Clarke + “I bear it so they don’t have to”
Clarke has clung to “I bear it so they don’t have to” for a couple seasons now. She first repeated it in Season 2. She said it when she was leaving Bellamy and her people, thinking she could leave and take the pain of what happened with her. Clearly, she was wrong. Season 3 was the consequences of her “bearing it” and seeing that her people/Bellamy still had that pain even though she thought she took it all with her into the woods. This season, Clarke said it again before she injected herself with nightblood. Clare uses “I bear it so they don’t have to” as her leadership mantra. To her, she’s taking the burden from everyone. What she has failed to learn is that it does not take the burden off everyone else. It may take some of it away or even change the type of burden everyone else feels but it does not take it completely. Yes, Clarke took the burden of injecting someone else with nightblood away. But she added the burden of her mother being worried for her and anything else that happened after that that is related to her being a nightblood now.
Clarke used the same mantra when she closed Bellamy inside the bunker without Octavia. She took the burden of saving the human race from him but she added the burden on Bellamy of needing to save his sister and go against her.
This is where it gets interesting, in my opinion. Clarke also uses “I bear it so they don’t have to” as a mantra for her relationship with Bellamy. The beginning of this season, Bellamy and Clarke were on the same page. When things got tough, she started to take on the burden so he didn’t have to. She wrote the list while he was asleep as if she wanted to write it and not put that heaviness on him. When he woke up and said “If I’m on that list, you’re on that list”, she broke. She cried. Her plan failed. He ended up having some of that burden on his shoulders even though she tried to keep it all to herself. In her past relationships with Finn and Le.xa, she was “selfish” and stayed with them and it ultimately led to their death. Now Clarke has learned her lesson (however wrong it may be). She “bears it so they don’t have to.” She can bear the lonliness and sadness she’ll feel without Bellamy being with her romantically if it means he lives. When Bellamy was about to confess his love (or so we think), she knew it and stopped him. Because based on her past, when the one she loves admits they love her, they almost immediately die afterwards. Clarke stopped him to protect him. So now Clarke sees him alive and, to her, it is subconscious confirmation that her logic is correct. That he is alive, in part, because he did not confess his feelings. She probably doesn’t even realize that she thinks this, it is probably entirely subconscious.
Later, Clarke locks Bellamy in the bunker with her. Going to extremes to keep him safe. I think this was part of her plan to keep him safe, not just from radiation, but from her and her “curse.” If he’s mad at her, if he hates her, he can’t love her so he’d be safe. She “bears it s he doesn’t have to.” She’ll bear the sadness of not having him so he can live, so he won’t have to suffer.
This is similar to when Clarke lived by “love is weakness” (which she also applied to Bellamy). Now she has to learn that bearing it by herself does not elimate the burden from others and that she can rely on others, on Bellamy, without hurting them. I think before the end of the season, Clarke will learn this or at least start to. She’ll see that Bellamy is not Finn or Le.xa and he can handle himself. He can love her and survive, if she lets him.
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