Clarke slides to the ground, back against the tree, her boots creating their own little dust storm as she stretches her legs out with a violent kick. She closes her eyes and breathes in deeply as she feels the brush of his shoulder against hers. It feels like her first real breath of air since this time yesterday, her first moment of peace.
They just sit there, by the biggest tree on the South-East side of the wall, on the slight rise of a hill that gives them a full view of the sleeping camp. At the exact spot where a gentle beam of sunlight breaks through the leaves for a few precious moments each morning.
By the time the sunlight has moved on and left them in shade, a few early-risers are dragging themselves out of their tents and the camp is beginning to hum with the noise of life.
She turns to face him for the first time, something she delays as long as she can every morning. Before she looks, she can sketch every hair, every freckle in her mind. The lines on his forehead, the wry curl of his mouth, the patches where his jacket has faded to match the colour of the dust. She can sketch the expression in his eyes as he looks over the camp, changing from guarded to possessive, to wistful.
But when she looks, he looks back, and he is suddenly Bellamy, her partner in all things, for better or for worse. Sometimes for the very worst. But he is looking at her, not looking to her like the rest of Arkadia, not trying to look for her like her mother, not looking from her as the grounders look away from Wanheda.
He looks with her, and then she knows their partnership is always always for the better, and she could never capture this Bellamy on paper, no matter how many nights she spends frantically trying, no matter how much she needs to remember this and hold onto it.
But she looks at him anyway, because she can never resist it, not here in their spot. She can never resist the pleasure and the pain of becoming Clarke and Bellamy, of joining her strength and weakness to his, for better or for worse.
"Are you ready to do battle?" he asks, with a serious mouth and smiling eyes.
"Always," she answers. It will be always, she tells him with her eyes, as he gives her a hand to stand up. And he lets out a deep breath as they walk into camp, hoping to God that she is right.