• •

CHAPTER SIXTY SEVEN;

THE ANATOMY
OF SELF-DESTRUCTION.

THE FIRST HOUR OF SHADOWING EMERSON BLED INTO THE NIGHT LIKE A SLOW-MOVING POISON—unrelenting, consuming, and fucking exhausting. Haven's breaths slipped between her lips in shallow wisps, shivering in the bite of the moonlit air. Miraculously, the numbing salve still worked, softening the harsh pull of her stitches and lessening the sting of torn skin. But its presence pressed on her nerves like the weight of unwanted hands. Her arm remained numb, deadened, and her shoulder bore its emptiness as a vacant echo.

Pain might have been a whisper tonight, but exhaustion was a roar. It knifed through her muscles with every spiteful step, dragging her breaths from somewhere deeper and darker.

Ahead, Emerson's silhouette glided with the ease of someone untouched by the agony of immobility. Fluid. Fast. Seamless. But Haven's body remembered—remembered too well—what it felt like to stop for too long, to decay into silence, into nothingness. Her stamina was brittle now, every step a silent war against her lacerations and the subtle drag of her hip.

But whatever.

She was healing.

And Haven had endured worse than this. Far worse. Agony had been her constant companion for five years—a shadow stitched to her goddamn heels. It taught her to bear the unbearable. To breathe when breath was a luxury. To move when every part of her shrieked for surrender. This was merely another night—another fight against herself, and the blur of the monster who dared to walk so far ahead.

All she had to do was stick it out long enough to execute her plan.

(... Semblance of a plan.)

Once Mount Weather loomed closer—just close enough to keep her out of the Reaper tunnels—Haven would let Emerson see her. A deliberate move, calculated down to the marrow of her still-healing bones. Tsing's orders scrawled across the photographs were explicit enough to hold the weight of her confidence: PROTECT AT ALL COSTS. Emerson would not kill her because he could not kill her. In his eyes, Haven wasn't merely a girl; she was a prize wrapped in lacerated flesh, her value encapsulated by the ink running through her veins. He'd drag her back, triumphant and gloating, through the steel jaws of the Mountain.

. . . Back to Tsing.

And once Haven was back inside—past the suffocating cleanse of the decontamination process—she knew what she had to do.

1.) Manipulate Tsing. Twist that woman's cold, clinical greed into a weapon she wouldn't see coming. Haven's blood was leverage; her survival was their salvation. If she played it right, Tsing would lead her straight to her trapped friends.

2.) Slit Tsing across her fucking throat. No further explanation necessary.

3.) Kill the Mountain Men, not civilians. A storm tearing through the gut of the facility—freeing her friends, finding her mother, and effectively fucking shit up. Keep Bellamy off their radar long enough to finish what he started, to strike lethally from the shadows while chaos raged around them.

4.) . . . Try not to die in the process!

Believe it or not, Haven wasn't suicidal.

        Not now. Not yet.

        This wasn't about self-destruction, nor was it about throwing herself to the wolves for nothing more than the thrill of the teeth. No, this was about helping them—the boy who carved warmth into the frigid hallows of Haven's heart, the friends she'd promised would see the sky again. Her body was failing, a litany of stitches and fading strength, but her spite—that unrelenting flame—remained unextinguished. It surged through her like molten iron, reforging her, remaking her into something unbreakable. Every wound inflicted, every drop of blood the Mountain Men hungered to drain, had only tempered her further.

        Her strength wasn't born of desperation; it was born of love, and love made her untouchable.

        Haven breathed them in—their lives, their dreams, their impossible hope—and used it to anchor herself to the earth. Their faces and their laughter were carved into her ribs, inscribed onto her very soul. They were her lifeline. Her pulse. The only reason her knees hadn't buckled beneath her yet.

        She could do this.

        She would do this.

        Because for her friends . . . Haven remained exactly who she had been for the past five years.

        Death-proof.

As Emerson slowed his pace, Haven slipped into the cover of the nearest shrub, the brittle branches clawing at her skin as she sank into the shadows. Twilight had deepened now, soaking the forest in bruised hues of blue and black. It wasn't difficult to evade the Mountain Man's gaze whenever he had paused for breath.

        But the ease of her evasion soon turned to impossibility.

Haven's heart seized in her chest as she swiveled her head—her breath snagging violently on the biting edge of shock. There, merely a foot away in the half-darkness, crouched the last person she ever expected to find out here. Every muscle in her aching body stretched taut as their eyes met.

A glimpse of pale skin. Dark hair. That telltale smirk, though far more guarded in the low light.

The name slipped out of her, a near-gasp, too soft and too loud all at once.

"Murphy—?"

John Murphy crouched against the very same shrubbery, fingers stained with crumbs from a ration pack he'd been casually tearing into. His sapphire eyes flared wide in the dark—a predator caught by surprise—only to settle back into their signature glint of amusement. Rising to his full height, he emerged like a smirk personified, teeth flashing just enough to make her fists twitch.

       "Well... shit," he greeted. "What's up, Hav?"

The words cut through the silence like a blade—too loud, too Murphy—and Haven's heart plummeted. She lunged forward and slammed a palm over his mouth, her eyes darting wildly toward the distant silhouette of Emerson.

Murphy blinked, equally amused and affronted as he swatted her hand aside. "You're not as subtle as you think, y'know. Midnight escapes don't suit you. What's the emergency, anyway?" He leaned in, far too close for comfort, whispering conspiratorially. "Did somebody piss you off again? Or is this just your regular death wish calling—?"

Haven exhaled through her nose and barely refrained from rolling her eyes. "Not important," she huffed. "What are you doing out here?"

"Pit-stopping back at camp." Murphy shrugged, all effortless arrogance, though his eyes carried another story—razor-sharp, cutting, and inspecting. "Thought I'd grab some air before I keep playing prophet for Jaha. City of Light, salvation, blah blah fuckin' blah." His lips twisted bitterly. "Beats sitting around camp with nothing but shit company."

Haven's silence stretched as her attention flitted back to Emerson, the distant shape flickering in and out of view through the thickened shadows. It was only a second—a single damn second—but Murphy caught it. His grin faltered just enough for a glint of suspicion to shine through.

        "But you're not taking a midnight stroll, are you?" he pressed knowingly. "Nah. You're running."

        Haven felt stripped bare and skinned alive beneath the intensity of Murphy's stare. His scrutiny smothered her, worming its way into places she'd kept stitched and hidden—sutures not meant for anyone's eyes, least of all his. It wasn't just the way his gaze raked over her, cataloging every ragged breath, every trembling edge that betrayed her unseen agony—it was the knowing. That awful, invasive understanding behind his eyes, curling into the hollows of her exhaustion like smoke seeping through cracks.

And then, as if to salt the wound, his lips curled higher—cruel, predatory—twisting her predictability into something that clearly amused him.

       "Oh." Murphy shook his head and stifled his impulse to scoff. "Oh, for fuck's sake. Mount Weather—? Really? Tell me I'm wrong."

Haven said nothing. Again.

        "Of course." Murphy's expression faltered for half a breath before snapping back into place. "Of course, you're sneaking off to get yourself killed. Why am I even surprised? This is, like, your brand."

        Haven tilted her head. "You done yet?"

        "Not really." Murphy shrugged again, a hollow mimicry of indifference, though the tension in his shoulders remained taut. "I mean... what's the plan here, Hav? Hobble into Mount Weather with one arm and a butter knife? Hope they don't rip you to shreds while your delusional ass plays savior?" He cuttingly cocked his head to the left. "Or better yet... leave just enough of a corpse behind so that Bellamy doesn't drop dead when he stumbles over your body."

        Haven felt her blood ignite. 

        "Get out of my way," she muttered lowly, attempting to sidestep the snake in her path, her eyes catching Emerson's suit gleaming distantly under the moonlight. "I have to go."

But Murphy remained firmly planted.

        "No."

        "No—?" Haven echoed.

        "No." Murphy's voice was calm, infuriatingly so, as if he had already mapped out the end of this conversation. "It's just—I'm really trying to understand your reasoning here. Enlighten me. Why do you willingly keep trying to kill yourself?"

Haven shifted to bypass him again, only for Murphy to maddeningly counter her every attempt. "Get out of my way, Murphy," she snapped lethally. "You're gonna make me lose my lead."

"You've got people—actual people—who care about you, and this is what you do?" Murphy's eyes narrowed as they swept over her. But Haven did not look at him—she would not. Her focus remained unwaveringly fixed on Emerson, refusing to grant Murphy the victory of her attention. "Sneak off in the middle of the night to play the sacrificial lamb... like none of that matters. Like they don't matter. What is it, Haven?"

By the time Haven finally forced her way around him . . . Murphy simply fell into step beside her, shoving his hands into his pockets with an arrogance that only stoked the irritation in her veins. He matched her pace perfectly, mirroring her, as though he'd made it his mission to shadow her every step.

"Guilt?" Murphy taunted. "Shame?"

         The toxicity of his presence was a foul thing—rotten and insidious, curdling in Haven's gut and twisting it into knots.

"Or do you just hate yourself that much?"

"What the fuck is with your psychoanalysis?"

Haven spun on her heel so violently the air itself seemed to recoil, her sudden halt forcing Murphy to stop dead in the moonlit path. Molten, celestial starfire seethed in her gaze, as though her fury alone could reduce his flesh to ash. She stared up at him, incredulous, utterly fucking mystified by his audacity to dissect her like some . . . therapist, to presume he had the insight—or the right—to unravel her intentions.

"Jaha's really been talking your impressionable little ear off with all his prophetic bullshit, huh?" Haven sneered, clenching her jaw, the words flaring with the destructive heat of a thousand suns. "You were Bellamy's bitch... then the Grounders'... then mine. And now you're Jaha's. Nice upgrade." She shoved Murphy hard against the chest and forced him to stumble backwards. "Stop testing me and go fuck yourself."

But Murphy remained insatiable. "Testing? Nah," he drawled, as though he relished in provoking her. "This is me giving you a reality check. Y'know, as a friend."

"A friend," Haven echoed flatly.

Murphy nodded. "No one else has the balls to do it," he reasoned, daring another step forward and erasing what little space lingered between them. "You're out here playing martyr, getting yourself torn to shreds over and over... and for what? Huh? So everyone can feel sorry for you? So you've got another scar to show off?" His voice dipped bitingly lower. "Bravo, Hav. Bravo. You're officially the most self-destructive idiot I've ever met—and I'm standing right here."

        "You're so desperate to feel important, aren't you?" Haven could feel her patience waning thinner and thinner with every passing heartbeat. "Like sticking your nose in my business, judging me for the way I fight for my friends, somehow makes you worth something. All while you sit here, talking shit, and doing fuck all."

        In the distance, Emerson's silhouette moved further west—a phantom slipping away into the trees. Haven blinked hard, forcing herself to stomach her outrage, her steps snapping forward again as she veered back toward the dirt path.

        . . . But Murphy wasn't done.

        He moved with an audacity that bordered on suicidal, sauntering in front of her with the same unrelenting boldness that scorched her blood into blinding, cosmic wrath.

        Haven did not think.

        Before her instincts could be tempered—before Murphy could even register the shift—her blade was in her hand, drawn as quick as a breath. She moved with precision, the edge glinting cold and silver in the moonlight as she leveled it unflinchingly against the pale skin of his jugular.

        "Move," she demanded. "Now. Or I swear to god—"

        "Do it."

        Murphy leaned against the knife's edge and flashed his milky canines. "Prove me right. Or better yet, do what you always do—run off. Keep pretending you're the only one that's suffering, and leave the rest of your friends to pick up the pieces," he whispered tauntingly. "Go on, Hav. Be predictable. Same. As. Always."

        What the fuck was going on here?

        Haven seethed under the weight of Murphy's conviction, unfathomably enraged by his audacity—his belief that he had any right to unearth her truths, or the truths of her friends. Who misguided entitlement had granted him the right to speak about her loved ones? What made him think he could dissect her like she was some open wound he had the privilege of pressing his filthy hands into?

        Again. Again. Again.

        His words weren't truths; they were traps. Snares tangled in barbed wire, designed to restrain Haven, to seed doubt about the path she already knew she had to take. His voice wasn't insight—it was fucking interference. Noise. A smug, smirking roadblock planted firmly between her and the only thing that mattered.

        Haven was not trying to harm her friends, and she certainly wasn't blind to their suffering. She saw it. She felt it. Every scream, every desperate, gasping breath, every bruise and hollow-eyed stare—they lived inside her chest, haunted her cartilage, clawing at her ribs like bloodthirsty beasts. If turning herself into Tsing made Haven predictable, then fine. Predictability could be their sword and their shield. Predictability granted Bellamy the luxury of time to act, to safely maneuver the shadows and execute their plan. If that was the cost, Haven was willing to pay it a thousand times over.

At least her friends would still be breathing.

        It wasn't martyrdom.

        It wasn't some tragic spiral of self-destruction masquerading as heroism. This was choice—an autonomous, deliberate choice carved from the marrow of Haven's own will. She wouldn't let their friends be reduced to collateral damage, would not allow their lives to bleed out in vain—not while the obsidian price of their freedom pulsed through her veins.

She did not need Murphy's words.

        And she sure as hell didn't need him standing in her way.

        "You're a joke, Murphy," Haven hissed lowly, tightening her grip on the blade's hilt as she inched it closer, daring him to flinch. "A parasite leeching off people better than you. The only thing you're good at is staying alive long enough to fuck over the next person that's stupid enough to trust you." A whisper-thin laceration of crimson beaded against his throat. "Get out of my way before I stop giving you the choice."

Murphy leaned further against the blade.

"Better a parasite than the idiot pretending she's a hero."

"I'm not trying to be a hero!" Haven bit down on the sting of her outrage, forcing it into submission until her words emerged as a razor-edged whisper. "All I'm trying to do is help them. I—I just—I can't do nothing. They're bleeding them, Murphy. They know Bellamy's face. What the hell are you doing other than standing in my way and wasting my time?"

"Have you ever considered that I'm helping out by trying to keep you alive—?" Murphy snapped, inching closer despite the blade slicing deeper. Fresh blood tainted the metal's lethal edge. "Seriously, Haven. You think anyone's going to thank you for this? Did you even say goodbye to Orion? You think Bellamy's gonna look at your corpse and say, 'Wow, what a noble sacrifice'—?"

Haven gritted her teeth. "Murphy—"

"He'll curse you for leaving him, scream at your grave—then go off and fuckin' kill himself. Is that what you want?"

All at once, Haven retracted her blade, the veil of crimson clouding her vision overtaking what little control she had left. Her fist found Murphy's jaw with a sickening crack. Relentlessly, she drove him backward, his spine slamming against the bark of the nearest tree. The force reverberated, but he did not resist. He didn't even flinch. Even as her fist came down again—once, twice, a litany of rage etched in bruises—Murphy absorbed the blows as if he'd been waiting for them all along.

Her left arm swung murderously.

        But it did not matter.

        Haven could have kept throwing, could have beaten him black and fucking blue until the world faded to scarlet and he slumped lifeless at her feet—not out of wrath alone, but because she could. Pain was a ghost to her now. The freshly torn stitches beneath her shoulder brace were a mere afterthought. Her blood scorched with a primal need that silenced everything else. All she felt was the celestial fire roaring through her veins, the bloodlust screaming in her ears like a war drum. Her cells sang for unholy violence, her bones ached to destroy, and her fists trembled with the hunger to grind Murphy's smug face into silence—forever.

Just as she had wanted to that fateful day in the dropship.

He had tried to kill Bellamy, then.

        But now . . .

Haven froze mid-swing.
       
        As her breaths eased and clarity obliterated the fog of her fury, Murphy's blood-smeared lips twisted into another smirk. It was gloating as ever, though robbed of its usual serpentine bite by the blows she had delivered.

"Feel better?" he rasped.

        Haven spat out the words like acid.

        "I don't owe you an explanation."

Murphy shook his head, a wry chuckle bubbling through the agony as he spat a mouthful of scarlet onto the dirt. "Nah," he panted, sucking in his inhale through clenched teeth. "I guess you don't. But have fun explaining it to the people who'll have to bury you. Again."

At that, Haven turned her back on the bastard slumped against the bark, her fists clenching and unclenching in rhythmic patterns of five as she melted into the night. Emerson's silhouette had vanished, but the faint shimmer of his suit caught the moonlight, casting a ghostly sheen on the distant shrubbery. Her senses split—half catching the sticky warmth of blood on her knuckles, half sunk deep into the cold, creeping decay in her heart.

        Beside herself . . . she spun back around.

"Why does it even matter to you?"

Murphy's expression was carved from stone. "It doesn't," he concluded, his voice empty as the hollow between stars. He stiffly wiped at the final traces of blood spewing from his nose. "Go run off to your grand, stupid death, Hav."

        With a careless flick of his middle finger tossed over his shoulder, Murphy merged back into the foliage. His parting shot—a gritty, graceless goodbye—echoed faintly behind him as he vanished.

"Good luck."

LORELEI TSING WAS A MAJOR CUNT. Haven rarely indulged in Orion's favorite profanity, but as she blinked herself awake, half-naked and stripped to the bone—again—the word lashed across her thoughts with perfect precision. Her skin was bare beneath the sterile lights, clothed in nothing but the white of familiar undergarments. Her brain pulsed sluggishly, fogged and frayed at the edges, mushy like overripe fruit. It was the same crawling disorientation she'd endured in the Harvest Chamber.

       . . . But, this wasn't the Harvest Chamber.

It was a laboratory.

The small room was hewn from stone, its cold walls shouldering shadows that bled insidiously into the dark. At the center, an array of technology thrummed, cables snaking like veins and feeding the sheer monstrosity of data that loomed before her. Haven's vital signs could be seen glaring in bold, stark fonts across the screen of a monitor. Below, illegible texts flickered with medical jargon too foreign to comprehend—but undoubtedly invasive. A drill could be heard whirring faintly in the distance. Two Mountain Men flanked the room's only exit, the doorframe adorned by a lone crucifix at its center.

And then . . . there was her.

        Lorelei Tsing sat perched at the desk beside Haven's hospital bed. Every movement was deliberate, her presence suffused with a quiet, surgical cruelty that pierced far deeper than words. Upon noticing Haven stirring, she glanced up from the tablet beneath her fingertips, flashing the Smith girl an incongruously warm smile.

"Haven! You're awake!" Tsing greeted enthusiastically, the words wrapping around Haven like velvet chains—binding her even as they feigned kindness. "What a pleasure it is to see that you've returned to us."

Haven wanted to kill her on the spot.

        But reality very swiftly chained her rage. Weaponless, in enemy territory, and vastly outnumbered, she forced herself to make a cold, calculated decision: survival first.

        Vengeance could wait.

        (For, like, two minutes.)

        Instead, Haven shifted, lifting her spine from the hospital bed—and froze. The ease of the movement startled her. There was no ache, no pull of stitches, no scratching revolt from her bones or scar-ridden muscles. Pain, her constant companion, was simply . . . gone. Her movements were liquid, seamless, as though her body had been rebuilt, fine-tuned, and made new. It was terrifyingly intoxicating. For the first time in years, the Smith girl felt light, freed from the chains of her afflictions.

        She felt . . . normal.

        What the fuck?

        Tsing noticed her confusion and flashed her a saccharine wink. "Medication," she filled in smoothly. "The good kind. I administered it through your IV after you completed decon. Wiped out your pain real nicely, didn't it?"

        . . . Right.

        Decontamination.

Once she'd revealed herself to Emerson outside the Reaper tunnels, Haven knew what would follow. It had been inevitable—capture, subjugation, the cold efficiency of the Mountain Men. As soon as the unexpected duo reached the intake door, they'd recognized her instantly. No hesitation. No mercy. The acrid sting of some unidentified chemical had assaulted her face, scorching her lungs and dragging her consciousness into the void.

Haven could reconstruct the next sequence of events without needing to remember. The Mountain Men had hauled her limp body through the decontamination process—again. The humiliation of being stripped bare, scrubbed clean under the impersonal, assessing gazes of strangers, their lecherous judgment hidden behind masks and sterile gloves . . . it was nauseating. Haven bristled at the thought, a flash of humiliation festering beneath her skin, but it faded just as quickly as it had ignited.

This had been part of the plan.

She knew the cost before she'd made her choice.

. . . At least she wasn't in another cage.

        "Yeah." Haven managed, the word raw and uneven from the sting of chemical residue clinging to her lungs. Even her tongue felt scoured by sterilization. "Yeah. Thanks."

        Under the scrutiny of the lights, Tsing's eyes ravenously traced the roadmap of sutures that latticed Haven's skin. "I assume your stitches came from the savages," she mused. "Well, the wounds, at least. I had to intervene and repair the ones surrounding your shoulder, but the stitches themselves..." Her head tilted ever so slightly. "Remarkable work, actually. Were they performed by the same doctor who gave you that wristband?

        Haven blinked. "Why does it matter?"

        "Every attempt to remove or disable it has been met with lockout codes." Tsing gestured to the machinery encircling Haven's right wrist, her professional detachment cracking for the briefest second. Frustration flared like a spark. "I'm still not certain how it survived the decontamination process. Whatever alloy it's made of is... extraordinary. The person who designed it knew exactly what they were doing."

. . . Thank the goddamn stars for Jackson and Sinclair.

Though Haven was still unsettled by the new machinery that continuously monitored her vitals—it was hers to be uncomfortable with. Not Tsing's to dissect, nor anyone else's to exploit. The technology was ingeniously deceptive, presenting a keypad that suggested the need for a numeric passcode. But it was all a lie—a beautifully executed hoax. The true key to unlocking the wristband lay hidden within a fingerprint scanner. One that had been cleverly concealed and only accessible through voice recognition—a safeguard only three were privy to.

        Jackson. Bellamy. Clarke.

. . . Haven could not bring herself to scan her own fingerprint for clearance yet.

Jackson had urged her to enter her verification into the device, preaching that self-trust was a vital step toward recovery—or so he claimed. But Haven knew her own tempestuous heart better. Had it been solely up to her impulsive desires, the wristband would have already been torn off, hurled against the nearest wall, or tossed into the depths of the ravine.

        Twice, at least.

        Haven straightened on the hospital bed, swinging her legs over the edge in one smooth motion. She did not rise, but the shift in her posture was enough—a silent declaration of defiance. Her lips curled into a sneer as she studied the devil in the white coat. Compared to Tsing's calm, clinical composure, Haven felt unrestrained and feral. There was something primal in the way she stared the doctor down—a predator sizing up its prey—though the overhead lights hauntingly obscured who was who.

        Time to execute the plan.

        Piss Tsing off by simply being herself—then dive into manipulation.

        "...I'll pass along your compliments once we burn this motherfucker to the ground."

Tsing's eyes sparkled, her composure unshaken, but there was something else in her gaze—a glint of amusement. "Ah—yes," she hummed, arching an elegantly expectant brow. "Emerson informed us of your... secret army, was it?"

Haven gritted her teeth. "Damn right."

        "Hm." Tsing tilted her head—a gesture becoming familiar in its irritating poise—and tapped her fingers rhythmically on the smooth surface of her desk. The nonchalant drumming of her nails was so aggravatingly composed that Haven almost leapt across the desk and throttled her. "And does your army have anything to do with Bellamy Blake—?"

Oxygen ceased to exist.

Haven's pulse thundered viciously in her ears, each beat a warning bell reverberating through her skull. But outwardly, she remained carved from the coldest of moonstone. Not a flicker of emotion betrayed her—no trace of shock, no customary spark of outrage. Tsing's revelation was a scalpel slicing through flesh and bone, but Haven swallowed the agony and forced herself to stomach its sting.

So.

        She knew his name.

It wasn't shocking—not entirely. The red ink slashing across Bellamy's face on their surveillance photos had already told Haven what she needed to know. Tsing was always watching, always digging her greedy, bloodstained fingers into the marrow of secrets. For all Haven knew, this was just another calculated bluff, an attempt to worm her way into Haven's mind and unearth what lay hidden.

Good. Fucking. Luck.

"Telling you would defeat the point of it being a secret, wouldn't it?" Haven countered lowly. "You monsters will have no clue what hit you. And by the time you finally do—you'll already be dead."

"I figured you'd say that." Tsing sighed, the sound almost languid, but her eyes darkened with a shadow that mimicked . . . remorse. "What a shame that your mother found him dead in the Harvest Chamber yesterday morning."

A lie.

Haven knew it the moment the words slithered from Tsing's mouth. It was impossible—Bellamy couldn't be dead. She'd spoken to him on the radio just last night. Dread curled tight in her chest regardless, gnashing insistently at soft tissue, but something else—something foreign—began to stir within her.

        Hope.

        If Dahlia had been the one to feed this supposed truth to Tsing . . . it couldn't be coincidence. Dahlia claimed to know everything—every secret, every movement whispered within the Mountain. As the government's lead Researcher, her knowledge ran deeper than anyone dared to admit, her library an alleged vault of power and control. What if she wasn't just watching from the shadows? What if she knew about Bellamy's infiltration and had been shielding him all along?

        . . . What if she had lied to Tsing to protect him?

Dahlia had promised to protect Haven's friends, though her words had always felt like a ghost of truth, fragile and fading. But maybe this time—in this moment—she had made good on it. Maybe this was her mother's rebellion, her act of quiet defiance against the machine she helped to construct.

Unless, of course, Bellamy was dead.

But if he wasn't . . .

Dahlia had to be helping them.

Still. Haven needed to pretend.

If Tsing believed Bellamy was dead . . . it could work to their advantage, drawing the Mountain's watchful eyes away from him and further obscuring his motives. But for that illusion to hold, Haven was required to play her part. She had to grieve—not quietly, but in a way that was raw and ruinous, a defiance born of the catastrophic sorrow that they had come to expect from her.

When Tsing would inevitably deliver her hollow, clinical condolences—when she dared to feign humanity—Haven would let the act sink deeper. She would lean into her manipulation, allowing Tsing to believe she was crumbling—falling apart just enough to surrender her blood in sheer defeat. And just when Tsing thought Haven was at her mercy . . . she'd remind her that grief had fangs.

       Haven would bleed for no one—not yet—but she'd Tsing's throat in her next breath.

Crying on command wasn't difficult.

Not when she was already mourning Bellamy—endlessly, devastatingly, ruinously—even as he stood alive beside her.

Tsing frowned at the sight of Haven's glassy eyes. "What a spectacular failure that was," she muttered, clicking her tongue in disdain before straightening in her chair. "What was the plan, exactly? Send your would-be hero to infiltrate the building and conjure some secret army from thin air? You children are impeccably stupid." She clicked her tongue again. "That wasn't your idea, was it—? I thought you were far smarter than that."

"Bellamy isn't dead." Haven managed to spit out. Her left hand rose to wipe the saltwater spilling freely over her cheeks, acutely aware of its numbness. "You're lying. You're just trying to get a reaction out of me. He can't be dead. H-He can't—"

"Oh, sweetheart—but he is," Tsing cooed, a lullaby of soft malice. She reached over her desk to sympathetically pat Haven's shoulder—only for Haven to recoil. "Let's take a look at Bellamy's vitals before he flatlined... shall we? We only drew one liter of the boy's blood, too. What a waste of a vessel."

Haven froze.

        One liter. His blood.

        . . . Bellamy had been in the Harvest Chamber?

        Her thoughts fractured, splintering under the weight of what she now understood, but she forced herself to cling to her facade of grief. Tsing couldn't know the extent of her shock—not yet.

        Not while Haven's rage was sharpening into something lethal.

Before Haven could steady herself, Tsing moved, swiveling in her chair with an almost leisurely air. The doctor's hands moved deftly, connecting her tablet to the monitor at the center of the room. A click. A hum. And then the screen came alive, illuminating the sterile space with its clinical glow. Instantly, the display was swamped with an onslaught of data—streams of figures and graphs that spun before Haven's eyes. Heart rate. Temperature. Central venous pressure. Intracranial pressure. All meticulously cataloged under a single name.

BELLAMY BLAKE

        The numbers blurred together, meaningless—a sterile cacophony Haven could barely register beneath the unholy pounding in her ears. But then the screen shifted, and her world seemed to collapse inward.

        A photograph.

Bellamy's corpse had been fucking photographed.

        Hung upside down. Unconscious.

        Drained for his blood.

        The familiar teal light of the Harvest Chamber bled over Bellamy's body, casting him in spectral shades of death that Haven couldn't unsee. He hung there, suspended by his ankles like some butchered animal, arms slack and reaching for the floor—as though even in death, his body yearned for freedom. Sterile white boxers clung to him, a final insult to his humanity, as if modesty could ever exist in the face of such desecration.

The image was static, ostensibly silent and devoid of life, yet Haven's senses raced to fill the void anyway. She swore that she could hear it—the faint dripping of blood that wasn't there, the suffocating hum of the machines that had stolen Bellamy's lifeforce. Her mind betrayed her, conjuring a flicker of hope, searching for even the faintest rise and fall of his chest.

        But there was nothing.

No breath. No warmth.

Haven thought back to Bellamy's earlier admission of Maya's assistance in his survival, the same assistance that had consequently led him to Mount Weather's radio.

". . . If it wasn't for her, I'd be dead . . ."

How did he survive that?

How had he endured the degradation of being strung up like prey, his life siphoned away one drop at a time, and still managed to stand—still managed to fight?

        How could Bellamy, after being broken and drained of a full liter of his blood, be expected to shoulder the weight of the mission . . . alone?

They had demanded too much of him.

Far, far too much.

"Bellamy was an incredibly strong man, I'll give him that." Tsing's voice was clinical, detached, as though she were speaking about a specimen under her scalpel rather than a human being. "When they brought him in, I almost flagged him as a Reaper candidate—he fought so violently I barely recognized him at the intake door." She let out a soft, humorless chuckle. "His blood, however, was... less than desirable. I suppose it's to be expected, given the turbulent state of his nervous system. Remarkably fragile for someone so determined to survive."

Haven's mouth felt horrendously dry. "What are you talking about?" she managed, leaning forward from her position on the hospital bed. Her misty eyes flashed wildly between Tsing and the monitor. "You—you tested him?"

"What else was I supposed to do with him while he was unconscious—?" Tsing shrugged. "We had to tranquillize him seven times."

Seven. Times.

Haven's foot twitched, and it took every ounce of her willpower to stop herself from driving it into Tsing's jaw—from silencing that clinical monotone with the sharp sting of retribution. Wrath festered wretchedly beneath her skin, hot and suffocating, but she somehow, she swallowed it down.

        Suddenly, the vitals on the monitor shifted, replaced by a cascade of images summoned by Tsing's insistent fingers on her tablet. The screen flickered, and the first image appeared—a CT scan of a brain. Bellamy's brain. Beside it, an MRI illuminated the monitor, its glowing contours cutting through Haven's already frayed nerves like a dagger.

        Her stomach twisted violently at the sight.

        The memory of her own MRI—the damning diagnosis of HIBI—flooded her mind, threatening to engulf her in a fresh tide of nausea. But she refused to look away. She couldn't. With untrained eyes and trembling hands, Haven voraciously studied the images, desperate to decode the damage laid bare before her.

        "Subarachnoid hemorrhage," Tsing announced. She gestured at the screen with her stylus, circling the dark streaks marring the delicate architecture of Bellamy's brain. "Blood pooling in the space between the brain and the arachnoid membrane. A lovely little side effect of severe blunt force trauma." She tilted her head, studying the image as if it were an abstract piece of art. "Whatever he hit his head on—or whatever hit him—should've killed him instantly. Frankly, it's a miracle he survived at all. Or maybe just sheer, dumb luck."

Haven blinked, and immediately wished she hadn't. In the suffocating darkness behind her eyes, she could still see him—Bellamy, crumpled in the dirt, his body limp and half-dead. Blood streaked his temple and pooled beneath him like a damning halo. The world had almost ended that day, but it wasn't the inferno of grenades and the scattered corpses of her dead friends that haunted her the most. Nothing had branded itself into her memory like the sight of Bellamy lying there—motionless, vulnerable, so utterly . . . wrong.

        That had been the moment.

        The cruel, morbid genesis of it all.

        The day his head injury had first taken root, silent and insidious, planting the seeds of the damage now splayed across Tsing's monitor.

        A cruel autopsy of his resilience.

"The darker areas of blood here suggest that he was healing," Tsing explained flatly. The image shifted to the CT scan, enlarged for clarity, as she circled regions of brighter discoloration near Bellamy's brain stem. "But it appears to have been reaggravated—likely due to severe system dysregulation. I'd estimate the fresh bleeding occurred about four days ago."

. . . Fresh?

Haven had grown all too familiar with the grim ritual of checking Bellamy's ears for blood. It had become second nature. On the rare occasions they could retreat to the privacy of their living quarters, Bellamy would always drift off to sleep first. Perhaps his exhaustion pulled him under swiftly, or perhaps he understood the need for these quiet moments . . . allowing Haven the space to perform her checks without the weight of his eyes.

        He never mentioned it, and neither did she.

        And so it had become Haven's not-so-secret-secret ritual—her fingers gentle yet thorough, heart clenched, scouring for the faintest traces of blood he might have tried to hide.

Since the first morning after she returned to Camp Jaha, when Bellamy had begrudgingly confessed to the bleeding, Haven hadn't seen a single drop. No fresh evidence of his body betraying him. She had let herself believe, foolishly, that he was healing. The lingering symptoms—light sensitivity, forgetfulness, and his usual brand of extra grumpiness—felt manageable, almost insignificant compared to what they had been.

But now, those glowing white spots on Tsing's monitor told a different story. One that gutted her. They were proof, undeniable and damning, that Bellamy had bled again.

Twenty-four hours before he and Lincoln had embarked on their journey to Mount Weather.

He had known. He must have known.

And he hadn't said a goddamn word.

Tsing cleared her throat. "Interestingly enough..." she began, gesturing towards the vitals illuminating the monitor once more. "The disruptions in Bellamy's nervous system—the spikes in his vitals—follow a remarkably consistent pattern. The first major disruption occurred four days ago, as evidenced by the lingering inflammatory markers in his blood, and the brain bleed's aggravation. The second..." Her lip twitched upward ever so slightly. "Well, that aligns almost perfectly with when you were brought to his attention."

        Haven gaped. "Me—?"

        "Yes, Haven. You." Tsing knowingly tapped her finger against the tablet. "PTSD doesn't just live in the mind. The body remembers—hyperarousal, emotional dysregulation, even the smallest triggers can cause cascading effects. And in his case, it's compounding the neurological damage. Whatever happened between you two, it's not just emotional. It's physiological torture." Her features remained dispassionately smoothed, unaffected by the gravity of her admission. "So, I'll ask again—what happened a few days ago?"

        But Haven could hardly hear her.

. . . PTSD?

Struggling against the rising tide of her horror, Haven's voice was barely above a whisper. "What are you talking about?" she stammered weakly. "You're—I—You're just lying. You can't possibly know what happened to him through some pictures. You can't know it had anything to do with me."

"I figured you'd say that." Tsing barely glanced at her, the barest flicker of amusement crossing her face as she returned her attention to her tablet. She scrolled as though Haven's undoing was nothing more than white noise. "While I was preparing Bellamy for harvesting, I took the liberty of analyzing surveillance footage with Cage. You know, as we finalized the missile launch for Tondc—because contrary to what your savages might think, we're not idiots."

        Haven's senses ran haywire, her spine calcifying into steel as she straightened. Nails gouged into the mattress. "Missle—?"

"And, as luck would have it, we stumbled across footage of you. Your voice. Interrupting the leader of the savages, no less."

       Before Haven could protest, before she could address together the thousands of emergencies vying for her attention, the monitor flickered to life with a grainy recording.

". . . Don't beat him into something smaller just to fit your control. . ."

        Haven's voice reverberated from the footage like an accusation dragged from the grave. On the screen, shadows of herself, Lexa, and the Grounder procession emerged, ghostly silhouettes flickering against the backdrop of Tondc's outskirts. It captured a moment laden with grief and tension—the day after Finn's death. They had transported his body to the Grounder village for the funeral rite, only to confront the grief-stricken, widowed father who faced Gustus's wrath. The footage was choppy, intermittently obscured by branches and leaves that swayed into the frame, as though even nature itself conspired in the act of surveillance.

Filmed from a covert hideout, nestled among the foliage, every shadowed angle told Haven what she already knew.

They had been watching.

The Mountain Men had been watching everything.

        "And imagine my surprise when Bellamy's vitals skyrocketed at the sound of your voice!" Tsing exclaimed brilliantly. "Even while he was unconscious in his restraints!"

With a flourish, she switched the display back to Bellamy's vitals—an illegible mess of spiking lines and flashing red warnings.

"We tested this, of course. Played voices of his friends, his sister, even some threats of violence... predictable reactions, all within range. But you—" Tsing cut herself off, almost gasping. She gestured to the screen with the rapturous pride of a scientist unveiling her magnum opus. "Look at this, Haven. Just look."

        Haven's pulse stuttered involuntarily—a fragile mirror to the chaos on the screen—as though her heart itself was tethered to Bellamy's unraveling.

Numbers flared and danced in an anarchic ballet of motion and light that refused to be deciphered. Oxygen saturation plummeted. Heart rate soared. Blood pressure. Respiratory rate. Skin conductance. Cortisol. Catecholamines. Adrenaline. Each metric seemed to scream Bellamy's agony, erupting in violent, blood-red streaks that bled across the monitor like an open wound. The display was alive with panic. A symphony of disaster that escalated too quickly, too loudly, too overwhelmingly. Every flashing spike and jagged line traced the contours of his body's rebellion, a war fought within the fragile boundaries of flesh and bone.

What was happening to him?

What was happening to the boy she loved?

"You aren't even in danger!" Tsing marveled, her eyes alight with an unholy fascination. The glow of the data bathed her face in haunting shades of crimson. "But you're talking. All you're doing is talking, and yet... you're terrifying him! His poor body couldn't tell the difference!"

Four days ago.

Realization crept into Haven's mind like the slow, insidious crawl of shadows devouring the last light of dusk. It was relentless, suffocating, tightening around her thoughts as she rifled through fragments of memory, grasping for something—anything—that could explain the biological torment tearing Bellamy apart.

        And then it struck.

Four days ago.

The footage was from four days ago.

The same day Haven had sacrificed herself to Lexa's blade.

Though much of that day remained a haze, smothered in hallucinations of phantom voices and the sting of open wounds, certain moments were scorched into her soul. She could still hear Bellamy's screams thundering beneath her skull. His vocal cords were shredded. His tongue was crimson with his own blood. She could still picture the rock biting into his flesh, slashing his own palm open, offering his lifeblood as a futile atonement for her choice. And then there was Jackson, his hands tight on Bellamy's trembling shoulders, attempting to steady the storm as Bellamy's legs inevitably gave out. She could remember the way he sank into the mud, chest heaving, his breaths erratic and shallow. His eyes had rolled back, yet he fought—he fought—tirelessly clinging to consciousness even as his body betrayed him.

        It was then.

        He had to have bled from his ears then.

        . . . All because of her.

Haven felt like she was decaying. "Why are you showing me this?" she choked out, sinking her nails deeper into the mattress and suddenly aching to tear into her own flesh instead. "What does it matter if he's already dead, Tsing? Are you just trying to torture me because he loved me? Is that it? Do you want me to feel sad? To give up and crawl at your—"

"Loved—?" Tsing cut in, halting Haven's frantic stammering mid-sentence. Her eyes flashed with something unreadable—part mockery, part disbelief. "Oh, sweetheart. What we're observing here is not love. Physiologically, love presents itself in entirely different patterns. Elevated dopamine, oxytocin spikes—those create calm, synchrony, and attachment. What you're seeing here? This is none of that."

Beside herself, Haven's gaze flickered back to the monitor. Her vision became distorted by tears she could not hold back, though she tried. Desperately, she blinked, again and again, but the veil of her grief only thickened. Every line of data—every agonizing measurement of Bellamy's suffering—blurred into a cacophony of scarlet flashes. Her teeth sank into her lip, the sting momentarily grounding her as a broken sob clawed its way up her throat. She swallowed it down hard, refusing to let it escape, refusing to grant herself the luxury of release.

How could she?

What right did she have to weep over the destruction she had wrought with her own hands?

The data wasn't poetic.

It wasn't elegant or open to interpretation.

It was just red.

Terrible, devastating, soul-crushing red.

        "Yes, there's a response—heightened activity in nearly every system," Tsing continued, flippantly tapping the morbid streams of data with her stylus. "But let's not romanticize it. Love doesn't provoke this level of hyperactivation. These patterns, Haven..." She released a patronizing sigh. "Love was not Bellamy's first reaction to you."

The admission detonated like a bomb.

"It was fear."

        A thousand armies, armed with steel and fire, could not have unleashed the devastation that clawed and howled beneath Haven's ribcage. No siege. No grand empire with its towering banners and unyielding artillery, could rival the ruin tearing through the mutilated chambers of her heart. Her marrow shriveled into ash. Her blood abandoned its purpose, leaving only the scorched, hollow shell of her veins—filled with ruin as black as midnight, as brittle as bone left to the wind. Beneath the wreckage of Tsing's confession, there was nothing but truth—a truth so cold, so merciless, it threatened to obliterate the very air around her.

        She had always known.

        The love Haven allowed Bellamy to bear for her was no hymn of salvation. It was no radiant star to guide him through the dark. It was a curse, virulent and unrelenting, twisting through him like a blade forged in her own cruelty. It did not heal him; it corroded him, unmaking him atom by infinitesimal atom until not even his bones could resist the rot.

        She was destroying him.

        She was destroying the boy she loved.

        Tsing released another fatigued sigh. "Trauma is a remarkable thing," she mused, dejectedly analyzing more streams of data as Bellamy's bloodwork spilled across the monitor. "His blood wasn't even fit for a successful transfusion. Stress markers obliterated anything viable. Cortisol and adrenaline levels weren't just high—they were catastrophic. His blood could've become hypercoagulable, which is far too risky for potential clotting. Too many damaged RBCs. White blood cell activation? Practically nonexistent. A... disaster of a sample, frankly."

        She bitterly shook her head.

        "I'm not surprised he died mid-harvest. He would've been better off as a Reaper."

        Still. Haven could not breathe.

She did not deserve to.

"You are awfully quiet," Tsing remarked softly. She tore her gaze from the glowing monitor, its data vanishing into the void as she powered off her tablet. "That poor boy must've meant a lot to you. I apologize for your loss."

Although Haven's rage threatened to unmake her, the flames no longer sought to devour Tsing alone. The violent itch for murder had turned inward, licking at her own insides, feeding on the guilt that wrapped around her like barbed wire. But even as it threatened to choke her, she summoned enough of that fury to remember—her plan, her purpose, and what was still at stake.

Bellamy was alive.

Her friends were in danger.

Haven hadn't clawed her way back to this hellish purgatory just to drown in grief and lose herself to despair. Not now. Not when the mission was so precariously balanced. This was not the time for self-pity; this was war. And if Tsing dared to wield Haven's grief as leverage—then Haven would let her, just as planned. She'd let Tsing believe she was the puppeteer, let her bask in the illusion of control, pulling strings she thought Haven could not see.

But it was Haven who would be holding the blade in the end.

Right before she'd slit the woman's throat.

Trembling, Haven furiously wiped at her eyes, forcing her lungs to inhale as she stared the woman down. "You apologize for bleeding my friends, too—?"

"No." Tsing's admission was horrifically devoid of humanity. "The ground is the dream, Haven. Survival comes at a cost. Your friends simply paid their share. But you... I owe you an apology."

Haven's fists clenched at her sides, tightening with the barely restrained urge to snatch Tsing's tablet from her cold, calculating hands and hurl it straight into her face.

"Why me?" she asked.

"Because I underestimated you," Tsing began softly, her tone a masterful veil over intentions that Haven could detect as plainly as words on a page. "I thought you'd see reason. I thought you'd help me willingly. Instead, I pushed too hard... scared you off." A regretful sigh escaped her rotten mouth. "Made you run so far you nearly killed yourself—and your mother—with that escape in the Harvest Chamber."

At Tsing's words, a treacherous flicker of hope flared beneath Haven's ribcage, burning hot and fragile against the cold weight of despair.

Dahlia.

It seemed her mother had twisted the narrative of Haven's escape, framing it as an act of aggression rather than a deliberate act of liberation. A calculated move, one that masked Dahlia's true intentions to free her—and to summon Lexa's reinforcements. Perhaps Dahlia was merely playing for survival, protecting herself in the ever-shifting chess game of alliances and betrayals . . . but Haven clung to the thought regardless.

It didn't matter if it was real or imagined. In this moment, hope—however faint—was the only thing that could keep her upright.

"But I still believe in what we can achieve together," Tsing drawled, her ashen lips tilting into a soft, beguiling smile. "You and I could make something beautiful."

Another drill whirred in the background.

        Haven decisively clenched her jaw. "If I help you, will you leave my friends alone?"

"If you help me, Haven..." Tsing clasped her hands together and menacingly leaned forward across her desk. "...We won't need your friends."

. . . They wouldn't?

Haven warily tilted her head. "How so?"

"You already know the wonders of your blood." Tsing unclasped her hands, reaching further across the divide until her fingers found Haven's wristband. She was too careful to touch the skin directly—too smart to risk the potential retaliation. "Let me refine it, divide it, and make it into something more. Let me heal you, Haven—restore what's mutilated inside of you. We can even prolong your life expectancy. And together..."

She broke into a smile—a real smile. Not the practiced curve of manipulation or the sterile politeness Haven had come to expect, but something startlingly genuine.

"We can heal others." Tsing's gaze softened, and for a fleeting moment, she almost looked human . . . almost. "Save lives. Imagine a world where no one has to suffer what you've suffered. What we've suffered."

        Haven narrowed her eyes as she weighed the doctor's words. The longer she studied Tsing, the more the woman seemed to fade into shades of grey. Her appearance was as lifeless as the morality she tried to peddle. The ashen flush of her fingers against Haven's wristband, the hollow shadows carving out her cheeks . . . it was decay masquerading as desperation. And if this was the extent of Tsing's alleged suffering—corporeal skin starved of sunlight and bones softened by vitamin D deficiency—Haven could not summon even the faintest ember of pity.

        Not for her.

        Not for any of the Mountain Men.

        They looked like corpses, embalmed by the Mountain's entombment, but they were safe—wrapped in the cocoon of their fortress, drowning in security and glutted on resources. They had all the things Haven's people were denied, all the privileges stolen from the innocent, and yet—it wasn't enough.

        It never was.

        Their safety bred hunger—a monstrous, endless hunger—that turned their gazes skyward, not in wonder but in greed. The Mountain Men were not content to merely exist; they would drain the lifeblood of others just to feel the warmth of the sun on their faces. They had everything but the sky, and for that singular absence . . . they would commit atrocities that scraped the marrow clean from the bones of their victims.

        It was obscene.

But their appetite was not Haven's problem.

        What concerned her more immediately—more viscerally—was the ever-looming threat to her friends and the glaring, jagged flaws in Tsing's vaccine proposal. If Haven could wield her blood as a weapon, not to heal, but to bargain—to save the people who mattered—then she would do it. She would bleed herself dry if that was what it took, but only if the hypothesis held water.

". . . If we spread the synthetic properties from one person with your blood to another... the synthetic would thin, weakening it, until it was just as ineffective as the vaccines. . ."

The memory dragged her mind back to that night in the dim-lit tent four days ago. Jackson's hushed confession, Kane's taut whispers—they ricocheted through her thoughts like shrapnel, grinding against the cogs of Abby's machinations.

Abby believed that vaccines and transfusions were ultimately a failure.

. . . Until she had secretly performed a successful transfusion on herself.

        Haven slowly retracted her wrist from beneath Tsing's hand. "Wouldn't you need to perform a full transfusion to save lives? Instead of vaccines—?" she asked. "Like a blood swap?"

        Tsing nodded. "That would work spectacularly," she said, letting her hands drift back to her tablet, as if Haven's question was of little consequence. Her eyes raked over the screen and scanned for something unseen. "However, you are one girl, Haven, and I need you alive to fulfill what's required. Dividing your blood into doses is just the beginning. There are... alternatives that I'm exploring."

        Haven arched an eyebrow. "Alternatives?" she echoed, acutely aware of the riotous alarms blaring beneath her skull. "Like what? And if I were to consent, how would the vaccines even work? Wouldn't my blood become too diluted? Ineffective?"

Tsing faltered, just for a heartbeat—a crack so brief it could've been imagined—before her features smoothed into their usual polished veneer. "There's a lot you don't know yet. But this is only the start of the agenda, sweetheart," she whispered. "The remainder of the phases—"

        "Lori?"

Tsing powered off the monitor and slammed the tablet face down against her desk.

        Lo and behold, lingering in the doorframe and positioned perfectly beneath the looming crucifix, was none other than Dahlia Smith.

        Haven felt her pulse skyrocket at the sight of her mother. By the looks of it, Dahlia appeared remarkably unchanged since their last encounter two weeks ago. Ice-grey locs framed a face sculpted with a perennial mask of scorn. Her lips, thin and taut, were set in their usual line of indifferent disapproval. Tattooed eyes scanned the room with razor precision—assessing Tsing's controlled composure, cataloging every sterile detail, before finally landing on her daughter.

No warmth existed beneath her mother's stare.

No relief. No concern. No surprise.

Dahlia's eye roll felt no different than the deliberate swing of an axe. "Of course she's here to save her friends," she tsked, stepping further into the laboratory. Her presence carried a weight that sent the Mountain Men skittering from the doorway like insects fleeing the sun. "Of course she's chasing after that useless, bloodbag boyfriend of hers. Did you not get the memo? Bellamy Blake is dead."

. . . Haven had heard that one before.

The lie was as hollow as the woman speaking it.

"You were right, Dahlia," Tsing hummed fondly. Her lips curved into a deceptively mundane smile—the kind that barely masked the sharp edge beneath—as she slid her tablet into the top drawer of her desk. "I'll let you gloat later. We were just finishing up. I needed to check Haven's stitches and run a quick physical on her shoulder."

Haven blinked.

What the fuck?

        Dahlia's eyes could have flayed Haven alive, unraveling every delicate string of her stitches—thread by fucking thread—with the incisiveness of her stare alone. "What happened to you?" she asked, tilting her head in pitiful observation. "Did you fall into an animal trap?"

Haven felt herself involuntarily shrink.

"...Nevermind," Dahlia sighed, the hardness in her voice fracturing as she abandoned her vigil at the doorway. Swiftly closing the distance, she extended a hand to her daughter, not gentle but insistent. "Get up. Your friends won't wait forever, and neither will their luck."

Haven stared at her mother's hand as though half-expecting it to lash out and strike her if she reached for it. She half-expected her skin to blacken and char, as though she were a heretic daring to defile something sacred. Half-expected the crucifix above the doorframe to tremble, to topple, and plummet—shattered by the audacity of their union, the heavens splitting open to hurl judgment upon them. Because surely, this—this moment—would unravel some sacrilegious law of the universe.

To reach was to risk everything.

To hold was to face the inferno.

And so . . . Dahlia did it for her.

"Welcome back, Bug."

• •

HIIIIIIII!!!!

GUYSSSS!! TFF ONE FIRST PLACE FOR THE BEST THE 100 FIC IN THE FANFIC AWARDS 😭🥹 i freakin love yall so much i can cryy!!! thank you for everybody who took the time to nominate and vote and thank you for everybody who has taken the time to read this fic up til this point.
OVER 540K WORDS AT THIS POINT.... yall are crazy.... just like me 😏
I LOVE YOU!!!!

LOOK HOW STINKIN CUTE

but back the chapter....
me crying in real time writing the scene with bellamy's photograph and everything with tsing's confession :,))) i am so miserable idk why i do this lol.
that man is traumatized. BEYOND traumatized.
and who is to blame!!! (ABBY!!!!!)
i hope everything made sense medically while also being digestible enough to understand... if you still have questions, good! again, i spent a lot of time researching these conditions and the sad science behind them and i hope it translates well

also.... yall. not murphy calling haven out (lowkey) and her getting defensive and jumping him instead...

murphy (in his own way): youre self destructive and thats actually super dangerous for you and your loved ones!!

haven: no i am NOT!!! 😡
*punches him until she tears through the stitches of the arm she cant feel anymore because she KEEPS TEARING THROUGH HER STITCHES* *runs to her death even though her health is literally at its all time low*

in all seriousnes tho
THEIR DYNAMIC IS ONE OF MY FAVORITES TO WRITE.
they have so many mirroring qualities!!! he is the cockroach that refuses to die and so is she. they cant fucking stand each other but they also (very) reluctantly try to keep the other alive

hav's decision to go to mount weather is so complex and so sad because she is sooooo desperate to save her friends, but she
1) drastically overlooks her own health
2) overlooks the promise she made to bellamy to stay behind
3) has the BEST intentions, but fails to realize she is inadvertently hurting other people who worry about her, even if she is trying to do the right thing
4) is so unflinching in this belief because its a choice SHE feels empowered to make, despite its danger, because after having no control in any other area of her life..... ever.... she just wants to choose something!!! even if its the worst possible choice for her :( even if it is self destruction, she just wants to choose

sighhhhhh
so much in this chapter is going to have lasting effects forever unfortunately !!!!!!

anyway.... we're back to another duel pov chapter coming up next. another one of my FAV bell povs too <3
bell and dahlia. NEXT WEEK.
baven reunion.
CHAPTER 69 🤭

I LOVE YOU!!!!!!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS MY ANGEL BAES YALL ARE THE GREATEST GIFTS IMAGINABLE!!!