Chapter Text
Bellamy is not angry.
Why should he be, anyway? What does it matter to him if Clarke goes with that floppy haired loser to hunt? It’s not like they’ll be spending the time fucking, what with Raven and everything. Truly, the only reason he’s bothered is that Finn is a terrible shot, and the camp needs Clarke.
He needs Clarke.
But not in any way other than the standard co-leader way. No, Bellamy just would prefer not to be in charge of nearly a hundred kids by himself. He’s not a babysitter.
And yeah, Clarke’s technically a kid, same as the rest of them, but she’s—she’s different. Holds herself like an adult. Which means that he doesn’t have to be the only adult. Well, him and Raven actually, but Raven doesn’t have the temperament to be a leader. She’s too standoffish, too busy mooning over her ex-boyfriend; not to mention she’s—
Currently shoving rations into her pack like she’s planning on making a run for it.
Bellamy groans, stalking over to her and catching her arm. Raven shakes it off, turning to glare at him. “What?”
Bellamy gives the bag in her hands a significant look. “Going somewhere?”
Raven’s lips tighten, her expression hard. “Anywhere but here.”
Oh, for the love of— Bellamy grabs her arm again as she tries to stalk past him. “You’re gonna get yourself killed out there alone, and it’s not gonna be the revenge you think it will be.”
“What would you know?” Raven sneers.
He resists the urge to roll his eyes. “I know that if you leave you’re going to die, and then we’re all going to die, because nobody else knows how to make weapons.”
Raven deflates slightly, her shoulders sinking. “So what?” she asks. “I’m just supposed to stay here and watch?”
Bellamy stiffens. His spine draws up straight, arms crossing over his chest protectively. Does she mean—? No, Raven can’t know anything he doesn’t know, and Clarke wouldn’t just— Finn and Raven just broke up, she wouldn’t—
Not that it matters to him, anyways. Clarke and Finn can fuck all they want, so long as they’re not endangering the camp. Which they aren’t, because they’re just out hunting. Just like everybody else.
“No,” Bellamy corrects, raising one eyebrow. “You’re supposed to stay here and be useful.”
She sighs and drops the bag to the floor, defeated. “So what’s the plan then? Just going to sit behind these walls with your gun and pick grounders off one-by-one?”
He almost wants to laugh, because, yeah, they’re fucked. They’re miserably fucked, and he knows that just as well as anyone else. More than anyone else, even, giving that he and Clarke have made a concerted effort to conceal that fact. He’s not a leader, or a general. Hell, he didn’t even make it to full guard member. He’s just the idiot who shot the chancellor so he could follow his sister to the ground.
“Pretty much,” he admits bitterly. “Got any better ideas?”
Raven’s eyes light up, and he can see her mind start to whir, gears turning. It’s funny, the expression she’s making, because it’s so familiar, so like— Clarke.
Clarke, their best strategist, their only healer, his partner; who is currently in the woods under the watchful protection of some guy Bellamy knows viscerally is currently doing nothing but making moon eyes at the blonde instead of looking out for Grounders.
Bellamy lets out a heavy sigh.
Yeah, they’re so fucked.
****
When she doesn’t come back with the rest of the hunters, Bellamy is, in fact, a little bit angry.
Who could blame him? It’s irresponsible, Clarke knows that. They’re all supposed to be back by dark, co-leaders or not. Actually, co-leaders especially. Clarke helped come up with the rules, the least she can do is follow them.
“Finn still gone too?” he asks Monty tightly.
Monty nods, shifting anxiously as he looks to Bellamy for guidance. “Nobody’s seen them since noon. Do you think we should go look—”
Bellamy lets out a harsh snort. “No.”
The idea of the Princess and Spacewalker, the most uptight person in camp and the most— adequate tracker getting lost together is ludicrous. No, this is no accident at all. He remembers the last time they disappeared together, before Raven came down, and nearly grimaces.
Monty worries his lip. “But—”
“They’ll be fine,” Bellamy grits out. “Tell Clarke to come see me when she gets back.”
He turns and stalks away before anyone can ask him one more thing about Clarke’s mysterious absence; brushing past a wide-eyed Raven, standing stock still a few feet away.
Great. At least he doesn’t have to be the one to break the news.
He pushes into his tent, tossing his jacket down beside his bed with more force than entirely necessary. Bellamy groans at the sound of canvas brushing open behind him, turning to face the intruder.
“Look, I’m really not in the— Oh.” He expects to see one of the camp girls he’d been sleeping with, Bree or one of the other blondes whose names he hadn’t quite learned yet when he started to clean up his act. Instead he finds Raven. “What are you doing in here?”
“Finn and Clarke, huh?” Raven sidles closer, running her fingers over the papers on his desk. Bellamy watches suspiciously as she glances up at him. Her lips quirk into a smirk devoid of any and all humor. “They don't waste time, I'll give them that. What's it been, a day and a half?”
He can feel all of his muscles tense, because, yeah, sure he’s been thinking it, but it’s a whole different story to have it confirmed by someone else. Finn and Clarke. Clarke and Finn.
Ugh.
Bellamy’s jaw flexes. “You mistake me for someone who cares.”
And he doesn’t care. He doesn’t.
He doesn’t.
But Raven does, of course. It’s her shitty ex-boyfriend out there, fucking the pretty blonde princess again, just like he was before Raven come to the ground. Just like— Bellamy crosses his arms over his chest, sneering. “Time to move on.”
Raven’s eyes flit over his face, his posture, and her expression loosens. Bellamy’s not sure what she thinks she sees, but it can’t be good. “Interesting.”
“Shut up,” he says, his voice low.
Raven’s lips curl, something mean glittering in her eyes. “I’m not saying anything.”
Bellamy glares at her.
“You know, I think there’s something that would make us both feel better,” Raven muses. "I've only ever been with Finn." She steps closer, fingers running up his torso, tracing his abs through his shirt. Bellamy swallows, his throat suddenly dry. “Take off your clothes.”
He just stands there, lips pressed tightly together.
Raven makes a small noise of annoyance, a huff. “Fine,” she says, toeing off her shoes. “I'll go first.”
“What are you doing?” he asks, watching as Raven unbuckles her belt, dropping it on the ground beside her.
She grins at him, unbuttoning her pants and stepping out of them, revealing her bare legs. “Moving on.”
And why shouldn’t he fuck Raven? She wants him to, and besides, she’s hot.
Bellamy feels heat grow in the pit of his stomach. It’s not just attraction, and he knows that, however much he wishes it were. It’s also spite, the sick hope that Raven’s attempt to hurt Finn will end up hurting Clarke too.
Which is stupid, he thinks bitterly, because why would Clarke care?
But what if she does?, something whispers traitorously inside him. Wouldn’t you like to see it? His throat ticks, hands settling heavy on Raven’s hips.
Bellamy would.
“If you're looking for someone to talk you down, tell you that you're just upset and not thinking straight—” He takes a breath, giving her a look. “I'm not that guy.”
Raven steps in close, her fingers finding his belt buckle. She looks up, meeting his eyes. “Good.”
****
For what it’s worth, the sex is good.
Despite only ever fucking Spacewalker, Raven clearly knows what she’s doing. And she’s beautiful, of course, with her long brown hair and her big doe eyes. It’s just— It’s not right.
It’s not right for the same reason it wasn’t right with Bree, or any of the other girls he’s tried to fuck since the trip to the bunker. She’s just too tall, her body too lithe, her hair too straight and eyes too brown and upper lip too free of birthmarks. She’s just—
Not Clarke.
Which is good, he tries to tell himself. It’s the whole point. But— the anger can only take him so far.
He’s not even sure Raven’s into it, her expression more determined than anything, but he does his best anyway, getting her off twice while he fucks her. Normally Bellamy runs his mouth in the bedroom, but the mood isn’t there for that. The tent is filled with heavy breathing, with gasps and groans, but no words. Raven’s kisses are harsh, all tongue and teeth, and he’s glad for it.
When he finishes, it’s with his eyes closed, imagining gold curls spread out over his pillow like a halo, wide blue eyes and heavy tits.
He slides off Raven as he comes down, panting. They both lie there for a long moment in the damp sheets, silently staring up at the ceiling of the tent. It’s not regret he can feel rolling off her, but something else. Hollowness. Bellamy can feel it echoed back in his own chest.
Raven moves to the edge of the bed, stiffly pulling her shirt over her head. Bellamy sits up as well, watching the line of her shoulders with sad eyes.
“Did it help?” he asks, knowing it didn’t.
Raven stands, tugging her pants up over her hips and stepping into her shoes. “No,” she says flatly. She grabs her jacket and hesitates by the door flap, not looking back. “You?”
Bellamy lets out a breath through his teeth, settling back on his pillow. His mind flashes to blonde hair and blue eyes and pink lips wrapped around a cock that is not his own— his fist clenches, nails digging into his palm.
“No,” he admits.
Raven jerks her chin in a terse nod, and leaves.
****
He doesn’t fall asleep right away.
The longer he lies there awake, the longer he waits for Clarke to come back from god knows where with her hair in knots, smelling like sex; the angrier he gets. When Monty knocks uselessly at the flap of his tent, quietly calling his name, Bellamy snaps. “What?”
“Um, sorry to wake you up, it’s just—” He looks to the tent, seeing Monty’s shadow shifting his weight awkwardly from foot to foot. “Clarke still isn’t back.”
Bellamy rolls his eyes, hissing through his teeth. “And Finn?”
Monty gulps, wringing his hands. “No, but—”
“But nothing,” he growls. “They’re fine. Don’t bother me again.” Bellamy rolls over, clenching his eyes shut tight. He can feel Monty lingering, feel him wanting to argue a little more, but eventually there’s the telltale sound of footsteps moving away.
Bellamy lets out a harsh breath, and falls asleep.
****
He jerks awake to a shoe slamming into the side of his face.
Bellamy sits bolt upright, his eyes wrenching open as he reaches beside him for a gun that isn’t there. His sister stands just inside his tent, arms crossed, foot tapping. The pale light shining through the canvas tells him it’s just after dawn. “What the fuck, O?”
“Get up.” She snatches his clothes off the floor and throws them at him. He narrowly manages to catch them before they hit him in the face. “Clarke is still missing, we’re putting together search teams.”
Bellamy groans, leaning back in the bed. “Who gave you the authority to do that?”
His other shoe glances off his nose. “What is your fucking problem, Bell? She’s been gone for more than twelve hours, get out of bed.”
Bellamy grumbles, pulling on his pants and underwear under the covers. “I don’t really think the princess is going to appreciate the whole camp barging in on her and Spacewalker.” Octavia makes a noise and he looks up, confused. “What?”
“You have got to be kidding me,” she huffs. “That’s why you refused to send anyone last night?”
Bellamy very much does not appreciate the tone, especially after the shitty sleep he’s gotten. He tugs his shirt on over his head. “She’s not my little sister, O. It’s not my job to cockblock her.”
Octavia scoffs, glaring at him. “It’s not your job to cockblock me either, but that is so beside the point. Clarke and Finn and Myles went out together yesterday. The three of them.”
“Myles?” Bellamy’s stomach flips, his throat going dry. He can vaguely picture the kid, stocky and a little nerdy. Definitely not someone you bring along for a tryst. “And you’re sure he’s not—”
“No, Bell. He’s not back either.”
Oh, fuck. Fuck.
That’s— bad. That’s really fucking bad. Because that means that Clarke has been missing all night for real, and not off fucking Finn in some safe and sound bunker like he thought. That means Clarke could be dead, or injured, or held hostage and tortured like Murphy, all while he was busy— what? Having petty revenge sex?
Fuck.
Bellamy swings his legs over the side of the bed, shoving his feet into his boots without tying them. He follows Octavia through the camp with hard eyes, weaving through the tents to the dropship, where a small group has gathered.
It’s all the people he would expect, all the ones who care about Clarke, all the ones most active in the camp, but— it’s so small.
Bellamy learned his lesson with the hunt for Octavia, that sending everybody out was a bad idea, one that just got people killed, but it feels wrong somehow. Clarke is— as loathe as he is to admit it, Clarke is the most important member of the camp. Not just his co-leader, but also a planner, a strategist, a diplomat; not to mention their only healer.
He thinks of Clarke humming as she slit Atom’s throat, Clarke working to save Charlotte even knowing she’d killed her best friend, Clarke with blood on her hands after torturing the grounder, Clarke on that bridge trying to make peace, Clarke fighting to keep people alive even when she was too weak to stand.
Monty give him a nod as he joins the group, and Raven tosses him a walkie talkie. Bellamy catches it, exchanging a guilty look with the brunette.
She looks at the ground, and he clears his throat. “Alright,” he says, tone clipped. “Tell me the plan.”
Monty nudges Harper, who launches into an explanation of where they’d last seen the missing hunters, of what quadrant they’d been going through. Bellamy nods along, arms crossed over his chest, struggling to keep his focus on the present.
His jaw clenches, mind drifting back again. He sees Clarke not two days on the ground and clinging to his arm, dangling over a pit of spikes.
A martyr, Bellamy thinks with a flinch. She’s a martyr.
And what do martyrs do?
They die.
****
It’s nearly mid-morning by the time they find Myles.
He’s barely alive, regaining consciousness long enough to tell them Clarke and Finn were taken by grounders and nothing else. Bellamy has them bring him back to camp anyways, even though he has no idea what they’ll be able to do to help him without Clarke.
They start to walk back, to regroup, and decisions get harder from there. Logically, he knows the odds she’s alive, or Finn— they’re slim. And even if the grounders haven’t killed them, they don’t even know where the grounder village is, let alone how to get them out.
With Clarke gone, Bellamy is the only one left in charge, the one people look to. They’re on the verge of a war, with limited bullets and even more limited experience, and they don’t know when the grounders will strike next. The best thing— the safest thing —would be to cut their losses and call them dead.
His stomach turns, bile rising up his throat as he prepares to say the words, prepares to call off the search. Bellamy opens his mouth—
The radio crackles, Raven’s voice bubbling through from command central at the camp. “He’s back,” she says eagerly. “Finn’s back!”
The group pauses mid-step, letting out a collective sigh of relief. Bellamy urges them forward and raises the walkie to his mouth, lips curling into a grin. “And Clarke?”
The smile falls from his face as the silence drags on.
“I’m sorry,” Raven says eventually, and Bellamy’s heart drops.
Fuck.
“Is she—” The words stick in his throat, the idea choking him. His hand tightens around the walkie-talkie. “How’d Finn get away?”
“They were going to kill him. Lincoln got him out.” Bellamy closes his eyes and tilts his chin, nodding silently. He lets a slow breath out through his nose, trying to quiet the riot occurring inside his chest.
“Good,” he chokes out stiffly, “That’s good.”
He feels like the trees are closing in on him, like he’s breathing in that acid fog. He wants to be happy for Raven but— if it had to be one of them, why Spacewalker? Why was he the one to come back?
“Clarke was still alive when they took him.” Raven’s voice is gentle, even through the static of the speaker. Too gentle. “It’s possible—”
Bellamy opens his eyes, pressing the talk button to cut her off. “Thanks,” he says, throat thick. He forces his feet to move, following behind the rest of the group. “We’ll be back in twenty.”
“Bellamy—”
He turns the walkie off.
****
Bellamy hates Finn.
He really fucking hates him.
He hates his stupid hair, and his stupid voice, and his stupid gaping chest wound that reopened while he was out leaving Clarke for dead.
He hates that Finn’s here, lying in his stupid bed in his stupid tent with his stupid too-good-for-him ex-girlfriend holding his hand, and Clarke is still missing. He hates the way Finn keeps trying to go after her like he didn’t leave her there in the first place.
He hates that he can’t go after her himself.
Bellamy doesn’t give a shit about Finn. He’s a judgmental two-timer who makes people do stupid shit, Clarke included. His dreamy ideals and starry-eyed politics have no place in this camp, no place on the ground. He doesn’t need Finn, he needs Clarke.
He needs Clarke.
But there’s a reason Finn is here. A message he’s brought them. “Lincoln says the Commander’s sent scouts,” he tells them, his grating voice like a nails on a chalkboard. “He’ll be back when he has more information, but he thinks they’ll attack at dawn.”
So, no, Bellamy can’t go after her, because it would mean leaving this whole fucking camp of goddamn children leaderless during a possible siege. And, yes, he is extremely fucking angry because of it.
He storms around camp like a hurricane, nervous rage simmering hot in his belly. The kids know better than to approach him, letting him stalk back and forth between the Dropship and Raven’s tent uninterrupted.
He wishes Raven would leave the fucking tent so he wouldn’t have to see Finn’s simpering face to be able to talk weapons and ammunition with her, but that’s too much to ask.
Of course, when she finally does, no one tells him. It’s just after dinner when he throws open the tent flap with a growl and— Finn blinks at him from his sickbed, eyes narrowed. Alone.
Bellamy’s lips thin, and he turns to leave.
“You’re seriously just going to leave Clarke out there?” Finn’s tone is whiny and accusing and it wouldn’t be half as annoying if it wasn’t fair.
Bellamy faces the younger man, arms crossing over his chest. “I’m not the one who left her.”
“You probably don’t even want her to come back,” Finn sneers. “Sure would put you back on top again. And you didn’t even have to get rid of her yourself.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bellamy growls lowly, his eyes dark with hatred.
Sure, he and Clarke have their differences, but they’re partners. She’s his….well, she’s his. Finn should keep his fucking mouth shut.
“Clarke would go looking if it were you or me,” he says. “She’d never abandon anyone like this.”
“You think I don’t want to go after her? You think I want to be stuck in this camp with your sorry ass, waiting to be told whether or not we’re going to get massacred in the morning? Fuck you,” Bellamy spits back, rage boiling over. “You’re the reason she was out there in the first place, you’re the reason we didn’t go looking last night, you’re the reason she’s—”
Finn pushes up on his elbows, glaring back. “How is it my fault you couldn’t be bothered to send a search party before dawn?”
Bellamy throws up his hands, huffing. “If she’d been with someone else, I would’ve known she was actually missing and not just off—” Fucking you. He bites off the rest of his sentence, hissing through his teeth. “Nevermind.”
He turns, pushing roughly through the tent flap into the dusk, ignoring the angry yells of the man behind him.
Bellamy hates Finn.
****
As the evening winds into night, Bellamy gets antsy.
He’s waiting for Lincoln to come back and tell him it’s all clear, because if he says anything else—well, they’re all fucked. And once it’s all clear, he can send out a search party, or better yet, Bellamy himself can go out and look— No.
He can’t.
Finn’s words ring in his ears, settling over his own guilty conscience. Clarke is still out there. He left her there. Every minute he stays in the walls of this camp is another minute the grounders could be torturing her, killing her. But if it’s not all clear, and god knows with his luck it won’t be, leaving now could damn the whole camp.
Still, Bellamy gazes out into the dark, thinking maybe— No.
He knows he can’t, he knows he shouldn’t, he— Fuck it.
With a growl, Bellamy snags his rifle, slinging it over his shoulder as he pushes through the gates. Fuck Finn, fuck the camp. He’s going after her.
He gets maybe ten yards before he sees her.
Clarke’s hair, bright even in the dark of the moonlit forest, bobs like a beacon through the trees as she staggers towards him. Something in his chest leaps and shatters simultaneously, a cry leaving his lips as he lopes forward to catch her.
She collapses in his arms, weak and exhausted, and Bellamy sinks to his knees. He clutches her to his chest. “Hey,” he says softly, pushing the hair back from her face. Her face is bruised and bloodied, but her eyes are the same bright blue as always. “Clarke.”
“Bellamy?” She looks at him like he’s the answer, like he’s not the person who left her abandoned to the grounders overnight so he could have revenge sex. Who almost left her out there again, and for what? His heart beats hard and heavy beneath his ribs.
“Yeah,” he says, throat thick. “You’re home.”
She blinks at him once, twice; her lips curling upwards just enough— and goes limp.