In the aftermath, he never really understood when or how it had happened. Perhaps it was in that forest, her hair the color of gold and the sun streaming through the leaves, a dying boy at his feet and his heart in his throat. Perhaps it was when the shooting star that wasn't fell to the earth like some unholy gift from the heavens, and she had collapsed into him with a sob stealing her breath and her hands clutching at his shirt. But maybe it was later, too; maybe it was her arms locked around his neck and the feel of her soft body beneath him, her hair the only part of her visible to him - all that golden hair, the color of sunlight and brightness and joy. Or maybe it was fate: that from that first moment when she declared he couldn't open the door and he blatantly disregarded her, mostly out of spite, he was meant to be irrevocably doomed to her clutching his heart between her small palms.
(It was all of the above, his heart laughed at him, but Bellamy was pointedly ignoring that.)
(And she was gone, his brain reminded him, and he was ignoring that, too, and the pain that radiated from his sternum.)
He was king of the rebels but he would do anything she asked of him without question, so when she left and didn't want him to follow, he obeyed. When she asked, tears clinging to her lashes, words unspoken carved into the red lines crisscrossing her bloodshot eyes, for him to take care of them, he obeyed.
But then, about two months into her little break (it wasn't forever or goodbye or anything of that nature - he refused to think of that), Miller came stumbling back to the Ark with a body in his arms and horror on his face, and Bellamy felt the world that had been hoisted upon his shoulders crumble.
(It was the hair he recognized first. He would have known it anywhere.)
He sprinted to meet Miller at the gate, yelling at someone to get Dr. Griffin now, and when he saw her broken body - he didn't know how the fuck she was even still alive, honestly, her frame thin and haggard and blood oozing from a small gash on her leg, and another one dripping at the top of her skull. He ran shaky fingers over her hair (she's real she's real and she's here, oh fuck), and then directed his attention to Miller.
"What happened?" (His voice cracked. No one commented.)
"I'll explain once we get her inside."
Bellamy gently tugged her body from Miller's grasp without the latter's protest, and he noticed how easily they fell together, twin flames that could only find solace in the other. As soon as Bellamy turned Abby was directly in front of him. At once, the woman's face shifted from fear to horror to steel in a matter of seconds, and suddenly the relation to Clarke was so painfully obvious that he couldn't decide if it made him want to laugh or cry at the familiarity. "Bring her in," she ordered, turning to Miller as the three of them moved towards the med bay (the newly built one, for her, all of it for her), the rest of the hunting party scattering away. Miller began to talk as they moved, telling both of them about how they had been hunting, like normal, until one of the boys had gotten spooked and accidentally fired at a tiny movement he saw.
"It was... Uh... Obviously not intentional," he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "Next thing we heard was her scream and then she must've fallen and hit her head when the bullet struck."
Bellamy wasn't breathing. He saw fire and flames and utter, unadulterated anger before him. He was going to fucking kill whoever was responsible for this.
"It just grazed her, luckily," Abby was saying, continuing to work with Jackson at cleaning and sewing up the leg wound before pondering her head injury.
"Luckily?" Bellamy scoffed, his mouth ajar and eyes wide as he stared at Abby, unsure of how the hell anything about this was lucky.
"Yes," she said pointedly, giving him a stern glare even as she managed to continue patching up her injured daughter. (So much similarity between the Griffin women Bellamy could hardly watch.) She went on: "I need you two to get out. I have to work on this head wound, and -"
"Fuck no, I'm not -"
"Bellamy, please." Her voice sounded desperate, and he remembered that this was someone she loved, too, and he wasn't the only one suffering, and so he relented with a heavy sigh as Miller steered him out of the med bay.
"Which one of them did it?" Bellamy asked harshly, his voice sounding much more tired and ragged than he would've liked, and Miller gave him a disapproving look.
"Bellamy, I really don't -"
"Which. One?"
A sigh and a shake of the head, and then: "Conrad."
Bellamy gave him a terse nod before stalking off the find the boy, and Miller simply looked after him, helpless and a little forlorn for his friend.
He found the boy by the fire, with his friends, a hesitant smile on his lips and a cup of something that was likely not water in his hand.
"Conrad." (Not a question. A demand.)
The boys quieted, and the boy in question looked up, startled and a little bit terrified, before asking, "Yes?"
"What the fuck did you think you were doing today?" Bellamy seethed. The boy tensed, and he knew this was wrong, and it wasn't entirely this boy's fault, but he was angry and hurting and fucking terrified for the little blonde force of nature currently bleeding out on her mother's table, and he needed this. "If you get spooked by any movement, that could mean the difference between life or death for someone. And today, it is, because that's Clarke on that table, and -"
"Hey! Bellamy!" He turned mid-rant to see Raven making her way over to him, face contorted with anger, and he faced the boy to see the tears trapped in his eyes and the tremble of his lip, and he pulled back. "It's time to go, Blake," Raven hissed when she reached him, grabbing his arm with surprising force and yanking him away until the boys and the fire weren't visible, and only then did she relinquish her grip.
"Look," she said, gentler, "I know you're scared for her. I saw her when she came in, too, and she looked rough. And we all care about her, Bellamy. But Abby is brilliant, and she's going to make sure Clarke's fine."
Bellamy seemed to collapse against the wall, his entire body sagging and the exhaustion seeping into his bones. It was late afternoon, now, the sky bleeding into red and orange, a molten masterpiece. He imagined her out there, alone, all those weeks, and about the way she must've had to patch herself up dozens of times, had to deal with her illnesses without any medical help. She was so alone, and it broke him. "Did you see how thin she was? And... and if they hadn't heard her make a noise, she might've..." (He felt his heart crumbling, and his voice felt like glass in his throat.)
"I know, but she's here now. That's what matters." Her voice was soft, and she placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder, before the call of his name pulled them out of their moment. They looked up, and Miller was jogging over to them.
"You can go see her now. She isn't awake yet, though," he said a bit breathlessly. Bellamy nodded and gave Raven a small smile in thanks before making his way back to the med bay.
Clarke was laying on one of the cots, her blonde hair fanned out like a halo on the crisp white sheets, and she looked so much more at peace than she had earlier, her skin clean and sutured and her brow smooth. He forgot, sometimes, the way she looked when she was like this; content and safe and whole, not the exhausted and angry and forced stoic posture she was usually forced to hold. He fell into the chair beside her bed, his calloused hand slipping into her hers easily, and they fit together like puzzle pieces, two halves to a whole (two sides of the same coin). Releasing a shaky breath, he murmured, "God, Clarke, you can't do this to me. Disappear and then almost die and then..." Another breath. "I need you. I need you to stay, to fight with me, to lead with me. I need you to just be there, to remind why the fuck we're doing this, to..."
He rubbed one of his hands over his face in agitation before muttering, "I fell in love with you as you were slipping a knife into a guy's neck, and yet somehow I'm always still surprised by how strong you are. I need you to be here because of that, because you're stronger than me, so much stronger, and I just..."
"Bellamy?"
His head shot up, and suddenly he could see her eyes, shining and so, so blue, and he was convinced there was nothing in all those galaxies more beautiful than the soft smile that tugged at the corner of her lip.
"Hey there, princess," he said softly, his thumb tracing absentminded circles against her palm. "How's the head?"
"It's okay," she murmured. Her voice was croaky from disuse, and she seemed a bit disoriented, but her eyes were glued on him, drinking every piece of him in as though to memorize and play back on her lids later, like a film reel. "I'm sorry," she whispered, and her voice cracked, and there were tears gathered in her eyes.
"For what?" he whispered back, reaching a hand up to brush away the stray drops that had leaked onto her cheeks.
"For everything. For leaving you and for sending you in there when I knew it was risky and for all those people and -"
"Clarke," he interrupted, a small smile on his face because this was his princess, coming in all battered and bruised and then apologizing for all of it. "I told you you're forgiven, remember? I meant it."
She hesitated, eyes searching his face, before murmuring, "Did you mean the other thing, too?"
He paused. "What other thing?"
Clarke's face was wholly serious as she whispered, with just a bit of nervousness and the tiniest sliver of hope, "The part about being in love with me?"
Bellamy forgot how to breathe again, his throat tightening and his muscles tensing, but he has said it, and of course he fucking meant it, and they were bound to die at some point or another, and so he simply said, "Yes. Of course I meant it," and he thought the wide smile that accompanied those words was the most glorious sight to behold. She tugged him up by the hand, scooting over so he could lay down on the cot with her. He gathered her up in his arms, her body molding to his naturally, like they'd done this a thousand times before, and he kissed the top of her head softly. She was radiating heat, and her head lay on his chest as her fingers grasped the front of his shirt tightly, as though she was afraid he would leave. (Never. They were tied together, she and him.) He almost didn't hear her soft whisper, repeating the words back to him, and he buried his smile in her hair.
(An hour later, Abby came in to check in on her daughter and found the rebel and the princess tangled together on the small cot, so intertwined she could not tell where one began and the other ended.)