A/N: *scuttles over, brandishing the new chapter*
*mutters "Happy New Year"*
*scampers away, leaving the chapter by your cup of coffee*
xx-Kitten.
Ice Heart
By Kittenshift17
Chapter One
"You can't just leave," Bellamy told her quietly as the stood outside the gates of Camp Jaha, watching their friends be reunited with the remaining forty-two and with family they hadn't seen since they'd been strapped into the drop-ship and sent back to the Earth's surface to die.
Clarke was trembling where she stood, unable to forget the horror she'd caused and the mass execution she'd performed.
"I can't stay, Bellamy," Clarke argued softly. "I can't… not this time."
"We did what we did to save our friends, Clarke," Bellamy said, forgoing the nickname he'd given her in some indication of how serious all of this was.
"We executed three hundred innocent people, Bellamy," Clarke argued. "Some of them were just children. Little kids, old people, people who'd never personally done anything to hurt us or any of our people."
"You're wrong," Bellamy said, shaking his head quietly. "Maya said that everyone in that Mountain knew what they'd been doing to Grounders for the past century – both in bleeding them in the harvest room, and in the tunnels underneath with the Reapers. She said that everyone knew but nobody talked about it and that they learned from a young age not to ask questions."
"They found a way to survive, Bellamy," Clarke argued. "Are we really any different? They killed five of our friends in there, yes, in pursuit of survival for their people. To ensure the survival of ours, you and I just murdered three hundred and eighty of them! Are we really so different?"
"Yes," Bellamy argued, stepping closer to her and staring into her eyes seriously. "We're different because we made sure to make it quick. We didn't let them suffer in cages. We didn't bleed them dry. We didn't keep them on hand like self-replenishing medicine sacks, Clarke."
"They'd have died out years ago without the transfusions of Grounder blood," Clarke argued.
"Then they should've died!" Bellamy growled. "Even before the bombs a hundred years ago, the earth operated under a law of the jungle, survival of the fittest mentality. Their bodies were very far from the fittest. They were essentially leeches living off the life-blood of others. I saw what they did to those Grounders, Clarke. They bled me. If Maya hadn't come to investigate why my blood healed one of those Mountain Men even faster than Grounder blood did, I'd still be sitting in one of those cages alongside Echo and the others, and all of our people would be dead thanks to their excessive harvest of bone marrow."
"We could have donated to them," Clarke argued. "If everyone from the Ark donated once, they'd all have been able to live. Maya would've lived. Some of those people helped us, Bellamy, but we killed them, too."
"Those who helped us had been refusing transfusions from the Grounders for decades, Clarke. They'd never have accept the donations."
"They might've, if it was freely given," she said, running a hand through her hair.
"And who would've given it to them, Princess?" Bellamy asked. "They tortured Lincoln, addicted him to the red, and turned him into a Reaper. Do you think Octavia would've jumped at the chance to help the people who'd done that to him? They killed Fox and the others. Did you see Jasper and Monty jumping at the chance to donate their marrow for their captors? Maya and those who helped us would've been last on the recipient list with Cage running things. He'd have murdered your mother on that table right then and there if we hadn't pulled that lever, Clarke. It was kill or be killed, and we were the ones built to survive."
Clarke shook her head slowly from side to side, unable to get past the guilt festering in her soul over what she'd done. She couldn't rejoin her mother and her friends in Camp Jaha. Not when she was a murderer – an executioner of the innocent. Every life she'd taken, until today, had been taken in a kill or be killed scenario, and while she'd felt regret, she'd reconciled herself to the death of those who'd attacked her. Even when she'd been part of the order to roast three hundred Grounders attacking the Drop Ship – what seemed like so very long ago, now – she'd been able to tell herself that they'd attacked her and her people.
She supposed the same was true for the Mountain Men, but she'd briefly been their prisoner. She knew that many of them were nice, desperate people. They had art and culture and more to their lives than the wretched, ceaseless drive to survive just one more night.
"Bellamy, we killed kids," Clarke whispered brokenly, tears overflowing her eyes to trickle down her cheeks.
"I know," Bellamy nodded. "But that's on Cage, Princess. He had the chance to call off the harvest and instead of bargaining, he strapped your mother to that table and started to suck her dry. Those kids were caught in the crossfire, but they'd one day have grown up to be more soldiers like Emmerson – capturing Grounders, harvesting some and turning others into Reapers."
"They were just little kids," Clarke said. "We could've…. With donations, they'd have survived outside. We could've taught them a better way…"
Bellamy emitted a low, pained laugh that caught Clarke's attention and she lifted her stinging eyes to his face, frowning at him worriedly.
"Whose way, Princess?" he challenged quietly. "Our way? The way of the Skaikru? We float first-time offenders for doing anything that might bring them happiness if it deviates, even a little, from Arkadian law. We punish people without mercy for endangering the survival of the group as a whole – always at the expense of individual freedom. Even here on the ground, where oxygen and food are abundant, within the walls of this camp, we punish those who dare to act selfishly. Your own mother received ten lashes with the electric baton for trying to find you and sending us out after you when we were separated, Clarke. Would you have taught those kids that way of living? Between obedience or death, I think I'd prefer death."
Clarke frowned into his face for a long moment, noticing the blood from recent wounds, and the dark circles under his eyes thanks to his being bled, and his tireless fight to free their friends from Mount Weather. She raised her eyebrows slowly before she looked beyond him toward their friends where they continued reuniting – the Delinquents embracing and exclaiming joyously to be amongst friends, once more. Family, she realized idly. They were a family, and even now, they stood somewhat separately from many of the others who'd remained on the Ark.
They'd been segregated so long – first in lock-up whilst on the Ark, and then surviving on Earth while their families remained on the Ark – that they truly were a different people now.
"What are you saying?" Clarke asked Bellamy quietly, not sure she was ready to even think about anything else, but knowing that if she could hide from the guilt of her crimes for a bit longer, her mind was going to latch onto anything that could distract her.
"We're not like them anymore, Princess," Bellamy whispered softly, shooting a look over his shoulder. "We've tasted freedom and gluttony and all those other things they tried to squash out of us on the Ark. We can't live like them anymore."
"They wouldn't have murdered innocent children," Clarke said weakly, thinking that maybe if they'd done a better job of squashing the defiance out of her, she wouldn't have murdered almost four hundred people.
"Yes, they would," Bellamy replied sternly. "They already tried. They sent the 100 down to Earth with no guarantee that it was habitable, Clarke. They sent you, and me, and Octavia, and Finn and Wells, and all the rest of us down here fearing that we'd have perished in just the same way those Mountain Men died, today. They were willing to sacrifice all of us to that fate for the good of the Sky people."
"And if we all return to a camp where Marcus or my mother are Chancellor, we relegate our friends back to the criminal teenagers they imagine us all to be," Clarke finished for him, shaking her head slowly and squeezing her eyes closed. "What are we supposed to do, Bellamy? I… I can't… I need…"
Bellamy's brow furrowed at the way she trailed off before he realized that she meant she couldn't face making decisions for them all so soon when there were some, even among the rescued forty-two, who would resent them both for pulling that lever. Jasper, for example, was hardly taking Maya's untimely death well after all she'd done to help them and after he'd gone and fallen in love with her, despite her weaknesses.
"Let's take a walk," he suggested quietly, turning his back on the camp and throwing his arm around Clarke's shoulders, beginning to steer her away from camp and from the responsibilities that loomed there the moment they both stepped inside. "We both need to get cleaned up."
Clarke didn't bother asking where he was taking her as they walked away, ignoring a questioning call from Monty about where they were going. They walked until they reached the tree line without looking back, and when they disappeared into the trees, no one followed them.
"Where?" Clarke asked tiredly after several minutes of walking, simply allowing him to lead the way, trusting Bellamy to guide her.
"I know a place," Bellamy said quietly, leading her toward a secluded, shallow pond where the leech monster couldn't venture and where they could bathe the blood and the stench of the mountain and the trek home from their skin.
Clarke didn't even bother taking her clothes off when they reached it, wading out into the shallow pool and submerging her body completely. There was a part of her – the brittle, fractured part that was aching with guilt – that wanted to stay under the water until she drowned, but she knew that neither her survival instinct, nor Bellamy, would let her. When she came up for air, she found that Bellamy had copied her, still dressed and making use of the water to wash both his clothes and his body free of blood and sweat and the grime of travelling so far.
Sighing, and resigning herself to continued living, Clarke copied him, using riverbed sand as an exfoliant for her clothes until they were clean before wading back out of the water and stripping them all off, one at a time. She was much too tired and too broken for modesty, and Bellamy obviously felt the same when he copied her, both of them stripping off and hanging their clothing over the branches of nearby trees and draping them over rocks to dry in the midday sun.
Naked, Clarke returned to the water, using the sand to scrub her skin until she felt raw. She was unaware of the damage she was causing herself or the sobs she emitted until Bellamy's hand closed gently over her wrist. Freezing, Clarke lifted her swollen eyes to his face and found him looking back at her with such guilt and pain and horror that it transformed his handsome face into a burning mask. She knew in that moment that she wasn't the only one struggling with what they'd done inside Mount Weather. Searching his face, she knew he was just as broken as she was and without a second thought, she closed the distance between them, crashing her lips against his for a desperate kiss.
She hadn't kissed him since that day in the forest months ago when Dax had attacked them. There hadn't been time, and neither had had the need for the other quiet so desperately since then. Tangling her fingers into his damp dark hair, Clarke pressed herself to Bellamy, grateful when he pulled her into his lap without hesitation and thrilled for the distraction as he kissed her back. Things had changed between them since the last time they'd done this. Back then they'd been tentative allies only when being such was for the good of their people, and enemies simply using each other for release on the floor of the forest.
When Bellamy slid his hands up the length of her back, his arms caging her against his chest and holding her snugly as he kissed her dizzyingly, she knew that no small part of this was the relief that the other had survived. She cared about Bellamy more than she could truly fathom, and there was a part of her, she was sure, that loved him. Perhaps not romantically, as she'd loved Finn, but certainly a part that would do more than kill an entire civilization of people if they tried to take him away from her.
Kissing him desperately, Clarke tangled her tongue with Bellamy's and she pressed her body needily against his. This time there were no clothes impeding her ability to touch him and feel the naked heat of his body pressed against every inch of her own. Rolling her hips against his growing desire, Clarke made sure he knew exactly what she wanted from him.
Bellamy obliged her.
She lifted off him slightly in the shallows, both of them too impatient and too desperate for foreplay, and when he'd aligned their bodies she slid back into his lap as deeply as she could. A low moan of agonized delight tore from her lips and Clarke's head dropped back as their kiss broke with the joining of the bodies. She rolled her hips slowly, her hands gripping his strong shoulders, her nails digging in ever so slightly. Bellamy's hands found their way to her hips and Clarke's breath caught when he lifted her off him before pulling her back down violently, bucking his hips up in a hard thrust.
Her breath came in sharp gasps as they worked themselves and each other into a frenzy, and there in his arms Clarke found that same sense of peace and connection and warmth and hope that she'd discovered with him on the floor of the forest so many moons ago. She could feel the tension coiling low in her abdomen and curling in the tips of her toes and she wanted it so bad, she thought she might scream. Rocking her hips faster, rolling them harder, impaling herself upon him again and again and again, Clarke chased the feeling of euphoria, determined to catch it and saturate herself in its warmth.
"Come on, Princess," Bellamy bit out from between gritted teeth as he bucked his hips and pulled her into every brutal thrust. "Scream for me. Let it all go."
Clarke's fingers tangled in his hair, pulling it hard enough to tip his head back and when she opened her eyes, she found his dark brown eyes fixed upon her intently. His face was twisted up with effort and desperation, wanting so badly to surround himself in the same peaceful release that she so fervently chased, and Clarke's stomach clenched, drawing a groan from his lips at the sensation of being so tightly squeezed.
Lowering her lips to Bellamy's, she stole a frantic kiss, her tongue diving to stroke against his and Bellamy's grip on her hips tightened to bruising, pulling her down into every upward thrust even harder and shifting the angle their bodies met just ever so slightly. Clarke broke their kiss when the new sensation shocked through her, her head tipping back with the ecstasy of the moment and without meaning to, she uttered a soft shriek of completion as that coil of pleasure within her snapped free, flooding her system with the euphoria she'd tried so hard to capture.
"Thank God," Bellamy groaned as she splintered into a thousand peaceful pieces. He manipulated her body for his own needs then, rocking into her deeper, grinding into her like he wanted to find out just how deeply he could plant himself inside of her before he groaned softly as he found his own release.
Clarke panted against his shoulder as the high began to ebb, her fingers tracing nonsensical patterns over the warm skin of his back and her cheek resting against the curve when his shoulder met his neck. Bellamy slowly curled his arms around her waist until he was cuddling her close and for just a few minutes, Clarke let him hold her and held him in return, allowing the sense of closeness and comfort to wiggle it's way beneath her skin and dislodge just a smidgeon of the guilt over everything she'd done in the lead-up to freeing their friends from the grasp of the Mountain Men.
In Bellamy's arms, the betrayal she'd committed, leaving Lincoln, Octavia, her mother and Kane in the midst of the bomb sight felt distant. The blood of children and innocents that stained her hands began to fade. The unusual relationship she had with Lexa and the betrayal the bitch had offered her in return for her own people – even after forcing her to keep her knowledge of the bomb to herself – stung just a little bit less.
Clarke wondered what would happen between her and Bellamy when he learned that Octavia had been there, and that Clarke had left the girl to die before running off into the woods with Lexa like a coward. She wondered if Octavia and her mother would ever forgive her for trying to put the good of the many before the lives of the few. She wondered if there might ever be a day when she might choose, instead, to sacrifice herself for the sake of others. She wondered if those she led in this wretched new world would survive without her if she were to run.
She wanted to run, even though she knew she had nowhere to run to. She wanted to be free, to live without judgement and act without guilt, and to stop having to spend every minute fighting. Maybe that's why she kept finding herself having sex with Bellamy. He carried as many burdens as she did. He had been born for gentle things and had a love of history and knowledge and had only ever wanted what was best for his sister. Yet, he had traded it all for this wretched life of fighting and pioneering where others were too unsure of how to proceed. He had sacrificed himself to torture to get inside Mount Weather, and he had endured it all and killed any who stood in the way of his goal to free their people. He had come through for them all, getting all the Grounders and the remaining members of the 100 from inside that wretched place at the expense of his own conscience and paid for with his own suffering.
"Clarke?" Bellamy asked quietly, his voice hoarse in the aftermath of their exertions.
"Hmmm?" Clarke hummed, not sure she was ready to talk yet, but beginning to see that no matter how badly she wanted to run, she wouldn't be able to.
It wouldn't be fair on her friends, and it wouldn't be fair to Bellamy. He had suffered as much as she had – more, really, she imagined. She might have to live with guilt, but he'd had to endure torture. Perhaps that was why he was better able to reconcile pulling that lever and as she sat there in his lap, curled around him like boa constricting that which brought it life, Clarke vowed that in future she would not be the one sitting behind the lines and making choices for the many without dirtying her hands and enduring that pain alongside him. She couldn't. It was easier to reconcile heinous acts when they were committed in anger, she had learned, though she'd also found when hunting down that sniper that exacting revenge brought her no peace.
"We can't go back," Bellamy said softly against her shoulder.
"To Camp Jaha?" Clarke guessed, not yet willing to release her hold on him even though there were important matters to discuss and even though they were so very vulnerable sitting there naked in the stream without so much as a weapon within reach.
"Or to the Drop-Ship," Bellamy said quietly. "The laws that Marcus and Abby uphold and the way they conduct themselves won't work for us, and it's not working for the hundred."
"Where else would we go?" she asked, trailing the tip of her nose against the curve of his neck and reveling in the warmth of his skin. "We're not welcome among most of the Grounders without Lexa's insistence, and she betrayed me outside the Mountain."
"She took her people and ran. We'd have done the same," Bellamy said, though he didn't sound happy in the knowledge.
"I wouldn't have," Clarke argued. "I was a fool, and actually believed that there might be a truce and an alliance between us and the Grounders. I believed that we might manage to find some kind of peace with them, and had we been offered our people while they continued holding the Grounders, I'd have stood firm and led our warriors into battle alongside the twelve clans to free them all."
"You'd have died," Bellamy told her.
Clarke laughed bitterly.
"Perhaps, but I'd have died with a little honor and with the knowledge that my pledge meant something to me," she said quietly.
"There is no honor to be had on the ground, Princess," Bellamy laughed darkly. "Haven't you figured that out, by now? The Grounders says that 'blood must have blood', and they're right. That is the only honor to be found down here, and it is an honor paid to the dead. Honor is not for the living down here, it's just one more hang-up in the way of survival."
"You're saying you'd have left all those Grounders there if you and our friends had been freed while they remained in their cages?" Clarke asked, pulling back a little until she was able to meet his gaze.
"I'd have left them all there, were it not for the enormous army of Grounders who'd have slayed us all as we tried to walk away," Bellamy replied, frowning. "Lexa had the luxury of commanding that army, and against them, we'd have been doomed, even with our guns. I'd have helped free their people for the sake of our survival, not for honor or loyalty to the Commander or the twelve clans."
His eyes scanned her face carefully as he spoke, and Clarke could tell that he saw right through her righteousness to the heart of her anger over the issue. She might've morally been against leaving those people there but might've done so if not for the threat of the army and if not for the budding feelings she nursed for the Commander of the twelve clans.
"You're attracted to her," Bellamy accused quietly, reading her face as if it were an open book.
"I'm not," Clarke denied, but from the look on Bellamy's face, they both knew she was lying.
"You shouldn't be," Bellamy said. "Don't forget that she was the one who called for Finn's death, Clarke. If she could walk off that mountain with her people – ignoring the call that blood must have blood for all those live lost, and all the blood paid by those that were rescued – then she could've called off the witch-hunt for Finn's head. He only killed eighteen people. The Mountain Men killed thousands, and tortured even more into becoming Reapers, but she walked away like it meant nothing."
"The Trikru clan would've revolted if she hadn't exacted revenge against Finn on their behalf," Clarke argued. "The alliance of the twelve clans would've been obliterated."
"She manipulated your feelings and Finn's madness to get him out of the way so that she could have you, Princess," Bellamy argued hotly, delivering harsh truths that Clarke never wanted to hear. "Lexa does whatever she has to in order to get what she wants. Don't make the mistake of thinking she'd do anything for you that wouldn't benefit her, Clarke. She cost us Finn, and she left you on that mountainside to figure out a way to save our people all alone."
"She refused to sacrifice her people for the sake of forty-two of ours," Clarke argued.
"She used you," Bellamy said.
"You're using me, Bellamy," Clarke argued, squeezing her pelvic floor to remind him of the way his body was still so snugly joined with hers and the way they'd just used one another.
"I walked into that Mountain and let them torture me to free our friends," Bellamy argued angrily, his hands gripping her shoulders harshly as he glared into her face defiantly. "I have been right next to you since we landed on this God forsaken planet, leading the charge to ensure you and everyone else on the Drop Ship survived, Princess. I'd have found a way to help you free Finn, if you'd asked it of me, even if it had meant a war between Camp Jaha and the Grounders. I'd have pulled that fucking lever in Mount Weather all by myself if you hadn't had the stomach for it and if it'd have saved only your mother. I have walked through hellfire with you and for you a hundred times over. I'm the one who's got your back, Clarke. Not Lexa. Not Raven or Wick. Not your mom. Not Jasper or Monty or Harper. Not Octavia or Lincoln. Not Indra and the Trikru. Me! I would never use you for my own gains. Don't you dare say otherwise!"
"You used me in the forest after Dax," Clarke argued. "You used me just now."
Bellamy's laugh, when it came, was low and mean but it rang with a hollow sort of ache that struck at parts of her she hadn't realised even existed. Parts that hadn't been hardened and toughened by the wars they waged for survival.
"Used you, huh?" he challenged, his voice losing its angry growl and lowering to something low and intimate and almost vulnerable. "That wasn't using you, Princess. That was a mutual exchange of sorely needed comfort – one you instigated, I might add. If I'd been using you, I'd have already shoved you off me and walked away."
Clarke blinked at him, frowning at the truth that rang in his voice as he said so. Bellamy, she'd come to learn, was a far more complicated man than he pretended to be and the way he said the words made her wonder just what this mess they kept finding themselves in meant for him. What did it mean for her, Clarke wondered idly, her eyes tracing over his face as she subconsciously began counting his freckles.
"Believe me, Princess," he went on quietly, releasing his tight grip on her shoulders to smooth his hands down her back to rest in the curve just above her rear. "Being used doesn't feel like this. It doesn't look like this. Those girls I fooled around with when we landed, fucking them just because I could, that was me using them. Raven taking out her heartache and frustration with Finn on me when she found out about you two and thought you'd run off together, that was me being used. When someone is using you, they don't even see you when they fuck you, Clarke. And trust me, I see you clear as day."
Clarke's mouth twisted, and her frown deepened as she lowered her eyes to his chest for a moment, noting the number of cuts, scrapes, and bruises that littered his flesh from their most recent fight for their lives.
"You slept with Raven?" she said without thinking, her lip curling back a little though she wasn't entirely sure how she felt about that notion other than to be kind of alarmed to know that she and Raven had shared two boys.
Bellamy laughed disbelieving.
"That's all you got out of what I just said?" he taunted just a little, an amused smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.
Clarke blushed, realizing that he probably thought she sounded jealous.
"Would you prefer I analyze what you mean about seeing me clear as day when you fuck me?" she challenged, and it was his turn to blush just a little.
"Analyze away," he invited, smirking though she could tell she'd thrown him for a loop. "I see you, Clarke Griffin. Every fucked up, guilt-ridden, callous, righteous, and broken bit of you. And I know you see every messed up bit of me too, even the vulnerable bits I've been pretending don't exist. Why do you think we keep ending up like this?"
He nodded between the two of them, their bodies still intimately entwined as they sat in the stream.
"Because we're cracked," Clarke sighed resignedly. "Fractured, bruised and broken. Because it's lonely to lead, even when we lead together. Because the decisions we have to make for the good of our people compromise our own morality. Because the human body craves release as a means of relieving stress, grief, guilt, anger, heartache, pain and just about every other emotion known to man."
Bellamy's lips twisted into something of a bitter smile at her frank acknowledgement.
"Well that, and because of the sexual tension that chokes the air between us every time you look at me," he smirked and though she knew he'd said it to relieve the somber mood bringing down their high, Clarke's cheeks cut crimson as she blushed at the very idea.
"You really have cracked if you think I'm actually lusting after you," she replied lightly, smiling in return and aware that in some parts of the world their exchange might be called flirtatious banter.
"Oh, yeah, sure," Bellamy rolled his eyes. "You're the one who keeps coming on to me, Princess."
Clarke opened her mouth to tell him that if that was true, it was only because he was conveniently as fucked up as she was, but she didn't think either of them could take that right at that moment.
"Maybe you're just easy," she teased instead, and Bellamy laughed at her suggestion.
"Maybe I am," he allowed, though he was shaking his head as he smiled.
Clarke's smile faded slowly the longer she looked at him, seeing everything he probably didn't want her to see; the good; the bad; the completely fucked up. She couldn't describe it, but as she looked at him it was like he was laid bare before her, and she felt just as bare before him. She knew he saw everything she hid from the others, and in the brief moments when they sought comfort from one another, Clarke found that that was okay.
"Maybe I need you, Bellamy," she whispered quietly, knowing there was really no doubt about it.
Bellamy didn't smile at her words, his dark eyes darting between each of her blue ones before he reached up and pressed a hard kiss to her lips. Clarke melted into the kiss, her fingers tangling into his damp hair all over again as her lips parted and her tongue darted out to meet his. He was never gentle with her, she realized, and there was a strange truth in that, too. There was something life affirming in the warmth of his lips and the brush of his tongue – something grounding in knowing from the heat of his skin and the tingle that ran through her blood at his touch, that they were alive and they'd survived and they would live to fight another day.
They kissed for several dizzying minutes, and when they broke apart, Bellamy laid his forehead against Clarke's, his eyes staring directly into her own.
"I need you, too," he admittedly hoarsely before he closed his eyes and they simply sat like that quietly.
In the silence that followed, both Clarke and Bellamy were unaware of the man watching from the trees and listening to every word, his ears having pricked at discussion about a divergence among the Sky People, and his curiosity caught by the Wanheda that went by the title, 'Princess'. His orders had been to capture her alive and bring her to the Commander if he wanted his banishment lifted, but Prince Roan of Azgeda was thinking that it might be better to wait and see just what this commander of death and her accomplice had planned.
NOTE: I wrote a novel! A real one. And I published it on Amazon. Check out my profile page, or google "PARANORMAL DIVISION: AWAKENING BY ELLIE J DUCK" for details and the link to purchase. xx