Blood Red | Bellamy Blake (1)

Chapter 6

Day 11

Lingering around camp meant helping the other delinquents, which meant talking to the other delinquents. Instead of doing that, Cheyenne stuck close to Clarke. She and Finn were a bit of a package deal, but that didn't bother Cheyenne too much. When Clarke moved to go help someone with a sprained ankle, she hung back with Finn near the door of the dropship.

"You want to go get some water?" he asked, peering over into the basin they'd been keeping water in before boiling.

She was unable to keep her eyes from zeroing in on where Bellamy was helping build the wall. There was no way she would be able to ask him if she could go with Finn without Finn realizing she needed permission to leave camp. The spacewalker was more observant than the rest of the delinquents and would clue in immediately to the probability that Bellamy gave her the bruises he and Clarke were so curious about.

So, she shook her head in the negative, dropped her eyes to the ground and slipped up to the third floor of the dropship where she could find some quiet. The sounds of camp didn't filter well up to the top floor, especially when the hatch was shut. When she wasn't slipping through the forest or helping Clarke, Cheyenne tried to find solitude comparable to the Skybox. While the dropship wasn't white and silent and cold, she still found herself able to breathe better isolated away. She didn't have to worry about staining the camp with her bloody hands or being touched by the other delinquents when they would walk too close to her or the noise of ninety-something other people becoming too much. Leaning back on the wall with the hatch closed, she could pretend that she was the only person on the Earth and that the sound of the stone sharpening her knife was the only sound in the universe.

A banging on the hatch startled Cheyenne into dropping her knife. The sound of it clattering echoed in the empty space around her, but Bellamy's head poking up relieved any lingering anxiety.

"Can you not hear up here?" he snapped.

Cheyenne's shoulders curled in on themselves at the tone of his voice. "I come up here to make sure I can't hear. It reminds me of the Skybox." She couldn't read the face he made at her confession, but she wasn't going to lie to him.

"I need your help. Come on." Without another word, he was gone again.

Cheyenne swiped her knife from the floor and slipped down the dropship ladder. Bellamy was waiting for her on the bottom floor, already launching into an explanation before her feet even hit the floor. She kept pace with him as they crossed the camp, dipping into the tent where they held meetings. Octavia was standing there with Jasper, waiting with eager eyes. Cheyenne didn't acknowledge them. Instead, she crouched down to look at the dirt with fresh eyes.

"I still don't understand how you didn't hear all the screaming and yelling," Bellamy said, watching intently as Cheyenne tried to figure out which edge of the tent they'd slipped out of through the overlapping footprints.

"With the hatch closed, you can't hear anything." She glanced up at him and then to Octavia and Jasper before focusing back on the dirt. "I go there to be alone. There are too many people in this camp." She slipped through the edge of the tent, knowing Bellamy would follow. He'd made sure she felt his urgency when he'd said Murphy was trying to kill Charlotte.

"You're that girl from Mecha, aren't you?" Octavia finally burst out. It was as if she'd been holding it in for days. "You're the girl that killed three guards and two civilians."

"O, you can't just -"

"It's okay," Cheyenne interrupted. She knew how much Bellamy loved Octavia and didn't want to be the reason he was angry with her. "You can ask whatever you want, Octavia."