Clarke was reliving her final goodbye with Bellamy for the hundredth time. The moment never strayed far from her thoughts when she was awake, but the dreams were, at times, nearly unbearable: The haunted look in his eyes, the way her hands had shaken when she hugged him, the press of his hand in her hair. The worst part was coming, and even in her dream state, she dreaded the moment she would say the words. "May we meet again."
A loud crash sent Clarke's heart racing, jolting her lethargic form, and sending a wave of nausea through her system. She struggled to drag her body into a sitting position, but only managed to prop herself on one elbow as she blearily surveyed her surroundings. She was still in the forest, but a small fire had been built. She looked into the darkness trying to find some sign of the fire builder when she heard loud, gasping breaths to her left. Clarke snapped her head towards the sound, squinting through the light of the flames. There was a figure, tall and masculine, just on the other side of the fire. She knew that silhouette. She had dreamed about it every night for four long months, and it would seem that tonight's dream, tonight's nightmare, was the worst she had ever experienced.
The sob tore from her throat without warning, dragging the air from her lungs as the tears burned down her face. "No," she wept, curling in on herself, hugging her arms tightly around her knees. "No, please. I can't do this. I can't see him." Clarke didn't know who she was pleading with, but she was certain that she would do anything to make the pain wracking her body go away. She was being bombarded with too many memories to comprehend, and seeing him like this, outside of their final moment together, was more torturous than saying goodbye to him every night.
Hearing the woman's pain, Bellamy turned cautiously trying to calm the gasping breaths wrenching from somewhere too deep to identify. This had to be a trick. Something the grounders had cooked up to draw him in. She was gone. She wasn't coming back. This woman was a fake. A hallucination. A ghost. She sobbed again, and the artificial grief of her voice sliced through him, shattering his already fragmented control. Treaty be damned. He was ending this game here and now.
He strode toward her, yanking the grounder woman up on to her feet as she cowered in his shadow. He shook her once, screaming, "Who are you? Who sent you here?" She choked out nonsense, begging him to end her misery. He shook her again harder. "Tell me who you are!" The fury in him rose. He had tried to save her, and she was toying with him. His grip tightened just as her head tipped back, firelight finally bathing her face. Her eyelids fluttered open to reveal pools of clear blue.
Bellamy's blood ran cold. This was no grounder, no ghost.
His legs began to tremble, the blood draining from his face. Bellamy gripped her as his fell to his knees panting. With a shaking hand, he brushed the dirty, blonde hair from her face, and allowed himself to whisper a word he had not uttered in 120 days. "Princess?"