There are tiny black stars on her mother's skin. They travel along the back of her earlobe and disappear into her hair. Clarke has a tendency to run her finger along the trail. She counts the stars, she memorizes them; she wonders who in the universe has the same exact markings as her mother.
They're called Soul Stars, Abby told her once. You're born with them, these unique constellations imprinted on your flesh, and someone, somewhere has an identical cluster on the exact same spot as you. That person is your soulmate.
But Jake has two Stars on his shoulder instead of a dusting behind his ear like Abby.
"Because your father and I aren't soulmates," she explains to Clarke, "but we chose each other. And I'll always choose your father. I'll always choose you."
She makes it a habit of saying this to Clarke when Abby finds her scribbling galaxies from an astronomy book onto her arms when she's six.
Clarke, it turns out, is one of the few who are born without stars on their skin.
She's twelve, but the textbook in her hands is decades older. It's the same astronomy book she used to copy the solar system from; the book she flipped through when she pondered how unfair it is that she'll always be alone in this life and the book she shelved for the last four years after she decided she's lucky to be blessed with an independent soul.
But Clarke has a crush on a girl in her class who has the view from her window scattered across her shoulders, and the old book is just a reminder she will never have what most other people do.
So she's on line at the market, prepared to trade it for some chalk she can actually make use of when she notices him.
He's tall, clearly a lot older than her, and has freckles across his cheeks which Clarke almost mistakes for Soul Stars. He has thread in his hand and a hole in his shirt and he's staring hard at Clarke's book as though he's waiting for it to burst into flames.
There's a pull in her gut, and she's blurting words out before she realizes what she's doing. "Want it?"
Judging by the way his eyes widen, snap to hers, the question comes as a surprise to him. "What?"
Clarke holds the text out, waves it under his nose. "Do you want the book?" she asks, but now she feels stupid for saying anything in the first place. He narrows his eyes and crosses his arms. For a brief second he makes Clarke feel astronomically small.
"What do you want for it?" he asks.
"Nothing," she tells him, "you can have it."
He's not buying it though. He looks bored when he says "seriously, what's the catch?"
Maybe Clarke is too young, too naive, but she can't help but wonder why everyone on this godforsaken satellite is always expecting a catch. "There isn't one," she insists. She hopes the insulted tone of her voice is enough for him to shut up and take the damn book.
Unfortunately for her, he seems just as stubborn as she is. "There's always a catch," he says. He smirks when Clarke glares at him, grits her teeth.
"Listen," she snaps, "do you want the book or not?"
His smile falters. He looks her up and down, most likely weighing the pros and cons of accepting what for him is an apparent steal from a prepubescent child. Finally though, he says yes.
"Then take it."
Warily, he extracts the book from her hands, holding it as though he's still waiting for its pages to explode when she marches away. Not five feet from the door, Clarke hears him call after her. "Hey!"
She turns around, rolling her eyes, waiting for the older boy to continue giving her grief.
"Is it any good?" he asks.
She shrugs, answers him honestly. "Dunno. I just liked the pictures."
The day before Jake Griffin is floated, a tall girl with red hair and a cluster of Stars behind her left knee stumbles into Medical. Her ankle is twisted and she's wincing in pain, but she smiles when Clarke spots the star system just below the hem of her skirt.
"Know who I match?" the girl asks her jokingly.
Clarke forces herself to smile, hands the girl an icepack. "No," she lies.
Thirteen hours later her father is dead and Clarke is being locked up in solitary confinement.
She doesn't feel guilty for not telling Wells she found his soulmate. Not when she regrets ever telling Wells anything at all.
She learns three things about him before they set foot on the ground: His name is Bellamy, he has a sister, and he does not belong on Earth.
The first Clarke figures out when Octavia practically falls down the dropship ladder, breathing his name like a long forgotten prayer. The second she learns when Octavia refers to him as, well, her brother. But Clarke knew the third before she even noticed his wrist was missing a band. Because he's the boy she gave her favorite book to.
And if her calculations are correct, there is no way he's young enough to be on the dropship with the rest of the delinquents.
Though she remembers him, Clarke doubts he recognizes her. She has curves where she used to be flat and flab where she used to be twiggy and she certainly looks nothing like the almost-teenager she was six years ago.
But, if she's being honest, Clarke wouldn't have recognized him either if she hadn't committed his nebula of freckles to memory the way she memorized her mother's stars.
Monty has an almost exact replica of the milky way on the back of his hand. Over 300 billion Stars swirling across his skin, just the same as Jasper. It's the most intricate arrangement Clarke has ever seen on two people, which is funny considering Jasper and Monty have the simplest, most uncomplicated relationship she knows of.
"He wishes Octavia were his soulmate instead of me," Monty tells Clarke one day. They're hiking to the lake to collect more seaweed, Miller standing guard behind them. Monty glances over his shoulder at him with a sheepish grin and he's still smiling when he returns his attention to Clarke. "But I don't care. Jasper is an idiot."
"It doesn't bother you that your best friend resents you for being his soulmate?" Clarke asks.
Monty rolls his eyes. "Jasper loves me. He knows he loves me. He's just a creep with a crush who needs an excuse to get close to a girl."
Clarke tries to stop herself from laughing which results in an ugly snort. Monty beams at her...then looks over his shoulder again.
"So," Clarke drawls, gaze traveling from a bashful Monty to a smirking Nate and back again, "you ever wish you shared those Stars with someone else?" She flicks her eyes in Miller's direction to emphasize her point. Monty ducks his head to hide his smile.
"Nah. I'm a loyal friend." He lowers his voice and leans in close so only she can hear him. He jerks his thumb at the boy behind them. "Some people find that attractive."
Clarke guffaws and playfully pushes him away.
Some people don't deserve soulmates like Monty.
She's sitting in front of the wooden cross they stuck in the ground for Wells when Bellamy finds her. Clarke can't remember if crosses are a Christian thing or if pentacles or hamzas are, but she thinks Wells would have appreciated the sentiment anyway.
"It's not the symbols or the stories that matter so much," he told her the day she found his old, worn bible. "It's the messages they send."
Clarke hopes his crooked headstone sends hers.
I love you.
I need you.
I miss you.
I'm sorry.
"You shouldn't be over here alone, Princess." Clarke wipes hastily at her eyes when she hears Bellamy's voice behind her. "Someone might find it ironic to slit your throat over the prince's grave."
Clarke shoots him a filthy glare over her shoulder. She pretends he has a heart she could rip out of his chest and stomp on. "Fuck off, Bellamy."
He doesn't.
Instead he sits down next to her, legs crossed, gun in his lap. "I thought you hated Jaha," he says.
"I did," Clarke says. "Then I didn't."
She doesn't think he understands and she's not about to elaborate, but he nods anyway, doesn't ask questions.
"I know who his soulmate was and I never told him." Clarke doesn't know what makes her say it – to Bellamy Blake, nonetheless – but the red haired girl with Wells' stars behind her knee has been weighing on Clarke's mind since she was put in Solitary. She wasted so much time holding a grudge against Wells, keeping secrets from him because she didn't believe he kept hers, that she just never told him.
"What, his soulmate wasn't you?" Bellamy teases.
Clarke purses her lips, ignores him.
"He deserved to know," she says. She digs her nails into her palms until they sting with red half-moons. "He deserved better."
As hard as she tries to hold them back, a tear escapes her. Then another. And before Clarke knows it she's hunched over her best friend's grave, sobbing so viciously she can hardly breathe.
She doesn't push Bellamy away when he wraps her in his arms and holds her.
Finn Collins has Stars running from his shoulder to the tips of his fingers. Clarke wants to cringe whenever he flips Jasper off with galaxies on his hands.
Their second week on Earth, Finn catches her staring at them and flexes his muscles to grab her attention. He laughs when she frowns at him, embarrassed of being caught. "Where are your Soul Stars anyway, Princess?"
Clarke shrugs. She busies herself with cleaning what little medical tools they have.
It's not that she minds not having Stars – not having a soulmate. She prefers it this way, especially now on the ground where forming any type of emotional attachment is foolish when death is their closest companion. It hurts enough when they lose someone they barely know; Clarke isn't sure she could handle losing the other half of herself.
Finn mimics her movements. He shrugs, a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. "What?" he asks. "Are they somewhere embarrassing? Are they on your butt?"
Clarke cracks a smile. "No," she tells him. "I don't have Soul Stars."
Finn deflates visibly. His shoulders sink and he grimaces and he watches Clarke pitifully as she tucks bandages away. "Like, not even one?" he asks.
Clarke shakes her head. "Not even one."
"That sucks."
"Maybe. I wouldn't know."
Finn grunts. "No, I guess you wouldn't." He rubs his hand over his Stars absently, a faraway look washing over his face.
"Did you ever meet yours?" Clarke asks him. Finn blinks at her, startled. "Your soulmate?"
He stuffs his hands in his pockets, jerks his head to the side, smiles sadly. "I guess it doesn't matter now, huh?"
Clarke isn't sure what he means.
She can't bring herself to look at his arm after they've had sex in the bunker.
Then, when Raven hits the ground, Clarke can't bring herself to look at Finn.
"Your boyfriend is looking for you."
Bellamy comes across Clarke sitting on the ground behind the dropship, cloaking herself in its evening shadows.
"Finn's not my boyfriend," she grumbles. She pulls her knees tight to her chest.
Bellamy rolls his eyes, sits beside her as he's been inclined to do lately. "I don't actually care," he says.
Clarke rolls her eyes. "Shocking."
"Easy with the sardonicism, Princess. You almost sound funny."
"I could say the same to you."
"Touche."
They commence a companionable silence. Bellamy leans his head against the dropship, his eyes fixed on the sky. Clarke picks at a hole in the knee of her jeans, pulling on a thread and making the rip larger.
Some minutes later, Clarke stiffens, staggers back to reality when Bellamy asks her a question. "So what'd Spacewalker do to you?"
She eases up but only a little, smiles grimly, tugs at the thread of her jeans a little harder. "I thought you didn't care."
"I don't care about Collins," Bellamy clarifies.
"And you care about me?" Clarke asks. The question is rhetorical – she already knows he couldn't care less about her – but she's still surprised when he doesn't flat-out say no.
"Are you gonna answer the damn question?"
Clarke slumps back against the dropship, her hands curling between her chest and her legs. After the incident at Wells' grave, she's tried not to make a habit of spontaneously venting her feelings to Bellamy – she's tried not to make a habit of interacting with him sporadically at all – but he has a penchant for seeking her out and making her spill her guts anyway. She doesn't work well when she's emotionally compromised, he's told her.
"Finn didn't do anything," Clarke says. "He just – I don't know. He wants something I can't give him."
From the corner of her eye, Clarke sees Bellamy glance at her sleeved arm as if he would find Finn's Stars there.
"Does he want to be punched in the face? Because I can help out with that if you'd like."
Clarke isn't positive he's joking. She allows herself to smile anyway. "Thanks," she says, "but I could handle that myself if I had to."
"I don't doubt it." Bellamy doesn't push for more answers but he doesn't leave yet either. He's staring at the sky again, gazing at the stars.
Clarke can't help but wonder where the constellation on his skin might be hidden. The thought makes her feel unreasonably lonely.
"Remember that astronomy book you forced me to take from you?" Bellamy asks.
Clarke is surprised he does remember. She stares at him, thrown off guard, until he says her name and repeats himself.
"You do?" she asks.
Bellamy looks angry he mentioned it. "If you're flattered I remember you, don't be," he warns her. "There aren't many girls with blonde hair and blue eyes on the Ark who can afford an actual textbook. And everyone knew who you were."
Clarke tries to mask her disappointment. "Whatever."
"But you remember giving me the book?" he asks again.
"Obviously."
"Well, Octavia loved it." Bellamy makes a face like he's tasting something sour. "She swears her Soul Stars are an exact replica of Cepheus. They're not."
Clarke turns her gaze to the stratosphere as if she'll know which set of stars make up Cepheus just by looking. "I don't know what Cepheus looks like," she admits.
Bellamy makes a disparaging noise at the book of his throat. "You owned the astronomy book."
"That doesn't mean I read it."
They both shake their heads, not quite as irritated with the other as they're pretending to be.
"I don't think I can point Cepheus out for you," Bellamy tells her, "but that right there is the Big Dipper." He leans into her until their shoulders are pressed together. Clarke feels his hair tickling her temple. He lifts his arm, traces what looks like a crooked cooking pot over the night. Clarke doesn't see anything. He sweeps his finger to what she recognizes as the North Star. "And that's the Little Dipper."
Clarke still has no idea what she's supposed to be looking at. "Cool."
"You don't know what I'm pointing to."
"No."
He's still leaning against her, and Clarke's entire body shakes with his when he laughs.
Then, because she has no control over what she says around him, Clarke is blurting things out again. "I've never seen your Soul Stars."
The expression on Bellamy's face is inscrutable when he looks at her; their faces are too close together to decipher any real emotion, truthfully. Clarke can feel his breath hot against her cheek. She can see every freckle on his skin, big and small, even in the dark. She's acquainting herself with the width of his nose and the swell of his lips and the sparkle in his eyes when he finally smirks and says "Why? Were you looking for them, Princess?"
Clarke shoves him away from her. "Maybe I was looking for a sign you even have a soul."
The hurt that flickers across his face does not go unnoticed, but Bellamy brushes it off before Clarke can apologize. She thinks of their day trip to the bunker, when she convinced him he wasn't a monster, convinced him he's more than he believes he is. She hopes her slip of tongue doesn't prevent him from believing what she's told him before and reminds him of often: he has a soul. Too big of a soul. So much soul it's crushing him.
Bellamy shrugs, leans back against the dropship a safe distance from Clarke. "Maybe I don't," he says, the most casual words in the world. He tilts his head to look at her. "I don't have Soul Stars."
Clarke feels her brows shoot up her forehead, but apart from that, she does not visibly react to Bellamy's revelation. Her chest, however, is aching with a kindred feeling she's not familiar with.
"Neither do I," she tells him. Her voice is calm, steady like it always is when she breaks the news to someone, but there's undeniably something different, more earth shattering about her confession this time around.
Bellamy sighs, shakes his head. "I'm serious, Clarke."
She scowls because it's all she can manage to do. "So am I."
Bellamy glares at her.
Clarke glowers back.
Finn's voice rings out in the distance, calling her name.
Whatever discerning empathetic spell they've conjured between them is broken.
Bellamy huffs. "Figures."
The grounder they're torturing is covered in dirt and blood and sweat. Tattoos are littered across every inch of his skin, but the ring circling his ankle does not escape Clarke's notice. She's kneeling on the ground in front of him, tears clouding her vision, swearing she's seen his Stars somewhere before. It's completely illogical, she reminds herself. There's no way in hell a grounder can be the soulmate of someone she knows, of one of the delinquents. And if he is, well, nothing is going to come of it.
Clarke has known plenty of people, after all, who have met their soulmate and decided not to pursue a romantic relationship with them. Clarke knows people who have chosen to nix even a platonic relationship with their soulmate. Because people believe in the power of stars the same way they believe in God: wholeheartedly, skeptically, or not at all.
So this grounder will take the not-at-all route if he knows what's good for him.
Which, apparently, he does not since he's letting children whip him and zap him and stick pikes through his hands.
Clarke realizes where she's seen the grounder's Stars the next morning while she watches Octavia put on her boots, tugging her jeans over the ring around her ankle.
"I don't expect you to understand," Octavia says. "My brother doesn't either."
For the first time, Clarke wishes she does.
She is not one to fall folly for cliches, but Clarke can't deny whoever said distance makes the heart grow fonder wasn't wrong. It's only been five days since the Mountain Men captured Clarke and the remaining 100, but it feels more like an eternity when she finally sees Bellamy walk through the gates of Camp Jaha.
There's no magnetic force which sends her running into his arms; just her aching feet and tired mind and her stupid heart which can't stop soaring.
They don't need constellations on their skin for them to realize they've found home.
Then Lexa persuades Clarke love is weakness, and if anyone is her kryptonite, it's Bellamy. So she sends him to the mountain.
She curses her clear skin for not begging her best friend to stay and her heart for being her Achilles heel.
Lexa has three stars in the crook of her elbow. When she tells Clarke Costia had them too, she whispers it like a secret she's never told anyone before.
"The Ice Nation knew she was my keryon houmon." Lexa keeps her face free of emotion as she speaks, blank with practiced neutrality. Clarke can still see the sadness in her eyes. "Our stars brought us together and our stars broke us apart. They are both a blessing and a curse."
Clarke can only nod along as if she knows exactly how The Commander is feeling. It's situations like Lexa and Costia's which make her thankful she does not have anyone so blatantly beholden to her. It's also situations like theirs which make Clarke angry she feels the heartache anyway.
"I'm sorry you no longer have your keryon houmon by your side," Lexa says.
Clarke gapes at her, then drops her eyes to the ground. She shakes her head. "Finn wasn't my soulmate," she chokes out. "I loved him – maybe not the way he wanted – but he wasn't..."
Lexa's eyebrow quirks up her forehead, her only betrayal of emotion. "I did not mean Finn," she says.
Clarke snaps her head up to look at her. She wants to know who Lexa thinks her soulmate is, so she does not mention her skin is a lonely, starless night.
"Bellamy," Lexa continues, eying Clarke like she is the most clueless creature in the universe. "Do you not share stars with him?"
Clarke's heart sinks into her belly along with her daydreams of calloused hands and her memories of night skies and the idea that maybe the scars she and Bellamy earned trying to find their way back to each other were enough to bind them together for good.
Clarke forces herself to admit the truth. "Not like that."
Finn's system of stars matched Raven's to a T. The pattern starts at the curve of their shoulders, wraps around their biceps like a vice, trickles along the inside of their wrists, and branches out onto each finger like twigs. When Finn was alive, Clarke would find herself shying away from his marks. Not because he shared them with someone else, shared them with Raven, but because they didn't suit him. They were too dark against his pale skin, too out of character with the rest of him. His Stars looked as though they were struggling to burst from his body, to encompass him with their gasses and transform him into a white dwarf. Finn's Stars did not belong in his sky.
Raven's, however, do. Her Stars are not stark against her; they are tiny compliments to her tan complexion and reminders of where she came from, who she was, the only family she ever had and every person she ever lost. Raven, Clarke knows, is a sentimental person. While Finn scratched at their markings like chains, Raven wears them like memories in a photo album.
On her, Clarke has trouble taking her eyes off of them.
Eventually though, she does, and instead she brushes her fingers along the puffy pink scar on her forearm – the one she has from her time in Mount Weather shattering glass, being stitched together, purposely ripping skin open, and being patched up again. Clarke thinks of the scar Bellamy has in the same place from cutting out the Mountain's tracking device. It's smaller, less noticeable, on his left arm where Clarke's is on her right, but she imagines that, maybe, their scabs can be their constellations.
She dismisses the thought as soon as it comes to her. What they had to do for their scars belongs to no one but themselves. Clarke's do not belong to Bellamy. Bellamy's do not belong to her. And they do not belong to each other.
The sound of Raven's voice interrupts Clarke's dispiriting reverie. "He's avoiding you."
They're sitting across from each other in Raven's workshop, Raven fiddling with the wires of walkie-talkies and Clarke getting lost in her thoughts when she stops herself from getting lost in Raven's Stars.
"No kidding," Clarke mumbles.
It's been five weeks since she left Camp Jaha. Five weeks since she left her best friend with a kiss on the cheek and parting words designed to be permanent. Five weeks meant to be the rest of her life until she stumbled upon Murphy in the woods, grumbling about landmines and missiles and Jaha sleeping with a hologram in the desert.
Clarke has been back for three days. Bellamy hasn't said a word to her.
"Has he, uh, mentioned anything to you? About why?"
Raven levels her with bored eyes. "Do I look like I speak Kicked-Puppy?"
"Right." Clarke wonders why she bothered asking. Bellamy and Raven are friends, but neither of them are inclined to have heartfelt conversations about their feelings with anyone, especially each other.
"He hasn't made any declarations of love, if that's what you're wondering." Raven smirks when Clarke gawps, then returns to her work.
"I wasn't – I wasn't wondering-" Clarke stammers, but Raven cuts her off before she can properly defend herself.
"Yeah, Clarke, you were," she says. "You want to know if he's professed his love for you or if he's cursed your name everyday for the last month, but he hasn't." She snips a wire, swears, feels around her worktable for electrical tape.
Clarke feels her shoulders fall. She hates herself for being disappointed.
"He gave Jasper a black eye for calling you a murderer, though," Raven tells her. "Hung out with your mom whenever she looked sad. Made sure no one touched your shit while you were gone. So maybe he doesn't have to say much to express himself." Raven finds the electrical tape, wraps some around the wire she cut.
Clarke's heart swells despite her confusion. "So why is he avoiding me?" she asks.
Raven shrugs. "My guess is he's afraid of you."
"Afraid of me?" Clarke's mind flashes to the Mountain, to Tondc, to the blazing dropship she closed on him.
"Afraid of his feelings for you. Whatever."
"Feelings for me?" Clarke's mind stops whirring, blanks completely.
"Jesus!" Raven exclaims. She drops the talkies, eyeballs Clarke the way Lexa did not long ago. "It's like talking to a freaking wall. Have you been listening to anything I just said?"
"I-"
"Bellamy is in love with you, Clarke. The head-over-heels, want-to-have-your-babies, infiltrate-a-mountain, soulmate kind of love with you."
Clarke focuses on slowing her dumb erratic heartbeat. The last thing the camp needs is for her to show up out of the blue only to go into cardiac arrest over a guy. A guy who, according to Raven, loves her. Clarke can't deny she's wondered what it would be like to be loved by Bellamy Blake, although she's not quite sure she feels so intensely herself. She remembers the feeling of his arms wrapped around her and the musky, woodsy smell of him. She imagines laying with him at night, curled into his side, being kissed by him under the moon.
But she tries so hard not to.
If she gives into those thoughts, those feelings, there's no turning back. She'd choose him over anyone, over everyone, and that is not an option for someone in their position.
Love isn't weakness, but being loved by Bellamy Blake would be the death of her.
Loving him back could be cataclysmic.
"He's not, Raven," Clarke says. "He's not in love with me. He can't – we can't – we don't have-"
"Soul Stars?"
Clarke nods, though in reality, Soul Stars are the least of her and Bellamy's problems.
"Screw Soul Stars." Raven points her screwdriver at her for emphasis. "People have nebulas on their bodies that don't mean a damn thing. Bellamy has an entire solar system in his eyes for you, idiot."
Clarke's mouth is dry and her throat is tight and her chest is being wrung out like a towel. She can't bring herself to look Raven in the eyes. Because even if she's right, nothing will ever come of Bellamy and Clarke.
She stares hard at her scar, suddenly wishing it away. "I never pegged you as a romantic, Reyes."
Raven scoffs. She drags her attention back to the talkies. "I risked my life falling through space in a fiery hunk of crap to be with the love of my life," she reminds Clarke. "Of course I'm a damn romantic."
Clarke has known Marcus Kane her entire life. She imagines, if uncles existed amongst their people, he would be like one to her. Perhaps an uncle neither of her parents were very fond of on the Ark, but an uncle nonetheless. He's given her crayons and scolded her for running down hallways and even escorted her around Alpha Station when she was three and lost her mother. So how she never noticed the Stars curling behind his ear and disappearing into his hair is beyond Clarke.
"Did you always know?" Clarke asks her mother. "Did you always know you matched with Kane?"
"No," Abby tells her. She's beside Clarke in the entrance of the medbay, arms folded across her chest as she watches Kane clap Bellamy on the shoulder in the distance. She's braided her hair the way she used to in space. Clarke can just make out two Stars on her mother's ear from where she's standing. "Neither of us did," she continues, "but we always had a feeling. I think that's why we were so horrible to each other."
Clarke thinks of her father who is dead because of her mother. She thinks of the way Abby used to brush the hair out of his eyes, how Jake would sneak up behind her while she was doing paperwork and tickle her, the long kisses they shared which would make Clarke cringe.
"Do you love him more than you loved Dad?" The question seems childish and impudent, but it's gnawing at Clarke's chest. She has to know.
Abby smiles. She tears her eyes from Kane and focuses wholly on her daughter. "I will never love someone as much as I love your father. I will never love someone as much as I love you."
Clarke can't deny she's relieved to hear her mom's old mantra, even if it is slightly revamped. But she's seen Abby and Kane together. Clarke doesn't think she would mind if her mother's words were no longer so true.
Abby glances towards her soulmate one last time before turning back into the medbay, leaving Clarke standing in the doorway alone.
"Despite everything, I still maintain you have choices in this life, Clarke," Abby calls over her shoulder. "So don't wait for the stars to align to make yours."
Bellamy turns around then, his attention snapping straight to where Abby stood not a minute ago, where Clarke still remains. His eyes meet hers. They hold the other's gaze for a beat too long. Bellamy is, unsurprisingly, the first to look away.
Clarke doesn't think the alignment of stars has anything to do with her choices. It's already too late for her to make them.
It's about two in the afternoon, but heavy gray clouds block out the sun, dominate the sky, and it takes Clarke a minute to remember it isn't nighttime. Thunder rolls in the distance. There's a trick Bellamy taught her forever ago to tell how long it will be until a storm arrives – something to do with thunder and lightning and counting – but she can't remember it for the life of her. Clarke is half tempted to track him down, ask him to refresh her memory, but they haven't talked like that since before she returned to camp over a month ago. Clarke has convinced herself Raven is completely delusion and Bellamy truly does hate her. Not that she blames him. She hates herself too, most of the time.
But she misses him.
"Clarke?"
Octavia is standing in the entrance to the medbay. Her face is washed of her warrior paint though her hair is still laced with braids. She set aside the Grounder gear long ago in favor of more comfortable clothing. She still has knives tucked at her side, hidden in her boots. Sometimes she carries a gun. If Clarke didn't know her, she wouldn't be able to tell if she was from the ground or from the sky. In her heart, she knows Octavia is neither.
"Everything okay?" Clarke asks. "Are you hurt?"
Octavia shakes her head. "I'm fine. I just-" She struggles to get her words out. Not because she doesn't know what to say but because she seems hesitant to say it. Clarke and Octavia are no longer on bad terms, not exactly, but they remain on shaky ground and they definitely are not friends. Clarke is sure she's still the last person Octavia would come to for anything truly important. "Have you seen Bellamy?" She blurts it out, grimaces, wrinkles her nose so Clarke knows she's not asking her because she wants to.
Clarke purses her lips. She frowns at Octavia, turns back to the cot she's rolling bandages on. "No. Have you checked his tent?"
"Wow. No," Octavia deadpans. "Wonder why I didn't look there."
Clarke grits her teeth, takes a deep breath. It's hard to maintain civility with Octavia when she acts so much like her cantankerous brother. "Okay. Have you asked Miller?"
"He hasn't seen Bell since this morning."
Clarke looks over her shoulder at Octavia and shrugs. "I don't know what to tell you. He's not here."
"Thank you, Captain Obvious."
Clarke doesn't bother hiding the roll of her eyes. She turns the last bandage, stuffs it in a box with the rest, stomps past Octavia to store them in the supply closet. When she turns back around, Octavia is still standing in the doorway, fidgeting and staring at Clarke regretfully.
"I just thought... I don't know. I thought maybe he would have told you if he was going somewhere," she confesses.
Clarke blinks, swallows past the lump in her throat. "We don't really talk anymore, Octavia."
"Yeah, you're both morons, the entire camp knows." Octavia huffs her disapproval. "Listen, he said he was going to wash up in the lake, like, hours ago, but he's not there and he's not in his tent and he's not anywhere I've looked – and I've looked everywhere."
Clarke bites her lip, shakes her head. She already knows what Octavia is going to ask of her.
"Clarke, please. Help me look for him. You're the only other person who cares as much as I do."
Thunder cracks again, this time much closer than before.
Clarke tells Octavia to meet her by Raven's fence in ten.
They split up to cover more ground. Clarke goes West while Octavia heads East. They decide if they haven't found Bellamy by the time it starts to pour, they'll meet back at Camp and inform the Council he's missing. Before they go their separate ways, Octavia stops Clarke, pulls her into an awkward hug. It takes Clarke more than one stunned, uncomfortable second to hug her back.
"Thanks," Octavia says. "Even if we don't – even if we don't find him. Thank you."
Clarke nods. She pats Octavia on the back uneasily until she lets go.
"Be careful," Clarke tells her.
"You too."
It's a start.
The trek through the woods is a familiar one by now. Clarke had plenty of time to explore during her weeks away and has grown accustomed to the land around camp during hunting parties since her return. Fifteen minutes into her search for Bellamy, Clarke spots the tree where she and Monty found a plethora of useful fungi last week. Thirty minutes in and she sidesteps an old Grounder trap Raven dismantled before Mount Weather was irradiated. Forty minutes and Clarke is hardly paying attention to her surroundings anymore. Her heart is racing, and she's struggling to remain calm when the thought of Bellamy dead in a ditch somewhere crosses her mind.
Clarke throws her arms over her head when thunder booms straight above her, dangerously loud, reminding her what it must have sounded like when the Ark fell to the ground. Lightening illuminates the sky not a half-second later, and she feels a fat drop land on her cheek.
"Shit."
She isn't sure what constitutes as pouring to Octavia. To Clarke it means rain is falling so hard she can barely see a foot in front of her. It's definitely raining now, but Clarke can still see well into the distance. She moves onward.
"Clarke?"
She's been hiking through the forest for approximately ninety minutes when she hears a voice behind her. His voice. She's soaked to the bone and her hair is stuck to her face and it's raining so hard that, no, she can't exactly see what's a foot in front of her and she's fucking freezing, but it doesn't matter because finally.
"Bellamy?" Clarke spins around, trying desperately to blink past the rain. She doesn't have time to register the beats her heart is skipping or the air stuck in her lungs when Bellamy grabs her wrist, pulls her under the canopy of a tree where the downpour is less brutal.
"What the hell are you doing out here?" he shouts. Clarke isn't sure if it's because he's angry or just trying to speak over the roaring winds. "Are you leaving?"
"What?" she blanches. "No! I was looking for you!"
"What are you talking about?" he asks.
"Octavia has been looking for you all day," Clarke explains. "She searched the entire camp and you weren't there. She asked me to help her find you."
Bellamy's face scrunches up. His eyes are narrowed, his brow furrowed, his hand raking through the wet tendrils plastered against his forehead. "Well she didn't look hard enough," he growls. "I've been arguing with Kane and your mom about patrolling the perimeter most of the day."
"In the Council Room?"
"In my tent."
Clarke squeeze her eyes shut. She pinches the bridge of her nose and sags against the tree. "I asked her if she looked there."
Bellamy ignores her frustration. "Where is O?" he asks.
Clarke sighs. She stabs her thumb in the direction she'd been walking from. "She went East. I went West. Why are you out here, anyway?"
Bellamy looks down at his feet, shuffles them a bit. He adjusts the rifle slung over his shoulder and takes his time answering her. "No one was in the medbay when Abby got there. She was looking for you, to help, but she found Jackson first," he says "When I heard she never found you I thought maybe – I thought you decided to disappear again." He lifts his eyes to meet hers. "I came after you this time."
Clarke isn't sure what to say. She wants to tell him she would never leave their people again, that she'd never leave him again, and that she's sorry he doesn't trust her enough to stay, and that she's glad they're talking again, even if it's because they're stuck in this furious storm and even if it's just for now. And she wants to tell him it doesn't matter if they don't have matching Ursa Majors over their hearts or the big dipper threaded between their fingers because alone they're both black holes, sucking each other in, but together they're a supernova, transcending entire galaxies and burning brighter than any star on any person's skin. She wants to tell him she loves him.
But she doesn't.
Instead, she brings her hands to his face, grazes her thumbs across his cheeks. She begs for him to realize, begs for him to understand everything she can't say aloud just yet. She stands on her tiptoes.
She kisses him.
Lightening fills the sky again, sets fire to one of the branches of the tree Bellamy and Clarke are locked under. She thinks of the Big Bang which birthed the Earth when he finally kisses her back.
Bellamy is not Clarke's soulmate.
But she feels the sun scorching her with his touch and she glimpses moon rays in his smile and entire worlds turn in his eyes when he looks at her.
She chooses him.