Fearless (Bellamy Blake - Book 1)

Chapter 17.

My body jerks awake, my eyes flying open and my lungs taking in sharp breathes of air at a rapid pace. I sit up quickly in my sleeping bag, looking around at my bare tent and try to calm my breathing down. 

Just a nightmare, Chris, you can handle those, have been your whole life.

I release a sigh and run a hand through my knotted hair, the light from the fire outside and the delinquents that are awake casting shadows across my tent. 

Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right?

I climb out of my sleeping bag and pull on my boots and jacket before walking out of my tent and sitting on a log by the fire, gaining a few odd looks.

Considering how late it is, there are quite a few people milling about camp. A good thing I guess, as we still don't know what or who exactly is out there.

"You all right?" Atom asks from across the fire.

"I was cold." I lied casually, making a point of rubbing my hands in front of the fire. Atom nods and goes back to doing whatever it is he was doing. 

It's been two days since we returned to camp with Jasper, and Octavia asking me about Atom. Turns out that when I saw Bellamy and the other guys returning from the woods, Bellamy had literally strung Atom up into a tree as punishment for being with Octavia. 

I had a go at him, of course. Atom's an okay guy, considering. Bellamy just needs to get used to the fact his little sister isn't so little anymore.

"No!"

My head turns at the sound of someone yelling repeatedly. My eyebrows furrow and I quickly stand, walking beside Clarke who's emerged from the drop ship and clearly as curious as I am.

To the side of the fire, a young girl tosses in her sleep at the base of a tree, crying out as she does. 

Looks like I'm not the only one having nightmares tonight. 

"Hey, what's wrong?" Clarke softly touches the young girl's shoulder, startling her awake. "It's okay, it's okay."

I notice tears slowly falling down her face, and my starts to ache for her. She's barely even a teenager and yet she was thrown down to Earth with the rest of us. 

"It was just a nightmare." I said rather softly as she takes in her bearings, realising she wasn't;t where she was in the dream. "I get them a lot too."

"You're Charlotte, right? I'm Clarke, and this is Carter." Clarke glances over at me and we make ourselves comfortable, silently deciding that Charlotte needs us right now. "It's okay to be scared. Do you wanna talk about it?"

"It's...my parents." Charlotte sobs quietly. "They were floated and I-I see it in my dreams and I just..."

I look down at the ground in silence. I can relate to her to an extent, but my circumstances are totally different. 

"Yeah, I understand. My dad was floated too."

I frown at Clarke's words. I never realised her dad was floated. That must have been a pretty big deal, since he was one of the privileged. 

"So how did you end up here?"

"Well..." Charlotte sighed. "They were taking my parent's things to the redistribution centre and I kinda lost it. They said I assaulted a guard."

"I can't say I blame you." 

"Sometimes our emotions take control of our actions." I say to her, "You may not have meant to assault that guard, but because you were so upset about your parents, and the fact they were taking their things away from you...you just have to realise now that it wasn't your fault and you did nothing wrong." 

"Well I wouldn't say that..." Clarke spoke up.

"You did nothing wrong, Charlotte." I say firmly, making sure the point gets across despite Clarke. "You were trying to protect yourself and your parents."

She nods slowly and we all sit in silence for a moment, Clarke glaring at me before sighing softly. 

"You see that  bright star up there?" She points up at the sky and both Charlotte and I look up. "That's the Ark, orbiting above us. I think, whatever happened up there, you know the pain...maybe we can move past that now. Maybe being on the ground is our second chance."

"Do you really believe that?" Charlotte asks, and I look at Clarke expectantly. 

"I'm trying to." She says truthfully, before wrapping an arm around Charlotte, letting the younger girl rest her head on her shoulder. 

I bring my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them, thinking. Being on Earth really is a second chance for us, but I have no idea what I want to make out of that. 

Do I really wanna be this 'tough, badass' like Bellamy said I am? 

I definitely don't want to be some, goody two shoes, that I know for sure. 

The grounders that attacked Jasper are still out there, and I'm pretty sure they're not happy we trespassed on their soil, so it's inevitable that we'll cross paths with them one day soon. 

I just have to figure out what kind of leader I want to be when that happens.