A/N: Okay, so this isn't technically the last chapter. But the last chapter won't end and it's getting to be pretty long so, here. Have this short bit as a sign of good faith. The rest of it should be up within an hour or two.
Clarke is dreaming about dying. She's sitting at a picnic table, overlooking the park, watching her father and Wells play Frisbee like they did when she was a kid.
She knows it's not real. Wells hasn't aged a day, still the fresh faced sixteen year-old he was the last time she saw him, and she finds herself wondering sadly what he would have looked like if he'd lived. Would he have grown a beard? Inherited the deep baritone his father so often employed in political speeches? Would he have liked the person she's become?
The last question sticks in her mind as her gaze travels over to her father. He stumbles on the grass, then rights himself, laughing as he flings the disc back toward the teenager. He looks happy, and carefree, and everything he wasn't when he died.
"Hey, baby." He looks over at her, eyes twinkling.
"Hey dad," she says softly.
"It's time to wake up, now," he tells her. She shakes her head, trying to get up, to close the distance between them.
"No. I want to stay."
Jake's eyes turn wistful, but his smile doesn't falter.
"I wish you could, kiddo. But you've got stuff to do."
Before her, he begins to flicker, like the image on a TV channel with bad reception. She reaches out, but he's too far away to touch. Behind him, the image of Wells begins to do the same.
"Wait," she cries, squirming in her seat. Her legs feel like lead. "Don't go! Dad, I-I love you!"
"I know," Jake says softly. "But I'm not the one you really want to say that to, am I?"
The fading Wells steps forward, boyish face glowing with contentment. The fault lines in her heart throb, threatening to crack all over again.
"Clarke," he says, smiling, though his voice comes out tinny and far away. "He's waking u-"
Clarke jerks awake with a gasp, blinking in the full daylight streaming in through the tiny window.
"Wh-" She rubs her eyes, disoriented. As the room comes into focus, her eyes fall on Bellamy, and the past twenty-four hours come flooding back to her. She jumps to her feet, hands fluttering around his face, itching to get a hold of his chart. His eyes are still closed, but his breathing is even, and the monitors beside his bed are all showing normal stats. Octavia is nowhere to be seen.
She sinks back into the chair, resting her hand on top of his. Her eyes drift shut again, and her mind struggles to hold on to the fleeting image of her lost boys, but they're quickly seeping away, like water through a crack.
"Bad dream?"
Her eyes fly open. Bellamy is looking over at her sleepily, lids drooping over unfocused eyes.
"Bellamy." She leans forward, dragging the chair as close to the bed as she can. He blinks up at her, and the emotion rises like a wall in her chest. She didn't think she would get to see those dark eyes open again.
"Hey, Princess." He lifts his arm, as though he wants to reach out, then drops it with a groan.
"Careful," she says, fighting back tears. "You're going to tear your stitches."
He frowns, eyes dragging as they flutter shut, then open again.
"Well," he mumbles, voice rough and stilted with sleep, and probably painkillers. "Wouldn't want to do that."
And that's all it takes.
Clarke crumples forward, face buried in his blankets, and she weeps with a force that's both alarming and painfully familiar. Through it, she feels his fingers tangle in his hair, the best he can do, and she reaches out blindly until her hand lands on his chest.
"Hey," the bed vibrates with the timbre of his voice. "If you keep this up you're going to make me think that I'm dying."
Instead of making her laugh, that just makes her cry harder. Eventually he sighs, and his own hand presses firmly over hers where it sits on his chest.
"Clarke, stop." This time he sounds stern, and it's so like him that she finally does, pulling herself together with a hiccup.
"Sorry," she mumbles. He rolls his eyes.
"Just don't let it happen again."
The giggle pushes out involuntarily, but she finds she feels lighter in it's wake.
"Do you remember what happened?" she asks. He nods, and Clarke can't help but notice how exhausted he looks, although that seems only fitting given everything he's been through.
"Yeah. Octavia told me. The cops were in here earlier taking my statement." His lips twitch. "You slept through all of it."
Her eyebrows shoot up in surprise.
"Huh. Guess I was tired." But that's not the whole truth. Her mind doesn't deal with trauma well. After her dad died, she slept for a week. After Wells, almost three. Her therapist called it depression, but Clarke thinks her brain was just trying to delay facing the gaping holes in her life as long as possible.
Her eyes flit to the clock on the wall. It's just after eleven. Belatedly, she realizes her shift started at nine. If she knows Jackson, though, he'll have taken care of it. Feeling a tug on her scalp, she looks up to see Bellamy pulling on a lock of her hair, frowning. As her gaze follows his, she realizes he's examining the now pink hue of it.
"You dye your hair?" he wonders. She stares at him.
"No, that's-" she gestures vaguely at his thickly bandaged abdomen, where she knows the bullet wound is hiding. His eyes widen in shock.
"Oh."
Throat dry, she pulls his hand away from her hair, trapping it between both of hers.
"Where's Octavia?"
"I sent her home to get some sleep. She'll be back later."
Clarke nods.
"Bellamy…" Now's her chance to say it. After everything, she knows she's lucky to even have the chance. But when she opens her mouth, she finds she can't. "What happened?"
He presses his lips together, eyes still slightly cloudy from whatever they've put him on, probably morphine.
"I was meeting Miller at the bar for lunch, and I went into the office before he got there to grab my paycheque."
Clarke can already feel herself tensing, and Bellamy's fingers curl around her hand, squeezing.
"I was in there for…I don't know. Less than five minutes. I heard shots, and screaming, called 911 from the office phone, and when I walked out there was only one guy standing up. Everyone else was on the floor." His stare is distant, like it's going through her. "I remember thinking Man, I hope Miller is running late. And then he hit me in the head with the butt of his rifle, and I was laying on the ground, and I saw Miller laying right in front of me, bleeding."
She knows the feeling. But she doesn't interrupt.
"When he heard the sirens he got distracted, and I was trying to drag myself over to Miller, to see if he was alive, and I saw this little girl hiding behind the bar. I don't know what I was thinking, but-she just reminded me so much of O."
She doesn't want to hear this anymore.
"When he wasn't looking, I told her to run. And then she fell, and I knew he'd heard her, and I stood up and jumped in front of her. That's when he shot me," he adds, almost as an afterthought, glancing down at his stomach. "But we both kept running. I was following her, but after a couple blocks I lost her. I knew I was close to your apartment, and you'd given me a key, and-"
Clarke can't take it anymore.
"Stop." Her voice shakes, and she tries to close her eyes, to settle her stomach, but she just keeps seeing him laying on her bathroom floor, staining her white tile red. "Bellamy, why didn't you just ask someone for help? Get them to call an ambulance?"
When she opens her eyes again, he looks a little more focused, watching her in concern.
"I don't know. I was just kind of on autopilot."
He'd been in shock, she guesses. But he'd also put his own life in danger because of it.
"You could have died," she whispers, eyes suddenly studying his face hungrily, like she needs to memorize every inch of it, just in case. "You were there for hours. If I'd gone to Octavia's, or if I'd just stayed at the hospital with Monty-"
"But you didn't," he says, firmly. "You came home, and I'm okay."
"You weren't."
Her words hang in the air between them, heavy.
"You died, right there in my arms, laying on the bathroom floor."
He blinks.
"What?"
"You woke up, just for a second, and I was trying to tell you-" she breaks off, breathing hard.
He stares at her, eyes suddenly sharp.
"Tell me what?"
Instead of answering, she pushes a stray dark curl out of his face.
"Why'd you have to be a hero, huh?" she asks softly. It's a rhetorical question, because he wouldn't be Bellamy if he wasn't always trying to take care of everyone else, trying to save them. It was how they'd met after all.
His hand shoots out, catching her wrist.
"Clarke. Tell me what?"
She looks at him, trying to force the words out, and after a few seconds go by she realizes she's holding her breath.
"I love you." The words tumble messily off her tongue, and she's not completely sure he even heard her, but she's done it. She said it.
The silence that falls after that is deafening, even through the hum of the machines surrounding them. And it goes on too long. Long enough to be an answer in itself. She clears her throat.
"Bellamy?"
"Clarke-" But her pager goes off, interrupting him.
"I've got to go." It's a 911, her shift might have been covered but if they need her, she goes. He's just staring at her, not saying anything, and the idea of escaping is suddenly incredibly appealing.
"But we-"
"I'll come back in a bit," she assures him, though she's not entirely she wants to anymore. "I'm sure Octavia wants some family time anyways."
She turns to go, sparing him a weak smile.
"Clarke-" His voice follows her into the hallway, but she's already gone.