A/N: This is a Post-Canon multi-chapter fic that will fill in the missing six years. As a warning: This is going to be a dark fic. I took some liberties with this story and I wanted to write a realistic take on grief and depression. Thanks for reading!
Chapter One: The Inferno
Bellamy sits overlooking the burning Earth with a soldier's grief.
The more he looked at the flame devouring below, the more he started to believe that the fire could reach out and take him too. From the ashes…
She was the fire below and he thinks a small part of it trapped itself in his rib cage. His hands tremble and he clasps his palms to quell it.
He left her to become the inferno. Alone.
The dark part of his heart thinks they should have burned together. Together. Wasn't it how it was supposed to be? He'd take her into his arms for one last time. They'd turn to statues of ash, forever in that embrace.
What were they but fading points of light? Those stars Clarke was always looking up at with an old's souls wonder. He sees them now with perfect clarity. Those stars. Blazing suns with their own finite infernos.
She became a star. His star. Perhaps that made him Icarus. Even in his hubris the sun drew him ever inwards; always to be set aflame.
Bellamy thinks in finalities. There was no coming back from this. There was no going forward from this. He's stagnate in his grief. There was a quiet responsibility that Raven gave him with such kindness but he didn't want it. He didn't deserve it. She was gone.
This room was gray, and his only source of light was below. Her star would burn in front of him forever, even when the fire has finally burned itself away. He'd always see the reflection of it in his eyes.
He hopes that through the years in this metal tomb he'd eventually lose his mind. Maybe then he'd see her again. She could draw him a lament. Madness was something he now looked forward to.
He didn't know how long he had been in this room but he knew the others were concerned. He saw the way they looked at him, as if grief were somehow contagious. He had put himself in quarantine.
He didn't want to see their disappointment and their trust in him dwindle.
There was a knock on the observation room door and he said nothing as a response.
"Bellamy." Raven says through the muffled metal.
He closes his eyes as a tear rolls down his cheekbone and escapes from his chin. Raven would tell him what Clarke would want for him and she'd be right but he couldn't hear it. He didn't want to listen to it.
She bangs on the door again and he thinks on stars, wristbands and never saying quite enough. It would always be that way, wouldn't it? He should have told her. He should have told her that he traced his heart in her smile. He should have told her that she was necessary to his existence. He should have made her believe that you can't have one without the other. The heart and the head.
Raven had gone. There was that silence again. He thinks eventually their concern would dull and they'd forget he was even here. It would be easier for everyone. Raven was meant for this. Not him. Not without her.
Bellamy wept towards the fire; her star. He whispers everything he should have said to the glass. He hopes that one day soon his mind would crack open and she would be standing here with him, overlooking the vast emptiness of the infinite.
Raven knocked on the metal door once more but didn't receive an answer. Murphy saunters by, throwing a glance at Raven.
"He won't come out and he won't eat." Raven says to him.
Murphy turns back to her with a shake of his head, "Well, I'm not going to help you force feed him if that's what you're asking."
Raven glares at him and Murphy shrugs before disappearing into the corridor beyond.
Raven was good at fixing things…things. Not people.
She understands that vast pit of loneliness that Bellamy has fallen into. She understands. She also knows that they don't have the luxury to lock themselves away. They had to keep this place maintained. They had to survive. Clarke would know this most of all.
She was gone and it left a gaping hole but they could do this. They had the means to pull through this and find their place again. She chose to survive and she wants that to mean something.
She slams her fist to the metal door, hoping that it startles him out of his reverie.
"If you want to waste away in that observation room…I'm not going to stop you but you're the one that convinced me this was worth it. So, prove it. Prove to me that this all means something."
Raven steps back and stares at the door, knowing it wouldn't open.
She knew that Bellamy was the only one that could pull himself out of this. Clarke wasn't coming to rescue them. This was it.
She'd take it and like clay, she'd shape this small chance into something meaningful. They'd get to go home again. He would either open that door and join them or stay in that head of his.
This was their future and she'd be damned if she was going to let it slip through her fingers now.
She turns then on a small sigh and stops when she hears the creaking of the metal door, opening.
She doesn't turn to look at him, afraid it would spook him back into the abyss again.
"Are you ready to join the living?" She asks.