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Entry tags:
the ghosts along your trail
WHO: Bellamy & Clarke
WHAT: friendly reunion
WHEN: 22 Guardian (ish)
WHERE: Emprise du Lion
NOTES: i'm not crying about blood magic and its aftereffects, you're crying about blood magic and its aftereffects
WHAT: friendly reunion
WHEN: 22 Guardian (ish)
WHERE: Emprise du Lion
NOTES: i'm not crying about blood magic and its aftereffects, you're crying about blood magic and its aftereffects
On the first day, the day he rode in with Kane, Bellamy was restless. Settled the horses, gots a drink in the tavern, then another. Let his toes thaw by the fire, and watched Kane when he caught sight of him in the tavern. The argument that the knight captain had made at their approach--to wait, to play cautious--had been a good one. Too many tensions, too many dangers. Bellamy tried to remember that as he scanned the room, tried to put away his impatience or at least bury it down deep, while looking all the while. Drinking too quickly, tense enough to deter conversation, if not attention.
He hadn't managed to wait inside for very long. The same had gone for the second day, and the third, though by the third he was somewhere beyond restless, impatience putting a grimmer line to his mouth. He spends the morning seeing to Hector, and Kane's horse. Eats while he walks, since walking is all there is to do. There's a fight to be had here; the Inqusition is everywhere, but Bellamy is still looking, in the faces of everyone he sees. Looking for Clarke, for an open face, for someone who might tell him something, but he second-guesses everyone, keeps thinking about what Kane said. He won't be nice when he asks. His patience is a thin thing, wearing down thinner. Have you seen a girl? About this tall, blonde. Probably with a staff. Will she have stashed her staff? Was she ever here? They had word of her. Words mean nothing. He should have said that to Kane, he should have said a lot of things, and he thinks--not for the first time, certainly not for the last--about leaving, grabbing some supplies and just going. Clarke's trail is getting colder every day.
It's nearly evening when he sees her. The sun sets early, drawing out the long lines of the shadows. Bellamy is working the edge of his knife against his whetstone, and when he presses his thumb against the blade, a thin line of blood beads up. He sucks in a breath and snatches his hand away, wiping it against his trousers.
And there's a girl, keeping to the shadows of the buildings. Not purposefully, more like she's following a path that just happens to run along that way. But there's a furtiveness to her all the same, a fast clip to her walk. Her hood is up, covering her face as well as it covers her hair.
Bellamy watches her. His knife is in his hand and there's blood on his thumb and he thinks, for a moment, about another knife, a little cottage somewhere with the fire built up high. Thick smoke. Clarke's face, shadowed.
He shoves his knife back into his belt and tucks away the whetstone, shoves to his feet just as the girl in the cloak disappears around a corner.
touches your face while crying about blood magic and its aftereffects
That's the last corner she turns, in any case, before she stops. There is nothing symbolic about it. She's not done running. But at this moment, in this particular place, she doesn't have anywhere to go.
When he comes into view she's turned to face him, with her arm crooked back over her shoulder to pull her staff free, and she freezes that way at the sight of him. Lexa had paralyzed her for a moment, too, but that was because there was too much fury fighting to surface at once. This paralysis is four different things canceling one another out, and a fifth thing—relief—that makes her want to sit down on the spot. Which she can't do. But she does drop her hand. Her eyes are shadowed by her cloak and the buildings blocking the dimming sunlight, but the grim line of her mouth goes slack and forms the first syllable of a word, without any noise.
don't you start with that
Seeing her face to face is a little like getting punched in the gut. It's enough that Bellamy stops, dead, doesn't go any further. She's got her hand on her staff and she looks surprised, and she should. The last time she saw him was hundreds of miles from here, a goodbye. Take care of them for me. Sometimes he's angry about that, that she left. It never lasts, comes back sometimes but it doesn't stay very long. Right now he's glad to see her--glad, but that hardly gets at what he's feeling, something not quite happy, something more complicated. The gut-punch feeling. She looks okay, as far as he can see, which isn't much, she's got that cloak on, hood pulled low. No visible scars. Good start.
And after all of this, Bellamy finds that he doesn't have anything to say to her. No words prepared.
"Clarke," is what he manages, his voice rough. Hardly the rousing speech. He's starting toward her before he knows it, says it again, like maybe to fix her here, so he can get to her, "Clarke."
:,C
That sounds flippant. But it isn't a flippant nod, coupled with a swallow against the lump forming in her throat. It isn't a flippant acknowledgment. Months of trying to understand a new definition of herself—one made of guilt and scars and blood—and she'd forgotten her name ever meant anything else. But it does, when Bellamy says it. She blinks away the overwhelmed haze (eyes shadowed, still) and becomes someone capable of movement. Forward movement, specifically. Taking three long strides forward to wind her arms up around his neck and press her face into his shoulder.
He wasn't the one she couldn't bear to look at. Only everyone else.
And everyone else—it's only a moment or two before the thought of them invades. They can't be here. Bellamy shouldn't be here either.
"Did something happen?" she asks. It's muffled. She moves back without fully letting go. "Is everyone—?"
no subject
"They're fine," he says, again, like he's got to say everything in twos. In this case, he might. It's been a long time since they've been fine. But even as he's saying it, Bellamy feels the pull of his responsibility, like a fishhook in his chest, so he says, again, for himself this time, "They're all right. We're here for you. We came after you, Clarke."
no subject
"Why did you come after me if they're fine?" There's a line between her eyebrows all the time lately, but now it's deeper. "I'm—" She's not fine. "—fine. I need to be here. You're supposed to be looking after them." Because he's fine, clearly; she has not paused to examine what it says about him, or about her opinion of him, that she thought she could leave him there with scars that match hers and expect him to be all right when she couldn't be. More important than introspection: "And who's we?"
no subject
"Kane." It's easier to answer the second question first. Less of a sense of guilt associated with it. "Just us. I looked after them as long as I could, and everything's fine, all right? We came after you because we need you. We need you back there. I know why you left--" if anyone knows, it's him, right? Even if he doesn't think about it that way, it's true-- "But we need you, Clarke."
If he just says it, plainly. Maybe that will convince her. It's not manipulation, it's just the truth.