The 99

Chapter Thirty: Bellamy

All right, so I decided to give this a try. I don't like where it leaves off here, but it seemed fitting, so I MIGHT make an epilogue if only to close it out on some lyrical note. Let me know if that would almost sound too lengthy or if I shouldn't have even added this part. I told myself I was done with writing Bellarke after the travesty that was season 7, but . . . guess that's been proven false. Pretty please review!  

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Her fingers were stained with lead, coal collecting like ash under her fingernails. He watched them silently as they moved across the crude bit of paper, cradling a piece of charred rock, the end of it pirouetting in sudden movements like a strange, sharp dance.

Bellamy never had the luxury of learning how to draw more than stick figures to amuse Octavia on the rare occasion he'd found something to draw on, and even rarer-something to draw with. But it wasn't as though he would've ever been able to create the images Clarke could. Even if he'd had all the time in the world, not in a million years would he find a smudged masterpiece looking up at him from beneath his own charred bit of rock.

So he watched.

It was comforting, the way it distracted him from everything else he was trying not to think about. Because if he thought about them, he would get frustrated. Angry. And if he got angry, he was liable to do something rash.

But the waiting was starting to get under his skin, dragging out his already nonexistent patience, and the idea of potentially getting lost in the woods was starting to sound infinitely more tantalizing than staying here.

Here, where his sister still hadn't found them.

He let out a long breath.

The fingers curled around the chunk of stone paused and blue eyes flickered over to him from where Clarke sat on a rock, seated around a sputtering fire. Dawn wasn't too far off, if the growing light beyond the mountain range was any indication of that. Sleep wasn't an easy thing for him to find. And not only for him. "Time changes the circadian rhythm," Clarke had explained to him earlier, an adjustment that now left them seated around the same fire right outside camp since 4 am.

Now her gaze was on him, full of knowing before he'd even breathed a word. "She'll find us, Bellamy."

Her words were sincere. Almost utterly convinced. Was he imagining the seed of room for doubt there? She was assuring him, but she wasn't making any promises either, because Clarke knew as well as he did.

She couldn't promise him what she didn't know.

Bellamy scrubbed a hand down his face, rubbing out the fatigue. His eyes burned from the smoke fumes. "Four days, Clarke." He shook his head. "It's been four days. Why would-"

"Because walking takes time," she said flatly, reminding him once again. "You don't know where she's at, so you don't know how far she's coming from. That crash was visible from miles off. You have to give her time, Bellamy."

"Unless she's injured, and she can't make it." Bellamy stood up, suddenly aggravated. "She could be right past that treeline," he snapped, gesturing towards the phalanx of woods that stretched out a quarter of a mile before them. "But I wouldn't know." He shook his head again, fingers curling into fists. "I wouldn't know."

"Then focus on what you do know," came Clarke's leveled reply. "You know that Octavia would fight to survive. You also know that as soon as Kane's scouts get back, we'll be one step closer to figuring out what we're going to do next with Mount Weather. And you also know that if any of the 100 are still in Mount Weather like Raven said, that they may have answers about Octavia." Clarke set her drawing and settled her fingers around one of Bellamy's fisted ones. She wasn't trying to calm him-she gave him room to be frustrated. But she was telling him things that were true. And frustration only made him more frustrated, because it didn't get him anywhere.