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“Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
- Homer, The Iliad
~ ~ ~ ~
It’s fitting, she thinks, that her soulmate is such a fucking nerd. ‘Who better than a nerd for Clarke Griffin, our crazy smart pre-med student?’ her friend Jasper would say. To which he’d only ever gotten an eye roll in response. But yeah, she agrees. It definitely is fitting that she got a nerd instead some stupid asshole who thought she fit the dumb blonde description.
Clarke got her soulmark on a Thursday, in the middle of games night at Raven’s place. One minute she had been beating all their asses at Mario Kart, the next, black writing had appeared on her arm, making her jerk her controller to the right so fast that she plummeted straight off of rainbow road.
“Holy shit.” She says, staring at the words, still clutching the controller tightly in her hands.
“Yeah I know Clarke, what a blow! First place to twelfth…Haha suck it Monty!” Raven says from beside her, furiously turning to avoid falling into the abyss after shooting Monty with a red shell.
“No..I mean, well yeah that sucked but…holy shit.”
Monty pauses the game, causing the others to all groan and shout out a few choruses of complaints.
He turns from his place at Clarke’s feet to look at her. He opens his mouth to speak but before he says a thing, his eyes catch onto the, very new, soul mark on her wrist.
“Holy shit.” He says.
“That’s what I said.”
“Ahhhhhhh! Clarkey has a soulmate!” Jasper exclaims, jumping up from his position on the other couch to grab at Clarke’s wrist.
“What does it say? What does it say?” Raven asks him excitedly, leaning over Clarke’s shoulder.
Clarke tries to shrug them both off but Jasper’s grip is insane, and Raven is stubborn. She relents, letting him turn her arm to read the words.
“Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed…” Jasper reads.
“Huh.” Monty says, still staring at the cursive writing.
“That’s strangely poetic.” Jasper says, finally letting go of Clarke’s wrist.
“It’s from the Iliad.” Clarke says to the others, still a little in shock that she had an actual soulmate. It wasn’t like it was rare to have a soulmate nowadays, but it wasn’t exactly common either. Clarke’s fingers trace over the words running up her forearm.
Raven snorts suddenly.
“Of course your soulmate would be a fucking nerd.” She says, patting Clarke on the shoulder. She sinks back into the couch and grabs at her controller, nudging at Monty with her foot.
“Unpause it Monty, I was whipping all of your asses!”
Monty gives one last look to Clarke before grinning at Raven and unpausing the game.
“Oh you’re on Reyes.”
Clarke smiles softly at her friends, watching as Jasper quickly darts back over to the other couch to grab his controller.
“I call cheat!” He yells, furiously pushing the button to accelerate.
She leaves her controller in her lap and silently stares at the words, reading over and over them again.
‘Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed.’ She reads.
Looking back on her life, she can’t help but agree.
~ ~ ~ ~
Not that Clarke had ever thought she had to be one of those people with a soulmate, but she had definitely fantasised possible meet-cutes she’d have if she was lucky enough to have one.
And can she just say, meeting her soulmate by hitting them with her car, certainly wasn’t any of the scenarios she had imagined.
Her day had been pretty ordinary in terms of how days go. Her barista didn’t spill hot coffee on her blouse, her car hadn’t broken down and she wasn’t late to work so her day wasn’t all that bad….but then again, the hot barista hadn’t given Clarke her number either and she could feel the start of a migraine coming on. So yeah. Not good, not bad. Kinda just cruising in the middle in terms of how days go.
Until she hit a guy with her car of course.
It was an insane hour on a Saturday morning, and Clarke was driving into the art studio she worked for. (Student loans didn’t pay themselves, so for about the next 209 years, she was going to be stuck trying to earn money on her weekends. Just so she could eat something with more nutrition than instant ramen and keep the lights on in her apartment.) When she came up to a red light, she slowed to a stop and took the opportunity to take a long scalding sip of the coffee the hot barista had given her this morning. Hoping the caffeine would wake her up after her late night finishing up assignments for school, she takes another long sip.
A car honking behind her makes her roll her eyes and and put her coffee back down (extra slow) into the middle console.
“I can see the green light you nitwit.” She mutters under her breath, purposefully taking a long time to accelerate. (Sue her. She hates impatient people and loves being passive aggressive).
Just as she is about to put her foot down further on the pedal, a random man steps out from in between two cars and walks directly in front of her car. Shrieking, Clarke slams her foot on the break. Her hands come up to cover her mouth when the impact of the car sends the man over her windscreen.
“Holy shit.” She says, wrestling with her seatbelt to get out of the car.
She can already see a crowd of people stopping on the sidewalk and staring.
Don’t just stand there gawking and taking pictures! She wishes she could yell at them all.
Seeing the man lying on the ground with his eyes closed, Clarke quickly rushes around the side of the car.
She kneels beside him, “Oh my god! I’m so sorry! You just suddenly stepped in front of my car and I had no time to stop! Please don’t be dead!”
The man’s long groan makes her stop babbling. His eyes blink open and he looks directly at her. Clarke takes in the sight of his curly hair, and the dark coat he’s wearing. He doesn’t look like the type of person to step in front of a car… but then again what type of person does?
“Ow.” He says, blinking a few times to try to clear the fogginess in his head. Clarke shakes herself out of her thoughts and leans forwards over his body. She pulls one of his eyes open further, checking his pupils for any signs that he has a concussion.
“Uhhhh….” The man looks at her in confusion.
“Don’t worry, I’m pre-med.” She says, letting go of his eyelids, satisfied that he isn’t showing any of the early signs of a concussion.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? You just hit me with your car.”
Clarke bristles.
“You’re the one that stepped so suddenly into oncoming traffic.”
“…Touchè.”
Clarke looks up from him as he closes his eyes and over to the small crowd that has formed. She scans through them, checking to see if any of them thought to call an ambulance. She lets out a sigh of relief when she sees that one woman has.
“Sir?” She asks, turning back towards the man. He still has his eyes closed.
“Bellamy.”
“What?”
“My name. It’s Bellamy Blake. I figured you probably wanted to know the name of the idiot you hit with your car.”
Clarke laughs, putting her hand on his shoulder. He opens his eyes at the contact, looking over at her.
“Well, Bellamy Blake, I’m Clarke Griffin. The asshole that hit you with a car.”
Bellamy smiles at her a little loopily. He lifts his arm to shake her hand.
“Pleasure to meet you.”
When he puts his arm back down, Clarke leans forwards to grab at his wrist.
“Is it okay if I check your pulse Bellamy? I need to know if your heart is beating okay.”
“Go ahead.” He says, looking up at the sky.
Clarke lifts his arm towards her and pulls back the sleeve of his coat. She puts her fingers on his pulse and begins to count to herself. After a moment, she stops counting.
“Okay…I think your pulse is fine. A little fast, but then again you did just get hit by a car so that’s probably just due to the….” she trails off, her eyes catching site of the familiar cursive writing of her tattoo,
“…shock.” She finishes, eyes glued to the edges of his tattoo.
Without warning him, Clarke pulls his arm closer to her and pushes the sleeve of his jacket up to his elbow.
“What are you-” Bellamy starts, lifting his head up to get a better view.
She drops his arm and grabs at the sleeve of her sweater, pulling it up to her elbow also.
She holds out her arm to him, showing him the matching tattoo she has inked there.
“…Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed.” He reads quietly.
His eyes flit back up to her face, seeming to take her in all at once. He opens his mouth to speak but Clarke beats him to it.
“The Iliad? Really? You’re such a nerd.”
He smiles at her smugly.
“Yeah but you recognised the quote.”
“What if I had googled it?”
“Something tells me that you didn’t have to google.”
“That something would be the concussion.” She deadpans.
Bellamy’s smile turns into a full blown grin and he starts to laugh. Clarke smiles as well, loving the warmth that his gaze is spreading through her chest.
So maybe she was wrong. This day turned out to be a pretty good one as days go. (Especially since the strange man she hit with her car turned out to be a pretty extraordinary).
-Fin-