Archive of Our Own

Finn is dead.

It’s a truth that’s been coming for a long time Bellamy thinks, since even before the Grounder Commander’s terms for peace, her demand of blood for blood. So while the girl beside him is still shock and sadness, for Bellamy it is a hollower ache, one that feels like anticipation fulfilled. In some small part of his heart it seems like he has always known how this was going to end, ever since they got to that village too late, if not by a Grounder’s hand then by Finn’s own.

Bellamy doesn’t know if that makes it better or worse for him than it is for Clarke. All he knows is that Clarke is hurting, breaking in a way he didn’t know she could, and there is nothing he can do about it.

They’ve been sitting here in the shadows by the fence for what feels like hours. She hasn’t said a word, but they’ve been passing a flask of Monty’s moonshine back and forth, which he figures is as close to comforting each other as they are likely to get. It is long since everyone else has gone to bed but sleep seems too far off to even contemplate.

“Do you think they buried him?”

Her voice breaks through the quiet and startles him enough that he almost chokes on his mouthful of moonshine. She seems to be waiting for an answer, but he doesn’t have one to give.

“I don’t know,” he answers finally, watching her from the corner of his eye and passing the flask back her way. “Lincoln might, though.”

It’s still odd to think of Lincoln as an ally, but Bellamy figures they have few enough of them in this world that he should probably take what he can get. Besides, he can’t stop seeing the look on Octavia’s face when she thought Lincoln was dead.

Clarke nods absently at the suggestion. She looks down at the flask in her hands, shifts it between them but doesn’t take another drink.

“I could get O to ask him,” Bellamy adds after another minute of silence, suddenly feeling like he needs to fill up all the quiet between them.

Clarke looks startled at the offer for a moment, like she’d forgotten she’d even asked a question in the first place, and then her face falls. “Maybe,” she says, no longer meeting his eyes, “Raven would probably like to know.”

He drops his own eyes, unable to stomach the look of guilt on her face. Clarke and Raven haven’t spoken since Finn left, and he knows Clarke thinks the other girl blames her. Knows that Clarke feels the weight of Finn’s death heavier than most because she blames herself.

“It’s not your fault, you know.”

The words from his mouth surprise him as much as her. He hadn’t meant to say them out loud, is pretty sure she isn’t ready to hear them even if they are true. He doesn’t want to make her think about it, doesn’t really want to talk about it much himself. There’s a fair amount of guilt he’s carrying in his own heart after all.

Clarke doesn’t raise her eyes but sets the flask aside, laying it between them like some flimsy barrier. “I should have tried harder,” she says and her voice sounds empty.

“Tried harder to what?” he asks, and his words are heated now, because if they’re gonna have this conversation – which, okay, he’s started it so they’re going to have it – he isn’t going to let her martyr herself over this. “To convince them to take you instead? To help him run, and restart a war in the process? There were no good answers, Clarke, none. Finn knew that, that’s why he…” his words trail off, unable to voice the words.

“Why he let them take him,” Clarke finishes for him, “Why he let them kill him.”

She finally meets his eyes and hers are harder than he expected. There is fury in them along with devastation and he isn’t sure in this moment who she hates more, him for not being able to stop this, herself for not finding another solution. Or Finn, for loving her and leaving anyway.

“Yeah,” he agrees, refusing to turn away first. “He did what he had to do, Clarke. We’ve all had to make those hard decisions and Finn made this one.”

“He shouldn’t have had to!” she shouts, her voice cutting through the air sharp and broken. Her eyes are shining with unshed tears and her voice sounds like it was dragged raw from her throat when she continues more quietly, “I should have been able to save him.”

There is a beat of quiet between them as Bellamy looks at her, counts her quick breaths and his own heartbeats, before he tells her “You can’t always save everyone. Not when what they need saving from is themselves.”

Clarke is the one to look away again, and her watery laugh isn’t filled with anything but bitterness and defeat. “I saved you didn’t I?”

And yeah, he thinks, she did.

“So why couldn’t I save him?” she adds when he stays silent.

Her eyes lift again and this time there is a plea in them, asking him to explain to her why the world is such a shitty place, why people die, why she doesn’t have enough in her to fix everyone. He doesn’t have any better answers now than he did when they landed on this godforsaken planet. Doesn’t know how to tell her that some things you can’t come back from, that some choices only lead you down one road in the end. How sometimes love can save you, and sometimes it breaks you instead.

Bellamy doesn’t have answers to comfort her, but he has to do something so he reaches out to take her hand in his own, so that maybe at least she’ll know she doesn’t have to face the questions alone. Clarke’s eyes flick down to where he is touching her, then back up to his face.

When she leans in and kisses him that, too, feels like it’s been a long time coming.

Her lips are chapped, and she’s pressing her mouth to his with a kind of intensity that almost borders on painful. Her hand is crushing his equally roughly, her fingers digging in against his bones and her teeth pressing against the back of her lips, and it is more fight than kiss, more punishment maybe than comfort, and still in this one moment it feels as if there has never been and will never be a time when he doesn’t want to kiss her.

So he kisses her back, and when she sighs and softens, shifts closer to him even as her lips gentle, he’s pretty sure nothing has ever felt both better and worse in his whole life.

The kiss heats quickly, and it isn’t long before she’s throwing a leg over his lap, straddling him with her hands caught in his hair, his own hands grappling at the back of her jacket, fumbling under it for the touch of her skin. Clarke bites at his lower lip and he didn’t even know that was a thing for him, but he can’t help the moan it pulls from him so he figures it’s definitely a thing for him now.

He’s got a hand underneath her layers now, palm smoothing up the warm expanse of her back while his other arm wraps around her waist and holds her in closer. She tugs at his hair, shifting their mouths just right so that the next time she slides her tongue against his sparks shoot through to his fingertips. She shudders under his hands and knowing she feels this too only tightens the feeling in his gut, makes him feel hot and wound tight.

When they have to stop kissing long enough to catch their breath the world comes back in a little. This close he can see the way her eyes are rimmed red, can see the dried salt tracks on her cheeks, and remembers that what they are doing here is about forgetting more than anything else. He still wants to kiss her though, so he doesn’t argue when she gives him a look full of intent and climbs off his lap, tugging at his hand to get him to follow.

She starts to lead him back into the camp and the problem of where to go quickly becomes apparent when she hesitates by the dark of the fire pit. Clarke has been sleeping mostly in the clinic, and Bellamy has not been in camp longer than a night or two if he can help it, usually bunking down under the stars. He knows either of them could have requisitioned a tent of their own by now, and he’s pretty sure her reasons for hesitating to do so are the same as his.

If he knows her half as well as it feels like he does then it’s because she, too, is reluctant to tie herself to this place more permanently when so much of who they are is still missing. When so much responsibility and blood and sacrifice is left for them, and when their eyes still move constantly throughout the day, searching out faces that aren’t here with them yet.

He wonders how often, now, she will search out one particular face that will never be with them again.

While he is lost in the sudden worry of wondering how they’ll ever manage to make a home surrounded by ghosts, Clarke at least seems focused on the here and now with a determination that speaks to the floodgate of despair she is desperately trying to keep closed. So she is the one that leads him to the edge of camp, near the structure that houses the clinic, as he tries not to feel the weight of everything they’ve lost and to focus instead on the feeling of his hand still held tight in hers.

There is a smaller tent set back behind the larger building that houses the main clinic, and Bellamy knows this is where they put patients that aren’t yet well enough to be far from a medic but aren’t in immediate need of care at all hours. Clarke herself spent a night here, when she first came back. He tries not to think too much about that either, about that time when he hadn’t known yet if she was still alive.

She pulls him to the tent quickly, shrugs a shoulder at his unasked question and says, “There isn’t anyone sick enough right now to need to stay this close.”

She still won’t meet his eyes, and he can hear the unspoken ‘not yet’. Even the ache of losing Finn doesn’t erase the truth that others have died here already, others will again.

He doesn’t trust his voice at the moment, doesn’t trust himself to have any words for her that won’t break this tentative spell they are under, and so instead he takes the lead this time and pushes inside of the dome, pulls her in after. It is dark and close inside, smells faintly of antiseptic and earth and blood, and he thinks this is fitting somehow, that their first time is going to be surrounded by the scent of pain and death.

Clarke drops his hand once the tent flap falls closed behind her, shutting them in with the deeper darkness. He reaches after her reflexively but she is already moving away, over to the small cot that is set up against the far wall. Bellamy watches as she hesitates at the edge of it, and he doesn’t have to wonder this time what or who she is thinking of.

“Hey,” he says quietly, finally finding his voice again. He moves up behind her, rests his hands on her shoulders. “We don’t have to do anything here Clarke.”

She shakes her head and leans back into his touch. “It’s not…” she starts, shakes her head again and reaches up to rest her hand over one of his. “I need this,” she says instead, “I need to feel something else right now or I think I might lose my mind.”

She turns with her words and his hands fall from her shoulders, drift down her arms as she shifts until he is holding her wrists and she is looking up at him and standing so close he can feel the brush of her breasts against his shirt when she breathes.

“Please, Bellamy.”

He kisses her again in answer, slower now, taking his time. He drops her wrists, lifts his hands to frame her face and slip his fingers through the silk of her hair. They tangle in the curls and she makes a little hiccup of a noise, more sigh than anything, but he feels dizzy with it nonetheless. Her hands are a warm pressure on his chest, anchoring him as he kisses her deeper, lets himself get lost in the taste of her.

For a long time it is enough, just to hold her and kiss her like this, like she’s breakable, like she’s precious (she is). He’s sure she can feel the wild beat of his heart under her hand, but she only clutches her fingers into the material of his shirt and holds on tight, her other hand slipping underneath, sliding over his stomach.

At her touch, the restless heat coiling inside him burns brighter and he moves from her lips, kisses across her cheek and down to her throat, wanting to taste every part of her, wanting to find all the places that make her shiver. She makes a warm sound of wanting when he grazes his teeth over the tendon at the side of her neck and it goes straight to his groin.

He gets his arms around her again, pulls her in tight and lifts her to move her closer to the bed. She makes that sound again and an answering growl is pulled from his throat as he lowers her down onto the rough wool of the blanket beneath her. She pulls him after, straining up to keep their mouths connected even as she struggles to start pulling her jacket off her arms and he goes to work on his own.

It doesn’t take long for them to shed their clothes, and then she is naked underneath him and in the shadowy light he can just make out the curves of her, the general brushstrokes of her pale body hazy in the dark, more like a dream than reality.

His dreams don’t feel this warm though, this solid. He can see here eyes more clearly than the rest of her, the shadows in them are the internal kind. One of her hands comes up to cup his cheek and he turns his mouth into it, pressing a kiss to her palm. The tiniest of smiles ghosts across her lips for just a moment at the touch and everything feels sharply focused all at once, almost painfully so. He thinks he could stop here, just lay with her, and maybe they might be able to find a way to put each other back together again after all. Then she is reaching between them, her small hand encircling and guiding him, and all thoughts flee his mind except for the way she feels.

When he sinks inside her fully Bellamy has to close his eyes against the unexpected swell of emotion that rises in his chest. He stills and for a moment he can’t breath, feels like if he tries his heart is going to fall from his tongue and he will never be able to get it back. Her arms around his shoulders tighten and she’s shaking under him, a quiet sob spilling raggedly from her lips even as she pulls him closer, and he realizes it is too late, too late. He’s already lost it, it is already hers.

When she kisses him this time he can taste the tears on her tongue. There is heat in it too though, underneath the salt, like she is trying to remind herself that hurting means she is still alive, and that living still matters. When he finally moves, pulling out slow only to sink back inside her heat again, he hopes she feels how much she matters. How much her surviving matters, more than almost anything.

Their coupling is quieter than he might have expected, could almost be tender if not for the circumstances that have led them here. He hopes this is what she wanted from him, hopes this isn’t something she’ll add to the pile of her regrets in the morning. Because for him this is the farthest thing from regret; it is comfort, connection, absolution, even through the building need.

It feels like being alive.

Eventually she pushes at his shoulder, gets him to turn over so that she is on top instead, hands pressing hard into his chest and her head thrown back as she rides him, moving faster now, chasing the release he feels himself straining for along with her. His hands come up to frame her waist again, looking large and scarred and dark against the softness of skin there and he marvels at the trust in this, in being able to touch her and see her and hold her.

He watches his fingers flex against her when she circles her hips just right, and then he has to close his eyes against the sensation, pressing his head back into the bed as he arches up to try to get closer, deeper. She does it again, and again, and he can feel the white heat of it rushing up through him. He forces his eyes open, needs to see her, and finds her watching him already. The blue of her gaze is steel-bright, focused fully on him, and when she whispers his name, Bellamy, that is what sends him crashing over the edge completely.

He comes back to himself in time to watch her follow him over, and this, he thinks, this is going to be his undoing. He was never going to survive her, but it might be worth it as long as he can hold on to the memory of this.

After, she lays quiet and still, her head on his chest, her arms still curled around his body, and yet he feels like she is drifting further away even her heart beats in time with his own. He tries to stop his hands from holding on too tight, and is pretty sure he fails.

She was never going to be his to keep, he knows that, has always known that. It doesn’t stop him from wanting to though. It doesn’t stop it from hurting, not when he can feel her pulling away before she ever even moves.

Clarke sits up eventually, and the last of the solace she was willing to take from him goes with her. They aren’t alone in the tent any longer, too many ghosts pressing in around them. One ghost in particular, Bellamy thinks, and hates that he can’t even be mad about it because he knew going in what this was.

“I should go,” she says quietly, turning her back and tugging her shirt back over her head with shaking fingers.

He watches as she shifts to slide her pants up over her hips, as she bends to start tugging her boots back on, and he wants to ask her to stay. He wants to pull her back down into the bed and hold her close, wants to try and hold on for a moment more to the comfort of touching her. But there was no question in her voice this time, she is not looking for him to stop her, and he is afraid of what will happen if he tries.

So he watches her leave without a backward glance and says nothing at all.