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As soon as Clarke falls asleep, he’s there.
He’s sitting next to her, the two of them bathed in the light of a campfire, alone in the dark woods. It’s impossible to tell just by looking, but she knows they’re on Earth. He’s clean shaven, and it’s so familiar she’d think this must be a memory if it wasn’t for the blood-soaked white robes he's wearing.
Bellamy glances over, catching her studying him. His lips quirk up as he turns his gaze back to the fire, leaning back beside her.
“Just ask,” he says, and she startles.
“What?”
“The question you’re trying not to ask.” He sounds almost amused and it makes her stomach turn. He shouldn’t— it’s all so wrong. “Just spit it out already.”
She doesn’t—she can’t, but he nods at her, urging her on, and she doesn’t know how not to comply. She wrings her hands, throat tight as she tentatively begins.
“Are you— are you at peace?”
“Peace?” He gives her a slight smile, shaking his head as though he doesn’t understand the question. “Why would I be at peace?”
“Because—” The lump in her throat grows, threatening to choke her. She has to force the words from her mouth, and they fall through her lips like a sob. “Because you’re dead.”
“I know that, princess,” Bellamy says gently. The nickname hurts like an old wound, and he turns to meet her eyes. “But how could I be at peace when you’re the one who’s killed me?”
He grins widely, a rictus smile. Clarke drops her eyes to her lap to avoid his unnerving gaze and jolts suddenly upright, leaping to her feet. She holds her hands in front of her, watching in horror as they drip with blood.
“This isn’t real,” she insists. It can’t be, she didn’t— she’d shot him. There was no blood on her hands, not literally at least. Nausea rises high in her throat, like she might be sick, and her knees feel weak under her.
“Of course it isn’t,” Bellamy says, raising one eyebrow. He crosses his arms over his chest, kicking his feet out in front of him. “I’m dead.”
“Oh God,” she chokes; and falls to her knees in the dirt, her body angled towards him.
“Do you believe in God, Clarke?” Bellamy watches her with curious eyes, ignoring the storm that roils across her face. “I always wanted to. Wanted there to be a reason that it all happened, that we suffered the way we did. Wanted to know I had a purpose.” He shrugs offhandedly, crossing one ankle over the other. “Guess I found that in the end.”
The reminder of the Shepherd, of the cause of his betrayal, is bitter. “If there is a god—” Clarke grits “—he’s cruel.”
Bellamy chuckles, the sound deep and melodic. “Maybe so. But maybe we deserved it, after everything we did.”
“How can you say that?” Clarke asks, taken aback. Her eyebrows furrow, lips pulled together into a tight line. “After what I—” She stops, the words balling up in her mouth like a knot.
“If you need forgiveness—” he starts, and she cuts him off, shaking her head violently.
“Don’t.” Her fingers fidget in front of her, eyes watching as she uselessly attempts to wipe the blood away. She knows the words he’s trying to say, and she can’t let him. They are blasphemous now, wrong in every way. “Please, just don’t.”
“Okay.” Bellamy hold up his palms in submission, and she feels her shoulders sag with relief. “I won’t.”
She nods, eyelids fluttering closed. “Thank you.”
There’s a long pause where neither speak. Clarke hears only the sound of her own deep breaths and the crackling of logs as they turn to ash on the fire. Bellamy’s not breathing, she realizes, the thought sick as it crawls through her skull. He doesn’t need to, not now.
“I loved you, you know,” he says, and smiles when Clarke looks up sharply. “Or maybe you don’t. Guess it doesn’t matter anymore.”
She shakes her head, heart clenching hard in her chest. “You didn’t. Not like—not like that.”
Bellamy frowns, expression hardening for the first time since they’d begun speaking. “Yes like that, Clarke. Always like that.”
“This isn’t real,” she says again, her voice weak. Her body quakes, hands trembling with the force of her conviction. “You’re not real.”
“Maybe not,” he allows, but gives her a disappointed look that cuts deeper than his anger ever could. “That doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
Her mouth falls open in a desolate gasp, heat welling up behind her eyes. “But you didn’t— you never—”
He waves a hand at her protests as if to bat them away. “Oh, I know. But the timing was never right, not for us.”
She doesn’t know what to say, her mind at once racing and blank. The words have left her, leaving only a heavy sorrow that threatens to drown her. Bellamy’s expression softens, and he leans back on his hands, gazing up into the empty trees.
“I always figured we’d end up together somehow in the end, when things calmed down and we weren’t at war. Thought we would settle down and finally just be happy. Have a cabin we could call home; me and you and Madi. Maybe a couple kids of our own someday.” He gives her a devastating grin, his wan face boyishly handsome as his eyes crinkle. “I always wanted to be a dad.”
Clarke feels her heart shatter, breaking under the weight of what could’ve been. The tears that have been threatening at the corners of her eyes spill over, and she chokes out a heavy sob.
Bellamy looks stricken, moving to kneel in front of her. He takes her hands in his own, and his fingers are unnaturally cold, like ice against her skin.
“It’s okay,” he promises, but his lips are bloodless, deep blue even in the warm light of the fire.
“It isn’t,” Clarke chokes. One of her hands reaches up to touch his face but stops just shy of his skin, her eyes finding the wet glimmer of blood still coating her fingers. “It never will be.”
With an apologetic look, Bellamy takes the hand again, bringing it back down between them. “I know.”
“I wanted that, too,” she admits, her eyes fixed on their joined hands. “That life. Why couldn’t we have that?”
“Clarke,” he says gently, thumb stroking the skin on the soft underside of her wrist. “You know why.”
A tear drips onto their tangled fingers.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice is full of unspoken words, full of pain and guilt and the weight of time lost. “I wish—”
He leans forward, brushing a kiss against her mouth. “I know.” Clarke looks at him with wide eyes, frozen in shock. Bellamy smiles back, his hand coming up to cup her chin. “What’s wrong, princess?”
She cries, lurching forward to press her lips against his. Her fingers tangle in his curly hair, and Bellamy chuckles against her mouth. He meets her frantic kisses, swallowing her sobs and slowing their pace till their mouths fit lazily together, slow and sure and right.
His lips on hers are soft but cold, his rough palm cradling the curve of her cheek. She feels tears burn behind her closed eyes, and she clenches them tighter.
“I love you,” Clarke says against his lips, the whispered words an admission of guilt. He touches his forehead against hers, pressing another soft kiss to her open mouth, and draws back.
Bellamy gives her one last, sad smile. His thumb brushes a tear from her cheek, and she leans into the touch. His voice is gentle, the question tender and sweet as it slices her open.
“Then why’d you kill me?”
Clarke wakes up alone.