AN: inspired by pacific rim and mostly just me laughing at all the times Raleigh says MAKO while in the drift
yeah sorry new post, new stuff, ugh ugh
When Bellamy was just a kid, still obsessed with comic books and history class, and definitely not worried about the inevitability of global anarchy, his mother had sat him down and said, very earnestly, life can turn on a dime my darling, and the only way you move forward is by not looking back. She'd whispered it into his ear over peanut butter and toast, a half-hearted sentiment tucked into his backpack as he left for school, and yet it had always stuck with him through the years.
Mind you, she'd been talking about her own decisions at the time – another one of her clients had taken her 'promises' a little too seriously and they were skipping town, again. But still, he figures the principle of it doesn't really change.
He tries to remember her after Miller dies. He thinks he knows her dark hair and thin lips, the harsh features that had made up her face, the surprisingly contrastive softness of her voice; he can't recall the color of her eyes though, or how her hands had moved when she talked, if they moved, or if she was like him and had to remain utterly composed when focusing all of her attention.
(All he can think of however are the last words on Miller's lips as the Kaiju had clawed him out of their Jaeger, the feeling of losing your entire mind in one instance, of having reality torn from you in the same moment that your world falls apart.)
He doesn't move after that. Losing the Arcas Minor and his drift partner in one blow is too much, was always going to be too much, and a man's got to eat. So he stays near the crash site and he finds new work and he refuses to look back.
.
.
Marshall Griffin coming for him isn't much of a surprise. The news reports are increasingly awful, though not entirely noticeable from the usual direness that is the last seven years of fighting and starving and dying, and he knows that the Jaeger program being shut down is not something the woman would take lying down. He's a trained pilot with a fairly good track record, and whatever, maybe the last few years of his career are all but non-existence, but Bellamy's always been better as an underdog.
He still wakes up some nights with the memory of his body being crushed, the feeling of dying, because being in someone's head as they're being eaten is pretty much the same thing as going through it yourself, with the added downside of living afterwards. He doesn't tell the Marshall this, but he thinks she might know by the way she stands when she talks to him, asks him to come back and risk going through that again. The tilt of her lips, the cadence of her voice when she says we'll have to find you a new partner really pisses him off, makes the world turn to fire and ash.
But they still have Arcas. There's still that.
And he doesn't look back, he won't, he can't compare then to now, but hell, at least he can choose what his view will be when the world ends.
.
(the blond-haired, blue-eyed whip of a woman who greets them when they land, says welcome back mom, and I imagined you differently has him rethinking the whole settling-for-the-apocalypse thing;
he doesn't ask her what she thought he'd be like, only why she was thinking about him at all)
.
.
.
Seeing the Arcas again instills a terror within him he's too prideful to admit to feeling, so he runs from it instead. Sure, now it's got another arm, that's fucking fantastic and all for this suicide mission of theirs, but all he sees is a disappearing body and the blue glow of a monster that he should never have thought dead.
In place of facing his fears, he seeks out little miss Clarke, princess of the Shuttledome. She fits her title well: soft-spoken, defers to authority, is one of the few official medics in this underfunded rebellion (Bellamy scoffs every time someone mentions the title, like shit, what are they rebelling against, extinction?), but he knows better than to fall for her appearances.
Because Clarke Griffin? She's a spitfire in a lab coat, an over-opinionated bossy know-it-all who never once looks at him with pity. She's got a kill-count of forty-seven in the simulator, and if that doesn't speak volumes about her, he doesn't know what else to say.
.
Of course, she has no problem letting him know what's on her mind.
"You're reckless," she tells him, hands on his wrist, "and dangerous. It makes you a threat to the Kaiju's, but it also makes you a threat to everyone else."
He chuckles. "Is that supposed to make me feel bad about hitting Collins?"
"No, it's supposed to make you rethink coming here."
Somehow her critiquing him only ever uplifts his spirit, and his grin widens. "So I shouldn't feel bad about hitting Collins?"
She punches him in the shoulder, which should really be off-limits seeing as she's also currently treating the injuries on his knuckles. "That isn't the point."
"I think you're avoiding telling me that it was the right choice to hit him."
"Well I'm certainly not going to feed your ego." She dabs the next cut more gently, so he doesn't push it.
They're quiet for a moment, Clarke fixing his hand and Bellamy staring at the top of her head, and he doesn't need her to tell him thanks or to somehow be grateful for defending her honour. Just like he feels no need to explain why he did it, or why he followed her into her room without a second thought after the fact, without any prior experience telling him that this was going to be normal.
(it is though)
She wraps the cuts, pushing the finished product back into his lap with a little bit more force than necessary, and he says, "We would be compatible."
"What, like drift compatible?" She looks at him. "That's just, I mean it's totally –"
"True." He shrugs, leans back against her bedframe.
"I was going to say absurd."
"Yeah, yeah, sure you were."
She stares at him for an uneasy amount of time, fingers drumming against her knee. He already knows to feel wary when she squints at him, asks, "Why? Am I like your last partner?"
It's kind of rude – actually, it's definitely rude, but most of all it's just super taboo. Like, there are some unspoken rules between Jaeger pilots and that right there is the biggest one, because you don't have a partner quit on you, or resign amicably, that's not how the bond works.
He's not surprised to feel the anger start to flame in his chest – he is surprised to feel it directed at himself rather than Clarke. Because he promised not to look back, he hates looking back, and yet…
"No," he finds himself replying, "you're nothing like him."
"Is that bad?"
She doesn't even have the decency to pretend to be cautious about asking him. "You're just different." He shifts a little closer. "Like, Miller was way more self-focused than you are, didn't meddle in my life or tell me what a shitty person I am. Also he never made stupid choices in friends."
"Finn isn't terrible all the time, just around you and your massive ego. And his drift partner is super cool, which makes him bearable by association."
"Clarke."
"Besides, you just told me a few of my bad qualities, that's terrible reasoning – "
"Clarke."
She glances away from him. "I'm not even a candidate."
He knows that, he's been sparring with all of the fucking awful ones all week. "You should be."
When she looks back to him he's close enough that he can see flecks of grey in the blue of her eyes, can see the moment her lips purse, probably swallowing another one of her heart-felt argument.
Instead she just leans closer, stutters Bellamy's heart in its place and fuck he hasn't felt this in a long while, doesn't know what to feel at the sight of this woman he's known for barely more than a week searching his face.
Whatever it is – whatever she finds – it works, because she sort of sits back a bit and nods. "Yeah, maybe I should."
.
(She's in the candidate lineup the next day, facing a frowning mother and a grinning Bellamy with eyes that betray nothing.)
(When they fight he feels alive, feels like the world isn't running out underneath his feet, and her grin is all bared teeth and a smile that is more of a snarl and fuck she's perfect.)
.
.
.
So, of course, the first time they drift, things go terribly.
He goes first, falling into the memories of Miller, of blood and terror and aliens, of his mother's lucrative pastimes, how he hasn't seen his sister in seven years, hasn't seen her smiling in eight.
Clarke's quick to follow though, quick to show him a Kaiju through her five-year old eyes, her father dying trying to save her, everyone dying trying to save her (her mind chants Wells, Wells, Wells, and he doesn't see anything, but he knows what it means). There are other images too, happier ones of small victories and her peaceful years at medical school, but like his own mind they are overshadowed by the horrors of this life.
As quick as he sees it, they're forced out of it, left standing in their own little realities, and all Bellamy can think is how devastatingly wrecked Clarke looks panting in the black armour suits.
She glances over at him with a smirk that says she knows exactly what he's thinking (probably does, he realizes, probably knows every inappropriate thought he's ever had) but then her lips soften out and he understands the question she doesn't ask.
He nods. He's okay – better than okay, actually. And from the way she's looking at him, he thinks she's okay too.
(Their second drift is hurried by chaos, entrenched in fear, but it's one hundred percent abso-fucking-lutely perfect. He's never felt more alive, never felt more comfortable in the knowledge that someone's in his head, knows every thought before he thinks it, and that someone is a little blonde woman who draws fire from his veins and throws it right back to him;
She thinks Bellamy's passion bottled in a body, more heart than head, more heart than anything, still far too reckless and undisciplined, and she loves him the better for it.)
.
.
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—-coda
When the fighting ends and disaster is averted, all he can think is that he's done with the past, done with everything that came before this moment. He rests his forehead on Clarke's, cards a hand through blonde hair shorn short, and he's looking to the future.
And it looks like Clarke Griffin