May 16, 2020
i.
"I don't feel like being around someone I actually like." She says it with blood on her lips, but it is resolute, just like the rest of her.
Biting the inside of his cheek, he represses the teasing smile. His gaze flits to Octavia, seeing her petulantly sit there under the hatch, like a child.
His reason for being here is leaving him behind. The people from the sky started counting down the days to his execution the moment the dropship launched. This girl, blonde and broken, she's giving him an out.
He'll take an out any day.
ii.
The guns were heavy, inked black. As she holds the rifle, her eyebrows turn down and she bites her lip. Determination is something that builds and builds in her, never leaves her.
She holds the gun harshly, awkwardly. He sees her mistakes, endearing in how even her mistakes are things she holds confidently.
"Here. A little higher." He grasps her elbows as she tries telepathically challenging the rifle. His eyes stick to her golden tresses, "Uh, yeah." He pulls away, "that's good."
Walking away, he says, "watch and learn." Her eyes rake him, and he can feel it under his shirt.
Of course, the one time he tries to look cool, is the one time he fails, miserably. The bullet he attempts to shoot is a dud, and her mockery tickles his pinking ears, gracefully covered by his curly hair.
"I'm watching..."
He grumbles petulantly—much like his sister—telling her to try hers. Clarke listens, but Bellamy knows it had nothing to do with him.
With determination, she brings the weapon of death into her sights. Her first bullet is a dud too, but it doesn't stop her. Preparing to try again, her hair tumbles into her face. He suppresses the sudden and random urge to use his fingers to move the strands from her startling eyes of the sea.
A shot rings out, echoing off the barrel behind our target. The corners of his mouth tug up as a rush of pride runs through his veins. His chin dips down to his collar, hiding his dimples away: the world steals the good things from him, always.
Clarke turns to him, lighting up in a way he could never fathom. Her fingers tremble in joy as her feet bounce.
"Am I horrible for feeling that?" For feeling good? No. Never. He wants her to feel good for the rest of her life. He wants to make her feel good. The thought startles him, and the underlying innuendo makes him pink, but it's more than that.
If it wasn't, he would've said it.
What is going on? He knew she was beautiful: he saw that from the start. It's an objective fact. She stared at him, dead in the eyes and he was so drawn. The pull was insatiable, unrelenting.
It still is.
They lean against a tree, bloodied and beaten. Bellamy decides—covered in dirt and the the guilt of the dead boy at his feet—now is the time to shatter, to tremble at her mercy.
She takes it in stride, like everything else.
("Come with me.") He can taste the words and they're oh-so-sweet, but she says "I need you," first, but also, "you're forgiven," next, and in that moment he was a goner.
.
("I need you." It haunts his dreams in a way it never should.)
iii.
"Bellamy Blake, you are pardoned of your crimes." In that moment, in that blood-tinted tent, his whole world opens its eyes. He escapes from under the floor.
The relief floods Clarke's shoulder like a creak. He can see it pour over her in waves.
It's nothing compared to him though; in that special moment, he can see his life passed the next month as a deadline. In that moment, life can start living.
He doesn't need to hide Octavia anymore, (or himself).
He doesn't need to chase down his next high, because his end is indefinite. His cheeks pull up, but his chin dips like the world will see him riding above the wake and shoot him down.
("He's one of us," she'd said, filled with pride and clenched fists. The tremors in her voice sounds strong and he just wants to kneel beneath her.)
iv.
"No, but I trust you." There it is. That rush.
His shoulders push back and he lifts his eyes to hers. He brings the guns like she asks. Honestly, he's pretty sure he'd do anything she asked, even if she thinks Finn Collins is prettier.
.
"I trust you," follows his dreams the night she first says it.
He wakes up in a cold sweat, absolutely terrified, because since when did he dream about specific girls, with specific blue eyes? Since when did they spend a severely large portion of the dreams clothed, supporting him, (loving him)?
But, one moment, please. "You're forgiven," really takes his breath away in that effortless sort of way. In his dreams, her hands carve around his jaw into his curls, and it makes his breathing stutter, almost as much as her burning kisses do when they finally get to the nude part of his unconsciousness.
He's more comfortable there; it's what he knows.
.
Roma wonders into his tent as he's shrugging off his jacket. The fabric slips from his shoulders and he just says, "no."
(He didn't say "not tonight," or "maybe later." He just said, "no.")
It's not because of Clarke, (not entirely).
Pardoned, he's pardoned (but not innocent), and he's forgiven (but too guilty). He's free, from the shackles of his mother, from the burden of hiding Octavia.
He's free and he can live, but he's spent twenty-three years doing the opposite, and how does he even begin; where does he even start?
Meaninglessness filled his life for a year of janitor-duty on the Ark. If he falls asleep that night, haunted by blue eyes and a quirking brow, he'd never say.
Except, it doesn't feel like a haunting when she whispers, "I need you," in his ears, like the many nights before. It feels like an echoing promise, between gritted teeth and hugging, between the handholding and the murmurs of bittersweetness, between even the sex.
"You're forgiven," he imagines her saying; his lips tug up, pushing his face into his makeshift pillow. It feels like everything he wants.
. .
.
.
i.
They went through so much, too much. A couple genocides later and they aren't even on Earth anymore. Alpha is a beautiful, terrible planet, as Jasper would say. Dead like the rest.
After everything, finding Octavia in the Anomaly, dealing with the Primes, he was just so done.
They meet in the middle of the field, again, because ripping them apart was fate's greatest passion. At least the fates were graceful enough to let them reunite, and this time under starry skies.
This time, under auroras of pink and green and blue.
Of course, his mother would fill the skies with her namesake in this moment. He was right, he thinks as he swallows her into his arms. The world saw the way he looked at Clarke Griffin, and denied him.
Maybe now, maybe now, they've taken enough from him.
She pulls back, but doesn't leave his arms. Her gaze, a blue tether he's been stuck on for 132 years waters up at him, but she smiles full and withering.
"We did our best."
She doesn't say they did better, but maybe they didn't. His fingers come up and brush the hair from her face like he wanted to decades ago, in a so much simpler time.
He's done waiting.
Fuck figuring out who he is. In a flurry, Bellamy crushes his lips onto hers, and it all pulses around them. She bites at his lower lip, clutching her fingers into his coat.
When he pulls back, his hazy gaze sticks to her lips and she giggles.
Bellamy can count on one hand the amount of times he's seen and heard Clarke laugh. It's a trembling sound, so sickly unfamiliar to his ears and he wants to cry, but he doesn't.
("Come with me." The words taste sour on his tongue now, because back then, he was a coward.
Back then, he was a brother, and that was all. Who was he? Octavia's brother.
"Come with me.")
"Stay with me," he murmurs, clutching her cheeks in his hands. She nods before a tear cascades down her face, catching on her lip.
They've been through so much.
Holding his head high, his lips break into a deafening smile, absorbing the dancing ribbons in the sky. The wind kisses his collar and he can see so much more when his eyes aren't trained on his toes.
Like her eyes, he can see her eyes, blue like the sea he only saw once.
.
Rushed as shit yes! Love it though. Also, Bellamy and Echo broke up somewhere in here. He would never cheat. Bleh. Leave a review?
Have a good day!!