Chapter Ten

"None of this is fair. It isn't fair that part of your life was ripped away from you. It's not fair that you were ripped away from me. I'm so sorry..."

-Cassandra Clare, Welcome to Shadowhunter Academy

She is apologizing and he is telling her it's all right, that she didn't know it could have happened. And then she is telling him that his acceptance of her is a lie.

Bellamy is angry, so angry at her words. Of course it's not a lie! How could it be? Doesn't she remember how he has comforted her, so many times? That wasn't a lie.

And to prove it to her, he pulls her toward him, slanting his mouth over hers. He lets his lips tell the truth, instead of his gruff voice. How could he hide the truth anymore?

And then she is kissing him back, and they are pressed closer together than they have ever been before. It's easy, and it's simple, but rough and hard and wild, all at once.

He always thought he saw fire and Clarke. Now his icy tongue can taste it.

She is fire, and he is ice, and it burns when they come together, a sort of sizzle that forms prickles along Bellamy's spine.

He is pulling her closer, pressing her into him. And she is pulling too, pulling on his shirt and his hair, and Bellamy growls—actually growls.

"It's not a lie," he repeats as he pulls away, clutching her chin in his hand.

Clarke stares at him and she blinks, and Bellamy is scared that she might slap him in typical Clarke fashion. But it appears that the princess is at a loss of words. "Okay," she says, and it seems dreadfully simple.

She turns away from him for a time, looking once again at her boots. And Bellamy waits. Because doesn't she have something else to say to him? Is she going to say anything else at all?

Bellamy waits, his heart thumping and his blood pumping and his ears drumming. Time goes on, and dread fills his stomach.

Because Bellamy knows, even before it happens. Even before Clarke turns to him and jumps, startled.

"Bellamy!" she cries, completely surprised. "You scared me."

Bellamy knows. Delete.

"Sorry, princess," he manages, and he somehow holds himself together. But his hands are shaking, and he can honestly hear the blood pumping through his body.

And Bellamy knows.

"Did you need something?" Clarke asks, and she is smiling at him, so sweet and so oblivious that Bellamy wants to shake her by the shoulders and scream don't you remember?

Delete.

Bellamy clears his throat (how else would he be able to talk?) and shakes his head. "I'm fine." Because of course he is fine. Of course he wouldn't care that she doesn't remember.

(It's a lie. Everything he tells himself is a lie.)

"If you don't mind, princess, I'm going to bed." He's shaking and he's screaming on the inside. Clarke forgot. The man took the memory.

Clarke blinks, and at last nods. "Goodnight, Blake," she says, as she has done every other night. But doesn't Bellamy deserve something different this night? Shouldn't he get that? At least some difference in emotion. Something that lets him know what she is feeling.

"Goodnight, Griffin," he says. And then he's walking away, and he's leaving her behind on the log, next to the fire.

But fire is still on his tongue, and it burns because he knows that it'll never happen again.

Bellamy swallows, and lets whatever left of the fire that is Clarke become smothered. And then her fire is gone from him, and Bellamy is cold and icy once again. Because the man has taken her memory.

It was as easy as pushing a button. Delete.

Alone in his tent, his face smothered in his pillow (because he can't let Clarke hear him), Bellamy roars. He roars and he curses the hell the two of them live in. And it seems awfully like the ending of a tragedy to him.

AN: Don't kill me, even though I must have murdered your hearts. Sorry about that. Haha.

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