"Jake Griffin, you're under arrest for treason."
The commanding officer's words float in the stagnant air. It's only a matter of seconds before they've got the engineer's hands cuffed behind his back, a short lag between declaration and action.
For Bellamy, it seems like an eternity.
He's just a cadet. He knew going into this that he'd have to do things that compromised his moral code for the sake of protecting his family, but he didn't think that it would be this soon. Or that it would be this.
One week on the job, and he's already assisting his superiors in arresting the Ark's top environmental engineer. A councilwoman's husband. Somebody's father.
"No, no, no, no." His daughter, a sharp-eyed blonde girl who can't be more than seventeen, tries to break through the crush of guards. The CO shoots Bellamy a warning look, so he steps in front of the girl, cutting her off.
But the girl won't be deterred. "Dad? Dad?" A note of hysteria climbs into her voice as she tries to wend her way around Bellamy.
A couple members of the guard grab the girl roughly by the shoulders and yank her back. She cries out and struggles against their iron grip, while Bellamy's eyes dart back and forth between the CO and the shrieking girl.
"Get your hands off her," Jake says, his voice weary. Like he's already resigning himself to his fate. The girl breaks free of the guards with one last jerk and catapults herself into her father's arms, already sobbing with wild abandon.
"I'll warn them," she chokes out, her words muffled in her father's shirt. "I'll find a way."
The engineer looks stricken. "No, Clarke. No," he tells her with a firm shake of his head as the men start strong-arming him out of his compartment. "Listen to me. Do not… do not do that." It's the last thing he has the chance to say before he's dragged from the room.
The girl—Clarke, he supposes—has this wild look in her eyes. She's still screaming for her father, desperately thrashing and trying to break away from the guards swarming around her, but Jake Griffin can't protect her now. Nobody can protect her now.
As one of Bellamy's superiors places Clarke under arrest and takes her into custody, Bellamy helps slide her slender wrists into a pair of metal cuffs. And even though it's his job, even though he doesn't know this girl, he hesitates before turning the key.
Look at him, tearing a family apart just so he can keep his own together.
It doesn't seem fair to him, but he knows one thing to be true: survival isn't about fairness.
…
Clarke huddles in her cell, clutching her knees to her chest as she cries. Cries for herself, cries for her father. Cries over Wells' betrayal, which is exactly what got her family into this mess.
She's so… angry. It's a feeling that's foreign to her, a feeling that settles in her chest and threatens to choke her. And she's not sure if she's angry at the leaders of the Ark, or her ex-best friend, or even her father for giving in so easily.
If she wasn't handcuffed, there's no telling what she might do.
The door to her cell slides open, and a dark figure materializes in the doorway.
"You coming?" The voice of a man, gruff and indifferent. Clarke looks up, but her vision is blurred with hot tears.
"Coming where?"
The man sighs. "Your father's getting floated. The CO told me to come get you." He hesitates. "Unless you don't want to come."
Clarke scrambles to her feet, a task made difficult by her restrained hands. "No! No, I'm coming."
"All right, then." The guard steps into the cell, extends a hand toward her. The very same guard that stepped between her and her father, just a few short hours ago. The guard that forced her wrists into handcuffs. She glares at him through bleary eyes.
"Don't touch me."
He sighs again. As if he's world-weary and jaded, even though she can tell that he's younger than he would have her believe. His crop of thick black curls that fall into his dark eyes is enough of a tip-off. But he doesn't touch her.
"All right, Princess. Let's go."
…
It might be the worst thing he's ever witnessed in his life. But he has to remain impassive, stoic.
Clarke launches herself at her father, once Bellamy unlocks her handcuffs temporarily. And he watches her face crumple when Jake whispers something in her ear, places an oversized wristwatch in her hands. It kind of sickens him to realize that she can't keep it, that he'll have to confiscate it as soon as they're back in her cell.
Chancellor Jaha stands off to the side with his son, both wearing matching frowns. Bellamy can't help but stare at the chancellor; can't imagine that someone could willingly sentence his friend to death.
He waits for the signal, the almost imperceptible nod that Jaha gives the guard standing by the doors. And when it comes, he takes his cue.
Clarke feels limp in his arms when he leads her away, drags her back behind the yellow line that separates them from the pod. She chokes out a sob when the doors close on Jake and the guard punches the 'eject' button at Jaha's command. It only takes a second for the gravity to suck him into deep space, but the impact is worse.
He lets her collapse into her mother's arms, lets them cry together for about as long as he can stand, before he remembers who he is. Who he has to be, at least while he's wearing this uniform.
To Clarke's credit, she doesn't cry when he clasps the cuffs back in place, or when he leads her back to her cell, or when he takes her father's watch and stows it in his pocket.
"I'm sorry," he tells her, just as he's about to leave. It's a formality, in a sense—her father just died, after all—but it doesn't really feel like it to him. Because he is sorry, even if she broke the law. He's sorry about all of it, especially the role he's played in it.
He is wholly unprepared for the withering stare she levels him with.
"You don't get to say that to me," Clarke snarls. "Just—leave me alone."
Bellamy stares back at her. He can feel himself shutting down. The empathy melts away before he realizes it.
"Sorry I bothered," he mutters, and slams the cell door behind him before locking it.
…
It must be some sort of special punishment. Because she was a co-conspirator in a plot to reveal classified information, Clarke not only loses her father and has to deal with the ignominy of solitary confinement, but she has to keep seeing the guard with coal-colored hair.
He is the only one to deliver her meals. The only one to hover over her in tense silence as she picks at her rations. She's pretty sure that the guards are supposed to be on some sort of a rotation, but somehow, she keeps getting stuck with him. And she's feeling incredibly unlucky.
"Wanna speed it up a little, Princess?"
Clarke glances up at the guard sharply, forgetting her peas speared on the prongs of her dulled fork. He's glaring at her.
"Sorry if my eating is inconveniencing you," she says dryly. "I'm sure you have more important things to be doing."
The guard huffs. "I do, actually."
"Well, I don't." Clarke holds his belligerent gaze and goes back to stabbing the grayish peas on her plate until they start to ooze. She can almost hear the steam pouring out of the guard's ears, and has to bite back a triumphant smile.
When she looks back up at him, his taut lips are set in a firm line.
"You know, you don't have to take this out on me," he says. "I didn't do this to you."
She stares at him in disbelief. And then she lets out a hollow laugh.
"Sure, Officer. You had nothing to do with this." Her eyes scour his black uniform, the badge on his chest, the gun holstered to his hip. "Nothing at all, right?"
He's silent for a moment, flexing his jaw. "I'm just a cadet," he tells her flatly. "And I was just following orders, okay? You made the choice to break the law. I was just doing what I had to do."
Clarke scowls at the guard and crosses her arms over her chest. She petulantly kicks the plate away from her with the toe of her boot. "I'm not hungry anymore," she mumbles.
He stoops to retrieve the plate. "Whatever you say, Princess."
Anger flares up in her chest. "Don't you dare call me Princess."
She swears that she sees a smirk flash across his lips before vanishing altogether. "What would you have me call you, then?" He folds his arms across his chest, mirroring her posture. "Prisoner Seven-Five-Six-Three?"
"You don't get to call me anything."
"Fine by me."
"Get out."
The guard clomps toward the door in his combat boots, but pauses before he passes through it, as if it's an afterthought. "I'll be back at first light," he tells her. "Goodnight, Clarke."
He's gone before she can ask him how he knows her name.
…
Bellamy walks fast with his head down as he passes the Guard's headquarters in Sector 37. He's off the clock, and there's only a few hours left before the sun comes up. He fully intends to spend those precious hours with Octavia, before she has to go under the floorboards again.
But he's not fast enough.
"Blake!"
He slows to a stop, biting back the urge to sigh, before he walks a few paces back to where his CO, Commander Shumway, is waiting with his arms crossed over his chest. The guy's imposing despite his modest stature, with rippling arm muscles and a perpetual glint in his eye. And even though Bellamy's technically off-duty, he still finds himself kind of buckling under the weight of his commander's steady gaze.
"Commander," he offers, with a curt nod.
"You heading back from the girl's cell?" he asks. Bellamy nods. "Any report?"
"No, Commander."
"She didn't give you any trouble?"
"Nothing I can't handle, Commander."
Shumway grunts. "Good." And then he just stands there, staring impassively at Bellamy. He wonders if it's safe to leave.
"Well, if that's all—" Bellamy hedges, but Shumway swiftly cuts him off.
"You spend an awful lot of time down in the correctional sector," he says, his eyes narrowing almost to slits. "I took the liberty of logging your key swipes. You want to see?" He doesn't wait for an answer, brandishes his tablet and starts tapping at the screen before holding it out to Bellamy.
He scans the log, his heart starting to pound, even though he doesn't really know what he's looking at.
SWIPE IN – CELL 7563 – B. BLAKE 19h00
SWIPE OUT – CELL 7563 – B. BLAKE 19h34
SWIPE IN – CELL 7563 – B. BLAKE 5h07
SWIPE OUT – CELL 7563 – B. BLAKE 5h26
"That's a lot of time in Cell Seven-Five-Six-Three," Shumway muses. He cocks a bushy eyebrow. "What's taking so long with the girl?"
Bellamy swallows hard. "She—she takes a long time to finish her rations, sir."
"Well, in that case, you should be doing your rounds in the meantime," Shumway shoots back. "All right? Don't just stand there waiting for her to eat."
"Yes, sir."
"If you want that promotion—"
"Yes, sir, of course."
"Good," Shumway says, and something of a smile works its way across his face. Or maybe it's a sneer. "You said that you wanted to monitor the Griffin girl? Make it worth your time."
Bellamy nods, and Shumway mercifully lets him go.
He can't explain what it is that compelled him to volunteer to monitor Clarke's cell. Hopes that he'll never have to explain it to his commander, because he can't figure it out for himself.
…
A few weeks pass without incident, so Clarke is rewarded with a few bits of charcoal. Reward, she supposes, for her good behavior. Because someone told the authorities that she loves to draw.
But that's all she gets. Charcoal. Not pads of creamy white paper, the thick sheets that felt like satin under her fingertips, because that's a commodity. Everything's a commodity on the Ark. Including oxygen.
Especially oxygen. And if she'd only been allowed to say something about it, she wouldn't be here right now.
Part of her wants to snap the sticks in half and grind them under her boot, but she doesn't. If she can't be out there, she'll make a world for herself in here.
She draws. A little on the walls, at first, but then it spreads. She draws whatever she can remember from her textbooks—clouds and cresting waves and evergreen trees—and for a little while, she forgets that she's in solitary, breathing in a limited supply of oxygen, when there's a whole world down below that she'll never get to see.
They'll float her someday, if the Ark doesn't run out of oxygen first.
…
On principle, Clarke refuses to speak to the guard whenever he comes by with food. Because there's nothing to say, really.
Although, she is sort of curious about him. Who he is, or why he's the only guard who comes by every day and every night.
But he talks to her, even though she hardly gives him the time of day. Calls her "Princess," probably just to piss her off.
It's working.
One time, as he's delivering her dinner, he leans up against the door and surveys her half-finished mural. It's a landscape of a craggy mountain peeking out from behind a thick copse of trees. She's just working from memory, juxtaposing pictures that she vaguely remembers from her biology textbooks, and completely ignoring her food, when she hears him clear his throat.
"What are you doing?" His voice is flat and low. Clarke prickles with irritation, gritting her teeth before resuming her sketching.
"What does it look like I'm doing?" She can't even stop herself from snapping at him, even though he is part of the Guard. Even though she's nothing but a prisoner.
Clarke dares to glance back over her shoulder, only to find his dark eyes fixed on her. She can't account for the tiny shiver that works its way down her spine.
"It looks like you're drawing."
She glares at him and goes back to her mural.
The minutes of silence that follow become stifling. She wonders if he's still there, or if she should bother to check. She doesn't know why she should care.
"Aren't you supposed to tell me that I'm vandalizing the Ark's property?" she bursts out, because really, his silence is unsettling. "Or threaten to report me, or something?"
He doesn't take the bait. She sneaks another glance at him, and there's a ghost of a smile on his lips. "There's not much I can do, Princess," he says. "I mean, you're already in lock-up."
Clarke scowls. "Could you stop that?"
"Stop what?"
"Calling me 'Princess.'"
The guard shrugs. "I thought we established that I'm not supposed to call you anything."
She sets the charcoal down. "Well, I'd rather have you call me Clarke."
He swallows, and she watches his throat bob. "Okay."
"I just… hate that word."
"Message received."
"So, what do I call you?" she asks. Her mouth falls open in surprise as the words come out without warning. She doesn't know why she wants to call him anything at all.
He hesitates.
"Bellamy," he tells her, in a voice so low that she almost misses it.
"Bellamy," she echoes. "Okay."
It's too quiet after that. She drops his gaze and refocuses on the half-shaded trees on the wall, picking up a broken shard of charcoal.
She doesn't see why he can't just leave. It's clear that she's not going to eat, and she has nothing more to say to him. Except…
"Well?" she demands, looking at him again over her shoulder. "Aren't you going to say something?"
He draws a little closer, his boots thumping with every step, before pausing just behind her.
"For someone who's never been to the Ground…" Bellamy starts, his eyes sweeping over the scene, "it's pretty impressive."
…
Bellamy knows that he's not supposed to spend so much time in Clarke's cell. He knows.
But it's just that, she seems so miserable. Like Octavia, who's spent most of her life in the shadows, in a hatchway under the floor. Prisoners, both of them, to an unfair system.
The only way he knows how to fight it is to give them a reason to smile.
He doesn't know when he stops being Clarke's appointed guard and when he starts being her friend, but it happens somewhere along the way. Somewhere in between the time he tells her his name and the time he first comes by her cell, even though it's not a meal time.
And at some point, she stops scowling when he walks into the cell. Starts calling him by his name. It sounds different falling off her tongue than when Octavia says it, or his mother says it. "Bellamy." The 'l's' are softer, the curve of her lips fitting around the sound gentler.
She isn't gentle, though. She's rough-hewn around the edges, especially when she's reminded of her situation. When he has to lock her back into her handcuffs before he leaves, because it's protocol, and she gets this hard look in her eyes that leaves him feeling cold.
He called her "Princess" because he couldn't fathom how someone so privileged could fall so far. Used to think it was amusing, watching her eyes flaming with anger, but now he thinks that maybe it's a little tragic.
But it doesn't stop him from wondering how a councilor's daughter got mixed up in this mess.
…
"What?" Bellamy asks, catching Clarke's eye.
Clarke checks herself. She was staring at him again, letting her eyes drift upwards from her dinner plate and fixing on his face.
Why can't she control herself?
"Uh, nothing," she says. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear and averts her eyes. She can't look at him because it's all so damn confusing.
She's supposed to be a prisoner. He's supposed to be her guard. There should be resentment between them, and nasty looks exchanged, and angry silences.
Not this. She's not supposed to look at him like this.
"You okay?"
The question startles Clarke. She glances up at him again, cheeks flaming, to find him giving her a strange look, a dark eyebrow arched high on his forehead. She nods, flustered.
"Yeah. Yeah, I just—" And then she catches herself. There are lines that can't be uncrossed, and this is one of them. Certain rules that must be followed, but they are rules that seem to slip her mind of late. She forges on in spite of herself. "I was just thinking."
"About?"
Clarke swallows. "About how you don't… seem like the rest of them. The Guard, I mean."
It's a question that's been floating around in her mind for a while. Because shouldn't guards be stoic, and tough? Shouldn't they exercise brutality when provoked? Shouldn't they treat their prisoners like the dispensable creatures that they are?
She's surprised by the softness of his features. The warm contours of his face, and the chestnut hue of his eyes. The way he clenches his jaw when he holds himself back from yelling at her.
No, he's not fit for the Guard. So why is he there?
"You know, I might ask you the same question," he responds after a beat. "About why you're in here. You don't seem like the hardened criminal type."
"I could be," she says, and the corners of his mouth lift ever so slightly.
"I don't think so."
Clarke bites her lip. "Well, you don't really know me, then."
Bellamy hums in agreement, his eyes lazily traveling the room, her charcoal drawings. She follows the path of his gaze until it settles on her. And suddenly, she's finding it a chore to breathe.
"I've got people I care about," he says softly. "People I need to protect."
And she wonders what he means, although she also understands completely.
"So did I," she tells him.
…
He likes unlocking her handcuffs more than anything in the world.
Watching her flex and rotate her chafed wrists. Or the way her hands, unrestricted, reach for a piece of charcoal. The worlds that flow out of her fingertips are unfathomable.
She has beautiful hands. The first time the thought crosses his mind, he chastises himself. Not just because she's a prisoner and he's monitoring her, but because she's off-limits in more ways than one. She's still a councilor's daughter. She's still seventeen.
But her hands are beautiful. Uncallused, unblemished, slender hands that move delicately over imaginary canvases.
These are not hands that belong in handcuffs.
Sometimes he conveniently 'forgets' to fasten them again. Because if she can't be free, her hands should be.
…
She writes his name once in charcoal dust, after he's already gone for the night, tracing the letters in careful cursive with her fingertip. Just to see how it looks.
…
He doesn't know why he tells her.
Maybe it's because she's locked up, and he's the only guard she sees. Because there's no real chance of her repeating his treasonous words to anyone else.
Or maybe it's because she has a trustworthy face. Bright eyes and an easy smile, when he's surprisingly able to coax one out of her.
But it's probably because he wants Clarke to trust him.
Bellamy doesn't know why that is. Still, he chases the feeling because it's the first time in a long time that he's felt this way about someone else.
…
"You… you what?" Clarke breathes.
They're sitting across from each other, on the floor of her cell. He's never dared to get this close to her before, unless he's taking care of her handcuffs. Usually hovers by the metal door, as if it would be breaking protocol to approach her for any other reason.
Well, he is breaking protocol. Clarke has her legs tucked underneath her and he's sitting dangerously close to her. So close that their knees brush. So close that she can hear him swallowing hard, working up the courage to repeat himself.
"I have a sister," he murmurs, refusing to meet her eyes. He traces a pattern on the floor with his fingertip. "Octavia."
A sister. A sister.
It's unfathomable. A member with the Guard, harboring an unregistered person in his quarters. A person who shouldn't have born to begin with.
God, if the Council knew…
She bites down on her lip, hard.
If they knew, they'd float him, too.
Clarke has no claim on Bellamy Blake. Barely knows him, but she knows that losing him would shatter what's left of her heart.
She clears her throat, forcing him to look up at her. There's real fear in his eyes, something that she hasn't seen from him before. Fear of… what? Judgment? Betrayal? She presses her lips together and smiles weakly.
"How—how old is she?"
Bellamy inhales sharply, but his shoulders relax at her question. "Sixteen."
Sixteen? Sixteen years of seamless cover-ups and sneaking extra rations and keeping her hidden from the outside world. Clarke masks her shock as best as she can manage. "Tell me about her."
It's not hard to see how much he loves his sister. A rare smile graces his hardened features when he talks about her. The words tumble out of him in an unpracticed rush, and Clarke picks out the details, fills in the blanks.
Octavia is patient. She is loyal, she is curious, she is so full of life even though she's not really allowed to have one. And she notices Bellamy deflating a little when he mentions that last part.
"It's just—unfair," he rasps, eyes flashing with sudden, unchecked anger. "She didn't ask for this. She didn't ask to live her life under the floorboards." He clenches his jaw and looks away from Clarke. "You know that she's never seen the moon? Or the curvature of the Earth? And she wants to. So badly. But I can't give that to her."
Clarke sits in stunned silence, watching Bellamy work his jaw furiously, probably trying not to lose it on her. "I can't give her anything," he mutters, resting his forehead against the palm of his hand.
She lets him hurt for a few more painful seconds. And then she does something stupid.
Her fingers have barely ghosted over his when he recoils sharply, yanking his hand away as if her touch scalded his skin. "Wh-what are you doing?"
Clarke gapes at him, horrified, before steeling herself. "I—I thought—"
"You can't," he says, shaking his head at her. His eyes reflect pure terror, or so she thinks. "You can't do that."
"Bellamy—"
"Clarke," he says, eyes dark and serious. "Please. Don't."
She's wounded. And confused. How could he open up to her like that, then shut down so quickly when she offered a little bit of comfort? How could he flip a switch that easily?
"Why?" she challenges him. "Why'd you tell me?"
Bellamy stares at her. When he speaks, his voice cracks. "I don't know."
But he has to know. He's looking at her with this new intensity that she can't place, and there's this searing heat coursing through her veins that she's never felt before that only burns hotter when he's close to her. When their fingertips are barely touching.
"I do," she says. "I do."
His lips part but no words fall between them. Instead, he tentatively inches his hand toward her.
When his eyes flicker up to meet hers, she understands.
They sit there for a while, trapping the warmth radiating off each other's skin between their palms, until it's late and he has to leave her again.
She conjures up the picture of his lips, parted slightly, and freezes it in her mind as she falls asleep.
…
He's so fucking stupid.
The whole point of joining the Guard was to protect Octavia. So he'd know when random compartment checks were coming. So that once he'd ascended the ranks, he'd have a little bargaining power when she was inevitably discovered.
But it's too late now.
What was he thinking? Letting her out of the compartment so she could see the moonrise? Sneaking her down to the masquerade ball without an escape strategy? The whole plan was so clumsy, so terribly executed, that he almost can't believe that he did it.
It's so unlike him. Taking such calculated risks.
For Octavia, he'd do anything. But he can't help her anymore.
She's in the Sky Box in general population. And that might have been okay—at least the Council didn't vote to float her for just existing—but it might as well be a death sentence because he can't see her anymore.
He doesn't have clearance to the Sky Box. Doesn't have clearance to anything because once Shumway figured out what happened, he demoted Bellamy. Took his badge and uniform, stripped him of his pride and kicked him out of the Guard.
He's a janitor. And he can't see his sister.
He can't see Clarke.
He can't say goodbye.
And that's what really burns him up. Because he's lost so damn much in his life, and he's never had the chance to say goodbye. Never knew his father. Never got to see his mother one last time before they floated her. Had Octavia ripped out of his arms before he could find the words to protest. Got fired before he was due to drop by Clarke's cell.
He just wants the chance to say goodbye.
It's suicide, maybe. But he's going to take the chance. By force, if he has to.
Because he has to.
He has to.
…
It's late when he slips out of his compartment, clad in his janitor's uniform. Late enough that only a few members of the Guard will be on patrol. And he knows where they'll be stationed.
More importantly, he knows where they won't be stationed.
There's nobody roaming the hallways past curfew. It's quiet enough to hear the hum of the generators, dark enough that the only light coming in is from the soft glow of the moon.
He just needs to get past Sector 37 undetected.
Bellamy can feel his heart pounding in his throat as he approaches the Guard's headquarters. Shumway is engrossed in conversation with another officer, his back turned to the hallway where Bellamy stands, frozen.
It's a small window of opportunity. He just has to be brave enough to seize it.
His fists clench at his sides. If he's caught, he won't go down without a fight.
But he won't get caught.
Bellamy doesn't give himself a moment to think. He sucks in a short breath and dashes for the hallway, keeping his back parallel to the ground so that none of the guards catch a glimpse of him through the propped-open door. A sudden flash of gratitude for Shumway flits through his mind—when he lost his job, Shumway took his clunky black boots. So now Bellamy can walk—or sprint—without making a sound.
He doesn't stop running until he's well out of Shumway's range, until he's at the ramp leading up to the Sky Box. That's when he allows himself to release a long sigh of relief.
It's not over yet, though. Not even close.
…
Something jolts Clarke out of her restless sleep.
It took her days, maybe even weeks, to realize it. With Bellamy, she was almost whole again. The confining walls of this prison cell, the ignominious sentence, the handcuffs… With him here, it was almost bearable. It was almost a fate she could accept, because he seemed to know how wrong it was, too.
Without him, she doesn't know how much more of this she can take.
She hasn't slept in days. Not since a burly guard stalked into her cell with her evening meal and grunted at her when she asked, startled, where Bellamy was. Not since he radioed in backup when she got a tad hysterical and held her down to plunge the syringe into her neck. Not since she awoke hours later, face-down on the floor and throat hoarse from screaming.
This isn't the girl that she thought she was. This isn't the girl she thought she might become. So attached to some boy who disappeared on her without warning. Without saying goodbye.
But, no. He didn't disappear on her. Something happened to him, she's sure of it. Because he wouldn't leave her like that. Not after the friendship they'd so painstakingly cultivated. Not after the things he told her.
Not after the way he looked at her.
Had she imagined it? She wonders sometimes if she conjured up the fatness in his pupils, the stares that lingered for even a moment too long. She has to be imagining it.
Yeah. She must be losing her mind.
She bolts upright in bed when she hears it. Keys jangling in someone's hand outside her cell door. Unusual for someone to be using a key to enter the cell, not a card swipe. Clarke's mouth goes dry, just imagining the burly guard coming back with another syringe in hand. Another punishment for daring to raise her voice.
The lock clicks.
Clarke bunches up the sheets in her fists. Her heart is thrumming fast, but she's not scared. No, she'll fight. She'll stand up and fight if she has to.
The door creaks open. She bares her teeth, ready to pounce.
"Clarke?"
The fight drains out of her as soon as she hears his voice.
"Bellamy?"
He slides the door shut behind him and crosses the floor in a couple of long strides. But she meets him halfway, throwing her arms around his neck just as his arms clutch her waist. She's breathless and giddy and enraged all at once, and can't figure out which emotion has the reins right now.
She doesn't care.
"What happened?" she gasps into his ear as she releases her hold on him. "Are—are you—?"
"Octavia got arrested," he pants, his hands finding her shoulders. "Shumway found out about her and—I got fired."
Clarke almost shouts, but he claps a hand over her mouth. "They'll hear you," he hisses. "And if they hear you, they'll find me. I'm not supposed to be here."
So many questions, but she doesn't get an opportunity to ask. Bellamy speaks quickly, in a voice so low that it's almost hard to hear him, but she gets the story. About how he risked everything to make Octavia happy, and lost everything instead.
"Bellamy," she breathes when he's done talking. "I'm so—"
He raises a hand. "You don't have to be sorry," he says, even though his eyes are burning. "It's my fault, anyway. She's my sister. My responsibility. And… I fucked it all up."
"Bell—"
"I didn't want to lose her," he says bitterly. "I didn't want to lose—you."
Clarke inhales sharply.
Bellamy shifts uncomfortably at her silence. "Look, I figured that you didn't feel... that way about me. I just, well." He clears his throat. "I had to let you know."
It's quiet for another moment.
And then she's kissing him.
His lips are rough, and their teeth knock together, and the kiss is all foreheads and bumping noses and hands in each other's hair, but it's perfect. She breathes into his mouth and she breathes him back in. It's exactly what she wanted. It's exactly them.
He drags her bottom lip between his teeth as his hands trail down her back, and she sighs aloud. It wouldn't take much more to send her flying apart into a million little pieces. In fact, this might just be enough.
"I've—I've wanted this for so long," he murmurs, once there's enough space between their lips for him to speak. "You should know that."
"Me, too," Clarke says, and she surges forward again to capture his lips.
"Clarke—" he sighs when he pulls away again. She can't help but hear the defeat in his tone. "I can't be here."
She whines at the loss. She wants to thread her fingers through his loose curls and pull him into her again. "But you are here."
"I know, but—if they find me…" His eyes search hers, and she knows what he's trying to say without saying anything at all. If they find me, they'll float me. They'll float you.
"I don't care," she says, tears springing to her eyes like a petulant child. "I don't care. They can't take you."
"Clarke…"
"They can't take you, too!" she bursts out, about an octave too high and a few decibels too loud. She doesn't miss the fear in Bellamy's eyes. "Not you, too," she whispers, as if that will make it better. As if that will make it true.
He stands there, looking so defeated and so forlorn, but he does tug her toward him. He does fit his lips against hers again, even though it's gentler now. It kind of feels like goodbye.
And Clarke thinks that maybe it is.
"You're gonna be okay, Princess," he whispers, mirth tugging up the corner of his mouth. She wants to cry, but a strangled laugh bubbles out of her.
He plods toward the door. Turns back one more time before he slides it open just a crack.
"Goodnight… Clarke."
And then he's gone.
…
When he aims the gun at Chancellor Jaha's chest, he has to squeeze his eyes shut.
This isn't for him. It isn't for Shumway.
This is for Octavia.
This is for Clarke.
He fires once, and races down the hall in the opposite direction, not wanting to see the grotesque scene behind him. Not wanting to see yet another family he tore apart.
…
Maybe things will be different on the ground.
They're criminals, all of them. Bellamy included.
He's not her guard anymore. She's not his prisoner.
Maybe things will be different on the ground. Different enough for them to finally have their way.
He hopes that she'll have him.
Author's Note: I just started watching 'The 100' and even though I'm barely into the second season, I'm hardcore trash for Bellarke. This is my first attempt at Bellarke fanfiction—or really, any sort of fanfiction for 'The 100,' so I hope that it's somewhat satisfying! You can also find this story in two parts on Tumblr as separate drabbles. Come find me on Tumblr at thehungagayums or leave a review! Thanks for reading!