It was nearly three months after their showdown with ALIE when they finally figured it out.

Oh, there'd been some early speculation. Some what ifs and a lot of I hate to even suggest this.

But most people had thought those were just the skeptics talking. The pessimists. The same ones who never thought anything was going to work. Who were sure the Mountain Men couldn't be defeated, and ALIE couldn't be shut down.

It certainly hadn't been how Raven had felt, because she was a "can do" person who knew her awesome brain would always find the answer.

And it was never, ever Monty's opinion. He insisted that it was unthinkable that he'd been forced to kill his own mother only to find out they were all going to die anyway.

As for Jasper? He was just starting to feel human again. And whole. And happy. It had taken him months to reach that point and he sure as hell wasn't giving up on life now.

And it most definitely was not Clarke Griffin, who'd spent her first six months on the ground pulling lever after lever in order to "save her people." And then been forced to watch as every single pull of every single lever had condemned hundreds of others - "not her people" - to their deaths.

So she had to believe that all those lives she'd taken had meant something. That it had somehow all been worth every black mark that had been left on her soul.

And there'd been plenty of others who had felt the same. Who'd held on tightly to that little kernel of hope.

But in the end, it seemed that the naysayers had been right all along.

Because after every calculation had been completed, after every equation had been solved, and after every scenario had been run a dozen times each, it turned out that they they weren't going to be able to stop the meltdown of all those nuclear plants after all.

In fact, they weren't going to be able to stop even one of them.

And Clarke had been so fucking sure! "We'll find a way," she'd told ALIE. "We always do." Except this time they hadn't.

When Kane told her, Clarke had given herself thirty minutes of solitude to bewail her fate, and then she was back with new queries.

"So what do we do now?" she asked Raven, her expression determined. She had to do something. Movement - a plan - was absolutely essential. Because giving up was anathema to Clarke Griffin.

Raven was silent, but Clarke could see in her eyes that something had been percolating inside her brain. Maybe something she had yet to share with Kane.

Clarke's brows rose as she waited for Raven to elucidate.

"Well," Raven said finally, lowering her voice to just above a whisper, "it's something I figured out using ALIE2. We could build vacuum-sealed, life-sustainable, self-contained pods. Giant ones, that could each include hundreds of people."

Clarke frowned. Raven seemed so certain that this would work. But...hadn't they already considered the "lifeboat" solution? What was different now?

"I thought we already looked into this," she said.

"Yeah, we did," Raven agreed, shrugging. "Early on. But it wasn't originally a high priority because we were so sure the nuclear meltdowns could be stopped. And there were other issues, including some design problems, that seemed insurmountable. At the time."

"And what's different now?" Clarke asked, bewildered.

"I told you. I used information from ALIE2, plus the extra brain cells that ALIE1 activated in me, to fix the design flaws."

Clarke couldn't believe it. Why wasn't Raven more enthusiastic?

"Why the hell haven't you brought this to Kane? We need to get busy building those things!"

Clarke could feel her excitement grow. Here was a plan she might actually be able to help with, since she really hadn't been much good at the nuclear physics.

But Raven was still frowning.

"Well, yeah, except the thing is, considering the number of people in our immediate vicinity...the Arkadians, the Trikru, the Azgeda, just for starters...we'd never have enough time to build all the pods we needed. And even if time weren't an issue..."

But Clarke had found her answer and she was rolling right over Raven's concerns.

"More people just means more workers. We'll get everyone's help with the building, but we need to start right away."

Clarke hugged Raven, turning to leave, her mind already on the planning and the organizing.

"I'm going to tell Kane about this right now."

"No, Clarke! Wait!" Raven reached out to grab Clarke's arm, and her almost useless left leg nearly crumpled beneath her.

"Huh? Raven, what's the matter with you?"

"You can't go running to Kane about this, Clarke." Raven was frantic as she clutched the edge of her desk, trying to regain her balance and at the same time prevent Clarke's departure.

"Why the hell not?" She was perplexed by Raven's attitude. They couldn't afford even a tiny delay.

Raven sighed, and it was suddenly clear to Clarke that there was something Raven hadn't told her.

"What is it?" she asked, wary, just knowing she wasn't going to like the answer.

"Even if you rounded up every single person you could find," Raven said, "and they all worked around the clock building these things, it wouldn't matter. The pods require specialized material, and the only place it's available is here, on what's left of the Ark."

Raven shook her head sadly. "I've done the calculations, and there's only enough of the necessary material to build a certain number of pods."

Clarke's mouth formed a silent "Oh" as she understood at last.

"And we don't have enough material to make all the pods we need to save everyone."

Raven nodded, confirming Clarke's fears. "We can't save everyone."

XXXXXXXXXX

In the end, Clarke convinced Raven that they still had to bring it to Kane. It was a viable solution. It just wasn't a perfect solution.

The committee discussed it, including the Trikru and Azgeda members, and eventually, all were in agreement that to take this option would be to make the best of a disastrous situation. Even if everyone couldn't be saved, at least some would live. They knew they'd eventually have to figure out a way to decide who those lucky souls would would be, but for now, they thought it best to focus on building the pods.

Clarke caught up with Bellamy as the meeting broke up.

"So what do you think?" she asked.

He shrugged, philosophical. "I guess it's better than nothing. Better than no one making it at all."

"Yeah," she smiled wryly, "maybe we'll get lucky for once. You and me. I think we're due for a break any time now."

Ordinarily, she could read Bellamy like a book. Every thought in his head, every emotion he felt, was immediately visible on his face. But today, Clarke found him impenetrable.

"This is a good thing, Bellamy," she asserted, just in case he thought saving the human race - again - was less than worthwhile.

"Of course it is," he agreed. "and maybe you will get lucky," he added, giving her one of his rare soft smiles. The one she wished she saw more often.

Not that she didn't see much of Bellamy. On the contrary, they practically lived in each others' pockets. They'd both had a tough year, what with constantly cheating death. And then there'd been so many personal losses for them both.

Clarke often wished she could have known Gina. Raven said she'd been great and really crazy about Bellamy. Of course, anyone would be lucky to have Bellamy as a boyfriend. So it was good to know that Gina had appreciated him.

She knew that Bellamy still mourned Gina, and even worse, still felt guilt over the way she'd died. Everyone had told him it wasn't his fault, but when had Bellamy ever listened to the rest of them?

And then there was Octavia. After ALIE's takedown, she'd fallen in with some bad company and made some questionable decisions. But then one day, having heard about the new threat to humanity, she'd come waltzing back into Arkadia like she owned the place.

Clarke's mother and Kane - about the only ones left who passed for any kind of law in Arkadia - had their hands full with an impending apocalypse, so they decided to withhold judgment on Octavia until they saw how she conducted herself. And so far, she'd caused no trouble. Of course, maybe that was because she spent as much time with the Trikru heda, Indra, as she did with the Sky People.

Secretly, Clarke thought that might be for the best. Octavia had developed some jagged edges over the past year, and Clarke didn't see them wearing down any time soon.

Really, it was mostly for Bellamy's sake that Clarke had been so happy to see Octavia return. The relief on his face when he saw her enter the gates had had Clarke crying happy tears.

She'd heard, of course, about Octavia's assault on Bellamy. Miller had told her about it, and every time she remembered his story, she became angry all over again. Clarke knew in her bones that if she'd been there, it never would have happened. Because she wouldn't have let it. No matter what Bellamy had said.

Things were better between the Blakes now, but would probably never be the same as they'd been when Octavia had lived under that floor. Clarke thought maybe that was okay. That maybe it was good for Bellamy to distance himself from his sister just a little. He'd never have been able to stop worrying about her if she'd stayed away, but now that she was back, maybe he could finally start to let her go.

"Why are you staring at me?" Bellamy said now, and the soft smile appeared again, along with a raised eyebrow.

"Was I?" Clarke shook herself. "Just daydreaming, I guess?" Then she blushed, realizing how that might have sounded.

But Bellamy was Bellamy, and he'd never call her out for a silly offhand remark like that.

"Will I see you tonight?" he asked, as they parted.

Clarke just nodded her head. What night did she not spend with Bellamy?

XXXXXXXXXX

It had been hard at first, after everything that had happened to her in Polis. Her feelings for Lexa - inconvenient, dangerous, long-suppressed - had burst forth finally when she'd understood she might never see the Heda again. That this might be her only chance to be with someone that, against all reason and expectation, she'd come to love.

So she'd given in to her impulses, and they'd had several glorious hours of intimacy. They had burned bright, and if Clarke were never to be with her again, it would have been a shining memory.

And then Lexa had taken a bullet that had been meant for her.

She'd been so filled with grief and guilt that she'd barely been able to do everything that had been necessary. If it hadn't been for Bellamy...

Clarke sighed. She thought she'd probably become too dependent on Bellamy lately. They'd always had that thing - that connection - and after ALIE, they'd both been damaged in the very same places. So they'd leaned on each other, and in the months following, that connection had grown and strengthened.

But Clarke knew she was better now. Not quite so sad and broken.

She wondered, not for the first time, if she should try to back away from Bellamy. But as with every other time she'd had that same idea, panic set in, and she had to stop herself from leaving what she was doing to immediately seek him out.

She also thought, from the happy expression on his face every time he saw her, that Bellamy probably felt exactly the same. But he never said anything, and so neither did she. They just let it lay. Maybe it was for the best, she thought. Things being so uncertain.

XXXXXXXXXX

With the buildings nearing completion, and the radiation threat mounting ever higher, the committee knew they could no longer put off devising a scheme to allocate space in the pods. There had been much discussion as to what method they should use, but they never seemed to be able to come to an agreement.

Should they employ a quota system? So many from each clan? Or maybe those with important jobs should get priority? Healers, engineers, political leaders, for instance. But that smacked of elitism. In some ways, it was a repeat of the origins of the Ark.

Some thought maybe the women and children should be given priority, as they would be on a sinking ship. But others pointed out that that made little sense, since at least some men would certainly be needed, too.

It was Bellamy Blake who, sick of the endless arguments, finally came up with it.

"Why not leave it to fate?" he threw out to the room.

The others turned quizzical expressions towards him.

"Leave it to fate? What do you mean by that, Bellamy?" Clarke asked from the chair next to his. The one she always sat in.

"I mean, have a lottery. Everyone writes their name on a special form, they all get dropped in a container, and we pull out the winners."

Abby frowned. "A lottery, Bellamy? We're not giving away sweets at a Unity Day celebration. This is...life and death."

He shrugged. "You wanted fair? That's fair."

No one seemed to know what to say, but then Kane heaved a sigh.

"Bellamy's right," he said. "It's the fairest way."

"But, Marcus..." For once Kane and Abby were not in agreement.

"I know what you're going to say, Abby, but the boy is right. Sometimes things have to be left to the fates."

Kane and Abby had one of those silent discussions they sometimes held with their eyes, until finally Abby nodded.

"So be it," she said.

Other heads nodded around the table. They had consensus.

XXXXXXXXXX

Kane oversaw the printing of the special forms himself. They would be handed out to anyone who requested one, but he'd also incorporated a numerical system as a cross-check to eliminate cheating.

Anyone who wanted to could opt out, of course, and plenty did, especially among the grounders. Many of them thought the Skaikru were crazy, anyway, what with their machines and their vehicles, and they didn't believe anything bad was coming their way.

But Indra took the form. And Roan. Nyko and Niylah and many others who had more familiarity with the Skaikru, and understood that the planet was about to become a very different, much more lethal, place to live.

Raven decided that she and her friends - Clarke, Bellamy, Monty, Jasper, Miller, Harper, and all the rest, should have a party to celebrate filling out their entries into what she insisted on referring to as the Life or Death Sweepstakes. Bellamy said it really didn't seem like a party kind of occasion, but Raven cackled that under the circumstances, they might not get another chance.

They had waited until the last possible moment to turn in their forms, since the names would be drawn the following day. Raven made a big deal about marching them all into the chancellor's office, and then overseeing them as they filled in their names. Clarke watched Bellamy write his with a flourish and then chided him because his last name was nearly illegible. (Do you know another Bellamy? he asked very reasonably.)

They'd maybe had a glass or two of Azgedan wine before they arrived, so the dropping of the slips into the lottery container might have been accompanied by a lot more hilarity than the occasion warranted. She knew it was crazy considering the circumstances, but Clarke couldn't seem to stop laughing.

It might have been the wine, of course, but maybe it was simply that she'd finally been forced to let go. Whether she lived or died was no longer in her own hands, but left up to the gods of karma.

They all squeezed back into Raven's quarters, where there was barely enough room for them to fit. When Bellamy grabbed the last available chair, then pulled Clarke down into his lap, she could hardly believe it. He never did things like that.

But Bellamy wasn't letting her up. In fact, his hands tightened around her waist. And the longer she sat there with him, the less inclined she was to move. Until finally, she simply settled back against him with a sigh, fully in his embrace. She turned and lay her head against his chest, equally astonished that he should be holding her this way, and that she should be so comfortable with it.

Clarke didn't want to think about why, when there was every chance she'd be dying very soon, she should suddenly feel so damned happy.

At one point in the evening, Raven caught her eye and winked, and Clarke felt herself blushing. But nothing could have persuaded her to move. The others neither remarked on it nor looked in any way surprised. Perhaps, she thought, she was the only one who was surprised.

It was after she yawned three times in a row that Bellamy suggested she should go to bed. She caught a few smirks then, but no one said anything, other than to wish them good luck in the next day's drawing.

"I'm feeling lucky," Bellamy said, smiling.

"Feelin' lucky or gettin' lucky?" Miller wanted to know, but the others just laughed.

Bellamy walked Clarke back to her quarters, but there was nothing unusual about that. What wasn't part of their usual routine was the hand that was holding hers tightly as they made their way down the hall to her room. But he dropped her hand as soon as she opened the door.

"Good night, Clarke," he said, smiling his soft smile. The one, she suddenly realized, he only ever turned in her direction.

"But...don't you want to come in?"

Clarke couldn't believe he was just going to leave her at the door like that. Not after holding her that way all evening. Not after being with her every damn day. Not after what they'd both been through for months and months. Not when their fates would be decided in a few short hours.

Not when time was running out for them.

Bellamy shook his head. "I'm tired, Clarke, and I know you are, too. I'll see you at the drawing tomorrow. And, who know? Maybe we'll both be one of the lucky ones."

With that, he leaned forward and brushed his lips across her forehead. And before she could react, he'd smiled his soft just-for-Clarke smile again, pushed her gently into her room, and closed the door behind her.

Clarke heard the door click, and realized she was alone. And likely to stay that way.

She stripped off her clothes, threw on something to sleep in - she thought it might actually be an old shirt of Bellamy's that she'd picked up somewhere and just never returned - and crawled into bed. The effects of the wine had worn off long ago, and she had nothing to dull the thoughts that swirled through her head.

What the hell had just happened?

She'd gone from perfect bliss to abject disappointment within the space a few minutes. He had held onto her tightly all evening long, and she'd thought it meant...something. That she was as important to him as he was to her. That he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

For Clarke Griffin could no longer pretend that she didn't want Bellamy Blake. That she wasn't desperate with longing for him.

Exhaustion and disappointment eventually combined to induce a fitful sleep.

XXXXXXXXXX

She woke abruptly to a sharp rapping on her door. Had Bellamy returned after all?

"Clarke! Clarke!" Her name was hissed in a whisper just loud enough for her to identify the voice as Raven's.

She opened the door quickly and Raven peered into the room.

"Are you alone? Bellamy's not here?"

Clarke swept her arm towards her tiny room, all of which could be seen from the doorway.

"As you see, I am alone," she said dispiritedly. "Why are you here in the middle of the night?"

Raven looked at her keenly, at the same time pulling something out of her pocket.

"You know how Bellamy said he felt lucky about tomorrow's drawing?"

Clarke shrugged. "Yeah."

"Well I don't think he's going to stand much of a chance after all," she said, opening her hand to show Clarke what it contained.

It was Bellamy's lottery form, the same one in which the "Bellamy" had been written so clearly and the "Blake" was just a messy capital "B" followed by an illegible scrawl. The paper itself was badly wrinkled, as though it had been screwed up into a ball.

Clarke was bewildered. "Where did you get that?"

"I found it while I was cleaning up. I think...it must have fallen out of his pocket."

Clarke stared at Raven as the implication finally hit her.

"He never put his name in. He filled out the form and he let me think he was taking his chance just like the rest of us, but he never goddamn put it in the box!"

As she said out loud what they'd both realized must be true, Clarke's voice rose in anger. And the more she thought about it, the more pissed off she became. Not only had Bellamy made a unilateral decision to opt out of potentially staying alive, but he hadn't had the guts to tell her about it.

And he didn't get to do that! They were a team, goddammit! She had a say.

"No, no, no, no, no!" she said, grabbing the wrinkled scrap of paper from Raven, closing the door behind her, and heading off down the hallway.

"Where are you going?" Raven hissed quietly, cognizant of the hour and the numerous doors along the hallway.

"I'm going to see a man about his life!"

"Like that?" Raven asked, gesturing toward the shirt that barely covered Clarke's ass, and the long expanse of legs below it.

"I don't give a fuck!" Clarke said, reaching the end of the hall and turning the corner.

"Good luck," Raven yelled after her, as loud as she dared.

By the time she arrived at Bellamy's door, Clarke was so angry that instead of knocking, she pounded.

"Bellamy," she said, not bothering to moderate her voice at all. "Bellamy, let me in this minute!"

In only a few seconds, the door was opened by a sleepy, rumpled Bellamy, barefoot and shirtless, his crazy hair even wilder than usual.

"Clarke! What...what are you doing here?"

And Clarke opened her mouth to let him have it, to really tear him a new one. But then she lifted the hand with the damning wrinkled paper in it, only to find that her hand was shaking. And that she couldn't speak around the lump in her throat.

Bellamy closed the door behind her.

"Where did you get that?" he asked quietly, glancing between her face and her open palm.

"Raven found it when she was cleaning up and she knew what you'd done," she answered on a sob. "Or rather, what you hadn't done."

She looked up at him, and now the tears were falling freely.

"Why would you do this, Bellamy? Don't you want to live?"

"Clarke..." Bellamy turned his face away from her, running his hand agitatedly through his hair.

"No!" she said, grabbing his arm. "You tell me right now why you were so damned eager to leave me all alone that you couldn't even take the chance of getting to live!"

"What! No! This has...it has nothing to do with you. It's my life," he said stubbornly.

"The hell it is!" she said, just as stubborn. "We're a team, Bellamy, a team." Clarke poked him in the chest to emphasize her point. "You can't be stupid enough to think that whatever happens to you doesn't affect me."

"Dammit, Clarke!" he said, his face a tangle of frustration, longing, and despair. "I don't deserve to live. After everything I've done, all the trouble I've caused. All the people I cared about who died because of me. Gina. Lincoln."

"Finn! Lexa! I'll match you person for person and crime for crime, and it won't be hard to come up with just as many dead bodies."

"The grounder army!"

"Tondc!" she countered, poking him in the chest again.

"The culling on the Ark!"

"Bellamy, you couldn't have known about that. But, okay, let's see...the grounders outside the drop ship! There were hundreds of them, and I killed them all. Just like that," she said, snapping her fingers.

Bellamy was silent.

"Clarke," he sighed tiredly, "this is stupid."

"No kidding. But so is you thinking that you don't deserve to live. Because if you don't then neither do I. And I want us both to live. So you have to try," she said, desperate to convince him.

Clarke swallowed convulsively.

"If I make it and you don't, or vice versa, then I'd...I'd have to accept that. It would be...fate. Or at least I'd try to accept it, because we would have done everything we could. But I can't accept this," she said. "I won't accept you just...giving up."

When he still said nothing, she screwed up her courage, feeling vulnerable but saying it anyway.

"Am I so unimportant to you that you won't even try to stay with me?"

Bellamy's eyes closed briefly, and he groaned as though in pain.

"Clarke," he said deliberately, his eyes on hers, "you are the single most important person in the world to me. And I'm pretty damn sure you know that."

Clarke moved closer to him, until there was barely any space between them at all.

"I thought I did. I thought that tonight you were trying to tell me something. That as close as we are, maybe you wanted us to be even closer."

Clarke reached up and stroked her hand across Bellamy's cheek. "I want that, too," she said softly, deciding to leave coyness and pretense in the dirt.

"Clarke," he breathed, covering her hand with his own.

They both moved then, closing the small space between them until their lips were brushing together softly.

His arms came down and gathered her in, and what had begun as a soft gentle kiss became something deep and passionate in just the few seconds it took for her to wind her arms around his neck and press their bodies together.

There was yearning in that kiss. There was devotion and affection and joy. And months of suppressed desire that had been shunted aside while the world kept them busy with its own demands. But they gave into it now, twisting their bodies around each other as they sought an even closer embrace.

Clarke could have stayed in that moment forever, but right then she had something more important to take care of. She sighed shakily and broke the kiss, laying her head against his shoulder. "Please at least give us this chance."

Bellamy breathed her in. "Are you sure you really want to be with me like this, Clarke?"

Despite the way she'd just kissed him, it sounded to her like he didn't quite believe her.

Clarke looked up at him and cupped his face in her hands, brushing her thumbs softly across his cheek.

"Yes," she said, giving him a small smile. "I think I've probably wanted this for a very long time, but we had a few other things on our minds."

"Yeah," he agreed, smiling his special for-Clarke smile. "We did."

"But even if...even if we can only be together just for now, Bellamy, I still want you to have a chance to live, to have a full and happy life."

"And that's all I've ever wanted for you," he countered.

Bellamy sighed then, folding her back into his embrace.

"Okay," he said in her ear. "So how do I get my name in that box? Isn't it too late? The drawing is tomorrow and the box is locked up in the chancellor's office."

Clarke pulled back, glancing up at him with a conspiratorial smile. "Good thing I have a key to the office then, isn't it?"

Bellamy smirked as he looked her up and down. "You hiding that key on you somewhere in that getup?"

She poked him in the ribs. "Very funny. We'll have to stop by my room on the way. In fact," she said, "why don't you grab your stuff. My room is a little bigger than this hole in the wall."

Clarke had already made up her mind not to let Bellamy out of her sight until it was all over. One way or the other.

"I won't need a shirt," he said, pulling on his boots. "I'll just use the one you're wearing. Almost positive it's mine."

"It was," she said, grabbing his hand and pulling him out the door. "Not anymore."

XXXXXXXXXX

Neither Clarke nor Bellamy got much sleep that night, but they were still up early to attend the lottery drawing in the mess hall. They stood together, arms wrapped around one another, and awaited their fates, both separately and together.

They were feeling confident and hopeful that after all that they'd been through, maybe karma would finally give them a break.

But that's another story.