A/N: I was planning to publish this chapter a little differently, including both this and what will now be the next chapter as one part. But it's taking longer than I had expected, and I know I left you with a bit of a cliffhanger, so I decided to break it up and give you this now.

Kudos to those of you who guessed who Clarke's assailant was! I hope you all are still with me after this chapter, at this point it seems there will be two more.

I just want to note that I'm about to enter into three weeks from hell; I've just gotten a full time job which is an hour commute each way, I'm packing up 22 years worth of stuff and moving to a new place which I'm going to have to spend two weeks renovating and moving into on top of working 40+ hours a week, my brother is graduating and has like 4 events for some reason that I have to go to, AND everyone I know was born in the next few weeks so there are a lot of birthdays happening. So I am going to do everything I can to have this story regularly updated until the end, but if I fail, just know I'm super busy.

Hopefully I get this done before I'm too thick into that stuff so it all works out, but just a heads up.

Anyways, enjoy!

When Clarke was six years old she fell off her bicycle. Abby had been nagging at her to wear a helmet, but Clarke had only just mastered the art of the two-wheeler, and she had no desire to dampen that achievement by strapping a helmet to her head.

But, inevitably, she'd picked up too much speed going down a hill, and panicked, braking hard. The result had been the back wheel of her bike wrenching off the ground, the whole thing flipping back over front, taking Clarke with it. The pavement came up to meet her forehead, and when she woke up, she'd gotten to suffer through her very first concussion. The pain, for a six year old, had been unbearable.

But that pain was nothing compared to the agony that startles her awake now.

"Ah," her voice comes out in a rough squeak, and even that exacerbates the pounding in her head. It feels like her skull has cracked in half. She definitely has a concussion. Forcing her eyes open, which is a battle once the light hits them, though there's barely any, she tries to focus. The last thing she remembers is going back to her room at the hotel, and then-

She sits up, and her stomach rolls. Someone was there. Someone hit her over the head.

With that realization comes fear, creeping in from her fingertips down, like ice water in her veins. She doesn't know where she is. It's definitely not her hotel room. The light, wherever she is, is negligible. Her back is pressing against a wall, and the cold that's seeping through her dress there makes her think it must be concrete. Her hands are tied, sitting uselessly in her lap, but she runs them along the floor, deciding that it must be concrete as well. She's still dressed.

And then something else hits her.

It's silent. The only sounds she can hear are those of her own breathing and the pounding of her heart. Which means that no one can hear her either. Her pulse takes off, and the nausea comes back, full force.

Where the fuck is she?

.-.-.-.-.-.-.

"Where the fuck is she?" Bellamy mutters, checking his phone for the twentieth time. She texted him saying she was on her way almost two hours ago. Their category has come and gone, they lost to Mad Men. Clarke missed it.

And maybe he's just projecting his own disappointment, but Bellamy can't help but feel like Clarke would have run all the way here from the hotel if she had to, rather than miss this.

So where is she?

.-.-.-.-.-.

No one comes.

An hour passes, or maybe it's five minutes, the pain in her head and the lack of any windows make it impossible to tell.

And then another five minute hour, and another, until she starts to panic, a little. There's something about being isolated like this, no daylight, no people, no sense of time, that sends her into a panic.

She doesn't want to die here.

She eyes the solid white door in the corner of the room desperately. She knows it's solid, she spent what felt like twenty minutes trying to knock it down, but it's impossible to get leverage in this dress, with her hands tied, it's impossible to do pretty much anything with this headache. Logically, she knows that whoever eventually comes through that door wants something from her, is a threat to her.

But at this point, she's not sure it can be worse than the waiting.

.-.-.-.-.-.

"You saw her? She was here?"

The concierge nods, looking nervous. Bellamy can't really blame her, he's practically vibrating with panicked energy, fingers tapping manically against the counter.

"She talked to my manager for a bit, then she left."

He scans her nametag absently. Nadia.

"Okay, is your manager here?"

"Um, yeah, hold on." Nadia disappears for a few seconds, returning with an older woman. According to her nametag, this is Linda.

"Hi," Bellamy doesn't even give her a chance to say hello. "My friend was here this afternoon about a break-in, in my room."

Linda seems to take in his outfit, he's still wearing his tux, didn't bother to change when he checked his room looking for Clarke.

"I remember. The blonde in the red dress."

"Yeah," he nods, "that's her."

"I haven't seen her since then," Linda says hesitantly, sensing that it isn't what he wants to hear.

"Okay," he deflates, scrubbing a hand wearily across his face. "And when was that?"

She pauses, thoughtful.

"Around four? Maybe four thirty?"

It's just past ten now. As far as Bellamy can tell, no one has seen her for six hours. He's already called everyone he can think of, Raven, Octavia, Miller. He even called Eddie, asking if his friend had heard from Clarke. But no one knows anything. It seems like she's just disappeared.

"Look, is there any chance you can give me a key to her room? She's kind of…missing."

For the first time in this entire exchange, Linda looks alarmed.

"I'm afraid I can't do that…but if you're really concerned, I could arrange to check her room. And you're welcome to tag along."

"Yeah." He doesn't have high hopes, he'd knocked on her door when he checked his own room, but it's possible she's just passed out. "Please."

Linda nods, grabbing a cardkey from the stack beside her computer and running it through the magnetizing slot. It beeps, the light flashing green, then she steps out from behind the counter.

"Alright, come with me."

He does, practically stepping on her heels in impatience. Clarke's room is on the fifth floor, along with the rest of the crew, the cast and producers are in suites higher up. The elevator ride takes what seems like half an hour, and he has to stop himself from sprinting down the hallway ahead of her. He knows which room it is, still, he waits for Linda to get there, watches as she knocks, slides the key into the door, as she pushes it open.

Clearly anticipating his edginess, she steps aside in time for him to push his way inside.

"Clarke?"

He shivers. She always keeps the air so damn cold. But he checks the bathroom, and the bed. She's not there.

"I'm sorry," Linda says softly, behind him. He's about to reply when she speaks again. "Uh, Mr. Blake-"

The tone of her voice has him turning, and he follows her gaze to the floor.

It's Clarke's phone. As the two of them stare at it, it lights up, Octavia's face flashing across the screen.

There's a crack in the glass, splitting his sister's face in half. He turns back to Linda, feeling all the blood drain from his face.

"I think," he says quietly, voice sounding strange to his own ears, "that you should call the cops now."

.-.-.-.-.-.

The worst part of a concussion, Clarke finds herself thinking, is the throwing up. She's hunched over in the corner of the room, heaving, and every retch sends a fresh wave of pain crashing through her cranium, which in turn only makes the nausea worse.

She feels disgusting as she crawls back to the other side of the room. Her makeup is smeared and caked all over her face, her mouth tastes awful. The urge to curl up in a ball and cry is almost overwhelming.

She wants her mom.

She wants Bellamy.

.-.-.-.-.

Clarke jerks awake to the same dead silence that lulled her to sleep. Horrified, she presses a hand to her chest. She shouldn't be sleeping, not with a concussion.

Not when she has no idea where she is, or who's watching her.

As though the very thought has summoned them, the click of a lock comes from the white door, reverberating in the small room. She sits ramrod straight, perfectly still, barely even remembering to breathe. She can't say how long it's been, best guess is maybe nine or ten hours, since she hasn't had to pee yet, but it already feels like she's lived a lifetime in this hole.

The handle turns; she can see the movement even in the dim light, and then the door is swinging open. A man steps in, in the dark all she can tell is that he has short dark hair, and he's tall. Suddenly, a light floods the room from overhead, white, and sterile, and burning.

She makes a noise of pain, eyelids slamming shut even as her instincts tell her to keep this intruder carefully in her sight. There are tears streaming down her face as she forces her eyes back open, just a reflex to the jarring lack of darkness, and as her pupils constrict, she realizes she recognizes the man standing in front of her.

"Wh-what?" She stammers, gaping at him in confusion.

It's Steven.

And then her gaze falls onto the knife in his hand.

.-.-.-.-.-.

"No, I know the procedure, you've explained it to me four times!" Bellamy shouts, fist coming down on the sergeant's desk in front of him. "But you don't know Clarke, she wouldn't have just fucked off in the middle of an awards show!"

"Hey man, you've got to keep it together." Eddie's hand comes down on his shoulder. He was in town for something non-Emmy's related, but met Bellamy at the hotel the second he heard about Clarke going MIA. "I know you're worried, but yelling at the cops isn't going to help."

Bellamy just shrugs him off, resuming his earlier habit of pacing in front of the booking desk.

"I'm sorry." The staff sergeant does look genuinely apologetic, her lined features further creasing sympathetically. "But if she hasn't been gone for twenty-four hours, there's really nothing we can do yet."

"It's been twelve hours," Bellamy counters, spinning on his heel. "Twelve hours since the last person saw her, and she told me she was coming right back. She left her phone," he mutters, pointing at where it sits in front of her, "-which was dropped, on the floor, in the middle of her hotel room, broken. Are you seriously telling me that doesn't count as…as the sign of a struggle?"

The officer sighs.

"Unfortunately it's not enough. You're just going to have to come back after twenty-four hours."

"And if something happened to her?" Bellamy asks, bluntly. "If she's in trouble? What happens in the next twelve hours?"

"There no reason to assume that's the case-"

"What would you do?" He asks her suddenly. "Knowing what you know now, what would you do?"

The look that crosses her face is answer enough. Something is wrong, they all know it.

But no one will fucking do anything about it.

.-.-.-.-.-.

"I don't understand." The words push themselves off her lips, as though the filter between her brain and her mouth has completely disappeared. Steven stares at her. He looks the same, almost exactly, eyes huge and sad, nothing in his face to betray what's going on, why he's here.

"What don't you understand?" Even his voice sounds the same. It should be one of the least threatening things she's ever heard, it's not deep, or angry, it's just quiet, a little melancholy. But her eyes are still on the knife, and he's just standing there, looking at her, and every cell in her body is screaming danger, danger.

Everything, she thinks, as the answer to his question. She doesn't understand a single thing that's happening in this moment. She settles for;

"Why am I here?"

He cocks his head at her question, continuing to stare, to study her.

"You're here because you're supposed to be."

Somewhere in the part of her mind that isn't terrified, or concussed, she registers that to be one of the least helpful answers possible.

"I don't…what does that mean?" Her throat is dry. She wants to know what time it is.

"I knew that if I just told you, you wouldn't believe me." He says it like it's her fault, like he blames her for something she never had the chance to do. "But that night…God took Maya away from me, but He gave me you. It was fate." His tone is dreamy now, and Clarke feels sick all over again. He's not in his right mind.

And she's in all the more danger for it.

"Steven," she says tentatively, "I think you need help, and I can help you, but you have to let me-"

"Uh-uh-uh." He shakes his head, lowering the tip of the knife to point it at her. It's one of those long hunting blades, the kind her uncle used to keep sheathed at his hip when they went camping. If Steven wanted to, she knows he could gut her with it. And the sudden transformation of his face, from the frown she recognized to a sick, angry smirk has her wondering if maybe that isn't exactly what he plans to do. "You're only saying that because you don't see it yet. But you will."

"See what?" She doesn't want to know. But she can't see any other way out than to try and give him what he wants.

"That you're meant for me. We're going to be together. I had to let go of Maya so I could meet you."

Appalled, Clarke scrambles to think of something, anything, to say to that.

"So…you're just going to keep me here?" She asks, a little desperately. The more unstable he seems, the more she loses any hope of talking him into letting her go.

"Of course not," Steven grimaces, as though he finds the idea distasteful. "But people will be looking for you, for a while. We have to keep you out of sight."

At least, Clarke thinks, it sounds like he's planning on keeping her alive.

"I have to pee," she blurts out, then finds that she does. But she also wants to see what's outside this room, if he'll let her. Praying that he won't just throw a bucket at her, she tries to school her face into something soft and pleading. For a second, he just looks at her, unnervingly still. Then he leans forward, Clarke automatically recoiling into the wall as he reaches for her. He makes a sound of irritation, hand curling around her bicep.

"Alright." He tugs her roughly to her feet. "Come on."

She stumbles a little as he pulls her alongside him, wondering where her shoes went. As they shoulder through the door, she stares around at her new surroundings. To her disappointment, it's just a stairwell, the same basic concrete that made up her cell. And then they're going up, and the stairs are a little difficult to navigate now that her head is swimming and throbbing. The entire stairwell seems to be spinning. She falters, and he notices, catching her under the arms as she pitches forward.

"What are you doing?" He asks, suspicious.

"It's my head," she breathes. "I've got a concussion, I need a doctor-"

He scoffs.

"You're a doctor. There's nothing anyone else could do for you that you can't do."

He's not wrong, really. But the disorientation of being kept in a grey cement cube without any sense of time or water is probably not helping her headaches. Or her confusion. It's difficult to focus on what he's saying, to remember.

"I'm not," she says wearily. "I'm not a doctor anymore."

He doesn't acknowledge that, just yanks her back to her feet.

"Come on."

It's slow going, but they make it up the rest of the stairs. The flight has thirty-seven in total. Clarke counted as they climbed. At the top is another door, and Steven pulls a key from his pocket, unlocking it. Before they go any further, he turns to her.

"No fucking around." The blade of the knife, just for a second, presses against her windpipe. She nods. Then he pushes her forward, and without her arms to throw out for balance, she trips over her dress and falls heavily to her knees. Steven sighs angrily, as though she did it on purpose just to piss him off, and picks her up by her hair this time. Her eyes water at the pain, which is only compounded by the tenderness in her scalp from when he knocked her out.

She hates him. She feels weak, and utterly powerless, and as he's standing there hauling her up by her hair, she hates him.

It gives her something to feel, other than scared, or exhausted, or lost, so she holds onto it. She's angry and she hates him.

As she regains her footing, and the moisture in her eyes recedes, she can see that they're in a basement. It looks like it belongs to a house, maybe, hideous dark green carpets covering the floor, an old wooden bookshelf sitting in the corner, piled high with faded board games. There's an unfinished staircase disappearing up to a level she can't see, and, in front of them, another door. It strikes her, as they walk toward it, that there are no windows in this room either. The need to know what time it is flares in the back of her head, throbbing along with the pain. Do people know she's missing yet? Does Bellamy?

"Here," Steven grunts, kicking the door open while keeping a firm hold on her. It's a bathroom, or a powder room, a dingy toilet sitting beside a pink sink. He lets go of her, crossing his arms, but doesn't turn away.

"I'm-are you going to watch me?" She demands, hands fisting in front of her.

He regards her for a moment, then, reluctantly, turns to face away from her.

"You have one minute."

It's going to take at least that, she realizes, as she struggles to hike up the floor length skirt with her hands tied together. She inches the material up her leg, grabbing it in one fist and pulling. She's always had a shy bladder, but it isn't a problem now, and she wonders if maybe she's been here longer than she realized. When she's done, she turns to the sink.

"I'm going to wash my hands," she tells him, and he turns back around.

"Alright."

She takes longer than she should, washing some of the caked makeup off her face, probably pushing her luck.

But she'll do anything to postpone having to go back in that windowless box.

.-.-.-.-.

"I don't really know what else we can do Bellamy," Eddie says gently, looking up at him in concern. "The cops won't help until it's been twenty-four hours. They were pretty clear."

"I have to do something," Bellamy rasps. He hasn't really stopped pacing since the police station. They're back at the hotel now, and he can't sit still. "It's not right. I can feel it. Something's wrong. And I can't wait another six hours."

A weight has settled in his stomach, like a ball of ice, the feeling that Clarke is in trouble, that she needs him. He should never have let her come back to the hotel by herself, he should have gone himself. Eddie looks like he knows what Bellamy is thinking, and his eyes narrow, but before he can say anything they're interrupted by a phone ringing.

Bellamy all but leaps for it, grabbing his phone off the bed, recognizing Octavia's name flashing across it.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Bell. Have you heard anything?"

He sinks back onto the mattress, sighing.

"No. I thought-I thought maybe you were calling to tell me she'd come home." He admits, disappointment washing over him.

"Oh." She sounds tired, worried. He hates to admit it, but he wishes she were here. "No, sorry. But Miller's here, there's something he wants to tell you."

"Miller?" He asks, puzzled. The man is a friend of Clarke's, but if she isn't back in Vancouver then he doesn't see how any of them can help. "Uh, okay."

There's a shuffling noise as the phone is passed over, and then a much deeper voice comes over the line.

"Bellamy?"

"Miller."

"Look, I don't know if this is important, but I thought you should know-"

Bellamy sits up a little straighter at Miller's urgent tone.

"-Clarke's been getting these calls for the past few weeks, all from the same number, sometimes like ten a day."

"What?" He doesn't get it. "From who?"

"That's the thing, she didn't know. The caller never said anything, she'd just get disconnected any time she answered. I think she tried to look up the number but it just shows up as registered to Brennan Worldwide."

"Okay…" Bellamy senses there's more.

"When she told us about it I offered to have a friend of mine run the number through the VPD database. And he just got back to me."

"And?"

"The calls were coming from the downtown Pan Pacific."

"What?" Bellamy groans, exhausted. "Where O got married?"

"Yeah, looks like it. But it's a specific line that only the concierges use, to make reservations and stuff."

This doesn't make any sense. It's been a full day since he slept, and he can't make the pieces fit together. Why would a concierge at the Pan Pacific be harassing Clarke?

"I have no fucking clue what that means," he tells Miller.

"Yeah, I figured. Look, if you want, I was thinking maybe I could take Monty and go down there. We could tell them about the phone calls and see if they know anything about it. We wouldn't tell them about Clarke going missing, obviously, cause they'd probably lawyer up."

Bellamy blinks. Him and Miller have never spent much time together, but Miller and Clarke must be closer than he'd realized. With a new respect for the man he'd often considered to be a bit of a jerk, and a stoner, he agrees.

"That would be great. The cops won't do anything, because it-"

"Hasn't been twenty-four hours yet. Yeah, Octavia told me. Do you have your laptop?"

"Uh," Bellamy glances over at it, where it sits on the nightstand. "Yeah."

"Okay, if you can sync Clarke's phone to it Monty can pull her call logs off the cloud. It'll give us some times and dates to work with."

He blinks. Clearly, there's more to Miller than he'd realized.

.-.-.-.-.-.-.

After Steven leads Clarke back to the concrete room, she passes out again. When she wakes up the smell of sick has gone from the room. Steven must have cleaned it up. The thought of him being in here with her while she sleeps makes her skin crawl.

It takes less than a minute for him to come, once she's awake. He must be watching her somehow.

"You're up," he says, slipping through the door and closing it behind him.

"Apparently." Her voice is raspy with sleep, and it doesn't help that her mouth feels like it's started to desiccate. She doesn't think she's ever been so thirsty in her life. Then she sees the bottle of water in his hand. The knife is gone, or just out of sight. "Is that for me?"

He glances down at it.

"Oh, yeah. Here." He throws it at her, and even with her hands tied she catches it, impressing them both. It looks like those years of college softball really paid off.

She fights the urge to down the whole thing at once, knowing she'll just end up throwing it back up. Forcing herself to take slow, short sips, she watches him. The lights have stayed on since he first showed up, and he looks like he hasn't shaved in a few days, a contrast to the smooth face she remembers at the hotel. The boyish innocence is gone, too, that hangdog look replaced with something harder, and a lot more menacing.

"What now?" She wonders, itching for some semblance of control, of understanding. It gets maddening, being stuck without any clue what's coming. To her surprise, Steven sits down, back against the wall across from her.

"You're probably wondering how we got here," he says slowly. Clarke gets the sense that he isn't talking about the car ride from the hotel.

"Are you going to tell me?" She doesn't want to play games. She likes to be the one in control, and this is making her palms sweat, having him here, completely in control, watching her like he owns her.

"Yeah," he nods, an anticipatory smile breaking out across his face. "I'm going to tell you everything."