The landing was rough, though he had to admit, it was better than the first time. It probably had something to do with the fact that Raven had full reign on the alterations.

"Everyone okay?" Bellamy grunted as he managed to unbuckle the harness before turning to his crew. Various noises of assent emanated from around him. He did a quick head count, and then recounted his six companions. They were all here, alive, and on the ground.

Bellamy moved toward the hatch, preparing to open it. A memory suddenly took hold of him, his white-knuckled grip halting on the lever. It was in another lifetime, it seemed, that the fresh-faced daughter of a council woman had given him an order. The first of many he had come to follow.

"The air could be toxic," she had warned.

"If the air's toxic, we're all dead anyway," he had spat back, before pulling the lever and allowing his sister to be the first person to plant her feet in the dirt and breathe real air for the first time in one hundred years.

But it was just a memory, he reminded himself. He shook it away and unlocked the hatch to climb his way out, suddenly blinded by the sun's rays. Bellamy choked back the emotions that threatened to overtake him. They had only spent a few month on earth, last time, but Clarke had been there every moment of it. Even when she left him, at least she was alive. The sun illuminated her gold hair, even when it was dirty, and added a spark to her eyes, even when she was broken. She had always been his sun, somehow blinding him and guiding him all at once.

"Where are we? Did we land in the right place?" Monty asked, crawling into the light after Bellamy.

"We're on the east coast of North America. We might be closer to Maryland than the old capital but that's what you get with hundred-year-old space junk." Raven shrugged.

"It's close enough to where we should be. We'll take a day, salvage what we can from the pod and learn the lay of the land. We won't be able to find the bunker if we don't prepare first," Bellamy directed. He began hauling their boxes out of the pod, sorting their things into personal piles, things they would have to carry with them in their search for the bunker.

"So, let me get this straight, we spent six years preparing for this moment and we still missed the mark? Bullshit." Murphy complained, arms crossed in the middle of the wreckage. Bellamy looked up to answer. His attitude hadn't much improved in six years.

"Next time we make a cosmic journey, you can drive." Raven snapped before Bellamy could.

"Well, hopefully that will be never," Murphy grumbled, rubbing a kink out of his neck. Emori grabbed his shoulder from behind, visibly drawing the tension out of him.

"Come on, you big baby," and with that they turned to assemble their sparse belongings.

It wasn't until much later that night that they were all huddled together in the shell of the pod, eating their ration packs. The silent camaraderie that had enveloped them in the depths of space was a calm one. Simply being together in the gathering hall, working on their separate projects had been filled with a comfortable silence. It reminded Bellamy that they were all together. If his short time on the ground had taught him anything, it was that life was not guaranteed. It didn't matter how much you loved someone, they could still be taken away from you. The Ark had given them a type a respite from constant worry and anxiety.

This silence was different. Silence on the ground was tense, it was thick. It was listening for the monster in the night, it was not knowing whether or not you were the monster. Bellamy didn't like the raw, hollow feeling that settled in his stomach, the one he had grow used to, in the days before. He tried to ignore the feeling.

"Get some rest, everyone. We head south first thing tomorrow," he said, laying on his back and staring at the cold metal sheets of the pod before drifting into a fitful sleep.

It took some time, as it were, to readjust to a natural circadian rhythm. So when the group woke the next morning, it was well past sunrise.

"Well shit," Raven muttered, wiping sleep out of her eyes as the group emerged, hopefully for the last time, out of a metal pod.

"We're over a year late, what's a couple more days?" Monty shrugged, referring to their friends currently holed up in the underground bunker. Harper rolled her eyes at his remark, but helped him and Raven gather their tech in preparation to head out.

Bellamy slung his pack over his shoulder, gazing out around the crash site, and the forest beyond. There was so much green. He hadn't expected this much foliage to have grown back so soon. The landscape reminded him of their dropship days. If he really concentrated, he thought he could make out Clarke in the distance. Walking towards their camp with medicinal plants, or maybe returning from the river. She would walk through the gates and immediately find her way to him. They would have an argument, and face their next crisis.

Bellamy frowned. Those days were over. Clarke was dead and he would never see her blonde halo standing beside him again. Besides, the Clarke he was hallucinating of now had her hair cut short, and wearing a jacket he had never seen before. Earth must have brought out the imagination in him. Whenever he pictured her on the Ark, it was in a blue jacket, sometimes his shirt, with long blonde hair pinned away from her face.

Without his explicit permission, Bellamy's throat tightened, and he felt as though he was in danger of upchucking the breakfast he hadn't eaten yet.

God, I miss you, Clarke.

Bellamy shook his head to rid himself of the image. They had a lot of ground to cover, after all. However, her image didn't fade, if anything, she got clearer, and closer.

"Alright, Captain, lead the way," Murphy drawled. When he noticed the look on Bellamy's face, he turned to follow his line of sight. "What the —" Everyone spun to locate the source of Bellamy's trance.

"Holy shit."

"Is that really…?"

"I can't believe it."

Bellamy swallowed. If his crew could see her, then she must be real. Shouldn't she?

But she burned. You left her to die.

Clarke, alive, and six years older than he left her, stood before them with an apprehensive look on her face. After a beat, Harper stepped forward to envelop her in a hug, Monty and Raven following, until she was trapped between the three.

"You're late," she smirked when they released her. Raven rolled her eyes, but smiled back.

"It's really good to see you alive," Harper said, also with a smile on her face. There was a pause as everyone tried to wrap their minds around this situation. Bellamy found that he couldn't quite look her in the face. Clarke cleared her throat.

"I actually have someone I want you to meet," she gave a call, and a small child emerged from behind a tree, running towards them. She skidded to a halt next to Clarke.

"Everyone, this is Madi. Madi, everyone. She's a nightblood, too. We found each other a few years back. She's been with me ever since," Clarke explained. The girl — Madi — looked young. Twelve, maybe. And she was staring up at Bellamy's face with a bewildered, yet knowing expression. He swallowed hard, not knowing why her gaze was so unnerving.

Another awkward and tense silence passed. Monty and Raven were better at this. They resumed conversation with Clarke, talking about the landing and plans to head to the bunker. Clarke and Madi apparently had a permanent residence near what remained of Polis, and they were all going to go there, instead, to gather materials and make a plan to uncover the bunker.

Clarke set their pace, and Madi flitted ahead every now and again, circling back to Clarke before dashing through the tress again. The hike was silent, and remained that was until the sun began to set.

After setting up camp for the night and picking at more of their rations, Bellamy kept his eyes on the fire as the others, save for Echo and Emori, who still held negative opinions of Clarke, tried to make up for lost time by striking up conversations with her. He tried not to listen, but small details of her years alone drifted through the flames and threatened to tear his heart in half.

He thanked the stars when she finally got up to sit with Madi on the edge of the small clearing. Raven took this opportunity to check in on him, as became her self-appointed duty on the Ark.

"Isn't this how it was supposed to be? Us coming back and finding Clarke alive so we could all start over?" Bellamy gave no indication that he had heard her. His gaze was still trained on the woman playing mother to a child he wished he had something to do with, but Raven was not so easily dissuaded.

"I know we wrote her off as dead, but the whole damn planet was burning. What else were we supposed to think?" Again, he gave her nothing. In the dreaded silence, a scream from Madi shocked them both,

"We were supposed to be a family!" she sobbed, clinging to Clarke. He let those words permeated the air around him, not sure if he would allow them to sink in. Raven just nudged his shoulder.

"The two of you have already wasted so much time. For once in your life you should get what you want." And with those parting words, Raven turned away from Bellamy to curl up under the stars.

Clarke may not have perished in Praimfaya, but something, someday, would kill her off. He didn't know if he would be able to live through her death a second time. With his head tilted up to gaze at the constellations, he didn't know if he would be able to ignore her either, not when she was so close, whole and alive.