Octavia catches him as he's walking away behind Raven.
Her jaw is clenched like she's about to cry and Bellamy knows that she won't because she's trying to be strong.
"What, O?" He asks irritably, trying to get himself to stop thinking about the words that keep repeating in his head. It's worth the risk.
Her chin starts to quiver. "You don't have to do this, Bell."
The older Blake sibling nods and then sighs. "Yes I do, Octavia. We have to get our people out."
Octavia takes a breath. "You're going to die in there."
"It's worth the risk." Bellamy replies bitterly, turning to follow Raven, but Octavia's too quick and she grabs his arm quickly. She searches his eyes before sighing.
"How long?"
"What?"
She gestures towards Clarke with a nod of her head. "How long?"
Bellamy sighs and shakes his head. "Unity Day."
Octavia's mouth drops open. "Bell—that was weeks ago!" She stresses and her brother groans.
"You think I don't know that?" Octavia shakes her head. This can't be happening. There has to be another way. There has too. "There just… There hasn't been time. First the Grounders and then Finn and now this alliance. There hasn't been time."
"You're throwing away your life for her, Bellamy." He looks towards the ground, a sign of weakness for him. "You are going to die in there. You and Lincoln."
Bellamy finally looks at his little sister and shakes his head. "It's not like I'm trying to get myself killed. It's worth the risk." He repeats, mimicking Clarke's tone. If Octavia wasn't so worried about him and pissed off at Clarke she'd laugh. "Besides, I thought of the plan this morning. She just didn't agree with it until now." He kicks the dirt with his boot. "I don't know what changed."
Octavia lets out a shaky breath and looks towards Clarke who's talking to Lexa. "I think it was Lexa. They were talking about something earlier, and Clarke hasn't been the same since." Octavia says in a small voice and glances at her brother. He looks so goddamn defeated. Broken down and he's giving up. She saw his face when Clarke told him that it was worth the risk. She should've known at that moment that her brother was in love with their, his, princess. But she didn't because she was too shocked at Clarke's words. "You should talk to her."
Bellamy snorts. "No one's gonna be able to get through that thick skull of hers."
"You can," he shakes his head. "Yes you can. You've done it before."
"I don't think I can this time." Bellamy sighs. "I gotta go. I'll see you in the morning."
And with that Bellamy returns to the tent that Raven disappeared into.
It's two weeks later when they get the news. Lincoln returns to Camp Jaha with the 47 in tow. Octavia instantly knows that something's wrong when none of them are smiling, not even Jasper and Monty.
Lincoln finds her first. "Find your healers. All of them."
"What happened?" Octavia forces out, trying to look around him.
"We need your healers." He tells her. "Now."
Finally, Octavia pushes around him. Her breath is knocked out of her. "No," she cries, pushing Miller and Monroe out of the way as they try to hold her back. "No!"
Bellamy and several other kids are being supported by others or on stretchers. Bellamy is on a stretcher. "Someone get Clarke!" She yells, collapsing next to her brother. "Go!" She shouts when no one moves. Jasper's the first to move and quickly he's rushing. "Move them all to the medical tent."
She helps lift the stretcher that carries her big brother and ignores the painful drumming in her ears and the cries trying to seep out of her.
Clarke's walking into the med tent behind her mother and doesn't see Bellamy first. She sees her friends who've made it out and who need help. They're the ones breathing. Bellamy, however, is not breathing.
"He's not breathing! He's not breathing!" She screeches, looking to Lincoln for help. Clarke hears her friend, or someone who was her friend, and turns from her living, breathing friends, and the small smile that had graced her face is knocked off as fast as it came.
"Mom," Clarke whispers, "mom!" Abby Griffin finally turns and is about to tell her daughter off when she sees.
"You help Sinclair with these. I'll work on him." She adds, when Clarke doesn't move. "Go." Finally Clarke shakes her head and gives Bellamy one more look before rushing towards everyone else.
"Where did you find him?" She hears her mother ask while Clarke cleans up Harper and gives her bed rest.
"One of the cages," Lincoln replies gruffly. "Where we found Monty and Harper and a few others. He was breathing then but on the way out… One of the guards shot him and…"
"Where was he shot?"
Lincoln points to something and that prevents Clarke from hearing, so she works even harder on her friends so she can return to Bellamy's side and fix the mess that she started.
Abby lets out a breath before she starts listing off everything she'll need and Clarke's heart nearly stops every time the list adds. When Clarke does finish patching everyone else up, and after she's led them to a separate wing of the medical tent, she returns to Bellamy's side and nearly cracks.
There's so much blood. It seems as if there's more outside of him than inside. Octavia's crying, tears streaming down her face as she strokes her brother's hair back. "You're gonna be okay," she whispers, wiping her face quickly, "I'm not gonna let you die big brother."
Lincoln sets a hand on her shoulder as Clarke helps her mother get the bullet out of Bellamy's stomach. Although they do finally get it out, Bellamy's lost a lot of blood and Clarke desperately sticks the needle in her arm to give him some of hers.
Both girls in the room are crying most of the procedure, as Abby restarts his heart three times.
Finally, when he's at least a little stable, Octavia stands, and within seconds she's attacking Clarke with the needle. "This is your fault!" She screeches, trying to bring the needle down Clarke's face, "you sent him in there and now he's dying, this is all your fault!"
Lincoln rips the needle out of Octavia's hands just as it finishes dragging down Clarke's cheek. Both girls gasp, and while Octavia looks like she wants to apologize, she doesn't, and instead curls her face into Lincoln's chest. Lincoln gives her a look as if to say I'm sorry. Abby quickly patches up Clarke's face.
"It's going to scar, sweetheart." Abby tells her but she doesn't care. She deserved it, she deserved to feel some pain.
After a couple hours, Octavia finally fell asleep by her brother's bedside and Lincoln carried her out of the med tent and into theirs.
Clarke's the only one who stays with him, besides the few people still in the other wing of the med tent.
She's been sitting on one of the other beds for a while, waiting till Octavia left.
Finally, Clarke heaves a sigh and dips a rag into the water bin and sits on the edge of the bed next to him. She starts to wipe down his face of all of the blood and dirt and gore that had piled up over the weeks.
Clarke lifts his head gently and sets it in her lap as she starts to wipe down his neck as well as she can. He's covered in blood and he smells like death. Every once in a while, Clarke will set her fingers just over his heartbeat on his neck to make sure that he's still there. She pushes her fingers through his dirty, darks curls and tries to calm her nerves and anxiety and guilt.
After what feels like days, he finally shifts and groans. "Where the fuck am I?"
Clarke nearly collapses. "You're alive."
Bellamy's eyes squint open. "Princess?"
"You're alive."
His eyes close again. "Of course I'm alive. You think I was gonna let myself die in there?"
Clarke lets out a strangled sob and his eyes find her face. Her face is contorted into a painful expression to attempt to prevent herself from crying, but it doesn't work and tears stream down her face and etch into the dirt and blood and the bandage that's on her cheek. "I'm so sorry, Bellamy." She forces out, "I shouldn't have told you to go, I should've talked to you we should've talked about it and I shouldn't have told you it's worth the risk because it wasn't and you're worth so much more than just a risk and I'm so sorry." She pauses a moment and wipes her face. "You were so close to dying and it's all my fault, I let you go and I knew the minute I sent you that I regretted it and Octavia hates me and so does Lincoln and Raven and you probably do too and I'm so sorry Bellamy."
"Clarke," he murmurs, looking up at him. "I don't hate you. You and your mom saved my life." She lets out another strangled sob and it takes a lot of his strength for his hand to find hers. "Yeah, you should've talked to me." Clarke nods shakily, "but," he continues slowly, "if I hadn't gone our people would've died the next week. We saw it on one of the charts."
Clarke swallows. "I shouldn't have sent you." She takes a breath and squeezes her eyes shut quickly. "The day before you left, Lexa talked to me. She told me that love is weakness and that I was being weak by not letting you go." He starts to say something but Clarke cuts him off. "It took me a couple days but finally I figured out that love isn't weakness, it's strength and I sent you because I was scared that because I care about you so much you'd die too and then I'd be left with no one."
Bellamy's quiet for a second, before he finally smirks. "So what I'm getting from this is that you're admitting to your idiocy and you're also confessing your love to me."
Clarke forces a watery laugh. "You're impossible. Just came back from the dead and already picking fights."
He snorts quietly. "Nah. And just so you know, I feel the same way."
Clarke's about to reply, about to let all of the happiness out of her chest when Octavia slips into the room quietly.
"Bell," she murmurs, and then grins, jumping at him. "Big brother!" Bellamy laughs quietly and lets his sister wrap her arms around him and check him over for any other injuries and Clarke slips out of the tent giving them some space.
As soon as she's gone, Octavia gives him a look. "How long have you been awake?"
"Few minutes," he grunts, looking towards the entrance of the tent where Clarke left.
"She talk to you?" He nods. "How'd it go? She was a mess the entire time she was making sure you didn't die."
Bellamy snorts and drops his voice to a whisper. "She basically professed her love for me."
Octavia laughs and gives him another look. "About time. But, really," she curls onto the bed with her brother, "be careful. She's still… Fragile from everything."
"I know," he murmurs, closing his eyes and letting his sister stroke his hair. "We have a lot to work out."
Octavia nods and sighs. "I just want you to be happy."
"I am now." He mumbles, giving his sister a hug. "I love you, O."
"I love you too, big brother."
However, the happiness only lasts for a few more hours until disaster strikes.
Bellamy falls asleep with Clarke wrapped up in his arms on the medical bed and her fingers running through his hair.
He doesn't wake up.
Octavia's the one to find him. She goes in there, humming an old Grounder tune, to give Bellamy some of her dinner cause she knows that what Abby's giving him is not enough to allow him to heal.
"Hey, Bell, I got some potatoes, Abby caught me trying to sneak more, though." When he doesn't reply, Octavia sighs and shakes his shoulder. "Wake up and eat this before she finds me." His face remains blank and Octavia starts to panic. "Bell," she shakes his shoulder again, more roughly. "Bellamy!" She screeches, starting to cry. "No, no, no!"
Her fingers frantically scramble for the hem of his shirt so she can see his wound. The bandage is covered in sticky, too red blood. She rips it off quickly to find that his stitches that Abby completed so carefully did not hold and they have broken into pieces. "No," she sobs, beating her hand on his chest, willing him to wake up, "no, Bellamy, please wake up, please!"
Lincoln hears the commotion as he passes by and enters the tent quickly. "Bell, please wake up, no, no, no!" She's sobbing and her hands don't know where to settle because she's trying to bring a dead man back to life and it's just not working.
Lincoln yells for Abby and within seconds she's in the tent, trying and trying and trying but nothing. Octavia refuses to let go of his hand and tears streak down her face.
Abby gives Octavia a sad look and then shakes her head. "I'm sorry. It looks like he bled out over an hour ago, before we all started dinner. I'm so sorry, Octavia."
Octavia shakes her head and drops it onto the table, her hands staying around her brothers. Her shoulders shake with sobs. Lincoln rests his hand on her shoulder and tries to soothe her. "Would you like to be alone?" Abby asks, and stands when Octavia nods.
"Don't tell Clarke yet." She murmurs, tears dripping down from her eyes. "Not yet." Abby nods slowly and then sighs, leaving the tent.
"Would you like me to leave too?" Lincoln asks, and when she nods he obliges.
As soon as she's alone, Octavia collapses into sobs, wrapping herself around her brother's cold body and burying her face into his shoulder because she wants to get one last whiff of his familiar scent before they put him in the ground forever. Her tears soak into his shirt and when Octavia pulls away she takes one look at him before she dissolves into sobs once more.
Her body shakes and she wants to scream. He was the one who was supposed to make it. Octavia wasn't supposed to make it to 18, and here she is three months out from being 18 and he's not going to make it past 23. Her head hurts when she thinks about her brother carrying her around the room on a pony ride through the forest and her heart hurts when she thinks about her brother leading her through the Ark for the first time. Octavia thinks about seeing the moon rise for the first time, standing next to her brother and she thinks about jumping onto the Earth with her brother right behind her.
Octavia's brain is plagued with memories from her entire life and how her brother was always there. He was always the one who took care of her and made sure she was safe and now he's gone and she has no one. Her only family, gone in a couple of short hours.
After what feels like centuries, Octavia is just staring at his lifeless form while silent tears drip down her face and off of her chin. She doesn't even bother attempting to wipe them away because she knows that more will come within seconds.
Abby renters the tent a few minutes after Octavia has rested her head on her brother's unbeating heart. Abby sits down next to her and slowly starts talking. "Lincoln's been standing outside of the tent keeping people from coming in. Clarke included. They know something's wrong and—" Abby tries to finish but then there Clarke is, pushing through Lincoln to get inside.
"What's going…" Her voice fades as she pieces it together. The tears dripping down Octavia's face, the sadness in her mother's eyes, and Lincoln's straight face. Her eyes jump to Bellamy's face and immediately she collapses to the ground, resting against one of the beds. "No," Octavia releases another sob and buries her face back into her brother's shoulder. "No. This is a joke. He's playing a joke on us." Abby sadly shakes her head and moves over to her daughter.
"I'm sorry, Clarke, I'm sorry there was nothing we could do—" Abby cuts off when her daughter, her strong daughter, fizzles into sobs and cries in her mother's arms. "Shh," she whispers, stroking her hair. Clarke eventually has enough strength to push herself up from the ground and wobble over to Bellamy.
She and Octavia stay by his side deep into the night.
They don't say anything to one another.
There's nothing left to be said.
The next morning, the remaining original 100 venture out of Camp Jaha and back to the drop ship, carrying the dead that they've lost in the last few weeks. Miller and Monroe carry Bellamy's stretcher. There are others, others that did not make it out of Mount Weather alive, but their bodies made it back.
The remaining delinquents (though you can hardly call them that anymore) decided that their people would never be buried at Camp Jaha. They would be buried at the drop ship, where they made their first breaths of the clean air on the earth and where they made their final stands against the Grounders.
Octavia and Clarke walk in uncomfortable silence. The cut on Clarke's cheek twinges with guilt and sadness, but she says nothing. The hands that caused it fill with regret, but Octavia says nothing.
Once back at the drop ship, a few able-bodied people begin digging the six graves that are going to have to be filled.
Clarke finishes cleaning up the wounds of people that are going to be taken by the earth, but she lets Octavia clean up her brother, because it's the last time she'll ever see him.
When the graves are dug and the dead have been moved, what's left of the 100 stand around the graves as each body is lowered into the ground and filled up. Joey Marks. Cassidy Diaz. Jordan Lason. Bryce Dawson. Alexandra Johnson. Bellamy Blake.
The crowd shifts uneasily when it reaches him. No one had expected him to be one of the ones to fall. He was supposed to be the one who led them through this, the one who made sure that they all got through.
And now he's gone.
The group decided to stay at the drop ship that night, because they felt weird leaving without those six people. Eventually, they will make their original camp their permanent home.
Clarke finds Octavia sitting by his grave. Silent tears fall down her face and she doesn't even move when Clarke sits down next to her, patting the recently dug earth.
"This is all your fault," Octavia growls at Clarke, not looking up from the dirt.
"I know." Clarke replies softly, dropping her head into her hands.
"He was willing to do anything for you, even die for you and you let him! You let him go!"
"I know." Clarke whispers, blinking fast to get rid of the tears.
"He loved you, Clarke!"
She takes a shaky breath. "I know. And I loved him."
Octavia stops talking and looks at Clarke quietly as the blonde tries to pull herself together. "You did?"
Clarke nods. "Yeah. I do. Did." She corrects herself quickly, sucking in another tight breath.
Octavia lets out another sob and collapses onto Clarke's shoulder. "He's dead, Clarke. He's dead and he's not coming back."
"I know," Clarke replies, smoothing her hand over the girls hair. "I'm so sorry, Octavia. I'm so so sorry. My mom tried, I tried…" Clarke trails off and she wipes her face off. She needs to stay strong for Octavia.
Octavia sniffles and looks back at the grave. "I'm never gonna see him again. Never gonna hear him laugh or talk or breathe or anything because he's dead." Tears leak down Octavia's face and Clarke shifts so she can reach into her pocket.
"Here." It's a piece of old paper, and Octavia sniffles as she flattens it out. She starts crying when she sees it. It's a picture of her brother, drawn by no one other than Clarke. It captures his smile perfectly and Octavia knows that this is one of his smiles that turns into a laugh.
"When did you make this?"
Clarke shrugs. "Few weeks ago. I needed something to do."
Octavia looks at the blonde for a second before giving her a hug. "Thank you." She whispers, and Clarke wraps her arms around her. They're quiet for a minute, listening to the sounds back at the drop ship mingled with the sounds in the forest. "He really loved you Clarke."
"And he loved you even more." She replies, digging her fingers into the dirt where Bellamy's body is now buried. "May we meet again." Clarke murmurs.
Surprisingly, Octavia speaks up, her voice choked up and quiet. "May we meet again, big brother."
The two girls stay out there all night.