Jasper wakes up, and flinches instinctively.
He stays like that for a moment; eyes squeezed shut, awaiting the daily pain that would slam into his chest every time he woke up. But it never comes, and after a minute, Jasper uncurls from his stiff position and takes a hesitant deep breath.
Ribs expand to send air rushing into his lungs, and there's no agony. There's no crushing feeling of panic that he can't breathe, and the ball of pressure that ebbs out from his spear wound is gone. He feels… better.
Jasper sits up cautiously, surveying the white room around him. He tests the softness of the mattress beneath him, and breathes in the antiseptic scent of cleanliness. The whole situation is surreal, and he's afraid to get his hopes up too much—only to have them dashed by reality.
It's utterly silent in the room, and he shivers slightly.
Surely all this peace can't be real, and just for him. Nothing in life has ever been exclusively for him, because the ARK was about distribution and equality. Jasper trembles slightly, at the prospect of the silence and isolation, and almost feels… grateful.
Then he shakes his head, and tries to think of his friends.
They had been stumbling out of the drop-ship after the Grounder battle, and then—then there had been pink smoke, and a bliss that only unconsciousness could award. He looks around at the room, at the peace and lack of pain, and can only come up with one conclusion.
He'd been saved.
The thought makes him feel slightly ill—but he doesn't know what else to think.
After another eternity spent just staring at the beautifully blank walls, Jasper slowly leans back in the bed and lets every bit of anxiety fade away. He doesn't look at the security camera, or at the reinforced door to keep him in—he just drifts away.
.
He wakes up, and feels peaceful.
For one of the first times in his life, there's no pressing need to do anything or be anyone. Jasper feels safe for the first time since they'd landed on earth, and he wants to preserve the emotion—to keep it alive for the times in the future when everything might change.
Maybe if he never leaves this room, things can stay like this.
Jasper lays on the bed for what feels like hours, staring at the ceiling and basking in the bliss of his nothingness. Occasionally, his hand twitches—a constant involuntary action since his impromptu stabbing—but he's able to ignore it. There's no one around to stare at his spasming fingers, or frown warily at him, and it feels liberating.
In this imprisonment, Jasper feels free.
His legs drift lazily a few centimetres off the floor, and his feet are clean for the first time in weeks. The realisation that he's suddenly clean again does nothing to shake his newfound sense of peace, and Jasper considers getting off the bed and exploring the white room around him.
He sees the door, barred from the outside presumably, and the window porthole that could lead to anywhere. He's aware of the possibilities that the space outside his small, white haven could have—but he feels such a strong sense of apathy towards anything but this peace that spreads through him.
Jasper sits there for hours, just observing and content not to make any other movements.
.
He wakes up, and lays there silently for hours.
Maybe this is what insanity feels like, Jasper wonders, as his eyesight drifts in and out of focus with the blank walls. Maybe insanity is just not caring anymore, feeling no obligation to care or react at all. Insanity must be a sense of security—because nothing hurts anymore, and nothing matters.
Jasper smiles wide, his body stiffening after the hours spent immobile, and decides to shift to his right side, so that he can get a different view of the same four walls.
The walls are always there, always white, and there's a comforting aspect to the regularity with which the room never deviates from. Jasper still hasn't ventured from the bed, hasn't touched the IV in his arm since he first discovered it, and he's delighted that he feels no need to do either.
There's safety in this lack of movement, of caring, and he relishes in the blank embrace of the white walls.
.
Jasper wakes up, and begins another day in silence.
He's no stranger to being imprisoned, no novice to the concept. Back on the ARK, he'd known that it would only be a matter of time before they got him for something, and that sooner or later he'd be making the one way trip out of the airlock. His personality had been too… colourful.
Back then, he'd had Monty as well though. They'd been apprehended together, and tossed into identical cells that neighboured each other, so the idea of solitude was inapplicable. That had been two years ago, and during the time, Jasper had learned to adapt.
He'd learnt a whole new way of become self-sufficient, from trading luxury items to knowing which prisoners to avoid in the exercise block. It had still been imprisonment, no matter how much the Council had invested to placate the human rights activists on the ARK—but a tamer form of imprisonment for minors.
The Dropship had come next, and damn if it hadn't felt like being put in cuffs for the first time all over again when they strapped him roughly into the harness. That time, the prison had been a metal box hurtling to the Ground at terrifying speeds. He'd thought that he'd been a goner, for sure.
But he'd survived that as well, and battled through the next few months, literally fighting for his life at times. It had been a new environment, as harsh and dangerous as being different on the ARK had been, and he'd paid dearly for the experiences. This room though, it doesn't seem to be a prison, for once.
Finally, Jasper doesn't feel like he's struggling.
.
He wakes up, and spends the day in thought.
Jasper thinks about the fact that he hasn't seen anyone since he'd been saved. Something tells him that there are others around, people who work behind the door, and keep the IV bags beside his bed replenished. There must be people to remake his bed when he falls asleep in it, and change the sheets daily to keep them fresh and crisp.
He's just never seen then.
A stray thought comes into his mind then, that maybe he should feel uneasy about it, that maybe he should try… fighting back. But fight back against what?
Things are finally easy and comfortable for the first time in his life, and Jasper doesn't think that he can let go of the feeling, no matter how much he should—because he simply doesn't want to.
.
Jasper wakes up, and decides to try walking to the door for the first time.
He stays frozen in a sitting position for long hours though, before he can work up the courage to actually make contact with the ground. The freezing sensation of pain that shoots through his feet upon initial contact is enough to make him choke on a breath, and scramble back up into a curled ball.
Somehow, he doesn't remember being this afraid before – not even when he'd been speared, because even then death hadn't seemed quite as dangerous as cold lino—and for the first time Jasper thinks that this place might be detrimental in some ways.
He tucks his face against his knees, and trembles on his mattress—trying to remind himself that he's safe, and that nothing can touch him in the white heaven.
His hand twitches more regularly, jerking against the crisp sheets, and Jasper swallows his sobs and crushes his shaking hand in between his legs.
No one can touch me in here, he chants to himself – and even his inner dialogue sounds terrified, safe safe safe away from the Ground.
A small part of him feels an emotion akin to self-disgust, but the rest of his mind is too caught up in the trance—and he starts to feel better finally. He is safe in this isolation, and the colour white has never been as comforting.
.
He wakes up, days later, and tries again.
This time, he makes it halfway across the room. Jasper can't quite walk right though, his gait reduced to a pathetic hunched limp of some such description—from the weeks of cowering and still contemplation that he had spent, all that space away on the bed.
He drags the IV stand along carefully with him, leaning on it heavily in his attempt to walk. Jasper thinks back fleetingly on the times when he'd ran through the forest, even after the spear and with explosions of pain in his chest. Now… now he can barely make it across a small room.
His world has been reduced to four blank walls, but somehow it feels larger than ever.
There's a sudden scuffle of noise from the world outside the door, and the quiet noise shatters Jasper's mind-set. He falls to his knees instantly, and it hurts—hitting the unforgiving ground so unrelentlessly—and folds in on himself, hands pressed tightly over his ears.
The IV pole clatters to the ground as well, and the secondary noise just about makes Jasper pass out. This feels a thousand times harder and more painful than his first venture outside the camp had been since his spearing, and the realisation scares him.
What's happening to him?
There's no time to dwell on the thought though, because the cold seems to be seeping inside of him, and he can't stop trembling on the ground. He's vulnerable, terrified, and not safe.
Jasper succumbs to the fear and terror quickly and quietly, and allows himself to slip away into his mind—away from the jarring sounds and strange textures, and to a place where it's comfortably blank and numb, and where he doesn't have to be afraid of his fear.
.
He wakes up, and feels an overwhelming rush of relief to find that he's back on the bed.
His knees are slightly bruised and swollen underneath the loose white trousers that he's wearing, the only indication that his fall to the ground had happened. He brushes his fingertips gently across the affected areas, and shudders silently—wishing that he'd never decided to see what had been causing him pain. Jasper tugs down the bottoms of the trousers, and looks away, desperate to forget the events of the disastrous incident.
Jasper brings his non-twitching hand up to tug at his hair slightly, seeing a dark tuft of hair breaching his clear line of sight to the white walls of his freedom—and is hit by the memory of Raven offering to cut his hair. He freezes for a few second, transfixed by the vibrant colours and sounds of the flashback, and feels a foreign sense of longing and… loneliness.
His body responds by hunching over even more, and his consciousness reminds him sharply that he craves the solitude and isolation—because he's safe here. He's secure, and relieved—grateful—for the white room, and everything that it brings with it.
There's a soft thumping sound that his hand makes as it shakes periodically against the pressed sheets.
Jasper tries to ignore it, and focus on the white walls, but he can't banish the colours that the memory had ignited inside him.
.
He wakes up, and feels comfortably numb again.
The day passes in a blur of inactivity, as Jasper revels in the familiarity of the nothingness.
He can be safe here, like he never was on the Ground before, and he can be alone here, where no one can hurt him. Jasper's not sure if he's happy, as such, but it's easy to slip into the trance of apathy and be so content, like he never has been before.
Jasper can exist here, and he doesn't know if things can get better than that.
.
He wakes up, and this time it's to the screeching sound of metal.
Jasper scrambles up so fast that he slams his back against the white, hard surface of the wall behind him, and his vision blurs. When it returns, all he can see is a dark figure coming towards him, a tall body dressed in back that doesn't belong in his white heaven.
The noises are disorientating—thuds of boots against the cold lino that Jasper hadn't been able to face again after the first proper attempt, and the jumbled, jagged noise of words. Jasper can't distinguish the initial few words from beneath the blanket of fear that's wrapped tightly around him, and he shrinks back against the white walls, where he belongs.
"—on! Jasper, get up and let's go!"
He doesn't recognise this voice, or the man who is getting closer and closer to him—an offensive new scent attacking his senses, so different from the perfect antiseptic blend. Jasper tries to make a sound of surrender in the back of his throat, but nothing comes out, only a grating sense of pain down his larynx.
Finally the figure reaches him, and lunges out to grab his wrist, and Jasper reacts.
He jerks back suddenly, and crashes off the bed onto the other side, immediately scooting away from the stranger with his resisting body. The face that seems to leer down at him looks confused, and Jasper just squeezes his eyes shut, hoping and praying that he'll be shown mercy.
Another harsh round of words are thrown at him, and Jasper can only shake silently and feel his hand thump against the ground with the force of his nervous twitches.
Then the noise ends, and Jasper dares to wonder if he's safe again.
He looks up cautiously and hopefully—but he's soon rewarded for his troubles with another surge of terror, because this time the stranger is standing still, staring at him. Jasper immediately breaks the eye contact, and fixes his gaze on the ground—not a threat, not a threat, just leave me, not a threat.
Something even worse happens then.
"I need some help in here! Monty! There's something wrong with Jasper! Finn!" The stranger yells out loudly, a clear note of urgency present in his voice, and Jasper flinches violently at the way the man holds his hands up in a non-threatening way at him, trying to placate him in some way.
Two more figures come crashing into the room, and Jasper gives into the temptation and simply curls up into a ball, hands clamped over his ears. It doesn't do anything to block out the sounds though.
"What the—what's going on?"
A second voice chimes in then, sounding concerned in a way that Jasper hasn't heard in weeks, "What did you do?"
More footsteps come towards him, and Jasper starts to flinch at seemingly regular intervals, in some kind of jerky imitation of a fit. The original man sounds frustrated then, and his voice is harsh and stressed, "He freaked out when I came in – but we don't have time for this. We have to get out and then deal with whatever…" there's an odd pause while the stranger trails off, a strange note of worry piercing his words, "whatever this is."
"Right."
Jasper works himself into such a state of denial about the whole situation that he can feel his heart skip a beat when rough hands grasp his shoulders, seemingly out of nowhere. He struggles, and fights to remain in his safe position against the wall, but more hands are suddenly tugging at his body now—and then force him into an upright position.
Concerned eyes bore into his terrified ones, and he can barely hold himself up as they support him. There's a tense silence for a moment or so, and Jasper longs to pretend that this is all a dream.
But then they start dragging him towards the doorway.
He seizes his body up and shakes his head so violently that he nearly passes out, but the two people on either side of him seem to be made of steel. They get closer to the door, and Jasper's struggles only increase. He can't leave this room, can't cross the boundary into whatever awaits him in the space beyond his white, blank haven.
Words tumble out of his mouth, pleas and cries for them to leave him, but no sound follows—and Jasper realises then that not uttering a sound for weeks on end had temporarily robbed him of his ability to speak. The others seem to pick up on his distress fairly rapidly, and they drag him faster.
The first stranger – Bellamy, his name is Bellamy—reaches across and rips the IV out of his arm as they near the doorway, and Jasper twists his face into a scream of pain and fear as he feels blood dribble slowly down his arm. His feet are scrambling and pushing against the floor, but even despite his height advantage he can't seem to slow their pace at all.
Jasper can't even stand up straight, he realises with a jolt, and his limbs are fatiguing at a rate that shakes him to the core.
His struggles gradually get weaker, and he eventually ends up being carried over the threshold of the room—his two arms slung over the shoulders of his tormentors, tearing him away from the solitude and security that he'd craved.
He tries to twist one more time and arch his back, just to get a final glimpse into the small haven that had been created for him.
Then the people on either side of him—and the one on his right seems so familiar, the one with dark hair and tears in his eyes—pick up speed and hurry him around a few corners. Jasper tries to memorise the route, on the off chance that he's able to get away and drag his stiffened body back to those four walls.
Jasper lets his head hang down when he sees the array of people that they arrive into—all shouting and jostling each other, all running restlessly in the same direction. There's screaming and crying, loud crashes and background noise—and the colours….
He can feel himself getting weaker, and Jasper lets go of any resolve that he'd had to stay conscious. This time, he hopes that he doesn't wake up.
His last sensation is of the arches of his feet dragging over unfamiliar surfaces, and his chin bouncing painfully against his chest as the strangers started to run—taking him far away from safety. Leave me here, please just leave me—he tries to say, but he's too far gone.
.
Jasper wakes up, and he's outstretched on his back.
There are rocks digging into his back, a faint breeze blowing across his face, and someone holding on gently to his wrist. He supresses the urge to flinch away, and instead opens his eyes slowly.
Blonde hair flashes in his field of vision, and the stranger squeezes his wrist with a smile as she moves back to sit on her hunkers, "Jasper. How are you feeling?" He shrinks back against the hard, unrelenting ground and shiver beneath the stare of the person from before.
There's still no sound when he opens his mouth to speak, but he makes the movements anyway, "Monty." The boy looks delighted for a few short seconds, as Jasper processes the information he'd regained in his mind—Monty, his best friend, dragged him through the doors of his room, "Take me back."
"Wha—what did you say, Jasper?" Monty asks quietly, after a long pause. He looks afraid to hear the answer, and Jasper knows that he's understood the first time around. He repeats it silently anyway.
"Take me back." His friend begins to shake his head, horrified, and the girl lets out a quiet gasp. "Please."
.
He wakes up, and makes a run for it.
Jasper's folded carefully into a corner of their temporary camp, back against a tree and as far away from the others as he can manage. There's a few people wandering around, looking exhilarated to be out in the open air again, even though the muted sound of their laughter is making Jasper's hand twitch violently with anxiety.
His legs protest the slightest of movements, but he manages to get himself on his feet, however unsteadily, with one hand braced on the tree beside him. Jasper doesn't see the pair of eyes that track his movements from the other side of camp, watching him carefully.
He takes a moment to guess which direction his white haven would be in, and then just decides to make a blind choice.
Then he's sprinting away from the others, stumbling and staggering through the undergrowth. A cry goes up from the people he's left behind, and he almost falls to the ground when he hears it.
"Jasper! Jasper, get back here!"
The sound of footsteps racing behind him makes Jasper want to throw up in fear and simultaneously break down in tears, because he knows what's coming next. He holds out for as long as his body is able, but eventually a hand grabs onto the back of his tattered and dirtied white attire, and yanks him back.
He struggles and moans, but more people move in to 'help.'
They bring him back to camp, and the sensation of so many hands on him and gazes washing over his thin body makes Jasper's skin crawl. Monty looks devastated, scrambling up from where he'd been asleep only minutes ago beside Jasper, and he looks away in shame.
The one with the blonde hair – Clarke—kneels down beside him as Bellamy carefully forces him down to sit on the ground, and she reaches out to touch his shoulder. He trembles.
"You're sick, Jasper," Bellamy tells him, from where he leans against a tree, looking more concerned than Jasper had ever remembered him, "They took you away from us, and turned you against us. You're confused, but we'll get you back."
Clarke nods, tears in her eyes, and Jasper can't bring himself to look at Monty, "We're your friends."
"No," the word is torn from between his lips, but Jasper isn't sure.
.
He wakes up, and doesn't try to run. The cycle repeats itself for several days.
Each long stretch of twenty four hours is roughly the same – gather supplies, fight to survive the radiated Ground, scrounge whatever scraps for dinner, sleep. Rinse, and repeat. Jasper watches their routine silently, and only moves when Clarke coaxes him to his feet to shuffle awkwardly around their haphazard camp a few times each day.
His legs are skinny and weak after so much time spent unresponsive, and they cramp up during the night when everyone else is sleeping, bar the few people on watch around the camp.
Jasper struggles to acclimate, to remember how to live properly.
But his mind keeps slipping back to the security and comfort of the white room, so pure and untouched in those blank walls.
He didn't have to force berries down his parched throat there, didn't have to rely on any nutrition because the IV did it for him. He didn't have to curl up tightly against the freezing ground every evening there and hope that his shivers would subside long enough for him to sleep.
Most of all, Jasper didn't have to spend every second of every day terrified of the harsh people around him.
The only ones he can communicate with without flinching or shying away are Monty and Clarke, and Bellamy to a degree though all he does is stare and narrow his eyes at Jasper silently. The white room, however safe and comforting it had been – had broken something within him.
And he wants to go back so badly that it aches deep inside his chest, where his spear wound had once throbbed.
.
Jasper wakes up, and feels his heart miss a beat when Monty's face comes into view only a few inches away from his own.
His teeth dig into his lower lip in shock and fear, but he doesn't make a sound – hasn't since he woke up on that first day back on the Ground again, not that he'd really left it. His friend just smiles adamantly, smoothing over any hurt or upset that Jasper's reaction had evoked.
Monty's good at pretending that everything is back to normal, that Jasper isn't some broken shell of his own self.
"Morning, Jasper!" He exclaims in an upbeat tone, and Jasper can only hear a small note of weariness in his voice. He's impressed, and even goes as far as to incline his head slightly in small greeting, which is more than he'd been able to offer previously.
Monty beams, and Jasper wonders if the twitch of his own lips counts as a smile.
.
He wakes up, and weeks have passed since he was torn away from his safety.
Jasper rises slowly to his feet, and doesn't allow himself to look towards Mount Weather, where he now knows they were held—he doesn't even really want to. The fire is still smouldering when he reaches it, and he hunches over to get some of its warmth.
Someone jostles him on their way past, and he squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, before refocusing on the fire and calming himself.
On the other side of camp, Bellamy catches the movement and nods to himself, a satisfied look on his face.
Later, when more people have gathered and Jasper's forced himself to remain in close proximity to them, he realises that it's not bad. He relaxes slightly, and notices that the others aren't even shooting worried looks in his direction anymore.
Monty flops down in a heap beside him then, and he lets the other boy stretch out his arms and yawn loudly. Patrol.
"I—I'm sorry. Monty. I understand now."
Jasper's words cause everyone to still and quiet down, but he only has eyes for his friend. Monty turns to look at him with tears in his eyes, and seems transfixed by his words. Monty tilts his head to the side, and Jasper copies the movement, remembering conversations and interactions from years past that feel familiar.
"It's good to have you back."
It's taken him months to reach this point of understanding, and maybe he'll never be fully back. But he knows that he's over the hardest part now, and the slight throb that pangs out from his chest feels comforting in a different way than the white room had. He rubs a hand lightly over the scar on his chest, takes a deep breath, and looks back towards Mount Weather and the white room.
Jasper would not be so easily broken.
.
Finally finished with this now - even though it took me a while to get the second part up. Note: this was all written before I've watched the new season, I wanted to do it all without any hints or guesses as to what'll happen in the show.
I hope you all enjoyed it though, and I'd appreciate any comments or feedback! Thanks for staying with this.
Now excuse me while I rush off to indulge in season two.