A/N: First, of course, I need to thank you for reading. I know the mid-season finale has weighed on many of us, and I hope this piece - which is centered quite heavily on the aftermath of that episode - is seen as appropriately respectful.

A/N2: Please help me extend a huge thank-you and big hugs to MarinaBlack1 - far and away the world's BEST beta. You should all be jealous. Also go check out her newest Murphy piece, Walking Through Fire! She's kicking a brand-new alternate ship!

A/N3: For this story I've actually been lucky enough to snag a second reader, too - so please also give mad props to Persepholily for her insight. Love you ladies!

Night 1

Sleep? Who the fuck could sleep right now, with Finn so suddenly dead like that?

Bellamy shifted, sighed, punched the metal frame of his bunk in the half-crushed living quarters he and Murphy – and for a brief time, Finn - had taken over as theirs.

This was all wrong. He and Finn had been at each other's throats since their boots first touched earth. They were so different, Finn's naïveté and his optimism and his need to love everything a constant slap in the face when all Bellamy had, all he would allow himself to think about, was protecting Octavia. Even after those first scared days had passed, the two men could never seem to agree on anything. But they had been brothers in arms, in their own way. Survivors of a hell few others would ever understand.

Now there was just a hole. A completely unexpected, unfair cavity in all their lives, and Bellamy couldn't fight his way out of this, no matter how many troops or guns.

The others were… When had they started to matter so much to him, anyway? Bellamy only knew how to love family. Aurora and Octavia. No room, no time, no safe way to love beyond the walls of their apartment and he had just… made his heart fit that cramped space. Two decades of relentless training should have been enough to help it maintain that specific small shape.

It wasn't.

How long had he lasted? Barely any time at all. Charlotte had started it. Charlotte's tiny determination and his own culpability in Wells' death and then fucking Clarke, man, pushing at him so relentlessly like that, reaching in with those small skilled fingers and prying him open instead of letting him shut down the way he wanted to after Charlotte died, the way he would have if he had been smarter and stronger and ended it all there.

But that had been the beginning of Bellamy's downfall. Every damn death after that. Endlessly. They had all mattered too much more than they should have, and he should hate Clarke for starting it all rolling. He should.

"Fuck."

Bellamy ground the palms of his hands into his eyes, so hard he saw bright pinpricks of white and yellow flash against the darkness. Wherever the hell Murphy had gone, Bellamy was glad for the privacy tonight. Tonight they were all processing the world in new ways, and most people seemed to want to do that on their own. For once the Ark survivors were being smart enough to give them their space. Tomorrow would be different, he was sure. Raven would wake up from the sedative Abby had given her. Clarke would…

His chest tightened. Clarke would be Clarke. Clarke would own it, all of it, and do that thing she did where her own pain got shunted off to the side to be dealt with later even though "later" almost never seemed to come around, did it?

Bellamy sat up and tried to breathe more calmly. Lie. Bellamy tried to breathe at all. Clarke had to be okay. If anyone had asked he would have said they all needed Clarke to be okay, for their collective survival.

Bellamy needed Clarke to be okay for her own survival.

Night 2

Just for once, a good night's sleep, please, dammit. Just one night.

If Bellamy tried hard to find the good things about the day – certainly not a ritual of his, but maybe not a bad exercise every now and then – he would admit it had been calm. Quiet, even. Lexa had returned Finn's body as a gesture of goodwill. It had sucked. Raven couldn't look, Clarke couldn't stop. Bellamy had no way to be there for both of them. He had to trust Clarke to hold herself together because they all knew Raven could not, at least not yet.

It was bullshit though, really. Not Lexa's gesture – of course not that, Finn needed to be with his people in death, he deserved that – but all the rest of it. The way they were all just friends now, when a day ago war had been inevitable. Abby and Jaha and Kane, paying lip service to the grief (to be fair, he had caught Abby's eye a couple times and he knew she knew how wrong it all was, but still) while forging ahead in that humanity-crushing way of theirs. For the chance at a better future. Who the fuck cared about the future now, if Raven could not find her way through the jagged-edged maze of her own shattered heart? If Clarke had pulled so far into herself she had been unable to manage eye contact with him, as though she were afraid he would look through her and find her somehow lacking?

That loss stung in a completely different way than the loss of Finn. Bellamy felt responsible for it - the damage she was doing to herself. He felt responsible for all of it, really, for letting Finn have a gun when he was unstable and for letting Clarke deal with Lexa alone and for basically fucking telling her, that night at the campfire with Octavia, that she and he were required to make the hard choices. "Had to be done," he had said, giving her carte blanche to kill any of them if the situation required it. Telling her this was her burden, as it was his. What a fucking arrogant asshole he had been.

He was actually thankful for Murphy, currently snoring gently in the corner, for his persistent irreverence and impeccable timing. The one time they'd all been together had been at lunch, and Murphy had made some typical snide comment, the exact words unimportant now, and Clarke had glared at him. Bellamy's whole body ached for that glare. That had been a little tiny piece of the real Clarke, the only thing that kept him going the rest of the day as he watched her from afar, watched her make such a terrifying show of being absolutely fine.

Of all the days to not be with her though. Today, when she needed to know she had somehow managed to do both the right thing and the good thing, so unusual since those were rarely the same thing. But… maybe she did not want that from Bellamy. Maybe it was better this way. He was not the keeper of her morality, he was barely able to serve as keeper of his own. No. He would just have to step back, let her do it her way for now. He could make it smoother though, like with Raven. Like with the way he had kept the prickly blonde guard, Major Byrne, out of Clarke's way all day. Or running point with Abby and the others. He could pick up the little pieces around her, clean up after her, so she was free to focus on what she had to do. So she could get through to the other side and have her time to grieve.

Bellamy the Janitor. It was the first time in his life he didn't hate the idea.

**Umm by the way... I really, really freak out about posting my stories. Every time, I panic that it is the worst piece of fanfic ever. As you can imagine, this piece - so outside of my comfort zone, structurally - has my stomach in absolute knots. Please let me know your thoughts!**