I've seen several amnesia!aus dotted around, but never one with Bellamy, so I hope you enjoy! I'm definitely enjoying writing it :) This is my first work in this fandom and is also unbetaed, so apologies for any mistakes and/or ooc moments.
Fic title comes from "Beside You" by 5 Seconds of Summer, chapter title is from "Wherever You Are" by the same.
Chapter One
nothing lasts forever, nothing stays the same
"Detective Blake? Bellamy, can you hear me?"
"Bell? Bellamy?"
"If you can hear me, Detective, I'd like you to squeeze my hand, please. This is the trauma ward of Mount Weather Memorial Hospital, you've been in an accident."
The world flashes across his vision, washed-out walls replaced with faces; Octavia; a dark-haired man with coal-black eyes; blurs of green and blue as nurses and doctors bustle around.
Bellamy can't remember why he's in the hospital, can't remember the journey in the ambulance, and the transition from the heaving hospital lobby to a quieter, less populated ward seems to be over in the blink of an eye. His vision is spotty, dark spots glancing past and his eyelids continuously drooping shut, and his head feels like herds of elephants are trampling across his brain.
He's woozy, and suddenly it seems much more important to close his eyes and sleep than to wonder why exactly he's here, what chain of events has lead to Octavia crying in his peripheral vision, paler than he can ever remember her being and only remaining standing with the support of a blonde girl slightly shorter than her.
The room fuzzes grey at the edges then fades to black, and Bellamy doesn't hear the frantic scramble that follows and the rush to the operating theatre. Instead, he dreams.
His dreams are filled with snapshot images of his childhood with Octavia, his younger sister often trailing behind him. It's as though his brain is racing through a Rolodex of memories; Octavia's birth, when he was just turned seven, terrified by his mother's screams of pain and his fingers trembling as he raced to dial 911; chasing after a five year old Octavia and catching her in his arms, swinging her up to the sun and laughing as she tilts her face towards the heat; coming home late at fifteen, pushing his mom and Octavia away in futile attempts to hide the smell of beer and weed clinging to his clothes; eighteen and vowing to clean up his act when he gets the letter about the full-ride scholarship for classics, when he questions his mom about the application she just smiles and tells him it was his sister's idea; twenty-two and in shock, standing in a starkly-illuminated hospital corridor with the crushing realisation that he is all Octavia has left in the world.
The pace of the dreams seems to quicken and blur all at once; graduating college; realising that, as much as he loves it, History isn't a career path that will pay enough to support both him and a fifteen year old; enrolling in the Police Academy and meeting Nathan Miller, the first person apart from Octavia that he can really call a friend; Octavia enrolling in college and picking up as many extra shifts as he can so that she'll never have to give up on her dreams the way he did his.
Bellamy rouses occasionally, usually blearily opening his eyes long enough for Octavia to start forward and open her mouth before he fades back into sleep. Several times, he's woken up and realised he doesn't recognise the person sitting in the chair at his bedside - ranging from a older man with dark hair and a prominent nose staring at him with an air of fatherly concern to a pair of boys, both smaller than him and again, both dark-haired, staring down at him. The taller of the two, sporting a ridiculous pair of goggles acting as a sort of headband, gapes excitedly when he notices Bellamy's eyes open.
Most frequently though, Bellamy wakes to Octavia sitting beside him, often reading aloud to him from the mythology books he so favoured when it was him reading to her so long ago. The reassuringly familiar tales of Hades and Persephone, Orpheus and Eurydice and Echo and Narcissus act like a safety blanket in the jarring strangeness of the hospital.
Octavia's visits are pretty much all he has to look forward to, spots of brightness in an otherwise dreary day. She arrives at the beginning of visiting hours without fail, and often attempts to charm the nurses into letting her stay just a little bit longer after hours.
"But I'm his only family. . ." She'll pout, batting her eyelashes in an expression he's been wary of for as long as he can remember. No one can resist her when she gets going, and often the nurse on duty will fold like a deck of cards, leaving Octavia to grin victoriously in their wake.
Bellamy's been confined to the hospital bed for what feels like an age, and there is a constant unsettled feeling in the pit of his stomach. Everything around him seems slightly off, like someone has moved all the furniture in a room five centimetres to the left.
He notices it most when he's with Octavia - loath as he is to admit it, there's something different about her. Whatever it is, it floats frustratingly out of his reach. He first twigs that something is wrong when he asks her how sophomore year of college is going, if her classes are going well and if she's managed to finally pick a major in the time he's spent in the hospital.
The colour drains from Octavia's face for a millisecond before she smiles brightly and begins to chatter aimlessly about so-and-so in one of her classes, who apparently said something so spectacularly ignorant that her professor was lost for words. Still, Bellamy is shaken, and although Octavia doesn't shut up for the rest of her visit, the gnawing thought that perhaps everything is not as it seems refuses to leave him.
On his fifth day in the hospital, the relentless monotony of sleeping, eating, and talking to Octavia is finally broken. He's been completely cut off from the outside world, with no television in his room, and needling Octavia for information proved futile - the badgering it took for her to agree to bring him some books and his own clothes was intense, and she demanded he tell her exactly what clothing and books he wanted, because as she put it, "God knows what lives in that pigsty you call a bedroom, Bell."
Bellamy's sitting propped up on about three pillows - the doctors still haven't let him get out of bed yet, and he swears that if they make him wait another day he might kill someone - and absent-mindedly leafing through a battered copy of A Tale of Two Cities when he hears raised voices echoing through the corridor outside.
"You said you would tell him! It's been nearly a week and he still doesn't have a clue what's going on, this must violate some kind of-"
He cocks his head. The voice, distorted with anger, sounds like Octavia. Then another, unfamiliar voice joins in.
"O, I know this is horrible, but Doctor Wallace is right. They need to be sure of the diagnosis before they tell Bellamy anything."
Although he doesn't recognise it, the voice is reassuring, low for a woman but sill unmistakably female, and the mention of his own name has him straining to hear the conversation.
Finally, a third voice lends itself to the argument - this one he does know. It belongs to Doctor Cage Wallace, a pale man with soulless black eyes and a soft-spoken manner that never fails to make Bellamy's skin crawl. Wallace has been the only person he's seen more than Octavia, and the doctor's stubborn refusal to tell him anything beyond the bare minimum means that the man has grated on Bellamy's nerves since day one. There's nothing quite as infuriating as knowing something is wrong with you and knowing that everyone around you knows what it is whilst you remain helplessly in the dark.
"As Miss Griffin said, Octavia, we wanted to be sure of ourselves before we moved any further. However, we have decided that now would be an opportune time to inform Mr Blake-"
"Finally!" Octavia exclaims emphatically, and Bellamy can only imagine the expressive hand gestures that follow.
He hears footsteps drawing nearer to his room and, in the interest of appearing unaffected by the conversation, hastily picks up his discarded book and does his best to seem engrossed in the storyline as Octavia throws open the door to the room followed closely by Doctor Wallace.
It doesn't escape Bellamy that the third voice is absent.
Octavia makes a beeline for his bedside as soon as she enters the room and launches herself into the chair beside him, reaching over and grasping his nearest hand so tightly in both of hers that he swears he can feel his bones grind together.
Wallace, meanwhile, flicks through the charts at the foot of Bellamy's bed before grabbing a clipboard and settling himself into the chair on Bellamy's other side.
He clears his throat.
"Now, Mr Blake, it has, I'm sure, been very difficult having been left in the dark for so long-"
"No shit," says Octavia fiercely, practically quivering with righteous fury, and Bellamy's heart seizes with a rush of affection for his fiery, ridiculously protective sister - a role reversal he is all too aware of and amused by.
"But," Wallace continues, sending a sour look in Octavia's direction, "it has been difficult to determine the best course of action when dealing with your. . . condition. It is something that sadly, none of us here at Mount Weather are entirely able to treat in the best fashion, and so we made the executive decision to call in a specialist-"
"You aren't fully equipped to deal with gunshot wounds?" Bellamy interrupts, fully aware that he's being rude but not caring enough to stop. In response to Octavia's questioning glance about his knowledge of his injury, he shrugs, winces at the pain it causes in his side, and says, "I am a cop, O, I have seen bullet wounds before. Besides, I asked the nurse that came in to change my bandages."
"I can assure you, Mr Blake, that we here at Mount Weather are perfectly capable of treating violent wounds in a safe and effective manner. It is the more delicate side effect of your accident that we find more difficult to treat."
Bellamy nods warily, turning towards Octavia. She's pale but blank-faced, sitting far too straight-backed in the uncomfortable hospital chair, and Bellamy feels the familiar unsettledness in the pit of his stomach again; Octavia knows what is going on, she has to.
"I'm sorry, but what is the 'more delicate' side effect?" He asks brusquely. "I've been stuck in here for days without any clue of what's happened to me and to be honest, I'd quite appreciate knowing."
Cage Wallace swallows before nodding. "Of course you're anxious. I'll send the specialist in now." He stands abruptly and exits the room, shoes squeaking on the hospital floor, and Octavia sags with relief, her back bowing towards him.
When she catches Bellamy's eyes she smiles that increasingly familiar, unnervingly bright grin and giggles falsely. If it was anyone else he'd be demanding to know what was wrong, but he knows Octavia better than anyone else on the planet, even this strange and unfamiliar imitation of her, and he knows that the fastest way to get Octavia to clam up is to pester her for information.
"If he had said 'we here at Mount Weather' one more time, I swear to god . . ."
Bellamy smiles half-heartedly at Octavia's weak attempt at a joke. "If you'd been stuck here all week, I don't think Wallace would have made it past day three."
Octavia huffs out a half-laugh, and lifts herself out of the chair with a dancer's grace, crossing the room in a fluid movement and perusing the stack of books he has waiting to read. The scarf she has on billows out behind her, creating artifical wings streaming from her shoulder blades.
"You aren't nervous?" she asks, letting a little bit of vulnerability seep through her protective shell. Her hands flit around copies of the Iliad, the Odyssey and a massive encyclopaedia of Greek myths that he knows she detested carrying to the hospital, lifting the covers and running her fingers along their spines as though the books will be able to tell her what Bellamy can't.
He shrugs in response. "I don't know what I have to be nervous of," he replies.
He's lying, and praying Octavia doesn't notice.
Octavia hums in agreement and opens her mouth to say something, but is interrupted by a gentle knock on the door. It swings open and a tall guy with a shaved head and tattoos banding both his arms enters the room, his shirt-and-jeans combo completely at odds with what Bellamy was expecting, but the clipboard in his hand confirming that this must be the mysterious specialist.
Bellamy's heart sinks slightly, although he tries not to pay attention to it. A small part of him was hoping that the specialist would turn out to be the woman in the corridor whose voice he feels he should have recognised.
"Bellamy Blake?" the man questions, and when Bellamy nods in reply he gestures towards the chair that Octavia recently vacated. "Do you mind if I...?"
"Of course not," Octavia replies for him, and when he turns his head the smile on her face leaves him lost for words. It's a genuine smile from her this time, and if Bellamy is slightly rankled by the fact that this stranger has managed to get an expression out of her in a couple of words when he's been struggling for the past week and a half, well that's his business and he just has to hope it doesn't show on his face.
"I'm Lincoln," the man continues, settling into the chair with a lightness of movement that belies his height and muscular stature. "I assume Doctor Wallace told you what was going on?"
"No," Bellamy replies tersely, and frowns. "He didn't even tell me I was shot - I have experience-"
"You were a police officer, right?" Lincoln gently breaks in, and his hackles rise indignantly.
"Am. I am a cop."
"My mistake," Lincoln placates, consulting his clipboard and making a few notes, ticking off a couple of boxes. Bellamy burns to ask what he's doing but grits his teeth and reluctantly refrains.
Lincoln turns to Octavia, who swooped in to occupy Wallace's abandoned chair while he and Bellamy introduced themselves.
"Hey," he greets her, and Bellamy feels the familiar Big Brother Instincts make an appearance.
He aims for casual when he asks if they know each other, although judging by the thinly veiled irritation that Octavia is attempting to conceal, he fails miserably. She glares at him and her hands clench together in her lap, her nails digging crescent indents into her skin; he can practically hear her teeth gritting together.
Logically, Bellamy knows that Octavia is more than capable of looking after herself, and he knows that the over-protective big brother shtick gets real old real fast, but the part of his brain that has spent almost every day of his life repeating the mantra of 'my sister, my responsibility' is stubborn and refuses to back off. A part of himself hates it, the urge to protect Octavia that colours his every action; but the fact remains that Octavia is all he has and vice versa, and if he lost her he didn't know what he would do. He knows it's the same for her.
"Your sister and I have spoken before," Lincoln says smoothly, interrupting the silent staring contest between the two Blakes, and (perhaps unwittingly) diffusing the tension. "She was the person I contacted when I needed your medical history, as your next of kin. But enough about us. What I was called in to discuss was you, Bellamy, specifically the aftermath of your accident. You were shot, yes?"
"I think that's been established."
Lincoln smiles ruefully. "I walked into that one, I'll admit it. You've had a physical exam done right?"
Bellamy nods, recalling being incredibly uncomfortable the day after he arrived at the hospital. It was one of the only days that he had managed to stay awake for more than ten minutes at a time, and he had paid the price for his being alert. He had had his balance, reflexes and senses checked out, and had also undergone a CAT scan. The narrow interior of the gantry of the machine made his skin feel prickly, too small for his body and claustrophobic.
"Well, the reason you underwent those procedures is because after you were shot, you fell and hit your head pretty hard."
Wincing in memory, Bellamy gingerly reaches his right hand towards the back of his head, feeling the raised egg-shaped bump sitting prominently there. He's weirdly thankful that he got shot in his left side; if there's a good place to be shot surely the side of his body opposite to his dominant hand is a pretty okay one, all things considered. It could have been his heart, after all, and then where would he be? Certainly not having this conversation, that's for sure.
"Yeah," he says shortly. "Definitely felt the effects of that."
Lincoln cracks the tiniest of smiles, reshuffling his papers and again checking off different boxes and making some short notes. Bellamy shifts in the hospital bed in an attempt to get more comfortable, dislodging Octavia's feet from where she has them draped across his calves, and just smirks in response to her indignant squawk of dismay.
"I'm going to ask you some questions now, if that's okay with you?"
Bellamy nods once more, beginning to feel like a bobble-headed toy, and he watches as Lincoln contorts to the side and pulls a stopwatch out of his pocket.
"There's no pressure, they're just some basic questions. It's something called the G.O.A.T," he says, settling the watch on the arm of his chair and flicking the clipboard to another sheet of paper. "Octavia, if you would keep track of the length of time it takes for your brother to answer me?"
Octavia murmurs agreement and grabs the watch from Lincoln's outstretched hand, wobbling precariously and nearly toppling over on to Bellamy's legs. She recovers, thankfully, and Bellamy can see her do a tiny victorious fist-pump out of the corner of his eye.
Lincoln clears his throat, sounding amused under his veneer of professionalism. "Let's get started. Octavia, you ready?"
She nods, and Bellamy has the sudden, ridiculous thought that he feels exactly like some sort of science experiment, as if getting shot in some grimy back alleyway is his superhero origin story and Lincoln is about to break the news of his invincibility.
"Okay," says Lincoln. "What's your full name?"
"Bellamy Blake," he replies, slightly annoyed. If this whole G.O.A.T thing is just some test of his personal information, he doesn't see the need the need for it - didn't Lincoln say that Octavia had given the hospital access to all his records?
"No middle name?"
Bellamy shakes his head. "Nope."
"Okay, good. And your birthday?"
"The twentieth of December."
The questions continue along the same vein, some more complicated than others; and Lincoln's clipboard is practically covered in answers and the time it took for Bellamy to give them when he asks, "What were you doing right before your accident?"
Bellamy sits in silence for a good few minutes, his brow furrowed in an attempt to recall information. Eventually he gives up, admitting he can't remember anything from that day apart from the ambulance ride.
"That's perfectly normal, Bellamy," Lincoln says. "We're going to move back to more factual questions now, alright? Who's the President of the United States of America?"
Bellamy grins, his mood abruptly lifting. "Come on, that's an easy one. Barack Obama."
Lincoln smiles as well this time, a genuine one that stretches his cheeks and takes years off his face. "Great. Now can you tell me if this is his first or second term?"
Bellamy's confidence dips slightly, and the smile slides off his face. "It's his second, right? The election was only a few months ago..."
Octavia gasps sharply beside him, and when he turns to her, her eyes are huge with unshed tears. "I knew it!" she cries. "I knew it and none of you would listen! I'm his sister, I'm one of the only people he has, of course he's not going to forget what year I'm in at college!"
"O?" Bellamy asks, and panic wells in the pit of his stomach like a poisonous thing, bitter and twisted. His sister shakes her head rapidly, and when he reaches out a reassuring hand towards her shoulder she bats it away quickly; as she stands up jerkily the screeching echo of her chair against the parquet of the hospital floor lingers in the abruptly disturbed air.
"Octavia," Lincoln says, and it's almost stern. Bellamy watches apprehensively, paranoid to do or say anything in case he exacerbates the situation. Lincoln stands up as well, but slowly, as if he's facing a skittish animal.
Perhaps, Bellamy thinks, seeing the wild look in Octavia's eyes, that isn't so far off.
Lincoln and Octavia hover like bookends on either side of Bellamy, a study in contrasts. Octavia stands coiled like a spring, ready to flee, whilst Lincoln is steady, still as a statue. Bellamy finds that he is reluctant to even breathe too loud, the silence in the room too fragile to risk disturbing.
"Octavia," Lincoln says again, and it is as gentle as an exhalation. "Please sit down. This is a difficult time for you, I know that, but please."
She breathes deeply, her hands clenched tightly by her sides. Octavia uses her hands as an alternative to speaking, Bellamy knows, and right now they read as anything but comfortable. Still, she inhales again, and when her breath gusts out she sinks back down on to the unwieldy hospital chair. Lincoln settles back down as well, relief plastered across his features, the discarded clipboard back in his hand.
Once he is secure in the knowledge that Octavia won't do anything rash, Bellamy allows himself to sink back into that now-familiar pool of worry that sits like a constant weight in the pit of his stomach. Octavia's explosive reaction to a seemingly innocuous question is alarming; but so is the fact that Bellamy finds himself unable to remember the day he was shot. He has a blank spot in his memory that spans God knows how long - by Octavia's outburst, he has an awful instinct that he's lost years of his life.
Lincoln clears his throat, pulling Bellamy out of his thoughts. "I think," he says, "that I've got what I came for. You don't have to be here for this, you kn-"
This he directs to Octavia, and she tosses her head haughtily, shifting flawlessly back into the role of a self-confident, put-together young woman.
"Don't be stupid," she parries disdainfully, and her manicured hand reaches across the bedsheets and grips Bellamy's tightly. "He's my brother, of course I'm staying."
"Okay then," Lincoln replies, and he sounds slightly defeated. "Bellamy, this is going to be tough to hear, but there is always going to be help available for you."
Bellamy nods, his throat tight.
"What year is it?" Lincoln asks, and Bellamy's stomach sinks. If he's being asked this, surely something is definitely wrong.
"2013? It's February, 2013 - Octavia, the Super Bowl was two weeks ago, Miller came over, remember?"
Octavia's grip on his hand tightens until it's almost painful, and tears overflow from her eyes, spilling down her cheeks. "Oh, Bellamy," she gasps out, hiccuping back sobs, and seeing how quickly Octavia has regressed back into crying has the dread in his stomach thicken and burn.
"It's 2015, Bellamy," Lincoln states, biting the bullet.
"No it's not," Bellamy volleys back, abruptly feeling slightly hysterical. "You're fucking with me, 'let's all play a joke on the guy in hospital, ha-ha-ha.'"
"You have Amnesia, Bellamy," Lincoln continues, talking on top of him and over-enunciating his words as if Bellamy has forgotten how to hear as well as remember things. "Retrograde Amnesia, if you want to be specific. It's a medical condition that typically manifests due to a traumatic brain injury, and prohibits the brain from accessing old memories. As of right now, I've only got a rough idea of how far back it stretches, but judging by the fact that you thought Octavia is a sophomore, I'd hazard a guess of a year and a half to two. I'm sorry for dumping it all on you like this, but sometimes it's best to face these things head-on."
Bellamy nods faintly, shell-shocked. It is a lot to take in, Lincoln is right. Two years of his life, gone as easy as breathing.
Thanks for reading! No promises on how rapid updates will be, as I'm right in the middle of my exams, but I'm tentatively planning 8 chapters and an epilogue. Chapters will most likely be quite meaty as I have a moral opposition to conciseness :) Reviews etc mean a lot!
Edited 21/5 to fix some formatting errors :)