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i.
It is maybe a month or two after she ripped his heart out and ground it into the dirt outside the gate when it first happens. By now, they’re just on the cusp of winter and with every exhale he can see his breath appear before him in little puffs of white.
Everything is cold and hard and bitter, harder to get out of bed in the morning and face the world head on while pretending that nothing was wrong, that this is all normal.
Or maybe that’s just him.
They’ve taken to letting out small groups of children- and some adults- at a time with a guide and several guards to learn about the area, the wildlife, the flora. Figures it’d be better to have them know what would kill you if you eat it or turn your tongue blue before someone brings it back to camp in batches.
It was on one of those such trips that a little girl lost her doll and Bellamy agreed to go out on his own and look for it.
(He needed to get away from camp for a little while before he went crazy.)
(Plus the little girl hard long dark hair pulled back into a braid and bright green eyes filled with tears, so how could he say no?)
So he leaves camp with his rifle slung across his chest, bouncing against his leg with every other step, and a radio clipped to his pants. The forest trees have shed their leaves and they crunch underfoot as he treks onwards. They wouldn’t have gotten far; maybe a few miles at most, and he already knows the general direction they came from, which means that it isn’t all that surprising when he finds the doll propped up against a tree trunk less than two hours in.
It is a ratty looking little thing; faded yellow yarn for hair, eyes filled in with a blue marker to keep the irises in check, and a threadbare little dress that was faded plaid. He remembers his mother using scraps of leftover fabric to make one similar to it for Octavia when she was younger so she wouldn’t be alone under the floor. She kept it until she was taken away.
The positioning of the doll was too staged to have been dropped there accidently by a crying seven year old. It puts him immediately on guard and his hand goes for his rifle before straightening to scan the area.
It is silent, not even the trees moved and a light veil of fog was starting to roll in. Bellamy squints through the fog and rapidly setting sun as he stares out into the forest. His eyes skimmed over everything but nothing seemed out of the ordinary; bare trees there, a flash of gold hair there, brown, dried crinkling leaves scattered all around-
His eyes snap back to where he saw the gold hair. Surely it isn’t...
It is.
She’s gone now, quickly and silently retreating, but if he squints hard enough, Bellamy can make out a vaguely human shaped something with brilliant gold hair and a dark jacket running away. He wants to say something, to maybe run after her, but for some reason all of his muscles remained immobile and all he can do is just stare.
He stares until she is out of sight while his heart thumps hard in his chest. The doll, which now bore a painful resemblance to the girl he just saw, is clenched in a vice grip in his hand. It is only when a particularly strong gust of biting wind blows past him that he jolts out of his reverie. There is a small knife in his pocket and he uses it to carve an ‘X’ on the tree he found the doll by before trudging back to camp without a backward glance.
Bellamy returns to the tree the next day with a small stack of paper and three pencils that he nicked from the guard wrapped in a ruined jacket he spent all night trying to patch back together. After a moment of hesitation he scrawls out ‘be safe’ on the corner of the top piece of paper before leaving.
When he comes back the next day, the bundle is gone except for the two words he left. She has ripped it out and scribbled ‘you too’ underneath it. Bellamy folds it in half and slips it in his pocket where it lies for the months to come. He makes it back to camp with a small smile that day.
***
ii.
It’s the dead of winter and he’s out hunting in nothing more than a heavy jacket and boots.
Once upon a time someone might have been there to call him an idiot for thinking he could brave the elements in just that alone, but now everyone else either looks to him for advice, cowers in fear, or chooses to pretend that he doesn’t exist altogether, so he doesn’t get that anymore.
(Maybe the someone would have had glittering blonde hair that caught in the wind and blue eyes that could have him drowning in them with the snap of her fingers and maybe he’s taken to spending some evenings when everything’s gone to shit talking to empty space as he sat under an ‘X’ marred tree with a flask of moonshine in his flimsy jacket and boots that were wearing thin at the sole.)
Yeah. He’s an idiot.
Still, that doesn’t dissuade the fact that he’s out by himself with his trusty rifle slung over one shoulder and a quiver of arrows in the other as he stalks the woods, bow in hand. Bellamy knows that the chances of finding prey in these conditions are slim to none, but he just really fucking hates being cooped up in that camp, doing nothing.
The argument with the Chancellor had nothing to do with it, not at all.
They’ve always had a rocky relationship at best and ever since she found out that it was he who stole the paper and pencils from the guards’ store room, she’s been looking at him with nothing short of a sneer. And then when she found out why exactly he’d taken them in the first place... well, she wasn’t happy to say the least. In fact, now, she just prefers to act like he doesn’t exist which would be all fine and dandy with him, but since he’s somehow gone and gotten himself picked as a representative for his people, that’s a bit of an inconvenience.
He works around it though, and if there’s one thing that can be said, it’s that Bellamy Blake certainly does the best he can no matter the circumstances.
He’s not sure how far he’s ventured into the forest, but soon he stumbles across traps that were certainly not laid by anyone from camp and fresh footprints in the snow. He knows immediately who they belong too and this time he decides to follow, because he’s been away for well over three hours wandering aimlessly without coming across anything and the least he can do is make sure she’s safe and fine and found somewhere to wait out the winter without getting frostbite.
The tracks go on for longer than he anticipated though and after he crosses what he estimates to be one mile, he stops and stares out in to the distance. If he isn’t mistaken, there was supposed to be a set of bunkers somewhere along this way. Something in his chest relaxes at the thought of her being somewhere relatively safe and dry and warm.
He’s debating whether or not to follow out the footsteps when he feels the telltale prickling of a stare at the back of his neck. Like with the tracks before, he knows exactly who’s staring at him, though he can’t tell from where. All around them the forest is still, as though waiting on one of them to do something. Even Bellamy finds himself holding his breath, afraid that even the slightest interruption would cause her to disappear for a month again. So he just stands there, staring out at the barren wasteland with the skeletons of trees and its muted hues of grey and blue and sometimes a flash of green. Her eyes never leave him.
Only when the sun begins its decent does he decide to leave. The bitter taste of disappointment settles in his mouth, heavy on his throat in an almost choked feeling. He didn’t expect her to actually say anything, but a man can dream.
He turns around, but before he leaves he flashes a lazy smirk to the seemingly empty woods and says, “Hide your tracks, princess; that way no one would be able to find you no matter how hard they try.” At one point he might have felt awkward talking to nothing but the trees, but he’s been doing that for the past month or so, so why not. On his way back he spots a flock of pheasants and manages to put an arrow through three of them. Now he’ll feel less pathetic on return to camp.
Bellamy goes back to camp, only to sneak out through the back later that evening when night is fast approaching, about two hours after getting bitched out by Abby for the second time that day. There’s the rifle across his chest and a flask of moonshine in his pocket and he makes his way to the tree- their tree- quickly, feeling the chilly bite of the wind through his jacket.
When he gets there, there’s a sheet of paper stuck right under the ‘X’ with a bit of tree sap. It’s a drawing he realises. Of him. From this afternoon.
It looks hurried, but somehow she managed to capture every single detail in a near perfect snapshot of that moment. She got the disarray of his hair, the white puff of air whenever he exhaled, the hunched shoulders and tense stance. What got him though was his face. He’s not sure if she realised it at the time- or at all- but Bellamy likes to think that he knows his expressions well enough so the ones that he sees on the paper has his heart constricting. His face is set in a stoic mask, but there’s obvious longing as he stares out into the distance, and a slight bit of anger in the set of his jaw and cloudy eyes.
He came out here to drink but instead finds himself trudging back through the snow after five minutes with an unopened flask still in his pocket to get back to his tent.
When he goes to stick it up on the flimsy wall of his tent he notices the small bit of writing behind it.
You’re going to freeze your ass off. That’s not being safe.
A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth and before he knows it, it’s blossomed into a full on grin. Bellamy ends up tipping his head back to release a short bark of laughter. It echoes off the walls of the tent, short and staccato and seldom heard. It’s been far too long since he laughed any kind of laugh. He tries not to reflect on that.
The drawing stays by his bed, being the first thing he saw most mornings and last thing before he fell asleep.
***
iii.
There’s a group of Grounders a good few miles north of camp that has agreed to trade with them. They are unaligned with Lexa, a small group with maybe no more than fifty in their village. Right before winter truly sunk its claws into them, that group had approached camp out of the blue with a request to be allies.
Bellamy’s not quite sure how exactly it happened, but he’s fairly certain she’s got something to do with it, despite the fact that the camp’s leader seems to play dumb whenever her name comes up.
It was a simple agreement: they would support them through the winter while the Ark would provide medical care if needed and some basic radios. They had the right to call on the Ark in the case of any medical emergencies.
They sent such a call two nights before.
Apparently half of their camp has been struck hard by a version of the flu that simply refused to leave. It sounded so serious that Abby herself has joined them on their trip. Bellamy being Bellamy had already signed up the minute he heard, only to receive the news that she was coming along also a few hours later. He’s far too proud to drop out because of something as stupid as that however, and as long as the Chancellor continues her new tactic at ignoring him, everything should be just fine.
At least, that was supposed to be the case. They didn’t really bank on an impromptu snowstorm that was so severe that they had to seek cover in the dropship to prevent anyone from losing their toes. And so, Bellamy spent an entire night in the company of a surly Chancellor and seven other guards, cold and wet from the snow, and stuck in the ship who’s metal walls contain far too memories for him than he can deal with right now.
Last time he was here, she was unconscious and they were trying to hide Finn.
It seemed eons ago.
Bellamy’s unable to sleep, tossing and turning on his bedroll as memories of his former home- because despite all the shit that happened, it still is a home for him and so many others- continuously assaults him, both good and bad. He sees the hundred bleeding from their eyes, and when he leans back, he can feel a phantom hand brushing his shoulder to check up on him. He can hear Jasper’s pained screams that second night, echoing harshly off the metal, though no one else can hear it. He sees her at the Unity Day celebrations, head ducked as she giggles at something he’s said.
As soon as the sun can be seen steadily rising over the horizon, he tells the guard on lookout duty that he’s stepping out for a little.
He likes to think that he knows these woods better than most, so he lets his feet lead him to wherever they wish while he tries to clear his head. Hopefully by the time he’s back they’re all read to go. It begins softly at first, but soon he can hear the gurgle of the stream. It’s only a few more paces away, and he does need to top off his canteen anyway, so he turns the corner-
And immediately stops in his tracks.
Because she’s there, jeans rolled up the knee and shirt clenched tightly in hand with her boots off as she kneels in the shallow water of the stream, scrubbing intensely at the shirt on a flat topped rock. At first he thinks that this is it, that one night back in the dropship was enough to finally crack him and she’s just some figment of his imagination here to torment him. But then he sees the watch loosely looped around her wrist, a thin, pink scar running down the left side of her ribs, a fresh looking blue black bruise behind her right shoulder, and knows that this is real.
He sees red then.
Red, because anger is coursing through his veins at a lightning pace because she’s alone, in nothing more than a pair of ratty jeans and a worn bra while fucking kneeling in a stream in the middle of fucking winter and-
“Are you trying to get your fucking self killed?” he hisses without thinking, glaring at her lone form for a short moment.
He’s barely gotten the sentence out before she has a gun cocked and aimed at his head.
She holds her stance for all of three seconds before her mouth parts in a small ‘oh’ and her eyes widen. She looks different from when she left, when she was tired and burdened with the deaths of many. Now, though she still looks weary and she’s much thinner with choppily cut hair, there’s the slight glimmer of a spark that wasn’t there before.
Her mouth parts and a small, “Bellamy,” makes it’s way out. She stands up, calves sopping wet and gooseflesh peppering her entire body.
Something tightens in his chest when she says his name and it's all he can do to not step forward and wrap his arms around her. It hurts to stop himself. Instead he leans against a tree and folds his arms over his chest to hide his clenched fists.
"Clarke," he replies in a flat voice. “Any reason why you’re trying to catch hypothermia?”
A dull flush appears, colouring her cheeks and the bridge of her nose before making its way down to her chest-
He promptly pulls his eyes back up and maintains his stoic facade.
Clarke just stands there though, completely unconcerned that she has on no shoes or shirt while standing in the snow, with the latter clenched in a sodden ball in one hand and her gun in the other. She’s still staring at him, candy pink lips parted in such a way that it’s almost like she’s surprised to see him there. It takes a cocked eyebrow from Bellamy to shake her out of her trance.
“What are you doing here?” she breathes, looking at him as though he might disappear in the wind any second.
“You’ve ignored my last two questions; what makes you think I’m going to answer yours?” She just stares at him until he concedes with a grunt because goddammit it’s been months since she’s left him with an acute pain in his chest that he tries to ignore the meaning of, she should not still have this level of control over him and yet, “Mission. Group up north wanted to ally themselves with us. Know anything about that?”
The darkening of her blush speaks volumes.
Eventually, after the borderline awkward silence extends for more than a minute in which the two of them just stared at the other, drinking them up as though it’s the last time they would see each other- maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but he rather not find out- he asks, “What are you doing here?”
She worries her lip between her teeth for a few moments before saying, “Got blood on my shirt; figured I should get it out before it stains.” Before he can open his mouth, she holds up her palm for him to see the angry red line slashed diagonally across it. “I was skinning a squirrel and my knife slipped.”
Bellamy observes the cut; it looks pretty deep and would probably leave a scar, but she seems unfazed by it. “Couldn’t put on another one before venturing out in a half frozen river to wash it?”
“I didn’t exactly leave with my entire wardrobe,” she gripes, her lips pulling down into a slight frown. It’s only now that he’s brought it up does she become self conscious, wrapping her arms around herself to hide her bare skin.
In one fluid movement, Bellamy slips off his pack and pulls out his spare shirt from it. He tosses it over to her. It lands in a heap at her feet and her eyes widen.
The soft blue of her irises pierce right into his soul and there’s that damn pain in his chest that always happens when she looks at him like that. He clenches his jaw and has to look away. “Bellamy...” she says softly.
“You’re going to freeze your ass off,” he recalls gruffly, staring over her shoulder.
There’s a sharp intake of breath and he can see her bite the inside of her cheek as she mulls over his sentence. She bends forward to snatch the t shirt off the ground and dusts the snow off it before slipping it on. It’s much too big for her, and hangs off her near skeletal frame. There’s a bitter taste in his mouth when he catches himself staring at her form for a second too long. She looks... good. In his clothes.
He has to look away again.
Finally, in that same soft voice of hers, she says, “I didn’t know if you got it.”
“What, you think a fox would’ve snatched it up?”
“I never went back to the tree.”
Bellamy always thought that he understood the power of words; the power they had to create something and then break it all in the same breath. He understood that they were able to squeeze his heart so tightly in the cavern of his chest that it almost shattered to pieces when she muttered those four words into his skin at the gate. Four words that burnt their way into his skin and fill him with something so much colder than the winter they’re facing.
This is almost like that all over again.
He keeps his face blank and he can see her fidgeting in front him, twisting her fingers in the hem. He doesn’t tell her to come back, doesn’t tell her anything again but, “The group of us will be passing her in about an hour. You should probably go.”
Her face crumples and she takes a step closer but Bellamy stops her. She’s not ready yet, not okay, and they both know it. She’s not as broken as she was when she left, but he can see that it’s only scotch tape holding the pieces together. He wants nothing more than to take her into his arms and hold her to him, to tell her that he needs her, but he doesn’t. This is something she wants to do by herself and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t respect her wishes.
Still though, he can’t help softening a bit as he takes in her lost expression. He reaches you to touch his fingers to her wrist. She looks up and it feels as though those blue eyes are swallowing him whole.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
He holds her gaze for a few more seconds before turning to leave. The rest of the group is just finishing getting ready when he slips back unseen. No one comments on his absence, though Abby does purse her lips.
When they pass the stream an hour later, it looks completely untouched.
***
+i
His stomach feels as though it was on fire.
Even lying prone in the snow, he still feels the intense burn and would have probably screamed if his body isn’t leaden and immobile.
Bellamy had no idea where he is. All he knows is that he maybe wandered too close to Grounder territory and before he knew it, an arrow tore through his flesh. He was on his own, and out of the radio’s range, so his only chance for surviving is to somehow maybe trek miles back to camp while slowly bleeding out or hope to get back into range to call for help. Neither were a good option, but he tried nonetheless, struggling to put one foot in front the other as blood dripped down his arm and his body felt heavier and heavier.
It took him a long while to realise that the arrowhead was poisoned.
Only when he finally stumbled, dropping to his knees in a snow bank did it register in him. Bellamy struggled to get to his feet, only to fall back down again as his legs were suddenly unable to hold his weight.
He ends up lying in the snow bank, feeling his eyelids get heavier with each blink and his breathing get shallow. The snow around him is sticky with blood and he’s counting down the seconds until there’s nothing left to count.
When he sees blonde hair and blue eyes and candy pink lips pulled into a horrified gasp above him he figures this is it, he’s dying.
He’s dead, and gone to hell, because that’s the only logical reason that he’d be seeing her. His own particularly painful punishment picked out by Hades himself for him to bear for the rest of his days in the Fields of Damnation. Bellamy tries to reach out and touch her, to smooth away the furrow between her brows and wipe the tears running down her pale face, but is unable to lift his arms. It’s an appropriate form of torture he guesses. To see her right there in front of him in pain and not be able to do anything about it. He probably deserves it.
Things begin to blur after that, and he feels hands prodding and pushing him. The world spins, a blur of white and brown, and he finds himself frowning. Something is being tied around his stomach and he hisses. He tries to see what but all his head is capable of doing is hang limp against his chest.
Everything burns, his vision is swimming, and his feet aren’t cooperating as she tries to pull him along with her. He’s not sure how long it continues for, just that he can add nausea to the list of things that he’s feeling, until the bright white of the snow is replaced by a dull orange glow of a lamp. She lays him down on a scratchy cot and he tries to mewl in protest at the loss of human contact. The world is still spinning dangerously and he shuts his eyes and tries to breathe through his nose.
Over the sluggish thud of his pulse in his ears he can her the clatter of something in the background, something being ground against metal, cloth being ripped and the faint crackle of wood as it burnt. He feels his shirt being ripped open next and a hand threading itself through his hair.
“This is going to hurt a lot,” someone says in a wobbly voice. He wants to laugh and huff out that he can’t possibly hurt anymore than he already is.
Apparently he can.
Just as soon as she spoke, a minute after, something hot, almost scalding, is being poured over his abdomen and he jerks off the bed. She repeats the process three more times and his breath is coming hard and fast. His vision is still blurry and he still feels nauseous.
The hand is back in his hair, softly threading through it before sliding down to cup his face. She runs a thumb over his cheekbone.
“It’s going to be alright. You’re going to be alright,” she repeats over and over. She sounds as though she’s crying but he can’t be sure. When he opens his eyes she’s nothing more than a blonde blur and the room spins, making him close them back.
She runs her knuckles down the side of his face once more before removing her hands from him. What comes next is probably the most painful thing he’s ever experienced.
She presses something hot against his skin, burning his flesh to cauterise the wound. He hears screaming in the background. It takes him a while to realise that it’s him. She does it again, and he arches off the bed, another scream tearing out of his throat. He can hear her muttering things, but is unable to focus on it, too busy being blinded by his own pain. Bellamy isn’t sure how long this goes on for but sometime between the third and fourth times she presses the blade against his skin everything goes dark.
Time passes strangely then for him. Sometimes he’s sure that it’s days that have passed and then sometimes it only feels likes seconds. He never wakes up for more than a few minutes at a time, usually when she’s forcing some kind of liquid down his throat, only to just pass out again. His bones ache, weary and heavy, and his entire body feels hot and cold at the same time.
One day he doesn’t wake up.
It’s like he’s trying to, fighting against the darkness, trying to open his eyes, to see something, to hear something, but there’s something holding him back. He struggles still, and when he manages to hear a faint buzzing sound, he grabs on to it with all he has, to fight against the darkness, against the burning in his chest. It sounds like his name, but he can’t be sure.
Something is pressing on his chest, almost painfully, and then there’s a slight pressure against his mouth, warm and wet, blowing air into his lungs and it quells the burning. She has to do it three more times before he can finally breathe on his own.
After he’s taken a few of his own shuddering gasps, he feels her lean down next to him.
“Don’t you ever do that again, Bellamy Blake,” she says, out of breath, and sounding as though she might break any moment. He wants to grab her hand and feel her pulse, regular and steady under his thumb, and tell her that he won’t, but all he manages is a pitiful groan.
Later that night he breaks out of his dreamless slumber to hear her talking. It’s not to him though, and he strains his ears until he can hear a scratchy voice. She’s using his radio he guesses, and he feels like he should know the voice, but right now he’s too tired, too drained to use any energy to think about that, so he just listens to her.
“...about four days now,” comes her tired voice. She pauses to take a shuddering breath. “He’s not getting any better and he- he stopped breathing today. I can’t fix him.” Her voice broke at the end of her sentence.
The scratchy voice replied with something unintelligent that he can’t really make out.
She huffs out a breath. “I don’t have any medicine and he’s been poisoned. I mean, he’s thrown up a few times, and it’s probably out of his system by now, but he’s got a raging fever that won’t go down for anything and I’m worried.” There’s another pause, this time more contemplative than the last one. “You should tell my mother and have her send a group to collect him. I- he can’t die, Raven. I won’t let that happen, even if it means letting the Ark find me.”
The conversation continues, and he hears her giving the other person- Raven- directions to where she is. He must have drifted back to sleep because the next thing he knows, he feels cool lips brush over his forehead and she mutters, “You’re going to be fine.”
He’s still barely lucid, and he spends more time unconscious rather than, but he knows that the next day there are people there, and it’s no longer her alone, in that tiny little wherever. He goes in and out of consciousness throughout the whole trip. They’re going back to camp he thinks. The whole way there he feels a hand wrapped around his, strong and warm against his clammy skin. He tries to squeeze it sometimes, to let her know that he’s still there. Sometimes she squeezes back, and brushes her thumb over his knuckles.
There’s a huge amount of ruckus that alerts him t the fact that they’ve made it back to camp, and he’s not sure if it’s more over his half dead form, or Clarke’s return. Probably both.
He’s whisked away to medical, though her hand never leaves his. Something’s injected into him and his senses begin to dull, sending him into a frenzy. It’s only the feel of her hand against his face, gently stroking, that he’s able to calm down. The darkness that envelops him is different this time, like sleep in a sense.
When he finally- finally- wakes up, it’s dark and the med bay is empty for her. She’s fast asleep in a hard metal chair near the examination table that he was on, hand still wrapped around his own. Her hair is a mess and there are purple smudges under her eyes. She’s wearing the shirt he gave a month ago, a knot tied around the waist and blood stains all over it. His blood, he guesses. Gently, he flips it over so he’s able to link their fingers together.
The small movement startles her awake and when her eyes land on him, she makes a small noise in the back of her throat before launching herself out of the chair and wrapping her arms around his shoulders.
“Oh god,” she whimpers into his neck, “You’re okay. You’re finally awake. You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay.” She repeats the last few words over and over like a song against his skin. He feels her body shake with unshed tears, but when he goes to hug her back, she abruptly pulls away.
“No,” she frowns, trying to inconspicuously wipe her face on her sleeve. “I don’t want you to pull your stitches.”
“How long was I out,” he asks, voice gravelly from lack of disuse.
“In total? Almost six days. They brought you back to camp sometime yesterday morning I think. My mum did what she could but said that it might be a while until you got up. Octavia was here too, but she left to go back to her own tent to sleep. Says it would be more comfortable than staying here. You’ve been here at camp for maybe a day? I’m not sure what time it is now though. Probably a bit more than a day. It’s late.” She’s babbling, and twisting a stray string from her pants around her finger. Bellamy places a hand on her own to stop her.
“Why are you back here?” he asks before cringing, “I didn’t-”
“It’s fine,” she said shortly. She’s quiet for a little bit before raising her eyes to meet his. “You almost died.”
A heavy silence settles between them. He keeps his hand on hers and she stares resolutely at the floor. “You didn’t have to,” he tells her. She looks back up at him, gnawing on her bottom lip. “I mean, I know that you...” he lets the sentence trail off, but she seems to know what he meant anyway.
“I don’t know if I can stay,” she whispers, closing her eyes. She turns over her palm and entangles their fingers this time. “I don’t know if I’m ready yet. I just... I don’t know what to do, Bellamy.”
He squeezes her hand. He still feels weak, and his hand is clammy against her smaller, warmer one. She squeezes back, and it’s a little bit perfect.
“Hey,” he says softly, “You do whatever you feel you need to do.”
She stares at him for a second before her lips curl up in to a tentative smile. It feels like the sun is finally coming out after being hidden for all these months, and, in that brief moment, he can breathe easy.
The smile is still there as she brushes back his hair from his sweaty forehead. “You should rest,” she tells him, gently pushing him back to lie down. He does as she says, and closes his eyes. He feels her lips press against his own for a moment, so soft and tender, that he thinks he may have imagined it. Neither of them says anything. They don’t have to.
She settles back into her chair by the table near him, hands still held together.
The next morning when he wakes up, Abby is standing there, his sister next to her. Octavia promptly tackles him into a hug, telling him that he’s not allowed to do something that stupid ever again because honestly Bell, you’re supposed to be the worrier of the family, not me. Abby is as indifferent as ever as she informs him about a horde of delinquents waiting outside for him, though he imagines that she does spare him an extra glance.
The chair is empty next to him and his arm is hanging limply off the examination table, cold and pathetic.
This time though, he’s not as heartbroken (because fuck it, after the events of the last few days he’s going to call it what it really is) as he was when she first left. That doesn’t mean he’s not though.
He pastes on a weary smile instead of dwelling on the topic and sits up despite Abby’s orders not to out of fear that he’d pull his stitches. He tucks Octavia into his side and allows the delinquents to flood in to the med bay, much to Abby’s chagrin.
Clarke isn’t there.
***
(and then that one time they found each other)
When the snow finally begins to thaw, Bellamy leaves camp for the first time since his injury and subsequent near death experience.
He tells Octavia that he’s going for a walk because being cooped up in camp for the past few weeks is driving him near mad. He needs to get out, to feel the crunch of dirt under his boots and feel the forest around him as he gets out of his own head. She looks like she wants to protest, but wisely holds her tongue and tells him to be careful instead.
He doesn’t plan on going far, just far away that the noise of camp wouldn’t bother him from his reading. So he leaves for the afternoon, gun tucked into his waistband and a radio in his pocket. It’s not a conscious effort, not really, but when he realises where he’s headed, he just sighs and goes with it.
The tree is the same as before, scarred with an ‘X’ on its trunk and leafless, at least for now. What is different though is a hole cut into it at its base. He frowns and leans down to investigate, book all but forgotten for the moment.
Something brown is sticking out of it, and he pulls it out, only to inhale sharply. It’s a piece of leather wrapped around several sheets of paper, a drawing on each one. There’s one of Octavia, another of Jasper and Monty, Raven, the Ark. He flips through them all, memorizing the lines and committing them all to memory. She must have used the entire stack of paper he left. At least half of them are of him.
A twig cracks behind him, and Bellamy whirls around, gun in hand.
It’s Clarke.
His eyes widen.
She has her lip between her teeth again, and she’s staring at him- or more appropriately, the drawings in his hand. His eyes flick down to her hand where she held another sheet of paper.
“I’ve been coming here at least once a week,” she says at last, stepping forward, “After I...”
“I haven’t been able to leave camp since that,” he smiles wryly. “Octavia’s been on my ass the whole time, somehow able to sense if I get within ten feet of the gate.”
She smiles at that, and steps closer to him. “How are you?” she asks, quietly, her eyes flickering from his face to his stomach.
Bellamy pulls up the hem of his shirt to expose the pink, puckered scar from the arrowhead for her viewing. “I’m fine,” he says. He lets the hem drop and studies her face. Her eyes are as blue as ever and sparkling. She still wears his shirt. “How are you?”
Clarke takes a deep breath and surveys the land in front of her, studying the path that he used to go to camp. Finally she turns back to him and simply states, “Fine.”
It’s only one word and it has him opening his mouth in protest. She stops him by handing over the new drawing. It’s of him and Octavia, both of them hugging on that very first day on earth. “I do them when I’m bored,” she says, “This was my last sheet.”
He doesn’t say anything else and she takes a step closer, reaching around him to thumb the X in the tree. “I can’t believe you marked the tree,” she muses out loud.
He snorts at that. “I had just seen you for the first time in months,” he explains, “And you were so close to camp. It was monumental.” She hums, still tracing the ‘X’ with her finger. Her hand bumps against his. “I consider it my spot now,” he continues, watching her. Her lips had parted and there was a growing flush on her face. “I come here to think, to get away from it all... sometimes pretend that you’re there and tell you all my problems,” he chuckles. He has no idea what he’s doing, but he’s putting it all out there for her to do what she wish. The blue of her eyes is reduced to a thin outer ring. He grasps her hand tightly in his the next time she bumps it against him, and uses it to draw her forward, making her stumble against his chest.
The forest is still. It reminds him of that first time he found her at this very spot. A hand curls itself in her hair, angling her neck up. Her free hand clenches tightly around his collar. Her hand is hot in his, and it warms him to the core.
“Your mother hates me,” he whispers, nose bumping against hers. “Especially when she realised that I let you leave camp. Twice. She’ll probably float me if it happens a third time.”
Her thumb is stroking the underside of his jaw, catching slightly on the patch of stumble that he missed there, and he wants to fucking purr. “We’re on earth,” she breaths, “She can’t float you.”
The hand in her hair tightens, almost painfully so, but her eyelids flutter and the colour on her cheeks darken. “She can damn well try.”
Her pupils are blown wide. “Bellamy,” she sighs and he hums because he can almost taste his name on her lips and it’s the sweetest thing ever. Clarke squeezes his hand tightly. “I am not leaving again.”
Their mouths meet somewhere in the middle, in between him bending down to close the small gap, and her surging up to meet him. It’s sloppy and there’s perhaps a bit too much teeth involved, but he has her pressed between him and the tree, with that fucking ‘X’ pressed between her shoulder blades and it’s goddamn perfection.
He kisses her like his life depends on it, which it probably kind of does and Clarke responds with equal fervour, raking her nails against his scalp and giggling when their teeth clack together in their eagerness. His hand moves from the nape of her neck to cup her jaw, thumbing it as he plucks one, two more sweet kisses from her lips. She draws out the last one, even going as far as catching his bottom lip between her teeth to keep him with her.
When they pull back far enough, her smile is like a supernova, leaving stars in his mouth and galaxies in his veins.
Their hands are still tangled together, warm and comforting and familiar.
He keeps it like that as he pulls her through the gates of the camp.