Work Text:
Clarke doesn’t like parties.
She didn’t like them on the Ark with the withering looks everyone sent her and Wells over their slightly less worn clothes and better masks, and she doesn’t like them here on the ground, not when the truce with the Grounders is still very fragile and when the very ground is a source of innumerable dangers to both sober and (very) drunk teenagers.
She would oppose to this particular one too, but it’s been ten days since the mountain was defeated, and though the joy of having their loved ones back home is enormous, they didn’t finish this war unscathed (she can’t even think of poor Harper without having a nervous breakdown because of the guilt), and the morale on both sky people and grounder camps hang low, so she lets Jasper, Monty and Miller talk her into throwing a celebratory party and before she fully realizes it she’s bringing the idea over to Lexa, who agrees, saying that it will serve to further unite both tribes.
And so she sits on a log in front of the biggest bonfire ever, clutching a cup of Monty’s best moonshine so far (he calls it Harper’s brand and it makes Clarke want to fling herself off a cliff) and stares off into the distance. She’s been like this for most of the night: vaguely aware of her surroundings but alert enough that she’s the first to reach Octavia when she nearly falls over herself, drunkenly dancing to a grounder song, checking her over for injuries. Lincoln is there, though, and he assures her he will take care of the girl, so Clarke goes back to her seat.
She’s pleasantly having a conversation with Kane -who, by the way, is not as much a dick as he used to be, and not nearly as much as her mother has proven to being these days- about the new guard patrol schedule, when she feels someone sit beside her on the log and, even though their conversation is far from finished, Marcus excuses himself and goes to, he says, find her mother. She looks over to her sitting partner and finds one brooding Bellamy Blake, drink in hand. He’s swaying a little in his seat, she notes, and she’s suddenly very aware of the fact of all the things that haven’t been said between them (“I was wrong”, “love is not weakness”, “nothing is worth losing you” are a few that come to her mind in the very moment) and that Bellamy is quite drunk.
“Hey” she says in a greeting. He tilts his head in her direction as a salute. They haven’t talked much since his return, except for a few important camp matters here and there, but there are serious conversations she thinks they’ve both been avoiding, and she doesn’t really want to have a heart to heart with a drunk Bellamy right now.
He hasn’t been the same since his time inside the mountain. It’s not like he talks about it, of course, but the cocky smirk he used to greet her with is a rare sight now, and even rarer when directed at her (and by “rarer” she means nonexistent). She wishes it didn’t hurt as much as it does but, she muses, she brought this upon herself, now she must face the consequences of her actions.
The nightmares are new, too. Bellamy was far from a peaceful sleeper when it was just her and him and the rest of the hundred around the drop-ship, but these days his screams echo across Camp Jaha in the dead of the night, and even though her tent is practically in front of his, she doesn’t have the courage to try and comfort him (brave princess, he’d once called her, but he was wrong, she was the greatest coward to ever step on earth).
Clarke is far from drunk -the glass she’s holding is still her first- but Harper’s brand is a strong one, and when she sees Miller wave his arm in Bellamy’s direction, a wide smile in his face, when she sees Bellamy’s nod in his direction, his lips tilted slightly upwards, she blurts out:
“You did good, Bellamy. They… you’re their hero. You saved them.” and she regrets the sentence as soon as it leaves her mouth. She thinks he’s going to yell at her -she’s prepared for that, wants it even, but it doesn’t come. Instead, with a slight slur to his words, he says:
“I did it for you."
She doesn’t know what to say (how does one reply to such a heartfelt statement?) so she starts denying him, saying that she knows the 47 are important to him and that he would have gone anyway, but he just shakes his head, waits for her to finish talking. "I’m not saying I don’t care for those kids. Hell, I’m fonder of them than I would admit while being sober. But princess,” and here he pauses to take a swig of his drink, letting Clarke bask in the glory of hearing him say her nickname without a bite in his words (maybe there’s still hope, she thinks). “I got inside that mountain for you. Because you sent me there.”
“Bellamy, you’re drunk.” She argues. And it’s a good point, but her father used to say that drunk people and children never lied, and she’s stuck between wanting to hear more and get the hell away from the bonfire, so she makes her desires meet halfway. “Let’s get you to bed.” She offers, her arm slipping under his to hold some of his weight, and when she’s laid him on his bed and he’s closer to sleep than he is awake, she allows herself to leave his tent.
Just as she’s leaving, though, Bellamy squirms in his bed, and calls her name.
“Clarke,” he murmurs, making her stop in her tracks to look at him. “I’d do it again. For you, I mean. I’d do it again” and then he drifts off to sleep, leaving her with a heart that’s bursting at the seams with feelings she refuses to acknowledge, feelings she has no right to hold for him. So she goes to her own bed that night, resolving to talk to him, properly talk to him the next morning, and sort things out between them.
She finds him in the med bay the next morning, asking her mother (who’s looking at him disapprovingly for a change, she notes sarcastically) for painkillers. She calls over to him, and when he looks at her there is a blush obscuring his freckles, she’s pretty sure he remembers his drunken words last night,
She supplies the medication he’s asking for, but before he can leave, she grabs his arm and pushes him back on the examination table. “I wouldn’t do it again.” He looks at her with questioning eyes, and she takes it as a cue to keep talking. “Send you there again” she mumbles, then raises her eyes to his own, “I wouldn’t do it Bellamy. It’s not worth it."
It’s not much of an apology, and it sure as hell doesn’t fix things between them, but the smile he gives her is huge and bright and warm (has he ever smiled like that to her? she doesn’t think so), and maybe there is yet hope for them.