The return to the camp was made in silence.

She limped slightly, a line of blood flowed from her eyebrow. Bellamy walked next to him, his shoulders tense, his hand pressing the flank where the coat darkened with the blood that insisted on dripping. The tension between them was still dense, but different now. Silent. Almost intimate.

The camp gate opened with the usual creaking, and the guard just nodded, looking at them as if they were returning from another battle.

But it wasn’t just anyone.

She didn’t say anything when Bellamy went straight to the improvised medical tent. She followed him.

The space was empty, except for a weak lamp in the corner. A bucket of clean water. Some cloths. The first aid supplies they knew how to use since before they stepped on Earth.

Bellamy sat heavily on the improvised stretcher, letting out a sigh that seemed to contain the weight of a thousand wrong decisions.

She didn’t wait. He took the supplies, wet a cloth and knelt in front of him. He began to clean the cut in his abdomen carefully.

“You should be lying down” - she murmured, without looking at him.

“You should be ignoring me” - he replied with a half tired smile.

She kept cleaning, feeling his skin contract under the touch. He was breathing deeper than usual. Almost as if he was trying to focus on anything other than proximity.

When she finished, she began to wrap the band around his rib. She was so close now that she could see the long eyelashes, the cut in the collarbone, the way he looked at her when she thought she wasn’t seeing.

“My turn” - he said, his voice low.

She looked up.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re bleeding.”

She hesitated... but sat on the bench next to her, looking away as he approached, careful. He took another clean cloth, wet it in water and slowly passed her eyebrow, stagnating the blood.

It was as if every touch of his said things he couldn’t say out loud.

His fingers lightly brushed the side of her face.

“You could have died today” - he said, almost like a whisper, without taking his eyes off the cut.

She felt her stomach turn.

“But I didn’t die.”

“Still.” - He stopped playing for a moment. - “I don’t know what he would have done.”

She didn’t answer. I didn’t know how.

Then, in the warm silence of the infirmary, with the smell of blood and alcohol, she leaned a little - just enough for her forehead to touch his.

It was a small gesture. Intimate. Almost imperceptible.

But for Bellamy Blake, that was everything.

And at that moment, they were no longer just the Ark’s rivals.

There were two survivors.

From the world.

One from the other.