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Clarke’s world was still spinning with the revelation of Bellamy’s death, and the last thing she was wanted to be doing was helping the people who were responsible for it. But it wasn’t about what she wanted, it was about what was best for her people and keeping everyone she now has left safe. And, that’s what was going through her head when she lied to Cadogan about his assumption that she still hosted the flame. It was the only leveraged she had, so the fact that it was destroyed would have to stay hidden.

“Clarke.”

She looked up at the sound of her name only to notice that all of her friends were looking at her, but she was fine. She had to be. There wasn’t time to grieve, not now, not until everyone she loved was safe. Before they all stepped into the anomaly she said she wasn’t going to lose anyone else, but she just lost the most important person to her next to Madi. So, her priority was getting everyone to safety. 

It was the only thing keeping her going. 

The reality of things was these people needed something from her, and Clarke latched onto that as she tried to come up with a plan to get her people back to Sanctum with everyone else because it was the only thing that mattered, and it’s what Bellamy would have wanted. 

But it always came back down to impossible choices, and the only thing Clarke could think to do was surrender to Cadogan with the condition that all of her people be let go, hoping to buy them enough time to get the radiation shield up and prepare everyone for when the people on Bardo found out she had been lying. But as soon as she voiced her plan to her friends, there was a ricochet of protests but no other ideas were offered.

“It’s the only choice!” Clarke all but shouted.

It was as soon as the words left her mouth that any composure that Clarke had over her emotions left her body.

“Only choice,” she whispered to herself. Clarke closed her eyes, and there Bellamy was, standing in front of her.

For a moment, she was back in Becca’s lab moments before Praimfaya. It was the end of the world, yet she and Bellamy were talking about something as trivial as oxymorons. But to Clarke, it held a moment with Bellamy that was anything but meaningless. Not when Bellamy was wiping away sweat from her forehead and making some lame jest about cold sweat being an oxymoron too, and not when if she focused hard enough she could still feel the brush of his fingers against her skin. 

Everything about that moment was seared into her memory the way any memory involving Bellamy was, but especially this one because she was saying goodbye to him with no hope of ever seeing him again. It was why she told him to use his head along with his brain because he had a tendency to throw caution to the wind. But then he told her that’s why he had her, and they were planning to spend five years in space together, but she now knew how that would turn out.

But it was in this instance, living in a world where Bellamy no longer existed, that the head and the heart took on an entirely different meaning. Clarke knew Bellamy was the heart because he was gallant and compassionate, but it took him leaving this world for Clarke to grasp the palpable concept of what labeling Bellamy the heart meant.

Because hearing the words Bellamy’s dead felt like her heart was torn from her chest, and she had no idea how to continue living. In essence, Bellamy was the heart, but it came crashing down on Clarke that he was so much more than that. To everyone who knew of the heart and the head mantra, Bellamy was the heart because he acted first without thinking of the consequences, but to Clarke, he was her heart, and one of the main reasons she wanted to live.

At the realization, her eyes shot open and tears flooded her eyes. She looked to friends to find that all of their eyes were already on her, but she didn’t have time to read their reactions because she was trying to catch her breath because all of a sudden it felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room, and she was losing her grip on reality.

It wasn’t until she felt the touch of someone grabbing her shoulder that she saw Raven standing in front of her.

“He’s gone, Raven,” Clarke said as tears raced down her cheeks.

“I know,” Raven said through her own tears. 

With even more confirmation of Bellamy’s death, a sob raked through Clarke’s body that she tried to hold back, and it was in that instant that Raven stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Clarke and whispered, “it’s okay to break, Clarke. I got you.” 

Clarke held onto Raven because she needed something to ground her because she no longer had the one person that kept her centered. Clarke had no idea how she was going to continue on, not when her heart when the heart that walked outside her body was no longer beating.