Hey there.
So.
I went M.I.A.
Sorry about that. Life got in the way, and this chapter gave me so much trouble. I've probably written, and rewritten it four or five times.
I hope that this is worth it.
Bellamy had no idea how long he stood there, back to the door, staring at the void where she had been.
He wasn't even sure what he was feeling – he knew there was a hollow in his bones, an uneasiness that settled in his stomach – and he couldn't shake himself out of it.
Finally, he let himself took a deep breath before running his hands through his hair, and he was forced to face an unwelcome truth.
Octavia was behind this.
The horribly tragic part was that Bellamy didn't know if he was completely and totally pissed that his little sister would pull a stunt like this, or relieved that maybe he didn't have to be the bad guy in all of this.
"Damnit O," the whisper escaped his lips before he could stop himself, and he forced himself to walk to the kitchen to get away from his thoughts. But they followed him, and suddenly he was standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open, simply staring at the contents inside.
He wanted to yell, he wanted to hit something.
His days went a lot like that. He'd wake up, mope to the fridge – stare until he finally decided on coffee, go to work, come home and then sleep.
There were slight variations, sure. But in his day to day, not much changed.
It'd had been more than a week since she'd walked out of his apartment and Bellamy couldn't get Clarke out of his head. He was obsessing about her, he knew that, but the girl was a puzzle.
He'd typed out so many texts to her, begging her to listen – asking her to talk to him. But he hadn't sent any of them; his thumb would hover over the send button for what seemed like forever before he would simply delete the whole thing.
But she left. That was something he couldn't reconcile.
She looked at him, told him he wasn't worth it, and left.
Bellamy couldn't bring himself to comprehend that that girl was the same one he had teased at a bar, a girl whom he'd trusted with the loss of his mother, and the girl who had shared the loss of her father.
And then it hit him, and his laughter surprised him. He and Clarke were more alike than he thought – she was running away from him. He would have done the same damn thing; Roma was just the catalyst that set everything in motion.
The only piece that didn't fit was his sister.
He'd been thinking about that day over, and over again – and he specifically remembered Clarke's eyes when Roma mentioned Octavia. He remembered the hurt and the anger in her eyes.
Bellamy groaned before dropping to his sofa.
He needed to talk to his sister – which would be a slow and painful process.
He was definitely not looking forward to whatever fight was about to happen, and he knew that there would be yelling involved. There was a reason Octavia had rarely been home – she had found every excuse on the planet to avoid their apartment, and he was sure that Harper and Monroe's parents were equally ready for the girl to come home.
When he finally decided what he needed to do, Bellamy felt the shift in his bones.
"Fuck."
He really didn't want to call Octavia, but he had to find a way to fix this. His sanity was on the line.
For a week and a half Clarke had hated walking away, she'd regretted telling herself that she wanted to forget about him.
Bellamy was right when he told her that they weren't good for each other. Even though he was only five years older than her, it was a crucial age difference. Clarke wouldn't be eighteen for another three months. And that was enough to ruin it all.
It was enough to ruin her afternoon too.
She was supposed to be sitting at the Spice Rack working on homework. School had officially started again two days earlier and Clarke had thrown herself into multiple college level courses, and doing her best to submerge herself in the work.
Clarke thought back to Arizona – how she used to thrive when she and Wells would work together in silence.
She had hoped she could get that sort of silence here – sitting in a quiet corner of the coffee shop she had first met Jasper and Monty. But the silence was just taking over her thoughts.
Clarke was having an annoyingly difficult time working on her AP Biology homework – and genetics was usually one of her strong suits – when she sensed someone sit in the chair across the table.
"I thought that was you."
When Clarke finally looked up, she saw Roma sitting across from her, and there was no stopping the white hot anger that coursed through her.
"What do you want from me? Didn't you see enough the last time?" she saw Roma start to speak, but Clarke just shook her head before continuing, "No, you don't get to talk right now. You had your chance last week. You had to have known why Octavia would have told you to come by that early in the morning. She wanted you to walk in on whoever he had brought home – to make things awkward and to make sure whoever she was didn't stay."
Clarke's eyes flashed as she felt the tension in her blood start to diminish, and suddenly she realized, "She's had you do this before. Hasn't she? Oh, my god, that's it. That's sick." Her breath was coming in gasps at this point.
Roma had stayed quiet throughout Clarke's rant and revelation. There weren't any words that would make the situation better. So she said the only thing that came to mind.
"I'm sorry."
The only thing that went through Clarke's mind was that she wished that 'Sorry' was enough.
And that is that.
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A big thank you to everyone who has stuck with me this long. Coming home to your reviews after being away was wonderful.