bellamy blake (whoweneedtobe) wrote in areaic, |
Was he okay? Hardly. Bellamy snorted at the question, scowling down at the floor. How could he be okay? Octavia was decades and miles and lightyears and whatever-the-hell-else away from him. He couldn't make it a single night without gasping awake from a nightmare. The one person he made that sacrifice for promptly turned and abandoned him. He could have let her pull that lever and irradiate those people all on her own. Monty hadn't moved to share the burden. Bellamy could have stood aside and only been complicit. Just a bystander. But instead, he chose to share the burden. To take some of that immeasurable weight off Clarke's shoulders. Because that was what co-leaders did. It was what partners did. Whatever it took. It got Gustus a sword through the chest and it got Bellamy the proverbial match.
Rather than voice all of that, however, he just shrugged silently. He kept the tense silence for a few moments before giving a slight shake of his head.
"I would've helped you," he pointed out evenly. It wasn't just him that needed her. It was Monty. Miller, Jasper, Raven, Clarke's mother for Christ's sake. They all needed her. He shrugged again. "But I get why you did it," it was as close to forgiveness as he could manage right now. He did understand. It was terrifying to stand in the face of what they'd done. Just like it was terrifying to stand in the face of those bodies, glittering down to Earth after the culling - all that blood had been on his hands, after all. Bellamy understood the weight of hundreds of bodies. He understood wanting to escape that look others gave you.
What he didn't understand was running away from someone who offered to ease that pain. "I just..." Bellamy wasn't one to be emotional if he could help it. He preferred to compartmentalize and hide everything behind stone walls and hard eyes. But he couldn't help the way his voice wavered at the start. Because in the end, it wasn't really about the burden. It was about not being enough. Together hadn't really been together at all. So he admitted part of that truth with a heavy sigh. "Guess together wasn't really together at all, huh?" the question was posed with a mixture of bitterness and pain.