a/n Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed the first chapter! I was really pleasantly surprised by the number of reviews and it's got me really motivated for this story. I know we've got the angst of Mount Weather, but overall I intend for this to be a predominantly cheerful fic to see us through these anxious times. Stormkpr continues to be the greatest beta known to penguinkind. Happy reading!
Clarke isn't surprised when she wakes up in Bellamy's bed the following morning. She remembers enough of last night to have seen things heading this way – more than she remembers of the previous night, that's for sure. But she's unsurprised, too, because she's beginning to realise that she would always choose to spend the night in Bellamy's bed if it were an option. She still hates him for manipulating her into staying in Camp Jaha – that goes without saying – but she has to concede that nothing makes her feel safe quite like the familiar scent of him on the pillow slip beneath her cheek.
Those two things ought to be incompatible, she muses. She ought not have such strongly mixed feelings about him. But amidst the general mess that is the state of her head at the moment, her conflicted emotions towards Bellamy seem like the least of her worries.
She sits up, and reaches for the glass of water on the bedside cabinet – because of course there is a glass of water on the bedside cabinet. Bellamy is dozing in that chair once again, and Clarke spares a moment to decide that, next time she finds herself in this bed, she hopes she'll be drunk enough to ask him to share it with her. Just to sleep next to her, obviously – nothing more. She just doesn't see the sense in him being so uncomfortable when there is space here for the two of them.
She still hates him, though. Naturally.
"Bellamy." It's not a question this morning, as she whispers his name into the space in between them. Golden morning light is spilling through the small window and the glow it casts over his freckled cheeks is in danger of doing funny things to her insides.
But she still hates him. Really she does.
"Morning, Princess." He mutters, warm and unguarded as he surfaces from sleep. "How are you feeling?"
"Better than yesterday." She acknowledges, drinking deeply from the glass. "Thanks for the water."
"No problem."
"And the bed."
"No problem." He repeats, very slightly grinning at her now, and this is almost starting to look like a half-way normal conversation between the two of them. "What have you got planned for the day?"
Just like that, all semblance of normalcy vanishes. Because she has nothing planned for the day, and he must know full well that she has nothing planned for the day, and she is beyond angry with him for asking. Has he not noticed, recently, that she doesn't much fancy talking to him about anything of importance?
He decides to speak, as if choosing to ignore her silence. "I think I might go see Kane and ask him to assign me something to do. I guess it'll be some low-ranking post in the guard but at least it'll give me a purpose, you know?"
"You, taking orders from Kane?" She asks, incredulous.
"Well I don't see you giving me anything to do any time soon." He bites back smartly. The words are harsh, yes, but she realises that he could have been harsher. She ought to be grateful for that, at least, she reckons – he could have full-on pointed out that she's the only person he's ever even contemplated following an order from before now, but she seems to have given up and resigned herself to drunken uselessness.
She decides that, maybe, she ought to make the most of his olive branch. It is only rational to treat him fairly, after all – the fact that he seems to be her only genuine friend in the world right now is neither here nor there.
"I'll go see my mum. If nothing else I can be an extra pair of hands in medical."
"That sounds like a great plan." Bellamy tells her, with rather more warmth than she thinks such an unoriginal idea can possibly merit. "Shall we get breakfast?"
"Breakfast." She repeats back at him, tone dull. Breakfast isn't really a thing she does any more, she's pretty sure.
"Yeah. If we go now we can get there before they stop serving. And I'm on a mission to make sure you eat, remember?"
She does remember. She remembers that bowl of disgusting stew she received with such ingratitude last night, and decides that, in the fresh light of morning, she might have a go at making up for that now.
"Thanks, Bellamy." She tells him, and he looks up in surprise at her sudden warmth. "Sure. Let's go get some breakfast."
…...
Bellamy can feel Clarke regretting her decision to join him for breakfast the moment they enter the mess hall. She doesn't say anything – she hasn't said anything the whole walk here from his room – but she suddenly goes from a relaxed kind of silence to one that positively fizzes with horror.
OK, he can read Clarke's silence. And what of it? It's no crime to know a close friend this well. He feels a little odd justifying it to himself like that, given she's currently furious with him, but he reckons they'll sort themselves out in time.
He needs them to sort themselves out, sooner or later. He's not sure how to function in a world in which the two of them are at odds for longer than the length of a single argument. They've always bickered and challenged each other, and that's what part of makes them such a strong team, but this mess he has made – this is something different. And it couldn't have come at a worse time, he seethes, as he hears his baby sister's laugh over the noise of the crowd and remembers pulling a lever for the sake of being able to hear that sound again.
Clarke has frozen at his side, now, barely a toe over the threshold of the mess hall, and she's looking at him in panic and wordlessly demanding that he find a solution. He remembers her words, only two days ago, about the sight of her people reminding her of what she did, and he understands that, now.
He has to admit it – he feels much the same.
"We don't have to stay and eat here. We can grab some food and get out of here." He whispers to her, and he feels her relax the moment he suggests it.
"I'd like that." She agrees, the tension already melting from her stance.
"Follow me. We'll be out of here before you know it."
He leads her to the servery, and they grab bowls of porridge and spoons, and then they make a run for it – almost literally – as they walk as briskly as politeness will allow towards the door again.
"Don't you want to stay and eat with your sister?" Clarke offers, nodding in Octavia's direction.
"She's not going anywhere. I'll catch her later." He says with a careful shrug. Clarke may be showing him marginally more warmth, this morning, but he's still pretty sure she's not ready for him to admit he'd rather eat with her. And he knows beyond all doubt that neither of them is ready for the can of worms he would open if he started telling her about his newfound hatred of crowded dining halls.
They walk to Raven's Gate, in the end. They don't discuss it – rather, it is simply where their feet take them. He wonders if it will always be like this between them, that no matter how much anger they hold onto they will always be moving in the same direction.
He certainly hopes so.
They crouch in the grass behind this forgotten corner of the Ark, careful not to touch the fence, and balance their bowls on their knees. He wonders if Clarke is thinking the same thing he is, whether she is remembering the times they have walked this way before.
He has to ask her. He needs to know that she has not forgotten the partnership he thinks they share. He's aware that acting impulsively is going to get him hurt, one of these days, but – this is Clarke. No way would she hurt him, however angry she might be.
"Do you remember the first time we met here?"
"Of course I do." Clarke looks affronted that he even felt the need to ask, and he stifles a grin. Perhaps things are not so broken between them after all.
"That was one hell of a day."
"It was." She agrees. "I just remember being so happy to see you alive, and then you dropped that bad news about Finn and – it was beyond confusing."
He ought to pick up that train of thought. He ought to encourage her to keep talking, he knows, because she never mentions Finn and he's pretty sure that all this bottling up of grief is one of the reasons they're here, now, hiding out behind a fence because neither of them can face a goddamn dining room.
But he's had to be brave too often, of late, and he can't quite do it any more.
"Clarke Griffin, confused?" He teases. "Never."
She cracks a weak smile, and the moment of honesty is lost.
…...
Clarke's angry with herself for warming up to Bellamy this morning. He damn well blackmailed her into staying at camp, only two days ago, and yet she distinctly remembers smiling at him over breakfast. She huffs a little, and keeps striding towards med bay.
She's even angrier with Bellamy, though, for making it so utterly impossible not to warm up to him. What else is she supposed to do, when he does all those thoughtful things? He's infuriating, with the way he keeps giving up his bed to her and sleeping in a chair, and leaving out water for her, and helping her navigate her horror of the breakfast hall.
She's a logical woman, so she can join the dots, here. She knows that he's going out of his way to be kind to her to show that he's sorry for the way he got her to stay. He might have said he'd do it again – she remembers that all too well – but that doesn't mean it's not hurting him.
She knows how that feels. She'd let a bomb drop on TonDC again, if she had to, if it meant saving him. If it meant saving everyone. That doesn't mean, though, that she doesn't feel guilty for it.
Damn it. She doesn't want to understand him. Understanding is half way to forgiveness, and she hasn't decided to forgive him, yet. She needs a little longer to decide where they stand. To decide whether he has atoned for manipulating her, or whether it's only that love has weakened her resolve.
Needless to say, she's in a bad mood by the time she arrives at med bay. She has to concede that her short temper is not entirely Bellamy's fault – she's here for all the wrong reasons in the first place. She's here for want of anywhere else useful to be, not out of any genuine enthusiasm for the idea. And she's here, too, because saving lives seems like the only way she has any hope of atoning for all the lives she has taken, of late.
"Clarke." Her mother greets her with visible joy, and it makes her stomach sick with guilt. No one is supposed to look happy to see her – she's a monster.
"Hey. Is there anything I can do to help? Any bandages to wrap?"
"Clarke, honey, you shouldn't be thinking of bandages today. Take a few more days off, get some rest. You deserve -"
"We'd love some help." Jackson interrupts, pausing on his way between patients, and Clarke has never been so grateful for him. "Dressing change on bed number four, if you're up for it?"
"I'll clean my hands and get started." She agrees, wilting in relief.
Changing a dressing is not a difficult task. She concentrates on it harder than is strictly necessary, focusing on the texture of the woven bandage beneath her fingertips, memorising the notes in the patient's file. When that fails, she counts the stitches in the wound she's wrapping, and when she runs out of stitches she starts to count the beeps from the monitor at the bedside. The patient is, unfortunately, not quite up to holding a distracting conversation, but it's good enough. It keeps the ghosts at bay.
When she's done, she reports to Jackson to be assigned something else to do. He seems to understand her current situation rather better than her own mother does.
"Thanks." She greets him at the sinks as they both clean up after their most recent tasks. "It's like you knew I needed to be here, keeping busy."
"That's exactly what I thought." He agrees. "I – I know what it's like to hurt, Clarke. I can't imagine what you're going through right now but if you need to talk, I'm here."
She doesn't allow herself to cry at his kindness, because she knows that, if she cries now, she'll never stop. "I just need you to give me another job to do."
"Sure. Bed seventeen needs her meds." She smiles at him, hopes he can read the gratitude and relief in her eyes, and flees.
The day follows in much the same fashion – meds and dressings, occasional blood transfusions. By early afternoon her mother has admitted defeat and even asks if she wants to scrub in on a little minor surgery, and she jumps at the chance. All in all, this is turning out to be a pretty sound way of keeping busy, and she's even doing something of use while she's at it.
The other good point, she has to admit, is that it's not keeping her too busy. She hasn't got enough spare thought capacity for her brain to go into some guilt-ridden overdrive on the theme of massacres, but she has just enough time, in the odd moments between tasks, to decide that probably Bellamy is just trying to protect her. That seems to be all he ever does and – well, she doesn't have a lot of close friends to spare, just now. Maybe she ought to think about talking things through with him, just as soon as she can string together a meaningful sentence without falling apart.
Maybe hating him is a bit strong. Maybe she should work on being able to explain to him that she's merely justifiably angry.
Maybe.
Her mother surprises her, towards the end of the day, with the suggestion that Clarke should come with her to check in on Raven. She explains that Raven has been moved to her own quarters, like most of the walking wounded, but that she's still getting regular doctor's visits.
Clarke says yes. She figures there's no reason why seeing Raven should set off her self-loathing any more than seeing anyone else. Sure, she struggled a bit with seeing her yesterday but she can't overcome challenges by just avoiding them.
When they arrive, Clarke is surprised to see that Raven is alone. There is no sign of Wick – only Raven frowning at a datapad, her mouth a sour line.
"Raven?" Abby greets her on behalf of them both. "How are you doing?"
"I'm doing great." Raven responds, fooling no one.
"Where's Wick?" Abby asks, tone gentle.
"Not here."
"I can see that." Abby persists. "I'm surprised, he was refusing to leave your bedside last time I saw you."
"I sent him away." Raven tells them, matter of fact.
"Why would you do that?" Clarke speaks up at last, beyond confused – and she likes to think that she's not easily confused.
Raven merely shrugs.
"Raven, honey, is there something we should know about?" Abby continues. "We're just concerned about you. You know you can tell us if -"
"He said he was my boyfriend." Raven tells them flatly. "Gina came by to bring us lunch, and Wick referred to himself as my boyfriend."
Abby is blinking in silent confusion, but Clarke gets it. She gets it only too well, knowing Raven as she does.
"So you sent him away." Clarke fills in the blanks. "You flipped out and told him he was no boyfriend of yours – that you didn't need a boyfriend – and that he needed to get out of here and never come back. Because you couldn't face the idea that someone might actually care about you, you didn't trust him to just stay with you and -"
"That's rich, coming from you." Raven snaps back at her.
Clarke is not a good enough actress to pretend that she doesn't understand what Raven means. She knows exactly what she's trying to say, can see the allusion she is trying to make, and it makes her sick.
It is that, exactly that, which sends her running to the bar.
…...
Bellamy isn't surprised to find Clarke at the bar by the time he finishes an all-too-rushed chat with his sister. Who is he kidding? He is positively expecting to find Clarke at the bar, when he shows up at the same hour as yesterday balancing two bowls of stew in his tired arms.
It's been a long day, a day of pushups and burpees and crunches and goodness only knows what else until he can barely walk, right now. But that is good, and is exactly what he needed to keep his mind off things.
Ok, maybe it's not exactly what he would have chosen. When he went to see Kane this morning he rather hoped his recent mission in Mount Weather might have earned him something more than a day of keep-fit with a bunch of twenty-year-olds. But it's what Kane offered him, and it's what he accepted, and it's what has him tired enough that he thinks there's some chance of him falling asleep in that damn chair before three AM, tonight.
He presumes he'll be sleeping in the chair again today. He's guessing that based on the way Clarke is already here, already half way down her second glass. Apart from the fact she's already getting started on the drink, he can't quite get a read on her, this evening, and that worries him. She's smiling at him as he walks over there, which is certainly not something she's done for a while, but she looks shifty, too, fidgeting in her seat.
"What is it?" He asks, as he sets down her supper.
"Nothing." She lies through her pained smile.
He huffs out a grudging laugh. "It'll shock you to hear that I don't believe that."
Her smile grows a little less obviously fake at that. "You're right, it's something. But it's not something I can talk about right now."
"I get that." He says, as she picks up her spoon and starts to eat. "Let me know if you want to talk about it another time."
He feels odd saying that. They don't exactly talk about the nature of their relationship very often – they've been sharing the stuff that really matters since that time she watched him fall apart at the foot of that tree after killing Dax, but they don't talk about the fact they talk to each other, and that's a distinction he thinks is important. Normally it just unfolds, organically, in a moment of distress. He's never said out loud before that he intends to be there for her for some future conversation, and it scares him.
It scares Clarke, too. He can tell from the fact she looks even more anxious than she did when he arrived. But she's never been one to back down out of fear and, sure enough, she's still trying for that strained but warm smile.
"Thank you, Bellamy. And thanks for supper, as well."
"No problem. How was med bay?"
"It was OK." She hedges, still shifty. "It was good to keep busy and feel like I was helping. But then I went to check on Raven and we argued." From the tone she's using, he can tell that costs her a lot to admit. He suspects it's something to do with her current mood, but he won't push her to say any more than she's ready to say.
"I'm sorry. You'll be OK, though. You two have been through too much to let one fight stand between you." She nods, still looking unconvinced, and he presses on. "Want me to tell you about my day?"
"Please." She agrees, looking distinctly relieved.
He talks about his training for a couple of minutes, and it's actually quite pleasant. Clarke nods in all the right places, laughs when he tells her an anecdote about Miller tripping over his own shoelace, and that smile is still fixed on her lips. He knows it's at least partly fake, sure, but he figures it still means something. He reckons it means that she's trying to show him she's in a better mood with him, that she's at least beginning to accept what he did to convince her to stay. And even forced cheer over supper is better than no cheer at all, he decides.
By the time he starts recounting their jogging expedition, he feels more human than he has since pulling that lever.
That's what gives him the confidence, in the end, to say what he's been wanting to say for the last two nights. When Clarke scrapes back her chair and rocks forward as if to stand and get the next round of drinks, he reaches out a hand in a quelling gesture.
"Don't get another, Clarke. There's no need."
She glares at him. "What did you just say?"
"Don't get any more drinks. We shouldn't keep drinking as much as we have the last couple of nights, and I'd rather just sit and chat." Confident or not, that's the closest he can bring himself to tread to the suggestion that conversation is a better coping mechanism than alcohol. He should know – she's the one who first introduced him to the idea of talking to her about his state of mind, after all.
"That's not what you said." She informs him, fire in her voice. "You said there's no need. And believe me when I say you have no idea what I need right now."
"Then tell me!" He wants to reach across the table and shake some sense into her. "But trust me when I say that you don't need to get wasted three nights running."
"I need another drink." She tells him, voice low and angry – with him or with herself, he's not quite sure. "Let me explain it to you, Bellamy. I need another drink – or more than one – so I can sleep tonight. Not because I won't fall asleep without it – I will, because I'm so exhausted I can barely see straight – but because I won't stay asleep without it. I'll wake up to nightmares of Mount Weather, and TonDC, and hell, probably even barbecued grounders. And I'll wake up to these nightmares alone, because if I'm not drunk then I won't have an excuse to stay at yours, so I'm going -"
"You don't need an excuse." He interrupts her, quiet but firm.
"What?" She wasn't expecting that, he can tell.
"You don't need an excuse to stay at mine. I – you're welcome any time. I hate the idea of you having nightmares on your own." He doesn't add that he expects nightmares for his part, too.
"You mean that?" She is still struggling to process the idea, and that hurts. It hurts that he betrayed her trust so badly by twisting her arm into staying here that she is confused by his wishing to care for her.
"Of course I mean that. If you're so tired we don't have to stay here long, we can get an early night." An early night sounds like heaven to him, but he doesn't want to push her. And he'll be on the chair anyway, he reminds himself firmly.
"I'd like that." Her smile is more genuine, now, as she sets down her spoon.
"Great. I'm ready when you are."
They don't even speak – they just stand up and start heading to the mess hall to drop off their dishes. There's something about the smooth way they deal wordlessly with the practicalities that feels almost like their pre-Mount-Weather dynamic, if he squints. He could nearly believe they are the two slightly more innocent youngsters who used to lead a camp of teenagers together. Sure, they had too many kills between them even then, but it was nothing compared to the guilt he knows they are both swimming in now.
They are silent, too, as they walk back to his room, but that's OK. Clarke's body language is more relaxed than it was earlier this evening, and he's looking forward to getting slightly more rest than he has managed the last couple of nights. Now he comes to think about it, he didn't sleep much in Mount Weather, either. In fact, he's not sure when he last got eight hours sleep in an actual bed – it must be a good three weeks, he reckons.
Clarke says nothing as she kicks off her boots, and he follows her lead as he does the same. She hangs her jacket on the back of his door, still without talking, and even wriggles out of her tight black trousers. That's just for practicality's sake, he's certain of it. They don't look very comfortable to sleep in. But all the same, it has his breath catching in his throat.
He hasn't bothered removing any clothes. He's going to spend the night in discomfort anyway, so there doesn't seem a lot of point.
"You've got a decent-sized bed." Clarke comments at last, taking him by surprise.
"Yeah." He agrees. "The Chancellor gave me the room a couple of weeks ago for helping find her daughter."
She doesn't so much as smile at his poor attempt to lift the mood, and that puzzles him. She would normally at least acknowledge that he was trying to buoy her spirits, and he likes to think they've reclaimed some small slice of normalcy this evening, so he would expect at the very least a little grin.
She's still staring at the bed when she speaks again. "As it's a big bed, we could both sleep in it without us having to touch. Without it being awkward."
It is important, he knows, to match her carefully light tone. "Sure we could."
With that, he sheds his jacket, and strips off his trousers, and the two of them slip silently into opposite sides of the bed.
Strangely, it isn't awkward. Now he comes to think about it, things with Clarke rarely are awkward, in his experience. Sure, there's sometimes anger or disagreement, or even shame, but they don't tend to bother with the pettiness of feeling awkward. In fact, it is pretty pleasant, lying quietly beside her in the darkness. She's the only other person in the world who can even vaguely relate to what's going on in his head right now, and that brings with it its own kind of peace. The fact that she looks beautiful when she smiles, or that he's just had a good view of her bare legs, doesn't come into it – or rather, he doesn't allow himself to dwell on those things, much.
"I'm still mad at you." She whispers, just as he is on the verge of falling asleep.
He notices that there's no mention of hatred, and he decides to take that as progress. "I get that."
"Thanks for being here for me." She murmurs, so quietly he can barely here her.
"Any time."
So it is that they fall asleep, neatly on their opposite sides of the decent-sized bed.
…...
It's Bellamy that has the first nightmare, and that catches Clarke by surprise. It occurs to her, all in a rush, as she wakes up to him screaming and panting and kicking at the bedclothes, that she should have realised he was having a hard time, too. Logically she knew it, of course she did – they both pulled that lever together – but she's been so busy wallowing in her own self-loathing that she's let him down, she realises now.
As she reaches over and smooths the hair back from his forehead and whispers his name, she finds that all thoughts of hating him for what he said at the gates seem to have fled her mind.
"Clarke?" His panicked gaze clears as he looks up at her in the dim light that filters through the window and under the door.
"You're OK, Bellamy. It's me, and we're in your room, and you're safe."
"Octavia?" He chokes out, still audibly anxious.
"She's safe." Clarke has to admit that she's not actually spoken to Octavia since they got back, but she did catch that glimpse of her at breakfast this morning.
He nods, and takes a few deep breaths, and stares at the ceiling. Her hand is still stroking his hair, but he doesn't seem to be objecting, so she sees no real need to remove it. She has a feeling the motion is calming her at least as much as it's calming him.
"I'm sorry." He says, when he has relaxed, and she swallows down surprise.
"What for? Don't be. We both get nightmares, that's no surprise."
"For waking you up and bothering you. I don't – I know this is difficult for you, and I don't want to push my problems at you, too."
She thinks her heart might have broken on hearing that, at least a little. "Bellamy. Trust me when I say I always want you to bother me with your problems." He looks sceptical at best, so she keeps speaking. "I mean it. I'm sorry – I've been so wrapped up in my own head that I never thought about how you were coping. It was selfish of me, and I'll do better."
"That's OK." He murmurs, a smile in his eyes that she's pretty sure she doesn't deserve. "I was selfish when I pressured you into staying."
"I can be mad at how you did that without hating you." She tells him, because that's about the closest she thinks she can get to telling him what's going on in her head right now.
He grins at her. "Good. Listen, don't go to med bay in the morning."
"What? Why?"
"I mean, go to med bay if that's what you actually want to do. But don't go as a distraction. I've got a better idea. I'm not going to go to training – I'm going to sit down with O and Lincoln and see what's going on with this kill order."
She lets the silence sit for a moment, still smoothing her hand over his curls, while she works up the courage to say what needs to be said.
"Could I join you?" She asks, at last, and she can see how proud he is of her for getting the words out. "I know Octavia's still angry with me but I'd like to do something useful."
"Sounds like a plan, Princess." He grins at her as she finally convinces herself to retract her hand and settle back onto her pillows.
"Sleep well. Let me know if you need anything." She whispers.
"You too, Clarke. Sweet dreams."
a/n Thanks for reading!