—
They wake Raven first.
With Monty gone, it just—it makes sense, for it to be her. With her finger hovering above the controls that will wake the mechanic from her glass coffin, Clarke decides they should wake Shaw, too. After all, he proved his worth in Eden. And pilots are hard to come by.
Plus Raven would kick their ass, and then wake Shaw anyway. It just makes sense.
Jordan hovers at Clarke's elbow, craning his neck for a glance of the girl who got his parents into space, the girl who brought herself to Earth in the scraps of a shuttle she put together with her bare hands—she's smarter than your father, Jordy, but don't tell him I said that—the girl who was shot, crippled, mind controlled, restarted her own heart and lived.
Behind him, Bellamy's smile is a living thing. His heart is heavy, still, anger and longing all at once. He wishes he gotten to say goodbye, but—well. Jordan looks so much like his parents. The smile comes just as easy as the hurt.
It takes a moment for Raven to open her eyes. Clarke notices a tremor in her leg, and wonders if being frozen in cryo woke memories in her skin. "Hey guys," she croaks. Her eyes flicker to the boy by Clarke's side. "Who's th—"
"Jordan! I'm Jordan, hi. Raven. Yeah, my name—um, Jordan."
"Sorry," says Clarke, resisting the urge to push a stray lock of hair away from the girl's face. It's not—she's not there yet. Not yet. She has to earn it. "He's kind of new to meeting people."
Raven's eyebrow shoots up to her hairline. Clarke offers a hand, and just like that Raven is swinging over the edge of her tank, legs shaking when they hit the ground. Bellamy is already moving to the next pod over, punching in the keys to wake up her—boyfriend seems such a trivial word these days—to wake up Shaw. Raven rolls her head across her shoulders, and Clarke suppresses a shudder. She forgot that Raven could do that, crack her neck like most people crack their knuckles. It sounds louder in space.
Jordan not so subtly turns away, helping Bellamy rouse the pilot, and Clarke is startled when Raven pulls her into an unexpected one-armed hug. "I'm still pissed at you," Raven mutters, her voice buried in Clarke's hair. "But I haven't properly said hello in what—six, no, sixteen years."
"Raven—" Clarke falters. She's not sure how to do this. She spent six years thinking she was done letting death speak for her. But it should be Bellamy, really, Spacekru were family out here for six years. She can't carry Monty and Harper this way.
Bellamy's hand falls on her shoulder. It's so familiar, so comforting, that she remembers to breathe. "We have a lot to talk about." His voice carries over her shoulder. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Shaw sitting up, Jordan awkwardly trying to introduce himself once again. He doesn't mention his parents just yet. "Why don't you get yourselves oriented and meet us on the bridge."
—
Neither Bellamy nor Clarke can find the strength to say the words aloud, so they play the videos for Raven and Shaw. Shaw didn't know Monty and Harper like they did, but he knows what they meant to Raven. She folds herself into his arms, and Clarke doesn't admit to herself that it feels lonely, watching them.
—
The rest of Spacekru is next—what's left of them. Murphy still looks as beat up as the day they went to sleep, but seems the least changed of them all. Clarke actually laughs when he sees her face and says "five more minutes, mom" before almost rolling out of his pod.
There are a few others after that. Madi, of course. Indra and Gaia, who have become unusual allies and trusted confidents of their little Heda. Miller, as one of the original hundred, deserves a place to mourn the loss of their friends. Miller wakes Jackson without asking anyone, but that's okay, too. They decide not to wake Kane. His condition is too unstable. And Clarke asks them to leave Abby sleeping, too, since she'll want to start saving him straight away. It's safer, for them to sleep.
(Bellamy uses that same reason to justify leaving Octavia frozen. No one questions it, but everyone can see in his eyes that he's not ready to face her. Not yet.)
They crowd into the bridge. It's cold, in space. Clarke ignores Madi's protests and wraps her in a blanket. Half the eyes in the room are red from crying. The others look like they could sleep another century. It's funny how cryo didn't make anyone feel rested. Like freezing their bodies just kept them all in that exact state of exhaustion.
The planet with the twin suns—"Tucson," Murphy insists, "old Earth city, I read about it on the Ark once, apparently it sucked" and "I didn't know you could read," Emori retorts, a stranger couple nowhere to be found—floods the viewing window.
"Tucson," Shaw grins. As the only person to have actually lived on Earth before ALIE destroyed it, he might have actually been there. "Two suns. Funny. And appropriate. Arizona might as well have had two suns, it was hot enough."
But it's Jordan who asks the million-dollar question. That makes sense, too, Clarke thinks. "So what now?"
Across the room, pressed up to the picture of Monty frozen in his old age on that damned screen, Echo's fingers tighten around Bellamy's. Madi sees it too, and Clarke can feel the girl's gaze search for her mother's reaction.
"Now—" Bellamy clears his throat. "Monty and Harper found a home for us. I think it's time we went back to the ground." He exchanges a look with Raven and Murphy, twin smirks filling their features. "Again."
"Should we wake the others?" Gaia poses the question to the group, but no one misses the way her eyes seek out Madi.
Bellamy looks to the child, too. "Heda?"
Madi shifts in Clarke's arms, turning outwards to face the congregation of adults deferring to her guidance. Clarke still feels uncomfortable, but she knows that this is the deal she made when she let Madi lead her people into the gorge.
"We—we don't know what it's like down there," she says, less sure of herself than she has been in years. Clarke tightens her hand around Madi's shoulder in encouragement. "They're safer up here for now. We should send a—a scouting party, first."
The others are nodding in agreement. Clarke's heart feels fit to burst. Her brave, intelligent girl. She swallows around the lump in her throat, and catches Bellamy's gaze. It's so easy—to easy—to read him again, just like they used to.
Are we wrong? Is it too much to ask of her to step forward? They both know that Madi is the Commander, Heda, but whatever happens down there, on the ground—it has always been Bellamy and Clarke, and it always will be. If they stand behind the girl while she leads her people, well. They have worked from the shadows before.
"We need someone to stay behind, to watch over cryo. Just in case," says Raven.
"It needs to be someone with experience handling complex tech," Shaw chimes in.
Clarke almost opens her mouth to suggest Raven stays behind—her leg, and all. Then she realizes she'll probably get her head bitten off. Or, if Raven agrees, Shaw wouldn't leave her side, and they'll still need a pilot to get them down to the ground.
Someone else realizes all of this, too. "You guys owe me so hard for every day I have to eat that damn algae up here." Beside Emori, Murphy shakes with laughter.
Gaia opts to stay behind as well. She still needs time to recover, and the way she looks at Bellamy makes Clarke wonder what happened in that gorge before Madi saved them. Murphy doesn't volunteer to stay, which surprises Clarke, but the hungry look in Emori's eyes when he announces they'll need a cockroach on the ground goes some way to explaining his decision.
And just like that, it's decided.
Miller, Indra, and Echo are warriors. They fracture off into a group to inventory weapons, make contingency plans, and discuss scouting formation. Jackson isn't far behind, muttering about hazmat suits and medical supplies. After some argument with her mother, Madi joins them, too. She grabs Gaia's hand on the way over, and the softness in the young woman's smile is enough to lessen the sting in Clarke's heart. Jordan's with Raven and Shaw, bent over schematics and controls in the pilots chair, the boy telling them everything he learnt on this ship, growing up, and Shaw filling in any gaps from his time with the crew of Eligius IV. Their chattering is too quick and complex for anyone but Emori to understand. Murphy tries, nonetheless, one hand gentle on Emori's shoulder as he peers at the screen they're all pouring over.
And that just leaves Bellamy.
He falls into step beside Clarke, easy as breathing, and the two of them take off to the metal hallways of Eligius to talk—privately. Neither of them notices the way Echo's eyes watch them leave.
—
"Are you okay?" Bellamy's voice is deep, and darker than she remembers.
Is it because of them? Because of the family you lost? Because of the century lying frozen in a glass box floating through space? Or is your voice darker than it is in my memories because of the six years you spent on the ring, where the last vestiges of the boy that you were gave way to the burning building of the man that you've become?
"I think so."
He reaches out to push her hair—it's so short, so pretty, suits you, princess—away from her face. "We'll protect her. Every one of us."
It's especially true of the several hundred grounders still frozen in cryo. Devoted to the memory of the flame and the Commanders who bear it. What are they, now? Spacekru seems wrong, for them. Spacekru is Bellamy's family. But they're not really Wonkru, not anymore, not after Octavia broke their spirit and marched them through the desert to their death.
Earthkru, maybe. It's close enough, for what they are now, for what is yet to come.
"You promised me that before, Bellamy."
The line of his jaw stiffens. She regrets saying it immediately. He forgave her, for Polis. She can forgive him this, too. "Clarke—"
She shakes her head. "It's okay. I'm sorry, too."
They come to an uneasy stop before one of the viewing windows on the ship's stern. The vast expanse of space stretches out before them. She does not recognize a single constellation, cannot place a single star, but every one shines on them in that moment.
Clarke's eyes flicker over his profile. His hair is so curly, she forgot about that, that messy, dark bramble patch across his forehead. She never got to tell him she—she likes the beard. He's older now, more worn, more serious, carrying the weight of the sky like the titan from his Greek stories. The beard is different but—it suits him.
"I never saw you, on the Ark," he murmurs, staring hard into the black ocean before them. "This is the first time we've been together in space."
Clarke can't help but smile. "Not the way I thought it would happen."
Bellamy tips his head back, exposing the column of his throat. His eyes are closed. He opens his mouth to try and put it to words—the guilt, the longing, the anger, anything he can say to explain what it did to him, leaving her behind.
"I—"
"I was proud of you," she interrupts. It's too raw, the pain between them. An open wound. The clinical training in her seeks to stem the flow of blood, to cover and stitch and forget about it until it becomes an ugly, thick scar. "I am proud of you, Bellamy."
He nods, a little shaky, and runs his hand across his face and through that tangle of messy hair. "Whatever happens down there—Madi is—Madi's your daughter. I get that. I won't let anything happen to her."
(I won't let anything happen to Clarke. This is how we save Clarke. She'll never forgive me.)
"I trust you," says Clarke.
"This could all be for nothing, you know. This place, this planet—it's not Earth. Who knows if we can even breathe down there? Maybe the air is poisonous."
"If it's poisonous, we're all dead anyway," she murmurs, and it does make him smile—but then there are the memories of all those they lost, Monty and Harper still fresh in their minds and Jasper like a ghost in the halls of this metal cage.
"I missed you," he says. It's so quiet she wonders if she was supposed to hear it. Clarke's fingers twitch, remembering what it felt like to fold him into her arms and promise they would meet again. There is no healing this wound. They spent too long leaving it gaping open, and now it feels like—like none of this is real. Like he'll wake on the ark with the echo of her name on his lips, and she'll lie in the sand and dirt of a forgotten wasteland and give herself to carrion birds. Sometimes she wonders if she seems like a memory made flesh to him. She was an echo, really, before Madi. A lonely spirit wandering the wastes of an old battlefield.
She wants to say something, but there aren't enough words in any language to express what it felt like to hold him in her heart, to tether herself to him in the hope of surviving five years of solitude. How do you tell someone they kept you alive when they mourned your death?
"Bellamy."
The two of them startle, unconsciously stepping further away from each other when they turn to Miller, whose stern form seems to fill the vast space of the empty hallway. Things are uneven, Clarke thinks, between these olds friends. There is no deference in Miller's eyes. Clarke understands a little about the devotion Bellamy's old friend carried for Blodreina, but seeing the change between them is—disconcerting. "Miller," Bellamy acknowledges. "Is everything okay?"
Miller fixes him with a hard stare. Clarke notices the steel in Bellamy's spine. He holds himself like a warrior, she realizes, like Azgeda. It splinters something in her, to know this man hardened himself even in those gentle years.
"Guns are a limited resource," says Miller. "We've decided to use them as little as possible during the scouting mission. Indra found you a sword. We need every able fighter we have."
Clarke doesn't miss how Miller's eyes skip over her when he says this. It stings, realizing that once again her people—not your people, Clarke, not anymore—see her as privileged. Her time in Shallow Valley, plenty of food and water and trees and sky and freedom, and now she's the princess once again. She'll never know what it meant to survive in that bunker, and she thinks that Miller might hate her for that. She's sure Octavia felt the same, when she was awake.
But Clarke is not weak. Clarke is a warrior, too. She always has been. She steps into Bellamy's side and crosses her arms across her chest. Both men read the intention in her action. She thinks Bellamy might be fighting a smile, but she doesn't let her gaze wander. It feels too vulnerable, under Milller's heavy stare.
"Okay." Bellamy's voice is a low rumble. "Lead the way."
—
Madi's nervous.
Clarke remembers how she felt, strapped into that dropship with ninety-nine of her peers. Panicked. Claustrophobic. Awaiting certain death—whether from re-enty or from an irradiated planet. But Madi is twelve years old, much younger than Clarke when she was sent to the ground. She puts on her brave face, insisting she can buckle herself into her seat, but Clarke still fusses around her making sure the buckles are tight and she won't come loose in the trip down.
"Clarke," Raven shouts from across the room. She's strapped in beside Shaw, looking a little out of place in the co-pilot's chair. "I think she's good. Get your ass in a seat, already, it's time to leave."
Using the ship's extremely advanced technology, the pair had been able to analyze the planet a little – enough to find a place to land, a small clearing a stone's throw from what looked to be a cliff face.
Shaw punches at the controls as Clarke hastily fits herself into her seat.
"Murphy, put on your damn harness," Bellamy roars over the igniting engine.
"I'm trying!" Murphy snaps. Bellamy unbuckles himself from his seat and drifts across the room. The memory of a boy—a spacewalker—floods Clarke's vision, and she can almost feel the hot, sticky blood on her hands. It takes some wrestling, but Bellamy and Murphy manage to the harness straps secured around him just as the ship detaches from Eligius, and Bellamy struggles to pull himself back to his seat.
The cabin starts to shake just as Bellamy finishes rebuckling himself, and Madi's hand shoots out to grab onto Clarke's forearm. She takes a moment to drink in the faces of her friends, her family, and then turns for one last look at the Eligius ship out the rear window.
Emori and Gaia stand before the viewing platform, and she can just make out the movement of their hands before realizing they must be waving goodbye. Madi's grip tightens, and then the outside of the ship is surrounded by fire as the hit the atmosphere.
I hope we do better here, too, Monty.
The lights of the dropship flicker, and die.
—