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Clarke wakes with a startled gasp, her breath catching in her throat as her heart hammers in her chest and sweat drips down her back. The world around her is black and unfamiliar even when she forces herself into a sitting position, only increasing the panic ringing in her ears.
No, it can’t be .
A gentle, yet familiar hand presses against her back and suddenly, her eyes slam open. She sucks in a lung full of air as she looks around her, remembering. Gabriel’s cabin looks the same as it did before she passed out from exhaustion, but she can’t be sure. She only saw it for a brief second before everything, the struggles that her body had been out though over the last few days, became too much.
The panic returns in full force as everything with Josephine comes back to her, but it is stopped short when Bellamy’s face slides into her line of vision.
“You’re okay,” he tells her gently probably for the third or fourth time, rubbing soothing circles on her back, “You’re ok—”
She doesn’t let him finish. Wrapping both arms around him, she buries her face his neck and takes her first easy breath in what feels like a lifetime. His arms link themselves around her back, pulling her to him just as tightly and she feel her heartbeat finally start to calm, “You’re okay.”
He lets out a strained laugh, his breath blowing against her hair, “Of course, I’m okay. It’s you I’m worried about… after everything… how are you doing?”
When she pulls back to look at him, concern is written all over his face and a stab of guilt hits her. There’s no doubt that her reaction was over the top; it was a nightmare, plain and simple, and a stupid one at that, but now he’s got the worry line back across his forehead.
“I’m fine,” she tells him quickly. If there was more than a fraction of space between them, maybe her lie would be more believable, but as it is, he just tilts his head to the side as if to say, yeah, I totally believe that. She lets out a sigh, not feeling up to hiding from him right now, “I had a nightmare.”
“About what?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she dismisses quickly, flinching in spite of herself as the recollections of the dream hit her again. She looks away from him, but it doesn’t matter since his hand is still rubbing across her back. Any other time and she’d have the strength to move away or at least the strength to know she should move away. Now though, she just leans into his touch and the comfort it provides.
“You woke up screaming and nearly gave me a heart attack—” he cuts off suddenly as she flinches again, unable to escape the image of him with blood pouring out of his chest. His tone is once again gentle when he continues, “What happened? You don’t have to tell me, but you’ll probably—”
“You died.”
“Clarke, I’m not going anywhere,” he starts to reassure her and she just squeezes her eyes shit against the guilt, “Everything is going to be okay now. I’m not going to—”
“I shot you,” she tells him in a frantic rush. Her breathing hitches, but she forces herself to continue, disregarding the tears streaming down her face, “ I killed you.”
There are a few seconds where all that can be heard is her raged breaths and the sounds of the wildlife outside and she he hums in contemplation, “Why?”
“Seriously?” she asks, her indignation enough to pull her out of a near panic attack, “That’s what you have to say?”
“There was probably a reason,” he responds back with a small smile on his face, closer to a teasing smirk then she’s seen in a while.
“There could never be a good enough reason,” she tells him with maybe more of an edge to her voice than the situation calls for.
Perhaps sensing that this is going to be a longer conversation than he initially intended, he raised up from his crutched position beside the bed that she’s on and moved to sit beside her legs, making sure to keep hold of her hand, “Look, obviously I don’t want to be shot, but it’s you; there has to have been some reason even if it’s dream you.”
“I think you have an unrealistic picture of how rational my dreams are,” she says, trying for teasing and falling flat. It’s impossible with the memory of the dream still lingering right at the edge of her subconscious. It just felt so real. She runs a hand across her face, simultaneously trying to rid herself of the unpleasant memories and find the strength to tell him what happened. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense— actually it make no sense… there were these people and somehow they got to you, made you think we should all be these weird light tree things… and then there was Madi and a book, one of my sketchbooks I think, she was in danger or at least I thought she was.”
“Danger from me?” Bellamy asks suddenly serious.
“I guess,” she answers somewhat hesitantly, looking away. The longer she’s awake the more ridiculous it seems. Bellamy would never hurt Madi, not after everything they’ve been though. She’s as sure of that as anything, “It really doesn’t make sense; don’t worry I’m not going to shoot you.”
She expects to find him grinning at her when she looks back to him, sure that her attempt at lightheartedness landed better this time, but instead, he looks more serious.
“Clarke, if it ever comes down to me and Madi, you protect her with no regrets alright?”
“No,” she responds supposedly, the ease which was just starting to settle around her falling away suddenly, “Absolutely not.”
“Clarke,” he warns her again, strongly intent on this.
“No,” she says again, matching his stubbornness, “It was just a stupid nightmare.”
“It was,” he agrees, “but if it ever wasn’t, you chose Madi; I chose Madi. It’s an easy call. You do whatever you have to in order to keep her safe.”
“If,” she counters, leaning towards him to make her point, “and let me stress how much this isn’t going to happen because once again, it’s all stupid, but if we were to be in a situation where for som strange reason you desperately wanted to be a beam of light and I thought that you were going to use one of Madi’s doodles to archive your evil plans, if I truly believed she was in danger then I’d shoot you, in the leg.”
“In the leg?” he asks, trying and failing to hide his amusement.
“Or maybe the shoulder,” she adds on with a shrug which makes his face brake into a smile, “Somewhere not to dangerous, just enough for me to be able to grab you, tie you up and shove you someplace where you can stay until I get you to come to your senses.”
Even though he’s clearly amused, there’s still an air of seriousness when he speaks, “If that’s an option, I’d definitely prefer that, but if it’s not… my life isn’t worth Madi’s.”
“No, it’s not,” she agrees softly, sliding across the bed till she’s pressed up against him, “but it’s worth a hell of a lot to me. I once weighted your life against the fate of the entire human race, or so I thought, and well, you didn’t get shot then so I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to pull that trigger.”
It’s definitely not the answer that she supposed to give, his life should not be worth more to her than anyone else’s, but it is and she accepted that fact a long time ago. He matters more to her. Maybe not the most, not with Madi around now, but more than her nightmare accounted for.
“But Madi,” he says, unable to let it go.
“But Madi,” she agrees eventually, leaning into his side, “but you could also just stay away from any cults.”
“Sounds like a plan,” he responds, laughing and then pressing a kiss into her hair, quick and easy. Even though she knows there wasn't any true purpose behind the action, it adds to the well of warmth pooling in her belly, chasing away the remaining traces of the nightmare. It really was stupid, her and Bellamy are a team; that’s not just going to disappear, not after everything they’ve been though.