Dear Readers: Thank you so much to everyone who responded to the story, especially the last chapter. I feel it's fair to tell you something about myself-I don't believe in avoiding certain situations because it might be messy. Life doesn't work like that, nor does the show that we're in love with. Turn back now if that makes you uncomfortable. If it doesn't, go forth and read. Cheers!

Clarke was quiet the next morning. Didn't mention the baby or her birthday. Didn't talk about it the next day either. Or the day after that.

Peter got the waginogans together. In addition to the med center, we had eleven other shelters. More people were being trained in how to make one, so rate of progress was probably going to explode. We weighed them down with rocks so that they wouldn't blow away, though most were pretty sturdy.

Younger kids went into first aid training. They got brand new med packs as a shiny graduation present.

Baxter was churning out the bowls like his pride depended on it. With Sam's help, they were producing some good work. Even a little design here and there, which didn't serve fuck all, but I kept my mouth shut.

The wall was finished with bigger logs, ends buried for stability.

I was getting my heart handed to me left and right.

I didn't think it would be so hard to find my sex partners and ask them if they were still protected. I had a friggin' threesome a couple of times with some of them. I had no problem looking them in the face after that. This wasn't about sex. This was about the rest of our lives and sucking up my own sense of shame every time I had to broach the subject.

Newsflash: there is no delicate way of bringing 'could you be pregnant?' into a conversation. None.

I had to do it four damn times. Three of them thought I was crazy for even asking. The last one was smart enough to wonder why that would come up.

That's how the rumors started. My threatening Monty and Jasper wasn't necessary after all.

She was in her med center, staring into space and biting her lip when I entered. During the day we left the flap open for the most part. We wouldn't be able to do that in the winter, and would have to install a better door then.

There was a lot of room inside, more than I would have thought possible. Peter really surpassed my expectations. There were beds, a few crude night stands for Clarke to set her limited supplies on, and room to maneuver. It was also empty of other people. That rare lull of patients that usually happened around midday when people ate. Funny how nobody screwed shit up when it was mealtime.

Which was why I was there. I brought food. "Come on, Princess. Can't skip lunch."

"Hey," she greeted absently, looking up with a faint smile for me. "Sorry. Drifted off there."

Usually I was the one that avoided topics while Clarke jumped all over them. Talk about your role reversal. For days now I'd been holding back, determined to let her think things through. But when an opportunity to get it out in the open came up, I'd be dumb to let it go. "You're eating for two now. Gotta watch it," I said as I sat down on an empty pallet.

She hesitated, then sat on the other. Octavia took out the stitches just this morning in her back, so she could move around fine. She accepted my offer of berries and nuts (the good kind this time) and slowly started eating. "You make it sound like it's a sure thing."

Trying to sound casual? Wasn't working. I could hear the stress a mile away. "You hopin' for a last minute reprieve, Clarke?"

She kept eating.

I watched her for a minute, then sat forward. "Alright. Get it off your chest."

"This could be a false alarm," she said. "There's no reason to get upset about it just yet."

Was she friggin' kidding me? "You can't just shrug your shoulders and hope for the best. That's not how life works down here." And the fact that Clarke Griffin of all people was shying away from reality was telling. "Me getting lucky with those girls not being pregnant...that's the exception, not the rule. So let's be real about this."

"I am being real about this. It's too early to tell."

"It's not too early to plan," I countered.

She snorted, exasperated. "What is with you? For once I want to be the one that tackles things on a touch and go basis."

"Not with this. Anything but this."

She paused mid-chew, blinking rapidly. Not crying, but wrestling with something internally. She did that sometimes, picking and discarding words in that big brain quicker than I could think. "I'm struggling," she said at last. "None of us are ready for this. You. Me. Raven."

I frowned. "Why Raven?"

"It's Finn's baby, Bellamy. How is she going to feel when she finds out her boyfriend's one night stand ended up pregnant? Especially when he's dead."

Didn't seem to me that it was any of Raven's buisness. Whatever went wrong in that corner, it was on Spacewalker. Clarke didn't force the guy or even know Raven existed. But telling that to Clarke for the thousandth time was a dumb idea. "The only way she'd know it was Finn's is if you tell her," I said instead, popping a few nuts into my mouth and chewing.

"I can't exactly keep it a secret."

"Why not? As far as anybody in camp knows, she's mine."

"Yours?" she repeated blankly. "Yours?"

"Yeah. Mine." I rolled my eyes as I took one of those nuts she didn't like out of her palm. "What'd you think 'I'm with you' meant?"

Clarke was blinking. Something was not computing. "Bellamy...I know you said you wanted to be with me and protect us, but..."

I tensed.

"You have to see how massively unfair that is to you. Raising someone else's baby? You didn't even like Finn. He'll be like a ghost. One day you'll look at her and see something of him in her. Won't that bother you?"

My jaw worked. My first instinct was to snap at her, to point out that I'm not that kind of fucking guy and that she ought to know that by now. Instead I sat right there, chewing the hell out of the nuts and berries, keeping my temper under control until I swallowed.

"You have to see why I'm thinking about it. Everybody would tell you to walk away. To not take on someone else's baggage."

It was her face that was doing it to me. It was the most vulnerable I'd ever seen her, and for once I was going to be the steady rock. "I'm going to say this one time, and one time only, Clarke. So listen up. The baby is the baby. You are you. You're my girl. That means this baby is my kid. I don't care where she came from." I stared her down. "Look me in the eye and tell me you understand that."

Her face pinched. Her struggle to believe me was visible, but fear and anxiety was getting the best of her for the first time since I'd seen her after landing.

I put the back of rations aside and rubbed my hands on my thighs. I didn't want to pull out the big guns, but the gigantic fucking bazooka it was gonna to be. I exhaled. "Damn you for making me say this out loud, Clarke."

She sat, watching me warily.

"If you die giving birth, who do you think will take care of her?"

She paled. Went white as a sheet, so much so that her green eyes almost glowed.

Well, too damn bad. I hated this as much as she did, but running from the truth didn't make it any less brutal. "You know damn well it'll be me,"I told her in a low, raw voice, "so don't ever give me that shit about her not being mine again. We clear?"

I saw a doe freeze up once. All its muscles went rigid with uncertainty. That's exactly what happened to Clarke. I don't think she even breathed.

Then she slowly relaxed. First her legs, then her hands, her shoulders, and finally her face. She almost melted into a puddle on the bed. "Yes," she said softly. "We're clear."

I narrowed my eyes. It couldn't be that easy. "You sure?"

"You're right. If I die, I know you'll be the only one I can trust her with. The only one I'd want her with."

I'd won, but that didn't matter. I was pissed. Really pissed. She'd made me say something that I didn't want to even consider in front of her. I resented it. Now she'd get obsessed with the idea and make all kinds of last minute arrangements for the baby's care. Morbid crap like that. "You are not allowed to die."

Humor warmed her gaze. "You know as well as I do that's not up to us."

"It hinges on you going through the with pregnancy to begin with. You have to really want this kid, Clarke. You have to be willing to do everything being pregnant and a mother down here will take. Otherwise...it's got to be ended."

"I know that. Right now I can't think as clearly as I need to. If this were someone else, I know exactly what I would say. It's dangerous. We don't have enough food. We don't have any of the normal things people take for granted. The camp just isn't ready for this. The problem is that it's easy to say, but that's not what I'm thinking about. Every minute of the day I wonder if she has a chance. If she did, if I knew that deep in my heart..."

She waved a hand like she was telling me some other person's story. "Then I think about what might happen later. Say we both survived the birth. We wouldn't be out of the woods. We'd be right in the middle of them. What if I lost her, Bellamy? What if after everything, she caught a cold or ate something wrong and she died?" Her gaze turned inward, agonized. "I'd be broken into so many small pieces I'd never come back together again."

I ached inside.

"I..." Clarke took a deep breath. "I want her. But I couldn't handle..."

"I know, Princess. I understand." I thought of the last year, where every day meant one closer to Octavia getting floated.

She focused on me. "You do, don't you." It wasn't a question.

"It's your body, Clarke. It has to be your decision."

She smiled sadly. "Then why are we talking about it like she's already here? That it's a girl, and that she's ours?" She reached out and took my hand in both of hers, stroking my knuckles with her thumb. "I think we both know we don't want to end this. Not you. And not me."

That was it, then. Our answer. We were going to be parents.

Green eyes met mine across the narrow space. "Are you really terrified?"

I released a shaky breath. "Yeah."

"Me too." Suddenly she lifted my hand and kissed the back of it softly.

"What was that for?"

"For being exactly what I need. First the comb, the needles, and now this. I'm glad we're not keeping score, because I'd be seriously behind."

I smiled at her teasing. "Who says we're not keeping score?"

Her brows arched. "Oh, we are? I see. Well, I did save your life. That has to count for something."

"I sewed you up after that."

"That's...true. Hmm." She thought about it. "It might be time for me to step it up."

She stood up and came to me—not to the bed, to me. She stepped into the v of my legs and cupped my face. Her hands were freakin' tiny compared to mine. She made me feel like a giant, even though I was pretty average for a guy. The second her palms slid across my skin, most of my remaining tension drained away. I didn't know how she had the power to do that to me, but I sank into it.

She smiled down at me, thumbs brushing my cheekbones. "I can't believe how many freckles you have. Octavia doesn't."

"She's the lucky one in the gene pool, I guess."

"I like them." She hesitated, like she couldn't decide if this was okay, but then she bent down and pressed a soft kiss to my forehead. "I like your hair."

"Yeah?"

"Mhmm." She kissed my temple. "I like your voice."

"It's a pretty nice voice." I didn't even have to make it raspy. I could smell her. It was Monty's flower water.

She kissed my cheek, my nose, and my other cheek. "I like how decisive you are, even when you're being bullheaded. I can count on you to keep your head in a crisis."

"Are you appreciating me as a person or as a leader?"

"Can't it be both?" She kissed my chin. "You once told me you weren't a fairy tale hero. You're right, you know. You're better. A fairy tale prince sticks around when things are going his way. You stick around no matter what." She pulled back just a bit. "Sure you don't want to change your mind? I'll give you one last chance."

I slid my hands up her thighs and grasped her hips. "Kiss me, Clarke."

"Okay," she whispered just before settling her pretty mouth on mine.

I like it when she agrees with me.

She kissed me like she had a world full of time. Sounds poetic, but it wasn't. It was...consuming. Clarke kissed me as though we weren't sneaking in a little alone time, or sitting in her med bay, or were smack dab in the middle of a freakin' forest. She kissed me like this was our house after a long day at work, right before we ate dinner and talked about our day. Long kisses. Exploring kisses. Kisses that broke just a little before she came back, changing the angle. Eyes closed, enveloping kisses. It was all Clarke. The only thing I had to do was hold on and enjoy.

Well hot damn. I definitely can go for more of this.

Which, of course, was the exactly moment she pulled back.

"Come back here," I said. I pulled her into my lap and wrapped my arms around her, chuckling at her snort. Some of her hair got stuck on my mouth, and I made a face as I tried to get the strands off.

Little fingers plucked the hair away, then lingered, tracing the curve of my bottom lip. She looked happy. Well, not happy happy. But content. Better than before.

How come after all this time watching her, there was still something new about her face? Didn't it ever get old? "So," I said, brushing our mouths together. I loved her smell. "Looks like we're going to be parents, Princess."

She breathed in, then slowly breathed out, nodding. "Looks like." She aimed one of those knowing smiles at me. "If I'm pregnant."

"Uh huh." I wiped off a smudge of blood from under her jaw. Her hair got in the way again. "I can't take this anymore. Sit on the ground. I'm taming this mane."

"Oh? How?"

"Don't give me attitude, Princess. Just sit and enjoy my braiding skills."

She obeyed. Hell, that was what, twice in one day? I needed to start keeping a journal so I could remember this stuff.

I started picking up bits of hair and getting to work.

"You really don't think Raven should know."

"Nope." There was such a thing as oversharing. "She'd just be hurt and it wouldn't solve anything." That sounded like a girly enough answer.

"I guess."

"She's ours, Clarke. Spacewalker was just there for conception. The rest is all us."

"You're right." She gusted out a sigh. "She's ours."

"Exactly."

"You know, if it weren't for all the problems we're going to come up against, I'd almost say you were excited, Bellamy."

"Excited?" Nah, that wasn't the right word. "I'm...worried. About you. About her. Wondering if I can keep you as safe as you need to be."

"But?"

"Kids are sponges. They soak up information as fast as you can give it to them. Ever seen an idea click in a kid's head, Clarke? It's pretty amazing. And they have personalities when they're real little. You know how they're going to be as adults by the time they're two, essentially. O always wanted to explore the jungle. Learn about the mountains. She got into everything because she was too curious for her own good."

"You must have been good with her."

"I was." I finished the tail, using the little string she had in her hand to tie it off.

"You still are. She's just...a teenager. Same as the rest of us."

"Don't remind me."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"You know people only say that when they think I'm not going to like the question."

She sat up, then knelt between my legs. This...was not comfortable. Not comfortable at all.

"Does it bother you that we haven't had sex?"

Well, shit. "This is really not the time to talk about it, Clarke."

"It's the perfect time. Here you are, ready and willing to be someone's father, and we haven't even done anything except kiss."

I had two options—show her just what was on my mind or pray to a god I didn't believe in for some divine intervention.

"Hey Bellamy—Whoa!"

Or, I thought as I turned to glare at Jasper, who stood with his mouth open and his hand over his eyes, I can kill a skinny kid that looks like a zipper with goggles.