Us Against Them. Maybe.

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This is my Fight Song --TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG, PROVE I'M ALRIGHT SONG "Please, can you speak English?" Harper did not feel confident in anyway that she was going to get out of that cave without a fight. Not with the comment that the grounder had just made. It wasn't a confidence building thing to say that you didn't kill a person because their rotting body would smell. All that told Harper was that once the storm was over, she could easily be dead. She had her gun though and if it came down to it, she had to be willing to shoot before the grounder could. She didn't see any problem with killing the grounder in self-defence, that was why she had her gun with her. However much she was pro-grounder, she knew not all of them would be good. It really shouldn't have been no surprise to Harper that the grounder wouldn't hand over a knife to her. It was a weapon and she hadn't exactly explained why she wanted it. Harper was feeling angry, but she wasn't the type to let her angry get the best of her. There was a twitching of her fingers, wondering whether the knife request would make the grounder angry enough to try shooting her again but Harper kept her hand far from her gun. She would watch the situation, not do anything before she was sure she had to. For all she knew at that stage, the grounder had no idea that Harper had a gun on her. She needed to keep it that way for as long as she could. "For my leg, stupid." Alright, so she didn't exactly have to call the woman stupid. She moved her hands over the fire, keeping her movements slow. The flames warmed her fingers and left a tingling sensation in them. She hadn't quite realised just how cold her fingers had become as the pain in her leg was her focus. Her eyes stayed on the grounder as she warmed her fingers. Any trust for her had been destroyed with the comment about not wanting to smell her rotting body. She felt herself calming down just the smallest bit as feeling returned completely to her fingers. "You said there was no heda when you left but there was Ontari," she said, commenting on one of her earlier confusions.  @jaga || Notes are cooool and ago here!

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Jaga's scowl deepened when Harper called her stupid, but she didn't make any move to get one of her knives off her belt to offer it over. She just watched Harper as she continued, warming her hands at the fire.

"Ontari never ascend," Jaga said finally. "Gyonplei no kom au." Ascension never happened. "She no say names."

She sat back from her crouched position and crossed her legs, taking a flask from her hip and taking a deep drink of water. "An you no carry own knife, you bleed. Stupid."

Tag: @harpermcintyre

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This is my Fight Song --TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG, PROVE I'M ALRIGHT SONG Waiting for any sign that the grounder might give her the knife, Harper found herself losing hope in that. She was tempted, she had to admit, to take out her gun and make the grounder do what she told her to go. A part of her knew it would work, a part of her almost craved the feeling of power she would get purely from holding the gun, let alone using it, especially when she was in a situation where she felt completely powerless. Still, she knew that it would run on her conscience if she killed the grounder. She had killed before, of course, but this grounder wasn't actually making any moves to kill her. Harper understood why the arrow had been shot and she understood, as much as she hated it, why the grounder wouldn't now give her the knife. She didn't have a temper that run wild and she didn't want to kill when her own life wasn't at stake. She had to think better. How many times had she seen Clarke treat wounds? Not that many, really. But she had to have remembered something else that might help her. At the very least, she could use her common sense and cover it. That could stop the bleeding. Looking down at her shirt, she frowned. She did like the shirt but she didn't have much of a choice. Moving her hands from over the fire, she grabbed the hem of the shirt, positioning her hands to try and tear the fabric. It was old but a lot more difficult to rip than she had expected. She teared off a strip, a couple inches wide. "Like hell I'll bleed," she muttered. Biting her lip as she did, Harper placed the scrap of fabric over the wound on her leg and tied it in place. She tasted blood in her mouth. Her tongue moved over her bottom lip, no reaction coming from her as the cut from her own teeth stung. It was nothing compared to her leg. She looked back up at the grounder, sitting and looking nothing but comfortable. There was the urge again to take out her gun but she pushed the urge back. She instead but her focus on what the grounder had said about Ontari. "A lot of the other grounders seemed to still accept her as Heda, from what I've been told," she commented. From what Harper had heard, the grounders had started joining the City of Light in hordes after Ontari had taken the chip. Maybe this grounder had just been stubborn.  @jaga || Jaga is really just the sweetest

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Jaga watched Harper tear her shirt to bandage her wound. Maybe she did have some survival skills after all. The tie on her leg would help slow the bleeding. Maybe even stop it entirely. How Harper was going to walk home on that leg was another question, and one Jaga didn't really care about. She just hoped if Harper had friends, they didn't get to this cave before Jaga left. If Harper didn't have friends, maybe an animal would eat her on her way home.

Harper continued on about Ontari, and Jaga rolled her eyes again. What did Harper care about this? And why was Jaga even still talking to her? She should have made Harper stay at the entrance to the cave in the cold, away from the fire. "Only branwoda Trikru accept Ontari. Stupid," she said, though this time the 'stupid' was directed at the Trikru who'd actually believed Ontari was heda without her naming names. A lot of the other Grounders were getting restless. But Maybe Harper missed that part. Once Skaikru came in with those chips, everything had changed. "Ontari no name names, she no heda." She narrowed her eyes at Harper. "What you care?"

Tag: @harpermcintyre

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This is my Fight Song --TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG, PROVE I'M ALRIGHT SONG Yes, the grounder was just stubborn. The eye roll told Harper that much, as well as the fact that her comments didn't match up with the information Harper had heard. Of course Harper would get stuck with the most stubborn grounder in existence. Although, she guessed that the grounder with her couldn't have been the most stubborn. Harper had a feeling that if she were stubborn enough, she would have just killed Harper. She obviously had no reason to keep Harper alive, she didn't like Skaikru and without any real leadership for the grounders - both Lexa and Ontari were dead now - there wouldn't be any political reason for her to not kill Harper. Maybe the grounder was a better person than Harper had given her credit for, or maybe she really was just keeping Harper alive because she didn't enjoy the smell of rotting bodies. Harper was finding that she didn't care anymore. She was alive and that was what mattered for the moment. Harper had clearly heard what Jaga had said, about only Trikru accepting Ontari and she just shrugged and made it seem as though she accepted the grounders words. From what Harper had heard of the battle in Polis, it had sounded like a lot more grounders than just those from just one clan had taken the chips. The grounder had narrowed her eyes and Harper didn't want to push it and have to use her gun. Although, truthfully, she had a feeling that she might not even be able to get her gun out in time if it came down to it. The grounder was skilled with a bow and arrows and Harper sometimes still felt too slow with a gun. That would just be amplified by the pain clouding her brain. "Doesn't matter," Harper simply said. She shrugged again and moved her eyes down to her leg so she wouldn't have to look at the grounder's narrowed eyes any longer. A gust of wind blew outside the cave, the sound echoing on the stone walls around them. Harper became even more thankful for the fire that the grounder had built and for the fact that she had allowed Harper to sit in front of it. It was again another moment where Harper's attitude shifting a bit and she felt the grounder wasn't as bad as she had seemed. "Thanks for letting me sit near the fire," she said, looking up at the grounder to give her a smile. Maybe the pain was really starting to get to her if she was thanking the person who had shot her in the leg with an arrow. "How long do you think the storm will last?" Out of the both of them, the grounder was more likely to know the answer to that question. Harper had seen a few storms in her time on Earth but the grounder would have seen many, many more. If she was going to be thanking the grounder, she could at least use the chance to get some helpful information. @jaga || This was the post I half-wrote and lost last night.

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At least Mouse was dropping the subject of Ontari, though when Harper thanked her for letting her sit near the fire, Jaga just looked at her, not returning the smile. Her expression was clear enough without words: Harper should be thankful. She should be thankful both that Jaga let her come deeper into the cave, and that she hadn't just put the arrow through her eye.

What the hell was wrong with her?

"Five minute. Five hour. Five day. You guess good as mine," Jaga said, looking back at the fire and taking a drink of water from her flask. For a moment, she just looked into the flames, feeling the heat was drying more of her hair and the under layer of clothes she'd stripped down to. Hopefully the rest of her clothes were drying too. "How you no take chip?" she asked after a while. She had seen the way people had been manipulated in Polis before she left.

Tag: @harpermcintyre

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This is my Fight Song --TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG, PROVE I'M ALRIGHT SONG The look that the grounder gave Harper caused the smile to quickly fall from Harper face. While Harper knew that her people had done some horrible things since they landed on Earth, killed hundreds of grounders, she also knew that all those things were personally her fault. She hadn't done anything since entering the cave to threaten the grounder, hadn't said anything to make the grounder think she was the type of person to go around killing for fun. So, yes, she had killed grounders before but only in battle and she would stick to that reasoning. She wasn't a killer. She was a soldier. But that didn't seem to matter to the grounder she was with the woman looked at Harper and treated her like she was responsible for every single death. Harper wouldn't have wanted to know how the grounder would act upon meeting someone like Pike. He was responsible for deaths. Upon hearing the grounders answer to her question, Harper could do nothing but roll her eyes and sigh. Five days? There wasn't any way that the two women would survive a whole five days in that cave without killing out each other. Harper looked down at her leg, the piece of fabric she had wrapped around it was stained with red but it wasn't soaking. It looked as if it had slowed the bleeding. A feeling of relief came on that but if she was going to be stuck there with the grounder for five days, that relief wouldn't last long. Even with the bleeding slowed, she would die before she could get out. Really, Harper had no idea what she was going to do when the storm stopped. How would she get back to Arkadia with her leg? She would have to hope that the others found her or that she could drag herself to someplace where other Arkers would be likely to travel through. "Long story," Harper answered, the words automatically leaving her mouth as the question surprised her. And it was a long story but then maybe, just maybe, if she told it the grounder wouldn't hate her as much as she did now. It would put her in light as someone who was against Pike's rule and his attitudes towards grounders. It might help her in surviving however long they would be stuck in that cave together. "I wasn't in Arkadia - our camp - when everyone was taking the chips. I was with a group that didn't agree with Pike." She kept her eyes on the grounder as she spoke, trying to watch her face for signs of what she was thinking and feeling. She could be good at that, sometimes, but she hadn't really had a chance to try it with a grounder. Arkers could be easy to read once you worked it out, grounders would likely be a completely different story. It wouldn't hurt her to try it, however, and maybe she would be able to use that and her story to get on the grounder's good side. @jaga || Sometimes Harper's reasoning and stuff makes me laugh.

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Jaga just stared at Harper. "You resist," she said after a moment, tilting her head and studying the other girl. Did Harper think she was going to convince Jaga that she was one of the good ones from Skaikru? Jaga wasn't sure there were good ones. And she knew plenty of them felt the same about Grounders. Pike had. Jaga had to assume there was a reason Pike had been placed into power.

"Yu kok au fou Skaikru frag op three hundred Trikru in they sleep o pas, Maus?" she said, mixing languages again, but knowing Harper would know she was talking about the massacre of a sleeping army. After a moment, she rephrased in English. "You resist before three hundred sleeping Grounder die or after?" No matter what Harper's answer was, it didn't change the fact that Skaikru slaughtered three hundred of her people in their sleep without provocation.

Tag: @harpermcintyre

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This is my Fight Song --TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG, PROVE I'M ALRIGHT SONG Harper nodded at the grounder's first comment, a smile on her face. The grounder had understood her, at least she hoped. It was hard to read the grounder, to know what she might be feeling. Harper was getting a slight idea that she wasn't happy, from the basic fact that she wasn't smiling or looking any more open than she had been before. There was disappointment in that but it couldn't be unexpected. This particular grounder she had come across didn't seem like the type to be happy about anything apart from maybe sitting being warmed by the fire. That was the only time in which Harper had seen a glint of happiness from her. "Yes, I resisted Pike's rule." Harper confirmed. With that, she moved her good leg up so that it bent and her foot flat on the ground. Her hands went down to retie her shoes laces, noticing they had come undone, likely from the rain. If she had to make a runner - well, as much of a runner as she could make with her bad leg - she wouldn't want to be falling over something as stupid as an untied shoe lace. As the grounder continued to speak, Harper's hands froze and her smile dropped off her face. While she couldn't understand much of what the grounder was saying, she could understand the English that she had mixed in, mentioning three hundred Trikru. Harper knew right away what she was referring to. While Harper hadn't been one in the group to kill the peaceful Trikru army, she still felt her heart break thinking about it. As an automatic reaction to the pain, she forced her focus onto something else, anything else and shut herself off from her emotions. It was what she did when she went into battle, what she did when things around her got too much. It was something that she looked at as strength. "That wasn't my fault," Harper calmly said, hardly getting the words out before the grounder spoke again completely in English. So that was what the grounder wanted to know. Whether she had changed sides after the slaughter, or whether she had always been on the grounders' side. Well, that question was easy. Sort of. She could remember the way that she had stood to try and stop Pike, Bellamy and the others from going to kill the army. She also remembered stepping aside, allowing them to leave. But the grounder didn't need to know that part. Harper had been against Pike and against the slaughter before it had happened. That was all that the grounder needed to know. "Before." From saying that, Harper quickly finished tying her shoe laces and moved her hands back near her body. "I don't hate you all. I don't even hate you and I have reason to." That might have been a small lie, Harper definitely felt a little hate looking at the grounder. It didn't matter, Harper was trying to convince her that she was one of the good guys. @jaga

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Jaga was prepared to start shouting at Harper that maybe it wasn't her, but it was her people, and that if she'd resisted before, why hadn't that attack been stopped, but then Harper said something she didn't expect. "I don't even hate you and I have reason to." Jaga didn't think she should believe it, but what reason did she have not to? Harper hadn't tried anything. Hadn't tried to hurt her. Harper would never be her friend, but Jaga relaxed her posture a little.

She looked back at the fire, unsure how to process this, so she sipped her water again. "My name Jaga," she said after a several long moments of silence, going back to Harper's question from when they'd first found themselves in this situation. "If you resist before, why my people still dead?" Her jaw was tight as she asked the question, but her anger wasn't directed at Harper now, but at the rest of them.

Tag: @harpermcintyre

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This is my Fight Song --TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG, PROVE I'M ALRIGHT SONG Harper's mouth might have hung open slightly when the grounder finally gave her name. Jaga. With the way that Jaga had been avoiding doing so, Harper felt like this was likely a moment where she had gained some trust. Which meant she had been successful. That left a smile on her face and Harper couldn't help but think that maybe it was a sign that she would actually survive the time in the cave. If she had managed to gain some trust of Jaga's, she could gain more and even if they were stuck in the cave for days, Harper could be confident that Jaga wouldn't do something like kill her in her sleep. Although, Harper still wouldn't feel completely comfortable with sleeping with the grounder around. The arrows looked very sharp and they were. Harper's eyes went to her wound, or more the bandage that was dyed in different shades of red from the varying levels of blood it had soaked up. She couldn't even be sure she would live multiple days in the cave with her leg. It was Jaga's next question that had Harper's smile drop again. Jaga yet again looked angry and Harper worried that she would give the wrong answer and leave herself again in a position of danger. "We were a minority," she answered, being careful to speak of the past. Harper hoped that with everything that had happened that they would no longer be a minority. The grounders weren't the enemy and Harper didn't want to see them at war again. She was getting tired of constantly being at war. "We tried, we did, but we weren't able to stop them." Some emotion made its way into Harper's voice, her own thoughts of the event and new regrets making it harder to keep up the mask that she could usually wear well. Instead of focusing on her thoughts, Harper picked up a stick that was to her side and placed it on the fire, watching the wood as it turned black and caught alight.  @jaga || Bit short but THANK YOU JAGA. HARPS HAS A NAME NOW. WOOO

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They were a minority. Jaga supposed those words didn't surprise her at all, but Harper actually seemed to get emotional when she continued. Jaga watched Harper pick up the stick on the ground and was surprised her first impulse was not to load an arrow on her bow and aim it at Harper. Harper only threw it in the fire, which meant Jaga didn't have to regret her non-response.

"It as I expect," she said, still watching Harper, her expression not giving anything away. "Decent Sky Person hard to find," she said. Harper had pretty much said it herself. So many people in her camp wanted those Trikru dead that there wasn't anything any resistance could do. "Fostaim ai gouba yu in." First time I've observed one of you.

Tag: @harpermcintyre

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This is my Fight Song --TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG, PROVE I'M ALRIGHT SONG One part of Harper wanted to argue with Jaga about her comment, tell her that there were heaps of decent Arkers and that she shouldn't make comments as bad as that. But then, Jaga was right. It was getting harder and harder for Harper to see any of the Arkers as decent, it was becoming harder and harder to see herself as decent. Just like all the other Arkers, she had done stuff in the past that she regretted and that she really shouldn't have done. Everyone had and that really left no one being decent any longer. It was difficult to argue with someone when what they were saying was correct, as much as you could wish it wasn't. Harper just decided to keep silent, for her reply, agreeing without pulling herself or the other Arkers into any holes. The worst thing she could do was mention things that had happened, even hint at them, things that Jaga may not know about and would definitely not know that Harper was involved in. Then Jaga spoke again but not in English. It was obvious by then that Jaga knew enough English to both understand and communicate with Harper. There was no need for her not to, unless she didn't intend on Harper understanding her. Which she obviously didn't right then. "Jaga," Harper started, using the grounder's name for the first time. "I don't understand your language. Please, use English." The words weren't intended to sound harsh but they definitely didn't sound kind. There was a snap to her tone. Now knowing Jaga's name, she did hold a little more confidence in how she spoke to the grounder, even if she should have still been careful of her words. There was still Jaga's bow and arrows in the cave and she knew that Jaga could likely shoot a lot faster than Harper. Harper was beginning to feel a bit fuzzy in the head, likely from the blood she had lost. @jaga

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When Harper spoke this time, Jaga actually scoffed at her response. Harper sounded annoyed, but Jaga wasn't too concerned, and she definitely wasn't going to repeat what he'd just said to Harper in English. She was starting to not dislike the girl as much as she had when they'd first met, but she wasn't about to tell harper that.

Jaga looked over at her, smirking slightly, though her eyes didn't hold any mirth. "You like Grounder so much, learn Tridedasleng," she suggested, a hint of sarcasm in her tone. If Harper was telling the truth, that she had resisted their leaders, fine. But Jaga doubted Harper would have any real affection for Grounders. She'd probably resisted because she simply hadn't wanted to fight.

Tag: @harpermcintyre

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This is my Fight Song --TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG, PROVE I'M ALRIGHT SONG It was obvious to Harper that Jaga hadn't liked her comment one bit. Harper found herself regretting it right away, her mouth shutting and her hand moving rest at her side where it would be closer to her gun. Jaga had yet to make any sort of move towards her bow and arrows but Harper was worried that she may have crossed a line and that the situation may change quite quickly. "Sorry," she mumbled, the word accompanied by her eyes glancing down at Jaga's hands and her weapon. She avoided the grounder's eyes, having already seen the look they held. Harper had held some hope that her and Jaga might get along well enough to make the rest of their time stuck in the cave livable. Now she was worried that she had fucked that up.  Harper looked up again at Jaga's suggestion, meeting her eyes and getting the idea that Jaga was being anything but serious. But it did give Harper an idea. Why couldn't she learn it? It was well obvious by that stage that she would be interacting with grounders for the rest of her life, however long that would end up being. Even if she died from her current injury, that time until then was going to be spent interacting with Jaga. While Jaga didn't have a perfect hold on English, maybe she would be able to teach Harper a thing or two. That could also help to fix what Harper had messed up with the last thing she had said. "Well, could you teach me some?" Harper asked, not a drop of sarcasm in her voice. It would make her life a lot easier if she could communicate with any grounder, not just the warriors with a good hold on English. "Trigedasleng," she repeated, likely saying it incorrectly. Her head was fuzzy and whether she would actually be able to learn anything from Jaga was questionable. "That's what your language is called?"  @jaga