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Clarke’s heart screams in pain- in pleading- the moment she sees him fall.
“No,” she mutters shakily, breaks free from the grip of a hand tight around her wrist. “No,” this time louder. Everything’s a blur of broken cries and dark red blood spattered across the clearing as if it were a canvas begging to be painted, and yet, her eyes have somehow stayed focused on him in the same way they generally seem to do; they’re always focused on him. Her head is pounding, her limbs ache—a wound in her shoulder continues to bleed relentlessly, staining the skin there black.
The world around her slows as he hits the ground, and suddenly she’s running, pushing others out of the way, uncaring of who or how harsh she does so. The pain in her body dulls, a mere ache now, and no matter how quick her legs carry her the space between the two of them only seems to stretch on, endless in the same way the number of days without him those six years only seemed to grow, no end in sight. But then suddenly, one night, an ethereal figure in the shadow of the rover’s headlights, he was there when she needed him just as Clarke reaches him now, tears welling in her eyes at the sight. Swallowing heavily and without a second thought, she drops to her knees next to him, feels like her chest could cave in at any moment.
“Hey,” she breathes, voice breaking. Her hand gently rakes through his hair, matted with blood and sweat. He blinks up at her, arm weakly lifting in her direction as if reaching out for her. His face is covered in scrapes not unlike it once regularly was on earth, his lip swollen, but the worst of all is the red of the blood coating his abdomen, staining his shirt darker than it is. She feels nauseous, takes a moment to look away whilst her hand still runs through his curls. She takes a deep breath, tells herself to calm down even though she knows she won’t be able to. “How we doin’, Slugger?” she asks, tone as light as she can manage.
It gets a smile out of him, a slow tilt of his lips not nearly as bright as the smile he gives when she usually cracks a joke, when he’s happy if only for a brief moment.
“Just peachy,” he rasps, his voice weak, blood trickling slowly down his chin. Tears gather in her eyes again, threatening to spill over, but she refuses to let them, looks away from him to blink them back. She won’t let him see her like this. Her hand settles against the curve of his jaw, thumb brushing slow circles against the stubble there. Her eyes drift down to his, wide and filled with tears of his own, and he looks so small.
Bellamy’s never been small—all broad shoulders and thick arms, presence large enough to fill a room; to motivate the masses. Seeing him like this now, weak and scared and so obviously in pain is the antithesis of the Bellamy Blake she knows, and the realization aches worse than any of the physical pain she’s in.
A tear trails down his cheek and her throat tightens. Her thumb moves from his jaw to wipe it away, and she offers him a soft smile, knows it isn’t convincing when he doesn’t return the gesture. “Clarke,” he starts, voice breaking. Drawing in a shaky breath, he tries again, “Clarke, I’m-” She knows what he’s about to say and refuses to acknowledge it as a possibility.
“Hey, none of that.” Her voice is thick, and she tilts her head to the sky, sends a silent prayer to whoever might be up there that she doesn’t lose him like she’s lost everyone else. If she gets to be selfish for once in her life, this is it. “Do you hear me? You’re- you’ll be okay, okay? You and me, we’re gonna get through this just like we’ve gotten through every,” her breath hitches, making it nearly impossible to speak. “Everything else.”
He’s crying steadily now, tears falling down his cheeks and taking with them the dirt, the blood previously settled there. She places pressure against his stomach with one hand, hopes it’s enough to somehow stop the bleeding. (Deep down she knows it isn’t, but she refuses to accept that).
“Clarke, please.”
“No,” she snaps, feels bad for the harshness in her tone. She goes back to playing with his hair, tries her best to bring him comfort, no matter how little. “You’re not-” she stops, unable to fathom the thought. “You’re not dying. We’ll get you out of here and do whatever we have to. I’m not- I’m not letting you die.”
They always say life is short, and Clarke’s seen the abrupt end of enough young lives to know it’s true. But Bellamy- smart, mythology-loving, too kind for this plane of existence, lovable Bellamy- deserves a life kinder to him than the one he’s been dealt. He deserves love and happiness and everything he has yet to truly experience that the universe has to offer, and she refuses to accept that he won’t get that. That he won’t make it. Clarke has seen death, has lost too many people to count, and with each she’s felt closer to the verge of breaking, the point of no return.
She’s confident losing Bellamy would be enough to take her there.
“No,” he whispers, and his eyes are beginning to droop. She shakes her head, wants to block out the words he’s about to say. “I’m dying, Clarke. There’s no- I’m not making it out of here. I know I’m not.” Clarke closes her eyes as he speaks, leans down to rest her forehead against his shoulder, doesn’t want him to see her cry. There’s always been a level of vulnerability she’s allowed around Bellamy, greater than that around anyone else, but it’s different now as his words grow slower, his breaths heavier, not as frequent.
She bites back a sob when his hand comes to rest against the back of her head, touch barely there, and then she’s wiping at her eyes, leaning back to look at him.
“Listen to me,” he says, “You have to be strong, and you- you have to promise me you’ll be happy. You’ll try to be happy. For me.”
Her grip on his shirt tightens, and her hands, her clothes are covered in his blood now. Her stomach feels sick at the sight of it.
“No,” she refuses, a sob wracking through her. “I’m not promising you that because you’re not dying. None of that’s even worth it if I can’t have it with you, Bellamy—you die, I die, remember? All of that ‘together’ bullshit?” He winces, and she only cries harder.
“It wasn’t bullshit,” he says, tired, and leans his head to the side to look at her. He’s quiet for a moment, watching her, before he admits in a low voice that somehow doesn’t sound like his, “I’m scared, Clarke.”
Me too, she could say, and it would be the truth.
His skin is pale and clammy to the touch. Each time he blinks, his eyes stay closed if only a fraction longer, and each time she fears he won’t open them again. She breaks with the realization that his earlier words are right, that he is dying. That after fearing the reality of having to live without him for so long…
“I’m right here,” she says instead. Her vision blurs with tears and her eyes close when, in a touch he can barely manage, he reaches up to wipe at them. “I’m not going anywhere,” she whispers, broken and too high-pitched for it to sound normal.
He doesn’t say the words, Will you hold me? but when he looks up at her, tries to reach out for her, she knows what he wants, and gently, she sits, pulls him halfway into her lap as best as she can manage. She shushes him when he groans in pain as she moves him, tells him it’s okay even though she knows it’s not. She holds him close, strokes a hand through his hair.
“Bellamy,” she whispers, words stuck in her throat. She’s lost the chance to say them so many times, has regretted each one. He needs to know. “Bellamy, I should’ve said it years ago, I should have told you every chance I got, but I didn’t, and I need you to know.” She caresses his face, musters a smile for this part despite how much it hurts. “I need you to know that I- I’ve always-”
“Don’t,” he stops her, and she furrows her brow, frozen in confusion. “You don’t have to say it just because I’m dying, Clarke.” His chest rattles as he takes a breath. He coughs, and she uses her sleeve to wipe away the blood that falls from his mouth. Said with the beginnings of a smile that she hopes never to forget, “I know you do, okay? I do, too.”
“Bellamy, please.”
“You don’t have to,” he says again, soft, broken. Defeated, almost.
Clarke knows he’s right, knows why he insists that she doesn’t. But God, he deserves to know how loved he really is. How much she loves him. She bites at her lip, skin probably broken by now, and can feel herself shaking. So she tells him the depths to which she loves him using any word but that, in a way she knows he’ll understand, as best as she can.
“You still don’t get it, do you?” she asks. “I need you. I couldn’t have- Nothing I’ve done since being sent to that hellhole in the dropship all those years ago would’ve been possible without you,” she sobs, and when she presses her lips to his forehead, he smiles, holds onto her shirt as tight as he can. It’s not very tight at all, but she knows. She knows he’s trying. Quiet, barely a whisper spoken against his skin, “You’re so special to me, Bellamy Blake. I haven’t always been the best at showing it, but you are, and I hope you know that.”
Her hand presses over his heart, feels it beat beneath her palm. His eyes drift shut, and barely, he tells her, “You’re special to me, too.”
Clarke holds him close, runs her fingers through his hair as she hums a song that makes her feel ill. She hopes beyond hope that somehow he can be saved until the very moment she realizes he can’t as his eyes drift shut for what she knows is the final time and his heartbeat begins to slow its pounding beneath her touch, eventually lulling to a complete stop. Broken, with the pain of her injuries rushing back to her, she rests her forehead against his as she sobs and begs with whoever will listen to just please give him back and tells him she loves him in the way he wouldn’t allow her to only moments before, gripping his body to hers as tight as she can.
Her chest aches with that of a heartbreak greater than she’s ever known and the pressure of something she can’t quite identify, and she thinks that if this is the end for her as well, if it’s coming soon, maybe Bellamy’s waiting for her—maybe his face will be the first she sees in whatever may come next. Selfishly, she hopes it is.
The only thing that can bring her any semblance of comfort is this: somewhere, whether it be in the afterlife or the next hand they’re dealt, they will meet again. It’s a universal truth, one which should rest in the cosmos by now along with constellations like that of Lyra, and she knows this time is no exception.
Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake will always find their way back to each other, death be damned.