What He Left Behind

Chapter 7

RAVEN POV

16 October 2150

"It's been 200 days, princess," I hear Bellamy's voice from down the hall. He's called her like clockwork every day for 200 days. I wonder if he'll keep calling her every day for the next four and a half years. I consider stopping to listen through the door of the comms room, but I decide against it and continue on to the mess hall. There, I'm greeted by my five friends, each of them wondering why I asked them to meet me here without Bellamy.

"We've got a problem, guys," I start.

"Raven, I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but we have a lot of problems. Which one are you referring to this time?" Murphy clearly isn't in the mood to be having this meeting, but I doubt he ever will be.

"We don't have enough fuel to get home."

"Do we have enough fuel to launch me into the sun?" Murphy retorts, as Emori scoffs at him from across the table.

"Are you being facetious?" Monty asks.

"Maybe."

"It's a yes or no question, Murphy."

"Not if you don't know what that word means."

"Focus, guys," I interject before things get even more out of hand. "Bellamy is slipping. He's not eating, he's not sleeping. He's going to kill himself from sheer exhaustion. He's falling apart and unless we can give him some semblance of hope to cling onto for the next five years, we're going to lose him. He's done too much for every single one of us for us to abandon him when he needs us most. We have to do this for our friend, for our leader. We owe him this."

"I just don't understand why we have to worry about this now. Can't it wait? It's not like we don't have four and a half years left to fix it."

"Oh, shut up, John. You just can't stand the thought of getting off your lazy ass and doing anything to help the group, can you?" Emori's voice is venomous. Judging by the look on Murphy's face as he stands up and pushes his chair away from the table, it's clear she's struck a chord. "Yeah, walk away John. Run away and hide somewhere like the damn cockroach you are."

A silence falls over the room, nothing to be heard but the echoes of Murphy's footsteps down the hallway.

"Well," Monty says, "I guess we'd better start problem solving."

That night, I can't sleep. We spent hours brainstorming and running simulations, but to no avail. Clarke's sacrifice made things easier for us, logistically, in terms of how much sustenance is necessary to support us for the next five years. The truth is, though, that we didn't only lose Clarke all those months ago. We lost Bellamy too. I know he's never handled separation from her well. Not while she was in Mount Weather, not while she was in Polis, and definitely not now that she's stranded on that scorched planet. Or, rather, she was stranded. None of us wants to admit it, and I haven't brought it up to anyone since I tried approaching the subject with Bellamy a few months ago, but we all know that there's no way for Clarke to have survived Praimfaya.

I know that we have years to find a way home but seeing Bellamy falling apart like this is really taking a toll on everyone. I guess we're all so used to him and Clarke holding everyone together that we don't quite know how to do it ourselves. Harper is really trying to rally everyone, but especially with the tension between Murphy and Emori, it's proving to be more difficult that she was expecting.

Bellamy isn't the only one of us who is grieving though, we all are, to some extent. Monty just lost his best friend. The difference is that Monty has Harper to help him through it, and he has the algae farm to focus on. Bellamy isn't opening up to anyone, he doesn't want us to see him fall apart, and he doesn't have anything to busy himself with but radioing Clarke every day and waiting to hear something back.