It's the second time he's heard her laugh since they'd touched back down on Earth; a pure joyous sound that instantly quirks his lips as his head turns to find her. She's sitting across the fire-pit, smiling up at Murphy with a glimmer in her eyes that he had missed more than solid foods or open skies. His heart swells at the matching mirth in Murphy's grin. "Oh yeah, you bet your ass we're doing this Griffin. On your feet." She stands, and there's a moment of hesitation that he can't decipher. But Murphy's eyes soften. And Bellamy's smile freezes in its place when the two figures embrace warmly, Clarke's eyes dropping closed, her arms tightening, Murphy's grip readjusting. He barely registers Harper walk up beside him until she lets out a soft chuckle and a "now there's something I thought I'd never see", and he feels the ground fall out beneath him.
He feels his heart twist and thump painfully against his ribs, watches as time folds in and upon itself, seven years of memories carefully boxed away now emptied into one big mess. He watches Clarke as she dips her head into Murphy's neck and suddenly her hair is longer, her face is cut, he's breathless from the impact of her body against his. How it was, how it is, how it should have been – they all converge, and he can't see straight, can't think straight, can't use his head when his bruised and weary heart is resuming its perilous struggle within his chest. He can't breathe, needs to move, stumbles to his feet.
The smile has completely slipped from his face now and the heads of Monty and Harper snap towards him as his feet struggle for purchase, eyes still glued to the pair hugging. "I.. uhm.. I'll.. be back." he rasps out and he wishes he didn't notice Monty's panicked glance in Clarke's direction, Harper's restraining hand on Monty's arm.
He's crashing through the underbrush, any hunter's skill forgotten. The world is tilting, it's axis thrown. It reminds him distantly of Jobi nuts, of his hand on her arm, of teaching her to shoot, oh god oh god what did I do. And his sister, indignant, on his return. A sob chokes out of him. O. The two of them had been everything to him. He sees them, on that first day, eyes bright and wide, eager for what magic and beauty this world could offer. But the smiles morph in his mind until there's blood dripping from Clarke's eyes, blood smeared across Octavia's forehead, broken "I loved her Mom"'s and vicious "or you are an enemy of Wonkru". He wonders, not for the first time, how many more horrors they faced in his absence.
He can't put a label on this feeling, or maybe it's more that he doesn't want to acknowledge it, to name the weight of it. It's there all the same, in the new hesitance with Echo, in the increased distance between Clarke's stance, in the constant this isn't how it's supposed to be that loops through his head on repeat. He feels it in the final glance Clarke gives before setting up sleeping quarters away from their own, in the seven plates dished up before the embarrassed rush to add two more, in the silent conversations dropped.
He sinks to his knees, arm propped against a tree and gasping for breath. Because gods be damned, he missed her. They've got her back now, by some miracle, but he can't help the small niggling part at the back of his mind that asks 'but have you?'