Soul Fate Determination

by LaughingSenselessly

Clarke Griffin knows a few things about soulmates: They are the people you're fated to spend your life with. They will have a soulmark matching yours. It means they're the love of your life. And no one else, absolutely no one, could be a better match for you than them. At least, that's what people say. - Soulmates AU, except Clarke and Bellamy are not soulmates.

1. soul

A/N: This fic was written for the very sweet Maggie, winner of my offering for the Fandom Trumps Hate 2020 charity auction. Maggie, I hope you like! Thank you so much for participating and for your generosity (and thanks to everyone else who bid!). :)

The prompt was basically that I could write anything as long as it had ~friends who get like very very physically intimate but Platonically~ in a modern setting. As anyone who has ever given me a prompt knows, i rarely adhere to the prompt and usually go way off the rails, and this is no exception! *laughter hiding real pain* but anyway, that is why this fic will have 3 parts instead of being the one shot i envisioned (most of the rough draft is written already). it just felt like the prompt required setup ok!. that's my excuse for this mess. apologies in advance, i am disgusted as well.

Other thanks I must extend: to MJ (tumblr wellamyblake) for helping me crack this story idea with just two simple but genius suggestions, and Sjaan (readymachine), who took the time to beta-read for me and is saving me from a LOT of embarrassment lmao. I love you both.

Disclaimer: There are probably many factual mistakes throughout this fic particularly when it comes to legal, corporate, and security related things. Please excuse my lack of expertise!

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Clarke Griffin is five years old when she meets her soulmate.

Her mother is having an important guest over at their house that day. Everyone dresses in their best. Clarke puts on her favourite sky-blue dress that the new housekeeper, Aurora Blake, says makes her look like a princess. Her mother wears her favourite suit. Her father refuses to put on a suit, but he dons a soft woollen sweater that brings out his eyes.

The guest is one Thelonious Jaha, who does business with her mother or something. Clarke catches the words "business merger" although she's got no clue what that means. It's all very confusing. Clarke doesn't care about all that, anyway. The adults talk, and leave her and Jaha's son to play together.

He's got big brown eyes and a gap-toothed grin. "I'm Wells."

"I'm Clarke!" She's so excited to meet someone her age that she hugs him immediately. He has a nice smile.

They run to the kitchen and Clarke shows him her crayon collection. They draw together for a bit. Wells stops to watch her.

"You're better than I am," he says.

Clarke glances at his drawing. "Yeah, I am. What's that even supposed to be?"

He shrugs, not in the least offended. "It's a cow, I like cows."

"They're cool," Clarke agrees immediately. She's never even seen a live cow, she just wants this boy to like her because she likes him.

Then she catches sight of something on his wrist. She grabs his hand to take a closer look. Just like everyone else Clarke has ever met, he has a tattoo on his wrist. Difference is, his looks exactly like hers. Identical. A chess rook.

Aurora Blake pauses in sweeping the kitchen floor to look at what they're doing.

"My goodness," she says with a smile. "We don't always meet our soulmate this early. Your parents will be pleased."

"What?" Clarke says. Wells is equally confused. So Aurora sets down her broom and explains.

It's not a tattoo, not exactly. They're soulmarks, and everybody is born with them, the same way they're born with little tufts of hair and two eyes and a screaming mouth. But they mean something. And Aurora explains three things about them, in gentle, soothing tones:

One: it's a soulmate tattoo.

Two: Soulmates are the people you're fated to spend your life with. The love of your life. They make life easier, they understand you, they're the person you always have on your side. And no one, absolutely no one else could be a better match for you than them.

Three: Your soulmate will have an identical tattoo.

"Clarke!" her mother calls from the doorway, cutting off the explanation. "Aurora, I'm so sorry, they shouldn't be bothering you while you're working—"

"It's alright," Aurora says with a laugh. "I have two of my own around their age at home."

Clarke's mother brightens. "Really? You should bring them here sometimes then! It would be nice for Clarke to have someone new to play with."

"Oh, no, I couldn't possibly, they're two pieces of work—"

"Please do," Abby says firmly. "That way you won't have to worry about childcare. We have plenty of house staff that could look after them here. Truly, it'd be our pleasure—"

"Mom," Clarke cuts her off, excited. She grabs Wells' wrist. "Look! We're the same!"

Abby glances their way for the first time, and does a double take. She looks more closely, and her lips spread into a grin. She raises her voice.

"Jake, Thelonious. You have to come and see this."

—

Wells is over to play a lot after that. They learn how to ride bikes together. Their fathers teach them how to play chess, or at least try. And they also end up going to the same private school when first grade starts that fall.

Clarke's parents are very happy about her soulmark. Clarke couldn't care less about it, though. The identical chess rooks on her and Wells' wrists are an interesting factoid about them that she can boast about and that's it. She's just happy to stomp in the mud with Wells outside when it rains, and to pick him first whenever they're playing sports in gym class. He's fun, and he quickly becomes her best friend, and that's all that matters.

A few months after, Aurora shows up to work with two children in tow. Clarke's drawing by herself at the kitchen table. Abby's with her.

"Clarke," she says.

Clarke makes a sound like, I'm in the middle of something! She's drawing a cow and it's taking all her brain power. She's gonna give it to Wells so it has to be perfect.

"Clarke," Abby says again, this time in a warning voice. Reluctantly, Clarke looks up.

She locks eyes immediately with a boy. Curly hair. Freckles. Her gaze shifts to the girl next to him. She's paler than him, but they have the same gently sloping nose. Aurora's nose.

"This is Octavia and Bellamy," Abby says. "Why don't you show them the trampoline?"

"I'm busy," Clarke says.

Abby gives her a second, more deadly look. Clarke hops off her stool.

As it turns out, Octavia is very chatty, which makes it all easy. Bellamy isn't, but Clarke doesn't mind. They jump on the trampoline for a long time and talk about anything and everything. Octavia's a year younger than Clarke, and Bellamy a year older. The two of them are half-siblings.

"My daddy was mommy's soulmate," Octavia explains proudly as they jump. Clarke tosses Bellamy a glance. He seems bored with the conversation, staring off into the distance.

Octavia goes on. They go to a public school on the other side of town. This is the first time they've been allowed to come along to Aurora's work. Octavia tells Clarke that they've been dying to get a trampoline at home but her mom says no and what did Clarke say to her parents to get one? And Clarke shrugs and said she never had to ask. She never has to ask for most things.

Octavia seems excited. "Maybe I'll ask her! Oh, Bell, wouldn't it be cool if we had one, too?"

Bellamy doesn't say anything, again. Clarke wonders if he ever talks.

—

Over the next few years, the Blake siblings continue to accompany their mother to her biweekly housekeeping work in the Griffin mansion. Sometimes the house staff suggest something for them to do, but sometimes Octavia points at something and asks if they can play with it. She's an adventurous type, sort of bossy too. Bellamy kind of just goes along with whatever his sister suggests. Clarke wonders sometimes if he has any feelings at all, at least until the one day they're playing hide and seek.

Bellamy finds Clarke within five minutes, but then they spend hours and hours looking for Octavia, and that's the first time he looks scared. Really, really out of his mind scared.

"I have to find her," he keeps saying. "I have to."

"We will," Clarke says, puzzled at the distress in his voice. It's the most she's ever heard him talk. "She's around here somewhere."

Eventually, with the help of some of the house staff, they find Octavia—she'd somehow gotten herself trapped into a closet that locked from the outside—and she emerges crying hopelessly. Bellamy hugs his sister, and you'd think she almost died or something with how tight he clings to her. Octavia sobs on his shoulder and Clarke stands back, noticing Bellamy's eyes are wet, as though he'd been trapped in that closet along with her.

So he loves his sister. That's about all Clarke can gather from him. Sometimes she tries to draw him into conversation, but he only answers her questions, doesn't say anything more than is needed to communicate. She can't quite figure out his deal.

—

When she's ten years old, she and Wells are biking up a hill and she gets a flat tire.

"You go ahead home," she says with a sigh. They're on the huge Griffin property, it'll take a while to walk back.

But Wells gets off his bike too, and they walk together for a while. "What are you doing tomorrow?"

"I don't know. The Blakes are coming over, it's housekeeping day. We'll go for a swim or something, whatever Octavia wants."

Wells hasn't actually met the Blakes, but she's told him enough that he knows about them. "What about what Bellamy wants?"

"How would I know what he wants? He never talks to me." She huffs, kicking a rock out of her path.

Wells gives her a look. "That bothers you?"

He reads her too well. "Can you stop acting like a therapist?" she complains, and sees him hide a grin.

"Just curious, that's all. You always talk about him like you're frustrated."

Because it disturbs her when people don't like her. Especially when it's for no reason at all. "Because! I've never done anything to him, as far as I can tell."

"Is he mean?" Wells' brows furrow. "I'll deal with him if he is."

That makes Clarke almost smile. She knows he could. He's disarmingly reserved most of the time, but at school he's picked and won fights with people twice his size. Usually for Clarke. "No… he just isn't nice. I don't get it."

"Well, why don't you ask him what his problem is?"

Clarke blinks. "Just… ask?"

"Yeah. What's the worst that could happen? He won't talk to you?"

Clarke half-laughs, conceding the point. As they make it over the hill and her house comes back into view, she says, "I hate it when you're right."

He bumps her shoulder. "No wonder you're in such a bad mood all the time."

—

Bellamy hates coming to the Griffin mansion.

Octavia loves it. Mostly she loves the glamour of it, the lifestyle there, more than she actually enjoys hanging out with Clarke Griffin. He's the opposite.

Everything in that house, he despises. Everything in it is just a symbol of what he could never have.

Although he loathes coming here, he still does for Octavia's sake, and he does his best to act like he doesn't feel nauseous looking at all their wealth. After all, it's his mother's job on the line.

After Abby Griffin had invited—insisted, really—that Aurora bring her children, she had felt like she had no choice. She sat Bellamy and Octavia down and drilled a few things into them. Be polite to your hosts. Have only one serving if they offer you food. Don't steal anything. Don't break anything.

"And be nice to Clarke Griffin," Aurora finished. "Even if she's not. I don't care what she says or does. Don't give her a reason to complain to her parents." She paused there and gave four-year-old Octavia a meaningful glance. "Do you hear me, Octavia?"

Octavia paused in jabbing her paper sword at imaginary enemies long enough to look up. "What?"

Their mother sighed and looked at Bellamy. It was understood in that moment that he would take care of it.

And he did. Every time Octavia was on the verge of saying something rude to Clarke, he quickly steered her away. He made sure she didn't break anything in their house. Sometimes when one of the house staff bought them lunch, he stopped her from taking too many sandwiches despite the fact that he was getting hunger pangs too. He also did his best over the years to make sure she didn't say anything too personal.

Like the time Clarke's dad—the famous Jake Griffin—took them all out for ice cream, and seven-year-old Octavia said while munching on her cone, "I wish we had a dad." And Clarke looked all surprised, and Jake Griffin uncomfortable. Bellamy immediately said to Jake, "I really like your movies, sir, what was your favourite role so far?" because he could tell Octavia was going to say something stupid, probably about how their mother's boyfriends never take them out for ice cream, they're much more interested in taking her money to buy cigarettes and angrily breaking things in their apartment when she says no. His mother wouldn't want that to come out.

Most of all, over the years Bellamy made sure to be perfectly polite to Clarke, although she made him angry. Not that she was mean. Not at all. He just didn't like the idea that he was supposed to be a pushover if she was. And she was always so nice, so gracious, as if he and Octavia should bow at her feet for it.

She invites them to her birthday party every year, but no matter Octavia's begging, their mother refuses to let them go. Bellamy's relieved for it, but also irritated, because what does Clarke expect? All her rich friends are going to get her big expensive presents. In his family, they can barely afford a cheap cake. She probably hopes to humiliate them.

He hates, too, when she goes off on her family vacations around the world, and brings them something back, like a seashell, or a tapestry, or a signed album from a famous singer her dad knows, or something stupid like that. It's like she's always rubbing it in their faces how above them she is. Octavia eats it up, though, while Bellamy fumes ever silently.

At least, until this particular day.

He's eleven and it's a regular cleaning day at the Griffin house. As per usual, they're about to go off with Clarke—today for a swim—but Abby stops them. She says she wants to talk to them before they go off to play. Aurora gives Bellamy an anxious look and he squares his shoulders, ready for whatever he's going to be told.

It's not what he expects.

"A butterfly statue went missing from my study two weeks ago," Abby says once they're alone in one of the sitting rooms. "Right after you two came for your playdate. Do either of you have any idea where it went?"

Clarke stands awkwardly in the corner as Bellamy tries to sort through those words. Is she accusing them of stealing?

He realizes that's exactly what she's doing when she says, kindly, "I remember the three of you were in here. You won't get in trouble if you took it."

Well, Bellamy certainly didn't steal anything. Which means his sister must have while he wasn't paying attention. She never could help herself when it came to pretty things. Especially pretty things that looked like her soulmark.

He glances at her from the corner of his eye. But Octavia says nothing, apparently finding the carpet fascinating all of a sudden.

There's a long silence, and Bellamy realizes one of them is going to have to confess, or else they'll be seen as liars as well as thieves. He's just drawing breath to say it was him when Clarke speaks instead.

"It was me. I broke it."

Abby Griffin looks over at where her daughter is standing.

"I accidentally hit it off the table and it smashed," Clarke says, her shoulders suddenly hunched in chagrin. "I cleaned it up by myself."

Abby stares at Clarke. Her voice becomes a little more flat. "You should've told me right away."

Clarke seems to shrink further into herself. "I was scared to tell you. I know you love it."

Abby's silent. Then: "We'll talk about this later."

Bellamy studies Clarke. She looks properly scared of the talking-to she's going to get later. He almost believes her, too. Even rich princesses must be clumsy sometimes.

At least until her mother turns away, and a glimmer of something cunning passes over Clarke's face before it's gone. Triumph.

He stares at her. He doesn't know what to think of it, not at all.

He's silent as Abby dismisses them, and Clarke takes them through the house. She presents Octavia with a gift of a new swimsuit, which delights her. He tunes them both out and tries to figure out what Clarke's game is.

To make Octavia indebted to her? No, Octavia's already indebted to her for a thousand things. Take that designer swimsuit, which Bellamy knows his mother could never afford to buy. So, what? To pull a fast one on Abby Griffin just because? That doesn't really make sense with what he knows of Clarke.

In the pool, he floats on his back and frowns at the sky while Octavia screams "CANNONBALL!" and throws herself into the water. Bellamy has enough time to hope she doesn't do a belly flop before her impact sprays water everywhere.

Clarke's sitting on a raft, drifting not too far from him. She splutters as she's drenched from Octavia's jump.

"Ugh," Clarke says. "This pool is way too small."

Too small? Too small? It's gigantic. It's bigger than his entire apartment. The annoyance flares in him so suddenly he can't control his mouth for a second. "I guess that's the biggest problem in your life."

Silence.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

He doesn't say anything for a second, wondering how he's supposed to back out of that comment. "Nothing."

She sighs, and it sounds frustrated. "I know you want to say something to me. So spit it out, Bellamy."

His name coming from her lips jars him a little. But he recovers quickly. He goes from floating on his back to treading water, so he can glare at her. And then he can't stop the words pouring out at all: "Your dad's a movie star. Your mom runs a gigantic company."

"Yeah, so what?"

"You're rich," he says, and he's suddenly angry, angrier than her. "Do you even realize how rich you are? Your pool is bigger than my bedroom. Just one of the stupid ornaments on the dining table in one of your stupid dining halls could pay our rent for an entire year. That's how rich you are."

Clarke's silent, her lips thin. He laughs a little, because he might as well dig this hole a little deeper.

"Go ahead, then. Go ahead and tell me how it's not all great. Tell me your secret sob story. What, Daddy doesn't love you? Mommy's too busy to give you attention? Does the princess feel lonely in her tower?"

"No," Clarke says. She sounds puzzled, and it leeches Bellamy of his anger, leaving him with only his confusion. She doesn't say anything else. None of this makes sense.

Slowly, Bellamy asks, "Why'd you take the fall for my sister?"

Clarke doesn't play dumb. She meets his stare with an unflinching one of her own. "Because otherwise you would've."

He blinks, bewildered. They stare at each other for a long, silent moment, that is only broken when Octavia comes splashing up to them.

"Would you two quit talking and swim with me?"

And that's the end of that conversation.

—

Later, Bellamy regrets his words. He imagines his mother getting a call from the Griffin mansion. We no longer have need for your services. Thank you. All it would take is a word from Clarke and a significant portion of his mother's income would be gone. Because of his stupidity.

But the call doesn't come. He doesn't breathe any easier, though. He asks his mother if he can stop going with her to the Griffin mansion; he points out that he's old enough to stay home anyhow.

Aurora takes his face in her hands and examines him like she might find the reason for his request written there. "I thought you liked going."

Only for Octavia. To stop her from misbehaving. But he's realizing now that Octavia's particular brand of rudeness is harmless compared to his, because she doesn't mean it the way he does. Sure, if he's not there she might say something insensitive to Clarke now and then, but that's far better than risking himself having another outburst. "No, not really."

His mother watches him carefully. "Well, come along for just one more day," she says, picking up her bag.

She's probably hoping he'll change his mind so he can look after Octavia. "Fine."

And so he goes. Reluctantly.

When he sees Clarke, bounding down the stairs to meet them, he feels himself tensing.

But she smiles.

"Hey," she says, and then her eyes move to his sister. "Hey, Octavia."

Today, the Griffin family's driver—a man with a soulmark of a throwing star—takes them out to a mini-golfing course. The entire building is empty. It's just the three of them and all the staff of the restaurant and course eager to please them. The entire staff just sits at their beck and call, watching them play. It's creepy, but Clarke seems to think it's absolutely normal. And Octavia, well, she thrives on her new ability to snap her fingers and get a Pepsi stuck in her hand.

Bellamy's never played golf before. He sucks at it. Octavia's about a hundred times better, and she wins the first game. She excuses herself to the washroom, and then he's alone with Clarke. He doesn't say a word to her and hopes he can keep it that way until Octavia comes back. He's lining up to take his shot when Clarke says, "Can I ask a favour?"

He gives her a wary look.

"I liked… when you were honest with me, earlier," she says. "Because you were right. I don't understand—I don't really understand what life is like for most people. For regular people, I guess. But I want to try."

He takes his shot. The ball goes sailing way, way, way past the hole. "And as the housekeeper's son," he says with a sardonic smile, "it's my job to teach you?"

"No. That's why it's a favour I'm asking. I just want you to be honest. Speak your mind, instead of holding it in all the time." A pause. "You can say no. Or just don't say anything. I won't mind."

Clarke actually liked that he chewed her out for her pretty princess life? Maybe he hasn't quite figured her out yet after all. Well, if she wants the truth, then she'll get it. "You really think someone like me can afford to say no to you?"

Her brows furrow as she takes her shot. The ball goes in. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," he says, "You could get my mother fired if you wanted."

She stares at him. "I wouldn't do that." She sounds hurt.

"And how am I supposed to know that? The point is, you could."

"Well," she retorts, "I wouldn't. That's never even occurred to me. I like your mom. She's really nice."

"She's nice because she's scared of you, too." At her expression, he laughs. "Am I blowing your mind yet, princess?"

"I don't want people to be scared of me!" She sounds frustrated. "I didn't even know that was a thing. See, this is why I like you." He blinks, but barely has time to process that before she plows onward. "You're telling it how it is. I'm just asking you to keep doing that. And if you say no, fine. But if you agree, then you can stop holding it in all the time."

She's more perceptive than he thought. But he can tell her frustration is real. And remembering that she took the fall for that butterfly statue, he finds himself believing her. Believing that she can handle the truth.

He lines up his next shot. Misses again. "Well, I'll start by saying us being the only people in this place is not normal."

"It's just to give us privacy. That's how it always is."

"Not for us regular people," he says with an eye roll. He throws his club down. "And by the way, if this is your idea of a good time, it needs work."

She picks it up and hands it back to him, a smile tugging at her lips. "You're just hitting the ball too hard. Here, I'll show you." She gives a gentle swing. Sighing, he mimics her. As he does, he glimpses the tattoo on her wrist. A chess rook.

By the time Octavia's back, Bellamy's lining up for another shot.

"Bell, you got this," Octavia encourages. He takes a breath, and swings.

The ball rolls gently into the hole. Octavia whoops.

"You did it!"

"Only took fifteen tries," Clarke says. Bellamy gives her a look. There's a glint of mischief in her blue eyes. So the princess has got a sense of humour.

"Give me a break. I'm new to this," he says.

Clarke pokes Octavia. "Your sister is new to it too, but she's still kicking your ass. Face it, you just suck."

Octavia barks a delighted laugh, and Bellamy mutters, "I never asked you to be honest with me."

—

The next time Aurora picks up her bag and says she's off to the Griffin mansion with Octavia, Bellamy hastily throws down his book. "Wait, I'm coming."

He ignores his mother's knowing smile.

—

Bellamy finds that when he no longer has to bite his tongue, he doesn't mind hanging out with Clarke. She's got wit about her, and is smart, and genuinely nice in a way that makes him realize all those birthday party invitations were probably completely innocent.

She's nice, but she's not immune to getting mad.

He finds that out one day when they show up while she's still got other company around, one of them the mayor's son and the other another actor's daughter.

Those kids barely even see Bellamy and Octavia. They're more interested in talking to Clarke.

They're walking around in the backyard as a group, and they start ribbing her about Wells.

"All he does is follow you around at school," the mayor's son says. "That's sort of pathetic."

Clarke's voice becomes ice cold. She only brings Wells up in passing, but Bellamy has always been able to tell how much she likes the guy. "He's my friend. Don't talk about him like that."

"Yeah, yeah. Defend him. You're just as much a loser as he is."

The other kid guffaws. Bellamy's eyebrows go up. These people are pretty much what he expected Clarke to be. He stays quiet, and grabs Octavia's hand to remind her to do the same, wanting to stay off their radar.

Clarke doesn't say anything more, mild-mannered as always. Or so she appears. Because as they walk over the pool deck on their way across the yard, she leads the little group a little closer to the pool edge. The other kids don't seem to notice, so wrapped up in hearing themselves talk. At least, until she slips.

WIth a yelp, she grabs onto the mayor's kid's arm—in the way someone might to regain her balance—and yanks him down. Somehow, he not only goes down with her, but he slides over the edge and goes crashing into the pool. Bellamy almost can't believe how well she pulls it off.

The kid gets submerged and comes back up, yelling his head off about his designer shoes getting ruined.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Clarke says with wide, apologetic eyes. "I'll get a towel for your shoes."

It takes all the sheer will Bellamy has to keep his poker face.

Later, when the other kids are thankfully gone, he tells her, "Maybe you should follow your dad into acting. Because I almost believed that was an accident."

She glances at him from below her eyelashes. "I don't know what you're talking about," she says, but her lips curve up very slightly.

Something about that sly look makes him realize he doesn't just not mind hanging out with Clarke Griffin. He enjoys it, very much.

—

Once Bellamy starts becoming more friendly, Clarke finds that she grows to prefer him. There's something calming about his quietness. Octavia's fun, but her energy can sometimes get to be a little much for Clarke. Especially when she's already got so much energy in her life, as a young girl growing up in the spotlight.

One night, she's being driven back from one of her father's awards shows, reclining in the back of a limousine and itching to take off this black, tight dress. She'd painstakingly picked it out with the help of her mother's stylist to be as unassuming and unnoteworthy as possible. Fashionable but not too revealing for an eleven year old girl. Her makeup was done to the extent where people wouldn't say Jake Griffin's daughter was ugly but wouldn't say she wore too much makeup for her age.

When her ride finally pulls up to the front gates, she exhales. Finally home. Inside, she collapses at the base of the spiral staircases, too exhausted to move up further although it's ten at night. So she just sits there for a moment, alone. Her parents are still at the function, going to the afterparties.

"Hey," says a familiar voice, and she looks up to see Bellamy at the doorway wearing rubber gloves. It was housekeeper day, but she thought he'd be gone by the time she got home. "Rough night?"

"I'm rich. I don't have rough nights," she jokes weakly, and is rewarded with a smile. It's become a running joke between them. "What are you doing?"

"Helping my mom finish up. She's doing a deeper clean today, since none of you were here. Speaking of which, did your dad win?"

Clarke yawns, leaning back on her hands. "No, but he had three nominations, and he won last year, so I don't think anyone cares too much."

"Then why do you look so tired?"

Her eyes snap up to his. He seems surprised to have asked the question himself, but doesn't backpedal.

"Because these things are tiring," she says eventually. She feels like she's doing more acting than her father around some of these celebrities. She feels like she's more careful about what she says than her mother when introduced to some of her business associates. Luckily, Wells was at the function as well, so it was somewhat bearable with him at her side, offering his comforting presence, squeezing her hand when he could somehow tell the flashing lights of photographers were getting to be too much.

"Well, I better go back to work," Bellamy says, and she snaps out of her thoughts.

"Can I help?"

He blinks. "You? Help?"

That makes her get up. "I know how to clean things. There must be something I can do. It's so late. You should all go home." Ignoring his incredulous look, she sweeps past him in her black dress.

Aurora and Octavia are scrubbing down cabinets in the kitchen and greet her warmly. Their warmth transforms into confused shock when Clarke takes a cleaning wipe and gets down on her hands and knees and starts scrubbing at one of the cupboards.

Aurora lets her do one cupboard door before sighing. "This isn't your job, Clarke."

"I want to help."

"You're making more of a mess," Aurora informs her gently. Clarke deflates.

"Oh."

"We're finishing up anyway," Aurora adds. Her voice is kind. "Why don't you go upstairs and sleep? I'm sure your day has been long."

It has, of course. Clarke drags herself to her feet, feeling stupid for trying. What does she know about cleaning or anything useful like that, anyway? She's not helping anyone by being here.

She excuses herself, and is halfway up the stairs when Bellamy calls her name.

She waits for him to catch up. When he does, he pauses before speaking. "She didn't mean it that way."

"She's right, though, isn't she?" He's silent, which she takes as agreement. "Was I really making such a mess?" She hates how small her voice is, but she can't imagine how she could have screwed up wiping down cupboards.

Bellamy chuckles. "No. She just didn't like watching you ruin your dress. Neither did I, if we're being honest."

Clarke looks down at it. Scuff marks where her knees had dug into the floor. She continues going up the stairs, slower now, passing her hand over her now-frizzy hair. He follows as she mutters, "The tabloids would rip me apart if they could see me right now."

"Why?" He sounds genuinely puzzled. She snorts.

"Why? They don't need a reason. They're just trying to sell copies. They'll make something up about the dress. I looked so not put together for my father's award show, why are the Griffins raising their daughter like this?" He's silent, and she goes on. "Once, they paid off someone at my school to tell them my grades. Another time, they did a poll on whether I should get plastic surgery when I'm older. They're the worst."

"Sounds rough."

She snorts, thinking he must be sarcastic. "Okay, fine. I guess I don't get to complain."

"I'm being serious." That shocks her enough that she stops to look at him. "Growing up in a spotlight can't be easy."

Well, that's unexpected of him.

"Still kind of a first world problem," he adds, and she half-laughs. That's the Bellamy she knows and loves. Somehow, he makes her feel a little more normal. She wishes she could do something cool for him, too, now and then.

"Hey," she says, struck with sudden inspiration, "Wanna go see my favourite spot in the house?"

Confusion clouds his eyes. "I thought you and O already dragged me to every room in this place."

"Well," she says, "it's not in the house, exactly."

—

When they reach the rarely used, barren guest room on the top floor Clarke takes him to, he looks around. "This is your favourite place?"

He's about to make some snarky comment, she can tell. Clarke rolls her eyes while opening the window. She throws one leg over the sill.

He starts forward. "Clarke—"

"It's okay," she says, throwing her other leg over the sill. "I've done this a million times. I won't fall." With a bit of maneuvering, her feet find the siding, and the roof that slopes at a gentle angle, gentle enough that she can easily climb onto it from this window.

The night is a bit cool for this, but she doesn't care. She scoots further up the roof and breathes in the sweet, crisp air. She feels lighter already.

When he climbs beside her, he says, gruffly, "Your dress is torn."

She looks down and sees she's split it. A lot. Up to mid-thigh. "Oh." Serves the dress right, really, for limiting her range of motion all night. She points upwards. "Now look."

He follows her gaze. The sky is beautifully dark and starry tonight, and so very quiet. It takes her breath away. As they look up, she says, "You know, I've only ever shown Wells this place."

"What's so special about it?" he asks, breaking the spell. She frowns.

"You don't get it?"

"It's just the sky."

"No, it's not." She frowns, trying to figure out how to explain. "The sun goes down and you get to see the rest of the galaxy right from earth. There's absolutely nothing between you and the stars, except distance. You're just part of it. Part of something bigger." She tilts her face up to it. "Up here, you realize you're nothing in comparison to the universe." And that anonymity is a wonderful reprieve.

She finally looks back at him, and he's already gazing at her, a soft, rather indiscernible look on his face.

"You don't get out much, do you?" he says finally, and she frowns.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Exactly what I said. Do you ever leave home if it's not sanctioned by your mom?"

The way he says it makes her frown. "I guess not. I can't just go out for a walk by myself, or I might get recognized. It's dangerous." She's basically just parroting lines her parents, her drivers, the entire house staff have always told her.

A glint enters his eye. "We'll see about that."

—

She doesn't quite understand what Bellamy's referring to, at least until he shows up the next Saturday to her house.

"A Mr. Bellamy Blake here to see you," says one of the butlers, appearing at her room door. "Shall we let him in?"

She frowns. What? It's not cleaning day. She sets down her sketchbook. "Yeah."

She ends up trailing downstairs though, waiting for him to be let in, and then breaks into a smile. He's wearing a backpack, curls messy on his forehead, and looking irritable as usual. Fondness grows in her stomach. "Hey." Pause. "Where's your sister?"

"Not here," he says. "Can we talk?"

She nods, and, ignoring the curious stares of the house staff, leads him up to her room. "What's going on?"

He dumps the contents of the backpack on her bed. "We're going out."

She stares. A red wig, a baseball cap, glasses… it clicks. "Bellamy, I can't—"

"Fine," he interrupts. "But don't say I didn't give you the choice."

He starts gathering everything back up.

"Wait, wait. Where would we even go? What would we do?" she says, exasperated. He stops and arches a brow.

"Whatever the hell we want."

She chews her lip. It's dangerous. Irresponsible. If her mother were here instead of across the country dealing with company stuff, she'd have her head.

Clarke picks up the wig. "I'm in."

—

They sneak out.

It's not spectacularly hard. Once Clarke gets into the wig and sunglasses and cap, she starts feeling like quite the rebel, and thinking like one too. Enough that she doesn't feel guilty sneaking past the house staff and exploiting every weakness their security has that she's noticed over the years. And then there's the bent part of the fence on the west side of the property that lets her out. It's such a stupid plan that it actually works.

They're walking down the road and no one even looks twice at her. It's thrilling. She could do anything she wants right now.

"How'd you even think of doing this?" she asks him. He shrugs.

"One time, Octavia got banned from a school dance. She was in a fight," he explains, and yeah, somehow that makes complete sense. "Anyway, she really wanted to go. I snuck her in. Disguised. Now, where do you wanna go?"

She thinks about that. "Take me somewhere you go," she says. "Somewhere you go all the time without even thinking about it."

"You mean, where the regular people go?"

She jabs him in the side. "Yes, exactly."

She's not sure what she expected, but he takes her to the library.

It's a tall building that looks ancient on the outside, like the Coliseum. But inside, everything is new and modern and bright. Clarke takes in the place with wide eyes. So. Many. Books. And so many people, from kids to seniors, who walk by her without a second glance. A young librarian, stocking new magazine editions, looks up and smiles at them both in greeting. Clarke tugs her cap lower and pats the red hair of her wig. Nervously, she says, "It went okay when you snuck Octavia in, right?"

"No," he says. "She got found out and we both got suspended for a week."

She gapes at him. He grins a roguish grin.

"Relax, princess. No one's going to expect to find you at the local downtown public library." He leads her to a nook of children's books, and picks up one of the graphic novels on the shelf. She glimpses his soulmark as his sleeve shifts—a stylized crown. "O loves this series."

She peeks over the shoulder at the colourful covers, promising adventures to every corner of the earth and beyond. A smile tugs at her lips. "Yeah, I bet. What about you?"

"Me?" He sounds surprised to be asked. When she nods, he scratches the back of his neck. "I like everything."

She waits, but he doesn't offer more. "There's got to be things you like better than others."

"My mom used to read us myths. Old stuff. Greek heroes and gods and all. I still like it."

He looks so nervous, like she might judge him for it. She smiles. "You come here all the time?"

"Why do you sound so surprised?" he grunts.

Still grinning, she doesn't answer. It's just, she loves collecting these little details about him. There's the gruff, hotheaded, sometimes rude Bellamy, and then there's this softer, bookish, thoughtful Bellamy. And she likes them both.

They drift around the library together for a while, and then Clarke sits down on the outside deck to people-watch while waiting for Bellamy to take out his books at the checkout counter. No one looks at her as they pass. It's perfect. She forgets who she is entirely.

At least, until she's rudely reminded by a magazine thrown in her lap.

She looks up. Bellamy's standing in front of her, bag of loaned books over his shoulder and an inscrutable look on his face.

"You're soulmated," he says. It sounds like an accusation.

She blinks and looks down at the magazine. One of those tabloids, the newest issue just out last week. It's a picture of her and Wells at that awards show they both went to, actually; holding hands. The intertwined hands are zoomed in on, showcasing their identical soulmarks. The front cover says JAKE GRIFFIN'S DAUGHTER AND HER SOULMATE SPOTTED OUT!

Clarke had already known about this one. She reads the tabloids despite knowing she shouldn't. And if Bellamy did, too, he would know already that she had a soulmate. The press has covered it a few times when the news was slow. "What? You know about Wells. I've told you about him a hundred times."

"But this never came up? That he was your soulmate?"

Now she's confused. "Was it supposed to?"

His expression shutters. "No, I guess not." He begins walking away.

She's even more confused. Why is he mad? She can't sort it out in her head.

He's several steps ahead when she gets it. It's an important part of life, for most people, these soulmarks. There was an agreement between them to be honest with each other. Especially about important things.

With a frustrated sigh, she tosses the magazine aside, catches up to him and grabs his wrist. He jerks away as if burned—as if she's burned him through his own soulmark.

"Listen, Bellamy," she says. "I haven't mentioned that bit about Wells. But that's because it didn't really matter. Not because you didn't matter. I'm sorry."

His frigid expression melts somewhat. "Don't—don't say sorry," he mutters. "You're right. It doesn't matter."

There's an odd moment of silence between them, where, inexplicably, wildly, Clarke thinks that actually it does.

But then it's gone, and he's saying, "Well? Should we get back? Did you get your taste of the regular-person life?"

She grins, relieved, and pushes up her sunglasses. "Yeah, and I think it agrees with me."

He gazes at her. "That it does."

—

Somehow, it becomes common practice for Clarke and Bellamy to hang out. Outside of his mother's housekeeping days. Without Octavia. He becomes another friend that the house staff grow used to seeing around.

She introduces him to Wells, finally.

"I've heard a lot about you," Wells says when they meet at a football game Clarke had dragged Bellamy along to.

Bellamy tugs down his cap. "Same here."

Clarke's eyes dart between them, inexplicably nervous. She just wants them to like each other.

They don't say much else before Wells' dad comes back from the concession with popcorn and hotdogs, and the game begins.

Afterwards, they all go back to Clarke's house and Wells suggests they play chess. Bellamy loses, of course. He's smart but he doesn't have the patience for the game.

Then it's time for them to leave, and Clarke still can't tell whether they liked each other. It makes her anxious. She asks them both later if they want to hang out again as a group, maybe go see a movie. Except on the night of, she finds out she can't, that her father has a function and he wants the whole family to go to it. She cancels at the last minute, but the next day Wells tells her Bellamy and him had met up anyway.

"We didn't go to the movies though. We went to the library."

She can't quite believe what she's hearing. "You went to the library together? Without me?"

"Yeah, sorry. I felt kind of bad about hanging out without you." He looks worried that she'd be mad. She manages to hide her delighted grin.

—

Bellamy, after much begging, finally takes Clarke to his apartment, where his mother and him and Octavia make her a big dinner. This time, they let Clarke help in the kitchen. Bellamy keeps shooting Octavia furtive looks until she goes to her bedroom and comes out with a butterfly statue and an apologetic look in her eyes.

Clarke laughs. "Keep it," she tells her.

Clarke invites him and his sister over to try the most expensive foods she can get the chefs to conjure: caviar, foie gras, oysters among them. She gets a kick out of watching their reactions.

("This… is what you eat?" Bellamy asks. He looks a little sorry for her.)

Bellamy takes her to a local arcade in disguise, where Clarke absolutely thrashes him at some Space Invaders game, he dominates at skee ball, and then they both flail around at Dance Dance Revolution until they collapse on top of each other, wheezing with laughter.

Sometimes they don't do anything exciting at all. Sometimes, they just lie on the roof and look at the stars. Sometimes, they just walk around the perimeter of the property, talking about nothing and everything and letting silence become comfortable between them. Sometimes, they study for their respective tests together on Clarke's bed and wake up from afternoon naps with tangled limbs.

A lot of the time he talks about his sister. That's a love Clarke envies, being an only child. But sometimes he talks more like he's her father than her older brother.

When she points that out to him, he gives her a glare. But eventually, when she's gotten the giggling out of her system and asks him earnestly to forgive her, he tells her how his stepfather—Octavia's father—died when they were young, and his mother fell sick.

"I thought she was physically sick," he says with a somewhat grim smile. "Because she spent all her time lying on the couch under a blanket drinking 'medicine', or in the bathroom throwing up. Now I know she was an alcoholic."

Their home fell into a mess and disrepair. Aurora's friends tried to help her with the children, but they couldn't be around all the time. There were many nights they didn't eat at all. And his mother drank too much one night, Bellamy tells Clarke. He was six years old and found her slipping in and out of consciousness and although he doesn't remember much from that night, he remembers begging his mother to stay with him until the ambulance came, and his mother becoming scared too, like she'd realized what she'd done, and telling him to take care of his sister, that she was his responsibility now.

It was also Aurora Blake's wake up call. She woke up in the hospital and called a friend and got herself a housekeeping job, and then another, and another, and that was how she started working at the Griffin mansion.

"I don't think she even remembers what she said to me," Bellamy admits. "She was too out of it. But I'll never forget."

Clarke sits there, sort of stunned. A lot about Bellamy suddenly makes more sense. He becomes quiet for a long time after that, and she wonders how many people he's told this story to before. Maybe she's the first. But no, she dismisses that thought. She's not that special, she thinks.

At least until one afternoon she's talking to Octavia at the poolside, and she asks if Bellamy ever heard back on his application for that volunteer position at the library. Octavia gives her a funny look.

"He applied for something at the library?"

Clarke gets the sense she wasn't supposed to say anything. That it was something Bellamy was keeping close to the chest, in case he didn't get it.

When Clarke doesn't reply, the furrow between Octavia's brows deepens.

"What?" Clarke asks nervously, splashing her feet in the water.

"Nothing." Octavia pauses. "It's just, my brother tells you things he doesn't tell anybody."

If her parents notice her newfound closeness with the housekeeper's son, they don't say much. Or at least, not at first.

When Clarke's thirteen, her mom decides it's time to start teaching her about the family business, Arkadia Pharmaceuticals and Biotech.

Clarke starts to develop a headache while her mom paces around her study, explaining the opioid they had developed that had made the company rich. "Can we cut this short?"

"No," her mother says. "You might be leading this company someday. It's important that you start learning this now. What are you smiling about?"

"Nothing," Clarke says. "I just know Bellamy will never let me live it down if I become a CEO."

Her mother stares at her for a second, then promptly walks over and sits down next to her at the table. Uh-oh. A lecture is coming, Clarke knows it in her bones.

However, the topic isn't quite what she expects.

"I know you and Bellamy are close," Abby says. "But I just hope you don't get too close."

Clarke blinks. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Her mother is silent for a moment, as if trying to formulate her message correctly before speaking. "I know teenagers like to act out, rebel by messing around with someone who isn't their soulmate, and that's fine, for the most part. But Clarke, you're already soulmated. Aurora's son is a good boy, and there's no need to break his heart. Not when you're going to marry Wells one day."

Marry Wells?

For some bizarre reason, Clarke had never thought that far ahead. She'd never thought, truly and deeply, about what being soulmated to Wells meant. Or at least, she'd avoided it. She'd ignored the implication in all the married couples around her with matching tattoos on their wrists. She'd opted out of reading the articles in those tabloids about how "cute" she and Wells were together.

The thing is, she loves Wells. With her whole heart. He understands her, and it's easy between them, and they come from the same sort of life. But the prospect of being with him—being with him that way—doesn't sit right at all.

"What if I don't want to marry him?" she blurts. Her mother stares at her, confused.

"Clarke, he's perfect for you. That's what a soulmate is. You're maybe too young to understand it yet, but you'll want to marry him, trust me." She smiles gently. "I resisted Jake, for a while. Even with all his dashing looks. But eventually, we all come around." She holds up her wrist, displaying her cloud soulmark. "And it just ended badly with the people I tried to be with before him. Don't ruin your friendship with Bellamy is all I'm saying, Clarke. Not worth it."

Clarke's silent, and looks at her soulmark. She's loved it all her life. It was like a compass leading her to Wells, her oldest friend. But suddenly it feels like a chain.

She lowers her wrist, trying to push those thoughts away. This is the whole point of it, to guide people to the right person. To make love easy. There's got to be something absolutely wrong with her that it scares her instead.

So she simply nods at her mother's expectant look. But Abby Griffin isn't done. She leans forward, clasping her hands on the table and wearing a quite serious expression on her face.

"Speaking of which, do we need to have the birds and the bees talk?"

—

When Bellamy is sixteen and Clarke fifteen, Clarke tells him animatedly that she's scored her first movie role.

"You mean," he says, "nepotism got you your first movie role." She jabs him in the arm. He fights a grin.

They're sitting on the roof with the stars and moon, passing a bottle of the expensive wine Clarke had stolen from her father's liquor cabinet between them. The night sky has grown on him.

"You have to admit it's kind of exciting," Clarke says. "It was so unexpected. They offered when I was visiting my dad on set. It's a tiny role. I'm going to be a grocery store clerk who shoots a robber and saves my dad's character. Want to come watch me embarrass myself?"

Bellamy considers. "Are you sure about this? The tabloids are going to be on you even worse if you start showing up in movies."

Her smile dims. "It's just for fun, to try it. I wasn't thinking about that."

Silence falls. He can tell that what he said has troubled her. He curses himself and his fumbling, brutal honesty, even though she asked for it. "Aren't you gonna ask me how my life is going?"

It works. Distracted, her smile returns, and she leans her head on his shoulder. "Yes. Tell me everything. How's your job going?"

Bellamy's volunteer position helping coordinate events for children at the library had eventually become a paid job. Good pay, in fact. "Fine." More than fine. He loves it. "Saving up money."

"Finally going to buy that jeep?"

"Maybe." Definitely. But he wants to keep his decision a surprise. He wants to see Clarke's face when he drives up in a big ass rickety jeep. He sees this particular vehicle all the time biking past the used car dealership on his way to school. He calls it the Rover in his head, mostly because it looks like the opposite of a luxury Range Rover. No one buys it because it's clearly a piece of junk. But after taking a car mechanics class, he's become taken with the idea that it might be a fun challenge to try to fix it up.

Clarke doesn't ask anything else. He likes that about her, too. That she doesn't push him to talk the way some people do. If anything, it makes him say more. "Octavia's loving her karate class."

"Yeah?"

He grunts. "She thinks she's Bruce Lee." A smile spreads on his lips even when he says it.

Clarke huffs a soft laugh and tosses her head back, her hair spilling over her shoulders. She has it completely down today. He gazes at her, the way he often does when she's gazing at something else. She's beautiful the way the starry sky is; endlessly, and breathtakingly, and too far away to reach.

Suddenly she bolts upright. "Look! Did you see that?"

He looks where she's pointing. Nothing but sky. "What?"

"A shooting star!" She frowns. "I swear I saw something for a second."

Bellamy picks up the half empty bottle next to them. "Are we sure this is just wine?"

"Ha, ha." She sinks back. "I swear it was. Like I was catching just the tail end of it."

Bellamy takes a swig from the bottle. "Maybe it was a falling spaceship."

She waves her arms at the sky animatedly. "Who knows? The universe is too big for it to be just us." The cork of the wine bottle flies out of her hand and bounces off the roof. She frowns. "Maybe there's planets out there where gravity is upside down."

"Maybe there's planets where there's better tasting alcohol," Bellamy puts in.

"Maybe there's planets where there's two suns instead of one."

"Maybe there's planets where there are two-headed deer."

"Maybe there's planets where there aren't soulmarks."

Bellamy stares at her. Her cheeks are flushed, and her smile fades a little the longer he looks at her.

"What?" she says, almost a little defensively. "Maybe there is. Wouldn't that be something?"

Bellamy takes another sip of the wine, a rather long one. It certainly would be something. He just can't decide if it would be better or worse.

If people didn't have soulmarks, there'd be a lot less order to things. People wouldn't know who to love. They'd make far more mistakes. The divorce rate would be higher than the negligible percentage it is now. Soulmates make love and life easy, that's been drilled into him enough times. But a love that intense is also devastating. His mother showed him that, when Octavia's father died.

And if everyone's got a soulmate, the bad people in the world do, too, and he knows that firsthand. The men his mother invites into their home are usually bad people, who get mad and break things and yell at her and once even beat her when he was too young to stop it. Then there's his own father, who knocked Aurora up and then left. He wonders how those men even have souls let alone soulmarks, but then again, maybe if Aurora was their soulmate, they wouldn't do those things to her at all. Maybe it's out of their control that they can't love her enough. Would they be kinder on a planet without soulmarks, a planet where you can never be sure if the person you're mistreating could be the love of your life?

"I don't know about that," he says eventually. "On this planet, you have Wells."

When he first met Clarke's soulmate almost three years ago, he couldn't help but hone in on the chess rook tattoo on his wrist. Same as Clarke's. It sort of hit him like a truck.

Not everyone meets their soulmate. Even fewer meet their soulmate as kids. It's just another stroke of luck in Clarke's charmed life, he'd thought bitterly, and then told himself that was the only reason he was bitter.

"I love Wells," Clarke agrees. Silence. Bellamy raises an eyebrow, now unbearably curious.

"But?"

She ducks her head a little, and her blonde waves fall in front of her profile, so he can no longer see her expression. "I kissed him, you know. A little while back."

Bellamy automatically raises the bottle and takes another long, long, long swig. Then another, for good measure, before he speaks. "And?"

"It didn't feel like anything. We agreed to just leave it alone for now."

She's so silent for so long he sets the bottle down and reaches to push her hair away from her face, and is startled to see her eyes are glistening with tears.

"Clarke," he says, startled. Her shoulders rise and fall unsteadily with a silent sob. He doesn't know exactly what has her so sad, but he's seized with the desire to make it better. "Talk to me."

She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. "Isn't it supposed to feel like something?"

Bellamy mulls that over. He's kissed a few people at school. Dated Roma when she came onto him after her last breakup, but that didn't last. Of course it didn't—they weren't soulmates.

"Sometimes it doesn't at first. Maybe you just need practice." She's still looking completely miserable, and his body is starting to feel very, very warm with all the alcohol. Impulsively, he says, "You could practice with me."

She whips her head around to look at him. He regrets the words immediately. That was definitely not the right thing to say. It sounds like he's coming onto her, which he's not—

But she looks like she's considering it. Maybe it was the right thing to offer… it doesn't matter anyway, does it? They're not soulmated. It would be purely figuring out mechanics—

Clarke leans in and kisses him, softly, and he feels as though he's been struck by lightning.

He recovers. He kisses her back, and the wine-drunk warmth in his stomach grows, and grows. She wraps her arms around his neck, and he melts into her soft embrace. After a few moments, she seems to become emboldened; she pulls him on top of her, and he rolls with it. His foot hits the wine bottle on his way, and it falls with a thunk on its side and rolls off the roof, but Bellamy doesn't even hear it hit the ground. The sound of his heart thumping in his ears is too loud.

Clarke's hands thread through his hair, but he keeps his braced on either side of her head. She sighs against his lips in the short moment they part for air, and then their mouths slide together again; first this way, then that.

He was totally wrong. She's a pro at kissing. Or at least, she's a pro at kissing him.

She must realize this too. They've already passed the time marker that would read you both realized her kissing technique is just fine and right now they are passing the time marker for it could definitely get awkward past this point and he still doesn't care. He just cares about how good it feels to be this close to her.

When they finally stop kissing, it's because they're both so out of breath they really do have to. She keeps her arms firmly locked around his shoulders, though, and neither of them move. He drops his face into the crook of her shoulder, gasping for air. His knees are digging painfully into the roof from the awkward positioning, although he barely noticed it before, he was so overwhelmed in her. Seriously, what the hell was that?

He feels Clarke rest her chin on the top of his head. He can tell she's going to say something, and he braces for it.

But she doesn't try to say it was kissing practice, or that it didn't mean anything. As always, Clarke surprises him.

"I know we're not soulmated, but I still liked that."

Her words, so carefully assembled, jolt his heart. He swallows. He starts to rise off her, and she lets him, but when he settles back into sitting position, she grabs his hand.

"Bellamy, don't. Let's not let this be awkward, or weird. I know it kind of was—"

"Damn, Clarke, you think?" he says, and they both kind of laugh, kind of nervously.

Then she says, quietly, "I just… whatever we are… I want to keep it."

"I don't want us to change either," he says readily, and at once, it's done. The tension eases. She looks around.

"Where's the wine?"

"I kicked it off the roof." He rubs the back of his neck, but she's grinning.

"That was a five thousand dollar bottle, you know."

"Really? Cuz it tasted like shit."

She laughs and they lean into each other. Instead of awkward, it almost feels even more comfortable to touch her now, like throwing his arm over her shoulders doesn't have the same weight to it that it did before tonight. He can just do it, thoughtlessly, the same way she can press a kiss to his cheek and it just feels… right.

"Kissing you is fun," Clarke says. "I'm sort of jealous of Roma now."

"Roma's ancient history."

"What did you do?"

"Why do you always think I did something?" he complains, playfully, because that's the rare sort of mood Clarke is capable of pulling out of him. "Maybe she broke my heart. Maybe we had a tragic love story and she said we couldn't be together, did you ever think of that, Clarke?" Without warning, he starts tickling her, and she giggles uncontrollably, nearly falling over in her attempt to get away from him. "Ever think of that?"

They're both grinning when he finally lets her squirm away from him, now happy tears running from her eyes, and god, he's so glad they don't have to change.

—

They don't kiss again, but they touch with more frequency.

Clarke does her role in her father's spy movie, and it's unexpectedly off-putting to see her act, although she's good. He and Wells are eventually sent off set guffawing. When they're let back in, she's so pouty he takes her aside and kisses her temple in apology.

These physical gestures no longer send a thrill of newness through him, nor when they brush shoulders or she touches his back or he grabs her hand. It feels absolutely normal, and comfortable, and good.

A few months later, Bellamy drives his new jeep straight up to the gates of the Griffin mansion and waits there. Usually by now the gates are already open. Not today, though. Today he has to turn off the ignition and clamber out to the intercom and press the doorbell. He jabs it three times in a row.

No answer. He pushes his hair out of his line of sight irritably. It's housekeeping day, so his mom must be in there, although clearly busy. He's late because he was dropping Octavia off at this new martial arts class she's taking. Luckily, he also knows the code to directly call Clarke's cellphone.

"Hello?" Clarke's voice is distant, on speakerphone he'd guess.

He can't help but feel his irritation soften slightly. "Clarke?"

Another voice speaks, faintly. "Is that Bellamy?"

Wells. Bellamy presses the intercom button again. "Clarke, the house staff must all be on break or something, because no one's letting me in."

"Maybe they're not letting you in because you're an asshole," Wells suggests.

"Cute." Bellamy suddenly spots movement from beyond the fence. "Wait, hold on, I think I see the groundskeeper."

"I can always come down and let you in," Clarke says. "I'm just on the roof with Wells, but we're going back inside now."

But he's already moving away from the intercom, towards where he can see through the slits in the fence, to the groundskeeper.

But something's wrong. The footsteps are lurching, uneven.

"Bellamy?" Clarke's voice floats from the intercom, but he barely hears. His footsteps move quicker, and then halt to a stop.

The groundskeeper is clutching his stomach. His grey shirt is shiny and sticky with something dark.

It catches the sunlight. Bright, red, blood. His eyes are wide, mouth opening to—ask for help?- but he collapses.

Bellamy stares in horror for a split second. Clarke's voice comes from the intercom again. "Bellamy, you big baby. Don't give me the silent treatment."

Her voice is light, teasing. And he both envies her and pities her in this moment. Because in the pit of his gut, he knows. He knows that none of the house staff are on break. There's a different reason no one is answering the intercom.

He knows that their lives are about to change. He doesn't know how he knows it. He just does.

But she doesn't yet, and he almost doesn't want that for her. He wants her to stay in her charmed world.

Clarke sighs over the speaker. "I'm coming down then."

That gets him moving. In a flash, he's back at the intercom. "Clarke, whatever you do, don't leave that room."

"What?"

"Wells, too," he says hurriedly. "Lock your door. Call the police. Your groundskeeper's dead. I'm coming."

Now she sounds scared. "Bellamy, what—"

But he's already climbing the front gates. There's no time to answer all of Clarke's questions. And he trusts that she'll do what he said.

He's not a pro at climbing, and the gates are tall and not exactly easy to get over—usually it deters Jake Griffin's fans, and if it doesn't, the security does. But no one comes and stops Bellamy. The hard metal bites into his palms, and his arms strain to heave him over the top, but adrenaline gets him through.

When he crashes to the ground on the other side, he hardly feels the bruises he'll surely have later. He scrambles to the groundskeeper's body. His eyes are glassy. There's nothing to be done. Bellamy lets out a breath. The man had always been kind to him as a child. A lot of people in this house have been kind to him.

And his mother—horror rises in his throat—his mother is in there. He rises and sprints through the grounds.

The lawn is insanely huge, and it feels like it stretches even bigger for this particular sprint across it. It takes an age to go around the house, to the gardener's entrance in the back. This is one of those times he really wishes he could rationalize owning a cell phone—but he'd always put that money to Octavia's martial arts classes instead, so today he has to find a way in.

He punches in the gardener's code and slides into the house. He only stops to grab a golf club leaning against the wall.

He goes slowly and silently up the stairs, straining his ears for sound. Nothing. He makes his way to the guest bedroom, where the door has been locked. He knocks, whisper's Clarke's name.

The door opens a tiny bit. Clarke's scared blue eyes peer through the crack, and the door opens further. He quickly slips inside.

Wells is just inside, holding a metal shower rod. Clarke beside him with a softball bat. They've armed themselves too. Clarke grabs his hand, looking down at him.

That's when he realizes how much blood is on his hands, his arms. The groundskeeper's blood. Bile rises in his throat, and he squeezes Clarke's hand once before letting go.

"What happened?" Clarke asks in hushed tones. He fills them in, clipped. Wells rubs his face. Clarke's jaw sets.

"My dad was in the kitchen," she says. "What if…" No one fills in the blanks; no one needs to. Jake Griffin has had plenty of close calls with stalkers and other danger. It comes with his job, and now…

Clarke lifts her chin. "I'm not waiting for the police. But neither of you have to come."

She's ready to walk into god knows what with nothing but her softball bat. Even if his mother wasn't there, Clarke's out of her mind if she thinks he's letting her do this alone.

"We're with you," Wells says and nods at Bellamy, as if in understanding that they were thinking the same thing. Clarke exhales.

"Then let's go."

Together, they make their way through the house. It's eerily quiet. They don't encounter a single person, and it makes Bellamy think that they've been taken somewhere.

And then they hear voices from the main kitchen. They creep closer.

Crying. Begging.

The house staff. Bellamy recognizes some of their voices. He strains to hear his mother's. Nothing.

"Shut up," barks an unfamiliar voice. "All of you, shut up for a minute."

Another voice curses. "This is all going to hell, Shumway. He wasn't supposed to die. She's not even here."

The three of them look at each other. Someone's dead in there?

"But someone's gonna tell us where she is," says Shumway. "Isn't that right?" The sound of fist hitting flesh, and a thud. Renewed begging and crying. "I didn't come all this way and spend all those years to not get the chance to look Abby Griffin in the eyes when I kill her."

Clarke presses her hand against her mouth, closing her eyes. None of this makes sense. It's bizarre.

Bellamy hardly even feels himself moving, but he does. He's only taken two steps towards the kitchen before a heavy thud registers in his ears. He turns, and Wells is tipping to the floor. Clarke squeaks. Someone—a third attacker, a blonde woman—has come up behind them, and she's got a gun.

"Three more, Dax," she calls, and Clarke and Bellamy hold up their hands helplessly. "Drop your weapons and go into the kitchen. And don't try anything."

They go. The scene in front of them is horrifying. Several of the house staff, on their knees, at gunpoint from the other two. Bellamy finds his mother among them, pale, trembling. When she sees Bellamy, she seems to crumple in on herself, mouthing No.

Clarke makes a strangled sound beside him, which diverts his attention. There's a body sprawled on the floor, a slow red rosette blooming from his head.

Bellamy could recognize the back of that head anywhere, just like half the world could. Jake Griffin.

"No," Clarke mutters wildly, taking three steps. "N—no. No!"

"Take another step and die," Dax says, but Clarke keeps moving. Bellamy reaches out and grabs her waist.

"Clarke, no," he says, even though her body is shaking, straining against him.

"Dad, Dad, no, what did you do to him, what did you do?" She's heaving with sobs.

Dax looks at the other man—Shumway. Over Clarke's crying, he says, "Well, this just complicated things."

"Think they called the police?"

"Obviously they did," says the blonde woman. She's dragged Wells' limp body into the room, and dumps him unceremoniously near the house staff. "They knew we were here. Look, they even armed themselves." She nudges the pile of makeshift weapons.

"Fuck." Shumway scrubs a hand over his face. He's got a comm in his ear. They all do, like they had really prepared for this. "Okay. New plan."

He comes up to Clarke. "Tell us where your mommy is. We know she was supposed to be here."

Clarke spits in his face.

He leans back. "Alright, that's not very nice." He grabs her by the hair.

Bellamy lets go of Clarke's waist, but only so he can lunge past her to punch Shumway in the jaw.

Probably not a smart move since the man's got a gun in his hand, but he can't help himself. Shumway's head whips back. Bellamy pulls his fist back for another punch, but then he's jerked backwards by the collar. Automatically, he elbows his assailant in the face, and is rewarded by a crunch. The blonde woman drops to the floor, out cold.

Panting, he looks up. Fleetingly he glimpses that Shumway's got Clarke pinned up against the fridge, gun to her back, talking to her in low tones. He doesn't have time to do anything about it, though. Dax is raising his gun at him.

Bellamy dives to the floor on instinct just as he shoots. Bang. The bullet lodges into the kitchen cabinet. The house staff scream in alarm, covering their heads. Dax lowers his gun to aim at Bellamy again. This time, he doesn't have anywhere to dodge.

Bellamy's mother screams his name. She shouldn't have to see this, Bellamy thinks wildly. If he dies, and his mother watches… she'll never recover. She won't be able to look after Octavia.

Wells appears out of nowhere. He crashes into Dax just as he fires again, and the bullet goes wide. The two of them careen into the kitchen island, struggling with each other. Dax is bigger than Wells, but Wells is strong enough to hold his own in close quarters.

"Help Clarke!" Wells shouts at him.

Shumway's still got a gun to Clarke's back. Bellamy runs to the blonde woman's side and grabs her gun, the points at Shumway. "Back away from her right now."

Shumway pauses. When Clarke was on set for her movie role, all three of them had learned to shoot, but that was for fun. Bellamy now wishes he'd asked more questions, that he'd paid better attention.

But Shumway's hesitation is apparently all Clarke needed. She throws her head back and hits him right in the chin, making him stagger away. For a second it looks like they might have the upper hand. Then, from behind them, Dax:

"Both of you get on your knees right now."

They all turn. It looks like Wells has lost his fight; he's slumped on the floor, and Dax has his gun trained to his head, bloodied and murderous.

"Don't do it," Wells mutters, apparently still half awake. But Bellamy and Clarke do, instantly. Dax looks at the gun in Bellamy's hand.

"Drop the weapon."

Bellamy does. He drops it, and then kicks it over to Clarke.

Shumway lunges, but Clarke's too quick. She snatches it up and then she's standing with a gun trained on Shumway. A cold glint in her eye, breathing hard, bleeding from a cut on her forehead.

Shumway scoffs. "You don't even know how to use that thing."

He walks boldly over to Bellamy and points his gun at him as if to prove his point.

Clarke's eyes go a little feral. She swings the gun between Dax and Shumway; between Bellamy, or Wells. Bellamy's unsure she even knows she's doing it. She settles her aim on Shumway when he presses the gun to Bellamy's temple.

"You touch him, you die," she says. Bellamy hardly recognizes her voice, it's so steely.

Shumway scoffs. "You don't even know how to use that thing."

"Try me."

Even Dax seems mesmerized by the scene before him. "You don't have the guts," he murmurs, almost to himself. "You can't do it."

But he doesn't seem certain. There's a standstill where no one does anything.

"You don't know what I'd do for him." Clarke's hands are impossibly steady, although her hair is sticking to her forehead from sweat. Her blue eyes are laser focused on Shumway like Bellamy's never seen before. And he absolutely, completely believes her.

Shumway seems to, as well. His smirk has faded somewhat, and slowly, he looks down at Bellamy. He takes Bellamy's wrist, and angles it up, towards the light.

"You're not even soulmates," he says. He sounds puzzled.

Bellamy notices something odd then. Shumway doesn't have a soulmark. Not on either wrist. His gaze swings towards Dax, and finds the exact same curious thing.

Before he can sort that out, Wells moves.

And moves fast. He must've been waiting for the opportune moment, when Dax was distracted with Clarke. He head-butts him, and scrambles away. It all happens so quick.

Shumway still has a grip on Bellamy's wrist, and Bellamy yanks him down with him, throwing him off balance. He doesn't see what happens next, but he hears a gunshot. And then a groan. Wells.

"No!" Clarke screams, eyes wild, and she fires.

Bellamy looks up in time to see Dax's head jerk back. The cupboards behind him are sprayed with blood. Clarke hardly blinks, so stone cold as her expression is. Then she turns and shoots Shumway, before Bellamy has the chance to do anything.

Shumway falls back with his mouth a shocked "O". Perhaps Clarke's so wrapped up she doesn't notice the blonde woman, now awake, lunging behind her.

Bellamy shouts, "Look out!" But he knows she doesn't have time. He throws himself forward, tackles Clarke, out of the line of fire.

They fall into a heap in a tangle of limbs. Clarke's below him, and he doesn't know what she sees behind them, but she raises her gun again and shoots again, and again, and again, until her clip is empty. Even then he just keeps pulling the trigger.

Bellamy turns to find the blonde woman pitching back, a knife clattering out of her hand, clutching her chest where multiple bullets have been buried.

Then: Silence. Ringing in his ears. Crying in the background from the house staff. He clambers shakily off Clarke. Clarke still has the gun raised, is still pulling the trigger, a sob escaping her. Bellamy takes the gun from her gently, and she lets him. They both turn to Wells.

Instantly, he knows there's nothing to be done. The other boy is on the floor, pale. His shirt is soaked with blood. There's so much blood.

Clarke slips in the pool of it a bit as she goes to sink to her knees next to him. "Wells, you're going to be okay. Just breathe, alright?" Her voice is remarkably calm for the situation. "Listen, do you hear that? The ambulance is coming. Just hold on."

Bellamy can hear the sirens too. It's too far in the distance, though. Wells lets out a rattling breath.

His voice is a gasp. "Clarke…"

"Shh. You're going to be okay," Clarke says, her voice trembling. Bellamy watches as she presses her hands to the gushing wound in his stomach, her hands becoming instantly soaked with blood.

It's not enough, even Bellamy can see that. He pulls an apron off the rack to give to her, to press down on the wound. They both press down on it. It does almost nothing.

Wells is becoming paler by the second. Clarke shudders with another sob.

"I'm sorry, Wells. Please forgive me."

Wells speaks, slowly. "I… I don't…"

Bellamy knows what Wells would say next, if he could. I don't blame you. But he stops there, and his chest stops rising. His eyes become glassy, and from Clarke's expression, you'd think he simply said I don't.

I don't forgive you.

Clarke feels for a pulse. For a breath Bellamy watches her, hoping against hope.

But Clarke's face crumples, and her head sinks onto Wells' chest as she begins to cry in earnest.

Bellamy's strength saps out of him. He falls on his hands and knees, and crawls towards his mother and the other house staff. Aurora holds her arms up to him like a child, and he hugs her, kisses her hair, because she's alive, alive, alive, and he could cry. And he does cry, because he hears Clarke keening behind him as she attempts CPR on a bled-out body, and it's like she's finally caught up with him in knowing that life will never be the same.

—

The paramedics get there too late, of course.

Bellamy and Clarke are taken to the police station. Apparently, as Clarke tells him mechanically before they get put in separate vehicles, her mother had a surprise meeting today, the only reason she wasn't at home.

At the police station, he's lead into an interrogation room for questioning. It goes on for hours. When asked for the third time if he thought Clarke was in a reasonable amount of danger when she shot the blonde assailant, Diana Sydney, he loses his temper.

He slams his handcuffed hands down on the metal table. "I've got an idea. Why don't we kill your soulmate, and your father, right in front of you and see if you feel like you're in a reasonable amount of danger?"

"Revenge killing is not legally justifiable, Mr. Blake. Could Miss Griffin not have used some other means to deter the attacker?"

"No, you're right," Bellamy replies in patronizing tones. "She should've said please. Don't know why we didn't think of that."

His interrogator sighs.

—

Clarke is much more diplomatic than she imagines Bellamy would be during his questioning.

"Was this murder in self defense?" asks Clarke's interrogator, referring to Shumway.

"Yes." Clarke struggles to keep her voice even. Ever since being torn away from Wells' and her father's body, she has been trying to hold herself together, and her body is shaking from the effort. "Isn't there a stand your ground law? They came into my home. I can't be convicted for these murders."

He waves that away. "We'll see about that. I'm just wondering why you killed Shumway so readily. He wasn't attacking anyone at that point. You had the gun. You had the upper hand."

Clarke fights down the frustration rising in her. "I didn't have the upper hand. He was about to kill Bellamy."

"Bellamy," the interrogator repeats. "What's your relationship with Mr. Blake, anyway?"

The interrogator's eyes are piercing. Clearly he's the bad cop in this situation. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Just answer the question. The details are all muddled. We need to hear this."

"He's my friend," Clarke says.

"A very good friend, would you agree? You spend a lot of time together, from what we know."

Clarke wonders where they're going with this. "Yes."

"And Mr. Jaha was your soulmate."

"Yes."

"Did you ever feel that Mr. Blake was jealous of that relationship?"

Clarke gawks. This line of questioning isn't about Shumway's death at all. It's about Wells. Are they suggesting that… "Let's be clear," she says, her voice razor sharp, "Bellamy and I have a very different relationship than I did with Wells. And don't you dare," she takes a breath, knowing she's losing her careful composure but not caring, "don't you dare suggest he had a hand in his death because he didn't."

"Then did you?"

Clarke blinks. The lights are too bright and she feels warm and she hasn't eaten in hours. She feels like she's about to faint.

"Who would you say you loved more," the interrogator challenges. "Mr. Jaha, or Mr. Blake?"

Clarke's hands make fists. I love them both, she wants to scream. Why can't anyone understand that?

Luckily, another officer comes in at that point to take over, and she's told she doesn't have to answer that. They move on to other questions. But she's shaky after that.

—

The two of them are let go, eventually, when Abby Griffin storms into the police station and demands it.

"Don't worry," she tells Clarke on the way to the car. "They just wanted to scare you. You're not going to be on trial. The stand your ground laws clearly protect you from prosecution. There'll be a statement put out, but our lawyers will take care of everything."

She pats Clarke's back. Clarke marvels at her composure, even after her soulmate's death.

But then again, Abby has nothing to blame herself for.

—

Clarke spends the next few days lying in bed with the blinds drawn. Bellamy comes to see her at some point. It's difficult to talk to him. She lets him hold her listless hand and feels like a monster.

It's not the fact that she's a murderer that really scares her. She had to do it. No, it's a constant loop of ifs in her mind that really keeps her up at night. If she had been faster, stronger… if she had done something more… if she had shot Dax before he had the chance to do anything. There are so many ways it could've happened, and Wells didn't have to die in any of them.

Maybe if you hadn't been so focused on Bellamy, a voice in her head whispers. She tries to shut it down. But it's there now, worming its way into her conscious mind. Maybe if you'd been loyal to your soulmate and only your soulmate, like you're supposed to be. Maybe Wells died because of you.

Eventually Bellamy gives up trying to get her to talk, and their silence, for the first time since they became friends, turns sour. He leaves, and after that, she refuses to talk to anyone. Not even Bellamy.

—

Jake Griffin's funeral is a huge one, on a rainy day with plenty of media coverage. Clarke can feel herself being scrutinized at all angles.

Wells' is the next day. And it's a sunny, cloudless day, which suits him, and Clarke is glad for it. Clarke is also glad there's less media coverage than her father's. Wells preferred to stay out of the spotlight. But with less spotlight comes less people, too, and that makes her angry. A beautiful soul like Wells deserves more people to grieve over his loss. The whole world should be here.

She's angry about a lot of things.

The day before, her mother had said, "I'm hiring a bodyguard for you."

Clarke opened her mouth to protest, but her mother kept going. "This is not negotiable. No more sneaking out with Bellamy either. Yes, I knew about that. But I can't do my job and worry about you being killed by stalkers at the same time."

Clarke had raised her eyebrows. "It wasn't stalkers. It was people coming after you. And we still don't know what it was about!"

"It doesn't matter."

"How could you say that?" Abby didn't say anything, and it made Clarke even more mad. "Dad died and you say it doesn't matter?"

"That's not what I meant."

"That's what it sounds like," Clarke spat. "There's more to this than meets the eye, Mom, I know it. Bellamy told me that night that those people didn't have soulmarks. How is that possible?"

"He was probably seeing things," Abby said gently. "It's not surprising, given what you've been through."

"But—"

"Let it go, Clarke."

She couldn't. "They were here for you. Do they have a grudge against you? Against Arkadia?"

Her mom was so quiet Clarke thought she might have struck a nerve. Then: "It doesn't matter. We have to think about the future of the company. You can't talk publicly about your wild theories, alright? Our stock prices will fall—"

Clarke walked away disgusted, and hasn't spoken with her mother since.

Wells' funeral service ends, and people mill around the funeral parking lot before going home. She sees Bellamy, his face still bruised like hers from that night, across the lot. She hadn't spoken to him during the ceremony. She'd only looked at him once, while she was struggling to get through her speech about Wells. It was just him and his sister. His mother, Clarke suspects, has turned to a bottle for comfort.

When she had caught his eye, he had stared stonily back at her. Neither of them cry. Not anymore.

She spots Wells' father approaching her across the lot.

"Clarke," Jaha greets. "If there's anything I can do for you, please let me know."

Clarke forces herself to look him in the eyes, to see the echo of Wells' in his. "Thank you."

Jaha looks into the distance. "I lost my son," he says, "and you lost your soulmate. I know that feeling myself. My wife died over ten years ago. You're never the same," Jaha says gently, and Clarke swallows. "And that's normal. But life goes on. We will, too. I promise you that."

Neither of them state the obvious; that Jaha never married anyone again after that.

In the coming days, there are a lot of similar condolences. Her room becomes filled with flowers, her house becomes filled with people who come to comfort her and her mother, to bring their apologies and offerings of support. There is a lot of love and sympathy for what the Griffins have been through, since both of them lost their soulmates. Especially for Clarke, though.

She was going to marry that boy someday, tuts somebody. It's a heartbreaking thing, to lose your soulmate so early. No one else you marry could ever compare.

Clarke's not sure what about that's supposed to be comforting.

—

The other witnesses at the scene testify to what happened. Her mother must've paid off the entire staff handsomely, because the actual reasons behind the attack are never outed. It's assumed overzealous stalkers killed Jake Griffin and Wells Jaha.

The media, of course, still has a field day with the entire thing. The entire story is just too juicy. Clarke Griffin killed three people and the housekeeper's son helped her do it!

It doesn't matter that she's not being charged. The whole world sees her as a murderer. People speculate whether she really needed to kill these people. They go as far as to wonder whether she liked it. The tabloid coverage is uglier than ever.

Clarke withdraws into herself, and doesn't talk to or hear from Bellamy in a long while. His mother's on leave, too. Then one day she sees a tabloid photo of him—they've been bothering him more, asking for details about Clarke—and he's got his hand in a split. She wants to reach through it and adjust the hastily done straps.

She calls Bellamy to ask what happened. He doesn't pick up. Confused, she calls Octavia instead.

"Oh, that?" Octavia says, shortly. "He got into a fight at school. Defending you."

It sounds accusatory. "I didn't ask for that."

"Right." Octavia proceeds to tell her the rest of the stuff Bellamy's been up to in the last few months. While Clarke has become a ghost, Bellamy has grown angry, frustrated. He's gotten himself suspended at school, gets into fights, and breaks things, including his own hand. A boxer's fracture.

She needs to talk to him. She can't sit here while he self-destructs. She texts him, to ask him if he'll come to her father's last movie premiere with her like they had planned before this all happened.

He sends back a curt Fine. Clarke sort of feels bad guilting him into it, but she has a suspicion he would refuse to meet otherwise.

—

The night of the movie premiere, Clarke and Bellamy take one limo, while her mother follows behind in another. Bellamy hasn't spoken a word since he got in here. He's just here to fulfill his duty, Clarke knows that.

She looks at him, although he studiously looks out the window. There's a bruise high on his cheekbone that looks fresh. He's gotten into a fight again. And she knows, she knows it's because he's hurting, but she doesn't know what to do about that. Not when he won't let her near him.

She watches him rub at the cast around his wrist, and asks softly, "Why'd you do that to yourself?"

He scoffs, crossing his arms and keeping his gaze trained outside the window. "Oh, now you want to talk?"

She studies his profile. The tension in his jawline, his crossed arms, the fact that he's seated as far away from her as possible. She wants to understand. "You… wanted to talk?"

He laughs, bitterly, and shakes his head. "Never mind. Only you're allowed to give a shit about what happened, I get that."

And she gets it then. She pushed him away for weeks, isolating him just as much as she isolated herself. Clarke has received all the sympathy and all the blame. Bellamy hasn't. Even though he was there, even though he almost died, even though his mother's suffering from PTSD too much to work—even though he cared about Wells, too.

"Bellamy." She pauses, unsure of how to put it. You're allowed to be sad. You're allowed to be angry. I should've been there for you to talk to. In the end, it's simple. "I'm sorry."

He doesn't move, but the line of his shoulders softens just a bit.

"You don't have to forgive me," she continues, and means it. He could never talk to her again and she would understand.

A tear falls into her lap. She dabs at her eyes, trying not to ruin her makeup—it wouldn't look good to show up to a red carpet looking a mess and the tabloids would jump all over it—but god, she cannot believe she did this in her grief. That she left her friend alone at the time when he most needed her. She shudders with a sob, tries to be quiet as she can with her crying. For a minute, her hitched, uneven breaths are the only sound in the limo. Then he speaks quietly.

"It should've been me."

She's not sure she heard him right. "What?"

His jaw works. "I should've—I should've done something, made Dax kill me instead. Not Wells—"

"Bellamy," she says, aghast. Through all her guilt, she never imagined he felt it too. "How could you say that?"

He looks at her then, his eyes wide and anguished and shiny. "Because then you'd still have Wells. You wouldn't be here crying."

Clarke gapes at him. She cannot believe he is that dense. "Yes, I would," she tells him. "You're just as important to me as Wells."

"No, I'm not," he says with a bitter smile. "I'm not your soulmate."

And there it is. They've never spoken this comparison out loud before. But now it's there, lingering between them. The thing is, perhaps he's right. Perhaps Clarke should care about him less than she does. But she can't. She won't. So she squares her shoulders.

"Do you think I'm less important than your soulmate?" she asks him instead. He blinks.

"You know I haven't met my soulmate—"

"Do you think that I would be less important?" she demands. And kind of, sort of, she wants to know his answer.

He glares at her before grinding out, "No."

"There you go," she says, pleased she's not the only screwed up one here. "So stop making stupid comparisons, Bellamy."

His glare doesn't lessen, but the relaxed lines of his body tell her the situation between them has mostly been defused.

Clarke touches her cheeks; still wet. "My makeup isn't too bad, is it?"

"You look like a raccoon," he replies, still glaring. She almost smiles. When he's direct, that's a good sign. She pulls out her phone to look at her reflection and starts wiping beneath her eyes. He watches her a moment, then:

"Here," he says gruffly, producing a crinkled package of tissues from his pocket. Half empty, she notes as he pulls one out, and then she doesn't note anything else because he gently takes her chin and pulls her face towards his.

They're quiet. His expression is soft again as he carefully wipes the dripping mascara off her face, brows furrowed together in concentration, like he wants to make sure she looks her very best today. Meanwhile, he looks like he barely tried. His curls are all over the place, his shirt hastily buttoned. His eyes red-rimmed, as though he gets as little sleep as her.

A fondness overtakes her. A yearning, for something she doesn't know. She cups his face in her hands, and he stills.

"What?" he says quietly, deep brown eyes burning solemnly into hers.

"Your hair is messy," she informs him, and that pulls a smile out of him, a little one.

"Well, are you going to fix it?"

"No. I like it."

The limo pulls up to the red carpet. Flashes of cameras catch her eye from behind the tinted windows. This is it.

"Do I still look like a racoon?" she asks him, and he shakes his head, and she doesn't even check her reflection, because she trusts him.

Before they get out, he grabs her hand. "Together?" he says, quietly, and it feels like both a question, and a vow.

She squeezes his hand back and nods.

—

Clarke and her mother pose for the cameras on the red carpet. Then Clarke sticks close to Bellamy when reporters yell questions about the night of her father's death and tries to imagine they're not here. She holds it together.

At least until she's in the darkened theatre, sitting between her mom and Bellamy, and it gets to her scene. She watches herself shoot a robber in the face, saving the life of her father's character, and that's when she breaks down.

—

Clarke's nightmares still follow her, different every time she falls asleep. She sees their faces—everyone involved in that night. Sometimes in those dreams she kills Shumway faster. Sometimes she kills Wells.

She knows Bellamy has them too. Only because he calls her frantically once in the middle of the night to ask if she's okay. He seems to calm down once he hears her voice. They don't talk about the nightmares, really, but it's sort of nice to know she's not the only one.

Abby Griffin sells the mansion. They move into a new home in a new neighbourhood, and while it's great that Clarke no longer lives at a murder scene, it also makes her feel desperately lonely. Meals with her mother aren't quite the same without her father's easy smiles and joking nature bringing them together. Clarke catches Abby looking down at her wrist sadly on more than one occasion.

Later, Clarke picks up a tabloid out of morbid curiosity and reads their dramaticized retelling of the great love story between her and Wells. Misinterpreting innocent hand gestures in public, or when Clarke leaned in to whisper in his ear as something more intimate. She can't stomach it. She spots the chess set gathering dust in the corner of her bedroom, and she picks it up and moves it to a different room. She can't look at it without seeing Wells' warm smile. She can't look at it without feeling guilty.

But, life does go on.

—

It's halfway through Bellamy's senior year that Clarke asks him where he's thinking of applying for college.

He gives her a look. "I'm not going to college."

Her jaw drops. "What? You always talked about it when we were little!"

"I grew up," he huffs. He looks away, but Clarke knows better. She can tell from the jaw clench, the brooding look in his eyes.

He still wants to. He just can't afford to.

Octavia's still in school, rent is still due. It probably doesn't help that his mother was so traumatized by what had happened in the Griffin mansion she has been unable to work for months. Clarke understands. Everyone's dealt with it in different ways.

She's unsure Bellamy dealt with it at all.

She opens her mouth, about to speak. But he holds up a hand.

"Don't," he says, sounding angry. "I know what you're going to say. And I don't want your money, Clarke."

"Nothing excessive," Clarke wheedles. They've played this game before. Clarke always loses. "Just to cover tuition and travel and room and board."

"No."

"Just tuition."

"No."

"Just textbooks."

"No."

"A loan! Like a bank—"

"You're not a bank," Bellamy says tightly, arms crossed over his chest. "And I'm not a charity case. So drop it."

She chews her lip. She can tell he's getting annoyed, but she'll have to pick this up later, because her mother has just walked into the front foyer.

Abby clearly notices the two of them have their jackets on. "Going somewhere?"

Clarke shrugs. "We're just going for a drive. We'll stay in the Rover the whole time." She puts emphasis on that last part. Her mother has started paying hawklike attention to Clarke's activities, and while Clarke can certainly understand why, it's absolutely driving her up the wall.

"I'm sure you will," Abby says. "Luckily, I've finally found you a bodyguard."

Before Clarke can react, someone steps through the door behind her. Clarke and Bellamy automatically shift closer together when they see him.

He's tall, and just generally gigantic, and Clarke honestly thinks he could crush her ribs to dust with those tree-like arms. His jacket has an logo on it; ELIGIUS SECURITY. It's the company Arkadia uses for corporate security too.

This guy's overall demeanor screams you are not giving me the slip, and Clarke is sure that's the exact reason her mother hired him.

"This is Roan," Abby says.

"Now wait a second," Bellamy says, but Clarke speaks at the same time.

"I don't need a bodyguard."

"Yes, you do. And we are not having this discussion. I've got one, you need one. It would give me peace of mind, at the very least. Eligius is the best in the business when it comes to executive security," Abby adds. "I had Kane vet him. Roan here is good."

Kane is on Arkadia's board of directors and a family friend. Clarke's met him several times, and he's a nice enough guy, but still, she narrows her eyes.

If Roan has any thoughts on the way he's being rejected right now, he doesn't say any of them. He just stares at her, expressionlessly. Clarke realizes her mother really isn't budging on this. She and Bellamy share a look of dismay. Irritably, she shoves her feet into her shoes.

"Let's go, then."

Roan doesn't talk much as they walk out to the Rover. Neither do Bellamy and Clarke; Bellamy simply tosses Clarke the keys and arches a brow. She nods; he's been teaching her to drive stick, so might as well get in some practice.

Clarke pulls out of the driveway and through the gates. There's complete silence. Clarke doesn't much feel like driving around with a stranger in the back who's listening to everything she and Bellamy say. More than anything, he's a reminder that her life has changed enough to need a bodyguard.

She wants to go back to how things used to be.

She doesn't realize her eyes are filled with tears until about ten minutes into the drive, when Bellamy says, quietly, "Clarke, pull over."

She's hunched over the steering wheel, barely seeing the road through blurry vision, shoulders tense with the effort of not crying. She won't, not with Roan here.

She obliges, pulling over to the side of the road. Bellamy rubs the back of her neck. His fingers are gentle, warm. "Clarke," he says, soft as butter, and she almost breaks down right then and there.

"You drive," she manages, and practically falls out of the vehicle.

They switch places. Bellamy says conversationally, "Why don't we go to the arcade?"

It's an odd sort of request. They hadn't talked about doing that, but Clarke shrugs. She doesn't much care where they go right now. Her mood's already ruined.

—

Inside the arcade, Clarke pushes her sunglasses up higher. Bellamy touches Clarke's hand.

"Alright, do your thing," he says.

"What?"

He smiles at her. "Go to the washroom. Don't you always have to go as soon as we get here? Might as well get it over with before we're in the middle of a game like last time."

What? That has actually never happened before. But she reads something in his smile, in the intensity of his eyes right now. And she trusts him. Extremely aware of Roan watching them, she plays along. "Fine," she drawls, and, hands stuck in her jean back pockets, she pivots on the heel and heads in the direction of the bathroom. Roan follows. Surely, he won't follow her inside, will he?

"I'll be right here," Roan says, leaning against the wall outside the washroom. "Shout if you need anything."

Unlikely. But Clarke shrugs offhandedly and pushes through the door.

The bathroom is nearly empty. Just a few stalls are in use. But Clarke's more interested in the window up on the wall, right above the sinks.

She washes her hands and dries them and fluffs her hair in the mirror about eight times before she's finally alone. Then she walks to the window. She has to stand on her tiptoes to get the latch open.

She puts her hands on the ledge. But it's just too high up for her to get any leverage. Luckily, at that very moment, Bellamy's hands appear through the window, grabbing her wrists and pulling her through like she weighs nothing.

She crawls onto the grass beside him and snickers. "It's a little weird that you were just standing beside the womens' washroom window."

"I didn't look through," he says, sounding affronted as they set off for the parking lot, and the Rover.

"I know you didn't." She bumps his shoulder, suddenly excited at the prospect of an evening alone. "Where should we go?"

"I've got an idea." As they clamber into the Rover, Bellamy glances behind them and curses. "Clarke, get in, quick."

Clarke follows his gaze and sees Roan sprinting across the lot towards them. She dives into the passenger seat and slams the door. "Go, go, go!"

Bellamy doesn't have to be told twice. The Rover's tires squeal as they exit the parking lot.

Clarke checks the rearview. "That was close. How did he catch on so quickly?"

"Because he's good," Bellamy replies darkly. Then sneaks a grin at her. "But we're better."

—

When Bellamy finally pulls the Rover to the side of the road, it's in the middle of nowhere, and the sky has darkened completely. On either side of the road is a field of long grass. A big sign advertises the acreage for sale. Clarke gives Bellamy a puzzled look; they've never been here before. He seems a little nervous, continually tugging on the collar of his jacket.

"Wow," Clarke says teasingly as they wade through the gently swaying grasses. "This is very exciting."

Bellamy gives her a look but doesn't explain. After they 've walked a minute through the field, he lies down on the ground and pats the space beside him. She obliges as he pulls out his new phone. It's a crappy, cheap one, but it does the job. Clarke stares at the stars while Bellamy types something in his phone. Then, he aims his phone up at the sky. Clarke closes her eyes and lets him do his thing, trusting that he'll explain when he's ready. In the meantime, she turns on her side in the tall grass and rests her head on his shoulder, throwing a leg over both of his. She drops a kiss on his jaw while she's there, and he leans into it.

She almost falls asleep before he speaks again. "Look at this."

She opens her eyes and looks at his phone. There's some app she doesn't recognize open, using his camera to capture the clear night sky above them. Bellamy points to one of the stars captured on the screen. "This is it," he says.

Clarke squints at it, then at the actual thing up in the sky. It's a very ordinary star, not one she could've picked out of a thousand others. "This is what?"

"This star," he says, "is named Wells Jaha."

She lifts her head off his shoulder to stare at him. Bellamy sighs and tugs something out of his pocket. A neatly folded piece of paper. He passes it to her. "This is a photocopy. I have the original certificate in my room, I'll give it to you."

She focuses on what he's handed her. A certificate from some star registry, declaring this star at this certain coordinates to be named Wells Jaha. "You named a star after him?" she asks softly.

Bellamy hesitates. "It's not completely legitimate," he mutters. "Actual astronomers don't really recognize these, but it's really in an international registry now. I just thought, this way, you'd always be able to see him when you look up at the sky—"

Clarke flings her arms around him.

"Thank you," she says, and feels his body, all the hard lines of it, sort of soften, as he hugs her back. He did this for her, and he got rid of Roan for her so she could feel normal for a second, and she loves him so, so very much.

She feels his lips press into her hair. Something occurs to her.

"How much did this cost?"

"Not much," he says, and she frowns, because she knows it cost something, and that not much to her is a significant sum to Bellamy. It means he sacrificed something to give her this. Not rent, or food, or Octavia's karate lessons; no, he would've sacrificed something of his. Maybe he held back on fixing the broken taillight of the Rover, or getting a new jacket, or skimping on food five days in a row, or any number of things Clarke would've preferred him to do with his limited money.

She sits up. "So you're allowed to spend money on me, but I'm not allowed to do the same for you?"

He sits up as well, expression darkening. "That's not the same and you know it."

"No, I don't! Tell me how it's not the same!"

He opens his mouth to answer, but then his eyes shift behind her, and his expression darkens further. "We've got a problem."

Clarke turns her head and sees Roan walking towards them. Her jaw drops. Beside the Rover, a sleek Eligius-issued black SUV is parked.

"Looks like he's gonna snap our necks," Bellamy comments lightly, and it's like the almost-argument from two seconds ago never happened.

"Do you think he could?" Clarke looks at Roan's massive hands and answers her own question. "Oh, my god. He could. Like a twig." They both sort of snicker, at least until Roan's close enough to speak.

"Sorry to interrupt," he says in a tone that makes it clear he's not sorry at all. "But it's time to go home."

Clarke crosses her arms. "What if I don't want to?"

"Then I'll throw you over my shoulder and take you home, princess," Roan says without blinking. "So make your choice. And make it fast. Your mother isn't very pleased."

"I wouldn't be either if the bodyguard I hired screwed up on day one," Bellamy remarks from behind her. Roan levels him with a flat look.

"I'll admit I'm impressed," he says after a moment. "No one's ever given me the slip. Who's idea was it?"

"Mine," Clarke says immediately. No way is she letting Bellamy take the blame as troublemaker.

Roan nods and looks at Bellamy. "Yours, then. Creative, I'll give you that. If you're ever interested in a career as a security officer, talk to me."

"Don't hold your breath," Bellamy replies.

Roan, unbothered, turns back to Clarke. "What's it gonna be, Clarke?"

Clarke glares at him, then raises her chin haughtily. "We can't leave the Rover behind."

"Cute of you to think I'm taking your boyfriend with us," Roan says. "I don't care about him, he can take his jeep. It's just me and you in my vehicle."

"Go, Clarke," Bellamy says, with a touch to her back. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Clarke sighs and does.

—

In the drive back to the Griffin estate, Clarke phones her mother and gets the lecture over with, on speakerphone, while touching random buttons in Roan's car just for the pleasure of hearing him say, "Don't touch that."

At the end of reaming her out, Abby says, "We'll talk about it more when you get home. And Clarke, don't do this again. This is for your own safety. I couldn't bear it if something happened to you too."

Clarke softens somewhat. "Okay."

She ends the call and turns to Roan. Roan keeps his eyes on the road. She looks at his wrist. His soulmark is some weird, jagged looking long triangle. "What is that, a carrot?"

"An icicle," Roan says sourly. "Are you going to try to escape me tomorrow?"

"No. Now listen up."

Roan's eyes narrow at Clarke's commanding tone. She doesn't care. Something had rubbed her wrong about his comment about not caring about Bellamy.

"I don't care what my mother says," she tells him. "If Bellamy is with me, you protect him too."

"I'm paid to protect you, not your boyfriend."

Again, Clarke doesn't bother to refute the assumption. "But if something happens to him on your watch," she says, making sure her next words are crystal clear, "When I turn eighteen, not only will I fire you, but I will make sure you never get another job. Got it?"

Roan finally looks at her then. Clarke's gaze is unwavering. Then, at last, he nods slowly.

—

Bellamy graduates high school. Clarke insists on going to it.

When they call his name to cross the stage, Clarke claps harder and longer than anyone else. She tells Roan to clap and he does too. Bellamy's looking especially handsome today; maybe it's the smile on his face, a little relieved, making him look very young. He never outright said it to Clarke, but she knows he was afraid he wouldn't graduate. Having to work two jobs to keep his family afloat can do that to a person.

So although he looks much more like himself in his rugged, beat-up jacket, Clarke's happy to see him in this outfit for one day. And she's not the only one.

"Do you think if I colour over my soulmark with a crown, he'll give me the time of day again?" whispers a girl sitting in the row in front of her, and her friend snickers. Clarke crosses her arms.

Octavia beside Clarke has clearly heard the comment too. She makes a face and leans in to Clarke and whispers how that girl was at a party a few months back, that both Octavia and Bellamy had been at. She'd just been broken up with in a very humiliating, public way, crawled into Bellamy's lap and he did not dissuade her.

"And he made out with her for like, ten straight minutes on the couch," Octavia had complained with an eyeroll. "He'll never say no to a hookup."

Clarke smiles a little although she can already tell Octavia's got it wrong. That girl was looking for a way to regain control, to be respected. What better way than to make out with Bellamy Blake, who—well, Clarke's not blind.

And she knows he's not truly a player, no matter how much he pretends to be. It's that he never says no to someone who he thinks he could make feel better. And she does love that about him, even if it makes her worry for him too.

—

Bellamy goes with Clarke to her first day in the Arkadia headquarters office.

Obviously, it's not her actual first time in the building; she had been there many times with Wells, as she explains. But today Abby wants her to sit in on some meetings with her. Abby's trying to groom her for leadership one day, that much is obvious. Clarke doesn't seem to mind, or at least she doesn't show it if she does.

The two of them sit in on a board meeting. Listening to a bunch of men squabble for two hours over a tiny branding decision is about as exciting as watching grass grow, but then they get to tour the lab, where a woman called Dr. Singh shows them around their stem cell research.

"We're doing a lot of work in trying to understand cell fate determination," she explains to Clarke and Bellamy.

Clarke nods sagely, but Bellamy doesn't. "What the hell's that?" he has to ask.

"Stem cells can become any kind of cell initially, but there's a sort of stepwise cascade that occurs to put them down one road or another, and after that they can't go back. Their fate has been determined, so to speak. We're interested in how to reverse that process."

Afterwards, as they're being walked out, Clarke hooks her arm through his playfully and whispers in his ear. "Thanks for asking, I was wondering that too."

"Is that right," he replies, pretending to be annoyed although he's more amused than anything. "You had me thinking I was the only stupid one in the room for a second there."

She pinches him in retaliation, still pressed up against his side.

They plan for a trip to the pizza joint across the street since they're both hungry, but they meet trouble in the form of a paparazzo as soon as they step out the doors.

Clarke sighs. "Oh, no."

Someone must've seen Clarke come in today. She and Bellamy detach from the other's side and retreat a respectable distance away. Sometimes the tabloids get photos of them touching and get the wrong idea. It's never a fun headline.

As has become habit in these situations, Bellamy scans the street, looking for the easiest route to escape prying eyes. The shortest way to the pizza place is still a busy intersection.

"Still want pizza?" he murmurs. "We could go back inside, take a car home."

She squares her shoulders. "No. I've been dreaming about that pepperoni for a week. I'm still game if you are."

He nods because it is damn good pizza, he's not immune.

With Roan at their side, they walk down the street, earning a few looks but nothing more. Bellamy jabs the walk button at the intersection several times, keeping an eye on the guy who'd sighted them in the first place. And… the camera comes up. A nice one, by the looks of it. Click click click. Clarke ducks her head. Roan automatically moves in front of Clarke, so Bellamy relaxes. A part of him is sort of glad Roan's around. It takes a bit of anxiety off his mind when it comes to protecting her.

Also, on a whim one night while trying to sort bills, he'd checked the Eligius website. The benefits of a job there far outweighed his pride. He'd applied.

The walk light is taking its sweet damn time. While they're waiting, the photographer manages to come up to them.

Bellamy's mood sours further when the guy speaks.

"Clarke! Any new romance since Wells died?"

Clarke tugs her cap down nervously, drifting to Roan's side. The man turns and sees Bellamy. Unfortunately, Bellamy is at this point a bit recognizable whenever he's with Clarke. And the tabloids have been quite interested in him for the past few years, for whatever reason.

Bellamy tries to move away, but the man snags his sleeve. "Bellamy! You and Clarke were spotted holding hands a week ago. Are you together for now? And if so, what about your own soulmate? What will you do when you meet them?"

The walk light finally turns on. "Get off me," Bellamy snaps, shoving him, but before he can do anything more, Roan steps between them.

"Alright, it's time for you to go."

The paparazzo seems surprised at the hostile tone, but when Roan doesn't budge, he lets them go and doesn't follow.

A little put off that he'd helped him, Bellamy looks up at the bodyguard as they cross the street. Roan's face is inscrutable as he exchanges a rather meaningful look with Clarke. Clarke, however, is smiling as if pleased. Alright then.

He looks down at his sleeve, where there's now a scuff mark, and attempts in vain to brush off the dirt. It's a bit of a fool's errand, seeing how beat up this jacket already is, but he doesn't like the idea of the paparazzo's fingers having touched it.

A shutter clicks, and he looks down the street to see the paparazzo taking photos of him. The way the camera's pointed, it doesn't even look like Clarke would be much in the frame.

"What's the point of taking photos of me? Who's gonna pay for that?" he mutters. Clarke grins. "What?"

"You don't read the gossip magazines at all, do you?"

"No," he says, bewildered. "What do they say about me?"

Her smile turns cat-like, and her lashes lower just a bit. "Look in a mirror once in a while and you'll find out."

It takes him a second, and when he understands, he blushes, and she laughs a little. And because her nose adorably scrunched up, looking happy, he can't help but smile too.

As they continue down the street, his smile fades a bit as he recalls the paparazzo's words.

What about your own soulmate? What will you do when you meet them?

Bellamy wishes he had the answer to that.

—

Bellamy's first day of training at Eligius is… interesting, to say the least.

The instructor, Anya, scowls at them all and proceeds to walk around and announce how Eligius is one of the best private security companies in the world, contracted by governments and major corporations alike to protect their assets.

"Our reputation is about strength. Our training is grueling. Our professionalism standards are very high. Only some of you will be able to meet our requirements, but that's the point. We only take the best." She pauses. "You look like a lousy bunch, so I'm not sure how you even passed the screening fitness tests." She's looking at a scrawny guy standing next to Bellamy when she says it.

Later, during break, Bellamy just happens to be standing beside the scrawny guy, who says, "That Anya bitch is a piece of work, huh?"

Bellamy half-glances at him, wiping sweat from his forehead. He's really not interested in gossip when he's just here to secure a job. He shrugs and takes a swig of water.

"I'm John Murphy, by the way," the guy says after a moment. "What did you say your name was?"

Bellamy hadn't said anything at all, of course, but he reluctantly replies. "Bellamy Blake."

"You look kinda familiar," Murphy says. "Have I met you before?"

A new, female voice joins the fray. "In a tabloid, I bet. Bellamy Blake, huh?"

Bellamy turns to see a muscular woman with dark hair tied in a ponytail approaching. She arches a brow at his surprise. "I know a lot of celebrities. You're Clarke Griffin's best friend, aren't you?"

Bellamy sighs and puts his water bottle down. He hates being recognized. If those damn paparazzi would mind their own business…

Murphy smacks his hand on the locker behind him. "There we go. I gotta say, you don't seem the type to be a rich girl's lapdog."

Bellamy levels him with a glare. "It's not like that."

"Then what is it like?" Murphy says, clearly not deterred, his tone dry. "Because no one really knows, do they? Some people think you're her bodyguard, which, I guess if you're here on day one with the rest of us, that sort of debunks that theory. Then there's the theory that you're just friends. Some people think you actually hate each other but have some kind of business relationship. Some people think you're fucking, but seeing as you're not even soulmates, that can't last long—or, wait, does she pay you—?"

Bellamy sees red, shoving Murphy against the lockers with a resounding crash. "Say another word," he seethes through gritted teeth. "Say another word and just see what happens."

A hand lands on his shoulder. "Hey," Ponytail Girl says sharply from behind him. "Do you want to be kicked out? Because that's what this is heading towards. Anya's coming this way."

Bellamy narrows his eyes at Murphy, who holds his hands up. "Relax, alright? I was just asking a simple question. No need to get so touchy."

Bellamy lets go of his shirt, blood still running hot. There's a reason he doesn't even look at the tabloids. He can't stand the lies they print about Clarke. He can't stand the way people assume things about her. He especially can't stand the way people assume things about him and Clarke.

Murphy looks at him warily and straightens his shirt. Bellamy starts to regret his impulsivity. He had wanted to blend in here, not make enemies on the first day.

But, unexpectedly, Murphy breaks into a grin.

"I would've hit me, too," he says.

—

Bellamy learns that Ponytail Girl's name is Raven, named after her soulmark. And she's an engineer at Eligius, getting basic training along with the rest of them.

Murphy's a high school dropout who's soulmark is a cockroach, which just seems exactly right to Bellamy. On day two, Raven introduces him to Miller, who waves at him from where he's got earbuds in and is looking at his phone.

("His soulmate's going to school across the country," Raven explains. "They FaceTime every day to keep in touch."

"Sounds hard," Bellamy says. Raven shrugs.

"Not if you're soulmates, I guess.")

Most of them are older than him, and more experienced. Bellamy's at a distinct disadvantage, but he knows the rewards of excelling at Eligius' training are a better job and better life at the end, so he works himself to the bone, competitive to the max, keeping up with the people who are taller, stronger, quicker than him.

The training is no joke, and most nights Bellamy collapses on his coach for a nap with every muscle screaming at him, only to have to drag himself off again to work his night shift sorting scrap at the junkyard. He would've liked to continue his job at the library, but it conflicted with Eligius, and he couldn't rationalize keeping it.

Clarke comes over for dinner at their cramped apartment sometimes. They don't spend as much time together lately, with Bellamy's workload and Clarke in her last year of high school, so they take what they can, which is Clarke sitting at a cramped dinner table chatting with Octavia and working on university applications while Bellamy dozes off on the couch. Yeah, it's great. If it weren't for Roan constantly lurking in the corner.

June rolls around, and Clarke graduates, and Bellamy hates having to act like he's happy for her, when in reality, he knows she's going to leave now—go somewhere he can't follow, because his family is here.

It's confirmed when Clarke quietly tells him one night that she's moving soon.

The university she's chosen is six or so hours away by car, so it's not as bad as it could be, but still. It stings. Even if he tries to pretend it doesn't.

On their last night together, they lie on Clarke's new mansion rooftop (not as comfortable as the old house) and Clarke lists all the universities she got into, each more jaw-dropping than the next.

She must see his expression, because she says, "I got in because of my last name and nothing else. They probably didn't read the rest of my application. I can't even be proud. Nothing I have is really mine."

Her voice grows a little sad, there. It's an angle to her life he'd never considered before. So he tries to lighten the mood. "Damn, Clarke, I'm trying to congratulate you."

"You're thinking it too. People would kill to be in my position. I know I don't have anything to complain about."

He goes silent because it's true that plenty of people would kill for that. Hell, even himself—the things he'd do just for the chance to go to school again. But Clarke's so self-aware that it's hard to be irritated. In fact, she makes it easier for him to understand. "You don't have to be grateful all the time," he says eventually. "When are you leaving tomorrow?"

"Early."

They grow quiet. Not because there's nothing to say, but because there's too much, and to try at all would ruin it.

After a few hours, Clarke whispers, "I have to get to bed." Bellamy nods, shifting to stand, when she catches his wrist.

"You could always stay," she says. Her blue eyes are wide, and she's biting her lip, and her hair is messy, blowing in her face with the breeze, and god, how could he not stay?

They end up curled up under Clarke's comforter together. It's the best sleep of Bellamy's life. At least until he wakes far too early—it's still dark—to Clarke pressed up against him, and he's hard.

He tries to shift away.

Her voice comes, soft. "Don't."

He freezes. She doesn't say anything else. Gradually, he puts his arms around her again, and she scooches back into his embrace. He almost groans aloud. She's so soft, so warm, and smells like something so distinctly Clarke—like wildflowers, like summer nights.

She turns around in his arms, and they stare at each other from their sides of their shared pillow for a long time. Her heel is hooked around his ankle. His arm is still draped over her hip.

He watches Clarke's long-lashed eyes drop from his, to his mouth, lower, and back up. Her gaze isn't so much seductive as it is—intense. Like she's trying to burn the image of him into her brain. And he's doing the same.

Her blonde tresses are spilled over the pillow, and her form is silhouetted by moonlight streaming from the window behind her. The blue of her eyes still seems bright enough to pin him where he lies. Her night shirt is slipping over her shoulder.

He falls asleep again trying to commit her to memory just like this.

—

He wakes an hour or two later because Clarke is trying to crawl out of bed to get ready without disturbing him. And failing.

As she crawls over him he catches her wrist, brushing his thumb against her soulmark. She stops and turns back.

"Clarke," he says, and nothing more. But as always, she understands.

"I know." She smiles, a soft, sad smile. "I'll miss you too."

—

For security reasons, Clarke's got her own house on the university campus, and yes, she's completely aware of how privileged that is. But it's safer than a dorm, although she'd been reluctant to admit it. Living with so many strangers who would undoubtedly talk to the press about her would be hellish.

As soon as she's settled, she goes for a walk through campus and calls Bellamy.

"You got moved in okay?" he asks gruffly. There's the sound of the Rover door closing. "Roan helped?"

"Yeah," she says softly, clinging to the phone and wishing she could drown in his voice. Wishing she could see his soft brown eyes, his rebellious curls, even the jeep she's come to associate so closely with him. "Classes start in a few days. What are you up to?"

"Field test tomorrow. Last one before I'm allowed to advance."

"Good luck to both of us, then," Clarke says. His life is moving on, and so is hers, and it feels like they're separating slowly. "I'll talk to you later."

She ends the call. Tucks her phone in her pocket slowly. And then starts tearing up as she briskly walks back to her new house.

Roan huffs an amused laugh at her side.

Clarke absently wipes the wetness away from her cheeks. "What?"

"Nothing," Roan replies, and keeps quiet for the rest of the night.

—

Classes start. Clarke's there for biomedical sciences. Her mother had suggested a few choices in that regard; premed, business, or pharmacology. Clarke hadn't known what to choose, so she chose what made the most logical sense if she's going to take over the company some day.

Roan's to accompany her to all her classes. She gets to her biology lab class, where students are still milling around, not quite in their seats yet. The TA introduces herself as Luna and tells her to find a partner in the room.

"Welcome to the class," Luna adds with a warm smile, offering her an assignment. Her lab coat sleeve shifts to reveal her raven soulmark. Clarke nods slowly, accepting the assignment she's been handed, and side eyes Roan.

"Can't you just be my partner?" she whispers, even though he's not enrolled in the class.

Roan looks amused. "Go socialize, princess. I'll wait outside."

"No, you can't," Clarke protests. "What if someone in here attacks me?"

Roan rolls his eyes. "I've run background checks on all of them. You'll be fine."

WIth that, he leaves her alone. Clarke squares her shoulders and spots a brunette girl with an infinity sign soulmark sitting alone at a table. Clarke slides into the seat next to her only to be given the stink eye. Great.

Their assignment is to look at seawater under a microscope to familiarize themselves with its operation. "Do you want to split up the questions?" Clarke asks her partner.

"Sure," the girl says, sourly.

"I'm Clarke," Clarke adds.

The girl bends to the microscope, ignoring her.

Clarke tries not to be bothered. She focuses on their assignment and there's ten minutes of silence between them. Clarke's phone buzzes in her pocket. She ignores it.

However, she gets stuck on the math of magnification, which is one of her designated questions. Her partner is fully absorbed in writing what seems to be an essay on her assignment sheet. Curious, Clarke cranes her neck to see. The girl moves her paper further away.

Clarke sighs and gets up. There's a line of people to ask Luna a question, so she might as well take a spot. Before she can join, someone waves at her from a table near the front. Two guys. She doesn't recognize them. But the one with lab goggles perched on his hair is smiling brightly at her, so she comes over.

When she does, the guy elbows his friend. "Dude, that's Clarke Griffin, all right."

"Dude. We were right," says the other, and they both simultaneously raise their hands and high five themselves.

Clarke instinctively looks at their soulmarks. Nope, not the same. But similar; a rake for the goggles one, a shovel for the black-haired one.

"I'm Monty," says the black-haired one.

"Can we get your autograph?" puts in the other. "Jasper, by the way."

Clarke considers them. "You can if you help me with this question."

"Are you kidding?" Monty pulls her paper towards him with a smirk. "Consider it done. And all your other homework, as long as you're willing to pay a small fee."

"A small fee?" Jasper stage-whispers. "She's a millionaire. Charge her like one."

Clarke grins and signs the napkin Jasper presents. "I'm not planning on buying homework. I just need some help with this one question."

Monty shows her the math, and after a minute she gets it. "Thank you," she says. "I was going to ask my partner, but she looked like she'd bite my head off."

"It's kind of a funny coincidence you sat next to her," Monty says. "Don't you know who that is?"

"No," Clarke says, slowly. Monty lowers his voice.

"That's Lexa Woods." At her stare, he raises his eyebrows. "Come on, your company's in the same field. You've got to know Polaris Biotech."

That makes her brain churn out a connection. Lexa Woods, young CEO of Polaris Biotech. Clarke dimly remembers reading an article about her a few years back; her cunning as a teenager, her strong leadership in pulling together a family company that was about to crumble and building an empire out of it. Not only that, but a year ago Polaris Biotech made a bid to buy Arkadia. Her mother had turned it down, obviously.

She cranes her neck back to see Lexa looking at her over her worksheet. Quickly, she busies herself again. Interesting.

More interesting is how many people in the classroom aside from Lexa have been looking at Clarke. She hears the word murderer. Her mood sours.

Her phone buzzes again. Walking back to her table, she checks it. Her mother.

Call me when you can.

Nothing urgent. Just some great news.

Nothing would get her more curious than that. Somehow, she manages to get through the rest of her class, but as soon as they're dismissed, she's out the door.

Roan falls into step with her as she calls her mom. Abby picks up after the third ring.

"Clarke, honey," her mother says. She sounds excited, which is really rather strange, since she usually keeps her emotions buried. "I hope I didn't pull you out of anything."

"No, I just got out of class." More people pass her in the hall, giving her a side eye as they go. Clarke's officially the freak on campus, apparently.

Her thoughts are pulled elsewhere when Abby says, "I wanted to tell you sooner—I—I have a new soulmark."

Clarke slows to a stop in the hallway and stares ahead in shock. A second soulmark.

It's very rare. But it happens. She remembers reading a news story a few years ago of a couple who were in a plane crash; their respective spouses died, and the two of them wound up living in the wilderness together for months. They came out of it with matching soulmarks on their other wrists.

Her mother goes on, excitedly. "It's been slowly growing for weeks now, and then today, well I saw it. Kane asked me to marry him. And I'm—I said yes."

"Kane?"

"Why do you sound so surprised? His original soulmate died years ago." She sighs. "I felt guilty at first. But I know Jake would want this for me."

"Yeah," Clarke says, looking down at the chess rook on her own wrist, then at her other wrist, the one that's smooth with no mark on it at all. "Well, congrats."

Her mother pauses. "I wanted you to know," she says, gentle. "That it can happen. Maybe it'll happen for you too."

"Maybe," Clarke echoes. The thing is, she's terrified of some new mark of fate.

But if it has to come, she can only imagine one.

—

Because Monty and Jasper are apparently the only people in most of her first-year classes who are friendly and don't think she's a psychopath, she ends up hanging out with them a few weekends later. She doesn't even care that they probably just want to be able to brag about a celebrity in their dorm. It's just nice to spend time with someone who isn't Roan.

The evening she spends at Monty and Jasper's is weirdly enjoyable but also bizarre. It turns out they sell weed out of their dorm, and also are homebrew hobbyists.

"Why would anyone buy this when they can just go to the liquor store?"

"Because we're not actually allowed to make it in the dorm, and the forbidden aspect is what sells this stuff," Jasper says, sounding aghast at the suggestion. Clarke takes another sip and makes a face. It's nasty. "Besides, it gets you drunk faster."

It does do that.

They end up trading stories about their lives. She learns Monty and Jasper grew up together on neighbouring farms. She learns that Monty aims to become an agricultural engineer, and Jasper's interested in environmental science, but neither of them are fully committed yet. She learns that they've not met their soulmates, but they're both in serious relationships.

"Does that work?" she asks them, quietly, remembering her mother's warnings about being with someone who's not her soulmate, that it would be a bad thing to mess with them. She knows there are plenty of non-soulmate couples out there, but it's sort of understood those relationships just aren't quite as profound a love, and much harder to maintain. When people meet their soulmates they usually part ways. "Are you… happy?"

Monty and Jasper exchange looks and then back at her. "Yeah," Monty says, quite seriously.

She absorbs that.

"Yeah, you think we're just gonna wait around our whole lives for our actual soulmates?" Jasper drawls after a minute. "I've heard of people waiting until they're fifty. Waiting until I'm halfway to my deathbed for someone to come along with a rake on their wrist. God, Monty, can you imagine?"

Monty rolls his eyes and looks back at Clarke. "Hey, look. I know your soulmate died… Sorry about that." Clarke shrugs as offhandedly as she can. "But that doesn't mean you can't live your life."

Somehow, she ends up telling them about how her mother's got a new soulmark. It's been all over the tabloids anyway, so possibly they would've heard.

"You might get a second soulmark too, then," Monty says. "Pretty good chance, actually. They say there's a genetic component."

"Yeah, maybe," Clarke says forlornly. "And if it does, I can't control who."

"Why not?" Monty says, pointing his joint at her. "If you knew exactly what the soulmarks are looking for when they select a person, why couldn't you recreate those exact conditions and self-select the soulmate you wanted?"

"Monty my boy, you might be onto something here," Jasper says from where he's sprawled upside down on the couch. He grabs his laptop, ripping the charging cord out of the wall, and props it up on his chest to open Google. Clarke sits back in thought.

"Do you really think that would work?"

"Why not? There's gotta be a method to the madness of these things."

Jasper speaks, squinting as he reads off his screen. "Found an article. Thank you Google." He reads aloud in an overdramatic British accent. "'While the exact mechanism of soulmarks is unknown, there have been several epidemiological studies attempting to elucidate patterns. What has been found is that the soulmarks tend to match with someone with very different genetic traits, which is hypothesized to avoid the likelihood of recessive genetic illnesses being inherited. Outside of genetic compatibility, there are associations seen in socioeconomic status, personality, and values.' Okay, I'm bored." He tosses his laptop aside. Clarke picks it up, trying not to look too obsessed as she memorizes the article title and author.

The conversation switches to new topics after that, but the moment Clarke gets home, she gets her laptop open and does her own literature search on soulmarks. Roan follows her in instead of going into his adjoining part of the house, as he is prone to do when Clarke "gets that look" on her face, whatever that means. They're at a point in their relationship where Clarke really doesn't care and neither does he. The hours tick on and on.

"This is getting pathetic," Roan says at one point, but she ignores him. Her bodyguard ends up falling asleep on the couch next to her.

Her eyes burn. But still she reads on. And at the end of it, it's four in the morning, but her brain is too wired to sleep. What if she could do it? What if—what if she could engineer a new soulmark, and have it match Bellamy's? What if all this time he could still be hers?

She's never allowed herself to think about it before, because it didn't seem possible. But now maybe it is.

One thing she runs across in her research she reads over and over. Often happens after a prolonged proximity to the other, or a shared trauma.

They've definitely had some of that. But proximity isn't possible right now… or is it?

—

She drives home that weekend. She hadn't planned to—her assignments and tests have already piled up—but she wants to see Bellamy. They already call each other every other day, but they need proximity.

She texts him to let him know when she's an hour out, and when Roan finally pulls the car into the lot of Bellamy's apartment building, he's already waiting for her. He's in his rugged jacket, hair a mess, eyes warm, and she forgets about soulmarks for a second, and just remembers him. She leaps out and sprints towards him.

When she flings her arms around him without saying a word, he seems a little surprised at first, but then picks her up in a hug. She burrows her face into his neck and closes her eyes and breathes him in and god it's like in Bellamy's arms, none of her problems matter; nothing can touch her but him.

"Can we not do this in broad daylight?" Roan asks in bored tones from behind her as he shuts the car door. "It would make my job easier."

She lets go and instead hooks her arm into Bellamy's.

Up in the apartment, Bellamy cracks open two beers. He offers Roan one, too, but he shakes his head.

"It's unprofessional to drink on the job. As you should know."

Bellamy puts the beer back. "Just testing you."

Clarke looks around; they appear to be alone. "Where's your sister and Aurora?" she asks, and Bellamy's expression darkens.

"My mother's at work. My sister… Last night," he says with a scowl, "she found her soulmate."

"What?" Clarke's jaw drops. "Really?"

It turns out it's one of his colleagues, that Bellamy had invited over for drinks. But as soon as Lincoln spotted the butterfly soulmark on Octavia's wrist, it was over. For both of them. And now she's over at his place. Bellamy's obviously not happy at how fast she's jumping into things, and they'd fought about it.

"Not your first fight," Clarke comments, noting the tension in his jaw. "It'll be okay."

"You didn't hear her, Clarke. She was talking about moving in with him. She's seventeen. She hasn't even finished high school. How am I supposed to be okay with that?"

A lot of people would. Because they're soulmates. But not Bellamy. Bellamy, disgruntled, goes on to rant about how Octavia's shirking her classwork and how is she going to get into a good college (because, naturally, it's a given to him that she will go while he did not). Clarke has to hide her smile.

Over the next few hours, they talk and talk, and despite the fact that their last phone call was three days ago, it's a marvel how much didn't get said. She tells him all about her classes, how she met Lexa Woods (although they're still barely on speaking terms), and the two stoners she's somehow befriended. He's passed his final tests at Eligius, he tells her, but it's hard for him to get a solid job. He's more recognizable compared to his colleagues.

Clarke can't help but feel a little guilty about that. But in the interim, he's taken a job within Eligius with the training center, and she's proud of him.

She tells him about her mother's second soulmark, but he already heard. She doesn't tell him how the predisposition is genetic.

The conversation only ends when Aurora shows up, bags under her eyes but a kind smile on her face. She's doing much better these days. "Clarke. Didn't expect to see you here." She shoots Bellamy a look, which he appears to ignore. "It's late."

"You should probably go home," Bellamy agrees. Aurora retreats to her bedroom.

"I don't want to go home," Clarke says, and his eyebrows shoot up. She scrambles to cover. "I… can I just stay here?"

His eyes soften. He nods.

"This place isn't exactly safe," Roan huffs from his corner, nudging the flimsy locks on the door. "Not even a security system. What do you want me to do?"

"Curl up on the welcome mat," Bellamy suggests without taking his eyes off Clarke.

"I was talking to Clarke."

Clarke waves a dismissive hand at him. "You can go off-duty. Enjoy the night, I'll be okay. Bellamy's here."

"You sure?"

She nods, and he leaves.

Later, they curl up in Bellamy's bed together, and it's just like old times that they fall asleep.

She visits her mother the next morning, and then spends the majority of Saturday doing homework at Bellamy's kitchen table. On Sunday, she heads home.

She spends as many weekends as she can over the coming months back home. Sometimes it's hard to force herself to get in the car for the six hour drive, especially after a particularly difficult week, but she forces herself. If she can just push them over the brink…

One morning, she wakes up and rubs her face with her non dominant hand, and that's when she notices something on her inner wrist.

A smudge. A blur of darkness. The edges are not yet clear. But she knows what it is, instinctively.

She screams loud enough to get Roan sprinting from his side of the house over to hers, only to find her bouncing on her knees in her bedsheets, clutching her wrist and grinning uncontrollably.

She shoves her hand in his face, triumphant. "Look!"

He does. "Did you bite yourself?"

She scoffs. "It's not a bruise, it's a soulmark. It's happening! And you thought I was pathetic."

He shoves her wrist down, giving her a somewhat pitying look, which she doesn't like. "I still do, just for the record."

She's on cloud nine. She's got exams for the next few weeks, so she doesn't have time to go home, but she'll be there for Christmas. And she decides she'll keep it a secret until then.

She can't wait to show Bellamy.

—

Bellamy's eyes flit to the clock for the umpteenth time that night. Well past nine, and the party is still in full swing. In his ear, various voices are speaking from their respective areas, checking in with each other. Murphy says, "Nothing on second level, just some drunk people trying to get it on in the hallway. Ground floor?"

"Clear," he murmurs, tugging at his tie. Eligius is doing security for the city's awards night, and so he's dressed in the standard black and white formal attire for his shift like everyone else. Fifteen minutes left. Clarke will have arrived home for the holidays by now.

He commands himself to focus when Miller sidles up to him and he barely even notices until he speaks.

"We're not getting out til two, apparently."

He releases a frustrated sigh. "Please tell me you're joking." He speaks a little too loudly; a curly-haired woman walking by glances his way. Professionalism. Right. He smiles at her warmly, and she stumbles a bit in her steps.

"I wish I was joking," Miller says once she's gone. "But there's no shift relieving us. Anya's orders. She loves pulling this shit, huh?"

Bellamy grinds his teeth together. Anya pushing her security officers to the limit was par for the course when they were training, but it's not cute anymore.

He and Miller drift away from each other again, back to their job. Bellamy goes back on autopilot, scanning the room, the exits, and nothing of substance happens until it's time for the awards to be doled out.

He leans against a wall and watches various police officers and emergency responders get their awards. An entire line of firefighters gets to shake hands with the mayor. One of them is the curly haired woman from earlier, and he watches her accept a certificate and extend her hand to shake.

That's when he sees it. He's across the room, and he blinks several times when he does. Then he pushes off and strides closer, keeping close to the wall until he can be absolutely sure of what he saw.

"And let's give it up one more time for Gina Martin, and the rest of these heroic firefighters," the mayor says into the mic. The curly-haired woman and her colleagues wave at the crowd, but Bellamy barely hears the applause around him.

Because this woman has a crown soulmark on her wrist.

—

Brunch the next day doesn't go quite as planned.

Both he and Clarke are quiet as they wait for their orders to show up. They're in a diner, away from the windows and from prying eyes, seated in a corner by an eager waiter.

"Exams went okay?" he asks her gruffly. She nods. She's beaming, although Bellamy isn't sure why, and she's staying tight-lipped.

"How was work?" she asks instead, and Bellamy shrugs. He hadn't got home until four in the morning.

Silence. Clarke's lips are pressed together, and he can't take it anymore. "Alright," he says, dropping a sugar cube into his coffee. "Spit it out."

She grins wider at that. "I should spit it out? You look like you have something to say, too."

Bellamy drums his fingers against his coffee cup. "I think I found my soulmate," he says without thinking.

It's the first time he's told anyone rather than just mulling it over in his head. There's really no good way, or good time to say it.

She stills upon his words, eyes widening, and then her expression seems to wipe clear—completely blank, for a single second—before she smiles again. "Really?"

He nods.

"That's… good. That's really good. I'm happy for you." Her smile doesn't strike him as happy. "How did that happen?"

He swallows to work moisture into his mouth. "She's a firefighter who was at the event last night. Her name's Gina." His voice becomes quieter towards the end.

There's a rather long pause before Clarke speaks again. "Well? What's she like?"

"I haven't met her yet." Just stared at her from far away, like a damn stalker. All he knows is that Raven knows her—he'd seen her congratulating Gina on her award—and that she has a sweet smile.

"What?" Clarke's brows furrow. "Why not?"

Bellamy says nothing for a moment, focusing his gaze on the coffee mug. Their server comes back and puts their plates in front of them. After he's gone, Bellamy says, "You think I should?"

Clarke picks up her fork and knife, and begins methodically cutting her sausage into neat, equal pieces. "People wait to be soulmated for years, Bellamy. And some people still don't find theirs. Of course you should. You're going to get to spend the rest of your life with her."

Bellamy's heart begins to ache upon hearing those words. "Right." He picks up his fork although his appetite is gone. "What was it you were going to say?"

She shakes her head. "Never mind."

They eat in silence.

—

Despite Clarke's advice, Bellamy doesn't look for Gina Martin. It would be easy, he knows, to just ask Raven. People do this all the time. Soulmates don't always just fall neatly into your life; sometimes they come out of nowhere and you have to run after them.

But Bellamy can't bring himself to do it.

On the last day of Clarke's winter break, she asks, "Did you talk to her?"

He knows she means Gina. "Yeah," he lies, because to tell the truth would mean he would have to explain why he didn't.

"Good. I—I want you to be happy."

She sounds inexplicably near tears. "I am," he says, bewildered, because at this moment he'd say anything to make her stop looking like that. "Clarke. What's wrong?"

"Nothing, just." She blinks several times, bites her lip, seems to find her composure again. "I don't think I'm going to see you for a while."

"You're not coming home on the weekends anymore?"

"I don't think I can. It was hard enough this semester. And it's only going to get harder."

"Then I'll visit you," he says, but she shakes her head, adamantly.

"I'm not taking you away from work and your family, Bellamy. And besides, I—I have to focus on school now."

Her voice is crisp, controlled. Bellamy takes a breath and an involuntary step back. Then he nods, because, well, it makes sense. If he had the chance to go to school, he'd probably want to do the same.

He hugs her goodbye. It doesn't feel quite like it used to. But maybe that's what it means to grow up.

—

Clarke moves through her first week of the new semester in a fog. Her new soulmark has fully formed by the first Friday of January and it's like a slap to the face. A clock face, striking twelve. She doesn't get it. She doesn't know anybody with it. Her new soulmate is a stranger, and whatever childish dreams she had about Bellamy Blake are hopeless. How stupid could she be, to think she could mold herself into his soulmate? He's already got his own soulmate. Who's Clarke to try and take him away from that?

Because she apparently likes to torture herself, she imagines their first meeting a dozen ways. Gina turning around, seeing Bellamy, then seeing Bellamy's tattoo, and realizing this man is her soulmate. Lucky bitch.

Clarke startles herself with that last thought.

Eventually, she circles back to that paper Jasper had showed her, and the final words in the conclusion section that until now her eyes had refused to properly read. While various associations to soulmarks have been explored in case studies, it should be noted that many have attempted to recreate the conditions needed to create a soulmate, and have not succeeded. Therefore, it can safely be assumed that science has not yet cracked the exact mechanism of fate.

She closes her laptop and goes to bed.

—

The next morning is even harder. Bellamy calls. She sends him to voicemail because she's angry. Not at him, though.

She's angry at fate. She knows it doesn't make sense to be angry at an intangible thing, but god, the universe is cruel. She wants the soulmark gone. But that won't happen. Sometimes people try to get tattoos over their soulmarks—they never stick more than a day. The soulmark always wants to come through.

So over the weekend she decides on the next best thing—concealment. Long sleeved shirts, jackets, and if it's too warm or it would raise eyebrows—makeup applied to her right wrist.

She still calls Bellamy as much as she can. They don't talk about soulmates. It's life updates only. Safe topics.

Her bitterness seeps into her daily life. She barely speaks to anyone. She ignores Monty and Jasper's house party invitations. They probably want to parade her around as a celebrity anyway. She loses her temper when she overhears someone fake cough "murderer" and starts walking in their direction, fists balled, and Roan has to discreetly drag her away.

She's enrolled in the second part of biology lab, a continuation of last semester's, and ends up in the same time slot as Lexa Woods. Again, it's the only empty seat. People must be intimidated by her.

Well, not Clarke. So she sits there.

"I didn't say you could sit here," Lexa says in her monotone.

"I didn't ask," Clarke snaps. It's the first time she's been less than polite to Lexa. But Lexa blinks.

As it turns out, rudeness was all it took to get Lexa to smile. And it's a pretty smile, that reaches to her green eyes, and makes Clarke's stomach do a flip.

Lexa's got an infinity tattoo. Clarke doesn't care. In fact, flipping the middle finger at fate seems like the perfect thing to do now.

—

It's a February day and Bellamy is half asleep on the couch when Octavia walks in front of him and announces she's moving across the country with Lincoln.

His eyes open. He knew Lincoln was being transferred to do security for a military company somewhere, but Octavia going with him? Yeah, this should be good.

He moves to sit up, wincing. The one good thing about Clarke being gone is that he gets less recognition by association, and therefore more jobs. Eligius has a contract with several national sports associations, and last night they were hired for security for a football game in town. He'd had to break up more than one fight, and his body is not thanking him for all the drunken hits he took. "Can you repeat that?"

"You heard me." Octavia lifts her chin.

"I did," he agrees. "Just giving you a chance to rethink it."

She glares at him. "I'm not changing my mind, Bellamy. This isn't me asking for permission. This is me telling you."

Yeah, he bets. She would wait to spring something like this on him right now, while he's sore, exhausted, sleep-deprived and otherwise not at the top of his mental game for a fight with her. He rubs his eyes blearily.

"You've known him for a few months," he begins, and she shakes her head.

"Here we go. I knew you'd say this—"

"Because it's true, O!"

"So what if it's true? I knew since the day I met him, and it's the same now. I love him, Bellamy, more than I've ever loved anyone. Wherever he goes, I go. He's my home."

That makes a part of him shrivel a little bit. That things could change that quickly in her heart. People love that idea, he knows; some people think it's romantic, the thought that a soulmate can somehow outshine the love a person has for everybody else. Clarke always denied feeling that way, of course, but he wonders suddenly if she was really telling the truth. And now, to hear it from his sister's mouth…

He rests his elbows on his knees, voice quiet. "What about school? What about—mom?" What about me?

"I'll graduate, obviously," Octavia says with an eye roll. "Lincoln's not leaving til summer anyway. And mom… she's okay with me going. Unlike you, she gets it."

Bellamy laughs hollowly, rubbing his face. "Yeah, you're right. I don't," he says, mostly to himself, but she hears.

"I know you don't get it," she snaps. "I can't just stay away from him. If you had a soulmate you would understand what I mean, but you—" she stops, suddenly and intently studying his expression. He quickly schools his features into a mask.

But too late. Some realization dawns on Octavia's face. "Wait. Bellamy, have you… met your soulmate?"

He drops his gaze to the carpet. She sits next to him, sounding stunned.

"You did. Oh, Bellamy. What're they like?"

"I haven't spoken to her."

"What?" He cringes at how shocked she sounds. "Why would you not talk to her?"

He releases a frustrated sigh. "I don't know, alright?"

She watches him for a long moment. Then, out of the blue: "Clarke's got a girlfriend, you know."

"What does Clarke have to do with—" He pauses, brow furrowing. "Clarke's got a girlfriend?" His sister nods, crossing her arms. He stares.

"She would've told me," is his first response.

"Just because you tell Clarke everything doesn't mean she returns the favour," Octavia shoots back.

"I don't tell Clarke everything," he says darkly, but Octavia's not listening, pulling out her phone. She shoves it in his hands and sits next to him on the couch.

"Look."

He does. The heading flashes at him first; CLARKE GRIFFIN IN LOVE AGAIN! A candid photo, slightly blurry and zoomed in, but still clear enough. Clarke's sitting at a cafe table in the sunshine, clearly not aware that she's being watched. Her wavy blonde hair, pulled back in a half-up style, is unmistakable. So is her smile as she kisses a brunette girl.

Bellamy would've thought she would tell him about a new relationship. Then again, he supposes, he'd never asked specifically. He scrolls numbly through the article. The girl is Lexa Woods, CEO of Polaris Biotech. Polaris and Arkadia are famously competitor companies, and both have attempted takeovers of each other at different points in time, the article reads. This love story rivals Romeo and Juliet, and although these two aren't soulmates, we couldn't be more thrilled. And judging by Clarke's smiles these days, she feels the same!

Bellamy hands Octavia's phone back to her.

"Well?" Octavia asks impatiently.

"This has nothing to do with me."

"Sure it doesn't. Now tell me your soulmate's name. I'm going to look her up for you." Bellamy remains tight-lipped. Octavia considers him shrewdly. Then: "If you're going to be this stubborn, at least think about your soulmate. She's out there waiting for you. Are you really going to be so selfish you leave someone without their other half?"

Bellamy releases a startled breath. That's an angle he hadn't considered—that it's selfish, to not meet Gina. That he's depriving her of something. Of happiness.

He thinks again of Gina—her curly hair, her sweet smile, the light in her that was so obvious even from far away. It's hard to imagine that Bellamy could make anyone happy, let alone her. She seems like happiness itself.

The thought surprises him, mostly because it feels like truth to him although he's never even spoken a word to her.

Octavia can clearly sense he's about to break. "Her name?"

"What if she doesn't like me?" he croaks, his last defense. Octavia snorts.

"Of course she'll like you. She's your soulmate, she's fated to. Now give. Me. Her. Name."

Bellamy sighs.

—

He tells Octavia so she can freely stalk her on social media, then texts Raven later to ask about her. Raven immediately calls him.

"So you're asking me now instead of two months ago when you saw her soulmark." When Bellamy doesn't say anything, she scoffs. "Why would you not give her a chance? Did you not like the way she looked or something? Or are you just scared? I can't figure out whether you're an asshole or just an idiot."

Bellamy turns his eyes to the ceiling. "You through?"

Raven grumbles a bit and sets them up for dinner, and Bellamy's heart beats wildly as he sits down across from Gina for the first time. He's never been on an actual date before. Romance was not his priority growing up. He doesn't know how to make someone's eyes light up with affection; he only knows how to make them go dark with desire.

But Gina smiles at him, gentle, and something about it calms him just a little bit. Then she puts her arm on the table, palm up.

His eyes automatically fall on the crown soulmark. Wordlessly, he pulls up his sleeve and reveals his identical one.

Gina arches a brow. "Well, didn't I get lucky."

Her voice is wry. Reminds him of Clarke, actually.

He hates himself for even making the comparison, but it's already made. The more she talks, the more his walls crumble. But he also finds Gina different—her sense of humour isn't quite as morbid, but more on the sarcastic side. Yet she's sweet, genuinely so. He doesn't say much but she's good at filling his silences and doesn't seem put off by them. He drinks in everything she tells him about her—that she's his age, a young firefighter, that she too comes from a single parent family that struggled with money. In many ways her life story mirrors his… up to a point.

At the end of their night, she says, "I liked this, tonight. Do you want to meet again?"

It surprises him a bit because—well, although he likes her, she liked him too for some fucking reason despite him barely saying anything at all. "If you want, yeah."

She watches him for another second. "You're not what I expected. I've heard of you before," she explains at his expression. "I don't read tabloids, but it was big news everywhere when… well, you know." Her face softens, and his heart wrenches at the reminder of that night, and the media circus, and how it screwed up him and Clarke forever while also pulling them closer which, he supposes, is what saved them from being pulled under.

"Look," Gina says softly, "I'm not in a relationship with anyone, so I'm open to something between us. But are you and Clarke Griffin…"

He knows what she's asking. "No." He hesitates, thinking about an electrifying kiss from a lifetime ago. "But she's always going to be important to me. Please don't ask me to change that." His voice is a little pleading, and he can't help it, because he can't, he can't imagine having to force his love for Clarke away.

But Gina nods, her eyes warm and understanding, and he thinks maybe, just maybe he doesn't have to choose.

—

They start dating soon after that. The months go by. Soon it's end of April, and Kane and Abby's wedding that Clarke had invited his whole family to months ago.

"Bring Gina," she instructs him over the phone, during her exam period. The event's been scheduled so there's just enough time for her to finish her school year and move out for the summer. "I want to meet her."

"You sure?" he asks, bewildered.

"Bellamy, she's your soulmate. Of course I want to meet your soulmate."

He's still quite nervous on the wedding day. It's held in a park that the Griffin family rented out from the city, in the flower gardens, and there are so, so many attendees that he's seen on TV or in movies; there are people who have fitted suits and designer clothes and flashy gold watches and huge diamonds hanging from their ears and—he feels very much out of place.

"Everyone here is so rich," Gina whispers at his side, and he smiles at the confirmation that they were thinking the same thing. He grips her hand and they find a seat along with his mother, Octavia, and Lincoln.

Clarke's one of the bridesmaids, and therefore very busy. He only sees her during the ceremony, walking up the aisle with the other bridesmaids, looking radiant with her hair in an artful twist, a robin's egg blue dress hugging her figure.

Her eyes rove the room until she finds him, and then her eyes seem to light up just a bit, and she seems to involuntarily straighten. He feels the corners of his lips tick up. He hasn't seen her in forever. He misses her, so much.

She gazes at him a beat too long, to the point where people are starting to turn their heads to see what Clarke Griffin is looking at, and he forces himself to become stoic. Then she quickly shifts her gaze just behind him, and a different kind of look takes over her expression.

Bellamy has to look.

There's Lexa Woods, in the row in front of him, but further from the altar. Her expression is stoic, too, but not so much when she gazes at Clarke.

He turns back around, although there's a painful twist in his belly.

Abby and Kane take their vows, and then it's over. Clarke finally approaches him during the reception.

"Bellamy," she says, and he reaches for her automatically, to bring her into a hug. She hugs him tight, and then lets go a moment too soon to look at Gina. "It's so nice to meet you."

Bellamy examines her expression and decides she means it.

He lets Clarke and Gina chat while he drinks champagne, and listens to their conversation. They seem to get on well enough, which is a relief. He supposes he always got along with Wells too. But how could he not? He knew Wells loved Clarke, would do anything for her. Even if he hadn't seen it in their interactions he would still know it from the soulmark on his wrist. How could Bellamy dislike someone who he knew for certain would make Clarke happy?

He leaves them alone to talk, going to the bar for a drink. He changes course when he sees his mother is lingering close to there, alone, but no drink in hand. He knows it's hard sometimes to resist for her. But she does. She hasn't had a relapse since she watched Wells and Jake Griffin die. From the distant look in her eye, there's something on her mind.

"Mom," he says, and she seems to snap out of it.

"Bellamy." She smiles at him, smooths her hand down his arm, frowns at the wrinkles in his shirt. "You should've let me iron this." Bellamy sighs and pulls his arm away. She lets him. "Your father would never let me, either. You look so much like him, you know."

Bellamy's heard that before. He's heard it when she's crying, when she was drunk, when she was happy, when she was angry, too. He just doesn't know where she's going with it this time.

"It's a beautiful wedding," his mother continues. "I spoke with Abby earlier. She seemed so happy, didn't she?" Bellamy doesn't respond, not wanting to admit he'd barely paid attention to the actual bride of the day. "It's not every day someone gets to marry their soulmate a second time."

Bellamy suddenly knows exactly where she's going with this.

Before he can stop her, she adds, "Maybe we'll be at your wedding next."

He can't speak for a moment. "I'm twenty."

"I'm not saying right now," Aurora replies. "Just, don't wait. You never know what's going to happen. But right now, your soulmate is here." She nods across the floor, where Clarke and Gina are still talking animatedly. Gina looks relaxed now. Clarke, too, but she shifts from foot to foot in her heels. Bellamy can tell she's tired from standing all day.

He gazes at Clarke while his mother says, "There are many things I regret, but marrying my soulmate young wasn't one."

"Do you regret my father?" The words fly from his lips before he can stop them. He's wondered this many times. Only now had the courage to ask.

A long silence. He knows his mother's not going to answer.

Instead she says, "Octavia's leaving home. You should, too."

"Mom."

"You don't have to take care of me," Aurora says, her voice quieter. "I'm not going to drink. Live your life."

That makes him sort of angry. Like he can just turn off the caring, the worrying that has been driven into him since he was six. He crosses his arms and doesn't respond, because then he might say something he would regret.

His mother pats him once more on the arm. "Go back to her. She's missing you right now." Then she reaches up to touch his face and, like many times over recent years, Bellamy is not sure who she sees when she looks into his eyes.

—

Clarke decides, rather bitterly, that if she had to form a soulmate from clay for Bellamy Blake, Gina would be exactly what she'd make.

She's a firefighter, selfless and kind like him; she's gentle in the way Bellamy responds to; and while she's not extraordinarily pretty, she has a quiet sort of beauty about her. She makes him smile as Clarke observed but she doesn't take his shit, as Clarke also observed from the anecdotes Gina had told her about him in a rather exasperated, but fond manner. Gina is perfect for Bellamy, and Clarke can see why Bellamy has become so quickly enamoured with her.

But then again, they were built to fall for each other.

When Bellamy comes back to them—he'd been talking to his mother—he puts his hand on Gina's back, and Gina leans into him, and Clarke feels very much like she's watching from outside the glass. Especially so when she drifts away to talk to someone else, and when she looks at them next, Gina whispers something in his ear, and he responds, and Gina's eyes go dark.

In some ways it makes Clarke feel worse that she didn't feel that spark between her and Wells. Maybe they were too young to, but she knows she felt it for Bellamy more than once, so that's no excuse. She's probably just a horrible soulmate.

Lexa arrives at her side, and it reminds her she no longer cares about soulmates.

"Let's go," she says to Lexa, grabbing her hand.

Lexa doesn't move. "You care about him."

It's not a question. There's no judgment or jealousy behind it, but maybe a bit of curiosity. Clarke doesn't answer right away.

"He's my friend, so yes. I care about all my friends."

"But you care about him more."

Clarke spins to take Lexa's face in her hands, desperate to finish this conversation. "Do you want to talk about Bellamy, or do you want to get back to your hotel room so I can rip your dress off?"

That shuts her up well enough.

—

Over the summer and next school year, Clarke grows closer to Lexa. Watching her run her company is fascinating, and the tribulations she has to go through as a young, female CEO to prove to the board of directors that she's competent is sort of… very inspiring.

It all makes Clarke more interested in Arkadia.

"It's about time," her mother groans when she calls to inquire about it. "I'll set you up."

So between studying at school, Clarke takes a leadership role at Arkadia in the city she's in. She starts aiming for a double major in biomed and business, too.

Lexa seems to admire this. "You're a natural at this," she tells her, stroking her hair away from her forehead one night while Clarke's looking at the AGM reports. "Now, if we just merged our companies, imagine how powerful we could be…"

Clarke laughs and pushes her head away playfully. "Would you stop with that?" It's a running joke between them, the history of takeover attempts between Arkadia and Polaris. "It's not going to happen."

Lexa gazes at her, something soft in her eyes. "Stranger things have."

—

Roan goes on leave for two months, during which Clarke has a different bodyguard; and when he comes back, he seems a bit surprised at how Clarke and Lexa have grown in that short time.

"I just didn't expect it," he says when Lexa's gone from the house, and Clarke's stirring pasta for them both because the boundary between bodyguard and friend blurred a long time ago. "I thought she was a rebound."

Clarke doesn't bother to ask who Roan thinks she's a rebound from. "She's not."

"She doesn't seem like your type."

"Why not? Yeah, she was a little rude at first, but once you get to know her, she's kind, and thoughtful, and loyal, and—What are you smiling about?"

"Just sounds like someone else we know."

Clarke throws her wooden spoon at him.

—

Two years pass like this. Octavia's across the country with Lincoln, and they elope when Octavia turns eighteen. Clarke can't say she's surprised, although Bellamy and his mother are beside themselves that they weren't told.

Every time Clarke sees Bellamy, he seems even closer with Gina. And with that closeness, Clarke feels a certain reluctance to touch him the way she used to; those thoughtless touches, those cheek kisses, those days they spent cuddling on a bed together just because. Even though it wasn't ever in an intentional way, it was just for the closeness of it, it doesn't feel right anymore. And she misses it—she misses freely being able to thread her hand through his dark hair, press her thumb into the dimple in his chin and watch him grin at her, to grab his hand, to fall asleep on his chest.

She misses their childhood, and the time when she barely thought about her soulmark at all.

As Clarke enters her fourth year of college, she sits on several boards at her mother's company. She's still deciding what she wants to do after this year. Her mother had suggested a graduate degree. She's written her MCAT, too, in case she might like to go to med school. But Lexa has another suggestion.

"Get your MBA. It'll help you, at the company," Lexa encourages.

Clarke has enjoyed the amount of responsibility she's been given, but she hesitates at this. "I don't know if running Arkadia is what I want to do yet. I'm not that good at this."

"Clarke, with the work you do for Arkadia, you're practically the COO." Clarke's silent. "You were born for it. Same as me."

The words are simple, and they make Clake even more indecisive. But she has enough money to continue being indecisive—so she applies to a wide variety of programs, and tells herself to decide in the spring.

She comes home for Thanksgiving that year, and as is custom she calls Bellamy to invite him and Gina for Thanksgiving dinner at the Griffin mansion.

Except Bellamy barely seems to hear her. "Clarke," he says, and although it's over the phone, Clarke finds herself stiffening. He says her name in a careful way, like he did from the gates of the Griffin mansion when he found a dead groundskeeper, like he knew their lives would never be the same again because of what he was going to say.

Her body folds into itself as he says, "I proposed to Gina."

"Oh," she manages, her voice bright even as she sinks to the kitchen floor. The truth is, she should've seen it coming. They're soulmates. They've been in a serious relationship more than two years. She's watched them grow together. She pushed him towards it, in fact. "Congratulations."

There's a long, thick pause. Then Bellamy speaks again, his voice rough.

"Clarke, I'm sorry I—"

She cuts him off. "You don't need to tell me anything. You're soulmated to her, so you're marrying her. It's simple."

He goes quiet. Clarke, determined to switch topics, asks about his plans for Thanksgiving. They exchange details of Thanksgiving dinner and then hang up. Clarke slides to the floor.

It's just not fair. Why does his happiness have to come at the expense of hers?

She peels back her sleeve and peeks at the clock face tattoo on her right wrist, that's been sitting there mocking her for so long. Her best kept secret. She supposes all she has to do is flash it at a paparazzi camera and in a few days the world would find her new soulmate for her. Then maybe she'd be able to move on.

She drops her sleeve back in place. She refuses to give fate the satisfaction. Who says she can't be happy with someone who isn't her soulmate—someone who she's built a relationship with out of trust and mutual passion and closeness?

You mean Bellamy, her heart says.

No, Lexa, her head scolds.

—

It's a difficult night. She goes to Lexa's place, a beautiful penthouse off campus. Roan eyes her disapprovingly, like he knows what she's going to do, but he drops her off and leaves without comment.

Lexa watches her get increasingly drunk in her kitchen but doesn't try to stop her, doesn't ask her what exactly is on her mind. But Clarke has a lot on her mind she wants to put out there.

"Did I ever tell you about Wells?" Clarke murmurs, pouring them both another drink. "My soulmate. Sometimes I think I got him killed."

Clarke starts crying, and Lexa pulls her head onto her shoulder. This is at least one kind of guilt they both bear. Lexa's soulmate, Costia, died in a car accident they were both in. Together they are two tragic, mismatched broken hearts.

But Clarke's never told her the exact circumstances of what happened the night her father and soulmate died. She does now, though. She relives Wells Jaha's last day in a hushed voice, with hiccups and sips of alcohol in between.

"Why do you feel guilty about Wells?" Lexa asks finally. "He tried to take the attacker down, but you didn't ask him to do that. He's responsible for his own actions."

Clarke smiles bitterly. "So am I."

Lexa seems to wait for more, but Clarke doesn't offer it.

"I never understood why those people were in your house to begin with," Lexa says. "Were they really stalkers, like the papers said?"

Clarke laughs bitterly. "That's just what my mom wanted everyone to think. But they were after my mom for some reason. I think it had something to Arkadia somehow. She never lets me ask her about it, or talk about it. She's just worried about stocks. Can you believe that?"

"Probably a good idea," Lexa says eventually, ever the pragmatist.

Clarke shakes her head in the dark, drowsy and sad and bitter about so many things. "No, it wasn't. None of it was."

—

Clarke wakes up the next day in Lexa's bed with a hell of a hangover. The clock reads ten in the morning. Lexa's gone; probably with a morning class. Clarke drags herself out and makes herself breakfast before leaving to get ready for her own day of classes.

Octavia calls her up later, asking for her help in her brother's wedding preparations, and Clarke agrees, of course, because what else is she supposed to do? Then she sulks around or a while more.

And she doesn't think much more about that night for a long time.

—

It's many months later, April, when Clarke has fallen asleep at her study table with her textbooks open and is jolted awake by her phone ringing.

She squints at the clock; it's seven in the morning. It's the middle of her last ever exam period, what's her mother thinking calling her this early?

"Clarke," her mother says hurriedly. "Please, I can explain."

She begins talking, but very fast. Clarke's too tired to really understand the words she's saying. Something about stocks? She gets up, stretching and moving to the kitchen to make coffee, putting her phone on speaker as she does.

"—and Lexa's certainly very on the ball, I don't know how she got an offer organized so fast—"

The mention of her long time girlfriend is what makes Clarke's mind finally wakes up to the task at hand. She pauses and squints. "Mom, what are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the night your father and Wells died, Clarke," her mother says, voice sharp. "Have you looked at the newspapers today?"

Clarke abandons her coffee and opens her laptop at the kitchen table instead. "Which ones are we talking about, the tabloids or the business ones?"

"Both."

There's a bad feeling growing in Clarke's gut. She opens both. Headlines jump out.

ARKADIA STOCKS PLUMMET.

Clarke clicks through to the next.

THE TRUTH OF JAKE GRIFFIN'S DEATH—NOT STALKERS!

Recent insider information has revealed the truth about the award winning actor's death—and it was about his wife.

Clarke scans the article until she finds something that leaps out at her.

Arkadia's reputation in biotechnology has a darker history behind it. Over twenty years ago, they dabbled in soulmark research. And without complete ethics approval, they tested it on unwitting subjects. The trial broke their bonds with their soulmates. Their soulmarks, completely erased. And those people vowed revenge...

Clarke's speechless as she reads. Her mother, in the growing silence, says quietly, "I wanted to get ahead of it. I wanted you to hear my side first—"

"So it's true. Those people who attacked us didn't have soulmarks. I told you that, and you said Bellamy was seeing things. You lied to me." Silence. Clarke's anger mounts further. "Arkadia did this. You botched an experiment and tried to hush it up and that's what got Dad and Wells killed!"

Abby sighs. "I know, Clarke. But we thought there might be a market in soul fate determinants. That there was an opportunity in changing soulmarks, matched from birth or after." Her voice becomes a quiet, scratchy whisper. "We should have known better than to try and change fate."

Even with her involvement in the company she hadn't known about this. It must've been tightly under wraps. "So what happened?"

"There was a misunderstanding with our study participants. I take the blame for that, for not making sure they understood the risks of the medication we were giving them. That it could erase the marks completely and leave them with no soulmate at all. And I suppose that was worse."

Clarke shakes her head, over and over, unable to come up with any words. "Was this legal?" She manages, and when her mother clearly hesitates, she says, disgusted, "I can't believe you, mom."

"Ethics didn't love the idea," Abby admits. "Dr. Singh went ahead with a small trial group anyway. I only found out later that she had, and then I didn't blow the whistle. I take the blame for that, too. After your father and Wells died, I looked into all the remaining participants of the study. I accounted for all of them but one. That's why I wanted you to have a bodyguard so much, Clarke. I couldn't risk that someone else might come after you for my mistakes."

Her head is spinning, but there's more. Clarke scrubs her hands over her face. "What were you saying about Lexa?"

"Oh," her mother says, and her voice becomes quiet. "Yes. Well, because of this story breaking out, our stocks have plummeted. Polaris Biotech has put out a tender offer to our stakeholders."

Clarke can't speak. Lexa's trying for a corporate public takeover.

No. Too much of a coincidence, that she had everything organized to do it right when this story broke.

No… she was planning this.

Because Clarke told her what really happened that night. Clarke had trusted her, and opened up. Clarke hadn't had all the pieces of the story, of course; Lexa would've needed more. So she'd hired others, poked around until she found the whole story out. And then found a few news outlets who'd pay the price for the biggest story of the quarter.

"N—no…" she mutters wildly as she scrolls through the stories faster and faster. She doesn't want to believe it. She can't believe Lexa would do this. "Polaris—Polaris can't take the company from us. The stakeholders aren't going to take this bid, right? Everything will be okay?"

There's a long silence that confirms what she's dreading. Then her mother sighs. "Clarke, things are not going to be okay for a very long time."

—

Clarke calls Lexa next. As soon as she answers, Clarke shouts, "What did you do, Lexa?"

Lexa appears to have prepared for this. "I'm sorry, Clarke. Please let me explain."

"Explain what?" Her voice careens several octaves higher. "You're taking over my mother's company. My company." Her heart breaks, and she can't stop tears from leaking into her voice. "I trusted you."

"And I always told you how much our two companies could do together, merged," Lexa says clearly.

Clarke laughs and it sounds unhinged. "When Griffin Pharmaceuticals and Jaha Tech became Arkadia, that was a merger. This is a hostile takeover."

"Whatever it may be, with Polaris' resources, and Arkadia's talent, we could change the world, Clarke."

"I don't care about any of that. I trusted you that night and you used it against me. My mother is going to be put on trial!"

"I didn't know there wasn't ethics approval for the trials. If I had I might not have done it. The papers found that out for themselves."

"Oh, great. That makes me feel so much better."

"Don't make this personal, Clarke. It's not. You know how long Polaris' board of directors has wanted to toss me to the curb." Of course she does; it's a struggle she's become quite intimate with, Lexa having told her the details. "They were about to, so I had to give them a show of strength. I had to show them what I was made of."

"We could have figured it out together," Clarke grits out. "If you had just talked to me."

"I knew you wouldn't agree. They forced my hand, plain and simple. You would've done the same in my position."

All the fight drains out of Clarke. "I'm not you, Lexa. I don't think you ever understood that."

Before Lexa can say anything in reply, Clarke ends the call, tosses her phone on the counter, and stares out the window.

The way Lexa made it sound, it seemed like she expected Clarke to understand what she'd done. But she doesn't. How could she? She's exposed a dark secret of Clarke's company to the world, gotten her mother in trouble with the law, and all for a corporate takeover?

Clarke barks a laugh, a sudden, harsh sound in the quiet of her kitchen.

It's such a wild thing—to love someone for years, so deeply; to be convinced that enough time had passed for you to be certain that this could work—and then one day realize you were never on the same page, not really. Clarke's not even sure how it's possible. She was so sure—she was so damn sure that she could make a life with someone who wasn't her soulmate. And look where that got her.

And she's suddenly immeasurably glad she never tried to force it between her and Bellamy. If she had ruined them by playing at soulmates, she's not sure she could ever forgive herself.

—

Her phone blows up all day. All week, really, and into the next. Family, friends, classmates, acquaintances, Lexa. She doesn't pick up any of them. She finishes her exams and hopes to hell she passed, because her already distracted studying turned to shit when the papers started talking about how Abby Griffin was probably going to prison for ethics violations as a CEO.

She's supposed to come home after exams and before graduation, but she can't quite motivate herself to pack up and go back to the city where her life's already fallen apart. If she just stays here, maybe it's like it happened to someone else.

Someone knocks on the door. Clarke puts her pillow over her ears. Very few people know where she lives. Lexa again, she'd guess. She'd sent many apologies. Clarke doesn't much care.

The shareholders loved the offer Polaris put out. In just two short weeks, Arkadia has been swallowed up by Polaris. The board of directors, dissolved. Lexa was so goddamn efficient with every step. The business pundits have been praising her decisions all week.

Her phone buzzes. Roan. They often just call each other when they're on their opposite sides of the house.

"Should I open the door? It's Bellamy," he says as soon as she picks up.

"No," she says petulantly, then blinks. "Wait. Bellamy? Really?"

She can almost hear her bodyguard rolling his eyes. "I'm going to open the door."

He hangs up before Clarke can say anything. Bellamy? He's driven here? For what?

Oh, no. No no no. Clarke leaps up from the bed and runs to the bathroom. She dabs concealer over her second soulmark first of all. Then she assesses the rest of the situation. Her hair, unwashed for god knows how long, is a mess. Her clothes, wrinkled. She hasn't taken a shower in days. And fuck! There's a week's worth of dishes in the sink out there.

She knows Bellamy doesn't care about all that, but that's not the issue here. The issue is if Bellamy thinks she's not doing well with this whole situation and then starts worrying about her for no reason. She doesn't need him worrying about her. He has Gina, he has a wedding soon, he's got a life, and he doesn't need her problems on top of his—

"That bad, huh?"

She whips her head around, still clutching the edges of her bathroom sink. The door is ajar, so she can see well into her bedroom and to the doorway, where Bellamy is standing. He's wearing his Eligius jacket and a gentle smile and he's so familiar, evokes such nostalgia of her charmed childhood and better days while standing in the mess that is her drab college bedroom, that she could almost cry right here.

He must see the change in her face, because his smile fades, and he steps towards her. "Clarke."

All thoughts of pretending like she's okay flood away. Her face crumples, and she folds right into his arms.

—

Bellamy had heard because his sister called him. And then he called Clarke, except she didn't answer, and he knew why.

Although his wedding was in a week, he'd known he couldn't leave Clarke like this. He told Gina quietly over her dinner that he had to go see how she was doing, and that she could come with him if she liked.

But Gina, after searching his eyes, simply patted his cheek. "Go help your friend. I'll hold down the fort here."

There's a certain trust in her voice he's not sure he deserves. He remembers Raven telling him once: She's too good for you.

He leaves anyway.

He and Clarke spend the first day cleaning the house together, methodically. Mostly to give Clarke a task to focus on. As they do, Clarke tells him everything. About Lexa. The corporate takeover. Her mother. The dark secret of Arkadia.

They keep finding new things to clean, and although Clarke keeps muttering it only became that way after the news broke, he suspects it was never very clean to begin with.

Roan confirms this when he voices the thought. "She lives in a pigsty." Clarke throws a sponge at him.

"Didn't I tell you you could leave an hour ago?"

Bellamy hides a smile mostly because it's the closest to normal she's sounded all day.

He's faster with things than she is; he wasn't a housekeeper's son for nothing, although she does try. She watches him efficiently clean grime off the stovetop with the scraper and sighs and says, "What can I do that will actually help?"

"Go clean the cupboards," he says, and is rewarded with another glimmer of a smile.

It's sort of strange to see her get down on her knees like she did so many years ago and wipe at the stains on her cupboards (seriously, how did that tomato sauce get there?), and it feels normal for a while, at least until the sun starts to set and he turns around from his latest task only to realize that Clarke has long since stopped scrubbing, and is simply staring into space.

He pulls off his gloves and goes to sit next to her on the floor. He doesn't ask her what's wrong this time; he does what Clarke always did for him, which was give her the space to speak if she wanted to, and sit with him if she didn't.

"I loved her," she murmurs at last. "And the funny thing is, I think she does love me back. So why would she do this?"

"Sometimes people who love you hurt you," he replies, from experience.

She looks at him fiercely. "Then they didn't love you very much at all."

He blinks a few times, unsure how to respond. Clarke becomes quiet, then says, "I guess that's why soulmarks exist."

He has no idea what she's talking about, and suspects she's talking to herself more than anything, but he asks anyway, "Why's that?"

"To tell you who you can trust with your heart." She looks at him then, raises a hand as if she might lay it against his cheek, but then seems to think better of it. "I'm glad you're marrying Gina."

His heart aches.

The proposal had been an impulse one night. He'd just come to Gina's place from his mother, who he'd found in tears after work. After much interrogation, she finally revealed the reason: her latest boyfriend had left without leaving a note, and stolen her old wedding ring.

Bellamy hadn't even known this new boyfriend existed. But the bruise on his mother's jaw he'd noted the week before suddenly made more sense. And she refused to give up his name, so Bellamy couldn't even beat the shit out of him for his trouble.

He went to Gina's, the crown soulmark on her wrist sharpening into focus when she opened the door. Her sweet smile that he had helplessly fallen in love with. And he remembered, again, Octavia accusing him of being selfish. He wondered what the hell he was waiting for.

Clarke's face, as it was wont to do, appeared in his mind's eye with barely a thought. He remembered the men who weren't his mother's soulmate, hurting her over and over again. He didn't want to be one of those men to someone else. There was nothing to wait for.

So he proposed, and that was that.

Presently, Clarke murmurs, "You'll take care of each other," and he's scared suddenly. He doesn't like the way she sounds, the finality of it.

"Clarke," he says slowly. "Are you going to come home?"

She turns her head away, and he watches her eyelashes sweep down. "Everyone is going to look at me. Friends, family, the company, news, the paparazzi, my mother, Kane, Lexa. They'll want to know what I do next. With the company, if my mom goes to—to prison. Kane's staying on the board of directors, but I was so involved with things, and I'm Abby Griffin's daughter—" She stops, burying her face in her hand.

She doesn't want to face the mistakes she's made. He puts a tentative hand on her shoulder, not knowing what else to do. He's usually not the one initiating physical contact, but it feels like the right thing.

And it is, he knows that when Clarke sighs and grabs his hand and leans into it. "I'm going to come to your wedding," she says. "I promised you that. But then I'm going to leave."

"Clarke."

"I can't do it, Bellamy. I can't face them all. I can't be the leader they all want me to be."

"Then what are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

—

For what it's worth, she does come to the wedding. He sees her the day before, where she's helping with the decorations, ruining a pretty white dress with dust and dirt as she helps move furniture. It's held in the same small church Aurora was married in.

On the day of, he keeps his eyes ahead, at the aisle, at Gina. He makes sure he does not look away from her deep brown eyes even once. He doesn't know where his gaze might stray if he does.

People cheer as they kiss. Gina giggles and nudges his nose with hers. "I'm so happy."

He smiles and kisses her again. He's happy, too. He loves Gina, of course he's happy.

But a part of him, too, feels this ceremony is what the rest of his life has been—duty.

He brushes that off. Still, it's hard to be happy when your best friend is not, and he can feel her misery from across the room. It rubs off on him a little bit.

Clarke tries, though. He looks her way during the reception, a chagrined smile on his face, and she smiles back, standing next to Raven, who she'd met earlier that day. She'd put in some effort for the event, her hair curled, diamond stud earrings, and bringing a plus one—who, Bellamy supposes, was supposed to be Lexa, but has been replaced last minute with a nerdy looking, black-haired guy who introduces himself as Monty Green when they meet during dessert.

Bellamy recognizes the name. Clarke had talked about him. "Nice to finally meet one of Clarke's college friends," he says, shaking his hand.

"Friendship is one word for it," Monty says. "Me and my roommate sell her weed and bad advice."

Bellamy looks at Clarke, who shrugs dispassionately.

"I didn't want the catering to go to waste."

He eyes them, bemused. "Right." Clarke's still somewhat expressionless and he doesn't like it. "Clarke, can I talk to you for a second?"

She nods, and follows him, out the reception hall and into the corridor.

He doesn't know quite what to say until they lean against opposite walls and she finally looks him in the eye. There's a silence, a rift between them he doesn't quite know how to reach over.

Then the words come as natural as anything. "You're just as important to me as she is, you know. If you need anything, I'll be there. Nothing can change that."

Clarke gave that to him with Wells. He'll give that to her, too. Bellamy and Clarke may not be soulmates as designed by fate, but that doesn't mean they have to be alone.

Clarke blinks several times, her eyes shiny. "Well, good," she replies, a bit unsteady. "Because you're never getting rid of me."

He barks a relieved laugh and welcomes her into his arms when she pushes off the wall to hug him. "Damn right."

—

That night, Clarke leaves the festivities early and goes home. With Monty, of course. She shows him the guest room.

"Thanks for being my plus-one," she tells him, and he shrugs, his hands stuffed in his suit jacket pockets. He looks very out of place without his customary hoodie.

"No problem. I completely understand not wanting to look like a loser at family events."

"I'm not a loser," Clarke mutters. "I'm fun."

Monty raises his eyebrows and pops a mint in his mouth that he'd stolen from the reception, but doesn't argue. "So where's that autograph you promised me?"

Clarke sighs and retreats to a storage room to find one of many autographed DVD sets of her father's movies. She picks one out and brings it back to Monty.

His face splits into a grin as he accepts it. "Clarke, has anyone ever told you you're the best?"

"No, but someone's told me I'm a loser."

"Really? They should go get fucked." Monty admires Jake Griffin's loopy signature. "Jasper and I owe you big time."

Yeah, they're definitely going to get a lot of money for that one. Clarke doesn't mind, though. There's tons of those lying around.

"It's okay," she says. "Just… thank you. For treating me like a human."

He looks up, and his expression softens, like he's understanding this isn't just a random gift. It's the least she can do as a token of gratitude for the friendship Monty and Jasper have given her over the course of four years.

"We tried to milk money out of you," Monty points out.

"But at least you were transparent about it." They share a grin. Then Monty says, "I still owe you anyway. Any time you want to hang out for a bit at my family's farm, give me a shout. I promise you won't run into paparazzi there."

"Thanks, Monty."

She hugs him goodnight and heads upstairs to her own bedroom. She roots around for a very specific, five thousand dollar brand of wine, and climbs to the roof. It's chilly out, and a little damp from rain earlier in the day, but she doesn't mind. She sits there in her pretty dress and opens the wine. She tilts her head up and searches the sky for a star she's so familiar with she can pick it out of a million.

And then she sighs, a long, tension-relieving sigh as she can finally let her mask of indifference slip.

"Hey, Wells," she whispers. "We haven't talked in a while." She swallows and tries again. "Bellamy got married today. Who would've thought, huh?"

Clarke saw how intently he gazed at Gina as she walked down the aisle towards him. He didn't look away, not even once, even as Clarke half-wished he would. She'd known then that she would have to settle for second priority, no matter how much Bellamy tries to tell her she's just as important. Because Bellamy is loyal, and he's a family man, and when he starts a family with Gina, that'll be it. Logically, she knows that. It still hurts.

And god, she has to get rid of that hurt. She nearly ruined his wedding day, she knows that. Bellamy should've been happy, but he looked strangely sad, stoic throughout, and she feels like it's her fault, dragging his mood down along with hers. And she refuses to do that anymore.

It's time to exorcise Bellamy Blake from her soul, because he clearly doesn't belong there.

"I have to tell you something stupid, Wells," she says. She looks down at her feet because she can't look at Wells when she says it. "I love Bellamy in a way that I shouldn't. I'm sure you already knew that. You didn't hold it against me, which I appreciate." She half-laughs, hating herself, and swigs the wine. That guilt will never go away. It's even worse because the Wells she knew and loved—because she did love him, deeply, just not in the way people wanted her to—wouldn't ever have judged her for this. He was a perfect confidante that way. And he still is the perfect confidante for the one thing she can't talk about with Bellamy: Bellamy.

"I wish we got to talk about it when you were alive. Maybe I could explain myself better. The problem is, I can't love Bellamy the way he deserves. I don't know how that's possible, but it must be, because if I did then fate would have made us soulmates." She struggles with herself a moment, blinking back tears. "But then I wouldn't have had you, so I guess that was the tradeoff."

She wants someone to tell her it's not her fault, that no, she hadn't hurt two people dear to her by splitting her soul between them, that no, her love doesn't break people. But of course, the stars don't reply. They never do.

"It's time to let it go," she whispers. "I have to accept my love wasn't enough for either of you. If it was, you'd still be alive, and Bellamy… well, Bellamy. Obviously I wasn't born with the ability to love him enough. Not on this planet." Her gaze drifts back towards the stars. "But maybe, on a planet without soulmarks."

.

.

.

.

---

A/N: thank you for slogging through this gigantic part 1! I'm working on finishing part 2 as we speak, and hopefully it will be a little more interesting and succinct, but i'm really not a good judge.

And in case anyone was wondering, yes, i am indeed STILL an unabashed slut for reviews if you'd like to make my day!

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