OUT OF MIND² ━━ Bellamy Blake

𝐗𝐕𝐈: The River of Styx

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THE RIVER OF STYX

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[ i lowkey take a lot of creative liberties
with some of the city of light stuff here,
because i feel like some
of it was never properly explained,
so. . . oops ]

"I'M NOT PUTTING those on her, Abby." Bellamy's voice breaks through the darkness that swallows Lyra whole. Her ears, finely tuned to the sound of his voice, are the first to return to the real world. She can feel the throne room's chilled stone beneath her back. "She's not a threat. And if she tries to. . . hurt herself. . . I'll stop her."

"C'mon, Bellamy," comes Murphy's familiar grating drawl. "We all know you won't touch her."

"I will if she tries killing herself again!"

Lyra stirs. She can feel the sensation of eyes leaping to her as she shifts and she keeps her face hidden in the crook of her arm. Her cheeks boil with humiliation as she feels the gauze on her wrists.

     What little memories she has managed to retrieve seep into her mind like molten wax. Nausea rolls through her. Memories, memories, memories, all these bad memories she does not know and yet wishes she'd never forgot. Launch day, the dropship camp, times when she'd been almost happy. But something is still trying to push everything else down and she fights to keep from crying out. What god is mighty enough to cripple the trauma that has been burrowing into her mind like a parasite?

"Octavia still has the second EMP. They have not used it on you yet. I am still in your head."

Biting back a scream, Lyra's head snaps up. She hardly notices the others jumping to make sure she's all right. All she can do is glare furiously at the bitch in the red dress, her teeth grit together as she fights the urge to yank out her hair.

She wouldn't feel it, anyways. She wouldn't feel any pain at all.

She is still chipped.

"Screw you!" Lyra snarls. She starts to stagger to her feet, then sways.

     "Easy, easy!" Bellamy's arms ensnare her waist. Catching her before she can fall, he helps her back to the ground. Gently he pushes her hair behind her ear. But there is a weariness in his face. "I don't know which version of you I'm talking to — "

     "It's me," says Lyra raggedly.

     He presses his mouth together. "Then tell me something only you would know."

She lifts her eyes to meet his tiredly. "You've just got to do it one last time. One last time, Lyra."

    It's a callback to one of their conversations in the dropship camp, back when they'd had no reason to trust one another at all and yet had anyways. The night of the hurricane. When Finn had been stabbed and Lincoln had been tortured. Bellamy had trusted Lyra to do whatever she could and Lyra had trusted Bellamy to do the right thing in the end. Thinking back on it now, she realizes that it had been the first night she had really seen Bellamy as a friend.