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She has no purpose, after, and no power.
She's not sure how much times passes before her legs go numb, before darkness starts closing in, her body shutting down those systems it considers non-essential to buy her a little bit extra time, a few more extra breaths, not knowing Diana's leaving has killed them all already.
And then there's light, a touch on her shoulder, turning her over.
Marcus.
In hindsight, it would have been a perfect opportunity to say she's never been so glad to see his ugly face in her life.
"You saved my life," she says, a handful of hours later, "thank you," and she should probably leave it at that, let bygones be bygones; now is neither the time or the place, and Thelonious was right, after all; they need someone like Marcus to make the hard calls, the tough decisions.
Then again, she supposes she's stubborn, like Clarke. "Don't think this means I'll forgive you for everything you've done."
"Honestly, I'm not sure if I can forgive myself for everything I've done," Marcus says, and there's a brittle fragility to his smile that has no right to be there. "Can I just say that I am very, very happy you're still alive?"
"You can say that." Doesn't mean I believe it.
He takes her hand. Hers is cold; his, warm. "I am very, very happy you're still alive."
They don't see a lot of one another after that. Things are moving quickly, spinning out of control - anyone's control, really.
He's still on the Council, she isn't; she's got patients, he's got ... Council things.
Both, in the end, will come to nothing, but in times like these, she finds comfort in routine, in fighting the battle she knows she can win, or thinks she knows she can win.
It shouldn't hurt this much to lose, she thinks, and then, yes, it should because victories are important. Even small victories. Especially small victories, when you know the big ones are out of your reach.
"Abby." He's right outside, in the corridor, when she walks out, as if he's been waiting for here - which is ridiculous, obviously; he was probably just passing by, going somewhere; the only reason he could even have known what's happened was if someone'd have called him, which would be even more ridiculous. "Are you all right?"
I'm not the one who needed surgery to save my life, she doesn't say. I just want to talk to my daughter one last time. There's no medicine for that.
And even if there was, we're out.
"I'm fine," she says, and her voice comes out high and sharp; she sees him wince as if it cuts him. "What are you doing here, Marcus?"
"Nothing," he says. "Nothing."
"You're being a horrible liar," she tells him. "And you're repeating yourself. Are you all right?"
"Never better," he replies, and her heart beats two, three times before she realizes it's a joke, and another one before she realizes he's just made her want to smile, in spite of everything.
It's a terrible feeling.
And then there's fresh hope; a chance. At life, at Earth. At seeing Clarke again.
She straps herself in next to Marcus, or maybe he straps himself in next to her; compared to all that's going on, the difference seems unimportant.
She feels something break loose inside of her when he unstraps himself again, like an infected wound being cut open to let the dirt out; she reaches out her hand and feels his grip, firm and steady.
This time, there's nothing at all fragile about his smile.
I think I've just forgiven him, she thinks, and it's a wonderfully heady sensation; so much more pleasant to cling to than to think about what it means, that he's undone his straps, that he's going back.
He's not going back. We are. Back to Earth.
Back home, she thinks, but it doesn't quite ring true, not yet.
Sinclair's warned them about the descent; it's a rough ride, and knowing that they might not make it doesn't help. She can't tell herself to just hang on, be strong, wait for it to pass.
It feels like an unforgivable waste, to maybe die while thinking such thoughts.
I'm going to talk to Clarke, she thinks, but she knows her own daughter; none of the conversations that unwind in her head end happily, with Clarke understanding, forgiving.
She wonders what Marcus is thinking, what keeps him going. She might ask him, she thinks; he might even answer her. Honestly.
"Good to see you can still smile," he says.
"Were you watching me?" Granted, she's right next to him, but mankind has not been equipped with the kind of sight intended to look sideways.
"Someone needs to keep an eye on you," he says, which is either deeply offensive or hilariously wrong-headed. (Or, just possibly, another joke, even if his lack of a sense of humor was always one of her many excellent reasons for not liking Marcus Kane.)
"And what made you think that someone's you?"
Marcus shrugs faintly. It's hard to do more than that, strapped in. She remembers Clarke, telling her two kids died in the shuttle because they'd undone their straps on the way down.
Idiots.
"Maybe I just want to make sure I'm going to be there, next time you need a hand."
It's nice, she thinks, how he doesn't refer to it as 'next time you need someone to save your life'. Like he respects her abilities, assumes she's capable of getting out of trouble with just the occasional bit of assistance.
Does this mean you're not going to try to have me executed again? Unkind, to ask that out loud; the man who tried to have her executed for saving an old friend's life would never have volunteered to sacrifice his own life to save the rest of them. And yet he did.
Marcus clears his throat. "If that's all right with you, of course."
"As long as you don't forget that sort of thing goes both ways," she says. It's nothing big, nothing dramatic; they've worked together before, occasionally, on the Council. They've agreed on some issues, sometimes.
She wonders why it still feels like she's just undone her straps, entrusting herself to powers she can neither see nor fully understand.