A/N: I hope everyone is finding a way to stay sane and stay healthy! Myself, I someone ended up starting a 3000 piece puzzle for the first time ever and am losing my mind a little trying to get it done...there's just so many pieces and everything is distracting with so many extra people home all the time...vent over.
As per usual, for all their various forms of aid, PenguinofProse, strangeJenny and Cherrypinkrose. And thanks to AvengerGirl17 for her original help with a certain part of this that I had written very early on before I'd even written chapter four...
So this chapter has a trigger warning. Anxiety, panic attacks, talk of injuries and less than stellar circumstances.
Chapter Eight
Another week passed by, and Clarke hadn't needed to see or speak to Bellamy throughout that week. She had seen him from afar at Madi's soccer game where they had exchanged friendly, but distant smiles that caused something inside her to die just a little.
And then she went on to survive another family dinner where they made polite, detached conversation before claiming seats at opposite ends of the dining table. From there, she had to pretend that seeing him looking all content and settled and affectionate with the incredible human that was his girlfriend didn't unhinge her at all.
When Echo had smiled tentatively and informed her they'd both be seeing her the following day at the team bonding paintball session, Clarke's first instinct had been to find an excuse to no longer attend. But then she reminded herself that she had been attending with Roan for the last five years, and not going for whatever fictional reason she could come up with would be more unusual than just sucking it up and participating. If Bellamy and Echo ended up on her team, they would end up split up anyway, and if they weren't, she would barely see them.
It made her almost physically weak when Roan pulled up to pick her and Madi up at the moment she should have been making some kind of falsely enthusiastic reply. He didn't get out of his truck, just lifted his hand in greeting to her family and greeted Madi with their usual fist bump as she hopped cheerfully into the back seat.
Clarke bid a quick farewell without properly looking at anyone, and climbed into the passenger seat beside him. Roan took her hand and squeezed it in reassurance, before putting the truck in gear and pulling away.
Her steadily mounting anxiety of the past few weeks was causing her to have waves of mild panic that kept her tossing and turning most of the night before she fell into a fitful sleep where she dreamed of blood and the rattle of a last breath. And so, for a few terrifying seconds, when she first opened her eyes the following morning, she had no idea where she was. That should have been her first clue to how the rest of her day was going to go.
Breakfast was a fairly standard affair where Madi spent most of the time either recounting some teenage amusement or another, or listening to Roan's stories about his latest cases. Not for the first time, Clarke wondered why, as a teenager, she had thought life would be easier once she was an adult. Then they dropped her off with Octavia on their way to the local paintball field.
And so, here she was, strapping into her paintball gear, getting panicked flashes of being strapped into her military gear with the world falling apart around her.
Roan's hand covered hers where her fingers had been subconsciously drumming away on the air gun, and kept it gripped tightly between them. "You've been jittery since I showed up last night," he murmured, stepping closer so no one could overhear. "Are you sure you want to participate?"
Clarke took in a deep inhale and then expelled it before she answered. "We won't know until I try," was all she could offer, demoralising as it may be.
"If you change your mind, I'll stick close so just let me know," he shot her a mischievous, dimpled grin. "Or just get yourself shot, I'm sure Ontari will be happy to oblige you."
She leveled her gun at him with a glare to show she didn't appreciate his humour, but was certain a smile was threatening to break through to ruin the effect.
As Roan stood, still grinning, with his hands up in mock surrender, Bellamy caught on the edge of her vision and the agitated butterflies erupted in her gut again. She turned her head without a conscious decision to do so, and met his eyes for a tense moment before looking away.
She could do this. She had done worse things in her life than spending some time with the person she had most missed and his impressive girlfriend. "Let's get this over with," she said on a sigh.
Ever the commanding sort, Roan corralled their fellow participants in to listen to a worker go over the rules and safety procedures for the site as well as the equipment they would be using. Before long the teams were drawn, as per usual Roan and Ontari were two of the three team captains, and Clarke wasn't sure if she was more relieved or disappointed to end up on a different team to Bellamy. Teams moved off in different directions and strategies were discussed and decided upon.
As soon as the starting gun went off, Clarke knew she had made a mistake. She shouldn't have come today. It was just paintball, but every time she took aim and shot someone visions flashed through her mind. Flickers of memories of the smell of burning flesh and seeping blood. The muffled sounds of shouted orders and screams of fear and pain, of guns rattling and the groan and screech of a vehicle rolling.
Clarke ducked behind a tree and tried to catch her breath. She fought with her spiraling emotions, reminded herself she wasn't a soldier anymore, tried to count her breaths only to find she suddenly couldn't remember how to count. Her guts were starting to cramp alarmingly now, and the back of her throat burned. Tears stung at her eyes. "No!" She swallowed it all back down, whacking her fist into the bark behind her hard enough to break skin. She was not a slave to this reaction! She would not succumb to it!
Someone stepped into the edge of her field of vision and she raised the airgun on reflex, heart skittering, finger moving on the trigger until her gaze made contact with a shade of brown she would always remember and she froze, locked in place.
"Bellamy," was whispered on an exhale before her eyes widened. Her mouth went dry as the Sahara and her lungs constricted painfully. She couldn't shoot Bellamy, not even with a stupid paintball...and he didn't seem to be shooting her either, just staring at her in alarm.
Unbidden, she pictured him in military gear on tour with her, an enemy gun trained on him, an instant away from a death she had seen too many of her comrades face and her body went ice cold, the burning in her throat making a resurgence. The black crowding into the edges of her vision and the ringing in her ears was a dead giveaway. She was on the verge of passing out.
"Clarke?" Bellamy's voice trickled through from a great distance.
"R-Roan," she grit out between desperate attempts to take a full breath around the elephant that had taken up residence in her chest.
"Stop apologising," Bellamy chuckled as he pressed the back of his hand to her burning forehead. "I'm the one who chose to stay here and look after you."
"You should not be here looking after me on New Year's Eve," Clarke rasped, the last word dissolving into a coughing fit.
"Well then, you shouldn't have gotten caught in sleet," he teased, pulling the blankets up higher on her shoulder where she lay facing him on her side.
"Who told you to give me a wonderful Christmas present that required frames?" Clarke sulked.
"Well, who told you to catch the bus when I have a perfectly good car and could have given you a lift?" He had collected a few small watercolour paintings from the recent places he'd been in Europe for his matches. They usually charged tourists an arm and a leg for them, but luckily he had a working knowledge of Spanish after six years living primarily in Spain, and a web of local friends in various cities who knew the best places to go without getting swindled. Clarke's delight upon opening the gift had been worth all the effort and every Euro he had spent. "Besides, I'd much rather spend tonight with you and my new books." Of course Clarke had reciprocated with a collection of hard cover classics.
"You just don't want to watch your underage sister get drunk and make out with her boyfriend." Clarke retorted. "I've heard the stories. You like a good party. Booze, hot girls and one-night-stands are right in your wheelhouse."
"Have you been talking to Miller?" Bellamy narrowed suspicious eyes at her.
"Our friends are prone to gossip, you know." Clarke rolled her eyes at him, then followed with a groan and reached up to rub her temples.
"Speaking of gossip," he tried to change the subject, not entirely comfortable discussing his sex life with her. "O was going on about how you wouldn't let them throw you a party for your twenty-first birthday. So do you have a problem with birthdays? Or with fun? Be honest Princess."
"I can be fun," Clarke let out an offended huff. "And it's just celebrating my birthday that I have an issue with."
"And why's that, Princess?" Bellamy raised his eyebrows at her. "And don't think O hasn't mentioned that somehow none of our friends seem to know when your birthday is."
"They know when it is," Clarke was pouting again and he couldn't help but laugh at her.
"Knowing it's some time in October doesn't really count as knowing though, does it?" he argued, more curious now than ever. "Swear me to secrecy if you must, but I'd at least like to know why you don't like to celebrate it."
"My mother always worked on my birthday," she let out a heavy sigh. "Most of the time she wouldn't even remember it was my birthday."
"I can relate to that," Bellamy nodded along, knowing instinctively that there was more to it. "More often than not Mum wouldn't remember mine. I don't even remember the last time she was around on one of my birthdays. On the plus side she didn't start forgetting O's until she was in high school."
"When's yours then?"
"Twenty-second June," he told her.
"So you don't get it," she whined, actually whined, in a very un~Clarke like manner. He was willing to let it pass given that she was sick. "You've never been so completely overshadowed -"
"Did you not hear me just now when I said my mum stopped remembering my birthday long before my sister's?" he couldn't help but retort.
But Clarke went on as if he hadn't interrupted her. "- and you certainly haven't ever been told you were cursed, or that you must be a witch. Or unlucky!"
How was unlucky the one with most emphasis in her list? He had just physically jolted when she admitted to being told she was cursed! ...And then it clicked. She had started referring to herself as being twenty-one when October was over. Her mother always worked, implying it was busy. Being cursed or a witch, and overshadowed was pretty self-evident. Most obvious of all was the fact that Murphy had spent the better part of November complaining about how much Clarke hated Halloween, his favourite event of the year.
"Halloween," he pieced together. "Your birthday is on Halloween?"
Clarke's only response was to sulkily burrow deeper into her blankets. "Kids are mean. Once it was known my birthday parties weren't costume parties despite it being Halloween no one ever wanted to show up. Then it somehow got out that my own mother wouldn't celebrate it and suddenly I was cursed. Then of course there's my dad."
Here was the real reason, Bellamy was sure before she even admitted it.
"He was stabbed in prison on the eve of my birthday. He didn't immediately die but he was in a coma for three weeks before my mum elected to take him off life support."
He couldn't hug her in their current positions, so he rested his hand on top of her head, a little thrill going through him when she seemed to turn up into the touch. "I'm so sorry for that, Princess."
"It's not like it was your fault," she gave a little shrug. "Just don't tell anyone."
"Promise," he swore, smiling down at her. "But don't think I'm not going to be buying you presents from now on."
"Glad to hear you plan to stick around, Blake," she commented dryly.
Bellamy made a considering noise in his throat. "I'm not sure I can imagine life without you anymore, Clarke. You've just fit in to it too easily."
"I forget sometimes that you've only known me a few months," Clarke admitted, glancing up at him with a little smile. "We're both a little weird, right?"
"Maybe," Bellamy grinned down at her. "Or maybe we both just needed a person without knowing it."
"Needed a person?" she raised her eyebrows at him.
Bellamy shrugged. "Someone you don't need to pretend with. Miller is the closest thing I've ever had to a best friend and he doesn't know half the stuff I've told you."
"I get it," she smiled, then sneezed and they both laughed at the timing. "My person or not, I'd still feel better if you weren't giving up your New Year's Eve to babysit me."
"No matter what anyone tells you, as much as I like a good party and a casual hookup, I really do love spending quiet time like this. I can't remember the last time I managed to spend a quiet night just reading," he put as much sincerity into his voice as he could. "Besides, I can be a controlling asshole and the idea of leaving you home alone with no one to take care of you would have weighed on me all night."
"I really am used to looking after myself though," Clarke sighed, but the mist he could see in her eyes told him he'd struck a cord.
"And tonight you don't have to," he patted her head. "Especially considering how quickly our supposed friends disappeared upon hearing you weren't feeling well."
"That should have clued you in that I'm usually a horrible patient," Clarke shot him a dry look. "Besides, have you met our friends? They all have horrible bedside manners. Your sister is somehow the one who's best suited to playing nurse."
"Words I never thought I'd hear in relation to my sister." Bellamy chuckled, pride swelling in his chest.
"Take it as a compliment." Clarke patted at his thigh. "It means you always did an amazing job looking after her when she was ill."
That tugged at his heartstrings. "Thanks Princess."
She made an 'mmmhm' noise and snuggled into her blankets.
That she dozed off shortly after gave him a moment to glance around her room, something that only made him smile at how Clarke everything was. From the easel in the corner with a half finished landscape, to the blackboard-painted wall covered in chalk drawings of Christmas images, to the sketchbooks and papers scattered all across her makeshift desk.
A pamphlet about Germany on the corner of her nightstand caught his eye and he pulled it closer having a quick read through it with a rising interest and excitement. "Clarke, what's this?" he shook her shoulder for her attention.
She squinted at the paper in his hand, grumbling at him for waking her when she was almost properly asleep. "The UN hosts a workshop every year at their base hospital in Germany. It's kind of like a training and good relations program for army medics. Unfortunately, there's only so many spots."
"So you'd be in Europe for how long?" He was getting ahead of himself, he knew, but the idea of having her on the same continent as him for an extended period of time was already making him so excited.
"Six to eight months," she smiled at his apparent excitement. "It acts as a kind of deployment, I guess, we get the occasional week off. The main difference being we get weekends to ourselves. Would that be of interest to you?"
"To be able to show you Europe and get to spend time with you regularly? Hell yes," he grinned at her. "These last few months say otherwise because of holidays but I usually only get time to come and visit O every two to three months during the season. It would be so nice to have family closer to me."
She gave him a fond little smile. "I guess it's a good thing I applied then."
Bellamy couldn't help but beam. "This is great! How soon will you know? How soon does it even start?"
Clarke gave a wide yawn followed by a fit of sneezes. "Can we talk about it in the morning?"
"Sure, Princess," he agreed with great reluctance. "Get some rest. I'll be right here if you need me."
The smile she gave him as she dozed off again had him softening with affection, and he pulled out his phone to start making lists of all the places he knew she would want to see when she made it to Europe.
Bellamy didn't know what was happening. He hadn't even seen Clarke until she had raised her airgun at him, and had initially been confused when she didn't immediately shoot him. But next thing he knew she was going almost transparently pale and was clearly struggling for air. She had barely managed to get Roan's name out and all he could do was frantically scan the area for the detective who was suddenly appearing from nowhere and bodily hauling Clarke to a more secluded spot in the shade, where he proceeded to sit her on a rock and shove her head down between her knees while her whole body violently tremored.
Overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness, Bellamy watched on while Roan crouched beside her and methodically striped away her protective vest and pulled the collar open at Clarke's throat and upper chest at an almost desperate pace before he took his fingers to her wrist and hand and began to massage at points on both.
"You got cold water?" Roan shot Bellamy a harsh, concentrated look.
Bellamy pulled the small water bottle from a pocket of his supplied cargo pants and unscrewed the lid, noticing the violent trembling of his own hands as he offered it out. He had to wonder why he couldn't seem to get any words out. When had he forgotten how to form sounds?
"Either wet some fabric or trickle it a cap-full at a time over the back of her neck," Roan's voice was completely devoid of anything as he gave his orders forcefully enough to get Bellamy moving.
Rushing to complete the task, Bellamy pulled the coloured bandana from his bicep and wet it, laying it carefully over the back of Clarke's exposed neck. Then he stood by uselessly and fretted, straining to hear what Roan was whispering to Clarke in a reassuring tone of voice just that bit too quietly for Bellamy to pick up.
"What happened?" Roan softly questioned when Clarke seemed to be taking deeper breaths and the frightening shaking had grown less frequent.
"I don't know," Bellamy's voice was hoarse even to his ears and he tried and failed to explain what had just happened.
Roan let out a long, strained sigh. "I should have known better than to let her participate today," he seemed to be berating himself. "I could tell she's been too anxious lately."
"You say that as if you could have stopped her," Bellamy hissed, anger rising. People didn't tell Clarke what to do and a little anxiety had never stopped her before...though he had to admit what he had just watched had gone far beyond any anxiety he had ever seen her have before.
"And you say that as if you know what's actually going on!" Roan retorted, his voice holding a solid punch despite the quiet tone. "She's been having nightmares again-"
"She's always had nightmares and anxiety," Bellamy was glaring darkly now, automatically defensive about the very idea of knowing Clarke less than Roan. "How does that translate to whatever the hell I just witnessed?"
Clarke's tremors picked up again, they'd agitated her, and Roan hissed, "Later," before adopting his soothing tone again, whispering to Clarke for several tense moments. When she quieted down again he asked her if she could swallow properly, which seemed an odd question to Bellamy but Clarke's head moved in an affirmative motion. "Do you mind sharing water with Bellamy?"
"Bellamy?" He could hear the stress in Clarke's muffled voice when she said his name and her breathing started to get erratic once more.
He reacted without thinking, gripping her free hand. "I'm right here Clarke, please just breathe easy. I don't think any less of you. I've seen you in far worse condition, haven't I, Princess? The night we met comes to mind. Then there was the time you were sick over our first New Year's together, you pouted through a high fever and almost threw up all over me, twice. And remember Paris? We got drunk and both tried to hit on that girl that turned out to be very realistic graffiti? O of course got the whole thing on camera."
Clarke squeezed his hand and something that resembled a hysterical chuckle came out of her. "I could have done without remembering that incident."
The peculiar look Roan was giving him was making Bellamy uncomfortable, but Clarke's hand in his, for the first time in six years, was giving him the most bizarre sense of home. "Bellamy, come rub her pressure points here and here," he shifted and showed Bellamy exactly what he had been doing.
Bellamy was loathe to let go of her hand, but was thankful for something useful to do.
Next thing he knew, Roan had produced some pills and was handing them to Clarke, claiming Bellamy's water bottle for her as she straightened slowly and took a gulp of water before raising the pills to her mouth, and Bellamy had to look away then, abruptly having horrible visions of Clarke having to rely on pills and if he kept thinking like this he would be the one having a panic attack. But then Clarke's fingers closed over his to stop his motions and she slid to sit in the dirt, back pressed to the rock she had previously been sitting on.
Roan settled in next to her and she leaned into his side, head on his shoulder eyes closed. Within moments she seemed to have fallen asleep, her whole body going limp.
Bellamy, however, couldn't seem to move, still crouched with his fingers on her pressure points. Taking deep breaths, he tried to sort through the mess that were his thoughts and emotions, hoping to form a coherent sentence when he next opened his mouth.
"She doesn't see it," Roan's voice broke through his thoughts, his vivid eyes completely focused on Bellamy as though he had been studying his reactions. "And she certainly may not seem it. But she's stronger now than ever."
He didn't know how to respond to that until he glanced back down at Clarke, finally appearing peaceful again. "She was always stronger than she gave herself credit for," he finally stated, matter of fact, because Clarke had always been the strongest person he knew.
"Not when I met her," Roan glanced down at her. "Not entirely anyway," he amended. "She'd been through too much already, and anyone could see she was barely hanging on by a thread, if they looked closely enough. To this day I don't know why the Brass hadn't sent her home with all the incidents she'd lived through. But I assume it was because she was good at what she did, and never wanted to leave a man behind. I respected her long before I liked her."
Bellamy's eyes flicked from Roan, keen - and a little desperate - to hear anything he would divulge, to Clarke, because really he couldn't keep himself from checking she was still doing okay.
"She saved my life once."
Bellamy dragged his attention away from Clarke to stare at Roan. "I didn't know that."
"We were stationed at the same base during our last deployment," Roan summarised. "Clarke replaced the medic on my team during a transport assignment that went south. The lead Hum-V in our convoy was hit by an IED. The force caused it to hit our hummer which then flipped, and we were pinned down by enemy fire and trapped. Clarke crawled out first; cutting my belt so I could crawl out after her. She made me pop her shoulder back into place as if it got dislocated every damn day. And then she turns to a young private, he was having a full blown panic attack and she just forced him to look at her, told him he would live before shoving his gun in his hands and telling me she needed cover. I'll never forget it. She got three guys out of that first truck and all of them survived. And then I got cocky and managed to get myself shot. She was the only thing that kept me alive. We didn't even know she'd been hit too until we all made it back to base safely. She was given an honorable discharge after that. We both were since I ended up with multiple shattered bones and a metal plate in my face," he ran his finger along the mean scar that curved from the corner of his eye and under the curve of his cheek.
Imagining Clarke being involved in the situation that had resulted in such an intimidating scar, knowing now that she had lived through that, and hadn't come away uninjured, was giving him heart palpitations. He had to pinch himself, hard, to try to focus on the Now and not have his own meltdown. He exhaled deeply, his shoulders sagging. He hated that he hadn't been there for her. He couldn't seem to help anyone. He'd barely been able to help himself and now he hated himself even more for it. "So what I just witnessed?"
"Is nothing compared to her original panic attacks," Roan reached across to push a blonde lock back off her face. "But thankfully, because of a lot of hard work, this is the first one she's had all year. They've been happening less frequently over the years."
"The pills-?" he choked on the word.
"Make her drowsy," Roan nodded along. "She'll be a bit of a zombie for the next few days - her words - which she hates, but it also means she'll be calm enough to sleep peacefully and recover at a healthier pace instead of just trying to push through it." His eyes swung to Bellamy's, a serious look in them. "Let's be clear. I'm only telling you this because you mean something to her and it seems you're going to be back in her life now. You need to know how to deal with this if it ever happens again."
Just to complicate matters more, Roan had to tell him he means something to Clarke. As if he needed another thing to try and process after today.
"You know," Roan's voice broke him out of his thoughts once again. "I called her Princess once, as a joke shortly after I first met her. She punched me, and now I know why."
"What?" Bellamy frowned, confused about the relevance of his old nickname for Clarke. How did Roan even know about it?
"You called her Princess earlier when you were trying to calm her down."
Bellamy physically jolted. Had he really let it slip out?
"She's asleep enough now," Roan's abrupt change to the conversation startled Bellamy, as did Roan adjusting Clarke, supporting her head and shoulder as he rose to his feet and then carefully collecting her in his arms. "Spread it around that Clarke wasn't well and I've taken her home. Madi is at your sister's, so we'll head there for now."
"If you're going to O's, I can take her. You should stay with your squad," Bellamy started to reach for Clarke, it was instinctive really, because seeing anyone cradle Clarke like that felt truly foreign to him.
But Roan just shook his head, halting Bellamy's movements. "She isn't your responsibility, Blake."
That statement hit him like a knife in the gut and all he could do was stand by uselessly when Roan turned to walk away, Clarke stirring in his arms.
Roan unexpectedly stopped and shot him a surprised look. "She's saying not to leave you behind alone."
Something in his heart pulled at the unexpectedness of that show of care even in her current state of barely conscious. Bellamy moved forward and tentatively touched the backs of his fingers to hers and Clarke stirred towards him. "I won't be alone Clarke. And I'll see you before you know it, okay?"
She made a sort of grumbling noise in her throat and snuggled back into Roan, who offered Bellamy a nod and then moved off without another word.
Bellamy stood, staring at nothing for a while, his thoughts a strange combination of blank and hopelessly jumbled, until Echo silently stepped into his line of sight and he started. There was concern in her eyes but he couldn't dwell on it as his heart took control of his head. "I have to go," he told her. "Something happened to Clarke. Roan's taken her to my sister's."
The concern seemed to shift to worry. "Want me to come?"
He was shaking his head before his brain could catch up. "I think it's something private. I just..." he trailed off, his mind not letting him put this all consuming worry into words.
"Go on then," he was already heading off before she could finish getting the words out.
It wasn't the most responsible thing really, but Bellamy couldn't remember the trip to his sister's place. Pulling into her driveway seemed to bring him back, and he spotted Octavia standing in her doorway before he was even out of the car.
Suddenly feeling self conscious, Bellamy tried to articulate an excuse for his presence. "I -"
"You took longer than I expected," Octavia rolled her eyes at him and almost smiled, pulling him into a brief hug. "She's in the living room."
"Roan?"
"He's on the phone out back, but he won't interrupt you," she ushered him off, and disappeared into the kitchen.
Bellamy hesitated for a moment, unable to identify if he was just nervous or if he was afraid to see the state Clarke was in.
Sucking in a deep breath, for strength, he entered the living room and instantly spotted Madi. The teen was perched on the edge of the couch, TV playing a cheerful animated movie with singing animals that didn't immediately register with him. She was chatting quietly and he finally noticed Clarke was laying out across the sofa, her hand clutched in Madi's, her other arm up covering her eyes.
Madi spotted him and brightened. "Bellamy," she grinned and stood, releasing Clarke's hand. "Clarke knew you'd come," she reached for his hand and pulled him over, sitting him down in her vacated spot. "She's a little out of it so don't be upset if she falls back asleep on you."
Bellamy nodded by way of response but Madi was already on her way out of the room.
Somehow, for the first time in six years, he was alone in a room with Clarke. But he couldn't seem to bring himself to look at her, bracing his elbows on his knees to take a few fortifying breaths. And when he finally did glance over at her, he spotted her peeking out at him from under her arm and couldn't help the relieved puff of laughter that escaped him.
Her eyes seemed a little dazed, but she was calm, and the tentative smile on her face was like a balm for his distraught soul. Tears unexpectedly sprung into his eyes and he dropped his head to try to hide them.
Clarke's hand came up and clamped onto his forearm. "Is it wrong of me to be relieved that you still care?"
Anger prickled through him. "How could I not care? I don't know that I've ever been that scared before, Clarke. You looked like you couldn't breathe and I couldn't even help you!"
"You did just fine actually," she mumbled. "But I'm sure you want an explanation?"
"I am kind of wondering why you seemed to have a panic attack out of nowhere," he chanced another glance at her.
"Not out of nowhere," she corrected gently. "I just chose to ignore all the precursors even though I knew better. I wasn't completely asleep earlier, so I heard you and Roan talking. I have P.T.S.D., Bellamy. That incident Roan was telling you about, I had all the signs and symptoms before it, but that was the final nail in the coffin. Injury or not, there was no way I could stay in the army after that. Neither my head nor my heart would allow it."
Bellamy swiped at his cheeks, a little surprised that he had started to cry in earnest. "How badly were you injured?" It made him sick to even imagine it.
"It wasn't too bad really, not at first," she corrected herself. "A few bumps and bruises, a couple of fractured ribs and a dislocated shoulder," she spoke as if it were just a paper cut and that seemed to horrify Bellamy even more until she continued and he instead felt as though his lungs had been pulled out through his throat. "But I took a bullet in the leg. It lodged in my bone and they had to operate. I would have been fine but an infection set in and in the end Jackson had to replace my bone with an artificial one or I risked losing part of my leg. Or worse."
"Worse?!" He bolted to his feet and paced a few steps away, took a deep breath, paced back, and regained his seat. "I should have been there for you," he sighed, dispirited.
"I knew you'd end up feeling guilty," Clarke huffed, her eyes narrowing on him. "This is why I didn't want to tell you."
"This isn't about me feeling guilty!" Bellamy's voice came out strained in an effort to not start shouting at her. "Though I am that a little. This is me being upset! I'm upset Clarke, that I didn't know, that I couldn't be there for you. I'm upset that this is part of your life now because you don't deserve it. And I'm upset that there's nothing I can do about it for you."
"You were never going to be able to save me from everything, Bellamy," her voice was back to being gentle. "Especially when I'm the problem."
"Six years, Clarke," he swiped viciously at the traitorous tears now. "No matter what you say, I could have been there. Should have been there."
"You aren't getting it Bellamy," Clarke hoisted herself into a seated position though it seemed to take a lot more effort than could be considered normal. "I was the problem. I refused to let anyone help me for longer than was healthy. O and Lincoln could tell you. I moved to Polis because I knew almost no one. I never answered their calls. I tried to cut them out, for so many stupid, petty reasons. But they stuck with me."
He should have stuck with her.
As if she could read his mind, she carried on. "There were days when I almost called you," she admitted. "But you were still overseas playing soccer. I couldn't bring myself to disturb your life. That's on me, Bellamy, not you."
He huffed at her.
"We'll just have to agree to disagree then," she was starting to blink drowsily at him. "I'm sorry Bell, I'm getting sleepy again. But if you start giving me that guilty look every time I see you from now on we're going to have a problem."
With a sigh and a nod, Bellamy couldn't seem to hold it in any longer. "I've missed you, Clarke."
A soft, yet somehow vibrant smile spread across her face. "Me too, Bellamy," she leaned forward and he caught her in a loose hug.
Her arms felt the same as he remembered. Strong and heartfelt, and he couldn't help but pull her closer, hold her tighter, and try not to break into sobs. It was when she started to shiver that he realised something was wrong and panicked a little. "Clarke," he made to move back but her arms tightened. "Are you crying?"
"You feel the same," came from the point where her chin had burrowed into his collarbone, the same spot it always had in the past. "It just caught me by surprise."
A little laugh puffed out of him and he settled into the hug until she calmed down and he realised she had fallen back to sleep. Careful not to disturb her, he settled her back into the cushions and took a few deep breaths before he moved off to find his sister.
Madi greeted him with a beaming grin where she sat between Roan and Octavia at the kitchen island bench, and she quickly hopped down off her stool and wandered back into the living room.
"Clarke's asleep again?" Roan checked, and at Bellamy's nod he also vacated the kitchen, leaving Bellamy to face his sister.
"Bell," the sorrow and apology in his sister's voice almost did him in. He was tilting his head back to fight off tears when Octavia's arms came around him and when a sob fell out of him, she squeezed tighter. "I was convinced Lincoln, of all people, must have been exaggerating when he told me what was going on with Clarke after she got back from her last deployment. She was pretty low, sure, and very withdrawn, but I was sure it was because of her injury and being stuck in hospital. Then I actually witnessed one of her panic attacks," she took a step back to meet his eyes. "I couldn't reconcile the person I knew with what I was seeing."
All Bellamy could do was nod, because really, what could he say?
"She really is so much better these days Big Brother," she smiled reassuringly at him. "She's better at managing it now. And she lets us help her when she needs it, too, which is good."
"Was she stressed because of me?" He'd been afraid to ask, but he needed to know the answer.
"To an extent. It's the time of year too," it wasn't the most comforting answer. "Madi going into high school had them both a bit stressed, they had just settled into their new routines and then you popped up...I'm pretty sure most of Clarke's anxiety about you is for your benefit, rather than her own. She was pretty worried about how you'd react to knowing about the P.T.S.D. let alone actually seeing it. Now that you have, now that you know, she'll probably settle down a bit more."
Bellamy shook his head with a heavy sigh, because that seemed so much like the Clarke he remembered. Always worrying about everyone else first.
"Lincoln and I are used to it, but if you're struggling at all, you might want to consider talking to Murphy," Octavia encouraged. "She kept putting off telling him, but the attacks were still fairly common at the time. She ended up so stressed out about telling him that she spiraled and almost collapsed. Murphy handled it well in the moment, he's a lot more put together than most of us have ever given him credit for, but afterwards he was a mess."
"Thanks," Bellamy nodded, then hesitated. "Should I stay? Or leave before she wakes up?"
"Doesn't matter," Octavia shook her head. "Between the anxiety meds and the after affects of the attack, she won't stay awake. Roan will probably take her home when Madi is ready to go."
"Madi's alright with all this? She seems way too calm for someone her age."
"That's another long story that isn't really mine to tell," Octavia lamented. "Ask one of them about it some other time. I will tell you that Madi is prone to minor anxiety attacks as well. She gets mild separation anxiety so if Clarke's down, Madi needs to be nearby or she starts getting panicky."
That opened so many more questions about both Clarke and Madi, their relationship, and Bellamy started to wonder just how Madi had come to be Clarke's daughter in every way bar one.
He tired to stop his next comment, he really tried, but it forced its way out anyway. "Roan seems good with them."
Octavia gave him a curious, considering sort of look, before one corner of her lips tipped up. "None of us really like Roan, exactly. He just has one of those personalities that rubs most people the wrong way. But it's served him well in his career choices and, at the end of the day, all we care about is how he treats Clarke and Madi. And he treats them better than he treats anyone else."
Bellamy couldn't quite figure out why Octavia's tone suggested she was somehow tying to offer him some sort of reassurance, ignoring the little voice in the back of his mind pointing out that he was, in fact, quite hurt that Roan seemed to have taken his place as the person Clarke relied on when times were tough. And while he was relieved that Clarke wasn't alone in her struggles, a niggling sadness lay beneath everything else because it was just more proof that he couldn't just slide seamlessly back into his place in her life.
He had taken too long to reply, he could tell by the look his sister was now giving him. "As long as she's happy. She deserves to be happy."
Octavia's eyebrows shot up for a moment before her eyes narrowed thoughtfully, as though she was looking for something in his expression.
"What?" Bellamy was sure he had a right to be nervous, his sister had shifted to give him an almost calculating look.
She gave him a little crooked smile and a chuckle. "I've heard that somewhere before."
That seemed significant, and possibly important, but Octavia was heading into the living room before Bellamy could question her further. All he could do was shelve the issue for now, brace himself, and face this new Clarke, her daughter, and her partner.
A/N: Please tell me your thoughts one this turn of events. I appreciate any notes.