Till now, I always got by on my own,
I never really cared until I met you.
Celine Dion
It had been said once that Aphrodite, Greek Goddess of Love, had the most unimaginably beautiful face, shifting in appearance to suit the desires of any man before her. It was told that her aura alone made men gravitate towards her as naturally as water over a fall-only, Clarke thought, to be plummeted to their demise. Well, and if Bellamy was Aphrodite in this little analogy, she was certainly no conquest to be had. In the stolen moments they'd had, she was easily able to overwhelm the devotion threatening to spill from her mouth with hot tongues and sharp nails through dark hair. And so she'd turned to him yesterday, this man, this terrifying boy whom she couldn't lose but had to give up and told him that it'd be worth the risk.
Worth the risk. Worth the risk to dive into that hell of a bunker and not know if he'd ever return to her. Worth the risk of having not one, but two of the boys she loves (loved) spill their blood on her hands-Finn's was already staining her wrists and creeping its way up her arms each night in her dreams, if Bellamy were to not return-
"Clarke!" Someone calls from up ahead, where they're following a slower route to get as close to Mount Weather as possible. And the questions come. Thick and fast from all around her, from the adults as well as the kids she'd landed with who were still here; thank the gods, because she was beginning to forget why she had to be so cold in the first place. These lives, Clarke. Each one you cling to, each one you love, will be another knife in the gut when they're poisoned or shot. Love is Weakness. Lexa's voice echoed in her head with each step she took.
Step. Weakness. Step. Weakness. Step. Weakness.
This nightmare, this unimaginable reality tears her with each second, but in the time between, she somehow manages to catch each piece of her threatening to fall down and swallow it whole, unbalanced between the cold indifference that had settled into her and the blazing needles in her feet, begging her with every breath to run for Bellamy. But she trudges on, because she must, because she's a leader now, and a murderer and a traitor to Finn and all that needs to be buried beneath something.
The infiltration has gone spectacularly badly. If it weren't for Bellamy's steel will in the middle of the confusion, he didn't know how things would've turned out; 7 of them have been caught in the crossfire as it is, and by the time he's finished feeling sick about the grounders and friends locked in cages, he's up on the surface again. The cold metal of the wheel is shocking in his hands as he goes to open it, and for a moment he reaches back, shutting his eyes and praying that he'll either never see Clarke again or that she's the first face he sees when he opens the door. People are nervous behind him, restless. He forgets they haven't seen the adults yet, and understands. He opens the door.
As it turns out, neither of his wishes come true, as Clarke is mysteriously absent from the welcome ceremony with her mom simply giving him a worried look when he asks and telling him she went out to hunt for the arrival. That doesn't sound like her, missing her friends return, but then again, she hasn't been herself lately and Bellamy swallows and nods, clutching Octavia's back as she runs up to his for a hug.
"I knew it, Bel, I knew you'd make it," she whispers into his shoulder, and his heartache, if anything, deepens.
"Thanks, O." He replies, letting her go and looking around the makeshift camp they'd been led to not far away from the open hatch to Mount Weather. Octavia looks up at him again, this time with a worry crease in her forehead. But the words between them remain unsaid, and Bellamy squeezes her arm one last time before sorting out reports and getting back to his tent.
It's not that Clarke doesn't want to see him, she absolutely does, but there are a thousand ways the thing could go and none of them she wants to play out. Because, and really, it came down to this: either she reconciles with him, apologizes, let's the weakness through like water through a crack in a damn, or she shuns him coldly, keeps her mind blank and loses the one person on this godforsaken earth that means the most to her. Loses him for good, because god knows he's not the type to wait around for any girl, even one as strong minded as her. Especially one as strong minded as her.
And yet, she finds herself wondering, picking at the earth beneath her feet, there's something about him, something she knows. Perhaps the way, always in her peripheral, she can see his gaze, the way she knew he always had her back, always shifts closer, always would be a constant in her life. Perhaps it was his jaw, the way she saw it tick when someone threatened her; which, let's be honest, was a fair amount. And maybe, just maybe, it was those times, those seconds before they kissed, before she dragged his mouth to hers in order to drown the noise in her head, where he would simply hold her face and search her eyes, stroking his thumb over her cheek. Gentleness her mind supplies, compassion. Love.
Fear stirred in her like dust. That weakness she'd become to understand, slowly melting, breaking, and reforming into something less abstract, more solid. Taller, and more humane, until Bellamy stood in her mind's eye with his arms crossed across his chest as he leant against a doorway or a tree shifting into something else, some memory of him fighting and shouting and protecting, laughing and smiling and bloodied, moving like a panther with no fear and no hesitation to save his sister, or her, or anyone of their friends.
Well, and that settled it. No matter her whirlwind mind, her foolish acceptance of Lexa's mantra-she'd return to camp to find her friends back, to heal the wounded, to give what little game she'd caught to the cooks, and to return to herself. To return to Bellamy. Because, after all, Bellamy loved and Bellamy fought and he was the strongest person she'd ever seen. She saw now, these two invaders were not joined by the hip, but rather completely separate entities. Love. Weakness. Strength. She picked the two she liked the most, and headed back to camp with a lighter feeling in her chest than she could ever remember having.
Aaaaah ok thanks so much for all the positive feedback, I decided to write another chapter and it will be a three-shot (that's a thing, right?) with the next one being the reunion, hopefully will get it up by tomorrow! Review if you like, thanks guys and stay tuned!
