brave princess (save yourself)

Rating: T for language

Pairing: Bellamy x Clarke

Summary: Clarke dreams of a certain someone who tells her that sitting on her lazy ass in a quarantined cell is no longer an option.

She loses count of the days in that tiny white room.

Sometimes she'll try to communicate with Monty (though she stopped after a few days, the doors were completely soundproof), and sometimes a man dressed in a white suit, helmet completely covering his face, will come in and draw blood. All she sees is whiteness every day. No sun. No stars. No color except for the red blood pulled into the syringe from her forearm and the blue of the painting hung on her wall.

Hours seem like days and days seem like eternities. Or maybe eternities feel like minutes and hours feel like seconds. She really can't tell anymore.

She's dreamed of Finn bursting through the door to save her thousands of times. She's dreamed that he runs in and sweeps her off her feet and kisses her, telling her that everything is going to be all right and that he loves her, and she says it back this time. She says it back because she's lost him far too many times.

But then she wakes up and she realizes that this time she's not getting him back. And she feels like she wants to vomit and cry and scream all at the same time.

For the first few weeks, she'd simply spent her time huddled up on her bed, drifting in and out of consciousness, letting her grief consume her. She didn't know how many infinities passed her by, but sometime between the 60th meal and the Mountain Men cutting off five inches of her hair, she dreams of him.

When she first sees his dark hair, she thinks he's Finn. She thinks it's another dream where he's come to save her, to sweep her up in his arms like he did when she had been sick with the Grounder virus.

But then he turns around and she gasps at the face before her.

"Brave princess?" he sneers. "You're acting like a child. Pull it together. How long are you going to wallow in your own misery rather than get up off your ass and keep moving?"

His harsh words shock her into silence and she just stares at him, mouth agape. "You're…you're never in my dreams," she whispers, her voice a breath on the nonexistent wind.

"Well, obviously you need someone to snap you out of whatever spiral you're in," he responds. His eyes are dark and passionate, just the way she remembers them. There's blood smeared across his cheek and bruises around his neck (she never did ask how he got them, he had brushed off the question too quickly) and she finds herself inexplicably wanting to run her hands through his dark, thick hair.

"Spacewalker's been babying you, hasn't he? Telling you he's going to save you?" her co-leader lets out a sigh. "He's not. We're both dead, Clarke. Do you remember what you told me that day when we were making the minefields around camp? Before the storage of food burned down?"

Her eyes move behind him and she thinks back. "No one is coming down to save us," she says softly. The radio silence from the Ark had told her that. The ash and bones that covered their camp told her that Finn wasn't going to come sweeping in either.

Suddenly, she felt Bellamy's hands cupping her face, drawing her gaze back to him. His hands felt rough against her skin and he leaned so close that she could feel his warm breath breeze over her lips. His dark eyes held such intensity that it frightened her, drilling past her exterior and into her soul (her frightened, lost soul).

"Brave princess," he murmured, no mockery in his voice this time. Instead there was an emotion she couldn't quite place, if she hadn't known better, she'd have said that it was pleading, maybe even love. "Brave, brave princess. Save yourself.'

She woke up sweating.

Some days later, she managed to steal a spoon.

It wasn't much, but it was metal. She found an angle (right behind her headboard) where the cameras could barely see her and couldn't see what she was doing, and in the early hours of the morning (when the lights in her room were off and she prayed that the monitors and guards were asleep) she went to that place and began filing the utensil's handle against the rough metal post of her bed.

She didn't know how long it took (a few days? a month?) but soon enough her tiny spoon was sharp enough to be knife. Every night as she would lie in bed, she would go over the few self-defense moves Bellamy had taught her back at the camp. She had been reluctant to learn them, but he was so persistent it finally got to the point where she had agreed to spar with him just so he would stop annoying her about it.

If only he could see her now.

She bided her time, waiting for the opportune moment. Many times, she thought it was approaching, only for a last second complication to make her hesitate long enough to lose her window.

Finally, one day, the door cracked open and she heard a guard shuffle in. He was dressed completely in white, a mask-helmet hybrid covering his face and he held a plate of food in one hand and a gun in the other. The gun caught her attention. He must be a new recruit because she had quickly realized that it was against their policy to bring weapons into the quarantined cells.

If she could get the gun, she could give them hell to pay.

She knew that it was now or never.

He was leaning down to set the food on her bed when she attacked. Her arm swung back and she threw all of her weight forward, driving the tiny blade towards his neck where she knew his jugular vein would be.

Except at the last second she heard him curse under his breath and catch her arm, stopping her knife inches away. She tried desperately to drive the weapon home, but he was simply too strong. He used her momentum to lean back and throw her off the bed, sending her tumbling to the ground.

Letting out a gasp of pain, she saw stars as her head slammed against the floor. Rolling over, she looked up at the guard, who was now removing his helmet. Her breath was coming in quick wheezes, terror gripping her as she wondered what they would do with her now.

"Well, shit, princess," she heard a familiar voice say. "I guess I should've expected something like that from you. But, come on, Clarke. I taught you that move."

The helmet is gone and she sees the pair of dark brown eyes she had looked into so many times. His hair is sticking out in all directions and a crooked smirk graces his lips as she can't help but let his name pass through hers.

"Bellamy."

She doesn't hesitate as she throws her arms around his shoulders and embraces him. "You're alive," she whispers. "You're alive, oh my God, you're alive."

He lets out a small laugh. "You're not going to get rid of me that easily, princess." He must have known the question she would ask next because he quickly says, "Finn is in the control room. The doors to all the quarantined rooms should be opening in about," he pauses and looks at his watch. "Three…two…one…now."

Right on cue, she hears the sound of seventy-nine doors opening and a of the delinquent's startled shouts. A mischievous smile growing across his face, Bellamy gestures for her to follow him and walks out into the hall.

"All right, rise and shine everyone!" he bellows at the top of his lungs. "There is a class three security breach, this is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. Come on, everyone, we're busting you out of here."

Heads begin popping out as the Hundred recognize the voice of the leader they were so sure was dead. Excited shouts of "Bellamy!" and "He's alive!" fill the corridor as they all file out behind him, chatting excitedly among themselves.

Following closely behind, Clarke grabs his shoulder causing him to look back and slow down, but not stop. "I hate to rain on your parade," she says so that only he can hear, "But how do you manage to get eighty kids outside of a highly securitized facility in broad daylight? I'm not saying that this was a bad plan…but this was a bad plan."

The roguish smile that had been playing across his features the entire time only grew as he walked, no, as he strutted down the hall towards the exit. He walked through the door and took a sharp left, pulling out a small key-card from his pocket.

"I'd assume that when the Mountain Men have prisoners, which can't be very often, they normally move ninety percent of their weapons to a safe place just in case some of their captives escaped."

Sliding the card into the door, the hatch opened and seventy-nine wide-eyed teenagers peered into the chamber that was revealed. All of the walls were lined with rifles, and boxes of grenades, ammunition, smoke bombs, and every weapon Clarke could even imagine was piled high around the room. She looked around in shock, realizing that they had a legitimate chance of getting out with all the sleeping gas and guns that were before them.

"Let's show them what happens when they mess with the Hundred!" Bellamy yelled, his words jolting the kids into action as they cheered and raced into the weapons room, beginning to grab everything they could carry.

The smirk on his face broke into an all out grin as he turned back and looked at Clarke. "Normally, they'd take precautions. But what the hell, what are a bunch of teenagers going to be able to do?"

For the first time in far too many eternities, she laughs.

(A/N Mmh. Short one here. It was sort of to fulfill a post on tumblr in which someone wrote my tags on a post *coughgreenfaerieflycough* *coughgofollowhercough* and it then proceeded to get a bunch of notes. :D Anyways, reviews are welcome!)