Building Bridges to Mountaintops

Cyra's mouth felt suddenly dry, making it difficult to swallow as she clutched her shirt in her hand. Clarke was still standing in front of her, obviously expecting an answer for why Cyra's shirt had been tied around a random tree. "I was…washing it. The blood stain. I guess someone from the camp thought they'd pull a prank on me," she finally answered, her words somewhat dull as she turned the material over in her hands, searching out the stain. Faintly, it was still there.

"Didn't do a very good job," Clarke muttered before she turned her back on the older woman, her annoyance clear on her face again. Cyra stepped back once Clarke had turned away, spinning on her toes as her eyes scanned over the camp.

She couldn't see Bellamy anywhere, so she assumed he was still in his tent.

Casting one more quick glance to Clarke, who had turned her attention to Finn for the time being, Cyra made a calm, though hurried, dash for Bellamy's tent. She didn't linger outside of it, or wait for him to learn of her presence, but threw herself through the flaps and into the small space. Apparently, Bellamy had been about to leave and she immediately ran into him, hitting his chest and nearly throwing them both off balance.

"Whoa! What the hell-"

"My shirt!" Cyra gasped out, interrupting him as she righted herself and took a stumbling step away from him, his hands falling away from her arms where'd they sought for leverage. Holding up the material in her hands, she watched as Bellamy's eyes widened, recognizing the dark grey as quickly as she had a minute prior. Snatching the sweater away, he looked down at the bloodstain that stared back at him.

"Where'd you find it?" he asked quickly, stepping up to her as he kept his voice low.

"Clarke found it. Tied to a tree."

Just as she was sure she had, his face paled as he realized that they had been very wrong in their assumptions. Animals didn't tie things around trees—it had been a long shot to believe that they would steal a shirt for a tiny bloodspot on it as well. Both were so focused on the discovery Clarke had inadvertently brought to their attention that they didn't realize they were standing a hair's width apart, Bellamy's breath a ghost against Cyra's cheeks. And she wasn't afraid, didn't shake or flinch back.

"Do you think it was a grounder?" he asked a moment later, looking up into those mismatched eyes. He would only look into one at a time, so he stared forward at the sky blue one that reminded him of the times he'd seen Earth through the windows of the Ark, so clear and bright. Or the sky, when they'd first opened up the door to the dropship.

Cyra hesitated. "Clarke said she found it on the East end of camp. The creek is on the West end. Whoever took that would have to have been fast and know the forest around them, go around the camp and not through it. It wouldn't have been one of ours."

"How far out?"

"A couple of minutes, but that's all she said to me."

"Does Clarke know?" Bellamy asked after a moment, his jaw taut with nerves.

Cyra shook her head, "No, she's too annoyed with me to put blame past myself, going on about being short on clothing anyway."

Snorting in disdain, Bellamy turned away from Cyra and lifted a hand to run it tiredly down his face. "A grounder…was right there."

Cyra blinked in confusion for a moment before she realized what he meant. If it had been a grounder, it would have been right there at the creek. It would have been so close to her, to them both, that it snatched the shirt as soon as Bellamy had ran after Cyra when she booked it away from him. That was the only way he/she could have gotten the shirt, circled camp and tied it to the tree before Clarke found it and brought it back with her.

Her entire body twitched uncomfortably at the thought. Had they been lurked behind the bushes? Had they ran past them without even seeing the grounder?

Bellamy turned back to Cyra, only then realizing that he was still holding her sweater in his free hand. However, as soon as he looked at Cyra he forgot all about it and simply tossed it onto the bed next to him. The woman had gone from pale to white, the distress of the thought clear on her face. "He was…he-"

Bellamy didn't say anything but immediately reached out for her. It shocked him when she didn't flinch away from him, or even react to being touched. He could feel her trembling slightly and wondered what had drawn such a reaction out of her. But then again, this was the woman who'd gone into a full blown panic attack from something as simple as someone seeing her scars. She'd also been the one who'd really seen what had happened to Jasper, she'd been there when the Grounder had speared him from across the river, before her eyes.

Wrapping his arms around the woman, her joints locked up from the contact before gradually releasing into a semi-relaxed posture. "I don't want you going anywhere alone, alright? No more solitary food scavenging, either."

"We didn't even know he was there, Bellamy," she muttered against his shoulder, the hot feel of her breath reaching him through the thin material.

"We will from now on," he answered, his tone angry and determined. He was already sick and tired of these bastards being ahead of them. They'd probably been watching the group when they'd gone out to Mount Weather the entire time, maybe even been watching the camp. His sister had been out there, she could have been the one lying in the dropship with a hole in her chest. It made his arms constrict subconsciously around Cyra.

It could have been her, too.

Suddenly, Cyra's arms were around his torso, returning his constricting embrace. He fought against tensing in surprise, only showing the surprise on his face which she could not see. She was holding onto him, returning his touch. It was a great improvement from short minutes before, when she'd been fighting for her life to get out of his arms.

"What if you hadn't been there?" she asked suddenly.

His blood ran cold.

If he hadn't been there…she could very well have been killed. Or taken. Beaten. Anything. She wouldn't have had any reason to run, she wouldn't have dropped her shirt and taken off because of him. He wouldn't have raced after her, confronted and comforted her. One simple action, one decision of not following her would have changed it all.

It very well could have been her strung up in a tree instead of her sweater.

"You're still here," he assured, but his voice was rough. "You're safe."

Cyra wanted to just go limp when he said that. People had tried to tell her that in the past—Dr. Griffin had tried to tell her that, since her father was dead and couldn't be there to hurt her anymore—but this was the first time she actually felt like it was the truth. This was the first time someone had held her and she didn't feel threatened or scared. Bellamy, somehow, made her feel safe.

Inhaling the smell that rose up from his shirt, his skin and his hair, she relaxed her neck to let her forehead fall against his shoulder.

"You have to set up some rules for the camp, before someone else wanders off and gets hurt, or taken, or-"

"I'll let people know. They're aware of the Grounders, that's a start. But no one here really knows the threat they could be. We haven't seen any other signs of them until now."

"Hey, Bell!"

The two flinched apart instantaneously, Octavia's voice interrupting the silence that had filled the tent moments before the flaps of his tent flew apart and his younger sister ducked inside, jolting in surprise when Cyra was the first person she saw.

"What's going on?" she asked immediately, on edge about the appearance of the two. Cyra looked more pale than usual and Bellamy was oddly tense, his face set into a bit more a frown than she was used to seeing. Had they been arguing about something?"

"I found a creek this morning, I'd heard that a close water source was still on a 'to find' list," Cyra answered.

"And, I found this," Bellamy added on, quickly snatching her shirt from where he'd dropped it on the bed. "Hang it up now and it should be dry by tonight," he added on when he realized it was wet and she only had a short sleeved shirt on. The nights were pretty cold, even inside the dropship, and he wasn't aware of any extra jackets lying around. The ones that Wells had taken off of the dead kids had been snatched up pretty quickly, so her sweater was the only thing she had to keep warm in the approaching cold season.

"Thanks," Cyra muttered as she accepted the damp material. "See you later, Octavia," she said quickly to the younger woman before she slipped passed her and vacated the tent. The younger Blake sibling turned to watch her leave before she turned back to her brother, a sour and contemplating look on her face. She wasn't sure that was exactly what the two had been doing, but Cyra had a pretty good poker face apparently. She wasn't able to tell if the older woman had been lying. They didn't act like anything had been happening, but Octavia found the thought oddly…unsettling.

"What did I tell you about going after her, Bell?" she snapped at her brother, who immediately went from tense to irritated.

"For Christ sake, Octavia. Nothing was going on!"

Octavia scoffed in disbelief. "Was she wearing your shirt?"

Cyra tried to take deep, calming breaths as soon as she was free of the tent. However, all that seemed to do was draw Bellamy's smell up into her lungs since she was still wearing his shirt. Lifting a hand to the hem of the shirt, she fingered the soft material silently as her eyes darted around the camp, taking in everyone that she could see. She didn't know if all of the remaining one hundred were still in the camp, but she suddenly had the urge to do roll-call.

Instead, she headed for the dropship to find some new strips of bandage for her arm before the dirty ones gave her an infection.

"Hey, haven't seen you all day," Monty greeted when she ascended the ladder, her sweater tossed over one shoulder so her hands were free.

"Sorry, I was recruited for wall-building detail," she explained as she stepped onto flat ground again. "Got any bandages I could steal from you?" Monty's eyes flicked down to her arm, taking in the red bandage through the dim lighting and immediately pulled a bag of strips from beside Jasper. While he was doing that, Cyra crouched down beside the sickly boy.

Jasper looked worse than when she'd left that morning, a cold sweat covering him from head to toe and his breathing sounded like someone trying to inhale through a straw. "He's not doing good," she mumbled sadly as her brow furrowed, hand reaching out to lie the back of her palm over his forehead. The heat that radiated off his skin made her want to flinch.

"Clarke's trying hard to find the plants used by the Grounders, but no such luck," Monty explained to her as he motioned for her to sit in front of him. Clarke had showed him how to change Jasper's bandage, since he was the one who spent all of his time with the unconscious adolescent, so he knew how to take care of her arm.

Cyra sat still, her arm held out for him, and watched as he untied Bellamy's knot with nimble fingers and unwound it from her arm. The dried blood and traces of puss had caused it to stick to her skin, leaving Monty with no choice but to pry it off with force, reopening the wound as well. Dipping a clean rag into a tin of water, he began dapping and soaking the graze to collect the blood and try to stem the flow. "I think this is getting infected," he muttered in concern, but Clarke would know better.

Sighing loudly, Cyra tipped her head back at the news. "I'll have to go and see the local Doc then, huh?"

"She's not so bad," Monty tried to defend. He had no issue with Clarke, but he noticed the way that she and Wells treated Cyra. Clarke was subconsciously reading Wells' insecurities about Cyra and that caused her to lash out at the woman, but it was also Cyra's clear dislike for the privileged on the Ark. Having heard her life before prison, he realised that she would have lived by bare bones and shear will alone.

Cyra only snorted in reply, the unladylike sound making Monty grin in amusement. It was unflattering and ugly, but Cyra showed no care about what other people thought of her. It was refreshing.

When the bleeding from her arm had stopped, Monty wrapped it in a new bandage and made her swear that she would go and see Clarke the next time she was required to change the bandage. Before she left again, Cyra hung up her sweater to dry on the edge of a piece of metal, the seats that had been there long since ripped out and taken outside as seating.

When they'd landed on Earth, she hadn't expected her days to consist of killer snake, killer grounders, killer cats and finally, near death frights. She'd opened her eyes to a blue sky and green Earth, taking in the beauty of the land and the smell of clean air which would never have a shortage. She had been so excited and now she dreaded what lay just beyond there slowly growing walls.

Glancing out through the trees, toward the sky, Cyra guessed that there would only be a few hours of daylight left.

Falling to sit on the edge of the ramp, she pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes. A headache was slowly creeping in and she wished that she had something to stop it.

"You okay?"

Octavia moved to sit next to her friend, a faint limp still present in her step. Cyra looked up to her with a look that spoke of bone-weary exhaustion and fear. "Why can't we ever catch a break?" she asked her friend, thinking back to all of the days they'd just laid on the cots and spoken about the most inane, random things. It was so pointless and yet she missed it.

Shaking her head, Octavia found herself mirroring her friend's look. "I don't know. I'm hoping that when all of this is said and done, we'll have the best lives someone could ask for. Live like Queens."

Cyra grinned at her answer, nodding along with the imaginary future. "I'd settle for free and at peace. Seems you can't get that these days without death being the one who gives it to you."

This was one of the first times Octavia had heard her friend speak so bleakly, but Bellamy had explained to what had happened to her—leaving out certain details—so she could understand the underlying dear and helplessness that Cyra was feeling. "Bell told me about your sweater—I was wondering why you were wearing his shirt. He's forbade me from leaving the camp. Again."

Cyra found herself shaking her head, more amused with him than anything. "It might seem like the most annoying thing in the world, 'Tavia, but he's just trying to protect you. He wants you safe. It'll be overbearing, but it's…love. He loves you and he'd move mountains for you. So maybe cut him some slack."

She could see the guilt that bled into Octavia's expression, but she could tell that the teenage girl was still annoyed with Bellamy's overprotective big brother routine. "I can understand him wanting to protect me from the Grounders, but there's some things he needs to butt out of."

"I'm sure he'd say the same thing," she pointed out, watching Octavia flinch. After all, the younger sibling had been the one to confront him on Cyra's current state of dress. Then, Cyra laughed as she straightened up and her eyes lightened just a little bit. "So, this is what siblings act like!"

"Shut up," Octavia snapped jokingly at the older woman. Truthfully, she was just happy that Cyra wasn't sad anymore. Well, that wasn't completely honest—she could still see it lingering in her eyes, but that was all that remained of it.

She was making an effort to hide it from her.

I'm sorry for the delay in update, I hope the Cyra/Bellamy moment makes up for it!