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30. (the 100) our house is crumbling under me;
our house is crumbling under me, part five.
Clarke easily spreads her blanket on the uneven ground, a short walk away from the main hub of Tondc. If he remembers correctly, they're an hour or so out from the Tondc 10 miles sign. He isn't so sure if that's a good thing. It'd been the very moment they'd tried with the Grounders. He hadn't slept well that night, keeping one eye open as he waited for one of them to try and plunge their knives into his back. He isn't so sure if Clarke did, either. Honestly, he wouldn't be surprised if it was the best sleep she'd gotten all week.
She doesn't hesitate in showing she still trusts the Grounders, despite them giving the Sky People no reason to. Killing Gustus may be a small demonstration of their trust in them, but Bellamy doesn't see it as much. It'd been a part of their beliefs to punish those who tried to hurt them. It'd been a part of Lexa's own terms for the alliance, but he doubts she'd even thought she'd be torturing one of her own.
Or maybe she did. Bellamy doesn't know how the Grounders think.
He takes a few steps forward, the ground crunching beneath his boots, but he hovers near the line he thinks that straddles the two camps. Clarke's near a tree, its trunk so thick he doubts a Grounder axe could slice through it even with the most powerful arm propelling it forward. Looking down at the leaf-covered ground, he looks over his shoulder.
Raven leans back against a tree on the very outskirts of the darkness that settles in behind them. She looks exhausted, bags beneath her eyes, hair slightly a mess that reminds him of a nest. He knows there's some blood beneath her fingernails from scratching her arms.
"Bellamy," Clarke's quiet voice draws him to look back at her. She's peering up at him, on her bended knee, as she pulls her blanket along the ground to straighten it. Regardless of what she does, she won't find smooth earth beneath herself to sleep tonight.
He looks down at her blanket. An age may pass between them before he looks up at her again. Without realising it, he shakes his head. "I'm going to give it a miss."
"Bellamy." She sounds slightly panicked, or exasperated, he isn't so sure. He doesn't know when he stopped being able to read Clarke. But she stands and draws his focus back to her when he wishes to turn his back on the Grounders and this alliance that's only going to get them killed. Taking a step toward him, she leans up to make herself bigger, even though she's never looked smaller to him than she has tonight. "We need to make them trust us. We need to show them that we trust them. That nothing's changed."
"Everything's changed, though," he says evenly. He lifts his shoulders, as if that's meant to explain what Clarke refuses to acknowledge. His voice remains hushed, but he can hear the exasperation in it as if it was a loud clap of thunder, "They were ready to torture one of our own without even thinking about it, Clarke. And we almost let them."
She opens her mouth, but he shakes his head. "We slept on their side of the camp when we were walking to Tondc. We trusted them not to poison our food. We trusted them to listen to us." His hands ball into fists as he leans down toward her, "You do see how this is one-sided, right?"
She pinches her lips together before she struggles, "I —"
"I'm not saying we burn this alliance, Clarke. We're already in too deep." He lifts his shoulder. If they were to remove themselves now, they'd be fighting a war on two fronts. It's a fight they're not prepared for, one he doubts they ever would be. Even with all the guns and bombs in the world, they'll eventually run out. Without any maps leading them to abandoned bunkers and with their own group splintered between Ark and Delinquent, the alliance is the only thing really piecing them together. "But what I'm saying is that maybe they need to give us a sign of trust."
Clarke's shoulders fall back, defeated. He decides, then and there, it's really not a good look on her. "You want them to sleep on our side of camp."
"They could try," he says, arms moving against his sides to only slap against them in his own defeat. "They could make an effort. They lost my trust." Though, he doubts that particularly matters.
Glancing down, she exhales with a nod, "Because of what they did to Raven."
He doesn't answer. Instead, he leans forward and looks over her shoulder at the Grounders in the distance. They're in clusters, groups of two or three. They blend in too well with the dark. If it wasn't for the fires littered on the edges of camp, he wouldn't be able to see them at all.
His eyes drop back to her, voice lowering, "Did we get a say on how Gustus was buried? Finn died, Clarke, and it wasn't our choice. We didn't get to decide how our person was punished." He curls his fingers into his fist to prevent himself from pointing toward the Grounders behind her. "They got to choose how he was put to rest. Gustus almost got Raven killed, Clarke, and he died as a Grounder."
He can see she's barely holding back tears. Pressing her lips together so tightly her own skin looks as white as the moon at her fullest, her eyes glisten if he's to focus on them. He thinks to pull back and be softer, but he knows that when it comes to Finn, it'll always be like a blade to the gut for her. A thousand cuts and more, he guesses, but it's a torture that he thinks she'll one day heal from.
"Gustus died as a Grounder. Finn didn't die as someone from the Ark. He didn't even get buried as one," he says, finding his voice softening. "I'm not going to bend backwards for a group of people who won't do the same for us. You want me to show my bare back to you? Show me yours."
She wipes the back of her hand beneath her eyes. Bellamy thinks to reach out and brush his hand against her shoulder, as if that'll pull her back together, but it's not his touch she longs for. Clarke keeps her head bowed and nods a bit too quickly and intently for him. She sniffs, letting her hands drop to her sides, before she looks up at him, head held high and neck arched, "I'm sleeping on this side of camp."
She may think she looks big, as tall as any tree, as fearsome as any Commander, but to Bellamy, she looks smaller than she has in months. The loud girl he'd tossed Princess toward with acid coating his tongue isn't there anymore.
Bellamy nods, subdued.
Clarke looks away from him. A few moments that feel so prolonged span between them before she kneels once more, gliding her hands along her blanket. Bellamy's hesitant to turn his back on her.
His feet feel heavy as he walks to his side of camp. He glances up only once to find Raven looking at him, lips parted and a soft kink to her brow, but he keeps his gaze down. The crunch of the leaves is louder than it has been since they've begun their walk from Tondc. It feels a little safer, like the air is thinner, with their agreement not to camp right in the political hub of the Grounders. It'd been Kane's idea, his own test of their trust of them, but it's not enough for Bellamy.
He can hear the Grounders, speaking in their native tongue, much louder than he had when he'd crossed the border dividing their camps. He knows some of them are watching him. There's always a few Grounders he recognises, not by name but by face, that always seem to linger in his peripherals. A part of him wishes they'd stayed in the heart of the Grounder political base. A part of him is just glad someone's going to watch his back tonight, regardless of where they sleep. But what he can feel more than the fires burning in the corners is her gaze trying to set him aflame.
When he drops himself beside her, a little in front of her as there's no tree for him to lean against, he pulls his knees to his chest and lets his arms hang off them. In the meantime, she's pulled grass from the ground. He doesn't look at her. Maybe that's why she tosses the grass toward him. From the corner of his eye, he can see her looking at him. Her voice is soft, "What the hell was that about?"
He sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and shakes his head, shrugging slightly. He isn't so sure if his shoulders have even moved. "Trying to make a point."
She ducks her head slightly, as if trying to capture his gaze. He keeps his on Clarke in the distance, watching the Grounders, some familiar, like the blonde and her clean shaven companion, and some unfamiliar, like a man with thick braids in his hair. "About?"
"This alliance," he says. He looks at her from the corner of his eye before he lets his gaze settle on the Grounders in the distance. "It's shit."
Raven settles against the tree, letting her head fall against the bark. She scoffs, drawing his gaze to her. "Tell me about it," she says. She shakes her head before she looks at him. "This alliance is a complete waste of time, Bellamy. You can see that, I can see that. Why can't they?"
He looks down at her legs, noticing how they're extended out before her rather than pressed against her chest like his. Sometimes he forgets a bullet had lodged itself into her spine and had taken a part of her with it when Abby Griffin had removed it from her back. What swells within him is difficult to push away. He thinks maybe that's why. Guilt.
"Do you believe in it?" she asks. He looks over his shoulder at her. With her leaning against the tree, she's behind him. It isn't on purpose he acts like her shield, but he wonders if maybe being cloaked in his shadow has soothed her own raised hackles. "The alliance."
"No," he says without missing a beat. He looks back toward the heart of the camp, watching Clarke was she sits on her blanket. Lexa approaches her, offering her a cup. "I believe in Clarke."
There's a pause before Raven's voice, wrapped in incredulousness, tries to draw his gaze back to her. "You sure about that?"
Bellamy looks down at the ground, watching as the feet of their people crunch the leaves and spread their own blankets on the ground and build their own tents. Octavia's with Lincoln, her voice louder than anyone else's in camp, even though she's whispering. They're huddled together by a fire, Lincoln's arm draped securely around her shoulders. Quietly, he admits, "I want to be."
"I want to be, too," she says. He doesn't look over his shoulder immediately. "I wanted to, anyway. Clarke always knew all the answers. She had them all, you know? There was nothing she couldn't do. But I guess basic empathy is one of them."
"She feels bad," he says. Raven doesn't look up at him, keeping her gaze on the ground. "I think what happened with Finn isn't making her see straight."
"Or think," she says. She reaches beside her to pull more grass from the earth. "Whenever it comes to him, she never thinks."
Bellamy lifts his shoulder, looking at the ground by her feet. Her good leg twitches, moving her foot side to side, but her bum leg barely makes a tremor in the ground. Even though it doesn't, Bellamy can feel its movement reverberate through the earth beneath him, much louder and stronger than her good leg can make the ground crack if she's to stomp on it.
"What would you have done?" When he looks at her, she's gazing at him. Her expression is one that's readable, one that tells him too much about her, and Bellamy chooses not to read the darkness to her gaze at all. "If you were the one Lexa held a torch for. Would you have done it? If I'd given you that knife. Would you have killed him?"
She may wish for him to imagine his own feet in Clarke's shoes, but Bellamy doesn't. He looks at her before letting his focus shift to the bark over her shoulder. If he had been the one to say goodbye to Finn, he isn't so sure of what he would've done. If it had been Octavia, he knows he would've joined her on the pole. If it had been his sister, he would've done what Raven tried to do, but without framing Murphy for the massacre he didn't deserve to die for.
She knows that. Better yet, she knows whatever he would've done for Octavia, he never would've risked doing for Finn.
"I don't know," he says quietly, shaking his head.
"You would've killed every last one of them if it was Octavia," she states it, rather than asking. He looks up at her. There's a slight quirk to her lips. "I thought maybe I would be like that — like you. Finn was my everything, but I was too scared to try and stand up for him."
Bellamy remains quiet, finding any protests putter out the moment they spark on his tongue.
"I think a part of me wanted to punish him for what he did to me with Clarke. Even what he did to Clarke." She shakes her head, her gaze dropping to his hip. "I guess I did get to do that. By being friends with her. By being reminded that he isn't the beginning and the end of my world." She looks up at him, then, and he thinks maybe they're sitting too close to the fire for how hot his face feels.
Raven's carved herself a life on the ground. With friends and with a place that is hers and hers alone, with no one able to fill the role of the resident bomb expert, he thinks maybe Raven's flourished more on Earth than she had on the Ark. But he doesn't know. The youngest Zero G on the Ark maybe had it better up in space.
"I still wish I could've saved him," she says. When he looks up at her, he notices how her eyes are wet. Unlike Clarke, she doesn't wipe at them. Her lips curve upward as she quietly laughs, a short, mirthless burst of air. "It was my knife that was used. I guess I got to save him after all."
She looks up at him, biting at her bottom lip for a moment as she studies him. Bellamy thinks to look away, but he keeps his gaze on her instead. "It's not easy anymore, is it?" She looks away from him, beyond him, and nods toward the Grounder side of camp. "They're people. One of them actually offered me a cup of whatever the hell they drink."
Flicking her fingers against a tin can by the other side of her hip, cloaked in shadow, he lets his eyes trail there before looking up at her. She looks surprised, amused, even, by it.
"Those people didn't deserve to die," he says. He finds something shift inside of his chest, like boulders removing their weight from where they sit inside of him. "O knew them. They had to be good people."
"They probably were," she says, eyes narrowed slightly. He thinks, maybe, Raven's straddling the same line as him. "Your sister's a good judge of character," she says, her voice slightly louder, more warmer than it's been in hours. Pulling more grass from the ground, she throws it at him. It's a pathetic attempt, given how they sink to the ground almost immediately without touching him. "So are you. Surprisingly."
Bellamy rolls his eyes as she smiles. With her good leg, she nudges the back of his arm with the toe of her boot. "Why aren't you with her? On the other side of camp."
He looks down at her foot. He doesn't answer her immediately. "I'm waiting for something," he says.
"What?"
He shrugs. "I don't know." He looks up at her. "I'm looking for something. Don't know what."
"That sounds dumb," she says. "Looking for something but you don't know what that is." Her voice is much lighter than it has been in a while, all gentle and containing a laugh. For the girl who knows what she needs to create a bomb, he doubts she's ever really been in the position of not knowing what it is she knows she craves. Sometimes, he envies her having direction. "You're a dumbass."
He looks at her, then. He finds the corner of his lips curve up, "And you're a pain in the ass."
Raven seems to beam. Bellamy finds he can't look away, not even when she's being an asshole. "Are you going to sleep beside me and protect me from all the bad Grounder monsters?" She flutters her eyelashes then.
He doesn't answer her, turning his head to look at the camp instead. Maybe it's too much of a solemn response, but he doesn't have an answer for her at all. The Grounders are the enemy, but they're also a friend — he finds himself having a hard enough time trying to trust Lincoln and the monster that had lurked inside of him, waiting for Mount Weather to unleash it.
"I like that you're sitting with me," she says softly. "They treat me like I'm contagious. Like I'm some biological warfare from Murphy." She scoffs, rolling her eyes. "That asshole wouldn't know how to start biological warfare."
He keeps his gaze away from her. "He knows how to waste time."
"If it means anything," she says, ignoring him. She must stretch, pushing herself slightly down the tree so she can tap him with her good foot. It's a little too hard, but Bellamy supposes that's on purpose. She waits for him to look at her over his shoulder. "If it means anything, I believe in you, shooter."
He doesn't think on it.
Bellamy tries to bite back a smile, but he finds that it wins, nonetheless. "Except for my aim."
Raven smiles, warmer than the fires lighting the camps. "Except for your lousy aim." She pulls herself back to lean against the tree properly again, spine straight instead of curved. "We should probably work on that."
Clarke easily spreads her blanket on the uneven ground, a short walk away from the main hub of Tondc. If he remembers correctly, they're an hour or so out from the Tondc 10 miles sign. He isn't so sure if that's a good thing. It'd been the very moment they'd tried with the Grounders. He hadn't slept well that night, keeping one eye open as he waited for one of them to try and plunge their knives into his back. He isn't so sure if Clarke did, either. Honestly, he wouldn't be surprised if it was the best sleep she'd gotten all week.
She doesn't hesitate in showing she still trusts the Grounders, despite them giving the Sky People no reason to. Killing Gustus may be a small demonstration of their trust in them, but Bellamy doesn't see it as much. It'd been a part of their beliefs to punish those who tried to hurt them. It'd been a part of Lexa's own terms for the alliance, but he doubts she'd even thought she'd be torturing one of her own.
Or maybe she did. Bellamy doesn't know how the Grounders think.
He takes a few steps forward, the ground crunching beneath his boots, but he hovers near the line he thinks that straddles the two camps. Clarke's near a tree, its trunk so thick he doubts a Grounder axe could slice through it even with the most powerful arm propelling it forward. Looking down at the leaf-covered ground, he looks over his shoulder.
Raven leans back against a tree on the very outskirts of the darkness that settles in behind them. She looks exhausted, bags beneath her eyes, hair slightly a mess that reminds him of a nest. He knows there's some blood beneath her fingernails from scratching her arms.
"Bellamy," Clarke's quiet voice draws him to look back at her. She's peering up at him, on her bended knee, as she pulls her blanket along the ground to straighten it. Regardless of what she does, she won't find smooth earth beneath herself to sleep tonight.
He looks down at her blanket. An age may pass between them before he looks up at her again. Without realising it, he shakes his head. "I'm going to give it a miss."
"Bellamy." She sounds slightly panicked, or exasperated, he isn't so sure. He doesn't know when he stopped being able to read Clarke. But she stands and draws his focus back to her when he wishes to turn his back on the Grounders and this alliance that's only going to get them killed. Taking a step toward him, she leans up to make herself bigger, even though she's never looked smaller to him than she has tonight. "We need to make them trust us. We need to show them that we trust them. That nothing's changed."
"Everything's changed, though," he says evenly. He lifts his shoulders, as if that's meant to explain what Clarke refuses to acknowledge. His voice remains hushed, but he can hear the exasperation in it as if it was a loud clap of thunder, "They were ready to torture one of our own without even thinking about it, Clarke. And we almost let them."
She opens her mouth, but he shakes his head. "We slept on their side of the camp when we were walking to Tondc. We trusted them not to poison our food. We trusted them to listen to us." His hands ball into fists as he leans down toward her, "You do see how this is one-sided, right?"
She pinches her lips together before she struggles, "I —"
"I'm not saying we burn this alliance, Clarke. We're already in too deep." He lifts his shoulder. If they were to remove themselves now, they'd be fighting a war on two fronts. It's a fight they're not prepared for, one he doubts they ever would be. Even with all the guns and bombs in the world, they'll eventually run out. Without any maps leading them to abandoned bunkers and with their own group splintered between Ark and Delinquent, the alliance is the only thing really piecing them together. "But what I'm saying is that maybe they need to give us a sign of trust."
Clarke's shoulders fall back, defeated. He decides, then and there, it's really not a good look on her. "You want them to sleep on our side of camp."
"They could try," he says, arms moving against his sides to only slap against them in his own defeat. "They could make an effort. They lost my trust." Though, he doubts that particularly matters.
Glancing down, she exhales with a nod, "Because of what they did to Raven."
He doesn't answer. Instead, he leans forward and looks over her shoulder at the Grounders in the distance. They're in clusters, groups of two or three. They blend in too well with the dark. If it wasn't for the fires littered on the edges of camp, he wouldn't be able to see them at all.
His eyes drop back to her, voice lowering, "Did we get a say on how Gustus was buried? Finn died, Clarke, and it wasn't our choice. We didn't get to decide how our person was punished." He curls his fingers into his fist to prevent himself from pointing toward the Grounders behind her. "They got to choose how he was put to rest. Gustus almost got Raven killed, Clarke, and he died as a Grounder."
He can see she's barely holding back tears. Pressing her lips together so tightly her own skin looks as white as the moon at her fullest, her eyes glisten if he's to focus on them. He thinks to pull back and be softer, but he knows that when it comes to Finn, it'll always be like a blade to the gut for her. A thousand cuts and more, he guesses, but it's a torture that he thinks she'll one day heal from.
"Gustus died as a Grounder. Finn didn't die as someone from the Ark. He didn't even get buried as one," he says, finding his voice softening. "I'm not going to bend backwards for a group of people who won't do the same for us. You want me to show my bare back to you? Show me yours."
She wipes the back of her hand beneath her eyes. Bellamy thinks to reach out and brush his hand against her shoulder, as if that'll pull her back together, but it's not his touch she longs for. Clarke keeps her head bowed and nods a bit too quickly and intently for him. She sniffs, letting her hands drop to her sides, before she looks up at him, head held high and neck arched, "I'm sleeping on this side of camp."
She may think she looks big, as tall as any tree, as fearsome as any Commander, but to Bellamy, she looks smaller than she has in months. The loud girl he'd tossed Princess toward with acid coating his tongue isn't there anymore.
Bellamy nods, subdued.
Clarke looks away from him. A few moments that feel so prolonged span between them before she kneels once more, gliding her hands along her blanket. Bellamy's hesitant to turn his back on her.
His feet feel heavy as he walks to his side of camp. He glances up only once to find Raven looking at him, lips parted and a soft kink to her brow, but he keeps his gaze down. The crunch of the leaves is louder than it has been since they've begun their walk from Tondc. It feels a little safer, like the air is thinner, with their agreement not to camp right in the political hub of the Grounders. It'd been Kane's idea, his own test of their trust of them, but it's not enough for Bellamy.
He can hear the Grounders, speaking in their native tongue, much louder than he had when he'd crossed the border dividing their camps. He knows some of them are watching him. There's always a few Grounders he recognises, not by name but by face, that always seem to linger in his peripherals. A part of him wishes they'd stayed in the heart of the Grounder political base. A part of him is just glad someone's going to watch his back tonight, regardless of where they sleep. But what he can feel more than the fires burning in the corners is her gaze trying to set him aflame.
When he drops himself beside her, a little in front of her as there's no tree for him to lean against, he pulls his knees to his chest and lets his arms hang off them. In the meantime, she's pulled grass from the ground. He doesn't look at her. Maybe that's why she tosses the grass toward him. From the corner of his eye, he can see her looking at him. Her voice is soft, "What the hell was that about?"
He sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and shakes his head, shrugging slightly. He isn't so sure if his shoulders have even moved. "Trying to make a point."
She ducks her head slightly, as if trying to capture his gaze. He keeps his on Clarke in the distance, watching the Grounders, some familiar, like the blonde and her clean shaven companion, and some unfamiliar, like a man with thick braids in his hair. "About?"
"This alliance," he says. He looks at her from the corner of his eye before he lets his gaze settle on the Grounders in the distance. "It's shit."
Raven settles against the tree, letting her head fall against the bark. She scoffs, drawing his gaze to her. "Tell me about it," she says. She shakes her head before she looks at him. "This alliance is a complete waste of time, Bellamy. You can see that, I can see that. Why can't they?"
He looks down at her legs, noticing how they're extended out before her rather than pressed against her chest like his. Sometimes he forgets a bullet had lodged itself into her spine and had taken a part of her with it when Abby Griffin had removed it from her back. What swells within him is difficult to push away. He thinks maybe that's why. Guilt.
"Do you believe in it?" she asks. He looks over his shoulder at her. With her leaning against the tree, she's behind him. It isn't on purpose he acts like her shield, but he wonders if maybe being cloaked in his shadow has soothed her own raised hackles. "The alliance."
"No," he says without missing a beat. He looks back toward the heart of the camp, watching Clarke was she sits on her blanket. Lexa approaches her, offering her a cup. "I believe in Clarke."
There's a pause before Raven's voice, wrapped in incredulousness, tries to draw his gaze back to her. "You sure about that?"
Bellamy looks down at the ground, watching as the feet of their people crunch the leaves and spread their own blankets on the ground and build their own tents. Octavia's with Lincoln, her voice louder than anyone else's in camp, even though she's whispering. They're huddled together by a fire, Lincoln's arm draped securely around her shoulders. Quietly, he admits, "I want to be."
"I want to be, too," she says. He doesn't look over his shoulder immediately. "I wanted to, anyway. Clarke always knew all the answers. She had them all, you know? There was nothing she couldn't do. But I guess basic empathy is one of them."
"She feels bad," he says. Raven doesn't look up at him, keeping her gaze on the ground. "I think what happened with Finn isn't making her see straight."
"Or think," she says. She reaches beside her to pull more grass from the earth. "Whenever it comes to him, she never thinks."
Bellamy lifts his shoulder, looking at the ground by her feet. Her good leg twitches, moving her foot side to side, but her bum leg barely makes a tremor in the ground. Even though it doesn't, Bellamy can feel its movement reverberate through the earth beneath him, much louder and stronger than her good leg can make the ground crack if she's to stomp on it.
"What would you have done?" When he looks at her, she's gazing at him. Her expression is one that's readable, one that tells him too much about her, and Bellamy chooses not to read the darkness to her gaze at all. "If you were the one Lexa held a torch for. Would you have done it? If I'd given you that knife. Would you have killed him?"
She may wish for him to imagine his own feet in Clarke's shoes, but Bellamy doesn't. He looks at her before letting his focus shift to the bark over her shoulder. If he had been the one to say goodbye to Finn, he isn't so sure of what he would've done. If it had been Octavia, he knows he would've joined her on the pole. If it had been his sister, he would've done what Raven tried to do, but without framing Murphy for the massacre he didn't deserve to die for.
She knows that. Better yet, she knows whatever he would've done for Octavia, he never would've risked doing for Finn.
"I don't know," he says quietly, shaking his head.
"You would've killed every last one of them if it was Octavia," she states it, rather than asking. He looks up at her. There's a slight quirk to her lips. "I thought maybe I would be like that — like you. Finn was my everything, but I was too scared to try and stand up for him."
Bellamy remains quiet, finding any protests putter out the moment they spark on his tongue.
"I think a part of me wanted to punish him for what he did to me with Clarke. Even what he did to Clarke." She shakes her head, her gaze dropping to his hip. "I guess I did get to do that. By being friends with her. By being reminded that he isn't the beginning and the end of my world." She looks up at him, then, and he thinks maybe they're sitting too close to the fire for how hot his face feels.
Raven's carved herself a life on the ground. With friends and with a place that is hers and hers alone, with no one able to fill the role of the resident bomb expert, he thinks maybe Raven's flourished more on Earth than she had on the Ark. But he doesn't know. The youngest Zero G on the Ark maybe had it better up in space.
"I still wish I could've saved him," she says. When he looks up at her, he notices how her eyes are wet. Unlike Clarke, she doesn't wipe at them. Her lips curve upward as she quietly laughs, a short, mirthless burst of air. "It was my knife that was used. I guess I got to save him after all."
She looks up at him, biting at her bottom lip for a moment as she studies him. Bellamy thinks to look away, but he keeps his gaze on her instead. "It's not easy anymore, is it?" She looks away from him, beyond him, and nods toward the Grounder side of camp. "They're people. One of them actually offered me a cup of whatever the hell they drink."
Flicking her fingers against a tin can by the other side of her hip, cloaked in shadow, he lets his eyes trail there before looking up at her. She looks surprised, amused, even, by it.
"Those people didn't deserve to die," he says. He finds something shift inside of his chest, like boulders removing their weight from where they sit inside of him. "O knew them. They had to be good people."
"They probably were," she says, eyes narrowed slightly. He thinks, maybe, Raven's straddling the same line as him. "Your sister's a good judge of character," she says, her voice slightly louder, more warmer than it's been in hours. Pulling more grass from the ground, she throws it at him. It's a pathetic attempt, given how they sink to the ground almost immediately without touching him. "So are you. Surprisingly."
Bellamy rolls his eyes as she smiles. With her good leg, she nudges the back of his arm with the toe of her boot. "Why aren't you with her? On the other side of camp."
He looks down at her foot. He doesn't answer her immediately. "I'm waiting for something," he says.
"What?"
He shrugs. "I don't know." He looks up at her. "I'm looking for something. Don't know what."
"That sounds dumb," she says. "Looking for something but you don't know what that is." Her voice is much lighter than it has been in a while, all gentle and containing a laugh. For the girl who knows what she needs to create a bomb, he doubts she's ever really been in the position of not knowing what it is she knows she craves. Sometimes, he envies her having direction. "You're a dumbass."
He looks at her, then. He finds the corner of his lips curve up, "And you're a pain in the ass."
Raven seems to beam. Bellamy finds he can't look away, not even when she's being an asshole. "Are you going to sleep beside me and protect me from all the bad Grounder monsters?" She flutters her eyelashes then.
He doesn't answer her, turning his head to look at the camp instead. Maybe it's too much of a solemn response, but he doesn't have an answer for her at all. The Grounders are the enemy, but they're also a friend — he finds himself having a hard enough time trying to trust Lincoln and the monster that had lurked inside of him, waiting for Mount Weather to unleash it.
"I like that you're sitting with me," she says softly. "They treat me like I'm contagious. Like I'm some biological warfare from Murphy." She scoffs, rolling her eyes. "That asshole wouldn't know how to start biological warfare."
He keeps his gaze away from her. "He knows how to waste time."
"If it means anything," she says, ignoring him. She must stretch, pushing herself slightly down the tree so she can tap him with her good foot. It's a little too hard, but Bellamy supposes that's on purpose. She waits for him to look at her over his shoulder. "If it means anything, I believe in you, shooter."
He doesn't think on it.
Bellamy tries to bite back a smile, but he finds that it wins, nonetheless. "Except for my aim."
Raven smiles, warmer than the fires lighting the camps. "Except for your lousy aim." She pulls herself back to lean against the tree properly again, spine straight instead of curved. "We should probably work on that."