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2014-09-02
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A Prince and Three Dwarves

Summary:

"Well, it does look like an apple," Clarke said, tone extremely dubious. "Kind of."

Work Text:

"Well, it does look like an apple," Clarke said, tone extremely dubious. "Kind of."

"Smells like it, too," Jasper said, holding it out, and Bellamy allowed himself to hope that meant they were getting somewhere here - if it (kind of) looked like an apple and smelled like an apple, he figured chances were pretty good that it was an apple, or something close enough to it.

"How'd you know what an apple smells like?" Monty asked, right on cue. "There were any apple trees on the Ark, I sure didn't see them."

"I read a lot," Jasper said, handing the maybe-maybe-not apple to Clarke.

"About apples."

"Yes, about apples." Jasper cleared his throat. "Among a wide variety of other subjects."

"Yeah, yeah, you were a bookworm and a total geek, we get it," Raven said.

"Look who's talking."

Bellamy decided that this was not an occasion where counting to ten slowly would help the situation become any less annoying in any way. It would just mean wasting another ten seconds that should have been spent gathering food. "Guys."

"Bookworms can be pretty badass, you know," Jasper said, and Raven grinned at him in a way that (to Bellamy) suggested she didn't necessarily disagree before she said, "I guess some of them are."

"Even if it's not an apple, it might still be edible," Clarke said and Bellamy could have kissed her. Proverbially, it went without saying.

"Right," Jasper said, either giving up on the 'convince Raven I'm badass' project as hopeless or putting it on the backburner in favor of making a contribution to the discussion that might be halfway useful. "Maybe they're, like, mutant killer apples."

Make that 'completely not useful'. "Dude," Monty said.

"What? There's two-headed deer - why not mutant killer apples?"

"Because the world's not actually a fucked up cheesy horror movie," Raven said. "Although I guess they might be poisonous or something."

"Another Grounder trap?" Bellamy hadn't forgotten about the berries. Or the virus. Or the mosquitoes.

"That tree's been here at least ten, twelve years," Monty said.

"Could be they're just really patient," Jasper said.

"Nobody's that patient."

"Doesn't mean it wasn't planted by someone," Raven said. "And if it was ... "

"They might come check on it every once in a while," Bellamy finished. "So if we're going to do this, we'd better do it fast. Clarke?"

"What?" She was still holding the potential 'part-of-their-daily-winter-ration'.

"Do we take them back to camp, or not? Your call." His vote'd be on 'yes'; it was the best option they'd found all day, but with this group along, he knew the argument about whether or not he was right would last at least another half hour, after which Clarke would decide that yeah, okay, maybe he'd had the right idea. At which point everyone'd stop arguing and start doing what he'd wanted them to do in the first place.

So. Clarke making the call, it was, and he'd just have to hope she'd make the right one.

"I'm a doctor, not a toxicologist. Or a botanist."

Or Clarke not making the call, it was. "So what? You need to take one back to camp first?"

"Those poor lab rats," Jasper said. "Oh wait, I forgot. We don't have any rats."

"I'm sure we could think of someone expendable to try them," Raven said, looking at nobody in particular. "They don't die in the next two days, we come back here and take the lot."

"There might not be anything left to take in two days," Clarke said, at the same time Bellamy said, "Two days is too long."

Raven sighed. "Look, I'm not going to break my back dragging a bunch of stuff back to camp that we might not even be able to eat."

Bellamy decided not to point out that she'd damn well do whatever he told her to do. (They'd both know it wasn't true, for one, and they'd also both know she would do what Clarke asked her to do, so whatever. Same difference, in the end.) "Yes or no, Clarke. It's not that complicated."

Clarke scowled at him. Predictably. "You want to take a bite and maybe die a slow and painful death, be my guest." She held out the apple to him - or possibly she'd intended to hit him in the face with it and changed her mind at the last minute.

Jasper'd been right, surprisingly; it did smell like an apple. (And Bellamy'd think about what that meant some other day. He might even talk about it to Clarke.)

Clarke (or rather: Raven) might be right, too: resembling an apple or not, the thing might be poisonous.

Then again, they might all die of some disease tomorrow, or be murdered by Grounders, or die horribly in some other way. Free from lethal radiation or not, Earth was still dangerous.

So Bellamy figured that, really, he might as well do something unexpected. It'd be good for Clarke, to make her a little less sure she always knew what he was going to do, and why.

"Are you crazy?" Clarke jerked back the definitely-probably-an-apple.

Bellamy shrugged. The thing didn't quite taste like an apple - at least, it didn't taste like the apple lemonade they'd served in the cafeteria sometimes.

Jasper looked as wide-eyed horrified as if he'd been the one to take a bite out of something possibly poisonous. Monty looked mildly impressed; Raven did not.

"It was your suggestion, princess."

Raven chuckled. Jasper glanced at her peevishly. "Sorry. I just thought of Snow White."

"We're Dwarves now?" Monty asked.

"More to the point: Clarke's the princess and the wicked witch?" Jasper said.

Bellamy sighed. "Give me the rest of that. We might as well be thorough."

"Any symptoms of poison might still take several hours to appear," Clarke said, handing over the apple all the same. "We should head back to camp, come back tomorrow."

Bellamy supposed 'tomorrow' was still better than 'in two days'. "Fine."

"Well, I guess it's not going to be a problem finding someone to kiss him awake if the worst happens," Jasper said, slinging his pack on his back.

"You volunteering?" Monty asked him before he added, to Bellamy, "No offense."

"None taken."

Clarke rolled her eyes. Not a faerie tale fan, clearly.

"Just in case, I want you to know I'm okay with it," Bellamy said softly.

"Um." Clarke blinked. "Thanks?"

"He means you can kiss him if he ends up in an apple-induced coma," Raven said from behind them. From very, suspiciously close behind them. "Possibly even when he doesn't, but I guess he's too shy to tell you that."

"Right," Clarke said. "Yeah, I noticed that about you. Shy."

Bellamy grinned at her, at least in part because, all things considered, it was much preferable to throttling Raven.

"But seriously, you still feeling all right there?" Raven asked.

"Aside from a desire to kill someone for annoying the shit out of me, you mean?"

"He's fine," Raven told Clarke. "Too bad."

"You slowpokes coming or what?" Jasper called.

 

"I guess I'd kiss you if I could save your life that way," Clarke said, maybe five hours later, with Raven safely back at the workroom slash lab in the shuttle, and Monty off to try and start growing their own not-quite-apple trees. "Just so you know."

"Thanks. I don't see it ever actually happening, but, well, good to know." Bellamy considered leaving it that, then figured what the hell - he couldn't do any worse than Raven. "I'd do the same for you."

"Yeah." Clarke sighed. "Well, one of us could almost drown. I mean, mouth-to-mouth is kind of like kissing, right?"

"If that's what you think, you've been doing at least one of them wrong. Possibly both."

"Oh, shut up."