It was before dawn and the coldest morning Bellamy had yet to experience on Earth. He shivered and pulled the collar of his jacket tight around his neck. He'd found a far corner of camp Jaha where the wires of the fence were strapped lazily so that a wide enough view existed of the rolling hills outside. For a few moments before the people of the Ark woke each day he could sit there and pretend he was free.

A twig snapped behind him and he turned. "Oh," he said. "It's just you."

Clarke rolled her eyes. "Yep, just me," she parroted sarcastically and thrust a tin of hot tea in front of him. He looked from her to the blooming strings of steam. "Oh, come on. Take it. Monty's own recipe."

Bellamy took the mug and wrapped his hands around it, letting the warmth seep from the metal into his skin, while Clarke sat down on the stump next to him. Silence settled in as they sipped their tea; he looked out and she looked down at the grass.

"I heard they call this a frost," she said after a while, eyes fixed on the ground. Her hand grazed over the blades of grass at her feet. They were stiff and crunchy, slightly dusted with something white. "Kind of beautiful."

"We're not equipped for winter." He kept his gaze fixed in front of him even as he felt hers burning into him. "Even if the Ark supplies- technology, medicine, those damn tasers- last us this year, they're going to run out. And then what?"

"I know," was all Clarke said and when he met her eyes he knew he didn't need to say any more. He didn't need to tell her the tech would die and that Raven and Wick building a power supply wouldn't be scalable enough. He didn't need to tell her that the guardsmen hunting with their semis would leave them without bullets in a year. Or that their clothing would tatter and fall off and that none of them had any idea what winter was actually like.

"The Ark's way of doing things…it won't work down here," was all he said. They drank their tea in silence as the sun rose up over the hills and the first people of the camp stirred for morning duties.

xxx

Soon that little corner of camp Jaha changed from being Bellamy's morning ritual to becoming their morning ritual. He thought he would mind. He went there to be alone with his thoughts, his dreams, his regrets, but found that he could be alone with Clarke beside him. More often than not they'd sit in silence. She would bring the tea, he would remark that she needed something warmer to wear, she would shrug. And they would settle in.

Life had slowed down. The forty-seven were back, the truce was holding in place. Of course there were hunting wounds and the acid fog and constant preparation for confrontation with The Mountain Men. That one stomach virus from an improperly boiled tub of drinking water. But all in all the machinations of the Ark and its leadership were churning and screeching towards building something on Earth.

"This doesn't feel like home," he said one morning when the clouds were thin and runny and pink.

"Do you miss it?" Clarke asked.

Bellamy drew in a heavy breath that puffed up his chest, let himself deflate when he let it out. "Every day."

"Yeah," Clarke said and looked into her tea. "Me too."

Bellamy shifted on his stump and cleared his throat, looked at her with something searching. It was the drop ship they were talking about, yes, but also what they created around the drop ship. What they built from nothing. That is was the two of them that led it, that they made the rules and they carried the burden of running things. And they missed it.

"Well," Clarke blinked and came back from wherever she had gone to at the bottom of her tin mug. "You'll be running things in no time. Guardsmen are already lining up to follow your lead."

Bellamy licked his lips and dropped his head. "Yeah, maybe."

Maybe. Maybe Clarke wasn't far off in her prediction. But was it what he wanted? He wasn't so sure. Something tugged tight in his chest when he thought of the future mapped out for him. Leading the guard, Clarke on the council with him, doing it their way. But Kane and Jaha and even Abby stood in their way, tied to their old-world laws and their blind belief in a certain modus operandi. When they looked at him, they saw a working class delinquent. When they looked at Clarke, they didn't see what he saw, they saw a girl just shy of eighteen.

It was that morning that Bellamy decided he was going to leave. He didn't want to take over the Ark's story and lead it like some rickety spaceship pretending it could fly in the dirt. He was going to start over, with Octavia and Lincoln and Monroe and Miller. Not Raven. Not Clarke. They were needed here. They would do good here. They had people here. He wouldn't ask Clarke to leave her mother, to gamble on a pipe dream because he felt lost and powerless and trapped.

He was going to tell his own damn story.

xxx

"Why does this boar meat taste like crap?" Bellamy grunted and dropped his fork with a clang back on his plate. "Who's the cook at this damn camp anyway?" A heel dug into his toes under the table that caught him by surprise and forced him to clench his jaw. He shot a stormy look at Clarke, who raised her eyebrows in mid-chew.

"They replaced our people with a team from the Ark," Jasper said glumly.

Clarke finished chewing and grabbed her water canteen and began to chug. Bellamy smiled at the sight.

"Plus they shot the shit out of the hog," Raven said. "Fifty bullets is its flesh is not going to do us any favors."

Bellamy shot Clarke a look only to find that she was shooting him one right back.

Later she grabbed his arm on his way to his tent. "Wanna get out of here?" Her eyes gleamed with a fierce defiance.

He looked to where her fingers snaked around his elbow, then back up. "Making a run for it, Princess? The dinner wasn't that bad."

"Tomorrow morning, meet by Raven's gate. You're gonna teach me how to hunt." And she stalked off.

They snuck out and into the woods before dawn, as quiet as their morning ritual. The grass, which he now learned was called frosted, crunched under their boots and flocks of birds fluttered their wings as they flew from tree to tree.

"It'll be harder this time of year, the trees aren't providing much cover," Bellamy said as he surveyed the woods.

"Didn't say I wasn't up for a challenge," Clarke said haughtily.

The corners of his mouth ticked up as he unhooked his axe from his belt. "What do you say we get some target practice in before settling in for a stakeout."

He guided her through axe throwing, spears, and rifles. Turned out she was a force to be reckoned with with a spear. Darts, she told him. By her count she'd beaten Wells at darts four hundred and sixty seven times.

They found a spot of dirt behind a gigantic tree root and crouched on their stomachs. Bellamy shifted when their shoulders brushed but it seemed there was no escaping the contact. Clarke's eyes darted over to him. It wasn't that it was altogether unpleasant, or that it was particularly abnormal. It was the awareness of it. Like there was nothing else in his current world but her shoulder against his. He gritted his teeth and focused straight ahead.

After twenty minutes her teeth were chattering.

"You're shivering."

"I'm fine," she said and blew into her hands.

"You're not," he protested. "We should go back."

"We haven't spotted a thing yet. No. We'll wait."

Bellamy shifted and began to tug his jacket off. "Ok," he said quietly and threw it over Clarke's shoulders before returning to his place. "And don't complain, I'll be fine without it," he added before she could protest. She stared at him for a long moment and pressed her lips together like she was fighting herself not to say a thing. And she didn't. Just returned to her post.

Another hour passed and the only life for miles came in the form of fluttering squirrels chasing each other up and down the trees.

"We should set squirrel traps," Clarke whispered.

"Smart. Might be good for winter. Lucky if we caught a couple of foxes," he said.

"And stews. We'll be low on vegetables," she said.

"Clarke…"

"Yeah?"

"Why now?"

Clarke shrugged under his jacket. "I'm sick of being useless." She looked at him. "Like you."

He nodded slightly.

She sighed. "My mom…she helps everyone better than I ever could. The truce….I just…"

"You miss it," Bellamy interjected, his voice low and quiet. "Leading."

Clarke hesitated before nodding, her eyes wide and troubled. "Am I awful?"

"No," he whispered. It almost wasn't there. But she heard it. "We make the rules, right?"

She sniffled and nodded back at him before holding up her hand in a swift, alert motion. Alarmed, Bellamy reached for his gun. Clarke pointed behind him to where a deer was grazing, facing away from them. He handed her the gun. "No," she whispered vehemently.

"Clarke. You got this," he insisted and shifted behind her. She looked back at him for reassurance, then lined up the shot. "Easy," he said and set a hand on her back. "Breathe." She did. And the shot tore through the barrel with a bang.

The deer fell and they were on their feet. It was bucking wildly, hit in its right thigh. Clarke froze, locking eyes with the wild, deep ones of her prey. Bellamy squeezed her shoulder before passing her to crouch down over the deer's head. He touched it between the eyes and stroked it softly as he pulled his knife from his belt and held it to her throat. As he pulled it along her speckled fur, his thumb kept stroking her temple, back and forth. After a minute the blood seeped out enough so that her eyes fluttered and grew dim.

Bellamy wiped his face along his sleeve. Clarke was staring holes into him, her mouth hanging open ever so slightly.

"Perfect," he said.

She tore her gaze away from him and back to the animal dead at their feet. "We should skin it. For its hide."

Bellamy's eyes nearly sparkled. "Resourceful, Princess."

xxx

They brought the deer to Octavia to skin.

"Nice shot, Bell."

"It was Clarke, actually," he corrected with pride.

Octavia was ecstatic to have such a clean shot to work with, thinking she could salvage almost the entire hide and start working on a jacket or a vest, maybe even a sleeping skin.

"You can make all of that?" Clarke asked in amazement.

"Oh hell yeah. Picked it up from my mom. I'm the world's best seamstress, but it's the world's best kept secret so-," Octavia made a zip-it motion with her blade across her neck.

When she was done they butchered the carcas and delivered it to the kitchen, side eyeing the guard who was just hauling in a massacred hog, rife with bullets.

The days grew shorter, and their time together grew longer. Quiet tea at dawn, a frosted trek just after, setting up snares and traps and then staking out.

Planning. They talked of food and winter and discussed indoor fire hearths and wooden huts and foraging for onions before the ground froze for good. An apothecary with an index of herbal remedies.

Clarke speared a hog one day.

Talking. That he was good at history. Of the girls that were mean to her in school. About Earth. The way it smelled and sounded. The way sucking in the cold air hurt in the lungs but somehow they both reveled at the same sensation. The lack of temperature control. Humidity, rain, the smell of mud. Clarke never stopped puffing out hot air into the atmosphere just to see her own little cloud created. Bellamy always dipped his head to shield his smile.

Turns out squirrels didn't taste as bad as he'd thought.

"This food is so good I could kiss you both," Raven exclaimed at dinner.

"Please don't," Bellamy groused.

Raven wiggled her eyebrows at him. "Squirrel stew. Who knew."

"I did," Clarke piped up proudly, slightly chirpily.

"Seriously though, how have you two not been arrested yet?" Monty practically whined. He was dying to get out and build his own little shack out of scrap metal in which to tend to…herbs and such.

"The food's too good. Kane can't even complain," Jasper said through a slurp.

"Speaking of…" Bellamy trailed off and shot Clarke a look. They both got up from their seats, twisting out from under the benches in unison. The others were used to it by now, and let them to their obsessive need for camp betterment. As they made their break from dinner Abby passed them and stopped.

"Clarke," she called, but her daughter was brushing past her with purpose.

"Sorry mom, gotta go."

Bellamy hung back to put himself between the Griffins and let Clarke walk ahead. He lingered just long enough to catch Abby ask their table where they were always off to.

"You know. Hero complex stuff," he heard Monty said.

xxx

"I can't believe we're seriously mapping out where to find wild onions," Clarke shook her head and kicked at the ground with the toe of her boot, a half smile worn on her face.

"Onions, replacing gunpowder on the list of most precious of resources," Bellamy quipped and her half smile turned into a breathy half laugh.

"Beats playing dice with Monty and Jasper all night," she said.

Silence hung for a beat as Bellamy lost himself in the waves of her tangled locks, willing himself to pull away and look at the map they were drawing in the dirt with sticks. "Yeah, it does."

Clarke mused on about hillsides and valleys and the warmest part of the day and how to time their trek just right in order to be back by dark and Bellamy heard her, he always heard her, but he also became acutely aware of a shift in the air. One that was very still, colder than usual, but not bitingly so. It was comfortable and calm and he'd never experienced anything quite like it before.

"Clarke," he said. "You feel that?"

"Feel what?"

"The change in the air," he said.

She gawked at him with a quizzical are you crazy brow, but it melted away. She was looking past his shoulder, almost squinting.

"What?" he said.

"Look," she practically whispered and darted a hand past him and into the air to catch a single falling snowflake. It touched her palm and disappeared instantly. She looked up. "Bellamy, look," she said again and he obliged. Speckled against the black sky tiny dots of white were floating like feathers down towards them.

For several still minutes they stood in silence, with heads tilted back and mouths agape in wonder.

"This is better than rain," Bellamy said quietly.

"There you guys are!" Octavia's breathless voice, like she just ran all the way to them, popped their bubble of meditation. "Come on, it's the first snowfall. Which means we're sneaking out."

"What for?" Clarke asked.

"Grounder ritual. Come on, Lincoln's planned it all. He says it's going to be a perfect snowfall."

"Shit. There goes the onions," Bellamy said, followed by a knowing look from Clarke. They'd be frozen over for good now.

"You two seriously need to chill," Octavia shook her head and gave Bellamy's shoulder an affectionate shove. "Loosen up, have some fun." She shot a peculiar glance towards Clarke and a twinkle in her eye. "Plus, big brother, I need to you carry a barrel of Monty's moonshine."

While their truce with the grounders was shaky at best, Lincoln and Octavia had managed to build bridges and bring together a small group of Grounders and most of the forty-seven. The tradition went that on the first snowfall of the year, different villages and tribes would each bring an offering and they would trade, share, drink, play music, tell tales, and celebrate the beauty of the snow ahead of the long, hard winter to come.

Bellamy hauled a barrel of moonshine, their offering, through a makeshift entryway made of stacked river rocks. Beyond the threshold tree trunks and stumps were set up as seating around several deep orange fire pits. Clarke had fallen behind to walk with Raven, and the rest of the sky people filed in as Grounders milled about and set up instruments and seating and lay out hides and furs. Several rabbits were turning on spits over one of the fires.

"Welcome, my friend," Lincoln approached as Bellamy set the moonshine down and embraced him in a warm hug. "Tonight we feast and drink. Our winters last long and this…" he pointed to the sky. "…grows bleak and grey."

"Yeah, about that. Got any tips?" Bellamy said, all business, but with a smile flickering across his face.

"Later," Lincoln reassured. "Octavia swore me to-"

"Swore you to promise that my brother have a good time tonight," Octavia interjected, with arms closing around Lincoln and a sloppy grin.

"Did she now?" Bellamy teased.

"She did," Octavia said. "Now crack open the damn moonshine."

"Yes, God. Please," Raven's deadpan voice crept up behind him. She was out of breath and her jaw drawn tight. Clarke followed soberly by her side, hands in her pockets.

Octavia started doling out moonshine and the crowd huddled around her. Bellamy saw Clarke hang back and shiver. He pushed through the crowd.

"Raven?" he asked.

Clarke just let out a heavy breath.

"She's hiding it well," he said. The corners of Clarke's mouth dipped down as she visibly tried to shake off the heavy sadness she had acquired on the walk up the hill. Clarke seeped up others pain like it was her own. "Come on, let's get you a drink."

Moonshine in hand, they surveyed the crowd. "Your people are cold," Lincoln said as he approached them once more. "Seems we both brought offerings to relieve the cold. Your moonshine and…" Lincoln waved to some men behind him and they hurled a mound of hides and pelts onto their shoulders. The men began distributing them to each of the forty seven, a pleasant, excited murmur whispering through the crowd, but Bellamy and Clarke were rendered speechless. A humbled speechlessness. Lincoln and Octavia exchanged a glimmering look from across the fire.

And so grounder and sky people alike gathered around warm embers, shared drinks, and settled onto the log seats, their shoes crunching into the soft snow. Soon all were wrapped in their new animal pelts and furs, hands cupped around drinks, huddled around the fires. Grounders gathered at the center flame and began to assemble on stumps and set up various contraptions and instruments. Unassumingly, one began to tap softly against a drum. Soon another joined him. And another. Something similar to a flute, a string instrument, but mostly drums in every shape and size, every kind of animal hide pulled tightly across the tops.

When the cups were scraping the bottom of the barrel and the last of the moonshine had been distributed, Bellamy threw up his hands and crossed his heart to Octavia, swearing he'd go be carefree. He picked at one of the roasting rabbits and threw a sinewy strand of meat into his mouth with a pop. Washing it down with his drink, he looked around. Octavia was sitting on Lincoln's lap, engrossed in the music and gently nodding her head in tune with its rhythm. Raven was commanding Jasper and Monty's undivided attention.

And Clarke. Where was Clarke?

He scanned the crowd and found her sitting on the edge of an empty log, third row back from the center. She was looking down into her drink. He had come to learn that was a particularly Clarke thing she did. He circled around the perimeter of the central campfire, as he approached he could feel the warmth of the embers leaving his skin the the air pop open again. It was less stifling, and he filled his lungs with cold air. He now knew why she was sitting where she was. Far enough away from the oxygen suffocating flames, but close enough still that the golden light lapped at her hair and at the corners of her face when she looked up and let her gaze trace over her people, happy and at ease, her features reverent and serene. She could take it all in from here.

"Well, Princess," he said, throwing a leg over the trunk and sitting to face her. "You sure do know how to have a good time."

She looked up and while her face remained serious, her eyes reflected the fire, bright and light. "You're one to talk."

He held up his hands in resignation.

"Not easy being in charge, is it?" he teased.

She sipped her drink before holding it up. "Doomed to drink ourselves stupid in silence."

"I'll cheers to that," he said and clinked his tin against hers.

They relaxed into a comfortable silence as they drank and listened to music they had never heard in their short lives. Bellamy felt it in his chest, in his bones, and couldn't ever recall feeling that feeling before. The drum beat followed his heart and fluttered in his stomach and spiked in his veins. He glanced over at Clarke and found her head lightly bobbing, her fingers strumming against her cup. The fur of her new pelt stood up at her shoulders and tickled her jaw.

"It's beautiful," she spoke, as if she knew he was staring. "The snow."

Several inches deep now and still floating from the sky, it had covered the earth in a white blanket, a term he had found silly when he read about it in school, but which he now knew was really the only way to describe it. It muffled the air and quieted it so that every sound was more precise and crisp than it had been before. The world reverberated off of it.

And with the snow on the ground and the beat in his chest and the flush in his cheeks and the moonshine in his head and the glow against her jaw, he reached out his hand. Tentative and delicate, his fingers touched hers. She looked down at their hands against the bark, but made no effort to move. He ghosted over her knuckles, found the spaces in between. Hers arched up, his dipped under, and their palms lifted from the trunk and like dancing webs, their hands explored the different ways they could intertwine. Fingers through fingers, his clasped over hers and locked in, knuckle to knuckle. It was like playing with magnets, he could feel the energy, the push, the pull. His skin was on fire and it wasn't from the flames.

Bellamy looked up at her, locking into her eyes, her face unreadable except for the fullness and the curve of her lips. So often they were pulled thin. Her eyes were pleading, pulling, yearning, questioning. Open.

A heavy snowflake fell on her cheek, right below her eye and he broke their interlocking to reach out the pad of his thumb and swipe it, softly, gently, away as it melted into water. Clarke's eyelashes fluttered and he slid his fingers through her hair and snaked around her ear, cupping her face in his hand. She stilled, almost froze, and he could hear her breath grow short and ragged. He continued on, possessed by the oceans in her eyes and the flush fluttering across the bridge of her nose, and brushed the tips of his fingers along her jawline, against her neck, where he applied the slightest pressure. Her breath hitched in her throat. Bellamy wanted to play her body like an instrument. He traced his thumb along the edge of her collarbone. He wanted to feel every bone.

"Clarke!"

His hand snapped away in an instant and she jumped.

"Clarke! Come on, we need you." Jasper's voice howled and whooped, as Monty, Raven and others echoed their agreement. She was being beckoned. "Only you can settle this!" Clarke looked back at Bellamy, and he threw his eyes over to the crowd, a quiet signal to go.

After a matter of minutes he felt much colder, his surroundings much darker without her there for the fire to reflect and bounce off of her.

The snow continued to fall for some time. The longer it fell the more Bellamy's plan was being buried under it. Clarke Griffin had gotten under his skin, and he didn't know if he could walk away without her.


Please forgive my snail's pace, I've never moved this slow before, but I got really into working methodically within the canon. (Except Finn basically doesn't exist. I didn't feel like dealing with that baggage). Promise to deliver on the M rating next chapter. In a big way.