AN: This was first posted on AO3. Hope you enjoy! :)
She's not very good with dates. And places. And directions.
So when she ends up a ways away from the vacation house by taking the 'supposed' shortcut through the woods, and ends up standing in front of the old and tall steel gates of a gray mansion, she could not do anything but sigh in defeat. Of course.
She stands there, looking at the vines crawling everywhere, the tall gate, the walls of the mansion, the windows, the trees – she feels a little involuntary shiver running down her whole being as she stared into its windows. As if anytime, she will see a person there gazing down at her with their sunken eyes and sallow skin. And it has lots of windows.
Clarke has never been one to believe in anything she hasn't seen (or felt) yet, being a daughter of science and everything. So all her life, no matter what her friends have said, she never believed in ghosts. So this imagining of a man staring at her from a window is ridiculous and – really, it came out of nowhere.
Adventure, she thinks, as she kicks at a stone near her feet. After all, this is what she came here for. The visit to her grandparents is for her mom, she came here to forget about everything. She came here to eradicate all thoughts of Finn, of Wells, of her… dad. She came here to have something, if not fun. Just something because she's tired of having nothing.
This is definitely something, she thinks again. And something she will have.
It's not hard to break into an abandoned house, Clarke thinks as she trudges through the musky and dusty hallways, in awe of the design more than anything, really.
And at the eighth room on the second floor, she finds the largest room she has ever seen. That might be an exaggeration, but this room, with all its gloomy glory, is not painted white or grey like the rest. She notes that this room is painted the color of pink roses, and that the rest of the rooms may have their paints chipped, but this one looks like it has just been newly coated – sans the smell of new paint. This room has nothing in it but an old mirror at the corner and a big old blackboard in the middle, standing like an old man weary of life. That might be why she sees this old room as the biggest. It literally has nothing.
What makes her wonder the most is the incessant urge to run her fingers along the smoothness of the blackboard, the impossibly silky surface, the dust gathering around her fingers as if parting by her command. She retreats her hand back, gives herself a moment to realize that she has indeed moved from her place at the door to the middle of the room seemingly unknowingly, and then stares at the pattern she has created, and her heart drops to her stomach.
There on the surface, written by the absence of dust is a single word:
LEAVE.
She sucks in a breath, frozen in place. She stays there for another solid minute before she finally moves, but not away.
"No," she says determinedly. She admits that in most cases, her mind would spew a tirade of questions, maybe even be mortified, but her pounding heart gives her the bravado she has never felt before. Why now, is the strangest and most pressing question. "I'm not leaving."
Fuck, she doesn't even know who or what she's talking to.
She watches with muted fascination and equal horror as the dust clears as if being wiped by a sleeve. And then, with a non-existent chalk, there written:
BRAVE ONE
Despite her horrified disposition, she finds herself chuckling. She has just received a compliment from a… "What are you?"
The writing clears. And then:
Ghost.
She smiles.
Foolish girl.
Only a foolish girl will venture into this hellhole and speak with him. He who has never seen the outside world ever since his death. He who has died. He who has now become the entity that haunts the halls of this mansion.
He writes, on the blackboard that he had once used as a tool to teach children, his students, about the wonders of the past, of history:
Only a fool will be that brave.
She chuckles loudly, and spins around the room, taking the nothingness in, as if basking in it. This is a girl who probably has everything given to her, he assumes. "Then I am a fool," she replies. "Because apparently, you are real."
He circles around her as she continues to spin slowly, her golden hair swaying around like golden sunlight through a particular window in the northwest meeting room when the sun hits it right. Her smile is small, content, unafraid. Such a fool.
"Hey, come on," she urges, spreading her arms to the whole room. "You must be so bored around here. Wait – are you – are there others?"
He watches as her eyes widen in question.
No.
"Oh thank God," she exhales in relief. "I mean, if there are others like you, I don't know. I have enough ghosts in my life."
I thought you didn't believe in me until a while ago.
She stops in her tracks, staring into a space where she thinks he might be and smiles this sad smile. If he still has his physical heart, it would have dropped to his physical stomach. "Not that kind of ghost," she whispers. Oh but didn't she know? Whispering is for ghosts.
She stays, but only for another half hour, and he is so irritated – stupidly and severely so because of two things: one is that he now knows her name, and two: she now knows his. Getting her name was simple, caught it in between sentences where she imitates her mother whilst telling a story, putting her hands on her waist and pouting her lips just a little bit that even though he has never seen nor heard the woman, he now knows that she says, "No, Clarke, you should go to med school, not art school."
Unfortunately.
He's staring into space, now wondering who this Finn guy is and why there are cheaters in this world when she stops midsentence, mid-track, and spins around on her spot again, talking to the room. "Come on, can't I even get a name? I mean, I'm Clarke, but you probably already know that. Wait… ghosts have powers, don't they?"
He huffs and gets up from his rather comfortable position seated on the ledge of one of the four windows of the room and gets up to her face, wanting to stare off the curiosity in her eyes. She shivers.
"You must be somewhere near," she smiles nervously. "I think I felt your breathing. Or something."
He is still staring into her eyes, possibly boring a hole into her soul if that was even possible, so really, it's not his fault that the blue in her eyes makes him remember the roars of the ocean's waves as they lap at the woods of the ships that Helen beckoned – or the slap of Poseidon's trident when he summoned a whirlpool.
He backs away and writes.
Bellamy. And no, I don't have supernatural abilities.
She smiles, wider this time, and he thinks this is the smile that brought Troy to its knees.
She leaves with a final glance to the room and a heavy sigh.
She comes back, though, despite the mostly one-worded answers and the literal cold shoulder because this is the most 'something' she has ever had in a long time. Who would ever believe she's actually talking to a ghost? Nobody, that's her count. So when she tells Raven that as a reply to her text message asking how her vacation is going, she thinks Clarke is being poetic and shit. She'll take poetic and shit any time, that when her mom asks her the same question just as she was about to run out the door and she answers with the same thing, and her mom looks at her like she's ready to put her in a straightjacket, she smiles a shit-eating grin and says, "Relax, mom. I'm just being poetic and shit."
She comes back with her sketch book, decides that the sunlight filtering through the huge windows is the most wonderful lighting she has ever seen. She doesn't even say anything, just sits there by the fourth huge window and starts sketching the mansion, dropping the vines and the unkempt lawns, and imagining what it must have looked like when it had life in it.
And that's when she feels it. Eyes, on her.
She smiles. "You know, I'm not much of a landscape girl," she says, her pencil hovering over a neat sketch of one of the numerous trees lining the pathway to the front door of the mansion. "I was more fascinated with the human body, the contours of the face."
She turns her head to look outside the window, content with the way the warmth of the muted sun caresses her face. "It was actually Wells who wanted to become an artist. We were so young back then, barely middle school, but he started drawing our classmates. And when kids pulled at my braids, he would draw them with big ugly faces and stick the drawings to their desks."
Clarke chuckles quietly, feeling her chest lighten with nostalgia. "The teacher couldn't really send us to detention because he was just being a creative boy.
"One day, he just wasn't there," she continues, twirling her pencil in her hand. "So when one of the meaner guys pulled at my braid and called me 'crybaby', I picked up a pencil and drew him with a large nose and droopy eyelids and stuck it to his desk. I think that's when I fell in love with… this."
She sighs, closing her sketchbook and standing in front of the lonely chalkboard. "Because I felt like I can defend myself with it. I realized, maybe they're not just pictures. Maybe they can make people shut the hell up or speak up."
She waits. And then:
Who's Wells?
"My best friend," she replies, looking down at the wooden floor boards, making a pattern in the dust with the toe of her snickers. "He is… was my anchor. After Finn – you know Finn, right, I told you about him – and then, my dad… he just – I knew in the darkest corner of my mind that he'd be gone from me, too, I just didn't think it would be that soon."
It is then that she looks up and sees the words:
The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living. – Cicero
It is wiped away, and then:
Nothing is ever really lost.
Her eyes soften, her lips twitching up to a reluctant smile. "Whose quote is that?" she asks, cannot keep the challenge from her tone.
And then, the strangest thing happens when she feels something cold touch her wrist. It is not freezing – not like all the ghost stories ever told – but a kind of gratifying cold after a long summer's day, the meeting of bare feet and the hems of the ocean's waves. In her ear, a single word, a deep voice.
"Mine."
She gasps, feels her cheeks flush. Her eyelids flutter. Woah.
She turns her head towards the direction of the voice, cannot keep the shivers from running down her spine. Her elatedness shows in her smile as she tries to find a faint figure in that general direction. She could not, but she's still grateful.
"Y-you spoke to me," she says, her voice shaking with excitement. "You spoke to me."
The cold around her wrist disappears, and all that's left there is the tingling of her skin.
She hears the chalkboard creak, and before she knows it, a sentence is already written there.
Yes, I did.
She huffs at him, but the malice is nowhere to be heard. "Oh come on!"
It is one lazy afternoon the day after that she finds an old cot in her vacation house and brings it to the mansion because she has noted that sitting on window sills will cause back pains and prickly legs.
She pauses from her sketch of Wells' smile and looks up at the ceiling, still lounged on the rather comfortable cot. "If you're wondering, this is what Wells looked like."
She turns to another page, one that's near the front page, and lets her sketchbook flop down on her stomach face up. "This is Finn."
Silence wraps around the room where she hears nothing but white noise and it makes her wonder just how something so hollow doesn't echo.
She looks up at the chalkboard that's now facing her and sees words being written slowly.
How about your father?
She scoffs as she reads the question, wondering just when and how this anti-social ghost suddenly became so interested in her life and the people in it. But, just like all the times this has been brought up, she ducks and avoids it blatantly. It is a bullet and she doesn't want to die yet.
"Are you really just going to use the board to talk to me?" she asks, rising from her sprawled position to a sitting one, looking around and hoping she'd at least catch a brief glance of him. "I heard you yesterday, Bellamy," she takes a second to appreciate the way the name rolls from her tongue as if she hasn't tasted anything that bittersweet. "You can talk to me, you just… I don't know, refuse? What's the matter?"
There's no creaking from the chalkboard, nor a whisper, and she feels her heart shrivel in disappointment. Of course.
She gets up from the cot, not even bothering to fold it, just leaves it there, gathers her things and makes for the door when she feels something cold on her shoulder.
"Wait," that deep, astoundingly already familiar voice says. It is not a whisper, not anymore. It is a word spoken to a person, not a secret.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
But this time, it's not her that's stupid. It's him. It's all him – because all he wants was to be left alone, but then when she finally wants to do it, he couldn't stop himself from touching her. Touching her and letting her hear him – he is so incredibly moronic.
But his hand is already on her shoulder, her warmth radiating into his skin, and he could not seem to let go.
"I cannot – you can only hear me when I'm touching you," he explains, trying to, after a hundred or so years, make his voice sound like it's coming from a living thing. "I tend not to touch things."
And then, the most surprising thing happens. She smiles. Which is not at all that surprising, but this one is so different. This one is so unique in a sense that he can see a little girl so many years ago, stepping outside into a world she had never seen before – he can see blue eyes staring up at the sky, the same smile this golden-haired girl has, plastered on another one, much younger in comparison, but just as bright.
Bellamy sees his sister. He sees Octavia. His heart weeps.
"Wow," Clarke breathes, disbelieving, amused. "So you're touching my – you're touching my shoulder? That's why it feels cold?"
"Yes," he replies, trying to steady his voice.
Then, she stretches out her right arm. "Grab my wrist," she says, her voice now small and hopeful. "Talk to me, please."
He moves his hand and encircles her wrist with his fingers, his grip doing nothing but touch the skin that is now his only source of warmth. The sunlight that has always streamed through the fourth window that he so loved, now a muted comparison to this girl's skin.
She gasps, her grin widening.
"What do you want me to say?" he asks.
"Anything," she replies. "You already know about me. I want to know about you."
She leads him to sit on the cot, his story spilling out of his lips like dark matter piling on top of each other on the space between her and his form. He counts the times her eyes widen when he tells her about the wars he had seen, and the children he had taught, and the people he had talked to. He quietly notes the way they wrinkle at the corners when he tells her about his friends, about his mother. And then, he takes and commits to memory the way they soften when he tells her about Octavia.
They're not looking at him, a thing he is grateful for, because if they had been, he could not have gotten a single word out for her to hear.
"Where is she?" she asks.
"She's gone," he replies and cringes internally at the irony. "Just like me. But she's not here, she's in a much better place."
"You miss her," she says, this time, not a question but a concrete statement and it steals the breath from his non-existent lungs. The clincher is that she understands. She does.
"I do," he replies.
She fidgets and shifts on her seat, and then stands up, but keeps her hand lowered. "Do you… want me to draw her?"
He's frozen. He has always been frozen in the rose-colored room – in the mansion, but this one grips at his chest like the swelling of the strings in an orchestra, the brimming expansion of the melody, the build up to gratification. He fights to keep his voice steady. "Yes."
"Talk me through it," she says, a smile playing at the corners of her lips.
He does. He tells the golden-haired girl about Octavia's dark hair, her eyebrows, her smile, her eyes. He tells her that when she braids her hair, she rivals doctors with her precision. When she raises her eyebrows, wolves cower and whimper. When she smiles, the sun is nothing but a flickering street lamp. Her eyes, God, are so full of soul the Underworld envies them.
His heart aches when he tells her those, but he thinks, anything to see his sister after a very long time. Does she miss him, too?
When she finishes, she strings her sketchbook up a rogue nail in the middle of the chalkboard's top frame, letting it hang like a portrait. He still hasn't let go of her wrist.
"The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living," she repeats, and oh if the irony of it all doesn't sting the most painful, then he doesn't know what else will.
He raises his eyes and uncurls his fingers from around her wrist, and looks up at the page. He feels his chest cave in.
If he just reaches out and touches it, it might come to life. And oh God, he misses her. He misses the things a portrait can never give him. He misses her laugh, her voice, his nickname as a giggle. Bell, stop being an idiot.
Bell, you're a genius!
Stop tickling me or I'll kick you, Bell!
Have you seen him, Bell? He's gorgeous.
Wake up, Bell.
Come on, Bell, it's not that bad.
I'm a big girl, Bell.
Bell, there are people here to see you.
Bell, run!
Bell, don't let me die.
Please.
"Octavia," he whispers to the thin air, hearing his voice disappear into nothingness, a plea for her to come back, to come home, evaporates to the ears of no one. He runs his fingers along the lines made by pencil, imagines that if she were to meet Clarke, she would have jumped up and grabbed her hand and lead her around the mansion. She would have liked Clarke. Just like he does.
He turns and sees her admiring the picture as well, and it takes him back to a time when he would have loved to take a girl like her to an exhibit, and see the colors of the paintings swirl in her clear blue eyes. He moves to cradle her face in between his hands, whispers "Thank you" to her skin, and kisses her cheek. He wishes now more than ever for his lips to make her feel warm, and not cold.
When he pulls away, he finds that her eyes are closed, and that her cheeks are red, and that her own lips are parted. Her eyes flutter open and she blinks rapidly.
"Did you just…"
"Yes."
Talking to a person you couldn't see is a hard feat to conquer, she thinks as she shoots the whole rose-colored room pleading eyes. For all she knows, he could be laughing at her now and she wouldn't know.
"Come on, Bellamy," she tries once more. "When was the last time you went out of the house?"
She glances at the chalkboard and waits five seconds. Ten. And then:
Why don't you just go by yourself?
She sighs heavily – as if, yes, this is the stubborn dead-for-a-hundred-years-now man that she is obligated to engage in conversation with almost every day. She can almost imagine the stubborn huff and the stubborn fold of arms across his chest. And then she allows herself a second to contemplate just how her life has become like this. And then she's back to arguing.
"It'll be just a walk in the garden," she says. "Thirty minutes, tops!"
The writing clears and is replaced.
Ten.
"Twenty, final," she replies, and cannot keep the goofy giddiness in her tone.
Fine.
She rushes to the front door, not even knowing if he's following, but there's this insistent trust in her heart that says he's at her heels nonetheless. And when they're standing at the dusty front porch and looking out into the vast and admittedly-scary undergrowth that has consumed the garden, she holds her wrist out (just like before) and she feels the familiar cold wrap around it.
She smiles hopefully. "Don't let go?"
"I won't."
They walk along a muddy cobblestone path, careful of prickly thorns and snakes (he keeps taunting her with every long vine that catches her eye, and she would punch his arm if she wouldn't be blindingly punching air instead). Albeit his reluctance at taking the short walk, he begins telling her of the time his friend Monty and his life partner Nathan had first met inside a tall bush when Nathan stole one of the prized apples Monty had been growing right there at the corner of the fence.
He tells her that Nathan climbed over the fence and picked one, took a bite of it in front of Monty in taunt, and was in turn chased around the garden until he decided hiding in a bush was the last of his resort.
"So this house…" she starts as they sit under the dead apple tree. "It was a school, and a home?"
The chirps of the birds swing around the air before he replies. "Much more than that. It was an orphanage, but unofficially so. My sister and I and our friends, we took in as many children without a home as we can. We taught them and fed them and clothed them.
"This was a safe haven."
There is an ellipsis in his tone, one that's not heard but subconsciously implied, and she couldn't help but ask about it. "What happened?"
The winds pick up. "Rumors were spread that we were smuggling children and maltreating them – that was a time when nobody believed a word unless they fell from the lips of the authority. That was also a time that when you reach the age of eight, you got more or less forced to work immediately.
"They came in with rifles," he continues, his voice now melding with the breeze whipping around them. "We couldn't save everybody – Octavia, she… the guard aimed at her – I took it but I wasn't enough. It went through me and she was shot in the stomach.
"We were both bleeding, but she was losing it faster. I yelled for Miller to take her away from here. To keep her safe.
"I don't know if she got away in time," he says shakily. "But she didn't die here… I did."
Another bout of silence wraps around them, but instead of the dread that she expects, it is comfort that fills her knowing that there's a chance that his sister had survived. There's no guarantee to that, but she holds on to that hope for his sake. And hers, too, to be honest.
"You said she died in a better place," she speaks after what felt like a stretch of time. "I bet she lived there as well."
"You don't know that," he replies, but there's no hard stubbornness in his tone like she expected. "But I would like to think so, too, most days."
They stay there under the dead apple tree for far longer than the twenty minutes they agreed upon, but neither of them minded. She gets up only when the sky bled red.
He sees her running under the rain long before she reaches the hallway to the room, so when she opens the door, he has already written on the chalkboard:
What happened?
She stops in her tracks, her hair and clothes dripping rainwater on the floor. Her eyes are red and puffy and sad, it makes him want to reach out if only his touch wouldn't add to the coldness that he's sure is freezing her.
She bites her lower lip and rushes to the cot, shucking off her clothes until she's down to her underwear and nothing more. She draws her knees up to her chin and rests it there, her eyes staring at nothing in particular, the expression of a hollow canoe in the middle of a foggy lake in November.
He sits reluctantly beside her, placing his hand on her arm. "Clarke," he says.
She shivers, so he retracts his heavy hand. But she makes a sound of clear distress and frowns.
"No," she pleads, "please, come back."
He places his hand back on her arm. "Do you want to talk about it?"
She sniffles, her eyes brimming with tears again. "My mom… she… we were having breakfast, she just – she talked about dad. She talked about him and… it just made me feel like she didn't even grieve for him. She talked about him like he didn't die."
"A stage of moving on, I reckon," he says softly, but she just shakes her head.
"You don't understand," she interjects, the crack in her voice fracturing his heart. "I didn't tell you about him. She… she was the reason he was in prison. She was the reason – she accused him of a crime he didn't commit. He died in a cell, Bellamy. Alone. I –"
She is crying now, burying her face behind her knees, shoulders shaking and voice wavering. The rain outside roared and poured, masking the sounds of her sobs.
He moves, wraps his arms around her and holds her. If holding her meant surrounding her by the cold that is his presence. But she doesn't protest, just relaxes – as if he is a solid body, as if he is not winter in the shape of a dead man. They stay like that for another minute before she stirs and sniffles.
"Bellamy," she says, her voice unsteady and shaky. "Thank you."
"We're even now," he murmurs to her ear, and delights in her watery chuckle. If she feels ice against her cheeks, it is his meager attempt at wiping her tears with his ghostly fingers.
Later, he finds himself sitting on the floor as she lies on the cot, holding her hand and telling her the adventures of the Blake siblings (they were mostly just Octavia getting into trouble and him getting her out of it – but now that he recounts them, he finds that they are indeed fascinating). He loves her laugh when she finds something amusing, so he stretches some details; like the size of the man he has to duel with because Octavia swore her brother can take him down and squeeze him like a pulp. Or the speed of the mule he has to wrangle because Octavia accidentally set it free.
It is during his third story when he hears her laugh that he finds that he is irrevocably falling.
"You are kidding me!" she now says, facing his general direction, her head propped up on her hand. "There's no such thing as a snake with hands!"
"I am telling nothing but the truth, darling," he says in defense. And while it is true that there has been a sighting of a snake with two hands, it is not him, but his friend Monty who has seen it whilst bathing in the lake. "Besides, it has been a hundred and odd years since. I'm certain there have been more of them propagating somewhere in this planet."
She shrugs and gives him a teasing frown. "Well, I'll only believe it once I see it."
He remains silent, looks at the contemplative expression on her face, and sighs. "Are you implying something?"
She plays with the frayed edges of the cot and her teasing frown deepens. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Sure you don't," he supplies.
There remains silence where the wine is allowed to ferment, and where he thinks falling is not at all that terrifying anymore when he is no more solid than his own feelings. He crouches and leans over her ear.
"Follow me to the mirror," he says, and her frown drops, her lips part, and her cheeks flush. She stands, doesn't even bother with modesty as she trudges over the full body mirror at the corner of the room. She stops there and wraps her arms around her torso, waiting.
He steels himself, and then caresses her arms with his hands, dragging them down until he reaches her elbows.
He appears then in the mirror, and her sharp intake of breath is the clear indication.
When was the last time he has truly seen himself?
He hasn't changed, not a single thing moved out of place. He is still the History teacher, the brother, the bronze-skinned educator.
"Bellamy, you're – I mean," she splutters, still slack-jawed. "You're beautiful."
He smiles down at her and watches through the mirror as she blooms with a smile of her own. The seconds stretch longer, like the details of his stories, until her smile drops.
"I'm leaving," she says quietly. "Tomorrow."
Of course.
His arms tighten around her, and his heart drops when he truly sees the image in front of the mirror. It should just be a girl and a ghost – but it's him and her. It's Bellamy and Clarke – and he doesn't know it could still hurt like this even when he knows what's coming.
"Bellamy, say something."
He rests his chin at the crook of her neck, and he looks so real in front of the mirror it makes his skin burn. "I know. But Clarke, listen. We will see each other again – we will meet again. One day. I promise you. Not here, not today. But somewhere."
When he looks up to meet her gaze, he sees in her eyes an amount of longing that has never been safe. This is the longing that killed pharaohs and queens. He wants nothing more than to soothe her pain.
"You promise?" she repeats, and he sees again the little girl with the haunted eyes, afraid of being left alone.
"Yes, I do."
She falls asleep on the cot that night, her sketchbook in one hand, and his fingers in the other. He listens to the rain fall all night, and then to her even breathing. Ghosts do not sleep – at least not him, so he is there when the downpour lets up.
It is early that morning, when a squad of townspeople barged in the mansion and took her, so he lets go of her hand. Her mother is there, eyes tearing up as she covers her daughter with blankets and murmurs soft words to her ears as she remains out cold. Maybe it's for the best, he thinks, because he is a ghost, and goodbyes are hard.
She'll find him.
She does not return the next day. Nor a very long time after that.
He takes comfort in the fact that she may have already gone to art school just like she has always wanted. That she defied every living thing that dared look down at her and challenge her. That she, maybe, sometimes remembers him, just like he always does. Will people believe her if she tells them about him? Does she return to the rose-colored room in her dreams?
And only one day when he ventures again into the rose-colored room that he finds a photograph of Clarke and a very familiar man pinned on the chalkboard. Dark curls over dark eyes – bronze skin, tall… he looks very familiar…
He must be someone Bellamy knows.
He must be…
(Bellamy fades into nothingness, alight the wind, scatters and dissipates.
Along with him are the memories of his long and extensive stay on Earth.
This is the last we will see and hear of the ghost that roamed the rose-colored room.)
Coda:
There remains nothing to where Bellamy Blake's ghost last stood but a modern photograph, faded and dirty, and the chalkboard with the words: What happened?
But let it not be a secret that he has found his peace in a somewhere where he and his sister exist. And the memory of one Clarke Griffin that he has never really learned to forget.