Raven is thoroughly convinced that she will never, ever, forgive Bellamy Blake for making her leave him to die. She cannot stop reliving that last conversation, hearing his voice running through her head.
"Bellamy, I'm sorry, but we have to go now."
"Yes, of course, you guys should go."
"What? What do you mean?"
"I'm staying. You guys should go. No time to argue – get on with it."
"Bellamy, you can't. You're not thinking straight, come on, get into the ship."
"I'm thinking perfectly straight, Raven. My mind is made up. It's time for the rest of you to go now."
No one had expected John Murphy to be the one to understand.
"Raven, he needs to do this. Look at him, he's not moving any time soon. We need to go. May we meet again, Bellamy. I hope she gets back to you."
"May we meet again."
Here comes John Murphy again, walking into the Earth Monitoring Station, hand in hand with Emori.
"I'm sorry, Raven. I know you're not going to forgive me for backing him up back there but... he needed to do that, I think."
"When did you get so insightful, Murphy?" she bites back.
"When I fell in love. He looked how I felt when they had Emori on that table in the lab."
Raven wasn't expecting that. Neither was Emori, judging by the look on her face as she stares at him with what can only be described using words like sickening and devotion.
"Coming up here without her would have broken him anyway. You know that. We all do. At least this way they have some hope of finding a solution together or – or at least – saying goodbye."
There are tears in Raven's eyes as she nods her head and turns back to the computer screen.
…...
The next time Clarke drifts into consciousness, Bellamy is too engrossed in his book to notice.
Drowsily, she allows her eyes to settle on him for a moment, taking in the rapt concentration in his gaze, the slight creasing at the corners of his mouth, the soft curve of his cheek as he smiles gently at something.
She likes to think he's smiling because he's with her, but she knows that, at this moment in time, the book is a more likely explanation.
"Good book?" She asks, her voice somewhat croaky from disuse.
His eyes dart to hers immediately, and in that moment she knows that he has been waiting to hear her speak for quite some time.
"Yeah, decent. I mean, it's only one of the founding works of Earth literature." He holds the book out so that she can see the words The Odyssey printed on the front. "And I'm just at the bit where this teenage boy tells his mum to shut up and go to her room and get on with doing something ladylike, which is pretty hysterical once you've met literally anyone in Trikru. I mean, can you imagine Indra being sent to her room to do something ladylike?"
Clarke giggles at that.
"Maybe this is the opportunity I have been waiting for all these years, a chance to learn about the wonders of Earth literature." There is a heavy dose of sarcasm in her voice, and it doesn't go unnoticed.
"You may mock, philistine, but Earth culture is fascinating. Particularly the Classical stuff. You know they believed in a goddess who was born out of her dad's forehead?"
"OK, that does actually sound like a pretty cool story."
Bellamy looks suddenly shy. "I could tell it to you if you like?" He won't quite meet her eye, and somehow she knows that this offer is different from all the other offers he has ever made her. This is not a favour or an exchange or him doing the right thing. An offer of storytelling is an offer of something that is part of himself, kept close to his heart. Something that used to belong to his mother and his sister. Something that belongs only to people he loves.
She smiles widely, and she knows that her heart is in her eyes as she whispers "I'd like that."
"Once upon a time – because, after all, that is how every good bedtime story starts – there was a god called Zeus. Now, to be honest, he was a bit of a womaniser, and also deeply insecure about a wide range of issues."
Somewhere along the line he has taken her hand, and she's not really sure when, but she feels no inclination to reclaim it.
"One of the women he decided to womanise was called Metis."
She would like to stay awake, really she would, but she's still not feeling at all well and anyway she feels so warm and safe and treasured as his voice weaves the story around her. Perhaps she should ask him to tell the story another day?
"And one of the things he felt particularly panicky about was this prophecy – because there were a lot of prophecies doing the rounds in those days – that any children Metis had would be wiser than their father. And, you see, this was a bad thing, because Zeus..."
After all, she reasons, her last coherent thought as sleep rises up to claim her, they have all the time in the world.
…...
Bellamy is not surprised that she falls asleep. A couple of minutes later he allows his sentence to trail away into nothing and wonders what to do now.
He needs to work out that computer simulation so that he can see which areas of land might escape the worst of the radiation. They will, after all, need somewhere to live once the death wave has passed and Clarke has made him a nightblood. That's another rather important project he could get started on, actually, he reasons – researching bone marrow transplants. And, to be honest, he could also do with organising their rations a bit. Or washing some underpants. Or making up one of the beds for himself.
At the very least, he could pick up The Odyssey again and, if nothing else, get some reading done.
But, of course, he does none of these things, because rubbing his thumb over Clarke's hand (when did he take her hand?) and keeping an eye on her while she rests is infinitely more interesting and important.
He won't let anything happen to her on his watch.
a/n Thanks for reading! Up next: Monty's pov and Clarke practises staying awake.
