Clarke is missing.
It is the only thing he can think about as he hears Abby, Clarke's mom, yelling orders at the guards filing around her.
Clarke is missing. She has been gone for eight hours. No guard. No friends with her. Gone.
This isn't like her. She never just disappears. And when she does, Bellamy can almost always find her. The dropship. The lake. That funny tree that is twisted enough to where it looks like a grumpy old man.
He can't find her. She's missing and he's panicking because where the hell is she?
"Byrnes! I want you to lead a search party. I want no rock left unturned," what a clichéd thing to say, Bellamy thinks to himself. "No leaf untouched! Find my daughter!"
Bellamy doesn't wait to be assigned to the search party. He knows that Abby doesn't trust him, not really, enough to go searching for her beloved daughter. So instead of standing around like the rest of them he quietly slips out the gate, virtually unnoticed; though he does make brief eye contact with Octavia before making it out of camp.
She's not at the dropship. He looked earlier today. In fact he searched all of her regular haunts and cannot, for the life of him, figure out where she's disappeared to. Horrible thoughts darken Bellamy's mind as the sun begins to dip below the line of trees. Awful images, of Clarke tied up and being tortured, flash through his mind's eye. He shakes his head to clear it and listens; he can hear the search party yelling for her and frowns. If she's out here, captive or simply hiding from the camp for a while, they will scare her or her captures off. So instead of following their voices he walks in the opposite direction until he can no longer make out their words. It is then that he can hear the trickle of a quiet stream and just below the noise of the water moving slowly over the rocks he hears a sniffing noise.
He makes his way slowly forward and sees her sitting there hunched over her knees and crumpled up papers litter the ground at her feet. With his hands held out, as if to steady a frightened animal, he approaches her.
"Clarke?" He asks, his voice low, trying not to scare her. She doesn't even react. Bellamy is now standing right beside her and he kneels, picking up the nearest crumpled up paper. He is studying the paper that is clearly a man, though there is something off about the lines in his face, and the shape of his eyes, his nose, his lips.
"I can't remember," she whispers so quietly he almost misses it as he stares quizzically at the drawing.
"What?" He asks, dropping the paper to the ground just to examine another piece that holds the same unsteady line work and confused facial features as the first. "Can't remember what?"
"I can't remember what he looks like," Clarke finally lifts her head and looks at Bellamy. The look in her eyes is so full of despair that it takes the air from his lungs and breaks his heart into fragments. "My dad," she says miserably. "I can't remember what he looks like."
"Clarke," he says softly, though he runs out of words after that, unsure how to comfort her. So instead of trying to come up with something comforting to say, words have never been his strong suit, he does the only thing he knows he is good at. He settles himself on the fallen tree beside her and pulls her body into his, lending her his strength. Gently he strokes her hair as she cries into his shoulder, soaking his shirt. He doesn't say anything for a long time and finally, after a few more soft sobs, Clarke falls silent as if she has no tears left.
"Do you want to go home?" She asks lifting her head from his shoulder, her voice hollow.
"We can stay here for as long as you need." She nods infinitesimally and rests her head back on his shoulder and together they watch as the last rays of sunlight disappear and give way to the suffocating darkness.
