oh Red Son no-

When do you think Blarke started falling in love?

Um this is the best anon i’ve ever gotten, i hope you’re prepared for me to go FULL meta. Here, have a novel. Thanks for this because i always wanna talk about this. 

For Bellamy i think it was pretty simple, tbh. I think Bellamy fell in love with Clarke pretty early in season 1, but didn’t realise it until season 2. I think he had the feelings and didn’t know what they were, but then when she hugged him in season 2, and then she left at the end of season 2, he knew, which i think was super clear by his response to seeing her again and finding her in 3x02. His crazed reaction to loosing her, his clear anger and betrayal at her choosing not to come home with him later in the season, his anger at her and his vocalisation of that later really shows it, to me, that he loves her at this point, and is not sure how to handle it. I feel like after that it only continues to grow, showing in his anger and resentment towards her for leaving him, and choosing the grounders over him, etc. The moment on the beach, in s3, when they have that conversation, when he tells her he was so angry at her, its like this weight off his shoulders, of being like “i’ve been so angry with you, but you’re here, and were together, and were doing this together, and I’m healing from this now”. 

With Clarke its harder for me to tell. I think she started moving towards loving him in season 1, but she didn’t quite get there then. She definitely cared for him deeply, and had strong emotional responses to the idea of loosing him, but maybe not love. In season 2, she realised just how much he mattered to her when she found him again (the hug in 2x05 was a big turning point for both of them i think. For Clarke it was her immediate, unfiltered emotional response to seeing him safe and alive again, and for him it was realising that she cared for him as much as he cared for her, which allowed him to let his feelings really take root. Bellamy has a problem with not feeling worthy of love, as we’ve seen.). I think her meeting Lexa kind of threw her for a loop, and sort of made her feelings for Bellamy more complicated, but I think she fully loved him in 2x09, when she took Lexa’s advice and decided that showing love, and being in love, was weakness, and told Bellamy that her being unwilling to risk his life was her being weak. I feel like a lot of people like to say that she could have meant platonic love, which is probably true, until you look at the context of that situation. The conversation she had with Lexa was clearly about romantic love. Lexa was telling her about Costia, and how “she was hers” and because of that she had been killed, how loving Costia had made her vulnerable, and Clarke took that, and translated it to her own life, and decided that her unwillingness to sacrifice BELLAMY was weakness. She had also been unwilling to let him go to Mt. Weather because she ‘couldn’t loose him too’,  directly relating him to Finn, and loosing someone she loved romantically (im a slut for blarke parallels to canon romances lol i could write a book on that alone). And then, after she sends him away, she immediately regrets it, and worries about him, literally bothering Raven every second when Bellamy is late, scolding him when he calls in late, because she realises that sending him away as a way to show strength was wrong, and that her feelings for him are real. She is distraught at the idea of loosing him. In season 3, she is so caught up with her new feelings for Lexa, and then her feelings of grief over Lexa, that she sort of pushes her feelings for Bellamy down, but even in season 3 we see that she trusts him, cares for him, and everyone around her sees it. 

I think season 4 was the first time we saw them both at the same place in their feelings, but with this awkward and uncomfortable sense of not being sure how to deal with them. Bellamy still felt a bit betrayed, a bit angry, at the beginning, and Clarke was clearly still grieving, but they were together again, trusting each other, and letting themselves sort of start to feel it all for real, and thats what we got throughout season 4. Clarkes INSISTENCE that Bellamy be inside the Ark when the wave came. Clarke putting Bellamy’s name on the list, even when he didn’t want her too, because she couldn’t imagine a world where Bellamy didn’t get to survive. Bellamy forcibly writing her name on the list because if he was going to live, she sure as shit was too. Clarke giving up 50 spots in the Ark for Bellamy because she couldn’t imagine not having him. Clarke making sure Bellamy was in the bunker when they stole it back, leaving Kane and Octavia and ALL the grounders outside, but sending someone to get HIM. Clarke refusing to shoot him, even when he threatened the survival of ALL of humanity, and letting him open the door to let his sister in, because even when she had killed before, so many times, she couldn’t kill him, she couldn’t pull the trigger and shoot him even when it was probably the RIGHT choice with the information they had. And dont even get me started on the “you’re so special” “you have such a big heart” etc conversations, i was DYING. Season 4 showed us that they were in love, even if they didn’t tell us. They didn’t behave this way about anyone else, they don’t do these things for anyone else. Bellamy refused to believe anything would happen to her, and she refused to believe anything would happen to him, even when the world was ending and there were no guarantees. He left her behind, and he blames himself, and lived FOR HER, every single day, because she died for them and he couldn’t let that be in vain. 

We see it now in season 5, fully fledged. Clarke called BELLAMY every single day for 2,199 days. She didn’t speak to everyone on the ring, she spoke to him, which we see because she tells him to tell other people things. She asks about something Monty is doing, instead of saying “hey monty, do you have the algae farm up?”, she tells him to tell raven to aim for the only spot of green, instead of saying “hey raven, aim for the only spot of green.” She used HIM as her way of surviving. When Madi finds the group, she recognises BELLAMY instantly, even after 6 years, with different hair and a beard in the dark, because Clarke drew him and talked about him and raised this kid on stories of him. She knew so much about him that she trusted him without question to save Clarke, who is basically her parent, or at least her only “family”. And then he stands there, in front of a crowd of armed, violent criminals, armed with nothing but pure drama and a coffee mug, and bargains for her life with the lives of 283 other people, and looking her in the eye to make sure she knows she is important to him. She matters, after all this time, after (he probably thinks) she probably feels like he forgot about her, he didn’t, he never could, and he would do anything to save her. Bellamy is Clarke’s anchor, and Clarke is Bellamy’s reason for living. If thats not love, then fuck me i dont even know what love is. 

Bellarke have been falling in love since season 1, and theyre finally there, and im fucking thrilled about it. 

WOw im so sorry. this is so much. good lord.