Work Text:
“So are we ever going to talk about it?”
Clarke stopped pulling on the rough rope binding her wrists behind her back, shocked and a little bit exasperated.
“Now? You want to talk about this now?” She asked Bellamy.
“Like you haven’t been wondering. And we’re alone, with nothing better to do.”
She almost laughed—leave it to Bellamy to use a kidnapping as an opportunity to clear the air between them. She had planned on talking to him about the incident in the mountain, really she had. A kind of sick curiosity had possessed her since then, as she constantly wondered just what had happened to him in there all those months ago, because her guilt was always ravenous, always looking for more to feed itself.
There had been plenty of opportunities to ask him too. Every time she opened her mouth, though, her lips burned, because she all too vividly remembered the way they had moved against his, how his jaw had felt against her palms, how she had felt all of this while his eyes had shone only with terror. So all of her courage would disappear, and she would ask him about supplies or weapons, something, anything that wasn’t riddled with old ghosts or the warmth she felt build inside her whenever he smiled.
“I’d say breaking out of these bindings would be a better use of our time,” she grunted, letting out a pained cry when she rotated her wrist too far.
“You okay?” He asked immediately, twisting around from the opposite side of the wooden pole to crane a look at her, brow furrowed in concern.
“Out of practice,” she huffed.
“Get tied up a lot while you gone?”
She hesitated, because he never asked about her time away, always got up and left, found something better to do when the rare person got her to talk about it. “No,” she lied.
He sighed, because of course he didn’t believe her.
“You’re the one who has all the talking to do,” she said after a beat of silence. If they were doing this, then they were doing this.
He didn’t say anything for a while, but she could practically hear his jaw ticking, as he worked himself up to the truth.
“Our plan was fucked from the start,” he started slowly. “Lincoln, he—the serum got the better of him, and then I was on my own. They designated me for harvest. Stripped me down, cleansed me, drugged me, caged me. Then they hung me, started draining me—“ his voice cracked, and Clarke closed her burning, wet eyes. “That’s when Maya found me.”
It was clinical, factual, the way he recited it, and it broke her heart. All of her responses seemed useless because she knew what he’d say.
I didn’t tell you because you didn’t need to know.
Don’t be sorry—I made my choice.
I was going to go whether you wanted me to or not.
The past was irrelevant, because nothing could be done to change it. So she faced the future instead. “Is it getting better?”
She listened to him shift, a soft rustle of fabric, the sharp scrape of a boot against the dirt. “Yeah. Or I thought it was.” He paused, then asked in a wary voice, “I scared you.”
“You weren’t breathing,” Clarke huffed. “Of course I was scared.”
“Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?”
Her fingers scraped against the pole as she figured out her answer. She had been avoiding him, and she was still scared, but not because he had stopped breathing. She was scared because she stopped breathing. Whenever she was around him, it felt like there as something crushing her lungs, the air leaving her whenever he laughed or his arm brushed against hers. She was scared, because she had felt this before—a flip of brown hair, a blink of a green eye flashed through her mind—and she didn’t want whatever she and Bellamy had (friends, friends, always just friends) to go up in smoke like it always did for her.
“Bell,” she started but the words got stuck in her throat. She cleared it, and started again. “I know how things work down here. Hell, it was the same on the Ark, too. We live so close to death, every day, so I shouldn’t be scared, because you’re fine, and alive, and I’ve survived other people dying, people I—care about, have cared about, but, if you die, I would, I don’t even know. I’d probably go out of my fucking mind again, so yeah, I’m scared.”
It wasn’t her whole truth, but it was close enough, honest enough.
“Clarke—”
His broken voice cut off at the tent flap opening, turning into a growl that Clarke joined in on when her eyes focused on Emerson.
“Nice to see you too,” he sneered.
She heard Bellamy swear under his breath, and she regretted choosing talking over breaking out of her bindings. Barely listening to Emerson’s vengeful rant, she kept jerking on the rope, knowing it was doing no good but determined not to resign herself to inaction.
When he raised a needle, flicking it and sending red drops spurting out, her limbs went numb. She heard Bellamy’s sharp intake of breath, then his frantic, angered struggles to get loose.
With a dark laugh, Emerson said, “I thought you might recognize it. You were strong enough to murder three hundred innocents, let’s see if you’re strong enough to survive this.”
Clarke let out a yell as she watched him stalk towards Bellamy, needle raised menacingly.
“Don’t touch him!” She growled, yanking and yanking and yanking against the ropes but to no avail. She had no idea what was in the syringe, but she didn’t need to know—in Emerson’s hands it was a weapon, one that was about to take Bellamy from her. Terror flayed her, and her growl turned into a panicked scream.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bellamy lash out with his leg, but Emerson dodged it easily. She yelled again when their captor tried to pin Bellamy’s neck, poising the needle for injection. There was a loud crack, however, like bone against bone, and she saw Emerson reel back into her sightline, clutching his head. Bellamy swore again, this time in pain. Frantically, Clarke looked for the needle; it was still in Emerson’s hand, the syringe full red.
Nearly crying in relief, she ignored the burning on her wrists as she continued fighting for her freedom. She was so busy trying to fray the ropes that she didn’t notice Emerson approaching until he had her neck in his tight grip. He wrenched her head to the side, and she fought to breathe. In the background she could hear Bellamy’s desperate, furious protests and threats, and the pole quivered against her back as he thrashed against his bindings.
Soon, though, all she could hear was Emerson’s hot breath panting in her ear as he hissed, “You get what you deserve, bitch.”
There was coolness, a pinch, and then she saw red.
Octavia winced as she heard her brother’s furious, relentless shouts echo from outside the gate.
“You sure you don’t want to go keep him company?” Lincoln asked again.
“He’d only talk me into helping him sneak back in, and even I agree that he needs to go cool off.”
Lincoln sighed, and she fought a grimace. It hadn’t been easy to watch Bellamy be forcibly escorted out of camp, fighting the guards’ hold on him the entire way. Maybe they should’ve cut him some slack; he had been held captive after all, had had to watch Clarke turn into a Reaper. They had been brought back to camp five days ago by the Grounders who had stumbled upon them and rescued them, Bellamy walking in on his own two feet, Clarke carried in, as she was bound tightly by ropes. She had snapped and snarled at anyone who got too close, and Abby’s hands had shook as she escorted her daughter into medical.
Bellamy had been disturbingly calm, though, even as Clarke thrashed, even as her mother shocked the serum out of her system. Octavia hadn’t missed the way he choked at the sight, though, and when he slipped out of the room shortly after, she had followed him, watching from a distance as he vomited in an empty corridor.
When he went back to medical and saw Abby’s stricken expression and Clarke with her eyes still closed, that was when it had started. A coma, Jackson had explained gently. We’ll just have to wait it out. She’s strong, and she has a good chance of coming out of it. Bellamy had stormed out, disappearing for a few hours, and he had come back with bloodied, splinter-filled knuckles.
His outbursts of grieving anger grew worse, and more misdirected, as two days turned into three, and then into four.
Octavia tried to help, because she of all people knew what he was going through. While things were still bitter between her and Clarke, she would never wish this on her. She could only talk her brother down from so much though, shield his worst moments for so long. The rest of the camp, and the council, soon lost patience, and when he had brawled with a Guardsman for god knows what reason this afternoon, it had been the final straw.
You are to remain outside the camp boundaries until we feel your behavior no longer threatens the safety of our people, Kane had said, his words emotionless but his eyes full of sorrow.
Fuck you, Bellamy had snarled as he was taken outside the gate.
The stars had been out for hours when he finally he stopped yelling, and Octavia let out a shaky exhale.
“It’ll be okay,” Lincoln murmured, pulling her into to kiss her temple.
It wasn’t okay though, not as day six and day seven passed, Clarke still asleep and Bellamy still outside the fence.
The morning of day eight broke, and whispers ran through the camp: she’s awake.
No one passed through the gate, though, and Octavia turned to Lincoln.
“Should I go tell him?”
“I doubt they’d let you through.”
Her hand twitched towards the knife at her belt, and Lincoln ducked his head to hide a grin.
“You’re a good fighter, but you can’t take all of them.”
“Wanna help?”
“They’ll tell him when she’s ready.”
Octavia sighed, because as much as she itched for a fight, she didn’t want to get Bell in any more trouble.
It was only a few hours, later, though, when a determined Clarke emerged from the Ark, hobbling quickly across the camp yard. Octavia watched as Abby trailed behind her, frustrated and worried. The commotion outside the fence—Bellamy had seen her—only caused Clarke to move faster though, and Abby stopped, her shoulders slumped, signaling to the guard to open the gate.
Bellamy ran straight for Clarke, who was trying her best to do the same. He slammed into her, enveloping her entirely, her head and shoulders cradled by his arms. Every line in her body melted as she clutched at him, tucking her face into his neck. Bellamy pressed his own face into her hair, murmuring and laughing and absently brushing his lips over her hair, onto her forehead, smiling the whole time.
Octavia froze, because she had seen a glimmer of that type of adoration on her brother’s face before, on their way back from the mountain, before Clarke had left. She had thought the abandonment had burned it out of him, that he had seared that wound shut long ago, but apparently she hadn’t been paying close enough attention. Resentment filled her, because what he was feeling was too dangerous when a girl like Clarke was involved.
“I thought you said he didn’t feel that way about her,” Lincoln said softly over her shoulder.
A furious protest rose to her lips, but then Clarke moved. Octavia watched her hands come up to grip Bellamy’s face, fingers gently exploring the healing bruises and black eye from his fight. She smacked his chest lightly, scowling, but then her expression broke when he spoke, and she crumpled in on herself. Octavia almost missed it, the brief but meaningful press of Clarke’s mouth against Bellamy’s chest, but the reverence and softness was enough to drain away her bitterness and let understanding come in its wake instead.
“I guess it’s different now,” she said slowly, swallowing thickly as she came to terms with the fact that Clarke might be as much in love with her brother as he was with her.
“They’re going to be okay,” Lincoln whispered in her ear, wrapping his arms around her from behind and pulling her into him. “We’re all going to be okay.”
Octavia wasn’t sure of that, but looking at the way her brother and Clarke were holding onto each other, as if their centers of gravity were located somewhere other than under the ground beneath their feet, made her a little more hopeful that one day Lincoln’s words would be true.