Murphy wasn't interested in admitting to anyone that he had slept well that night. It wasn't like he and Clarke had ever been close or anything. Really he had no right to care at all about her unexpectedly ongoing existence.

But meeting Emori had brought out some unexpected facets of his personality, and he found that he had not liked watching his friends grieve. In particular he had not liked watching Bellamy fall apart.

If he were being truly honest with himself, he had not liked living at the cost of someone else's life again.

So at the breakfast table the following morning he tried his very hardest to play listlessly with his algae porridge as usual. This was rendered slightly tricky by the fact that there were a few key pointers to the existence of good news. Bellamy had actually shown up to breakfast, for one. And everyone seemed to be smiling, which was not a common occurrence so early in the morning in a metal box in the sky.

The weirdest thing of all, was that people were actually eating their porridge, and not one person seemed inclined to go through the daily ritual of pointing out that this was exactly the same gloop that was served up as "soup" at lunch and "stew" at dinner.

Maybe Murphy really could start to believe in miracles.

He was caught by surprise at Bellamy's invitation to do a little combat training with him after breakfast. He couldn't remember the last time he had invited anyone to do anything.

He allowed himself a small and genuine smile as he agreed, and followed his crewmate from the room.

…...

Bellamy needed to keep himself busy. He knew that, if he didn't, he would spend the entire day sitting next to the radio waiting for Clarke and Madi to get home. And he was painfully aware that he had been anything but sociable recently, so a morning of training with Murphy sounded like just the thing.

Of course, he had underestimated Murphy's aptitude for taking the piss.

"So, maybe you should have done, huh?"

Bellamy wanted very badly to pretend that he had no idea what Murphy was talking about. But, unfortunately, he knew he wouldn't fool anyone. Every one of his crewmates had been there to hear him imply that, maybe, he should have once declared his love for someone in, as Madi had so insightfully put it, "a crazy scientist lady's lab". And every one of them was perceptive enough to know who he'd been thinking about as he said that. It wasn't exactly rocket science. And really, what did it matter? All that mattered was that she was alive. With that thought, he looked Murphy straight in the eye, said "Yes, maybe I should have done", and aimed his right fist at his friend's stomach.

…...

Bellamy made it to about mid afternoon before he cracked and headed back to the Earth monitoring station. It didn't matter that she wouldn't be back yet, he reasoned. He could sit and wait – he had nothing else to do anyway. And he'd found a book, so he could read. That wasn't a completely foolish use of time, when he put it like that. He'd already "helped" Monty with the algae farm until he'd been told to leave with an instruction to go away and come back when he was feeling patient. That seemed a bit unreasonable, he thought – surely no one was expecting him to be patient today.

He opened his book (a worn copy of the Aeneid that he'd found hiding behind a cabinet in an

old school room) and set about waiting.

He struggled on for about fifteen minutes, before coming to the conclusion that the Aeneid wasn't such a great book after all. Funny, he seemed to remember it had held his interest much better when he'd read it previously. Maybe Homer really was the better author. Somehow, this particular book just wasn't quite what he fancied today.

So much for reading then.

And really, that left only one logical thing to do. After all, he didn't actually know how far away these berry fields were. Maybe they'd already be back by now. It surely couldn't hurt to check, could it?

He pressed the call button and began. "Hi Clarke, just wondering if you're back yet. And Madi, too, of course. I hope you had a nice trip. Or are still having a nice trip, I suppose. Anyway, I wasn't sure what time you'd be back so I just thought I'd check if you were around. Of course, if you're not around I'll try again later. Like we originally planned, I suppose. Erm, yes, I'll stop rambling now."

"I would, if I were you." The response came right away, and he could hear the laughter in her voice.

"Wow. I am not proud that you heard that."

"Another five hundred and forty five attempts like that and maybe I'll consider us even. Care to explain why you're calling a solid four hours earlier than agreed even though you didn't expect me to be home?"

"Care to explain how you managed to reply immediately?"

"Touche. Moving on..."

"So how were the berry fields?"

"Great, actually. I really love going on adventures with Madi. I was on my own for the first year so it's pretty great to have some company."

"Yeah. I'm pleased you found her."

"Me too. And there's not exactly a lot of entertainment options here so a day out is a pretty good thing."

"I can understand that. What was the most exciting thing about your adventure today?"

"Madi found a dead mole and threw it at me. That was pretty wild."

"Wow"

"How is your day going?"

"Pretty good. Trained with Murphy for a while. Annoyed Monty for a while. I was trying to help but he just didn't see it."

"Poor bloke. He must have his work cut out looking after you lot."

"Yeah, he's been a bit of a hero."

"I'm sorry to cut this short, but I actually still have to go catch dinner. Any chance of rescheduling this, for, you know, the time we actually said we'd speak?" Bellamy felt his cheeks heat up as she spoke. Of course, it was selfish of him to think that she had nothing better to do than sit around speaking to him all day.

"I'm sorry. I didn't even think about how busy you must be. Of course, we can speak later. I'm sorry."

"Hey, no need to apologise. It was great to speak to you. I seem to remember I enjoy it enough to have tried to get through once or twice before." He relaxed at that, and felt a smile grow on his face.

"You know what, now that I know you weren't killed by some terrifying mutant creature on your day out, I think I can allow you to go get some supper. You'd better call back as soon as you're done though."

"Don't you worry. I'll be here."

a/n Thanks for reading!