Author's Note: Apologies to my 100 fans who are waiting for the resolution of Revenge, but in regards to that story I am BLOCKED. I will do my best to get in there and finish that up soon. In the meantime...this one arose!

As with many of my fics, I have formatted this in an alternating first person, style, the acting speaker annotated by the title preceding the segment. If this gets confusing for anyone, PLEASE let me know and I can work on how I dictate who is speaking. Thank you so much for reading this! PLEASE review and give me advice, feedback, and ideas! (Positive or negative - I relish the chance to grow in my writing!) xoxo – E

Bellamy Blake

Fishing, building huts, living off the Earth, hunting, was there no end to the evidence that I had always been meant to live down here among the green and blue and happiness of nature? I loved the thrill of it all, the way that my survival didn't depend on how much money someone else decided to give me or the circumstances of my birth, but by how hard I worked and how I reacted to my surroundings and situations. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't also thrilled with the fact that down here, I could be friends or foe of anyone I chose, not whomever the Ark chose to surround me with. Without the 100's decent back to Earth, I probably never would have met half these kids. Okay most of them actually, because many of them would have been in jail until they were floated and the others were...well...Clark and Wells. And I wouldn't have met them either. I definitely would never have been in Clarke Griffin's path without this trip to Earth. I really didn't want to think about that. She was a know-it-all. She was ruining my plan to keep the Ark from following us down here. She was bossy. She was annoying. She was...exactly who I would have hoped to have by my side if I weren't on the run from the Ark. Half a year. The Ark was going to follow us in half a year. I needed to be established as leader down here before then, enough so that those who I needed to survive would follow me when I ran. Because I would have to run. The minute the council showed up they'd want me gone. There was a long, drawn out crackle in the air, it almost sounded like lightening, but given the clear sky above us it was safe to say I was wrong.

"Bellamy watch out!" Clarke's scream tore through my chest as I lurched towards her, caring less for what she said and more for the note of panic in her voice. She gripped me and pulled me towards her...just before I saw a streak of light behind me. Energy surged through the wire fence. It had been dead since we arrived, presumably longer than that, but we had no real way of knowing that. It had been an electric fence once upon a time, the sort that had kept out invading armies more than cattle. A true shock that could do some real damage. And it was live. All of a sudden, it was live. What the hell was that?! What had turned it on? The Mountain Men? But why now? This was never their territory line, they had no reason to stop us? It didn't seem to have much to do with us, anyway. Maybe something else was happening, somewhere else on the line. I screamed out as a sharp sting went through my ankle before the fence went dead again. At the exact moment the wires died down, the sound of electricity ceasing to exist, I heard Clarke's small cry of pain.

"Clarke?" I looked down her outstretched arm, the one that had reached forward to pull me back from the electric fence, the one which had grabbed onto the fence when I moved towards her at the sound of her scream. Holy hell. A red mark traced up her arm disappearing beneath her skin. Oh dear God she'd been hurt. I screamed out for her, pulling Clarke with me, refusing to let go.

"Oh God, Bellamy." She breathed, her eyes wide. "Your ankle, I…" She took a shuddering breath, attempting to collect herself.

"I'm fine. Clarke your arm-"

"I should really check it out, make sure you're okay. Minor burns, in and out, shouldn't have had any full body shocks." She spoke clinically, as though she were trying to emotionally distance herself from the problem. That was pretty normal for Clarke when she was assessing an injury – couldn't let her emotions (of which she had many) get in the way of actually helping. It probably would have worked too, if she hadn't been de facto sitting in my lap, my arms still wrapped tightly around her.

"Check yourself out." I growled at her.

"Bell." She murmured, waiting for me to release her, ignoring my request.

"Check yourself out!" She probed at her arm, enough that I was satisfied for now, but not so much that I wouldn't keep my eye on her ... for the rest of her life, actually.

"Some burning. Shocks traveling through my arm and out my leg. Didn't pass by my heart at all. I'll have Monty check my vitals later but it should be just fine. No permanent damage." She glanced down at the ground. "Thanks."

"Hmm?" My brow furrowed.

"For protecting me, like that. I used to think that maybe you wanted me dead, out of your way or whatever but…" She shook her head as I looked on in disbelief, unable to comprehend how she had ever thought that. "You always do. Protect me, I mean. All of us, really. You take care of all of us. Bell, I know there's something you're not telling us. Octavia said you had to do something to get on the Ark and that's why you don't want them to- but I guess I'm just saying, whatever it was you did. It was worth it Bell. We would all be dead if it weren't for you. You're… thanks Bell."

"What have I done?" I asked with a humorless laugh. "You're the one who keeps saving us all time and time again. All I do is get in the way. Yeah, I hunted. Someone else would have stepped up if I hadn't. All I've done is try to keep you all from your parents because I'm too afraid to face the consequences of my actions." I knew how bitter I sounded. And now I'd have to tell her. Now I'd have to tell her what I did to a man she used to call 'Uncle', what I'd done to her best friend (even if they were fighting right now, she wasn't about to justify my taking HIS dad away after what had happened to her own). Now I'd have to tell her and she'd never be able to see me as just Bell ever again. Now I'd be the crazy janitor from factory station who shot the chancellor.

"That's not true Bell."

"Clarke I-" Her lips cut me off and I found that each of the words I had planned to say to her just sort of, floated away. It was only a moment. A quick kiss that would forever linger in my mind. Barely a gentle caress of skin. It could have even been between friends. Just a thank you kiss. Nothing more.

But then our eyes met, a mirrored hunger hanging between us. And that was it. I pulled her closer, wrapping her up in my embrace, thanking whatever God existed that she was alive right now. My lips didn't 'gently caress' her anything, they devoured her. I devoured her. We were alive. She was alive. And good God, what a time to be alive.

Clarke

Our hips stuttered against each other in an odd staccato, thrust, retreat, chase. We moved, not necessarily in tandem, but that didn't make this any less… was holy-fucking-shit a descriptive word? Probably not. But that was all I could reasonably come up with just now. He'd done that thing again, that protective, friend, thing. He hadn't even given a shit about himself, he could have died in the middle of that fence and he didn't give a shit about any of it. He just wanted to make sure I was okay. He'd killed a mountain lion earlier today. Then he was protective over me. It was probably some primal, uncivilized part of me, left over from when humans were first learning to survive on this same planet, but his actions today had created an un-namable need in the pit of my stomach. I hadn't wanted him. I had needed him. It was primal. It was instinctive. It was so freaking hot. Finn had been… it had been sex. Not quite making love, not…whatever this was. Just sex. I had thought it was amazing, but compared to what I was feeling now, it wasn't even a noteworthy experience. Bellamy filled me, stretched me, and he pushed me. He didn't treat me like a delicate flower. He treated me like a warrior. He treated me like both a prize to be claimed and an equal opponent. He treated me like-

"Holy shit! Yes! Right there, Bell!" Oh God. Why the hell was I analyzing this when he could do that. His fingers bore down on me, pressing that point just above where our bodies met, devouring each other. We were so close. I didn't understand how it was possible to be this close to another person. It was almost as though we had ceased to be us, and become one thing, one creature with one mind and one heart and one purpose. And that purpose was to consume each other. He was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I exploded around him in crashing layers. I couldn't be bothered to attempt to look sexy as I came, like I usually did. There just wasn't enough space left in my brain to accomplish that. I just came. Hard, fast, and seemingly without end. I rode out my orgasm, thrusting down hard on him. He growled. He actually growled, (It somehow only served to turn me on more.) and he flipped us over, covering my body with his. He was pounding into me now, not just letting me set the pace, but truly taking charge.

"Yes, Bell!" I breathed out. His face was buried in my neck, licking, nipping, and sucking his way around the skin there. He murmured something against my neck but it was muffled and I couldn't quite make it out. I wasn't about to stop and ask for clarification. It was… this was perfect. I was naked on a forest floor next to a dead animal, but this was absolute perfection.

I didn't ever want this to end.

It had ended. We had finished (me a few times more than him) and we had laid there for a few moments, burnt out and so fucking happy.

"That was…"

"Yeah." We didn't need any more words then that. We did our best to clean up and fix our appearance, deciding to claim any additional rumpled appearance was a part of the hunting we'd done. (We did have something to show for it after all.) then Bellamy trussed up the animal and we picked it up, walking back in silence.

It wasn't awkward though. That surprised me. I had thought we would suddenly realize what had just happened, shrink back into ourselves, continue to avoid each other at all costs but instead, we'd just reached a new understanding of one another. We had just had 'I-can't-believe-we're-alive' sex. And it was damn good. And now we were going to continue to be adults, partners so to speak, leading our people. Life went on. We prepared the meat on our lion, deciding to eat the beast Wells and his hunting party had returned with first as it was slightly smaller, wouldn't save as much meat for the future. Lincoln's tips were incredibly helpful. It was barely August and we would never have thought to already be preparing for winter but Lincoln had told us we already had a late start.

We had built several huts, we even had a smoking hut built to preserve the meat and we had several stores of food saved up. Octavia was showing people how to tan hides – how she was getting so good at this stuff so fast was beyond me but damn – and Raven was working out a heating system in the drop ship. Harper was leading a group on weaving blankets, we were…preparing. Well. We might actually make it through the winter. Lincoln said it was easier to track animals in the winter, paw prints in the snow, so we could keep hunting, but with many of the more substantial food sources in hibernation, it was going to take a lot to feed a tribe our size. So we stocked the big snacks now. And decided to let the smaller animal populations get big, lazy, and not so scared of us. It was going to take a lot of rabbits to feed 96 kids. The Ark wasn't coming down until spring, that was a boon at least. When Monty had made contact they'd shown that they'd already forced an algae burst in a single wing of the ark, keeping it away from the water sources, then diverting the oxygen across the Ark. They'd bought themselves time. That was good. Introducing thousands more to planet Earth when resources were already scarce and when they'd all likely get themselves killed for pure arrogance and a lack of intelligence about these sorts of things wasn't going to help morale around here. We just needed to make it through the winter, then when they came we could spend all of spring, summer, and fall preparing them and our resources for the impending hard months. Or convince them to move South. We had options.

The following weeks went by much like the last few had. We prepared. We stocked up. We trained. And Bellamy and I, we became something close to friends. Maybe. No one else knew what had happened between us. It wasn't their business to be honest. Finn continued to try to choose between Raven and I which was an interesting fight to watch as we had both decided that neither of us could trust him enough to have that sort of relationship with, though he was still akin to family for Raven. But I found that the more time I spent with Bellamy, the more I just… didn't care. He could do what he liked. I certainly had. Bellamy wasn't into me like that, so we led together, we fought together (and with one another) and we remained friends. That was as far as it was likely to go. Unless he saved my life again. I wasn't exactly opposed to it happening again.

Bellamy

I wanted her. I always wanted her. She wanted respect. She wanted our lives to go on, pretending it hadn't happened and I could give that to her. I would give that to her. But God did I want her. I knew what everyone thought of me, that I slept around a lot, had a lot of experience, but in all honesty for a man of my age I was alarmingly under-experienced. It wasn't exactly easy to get it on with girls on the Ark when I couldn't bring them back to my apartment, whether my mother was there or not, knowing that my baby sister would be under the floor boards able to hear everything. Two people. I'd been with two people before Clarke. Wait…Raven. Three. I'd been with three. Huh. I guess it wasn't as few as I'd thought. Ellie, a classmate on the Ark whose parents worked the same shift. Roma. Raven. And now Clarke. Ellie had been a race for both of us just to do it before we were the last virgins in our class. Roma had practically thrown herself at me when I'd become one of the leaders down here. It wasn't me she was after. It was my status. Because of that I didn't feel so badly for using her for sex. Then there was Raven. She'd found out about Finn. Then she told me about them. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't been hurt by that. Clarke and Spacewalker. Like she couldn't already see what a….ugh. he was far beneath her. And thought I'd no claim to her at the time, it had still hurt. I lashed out. And I'd slept with Raven. And it only made both of us empty. Then there was Clarke. Clarke. Clarke. Clarke. She was…everything. She was everything. (And by far the greatest sex I had ever had.) It was more than just sex between us, there was trust, there was chemistry, and there was, on my side anyway – a true set of feelings that hadn't been there with any of the other girls. It really was different when you loved her.