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"I love you, Clarke."
Bellamy's voice, deep and gravelly, doesn't shake as the words pass the edge of his lips. Unfortunately, Clarke cannot say the same about her hands. She tightens her grip on her weapon, secures her index finger on the trigger, and checks that Cadogan's head, which she aimed at a second earlier, hasn't left her line of sight.
It's Bellamy's pleading eyes that she meets again as he readjusts his stance in front of his new leader to protect the guru's life with his own body.
"I'm in love with you, Clarke," he repeats. "And I'm sorry you have to make such a difficult decision because I hate the idea of you suffering so much— But if you want to kill him, you'll have to kill me too..."
He seals his promise by locking his jaw. His lips close on a strong expression. His brown eyes are resolute, ready to face whatever awaits him. He is so far from the Bellamy she knew, so far from their arrival on Sanctum, driven frantic by the eclipse. So different from the Bellamy who would have done anything for the safety of his people, even if it meant drowning John Murphy and strangling the woman he now claims to love with his own hands. And if Clarke wonders why the eclipse doesn't affect him this time, she knows that the answer to her question is not what matters at this moment.
"Move, Bellamy."
Perhaps it's indeed the eclipse currently taking place over Sanctum that's causing Clarke to lose track of what should be important in Bellamy's last words. Or maybe it's just the last days, the last weeks, hell, even the last years of her life and all the trials that have been eating away at her little by little that make her lose sight of what her heart is howling out for her to notice. The young man has just told her that he loves her.
Yet all Clarke sees at that moment is the gun in the palm of her hand, and the crazy, anxious look of Bill Cadogan behind Bellamy's silhouette. All Clarke hears is her head shrieking that she doesn't want one last war, even if it's the one that will end all the others. She's already lived through enough wars to last a lifetime. All she wants is peace. And the quickest and most effective way to achieve it is to put a bullet in the head of this selfish, narcissistic, pseudo-god, and so-called shepherd, Bill Cadogan.
She has to do it. For her family, for her friends, for her people. "For all mankind" , she thinks ironically. If this is not a living oxymoron, what is? She would like to share this joke with Bellamy. Only he would be able to smile at such twisted humor. But she can't, because Bellamy isn't at her side, he's on the other side of the barrel, on the trajectory of the bullet she's saving for Cadogan.
"I told you to move!" she yells when her companion doesn't budge an inch.
Bellamy swallows slowly, painfully, and then answers:
"I can't. I know you think I lost my mind on that mountain. I know you think I've lost myself, that I don't know who I am or what I'm saying or what I'm doing anymore...". His dark gaze meets hers and unleashes its overflowing emotions: tenderness, devotion, hope, and despair intrinsically connected; just before asserting his proof, his truth. "But I'm still me , Clarke... If I wasn't me, I couldn't tell you-" He struggles for a second with words, as if pronouncing them goes against the person he's desperately trying to become, against the dogma that now teaches him to no longer feel selfish love, but only a single and undifferentiated love for every living being. "I couldn't tell you that I love you. And I love you so much , Clarke... And for so long—".
"Stop," commands the young woman, her voice broken.
"No, Clarke. You need to hear this because it's the truth. Because I've held it too long. And because I know the woman I love- the woman I love is going to pull that trigger anyway."
"Don't."
Bellamy doesn't seem to hear her or chooses to ignore her, maybe.
"And I need you to know that despite this, I love you, Clarke. I lov—".
"Stop! SHUT UP !"
A bullet fired right at his feet interrupts Bellamy. Behind him, Cadogan jumps and retreats, but not far away, trapped in the dead-end he had run into minutes earlier as Clarke chased them. As for Bellamy, he doesn't even flinch at the detonation, he doesn't take his eyes off of the young woman for a single second, his gaze fixed, not on the revolver that she's holding firmly pointed in his direction, but on her face, as if he was trying to carve each one of her features in his memory with a single glance.
Bellamy doesn't say a word anymore, and this silence should bring relief to the young woman. Unfortunately, she doesn't hear silence. Echoes of her companion's words are overlapped with the voices of all the people she lost because she was not fast enough, not prepared enough, not smart enough, not strong enough. Their tones whistle in her ears, blaming her for the weaknesses that cost them their lives, explaining to her how lonely she is, how she will never be enough for anyone, assuring her a slow death to herself and to all those she swore to protect if she doesn't pull the trigger.
Bellamy's gaze on her is the opposite of what the voices are whispering to her. The love that burns in the warmth of his brown eyes promises her that she will be enough, promises her that she will never be alone again, but she doesn't see it. All that her eyes, reddened by the purple sun of the two stars that are eclipsing in the Sanctum sky, can distinguish is Bill Cadogan.
All Clarke has to do is pull the trigger and it's over.
So she takes a deep breath, refuses to cross Bellamy's eyes as he looks for hers when he sees her solidifying her choice, refuses to glance at him when he whispers, so sad, yet so calm.
"Do what you have to do. Just remember that I love you."
The detonation is deafening, but it doesn't cover the words Bellamy just said. They burn into Clarke's heart the second her index finger pulls the trigger; brand themselves on her skin as she watches Bellamy take a step to the side to protect his new leader with his body; leave their gaping, painful and horrible wound in her flesh at the very instant the bullet hits the young man in the chest.
Clarke's heart stops. It's her head that commands her to continue shooting while the body of her best friend collapses on the ground, leaving Cadogan finally unprotected. The next bullet is the right one, goes through the Shepherd's brain right between the eyes. The man falls to the ground, dead on impact. It seems that she has finally succeeded in making the kill shot.
The silence that follows is astounding. The voices in her head have fallen silent. The echo of the two shots from the gun immediately faded into the space around her. The sound of the revolver crashing to the ground a second after she lets go of it with her now trembling hand almost pierces her eardrums. Yet, it's Bellamy's wrecked rattle a few steps away from her that brings her back to reality.
The scream she lets out as she runs towards him is no longer human. Clarke is no longer human herself anyway. She's nothing more than the monster who sacrificed the life of the man she loved most in this world to save the life of humanity to which she no longer belongs.
The blood that flows from the young man's wounded body pierces his white clothes and soaks the red soil beneath him. Crimson, ivory, and purple. Clarke falls to her knees beside Bellamy. Her expert hands immediately find the injury, the gaping hole just below his heart. His heart, which still beats under the compression of her fingers, but so weak, so slow, that Clarke understands right away that there's nothing more to be done. The sobs that shake her then are horrible and terrifying, worse than all the explosions, all the blows, all the fights she has endured so far. The tears flow from her blue eyes and trace in the dust covering her skin lines of clear water that nothing will ever dry up.
Bellamy tries, though. His hand rises in a final effort, resting on the young woman's cheek and running the tip of his thumb to wipe her cries, but it's a waste of time. Clarke closes her eyes and rests her bloody palm on the back of his hand to keep it there for a few seconds until strength slowly leaves him and the weight becomes too much for him to bear. Clarke doesn't let go of his hand when it rests against his heart, then reopens her eyes to meet the unfathomable abyss of his own.
She doesn't say she's sorry. He doesn't say she shouldn't have done that. The silence is only broken by her unruly sobs and Bellamy's hissing, choking breath, until...
"Ki— Kiss me."
Blood drops from the corner of the young man's lips and salt rests on Clarke's as their trembling mouths meet for the first time. The kiss is sweet, tender, the broken promise of a future that would have belonged only to them and in which they could have been happy and together, if only...
"I love you..."
Even if the way her lips danced on his is more meaningful than any words she could say, Clarke says it anyway. It's not a lie. The fact that Clarke loves Bellamy will never be a lie. They just wish it was enough.
He smiles faintly at her words and his lips open for what she thinks is an answer. Their mouths touch when Bellamy whispers his last words.
"I forgive you."
Then his breathing stops. His last exhale used for this last absolution. Under Clarke's fingers, the heart of the man she loves has stopped beating. She closes his eyelids, still open on the void, before laying a last kiss on his lips.
" Clarke Griffin doesn't break ," Raven once said.
And it was true then. She hadn't broken when her father died, nor when Wells died, nor when Finn died, nor when Lexa died. Not when she was left alone on Earth, not when Madi almost lost her life with the innocence of her childhood, not when she had thought she was dying, not even when her own mother left this world.
Clarke Griffin doesn't break.
That was true then. However, with Bellamy's still warm body in her arms, the taste of his forgiveness still on her lips, and his unshakeable love still imbued in her heart, Clarke Griffin finally breaks.
***
Seven days later, Jordan presses on the Anomaly Stone the code for what was ultimately not a last war, but simply a test, their final test. While, as a proud descendant of his parents, the young man saves the entire human race, Clarke's last thought is for Bellamy.
Around her, her friends disappear in an explosion of golden sweetness that Bellamy had once described to her, but which she didn't want to believe. Her loved ones fade away one by one, Madi, Octavia, Murphy, Miller... All with a blissful smile on their faces, leaving a trace of their existence into the atmosphere and saturating the universe with unparalleled peace and beauty.
Transcendence.
As she disappears, surrounded by a golden light more tender and warm than any embrace, except perhaps for one, Clarke wonders if she'll get a chance to tell Bellamy he was right, on the other side.