Chapter Text
Growing up, she never thought she would marry for love. Up on the Ark concerns were always more utilitarian, more businesslike. Get married, have your one allotted child, save your dreams for the generation lucky enough to make it down to Earth again.
Well, here she was, and Earth was nothing like those dreams.
“Are we agreed?” Lexa’s cool, almost bored voice commands the room. It’s almost too cool, too controlled. So casual it is anything but.
Kane turns to her, quizzically, looking for final confirmation. Her mother stands stiff and tight lipped behind him, her face tired and worn. There is no other option, none that she could live with. None that would be anything but selfish. She nods her head once, tightening her jaw.
“Skaikru agree to the alliance, Commander,” Kane says, voice clipped, barely containing the desperation just below the surface.
“Good,” Lexa concludes, her eyes fluttering away, refusing to meet her glance. “We’ll start at sundown.”
With a final flourish she gets up from her dais, nodding briefly to the man at her side. To the man she’d just agreed to marry.
For the first time since the negotiations started she throws him a quick glance, scanning him from head to toe, taking in the tight jaw, the broad tense shoulders. And then the eyes. The dark, hard eyes boring into her, sending chills down her spine.
She quickly casts her head down, but she can feel his eyes resting heavily on her back as Kane and her mother escort her out of the room.
She is scrubbed and dressed according to every grounder custom, or so she assumes. No one really bothers to explain anything to her. She is simply guided into a room an unceremoniously stripped naked, any protest she tries to make brushed off with brusque guttural sounds in a language she still only has a rudimentary understanding of.
She catches a glimpse of herself in a dark, stained mirror and inhales sharply. She barely recognises her own reflection. The skin stretches tightly over her ribs, her stomach is hollow, her cheeks sunken. Gone is the roundness she’d had and occasionally hated up on the Ark and would give anything to have back now. There are bruises on her arms and legs, tiny cuts on her hands and face. There are deep, dark circles under her eyes that still doesn't make her look as tired as she feels.
She lets the grounder women preen and prod her, lets them carefully scrub her clean and try to untangle the persistent knots in her hair. It feels nice, having hands on her that are soft and undemanding. She’s gotten so used to violence, to the harsh realities of Earth and surviving everything it threw at them that she can’t even remember the last time anyone put their hands on her in anything other than malice or desperation.
Since day one, since the dropship landed, she’s been fighting. She’s lost more than she’s won, buried more friends than she cares to dwell on. There are just around twenty of them left now, when the number should’ve been five times higher. Wells was never good at the war stuff, and Finn only wanted to avoid fighting. She could never manage to get everyone on her side, and after the grounders had picked them off like flies they’d had no choice but to plead for a peace treaty with Anya, no matter the cost. No matter how many dead friends she’d felt like she’d betrayed.
She looks down on her hands as the grounder women carefully remove the grime under her nails, and she could’ve sworn she can still see flecks of blood on them. They smear something soft and thick over them, honey maybe, trying to soften the callouses. She’d buried each one of her friends with her own hands. Wells had been the tenth. Finn had been one of the last.
Her hair is braided with meticulous precision, smears of thick, dark paint drawn across her cheeks and eyelids. Soft leather and fur is tied to her body with complicated knots she already knows she’ll have trouble undoing. As they transform her into a grounder bride, she lets the hopelessness of the situation finally grip her.
When the Ark came down, the precarious treaty she had pieced together with Anya became even more unstable, and the few resources they had managed to beg, borrow and steal had dwindled to almost none. Outsmarted, outnumbered and unused to their new home, even their guns and technology had been futile against Trikru and a new world working against them. Without this alliance none of Skaikru will survive. The massacre of their hunting party, Finn’s hunting party, just a few weeks back told her that much. She shudders, trying to shake the image of vacant, lifeless eyes in a too familiar blood spattered face.
Her dressers turn her back towards the mirror and take a step back, clearly pleased with their work. She scans herself, taking in the unfamiliar clothes, the elaborate hair.
Skaikru Princess, they’d called her.
She’d heard the whispers when she’d entered Polis. She’d scoffed at the title, but looking at the strange reflection in the mirror it makes her gut clench. Lexa had insisted it'd be her to complete the alliance. She hadn’t looked her in the eye when she said it, she’d looked right past her, stone faced and determined. In her eyes, in the eyes of every grounder, she was the leader of Skaikru. The burden of this alliance would fall to her, and her alone.
The ceremony is surreal, like an out of body experience. She walks up a makeshift aisle, the crowd parting to watch her, to take her measure. She’s aware a priest of some sort says words that hush the crowd, but she can’t understand them. She throws a glance over her shoulder, where her mother is bleary eyed but stone faced. She shakes her head almost imperceptibly but she doesn’t interrupt or object. She knows their survival hinges on this.
She turns back to the priest, barely glancing at the man next to her, but his presence feels overwhelming. His breathing is even, he doesn’t fidget like she suddenly realises she is. He smells a bit spicy, a little heavy. Foreign. She nearly jumps when he shifts on his feet and brushes against her arm, the heat of him searing her skin.
Her eyes are firmly fixed ahead as the priest starts proceedings, as he chants prayers that she can’t decipher. She can only pick out certain words, and they all make her blood still in her veins. Death, fight, blood. If there is a word for love in trigedasleng she doesn't know it.
The priest produces a long, thin knife, the blade glittering in the light from the candles covering every surface of the throne room. She jerks back on impulse as he lowers the blade and hands it to the dark haired man next to her, but he seems unperturbed. He simply accepts the dagger, before calmly cutting a deep line into the palm of his hand. Blood trickles down his dark skin, drops hitting the floor with a soft splat.
He turns towards her then, his eyes meeting hers for the first time. They’re dark, a little narrow, almost questioning and she forgets to breathe as they lock her in. After a beat he flutters his eyelashes, shakes his head a little and thrusts the knife towards her, blade facing away from her. He motions for her to follow his example, stopping her when she goes for the wrong hand, his thumb accidentally brushing over hers as he places the blade in the right hand. A short, sharp shock runs through her, making the hairs on her neck stand up, but she forges ahead, hissing as she cuts a thick gash into her palm.
The priest places her hand in his, twining an elaborately decorated leather strap around their clasped hands, their blood mixing, their union confirmed. There is another blessing, she thinks, satisfied murmurs behind her and then someone is singing a hauntingly beautiful song and she guesses that’s probably it. Her palm throbs and stings, the heat of his hand holding hers nearly unbearable. Married. Allied. Safe.
“What’s your name?” she manages to whisper to him as he leads her out of the throne room, muted chatter exploding around them. She never thought to ask when it was all theoretical, when it was a negotiation and not a relationship.
“I’m Bellamy,” he says, voice gruff but his english perfect.
Her new husband is a general, she thinks. If she understood the grounder word correctly. He certainly looks like a warrior, his eyes sharp and focused on his surroundings as they take a seat at the banquet table, hands still tied together. The way his eyes flit over every weapon, every Ark guard uniform in the room sends a thrill down her spine. She’s seen that look before, been on the receiving end of it. It has almost always ended in bloodshed and more graves to dig for friends.
She takes a deep breath, shifting uncomfortably in her seat, her hand sweating and stinging inside his large, rough palm. She can feel the weight of every single pair of eyes in the room resting on her. Watching. Measuring.
“What’s the matter, Princess?” he mutters in her ear, his lips brushing against her hair. “Isn’t this supposed to be the happiest day of your life?”
His voice is deep and there’s a mean edge to it that makes her jerk back and face him. There is a glint in his eyes, a challenge of sorts, his mouth turned up into a slight smirk in one corner.
“I’m ecstatic,” she snaps, her own voice unrecognisably cold and hard.
She yanks her hand back but the leather strap still has them bound together, so they end up jostling back and forth, neither of them backing down. His eyes are full of ire as they wrangle for control, and it’s only Lexa’s annoyed cough that makes them stop. She takes the two of them in with a raised eyebrow and she can feel her cheeks flush with heat.
It’s hard after that, to sit up there at the head table and pretend like she’s happy about the alliance, about this marriage. It’s hard to pretend like this isn’t anything but a forced surrender. She throws her new husband a few glances, notes the wild, black curls and the healing cuts that run like deep tire tracks across freckled, dark skin. She takes in the dark bruises on the back of the hand that is still tied to hers, the weary look on his face as he studiously avoids her gaze.
She sighs deeply and throws her mother a glance further down the table. Abby sends her a small, encouraging smile but it irritates her more than comforts her right now. She’s going to have to live with this hard, angry man next to her. She’s going to have to live with his people. People who were her enemies just days ago. She lets her eyes wander up the table and accidentally meet another pair of hard eyes, staring and challenging. The girl they belong to has equally elaborate braids as her, black paint around her eyes that make her them gleam just like the multitude of sharp knives strapped to her chest. Her mouth opens wide in a feral grin as she holds her gaze.
The intensity of that stare makes her swallow down the wine in her cup in thick gulps, makes her pick at her food so she doesn’t have to meet those eyes again. It’s been a while since she had anything this substantial in her belly and she allows herself to enjoy it for a moment. If nothing else, her people are eating well tonight. They’re not starving, they’re not freezing and they’re not dying. She bears it so they don’t have to.
The party drags on, the atmosphere turning from cautious reverence to something resembling raucous festivity, cups of wine being raised towards the happy couple with alarming frequency. Her arm is aching from being attached to Bellamy all night, her head pounding with the wine she is unaccustomed to. Across the room there are shouts in trigedasleng which she doesn’t understand, requests or encouragements, it’s hard to tell. Bellamy leans away from her to listen to the quiet commands Lexa is muttering in his ear. She’s too far away to catch any of the words.
Preoccupied by the excited babble that seems to be rising in the room, she has no chance of escape when Bellamy suddenly leans over her and pins her to her chair with a strong hand on her shoulder. His mouth is on hers before she can even open it to protest, his lips hot and demanding. It’s not a short kiss. It’s not a careful, polite, impersonal kiss. It’s a long, consuming, insistent kiss. His tongue slides between her lips and find hers, probing and intense. It’s impossible to stay passive, every swipe of his tongue coaxing hers out, making her reciprocate. Somewhere, beyond the pulsing of blood in her ears, there are loud cheers and wolf whistling and at the back of her mind it occurs to her she should be embarrassed. It’s hard to care when his breath is hot against her skin and the glide of his tongue sets a fire deep, deep in her gut. When he finally releases her his eyes are dark and unreadable.
“Now you’re ecstatic,” he mutters, face close to hers so no one can hear.
When he pulls back, the room erupts in cheers and no doubt jeers. She’s glad she can’t understand them. There is a small smirk on his lips, but his eyes quickly return to that hard, focused glare as he turns away from her like nothing happened. Behind him she catches the look on Lexa's face. Her face is a little flustered, like she’s ashamed. But she schools her expression into something hard, her jaw jutting forward, her chin tilting upwards. And it clicks into place. She is showing off the spoils of war. If it wasn’t clear already, the whole room, all the clans, her own people, all now know without reservation that Skaikru is under Lexa's thumb.
She almost groans out loud when Bellamy finally unties the knots that bind their hands together. She stretches and clenches her hand, grimaces at the gash in her palm smeared with streaks of his and her blood. He doesn’t say anything, just observes her quietly, his face blank.
“What the hell was that?” she hisses, because they are alone and she can drop any pretence.
“What was what?”
He feigns ignorance as if he didn’t just display dominance over her in the most public and intimate way. He turns his back on her then, moving over to a bowl of steaming hot water to clean his cut.
“The kiss!”
She doesn’t even try to to mask the anger in her voice. An alliance is what they had been promised. Access to resources, technology, knowledge. Peace between the sky and the ground and a chance at survival and prosperity for them all. At least on paper. Everyone at Camp Jaha already knew the alternative was unthinkable. But she had at least expected the grounders to hold up the illusion that this was something they needed too.
“It was just a kiss,” he shrugs, back still turned, voice overly casual. “It’s a wedding after all.”
“It was a display of power and you know it.”
No reaction. Rage roils in her gut, her face burning hot and her fists clenching.
“You practically pissed on me, marking your territory.”
That finally gets him. He turns on his heel, levelling that dark, hard glare at her again.
“You are my territory,” he snaps, closing the distance between them and forcing her to take a small step back so she can keep her eyes on his. She hates him for it, for making her give even an inch of ground away. “You’re my wife. Everything you are is mine. Your people are my people. And now everyone knows it.”
“I’m doing this for my people,” she hisses back, jutting her chin up and getting in his face. “I am no one’s property, and neither are they."
“It’s supposed to be an honour, you know,” he says, cool and collected but there’s an edge to his voice. A warning. “Marrying me. I was never going to marry just anyone. Certainly not someone who fell out of the sky, by accident, and survived, by accident.”
“We didn’t have to make this deal you know,” she lies smoothly, only intent on wiping that smug look off his face. “We have guns. We have bombs.”
“And you would’ve all been dead before you had a chance to use them,” he snorts, his face now so close she can feel his breath sweep across her face.
“You’re lucky,” he says quietly when she doesn’t have an answer to that. “You’re lucky you’re mine. It means you get to live.”
He stares at her, not bothering to pretend, not hiding his contempt. He’s so close she can practically taste him again, her mind involuntarily flitting back to that kiss earlier. Her eyes drop to his lips before she can stop them, and he steps back smirking, breaking the moment.
“Thought so,” he tuts, mostly to himself.
He turns, starting to strip off his jacket and suddenly one of the intricate metal bangles they put on her is in her hand. She flings it at his head, hard and precise, and it hits him square on with a satisfying thump. He whirls on her, bewildered and... amused.
“Brave Princess,” he chuckles, eyes glittering, and he is absolutely infuriating.
He carries on taking his jacket off as if nothing happened, though he picks up the bangle and carefully places it on the nightstand. It’s only then she really registers her surroundings. It’s not just a bedroom they’re in, it’s a wedding suite. She vaguely considered that she might be confronted with sharing quarters with her new husband at some point, but the politics of the alliance had occupied her mind. She hadn’t really had time to focus on the practicalities of a marriage.
The entire room is covered in candles and flowers. There are bowls filled with water, rose petals and floating candles at the foot of the large bed. There’s a large canopy of flower garlands over the bed, big red and orange flowers tied to the posts, more petals scattered across the furs covering the mattress. There are so many candles in the room that there is no logical explanation for the goosebumps that erupt on her skin. Sometimes the beauty of Earth knocks the wind out of her and for a brief moment she forgets that beauty can be deceptive, sometimes deadly.
Her husband seems unaffected, he continues to take off his clothes like she’s not in the room, revealing hard, dark skin and even more freckles. She turns away to give herself a moment to process, dipping her hands in the rose scented water to clean away the blood on her hand and the paint on her face. By the time she turns back he’s under the furs, mostly covered and that makes it easier to say what she wants to say.
“I’m not sleeping with you.”
He just looks at her, his eyes roving up and down her body, lingering purposefully on her breasts. Flush rises on her chest and in her cheeks but she juts her chin out and stalks over to the bed, refusing to let him intimidate her.
“Move,” she commands, sliding under the furs next to him, making sure there is a good foot and a half of space between them. “And don’t touch me if you want to keep those hands.”
“You know, you might feel a bit more comfortable if you took off those clothes,” he says, teasing. But he’s not wrong. The candles in combination with the furs and the leather covering her body makes for a sweaty combination.
“I don’t know how to get them off,” she admits, voice low, before quickly adding “All this grounder gear is so damn complicated.”
“I can help you with that.” He’s risen up on one elbow, looking down on her, eyebrow slightly raised.
“I’d rather die of heatstroke,” she huffs, sending him a deathly glare. A rose petal flutters up as she huffs, floating in the candlelight and landing on her cheek.
“Whatever the hell you want, Princess.”
He turns over and is asleep within minutes, leaving her to squirm uncomfortably in the heat, listening to the even puffs of his breath. She finally manages to loosen the knots on her skirt and slides it off, praying the movement doesn’t wake her new husband. She falls asleep hours later, after staring up at the flower canopy over her head and running over every step, every move that has brought her here. Sleeping next to a man that was her mortal enemy just a few days ago, she somehow sleeps better than she has in months, only because despite her own discomfort, she knows her people are safe.