Bellamy

"They should be back by now," Echo muttered under her breath as she wiped his forehead and bare chest down for what seemed like the thousandth time. He couldn't believe he had so much sweat in him, but it just kept coming and coming. She had mixed more of the anti-fever medicine and given it to him, but his body seemed to burn it off even quickly.

She felt his neck with her fingertips and shook her head with dissatisfaction. Bellamy tried to lift his head to look down at himself, but he felt weak. He saw enough to know he was in trouble though, his skin sallow and dotted with strange patches of red.

"They'll be back when they're back," he answered, but Echo didn't seem to hear him. His voice was obviously much quieter than he thought, just a thread of its former self. Echo mopped his brow with cold water and he saw her eyes looking into his, her brows furrowed.

"What did you say?"

"I said they'll be back when they're back," he replied. "There's nothing we can do about it… we just have to wait."

Echo nodded slowly, watching him carefully for a moment. She moved to the top of his head and she slid her hands under his armpits, hauling him up to a sitting position and letting him slump into her before she dragged him backwards, leaning him upright against the trunk of a tree. She came around to the front of him and crunched low, looking into his eyes. "Try again to speak," she ordered.

He frowned at her. "Am I not making sense?"

"You just said to me 'I am not making fence," she informed him. Bellamy's face paled a little and he swallowed. She watched him carefully and it was clear those weren't the words he had meant, so she squeezed his shoulder. "It will pass." She glanced at the sun, gauging the time, clearly concerned about the whereabouts of Lincoln and Octavia. "Take some deep breaths."

Bellamy did as she said and tried not to be alarmed. He knew he was in no position to go looking for them, but Echo's concern was making him feel like they might have gotten into trouble, and he was worried for Octavia. He knew Lincoln would keep her safe, but if they were late then something must have happened.

He took a deep breath, trying to order his thoughts and force himself to be coherent. "How much longer do I have?"

Echo hesitated. She examined his leg closely, the spider bite, his discoloured skin. She felt his clammy forehead, touched his neck again to feel his pulse, laid her cheek against his chest to hear his heartbeat. Finally she looked back to him and said, "You might be fine."

"And I might die," he finished for her simply.

Echo's eyes met his. Calmly she said, "Everyone dies."

It made him laugh, but mostly it was due to nervousness more than anything else. "Okay then." He leaned his head back against the tree, adding, "I was kind of counting on it not being today, though."

She smiled a little, nodding to him, soaking his hair and neck with the cool water. "You and I will work together to make that happen, as much as we are able," she assured him. "Perhaps death will be content to wait for your sister and Lincoln to return to us."

"I feel comforted already," he said dryly, and then added, "Sitting up is better."

Echo went to the horses and she pulled a length of rope from one of the saddlebags, slicing off a long section. She returned to Bellamy's side and tied it around his calf, uncomfortably tight, fashioning a crude tourniquet.

"Will that help?" he asked.

Tightening the rope even more, she tied it off and shrugged. "It won't hurt, and it may slow the process." Her eyes flickered to Bellamy's. "I am no healer."

"So who are you?" he asked her, figuring it was a good idea to make conversation, suspecting it would probably be bad if he lost consciousness now. "Who were you, back in the Ice Nation? And how did you end up such a long way from home, to get taken by Mount Weather?"

Echo seemed to bristle a little at all the questions. Finally she said, "I don't believe this is the time to discuss such things."

"Sorry," he answered. "I was just trying to fill the silence." After a moment he admitted, "I'm afraid to fall asleep." Now that the vapours he'd breathed had worn off, he imagined his dreams would be far less pleasant than the vivid vision he'd had of his quarters and his mother.

"With good reason, this time," she agreed. "Rest was your friend before, but I fear that if you fall asleep now you will probably never wake up."

Bellamy laughed softly. "You have an excellent bedside manner."

"What's that?" she asked, confused.

"Nothing." He shook his head, smiling a little. "Just a bad joke."

Echo sat down next to him and held a cup of water to his lips. Bellamy gulped it down thankfully, but the effort exhausted him and he leaned back against the tree, feeling his eyelids grow heavy.

"You should talk," Echo told him. "You should talk so that you stay awake."

"I have no idea what to talk about," he admitted. His head was pounding and his mind felt foggy and muddled.

"Anything," she urged him, refilling the cup and holding it to his lips once more. Again Bellamy drank the liquid down, and again it made him tired.

The first thing that came to his mind was a story that he used to tell Octavia, one from the ancient Greeks. Their mother had instilled a love of mythology in both her children when they were small, but once Aurora grew too busy to tell stories, Bellamy had taken over the role, regaling Octavia with all sorts of tales to keep her life more exciting than the four walls that imprisoned her.

Unlike his mother, who would read the stories religiously, only embellishing by creating funny or dramatic voices, Bellamy enjoyed changing the stories. When it suited him, he altered endings or varied details, usually to make the story more palatable for his sheltered sister.

So, accounts of violence or rape became sagas of triumph and heroism. Characters who were once wicked were, in Bellamy's telling, redeemed, and those who were cowards might find an untapped source of strength that they had never known. Mainly he wanted Octavia to have hope, and those stories were her only source of entertainment. She had enough heartache in her life.

"Medusa was the granddaughter of Gaia, the earth," he began quietly. Echo looked at him in surprise, as though she thought he was being incoherent again, but then she seemed to relax, realising it was a story, when he continued, "When she was a child she was beautiful. She had the most amazing hair, thick and flowing, and pretty blue eyes. As a young girl she decided to dedicate herself to the goddess Athena, becoming one of her priestesses. Some years later, she met Poseidon, who was so handsome that she fell in love with him and broke the vow of chastity she had made to Athena."

"Chastity?" Echo asked, clearly surprised. "Why would any goddess request such a thing of a woman?"

Bellamy was used his stories being interrupted; as a child Octavia had been an expert at that, always full of questions. "That was their way," he said, a phrase he'd heard Lincoln say before to explain cultural differences. This seemed to satisfy Echo so he continued, "As punishment, Athena turned Medusa's gorgeous hair into venomous snakes. She caused her pretty eyes to turn bloodshot, and cast a spell on her so that any man who ever looked into those eyes would immediately turn to stone. Medusa was horrified, and she fled her homeland to Africa and began wandering the lands, her hair dropping baby snakes wherever she went. And that's how Africa became full of venomous snakes."

"Africa?" Echo interrupted.

"It's another continent," he said. "Across the ocean from here… far away. This story is from a place closer to there than here."

"Did this really happen?" she asked, confused.

He smiled a little; again she reminded him of Octavia, who had asked that question often. "I don't know," he said what he'd always said to her. "Maybe, a long time ago, far away. But the story has been passed down for centuries and centuries."

"I have never seen a woman with snakes for hair," Echo declared.

Bellamy smiled but said nothing about that, continuing his story, "Many years passed, until a greedy king asked a warrior named Perseus to bring him the head of Medusa for his collection. He gave Perseus a magic helmet that would make him immune to Medusa's stony glare." He reached the next part of the story, where Perseus is meant to kill Medusa, but as usual he decided to change it. He felt bad for pretty Medusa, whose only crime had been to fall in love, and how lonely her life had become because of it. Where was Poseidon when his love was tortured so mercilessly, he'd always wondered? He disliked the true ending.

"Perseus agreed to the mission, and travelled far away to the cave that Medusa now called home. He crept inside, his sword drawn, the helmet on his head, and he walked right up behind her, ready to cut off her head there and then." Bellamy stopped telling the true version and started on his own. "But then something amazing happened," he said. "He heard Medusa weeping. She didn't know he was there, so he just stood there listening to her cry, looking at her. Even the snakes on her head, her only friends, seemed to droop with sadness."

He paused, building the suspense, as he would have for Octavia, before continuing, "Suddenly, Perseus dropped his sword and at the sound Medusa leapt up, frightened, turning her eyes on him. When he didn't turn to stone, she wept fresh tears, knowing she was going to die. Perseus had heard many stories about Medusa's ugly face, her terrifying eyes, yet the woman before him still had much of the beauty that she'd had in youth. It was just that no one had ever been able to look long enough to see it. Thanks to his magical helmet, Perseus could, and he fell in love with Medusa right then and there. He decided to stay in that cave with her forever."

"And did they?" Echo asked curiously. "Did they live in the cave together?"

He shook his head. "No, even better," he said. "The goddess of love, Aphrodite, was so moved by their feelings that she reversed Athena's spiteful magic, so Medusa could finally be free." He added the obligatory ending always insisted upon by Octavia, "And they lived happily ever after, the end."

Echo frowned thoughtfully at the ground for a little while before she said, "I do not believe this really occurred. Perhaps I should tell you one of our stories. They certainly have no themes of chastity." She said the word like it was offensive, and he just continued to smile, shaking his head a little.

But now that the story was finished, Bellamy felt his exhaustion creeping back. The sun was starting to dip low on the horizon now, and he frowned as he watched the light drain from the world. "Where are they?" he asked abruptly.

"I don't know," she said. "You must rest now. Do not worry about your sister."

He shook his head. "That's not really something I know how to do."

Echo glanced at him. "Then worry, but also focus on conserving your strength so that you will still be alive when she returns." She mopped his forehead again, but his skin now felt more cold than hot, and he could tell from her expression that this wasn't necessarily a good thing.

Bellamy drew in a big breath and let it out slowly. He leaned back against the tree and watched as the sky changed colour. It was true what he said: he had no idea how not to worry about Octavia. He'd been doing that since he was six years old and he had no idea how to shut it off. Still, he tried to push it aside, tried to focus on staying alive.

He woke with a jolt sometime later, only knowing that it had been a few hours by the way the night sky glittered with stars. The world looked like it was spinning, and his vision was blurry and skewed. His heart was pounding hard, and he could feel that his breath was too quick, but every time he tried to slow it down he felt like he was suffocating. Echo's face came into view, and he felt her sponging down his face, neck, and bare chest with cool water. It felt good, but did little to lower his fever. The fever medicine must have worn off again, and his temperature was through the roof, is skin fiery.

"Remember your plans?" Echo asked him, forcing him to focus his eyes on her face. "You aren't meant to die today."

"That was yesterday," he whispered, swallowing hard, fear rising in his chest. He cast his eyes around the campsite, and it was obvious that Octavia and Lincoln still weren't back. "Where are they?"

"Somewhere else," she answered him. She clapped his face between her hands and forced him to look into her eyes. "Focus, Bellamy. You must stay alive."

He gulped in hungry breaths, but it was as if he couldn't get enough oxygen no matter what he did. He felt his body shaking, feeling like he was freezing even though he was sure that he was actually burning hot. In the moonlight the skin below the tourniquet looked even more mottled and discoloured than it had earlier. He felt weak, like just keeping his eyes open was exhausting.

Echo's face became distorted as blackness seemed to press against the edges of his vision, He fought hard to stay awake, but it was a losing battle, and soon he couldn't feel anymore- not the tree behind him, not Echo's hand, not anything. He heard Echo cry out "No!" just before everything went dark.