Fighting with him was like trying to solve a crossword and realizing there's no right answer,

Regretting him was like wishing you never found out that love could be that strong.

Taylor Swift-Red

Clarke never planned this; never dreamed about it in the rests between running and fighting and aching for her lost friends. Not once did she imagine, as she and Bellamy fought for control when they first landed, that at any point in the near future would she crave his voice, his care, his touch like the hunger that sometimes ate away at her stomach. Both the food and the man were a necessity for happiness.

The spark was when she was trudging the hard ground around the edges of camp after the massacre, replaying the slaughter that she'd walked in on earlier, merging it into black and white, scratching out Finn's face and speeding up the scene, as if somehow it'd become so blurred that it'd erase completely from her memory. But it won't, it won't, it just won't and goddammit she just-she just needs someone-someone who's not Finn, not the adults, not a stranger. She needs him, needs him so badly that the desire burns her throat and spills liquid fire onto her cheeks, stinging her cut face.

"Clarke?" Bellamy's voice calls, and she hears his footsteps on the ground, knows, would know by feeling alone that he'd come again to help her. Despite the fighting they'd first thrown up as a defence, the rightness of his presence now seems to settle in her bones like the deep heat cream they'd sometimes use on the Arc; a slow burn with the hint of a subsistent itch for something else, something more-

"Clarke, what's going on? We were wondering where you were-hey," he paused when he saw her eyes were red from crying, over a mouth set in a line hard enough to keep in confessions yet untold. He stepped closer and bracketed her arms

"Hey," he repeated, gently, shifting his weight onto his other foot so that he could get a better angle into her face, "Finn?" he asked simply, and there it was, there it is Clarke, an easy route out, one that required little to no explanation and wouldn't be questioned, one that'd be completely understandable after the recent events. What was less understandable was the way she couldn't quite look Bellamy in the eye, instead letting her gaze wander down his black-clad body to his feet as she opened her mouth to speak.

"How-how could he? How could he Bellamy? They were unarmed; they were-there were children there!" She hissed desperately, finally snapping her gaze to his and spinning on her heel as she saw his pity.

"I'm sorry, Clarke, if I'd have known-"

"Known what, that he was a cold blooded killer? You did know that Bellamy, you said it yourself! You saw him execute the grounder, you knew!" She snapped at him, knowing the punch to the gut that would follow.

"And what, I would've had to kill him to stop him going after you! He loves you, Clarke-he's in love with you!" and, to Bellamy's ears, that was a sentence spelt too close to the edge of a jealous confession, so instead of calming down and telling her it's going to be ok, he followed it up with "So screw you if you thought I knew what was gonna happen, Princess, because it wasn't like that and you know it."

He ended up behind her, stepping forward as he spat out the words with the next poison dart aimed on his tongue when he spun her round by the shoulders and her face stopped him dead, stopped his heart for a moment because goddamit but he just couldn't see her in this much pain.

"Oh, Princess," he muttered into her hair, smoothing it down with his hand and trying to erase the face screwed up in agony on the girl he'd follow anywhere.

"I-I'm sorry," she sobbed into his chest, small hands coming up to hide her face further, but he pulled away and pulled her hands down and cupped her face in his own as if it were the last light in a dying night.

"Clarke-no, Clarke, look at me-I'm sorry, ok? I'm sorry it was him, I'm sorry you had to see that-it's not your fault, not at all, and I promise, I promise, we're going to get him back. Clarke-Princess, please," His voice dropped to a whisper at the last part as he pressed his forehead against hers, willing the oath of undying loyalty and need for her to be ok into her confused and overrun head. "No matter what, Clarke, I swear, he's going to be ok. You're going to be ok." And the way her lips parted under his own after that promise, the way hands came to pull at his hair, the way she grasped his jaw to pull him closer had him believing, if only for a second, that even if he couldn't keep his promise, that even if the boy who went crazy over her loss were to never return to himself, that they would be enough. That he would be enough. That, when faced with the choice between bent or broken, she'd pick him up and piece him back together with a heart that she'd already given to another.

Painfully enough, it was her tugging his lip between her teeth and kissing the corner of his mouth that had him free falling back into reality- this wasn't her, not really, nor his Clarke. Too much. Too much desperation, really, too much pain. She was in too much agony to really process what was going on, what this meant to Bellamy. But screw it if that was going to stop him loving her, and it was the point where Finn strode out after being pardoned and sat opposite her, and Bellamy saw that behind her cataract of unforgiving steel, diamond belief was struggling to pierce through the veil, and no matter how many times he knew he'd throw his life away for her, she'd made her reality one where Finn was the sole saviour, the single boy she couldn't live without.

And now Prince Charming's dead by the hand of his Princess, and Bellamy's stomach coils like poison each time he's tugged away from the group, or makes the mistake of following Clarke when she seeks privacy to comfort her. A mistake he'd make a thousand times, and a thousand times again, because the poison only lasts as long as she tugs him closer by the hem of shirt and drinks his works like liquor, drunk into a stupor from which she never returns when she's with Bellamy; and this is what he hates. He hates the way she won't say his name when they're together, holding each other until their absence won't be ignored any longer. Resents the way her nails dig into his neck and fingers bruise his jaw trying to inch him closer. Loathes her eyes; hates them the most for their absence of emotion, and even if her mouth is warm under his, her heart is cold, cold, colder than he's ever know it.

It's the time that he follows her and kisses her and holds her tenderly after she admits that she couldn't lose him too that he believes, really, that Clarke is coming around. That maybe, just possibly, she's recovering slowly from Finn, and she'll open her heart to him and quit shutting him out.

It's not poison, he realises, when she breaks away from him as her mother calls her name, walking quickly out of the shelter of trees without a glance back; it's a drug. Its heroin, cocaine, ecstasy that he inhales from her breath and it's killing him quicker than any poison ever could. But the only thing worse than taking it and dying is not taking it and walking through hellfire for the rest of his life, so he lets out a breath and walks calmly after her, resisting the urge to save himself and following the supplier instead.

"It's worth the risk."

Bellamy hears the words, but they don't compute until he glances up at her face and sees the soft curve of her lips now unanimated, the burnt amber of passionate fire in her eyes frozen to an entity harder that diamond.

"Weakness." He remembers hearing the word during the burial ceremony, watching as Lexa spoke to Clarke about the pain of loss and love, and a new fire burns inside of him, searing its way through him until they empty into open air. But, like Clarke's, this new reality seems adept at putting out fires, and all that remains is;

"I thought you said it wasn't worth the risk." Deflated. Please, Clarke, don't do this. Don't push me away. Don't shut me out. But he turns before he can see the look in her eyes again, clenching his jaw and swallowing, hard.

He misses the way Clarke's jaw tightens, quickly, and then relaxes back into inertia. The others would think it was stress, or miss it completely, but Bellamy, had he seen, would have known the tick for what it was. Whether it would have helped the situation or not is a different story.

But regret never does help anyone.

It's worth the risk echoes through his mind as Lincoln guides him back through the passages to Mount Weather and as the high fades and his mind becomes sick with distance, he realizes them for what they really are. Love is weakness. Well, and he'd get everyone back, whether it killed him or not. But Gods, Clarke, may we meet again.

ugh too many Bellarke feels after the recent episodes, my first fanfic so please review if you have anything to help with or say xD Some of the continuity in the sentences isn't right I know, but it was just a one shot angsty piece so please forgive me :)