Already Claimed

by Solia

We're all a part of somebody's story; even on a battlefield, surrounded by death and grief, there's someone we can claim as our own. And they claim us. We hope. After Madi's ascension, Echo watches as Bellamy is reunited with the girls of his story. Post Damocles Part 1, season 5, implied Bellarke, forgiveness fix-it.

Title: Already Claimed

Author: Solia

Fandom: The 100

Rating: PG-13

Tags: Season 5, Episode tag Damocles (Part 1 & 2), implied Bellarke, battlefield hugs

Author's notes: I have a million better things I should be doing but with the season finale of The 100 airing in less than a day I'm mildly buzzing with excitement and this vision of a perfect cuddle won't leave me alone. Since it won't be relevant after tomorrow I had to write it down before the episode airs and goes in a totally different direction. I'm a Bellamy fan and I so badly want to see him recover his two most significant relationships in this finale. I'm not normally a writer for this fandom – apologies for any tropey missteps I have made here, it was a three-hour rush job. I hope someone else gets some enjoyment out of it!

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It's over, for now, for the minute, for a breath, but it's enough. It's another battlefield but it doesn't matter because we're the victors this time, and every bullet on the planet is spent, and in the silence that wavers after McCreary's fall to the ground, everyone's looking to those they followed here. Battered, bruised, bleeding, bereaved, they breathe heavily and wait for whatever's coming next. The girl Madi is uncertain, half-spattered in red blood not hers, half-hidden behind the tall form of Bellamy who promised to protect her and hasn't forgotten. Beyond them, gun still smoking slightly from the shot that should've missed, the shot that saved them both, Clarke is only now lowering her arm, and even from this distance, it's evident she's shaking to see that pair alive. Echo wishes she were a little further away so it weren't so clear that Clarke's look of rapt relief is shared across all three faces. Bellamy Blake, clutching his gun-shot side, stares at the friend he spent six years hating himself for leaving behind, and although Echo's own blood boils at the thought of Clarke's betrayal of him at the bunker, she can see in this moment that it's already forgiven. His heart's too damn big, damn him.

He stares at her and she stares back at him, the friend she'd assumed she'd left to die, whose devotion to her child is evident in the bullet he just took for her, and her light eyes drop to the girl he's protecting. Like he said he would.

Madi. Her mouth makes the shape of the name that will be remembered as the first of the new line of commanders, and she drops the last gun anyone will ever fire. As she stumbles across the uneven floor of dead bodies to reach her and Madi pushes excitedly past Bellamy to meet her, a chant starts. It's low at first and gains weight and strength as it throbs through the adrenaline-fuelled crowd of faithful. Echo feels it like a current pushing around her, and when she looks about her she sees mouths forming the shape of the chant. Madi kom Louwoda Klironkru Heda. Madi kom Louwoda Klironkru Heda. Her gaze catches on John Murphy's. He shrugs, joining in.

Echo looks back to the head of the crowd. She's only a few rows back but she sees the effect of the chant on Earth's foremost family. Clarke slows, wary of the attention on her adopted daughter; she's injured too, Echo realises now, or perhaps just in shock, seeing the blonde trip to her knees as she battles her way over a trio of dead bodies. Madi slows, too, scared by the chant and not knowing what it means. She looks back, bright eyes surfing the sea of unfamiliar faces, glazing right over Echo's. But Bellamy steps after her, and his sister joins him on his other side, an automatic hand on her sword in case, and Madi's face says she knows she's safe. Echo knows the feeling; knows it's his superpower. He puts himself between the girl and the crowd, and looks back over his shoulder for her foster mother's gaze. Waiting for her instruction. Clarke's mother arrives at her side and pulls her up to her feet, but Clarke's eyes are on her child, plain with the despair of losing her. Madi was hers but now is everybody's. The chant rises. It's time.

Clarke must know it. It's clear in the way her eyes lift to Bellamy's, clear in her reluctant nod. On the Ring, Echo knew Bellamy as a leader. In this dynamic she sees he's only half of one. With Clarke's permission this time, he lays a reassuring hand on Madi's shoulder. It's time. She smiles up at Bellamy with that look of little-girl trust she had for him from the very first time they met her, and with a confident glance back at her worried mother figure, she turns back to the people. Her people.

The chant dies as a twelve-year-old commander addresses them for the first time, flanked by wounded Blakes who will die for her, and Echo watches as stone hearts start to beat again. The crowd – Wonkru, Spacekru, Eligius converts – listen to this pure-voiced little girl standing on a dais of death talk about unity and the stories that bind us all. They listen as she reminds them all of their own stories, stories from an Ark in space and the lands of Earth and a chilling underground bunker and a prison, stories now bound up in new, shared stories of nuclear cataclysm and war. Stories with the same themes. Survival. Desperation. Family. Loss. Love. Unity. We don't all claim to love everybody here, she reminds them, but we all claim somebody here, and we all lost somebody here to somebody else here. And so did they. And so we are one, as the Red Queen taught. Madi's got a special smile for Octavia here, half the beneficent expression of forgiveness from the line of wise commanders occupying the girl's mind and the other half the admiring smile of a child to her idol. Echo doesn't like Octavia, but sees in the Blodreina's shy, nervous return smile the innocent baby sister Bellamy remembers hiding under the floorboards of his childhood. She's not gone after all, just buried.

By now Clarke has struggled over to the three and stands behind Madi, supported by her own mother. Madi kom Louwoda Klironkru Heda turns to the woman who has raised and loved and protected her all these years and extends a hand that is confident and assured beyond her lived years. Clarke Griffin's pale face is warm with pride in her girl as she takes it in her own. Claiming each other. Abby Griffin wraps her arm more tightly around her girl in claim. Bellamy turns his shoulder enough that his arm can reach limply for Octavia beside him without looking at her – he's still pissed with her, Echo can tell, but they're siblings and their bond can withstand a greater beating than most – and the formerly glorious Blodreina gratefully accepts, eyes shuttering closed as she counts her blessings he's still claiming her as his. Echo assumes.

All through the crowd, the gesture is spreading. Mothers and brothers and friends and lovers and everyone else is reaching for the comforting hand of someone they love, someone they claim as theirs. Hands crisscross between groups, voices spark back up, sobs start to loosen from tight throats, and amidst it all, the strangest sound: laughter, if you'd believe it. Relieved laughter, much of it through tears, as love and comfort is found in the remnants of community around them. Monty, whose head dropped when Madi spoke of loss and guilt with the wise quiet knowing of the commanders before her, claims Harper, who claims Emori, who claims John, who claims Raven with some cheeky line Echo doesn't hear. She's filled with a sudden irrational urgency to get to the front of the crowd, and she pushes forward, but she's blocked by interlocking hands and arms, and some even denser, hugs. She knows there's no real claiming in taking hands, that it's a sweet metaphor constructed by a sweet child, that she has more people here to call her own than she has hands, but there's one person she loves more than the others, and she can't reach him from where she stands.

He cuts the distance for her by casting a look over his shoulder, warm dark eyes penetrating the crowd to catch hers on his second sweep, and she stops pushing, feeling foolish. Of course he's hers, as much as she's his. Their shared gaze, if brief, is their claim, and she flashes him a quick smile, proud of him, pleased for him, prepared to wait her turn for him. At her side, her hand is tentatively taken inside another; she looks, and it's Shaw, looking apologetic, thanking her for not killing him when her instincts said otherwise. Beyond him, Raven's smile is beatific, and the rest of their space family shares looks and words of warmth and affection. Grateful for each other.

It's just a minute, just a breath of inattention, but it's enough. When she looks back she's already lost him. Everyone still alive has followed the little commander's lead and taken up hands instead of arms as they're used to, and the little girl is one of the last with a hand hanging loose. She looks out across the vision of peace she's made on the exhale of violence, happiness clear on her small face, and then she looks closer, at those she claims for her own. Clarke and Abby. Bellamy and Octavia, and attached to her, Indra, and by unseen extension, she seems to look across the land to where the camp for the wounded remains. Gaia. Madi takes Bellamy's hand without hesitation, completing the circuit. Claiming him, claiming them all.

She will be a great leader, Echo is certain, with those champions for protectors and advisors, but that's not what she's thinking when all around her, the handholding becomes handshaking and hugging and back-stroking and grief, and at the front of it all, Madi looks lovingly between Clarke and Bellamy. She holds their hands and listens while Bellamy speaks, nodding obediently like a daughter. Clarke's mother leaves her standing somewhat steadily, presumably to go and check on Kane, and Clarke watches Bellamy's face while he talks to her girl, her wariness gone. He must say something encouraging to Madi – of course he does, he's the classic big brother hero – because the girl drops their hands to throw herself at him in a delighted little-girl hug. Echo sees the wince of pain that crosses his face, recognises the way his shoulders tense to ride out the sting as Madi's arms go ignorantly around his injured midsection. But he's Bellamy, and his heart is too damn big, so he smiles through it and strokes the girl's hair affectionately and hugs her close. Protective, loving. He has been a big brother much too long to stop now. His sister, watching on at his side, fingers still entwined with his adoringly, seems to think the same thing, her smile wry.

His gaze lifts to Clarke's and Echo follows it to check if his old friend is angry, possessive, jealous? She has started to cry. She tries to shake away the tears, and she's too far away for Echo to hear but her mouth makes recognisable shapes: I'm sorry, I'm so sorry… So she should be, but he's Bellamy and he won't hear it. He cuts her off with her name, which is short and sharp and Echo doesn't like the way it comes to him so easily, this best friend of his who challenges and betrays and hurts him but apparently, in his mind, only as much as he does her. He releases Octavia and offers both of his hands to Clarke; Madi, still clinging to him, reaches one of her own hands back. Welcomed, smile watery, Clarke stumbles forward to them, collapsing against him and Madi, and Bellamy briefly cups her face in his hands and presses his forehead to hers. They've sold each other out to certain death, maybe more times than Echo knows about, to Praimfaya and to fighting pits and angry little sisters, but apparently there's always room for a seventh chance in that big heart. It is impossible not to see his thumb stroke her wet cheek, his fingers curl in her short fair hair, her hand land lightly on his breastbone, but perhaps he doesn't notice, perhaps she doesn't notice – in that moment they're trapped in each other's gaze, even as they speak. Claimed. Before today. Then she starts to lose the strength in her legs, and he wraps his arms around her tightly, pulling her up, crushing her against her daughter. Madi mustn't mind; she clutches one of Clarke's hands tightly beside her, her smile visible in the gap between her two favourite people as Clarke kisses her temple and begins to sob into Bellamy's shirt, and Bellamy dips his head into the crook of her neck. Does he breathe her in? This traitor, who he loves?

His heart is too damn big and he only loves traitors and sweet little girls, and there's one who tops both lists. He's rougher with her than with either Madi or Clarke, chancing his hold on the unsteady Wanheda to only one strong arm so he can reach the other one to Octavia. He catches her by the collar and yanks her over into the group hug. She joins willingly, crushing his neck with tight, eager arms and murmuring her apologies and her I love you, big brothers into his shoulder while he hooks his arm around her neck and kisses her hair, finally overwhelmed.

Just like that, he's a man complete. His eyes are closed, not roaming, not seeking out Echo anymore. His arms are full, Clarke and Madi in one and Octavia in the other, everyone miraculously fitting together like the mismatched family they are. His love for her, though undiminished, Echo knows, does not compare to this. On the Ring he was her leader and lover, and here, to her, he still is; but she hadn't known him long enough before to know that he is only leader and lover when he isn't in the more important roles of brother, protector and friend.

She starts to see that the Ring was an even more artificial environment than she'd feared, and that this was nobody's fault. She feels still and stone in a sea of movement and overwhelming emotions.

A new hand takes hers. "Don't worry," Raven soothes, leaning into her side with warmth unknowable just five minutes ago. Before Madi. Before Clarke fired the last bullet. Before everything was over, and not just the battle. She squeezes Echo's hand in understanding and they look together toward the touching scene of familial love that, even amidst all the outpouring of love and grief and all the tangled group hugs following suit, still stands out like a beacon. Echo expects to feel sick, twisted, but she feels empty. Raven's hand is all she feels. "He's got a big heart – room for all of you. Promise."

"Yeah." Echo hopes her return smile is like a real one. "I know." She knows he loves her. She knows he will continue to accommodate her in his big damn heart. She just hadn't realised until now that she is a tenant, being accommodated, and that the other occupants are landowners with their own claims. Superstitiously she wishes she were standing closer to the front when Commander Madi's metaphorical claiming began. She looks down at her hand in Raven's, the only thing she can feel. Whether she looks here or at Bellamy with his girls, she sees the values she learned from him in their six years together on the Ring. Family and loyalty. She makes herself swallow and remember where she is – alive, in the middle of the victorious side of a battle that could have been much worse, surrounded by injury and mess that needs to be tended to quickly. "I'm not worried."

She starts calling for action, directing attention to the worst injured, and as those nearest start mobilising, she chances a last glance back. The Blakes and Griffins are still entwined, holding each other up, bleeding on each other, grateful for each other, not betraying each other at this present moment. Bellamy's head rests across those of his sister and best friend, and he's not seeking her out but his eyes catch Echo's and he smiles warmly. She finds it isn't hard to smile back. She's proud of him, she's pleased for him. She'll wait her turn for him. It's okay. They're part of his story, as Madi said, while Echo's part of a new chapter, length unknown. It's always been over and she didn't know it until she saw it; it's just for now, just for the minute, just for a breath, but it's enough. Everything is just for now, just for the minute – isn't this war a testament to that? Five minutes ago everything was lost and now a twelve-year-old matchmaker commander spattered in McCreary's blood has everyone hugging and holding hands and Bellamy's got everything he needs and Echo isn't it.

She breathes and issues another direction to those near and able. It's just another battlefield.