"Bellamy!"

He froze. His hand had begun to reach for the gun in the waistband of his pants until he recognized the all too familiar voice calling his name.

Clarke

He turned slowly, hesitantly, to face her. His eyes widened when he saw the gun she had pointed at him. Determination shone in her eyes, but he could see past the confident facade she bore, he has seen it on himself far too many times.

He raised his hands to show her he was unarmed, any thought of pulling out his weapon long gone from his mind. Clarke didn't budge as she continued to hold the gun aiming straight at him.

"What are you doing?" He asked, still frozen in place.

"What I have to. Like always."

He had taken out the two guards assigned to follow him and the ones stationed at the door. He had Abby distract Jaha in return for his promise to bring Kane back with him if he made it out. He had even found a way to temporarily disable the security cameras so he could escape unnoticed. He thought he had considered everything. Of all the times to forget the captivating girl before him how had he let it be now.

"You don't have to do this Clarke." He spoke uneasily, putting his hands down but still not making any move to go forward or back.

"I can't let you open that door, you know that." Her voice was shaking as was the hand she had clasping the gun. He knew he could probably take his chances disarming her but he didn't want to risk it.

"Well then you're going to have to kill me, because I'm not going to stay here while my sister's out there. You know that."

She knew him all too well, lately it felt like she was the only one who understood him at all.

"You don't even know if she's alive Bellamy. The radiation levels are increasing by the minute in three days the only people who will survive will be in this bunker." She had thought this moment through. That much was clear.

"Yeah, well maybe I don't want to survive without her. Maybe I'm done surviving Clarke." His voice cracked as he recalled his world crumbling down when he thought Echo had killed Octavia only a few days earlier. He thought about Jasper who was so sick of the people they had become to survive that he'd rather die than spend another day surviving.

"Don't say that." The statement didn't sound right with her still pointing a gun at him. "I know how much you love her Bellamy but you can't just give up because of this. You can't put every single one of us in danger because-"

"What if it was someone you loved out there? What if it was your mom everyone was perfectly fine pretending was a lost cause!"

"I did everything I could to make sure the people I care about were in here before those doors shut. If that hadn't been enough I would have accepted it. The survival of the human race is more important than one person."

"Then why the hell am I here Clarke? You know I'm not going to stop until I get out those doors. You may as well have left me out there for dead too."

"You know why I couldn't do that Bellamy. I need you. We all do. We would have saved Octavia if we could there just wasn't enough time, it wasn't poss-"

"I'm done listening to your damn excuses! When did it become okay for us to start leaving people behind. My sister is out there, I know it because unlike you I didn't send her into that conclave to die. I'm not leaving her out there."

"Don't make me do this Bellamy. I don't want to lose you, but I can't let you open that door." Her words were strained and her hold on the gun was unstable. He could probably release her grasp on it if he took his chance.

"Maybe you should be more concerned about losing yourself. The Clarke I know, the girl who was sent down here with the other hundred of us, she wasn't okay with letting her friends and hundreds of people die."

Her look of determination was breaking down and he could tell his words were getting to her. He knew he was hitting a sore spot. He thought far too often about all the mistakes he had made down here himself. He couldn't imagine Clarke had done any different.

"Who we are and who we need to be to survive are two very different things."

She was throwing his own words in his face and he shouldn't have been surprised. How many times had he told himself those words?

"What's the point of surviving like this? What's the point of surviving if you have nothing left to live for."

"Octavia isn't all you have."

"No." As he looked at her he knew she was right. As much as he'd tried to deny it, as much as he tried to push away the truth, as much as he had hoped for it to fade away…

"No she's not all I have. But I can't live with myself knowing that I didn't do everything I could to stop her from dying."

His body seemed to be able to work again because he was walking towards her now. Down the clanking metal steps, drawing closer till he was right in front of her. Clarke stiffened and tightened her hold on the gun as Bellamy stepped close enough that the barrel was pressing into his chest.

"So if you're not going to let me walk through that door that you're going to have to kill me Clarke, and you're going to have to live with letting two of your friends die pointlessly."

"Bellamy…" Her voice was hoarse and her eyes watered as she spoke.

How had they wound up here?

"Come on Princess, do it. Save the human race. Survive again, like always."

He wasn't sure whether she would do it or not. He had such faith in Clarke as a leader, he knew she would do anything to protect her people. But he also had faith in Clarke the person, the girl who had been his moral compass when they first landed on this planet. The girl who had convinced him that he wasn't a monster and stopped him from becoming one.

Bellamy had faced death so many times he wasn't sure if he should fear it anymore. Maybe the stupidest thing of all was that he was more afraid of Clarke pulling the trigger and having to bear the guilt of his death then his actual death itself.

How had he wound up feeling this way?

"I...I can't, I have to-" her words came out in broken phrases, attempts to try and regain her sense of control. She'd been in control for so long she'd forgotten what it was like to be powerless.

"Clarke-"

"Stop him now!"

The door burst open and Jaha's commanding voice filled the room as a series of guards poured in. Bellamy barely had time to move before they had surrounded him. He knew it was useless fighting back but he still did. He had to.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Clarke drop the gun. He heard it clatter to the ground just as he was jolted by a taser to the back of his neck by one of the guards he recognized as Miller. As he fell to the ground he stole one final glance at Clarke as he had so many weeks ago on their journey to find Luna before he had faded from consciousness.

He saw the tears that had welled in her eyes roll down her cheeks as she looked down at him. As her eyes locked with his he almost felt bad for her. It was ridiculous. She was the reason his sister was going to die.

Just before he lost consciousness he saw her mouth the words to him.

I'm sorry