Chapter Text
One
Bellamy Blake wakes to someone scratching at his tent door and whispering his name. Exhausted, his heavy, sleep-addled head fights to pull him back under.
“What is it?” he slurs, cracking an eye open to take a stab at determining the time, but the dark within the canvas tent offers no clues. It’s definitely too early for chirping birds or any pre-dawn activity from Arkadia's occupants. Meaning he’s not been asleep very long.
The person outside hesitates before whispering, “Are you alone?”
“Yeah, I’m alone,” he says crankily, not bothering to keep his voice down. “Who’s there?”
His visitor hisses a command for him to be quiet and begins tugging at the nylon straps he had sewn on to secure the tent’s front flaps. He’s just struggling up onto his elbow’s, stiff muscles protesting, when the last of the ties comes loose and a shadowy figure pokes its head inside.
He’s had a few opportunities to curse the Ark survivors for installing those blasted floodlights around the camp perimeter. As it is, the bright light that fills his tent not only blinds him momentarily, but it also back-lights the person currently crawling inside. Her identity would remain a mystery to him, were it not for the slight corona that the light creates through her blonde hair.
Bellamy sits up fully, his heart jerking in his chest and his stomach dropping. “Clarke?”
Just as quickly as the light filled the small confines, it is doused out when she turns back around and reties the tent’s straps behind her.
“Jeez, Bellamy,” she hisses, her back still to him. “Why not say my name a bit louder, in case someone didn’t hear you the first—”
He frees himself from his tangle of blankets and pelts and is across the small space without realizing he's moved. All he knows is that one moment, he was sitting, stunned that Clarke Griffin had just slid into his tent, and the next, he is at the tent flaps himself, pulling her away from her work and hauling her into his arms. It surprises her enough to stop her diatribe in its tracks.
Of course, when they’ve hugged in the past, they have both been standing up. In some, far reach of his mind, he knows he should feel more awkward that he’s only in his underwear and that Clarke has ended up sprawled in his lap when he sinks back onto his blankets, clutching her to him. But he’s just so fucking happy to see her, to know that she’s okay, that he can’t care.
Three months. That’s how long it has been since they stumbled back to Arkadia from Mount Weather and Clarke refused to go through the gates, too wrecked by what they’d done to free their friends. Three months where Bellamy’s emotions have run the gamut between resentment, sadness, worry and, yes, loneliness without Clarke.
“You’re back,” he breathes out, gusty relief lacing his words.
Clarke squirms a little in his arms, but only so she can twist around to face him. Carefully, she moves her arms around to hug him back, but Bellamy notices that she’s shaking her head as she presses her forehead to his shoulder.
“I can’t… Bellamy, I can’t stay. Not yet.”
At this, he draws back. Not fully away, but enough that he hopes a palpable incredulity reaches her through the dark.
“What?” His voice is flat.
Instead of scooting away defensively, as she might have once done, Clarke burrows up against him again. He realizes that her time away has probably felt longer for her. While he has had handshakes, casual arms slung across his shoulders, and a few hugs, he can’t imagine Clarke doing her soul finding with a gang of cuddly grounders. It should come as no surprise that she wants to be as close to him as she is.
With a huff, he tightens his arms again, staring into the dark over her shoulder. She smells wild, like cold air, pine, and musty but pleasant earth.
Clarke doesn’t answer him for several beats and he thinks she might be subtly sniffing his clean skin as well. Finally, though, she does speak. “I still see it when I close my eyes. I still see them.”
Bellamy’s eyes shut briefly, but he opens them when he finds words. “I don’t get how being alone can help that.”
“How’re Jasper and Octavia?” she asks. He knows what she’s getting at. How can she forgive herself if they still condemn her?
He thinks on it. On Jasper’s refusal to be anywhere near him for two months after their return, but his slow, careful offers to help Bellamy with things around camp as time has passed. He thinks on Octavia, who was quicker to come around, asking Bellamy if he knows when Clarke will be back, if she is okay.
“I think,” he murmurs carefully, “that they want to forgive you.”
“Want to forgive?” Clarke asks, finally scooting off Bellamy’s thighs and moving further back in the tent. He follows her shadowy form, sitting cross-legged across from her as he flicks on the flashlight that he keeps by his pillow.
He studies her dirt smudged face, wearing such a pained expression, and her eyes, which are nearly as dark as his in the minuscule light. She still wears the outfit he last saw her in, and seeing how worn it is in this short time, he feels another spike of warring sadness and bitterness.
Unable to decide between bluntness and tact, he tries for somewhere in the middle. “It isn’t easy when they can’t talk to you. When they can’t see how hard it’s been on you.”
She nods, looking down to fiddle with a loose thread on the edge of one of the blankets. “It feels like I can’t breathe sometimes. Every time I think about coming back, I remember how everyone, but those two especially, hated me in those last days.” When he opens his mouth to deny it, Clarke shakes her head. “Octavia and I have always had an uneasy relationship. But it’s never been as bad as when the Mountain Men bombed TonDC. She has no reason to forgive me after that.”
Bellamy shakes his head. “Maybe at first, but Lincoln has told her enough times that Lexa convinced you it was a necessary sacrifice, and I think she believes it.”
“But it wasn’t necessary, ultimately,” she whispers raggedly.
Sighing, he nods. “You could only trust them at the time. It would have made no sense to form an alliance with the grounder clans if we secretly thought they’d betray us the whole time.”
“But how did I become a person who thinks the end justifies the means? My dad would have never—”
“Clarke,” he cuts her off with hushed insistence. “Living down here has been hell. You can’t know how your dad would have responded, because none of us could have fathomed that it would be like this.”
She scrubs at her face and looks up at him with a wobbly smile. “I hope I can believe that sometime.”
And just like that, he knows he will not be able to convince her to stay. Not this time. However, maybe he’s convinced her to think of a time when she will stay.
“What do you need me to get you before you go?” He can’t stand the thought of her going back into the cold, but if she must, he can try to offer her something that will help her stay alive as winter creeps in.
“Nothing,” she shakes her head. It won’t do, but he lets her continue. “I got sidetracked. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” he snaps and then shakes his head in a subsequent apology of his own. He’s tired and his body is protesting with dragging weariness. “Please,” he adds.
Nodding, Clarke pulls in a careful breath. “I really came to tell you that Lexa’s circle is moving out for the season. I guess they’re migrating south before the weather gets colder. I think the winter is going to be worse than we expected.”
Frowning Bellamy considers this. Nuclear winter is the stuff of legends, but he’s unsure if that’s what’s in store for them or not. “Do we need to move, too?”
“No. Not since they’re leaving. I think Lexa only wants to make sure there’s not too much competition for resources in the upcoming months. Just see to it that everyone doubles down on preparation.”
“She told you that?”
A flush spreads across her cheeks. “I might have been spying,” she mutters.
Bellamy’s lips curl, a surprising need to tease making itself known. “Please tell me you sang some action theme music? Like what they play in those old vids.”
Snorting, Clarke rolls her eyes. “And on that note, I’m going to go.”
Her words sober him, shoving any playfulness aside. He only notices he’s scooting to put himself between her and the tent entrance when her eyes narrow at him.
“Stay until morning,” he insists.
“Bellamy,” she sighs, wilting into herself a little. “I can’t. If my mom sees me, she won’t let me leave.”
“And I will?”
“Like you could stop me.” Her voice is low, threatening.
Bellamy fights down his own, rising hackles. Way to soothe the savage beast, Blake, he thinks to himself. Instead he tries for a conciliatory tone. “You’re right. I won’t stop you. But… please? It’s below freezing out there. I’ll help you sneak out before dawn.”
“Which is in”—she glances at her watch—“three and a half hours.”
“So stay for three and a half hours. When was the last time you were actually warm while you slept?”
His suspicions that Clarke is living rough are confirmed when her eyes flicker longingly to the blankets underneath him.
“Great,” he says with false brightness. “That’s settled.” Before she can come up with another reason to leave right then, he flicks off the flashlight and noisily crawls back into his pallet of bedding, moving to the far side of it as he straightens out the blankets that cover him, leaving a corner folded back for her.
In the dark, he can almost hear the cogs in her mind working, telling her that it’s a bad idea, that she needs to be moving, but she finally huffs out a quiet, “Damn it,” and then the only sound comes from her shucking off her shoes and coat.
He tries not to congratulate himself on his cunning too much when she shuffles her way into his bed, tugging the covers up to her chin while she flops her head onto his pillow.
They lie there for several minutes before he rolls onto his side to face her. She is close enough that he can see the slightest gleam of her eyes as they stare at each other. He only relaxes when her hand tentatively reaches out to brush his wrist, her thumb stroking over his pulse.
“Thank you, Bell,” she whispers.
He frowns at the strange goosebumps that shiver across his skin with each pass of her skin over his, but it emboldens him to move an arm around her, wanting to give her as much comfort as possible before she returns to her self-imposed exile. He knows he’s made the right decision when Clarke sighs gratefully and scoots closer to him, pressing her face to his chest.
Going along with this strange, new tenderness that he feels comfortable enough to show her, Bellamy presses a kiss to the top of her head.
“Being down here’s been a making of us,” he whispers into her hair, “but I refuse to believe it’s the making of us. We’re not done, Clarke.”
“Thank you,” she whispers again. Then she slumps against him, already asleep.
He stays awake for a long time after that, feeling her breath puff out across his skin. He makes a mental list of the things he needs to gather for her before she leaves. He can give her one of his two flannel shirts, and maybe a couple pairs of socks. He will break into the food storage bins and steal some rations, and he'll try his luck at pilfering a flashlight from Raven’s shop.
He’s not sure when his busy plotting shifts to a dream where he’s trying to whittle out a canoe for her, insisting that she not get her tiara in a twist over the time it’s taking. Whatever the case, when Bellamy opens his eyes, the birds have untucked their heads from under their wings and started up their morning racket. The blue, predawn light is stealing through a crack in the tent flaps, confirming what the cold along his front told him before he’d even fully woken.
Clarke is already gone.
Later, when he’s done staring pensively at the top of his tent and he drags himself out of the warm blankets to get dressed, Bellamy will discover that she’s helped herself to one of his pairs of socks without his offering.
He'll almost smile.