A/N: My cat was hit by a car the day we got back, and we only found out yesterday. I loved this cat so much you guys... I loved her almost as much as Bellamy loves Octavia, if that gives you a sense. I am so devastated. I have a few chapters already written, so hopefully my updates won't slow down, but in case I disappear for a few days, that's why. I'm extremely heartbroken about it. :'(

Bellamy

Pain like fire against his skin. Eyes squeezed shut against light, head rolling side to side, hair plastered to sweaty face like a second skin, cloying and heavy. Constant nausea, hands trembling, wrists and ankles raw and bleeding, pulled against loops of leather keeping him from release.

Cravings for Red like agony, unfulfilled, like dying. Panic and horrible suffering, anxiety, fear, urgency with no words to voice it.

Faces hovering in and out of view- loved faces, faces he knows, faces he cares for- faces he would like to murder, faces he would like to tear into, bite and claw and hurt, for not giving him what he needs. Like gnats circling him, useless and irritating.

Breath hot, laboured, sleep elusive, dreams like horror shows when he does sleep. Skin prickling, tingling, burning, a crushing weight sliding down across limbs, heart pounding, muscles tensing up and then going soft like jelly. The feeling of insects burrowing in and taking small bites, taking everything.

Distorted vision, hallucinations, terrible frightening monsters all around him, feeling sanity flowing out of him like blood, replaced with the terrible agony of waiting. Waiting for Red, waiting for freedom, waiting to die.

Snapping jaws toward a finger, an arm, a body. Feeling cool cloth against his skin, freezing like fire, each water droplet trickling down like lava. Restraints pulled, slicing at tender flesh around ankles and wrists, refusing to give way.

Hearing like being underwater, head pounding, ringing in his ears as though he is far away from sound. Then the steady drip, drip, drip of the IV, inescapable, dull throbbing in his hand, cannula keeping his vein open, not for Red but for clear liquid, so cool it burns. The desperation to pull it out, the frustration of not being able to. His body not his own, enslaved and captive.

Echo coming to him in his dreams, Echo in the cage next to him, asking him for help, blaming him, hating him, promising. Her eyes when he swears he'll be back for her haunting him, and the taste of her blood, sweet and metallic on his tongue, like a beautiful dream.

Reality is not beautiful, and the faces he sees when he's awake only remind him of how far-gone he is. If only he could get at them, the gnats of his sister, of Clarke, of Lia, buzzing around him, tending to him, giving him everything he doesn't need and nothing he does. If only he could get at them he would gladly rip their hair out in chunks, tear off their arms, slit their throats and dig into their necks with his teeth, if only he could have a single dose of Red.

Suffering like a constant companion, laying itself over him, seeping into his every pore like sap- never able to breathe fully, never able to sleep properly, never able to see through the brightness, taste anything but the dryness of his mouth.

He can't hear through the rushing in his ears, can't smell through the acrid sweat that drips down his cheeks like tears. He can't touch anything because his skin is gone, exposed nerve endings on every inch of him, receiving only pain while craving only the pleasure of the drug.

The knowledge that there is a solution to all this pain, all this suffering and unease and restlessness, and that there is a bounty of it right outside this room- it would be so easy. Fantasies more vivid than any dream, of sliding that needle deep into his neck, of loading vial after vial of Red, depressing the syringe, filling his veins until the red of his blood turns luminous, until he succumbs to a death so blissful he can almost taste it.

When he sleeps, there is agony and suffering.

When he wakes, the same.

The yearning for Red is like grief, worse than any he's ever felt, bottomless.

His body convulses, shakes- the spasm of muscles, more pain- the world disappears as his eyes roll. Then he slips backwards into death like bliss- finally quiet, finally free of pain, finally able to rest. There is nothing better than this sweet release- death is even better than Red, better than anything, the blackness like the soft embrace of his mother's arms, eternally good.

Then he is jolted to life again- back to agony, back to suffering, back to senses assaulted and body imprisoned and that terrible, terrible craving.

The gnats celebrate this renewed pain, his return to life, like it's a gift.