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He's not there when she comes home.
He's settled a little in the weeks she's been gone, settled enough that he's worried the first sight of her will burn up the last of his rage with relief, and he doesn't want that, so he makes sure he's out when she walks in, makes sure he doesn't come back until nightfall.
They have an alliance, and Indra leads the Trikru, Lexa in exile. It's good news, as far as he's concerned, and it's Clarke's doing.
Still, he can feel his leg throb every time he thinks of her refusing to come home. Someday, they're going to talk, and she's going to convince him it was the right decision. He knows it was. He knows she didn't really choose their enemies over him, that peace wouldn't have ever been possible with Lexa in power because they couldn't have really trusted Lexa again. That she stayed because she had a plan, and she couldn't have done it if she'd left with him.
But he's not ready to forgive her.
Monty talks to her; Raven doesn't. Lincoln yes, Octavia no. That's how it is. The camp isn't divided, not really, but there are people who can see Clarke and people who can't.
Clarke respects it, and Bellamy tries not to let it twist him up. She made her choices. They might have been the right ones, but she still deserves the consequences. He shouldn't feel bad for her.
"She apologized," Monty tells him, two days after she gets back. Every time Bellamy sees a flash of blonde hair, his entire body riots. He can't last, feeling like this. But he's thought that for his whole life, to a greater or lesser extent, and he's not dead yet. So this probably won't be what kills him.
"Good for her."
"About Wanheda."
That does surprise him. "What about it?"
Monty ducks his head. "She said she was sorry for not--for acting like it was all her. That she was the only one. She thought if she tried to spread the--" He screws his mouth up, like he can't find the word. How could he? "If we were all responsible, she thought we might all have the price on our heads."
I bear it so they don't have to, he thinks, and says, "Noble."
"I don't like it either," he says. "But I thought you should know." There's a pause. "She said she wouldn't bother you."
"That's not really up to her," he says. She's been bothering him every fucking day since he met her. She couldn't stop if she wanted to.
He can't really believe she wants to.
Monty snorts, unexpected, and Bellamy feels his shoulders relax. Monty's good. "Fine. She said she'll leave you alone. It's up to you if you want to see her."
But it's not, of course. Not really. It's Raven who finds him, two weeks after Clarke gets back, and says, "Someone needs to teach her to drive."
"Go for it," he says. "Ask Abby to give you a couple days."
"Nope. This is on you."
"Since when?"
Raven considers him, and he does his best not to flinch under it. He doesn't feel like he's being petulant or unfair; he thinks he's doing his best.
Considering what they've been through, he thinks he's doing pretty well. But Raven doesn't ever let him off the hook.
"She's not leaving again."
"Not unless it's what she thinks we need," he says. The words taste bitter, because he'd do the same thing, if he thought he had to. But he's never thought it like she has.
Leaders do what they think is right.
"I'm not gonna say I get what she did, because I don't. I'm not gonna say I get how you feel either. But I know you're not gonna feel better if you pretend she never came back. And if anyone gets what she did and how you feel, it's her. So you're going to teach her to drive, because I heard Kane and Abby talking, and they want to send her out in the field soon. And if you two don't talk, she's going to be out there without you."
It's unbelievable, how much he hates the idea, given he's not spending time with her anyway.
"She doesn't have to know how to drive."
"She might as well."
"Does she know about this?"
"No. I'm meddling with you, not her."
He nods. "I'll talk to Kane about it."
"Good."
He knows Kane is worried about him and Clarke, worried about Bellamy's judgement where she's concerned. It would be easy to resent him, except he doesn't trust his judgement either.
But Raven's right. This isn't making it better. And it would be fucking nice. To be better.
Kane approves the driving lessons.
He gets to the jeep two hours early, so she won't be able to beat him there. He can't deal with seeing her unexpectedly; he needs to have the advantage. Miller and Raven are working on another one of the cars, trying to get it operational, and he reads while they watch him, clearly judging, but--in a nice way. They're rooting for him. He's not sure what he's trying to accomplish, exactly, but they want him to do it.
Clarke shows up twenty minutes early, and she's still so much to look at. She looks better than last time he saw her, but then again, he doesn't think she'll ever look worse than she did in Polis. It's not possible.
But she looks good now, really good. Clean and well fed, hair braided out of her face, dressed in her own clothes.
He doesn't mean to stare, but it's impossible not to. He's spent so fucking long not looking at her, and now here she is, alive and so close he could touch her again, if he knew how. If he was sure he wanted to.
"Hey," she says.
"Hey." It comes out strange, and he clears his throat to get his voice back. "I'm driving us out," he says. "You want to learn somewhere open."
"Sure."
She swings up into the passenger seat, and he feels his entire body tense, shift. Awareness of her is a physical thing, as unavoidable as breathing. She's so close.
They've been driving for ten minutes in silence when she asks, "Raven or Monty?" and he nearly jumps out of his skin.
"What?"
"Whose idea?"
"Raven." He pauses and reconsiders. "She's the one who talked to me, anyway."
He sees her nod out of the corner of her eye. "Tell me when I can talk."
"What's that supposed to mean? You're talking now."
She doesn't rise to the bait. "I meant it, I'm not going to--"
He snorts. "Bother me."
"The last time you forgave me, I left," she says, soft. "I'm not going to ask you to do it again."
They lapse into silence, but he finally has to ask, "Did it help?"
Her mouth twists. "Good question." And then, "Some of it did. I think it was the right decision, but I wish I could have--I wish I'd known how to stay. I really do. And I wish I could have come back with you. I wanted to."
The relief of it is almost like a physical blow. Not that he hadn't--he knew why she'd stayed. He knew she didn't want to be in Polis. But he hadn't been sure she wanted to come back. For all he'd known, she wanted to go back to whatever she'd been doing. For all he'd known, she might never have wanted to come back.
"But you wanted to take down Lexa."
"It felt like what I could do. For you. I wanted--" Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her hands twist in her lap, and his own fingers ache. "I was in bad shape. I'd been alone for three months and then--" She swallows hard; he cans see the bob of her throat, even if he can't look directly at her. "I didn't--I thought you could have bled out. In the cave. Or that the Ice Nation could have found you before you could get back. And even if you made it back, you would think the Ice Nation had me, and--I never even got to thank you."
"For what?"
"For coming."
It's enough of a shock that he finally looks at her full on again, and she's already looking at him. The sound that comes out of his mouth is harsh, all pain and surprise, no humor. "Coming?"
"Seeing you there, telling me you were going to get me out, that was the best thing that's ever happened to me," she says, so soft.
"That's fucking sad," he says, and she doesn't quite laugh, but it's closer than he came.
"Maybe," she admits. "But--"
"All I did was lie to you and get stabbed."
"You came," she says again. Her fingers twitch in her lap again. "And then no one did."
He frowns. "What?"
"In Polis. Lexa told me when she sent the messenger, to tell you all where I was, and every day--" She lets out a harsh breath. "No one came until the summit. I thought--I didn't think you were dead. I couldn't. But I thought you remembered that I'd left you behind, and you didn't need me back. I know you didn't--" She adds quickly. "Monty told me. My mom had to strap you down. And--" Her tongue trips. "They convinced you to wait."
He knows what she isn't saying, that Gina did most of it, that Gina had been the one to remind him he couldn't walk into Polis and shake it until Clarke fell out. There had been liberal use of the term reckless dumbass, and she wasn't wrong. He couldn't have gotten her.
But he didn't know she knew they knew where she was. He didn't know she was waiting for them, for him, and that he hadn't come.
"I nearly punched your mom," he finally says.
"She gets that a lot." She's quiet again and finally says, "I can tell you why I stayed. But I don't--it doesn't make it better. What I did to you. After you came to get me, I just--"
"Yeah," he says. "Tell me."
"I agreed to stay, for one thing." He snorts, and she does too. "I know. But--if you'd tried to take me out of there by force, it would have been--"
"Bad," he admits, grudging. He would have, in that moment. He would have fought his way out of there, if she'd so much as blinked.
"I don't want to be at war for the rest of my life. We had to start--"
"I know," he says, and he means it. He clears his throat. "So, you agreed you'd stay."
"It was part of the deal. And I didn't--" She smiles a little, so grim. "I didn't trust her, obviously. But I couldn't just kill her." She lets out a ragged breath. "I had the knife at her throat, and I couldn't--"
"That's not a bad thing. It would have been satisfying for a second, maybe, but--less helpful. And you would have killed her." He knows better than anyone that she doesn't need more deaths on her conscience. Not when there could be another way. "I knew you stayed for a good reason, Clarke. Not--then. Not for a while. But I know you. I knew you wouldn't--it wasn't about me."
"It was. But--not like that."
He gives up and stops the jeep so he can really look at her; she's leaned back in her seat, eyes closed, neck long and pale. The cuts and bruises are all faded, the makeup the grounders put on her gone.
She looks like his Clarke again.
"Am I supposed to start driving now?"
"I don't know how to forgive you anymore," he admits.
"I don't mind."
"I mind."
She opens her eyes and looks at him. "Why?"
"Why?"
Her tongue darts out to wet her lips. "Do you know what Lexa told me?"
"A lot of fucked up shit," he says, and she smiles.
"That too, yeah. But--the one she made me believe. Back--before. When we first met. Right after Finn. Everything was just--you probably remember how I was."
Talking to ghosts. He remembers. But he just nods.
"She said love was weakness, and--that sounded so good, you know? If I would be stronger if I could just turn it off. If that would make me a better leader. A better person." He must look really, really dubious, because she actually laughs. "I know. I saw you in the cave and--I knew."
"Knew what?" he asks.
"It's so fucking stupid because--because of you. Do you even--do you know how much you love people, Bellamy?"
He has no idea what she means, but he nods anyway, wanting her to go on.
She's still smiling. "Yeah, I--I didn't think you did. But you do. And you're the strongest person I know."
"You do too, you know," he finally says. He knows that much. "You couldn't stop if you tried."
"I know. I did try."
"Okay," he says, finally. "Switch seats. Time to drive."
The conversation nags at him, though, as he talks her through the lesson, even though he's--honestly--having fun. They're not better, and he still feels too large and too full and as if he just needs to fucking scream, but--Clarke is just so bad at driving. Most of them picked it up quickly, once Raven had figured out the basics, but Clarke is just terrible, and every time she swears at the clutch or kicks the floor, he just wants to laugh.
"I'm glad you're enjoying this," she mutters, but he can tell she really means it.
"Someone should be," he says. She smiles at him and he doesn't know why that does it, except he hasn't seen her smile much, and this is the most genuine one yet. It makes him think of Polis, of her eyes dark and closed, and the memory comes back to him. "When did she tell you that?" he asks, mouth suddenly dry.
"What?" she asks. She's glaring at the dashboard again, not paying much attention to him.
"When," he starts, has to swallow past a lump in his throat. "Lexa told you love was weak. When?"
From the look she gives him, he wonders if she was waiting for him to put it together. If she had been trying to tell him this. "Before I sent you to Mount Weather," she says.
"You didn't send me. It was my idea. I don't take orders from you, Clarke."
"But you would have stayed for me."
"Yeah." He wets his lips. "That's why," he says, voice strange even to his own ears. I was being weak.
"That's why." The look she gives him is incredulous, almost exasperated. "Bellamy. I love you. Of course I love you. You're my--" Her mouth twitches. "You really thought I didn't?"
He doesn't know how to explain it. It's not exactly that he thought--it feels unfair to her, to say he thought she didn't love him. She loves their people, and he's one of them. Of course she loves him. But he didn't really think it was personal.
"I would have told you why I was staying in Polis," she says. "I would have asked for a moment alone with my people, to say goodbye. I think I could have done it without--I think none of the other delegates would have been suspicious. But Lexa was jealous of you."
He rubs his hand over his face, feeling the scratch of stubble. He feels like he did the first time he was truly underwater, that heart-stopping second of dizzy submersion, the sensation of having nothing surrounding him, no gravity to pull him down, no ground to anchor him.
"I don't know what you want me to get out of this conversation," he finally tells her.
"Why do you think I was willing to put it off?" she asks, but he knows that's not why. He thinks she probably needed him to be angry with her, the same way he needed it.
It feels like such a luxury, having the time to to feel things.
She restarts the jeep and chokes it out almost immediately, tries a few more times, finally gets it going, actually lets out a whoop, all sudden joy, and grins at him, like it's his victory too.
He smiles back. He doesn't need to think about it at all.
Her expression dims, and he sees her swallow, turn off the car, deliberate. "Okay, I've got it."
"Driving? Trust me, you're going to need another day."
She ignores him. "If the only decision I ever had to make, if the only thing I was ever--if all I was choosing was if I'd stay with you or leave you, I would pick you. Every single time. Always. But--it's never just that. And I couldn't just--" She looks away from him, voice choking, and he's still staring at her. "That's what I wanted you to get from this conversation. That and I'm sorry. That I couldn't. That I didn't," she corrects. "I always had a choice. And I always--I didn't ever stay with you." He doesn't know how to respond, and she turns the key in the ignition again, gets the jeep going, humming to life under her fingers. "Think I can get us back?"
It takes a couple tries before his mouth works. "Yeah," he says. "I think you can."