After defeating Mount Weather, the Ark people struggle to rebuild their society and prepare for the changing seasons. Working frantically to ensure their survival, Clarke contracts an illness that has her wandering deliriously out of Camp Jaha in the middle of the night. Bellamy, desperate to find her before it's too late, will do whatever it takes to save the girl he can't live without.
Her throat felt like a colony of fire ants had taken up residence along its swollen walls, but no one needed to know that. Clarke dragged a chapped hand through her hair, smoothing the unruly curls from her face as she worked at weaving the complicated pattern Lincoln had taught her. If the grass blades would just cooperate, she'd have finished the stupid basket already. After another minute of struggling Clarke heaved a frustrated sigh and set the basket aside. It wasn't the work she wanted to be doing anyway. She'd kept busy since negotiating the terms of the peace treaty with Lexa and rescuing their people from Mount Weather. There were so many things to do. People to heal, conflicts to soothe, and plans for their survival had to be renegotiated on an almost daily basis. Being busy had become her constant. She counted on it, expected it, and in the rare moments when she wasn't dashing from place to place trying to do everything at once, she felt lost. That's why Lincoln had taught her how to weave the baskets. Giving her fingers something to do calmed the anxiety that bubbled in her chest at the prospect of doing nothing. If she was resting, people were dying. It was a fact she'd learned through experience, something that she drew from the recesses of her mind to keep her moving forward, no matter how worn or exhausted she might feel. The dead are gone. The living are hungry. She hadn't realized that day the truth in Lexa's words.
Clarke abandoned the basket and her perch on the roughly hewn log that had served as her chair. Across the clearing she could hear the echoing thumps of hammers and saws. Without hesitation, she rose to her feet and followed them.
Her mother had assembled a task force to build permanent structures only two days after they'd secured the formal peace treaty with Mount Weather. It was unsurprising, really, that Bellamy Blake had become the head of that team. He stood now with his back to her, eyeing the workers like a fisherman surveying the ominous confluence of two currents. As always, their project was driven by the relentless call of winter.
"Group C, fall into log cutting rotation," Bellamy shouted.
Clarke almost felt like smiling. Log cutting meant they would be working in the woods. The thought of getting lost in the tangle of dense green undergrowth eased some previously silent knot of tension in her chest. The woods were a shadowy, twisted place. She was a shadowy, twisted person. It fit.
"Bellamy," Clarke said, walking up beside him. She brushed her fingers over his shoulder. He turned his head, lips pressed together in a firm line that turned up at the edges. It was his grim smile.
"Clarke." He leaned in. "I don't know if we're going to finish in time."
Clarke pulled her jacket tighter around her, gripping the collar and pulling the fabric up her throat. "Nyko said the first freeze will come sometime next week. If we're not ready by then…"
"It's going be a cold night in our metal box," Bellamy finished.
Clarke nodded, glancing at the looming form of the Ark behind them. In Space, it had served their needs. They'd been able to heat it, light it, make their homes in its walls. Now it was little more than a dark metal tomb that would serve only to amplify the cold winter nights on Earth.
"We'll finish," Clarke said. "We have to."
She didn't raise her eyes to see Bellamy's expression. They stood for a moment in silence, Clarke's eyes drifting toward the woods while Bellamy's drifted to her.
"You alright, Clarke? You look kind of pale."
"I'm fine," She said, her voice emotionless. Another beat of silence. The wind swept her hair over her shoulder, tugging gently at the curls and leaving a trail of goose bumps across her skin. "I'm going to help cut."
He nodded. She didn't see the motion as she strode off into the woods.
Bellamy sighed, watching her figure until it disappeared. He'd been unsure of her lately. She was still Clarke, though a more exhausted, beleaguered looking version of the girl he'd first met. She was also the girl who had spread wide the gates of hell and asked him to walk in, twice, for the good of their people. She was the girl who had sprinted to him when he emerged from behind that gate, throwing her arms around him as tears formed in her eyes. Once, when she first made it back to camp. Twice, when she found him in the halls of Mount Weather. Now, well, she was the girl who was saving their asses, every single goddamned day.
In the woods, Clarke sweated alongside Lincoln. The stoic grounder had become something to her, maybe even a friend, in the weeks following Finn's death. They worked together well, standing at either end of a two man saw, cutting their way through the base of a tree. Perhaps their compatibility had to do with the fact that they were both broken in some respect. Both trying to get over the horror of events they could never erase.
Erase. That was exactly what Clarke wished she could do. Just like drawing a picture, she wanted to grab the stub of a pencil and lay waste to the events that had transpired since they came to Earth. No Mountain Men, no dead Finn, no war against the Grounders, no blood on her hands. She would trade everything good to get rid of just one of the bad.
She wasn't going to go around telling anyone that, either.
The labor felt harder than usual and Clarke's body ached in a way that had nothing to do with the exertion. As morning slunk into afternoon, the air warmed. Lincoln had shed his shirt, but Clarke kept her jacket tightly zipped. She could have sworn it was getting colder with each passing minute. Even the labor of working the saw did little to raise her temperature.
The hours of the afternoon dragged on, and Clarke was sure that Lincoln was doing most of the work. Every once in a while she caught him eyeing her with concern, but he said nothing except to offer a break, which she refused. When the sun finally sank behind the horizon she felt like she'd been dunked in a lake of ice water and then beaten. She trekked sluggishly back to camp.
Lincoln met Octavia inside the gate and the pair headed off toward the dining area, Raven trailing slightly behind them.
"Wanna come with, Clarke?" she asked.
Octavia, who rarely made eye contact with Clarke and spoke to her even less, shot a cool glance over her shoulder. Lincoln might have made his peace with Clarke, but Octavia had not, and Clarke was beginning to wonder if she ever would. This Octavia was not the same girl who'd run off to chase butterflies. She was a warrior and a Second, a Grounder and a Sky Person. She was not forgiving.
"I think I'm going to grab a better jacket first," Clarke said.
Raven frowned. "Okay, well I'll save you a seat."
Clarke smiled and continued toward her tent. She didn't actually intend to go to dinner. It hurt to swallow and she couldn't fathom doing anything but collapsing in her bed with as many blankets as she could find. She was getting sick, and their wasn't much use in denying it to herself anymore.
"Did Clarke come back with you?" Bellamy asked, jostling the table as he took a seat.
"She did."
"She told us she was stopping by her tent before coming to get dinner," Raven offered.
"Good," he sighed. Bellamy ate, paying only partial attention to Octavia's conversation about sword maneuvers. He kept watch for a flash of messy blonde hair, but none appeared.
"And that's why I've decided to keep the baby."
Bellamy's attention snapped back to his sister across the table.
"What?" he spluttered.
"See I told you he wasn't listening," Octavia grumbled to Lincoln. "Just go check on her already, would you?"
"Sorry," Bellamy said with a pained expression.
"It's alright. Just go."
"Yeah." Bellamy stood up and left the dining area, grabbing a piece of bread from the basket as an afterthought.
When he got to her tent, he called out.
"Clarke?" No response.
He pushed the tent flap aside. Clarke was lying on her stomach beneath three blankets. Her pillow was damp beneath her face. He watched her for a moment, trying to decide if he should wake her up and make her get something to eat. She looked so vulnerable in sleep, her forehead smooth and her hands tucked under her chest, just over her heart. He couldn't bear to wake her up. Instead, he knelt at the edge of her bed and unlaced her boots, pulling them from her feet with gentle fingers. He began to take off her socks too, but her skin was so cold that he decided to leave them on. If he'd touched her forehead, he would have found that it was burning hot. He sat at the foot of the bed for several minutes, listening as she inhaled and exhaled. Her breath sounded labored, but not enough to cause him alarm. When his head began to droop and he was in danger of falling asleep himself, Bellamy left.
As he crossed the yard he caught a flash of Octavia's dark hair in the window of the engineering and weapons shed. She was still up, working her sword over a whetstone by lamplight. Bellamy almost walked over to her, but sleep pulled at him, and he elected instead to slink silently through the dark, only half conscious.
Bellamy reached his tent and collapsed, exhausted, into his own bed.
In the early hours of the morning, Octavia paused her work on her sword, testing the smooth metal against the pad of her thumb. Indra had chastised her after evening training for letting the weapon go dull. She swept a hand across her forehead, wiping away the grime of the day that had collected there. Packing up her tools, she moved to the door of the shed, tossing the whetstone and cloth into a tub on the feeble shelf they'd erected. A sound in the yard caught her attention. She stilled and peered through the open door.
"Clarke?" she whispered, her forehead scrunched in confusion.
The fair-haired girl was moving oddly, her steps unstable and her arms wrapped around her torso.
Octavia slipped from the shed and padded toward her with silent steps.
Clarke was mumbling something indecipherable, her hair and forehead coated in a fine sheen of sweat. Her skin was ghostly pale in the moonlight, her feet wet in only socks.
"Clarke?" she said, louder this time.
The girl glanced up, her blue eyes clouded and frantic beneath Octavia's gaze.
"I have to find him," she slurred. Now that Octavia was closer she could see that Clarke's cheeks were flushed a deep red.
"Who?" Octavia asked, placing an arm on Clarke's shoulder.
Clarke shook her head and continued staggering toward the gate. They'd given up large night watches since the end of the war and the yard was completely deserted.
"I did what I had to," Clarke said, each syllable thick and ill formed. "He'll understand. I have to find him."
Octavia stood rooted to the spot. Was she talking about the bombing of the village, about Bellamy? Something cold and hard surfaced in Octavia. She hadn't forgotten, not once since that day, that Clarke had left 250 people to die, had left Octavia herself to die. She felt her hands clench into fists. It had been war, sure, but life had value down here. This couldn't be the Ark all over again, and Octavia could not be that trapped little girl beneath the floorboards, not anymore. Yet, Clarke had made her feel that way, just that small.
Something twisted in Octavia's chest as she looked at the fragile stranger in front of her.
"Good luck, Clarke," she whispered, releasing her hold on the girl. With that, she walked away, leaving her leader, her former friend, her brother's confidant, to stumble incoherently through the night.
Bellamy woke feeling stiff. He'd been working alongside the builders for two weeks now, and he could feel the effects in the lingering soreness of his muscles. His stomach grumbled, and he thought of breakfast, which of course, made him think of Clarke. Everything made him think of Clarke, and it was downright annoying if he was being honest. He decided to go roust her from her tent, or track her down if she was already up, and force her to eat with him. He needed to talk to her about trying to speed up the housing project anyway.
He sifted through the pile of clothes at the end of his bed, settling on the least grimy shirt he could find. He pulled it over his head and bent down to lace up his boots. He remembered the delicate curve of Clarke's body beneath the blanket last night, the pale color of her skin and her labored breathing. Worry surged through him and he fumbled through the knots on his last shoe.
Only one person called good morning to him as he crossed the yard, and he managed only the smallest of nods in response.
He paused again outside her tent.
"It's Bellamy. Can I come in?" He counted to five when he heard nothing. Then he entered.
The tent was, empty. It wasn't a particularly shocking discovering. Clarke was often an early riser, so Bellamy wasn't sure why he suddenly felt sick to his stomach. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he noticed that her blankets were tangled in a knot on the ground, like someone had thrashed in them and then thrown them off. The contents on the table had been jostled. The cup holding Clarke's pen and pencil had been knocked over and a book lay on the floor alongside a sketch for their buildings. Finally, Bellamy noticed that there, at the foot of her bed, exactly as he had left them, sat her boots.
"Shit. Where are you, Clarke?" Bellamy whispered.
Bellamy spent the next two hours searching every place he could think of. He went to the medical bay and stood amongst the burning scent of moonshine and iodine, holding a piece of cloth to his mouth as he asked Abby if she'd seen Clarke. The woman hadn't been fond of him ever since he'd helped her daughter go around her back for perhaps the tenth time, but she answered calmly while cutting an arrowhead from a guard's back. No, she had not seen her daughter. Lincoln hadn't seen her and neither had Raven. Clarke wasn't with Monty discussing a plant emergency (was that even a thing?) and she wasn't with any of the three different groups of builders, though Bellamy wasn't sure of anything there that could have required her to leave her tent so quickly that she didn't have time to put on shoes. The longer Bellamy looked the more frustrated and anxious he became. The one person he wished he could ask to help find Clarke was, well, Clarke.
"We need to send out a search party," Bellamy barged back into medical without so much as a hello.
Abby stared at him, her eyebrows raised.
"And we need to question the Grounders, our people too. Everyone," Bellamy said.
"You didn't find her" Abby asked, uncertainty creeping into her voice.
Bellamy ground his teeth at the redundancy of her question. "No. She's gone and her tent is a mess. She didn't even take her shoes."
"Her shoes?"
"Order the search party now," Bellamy said, angrily. "I'm going to the Grounders." He spun on his heal and strode toward the door.
Abby snapped out of her shock and lurched forward, catching Bellamy's arm.
"No. I'll go. You take our people out into the woods. You know them better than I do."
Bellamy frowned at the woman. Abby was small and she looked it, whereas Clarke was small, but projected strength, power, and certainty. He searched for some glimpse of Clarke in her mother's face, but found none.
"Fine. Leave now." Bellamy shook free of her arm and ducked toward the door.
"Bellamy," Abby called behind him, fear reverberating in her words. "We have to find her. She's…she's the reason everything works."
Bellamy stopped just outside the tent. "I know."
They crashed loudly through the cold shade of the forest, a group of twelve, each spaced about 15 yards apart, cutting a swath through the trees. Bellamy had set out with his own group of searchers just after leaving Abby. They'd found a fairly clear trail that began just outside the camp boundaries and followed it until they reached a stream. After that, the signs disappeared. The weaving nature of the path they'd discovered worried him. There was no true sense of direction to the footprints and broken branches. It was if she had been stumbling blindly, though she didn't appear to have been coerced by someone, because there was only one set of tracks.
Around mid afternoon Bellamy jogged back to camp, leaving the other members of camp Jaha searching the woods. He needed to see what Abby had learned from the Grounders.
He'd barely made it through the gates when Abby was upon him.
"Anything?" she asked, searching his face.
Bellamy shook his head.
"The Grounders haven't seen her."
"They could have been lying."
"I spoke to Lexa to directly. I think she's telling through truth." She swallowed. "If one of her people did something, I don't think she knew about it."
Bellamy grimaced. There were still plenty of people who held grudges against Clarke. She'd made dozens of controversial decisions since coming to Earth. But the footprints…
"I think she was alone."
"What?" Abby asked, surprised and at once hopeful.
"We found tracks, and if they're hers, it doesn't look like there was anyone else with her."
Abby shook her head. "That doesn't make any sense. Why would she leave in the middle of the night?"
Bellamy's stomach sank. "I don't know."
Across the yard, various Grounders began to funnel into camp. Abby followed his line of sight.
"Lexa sent them to help us find her."
He nodded. That made sense. Lexa had always shown great respect for Clarke. Without her, Bellamy doubted the alliance would have gone through. He spied Indra among the crowd. Octavia!
He felt stupid for not having remembered earlier, even if he'd only been half conscious at the time. He walked quickly to the Grounders, weaving between their various hulking forms until he found his sister among a group of Seconds.
"Octavia!" he said, snagging her arm in the crowd. He led her out of the throng.
"Did you see Clarke last night?"
Octavia shifted her weight uncertainly from foot to foot, refusing to look him in the eye. It was a dance he'd seen a thousand times in their small apartment on the Ark. She was keeping something from him, and she felt guilty about it.
"Can we go somewhere private?" she asked with a sigh, catching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger.
Bellamy practically dragged her to his tent.
"Spill. Now."
Octavia grimaced and sank down on the edge of his bed.
"I saw her when I was putting up stuff in the weapons shed last night. She was wandering across the yard and mumbling something about needing to find someone."
"And?" Bellamy asked impatiently. "What did you do? Who was she looking for?"
"I think she was sick, Bellamy. And I," Octavia paused, her expression hardening. "I let her go."
"What?" Bellamy's voice was low and furious as he towered over her, arms crossed.
Octavia stood abruptly. "You know what Clarke did," she said, shoving an accusing finger to his chest. "She left an entire village to burn! And then you come back and just say everything is okay? It's not okay, Bellamy! Not even close."
"Octavia, you have no idea what you're talking about."
"She left me to die, Bellamy. She left all of us like we were worthless!"
"Shut up!" The words fell from his lips before he could control them, deep and loud, full of unadulterated rage. Bellamy had never screamed at his sister like that in his life.
Octavia reacted as if she'd been slapped. She tried to move around him to leave the tent, but he blocked her path.
"Get out of my way," she seethed.
"No," Bellamy said. "You and I have some things to straighten out."
Octavia glared up at him.
"Octavia, you've never been in that position," he began.
"I get it. You don't care that she left me to die," she said flatly.
"Fuck, Octavia! Of course I do. You think I don't hate that?" He was yelling again, and he pulled in a long breath in an attempt to calm down.
"I'm not defending everything Clarke did. I've been there Octavia; I've done things…" he trailed off, thinking of 300 bodies drifting through space, of dead teenagers and little girls throwing themselves off cliffs.
"I've made so many bad decisions, O," his voice broke slightly. "Those decisions, they're impossible. There is no good choice, and if you hate Clarke for making the choices she did...then you have to hate me more, because I can guarantee you that Clarke has never made a decision that wasn't for the good of all of us, and you and I, we both know that the same can't be said about me."
He exhaled shakily, staring at the ground as he attempted to regain his composure.
Octavia was silent for so long that he was afraid to look at her expression. When she did speak, her voice was quiet and small, like she'd suddenly become ten years younger. "Bellamy," Octavia said. She hugged him, pressing her head against his shoulder. "You're a good man," she whispered against his ear.
She drew away to examine his face.
"I can't love her right now, Bell, but, if you do…" she searched his eyes, "then that's okay."
Bellamy pulled back, shaking his head. "I just want her back," he said.
"We'll find her," Octavia said, laying a hand on his back. "I promise."
He nodded. As he moved to leave the tent, he stopped, looking back over his shoulder.
"You don't have to love her, Octavia. You don't even have to like her." He caught his sister's gaze. "You just have to not hate her enough to let it go."
He left the tent.
Bellamy spent the next six hours searching the woods alongside a collection of about 50 Grounders and Sky People. When the sun began to sink behind the horizon and the others turned back. He kept searching.
"You should come back," Abby had told him. "We won't find her in the dark and it's dangerous to be out."
He could tell the words were painful for her to utter. It was obvious that Abby could hardly bear the thought of giving up the search for her daughter, no matter what ill will that had passed between them. He wondered if she was only telling him to head in because she thought that was what her daughter would have wanted.
It didn't matter. He refused.
Bellamy wandered aimlessly through the trees. If Clarke was sick, as Octavia had said, then she could have been going nowhere in particular. It was just beginning to become fully dark when it occurred to him that she might have headed toward the old drop ship. No one had been there in months, but it was as good a lead to go on as any, so he struck out in that direction.
The moon was glowing eerily through the leaves of the trees by the time he caught sight of the metal building in the distance. He was grateful for it's light, however, because he'd thought to bring with him only a small flashlight, and it did little to illuminate the various vines and logs that occasionally caught his toes.
He stepped tentatively through the remains of their old camp. When he reached the clearing, where their descent had flattened the trees, the moon shone through in earnest. His breath caught in his throat.
There, lying upon the ashes of those she had sent to a fiery death, her hair gleaming silver in the night, was Clarke Griffin.
He felt as if his vision had narrowed to a pinpoint, a microscopic field that had room only for Clarke. He dashed madly forward. He fell to his knees beside her, stirring a flurry of human ashes around them. He cupped her cheek in his hand, dusting little pieces of human bone from where it lay burrowed in the skin.
"Clarke? Clarke?" he whispered.
Her forehead was damp and burning.
"It's alright," his voice trembled. "I'm going to get you home, and everything will be okay." He brushed a soft kiss against her hair. She didn't stir. He lifted her from the ground, cradling her head against his shoulder. Her chest rose, but her breaths were quick and shallow.
"Stay with me," he whispered, and strode into the dark.
They crossed the camp boundary just as the sun began its trip to the West. "They're back!" Someone shouted, and Bellamy lifted his head from where it hung tiredly, his eyes trained to his feet.
"Get Abby," he told a guard, his voice hoarse.
Someone attempted to lift Clarke from his arms, but he clung to her limp form, stumbling as much as walking toward the med tent. He broke through the entrance and deposited Clarke on a table just as Abby rushed in behind him.
"Oh my god. Clarke? Can you hear me?"
Bellamy fumbled to the side, sinking into a chair in the corner.
Raven ran in then, panting. "Bellamy! You found her," she breathed. The dark haired girl rushed to her friend lying on the table. "Will she be okay?" she asked, looking to Abby.
The chancellor didn't even bother to look up, her focus entirely on her daughter.
"I have to break her fever," she muttered to herself, sifting frantically through the contents of the med shelf. "Someone find Jackson," she shouted. She spun around, realizing for the first time that a small crowd had gathered in the room. "Everybody out!" She ordered.
A few members of the former 100 filed out of the tent. Bellamy made a sound of protest at Abby's demand, but Raven caught his arm. She surveyed his appearance. "Come on," she pulled him from the tent and he stumbled after her. "You need sleep." She glanced at him again. "And food. Food then sleep. Then you can go back to Clarke."
He wanted to argue, but his vision was doing the tunnel thing again and Bellamy had a feeling that if he didn't voluntarily lay down soon, his body was going to do it for him.
He startled awake in his own bed sometime in the night, feeling slightly better. His stomach was no longer screaming for food and he didn't seem to need matchsticks to prop up his eyelids anymore. So, that was something.
"You were calling her name in her sleep."
He jumped at the sound of Octavia's voice coming from the doorway of his tent.
"O?" he asked.
"Yea I'm here – came to get you actually."
He sat up in bed.
"Clarke is starting to wake up. She's asking for you."
Bellamy was fumbling his way out of the covers before Octavia had even finished speaking. He grabbed a shirt from his pile, tugging it over his head as he leaned forward to kiss his sister on the top of her head.
"Thank you, Octavia," he said, pulling away. She grabbed his hand and held on tight, forcing him to turn back to her.
"I'll forgive her Bell," she said quietly. "I can do that now."
Bellamy grinned, his entire face lighting up in something goofy and precious that Octavia hadn't seen in a long time. She felt an answering smile stretch its way across her lips. "Alright. Go get the girl, then." She laughed, releasing Bellamy's hand. Without another word, he was gone.
Clarke was shifting anxiously on the exam table, layers of blankets tucked up to her chin. Her eyes were closed, but a small frown graced her features, her forehead scrunched into those three little lines that he knew so well. He ran her fingers gently over the raised skin and her expression grew peaceful. She stopped shifting on the table. Abby was sitting in a chair beside the bed, looking tired.
"Her fever's gone down," Abby said.
Bellamy turned his head to meet her eyes, keeping his hand on Clarke.
"She should wake up soon." She glanced up. "She's been asking for you. Did Octavia tell you?"
Bellamy nodded, turning back to the sleeping girl.
"She'll be weak for a while," Abby paused. "And she's underweight."
Bellamy nodded again with his back to her.
Abby rose from her chair. "Call me when she wakes up."
"I will."
She paused at the entrance to the tent, watching the dark haired boy lean over her daughter, his thumb brushing softly against her cheek.
"Thank you, by the way," Abby murmured. "You brought her back to me."
Bellamy stiffened. Silence stretched between them. "She'd do the same for me," he said at last.
"Yes. I think she would." Abby left.
Clarke stirred awake over an hour later. Bellamy's breath caught in his throat when he saw the clear blue of her eyes blinking against the light of the morning.
"Hey," he said thickly, a soft smile around his lips.
"Hi," Clarke breathed. She looked around slowly, taking in her surroundings and the pale white night gown she was dressed in. "What happened to me?"
Bellamy stared at her for a moment, and a laugh bubbled up from his chest.
The sound of it filled the room and all the tension drain out of him. In a moment of desperate, wild happiness, he wrapped his arms under Clarke's shoulders and around her back, pulling her against his chest, laughing still.
If she was surprised, she didn't show it. She clung to him, though more weakly than she ever had before.
"What happened, Princess, is that you led the entire camp on a wild goose chase."
"Did I?" she asked, eye brows raised.
"Yep," he nodded. "And then, being the excellent looker that I am," - Clarke made a noise of protest, but he ignored her - "I found you."
"There's no hiding from Bellamy Blake huh?"
"Not even the slightest glimmer of hope," he grinned.
"Well then," she said, smiling as he lowered her gently back onto the bed. "I'll make a point of not doing it again."
"Please do," he said.
"Now," she began, "can you please fetch someone who will really tell me what's going on?"
"Aye, aye, Princess." He tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and pressed a kiss to her cheek. He didn't know if he was technically allowed to do that, but she smiled at him, and he though maybe it was okay.
Two weeks later, Clarke Griffin sat across from him at the dinner table. The winter cold had come to greet them in earnest two days ago, and yesterday they had finished their permanent buildings. This marked their first dinner in what Jasper had jokingly termed, "the banquet hall." In reality, it wasn't anything grand, just a simple room, long enough to fit about 50 people at once.
Clarke was herself again now, except better. It had taken almost losing her to something as silly as a fever to make Bellamy wake up and realize what she meant to him. He wasn't sure if it had done the same thing for her, but she smiled more now, she laughed. The quiet, brooding moods that used to consume her days lasted only a few hours now. When he kissed her outside the camp gates four days ago, she kissed him back.
And here she was now, leaning slightly against him on the bench seating in the room they'd designed together. The whole hall buzzed with excitement as the kitchen staff prepared to bring out the meal.
Their knees touched beneath the table and she turned to him, her expression thoughtful.
"You know, I used to think I would give this up, do anything just erase even one of the terrible things that have happened since we came to Earth," her voice trailed off. She stared down at her hand, as if remembering what it was capable of. Bellamy caught her fingers between his own, pulling their joined palms up to kiss the back of her hand. She smiled at him, breaking out of her reverie. "I wouldn't do that anymore. This," she gestured to the talking, smiling, people around them, to the building they'd made by hand, "this is worth something." She leaned into him and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "I think, Bellamy Blake, that we did alright."