Bellamy's hands were restless. They always were when Clarke was gone.
Hunting, he reminded himself. She was just hunting.
She'd stormed into his tent before dawn that morning, letting him know that she was taking the day to go hunting. He didn't argue with her, even though the both of them knew she wasn't hunter. She was many things, a healer, a leader, the head of their people, his steadying force, the voice of reason, but she was not a hunter.
But it was the first time she'd looked him in the eye, looked anyone in the eye, since Finn so he'd just asked if she wanted him with her and she shook her head so he found Wick because he was the only other one he trusted, even though he wasn't a guard, -but Bellamy knew he wouldn't let anything happen because he saw the way Wick was around Raven and even if she wouldn't admit it right now Raven couldn't lose Clarke too- and tossed him his gun and told him to keep an eye on her.
Since then his hands hadn't been still once.
He kept himself busy all day, pushing Clarke out of his mind-she was fine, there was no reason to think she wasn't-and wore his hands weary, covering his skin with calluses and scrapes and blisters, each new mark reminding him exactly how long Clarke had been gone.
It was Octavia who found him around midday and took the knife he was carving wood with out of his hand and dragged him to the med bay, forcing him to sit still for a moment while she cleaned and bandaged his hands.
"Wearing yourself down isn't going to make her come home any faster. You need to relax. She needed some air outside of this camp. It's not surprising," she scolded him as she tied up the bandage on his first hand.
He held his other hand out to her, knowing that she'd just drag him back again if he tried to leave before she was done.
"She's been gone for hours," he said simply.
"And she'll be back and she'll find you and everything will be right with the world." She winced at her own words. "Well everything will be as close to normal as it can be, anyway."
He knew Octavia was right. He did. But he couldn't stop. There was a nervous energy brewing within him, vibrating through his core, slipping along his veins and releasing itself into his hands.
He couldn't be the guy with the shaky hands, he had to be steady. Dependable. A leader.
So he didn't let them shake. He put them to work.
He caught Octavia raising her eyebrows at him every time he walked by her with something new in his hands, and he would have stopped to explain himself, except she already knew and the vibrating would start to get stronger anytime he slowed his hands down so he'd just duck his head and carry on.
He tried to imagine Clarke hunting. It was a ridiculous thought. Clarke shouldn't be hunting. She should be there. At camp. Camp wasn't right without her, it wasn't good. It was broken and strange and he knew that she felt broken and strange and maybe couldn't take being forced into the med bay to save people day after day when she couldn't save Finn but he knew that chucking a spear at some unsuspecting animal wasn't going to make her feel better.
Maybe he should have explained it more to Wick. Maybe he should have insisted that he go with her.
His mind was churning while his hands worked and he saw his bandages darken with dirt and he probably should have gone to Octavia, but instead he found someone at the gate, struggling to fix a broken part in the fence so he laid a hand on their shoulder and told them to take a rest, he'd take care of it.
His hands were sore at nightfall.
He was finally about to go back to Octavia and take whatever verbal lashing she had planned for him when he saw a stocky figure running toward him. It was Wick.
"Bellamy!" He shouted as he got closer.
Bellamy felt his blood run icy cold in his veins. He felt his hands shake and he had no way to still them.
"Where's Clarke?"
Wick was panting, unable to catch his breath, pointing at the woods just outside the fence.
"She wouldn't come back. She was going to stay there. She caught a rabbit and she wouldn't-"
Bellamy nodded, slapping his arm on Wick's shoulder as he sprinted out of the gate and toward the patch of trees.
Clarke was kneeling in the dirt when he found her. A bloody rabbit carcass was in front of her and she must have tried to skin it and done something wrong because all she could see was the mud matted in its fur, and all over her hands. She must have run her hands through her hair, because the golden yellow was caked over in brown and red and black.
Her shoulders were shaking and she was doubled over, head pressed into the ground in front of the rabbit as her fingers clutched its fur.
He dropped to his knees beside her and ran his hands over her back, rubbing them up and down until the shaking in her shoulders stopped and her breathing made its way back to normal. She still wouldn't look up at him, but she started to sit up. She squeezed her eyes shut at the sight of the rabbit in front of her, so Bellamy pulled her up to stand beside him and faced them the opposite way.
Mud made her hair stick to her forehead so he raised a finger and peeled it away, watching some stray bits of dirt fall the ground by their feet.
She needed to get clean.
"Let's go to the river," he whispered and she nodded, so he took her hand and led her further into the woods down where he knew the trickling stream of the river was. He shrugged out of his shirt and kicked off his shoes before tugging his pants down. He left his boxers on and made his way over to the water, waiting for her to follow. She took off her jacket and pants but kept her tank top and underwear on, and wordlessly followed him in.
She stood there, almost helpless, but Bellamy knew that wasn't a word that could ever describe Clarke. She almost seemed like she was waiting for something. He wasn't sure what.
He remembered the cuts on her face and hands and knew that they would get infected if she let the mud cover them for too long so instead of washing himself, he reached his hand across to hers and scrubbed the dirt away from her skin, watching as it floated down the stream.
When he had finished with her arms he moved on to her face. She dunked herself under, but allowed him to be the one to wipe the dirt away from the skin near her eyes and nose and mouth.
The river was so shallow where they were that when she finally lost her energy and collapsed to her knees, her shoulders were still above the water. She tilted her head back and let her hair sway back and forth around her head, shutting her eyes. He washed that too.
When they were clean and dressed she grabbed his arm and spoke for the first time since coming into his tent that morning.
"Can we just stay here a while? I don't think I'm ready to go back just yet," she whispered.
Her eyes weren't as cloudy as when he found her, she seemed steadier and he wasn't worried about her taking off in the middle of the night, so he nodded without question and sat leaning against a tree. She sat down with him, leaning into his side a bit.
He heard her whisper "thank you" softly under her breath, before pushing her hair out of her face and leaning her head down onto his arm.
"Your hair is still a mess," he said gently. "I can braid it for you if you want."
He didn't expect her to take him up on his offer, but his hands were getting shaky and he could tell Clarke needed to be touched and it was the only kind of touch he thought would be okay, but she nodded and moved so she was sitting with her back to him.
He reached out and started untangling a few big snarles in her hair with his fingers before he started lacing the strands together in a simple braid starting at the top of her head and resting against the base of her neck.
She pressed her head into his hands as he worked and sighed when he finished, leaning back onto his chest. She ran a hand over the newly finished braid and he caught the ghost of a smile on her lips.
"Okay." She said. "Ready to go back now."