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then the ice runs through her veins

/6/ then the ice runs through her vein summary: The Ice Nation takes Bellamy hostage in an effort to learn Clarke’s secrets. Or — Azgeda tries to get at Wanheda through her greatest weakness, but Clarke’s not about to just let the Ice Queen send her Bellamy’s head in a box. Diverges during {3.04}.

the general context is: after her fight with Roan, Lexa doesn’t kill Nia, and shit hits the proverbial fan

Ao3 FF

Clarke had always pictured Azgeda as some cold, desolate place.

But as she’s hauled forward by her bound wrists, the goosebumps running up and down her arms have less to do with the chill in the air and more to do with the adrenaline pumping through her veins, the icy pit of anxiety making her legs feel like lead and her head cloudy with panic. With the bruising force of Prince Roan’s grip on her upper arm. She shivers as she runs through all of the options at her disposal; she doesn’t know the Prince well enough to understand what makes him tick, to persuade him to undo her bonds and let her go.

But she has to try. “I thought you dishonored your people when you lost to the Commander. Do you really think this will make them take you back?”

Roan doesn’t bother to respond—just quickens his pace so that she has to struggle to keep up.

She was supposed to be safe in Polis (under Lexa’s protection—which hasn’t meant much in the past, but Clarke only has so many options), so she wasn’t expecting it when a cloth soaked in some sort of sedative woke her in the middle of the night. When she opened her eyes again and found herself in a barren prison cell, stone floors covered in faded stains and distant wails saturating the stillness in the air. She’d screamed herself hoarse, everything an uncomfortable reminder of the quarantine ward at Mt. Weather.

It was only when she heard footsteps outside her cell bars, launched herself and her handmade shiv at the door and was summarily disarmed by a smirking Prince of Azgeda (“up to the same tricks, i see”) that she realized exactly where she was (just how much danger she was in).

Now, she’s being led down what she assumes is a hallway, the coarse bag thrown over her head just as suffocating as it was when she was in this exact situation barely a week ago (except, this time, she knows that the first face that greets her when she can see again will be far less sympathetic). She shuffles after Roan in silence for a couple more minutes. Like before, she’s no match for him physically, and goading him into freeing her certainly didn’t seem to work, so she settles on appealing to the same humanity that spared Bellamy (sort of) what seems like forever ago.

She’s about to give it a shot when Roan is suddenly yanking her to a stop. He removes the sack from over her head and, for a moment, Clarke is blinded as her eyes adjust to the light. But then her vision is dissolving into cracked tiled floors, austere white walls (so different from the muted browns of Polis), furred tapestries hanging next to ensconced torches. And in the center of it all is someone she hoped she’d never have to see again.

The Ice Queen.

The serene look on her face is a shock when, last Clarke remembers, the Queen was storming away after Lexa’s trial by combat, vowing retribution in such a brazen way that her words alone would’ve gotten her floated on the Ark. She laces her fingers together in front of her and takes a step farther into the light.

“Hello, Wanheda,” she says.

(Clarke can feel it deep in her bones.)

“Have you been enjoying my hospitality?”

“Why am I here?” Clarke snaps.

“Not one for small talk, are you?”

Clarke pulls herself up taller. “Lexa won’t stand for this. You can’t just kidnap a political ambassador.”

Nia raises an eyebrow. “Oh? But I just did. Besides, the way I see it, you’re no more an ambassador than you are the martyr you pretend to be. Lexa will bend over backward to give in to Skaikru, no matter how much it alienates the rest of the Coalition.”

Clarke knows that she’s right—she hasn’t been involved with Camp Jaha (no—it’s Arkadia now) for months, doesn’t understand the intricacies of their tenuous alliance or what they really need. The other envoys have been nothing but antagonistic toward her, their shared animosity chasing her every step, and the unpredictability of the forests she’s called home since she left her people behind is starting to seem safer than the political intrigue of Polis. But, most of all, even though Lexa’s reaffirmed her powerbase (for now), no matter what she promises, Clarke trusts her about as much as she trusts Murphy on a good day.

But she’s not about to tell the Ice Queen that.

“She spared your son. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“She shouldn’t have. It’s why she’s weak—why’s she always been weak.”

“I appreciate the concern,” Roan says.

Clarke ignores him and suffuses her glare with all the disdain she can muster. “If that’s what you call weak, then you’re a coward.”

Nia cocks her head. “Semantics. Now let’s get to why I really brought you here.” She unsheathes the sword at her hip and runs a finger idly along its edge, tilting it so it catches the light just so, and Clarke can see that it’s mottled with fresh blood.

Ice begins to creep through her, stiffening her limbs and clogging her throat until her breath feels shallow and all she can taste is the metallic tang of fear—she doesn’t want to know where the Queen’s just been, who just met with the other end of her blade. Why the Queen hasn’t cleaned it yet. Intimidation, Clarke tells herself. Nothing more.

Clarke’s never thought of herself as prey, but the Ice Queen is like no other predator she’s ever encountered. There’s something vile in the lazy smile playing across her lips that Clarke has never seen before (not even when Cage strapped her Mother to that table, when Lincoln was half-mad with bloodlust or when Emerson left Camp Jaha with nothing but a ripped suit and hate-filled eyes). And it absolutely terrifies her.

But she won’t beg—she won’t show how frightened she is. She won’t.

The Queen’s fingers still when she finally looks up at Clarke. “Our legends say that whoever cuts down one who holds great power receives great power in return… But lately, I’ve been wondering—wouldn’t it make more sense to keep you alive? At my side, striking fear into all who would defy me?”

Clarke’s glare doesn’t waver. “I’ll never help you.”

Nia sighs. “Shame. But hardly a surprise. Which is why I’ve decided to provide you with a little incentive. We have someone here I think you’ll be happy to see. I have to warn you—we’ve had to keep him entertained, so he might be a little worse for wear.” At that, the pit of unease works its way further into Clarke’s gut, simmers there as she watches Nia clap her hands and turn to look at an archway at the far end of the room.

The Queen’s Second parades in, head held high (Clarke struggles to remember her name until it comes to her in a rash of memories—black blood and a poisoned blade and a deadly ultimatum—Ontari). A figure stumbles in behind her, legs unsteady, an indistinct mass of ripped clothes covered in matted blood. Clarke can’t make out his features as Ontari shoves him forward, and by the time she’s wrenching him to a stop in front of the Ice Queen and taking up sentinel behind her, Clarke isn’t sure she wants to. She stares desperately at his bare feet, the tattered material of his pants, as a horrible voice starts hissing in her ear, taunting her with images and truths that she wishes she could just will away.

As Nia grabs his collar and thrusts him forward, Clarke sees that his hands are shackled in front of him, bloodied nail beds reminiscent of that day they found a delirious Murphy roaming outside of camp. She rakes her gaze from his wrists to his chest, the length of it decorated with a map of crisscrossing lacerations and grisly welts. Her eyes follow the rough lines of them, creeping upward until they stutter to a stop and linger at the bruises coiling around his neck.

Everything about him is familiar, and she doesn’t want to look up at his face, doesn’t want recognition to knock the wind from her because she knows that the sight of him is going to break her. She knows that it’s selfish of her (that she’s the one who antagonized the Queen, who set this entire series of events into motion), but she wants to avoid the wreckage she’s left in her wake at any cost. With a mounting dread, she finally drags her eyes upward, and when they alight on black curls and dark skin and freckles (indistinguishable from smatterings of blood, so much blood—), she goes cold all over.

Bellamy.

“No,” she breathes.

Nia’s answering smile drips with condescension. “Yes.”

And then all rationality flees Clarke.

She sees red, yanks against her bonds and struggles to loose herself from Roan, lurching forward and twisting her arms and jerking from side to side. But the Prince’s hold on her is firm, and she finds that all she’s managed to do is add another layer to the grin on Nia’s face. The cruelty in it almost doesn’t seem possible, like she’s some caricature of a person, a villain Clarke’s only read about in stories. But this isn’t some nightmare, some horrible dream that Clarke can just wake up from. It’s real. All too real.

“You bitch! What did you do to him!?”

Nia only laughs. “Guess.”

And then Bellamy is moaning and lifting his head, and the blankness in his expression is like a blow to the gut. His eyes are glazed over and unseeing, and a bolt of pure panic is shooting down Clarke’s spine until she feels almost as unsteady as he must. But then he’s blinking back his grogginess and his lips are moving around the shape of her name, once, twice, until it’s filling the chamber, its edges hoarse, ragged.

“Clarke?”

His face is covered in bruises and sallow skin, features gaunt, dried blood caked into his hairline. His entire body is quaking, as fragile as she’s ever seen him, and it looks like it’s taking all of his energy to not crumble into a heap on the floor. It’s as if he’s a hastily drawn sketch of himself, blurred at the edges, lines jagged, no care taken in his making (unmaking). And that terrifies her. Bellamy has always been the strong one, stalwart and unbreakable in the face of all that they’ve fought against, all that they’ve done (when she’s done nothing but run away). To see him reduced to this, to what looks like days of torture at the hands of someone as sadistic as the Ice Queen, is making her sick to her stomach, nausea winding through her and a coil of fury coursing through her veins.

Nia’s mocking voice pierces through the rushing in Clarke’s ears, sets her blood boiling. “My son told me all about your weakness. And when we found this one roaming our territory dressed as one of our warriors… Well, you can figure out the rest.”

Clarke snarls, positively feral.

Nia cocks her head, the smile on her face hiding none of the depravity behind her mask. “You know, your precious little Lexa once stood in the same spot you’re standing now. Because of her own weakness. What was her name again?”

Ontari speaks up from over her shoulder. “Costia, my Queen.”

Nia’s smile morphs into a sneer. “If you say. But it doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

And then she kicks Bellamy in the back of the knee, shoves him down until he’s kneeling on the cold ground, hands braced against the floor. Bellamy grits his teeth, but when he tries to rise up through his pain (he looks like he’s in so much of it that Clarke can feel it like it’s her own), Nia brandishes her sword, lowering it until it rests on the back of his neck. And in that moment, Clarke imagines it swinging down just a little faster, cleaving into his skin and spraying the floor in red and no—

Nia angles the blade until it catches the light. “I always hate this part. They never beg—too much pride.” She fixes Clarke with a malicious grin. “But you’re different, aren’t you? Skaikru is weak. That’s why they’re so easy to kill.”

Clarke surges forward again, jerking to a stop only when Roan reins her back in. “Please… please! I’ll do anything!” she cries. “I’m begging you—take me.”

Bellamy’s head snaps up (Clarke can see blood dribble its way to the ground as skin meets blade). “Clarke, no!” He looks frantic, a mirror of herself, his eyes wild and pleading in a way she’s never seen before. She’s never seen him so unhinged, so distraught, and she wonders how many times he’s looked exactly like this in the past few days (while the Queen beat him, tortured him—) before she slams the door on that line of thinking.

Despite the gravity of the situation, she distantly wonders what sort of luck they must have for them to be reenacting the same roles they played in a cave not so long ago. (no—please! please don’t! i’ll do anything! i’ll stop fighting, just please don’t kill him.) When he brushed her hair back from her face and it was like she was home again, and that smile, that smile—

But then Nia is shoving his head down, and Clarke can only catch a flash of gritted teeth before all she sees is black curls and matted blood and all-consuming terror again. Nia barks out a laugh. “What happened to that golden tongue of yours? Don’t know how to talk your way out of this one?”

Now tears are sliding down Clarke’s face in a way that they haven’t since she hardened herself all those months ago. She rarely ever lets anyone see her this weak, this vulnerable, but she doesn’t care because it’s Bellamy. “Please, just… just don’t. I’m the one you want,” she sobs.

But it’s like Nia is only feeding off of her hysteria, letting it fuel her until Clarke sees nothing of this woman besides her unfettered hubris. “You’re more use to me alive than dead. The great Wanheda. Subdued and mine to command at last,” she purrs. “His death will serve as your motivation. You will not cross me. Because there are plenty more where he came from.”

“No, I—if you kill him, I’ll never do what you want. Never.”

The Queen appraises her and Clarke thinks that maybe she’s getting through to her, maybe she’ll let Bellamy go— But then Nia is sighing in annoyance. “I guess we’ll see, won’t we? Enough of this.” She fists a hand in Bellamy’s hair and yanks his head up, shifting her sword to his throat. “Any last words, boy?”

His eyes are closed (in pain or acceptance, Clarke can’t tell), and she can’t help but think that that’s what they’ll be like when he’s gone for good, when he’ll never open them again. She wants to beg for that to never become a reality, to get down on her hands and knees and grovel at the Ice Queen’s feet. But Roan’s hands on her wrists and the image of the sword at Bellamy’s neck are freezing her in place, clogging her throat and narrowing her field of vision until all she can see is a man who means more to her than anything else. A man she owes so much to.

A man she can’t live without.

Bellamy opens his eyes and lowers his gaze from the ceiling until it settles on Clarke. And for that one furtive moment, it no longer looks panicked, frightened. Instead, it looks resolute. When his voice (full of one last desperate plea) finally rings out and Clarke hears what he has to say, her heart stops beating and plummets to the floor.

“Run.”

And then he jerks out of Nia’s grip, the metal edge of her blade digging into his skin, cutting a slit across his throat (that looks entirely too deep). He sways and nearly collapses, but he manages to just scramble out of the way when her sword chases his movement.

“No…!” Clarke screams.

This time, when she lurches forward through the chaos, it’s surprisingly easy to escape Roan’s grip. As she staggers forward, she doesn’t have time to wonder why her hands are suddenly unbound before a blur of dark hair and palpable rage is intercepting her. Ontari tackles her to the ground, a solid weight preventing Clarke from tearing into the Queen and saving the one person who matters most—

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Nia rear her leg back and kick Bellamy in the head, sees him hack red onto the tile. When he tries to push himself up through his daze, she traps his chest under the heel of her boot and raises her blade above her head, about to plunge it downward. Clarke wants to cry out—she can see the next moments play out like a silent film, grim and terrifying, leeching all color from her surroundings. But she can’t because Ontari’s hands are at her throat, digging into her windpipe, blurring her vision in and out. Clarke claws at her arms, bucks her hips, but Ontari is a trained warrior and she’s been fighting since she was a child and Clarke knows that she has no chance against her and—

And suddenly, Clarke hears the sound of metal clanging against tile. Ontari’s grip loosens and Clarke thinks that maybe she hears her shriek in outrage, but she’s not paying attention because when she finds the strength to turn her head and drag her eyes up from the ground and the instrument that would’ve been Bellamy’s death, she sees an arrow protruding from Nia’s shoulder. The look on her face is murderous, but Clarke doesn’t have time to cower away because she’s focused on the Queen’s sword, lying useless at Bellamy’s side (he’s not moving, oh god he’s not moving—).

Clarke doesn’t care how it happened. She’s about to run to him, to do whatever it takes to keep him breathing, when out of the corner of her eye, she sees Ontari lunge for her again. But then the Queen is biting back a scream as another arrow finds its way into her thigh. Clarke turns to look at its source, and a wave of confusion barrels through her when she finds Roan still standing where she escaped him only moments ago, this time with a bow and arrow in hand and disgust marring his features.

“Move an inch, and I put one through her eye,” he tells Ontari.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Nia hisses.

“Don’t think I won’t, Mother.”

He cocks his arrow and the three of them stare each other down, an eddy of tension whipping around the room and coiling Clarke’s nerves into an even more tightly wound ball. She spares their standstill one more second, waits to see if any more arrows will go flying, and then her attention is snapping back to Bellamy. She doesn’t wait for Roan’s okay; she scrambles to her feet and barrels forward, stumbling over herself, frantic. (the distance between them suddenly seems staggering, and for every step she takes, Bellamy’s crumpled form seems that much farther away.) She finally skids to a stop on her knees beside him, pushing her hands into the bloody mess of his neck, blanching at all of the red that coats her fingers.

But when Bellamy groans, when she blinks back the haze of panic, she sees that it’s not as deep as it looks, thank god. His eyes are fluttering open and darting up and down, back and forth, until they finally settle on her face and soften. There’s pressure at her elbow, Bellamy’s trembling fingers flitting across her skin, and he’s scanning her face, her arms, her shoulders. And it just kills her because he’s checking to see if she’s injured while he’s covered in bruises and lying in a pool of his own blood on the floor.

The sudden urge to laugh (in a deranged sort of way) wars with all of her worry and lingering terror, all of her frustration because why does he have to be so goddamn selfless all the time—

Everything else falls away until it’s just the two of them, dumbstruck with relief, his name a breathless sob on her lips. He tries to return the favor, but blood only bubbles up from beneath her hands; he gags until Clarke snaps out of her reverie, turns his head while rivulets of crimson wind their way toward the floor. She rips off the end of her shirt (she doesn’t have time to worry if it’s sterile or not) and threads it under his neck, knotting it at the side. Blood immediately begins to dot the makeshift bandage’s surface, but it’ll have to make do for now.

She lifts a shaking hand and brushes the curls from his forehead, runs soothing circles over his temple with the pad of her thumb until his breathing steadies and he’s turning back to look at her. When his eyes meet hers, she laces her next words with a courage she hasn’t felt in months—because nothing has felt quite so important, so fundamentally right, in months.

“I’m going to get you out of here, Bellamy. I promise.”

Bellamy’s bound hands find her knee and squeeze, and the look on his face reminds her so much of that day they first opened up to each other, when he called himself a monster: raw and vulnerable and lost. In need of a lifeline. Some hope. Her. As she watches the awe wash away the hopelessness, she stares in awe right back. She hopes he knows just how much she needs him, because as many times as she’s told him, shown him, she doesn’t think he believes it.

Roan’s gruff voice cuts through the calm. “Time to go, Wanheda.”

Clarke takes one more second to bask in the rightness (amidst all the wrong) of this moment, and then she nods. She leverages an arm under Bellamy and tries to readjust when he hisses in pain, but it’s like no matter where she touches him, it hurts. She throws all of her strength into lifting him up, doing her best to shoulder his weight as they slowly struggle to standing (she’s trying, but she can tell that he’s still doing most of the work). When they finally make it to wobbly legs, he slumps into her side and chokes down heaving breaths, skin slick with sweat and body shaking like a leaf.

Each tremor sends a new wave of determination coursing through Clarke, sharpening her dread and uncertainty into a steely resolve until her willpower alone is dragging Bellamy farther and farther from the Queen and her bloody blade, from Ontari and her bared teeth. They stumble to Roan’s side and the refuge afforded by his still nocked arrow, and only have a second’s rest before Roan is shuffling backward and ushering them behind him.

“Traitor,” Ontari spits.

Roan doesn’t slow his retreat. “If that’s what you want to call it.”

“Lexa was right to banish you,” Nia sneers. “You are no longer my son.”

“Can’t say I’m too broken up about it.” (but Clarke can see the way his jaw tightens.)

She thinks that Nia snarls something else, but she barely registers it because as soon as they clear the room, Roan is veering sharply to the right, leading them down a narrow corridor. As they rush ahead, Clarke hears shouts coming from the throne room behind them, and it’s like they can’t move fast enough. They make another right and come to a dead end and Clarke wants to scream at Roan because isn’t this his palace? doesn’t he see that Bellamy can’t go back there—?

But then Roan is yanking aside a faded tapestry, revealing a hidden passageway carved into the stone of the wall. He pushes them through, and out of the corner of her eye, Clarke sees him set something on the ground. But she doesn’t have time to examine it because he’s suddenly shoving them down and folding himself over them. There’s a loud boom, and dust and chunks of debris rain down around them, caking her in a thick layer of soot and confusion.

All Clarke can hear is a ringing in her ears, and everything is blurry, out of focus (everything hurts). The only thing tethering her to reality is her arm around Bellamy’s back, his face turned into the crook of her neck. She doesn’t move until she feels him stir, his harsh breaths fanning across her skin, and then she fists a shaky hand in his shirt and drags herself to sitting.

When Roan shifts away, Clarke sees the entryway behind him, now blocked by piles of blackened stone and a cloud of heavy smoke. He catches his breath and readjusts his armor. “That should slow them down.”

“Where did you get a bomb?”

“Under the Mountain. The other clans wouldn’t touch any of the technology they left behind, but my Mother’s never been one to play fair.”

“Neither were they,” Bellamy groans.

Clarke’s attention whips back to him. “Bellamy! Are you all right?” (she knows that it’s a stupid question, because of course he’s not.) Her fingers run frantically up and down his arms, over his chest, and she finds herself wishing that her touch alone could heal him, wash away the blood and clean up the cuts and bruises until he’s as fresh-faced as he was that first day at the Dropship. When they were all so naïve. When the only casualty of her weakness was her Father (instead of the hundreds that litter the graveyards of her conscience now).

Bellamy lifts his still bound hands and wraps them gently around one of her own, stilling its frenzied movements. “I’m fine,” he whispers.

(she’s never heard a bigger lie in her life.)

She’s about to tell him as much, but then Roan is shouldering her out of the way. “You can fuss over him later.” He unsheathes a blade at his belt and cuts through the ropes binding Bellamy’s wrists together. She’s grateful, because why didn’t she think of that, but she can’t help but blanch at the mangled skin they leave in their wake.

Roan leans forward and slings an arm under Bellamy’s torso, grunting as he hauls him to his feet, and wastes no time in hurrying farther into the passageway. When Clarke stands to follow, it takes a second to get used to the sensation of no longer having Bellamy’s weight at her side (the sudden loss of contact is like a phantom limb; it’s been three months and she doesn’t want to stop touching him now—), but then she’s gaining her bearings and hastening after them.

As they make their way forward, she keeps one eye on the path ahead and the other on Bellamy’s hunched form, the arsenal of weapons strapped to Roan’s back. She distantly wonders how he can see so well when the only light comes from the occasional grate in the ceiling. “I spent a lot of time down here as a child,” he explains when he notices her stare. “These tunnels are a labyrinth—she won’t catch our trail until we’re long gone.”

“Not to sound ungrateful,” Bellamy says, voice so gravelly Clarke has to strain to understand him, “but if it was always your plan to escape down here… why did you wait so long?”

“You were always too heavily guarded. And then when they brought her in”—he shoots a look at Clarke—“I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone. Fewer chances to get caught.”

“But how did you know Nia wouldn’t have guards swarming the place?” Clarke asks.

“My Mother’s always been arrogant. I knew she’d eventually try something—slip up and think she could handle you by herself.”

Clarke grits her teeth. “I’ve been underestimated by more than my fair share of people.”

“If I hadn’t been there, you wouldn’t have made it out,” Roan says, matter-of-fact. “For someone who’s supposed to command death, you really aren’t all that dangerous.”

Clarke feels a pang shoot through her chest as she remembers just how useless she was (when it mattered most, when it was more than her life on the line, when Bellamy might’ve—). She mulls over his words, and even though they’re meant as an insult, she finds that they don’t bother her much at all. “Not in the traditional sense, no,” she sighs.

Roan glances at her out of the corner of his eye, expression rife with understanding and something else she can’t quite place, and then he picks up the pace and doesn’t say anything else. They make the rest of their way in silence, turning down crumbling corridors and dodging curtains of cobwebs until the darkness slowly fades into light and the sounds of a forest replace Bellamy’s choking wheezes and her rapidly pounding heart. They make one last turn, and then they’re outside, a single thought coursing through her and leaving a bout of renewed energy in its wake.

(freefreefree)

As soon as their feet hit packed earth and frozen grass, Roan eases Bellamy off of his shoulder and helps position him around Clarke: her hand wrapped around his waist, his arm thrown across her shoulders, sides pressed up against one another. He’s leaning heavily against her, muscles tense beneath her fingers, and he’s shivering so violently that it’s all she can do to keep hold of him.

“My Mother doesn’t know about this exit,” Roan says. “You’re in the clear for now.”

Clarke angles toward him. “Why? You must’ve been the one who told her about us in the first place.”

“I shouldn’t have done that. I wanted to get back in her good graces. I didn’t know she’d have occasion to actually do anything about it.”

“But she did. And she won’t stop trying.”

Roan appraises her for a moment, studying the blood trickling down the length of Bellamy’s torso and onto the hand she has wrapped around it. And as she follows the path of his gaze, the furrow of his brow and the stark line of his mouth, Clarke knows that he means it. She’s not easily inclined toward trust, but she recognizes something in his expression that screams sincerity.

“I haven’t agreed with my Mother in a long time. There’s no honor in this—it’s barbaric,” he says. “You and I have a lot more in common than we originally thought, Wanheda. You’re not the only one who’s lost someone you care about to my Mother’s schemes.”

Clarke is about to ask who he means, but then Bellamy is suddenly stiffening at her side. She jerks her head toward him, assuming the worst. But she’s only greeted with the sickly sheen of his skin, the gauntness of his cheeks, and she’s drowning in a new swell of guilt because she knows that standing around is only making his condition worse.

“We need to leave. Now.”

Roan nods. “Here.” He unlaces a pouch from his belt and loops it over her neck. “Medical supplies. Figured you’d need them after I helped you escape.”

“Where are we going?”

“There’s a cave not too far from here—head due east and you’ll hit a wall of ivy. It’s hidden behind. I don’t imagine you’ll make it much farther than that.” He shoots Bellamy a knowing look when another shudder wracks his body.

Clarke narrows her eyes. “What about you?”

“I’ll meet you in a couple of hours. I need to wrap up a few loose ends before we leave.”

Clarke searches his expression, trying to find any hint of a lie (that this is some elaborate ruse, that he’s planning to drag them back to the Queen to string them both up this time—). But then she remembers the pain in his words (someone you care about), and the last of her suspicion leaves her. She musters all of her gratitude, all of her joy at Bellamy being alive, and looks up at Roan. “Thank you.”

He simply nods and unsheathes the blade at his back. “Don’t thank me yet.” And then he turns on his heel and disappears into the black.

For a moment, she watches him ago, already missing the blanket of his protection and his cool-headed certainty. But then Bellamy groans. He’s barely conscious—head lolling onto his chest, eyelids fluttering open and closed. Clarke shuts out the incessant voice telling her that this is all her fault (even though it is, dammit) and instead focuses on the fact that, right now, Bellamy needs her. Because even when he’s angry with her, doesn’t agree with her, he’s always been there for her when she needed him most (when Dax’s body lay at their feet, standing in the shadow of Finn’s funeral pyre, in Dante’s control room, even after she abandoned him at the gates—), and it’s finally her chance to be there for him.

So she shoves aside her guilt, her insecurity and fatigue, and puts one foot in front of the other: left, right, left right. She focuses on Bellamy’s harsh breaths, the weight of his arm across her shoulders. The fact that he’s right here. That she’s never letting him go again.

“I’m getting you out of here, Bellamy. I’m not going to let her touch you again.”

“Us...” he mumbles.

Clarke furrows her brow. “What?”

“You’re getting us out of here,” he says. “Because if someone finds us… and you try to pull some self-sacrificial crap? I’m not leaving you… and then we’re both dead.” His words are halting, labored, but his intensity comes through all the same.

Warmth spreads through Clarke’s chest despite it all. “You’re starting to sound delirious.”

Bellamy makes a noise, and Clarke’s not positive, but it almost sounds like a laugh. “I’m still not sure if I’ve lost it… and this is all a dream.” And his voice is so quiet, she’s not sure if he meant for her to hear him at all.

They make their way east through the dawning light of the forest for a while, Clarke mumbling meaningless words of encouragement as Bellamy’s hold on her grows weaker and weaker, his faltering steps slower and slower. She finally spots a copse of ivy, the sight of it cutting through her exhaustion. They stumble through the vines and are greeted by a small cave, mossy walls lit by a natural skylight above their heads. When they clear the entrance, all of Clarke’s adrenaline leaves her and she deflates right along with it, both of them collapsing to the dirt in a tangle of heaving chests and tired limbs.

As soon as they hit the ground, Bellamy hisses in pain and curls into a ball, arms wrapped tightly around his torso and teeth drawing new blood from his cracked lips.

Clarke is immediately chastising herself and her useless limbs and her stupid fatigue and how could she be so careless— She darts forward until she’s hovering over him, hands just shy of landing. “Shit. I’m sorry, I—let me see—”

“Just gimme… a sec,” he moans.

He lies there, trembling and trying to bite back the pain, looking more vulnerable than he ever has before. She places a hand over one of his and squeezes, lending him all the strength she wishes she felt. When the tension finally leaves his body, he rolls onto his back and Clarke scoots forward so that his head lands in her lap. His eyes drift to Clarke’s, and they stare at each other in disbelief, a burgeoning sense of relief overriding all of Clarke’s anxiety and her single-minded drive to escape.

They drink this moment in until Bellamy raises a hand to the blood on his neck. “It’s funny…”

Clarke frowns. “What is?”

“Jasper.”

“What?”

“A few weeks ago, Ice Nation slit Jasper’s throat too.”

Clarke stares at him, incredulous. And then her mouth betrays her, quirking up at a corner. “I’ve never met anybody with such a morbid sense of humor.”

Bellamy’s answering chuckle dissolves into a fit of coughing and culminates in a “… fuck, that hurts.”

“Shh—shhhh. Stop talking, Bellamy,” she chides. “I need to take a look at your neck. It’s not that deep, but Nia—”

At that, he suddenly lifts his arm until he’s squeezing her elbow, grip tight in spite of how unsteady he is. His eyes dart frantically between her face and the mouth of the cave, and he looks as panicked as she’s ever seen him. “No—no. You need to get out of here. Before she finds us.”

Clarke flinches in surprise. “What?”

“She can’t—I can’t… god… What if she takes it out on you and—”

(Clarke knows that the blood loss is starting to disorient him, and in his eyes she can see what remains of the hopelessness he’s been fighting for who knows how many days.)

“Bellamy, no—”

“You need to leave. I’ll be fine on my own. I always am, so—”

Clarke lays a palm firmly on his cheek, willing him to calm down. “Bellamy. If you think that’s even an option, you really are delirious.” And she expects it to be a battle—for him to tear his eyes from hers while he works out an argument, to challenge her on this like he always does. But he doesn’t. He just stares at her in a distant sort of way that confuses her because she can’t quite tell what it means (because if there’s one thing she knows about the two of them, it’s that they’ve never needed words to communicate). His sudden hysteria is leaving him, his features softening, and when he speaks, his voice is almost as unguarded as his expression is.

“… I wonder about that myself sometimes.”

He holds her gaze, and for a moment, it looks like he’s going to say more (like he wants her to understand). But then he sighs and shuts his eyes, his breathing leveling off as exhaustion finally wins and he succumbs to sleep.

Clarke knows that it’s just the shock winding through him that’s causing the rapid swings in his emotions, that he’s not really making sense and probably won’t remember a thing he’s said since they escaped. But, sometimes, she thinks about the things she’d do (has done) for this man, and she can’t help but wonder the same thing.

For a moment, she revels in the steady rise and fall of Bellamy’s chest, and then she steels her nerves and channels all the medical training she’s avoided since she slid a knife in between Finn’s ribs. She needs to remove the tattered remains of his shirt because that’s where the worst of it will be, but she’s afraid to wake him up from what might be his most restful sleep in days (afraid to see all the damage that lies beneath). So, instead, Clarke turns to his most recent injury. She removes the pouch from around her neck, rifling through it for supplies. When she finds what she needs, she gingerly removes the fraying cloth from around his throat and sets about re-cleaning the cut, wiping away the drying blood and packing it with some sort of medicinal herb. It really isn’t as deep as it seemed, but as she takes in the state of the rest of his body, she knows that it’s too soon to be thankful.

Once she’s done, she starts on the rest of his visible wounds—on the mangled skin of his wrists, the cuts littering his face, the open sores of his bloodied nail beds. With each dab of her medicine-soaked cloth, each layering of gauze, she dives deeper and deeper into her own guilt—now that she’s no longer running on anything but adrenaline, now that they’re safe (for now), it all comes crashing back over her, dragging her down into its depths until it’s all she can taste, hear, feel.

The last three months have done nothing to dampen it, the burden of so much death, so many lives extinguished by her hand (i am become death, destroyer of worlds). Ever since she pulled that lever all those months ago, incinerated an entire army of Grounders, she’s been the linchpin of so much destruction and suffering that “Wanheda” seems less like a stranger and more like an old friend. She’s like a ticking time bomb: wherever she goes, she detonates, decimating the people around her and leaving only rubble in her wake. Bellamy is only the latest victim to be buried under the consequences of her good (selfish) intentions, but somehow, seeing what she’s done to him hurts worse than anything else has.

Clarke brushes the curls from his forehead and tries to find the man beneath all of the blood and bruises, tries to focus on the constellations of freckles that paint his cheeks, the chronic downturn of his brow, the scar on his upper lip. If she pictures it hard enough, it’s almost as if she can see through all the marks the war(s) carved into his skin, the unwanted burdens this world has dumped on his shoulders. And it takes her back to a simpler time, when Mt. Weather was nothing but an abstract idea, when whatever the hell we want was their greatest enemy. But then she remembers what she told him then (we don’t decide who lives and dies—not down here), and she can’t help but sneer at the irony of what she’s become. She’s not sure if she wants to go back to that time or if she wishes they had never made it to the ground in the first place.

She blinks back the sudden wetness in her eyes and is surprised to find Bellamy staring back at her.

“Hey,” he breathes.

Clarke tries to smile down at him, but all she can manage is a slightly less severe frown. “Hey.”

“I fell asleep?”

“Not too long ago.”

Bellamy swallows. “Are we…?”

“Safe as we can be. Roan said he’d meet us here in a few hours.”

Bellamy cocks an eyebrow. “And you trust him?”

“Right now, he’s the only option we’ve got.”

Bellamy looks like he maybe wants to argue (Clarke distinctly remembers when Roan was the one holding a sword to his throat barely a week ago), but then he’s nodding his head and struggling to a sitting position.

“Easy,” Clarke mumbles, laying a hand on his shoulder for support, the clinical part of her cataloguing how his muscles twitch and shudder, which parts of him seem to hurt the worst. She bites down on everything she wants to say to him in an attempt to appear rational, level-headed. Bellamy doesn’t need a sniveling mess of tears and apologies—he needs a doctor, and right now, she’s as close as he’s going to get.

“I’ve already taken a look at your face and arms, but I need to see what else they did.” She swallows the dread coating her throat. “Can you lift your shirt up?”

Without meeting her eyes, he starts to raise his arms, but then he winces and jerks to a stop. When he tries again, he makes it only half as far before he shrinks back again and grits his teeth in frustration. “I don’t think I… fuck—”

Clarke digs her fingers into her thighs, tries to redirect all of her anger at the monsters who did this to him. But if the concern in his expression is any indication, it’s not working.

So she releases her tension on an exhale. “Here. Let me.” She rises to her knees and grabs the back of his shirt, slowly draws it over his head and down the length of his arms. When she finally tugs it off and casts it aside, comprehends the full extent of his torture, all her attempts at rationality desert her and she can barely contain the bile that rises in her throat.

Bruises of various shapes and sizes mar his skin, painting him in a macabre array of purples, blues, and blacks. There are lacerations scabbing over with dried blood, sores and masses of ruined skin where it looks like he’s been burned (blistered and oozing like the bodies in Mt. Weather, and she doesn’t even want to know how—). Over top of it all is a maze of gashes and whip marks that bleed into one another until she can’t tell where his injuries begin and end. She tries to concentrate on what little of him remains untouched, but the patches of clear, tan skin are so few and far between that she can’t help but remember that day she slid a knife into Atom’s broken body a lifetime ago—except, this time, her role is not one of mercy, but of fault (she may as well have slit Bellamy’s throat herself).

She knows that what she sees is only a snapshot of the agony Bellamy must have felt (must be feeling), and it sickens her, sends nausea roiling down to her very core. She wants to do nothing more than rush out of the cave and suck in mouthfuls of fresh air, bury her face in her hands and scream at the sky about how unfair it all is (about how he doesn’t deserve this and how it should’ve been her—why couldn’t it have been her?).

But that won’t solve anything.

So she raises an unsteady hand and lets it hover just shy of a burn on his abdomen, tracing the space above it with her fingers.

“How are you not dead?”

“Strong-willed,” he grunts.

“I need to clean this before it gets infected.” Clarke clenches her hand into a fist. “It’s going to hurt.”

Bellamy just shrugs and breaks eye contact, shifting his body so that she has easier access.

But Clarke is still riding the wave of emotion threatening to overtake her. Even though she knows that he needs her to keep it together (that she’s failing, miserably), she doesn’t want to hear his groans, the sounds he must’ve made while the Queen laid into him. She doesn’t want her hands to be yet another architect of his destruction. And maybe that’s selfish of her, but she can’t cause him any more pain—because she knows that, ever since she sent him into the Mountain all those months ago, watched his face fall and his gaze harden, that’s all she’s done.

(iwasbeingweak

it’sworththerisk

ibearitsotheydon’thaveto

maywemeetagain

i’msorry)

“I’m serious, Bellamy. I—I don’t want to hurt you any more than you already have been.” She starts rummaging through Roan’s medicine bag at her side. “Maybe there’s something in here that can knock you out for a few hours. At least then you won’t be awake while I—”

Bellamy catches her wrist in his fingers and lowers it between them. “Clarke,” he breathes. “It’s not the same.”

Shame wells up inside of her and radiates outward until it feels as tangible as the air around them. “I may not have wielded the blade, but it’s me they were after.” He can’t argue with her, because they both know it’s true.

But Bellamy only tightens his grip on her and runs a thumb over the erratic beat of her pulse. “Please don’t blame yourself.”

Clarke hears the lifeline in his words, hears how badly he wants her to just grab hold and believe him (how much it reminds her of a quiet homecoming, of the shadow of the Ark over their heads, of a quavering voice and a heartfelt plea—please come inside). But she also hears the hoarseness in his voice, scraped raw from god knows how many days of screams. She hears the sound his body made when Nia slit his throat and he crumpled to the ground like a rag doll.

She hears her silent screams when she thought he was dead.

She knows that she doesn’t deserve his forgiveness, not when she threw it away so easily last time; not when, were it not for her, he’d be whole and safe and leading his people far away in Arkadia. Where he belongs. Where he thrives. Not bleeding out in a cave in the middle of nowhere. She fixes her gaze pointedly on the fingers he has wrapped around her wrist. “I should get started so you have time to rest before Roan gets back.”

Bellamy shoots her one last wary look, but then he sighs, releases her and lets his arms drop to his sides. She leans forward until she’s in the circle of his bent knees and gets to work. She dabs at his injuries, disinfecting them, wiping off the dried blood covering his chest, cutting away the dead skin and prodding his bruises for broken ribs. With every touch, he flinches away from her, but he stays mercifully silent. It kills her that it’s partly for her sake, and she wants to scold him for holding back, for pretending that he’s alright. But then she reminds herself that this is probably as in control as he’s felt in days, and she knows that she can’t take that away from him.

So she simply pulls out a suture kit when she’s finished cleaning away the worst of it and begins to stitch him back together. This time, he can’t muffle his winces or the way his breathing has picked up again, coming out in fits and bursts, a harsh staccato made worse by how feverish his body feels, how his skin throbs beneath her touch. She works her way down his torso until her needle lingers on a particularly grisly cut, lined with jagged edges and spanning the width of his stomach. She thinks that it must’ve taken a while to make.

“My guards got bored pretty quickly,” Bellamy says, voice so quiet she has to strain to hear him. “Moved from one… method to the next, but nothing ever lasted long.”

Clarke grinds her teeth. “What were you doing in Azgeda territory in the first place?” she asks, trying to distract him (both of them) from both the memories and the steady rhythm of her needle through flesh.

“Got intel that they had you.”

“You think it was a trap?”

Bellamy nods.

“And you didn’t take anybody with you?”

“No time. I was by myself when I found out.”

Clarke frowns. “Reckless.”

“Always have been.”

Unbidden, a corner of her mouth quirks up, but she quashes it down as soon as it comes and gets back to work.

For a while, only their breathing penetrates the heavy silence in the air, harsh and unsteady in tandem. When she finishes with his front, she crawls out from between his knees, studiously avoiding his gaze, and sidles behind him. And when she sees what awaits her, she gasps.

“Bellamy, your back…” she whispers.

Bellamy hunches his shoulders and scoffs. “They said they didn’t want to attack a man who had his back turned. That it was dishonorable.”

Clarke takes in the smooth expanse of skin, the only signs of his ordeal a fine sheen of sweat and stray smudges of dirt. She can’t reconcile how undamaged it is from the rest of him, how if he doesn’t turn around, she can almost pretend that there’s nothing wrong.

The harsh juxtaposition is what finally breaks her. She places a trembling palm in between his shoulder blades and sucks in a shaky breath that causes everything she’s been holding back to mutiny, rebel against her crumbling defenses. The words come tumbling from her mouth, shattered and miserable and rife with every emotion she’s been battling since it all began but hasn’t been able to voice until now.

“I’m sorry this happened to you, Bellamy. I’m so, so sorry.” And she feels like she’s suffocating on it.

“Clarke…” Bellamy starts.

But she just shudders. Feels the shame down to her very core, clawing its way through her and taking root. Grounding her to a reality she wants nothing more than to be free of. Bellamy must sense the storm of her emotions because he’s suddenly softening his posture and leaning into her touch, the bitterness in his voice smoothing away its sharp edges.

“It’s nothing I can’t handle. I’ve already been through this—at Mt. Weather.”

Clarke is reminded of another time she sent Bellamy to his suffering. “I’m sorry about that too,” she whispers.

“No, Clarke… I didn’t mean—” He huffs out a harsh breath. “Stop apologizing all the time!”

She grits her teeth. “I told you you wouldn’t be by yourself, but I—I sent you into the Mountain to die. You came here because you were looking for me. How can you ever forgive me?”

But Bellamy just shakes his head. “That wasn’t your fault, and neither was this. I made my own decisions. I told you, I—” He cuts off, swallows and tries again, this time an undercurrent of levity in his words. “I told you before—I don’t take orders from you.”

But that just makes Clarke angrier. “Bellamy, stop. Stop trying to downplay this, it’s—” (why does he insist on trivializing his pain, why can’t he just be selfish sometimes?)

“It’s not that I’m downplaying it, Clarke,” he says quietly. “It’s just that… talking about it will just make it more real.” He takes a deep breath. “You’re the only thing I’ve wanted to be real for days.”

From her vantage point behind him, she can see the outline of his jaw as it twitches in that way that it does when he’s angry with himself, unsure. He’s clenching his fists to stop them from shaking, and it’s slowly hollowing her out where her heart should be, carving into her chest cavity and filling it with such dread, such knowing, that she starts shaking as well. She knows what he’s going to say next with the kind of certainty that comes when you’re free falling and you can see your end racing to meet you, the kind she’s become all too familiar with since they landed on the ground and we are apogee became we’re not alone.

When Bellamy finally speaks again, his voice comes out a tattered version of itself. “They said that they’d had you for days. That what they were doing to me was nothing compared to what they’d already done to you. That they—that they liked how you screamed.”

Clarke lets out a half-sob. She knows how he’s feeling (has been feeling the same since Ontari paraded him into the throne room and her imagination ran wild). The thought of someone hurting him instead of her, in front of her, is too much to handle, and she can barely contain the revulsion that threatens to overtake her.

She wants nothing more than to hold him and soothe it all away. To remind him that she’s still here. That she hasn’t been hurt in the way he has. To tether him to the physicality of her, of them together, both still breathing. Living.

So she does.

She threads her arms under his and wraps them over his chest where she knows he’s fairly uninjured, resting her cheek on his shoulder. He stiffens in pain, but when she makes to pull away, he stops her with a hand on top of one of her own.

“Don’t,” he breathes.

(his voice is gravelly, and it rumbles in her chest, centering and unmooring her all at once.)

“I’m sorry.” Her lips whisper along his neck. “I shouldn’t have stayed in Polis. If I had just gone back with you…”

But Bellamy just shakes his head. “No—you don’t understand, Clarke. You left me—everyone—and for the longest time, I resented you for that.”

Clarke lets out a watery exhale.

“But, if you had stayed, I’m not sure you really would’ve been there anyway. So I understand why you had to leave. I get that. But that didn’t stop the fear. Every time I looked out the gates, I imagined you out there alone. Cold. In danger… And these past few days, when they told me they had you… it was like it had all come true. Strung up while those bastards—” His shoulders start to shudder. “I can’t—fuck…”

And when his voice cracks, what’s left of her composure cracks right along with it. Tears slide down her face as her lips start to tremble, as her arms tighten their hold on him.

“I don’t want to lose you. Thinking about it made me realize… it doesn’t matter why you left. Why you stayed in Polis. I don’t care. All that matters is you’re all right.”

Clarke doesn’t have time to let that sink in before she’s suddenly releasing her hold on him. Bellamy grunts in protest, but then she’s crawling back in front of him until she’s sitting in between his bent knees and enveloping his clenched fists in her hands, catching his gaze so they can’t hide from each other anymore. His features are arranged in such anguish that the hole where her heart was is suddenly mending itself back together and shattering into pieces again all at once, buoyed on a cloud of grief and gratitude and regret and, most of all, Bellamy.

She leans forward until their foreheads are touching (slowly, so slowly), and waits for him to pull away, to maintain the undefinable distance that’s always been between them. When he doesn’t, she relaxes and breathes him in.

“You won’t lose me, Bellamy. I’m right here.”

He blinks at her, eyelashes fluttering like they do when he doesn’t believe her, when she tries to tell him just how much he means to her (ineedyou—can’tloseyou—knewyouwould). He looks so much like he did that day outside of Camp Jaha. When he asked her where you gonna go? and the desperation in his eyes nearly convinced her to stay.

“It was the same for me, never knowing if you were okay. Pulling that lever… if it tormented you as much as it did me.”

Bellamy disentangles one of his hands from hers and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, fingers lingering at her cheek. “I wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay. You leaving? That killed me. It felt like… like I was missing a part of myself. I know we’ve only been on the ground for a few months now, that we led entirely separate lives on the Ark… but I feel like I’ve known you my whole life.”

Clarke nods her assent and lays a palm over the one he has on her cheek, needing to feel the warmth of him against her, wanting him as close as possible.

“You always say how much you need me, but… I don’t think you’ve ever realized how much I need you too,” he says.

She’s surprised when there’s no niggling feelings of doubt. When she sees the certainty, the weaknesslove, in the set of his features. Sometime over their time at the Dropship, her self-imposed isolation, the nightmare of the past few hours, what i did to get them here has truly become what we did. And while the guilt and grief will never entirely go away, she looks at Bellamy and she knows that she doesn’t have to bear the weight by herself anymore.

“I wasn’t ready to face my demons before,” she says. “I was scared that you would all look at me and only see a monster. That I’d look in the mirror and not know who I was anymore.”

“Clarke…” Bellamy says, “I know who you are.” (and his voice is soft, so soft.)

Clarke smiles. “I know you do.”

“You don’t have to do this alone.”

And instead of the response that used to come so easily (i bear it so they don’t have to), she leans deeper into the curve of their bodies and vows, “Neither do you. No more running away. Whatever happens next, we face it. Together.”

He nods. “Together.”

With that promise, Clarke thinks she could sit like this for hours, basking in their faith in each other, the knowledge that they’re both safe and here and real. Marveling at just how much she missed this. Them. Because for the first time since she escaped the Mountain and ran into his arms, she feels pure joy.

Bellamy’s voice is what finally breaks the spell.

“I guess this makes up for Roan stabbing me in the leg.”

Clarke lets out a half-sniffle, half-laugh. She reluctantly lowers his hand from her face, pulls back and wipes away the lingering tears (but she leaves her fingers clasped over his—she doesn’t want to stop touching him. she can’t, not when she was so close to losing him). “But he’s also the reason we were even there in the first place.”

“True. But it’s not like we can be picky right now.” He sighs. “So what now?”

“Now, we wait.” Clarke shrugs. “You can tell me what I missed. How everyone is doing.”

Bellamy fingers a lock of her hair, still pink with fading red. “Why don’t you tell me about this first?”

“I think I’m making up for skipping over my teenage angst phase.”

“Princess with a rebellious streak—all you need now is a tattoo. What will your mother think?”

Clarke snorts. “Nothing good.”

Bellamy winces as he chuckles, but the pang of guilt she expects is instead a pang of relief. She takes in his battered body, but instead of focusing on the pain carved into his skin, she focuses on the smile playing at his lips, the feel of his hands in hers, the steadiness in his gaze. They’re both broken, damaged in different ways. But no matter how many times they shatter, lose the pieces of who they used to be, she knows that they’ll always be there to glue each other back together. Instead of running away from their pasts and the responsibility chasing their every step, they’ll face it. Because you don’t ease pain—you overcome it.

Together.

For the first time in a long time, Clarke feels free. Centered. And as she looks into Bellamy’s eyes, she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt: Nia was wrong. Her friends—Bellamy—aren’t her weakness. They’re her strength.

And she’s not planning on leaving them ever again.

{fin.}

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