Heaven Can’t Wait – Chapter 61

<< Chapter Sixty | Table of Contents | Chapter Sixty-Two >>

---

Chapter Sixty-One – She’s Still Alive

Bellamy reaches for the door control, but Monty grabs his wrist with a firm grip.

“You can’t. The inner doors are malfunctioning.” He says, pointing to a warning on the panel. “If you open the doors, you’ll flood the entire hallway with radiation.”

“I can’t just leave her in there. She’s going to die.”

“Bellamy,” Monty whispers, “She’s already dead. No one could survive that amount of radiation. That’s why we’re hiding in Alpha Station in the first place.”

“But she’s a nightblood,” says Harper. “Maybe-”

Monty shakes his head. Harper’s eyes tear up and she looks away, pulling Cara into her arms to comfort the crying girl.

“I don’t care. She’s still alive now. I have to go to her.”

Monty doesn’t let go of his arm. “If you go in there, you’re as good as dead, too.”

“Well, I’m not letting her die alone and scared.”

“Bellamy, listen to the nerd,” Murphy says, “He knows what he’s talking about. No need for two deaths today.”

“I’m going in. I don’t care about myself. Maybe there’s a chance she can survive with her nightblood, but we won’t know if we don’t get her out of there.”

Heaven Can’t Wait – Chapter 60

<< Chapter Fifty-Nine | Table of Contents | Chapter Sixty-One >>

---

Chapter Sixty – Missing Again

Bellamy wakes slowly— a feeling of warmth caressing him inside and out. Just like the last three mornings he’s woken up here, he doesn’t want to leave Clarke’s bed today, either, but he needs to get going before the craziness starts.

They’ve been steadily moving people out of the halls back to their quarters on the other side of the station for the last few days, and today they are clearing out the refugee camp that will once again be open as a fully-functioning Mess Hall. It’s going to be a long day of moving heavy crates, cleaning, and stopping the occasional fight, and Bellamy wants to get it done as quickly as possible because once the Grounders are all on their own side of the station, the better things will be. At least he hopes it will curb some of the drama he’s been dealing with since the evacuation.

Reluctantly, he slides out from under Clarke’s arm and gets dressed. He pecks Clarke on the forehead but doesn’t wake her before slipping out of the room.

Bellamy skips going to his office and heads right to the Mess Hall while reading the scraps of paper with Clarke’s carefully inscribed list of names in order of their move, but when he gets to the Mess, it’s already pandemonium as the Grounders pack up their personal belongings and Arkadians move crates that have been temporarily stored in the large room. In the space that had been cleared last night, tables are already set up where civilians watch the chaos and eat their breakfast.

We’d get a lot more done if you helped instead of just watching, he thinks, but doesn’t say anything. Instead, he hops up onto a crate to get everyone’s attention.

“Good morning,” he calls until most eyes are on him. “I know everyone is anxious to get back to their own quarters, but if you’ll just be patient a little longer, we can do this in an orderly fashion so everything ends up where it belongs without any issues.” Unlike yesterday when two groups of Arkadians began fighting over a single crate of belongings they both claimed as their own which ended up actually belonging to neither of them. That only took twenty minutes to figure out. The crate was still sitting in his office waiting to be retrieved by the owners.

Heaven Can’t Wait – Chapter 59

<< Chapter Fifty-Eight | Table of Contents | Chapter Sixty >>

---

Chapter Fifty-Nine – A Really Long Day

Bellamy’s good mood lasts approximately three minutes before he hears a commotion halfway back to his office. He turns the corner to find a ring of Grounders surrounding a group of Arkadians. Olsen right in the middle of things. Bellamy is instantly on high alert.

The Grounders back off at his approach but keep an eye on him while Olsen and his friends look just as wary.

“What’s this about?” Bellamy asks Olsen.

The man is battered and bruised from the fight. He spits a glob of blood onto the floor before answering. “What does it look like? We were jumped.”

“Just like that?”

A Grounder as big around as an oak steps forward. “They accused Sylvan of thievery.”

The two groups immediately start yelling at each other again, nearly coming to blows once more.

“Enough,” Bellamy shouts, rubbing at a pain behind his eye. 

Another Grounder—this one smaller with a gimp leg—clears his throat. “I didn’t steal anything. I’ve been in my tent all day.” He taps his bum leg with a wooden cane. “It’s not like I could get far if I needed to run. And as you can see, I have everything I need already.” He uses the cane to push aside a sheet hanging from the ceiling to get a better view of his sleeping mat and small stash of belongings.

“Search it,” Olsen commands. “You’ll see. There are dozens of witnesses that saw him prowling around Hinton’s quarters while they were getting their rations.”

Dozens of witnesses all from Farm Station most likely.

Bellamy knows this is going to get out of control fast if he makes the wrong move. With a sigh, he moves past Sylvan to look through his bag and crate.

Olsen seems to take umbrage with Bellamy’s gentle care. He shoves Bellamy out of the way to toss the small space. Someone else tears down the sheet while another flips his mattress. Next thing Bellamy knows, there’s a knife tearing through the fabric.

Heaven Can’t Wait – Chapter 58

<< Chapter Fifty-Seven | Table of Contents | Chapter Fifty-Nine >>

---

Chapter Fifty-Eight – Not All Hope Is Lost

Bellamy spends the rest of the day going over a growing pile of reports while trying to convince himself that Heaven is perfectly safe with Jeff who is definitely telling the truth about his repair work. He’s not doing a very good job of either, though.

The anxiety continues to fester with each new altercation he has to assess. Tensions between the Grounder and Arkadian refugees camped in the halls are growing by the minute. He’s had to leave four times to break up fights and talk to people, but nothing is helping. Lockup isn’t much of a threat when they just catch and release people because of space problems.

Reluctantly, he begins to understand the way things ran on the Ark. Floating was the only alternative, but he doesn’t want to believe they’re at that point already.

The doors have only been closed a few days for crying out loud.

“What are you doing?” Harper asks, heading for the time clock on the wall.

Bellamy startles out of his thoughts then looks blankly at the tablet in front of him. He shakes his head to clear it, but it doesn’t really help.

“Aren’t you coming to dinner?”

“Oh, right.” Clarke invited me to dinner at her place. With all of our friends. He swallows hard. “I just have to finish up some work.”

Harper quirks an eyebrow and crosses her arms, head tilted to one side. “You’ve been working all day.”

He scoffs. “I don’t think I get that luxury of not working anymore.” But he pushes the tablet to the side and locks some paper files in the desk drawer before standing and stretching.

Heaven Can’t Wait – Chapter 57

<< Chapter Fifty-Six | Table of Contents | Chapter Fifty-Eight >>

---

Chapter Fifty-Seven – Busy With Work

“What did you need?” Bellamy asks as soon as he arrives in Engineering.

Raven’s expression is grim as she guides him to a corner where some screens are set up around a computer terminal. Kane is waiting for them. “I’ve been going through security footage of the other side of the station, checking radiation levels and stuff. It’s routine.”

“And?”

She taps at the keyboard. “I found something in one of the closed sectors.”

“Found something? Like a radiation leak?”

Raven grimaces. “Like bodies,” she whispers, turning a screen towards Bellamy.

The image on the screen is in grainy black and white, but the unmistakable shapes of five people piled in front of a door are clear enough.

“Where is this?”

“Just on the Grounder side of the station. One of the last lockdown points—junction 17-C.”

A memory prods at the back of his mind. “I saw someone working on this door the other day. He said it was malfunctioning.”

Raven’s frown deepens. She checks something on the computer then looks up at Bellamy. “There’s no record of any repairs on that door.”

Now Bellamy is frowning. Why would Jeff lie to him? Unless he’s part of this group targeting the Grounders. The thought makes him sick. He left Heaven with Jeff.

Is she in danger? If Jeff is siding with Farm Station why would he even be okay with taking in a Grounder child? Unless he has some plan for her.

The thoughts swirl, getting darker and darker until someone squeezes his shoulder.

Avatar the Last Airbender fic: When Pirates Happen

When Pirates Happen

When Zuko is kidnapped by pirates, his friends come to find him. Written for Zutara Month 2022 on tumblr for the prompt: pirates.
585 words | [PG]

---

The last thing Zuko remembers is standing on the beach at his family’s summer home on Ember Island. He’d closed his eyes, soaking up the first rays of the sunrise. The next thing he knows, he’s waking up slowly to the swaying of a ship on the sea.

He rolls to his side—head aching—and groans. “What happened?” 

“You have come into the hands of Longwei Dong—the greatest pirate in all the Earth Kingdom.”

Zuko scoffs. Pirates. Just what he needs. “Never heard of you?”

Longwei sputters then unsheathes his sword, pointing it at Zuko’s throat. “You will know me very well indeed when this is over.”

“And how exactly do you see this ending?” Zuko stretches his neck from side to side then shakes out his arms. “Because I don’t think it’s going to go the way you think.”

“I think,” Longwei says, stabbing his sword with each word, “your family will pay handsomely for you.”

Zuko actually laughs at that. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Might have been these fancy clothes you’re wearing or that big house with a private beach or-“

Camp NaNo Week 2 Update

Another week of Camp NaNo is done. I’m a day late and a dollar short with this update, and I don’t have much to tell. On the positive side, I finished my official Camp NaNo goal of 6,000 words (YAY!), but on the other side, I’m still one chapter short of my ultimate goal of finishing four chapters during April.

In the past week, I only really worked on Heaven for a couple of days which included some editing and rewriting chapter 61. I have yet to start writing chapter 62 which is the last one I need to finish to “win” in my book. But I’ve been procrastinating something fierce.

Really, I think I’m getting burnt out on the story. I’ve been steadily working on it since January, and it’s hard to juggle all of the plot points and remember what I wrote years ago. I get frustrated because I create plot holes because I forgot details I came up with in 2018. I can barely remember what I did last week, let alone four years ago. Needless to say, it’s been an ordeal, and I’m kind of stuck.

But there are still two weeks left to finish, so I’m not that worried. I’ll just keep plugging along, making outlines, brainstorming, and editing what I do have done.

Because the burnout on this one story is getting to me, I’ve started working on other projects including finishing some prompts for Zutara Month and writing drabbles from prompts I find on dreamwidth.

Don’t worry, Heaven Can’t Wait hasn’t been forgotten. My goal is to finish the fic by the end of the year. I had 80 chapters and an epilogue plotted out, but I keep having to throw away my outlines because they don’t work anymore. But I’ll get there, even if I end up shortening the fic by ten chapters. I’m so close, I can taste it.

Anyway, here’s a snippet from the last chapter I was editing (chapter 61)

Bellamy goes to the door to the Observation Room and punches in the command to close the inner airlock. The door tries to close but doesn’t quite make it before sliding open again. His hands are shaking violently as he enters the override command. The computer bleats out a warning about the broken door and the radiation levels in the airlock, but he ignores them, reentering the override one more time. The door whooshes open, and immediately, he’s hit with a wave of heat and humidity that makes him see white.

He ignores his discomfort and rushes in to where Heaven lay on the floor, meekly moving her head from side to side.

Avatar the Last Airbender fic: Cultural Exchange

Cultural Exchange

After the war, Katara and Zuko share a little of their culture through their cuisine. Written for Zutara Month 2022 on tumblr for the prompt: sharing cultures
708 words | [PG]

---

“So this is your favorite food?” Katara asks, admiring the plating of the dish. 

Zuko grins as he cuts the round bread into four large pieces. “It’s called a Fire Fritter. It’s filled with sweet cream and fried then drizzled with Fire Flake sauce.”

“Both sweet and spicy, huh? That seems to be common in the Fire Nation.” Katara takes a tentative bite of the fried dough, being careful to get more of the sweet filling than the flaming-red icing. The bread itself is moist with a hint of sweetness, but the filling melts in her mouth full of sugar and a hint of mango, but then a bit of the Fire Flake sauce bursts on top of the sweetness, adding just a touch of heat that slightly burns the roof of her mouth before she swallows.

“So?” Zuko asks, his hands fidgeting with the edge of the plate. He’s looking anywhere but at her.

Katara licks her lips, considering the mishmash of flavors. “It’s amazing Zuko, the sauce is a little too spicy for my tastes, but I could eat the rest every day.”

A smile spreads across his face. “They make a version with a milder sauce—you can try that one next time.”

Katara smiles, too, as she takes another bite, this time avoiding the Fire Flake sauce. She really could eat the sweet cream filling all day long. “You have really good food in the Fire Nation,” she tells him, licking her fingers free of every crumb. “Lots of variety and flavors.”

Heaven Can’t Wait – Chapter 56

<< Chapter Fifty-Five | Table of Contents | Chapter Fifty-Seven >>

---

Chapter Fifty-Six – Other Things to Worry About

This time when Bellamy wakes, it’s to keys in the cage door. The clinking and creaking of metal pulls him from a now thankfully dreamless sleep. The door swings open as a yawn escapes. He glances up through puffy, sore eyes at a stern-looking Indra. For a split second, he’s back on that field, convincing Pike to let her live. He won’t lie and say he hasn’t wondered more than once if that was a mistake.

Her lips are set in a grim line. She moves out of the way without saying anything to let Kane in who quickly uncuffs Bellamy and offers him a hand up.

Bellamy gets to weak legs, rubbing his sore wrists. “What’s going on?”

“I’m releasing you on your own recognizance.”

“What? Why?” Bellamy glances at the other men in the cage who have woken with the noise as well. He leans in closer to Kane. “The assault-”

“Those charges have been dropped.”

Bellamy blinks at Kane, not sure he heard him correctly. “Dropped?”

Indra stands a little taller. “By Grounder law, you did nothing wrong in protecting the child. Benedict got his due justice for striking someone too weak to defend themselves.”

Bellamy runs a hand over his face. “But-”

“Bellamy,” Kane says, taking him by the arm to guide him out of the cage, “just accept this mercy and promise not to let your emotions get the better of you again.”

Camp NaNo Week 1 Update

Well, it’s been a week since Camp NaNo started, and there isn’t much to tell. I settled on a goal of 6,000 words which is about four chapters based on an average of 1,500 words per chapter. The plan was to fully write four chapters then edit them to ready along with the two chapters I already had finished.

So far, things are going good. I’ve already finished editing chapters 57 and 58 which were the ones that were finished. Then I got inspired to write on the 5th. I ended up with 4,666 words which was three chapters. So, five days into the event, I had nearly finished my goal, but I didn’t like how one of the chapters turned out so the next day I wrote a new beginning to the chapter, adding another 830 words which produced an obscenely long chapter compared to previous chapters. I’ve been working on editing it down to something reasonable.

So, week one went rather well. Three chapters written, two fully edited, two chapters rewritten and ready to be edited. Now I just need to finish the fourth chapter and get everything edited, and Camp NaNo will be a success. I’ve got three weeks to work on it, so I’m in no hurry.

Here’s a little snippet of what I wrote on the 5th:

On his third trip back to the Mess Hall, Bellamy sees a group of kids in a circle in the center of the room. Storytime. Is it Wednesday already? Maybe they’re just taking advantage of the chance to get out of their rooms no matter what day it is.

The group is mostly listening to a woman perched on a broken chair as she reads a weathered picture book. Both Arkadian and Grounder children sit in the circle, watching her turn pages.

And here’s a bit from the 6th:

They’re nearly to riot level again before Bellamy’s voice echoes over the crowd.

“Everyone calm down! Or you can all spend the night in lockup.”

Slowly the crowd quiets while Olsen completes his search, tossing the crate to the floor where it breaks into pieces, spilling personal items across the torn mat. Bellamy’s about to call the search when someone’s boot connects with a panel on the wall. The sheet of metal comes loose, clattering to the floor.