Happy New Year everyone! This chapter is a bit longer than my others. Hope you enjoy. Please leave reviews and suggestions!
"Grab her." A man snarled. Someone seized her by the wrists and dragged her away from the tent. She couldn't scream but she kicked and thrashed desperately to get free. One of the men she recognized from breakfast earlier in the day. He had been seated at a table to her left, and had kept his eyes trained on her and Abby through the entire meal.
Lina was hauled through the mud and brought in front of two thick wooden posts in the ground. Each man took one of her hands and tied it to a post so her arms were stretched wide. When she lifted her head, there were at least a dozen men and women staring back at her. Every pair of eyes outwardly displayed deep hatred for the girl in front of them.
"Get on with it Robert." One woman called out. Lina began to plead with them but her voice was swallowed by the gag.
"Just kill the bitch!"
"No, death is too easy. Make her suffer."
"We should rip her open like they did to our kids!"
"Please, don't do this!" she tried to yell, but it came out as no more than a mumble with the cloth in her mouth. "I didn't do anything!" She continued, although she knew they couldn't understand her. From the corner of her eye, she watched the man behind her pull something from his jacket. There was a clicking noise followed by the low hum of electricity. She felt the man tug the neck of her shirt so hard that the fabric ripped and now hung open in the chilly breeze. The humming became louder until it was all that Lina could hear.
The shock touched the middle of her back. The pain rippled through her body and made her cringe uncontrollably. Each muscle in her body contracted so tightly she felt them crushing her bones. Her screams of pain were absorbed by the cloth. The second shock hit below the first, and the third was on her shoulder blade. Her stomach began to turn from the smell of her burning flesh. Her fingers wrapped around the ropes that bind her to the post. If she didn't hold onto something the pain would carry her away into oblivion. The shocks kept coming, and so did the agony.
"Stop!" a voice called out from somewhere far away and Lina couldn't lift her head to see the speaker. He didn't stop. Another shock caused her knees to buckle and the weight of her body now pulled down on her arms.
When the gun went off, Lina hardly heard it. Her senses had become numb to anything other than the feel of the burns and the hum of the electrified stick. It took her a while to realize that someone was untying her hands from the posts.
"Can you stand?" Her eyes were still shut but she could now hear the buzz of voices surrounding her. Out of all of them, Bellamy's was the one that registered clearly in her mind. "Lina, can you stand?" he asked again as he untied her other hand. Her free hand reached up for the cloth in her mouth and yanked it out seconds before the vomit.
When both her hands were free, Bellamy heaved her to her feet like she was a toddler with his hands under her arms. She wobbled in place as she regained her balance and nodded. She could walk. It was painful, but she could do it. Each step sent a fresh searing pain across her back. He walked beside her with his arm out as though he expected her to stumble at any given minute. She surprised him, and herself, by walking the entire distance to medical without his assistance.
The medical hall was bubbling with noise and movement as they approached. Abby and the others were still working tirelessly on the three wounded hunters. She looked through the glass door and could see one man lying on the table she had been sitting on not long before. His shirt was cut open and blood spilled out of a long wide gash across his stomach. Blood was also leaking from his open mouth, and his eyes stared lifelessly back at her. Her breath caught at the site. She could be the next corpse on that table. She would have been if Bellamy hadn't stopped the lashings.
"Stay here." He said as he moved to go through the door. Her head spun around in every direction, searching for others in the hallway. He was going to leave her again, leave her alone so anyone could take her. The sudden panic caused her to wheeze for air. Bellamy looked back to her with a soft expression. "You'll be okay, I can see through the doors. I'll only be a second."
She watched him race to Abby and Kane and say words that she could not hear through the glass. All of their eyes turned to her at the same time and then back to Bellamy. Abby ran to a nearby cabinet and retrieved a small jar that she handed to Bellamy. And then he was back by Lina's side and leading her away.
The sun had completely disappeared behind the tree line, leaving the camp it total darkness besides the few torches that lit the edges. The people of Camp Jaha had emerged from their tents once again and the grounds were in a state of chaos. Questions were being shouted to multiple guards who had to shout their answers out over the crowds. She had no idea how he was able to navigate their way back to the tent because she had a hard time seeing more than four feet in front of her.
"I told you to stay in the tent." He said while he held the tent open for her to enter. She was too exhausted and in too much pain to respond. Technically she hadn't left the tent. He followed her in stood in front of her cot. "Abby said this will help with the burns." He held up the small jar he'd been carrying. "Turn around."
Lina didn't move. She knew what he was thinking, but there was no way she'd let him touch her. She was perfectly capable of doing it herself, and she made that known by boring a hole in his head with her eyes. But his own stare didn't falter.
"I can do it." She said in the toughest voice she could muster. But it came out as little more than a gasp. Bellamy rolled his eyes. The asshole actually rolled his eyes at her!
"Turn around." He said again doing a good job at keeping the annoyance out of his voice. She crossed her arms and planted her feet in the mud. Defiance was one of her greatest skills. "Fine." He shrugged and thrust the jar into her chest. He plopped himself down onto his cot and folded his arms under his head. Lina stared at him a second longer and then unscrewed the top of the jar.
The ointment inside was clear and cool to the touch. She dipped the tips of her fingers in and then reached behind her back. The lowest burn was easy to reach, and she managed to smear the gel over the wound even with shaking hands. The gel felt like magic when it touched her skin. The cool wetness against the burns made her sigh with relief. The next one up was made more difficult due to the fact that stretching her arms so far caused more pain to radiate from the burns on her shoulder.
She glanced up at Bellamy, who was still sprawled on his bed watching her struggle. She wanted very badly to turn away from him, but the back of her shirt had been so ripped that she had to keep her arms positioned in certain ways to keep it from falling off the front. Turning away from him meant letting Bellamy see her entirely open back. Lina reached over her shoulder in an attempt to cover the burns in that area, but let her arm drop immediately. Reaching up pulled the skin on her back so tightly that she feared it would rip open. She let out a small sigh and closed the jar. The rest would have to wait for Abby in the morning.
Bellamy must have sensed her defeat and rose from the bed. With one long stride, he came to stand inches away from her. He tore the jar from her hand with his hands on her upper arms, spun her around.
"Stop!" she protested and tried to turn herself to him again, but his arms were firm.
"Just let me do it." he said with a flat tone.
"Please don't." She let the words spill out on a soft cry. She had stopped fighting against him, but the thought of his hands touching the burns made her heart pound. The pain was unbearable when she touched them herself, a strangers touch would be excruciating. It was the fear of pain, mixed with the fear of Bellamy Blake, mixed with the embarrassment of him seeing her body that caused the tears to spill silently onto her cheeks. She was thankful that he couldn't see them.
"Its alright." His voice was much softer this time. "I'm not gonna hurt you." And he didn't. His fingers traced over the burns so lightly that had they not been covered in the cooling gel, she probably wouldn't have felt them. Her breathing began to even out, and her heart slowed to a manageable pace once again.
"Who shot the gun?" she asked abruptly, vaguely remembering the events of rescue. "When you untied me, I heard a gunshot."
"Octavia. She fired a shot into the air to get everyone's attention so I could get to you." He explained. His hand finished with the last burn. "I didn't think to get you other clothes." He gave a light tug on the ripped fabric of her shirt. "But it's probably better not to have any material rubbing against these tonight." His fingers pressed against her bare back to signify the burns. She gave an involuntary shudder under his touch and he dropped his hand. "Get some sleep." He said in a gruff voice and Lina heard him resume his position on the cot.
She laid herself face down on her own cot, not bothering to get under the covers. Her back was on fire and caused her whole body to feel unusually warm. Using her arm as a pillow, she closed her eyes and waited for sleep.
But sleep never came.
Each time she closed her eyes the faces of her family flashed before her. First Hannah, with her big green eyes looking at her with admiration and childlike curiosity. Then her father, his nearly black eyes, which matched hers, were filled with wisdom and unconditional love.
Some hours later, a muffled sound from Bellamy's cot made her turn her head. She laid her cheek against the thin mattress and watched in astonishment as the young man's body jerked in his sleep. Another small noise escaped his lips and she realized that Bellamy was having a nightmare.
She remembered when her father used to suffer from night terrors. His screams would wake her in the dead of night and she'd run to his room in a panic. She had learned quickly that it's a bad idea to wake someone who is in the middle of a nightmare. Once she had shaken her father's arm in an attempt to bring him out of it and he had unconsciously closed his hand around her throat and thrown her into the wall.
Her father had never told her what his dreams were about. Her best friend Lauren's father was a ground man in a different sector than her father. She had once over heard him talking about how the savages had attacked a group of soldiers on a supply run. Four of the seven men in her father's crew had been killed by the Grounders. She couldn't blame her father for having a rough time sleeping.
"Bellamy." She said a voice hardly louder than a whisper. She knew she couldn't bring herself to shake him awake, and part of her wanted him to suffer through whatever was happening inside his mind. Silently, she watched as he thrashed around under his covers while she wondered what on earth Bellamy Blake was afraid of.