Author's Note: Just a quick sketch on what Bellamy felt at the end of 2x16.

He's been convinced for a while now that life is measured in moments of pain. His pain, pain of another, even that talked-about pain no one likes to admit they ever feel. Those moments mark the timeline of his short life, and he remembers them ever more sharply than just about any other.

His broken finger at age five.

The cracked rib at age fourteen.

The long lineage of beatings his body's gone through since they fell from the sky.

This pain he feels, it can be sharp and quick, or dull and deep, but always it fades, leaving him to continue on to that next moment. And there are memories attached to these instances, memories that shape him and haunt him as he still struggles to solidify his place amongst a divided group.

The memory of his mother's pain as she bore his sister.

The memory of his sister's pain as she hid beneath his feet.

But these memories are in the past, and while they have guided him and taught him, he has found a place for them in a part of him he only visits when nostalgia grips hold. It is the more immediate pain that overwhelms his ability to compartmentalize and cope, the not physical pain the presses on him at every turn.

He's felt ragged steel part his flesh and spill his blood.

He's felt fists crack his jaw and boots pound his body.

And he's witnessed the same for his sister, the one he promised to keep safe. He's witnessed it for all those who exalted him as leader, those unwanted and discarded that he's come to know as his people, his responsibility. Every blow they take, every broken bone and bloodied body he sees marks another memory, another moment he tries to file away and relegate to then. To the past. Because if he allows them to exist all at once, they will pull him under with their red, ruined weight and drown him in inadequacy and guilt.

So he puts them aside, learns from them, and carries on.

But this is a pain he wasn't prepared for.

This is a pain that lingers open and raw.

She walked away from him, from them, from their people that she battled so hard to liberate, and he didn't fight her. He watched her go and did nothing to prevent it, because he knew she would never stop, not even for the words he wanted to say. He almost spoke them, but her conviction left him swallowing them with a bitter aftertaste. They had a last embrace and that's when he felt it, the gaping, ragged wound that cut him from the inside, and he knew instantly this pain is not one he'll be able to simply file away. He knows now as he stares at the spot she once occupied that this pain is not going to diminish with time or space or happy thoughts.

This pain will last because the weapon that caused it is still being twisted in his chest.

She walked away, and left behind a wound that will rot away the part of him belonging to her.

He thought he understood pain.

She has proven how little he knows.