Chapter 15: Bleeding Hearts - Part 4
POV: Finn
The breaking point came at dusk, when Finn watched Raven choose Alec's company for the third straight evening. She settled beside the farm boy at their usual log near the fire, their shoulders touching in casual intimacy that spoke of shared secrets and mutual trust. The easy way she laughed at his terrible jokes, the comfortable silence they shared while working on equipment—it all felt like watching his future slip away one moment at a time.
"When did I lose her? When did some random kid with lucky instincts become more important than everything we had?"
Finn had tried being patient. Tried giving her space to process his return from the dead, his months of keeping secrets about their relationship status, his failure to prioritize her above heroic gestures and group dynamics. But patience felt like surrender when she looked at Alec like he was solving puzzles she'd been trying to crack her entire life.
He found his opportunity when Alec stepped away from the fire to check perimeter security, a task he performed with the kind of tactical awareness that made Finn's spacewalk heroics look like amateur stunts. The kid moved through dangerous territory like he could see threats before they materialized, positioning himself to intercept problems others never noticed.
"We need to talk," Finn said, cornering Alec near the dropship where shadows provided privacy for conversations that might turn ugly.
"About?"
"About whatever game you're playing with Raven." Finn let anger color his voice, the frustration of weeks spent watching his relationship dissolve while some mysterious farm boy collected the pieces. "You show up, play mysterious and helpful, and suddenly she's looking at you like—"
"Like someone who doesn't lie to her?" Alec interrupted, his voice maddeningly calm. "Like someone who tells her the truth when he can and admits when he can't rather than making promises he won't keep?"
The words hit like physical blows, each one targeting insecurities Finn had been trying to ignore. His history of casual deception, his tendency to prioritize image over honesty, his failure to put Raven's needs above his own heroic aspirations.
"She was mine first," Finn said, hating how possessive he sounded but unable to stop the words.
"She's not property," Alec replied with quiet intensity. "She's a person who makes her own choices. And she's choosing to trust someone who won't lie to her about what matters."
"And what do you matter to her?" Finn demanded, stepping closer with aggressive body language that had intimidated other delinquents but seemed to have no effect on Alec's steady composure.
"She knows what I am to her," Alec said simply. "The question is: what are you to her? Because from where I'm standing, you look like someone who had something precious and didn't take care of it."
The brutal accuracy of the observation deflated Finn's anger into something smaller and sadder. He could see the truth in Alec's words, could recognize his own pattern of taking Raven's loyalty for granted while chasing validation from people who mattered less.
"He's not competing for her. He's already won. And the worst part is, he probably deserves to win."
"I'm not your enemy," Alec continued, his tone softening with something approaching sympathy. "But I won't back off just to make this easier for you. She deserves someone who puts her first, who fights for her, who doesn't make her compete with his ego for attention."
"And that's you?" Finn asked, though the question lacked the venom he'd intended.
"That's what I'm trying to be," Alec admitted. "Every day. Because she's worth fighting for, worth protecting, worth being honest with even when the truth is complicated."
POV: Alec
The conversation with Finn left me drained in ways that had nothing to do with physical exhaustion. Confronting someone's romantic desperation while hiding my own impossibilities created layers of deception that made my head spin. But as I returned to camp, I caught sight of Raven watching our interaction from across the fire, her expression mixing concern with curiosity about what we'd been discussing.
I was walking toward her when my combat prediction exploded with sudden, overwhelming clarity.
Movement. Multiple contacts. Coordinated assault pattern from three different directions simultaneously.
"GROUNDERS!" I shouted, diving toward Raven just as arrows whistled through the space where I'd been standing.
The attack was professional, coordinated, designed to maximize casualties among our scattered group. Eight warriors emerging from concealment with tactical precision that made our amateur defenses look pathetic. But my enhanced combat instincts were painting the entire engagement across my consciousness—strike patterns, movement vectors, probability calculations for survival and counterattack.
Time dilated as adrenaline flooded my system. I could see everything happening in crystalline detail—Bellamy diving for cover while drawing his weapon, Clarke scrambling to protect the medical supplies, Octavia moving with surprising grace despite her lack of formal training. And Raven, frozen for a crucial half-second as arrows filled the air around her position.
I reached her just as a Grounder warrior materialized from the shadows, war paint and leather making him look like death personified. My combat prediction showed me his attack sequence—feint left, strike right, follow through with grappling move designed to incapacitate rather than kill.
The knowledge flooded my consciousness two full seconds before he began moving.
I stepped into his strike pattern, deflecting the spear thrust with precisely timed leverage that sent the weapon wide while my own blade found the gap in his leather armor. Not a killing blow—I couldn't bring myself to murder someone who was protecting his territory from invaders—but enough to disable him temporarily.
The second attacker came from my blind spot, but my prediction had already shown me where he'd be. I spun left just as his blade whistled through empty air, my enhanced awareness making the deadly dance look choreographed rather than chaotic.
From across the battlefield, Bellamy was fighting two Grounders simultaneously, his military training evident in economical movements and tactical positioning. But even he was struggling against warriors who'd spent their entire lives preparing for combat, and I could see the exact moment when his defense would fail.
Without thinking, I flowed through the engagement like water, my body moving through attack patterns I'd never learned but somehow understood. A Grounder blade sliced across my ribs, shallow but painful. A spear point grazed my shoulder, drawing blood but missing anything vital. I took hits that would have crippled others and kept fighting, my regeneration already beginning to close wounds while the battle continued.
The entire skirmish lasted perhaps four minutes. When the Grounders finally disengaged and melted back into the forest, we were left bloody but breathing, our amateur group having somehow survived professional assault through a combination of luck, determination, and tactical awareness I couldn't explain without revealing capabilities that marked me as other than human.
"They're going to ask questions. They saw too much. Moved too well, predicted too accurately, took damage that should have dropped me."
Bellamy approached me as I stood over the disabled warrior, checking his injuries to ensure he'd live to rejoin his people. The older man's eyes were calculating, adding this engagement to his growing file of Alec Morgan impossibilities.
"How did you know where they'd come from?" he asked quietly.
"Lucky guess," I said automatically, the deflection feeling weaker every time I used it.
"Right." His tone suggested exactly what he thought of that explanation. "Lucky guess that saved half our people."
He studied me for a long moment, weighing evidence against loyalty, suspicion against gratitude. When he finally spoke, his voice carried the weight of decisions that would define our relationship going forward.
"I don't know what you are," he said simply. "Don't care. But you fight for us, you take hits for us, and that makes you one of us. Whatever secrets you're carrying, you've earned the right to keep them."
The acceptance hit me like a physical blow. Brotherhood without full understanding. Trust without complete honesty. The kind of grace I'd never expected to find in this world of survival and suspicion.
"Thank you," I managed, my voice thick with gratitude I couldn't fully express. "I won't let you down."
"I know," he said, clapping my shoulder with rough affection. "Because if you did, I'd kill you myself."
The threat was delivered with genuine warmth, and I found myself laughing despite the blood loss and exhaustion. This was what family felt like—people who'd stand with you despite not understanding you, who'd trust your intentions even when they questioned your capabilities.
As evening deepened and the camp settled into nervous vigilance, I found my way to the small shelter I'd constructed near the dropship's edge. I was checking my wounds—already healing faster than they should—when Raven slipped inside without invitation.
She didn't speak, just curled against me with the kind of trust that made my chest tight with protective instincts I'd never experienced before. I wrapped my arms around her, feeling her warmth against my side, breathing in the scent of her hair mixed with metal shavings and electrical components.
"This is what I'm fighting for," I realized, holding her close while my enhanced hearing tracked the night sounds around our camp. "Not just survival, not just keeping people alive. This connection, this feeling of belonging somewhere, this possibility that I might actually matter to someone who knows part of what I am."
But even as I savored the moment, my knowledge of future events pressed against my consciousness like a weight. Murphy would return soon, carrying biological warfare in his blood. The virus would tear through camp, killing some, changing others, forcing impossible choices about mercy and survival.
And I'd have to navigate it all while pretending to discover threats I already knew were coming, protecting people from disasters I couldn't explain, fighting my own nature to save lives without revealing what I was.
For now, though, there was just this—Raven's trust, Bellamy's acceptance, the growing sense that I might actually have a place in this world despite the lies that defined my existence here.
Some moments were worth protecting, even when you knew they couldn't last.
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