Secure Embrace
Cyra had pulled her shirt from the water, inspecting the stain, when she noticed a blurry reflection in the water, taking a faint outline of a person. Jerking away from where she'd been kneeling, she had nowhere else to go but to step out into the water in a panic, spinning around to who had been behind her, eyes wide with surprise.
"Bellamy?" she demanded in shock, annoyance and anger lacing her voice. However, the anger bled away when she noticed the look on his face, something that looked a mix of sadness and pity expressed on his features. It only took her another second to realize that, having been standing behind her, he would have seen her scars.
Taking another step back, out of the stream and onto the shore across from Bellamy, Cyra clutched at the shirt in her hands, tendons standing out in her arms at the tension.
The only person that had seen her scars on the Ark had been Dr. Griffin, and now Clarke and Bellamy had both seen them in less than two days. "Stop looking at me like that," she finally snapped at him, hating the pity in his eyes. She didn't want pity, sympathy or anything that would cause someone to think of her as weak. She wasn't weak, but whenever someone saw her back that's what they'd think.
"Who did that to you?" Bellamy asked instead, remaining calm as he watched her posture tense up. Facing him head on revealed that there was one other scar that could be easily missed if someone wasn't looking for it. The raised pink skin was just above the hem of her sports bra, leading from her arm toward the center of her chest on her right breast.
"Stop!" Cyra shouted so suddenly that Bellamy put his hands up as though to ward off her anger. "Stop—Stop looking and staring! Just stop it!"
"Okay, okay," Bellamy agreed, turning his head to the side to stare upstream instead. Until he heard running. Looking up again, Cyra had disappeared through the trees, taking off away from him at breakneck speed. "Wait!" Leaping over the small stream, Bellamy took off after her, trying to keep up with her thin form dodging through the trees like a ghost. "Cyra! Come on, stop!"
Just as he had done the last time he'd been forced to chase her down through the forest, Bellamy dodged around in hopes of cutting her off. It was surprising how quick she was, he hadn't been expecting it. However, she was running in one straight line, so it was easy to get around her once he got a bit of an advance on her. Cutting into her path, Cyra didn't even cry out when Bellamy caught her with an arm around her waist, almost taking her feet off the ground from her own momentum.
"Let me go!" she finally shouted, trying to throw her weight around enough to get him to release her. When he didn't unwrap his arm from her—instead using the other to secure her torso against his—Cyra lost it. Her breathing picked up to the point that he was mildly worried she'd pass out from hyperventilating, her entire body quaking in what he could only assume was fear.
She was having a panic attack.
"Cyra, it's okay. I'm not gunna hurt you," Bellamy tried to assure, to calm her down, but Cyra was still trying to use her feet to either push against him or away from him, digging her heels into the soft dirt beneath them. "Cyra, please, stop!" She either realized that he wasn't going to hurt her or she wasn't getting away from him, because her struggles gradually ceased until she was only leaning against him. Bellamy took her weight and gently eased her down with him, sitting on the forest floor as she continued to tremble lightly.
As tall as she was, he realized that she was still incredibly thin and light.
Her back against him, Bellamy almost had her sitting in his lap as she struggled to take in proper breaths. Her skin was beginning to feel cool to the touch, her shirt dropped back on the stones near the creek, with a cold sheen of sweat glistening on her pale skin. "Don't look at them," she rasped out a moment later, looking down at the mossy ground they sat upon.
"I won't," Bellamy promised, continuing to just hold her as she slowly calmed, taking in deeper breaths and relaxing her agonizingly tense posture. "You're okay, Cyra. You're just fine."
"No," she denies in a tired tone. "I'm not."
Holding onto her a bit tighter, Bellamy resisted the urge to look down at her scars. They were so close. He could have counted each of them—instead, he forced himself to look closely at her hair, taking in the blends of blonde and brunette strands—she must have been born blonde, but the strands darkened from time in solitary. "You will be," he tried instead, squeezing her arm to offer what comfort he could. However, doing that brought him to realize that both her arm and his palm were moist with warm blood. The wound there was bleeding heavily, her heightened heartrate causing it to increase the blood flow.
Instead of staying anything, he shifted his hand to press over the wound in hopes of stopping the bleeding. She didn't flinch in pain, even though he was fully aware that she'd feel it, but just continued to stare at the ground. He didn't know what else he could do—he'd never had someone have a panic attack on him before. However, he did raise his younger sister and knew that someone who was afraid, or sick, or upset recovered best when there was someone that they knew was there.
Soon her shivering died down, more caused by the chill in the air than her fear, and he only held onto her more securely in hopes of keeping her warm. He was surprised when she slowly leaned back into him, resting against his chest without even realizing it as she calmed down.
They had been sitting in silence for a while before she spoke suddenly, startling Bellamy from the abruptness of it. "It was my dad."
Swallowing thickly, Bellamy stopped himself from speaking and let her continue on her own.
"He wanted to sell me for sex. I fought off the guards, stopped them from doing anything, and my dad beat me into a hospital bed." Her voice was bland, monotone, but he couldn't blame her for wanting to detach herself emotionally from the situation. He'd tried to do the same whenever the guards came to visit his mother—otherwise his rage would have had him beating someone into a hospital bed.
The breath that Bellamy released quivered against her neck, his attention wavering down to her shoulders against his will. "Did they float him for it?"
There was a momentary pause as Cyra lifted her head, staring forward into the green forest. "He's dead," she answered without the least bit of remorse in her voice. Then her eyes slowly directed over to her arm, where his hand was resting over her steadily bleeding bullet graze. "You're getting covered in blood."
"Yea, and you're losing a lot of blood," he returned. "Let's get you back to the creek." Lifting her carefully as his arms constricted tightly around her—thankfully, she didn't panic this time—Bellamy soon had her standing on her own feet.
"Please let me go," she asked in a meek voice after they were both on their feet. Of course, Bellamy didn't want to overstep his bounds again and released her reluctantly. She was standing stiff again, but it seemed that it was more from discomfort. "No one else knows," she finally mumbled out. "Not even Octavia."
"I won't say a word," he promised without having to get any further prompt from her.
Usually, he'd have used this against her. It's what he would have done in the past—something he would have to do in order to survive on the Ark. But with her…he didn't want to betray this secret, especially because it made him think of his mother, harassed by the guards more times that he was willing to remember.
Cyra took over holding her wound, slowing the blood flow. Thankfully, her heartrate had calmed down as well and therefore she wasn't going to be bleeding as heavily. Bellamy kept an eye on her, though, walking a couple of paces behind her as they started back in the direction of the creek. It was a silent walk that felt as though it was going to go on forever—he hadn't thought they'd gotten this far away from the river. At least Cyra's panicked running left them a clean trail in the dirt to follow.
However, they soon reached the last clustering of bushes before the creek. Cyra shouldered her way through them, wincing at the prickling feeling of the trees pricking her skin. Glancing along the rocks on the shoreline, she stopped in her tracks when she came up empty with her search. Spinning in a circle, thinking that maybe she'd dropped it somewhere further than remembered, proved just as futile as the first check.
"What's wrong?" Bellamy asked as he emerged from the bushes as well, brushing the leaves from his shirt as he looked at the confused Cyra.
"My shirt's gone," Cyra answered in a low murmur. Frowning as well, Bellamy began to glance around their feet. He distinctly remember her dropping the wet material on the rocks—he'd had to step over it to follow her—and yet there were only traces of water splashed up from the creek to show for it. "Maybe I—"
"No, I saw you drop it here," Bellamy confirmed. He knew that she'd be second guessing herself, he probably would as well if he hadn't been certain. "Maybe an animal took it, smelled the blood?"
Cyra sighed in answer as she nodded along. It made sense, but that didn't exactly help her. "Great, now I've got to worry about things stealing my clothes?" she grumbled to herself before hopping over to the other side of the creek, snatching up the bandages that had—thankfully—been left where she'd laid them to clean later.
Rinsing the bandages of blood quickly, she didn't have time to wait for them to dry. So, she simply wrung them out as best she could before beginning to loop them around her arm. Bellamy silently moved forward to help, noticing her muscles flinch when he was close. Thinking back on it now, she'd never really let someone else touch her before. He'd seen her and Octavia close, but whenever it came to being in a group or around untrusted people, she always seemed to push herself away from them, stand off to the side or in the back.
Tying her arm tightly, Bellamy looked up to her face. She was watching his hands, her mismatched eyes staring at him critically. "I've got an extra shirt in my tent," he began as he took a step back. In the next moment, he'd lifted his shirt up and stripped it off of his torso, leaving it bare. "Here, people probably won't notice if you're wearing my shirt for now. Better not to have you walk into camp half-naked."
"Thanks," she accepted the shirt with whispered gratitude, taking the still warm material in her hands. She had never worn someone else's clothes before, so it was strange when she pulled the shirt up over her head and took in the strong smell of Bellamy's natural body odor and nature from spending time on the ground. It was warm with a foreign body's heat and larger than the clothes she'd had for the past couple of years. His bulkier frame left the shirt draping over her boney figure like a blanket.
"Come on, let's see if we can sneak back into camp without too many people's crazy assumptions," he proposed, motioning for her to head out in front of him. She knew better how to get back anyway. "How'd you know this place was here?" Bellamy called up to her as they left the stream behind. "We've been looking for a water source recently."
"Found it this morning," she answered back with a glance at him over her shoulder. "Looking for something to eat."
"You didn't get anything last night," Bellamy remembered, muttering more to himself than anyone else. "I'm sorry, should've gotten you some when we went back to camp."
"I wouldn't have eaten it—I was pissed off at you, would've refused out of spite."
"Sounds like you've done it before," he probed cautiously, hoping that he wasn't treading into territory that would cause another breakdown.
"When I was first put into lockup, I refused anything and everything. Water, food, a shower. The guards hated me. It was actually Clarke's mother, Dr. Griffin, who finally got me to do something. She just wiped the grime off my face with a cloth and gave me a glass of tea while she checked on my back for infection. It was…different. Kind of woke me up. I realized that rebelling like that wasn't doing anything but making me sick, hungry and smell terrible."
"You'd have been…what? Fourteen?" Bellamy asked.
"Just about," she answered, but in truth she'd been nearly sixteen at the time. She didn't want Bellamy to know about her surviving her trial. His mother was floated only because of having a second child—she couldn't stand to have him hate her because she was alive for doing a crime much worse. "I couldn't do anything else, so in a way it made me feel like I was taking my life back into my own hands. Didn't really work."
"Your life is yours now," Bellamy encouraged. His words caused Cyra to slow to a stop, glancing back at him with a new interest in her eyes. "I spent my whole life taking care of Octavia, trying to keep her safe and hidden. But it was because of me that she was found out. There was a masquerade and she wanted to go out and see the Ark so badly. So I took her to the party. And the guards came in, asking for everyone's identification."
"She didn't have one," Cyra mumbled to herself, taking in Bellamy's tortured expression.
"I tried everything to get her out, I bribed every guard I could, but they'd never do it. My mother was floated for having a second child and I was kicked off the force and demoted to janitor. I want the lives that Octavia and I always dreamed about—and we're here, on Earth. Doing things of our own free will, and not having to hide anymore."
"Not having to hide," Cyra repeated as her hand lifted to touch her shoulder without really thinking on the action. Swallowing thickly, she removed her hand and glanced back at him again. Her eyes were clearer than they'd been since she'd first spotted him. "Come on, let's get you a shirt." Glancing down along his chest, she noticed that there were faint goosebumps along his skin. "You look cold."
Bellamy's initial reaction would usually have been to flirt after a comment like that, but after hearing what her father had put her through he suddenly felt disgusted at the thought of trying anything sexual. Clearly it made her uncomfortable in more ways than one. It also explained why she'd been so violent about him calling her babe the night before. One of the men who'd attacked her must have called her that at some point.
Thankfully, Bellamy's tent was on the edge of the camp by the dropship, so all they had to do was circle around the perimeter of the camp to get to the back of the tent and sneak under the material. Instead of taking the shirt back, Bellamy just let her keep it while he searched for the extra one that he knew he had somewhere.
"Thanks again," she mumbled as she ducked back out from the back of the tent, out of sight of anyone. Bellamy watched her leave silently, a new shirt in his hands. He didn't mind parting with the last one, but it was strange to see someone else wearing it. Usually when a woman was wearing his clothing it was after he'd had sex with them—this was something completely new for him.
He also had no idea what compelled him to give up the article in the first place. Maybe it was because he was technically the reason her shirt had been lost in the first place. If he hadn't spooked her into running, it wouldn't have been left behind.
Cyra moved to rejoin the rest of the camp as she subconsciously tugged on the hem of Bellamy's shirt. She doubted that anyone would notice that it was his, or even that she was wearing something different than before, that's not something most people took notice of anyway. Everything was faded and torn or ripped anyway—no one had any type of outfit that really stood out.
"Hey, Cyra!"
Turned to where Sasha was still working on the fence, Cyra made her way back to the others. "Hey, you guys got a lot done," she said in greeting, taking in the additional couple of feet that had been added on since she'd been around.
"Yea, we wanted to get another set done before nightfall. It seems like a lot now, but…we still have the entire perimeter of the camp do to."
"It's a start," Cyra assured.
"How's your arm?" Sasha asked, glancing down at the strip of soaked, red cloth. "That…doesn't look much better."
"I've gotta go change the bandage, get a dry one. Do you guys need some help here, or-"
"Cyra!" Clarke's voice shouted from near the edge of the camp. Cyra let out a long, quiet sigh as she turned to look toward where the blonde was standing. Her annoyed expression bled away almost immediately, however, to see her standing with her familiar, dark grey sweater in hand. Clarke's expression was a mixture of confusion and annoyance, but when she watched Cyra's face pale at the sight of the material in her hands, she grew concerned.
"Sorry, I'll be right back," Cyra muttered to Sasha distractedly. Making her way toward Clarke, her walk was brisk, bordering on rushing. "Where did you get that?" she asked as soon as Clarke was in hearing distance, but keeping her tone even and low so that no one else's attention was drawn over to them suddenly.
"I was looking for the herbs that the Grounders used for Jasper when I found it. We're short on clothes as it is-"
"No, Clarke," Cyra interrupted as she stepped closet to the blonde. "Where did you find it?" The urgency in Cyra's tone caused the privileged girl to swallow thickly.
"It was tied to a tree, a couple of minutes East of camp," she explained, handing the still damp material over to Cyra. The woman immediately turned it over, searching for the bloodstain that had been on the arm. It was faint from her washing it, but still there. "Why didn't you have it?"
Opening her mouth to answer, Cyra could only stare down at the sweater in disbelief.
