"Go ahead, shoot me!"
Now that he thought back on those words, Bellamy realized just how stupid they had been.
But he really hadn't thought that Finn would go through it. He hadn't thought that Finn would have been capable of going through with it… Although who could have guessed that Finn, who was so against violence, would ever be capable of killing someone?
And yet that was just what he had done… That was why Bellamy had woken up in the wee hours of the night to have to claw himself out of the shallow grave that a few volunteers had haphazardly given him.
…That was why Bellamy was walking back to camp with a bullet hole in the front of his shirt and covered in a coat of dirt mixed with his own blood.
Finn took another long chug from his drink as he tried to block out the memory of all that had happened earlier that night. Unfortunately, no matter how much he drank, it just wouldn't go away.
"Go ahead, shoot me!"
Finn hadn't meant to kill Bellamy. He had just meant to scare him… He had just wanted to teach him a lesson, not shoot him. He had thought that the gun hadn't been loaded, but clearly he had been very, very wrong.
"This is all your fault, Bellamy. You're running this camp into the ground and you know it!"
"What are you doing with that gun? We both know that you'll never use it… Or am I wrong? …Go ahead, shoot me!"
Finn took another swig and let his face fall into his hands as he struggled, unsuccessfully, to think about anything else.
It was all just playing on repeat in his head over and over again… The argument… Pulling the trigger and being surprised by the deafening sound… Watching Bellamy fall to his knees with a look of sheer surprise on his face… Running over to try and stop the bleeding, only to discover that it was already too late… Walking back to camp, covered in Bellamy's blood… The way that Clarke and Raven had rushed over to him with concerned looks on their faces and so many questions…
"What happened?"
"Are you okay?"
"We heard a gunshot."
"Whose blood is that?"
"What happened to you?"
"Finn, are you okay?"
He couldn't erase the looks of horror that had appeared on their faces when he had barely managed to get out what he had done any more than he could forget the look that had been on Bellamy's face as he had died.
And just when Finn had thought that it couldn't get any worse, Octavia had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, with tears in her eyes.
Finn was already collapsed to his knees with tears of his own falling when he heard Octavia's cracking voice come from what felt like miles away.
"No… You're lying. Bell isn't dead… He can't be dead."
She shook her head in denial.
"No… No!"
Her voice turned into hysterical shrieks as she suddenly moved to charge at Finn.
"I'll kill you! I'll kill you for this, you hear me?"
Finn had been so busy watching Octavia breaking down that his mind had barely registered that Jasper and Clarke had both had to run to hold her back. They had barely managed to restrain her as she had thrashed and screeched, all the while sobbing hysterically.
He remembered the look of disgust, which Clarke had made a futile attempt at disguising, that she had given him as she had led Octavia away before it all looped over in his head and he was back at the argument with Bellamy.
Finn couldn't block any of it out, so he just kept drinking until finally he was able to pass out.
It was Octavia who saw him first, the next morning.
Maybe she should have been terrified by the sight of him. She had every reason to fear him as he walked up with an expression filled with a rage like she had never seen before and caked from head to toe in mud and blood. She wasn't afraid though, she was just relieved.
"Bellamy!" She screamed out excitedly as she barreled towards him, pulling him into a big hug.
He just barely managed to hug her back, loosely holding her, as his eyes scanned past her in search of Finn.
"Where is he?" He growled out, his voice coming out hoarse and scratchy.
Bellamy moved to pull away from his sister, but she held onto his arm tight enough that he was forced to look down at her.
"Bell, how are you okay?" She questioned as she stared at the blood-stain in his shirt that surrounded a small bullet hole over his chest. "I thought you were dead."
He continued to look past her as she pushed up his shirt, surprised to find only the tiniest of healed scars where there should have been a bullet wound.
"How is this possible?" She demanded. "Finn said-"
Bellamy's eyes flickered down to meet his sister's for the first time since he had arrived back at camp.
"Finn said what exactly?" He questioned in a tone of pure anger. "That I was dead? That he shot me in the chest when I wasn't even armed just because he didn't like the way that I was running camp? That he killed me? …Because that's all true."
"Then how are you here?" She questioned. "And if you got shot in the chest, then why do you just have some tiny scar that looks like it's been there for months?"
"I don't know," he answered in an annoyed tone. "Just tell me where Finn is."
"Why?" Octavia questioned. "So that you can kill him? He's not worth it, Bell. It's already hard enough trying to keep the camp together without us killing each other."
Sure, she'd had her own share of homicidal thoughts towards Finn, but now that she knew that her brother was alright it was no longer worth it to try and go after Finn.
"Maybe somebody should have told that to him last night," Bellamy replied through gritted teeth.
Finn woke up to the worst hangover that he had ever experienced in his life and he was glad. He deserved it… He knew he did. And he wanted to feel that pain. He embraced it.
He knew that he had to go try and talk to somebody.
He needed to apologize to Octavia and try to explain things to her, even though he knew that it would never be enough to bring her brother back…
He needed to go talk to Raven. He needed her to understand… Hell, maybe he didn't even. Maybe he just wanted her to tell him that he wasn't the horrible person he thought he was… He needed to know if she still saw something redeemable in him.
As he walked outside of his tent, he was blinded for a moment by the sun and it felt as if someone had taken an axe to his head. He kept walking anyways.
It wasn't until he had gotten five or six steps away from his tent that his vision cleared up enough for him to spot Octavia and, much more surprisingly, Bellamy.
He wondered if he was still drunk, or maybe just going insane, as he stared over at the other man in surprise. He felt a wave of relief wash over him, but also a wave of horror which only caused the pit of guilt in his stomach to triple in size.
Bellamy pushed past his sister, seeming to forget that she was even standing there, to storm over to where his killer was standing the instant that he spotted Finn.
"I- I'm sorry," Finn whimpered out, his voice cracking a little as he spoke. "I didn't know- I didn't mean to-"
Bellamy quickly shut him up with a sucker punch to the jaw, followed by several more blows to Finn's face. He only stopped when the sound of Clarke's voice beside him dragged him back to reality.
"Bellamy, stop!" She insisted. "This isn't going to fix anything… We can't just all go around killing each other and going after revenge. It has to stop. We've already got enough to worry about with just the Grounders."
Bellamy reluctantly released his hold on Finn, letting him fall to the ground, before he turned to face Clarke.
"Are you alright?" She asked her tone thick with concern. "I thought that you were…"
"Dead?" He asked harshly before his tone softened a little. "Yeah. So did someone else apparently, considering I woke up in a grave."
"How are you alive? …Didn't you get shot in the chest?"
"Yeah, I did," he responded. "And how I'm alive is pretty much on the top of my list of things I'd like to know right now."
Bellamy had just finished cleaning himself off and pulling on a change of clothes when Raven walked into the tent.
"Can I talk to you for a minute?" She questioned.
"If you came to try and defend Finn, then no," he responded. "…Just be glad I let him live."
"No, it's not about Finn," she responded. "It's about you… I think I might know why you survived."
A/N: Please read and review! I hope that you enjoyed the first chapter. This story is dedicated to Steph-Schell who requested the idea.