Bellamy

The motion of the horse jostled him back to consciousness, but he didn't understand that that was what he was feeling right away. He tried to make sense of the gentle rise and fall of his field of vision, which was also sideways, the trees going past, and the steady, muffled hoof beats on the soft ground. It was the bristling of his horse's mane that clued him in to his surroundings, and he realised that he was leaning forward over the neck of the animal. He tried to straighten up, but he didn't know his wrists were bound until they caught against the underside of the horse's neck, wrenching him forward again.

The horse let out an irritated whinny, and Bellamy looked up just in time to see Echo turn around on her own horse up ahead, which was tied to Bellamy's with a length of rope. She slowed, circling back around and putting a hand out, slowing his horse to a stop.

"You're awake," she noted.

"Yeah, where are we?" Bellamy asked, annoyed. "Why am I tied to this thing?" He realised it wasn't only his wrists that were bound, but also his thighs and ankles, which were tied around and around with hope to keep him from slipping one way or another. He didn't know who was more annoyed by it, him or the horse.

"You are weakening quickly. I am taking you to get help," she told him. She offered water, putting the small clay pot to his lips, and Bellamy took a long drink as she tipped it up.

Once he was finished drinking he shook his head. "No, we can't leave, Octavia and Lincoln are coming back to the camp."

"They are long overdue," she said. "You have been asleep for nearly two days. We could not wait any longer, but they will know where we have gone."

"But what if-"

"Bellamy," Echo said firmly. He looked at her, at the urgency on her face as she said gently, "Look at your leg."

As soon as she said that, he didn't want to, but he cast his eyes down anyway. His calf was unrecognisable below the tourniquet still tied under his knee. Where there had once been the smallest round lump, barely noticeable, there was now a horrific open wound. It was like a crater in his flesh, a good ten centimeters across, the skin cracked and sloughed away from the edges of it, the centre open, deep and moist, pink like only the inside of a body could be, oozing pus. The whole bottom of his leg was so red he looked like he'd spent a week in direct sunlight, and his toes were half red, the tips turning black.

"How am I not dead?" he whispered, meeting her stern brown eyes.

"You will be soon," she assured him, shaking her head. "We must keep moving."

This time he didn't argue, he just let her lead his horse onward through the mountainous terrain. He dared to take another look at the wound, and he felt his vision swimming from the mixture of the gore and the motion of the horse, and the edges of his vision went dark. His head lolled forward back onto the horse's neck, and once again he was unconscious.

The next time he woke, Echo was slapping him hard in the face. He came to abruptly, trying to raise his hands to stop her, but they were still bound. Luckily she noticed his eyes were open, and she stopped hitting him.

"Drink this," she said urgently, holding a bowl of liquid to his lips. He gulped, coughing a little at the extreme bitterness of whatever she was feeding him, but her fingers anchored in his curls and she forced his head back. "All of it," she said. He obeyed, and as soon as she let go of his head he passed out again.

Bellamy's leg bounced as he sat outside the psychiatrist's office, waiting impatiently for his name to be called. He was seething with anger, having been told the previous day that Octavia, now fifteen days in the Sky Box, was exempt from Visitor's Day. The only information he'd been given was that she had a mental health block on her file, which meant nothing to him. This psychiatrist would supposedly have the answers.

He remembered the psychiatrist, her dark brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, the caramel skin of her hand as she reached out to shake his, the kindness in her near-black eyes. Santos, her name had been.

When she asked 'What can I do for you?' he immediately answered, 'I want to see my sister.'

"Until I've approved, she won't be allowed to have visitors at all. Not you or anyone else."

"There is no one else," he growled. "I'm all she has."

"Yes," Santos answered calmly. "And do you think that's healthy?"

"Healthy?" he asked scathingly. "No, of course it's not healthy, that's the whole point. That's why she got caught."

"Tell me about that," Santos offered.

He took a deep breath. "When she was little it was easier," he said, trying to explain so she would realise what their life had been like, and therefore just how important he was to Octavia and how much she needed him. "But when she got older she started feeling more and more stifled. She could hardly stand to be in that room half the time. She would pace for hours, or throw herself down on one of the bunks and scream into a pillow- she couldn't scream out loud because someone might hear her. She couldn't stand it, and neither could I… I couldn't watch her wasting away in that goddamn room anymore."

"So you took her to the party," Santos said calmly.

Bellamy let out a breath, long. "Yeah," he said heavily. "I took her to the party. I took her to the window first, so she could look outside- we don't have windows in our quarters on Factory Station." A small smile played at his lips as he remembered that moment, showing Octavia her first glimpse of Earth, of a moonrise. "You should have seen her face."

"It was reckless, though, to take her to the party," Santos said, drawing his attention back. "Wasn't it?"

"Yeah, of course," Bellamy snapped. "I knew what was at stake, same as her, but I thought I had it all figured out." He looked down at the floor, swallowing the lump of guilt that rose in his throat. "Obviously not. And now she's here and our mother is dead."

"I'm sorry," the doctor said quietly. When he looked at her, he noted that she did seem sincere.

"So do you see why it's so important for me to be allowed to visit her?" he asked hopefully. "I'm all she has. I need to see her, and she needs to know that I'm still here, that I'm looking out for her."

"Bellamy," Santos said firmly. "You and she need space right now. You are both far too codependent. It's not either of your faults, but you are too reliant on each other, and what she needs right now is space- space from you. That's the only way she's going to mature. She needs to know she's separate from you, and she's never had that until now. She needs to know that she can survive your absence."

"But she can't," he protested. "She's never been alone a day in her life."

"Exactly."

Bellamy stood up and kicked at his chair, sending it sliding across the tile floor and against the wall. Santos stood up too, and she watched him calmly as he advanced on her, his eyes full of anger. "You're going to ruin her," he said savagely.

"No," she answered, calmly. "I'm trying to stop you from ruining her."

He wanted to punch her, to put his hands around her throat and squeeze until her eyes popped out. That desire for violence scared him a little and so he just clenched his fists, digging his fingernails into his palms until they hurt.

Finally, carefully, he pulled the chair back to its usual spot and sat down again. Santos returned to her own seat.

"When she's eighteen, she'll have a hearing," she said gently. "And if they decide not to float her, she'll go home."

When Bellamy met her gaze her face was distorted before his eyes and he knew then that he was about to cry. He blinked back his tears, drawing in a calming breath and letting it out slowly. "But she won't be eighteen for almost two years," he whispered.

"Then take this as an growth opportunity for both of you," she answered. "Octavia has a very good chance of being pardoned."

"Yeah, no shit," he snapped. "That's because she isn't a criminal."

"Technically she hasn't committed a crime, but my job is still focused on her rehabilitation," she said patiently. "And believe me, Bellamy, she needs to undergo serious psychological therapy before she'll be ready."

At that, he lost it. "Yeah, because Jaha made it so she had to live in that tiny little room for her entire life! Anyone would go crazy in a place like that. You're lucky she's as normal as she is." He glared at Santos, shaking his head, jabbing a finger in her direction. "You couldn't have done any better than me. You have no idea what it was like."

"You're right, I don't," she answered. "And I invite you to make an appointment with one of the counselors on the Ark to discuss this further. But my concern, my priority, is Octavia. She has lived fifteen- nearly sixteen- years of life and in that time she only saw two other faces- yours, and your mother's. Her entire childhood was constructed by the four walls of your quarters, and by only two other people. Her formative years were spent with no peers, no school, no outside contact… nothing. That's not normal, Bellamy. That leaves some deep scars."

"Don't you think I know that?!" he exploded. "That's why I took her to that goddamn dance! I wanted her to be normal for one night. I saw her choking in that room every single day and I needed her to see that there was more. And it got her caught." He shook his head, his whole body deflating a little as sadness slowly replaced his anger. "I just couldn't stand it anymore," he said softly. "She deserved so much more."

"Please don't think I have no sympathy for your position," Santos said quietly, and she did sound sympathetic. "But now that she is under my care and not yours, it's up to me to make the decisions that are best for her. Her life will not include you anymore. Not until she's out of the Sky Box. Octavia has a good chance of being pardoned on her eighteenth birthday, but not if you interfere."

It was like a blow to his stomach- the finality of it. He leaned forward, dropping his head into hands. "How the hell am I interfering by showing that she has a loving family who's willing to look after her when she gets out?" he tried. When that did not seem to move her, he gritted his teeth. "I'm going to come back here," he said. "Every month, I'm going to come back here on Visitor's Day and I'm going to demand to see her. You don't understand. She needs me."

Santos shook her head. "She's not even supposed to have a family. If you came down here and demanded to see her again and again, all you'd be doing is bringing attention to everything that's wrong in her life, to why she's here in the first place. If I'm going to give her the best chance of a pardon, I need to show that she's changed, matured, moved on. That she can be a productive member of society. Not that she's still clinging to a relationship that is, technically, illegal."

"Goddammit, our relationship shouldn't be illegal!" he snapped. "I'm her brother, she's my sister. Maybe it's not allowed, but we didn't make that choice, and we love each other. There's nothing wrong with that."

"And your mother loved her, didn't she? She made the choice to have a second child. It was her love that brought your sister into being, but it's also why she was floated," she said bluntly. "You say you love Octavia, and yet you're prepared to come down here every month to throw a wrench into her recovery. Love can be destructive as well as healing, Bellamy. Which kind do you think yours might be?"

He didn't answer. If he could have killed her with a look, she would have fallen dead on the floor. But it didn't matter- she was finished. The only other thing she said was, "I'm issuing a trespass order against you. If you come back to the Sky Box, you'll have committed a crime. And let me remind you, you're twenty-two years old, so if you do get arrested you'll be seeing the inside of an airlock- not me. So stay away, Bellamy. Find a way. Just trust this process and forget about her for now. Get on with your life, because believe me- together, she and I will be working on getting her on with hers."

He shook his head, his voice small. "You have no idea." His body was tiny knot of anger and despair, and his glare was cold. "I could never forget about her."

Santos stood up and opened the door for him to leave. "Then you're going to have a very miserable time."

If only she'd known.

Bellamy's eyes opened slowly. He didn't appreciate that dream, the memory, having to relive the heartache of knowing Octavia was lost to him until her eighteenth birthday, maybe forever, and of having his love for her challenged. He'd loathed that woman, could still taste the hate, thick and angry, in the back of his throat. He must have dreamed it because Octavia was on his mind. Where was she?

Wherever he was, it was dark, and he couldn't see anything for a long moment. The first thing he made out was a light flickering nearby, and then he could make out shapes and he realised they were in the room of someone's house- there were chairs, a bed, and the flickering was coming from a small hearth in the wall, where something was bubbling.

He tried to call Echo's name, but he couldn't seem to find his voice. Even the act of turning his head from side to side to look for her was almost impossible. He could feel soft furs beneath him, but he had an odd sensation of numbness, as though nothing around him was quite real.

Bellamy licked his lips, which were rough and cracked. He wanted to sit up, to look at his leg, to see if he even still had a leg, but he couldn't make his body do what he wanted. All he could do was lay there, shifting his eyes around, unable to move at all.

After what seemed like hours, Echo's face appeared above his and the relief was instantaneous. "We have given you something for the pain, and something to keep you still," she explained to him. "You were thrashing, making yourself worse." She gave him an accusing look.

"My leg?" he asked, and his voice sounded like someone else's.

"Still there," she answered, as though reading his mind. "We are trying to save it."

"Octavia?" he asked next. The look on Echo's face told him that his sister was still missing. "How long?"

"Long enough," she answered, gently. "They made it to this village, to the healer that is helping us now, and they traded a horse for your medicine. They should have returned to us days ago."

Bellamy tried not to panic. "So what happened to them?"

"Bellamy," she said gently. "You know I cannot tell you that."

"We have to find them."

"Once you have healed, we will leave this place and search for them," she promised. "But right now, you cannot even move… you must focus your strength on your healing. Your death will do them no good."

His mind was racing, but he forced himself to stay calm. "Okay then," he said, finally. "So what do we have to do to get me better?"

"Drink this," Echo instructed, tilting a cup to his lips. Whatever she was feeding him tasted disgusting, but he downed the whole thing without complaint. "You must do everything we say if you wish to save your leg, your life, and your sister. Do you understand?"

He nodded. "Who's 'we'?"

Echo called out in Trigedasleng, and an older woman appeared at her side, clicking her tongue as though chiding him. "This is Lala," Echo explained. "The healer of this village. She is working hard to snatch you from death."

"Tell her thank you," Bellamy said. "Please."

Echo nodded and said to Lala, "Belomi ron chich mochof." Lala smiled at him and patted his cheeks in her hands, nodding. She spoke to Echo for a moment, and then Echo smiled at the woman, nodding her head before saying to Bellamy, "She hopes that you live."

"Well that makes two of us," he said dryly, as Lala moved away.

"Three," Echo said. Something about her tone made him look at her, and they locked eyes, her own soft with concern. She gingerly wiped a cool, wet cloth over his burning skin, down his face, over his neck, and across his chest, still looking into his eyes as she did so. He didn't know her well enough to read her, so he wasn't sure if it was confidence or concern that he saw in her eyes as she evaluated his well-being, or lack thereof.

She tucked her hand behind his head and lifted his chin, pressing another cup of bitter liquid to his lips. "This will make you sleep," she said. "We must clean and dress your wound now, and you will not be able to stand the pain."

Bellamy gritted his teeth but drank the liquid down, draining every bit of it. Even before he was finished his head started swimming as she gently laid it back on the furs. She resumed cooling him, soothing his fiery skin as she waited for unconsciousness to overcome him. He reached up and caught her hand, curling his fingers around hers. "Thank you," he whispered.

Echo's eyes flickered to their hands, then back to him. For a long moment she did nothing, until he felt the smallest bit of pressure as her fingers tightened around his. But then she pulled back abruptly, glaring at him. "Do not make things more complicated than they already are," she said in annoyance, dunking the cloth back in the cold water and sweeping it more firmly across his skin.

He felt like a chastised little boy and he didn't know quite what to say. He'd only been trying to thank her for all the hard work she was doing, all the effort she was putting into keeping him alive. Finally, feeling a bit ridiculous, he just said, "Sorry."

Echo narrowed her eyes, looking at him sharply as if she thought he might be insincere. Satisfied that he had meant his apology, she nodded. His vision was blurry now, and his hearing was starting to fade as he felt the darkness closing in. He tried not to be afraid, tried not to feel like he was dying, tried to remember that he trusted her. Her eyes were steady and warm.

"Your fight is not over, Bellamy," she said firmly, and he felt the cool touch of her palm against his cheek. The last thing he remembered was her face leaning in close, her long hair tickling his chest, and then the gentle touch of her lips against his. But he couldn't be sure if it was real or part of a dream.