A/N: Muchas Gracias for continuing to read and leave me such wonderful feedback, and HAPPY NEW YEAR! I wish all of us great mountains of beautiful Bellarke in 2015. I love you ALL!
A/N2: Extra special hugs to both my fabulous reader, Persepholily, and to the amazing MarinaBlack1 for her awesome beta skills and her EPIC Lexaphy piece, Walking Through Fire.
A/N3: I was a bit dissatisfied with Night 8... so if you read that one prior to 12/31/14, just be aware I have since gone back and tweaked it slightly.
Night 9
Bellamy's wide grin should have lit up the interior of his bunk... Maybe even the whole battered metal room. He kept trying to shut down his elation, but it was proving difficult to control.
She had fucking done it. Clarke had cleared Raven. Bellamy pretended not to notice the way his chest burned with pride at the memory of her, standing in front of all those Grounders, outwitting them all. She had been…Fuck, if she hadn't been just like one of the Furies, beautiful in her righteousness, her eyes bright with vengeance and her river of blonde hair dancing with every angry step.
She had blown him away.
Honestly, it wasn't even the way she stared Lexa in the eye when she asked permission to question Raven. It wasn't the way Clarke seemed at first to be attacking her friend, accusing her of murder, pushing relentlessly until Raven was screaming back in raw hatred, snarling and spitting as she admitted how she wished she had done it. That was when Bellamy had begun searching for an escape route. The petite mechanic seemed so determined to break free, to go after Clarke, and there was no way he would let that happen. But then Clarke had stepped back, dragging a sudden eerie calm around herself, bringing the audience forward in tense anticipation as she asked Raven about the poison. Clarke must have learned how to pull them in like that from watching his speeches; she had never done it so effectively before. And that was when he had begun to fear her a bit... Feared her in much the same way he had that fateful night when she sacrificed her own potential happiness at the altar of Finn's painless death.
More than anything else though, he had been left breathless by Clarke.
It was the way she had so deftly slipped in a question about the wrong poison, asking Raven about "monkshood" so casually most had not even thought about it.
It was the way she hadn't even blinked when Indra corrected her.
"Foxglove," the Grounder had interjected automatically, at first seemingly unaware she had spoken at all.
"Indra," Lexa had started, holding one hand up to Clarke even as she turned her clever green eyes on the proud warrior. "Only the Healers have seen Gustus' body. How could you know what poison was used?"
The hushed crowd had held its collective breath. This was an unexpected turn, and they wanted to be sure they understood what was happening. Every furrowed brow, every quick glance left or right suddenly mattered more than usual. When Indra blinked, and shifted her weight to the balls of her feet – preparation for flight, as sure as screaming a confession in this crowd, Bellamy thought – he had finally realized what Clarke and Lexa were doing. This was a sham of a trial, but not in the way Bellamy and the others had assumed.
Tonight, Indra slept tied to the wretched post outside Lexa's tent.
Clarke had bested the Grounders, strengthened her ties to their Commander, and kept her promise: Raven was home. Bellamy let a sigh of admiration escape into the dark empty room. His grin was still hanging on stubbornly when Clarke squeezed through the doorway.
"Murphy's out there, celebrating with Wick and Raven," she noted quietly. "Why aren't you with them?"
There were so many reasons. Most of them involved Bellamy's own selfishness, something he didn't care to analyze at the moment. He could only safely offer a partial answer.
"Now that Raven's been cleared, we need to think about Mount Weather." His grin slipped at the self-imposed reminder. With the moon surer tonight, Clarke was a silvery silhouette moving toward his bunk. He watched the persistent cool light as it tried, and failed, to turn her cold too. Instead she seemed to grow in warmth as she stretched out beside him.
"The Commander always knew it wasn't Raven," she began, her body turned toward his, the words floating between them on the heat of her breath. He shifted to face her, eager for her voice, trying hard to ignore her blatant oversimplification. "She suspected Indra from the start but her hands were tied. There were just too many warriors loyal to Indra; the Commander needed the accusation to come from someone else. So it wouldn't seem tainted."
"I get it, Clarke," Bellamy cut in abruptly, despite his initial desire just to listen. Call it a personality flaw of his, but sometimes when she spoke it felt like she thought he was an idiot - and he needed her to know he was no such thing. "Indra dies a criminal, not a martyr, and the Commander's hands are clean of any political motive." Bellamy felt the grin sneaking back into place. "But how did you know Indra would hang herself with her own words like that?" Clarke grinned back. Bellamy hated the heavy darkness for cloaking such a beautiful part of her happiness from him.
"I really didn't. I thought we'd have to prove Raven doesn't know anything about poisons, and then we could request a search for physical evidence."
"Physical evidence?"
"Yes. Monkshood is one of the poisons the Grounder warriors carry; foxglove is something we actually had on the Ark. If someone wanted to frame one our people, foxglove would be an excellent choice. So… if we had found any traces in the Grounder camp..." They were quiet, watching each other in the not-quite-light, each processing Indra's deviousness in their own way.
Finn's death had seemed to rip all their relationships to shreds, but ultimately it was the Grounders paying the heaviest price. While Raven had ranted and howled, Clarke had been able to see the tempest of grief for what it really was. She had saved her friend, and their hug after Lexa freed Raven of her bindings had brought a relieved lump to Bellamy's throat. Indra, by contrast, had seethed quietly at the discovery of her Commander's weakness. She had felt so betrayed by the woman to whom she had pledged everything, that she was willing to frame one of the Sky People for murder in order to mend the perceived damage. Bellamy's mouth twisted down at the idea of a loyalty so perverse it would drive Indra to treason.
As Clarke's breathing evened out, as each blink of her eyes became heavier and the muscles of her face and neck relaxed, Bellamy's thoughts shifted slightly. He grappled with the instinct to reach out, to caress the little line under her left eye where the stitches had finally been removed, to straighten her collar, smooth her hair. In one of her last moments of clarity, Clarke managed to form her mouth around two silent syllables: "Thank you." Bellamy clenched his jaw to keep from correcting her for the strange, misplaced gratitude.
"… Bu'there's nothin' can kee' me from lovin' yooou… Not fire… an'… not – not iiiice…" Murphy's singing was terrible. And loud. And drunk. Bellamy's eyes flew open just in time to note a bundle of dark clothing and stringy hair collapse against the far wall, then slide slowly sideways until it had managed something resembling a comfortable position on the floor.
Bellamy groaned. He should make sure Murphy was turned on his side, at least. The last thing they needed was someone choking on their own vomit overnight. He tried to disentangle himself from Clarke (when had that even happened?) without waking her, but she moaned a bit and asked him what was wrong, not even bothering to open her eyes. Bellamy ran his hand softly over her cheek and along her jaw, gently assured her he would be right back, then crossed the room to check on Murphy. He shifted smoothly into big brother mode, pulling off the boy's boots, rolling him into a safer sleeping position, and tucking the blanket around him before turning back to the bunk.
He was halfway there when his own earlier actions caught up with him. Bellamy raised one hand to stare at his suddenly burning fingers, hating the traitorous bastards.
Dammit. What was he doing, what was he thinking? This was all wrong. So twisted and selfish and... Wrong. Bellamy cut sharply to the right, escaping through the doorway and into the black, barren hall. He needed to get away from this, he berated himself as he stumbled blindly forward. Get away from her. From his own stupidity.
