Because of You

A Jacket and A Question

Bellamy stood for a few extra moments before sitting down beside me. I noticed how he kept a foot or so between us and how tense he looked, his knees drawn onto the step under him. I noticed a scuff on one black tennis shoe. He stared out to the lawn, yellowed with the change of weather.

I felt compelled to fill the void of silence. "It's nice out," I said, as the wind teased my hair around my face.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Bellamy cast me a look. "Are you really trying to make small talk?"

"Is that not allowed?"

Bellamy faced forward again and gave a small shake of his head, brown curls rustling in the light breeze. "Let's cut to the chase. You helped me last night. I appreciate it. I made an agreement, and this is me making good on that agreement. You get one question, but my offer expires after today."

I toyed with the bottom of my lip. Bellamy Blake was as straightforward as they came, and though his bedside manner, or manners in general, could use some work, maybe straightforward wasn't such a bad thing to be.

I let out a lengthy sigh, not knowing where to look. I settled on my hands. I flipped the question over and over again, hesitant to speak aloud what had been bothering me for the last week.

"Those scars on your back?" I asked in a quiet voice. "How'd you get them?"

Bellamy hesitated, and I wondered if he would even answer at all. It didn't sound like a story anyone would want to retell and I wasn't positive I wanted to hear it. But it was the obvious query and I suspected it was what Bellamy had expected me to ask. "Not all of them are from the same person," he murmured, his head turned from me. "The belt marks . . . those are from my dad."

I bit the inside of my lip. Hard. "I thought he was in jail." That was what Octavia had said.

Bellamy smirked dryly. "What do you think put him there?"

A shiver ran up my spine.

"Drug abuse, child abuse, endangerment . . . He was a violent guy, even more when he was drunk." Bellamy's hands tightened automatically. "And after my mom, he was drunk all the time."

"But there were . . .," I couldn't swallow properly, my mouth suddenly tasting of sawdust. "I thought I saw burn marks."

"He smoked cigars," said Bellamy. "Sometimes I was his ashtray."

I breathed past the horror filling my chest, wrapping around my ribs like a vice. "What about Octavia?" I asked, fear flooding me. "He didn't –?"

"No," Bellamy snapped. "He never touched her. I didn't let him. And eventually, when I got old enough, I made sure he would never be around to try."

I didn't know what to feel. Appalled? Yes. But it was eclipsed by my own anger, how a father could be so cruel. It went beyond the borders of my understanding. Growing up, my Dad was one of the most important people in the world to me. He had been the hero in my life when in Bellamy's, his own father was still the villain.

"And the other scars?" the words were quiet now, like I couldn't muster up the volume.

Bellamy's teeth clenched and the muscles in his jaw grew prominent. "I lived in a lot of homes. Some of the families were nice." He looked across at me. "Some of them weren't."

We didn't speak for a long time and I stared into his eyes, at last understanding some of the hardness in them. I knew the pain of losing those I loved dearly. Bellamy knew the pain of pain, inflicted by those that were meant to keep you safe from it all.

Which was worse, I wondered?

I couldn't feel the cold in the air anymore. It felt like it was on the inside; no amounts of coat or blanket could alleviate it.

"Is that a satisfying answer?" Bellamy finally asked, his shoulders and hands still wrought with tension.

I still couldn't swallow. Couldn't even breathe. And I knew, without him even saying, that this wasn't yet the full story. He'd only given me a piece; a single sliver to the broken image that was his childhood.

"I don't know what you mean by satisfying," I said.

"Do you wish you hadn't asked?"

Maybe I did, to some degree. But I still gave a small shake of my head, because at least now, I understood him more clearly than I ever had before.

Bellamy narrowed his eyes in a small warning. "Don't pity me, Clarke. Or Octavia."

"I'm not pitying you," I said automatically, and that was the truth. I was so accustomed to that look of pity myself. I knew what good it did and I wouldn't give that to him, because he'd proven stronger than his circumstances.

"Everyone does sooner or later," he breathed.

"You can't fit the world into a box, Bellamy," I said. "Why should I pity you? Bad things happened. Horrible things, but you did something about it. The only thing that calls for is my respect." I shrugged noncommittally.

A flicker of confusion shown in his eyes, like he was looking at an equation he couldn't quite figure out. Then I blinked, and it was gone. "That's a first," he said.

"It shouldn't be." I was surprised by the edge in my voice.

He raised a brow. "Why do you care so much?"

I crossed my arms over my chest. The leaves on the nearby trees chattered from the gust of wind. "I . . . I just think it's unfair."

Bellamy sighed. "Everything's unfair. We live in a place where dads beat their kids and boyfriends get gunned down in parking lots."

I flinched internally at that. I ground my teeth as the images flashed through my head, just as they did with each reminder.

"Happens every day," he added.

"Not all of it is unfair," I said, looking out across the lawn again.

In my periphery, Bellamy cast a glance at me. His voice turned steely. "How do you, of all people, figure that?"

I thought back to this whole year. The unbearable pain of having someone so close ripped from you. Again and again. The darkness. "It was unfair for my dad and Finn to die," I spoke slowly, each word serrated. I looked at Bellamy. "But it wasn't unfair to love them. And it wasn't unfair to have them love me back."

"And me?" he asked, a note of sarcasm in his voice. "Where's the fairness in a father using his son's toy bin to hide his liquor? Where's the fairness in a kid raising another kid when he should've been attending school?"

I deliberated, picking my words carefully. "Maybe that fairness is not in your life, but you're the one that put it in Octavia's."

Bellamy scoffed, but it was weak. His clasped hands tightened and he said nothing.

I didn't want him to leave yet. I wasn't quite ready to return to the empty house. "You know, I didn't think you'd even come, much less be honest with me," I admitted.

Bellamy cast me a smirk, tinted with discordance. "Who's to say I'm speaking the truth?" he asked. "This could've just been some elaborate lie I concocted on the drive here."

I scrutinized him. "It's not."

"And how would you know?"

It was my turn to smirk. "I hate to break this to you, Bellamy, but you don't hide things as well as you think you do."

"Don't start thinking you know everything about me, Clarke," he said, but I could see a bit of the tension in his shoulders dissolve. His clasped hands grew more relaxed.

"I don't think I know everything," I said, turning back to watch as the wind ruffled the dying grass. I stared up at the sky, adorned in wisps of cloud. "But I think I know enough."