BITTERSWEET | BELLAMY BLAKE

𝟮𝟬. gilded tombs do worms enfold

     "He's right," Bellamy grunted. His eyes searched around them. "Where's Octavia?"

     "Not here," Elliot muttered, trudging towards them. She looked at Lincoln. "What's your plan?"

     "It doesn't include you, El." He shook his head adamantly before dropping to his knees beside the deer with a knife in his hand. Bellamy watched him uneasily as he started gutting the poor animal's inside out. 

     "Let me help," Elliot pressed on, becoming frustrated as time passed. The woods looked damp today and the sound of cicadas and birds filled the silence. "I can help."

     "Go home," Lincoln told her. His eyes shot up towards her as he finished smearing animal blood on his face. "That's all you can do."

     "Shut up," Elliot spat in their language, feeling Bellamy's eyes on her. "I'm not going anywhere."

     "Fine." The man hissed, taking the limestone from the older Blake as he drew uneven lines across his face with the white powder. "You help me get him to the intake door."

     "What happens then?" Bellamy asked.

     "We kill everyone, and you slip inside," Lincoln said nonchalantly. 

    The look on Bellamy's face told a lot. It was crazy how they could just talk about killing people like it was nothing. He realized just how dangerous they were. These two were just as bad as any of them out there, and yet a small part of him still trusted them. Maybe because Elliot had saved him countless times just as Lincoln did to his sister.

     "Let's go." Elliot sent a nod at the two men. "We have a lot of ground to cover before dark."

     "Hey. I needed to know what happened after the intake door."

     "They remove your clothes, blast you with boiling water, and douse you with something that burns even worse. From there, we were sorted. The others were tagged harvest. I was tagged Cerberus, turned into a Reaper."

     "Cerberus. Three-headed dog that guards the Underworld." Both Grounders looked at the oldest Blake with confused tilts of their heads. "My mom read mythology to us all the time. Octavia loved it."

     That made the corner of Lincoln's lips lift into a small smile. Bellamy noticed it, and he couldn't help but think about the fact that this Grounder would die for his little sister. He wasn't the only one who wanted to protect her anymore. Like it had always been. I suppose he needed to learn to accept that.

     "You're good for her," Bellamy said almost forcefully. Behind them, Elliot narrowed her eye at the back of his head. "You made her strong."

     "She was already strong."

     The mountains hid behind thick mounts of fog which made it look harder to get to. Elliot never wandered that far. It was too much of a risk to come across the Mountain men. She had killed a few of them, but she almost died twice, too. Their weapons were advanced and that gave them the upper hand. 

     "The Mountain has many eyes between here and the tunnels," Lincoln informed Bellamy who walked back to them after looking over the map Clarke had drawn. "From now on, details must be exact."

     "What if we run into real Reapers? Won't they wonder where you've been?" Bellamy questioned. His gaze flickered to the girl who stood a few distance from them. "What are you gonna do?"

     "I'll deal with it," Elliot said shortly. 

     Bellamy frowned. "How?"

     "I'll do my thing, you do yours," She snapped, giving him one of her glares as she pushed herself off the tree she was leaning on. She pulled off the sharpened knife she had stabbed on the tree and pointed it in his direction. "Worry about yourself."