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Screams from Charlotte bring Bellamy running breathlessly through the forest - God knows what it could be on this planet - and skidding to a stop behind her. His hand immediately goes to her shoulder, searching for danger, but he finds a danger that not even he can prevent.
Because he caused it.
Atom - Atom, his best man, one of his best friends - is laying on the ground with sightless eyes and breathless lips, using his last increments of to writhe in pain. “Son of a bitch.” He mutters under his breath, looking at the pained figure. Looking at the pain that he’d caused. “Atom.” Bellamy strides forward and drops to his knees. His eyes have the glazed over colourless sheen of a blind man’s and his lips are pale on the outside of his mouth and bloody inside, almost every inch of skin visible is either bloody, infected, burned or all three. Octavia. Is Bellamy’s first thought, if his sister was as smitten with the kid as Bellamy suspected, she’d be heartbroken - she’d blame Bellamy, after all, it was Bellamy that bound him to the tree.
Atom’s breathing is laboured and he seems to be attempting some breathy words. Bellamy leans down to both hear what he’s trying to say and assess the damage when he hears him properly and sits back up hastily. “Kill… me…” Atom is breathing and Bellamy is trying to think of ways to fix them but he can’t - because there are none. As much as Octavia and some of the other kids at camp like to think that Clarke is some medical miracle worker for saving Jasper, Bellamy knows that even she can’t even attempt to fix this.
Atom’s neck is burned and bloody and he’s still struggling to breathe as some of the other kids on Bellamy’s team approach them, standing behind a stunned Charlotte - great, another thing to add to her nightmares. Atom starts coughing and his pale lips are coated with crimson. Bellamy grips a knife that had been handed to him by Charlotte at some point, and adjusts his grip on it, getting a feel of it.
He doesn’t want to kill Atom.
He doesn’t have a choice.
Either kill him or let him suffer, it’s not a hard choice.
So why can’t he make it?
Footsteps behind him bring Bellamy from his reverie and he turns his head sideways, not fully looking at the intruder but not looking away either.
It’s Clarke Griffin, Princess of the Ark.
Great. He thinks. Of all help to send me…
She’s walking towards him now and Bellamy wants to tell her to hurry the fuck up, and then tell himself to shut up, because the tiniest bit of him is relieved that she’s here.
Even though he’s 100% sure that she doesn’t have the guts to kill Atom. She walks around the boy’s body, drops her backpack to the ground and drops to the other side of him, facing Bellamy.
Bellamy’s mouth is open and his gaze is fixed on her, although her’s is unrelenting from Atom, who is still muttering “Please”.
She crouches near him and places a hand on his stomach, glancing up at Bellamy as she does so, the knife is still in his grip, his knuckles white from the severity of his hold.
“I heard screams.” Clarke explains, as she assesses the damage on Atom’s body efficiently.
“Charlotte found him,” Bellamy admits, looking up at her. “I sent her back to camp.” There’s a second of eye contact where neither of them speaks, but a faint cough from Atom brings Clarke’s eyes down to him.
When her eyes next meet Bellamy’s, it’s to shake her head slightly; confirming his suspicions and drowning his hopes all at once. Atom won’t survive this. Bellamy’s grip on the knife tightens even more as his eyes flick between the girl and boy in front of him. He nods his own confirmation. They’ll have to kill him - it’s what’s right. And Clarke sends a quick nod back, taking a deep breath. She lets out a sad smile and then leans closer to Atom.
“Okay.” She whispers to Atom in a voice that sounded like she was speaking to a child. Bellamy resists the urge to groan - what were they going to do? Patronise him to death? - “I’m going to help you.” Clarke continues and Bellamy doesn’t speak although he doesn’t have a clue where the hell they’re going with this. “Alright?” She asks, even thought the boy is clearly too much in pain to answer. He seems to manage a painful almost imperceptible nod, and Clarke reaches out to touch his hair, as she strokes it, she starts to hum, a quiet tune; a tune recognised by Bellamy as one that some mothers on the Ark would sing to their children when they were younger - Bellamy’s mother had sang it to him and Octavia once or twice, but it was usually forgotten in the favour of other more preferable songs. The quiet tune is intertwined with the alto of Atom’s continually choked breaths, and Bellamy finds himself wishing he knew where she was going with this. His hand still holds the knife, but she reaches over and extracts it from his grip, holding it herself. Her eyes are soft and her brow creased as the knife makes its way into Atom’s neck, the tune coming from Clarke’s throat never weakening. She glances at the knife once, bloodied, as she removes it from his neck, and silence takes over her, but she resumes singing quickly. Bellamy watches her closely, something like newfound respect in his eyes. Clarke strokes Atom’s hair once more as she hums as if lulling a child to sleep - which in a way, she was - whilst Bellamy can do nothing but stand back and watch.
Bellamy looks away and swallows deeply as the life drains out of Atom’s eyes, respect leaking into his own, along with tears of grief for his new friend, the shortness of the friendship doing nothing for the heaviness of his heart. The moment between the medic and dying boy seems both frighteningly public and distinctly intimate all at once.
Clarke’s tune eventually dies out, and that’s when Bellamy knows that Atom is gone. He returns his gaze to the dead boy, whose eyelids are already closed, and then to the blonde medic, that seemed to sweep in like an avenging angel at exactly the right moment.
She had taken the blood so he didn’t have to.
He’d have thought it would be the other way around.
She was a spoilt princess.
His judge of character had never been so woefully inaccurate.