Chapter Text
The first time Bellamy met Clarke she had a gun in her hand and blood on her face. The first time Clarke met Bellamy he had a gun to his forehead and fear in his eyes. Maybe it was those eyes that made her finger hesitate over the trigger.
“Don’t shoot.” His voice was barely above a whisper but it sounded like gravel. “Please don’t shoot.”
“What can you offer me?” Her blue eyes were ice, sending frost down his veins.
“A car?”
The two little words hung in the air for a while before she seemed to make up her mind. He found his arm wrenched uncomfortably behind him and a forceful hand at his back pushing him forwards.
He was all too aware of the gun at his temple as she steered him towards the door of the abandoned gas station. Neither of them mentioned the awkward angle he was bent backwards so that she could comfortably place the barrel against his skull.
“See? Beautiful four wheel drive. Good enough for you, Princess?” Cockiness was a stupid trait to possess when a stranger held your life in their hands.
“You’re willing to stay with me?” There was something in her voice. Something small and shivering that he couldn't quite place.
“Sure. I mean a partner would be good. Really good. We could look out for each other.” He wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince.
“Okay.” Her voice was rather calm for someone who had almost shot him before he could even react.
“Well, Princess, I’m no expert, but the first step to a trusting relationship with someone is probably something like ‘take the weapon away from their head’.”
With the gun safely tucked into her jeans, they cleared the gas station of supplies. She made sure she always kept him in the corner of her vision. She methodically picked through every shelf, necessities were thrown int her rucksack, everything else lay abandoned. It was an easy, familiar rhythm to settle into. Batteries? In the bag. Baby wipes? No thanks. Muesli bars? Why not. Bug spray? Hmmm. Not a necessity but it might be--
“Fuck!” his yell broke through her rhythm and sent her heart racing.
She rushed over to him. A head rolled by his feet.
“This is fresh.”
“Yeah,” she said, using the toe of her boot to stop the unnerving rolling of the severed head. “I had to deal with him when I first came in. Looks like he worked here. Must be an awful place to turn, all by himself.” She looked a little sad, as if she felt sorry for the guy she had brutally executed.
He frowned at her, only now registering where the blood on her face must have come from.
“And you fucking decapitated him? We both know you have a gun, Princess.”
“Are you serious? Bullets don’t kill them! They just come back after a few hours.”
“How was I supposed to know?”
She went quiet at that. They had the station cleared out within minutes.
---
Long hours on the road together were not nearly as awful as either of them had expected. He didn’t seem to fill the air with pointless chatter and she only spoke to point out the nice colours of the sky. They worked well together, too. Clarke had found him a machete so he could ‘actually do some good.’ Threats were dealt with swiftly. Bellamy sometimes stared too much at the way she would tear through the neck of any zombie they encountered, flames flickering in her eyes. She was always so level headed—‘raid the hospital? Are you nuts? That’s basically zombie paradise’—but with a blade in her hand and zombies in her way she was all passion and ruthlessness. In those moments it was hard to remember the girl who was fascinated with pink afternoon skies.
They still didn’t know each other’s names. Clarke would call him Scruffy (‘Sorry but you need a haircut’) or alternatively get his attention through ‘hey you’. Bellamy called her Princess mainly because she ground her teeth when he did. It was better this way. Clarke knew she didn’t want Scruffy’s friendship. She wanted someone who would split her neck open if she was bitten, someone who wouldn’t even worry about digging a grave. And now he wouldn’t even know what name to write in the earth.
Wells.
Her stomach clenches every time. The dirt had soaked up her tears as she had dragged her index finger across its uneven surface. His name marked the earth but it wasn’t enough. The dirt was hard and her finger was cut up but it just. Wasn’t. Enough. Maybe her tears would slide their way through the cracked earth down, down to his lifeless body. Maybe they would whisper to him, tell him how much he meant to her; much more than five letters scratched into the dirt.
Sometimes Scruffy looks at her and she thinks he knows. Knows that every blade through a zombie's neck is a punch to her gut, a knife to her heart. He’ll come up behind her when she takes a moment too long to stare at the head she had just disembodied with sympathy in his eyes. She doesn’t want his fucking sympathy. She makes a show of kicking away the zombie’s head when he does it.
---
She knows they are heading east. Yeah, their path is mainly determined by where they think they may be able to find supplies but it’s always east, east, east. She doesn’t ask why, it doesn’t matter. She was walking for days on end with little aim before she met him so they could drive so far east that they end up in the ocean and she probably wouldn’t question him.
She trusts him.
She looks over at him now, hands gripping the steering wheel, face halved by the shadow of the visor and the golden setting sun. She trusts him. That should make her feel uneasy but instead the idea settles comfortable and warm in the bottom of her stomach. Maybe it’s because she knows that he wouldn’t risk his life for her, because he would be able to keep going if she were to die. It’s a nice feeling.
Nightfall means sleep. Headlights attract too much attention and there’s no point in driving blindly through the darkness. He always lets her sleep in the boot, despite it clearly being set up for him. He sleeps in the backseat so she doesn’t think it’s that bad of a compromise.
“Goodnight,” he calls in his low voice.
“Goodnight.”
They fall asleep to the sound of each other’s breathing.
---
“Good job, Scruffy.” Her chest is rising and falling rapidly and she can barely get enough air in to spit out the words. This was supposed to be an easy raid but the countless bodies scattered across the grimy floor prove that it was anything but. Their eyes connect over their kills and she can tell he's just as wrecked as her.
“Bellamy.”
“What did you just call me?”
“My name. Bellamy.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t have to t—“
“Clarke.”
She watches as Bellamy crouches down to a body in front of him and disentangles a blade from the corpse's fingers. Bellamy. Huh.
---
“Bellamy!”
“Fuck, what?!” He can ignore how much he likes his name on her lips as her outburst nearly caused him to fucking crash.
“Go back.”
He throws a rough U-turn and feels satisfied when she slams against her door. What—she scared the shit out of him. He sees what she was so damn excited about after a few seconds. It’s an old crappy-looking truck stop and he hesitates before pulling into its driveway.
“I just want a real bed for once. Oh, shit! Do you reckon it’ll have a shower? A working one?”
He gives in and pulls into the driveway. He could mention that it’s his long legs that were getting cramped and he had given her the best sleeping spot but he finds he doesn’t really care. The rotting wooden door of room 18B is easy to kick through and they make their way in. There’s a faint stale smell but other than that the room’s in fair condition.
“Bags this one!” calls Clarke, moving towards the bed closest to the window.
“Yeah, whatever.”
She soon forgets about the bed anyway, rushing for the bathroom. Seconds later the sound of rushing water meets his ears.
“It’s kinda mouldy in here but the shower works!” her voice echoes over the water. The sounds from the bathroom are muffled as she shuts the door behind her.
When Clarke sees her reflection it’s… unpleasant. After Wells she had chopped off the majority of her hair and it had grown back uneven, hanging unkempt at her shoulders. Her face is a roadmap of cuts, blood and scars. When she strips off her clothes they tug painfully on her cuts, held tight by dried blood.
She steps into the shower and the water feels as if it is shedding a layer of her skin. Red and brown dance and swirl down the drain. She closes her eyes and allows herself to feel everything she’s been bottling up inside. Exhaustion—a constant companion that hangs from her limbs. Loss—the tears that sit behind her eyelids, ready for any moment of weakness. Fear—something that sits at the pit of her stomach that she tries to shove down, down, down.
Down the drain. Down with the red and the brown and maybe some tears if she’s being honest. When she sees her reflection again it’s not particularly pretty but it’s more her. Her hair is actually blonde again, something the blood and dirt had almost disguised. She attempts a smile. It looks awkward and a little creepy so she promises herself not to try that again anytime soon; she was never much of a smiler anyway. She had soaked her clothes and now they hang dripping over the towel rail so she wraps herself in a towel before heading back out.
“Shower’s all yours.”
“Thanks.”
When she’s wrapped in the stiff, off-white sheets of her bed (her window-side bed) she hears the shower turn on again and falls asleep to sound of water against tile.
---
He hears her crying that night. Sleeping was almost impossible for him to find with the heavy quiet of the room—an eerie presence. All quiet is shattered as a sob scratches its way out of her throat from across the room. She never shows any weakness in front of him so Bellamy stills beneath his sheets, unsure of what to do.
“Clarke?”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She’s asleep. She starts gasping for air and Bellamy quickly makes his way across the room.
“Clarke,” he whispers gripping her shoulders. “Clarke, wake up. It’s just a dream.”
Her eyes snap open and she reaches out to dig her nails into his forearms. “I had to.” He starts for a moment before realising her wild eyes are unfocussed and he shakes her shoulders firmly.
“Clarke!”
She finally comes to with a shock, frantically looking around the room
“Deep breaths. You’re okay,” he reminds her. They breathe together for several moments and he watches as the steel creeps back into her eyes.
“Thank you,” she says in a firm voice. He takes this as his cue to go back to bed.
“You’re welcome, Princess.”
He doesn’t ask what she was apologising for just like she doesn’t ask what’s in the east. He knows better than to try and dig through her demons. Hell, he’d be fucked if she tried to do it to him. Some things are better kept secret, and the ghosts that haunt his skull are such things.
The next morning they dress and, slightly cleaner and well rested, head out onto the road again. They fall into an effortless pattern, as the miles of road stretch before them, the horizon’s edges trembling in the heat.
It goes on.