Octavia followed him hesitantly down the hallway, eyes shining with fear and excitement under the dark mask that covered half her face. He smiled to himself. Best brother on the Ark.
Only brother on the Ark, but that was beside the point.
He felt Octavia's hand slip out of his, and he watched as she sprinted into the party, dancing to the music. All of a sudden Jasper appeared from the shadows, holding a rifle.
"Jasper what the hell…"
Lincoln appeared on the other end of the room, and Jasper's shot rang out, piercing the cheery atmosphere of the party and in the same moment piercing Lincoln's skull. Octavia screamed. He tried to run to her, to get her out of the hell erupting here, but before he could move, a pair of airlock doors shut in front of him. He pressed his hand against the glass. The room on the other side was empty now except for his sister. She slowly removed her mask and let it fall to the ground. "This is your fault."
"Octavia I'm going to get you out of there. I'm going to keep you safe."
The room began to deteriorate around her, huge pieces of metal were flying into space. The floor was disappearing, falling into a black abyss and getting closer to where Octavia stood.
"This is all your fault."
"No, Octavia, no! Somebody help! Somebody help me!"
"All your fault." Jaha appeared behind her and gripped her shoulders with hands still soaked in blood from his gunshot wound. Dax stood next to them, blood trickling down his collarbone, gun to Octavia's skull. Hundreds of others floated in the black of space, waiting.
"Don't take her, take me! Hurt me, kill me!"
"We are hurting you." Murphy appeared directly in front of the air lock doors. The floor continued to fall away. "We're putting the rope around your neck."
"We're torturing you." Octavia said it with poison, eyes glinting with hatred.
"We're bleeding you out," Jaha spat.
"We're suffocating you." This came from the three hundred people already in the black of space.
"No, no, not her. Please." Warm wetness trickled down his face. He was on his knees. Begging. Pleading with the dead and the undead for the life of his sister, who hated him. Who was ready to leave with them.
"Your fault."
With those final words from Octavia, the floor fell away, and everything went black.
"No! No, Octavia, please, no!"
"Bellamy? Bellamy! Bellamy wake up!"
"No, no…" Bellamy sat up with a start, eyes flying open. He felt his whole body shaking, and his bare back was covered in sweat. And there, next to his bed, looking very concerned, was the Princess herself. "Clarke. Dammit." He rolled his eyes and fell back into bed. "What do you want?"
He could see her fighting with herself, trying to figure out if she should ask. "Bellamy…"
"Nightmare, Princess, that's it. I'm fine. Now tell me why you needed me so desperately that you came into my tent while I was resting."
"Right. Well I just thought I'd tell you that Finn and I had a less than successful trip outside the walls. Mainly because we got attacked and captured by grounders, who threatened to kill Finn if I didn't save a girl that was injured in the bridge explosion. I did, so Finn's alive, but I'd just like for that to never ever happen again. So next time we leave the camp I'd like you to be with us. That's all." She turned to walk away but Bellamy's hand shot out and encircled her wrist.
"Not so fast princess." She turned around, a look of pure annoyance darkening her features.
"What now?"
"Are you okay?"
"Yes, they didn't hurt me, they needed me to save someone's life. My wrists are a little sore because they did chain me up, but I'm fine."
Bellamy glanced down at where his hand still held her wrist. He released. "Sorry, Princess." He looked back up at her face and saw pure exhaustion. "Go rest, I think Octavia can handle a couple stupid injuries while you nap. You deserve it."
"Damn straight." Clarke turned on her heal and marched out of the tent. Bellamy smiled to himself. As much as he and Clarke butted heads, he couldn't deny that they worked well together, and she was definitely made of leadership material. He wondered where this camp would be if he didn't have Clarke to force him to look before leaping. He wondered where he would be if Clarke wasn't around to remind him who he was. He decided the answer was most likely the same for both.
"Probably dead."
x
"All set. Next time you're throwing knives, try to avoid retrieving yours while someone else is throwing." The boy hurriedly thanked her and scampered out of the dropship. He had been nicked in the shoulder by another kid's knife during free time. Clarke sat back and thanked whatever was watching over them that it hadn't been as bad as it could have been. They didn't need to dig any more graves.
"Hey Clarke." She bristled at that voice. As she turned to face its owner, she painfully recalled the days when the hoarse baritone was her favorite sound, a relief from the cacophony of her day. But she pushed away the memories and faced the boy.
"What is it, Finn?" She saw his face crumple a bit before he collected it back into a smile. She almost felt bad for him.
Almost. "Nothing, I just wanted to come in, say hi, see how you were doing. Maybe thank you for saving my life."
"I didn't save your life, Finn, I saved a grounder girl's life, and the grounders spared you."
"You saved her life for me though."
"Get over yourself, Finn."
"It's true though! And I'm grateful."
"Well I saved her, and you consequently, because it was the right thing to do. Nothing more." Clarke said this pointedly, enunciating every word. "It was nothing more than a moral obligation. You're welcome." Clarke immediately regretted her add on because at those two words, Finn's face lit up.
"Well, I guess it's true then, high pressure situations do weird things to relationships." He grinned flirtatiously. "Am I really welcome, Princess?"
"Please leave, Finn." Clarke spun on her heel and walked over to organize the medical supplies. She heard footsteps approaching her, which she promptly ignored.
"Clarke, come on, you can't stay mad at me forever. And Raven broke it off with me, so we can-"
Clarke spun around, eyes on fire. "We can what? Huh, Finn? What can we do? Go back to the art supply store and get naked and act like this never happened? Immediately pretend Raven is just another inconsequential girl in the camp and not your very recent ex?" She took a deep breath and tried to lower her voice. "Look, I'm not mad at you anymore, though you do somehow manage to piss me off in new ways every day. But I get it. You thought you'd never see her again. I just," she paused, figuring out how to word it. "It's just that, after Raven, and the bridge, I can't trust you. And after the way you acted after Raven came down, I'm not interested in pursuing a friendship with you. So I'm not still mad that you screwed me and never told me you had a girlfriend. I just don't care for your company. Now, if you please, I'd like to relax a little bit before the next kid comes in with another stupid injury." She turned back around and continued to pointlessly rearrange herbs and needles. She felt her muscles relax with every retreating footstep.
She turned around and sat herself facing away from the entrance on a mattress left over from the grounder virus. She concentrated on stilling her shaking hands. She wouldn't admit it to anybody, but a day later she was still trying to get over the kidnapping. The grounder leader did not like her, and by this point, Clarke reciprocated those feelings. God damn savages, won't even listen when I try to explain, when I try to apologize. They want a war, they don't care that we're just a bunch of scared kids. That I'm just some scared kid. I'm just some stupid, scared kid who's trying to be a doctor in a world without medicine. Dammit. Clarke wasn't even trying to stop shaking anymore. She hadn't cried yet, when they got back she didn't cry. When she went to bed, she was too exhausted to cry, she simply fell into a gloriously dreamless sleep. And she had been patching up children all day. But now, she was alone. She had finally told off Finn, and she was tired of holding it in. She let a broken sob escape her lips, and tears rolled down her face.
Just then, the fabric flap at the entrance to the dropship swished and she heard approaching footsteps. She'd had enough. She whirled. "Finn dammit go away!" She came face to face with a smirk and deep brown eyes.
"Space walker bothering you, Princess? I can set him straight for you." Clarke simply closed her eyes, turned back to face the wall, and sat back down on the bloodstained mattress.
"Bellamy. Now isn't a really great time."
"Apparently. Want to tell me what's being a royal pain up our Princess's ass?"
Clarke inhaled shakily. "I'm just barely closing in on eighteen. I'm still a kid myself and I'm supposed to be leading all these kids. Leading them into a war, no less. I don't know what the hell I'm doing, and the grounders don't care. They don't care that I didn't chose to be sent down here. They don't care that I didn't choose to be leader in their eyes. They don't even care that we didn't know they were here, or that we didn't mean to harm them. They just want war. And they'll get it. And we can't win. And it's all on me." By now she was crying, tears rolling freely down her cheeks and into her lap. She felt a strong hand grip her shoulder.
"Not all on you, Princess. Remember, we're leading these idiots into war together."
She knew he was trying to lighten the mood, to lighten her mood, but it wasn't working. "I just want to go home." She covered her face as sobs wracked her body. She felt Bellamy come around to sit next to her and his strong arm wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her in. She turned her head to bury it in the crook of his shoulder, and felt his other hand reach up to finger comb her hair.
"Clarke." She didn't respond. She was trying to gather herself. "Clarke, I'm sorry about your mom." That didn't help. She lost control of her emotions again. She felt his arm grip her tighter. "We'll figure something out. You're not alone, Clarke." She nodded into his jacket.
After a couple minutes, she felt better. She sat back and let Bellamy unwrap himself from her. They sat, not touching, not talking, for a while. Then Bellamy got up, grabbed a rag, soaked it in water, and handed it to Clarke. "Wash your face, Princess." Clarke nodded and listened to his footsteps retreating. She may have hated him at the beginning, but right now, she wouldn't want to lead alongside anyone other than Bellamy.