Eurydice

- I -

Until we have seen someone's darkness, we don't really know who they are.
Until we have forgiven someone's darkness, we don't really know what love is.
- Marianne Williamson

Bellamy knows Clarke Griffin far better than he wants to admit, to himself, or anyone else. It's a fact he's tried to ignore, but a fact nonetheless. He knows the steady presence of her at his side as surely as the beating in his chest, the breath in his lungs.

So he knows the instant she starts to tailspin.

Always level-headed and rational, Clarke isn't prone to panic, but in the command center, Bellamy witnesses her spiral into a kind of quiet madness that terrifies him to his core. He watches as it twists and molds Clarke into something that he doesn't recognize, witnesses the yawning darkness that she had held softly inside of herself rise and rise, until it seems to dim the light behind her eyes.

And Clarke looks to him, her other half in more ways than he wants to admit, to help her, to pull her back from the edge of the abyss into which she is about to plunge.

Tell me another way, find me another way.

But he can't. There isn't. And Bellamy is, not for the first time, faced with all of his glaring inadequacies in the face of the realization that he can't save her from this.

Bellamy can, however, take equal share of the decision, just as they took equal share in leading their people.

Don't let me do this… don't let me do this alone.

She never actually says it, she never would, and Bellamy would never expect her to - led by some misguided attempt to save him in turn. But he still hears it, somehow, as though it whispers against his mind, a phantom weight suddenly heavy in his soul that is surely only a fraction of what Clarke forces herself to carry.

Despite the thick leather covering her hand Bellamy feels it trembling over the lever. Together. Clarke's relieved exhale is little more than a shudder, like the last shred of her soul leaving her, and Bellamy watches her close her eyes as his hand tightens her fingers over the lever. He closes his eyes too, pressing his forehead against Clarke's hair, breathes in the smell of sweat and leather, earth and something sharp that reminds him of the air on the Ark – like ozone.

Clarke's arm is slack beneath his as Bellamy pulls the lever for them.

Clarke moves once the lever was down, once they hear the scrubbers stop for a moment and then start again. Her eyes dart between the screens, edge to edge, and Bellamy knows that she is committing it to memory, forcing herself to watch the people of Mount Weather die. Somehow, each death seems to take more from her than the last.

Bellamy watches Octavia, her figure so impossibly small on screen, turning in a circle as the room around her crumples and dies, wilting in on themselves. Another thing he has failed to protect his sister from – the last sounds of the dozens of people around her as they die so, so slowly, and at the same time so, so quickly.

"Let's go get our people."

Bellamy isn't sure if it's Clarke that speaks, or if it is the shadow that has swallowed her and seems now to wear her skin.

.

He has to keep glancing at her out of the corner of his eye to make sure Clarke is still there. Instinctively, Bellamy knows that she's there, because where else would she be if not at his side, but unlike all the times before he cannot feel her there. Clarke is there bodily, yes, but that has never really been what Bellamy has felt at his side – she is not there in the sense that he needs her to be.

He is not surprised that she wants to leave, but still something in him rails against the idea. It sends his stomach into knots, and there's an uncomfortable dryness in his throat that he cannot swallow down because he blames himself.

Bellamy had failed her. The one and only time he has failed Clarke, and the price paid had been so impossibly high. She had asked him to tell her another way, to find for her a solution that didn't cost her soul. But he couldn't. There wasn't.

"Look. If you need forgiveness, I'll give that to you. You're forgiven. Please come inside." I need you to forgive me. Tell me you forgive me. Please don't leave.

"Take care of them for me." Of course you're forgiven.

"Clarke –"

"No. Seeing them every day is just going to remind me of what I did to get them here."

"What we did. You don't have to do this alone." I can't do this without you.

"… I bear it so they don't have to." I bear it so you don't have to.

"Where are you gonna go?"

"I don't know."

Clarke's lips against his cheek are strangely cold, but Bellamy slides his arms around her, comforted, if only for a moment, by the solid weight of her against him. He releases her slowly, hesitantly, wanting to keep her here with him for as long as he possibly can. But he lets her go because he has to, his fingers lingering at the curve of her waist as Clarke steps away and turns, the tips of his fingers brushing against her jacket as she takes her first stride away from him.

Bellamy turns because he can't watch her walk away from him, a sigh shuddering past his lips and wonders if Clarke even realizes just what she was taking from him.


I am Bellarke trash. This was something in my head after having FINALLY watched season 2.

A few things you should know:

1 - Chapters will probably be short. This is so I can get them out quicker. Hopefully. My track record with writing hasn't been that great lately.
2 - This will veer into AU territory, but I will not reveal how just yet.

Please, please, PLEASE let me know what you thought. :)

- Kay