Hello all! I'm dipping my toes back in the water and publishing again! This is one of the first stories I've written for The 100 fandom and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it! AO3 saw it first (search: kelsalynne). This is my little attempt at writing for Bellarke, with a focus mainly on spacekru interactions during the 6 year time jump.
Happy reading!
I left her behind. It was the worst thing I had ever done. The hardest thing, the saddest thing. I left her behind on the dying Earth. I should have stayed. The grief ate away at me endlessly.
My new family helped. I could always count on Murphy to crack a joke whenever he saw me lingering at the window overlooking the destroyed Earth for far too long. "If you keep staring so intensely, you might actually blow it up for good," he would say and I would turn to him with the best smile I could manage before putting him in a headlock.
I could count on Raven to assure me that Octavia was still alive, in the bunker, cared for by Indra and Kane and Abby. Even if I couldn't save Clarke, I had saved my sister. Despite the brave face I put on, Raven still worked tirelessly, pulling all-nighters most nights with Monty in an attempt to get our communications system working. Occasionally, Emori would join them, using some excuse like bringing water or asking Monty about the farm. It was hard to miss the excitement burning behind her eyes as she watched Raven sift through all the technology. I wondered if any of it had looked familiar to her, knowing now how she used to bring scrap parts to ALIE before any of us knew about the City of Light.
"Not much would make me happier than hearing my sister's voice," I told Raven during our third month on the Ring, "Except maybe you getting some sleep."
She rubbed her sunken eyes for a moment before suddenly dropping her hands, failing at seeming any less exhausted than she clearly was. She stifled a yawn and I saw her nostrils flare. I cleared my throat in a lame attempt to cover my laughter and she whipped her head toward me, ready to attack. Three deep breaths. She closed her eyes. "You're right," she said, standing up from the pile of scrap metal in front of her. She pushed some parts away from her a bit too aggressively, which didn't go unnoticed.
"You're doing great with the anger management, by the way." I dodged the fist she aimed at my gut before pulling her in for a hug. "We've got plenty of time to figure it out, but we can't do that at all if you work yourself to death every night."
She pulled back to look at my face. "Four nights a week?"
"Make it three and you've got a deal," I responded, pulling her with me toward our rooms. Before separating, I added, "Maybe teach some of this stuff to Emori while you're at it. I think Monty may be more interested in his farm these days."
"Anger management, three out of seven, invite Emori," she held out her hand to me. "You got it, boss."
I accept her handshake and reminded her, "I hate when you call me that," before ducking in to my room for the night.
I could count on Harper, which was unexpected. For over two years, nearly every night, she would wander out of the room she and Monty shared and stand with me by the window, observing the patch of green with a mixture of longing and desperation. She loved seeing Monty happy, she knew how much better off he was in space—it was an improvement that was hard for any of us to miss, but still she longed for the ground nearly as much as I did.
And she understood why that small patch of green was all I had to hold on to. As much as I tried to hide my wishful thinking, Harper knew I still hoped the nightblood had worked, and that Clarke was on the ground, alive. She caught me at the radio a few times after I thought everyone had gone to sleep. During our fifth month in space, I found myself pacing around the radio, my hand twitching forward as I grew closer with every pass. The odds of Clarke surviving the Death Wave, even if the synthetic nightblood had worked, were slim. As a group, we decided the best way to honor Clarke's memory would be to live for her, rather than to drown ourselves in wishful thinking. The rule applied to everyone, but it was no secret who they were trying to protect. "Clarke," I had a script now. It was too hard for me to say what I wanted to say. I couldn't. Not if she was dead. "Find the Shallow Valley settlement, you'll be safe there. From up here, it looks like the only survivable land that's left." I usually stopped there, but tonight was different.
Tonight I couldn't help myself. I saw my hand shaking before I registered the movement within my own body. I heard the way my voice broke before I realized I was crying. I choked out the words. "It's getting tough up here without you. I could really use one of your pep talks right about now...I'm sorry I left you. I should have stayed. I'm so sorry Clarke." I felt the pain building in my chest. "I'll never forgive myself for that. I'm so sorry." I dropped the radio back to the desk and let my face fall into my hands. I had gotten better about keeping the crying to a minimum, not allowing the pain to overtake my body with the violent sobs that threatened to rip me open. But not tonight.
"Even if you don't forgive yourself," Harper said, startling me as she placed her hand on my back. I kept my face down, not wanting her to see my tear-soaked cheeks, or my eyes which were sure to be red, if not also puffy. I was sure I looked pathetic. She continued, "Clarke forgave you. I know she did. If she died, she died saving you, Bellamy. She died saving all of us." I looked up at Harper then, and her eyes looked far away, but her words comforted me.
"I know you're right," I said, trying to overcome the way my voice was breaking. Her reassuring smile made me stronger and I got up from my seat and made my way to our usual spot, where we had stood a few hours earlier. She followed me and wrapped her arms around my side. I leaned my head down on top of hers and sighed, long and heavy.
"She loved you, Bellamy," Harper said after a moment of silence.
"More than I ever deserved," I responded with as much of a smile as I could muster, allowing myself to feel the stab of Harper's words in my chest. I normally didn't indulge the fantasies, but looking down at Earth from the home Clarke had given us with her dying moments, it was easy to imagine that she loved me. Maybe not how I had loved her, although I wasn't sure of what that even meant. Still, it was a love I never could have asked for. A love she gave selflessly, to me and my family.
"Get some sleep, you'll want to be up bright and early for Monty's newest algae recipe. According to him, 'It almost tastes edible'." I rolled my eyes, muttering how promising that sounded, and Harper chuckled under her breath as she nudged me toward the direction of my room. "Goodnight," she whispered as she opened her door to join Monty.
I was glad Harper was here.
It took three years for Echo and I to more-than-tolerate being around each other. Admittedly, it was mostly my fault. Every time I looked at her, I saw the spy who tried to kill my sister not once, but twice. I saw the warrior who would have killed Clarke, killed anyone, to protect her king and her people. It was a hard thing to see past. Until eventually I did.
I had skipped a month of our window meetings in an attempt to salvage what was left of my sanity, and when I finally returned to them again, Harper had stopped showing up as well. It was for the best, I was sure. It's one thing for me to long for Clarke, and another thing entirely to have an audience for it. Although I was sure she never told Monty about my feelings or my hopeless radio calls to Clarke, weakly disguised as merely an attempt to contact Octavia in the bunker, he must have known.
Everyone knew, and no one discussed it.
But tonight was different. Tonight, it was Echo who came to join me. We had been spending more time training together recently, given that we were the best fighters on the ring. Training against easy matches got boring after a while, and there were only so many ways to stay preoccupied in our metal prison. I glanced at the bruise forming on her cheek, given to her by my fist earlier that day. I hadn't meant to hit her as hard as I had. Or maybe I did. I still wasn't sure.
"How's your cheek?" I asked, trying to avoid looking in her eyes. Ever since leaving the ground, I had been trying my best to leave myself in the past as well. Clarke had told me to use my head, but there was no thought behind connecting my fist to Echo's face. I could have easily shifted, stopped myself somehow. But I hadn't been thinking.
"I'll heal," she assured me, smiling a bit as she turned her gaze from me back to the valley. "How are you, Bellamy?"
I looked up from the patch of green and into her eyes. They were intense, trying to read in my own eyes the thoughts I never verbalized. Her stare held me, enticing me in a way I had expected, but had always tried desperately to avoid. I cleared my throat and glanced back out the window. "Please," I scoffed, "Azgeda may have trained you to be a warrior, but I've got thicker skin than you'd expect." I rubbed my arm, the place she had bruised me with her retaliation at our training session.
"Azgeda didn't only train me to be a warrior," she said, not missing a beat. "They trained me to be a spy, too." A knowing look replaced her cold expression, and she smirked. "Where's Harper?"
Before I could remember Clarke's advice, I had Echo's arm in my hand. I spun her in front of me and pushed her into the window, holding her there with my other arm firmly pinned against her throat. She gasped, but maintained eye contact. I didn't have a strong enough grip to cut off her words. "Bellamy," she strained. "I meant no disrespect." She seemed sincere, and her eyes burned into mine again. I loosened my arm from her throat slightly, but kept her pressed to the window.
"You've been spying on me?" I asked, not really needing confirmation. I had felt her eyes on me from time to time, had seen the way she looked at me differently after bad nights, apologetic but unable to approach me about it. I knew she was watching me, but I hadn't confronted her before, unsure of what my awareness implied. Why could I feel her presence more clearly than anyone else's? Maybe, it was because I still didn't trust the spy. But maybe it was something else entirely. A familiar ache pulled at my chest, bringing back stored away memories of Gina...of Clarke. I pushed them away. "Family doesn't spy on family."
"Are we family, then?" she asked, and the softness in her voice surprised me.
I lowered my arm from her throat all the way and released her from my grasp. "Of course we're family," I whispered as I leaned my arm against the window and closed my eyes. Suddenly, I was exhausted. The war was over, but I was still fighting. Fighting to remain sane, fighting to honor Clarke's memory, fighting to hold myself together when I had so desperately wanted to fall apart for the last three years. It wasn't getting any easier. I felt my face betraying me, the heat building behind my eyes as I hunched over farther, allowing a quiet sob to roll through my body.
"Bellamy." Before I could react, she had me in her arms. I didn't fight to pull myself away, despite the protest in my head. It went against all of my instincts to let her be so close to me, suspicious she would attempt to slit my throat at the first moment of vulnerability, but also afraid of what her closeness could mean without violence attached. But she didn't slit my throat. She didn't attempt to overtake me in the way my biased over exaggerations told me she would. She hesitantly moved her hands up and down my back. She was comforting me, at least as well as she knew how. "I know you loved her, Bellamy." She pulled her face back from my chest to stare in my eyes. "But what you're doing to yourself is not healthy. This is not what Clarke would have wanted. This is not what she died for." She finished in a whisper, and it was clear she didn't mean to harm me as much as her words had.
The truth was, I knew she was right. I had been longing for Clarke for three years now, for any sign that she was alive, for any sign that she was dead. Something, anything to clear up all the uncertainty. It had weakened me, compromising my will and my capabilities. It wasn't healthy, yet I didn't know where to begin patching up the wounds.
Normally any mention of Clarke would shut me down, but tonight was different.
Echo began to pull away as my silence stretched on, turning her face from me, but I didn't let her. I tightened my arms around her waist and pulled her back against me, holding her close and swallowing the sob I felt building in my chest. Her eyes were startled, but mine were determined.
"Echo, could I try something really stupid?"
She nodded.
Slowly, as slowly as I was capable after denying my attraction over the years, after surviving for so long without touching someone like this, I leaned my face down toward hers and pressed our lips together. She accepted my kiss with gratitude, returning it with her own, curiously and hesitantly.
I had planned to wait, to hold on to the hope that Clarke was alive. But tonight was different. Tonight, I needed nothing more than to move on, so I ignored the screaming in my head, the images of Clarke flashing behind my closed eyelids, and continued to kiss Echo, willing my heart to finally begin mending.
Accepting Clarke's death was harder every day. I missed her, I still longed for what could have been, despite not understanding what that really meant. Did I want her back simply to remind me what it means to be a leader, or was it something more I craved? I usually had a handle on my feelings, but when Clarke was involved, everything seemed so foggy, and with Echo in the picture, I couldn't allow myself to clear the confusion.
Too often, I woke Echo when my nightmares turned into screams, filling the dark room with pleas for Clarke to return, to survive, to make it to the ship in time. Sometimes, the screaming was replaced with sobs that wouldn't let me remain asleep. Be it screaming or crying, it was harder for Echo than she would admit, and seeing the pain in her eyes as she held me, comforting me for a loss she could never make me forget, I felt like the lowest kind of scum in the universe.
I overheard Echo talking to Raven and Emori, and although I wasn't a spy I had picked up a few tricks. I slid back into the corridor and concealed myself from view. I busied myself with a control panel on the wall, sure I wouldn't be caught but wanting to look preoccupied just in case. I felt bad listening in on private conversations; family doesn't spy on family, after all, but Echo would never tell me how much it hurt her to see how I still felt about leaving Clarke to die alone after all these years.
"You've all seen how he acts," Echo said, leaning closer to Emori. "Em, I know you've noticed. You're almost more observant than I am," she added with a light smile, the kind I knew as nothing more than a mask.
"He just needs more time, Echo," Raven assured her, throwing an arm over her shoulder. "He isn't doing it on purpose. It's hard, holding it together all the time. And he has to keep all of us together while he's at it? It would be tough for anyone, and Bellamy is no different."
"As much as he would hate to admit that," Emori smiled. "Grieving is hard when you're keeping your family alive at the same time. But all of this has to be hard for you, too," Emori amended. "You need to talk to Bellamy, and tell him you're hurting."
"What we need to do is get back to the damn ground," Echo said a bit louder, shaking Raven's arm off her shoulder as she did. "If he could just see that she's gone, maybe he could begin to heal. Sometimes I swear he would have rather died on Earth with her than be up here with us. With me. No, I'm serious," she cut off Raven's attempted interruption. "Of course I'm not hoping Clarke is dead. I know he loves me, I know he loves all of us, but you haven't seen what he's like. He's so broken up over it I don't know how I'll ever be able to fix him." Echo leaned over the table separating her and Emori. Raven placed her arm back over Echo's shoulder and Emori reached towards her to brush something from her cheeks. Tears.
"We'll get through this together, okay?" Emori said after a moment of silence. "It won't be this hard forever."
"I thought Echo was the spy?" Monty's voice surprised me and I jumped back from the control panel I had abandoned fake tampering with. I spun around to face him with wide eyes like a kid caught with their hand in a cookie jar. "Your secret is safe with me." Monty smiled and gestured down the hall. "Take a walk?"
I followed without a word and he lead me to his algae farm. "What's going on, Bellamy?" Monty asked after the door shut behind us.
"I'm hurting her, Monty," I choked out, feeling defeated. "I love Echo, but I'm worried it's not enough anymore. How long can one person stand their partner's grief before it's just...too much?" I placed my hands on the metal table in front of me, clenching the edges to keep myself standing. Breathing was getting hard again, and I felt the familiar sobs threaten to drown me. "Dammit," I choked out as my arms shook. I brought my head down on the table a bit harder than I should have and immediately laced my fingers through my hair. I tugged as the follicles protested the aggression, then stood up straight. I let my arms fall back to my side and began pacing the farm.
Monty was silent as I worked through my swimming thoughts. He was silent as I sat on the floor and curled into myself as far as I could. He was silent as I let the tears spill over, profanities spilling off my tongue. I stayed like that until I could no longer understand what thoughts were breaking me more, hurting Echo or leaving Clarke.
I didn't notice when Monty left. It was only when he returned that I forced myself off of the ground. He handed me a warm cup. "Drink. I found a way to brew tea with my algae too. It tastes better than eating it does, although we'll still have to do that too." Monty offered an apologetic smile, knowing all too well how much I hated our new diet. Among other things, I missed hunting. Or maybe I just missed hunting with Octavia. She was better than I was, and she never let me forget that fact. I smiled at the memory of her triumphant face as she hauled a deer from the forest by herself one early morning in a different lifetime.
I took a sip of Monty's tea and was surprised when hiding my distaste was easier than normal. It didn't taste good, not by a long shot, but it was a more mild version of the intense flavor of the algae. "Thanks."
"When I lost Jasper," Monty said as he tended to his plants, "I wasn't sure how I would move on. I held my best friend as he took his last breaths. I told him I loved him, but I had no way of knowing if he heard me. I hoped he did, but really there's no way to know for sure." Monty moved around his greenhouse subtly, not looking at me as he spoke. "I know it was hard for Harper, seeing me like that," he continued quietly. "Love is hard. You share the good, but you share the bad too. She was shouldering my burdens, and it was tough for both of us." Monty fell silent after that, plucking dead leaves from his plants and checking the soil in the pots that looked dried out.
"How did you move past that?" I asked after I had time to consider his words.
Monty looked at me then and held my gaze as he spoke. "I realized that, despite everything, Jasper died on his terms. It was what he wanted. And he never would have wanted it to destroy me like it did."
I broke the eye contact first, staring down at my feet as my thoughts raced, unable to form anything coherent to respond with. How could I ever explain the conflict in my head to anyone? How could I make it make sense? The war was over, but not.
"Clarke died on her terms too," Monty finally said, pulling me out from inside my head again. "She died turning the power on for us. She stayed behind to save us. And she wouldn't have wanted it to destroy you like it did. She would want you to move on. She would want you to be happy. She loved you, Bellamy. Don't take this life she gave you for granted." I looked up in time to see Monty finish his farming. He met my eyes and smiled gently. "Come on, it's time for dinner."
Dinner was disgusting, as always. Echo was stronger than all of us combined, choking her serving down without hesitation. I knew how she really felt about Monty's algae, but she put on a brave face for him without fail, every time. Scattered conversations unfolded between our little family, and I was almost too distracted with my own thoughts to notice Murphy leaving before anyone else, leaving Emori behind as he did. Raven quickly reached for Emori's hand and dragged her to the workshop for more tech lessons, but I noticed the hurt look as her eyes followed Murphy until he was out of sight.
I collected the empty dishes and dropped them in their designated bin. Monty and Harper were chatting happily with one another. He reached up to brush a strand of hair from her face and I watched as she melted into his touch. They were effortless, like breathing.
As nighttime closed around us, I avoided looking at the radio. This was when I would call for Clarke. But tonight was different. I didn't steal a glance out the window as I made my way to my room. Echo was already there, changing into her pajamas. She jumped slightly when I pushed the door open.
"Bellamy, what—" I cut her off, pulling her towards me and crushing my lips to hers. She hadn't expected me there so early, but I wasn't going to acknowledge the reason for that. I let my hands settle on her hips before gently sliding them up her waist, bringing her shirt up slightly with the movement. I focused on the feeling of her body beneath my hands, forcing every thought from my head. Tonight was about us. Nothing else. No one else. I owed it to her.
She moved her hands to my chest and pushed back slightly to look at me. "You're early. Is everything okay?" she asked with guarded excitement in her eyes.
"I love you," I responded simply before I pulled her back to me. She didn't ask anything else.
The changes in our relationship were obvious, but no one talked about it.
In the few months before we saw the intruders in our sky, Echo had stolen away in the night to spend extra time with Raven and Emori in the room they had begun sharing. We hardly saw Murphy at meal times anymore. Echo was loyal to Emori's trust, and would only give me simple and, at times, cryptic answers to the questions I bombarded her with when she would return a few hours after everyone other than the three in the workshop had gone to bed.
I considered attempting to ask Murphy about what was going on. It was obvious he and Emori had taken space from each other, and that the decision wasn't his. He had changed after accepting the safety of our situation in space, but it was unclear still what had been the final straw for Emori. I wanted to talk to him, and try to offer some advice if I could, but I avoided the urge. I still didn't trust my judgement with romance. Echo and I were finally feeling natural after nearly three years together, and I couldn't risk breaking apart my family even more if I said the wrong thing. It hurt not being able to help, but I knew Murphy had Monty. I saw the two of them speaking in hushed voices from time to time, and saw the way Monty and Harper shared glances and protective looks whenever the energy in the room shifted after a snarky comment from Murphy or a cold remark from Emori. They were working their magic with him at the pace that he needed. I had every reason to trust that, so I did.
Echo and I had plenty of nights together after my talk with Monty. Nights where I was finally able to give her the undivided attention she deserved from me. Nights that improved with time. I spent the next year making up to her the countless ways I had let her down. We never fully discussed what had changed, or the time before. I think she shared my fears about what the conversation could cause. It had potential to make us stronger, but it had equal potential to tear us apart.
So after we made the decision to break in to the Eligius ship, I felt a familiar sting that I tried my best to ignore. It had been a long time since I let myself hope Clarke was alive, but knowing we could be back on the ground soon made it harder to control myself.
I focused on Octavia as much as I could. Echo was worried about her for good reason. The last my sister knew, Echo had been banished to live out her last hours in misery before the death wave stole her from this world. What would she think of our relationship? I was nearly convinced she would be accepting, swallowing her pride like I had for Lincoln. I still worried, too, though I tried to hide that from Echo. How much could my sister have changed in the 6 years we were apart? But we were still blood. She would want me to be happy, I was sure of it. So when I promised Echo nothing would change on the ground, I really thought it was the truth.
Then we were on the ground. And we discovered that Clarke was alive. And we saw what had become of Octavia. And I tried not to let things change.
Octavia was a greater obstacle than any of us had anticipated, so when Echo told me her plans to defect, I wasn't surprised. That didn't make me any more comfortable with not being able to protect her, and saying goodbye was one of the hardest things I had ever done. I still couldn't stop my mind from wandering. I wished I could find anything else other than Clarke surviving Praimfaya to offer me comfort in our situation. I had left her behind, but I hadn't killed her. I could let Echo go now, and she would be safe too. I had to believe that Echo would be okay to be able to let her leave and do her part in protecting our family, but thinking about Clarke was the worst way to do that and I knew it.
Echo and I had a smooth rhythm together, giving and taking in complementary ways, easing into each other like we'd been together for lifetimes. But tonight was different. Familiarity cloaked us from nights left unspoken, threatening to rip me open into sobs again. Space had made me soft. This was war, and it was time to be strong again, for Echo, and for the rest of my family. When Echo left, kissing me once more before she went, I knew that she knew. But we didn't talk about it, far too afraid to face the potential fragility of our bond given the unpredicted shifts in our little universe.
We worked well together on the battlefield when the time came. She rescued me when I needed her the most, and I was grateful that she had survived in our time apart, even if it had shattered me.
If I was being honest with myself, I could have admitted how the differences in myself since returning to the ground were because of Clarke. But I wasn't allowed to be honest with myself anymore. Not if I wanted to protect Echo. The truth was, my feelings for Clarke were guarded now in a way they hadn't been since first meeting her. I knew I betrayed her trust to save my family. I knew it was selfish, and unforgivable in her eyes. But I never expected her to leave me to die. Paired with the ache of losing my sister to what she had become, I lost my trust in Clarke. I was always ready to die for her, but dying because of her? I could hardly process what our decisions meant anymore, I just knew everything I did had to be for Echo, and for my family. Clarke didn't need my protection anymore, but they still did.
I had allowed myself too many fantasies in my time apart from Echo. I had to wonder if I had known about the radio calls, would I have torn myself up so thoroughly with wishful thinking beforehand? If Clarke had told me in a better way that she never gave up hope for the six years apart, would I have been able to not let it change anything? But Madi caught me off guard, and after my family was safe again, I felt the old scars begin to burn.
Echo found me that night, after the decision was made to go into cryosleep and wait for the Earth to come back to life. With 10 years of nothingness ahead of us, we couldn't put off the conversation any longer. She kissed me fast before pulling me to an unoccupied room and letting her lips become more urgent, her touch more desperate. I tried to return the enthusiasm, but I wasn't used to the broken up feeling anymore, and it exhausted me over the past weeks I had let it seep back into my system.
Echo pulled away from me and turned her back, facing the dark corners of the room. "You promised me, Bellamy," she whispered after the silence became unbearable. She turned back to me then and shoved her palm against my chest. "You promised me nothing would change," she said with slightly more volume.
I stumbled back, unprepared for her aggression, and desperately searched for a response. I tried to speak, opening my mouth then closing it again when the words didn't find me. We stared at each other for a long time, her in betrayal and me in desperation.
She stood up straight after a while and wiped her eye. I hadn't noticed she was crying, but I hadn't noticed I was crying either. "I will not battle for your love," Echo finally said when it was clear I couldn't speak. She waited for a response again, but I couldn't bring myself to speak. I was still too afraid of breaking in front of her more than I already had. I didn't want her to see the way I was falling apart over her, and over Clarke, over and over again. I was pathetic. She sighed and spoke again. "I think we should take some time to figure all of this out. I think you need to figure this all out. I love you Bellamy, so much more than you could understand, but I will not watch you shut me out anymore. I can't do this again." She came to me then, and wrapped her arms around my waist. I returned the embrace, gently stroking her back and letting the tears soak into her hair.
She pulled away after a few moments and began to walk out the door when I caught her arm. I felt the pain ripple through me and forced the words from my chest. "I'm sorry, Echo. I didn't want to hurt you. You have to know that," I begged. I was breaking my family, and it was one of the worst things I had ever done.
Echo inhaled slowly, staring into my eyes with a strength I couldn't find within myself anymore. "You will always be my family, Bellamy." She pulled her arm from my grasp and escaped from the room and down the hallway. I let the sadness take over now, in the privacy of the abandoned room.
I'm wasn't sure how long I spent huddled into myself on the bed, but it wasn't long enough before Raven's voice filled the ship from the intercom. "Alright boys and girls, it's time for bed." I stopped in the bathroom on the way and splashed my face with some water from the sink. I was happy to see my face wasn't betraying my emotions as much as I anticipated. Suddenly, a ten year break didn't seem so bad. I was exhausted.
Clarke and I being the first ones woken up was unexpected to say the least. When I opened my eyes and saw her standing over me, I was overcome with a warm feeling reminiscent of my best days on the Ring, and my best days on the ground. That fire was drained from my system nearly instantly, replacing my blood with ice water and chilling me to the bone. Monty was dead. Harper was dead. Earth was dead. None of it was coming back. It was a lot to process.
I was thankful to have Clarke with me. If I had been with any of my family from space, I would have had to hold myself together. Falling apart with Clarke was easy, and she didn't argue when I asked Jordan to give me some time. His smile, so much like his mother's, tore into me like daggers as he stumbled through an awkward apology and left us alone.
Clarke let me cry for a while. I wasn't sure when we ended up on the ground, or how long it took for her tears to join my own, it could have been hours or days or years. Time didn't mean much to me anymore. After my eyes had finally dried out, Clarke continued to hold me close, rocking our connected bodies back and forth and humming a tune I vaguely recognized.
"Wasn't that one of Jasper's favorites?" I asked when recognition finally sparked. I leaned away from her slightly to see her face, and her eyes were just as puffy and red as mine felt.
"Yeah, it was." Her voice broke and she cleared her throat of the sobs she was now holding back. "I found Maya's music player when I went back to Arkadia, not long after praimfaya. That's when I found his note to Monty." We both tensed.
I was the first to speak again. "I'm glad they found happiness. Harper and Monty. Maybe we'll all get our chance at it, too."
"I just can't believe they're gone," she responded. Her eyes traveled back to Monty's face, frozen on the screen in the last frame of his video. "I can't believe it's been 125 years," she added, laughing a little as she did.
I smiled too. "It all seems so unreal," I agreed. I stood from my place on the cold floor then, and offered my hand to Clarke for her to follow. She accepted my help but immediately released my hand when she was standing. She moved closer to the window and stared out at the two suns rising over our new home.
"Who should we wake up first?" she asked after we shared a moment of quiet awe. "I'm sure you want to wake up your family," she added. "Murphy, Emori...Echo. They'll want to see this too." She was avoiding looking at me now.
"I'm not sure Echo wants to see much of me," I confessed despite myself. "At least, that's not the impression she left me with. We kind of broke up."
Clarke met my eyes and looked away again before I could decipher the gears turning behind her own. "I'm sorry to hear that," she finally responded after the room had grown too quiet once again.
I realized suddenly that, other than Jordan, who was lingering somewhere on the ship waiting for us to find him, Clarke and I were alone. And safe, for all intents and purposes. I tried to think back to the last time we were left together like this, and nothing came to mind. Time spent with Clarke usually coincided with time spent fighting for survival. I chose to take this moment for what it was, and to see what it could be worth.
I stepped closer to Clarke and placed my hand on her shoulder. She leaned in to my touch slightly, but kept her eyes firmly planted on anything but me. "You're my family too. You know that, right?"
She broke. I saw the tears shimmering in her eyes and reached to pull her closer, but she stepped away from my touch this time. When she finally turned to face me, her stare was burning. "You put the flame in Madi's head," she spat out. "You betrayed me, Bellamy. You said you would keep her safe and I trusted you. How am I ever supposed to be okay with that? How am I ever supposed to consider you family after that?"
"I did what I had to do," I snapped back, using words she'd used on me countless times before, and her expression crumbled. She turned from me again, and I watched as her shoulders trembled from the sobs wreaking havoc on her body. "I was trying to save us, Clarke," I continued. "I was trying to save you. Madi was too," I reminded her. Then, because I was reminded of Madi and because something had broken in me, too, and I was apparently throwing all caution to the wind, I added, "You know, she told me about the radio calls, Clarke." She looked back at me with emotions I couldn't quite place and her sudden lack of breath left her sputtering. "She told me you called me every day for 6 years, and I'm still trying to figure out how something like that could turn into leaving me to die in a fighting pit." I spoke the words with more venom than I anticipated, and was taken aback by the sudden increase in my heart rate and the sound of adrenaline pumping in my ears.
"I never wanted to hurt you, but you left me no choice, Bellamy. She's my daughter."
And in that moment, she looked so much like her own mother that I couldn't stop myself from laughing. I couldn't remember a time I had laughed that hard. I bent over to clutch my stomach as the involuntary sounds escaped my mouth and tears rushed to my eyes again. "I'm sorry—Clarke—I know we're in the middle of something—but you are definitely your mother's daughter." I managed to force out between fits. She laughed along with me then, and the sound filled the space around us and brought us closer to one another.
I found myself moving a strand of hair from her face while she busied herself smoothing out my shirt over my shoulder. Her touch lingered longer than I had prepared for, but it wasn't like I was in a rush to remove my hand from her face either. When we finally separated again, my words found me as easily as if I'd rehearsed them a hundred times. "I'm so tired of being upset, Clarke."
She smiled softly and nudged me with her elbow while drawing my attention again to Monty's frozen face on the screen. "If ever there was a time to start over, I think it would be now."
Usually, this was when we would begin working on our game plan. We would put more space between us and discuss logistics and tactics then separate and tackle the problem from opposite ends of the playing field. But tonight was different. Tonight, we didn't have to survive a war. Tonight, we didn't have to leave. So we didn't.
Clarke told me about Madi and how they found each other, and the way she lit up as she talked about the girl, who was—by nearly every definition of the word—her daughter, was enough luminance to dispel all of the shadows from my mind. She showed me the scar from Madi's bear trap, and explained the faded red streaks in her hair and how Madi couldn't stop herself from asking every hour on the hour if they could use some of the berries from their harvest to add the pop of color to their appearances. She told me about the late nights spent stargazing and storytelling, and how Madi had known all of our hardships and all of the tough choices we made and how proud she and Madi were of all of us. "I mean, the way you all found a way to survive in space? I knew you guys would make it through, and you came out stronger than I ever could have imagined. All of you."
I told her about the Ring, and about how all of us lived for her and her sacrifice. I described the potent taste of Monty's algae, "Imagine grass, but marinated in mud and and sewer water." I told her about how Emori found her place with Raven and how Harper had taken on the motherly persona for all of us in space. We both laughed again at how Murphy would have made an excellent comedian in another lifetime. After the fit stopped again, I said through a shaky breath, "You should have been there with us."
"But if I had been there with you, I never would have found Madi," she reminded me.
Again, words slipped out before I had consciously decided to speak them into existence. "Yeah, and I would have never been with Echo."
I didn't even realize I said it at first. It was a thought I'd had a million times, and a thought I'd kept to myself just as often. When Clarke's expression registered in my mind, I immediately tried to back track. "I mean—I didn't mean—I just." I closed my mouth again when I realized there was no way to make sense of my slip up.
Clarke was quiet for a moment, and just when I noticed she had stopped breathing, she sighed heavily and turned away from me. "We'll have to wake up Raven and Shaw, of course. I think I'll want to keep Madi asleep until I'm sure we're safe, but my mom should be awake, too. If that's okay with you," she added, making sure to include me in the decision making process.
I cleared my throat, attempting to sound like I had myself together and wasn't, in fact, beginning to unravel. "Uh, yeah. That sounds good. I think we should wake up Murphy, Emori, and Echo too. They'll be good for a ground unit when we land."
Silence filled the space between us again and I found that I was mentally kicking myself in response to my own slip of tongue. I hadn't meant to ruin our time alone together, but still I found a way to mess it up. Of course she didn't feel the same way about me. Of course she hadn't spent our years apart imaging what every moment would be like if we were together. Of course she didn't long for me like I did for her. I felt pathetic again.
"So it's settled," she said finally. "I'll go get Jordan."
I reached out to take her hand before she could leave. "Please," I said before she could step further away from me. "Please, don't leave yet. I'm sorry I said that, it was stupid and I shouldn't have—"
Clarke cut me off with acid in her words. "What am I supposed to make of that?"
"What am I supposed to make of your radio calls, Clarke?" I shot back, letting the question spill off my tongue. "From what I can tell, you missed me as much as I missed you. But you don't act like that now that I'm here with you. You act like..." I trailed off, not wanting to finish the accusation.
"No, go on," she told me when it was clear I wouldn't continue. "How am I acting now?"
"You act like our time apart meant nothing to you, when it tore me to pieces for 6 years."
"You think being away from you was easy? You think watching you fly in to space, knowing I would either be dying or living without you, was easy for me?"
"What else am I supposed to think?"
She shook her head and took a deep breath before stepping closer to me again, and I vaguely noted how much I'd missed how animated she could get when she was really getting into a conversation. Her hands flew out as she spoke, emphasizing her words. "It was the hardest thing I've ever done, Bellamy. My time without you felt endless. That's why I called you every day. Because the thought of living in this world without you with me was too much to handle. I had Madi, but I still felt so alone. I needed you, and I still do, and I have no idea what to do about that."
"You need me? Because from where I'm standing, you've all but put the nail in my coffin. Tell me what I'm supposed to make of that."
"I never wanted to hurt you Bellamy. When Echo told me you were alive...it was like I had been holding my breath since I left you. I thought you were dead. But you weren't, and I could breathe again. And there's no way I could ever make it up to you for all the times you've come through and saved all of us, even when I didn't know how to do it myself."
I stepped closer to her, wanting all the space between us to be gone but choosing to take it slowly. I didn't want to scare her off again. "I'm tired of keeping score. I'm tired of thinking about what we owe each other and what we owe our people. I'm tired of nothing ever being good enough to replace the hundreds of apologies that have gone unsaid. You said now is a good time to start over? I agree. So let's start over."
Before I could second guess myself, I pulled Clarke against my body and held her face in my hand. I stroked her cheek at first, feeling the electricity under my fingertips where they lingered on her skin. Then I moved my hand to her hair and felt the way the knots uncurled as I pulled my fingers through her strands. She leaned herself in to my touch and closed her eyes. A smile played at the edges of her mouth and a sigh escaped her lips. Her arms lifted to wrap around me and her thumbs traced pictures on my back as we fell completely into each other. I wasn't used to being so completely alone with Clarke. I didn't want this moment to end.
"I called you too, you know," I admitted. I felt the weight lifting from my heart as I spoke and she opened her eyes again.
"You did?" She tried to hide the smile she was fighting, but she couldn't fool me.
"Admittedly it wasn't as often as you, but yes. Of course I did. I had to believe you were dead to move on, but I never could completely give up hope. It was impossible to—"
"What are we doing, Bellamy?" She cut me off again, exasperated. She still couldn't conceal the smile.
When I couldn't think of a response, I reached for her face again, this time to tilt her chin up and draw her closer to me. When she leaned in to my touch with redness rushing to her cheeks and her eyelids fluttering shut, I closed the distance between us to press my lips to hers. She was soft and warm and I felt her mouth dancing with my own like they knew all the steps and had been waiting centuries to perform with each other. Her arms wrapped around me tighter and I knew we were helpless from that moment. I couldn't part from her any easier than she could from me. Neither of us tried for a very long time.
Kissing Clarke was something I had imagined for lifetimes, but none of my countless fantasies could do any justice to the real thing. For all the ways I pictured us together, I never could have expected the electricity running between our bodies, or the way I felt all of my tension fade away as her hands traveled up and down my spine, sending shivers through every part of me. I let my fingers tangle in her hair and shuttered as her hands found my bare skin under the shirt they had shifted upwards. We melted together. Her nails dug into my back and a gasp escaped her lips as my mouth traveled the length of her neck. I pulled away long enough to stare into her eyes, just as dumbstruck and love drunk as I felt, before our lips found each other again.
When we finally parted, too soon, we were both breathless and flushed. I felt my heart hammering in my chest and Clarke leaned herself into me for balance.
"I'm not sure what we're doing," I finally answered. "But I'd like to figure it out."
Her eyes, shimmering again with tears, held mine captive. "Together?"
"Yeah." We both stared back at our new world, our new start, and I felt the weight of a thousand years of grief lift from my shoulders as Clarke's fingers intertwined with mine like they had found their home at last. "Together."
As always, I hope you enjoyed the story! Please be sure to favorite and comment with any critiques or requests!