Title: "Put Your Lights On"
Author: Lila
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing: Bellamy
Spoiler: "Blood Will Have Blood, Part II"
Length: one-shot
Summary: It takes a war for Bellamy to realize he's not the same boy that fell from the sky. (Or five times Bellamy Blake thinks that he's all grown up and one time Clarke proves it to him.)
Disclaimer: Not mine, just borrowing them for a few paragraphs.
Author's Note: Per usual, I had an idea that wouldn't stop bothering me until it had been written. I'm actually quite pleased with how this fic turned out and hope we see similar development for Bellamy in season three. Title and cut courtesy of Everlast. Enjoy.
"There's a monster living under my bed
Whispering in my ear
There's an angel with a hand on my head
She says I've got nothing to fear"
1. Kane
Bellamy stays at the fence for hours after Clarke leaves, staring intently through the gaps between the electrified wires. He scans the trees and looks for signs of movement, but mostly keeps his eyes trained on the beaten path, searches for a flash of leather and metal that never comes.
He's adjusting slowly, to being back here. Not home, but something else, a place he thinks he'll get used to with time. He still flinches at loud noises, starts when he hears a scream, but he's getting better. He knows it isn't Tsing's drill that causes a high-pitched cry to fill the air, but a mother reuniting with a child she thought dead. There are so few of them left (the ones that survived the Ark, the others that survived the mountain), and it helps him remember. Every life matters down here; every life is precious.
Clarke told him as much when they first arrived, only a few months in the past but it feels like a lifetime ago. He was a different person then but he's learning, even if he still has so far to go. "Take care of them for me," she'd said and he'd accepted her challenge, one last promise he intends to keep. It scares him, maybe more than the night Octavia was ripped from his arms, that he won't be able do this one thing for Clarke. It's because of dumb luck that he's seen anything through. He'll try though, try with everything he has left, to put their people back together one day at a time.
"We're safe now," Kane say softly, stands a careful distance from the rifle Bellamy swings in his direction. Old habits die hard, especially a stranger sneaking up on him in the dark.
He's holding up his hands when Bellamy turns, waits patiently for a signal to step forward. Bellamy lowers the rifle and leans back against a fencepost, careful to avoid touching the wires. He just pointed a gun at one of his own. It suddenly requires too much energy to stand up without support.
Kane settles in beside him and peers into the forest. Even with the full moon, the path is hidden by the overgrown grass that runs alongside it. It's dark and endless but for once, there are no Grounders lurking in the trees. Bellamy takes each victory as it comes.
"For a while, I wasn't sure I'd ever see this place again."
"Me too." Bellamy isn't sure he wanted to see this place either, but now he's having a cordial conversation with the man that floated his mother. It's not just the circumstances that have changed. He's not the same boy calling for whatever the hell we want. He hasn't been for a long time.
"I grew up in the Cult of the Eden Tree," Kane says randomly, but Bellamy doesn't interrupt. There's a story there, the way there always is, and it deserves to be told. Clarke would want to hear more, but she's not here, so he listens for her.
"I didn't know that." He wonders if anyone did. He only remembers Kane as the head of security, strutting through the Ark's corridors like he had a giant stick up his ass. It makes Bellamy wince. Once, he treated the dropship the same way.
"I was the Keeper of the Tree." Kane laughs, like he's still a little boy tending to their last vestige of earth, another side of him slowly being revealed. "I stopped believing when I was a teenager but the lessons never quite left me. Our people were promised to the ground and I dedicated my life to making it happen." He pauses, lays a hand on Bellamy's shoulder so he turns to face him. "I made a lot of mistakes, did many things I'm not proud of, but I don't know if I regret them, not when it got us here."
It's not an apology but Bellamy can hear the remorse, the grief Kane feels for the souls he condemned to the deepest reaches of space."I bear it so they don't have to," Clarke had said just hours before and he hadn't understood it then but it's beginning to make sense. This is what it means to lead, to make the hard choices. It's not about guts. It's about strength. Determination. Believing in his people enough to do what's necessary to keep them safe.
"Does it get any easier?"
"No."
"I didn't think so."
"But it becomes normal," Kane explains. "A new normal. Every day, I think about what I've done and what I can do to never let it happen again. I don't think that's such a bad thing."
"A new normal," Bellamy agrees. He can't change the past, but he also won't swap out all the good to make up for the bad. He doesn't hate everything about the man he's become.
Kane drops his hand, signaling the end of the conversation. "I'm holding a meeting tomorrow morning to discuss restructuring the Guard. You'll be there?"
It's not a question, even though he phrases it as one. "Wouldn't miss it."
After Kane leaves, Bellamy turns back to the fence but finds he's lost interest in keeping vigil. Clarke is gone and she might never come back, but he isn't lost without her. Something inside him recalibrates, charts a new course. It will be hard running things on his own, but he's done it before. He can do it again.
2. Abby
Jackson catches him just before he reaches the tent Miller set up for him. Bellamy hopes he'll see his friend at the meeting tomorrow. They made a good team at the old camp and he's confident they can do it again.
"Hey, Bellamy!" Jackson runs the last few meters and skids to a stop in the loose dirt. He's breathing hard and signals for Bellamy to wait while he catches his breath. "The Chancellor has been asking for you."
Bellamy represses a sigh. He knows what this is about. The entire camp saw him at the gate, waiting until every survivor was safe before stepping inside the fence himself. Some of them probably saw Clarke disappear into the forest, the late afternoon sun glinting off the metallic detailing on her jacket. Wherever Clarke's gone, Abby thinks he knows.
"Sure," he says and stiffens his spine to face his chancellor's wrath.
He finds her in the med-bay, her injured leg propped up on a pile of blankets. There are dark circles under her eyes and the corners of her mouth are pinched with pain, but her gaze is clear when he comes to stand beside her bed.
"You wanted to see me."
Abby gestures to an empty chair. "Have a seat."
Bellamy wordlessly sits down, feels very exposed without the rifle he left at the door.
"You let Clarke leave," Abby says and opens her mouth to start the next sentence but Bellamy interrupts.
"If you could hold off on the lecture until tomorrow, I'd appreciate it. I'll tell you all about it then." He's dirty and exhausted and looking forward to sleeping somewhere that isn't a ventilation shaft. Going another round with Abby can wait until morning.
A hint of a smile curves Abby's mouth, takes years off her weary face. "I'm fresh out of lectures. I wanted to thank you, actually. What you did in Mount Weather, it was incredibly brave."
He drops his eyes to the worn, metal floor. From the moment Clarke told him his life was worth risking, he understood the mission she tasked him with: save their people, bring them home, worry about themselves later. He never questioned it, still doesn't, no matter the consequences he keeps facing. "It wasn't a choice."
"Bellamy," Abby says softly and when he looks up, her gaze is steady. "Yes, it was."
He looks away again and gives her a casual shrug. "I didn't do it alone." He doesn't want Abby to see how much her praise means to him, her recognition of what he lost to save her people.
She manages to surprise him again. "I was wrong about you. I thought you were a hotheaded rebel, but you're so much more." She reaches over and brushes her fingers over the back of his hand, gets his attention and regards him with eyes filled with gratitude. "I was on the Council," she reminds him. "I sent a hundred children to the ground knowing they could die." She pauses and her fingers curl around his. "I sent my daughter to die. I heard what happened in the control room, what you did for our people, and I wanted you to know how grateful I am. How grateful we all are."
He stares at her a moment, unsure of how to respond, but she's smiling at him, soft and so much like his mother when Octavia took her first steps or said her first words, like when he got his acceptance letter to the Academy. She's telling him that it's okay to be proud of what he did, that it's okay not to hate himself.
"You're welcome," he says and her smile widens, fills with something a lot like pride. It falls a moment later, replaced with exhaustion, and she lets go of his hand.
"I know why Clarke chose you," Abby calls out as he's strapping his rifle across his back. "She made the right choice."
Bellamy nods in acknowledgement and steps out into the night. The air is fresh and clean, not unlike their first day on earth, how it feels endless and free and filled with possibility. He messed up their first opportunity to build something here, but he has another chance. He can do things right, correct the mistakes they made the first time around.
He'll do more than take care of his people. He'll make this place into a home.
3. Jasper
A few weeks pass and their little camp becomes something resembling a village.
They clean out Mount Weather and load up on supplies, store food and distribute clothes and hook up solar generators to heat the Ark during the long winter nights. Wick thinks they could have full power by spring, but Bellamy's in no rush. They have food to eat and medicine to keep them healthy and a safe place to rest their heads. They don't need more.
They assign work details too. Bellamy and Miller join the Guard along with a surprisingly resilient Harper, but Monty sticks to agro-engineering. The others find their place or accept assignments, usually without complaint. It's the adults that groan and whine, try to push the unskilled labor off on the kids, but Abby challenges them with steely eyes. "Everyone pulls their own weight down here. If you disagree, there's the gate."
She'd been talking with a former chief from Factory Station, a short, stocky man with a ruddy complexion and bulbous nose that spoke of his reliance on Nygel's black market moonshine. He's been slowly detoxing for the last month, and Bellamy can sympathize with his health problems but not his reluctance to fell firewood. His own shoulder aches from the morning he spent building cabins earlier in the week.
The man had looked at Abby incredulously, eyes sliding slowly from her challenging stare to the twisted metal of the gate. He'd mumbled something under his breath before stomping to the water spigot and eventually joining up with the logging crew. After that, the adults fell in line, reluctantly accepting their placements rather than face a showdown with the Chancellor.
It makes Bellamy like Abby more, how quickly she's adapted to the aftermath of war. Her citizens were born on the Ark, but they're no longer the same people that fell from the sky. She's learning too, isn't afraid to embrace change. He wishes Clarke could be there to see it. He thinks she'd be proud of how far her mother has come, maybe even be proud of him too. He's kept his promise, fights every day to see it through.
"He's skipping work," Monty says and cocks his head towards where Jasper's staring moodily at the fire. "I can't keep covering for him. Can you talk to him?"
Bellamy blows on his hands and cracks his fingers, tries to get some feeling back in them. He gave his gloves to a blind ten-year-old earlier in the day and forgot to stop by the clothing depot before it closed. He shoves his hands in his pockets and hopes it's enough to prevent frostbite.
He's tempted to let it go. Jasper did lose his first love when he and Clarke irradiated the mountain. Bellamy remembers watching his mother sucked into the dark depths of space. He knows what it's like to lose someone he loves.
He watches Jasper a moment longer, how he shoves Harper away when she tries to give him a bowl of stew, and it strengthens his resolve. They all suffered in the mountain, have been coping in their own ways, but Jasper's the only one being an asshole about it.
"Yeah, I'll talk to him." Monty's relieved smile confirms that it's the right choice. He made a promise and he can't let it slip away because keeping it is hard.
The next morning he shakes Jasper awake before dawn and plants a boot on his neck. "You have two minutes."
Jasper is glaring when he joins him in the cold morning air, zipping his coat and hurrying to tie his boots. "The hell, Bellamy?"
He throws a pack in Jasper's direction. "Start walking."
They hike for almost an hour, until Bellamy spots the lip of what used to be a lake but is now a tangle of weeds and roots and winter trees devoid of their leaves. He climbs a small hill and stops only when he spots a strip of red nylon waving in the breeze. He doesn't look back at the large oak standing sentinel over the bunker. He'll never forget what happened here, but he doesn't need a visual reminder of the first time he killed a man.
He's wearing his "Bellamy Blake" face, the tight jaw and fierce eyes that defined him during those early, chaotic days. He crosses his arms over his chest and stares down at Jasper, lets him see the fire in his eyes. He has one shot at this and failure isn't an option.
"You have a choice," Bellamy says. His voice is calm but razor sharp, so there's no mistaking his meaning. Jasper swallows thickly but doesn't lower his eyes. "We're a community and everyone contributes. I'm sorry for your loss, but this sad sack behavior stops now."
Jasper's eyes blaze with anger. "Fuck you, Bellamy."
"Not the answer I was hoping for." Although it was the answer he was expecting. Jasper can be funny and kind, but he's also a petulant brat most of the time. Bellamy's not sure why he thought this would be the moment when Jasper would surprise him.
"You killed the love of my life!"
Bellamy counts to ten before answering, reviews his thoughts before saying a word. He thinks Jasper is an idiot for falling on his sword for a girl he only knew for a few weeks, but he knows better than to mock his feelings. So much can change in a short amount of time. That he's having this conversation is living proof.
"I know," he says but doesn't apologize. He's sorry Jasper's in pain, but he's not sorry that Maya's dead, not when it meant ending the war, saving the lives of his people. "I can't bring her back, but you can't keep acting like this. We all lost something but that doesn't mean we can take it out on everyone else."
"You're talking about Clarke."
For a few seconds, Bellamy's at a loss for words. He was thinking about his mom and Lovejoy Jr and all ghosts he carries with him, all the reasons it's hard to get out of bed each morning.
"Hit a nerve didn't I?" Across the clearing, Jasper looks triumphant but he isn't wrong. It's not what Bellamy meant but it's why they're here, the decision Jasper needs to make, the life he needs to choose.
"Yeah, this is about Clarke. She couldn't handle what happened at Mount Weather and she left." He picks up the pack and tosses it in Jasper's direction, points out the entrance to the bunker. "You have the same choice – become a functioning member of society and come back with me or find your own way. This is a one time offer."
For a long moment, Jasper stares at him, looking so much like the goofy kid with the goggles that he almost gives in, but then he remembers his promise, remembers all the times his mother put Octavia to sleep in a dark hole with a hug and a kiss because it was the only way to keep her safe. "Tough love," he hears Clarke say, and he straightens his shoulders and doesn't back down.
"Okay," Jasper says softly, so softly Bellamy almost doesn't hear him, but the tears in his eyes give him away: sad, mournful, but mostly relieved. It must have been agony carrying all that pain by himself for so many weeks.
Bellamy gives him a stiff nod he hopes doesn't betray his own relief, because this intervention could have gone so badly.
He shoulders the pack, shepherds one of his flock to the right path. "Let's go home."
4. Raven
It's midwinter when a girl corners him in the mess hall.
"Kali's moving in on Reg."
Bellamy looks up from his breakfast to find Eryn staring down at him, hands planted squarely on her hips and a wearing a demanding expression. Whatever's wrong, she clearly expects him to fix it. "What?"
Her expression turns exasperated. "Kali keeps hitting on my boyfriend. I need you to make her stop."
"You want me to solve your relationship problems?" He's not surprised that she's come to him for help – they all still come to him for help, even months after the mountain fell – and he does his best to keep them all together, but boy drama is outside his sphere of expertise. "I don't know what you want me to do."
Eryn plops down next to him and buries her head in her hands. "Why does he flirt with her when he has me?"
She sounds like Octavia when she realized she'd never see a moonrise and Bellamy struggles for words to explain the inner workings of a teenage boy's mind without obliterating her heart. He's a man grown now, but he was a boy once, and no more so than those first days on the ground. There are no right words to explain the appeal of a threesome.
"Uh, well…" he starts, desperate for something to say, and then Raven steps into his line of vision, limping over to drop a basket of metal tubes on the table.
"Rifle scopes, just as ordered."
Bellamy has never been happier to see anyone in his life. "Thanks," he says and grabs the basket, jumps out of his seat and plots an escape route. "Eryn, I think Raven can better answer your questions." He practically sprints out of the mess tent, feeling only mildly guilty for literally running way from a disabled person. He thinks about all the times he got pulled into Raven and Spacewalker's drama. Payback is still payback.
Whatever Raven says works, because later that night he spots Eryn and Kali eating dinner together and Reg sulking across the room. He thinks about saying something sympathetic but decides against it. It's an important lesson to learn, that girls aren't disposable, even when they pretend they can be. He blushes just from thinking about his behavior when they first arrived.
He's drinking when Raven finds him later that night, taking advantage of his first solitary moment in days to drink a little moonshine by the fire. These moments are few and far between. He hears her first, the scuff of a limp foot being dragged through the dirt, and then she's standing in front of him, hands planted firmly on her hips and wearing a demanding expression. He braces himself for the ensuing tirade, but Raven only slumps down beside him and plucks the makeshift flask from his hand, brings it to her lips and takes a healthy pull.
"I thought you'd tell me that I owe you one." He watches her nervously as she takes a second sip.
"I did too." She pauses, screws the cap onto the bottle. "It's still implied."
"Thanks for taking one for the team. I'm no good with that kind of stuff."
Raven shrugs. "I took it as a sign that things are on the mend."
"What do you mean?"
"Eryn and Kali were fighting over a boy. It's a stupid fight, but that's the point. If they have the energy to care about which of them is dating Reg, they're not worried about dying anymore." She pauses. "You did it, Bellamy. You made this place into something safe."
"Yeah," he says after a moment. "I guess I did."
She clears her throat. "It also made me think about us, about the way I treated you. I should have never gone to your tent that night. I used you and it was wrong. I'm sorry."
The way Bellamy remembers it, he used her too, but he's too shocked by her confession to mention it. Mostly, he stares at her until she swats at his shoulder. "You heard me say it. I'm not repeating myself."
He keeps staring. "Who are you and what have you done with Raven Reyes?"
Even in the darkness, he can see the flush creep over her cheeks. "I think…I think Wick's good for me. He isn't scared of calling me out on my shit."
Bellamy nods. Once, he had someone like that too, a slip of a girl that never shied away from speaking her mind or telling him when he was wrong. Clarke's gone but he still hears her in his head, reminding him of the boy he used to be, telling him to be the man he wants to be.
"He's good for you." Bellamy doesn't know Wick well, but he likes Raven and it's clear the guy makes her happy. After all she's been through, she deserves at least that.
"Yeah, he is," Raven says almost shyly. "Being with him made me realize that down here, it's not who we are but who we choose to be." She stretches her left leg so the brace gleams in the moonlight. "I'm not the same person I was on the Ark and that's okay." She smiles up at him, a rarity that makes him smiles back. "You're not the same asshole that stole my radio and that's okay too."
He laughs, glad they can joke about the time he almost killed her. "I'm glad I'm not that person anymore."
"Me too." She pushes awkwardly to her feet, slaps away his hand when he tries to help. "Good talk."
"Night, Raven."
He watches her walk away, a slow, lolling gait in the moonlight, but more content than she ever was when she had two good feet. Despite all he's lost, he knows he's become a better version of himself. He no longer cringes when he catches a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror.
The next morning proves his theory when he spots Brynn distributing laundry in the clothing depot. He hasn't spoken to her in months, not since he took down her name as one of the Mount Weather survivors, and they haven't had a real conversation since their first week on the ground. It's amazing how awkward it is just saying hi to her when he's been inside her.
"Hey Brynn."
She glances up, clutching a tablet to her chest. "Bellamy! How can I help you?"
"Can I talk to you for a minute?"
"Okay." She gestures for another worker to cover her station and follows him outside. "Your shirts should be ready this afternoon." She looks concerned about the state of his laundry and he shakes his head to let her know it's not what he wanted to talk about.
"I wanted to say sorry," he blurts out, watches her brows draw together in confusion. "About…" He searches for a word that isn't threesome and prays his face is only a dull shade of pink. This is easily the most painful conversation of his life, even worse than the time he had to explain to Octavia that she wasn't dying but having her first period. He tries again. "I'm sorry about how I treated you when we were, uh, together."
After a moment, he sees the recognition on her face. "Oh. Right. Well, it wasn't like you made me, but yeah, I was hoping it turn into something more."
He'd thought so. Brynn was the clingier of the two girls that night. "So I'm forgiven."
"Of course." She looks like she wants to go in for a hug, but she sticks out her hand instead. "Friends?"
Bellamy smiles. "Friends." He lets go of her hand. "I need to get back to work."
"Me too." She turns just at the door. "It was really nice of you to say all that stuff. You're not the guy I thought you were."
She's gone before he can say thanks but it's probably for the best, because he didn't have a response. He only said what was right, what Brynn deserved; he doesn't need a medal in return.
Still, it sticks with him through the rest of the afternoon, especially when he takes his seat in the mess hall and Sinclair stops by his table to thank him for securing better quality filters from what's left of Hydro Station. Annette from Food Supply compliments how well he skinned the boar his hunting group caught the day before. Abby ruffles his hair and tells him it's overly long, to stop by Medical and she'll give him a trim.
He watches her walk away, spoon paused in midair, and fights back the urge to cry. It means more than he can say, that when they look at him there's only admiration in their eyes. They see him the way he's always wanted to see himself.
5. Octavia
Weeks pass and winter begins fading into spring.
Harper makes it through the night without a nightmare. Raven kisses Wick in full view of the entire village. Jasper sits down next to Monty at breakfast and eats an entire meal at his best friend's side.
The world is changing, and Bellamy measures their success in the baby steps his friends are taking. By summer, Jasper and Monty might even be on speaking terms.
Octavia finds him in late afternoon, knocks on his office door and comes a halt in front of his desk. He puts down his stylus and smiles at her. As winter inches to a close, she's been readying the camp for the enemies Lincoln says will awaken with the spring thaws. The Ice Clan in particular is a likely threat, and she's been putting in double training sessions to prep. He's seen very little of his sister in the last few weeks.
"Let's take a walk," she says and he has hours of work ahead of him – performance reports to write up and rosters to finalize – but he knows better than to argue with the stubborn look on Octavia's face. He's seen it looking back at him in the mirror on many occasions.
"Sure," he agrees and shrugs on his jacket, falls into an easy pace beside his sister as she leads them out of camp and towards a clearing halfway between the Ark and dropship.
Today, it's a mess of dried up leaves and crunchy twigs, but Bellamy still knows this place, knows in a few months the branches will be dripping with bright foliage and butterflies, blue, luminescent butterflies as far as the eye can see. His heart drops into his stomach – he knows Octavia didn't bring him here for a casual chat.
"What's up, O?" he asks, watches her kick at the dirt until she's ready to speak. He's suddenly terrified of the news he thinks she'll deliver.
"Lincoln and I are leaving after the thaw." A tight knot still forms in his belly but some of the anxiety passes and he laughs, loose and relieved. It's not what he had thought she'd say.
"Really, Bell?"
"I thought you were going to tell me that you're pregnant. I'm not happy that you're leaving, but at least I don't have to kill Lincoln."
His fierce warrior of a sister turns bright red, all the way up to the Grounder braids woven through her hair, and shoves him lightly with her shoulder. "I'm sixteen, Bell. I'm young but I'm not stupid."
"Yeah," he says softly, studying the familiar planes of her face. "You're all grown up." He can still see the infant his mother laid in his arms, hears the promise he made the first time he held her, but when he looks at her now there's so much more, strength in the tight set of her jaw, fierce determination in the bright blue of her eyes. She isn't the little girl hiding under his floorboards anymore and he can't send her back there.
"You're not going to stop me?" Her voice is soft and her eyes glisten with tears but she doesn't look away. She knows who she is, a woman born of the sky but shaped by the earth, and she isn't afraid to show him what's in her heart. It's poor timing that she'll be gone soon when there's so much more she can teach him.
He brushes a stray piece of hair out of her eyes, hopes it's not for the last time. "I'll always feel responsible for you, but I think it's time you start being just my sister."
Octavia throws her arms around him and hugs him so tight it feels like she might never let go.
But she does, pulls back to smile through her tears. "I love you big brother."
"I love you too," he says and leans in to press a gentle kiss to her forehead. "And you'll be back." It's not a question – he won't accept an alternative.
"You're my family, but Lincoln's my home. It's been hard for him to be Skaikru. They don't understand him and he'll never fully belong. We're going to find our own place, but that doesn't mean I'll forget where I come from."
She pushes to her feet and holds out a hand to help him up, looks around the clearing one last time. It's not the answer he wanted but there's a promise in it, and he knows something about keeping promises.
"We'll meet again," he says and Octavia leans into him as they make their way back to camp.
"Always," she says. "We'll always meet again."
+1. Clarke
Summer comes upon them sticky and sweaty and so damp Bellamy sometimes swears he can actually see moisture hovering in the air. Winter was long and cold but he'd take it back in a second if it meant he could step out of the shower without immediately needing another one. The heat is insufferable and the mosquitos intolerable, but there's something about the sun on his face that makes it all worth it. It means he's free. It means his life is a path of his own choosing, not one the Ark set out before him.
There's a shout at the gate but Bellamy ignores it. It's been months since he's felt his heart rate race, looked for blonde hair amid any new arrivals. Octavia's been gone a few weeks and won't be back until fall, and that's a conservative estimate. He might not see his sister again for a year or more. Whatever is happening at the fence, he trusts his people to handle it, so he straightens the uniform that the clothing team made for him and starts walking to the training yard on boots resoled with rubber from Mount Weather's garage.
He makes the mistake of turning, just a quick check to make sure the rookies are following the correct intake procedure, and he sees it, a flash of silver-blonde glinting in the sunlight. He doesn't move a muscle and the bottom still drops out of his world.
A crowd has gathered around Clarke and he can't make out all the people, but he recognizes some of his friends amongst the group. To his surprise, it's Jasper that walks forward and wraps Clarke in a brief but tight hug. After a second's hesitation, she hugs him back. He can't hear what they're saying but it's something nice, because Clarke smiles and it's a smile he hasn't seen since their first day on earth. Her hair was in braid then and she wears it the same way today, bleached a few shades lighter by the harsh summer sun. She's skinnier too and sporting a healthy tan, but she's too far away to see what's in her eyes. He'll know then, if it was worth it, if she's still running from demons nipping at her heels.
It's past dark when she finds him, hours after her return, and he's reviewing training schedules on his tablet when he hears her boots on his porch. He saves his work and waits a beat before opening the door, finds her standing with one hand poised to knock and the other holding a green glass bottle. She looks cleaner than upon arrival, and her hair falls in loose waves down her back, but her face is cast in shadow. He still doesn't know which version of her he's staring at.
"Can I come in?"
Her question should have been his first clue that something was different. The girl he knew would have pushed past him and started in on whatever was bothering her, likely not pausing to breathe until she absolutely had to. This girl waits patiently for permission, doesn't push to get what she wants.
"Of course," he says, ignores the feel of her shirt against his bare arm as she brushes past him. The door shuts with a painful bang.
"Where were you – "
"Welcome back – "
They pause, the awkwardness palpable in the small room, before Bellamy takes a seat at his kitchen table and gestures for her to sit across from him. "Welcome back."
"You weren't at the gate." There's an accusing note in her voice and it goes a long way in dissipating the tension, bringing them back to the people they used to be.
He shrugs. "I'm an important man. I had things to do, people to take care of." Her eyes narrow and he feels a little guilty for playing dirty so early in this conversation. But only a little guilty. She is the one that ran off into the woods and left him to pick up the pieces.
"I deserved that," she says, expression relaxing into a blank mask that reminds him too much of Lexa. Suddenly, he's insanely curious where she's been the last six months.
"Why did you come back?"
She waits a beat, gnaws slightly on her lip, a nervous habit he doesn't recognize. It must be new and he doesn't like it. "The easy answer is Jaha," she finally says. "The harder answer is that it was time. It's been time for a long while. I just wasn't ready to face it."
"We did okay without you."
Clarke looks around the cabin, takes in the running water and wood-burning stove, the bed and dresser and table and chairs they're sitting in. She notices the clothes he's wearing, sewn on earth, and the tablet sitting at his elbow. She sees civilization in very fabric of this room, realizes they made it happen without her.
"I'd say you did more than okay."
He knows he should say thank you and move on, start discussing whatever happened with Jaha, but a flare of anger licks through his chest. He doesn't need her approval. He doesn't need anything from her.
"What do you want Clarke?" He crosses his arms over his chest and raises his eyebrows.
She bites her lip again and pushes the bottle across the table. "I wanted to share a drink with my friend."
"No."
"No?"
He shoves away from the table, away from her. "You can't just waltz back in here and act like nothing happened. This place, I made it into something good and it works because of me. Because of what I had to do." He pauses, tries to catch his breath. "Because of what you made me do."
"I know," she says softly and her mask falls, mouth trembling like it did at the gate so many months ago. "If I'd stayed, I would have ruined them. I would have made sure, every day, that they understood what we did to bring them home. They needed to heal and I couldn't give that to them, but I knew you could. Don't you see? I needed you to do what I couldn't. I needed you to be what I wasn't ready for."
Bellamy watches her for a moment, eyes shiny with tears and her jaw tight with the effort of holding them back, and then they spill down her cheeks and he's a goner. He can hate her and rage at her but seeing her cry is more than he can take. "Hey, hey," he croons and crouches down in front of her, takes her hands in his. "It's gonna be okay."
"I know," she says tearily and gestures vaguely around the cabin. "I've seen what you can do."
"I'll be even better with you," he says and the anger in his chest fades entirely. All he's built these months, the man he's become, it's not going to disappear because she's back. "Take care of them for me," she'd said but he realizes he didn't do it for her. He did it for them, and for himself, but mostly because it was right. It'll only be easier if he doesn't have to do it alone.
"You don't hate me?"
Bellamy smiles, tilts her chin so she can see the truth in his eyes. "I could never hate you, Princess." She laughs at the old nickname and sounds enough like her old self for him to let go of her hands and take his seat across the table. "So tell me about Jaha."
She groans and takes a calming breath. "I don't know where to start."
Bellamy opens the bottle and pours two cups of wine. "I've heard it can't hurt to start at the beginning." He raises his cup in a toast. "Besides, we've got nothing but time."
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