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29. (the 100) our house is crumbling under me;
our house is crumbling under me, part four.
He estimates it's been a few hours since Raven had been cut from the tree. They emerge together, him lingering behind her as they slowly ascend the steps from the feasting hall or prison or whatever the hell the Grounders really use that room for. He doesn't try to push her up them, nor does he even hover behind her, trying to passive aggressively encourage her to move faster as he'd seen a blonde Grounder try and do on their walk to Tondc.
It doesn't matter to him how long it takes. Raven tries to crack a joke that goes right over his head, and when she doesn't get a response, she seems to stop and peer over her shoulder at him to say, "Huh. Tough crowd."
The moment they rise, Raven's eyes shift toward the stars. He remembers when they had been able to almost touch them. He wonders if she had, as Spacewalker. Did she reach out to brush her fingers against what had held her hopes and dreams? He wonders if they still do.
The sun has since descended and the stars have untucked themselves from their beds to twinkle in the dark sky. She stops before him, almost blocking him in the frame of the makeshift door leading down to the hall. He may be taller, but she takes up a hell of a lot of space for someone who is shorter than him. She tilts her head as far back as she can without tipping over, and Bellamy remains behind her, looking at her before he even thinks to copy her and peer up at the heavens where they'd descended from.
He doubts they're anything close to gods, even if the Grounders sometimes think they are.
He hears the sound of footsteps approaching them. Tearing his gaze from the night sky that's captivated Raven, he sees O jog over toward them. Her smile is as bright as the moon to him.
She sounds breathless. "Hey," she nods toward him, her eyes focused on Raven. "I saved you some food."
Raven stops looking at the stars to smile at Octavia. "That's nicer than what your brother did for me," Raven quips, the corner of her lips quirking upward as she looks over her shoulder at him. Bellamy rolls his eyes. O looks at him with amusement to the slight arch of her brow, before the two of them ignore that he's even standing behind her.
She's probably oblivious to it all as Raven returns her gaze to Octavia. She holds out her hand with a royal flourish, something Commander Bitch seems to lack with how stoic and quiet she is for a leader. "Take me to my food, Warrior Girl."
Octavia turns on her heel, looping her arm through Raven's. She doesn't begin to walk, peering over her shoulder at him. "I saved some for you, too," she says. He nods, opting to say nothing at all, as she begins to walk, guiding Raven to where she's set up camp for the evening.
It's an odd sight to Bellamy, seeing his sister arm in arm with someone else. It's how she'd treated him in their own unit, pulling him this way and that, showing him a dress she'd mended to only pull him hard to the opposite side of the wall as she presented to him a black cloth she'd stitched the stars and moon into based off his stories. He doubts she'd been allowed to take that to the Skybox. He hadn't remembered to try and give it to her when he could manage a visit.
He knows it's harmless, but Octavia's smarter than so many give her credit for. It's a sign of unity, of how the Grounders haven't quite broken them with their own lack of displaying that they give a shit about this alliance, too. The Grounders are stitched so closely and tightly together that not even Heracles could hope to tear them apart, but neither are the Sky People weak. He supposes this is Octavia's way of killing two birds with one stone — sending the Grounders a message no one else is smart enough to design and ensuring Raven knows she's not fighting this battle alone.
He watches them leave, but can see another approach him from his peripherals. Any attempt to go for a walk to relieve himself of his pent up stress is currently put on pause. The weight of the world seems to slowly press against his shoulders, rendering him as hopeless as Atlas, but perhaps not as bitter. Remaining where he is, he turns on his feet to face her.
Clarke approaches him like she's a skittish animal, choosing to confront the beast thinking to prey upon her. But Bellamy doesn't want to hunt her like she's game. He doesn't want to hunt her at all.
"Hey," she says, lifting her shoulder as a substitute for a hand. Her lips curve into a smile that drops as quickly as it rises. "How's she doing?"
Bellamy draws in a breath as he looks to where Octavia's guided Raven, watching them sit on a log side by side. As soon as they sit, Lincoln appears, hovering beside Octavia like Cerberus. "Good," he says, turning his gaze back to Clarke. "As good as someone can be."
"I thought it was better I just stayed far away from her," she says. All Bellamy can do is lift his shoulder as a response. He thinks anyone with eyes can see that Clarke Griffin should stay the hell away from Raven Reyes, just in case it's not a fist she throws her way the next time she thinks to poke a girl who has been flayed of her flesh.
When he looks back at her, Clarke's expression is one that's about to shatter. She looks away from him, pressing her lips together in a bid to keep herself in control of her own emotions. He can see that they're running away from her now, but he has no idea on how to encourage her to run after them.
"I didn't mean for any of this to happen," she says, her voice small. He can hear the tears she tries to hold back successfully invade her tone, as if they're pissed that she won't let them shed so they've come to conquer her voice instead. She looks at him and Bellamy knows his expression is soft rather than hard. As much as he wants to guard himself from the grief their camp feels at the loss of Finn, he finds he can't really build his wall fast enough to hide behind.
"It wasn't your fault," he says. He doesn't take a step forward. Neither does she. There's some distance between them, space that's never really been there before. Even when she'd been some snotty privileged girl he liked to mock with a nickname a boy who wasted oxygen had given her as if it was a tiara, he hadn't felt so far away from her then.
She looks up at him, her voice cracking, "He did all that for me."
Bellamy exhales through his nose as he observes her. "He didn't," he says. He knows he doesn't know Finn's motivations. He barely knows Finn. But he knows the way Clarke's chosen to interpret whatever he's said, whatever's burrowed itself beneath her skin to make her think like she'd been the one to command Finn slaughter an entire group of people. "He was worried about you, but Finn made a choice. What we do in order to look out for our people …" What they do to survive had been a defining moment, a decision that would strip them and chain them to a rock for a monster to devour. But it's not that simple anymore. "It's not their fault. It's ours."
Clarke twists her hands together, looking down at them as her fingers fiddle with one another by her hips. "The way we choose to survive … I'm wondering if it really does define us."
Bellamy shakes his head. "I think the way we choose to live with what we've done is what defines us, Clarke." But he isn't an expert. Regardless of what anyone says, it'd been his fault those people were sacrificed on the Ark. He'd almost let it define him by breaking him, seeing him crumble like he was a tower made of soft stone. But Bellamy thinks he's atoning for his wrongs by ensuring those who have made their way onto the ground, the children and surrogate family members of those who had died, are protected.
Her voice is barely audible, but it rings loudly, like bells, in his ears. "Raven's always going to hate me for what I did."
"Maybe," he says. He doesn't think to say She'll get over it. It's been a good year since Aurora had been floated and he still feels the grief overtake him like it had the moment he realised his mother was doomed to a fate that would prevent her from watching Octavia live the life they'd always wished for her to attain one day. Clarke may make it a point to not look at him, but Bellamy keeps his gaze on her. "I doubt Raven's going to forget. But I think she's more angry with Finn than she is with you."
Clarke looks up at him, her lips pinching once more. She closes her eyes for a brief moment, but it feels so long, like the span of a year, before she opens them once more.
He doubts it's rocket science. He doubts she even wants to hear it. He sincerely doubts Raven even wants to know he's even said it. But Bellamy's not Clarke, he's not Raven, he's not blind and biased and hellbent on burying his head in the sand when it comes to Finn being a martyr for their own cause. Finn's dead and while Bellamy feels an ache in his chest for a man who had been a friend, he can move on easier than they can.
The moment he speaks, her eyes close. "Finn made the choice. Finn gave himself up. Finn put himself in a position that threatened his life. Finn's the one who removed himself from where he's always stood for her." He'd been a constant in a girl's life before he had chosen to take the fall for her spacewalking, if he's to remember the story correctly. It's a choice, one he'd made, one that hadn't been forced upon him. If Bellamy looks back, he can see how Finn had tried to separate himself from her. If he looks back, he can see how Finn had tried to atone for his crimes too late.
Maybe saying his name over and over is cruel, but he wants to hammer it into her skull with a chisel that, sometimes, choices come back to bite people in the ass. As much as he wants to blame himself and only himself for Aurora's fate, she'd been toeing the line of luck by intertwining so closely with those tight with the council. She'd ended up testing Athena like Arachne had, believing herself to be able to out-weave the council and those who kept their eye intently upon her back, and had ended up tying the noose around her own neck.
Once, he'd thought Aurora had died because of Octavia, but Bellamy's since learned that the choices a person makes, the direction they decide to take when they reach a forked road, is what leads them to paradise or dooms them to damnation.
He tilts his head to the side as he observes her, waiting for her to open her eyes. Once she does, he speaks once more, his tone softer and sympathetic, "You're just easier to lash out at since you're here."
Clarke looks off to the side, in the direction of where Raven and Octavia sit. He follows her gaze, exhaling once more, finding that his shoulders slouch with his sigh. Raven's laughing as Octavia talks animatedly, distracting her by being the little sister he knows her to be — a bright star in the sky instead of a ball of burning gas that does nothing when someone thinks to wish upon it. "And I think the Grounders are taking their anger at Finn out on her."
He can see Clarke turn her head back to him, brows furrowing. He looks at her again. "You think …"
"Sometimes it isn't enough for a leader to kill one of her own." Thinking back to the drop ship, to the very day the Grounders had chosen to wage war upon them, Murphy had wanted revenge. He hadn't been a leader, but of his one-man army, he had been. And Bellamy knows if Raven hadn't saved his ass, the camp would've been up in arms over Bellamy Blake swinging from a raft in the drop ship. It's arrogant of him to think about it like that, believing himself to be important, but Clarke had opened his eyes to his own power, of how the kids had looked up to him — and still do.
For Murphy, he had tried to poison him as Gustus had wanted Lexa to believe of the Sky People. He'd wanted atonement, a justice that would've opened a box of anarchy not even Pandora could contain. Although Gustus' death has seemed to smooth over the waters, Bellamy doubts anything is as easy as placing all that grief and anger and distrust back in its little box.
Stepping toward her, he reaches out to brush his hand against her shoulder before letting it drop. It's the only comfort he knows to give, that he's even comfortable in giving her. He knows she doesn't want him. It's a ghost she wishes to hold her and tell her she's not wrong, that everything's going to be all right. He leans down toward her, "They're angry, Clarke."
"They won't do anything," she says, shaking her head. She sounds desperate, like she wants to believe in it. She's convincing herself by trying to convince him, her biggest critic, the most stubborn nonbeliever in such good fortune. If she can persuade him that the Grounders won't think to retaliate, then maybe she can believe it herself, too. "It's over."
"For Lexa, maybe," he says. He looks away from her, licking his lips, wondering if there's any point in adding more weight to her shoulders. But Bellamy thinks it's probably best Clarke understand who she's dealing with. They're Grounders. They're people. They're a family, regardless of how savage they can be in their beliefs.
He looks down at her, "They care about their own, Clarke. I think we need to show them that we do, too."
Her brows crinkle. "How?" Her voice cracks. She looks up at him as if he has all the answers, eyes searching his own as though she can unlock them from his own dark gaze. "We're standing together. Even Kane's on board with this."
Having Kane on their side means little to the people who don't know how much of a pain in the ass he is. He's all diplomatic and polite to them, but to the Sky People, to the kids who had been dropped on this ground, he's still one of their biggest obstacles. But he doesn't think to tell Clarke what should be obvious to her. Maybe when she's thinking more clearly she'll realise that they're fighting a war on two fronts when it comes to convincing others of them — the criminals — being in the right.
"It's not enough," he says, shrugging. He may possess stories, but he doesn't have the answers to this particular problem. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth to bite hard down on it as he contemplates even speaking further, but Bellamy's always been a little too candid with Clarke to keep his mouth zipped shut tightly. "You hesitated," he says, remembering Raven's own words. His parroting of them lacks the weight of its meaning it had when Raven had spoken them. "You didn't fight for her hard enough. For the sake of the alliance, you were willing to let her die."
"I wasn't —"
"I know," he says firmly. Clarke's face crumbles, her eyes reddening. She looks away from him like he's punched her in the jaw. He doesn't say anything, though. Finn's the fixer just as Bellamy's the destroyer.
Looking over her head, he notices the blonde with intricate braids from earlier, the black war paint decorating her eyes. She's looking at them unblinkingly, stare as sharp as any knife. If he's to look around, he knows the Grounders stare at the Sky People like they're enemies. Like they're prey to hunt. The woman he stares at now, meeting her hard gaze with hard gaze, is the woman who had tried to trip Raven over on their walk here. He remembers it as clearly as if she'd been the one to tie her to the tree.
Clarke eventually looks up at him, brows crinkling once more, before she peers over her shoulder to follow his gaze. He looks back at her as she tries to study what he's seen. It's not rocket science to understand what he's trying to unweave. Clarke thinks herself to be Arachne, talented enough to unweave what she has woven, but Bellamy knows he's better than her. He's Athena, challenging her to outdo him, to only find that she falls short just as he had expected.
Once she turns back to looking at him, he says quietly, "But they don't."
He estimates it's been a few hours since Raven had been cut from the tree. They emerge together, him lingering behind her as they slowly ascend the steps from the feasting hall or prison or whatever the hell the Grounders really use that room for. He doesn't try to push her up them, nor does he even hover behind her, trying to passive aggressively encourage her to move faster as he'd seen a blonde Grounder try and do on their walk to Tondc.
It doesn't matter to him how long it takes. Raven tries to crack a joke that goes right over his head, and when she doesn't get a response, she seems to stop and peer over her shoulder at him to say, "Huh. Tough crowd."
The moment they rise, Raven's eyes shift toward the stars. He remembers when they had been able to almost touch them. He wonders if she had, as Spacewalker. Did she reach out to brush her fingers against what had held her hopes and dreams? He wonders if they still do.
The sun has since descended and the stars have untucked themselves from their beds to twinkle in the dark sky. She stops before him, almost blocking him in the frame of the makeshift door leading down to the hall. He may be taller, but she takes up a hell of a lot of space for someone who is shorter than him. She tilts her head as far back as she can without tipping over, and Bellamy remains behind her, looking at her before he even thinks to copy her and peer up at the heavens where they'd descended from.
He doubts they're anything close to gods, even if the Grounders sometimes think they are.
He hears the sound of footsteps approaching them. Tearing his gaze from the night sky that's captivated Raven, he sees O jog over toward them. Her smile is as bright as the moon to him.
She sounds breathless. "Hey," she nods toward him, her eyes focused on Raven. "I saved you some food."
Raven stops looking at the stars to smile at Octavia. "That's nicer than what your brother did for me," Raven quips, the corner of her lips quirking upward as she looks over her shoulder at him. Bellamy rolls his eyes. O looks at him with amusement to the slight arch of her brow, before the two of them ignore that he's even standing behind her.
She's probably oblivious to it all as Raven returns her gaze to Octavia. She holds out her hand with a royal flourish, something Commander Bitch seems to lack with how stoic and quiet she is for a leader. "Take me to my food, Warrior Girl."
Octavia turns on her heel, looping her arm through Raven's. She doesn't begin to walk, peering over her shoulder at him. "I saved some for you, too," she says. He nods, opting to say nothing at all, as she begins to walk, guiding Raven to where she's set up camp for the evening.
It's an odd sight to Bellamy, seeing his sister arm in arm with someone else. It's how she'd treated him in their own unit, pulling him this way and that, showing him a dress she'd mended to only pull him hard to the opposite side of the wall as she presented to him a black cloth she'd stitched the stars and moon into based off his stories. He doubts she'd been allowed to take that to the Skybox. He hadn't remembered to try and give it to her when he could manage a visit.
He knows it's harmless, but Octavia's smarter than so many give her credit for. It's a sign of unity, of how the Grounders haven't quite broken them with their own lack of displaying that they give a shit about this alliance, too. The Grounders are stitched so closely and tightly together that not even Heracles could hope to tear them apart, but neither are the Sky People weak. He supposes this is Octavia's way of killing two birds with one stone — sending the Grounders a message no one else is smart enough to design and ensuring Raven knows she's not fighting this battle alone.
He watches them leave, but can see another approach him from his peripherals. Any attempt to go for a walk to relieve himself of his pent up stress is currently put on pause. The weight of the world seems to slowly press against his shoulders, rendering him as hopeless as Atlas, but perhaps not as bitter. Remaining where he is, he turns on his feet to face her.
Clarke approaches him like she's a skittish animal, choosing to confront the beast thinking to prey upon her. But Bellamy doesn't want to hunt her like she's game. He doesn't want to hunt her at all.
"Hey," she says, lifting her shoulder as a substitute for a hand. Her lips curve into a smile that drops as quickly as it rises. "How's she doing?"
Bellamy draws in a breath as he looks to where Octavia's guided Raven, watching them sit on a log side by side. As soon as they sit, Lincoln appears, hovering beside Octavia like Cerberus. "Good," he says, turning his gaze back to Clarke. "As good as someone can be."
"I thought it was better I just stayed far away from her," she says. All Bellamy can do is lift his shoulder as a response. He thinks anyone with eyes can see that Clarke Griffin should stay the hell away from Raven Reyes, just in case it's not a fist she throws her way the next time she thinks to poke a girl who has been flayed of her flesh.
When he looks back at her, Clarke's expression is one that's about to shatter. She looks away from him, pressing her lips together in a bid to keep herself in control of her own emotions. He can see that they're running away from her now, but he has no idea on how to encourage her to run after them.
"I didn't mean for any of this to happen," she says, her voice small. He can hear the tears she tries to hold back successfully invade her tone, as if they're pissed that she won't let them shed so they've come to conquer her voice instead. She looks at him and Bellamy knows his expression is soft rather than hard. As much as he wants to guard himself from the grief their camp feels at the loss of Finn, he finds he can't really build his wall fast enough to hide behind.
"It wasn't your fault," he says. He doesn't take a step forward. Neither does she. There's some distance between them, space that's never really been there before. Even when she'd been some snotty privileged girl he liked to mock with a nickname a boy who wasted oxygen had given her as if it was a tiara, he hadn't felt so far away from her then.
She looks up at him, her voice cracking, "He did all that for me."
Bellamy exhales through his nose as he observes her. "He didn't," he says. He knows he doesn't know Finn's motivations. He barely knows Finn. But he knows the way Clarke's chosen to interpret whatever he's said, whatever's burrowed itself beneath her skin to make her think like she'd been the one to command Finn slaughter an entire group of people. "He was worried about you, but Finn made a choice. What we do in order to look out for our people …" What they do to survive had been a defining moment, a decision that would strip them and chain them to a rock for a monster to devour. But it's not that simple anymore. "It's not their fault. It's ours."
Clarke twists her hands together, looking down at them as her fingers fiddle with one another by her hips. "The way we choose to survive … I'm wondering if it really does define us."
Bellamy shakes his head. "I think the way we choose to live with what we've done is what defines us, Clarke." But he isn't an expert. Regardless of what anyone says, it'd been his fault those people were sacrificed on the Ark. He'd almost let it define him by breaking him, seeing him crumble like he was a tower made of soft stone. But Bellamy thinks he's atoning for his wrongs by ensuring those who have made their way onto the ground, the children and surrogate family members of those who had died, are protected.
Her voice is barely audible, but it rings loudly, like bells, in his ears. "Raven's always going to hate me for what I did."
"Maybe," he says. He doesn't think to say She'll get over it. It's been a good year since Aurora had been floated and he still feels the grief overtake him like it had the moment he realised his mother was doomed to a fate that would prevent her from watching Octavia live the life they'd always wished for her to attain one day. Clarke may make it a point to not look at him, but Bellamy keeps his gaze on her. "I doubt Raven's going to forget. But I think she's more angry with Finn than she is with you."
Clarke looks up at him, her lips pinching once more. She closes her eyes for a brief moment, but it feels so long, like the span of a year, before she opens them once more.
He doubts it's rocket science. He doubts she even wants to hear it. He sincerely doubts Raven even wants to know he's even said it. But Bellamy's not Clarke, he's not Raven, he's not blind and biased and hellbent on burying his head in the sand when it comes to Finn being a martyr for their own cause. Finn's dead and while Bellamy feels an ache in his chest for a man who had been a friend, he can move on easier than they can.
The moment he speaks, her eyes close. "Finn made the choice. Finn gave himself up. Finn put himself in a position that threatened his life. Finn's the one who removed himself from where he's always stood for her." He'd been a constant in a girl's life before he had chosen to take the fall for her spacewalking, if he's to remember the story correctly. It's a choice, one he'd made, one that hadn't been forced upon him. If Bellamy looks back, he can see how Finn had tried to separate himself from her. If he looks back, he can see how Finn had tried to atone for his crimes too late.
Maybe saying his name over and over is cruel, but he wants to hammer it into her skull with a chisel that, sometimes, choices come back to bite people in the ass. As much as he wants to blame himself and only himself for Aurora's fate, she'd been toeing the line of luck by intertwining so closely with those tight with the council. She'd ended up testing Athena like Arachne had, believing herself to be able to out-weave the council and those who kept their eye intently upon her back, and had ended up tying the noose around her own neck.
Once, he'd thought Aurora had died because of Octavia, but Bellamy's since learned that the choices a person makes, the direction they decide to take when they reach a forked road, is what leads them to paradise or dooms them to damnation.
He tilts his head to the side as he observes her, waiting for her to open her eyes. Once she does, he speaks once more, his tone softer and sympathetic, "You're just easier to lash out at since you're here."
Clarke looks off to the side, in the direction of where Raven and Octavia sit. He follows her gaze, exhaling once more, finding that his shoulders slouch with his sigh. Raven's laughing as Octavia talks animatedly, distracting her by being the little sister he knows her to be — a bright star in the sky instead of a ball of burning gas that does nothing when someone thinks to wish upon it. "And I think the Grounders are taking their anger at Finn out on her."
He can see Clarke turn her head back to him, brows furrowing. He looks at her again. "You think …"
"Sometimes it isn't enough for a leader to kill one of her own." Thinking back to the drop ship, to the very day the Grounders had chosen to wage war upon them, Murphy had wanted revenge. He hadn't been a leader, but of his one-man army, he had been. And Bellamy knows if Raven hadn't saved his ass, the camp would've been up in arms over Bellamy Blake swinging from a raft in the drop ship. It's arrogant of him to think about it like that, believing himself to be important, but Clarke had opened his eyes to his own power, of how the kids had looked up to him — and still do.
For Murphy, he had tried to poison him as Gustus had wanted Lexa to believe of the Sky People. He'd wanted atonement, a justice that would've opened a box of anarchy not even Pandora could contain. Although Gustus' death has seemed to smooth over the waters, Bellamy doubts anything is as easy as placing all that grief and anger and distrust back in its little box.
Stepping toward her, he reaches out to brush his hand against her shoulder before letting it drop. It's the only comfort he knows to give, that he's even comfortable in giving her. He knows she doesn't want him. It's a ghost she wishes to hold her and tell her she's not wrong, that everything's going to be all right. He leans down toward her, "They're angry, Clarke."
"They won't do anything," she says, shaking her head. She sounds desperate, like she wants to believe in it. She's convincing herself by trying to convince him, her biggest critic, the most stubborn nonbeliever in such good fortune. If she can persuade him that the Grounders won't think to retaliate, then maybe she can believe it herself, too. "It's over."
"For Lexa, maybe," he says. He looks away from her, licking his lips, wondering if there's any point in adding more weight to her shoulders. But Bellamy thinks it's probably best Clarke understand who she's dealing with. They're Grounders. They're people. They're a family, regardless of how savage they can be in their beliefs.
He looks down at her, "They care about their own, Clarke. I think we need to show them that we do, too."
Her brows crinkle. "How?" Her voice cracks. She looks up at him as if he has all the answers, eyes searching his own as though she can unlock them from his own dark gaze. "We're standing together. Even Kane's on board with this."
Having Kane on their side means little to the people who don't know how much of a pain in the ass he is. He's all diplomatic and polite to them, but to the Sky People, to the kids who had been dropped on this ground, he's still one of their biggest obstacles. But he doesn't think to tell Clarke what should be obvious to her. Maybe when she's thinking more clearly she'll realise that they're fighting a war on two fronts when it comes to convincing others of them — the criminals — being in the right.
"It's not enough," he says, shrugging. He may possess stories, but he doesn't have the answers to this particular problem. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth to bite hard down on it as he contemplates even speaking further, but Bellamy's always been a little too candid with Clarke to keep his mouth zipped shut tightly. "You hesitated," he says, remembering Raven's own words. His parroting of them lacks the weight of its meaning it had when Raven had spoken them. "You didn't fight for her hard enough. For the sake of the alliance, you were willing to let her die."
"I wasn't —"
"I know," he says firmly. Clarke's face crumbles, her eyes reddening. She looks away from him like he's punched her in the jaw. He doesn't say anything, though. Finn's the fixer just as Bellamy's the destroyer.
Looking over her head, he notices the blonde with intricate braids from earlier, the black war paint decorating her eyes. She's looking at them unblinkingly, stare as sharp as any knife. If he's to look around, he knows the Grounders stare at the Sky People like they're enemies. Like they're prey to hunt. The woman he stares at now, meeting her hard gaze with hard gaze, is the woman who had tried to trip Raven over on their walk here. He remembers it as clearly as if she'd been the one to tie her to the tree.
Clarke eventually looks up at him, brows crinkling once more, before she peers over her shoulder to follow his gaze. He looks back at her as she tries to study what he's seen. It's not rocket science to understand what he's trying to unweave. Clarke thinks herself to be Arachne, talented enough to unweave what she has woven, but Bellamy knows he's better than her. He's Athena, challenging her to outdo him, to only find that she falls short just as he had expected.
Once she turns back to looking at him, he says quietly, "But they don't."