Okay, so if anyone is confused as to the timeframe, this is directly after Finn's death, with Lincoln in Mount Weather in Bellamy's shoes, having never undergone any Reaper transformation. So yup. Please review!
Someone is shredding apart my skull. Piece by piece. I'm sure before I even open my eyes I'll find bits of bone fragments lying on the floor.
Yet when I do manage to peel back my lids, the metal floor is bare. The light slashing into the room sears straight through my eyes and into the back of my head. I hiss, but it sounds more like a pained gurgle. My mouth is like cracked dirt, limbs like stone. The red curtain seems more brilliant today, making the room a burning glaze of crimson wall and crimson floor. I try to blink it duller, but it doesn't change. The ache in my head has grown to a galvanizing pound that ricochets from temple to temple, so strong it makes my eyes water.
I need the Red. I need it more than water and the air in my lungs. Need it more than the other red in my veins. But my arm isn't free anymore. The steel is stronger than me and even though I pull and tug and shriek at the bindings, they refuse to let me go. The only thing that breaks is my skin, over and over, deeper and deeper, reopening day-old wounds. The pain is dull in comparison to the crescendo in my head.
"It's almost out of your system," comes a familiarly unfamiliar voice and again appears the sunshine girl, breaking through the thick clouds of shadow. But there's something off about her today. Something distinctly breakable.
Maybe it's the way her voice rasps and cracks, no longer made of steel.
Maybe it's the bruising that lines her neck I can glimpse through the shifting material of her shirt.
Maybe it's the detached look in her red eyes, that tells me she is looking at a Reaper, and not at a friend.
My response is a low growl.
She ignores me, instead coming forward with a silver jar of sorts. She stops just before me. When her right sleeve retracts, I see a bracelet of bruises there, too. "Right now your body is going through withdrawal," she says, and I distantly wonder why she's telling this to me. Why she thinks it matters. "Headaches," she continues, "disorientation, they're the most common adverse reactions. It should be another day before we notice any change."
Three days, the suited mans words ring back to me from the knife if memory, it hurts to recall. To think. To refrain from sowing the metal shackles through my wrists.
"It's important you stay hydrated," she continues, oblivious to the cacophony of pain in my head. Or maybe she's not, and instead wants me to feel it.
She raises the metal jar and steps toward me, cautious, yet not afraid enough to stop.
But water is no substitute for the Red, and if I can't have the latter, I'm better off left for dead.
"Bellamy," she says. Demanding. I turn my head away from her, ignoring the onslaught of pain that comes with the action, burning holes into the wall at my side.
A sigh escapes her. "Bellamy, if you don't drink anything you could go into hypovolemic shock," she continues, but I have the feeling her words are for her alone. Perhaps my death will bring her pain. I wonder just how much I want it to.
She inhales a shaky breath, and it's like I can hear her iron will eroding and crumbling away. She is not as strong as the others have been led to believe.
I glance back to her long enough to watch as she shuts her eyes. Her lashes cast their sharp silhouettes down her cheeks, making it look like the sunshine girl is crying shadows.
But she's not crying. In fact, I can hear her thinking from here, silent and insistent. But I doubt she truly knows what to do, and am almost content with watching her try to figure it out anyway.
She's just opening her eyes when the metal door swings up again, and in comes the other girl, much like the previous day. I can't tell if they're more alike than they realize or more different than I realize. But if I can read anything, it's that one is not softer than the other.
"Hey," says the brunette, whose name has fled from me. She nods in my direction. "I'll take watch now."
The blonde looks like she has something to say but acquiesces, extending the metal jar to the other girl. She takes it stoically, and I don't miss the cold look in her eyes.
The blonde moves to the hatch but pauses before ascending. She looks back. "Octavia-"
"Save it, Clarke," the other snaps, words like ice.
But I don't think the other is accustomed to taking orders, because she doesn't listen. "I didn't mean for this to happen. I didn't want this."
The brunette's eyes narrow and her grip around the metal jar tightens. She doesn't meet the other girl's gaze. "Doesn't change anything. It happened. I'm not interested in helping you clear your conscience."
"I didn't know."
"You knew it was dangerous, sending him in there. You knew it, but you did it anyway. Guess it didn't matter, so long as you got your inside man."
It's dark, but I think I see the sunshine girl's eyes shimmer. "That's not fair. We're in the middle of a war-"
"We're always at war!" bursts the brunette, restraining herself just enough to keep hold of the jar. Her head whips back, sending her braids across her neck. "Ever since we came to the ground, war is all we've been a part of. So don't use it as an excuse. You are responsible for this, and there's nothing you can say to make that any less true." She twists to face me again and throws the words over her shoulder. "If my brother dies, it's on you, Clarke."
I watch the girl as she finally turns away and disappears under the hatch, leaving me with this other girl, who seems to lose her coldness the moment the hatch closes. She steps up to me and I feel the growl before I even command it. When she tries forcing the lip of the jar to my mouth, I jerk back and snarl.
The muscle in her jaw feathers and she lowers her arm. Her large eyes bore into me, and I can almost imagine what she would like as a child. But there is nothing child about this girl before me. "You're not giving up that easily, big brother," she says. Then in the time it takes me to blink, the jar is at my lips and water is going down my throat. I try to spit it out but the girl clamps one covered hand around my mouth, forcing me to swallow. "I need you, so you're going to fight this, do you hear me? You are going to fight, and you are going to win."
It doesn't sound like a question, but an order.
The brunette is telling me about the stars when a new pain hits.
Or maybe it's just the same pain amplified. But it comes on suddenly, screaming in my ears and slicing through my head. Some sound bursts from me but I barely hear it over the pound of my heart and an impenetrable buzzing that erupts from somewhere, a million flies with claws that rake from my head to the base of my neck. They twist and weave down my spine, setting every nerve on fire.
Then the pain is everywhere.
It shudders through me, rattling my organs until I think they'll impale themselves on my ribs. It seems to last forever, and someone's cry wheedles its way past the cotton in my ears. I feel my body go limp at the same time hands are on me, touching my face, brushing back my hair, but I don't have the control over my own limbs to push them away. My wrists come free of the restraints and my back meets the floor. Sweat freezes at the bite of metal. It's like cool water on aching teeth, and I try to move away from it, but something else pins me down.
I open my eyes to look, but all I see is red, draped over my eyes so thickly I can't make anything beyond it out.
"Bel . . . my . . ." Words come to me in chipped pieces I try without success to put back together. "Oc . . . via! Get my M . . .om."
I blink rapidly, and for a moment the crimson waters recede, and I see the sunshine girl piercing through the red. But then those waters swell and crash over me once more, hiding her from view. Back and forth it goes. The world turns glitchy and unfocused, until I make an effort not to look at all. Brilliant spokes of pain shoot through my temples like a small lightning storm, hailing at the back of my lids.
I stop trying to understand the shattered words spoken somewhere overhead. The floor jostles beneath me, and each movement loosens another bolt of pain. They strike through the corners of skull, burning, burning, burning.
Then the rattling starts again. My back arches. Despite my efforts, my eyes shoot open and the red retreats. The blonde girl is bent over me, face close. When her gaze shifts up to mine, I can see it. The maelstrom of fear there, torrential and desperate, and I know.
My death will not hurt this sunshine girl. It will break her completely.
I don't know how much time passes. A second. Eternity. There's an endlessness to pain that makes me wish I could pry myself apart and force it from me. But I can't do anything except lie on the floor that's grown warm now. The floor continues to jostle and those hands are still exploring my face, pulling back my eyes, opening my mouth. There's bursts of clarity that drill through the haze, making everything crystal before steaming up again.
"You said three days, Clarke!" says the brunette whose name I can't call from the dark. "It's barely been two! What's happening?"
A flash of light strikes and I shut my eyes against it.
"It must be because of the Ark," says the blonde, and something touches my face. It's cold and I flinch away from it. "Like I said before; he metabolizes it faster than the grounders."
"So does that mean it's worse for him?"
"I don't know, Octavia."
I lose my grip on the sliver of clarity and it flits away, lost in the fit of rattling that returns.
"He's seizing again." Someone turns my head and more bolts explode, brighter than the rest. My corneas are on fire, my insides ash. A choked sound comes from me and my hands clench so hard my nails dig into my palms. I can't even feel it.
"Tie off his arm," a different voice says, one I don't recognize.
Somehow, the blink of clarity is back, pulling me to the surface once more no matter how much I want to dive deep inside myself, to a place the pain can't reach. Someone is moving my limbs and I try to fight them, but the drums at my temples are too much. The lightning storm is a hurricane now, electrifying me.
"What is that?" I think I hear the brunette ask.
"It'll help break the fever."
I grind my teeth so hard I'm sure I'll break my jaw. My back moves of its own volition, slamming against the floor again. The pain in my head piques to an excruciating degree and this time I let myself scream. I was wrong before. This is death. It is chewing me up and spitting me back out, like it can't decide if it wants me or not. I hope it does.
"His pulse is weakening . . ." someone says, and I don't care who it belongs to anymore.
"Move out of the way!" shouts another.
"Bel, come back to us!"
Shadows rise up, and I suddenly have a moment of clarity, so crystalline I can feel its presence, like a light burrowed somewhere deep inside. I have only to cleave myself apart to reach it. There's a solidness there. A truth dancing in and out of my grasp and I grab hold before it can slip through my fingers.
My name is Bellamy Blake.
Then the darkness surges and that light goes out.