Chapter 10

Clarke yawned. It was late afternoon. She had decided to go check in with her mother but trying to talk to Abby about her problem had been futile. Abby continued to insist that everything was fine and that she didn't need any help. Her weary expression and shaking hands said otherwise. Clarke knew that something would need to be done soon and promised herself that it was the first thing she would focus on as soon as the whole ordeal with Octavia was stable. Tired of staring at the screen filled with medical files that wouldn't give her the answer she needed, she got up and stretched.

Nightblood was the solution to the prisoner's health problems. Clarke had taken a small sample of her blood and had combined it with that of one of the prisoner's and had watched under the microscope as her nightblood cells had overtaken the affected cells. How were they supposed to create enough nightblood for the whole crew though? That was the question that kept haunting her thoughts.

There was a knock at her door, which didn't make her jump. Making some progress, she told herself. "Come in!" She called. The door slowly shifted open to show Monty with Echo right behind him.

"Hey," Monty said. Clarke smiled at him.

"Hey, what's up?"

"I wanted to see if I could be of some help. I talked to Raven earlier and she told me about what's been going on. Your blood is what is going to cure the miners?"

Clarke nodded. "Yeah, it comes down to blood again. We still have the same problem we did before the death wave hit. We didn't know nightblood was the answer then but if we had, we still wouldn't have been able to make enough of it from just Luna. Now we're in the same boat. We know that nightblood is going to do the trick but it's just me this time. We can't take enough out of me to save them all. I just don't know what to do."

Monty rubbed his hands together. "Actually, that's why I'm here. I may have a solution to that. To making less nightblood help more without putting your life in danger. If Diyoza is willing to take me back up to the Ark, I should be able to get what I need."

Clarke was confused. "I'm sorry, but I'm lost."

Echo frowned. "You aren't the only one."

"The water filtration system on the Ark, it's what I need. I think I can tweak the system to run the blood through it, instead of water. I don't know how to explain this without confusing you more. Basically, if I can do what I think I can, we can take the affected blood of a miner, run it through the filtration system, add your nightblood and run the cleansed blood back into miners."

"So by running the affected blood through the filtration, you are clearing the cells of the pollutants," Clarke said.

Monty nodded. "By clearing some of the cells, there is less for the nightblood to overtake, meaning there is less blood needed from you to make them better. From the scans and files that Abby showed me, there are just too many pollutants in the miner's blood for the filtration to remove all but every bit that can be, will make it easier."

Clarke stared at him in wonder. "That might actually work Monty!"

"Let's not get our hopes up just yet," Monty warned. "Let me look through what you have here and I can come up with a plan to modify the filtration system based on the number affected and how severely affected they are. Think Diyoza will give it a shot?"

"Yes," Clarke said without hesitation. "Diyoza wants to help her people. She's not that different from us. I'll go let her know your plan." Clarke headed out to find Diyoza but stopped in the door. "Thanks Monty."

Monty smiled at her and then threw himself into the paperwork on Clarke's desk and the files loaded onto the computer. Echo stood awkwardly by the doorway.

"Do you mind if I join you?" Echo asked Clarke.

"No, of course not." Echo fell in step next to her. They walked in silence for a few minutes. Clarke was fairly certain that Diyoza was in the ship and headed in that direction. She tried to think of something to say but she and Echo had never been close. And as much as she hated to admit it, it was difficult for her to be so near someone who knew Bellamy as intimately as she did. The wave of jealousy washed over her again but she quickly tried to push past it.

"Thank you," Echo said suddenly breaking the stillness. "I know I haven't said it before, but thank you for saving us all. If it hadn't been for you and Bellamy, I wouldn't be here."

Clarke flinched slightly at the way her voice softened when she said Bellamy's name.

"There's nothing to thank me for," Clarke said. "I'm sure you all worked equally hard to keep each other alive."

Echo nodded in agreement. "Yes. Everyone did their part to keep us alive but if it weren't for you, we never would have even made it through the doors. It was your sacrifice that saved us. And that's not something that should go unvoiced."

"It wasn't a sacrifice," Clarke said. "I'm alive."

"But it was," Echo insisted. "You were down here alone, left to deal with an empty world. If it weren't for you, I would have died because of my banishment along with everyone else left outside of the bunker."

Clarke didn't know what to say. A thankful Echo was not something she was accustomed to so she continued walking.

"Bellamy said things wouldn't change when we got back to the ground," Echo said. Clarke again felt a twinge at the sound of his name. She felt possessive of his name and didn't know why. Maybe it was because she and Madi had been the only ones to say it for all those years. You are being ridiculous! She chided herself.

"I thought our biggest obstacle would be Octavia. I did try to kill her multiple times. I held a sword to your throat. I killed several of your people. It took Bellamy a long time before he would even look at me. I mean really look at me, without that anger in his eyes. It took him 3 years to start forgiving me." Her voice was quiet. "It felt like such a long time, especially stuck up there surrounded by nothing but darkness. It's depressing up there, you know that?"

Clarke nodded. She'd felt that way often growing up on the Ark. The stars always shone like little twinkle lights but the rest of the world felt like blackness, with the Earth the only glowing form of life. Life out in space had never been easy but when it was all you had ever known, you didn't know what you were missing. The isolation of it all must have been more difficult to deal with for Echo and Emori as well.

"It took another year for us to even be friends. When you only have a handful of people to interact with daily, you become very close but you also start to get sick of each other. But it wasn't that way with Bellamy. I always wanted to spend more time with him and every minute we spent together felt like a blessing. Like a moment of peace that I didn't deserve."

"Echo," Clarke said. She didn't know where Echo was going with the conversation but hearing about her relationship with Bellamy was like a knife in her chest. It was a reminder that in those 6 years, Bellamy had had Echo there. Echo had been the one to comfort him when he was having a rough time or when he felt sad. When he was missing Octavia, wondering if he'd ever get back to the ground to see her again. Echo had been able to hold his hand, to wrap her arms around him and tell him it was going to be ok. Clarke saw it all too clearly in her head, she didn't need to hear the details of it.

"As much as I tried to convince myself that we were doing great, that everything would be fine, I always knew that it wasn't," Echo continued on as if Clarke hadn't spoken. "Even though he was always there, he wasn't all the way there. A part of him was always missing. I always attributed most of it to Octavia. That he was missing her. He put on a brave face for us all. He never let us see him in a moment of weakness. But we all knew. We all knew that some part of him wasn't there with the rest of us."

"Why are you telling me this, Echo?" Clarke stopped and turned to face her.

"Because it was you. It was you not being there that kept him from fully being there. And as much as it was Octavia that he missed, it was you more." Echo sighed sadly. "I tried. I tried to fill that hole that you left. I thought with time, that maybe he would be that same Bellamy from the ground. I thought that we would get back to the ground, he would have his sister back and then he would be back. But I realized that it was you who made Bellamy who he was. That it was the constant of you just being there. I tried being that constant for him. It just never was what he needed. I wasn't what he needed. You were."

"I don't understand what you want me to do," Clarke said.

"Talk to him," Echo told her. "Things have been so crazy since we've been back. We didn't expect for things to be so life and death. As soon as we stepped off the ring, we were deciding who lived or died as if no time had passed at all. Bellamy is in shock. I think a part of him still doesn't fully accept that you're alive. It's almost as if he's afraid of believing it. As much as I hated to admit it to myself, he needs you. That's the truth."

Clarke shook her head. "I don't understand," she said again. "You and Bellamy-"

"Are no longer together," Echo said. Clarke was a little taken aback by that. "I ended things with him the moment he decided to tear off after you through a wasteland. Do you think he would have crossed a dead land for me?"

Clarke started to say she was sorry but Echo held up her hand. "I don't need apologies. It's just how things are. How they always were, I guess. I was just too blinded to see it until now. I knew this was coming. I just thought it would be the girl under the floor to tear us apart, not a dead girl. Things change when the dead girl isn't so dead anymore."

Clarke bit her lip. She didn't know what to do. Bellamy had had a chance to talk to her since he'd arrived but had almost been avoiding her since delivering the news of his sister's soon to be arrival at Shallow Valley. He had opted to go hunting instead of talking to her. If he felt even a slight bit of what Echo was telling Clarke, then why wouldn't he talk to her? Had the time and distance pulled them too far apart? Was it too late for them?

"He's afraid," Echo told her, reading her face. "He's afraid that you'll turn him away. That you don't feel what he does. It's pretty obvious to everyone except you guys it seems."

Clarke raised her eyes to Echo's. "What's obvious?"

"That you have the biggest part of Bellamy. Something I never did. You have his heart."