It had been two weeks since he had begged her to enter the camp with him.
Two weeks of throwing himself tirelessly into endless tasks and duties after her refusal.
Two weeks of determination to heed her last request to him.
Furious that she had made it of him. Furious at himself for letting her walk away.
She was allowed the luxury of time and distance. He had to face every person in the camp daily. At night he faced his ghosts.
Oh and he was a member of the Council now. Bellamy Blake. Criminal. Murderer. A member of the fucking council.
The people he had despised his entire life. The others, the privileged ones. The ones who had sentenced his sister to death for the crime of being born and had floated his mother for her audacity to want her daughter to live. He was one of them. This decision had been brought to him by Kane and Abby.
"You've proven yourself time and time again. This isn't the Ark. Your people need you and we can't do it without you."
A humble Kane uttering the unthinkable.
But it was always supposed to be her seat.
Abby looking at him with beseeching, motherly eyes. The latter had pissed him off but still he had accepted. What else was there for him to do? And truth be told, with the war seemingly over, there was an unimaginable amount of work to be done and the magnitude of it all was overwhelming if he tried to look at the big picture. So he didn't. He focused on the smaller parts that would make up the whole and hoped they would somehow fall into place.
There had been no sign from the Grounders other then Lincoln who was one of them now. Not that Bellamy trusted this current cease fire. Their defenses were top priority. The council understood this theoretically but seemed incapable of making any concrete decisions or actions.
And then there was the insane notion some of them had to move their camp into the mountain itself. Into that hellish tomb. Never.
So he had sat in on endless meeting about their fucking laws. The laws from the Ark could no longer apply to their people down here, everyone knew that. They wouldn't stand for it even if the council tried. So they had to be rewritten. Bellamy had little interest. In meetings he glared at the people around him as they discussed laws. Laws. There was no law on the ground. They were just a small tribe of the luckiest fucking survivors from space. And survival was still their key priority. Kane had noticed his growing fury and unrest in the meetings and wisely had set him in motion instead.
Now Bellamy stalked the perimeter surveying the work that was being done. Armed guards at their posts wearily eying the woods. They were reinforcing the electric fence. Electrified wires were great, but in its current state it wouldn't stop arrows or spears from attacking from outside. They needed real reinforcements. Any man and woman strong enough was set to work. Did anyone know what they were really doing? No. There were no forests in space. There was only theory. An entire civilizations worth of books and techniques and instructions, some of which survived in the hard drives but it may have well been written in some alien language.
Earth Skills 101. He laughed bitterly at the mandatory courses they had all taken designed to prepare them for this.
They were all like children down here. And that would get them killed. Winter was fast approaching. It was getting colder every day. He woke at dawn most days from a restless sleep only to wander out into frost. Some days now there was a light dusting of snow. He marveled at it. So simple - frozen water, it was beautiful. He gathered the powdery stuff in his hands and squeezed until it turned further into ice and burned his hand with the cold.
He pictured her out alone in this but quickly banished the thought from his mind. She had made her choice. The fury he felt drove him relentlessly into punishing his body. He did more then simply bark orders at people - he jumped in and did the toughest work alongside them and they respected and admired him for it. Feared him for what he was, for what he had done. And for the relentless intensity he put into everything. It made them all work harder. Not until hunger gnawed at him relentlessly around high noon would he stop to break his fast.
Lincoln had warned them that the game would sometimes dry up in the cold season. That people had starved through harsh winters. And so food was another obstacle he tackled. Traps and snares were set out throughout the woods to get what game they could. Hunting expeditions were organized and deployed and he frequently led them as he was still the best hunter they had.
They looked up to him.
He was mindful of a hundred duties from dawn until dusk. Octavia worried he was being spread too thin and that he would exhaust himself to sickness but the constant work was the only thing which kept him sane. When he let his focus break, the ghosts would creep back.
All of the dead. The monstrous things he had done in the name of survival.
No he wouldn't let that happen. So he embraced the fury and allowed it to propel him forward. Refused to admit that it was merely masking the pain, the intense wound on his soul that was laid open and gaping for everyone to see. That he would eventually have to stop and face the ghosts.
So yes, they respected and admired him. But none loved him save for Octavia. None made a friend of him.
And so he felled lumber and tracked their meat. He planned and organized. He ran himself into exhaustion until he passed out like the dead. And he prayed each night as his eyes closed that the dreams would be kept at bay.