Follow the Leader


Author's Note: Hey guys, hope you enjoy!

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


Chapter 4

"That had to feel a little good," Bellamy said, waving his hand toward the fire that was now filled with the ashes of her drawings.

"I wouldn't go that far. I haven't felt good in a long time, but better is relative and appropriate."

He shrugged. "I'll take it." He looked back toward the bunker. "You'll need some new drawings to cover up the graffiti on those walls."

"I told you when I try to draw now, the bad comes out. I've tried to draw something else—something simple or beautiful—but it just gets taken over."

He considered that and held up a finger to make her wait before momentarily disappearing down the hatch. He returned minutes later with a kohl pencil and the worn down sketchpad she had found when she first arrived. She would be out of pages soon, which will be both a relief and a sorrow. He handed her the tools that she had come to love and hate equally. She wanted to love them again.

"What am I supposed to draw?"

He plopped back down beside her, but he turned his body so that he was fully facing her. "Draw me," he said simply.

She rolled her eyes. "I've drawn you before."

"Yea, I saw. You've drawn me in battle and in a cage waiting to be harvested. I'm asking you to draw me now. Draw me happy," he requested with a familiar smirk on his face.

"Have I ever seen you happy?"

He cast his eyes downward. "I was happy when I saw you again." He cleared his throat, uncomfortable with the way that sounded even if it was true. "I was happy—or umm…relieved—that you were alive."

"Right," she said. She smiled and brushed her hair out of her face as she started to sketch. "Is this the pose you want?" She gestured to the way he was hunched forward over his knees.

"Tell me how you want me," he suggested.

"Scoot back a little and stretch your legs in front of you." He followed her instructions. "Now prop yourself forward by resting on your hands behind you. And then keep looking at me like that, but tilt your head just slightly toward the firelight."

He complied with her gentle commands, happy for once not to shy away from staring at her.

It didn't take long for Bellamy to zone out completely. The scratching of her pencil to the paper and the warmth of the fire were hypnotic.

He almost jumped out of his skin when she spoke to him. "Tell me honestly: why did you come?"

He blinked hard, trying to wake his mind back up. She was still drawing as she had been before, flicking her eyes back and forth between him and the pad of paper.

"To bring you home," he replied as though it were ridiculously obvious.

"No, I mean, of all people—Octavia or Raven or my mom—why were you the one to come?"

He looked into the fire. "Why do you think?"

"Keep looking at me." She prodded by tapping her pencil against the paper to remind him that she was still drawing.

He leveled her with a glare, but returned to his pose. "You're a smart woman, Clarke. I'm sure you've figured out why it was me." That was the closest he had ever come to hinting at what he felt for her and it was more than he had ever intended to reveal.

"Tell me."

He suddenly realized how uncomfortable his pose had become. His muscles felt stiff and his left arm had started to fall asleep, but he knew he had to say something to Clarke to get her to stop asking her questions. It would only make her more curious if he got up to go to sleep now.

"A part of me thought you would come back to camp on your own at first. But the smarter part knew that you wouldn't." He shifted his balance a bit so that he was sitting up a little straighter and focused his eyes on a spot in the forest just beyond Clarke's head. "You being gone didn't prevent you from driving me crazy like always though. I was doing my best to help hold our people together, but I couldn't focus because I was so preoccupied wondering if you were alive and okay. I didn't know if you were near or far; dead or alive; or just falling apart. And it was killing me that I didn't know you were safe because I lo—…care about you." He finally met her eyes again to find that she had long since stopped drawing.

"Care about me how?"

Bellamy sighed and shook his head. "I don't think you're ready to hear it," he said. He'd had enough. He pushed himself off the ground and started to gather everything that needed to be brought back into the bunker.

"I might be ready." She hadn't yet followed his lead.

"Then I don't know if I'm ready to tell you," he admitted.

She got up then. "I've never known you to be scared to speak your mind." She assessed as she moved toward him.

"You haven't known me that long, princess."

"No," she said, trading him the completed drawing for the plates and utensils that he held. "But I do know you well." She pressed forward on her tiptoes to give him a goodnight kiss on the cheek and then climbed down into the bunker, leaving him to put out the fire.

He watched her go and then turned his gaze to the drawing in his hand. It wasn't the posed moment of him sitting by the fire that he expected to see. Instead it was a rough sketch of Bellamy with his arms around a girl who bore a striking resemblance to Clarke. He had a relieved grin on his face and was clutching her tightly to him. There was a gash on his face in the picture that didn't reflect his current appearance and he realized she had captured the moment when she had practically tackled him in greeting after she first escaped Mount Weather.

He had a fleeting worry that Clarke still hadn't been able to draw a happy moment and that unlike him; she might consider this a bad memory. After all, why draw this instead of just sketching what was in front of her tonight next to the fire? But he shook those doubts away. Even if it wasn't a great memory for her, on the scale of all of her other drawings, this was the happiest one that he had seen.

He carefully went about extinguishing the fire, making sure all the embers had cooled before he returned to the bunker. He pulled the hatch closed behind him and gave a silent thank you that Clarke had lit a candle for him. She was already asleep on the bottom bunk. He quietly stood the drawing up against the wall on the desk, blew out the candle and climbed into the top bunk. He fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the mattress.

What felt like only minutes, but was actually hours later, Bellamy woke with a jolt. He swung up ready to attack. He regretted not sleeping with a knife under his pillows as he usually did. He jumped down from the top bunk to the floor, trying to make out shapes in the dark. He thought he had woken up because he heard a scream and worried that Clarke had been attacked. His eyes found her in the dark, still in her bed. She was thrashing back and forth, breathing hard and speaking unintelligibly. Bellamy relaxed a bit, trying to calm his heartbeat. It was just a nightmare. He watched her struggle under her blanket, tossing and shaking with now soundless screams.

Bellamy wanted nothing more than to wake her and put an end to the dream, but he remembered what his mother had once told him when Octavia had a bad dream. She said that it was worse for the dreamer to be jolted awake during a nightmare because whatever they were struggling with would remain unresolved in their mind, lying in wait to return for the next bout of darkness when the dreamer was vulnerable to sleep. So no, he didn't want to wake her, but he wanted to help.

He took a deep breath, knowing that this could come back to bite him in the ass if she woke up, but he was going to do it anyway. He sat down at the edge of her bad, careful not to jostle her too much. Her back was to him, but he could feel her violently twitching accompanied by the occasional whimper. Bellamy reached across his body with his left hand to lightly stroke her hair. He placed his right hand on her arm and swirled his thumb lightly along her skin to soothe her. Her movements started to slow, but he could still feel the tension in her body as her mind struggled. He cleared his throat and then began to hum the melody of some lullaby his mother used to sing to him. His low baritone barely filled the small room, but it seemed to have the desired effect. Her whimpers quieted and the stiffness in her body eased ever so slightly.

When he was satisfied that the worst of her dream had passed, he started to ease his right hand from her arm, His song was about to come to its natural end and he planned to return to his own bunk, when he was startled to silence by her arm lifting and reaching for his. She grasped his hand and pulled him towards her, forcing him to either lie in the bed next to her or else strain his back and wake her up. He chose to lie down. His left hand remained stroking her hair and his right arm was draped around her waist, tucked under hers.

"Clarke?" he asked, his voice a barely audible whisper. He wasn't sure if she had woken up and grasped his hand with the need to feel safe after that dream or if she had just reached out for something to hold on to while she was still in the throes of sleep.

She didn't respond.

He spent several long minutes playing with her hair and listening to the sound of her breathing. He thought she might eventually shift enough that he could still extract himself without waking her up. Instead she leaned back into him as if gravitating toward the warmth of his body. He shivered, unsure of how to handle this kind of closeness to her.

He let his eyes fall closed and breathed a sigh of contentment before his mind gave in to sleep.


Clarke woke up slowly the next morning, which should have been her first clue that something was different today. It was the first time in as long as she could remember not being awoken by a nightmare with a scream on her lips and a pounding in her chest.

She blinked the sleep from her eyes and leaned back slightly to get her bearings. She felt something solid at her back and froze. She looked down at her hand to see it tangled in a larger one. From what she remembered, she had gone to bed alone. When had that changed?

She peeked over her shoulder, careful not to move the mattress too much. She should have startled at how close Bellamy's face rested next to hers on her pillow. It was almost buried in her hair. Instead she felt a comfort that she couldn't quite explain. She had the best sleep she'd had in a long time and she knew that Bellamy being in the bed with her for that was not a coincidence.

She felt a Bellamy rustling behind her as he slowly woke up. She felt his heart speed up where his chest pressed against her back. She felt him try to ease off the bed without disturbing her, but she didn't want him to sneak away without a word. She turned to face him, never letting go of his hand that was still tangled with hers. He froze, surprised by her sudden movement and by the fact that she hadn't shoved him to the floor.

He searched her face for some sign of what she was thinking, but came up short. "I'm sorry," he stammered and pulled his hand from hers. "You were having a nightmare and it was the only thing I could—."

"Shut up Bellamy." She cut off his explanation. She reached for him, tucking her head into his chest and wrapping an arm around his waist.

He hesitated before gently putting his arms around her in a hug.

"And thank you." She murmured into his chest.

He relished the feeling of holding her in his arms for a few minutes before speaking. "This was honestly the last way I expected you to react this morning."

"Would you rather I yelled at you?"

"No, but looking at our history it was the more likely reaction."

She laughed. "If you were the same person you were when we first got to the Ground then you would have gotten that reaction."

"Oh come on. I can't be that different."

She moved her head from his chest so that she could look at him and they locked eyes. "You are. We both are."

He ran his gaze over her face, taking in the steel blue of her eyes and the beauty mark above her lips. She looked almost exactly the same as she did the day they arrived on the dropship. Her cheeks were a little more gaunt and her eyes were a little more haunted, but she was still the strong, natural leader that she had been from day 1.

"I guess you're right," he sighed. "You used to be such a pain in my ass."

She smiled. "Well, I mean that hasn't changed." She sat up in bed and adjusted her shirt to make sure it was covering her stomach. He watched as she gathered her hair away from her face into a loose braid. She climbed over him to get out of bed and went in search of some food.

Bellamy pulled the blanket up over his head and gave a silent groan. He didn't know if he wanted to kick himself for holding onto her for so long or for not making it last longer. He needed to convince her to come back with him soon or she was going to drive him crazy enough to do something that he couldn't take back.