a/n Hello and welcome to an angsty exploration of survivors' guilt during the time jump. Huge thanks to Stormkpr for betaing this. Happy reading!

Note: non-graphic reference to self harm.

Raven has something of a soft spot for Bellamy. She's certainly fonder of him than she is of any other guy she's ever had uninspiring casual sex with. He's a good man, and a loyal friend, and she thinks she might describe him as a brother to her, if it weren't for the fact she knows full well that their friendship pales in comparison to the love he bears for his little sister, buried beneath the floor on a burning Earth.

So, of course, she's worried out of her mind about him losing Clarke. She knows that, technically, they all lost Clarke, but there is some unspoken acknowledgement between all of them up here on the Ring that, really, Bellamy lost her in particular.

Raven has basically assigned herself the task of looking after Bellamy, in the week that they've been here. She likes framing it as a task – a task is a specific and manageable thing to accomplish, which stands some hope of actually being completed. Now, she is looking after Bellamy. One day, in the future, he will be healed and she won't need to worry about him so much.

At least, that's the theory. So far there is absolutely no sign of it working out like that.

Today, she's clasping a ration pack in her hand when she approaches his door. He's not doing very well at remembering to eat. He does surface from his room for a few hours each afternoon, just to order them around a bit and pretend he's holding it together and doing what Clarke would want, but then he retreats back here, without fail, the moment the business of the day is done.

She knocks, not really expecting a response, and opens the door.

Bellamy jumps back as if burned, frantically wrapping the bandage back around his wrists, but it's too late. Raven has seen exactly what he's trying to hide. He still has those wounds from being handcuffed and locked up in the bunker last week. And Raven's no medical expert, but she has scraped her knee a time or two when she was a kid. She knows what an old wound looks like when someone just won't stop picking at the scab. Bellamy's wrists are looking worse than any child's graze picked at out of curiosity, though. They are oozing a substantial quantity of blood and look nowhere near healed.

She takes a deep breath, and tries to calm her panicked nerves.

"Bellamy -"

"I'm fine." He snaps, contrary to the ample evidence that he's really not fine.

"I brought you some food." She deposits the rations at his side. "Do you want to talk about anything?"

He doesn't even do her the courtesy of shaking his head. He just sits, sullen and silent, denial in ever fibre of his being.

"Bellamy -"

"What, Raven? What do you want me to say?" His voice is angry. She watches him pause, take a breath, and try again more carefully. "Thank you for bringing me food. Now if you don't mind -"

"You can't keep doing it." Raven says. She knows judgement is hardly a helpful reaction, but she's worried about him, damn it. "You know you can't. It'll leave a scar if you keep picking at it."

"Good." He says, one firm syllable, like he thinks he deserves to live the rest of his life with manacles of scar tissue bound tight about his wrists.

Hating herself for even considering it, she brings out the big guns. "Clarke wouldn't want -"

"Don't you get it, Raven? It's her fault my wrists are bleeding. She had me locked up – or Jaha did and she didn't stop him. This is her fault and as long as I'm bleeding, and as long as I can blame her for it, I'm not – I'm not blaming myself for her being – for her being dead." As ways of holding onto a loved one go, Raven thinks this about the most screwed up idea she has ever come across.

She tries to keep her tone light and soothing. It's a challenge – neither of those traits come naturally to her. "Bellamy. I know you're hurting, and you want to hold onto her memory. But I don't think this is a good way to go about doing that."

"It's the best way I'm going to get." He says, with the certainty of one who has evidently thought about this at quite some length. "It's better than blaming myself for leaving her behind. Or asking myself what would have happened if I hadn't been angry with her in the first place. If I wasn't angry, then we wouldn't have had to talk it out. And if I wasn't concentrating on that, I would never have hit that tree and then -"

"Bellamy -"

"It's my fault she's dead." He concludes robustly. "My fault. So thanks for supper and all, but you can go, now."

She does. Coward that she is, she leaves him, and runs from his room in fear.

…...

Bellamy's words stay with Raven, in the days that follow. He's somehow managed to give voice to that niggling sense of guilt that has been festering in the hidden corners of her mind since the second they closed the door of that rocket.

It seemed to be helping him to express his guilt, she notes. Sure, she's not convinced that ripping his own half-healed wrists open was the best way of doing that – she prefers the idea of talking about it, herself – but she can see, now, that letting it out is better than holding it in.

If nothing else, expressing her guilt might give her something to speak to Bellamy about, she decides, when she takes him his supper and a bottle of antiseptic the following evening. She might not be able to stop him from hurting himself, but at least she can help him to avoid infection.

She doesn't wait for him to greet her. She plunges straight into the words that have been echoing through her for most of the last twenty-four hours.

"It was my fault, Bellamy. Mine. If I'd taken more care with getting the rocket ready for launch, if I'd just concentrated more carefully, I wouldn't have caused that explosion. And then the comms system would be working, and then she – she would never have had to go to the tower." She pauses a moment, because that isn't quite everything she wanted to say, either. "And it's my fault for sending her to the tower."

Bellamy shakes his head. "It's my fault. She could have gone to help get Monty. I should have been the one to go to the tower."

That is nonsensical, of course. Bellamy is stronger, and obviously a better candidate for carrying a person. And as far as they knew at the time, going to the tower was a manageable task.

But Raven can see, now, how it helps to let it out. Sharing your guilt with a friend is better than letting it eat away at your flesh.

…...

She goes to see him again the following evening, supper in hand, guilty confession on her lips.

"It's my fault." She begins, of course. "If I hadn't insisted on staying when Jackson and Miller took Murphy and Emori back to Polis, none of us would have been there at all. She wouldn't have come to fetch me."

Monty and Harper and Murphy and Emori and Echo would be dead, of course, but that is not the point of this exercise. This is an exercise in taking the blame for Clarke's death, specifically, and Raven will play the game to the letter.

Bellamy goes one better, obviously. He always does.

"It's my fault. If I told her I'd forgiven her for the bunker – if I told her I loved her – maybe she would have run harder. Maybe she would have tried harder to get back to us. She'd have had something to run for." The tears are rolling down his cheeks before he is even half done, and his thumbs and forefingers are clasped tight around his wrists, over the bandages, putting pressure on the wounds she knows will stay with him for life no matter how they scar.

Raven doesn't contradict him. She can't, because she has a horrible feeling he might be right. She knows the story of Clarke refusing to put her own name on the list, she watched her inject herself with nightblood and volunteer to be tested. She was obviously a woman who had long since lost sight of the value of her own life.

Maybe if Clarke knew she was loved, she might have lived.

…...

By the time Bellamy's bandages are off, he has a pair of thick, ugly scars at his wrists and has taken the blame for Clarke's death by at least a dozen different routes.

He's started eating supper with the rest of the crew, though, so that's progress, Raven decides.

He still likes to point out the many ways he caused Clarke to die, but Raven's so used to it by now that it barely strikes her as concerning. And anyway, she joins in with it more often than not, so she figures she can hardly complain.

"It's my fault." Bellamy offers, over the dining table one day. "If I hadn't opened that door, she'd be safe inside the Polis bunker right now."

"And more than half the people round this table would be dead." Murphy points out, unhelpfully but accurately.

"That's not the point." Raven tells him, keen to defend the blame game for reasons that she cannot entirely define.

"I know it's not the point." Murphy concedes, uncharacteristically gentle. "I get it."

The thing is, she genuinely believes that he does.

…...

She's not sure when it becomes a team game. It starts off as just her and Bellamy, but before she knows it, most of the family are playing.

"It's my fault." Harper pipes up, over an early batch of algae. "If I hadn't joined that stupid party -"

"- it wouldn't have made the slightest difference." Monty finishes for her, firmly.

"No, it would have. Because then we'd be at Polis, and – I don't know – you could have driven so Bellamy didn't crash?"

"That's my fault. I wouldn't have crashed if I loved her less." Bellamy confesses. "It's stupid, but I was staring at her not looking at the road. So it's my fault. She's dead because I loved her."

Somehow, Bellamy always wins.

…...

The theories get more complicated with time. Raven's not sure when they move from one-sentence shared guilt to minutes-long tales of alternate realities far removed from actual fact. The transition is so seamless that she never notices it. But it has doubtless happened, she notes, as she listens to Bellamy explore what might have been different if only he'd stayed on the island after delivering the hydrazine.

Bellamy still wears the blame for her death like a badge of pride. Without fail, every day, he is the winner of this hollow victory.

Raven likes this game they play. She shouldn't, of course, because passing around guilt like some destructive parcel ought not be a pleasant experience. But she's good at hypothesizing – it's the scientist in her – and this is just a new way of doing that. Rather than asking what would happen if she tweaked the fuel intake of a rocket, she's asking what would happen if she tweaked the path of their shared narrative.

It's twisted, but it's their way of remembering.

It gets to the point where even Echo tries to join in. It doesn't come naturally to her, but she gives it a go.

"It's my fault." Echo begins, because that is the opening move of each and every turn. "I could have gone to the satellite tower."

"That's not how it works. It needs to be something realistic." Raven argues, sure that Echo has done something wrong she cannot quite put her finger on. The blame game is not about the things they could have done. It's about what they feel they should have done.

"Realistic?" Echo repeats, incredulous. "I don't see how that's any different from what you guys do, blaming yourselves for things you'd never have done or couldn't have known would make the slightest difference. It's not like Bellamy would ever actually have left his sister out there to die."

No one answers that. Echo has called them out on the futility of their favourite pastime, but they all know they will keep playing.

…...

Bellamy still has scars on his wrists, one year in, ugly and lumpy and so much worse than they could have been. But everything is worse than it could have been, Raven acknowledges, so she gets on with pretending that she doesn't notice how he runs his fingers over them whenever he's remembering Clarke.

They still play the blame game, two years in, holding onto the memory of Clarke in the only way they know how, reinforcing that her death was everyone's fault and no one's. It's the way they've been able to heal, and like Bellamy's wrists, it's an ugly, lumpy, messy kind of healing, but it's better than not healing at all.

They still hypothesize, three years in, but now it's not only Clarke's death they muse on with their what-ifs. They branch out into other alternate realities, reframe their shared story a thousand different ways.

But they always come back to Bellamy, claiming responsibility for killing Clarke.

"It's my fault." He insists, tiredly and with an aching familiarity. "I should have gone with her to the tower."

"We've definitely had that one before." Murphy grumbles, with that strangely caring insensitivity he shows in place of actual kindness.

"What do you think she'd say, if she could see us now?" Harper asks wistfully.

"She'd laugh at us." Raven decides. "She'd think we're silly to still be arguing over who killed her."

"She'd laugh at us." Murphy echoes. "And then she'd get on with snogging Bellamy."

There is a heartbeat of loaded silence. Murphy has just spoken a truth no one has dared to voice in three years, and they're not quite sure how to process it. Sure, Bellamy's hypotheticals sometimes revolve around him loving her, but they never point out that she felt the same way.

It is Bellamy who breaks the tension. "In my dreams." He scoffs, tone light.

They break into relieved laughter, and eat their algae. But Raven knows he is telling the truth. She can see it in his eyes – kisses with Clarke really do haunt his sleep.

…...

Raven knows it's weird, but as the years inch slowly past, the family that floats through space clings to the ritual of apportioning blame. It keeps them grounded, somehow, and it's a way of talking about Clarke, and about the ground and even others they have lost, that everyone can join in with, free of judgement. The ritual of it's my fault acts as a kind of disclaimer, gives them permission to miss her in whatever way suits them best. Even Murphy joins in, a time or two, and Emori becomes one of their most dedicated participants, remembering the woman who would not let her become the subject of a human trial.

Raven thinks it's about the healthiest coping mechanism they're going to get in a world without group therapy. It's a way of holding onto Clarke's memory that is not completely delusional. She is not a nightmare, nor a pair of scarred wrists. She's a story, like every great hero. She's becoming something of a legend – just as Bellamy has countless different stories about Odysseus, so there are infinite versions of the story of Clarke. They've covered every aspect of her life, through their hypotheses, from the question of what would have happened if she and Bellamy had hit it off from the first moment on the ground, right through to wondering whether they ought to have held the rocket another second for her.

Bellamy doesn't like this development, though. He doesn't like the way her story is passing into family legend.

"It's not right." He tells Raven, after Emori's eighth recital of the nightblood story. "We're turning her into a hero, but she wasn't a hero. She was a person, a real living person. We're as bad as the grounders with Wanheda." He spits the hated name.

"That's different. We're doing this out of love." She tells him easily. "And we're remembering she was human. We remember her faults, too, don't we?"

"She didn't have any." Bellamy says, firm, yet nevertheless clearly aware that it's an affectionate lie.

"Stubborn? Self-sacrificing? Too convinced of the superiority of her own plans?" Raven reminds him in a teasing tone. It is easier to talk about Clarke, these days, and even to tease.

"Those do sound like things I would say." He concedes with a sad smile.

"But yeah, sure, tell yourself she was perfect."

"She wasn't." He admits, rubbing one thumb against the scar on his opposite wrist. "But I loved her all the same."

…...

The day that marks five years in space should be wretched. They have no way of getting back to the ground, and no hope of finding a way any time soon.

But then Emori tells them she's pregnant.

That lifts the mood, to say the least. There follows a predictable outpouring of joy and congratulations and well-wishing.

But amidst the noise, John Murphy asks something that is rather less predictable.

"So, Bellamy, which Clarke story are you going to tell the little one first?"

That's it. Just like that. Stories of Clarke as so much a part of their lives, these days – so much a part of them – that there is no question in the expectant father's mind. Bellamy will be the storytelling uncle, and he will tell stories of Clarke.

And always – sometimes as a shout, sometimes as a whisper – those stories will begin with the magic words.

It's my fault.

…...

Raven thinks it's another myth, when Bellamy first tells her Clarke is alive. She presumes it's another hypothetical, but that she missed the what-if.

Of course she does. It's just so unexpected that she cannot wrap her head around it. Here she is, thousands of miles above the Earth in an enemy spaceship while her friends face goodness-only-knows-what dangers down below. She's spent the day preoccupied with wondering how Emori and Murphy's young baby coped with the flight, not wondering whether a dead woman might still be walking.

But then she hears Clarke's voice over the lazer-comm, and the myth crystalises very suddenly into reality.

"Raven. Hey."

"Clarke. Oh my God. How are you – how -?"

"Nightblood." She explains calmly. "I survived the radiation, and I found a patch of forest that the death wave didn't -" She breaks off, into a flurry of most un-Clarke-like giggles.

"Clarke?"

"It's my fault." Bellamy claims, sounding distinctly unrepentant. "I was distracting her."

Raven feels a smile split her face as she understands exactly how Bellamy was probably distracting Clarke. It does her good to hear of her friend's happiness, after all these years spent worrying about him.

"Did you tell her yet?" Raven asks, knowing that Bellamy will understand exactly what she means.

"It was the first thing I did when we got her out of there."

"No it wasn't." Clarke corrects him, joy in her voice. "You kissed me first."

Raven sits back and listens to their happiness. She contributes a word or two, here and there, but for the most part she leaves them to it.

It looks like her task has been accomplished.

a/n Thanks for reading!