#he would never hurt other children; even for Anya’s sake

[amethysttribble]

That I’ve already made 1 post being annoyed with the Spy x Family fandom and I could easy make 2 more, is really quite telling

[masterofmagnetism]

Impotent || Self Para

“It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.” ― Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear WHO: Erik Lehnsherr, mentions of @firstxman, @mistressxfmagnetism, @disarraycd, @burdenedxtelepath, @maidenxfmight, @mysteriousmutant WHERE: His rooms at the Brotherhood HQ. WHEN: After his confrontation with Alex and Scott. WHAT: Unable to access his powers for the first time he can remember, Erik finds himself alone with the hallucinations and memories dragged up by the Enchantress’ spell.  Except, maybe not alone--the Phoenix, unrestrained by the collar or Erik’s natural resistance to telepathic interference, takes advantage.  WORDS: 2.3k

TWs: Holocaust mention, child abuse, torture, experimentation, child death, paranoia, anxiety, guilt.  Uhhh.  Lots of TWs.  Par for the course.

He asked for this.  

He asked for this, and yet he still can’t catch his breath because there is a collar around his neck and the world seems to have lost a dimension without the gentle humming of the metal he can see around the room brushing against his senses.  He’s always filled his rooms with metal--from furniture to trinkets.  He liked to have access to it, needed to have access to it.  But it sat there dead to his senses, now, and Erik would have preferred the loss of an arm, the loss of nigh on anything else.  

Except.  

If he had them, he could hurt his family.  Would hurt his family (again), because he couldn’t tell what was real and what was fake and what was once real but couldn’t be now and they were all too close.  Stupid, stupid.  There had been a time that he’d worked largely alone, a very long time, and that had been safe.  Safer than settling down in a cabin in Ukraine as if he’d ever be allowed to have a family, safer than making friends with another Mossad agent and seeing the hole in their head and knowing he hadn’t gotten there fast enough, safer than staying at a school full of children who looked at him like he was anything like a hero until he put a bullet in their headmaster’s spine.  All that had happened when his perception could be trusted, and even that wasn’t the case, now.  He couldn’t trust his own eyes, his own ears, his own mind (that wasn’t even his own, anymore, some part of him reminded him distantly).

Freezing Alex’s blood had been easy, too easy.  Had Scott come a few moments later, he could have killed him:  the man’s brother, Lorna’s boyfriend, one of the many children he considered to be like his own.  Another child to pay the price for his powers, like Anya had.  

No, no.  That wasn’t your fault.  You tried to save them, to save her.  They did it.  You know how humans are: violent, dangerous.  Traitorous--your own coworkers, your own wife, neighbors whose houses you would visit, whose kids you would babysit; they all would have seen you dead.

( It sounds like his mental voice, sounds like Erik himself, and he doesn’t know when the Phoenix learned that.  He can’t even say with any certainty that it isn’t him, the words fitting so neatly into his stream of thoughts that it may well be.  Two layers of thought--Charles had said that was possible, and while he’d never known himself to be aware of it happening in his own mind, usually so carefully linear, it was possible. 

So, he noted absently in a thought that disappeared in the next moment, was the chance that he was losing his mind. )

“Please, Max.  Don’t act like this is news to you,” says the man that haunts his nightmares, where he sits in Erik’s chair like it’s his own, regarding the metallokinetic in his spot in the corner.  He’d hoped the two walls against his back would help.  They aren’t, much--any consolation they would provide is negated by the fact that he’s not certain they’re real at all.  The room keeps shifting around him--lab, gravesite, cabin, field, Raft, park. He remembers a scene from nigh on a century ago when his mother had wrapped him up with a coat to take him to the fair in town and crouched down to cup his cheeks and warned him if you get lost, stay where you are and someone will come find you, and so he refuses to move.  He thinks Scott knows where he is--that memory is clear enough, but then again, so is the man sitting in front of him who should be dead dead dead but yet continues to speak.  “I told you long before Vinnitsa that humans were the enemy.  They’re vermin, compared to us, and you know it.  Scheming.  Deceitful--and so are their sympathizers.” 

Charles, the most vocal of all of them in favor of the humans, who decided to recruit children to the cause for the sake of optics, who worked with the CIA, who got into his head, into Lorna’s head--

“I did warn you, Max.  But you always did need a heavy hand to pick things up, I suppose.”  Shaw, the one from Cuba, wavers, slips into the man Erik had first known him as in the camps, and Erik clenches his hands around his knees as the room shudders back into the lab he’d hated so much.  “Let me give you a hand,” he says, and Erik’s stomach rolls as the prod he’d hated so much comes into sight and the collar around his neck seems to soften into the strap they used to hold him down and then he feels--

Fire.

Licking at his legs, at his arms, singing his clothes but still too far away to catch, as he tears his way through the collapsing house.  He’d seen her fall, from her place in the window, as the floor collapsed underneath, but she was still here, maybe she was more alive than the men laid across their front yard like a battlefield.  “Anya!”  No response, but there was a shoe, and he feels what’s left of his heart plummet straight through the floor like she had because there’s a heap of wood still smoldering but ready to catch ablaze at any moment just a few meters away.  She’s there, but he knows she’s gone before he manages to dig her out.  

The house collapses just a few moments after he’s out, but he doesn’t care about anything but the girl lying limp in his arms like the ragdoll her mother had made for her.  Her mother who was gone, now, in a way that hurt almost worst than the way that his child was gone because she’d chosen it.  He’d only glanced at her for a moment before plunging into the house, after killing the humans who’d held him at bay, but the image was seared into his mind like a brand.  

He’d never seen her look so afraid, so disgusted, and it was directed at him.  

She claimed to love you for years, and look how easily she left.  One glimpse at what you are, and they go running.  Who you are doesn’t matter, only what.  It’ll never matter to them.  

Humans always saw things in black and white, as much as they’d profess to the contrary.  And that black and white was always selfish:  is this for me or against me?  They liked boxes, categories.  The Nazis had exploited it: here, here’s a list of the people you can blame for your problems.  It doesn’t matter how young, how good--the Jews, the Roma, the Sinti, the Slavs, the gays, the ‘asocial’.  Every war in history was based on that tendency to categorization--race, politics, religion, gender.  Us versus Them.  Them versus Us.  And the humans couldn’t, wouldn’t, stop.

Mutants were a team, together--their shared evolution, shared gifts, was a stronger tie than any artificial separations amongst themselves.  They were different, better, more evolved, more capable of working together.  The ‘split’ between the Brotherhood and the Institute had been overhyped to begin with, and never had it been clearer than now, with Xavier’s first and most devoted students now joining with the very group they’d once fought.  It was Charles who had become the sole standout, still too interested in the humans to see the truth.  

No, more than that--he split you to begin with.  He told you to leave, told Raven to do the same, and then let the others paint you as traitors.  He let the X-Men fight you for the sake of human credibility.  You told him you wanted us all to be brothers fighting for the same cause and he didn’t just say no--he made sure it wouldn’t happen.  

( He doesn’t remember reading the situation in Cuba exactly like that, before, but it sounded right.  The memories lined up.  The Phoenix shows you the truth. )

There was a reason Charles had been left out of the preparations he was making.  He couldn’t be trusted--had been far too sympathetic to the humans for too long, had taken on their habit of categorizing.  Us and Them.  Institute and Brotherhood.  

The only Them, the only Us, that mattered were the humans and everyone else, and that wasn’t prejudice but scientific fact.  Humans were less evolved.  Humans were dangerous.  The others tried to live in peace while humans hadn’t had peace for their entire existence.   

Waging war for peace.  A human concept, innately hypocritical, and yet: “Tactics based solely on morality can only succeed when you are dealing with people who are moral or a system that is moral.”  He remembers reading those words in a cafe in Dallas in 1964 like it was yesterday, hearing them ring as true as anything he’d ever heard.  King walked his followers into water cannons and dogs and bullets and asked them to lay down nicely for the cameras while it happened.  X spoke of an eye for an eye, matching guns with guns, dogs with dogs, and Erik remembered all too well that the only reason he’d gotten out of that hell of a camp with Magda was because the people of the camp had fought back and stopped being docile.  

( He couldn’t remember the rest of that saying, though, the phrase slipping from his mind and a moment later he couldn’t tell you there was another half at all. )

His mind shot to the Park, to the images they’d played on TV and that he’d gleaned from Jean’s mind the last time they’d shared headspace.  To the way that his people had been simply enjoying a warm day, harming no one, threatening no one, only to be met with armed enforcers and one of their own dying choking on his own blood in Logan’s arms.  Raven had--

Raven told the Enforcers they were there, but she didn’t make them pull the trigger.  They chose violence, like they always do.  This is what happens if we don’t fight like they do.  

More dead children, one of his greatest fears, the reason he has this blasted collar on in the first place--because Erik will do anything to keep the family he has now safe.  

Anything.  

Anything at all.  

Another shift, back to his own room--but not this one, the one in Brooklyn, the one where he and Jean had nearly taken the building apart in one confrontation that had almost gone as wrong as the one with Alex ( was that just an hour ago?  How long had he had the collar on?  How much time had passed? ).  There’s the haul from L-Corp sitting dismantled on his dining table, and Erik is reading the papers he’d stolen along with everything else, and his stomach feels odd the more he reads.  

Excitement? Fear? Guilt? He didn’t know, he still didn’t know.  The idea had crossed his mind back then but made him feel faintly queasy, doubts and concerns that he could no longer put his finger on making him reluctant to use the data he had the way the bird was whispering to him that he could.  But the feeling he had now looking back on it is something colder than that had been.  Matter-of-fact.  He knew what he needed to do.  

Supergirl agreed with him.  Agreed with the need for safety, agreed with his anger, agreed with everything except wasn’t willing to take the steps he was.  

Help her.  Help her, help us.  

They needed a win against the humans.  They needed it now, because Enforcement wasn’t getting any looser.  Erik’s plan was good, he felt it--he’d gone over much of it with Scott, tweaked the things that needed to be tweaked, and it felt like as good a plan as any.  But nothing was infallible.  

Why deprive yourself of an advantage against an opponent who won’t do the same?  We can help all of them--mutants, inhumans, aliens, metahumans.  We’re doing this to help them.  Any help from any of them is another point to balance the scales in our favor.

War was coming.  Even Scott and Jean believed it to be necessary.  He couldn’t afford to lose.  They couldn’t afford to lose.

Shaw was back, and Erik tried not to shudder as the sensation of the wall morphed into a knee as the man’s voice drifted down from above.  “You’re creative, Max, I’ll give you that.  It’s not the way I’d do it.  Bit more hands-on than a nuke would have been, but that’s the price you pay for trying to spare any of them.  I still say you kill them all--but who knows, you may well end up doing that anyway.”  No.  The threat would work.  It had to work.  The country’s principle of non-negotiation could hardly extend to millions of lives in the balance of their willingness to play ball.  “They’re stupid, we both know that.”

Can he live with the possibility of having that much blood on his hands?  

Can he live with what’ll happen if negotiations fail and he doesn’t?

“You’ve lived through so much, Henryk,” and that was Magda now, and Erik shook his head as if that alone could drive her out.  He didn’t need this.  

“Is there anything that you can’t live with?”  

The lines he drew in the sand have been moving for decades.  Things he swore he’d never do, he’d done, time and time again, promising himself that he still wouldn’t do this thing or that thing until the time came that his hand was forced and it was started all over again.  Even now, he’s doing something he’d promised he wouldn’t, locking his power away for the sake of his family.

He can’t have it all be for nothing.  Can’t live with the thought of being powerless to save his people yet again.  He’s an Omega-class mutant backed by Omega-class mutants.  He’s sharing the Phoenix Force.  He has to win.  He has to.  He has to. 

No matter the cost.

[captainhuggermuggerus]

Medusa of the Deep

This was getting ridiculous.

           There were ten fishing boats in the village, with three to seven people on each. Well, there had been. Now there were only enough people for three of the boats, because the rest were all dead of jellyfish poisoning.

           As to the rest of the men, who were supposed to handle this kind of thing. They had all refused to go back out into open water and deal with whatever was reaching up and killing their own. That left the women.

           They were meeting at the church, supposedly to decide who they were going to make sweaters and socks for, since not everyone could get yarn and winter was coming. However, it was also to discuss the jellyfish problem.

           Meg was the oldest, a short woman whose husband, while he lived, had told her she was never allowed on his boat lest she capsized it. She had gotten her revenge by not letting him in the house until he’d washed off every bit of fish smell.

           The joke was that Meg had no sense of smell.

           Meg was sorting scrap yarn from their indulgent summer projects. “Has anyone actually seen it, though? The jellyfish? Must be massive. And how do they keep catching it?”

           “They’re idiots,” was Suzanne’s comment. Suzanne had gotten married last year and was expecting her first baby, which made her irritable. She loved children but hated being fat. Her husband sometimes slept at the pub because she was more upset as she got bigger.

           Laurie rolled her eyes. She was the village teacher. “We know that. My husband says they keep catching her in the nets, and trying to put her back.”

           “Oh, a her?” Meg asked, putting down the soft yellow yarn. “And how did he know the gender of a jellyfish? They’re blobs!”

           That gave them all pause, and they stopped, looking at each other.

           “Idiots,” Laurie muttered. Although she wasn’t clear as to whom she referred.

           Meg started cackling. “They keep catching the same mermaid!” she chortled.

           “Well, why don’t they stop doing that?” Suzanne grumbled.

           Meg finally stopped laughing. “We need to go talk to her, see what can be done.”

           “Why did they say jellyfish if she’s a mermaid?” Suzanne asked.

           Meg was back to sorting the yarn. “The first ones anyone met were the ones with the long fish-tails, those were mermaids, but no one knew about the other kinds of tails for ages. She’s still a mermaid, she just probably has jellyfish tentacles instead of a tail.”

           “And we will be able to talk to her…why?” Laurie asked. “Since she’s been attacking people?”

           “Well, we aren’t going to drop nets and try to catch her!” Meg was scandalized. “We are going to be civilized about it, and discuss what’s going on, and come up with a solution.”

           They all took a moment with that, realizing that, while they loved their husbands, they could be a bit dumb, and it had gotten several people killed.

           Suzanne sighed. “We’ll have to go out at night.”

           “I’m packing food,” Meg added. “Laurie, can we use your husband’s boat?”

           Laurie shook her head. “Engine’s broke.”

           “Suzanne?”

           “It’s one of the new ones, I have no idea how it runs. What about you, Meg?”

           “I sold Ted’s boat to pay off the house ages ago. I have a rowboat, though.”

           “I’m not rowing anything,” Suzanne was final.

           “I can,” Laurie added.

           “So can I,” Meg decided. “You and I will row. Suzanne will keep things from falling overboard while we do.”

           “Are you sure you should?” Laurie asked, concerned.

           “I’m eighty-two, not dead. We’re bringing sandwiches. And apples.”

           And so it was decided.

.           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .

           Suzanne was not impressed by the rowboat.

           “It’s got seaweed growing on it!”

           “That happens,” Meg agreed. “Hop in and hold the basket so we can push it out.”

           Once they were out on the water, Meg and Laurie rowing-and Meg was trying to get Laurie to understand the actual rhythm-and Suzanne was clinging to the side with one hand, and the basket of food clutched the other.

           They rowed out into the bay, Meg deciding where they should stop.

           “Do you think the mermaid speaks English?” Laurie asked. “Because this could get complicated.”

           “Well,” Meg thought it over. “Usually, they have some idea of local human languages. If not English, maybe she knows some Swedish or Danish, I know a little of those. Anyone else know any other languages?”

           “French,” Laurie offered. She was a teacher, after all, French was a sign of a well-taught teacher, and also a governess, which she had been as well.

           “What about you, Suzanne?”            Suzanne seemed focused on not getting dumped overboard, even thought hey were barely tilting. “Gaelic.”

           “Seriously?” Laurie was incredulous. “I didn’t think anyone knew that anymore!”

           “Me either. Where did you learn?” Meg added.

           “My great-grandmother, when I was little. Why are you pitching this thing every way imaginable?” she added, strident.

           They were barely moving. “Sorry, dear,” Meg offered. “We’ll be more careful.”

           Having reached the middle of the bay, they stopped rowing, and Meg lit the other lanterns they had brought, so they were in a blaze of light.

           “Now what?” Laurie asked.

           “Now,” Meg told them. “Now, we wait. Who’s hungry?”

           They were happily into the sandwiches when the water suddenly bubbled up.

           Meg put her sandwich down. “Oh, lovely, that must be her. Suzanne, lean to the port side, would you? Thank you. dear.”

           The water bubbled up and the surface tension broke, revealing a dark head and two dark eyes, narrowed.

           “Good evening,” Meg greeted her. “Would you like a sandwich?”

           Eyes stayed narrowed.

           “We wanted to talk to you, about what’s been going on in the bay, but like civilized people, over food,” Meg continued, fishing out another sandwich. “Do you like apples? I’m Meg, these are Laurie and Suzanne.”

           Still nothing, but Meg offered her the sandwich anyway. Suzanne sighed deeply.

           “We don’t have nets or anything boneheaded like that,” she offered. “We’re in a rowboat, for heaven’s sake.”

           The mermaid raised one brow at that, a brow that didn’t have hair but the faintest suggestion of scales. Then, carefully, she extended one arm, and took the sandwich, raising her body halfway out of the water. To brace herself, she exposed a few tentacles, making sure to keep them outside the rowboat.

           She took a bite of the sandwich. Meg had made egg salad sandwiches for all of them except Suzanne, who hated egg at the moment. She had gotten chicken salad.

           “Thank you,” The mermaid’s voice was a deep rumble. “I’m Anya.”

           “A pleasure to meet you!” Meg agreed.

           Anya took a bite of the sandwich, and her eyes lit up. “This is good!”

           “Egg salad,” Laurie offered. “Meg makes the best egg salad sandwiches.”

           After they ate, Meg gathered the napkins up. “Now, we need to talk about the idiot men and what’s been going on out here. We’ve heard everything they’ve said-what about you? What’s been going on?”

           Anya leaned on the rowboat, her tentacles curling underneath and up the other side so the little boat wouldn’t capsize. “I’m not sure. I got caught in a net, and they pulled me out, usually people apologize and let you go, but they seemed to think they could give me away? I hit someone getting off the ship. It was hard-tentacles don’t work too well out of water.”

           Suzanne shook her head. “Idiots. Our husbands are idiots.”

           “We knew that, though,” Laurie told her.

           “And I thought that would be the end of it, since I hit someone with my tentacles, and I know they’re poisonous, and I went further offshore, so I wouldn’t interfere with their fishing. And they kept coming back, and I started to use my tentacles to defend myself, and I’m afraid people got hurt.”

           “People got killed,” Suzanne offered.

           Anya slunk down in the water. “I grew up in these waters. They’re my home, too.”

           Meg reached over and patted her hand. “There, now, dear. We aren’t trying to make you leave. We need to provide a solution, that’s all. And your family was probably here alongside ours for years, and no one ever noticed the other. So, how did that work?”

           “We had an agreement. We would drive the fish upwards, to the nets, and in return we would not be caught in them.”

           “That sounds great,” Laurie commented. “We’ve had such trouble getting in good catches for a while now.”

           Anya nodded. “And I don’t mind! I only eat the little fish, or the eggs. But I don’t want to be carted off somewhere.”

           Meg was thinking hard. “We need to talk to the actual fishermen, but since they’ve been idiots and half of them are dead, they will appreciate the help. Even if we have to smack them with spoons. Can we meet back here in two nights?”

           “Sure. Can you bring another sandwich?”

           Meg patted her hand. “Of course, dear.”

           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .

           It took rather a lot of persuasion on Laurie and Suzanne’s part to get the men tot listen, and finally Meg was so irritated that she came into the church where they were meeting, threw a basket of partially thawed fish guts on the floor with a bang, and glared at all of them.

           “You’re idiots,” she informed the now-silent church.

           “Look, there are places down south that---”            “Young man,” Meg narrowed her eyes. “Before Laurie came back with her fancy degree to teach-I love you, Laurie, you are a boon to this town, this has nothing to do with you at all-I was the teacher here. I took you outside and tanned your backside myself when I found out you were declawing all the cats based on one book that you should never have gotten. You are not allowed to make decisions like that. You have no respect for life. Anya-that’s her name-is a mermaid. She’s from here, just like we are. Her family used to drive the fish up for us, back when this town actually had money. She’s come back. If we work with her instead of acting like idiots, we can start to have something again.”

           He opened his mouth, bright red, and then closed it. He really wished Meg would forget the declawing thing.

           “So, she wants to not be caught in the nets. I think we can all agree that, since she will help-driving the schools of fish to the nets-we can all do that? This is a very simple equation, you know.”

           The men looked at each other, somewhat shamefaced.

           Laurie and Suzanne high-fived, knowing Meg had made the point for them.

           “Good,” Meg announced. “We’ll go tell her. Don’t a single one of you make us liars.”

           That last, she added with a finger-shaking.

           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .           .          

           Over the next three months, the town had greater catches of fish than in the previous ten years. They were able to rebuild the library and fix up the school.

           Meg also made sure they rebuilt the promontory walk over the deep part of the inlet. That was where, when she was a girl, the mermaids would come up to the surface, and people could talk to their aquatic counterparts. For a while, it was simply her and Anya. Then other people started coming.

           And other mermaids.

           When Meg saw ten of them, some medusas like Anya, others with fish tails, or wrapped in kelp, talking to the children that Laurie had brought down for the day, she knew the town was going to be all right.

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[saibh29]

Thief (Part 2)

Pairings: Bellamy / Reader (grounder)

Warning: Mentions of Torture, Swearing, Blood, Violence

AN: Due to an incredible amount of demand I’m continuing to write Thief, there isn’t a lot of Bellamy in the chapter but it’s kind of setting the scene for the next one. 

@angelaiswriting @georgiagrl1990 @selldraug @angryares @coffeebooksandfandom

You went carefully down the steps towards where you knew that Anya was keeping the sky crew hostage, John Murphy, your people had found him wondering the woods almost a week ago now and had utilised just about every method at your disposal to get information out of him. You dismissed the guards watching Murphy leaving you alone with him.

He wasn’t looking good, dried blood covered his face and body. It was matting his hair and drying on his clothes. Fresh blood was dripping from his nose and bruises decorated his skin. It looked like fairly recently his shoulder had been dislocated.

He was eyeing you warily as you crossed over to him crouching down in front of him.

“Thank you John” you said quietly “You were right about everything”

You brought out one of the bullets you’d stolen holding it out in one hand. John’s eyes widened at the sight of the bullet.

“They were exactly where you said they would be”

“You stole the bullets”

Smiling at him you nodded “every single last one. It will be interesting to see how they fight with no bullets for their precious weapons”

“You aren’t even scratched”

“Of course not, I’m very good at my job John”

He had dropped his eyes away from your own now, staring at the ground. “You’ll kill them all, destroy the whole camp”

“That’s the plan” he didn’t move again “how does it feel to know you were the cause of your own peoples doom?”

He did look up then, eyes flashing with rage “they deserve it” he snapped “they hung me for nothing and banished me leaving me to die. I want to see them burn”

“Who did?” you asked curiously, a picture of Bellamy flashing before your eyes as he laid unconscious on the grass. “Who out of all of them banished you John?”

“Why would you care?”

“I don’t” you back tracked shrugging your shoulders “revenge however doesn’t usually focus on such a large group”

He was staring at you steadily “Bellamy Blake” he spat out the name as you kept your face blank. “He’s the one who did this to me”

“Bellamy Blake” the name sounded strange coming from your mouth. You might be able to speak their language but names were a personal gift and help power over the owner. Their names were very different to your own and very distinctive.

“I met him” you didn’t know why you were telling Murphy this. “He tried to shoot me”

“That would be Bellamy” he agreed. “I hope you killed him”

“And deprive you of your revenge?”

“Dead is dead”

You didn’t answer him this time, getting back up to your feet. There was sickness in John’s voice that went beyond ‘Blood demands blood’. He wouldn’t get his revenge of course. When he had outlived his usefulness then Anya would kill him.

“Thank you for your help John”

You left him much as you’d found him sending his guards back in, you instead of going back to your main camp headed to the edge of the forest lifting the hood of your cloak up to cover your hair you moved quickly through the tree’s.

 ********************

It hadn’t taken you long to find a group of sky people, they were not quiet when moving through the woods and were alerting everyone to their presence. You scaled the tree closest to them completely hidden in the branches as the group came into view.

It was the boy from before, Finn and two other boys who you didn’t recognise.

You weren’t sure why you were doing this, why you were still sat in a tree watching as Finn talked to the other boys. You weren’t able to hear exactly what they were talking about but it didn’t look pleasant.

You were curious about Finn and his obvious determination to save you from torture and pain, or whatever it was that Bellamy had planned to do to you.

The two unknown boys were leaving and letting your instincts take over you dropped from the tree. You’d landed almost silently directly behind Finn. When he turned aware that someone was behind him you quickly covered his mouth with one hand, using your other to press a knife against his neck moving him back into the shadow of the tree.

“Stay very quiet Finn”

“You do understand us!” he whispered not seeming particularly scared of the grounder who had reappeared in front of him.

“Of course I understand”

“How did you get free?”

“Is that really what you want to know from me Finn? How I escaped from your groups pathetic attempts at kidnapping”

“Why are you here now?” he eventually asked “You got free, took the bullets and knocked out Bellamy. Why come back?”

“Better Finn” you praised “Much better. Now if only I could answer that or any of your questions”

You removed your knife from Finn, fairly certain that he wasn’t going to go anywhere. He was too curious to know what was going on.

“You pissed off a lot of people… I don’t know your name”

You looked carefully at him, finally saying “Y/N. My name is Y/N”

“Y/N” he repeated testing the sounds in his mouth. “You knocked out Bellamy” he smiled a little at that thought. “Not that that particularly annoyed me”

“Not a fan of your illustrious leader? Interesting”

“He isn’t our leader” Finn instantly corrected you. “Not the only one anyhow”

“Ah yes the blonde… Clarke”

Finn was frowning now “you seem to know an awful lot about us” he thought about this once more “how did you know where we kept the bullets?”

“I told you already about questions and answers Finn. I can’t answer them even if I’d wanted to” the loud voices of more sky people shouting out Finn’s name reached your ears as you cocked your head trying to pinpoint where the sound was coming from.

“I believe this is where we say goodbye once more”

“Y/N” Finn reached out grabbing your wrist suddenly looking worried. “I meant what I said before, I had no desire to hurt you I only want peace”

“Peace?”

He nodded his head urgently. “Why must we fight? There must be another way”

“There might have been before the missiles” you admitted, you weren’t sure once again why you were telling him this. He had no right to the information.

“Missiles?” he looked confused “what missiles”

“Don’t act stupid Finn it doesn’t suit you” you pulled your wrist out of his grip. “Your people fired those rockets into the sky, they hit our villages. Innocent people were killed. Woman and children who had never raised a weapon in their lives. Your people did that Finn”

He was looking pale as he stared at you his mouth hanging open. “Holy shit. Y/N we didn’t know” he was fidgeting anxiously now obviously trying to restrain himself from grabbing you. The voices from the forest were getting louder and you recognised the main male voice. It was Bellamy. He was out there somewhere close looking for Finn.

“Y/N I swear we didn’t know. Those flares were to send a message to our own people. They weren’t mean to hit anyone”

He obviously believed he was telling the truth, it was clear to see in his face. Not that that made it any easier for you believe him.

“FINN” Bellamy’s voice was now literally seconds away from finding the two of you.

“We will talk about this again” you warned Finn before making for the tree once more. With the ease and skill of a cat you scaled the trunk swinging into the branches and hiding yourself in foiliage just as Bellamy came into sight.

He was scowling as he caught sight of Finn. “For fuck sake Collins, you know better than to wander off on your own. It’s not safe out here”

“I wasn’t alone. Monty and Jasper just left” Finn instantly defended. His body language had changed completely too when he was talking to you. He didn’t like Bellamy, everything about his posture was screaming that dislike.

“Then why are you still here? On your own?” Bellamy’s gaze swept the trees and branches above. He wouldn’t be able to see you but you tensed anyway. Remaining utterly still.

“I was just leaving” Finn bent down and picked a random flower from the floor. “Was just getting something for Raven”

Bellamy stared at the flowers obviously not believing him but not willing to cause any more of an argument. Then he looked up once more, staring directly at where you were crouched. You knew he couldn’t see you, but it certainly felt like he could as dark eyes bored into your own.

In an indirect way he was in just as much pain as John Murphy you noticed. Only his pain had been internalised. You were suddenly desperate to find out just what it was that Bellamy Blake was hiding. This time though you curbed your impulses and instead remained still in the tree as the two men turned and went back towards the sky people’s camp.