in an empty medical bed.
“You should take a page out of her book,” Marcus told Raven.
The mechanic immediately shut him down. “I’m fine.”
“Raven …”
“I said I’m fine.”
Marcus didn’t have the energy to argue, and he would have lost anyway. Rather than waste what energy he did have he leaned forward and folded one of Abby’s hands into both of his. He’d had a long and trying day, so Marcus allowed himself a moment to rest his lips against Abby’s knuckles and close his eyes.
Days had passed like this; the sun traversed the sky, and the stars littered the heavens with their patterns, and the rain made smudges of their footprints, and still Abby hadn’t stirred. All around them life continued on, and yet for Marcus - for Clarke, and Raven - the world had stopped spinning.
Time rushed away from them, but they stood resolute against the onslaught.
Abby Griffin slept on, oblivious.
Marcus had tried everything, and he knew that Clarke and Raven had as well, but he would try again. He would never stop trying.
“I know you can hear me, Abby. You always hear me, even when you choose to ignore me. We’re all here: me, and Raven, and Clarke. We’re here, and we need you here with us, okay? Just come back, Abby.”
Raven nudged Marcus in the shoulder and handed him a tin cup of tea when he acknowledged her. He took it gratefully. The three of them were long past the point of being embarrassed by their heartfelt pleas for the woman in the bed to wake.
Marcus drank his tea, and he spoke to Raven in low tones, and he paced. The night grew long around them, and no one left, and still Abby slept.
Jackson made an appearance around three-thirty. He shook his head in the face of Marcus and Raven’s hopeful expressions; it was all Marcus could take in that moment. He returned to his spot at Abby’s side, though he didn’t sit, and braced both hands on the bed. His head drooped from exhaustion, from defeat, from the constant, crushing fear that Abby Griffin would never again open her eyes.
“God, Abby.” His words were little more than broken whispers that tumbled past his lips with no direction or hope of being received. “Not like this. You can’t go like this. I will do anything if you just … if you just open your eyes right now. After everything I’ve done, everything I’ve put you through … wake up, Abby. You have to wake up.”
When she didn’t move a dry, thin sob escaped Marcus. “Tell me to go and I will. But if you ask me to stay I’ll never leave you again, Abby. I promise. Just tell me what you want me to do. Open your eyes and tell me what to do.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and imagined her the way she was: fierce, and irritating, and wonderful.
Then, a rustle against the blankets; a fluttering, weak pressure against the bare skin of his inner elbow.
The rasp of a voice he hadn’t heard in days, rough and brittle as dry leaves in the late autumn. “Never is a long time. Sure that’s what you wanna go with?”
Marcus’s eyes flew open as a choked cry fell from Raven’s lips. “Clarke!”
He was falling over himself to clutch at the hand that rested so lightly against his arm, and a tear slipped over his nose as he found himself staring at a bleary but awake Abby.
“Abby.”
“Mom!”
Clarke flew across the room and clung to her mother and cried as Raven curled one hand around Abby’s leg below the knee, and Marcus held Abby’s hand up and pressed it against his cheek. Each point of contact was a link, a string that tied Abby to them.
When Jackson came back, almost two hours later, he found them much the same: Raven, her head resting on the bed and one hand on Abby’s leg; Clarke, curled on her side in the bed with her mom; Marcus, the crown of his head just resting against Abby’s waist and her hand in his hair.
Everyone was fast asleep, save Abby.