• •

CHAPTER FOUR:

NOBODY'S DAUGHTER.

[ content warning: brief mention of s/a ]

• •

         A CRIMSON haze crept behind the dropship as the sun bid the Earth farewell. Hours had slipped away unnoticed since the group's departure for Mount Weather, leaving the campground buzzing with activity and commotion in their wake. Freedom was a joy the deliquents felt down to their very cells, and they intended to savor it with every precious minute they had.

         Haven had other plans.

        She'd dedicated a significant portion of her time scouting the perimeter of camp on her own, partly because she couldn't stop staring at the flowers blossoming to life around them, and partly because she needed to avoid anything and everything that had to do with Bellamy Blake.

        Haven's stomach churned at the memory of him vanishing wordlessly into the crowd, his lone silhouette swallowed by the bodies of deliquents in a blink. He hadn't said a word, hadn't so much as breathed in her direction as she stood beside him. All of their unspoken thoughts were left abandoned in the air that seperated them, lingering like stars yearning to be born in the vastness of outerspace.

        Fucking whatever. She had refused to stand there and wait for him like some kicked animal. Adrenaline was too high for anybody to think straight, anyways. In a haze, Haven stormed off towards the treeline, suddenly seized by a desperate need to study the radiation-soaked shrubbery to quiet her brain.

        But, alas; her effort was shortlived. Instead, what repeatedly (and unwillingly) interrupted Haven's stroll was the pairs of delinquents sucking face behind tree trunks or intertwined somewhere in the dirt. The first encounter hadn't fazed her, but by the time she stumbled upon the fifth? She was ready to gouge her own eyes out with the next branch in sight. It became painfully clear that they needed privacy down here, some form of shelter from the forthcoming night– and from each other.

        Which brought Haven back to where she stood in the present. She was scouring the dropship in desperate need of supplies: tents, clothes, toiletries, anything that could be of use. Despite inhaling enough dust to trigger an asthma attack, the task served as a welcome distraction. It was good for her.

       For the most part, at least. Haven tried not to think too hard about the two bodies that laid lifeless in the second tier of the dropship. This proved to be a difficult feat, considering she had to maneuver her footsteps around them everytime she needed to access the ladder. She didn't even know their names, yet there she was, draping a torn sheet over their bodies in a somber attempt to offer some fucked-up form of respect.

"In peace, may you leave this shore," Haven had lulled, voice trembling in the slightest. The fallen floaters stared ahead, deadeyed. "In love, may you find the next. Safe passage on your travels, until our final journey to the ground," She tried to swallow the acid on her tongue as she finished. "May we meet again."

        Words would never suffice for a grief like this.

        It felt so wrong, so torturously unfair to recite the saying from the very people who condemned them to their deaths in the first place. Chancellor Jaha's decree that the delinquents were expendable echoed in her mind. They knew this, understood this, had even accepted it, to some extent. But to die by it, before they even had a chance... Haven simply couldn't bear it. Her anger raged within her like an approaching storm; harboring intensity and threatening to release a torrential downpour. Their deaths, the injustice of it all was a bitter reminder of the fate they'd been subjected to.

        Busying herself was easier. It was what Haven needed, and what she'd continue to do so that she wouldn't burst at the seams. She was halfway towards the third-floor hatch to search for more supplies when it suddenly opened from beneath. Haven, scared as shit, catapulted backwards with surprise.

"WHAT THE FU– Orion!"

A head of curly hair emerged from the entrance of the hatch, with half of Orion's body still clinging to the ladder beneath her. She noticed Haven's stunned expression and stifled a laugh. "Need some help up here?"

       "Yeah." Haven answered, taking a moment to catch her breath. That was so humiliating. The startle from her acquaintance left her veins buzzing. "We need to find more tents."

        "You got it, boss." Orion offered Haven a friendly salute before climbing through the rest of the hatch. "I do not wanna be out there anymore."

Haven's brows furrowed with concern. The steel frame of dropship blocked off most sounds from it's surroundings, but surely she would've heard commotion if it was loud enough. "Why? What's going on?"

        A sigh of discontent left Orion's mouth as she started in the direction of an untouched wooden box. "The garçons stupides (stupid boys) are arguing again. Something about the wristbands...He wants everybody to take em' off so the Ark can't track us anymore."

         "He?"

"The one with the hair. He's still in some leadership-pissing-contest with Jaha's kid. I get it, but like, damn." Orion didn't look up as she replied, her attention entirely fixed on rummaging through the contents of the box she discovered.

        Bellamy.

Haven's mind stirred as she considered the situation. She could understand his disdain for Wells easily enough. Still, so many questions remained, each one of them circling back to the Blake boy with a dizzying force.

She knew him. She knew him well enough to trust with an absolute certainty that the only reason he'd boarded the damn dropship in the first place was for Octavia– but what the hell had he done to achieve it? The guard's clothing he'd worn upon arrival wasn't his; Haven would recognize his uniform anywhere, even amidst a sea of people.

        If her assumption held true, Bellamy must have struck some sort of desperate deal with somebody aboard the Ark to follow his sister to the ground. His big, reckless heart could've driven him to do anything. Maybe this elaborate leadership scheme had little to do with outdoing Wells, and everything to do with protecting Octavia and himself. She felt a gnawing need to put the pieces together and make sense of things as the mystery surrounding him deepened.

        Orion, sensing Haven's silence, shifted the conversation with an air of friendly curiosity. "So," she began, tone nonchalant, "I never asked what got Vampira locked up in the first place."

"Vampira doesn't tell."

        It was true. In the SkyBox, an unspoken rule reigned among the deliquents: never, under any circumstances, dare to ask another the reason behind their imprisonment. Unless you were comfortable with getting shanked, that is. The act was a desperate clutch at the shreds of what little privacy remained. Occasionally, some would share their painful pasts at their own free will; making it the only time it was acceptable to ask questions. Public information was fair game. However, things were markedly different on the ground. Perhaps the delinquents would abandon their own moral codes in more ways than one.

        "Boooo." Orion teased. She glanced to Haven and realized that despite her initial jest– Haven was serious. "Oh, come on. We can make a deal: I'll tell you my sad story– you tell me yours."

Haven found herself at a crossroads. She hadn't forged many friendships in the Skybox, with the exception of Jasper and Monty. Maybe this was her chance to build a new connection. "Fine," she eventually conceded, trying to dismiss the ache blossoming in her chest. "It's not flashy though. I assaulted a guard."

It wasn't a lie. It also wasn't fully the truth.

        Dahlia Smith, Haven's mother, was known across Mecha Station as the community's crackpot. She clung to an ever-growing web of conspiracy theories, each more labyrinthine than the last, all in attempt to fulfill what she believed to be the sole purpose of her existence: returning to the ground.

Haven began to notice signs of her mother's mental health deteriorating back in elementary school, but it wasn't until she reached her teenage years that she truly grasped the severity of their situation. Dahlia, a librarian by profession, dedicated the majority of her time at work to fueling her mania. She immersed herself in reading, studying and research until her eyes burned with the relentless pursuit of information. As time passed, Dahlia eventually stopped eating, stopped sleeping, and seemed to no longer notice her daugher's existence as a whole. The drugs didn't help, either. It was an unforgiving descent into madness that Haven had to witness– her mother was consumed entirely by the tantalizing, unattainable lore of the Earth, and there was no way to stop it.

The hysteria reached it's fateful peak on Haven's fifteenth birthday.

Haven returned to visit her mother in the library later than usual that day. She'd started volunteering with Raven in the Mess Hall to help distribute rations to Mecha's families, and afterwards, the Reyes girl surprised Haven with a single slice of birthday cake. The girls lingered, savoring their time together, neither wanting to return to the feeling of being forgotten at home.

The library's usual serene atmosphere felt eerie with the realization of Dahlia's absence. Haven's heart raced in a frantic need to find her mother as she meticulously searched every dusty corner and crevice, her breath quickening with every passing moment. It was all to no avail.

Dahlia remained elusive like a ghost.

Driven by desperation, Haven rushed back to their cramped living quarters. Maybe her mother had returned home instead. Maybe she remembered her daughter's birthday. Her footsteps echoed with an anxious urgency, but she arrived to a chilling sight– two guards, clad in stern expressions, stood sentinel outside her doorframe.

"Haven Smith?" One asked, his voice gruff.

Haven didn't have the time for formalities. "Where is she?"

"Dahlia Smith has been sentenced to execution by order of the Council."

The word 'execution' hung heavy in the air like a death knell, each syllable acting as a relentless stab to the heart. Haven's chest constricted as she forced herself to breathe, to stay present. She pleaded with the stars that it was all just a terrible dream, a momentary lapse in reality, but the guard's words were mercilessly real.

"We found your mother trying to launch a government-sanctioned escape pod, kid." The second guard spoke this time, but Haven couldn't hear him. She wasn't there anymore. She was light years away, galaxies apart from her own body and senses. "There's no way out of this one. I'm sorry."

Haven couldn't remember much after that. She awoke in a cold, dimly lit prison cell, surrounded by the bleak reality of her new existence. Apparently she'd assaulted a guard, but that memory was a gaping void. Apparently she'd be sentenced to serve three years of jailtime in the Skybox– but that too was lost in the haze. She was fifteen for less than a day, and her life had already twisted and contorted beyond recognition.

        But the most devastating blow, the one that tormented her deepest, was the cruel fact that her mother had already been floated. The only thing that hurt more was the realization that Haven didn't get to say goodbye. In that desolate cell, her heart felt like a leaden weight, crushed under the unforgiving agony that threatened to engulf her entirely.

She was fifteen.

"Oh, great! That actually makes me feel better about mine." Orion's oddly cheerful voice cut through the noise within Haven's mind, yanking her back to the harsh reality of where they stood in the dropship. Her tone was casual as she continued. "I killed somebody."

Haven's body stiffened, throat parched, thoughts instantaneously becoming a spin-cycle of oh my god what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck, what the–

Orion shook her head as she glanced to Haven's paling expression. "Don't get queasy on me. My stepfather got... handsy one day."

The silence that stretched between them was heavy enough to stifle the roar of an engine. Orion, still bearing the features of a child, her adult features yet to have fully formed, was a stark contrast to the depth of her experiences. Haven felt her heart capsize with realization. "Orion, I'm.."

"Don't be!" Orion interjected, her smile strangely out of place yet utterly sincere. She wanted Haven to grasp that there was no need for apologies, no reason for guilt. Her words carried a chilling finality. "He didn't have hands anymore when I finished. Blood loss got to him before Medical could. What a shame."

Haven met her smile this time. "A shame indeed. But I'd have taken his feet too– just for good measure."

Orion's snort filled the room at that, followed swiftly by Haven's own laughter. The girls shared a mutual look of understanding before busying themselves with their search for supplies once more. As they moved, their confessions seemed to linger in the air like gently falling snowflakes. Like they were no longer burdened with the weight they once carried. The atmosphere felt... lighter, less lonely– a sensation that was entirely new and welcomed by the both of them.

A sudden chorus of cheers erupted, sending vibrations through the walls of the dropship. Haven could feel the floorboards beneath her feet tremble. Initially, she would've ignored it, dismissing the ruckus as the delinquents continuing to celebrate their freedom. However, the subsequent sound of muffled arguments had her rethinking that assumption. The girls scrambled down the hatch and to the entrance of the dropship without haste.

Arriving at the entrance of the dropship, Haven and Orion were immediately overwhelmed with sensory overload. A campfire's roar resonated through the air, it's flames crackling and dancing in a mesmerizing display. Smoke spiraled upward, forming intricate patterns against the dark sky, and the unmistakable scent of burning wood permeated every breath they took.

Before them, the delinquents had formed a tight circle around the blazing fire. The warm, flickering light played upon their faces, casting eerie shadows and highlighting the anticipation in their expressions. It was almost beautiful, until Haven's keen eyes picked up on a crucial detail– half of the crowd no longer wore their wristbands. She stiffened. They've been taking them off this entire time?

In the center of this makeshift gathering, Wells and Bellamy commanded attention, their presence a focal point amidst the fiery spectacle. Wells, mirroring Haven's realization, limped towards Bellamy with a palpable anger in his stride. "What the hell are you doing?"

Orion groaned lowly beside Haven. "Here we go again."

A teenager positioned behind Bellamy stepped forward, as if to intervene and push Wells away, but stopped short as Bellamy placed a restraining hand to his chest. Bellamy turned to face Wells with an unnerving confidence. "We're liberating ourselves. What does it look like?"

"It looks like you're trying to get us all killed!" Wells shouted, clearly exasperated with the stupidity of the situation. His gaze sweeped over the encircling crowd as he continued. "The communication system is dead. These wristbands are all we got. Take them off, and the Ark will think we're dying, that it's not safe for them to follow."

"That's the point, Chancellor." Bellamy's retort was a defiant sneer, his words dripping with venom as he spat them out. Despite the gravity of the situation, he appeared almost bored with the argument. "We can take care of ourselves– can't we?"

Another round of cheers emerged from the crowd, voicing their agreement with Bellamy's seemingly rhetorical question. Haven could see the validity in both sides of the argument. She recognized Wells's genuine concern for the group's survival, but his privileged background and misplaced sense of authority made his arguments sound deeply out of touch, no matter how logical they were. Bellamy, much like the rest of the delinquents, had experienced firsthand the oppressive actions of those in power and wanted nothing to do with it. It was a clash of perspectives that seemed destined for disaster.

"You think this is a game?" Tension hung thick in the air as Wells maintained his poise, trying to reason with the crowd by speaking to them instead of Bellamy. "Those aren't just our friends and our parents up there. They're our farmers, our doctors, our engineers. I don't care what he tells you! We won't survive here on our own, and besides, if it really is safe, how could you not want the rest of our people to come down?"

"My people, already are down." Bellamy gestured to the crowd behind him before he pointed accusingly towards the stars above, as if trying to cast a curse on the Council from their new home on the ground. "Those people, locked my people up." His aloofness towards the debate hardened to ice within a millisecond. He strode towards Wells in a death march. "Those people killed my mother for the crime of having a second child. Your father did that."

A piece of Haven crumbled at Bellamy's words. Given that Octavia was arrested, she'd assumed that the Blake's mother had been sentenced to death as a result. But she had no way of knowing for certain; Octavia resided in an entirely different cell block than Haven did, and Bellamy was a distant ghost the past year. The confirmation of their mother's fateful ending made her stomach sink.

        Wells held firm in his response. "My father didn't write the laws."

        "No– he enforced them. But not anymore, not here." Bellamy wielded his words like a finely honed blade. Haven watched his jaw twitch with restrained anger as he continued his speech, sensing the impending chaos that was sure to follow in it's wake. "Here, there are no laws! Here, we do whatever the hell we want, whenever the hell we want!"

        The crowd stirred, their cheers of agreement and shifting postures revealing the dangerous energy of rebellion that crackled in the atmosphere. This wasn't right. Something bigger, darker, and infinitely scarier than mere amusement had taken ahold of them. Haven undestood that this no longer just an argument now– it was the transformative birth of an anarchy. And as for Bellamy?

        He was the damn ringleader.

Bellamy advanced another step, moving confidently sinister. The weight of his presence loomed over Wells like a predator closing in on it's prey. "Now, you don't have to like it, Wells. You can even try to stop it or change it, kill me. You know why?" He paused for a moment, letting the tension thicken before delivering the final blow that would reshape the camp forever. "Whatever the hell we want."

        The camp seemed to collectively hold it's breath, suspended in a tense and riveting moment of what to do next. And then, as if to seal their fate– John fucking Murphy echoed Bellamy's war cry, his fist raised in solidarity. "WHATEVER THE HELL WE WANT!"

        "WHATEVER THE HELL WE WANT!"

        "WHATEVER THE HELL WE WANT!"
  
        "WHATEVER THE HELL WE WANT!"

        It was a rallying cry that sent a shiver down Haven's spine, marking the beginning of an era defined by chaos and rebellion. Knowingly or not, a line was drawn in the sand; Bellamy was now King of the Earth, and God save the people who stood in his way.

        Except Haven, of course.

        She stormed towards Bellamy with the fire of a thousand suns. Her steps carried her forward as if driven by an uncontrollable force, her heart rioting like a drum in her chest. No longer would she stay silent. No longer would she stand idly by. But when she finally reached the Blake boy, her senses betrayed her.

       Haven could hardly remember how to open her damn mouth.

        Their eyes collided and a supernova exploded. Haven couldn't pinpoint exactly where it came from, but she felt it down to her very bones. She became acutely aware of his towering height as she halted with only mere inches seperating them. Haven glared up at him, as if challenging the universe itself.

       Bellamy's lips curled into a familiar smile. "There you are."

        He peered down at Haven with a knowing glance. Like he'd been waiting for her. The words she had momentarily lost surged to the forefront of her brain with a vengeance, fleeing from her throat like knives. "What the hell are you doing?"

         Bellamy responded with a nonchalant shrug, his demeanor remarkably composed. It was though the tumultuous events of the past twelve hours, and even the entire past year, held no significance to him. "I don't know what you're talking about."

        "You know exactly what I'm talking about." Haven deadpanned. His calmness in the midst of chaos was both perplexing and fucking infuriating– as if he bore no accountability for any of it. "When did you become such an asshole?"

        "Those are fighting words, Haven." Bellamy teased, his tone was very clearly amused. Her name felt like lead on his tongue and a foreign language to his own ears. It had been so long. He countered her question with one of his own, a ghost of their past banter. "When did you become such a hardass? Back on the Ark, you would've loved that speech."

        Back on the Ark.

        Right where he'd left her.

       Haven shook her head, resisting the urge to slap the freckles adorning his tan skin. "That speech is gonna come back to bite you. Maybe I would've liked it when I was seventeen, but we're adults now, Bellamy." She paused as she observed the muscles in his jaw flexing. "The rest of them... they're just kids. Their anger is all they've known. Somebody has to show them something more than that."

        Bellamy's eyes flicked away from Haven's for the first time during their exchange, drawn to the lively faces of the delinquents scattered by the heat of the fire. When his gaze returned to hers, it held a hint of conviction. "That's exactly what I'm doing."

        "How? How does any of what just happened help them? You're riling them, Bellamy, you're..." Haven shot him an incredulous look. She grappled with her thoughts, pleading with her brain as she sought out a reasonable explanation for his actions. Then, a realization dawned on her, and her words turned somber. "You're just covering your own ass."

        For the first time that night– Bellamy Blake was quiet.

        Haven's mind spun like a cyclone, threads of realization weaving a tapestry of turmoil. The wristbands, the speech, the chaos that followed– it was all a calculated scheme. Bellamy's professed desire for freedom had been a smokescreen; his true aim was to sever their lifeline to Ark, creating the illusion of their deaths, only to deter their pursuit to the ground. To escape the consequences of whatever the hell he'd done that landed him on the dropship in the first place.

        "What did you do?" All at once, the animosity retreated from her veins, quickly replaced by a torrent of deeper concern. She moved to close the gap between them, eyes frantically searching Bellamy's for any remains of truth. "That's why you don't want them to come down here.. right? Tell me. What could you have possibly done that's worth this?"

        Silence reigned– a roaring, heartrending void.

        "What... what happened, Bell?" Her voice was nothing more than a desperate whisper now. There was no rage left, no fire. The question went beyond seeking insight to his actions, Bellamy knew it just as well as she did; it was a plea for understanding, a longing to untangle the mysteries that seperated the man before her from the boy she once knew.

        All he managed was a blink.

        As if to challenge the maelstrom swirling beneath Haven's ribs– a torrential downpour descended from the heavens, drenching the world around them as they knew it. She closed her eyes and tilted her head to the sky, embracing to the rain as it cooled and trickled off her skin.

        When Haven reopened her eyes, she found that Bellamy had done the same. The rain had tranformed his hair back to it's unruly state, a dark curtain obscuring his forehead. Flames from the fire cast a mesmerizing dance upon the raindrops that clung to his cheekbones, jaw, and collected at the base of his neck. Like he'd been painted with watercolors.

        "It's not for you to worry about."

        Haven had already begun to turn away from Bellamy by the time he answered. His voice was a strained, nearly inaudible murmur, a whisper that fought to be heard against the relentless downpour. When she glanced back at him, his expression was pained, as if he had to pry the words from his own damn tongue.

        "Fine." Haven stared at Bellamy through wet eyelashes. Exhaustion weighed on her, and she knew there was still an abundance of work to be done in preparation for the night ahead. She finished the conversation with an air of warning. "But don't turn these kids into collateral just because you're scared. We don't have the time."

        With that, Haven turned on her heels, her boots trudging through puddles as she started the direction of the dropship. The rhythmic pattern of the downpour provided a dissonant soundtrack to her thoughts, a stark contrast to the urgency she felt. She needed to work, to use her hands– she needed focus. Her mind was already working out the logistics of distributing the tents she'd found and devising a way to collect the rainfall for drinking, when a voice, his voice– called out over her shoulder.

        "Where are you going?"

        Haven pivoted to face where Bellamy stood once more. "Doesn't matter." she answered– and she meant it. There would always be another opportunity to argue with the Blake boy. For now, she echoed his sentiment from earlier with unwavering resolute. "Whatever the hell I want, right?"

        Bellamy's eyes locked onto her with a complexity she couldn't quite read.

        "Yeah. Whatever the hell you want."

• •

friends to enemies????? to lovers???? incoming when???

live love orion <3 cannot wait to develop their dynamic more

sincerely hope u enjoyed i have been working hard and genuinely enjoying this rewrite

love u!

• •