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CHAPTER SIXTY TWO;

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE . . . LET ME GET WHAT I WANT.

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        SOMEHOW . . . WALKING WAS A TORMENT THAT NO BLADE COULD MATCH. Haven had known the bite of knives, felt the cruel sting of metal against flesh, but now—the mere act of moving eclipsed all else. In truth, she hadn't registered the worst of Lexa's slashes when they first landed. She'd been lost, submerged beneath the image of Finn, his spectral vision woven from the threads of HIBI's delusions. Pain had receded to the edges of her awareness, a faint whisper at the back of her mind, until Lexa's blade had found her shoulder—ravaging through stitches and sinew without remorse.

Now that . . . that was pain. A savage, soul-splintering agony that outstripped anything she'd known in her twenty years of life.

        And she had died. Seven times.

        Although Haven's shoulder wound had returned to its state of numbness—the other lacerations were not granted such mercy. Every stitch stretched taut in an attempt to hold her torn flesh together. Her lower throat was gripped by a dull, persistent ache. Her arms vibrated with the low hum of contained torment. Her abdomen clenched with each breath. But it was her hip that cradled the deepest agony—an incendiary, gnawing gash that flared to life with every step, as though her bones themselves protested her defiance.

       Still . . . despite the pain that morphed her walk into something closer to a stagger, Haven forced herself onward, abandoning the shadows of her tent and stepping into the uncertain light beyond.

        By the time she finally emerged—the first wisps of dawn had begun to creep across the endless night, casting the world in a silvery, violet glow. Haven had stubbornly shrugged off Bellamy's hands as he reached to steady her, and somehow managed to settle at the firepit beside the others. Nestled between him and Orion, she sat clothed in his jacket, while her torso was warmed with the quilt he had draped over both of the girls' shoulders.

        Nobody knew what to say to Haven.

        So . . . they avoided it. Pretty much.

        Which, was fair.

        Haven didn't necessarily expect her friends to make sense of her latest brush with death, nor to brave the silence her return demanded. How could they? She had stepped toward that execution pole with intention, offered herself as a willing sacrifice to a fate that would have—should have—taken her in Raven's place. Survival had not been in her plans. She hadn't meant to stumble back into their lives, bearing the scars and shrapnel of another unwilling battle with death itself.

But fate had other designs, wrenching Haven from the repear's embrace and spitting her out half-formed—again—and forcing her friends to watch—again. They'd witnessed her flesh rend and tremble, seen her convulse in the aftermath, her body nothing more than the battleground that refused to surrender.

And then, as though the universe delighted in gouging salt into the wound, her blood—her very essence—had somehow entangled itself with Abby's.

        Clarke's own mother.

        The Chancellor of Camp Jaha.

        Haven felt it—a bizzare, inexplicable tether she could barely comprehend—binding her to those she might never understand: herself, Abby, and, impossibly . . . Lexa.

       . . . How could anybody comment on that?

        It was fucking insanity.

        So . . . Haven was grateful that the others carried on with their usual bickering, inflating the silence with familiar noise and petty arguments that kept reality at bay. They averted their eyes from the metal wristband tucked beneath the cuff of Bellamy's jacket, and seemed to overlook the stitches lurking just beneath her clothes. It was a fragile mercy—a pretense of normalcy, yet it meant everything. She doubted she had the strength to endure any further revelations, or navigate more questions that she never seemed to have the answers to.

"I think for the first time in, like, a month and a half... I am not currently fighting the urge to shit my pants."

Haven felt the corners of her mouth lift slightly at Orion's rambling. She glanced to her left, catching sight of the Vincetta girl gazing into the waning embers of the firelight. It appeared that Orion was too busy lobbing pebbles into the ashes to notice Haven's stare, muttering curses under her breath whenever Bellamy—smug and calculating—managed to toss his stones farther than hers.

"You should've kept that one to yourself," Octavia jabbed, snorting from her position across the fire and nestling closer to Lincoln's iron frame. "IBS sounds like a personal problem."

Orion blinked. "Uh, take that up with Jasper. I definitely don't have... that," she answered, dismissing the accusation with a shrug and focusing intently on the trajectory of her next pebble. "But the alliance is making me feel kind of unstoppable. Less afraid-ish. Especially since I'll be getting Michonne back soon."

. . . Right.

Haven choked back the swell of bitterness that rose at the mention of the alliance. Only nights before, she had trusted in its stability, and clung to it as her lifeline in the wake of Finn's death.

        But after Lexa's blade had unflinchingly cleaved through her flesh . . . she couldn't overlook the cracks spider-webbing through that belief.

        How easily it had all crumbled when Trikru pointed their fingers, eager to accuse Skaikru of attempted assassination. Not a single breath was wasted to question it. Lexa hadn't even granted Skaikru the dignity of investigating; she had hurled them to the wolves on the flimsiest shadow of suspicion. And even if Gustus had poisoned her mind, the Commander's willingness to sever ties so . . . effortlessly, left Haven's mind wondering just what, or who, Lexa would be willing to sacrifice next.

Now . . . Bellamy's mistrust in the alliance had become a shared wound.

But even the weight of that dark truth couldn't smother the importance of what lay ahead. Mount Weather loomed, a graveyard of steel and stone, casting its skeletal shadow over the lives of their friends imprisoned within. The alliance could crumble, fall to ruin, scatter into ash on the winds of betrayal—but it did not matter.

        Haven knew that they would storm that godforsaken mountain one way or another.

They would save their friends.

        . . . They had to.

"Yeah," Bellamy breathed, flicking yet another pebble into the dying embers, only to watch it sputter and darken. "I need my gun back."

        He resisted the impulse to grunt when Orion's pebble nudged his aside. But instead of feeding the petty back-and-forth, he let the game slip away, hand falling to rest on Haven's thigh, warm and grounding against his own.

Orion rolled her eyes. "We know you do," she deadpanned. "The first thing I'm gonna do when I get Michonne back? Slice through some ferns. Maybe scare off a few squirrels." She cast a pointed look in Bellamy's direction. "And what about you, big guy? Got any heroic plans?"

Bellamy did not hesitate with his answer. "I'm gonna go put a bullet in Gustus's corpse," he declared flatly, a dark glint sharpening his eyes as he reconsidered. "Actually... an entire fuckin' clip."

"Damn." Orion snickered. "Yours sounds way more fun."

        Bellamy merely shrugged. "Do you know if the other Grounders buried him?"

        "I don't know—?" Octavia answered, furrowing her brows in the slightest, warily seeking to unearth her big brother's intentions. "Why?"

        "Could've spit on his grave."

As Haven felt the firm pressure of Bellamy's hand on her thigh, caught the faint grind of his jaw . . . the hollow rot beneath her ribcage pulsed again, as if it had awoken from its brief slumber.

She had drifted, momentarily lulled by the cadence of their conversation, and allowed herself the delusion of believing that her wounds were hers alone. But now, in the steel-hard lines etched into Bellamy's face, Haven could feel the darkness clawing its way back, creeping insidiously up her throat. She had fed it to him unknowingly, rooted it deep within his bones—poison she'd never meant to share.

Since their life-altering conversation in the tent . . . Bellamy's deathly pallor had gradually returned to the flush of life, his voice sharpened to granite, shoulders squared with the conviction of a soldier reborn. No one dared ask about the bloodshot eyes that betrayed the tears of another sleepless night; no one questioned the devastation lurking beneath his stoic calm. In the creeping dawn, he had been achingly silent, a silence Haven could recognize as if it were her own shadow.

        She saw it—the dark hunger lingering in his eyes, a need to bleed the world that had hurt her. She knew he would tear through Gustus and any Ark leader who had dared to play a part in her suffering, rend them limb from limb if only to exorcise the ghosts embedded in her bones. He would not be so ready to kill, to bury the past with such seething finality . . . if it weren't for their hands in the wounds that scarred her.

       Bellamy would not be this angry, this restless, this fractured without her darkness seeping into him, marring his veins with her shadows.

        He would not be this . . . haunted.

        Not without her.

        But as Bellamy's thinly veiled anger tipped dangerously close to another spell of heartbroken silence, Haven knew that she had to keep him talking—if only to hold him back from the ledge until sunrise.

"How are you gonna shoot him if he's already buried underground—?" she challenged, shifting further from Orion and tilting her head with an arched, teasing brow. "Doesn't that defeat the point?"

Bellamy shrugged again. "I'd unbury him, shoot him, bury him again... then spit on him," he declared matter-of-factly. "Problem solved."

Haven blinked, caught somewhere between mortification and admiration, staring at the boy she loved through wide, owlish eyes. For a moment, she wondered if she had screwed up—if prodding at the raw wound left by Gustus had only stoked the agitation scorching through him further.

        But then . . .

Bellamy's hard edges thawed, the storm clouds in his eyes retreating as a familiar smirk tugged at his lips. The gentleness of it shattered through the lingering darkness, spilling warmth that seemed to chase away every last trace of twilight.

        He leaned over and softly kissed her forehead.

        . . . There he was.

        Lincoln regarded Bellamy with a rare, contemplative air. "How did you know it was Gustus, anyway?"

        Bellamy's answer was certain. "He'd do anything for her—to protect her." His gaze lifted from the dancing embers and flickered briefly to the girls huddled under the blanket. For the faintest moment, something softened his expression—a quiet tenderness, fleeting yet unmissable—before his eyes returned to the flames. "It just makes sense."

Octavia huffed out an irate breath. "And look at the thanks he got."

"What—?" Bellamy's head snapped toward his little sister's at once. His dark eyes narrowed with a heat that rivaled the firelight festering between them. "Like he didn't deserve it after the shit he pulled?"

"Of course he did," Octavia snapped back. "All I'm saying is that it's just scary how fast the Commander could kill her own advisor."

. . . Haven was inclined to agree.

The Commander's judgment was a force that defied time, something ancient and terrible that should have lingered only in the half-light of myth. Yet, here it stood, sharp as a blade forged from the marrow of the earth itself. There was no hesitation, no mercy, in the way she wielded it—severing bonds and breath with a single word, as if loyalty and life were threads meant only to be cut. Her blade no longer hung just above Haven's neck . . . but the entirety of Skaikru's.

"Welp." Orion redirected the trajectory of her final pebble and sailed it directly at Bellamy's unsuspecting forehead. "I still vote that she should kill herself."

Bellamy shot her an immediate death glare as his hand flew to his brow. "What the fuck was that for—?"

"For fun, dipshit," Orion deadpanned. Her fingers ghosted over her forehead, brushing aside the rebellious baby hairs that dared escape the precision of her french braids. "What are you gonna do about it?"

Bellamy drew in a sharp, deliberate breath, as though weighing the angel's whisper against the devil's roar.

        But ultimately, the devil won . . . as it always did.

        Without hesitation, he scooped up not one, not two, but three pebbles, flicking them with unerring precision at Orion's face. The first two struck her dead-center between the eyes, while the third flew straight toward her nose, but Haven's hand darted out, intercepting it mid-air.

        Haven swiftly proceeded to glare at him.

        "You can't seriously be pissed at me." Bellamy stared at Haven just as incredulously, gesturing towards Orion with an exasperated flail of his hand. "She's the one who started it."

        "She's seventeen."

"She's a demon."

"She is also right here." When it became clear Bellamy wasn't reaching for a fourth pebble, Orion hissed through her teeth, shoulders rolling back as she begrudgingly rubbed her forehead. "Normally, I would castrate you. But y'know what..." She exhaled a reluctant sigh. "That was the probably most respectable thing you've ever done. Pop off, I guess."

Bellamy responded with a low huff.

"...Diva," Orion hissed.

        "Guys!"

Haven felt her blood freeze at the sound of Raven's voice emerging in the distance. She turned, catching sight of her estranged best friend bursting forth, sprinting toward the huddled forms by the fire. In Raven's eyes glimmered a spark of old energy—electric and wild—a familiarity that Haven hadn't glimpsed in what felt like an eternity. It kindled a bittersweet warmth within her, thawing the icy dread that had clenched her soul.

        But the warmth dissolved as quickly as it had come, frozen once again, as her eyes locked onto the object clutched in Raven's hands.

        The radio.

        . . . It was relaying a message.

        The faint, crackling cadence of a voice echoed through the early morning air, humming with a gravity that yanked every soul toward it like a magnet.

        As the group surged into motion, Haven suddenly felt like an imposter among them. She struggled to rise on one shaky leg while the others had already gathered around the sputtering radio. Lincoln and Octavia reached Raven first, while Clarke swiftly abandoned her strategic exchange with Lexa . . . seamlessly falling into place before Haven could even stand.

        Moving was un-fucking-bearable.

        Every step was torture—a biting, relentless reminder of Haven's fragility, but she bit down on it, hard. She refused the hands that reached for her—Orion's pushy, insistent grip and Bellamy's quieter, hovering offer of support. Instead, she drove her body forward, staggering after the others with a stubbornness that bled into self-destruction.

        The others slowed their pace at once, unconsciously falling into step with Haven's fractured rhythm. And although she knew it should have felt like solidarity, it twisted her gut with the precision of a goddamn knife. It was mortifying to be robbed of the ease and grace she once carried like armor. But the alternative—tearing her stitches further and subjecting herself to Jackson's needles once more—was a torment she could not endure again.

So . . . she moved, each agonizing step carved from sheer force of will, her pride dragging her forward even as her body begged to collapse.

        The weight of Raven's stare scorched ceaselessly into Haven's temples as she staggered closer. Despite its magnetism, Haven couldn't summon the courage to face it, to confront the malice she knew was seared into her best friend's gaze. Not yet. But even if she'd dared to look, Bellamy had already stationed himself between them, his body an immovable wall of iron. He didn't speak, nor did he need to—his stance alone was a death sentence in itself.

       If Raven so much as wanted to breathe in Haven's direction . . . she would have to go through him first.

        "Listen to this..." Raven whispered.

        " . . . This is Jasper Jordan. Forty-six of us are trapped inside Mount Weather. We need help. . ."

Haven froze.

Jasper James Jordan.

        . . . He was alive.

        "Talk to him," Clarke urged breathlessly. "Say something."

        And then . . .

        " . . . This is Nate Miller. . . "

        At the familiar sound of Miller's voice crackling through the airwaves, Haven's knees buckled, the dread that had gripped her marrow loosening in an overwhelming surge of relief. It washed over her like a baptism, purging the shadows she hadn't recognized had rooted themselves so deeply within. Tears blurred her vision, and before she knew it, she was clinging to Bellamy's bicep. The relief etched into his features mirrored her own, yet it ran infinitely deeper . . . carving through him with an intensity that whispered a thousand untold memories.

Miller wasn't just any name over the airwaves.

        He was Bellamy's brother in arms.

His lead Gunner.

His closest friend.

        ". . . Forty-six of us are trapped inside Mount Weather, and forty-six of us are currently fucking shit up. But we need help. We don't know how much time we have left . . ."

"I knew it!"

Before Haven's dread could claw its way back to the surface, Orion's voice cleaved through the radio chatter. Her elbow followed, shooting out in a thoughtless gesture of I told you so, the kind of gloat that should have been harmless.

        But the moment it connected—unseen, unknowing—with the delicate line of stitches beneath Haven's shirt, the air itself seemed to split.

. . . FUCK.

        A shockwave of agony tore through Haven's abdomen, white-hot and vicious, wrenching an involuntary cry from her lips. Her body folded in on itself, hands instinctively clamping over the fresh wound. Before the echo of her cry had even faded, Bellamy was already moving, yanking a wide-eyed Orion by the scruff of her jacket and decisively planting her three feet away.

"Fuck! Fuck! Sorry!" Orion's hands flew toward Haven in a reflexive, useless attempt to undo what she'd done. Mid-motion, she froze, ultimately shoving her hands into her jacket pockets to avoid any further betrayal. "But I told you! I freakin' told you! I knew Miller was alive in there! I knew he was handing those freakazoids their asses!"

Bellamy's death glare was scorching.

        Meanwhile, Haven forced herself upright, miraculously summoning the strength to straighten her torso. "It's... fine..." she gritted out, sucking in an infuriatingly labored inhale and wiping at the cold sweat against her brow. "Talk to Miller."

        But Raven was horrifically still.

        "Raven," Clarke insisted. "Talk to them!"

        " . . . This is Jasper Jordan. Forty-six of us are trapped inside Mount Weather. We need help. . ."

        It soon became devastatingly clear to Haven that Raven's stillness was not the typical calm of her mind working at hyperspeed. This stillness was different—a jarring silence of a brilliant mind brought to a screeching halt. The machinery of her thoughts ground violently against their tracks as clarity slammed into place.

        "It's repeating," Raven breathed grimly. "The message has to be prerecorded. It's not live."

        " . . . This is Nate Miller . . . "

        Bellamy's spine snapped taut, each of his vertebrae aligning into place with the rigidity of tempered steel. "We need to do this now," he declared. "We've got the alliance—now is the time to use it."

Clarke did not hesitate. "We still need an inside man," she exhaled, the words barely audible over the rapid-fire calculus of her thoughts. Her mouth was moving before the idea had fully formed. "Bellamy, you were right. Without someone on the inside to lower their defenses and turn off the acid fog—an army's useless. You should go."

Haven's neck jerked upright. "What?"

"I thought you hated that plan," Bellamy countered, furrowed brows betraying not hesitation of the plan itself, but something closer to . . . surprise. "That I would get myself killed."

Clarke shook her head. "I was being weak," she conceded icily. "It's worth the risk."

All at once, Haven was seized by the unrelenting, irrational urge to smack the blonde clean across her face.

        It wasn't just the cold calculation in Clarke's voice, nor was it the frost-laden bite of her words. It wasn't even the way she disregarded Bellamy's life with the same detached precision as a surgeon cutting away diseased flesh. Rather, it was the sheer ease with which she spoke, the absence of hesitation as she stepped into the limelight of her lineage. How effortlessly she had become a mirror—unwitting, perhaps, but no less damning—of her mother.

        A reflection of cold, surgical righteousness that cared for the greater good . . . but left the souls sacrificed in its shadow to rot.

Haven's eyes flashed towards Clarke in a solarstorm of outrage. "His life is worth the risk—?" she echoed, head tilting with sharp, calculated menace, despite the sharp tug of stitches straining at her throat. "What the hell are you saying?"

"I... I can't just leave, Clarke." Bellamy reasoned lowly. "Not after everything else. Not right now."

        "We don't have the luxury of waiting." Clarke dismissed his concerns with callous efficiency. But then her gaze slid to Haven, and the galaxies swirling in Haven's eyes collided wretchedly with Clarke's blizzard—a clash of infinite, furious wonder against unrelenting frost. "I'm sorry about everything, Haven. I—I mean it. But right now, Bellamy needs to help our friends more than he needs to babysit you."

        . . . Babysit.

Haven blinked at her. "What the fuck?"

        "Jeez, Blondie," Orion muttered, folding her arms across her chest and warily side-eyeing the blonde. "Haven literally almost died—again—and your mom kinda just imploded their lives." She screwed her lips into a tight line. "Maybe give them more than, I dunno, two hours to cope before seperating them."

. . . Seperating?

Panic began to gush into Haven's lungs, rising like molten magma, flaring higher and hotter with every breath. She strained to summon a protest, to fight the crimson tide surging within her, but the words emerged as nothing more than a soundless stutter.

        Clarke refused to waver.

        "The world keeps spinning." Clarke held her chin high despite the gravity of her words. She thrust a crumpled pamphlet into Bellamy's hands without hesitation. "Here's my map of Mount Weather. Find a way to get on that radio and talk to us. Good luck."

        And then . . .

        She was gone.

        Nothing could be said to penetrate the apocalyptic silence that roared in her wake.

Seething, Haven watched Clarke receding into the depths of Tondc, her figure haloed by the violet tendrils of dawn yet darkened by the looming, titanic specter of Lexa's presence. The Commander cast a glance over her shoulder, nodding at Clarke—a gesture not of empathy, but of calculated approval.

        Then, Lexa's attention found Haven.

        Her ice-blue eyes, tempestuous as ever, bore into Haven's own, leveling her infernal glare with an infuriatingly serene poise. There was no solace in that gaze, no respite from the tumult that churned within it. Only the kind of detachment that came with absolute authority, as if to soundlessly declare . . .

. . . You cannot stop this.

        Haven was going to smack the shit out of her next.

Octavia was the first to breach the morbid stillness. "Bell..." she began warily. "How are you gonna—?"

"I can get you through the tunnels," Lincoln cut in, his deep voice cutting cleanly through her uncertainty. The words were not meant for her, though—his gaze remained unwaveringly fixed on Bellamy. "I know my way in. I'll lead you to the intake door."

        To Haven's horror . . . Bellamy jerkily managed an affirmative nod in response.

        The weight of the men's silent exchange seethed in her chest, and for one volatile second, she wanted nothing more than to rip the certainty from their eyes—to blind them both to the reckless inevitability they seemed to accept.

"No," Haven asserted, shaking her head, frantically glancing between the men as her panic only flared hotter. "No. Why are we talking about this like it's already been decided? It hasn't. I-It's not."

"You can't go back there." Octavia added urgently, pivoting towards Lincoln and echoing Haven's insistence with a fervor all her own. "Not yet."

        Haven's eyes slid to Bellamy's again, her gaze intensifying as it captured the firelight casting shadows upon his bone-tired features. His eyes did not dare to stray from hers, yet she could feel the tempest of thoughts whirling in his mind, the audible strain of his ribcage as it fought to encase his impossibly generous heart. That heart, too grand, too reckless, too big for the confines of his chest, wrestled mightily with the unbearable equation of duty.

The cost of saving their friends measured morbidly against the cost of leaving her.

        And in that moment, Haven could see his answer forming . . . etched in the flicker of the flames and the tremor of his shoulders.

         "You... you can't go either," Haven whispered, summoning a miraculous surge of strength to suppress the magma rising in her throat. "You can't. You can't. We just talked about this."

        Bellamy sucked in a long breath. "I know," he whispered softly. His fingers reached for her hand, desperate for some fragile bridge between them—only for her to viciously snatch it away. "Let's just—"

        "Bellamy," Haven insisted. "Bellamy!"

        Around them, the group shifted uncomfortably, every pair of eyes seeking the dirt or the horizon—anywhere but the inevitable shattering of the girl beside them. Her shout wavered, fraying at the edges, teetering dangerously close to the genesis of a sob.

         Bellamy knowingly motioned his head toward the tent lingering in the shadows. "C'mere..."

As Bellamy's arm reached to sling over Haven's shoulders—half a shield against prying eyes, half a clumsy offering of comfort—she vehemently struck it aside. The force of her rejection stung—again—but he refused to flinch, letting his hand fall uselessly to his side as they trudged toward the tent.

        Each step Haven took toward the stupid structure dragged heavily, as if her feet were mired in a pit of quicksand. The desire to flee, to storm away from him, clawed at her insides, but her body continuously betrayed her. Lugging herself closer to the inevitable confrontation was a war against her own body—a body weakened by the crude stitches tugging at her flesh, by the blood loss leaching her strength, by the gnawing rot festering in her chest.
       
        She fucking hated it.

        Hated the orange tent ahead of them. Hated Bellamy for walking alongside her, for daring to carry the burden of their choices on his too-large shoulders. Hated his bleeding, outrageously fearless heart. And in the cruelest revelation of all, she suddenly hated herself for clasping Jackson's wristband around her arm—the thing that had tethered her to survival when every other part of her shrieked for death.

        Slowly, but no less furiously . . . Haven shoved aside the tent's curtain with more force than necessary, long before Bellamy could reach for it. Inside, she felt like a caged animal—pacing, breath short and sharp, thoughts scattering like stars flung amidst the void. She couldn't stand still, think clearly, or catch her goddamn breath. Every inch of the small enclosure seemed to tighten around her, intensifying the war within as she fought against the inescapable fracture of her heart.

"Tell me what you want me to do here, Hav."

        As soon as the curtain fluttered shut behind the Blake boy, his transformation became startlingly abrupt. The furious, war-torn soldier who had prowled outside—poised to raze the heavens, to unearth graves, to unleash hell itself upon any force that had dared to harm her—had vanished. Vengeance still lingered somewhere in the depths of his shadow, but it had softened, stripped of its armor, and left bare in the dim light.

What stood before Haven now was not the indomitable soldier she had come to recognize—but a ghost.

"I mean it," Bellamy pressed, his wild eyes burning as he traced her restless pacing, nearly flinching against the muted cracks of her knuckles. "Talk to me. I don't take orders from any goddamn Griffin."

Haven stifled the urge to sneer, her lips pressing into a thin line as she fought to convert her roiling emotions into words—into something Bellamy couldn't read off her face like an open wound. "I... I don't want you to go," she admitted shakily. "We have to save our friends. I know that. But you can't—you're not going alone, Bell. Not without me."

"Hav..." Bellamy sighed and it felt as though all oxygen in the tent had extinguished alongside it. "That's not how that works."

"Why the hell not?" Haven shot back. For a moment, she lost the battle against the firestorm inside her, allowing the flames to lick at the edges of her control before she forced herself to pull back. "You move, I move. Your words. That's what you said to me earlier this week."

As Bellamy inhaled, scanning the turbulent air between them for the safest way to phrase his response—Haven felt the sudden urge to scream, to shove him, to shake any semblance of sense into his impossibly stubborn skull. But instead, she stood rooted to the spot, waiting for him to find the words that might somehow justify the betrayal of the vow she had trusted so deeply.

"You heard what Jackson told us," Bellamy began lowly. "You can hardly walk, and you need to focus on recovering so you don't—" His voice faltered, the crack in it betraying his strength as he shook his head, dark curls falling forward to shield his tormented eyes. "So you don't die. And you're still Tsing's number one target. Like it or not... this is too dangerous for you, angel."

Haven curled her lips into a scowl. "So what?" she fumed, shoving the unending list of betryals her body had dealt her—the weight of her shortcomings, the endless list of her limitations—deep into the pit of her belly. "What about you? What about your brain bleed? What if you leave me here to keep me safe—but you die instead? Why does it have to be you? Why can't someone else—why can't we—figure it out together?"

"Who else is gonna get this done?" Bellamy challenged, stepping closer, the tension in the air coiling tighter as Haven's restless pacing stilled. His words were firm, but not unkind. "You know I can do this—just like I knew you could handle everything with Lexa. How do you think I felt watching you leave for negotiations?"

        Haven only stared at him. "That was different," she declared, though her voice trembled beneath the strain of her own uncertainty. "You'd be infiltrating a nightmare facility all by yourself—"

        "What's the difference, Hav?" Bellamy's interruption fled his bruised vocal cords involuntarily, still raw from the screams that had raked through them the day before. "Really. Do you have any idea how that felt for me? You think I wasn't terrified—just like you are right now? I was worried sick. I—I couldn't even keep water down." He dared another step forward when Haven showed no sign of resistance. "I'm not trying to turn this into an argument, alright? I'll do whatever the hell you want me to do—whatever you need. You know that."

        One step closer. Another.

        "All I'm saying is that Lexa leads twelve clans—and I still trusted you enough to let you go."

        A quiver in Haven's chin betrayed the impact of his words as they finally began to register. "It's not about trust," she sputtered breathlessly. "I-I know you can do it, but I—"

"But what?"

        "But I don't want you to!"

Bellamy nearly wilted on the spot.

Her confession wasn't spoken; it bled into the air, a corrosive truth that tainted everything it touched. It wasn't vile because it was wrong—it was vile because it was true. It was vile because it was selfish, and for the first time in her life . . . Haven let herself be selfish. She allowed herself to care less about the masses they were fighting to save and more about the singular, fragile heartbeat standing right in front of her.

        It defied logic.

        It was irrational, reckless, shameful—a betrayal of every principle that had kept Haven alive until now. Bellamy had always been the cornerstone of the hundred's survival, the immovable pillar upon which every fragile hope rested, the executioner of every desperate plan that had dragged them—bloody and breathless—toward another sunrise. She knew it. She had always known this. She knew her needs were inconsequential in the face of the lives hanging in the balance. And yet . . . she found herself pleading—not with him, not with reason, but with the universe itself.

        Not for the mission. Not for the others.

        . . . For her.

Just. One. Thing.

        One single facet of her shattered, tumultuous existence that she could claim as her own.

        One tether that the frightened little girl within her could cling to, curl herself around, and never let go of.

"I... I don't want you in that place," Haven admitted, her fury crumbling under the weight of something far heavier. "I know what it's like in there, and it's a fucking nightmare. The Harvest Chamber isn't even the worst part of it." Her tears thickened, choking her words as her thoughts helplessly wandered to the faces of the dining hall—the quiet, unassuming horror of it. "There's... there's people living there. Civilians. Siblings. Children. Innocent people among the Mountain Men. And you'd have to navigate that—all on your own."

Her heart wailed as she thought of Leo.

". . . THAT'S MY FRIEND! . . . WHAT HAPPENED TO MY FRIEND—?! . . . "

        The youngest Lovejoy's frantic wails echoed in her ears with haunting clarity—a visceral memory Haven could not shake. The sound of his terror reverberated through Mount Weather's cold, sterile corridors with the same unbearable sharpness as the image of his mischievous, shit-eating grin. He was a bottle of light in a sea of shadows, fighting to hold its shape in a place that devoured such brilliance without remorse.

        . . . But Leo wasn't the only one.

        Leo wasn't the only innocent child with parents shackled to the Mountain Men's oppressive hierarchy. He wasn't the only soul who would be orphaned in the crossfire of a war that cared nothing for innocence. He wasn't the only sibling who would be left to navigate a shattered world alone if the Mountain Men refused to surrender.

        Three hundred people lived there.

        Haven drew in another shaky inhale. "I... I can't... I don't want you to be forced to differentiate the good people from the bad. I don't want you to walk that line." A splinter in her throat momentarily split her resolve. "And I... I don't want to be by myself here. Not after everything with Jackson and Kane and... Abby." The next part of her admission slipped out quietly, as though the words themselves were too selfish, too vulnerable to deserve the air they occupied. "And I don't want to lose you. I—I can't handle that again. I won't."

        Bellamy weakly mustered a broken, half-smile in response.

        "I know the feeling."

And just like that . . . Haven's anger fully dissolved into nothingness. It gave way to despair with devastating finality, like a dam bursting under relentless pressure. The fury that had burned so brightly, so blindingly, was consumed by the ache she couldn't outrun. Tears came fast and unrelenting, spilling down her cheeks as her composure finally shattered.

. . . Didn't she want this?

Hadn't she convinced herself that it had to be this way?

Before leaving Bellamy behind in the dropship, tasked with navigating the impossible negotiations between Clarke and Lexa, Haven had been so sure. So certain. She had clung to the fragile, desperate belief that their separation was necessary. That she needed his trust, his faith in her strength, to forge their paths apart. To prove they could stand on their own, fight their own battles, and somehow crawl their way back to each other—bruised, bloodied, but victorious.

Together.

It had been so effortless to decide when the risk was hers to take.

But with Bellamy's life on the line?

It wasn't just difficult. It was unthinkable.

It was fucking impossible.

        And Haven could see it—clear as starlight, devastating as a blade to the heart—the look in Bellamy's deep, glorious, endlessly brown eyes. His decision was already made, forged in the fires of his instinct to protect, to fight, to sacrifice himself if it meant a chance at saving the people he loved.

        But his heart . . .

        His heart was still tethered to hers.

        She could feel it in the way his gaze lingered, heavy with a thousand unspoken promises. He wasn't moving—not yet. Not without her. He stood at the edge, waiting, the gravity of her presence holding him back from plunging headlong into whatever hell awaited him.

        Waiting for her permission to let him go.

        Waiting for her to shatter her own heart and set him free—or to summon the strength to hold him back, to seize him with her trembling hands and refuse the sacrifice. To demand, selfishly, desperately . . . don't go. Stay. Stay. Stay, because the world was already cruel enough, and losing him would be another cruelty she could not survive.

        He would go if she asked.

        He would stay if she begged.

        Haven wiped at her eyes with the back of her quivering hand, forcing the tears away as she squared her shoulders, bracing herself against the dead thing rattling in her chest.

"I'm coming with you."

        Bellamy's reaction was immediate, his jaw tightening as if he'd expected this—hoped against hope that he wouldn't hear those words, but knew her too well to believe otherwise. "Not happening."

        "I know the interior," Haven added weakly, braving her first step closer to him since the awful conversation began. Her throat felt dry, her tongue thick as though coated in soot, but still, she forced the words out. "I know how to survive the tunnels. I-I can find my mom, and we can work—"

        "Haven."

         Bellamy cut her off with a sharp shake of his head before finally obliterating the gap between them. His hands gravitated towards Haven's shoulders, careful not to disrupt her newly mended brace, and lulled her flush against his chest. Tears came fast, seeping through his shirt in seconds, though her grief was insidiously quiet. She refused to weep aloud, but the strength of his arms anchoring her and the erratic staccato of his heartbeat against her ear only made it harder—impossible—to swallow the sob clawing its way up her throat.

"I don't want to tell you another thing you can't do," Bellamy began delicately. One of his hands ventured beneath the hem of her clothes, his touch warm as it began tracing slow, soothing patterns along her spine. "You can stay and help me navigate once I connect to the radio. You can stay and help strategize with Clarke. You can start physical therapy. Or, you can do fuck all for all I care, but just..." The sound of his lungs inflating with oxygen warmed the shell of her ear. "Let somebody else handle the hard stuff for once, alright? I got this."

        Haven felt an overwhelming urge to glue herself to him for eternity. "I don't want to be alone."

        "Alone—?" Bellamy echoed. Although her face was buried against his chest, she could feel the faint smirk tugging at his lips. "C'mon, angel. You're too popular for that. Orion and Octavia can be watchdogs til' I get back—and Kane, Jaha, and Abby won't come within a mile radius of you. Not unless you give them permission." His hand drifted further, anchoring against her lower back as he clutched her tighter. "You've got the upper hand with them now—remember?"

. . . Did she?

Haven wasn't sure. All she could be sure of was the certainty of her fear. She was terrified—so, so terrified—but the dark, gaping chasm of what lay ahead felt deeper, sharper, more final. Facing the Council members responsible for sanctioning her medical abuse—without Bellamy's protection—felt like stepping into her own execution . . . again.

        But she knew, with bone-deep certainty, that if she allowed herself to tumble fully into that rabbit hole, she would not be able to ghost her way back.

She could do this.

        He could do this.

        Still . . . Haven's fingers shook as they curled tighter into the fabric of the Blake boy's t-shirt, the worn cotton catching on her nails. She inhaled deeply, breathing in the scent of him—gunpowder, earth, something achingly Bellamy—desperate to commit it to memory, to etch it into her soul as the map she could follow in the dark.

        And then, as if he'd reached into the marrow of her thoughts, Bellamy spoke.

"Tell me to stay."

Haven glanced up at him. "What?"

Bellamy stared down at her with unwavering conviction. "Tell me to stay," he repeated earnestly. "And if you really mean it... I will."

She knew that he meant it.

But she also understood that Bellamy Blake was the most capable, driven man she had ever known. He was a force of cosmic greatness, an inferno bound to mortal coils—a soul that refused to falter even though the world conspired to crush him. What began as the vaunted reign of the King of the Earth had transformed into something far greater, something elemental. His love for those he once ruled was not a crown but a crucible, forged in fire, unshakable and infinite. He carried them all—their burdens, their sins, their shattered dreams—with a lion-heart that bled for them, and refused to stop beating.

        And yet, the splintered wraith of a little girl buried deep within Haven, who still clung to the echoes of innocence, longed to claim him. To curl her trembling soul around the steadiness of his and call it home. She wanted him to be hers—hers alone—a sanctuary against the bedlam of the world.

But Haven was not that little girl anymore.

She was twenty years old—a body of mutilated edges and quiet ruin—and she knew she had not strengthened Bellamy Blake.

She had eroded him.

The home she had carved in Bellamy's heart had withered into decay, a cage of her own making that held him captive in her darkness. She hadn't been his salvation—she had been his undoing. His lion-heart now flickered dimly, smaller, deformed by her poison. She had stolen from him, molecule by molecule, until there was so little left of him.

. . . Who was Haven to ruin him?

Who was she to steal from the one who gave so much? To interfere with the thing he did best—rising, unbroken, saving the goddamn world no matter the cost?

She was nothing but Bellamy's destruction.

He was meant for so much more.

Bellamy noted her silence and adjusted his hands to cradle her face. "See? You believe in me more than you think," he teased, his lips curling into an unfathomably tender smile—one that reached cells within her she hadn't known still existed. "I love you, okay? I—I love you more than anything, Haven. I'll love you for the rest of my fucking life—and I'm coming home to you at the end of this." He kissed her forehead before searching her glassy eyes again. "I promise."

Haven attempted to lower her gaze, seeking refuge in the shadows of her own doubts—but Bellamy's hands gently lifted her chin. "Don't say that if you can't keep it."

"I can," Bellamy vowed. "I will."

        There were no words—no dialects vast or powerful enough to encapsulate the weight of what he felt. No tongue, not even his own, could shape the enormity of his promise. It lived in the marrow of him, too deep, too infinite, to ever be properly spoken.

So he did not try.

Instead . . . he kissed her.

It wasn't soft or cautious—it was an uproar, a collision of everything Bellamy could not say and everything he refused to leave unsaid. His hands, still cupping Haven's cheeks, drew her nearer, a familiar warmth creeping up his neck as her hands clasped his wrists. She returned his kiss with a force that doubled his—twice as intense, twice as fervent—and heartbreakingly sincere. Her anguish bled into every moment of it. It was love tangled with sorrow, mourning cloaked in desperation . . . and a quiet, shattering ache that felt too much like goodbye.

But Bellamy refused to let it be.

        "Promise that you won't come after me."

Haven gazed up at the boy who held her heart, utterly breathless, her lips trembling as she wrestled with the protest within her. "I—"

"Haven," Bellamy demanded. "Promise me."

One heartbeat passed. Another.

And then . . .

"I promise."

Bellamy sought Haven's watery eyes for any flicker of deceit, allowing the moment to stretch taut before crashing his mouth into hers again. He poured every celestial element of his being into her, every ounce of his strength, his hope, his unrelenting devotion, until the world narrowed to nothing else but this—her lips against his, their breaths entwined, hearts colliding in a moment that defied the war that loomed to tear them asunder.

        Kissing her was the closest he had ever felt to flying.

To soaring beyond the confines of the earth.

To brushing the essence of the heavens.

Again, and again, and again—Bellamy kissed her with the same volition as he always had, each touch more insatiable than the last. His tongue swept against the curve of her mouth before claiming it, parting her lips in an unrelenting demand for more. It wasn't enough to simply touch; he needed to be devoured by the lure of her orbit, to carve galaxies into every trembling sigh between them. His desperation spilled into her like prayer, as though his existence hinged on the taste of her—on feeling every fragment of her soul igniting against his.

        Until . . .

Haven was the first to retract herself.

        "There," she panted, her tongue darting out to trace her lower lip in the absence of his. "Consider that your good luck charm."

        Bellamy scoffed. "I don't need luck," he shot back, one hand sliding from her face, fingertips brushing aside the stray locs veiling the curve of her neck. He dipped closer as his lips found the defined line of her jaw. "Not when I've got you."

        "Then why..." Haven's head tipped back involuntarily, surrendering to the lure of his lips as they wandered lower, scorching the arc of her throat. Each kiss was slow, measured, as though he were memorizing the fragile rhythm of her pulse beneath his mouth. "... are... you... still... kissing... me..."

        Bellamy did not dare to lift his head. "I don't need luck—but I never said I don't have needs." He murmured the words as a velvet rasp against her skin, lowering the hand near her hair to clutch the small of her back, gently aligning her hips with his. "You just make me greedy."

        Haven's lashes fluttered closed. Again.

        "Yeah?"

        "Yeah," Bellamy hummed. His mouth despairingly completed its voyage, meandering from the sharpness of her jaw to the tender space beneath her ear. Emboldened by the soft sigh that escaped her, his fingers ventured under the hem of her shirt—tracing pale fire against the skin beneath and savoring the privilege of touch. "That's also why I'll be coming back. I could kiss you til' I die."

        But at his words, Haven abruptly pulled away, her eyes snapping wide open.

        "You're not dying."

        It wasn't a declaration. It was a command.

One he had no intention of disobeying.

Bellamy stared at her through starry, drunken eyes, his kiss-swollen lips carrying the faintest curve of amusement. "Figure of speech."

        Haven glared at him.

        He merely shrugged.

        All at once . . . Haven found herself yanked back to the terrible gravity of their circumstances, the suspension of celestial heights that Bellamy's mouth had lifted her to vanishing beneath her feet. The air seemed thinner now, heavier, as if the stars they'd conjured had suddenly fizzled to dust.

        She almost disintegrated beneath the gravity of Bellamy's stare—the aching, unrelenting longing woven into every glint of his gaze. It was a look that spoke of devotion so absolute, so ruinously pure, that it could've crumbled cathedrals. Like he would sink to his knees and crawl willingly into the pits of hell—if only it meant she had asked it of him.

        But Haven knew better.

    She knew that Bellamy was devastatingly, tragically blind to the ruin he had pledged himself to.

        He did not understand that he was already tethered, unwittingly bound to the obsidian pit Haven had become—a hellfire trap as much hers as it was his. To hold his stare was to drown in infinity, to feel the heat of a dying sun as it scorched her to ash; to look away was to sever the invisible string that condemned him to loving her.

And yet, she couldn't decide which was crueler—to let him love her, or to let him go.

"Let me walk you through the Mountain's interior," Haven whispered, clearing her throat and banishing the sudden swell of emotion that threatened to surface. She gestured toward the map he had abandoned on the cot beside them. "I can show you what to look for. I'll—I'll explain the best that I can."

        Bellamy's hand shot out to seize her forearm. "Might be too difficult for me," he admitted gruffly, earning himself an immediate eyeroll in response. "What? You're beautiful, Hav. And whenever you talk about smart stuff... my brain shuts down." He tilted his head, a glint of mischief sparking in his eyes as he observed her—the same boyish, wicked innocence he'd carried since the day he'd stepped into adulthood. "Don't look at me like that. Can't be a good learner if I'm distracted."

Haven averted her eyes, focusing on anything but him, as if distance—even in the form of a glance—could prolong her inevitable shattering. "You're just trying to distract me by flirting."

        But even as the words left her, she knew they held no armor . . . just as well as he did. Her defenses were as transparent as spun glass, and Bellamy had long since learned how to shatter them with the gentlest touch.

Softly, though no less insistently, his grip on her wrist tightened, guiding Haven closer to him with an authority that left no room for retreat. The space between them dissolved once more, and his lips hovered just above hers, the faint caress of his breath against her skin a deliberate torment—a sacrilegious temptation she found herself powerless to defy.

        "...I think I can distract you with more than just flirting," Bellamy rasped. "Say the word."

But words had already abandoned her.

Haven rose on her tallest tiptoes as she captured his mouth with hers, a kiss that spoke the syllables she could not find. Her right hand gripped the nape of his neck, the heat of his skin branding her palm, while her left—traitorous and numb—hung limp, denying her the full sensation of him. She kissed him once, then again, then again—each collision of their mouths more reckless than the last. His hands slid further beneath her clothing, rough and warm against the frostbitten planes of her skin, cautiously skirting the lines of her hidden stitches.

In that moment, she could feel the weightlessness return to her, the dizzying, soaring ache of becoming undone. She hovered there, mid-air, suspended in the universe of his making—soaring so high she failed to realize that he had also tasted her fall.

Bellamy had swallowed not just her sigh, but her sob, the saline trace of it seeping through the fissures of her resolve.

He tore his mouth from hers instantly.

        "Hey..." he panted, pupils blown wide, lifting his hands from her spine and cradling her tear-sodden cheeks in his palms . . . again. "Talk to me."

. . . But what could she say?

What else could Haven say to him as he prepared to walk into his own death—to infiltrate a building that loomed like a tomb on the horizon, waiting to claim him? Goodbye—? Good luck—? What words could possibly convey the weight of her remorse for the friends trapped within its depths, fighting for their lives while he lingered here—for her—as if her comfort outweighed their survival?

       What language could ever exist to encapsulate the selfish, soul-crushing plea that echoed in the hollow of her chest?

        Please! Please! Please! . . . Don't go!

        Haven's fingers fisted the fabric of Bellamy's shirt, anchoring herself to the warmth of him, and to the heartbeat she feared she might lose.

        "You're not dying," she repeated brokenly. "You can't."

Bellamy stared at her with an intensity that seemed to transcend time, as if he had never existed before this moment and cared not to exist beyond it.

        Let the world parade its grandest kingdoms and its rarest wonders before him, and watch him turn the other cheek. Let the world crush him, deform him, transmute his very cells into something alien, and still—still—watch him crawl back to her. Let the Mountain Men bury him six feet under and watch as the girl he loved breathed life into soiled, collapsing lungs. Watch as she resurrected him, strengthened him, and led him home.

Always.

He softly brushed his thumbs against her tears and smiled amidst the unshed tears of his own.

"I know," Bellamy vowed. "I've got too much to live for."

The words roared across the air as an oath.

And soon, Bellamy's thumbs tenderly swept away the final vestiges of sorrow soaking her cheekbones, his lips chasing the salt trails left behind. Each touch—a benediction on her eyelids, her cheeks, her jaw—left no expanse of skin untouched, no fragment of Haven's soul unstirred. It was indiscernible, the moment her lips found his again—whether she sought him or he sought her—but when they met, the world between them collapsed for the thousandth time. She did not register her breath intensifying, nor the press of her thighs against the cot's edge as Bellamy's fire coaxed her backward.

       Haven entwined her fingers in his curls.

        . . . And he was done for.

Wholly. Irrevocably. Eternally.

Time splintered into a thousand opulent fragments as Bellamy gently lowered Haven onto the bedding. His forearms caged her, trembling as he held back the full force of his need, though she would not allow restraint. Her fingers knotted tighter into his hair—commanding, frantic—drawing him deeper into a kiss that obliterated reason, until her moans were spilling into his mouth and he was suddenly drunk on the sound. Mouths crashed. Names floated breathlessly as half-prayers, half-profanities. Legs entangled as roaming hands mapped unexplored territory and thoughtlessly threw garments aside. Swollen lips descended to stitches, collarbones, hips, and vanished between trembling thighs—claiming the scars of old wounds and christening her skin with marks of his own.

Soaring.

        They were soaring.

Together . . . they flew beyond flesh and bone, past the limits of mortality. Souls entwined in heavenward ascension only to plunge into the abyss of cosmic ruin. Again and again, they raced to the edge, trembling between ecstasy and oblivion, until their mortal forms dissolved entirely. Until they became nothing but the stardust of the galaxies they were born from, their origin stars burning brighter than ever before, leaving the universe itself to shiver in their wake.

Eternity was gone too soon.

        Reeling from her aftershocks, Bellamy's lovesick eyes remained wide, awash with wonder, as if the very sight of Haven clinging to his bare chest was a gift he would never fully deserve. Blissfully, he did not glimpse the truth lingering in the stillness between them. He did not notice the subtle curve of her fingers, hidden just beyond his view, mirroring the quiet defiance she had so masterfully cloaked during their earlier exchange.

        Haven had vowed not to follow him into his death, the weight of her promise the only tether granting him the strength to leave.

        . . . But her fingers had been crossed in secret.

• •

HIIIIIIIIIIII IM SAD LOL

if you wanna bawl your freakin eyes out... song of the chapter is only time by searows

haven self destructing and thinking shes destroying bellamy... meanwhile bell is literally just like 💕💞💞💗💝💘💖❣️❤️‍🩹🩷❤️💜💙💙💛💚🩶💍💍✨✨✨💖💖💌💌

shorter chapter again (girl we are at still 9.5k words) because i didnt finish editing the second part in time 🤩 but yk what it actually works out because 1) no update drought!!! and 2) it works better for the dual pov chapter I have planned for next week as a result...only if editing how long it is doesn't force me to cut it in half
YALL GONNA GET SOME GOOD PARALLELS THOUGH TEEHEHEHEHEHEHEH

one thing about baven...... they always gonna fuck after every near death experience. i dont even intend for it to happen that way it just like... does.
explicit smut shall come at a later chapter for those who are into it 💋

ANYWAAAAAY.
another baven seperation i fear. unfortunately bellamy has to go off and be a hero or whatever..... (horrible timing my guy) but the dual povs shall persist!!! it wont be an unbearable seperation like last time lol :)))

I LOVE YOU!!!! SO FREAKIN MUCH!!! YOU ARE SUNSHINE AND STARS AND EVERY BEAUTIFUL THING TO HAVE EVER EXISTED!!! 🫵