Follow the Leader

Author's Note: Hey guys, I know it's been forever and I'm so sorry! Please enjoy and don't hate me for taking forever. I'm hoping to get the next chapter out real soon!

Disclaimer: I do not own any part of The 100.

Chapter Three

It felt like hours that Bellamy and Clarke stayed locked in each other's embrace and it still wasn't long enough for him. But he had to say something. "You know this isn't healthy, right?" he teased and was surprised it had the desired effect.

Clarke managed a small laugh before gently pulling away. "Trust me, I know." She picked up the basket of gathered fruits from where Bellamy had set it down and moved it to one of the few unoccupied spaces on the metal shelves. "This isn't exactly what I set out to do when I left." She began pulling different items from the various shelves and piling it up on a small table. She began what looked like meal prep, which seemed like an excuse to keep her hands busy and her mind distant as they spoke. "When I got here, I couldn't get the blood stain to go away – it had soaked too deep into the cement for too long. And so I started to draw to mask the stain. That's what I used to do on the ark. I was in isolation for so long that I would draw to escape. Funny enough, I would draw the Ground—all of the beautiful things I'd seen of it in books."

Bellamy listened intently as he slowly wandered around the room, taking a closer look at each individual drawing. "But I can't seem to draw the beautiful things anymore. Only the bad."

"Then why draw at all?" he asked.

She paused a moment, trying to find the words to explain. "It helps. For a moment. Like therapy, I guess. When I get it down on paper, for a small amount of time I don't have to think about it or be burdened by it. I can get it out of my head."

Bellamy narrowed his eyes. "At least until you surround yourself with the drawings and force yourself to look at them every day."

"I deserve to look at them. To look at them and remember everything that's happened."

Bellamy shook his head and started pulling the paper drawings off the wall. Clarke immediately stopped what she was doing to stop him. "Bellamy, leave them!"

"No!" he growled and held the papers behind his back and out of her reach. "You don't deserve this, Clarke! You don't deserve to be tortured by anyone, not even by yourself."

"Bellamy, just give them back," she said calmly, yet firmly.

"You don't need these, Clarke. Surrounding yourself with all of the terrible shit we've been through will keep you stuck and you'll never move on. You can't hate yourself so much that you would keep putting yourself through this."

"Maybe I do," she replied with a renewed fire in her eyes.

He turned away from her and quickly went back to remove as many drawings from the wall as he could. He wanted to tear them to pieces, but he didn't think she would forgive him for that any time soon and he wanted her to be the one to choose to move forward. He couldn't force her into it. "If you hate yourself, you must hate me too."

"What?"

"I've done ten times the destruction you have. The culling was my fault for destroying the radio to the ark and I pulled the lever at Mount Weather right there with you. So if you hate yourself for making that decision then you must hate me even more." He kept moving, but he could barely breathe as he waited for her to speak. He held up one of the drawings of his hand gripping hers on the lever.

"I've never hated you, Bellamy," she told him. He raised an eyebrow, clearly skeptical about how she felt about him when they first met. "Really. I don't hate you."

"Then you need to stop hating yourself. We would all be dead by now if it wasn't for you. The grounder would have slaughtered our entire camp a long time ago and those left on the ark would have known the ground was survivable—I wouldn't have let them know it." He sighed and sat done on one of the beds, gesturing for her to sit next to him. She reluctantly followed his lead. "I was being selfish when I destroyed that radio and it cost good people their lives, but you forgave me." He put his hand on hers and squeezed. Normally he wasn't so casual about touching her, but he had missed having her near him for so long that he didn't care to keep his distance. "You weren't being selfish when you were trying to save our people so you need to forgive yourself. You're too important to allow to just wallow away in self-hate."

She looked up at him. "Of all people, you should know that it's not easy to forgive yourself."

He nodded. "You're right. It's not easy, but I've never known someone who takes on a challenge as fearlessly as you."

"How did you forgive yourself?" she asked.

He took his time to answer, wanting to be honest without discouraging her. "I haven't fully. But I try and move forward every day, remembering everything that's happened and trying to learn from the past instead of dwelling on it."

"I don't know how to do that."

"I won't give your orders, but if I were you I'd start by leaving this place. Come back to Camp Jaha with me and help me make up for the lives that we were force to take by fighting for the ones that you saved."

She pulled her hand out from under his and stood up. "I'm not sure I can do that."

Bellamy nodded. "Then you and I are going to get very cozy here because I'm not going back without you."

Clarke sighed. "I'm not making any decisions right now," she announced and then returned to her food prep station.

Bellamy smiled. He took her response as encouragement. He had expected her to outright refuse his request to return with him. He had to restrain himself from showing her how thrilled he was by her words.

"I'm not asking you to make any decisions right now." He stood up and headed for the bunker entrance. "But I do have an idea that might be a good first step to help you move on. You willing to give it a shot?"

She looked up from what she was doing to study his face. Whatever she saw there seemed to be good enough. "Yea."

"Okay, meet me outside when you're finished," he gestured to the food in front of her. "Just shout out if you need my help."

"I won't need it," she called after him.

He rolled his eyes and left the room. A small part of him thought she might rush to close the door and lock it with him outside. He waited a moment just outside the door, his heart throbbing in his ears. But the door never moved and he had some hope that she was done locking everyone out of her life.

When Clarke carried out a couple of plates of food less than ten minutes later, the sun was already well on its way to setting. That wasn't going to be a problem though because Bellamy had gone about setting up a small bonfire at the center of the shallow clearing. He was throwing on another branch when she approached.

"Are you burning all my firewood?"

Bellamy spun around quickly toward the sound of her voice. He ran his hand through his hair, showing off the soot covering his toned forearm. He cringed. "I'll go out and get you more tomorrow."

"And you're not worried that the fire's going to attract any unwanted attention?"

He sighed. "I'm pretty sure the grounders are focused elsewhere and I'll put it out when we're done."

Clarke hesitated like she wanted to say something—to probe him for more information on what he knew about the grounders, but she stopped herself. Instead she handed him one of the plates and said, "here." before sitting on one of the two rocks Bellamy had dragged next to the fire.

He took it gratefully and sat beside her, quickly making work of the mix of freshly picked fruits and berries and some sparse rations she must have had stored in the bunker. He hadn't realized how hungry he had gotten.

She ate slowly as she watched him devour his meal. It felt strange to eat with just the two of them. They sat together next to a warm fire as the sun set in silence. It was strange, but it felt good to share her isolation with him.

"So what are we doing out here? I'm guessing you didn't set up a bonfire at sunset for the romance of it all," she said and set down her still half-full plate on the ground. She'd get back to it later, but for now her curiosity had gotten the best of her.

"No, it's not for romance, it's for catharsis," Bellamy answered. He reached behind him to scoop up the pile of her drawings that he had held in place by using a smaller rock as a paperweight. "I think you and I should take one last look at the memories that you've drawn here and start to let them go, one by one, by letting them burn."

"Burning them is not going to make me forget anything," she protested.

"I just want you to leave some of it behind you."

She stared into the fire, mesmerized by the sound of the flames snapping and sizzling as they licked the firewood. And Bellamy held back, waiting for some cue that she agreed. He got that when she nodded.

He sat down next to her beside the fire, closer then he intended as his knee naturally brushed against hers when he settled in. He didn't bother to move it away. "Ready?"

"Hand 'em over," she replied and he did just that.

He watched the fire as she slowly fingered through the drawings, wanting to give her some privacy while still being there for support.

It had been several minutes without a word and none of the drawings had become kindling just yet. When she broke the silence, she spoke so softly that Bellamy thought he had imagined it.

"Does he hate me?" she had asked.

Bellamy turned his head to ask her 'who' when he caught site of the picture in her hand. It was one of Jasper. His face was gaunter than the real man and he had a haunted look in his eye. This wasn't the friendly chemist from their early days on the ground. This was the devastated kid they had brought home from Mount Weather.

"He's…I don't know. He's angry still, but not just at you. He's angry at the world. And he still has this air of grief about him no matter what he's doing. But I don't think he hates you."

"I don't believe you," told him. "From the way he looked at me when we last saw each other, he must hate me."

"You're not giving him enough credit. Jasper is a smart man. A part of him knows that he and Maya were never going to end well—they couldn't have. But he thought he was in love and his feelings may still be clouding the truth for now."

"Thought?" she asked, intrigued by his choice of words. "You don't think he was really in love?"

Bellamy ran another hand through his hair as he always did when he was trying to think. He was trying harder than ever not to say the wrong thing, but it didn't seem to matter. He shrugged. "Maybe it's not my place to say this, but yea. I mean he barely knew her. Do I believe he had feelings for her? Absolutely. But I think love is a very strong word."

"Maybe he knew her better than you think," she suggested.

Bellamy laughed a little. "Honestly, how well do any of us know each other? So much has happened that it seems like a lifetime, but it hasn't been that long."

Clarke narrowed her eyes. "So are you saying that I didn't love Finn?"

"Did you?" he asked instead of answering her question. He was uncomfortable with how much he needed to know her answer.

"I don't know," she confessed. "Maybe I could have if we had more time. I can't even remember how I felt about him anymore because every time I think about him all I feel is guilt."

He wanted to put his arm around her and pull her close to him. Wanted to do something to take away her guilt, but he knew it wouldn't help. He couldn't bring Finn back. All he could do was walk the thin line of trying not to make thing worse. "If you want an outside opinion, it was clear to me that you both felt something for each other. Love or not, I know that you truly cared about him."

"Maybe down here that's all that matters." She pulled the picture of Jasper from the pile and pushed it into the flames, letting it crackle and dissolve away into nothing. "We may not have the time to truly love each other the way we used to—to wait for it to build—but we have to cherish whatever little time we may have with each other because our lives seem to go by a lot faster on the ground than they did in the sky."

"You're probably right," he murmured. He let his eyes fully take in the woman beside him. The fire warmed her skin and made her hair shimmer with gold. Her smooth cheeks were flush from the flames, matching the curve of her perfectly pink lips. And then there were those shimmering blue eyes that she directed at him with a spark that he hadn't seen in quite some time.

"Did you just willingly admit that I'm right?" she teased.

He gave her a half-smile. "Maybe."

"I never thought I'd see the day."

"Don't get used to it."

The edge of her lips started to curve upward in a smile, but didn't quite make it all the way when she looked back down at her lap at the picture that now lay on top of the pile. It was the picture of Lexa leaving with her people.

"Have you seen her?" Bellamy asked.

Clarke shook her head. "I considered tracking her down once I left Camp Jaha. I wanted to confront her about how she could betray me…" she trailed off.

"But?" he pressed her to open up more.

"But I know how. She was protecting her people. You and I might have done the same."

Bellamy disagreed. He didn't think Clarke would have betrayed her ally like that. She would have found another way, but he wasn't going to argue with her. She wouldn't see it his way. "Does that mean you forgive her?"

"No, understanding why she betrayed us doesn't change the fact that she did it. I really thought she felt something for me and yet she turned her back on me. Even if one day, I could forgive her, I'll never trust her again."

He scoffed a little. "Do you trust anyone?"

"I trust you," she responded without thinking, but she knew it was true. Somehow the person that she trusted more than anyone in the world was Bellamy Blake.

Bellamy didn't know how to respond so he didn't. He was flattered and honored and surprised. And he trusted her too, but she had to already know that.

Instead, he watched as she fed the fire with more drawings. She started with all of Lexa's and even surrendered a few of Jasper and Maya and Finn to the flames.

Finally, she took a deep breath, inhaling the acrid smoke. Tears stung her eyes—a mix of her emotions and the heat overwhelming her face. She was done looking through each drawing—done surrounding herself with the frozen moments of her tragedies. She flung the remaining papers into the fire and watched them get consumed until there was nothing left but embers.

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