Bellamy's gaze followed Clarke as she paced back and forth in front of him. She looked unbelievably tired but refused to rest until she had absolutely no other choice but to close her eyes.
The world was sick and it wasn't going down without a fight. Each day there seemed to be a new problem rising to the surface. Not to mention new, and old enemies. And Clarke, with her grief and her guilt, constantly tried to shoulder it alone. Always seeming to forget that she wasn't just an 'I.' That she never was.
"We'll figure this out, Clarke. We always do."
Bellamy was sitting on the ground, his back up against a tree. The entrance to the bunker him and Clarke practiced shooting in was only a short distance away. Memories seemed to linger there like ghosts. He could feel them in the wood and the dirt. Hear her voice telling him she needed him. So many things had changed since then, but that— needing each other— that was their one constant.
Clarke stopped moving and looked up at the sky.
"I don't know if we can this time." Her words tasted like defeat, especially compared to the ones she had been burning into their people's minds over and over again the past few weeks. They'd not only survive, she had said. They'd thrive.
What complete and utter bullshit.
Admittedly, Hope had become a coping mechanism. The only way she could convince herself that she had done the right thing, despite that little voice in her head that told her what she had done was the exact same thing ALIE had tried to do: Make a choice that wasn't just hers to make.
She expected Bellamy to say something, but he stayed silent. He was looking at her in a way that he did sometimes when she wasn't paying attention. But this time, when she turned toward him, he didn't look away.
"Would you dance with me?"
The question hung in the air between them for a moment.
"What?" She asked, completely taken aback.
"Dance with me." He repeated, only this time with a silly smile on his face.
Clarke smiled back at him, still not completely sure if he was being serious.
"We have no music." She finally said.
"Oh?" Bellamy replied as he pushed himself up off the ground. He started humming then. Quietly at first, and then a little louder as he walked toward her. Despite how embarrassingly out of tune he was, she recognized the song from movies she had watched on the Ark. Movies Bellamy must have seen as well.
It was strange thinking back to a time where they didn't really know each other, despite growing up in the same place, and walking the same hallways.
He offered her his hand, and she took it, smiling as he spun her around. Soon his free hand was resting on her back, while hers found his shoulder. They moved together, his humming somehow only getting worse, and she laughed more than she had in… well, she couldn't remember how long it had been. She decided to hum along with him, doing far better than he had been doing, eventually switching from humming to singing. Her voice was good, pretty even. A hidden talent nobody but Wells and her parents knew about.
Bellamy stopped humming and listened. Realizing she had his full attention made her feel almost shy, but they kept dancing, and she kept singing, and Bellamy kept staring. Once she was finished the song, they stopped moving, but her hand stayed on his shoulder, and his stayed on her back.
"Thanks." Clarke said, breaking the silence.
"For what?" Bellamy asked.
"For reminding me to laugh."
Her hand moved from his shoulder to the back of his neck, and she lifted her head up, placing a tiny kiss on his cheek, hesitating only a moment before placing another on his lips. It was a soft, gentle kind of kiss. One you might give to someone you had been kissing for a long time.
With every word, every touch, and every look— they might as well have been.
"We should probably start walking back." Clarke said as she let go of him.
"Yeah… yeah, let's do that." Bellamy nodded in agreement.
They were smiling at each other, and Clarke could feel a blush creeping up on her cheeks. They turned toward the direction of the camp, walking side by side as they had done a hundred times.
Only this time, Bellamy was holding her hand.