just as the sun chases after the moon

just as the sun chases after the moon (i will always chase after you)

He remembers heat and pain. The heat is sharper, seared into his memory like the red-hot wires he accidently brushed against while trying to fix their sliding door when he was seventeen. When he thinks of that night, he thinks of the heat first; so intense, so unlike anything he had felt before. But he remembers the pain too. And he remembers the pain had come first.

The pain of thinking that his princess was dead. The pain of letting Octavia go. The pain of the Grounder's weapon knocking the breath out of him. He remembers Clarke yelling that he wasn't in the drop ship and he remembers hearing her desperate voice say, "He's killing him!"

He remembers the pain of dying.

He had thought back to when he was in the drop ship with Murphy and he had felt the ghost of the harness tighten around his neck, suddenly finding himself struggling to breathe. He remembers being incredibly grateful that Clarke wasn’t there to witness that moment, and he had decided right then that he didn't want her to see him die.

But now he was starting to think he didn't have a choice.

The Grounder had been on top of him, weapon raised and ready to deliver the killing blow, when suddenly the weight was gone, accompanied by the sound of two shots. Looking up, Bellamy saw Spacewalker (Spacewalker!) running towards him, gun raised.

"Damn kid, wasting ammo," he mutters under his breath. He picks up his gun and slams it into the head of a Grounder approaching Finn from behind. He's knocked over again, this time a Grounder’s hands wrapping around his throat and out of the corner of his eye he sees that the kid isn’t moving, he’s just standing there looking off into the distance.

If he wasn't being choked to death he'd have yelled at him.

He realizes that Spacewalker is looking at Clarke and he would’ve laughed if he could. It would seem that the princess is too occupied worrying about her pacifist lover to watch him die (maybe he’d get his wish after all). Then he sees a flurry of blonde hair disappear in the direction of the drop ship, and he realizes with a sinking feeling that he's not going to get out of this one alive.

As everything goes black, reliving the tightening of the noose as the Grounder’s hands squeeze the life out of him, he can't help but feel pissed that Spacewalker was too busy having a moment with the blonde princess to realize there was a Grounder killing him.

He remembers the weight disappearing, and a gasp so violent it feels like it’s ripping his throat apart.

And then he remembers heat.

--------------------

He wakes up in a cave. Well, he thinks it's a cave at first, but then he sees sunlight streaming in from a crack in the wall and he realizes that it's one of the foxholes the Hundred had dug. He tries to sit up, only to cry out in pain as he feels an intense pain in his side.

Next to him, Spacewalker opens his eyes.

"Keep it down, will you?" the kid grumbles, adjusting himself against the dirt wall. Part of his face is an angry red and it looks like one of his eyebrows is singed off.

Bellamy glances down and sees that the entire side of his shirt is burned away, leaving blistering flesh exposed from his hip up to his rib cage. He gently touches the skin, only to let out a grunt of pain and fall back against the ground.

"How the fuck did we survive that?" he asks, exhausted.

"You were passed out and the Grounders were occupied trying to get into the drop ship. I pulled you into a tunnel as far as I could before the blast hit." Finn winced as he opened his eyes and his fingers brushed against his face. "Apparently it wasn't far enough."