Stitching up a human being was not high on my list of things to repeat.

Stitching up Clarke? Damned nightmare.

I didn't clean my hands. Didn't think about sterilizing the needle. When I realized that, we didn't have a choice; we had to douse Clarke'se wound in moonshine.

We were lucky she didn't go into shock.

I didn't feel lucky. I felt like a big, beat-up piece of shit that picked on someone who couldn't fight back. The guy that made Clarke Griffin scream in pain.

I lay on a makeshift bed, arm thrown over my face to hid the wetness stinging my eyes. Dammit. It needed to be done. She would have died. Why couldn't I get that through my head and stop friggin' shaking?

"Bellamy."

Octavia.

"I've gotta clean your face and do something about your head."

A corner of my mouth quirked. "Chop it off, you mean?"

"I'll save that for a later day." I heard rustling, maybe the sound of her kneeling. "Come on, Bell. Nobody's here but me."

Okay. Time to get myself together and be big brother. I swallowed the lump in my throat and willed the dampness to dry. I finally pulled my arm away and let it flop to the "bed".

I looked at her.

Being a big brother to Octavia was easy. Being her dad—because let's face it, I was—was hard. Being a dad meant protecting her from the hard shit without sheltering her. It meant hiding when I was afraid so she'd have just a little bit of innocence left. I did a damn good job for 15 years.

Then I failed. I've been failing ever since.

Worst part of it was, she knew it.

She got to cleaning and even stitched my head up like a pro. That hurt. I gritted my teeth and bore it, digging my fingers into the blankets under me.

When she was finished, she sat back. "You've changed."

My head throbbing, I didn't bother biting hers off. "So have you." Truth.

"I stared at death in the face. Gives a girl some perspective." She looked down. "But I've got you, and I don't want to lose you. Not again."

Damn. "Me too, O. Me too."

She bit her lip. "Finn's dead, Bell."

I froze. "What?"

"Miller came in a few minutes ago. He said it was internal bleeding. Finn's dead."

Before I knew it I was lookijng over at Clarke's sleeping form. "Fuck," I said.

"I thought you should know." She got to her feet like they were made of lead. I sat up too, my vision swimming, but I didn't want to sit over in the corner by myself. I wanted to be somewhere else.

Hell, why not admit it? I wanted to be near Clarke.

Suddenly I was in Octavia's arms, and she was hugging me like her life depended on it. "Love you," she whispered into my shoulder.

I melted a little. I missed this. For an entire year, I missed this. I hugged her back. "I love you too, O."

She left, hiding her sniffle. Leaving me with Clarke.

I got up and hobbled over, feeling stiff. We'd covered her with a fur to keep her warm. I dragged up one of the drop seats and sat down, prepared to wait. Or something.

I don't know. I just sat and stared, half at Clarke, half at nothing. Seemed like hours went by like that, with me turning over the situation in my mind until I was ready to go crazy. I should have gone out and taken control. Who knew what the hell Raven was getting herself into.

Miller would take care of it. For a little while.

"Bellamy?"

I blinked. "Clarke? Hey." I glanced at the parachutes. The light had changed. How long had I been sitting there?

"Where...We're back at the drop ship. How did that happen?" She tilted her head on her cobbled-together pillow. "You've looked better."

I smiled crookedly, smoothing her hair away from her ear. "I said I'd get you through this." My fingers got caught in tangles, so I started to pick them apart. It gave me something to focus on.

"It would be easier to cut it off." She sounded exhausted and in pain, but at least she was making conversation.

I knew this trap. That was the advantage of being the only guy on the Ark with a sister; I learned about women early. I knew better than to argue with a girl about her appearance. Gave me a head start in life. I settled for remarking, "You wouldn't get to do your princess hairdo anymore."

She huffed out a laugh. "That's true. Wouldn't get hooked on branches either though."

I tried to picture her with short hair. Couldn't do it. "Think anybody here knows how to give a decent haircut?"

Her brow furrowed. She looked me up and down. "Is there a reason Octavia has super long hair?"

I pursed my lips, trying not to laugh. "Maybe."

She waited.

I shifted. "Let's just say that bowl cuts are a lot harder than you'd think." Or, in other words, O had a cowlick from hell and one wrong snip earned me six weeks of pouting.

Clarke smiled. She didn't do that enough. None of us did. Sometimes that was easy to forget. Then her mouth would spread and show her teeth, and she'd look so happy that I'd get this warm glob of whatever in the middle of my chest. Clarke was pretty. She had—what were they called? Apple cheeks. They'd glow a little pink when she smiled. I liked it.

I paused in the middle of untangling, just looking at her.

The pink deepened. "What's it like to have a sister?"

"Tough. She takes up a lot of energy."

"You love her."

"Yeah." I put her hair down, satisfied that I'd made at least a little headway. But I didn't want to stop touching her just yet. I let my finger trail over her shoulder, back and forth, liking the way her skin felt.

She shivered.

Hm. "Cold?" I dared her to lie to my face.

Her eyes narrowed. "A little."

Huh. She was getting better at this lying thing. I still didn't believe her, but this time she didn't even hesitate. I pulled up the fur higher, careful of her wound.

"Why is having a sister tough?" Her voice was husky.

"Ever been trapped in a small space with two women on their period, Clarke? When one of them is going through puberty? No where to run."

She was back to smiling, faintly. "Never thought of it like that. You're making me feel sorry for my dad."

Sore topic there, and I wasn't ready to lose this sense of contentment between us. "Compared to that, wild boars don't even make me blink." I shifted to the edge of the seat and rested an elbow on the table. "Don't think they'd appreciate my tea party and hair braiding skills, though."

"That I would like to see."

"Don't think I can do it, Princess?"

"Is there anything you can't do?"

Some of my humor dried up and turned rueful. "Too many things to count."

"I'm laying on a table, sewn back together because of you. I find that hard to believe."

I wet my lips. I didn't want to say it, but she had to know. "There's something I have to tell you, Clarke."

Her smile slowly faded.

"Finn's dead."

The power of words. A few syllables and a person's entire life can change.

She blinked. Her eyes got wet. I watched her accept the truth. Still, she said, "How?"

"Internal bleeding."

Her lashes swept down. A tear, then two, slipped down her cheeks. "Damn him. I told him what would happen if he pushed too far. I told him," she repeated almost soundlessly.

I leaned in. "Clarke." I gathered her hand up in mine, needing to know. "Did I kill him?"

She glanced up, startled.

I sucked in a sharp breath. "I pushed him. Roughed him up when he followed. Punched him for looking at you." Because I was jealous.

Fuck.

"Bellamy. He was moving when he shouldn't have. He could have done it when he was walking after you. It could have happened when he was running from the Grounders." Her fingers flexed in mine. "It could have happened when you punched him and he fell."

My blood ran cold.

"He knew the risks. He took his life into his own hands when he got out of bed when I told him to take it easy." She blinked rapidly. "He didn't think things through."

"I'm sorry." I didn't know for what. The words felt raw in my throat, but they came out anyway.

She nodded. "I don't know if I can...cry here...in front of you." She pulled her hand out of mine and held it in front of her eyes. It was trembling. "So do you think you could-"

"Yes you can," I interrupted. "You can cry in front of me, 'cause I'm not leaving you alone like this."

"No. I don't even have the right to cry. He wasn't anything to me."

Bullshit. Her first, and not the worst human being I'd ever met. I didn't like the guy, but that didn't mean much. I stood up and walked around the table. I hefted myself up onto the surface. There wasn't much room for the both of us, but I wasn't going to let that stop me. "Come 'ere."

She lifted her head, staring at me. I ignored those doe-eyes and slid my arm under her chin, between her face and the pillow. It was almost like we were back in the hidey-hole, squeezed up where two people our size shouldn't be able to fit. "Put your head here, Clarke." I patted my chest.

She looked at it like it was on fire.

"Come on, Princess. You remember how this goes."

She was still staring at my chest, but I could see she was wavering. Her chin was quivering, almost the same way Octavia's did when she was little. Girls aren't pretty criers, in my experience. They get splotchy and red, and their noses run. Which was how I always knew when a girlfriend was trying to manipulate me. Real girls used their whole body to cry.

Clarke had a better reason to cry than a lot of people in camp today.

When she gave in, she practically collapsed against me, grabbing handfuls of my shirt like I was going to run off somewhere if she didn't. I helped her crawl up over me, swinging of her legs over both of mine, her face buried in my chest. She was sobbing, shuddering with every breath. I rubbed her back, my other hand loosely clasped around her head, keeping her warm while she soaked me with tears.

I stared at the ceiling.

I'd never understood that phrase, "hell on Earth".

Now I knew. It was a bunch of kids stuck in the middle of a hostile forest, trying to figure out how to survive. We weren't explorers. Hell, I was the only legal adult around that I knew of. And the Ark shipped a group of teens from space to a land they had only seen in books and videos.

We were used to tight spaces and artificial light. One of the kids had a fucking panic attack when he saw all the land in front of us—because he'd never seen shit like that before.

Those were the kind of people the Ark expected to die or make their way a little cushier when they came. They'd get here, look around, and say something pompous, like, "Good job, kids, the adults will take it from here."

I'd bet they'd even say Finn died a hero. So did Roma and Charlotte and Wells. There were always people who could spin someone else's tragedy to suit themselves. Even me.

Sometimes, I thought to myself bitterly, humanity fucking sucked.