Written for Amber's Dialogue Challenge ("You are beautiful.") and Sarah's 'Quotes I Love' Challenge ("The stars are filming us for no one." - Carol Ann Duffy), both at the 100 Fanfiction Challenges Forum. Come visit us!
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The strange glowing butterflies are back again, fluttering around Clarke as she lays on the ground. From her spot under a tree, Clarke sees the moon but the stars are what mesmerise her.
"What are you doing?" Bellamy asks suddenly, coming from the road to Arkadia. He's armed as always, even now that peace with the grounders has been reached thanks to their union against ALIE. "We are celebrating."
She huffs.
"The stars are filming us for no one tonight," she tells him, sitting up. In turn, Bellamy sits down. "These could be the last days we see the night sky and feel the air around us."
They are facing each other, and the moonlight makes Bellamy's face look younger than he is. She has never noticed the wrinkles around his eyes and in his forehead, but now she can't unsee them. Her hand is on his face before she knows it, and her fingers still stained with charcoal leave a trace under his eyes.
"You look beautiful," she tells him, mustering all the courage she can. For a moment she feels guilty, remembering Lexa and her skin singing under Clarke's fingers. Bellamy's skin doesn't sing; it glows under her touch as if she were the moon and he was the Earth.
"I'm the one supposed to say those things to you, Princess," he smiles and she swats his shoulder lightly.
"Down here there are no princes and princesses, Bellamy."
"What? Only Hedas?"
She smiles in spite of the memories the word brings. Bellamy, reading between the lines, puts a hand under her chin and lifts her face.
"Don't be sad," he says. "She knew what she was doing, Clarke. With you, and in the war."
"It's not that," she tells him, noticing the way his shapely lips form a thin line. "I miss Lexa. That's all."
"It's understandable," he says, and Clarke guesses he misses Gina. "You had almost no time at all with her. There are endless possibilities never explored. Dreams of what could be."
He's right. Clarke looks up at the sky again. Passing clouds hide the moon, leaving them in temporal darkness.
"Do you remember how it was at the Ark? We would look down to the Earth and see the clouds covering some part of the planet."
"I never had time for that," he says. "Not everyone had time to spare, Princess."
"Well, I remember. I used to think we would never see it from the other side. But now we're here and we'll probably die in the next few weeks."
Bellamy laughs as his hand takes Clarke's. His hands are cold but she likes the sensation against her skin.
"I wouldn't have known you at the Ark," he whispers. She notices how his eyes follow her lips and only occasionally steal glances at her own eyes. "And we would have never felt this."
He doesn't need to clarify. Earth is, in all truth, the better option.
"Even in death, Earth is wonderful."
He chuckles. "Let's go back to Arkadia."