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CHAPTER SIXTY THREE;

NEWANA EN HAIHEFA.

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HAVEN DID NOT KNOW HOW TO EXIST WITHOUT HALF OF HER ATOMS. The absence of Bellamy Blake anchoring her universe left her senselessly untethered—an aimless fragment amidst an existence she no longer recognized. Bellamy and Lincoln had barely paused at Camp Jaha before plunging into their pursuit of the Reaper tunnels. And since then, every thought of their suicide mission had coiled hellishly around her ribs. Yet, beyond the fear of impending loss, it was the distance—the literal, physical void between her body and the boy she loved—that carved her open the most.

        It wasn't absence; it was amputation.

They hadn't said goodbye aloud.

They couldn't.

Instead, Bellamy had despairingly pressed his lips to hers—a kiss laden with a thousand unspoken promises, and none of the finality it warranted. It wasn't enough. Not for him. Not for her. His shoulders had squared as he turned to leave Camp Jaha's electric borders, every step a herculean effort against the tug of Haven's magnetism.

        Ten steps.

        That was all it had taken.

        After merely ten agonizing steps, instinct had spun Bellamy around. He jogged backward, caught her face in his hands, and kissed her again—harder than before, as if it were the final act of defiance he had left.

She did not stay to watch him disappear.

Since then . . . Haven's lungs felt hollow, her chest constricted, as if her heart had been stolen and left to beat somewhere impossibly far from her reach. She existed, if existence could be defined by a pulse so faint it barely stirred her veins. Her blood crawled sluggishly, colder now, as though every drop mourned the absence of him.

        It was ridiculous—no, it was unbearable—how a mere handful of days without Bellamy could press down on her with the force of a lifetime's worth of grief. The world had never been kind to her, but this . . . this was something else.

        Because this was after.

        After she knew the incendiary, all-consuming depth of loving him, and knew the indescribable heights of being loved by him in return.

Being confined within the dust-laden borders of Camp Jaha had become an agonizing balancing act—avoiding Raven, yet obsessively checking to see if Bellamy had reached out through the radio. Each time Haven peeked into the Engineering Bay, the low hum of conversation between Raven and Wick would falter, sputtering to an awkward halt. Their eyes would dart to hers—sharp, knowing—and for a fleeting moment, her hope would outshine the steel of her armor.

But the response never changed—a wordless shake of their heads, Raven's lips tightening, and Wick's gaze softening with pity.

Bellamy hadn't called.

Raven would always part her lips when their eyes met, teetering on the edge of saying something—anything—that might bridge the sinkhole between them. Haven would linger and cling to the faint, flickering promise of her next breath. Yet, the moment always disintegrated, collapsing beneath the weight of Raven's gaze as it drifted—inevitably, painfully—to the endless, endless stitches that latticed Haven's body.

Stitches that, in another life, would have belonged to Raven.

        Eventually, the silence evolved into its own language. Both Mecha girls understood—without ever speaking it aloud—that neither conversation nor apology would emerge between them anytime soon.

And so . . . they stopped looking at each other altogether.

When Haven slipped, spectral and silent, into the Engineering Bay, it was Wick who carried the burden of her unspoken question. His gaze—gentler than it should have been, heavier than she could bear—would answer before his voice ever could.

A faint shake of his head.

No connection.

No Bellamy. Again.

        Haven would nod, the gesture brittle as broken glass, before retreating once more into Alpha's serpentine shadows. Each step felt like dragging her skeleton through quicksand. She was hollow—half-dead from despair—yet still clinging with trembling hands to the hope that refused to die.

Next time, it whispered. Next time.

Next time, Haven could be brave enough to mend the fractures between her and her best friend, to stretch across the chasm and wrench them back from the edge.

Next time, Haven could be brave enough to follow Bellamy into those cursed tunnels, to confront the darkness with him and not from afar.

        Aside from . . . that, the hours since her last uneasy trip into Engineering had trickled by in Jackson's company—sort of. Since Haven's shoulder wound was far from healed enough to start physical therapy, she found herself trapped once more in the confines of that detestable sling, a bitter reminder of the liberty her brace had once offered.

It was humiliating.

Haven knew she had always carried far too much pride, a trait that burned hot and reckless in her veins—stupid overconfidence, as Monty had so fondly called it. But her pride in her mobility, in the precision and grace of her body, was something different.

It was sacred.

If her flesh had been claimed by Abby's mutilations, then at the very least, she could inhabit it with defiance—gliding through spaces to assert ownership, to pretend that it was hers in spite of its ruin. Her steps had always been an unspoken rebellion. Fluid. Agile. Razor-edged with intention. As though every motion thunderously cried out . . . THIS IS MINE! You cannot take it from me!

But not anymore.

Not after the torture. Not after Lexa's blade.

Now . . . Haven's body felt abhorrently foreign, fractured beyond recognition, a stranger she inhabited with bitter reluctance. The grace that had once been second nature was gone, replaced by an awkward, agonizing struggle to move as she once had. Her limbs no longer obeyed her; they were heavy, cumbersome, betraying her with every stilted step.

She felt devastatingly insecure.

Jackson had insisted the sling was medically necessary—a phrase that had soured in her mouth—at least for the next forty-eight hours. It didn't matter that Haven's pride chafed harder than the straps digging into her shoulder. He'd promised to repair the brace he'd slapped together back at Tondc, the poor craftsmanship of which he blamed on a lack of materials. She'd scoffed then, and she was scoffing now—even as the humiliating sling held her hostage until he finished his repairs.

        And because her frustration wasn't enough, she was also tasked with keeping her mind sharp.

        Mental stimulation, as Jackson put it.

        A.K.A. pointless board games and shitty paperbacks—the kind that made Haven roll her eyes hard enough to strain her good shoulder.

        Until . . .

        Without a word, Jackson had slid an old Greek mythology text onto the table. Her breath caught when she recognized it—Bibliotheca by Apollodorus. The same weathered book she and Bellamy had once read together aboard the Ark, its pages worn soft by time and the weight of countless hands.

        It detailed the twelve labors of Heracles, but Haven's heart had always belonged to his final trial: retrieving Cerberus, the three-headed guardian of Hades' gates. There was something about the myth that had intrinsically drawn her in, a fascination that went deeper than its heroics. She'd gushed over the details as a seventeen-year-old girl, envisioning the underworld and its fearsome hound with utmost clarity.

        Cerberus was no monster. Not to her.

        He was a protector.

        A creature of unshakable loyalty, stationed at the gates of hell not for cruelty, nor glory, but for duty. His bared canines and thunderous growls weren't born of malice—they were forged in the fires of defiance. His strength wasn't rage, but an instinct to defend what was his. To hold the line, even as the flames of Hades scorched his heels and darkness clawed at his sides.

Cerberus did not falter.

Cerberus did not kneel.

Because even as the world painted him as a beast—a terror to be conquered—he knew the truth.

This. Is. Mine.

        Against all odds, the literature had managed to keep Haven rooted in place for the past hour—a feat so improbable it might as well have been drawn from myth itself. Perhaps the mental stimulation was a small victory against the grim prognosis of HIBI. Or maybe it wasn't about healing at all. Maybe it was the nostalgia—an anchor to a time when the world wasn't as cruel, when the stories she read hadn't yet bled into her own life.

        "Haven—?"

. . . If only for a little while.

        Haven slammed the book shut at the unfortunate familiarity of the voice. She jolted upright from her curled position against Alpha's hull, her feet skidding against the damp grass as she scrambled to steady herself.

       Kane loomed ten feet ahead of her.

"May I have a word?"

"Nah," Orion hissed. "But I've got several."

        True to Bellamy's orders from the day before . . . Orion and Octavia had taken shifts tethered to Haven's side, relentlessly guarding against the vultures circling her name. The directive had been clear: ensure no member of the Council could get her alone, not in Bellamy's absence, or beat their fuckin' ass. Indoors, it had worked like a charm—walls and doors were tangible barriers. But outdoors? Out here, the terrain was open, freedom abundant, and the Council far too opportunistic to waste an inch of it.

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

Orion unflinchingly leveled her sword at Kane's throat. "Four words. Eight syllables," she spat, twisting the hilt in her palms and narrowing her eyes into murderous slits. "Wanna guess?"

        Kane merely sighed. "I—"

        "Motherfucker, I will kill you."

        The words were not a bluff.

        Haven slid the mythology book into the crook of her sling and forced her spine to straighten. "It's fine," she muttered wearily, lifting her free hand to lower Orion's sword from Kane's neck. She then fixed Kane with an expectant glare. "You came alone?"

        Kane nodded. "Jaha's... somewhere," he mumbled, scratching the scruff on his chin before shoving his hand deep into his pocket. "Abby's still hiding from the public until her face heals. It's just me."

        . . . Right.

        The knowledge that Bellamy had repeatedly struck Haven's abuser should have been a balm—a vindictive, grim satisfaction to soothe her wounds. But instead, it made her horrifyingly nauseous. The phantom image of the Chancellor's broken face haunted her thoughts—not because Abby didn't deserve every fractured bone, every scar carved into her flesh—but because Haven feared what the sight might reveal.

        The blood.

        Not crimson, but black as a starless void.

        Blood that did not belong to Abby. Blood siphoned from Haven. Blood that had been hers—hers to give, hers to keep. Blood that now bled as a silent testament to the atrocities committed in her name.

        "You really should've just let Bellamy kill her." Orion huffed out an agitated breath as she slid Michonne back into the sheath at her waistband. "Would've made things a lot easier for everybody involved. Including you..." Her glare locked onto Kane with a venom so potent it might as well have struck him dead. "...Vice Chancellor of Experimenting on a Fucking Minor."

        Kane could not restrain his grimace.

        "Yeah. Told your ass I was eavesdropping," Orion spat, crossing her arms defiantly, sizing Kane up like he was something she'd scrape off her boot. "You're way too old to be such a freakin' weirdo."

Kane pointedly cleared his throat. "Anyway," he continued, his gaze briefly meeting Haven's before darting away—a reflexive flinch from Orion's audible hiss. "While Clarke is strategizing with Lexa and the Guard back in Tondc, I thought this would be an opportune moment to extend an invitation of our own."

Haven stared at him blankly. "You want the Grounders to come here—?" Her voice echoed the bewilderment tightening in her brow as she parsed Kane's intentions. "Like... here, here?"

"Yes." Kane straightened, refusing to shrink as her stare burned hotter, shifting into something dangerously unreadable. "With the alliance finalized, it's vital to share war strategies and learn everything we can from one another," he continued simply. "Infiltrating Mount Weather will mean nothing if our plans clash. We can't afford to kill each other before we even reach the mountain."

        Well . . . fuck.

Haven hated to admit it . . . but the pitiful excuse of a man did raise a fair point. Skaikru had ammunition and the rigid discipline of the Guard, but that would mean little without the bleeding, battle-forged wisdom Trikru held from years of war against the Reapers and Mountain Men. Bullets wouldn't last forever. Skaikru would need to learn the true art of hand-to-hand combat—the kind the forest warriors had mastered. And Trikru, for all their experience, would falter in the face of an enemy that thrived on technology and cruelty; they needed to evolve beyond the strategies they'd relied on for generations.

If there was any hope of saving their people, both groups would have to swallow their goddamn pride, move with the blows of criticism, and adapt—or die trying.

Anything less wasn't merely failure.

        It was extinction.

Still . . . the larger question remained.

        "What does this have to do with me, Kane?"

Almost imperceptibly . . . the corners of Kane's mouth lifted into the ghost of a smile. "You command attention, Haven," he declared firmly. "I saw it from the moment you interrupted the Commander on our trek to Tondc. I saw the gratitude in that father's eyes when you stopped his beating. A lot of the warriors seem to respect you."

. . . Respect her?

Haven's scoff, woven with acerbic disbelief, escaped unchecked—a harsh whisper against the gravity of Kane's claim. "They cheered while I was getting tortured."

"They were under the impression you had betrayed them," Kane countered carefully, as if walking the tightrope above her abysmal rage. "Not anymore. They see differently now. I believe your voice—and your blood—are pivotal to bridging the gap."

Her blood.

. . . Here we fucking go.

        Haven was growing increasingly fed the fuck up of navigating other people's obsession with her blood. Abby. Tsing. Lexa. Kane. Abby again. The entire goddamn Grounder population seemed to revere it as something holy. And for what? Because it mirrored that of their leader? Because it made her another pawn in another game she never consented to play?

        Why? Why? Why?

        Haven's blood—this so-called miracle—wasn't wrought from divine intervention or destiny. It had stemmed from Becca, her great-grandmother. Desperate to survive, she had injected herself with the serum she created, a scientific hail mary to endure Earth's radiation and evade Polaris's merge with the Ark. Something about Becca's technology had posed a threat—and this serum had been her way out.

        And if Haven's assumptions were correct, Becca hadn't been the only one. The serum must have been given to other civilians aboard Polaris who made it to Earth, passing on this rare, dark blood to future generations. That connection tied Haven to Lexa—and possibly to other Grounders who carried the same gift, or curse, in their veins.

        . . . Natblida.

        The word slithered through her thoughts, thick and constricting, like a chain winding tighter with every heartbeat. It was more than a title; it was a prison crafted from the strands of her own DNA. A legacy she never asked for, binding her to people who refused to see her as anything more than a symbol.

        A vessel. An experiment. A weapon.

        Not a person. Never a person.

"Again..." Haven dragged in a sharp, exasperated inhale before shaking her head at the imbecile awaiting her answer. "They almost killed me."

Kane shrugged. "You lived," he asserted softly. "Perspective is everything."

Orion gritted her teeth. "You sick cunt."

        Once again, Haven found herself battling the overwhelming urge to rip off her sling . . . if only to use it as a weapon to smack him across the face. "You're unbelievable," she muttered beneath her breath. "What do you expect me to do, Kane? Slit my wrist so they can bow down to me like they do for Lexa?"

"Absolutely not." Kane shook his head with enough force to make the denial appear genuine. His arms folded across his chest, brow knitting together, as if her accusation had struck a nerve. "I—I don't know how it is biologically possible for you to share the same blood type. Whatever the cause, they respect it. And can use that to our advantage." His lips twitched into that barely-there smile again. "But beyond that... they listen to you."

        Haven barked out a bitter laugh. "I don't really wanna be used to your advantage," she spat. "I've already been your tool for four goddamn years. Remember that?"

"It's not for my sake, Haven. Your friends in Mount Weather are depending on us," Kane reasoned, his words infuriatingly even, utterly undisturbed by her resistance. "And when Bellamy radios for backup... we need to be ready."

Haven felt her ribs collapse. Again.

"Fine," she breathed out, the word heavy, saturated with resignation. Her free arm swept across her chest to cradle her sling. "Fine. When are the Grounders coming?"

        At that, Kane shifted uneasily on his heels, the rare crack of discomfort slipping through his typically composed exterior.

        "...Now."

Before Haven could blink—let alone detonate into the whirlwind of outrage that Kane's scheming demanded—thunder erupted in the distance.

Not from the skies, but from the earth itself.

        Footsteps.

        All eyes snapped towards the front gate.

        Looming on the horizon came the Grounders—a storm-bound procession carved from stone and shadow. At their helm stood none other than Indra, a woman of deceptively small stature, though she towered over her warriors in presence alone. Her every movement commanded reverence; the wind seemed to part for her, the massive figures trailing her like shadows bound to an unforgiving sun. Behind her, the sea of warriors shifted with the weight of their armor—steel and leather groaning in unison, the metallic clatter a symphony of impending war.

        "Dude..." Orion's whisper warmed the shell of Haven's left ear. "...We're cooked."

        As the Grounders approached, the divide between them and the Arkadians shrank with every pounding footfall. Byrne and the other guards stiffened, hands twitching near their weapons, their gazes wary and alert. Tension rippled through the crowd as the Grounders finally breached camp's boundary, marching unflinchingly into what was once enemy ground.

And then . . . the storm stilled.

The procession came to a halt.

Indra's dark eyes swept the gathered faces, piercing, calculating, before settling on Kane. On Orion. And then on Haven. It was as though she could peer beneath the veneer of appearances straight into the marrow of their intentions.

. . . Yikes.

What once was enemy territory now felt like a battlefield waiting to ignite.

        "Mounin," Kane greeted warmly, the Trigedasleng rolling off his tongue with practiced respect. It was a gesture of peace, a bridge made of sound, and Haven, thanks to Lincoln's teachings, caught its meaning—welcome. "I thought we'd start with a reception, then move on to training. We have a lot to learn from each other."

        But Indra was not looking at him.

        . . . She was staring at Haven.

        Haven could feel the enormity of her scrutiny—razor-sharp, stripping her bare, piece by excruciating piece. It wasn't the first time Indra had looked at her this way. She remembered the iron grip that had shoved her into the clearing for what was meant to be her execution. But this . . . this was worse. There was no crowd to witness her degradation, no rope to bind her, no knife to make the death swift. Just the crushing silence of Indra's dissection, peeling her apart layer by layer, as though Haven's existence itself was an offense.

        She felt naked.

        Her scars were the first to fall under Indra's observation—stitches pulled taut across her throat. Then to the sling that held her mutilated shoulder, and the mythology book tucked awkwardly against her chest, a shield made of paper rather than steel. But it wasn't just the physical wounds Indra was crucifying. It was the unseen ones—the unwitting mirror of Dahlia, the ghost of her execution, the biological truth she carried in silence.

        Indra saw it all.

        Under the magnitude of her glare, Haven suddenly felt . . . minuscule, smaller than she'd ever felt in her life.

        But she did not allow herself to buckle.

        "Natblida," Indra drawled coldly. "I am surprised you are still standing."

        Haven lifted her chin. "Indra," she addressed, her tone warm—mockingly so, though not dripping with Kane's polished diplomacy. "I'm surprised Bellamy hasn't killed you yet—but here we are."

        Kane went deathly pale.

        Indra, however, did not seem offended. Not even remotely. Her expression barely flickered, though a slight narrowing of her eyes betrayed the faintest crack in her composure. Annoyance, perhaps. Or boredom. If anything, the remark seemed more expected than shocking, as though Indra had already accounted for Haven's bluntness—and even more so for the inevitable mention of Bellamy Blake.

        "...You huomons are so predictable," she muttered at last.

Haven lifted her chin higher. "Anyway..." she began evenly, as if the brewing tension wasn't threatening to strangle the air itself. "I'll spare you the civilities that I know you don't want to hear from us. You were gracious enough to allow us into your village—this is ours."

       With a fluid motion, she gestured to the near-barren, lifeless expanse of Camp Jaha and the dark, gaping mouth of Alpha's porthole. The sweep of her arm was light, almost dismissive, yet laced with a pointed awareness of the place's inadequacies. She didn't expect kindness from Indra. Approval was a fantasy she would never indulge in. But she also wouldn't offer any apologies for what Skaikru had built—or failed to.

        Let Indra witness the cracks and the flaws.

        Let her judge.

        Haven refused to be ashamed of what they had cultivated . . . no matter how fractured it was.

       "Try not to laugh when you see how dull it is."

Indra's eyes swept across the territory with a single, deliberate turn of her head, her jaw tightening as she absorbed the barren monotony of Camp Jaha. "Your community is... bland," she murmured. "Trikru has culture."

"That's exactly why you're here," Haven answered, her words honeyed, forcing her lips into the semblance of a smile as she gestured toward an empty crate. "C'mon. Weapons there. Only our guards are armed here."

        Indra visibly hesitated.

"Don't worry," Haven hummed sweetly, leaning forward ever so slightly . . . just enough to underscore the bite of her next words. "I won't make you lift up your shirt."

        At that, Kane very pointedly cleared his throat—a silent, unspoken command to shut the hell up.

        Haven, of course, did not care in the slightest what Marcus Kane thought of her tactics—or her tongue, for that matter. He was the one who had dragged her into this political shitshow in the first place. If he wanted smooth and polished—he should've cowered behind the phantom podium himself, spinning gilded words to the masses as he always did. If he wanted safe . . . he should've kept Haven far, far away.

        But no.

        Kane had chosen her.

        He'd chosen the girl who did not flinch from jagged edges, who wielded mayhem as her weapon, and refused to soften herself for anyone—not even for the towering, stone-faced warriors glaring daggers at her now. If her words cut too deeply, if they struck like fists instead of olive branches, that was on him. Kane wanted her voice, her presence, her particular brand of chaos.

        So, here she was . . . lighting the fire and daring the wind to catch it.

Haven knew what the fuck she was doing.

         . . . Mostly.

        Unflinchingly, Indra began to disarm, surrendering her blade into the hollow crate with a resonant clatter. Her eyes never wavered from Haven's—an unspoken vow of defiance, or perhaps obedience, seething silently between them.

        Soundlessly, Haven turned on her heel, a specter of quiet authority carving a path through the ruins. Kane hesitated, his breath caught on the edge of her shadow, before falling in line. Behind her staggering, the procession begrudgingly spilled into Alpha's porthole—Skaikru and disarmed Trikru alike—bound together by the gravity of Haven's silent command.

        The air inside the satellite's exoskeleton was stifling, saturated with the weight of too many unspoken truths and barely restrained tempers.

"Okay." Orion's whisper was low, teasing, but sharp enough to resonate in the hollow corridor as they ventured deeper. "Not too bad, Hav. Indra only looked like she wanted to stab you... what? Twice?"

"Shh," Haven hissed, shooting the Vincetta girl a sharp glance of reproach. "You suck at whispering."

"And you suck at talking to authority figures without making them want to shishkabob you," Orion shot back, lifting her shoulders in an unapologetic shrug. Her lips melted into an outrageously innocent smile. "Yin-yang, bitch."

Haven let out a quiet huff, rolling her eyes fondly, though she refused to let the smile tugging at the corner of her mouth fully form.

        Kane's voice cut through the uneasy quiet next, falling into step just behind Haven and Orion, his stride aligning seamlessly with Indra's. "Thank you for agreeing to this, Indra."

        "We're here on the Commander's orders," Indra shot back, her gaze steely and focused as she scanned the alien interior for potential threats. "I agreed to nothing."

        Haven began to walk backwards, shuffling as far as her stitches would allow her to, confronting Indra while still guiding the way forward. "You're here, aren't you?" she countered evenly, tilting her head towards the looming doorway ahead. "The Chamber Room is right through here. I'm sure Kane will launch into his speech any second now, so... please, get as comfortable as you can in our five-star tomb."

        Kane shot Haven another death glare.

        Paradoxically, Haven met his warning with a perfectly unbothered, blank stare—though her fingers twitched with the impulse to flip him off.

        As the Grounders began to file into the Chamber Room, Haven felt a sharp, simmering resentment lance its way up her spine. Of all the places to gather, to deliberate on unity and justice, they had chosen this—an iron box suffocating beneath the weight of history. On the Ark, there hadn't been much choice; steel walls were the only constant, a necessity to contain judgment and secrets alike. But here, on Earth, those same walls felt insulting, oppressive, and . . . wrong.

        The room shrank with every Grounder who stepped through its threshold, their quiet, tense movements stripping the air of what little oxygen remained. The steel did not offer protection—it imprisoned them. This was no place for negotiation or peace; it was a goddamn deathtrap.

        A cage.

        . . . They should've had this meeting outdoors.

        Beneath the expansive sky, where the wind could scatter tension and the Earth could remind them of what they were trying to build—not for the Grounders' sake alone, but for Skaikru as well. Because Haven wasn't exaggerating when she'd called this cursed place a tomb. If there was any hope of progress, any flicker of diplomacy, it would have to ignite within the first two minutes. Maybe less. Before the air turned too thick to breathe, someone's composure cracked, and all hell broke loose.

         . . . Because it always did!

        Every. Damn. Time.

        And as Haven caught sight of the disgraced figure of Thelonius Jaha lingering disdainfully at the chamber's outskirts . . . she knew he felt the same.

"What's up, Hav?"

The greeting snaked through the air like oil over flame—smooth, deliberate, and utterly grating.

As Haven settled into her spot between Octavia and Orion, the hairs on the nape of her neck didn't just wither—they burned, singed to ash by the suffocating presence of John Murphy. Even after his apology tour, his proximity still ignited an instinctive urge to choke slam him on the spot. It wasn't just his words, his tone, or the customary smirk that twisted across his face. It was his very aura—the infuriating, exasperating energy that seeped from him, warping even his most benign attempts at conversation into nails scraping across her skull.

"Beat it, fruitcake," Orion hissed, stiffening from her vigil at Haven's left and reflexively itching for the hilt of her sword. "I get that Bellamy's gone, and you want to, like, sniff Haven's hair to remind yourself of him, but—"

"I think you need to pick up a new hobby besides obsessing over me, Orion," Murphy interrupted snidely, reveling in the sheer predictability of her outrage. "I didn't realize you spent so much time daydreaming about me sniffing hair. Is that, uh, a fantasy you wanna unpack, or—"

        "I fantasize about rocket launching you into a freakin' ravine," Orion shot back. "Wanna test my follow-through?"

        "I just wanted to say hello to my friend."

Haven stifled the impulse to groan. "We're not friends."

"Whatever you say." Murphy leaned casually against the cold steel wall, his gaze flickering over her with an expression that almost—almost—resembled fondness, though it was veiled beneath his usual veneer of mockery. "Look at you. Leading the charge now. Gotta admit, it was a bit of a shock seeing you and Kane walking shoulder to shoulder. But... oh."

The words stumbled, his voice hitching as his eyes dropped lower, finally catching onto the jagged lines of her stitches.

"Oh, shit."

Once again . . . Haven found herself subjected to the unbearable scrutiny of merely existing. Murphy's serpentine eyes traced every lattice of Jackson's careful stitching along her throat, lingering on the sutures peeking out from beneath her jacket's collar. Every brush of his stare felt like salt ground into raw flesh—not for its intensity, but for what lay beneath it. It wasn't mockery or disdain, as she might have expected, but something exponentially worse.

Understanding.

Not the distant, detached kind, but something visceral and unnervingly close, as though the stab wounds weren't just hers, but his too. As though Murphy could feel the edges of the blade as intimately as she could. And in that fleeting moment, Haven felt stripped bare—not by judgment, but by recognition.

A reflection of her agony staring back at her through the one person she wanted nothing more than to despise.

        And then . . .

       "You lose a fight to a blender or some shit?"

Haven's retort fell hollow and flat. "Don't look at what you can't touch."

"Touch—?" Murphy scoffed, blinking and slouching further against the wall, as though her words had shaken him from some unwelcome reverie. "Relax. Bellamy can play Operation with that mess. Not me. I actually value my fingers staying attached—thank you very much." His gaze flicked once more to the seething sutures and the arm cradled in its sling. "I mean, I heard the torture was bad, but... yikes. What's next? They send you a punch card? Ten stabs and the next one's free?"

Haven shot him a look that could have withered monuments. "You done yet?"

        But John Murphy, being Murphy, had never been one to quit while he was ahead—or at all. "...Is now a bad time to say that we're finally even?"

        "I will stab you in your fucking eye."

"Just one? Not both—?"

Haven shifted to retrieve her blade.

All at once, Murphy flinched, his grin vanishing as his hands shot up in exaggerated surrender. "Whoa, whoa, easy now! No need to escalate," he quipped. With a theatrical flourish, he took three overly dramatic steps back, his boots clanging loudly against the floor. "See? Respecting boundaries. No knives necessary. I'm learning."

. . . Dick.

        "Alright, quiet down."

Kane's voice effortlessly cut through the uneasy hum of Arkadian whispers and the lethal, heavy silence of the Grounders. He stepped toward the deliberation table at the center of the room, his face meticulously composed, the practiced mask of diplomacy firmly in place. With a measured sweep of his hand, he gestured first to Indra—the war-forged, glorious advisor whose presence demanded fear—and then to Haven, the twenty-year-old girl still white-knuckling her mythology book.

"Haven, Indra," he began evenly. "Please."

        Summoning every ounce of conviction she could scrape together, Haven stepped forward, her jaw tight as she fought to mask the subtle drag of her injured hip. Reaching Kane's left, she stopped, while Indra moved fluidly into position at his right.

But as Haven lifted her gaze, the weight of the room crashed down on her with the enormity of a collapsing sky. The sheer magnitude of eyes—Grounder and Arkadian alike—seemed to vacuum the very breath from her lungs. This wasn't just Indra's sharp scrutiny or the crucifying judgment of the Grounder procession.

        This was everyone.

        Too many eyes. Too many expectant stares.

Too many people waiting for guidance she wasn't sure she could give.

        . . . How did Bellamy and Clarke do this all of the time?

Kane set the tone first. "I know we don't have a lot in common, but we do have a common enemy and a common goal," he started firmly, sweeping his gaze across the chamber. Every scowl, every hollow pair of eyes seemed to absorb his words, whether in resentment or reluctant curiosity. "And for us to reach it—to get our people out of Mount Weather—we need to work together."

A flicker of hesitation crossed Haven's face as she stepped forward. "Ogeda," she translated, the Trigedasleng rolling hesitantly off her tongue—not from a lack of belief, but from the fear of mangling the words as Kane had so famously done. "Skaikru and Trikru."

        Together.

        "Ogeda," Kane reiterated. "Our survival depends entirely on you sharing your knowledge of this world."

        Haven nodded. "We recognize that you have lived here long before us. We recognize that your army, your livelihood, and your existence predates our own by a landslide," she continued, gripping her mythology book with a force that left her nails pressing half-moons into its spine. "But the survival of your people in Mount Weather—and against the Mountain Men—also depends on our tactics as well."

        Indra could not restrain her protest. "Trikru depends on no such thing," she hissed out. "Our ways are unbroken."

        "Change doesn't dishonor your culture," Haven countered evenly, forcing her posture to straighten and her tongue to sharpen as she faced the formidable warrior. "Respectfully... you've been getting your asses kicked by the Mountain Men for years. Don't let your pride doom your survival. You're strong—but strength without adaption is a death sentence. Refusing to admit there's more to learn won't protect your people."

        She met Indra's death glare head-on.

        "It will bury them."

        Much to Haven's surprise . . . Indra did not bare her teeth or unleash another scathing, scornful protest. Instead, the warrior stood motionless, her expression carved from stone, unreadable save for the faintest flicker of something—reluctance, perhaps, or begrudging consideration. Granted, she didn't look particularly pleased by Haven's blunt assessment, but she also didn't look like she was about to skewer her on the spot.

Thank the goddamn stars.

        Fractionally, Haven's shoulders eased, her grip on the mythology book loosening as she allowed herself the smallest breath of relief. It was by no means a victory, but a silent success—however fleeting.

       Orion and Octavia shot her a lively thumbs-up from one side of the room—one that was swiftly mirrored by David on the opposite side.

And then . . .

        Just beyond the girls, Haven's gaze snagged onto Murphy—locked in a low, venomous exchange with another warrior. Murphy, ever the portrait of indifference, lounged against the tension as if it were a throne carved for him. But when the warrior swatted the drink from his hand—Murphy shot to his feet at once, agitatedly shoving the man backwards and plunging them both into the crowd's limelight.

         Haven immediately grimaced.

Well . . . fuck. Here we go.

        "Mr. Murphy!" Kane barked, abandoning his diplomatic stance at the center of the room to level a scathing glare at Murphy. "Apologize to that man."

Murphy didn't so much as breathe in Kane's direction. "For what?" he challenged flatly, refusing to peel his eyes away from the warrior looming across from him. "He was the one who came at me."

. . . Haven knew that was true.

But Kane wasn't swayed by truth or circumstance. "Two days work detail."

"Work detail?" Murphy echoed, ripping his eyes away from the Grounder to glare at Kane, exasperation flaring hot in his voice. "I just told you, I didn't do it—"

"Care to make it three?"

        Haven jabbed her good elbow sharply against Kane's torso. "Kane," she hissed under her breath, careful not to disturb the suffocating silence that hung over the chamber. "Stop. Talking. You suck at de-escalating Murphy."

Kane cut her a sidelong glance, but before he could muster his condescending retort . . . the unexpected happened.

Murphy was the first to back down.

        The tension in the atmosphere stretched taut as he severed eye contact with the Grounder, though the strain of it was etched into every line of his pale frame. His jaw tightened, fists twitching at his sides, and his lips curled into a contemptuous sneer as he finally shifted his gaze to the floor. Without a word, he sought to escape the oppressive walls of the metal tomb—and perhaps Kane's consequences—before his smoldering irritation found the spark to set it aflame.

        But . . . like all things on Earth, Haven knew the peace was a fleeting mirage—a thin veil fluttering over the face of perpetual turbulence. Nothing ever resolved that smoothly here. She saw it before it happened—the flicker of defiance in the Grounder's eyes, the coiled tension in his frame as he curled his lips into a scowl.

        His taunt struck like gunfire.

        "You can burn just like your friend."

Murphy froze.

One heartbeat passed. Two. Three.

And then, like a live wire finally snapping beneath the scorch of too much voltage, Murphy spun backwards—crashing his knuckles against the Grounder's face before launching his entire body after him.

"Murphy!" Kane barked. "Murphy! Stop!"

        His commands landed on deaf ears.

Before Haven could draw a breath, the riot finally detonated—an explosive clash between Grounders and Arkadians, dragging every soul into its cataclysmic wake. Bodies collided in a storm of fists and fury. Murphy and his adversary tumbled to the floor, only to be trampled by guards and warriors alike, their tangled forms kicked at and clawed apart as the mob surged around them. David's barked orders were swallowed by the roar of the clash. Byrne and Kane reeled from sharp blows. Crimson splattered across the steel floor. Noses cracked. Knuckles split. Haven's book slipped from her grasp, its worn pages fanning helplessly against the blood-slick floor as her shoulder was jostled by a stray arm. Orion and Octavia flanked her like shields—a desperate attempt to protect her prone form against the surging tide of bodies.

        But the chaos was insatiable.

        An elbow drove into Orion's ribs, earning a snarled curse as she retaliated with twice the force, fists flying. Octavia was dragged in next, hurling profanities as she threw herself into the fray, vainly attempting to maintain peace. And soon enough . . . Haven felt herself being swept away, caught in the raging current of violence as the world devolved into pandemonium.

Again. Again. Again.

Haven had always understood this was coming. Conflict between the warring factions wasn't just likely—it was inevitable, a ruin written in the stars long before their feet touched Earth. Two dissonant orbits—spinning too wildly, too differently—to ever truly align. Destiny had come to collect. If not for her injury, she would've nosedived into the tumult, fists flying in a frantic bid to tear apart the clash of bodies herself.

        Perhaps her body had betrayed her.

        But her voice remained unshaken.

        "ENOUGH!"

         The Grounders froze first, their feral aggression stalling as countless eyes snapped to her, wide and startled. Slowly, the tide of bodies followed, movements stuttering into stunned silence.

Seething, Haven gritted her teeth, every muscle in her body wailing in protest as she forced herself to move. With trembling hands, she gripped the edge of the deliberation table, her knuckles moon-white from the strain. One heave. Another. Somehow, she managed to haul her aching frame atop the metal, planting her feet unsteadily as she rose to stand tall.

"I don't care who started what!" Haven shouted, straightening as much as her battered form would allow, forcing her lungs to expand against the tightness in her ribs. "Not anymore! We've both done terrible, terrible things to one another! Wasting time—pointing fingers, keeping score—has done nothing but pile up the bodies of both our people!" She jabbed a condemning finger at the crowd before thrusting it towards the purgatory looming in the distance. "Here—and in Mount Weather!"

Haven towered over them now, eclipsing them in stature and presence, her shadow elongated commandingly across the blood-slick floor.

"Trikru—your anger is justified," she declared, her eyes locked onto the mournful warrior who had taunted Murphy. "Your grief is justified, your mistrust—all of it, justified. But so is Skaikru's!" Her voice quivered as memories surged unbidden—of the graves left behind at the dropship, of her own body laid bare for punishment. "You... you killed our family too! You cheered while my body was mutilated! But I'm still here—still alive—fighting for you and your survival, because I can see past the pain for what's at stake!"

        Agony knifed through her lungs as Haven stared down at the sea of bodies, their faces frozen mid-conflict, yet utterly immobilized beneath the crushing weight of her will. For a moment, she swayed, knees nearly buckling under the pressure.

        But then . . . Kane's bruised eyes met hers.

        A subtle nod.

No words. No gestures. No scorn.

A lifeline in the storm, soundlessly urging her to stand tall amidst her nerves . . . to keep going, even as her lungs threatened to collapse.

Do it for Clarke. Do it for Bellamy.

        "We can't allow our mistakes and our differences to harm our people any further." Haven threw down the declaration with the conviction of a thousand solarstorms. "Grieve. But grieve with perspective. Honor our dead by refusing to let more of us join them. And if you won't allow yourself the chance to try..."

Her foot slammed against the table below.

        "Then get the fuck out of this room."

Silence roared. Apocalyptically.

In the wake of Haven's declaration, no one dared to openly sneer in protest, though the atmosphere lacked a clear wave of acceptance. Uneasy eyes shifted rapidly between Arkadians and Grounders. Nerves twitched beneath the surface of volatile skin. Fists clenched and unclenched, the residual heat of violence still smoldering in the charged air. Spines straightened, vertebrae snapping taut, as if some unseen force had bound the assembly to Haven's words—unwillingly, unknowingly, but inescapably.

        As the heavy silence stretched, confirming that no one would dare challenge her further, Haven gave a curt nod and shifted to descend from her makeshift podium.

One voice rose above the stillness.

"Newana is correct."

Begrudgingly . . . it was Indra who bent to retrieve Haven's fallen mythology book from the floor. She scuffed off a bloodied boot mark from its worn cover, attempting to restore some dignity to the object before thrusting it back into Haven's palm.

Her stare was a weapon unto itself.

        "Ogeda," she intoned lowly. "Or die."

• •

BELLAMY DID NOT KNOW HOW TO EXIST WITHOUT HALF OF HIS ATOMS. Every breath was violence, dragging lifeless air into lungs that screamed for the alchemy of Haven Grey Smith—air touched by her, shaped by her presence, the only kind his body recognized as home. His heart was a shattered metronome, its rhythm gutted and discordant, searching for her like some maddened child or lost dog.

        It didn't beat. It begged.

        He knew that their separation during the rescue mission was only temporary. He clung to it with a ferocity that bordered on delusion—because the permanent alternative was unthinkable.

        And yet . . . fuck.

        Bellamy hated this.

He hated the plan he had agreed to, and what he had essentially forced Haven to agree to as well. He hated the empty space beside him that pulsed like an open wound. He hated the silence where her voice should have been, the divinity of her laughter, the biting remarks that somehow softened the edges of their unkind world. He hated the seconds and miles that stretched between them, each one burning brighter, sharper, more agonizingly than the last. And he hated this godforsaken Grounder costume—the stench of leather and sweat clinging to his skin as he trailed Lincoln through the wilderness, miserably attempting to shut out the forest's taunting whispers of vastness.

Speaking of the wilderness . . .

        Bellamy also hated Earth.

        He hated running for his life almost every day, muscles burning and lungs gasping as if the ground itself conspired to kill him. He hated the way the sun scattered light across his bronze skin, illuminating the freckles he'd never cared for—freckles the celestial glow of outer space had left in quiet obscurity. He hated riverbanks, their deceptive calm hiding his very real and very private terror of drowning—the weight of his inability to swim pressing against him like a stone. And sand—god, he hated sand—the way it insolently crept into every crevice and its coarseness irritated his skin.

         Above all else, Bellamy loathed the way this damned planet spun—faster, unforgiving, and infinitely more relentless than any of the others they'd glimpsed from their perch in the stars. Earth refused to slow its furious pace. It denied him even the illusion of control, the tiniest fragment of power over his own fleeting existence. Every rotation stole more time from him—time to think, to plan, to build a future.

        Time to go back to her.

        He hated all of these things as an adult.

But as a boy . . .

        As a boy, Bellamy might have loved it.

He might've loved the dizzying spin of the Earth—the thrill of its wild, unrelenting motion. Running endlessly through seas of evergreen and soft, untamed grass, feet pounding against a world that felt alive beneath him. Inhaling fresh, crisp air instead of the sterility of recycled oxygen. Watching fireworks illuminate the sky instead of staring out at the quiet, distant brilliance of solar flares from behind steel-plated windowpanes. Learning the names of constellations Earthside, sprawled under an open sky, instead of tracing them through the narrow, distant view of a glass boundary.

He had always wanted to know Haven as a kid.

        He knew Finn and Raven kept her busy, and that she spent most of her time with Dahlia in the library when she wasn't under their orbit. But he wondered about her—had always wondered about her. What would his ten-year-old self have thought of her? To see her through the innocent, unjaded eyes of a child not yet burdened by survival and grief? On the Ark, baby pictures nonexistent; their childhoods were stories without beginnings, lives without the softness of memory.

What had Haven looked like before her hair was styled into locs, before her face carried the weight of battles she hadn't chosen? Had her smile been the same—wide, but wary—or had it been fuller, easier, unbroken by the shadows she now carried? Was the barely discernible gap between her third and fourth front tooth always there? Or had it been wider once—a quirk of childhood that shifted with the stubborn passage of time, closing like a wound learning to heal?

         . . . Was she happier?

        Bellamy often wondered if the boy he'd been might have found Haven in a way the man he was never could.

        It would've been fun to be a kid with her.

        To have a friend for Octavia.

        Maybe, in some kinder timeline, Earth hadn't burned beneath the force of its own destruction. Maybe nuclear warfare never came, and instead, they could have met in elementary school, their knees bruised and grass-stained as they tumbled together on the playground. Maybe he could've pushed her on the swingset, watched her throw her head back in laughter as she soared higher, higher, until the stars were almost within reach. Maybe they could've flown kites on windy afternoons, running side by side, the wind chasing them like a friend, not a predator. No spears, no blood, no fear—just the fragile dance of string and paper against a boundless sky. Maybe they'd upheld the traditions of a world that still knew how to hope—celebrating Halloween in crappy costumes and getting sick from swapping candy all night long.

        Maybe, in that life, he could've loved her longer.

        But he could not have loved her more.

What Bellamy felt for Haven wasn't bound by time or circumstance. It burned through every version of himself, every possibility, scorching with a brilliance that transcended chance and unspooled across every timeline the universe could conjure. Whether they were children on a playground, strangers in the stars, or the fractured souls they were now, the truth remained immutable—he couldn't have loved her more, even if he'd had a thousand lifetimes to try.

        Bellamy did not need the stars guiding his hand to love her.

        He chose it.

       Again and again, in every breath and every heartbeat, he chose her—not because the universe decreed it, but because Haven was the only thing in existence worth choosing.

        . . . Which, is why he had to get into that damn Mountain.

        He had friends to save.

        Enemies to destroy.

        And a promise to keep.

Bellamy Blake always made it back home.

        Summoning the mightiest of inhales, Bellamy held it in, the breath lodging in his chest like a clenched fist. Carbon monoxide crawled from his lungs in a slow, deliberate exhale—his gaze finally wrenching away from the rusted skeleton of an abandoned swingset in the distance.

Nightfall was approaching after a day's worth of relentless travel, and Bellamy did his best to focus elsewhere—to avert his eyes and dissociate from the putrid task at hand. Lincoln knelt beside the lifeless body of an elk, his hands unflinching as he gutted it—the rich, metallic tang of blood saturating the earth around them. The scent of iron was nauseating, clinging to every molecule of air, but Bellamy did not flinch.

        He couldn't.

        The plan was brutal but necessary.

        Coat Lincoln in the elk's blood—drench himself in the sickening stench of death to mask his humanity. To ensure the Reapers wouldn't catch even a hint of who Lincoln truly was as they descended into the darkness of those tunnels.

        Hence . . . why Bellamy was currently wearing the stupid Grounder costume.

        "Okay," Bellamy began, poorly restraining his grimace as Lincoln spread the elk blood across his throat. "We make it to the intake door without any of the real Repears seeing us. What happens then?"

"I kill everyone and you slip inside," Lincoln declared stoically. "Limestone."

"Right," Bellamy muttered, fetching the satchel of chalk from the depths of his makeshift warrior garb and passing it to Lincoln. He watched as the Grounder began spreading the powder across his already blood-slicked features, the pale dust mingling with the crimson in ghostly streaks. "So, in the meantime—we'll just blend in with the cannibals. Easy."

        Lincoln didn't respond, but Bellamy caught it—barely. The slightest twitch of amusement at the corner of the Grounder's mouth, there and gone in an instant. It left Bellamy blinking, unsure if he'd imagined it, the levity so fleeting it felt almost alien amidst the crushing weight of their mission.

        "Let's go." Lincoln rose from his position near the elk and fluidly reached for the spear he had used to claim its life. "We've still got a lot of ground to cover before dark."

        Yet, the echo of that almost-smile lingered, unearthing something deep within Bellamy's chest—a reminder of how strange and complex the man before him truly was.

        How did Lincoln do it?

How did this man—wrapped in the armor of a war-driven warrior—carry so much weight with so little reaction?

Life on Earth must have forged Lincoln into steel, hardening him against the bloodshed of a world that seemed designed to break those who dared to endure it. It was the kind of strength that Bellamy had thought he understood once, back when survival had been his only priority, when every decision had felt like a calculated risk for Octavia's life.

But his understanding had been flawed.

Bellamy found his thoughts unwittingly drifting back to the early days at the dropship. The chains. The blood. The raw desperation that had eviscerated his moral compass and driven him to torture the man now kneeling before him. He had thought Lincoln's stoicism was cold indifference then—something born of darkness—of everything Bellamy believed made the Grounders savage.

Now . . . he saw it differently.

Lincoln's stoicism wasn't callousness.

It was balance.

Beneath the quiet, impenetrable exterior was a well of something Bellamy didn't expect. There was a kindness to Lincoln, woven into every word, every valiant act he undertook to protect the hundred—deeds that remained largely unthanked and unrecognized. Even now, preparing to march Bellamy into the infernal depths of hell, Lincoln carried himself with a resolve that was strangely . . . human.

And that realization struck something deep within the Blake boy—a sharp pang of guilt, of humility, of shame for ever having believed otherwise.

        The Grounder hadn't let the blood on his hands define him. He hadn't let the pervasive horrors of Earth reduce him to the savage animal Bellamy had once so arrogantly believed him to be. Instead, Lincoln carried himself with a dignity that Bellamy realized . . . he had been missing in himself.

        Lincoln was a man who chose, again and again, to temper that hardness with silent, unwavering compassion.

        Truth be told . . . Bellamy wasn't sure if he envied Lincoln for it, respected him for it, or hated himself for not recognizing it sooner.

        Perhaps all three. Probably.

. . . Definitely.

        "Hey," Bellamy called out, rising to his feet and quickening his steps to catch up with the warrior striding ahead of him. "I need to know what happens beyond the intake door."

        Lincoln kept his eyes vigilantly trained on the ashen horizon. "They remove your clothes, blast you with warm water, and douse you with something that burns even worse," he began, wholly ignorant of the grimace that twisted Bellamy's freckled features . . . again. "Then we were sorted. The others were tagged Harvest. I was tagged Cerberus and turned into a Repear."

        "Cerberus." Bellamy breathed the word with startling recognition. "The three-headed dog who guards the underworld."

        Lincoln cast him a curious glance.

"My mom read mythology to us all the time," Bellamy explained, his voice quieter now, softened by the bittersweet flood of nostalgia rushing into his chest. "Cerberus wasn't just a guard. He was a protector—of something dark, yeah, but also... sacred. Mythology's funny like that." His eyes wistfully clouded over. "Shared the story with Hav when I'd sneak books to her as her Guard. Octavia loved it too."

The words came out haltingly, as though they carried a weight Bellamy hadn't been prepared to unearth. If he closed his eyes long enough, he could almost feel the familiar press of his chin against Haven's shoulder back aboard the Go-Sci Ring, the two of them devouring every forbidden page of the contraband books he'd risked smuggling for her.

        But if Bellamy allowed himself to close his eyes for too long, if he held his breath and permitted his mind to wander to his dead mother—the faint, lingering cadence of her voice—it felt like prying open a wound that had never properly healed.

        The memory was his first version of home.

Octavia had loved reading too—not as much as Bellamy, but enough. Really, though, he had selfishly convinced himself that what she truly loved was him reading to her. That she loved the sound of her big brother's voice weaving tales of gods and monsters, spinning myths of worlds far removed from their own bleak reality. They would curl together beneath the floorboards of their living quarters, and Bellamy would whisper every scripture of Greek and Roman mythology that Factory's library had carried.

        But then he hit puberty.

        Bellamy's frame stretched out, becoming too lanky, too broad to squeeze into the narrow confines beside her. As his body expanded, those precious, stolen moments of solace began to dissolve, overshadowed by the burgeoning weight of responsibilities that came with growing up.

Room checks.

Time after time, Bellamy was forced to abandon his little sister beneath the floorboards, pretending that he wasn't internally decaying as Octavia begged—pleaded—for him to leave the boards cracked.

        Just a millimeter.

. . . She was terrified of the dark.

"You're good for her," Bellamy said suddenly, the words tumbling out before he had time to second-guess them. But they weren't empty, nor impulsive—they carried the weight of truth. "You made her strong."

Lincoln shook his head. "Octavia is already strong," he stated, smoothly sidestepping a fallen tree branch and signaling for Bellamy to follow. "So is your huomon."

        At that, Bellamy arched an eyebrow.

Huomon.

The syllables had lingered in the shadows of his memory, creeping into moments when he hadn't cared enough to question their weight—until now.

        From Nyko. In the dropship.

" . . . If you show up anywhere near the proximity of your huomon, they will take it as a threat. . ."

From Indra. In the dining hall.

". . . Can you not smell the stench of devotion rotting beneath your own nose? Em ste em huomon! . . ."

The Grounder language had always been foreign to Bellamy—an intricate wiring of sounds he hadn't cared enough to untangle. He wasn't well-versed in Trigedasleng, nor had he ever made much effort to actively learn it. His pride, or perhaps his prejudice, had seen to that. If he were a different man, he might have set aside his resentment and embraced the language for its strategic value, or even for its undeniable beauty.

But he wasn't.

And so the words had mindlessly swirled around him—foreign and unimportant—except one.

Huomon.

The word surfaced too often, weighted with significance whenever Haven's name—or his—hovered in the air. He had heard it spoken in hushed tones, echoing in the mouths of the villagers at Tondc, who observed him and Haven as if they were something worth whispering about. At first, Bellamy had dismissed it, bristling with the assumption that it was just some fuckin' Grounder slur. Perhaps another insult to degrade Haven further—a sneer layered beneath their ostensible Natblida reverence.

        (He also hated when they called her that.)

But now . . . Lincoln's casual use of the word halted Bellamy dead in his tracks. There was no malice in it. No disdain. A simple truth, delivered gently, as though the meaning behind it had been obvious all along.

And maybe it had been. Just not to him.

Bellamy's jaw tightened on instinct. He wasn't certain whether the heat rising in his chest was curiosity or irritation—or both. "Huomon," he repeated, the word clumsy and foreign on his tongue. "What does that mean? Why does everybody keep calling Haven that?"

"It means what it's always meant," Lincoln answered with disarming simplicity. "Wife." 

Bellamy nearly choked on his goddamn tongue.

"Husband. Spouse. Partner," Lincoln continued, his tone still maddeningly neutral, entirely unaware—or perhaps perfectly aware—of the revelation he had just dropped. "It's interchangeable, but definitely further above what your people call... dating." He spun around as he recognized the absence of Bellamy's footfalls. "Haven is your wife... is she not?"

Bellamy stood rooted in place.

Lincoln blinked at him. "...You two are not married?"

         Clearing his throat, Bellamy shook his head, vainly attempting to shove the flush at the nape of his curls back where it belonged. "Kinda hard to do that when we've been running for our lives for the past two months."

Lincoln tilted his head, scrutinizing Bellamy with that quiet, unnerving intensity. It was demoralizing, and it made Bellamy feel like every secret he'd ever attempted to bury was scorched across his forehead in ash.

        "Then why do you walk like she is—?" the warrior pressed, dumbstruck. "Octavia said you have loved Haven for half a decade."

        . . . Of course she did.

        "Things were different then."

        "And now—?"

Bellamy huffed out an agitated breath. "...I'm working on it," he admitted stiffly. "What's it matter to you, anyway?"

        As Lincoln's gaze intensified even further, Bellamy could finally place the unnameable emotion congealing in his chest.

        Insecurity.

Tradition wasn't what unnerved Bellamy—it wasn't the mention of marriage, a ritual he'd always considered a relic of a world long gone. No, Bellamy Blake was a traditionalist only insofar as Haven had transformed him into one. She had molded his chaos into something anchored and undying. Life with her transcended the sanctity of vows whispered at the altar of a dying world. Not when war loomed on the horizon, and certainly not when the bond they shared defied even the oldest of customs.

        But . . . god.

        Haven deserved permanence.

        She deserved something far grander than Bellamy's hollow assurances and unspoken vows. Something solid. Something that couldn't be stolen by the merciless winds of this fractured earth. A symbol, etched in gold, bound to a certain finger on a certain hand as he knelt at her feet. Something that would say—she was his, and he was hers, in ways that no war, no death, no goddamn apocalypse could ever erase.

        Until then . . .

        The Grounders' assumptions clung to him like thorns, digging into the tender, insecure places he hated to acknowledge. It wasn't shame—he could never be ashamed of loving Haven. Loving her was the truest thing he had ever done. She was the love of his goddamn life, the one thing in this apocalyptic world that he could look at and say . . .

        This. Is. Mine.

        And yet . . . there was a desperate, feral part of Bellamy that longed to cradle their love in his palms and shelter it from invasive eyes. The love he had for Haven was not meant to be crucified or questioned or publicly picked apart. It was not for Lincoln, not for any damn Grounder or outsider to claim understanding.

It was theirs.

        He'd be lying if he claimed that some selfish, gloating part of himself hadn't reveled in Lincoln's confession—the notion that others could feel the monumental enormity of what they were, even without Bellamy having to declare it aloud. But the revelation only served to sharpen the knife lodged between his ribs, insidiously reminding him of his own shortcomings—his failure to provide Haven with what she deserved.

. . . Yet.

        "It doesn't matter to me," Lincoln answered at last, his eyes flickering to Bellamy's clenched jaw before wisely choosing to back the fuck off. "The other members of Trikru take the title as respect, believe it or not. Be glad they don't know you aren't actually wed."

        Bellamy stared at him uneasily. "Why?"

        "Most know Haven as Natblida because of what she represents—a survivor of the poison sky." Lincoln resumed his stride through the wilderness, allowing Bellamy to begrudgingly walk in tandem beside him again. "But those who fear her know better. You both have coined titles for yourselves."

        "Yeah?" Bellamy scoffed. "And what's that?"

        "Newana en Haihefa." Lincoln answered the question with another soft, barely-there smile—Trigedasleng heavy on his tongue. "The Immortal and the King."

        Bellamy instinctively clenched his fists.

The Immortal.

A.K.A. Vampira 2.0 in Trigedasleng.

. . . Fucking bastards.

Lincoln's steps slowed just enough to glance sideways at Bellamy. "We gathered the titles from eavesdropping on the camp at your dropship," he jabbed lightly. "Not that it was hard, considering how obnoxiously loud you people were."

Bellamy glowered but did not bother with another wasted retort.

"You two are interwoven so... strangely." Lincoln stared straight ahead as he delved into the next part of his observation. "The others often speak of Haven alone. But they do not speak of you without her."

        Bellamy's throat constricted. "Why?"

        "She exists without you in their eyes," Lincoln admitted matter-of-factly. "You? You do not exist without her."

        Bellamy did not deflate at the sentiment.

        . . . It was true, after all.

"Still, the others recognize your bond as marriage and will act accordingly—especially with the alliance in place," Lincoln continued, acutely aware of Bellamy's irritability morphing into something . . . quieter. "Your charade as huomons grants you certain protections in Trikru territory. It is a useful deception—unless, of course, it's exposed for what it is." He shot Bellamy a sidelong glare of warning. "So... don't."

Bellamy nodded. Unflinchingly.

As Bellamy finally raised his eyes from the hypnotic cadence of his boots pounding the damp earth, he sensed the weight in his throat intensify—a lump too obstinate to swallow. The terrain beneath him was transforming—softer, spongier, the moss creeping through the soil as a silent warning. They were veering west, deviating completely from the path he believed they ought to follow.

"Wait." Bellamy halted once more, his body protesting with a heaviness that mirrored the ache in his chest. He gestured toward the dense foliage to their left. "The garage where we found you is north. That way."

Lincoln shook his head. "There's a mine entrance closer to where the Repears hand us over," he clarified. "We go into the underworld when we have to—not before."

For a fleeting moment, the warrior's eyes darkened, shadows flitting across them like ghosts, before he squared his shoulders and resumed his death march onward.

The men moved in perfect sync.

        Throughout the deepening shadows of their descent into hell . . . Bellamy could still feel the gravity of Lincoln's admission blanket over him like a second skin, heavy but familiar. It didn't strangle; it didn't suffocate. It simply settled, as truths often do when they've already taken root in the soul.

        He had always known that Haven was more than mortal flesh. She wasn't merely a star—she was the kind of cataclysmic light that birthed universes and annihilated them in the same breath. A supernova—wild and untouchable—her brilliance bent the world to her whim and reshaped it in the echo of her fury. Destruction and salvation. Ascension and deliverance. She moved through the world with unapologetic strength—a hymn of anarchy and divinity that neither gods nor men could silence.

She was not meant to be held, only worshipped—and yet Bellamy stood willingly in the eye of her storm, his mortal form eclipsed by her brilliance. He did not orbit her; he was drawn into her gravity, dissembled particle by particle, reshaped by her light until he could no longer recognize where he ended and she began. Her starfire consumed him—and yet he craved it—clinging to the burning as though it might make him eternal alongside her.

The Grounders saw it clearly.

He didn't exist without her—not in their eyes, and most certainly not in his own.

The sting of Lincoln's observation should have cut deeper, but it didn't. It was a truth Bellamy had accepted long before anyone else had spoken it aloud. Let the world crown her the Immortal. Let them quake in awe. Let them bow and weave her into myth. Let them lay their fears, reverence, and prayers at her feet, immortalizing her name in the annals of legend. Let them try to name him in her shadow with hollow titles of glory and might.

        Bellamy had no desire for the grand title of Haihefa, anyway—not when he had the privilege of being the fragile, breakable man who witnessed Haven's divinity up close and did not falter.

        Being her huomon was enough.

• •

HELLOOOOO

I FUCKING LOVE THIS CHAPTER.
this is genuinely one of my favorite things ive ever written. not even that it's anything particularly special but i just. ugh!!! scratches my writer brain and warms my heart and reminds me why this is my favorite thing to do :)))) a comfort chapter dare i say. everything has been SO sad and angsty so writing this and allowing haven to be back in her element was like a breath of fresh air. i wouldve had her fucking shit up with lexa and clarke but she can BARELY walk rn... it doesn't make sense plotwise for her to be there unfortunately
plus the bell pov <3 once again.... he loves to aggressively suppress his fears about haven's health/livelihood by damn near maladaptive daydreaming to cope
😜🤩🥳🥰 JUST LIKE ME TWIN!
but i really really i sincerely hope you enjoyed this as much as i enjoyed writing it

I ALSO REALLY HOPE SOMEONE GOT THE ANAKIN REFERENCE TOO PLS

ANYWAAAY!! little shoutout to the cerberus parallel too :,))) it can be applied to like 4 different things in this chapter. my fav is haven's relationship with her autonomy tho

LOVE YOU SO SO SO SO SO SO MUCH!!!! im so thankful to everyone forever and ever and ever and ever
🤎🤎🤎