"How is she?" asks Bellamy. He stands with Kane outside the pulled curtains that circle Abby's cot.
"Recovering," says Kane. "Jackson says she'll be weak for days, until her marrow regenerates."
Bellamy nods. He leans in close, whispers. "Clarke is gone," he says. "She left."
Kane's eyes widen, briefly, and then he sighs, runs a bloody hand through his hair. "I'll tell her," he says. "Later."
x
It's not long before Jasper disappears as well, melts into a cool, starless night, leaves no trail. They wake to find the missing rations and two missing guns, and when Bellamy follows Monty (silent, frantic, sprinting) back to quarters he isn't surprised to see Jasper's empty bunk. Monty ignores Bellamy's hand on his arm, runs to wake the night shift guards. He shakes a stunned Miller roughly from sleep.
"How did you not see him?!" he shouts. "Why didn't you stop him?"
Miller stammers in response as Monty lets him go, slumps to the floor. Bellamy is quiet, thinking about Jasper edging through the fence, shouldering his packs, heading blindly outwards with ghosts hot on his heels.
He gets it.
He thinks Monty probably does also. But right now the kid is broken by his loss, and Bellamy gets that, too, and for a passing second is comforted by the knowledge that he, at least, got to say goodbye.
x
"Please come inside," he'd said, and she hadn't.
x
In Clarke's absence Bellamy is the de facto leader of the original one hundred, and, even if he wasn't, he thinks Kane would have arranged his placement on the Council anyway. It says something about Earth, that a botched murder attempt has bonded them together in mutual respect. Some may die so that more may live, the good of the many, Caesar falling under Brutus's knife in the stories Octavia used to love: Bellamy has always understood.
"I know you can make the decisions that need to be made," says Kane, his voice low, his hand on Bellamy's shoulder, and Bellamy nods at him because it's true; he has, he has pushed the lever and watched people burn.
"You care about our people," Kane continues. "And you'll keep them safe."
Bellamy nods, again, but this time he wonders. It isn't a thing that Kane and the rest can understand—not with the Sky People reunited on the ground, under stars and clouds and sunlight that's thinning as the days begin to shrink and shorten. Bellamy had never needed other people. Never cared. Where the citizens of the Ark had grouped themselves into Tree Cults and Councils and Guilds, he had remained aloof, pursued a career for the sake of appearance and necessity, avoided friendships. He'd always had something everyone else didn't: a sister.
And when they'd crashed onto solid ground and spilled riotously out onto their new Earth, nothing had changed, the world was still him-and-Octavia and everything else, with more freedom and just as much death, until one day it was different. A twelve year-old named for an ancient queen threw herself off a mountain and his beautiful sometimes-enemy slid a knife gently into her friend's heart, whispered "It's going to be ok" in a way that didn't sound like a lie, and when later she told him "We need you" he believed her.
So now he meets Kane's eyes and says, "I'll take care of them," and he means it. After all, she told him to.
x
"The Boat People are a people of peace," explains Lincoln. They're sharing night guard, something Bellamy doesn't exactly look forward to.
Just because Octavia-of-the-hidden-crawlspace is now Octavia kom trigedakru doesn't mean Bellamy's any less her big brother. He's not going to like her boyfriends, especially not the backstabbing sometimes-cannibals. Especially not the ones who want to take her away from him.
"She's not leaving," says Bellamy, staring straight ahead, watching the forest edge, sharp shades of black and grey on a windless night.
He can feel the grounder tense beside him, can almost hear him collect his thoughts.
"You are her kru," says Lincoln, "and nothing will ever change that. But you don't control her. I will ask you now for your blessing, but—"
"Shut up!" hisses Bellamy. "Did you see that?" He could have sworn that part of the northern treeline had wavered, for a moment, the hazy blacks and greys shifting beyond the range of Raven's lights. He hears Lincoln cock his rifle. The grounder's gun, taken from the Mountain's stores after their victory, has a nightvision scope.
"Look north," says Bellamy, not taking his eyes from the trees.
As Lincoln focuses, scanning slowly north and south and north again, Bellamy listens to the sound of the forest. There aren't many animals on Earth that aren't monsters, but the insects seem harmless enough, their low constant hum a welcome change from the silence of space.
"We used to think roaches were the only thing that survived the war," he says, and Lincoln, eye pressed to his scope, does not respond.
After a minute he relaxes, lowers the rifle. Bellamy chances a sideways to glance to see the grounder crouched low, looking downward, his head in his hand.
"There was nothing," says Lincoln. "Perhaps you saw a lone deer."
"Perhaps." Bellamy feels his racing heart begin to slow. It doesn't matter if it had been fear or hope that beat wildly in his chest, but he exhales slowly, swallows, tamps them both down.
"Roaches feast on decay," says Lincoln, and Bellamy can hear the bitterness in his voice. "Others die so that they may thrive."
His sister's lover doesn't deserve consolation, and Bellamy (who has stolen people's air, burned off their skin), has none to give. "She's not like us," is all he has to offer, and Lincoln briefly lays a hand on his shoulder, an apology, an agreement.
x
The Council does not, on the whole, seem to share Bellamy's concern that they are being watched. But they have, as he points out more than once, been on Earth for less time, and therefore have less first-hand knowledge about how fast shit can go down.
Regardless, his proposal that they increase the guard postings and send out survey teams is outvoted, and as weeks drag by without incident he begins to think that maybe they were right, maybe he was just seeing shadows lengthen in the dreamlike space between night and morning. He starts to go out more, though, unapproved excursions into the woods, no backup, knives in his boots and a rifle slung over his shoulder. Raven, thankfully, quietly turns off the fence every time he wants out. In the forest, he keeps his eyes wide open, and makes sure to look up, into the trees, watches the path for the telltale smoothness of grounder traps.
It occurs to him more than once that he is doing what Clarke would, had she seen what he did, and each time the thought crosses his mind he almost smiles.
x
Bellamy dreams most nights, dreams of people dying, clawing at their necks, gasping for air, dreams of their skin melting off in sheets. He wakes sweating, sometimes screaming, and is thankful that Monty, his bunkmate, pretends not to notice. He wonders if Clarke's dreams, wherever she is, are similar, thinks that probably they are. If she hadn't left, he thinks that maybe he would go to her, wake her from sleep, draw her to him—close enough to feel the nightmares shivering on their skin—and then he would forgive her over and over again, and be forgiven in turn, until maybe one day they would both stop needing it. Sometimes he thinks he hates her, for leaving. For making them do this alone.
(If he's honest—which most times he isn't—sometimes he dreams of other things, like the dream where he's on guard duty and sees the treeline shift and raises his gun to see her face in the crosshairs, her pack slung over one shoulder, the noon light catching in her hair so that it seems she's wearing bits of sun. In this dream she runs to him and he kisses her before she has a chance to speak, kisses her lips and her face, runs his mouth along her perfect jaw and down her neck, into the hollow of her throat. Bellamy, she says, and he feels his name vibrate there, under his tongue, feels her gasp as he bites her and sucks. She falls with him to the ground, a mess of their suddenly naked skin and her gold hair, and he runs his hands down her body, his fingers tracing the curves of her breasts and hips, his lips following in their wake, circling around her navel, traveling downwards. When he settles his shoulders between her legs and licks her, slowly, her hand grabs his hair and she arches, almost as if to push him away, but she says don't stop, and he doesn't, and she tastes like sunlight and stars. She's always about to come when he wakes up, hard, aching, reaching for himself before he's even really conscious, coming against his hand without making a sound.)
x
Sometimes—times when he's on solo guard duty during daytime hours, times when he lies awake listening to thunder, times when he slips out on his clandestine recon trips through the trees—he has too much space to himself, too much room to think; Earth is massive, endless, like space was but somehow bigger, no walls or roof, no floors, just himself and the sky.
It's these times he wonders when it began, the wanting, and can't pinpoint it. He wants someone who's gone, that much he can admit. There's nothing special or unique in that—death was commonplace on the Arc; it's common here, too, and everyone knows what it's like to miss someone. For Bellamy, though, it's new. Not that he misses her, necessarily—and he tells himself this when he makes his way back to their charred ruined dropship, closes his eyes and imagines the million different ways things could have gone—it's more just a sex thing, really, a thing for a friend he went through a lot of shit with, a friend who bailed instead of sticking it out. Maybe if he had fucked her once before Mount Weather, maybe then he wouldn't dream about it at night, think about it during the day, fall into the easy fantasy of what it would be like to have her back.
Bellamy wants her back because he wants her—who wouldn't—and because she gets it, but that's it.
His mom, back on the Arc—Bellamy remembers her missing someone, remembers her crying when she thought he couldn't hear, for hours, neverending. It had stopped around the time Octavia was born, but he hasn't forgotten the sound. It had been angry, sometimes, but mostly hopeless, the sound of truly missing someone: someone who was never coming back.
And Clarke, well—Clarke's alive, of course, out there somewhere, probably with Lexa's tribe. She's alive and she is coming back, when she's ready, one day. Any day now.
Bellamy, his back to the dropship, relaxes for a moment and turns his face to the sunlight. He feels the warmth play against his skin, soft, hints of coming summer. May we meet again, he thinks.
x
There's a day, though, a normal day in the dull grey and brown of late winter, the thawed ground wet with sludge, where Bellamy is bringing shouldered firewood to C quarters and comes across Abby crying against Kane's chest.
He drops the bundle by the doorframe, loudly, and barely meets their eyes before hightailing it out of the bunks.
Monsters live beyond their fences, lurking in the water, in the trees; there's people, too, worse than the animals, there's deep holes in the earth lined with spikes and he's not there to pull her out of them.
He's shaking, as he makes his way to the southern guardpost, finds the shack empty and closes himself in. Nausea and fear slam into him at once and he vomits on the floor, can't even make it to the latrine in the corner. It's been five months with no word and she may be dead, he thinks, just bones, now, bones and clothes at the bottom of some pit.
Behind him, the door opens.
"Go away," he manages, and when they don't he turns around to see his sister there, staring at him.
"Are you sick?" she asks, almost accusatory.
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine." She has a water skin at her hip, which she swings over her head and throws him.
He drinks, catches his breath, lets his stomach settle. "Thanks," he says, and when he holds the skin up to her she makes a face at him, holds up her hand.
"Keep it," she says. "If you're not sick, then, what's wrong with you? Monty have some moonshine I don't know about?" Octavia's voice is light but her face is thin, drawn tight in concern.
"No," says Bellamy. He looks down. He waits, for several seconds, and his sister, who knows him, is silent. Finally, he says, "She's probably dead."
"Maybe not," she counters, after a beat. "Clarke's survived a lot worse than a walk through the woods, you know."
He meets her eyes, and smiles.
Before she leaves, Octavia turns back to him. "Maybe you should go after her," she says.
x
After this Bellamy starts bringing Abby extra firewood, and on his patrols he throws his circle wider, moves in the forest with open eyes and grim resolve, afraid that the snowmelt may reveal Clarke's body. (And he thinks about it, what O told him, thinks about it more than he likes, more than he wants, all the time.)
x
Later, on the first day of what Lincoln tells them is the grounders' summer season, the Council of Camp Jaha sits in a room walled with rusted hull scraps, and argues.
"It's been months since we've had contact with another grounder clan," Kane reminds them. "We should take that as a sign that our camp will be left alone. We should continue to reinforce our hold here."
"You think we'll just be left here in peace?" asks Abby, incredulous. "That's naïve."
Bellamy, who has at this point stopped insisting that they're being watched, thinks that Abby is right, thinks that the end of winter might mean that they're newly vulnerable.
"You think that sending emissaries to Polis will help our position?" Kane asks Abby. "Our alliance with Lexa's clan is over. Her people will not have forgotten the hundreds they lost."
"They betrayed us at Mount Weather," Bellamy points out. "So the score is even between us."
"That doesn't mean that the Woods Clan recalls us fondly," Kane shoots back. "Isn't that right, Lincoln?"
Lincoln, although not officially a member of the Council, sits at most meetings as a consultant on Earth and grounder politics. It is from him that they know details about the twelve clans and Polis, the grounder capital, where Lexa's people headed after abandoning them at the mountain.
"Lexa alone saw the value of an alliance," says Lincoln, "But the trigeadkru have no love for the Sky People. You will not be welcomed in Polis."
Abby runs her hands through her hair and then clasps them in front of her, frustrated. "But Clarke is there," she says, finally.
Kane, who is seated beside Bellamy, gives her a long look from across the table, but she does not meet his eyes.
Bellamy knows, from Lincoln, that Polis is a week's journey on foot, one hundred miles away as the crow flies (but there are no more crows, on Earth, no birds in its sky).
"We do not know for sure that Clarke went to Polis," Kane says, gently, "or even if she is alive at all. That is merely our best guess. She could have headed west, or followed Jaha to the City of Light."
"There are wolves, in the woods," says Lincoln. "And my people's traps."
Bellamy thinks, for a moment, that he would enjoy wrapping his hands around the grounder's neck and squeezing. "Clarke is alive," he says, louder than he meant to. He meets Abby's eyes, and nods.
"Maybe," says Lincoln. "Maybe."
Abby continues to look at Bellamy, as if studying him. "We could send Octavia to Polis," she says, carefully. "She was Indra's second. They may listen to her."
Bellamy's fists tighten, reflexively, and he raps his knuckles once against the metal table. "No," he says, immediately, but as he says it also finds that he understands Abby's point. His sister may have chosen her people—chosen him—at Mount Weather, but he thinks she still has the clan's respect, which is to say that they wouldn't kill her on sight. Probably.
"No—" he says again—"I'll go with her." And as he says it, a ghost of hope flames bright within him.
Abby's eyes widen, and then she smiles.
Kane turns to him. "They may kill you."
"I can hang back when we reach the city," says Bellamy. "Stay hidden in the trees, wait for O to make contact with the Woods Clan." The plan, vague shapes of it, blooms sudden and brilliant in his mind.
"It could work," says Abby.
"No," says Lincoln, loud enough that the room grows quiet. "Octavia will not go."
"You don't control her," Bellamy says, echoing the grounder's own words.
Lincoln looks downward, folds his arms. He seems uncomfortable. Bellamy watches him, and, even before the grounder says anything, feels the dread wash over him in a cool wave, feels his world shift, sickening, and waits desperately for it to correct. He feels Kane grab him by the arm as he stands from his seat, feels it as if it's happening to someone else, as if the world is moving in slow motion.
Lincoln shrinks into himself, eyes closed, his face in his hand.
"You son of a bitch," says Bellamy. "Look at me!"
He tries to move towards to grounder, can't, not with Kane's hold.
"She was going to tell you," Lincoln tells him, his voice unusually high.
Bellamy sees Abby jump to her feet in his peripheral vision. "Fuck," she says, calm and final. "She's pregnant, isn't she?"
The grounder nods at her and Bellamy sags against Kane, defeated, watches Abby stride purposefully from the Council room, doubtless off to find his sister.
Lincoln finally looks at him, and his eyes are sad. "I am sorry, Bellamy," he says, and follows Abby as Kane holds Bellamy back, doesn't let him follow.
x
It's not that Bellamy's overprotective, or even protective at all. He's known his sister was fucking the grounder pretty much from day zero, and yah, he didn't necessarily love it, but he didn't interfere, didn't say anything when Octavia essentially moved in with the first guy she ever had sex with, the guy who betrayed him under the mountain and sort of used to eat people. If Clarke were here she's probably tell him to calm down, that everything was going to be alright. But he would tell her that Octavia used to be the only person he cared about, that she was his purpose and his home, his reason, and that they were on Earth now, goddammit, where things tended to go very wrong, and if something happened he would have nothing, truly, because she was gone, too, dead or captured or off in some far corner of this terrible planet with the grief and guilt they should be sharing.
It's now—as he sits beside his sister on the cot she shares with Lincoln, and Octavia draws his hand tentatively towards her stomach and says "she's kicking now"—that he really allows himself to miss her. The weight of it presses the air from his lungs and he struggles to breathe even as he smiles, despite himself, at the flutter of movement beneath his hand.
"I love you," says his sister.
x
His next night guard is with Miller, who is chatty enough to stretch the limits of Bellamy's tolerance (which is, these days, thin at baseline).
"That's got to suck, right?" Miller is asking him (about his seventeen year-old pregnant sister), and Bellamy is trying to get by with noncommittal grunts while keeping an eye on the forest.
"I don't know how you do it, man," he continues. "If it were my sister I would murder the guy. Seriously."
"The thought has crossed my mind," Bellamy says. He glances up at the sky, thinks that he probably has about four more hours of this ahead of him.
"Well, it's kind of exciting, right? First new life on Earth, and everything. Pretty sweet. Kind of."
"Kind of," offers Bellamy.
They hear footsteps, then, approaching the fence from behind, and turn to see a figure walking towards them.
"Keep watch," he tells Miller, and, grateful for the escape opportunity, shoulders his rifle and climbs down the ladder.
It's Abby. She's wearing sweatpants and a large black sweater, her braided hair falling against one shoulder.
"Trouble sleeping?" asks Bellamy.
She smiles at him. "I rarely sleep," she says. "Is this a bad time?"
"Not particularly," he says. "What's on your mind?"
"It's your sister," says Abby. "I examined her today, and I'm concerned that her placenta is in the wrong place."
She must sense the anxiety from the look on his face, because she quickly reaches out and grabs his shoulder, squeezes. "It's not something to worry about, right now," she assures him. She's early enough that it will probably move, as her uterus gets bigger. I just wanted to tell you, because with this condition she really needs to rest, and, well, you know Octavia better than anyone—rest really isn't her strong suit."
"I caught her carrying wellwater yesterday," says Bellamy, shaking his head.
"That's what I'm saying. I know it's because she hates feeling useless. It's the way she is. But if you could just convince her how—"
"Bellamy!" hisses Miller, from the lookout, cutting Abby short. "Get up here! I saw something, something in the trees…"
Bellamy scrambles up to Miller's side. He's been ready for this: he has a pair of night vision goggles hanging on his belt, something he'd convinced Raven to outfit from the tech in the Mountain Men's radiation suits. He brings them up to his eyes, now, looks to where Miller directs him.
And he sees it—not just movement, this time, but a person, camouflaged underneath branches and leaves, their telltale eyes bright white dots.
"Son of a bitch," whispers Bellamy, and he hands Miller the goggles so he can confirm it.
"What is it?" asks Abby. "Should I come up?"
Bellamy, focused on scanning the trees for other figures, doesn't respond.
"Shit—I lost him," says Miller.
"What do you mean?" Bellamy grabs the goggles and scans, but Miller's right, their watcher is gone.
"Turn off the fence," says Bellamy. "I'm going after him."
"We need clearance to do that," Miller protests.
"I'm a Council member and I am giving you that clearance now, Miller," says Bellamy. "I need you to go tell them we need it off. And get Raven, if they give you trouble."
Miller nods and climbs to the ground, sprints off to electrical.
"What the hell is going on?" hisses Abby, when he drops once again to the ground.
"We've got a bogey on our radar," says Bellamy. "And I'm going after him."
He ignores Abby's protests and makes for the south gate, scuffs some dirt at it with his boot and swears when it crackles blue against the wire.
"Come on, Miller," he says, and paces before the gate.
"This is crazy," says Abby, catching up with him. "You can't do this. We'll call an emergency Council meeting, get organized—"
"I've been searching for this guy for months," says Bellamy. "At night, sometimes. Every week. By myself, in the woods. I'll be fine, Chancellor."
"I won't allow it," is all she says, simple, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "It's too risky. We need you, Bellamy."
His throat closes up at that, a little. "But what if it's Clarke?" he asks, and it sounds vaguely desperate, even to him, but it's Abby, she understands, she has to.
She looks at him. "It's not her," she says, and he knows that she's right, but can't help chasing the first signal of the outside world they've had in the eight long months of living behind these walls.
The fence turns off then, a brief hum and a click, and Bellamy knows he's only got a minute before they turn it back on, so he pushes open the gate and pulls it shut behind him.
"Bellamy!" says Abby, almost a shout, but he breaks into a run and leaves her behind, the path to the forest edge well-known to him, his feet sure on the rocks and grooves as he makes for the trees.
"Who's there?" he calls out. "I just want to talk." He holds his assault rifle deliberately by his side, down, but close.
"We know you're watching us," he shouts into the trees. Behind him, a twig snaps.
He whips around and draws his gun.
"Don't," says Abby. "It's me."
"Why the fuck did you follow me?" he hisses, lowering the weapon, his heart racing.
She just looks at him, at the forest edge, her eyes black and unreadable in the night. "I don't know," she says.
And it's as he's shouldering his gun, ready to walk Abby back to Camp and give up on the shadows in the trees, that he sees it: a flash of movement, from above, barely in his peripheral vision, and he looks upward.
It's a net, he realizes, flashes of darkness falling from the canopy, almost silent, and Abby follows his gaze and barely has time to scream before they're both pulled off their feet, off of the earth, into the night.
x
Notes!
I don't own the 100. Title is from "As the Crow Flies" by David Gray. This was written for my BFF too_addicted_to_fiction - you have probably read her amazing bellarke stuff - because she is awesome and I love her.