( yeah, i'd rather be a lover than a fighter )

[baring]

who: bellamy blake (baring), clarke griffin (skaikru), her adopted people, and YOU! | ( 3 open prompts, 1 semi-closed )
when: mid may, post-party
where: various locations
summary: there's no getting around the fact that clarke's been here for months. there's also no getting around bellamy's refusal to leave her side. time to face the damn music and figure out a new normal.
warnings: blanket warning for the 100's everything. nothing graphic or violent planned but the meta of both bellamy and clarke will probably go to some dark and unfortunate places. feel free to opt-out here on his permissions post.

I'M IN NEED OF A SAVIOR, BUT I'M NOT ASKING FOR FAVORS. | clarke griffin + bellamy blake ( VARIOUS LOCATIONS, SEMI-OPEN TO EVERYONE BUT EBALON AND LA PLUMA 🙃 )

( friends, enemies, casual acquaintances, neighbors, and begrudging allies — you've all met clarke griffin, right? 5'5", blonde, best described as fucking reckless and angry, but like, with a purpose. she's been here since the beginning, jumped off the serena eterna and very publicly died against the side of pirate jenny's galleon. got her arm chopped off in the televised battle royale, and recently took a pair of lobster crackers to the captain's head while sitting in his lap in the middle of a party. basically always looks like she's about to cry, punch someone in the face, or grind her teeth so hard they crack under the pressure of all her anxieties. bleeds black blood, still looks a little crispy from maybe-dying in a nuclear apocalypse. exudes an air of forlorn loneliness, and begrudgingly started making friends. only really gets excited about antibiotics and chocolate cake. doesn't wash her clothes enough, has been the doomsday caller on the corner insisting they were all going to die from day one...

well guess what, you're about to start see her smiling. a lot.

small, still-sad smiles; like tragic inside jokes are being passed back and forth between her and the young man who arrived just recently, and seemingly immediately glued himself to her side. and her to his.

catch them walking through the hallways together, oddly mirrored images of emaciated, battle weary youths. or spot them sitting in a corner table of the dining halls, her picking at a sparse plate of meat whilst he hunches over a bowl of soup. or maybe you see the two of them out on deck, clarke gesturing all about like a tour guide — look, that's where pirate jenny swelled from the sea and almost drowned us all; that's the direction the skiff from the island returned from; there's no fish in the sea; that's the bridge up there; here are the most strategic points i've found in the event of an on-board war, etc — while bellamy takes it all in with a perpetual air of disbelieving acceptance. they're probably also found in all and sundries, clarke shoving bottled water, prepackaged snacks, and soap into his arms before giving him the rundown on how to "check out", despite no actual money being necessary. or maybe at the mouth of the newly erected tommy bahama's, neither complaining about the gaudy patterns all that much — still not quite over the novelty of new and clean.

anywhere along the ship, those few who have become friends and confidants may be flagged down by clarke with an almost unnatural air of enthusiasm. anyone else who approaches will be politely greeted, and introduced to — )

This is Bellamy.

( unless it's ebalon or la pluma, in which case clarke's immediately clamming up, and putting hands on bellamy to usher him away. )

MY WHOLE LIFE I'VE FELT LIKE A BURDEN. I THINK TOO MUCH AND I HATE IT. | LIBRARY, OPEN.

( if there were any informational texts to be found, clarke would already have them stashed and earmarked. that isn't good enough. what purpose does a library have, if not to help people educate themselves?

bellamy has to see the library with his own eyes and make his own judgment call on whether it's useless. he trusts clarke; this isn't about that. it's about books. actual physical copies of books were limited on the ark, rarities in the form of personal collections that either passed hand-to-hand or were kept aside, criminally untouched in private collections. most texts were accessible via tablet, presuming you had the credentials. classes were generally lectured from flawed memory, arbitrarily passed to the next generation by word-of-mouth. he runs his freshly scrubbed fingers over the spines, skimming titles and authors in quiet wonderment. is this what people on earth had, before? stories that weren't crumbling to pieces, water or fire-damaged, missing pages?

he pulls several in his rummaging, opening them to thumb through the pages, puzzling over the binding on hardcover copies.

up and down a ladder, he inspects the uppermost shelves as well, probably with a goofy smile on his face.

just wait until he tells octavia ab—

expression darkening, he closes that particular book in a snap and stows it away where he found it. eventually, less sulkily, he winds up cross-legged on the floor with a semi-circle of books around him. the running theme seems to be shakespeare and any roman-themed ( greek will suffice ) fiction he can find.

when he isn't surveilling the ship, collecting supplies like a retriever and/or following clarke like a menacing shadow, he can be found descending down the literary hole with tunnel vision. he's either startled out of his reverie with a, ) Did you say something?

( or more inquisitively, disturbing another reader to ask, )

Fifty shades of what now? ( SQUINT ) But there aren't that many.

( please humor the man. he is clearly handicapped by a lack of taste, what with that shirt, those socks and really impractical khaki pants that are too tight and without nearly enough pockets. )

I'M SO USED TO BEING IN THE WRONG, I'M TIRED OF CARING. | TUAVA ( BUT CAN BE TWEAKED TO WHATEVER BAR ), OPEN.

( you ever have one of those nights where you can't stand anyone or anything? you can't sleep because you're too exhausted but too alert to give yourself permission to rest? can't eat it away, can't shower it away? in a hopeless attempt to cross everything off the list, he even tries jogging in start-and-stop laps around the sports deck. the runner's high gives him a head rush stronger than any deprivation while an alarm was blaring in space. all it does is make him miss raven and echo, and being knocked flat on his back repeatedly. so naturally, he runs that much harder to steal the wind from his own lungs. bellamy exercises until his hands are on his knees and he's a heaving mess, concerned he's about to lean over the railing and hurl up his soup from dinner earlier.

the edginess lingers after his second shower of the day, doesn't go swirling down the drain with his shampoo like he wishes it would.

he wanders the many shops and entertainment without any real direction in mind, giving clarke her first real solitude since his arrival and allowing himself to shake out the feelings he's been bottling up on purpose.

his feet lead him to a whiskey bar of all places. he stands in the entry for a whopping thirty seconds—don't do this, you don't do this—and then he shrugs off the little voice in his head that reminds him incessantly of his responsibilities ( how clarke needs him to be strong, how their people are probably waiting for them to come home ). but for the next hour, bellamy wants to sit slouched in a loveseat with a leg drawn up, bent at the knee but preoccupying the entire piece of furniture with how he's spread out. a half-full glass rests on his thigh with his hand over it. if anyone happens to look up or moves to sit across from him, he'll raise his glass in answer. but, he doesn't have much to say.

he's spent the last six months playing clue in his head, wondering who would kill who with what and where, if he didn't unplug the oxygenator first because they could all be so aggravating in close quarters. only, for tonight, he misses them. because for the first time without octavia in his life, he still had a family. there were these people around him constantly, filling a wound in him.

lamely and without more than a tired smile, he tilts his head to the side and gestures with his free hand. )

Can I buy you a drink? ( sorry, friend, he's running on empty. )

LOVING NEVER GAVE ME A HOME, SO I'LL SIT HERE IN THE SILENCE. | ADULT POOL, OPEN.

( reasons why we do not drink in our ripe old age: The Hangover. The Hangover, different than a hangover ( lowercase ), finds you, cracks you over the head with the nearest blunt object ( a flamingo-shaped bookend ) and plays some god awful bubblegum pop song on a loop until you die. maybe that latter part is more the serena eterna than bellamy, but he can't be sure this song wasn't on maya's ipod that jasper inherited. was it? is this hell?

when he accomplishes crawling ( yes ) out of bed and finding a pair of shorts, he blearily stumbles to the pool deck for some much needed sunshine with some weird sandals and chunky pink, plastic sunglasses. his curls may or may not be defying gravity in whatever manner they please. the towel around his shoulders like a cape is the closet bellamy gets to locating a shirt in his zombie shuffle to one of the beach chairs.

forty-five minutes later and this man is staring at the water like an uninterested cat, nodding off in his chair. this is what the kids are calling suntanning, right? unintentionally falling asleep and gaining more freckles? okay, cool.

except every time he almost falls asleep the umph tiss umph tiss starts up and he jumps, heart-racing, panic! at the pool, party of one. )

This is not what dreams are made of. I've got to get out of here.

( ABORT PLAN!!!! ABORT!!! it's too late, he's standing at an unfortunate time, rising as someone approaches to sit next to him and now here they are, nose-to-nose(ish) - height differences, you know. someone flails, there's grabbing, a teeter-totter effect and then maybe this ends in a meet-cute and not murder. that happens, doesn't it? surely, two people can plummet into a beach chair and not go to battle. )

Comments

so far from a savior but he's here (cw for his yucky obsessiveness)

[mooninthewater]

[ This is curiosity, he tells himself, as he cloaks himself in camouflage to follow around this new person with who he considers his commander. He's curious about who this is. Where he's from. Why he hasn't seen him around. Why Clarke is so friendly with him. Why Clarke is so happy, suddenly. Why she's guiding him around. This isn't jealousy. This is curiosity. Just because Clarke is with someone he's never seen before and being so kind and friendly with him and smiling doesn't mean he's jealous. He's curious. That's it.

If there are shadows in places there shouldn't be, it's nothing to worry about. Everything is okay! Mizuki is telling himself this.

After some consideration and quiet investigation, he can put together that this is probably someone from Clarke's home. It doesn't make that festering obsessiveness he feels die down any, but he can at least pretend it does. He's a little upset he's never heard about this person before. He's a little upset that someone is making Clarke this happy when he's hardly gotten his own smiles out of her. But just a little. That's okay, though. Thus once they are distracted by something or other, Mizuki decides he's fine to leave here. If he's a friend, then Clarke is okay. So he uncloaks and turns on a heel to go back to more fun, distracting things that don't involve following around the person he's most grossly attached to.

Until he's suddenly being called after. Cool, cool, cool. No, this is fine, he can be nonchalant about this. For a moment, he fiddles with the umbrella in his hand, and then finally makes his way (back) over to Clarke and Bellamy. He puts on the usual smile — warm, friendly, and filled with positivity. ]

Hallo, hallo~. I'm Mizuki! [ He's too busy twisting his umbrella around in his hands for a handshake, but he does give a slight bow of his head. ] It's nice to meet you!

[baring]

( on the contrary, there is nothing but things to worry about, regardless of what mizuki is telling himself.

the entire duration of the time that clarke is doing what he boils down to her daily routine, painting all the pictures of her experiences, giving him a front row seat to her memories, he can’t shake the feeling that they’re being watched. it’s a pinprick paranoia, one that makes him edgy. bellamy can’t place it. there’s no rhyme or reason, beyond being on a cruise ship that thrives on spilled blood and misery, apparently. if he has to evaluate the feeling for what it is, then it has to be because of how they survived on earth. that’s what bellamy concludes, not that he’s strictly in the habit of gaslighting himself into doubting his instincts. the same instincts that have kept him alive by the skin of his teeth.

he can’t attribute the suspicion to anything or anyone. )

Hi. ( a spare glance between clarke and this umbrella-twirling individual—Mizuki. remind him to tell clarke she sucks at introducing people. he doesn’t lie by agreeing with the sentiment; how would he know that? it’s too soon to tell. ) How did the two of you meet?

1/3

[skaikru]

( simultaneously: )

In containment —

2/3

[mooninthewater]

At a party!

3/3

[skaikru]

( ah, well...

no, that's technically not wrong, though the look she's shooting mizuki is mildly aggrieved. then dragging her gaze back to bellamy's face and giving a half-shrug of her shoulders. )

...While contained at a party. The doors wouldn't unlock until we talked to each other, asked questions, and traded stickers.

( do you ever experience things in life so absolutely bonkers, that they feel like very real happenings in the moment — the threat of being locked in a room with a couple dozen strangers, the fact the doors couldn't be cut or magicked down, tormenting gal friday into bleeding and getting her first glimpse of the captain's bored monotone through their cruise directors not-mouth — but then you're asked to explain them out loud and they just sound... stupid? and you've just gotta wince a tiny bit, but carry on regardless?

yeah, that's where clarke's at in this moment. )

[mooninthewater]

[ Whoops! It was a fun game, though, right? Asking questions, getting to know each other, etc. Mizuki sure had fun. And he made a good friend! Because that's obviously what they were when Clarke left the party mildly disturbed at the little jellyfish with the very same smile on his face that he has on now. ]

We had a fun psychological talk about things like the trolley problem, the prisoner's dilemma and traumatic hysteria. If we could have, I probably would have gone into some more game theory questions. Those are my favorite. Ehe...

[ And that alone was enough to get him to cling onto her. Shouldn't have answered those questions so well, Clarke! ]

Clarke is very valiant and has some quick decision-making skills. I quite admire her.

[baring]

( in the labyrinth of mouse-in-a-cage, he knows how quickly one thing can lead to another. rationale forced to play the backdrop to adrenaline. as a man unable to unstitch his heart from his sleeve, he sometimes excels at mind-over-matter. he’s tempering himself for the sole purpose of meeting the collective of her allies. it occurs to him to push up his nose and snub the idea of sides again—hers, theirs, yours, they’re all here on the chopping block. it doesn’t matter who they identify with, though opening the floor for a debate with clarke sounds like more work than one day of putting names to faces.

fun psychological talk: red flag. that’s what he sifts out of the dirt because otherwise he’ll be looking at clarke like a dead fish. stickers? hadn’t she metaphorically handed him a loaded gun and told him this is your ammunition? we’re going to die. )

Yeah. There’s nothing more entertaining than what someone is capable of when they have no good choices. ( why is mizuki so chipper? it’s not directly combative, though admittedly skeptical. ) Theoretically, of course.

( looking at clarke now with the same focus of navigating a minefield; this is the way of them, of clarke roping in new people. )

She's admirable. I wouldn't bet against her. ( he is not a fountain of giving right now. back to mizuki: ) You're smart not to.

[skaikru]

( nothing more entertaining than fun psychological conversations for some, and nothing quite as cathartic as cracking the seal on deeply internalized trauma and freely admitting to personal failures of morality for others. for whatever it's worth, she'd tried to serve mizuki answers as unbiasedly as possible, he just ended up having a very odd sense of heroism and a propensity to project which... she'd failed to actively discourage.

on a fresh page of interaction, there's nothing more mortifying than standing between two people and weathering (ugh) compliments. in fact, it's a physical struggle not to pull her mouth into the slightest of sneers. and looking up to catch bellamy's eyes, she offers the slightest shakes of her head. a denial, hand in hand with an admission: i tried... to tell mizuki he was wrong. tried to impress on him there were no such things as heroes, and that in the end she'd killed more people with those decisions than she'd ever saved. but that chipper disposition gives 'way to a childish sort of innocence at the most inconvenient times, and it's proven hard to fight with him when so much as a slightly raised voice sends him shrinking into the shadows. later she might try to better explain to bellamy how she and the blue haired boy ended up in this weird but tightly bound sort of relationship, but... it'd require more candor than she's willing to divulge in front of mizuki himself.

she doesn't want to hurt his feelings.

nor look a gift guard-dog in the mouth, when he'd proved to be a better foot solider than a listener. )

Anyway. ( let's not linger here, moving on quickly and gesturing to each of them in turn — )

Mizuki is the ( jellyfish, but she's an ounce of respect for how he chooses to introduce himself. ) sea jelly I told you about.

And Bellamy's from my home. We first met when we landed on Earth, and he's been my friend, confidant, and co-leader to our people since. ( arguably with a few breaks here and there, but. semantics. )

[mooninthewater]

Right, exactly! You get it!!! [ The choices when there's no "right" answer truly are the best. Especially because it opens up a whole slew of opportunities for Mizuki to pick apart people's brains and learn from the best what to do in those situations himself. And now, somehow, we're here, where Mizuki decided that Clarke is the person he should be following around. Things happen a lot, do not worry about this. ]

From your home? Ah, I'm sorry that you got stuck here with the rest of us, but I'm glad Clarke got to see a familiar face. Don't worry, though, if there's anyone who can figure out a way to get back, it's her.

[ You thought the complimenting was done, Clarke? Please. Mizuki is nothing if not a kiss ass. Also, well, he's maybe still in his jealous mode, so he has to shower her with compliments otherwise he's not doing a good job. ]

But yes, I'm a sea jelly, in layman's terms. In my world, specifically, I am an Aegir, a sea-faring race. My variant of Aegir just happens to also be cnidarian. Sea jellies. And Clarke is one of the first friends I've made here, too~.

[baring]

( he remembers. clarke kneeling in a clearing, doing what he couldn’t — strong, resolute, singing a chilling lullaby, and he knew suddenly ( in the same way he knew he was a coward ) that clarke could do anything, would do what was required of her. the same way he remembers resenting her spine; the challenging rise of her chin, that condescending tone, her insistence that they needed each one of their people to come down from the ark in as gentle of a flaming crash landing as possible. he’s not bluffing, nor is bellamy using rancor in his description of clarke. she is a wonder and not all wonders are magnificent, however paralysis-inducing they may be.

she objects and bellamy pulls in a breath, sticking a pin in that conversation for later. more than their fair share of disagreements, that staircase in the bunker leading to the hatch in particular, but he’s here, isn’t he? meeting her people.

but mizuki is here and he’s exclaiming that he and bellamy are brain twins or some such nonsense, and he doesn’t. he doesn’t get it. he wants to dig in with his teeth and tear at the point. figure out where and how this person has had a singular experience with hard choices, with blood and gore and murder, to be this ecstatic about it. he doesn’t disagree about clarke because she always finds a way; right, wrong - inconsequential. a path nonetheless. )

I'm not worried.

( his norse mythology is nonexistent, other than bigger names and words that might have been mirrored in greek or roman texts, so he blinks accordingly, following as best he can. )

And what are Aegirs known for, specifically? Your variant. In your world. From a curious friend of a friend to a friend of a friend. ( he’s perfectly civil, clarke, do not change the subject again. ) I'm human with very few distinctions to set me apart from other humans.

( but there are some markers. )

[mooninthewater]

[ Mizuki shoots the occasional glance at Clarke. Whether that be for some kind of sign he should stop talking or he's brought up something weird, or something like that, but she seems mostly just the Clarke-version of pouty that she's having to deal with Mizuki's doting. Guess he can just keep talking, then?

Mizuki doesn't seem to pick up on expression and tone all that well, so he's not really able to pick up the subtext of any of this. Fortunately? He's sort of looking for a reason to be mad at Bellamy right now, after. But only because he truly is a clingy piece of shit. For now, though, he merely teeters in place. ]

Hm. Being... sea-faring? [ How does one explain their species/race to someone else? He tries to think about it. ] We... can talk, breathe, and withstand deep pressure underwater? My variant are usually known for our stings, though. And how long our stingers are, of course. [ Among other things, but things like camouflage and having a siren-esque voice and cannibalism are not exclusive to sea jellies, so he doesn't think to bring it up.

He taps his chin with a knuckle for a moment, pondering, then looks back to Bellamy. ]

I don't know much about humans in general. We don't have them in my world. But the things I've learned so far have been quite fascinating.

[baring]

( have no fear mizuki, it’s probably a mixed bag of having to tolerate both of them. bellamy has been no peach on this tour. it’s possible that he’s lashing out at the wrong people due to being trapped, it’s also possible that he’s not going to reflect and think about that today. or any day in the first couple of weeks. he’s repressed everything in the last year, why not add this to the tally?

if he could go and pull an encyclopedia down from the library, he would be hoarding entire volumes at a time. tragically, he has to operate by word-of-mouth, by fill-in-the-blank tales that don’t explain everything. the takeaway’s not a threat, it’s stilled jotted down in memory. a dozen questions follow: how long can he breathe underwater? has he explored? did he see anything?

if mizuki had, would they even be here? self-explanatory. )

We destroyed our planet. Twice. We’re surprisingly resilient in spite of the fact that nearly everything can kill us. ( he shrugs. ) Is there anything you want to know? I can’t promise we’re as riveting as sea-faring beings. Maybe we’re both biased towards our own kind.

[mooninthewater]

[ Yes, well, being the antithesis of the other person surrounding Clarke seems to be a very Classic Mizuki© move at this point. He's not trying to be, of course. Maybe Clarke just needs to hang around more optimists? ]

So I've noticed. It's good to know many of you have the same structure of thought, as well. It's certainly made it easier to understand everyone. Learning about your worlds and how being there has effected your decision-making skills has also been a treat~. [ A warm smile to Clarke here. ] And, of course, meeting some real heroes is sort of like a dream~.

And, anyway, [ Back to Bellamy. ] I wouldn't say I'm biased at all. I may know more about Aegir, but I've enjoyed socializing with all the people who've made it on board thus far. I haven't really met a bad human yet. Considering the sample size, that's impressive~!

[skaikru]

( if she were a weaker person, that aside from mizuki would absolutely had clarke shoving her face into her hands and screaming. softly. mildly. a gentle sort of frustrated scream. as it is, she's just hovering off to the side, neck stained an uncomfortable sort of ruddy red-black. teeth pressed tight, fighting off an urge to bring her hand to her mouth and start gnawing at a nail. mizuki invokes the term heroes again, and that sets clarke to shaking her head even as he turns his attention back to bellamy. she's tried, tried outright to insist the world wasn't as black and white as this — just because someone seems valiant on one side a conflict doesn't mean they're forgiven for their crimes by the opposition.

every blood drenched warrior was someone's boogeyman.

then she sees an opening and scrambles to take hold of it. clears her throat, points out very firmly — )

The Captain. He's human, or was. And is a very bad person.

( dragging attention back to everyone's mutual enemy here, which tends to smooth out any bumps in the road to camaraderie if they could all just focus on the end game plan. )

[baring]

( that. there. do humans think the same? for so long, bellamy was consoled and spurred on by the concept of sides: them and us. but if praimfaya taught him anything, if watching hundreds of people die every time he and clarke made a decision, it’s that mizuki is right. most of them do think the same. those who aren’t stock still with fear are willing to contribute to the fight. it’s concerning that mizuki attributes it to heroics because nothing about saving their people has ever felt good. he doesn’t say anything, can’t, won’t.

he levels him with a look while clarke cuts in, categorizing that kind of all or nothing thinking with the caution it deserves. bellamy would know. )

We’re all bad people. ( no ifs, ands, or buts. it doesn’t need further identifiers. and some of us are delusional comes his unbidden thought. he's feeling out the edges as if in a pitch black room, blindly, with his hands. clarke will tell him what her point is, so it's at mizuki that he pitches: ) What do you make of the Captain?

[mooninthewater]

[ Mizuki continues to hold his smile, but those eyes of his get considerable darker at the accusation of all people being "bad". It really doesn't sit well with him. Especially so, since Mizuki's view on people are very black and white. His head lulls a moment, trying to very politely choose his next words. Clarke is right here, after all, and it's not like he's going to do anything without her order, but this conversation is suddenly very sour for a certain jellyfish. Not that it's ever been particularly sweet, either. ]

Is that so? What makes you say that? Is it because you consider yourself a bad person, or because you skew your views to suit an easier to swallow narrative?

[ And, for now, the question about the Captain is being ignored. Both because "Of course the Captain is a bitch and I hate him" should be everyone's thoughts about the fucker, but also because he's very focused on that other thing for right now.

Sorry, Clarke! ]

[baring]

( a throwaway statement taken like a high-and-mighty evaluation. bellamy swallows, measured breathing the one thing that keeps him from saying or doing anything outright. you know what he doesn’t like? feeling like he’s on an examination slab being prodded at. turnabout is fair play. if he can’t handle being squared with very targeted questions, then he probably shouldn’t be dishing them out. that’s what he reminds himself taxingly. he doesn’t know how to answer that without divulging into a long story and a longer debate. )

Both and neither. ( if anything, he would reason that he has a more realistic grasp on human nature when said people are under duress. ) Your good might be my bad whereas my bad could be your good. I’m saying: what if we’re both wrong? Because we are, to someone. Somewhere down the line. It's inevitable.

[mooninthewater]

[ Unfortunately, Clarke managed to befriend someone who very easily hyperfixates on one thing a person says and skews it out of proportion. Usually in part of his anxiety, but here, it's definitely because he's looking for something to back Bellamy into a corner with. Not that it's his specialty in any way, shape or form. Social smackdowns are, perhaps, his weakest field, actually. But he'll be damned if he doesn't try as far as he's concerned. ]

With the sort of place you and Clarke are from, I'm not surprised you think so. But such a pessimistic view is exactly what's going to hurt everyone on this ship. [ So, you know, maybe just go live out on the water in a lifeboat. We'll throw you crab legs occasionally for food. Probably. ] Besides, that's why I don't make decisions like that. I prefer to listen to those naturally valiant enough to make the innately noble decisions.

[skaikru]

( ooooookay.

oooooooooookay. that is absolutely enough of that.

perhaps for a few moments clarke had melted into the background of the conversation, torn between unearned fluster every time mizuki nodded his head towards valor and attached her name to it, and the firm underlying basis that she and bellamy came to know and accept as fact. not all that long ago, she'd tried to impress a similar ideal on mizuki — that every hero was a villain to someone else; that every good guy haunted someone else's nightmares; that every time someone acted to protect their own loved ones, they left their victim's loved ones without someone equally important in their lives. but in the face of that pressing confrontation, he'd shut down and demurred. excused himself, sung the song of i don't know with the familiar chorus of that's why i let other people decide for me.

but in this exact moment, it feels a lot like he's deciding to throw shade with zero input from any higher ranking commander. and she's floundering. introducing bellamy to the allies she'd managed to find on this ship was supposed to go so much better than this and instead —

clarke sinks her teeth so severely into her lower lip at that last barb (the one about harming everyone on this ship) that it threatens to reopen the one-week healed split down the center of her mouth. and any humiliation related to unearned reverence from mizuki is shoved six feet under in favor of action.

all of a sudden she's directly between the two of them. one hand presses against bellamy's chest, the suggestion of a physical restraint and a tangible thing to anchor him before any rebuke can make its way out his mouth. the other hand stops a distance away from mizuki's face, the unspoken signal for silence and cease.

okay guys. whatever the fuck this is, it isn't happening today. who would have imagined picking sides would happen so early on in this relationship, but torn between two rough-edged individuals, it's mizuki she turns to rebuke. )

That's not pessimism, it's realism.

( staking her position first. dismissing secondly — )

...How about I talk to you later, Mizuki?

( go. )

[mooninthewater]

[ Ah. Hi, Clarke. He almost instinctively reaches for her hand when it's suddenly so close to him, but ends up digging it into his rain poncho inside and balling some of the plastic up into his fist as he just stares at her. Mizuki absolutely wants to argue his point, but he is very effectively subdued by the unspoken order. He rights his position and his expression returns to something soften than that feigned smile and sharp eyes.

Sufficiently put back in line, Mizuki nods obediently as if he weren't verbally sharpening knives prior. Obviously, he's always this docile! Why wouldn't he be? ]

Okay. I'll be seeing you then.

[skaikru]

( this is possibly the only situation in which she isn't absolutely starving for hand holding. reassuring squeezes of the fingers, similar clamminess of palms to drive home the point she's not alone in whatever anxiety she's currently experiencing. no, in this moment it's like she's the internal level of a motion sensitive bomb, and seeking to diffuse it.

mizuki's back to docile, and clarke nods. )

Okay.

( this is okay, you're fine, it's fine.

but she's still keeping her eyes fixes on mizuki until he inevitably turns and retreats. watches the angle of his shoulders until he's out of sight (without any regard for the boy's propensity to turn invisible and stalk through the shadows) before eventually dropping the hand splayed across bellamy's front and turning to face him. there's a black-blooded flush at the base of her throat, and the most awkwardly pained expression on her face.

immediately, an explanation seems necessary. )

Okay, look...

[baring]

( a blake with their back against the wall has, in experience, not been fun for anyone involved. except maybe kane? verdict’s still out on that one. everything that mizuki utters makes him more unhinged than before, because his survivor’s guilt has eclipsed all else. his blood boils in combination with the second statement, coupled together, as if clarke’s this perfect person—as if any one of them is capable—and there’s both so much and so little he has to fume with in retaliation. he surpasses rage with a step forward into sterile calmness. he said it once, tears in his eyes, that he didn’t want to feel that way anymore, he didn’t want to be angry with clarke but wanting to be better and being faced with the fact that those triggers still exist despite acknowledging them is something else.

he inhales through his nose, vehement in his rebuttal that clarke lodges in his throat by the hand on his chest. a day doesn’t go by where bellamy doesn’t dream of every ally in mount weather that helped them, that he doesn’t picture the children, that every part of him doesn’t accept the hatred for himself while he pulls a single lever with her. a day doesn’t go by where he doesn’t see indra as a lone survivor to an entire army that pike ordered murdered in their sleep while he stood by silently, collaborating to a point, shooting to a point, only able to save one. soul too far sold to claim anything else.

really, he wants to retort, because you have experience with lives in your hands? but he can’t because clarke is there, between them, halting him from answering with his fists. how easy it must be, how convenient, how simply bloodless the life of someone who lets people make decisions for them must be. he wouldn’t know, hasn’t for such a long, long time. )

No. You don’t have to explain yourself. You were here. Alone.

( and you know what? he doesn’t know anything about that. she can feel his chest heaving, felt. he steps back as soon as they’re alone and she turns to face him, suppressed again by clarke’s will and yes, he has mixed feelings about that, too. he wants to go. )

It doesn’t matter.

( see: he doesn't want to hear it. it doesn't matter because bellamy doesn't give a shit what her reasons are. if this is one of her people, she has a reason, he doesn't need to know what that reason is in its entirely, though he suspects it isn't selfless. )

[skaikru]

No, it does matter —

( she catches the infinitesimal hints of flight impending. that flicker of violent intent in his eye, the way his jaw tightens and throat bobs around unspoken words. clarke tended to walk away from fraught conversations with mizuki about choice and good versus evil with the intention of spurring him into learning how to make those choices for himself, but their chats hadn't ever held so much oddly placed tension. what the actual hell was up with that, by the way? and now bellamy's gone and had his own interaction with the psycho-analyzing psychopath and gets to walk away with tightly clenched teeth instead of bruised knuckles. the furious rise and fall of his chest, the halfstep back — which she follows, of course, maintaining proximity and dropping the volume for some faux sense of privacy while they stand out on the expanse of the ships deck.

and then she takes a breath, trying to quickly slot feelings into words and make a disarming plea. her eyes catch up with the agenda before her tongue does, and she looks at bellamy with something sad in the blue of her irises. )

He —

( how to describe mizuki... he's not normally like this; he reminds me of a child; he's been through and done horrible things all his own, but i don't know how much of it he feels...

he's useful to me. or promises to be.

this ship needs to galvanize if we're going to beat the captain, and one can't be picky about the captains under their command...

no, none of that's right. )

It's got nothing to do with the fact I was here alone, and everything to do with the fact I thought all of you could be dead. ( and without meaning to, she'd gone out and found the beginning strands of a new people, without ever having wondered what would happen if the old and new crossed paths. ) And that I should be too, but instead I've been on this god damn boat for three months. I don't even understand half the things we're dealing with here, and I needed good, painfully honest and brutally capable people to help figure that out.

( a new threat arose. and just like on earth, clarke turned to face it while trying to swallow down the ghosts that dogged at her heels from the last venture. but they were always, always behind her. )

And Mizuki is those things. At least most of them. We're going to need him to get out of here in the end, okay?

[baring]

( without meaning to summon them from the rift of memories, jasper’s words come back to him. because at the end of the day, at the end of the world, nobody gives a damn about your reasons because they are your reasons. well, acid rain doesn’t linger overhead in angry clouds, threatening to end them right there on the deck. bellamy can sincerely relate to the sentiment, realizing that the only person the clarification matters to is clarke. he already knows that he can’t control clarke, can’t stop her from making alliances with suspicious people, and more than that, bellamy doesn’t want to. he puts his trust in the weatherproof idea that she’s done whatever she’s needed to do to survive. mizuki is one of those things.

she’s cultivating the friendship for a reason unseen; maybe she sees another side of him, perhaps the situation in which the two of them were pushed together had been more favorable, clarke more receptive than he had been. whatever the case, he looks at her head-on, forcing himself to look at clarke when he wants to turn away.

an exposed set of nerves puts him into a particular agony, the kind that whispers to him that he will get these people killed, when push comes to shove. there's also a sinking, slithering emotion buried beneath the guilt that's jagged and elusive, something white-hot that bellamy pointedly ignores because it's idiotic and selfish. he wants to stamp it out beneath his shoe. what was clarke supposed to do, wait? he may have called her a princess a handful of times, but she's not a maiden in a tower window.

i've heard that before.
we don't need him.
i'm here now.

he forces all of those self-serving thoughts back behind the bars of his ribcage with fists tucked under his crossed arms. )

Okay. I trust you. ( he will trust that clarke believes they need mizuki to leave this prison, he will not give that trust away freely by extension. ) When I said it didn't matter, I meant that he's important to you for reasons I won't understand. You don't need to tell me why. I'm not judging you, but he pissed me off. He wouldn't be the first.