undertow | bellamy blake (book one)

24 | fighting

"Jovie, get back here," Bellamy called after the blonde as she walked away. She rolled her eyes as she kept going. If he wanted to yell at her then he was just going to have to follow her. She wasn't going to make it easy for him because why would she do that?

"Sorry, Mom, I'm a little busy," Jovie replied sarcastically as she grabbed a canteen of water so she could clean off her face. Before she could though, he knocked the canteen out of her hands and water went flying. "What's your problem, Bellamy?" She snapped, glaring up at him.

"What's your problem?" He replied angrily, motioning to her attire. "You look like one of them." He said it like he was disgusted by her. "You are not one of them!"

"I know I'm not!" She screamed. "But at least they respect me, which is more than I can say about you right now." Usually he valued her opinion, but now he was acting like she had lost her mind. Maybe she was acting a bit reckless, but she was just trying to fix things. All she asked was for him to support her because at least she was doing something to try to save them all. To save the delinquents and the Grounders. They were all human and that had to count for something.

"I don't care if they've given you some dumb nickname," he replied. "If you think they give a damn about you, you're wrong. They will not hesitate to kill you, just like they won't hesitate to kill the rest of us!"

"Why does everything have to be about death and killing each other?" Jovie said.

"That's just the way it is," Bellamy told her. Jovie shook her head. She refused to believe war was the only end to this. The world was messed up but there had to be more than this. What was the point of surviving if there was nothing worth surviving for?

"It doesn't have to be," she replied. "We don't have to let it be."

"Why are you so hellbent on making peace with them?"

"Because I'm tired of fighting!" She exploded. "I've been fighting my entire life! I didn't have a normal childhood. I didn't get to make friends and have fun because I was too busy worrying about whether I would make it through the day without someone figuring out that I was alive. I had to fight for myself because my parents chose John over me. And now all we do down here is fight. We fight with the Grounders, we fight with each other, we fight with ourselves. It never stops, Bellamy!"

Jovie was tough because she had to be. She never had someone to fight for her, and she had grown tired. She wanted to make peace to prove that it was actually possible. She had to believe there was something more than just violence. Life couldn't just be about death.

Bellamy didn't know what to say because he didn't think peace was possible, not now at least, but he didn't want Jovie to lose hope. It was the one thing she had that kept her going. So he just sighed and took a step forward, wrapping his arms around her. She was more important to him than winning this argument.

"I can't promise you that the fighting will ever end," he said quietly. "But I can promise you that you'll never have to fight on your own again." And he was right. Down here she had a family. Bellamy, Octavia, Finn, Raven, Clarke, Monty, Jasper, even Miller, they all cared about her. Whether John was still alive or not, she had no idea, but he would always be there for her. And she could see that Lincoln wanted to protect her too. She had a whole army of people fighting for her. She just had to realize that.