This was it. He was losing. Bellamy could feel it. He could see it in her expression, in every tear that slipped down her face. She was going to win. His grip on the gun was white-knuckled and he shook his head, because he couldn't just walk away. How could she ask that? "This is my responsibility," Bellamy insisted in a pained voice. He gave Finn the gun. He let Finn go to that village with only Murphy to rein him in. He pushed Clarke to do this. "This is mine," he repeated, angrier this time. How dare she just take away any responsibility he had for any of this?
"I can't," he couldn't just walk away. "I can't," Bellamy echoed plaintively. He couldn't walk away from Clarke any more than he could walk away from Octavia. Didn't she get that? Couldn't she figure it out by now? Not that he had any grand understanding of it. Bellamy just knew that he couldn't budge, not while Clarke was still there. He took in a ragged breath and swallowed back the argument that, yes, her life was worth it. In this very moment at this very second, her life was worth double theirs. But the words died on his lips because he knew she wouldn't agree. He knew in any other circumstance, he wouldn't agree either. So he stood, doggedly, in his spot, gun raised. It was all he knew to do.
It was that lost, desperate, frustration that blinded him. That anger that wouldn't be tamped down at the loss of control, the realization he was never in control to begin with, the inability to understand the powerful emotions coursing through him that had everything to do with Clarke. It was overwhelming and mind-boggling. One minute, the only thing he could see was Clarke and the next, all he saw was the sudden movement of Lexa and the flash of her blade. Bellamy reacted reflexively and dropped the gun a fraction, aiming for the grounder's arm, and fired off a shot, the crack of the pistol echoing in the forest and making his ears ring. </div>