Work Text:
Abby looked into her daughter’s eyes. How to break her? Suddenly she smiled.
“Her friends are her weakness.”
The horror in Clarke’s face said enough. She’d hit a nerve. Who did they have, locked up down there? Monty, Jasper, Raven.... Something clicked. ALIE grinned maliciously beside her.
“You know who to pick,” ALIE crooned. Abby smirked.
“Start with Bellamy Blake.”
A tortured “no” escaped from Clarke’s lips. With newfound panic, she began tearing at the straps securing her to the torture device. Banged her head against the back. If she died, they wouldn’t need to torture him. “No..” If she could get herself severely injured, they needed her enough that they’d stop hurting him to heal her. “No, no, no.” Something. Anything.
She thrashed as Abby watched her, expressionless, until a familiar male voice sounded from just outside the door. Clarke stilled.
“Hey! Where are you taking me?! Let me go! I need to see Clarke! Clarke!” His frantic tone made Clarke’s heart constrict. Not him .
The doors swung open, two guards bookending a man covered in dust and grime, fighting against their grip. He had deep cuts on his arms and face; Clarke made a noise of pain at the sight, causing him to look up.
His eyes took in the straps binding her wrists and ankles, the chain around her neck… the panic in her eyes. The knife in Abby’s hand, the blood along Clarke’s chest. The realization that he was next.
“Clarke…” he said, his voice softly breaking. “Don’t give them what they want.”
Clarke shook her head, tears welling in her eyes as she beheld her friend, her partner, her companion.
“I.. I can’t... Bellamy, I-”
“That’s enough,” Abby cut her off, and let her fingers graze a knife on the table as she stared down Bellamy. “Let’s get on with this. The City of Light is waiting.” Her knife danced across his dark skin, trailing its tip across the hollow of his throat, his collarbone, down to his chest. “Where shall we start? Clarke?”
“Mom, please,” Clarke breathlessly begged, her voice thick. “I’ll do anything, I’ll stop fighting, just please… oh god, please, don’t hurt him.”
“You can stop this. Just give us the Flame, and I won’t touch a single hair on his head. You have my word,” Abby smiled.
A tear finally fell, sliding down Clarke’s cheek. She looked helplessly to Bellamy, who simply shook his head. She lifted her head to Abby. “You know I can’t,” she said sadly, her voice cracking.
“So be it.”
From the silence came Bellamy’s cry of pain as the knife slit his flesh without warning, warm blood sliding from the wound.
“Just tell us, Clarke,” Abby crooned, her knife cutting into him a second time. So close to his throat. Clarke couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. All she could hear was Bellamy, being tortured. Bellamy. The man who’d saved not just her body but her mind, her soul, over and over again. Mount Weather. Defeating the Grounders. He’d put his support, his trust, his faith, in her , only for her to let him down when it mattered most.
Abby knelt to where Bellamy was being forced on his knees by the two guards, so that they were know eye to eye. “She can stop this,” Abby murmured sardonically. “But she won’t. And you know why?” Bellamy finally met her eyes, ever so slightly thrown. Clarke could see it. But so could Abby, and she smiled twistedly, bringing her mouth to his ear. “Maybe she doesn’t love you after all.” Her breath was hot on his neck, and she leaned back to examine her work. “Bet that hurt more than this old knife here.”
Clarke looked on from where she was strapped in, unable to hear what Abby had said.
“Mom, please, leave him alone,” Clarke pleaded.
Abby’s facade snapped. She whipped her head back around to face her daughter.
“No.” And with her eyes still locked with Clarke’s, she brought her knife around Bellamy’s cheek and sliced without a second thought, the wound long and deep across his cheek. He cried out at the surprise hit. His head hung low.
“Bellamy,” Clarke demanded. No response. “Bellamy!” she yelled this time.
Abby stepped back, laughing, and sauntered over to a sobbing Clarke.
“You could have stopped all of this!” she laughed incredulously, staring at her prisoner.
“I’m not the one holding the knife,” Clarke countered, her sorrow turning to rage.
“No…” Abby said thoughtfully, running a finger down her knife now soaked in Bellamy’s blood. “You’re not,” and within an instant had the knife at Clarke’s throat. “And you’d do well to remember that,” she growled, pressing the blade into her skin and allowing it a full, slow, agonizing cut along the side of her neck.
Clarke made a small noise, but pressed her lips together; so long as the knife was against her skin, it wasn’t against Bellamy’s. She focused on her breathing. In, out, in, out. Again. Looked at Bellamy, who would be unconscious on the floor were it not for the guards holding him up on his knees. She’d spent so many years with that beautiful, kind, intelligent face, she could’ve traced it in the dark, but even so, she found it comforting to watch him. Memorize the planes of his face, his dark eyelashes, the smug curve of his lips now loose with fatigue.
Yes, for him. She’d endure it for him. The knife found its way to her arms, her chest. The pain registered, but she clamped her mouth shut. She had to keep her mom focused on breaking her .
“It would be so easy, Clarke,” she heard her mom say through the pain, “to just tell me. We’re not the bad guys, here, sweetheart.” Another slice - a deep one. Clarke couldn’t muffle her cry of pain this time. Bellamy jerked awake. Abby didn’t see it, but Clarke did.
Oh god, no, be unconscious again, don’t make her fixate on you, Clarke silently begged him.
“Clarke,” he groaned, attempting to lift his head to look at her. Her heart broke.
No, no no no.
Abby turned slowly back to him. “You’re awake. Good. Let’s finish this,” she said darkly, picking up a heftier knife and striding over to him quickly. Clarke panicked as she realized there would be no more torture. Abby had tried… and it hadn’t worked.
“ Bellamy !!!” Clarke bellowed, one last time, before Abby plunged the knife into his side. “No, no, no,” Clarke screamed as he doubled over in pain. The guards had released him. He coughed, spurting blood onto the carpet. It hit her like a train: Bellamy was dying.
She strained against the straps, but couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything. She was useless, utterly useless. Bellamy was going to die alone, in this godforsaken throne room, because of her, and there was nothing-
Wait . She looked to Abby, cleaning off her knife from their blood. Bellamy’s blood. Looked to Bellamy on the floor, groaning in pain. Her options. It was worth it.
“I’ll give you the Flame,” Clarke said into the empty room, her voice breaking. Now she had Abby’s attention. “But let me go to him. Please. I… I don’t want him to die alone.”
Abby stalked towards her. “I can’t let you do that.”
Clarke shook her hair out of her eyes. “Then mark my words, when I say that you’ll never get the flame,” she said it quietly, dangerously. Abby had to believe her. Bellamy groaned by the door.
“Fine.” The knife came down on the straps, and Clarke practically sprinted across the room to where Bellamy had collapsed in his own blood. She rolled him over so that his head fell in her lap.
“Hey,” she murmured desperately, tears filling her eyes at his paleness. She ripped a cloth from her shirt and tried to constrain the bleeding with one hand, while the other gently traced lines on his face. She began to cry in full now, feeling desperately for a pulse as her tears dropped onto his face. His eyelids fluttered, and she gasped through her sobs.
“H-hey… princess,” Bellamy murmured with effort. Too much effort. Clarke still closed her eyes at the sound, hearing his voice. She couldn’t lose him. Sending him on the suicide mission into Mount Weather proved that. He attempted a smile but winced in pain. “S’tell me… how bad’s ….it... really?”
A relieved sob choked its way out of her throat. She could say goodbye.
“I… I don’t know, Bellamy,” she replied softly, allowing their eyes to lock as she stroked his hair. “But I’m going to do everything I can. Everything…” another tear came down as she trailed off. “Oh god, Bellamy. I can’t do this alone. I can’t.”
He moved a hand up to cover hers. “Clarke…” she smiled and closed her eyes at the touch, only to have the moment ruined by another cough of blood. “I know… after this… you’ll be beating yourself up. But I want… you...to remember… this wasn’t your fault. It had… to be done.”
Clarke just stared at him, this man whom she’d come to know so well, as the tears slid down her face. Her fingers ran through his hair, across his cheeks. “Bellamy, I-”
“Me too, Clarke.” She collapsed into herself, placing one final kiss on his temple as his body became heavier in her lap. Bellamy.
A scream found its way out of her throat. Another. Bellamy, she was screaming, Bellamy. Over and over until it morphed into a sound filled with pain and longing and grief. She gently rocked his body back and forth against her torso.
“I love you,” she finally whispered.
She didn’t know how long she’d knelt over his body. Minutes, hours, possibly the entire day. All concept of time had vanished. There was just Bellamy and her, on the stone floors of Polis.
She felt a hand touch her shoulder - Abby.
“The Flame,” she commanded.
Clarke took a deep breath, feeling the grief transform into rage. Real, palpable anger. Her tears quieted, as she picked up the knife lying beside Bellamy’s broken body as she stood without facing Abby.
“You want the Flame?” she said softly. Abby merely stood expectantly. “Here,” Clarke said, spinning around and spearing Abby’s heart with the blade. She twisted the blade, lowering Abby’s body with the knife’s pressure, as she leaned over her.
All that could be heard for a few seconds was Abby’s lungs gurgling blood.
Clarke loomed over her, without a shred of remorse.
“You can break my soul, take my life away,” she whispered, twisting the knife, “beat me, hurt me, kill me,” pushing it farther in, “but for the love of god,” she pulled the knife out, grabbing Abby by the shirt and looking her dead in the eye as she gasped as she drowned in her own blood.
“Do not. Touch. Him.”