Three chapters down; one to go.


Winter on Earth is more brutal than Clarke could have ever imagined.

It's frigidly cold and the days turn ever shorter to accomplish what needs to be done. She and Bellamy huddle together at night, with even their heads down under the blankets on the coldest nights. Food is scarce, spare clothing even scarcer. The battle for Mount Weather had left a body count, of course, but the bittersweet reality is that the hydroponic gardens on Level 1 are producing an excess of food. In return for the Ark's medical services, the mountain men send the doctors home to Camp Jaha with bags stuffed full of berries, root vegetables, corn, ground cornmeal and a bit of flour, and more.

Between that and the squirrels and rabbits the Earth Skills masters snared here and there, they stay just on this side of true starvation. But medical stays busy with spells of lightheadedness, with bouts of dry heaving, with unshakable fatigue, with missed periods causing pregnancy scares. So, when a troupe of grounders march through the gate a week after the first major snowfall with the carcasses of three stags, two does, and a handful of turkeys, and some live chickens squawking from where they hang upside down from the grounders' saddles, Clarke could have cried.

The turkeys need to be plucked and the deer need to be skinned before they freeze and the grounders gesture for the sky people to gather round and learn. Clarke finds herself standing between Bellamy and Kane beside one of the does, watching the teen boy, Rojer, deftly pull away the hide of the animal. He speaks slowly, carefully, asking over and over again, You understand? You understand?. When he's finished with the right side, he presses his knife into Clarke's palm and tells her to try.

The knife goes through the fascia easily enough, and Rojer instructs her to try shorter strokes when she keeps nicking the muscle underneath. It helps her hug the curvature of the animal's body more easily, but sooner rather than later, she struggles to manage the bulk of the body and the growing flap of its hide. The urge to just cut it away is strong, but life on the Ark has already given her the life lesson of never wasting anything, and life on the ground has taught her how much superior animal hides are at retaining body heat compared to woven blankets.

Bellamy's hands appear under her own, take the loose hide from her left hand and pull it out from the doe's body. It makes it easier to see where the knife should go and she starts to slice more confidently towards the doe's shoulder. "The tendon will loosen her leg," Bellamy notes, practically into her ear as he reaches across her to pull the animal's leg straight up into the air.

Between the two of them and comments from Rojer, Clarke and Bellamy finish skinning the doe, with Kane and Rojir helping to move the bulk of the beast when needed. "For the most hungry," Rojir says when he pulls out the doe's organs and passes Kane the liver, kidneys, and heart on a trough of wood.

Under the direction of Abby and Jackson, the youngest kids and some of the skinnier adults get the organ meats for dinner that night, sliced and spitted and turned over the fire. Clarke watches in jealous amusement as they make faces at the taste and texture, even though they gobble up their portions and suck the juices from their fingers. The rest of them have stew with diced venison—not nearly as much as they would have liked, but the rest of the deer and turkeys hang in the smokehouse all night and for most of the next day until Rojir's father, Warren, determines that they are fully cured and can be stored.

Bellamy, Miller, Monty, and Jasper work through the night to throw together a hen house and a separate pen for the rooster. By morning, the hens are untied and clucking away happily exploring their new home. The hens won't regularly produce eggs until springtime, Warren warns them, but once they start, the Camp will be able to build their own flock. They already bring a welcome amount of amusement, though, as Clarke, Harper, and Fox lean over the wall of the pen and start to give the hens names.

"Why are you naming them?" Miller asks, grumpy with lack of sleep. "We might have to eat them if we don't have enough food."

Fox's mouth drops open in horror, already attached to Lady and Pearl and Amythyst and the other hens that she's named, warbling to each other and oblivious to the conversation going on about their hypothetical fate. Harper hooks her arm through Fox's and frowns back at Miller, incredibly far from amused. "I doubt a handful of skinny chickens would save the whole camp from starving to death," she counters drily. "Besides, aren't you on guard duty these days? Fox and the kitchen group make the food decisions around here."

Miller huffs and tells Harper without much force that he liked her better before she got a gun and Bellamy laughs at him. "And you liked the name I gave to the rooster, Miller!"

Clarke cuts him a mirthful look from the corner of her eye. He's dirty and sweaty, with cuts across his hands and dirt under his nails, but he's proudly resting his hand on the corner post of the henhouse. "Let me guess—Julius? Emperor of Camp Jaha's Lady Fowl?"

He clears his throat, crosses his arms over his chest. "Zeus." Fox and Harper giggle behind Clarke, and she's in a good enough mood to wink at Bellamy when he presses his lips together and fails to hold back his own self-deprecating chuckle. "Alright," he says, dusting off his palms. "I'm going to clean up and get some sleep before the Council meeting later this afternoon. They want to restrict out-of-camp privileges to the adults, so I've got to get my rest before heading in to war." He tugs a lock of Clarke's hair as he passes behind her, lets his hand drift across her shoulder blades as he goes.

A grin rests on Clarke's face all the way to medical, because she thinks that finally everything is on the upward swing. With appetites satiated, medical clears out. Clarke finally takes a day off and sleeps past lunchtime, awakening only when Bellamy sits on the bed next to her and waves a piece of deer jerky under her nose. Even with all of his Council duties and keeping tabs on the forty-four kids they brought back from Mount Weather, he always knows when she's forgotten to eat and isn't above physically standing in her way and refusing to move until she scarfs down a little bowl of Fox-provided porridge or stew.

Warren and his fellow hunters return at the next moon's turn to begin to train a group of men and women (Monroe and Jasper included, since Bellamy had won on the out-of-camp issue) in archery and spear throwing. They take Clarke and Harper and a few guards back to their village to put a guy's torso back together after a run in with a boar. While they're there, Clarke and Harper check on the wounded the Ark had cleared for travel those weeks before and only have to chastise one warrior for not staying off of his leg.

As if it had been waiting for morale in the camp to rise, the flu strikes hard and fast the day after Harper, Clarke, and Jackson don't have a single patient all day long and do nothing but clean and scrub medical from top to bottom. As soon as they recognize the symptoms, Clarke throws a bandana over her face and races out the door, heading for the Council chamber. She recognizes the back of Bellamy's head in the hallway and calls out his name, grabs onto his shoulder when he wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her in close to keep her from falling over due to her own breakneck speed.

"What's going on? Are you alright?" he asks, looking down at her bandana.

"I'm fine but we've got a case of the flu. The Council needs to institute a quarantine protocol now if we want to keep this small. Mom and Chief Miller will know what to do."

"Got it." Bellamy gives her a gentle push back the way she came, and his own boots pound towards the Council chamber.

Non-essential personnel are confined to quarters; communal spaces are closed until further notice; persons experiencing symptoms are to immediately report to medical for quarantine and treatment. Kitchen personnel work all day to not only make the meals, but also to deliver them door-to-door (or tent-flap to tent-flap, as it were). Council meetings are suspended, so Abby returns to medical to help bear some of the weight with the overloaded staff.

It doesn't even occur to Clarke to separate herself from Bellamy.

In fact, she goes three days sleeping next to him before she sits bolt upright early one morning and exclaims that she could be getting him sick.

"'M fine," Bellamy replies, eyes half-lidded in the grey light filtering through the plastic. "If you were gonna get sick, you woulda already, right? 'Nd same for me." He grunts when she presses her fingers to the warm skin of his throat, checking the speed of his pulse. "Your fingers are cold."

His pulse is fine, his skin warm from sleep but not overly-hot, his breathing sounds clean and lacks the crackling sounds of congestion. "Any nausea? Lack of appetite?" So cued, his stomach growls dutifully. "Fatigue?"

"'Course, you just woke me up," Bellamy huffs and puts a hand under his head. Clarke's eyes immediately fall to the crisp black hair under his arm and the lean definition of his upper arm and chest and her throat suddenly goes dry in time with the little somersault her stomach does. She pulls her eyes away, sends them tripping over the neckline of his tank, her pillow, the far tent support pole, and then back to Bellamy's face. "I'm fine," he repeats, closing his eyes and tugging on her elbow. "C'mon. Let's go back to sleep while we still can."

Clarke's mind is still skipping, so she doesn't answer, just scoots back down into the warm cocoon of blankets. She really should think more about how comfortable she is when Bellamy curls up behind her and resumes his light snoring into her hair, but that's the thing about being comfortable—she drifts off to sleep before she can put forth the cognitive effort she wants to.

Never one to make anyone's life easy, John Murphy chooses this time to return to camp. He's got a backpack full of booze, a severely-infected wound on his arm, and a message: "Some Princess Leia hologram has a nuke."

"Where is Thelonius?" Abby asks, even as Councillor Early asks who Princess Leia is.

Clarke thinks its best to not warn Murphy before she pours moonshine over the open and oozing wounds of his forearm. She's rewarded with a string of curses, but it was worth it for how his arm had stayed still until it was pretty much over. "Jaha's gone full crazy," Murphy grinds out, shaking from the pain, and snatches the bottle of moonshine from Clarke to take a few long swallows. "Like, cult-crazy. He thinks he has a destiny. A real one. Last I saw him, he was running after a drone into the woods."

Clarke looks up from where she's been bent over his arm and locks eyes with Bellamy. "Hold him," she directs, reaching behind her for more linens and salted water. "I've got to clear this debris out manually. You might want to take another shot of that moonshine, Murphy."

Murphy swears under his breath, but when she turns back around with a strip of sterile cloth wrapped around her finger, he's leant his head back against the table and squeezed his eyes shut, and Bellamy's braced his hands on Murphy's shoulders.

Clarke learns all sorts of new vocabulary that afternoon.


She and Bellamy have grown comfortable enough in bed that Clarke doesn't even ask to roll into his body heat on cold nights, and she knows that stressful council meetings are directly and positively correlated to the likelihood that he'll pull her close at night. He gives her the short versions of most of the meetings, though certainly Clarke's been his sounding board for longer rants. They lie side by side in the mornings, too, running through their plans for the days through yawns and closed eyes. Sometimes the feel of his morning erection is the first thing she feels in the morning, and somewhere along the way it stopped being weird. After all, it's not inherently sexual, her doctor's mind reminds her, when she thinks about it too much. It's just a fluctuation in his hormones. Still, Clarke pulls her hips back and away when he inevitably sighs or mumbles into her ear, voice low and rough from sleep, or she breathes in his heady man scent, and her stomach does that flip flop that she's started noticing but tries her best to ignore.

The evening before a diplomatic detatchment is due to arrive from Polis, Raven stops by to give Bellamy a heads up on the progress on the radios and walkie talkies for the grounder tribes. According to the messenger, the detachment was to be headed by Indra, meaning that Octavia would be with her, and Raven seems relieved that at least one person in Polis would know the basics of how a radio frequency works.

Once Clarke pulls out a wineskin and starts pouring drinks, though, the talk quickly turns from work to play. Clarke and Raven tease Bellamy about his prized chickens, he shrugs it off good-naturedly and asks Raven with a wink how her stoichiometry is going with Wick. Clarke groans when they gossip about her mother and Kane of all people, so Bellamy rocks his chair onto its back legs with a laugh and changes the subject to Murphy's collection of booze and how he's let Bellamy try the whisky but won't share the scotch with anyone but the medical staff painstakingly putting his arm back together.

Raven's chuckle is forced, but Clarke has to wait until one of the kids unexpectedly pulls Bellamy away to help them re-pole their tent after the day's storm to ask about it. "What's that about?"

"What's what?" The youngest zero-G mechanic in 50-odd years is a terrible liar after a glass of wine.

Clarke arches a brow. "Bellamy mentioned Murphy and you sort of clammed up. Are you okay?"

"It's nothing."

Clarke leans forward on the table. "Did he do something to you? You should tell Chief Miller if he did—"

"Ugh!" Raven throws her hands in the air. "We hooked up, alright?!" With a huff, she drops her face into her hands to avoid Clarke's shocked stare.

"Hooked…up? Since he's been back?" Clarke's voice gets progressively higher pitched as the questions continue to spill out. "Does Wick know?"

"No," Raven's already saying, her hands muffling the words. "Well—yes—Wick knows. But it's not since he came back. It was—before. Before Finn and the alliance and everything. It was just one time. And we didn't even have sex. He just…"

This is completely and incredibly surreal, but Clarke can't help the way she breathes out: "He just what?" She used to talk about crushes and love during sleepovers on the Ark, but Raven and Murphy? Raven and Murphy?

It comes out as a mumble. "He ate me out." Clarke slaps her hands over her mouth and Raven pours herself another glass of wine. "That's not even the worst part, Clarke. It was good. Like, goddamn, he knew what he was doing." She drains half the glass in one go.

"Raven. Why." Clarke reaches out her hand and covers Raven's. "I'm not judging I'm just—confused. Very confused. He shot you and then you—"

"Exactly. He shot me." Raven laughs. "He said he wanted to apologize and I felt shitty about my leg and…I let him."

"Well," Clarke says after a minute. "Did you accept his apology?"

Raven laughs again. "I did at the time, but then the grounders wanted Finn, so…." I came because you asked me to, Murphy had said to Raven, and then—Cold bitch. Clarke stares down into her wine. Huh. "He seems alright now," Raven continues. "It's just awkward. Because of the whole—eating out thing."

Clarke shrugs. "I wouldn't worry about it. You and Bellamy are fine, now, after all, and you two actually had sex." She doesn't mean anything by it, but Raven chokes on her wine, coughs before she is able to form a sentence.

"You know about that?"

She's shocked, clearly, but also seems strangely apprehensive. Clarke frowns. "I thought everybody knew. It's not like the tent walls were soundproof back then. I just heard it through gossip. Nobody has talked about it in a while though, if you're worried about Wick finding out."

Raven shakes her head. "No, no, it's not that just—you know it was just that one time, right? And I didn't ever like, want anything with Bellamy. And he never tried to hook up with me again after that."

With a confused little laugh, Clarke tilts her head at Raven. "Why are you explaining yourself to me?"

Raven tilts her head right back at Clarke, ponytail swaying with the movement, and her eyes dart from Clarke, to the bed behind her, and back to Clarke. "Aren't you two…I mean…I thought you two were together, now."

It takes a long moment for the sentiment to sink in, and Clarke is distracted for a moment when her mind goes to the press of Bellamy's body against hers at night and how her heartbeat speeds up and her skin goes all tingly as her mind connects the dots Raven's laid out instead of the reaction she knew she should have—one of disbelief and surprise.

"Uh, no. It's not like that. I'm not ready for that," she stammers out, but the words seem to come automatically, ordered together without a spare thought. Finn's face springs to her mind, but her heart doesn't feel like it's going to burst anymore, hasn't for a while now, even though he passes through the back of her thoughts on nearly a daily basis.

Raven frowns at Clarke, repeats Clarke's earlier move of reaching out and covering her hand. "I'm sorry. I guess that's what they mean when 'assumptions make an ass out of you and me.'"

Clarke shakes her head to clear it and covers Raven's hand with her own, making a little stack of them on the table. "Don't worry about it. I probably would have done the same."

The plastic of the tent rustles as Bellamy ducks through the flap again. "Am I interrupting girl time?" he jokes. Clarke notes how he drops his hand on her shoulder as he walks behind her to his seat again, and she sees Raven's eyes dart to the contact as well, how she subtly raises a brow, almost as if to herself, as she drops her eyes to her own glass.

"Absolutely not," Raven drawls. "Join on in, Bellamy Blake."


They're reading in the low lamplight when they hear Miller and Monty start up next door. Low voices and chuckling broken by long moments of quiet. Well, Clarke thinks, it's just because we can't hear them kissing. And sure enough, the silence ends with Monty laughing and Miller murmuring something back to him.

Bellamy sighs and dog ears 1984. "I would be a lot happier for them if they weren't so loud," he grumbles, pushing his head into his pillow so he can look up over their heads and see where to set his book.

Clarke rolls her eyes and turns a page in her own novel. It's the third book in some ridiculous series about teenagers in New York City and a secret blogger who tracks their moves, but she's enjoying it. It's mindless and easy, even without having read the first two books. She's looked through the little library the Ark has assembled, but has yet to find them and thinks they're lost forever, unless they come across a library or bookstore at some point. "They aren't being that loud, actually," she says, careful to keep her voice quiet so as to not alert the lovebirds next door. "That's the problem with tents."

Bellamy hums in agreement and rolls onto his side, props his head up on his hand. "Wow, you're really plowing through yours."

She cuts him a side glance and a bit of a smirk. "It's an easy read. The furthest from Orwell that you could ever get."

He grins down at her, teeth glinting in the low light. His hair is shiny, too; he'd washed it after Raven left, and scrubbed his face and the back of his neck, and then he'd stripped off his shirt to get under his arms and Clarke had ducked out of the tent for some air. By the time she'd come back, he'd changed into his loose cotton pants, so – (Clarke jerks herself back to the present before she lets herself think about what else he'd washed while she was out).

There's a groan from next door, muffled and quiet, but still there, and Clarke drops her book on her chest and presses her index finger to her lips, ordering Bellamy to be quiet. He falls forward, half onto her, and buries his own groan into the pillow under her head. Clarke shakes with silent laughter, hand clapped over her mouth, and tries to take deep breaths to calm herself down.

"This is terrible," she whispers into Bellamy's pine-y fresh hair. "And they're trying to be quiet."

Bellamy pushes himself back up onto his elbow and peers across the tent, drums his fingers where they rest on her stomach. "What if we layered hides over the tent forms?"

"What if we just built normal cabins?" Clarke rebuts. "That would solve a lot of these problems. Including the exposure issue. We can't do another winter like this."

"Agreed." Bellamy goes from drumming his fingers to absentmindedly running his thumb back and forth, back and forth from its socket. It doesn't matter that his hand is outside the covers, Clarke can feel it as though it were against her skin and she fights against the urge to close her eyes and wholly enjoy that tiny, singular, repetitive motion. "We don't have the space inside the Camp, though."

Logistics. Yes. Clarke can handle that. "We're at peace for now. Couldn't we shut down the fence long enough to expand the border of the camp before we start building? Or we could turn some of the tents into dorms to make space."

"Or we could build outside of camp and re-enclose it when everything is finished," Bellamy offers. Then he heaves a sigh and shakes his head. "The other Councillors won't like it. They don't think the other kids are mature enough to be living independently. I have to fight tooth and nail almost every session to keep them from moving them back inside the Ark itself for 'safety,' never mind the fact the kids all say it would be like being stuck back in Mount Weather again."

The kids. Clarke runs her eyes over Bellamy's profile, lit up in the soft lamp light. She can see the hint of his stubble, the faint lines settling in at the corners of his eyes, the way his face has shed all baby fat, unlike the slightest bit of her own that she knows still rests at the highest point of her own cheekbones. "How old are you, exactly?"

He glances down at her and furrows his brow, slightly confused as to where the question came from. His eyes dip down to her mouth when she licks her lips to ease where they're chapped in one corner, but then they linger there for a beat longer than necessary and Clarke's breath catches in her throat. "Twenty-three," he finally replies, after he pulls his gaze back up to hers. "Twenty-four in the summer."

A man grown. She can't handle his hand on her stomach anymore, making her breath tight and her stomach go all molten, so she turns towards him on her side, and he drops back off his elbow to mirror her, back on his own side of the bed.

"I turned eighteen after the dropship landed," she tells him, answering his question before he can ask.

"You did? Why didn't you say?"

Clarke raises an eyebrow at him. "Say what, exactly? 'Let's pause this war so I can have some birthday cake?'" He doesn't seem satisfied, but she shrugs. "We had more important things to do."

A moan from next door cuts off whatever his response was to be. "Cabins," Bellamy sighs, and reaches up over their heads to turn out the lamp.


He's wrapped around her in the morning, arm curled around her waist and breath coming deep and slow against the nape of her neck. Her stomach does a flip when she feels his length lying long and hard against the small of her back.

Bellamy shifts against her; his arm twitches where it rests in the curve of her waist. He mumbles a bit against her ear, something about breakfast and guard rounds; he's waking up, slowly but surely. Something about his rising awareness makes the decision for Clarke, as she remembers the slow blink of his brown eyes in the lamplight the night before, the way they twitched down to her mouth when she'd mentioned their age difference.

Instead of rolling out of bed as she normally does when she remembers that Bellamy's cock against her ass means that he's a man, she rocks back into the cradle of his hips, enjoys the thrill that runs down her spine when he grunts a bit into her ear. It's a huff, really—a huff of warm air on top of the warm embrace he holds her in under their warm blankets, and she does it again, feels the jump of his length against her back and the way his whole body jolts to awareness now.

He feels it that time, grabs her hip to hold her fast and breathes her name into her hair. There it is—the pang of desire down low between her legs, and she can't help the arch of her back and the sigh she lets slip from her throat.

When she looks back over her shoulder, Bellamy's eyes are sharper than she's come to expect from the months of waking up with him in the morning. "Clarke," he murmurs again, but it's less of a question, this time what with how she shifts onto her back and lifts a hand to set the tip of her pinkie into the dimple of his chin.

Bellamy kisses her, then, sure and firm and honest, his hand leaving her waist to drag his fingertips along her jawline. His lips are soft, his tongue gentle, his skin warm when she slips her fingers up under the edge of his t-shirt's shirt sleeve to dip them into the shallow troughs between the cords of his bicep and tricep. For a long, wonderful moment, Clarke revels in the comforting weight of Bellamy's arm across her chest and the quiet sounds of their mouths meeting, parting, and meeting again, slow and sweet in the early morning.

But then Bellamy makes this—this noise—this half-sigh, half-groan against her mouth before he sucks her lower lip into his mouth and slides his tongue across it. It's a slither of wet heat against her lip that snakes down Clarke's spine in a heartbeat to coil low in her belly. She gasps, fingers curling into his arm, and Bellamy flicks his tongue against the roof of her mouth as it falls open. She tastes the salt of his upper lip when she laps at it, shivers at slide of his hand down her neck. The heat between her legs flares and Clarke wrenches herself away, shoving Bellamy's arm off and swinging her feet off the bed.

She nearly trips over her own bare feet as she heads to the basin of water they keep for washing their face and hands. "I'm sorry—Clarke—Clarke—I'm sorry," Bellamy's stammering behind her. Another apology gets lost in the sound of Clarke plunging her hands into the ice-cold water and splashing it on her face. The chill is immediate, chasing away the blush that had been rising across her chest and face. One more splash and even the heat between her legs is gone, but the memory of it remains when she turns around and sees Bellamy sitting up in bed, hair sticking up everywhere and t-shirt twisted from sleep, but his mouth is a bit swollen and his eyes are still bright with desire.

It's his stricken expression that strikes her in the gut, though. "No, it's my fault," Clarke assures him, pushing her hair behind her ears. "I shouldn't have—That wasn't a good idea." He closes his mouth, presses his lips together and tosses the blankets back. He's still hard, Clarke notices and she's unable to pull her gaze from his lap for the few seconds it takes for him to shift to the edge of the mattress and stand up. Her heart stutters and her stomach does that fluttery thing. Clothes. I need to get dressed.

"Clarke—"

"My shift goes until lunch today," Clarke cuts him off, shimmying into some cargo pants and buttoning them at her waist. "And then I'll probably go see Raven for a bit after that." Bellamy watches her shrug into a sweater and his face is so anguished and apprehensive that Clarke makes herself stop and look him in the eye. "Bellamy, it's fine, I promise. I just don't want to talk about it, okay? We should just—just pretend it didn't happen, okay?"

His eyebrows draw together at that, and the corners of his mouth turn down, but Clarke doesn't let herself ask him what he's thinking. If she stays, she doesn't know what she'll do. She whirls on her boot heel and flees the tent, all but running to the sterile safety of medical.


Bellamy whips his shirt over his head and throws it onto the bed. He knows he wasn't misreading her. Not with how she's been looking at him recently, not with the way she'd reached out for him first. He'd been so careful to not push her, no matter the way he'd hear her breath hitch or feel her body turn in towards his any time he was around. Body and mind are two very different things, and they had been in perfect sync just now until something had changed and sent Clarke reeling away from him.

Annoyed and frustrated, Bellamy shoves his feet into his boots and laces them up with sharp yanks. One step forward and two steps back.

Luckily, he's so busy that he can distract himself from the memory of her arched back and soft skin. He runs into a group of the kids at breakfast and floats the idea of the cabins. They're ecstatic and want to know when they can start. "I'm tired of the seams coming apart," Rebecca says. "I want to like, go to sleep and not wake up with an unexpected mountain view."

"We'll have to wait for the ground to thaw," he cautions them, but it does little good. They're already chattering amongst themselves about real walls and windows and roofs, so he leaves them be with their excitement.

The air is starting to warm, and they haven't had a true snowfall in at least a week or two, but it's still chilly enough for Bellamy to shove his hands into his pockets and quicken his pace across camp. He clangs up the ramp to the Council chamber, which is just as cold as outside, but without the biting wind, and gives his morning greetings to councilors and Chancellor Griffin.

They are, of course, less enthused about the idea of permanent structures.

"I don't think you've really thought through how much man power it would take, and how exposed it would leave us in the process," Chancellor Griffin admonishes. Bellamy wishes, not for the first time, that she weren't Clarke's mom. It would make disagreeing with her a lot easier.

"We have a defensive alliance and we're at peace for the time being," Bellamy shoots back. "The only thing we're in danger of at the moment is freezing to death next winter or starving to death before the crops grow in this summer."

Kane seems cautiously optimistic, but: "I don't think it's a bad idea, Bellamy. Still, it's a pretty massive undertaking, to build cabins for three-hundred-plus people."

With a scoff, Bellamy shakes his head. "I'm not talking about cabins for the whole camp. I'm here to represent and take charge of my group; what you all decide to do for yours is up to you."

"Permanently separate the forty-four from the rest of the Ark?" Chancellor Griffin shakes her head. "No. I'm sorry, but no. We've dealt with your interference with Council matters up until now, we've given the kids time to rest after Mount Weather, but it's time for your private meetings to stop and for the forty-four to re-integrate into the Ark population."

Bellamy fights the urge to bang his head on the table. "With all due respect, they don't want that."

"It's not about what they want," Councilor Bort interjects. "It's about upholding the authority of the Ark Council."

Bellamy shoots him a glare. "Don't even get me started on Council authority," he grits out. "Because the last time I checked, no one voted for Chancellor Griffin, and the Ark Constitution states that the Council is a 'temporary government' until the exodus back to Earth. Well—we're back on Earth, Councilors. And you-" he gestures at Councilor Bort "—you're the Councilor from Factory Station, which crashed and wiped out ninety percent of your own electorate. And I'm being polite using that term, because I'm one of the forty-six percent of Factory Station that didn't vote for you. At least I've got forty-plus people that I know I'm representing every time I walk through those doors."

Silence reigns in the Council chambers for a long moment. Chancellor Griffin stares him down from across the table, and Bellamy recognizes the stubborn set of her jaw that he sees so often in Clarke. He likes the Chancellor, he does, because she wants to keep everyone safe, but she's wrong here, and Bellamy won't give an inch just because she's a first-class doctor and has a better-than-average moral compass.

"I know you want to think they're just kids," he says, addressing the room at large but talking directly to Chancellor Griffin. "But we survived on the ground for a month, fought off a grounder army on our own, and they came together as a group and busted their asses inside the Mountain to help us win the war. They're young, but they're smart, and they know what they want. And they want to build some cabins. You all should think about doing the same. We need to stop living in tents and wreckage like this is all temporary."

No one stops him when he leaves. He's won a battle, and a big one, but he knows it's just another in the string of many. He knows from history that establishments never go down easy.

Octavia is waiting in his tent when he gets back, wraps him in a huge hug and clings tight for a long time. She's so lean and firm, now, and her hands are calloused from handling swords and arrows. Indra's given her leave to come see her skaikru brother, she tells him with a grin as she drops down into one of the chairs.

She's learning battle strategy and tracking, archery as well as swordplay. One of the other seconds uses a longaxe, and she wants to learn that next. She pulls up her sleeves and proudly shows him the scars littering her forearms and hands, tells him the story of each and every one. Bellamy's proud of her, but part of him still wants to wrap her up in a blanket and sneak her away to the mountains to somewhere she won't ever get hurt again.

"You're ridiculous," she laughs when he tells her this. "As if you'd get ten feet before I'd clock you over the head."

He reaches out and arm, snatches a pillow from the bed, and tosses it at her face. "Maybe I'd surprise you."

Octavia catches the pillow and spins it in her hands. "Speaking of surprises…" she jerks her head at the bed, "this is still going on? Are you two still pretending you're just keeping each other warm? That excuse won't hold up into spring, you know."

The look she shoots him is humorous, congenial, but Bellamy can't help the face he pulls. "Of course you would bring that up today," he mutters, half to himself.

"What? What happened?"

The other Arkers simply don't understand the confidentiality that comes with being a sibling, and Bellamy doesn't really think twice about recounting the events of the early morning to her. The more specific details he keeps vague, of course, but he sets his elbows on the table and gives her the broad outlines. Octavia's face goes from intrigued to faux-scandalized, to excited, to confused, to sadness tinged with sympathy.

"I was just following her lead," Bellamy says in conclusion. "I just don't know—what happened."

Without her warpaint, Octavia's face looks as soft and sweet as it had back on the Ark, even as tanned from the winter sun as it is. "Bell," she breathes. "Clarke is scared. She's afraid. We both know Clarke. She is the queen of compartmentalization. She probably started feeling something she wasn't ready to deal with and—" Octavia makes a shoving motion with her hands "—shut it down."

Feeling something? Bellamy opens his mouth to ask her what she means, but a horn sounds from across camp and Octavia jumps to her feet. "Gotta run, big brother," she rattles off, throwing her sword across her back and kissing the top of his head. "Be nice!"

"I'm always nice," he shouts after her, but her twinkling laugh is all that answers him as she leaves.

Scared, huh? With a sigh, Bellamy pushes himself to his feet and starts to straighten up the table and chairs and organize the chaos stretching across the table's surface. He'd thought Clarke had been doing better over the past few months—laughing more, smiling more, talking more. It's why he'd finally given in and kissed her, after all. She'd seemed like she was finally making peace with what had happened and was starting to turn outwards again.

And "felt something"—he doesn't know what to make of that. She'd pulled him closer, after all, hadn't she? And then arched up into him with a gasp when he'd deepened the kiss?

Bellamy freezes in the middle of the tent, hands grasping the pillow Octavia had left on her chair. Fuck. That had been it, hadn't it? She'd freaked out right after that—right after they'd shifted from chaste and slow to something a bit more desperate and primal.

Queen of compartmentalization.

Bellamy drops the pillow onto the bed with a huff. Everything I touch dies, she'd told him after all.

By the time Clarke finishes her shift, disappears into mechanical for the afternoon, and returns to the tent that night, she seems to have balanced her keel. She gives him a small smile when she ducks through the tent flap, blonde hair shimmering in the low firelight, and goes out of her way to clear away his plate for him after dinner, all while saying as little as possible.

He goes to bed first as usual, gives her his back while she changes. But when she crawls in next to him, Bellamy turns back to face her, runs his eyes over the little line of worry between her eyebrows. She puts a hand under her cheek and looks back at him, pressing her lips together the way she does when she's got ten thousand conflicting thoughts running through her mind.

"You can move out if you want," Bellamy finally says. He works to keep it quiet (they can hear Monty and Jasper next door) and doesn't miss how her eyelids flutter at the roughness of it.

"I don't want to," she whispers back, eyes shining bright blue in the lamplight.

His chest tightens at her earnest expression and the corner of his mouth pulls up in a half-smile. "You gotta say something sometime, Clarke. Please, talk to me."

She exhales heavily through her nose; her eyelashes flutter before she begins. "Before Mount Weather, I told Lexa that maybe we deserved to do more than just survive. I still believe that. But sometimes, when I'm with you, I feel so…" she trails off for a moment and pulls her eyes from his. "…content, and safe, and happy, and then I start to want." Pink tinges her cheeks, and Bellamy knows exactly what she's talking about. But her voice is shaky, and she still won't meet his eyes, so he slips his hand under hers and lets her fingers fall into the spaces between his own until their knuckles catch against each other in a loose-knit lace. "I feel guilty. I feel like I shouldn't want those things, that certainly I shouldn't have them. Not after everything I've done."

Bellamy's chest tightens again, but for a completely different reason this time. "You deserve it Clarke. You do, I promise. And if you need forgiveness, I'll give that to you. I forgive you, alright? I forgive you. But please—please don't shut yourself away because you think it's what you deserve."

Her chin trembles and when she blinks, a tear slips out of her eye, slides over the bridge of her nose and drops onto her pillow. Bellamy leans forward before he can stop himself and kisses the salt-wet spot on her narrow nose, and then she's tilting her face up and pressing her mouth to his. It's slightly off-center, and closed-mouthed, and she shakes once with a silent sob before she pulls back and wipes at her eyes.

"If you need time—" Bellamy starts, settling his hand on her arm and rubbing his thumb in soothing circles, but she shakes her head and ducks forward to kiss him again. This time it's longer, and wetter, but she keeps it slow and chaste and Bellamy follows her lead.

"I just need to go slow," Clarke murmurs. She lifts a finger and runs it along his cheekbone; Bellamy nods and kisses the back of her hand when it falls onto the pillow in front of his face.

She gives a little amused huff when he nudges her nose with his and her mouth opens sweetly under his own coaxing and searching one. "But you're okay with this?" he asks against her lips, careful to keep his hand on her arm and their kiss brief. She hums in assent, giving his elbow a little squeeze. "Okay. Then we'll just do this."


Note bene: Clarke accepts Bellamy's apology here because, if you remember, this fic is *technically* canon divergent from 2x14, "Bodyguard of Lies." They didn't irradiate Mount Weather in this fic, so there's not quite as much resting on her shoulders, though she's obviously struggling what she had to do even before the Battle for Mount Weather.

Hope you all are enjoying it! Drop me a comment and come find me on tumblr at .com. :D