A/N: It's been HOW many months since I updated?! ... Shit. I have nothing acceptable to say as excuse.
A/N2: Have we talked about the world's best internet wife? MarinaBlack1 is amazing. She recently published her first original novel, and her second - Unintentionally Yours - is due out in a couple weeks! It is a fantastic story. Please search her out on Amazon. You will not be disappointed. BUT... she is also currently working on her THIRD (YES! THIRD!) original piece so I have not asked her to beta this because COME ON: girl has enough on her plate. Persepholily gave it a quick read-through though, so hopefully between the two of us any really terrible glaring errors have been dealt with already. If not, I take full responsibility.
A/N3: I DO feel really terrible. I feel like I pulled a total Clarke on this one; I just got to the point where I needed space to be able to process things, before being able to come back to Bellarke in a more healthy way. BUT I AM SORRY!
Like some grotesque mechanical parody of a sunflower field, A.L.I.E.'s aging solar array had dutifully followed the sun's passage across the sky – but now that great orb had disappeared from view and the panels were left to stare forlornly at a western horizon smudged with fading wisps of lavender, gold, rose.
Indra, Timo, and Lincoln waited in silent semi-patience beneath the two-tone dome of twilight as Octavia – and Aiolos, such an oddly human horse – said goodbye to the ones who would be staying behind. Clarke and Bellamy gave each other space, too. She knew both Blakes struggled with this latest separation, despite Octavia's protests to the contrary; he knew Aiolos mattered more than Clarke wanted to explain.
After that departure, the remaining members of the group fell into a collective restlessness. Clarke demanded they wait for morning to leave, hoping to avoid the sea monster's attention by traveling over water during daylight hours.
…Now Raven and Wick huddled together under the solar panels where they could attend to her brace, using it as a pretense for flirting that would, inevitably, lead to love-making. Monty and Jasper collected Harper and they gravitated toward the old boat, spreading out a beggar's collection of drones and radios and the scraps of metal Raven kept shedding as she and Wick found new ways to increase the efficiency of her brace. Miller hovered anxiously at Bellamy's elbow. It was clear he felt torn in allegiance, staring after the trio by the boat even as he debriefed Bellamy on all that had happened in his absence.
Clarke watched the men and felt jealous. She noted Miller's hands, as jumpy as his gaze, and felt jealous of that physical longing for the others. In fact, Clarke realized as she let her attention drift out over the rest of the scene, jealousy was eating her alive. She searched for other emotions, but could not find them for the green haze infecting her thoughts.
"Excuse me," she managed as she turned and fled all of it. The dunes swallowed her quickly; the darkness of night assisted. She stumbled and slid and sobbed her way down one long steep slope after another.
They didn't need her. Not really. It was what she had wanted, wasn't it? A release from the horrors of leadership? So why this reaction?
She had left them under Bellamy's care because her moral compass had broken, but not his.
He could keep them safe and still stay true to who he was, something she had failed to do. So she had walked out on them. On him. Because even though he might resent her for it, she knew she had no right to demand his respect, his… trust… until she was his equal. And the minute he had tried to own half her guilt, deep in the bowels of that mountain, he had proven to her just how very unequal they were.
"Clarke?... Shit!" Sand cascaded down the slope behind her, a dry monsoon heralding Bellamy's arrival. She was kneeling, sobbing quietly into her sleeve; he could not have heard her. But he had come to her somehow, the relentless asshole.
"…I should never have left." Her own sudden confession shocked her. Bellamy's sharp exhale – close, just behind her shoulder – and lean fingers found the tight triangle of her trapezius, squeezing gently.
He kneeled beside her, his touch disappearing as he balanced himself. "I'm supposed to say you did what you had to do, again." Bellamy's words came out low and gruff. They scratched like sand over Clarke's raw heart. "Well, I can't. Not any more." He moved around to face her. "It was the worst thing you ever did to me."
Clarke bit her lips together, fresh tears welling up, and waited for more.
"Sounds selfish I guess. Maybe it is… but Clarke, I missed you. Every day. Even now, I wake up sometimes and there's a second where I forget what's happened and where we are… and I miss you."
She blinked at the tears as they spilled, and nodded, and waited for more.
"Jasper was so bitter, and you weren't there for him. Harper was… traumatized. She could have used your support, but you weren't there. Monty pretended he was okay but he was way too quiet, and we tried to get him to talk but Nathan and I, we're no good at that shit. We looked around for you, and you weren't there." He expression said he hated himself a bit for doing this to her, but also that he had never needed something quite like he needed to share these stories.
"Octavia blasted you for everything, pretending she knew your deal, but underneath all that anger she was just scared and confused, and Clarke… you weren't there."
She turned, and fell into the black pain of his eyes. She recognized that strain. He had been her strength – had been everyone's strength – far too long. He was an ocean of loss and hurt and Clarke threw her soul into the stormy waves of his grief, unable to let him suffer this way alone a minute longer.
"I never wanted to leave you," she whispered hoarsely. "If I could have, I would have taken you with me. But Bellamy, no matter how much I needed you… they needed you more."
"Yeah? And how about me? I needed you, Clarke!"
"I'm sorry!" she choked out. "I am so sorry," she continued as she grabbed blindly for him, fingers connecting with his cotton shirt, the bare skin at the back of his collar, the dark mess of tousled hair behind his ears. She lunged hungrily for his lips, gasping against his mouth at the force of their kiss: he both punished and pleaded, angry and sad and desperate to help her see what she had done to him.
"You were the only one I could trust," she mumbled into his cheek eventually. "To be there for them. And to… to still be there for me, when I came back. The only one I could trust, Bellamy… It's always only been you."
He pulled back for a moment, the downward curve of his mouth hovering at that space between sorry and sad.
"I know," he finally whispered, pressing loving lips to soft skin. To chin. Throat. Ear. To the hint of exposed flesh along the ridge of her shoulder.
For no reason she could explain, Clarke sighed at the sudden release of a heavy weight. Those two words erased her jealousy of earlier, and she allowed herself to give in to the pleasure of Bellamy's caress, determined to reciprocate that generosity. Her fingers drifted up his scalp, tangling once more into his hair, dragging his face toward hers. Her mouth parted in anticipation as their bodies pressed together; she slipped her tongue past his teeth, moaning at the warm tingle of his torso, hard and lean, tightening against hers.
Eventually they pulled apart: out of breath, wild with their hunger for more but weighed down, as ever, by the shadow of six people waiting for them and by the looming threat they still faced.
"…Fuck," Bellamy growled. Clarke nodded in silent agreement.
It was eerie trying to sleep on this beach, so different from Luna's and yet similar enough to leave Clarke feeling unsettled. The water was brackish here, a touch of salt to carry on the breeze, like a memory of lost serenity. The waves, too, had little of the force of their sisters on the true coast – but the sound existed nonetheless, the slap of water on sand, hypnotic and rousing in equal measure.
The lack of Luna's presence, and knowledge of what lurked in the murky depths of the channel before them now, tugged at Clarke as she tossed and turned. Eventually she admitted the impossibility of sleep. She sat up, draping her arms over her knees, her eyes on the small boat and the water beyond it. The monochromatic landscape glittered under the low cool light of the stars.
"Thinking about tomorrow?" Bellamy murmured from his place in the sand beside her. Clarke looked back at him, saw him lying face-up with his arms crossed behind his head. He was not watching the water; he was staring into the fathomless inky darkness overhead, their former home.
"Sort of. Or maybe… comparing notes on the past and the future."
"You can see the future? That's a damn useful skill, Clarke. Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
She grinned, grateful he could find and offer her a bit of humor, and smacked him in the knee. "Shut up. No, I meant… This place reminds me of Luna's village. It's not the same, not even close… but there's something about it."
"Except you went there to heal, and you've come here to… fight." Bellamy sat up too, his shoulder brushing against Clarke's in that comfortable "I'm here" way that always calmed her.
Someone whistled gently in the darkness. Bellamy whistled back, echoing the simple melody.
"It's Harper," he explained to Clarke. "She's amazing. She's been teaching the guards in her free time, so they can communicate while out on patrol. Miller refused to learn at first – said he had Monty's radios for that kind of stuff – but I think Monty convinced him to humor her. They've gotten pretty good."
"Good to know I'm not the only insomniac," Harper chirped as she arrived, sinking into place on Clarke's other side. "Is this general sleeplessness, or are you two conspiring again?"
Clarke cocked her head at Bellamy, her brow furrowed. "Do we conspire often? Raven accused us of the same thing earlier."
Bellamy grinned and leaned into her slightly, although when he spoke it was to answer Harper. "General sleeplessness, but we might as well use the time."
"Right," Clarke agreed, shifting gears smoothly. "We're lucky to have those two drones. Harper, do you know what they're capable of at this point?"
"They scramble our location signals to A.L.I.E.'s other drones, and block audio. Monty has mostly been using them to scout out the terrain around here, though. Wick was also trying to equip them to fight."
"Fight what? Each other?" Bellamy sounded annoyed.
Harper giggled. "No. To attack the other drones. We thought maybe we could take out enough that we'd blind A.L.I.E. but – "
" – Don't. It's pointless to try that. There are too many, you wouldn't even make a dent. All you'd do is telegraph our hostility to her. In fact, we need to stop scrambling our location right away. A.L.I.E. is expecting us. She'll go easier on Jaha and Murphy if she knows we're on our way."
"What do you mean she'll 'go easier' on them?" Bellamy asked. Despite Clarke's steady narrative as they crossed the desert, he still felt like there were so many details missing.
"She withholds food if she feels they're stalling. Of course, they're always stalling, it's just a matter of whether or not she can tell. Anyway, they've been dealing with that for a while now."
"Shit," Harper breathed. "I didn't realize. And they can't leave?"
"No. I was granted permission to walk away from A.L.I.E.'s compound only because Jaha convinced her I would bring back engineers and mechanics to work on the missile. And that I would do all of this very quickly."
"And what happens if we weren't fast enough?" This time it was Monty, crawling up to sit facing Harper, knees touching. There was a mutual comfort to the physical connection – a call-and-response Clarke recognized all too well. She and Bellamy had occupied that kind of space far longer than she had initially admitted, certainly longer than Lexa, or Finn, or even Abby had understood. That small touch between their friends, the one so reminiscent of Bellamy's shoulder still pressed against hers, clawed at Clarke's heart and she shuddered as faces of the fallen swam into focus; Monty's question prodded two new shadowy figures to join the others, ambushing her.
"Clarke?"
"I'm fine. Just give me a minute," she assured Harper, turning to Bellamy, desperate. He seemed to understand instinctively, finding her hand and twining his fingers into hers the way he had when they fled Polis with Echo.
"Let's talk about something else," he began, and even though he was speaking to all of them, it was Clarke who nodded. "Okay… I'll tell you about Octavia, since she's not here to stop me. When she… when she was a little girl she was stubborn." He paused and shook his head, and allowed a quiet chuckle. "Not much has changed, really. But even as a child she wanted to fight. She hated hiding. She knew she had to, she just… really hated it." Bellamy was grinning now at the memory of tiny Octavia and her long dark ponytail. "We turned it into a game, to make it less miserable. She would make up a story, and when she got out, she'd tell me the beginning and I had to guess how it ended."
"What kind of stories?" Monty asked, curious despite himself. Clarke squeezed Bellamy's hand in silent thanks, and listened.
"Didn't matter what kind. It could be about lions or kings or astronauts, it always ended with the brave Princess Octavia slaughtering everyone and taking over the jungle or kingdom or spaceship. Every damn time."
Monty and Harper tried – and failed – to stifle their laughter.
"But whatever happened to the girl with the butterflies?" Clarke whispered, genuinely baffled.
"I don't think Octavia sees appreciation of beauty, and fighting for what's right, as being mutually exclusive."
There was silence for several minutes as the others thought about Octavia and her current mission.
"Monty, the drones are blocking audio right now?" Clarke asked suddenly.
"Of course."
"First thing in the morning, you and Wick need to fix that. But for tonight let's use it to our advantage. I'm thinking about what happens after we stop A.L.I.E. – and that's not the kind of information her drones need to hear."
"After we stop her? You're awfully confident," Monty pointed out.
Clarke smiled through the darkness. "With you on my side, Monty? Yes, I am."
"This is the cavalry?" Murphy stared at Clarke in disbelief as she climbed out of the dinghy on the shores of the lighthouse. "We sent you for help and you thought the Odd Squad was our best chance of success?"
Clarke ignored the words in favor of the deeply – very deeply, in Murphy's case – hidden sentiment. He was even gaunter than when she had left, his eyes sunken behind that hawk-like nose, but she breathed easier knowing he still had the energy for such defensive sarcasm. She hugged Murphy quickly before stepping aside to let the others greet their… well. Maybe not exactly a friend… Colleague, perhaps.
"I'm still a damn sight more useful than you, Murphy," Raven growled in challenge, but her grin and her hug were warm. The others followed her lead, and as he accepted each sign of affection something within John Murphy softened a bit.
Until he spotted Bellamy.
Both men froze, each engaging in a moment of internal struggle; as Bellamy tensed and Murphy… regressed… Clarke was reminded of the strange love-hate relationship the two had always shared. It seemed like years, now, since that frantic mob strung John from a tree while the not-yet-sure Bellamy hesitated, trying to decide what kind of leader he would be.
"My Lord," Murphy finally hissed with a mocking bow.
"Always such a prick," Bellamy grumbled as he pushed past the other man's bent form, knocking hard thigh against bony shoulder along the way.
"You would know," Murphy called to the man's back. He noticed Clarke's suspicious stare and straightened, shrugging and forcing a caustic smile. "Don't worry about it. He'll get over me eventually. Welcome to Casa Crazy everyone! Population two – no," Murphy cut himself off, silently counting out the group in front of him – "Sorry, let's make that ten humans and one psychotic computer program. A.L.I.E.'s been expecting you."
Murphy's tour of the compound was quick and pointed. There was Charon's Boat (Jaha had named it one night in a fit of despair), useless as an escape route since A.L.I.E. had a small army of weaponized drones ready to sink it at any time. The lighthouse, creepy timeless homage to her creator. And, as they crested the hill: the mansion. Clarke watched the faces of her friends for their reactions. Awe hit first, followed by fear. Desire, too, danced behind several pairs of eyes, and Clarke remembered that initial surprised covetousness.
It would fade.