Archive of Our Own ^beta

Clarke Griffin isn’t the first ghost Bellamy Blake sees.

She is just the first one he recognizes.

It is impossible to live on the Ark and not recognize the Alpha station princess. She has not one but two parents on the council. Her mother is the head of medical and her father is the Ark’s chief engineer. In other words they are both in charge of keeping the last remnants of the human race alive long enough that future generations can return to the earth. So flying under the radar is pretty much out of the question for their daughter.

At Unity Day and other official events her family are often clustered near the front next to Jaha and his kid. Shaking hands, kissing babies like some kind of sick reenactment of an old earth election. He has read that politicians on earth were generally considered too corrupt to trust and that seems to track considering they’d managed to torch their whole planet because they couldn’t get along. So maybe it makes sense that the Griffins and the Jahas remind him of these bygone leaders.

They too can’t seem to see beyond their own hubris. Getting back to Earth at the expense of everything including their own humanity.

Banning second children. Floating people for small infractions. Allowing the gap between stations to grow and grow with their own station always managing to stay on top.

Needless to say, Bellamy isn’t their biggest fan. Still. He is aware. How could he not be?

So when he looks up one day in his family’s quarters and sees a confused looking Clarke Griffin standing by the door he recognizes her right away.

He just doesn’t recognize her as a ghost right away.

Instead his first thought is that his whole family is going to die. Because seated at the table across the room is Octavia, his illegal little sister who is very much not under the floor at the moment.

“O,” Bellamy is on his feet and putting himself between Clarke and his sister immediately, as though he could somehow hide what had already been revealed.

“Bell, she’s already seen me.”

Octavia’s voice is terrified yet somehow doesn’t shake. His brave little sister.

“What do you want?” He demands, realizing his voice is shaking more than his sister’s had. “How did you get in here?”

Clarke somehow manages to seem more confused than they are that she has arrived in their quarters.

“I...I’m not sure. I think maybe I hit my head?” She reaches one hand up as though to grip her scalp through her blonde locks but lets it drop instead. “I wasn’t feeling very well and I think I was looking for some help. I can’t really remember. Your door must have been open.”

“It wasn’t,” Bellamy grits out. As if he would leave his door unlocked. As if he hadn’t been training himself since the age of 6 to never do that.

“I’m sorry...I didn’t mean to...I’m really confused right now.”

“Bell,” Octavia tries from behind him but he waves a hand in her direction hoping she’ll get the hint and stay quiet. As if she can just be silent until she is unseen by the girl in front of them.

“I can escort you to medical but you can’t be here,” Bellamy says firmly, his panic still screaming in his mind that none of this matters. It is all over now.

“ Bell ,” Octavia’s voice is more insistent this time and Bellamy throws her an anxious glance over his shoulder. “Look at her, Bell. Calm down and look.”

Despite his entire being surging with adrenaline, Bellamy manages to do as his sister asks.

She stands in front of the door, dressed in casual clothes, her almost unnaturally blonde hair gleaming even under the drab lighting their quarters can offer. Her expression is confused and afraid, her eyes seeking out his as though she might find answers there.

Which he supposes she might actually because he finally sees what Octavia is seeing.

The way the edges of her blur slightly whenever she moves, shifting nervously from foot to foot enough to reveal the slightly inhuman shine that flickers around her occasionally.

It is something both he and Octavia have seen before.

And the people who looked like that...were always dead.

Before Bellamy can react to the fact that the very much dead Ark princess is in their quarters his radio crackles to life startling everyone in the room.

The voices that emerge from his handset aren’t actually talking to him but they’re using the open guard frequency and even cadets are expected to be ready to respond to that at a moment’s notice.

“All units be advised the southern observation station is being cordoned off. No civilians are to enter the area under any circumstances.”

“What’s going on?”

Clarke is still looking at him like he’s her lifeline, the person who is going to step in and make what is happening to her make sense.

And Bellamy hates her parents and he has always hated her a little on principle but now he hates himself a little for having to be the one to say this.

“I think they just found your body, Princess.”

———————

They find Clarke’s body in the observation station lying in a pool of blood, a head wound clearly to blame for her death. Solar flares mean that the security footage is useless but no one else is seen leaving the area. There had been quite a bit of what they liked to call space turbulence that day, small meteors and debris impacting the Ark causing tremors that could be felt on board particularly at the outermost stations. Like the observation areas.

In the end it was determined that Clarke had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. She got caught in a tremor, fell and hit her head.

As quick, and simple and unfair as that.

It was sad, of course it was, but Bellamy has other things to focus on than the untimely death of one spoiled teenager.

At least he would if she would just leave him alone.

“Maybe I’m supposed to get Wells a girlfriend. I know he’s lonely and…”

Bellamy scoffs and Clarke cuts herself off mid ramble.

“Why do you think I’m still here then?” She demands, hands on her hips, her head tilted at an angle seemingly intended to precisely express her frustration with him.

As if she is the only one with a right to be frustrated in this situation. He is the one being haunted.

Well, him and Octavia technically but his sister doesn’t mind the company.

“I don’t think about it, Princess. My world doesn’t revolve around your problems.”

She groans.

“You’re infuriating!”

“Feel free to go spend some time with people who should actually care about you anytime.”

He regrets his words as soon as he sees her reaction. The hurt that floats across her face before she covers it up with a glare.

He knows it’s not his most fair comment.

She does spend time following her parents around. Her best friend the Jaha kid and her boyfriend too who were apparently not the same person though he purposely tries to remain vague on those details.

But eventually she always craves being around people who actually know she’s there and ends up back in the Blake quarters.

Bellamy’s mother can’t see ghosts but she had long ago accepted that her children had a gift she would never fully understand. Or a curse. The jury is still out.

When she finds out Clarke spends her days drifting in and out of their quarters at will, Aurora takes to greeting the girl every time she enters the room.

She kisses each of her children on the crown of their heads, brushing her fingers gently over their hair before placing her hand softly on the table as though it was a stand in for a blonde head.

“Hi Clarke.”

She murmurs the greeting to thin air with motherly affection, and for some reason this fills Bellamy with disproportionate anger.

Was she so desperate for children to mother that an illegal second child wasn’t enough? She wanted to adopt all the teenage ghosts wandering the halls too?

“She’s not even here,” Bellamy snaps one day with so much venom Octavia looks like she wants to burst into tears right then.

His mother looks hurt too and both of them give him a wide berth for the rest of the night, giving him as much space as possible in the tiny room they all share.

When Clarke finally does turn up that night after his mother and Octavia are asleep he refuses to speak to her. Eventually she slips away and Bellamy fights the urge to cry over how guilty he feels.

How young and like his sister she’d looked in the dark.

How alone.

——————

She never stays away for long.

She and Octavia form a fragile friendship and Bellamy finds himself feeling grateful for that against his own better judgement.

When he first realized Octavia could see ghosts like he could he had thought it might be a solution to her feeling so lonely. He didn’t know if they were drawn to them like a beacon or if ghosts just had a lot of time on their hands and eventually ended up in every room in the Ark. He just knew that over the years plenty of ghosts had wandered through their quarters and Octavia loved to talk to them.

The problem was they always left eventually, most of them fairly quickly. They made peace with what they were leaving behind and a door would appear for them, a door to whatever came next.

And when they stepped through Octavia was always left alone again.

He knows the same will happen with Clarke, that she will sort through all her stupid ideas about what her unfinished business could be and actually finish it. Then her door will appear and she will move on too.

That’s just how it works.

But seeing Octavia with someone to talk to who is less than 2 years older than her, someone who will giggle and tell her about boys and be her friend ...he can’t bring himself to wish her door will appear.

Even though she drives him absolutely crazy.

—————

“Tell me again.”

Bellamy sighs and squeezes his eyes shut as though blocking out the sight of the blonde before him will block her existence from his life too.

He’s just trying to do his job, stand in front of the market like he’s supposed to without anyone thinking he’s nuts.

Unfortunately Clarke is flitting around demanding he tell her what he knows about the procedure ghosts follow after death. Again.

“They show up. They hang around for a while until they deal with whatever is holding them back and then a door appears. They go through it and…”

He snaps his fingers.

“Poof.”

“Poof?” She repeats.

He nods. Tries to be subtle about it because someone is passing.

“No one ever stays?” She asks insistently.

And Bellamy fights the urge to groan. She can never make things easy.

“There is one guy...but he’s not what I’d call a ghostly role model.”

“You have to introduce me to him.”

Clarke doesn’t say it like a request. She says it like an order. Of course she does. Pretty princess always used to getting whatever she wants.

Still. Maybe introducing her will give her someone else to bother for a few minutes a day.

“Fine. After my shift. Now can you let me do my job?”

Clarke grins and she looks so pretty and so alive and for a second Bellamy wants to grin back. For a second he wants her to be his friend too, not just Octavia’s. But that’s not happening.

So he just rolls his eyes and ignores the way she disappears yet he can still hear her pleased giggle for a split second after he stops seeing her.

—————

“Clarke, this is Wick.”

Bellamy isn’t sure what Clarke expected from the Ark’s longest ghost resident but judging by the way she’s staring it wasn’t Wick.

To be fair he’s currently perched on the edge of the lectern Jaha sometimes uses for making speeches, kicking his feet and grinning at her like it is the most normal thing in the world.

“Clarke Griffin, nice to meet you. I knew your grandmother. She was hot.”

Clarke sputters.

“My...how long have you been here exactly?”

“Live years or dead years?”

Wick grins then waves his hand as if to acknowledge his great joke.

Neither Bellamy or Clarke react so he sighs and continues.

“I died 72 years ago. Freak electrical accident. Small engineering mishap. No one’s fault.”

“I heard you almost brought down the Ark’s entire oxygen system when you crossed the wrong wires.”

Wick shoots Bellamy a less than impressed look before shrugging.

“Nobody’s perfect. This place wouldn’t still be here if not for my tireless engineering work. Like your dad.”

He nods in Clarke’s direction.

“You know my dad?” Clarke asks.

“I know everyone on this floating monstrosity. I’ve got all the gossip.”

“You never got your door?”

“And miss out on all this excitement?” Wick gestures around the empty room and Bellamy rolls his eyes. “Nah.”

Wick hops down from the lectern.

“Come on, let’s go to the mess hall. I can’t eat of course but I like to move people’s food around when they’re not looking.”

“You can move things?”

The excitement in Clarke’s voice doesn’t sit well with Bellamy but before he can express his reservations she’s already following Wick down the hall, chattering questions all the way.

Bellamy considers following them before realizing this is what he wanted to happen, a distraction so he could have some peace and quiet.

And if he isn’t enjoying it as much as he thought he would he doesn’t admit it to himself.

—————

“And Wick says…”

Bellamy tries desperately to tune out Clarke’s voice as she tells Octavia for the hundredth time what Wick had said during their latest session.

Apparently Wick is giving her some kind of ghost training course, trying to teach her how to manipulate physical objects and read people’s auras.

Or something.

Again, he’s trying not to listen.

He’s failing.

His boss had dressed him down that night for daring to ask a member of Alpha station why they were out after curfew and the double standards of the Ark are echoing in his head.

The voice sounds like Clarke’s though he knows that’s not fair.

He loses control.

“This isn’t what you should be focusing on!”

His outburst startles both Clarke and his sister from their position on the floor across the room.

“Bell!” Octavia’s tone is a warning but he can’t stop now.

“And what exactly should I be focusing on?”

Clarke snaps right back, her blue eyes flashing.

“Figuring out what’s keeping you here and finding your door!” He roars.

She shrinks back a little and guilt tries to worm its way into his mind but he shoves it back.

“You’re not supposed to be here, Clarke. You’re dead. You’re supposed to be moving on. Not trailing after Wick, not playing house with my sister, not pining after your boyfriend, gone. Done. Finished. You’re dead .”

The lights flicker and the books on their one sad shelf go flying across the room.

Octavia shrieks in surprise and Bellamy has just enough time to catch sight of Clarke’s tear filled eyes before she flickers out and disappears entirely.

—————

Neither Octavia or Clarke are speaking to him after that incident.

He knows Clarke is still visiting Octavia but she now sticks mostly to waiting until he is out on a shift.

One day he returns from work and she’s still there, a stony silence his only greeting from both girls.

“Don’t stop on my behalf. I’m going to take a shower.”

He strides past them and Clarke stays put. He’s not sure if he can call that progress or not.

He towels off after his shower and finds himself eavesdropping on their conversation.

“I really think he’s my unfinished business, O. Finn and I had plans. I never got to do all the little things I wanted to do for him. But maybe it’s not too late.”

“That’s so romantic, Clarke! I wish I could meet him.”

Clarke must know he’s done with his shower because when he steps back into their main living space she’s gone.

Octavia on the other hand is absentmindedly flipping through their worn copy of Beauty and the Beast and smiling to herself.

“Following around some boy is not her unfinished business, O. She needs to know that.”

“Why do you care?” Octavia snaps but her face almost instantly softens when her eyes meet his, as if the act of being angry at him takes too much energy to sustain this long. “How do you know? It could be.”

“Clarke‘s life was worth more than making things easier for a guy. So is yours. Don’t ever forget that.”

Octavia’s eyes swim with tears which she swipes at roughly with one hand.

“It’s not like I’ll ever get the chance anyway, right? Not like I’ll ever get the chance to do anything.”

Bellamy swallows thickly around his ever present guilt for something he didn’t cause anyway.

He starts thinking of ways he can give his sister a chance to do something, anything .

He dooms them all.

——————

Bellamy thinks he might be in shock.

The guard is holding his sister’s wrist, the chaos of the disbanded dance all around them.

His panicked eyes meet Clarke’s over the guards shoulder.

She had come with Octavia to the dance, of course she had. She had wanted to witness O’s first brush with freedom and if she got to see her boyfriend moping around in the corner all the better and she was here and the guard had Octavia and he couldn’t stop it and…

Clarke reaches out, grabs the guard’s shock baton and gently lifts it from its holster.

Bellamy can’t stop staring, can’t believe this is happening, because a guard has his sister and the ghost of the Ark’s Princess is using her recently acquired skills of object manipulation, and is she going to shock lash a guard so they can get away? And…

Before Clarke can press the button her ability to grip the baton fades as though it was never there, the metal stick falling straight through her still curled fingers and clattering to the ground.

The guard whips around looking for the culprit but finds no one near enough to blame.

He scoops up the baton with one hand never releasing his grip on O’s wrist and Bellamy knows it’s over.

—————

They don’t let him be there when they float his mother. Don’t let him say goodbye to her at all.

They’re too busy questioning him about his involvement and how they were able to keep a second child hidden for so long.

He wants to rage. He wants to tell them it was because some of their colleagues were more than happy to turn a blind eye in exchange for coerced sex with a desperate mother.

He doesn’t. Needs to stay alive if he ever wants to see O again. His sister. His responsibility.

Locked up in the skybox for the crime of being born.

By the time he’s back in his empty quarters it’s already too late.

His mother is dead.

He slumps on to the floor against the bed, allows his face to crumple, hides his tears with his hands even though he’s alone and there’s no one to see.

Or so he thought.

“Bellamy?”

Clarke says his name like a question.

He raises his head, chokes on a sob when he sees her face, all furrowed brow and trembling lips and eyes glistening with tears for his family. He can tell she’s trying not to let him see her cry, not wanting to encroach on his grief.

She sinks down next to him.

“I’m sorry. I tried to...I’ve been practicing but I just...I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” He doesn’t recognize his voice, the painful, wet croak of it. “It’s mine. I never should have taken her there. I never should have risked it.”

He pounds his fist into the floor next to him and she flinches but recovers quickly.

“Bell...no.”

She’s never called him that before. Octavia is the only one who does. He doesn’t want to hear it now.

She must see him stiffen because she doesn’t try to convince him it isn’t his fault.

“She’ll be here soon.” He says into the silence that settles over them. “My mother.”

His mother’s ghost. He dreads it but longs to see her at the same time. For her to say his name softly and tell him everything will be ok. Even if it is a lie.

“Bellamy, she’s not coming.”

Clarke isn’t bothering to hide her tears now.

“I didn’t want her to be alone...I was there when they...when it happened. She saw me. She spoke to me. She wants you and Octavia to know she loves you very much and she knows you’ll look after your sister and…”

Bellamy cuts her off his voice tearing out of his throat like a knife slicing through.

“Where is she Clarke? Where’s my mom?”

Clarke swallows hard. Doesn’t meet his eyes.

“She got her door, Bellamy. Right away. It just appeared. That’s...that’s a good thing, right? She’s at peace now and not...stuck.”

Bellamy doesn’t know. Doesn’t know anything anymore.

Is it worse to know his mother put them all in this situation and then apparently has so little baggage over the whole thing that she could immediately move on? Or is it worse to imagine her trapped like the girl next to him?

He reaches for Clarke’s hand without thinking, watches his fingers sink through hers and make contact with the cold metal floor.

She looks up and meets his gaze, the desperate sadness he sees there matching his own.

They are both alone in all the ways that count.

And they can’t help each other.

—————

She still tries.

She visits O.

He’s not allowed to visit her, some part of his punishment along with being demoted from guard to janitor. He knows he’s supposed to be grateful. The fact that he hasn’t been floated is supposed to highlight the council’s mercy. As if they were so magnanimous not to have killed him for something that happened when he was 6. As if being separated from his only remaining family is so kind.

He knows it bothers Clarke. That both of her parents are on the council and must have been involved in the decision to float his mother, to lock up his sister. She used to babble about them to Octavia amongst her running commentary about her boyfriend but since the disaster at the dance they have been noticeably absent from her unsolicited updates.

It’s not her fault but he knows she wants to be able to change it. She can’t. But she can visit O.

So she does.

She goes every day and reports back to Bellamy. She passes messages between them and makes sure O is never truly alone, even in solitary.

He doesn’t say thank you, the words dying in his throat every time he tries.

But he loves her a little for it.

She tries to help him too though he imagines it’s even more of a thankless task.

She starts spending evenings in his quarters, always there when he comes in exhausted from scrubbing floors and cleaning up after her former neighbors.

He opens the door, steps inside, and her beaming face greets him, glowing in that certain way that can’t be explained simply by her ghostliness or her blondeness that is just...Clarke.

At first it’s awkward.

They had never really talked this much. They had bickered, and he had answered her questions when she pestered him, but they had never really talked .

He had left that to O.

If she finds it as awkward as he does she does a better job hiding it.

She takes care of all the talking for the first few weeks. He putters around the room or sits at the table or lays on the bed while she talks and talks and talks.

She tells him about growing up in Alpha station, watching old soccer matches on the projector, playing chess with Wells Jaha, and her dad letting her draw on the walls of their quarters.

He knows these stories would have annoyed him not long ago. The happy memories she describes a world away from his life scraping by and trying to keep Octavia alive and hidden.

He doesn’t find them annoying now though.

He catches himself chuckling during one of her stories about getting caught drawing a less than flattering likeness of the chancellor and the grin she gives him in return is radiant in her victory.

She tells him more stories and eventually he starts returning the favor.

He tells her about the myths his mother used to read to them. He tells her about the few friends he’d had growing up. How he had to distance himself from them eventually so he wouldn’t slip up about Octavia in front of them. He tells her about the games he and O used to play. He would be a dragon chasing her around the room threatening to torch her with his fire until she eventually turned around giggling and slayed him with her sword.

Clarke likes that story the best.

“You don’t look like a dragon to me, Bellamy Blake.”

“Don’t get too comfortable, Princess. You haven’t seen me in action yet.”

If ghosts could blush that’s what she would be doing.

Bellamy isn’t trying to be suggestive, hadn’t thought through the implications of what he was saying at all. Still. He doesn’t correct her. Finds that he likes it when the princess blushes.

Not that it matters.

She’s dead. And in love with someone who isn’t him.

She talks about Finn all the time too.

How amazing he is. How kind and handsome and funny. How he made her feel special just by being with her.

“You are special. He has nothing to do with it.”

Bellamy’s gruff words are tossed out casually and if Clarke blushes again he very deliberately doesn’t look her way to see it.

None of this matters.

His mother is dead.

Octavia is locked away.

Clarke will find her door.

He will be alone. Forever.

—————

She gets some drawing charcoal somewhere.

She has mastered holding objects at some point since the dance and neither of them talk about it.

He sees her though.

Moving things around in his quarters, cleaning up, trying to make things nice for him.

It reminds him of when she thought her unfinished business was to look after Finn and he feels a weight settle in his stomach.

He’s not sure if it’s because Clarke still seems to think her purpose is to look after others and neglect herself or because he can’t ask if it means something that she’s chosen him to look after.

The drawing they talk about though.

She tells him that she’s been decorating O’s cell. She’s been covering the floor and the walls with images of him and their mother and mythical beasts and most of all the earth.

She tells him the guards can’t figure out how Octavia is doing it and they both have a rare laugh at the thought of O being a magical being in the mind of the guards.

Clarke starts drawing on the walls of his quarters too.

She starts with a drawing of his mother and sister, startles when he comes home early before she’s finished and eyes him guiltily as though she expects to be reprimanded for damaging his property.

As if he would hate her for trying to give him his family back.

It’s true he feels a strong rush of emotion at the sight but it isn’t hate.

It’s the first time he feels the inexplicable urge to say it to her. No good can come of those words though.

So instead all he says is she needs to add herself too.

Her smile is blinding.

And she does as he asks.

She adds other drawings to the walls over the next few months but Bellamy’s favorite is still the first.

The portrait of his girls. All three of them.

—————

A year passes like this.

It’s a fragile sort of happiness, an island of respite in an ocean of tragedy, but they embrace it as best they can.

Bellamy gets used to Clarke being there when he gets home.

She doesn’t spend all of her time waiting for him of course.

She visits O. She visits her parents, forgiving them as best she can for their role in the downfall of his family. She visits Wells. She visits Finn.

She visits Wick.

Sometimes Wick is with her when Bellamy gets home, the two of them laughing at his table, and something fiery and hot erupts inside him.

Maybe he is a dragon after all.

But then Clarke looks up and smiles at him and the beast within him settles, content.

None of this matters, he reminds himself.

She is dead. And in love with someone who isn’t him. But it’s someone who isn’t Wick either, and that helps a little.

They go on like this, sequestered in their own truly bizarre version of normal, until one night Wick bursts into Bellamy’s quarters, panic written all over his face.

“Wick, what is it?”

Concern colors Clarke’s expression.

Bellamy feels only a sense of heavy dread. Despite his ability to see ghosts he has never believed in any other kind of psychic ability. Still. He suddenly has a terrible premonition that whatever small existence they have managed to eke out for themselves is coming to an end.

“I remember. I remember what I was working on when I died.”

Clarke is on her feet, resting a reassuring hand on Wick’s arm.

Bellamy wonders if he can feel it. Feels dully jealous through the fog settling over him.

“I was in engineering with your Dad. I’ve been feeling this urge to go there lately. I couldn’t put my finger on why but your Dad’s been there late every night this week. He was working on something and I looked at his notes and all of the sudden it all came flooding back. How could I forget?”

Wick rakes one hand through his hair in distress and Bellamy fights the urge to try to shake him into getting to the point. He knows it won’t help, settles for snapping at Wick instead.

“Forget what?”

Clarke shoots him a look but Wick takes the bait and continues.

“The Ark’s oxygen system is failing. It will be unable to sustain human life within a year. Probably less. Months.”

Clarke reels back from Wick as though his words were a physical assault.

Bellamy closes his eyes. Feels the hopelessness he knows too well wash over him. It feels as familiar as it does painful. He doesn’t doubt Wick’s truthfulness, not when he has been waiting for the other shoe to drop for as long as he and Clarke have been doing whatever they are doing. This fear felt awful but it also felt right.

By the time he opens his eyes, Clarke has recovered and is peppering Wick with questions, her eyes full of resolve to find a solution.

Brave Princess.

“No, no, you don’t get it. 70 years ago it was a glitch I could have fixed. I was fixing it when I died. But it’s been too long, the parts that could have been replaced then wouldn’t save it now. It’s too old and the problem’s been missed for too long. This is it.”

“How did no one catch this in the 70 years since you died?”

Bellamy’s blunt question earns a small smile from Wick that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Clarke’s dad is the first genius that’s held the job. Since me.”

“My dad will think of something.” Clarke insists. “Has he figured out there’s a problem yet?”

Wick is already shaking his head.

“He’s close. He knows something’s wrong, that's why he’s been poking around all week. I sped things up, circled the relevant passages in his notes when he wasn’t looking. I’d bet by now he has the full picture.”

“Then we’ll be ok.”

Clarke’s hopeful tone squeezes at Bellamy’s heart.

She says “we” as though she wasn’t already dead. As if her life hasn’t  already been stolen from her.

“Clarke...I’m telling you it’s too late for that. I didn’t do it so your dad could fix it. I did it so he could warn people. It’s the best I could do.”

Before Clarke can say anything else Wick freezes, his mouth falling open as he stares at something over Bellamy’s shoulder.

Bellamy turns and sees that a door has appeared on the wall where there shouldn’t be one.

He panics for a moment, thinking wildly that it belongs to Clarke, that she’s leaving him and then Wick’s voice breaks through his anxious thoughts.

“Is that...is that for me?”

Bellamy turns back to the two ghosts. Of course it was for Wick. After all this time. He was finally getting out while the getting was good.

“You found your unsolved business, Wick. Even though you refused to look for it. It’s for you.”

Clarke looks terrified yet fascinated.

She hugs Wick, latches her arms around his neck and squeezes tightly.

“I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too. Good luck with everything.”

Clarke releases Wick and he steps towards his door, pausing next to Bellamy.

“If she asks later, my face was very stoic and brave during this moment, ok?”

Bellamy tries to chuckle but the sound dies in his throat. Settles for a half smile which seems to satisfy Wick.

Then Wick is opening the door and passing through and they are left with the wreckage he brought them.

—————

Clarke disappears for days at a time.

Bellamy knows she is shadowing her dad, hoping she will learn something that will prove Wick wrong or give them a hint as to how they can avoid the fate he described.

Bellamy doesn’t know what she thinks they could do with the information if she miraculously found it.

For his part he spends his days mechanically cleaning and fantasizing about breaking O out of the skybox so they can spend their last days together.

Both plans are equally hopeless but neither of them is prepared to accept reality just yet.

And then reality comes for them.

“Bellamy! Bell!”

Bellamy shoots up in his bed, waking from a nightmare directly into another one.

Because Clark is in front of him, face screwed up in agony.

“Earlier I heard my dad tell my mom about the oxygen system failure. He was recording a message, he was going to leak it, tell everyone what’s happening. He and my mom argued, she wanted him to keep it quiet. He said he couldn’t do that. She must have told Jaha...they’re...oh Bell, they’re floating him. Right now in the middle of the night so no one asks questions.”

“Clarke…”

Bellamy doesn’t know what to say. If anyone should know how she feels, it’s him.

But even if his mother had been floated indirectly because of his actions, even if that guilt did eat him alive daily, he hadn’t consciously made the decision to take O to the dance knowing the outcome.

For her mother to know the cost of telling Jaha would be her husband’s life and doing it anyway …

“Come on!” Clarke is still talking, her voice urgent. “They’re doing it right now we have to go.”

Then she winks out of existence, not waiting for Bellamy to follow her.

Bellamy swears but leaps from his bed and dresses in record time.

He sprints through the Ark’s empty hallways praying he doesn’t run into a guard on the way.

By some miracle he makes it to the corridor leading to what Wick used to call the “float zone” in some attempt at morbid humor.

In reality it’s just an airlock, intended to be used for space walks and repairs not tossing citizens to their deaths. It was the council that had turned it into an execution chamber generations ago.

His mother had died here and now Clarke’s dad...Clarke.

Bellamy stops and peers around the corner, spots Jaha and Clarke’s parents, her father in handcuffs. There are also two guards. And Clarke.

She’s bouncing between her father and her mother while Jaha reads the crimes Clarke’s dad has been convicted of.

He’s not listening to Jaha though. All he can hear is Clarke screaming into her mother’s face.

“How could you? How could you?”

She somehow catches sight of Bellamy and abruptly stops screaming. She disappears and reappears right in front of him.

“We have to stop them. Bellamy they can’t float my dad. They can’t.”

Bellamy doesn’t know what to say to the girl before him, her ever present shimmer blinding him momentarily, her blue eyes staring blearily into his when his vision clears.

Even though she’s been through so much, has literally died , he feels like he needs to protect her innocence. Somehow doesn’t want to be the one to tell her they can float her father. They will float her father. And there’s nothing either of them can do about it. He already had to be the one to tell her she was dead. Not this too. It isn’t fair.

“Clarke,” He whispers brokenly. “It’s after curfew if they even see me down here after hours they could float me too. And if they’re willing to let your father die to keep this secret they wouldn’t give a second thought to me.”

He thinks for a moment she will argue but instead she just collapses weakly against his chest. He instantly wraps his arms around her, one hand coming up to hold her head where it rests at the base of his neck.

“I can’t watch. Will you...could you? I want someone who cares to be there for him.”

Bellamy nods, knowing she can feel it.

She watched his mother get floated. Now he will watch her father get floated. Were they cursed to just bear witness to each other’s pain?

He leans out slightly to peer around the corner again just as Jaha presses the button and Jake Griffin is sucked out into the coldness of space.

Bellamy must stiffen when it happens because Clark gives a sob and burrows further into his neck.

Bellamy shushes her gently.

“I’ve got you, Princess. I’ve got you.”

And he does.

He holds her while Jake Griffin’s ghost strokes Clarke’s hair, kisses her temple, tells her to forgive her mother. Nods at Bellamy. A message of love and trust and responsibility passing between them.

Because Bellamy understands in that moment why Jake can leave. He did his part. His unfinished business would never have been the Ark.

It would have been Clarke.

So Bellamy holds her while Jake leaves through his door.

He holds her while her world crashes down around her in a way he understands all too well.

It’s not until much later that he realizes Clarke is solid in his arms.

—————

When Clarke touches him he can’t feel her exactly.

Not the way he would have had she been alive.

There’s no weight to her, no pressure where her hand presses down on his arm, no warmth generated when she rubs her thumb over the back of his hand.

But there is nonetheless a solidness, a cold tingling sensation, a something he feels whenever they touch.

Which they do a lot.

After her dad is floated they spend 24 hours in his quarters, lying in his bed, her head on his chest while she explores what it means to touch him now that she can.

For his part Bellamy stubbornly refuses to initiate touching her. It’s not that he doesn’t trust himself or that such a thing would even be possible... he just is afraid of breaking her.

It seems like a stupid concept, even to him, but he is terrified that this small blessing will be taken away. That even this scrap of happiness is more than they are allowed.

That she will shatter under his touch and drift away.

Clarke seems to have no such reservations.

She runs a finger along his cheek, following the trail of his freckles over his nose and onto his other cheek.

“You’re beautiful, Bellamy Blake.” She whispers and his heart cracks.

He reminds himself that she is dead. That she is in love with someone who isn’t him.

He can’t bring himself to care. Wants to be selfish for once.

Thinks about saying it to her for the second time. Chickens out.

“I get that a lot.”

She laughs and shoves his shoulder, a rush of cold shooting through him.

The smile falls from her face.

“You have to tell everyone, Bellamy. Finish what my dad started. Let everyone know what’s coming. They deserve to know.”

And there it is. The stab in the chest to remind him happiness isn’t something he gets to keep for long.

“Clarke...I can’t.”

She reels back at his words, the sudden few inches between them feeling like a distance he may never be able to cross.

“They’ll float me, Clarke. Of course they would float me.”

“So what, we just give up?”

“There’s nothing we can do. Everyone’s going to die anyway. We can’t fix it. All I can hope for is that I figure out a way to see O before...before. That’s all I’ve got now.”

“So you get to say goodbye but no one else does.” Clarke says flatly. “Because you’re a coward.”

“Clarke…”

“Then I’ll do it. Write it on all the walls.”

“Clarke as far as they know the only people who know about the flaw in the system are Jaha and your mom. If you do that he’ll just float your mom too. I know you’re angry with her but you don’t want that.”

“You don’t know what I want!” Clarke shouts, tears building but not falling from her eyes.

“I do, you want to do the right thing. You’re good, Clarke. You’re so, so good. But that’s not always enough.”

“I hate you.”

Clarke seems to surprise herself with the words but she doesn’t take them back, just blinks out of the room and leaves Bellamy alone to cry for this place that never gave him a chance to be the good guy.

—————

He doesn’t see Clarke for a month.

He tries to catch a glimpse of her, loitering in all the places she used to hang out, pretending to mop while really shadowing Wells or her mother.

None of it matters.

Wherever Clarke is she doesn’t want to be found.

He sees traces of her though.

The lights in the Ark have taken to flickering. The metal panels of the walls shifting and settling against themselves, groaning like a human moan of pain.

He sees the concerned looks on the remaining council member’s faces, knows they probably think other systems are failing on top of the oxygen malfunction.

He knows better.

He knows the Ark is echoing Clarke’s pain.

He hopes she is still visiting O but he has no way of asking.

Sometimes he talks to her in his quarters at night even though he knows she’s not there. And O. And his mom.

He remembers his mother stroking the table in the place of a lost girl’s head. He bends over the cold metal surface pressing his cheek against the spot and cries.

He cries for his mother who loved so much, against all reason. He cries for Octavia who spent her life hiding under the floor only to be locked up in a new cage. He cries for Clarke who wanted so badly to save everyone but hadn’t even been able to save herself.

And he cries for himself. The last man standing in a Greek tragedy.

—————

When Shumway, his old boss from the guard, approaches him about the 100 project he can hardly bring himself to be surprised.

Of course a group of people willing to float their own loved ones would not hesitate to send 100 juvenile offenders to the ground to die if they thought it would buy them a few extra months of oxygen.

Shumway brushes away his demands that they stop this somehow or smuggle his sister out of solitary.

He offers only to get Bellamy a seat on the dropship so his sister doesn’t have to die alone. Briefly mentions the idea that the earth could be survivable sooner than they thought but neither of them believe the words.

There’s a price. Of course there always is.

Give O one night of freedom, lose her forever. Save his own life, lose Clarke forever.

This time it’s his soul he’ll leave behind.

Shumway presses the gun into his hand. Orders him to shoot Jaha. Bellamy takes it.

His sister. His responsibility.

—————

The next week passes in a blur.

Bellamy thinks he must have eaten at some point, most likely slept too. He doesn’t remember doing either.

He stares at the drawing of his mother and Octavia and Clarke until he can no longer stand to do so.

Then he puts on the stolen guard uniform Shumway had provided him with.

He shoots Jaha.

Tucks the gun away in its holster with shaking hands.

Ducks into the first empty corridor he comes to and empties the contents of his stomach.

It’s almost time.

He knows he needs to get to the dropship, knows the launch time is in less than an hour, knows if he misses it all of this was for nothing.

He also knows he needs to try to see Clarke one more time.

—————

He heads back to his own quarters because he can’t think where else to look. His head is spinning, and he knows she won’t be there, hasn’t been there for weeks, but he needs to check anyway.

He steps through the door and stops short like he walked face first into a wall. His ears ring.

She’s there.

He thinks he’s imagining her at first, curled up on his bed right where she was the last time he saw her.

Then she looks up and her face is a mess of tears and heartbreak and he knows she’s real. This isn’t what his brain would have conjured in this moment. He would have taken the easy way out. He knows this about himself.

Then she’s up and in his arms and he’s holding her almost feeling it.

The lights flicker wildly.

“It was me.” She sobs. “The lights. The walls. I was trying to tell myself something. It was me.”

“I know.” Bellamy runs his hand over the back of her head, holds her closer against him, closer than he deserves.

She pulls back.

“I didn’t fall. I didn’t fall, Bellamy. It was Finn. He pushed me. He murdered me.”

Bellamy didn’t think anything could surprise him anymore, didn’t think anything could hurt him anymore, but this…

“Clarke…”

Her name is an open wound between them.

She pushes into it first. Of course. His brave princess.

“You’d never know it because he’s so sweet looking but he has a temper. He always liked to go to the observation station. I wanted to surprise him. But he was there with someone else, another girl, Raven. They were...kissing...I...I hid around the corner, waited until she left. I confronted him, told him I’d tell her he was dating both of us. He got so angry. He shoved me so hard and I fell and...and…”

“Clarke…”

Bellamy is useless. Can’t think of comforting words through blinding rage.

“I followed him around, Bellamy. I thought he was mourning. Turns out he’s just been bored. The other girl, Raven she’s in the skybox, some kind of unauthorized space walk. I’ve been walking past her every time I went to see O and I’ve been following him around and I forgot . How could I forget being murdered?”

“You saw what happened with Wick.” Bellamy tries to wipe away her most recent tears with his thumbs before he realizes he can’t do that for her either. “It’s not your fault.”

“I’m so sorry I left you.” Clarke says suddenly.

“That wasn’t your fault either.”

Clarke shakes her head. Always so hard on herself. Always giving, and giving and giving to everyone around her and still beating herself up for not doing more.

“I was so angry with you for leaving. I don’t want to feel like that anymore.” Bellamy tells her. Finds that it’s true.

She’s so good and so full of empathy and Bellamy doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve any of it.

But he’s selfish.

And he will try to take something now, something he never let himself have when he actually deserved it.

“Clarke, they’re sending the kids in the skybox to the ground. They don’t know if it’s survivable but it will buy them some extra oxygen either way. They’re sending O, Clarke. And I’m going with her. Come with us.”

“What? Bellamy the radiation...they can’t. They’ll kill you all! What about everyone else, we can’t…”

“We can.” Bellamy cuts her off, his eyes finding hers and finding enough in them to keep going. “My sister will be on that ship. I will be too. Whatever happens we’ll be together and that’s better. Come with us. Come with me.”

“Bellamy we don’t even know if I can leave the Ark.”

The alarm on the guard watch he’s wearing sounds, echoing painfully in the small space.

Bellamy pushes the button to silence the sound, takes a step back and holds his hand out to Clarke.

“Let’s find out.”

She hesitates for only a moment before taking his hand.

Something swells in his heart. The old Bellamy would have called it hope. The new Bellamy labels it only the next thing the universe will try to take from him.

But he’ll fight like hell.

—————

It doesn’t take long.

They arrive at the dropship amidst chaos.

Alarms are sounding and guards are rushing around shouting into their handsets.

They’re still loading the last few of the 100, the teens resisting, not knowing they very well could be getting the better end of the stick with a quick death.

He hears Kane, the head of security, a member of the council, shouting orders from across the bay.

“The chancellor has been shot. All units not loading the prisoners take up positions around all council members. The Ark is in lockdown as of now. No one leaves their quarters.”

Clarke gasps. Bellamy reflexively squeezes her hand still gripped in his, gets only a flood of cold tingles in response.

Shumway is standing by the door of the dropship.

He catches sight of Bellamy across the bay. Nods.

“Come on, Clarke. We’ve got to go.”

“Bellamy…”

Clarke reaches a shaky hand and points at the wall just to their right.

Bellamy follows the line of her arm, let’s his gaze trail down her delicate finger until he finally sees what she’s pointing at.

There on the wall is a door.

It’s the kind of door he instantly knows is out of place.

All the ghosts he knows of on the Ark have always received some variation of a metal door, the kind they have on the ship, the only kind any of them have ever seen in person.

This door is made of a material he knows only by name and description, not first hand experience.

Wood.

It is painted red. It has a golden knob.

It looks inviting. It is beautiful.

Of course it is . It is Clarke’s door.

It is Clarke’s door.

“Clarke, your door. You have to go.”

He doesn’t let himself consider saying anything else. Decides to let himself try to be the hero one last time.

Decides to try to be good like his mother taught him, like O thought he was, like Clarke…

Clarke is staring at the door but she isn’t going through it.

Bellamy glances back at the dropship, Shumway is already looking at him, gestures for him to come, mouths something that looks a lot like now or never and Kane is yelling to get that dropship launched and…

“I can’t.” Clarke is trembling. “Not until I know you and O are ok. I can’t leave like this, not now.”

“Clarke, you don’t have a choice.”

Bellamy doesn’t care if anyone hears him, doesn’t care if they think he’s talking to himself. He only cares that Clarke is good and she got her door and she needs to go.

“If you miss it...I don’t know if it will ever come back again.”

“But you don’t know that it won’t?” Clarke asks, her voice taking on that determined tone that makes him fill with hope and dread and...something else all at once.

“Clarke…”

“I do have a choice, Bellamy. And I’m not leaving until I know you’re ok.”

Bellamy gives in. Let’s himself be selfish again. Knows deep down that even though he got his mother floated, even though he’s murdered the chancellor, this is what he will always hate himself for most.

But he does it anyway.

Tightens his grip on an invisible girl. Runs with her into the dropship just before the door closes.

Straps himself into his seat and closes his eyes and holds Clarke Griffin’s hand.

—————

They make it.

They survive the landing. He reunites with Octavia.

She is the first to step foot on the ground in hundreds of years, and the earth is beautiful and his heart sings Clarke is here, Clarke is here, Clarke is here .

Things are good for about five minutes before he realizes what the bracelets are for, that the Ark is monitoring them and will follow once they realize their specimens aren’t dead.

They’ll kill him when they get there.

But worse they’ll tell Octavia what he really is. They’ll tell Clarke. Even if they don’t know they’re doing it.

So he swaggers around.

Makes a speech.

Whatever the hell we want.

And the bracelets start coming off and Clarke stops talking to him and none of it matters.

He doesn’t deserve her anyway.

————-—

He sees Clarke talk Octavia into taking some others to look for Mount Weather and the supplies they’ve been promised they will find there.

He tries to convince his sister it’s too dangerous but in the end he lets her go.

Picks up the pieces when they return bloody and down one teen. Goes on the rescue mission to get him back when he feels Clarke’s glare burning through the back of his neck.

Follows her grudgingly given medical advice to try to save the kid’s life. Doesn’t let himself feel disappointment when she vanishes without saying anything more.

—————

They aren’t alone.

Octavia makes friends with a grounder girl, a fierce fighter who tackles him with enough force to knock the air from his lungs before Murphy and Miller drag her off of him.

They tie her up.

Try to make her tell them the antidote to the poison on the arrows the grounders keep shooting their people full of.

In the end O poisons herself to get the answer and Bellamy can’t understand how they got here.

How Octavia is looking at him with something that is not quite hatred but it’s close.

“You got me locked up. You got mom killed!”

“My life ended the day you were born.”

Words they can’t take back even when apologies eventually follow.

How Clarke looks at him with a blankness that’s almost worse than Octavia’s anger.

Then Finn comes down.

—————

They see the pod fall from the sky. Bellamy tells everyone they’ll find it at first light, slips away in the dark and gets there first.

When he sees it’s Finn a blinding rage fills him, hot and scorching and threatening to erupt from him and burn everything to ash.

He thinks he’s dead. Doesn’t check, but he isn’t moving and Bellamy is grateful. Grateful that he doesn’t have to decide if he will take another life or not.

Even as he knows he’s taking hundreds as he speaks. Just more distantly.

He cuts the radio from the pod, tosses it in the river and makes his peace with the latest evil he commits.

Then Clarke is there and she’s talking to him, telling him every stupid thing he ever did was to protect his sister, that’s who he is and she knows he doesn’t want everyone on the Ark to die.

He helps her find the radio. It’s dead because of course it isn’t that easy. He doesn’t get to be the good guy. He isn’t the good guy.

They send up flares to signal to the Ark that they’re alive.

Stand and watch them light up the sky, not knowing they will fall like missiles on a grounder village.

Clarke asks if they can wish on this type of shooting star.

He says he has no idea what he would even wish for.

It’s a lie.

He closes his eyes.

Pictures he and Clarke in his quarters. The year they were happy. As happy as he suspects they ever will be.

Her finger tracing the constellations of his freckles.

His heart in her hands.

—————

Finn isn’t dead.

Raven embraces him and Miller has to hold Bellamy back and no one knows why Bellamy has suddenly lost it and is trying to kill their latest arrival.

No one but Clarke.

She makes him promise not to hurt Finn.

At first he refuses. But Clarke reminds him the kids need him. He’s their leader. If he kills someone they will banish him at best and then they’re on their own. They won’t survive.

O won’t survive.

“So he just gets away with it?”

“He’s not the only murderer down here. They’re all criminals, remember?”

“It’s not the same!”

She knows what he’s not saying. Of course.

“Killing him won’t bring me back.”

Clarke puts her hand on his, the familiar tingles almost painful.

“Keep an eye on him but be smart. You’ve got such a big heart, Bellamy. People follow you, you inspire them. But the only way to make sure we survive is if you use this too.”

She taps a finger gently against his temple.

Bellamy’s heart swells with a dark approximation of hope, the only variety he gets to feel anymore.

“I’ve got you for that.”

—————

And he does.

What’s left of the Ark crashs to the ground, bringing adults and complications with it.

Everyone knows he tried to kill Jaha. But he failed. And they’re on earth. And “if you need forgiveness, I’ll give that to you” and he keeps going.

The grounder attack.

Mount Weather.

More fighting with the grounders, always more, more, more.

And she is there for all of it.

To most he is alone. Always a step removed from his new friends, his fragile patched together family, even his sister.

He is the one who all the impossible choices fall to.

And he makes them.

Crumbles a little more inside every time, finding himself further and further from the boy on the Ark.

He bears it so they don’t have to.

But he doesn’t bear it alone.

Clarke is always there to talk strategy, debate and argue and remind him who he is. Who she thinks he is anyway. And when they both realize they have to abandon that to save their people she reminds him that who they are and who they need to be to survive are two very different things. And she makes that survivable for him.

She makes life survivable for him.

He sees what it costs her.

Her glow fades a little.

Her door doesn’t come.

But he’s selfish.

And he hopes it never does.

Because he’s not the good guy.

He says this to her once, devoid of context just needing her to hear it.

“Maybe there are no good guys.”

He wants to tell her she’s wrong, that she is good but the words die in his throat.

He’s not sure it’s entirely true anymore. Thinks he has let her sink into the mud with him for too long to be entirely sure.

And that’s his greatest crime.

—————

It’s all hard and painful and exhausting but survivable until it’s not.

Octavia falls in love with Finn.

She’s been drifting away from Bellamy for a long time, growing angrier and angrier. He can see it.

He understands.

Aside from him and Clarke she’s the only one who has to see the daily evidence of the monstrous things they’ve done to survive.

At least a few ghosts gather outside the gate of Arkadia every day. Grounders they burned. Citizens from Mount Weather. Some faces they recognize. Some they don’t.

Bearing witness.

Octavia sees them just as much as he does except she never got to decide what happened to them.

Never stood with Clarke, hand on a lever, together , and made a choice.

He thought that was a kindness. He knows Octavia sees it as a betrayal.

So when she starts acting happy , bouncing around the camp, smiling at him occasionally, he can almost believe he’s gotten a lucky break.

Maybe he’s getting his sister back.

He knows now she fell in love with Finn.

Had been sneaking off with him for months.

Bellamy didn’t know and Clarke didn’t know but Raven figures it out.

Confronts him in public and Finn denies it until he can’t anymore, until he lashes out and shoves her right there in front of everyone and Bellamy’s vision goes red and he’s punching, and he’s punching, and he’s punching and he’s dragging Finn to the gate of Arkadia and…

Raven’s fine, has only toppled over into the dirt at all because of her bad leg and everyone is looking at Finn like they don’t know him but mostly they’re looking at Bellamy like they don’t know him and…

“Bell! You can’t banish someone for one shove. This isn’t the Ark. How could you? I love him!”

Octavia is shouting, crying but he ignores her.

Practically throws a bleeding, semi-conscious Finn outside and slams the gate behind him.

Kane is there.

Demanding an explanation.

“He’s hurt girls before. Fatally .” Bellamy grits out unsure if the husk in his voice is from rage or barely contained tears. “He’ll do it again. Please .”

He doesn’t know what Kane sees in his eyes but it must be enough.

“You saw this yourself?”

Bellamy nods.

He saw it written all over Clarke’s face every time she had to pass Finn in the camp, everyone’s favorite fun guy, a murderer who couldn’t be more popular. While no one even knew she was there.

That’s what she bore for her people. For him.

No more.

Kane believes him. He still locks Bellamy up for a week for taking justice into his own hands but he doesn’t let Finn back in.

Clarke shows up on the second day.

Tells him they found Finn’s body. It was some kind of animal.

He allows one shaky breath to shudder it’s way out of his lungs.

It’s over.

Except it’s not.

Clarke tells him Octavia is gone. She left after they found Finn, snuck out into the woods.

Clarke followed her. Tried to tell her that Finn had killed her, that her brother was protecting her but Octavia couldn’t hear it.

Wanted to know why Clarke had never said anything on the Ark.

Thinks Clarke is jealous that Octavia almost got to have what Clarke couldn’t have anymore.

Curses Clarke right along with her brother.

When Clarke persists Octavia explodes.

“You’re not in charge of me, Clarke! And that’s a good thing because when you and Bellamy are in charge people die.”

Clarke still followed her. Knew that Bellamy would need to know. She did that for him.

Octavia made it to her friend, made it to the grounders, they took her in, she’ll be alright, his sister is alright…

But he isn’t.

His sister. His responsibility.

He protected her. And she hates him for it.

And he can’t blame her. She’s hating him for the wrong thing but he deserves to be hated so none of it really matters.

He doesn’t say any of this but Clarke knows.

She always knows.

She wraps her arms around him in the cell and he can almost feel it.

Lets her hold him until he drifts off.

He dreams they’re back on the Ark.

Octavia is under the floor again and he can’t remember how to let her out.

—————

Octavia returns in war paint.

Her hair is bound in grounder braids, a heavy sword hanging at her side, her eyes hard.

She has brought a grounder with her, a healer she says.

“A witch,” Hisses Murphy who spent time as a grounder prisoner, but no one is much in the habit of listening to Murphy.

Bellamy sees the coldness in her gaze, sees the way it doesn’t match the smile on her face when she reaches out to hug him.

He sees it but he doesn’t really let himself see it.

Like the ghostly glow around Clarke when she first appeared in their quarters he sees it but doesn’t take it in.

He sees what he wants to see.

He sees his little sister. Loving him. Forgiving him.

He’s selfish.

He opens the gates.

—————

He only finds out what happens next from Octavia when he visits her in her cell.

She had taken down three guards and two civilians before Murphy had managed to shock lash her from behind.

He remembers Clarke trying to shock lash a guard to save her once.

Clarke . He can’t find Clarke.

The witch is alive in a different cell.

Octavia is alive. But she’s not his sister anymore.

He can’t hate her, even now. He finds a way to blame himself for even this.

O was born into a world that gave her no chance to be the good guy.

He thought he could protect her from that.

He was wrong.

“Where’s Clarke, O? What did you do to her?”

Octavia grins.

“Sent her to hell where she belongs, big brother.”

She almost gleefully tells him how she had convinced Clarke that they could help her finally move on.

That the so called healer could make her door appear and give her the peace she longed for.

That she could see her dad again.

And when she still hesitated she told her that it’s the only way Bellamy would ever have a real chance at happiness.

That he couldn’t move on with his life until he let go of the guilt of causing Clarke to miss her door.

That he didn’t need her anymore and was ready for a new life. An easier life.

Bellamy sinks to the floor as Octavia describes how Clarke had changed her mind in the end.

Said she needed more time. Said she needed to say goodbye. To him.

How they had opened a hole in the world anyway and sucked her into whatever comes next screaming and clawing at the floor all the way.

“Why? Why, O? Why?”

Bellamy sobs, searching for the sister he held moments after she was born, searching for the sister he had named, searching for the person all of this has been for and…

“Because I wanted you to know what it feels like to lose.”

Bellamy almost laughs bitterly at the absurdity of her statement.

Hasn’t he lost everything? His life when she was born, and his mother, and finally now even Octavia herself...but he doesn’t laugh.

He doesn’t even argue with her.

Because she’s right.

He’s lost and lost and lost.

But none of it felt like this.

Clarke .

“She was dead all along, Bell. You just never accepted that.”

Bellamy lashes out, lunging forward and rattling the bars, feeling a sick satisfaction when his sister jumps back.

Clarke would say Octavia is right. Cruel, but right.

Clarke would tell him it was time for him to move on.

She’s not around to lecture him.

He goes a different way.

—————

At first he thinks he’s losing his mind.

He’s been drinking a lot, the fact that Monty’s moonshine causes him physical pain as he drinks it just a bonus to the hazy reality it allows him to slip into.

He’s in his new room in what’s left of the Ark. Arkadia, their fragile new existence on the ground.

The one that means little to him now that both Octavia and Clarke are lost to him.

He finds that his most recent bottle of moonshine is empty, is contemplating if he can stand long enough to find more, when the radio in the corner crackles to life.

“Bellamy?”

It’s Clarke’s voice.

It can’t be, but it is.

He studiously ignores it.

He can’t take his mind taunting him right now.

But the voice only grows more insistent.

“Bellamy? Bell are you there? I don’t know how long I have.”

And that’s all it takes.

He can’t ignore it when she says his name like that, not when he can picture the exact look on her face that usually accompanies it.

He stumbles to his feet and lurches across the room.

He grabs the handset.

“Clarke?”

“Bell!”

The relief in her voice cuts through his belief that this is a hallucination.

His imagination isn’t like this. The Clarke he conjures more likely to remind him that it’s his fault he lost her than to sound relieved at his voice.

“Clarke, where are you?”

“I don’t know exactly. It’s like a holding space until they decide where they want us to go. There’s all these rooms and I can hear whispering. They’re really angry I didn’t use my door.”

Purgatory.

Bellamy’s mind is filled with images from the myths his mother had read to him. 3 headed dogs and rivers to cross and beautiful girls tricked into hell.

“Bell...I’m scared.”

He shuts his eyes as though that will ward off the fear in her voice. Opens them, grips the handset resolutely, fills his voice with the certainty he actually feels for once.

“Clarke? I’m coming to get you, ok? Stay strong. I’m coming to get you.”

“Hurry.”

He hurries.

—————

He would have hurried more if not for the intervention of his friends.

When he tries to storm the cell where they’re keeping the grounder witch, Miller is on duty.

He takes one look at the half drunk, all fury Bellamy Blake lurching towards him and calls in reinforcements.

Monty, Harper and Raven turn up right away and Bellamy realizes he has no chance of overpowering them all.

He realizes his only chance is to convince them. Convince them that Clarke is a ghost, that she’s in trouble, that he can still save her.

Maybe.

Surprisingly it is Raven who comes around first.

When he had thrown Finn out of camp she had hated him. Shoves and cheating were one thing but he had still been the closest thing to family she had for most of her life.

But over time she let Bellamy explain.

He had not admitted that he only knew because Clarke’s ghost had told him but he had told Raven that Finn was responsible for her death.

And eventually she believed him.

She had seen his temper, felt how it could swing like a pendulum between love and rage at a moment's notice.

“I thought he loved me.”

“Maybe he did in his way. As much as he was capable.”

“Not the way I wanted to be loved.”

She could have felt guilty that she didn’t know what Finn was. Guilty that he had killed another girl on her watch. That she put the feeling of security his familiarity gave her over her instincts that had been screaming he wasn’t right.

It’s what Bellamy would have done.

But Raven gets angry instead. Let’s that anger fill her and propel her to keep going even fiercer than before.

So when Bellamy explains that Clarke isn’t gone, not really, that they can still save her. Sort of. He hopes.

She doesn’t hesitate.

“Hell yeah, let’s do it.”

The others follow along with various levels of acceptance. But they follow him.

He feels a swell of affection for them. This ragtag band of child criminals who had survived not because of those who should have protected them but in spite of them.

They stand guard while Bellamy slips into the cell.

“Bellamy Blake. Wanheda, commander of death. I knew you would come.”

—————

“It was your people who gave me that name.”

Bellamy approaches the witch who is still chained to the wall.

“Can’t say I ever cared for it much.”

“It was given by those who never saw you, of that I am sure. Commander of death? More like the haunted. And now your little friend is gone. What will you do, commander?”

Bellamy doesn’t hesitate.

“Go after her.”

The witch laughs.

“You would not say so if you knew what waited for you.”

Bellamy kneels in front of her, his heart pounding but his words sure.

“I’ll take everything you’ve got. Death. God. The Devil. None of it frightens me.”

The witch examines his face and apparently finds something there that pleases her.

She smiles.

“It will.”

She brings the hand not chained to the wall up and begins chanting, a ball of glowing light erupting from her outstretched hand.

Bellamy has only a moment to take in the spectacle before the ground beneath his feet opens up.

He falls.

—————

Bellamy wakes up flat on his back in a nondescript hallway, doors lining the walls on both sides.

A girl leans over him, her light brown hair hanging down like a curtain.

He sits up with a start and the girl stands straight, a grin adorning her face.

“Took you long enough, gorgeous. I’ve been bored as...hell...waiting for you.”

Bellamy scrambles to his feet, glancing around nervously, half expecting monsters or demons to jump out and demand he do battle with them.

“Oh calm down.”

The girl smirks.

“That was just a little purgatory joke. No need to be alarmed.”

“Who are you?”

She looks to be a few years younger than him, a pale blue dress, shoulder length brown hair, green eyes.

“I’m Annie. You’re Bellamy. There’s that done.”

He doesn’t recognize her and she isn’t what he was expecting. Or he does recognize her but can’t place her. No he’s sure he does, but…

“Have we met before?”

“5C.”

“What does that mean?”

“Oh you’re asking the wrong questions, Bellamy. Isn’t there something else you should be asking right now?”

“Where’s Clarke?”

She clicks her tongue, points at him in confirmation.

“That’s the one. She’s around. First we’ve got to sort through some memories I’ve gathered up just for you.”

“Memories.”

Bellamy glances around, takes in the doors again, fights the dread that threatens to rise up and drown him.

He thinks of Clarke and a sense of calm settles over him.

“Let’s get this over with. Do I just choose a door?”

“You catch on quick. Brains and great hair. What a man!”

Bellamy ignores her comments, turns to the closest door, reaches for the handle but hesitates at the last second.

He steps back.

“Is the brave Bellamy Blake afraid? Come on now, don’t ruin my image of you. I’m nursing a little crush I don’t mind saying.”

Bellamy chooses a different door. Grips the knob, turns and…

He’s back on the Ark.

He recognizes the room. The drab walls, the large desk, the model of Earth perched on the edge.

It’s the chancellor’s office.

“Oh my. Do you think he’s had an accident?”

Bellamy looks down and fights the urge to get sick.

Jaha is lying on the floor, seemingly lifeless, blood quickly soaking through his shirt over his stomach, pooling beneath him.

“I didn’t kill him.”

“You certainly tried.”

Bellamy swallows, looks away then forces himself to look again.

“He lives. He forgave me.”

“Is that how it works? Someone just says those words and your slate is wiped clean? Hmm, maybe it is. Wouldn’t have made much difference in your case though, would it? This was just the beginning.”

Bellamy flinches.

He knows what’s coming now, understands what this place is and everything in him wants to run, wants to claw his way back to the world and forget everything.

Except that would require forgetting about Clarke.

Unacceptable.

“Enough. Let’s get a move on. I need to find Clarke.”

“All right, all right. Bossy. I have to say I’m a little disappointed we missed the you from this day. I do so love a man in uniform!”

They exit back to the hallway and Bellamy strides immediately to another door.

Not the one that had nearly singed his hand when he approached it, thrumming with voices he couldn’t quite make out.

Not that one.

But he does choose a door, twists the knob, steps through and suddenly they’re in the middle of a battle.

They’re back at the dropship, grounders surging up on them from every direction, crazed eyes and battle cries filling his senses.

One raises his sword and swings toward Annie’s head.

“Look out!”

His cry of warning only earns him a laugh from his guide.

“My hero! They can’t hurt me, Bellamy. I’m not really here. Her on the other hand…”

She gestures toward the ground where the body of one of the 100 lies, eyes open, unseeing. Jessie. She had only been 14.

“I didn’t want this.”

Bellamy wants to claw out his eyes, wants to stop seeing this all again, wants all of this to stop.

“But you told them to stand and fight didn’t you? Told them they could win? We’re grounders too, right?”

“I didn’t have a choice. We were under attack!”

She steps closer to him, jabs a finger into his chest, that smug smile still present on her face.

“Exactly! You were just a victim.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Oh, almost time for the barbecue. This is my favorite part. 300 grounders at once, now that is impressive.”

“Stop it!”

“Too bad some of your own got caught in the blast. But that’s just how it goes right? Bellamy Blake champion of the many.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Isn’t that what you’re always doing? Making tough choices to save as many people as possible, even if a few die along the way. Only...that’s what Jaha was doing. And you shot him.”

“Shut up!”

They’re back in the hallway.

Annie shakes her head.

“No need to get sensitive, Bell. These are your memories after all.”

“Don’t call me that, nobody calls me that…”

“Except for Octavia and Clarke? I have to admit, I’m hurt. I guess we’re not as close as I thought.”

Bellamy resists the urge to slam her into the wall, to wipe the smirk off her face.

He has to find Clarke, he promised he would and this girl, this girl he can’t place...

“How do I know you?”

“5C.”

“Why do you keep saying that? Is this all a joke to you?”

“I love jokes. Why did the grounder walk into the bar? Oh, I always forget the punchlines though. Oh well. Weren’t you looking for something?”

Clarke.

Bellamy turns away from the girl and yanks open the only remaining door other than...the other one.

They’re in the ravine with the dead grounder army he and Pike had led the attack on. The bodies stretch as far as Bellamy can see and he feels sick at the sight.

“Oh dear, what happened here?”

“They were on their way to surround Arkadia. We had to strike first.”

“Of course you had to. You had to protect all those people back home. All those innocent lives.”

“Yes.”

“Octavia and Clarke didn’t think much of your choice though, did they?”

“They forgave me. They understood. Eventually...they…”

“It’s all about forgiveness with you, isn’t it?”

She walks around gingerly, hopping over bodies and eying him all the while.

“As long as someone’s around to forgive you after you do something terrible you can keep going. But the things you need forgiveness for do tend to pile up, don’t they?”

“You don’t understand.”

“Oh, I understand. You do whatever it takes to make sure people survive.”

“Yes.”

“But not all people. These grounders were people. People who hadn’t even attacked you yet. Maybe they never would have. But...sacrifices must be made. You really were the perfect student of the council on the Ark, weren’t you?”

“That was different.”

“Was it? Maybe so. They made hard choices based on facts, but you, sometimes you just get angry right?”

“I didn’t do this because I was angry. I had to…”

“Yes, yes, we’ve established that you had to. You do get angry though, don’t you Bellamy? Angry with your mother for saddling you with a sister. Angry with Jaha for floating her. Angry with Clarke for needing some time away to think about what the two of you did in Mount Weather. And the next thing you know...dead grounder army. Just saying, could be a connection.”

“This is a waste of time!”

Bellamy shouts at her but she only smirks again.

“Fine, let’s get to the grand finale.”

She snaps her fingers and they’re standing in front of the final door. The first door. The door that terrified him.

“You don’t have to do this you know. She’s dead. She was dead when you met her. You could go back, tell your friends you tried your best to save her and it couldn’t be done.”

Bellamy places his hand on the doorknob, his hand shaking and rattling the metal gently.

“No.”

“That’s the spirit. Then by all means, open the door.”

He’s back in Mount Weather.

He stands outside of a large metal door, 5C etched above it.

He pushes the door open with shaking hands.

The long tables in the cafeteria are full of rotting food, hundreds of chairs, each of them full of grotesque bodies, slumped and lifeless. More bodies littering the floor.

He walks between two tables, searching for Clarke, searching for an answer, why is he here, and…

One of the bodies sits up from her position slumped over the table.

Annie.

Bellamy feels anguish and realization and shame wash over him all at once.

“Over here. Is it all coming together for you now? I know, I know. I should show my radiation burns for the full effect but I can’t help it, I’m a bit vain.”

“You died here. You were one of the mountain men.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Way to state the obvious. I have to say I was a little hurt you didn’t recognize me. Come on, have a seat.”

She gestures at the empty seat across from her and Bellamy slides into it, avoiding her gaze.

“Now. Let me introduce you to the gang. This is Louise. She helped the President curate the art hanging around here. Van Gogh was her favorite artist. Bit obvious but hard to argue with.”

She points further down the table.

“That’s Brian. Brian actually hid 16 of your friends in his apartment when Cage was searching for them. 16! Not bad, huh?”

She jerks her thumb over her shoulder.

“And over there that’s Katie. Katie taught our kindergarteners. Cute bunch. Did you know we had almost 50 kids living here? You did, didn’t you? You saw them when you were sneaking around and you still turned off the radiation scrubbers and killed us all. Now that’s dedication.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Not good enough, try again.”

“I had to.”

Bellamy barely chokes it out, tears gathering in his eyes.

“You had to. To save people.”

“Yes.”

“Which people? Not my people. Not me.”

“You were killing my friends. Using them…”

“We were trapped in a box. You know what that’s like right? Not enough air to breathe. Nowhere to go. Sound familiar? Anyway, what about Brian? He helped you. Mya? What about the 50 kids who had no clue what was going on? Are they guilty too?”

Bellamy can feel the tears escaping now.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Annie slams her hand on the table.

“I don’t want you to say anything. Every word out of your mouth is an excuse. It's misdirection!”

“I’m not trying to trick you. I don’t…”

“Not me, Bellamy. You’re lying to yourself.”

“I’m trying to do the right thing.”

Annie laughs, twirls a piece of hair around her finger.

“How’s that working out for you?”

“You know, it wasn’t just me anyway. Clarke was there, Clarke knew it was the only way and…”

“There you go again.”

Annie jabbed her finger onto the surface of the table to emphasize each of her words.

“I was 19. My favorite color was purple. I wanted to be a nurse. I had a little brother that I loved more than anything else in this world. Those are the things that make up a human being! Did you think about that when you and your precious Clarke pulled that lever?”

“We had no choice.”

“You never do, do you? Because believing that lets you move on, let’s you seek forgiveness . But that’s just a word. It can’t wipe your slate clean. How dare you call yourself the victim? The arrogance.”

“All I ever wanted was to protect people.”

She leans forward, each word a hiss.

“Which people, Bellamy?”

“My people.”

“We’re getting closer. So the good of the many is all bullshit right? It’s always going to be your people first, no matter what.”

“Yes.”

“Speak up.”

“Yes!”

“Good. Now let’s follow this to its logical conclusion. Let’s say you had to choose between two of your people. Monty vs Miller? Harper vs...Octavia? Is that one too easy?”

“What do you want from me?”

Bellamy let’s a sob escape.

“I want you to walk out of here with the knowledge that all of your rationalizing is pointless. You’re not the good guy. When push comes to shove you would sacrifice everyone, even your people for the sister who hates you and a girl who’s already dead . That’s your fate. To want so badly to be a hero and watch yourself destroy everything you touch for the sake of those who can never give you what poor little Bellamy truly wants. Love .”

“I’m not the good guy.”

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

“I’m not the good guy!”

Annie’s anger fades and she smirks again.

“No, you’re not. You’re too selfish for that. But you are here on a rescue mission, aren’t you? I can let Clarke go but there’s a cost.”

Bellamy knows that. Knows there’s always a cost.

“I’ll stay. I’ll look all of my victims in the eye just let her go.”

“Tempting. But it’s not that simple. The time and date of your death has already been set. You’re the final piece in someone else’s story. They need to complete their journey and to do that...they have to kill you.”

Bellamy takes a shaky breath.

“Who?”

She forms a gun with her fingers, pretends to shoot him.

“You’ve got a sister shaped bullet coming right for you, Bellamy. Octavia’s going to kill you. But not yet.”

Bellamy wants to be surprised but he’s seen the hatred in O’s eyes. Knows she stopped being his little sister at some point. Knows he could never hurt her anyway. It makes sense.

“So you’re letting me go?”

“After cursing you with knowledge. It’s all very Greek tragedy isn’t it? As far as punishments go it’s both cruel and interesting.”

“Where’s Clarke?”

Bellamy hasn’t forgotten, can feel his resolve returning, his fear falling away. The worst had been confirmed for him and there was no need to wonder. In a way it was a comfort.

“Enjoy your time with her while you can, lover boy. I’ll see you soon.”

She raises her hand again, shapes it into a gun and…

He’s back in the hallway.

“Bellamy?”

He turns and there she is.

He’s not sure who moves first but they’re running, and they collide and he’s holding her and he can feel her really feel her not just the cold tingles he’s used to.

She’s warm and soft and real.

He lifts her off the ground slightly, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, her face buried in his shoulder.

“You saved me.”

“You saved me too.”

She pulls back just enough that she can see him properly and he lowers her back to the ground without releasing her.

Her hands are on his face, stroking his cheek.

“Are you alright? They just let me go. Did they do anything to you? Is there a price or something?”

“Nothing. Just mind games. That’s all. We’re going home.”

She pulls him in again and he goes willingly.

He thinks about saying it then, for the third time. Starts to pull back so he can he see her face when he says it but then…

They’re back in Arkadia.

—————

Everything is a rush when they arrive.

His friends don’t know he’s been successful of course when he reappears in the cell but he assures them that Clarke is with him.

They wave to the thin air just to the left of her as they open the cell, Raven even goes in for an awkward hug with nothing before dropping her arms and shrugging.

Bellamy is reminded of his mother greeting Clarke back on the Ark. How it had angered him so much. Now all he sees is his mother’s capacity for love. How glad he is that some of it got directed toward Clarke.

He notices the witch has collapsed and Harper checks for a pulse.

Shakes her head when she doesn’t find one.

“Guess it took all her energy to send you to hell.” Miller remarks.

“It wasn’t hell exactly.”

Miller shrugs.

“Hell adjacent then.”

Clarke laughs and even though Bellamy is the only one who can hear it he feels a rush of satisfaction at the sound.

She’s back. He saved her. Everything else can wait.

—————

It waits.

Sort of.

Life goes back to what passes for normal on the ground. There are briefings and negotiations with the grounders but also meals with his friends.

He lets himself enjoy their company a little more.

Somehow knowing the end is coming feels like a perverse sort of permission to finally start living.

Octavia is still Arkadia’s prisoner. He knows he can’t keep her locked up forever. He just isn’t ready. Not yet.

He still loves her.

His sister.

But maybe not his responsibility.

Maybe that was a burden that never should have been placed on a scared little boy’s shoulders.

Maybe she will kill him one day.

Slay him with her sword like when they were kids.

Maybe he can’t stop that now. Maybe it’s enough just to love her anyway. Maybe that’s easier after all.

Clarke finds him a week after they return from purgatory standing at the edge of camp, staring at what remains of Mount Weather in the distance.

She slips her hand into his.

Back in the real world all he feels is the rush of cold and that something so hard to describe but he’s grateful.

It’s not enough.

But it’s what he has.

“Are we ever going to talk about it? What they said to you?”

He squeezes her nearly there hand.

Almost answers her question.

“I think about what my mother would think of who I’ve become. Who I’ve let O become. She raised us to be good , Clarke. You know that. But all we do is hurt people.”

“Your mother knew love is complicated better than anyone. She hurt people she loved too. She would want you to be good, sure. But she would also want you to be happy. Don’t go too deep in your head, Bellamy. Don’t go where we can’t follow. Octavia will realize how special you are and she’ll need you. I need you.”

Bellamy very deliberately doesn’t look at Clarke.

Is reminded of Orpheus and Eurydice. How he led her out of hell, his only order not to look back but failed at the last moment unable to resist just a glance.

He’s been walking in front of Clarke for a long time. It’s time to stop looking back. Trust that she’s there.

He feels the words well up inside of him for the fourth time.

Finally feels like he can let them go.

“I love you, Princess.”

“I love you too.”

And just like that, he finally gets another taste of happiness.

—————

Can you wish on this kind of shooting star?

I wouldn’t even know what to wish for.

He wishes he could say that by some miracle of magic or science they are able to bring Clarke back to life.

He wishes he could say that it turns out she was really only in a coma all along, her body somehow miraculously intact and found somewhere in the wreckage of the Ark waiting to be awakened.

He wishes he could say he stops feeling guilty, that Octavia forgives him, that they all live happily ever after, that Odysseus finally sails home.

But this isn’t that kind of story even if it does have ghosts, and dragons and a little bit of magic.

Death still comes for everyone, eventually, in their own time.

It was that way for Clarke.

It will be that way for him.

He doesn’t have to remind himself that she’s dead anymore.

They will always have to struggle to survive, struggle and struggle and struggle and the truth is Clarke has already lost.

He tells her she will get another door.

She tells him maybe she’ll just wait and they can go together through his.

He’s not sure he will get a door.

He’s not the good guy.

But maybe Clarke was right when she said there might not be any good guys.

Maybe none of this matters anyway.

He thinks he is finally understanding that love at least is not about what a person deserves, is not a limited resource that must be hoarded and saved for a rainy day.

And Bellamy loves.

Bellamy loves and he is loved and on his better days he thinks that is good and right and the only kind of miracle that truly counts.

Clarke Griffin isn’t the first person Bellamy Blake loves.

She’s just the first one he recognizes himself in.

The head and the heart.

The princess and the dragon.

Clarke and Bellamy.

And together they are good .