Follow the Leader
Author's Note: Hey guys, I know The 100 season 3 is premiering soon (in the US) and I am super excited, but by the looks of the trailer it doesn't seem like there will be too much Bellarke this season. Since they are my favorite ship, I wanted to write a shorter story about my favorite pair and what happened to them after the season two finale in my head. I hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own any part of The 100.
Chapter 1
"This is bullshit," Bellamy Blake cursed as he exited the war room. He stormed away quickly, not waiting for Raven to catch up as she followed him.
"Slow down, will ya?" she shouted at his back as she hobbled toward his tent. Between her bum leg and her recent injuries at Mount Weather, it was a minor miracle that she could still walk at all. It took a monumental effort to run after him.
Bellamy didn't pay her any mind. He didn't care if she followed him or not, he just needed to get away from that room and those idiots who called themselves their leaders.
He shoved the flaps of his tent aside and entered to find Octavia and Lincoln huddled inside. Thankfully it looked like they were just talking.
"What happened?" Octavia asked the second she saw the look of fury on his face.
"They want to wage war with the grounders." Bellamy responded.
Lincoln tensed. He still felt a strong connection to many grounders and he didn't want to see them hurt.
Bellamy continued, "They want to take a page from the mountain men and drop a bomb on Lexa." He started rummaging through his belongings and stuffing the useful supplies into a worn backpack.
Raven finally crowded into the tent behind Bellamy and settled him with a glare for making her chase him.
"They want to bomb the grounders?" Octavia repeated Bellamy's statement as a question. She couldn't believe that. Not after the wreckage and destruction that they had all seen in the aftermath of Tondc.
"Yes, as a pre-emptive strike." Raven clarified.
"Apparently we've learned nothing from how the earth was destroyed the first time around and they want to give it another go." Bellamy's sarcasm came out as a raspy grumble, but Octavia managed to catch the words.
"Why?" Octavia directed the question at Raven, knowing the wrench monkey would be more like to give her a straight answer than her angry brother would.
"Our scouts have been keeping track over the last couple of weeks and the grounder armies are surrounding the camp. They're moving slowly, but they're getting closer and closer. Kane is worried that Lexa is moving in to take over the camp, which would leave a lot of our people dead." Raven looked to Lincoln. "They think she wants to take us out while we're still weak so that we don't have a chance to retaliate for her betrayal."
Lincoln nodded. "It's something she might do," he confirmed.
"And the Chancellor thinks a bomb is the best way to deal with this?" Octavia asked, watching Bellamy tear through his room out of the corner of her eye.
"Abby is hesitant, but she's feeling the pressure from the other members of the council and doesn't have a better plan."
Bellamy scoffed and then pushed past Raven and out of his tent.
"Seriously?" Raven shouted, annoyed that she needed to chase after him again. Couldn't he sit quietly and stew with anger instead of traipsing about?
Octavia leapt to her feet and ran after her brother. "Bell, what are you doing?" she asked when she reached his side.
Some of the other people in the camp began to stare as Bellamy stormed through, interrupting their work as he collected any necessary supplies and threw them into his bag.
"I'm leaving," he told Octavia.
"Where do you think you're going?"
Bellamy turned to face his sister so that she could see the serious look in his eyes. "To find the only person around here who should actually be leading our people."
Octavia sighed. "You don't know that Clarke would do any differently than her mom."
He narrowed his eyes at her. "Unless she's changed drastically in the two weeks since she left, I know she would find another way." He turned his back to his sister and made his way to the small break in the camp's fence.
"Maybe she has, Bell. We've all changed a lot since we've been here. I know two months ago you wouldn't have even thought about going after Clarke once."
"It doesn't matter, O. I'm going."
He got to the opening in the fence to find Raven and Lincoln already waiting there for him. Apparently his intention to go after Clarke had been obvious to Raven.
"What if she doesn't come back with you?" Octavia posed the question from behind him.
He stopped walking. He didn't want to consider the possibility. "I have to try," he said with a shrug. He continued forward again.
"I'm coming with you," Raven told him as he approached her.
"Don't be stupid," he replied.
"I'm not. I can help you."
Bellamy tapped his foot against her leg brace and shook his head. "All you'll do is slow me down."
Raven gritted her teeth, hating the fact that he was right.
"Well, I'm not letting you go alone." Octavia said. "And I'm a better tracker than you," she added like he had no choice but to take her for that reason.
"I'm going alone," he countered. Before Octavia could protest, he cut off her words. "You need to be here, O. I need you and Raven to do whatever you can to stall the council until I get back." Lincoln stepped forward to offer his assistance. "And no, Lincoln needs to stay here in case the grounders make a move. You know more about their battle strategy than anyone and the camp might need you if the grounders decide to try to talk things out."
Raven and Lincoln's silence was enough to tell him that they agreed. Octavia was a different story.
Bellamy placed his hands on his sister's shoulders. "I'll be fine. I promise." Octavia refused to look him in the eye. "I think this is more of a one on one conversation between me and Clarke anyway. Too many people might spook her."
She finally met his eyes. "If you get her back, are you going to be less moody?"
"What?"
"Ever since she left, you've been even moodier than usual. It's driven you crazy and you've driven us crazy," she explained.
Bellamy looked back at Raven to find her smirking and nodding in confirmation. He turned back to his sister. "Shut up," he told her and then pulled her into a tight hug. She squeezed him back.
He gave Lincoln a quick nod and let Raven clap him on the back. "Go get our girl," she ordered before handing him a few extra things that she had picked up for him around camp. He took them gratefully.
He gave one last look to Camp Jaha and his three unlikely allies and then disappeared throughout the fence without another word of goodbye.
Bellamy hadn't gotten very far from Camp Jaha when he realized that he didn't really have a plan for finding Clarke. He had been so focused on the idea that he could get her home that he hadn't thought about how he would find her first.
She had been gone for two weeks and any trail she had left behind would be ice cold. Bellamy's first thought was the she would go to the grounders. That maybe she would want Lexa to answer for her betrayal. He brushed off the idea. Clarke wasn't prone toward revenge. She didn't want to see anymore death or pain. And any excuses Lexa had for her betrayal wouldn't give Clarke closure from what she had done to those in Level 5. It wouldn't change anything. Lexa had chosen her people over the 48 just as Clarke had chosen her people over those in Level 5.
Lost in thought, Bellamy finally focused enough to realize where his feet were headed. He was moving toward the drop ship. It was unintentional. A habitual instinct had kicked in to take him to the first place he knew on the ground. But the drop ship was as good a place as any to start the search. Clarke may have run to someplace familiar to her. It would be safest.
It didn't take much time for Bellamy to arrive. He was disappointed to find that it was empty. There were no signs of anyone living among the abandoned quarters.
It was an eerie place to wander through alone. The empty camp felt haunted with the remnants of the life that the 100 had built up and the destroyed war zone that they had left behind.
Bellamy walked through every place in the drop ship borders. He brushed his fingers across the message that Abby had left for Clarke so long ago, wishing Clarke had done the same for him. She had to have known that he would come for her eventually. It would have been helpful for her to leave him a note.
It wasn't until he came across the graveyard that he felt something was different. He hadn't actually expected to find anything there—he merely wanted to bow his head for a moment to respect those they had lost. It was the least he could do for Atom and Charlotte. But something caught his eye. A small cluster of white flowers lay starkly upon one of the older graves. The grave belonged to Wells and the flowers were very fresh.
Clarke had been here.
Any fresh footsteps had been kicked clean, leaving no trail to follow her back to her camp, however if she was close by then Bellamy had an idea of where she might be staying. He did his best to remember the path and soon recognized the signs that the route had been used many times. Low hanging branches had been snapped away, the grass and leaves on the forest floor had been worn down in the same spot as though it had been climbed over repeatedly.
As Bellamy made his way through the woods he tried to remember what Finn had called the bunker once. The name drove him crazy as it sat on the tip of his tongue, just out of reach. He finally made it to the small fortress to find that a small clearing had been made just around the hatch, enough room to safely build a controlled fire to cook meals. It wasn't until he approached the hatch door to find it sealed shut that he remembered its nickname: The Art Supply Store.
Bellamy wasn't exactly sure what to do. He needed to rest so he sat down on a nearby rock and took a deep breath, Now that he was here, he wasn't so sure Clarke would have taken refuge here—at least not for long. He stared to the left of the clearing in the direction of the shallow grave that he and Finn had dug for Delano, the grounder that Finn had tortured and killed. He noticed that this grave was free of flowers. He cringed, imagining Clarke alone, scrubbing at the pool of Delano's dried blood to remove the stain from the floor of the bunker. Maybe this place held too many memories—both bad and good—that Clarke would prefer to forget.
Then again, he could imagine the princess torturing herself with the memories on purpose. They were a reminder of why she thought she was better off alone.
Either way, Bellamy knew he had to knock on the door and see if she was here eventually, but he was stalling. Now that it was possible that he had found her, he realized he had no idea what he planned to say. After all, he couldn't get her to stay at Camp Jaha in the first place. What made him think that he could actually get her to come back with him?
Bellamy sighed and pushed himself off the rock. He turned toward the metal entrance and just stared at it, contemplating if he should actually knock or just let himself in. He rested his hand on the latch, ready to open it. If he knocked, he wasn't actually sure she would want to let him in, but if he went in without warning he risked unintentionally startling her.
His deliberation between the two options was interrupted by a rustle of branches behind him. He swung around quickly, prepared for a grounder attack, but was instead greeting by the sight of his favorite blonde. She stopped when she noticed him standing at her doorstep. She blinked hard as though to make sure she wasn't imagining him. She had firewood tucked under one arm and a basket with an assortment of picked berries hanging off the other. She looked beautiful as always, with her hair pulled back in a loose braid similar to how she wore it when he first saw her. Her eyes were tired, rimmed with dark circles, and she was thinner than Bellamy preferred. It didn't matter though. It wasn't until he saw her that he realized how much worry had been eating away at him since she left. The sick pit of anxiety that had been hollowing him out from the inside shriveled away from the sight of her before him. She was safe and clean and alive.
He should have known all along. Clarke had always been a survivor.
Clarke squeezed her eyes shut again and Bellamy took a tentative step toward her. Maybe she wasn't okay.
"Are you real?"
He paused and then smirked. "Why? Have you been dreaming about me, princess?"
She shook her head. "Yea, it's really you," she said with a sigh and then walked past him to set down her bounty from a morning of gathering natural supplies in the forest. She turned back to face Bellamy and he noticed that she had strategically placed herself between him and the door.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, leveling him with a stern stare that he had come to miss.
"I came to find you," he told her with another step forward to which she held up a hand to stop him.
"I'm not going back with you," she said, skipping forward to answer the question he hadn't had a chance to ask yet.
It wasn't the answer he wanted.
But he grinned through his disappointment as he replied, "Well then, it looks like you have a new roommate."
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