FROM HER ASHES³ ━━ Bellamy Blake

𝐗𝐗𝐈𝐗: You're the Only Friend I Need

┍━━━━ ⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆ ━━━━┑

YOU'RE THE ONLY FRIEND I NEED

( sharing beds like little kids

we'll laugh until our ribs get tough

but that will never be enough )

┕━━━━ ⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆ ━━━━┙

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          LYRA CAN ONLY describe what follows as pure, utter hell.

     Her mind doesn't belong to her. It never has. Everything burns.

     Memories shudder through her, and yet none of them are hers. No, they are something much, much worse.

     The memories of the Commander's.

     When they finally came to speak to her ━━ and they did come to speak to her ━━ they never left her alone. She watches everything. Patterns of maps, battle plans, the delicate curves of a swords hilt, the way it feels to shoot an arrow so straight and true that it sinks into someone's eye, Polis as it was being built, the sun melting into the sea, a killer's crinkly brown eyes, a brother's scowl, the wave-tilt of a dying lovers smile. They are feverish and rabid, cutting her apart like knives, crushing her to bits, so much of other people, dripping dark and ribbon-like until Lyra cannot breathe, overwhelmed with thought. There is no way to make sense of the wildfire consuming her.

War. Death. Pain. Murder. Betrayal. Loss. She feels it over and over and over and over again. Washing over her in waves, drowning her all the while.

She learns what it is like to die ━━ to be burned alive, to be cut into ribbons, to get so sick you cannot stand, to be betrayed by your only friend.

     She learns what it is like to lose. To be defeated in battle and subject to the brutalities of the cruel oppressor. To lose those around you, one by one, as suddenly they are mere pawns on the chessboard in the game of power.

     There is nothing soft and digestible about this. These memories are not ghost-like, obscure, they are not foggy and blurred. They are not phantoms. They are demonic. Like searing hot flames licking at the inside of her skull, slathering her entire body, burning her to ash. Sharp. Fiery. Destroying her from the inside out.

Heda Glass kom Azgedakru, the Commander before Lexa, experiences brutalities beyond anything Lyra has ever known. Forced to kill her own twin brother for sport when she is still a child. Her own flesh and blood and bone, cut down by her own knife. Going deaf after an explosion. Disabled. Crippled without the ability to hear in a world of war, her death is brought slowly, and Lyra feels it all. It is torturous. . .

An unbearable vision of white pain. Conceived somewhere between hear and agony. Something strikes her so heavily in the head that Lyra is sure that she herself is crying out loud. Not just in the memory, but that the scream is quite literally being pulled from her lungs in reality ━━

"Lyra? Lyra!"

Her eyes snap open with a start.