Disclaimer: I have only recently discovered the wonderful TV show The 100, so I think it's a bit obvious that I don't own it. The CW does.
A/N: Reviews are appreciated.
5.
The first time Clarke tells the story of how she realized she was in love with Bellamy, it's to her tiny, dark-haired daughter whom she's trying to get to sleep. Willa is much too young to understand a word she's saying, but Clarke figures that just the sound of her voice will help as she rocks her little girl back and forth.
"It started out as an unusual day to begin with," Clarke hums, thinking back; "Counsellor Jaha and a diplomatic party came to our camp on their way to meet the Grounders for peace talks. Jaha wanted me to accompany him in support, since the Grounders were on better terms with our people, the 100. But your dad wouldn't hear of it, he's always been pigheaded when it comes to protecting those he cares most about."
"We argued about it for a while, but then your uncle Jasper came back to camp with a broken arm and that settled the matter. By the time I was done tending to Uncle Jasper," here Clarke chuckles a little at her friend's expense, he really did have the worst luck in the camp, "your dad had already left with the Counsellor and his diplomatic party. They'd reasoned that as the other co-leader of the 100 your dad would work well-enough for the purpose of their mission and away they went."
"Only they never made it to the meeting because as they were making their way through the forest, acid fog hit. They had no choice but to hide in the Reapers' tunnels and wait it out. That's where the Reapers found them in the middle of the storm. With nowhere to run, your dad had to marshal the adults into a defense as most of the guards on the mission were still poorly trained in Earth fighting. In the midst of all that chaos, one of the Reapers caught Counsellor Jaha and tried to drag him away. Your dad saw what was happening and he took on the Reaper single-handedly with nothing but a rock. Your dad won, he saved Jaha's life and most of the diplomatic party too."
"When they came walking back into camp, all I saw were the injuries and the knowledge I'd nearly lost him to the acid fog. I'd wanted to be mad at him, even meant to yell at him. Yet when I reached him, I hugged him tight instead and found myself saying, 'I love you,' for the very first time, and I haven't regretted it since."
Clarke finishes her tale in a whisper and presses a gentle kiss to Willa's sleeping forehead. Then she moves to settle her daughter in the crib Bellamy had built not that long ago for her.
"That was a beautiful story," Abby says from the entrance to Clarke and Bellamy's home, making Clarke jump; "I don't think I've ever heard you tell it before."
"I figured I'd better start practicing now, so that when she gets older I can bore her with the tale over and over again, just like you and Dad used to do to me," Clarke jokes with a smile.
It had taken time for her to forgive her mother for her choices, but eventually Clarke had, and oddly enough Octavia had shown her how to let go of all that anger. Now Clarke is grateful for her mom's experience when it comes to raising a child, all the advice she has and comfort she can provide that Clarke is making the right decisions – even if raising a child on the Ark was nothing like raising one on Earth.
"Well you'd better keep practicing that story, because it's going to change a lot before you get it right," Abby replies and in time Clarke learns she's right.
4.
It's Monty of all people who makes Clarke think more about the day she realized she cared far more deeply for Bellamy than she thought possible. It begins with Monty experimenting on some new rock in his self-made lab on the outskirts of camp. There is a slip of fingers, two things get mixed together that shouldn't be, and the combination hits the rock with deadly accuracy. Even a mile away at the river, cleaning some bandages, Clarke hears the explosion.
Clarke hurries back to the dropship as quickly as she can and is thankful to find no one dead. The explosion, though loud, is mostly harmless in the end. Monty's lab is covered in soot and the genius boy has suffered a plethora of cuts and bruises that have to be washed out and disinfected, but otherwise everything is okay. Bellamy is less pissed then usual at Monty's experiment-gone-wrong, but that's probably because his explosion doesn't take out a section of the wall as it has many times in the past.
In the dropship, which still acts as her infirmary, Clarke pulls in a resistant Monty to treat his wounds.
"No really, I'm good, I can totally clean these cuts myself, no big deal," Monty tugs futilely, trying to free his arm from Clarke's iron grip.
"Monty, shut up and sit down," Clarke orders with her doctor's glare and sagging, Monty does as he's told.
"Will you at least distract me while you work?" he whines after she starts flushing out the grime in the first cut.
"What do you have in mind?" Clarke asks, reaching for the moonshine.
"I don't know, tell me a story?" Monty suggests and then yelps as she pours the moonshine on his cut.
"Oh quit whining; we do this often enough you should be used to it by now," Clarke reminds him.
"We'll see how you feel the next time you get injured," Monty grumbles.
"Be good, or I won't tell you a story," Clarke retorts.
Bellarke-Bellarke-Bellarke
"Nah, I don't buy it," Monty says after Clarke tells him the story of Bellamy saving Jaha's life and coming full circle.
"What do you mean you don't buy it?" Clarke asks, offended.
"That might've been the first time you told our fearless leader you loved him, but you were feeling it long before you said it," Monty replies knowingly; "So when did you really know that you loved him?"
Clarke bites back her original response as she considers Monty's observation and realizes he's right. Then she thinks back further to when she first noticed how her feelings for Bellamy had changed and finally stumbles across an answer.
"I guess it was when Bellamy gave me that white orchid," Clarke decides as she's finishing up the last of Monty's cuts; "That was after Lincoln had explained to him the meaning of different flowers among the Grounders and how the white orchid is a sign of well, courtship, to them. Bellamy explained it all to me after he gave me the orchid and then he asked me out on our first date."
"That's what you're going with?" Monty asks as if in disbelief.
"Yes, why?" Clarke asks confused.
"Nothin'," Monty replies and then scurries out of the dropship before Clarke can demand an explanation out of him.
3.
Monty's vague answer, and his continual dodging of her whenever she tries to get him to explain himself, keeps Clarke wondering and reflecting about her feelings for Bellamy. Then one day she realizes that her affection for Bellamy had changed long before he finally asked her out on a date. As Monty is still dodging her – and doing a very good job of despite the fact they live in a small camp – Clarke tracks down Jasper instead.
"I didn't do anything," Jasper declares, hands above his head as Clarke marches towards him, scowling.
"I'm not here about that," Clarke responds, though she has no idea what problem Jasper has caused this time, it is Bellamy's turn to deal with Jasper so she doesn't care; "I'm here to give you a message to give to Monty."
"Okay," Jasper answers as he lowers his hands, confused; "Why?"
"Because he's avoiding me and I need you to tell him I figured it out," Clarke talks in a rush, wanting to get the conversation over with; "Tell him, it was after we got all our people back from Mount Weather that I realized I cared about Bellamy. I'd thought I had lost him again, so soon after I got him back, and when I saw him again after everything, I realized I needed him in my life, as a co-leader and friend. I'm not saying I was in love with Bellamy all the way back then, but he meant a lot to me."
"Wait, Monty's hiding from you because you want to talk to him about your love life?" Jasper asks far more loudly than Clarke wants him to, so she hisses at him to keep it down.
Jasper just laughs and heads back to his post on the wall, leaving Clarke equally perplexed and wanting to strangle him and his friend for assuming they know more about her feelings than she does.
2.
Clarke is not that surprised when Octavia finds her soon after her talk with Jasper. She has a few choice words to say about the gossips among their people who love to spread the word about their leaders' love life and Octavia just laughs.
"I hear you're telling people you fell in love with my brother only after Mount Weather," Octavia leans casually against Clarke's work table as she's shelling nuts to be canned for winter.
"I am not telling people," Clarke retorts; "I was practicing for how I'll tell Willa when she's older and Monty and Jasper think they know better."
"Well they're right," Octavia shrugs and Clarke stops what she's doing to glare at her sister-in-law; "They are. You were in love with my brother long before we rescued our people from Mount Weather. Actually, you were both in love with each other and couldn't see it, but I did."
Then Octavia gets called away by the cries of her own son and Clarke is left to her thought again. With Jasper and Monty, Clarke could believe they were just seeing more to the situation than what was really there. Octavia was a different story; she knew her brother and she had understood Clarke better than most early on. She spent the rest of the day considering the different interactions she'd had with Bellamy that had convinced Octavia they were in love with each other and just didn't know it.
"It was the hug," Clarke tells Octavia that night after dinner when they have a calm moment; "When I hugged Bellamy at Camp Jaha, after I'd thought he'd died fighting the Grounders, and I was so relieved to see he was alive. That's when you realized I was in love with him, even if we couldn't see it."
"Oh, I knew you two were in love with each other before that. The hug confirmed it and made me certain you guys would figure it out on your own one day and look, I was right," Octavia replies with her signature smirk.
Then she disappears into her own hut to be with her family for the night and Clarke is left to ponder some more.
1.
The matter of when Clarke knew she loved Bellamy is dropped for some time. There are more pressing needs than gossip when trying to eke out a living on Earth. Still on quiet nights, when she has trouble getting to sleep, Clarke turns to face Bellamy as he rests beside her and considers their tumultuous past.
The truth comes to her one day when she's watching Raven walk towards her on the dropship, cradling a sprained, possibly broken wrist.
"When I sealed the door of the dropship, before we ignited the blast fuel, and I thought I was sending Bellamy to his death, that's when I knew I cared about him," Clarke muses aloud; "I didn't want to call it love. I was too scared to name it for what it was and my heart was still aching from Finn's lies, but that was when I knew."
"Uh huh, glad it only took you five years to figure that out Princess," Raven quips as Clarke probes her wrist.
Finn is no longer a sore subject between them, time has healed those wounds. Besides, Clarke is happy with Bellamy and Raven has Wick. So there is no awkward silence between them the mention of Finn, just years of being friends.
"What, you're saying you knew how I felt even then?"
"Your face said it all," Raven says with a shrug; "That and you cried out Bellamy's name when you were sleeping, not Finn or anybody else, just Bellamy, and everybody who was awake heard you."
"And none of you thought to mention this because?"
"That would've ruined all the betting pools we had going on about the two of you," Raven replies with an ornery grin.
And Clarke just groans.
+1.
"Daddy," Willa begs one night as Bellamy is trying to get her to bed; "tell me a story."
"I'm afraid I can't Little One, you didn't use the magic word," Bellamy replies as he tucks Willa beneath her covers.
From her position at the work table, where she's filling out the infirmary rotation for the next week, Clarke doesn't bother to hide her smile at this tradition.
"Please Daddy," Willa pouts.
"All right, all right," Bellamy agrees and pretends to ponder for a moment; "Do you want to hear the story about the Princess who saves her people from a nasty dragon in a mountain?"
"No, not that one," Willa tries to slip out of the covers.
"How about the great Roman ruler, Caesar Augustus and his sister Octavia?" Bellamy asks, as he tickles Willa to keep her in place.
"Uncle, uncle," Willa cries, having picked up the phrase from Jasper, and Bellamy relents of his tickling; "Tell me a story about you and Mommy, please."
"About me and Mommy, huh," Bellamy considers and Clarke stops working to listen to this story as well; "Have I ever told you the story about the day your mom and I first met?"
Willa shakes her head and settles down; her blue eyes focused Bellamy, always an attentive audience. Bellamy grins down at her from his seat on the corner of the bed and stretches out his legs as he gets ready to amaze their daughter with his storytelling skills.
"It happened many years before you were born," as most of Bellamy's stories begin; "When the leaders of the Ark up in space, decided to send 100 teenagers to the ground, to find out if people could live on Earth once more. Your mom was of course one of those original 100, probably one of the first they picked to send, but I didn't know that at the time. I was more concerned with getting on the dropship to be with your aunt O, because I'd promised to protect her and I couldn't very well do that if I was stuck in space."
"So I made a deal to get on the dropship and snuck onboard at the last second," a child-friendly version of what had happened, yes, but Willa is still too young to be told the reality of the situation; when she is older, then she'll be told the truth; "It was very scary on the way down, I didn't have a harness to hold me in, and the ride was very bumpy. We were in nothing more than a giant box of scrap metal that we were hoping would get us safely to the ground. With a lot of luck, the dropship landed and most of us survived. Then came the moment of truth, it was time to open the door."
"I was the first one to the door, I was going to open it, and make sure that your aunt O was the first one off the ship, the first Arker to set foot on Earth in nearly a hundred years. Then your mom showed up. She had her long blonde hair pulled into a ponytail and was wearing clothes as old and worn as everybody else, but she certainly was a sight. Then she opened her mouth and started bossing me around, telling me the air could be bad, and I knew I was a goner. In her I saw a fire that matched my own and I knew she'd been no good for me, so I resolved to stay away from her as much as possible. My plan failed big time, but I'm very glad it did," Bellamy turns to smirk at Clarke.
Clarke fights to keep her grin off her face, but fails as she walks over to her husband and sleeping daughter. She brushes her fingers through Willa's dark curls while Bellamy rests his hand on Clarke's stomach where their second child was growing.
"So you knew from the beginning did you?" she asks him coyly; "Just wait until I tell O that, your sister's going to be very displeased you didn't tell her sooner."
"You wouldn't dare," Bellamy starts, but Clarke just smiles mischievously at him.
Bellarke-Bellarke-Bellarke
They laugh, they cry, they fight. They held their camp together by threads, watched it fall, and now were seeing it flourish. They are co-leaders and partners, lovers and parents, the King and Princess. They may have fallen in love at first sight, perhaps years later or anywhere in between. In the end, it doesn't matter when, it only matters that they love each other with everything they have in them – that they are Bellamy and Clarke.