The Five Times Bellamy Blake was Selfish

by viansian

(and The One Time He Pretended He Wasn't) Bellamy Blake was a selfish man. He hated himself for it, but he'd grown to accept it, embrace it even. That is, until he met a princess.

The Five Times Bellamy Blake was Selfish (and the One Time He Pretended He Wasn't)

Couple: Bellamy x Clarke

Rating: T

Summary: Bellamy Blake was a selfish man. He hated himself for it, but he'd grown to accept it, embrace it even. That is, until he met a princess.

i.

When Jasper had been injured, his dying moans had shaken the entire camp. In part, Bellamy knew that if the entire camp continued to be shaken by the boy's cries, he was going to have a problem. It was much easier to keep everyone under control when they were all afraid of him.

So, he had marched right up to the third level of the dropship and informed Princess Clarke that if the kid wasn't better in a day, he'd kill him himself. And he had meant every word.

He never would've guessed that mercy killing would be so damn hard.

As he knelt by Atom's convulsing body, he knew what he had to do. The boy had even begged for death by that point, but as he clutched the knife tightly in his hand, Bellamy realized that he had no idea where to even start.

Then he heard a twig snapped behind him. Whirling around, his eyes landed on a blonde figure silently watching the scene before her unfold. As she slowly approached him, Bellamy realized with shock that he was grateful that she was there, grateful that he didn't have to do this alone.

Then she had gently pulled the knife out of his grasp.

He didn't realize what she was doing right away, but as she started humming and Atom's body began to shake less violently, it all became clear.

He should have snatched the knife right out of her hands then.

Looking back, he almost felt guilty for making her, a child, (dear God, she couldn't be older than seventeen) kill Atom. He should've been strong, he should've allowed her to keep her innocence, grabbed the knife and told her to look away. A girl as young as her shouldn't have to watch the life drain out of the eyes of a friend. None of those kids should.

But Bellamy Blake was a selfish man. So he let her.

As he watched this innocent girl transform into a chillingly beautiful angel of death, he wondered if he was a coward too.

ii.

Getting rid of the radio hadn't been a very hard choice. When he had a goal in mind, nothing stopped Bellamy Blake. He had left right away and gotten to the pod before anyone else. The sleeping astronaut had never even seen him take the radio, and as he flung it into the river, he was reminded how good it felt to be free.

Every man for himself. He'd always save his own skin over someone else's.

Then the fucking princess had caught up to him.

He had no idea how she did it, made him feel like he owed the people of the Ark something. They had taken everything from him, and here in this new world, he finally had the chance to take what he wanted. No rules. Whatever the hell he wanted. These kids were lost, and all they needed was a dark, handsome stranger to lead them, to whisper honey-sweet words in their ears, urging them to do his bidding.

But then she came along, with her stupid self-righteous attitude and her integrity. Her sheer honesty and morality seemed to be the only things that could rival his silver tongue and charisma. And he hated her for it. He hated her because he couldn't lie to her, he didn't want to lie to her because she never lied to him.

When they found out the radio was as good as gone, she had screamed at him, her eyes lighting up like the stars that burned as they fell through the atmosphere.

"Three hundred people are going to die today. Because of you! Do you even care?"

He had sneered at her. "You asked me to help," was his response. "I helped."

He dared not speak of the knot that twisted in his gut, making him feel sick to his stomach. Or of the hate in his chest that grew for the blonde hurricane standing in front of him and what she made him feel.

Bellamy Blake had always been selfish. But this was the first time he had ever felt guilty.

He helped them set up the flares that night.

ii.

"I won't let anything bad happen to you. I promise."

He felt himself breaking that promise as he shoved the extra rations in his pack. He felt the weight of breaking that promise as he studied Octavia's face, knowing it would be the last time he ever saw it.

He hadn't given up much to follow her to Earth (his life on the Ark wasn't worth much anyway). Perhaps the only real thing of value he had lost was his humanity. He was only happy that Clarke was too preoccupied with her troubles with Spacewalker and his girlfriend to actually understand why he was dropping bits of advice for her to remember when he was gone.

"You're going to want to keep Miller close. The other's listen to him," he mentioned offhandedly, changing the bullets in his gun.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her blonde hair catch the light as she shook her head. "Why would I need to keep Miller close?" she asked. "You're acting like you not…

She trailed off and Bellamy swore under his breath. She understood.

"You're planning on running away, aren't you?" she asked. Was it his imagination or did she seem angry? Why should she be angry about him leaving? She hated him. It would be easier to run the camp without him anyway; she was the strongest one there. They would all listen to her.

"You can't."

Firing a shot from his gun, Bellamy suddenly found no pleasure in the fact that he had hit the mark right on. "Don't tell me what to do, princess," he snapped. "I've made up my mind. They'll kill me as soon as they land anyway."

"What about Octavia?" Clarke hissed. "You're just going to abandon her? After all that you've done to protect her?"

"Don't talk to me about Octavia."

"Well, obviously someone needs to! Don't act like you don't know I'm right." the blonde challenged. "You're just trying to save your own skin."

He snorted. In all his time he had never met someone so…so infuriating as Clarke. Couldn't she just leave it? Turning towards her, he growled, "That's right. I am. You think that just because I helped you contact the Ark, I'm suddenly a good guy? I'm still as selfish as I've always been. So yes, I'm saving my own skin. Octavia hates me and she'll be fine as long as she sticks with the rest of the camp." He fired two more shots towards the target, only to find that they were dud. Throwing the gun to the ground he spat, "I need some air," before storming out of the bunker.

Later when she found him, bloodied, bruised and hands shaking after killing Dax, she had told him that she needed him. She had assured him that he wasn't the monster he knew he was, and told him that he couldn't run.

Like hell he couldn't.

He sometimes wondered what would've happened if he had walked away, refused to come back with her and stuck to his original plan. How long would he have lasted?

How long would she have lasted?

In the end he went back with her, but only after she promised him that they would convince Jaha to pardon his crimes.

When the chancellor of the Ark forgave and acquitted him, he'd never forget the small smile that passed Clarke's face. He was still selfish, but something about this princess made him want to be more.

iv.

It happened slowly at first; just the simple desire to not piss her off as much as he used to. He started doing things that he knew would make her happy, or at least, would make her less mad. Instead of stringing up the kid who had disobeyed orders from a tree, he settled for a punch (one meant more to shock that injure) to the gut and the promise it would be worse if it happened again.

Next, he found himself protecting her, wanting her to trust him. Often, he'd wake in the early mornings (even monsters have nightmares), and find himself untangling the arms of a woman to quickly walk by her tent, just to make sure she was all right.

He liked the way she smiled, even if it was a rare occurrence. But at best, his stupid jokes would sometimes pull a weary, broken twist out of her lips. He was surprised when he realized how hard he was trying to pull a real smile out of her. When he finally did, it was an unexpected occurrence.

He had been talking to Jasper and Raven about some new defense mechanisms to plant outside of camp, something else to keep the grounders away. Suddenly, he felt something tug on his belt. His hand flew to his side, and but he didn't't feel his canteen. Turning around, he saw a boy, no older than twelve or thirteen, grinning and waving the bottle like a banner over his head. A chuckle escaped Bellamy as he began chasing the boy around camp. When he finally caught him and snatched the canteen, shrieking laughter escaping the child as he tickled him, Bellamy looked up and his eyes found her across the camp. The smile on her face glowed brighter than the sun and he felt the smile on his face grow as he watched hers. Their eyes locked and something changed inside him. He felt happy.

He hadn't this carefree in years.

He didn't realize how deep his feelings ran until he saw her smiling at Spacewalker. That true, radiant smile he had worked so hard to pull from her was now gracing her face as she longingly looked at the boy next to her.

He had just stared in shock for a few moments (he had only left her a second ago), slammed down the drink he was bringing her on the table and stormed out of the camp. Without a gun.

He couldn't remember the last time he had been so stupid.

Luckily nothing came of it. Staring out at the stars, he wondered what it was about her that made him act so foolishly. The sound of snapping twigs caught his attention, but he didn't turn around as Octavia sat down next to him.

For a long time, neither of the spoke, until his sister, her voice so small and soft, whispered, "You love her, don't you?"
"Don't be stupid, O," he snapped, his eyes never leaving the sky. "She's the last person I'd fall in love with."

She deserved Finn, the kind of boy they told stories of. The dashing, adventurous hero who loved the girl without condition, who was as full of light as she was.

But her smile was burned into his mind and the lie tasted like poison on his tongue.

She was pure. She was pure and strong and beautiful and he was nothing but a dark nightmare, a monster waiting to devour her. Men like him couldn't love girls like her without destroying them.

Falling in love with Clarke Griffin was the most selfish thing he had ever done.

v.

There was a storm coming and everyone knew it. The sky had begun to darken hours ago and the air was heavy, like an indestructible wall pressing towards earth.

Bellamy heard Clarke call out after him, but he ignored her, trudging deeper into the woods. The first drop of rain landed on his hand and he knew he should head back, go back to camp with her and pretend like nothing ever happened. But he didn't want to. He wanted to scream and cry and punch something until his knuckles were bloodied and his hands were broken. He wanted to take his anger out on her, to blame her for everything that had happened.

But he couldn't.

Because he loved her.

"Bellamy, wait!" she called after him. "It's not safe out here. We have to get back to camp! Bellamy, please talk to me!"

He almost bumped into her when he whirled around. "What do you want me to say, princess?" he screamed. "Tell you that everything is going to be okay? Because it's not!" His head felt like it was exploding. He felt like someone had stabbed him in the chest and just left the knife there. He couldn't breathe. The rain was coming down harder now, like tears of heaven pouring to the earth. "She's gone, Clarke. Octavia is gone, probably miles across the ocean with that Grounder by now. Do you hear me, princess? I'm never going to see my sister, my sister who I promised to protect, my sister who I gave up everything for, my sister who I kept hidden under the floorboards for sixteen fucking years. She's gone."

He was standing close to her. He was standing so close to her he could feel her breath on his skin, the heat radiating off of her despite the cold rain. Her hair was wet, and there were tears in her eyes.

"Just think about this," she pleaded with him. She looked so beautiful. Even with her hair sticking to her face and the dark circles under her eyes, she looked like she belonged in heaven, not this hell called Earth. "We don't know the circumstances and you don't know if she's-"

He cut her off by pressing his lips against hers. For a moment, she did not move and his heart stopped, but then she wrapped her arms around his neck and planted her hands in his hair, pulling him closer to her.

His lips moved against hers and she tasted like salt and sorrow and hope and heaven.

She tasted like life.

He came to his senses in a flash and pushed her away from him, both of their breaths coming in gasps. Her eyes locked with his, her impossibly blue eyes wide with an emotion he could not place and her lips parted and swollen. He didn't want to imagine what he must look like.

He turned away, swallowing and trying to regain his composure. "Go back to camp, princess," he said, begging his voice not to break, not to betray him.

There was silence and for a moment, Bellamy wanted her to tell him no. He wanted her to demand an explanation, he wanted her to punch him and hit him and then kiss him again. He wanted her to fight, to be the warrior he knew she could be.

But then he heard the crunch of twigs as she walked away and he was left alone in the rain.

When he was sure she was gone he stumbled against the tree and slid to the ground, his whole body shaking. He did not know if it was tears or rain streaming down his face.

He shouldn't have kissed her. He knew that men like him destroyed angels like her. He knew that he was no prince, no adventurer bards would sing about. He knew that he wasn't what she wanted.

He was a coward.

He was a criminal.

He was a monster.

He was a liar.

He was selfish.

He was so, incredibly selfish.

Because, God forgive him, if he go back in time, if he could tell her not to follow him out into the storm, if he could stop himself from kissing her, if he had the chance to take it back, to somehow erase the last ten minutes of his time on Earth...

He simply wouldn't.

vi.

The Grounders had come at night. No one had heard or seen them coming, the forest was empty one moment, and then next they were surrounded.

Bellamy knew it was retribution for torturing Lincoln.

He knew that he had brought this down upon them.

It came as a surprise when the Grounder princess had asked for their leaders, when she had said she wanted to talk. He would've assumed they had just wanted to annihilate them, to destroy them completely. He contemplated not stepping forward, trying to save his own skin yet again by pretending he wasn't there and letting them kill someone else.

But then she stepped forward and he swore under his breath.

There was no escaping it now.

The two of them followed the Grounder princess outside the camp, followed by a few of her warriors. Once they were out of shouting distance from the camp, Bellamy heard a yelp of pain from Clarke. As he began to turn to see her, her name on his lips, he felt a sharp pain in his head as one of the Grounder warriors slammed the butt of their axe into his temple. He dropped to the ground, his vision swimming, and it took all he had in him not to lose consciousness right there.

"You torture one of our own," the Grounder princess growled. In the light of the torches, here eyes painted black and bones of animals hanging around her neck, she looked like a demon, a creature that truly belonged on earth. "You burn our villages down with your missiles. You kill our warriors with bombs and trespass on our lands. These are all acts of war."

Bellamy pulled himself off the ground, kneeling in front of her. Clarke was next to him in a moment, a small stream of blood running from her hairline to her cheek. "What do you want?" she choked out. "You could have easily killed the entire camp. Why do you want us?"

There was silence for a moment before the demon-like woman spoke. "When you spoke of peace, you sounded genuine. I am willing to negotiate peace. But the souls of my people cannot rest in the afterlife until they have been avenged." Pulling out her knife, she continued, "One of you will pay for their passage with your blood."

"You want to kill one of us?" Clarke asked. Her voice sounded determined, stronger than he had ever heard it before. "Fine. If it will bring peace, then kill me." The warriors moved towards her.
"No." The word passed his lips with such authority even the Grounders stopped in their tracks. His breathing still heavy and his vision still blurry, he looked up into Anya's black eyes. "You kill her, you won't have peace," his voice was dark, the knot in his chest coiled like a snake ready to strike at any moment. "I will find each and every one of your people and kill them. I will rip your limbs from your body and hang you up from a tree to die. I will build a thousand more bombs and I won't rest until this entire world is as decimated as it was a hundred years ago. If you take her, you will never know peace."

There was a very long silence before he finally said it out loud. "Take me instead."

"No!" the shout from Clarke was almost enough to make him want to change his mind.

But Bellamy ignored her and instead stood to his feet. "I'm the one who built the flares," he declared. "I'm the one who tortured Lincoln and I'm the one who set off the bomb." Well, that last one was a lie, but if he could pin all of the hundred's crimes on himself, maybe those kids back at camp could survive. "So if you want to avenge those who have been killed, take me."

The Grounder princess looked him up and down. "Very well," she said. The warriors began to move towards him.

"Wait!" Clarke sobbed. Anya turned towards her, brow raised. "Please," the blonde begged. "Please, just let me have a minute with him."

With a short nod from the leader, the Grounder warriors backed away and Bellamy knelt down before the princess that he had fallen in love with, the girl who's innocence he had seen fade away and the woman he had seen grow into a strong, true leader.

She threw her arms around him and fell into him, hugging him like his touch was the only thing keeping her alive. He felt her small body shake as he clutched her tight, his hands wrapped around her frail waist. "Bellamy," she whispered in his ear. "Bellamy, please."

Pulling away, he forced a smile, gently tucking her gold hair behind her ear. "What would you have me do, princess?" he asked softly. "Let you sacrifice yourself?"

Her answer was so desperate he felt is shake is soul.

"Yes."

Swallowing hard, he shook his head. "Sorry, no can do, princess." As he looked at her, he was reminded of all the things he loved about her. Her courage. Her integrity. Her light. Her honesty. Her strength. She was everything he was not and he loved her for it. He loved the fire in her eyes and the passion in her soul. He loved her bravery and the fact that she saw good in everyone, even when it wasn't there (God knows it wasn't in him).

He gently wiped away the tears that had begun to spill from her eyes. "Clarke," he whispered, his voice catching in his throat. "Bury me next to Charlotte."

Her lip quivered and she shook her head. "No," she said, her tears spilling over. "No, no, no, no, no. Bellamy, please."

He shushed her by raising his hand and letting his thumb brush across her lips, the lips he had so selfishly tasted that day in the rain. "I have been selfish all my life." Lifting his eyes to look into hers, he felt his heart break when he saw he fear and pleading in them. "Just this once," he murmured, "let me be selfless."

Right at that moment, one of the Grounder warriors grabbed him by his hair and began to drag him away from Clarke. Through the intense pain, he heard her sobbing and screaming, screaming at the Grounders to let him go, to take her, screaming at him to fight, goddamn it, fight! But he didn't. He didn't because the choice was him or her. And he would always choose her. He couldn't imagine leading without her and he refused to imagine living without her. He couldn't imagine carrying her cold body back to camp, back to the Hundred and continuing living without her by his side.

His old fear of death washed over him, but this time he embraced it. He briefly wondered what was on the other side, would he be absolved of his sins? There was no Clarke to convince the chancellor of heaven to pardon him, no chillingly beautiful angel of death to lead him to the gates of paradise. Perhaps he would simply wait for her, wait until she met him at the doors of the afterlife and they could face whatever God there was together, just like they did with everything else.

The blow to his head must have been messing with his mind, because for a split second, he thought he saw something like sorrow or regret pass the Grounder princess's face. As if she wished she did not have to take him away from the sobbing woman, kneeling on the dirt, screaming, begging them to not kill monster that loved her. But it was gone as quickly as it came. She knelt down before him, whispering words in a language he did not understand over the bone knife she was holding.

He remembered his conversation with Clarke, after the bunker and the hallucinations (after he had killed Dax), when she managed to convince him not to run away. She had told him that she needed him and it had taken him a while to finally understand what she had meant. Leading was hard. It was a burden that was heavy to bear. But together, together the two of them could share the load, they could hold the other up when they fell, they could save each other from themselves.

He could say they needed each other equally, but that would be a lie. The truth was that he had always needed her more. The harsh reality was that his fear of dying, of losing the one thing he had fought so hard for and sacrificed so much to protect, was outweighed by only one thing: his fear of living without her.

A sharp pain pierced through his side and his breath was knocked out of him as he felt the Grounder's knife rip through his skin. He heard Clarke's bloodcurdling scream as he tasted blood on his tongue and her violent sobs of his name echoed in his ears as he fell to the ground, small rocks biting into his cheek.

As his vision began fading, his blood warm and sticky on his hands, he managed to turn his head, wanting to see her one last time before he died. The light from the torches behind her caused her blonde hair to glow, making it seem like there was a halo of gold light surrounding her. His angel. His beautiful angel of death. For a moment, he wondered if he was dying to save her as much as to save himself from a life without her. Right before her halo and her frail form faded to black, he realized that even in his sacrifice, his most selfless moment, he was still selfish.

(A/N Longest and darkest fic I've written in a while. Reviews are welcome! I was thinking about writing a follow up with Clarke dealing with his death "The Five Times Clarke Cried Over Bellamy Blake (and the One Time She Didn't)". We'll see if that actually happens.)