Hey guys ! I'm French, but thanks to " AudreytheAwkward " ( an awesome beta who read back after me and corrected all my mystakes ) i'm able to publish the translation of "Cicatrices" in english. Enjoy :D
Attack. Wound. Blood. Claw. Disinfect. Operate. Remove. Blood. Disinfect. Stitch up. Wait…
Clarke was anxious, impatient, and put under a lot of stress. She hoped that the wound wouldn't get infected...She had told him to stay inside his tent, and she really expected him to listen to her advice for once. This guy was so stubborn, but in Clarke's eyes, his stubbornness was his greatest quality. This idiot had been distracted during a hunting trip, and he had ended up with a claw deeply stuck in his chest. He should be happy that his lungs hadn't been punctured, and that none of his vital organs had been damaged. The claw was stuck between two ribs, making it incredibly difficult to remove. Clarke's mother was nowhere to be found when he had returned to Ark camp after the accident, bleeding profusely. Clarke had been unable to let him suffer such agony. She had started treating him the second she saw his face. It had been pale; so pale that it terrified her. The fear of losing him outweighed anything else. She had to do something, or at least try to.
Her hands trembled with fear as she worked. Despite everything her mother had told her about medicine, she still doubted herself. Even when her mother returned and looked over her work, assuring her that everything had been done perfectly, Clarke still couldn't stop thinking that if anything went wrong, it would be her fault.
The complications. What if the wound became infected? What if she didn't disinfect it well enough? She'd only been able to find a bottle of alcohol, which she had poured onto her patient's t-shirt, which she'd cut away to operate on him. Sometimes, Clarke truly wished they could have access to the same medical supplies and technologies they'd had on the Ark, just for a moment. All of that made her really anxious.
Damn it, how long did she need to wait before she could see him? The waiting time killing her, so, she tried to occupy her mind and thoughts, to avoid thinking of her patient. She told herself he was a patient, anyway. Pretending he was exactly like the others, and not one of the few people that she could trust in the world, helped her to not worry or overthink.
Clarke knew she was probably arriving an hour earlier than she was expected, but she didn't care. It wasn't a random guy after all.
It was Bellamy.
She walked all around the Ark camp for several minutes, with a hesitant step, sometimes quick, sometimes slow. She saw what they called "tents"; piles of scraps from the Ark, woven together to host small numbers of people. In this camp, she felt deeply uncomfortable, and even less safe than she had before the Ark had come to earth. She knew the rest of the 100 felt this way as well. The camp was too similar to the Ark, when she was still floating in orbit around the Earth. The Ark reminded them of their old life; their moments passed on their lousy cells, treated like social pariahs. The camp they had built on their own during their initial days on Earth was so much better than this one. They manufactured it with their own blood, and all the natural resources, such as wood or mud. The Ark camp was cold and hard, made out of meaningless metal parts. Despite the electrified fence that was encircling the totality of the Ark camp, Clarke didn't feel any safer here than she had when she was still behind the fortifications of the wood wall, as easily destructible and rickety as it had been.
She knew she had reached Bellamy's tent as soon as she noticed his blood-stained pants, drying on top of the roof. His pants were easily recognizable; no other man in the Ark camp had pants with so many holes in them.
Clarke didn't knock against the door before entering Bellamy's tent, but maybe she should have. Bellamy was stretched on his bunk, his arms crossed under his neck, in a position of relaxation, but that wasn't what made her cheeks flush. Bellamy wasn't wearing a shirt; she had cut it off before the surgery. He wasn't wearing pants, either. They were on the roof. The only things he was wearing were his underpants and his socks.
He looked at her, surprised at her presence.
"Already here?" he asked, arching one of his eyebrows.
Clarke sighed slowly, but it wasn't Bellamy's fault.
"Well, I have already finished to see how my others patients are doing," she began.
"What's wrong princess? You want more blood?"
"Let's just say that I wish my mother had let me assist her during Mike's amputation, instead of delegating me to change the dirty bandages."
"I thought you enjoyed taking care of everybody's…"
"I do!" she cut him off. "But I would also like to learn some more challenging operations. Knowledge like that could mean life or death on the battlefield. And If she won't let me practice, or at least watch and observe new things…" she trailed off.
Bellamy uncrossed his arms and braced himself on the bed, trying to push himself up.
"What the hell are you think you doing?" she demanded, rushing to his side.
He groaned in pain, grimacing.
"Bellamy!" Clarke scolded.
She put her hands on his shoulders, and she helped him to sit on his bunk.
"Idiot! I told you not to stand up," Clarke mumbled.
"I'm fine, Clarke," Bellamy tried to convinced her.
He wasn't fine, but there was no point in telling Clarke that. Honestly, why should he complain about it? He only need to stayed strong and act like it was nothing for a few weeks, the way he always did.
"Don't lie to me. I can see how much you're suffering, just by looking at you."
He took a deep breath.
"Why are you here, Princess?"
Of course he knew why she was in his tent, but he wanted to change the topic.
"Your bandages. I have to replace them as often as I can."
Clarke turned her head toward her first-aid kit. "And I need to check the wound. I have to make sure it hasn't gotten infected, or worse."
"Don't worry about me," he protested.
Clarke took her rolls of sterilized gauze bandages and a pair of scissors, under the careful gaze of Bellamy. She also took the dry wipe and a small bottle of alcohol she use to neutralize bacteria. She turned back toward Bellamy, then she realized that the only way for her to remove the dirty bandages was to sit behind him. She couldn't ask him to move or to stand up because of his condition. They stared at each other awkwardly, before Clarke decided to act, instead of look at him.
She went down on her knees, behind him –right after depositing her first-aid kit at the foot of his bunk. She put her cold fingers on his burning back, and he shuddered at her contact. She observed the goose bumps on his skin, before slowly removed the first bandage.
Taking them off wasn't easy; every time she had to undo another bandage, she had to press her breast against his back. She continued to pull the bandages, while Bellamy tried to stay as still as possible, until all of the bandages were gone. Clarke shifted her position and bore down just in front of him. She forced herself to stay focused on his wound instead of looked his abs.
It shouldn't be distracting her. Yesterday she had literally ripped his shirt off and had already seen him bare-chested. Slowly, Clarke put her finger to his injury, tracing the contours of the wound and scrutinizing the reactions of Bellamy's face. His gaze didn't leave her during the whole ordeal. While he was trying to hide his pain, tightening his teeth, Clarke tried to eliminate the glimmer of worry into her eyes. But it wasn't fear. At the second where she saw the wound, she understood that his injury wasn't infected.
She wasn't feeling fear; she was feeling desire. She touched him and she liked it. The sensation of his warm skin under her finger was weird, but enjoyable.
"So...I guess that's the usual way to check if a wound is infected or not? Because, I may have some other injury..."
"I bet you do. Do you want my mother to come and check this out?" sneered Clarke.
He muttered something like "No need" and Clarke removed her finger from his torso. She leaned forwards, to reclaim her first aid kit. The neckline of her shirt swept down as she bent over, but she didn't mind.
"The good news is that the wound isn't infected," she stated.
"Told you."
"And the bad news is that you will have a scar," she continued while she wet the wipe with alcohol.
"One more or one less, that doesn't change anything much." he shrugged.
Clarke examined quickly his chest.
"Well, it's not that bad," she commented, trying to sound formal and uninterested.
"All my scars aren't...physical," he admitted.
She frowned and he explained:
"Every time I have lost somebody I loved, or every time something have touched me...That leaves a mark."
"Like the memories that even the time cannot erase?"
He nodded his head in agreement, then Clarke started to sponge his torso with the alcohol in an awkward silence. She thought about what he just said. She knew Bellamy was a human, as capable of feeling emotions then her, but she never saw him touched by anything. He always seemed so calm and in control of his emotions. She put down the wipe, took the bandages and gently wrapped them over the wound. Here again, she had to press her breast against his torso, in order of cover his injury correctly. It was very uncomfortable because she almost had to sit on Bellamy's lap. He didn't protest. When she ended her task, she could feel the red cover her face in embarrassment, but she tried to ignore it before she give him some instructions.
"Ok. If you don't touch to your bandages, everything should be fine. But, in case something goes wrong, you call me and you don't try to replace them by yourself. Is that clear?"
"Crystal clear."
Clarke picked up her stuff and she was ready to go when she remember a last piece of advice.
"Oh, and next time, please, put a shirt on. Or a pants."
He smiled at her, then he retorted, "Don't pretend you didn't like what you saw, Clarke."
Hope you like it. The second part will arrive this month. :)