33. (the 100) our house is crumbling under me;

[peaked]

our house is crumbling under me, part eight.

At this point in his life, Bellamy isn't sure what to expect anymore.

He doesn't expect Raven to ask for a story by their little campfire. With Lincoln and Octavia sitting beside them, he tells her the story of Icarus. Octavia jumps in with her own anecdotes, both true to the story and a tangent on reminiscing about Mom.

He doesn't expect Clarke to pick a side at all. She doesn't set up her blanket on the Grounder side of camp, but on their own.

He doesn't expect the Grounders to take it so lightly that he'd spoken disrespectfully to their leader, but they don't even bat an eyelash, let alone glare at him from across the invisible divide.

He doesn't expect Lexa and a few of her own people to sleep on their side of camp. What he does presume, though, is Clarke will sleep near the Commander — and she does.

He doesn't expect Clarke to become the one person he can no longer predict. Unlike everything else that's happened over the last few days, he should've seen it coming. She's been slipping further and further away from herself, and the moment she approaches him, pulling the four of them away from their fire, he knows the solemn expression on her face is what he should've expected from her.

Her words are an echo, a contradicting parroting of what she'd told him earlier. "It's worth the risk," she says quietly, but Bellamy hears it echo so loudly around him it shakes the earth.

Octavia's stare is hotter than the sun itself. It makes him feel like he's Icarus.

Raven may say "Let me show you what to look for", but all Bellamy can hear is Let me show you what to look out for. He knows she isn't warning him of anything that can be found inside Mount Weather. She may walk without a pinch to her expression, her face a blank mask, but her steps are hard. He thinks she's putting too much weight on her bum leg, but he doesn't reach out to slow her down as she leads him a little ways away from the main camp.

It's where they're sleeping, near the outskirts of where the woods properly begin. It's where he prefers to sleep now, a little closer to the darkness, able to hear any snapping of twigs or crunching of leaves. Someone needs to sit at this post, and he knows Jasper Jordan and Monty Green would've opted for it if they were here.

She drops down onto the ground, refusing to pull at her blanket, as she digs through her own bag. He's not sure what she's looking for, and he isn't so certain if she does, either.

After he sits down next to her, she frowns. "Why are you doing this?" Her voice is sharp, even if it's purposefully quiet. Neither of them want their conversation to echo within the camp. She doesn't look at him.

He watches her instead of her fingers pushing items and crap around in her bag. "You won't find Jasper and Monty in your bag."

She mutters, "Pain in the ass." She digs through her bag once more, rifling through it, moving things around with a fierce sweep of her hand. "It's not worth the risk."

"Lincoln knows a way in."

She looks quickly up at him, eyes narrowed into a stare. Her voice has a bite to it he's all too familiar with. "Then send Lincoln."

"They know him." He doubts those in Mount Weather would really forget the face of a Grounder they'd turned. Maybe they all look the same to them, experiments in human form. It's not a risk he wants to take. Throwing Lincoln into the lion's den had almost destroyed Octavia.

Raven clenches her jaw. "And if you get shoved into that project that turned him into a Reaper?"

Lifting a shoulder, his voice remains calm, detached, "It's a risk I have to take."

Raven's lip curls upward before she ducks her head to peer closely inside her bag. "It's not one I want to take."

Bellamy sighs, feeling the weight of her own arguments stack against his back. They're in the form of meteorites, the rocks that have crashed to space like they have in their respective pods. He doesn't know how to shift them, but he can feel himself burning under the weight of it. "The best chance we have at saving our people is if we infiltrate Mount Weather. Everything else has worked against us, Raven."

She keeps her gaze hard on her bag, her voice tight and sharp, "There's a better way."

"It's me going inside." He looks at her cheek, willing and not willing her to look up at him. Bellamy doesn't know what he wants. He expected that of himself. "Lincoln knows a way in. I'll pretend to be a Grounder —"

He knows her eyes have moved from her bag to stare hard at the ground. "And get turned into some killing machine that eats people."

"You don't know that —"

"I know that it's a risk none of us should be willing to take." She looks up at him, her eyes glistening. "How many more people do we need to lose before the princess realises she's not the best decision maker when her head's so far up Commander Bitch's ass?"

His voice is quiet, "It was my choice."

She shrugs her shoulder, looking at him as though what she says is the easiest resolution in the world. "Then remove your head from her ass, too."

"Raven," he says, sounding slightly exasperated. He feels amused by her antics, but he doesn't want to laugh. It's endearing at best and worrisome at its worst, knowing that maybe leaving the camp will be a mistake he comes to regret making.

She doesn't look at him. The darkness of the night tries to swallow her whole. Her voice sounds tiny, "I'm not losing another person I give a damn about. I'm running out of them way too fast for my liking."

"You're not going to lose me," he says. He feels a hand clutch at his chest, inside of it. "I'll get to a radio. We'll talk."

She refuses to look at him. Her voice cracks, "And then I get to hear you get killed. Great."

"So little faith in me, Zero G," he says, shaking his head. He wants to laugh, but it only comes out really small. He wants to lighten the mood, to repair what she's purposefully dismantled, but without her helping him place all the gadgets and wires back in their rightful place, he stumbles.

He ducks his head to try and catch her gaze, but she stubbornly and childishly tilts her head away from him to look at the darkness of the woods surrounding them. "I believe in you," he says. "I wasn't lying when I said you were smart. I'm not going to be alone if I get to a radio and you're on the other side."

"If," she says, whipping her head around. "If you get to a radio. Doesn't inspire confidence, shooter."

He thinks to point out she lacks so much in him, but Bellamy knows it isn't true. As much as he wants to act out, embodying his own fears and anxieties when it comes to walking into the lion's den, he finds he doesn't want to take it out on Raven. Instead, he tries to think of the best way to fix this.

"I'm going to get a radio. I'm going to find the right station. And I'm going to get our people out." He doesn't sound confident, but his voice is louder than it is before, and that's all that counts to him.

"And you're going to live," she says. It sounds like she's trying to convince herself, or maybe she's trying to instill confidence within him. He's not so sure. But it works, for him, anyway. To have her look at him with such a hard determination in her eyes, as if she's telling the stars that they're to grant her wish rather than simply mull it over, it makes him feel more confident, even if he thinks to bury his feet in the ground and refuse to move. "And not eat people."

His lips quirk up. "Kind of not on my to-do list, Raven."

"Good." She nods, as if that's final, as if, maybe, he's changed his mind. He doesn't know what she's thinking right now. She looks down into her bag, as if she's still trying to search for that little tool or weapon or something that will somehow assist him in freeing their people. He thinks it to be a distraction, keeping her hands busy has always been Raven's way of coping.

She stops rummaging through her bag. "When do you leave?"

"Tonight," he says. Then he thinks to amend, "The sooner the better. Our people have been stuck in that damn mountain for way too long."

Raven remains quiet for a moment.

He reaches out to touch her arm. She looks down at it, like she's startled by the weight against her upper arm. Her brows knit, but he tries to not think too much on it. "I spoke to Lexa," he says. "Commander Bitch. We made a deal."

She looks up at him, her brows furrowing, her voice beginning to grow its hardness once more. "What kind of deal?"

"You're going to be okay," he says. Her brows pinch in bewilderment as he watches her assess his expression, as if a twitch of his eye or a curve to his lips can tell her everything she wants to know. "I told her I'd help her from the inside. Anya was her friend, and she was inside the mountain, too. I told her I'd help her people if she helped mine."

"By what?" she narrows her eyes, trying to discern which wire it is she needs to cut to maybe make him stop talking. "Not torturing our people without a second thought?"

"The Grounders won't be thinking twice about trying to hurt you," he says. "It's not going to happen again."

She stares at him and he wonders if he has grown two extra heads. He's Cerberus, guarding Hades — or maybe it's Persephone. "You signed your life away to trust the Grounders."

"No." His own brows furrow now. His hand on her arm tightens, hoping for her to understand that sometimes such unbalanced deals need to be made. "I asked her for her to meet us halfway. They may not want to sleep on our side of the camp, but they're not going to sit around expecting us to do all the legwork, either."

Her eyes narrow as she looks at him. He knows she's trying to search for an answer, maybe a faulty wire she can remove to fix him. If she can locate that, then she can stop him.

It's how he thinks her mind works, anyway. He's a gadget that she can make better or save from finding himself in the hands of those who will only mistreat him.

"You really see them as the privileged, don't you?"

He looks away from her, brows furrowing. It's a throwback to how he used to think, dividing the camp on purpose to pit them against one another to ensure he could outwit the Ark. He doesn't like the reminder of the person he used to be. But it's the foundation she has, what he thinks she only knows about him. He's the guy with a chip on his unprivileged shoulder.

He looks back at her. "You're to tell me if she goes back on her end of the deal," he says. "If anything happens — I'm not saving them."

She arches her brow. "Bellamy …"

He sighs. "Indra said it herself, Raven. Lincoln's one of us now. They gave up on him when O didn't. When we didn't." It has to count for something, even though Bellamy's scared of Lincoln retreating back into the mindset of a Reaper. They never should've been able to bring him back from the brink of his own insanity, but they had. The Grounders give up as soon as there's the tiniest scent of the impossible. "They're not sending one of their own in to help. Lexa knows if they're to win this war, they need an inside man, and if I'm that insider, she's going to have to keep her end of the deal."

Raven's voice sounds a little distant, like she's working on some problem he'll never understand. "Because she knows how much Clarke cares about you."

Bellamy's not so sure about that anymore.

He looks at her pointedly. "I told her I'd know."

"Because you think they'll come after me if you leave," she says, voice quiet. It's like she's taken all the parts of the various pieces of equipment they've collected over the last few weeks and is trying to build something bigger and better. Bellamy's not so sure if she's going to be successful, but with his hands clumsily trying to create a weapon, he can see her own mind beginning to spin with the ways to fix what he's attempted to build.

He doesn't confirm or deny her own statement. He thinks it to be evident enough without him having to waste his breath to tell her that that had been the incentive behind him approaching Lexa. But he thinks maybe he should've, given he doesn't want to answer her next question.

"Were you going to go if she said no?"

Bellamy thinks not to answer. He even looks away, as if the night can pull him into its arms to remove him from where he sits. He can feel her right against him, her side almost brushing against his own, and he begins to wonder when they'd stopped sitting so far apart from one another.

His own answer is quiet, but firm, "No."

"But you are now."

"Yes," he looks down at the ground. It's cold, even though the fire wraps around him like a blanket. "She gave me her word. I'm going to test it."

"You're going to test the alliance," Raven says, voice deceivingly quiet. It's like she understands him, his way of thinking, his own need to throw himself to the wolves. It'd been his people he had killed on the Ark. They'd culled his people for the oxygen they didn't need to sacrifice a human life for if he hadn't been so stupid.

There'd been no alliance then, not one between Grounder and Sky Person. But there had been one on the ground, between all of them. The moment he seemed to show remorse, Clarke had softened while Raven grew angrier.

He should expect it now, but he doesn't.

"You're going to test the alliance," she says, voice pitching higher, "with your life." She punches him hard in the arm.

He flinches, but he doesn't lift his hand to cradle his upper arm. "I am."

"Idiot," she hisses at him. "Go float yourself, Bellamy. Test the alliance with one of your stories. Test it with one of your inspirational speeches. Don't test it with your life!"

He looks up at her, brows knitting together. "We need to get Jasper and Monty out of there. We need to get Harper and Miller and Fox —"

"There's another way," she says, voice lacking any emotion. "There's always another way."

"We're running out of time, Raven." It's as simple as that, he thinks. The longer they stall, the more out of touch they'll become with Mount Weather. He knows they'll start to fight with each other rather than working together as one powerful guard.

It's how this always works. Heracles had promised to hold the sky for Atlas if he helped him find a golden apple, but it'd all been a trick to see his Labour completed. And he knows that the golden apple has a time limit on it, that it'll become harder to snatch, with Ladon growing fiercer and stronger on the fact that no one's come for the apples in weeks.

He thinks to open his mouth to tell her this, confusing her beyond belief with his own stories, but he feels a kick to his shin and sees Octavia fuming above him.

"You're not going." She folds her arms against her chest. Her hair's a mess and she's breathing so heavily. "You're not going."

Raven remains quiet, peering up at her.

Bellamy pulls himself to his feet to feel Octavia shove at his shoulders. "It's not worth the risk," she breathes out. Her arms release themselves from their cage against her chest and her hands curl into fists. Her voice grows so loud it echoes, "You're not worth any risk!"

He opens his mouth, but closes it when she punches him hard on the shoulder. Her fists follow, pummeling his chest. She's less of the warrior she's trying to form herself into being and more of the little girl he remembers from the Ark, scared and lost beneath the floorboards.

Bellamy reaches out to wrap his fingers around her wrists. Once he does, she folds into him.

"I promised nothing would happen to you," she sobs. Bellamy lets go of her hands, feeling her palms press hard against his chest before she grips at his jacket. His arms wrap around her. "How am I supposed to keep my promise —"

"O …"

He hears Raven stand, the leaves shifting beneath her feet. It takes more energy to pull herself up now. But he hears her when Octavia's approach had been quiet, as stealthy as the warrior he knows her to be.

"Nothing will happen to him," Raven says, voice quiet. He looks over to her and notices how her eyes seem wet. He knows his are. Octavia's arms wrap around him tightly, hands smacking against his back.

Raven lifts her eyes to him. "I'll be making sure of it."

Octavia doesn't acknowledge her, but he thinks she does with how she becomes louder, pressing her cheek against his jacket as her hold on him becomes tighter.

"We're going to raze Mount Olympus," Raven says. Bellamy looks at her with bemusement, a slight quirk to his lips as he finds himself puzzled by her even knowing of the Greek gods' own throne room. She shrugs her shoulder, looking at Octavia. "She likes to tell me stories, too."

Bellamy doesn't say anything, but he knows nothing needs to be said. Raven turns on her feet and walks away, only a small distance from them. Octavia's hold remains tight around him, just as his arms refuse to drop from her.

He doesn't know how long they stand like that. He doesn't look up to notice any Grounders or Clarke or Raven in the distance. He doesn't concern himself with the goings-on in camp.

When she quietens, Bellamy bows his head to press a kiss to the top of hers.

Her voice is mumbled against his jacket. "Don't fly too close to the sun." She looks up at him, releasing one arm to wipe hard at her eyes. "Promise me."

"I promise."

Octavia stands taller, despite her other arm being wrapped around him. Her fingers tighten around the back of his jacket. She tilts her head up, inserting steel into her voice, "I'll come in after you if you do."

Bellamy's smile is small. "I know."

"I want you to check in every minute."

His smile widens as he looks down at her. "O …"

"Every minute," she says, peering up at him. "This is a stupid plan, so you're going to follow my stupid plan, too." She sniffs before she looks up at him sharply. She bites, "Got it?"

He nods, "I do."

"You're not leaving without saying goodbye," she says. This isn't the goodbye she wants, even though Bellamy thinks it'd be easier if he snuck out of camp in the next few hours with Lincoln. It's the plan. Say goodbye, head out, pray to the gods they don't die.

"I won't," he breathes out.

"Listen to Raven," she says. She looks down at his jacket. "If you get hurt, I want to know. Mountain Men aren't allowed to hurt my big brother. No one's allowed to hurt you but me."

He looks down at her, amused. "Is that a rule now?"

"Yes," she says. She looks off to the side and smiles, even though he thinks it to be wet.

"It's a good one," Raven says. She stands to the side of them, hands by her hips. She looks slightly out of place, but she always has in a group of delinquents who don't know what their own hands are capable of.

Octavia wipes at her face with the back of her hand. She pulls away from him, but curls her hand into a fist and punches him lightly in the chest. "Don't be stupid," she says, voice firm.

"I won't," he says, nodding. He notes the hesitation in her steps. She doesn't want to leave, just as he doesn't wish for her to, either. But Raven stands to the side and he knows he needs her to talk sense into him. "Go see Lincoln."

Octavia nods. She doesn't turn on her foot and walk away, insisting to walk backwards a few steps before she does turn her back on him hesitantly.

Raven waits until Octavia's with Lincoln at the very edge of the woods. He watches as his sister flings her arms around him, too, before he looks to Raven.

She takes a step closer to him, voice low. "When are you leaving?" He's told her before, but he knows she must wonder if his plan has changed. Octavia has the power to alter Bellamy's plans, and although he wishes to postpone this, he knows they need to infiltrate the mountain as soon as they can.

His answer doesn't change, even though he thinks the urgency to leave has.

"As soon as Lincoln's free," he says, sparing a glance to his sister hugging him. He looks to Raven once more. "I'm getting Grounder gear."

"Lexa," she says, as if understanding. He doesn't know if she approves. He doesn't want to care if she does. "You're not saying goodbye, are you?"

"Dressing up and leaving as soon as we can," he says. He looks down at her hands. "It's easier."

"Harder," she corrects. "This is easy for no one."

He doesn't answer, instead choosing to lift his gaze back to her.

"I have a bad feeling about this," she says. "You don't know the mountain. None of us do. We hardly know who we're fighting."

"They're inside the mountain and they have our people. That's who."

She shakes her head. "It's not that simple, shooter. We're going in blind."

"I know."

"We're both going to be blind."

"I know," he says a little heatedly. He looks away from her, rolling his shoulders. He remains quiet for a moment, refusing to meet her gaze as she looks at him. He wonders if she thinks of him within this moment as some sort of radio to dismantle, or a bomb to make, counting down the seconds until he explodes.

He doesn't explode in fire and smoke, but he does with a quiet admission. "I'm scared."

"We all are, shooter," she says. Her feet shuffle against the ground as she comes to stand closer. "You're a lousy shot," she says. He can tell she's trying to inject amusement into her voice, but even to his ears, it sounds like a poor attempt. "Don't be a lousy one in there."

He looks down at her with a slight quirk to his lips. "Any other great ideas, genius?"

Raven purses her lips, considering. He rolls his eyes, shaking his head. Give Raven Reyes an inch and she builds a damn pod out of it.

Her eyes return to him. With a slight arch of her brow, she lifts her shoulders, as if she's pretending she's not trying to tell him how to survive what both of them don't know how to navigate. But he asks her for her red string. She's doing her best to untangle it from the knots they've let it tie into.

"Don't throw the radio away," she says. "And don't drop it into any rivers, either. We need it, shooter."

"I doubt there's a river in the mountain," he says.

She shrugs her shoulders. "We need to be on guard for everything. You need to remember that."

He raises his brows in an attempt to say go on. He can feel the nerves coil around his entire body, but the more she talks, the less focused he is on them. He wishes he could take a radio with him along this walk to have her speak nonsense to him for the entire journey.

"Grunt like a Grounder," she says. He watches how her face brightens up the moment she smiles. "But don't smell like one. Remember to smear dirt on your face, they like that a lot."

He smiles down at her. "Any other useless advice you want to give me?"

She slaps him on the shoulder without missing a beat. She may smile, but her voice sounds slightly tense to him, "Don't die."

He nods. "I'll do my best."

"And the moment you get a radio, you call me." She hits him on the arm again, as though the bite to her tone and the sharpness of her own orders isn't enough. "I'll be checking every damn channel I can."

He nods, saying nothing else.

She steps into him. He remains where he is, standing still. Once he realises there's not much space between them, he doesn't feel the urge to step back. He's a pillar, or maybe she is, refusing to let the other fall with how closely they stand together.

She presses her lips together and looks at his shoulder. He wonders if she feels the urge to lift her hand to brush dirt from it. It's what Clarke would've done. But Raven Reyes isn't her.

She looks back up at him and remains silent for a few moments, her eyes never leaving his. Her voice is quiet. "You're going to be okay."

He nods again, but lets his gaze drop. Fear is a demon that needs to be slain. Fear is death. But he fears death, and so he wonders if they're two interchangeable beings within this moment.

He thinks of Aurora, wondering what kind of advice she'd give him now.

But he finds Raven's belief in him to only calm his nerves for a brief moment before they burn beneath his skin once more. He wants to believe her so desperately, but he sometimes wonders if Mom had been lying when she said he was going to be okay without her, too.

He thinks to say something, but he finds he lacks the words. He's still afraid. He's still gripped by the demon that hasn't let him go, but has, instead, burrowed beneath his skin ever since Mom died.

He looks up at her and says, "I'm trying to convince myself of that."

She smiles, it slightly force, weaker in its beam than before. Don't fly too close to the sun, Octavia had said, but Bellamy thinks he already has.

Raven looks down at the ground, her face pinching. She does a poor job of hiding her expression, even when she looks up at him. She leans up on the tips of her toes, hands reaching up toward him. He remains still, forgoing to breathe, as he feels her hands brush lightly against his cheeks.

Her fingers curve around his neck. Leaning toward him, she slopes her mouth against his. At first, it feels light, her lips merely pressing against his own, but then she leans against him, harder than before. Her fingers remain around his neck, as if wanting to keep him in place.

There's no need for it, though.

Bellamy pushes back against her, opening his mouth beneath hers as his hands reach up to clutch at the back of her jacket.

He thinks he can feel her smile, but then he wonders if that's the curve of his mouth.

She pulls away from him, head bowed slightly. She tilts her chin up and presses her temple to his. It lasts for a brief moment, but he finds it grounding, regardless of how long it may last.

She takes a step back, but her hands slide to the lapels of his jacket. Her fingers clutch at it, knuckles almost white. She looks at his neck while he watches her, wondering when her gaze will meet his.

"Did that help?" she cocks her head as she peers up at him. Her voice lacks any cockiness to it, any humour as she takes them back to that night in his tent. She peers up at him with a slight quirk to her lips, a shyness to her own touch.

Bellamy purses his lips together, as if he really needs to mull his answer over. Like she had in what feels like an age ago, she'd known her answer immediately. He finds he does, too.

Lowering his head, it's as though it's just the two of them, the last survivors of the world standing together. Her hands don't drop from his jacket as his remain curved around her waist.

With a quirk to his lips, he shifts his gaze to hers. "I'll let you know when I get back."