A/N: This chapter hurts me. Physically hurts me. There's so much... Argh these characters! (Thank goodness for MarinaBlack1, officially the world's best beta and also a hell of a writer, and my adorable, perfect reader, Persepholily. I'd be a hollow shell of a woman without them.)

Night 15

Clarke stood just to the side of an aging concrete dam, and stared across the ravine at the mountain that had imprisoned her. The moonlight outlined her perfectly in its cool light. Bellamy knew he should warn her she was an easy target standing on the cliff edge like that but... He couldn't bring himself to do it. Clarke never got peace. She needed these few stolen moments, and he would keep watch while she took them.

He felt movement behind them and turned, determined not to give Octavia the satisfaction of catching him like this two nights in a row.

"Clarke is too visible there," Lincoln said quietly, joining Bellamy and redirecting his attention back to the cliff.

"She knows. She'll move soon," Bellamy assured him in a hoarse whisper. Lincoln nodded, ceding to Bellamy's knowledge of his partner. There was silence for a moment.

"She's hurting," Lincoln noted.

Bellamy frowned and nodded slightly. "She has a right to," he said. "She's lost a lot." Lincoln opened his mouth to answer but Wick came crashing through the undergrowth, causing both men to cringe. The Sky People still had so much to learn about life in the woods.

"How's the view?" Wick asked; his voice carried to Clarke. She spotted them in the shadows and wandered back their way.

"Wick will need help getting to the hydroelectric controls once we're inside," she pointed out, as if picking up the thread of an ongoing conversation. "I'll go with him." Everyone tensed at her serious tone. Gone was the peacefulness of the night.

"Like hell you will." Bellamy knew it was not a smart reaction, but she –

"Do you have a better idea?" she asked.

– Dammit, she had kept this from him on purpose. She knew he'd be upset; she had waited until the last minute –

"I'll get us all in," Clarke pressed, "But you and I both know Wick has to make it to that control room. It's our only chance at stopping them forever." She stared up at Bellamy as she spoke, her eyes glancing over his features, silently begging him to see her point of view. "Bellamy, I need you to get our people out. Wick and I will meet you back here." She was calm. She had made her peace with this new plan.

Bellamy had not. He licked his lips, furrowed his brow, shook his head at her. It was all his own fault. How could he not have realized she would do something like this? Volunteer to lead a suicide mission into the bowels of a mountain, only to take it a step further and select herself for the most dangerous leg of that mission?

"Clarke, I don't like this." It was the truest statement he could make without admitting more than he should, without possibly skittering over the edge of reason. And with Lincoln and Wick - and when the hell had Murphy shown up? - all staring at him, he needed to be in control of this moment.

"I know you don't," she said.

Bellamy swallowed hard. He was reading too much in the softness of her gaze, the slight downward pull of her mouth, the way she stepped into his personal space as she touched his sleeve. This was getting into that off-limits territory again. Bellamy sighed.

"Okay. We'll do it your way." He pulled back from her abruptly, gathering the men and reminding them to get some rest. He could feel a toxic mix of dark emotions building in his chest, and almost hurt with the need for release from the poison.

"What'll you do if she doesn't make it?" Murphy asked. It might have sounded sympathetic, coming from any other person.

"Shut up, Murphy," Bellamy growled, but Murphy ignored the warning.

"I mean, she's basically your security blanket at this point. If Clarke bites it –" Bellamy rounded on him with a snarl, his hand fisting into the fabric of Murphy's jacket.

"I said fuck off!"

"Well damn, Bellamy, if I didn't know better –"

"What's going on here?" Clarke interrupted; she sounded annoyed, but Bellamy was still seething, and he refused to look away from Murphy. Instead he tossed a shoddy excuse over his shoulder and made damn sure Murphy knew to get the hell out of his sight. Only then did he turn to Clarke. She raised an eyebrow, curious, but he refused to let her goad him into a conversation about what had just happened between the two men. He let her lead the way to the shelter of a pine tree near the cliffs; the ground beneath its branches was dry and soft, carpeted in long red needles.

She curled against him for warmth, and he closed his eyes.

"Clarke, tomorrow… be careful," Bellamy said. There was a beat of silence, and he thought maybe she hadn't heard him.

"...You too," she finally whispered into the dark.

Night 16

Bellamy never – well, hardly ever – looked for Clarke when they were in the midst of battle. It was one of those habits he had originally developed to protect Octavia, on the Ark. Because when the guards came for an inspection, you could not – absolutely not ever, Aurora would say to her tiny son each time, gripping his shoulders and staring as though she was examining his soul – look in the direction of the crawl space. To do so was to reveal their weakness. An unthinking glance at just the wrong moment, and their most valued treasure would be ripped from them.

But sometimes, when he knew it was safe enough, Bellamy would risk it… because he needed to know Octavia was still hidden. Because he needed that confirmation. And because, despite his mother's strength and her demand that he be just as strong, Bellamy was always too fucking weak.

And so he risked a glance at Clarke tonight, blood-smeared and breathless, fighting her way through Mount Weather's security guards like she was born to it. He refused to smile, even though a fierce warm pride pounded in his veins.

"Where's Octavia?" he called during a relative lull, recalling his other priorities.

"She and Lincoln went after Wallace's son," Clarke explained. "They'll find us later."

"How?"

"Lincoln copied my map."

"… And the Commander? Is she going to be okay back there?" He gestured behind them.

Clarke looked over her shoulder at the dark entrance leading to the mining tunnels. Even from this distance they could hear the sounds of Lexa and her warriors, battling Reapers. She nodded grimly at Bellamy in assurance and he nodded back, then followed her through the underground maze that led to their friends.

Who was it that originally said, "War is hell?"

They were so damn right.

It really was hell. It was claustrophobic, an entire mountain hanging over their heads and an army of ghostly men and women to fight through, and at the end of it all they found a room filled with… people they barely recognized. Jasper insisted on finding Monty and Harper, and Maya. Bellamy couldn't remember any of their people having that name, but the way Clarke reacted to Jasper's frantic search suggested a much more complex story than Bellamy was willing to deal with at the moment.

The big room, filled with huge cages, was nauseating even though he had been warned ahead of time. Bellamy actually heard Wick get sick in a corner. Clarke had no time for their horrified reactions; she moved swiftly downs the rows until she came to one that made her gasp softly. The others didn't notice at first, but Bellamy pushed past them to be at her side just as she shot the lock open with the handgun he had given her (a dangerously stupid way to open a lock, he would have stopped her if he had known that was her plan) and wrenched open the door.

Monty, pallid and anemic, insisted the nearly-dead Harper go first. She was jarringly listless, dull-eyed. The sad image drove them all a little mad, and with Harper as a rallying point they fought that much harder for each step they took back through that hell.

They were almost out when their path was blocked by a man Bellamy just knew must be Dante Wallace, and Clarke became so disturbingly quiet Bellamy considered killing him right then. She must have sensed his violent intent in the way he moved though, because she grabbed his arm. She managed to dredge up the last remaining shards of their at-this-point quite threadbare mercy, turning to Bellamy, watching him in that mind-reading way of hers, silently asking him not to harm this man.

Bellamy growled in frustration. He had run out of words in this decadent underground world.

"Jasper?" Clarke called, eyes never leaving Bellamy's face. "Did President Wallace receive one of the bone marrow transplants you mentioned?"

"I – I don't know," Jasper called back. "Maya did, she was one of the test subjects. It's how we knew they were doing it at all."

"Yes, Clarke, Dr. Tsing performed the transplant as soon as Maya's procedure proved it was safe. But I assure you, I had no idea your friends were being – "

"We don't have time for this," Bellamy interrupted, trying to remind Clarke of their mission. She seemed thrown; without really stopping to consider the consequences he reached for her cheek, brushing his thumb over a cut that was still healing. "Clarke," he whispered, calling her back from wherever she had gone.

It must have been enough. She blinked once, and her eyes were clear again, focused. "Miller, Wick, change of plans. We'll be taking President Wallace with us." She motioned to them.

"But… the dam?" Wick seemed confused; Bellamy couldn't blame him.

"What are you doing?" he asked Clarke as the men took Wallace into custody. "Wick needs to go."

"Bellamy, this is better," Clarke answered. She pulled him to one side in an attempt at some privacy. "We can use Wallace as a bargaining chip. This way we don't need to kill the electricity to the mountain at all; it means we won't have even more innocent blood on our hands."

Privately, he referred to these as "Finn Moments" – those times, rarer with each passing day, when their friend's ghost came back to haunt them in some new way. Her eyes weren't just clear now; they were wet, shimmering with tears she wouldn't let fall, and Bellamy struggled for some outward semblance of calm. His chest collapsed and a dark, wretched need to kiss her surfaced, was shoved mercilessly to the side as he watched her rein in her grief.

"Okay. Okay, Clarke. We'll do it your way," Bellamy agreed, because even though he had come to this mountain to avenge his friends and her, that wasn't what she needed. She needed to know they still retained their humanity. She needed to see they were not going to… to descend into the darkness, as Finn had.

He shouldered his rifle and together they led their people back through the tunnels. Dawn was coming.

** Once again I shall gently remind that feedback makes me feel really lovely and warm and gooey inside. Which I like. So then I want to write MORE, so I can get MORE feedback... see how that works? It's a... well, kind of a... "feedback loop" you might say.**