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Clarke doesn’t know a lot about the revolution in the streets of The Kingdom of Ark. The only thing she remembers is Wells making her get up in the middle of the night, eyes like a forest animal caught in wildfire, saying, “We’ve got to go.”
She remembers being rushed into a car waiting outside the manor, wearing nothing but pajamas and a coat. The cold burned her skin, snowflakes catching in her hair and making her shiver when their parents joined them. No one told them anything, just that they couldn’t be safe in the manor anymore.
Days later, she sees Bellamy Blake for the first time and thinks that yes, this boy is the revolution spilling blood down their streets and the fire she sees in his eyes is a perfect match for the masses he sets ablaze.
“We don’t want to negotiate with you,” he says, glaring daggers at Clarke’s mother and Wells’ father. The rulers, equal. Equal in the power, equal in the austerity the exile from their manor forced them into.
Clarke has a shirt, a pair of pants and her pajamas. That is all there is left. Her sketchbook lays forgotten at the bottom of her wardrobe and her fingers aren’t be smudged with charcoal anymore. Now she has these little things and her mouth is forced shut.
“Who is ‘we’, Mr. Blake?” Thelonious Jaha asks, clasping his hands on the table. Even the way the three of them sit around the table goes to show how different they are. Abby and Jaha’s voices are calm, articulated, their demeanor restrained. Blake sits in his chair, restless movements and wild eyes – as if he is a match and the whole world is drenched in gasoline.
“The people. I speak for the people.”
“We are trying. We are,” Abby assures him.
“No, you are not. If you were trying, you would know that the people can’t afford medicine they desperately need. If you were trying, you would know that the people are tired of being overworked and barely making ends meet as it is. If you were trying, Mr. Jaha, Mrs. Griffin – you would be with your people in the streets. But you are hiding out here.”
Both of them flinch at the obvious lack of their titles – your highness. Instead, he addresses them as commoners and Wells grins just for a split of second.
The two of them don’t agree with their parents. If Clarke didn’t think that the revolution was counterproductive, she would be sitting by Blake’s side and opposing her mother.
But revolutions bring nothing good. The history is full of them and they do bring about changes, but the blood flows red all the same and people who fought to see the changes die before they can. Her father died stopping an uprising, trying to mediate – a commoner, much like Blake.
And yet, nothing changed. Her mother sits on the throne all the same.
One thing is true about the revolution and it is that it devours its own children. And Blake is a child.
“What is it that you propose we do?”
“Give up the throne,” he deadpanned. “Turn the country into a democracy or give the throne to someone who will make proper use of it.”
Jaha scoffs. “To whom? Someone like you?”
“Not me. I don’t want the throne. I want things to change.”
The Kingdom of Ark has always been a kingdom but in the last two hundred years, it wasn’t a single king that sat on the throne. There were two, to assure balance and everyone’s best interests represented. That is how Wells’ father and Clarke’s mother came to sit side by side, equal.
“What do you think is going to happen?” Wells asks her, his voice laced with worry.
Clarke’s teeth sink into her lower lip as she considers Blake, self-assured, powerful in his childlike idealism. He is the one their people would follow. Not Jaha, not Abby. Bellamy Blake, from the workers’ part of the kingdom – Bellamy Blake, with his unruly curls and lips that speak of revolution like it is ingrained in his blood.
“We don’t stand a chance, Wells.”
She proves to be right not long after. The negotiations continue throughout the next week – Clarke and Wells bored out of their minds and desperate to do something, anything to help themselves, help the people. They are the prince and the princess of Ark but they don’t share their parents’ worldviews.
If someone asked them what they thought of monarchy, Wells would scoff – much like his father – and say that it was outdated and unjust. Clarke would say with absolute certainty that it was wrong and impractical. She benefited from her privilege but she didn’t want it if it meant she could eat caviar while someone else struggled for bread.
However, no one asked them and the decisions were made without their vote.
That is why she is sitting in the improvised conference room of their new lodgings and staring at her mother like she can’t believe what she’s saying. Because she can’t.
The news are filled with images of wounded revolutionaries, their banners representing the flag of Ark upheld by people, and yet her mother comes up with this ridiculous plan.
“It is the only way to secure the kingdom, Clarke.”
“The only way to secure the kingdom is that I get married to Blake?”
Wells squeezes her hand, turns to look at his father. “This is preposterous! You can’t do that to her!”
“The deal we have reached with him will be stronger if there is a marriage. You know how this works, Wells,” his father sighs, age wearing him down. He used to be like a second father to Clarke, always there to teach Wells and Clarke how to play chess or how to ride horses, but now she sees him for what he really is.
Now she sees her mother for what she really is. They are rulers. Ruthless, pragmatic rulers who will push their children in front of them to secure their power, to secure their wealth.
Her blood is boiling in her veins and it’s not the mention of marriage that hits her the hardest. It’s the fact that her mother betrayed her. Wells’ dad betrayed her. They knew how she felt about arranged marriages as acts of political coercion and they promised they would never make her or Wells do it. The plan was for Wells and Clarke to become the next rulers, friends and allies who saw eye to eye and could do some good for the people.
Not Bellamy fucking Blake, with his revolutionary thoughts and every talk show he takes part in featuring him with a rifle slung over his shoulder and the vein in his neck pulsing when he talks about all the faults of the current rulers.
“It’s the twenty-first century,” she finally breathes. “Twenty-first century, Mom.”
“I know, Clarke,” her mother sighs. “You don’t have to go through with it, of course. But you know very well what is going to happen if he overthrows us, if you are not there to veto his decisions. He agreed to this and it’s the best thing we’ve got.”
Unfortunately, Clarke is aware of that. She sees red but she sees what would happen if there was no one to stop Blake. She is not opposed to the idea that stands behind the revolution – after all, she has friends among the workers, mechanics, agriculturists, always wants to know how she could be help them when she is crowned – but this revolution is armed conflict instead of peaceful dialogue, and it’s a flimsy bubble they’ve found themselves in.
The problem with flimsy bubbles is that they can burst very easily. And if she isn’t there for damage control when and if that happens, everything is going to go to hell.
So she stands up and leaves, Wells trailing after her. They don’t speak for a very long time and it’s Wells who finally breaks the silence in a secluded hallway.
“You’re doing it?”
“I don’t have a choice, Wells. It’s either that or seeing my people ruined.”
“Damn,” he swears, a watery smile tugging on his lips. “I almost wish Blake was bi so I could do it.”
Clarke laughs because she is eighteen and her head is not yet strong enough to carry the weight of the crown. But this is all she has known her entire life – politics and sacrifice. What’s one’s misery in exchange for the happiness of many?
“I love you, you know that?”
Wells rolls his eyes, all fondness and amicability. “Duh, Griffin. And I’m not addressing you with Your Highness. Fuck you.”
“Yeah, Jaha,” she says, but she smiles and what comes next seriously lacks the heat. “Fuck you, too.”
**
The wedding is short, the vows perfunctory, and she doesn’t kiss Blake because she’d rather sew her lips shut than do it. Instead they sign a contract, promising the both of them equal voting and vetoing powers, and they’re ushered off to a conference room.
“Sir Jaha and Lady Griffin will be with you shortly,” Jackson, her mother’s assistant, assures her and she nods, thanking the man. Everyone looks at her like she’s a fucking tragedy these days and maybe she is. Still, she came into this world kicking and screaming and she certainly doesn’t intend to go down without a fight.
Blake is glaring at her when Jackson closes the doors behind him and she smirks. He looks fucking ridiculous – he wouldn’t even wear a suit, instead opting for a worker’s uniform comprised of heavy boots that clanked on the church’s marble floors and a shirt that smells of gunpowder and sweat.
Gunpowder and sweat, a good way to describe Bellamy Blake.
“Are you happy now? Bellamy Blake, the king,” she hisses, a careful distance away from him. He is infuriating, pretending like he isn’t one bit happy about this.
“I didn’t want this!” he protests, crossing his arms at his chest again. She scoffs because, for all of his talks about equality, she can see the lust for power bubbling in his eyes.
“Sure you didn’t. What was it you said, ‘Democracy or death – whatever the hell we want’?”
He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, the fists by his sides clenched when he speaks. “You think you’re such a catch, don’t you, princess?”
“Let me tell you how this is going to go, Blake.” She draws closer to him, careful to stand her ground and to stop her voice from shaking because she is seething with rage – this boy wants nothing but power and he thinks it’s going to go so well now that he’s got it. “The king is dead, long live the king. Is the phrase familiar to you? Because no king is loved, every king is just tolerated. That’s how it goes. They’ll string you up the same they want to string my mother up.”
“At least I’ll take care of my people!”
“Your people?” she scoffs. “They are going to stop being your people the moment you are crowned. You’ll become just like us, Blake. A king. One of the privileged.”
His head would look good served on a silver plate, she realizes. And he’d be smarter dead than he is alive.
“You’re an idealist, that’s what you are. And you don’t have what it takes to rule. But far be it from me to stop you. Do what you want and know that I’ll be standing in the first row when you get the same fate as Robespierre.”
He narrows his eyes at her, all fury and rebellion. “You’re fucking insane.”
“I am,” she sneers, “a fucking queen.”
**
And so she becomes the queen. The crown they place on her head, velvet and rubies, feels like a mockery in the light of day. For that, she becomes a fight wrapped in blue lace dress she wears to the coronation and she is fury incarnate when her mother calls on her for counsel.
“You can tell my mother that I don’t want to speak to her,” she tells Jackson and watches his eyes widen. That’s what they wanted to make of her – a pawn.
What she is going to become is a queen.
Bellamy and she don’t share their quarters. He has the west wing of the manor, the one where Wells once lived in, and she has the east. It feels good to be back in her room but she no longer feels like a child allowed to sketch all through the day and visit the market to talk to people whenever she pleases.
They do, however, share their meals and sit in the dining room, five feet of table separating them as Blake goes through various pamphlets and carries sheets of paper to scribble what needs to be done, and she reads the newspapers.
When she sees his moniker on the front page, she laughs out loud and he raises his head. “What’s so funny, princess?”
He calls her ‘princess’. It’s revolting but she won’t give him the pleasure of correcting him so she goes with it.
The newspaper slide across the oak table and his reflexes are quick as he catches and unfolds them, frowning at the front page.
There’s a picture of him, blood smeared across his face and mouth open in what must have been one of his famous speeches. He can move the masses to die for him, but he ought to know that he can, too, die - by their hand.
His name is written in block letters, and there is a hyphen separating it from his new title – “The Rebel King.”
Clarke smirks as he frowns. “Like the title? The Rebel King. Really makes you sound like you’re a big deal.”
They fight a lot, bicker about everything constantly. Sometimes he’s right about something but she won’t let him get off easy so she fights him on absolutely everything.
This time, however, he slides the newspaper across the table wordlessly and returns to his meal. She watches him stab the meat with his fork like it has personally pissed him off and realizes that she’s actually interested in why that made him shut up.
But she’s not going to ask him so instead she calls Wells to arrange a meeting with Raven.
Both of them have their counselors – Wells is hers, the only person she could trust. There are others – Jaha and her mother, whom she mostly ignores, but Wells is the one she actually discusses things with. Bellamy has a ragtag bunch of his own – John Murphy, a guy from the seediest parts of the kingdom, Nathan Miller who is the head of their security – Bellamy insisted and Clarke just shrugged, “Whatever the hell you want, right?”, Diana Sydney who is apparently useful but Clarke can’t shake the feeling that she is a wolf in sheep’s skin.
Sydney is the one who replaces him as the representative of the workers after he is crowned. Apparently, Blake is not aware that he has become a king because Wells calls her one morning to tell her that the press is all over his visit to the workers’ area.
She’s still in her pajamas, hair messy and no makeup on her face when she storms into his bedroom, slamming the door shut and trying not to gloat when he jerks up, startled from his sleep.
“What the hell did you do?” she demands, throwing her phone at him and pacing back and forth as he retrieves his glasses from his nightstand and then reads through the article.
Bellamy Blake, the Rebel King, meeting with the workers in hope of finding support. That’s it, that’s the headline and Clarke just knows that they’re going to get so much shit about it.
But Bellamy is quiet, even after he’s done reading, and she snatches her phone out of his hand, barely restraining herself from smothering him with the rumpled sheets.
“You can’t do that shit!”
He’s back to defense in a beat and it just looks ridiculous because he can’t look angry and frightening when he’s sitting up in his bed and looking like a petulant child. “Why the hell not?”
“Yeah, okay, do that,” she rolls her eyes, leaning on his wardrobe and glaring at him. “And then the agriculturists and mechanics and engineers and everyone in this kingdom is going to shout unfair advantage. You’ll be done and it’s been what – a month?”
“Why would they do that?” he frowns at her, the mask slipping away to be replaced with confusion.
“Why do you think we meet up with the representatives of every sector together? We’re doing it so we can exclude the possibility of someone accusing us of corruption. If you meet up with them separately and someone sees you, which – bravo, going there in broad daylight - this is what’s going to happen. The press and the people are going to drag you.”
“Like you care.”
“You’re right – I don’t care. About you. I care about restoring the peace in this country and we’ve been doing alright so far. We won’t if you keep this up.”
“So what about your covert visits to mecha? That’s fine, I guess, because you’re the princess?”
Clarke freezes in her tracks, her stomach plummeting. She was careful about it – she was. She knows she was but somehow, he’s still smiling smugly at her and –
“You had me followed?”
“I need to know where you’re going,” he says, calm, and she wants to bash his head in with her phone because he has absolutely no right.
So she steps closer, almost close enough to count every annoying freckle on his face, and practically growls, “Do not repeat that mistake. Don’t.”
“Relax, Princess. I don’t care if you’re fucking someone there,” he rolls his eyes, leaning back into his pillows. “You’re just a hypocrite.”
“Oh God, Blake. Not everyone has enough time to run a kingdom and have threesomes whenever they please.”
He looks offended and yes, she is going to gloat. Because she deserves one good thing out of this train wreck. “I don’t-“
“The whole country knows your residence had rotating doors during the riots. So just don’t.”
“But not now, I-“he looks shocked, eyes wide and the mask of anger falling away to be replaced by something that looks a lot like hurt. “This marriage may be political but I wouldn’t do that.”
“You want a medal for that? Like I said, I don’t care. But I don’t visit mecha because I have someone I’m sleeping with there. I visit mecha because Raven Reyes is my friend.”
“You know Raven?” he asks, incredulous.
“I love Raven. But she is a friend, an advisor. Not a quick fuck to get away from this clusterfuck,” she gestures noncommittally and Blake –
Blake chuckles, the corners of his eyes crinkling as a smile spreads across his face and Clarke is shocked. This is the first time she’s seen him smiling – actually, properly smiling. It’s a good look on him, she begrudgingly admits.
“I was visiting my mother,” he tells her after the servants have brought them coffee and breakfast. She’s sitting in the armchair by the window, the sight of a sprawling city making her feel small and important at the same time.
When he speaks, he’s not looking at her. Instead, his gaze is focused on the covers, fingers wrapped around his mug and the steam making his glasses fog.
“My sister lives with her. She’s a bit younger than you, she’s seventeen. I visit them often because my mom is sick, but this is the first time someone had seen me. I’ll be more careful in the future,” he says and then looks at her, earnest. “I promise.”
“Your mother is sick?”
Bellamy nods, running his fingers through his already messy hair and Clarke thinks that he looks very young and very unlike a king sitting in his huge bed and looking as if he’s grasping for the last bit of warmth coming from his mug.
“I’ll call Wells, we’ll get her to the hospital and –“
“It’s too late, Clarke,” he says, a watery smile. “She’s got a month left, at best.”
She doesn’t know why she bites into her lower lip, doesn’t know why all of a sudden she feels compassion for him. Doesn’t know what changed in half an hour she spent there, but they are sitting on his bed, eating and drinking coffee, making plans for the kingdom stretching below them and for the first time in a very long while, she doesn’t feel weighed down by the burden of being a queen.
Instead, she sees Bellamy and thinks that maybe there is a future in which all of them don’t crash and burn.
**
Aurora Blake dies on the first day of spring and Clarke already knows what happened because Miller came to get her. Bellamy wouldn’t move from his mother’s body and so she is the one who goes to retrieve him.
He doesn’t want to talk to anyone, the doctors tell her, and she nods but enters the small, run-down house with a façade of exposed red brick nevertheless. It’s old, it’s worn and it feels lived in. It feels more like a home than the manor ever did, even with people quietly standing by the side as she moves towards his mother’s bedroom.
She’s never seen Octavia Blake but she recognizes her when she sees her sitting by her brother. Both of them look like fire and both of them look devastated.
Bellamy is on his knees by his mother’s bed and Clarke’s heart lurches when she sees the woman. She saw her father’s body when he died but there was so much blood and it was a shock, overwhelming, too many emotions to even recognize him and cry for him at the sight.
Aurora Blake looks peaceful and everything is sad where Clarke’s father’s death was violent.
“Bellamy,” she whispers, dropping next to him and tentatively placing a hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t move away but he doesn’t show any signs of hearing her.
“He won’t talk to you,” Octavia says, eyes glued to her mother’s unmoving body as her arms wind around her waist. That’s what tragedy does to you – it breaks you into splinters that struggle to break free. In the end, the only thing you can do is cling to yourself desperately, trying not to lose everything.
But these two – they’ve lost their mother. And Clarke may not like Bellamy but she understands the pain, the desperation with which he clutches the woman’s hand. Like he can bring her back, if he tries hard enough. Like he can change something.
He’s no longer a revolution, he’s a funeral march and she presses herself harder into his side.
“You can’t do anything for her anymore, Bellamy. I’m sorry.”
Clarke knows why he decided to join and lead the revolution – he told her. If they hadn’t been poor, his mother would have had enough money for the medicine she desperately needed. If they hadn’t been poor, she would still be alive.
“I can’t, can I?”
Clarke shakes her head, shivering when he looks at her and she sees the tears in his eyes. They are bitter and they could poison the entire world.
She understands.
“What happens now?” Octavia asks.
“I’ll take care of it. If you’d like to, you can come live with us. I know my family failed you, Octavia, but I promise I won’t.”
And she means it. Clarke truly means it. She’s seen mechanics like Raven, injured and unable to afford the surgery that would help them. She’s seen children with cuts and scars on their fingers from working to help keep their families afloat. She’s seen it all and it broke her heart every single time but now she can help – now she can change something.
Octavia nods. “Come on, Bell, let’s go.”
“No – we can’t – we can’t just leave her here, O.”
“She’s gone but we’re still alive.”
It is something that Clarke knows she will never be able to understand, not truly. The way these people know that they have to survive even when tragedy strikes them hard enough to render them immobile and speechless. They push forward, they keep working and they never stop.
They don’t have the time. There is bread to be earned and for that, emotions must be postponed until they are allowed to feel.
When Clarke’s father died, she had the privilege of mourning. The workers don’t have that privilege. They don’t even have the privilege of crying and being sad about someone. If they have to feel it, they have to work through it.
Clarke is furious by the time they return to the manor and she shows Octavia to the room she can choose to occupy. The girl thanks her, retreats to her solitude and Clarke stomps downstairs, brushing Wells off when he wants to ask her how she’s doing.
“How am I doing? These two lost their mother and they are still surviving! Christ, Wells, don’t you see how wrong all of this is? Do you even know why Aurora Blake died today?”
Wells shakes his head and Clarke storms through the dining room into the kitchen, her friend hot on her heels.
“Because she couldn’t afford medicine!” She drives her point home by slamming the fridge door and chops the vegetables angrily before dumping them in a pot. “Measly, stupid, little medicine!”
“What do you want to do, Clarke?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Wells,” she rolls her eyes. “Maybe hang our parents at the main square? Because we ate caviar for breakfast every day and they hardly had stale bread! Call Kane, tell him to get his ass here first thing in the morning. Then call Collins and have him draft a proposition for reconsideration of the labor law in place. And then call my mother and your father and tell them to fuck off.”
“Gladly,” Wells grins and Clarke feels some of her anger dissipating. She’s been seeing this her whole life, but never this close – never this real and never this painful. It’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
They are back to being somber by the time Bellamy stumbles into the kitchen, eyes bleary and his once bronze skin almost going grey.
“Please accept my condolences,” Wells says, as politically correct as usual, while Clarke chooses for a more proactive approach.
“Can I get you anything?”
He looks between the both of them like he can’t understand what they’re saying and his voice is hoarse when he speaks to Clarke.
“Octavia was hungry, I was just –“
“Okay, I’ll take care of it. Do you want anything?”
Bellamy shakes his head. He looks as if the whole concept of being alive right now is confusing him. Something about his pain is so raw and human that it makes Clarke want to cross the kitchen and uncross her arms to hug him.
She doesn’t. Instead, she makes sure that the Blakes have everything they need and she tugs Wells along to the meetings, slams her fists on the tables of rich, white ministers and advisors – just a girl, she hears the condescension in their tones, sees them trying to patronize her.
But she is the queen. And her blood boils thinking of her people, her tunnel vision allows her to only see them – their ashen faces and ribs protruding from their skin. They are her people. Not those who listen to her because they have to, not those who drive expensive cars and haven’t really worked a single day in their lives.
She knows who her people are and even if she falls into her bed exhausted at the end of the day, her bones weary and aching, her heart beats harder. This is the good fight and she’ll scrape her knuckles on their teeth. She’ll press her fingertips into the bleeding wounds of their society and she’ll give anything she can to close them.
If emptiness of one girl is the price for keeping millions fed and clothed – yes. Clarke is going to pay it.
**
“I was wrong.”
Bellamy lifts his head up from his stack of papers and looks at her. His brows are furrowing behind his glasses as she takes a seat next to him, running her fingers through her hair and trying to let go.
The day was long, the day was bruising and even her hair aches. Her breath is trapped in her lungs and the weight of the world is pressing on her chest. But somehow, toeing off her shoes and curling her legs under her body, Bellamy looking at her, amused – it helps.
They are allies now. Friends, if she feels brave enough to call them that. They sit in the library every night. Sometimes they talk, sometimes they don’t – sometimes it’s enough to feel someone next to you and know that they are helping you carry the weight.
She exhales, knowing that he’s here, and the weight is lifted. He doesn’t have to – she knows how to bear it, knows how to stop her shoulders from slumping under the burden of being a queen. It’s art, and she is an artist. He doesn’t have to be anything more than a revolutionary at odds with her, but he became a king. The burden is no longer only hers; it is theirs.
She doesn’t tell anyone but she dreams of a day when she could run away and spend her days getting her fingertips black with charcoal, not with trying to redeem the sins of her ancestors. Bellamy would understand.
And it scares her. It scares her that he allowed himself to cry in her arms when his mother died. It scares her because he is a fight and he is fury and he is a fucking riot in a boy’s body, only so much his hands can do, but he still looked at her and wept.
He still looked at her and asked her to stay.
She did and she still trembles with how he shook in her arms as he told her that he is a monster, and his mother had raised him to be better.
“Bellamy, you’re not a monster.”
But she had once thought that he was – couldn’t come to terms with how adamant he’d looked, how bloodthirsty he seemed.
He could never be a monster. All he was is a boy who becomes a man through turmoil and who knows loss intimately. His kind loses every day. Her kind wins.
Bellamy Blake, looking at her with honest interest as she untangles the knots in her hair, scares her.
“Wrong about what?”
“Wrong about you.”
There’s all the weight of the feelings she can’t hold anymore in that sentence and she watches as the expressions on his face change. The first one is surprise – eyes wide, lips only slightly parted, red as freshly picked cherries, red as blood. Then comes the mask – perfectly blank, smooth forehead and ice in his eyes. Lastly, there is something she doesn’t understand.
(There are a lot of things she doesn’t understand about the boy who is the king to her queen.)
She doesn’t understand how his mouth stretches in a smile and how fond of her he looks. But they are both young, they feel it the most when the night descends on their kingdom and suddenly there are no duties to keep them from feeling so young in the shoes of someone so old.
They are paradoxes, both of them. She is a child of eighteen and a queen. He is a revolutionary of twenty-three and a king.
Together, they are a force of nature.
It’s not love, she thinks as she places a hand on his thigh and feels him shiver. It’s not love, she repeats as she kisses the incredulous look off of his face. It’s not love, she knows when he returns and deepens the kiss.
There’s the passion of his speeches when he presses her close like nothing will ever be close enough. There’s all the tragedy he’s witnessed when he bites into her lower lip. Their hands are so desperate for some comfort, their bodies shells of what they could have been if the cards had only been dealt differently, and they are only children when he pulls her into his lap and she doesn’t protest.
God, she feels so old, with all of these battle scars he’s carrying. The one above his lip, the one she kisses and makes him chuckle. The one she uncovers on his chest when she unbuttons his shirt, a circle with jagged ends. Gunshot wound.
He has all of these battle scars and her heart breaks for him because she was wrong. She was so wrong and so stupid and so young. But there is still hope, there is still innocence in the way he smiles at her when she kisses him, unprovoked, like he didn’t expect her to do it again.
“I was wrong about you too,” he whispers into her ear, sweeping her hair to the side so he can press wet, open-mouthed kisses to her neck.
She thinks he’s going to laugh when she whimpers, her hands slipping from his back when she tries to dig in her fingernails to hold on tight to him and never let go. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t mock her, doesn’t tease her, and it isn’t like fighting against him. It’s like fighting with him, side by side.
They are the only two people in the kingdom who can change something and the top is a lonesome place to be. But she has him. And he has her.
“Wrong?” she breathes out as his lips trail down her body. “Wrong how?”
He smiles at her – innocent, boy Bellamy, not a fucking rebel king – and she can even see the mirth in his eyes, even if his pupils are blown wide and his desire is truly a sight to behold.
“Well, for one,” he whispers into the skin of her stomach. Lower, until the way he dances around her heat is teasing and she wants to tell him how much she hates him. “You’re not a princess.”
“Oh?”
“You’re the fucking queen.”
But she doesn’t get a chance to reply because he is finally pressing his tongue just where she needs it, where it feels like she’s going to explode if he doesn’t stop, explode if he does stop. There isn’t a good choice but, she realizes as he grazes his teeth across her clit, fireworks erupting behind her eyelids – there isn’t a good choice but the two of them never could get good choices.
They got the worst ones but made the best of them. They survived.
She smiles at the sight of his head between her thighs and thinks about how they fit. Ridiculously, incredibly, her fingers twisting in his unruly curls, the heat of his cheeks lighting a fire in her, his hand pressed to her stomach to anchor her hips and their fingers intertwined.
He fits and she tugs him back on top of herself, his weight pressing against her in a way that makes her want to cry out that he’s hers and he’s staying right there. Her chest isn’t constricted with all the remarks she’d bit down and all the breaths she forgot to take. Instead, everything is light and heat and laughter that bursts from her lips.
Bellamy smiles at her. “What’s so funny?”
“You fit,” she presses out between giggles that wrack her body and it’s as the both of them are laughing that he pushes in and Clarke gasps because – fuck him. Fuck Bellamy Blake.
“You are fucking Bellamy Blake.”
“Yeah, well,” she breathes, meeting his thrusts and digging her fingers into his forearms, tracing his muscles, veins. Blood – the stuff of life. Blood – the stuff of death. “It’s pissing me off.”
“What, fucking me?” he asks, amused. She wipes off the smirk off his face by turning them over and grinding her hips against his, rendering him speechless.
It’s her time to smirk but even then she can’t because he is beautiful. His freckles dance in the dimmed lights and the sight of him with his brows knitted in concentration and eyes closed – it’s beautiful. He is beautiful and she hates how she could despise him mere months earlier and now his smile is her idea of comfort and his arms an alliance that would never break.
“No, liking you.”
They are spent, breathless, lying on the library floor and staring at the ceiling above them. Children, adults, a queen and a king, martyrs, pawns – victors, maybe.
Victory sounds good, victory tastes like Bellamy smiling tiredly at her as he returns the glasses to the top of his nose so he could see her better.
Victory, Clarke thinks, might just be him next to her.
“You like me?”
She smacks him. “Don’t get cocky.”
Bellamy waggles his eyebrows at her and she can’t help but to laugh. She’s so tired of being serious, weary, spent because her days are a never-ending fight she knows she has to fight, but. It’s hard. With him, it’s a little easier.
“I didn’t see you complaining about my cockiness earlier.”
“You’re such an asshole. I don’t know how I’ll survive being married to you.”
Then he kisses her again and she thinks oh, so that’s how.
**
“You two fucked, didn’t you?”
Raven is squinting at them, frozen in the doorway with a wrench in her right hand. It’s one of those secret consultations Clarke goes on – the difference being that now Bellamy is accompanying her.
Clarke rolls her eyes. “Priorities, Raven.”
“The priority was to get you and that asswipe,” she points her wrench at Bellamy, “laid so we wouldn’t have to put up with your shit.”
Then the mechanic turns to Wells, almost slapping Clarke square in the face with her ponytail. “Did they or didn’t they?”
Wells smiles smugly before nodding and Clarke watches them fist-bump before deciding that they are grown ass people who need to help her and Bellamy save this kingdom.
“Wait, does that mean that someone doubted my abilities in the area of conjugal marriage relations?” Bellamy asks.
Clarke sort of hates all of them but she sighs, plopping down on a chair. “No. The two of them are just weirdly invested in other people’s love lives.”
“Not other people’s,” Raven corrects her. “Just yours.”
“Alright, now that we’ve established that Bellamy and I consummated our marriage, can we please talk about mecha’s demands?”
Raven eyes Clarke for a few moments before shrugging and limping off to retrieve a paper. She shoves it under Clarke’s nose and the latter gets a funny feeling that everyone’s turned on her when Bellamy chuckles.
The demands aren’t unreasonable and they fall exactly into the category of measures Kane, their minister of finances, said would be possible to introduce. Shorter hours, bigger pay in exchange for raising the property tax for those who possess more than two properties.
“Tax the rich and feed the poor until there are no rich no more,” Bellamy says, smiling, when they’re finally left alone in the conference room at the end of the day.
Monty Green and Jasper Jordan, from agricultural and pharmacy unions respectively, stated their demands and left some time before Clarke finally exhaled. It was a long day, but a lucrative one at it. The demands weren’t unreasonable – everyone just wanted to have enough money to feed their families and be able to survive.
“I can’t believe our parents hadn’t done this earlier,” Clarke whispers, looking at the propositions Kane sent them after reviewing the unions’ demands. The tax would be proportionate to wealth, something that always seemed reasonable to Clarke.
Of course, the rich wouldn’t give up their money easily – that was always expected, and there’ll be hellish arguments in the parliament and in the conference rooms across the kingdom before the measures are implemented, but – it’s something. It’s definitely a start.
“Well, your and Wells’ parents have a lot of faults.”
Clarke considers it. Yes, her mother does. Her father didn’t, not so much. He just wanted to help, in any way he could.
“Did you know that my father was a commoner?”
Bellamy’s eyes widen in surprise and he shakes his head. The sleeves of his shirt are rolled up to his elbows, the top two buttons unbuttoned and he looks tired but relieved.
Clarke hums in confirmation, lifting her legs to rest them on a chair to her right. She is exhausted, her feet are killing her but finally it doesn’t feel like shouting into the wind.
“He was. Well, he wasn’t from a wealthy family, but he was an engineer. A really good one at that. But since my mother was the queen, he dropped everything to help her any way he can. I don’t know if you remember the uprising four years ago but he was the one who negotiated with the workers. He wanted to help.”
She watches Bellamy’s face grow more serious with every word she says, but she can only see the clear image of her father opposing her mother in her mind.
“My mother wouldn’t agree to their demands and my dad was at the square with the people when she and Thelonious held the press conference. He was the next best thing apart from the king and the queen when the people realized that no change would happen. They thought he had tricked them when, in reality, he thought my mother and Thelonious would agree to their demands.”
Bellamy looks truly remorseful when he speaks. “I had no idea.”
“We don’t talk about it,” she offers, a small wistful smile tugging on her lips. Her father is mourned and mentioned daily, but his actions are kept a secret. “I remember when I first saw you, I thought you were just like him. You wanted to believe in people and that would be your downfall. I didn’t hate you because I wanted to stay in power – I hated you because revolutions change nothing, only the right rulers do.”
“Is that why you agreed to marry me?”
“Yes. I didn’t want to, of course, but it was preferable to letting you unleash hell.”
“I would never-“
“No, you wouldn’t. But your advisors would turn on you, the people would turn on you. We can’t make it without rules, Bellamy. We need rules to keep everyone alive. I just wanted to be there to make sure that they stay in place, even if they’re changed.”
They sit in the silence for a while. It’s not loaded like many before them – it’s companionable. And even if what she feels for Bellamy isn’t love – not yet – it is respect, it is the partnership which allows them to support each other and come off as one in front of the opposition.
It isn’t love, not yet, but it’s something deeper – something that allows Clarke to wake up in the morning knowing that she’s not alone, not ruling with a stranger by her side.
Bellamy isn’t a stranger – she sees the reasons behind his actions now. She sees how badly he wants to believe that people could make the right decisions, that they would remain incorruptible. But Clarke is well-versed in politics and human nature, she knows that most of them have a price.
Bellamy may want to die standing up for his beliefs, but he’s one of the rarest sort of people. She admires it, deeply and greatly, but he would have been overwhelmed hadn’t it been for her to tell him when he’s being irrational.
“For what it’s worth, I didn’t want to go through with it.”
Clarke cocks her head to the side. “With what?”
“The marriage. I didn’t want to do it. It felt unfair to force any of us into it, especially you. But Sydney advised me to take the offer and I figured there was still a chance you’d refuse.”
“Not when it comes to my people.”
Bellamy smiles and she sees the boy under the shell of a king. They are so young and they have to be so old to make it through this. She realizes that she would very much like to get to know him – the real him, the one he could have been without all the tragedy.
In a different life, they could have been friends. They could have been lovers who didn’t become because they could only lean on one another – they could have had a choice. A lot of choices. A lot of freedom.
“So you decided to become Iphigenia for your people?”
“Iphigenia?” Clarke asks, a little incredulous. “Agamemnon’s daughter?”
“The one who was sacrificed so the ships could sail for Troy, yes.”
Yes, there are layers of him she can only briefly see in splits of seconds when he forgets that he is a king, forgets all the responsibility weighing down on him. She sees him in clues, hints, puzzle pieces that could never form a whole but she still tries to make sense of them.
“I wouldn’t call myself a tragedy, Bellamy. And I honestly hope you don’t think of me that way. But these are my people and I would do anything to help them. If that means marrying an asshole,” she nods towards him, “so be it.”
Touching doesn’t come easy to Clarke. She isn’t as tactile as Bellamy and Octavia, always brushing in passing, hugging, Bellamy’s absent-minded kisses planted on top of Octavia’s head.
On the other hand, Clarke was brought up in manners and keeping to yourself, and it is because of that that she nearly recoils when he laces his fingers through hers on top of the table. His thumb rubs across her knuckles as he studies their joined hands like it’s another proposition they have to consider.
“Are you still sorry about it?” he asks after a long silence that had her insides twisting. He looks so serious sometimes and she got used to his walls tumbling down for her. “The marriage?”
“Yes.”
His thumb ceases movement and he looks up at her, hurt flashing across his face before she has had the chance to elaborate.
“Of course I wish I could turn back time and not let this happen.” She lifts their joined hands and feels his pressure loosening as he tries to get away, visibly uncomfortable. “But only because I wish we had the freedom to choose this. Not to have to come to terms with it because it was forced on us.”
He looks confused, a crease forming between his brows and she reaches out to smooth it with her free hand. When he leans into her touch, closing his eyes, she can’t help a smile.
“So yes, I wish the marriage hadn’t happened. But I am not sorry for meeting you. I am not sorry that we happened. That’s the best part of all of this.”
Bellamy is the silver lining of a very dark, very stormy cloud crackling with electricity. But they are a tragedy and no matter how many silver linings you are able to find – a tragedy is a tragedy. And the world is built on the backs of sacrifices of people like them.
But they can take it. After all, they bear it so their people don’t have to. And all the difference between desperation and hope can be found in four simple words – they bear it together.