a/n Thanks again for some super encouraging reviews last chapter. It's always bittersweet publishing the end of a story, but here goes - happy reading!

Bellamy found the next day rather easier than he had anticipated. Sure, he would have to somehow figure out how to disable the acid fog, and then figure out how to free the grounders in the cages, and the remaining delinquents, but all of these things seemed rather more manageable in the warm afterglow of his conversation with Clarke. He felt lighter, somehow, since she'd revealed just how much she cared and he'd been able to drift towards sleep talking to her about everything and nothing. And the knowledge that she was coming for him, and that, if all went to plan, they'd be reunited by the end of the day had him walking with what could only be described as a spring in his step.

All they had to do was find a relatively peaceful way to save their friends without killing everyone in this mountain – so only a slightly impossible task – and then they would be able to get on with building a peaceful future of drawing and reading and caring for one another.

That was the plan, anyway.

His optimism lasted as long as it took Mount Weather Security to shut down his keycard. That was the moment he realised that they were onto him, that he was done with playing hide and seek in maintenance cupboards and this new game was rather more life and death.

Maybe Clarke would be receiving his head in a box, after all.

No. He couldn't let that happen, he decided, as he ran towards the acid tank with a guard hot on his heels. He couldn't let her lose another person she cared about. With that, he hardened his resolve and took down the man who was chasing him.

That guard wasn't innocent. None of these mountain men were innocent.

…...

Clarke burst into Lexa's presence chamber unannounced, bristling with anger. Lexa couldn't just go around ordering the death of one of her people. And she certainly couldn't go around ordering the death of the sister of her – well – her person.

"You ordered Octavia's death?"

"Octavia knew about the missile. That makes her a threat. If you weren't so close to her, you'd see that."

"It's because I'm close to her that I know she's loyal. Her brother is more important to her than anything." She stated fiercely, knowing how that felt. "She would never endanger his life."

"And you're willing to risk everything on that? On your feelings?" Lexa asked, appearing more agitated by the conversation than Clarke had perhaps expected.

"Yes. You say having feelings makes me weak. But you're weak for hiding from them." She informed her, letting out all the anger she felt at letting herself be persuaded otherwise, at all the mistakes she had made of late. "You felt something for Gustus. You're still haunted by Costia. You want everyone to think you're above it all, but I see right through you."

"Get out." Lexa snapped.

"Two hundred and fifty people died in that village. I know you felt for them. But you let them burn."

"Not everyone. Not you." Clarke found herself rather thrown by that, because it seemed to imply something that she wasn't entirely sure she could process.

"Well, if you care about me, then - trust me." She begged, deciding in the heat of the moment to make use of the heat in Lexa's eyes and process what it might mean later. "Octavia's not a threat."

"I don't think I can do that." Lexa said, sounding suddenly rather more fragile than usual.

"I can't sacrifice my people anymore." She resolved easily. "If you do anything to hurt Octavia, I'll tell everyone we knew about the missile."

"OK. Fine." She spat. "Octavia has nothing to fear from me." There was a short pause before she spoke again in a rather softer voice. "I do trust you, Clarke."

"I know how hard that is for you."

"You think our ways are harsh, but that's how we survive."

"Maybe life should be about more than just surviving. Don't we deserve better than that?" She wondered, and unbidden an image came to her mind, of Bellamy sitting by her side with a book and a broad grin while she sketched the shape of his jaw.

"Maybe we do." Lexa agreed, and while Clarke was distracted, smiling softly at her vision of domestic bliss, she found that the distance between them had grown somehow smaller.

And suddenly Lexa was kissing her, warm lips soft against her own, and the air was rushing from her lungs in a gasp of surprise and, she had to admit it, excitement. In another world, in another lifetime, she thought that probably she'd have found it only too easy to fall in love with this remarkable woman. But on this occasion she pulled away and forced herself to meet her eyes.

"I'm not - I'm sorry." She stuttered even as there was a commotion outside, grounder voices raised, and Lexa looked up, instantly alert.

"Bellamy." She said, and it was simultaneously a response to Clarke's garbled excuse and to the situation beyond the walls of this tent.

Clarke nodded briskly, not dwelling too long on what nodding might mean in this context. "He did it."

"You're right to have faith in him." Lexa commented, and she found herself thinking that there was at least a little sadness in her gaze as she said it. "Now we fight."

…...

Bellamy wasn't proud of blowing up the acid fog tank – it certainly wasn't in line with his orders to be subtle in his sabotage, he conceded – but it was done, and that meant they were one step closer to the endgame and to Clarke running through those doors, an army at her heels, and to drawing and to reading and to the peaceful resolution he was fast realising he craved.

Of course, as soon as he felt that such a thing was within touching distance, it started slipping through his fingertips.

It all began when his radio cut out, immediately after the acid tank explosion, and whilst it felt a little like losing a lifeline he told himself that, actually, there was no reason why that should matter in the slightest. After all, he knew what the plan was.

But then it unravelled a little further when he went to fulfil the plan but realised that the plan had been rendered impossible by the disappearance of all the grounder prisoners, and suddenly he was the only occupant of the eerily quiet corridors. He didn't like this. He didn't like it at all.

He set out for the door to the reaper tunnels, deciding that, if nothing else, he could at least let those divisions of the army in. And, surely, Clarke being Clarke, she would find a way to solve the rest of their problems, to swoop in and save him from this failed plan that was crashing round his shoulders.

Saving him was what she did best.

…...

"It can't be over." Clarke found herself mumbling at the closed door. She would not, could not accept this. She did not send Bellamy into that mountain to disappear from the radio – possibly dead – for nothing.

She was getting inside there if it was the last thing she ever did.

Without giving the others a chance to stop her she set off running, for the tunnels, for Octavia and Indra, for any chance, however slim, of salvaging something of this mission. Her fury carried her through – fury at Lexa, for claiming to care about her but then leaving her alone like this, fury at the mountain men for stealing away these people she cared about. Fury at herself, for getting them all into this impossible situation.

It wasn't until she noticed Octavia yelling at her that the fog of rage began to clear.

"What's wrong with you?"

"I am getting through that door."

"And that's your plan?" She asked, making it quite clear that she thought it a rather poor one. "Bellamy's counting on you. Everyone's always counting on you."

"Well, what do you want from me?"

"You trusted Lexa. You let a bomb drop on TonDC. You let all those people -"

"I am doing the best I can!" She lost control and interrupted the catalogue of her sins.

"Yeah? Well, it's not good enough."

She was about to attempt to defend herself when the door opened and there was Bellamy, looking relieved and well and alive, and before Clarke had time to gather her thoughts his arms were around her and he was kissing her, hard and fast, crushing his lips to hers. This, she thought, was a rather new development – since when did their relationship, such as it was, involve frantic kisses in the midst of rescue missions? In front of not just other people, but his sister, no less? It was not an unwelcome development, though, she decided easily, relishing the much-missed taste of his warm breath.

"Bellamy?" Octavia tried to greet her brother, but it came out as a question, and even in the face of this crisis her heart melted a little at the way that he managed to summon up the smallest of smiles.

"Why does everyone find this so unbelievable?" He asked, keeping one arm around Clarke's shoulders as he reached out to hug his sister in greeting with the other. "Personally, I think it makes perfect sense."

"I missed you too, big brother." Octavia commented with a raised brow, clearly still not entirely comfortable with the situation.

"Where's your army?" Bellamy asked Clarke, as if it had only just occurred to him, and she found herself rather wanting to bury her face in his chest and hope the world would disappear for a moment.

"Gone just like yours. Say you have a plan."

"Not really. We need to talk to Dante. Maya says he's in quarantine."

"Clarke!" Jasper rushed out of the door and joined the reunion, a hazmat-clad figure who could only be Maya hot on his heels.

"Jasper." She broke free from Bellamy's embrace just long enough to greet them. "And Maya. Thank you, so much. For keeping him alive."

"We need to move." Jasper told them urgently. "Maya only has thirty minutes of oxygen, and the rest of it's on level five."

"Then we need to get her to level five." Clarke pointed out, confused as to why no one else had considered this logical solution.

"Level five isn't safe for any of us." Monty informed her, and she mourned again the passing of the plan.

"We'll take the trash chute again." Jasper suggested. "It will work."

"To get in, maybe." Bellamy said. "But every soldier in this mountain is there. We'll never make it out."

"We can do this. We'll split up." Jasper suggested.

"Okay. You guys go for Dante." Octavia instructed, pointing at Clarke and Bellamy. "We'll help Maya."

Clarke turned to Bellamy just in time to catch his decisive nod and half smile. And that was all the confirmation she needed, really, that this plan was the best they were going to get. She held fast to the hand he reached out towards her and followed him down the corridor into the depths of Mount Weather.

…...

Bellamy had expected to feel better with Clarke by his side, but somehow her presence only made the situation worse. The stakes were higher, now that she was in danger, and he was no longer alone in this mission. They'd made it to the command centre, and they had the president's father in their clutches, but somehow things were still not going to plan.

He wasn't sure why Clarke had shot the old man. And he was even less sure why she was threatening to irradiate level five. He was just sure that she thought she was doing the right thing, and that he needed to support her in that.

"Emerson is coming for us." Her panicked voice interrupted his thoughts.

"They deactivated my key card. Can you do that to his?" He asked Monty.

"That one's easy." He was relieved at his friend's answer, but his relief only lasted as long as it took him to notice that Cage Wallace was wandering away from the crowds in the dining room.

"Where's he going?"

"The dorm." Clarke confirmed his worst fears. "Monty, can you do it? Can you irradiate the level?"

"I can do it." Monty confirmed, sounding less than happy that it was so.

"Wait a second, Clarke. We need to think about this. There are kids in there." He reached out and put a hand on her arm, unable to condemn hundreds of people to their deaths quite so easily. After all, he knew what it was like, to cause the deaths of hundreds of people who'd done nothing wrong. He wondered in a slightly detached way if, perhaps, killing innocents was what had brought them together.

"I know." Clarke said, visibly uncomfortable, unable to meet his eye.

"And people who helped us." He reminded her, thinking of Maya saving his life.

"Then please give me a better idea." She met his gaze at last, expression slightly desperate and also distinctly challenging as she stared him down.

"I can't." He admitted at length, wasting precious seconds they didn't have. "Like you said, ideas are your thing."

She gazed back at him, more desperate even than before, silently begging him not to leave it at that.

"But I can stand with you while we do this." He told her, taking in the frightening scenes on the screen as Emerson prepared to blow the door. "It's just - if we do this, there's no going back."

"Clarke, we're out of time." Monty pointed out reluctantly. "I've done it. You pull that lever, and level five is breached." Slowly, painfully, she reached out to cover the lever with her fingers.

"I have to save them." Clarke told the room at large, tears coursing down her cheeks and eyes fixed on the camera feed from the dorm.

Bellamy allowed himself to look at those images for the first time, really look, and gasped at what he saw. Clarke's mother, strapped to a table, Raven on the one adjacent. Jasper and Miller and Bree and Kane cuffed to the walls.

His sister, fighting for all she was worth.

But that wasn't what made his mind up, not really. None of that mattered quite as much as the lost look in Clarke eyes as she grappled with bearing the burden of leadership alone.

"We have to save them." He told her firmly, reaching out to cover her hand with his own where it rested on that lever. "Together."

…...

Clarke couldn't wait to get out of this mountain. The decision she'd had to make – or the decision they had taken, she tried to remind herself – was without doubt the hardest of her young life, and coming so hot on the heals of the missile at TonDC she found that she rather hated herself. The death of Maya weighed on her heaviest of all, the young woman who'd saved Bellamy's life when she couldn't, and whom she'd now repaid with toxic air and a painful death. And she'd tried to be the good guy, as her mother had wanted, but it seemed that she was destined to fail and fail and fail again, to make mistakes at every possible opportunity.

She just needed to get out of here. She knew it wasn't brave, to want to run away rather than facing her fears, but she couldn't help it. Her gaze flitted around the dorm as she wondered how quickly she could make it to the exit.

Just as she was on the point of fleeing she saw Bellamy walking over, away from the corner where he'd been enjoying his reunion with Miller. She froze as he crossed the distance between them.

"Hey. Clarke." He reached out and cupped her cheek. "I know this is hard, but we'll be OK."

"How did you know I wasn't doing OK?" She asked, surprised out of her flight instinct.

"You've got that road to TonDC look in your eyes."

She supposed that was it, really, all the confirmation she needed that this flawed man was, in fact, utterly perfect for her. Perfect at reading her thoughts almost before she had thought them. Perfect at keeping her steady when she wasn't OK, and perfect at sharing a smile when the going was good.

She stepped forward into his chest, and his arms were around her before her first sob into his collarbone had even left her throat, and then she was weeping, oblivious to their audience, oblivious to the realisation that their secret was certainly secret no longer.

"Did that help?" He asked gently, when she was all cried out.

"Yes." She told him, and she knew that he was not surprised to hear it.

…...

Bellamy found that the choice he had made, to stand by Clarke and pull that lever, weighed heavily on him, but it was apparent that she was struggling with it even more. And that made sense, he thought, given it had been her idea, and taking into account how much she was still beating herself up over TonDC. He supposed that, perhaps, it might hit him more heavily in the coming days when he'd had time for it to sink in, much as getting Octavia arrested had somehow hit him so hard those first few weeks on the ground. And if that was the case, then at least he'd be able to lean on Clarke in turn, then, as he was supporting her through her immediate reaction now.

She'd grown quieter as the journey wore on, less inclined to continue with the forced conversation that had been a feature of the early part of the walk. She had made a point of talking to each of the surviving delinquents, and checking in with her mother, and staying by the side of Raven's stretcher for a while. And, of course, he had stuck by her side throughout, hand never leaving hers, relaxing into his relief at finding that, miraculously, they were both safe and well and reunited.

But she was evidently still battling with the emotions of the day, he noted, as the walls of the camp came into sight and she froze on the path.

"You're OK." He told her, because she would be, even if she wasn't quite yet, and because asking what was wrong seemed pointless at best.

"I don't think I can go in. I don't think I can do it." She told the ground at her feet and he felt himself begin to panic. She couldn't leave him, not now. Letting her leave now would be easily the biggest mistake of his life. He didn't want to be the monster he was without her, the monster he had been on the way to Mount Weather, the monster who had caused the culling.

"It'll be OK." He soothed her quietly, rubbing his thumb across the back of her hand.

"Seeing them every day, it's just going to remind me of what I did to get them here."

"What we did, Clarke." He reminded her firmly. "What we did together. And we'll get through this together too."

"You think?" She allowed herself to look up for just a second at that, the slightest hint of relief showing on her face.

"I know we will. You and me? We can do anything."

"I don't think that's strictly true, Bellamy."

"You might have a point. But – we're better together. You know that." He gathered his courage and told her the truth that she had told him so recently, and yet so long ago. "I can't do this without you."

"You can't?"

"Of course I can't. And... even if I could, I wouldn't want to do it without you." He decided to take a risk and cradle her chin in his hand, tilting her face up so he could meet her eyes. "I would quite like not to have to do things without you at all, in the future, as a rule."

"OK." She said simply, and it was everything he had been waiting to hear.

He sighed in relief and bent to touch his lips to hers. He had intended it just as a brief peck, a bit of comfort, but somehow it didn't turn out quite like that. He'd missed her, this incomprehensible woman whose lips helped his world to make sense, and it seemed that she, too, was feeling that the week they had spent apart had been rather too long. And kissing her felt even better, now, somehow, after the events of recent days, when he'd been beginning to fear he'd never again feel her sigh against his mouth or part her lips with that particularly enthralling moan. But as it was, he mused as she tangled her fingers in his hair, he'd somehow ended up here, and the one thing he'd recently realised he'd always wanted – a peaceful future of books and sketches and distractions with this woman who was at once both his strength and his weakness – seemed to be, at last, within his grasp.

He broke away when he realised that a small crowd of delinquents had started whistling at them, with Monty cheering over and above them all. He slung an arm around Clarke's shoulders and started shepherding her towards the camp.

"Come on. I think we deserve a drink."

"Are you asking me out on a date, Bellamy Blake?" She asked him, voice full of laughter.

"I thought it was about time I did." He tried to justify himself, feeling suddenly nervous at this uncharted territory of a slightly more conventional arrangement. "It's been a while since we started – well – whatever this is."

"Whatever this is?" She cocked an eyebrow and peered up at him with a grin that he found he simply had to kiss away.

"You know what I mean."

a/n Thanks so much to everyone who has read and enjoyed this story! If you're feeling bereft that this story has ended - good news! I have written other things! You might want to take a look at my profile for many more Bellarke options. I've just started a new little project called Child of our Time...