IN MY HEAD¹ ━━ Bellamy Blake

𝐗𝐗𝐕: Death March

And it's now, on the verge of a war, that Lyra realises how much she cares for the kind boy.

Smashed up syllables ricochet deep in her chest as she tries to rise, tries to ask him where the hell he's been, but that only makes her head hurt more and she falls back with a groan. A half-smile crawls across Wells' face as he presses a metal tin to her hands.

"Drink this. You'll feel better."

She gulps it down greedily. It's freezing cold and dribbles down her chin, frothing onto her jacket. She's never noticed it before, but the water tastes different here. On the Ark there'd been a long running joke about how you were basically drinking your great-great grandfathers recycled piss, water stripped bare of everything save for h2o molecules. But here on Earth, the water tastes much. . . much muchier.

She sighs. "I look like shit, don't I?"

"Better than me," offers Wells, disgruntled. "You had a lot going on."

"So did you," counters Lyra. "What, were you kidnapped by Grounders?"

"Yeah, but you guys had that whole hostage situation."

Then, from below them, Lyra hears Raven scream.

She is on her feet at once. Wells scrambles behind her with a half-assed "You need to lay down!", but he isn't fast enough to stop her. Skidding across smooth metal floors, descending down the metal rungs of the ladder. She was alone on the second floor of the dropship and when she slams onto the first floor, she's greeted with a terrifying sight.

As breakable as glass, Raven's body writhes atop a small table. A hideous gash gapes in her stomach, caked with dirt and swirling with infuriated crimson, leaking a sickly pus-yellow. But she's sentient as Clarke thrusts a blade burning orange into the wound ━━ cauterising it, Lyra thinks wildly ━━ and she's alive.

Lyra stumbles in relief.

Then Bellamy is there, catching her, helping her upright, then retreating and giving her space. His eyes look half-crazed as he takes in her appearance.

"You're alive," he breathes.

"I hope that's a good thing... ?"

"Christ, Lyra." He gives a short huff, running a hand through his sweat-smothered curls. "Of course that's a good thing."

"There," Clarke announces from above Raven's body, extracting the knife and handing it off to Wells, who'd followed Lyra down. Finn is on her other side, forehead creased with worry as he observes his ex-girlfriend. "That should stop the external bleeding."

"I don't understand." Finn's knuckles are pale as the moon as they coil around the edge of the table. "How did Murphy get a gun?"

At the mention of Murphy, Lyra swears she sees Wells duck his head, but it happens so quickly that she then thinks she might have imagined it.

"Long story," Bellamy grumbles.

"We got lucky," wheezes Raven, limbs splaying, features contorted in agony. "If Murphy hit the fuel tanks instead of me, we'd all be dead."