A/N: *sidles in with a cough* … hiii. So I know it might have looked, for a while there, like I'd forgotten this story. But nah: it's because I've been doing a lot of research and redrafting to try to get this monster of a chapter (it's as long as all other chapters combined lol) accurate in its cultural representation. And then at the height of my block, the finale happened and shattered my heart. Fortunately, writing in love may you find the next has seriously helped me repair my heart. And just to clarify: Five Times will remain divergent from canon post-2x08. (Also in the detail that I haven't had Octavia return, and how they got the kids out of Mt Weather without genocide.)

I want to send so much love to Thea (maytheymeetagain on tumblr) for her help and support with the Tagalog in this chapter! She is such an inspiration – and I don't think I've mentioned it before but she's the reason I actually started writing bellarke fanfic. Every single one of her bellarke fics is incredible.

I really hope I've used everything from other cultures appropriately in this chapter. Please, everyone, just let me know if I've accidentally made a faux pas, because I really mean no disrespect and only want to enrich the bellarkeverse with Bob Morley's Filipino heritage (and Henry Ian Cusick's Peruvian heritage too ;) )

On a final note, all the symptoms are true to life. Don't OD on aspirin, kids.

IV.

The skin on his hands is still too tender to hold a gun, the skin on his leg still pulling painfully and tiring easily, but Bellamy had become too bitterly restless to stay contained in camp any longer. Clarke could see how he needed to get out in the woods again, so agreed on a short reprieve without (much) argument over the risks. It is merely a scouting mission, an attempt to discover whether Monroe really had seen caves on their southern border. It's probably only the desperation of blind wishful thinking that drives Bellamy to agreeing on such a small party, too.

They find the caves all right. And everyone is overjoyed for all of two minutes, until Miller makes it down the long, steep bank ("we could cut proper stairs next time") without pitching, Monroe on his heels, Harper staying back on the ridge with Bellamy. It takes all of one look into the black rocks for Miller to turn back angrily and shout, "they're full of water!"

"All the way back?" Bellamy shouts back, heart sinking. They would have been a blessing in winter. Everyone knew it was a long shot that the caves would be habitable, but this is an unexpected first major obstacle.

Monroe joins Miller and hauls out the flashlight, directing the beam around the caves. Her restrained excitement of the three miles out here is giving way to grim disappointment, as far as Bellamy can read. Long seconds of silence stretch out, and he focuses on the sound of the end-of-winter woods breathing around them: branches whispering together, wind whistling, early birds singing exuberantly. It was embarrassing how many breaks he'd needed on the way here, but Clarke had threatened that he wasn't to be masochistic about this, and his companions had been glad of the breaks too, not being pushed to their limits – for once.

"We can see pretty far back, but it's not very big in the first place, and it's all swimming." Monroe's flat tone brooks no arguments.

Bellamy runs a hand through his hair and glances around, trying to think. "Is it stagnant or moving?"

"Is it warm?" Harper adds loudly. Bellamy raises an eyebrow in appreciation, carefully angling his hot palms into the cool breeze. That would be good.

Miller jumps down the few feet of jagged rocks to get into the cave mouth. Kneeling down to swish his hands in the water, he glances around the walls, making a face a second later and stepping back up with hands in jacket pockets. "Very cold, but moving."

"Useless," Harper mutters. Bellamy privately agrees.

"Okay, thanks guys. That's too bad. Let's get you back up."

While he sorts out the ropes Miller and Monroe had used going down, listening to the quiet cussing as they two try to get back up the bank, Harper wanders a little way aways. She returns ten minutes later with her arms full of broad-leaved, pink-blossomed plants and a beam on her face.

"Hey Bellamy, Clarke's been grumbling for ages about how there's no Spireaaround for our cramps, but there's a whole mini-cave-full over there. Just in that dip, there's this rock covering a whole bank. Nice, huh?"

Miller coughs at the mention of cramps, but Bellamy has been helping Octavia with pain relief for too many years to be bothered by it. "Nice find, Harper. Have you got any with decent roots?" She nods, happy colour brushing her cheeks. "We could plant them then. Monty'll love it in his new herb garden. Seriously, great job."

Bellamy turns to the two hunters packing up their ropes. "Maybe we can bring back some meat too. Harper's just upped the game."

"Is that a challenge?" Miller rubs his hands together and chuckles. "Who can bring back the most useful stuff? Loser takes the next night guard shift of the winner."

"If Clarke's judging? I'm in." Harper slaps her free hand on Miller's and smirks. "She'll just name Bellamy loser anyway."

"Hey! She is – yeah, fine." Bellamy snorts along with the others and sets off in the direction they had come not half an hour before.

It's hours later – more hours than Clarke will be happy with – before they even get near camp. In order to make the day worthwhile, Miller had suggested a large detour to spear as much game as possible. Bellamy feels exhausted now from this relatively easy excursion, which disturbs him. Those injuries have really made him slack off.

He's not the only one dragging his feet. Harper is lagging, so he's glad of the excuse to drop back and ask if she's doing okay.

She screws up her face, popping a leaf into her mouth. One of the Spirea leaves, Bellamy realises. "Fine. Just need a bit of this. And once we get dinner, I'll be all good again."

Bellamy's stomach audibly rumbles. Harper laughs. "You want some? It doesn't do anything, just fills you up. And I've got a whole backpack full of it now."

"If you're sure." Bellamy certainly isn't, and doesn't want to waste resources, but… it is still a mile and a half to camp.

"It doesn't even taste bad," Harper assures him. "More bitter than Clarke's normal tea, though."

Bellamy warily takes the whole plant she offers him and rips off a shred of the leaf, popping it in his mouth and chewing. Harper was right; bitter, and a little peppery, but on the whole, not too terrible. He half-smiles in thanks, shifting the two wild dog carcasses to his other shoulder.

Within ten minutes, the vegetation has him feeling surprisingly better, enough to joke with Harper and even get her to open up a little. Summoned by their laughs, Monroe and Miller wait to rejoin them. "Hey, what's so hilarious? I mean, aside from Bellamy's existence."

The leader rolls his eyes. "Harper's Ark story from when she was dared to grab extra food from the canteen. Seriously, when –"

"Have you started on the dog already?" Miller interrupts, eyebrows shooting up his face.

"Nah, it's just Harper's Spirea. It doesn't actually taste too terrible."

Harper grins at the doubt on Miller and Monroe's faces. "You want to try?"

"I'm actually good, thanks," Miller tries, but Bellamy teases him mercilessly for chickening out until he caves and crams five leaves in at once. The ensuing disgusted expressions keep Bellamy chuckling across the remaining dark mile to camp.

The scouts have the gates opened well in time for the four to troop in. Bellamy immediately goes into leader-mode, sorting out which runners will take away the meat. Monroe and Miller quickly peel off to their tents, but Harper volunteers to take the plant-stuffed backpack to Clarke herself. Bellamy catches Tin – the kid taking his wild dogs – wrinkling his nose at overhearing the offer. So Bellamy raises an eyebrow, inviting Tin to explain.

"It's just – she's trying to do physical therapy with the mechanic at the minute," Tin tells them, looking slightly pained, Adam's apple bobbing. "The last person to go in there –"

"Got a spanner to the head?" Bellamy guesses.

Tin looks slightly amazed, naïve youth that he is. "It was a wrench to the stomach, but… I'd leave it for now. They shouldn't be much longer, I think Clarke's helping with the cooking tonight."

"Alright." Bellamy claps him on the shoulder by the way of thanks and moves off towards the fire, glancing behind him to check Harper's following. The first rounds of meat – presumably what the actual hunting party had brought back today – are already on the fire and his stomach is growling. He was no stranger to hunger on the Ark, feeding Octavia all he could spare from his rations and then some, but here on Earth, it's been a while since anyone's gone to bed with a growling stomach.

But… pulling out of his thoughts, Bellamy realises Harper isn't with him. Turning properly this time, he sees her swaying ten yards away by the gates and looking kind of grey. Not good. He nods his head towards the fire, and Harper nods back, taking a tentative step towards him before she pauses and tips forward.

He doesn't get there in time, but Tin does – or at least, he slows Harper's shoulders enough that she doesn't smack her face into the dirt. Bellamy helps turn her over onto her back, eyes roving for any sign of threats. But there's nothing: no arrow in the back, no concealed knife wound to the gut. What even?

"Dawn," he barks to a passing girl, "get Clarke now."

She nods and scurries off as well as an eighteen-year-old can scurry, leaving Bellamy to kneel and pull Harper over his shoulder in a scar-straining fireman's lift. She's coughing on his back, weak but very alive, and he doesn't even have to ask for Tin to follow with the backpack. Whatever disease this is, Bellamy thinks grimly, the damn flowers might just come in handy.

He keeps his knees bent and breathing even in the bumping jog across the commons. Clarke meets him halfway up the ramp into the drop ship, darting back to draw the curtain aside. Bellamy's breathing hard as he makes it to the nearest plinth and unfolds Harper from his shoulder, catching her head carefully and putting her down. When he stands back, Raven is strapping on her brace and a nastily deep scowl, her eyes following Clarke as the healer hurtles back in with a freshly-rinsed sick bucket.

She's by Harper's side immediately, tucking her patient's hair back and talking in low tones for several minutes. She stands back up with a crease in her forehead; Bellamy decides they're in it for the long run and falls onto the plinth behind. He wouldn't admit it out loud – although Clarke will already have picked up on it – but all that carrying and the exercise in his weakened state has made him light-headed with tiredness. And his stomach is clenching unpleasantly from hunger.

But his healer doesn't comment in any way, just turns to him and demands, "what happened to her?"

"No wounds, no heatstroke, she's been drinking," Bellamy replies, slightly breathless. Raven turns away in disgust, though he realises it's not aimed at him.

"Any contact with diseased people? Poisons?" Clarke asks, pulling up Harper's semi-conscious head and shining the med bay flashlight in her eyes. "It's not a concussion."

"Nah, we've not seen anyone. Only eaten the fire bread, smokehouse meat, and those wrinkled apples still going round." Bellamy reconsiders. "Oh, and Harper found a whole bank of Spirea. She gathered a load, said you could use it for the girls' cramps?"

"Yeah!" Clarke's excitement doesn't stop her checking in Harper's mouth. "For all pain relief, actually. We won't have to get people wasted on moonshine now." She turns to him and beams, and for a second the world lights up. But then it melts off her face and Clarke narrows her eyes at him. "You know –"

Bellamy never finds out what he should know, because at that moment his stomach clenches. Hard.

In a single hard surge across the room, Bellamy throws himself over the vomit bucket in time for his stomach to empty itself. It's nasty and intense and he's only ever had one stomach bug before so by the time he's retching up acid, ears ringing, he's wishing desperately that O were here again to reassure him it'll be okay.

The weight of a small hand, and then another, on his shoulders helps. Having Octavia see him so ill would worry her terribly, and she'd have no way of helping him herself; it would kill her, and kill him to see her so angry and upset. But Clarke can straighten him out. She's such a great healer. She'll heal the whole damn earth, with all its problems and hate, in time.

Bellamy pushes himself up, trying not to make eye contact with Clarke as he seizes the bucket. "I'll just –"

"Nope." Clarke's caring hands on his shoulders force him to lower back to the floor. Her determined voice is out, and if Bellamy were feeling less grotty and weak, he wouldn't be so rubbed up the wrong way. It's probably the sixth sense that tells him he's fucked up again and is about to find out how. "Were you guys snacking on the Spirea?"

Bellamy feels too nauseous to speak or even nod, so settles for a tightening of the lips. A shroud of dread has settled over him, and Clarke's measured exhale does nothing to alleviate that worry. Being able to read her so well has drawbacks sometimes, and an inability to lie? Right now, that's one of them.

"What is it?" Raven peers over Clarke's shoulder at him slumped by Harper's bed. "Clarke?"

"I think Aspirin poisoning," she says carefully, and for him, this just sounds like oh God. "We only ever make it into a weak tea for pain relief. They've ingested too much salycilate. I've not seen this particular strain of Spirea and it might have evolved to have a higher concentration of salycilates. Bellamy, did the others eat it too?"

"Mm-hm." Is the room spinning or is that just the weird pressure in his ears? He tries to look up at Clarke now, grab her attention so he can focus on her. Because everything in his vision is blurring, pixelating, and his head feels really full of blood, like it's pressing in then sucking out. A black hole, inverting.

He swallows, throat thick with trying to say something. Clarke is speaking to Raven, voice hurried and tight, something about getting Monroe and Miller, but their voices reverb in his ears. And as Bellamy's trying to distinguish their sounds from each other, make the nonsense into words and meanings again, maybe regain a little normalcy in his fuzzing nerves, a quiet beached-fish gasping fills his ears, louder and louder accompanied by ringing.

Is it me? he wonders, semi-wildly. The ringing probably is. But the gasping… no, it's coming from behind him. Harper.

Harper!

But the one fuzzy figure in front of him – where'd Raven go? – isn't looking over there, she's pulling buckets and blankets from a cupboard shelf above her head. His stomach is still rolling unhappily, but Bellamy manages to cough out "Clarke" and "Harper".

He has to pitch forward over the bucket again for it, entire body burning and exhausted, limbs somehow extremely heavy, but when he regains his senses, Clarke is buzzing around Harper with water. She's muttering; Bellamy catches "severe poisoning", "dehydration, classic, that's going to be difficult", "hyperventilation, crap on a cracker". The last is a curse learned from one of the hundred and it sets him smiling slightly in his pathetic state.

His body slumps to the floor. Bellamy finds he hasn't much control over it, and besides, he's got no will to move from here. That would require so much energy… and the ear-ringing and vision-pixelating is fading away nicely now…

He hasn't the strength to hold up his eyelids or his stomach down as the remaining dregs of his energy focus there.

Before his brain can process it properly, he's slipped into unconsciousness.

There isn't a waking so much as the fuzzy realisation that he's regained some of his senses. There's none of the refreshment that comes with sleep. Someone is trickling water into his mouth, and it feels like night-time, but all his joints ache with rope-worn weariness.

Bellamy's muscles are clenching and unclenching, and the person beside him pauses as he gasps. His lungs feel like they're being scraped dry with sandpaper – but even worse, his roiling stomach is boiling poison and about to –

He manages to throw himself to the side of the bed just in time for his stomach to empty violently. The boy with him mutters something about "at least you can aim this time" and "Clarke'll kill me for this happening when she's finally napping" but places a hand on his covered arm, comforting. Terrible cramps shake his body, but Bellamy throws up more toxic acid before his body decides to completely shut down on him. He wants to know what's going on, what's happened, but his consciousness is pulled into the black air by the body he's yoked to.

There is nothing for a long time; brief snatches of noise, fleeting sensations of his body trying to squeeze itself dry all over again, but Bellamy can never quite even make it near the surface of reality, let alone break it. He feels like a spirit both too large and too small for this confining body as the world passes but he cannot access it.

And yet – when life is briefly touched again, it is too soon. Way too soon.

He's so hot and sweaty that for a wild, brain-clenching moment, Bellamy thinks he's passed out in the engine room again, where desperate Walden citizens could get harsh illegal work. Underpaid labour, in the cheap form of moonshine or other materials, Bellamy would hand it all to his mother so she could flog them for more money.

But no. There's no Octavia under the floor now, and she has a whole forest to run around in: it's more than they ever could have dreamed of, even in all their whispered imaginings. But… where is she?

His sister. Bellamy can vaguely recall enough, through fuzz-ridden mind, to know he's safe right now, and Octavia isn't. Where is she? Where is she?!

Bellamy's tongue comes stuck back to the roof of his mouth. He must have been saying something, speaking out – but what? There are shadowy figures on either side of him now. The light over his head, reflecting off the canvas around him, just makes the scene bleary. And it's blurring the words, which are taking a while for his brain to process now.

But then someone trickles water into his mouth, and it's like the gummed acid it cleans from his mouth is clearing a stream to understanding in his mind: the noise becomes soft words.

"I can't understand," someone is half-sobbing. The voice makes his heart squeeze. "It's getting worse. Miller and Monroe's have nearly cleared up now, but Harper is on the brink of coma. I can't…"

"Where the hell is Octavia anyway?" An angry voice, this one. "He keeps almost killing himself, and one of these days he'll manage it and she won't be around. Three months, is it now?"

Bellamy tries to speak out; manages to force a "help me" from his rasping throat. It only serves to still the girls either side of him.

"What? What did he say?" The angry voice is suddenly strong with need.

" 'Tulungan mo ako'… what does that even mean?" His wrung-out girl is muttering to herself, but Bellamy can picture her now pursing her lips and turning away. "Raven, get Glass. This sounds like what she speaks. She might be able to shed some light on it. Or, you know, Octavia."

Raven. Octavia. He can picture them around him now, the cool hand smoothing through his hair surely his sister's loving touch, its hot absence when she goes to get him water. He misses her so much – so, so much. He built all his life around supporting Octavia, and now she's gone, the grounding of his life is shifting dangerously. Where is she? Where is she?!

"Octavia!" The word is a desperate plea from his nuclear waste of a throat. "Octavia… come back, please. Please."

There's a strangled sob from somewhere above him as he just repeats the words over and over, and Bellamy forces his eyes to focus slightly. He knows this shadowed face – his brain can fill in all the blanks, it has been for years and years, so though the girl is barely lit, his brain decides she must be his sister. And besides, who else can fill him with such calm just by taking his hand and holding it tightly in both of theirs?

"Hey, we got her." The angry girl's voice – Raven. Bellamy's mind is heating and fuzzing, along with the tips of his fingers and toes, but he can still register their voices, although his mind is taking a long time to sift the noises into meanings again.

"Glass!" Octavia calls from beside him, a chord of desperation tingeing her voice. "What – what's he saying? Aside from 'Octavia'?"

Another person comes to his other side, their long hair dipping onto his burning arm. There's a pause, measured breathing as the girl who looks like a cousin from another life meets his gaze distractedly. This girl too, he feels like he should remember. But he can't stop his lips from moving, chanting his mumble to Octavia anyway.

"'Bumalik ka sa akin… pakiusap…' " The new girl's face is swimming in and out of focus, but she's saying his words right back at him, and with better pronunciation than Octavia did. Maybe his sister's out of practice, being down on earth with little time to remind themselves of their other language. And she'd wanted to learn Trigedasleng from Lincoln so maybe her tongue's a little skewed from that…?

It can't be that, but his mind is too feverish to find the reasons right now. Bellamy runs through their daily practices, where they would trade new Tagalog words and phrases. She was quicker at picking them up, had a better memory too, so even though he would trade words with the other two Filipino families, she was the one who could speak it fluently first. By the time she was ten, their mother had all but forgotten English anyway.

The familiar-looking girl on his right is whispering furtively to the others over his limp body, but Bellamy can't make his brain focus to decipher the English any longer. It just sounds unhappy, plaintive noises coming from all three, and his left hand gripped even tighter in that warm grip.

His mind begins to darken, overtaken by the fever that's pressing down on his eyes and stomach and lungs, but it brings a last burst of clarity, and suddenly he remembers. "Gl- Glaiza?"

That dark sheet of hair whips back round and almost hits him in the face. "Bellamy?"

He tries to cough and fails. "Glaiza…"

"Why is he calling you that?" Raven's blurry voice manages to compute in his mind, demanding.

"It's my real name," she tells them quietly, just above the roar of blood in his ears. "But it would confuse most people. So we only used it when speaking Tagalog, practicing with each other occasionally. Aurora was the best out of all of us, Bellamy right behind."

He tries to tell her that Octavia was always better than him, better in every way so of course in Filipino too, but it just sinks him into a stupor he can't get out of for another long time.

His mind is a tangled rush of heat. His ears ring incessantly, snatches of voices pulling through and whirling, bringing half-dredged memories to the undulating surface: Octavia screaming for their mother, Shumway's boot in his ribs, Atom's desperate begging for death. Other images – faces he can't recognise in this regressed state – of people stabbed to death, strangled to death, whipped, shot, burnt alive…

And revealed at the centre of all of them stands a girl, a halo of gold surrounding every kind word, every cruel move, every single calculated action she makes. Bellamy relaxes and is energised by her; she will keep him safe, and he tries to do the same for her. Except people keep coming to take her: stab her in the stomach, roast her with rockets, shoot her in the back of the head. And he throws himself in front of her time and time again, but it's always, always too late. And that knowledge – that he can't save her – sends him into a pit of despair, always filled with more enemies killing her.

His heart beats a mile a minute, its footfalls covering the Earth swifter than Bellamy could even dream of. Shouts in his ears make it pulse harder, and his body seizes with toxic pain. Cool thuds against his skin don't help; everything just adds to the sensation of being roasted in steam over a giant rocket fire.

And at the height of this mountain of pain, the very deepest tunnel he can find in the mine of heat, he finally finds a lifeline. A voice.

The tune is simple and plaintive. Soothing. A balm that soothes his inflamed mind just enough to access sensible memory for a moment.

Nang munti pang bata sa piling ni nanay, nais kong maulit ang awit ni inang mahal…

A lullaby. One his mother sang to him, then to Glaiza when her mother died, and then to Octavia. Her voice had been so loving, so beautiful. She'd had several songs from her homeland: 'Pangako', 'Ikaw Ang Ligaya Ko', 'Kung Ako'y May Aasawa'.

This tune, 'Sa Ugoy ng Duyan', was the song he had the earliest memories of, though. And they flood his mind with distorted images and sounds and emotions. Something nags at him, his mind trying to remind him of something. Something important. Someone, maybe. What was it?

His mother. He'd lost her now, they were on the ground… And yet these aren't the revelations. Bellamy goes searching, through the red landscape, twisting, but the lullaby is still there, weaving between the landscape. He remembers the incredible greens and browns of the wood, how there's none of this blood red in the wonderful forest.

The damn lullaby. He wants to search for his mother in the red instead, just melt into that, but his heart has other ideas. It wants to hear the song – starts telling him there's a loving girl right next to him, he has to stay for her – and Bellamy is propelled into semi-consciousness.

Only, there's been a pause in the music. "Awit ng pag-ibig… habang ako'y na…sa duyan," he whispers in pants. Song of love in the cradle.

It's so beautiful.

He wants so badly to sleep now.

"Bellamy?" He tries to open his eyes. Someone's calling him. But even when his eyelids are open, he can't see, and – and –

He starts gasping, panicking, the weight of sand in his lungs seeming to absorb even more water within seconds. It sends him into chaotic shock. The singer starts garbling behind him, saying "Clarke! Clarke!" on repeat.

The arm which had been across his chest is abruptly pulled off, the figure at his side uncurling. He feels her hair across his face and it slows his gasps of fear. She strokes through his hair and the tenderness comforts.

"Octavia?" Maybe it's her. He can't imagine anyone else staying by his side like this.

But the singer… Clarke, she had said. Clarke.

She's the only face beside Octavia's that he can still see through the darkness of his mind. Bright. Faithful. True. Strong.

And he wants her, more than anyone else, beside him.

"O, I…" He coughs, and the girl with him – Octavia, it's got to be – trickles water into his mouth. He forces his lips and throat around the words. "Octavia, I need you. I need Clarke. Can you get her for me?"

His helper stills, listens to someone repeating parts of his words, even as the hand on his shoulder shakes. Octavia, kailangan kita…

"Bellamy… stay with me." She turns back around, saying something quietly – brokenly – in a voice that wavers on at its worst and if he makes it through. Bellamy clutches her hand, hard.

"Kailangan so kiya," he manages to get out. His eyes are stinging, his body racing itself to the end. Repeats, "I need her, I need Clarke. Where is she?"

She says something back, or at least tries to, but her words are drowned in the desperate gasps and blood fuzz of his head. And if he's going to drown in his own blood, then he needs to pay the last debt standing, leave Earth with every unresolved tie paid out blue.

He can't let his sister live while blaming Clarke – because, being the stubborn Blake she is, that's what she'll do.

"Octavia," he gasps, "mahal so kiya. Mahal so kiya."

There's a quiet sigh in the background, but Bellamy blindly grabs for the hand soothing his cheek. It is bringing him spots of peace amongst the inner turmoil. He needs to hold both of these hands for as long as he can, cling to that brief oasis of peace, and he doesn't want to face death, doesn't want to leave them now –

I won't be dragged down, he tries to shout, but his body is pulling away, so he concentrates every fibre of his being on the hands in his and the tears hitting his skin, and he builds his own life raft from memory to carry him.

His heart begins to tire, crack from the effort, but Bellamy fights, carrying the spirit of her with him.

It takes a very long time to beat back all the monsters and armies of darkness. So, so, long, trudging, weary, desperate. And when he has nearly won, he is so exhausted that another darkness – with a quite different feel to it, warmer and kinder than the last – envelops everything. He doesn't even dream.

Eventually, when he wakes, it bears more of a touch of reality – a proper awakening, less drenched in images from his own head. Quiet, too. Cooler. Bellamy lies still, his body sweaty and tickling and wrecked from the fight that's still not quite over.

So why did he wake when there's so much healing left to do?

And then he hears words, crackled and to a more swaying tune than he'd heard them before, so it takes a moment to realise he knows them. "Bésame, bésame mucho, como si fuera esta noche la última vez…"

There's a frustrated sigh in the middle, accompanied by a metal thwack, before the singer continues to mumble her tune in the morning quiet. The vague splashes and conversations from the main camp provide a comforting canvas of reality in the background. When she gets to "Que tengo miedo a perderte, perderte después," Bellamy realises that this old Spanish love song – that he doesn't even know the meaning of – is managing to wake his strength again. Very slowly, note by note, a little feeling returns to him.

He tries to turn his head a little to see the girl and fails. Has to stay still for a moment to regain his strength. He knows her voice as an ally, easily, but can't summon the face or name. Concrete nouns are still too far-flung from the epicentre of the crater the poison has made of his mind.

One way to summon her. And anyway, it's what his tired mind demands.

Bellamy quietly joins in. His strained, badly-prounounced rasp of "Quiero tenerte muy cerca," isn't fully registered, although the girl quietens as she sings the next line – "Mirarme en tus ojos

verte junto a mi" – so she can hear him sing too.

Within a second, she's standing over him, eyes wide and hands on hips. Her face… he runs it through the database, mentally sighing in relief when it finally matches with Raven. "Bellamy Blake, you dark polyglot horse. First all this Filipino, and now Spanish?" She carefully begins the process of getting to the ground with a bad leg, shaking her head as she goes. "I didn't think Clarke's bringing-you-back-with-song theory would actually work, wow… Too bad you let me go through all seven of the other Spanish songs I know first before we finally hit gold."

Bellamy coughs, trying to wetten his dry throat. Raven takes the hint and slowly tips a tin cup to his mouth.

Eventually, Bellamy's able to talk properly, although it takes him a moment to remember how to access English. Even then, it sounds like a rusty hinge. "My Mom was Filipino, so we spoke Tagalog most of the time with her. I don't know Spanish." The song had only ever been about the soulful sounds of love it transmitted to him, the aphasic listener.

"Then how'd you know that old song?" Raven asks him, unabashed. "Andrea Bocelli didn't just plant himself in your home by accident."

Bellamy frowns, recalling misty memories of his mother crooning it to his little sister when she cried in the dead of night. "My mother said it was one of the three good things she got from my father. Me, Octavia and 'Bésame Mucho'. He used to sing it to her." He coughs again.

Raven's eyebrows are creeping up her face. "Your dad spoke Spanish? Who was he?"

"Don't know. Mom never told. She was adamant." He tries to turn his head away to signal the conversation over, but it takes too much effort and his eyes close of their own accord.

Before cool darkness envelops him again, Bellamy hears Raven snort softly. He doesn't have time to wonder why before he drops over the edge into unconsciousness.

Waking again is difficult work. Bellamy floats for hours in a semi-conscious prison, anxieties teasing him, but unable to break out and vanquish them with rationale. Exhaustion eventually reclaims him, but only a few hours later he's left sweating in the desert of semi-awareness: someone helping him drink, throwing off his blankets, talking to him, and he can't get to them. There are more songs; but none of them help.

In fact, in the end, it's the silence that works.

Some part of his brain must slowly pick up that he is surrounded by complete silence. It sends warning bells after several hours of this strange lack of noise, because camp with the delinquents is never completely devoid of sound. And like the desperately caring dad-slash-leader he is, anxieties surface about what terrible things could be happening and tug on him until he's suddenly breathing easily, and his body is back where it should be, fully under control of his sleepy but rational mind.

Finally.

It's tempting to just lie there, revelling in the feeling of control and (tired) normalcy once more, but Bellamy can't bear the idea of leaving Clarke alone to cope with everything for one minute more. She must've been shouldering so much in these days – and has Harper made it? Did Octavia return, or was she a figment of his fevered brain?

"Clarke?" he croaks. Where is she? Bellamy tries again, voice more insisting – "Clarke" – but there's nothing. She wouldn't leave him – or any patient – without a supervisor unless something terrible had happened.

Shit. He grits his teeth, braces his hands on the floor to push up.

The effect is less than spectacular. Bellamy barely makes it to sitting position, arm muscles trembling and stomach squeezing, before he has to rest, panting. It's only in glancing around the room for distraction that he notices her.

Five feet to his left, Clarke is crashed out on the floor. She's on her front, head pillowed on her arm, and splayed as if she'd fallen, but – Bellamy realises with the tiniest hint of a smile – she's probably just not slept for two days straight and couldn't stop herself. Whereas he's on a pallet, swaddled blankets kicked aside, there's only a measly rag of a blanket pulled over Clarke. It has the feel of Monty's handiwork.

He can just see Harper's feet poking around the corner, and though his friend's breaths are laboured, Bellamy relaxes in the knowledge that she's under the best care. She'll pull through, with Clarke's help.

God, what a battle it's been. Stupid plants.

He knows he should probably lie down again; Clarke would want (well, instruct) him to rest, and clearly the camp isn't at risk after all. But from here, he's got a wonderful vantage point to watch her soft breathing flutter the strands of knotted hair that have settled near her bitten-raw lips. There's deep lines of exhaustion written in her face, which even in sleep looks saddened. Bellamy wishes, with a powerful yank on his heartstrings, that she should never have to look that way again. And the fact that he's caused it just deepens the ache.

Carefully, he shuffles a foot closer to her. Checks that nobody's outside, watching him watching Clarke – which just makes it sound creepzoid, but he can't help himself any more than a waterfall can just stop falling, and really it's taking everything in him to not curl around her as it is. The desire to enjoy the simple pleasure of curving around his most trusted friend has his fingers aching to lie down next to her. But it's only from this closer distance that Bellamy can really see the layer of dirt around her face and hands, and – through these signs of devotion – tear tracks are etched in.

Bellamy has to close his eyes, the urge to protect her and claim her is so strong. And when did it get like this? When did his urge towards Clarke manage to outgrow the worn pull towards his sister?

It's in the middle of this inner war that Clarke's eyes slowly open. She blinks, trying to brush aside the sleepiness, and it's already too late for Bellamy to pretend like he wasn't watching over her (whatever, they've both done it in their time) so he just enjoys seeing understanding filter in and warm her face.

"Bellamy," she breathes, pushing up from the floor. Part of him registers that his own tensely-held expression has melted right into dedicated tenderness, but mostly he's just full of ClarkeClarkeClarke and they've both thrown themselves at each other and he envelops his partner and squeezes her as tight as he dares.

She's hugging him back just as tightly, and his eyes are closed and face buried in her golden tangles, his hot breaths absorbed by her. Clarke takes a shuddering breath in his arms, shaking slightly as she tries to hold back tears, but Bellamy's already failing at it, their mutual relief overwhelming and crashing. For a glorious long moment, he revels in the glorious sunlight that is holding Clarke, his soul peaceful for this extended pause in time.

But there's words he still has to say to her, and the value of precious seconds alone has never been lost on him. "Clarke," he mumbles, voice threatening to crack, "you saved me."

"We save each other," she replies immediately, sniffing at the end. "Though one of these days, your stupid near-death experiences will be the near-death of the rest of us. I can't believe you almost died on me."

Clarke draws back, and Bellamy complies reluctantly, his arms empty without her. But it means he can study her face better again, watch the weak relief that trickles across her expression as they just breathe, together.

"When I was in there…" Bellamy shakes his head, words spilling without his meaning to let them go. "I almost couldn't come up. It was you who kept me here." And on an impulse, he can't stop the final words: "Don't leave me, Clarke. I need you."

She smiles gently, as if replaying the time when she said that to him, a beam of early sunshine from the half-open door illuminating her hair brilliantly. "Kailangan kita, too."

He can't keep the wide smile off his face. "You learnt Tagalog?"

"You spoke it enough," she scoffs. "Thanks for telling me before that you're bilingual, asshole. I had to learn the basics from Glass."

His expression dims a little as he is transported back to those hazy hours. And the realisation that Octavia must have been all an image, after all. So who heard…?

"What did she teach you?" It takes too much strength to match her gaze, the stone of fear in his chest making his fingers shake in hers, and when did they start holding hands? It feels so safe to clasp her hand like this, a promise to be his anchor, and he never wants to have to let go.

"Kailangan kita; I need you. Huwag mo akong iiwan; don't leave me. Tulungan mo ako; help me." Her voice breaks on that, and Bellamy's face shoots up to see Clarke's eyes shining with tears. "You said that one a lot," she explains, voice swollen. "You cried them all a lot."

Without thinking it through, he pulls her head to his chest, where she begins to sob. "Hey, I'm not – I'm not leaving you either. And you did help me." He tries to keep his voice soothing, one hand around her back, the other stroking her head. Searches for a distraction, and finds it in the rock of anxiety sitting in him. "Any more Tagalog?"

"Mahal ko siya," Clarke gets out between breaths.

It stops his strokes for a moment. He must have stiffened too, because Clarke looks up at him, her face swollen from the crying.

"Did Glass tell you what that one meant?" he asks, face turned away. He can still feel Clarke's head shake side to side.

"She said that was one for you. But… I think I know." His eyes snap down to hers, but it's her turn to look away, closing her eyes with anguish written across her face.

And that's all it takes for the rock to crack, its shards flowing through him to lodge in his nerves, lungs, heart.

There's a noise from the doorway, but by the time Bellamy lifts his eyes, they're already gone. Clarke doesn't appear to have noticed, anyway. Her hands are shaking, and she tries to push away from him.

"I need you, Bellamy. But we can't ever be more than co-leaders." When her watering eyes meet his, a painful ache fills his chest so he almost can't breathe again. "You know that. We've both known that for a while. For the kids. If we broke up… if anything happened…"

"It'd be about as messy as it would be now." He tries to recapture her hand. Her expression just worsens under his terse desperation. "Clarke. Come on. If it's just me overstepping, you can just say now. I won't press you, make it awkward."

She has to look away, more tears spilling down her face as the emerging sun lights up her eyelashes. She doesn't need to say anything for him to know, right to his core, that Clarke feels the same way as him. And that she believes that in this, she cannot be allowed to accept happiness. "We can't. Not with the adults looking to our bunch of delinquents and already thinking…"

"Your mom likes me. She respects us, Clarke." But already his heart is falling off a cliff, and he's losing her. "Clarke, you were the only thing that kept me alive when I almost died. Life's too short for not – "

"We can't put ourselves first." She stumbles upright, rubbing her face. "Whenever anything happened, you'd want to save me rather than take the sacrifice to save the group."

He can't deny it. It's too late to change that desire, way too late and he's too far gone. "But we both know that we both have to put the kids first. It's what we've always done, we're not slaves to emotions, we can still do that." Desperation tears at him. "I know you, Clarke. Mahal kita."

Even the sound is intimate, because who else can share this with them? It's the one thing he thought was theirs, and theirs alone, but Clarke has lain it open for him, pointed to where all their delinquents sit between them. The words force Clarke to meet his gaze a final time. "This – our feelings – stay in here. We can't do this."

"Yes, we can." How can she reject his love – his love for her – when she carries the same?

"Please, Bellamy." She sags, as if her dreadful decision is too weighty for carrying alone, and in that moment Bellamy knows he'll help her carry it for all the reasons she wants to silence.

He can't look at her as he gives a single, resigned nod.

His heart breaks to the sound of her footsteps going down the drop ship door and into the morning.