the songbird ; b.blake

twenty-three; trigger points

"Hey," I rasped, voice thin. "Are you okay?"

He didn't answer right away. Then he blinked slowly, like he'd forgotten I was even there. "No."

I waited.

"If my mom knew what I did..." His throat bobbed. "She raised me to be better than this."

I wanted to tell him she would've understood, but he wasn't done.

"All I do is hurt people," he said, voice sharp now. He looked away, disgust curling in his mouth. "I'm a monster."

I felt the heat rising behind my eyes again. A part of me still burned with everything we'd said back in the depot. All the things he kept from me. The way he was ready to vanish without a goodbye.

But another part of me— one I hated a little— still ached to protect him.

"You saved my life today," I said quietly.

He looked at me then.

"And you do everything you can for camp. We need you."

His jaw tensed. He didn't believe me. Not yet.

"You can't run anymore," I said. "You don't get to disappear in the night and call it protection. You have to face it."

"And what exactly am I facing?" he asked bitterly.

"We'll figure out what to do about Jaha," I replied. "Together."

He let out a slow, exhausted breath, closing his eyes for a beat. "Can we figure it out louder?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Later."

Silence again. I leaned my head back against the tree, my fingers curling lightly around the torn edge of my jacket.

Everything hit me at once. The fight in the depot. The look on his face when I told him I knew he was leaving. The hallucination. Wells.

My chest tightened. I hadn't let myself think about it yet. About what Wells had said to me. About the voice in my head that had worn his face but used every weapon it could find to tear me apart.

He'd looked like Wells. Sounded like him. But he was twisted. Mean. Cold in ways Wells never was.

He'd told me I thought love could save me. That Bellamy would leave me just like everyone else. And then he had.

I turned my face slightly away, swallowing the lump in my throat.

No. I wasn't forgiving him so easily this time. Not again. He didn't get to be the storm and the shelter. Not without earning it back.

His voice broke the silence again, softer this time. "Did you hallucinate?"

I hesitated, but nodded.

He shifted beside me. "What of?"

I looked up at the dying light in the trees, golden and fractured.

"I saw Wells." The words dropped out of me like stones.

Bellamy didn't speak. Just stayed still. Listening.

"He looked exactly the same," I said slowly. "Same jacket. Same crooked stance. Like he hadn't aged a day since... since the night he bled out.

My throat tightened. I blinked fast.

"At first, I thought— I don't know. Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought. Or maybe I'd died and didn't realize it yet. He was just there, leaning against the shelf, acting like it was any other day."

Bellamy still didn't say anything. But I could feel it— the shift in the air around us. He was hearing every word.

"He started saying things. Things he never would've said. That I'd fallen apart over you. That I still thought if I loved someone hard enough, they'd stay."