❝it's often just enough to be with someone. i don't need to touch them. not even talk. a feeling passes between you both. you're not alone.❞ 

-marilyn monroe, actress

♛

MY SCREAM IS SO loud that I may as well have shred my vocal chords with the force of it. It's so powerful that I lean forward as it comes out, endless tears cascading down my face in a hot, rapid waterfall that blurs everything together except Bellamy's flailing body as he struggles to get his feet on anything at all. The pain and helplessness I feel is enough to make my body explode. I know that I can't do anything to help him because of how heavily bound I am. That thought alone makes me want to combust.

"Using your hands is a cheat," Murphy chastises as he walks forward and forces Bellamy's hands from the seatbelt while he thrashes around. He brings them down to his sides, but they keep moving back upward to his neck out of instinct. Bellamy takes this opportunity of distraction to send a right hook to Murphy's cheek with a wild swing, making him turn back and crouch to the floor with a grunt. Murphy gets back on his feet only seconds later, ramming the handle of his rifle into Bellamy's abdomen several times and causing him to go limp with a choke.

I can't describe the amount of relief that washes over me when the familiar hiss of the door opening causes Murphy's head to snap in that direction. I faintly hear Jasper exclaim from outside, "Raven, you did it!"

Because he's a coward, Murphy immediately abandons ship and climbs the ladder to the second floor. The hatch slams shut behind him with a bang. Bellamy still flails around as the door fully opens. I realize that I'm the only one who can alert anyone at this point, and so I scream again as loudly as I can to get the attention of those outside. My throat burns in protest when I do so.

Jasper enters immediately afterwards with his gun raised. He takes one moment to assess Bellamy hanging limply and me tied up until he drops the gun and rushes to Bellamy's aid. Lifting up his legs, Jasper allows Bellamy to suck in a strangled breath while Octavia hurries to unclip the seat belt. Monroe lets go of her rifle as well and tends to me, lifting the gag out of my mouth with widened eyes at the state I'm in.

"Are you okay?" she questions, starting to untie the restraints around my bleeding wrists. I nod without really meaning it as I watch the scene in front of me unfold.

Octavia is too short to unclip the seatbelt. Her fingers barely brush the top before she rises on her toes and snaps it undone, causing both Jasper and Bellamy to drop to the ground at the sudden leisure. Octavia lunges to catch her brother before his head hits the metal floor and lays him gently down. "Bell, breathe! Breathe!"

I gasp in relief as Monroe finishes untying the straps around my wrists. My face screws up in pain as I bring them around in front of me; my shoulders ache terribly from being held back for so long, and my skin is trickling blood where the seatbelts had cut into the skin. I try to stand and almost immediately pitch forward. I haven't even noticed that my legs are asleep.

"Woah, woah, woah," Monroe mumbles when she catches my fall. "Easy. You've been sitting for way too long."

"Exactly my point," I counter as I grit my teeth and force my numb feet to support my weight. My voice is hoarse from how much my throat hurts. Bellamy is still on the floor, feebly gasping in air. Octavia removes the loop from around his neck and assures him he's okay about fifty times.

"Raven, they're fine!" Jasper shouts down to the floor.

Bellamy rolls over and gets to his knees, hunched over as he fights to catch his breath. When he yells out Murphy's name, his voice is deeper and raspier than I've ever heard it. He gets up and stares up at the closed hatch above. "Murphy! It's over!" To my surprise, he begins climbing the ladder and shoves his shoulder into the hatch repeatedly. "Murphy!"

He lets out a grunt as the door lifts and slams shut several times, never opening more than an inch. It's obvious Murphy has something keeping it shut.

"There's only one way out of this for you, now!" Bellamy warns at the top of his lungs. Only moments later, an explosion rocks the ship and causes me to nearly fall flat on my ass had Monroe not been holding me up. Bellamy finally breaks the door open and pops his head into the second level. Smoke spills down into the first floor, smothering the top half of him in grey.

"What the hell?" Octavia questions. Jasper hurriedly follows Bellamy up the ladder. I cough on the smoke that wafts through the air, wiping away the tear stains on my wet cheeks as I do so.

Bellamy comes back down the ladder a few moments later, hopping down the last step and glancing at the three of us. "Murphy created a hole in the second level using the gunpowder. He ran off."

"So what do we do now?" Monroe asks, still keeping her grip on my arms.

"We go after Clarke, Finn, and Monty," Bellamy responds firmly. A small grin manages to appear on my face at these words. "We don't abandon our own."

As he says the last sentence, his eyes drift to me. He takes in the tear stains on my cheeks and the dried blood on my wrists before coming forward. Monroe releases me so I can hobble to him. I almost fall into his arms as he pulls me tighter and slides his arms around my back in a tight hug. I respond by wrapping my arms around his neck, but not too tightly that he chokes again. That's the last thing I need.

"I'm so glad you're okay," I confess in a whisper with my face pressed into his shoulder.

"Same to you," he responds gently. He leans slightly backward and presses a kiss to my forehead. "Now let's go save our friends."

As if on cue, Miller's frantic voice sounds from the walkie in Bellamy's pocket. "All gunners! We got movement outside the south wall!"

Jasper jumps down about four steps of the ladder and lands hard on his feet. He darts out of the dropship more quickly than any of us can follow. It takes me a second to notice that a light sprinkle of rain is falling from the clouded sky. It cools my warm skin and dampens my hair. The cool air hits me like a slap in the face from how fast I'm running toward the area Miller is.

"Wait!" Miller orders in a shout, holding his hand out to stop all the people that are coming forward with guns. He's standing on one of the patrol positions on top of a mound of scrap metal that makes up the wall. "Clarke and Finn! Open the gate!"

A smile takes over my features at the announcement. Bellamy and I slow to a walk side-by-side toward the door as a few others heave it open. Clarke darts through almost immediately, with Finn popping in a few seconds after her.

"Hey, we heard an explosion," Clarke gasps through breathless pants. Her brow is creased with worry, her gaze shifting between everyone that's gathering around. "What happened?"

"Murphy happened," Bellamy replies vaguely, sharing a knowing glance with me.

Unable to contain myself, I reach forward and pull Clarke into a hug. She returns the embrace, which only lasts for about two seconds before I pull back and ask, "Where were you? Have you seen Monty?"

"Monty's gone?" Clarke questions with her eyes going wide. Now that I'm closer, I notice a few scuff marks above her right eye, chin, and a welt on her cheek, but she seems fine otherwise.

"Clarke, we need to leave, now," Finn reminds her breathlessly. He doesn't look much better than she does. His wounds look much more recent than hers, with cuts littering his face and his dark hair slicked back from the light rain.

"Leave?" I repeat with confusion lacing my tone. "You just got back."

"There's an army of Grounders unlike anything we've ever seen coming for us right now," Finn announces to the entire camp, which has assembled in a wide circle around us. "We need to pack what we have and run."

"Like hell we do," Bellamy retorts fiercely. "We knew this was coming."

"Bell, we're not prepared," Octavia argues.

"And they're not here yet," Bellamy counters, voice still slightly raspy due to the hanging incident. "We still have time to get ready. Besides, where would we go? Where would we be safer than behind these walls?"

"There's an ocean to the east," Finn answers, pointing out in the direction he and Clarke came. "People there will help us."

"You saw Lincoln," Octavia realizes with a poke to Finn's elbow.

"You expect us to trust a Grounder?" Bellamy questions as if Lincoln hasn't saved Octavia's life multiple times. She cocks her head to the side angrily at this inquiry. "This is our home now. We built this from nothing with her bare hands. Our dead are buried behind that wall in this ground! Our ground! The Grounders think they can take that away. They think that because we came from the sky, we don't belong here. But they have yet to realize one very important fact: we are on the ground now, and that means we are Grounders!"

Many people cheer in response to this, making a small smile lift my lips. If there's one thing that's certain, it's that Bellamy has an incredible way with words.

"Grounders with guns!" Someone adds in.

"Damn right!" Bellamy agrees in response to the nameless boy. "I say let 'em come!"

"Bellamy's right," I praise, voice still cracking through my words. "We spent days building these walls. We put blood and sweat and possible tears into creating this camp from nothing. Are we going to leave it all behind and flee? Hell no."

"We may never find a place as safe as this," Clarke pipes up. "And God knows, in this world, we could be faced with something even worse tomorrow. But that doesn't change the simple fact that if we stay here, we will die tonight. So pack your things. Just take what you can carry. Now."

Overlapping chatter fills the air as the campers hurry to their tents to grab the things they can. Clarke sends Bellamy and I an apologetic look that I nod to. She knows more about the army than we do. I trust her.

"Help me!" Raven's pleading voice shouts above all others. I turn to see her leaning heavily against the side of the dropship, holding onto her side with her face screwed up in pain. I immediately rush to her aid, my heart thumping fast. One of Murphy's shots had actually hit her.

"Grab onto my shoulder," I instruct her, wrapping an arm around her waist to keep her on her feet. The grimace on her face doesn't disappear for once second while she stumbles and grips onto my biceps for support.

"Murphy shot her," Jasper informs Clarke and Finn. Finn helps me support Raven as Clarke rushes over and quickly examines the state Raven's in.

"Get her onto the dropship," she instructs hastily.

"Hey, Fallon, I got this," Finn tells me after noticing my bloody wrist that's exposed from my sleeve. I nod and release Raven, allowing him to pick her up and carry her effortlessly toward the dropship. My aching arms are secretly thankful.

"Hey, what happened?" Clarke asks in reference to my wrists. She stops me by holding out an arm and standing in my way, eyebrows pinched as she holds up my arm and checks out the circle of opened skin. I wince when her fingers come too close to it.

"Like Bellamy said, Murphy happened," I answer vaguely, my eyes trained on Finn and the small crowd following him as he gets Raven inside. "Don't worry about me. Let's take care of Raven."

Clarke hesitates before nodding and releasing her grip on me. We walk inside the dropship together, heading toward the metal table that Octavia is hurrying to clear everything off of. Raven's cries and whimpers of pain pierce my heart sharply. It takes me a second to realize that it's coming from my wrists. The material of my jacket had been irritating them.

Finn adjusts his grip on Raven. He carefully sets her down on the makeshift bed that Myles had been previously lying on, holding her hand and generally cooing in her ear. I watch all of this with a nauseous feeling in my stomach.

"Here."

I face the other way to see Bellamy with a relatively clean rag in one hand and Moonshine in the other. I grimace at the sight of them, knowing what his plan is.

"I know," he sympathizes at the sight of my face, "but it'll help. Wouldn't want an infection."

I nod and yank up my sleeves to above my elbows, exposing the dark red lines that create an almost perfect circle around each of my wrists. The skin is cut jaggedly; it's deeper in some areas than in others. It's already starting to form clots of blood, and the result is ugly.

Bellamy uncorks the musty bottle and holds the cloth between his side and arm. With one more glance at me to see if I'm ready, he takes my left fist with his free hand and steadies my arm. The trickle of clear alcohol streams from the bottle and onto my skin, causing a strong stinging sensation to stab at my nerves and make them feel like they're burning. A whimper escapes my lips as I squeeze my eyes shut so tightly that I see colors behind my eyelids. My lip trembles; I have to bite down on it to keep from crying out. The pain is no less when he moves onto the next wrist, and it takes me a second to realize that my nails are close to cutting into my palms from how hard I'm clenching my fists.

"It's done, Fallon. It's over."

I let out a slow breath and open my watering eyes. Bellamy corks the Moonshine and sets it on the table beside him. He then takes the cloth and uses it to dab gently at the flesh around the cuts, which luckily haven't started bleeding again- yet.

"I need medical tape," I say in a shaking voice as he dries off the liquid from my skin. "Do you know if we have any?"

Bellamy scoffs with a playful smile and meets my eyes. "Do you really expect me to know?"

I roll my eyes and jump as something flies at me. I'm just able to catch it before it zooms past me. Upon looking down at it, I realize it's a roll of medical tape and gauze. Clarke is smiling at me from across the room. I knew there had to be some medical supplies in this stupid ship.

"Perfect." I quickly pick at the end until it unsticks, then hand Bellamy the gauze. "Place that around the wound. I'll use this to keep it in place."

He does as he's told, obediently pressing the gauze where it needs to go as I stick it in place. I wrap the tape twice around the wound before going up to my hand and around the spot between my thumb and the rest of my fingers.

"Here, I have a knife to cut it--" Bellamy cuts himself off when I lean forward and rip the tape with my teeth. Without looking at his reaction, I stick the end of the tape in place before moving onto the next wrist.

"Wait," Octavia calls out suddenly, putting a hand to her head as she tries to coax a memory back to her. "Lincoln did something in the cave when he took me. He burned a knife to stop the bleeding or something."

"Cauterizing," I explain, sharing a grave look with Clarke. It's a last-resort move, and doing it with a bullet still inside of her might do more harm than good. However, it'll also be the only thing that can save her life at this point. "Okay, let's do it."

---------

#protectravenreyes2k16

#protectfallonrivers2k16

seriously man those two have been through the most at this point when you really think about it. we need to protect the bbys

but seriously bellamy helped clean fallon's wound aw (tbt to when he used a tourniquet to stop the bleeding of her bite wound in chapter 3 or something aw look how much they've grown)

-kristyn