Stories From The Ground

Together

So I just caught up on the show on Netflix yesterday. I have to say that while I initially had my doubts about season 3 it really delivered. So I've written some stuff for the 100 before, but it's been about a year since I updated any of it. My writing style has shifted to focus more on one shots since that time anyways so that's what this is going to be. Hope you like it. I was listening to Ordinary World by Green Day while writing this.

As he watched his sister bury her sword into Pike and then turn around to leave him to die Bellamy finally got it. He supposed that he should have gotten it up on the Ark when his mother and Octavia paid the price for his mistakes despite his best efforts to protect them both. The world had only kept hitting him over the head with it every step of the way on their journey on the ground, but he had fought it every step of the way too. Now though, as he watched a man who had once taught children classes on survival techniques they would probably never use fall to the floor dead almost instantly from his sister's own hand, he finally got it. This world wasn't going to let him do it alone. He glanced over at Clarke, caught her eye, and knew that he wasn't. She pointed him towards the balcony and he followed without a second thought.

Leaning against the balcony overlooking what was left of Polis Bellamy was struck by how much had changed since the first time he had been there and he guessed that Arkadia wasn't fairing much better if the quick look he had gotten the last time they were there was anything to go by. This was what the historians in the books he read as a child always talked about when they discussed war. The parties involved always marched off to battle only thinking about the glory of it all and thinking that it would be over in only a short period of time. They soon found that war was not the easy, simple, concept that they had thought it would be and were often forced into doing far worse things for far longer than they had ever hoped. That's what they had done at Mount Weather and that's what they had done this time regardless of who was perceived as "good" or "bad" in either situation.

"It's not over," Clarke said from where she leaned next to him.

"It's never over," he confirmed.

"ALIE said that the abandoned nuclear power plants out there are releasing enough radiation to kill the Earth in six months," she dropped the information on him. "I know that it could have just been a bluff to tempt me into letting her and the City of Light survive, and I was tempted, but we still have to make sure."

"We'll figure it out together," he said. "We always do."

"Together," she said moving her hand to cover his.

Together, they had said it a few times since that first time in Mount Weather, but he was just now starting to realize what it actually meant. Separately they could get by alright, survive and make it through the day to day problems, but never as good as they could when they went after a problem together. Without her around he had almost brought both their people and the Grounders to the brink of mutually assured destruction and given an AI bent on destroying the world a cover to operate under without much oversight. Pike may have been the last casualty in a war that he had started, but it had been a war that Bellamy had allowed to happen and he was going to have to live with every casualty now too.

He had to live with every life they lost in those first few days and weeks on the ground, when everything could have fallen apart at any moment. He had to live with every life that he and Clarke had taken in Mount Weather. He had to live with every life that they took in that field the day they attacked that Grounder army. He had to live with every person who died by his hand and every person who died under his command. He supposed that they all had to do that now. He had heard it said a lot that war was Hell and he had never really understood it. He had gotten the gist of it sure, but had never truly understood. If what he'd seen so far during his time on the ground was any indication he finally knew exactly what they were talking about. Watching people around you who you had spent day and night with for the entirety of the buildup to the whole thing start dropping like flies was a sobering experience. Watching people on the other side drop like flies every time you pulled the trigger was equally sobering, and he guessed that everyone who had ever fought a war and survived carried around the weight of it all just as he was doing, just as Clarke was doing.

"When you left I was angry," he said after a few moments of silence. "Angry at you for leaving and angry at myself for letting you leave."

"And Pike made sense at the time," he continued. "The Grounders were a good target for my anger."

"I actually thought that I was doing the right thing," he finished with a sigh.

"I thought I was doing the right thing too when I left," she said. "I thought that not having me around would help them move on from Mount Weather easier."

"Maybe that's why we need each other around," she continued. "Call out all of the bullshit."

"From here on out we do this together or not at all," she finished looking up to meet his eyes.

"I'm game if you are," he said.

"Good," she said. "Now let's get back to our people."

Bellamy had been looking for answers to all of his problems when he had turned to Pike. He assumed that that was what the people who took the chip were looking for in the City of Light too. He now realized, however, that the true answer to all of his problems had been in front of him the whole time and he had refused to see it. There wasn't some new leader who was going to all of a sudden have new solutions to everything and there wasn't some mystical City of Light that could make all of the pain from surviving go away, that wasn't how the world worked. To find the strength to get through any problem they only had to look at the people next to them for answers. He only had to look at Clarke. What they all had was still fragile and could still be torn apart at any moment, but with Clarke by his side he knew that together they could see their people through whatever struggles came next.

I already have some ideas for future chapters but I guess we'll see where the inspiration takes me.