linger in the chambers of the sea | a bellarke fanfiction |

Day 1

Recommended listening:

"Different Worlds" by Jes Hudak
"All I Want" by Kodaline
"Tristesse" - Etude no. 3 in E major, Op. 10 no. 3" by Chopin  

*

The first day leaving Arkadia concluded with Bellamy slamming the rover's breaks in front of a fallen log, Octavia's mad dash to shore, green fire, and a series of unpleasant confrontations. When all was said and done, night had fallen with the group divided. Jasper stood by Octavia as she dropped sprigs of pine into the campfire, watching it burst in chemical flashes that lit up their tiny spit of land. Clarke left them to it. First her eyes, then her feet tracked the despondent form that trudged along the rocky water line, ever further from the group's source of warmth and light.

Ahead of her, Bellamy shuffled on the beach, leaning first on one foot, then the other. With his arms hugging his body, he seemed thin in the cold moonlight. When he heard her coming, Bellamy straightened, pushed his chin out, and refused to look her way.

"Let me guess, you came here to fix things." He grunted the next words, spinning them into an insult. "Wanheda, the Peacemaker."

Clarke took a deep breath. "I came to see if you're okay."

"Well, I don't need your help," he retorted. Even so, he turned slightly, as if to check the effect this statement had on her. For all the snap of his words, Bellamy's eyes looked wide and unhappy in the darkness, with little dots reflecting the light of the distant fire. Clarke nodded, and instead of pushing it, moved to join him in silent contemplation. They stood side by side on the shore of Lincoln's small inlet, watching the moon's reflection get swallowed by eddies in the dark water. The night was cold, too cold to be this far from light and heat, but she could afford to wait.

Elbow to elbow, she sensed when he looked back at the fire, and the insurmountable canyon between. Bellamy let out a long breath, then whispered her name like an invocation: "Clarke." He gestured hopelessly toward the green beacon and the faraway girl keeping it strong, "I've lost her."

She took a step nearer, and Bellamy allowed it. With every slow minute his skittishness gave way to grief, an emotion Clarke knew intimately by now. There was an impulse in her to reach out and take his hand, but she hesitated, testing out words instead. "Give her time, Bellamy. There may be blood on your hands, but it's not Lincoln's."

He met her eyes finally, and the hitch in his voice carved into Clarke's heart. "Some of it is."

Pain like that, she knew. Pain like that bore into your chest and gnawed at your bones, twisting inside till everything was poisoned. It felt like only yesterday that Lexa had looked Clarke in the eye and told her, "I never meant to turn you into this." Clarke had hated her for that, for taking something so huge and making it seem trite, but now, after everything—after losing Lexa to peace instead of war—Clarke could almost understand what she'd meant. Bellamy may have done this to himself, because he let himself believe that he could do something terrible if it meant saving the people he loved, but it still hurt to see that weight cloaked around him. This was the last thing Clarke wanted for Bellamy when she left Arkadia, and it hurt even more knowing that she could never lift it from his shoulders.

"Maybe," she agreed, blinking back memories of Lincoln. Clarke could still picture his soft smile as he wrapped his arms around Octavia, or his determined expression when he lifted his bow. Through all the tragedy that befell him, Lincoln kom Trikru had been a bright star in a sky full of stormclouds. Life on the ground would take and take and take from such a person, till it finally took the very breath from your lungs. Then the people you'd loved were left to stand by a fire with only tears and trinkets to remember you by: a sculpted necklace, a weathered tin box, or a tattered book of maps to nowhere.