The camp was still moving when Lily sat down.
She could hear it through the canvas — the voices, the footsteps going in all directions, Bellamy's boys calling to each other across the clearing. Someone had suggested search parties. Someone else had said the wall needed reinforcing before anyone went anywhere. The argument had been going on for ten minutes, and Lily had stopped following it around the time Raven had pressed her firmly onto the crate and told her to stay there.
"You're not going anywhere," Raven had said, in the voice she used when she was not discussing things. "Sit."
So Lily sat.
Her wrist was wrapped, her cheek cleaned and dressed with a strip of cloth she'd soaked in willow infusion. The swelling had started — she could feel it now in the particular tightening heat along her cheekbone, the way the skin felt too small for what was underneath it. It would bruise properly by morning. She knew the shape of bruises.
She pressed her fingers carefully along the edge of the dressing and made herself stop.
Outside, someone was shouting about the east wall. Someone else was answering. The panic had a particular sound — not loud, exactly, but dense, layered, every voice carrying the specific frequency of people who had already seen enough bad things to know that the next one was always possible.
The Grounder was gone.
She turned that over in her mind. Someone had left the hatch open — deliberately or carelessly, she didn't know yet, and it probably didn't matter, because the result was the same. He was out there, and they didn't know what he would do, and the camp had decided that whatever it was, it would be terrible.
She wasn't sure they were wrong.
But her mind kept pulling back to Jake.
She had left him with Miller. Had helped carry him back, had given Miller enough of an explanation to satisfy the immediate questions — the fall, the slope, the bad terrain past the berry patch. Miller had looked at her face and then at Jake and had not said everything that was in his expression, which she was grateful for. Jake had not spoken. Had not looked at her again after that first moment in the undergrowth, his eyes finding hers and then moving away.
She understood it. She did not feel good about understanding it, but she did.
She pressed her wrapped wrist lightly against her ribs and made herself breathe.
Then suddenly tent flap opened.
She turned too quickly — the bruised cheek pulling in a way that made her flinch — and then Bellamy was there, and Clarke behind him, and Lily was on her feet before she'd decided to stand. Relieved crushed even more than she expected, but then she noticed his face.
"Bellamy—" His name came out as barely a whisper. She crossed to them, and the light was dim but it was enough to see the cut above his brow, the dark smear of dried blood along his jaw. Her hand moved before she could stop it, hovering near his cheek. "God. What happened to you?"
His eyes had found her face the moment she moved, and his expression changed. He stepped closer, his gaze going immediately to the dressing on her cheekbone, the swelling beneath it.
"What happened to you?"
"Miller told us," Clarke said from behind him. She was watching Lily with that careful attention that meant she was already building a picture. "Are you alright?"
"It's nothing." Lily kept her eyes on Bellamy. "I'm fine. Don't worry about it." She reached toward his face carefully, not quite touching. "We need to clean those. There's blood."
"You can manage it?" Clarke asked.
"Of course."
Clarke looked between them for a moment with the particular expression of someone deciding not to say something, and then she nodded. "Alright." She looked at Bellamy. "I'll come find you when they're ready."
"Ready for what?" Lily asked, turning.
Bellamy's jaw shifted. "I'm going to tell the Council who asked me to kill Jaha."
Lily stared at him. Then — she couldn't help it — she felt something loosen in her chest. "Really?"
He gave a single nod, and she felt her lips turn up into a relived smile. But then she remembered that he had still to be forgiven. And she knew that the Ark did not forgave easly.
"Clarke," she called the girl, before she could left the tent.
"If Kane is there — tell him to remember his promise."
Clarke's brow creased. "What promise?"
"He'll know." Lily held her gaze steadily. "Tell him exactly that."
Clarke looked at her with that same careful expression she often wore, but then she gave a small nod. "Alright." She moved toward the exit and was gone, the tent flap settling behind her.
The space went quiet.
Lily turned to find the cloth, the bowl, the things she needed. Bellamy had settled onto the crate without being asked — she heard the shift of his weight, the particular sound of someone who was more tired than they were letting on. She poured water, checked the temperature, came to stand in front of him.
"You didn't have to do it," he said. His voice was even, but she knew the different registers of his evenness by now.
"I did." She considered the cut above his brow. "I don't trust Marcus on his word. Not without witnesses." She dipped the cloth. "Hold still."
"What happened to your face, Lily?" He asked and she felt her body tense.
"Nothing, don't worry," she said, not quite able to hide the tension in her voice. And he picked it up, because as she moved to clean his cut, he touched her wrist. Holding it enough to stop it from moving, but gently enough that if she wanted to move back, she could have.
"I've got my secrets and I know you've got yours." He said quietly, searching for her gaze. "But if I'm going to be honest with you, so are you."
She went still for a moment, not able to look away from his eyes. And even if she still felt tense, the warmth of his hand give her the strenght to nod.
"Alright," she whispered.
"Alright," he said with a nod.
Then there was a moment of silence, before she spoke again. "You first."
He let out a breath through his nose that was almost, not quite, a laugh. "The man who asked me to shoot Jaha — he wanted me dead too. Wanted to tie off the loose end. He send one of the boys in the woods to kill me."
"Oh my god, Bellamy." She felt the cold move through her chest. "Where is he now?"
"I killed him." He said it the way he said things he had already finished deciding about — flat, direct, but she could see the suffering behind his eyes. "It's done."
She looked at him. At the line of his jaw, the set of his eyes. She almost asked if he was okay, but then she remembered what he had told her weeks ago in the cave that he could not afford to be weak. And she wasn't sure he would have spoken openly about how he felt about what happened.
"I'm sorry that happened to you." She decided to say instead, as she cleaned his cheek.
Something shifted in his expression, briefly. And then he nodded. "It's alright." He observed her for a moment. "Your turn."
She set the cloth down. She was not sure she was ready to talk about what had happened. Then she took a deep breath. "I... um..." she muttered, then cleared her throat. "One of the guys... Jake. He..." Bellamy frowned as he observed her, his body already tensing. "He had seen me talking to Kane on the radio. And apparently you're not the only one who knows that he helped me with my station placement on the Ark."
Bellamy's jaw shifted. His eyes had gone dark in the way she had learned to read, he was getting angry.
"What did he do?" His voice was quiet and even, which was worse than if it had been loud.
"Bellamy." She shook her head. "Nothing—"
He reached up slowly and moved her hair back from the side of her face. She winced before she could stop it, the motion pulling at the bruise along her cheekbone, and she heard the small sharp breath he took through his nose.
"Is that nothing?"
She held his gaze. "Listen." She kept her voice steady. "I get it. That's why I never wanted anyone to know—" She let out a breath. "Marcus. He... he has done terrible things. To so many people." She pressed on before he could speak. "I can't blame Jake for wanting to get back at him in some way."
"Why are you protecting him, Lily?" He asked her with wide eyes. "This guy attacked you."
"And Marcus floated his parents, Bellamy." The words came out quiet and certain, but her eyes stung with tears. "Like he floated your mother. Like he floated Clarke's father. Like he floated people whose names none of us even know." She held his eyes. "I get why someone would want to kill me for that."
"I don't." He looked at her — really looked, the way he did sometimes when he was working something out, following a thread back to where it started. Something moved in his expression. "Why do you feel responsible for what he does?" His voice had shifted, gone quieter, almost careful. "Lily—"
"Bellamy." Clarke's voice came from the entrance. They both turned. She stood in the gap of the tent flap, her expression carrying the particular gravity of someone who had been waiting for the right moment. "They're ready."
He looked at Lily for one more second. Then he stood, and let out a breath, and became the version of himself that walked toward difficult things. "I've got to go."
"Hey." She reached up and turned his face toward her, carefully, just enough that he had to look at her. His jaw was set, his eyes tightly controlled. She held his gaze. "It's going to be alright. They'll pardon you."
"Yeah." He said letting out a breath. "Maybe."
She held his gaze. Then, because she meant it and because he needed to hear it as much as she needed to say it, she leaned forward and kissed him. His hand came up to her face, careful around the bruise, and he kissed her back, and for a moment neither of them was thinking about anything else.
When he pulled back his eyes were open, looking at her.
"You're not off the hook," he said quietly. "I still have questions."
Lily found herself smiling, "Do your things first."
He gave her a look that was almost, briefly, a smile. Then he kissed her once more — short, deliberate. "Wait for me in my tent."
"Alright," she said, observing him as he moved to the exit of the tent. Then she saw him stop and take something out from his pocket.
"Before I forget," Lily frowned as she saw him leaving the ten vials on her table. But she did have no time to ask, he gave her a last little smile and then walked out.
She didn't know how long she sat in his tent.
Long enough for the camp to quiet into its later rhythms — the fire settling, the voices pulling back, the night pressing in on the canvas walls. She had found his blanket and pulled it around her shoulders without thinking about it, and now she sat on the edge of his cot with her wrapped wrist held against her ribs and her eyes on the tent entrance.
The pardoning could go wrong. She knew that. Kane had said yes, but Kane always said things carefully, in ways that left room for them to mean something else later. And the Council might not care what Kane promised a girl they'd sent to the ground to die. Bellamy had shot the Chancellor. That was the shape of it, stripped down.
People like me don't get pardons that easily.
She pressed her hands flat against her thighs.
Outside, footsteps moved past the tent and then away. Someone called a name. Silence.
She thought about Jake. About his face in the undergrowth, looking at her for one moment and then away. She thought about the stone in her hands, the sound it had made.
Dull and solid and wrong.
She pressed her fingers to her lips.
The tent flap shifted.
She was on her feet before he had come fully through it.
"What happened?"
Bellamy stood in the entrance, and she read him — the set of his shoulders, the quality of his stillness, the way he was holding the thing he was about to say.
Then he let out a breath.
"They pardoned me."
She crossed to him. She didn't think about it: she just moved, and her arms were around him, and she felt him exhale fully for what she suspected was the first time in hours, his hands coming up to her back, holding.
"Bellamy." She pulled back enough to see his face. "That's — that's great."
"Yeah." Something tired and relieved moved through his expression. "I told them about Shumway."
"Shumway." She frowned, settling that name in. "It was him?"
He nodded. "He told me to do it — said it was the only way to get on the dropship with Octavia." He took a breath. "He didn't tell me why he wanted Jaha dead."
Lily shook her head slowly. "I'd never thought he would do such thing…"
He observed her in silence for a moment, before he spoke again, "You know him too, huh?"
She did. She had spoken with him sometimes. He worked with Marcus, so it happened that she would meet him in the corridors. He never seemed a person able to do such thing.
Bellamy didn't seem surprised when she nodded. His eyes were quiet on her face. "But you don't feel responsible for what he did."
She understood what he was doing. "Bellamy—"
"You know…" He said taking a breath. "I've heard and thought many things about your relationship with Kane," Lily looked away at those assumptions. "But nothing is enough to make you feel so much pain over his actions." He leaned forward, the moviment made her lock her eyes with his. "You've learnt my secrets," he said with no harshness in his voice. "If I'm going to be honest so are you."
The tent was small and close and the fire outside threw moving light through the canvas and there was nowhere left to go.
She felt her body tremble, and her eyes water. She had kept this secret for so long, that it almost hurt to let it out. But after a long silence Lily finally let out a breath.
"You called me Kane's pet once," she said quietly. "But I'm not his pet." She met his eyes. "I'm his daughter."
The stillness that came over him was complete as he listened.
"Illegitimate," she kept saying. Then a humorless chuckle left her lips. "Councilor Marcus Kane is always dignified and righteous. He didn't want for anyone to know so we didn't tell anybody." Then she bit her lips, trying to keep her tears from going down her cheeks. "But he owned my mother. So he helped me after she passed."
A confused frown appeared on Bellamy's face, "So all this time—"
"I didn't want anyone to know. I still don't." She pressed on, because if she stopped she wouldn't start again. "I wanted to come down here and be no one. But I still feel linked to him." She took a breath as some tears ran down her cheeks. "Every time he pushes that button or he agrees on it, I feel like I'm doing it too. Like it's my fault."
Bellamy shook his head, "It's not your fault."
A sad chuckle left her lips, "I can't help it," she said with honesty. Her voice trembling. "Every time I look any of you in the eyes, talking about how the Ark had hurt you, how much you've been through, I cannot help to… to see Marcus behind it all. And…" She looked down, biting her lips again.
"You're afraid to be like him…" At his words she let out a sob, nodding her head.
"Hey." His voice was low. He stepped forward and his hands came up to hold her face, careful on both sides, thumbs brushing her cheekbones. "Look at me."
She did.
"You're nothing like him." He said it plainly, without decoration. "I have watched you fight for people's lives since the day we landed. "You would never have pushed that button." His eyes were steady on hers, but it didn't make you less scared.
"What if this world pushes me to be?"
"You are not him." He spoke as if he wanted for her to understand every word. "Whatever this world asks of you — whatever you end up having to do down here — those choices are yours. Not his. Yours."
She breathed. His hands were warm against her face.
"I'm glad you're safe," she said, and her voice came out soft and a little broken and entirely honest. And she saw him smile at her. She observed his face, before she moved forward and kissed him. And she closed her eyes when she felt him kiss her back. His hand sliding from her jaw to her hair, and she felt the shift in him like a change in pressure, something that had been held in check for a long time releasing all at once. She pressed closer and he drew her in, and the tent and everything outside it lost its edges entirely.
She had been kissed before — briefly, carefully, the kind that stayed on the surface. This was nothing like that. This pulled at something beneath her ribs, made her forget what her hands were supposed to be doing, made her forget everything except the warmth of him and the way he was looking at her when he finally paused, his forehead resting against hers, both of them breathing unevenly.
"Lily." Her name in his voice, that low quiet register she'd only heard a handful of times.
She answered him by pulling him back down.
Lily felt his arms bringing her closre to him, and her hands found his hair. At some point — she couldn't have said exactly when — they had moved, the cot finding them, the world narrowing to the dim warmth of the tent and the sound of the camp fading to something distant and irrelevant. His hands were gentle around the bruise, careful in a way that made her chest ache, and she had never in her life felt so entirely present in her own skin.
She found herself touching the skin under his shirt, trailing them up until she helped him take it off. Her eyes looked at his body and something shifted inside of her and she brought him back to her lips as soon as he threw his shirt away. Her hands touching his back, loving the feeling of his skin under her fingertips.
"Bellamy..." she let out a quite moan as he moved to kiss her neck. Lily closed her eyes, shifting her legs so that he was resting in between her tights. Another moan escaped from her lips when she heard his hardness rub against her through his pants.
They kissed again as she pushed up enough to have space to take off her own shirt. Bellamy's eyes went on her body as she did so and his gaze only gave her the courage to go on, reaching back unclasping her bra.
"Are you sure?" he asked, just before she nodded, throwing her bra away and reaching out to kiss him again.
It didn't take long for them to get rid of both their pants as they kept touching and kissing.
"Have you ever done this before?" He asked, moving from her lips just enough so that he could look in her eyes.
Lily put her hand into his black locks, gripping it making him groan.
"Please, just keep going," she said against his lips, before kissing him again. He responded hungrily, shifting in between her legs. She kept kissing him as she felt him moving his hand so that he could position himself against her entrance. She felt extremely hot, feeling him against her, starting to push inside of her. They both let out a moan, and she took a deep breath, as she felt him entering her inches by inches. It was a foreign sensation, feeling herself stretching around him and feeling strangely full, but as he moved she could not help her hips push against him, as if her own body wanted for him to be inside her. Her mouth was ajar as he completely set inside her, her fingers digging into his arm, scratching his olive skin. He kept kissing her neck and every inch of skin he could reach as she took deep breaths, getting used to the different sensation.
"I'm gonna move," he whisper in her ear, his hot breath made her shiver, "Can I?"
Lily nodded her head, out of words, too overwhelmed by all those new sensations. She observed him getting more comfortable above her, and he suddenly moved his hips forward, the movement made her let out a little groan, feeling him move. And the more he moved, the more she couldn't control those sounds she was making, until her body was rocked by his thrusts.
"Oh god," she moaned as he hit something inside of her. He smirked observing her expression, they just looked at each other. He angled his hips so that he could keep hitting that spot that made her gasp and mewl.
"Bellamy, god!" She found herself moaning, as he let out heavy sounds that just made her feel more eager each time. Her body was tensing in some kind of anticipation, she had never felt like that, but she just wanted more.
"Please…" she gasped not even sure what she was pleading for.
"You feel so good," he said, his hips moving faster and faster as he grabbed the side of her face to pull her closer in a kiss.
She kissed him back as passionately as he was doing, but the feeling of her body, the need of air and their skin touching was overwhelming. He then let out a little growl, moving away from her lips so that he could focus on moving his hips and at that point Lily felt even more overwhelmed. Her head fell back, as her hands clenched around his arms to feel at least a bit grounded, the sounds left her mouth louder and more frequent and her body tensed and tensed. She could feel him move, and she was growing desperate and desperate as her lower body tensed. He seemed to feel the same, because he was becoming erratic and his moans were louder as well. Then finally, her upper body moved forward against him, as she felt like her lower part had became so tense that she was squeezing him. He moaned again, as she felt like she could not see for a moment. Then she felt something liquid, filling her just before Bellamy gave a few last pushes, then he stopped his movements.
Lily was so overwhelmed by everything that had happened, her breaths were heavy, but her body felt lighter, like it had never been. The sweet ache in between her legs and in her limbs only making her feel more alive than she had ever been.
When she opened her eyes, she immediately looked for Bellamy's. He was already looking at her, with a gentle smile an his face, just before he leaned forward to give her another kiss.
"Stay here tonight," he said, and her lips broke into a smile, then his lips touching hers once again. But Lily wasn't sure she wanted to go to sleep yet.