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The cage they crammed him into was too damn small, but Bellamy had a feeling that was intentional on his captors' part.
Fucking bastards.
He had woken up here—groggy, confused, with his head throbbing like no other—hours ago. The bars of the cage bit into his skin (where the hell did his clothes go?) and he had to slump uncomfortably in order to not crack his skull into the low metal above him. The second he realized he was locked in, he had banged against the cage door, rattling it like a damn wild animal, trying to loosen the hinges and escape. But the bars held against his abuse, and he panted, sweating with the effort.
When he came to the realization that he was well and truly fucked, he had let the panic overtake him for a short minute, but that was all he could afford. After that, he had intentionally calmed himself, trying to think back to how he got there.
All Bellamy could remember was sprinting through the caves, hot on Lincoln's heels as they dodged Reapers around every corner. Then a searing pain had ricocheted through his skull, and the darkness overtook him seconds later.
And now he was here, a captive of the Mountain Men. He had failed his mission.
What had they done to Lincoln? Were they turning him back into a Reaper? What would they do to him?
The questions spiraled in his head, but he sat quietly, waiting. It wouldn't help anything if he worked himself into a frenzy. He needed to be cool and collected when they came for him.
Eventually, they did exactly that.
"Mr. Blake, we apologize for your current accommodations. As soon as we determine your threat level, we will relocate you accordingly," a woman in a white coat said as she opened the door. She waltzed into the room and up to his cage without batting an eyelash, like she didn't find people being stuffed into a metal crate the size of a shoe-box the least bit disturbing. Bellamy resolved not to trust this one.
(Or any of them, really. Clarke had told him all about their sugared lies and poisoned, honeyed promises. )
"Where are my friends?" he snarled. "What have you done to them? I want to see them—"
"All in good time... Bellamy, was it? We have a few questions to ask you," a man said. Bellamy hadn't noticed him sneak into the room behind the woman in the white coat. His hair was a slick black and his smile twisted up his whole face. His suit and tie were pressed and neat, if a bit worn out. A diplomat, Bellamy guessed. Or some kind of higher-up.
He looked like a snake, but Bellamy figured if anyone could answer his questions, it would be him.
But before he could direct his flurry of questions onto this man, three guards with guns burst into the room. They ripped open his cage door and dragged him out onto the floor face first. Bellamy struggled and kicked on the floor, taking mad, wide swings at their faces, his heart pounding adrenaline through his veins. One punch connected to the sharp bone of someone's jaw, and Bellamy felt a thrill of success at the guard's pained grunt. Then they were on him again, and one of them slammed his nose down into the concrete floor. He felt the blood begin to pool under his face as his head spun.
Once his hands were secured behind his back, they hauled him to his feet. They yanked his head back by his hair as he gulped in much needed air. He glared fiercely at the couple before him, even as the blood continued to trickle from his nose.
"Mr. Blake, I hate to say it but struggling won't help you or your friends," the woman said, and Bellamy froze. She nodded when she caught his wide-eyed stare. "I see you understand what that means. If you will please follow us, we will escort you to our interrogation room."
He forced his posture to relax. He couldn't put his people at risk by not following their orders.
They marched him out of the room with the cages and down what felt like hundreds of halls and flights of stairs. He tried to map their route in his mind (they had taken Clarke's drawing from him, damn it), but it was useless. At one point, it felt like they were taking him in circles just to confuse him. Then he realized they probably were doing exactly that, to disorient him. He felt the unease slowly climb up his spine and settle into the back of his neck. One of the guards must've noticed his shoulders tense because the grip on his wrists turned into a vice.
He tried not to shiver at the cold air around them. He wasn't wearing shoes and the icy, concrete floors bit at his feet with every step. He didn't even have a shirt, and the paper-thin blue hospital pants they had put him in weren't helping at all. In fact, they seemed to make the chilled air feel even worse.
Finally, after he started to lose feeling in his toes, they opened a door that they had passed before (he was sure they did, there was a scratch in the paint on the left side of the entry way, Bellamy had seen it). The room they shoved him into was small with a single light dangling precariously from the ceiling. There was a table sitting in the middle of it, with two metal chairs on either side. They forced him down into one, and tied his hands behind him. Then they tied his ankles. The guard with a dark bruise currently forming on his chin yanked the ropes until they bit into his skin and he smirked at the man's nasty glare through his pained wince.
The man in the suit sat across from Bellamy, and the woman in the white coat stood a bit behind him, off to the side.
"Let's start with introductions, shall we? My name is Cage, and this is Doctor Tsing."
"Cage, huh?" Bellamy said sardonically. "Fitting."
Cage smiles at him, but it looks more like a predator bearing his teeth, a viper displaying his fangs.
"I think you and I are going to get along just fine, Mr. Blake."
Doubtful, Bellamy thought.
"How do you know my name?"
"We know plenty about you!" Cage laughed. "About you, about your allies... your leaders." He pulled a folder from his jacket and plopped it onto the table before him. Pictures spilled from it, and Bellamy felt panic rocket up into his chest, sharp and swift.
There were countless pictures of him and Clarke scattered before him: of them standing at the edge of Camp Jaha talking, walking through the woods with Lexa and her Grounder army, sitting near each other by the fire they had built in their camp on their way to Lincoln's village. There was even a picture of them from weeks ago back at the drop ship, back before the Grounders ambushed them. He had been trying to talk Clarke out of going for another medical supply run by herself that day. She hadn't been happy with him, and he could see her annoyed, pinched eyebrows in this shot of them, even from so far away.
The Mountain Men had been watching them the entire time.
He tried to keep his voice even. "So what's your point? They're just pictures. What do you want?"
"We know that you and Clarke Griffin have made an alliance with the Outsiders. We want to know what you're planning," Dr. Tsing said from behind him.
"I don't know why you think I would know her plans," Bellamy shrugged. "Clarke is our leader. I'm just a grunt with a gun. She doesn't tell me anything," he lied smoothly. "She keeps me close because I have good aim, that's all."
Cage's eyes glinted under the dim light. "I think we both know that's a lie, Mr. Blake."
Bellamy remembered the princess's cold expression when she looked him dead in the eye and said, You should go. I was being weak.
It's worth the risk.
"I wish I was," Bellamy muttered, his eyes shunting off to the side.
"Tell us what you know," Cage growled, apparently losing his patience with the younger boy.
"I don't know anything. She sent me away before they made any plans." That was the truth, but not the entire story. He knew vaguely what Clarke and Commander Lexa planned to do, but mostly they had hastily went over his part of the scheme before he and Lincoln quickly and silently departed their temporary base in the woods.
There hadn't even been time to say goodbye.
(He regretted that now—not saying a farewell to Clarke before he left—but the bigger question was, did she?)
"Look, mister. I don't know who you think are, but that girl right there," Bellamy nodded toward the pictures on the table. "She scares me a hell of a lot more than you do. So you're gonna have to try a little harder."
Something in Cage seemed to shift, and Bellamy felt his muscles tighten up, preparing for a fight. He suddenly regretted poking at the viper in front of him.
"See, now I don't think we can be friends anymore, Bellamy, because you're lying to me, and I don't like liars." Bellamy didn't miss the irony in that statement. "Now I'm going to have to resort to other measures to get the truth from you. Just know that I tried to be the nice guy here, Mr. Blake."
Cage nodded at Dr. Tsing, and she stepped forward to Bellamy's left side. Before he could blink, the guards surged on him, locking a forearm around his neck and pulling his left arm as far as the ropes would allow. He couldn't see, but he felt the sting as a syringe stabbed into the muscle of his shoulder. He jumped, tried to haul himself away from the witch, but he could feel a burning liquid being pushed under his skin.
"What was that! What the hell did you just give me!" he roared. He tried frantically to slow his heart rate, taking deep breaths, but to no avail. He knew that the faster his heart beat, the quicker the invading poison (or whatever the hell it was) would spread through his body. Clarke had taught him that when they had needed to pull a poisoned arrow from some poor kid's leg. She had told the kid to calm down, or he was going to kill himself that much faster.
(But he still died. There was nothing Clarke could have done. She had remained silent for almost two days afterward.)
"I've given you a toxin that will... encourage you to tell us what you know," Dr. Tsing told him. She looked back to the guards surrounding him. "Take him back to the cages. He'll begin feeling the effects soon, and won't be able to walk."
Bellamy struggled once again when the men dragged him from his chair. He spit curses over his shoulder at the witch and the viper as they hauled him from the room. While they directed him back to his cage, the halls around him began to close in. Shadows jumped from every corner and licked at him, burned him, laughed at him. He screamed as the shadows latched onto his throat. The guards just shoved him forward, growled at him to keep moving. Their faces morphed into monstrous shapes—oozing puss and blood. Bellamy quickly shut his eyes, but tripped over his own feet.
"Get up." One of the men kicked his ribs. He didn't move, he couldn't. His legs wouldn't obey.
"Damn it. Couldn't the doc give him that shot after we locked him back up?"
"Guess not. Come on, let's get the poor bastard up."
They must drag him, because Bellamy doesn't feel his legs move. He kept his eyes closed the whole way, knowing if he opened them, he would be seeing things—frightening, disturbing things—that weren't there.
It didn't stop the hallucinations from projecting onto his eyelids, however.
First he was standing on the edge of a cliff, dangling Charlotte by the wrists over the empty blackness below. Then he was screaming as water sluiced down on him from above, drowning him slowly and he couldn't breathe. Then he was clutching a radio in his hands while three hundred people burned right in front of him, the smell of charred flesh making him gag.
It went on for what felt like hours before his eyes finally cracked open slowly, as if they had been glued shut. He was back in his cage, but this time the room was different—darker, somehow, and lit by what looked like firelight.
Clarke Griffin stood outside the metal bars, staring blankly at him. They were back at camp, but he was still locked up. He gazed at the blonde girl, confused.
"I can't lose you too, okay?" she told him.
"Clarke, let me out," he said desperately. He gripped the cage door, rattled it. "Let me out, let me go, please Clarke, let me go—"
"We need an inside man. I was being weak."
"No. No, no, no, no, no—"
"It's worth the risk. Good luck."
"Clarke! Don't do this, please—" he felt the agony run through him all over again, just as searing and black as it was the first time she said those words to him.
She just continued to stare at him.
"I can't lose you too, okay?"
He watched her, helpless as she repeated her words over and over and over, slowly cutting up his innards with every sentence.
"We need and inside man. I was being weak. It's worth the risk. Good luck. We need an inside man. I was being weak. It's worth the risk. Good luck."
Bellamy?
"Need an inside man. Worth the risk. Good luck."
Bellamy, wake up.
"Inside man. Good luck."
Bellamy!
"Worth the risk."
He screamed himself awake, gasping for air as his lungs seized up. He was drenched in sweat and he shivered at the way it clung to his skin.
"Welcome back," someone said from his right. He dragged his head sideways to look, still exhausted, and saw Monty locked away a few cages down with Harper in another one just above him.
"Monty?"
They both looked pale, sallow and empty. Their eyes looked bigger, like their faces had receded to make them seem wider, hungrier. They wore white hospital gowns, and bandages covered their arms and legs in different spots.
"What the hell did they do to you two?"
" Took some bone marrow, you know. No big thing," Monty coughed, sounding like he was three seconds from passing out. "What'd they do to you? You were screaming for someone to stop, to let you go."
Bellamy looked away, down at the cold floor below. His eyes widened when he saw a pair for feet there. His eyes shot up, and there was Clarke, once again right in front of him. Her cold, blue eyes glared into him, freezing him in place. His mouth gaped open in shock.
"Bellamy?"
He quickly looked back at Monty, who wasn't reacting to Clarke's sudden appearance at all.
Was he still hallucinating?
"Dude, you alright? You look like you're gonna throw up."
"Right. Uh... They're trying to interrogate me for info on Clarke. They gave me some kind of hallucinogen." He ignored the figment of his mind standing in front of him.
"Sounds exciting," Harper groaned from her cage.
"Oh yeah, it was a blast," he smirked, pointedly ignoring the blonde hallucination standing in the middle of the room. "But now I'm better, and we need to make a plan. How many still alive?"
" All forty seven, as of a few days ago," Monty answered his leader. "Can't know for sure now. They've kept us locked in here, or in surgery since they took us away from the others."
Bellamy nodded. "Alright. We need to turn off the mountain's defenses so Clarke and the others can get close. For that, we have to take the control center. Any ideas?"
Bellamy and Monty stared at each other, stumped. There wasn't much they could do locked in metal boxes without any weapons. Or clothes, for that matter.
(He tried not to glance at Clarke. She mouthed something at him, her lips moving quickly and silently, but he didn't want to know what she was saying. He had a feeling he knew, anyway.)
"Actually," Harper said quietly. "I might have an idea of how to get us there."
----------------------------------------------
They had to time it just right. When the guards came back to take Bellamy away again, Monty forced his fingers down his throat, making him gag and throw up on the floor in front of them. It was mostly bile, because they hadn't fed Monty in a long time, but the guards still stuttered and backed away from the mess.
Bellamy took advantage of the distraction and threw his head backward into the nose of the guard holding his hands behind his back. He heard a sickening crunch and a pained shout. As the other guards rushed at him, he dodged, kneeing one in the groin and elbowing the other one's jaw hard enough to send the man sprawling to the floor.
Clarke still watched from the corner as Bellamy grabbed the keys they had used to unlock his cage. He set Monty and Harper free, and they went about stripping the guards of their clothes and weapons.
Donned in their new disguises, they made for the door, but Clarke stood directly in their path. Monty and Harper walked right past her, but Bellamy paused, and something drew his gaze down to her hands.
They were covered in blood. And she clutched Raven's knife, the one Clarke had used to kill Finn, in a white-knuckled grip. She glared at him, her teeth bared.
"Let me go," he said quietly. She shook her head. "Clarke, I need to get them out. It's what you sent me here to do."
Slowly, her full lips moved again, and she was mouthing the words—
I sent you here to die.
The knife her hand glinted menacingly.
Was this how his mind saw Clarke? As a killer? A cold-blooded murderer who sent him on this suicide mission?
No. No, that wasn't how he saw her at all. This was the toxin doing its job, trying to turn his mind against her. But his captors hadn't banked on the fact that he would never betray Clarke, even if it killed him. He realized that if she turned on him, decided to discard him like everyone else eventually did, he would follow her to the edge of the abyss and jump right off the damn cliff if that's where she lead them—if that's what she asked of him.
(The epiphany both startled and amazed him. He'd never felt such... purpose before for anyone except Octavia. It was unsettling, but not unwelcome.)
"No, Princess. You sent me here to save our friends, to save everyone," he knows talking to her is useless, that he is essentially talking to his own mind's projection of her, but he doesn't care. "So that's what I'm gonna do. Now get the hell out of my way."
She hesitated, still quietly staring. But the blood on her hands vanished. She dropped the knife, and it disappeared before it hit the ground, but she didn't move otherwise.
"I know this isn't you," he told her gently. "You're just scared, and hurt, and angry. You didn't send me here to die, Clarke. I know that. I know you."
Tears began to trail down her cheeks, and he wished so bad that he could run his hands along them, to catch the droplets before they hit the ground.
"I'll see you soon, okay?"
She nodded, and Clarke's image faded away with the last of the toxin in his blood.
"Uh, Bellamy? Are you okay?" Monty poked his head back into the room. "You've been talking to yourself for like, five minutes and they're gonna come looking for you and the missing guards soon, man."
"Yeah I'm good," he shot one last glance to where Clarke was standing, then looked directly ahead, his path clear once again. "Let's go get our people out of here."