Hey, guys! So, this is just an idea I had. Since Madi is so keen on telling people important things, I thought it would be interesting to write a one-shot of her telling Bellamy about Clarke's updates. It might be idealized a bit, but that's okay. I personally really want him to find out about the updates, because I think they need to be revisited. (Side note: if anyone has any requests, please feel free to suggest them to me!) Thank you, and please review!

He couldn't stop staring at the screen.

Eyestrain had set in hours ago, but Bellamy didn't look away from the scale on the computer, still measuring a signal he kept hoping would fade, blink out like a dying star.

It didn't.

He ran a hand over his face, ignoring his burning eyes.

If you're caught, or if you fail to bring down the eye, no one is coming to save you.

Bellamy shook his head, wishing he could drown out the phantom echoes of gunfire.

He wasn't naive; he knew how much people could change over six years. But he'd just underestimated the extent of that change, and what kind of person it left him with after. Who Octavia was now . . . Bellamy didn't know how to grasp it. He wanted to fix things, but he knew he couldn't. This was different, a something not even he could protect her from.

Bellamy pressed a hand to his neck, massaging the sudden knot of tension that had appeared there.

The sudden cry of the metal door opening rewound that knot nice and tight; he didn't want to have to deal with Octavia again. Not now. He looked over, nearly prepared to tell her as much.

The sight of blonde hair and blue eyes made him relax, and he felt his tension ebb at the sight of Clarke, Madi close behind her.

"Want some company?" she asked, as the two came inside.

Bellamy tried for a smile, turning fully in his seat to face the pair. "Not sure I'm the best person to be around right now, but it's at your own risk."

From the corner of his eye, he caught Madi' s curious gaze.

Clarke stepped forward, gesturing with a tilt of her chin to the screen. A crease appeared between her brows, knowing exactly where his mind was at."How's that going?"

Bellamy shrugged, as if the signal weren't something worth staring at for as long as he had been, but he knew the look in his eyes gave him away. "It's going. Nothing's happened yet."

Clarke nodded, like she already knew. "Echo will do it," she said, her voice confident.

"I know." He grimaced. "I just hate that she has to."

Clarke pursed her lips, eyebrows still pulled together. "She'll make it back. One thing I know about Echo is that she's stubborn. Unless that's changed over the last six years?"

That coaxed the ghost of a smile out of him. "No. Some things just don't change."

Clarke smirked, her gaze fastened on his. "You're right, they don't." She took a step forward, glancing once at Madi. There was something else she had on her mind, too. "I was wondering, would you mind keeping an eye on Madi for me? There are some . . . things I need to go check on and I'm not comfortable with leaving her alone."

Bellamy's back stiffened. "Anything wrong?"

Clarke shook her head. "No. It's just . . . It's safer."

He looked at her intently. "The other night, you were about to tell me something. Something that sounded important."

She looked at him.

He waited.

Clarke glanced at the girl once more. Her expression would be resolved if not for that line between her brows. That always gave her away. "Madi is a nightblood."

Slowly, Bellamy nodded, already well aware. "I know, I thought you-"

"No," she cut him off. "Madi is a natural nightblood." The weight in her words were tangible, Asif she were entrusting him with something very precious. "That's how she survived the death wave."

Faint surprise jolted through Bellamy, but it was doused before it was barely lit. It made sense. And who were they to think Luna was the last of any nightblood anywhere? But then the rest of the pieces clicked into place, and suddenly Bellamy understood Clarke's caution.

Coldness seeped into Bellamy, and he looked back at Clarke, understanding her with perfect clarity. He knew what that was like, to do everything you could to protect someone. That had been his whole life, trying to protect a young girl who, at one point, used to be a lot like Madi.

It wasn't anymore.

"And you're worried that if anyone knew, some people might think Madi is the rightful commander?"

Clarke just looked at him, the answer clear in her eyes. "That's why you wanted to leave," he said.

She sighed. "Things have gotten . . . complicated, and since I don't want to leave Madi by herself, I'd rather have her here, with you."

Bellamy didn't need to consider anything. "Think you'll need help?"

"This is helping me," she said, her voice gentle. She looked sidelong at Madi. "And I think you're the only person I know who can understand how much that means."

Something tightened in Bellamy's chest. He knew the level of trust required to give the person you cared about the most into someone else's hands. Six years may have changed a lot, but a deep part of him was relieved to know they hadn't changed that much. "She'll be right here when you get back."

The corner of Clarke's lips lifted. "Thank you." She met Madi's intent gaze, the girl's own apprehension unhidden. "I'll be back soon."

Before she could open the door, Bellamy called to her. "Clarke."

She turned to him.

"If you run into trouble, you know where to find me."

That smile returned. "I know."

Once Clarke had gone, silence descended once more. Bellamy's focus quickly returned to the screen, but a piece of it drifted away, back to the girl who had wandered to the other side of the room, inspecting the miscellany of things littering the shelves. When Bellamy glanced over at her, he found her eyes already on him, big and curious and maybe even a little wary.

"Guess you and I haven't had the chance to talk much since we got back," he said, wanting to break the silence.

Madi shrugged. "People are busy in wars."

He glanced back to the screen before returning his gaze to her. "How are you doing with all this anyway?"

"I'm worried," she answered instantly, brutally honest. "About Clarke. I did something that she wishes I hadn't."

Bellamy dropped his hands onto his knees and turned towards her.

"I . . . kind of became a part of Wonkru."

He stared at her. Unbidden, an image came to him, of her standing in the arena, scared and defenseless. "You . . . You what? Madi, . . . I know Wonkru is strong, but Clarke's right. If people find out about what you are and it reaches Octavia-"

"Octavia knows."

Madi had his undivided attention now. "What? Did she-?"

"I told her."

That silence descended for another moment, and Bellamy pulled back all the things he wanted to say, trying to understand. "Madi, why would you tell her that?"

"I did it to protect Clarke!" she said fiercely. "If we'd gone to Shallow Valley like she'd wanted, Diyoza would've killed her and I couldn't let that happen."

At that, Bellamy tried to breathe past a fresh tightness in his chest. No more people. He wasn't losing anyone else, not Echo, not Raven, not Murphy and Emori. And not Clarke. Not again. "What did Octavia do?"

Madi ran a hand idly over a shelf. "She accepted me into the clan. I know Clarke thinks she's changed-"

"She has changed, Madi," Bellamy promised, his words breaking, as they did every time with that realization. He couldn't get used to it, and she was making it incredibly hard to accept it. "She is a not the person she was before."

"You are. I mean, I know you've probably changed some, but Clarke still trusts you. She still needs you."

That almost made Bellamy smirk. "We're different people now. We need each other, but she doesn't need me like she needs you."

Madi's hand dropped from the shelf, those big eyes gentle yet penetrating. "That's not true. I know it. Like, whenever she radioed-"

"Radioed?"

"Yeah, when she tried to make contact with the Ring."

Bellamy blinked. Of course. It's something he would've done, if he'd been in her position. It frustrated him though, to wonder how close they'd come. What would it have been like to find out Clarke was alive years ago? "How long did she try?"

Suddenly Madi looked hesitant to reply, like the answer was obvious and she was only now realizing it wasn't her place to give it away, a trespasser over personal property. Part of her must have thought it was too late though, and in a voice she pitched lower, she murmured, "Every day."

Bellamy stared at her, as if unable to understand."Every . . . Every day?"

With wide eyes, Madi nodded. "Two thousand, one hundred and ninety-nine, to be exact."

A cold draft seemed to pass through him, but it was quickly chased away by the heat of his frustration. His guilt. All that time spent believing she was dead, while she sat miles below, talking to ghosts in the stars.

Bellamy shut his eyes for a moment, trying to clear his head. When he reopened them, Madi was watching him intently. She might've been young, but that didn't mean she didn't see as much as others did. Maybe it meant she saw more.

Her confession made Bellamy want to know about those six years. He felt Clarke's reservation when he'd mentioned it last, and he hadn't pried. But he'd known there was more, a lot more, and while he would wait to talk to her about it in detail, a piece of him just wanted a bit of insight into what that time had been like for Madi, and the woman he'd buried too soon.

"How long was it," he asked, leaning forward. "Before she found you?"

Madi glanced away with a shrug of her shoulders, seemingly glad for the subject change."A few months, I think. I remember feeling alone for a long time, but I can't remember much of it. Everything was . . . the same, until the end of the world just felt like one, endless day."

Bellamy's hands tightened, a hollow feeling settling on the inside as he tried to grasp what it would be like to be isolated for months. "You're strong, to survive something like that."

"We both are," she agreed.

Bellamy smiled. "How'd you two meet?"

Madi's expression suddenly turned sheepish, her cheeks warming to pink. "I . . . kind of caught her. In one of my bear traps."

He winced internally. "Traps?"

"Yeah. And then I stole her supplies. I warmed up to her, though. Now I can't really remember what it was like without her. Like she was always there."

Bellamy nodded, understanding. That was like the day Octavia had been born. It felt like his starting point after a long time being adrift. "What about Clarke? How was she when you found her?"

Again, Madi shrugged, but Bellamy caught a flash of something in her bright blue eyes. "Quiet. Sad. I don't remember much. We haven't talked about it."

Bellamy's brows furrowed. "Ever?"

Madi pressed her lips together. "She doesn't talk about before."

That quiet crept back into the room as he took her words in, wishing he could shrug off the guilt that had begun to weigh on his shoulders. Clarke wouldn't want that, he knew. It was just one of those times he wished, more than anything, that he could've changed something by not changing anything at all. Clarke staying here didn't only save their lives, but Madi's as well. But the memory of leaving her had haunted him for years after, and it frustrated him to know that while they were surviving off algae on the ark together, Clarke was alone. Not forever, but long enough for her to never want to talk about it.

"What did she radio us about? Was it just to check in?"

Madi shook her head. "Oh no. They were mostly updates. What we were doing. What was going on. Like when we would make trips to Polis, or when the solar panel of the rover broke. Twice. A few years ago, there was a really bad sandstorm, and Clarke almost got lost." She grimaced at the memory. "Some updates were more important than others. I think she did it to feel close to you. That it made her feel like you guys were still alive."

Bellamy swallowed, once again taken aback by the picture Madi painted, of a radio stashed between the two of them, full of messages that would never reach their destination. It reminded him of a time on the Ark, when, in Earth Skills, he'd first heard about messages contained in bottles. Their words were tediously scrawled and folded onto paper, only to be capped and cast into the sea where they waited, against the odds, to be found. He thought about that now, imagining not one bottle but over two thousand of them, drowning, unanswered, in the expanse of space.

And yet, Clarke had still hoped. Six years of silence couldn't take that from her.

"I bet she had a lot of questions for Raven. Probably gave Monty an earful about the algae," Bellamy said, half joking. "Harper would've liked to hear her medical advice. I'm sure she had a lot after . . . after."

Madi rested her forearm at the edge of the table he sat at, peering sidelong at him. "Yeah, she talked about them."

Bellamy glanced up at her. "About them? I thought you said she talked to them. To us."

"Not to everyone," Madi said, her expression suddenly serious, her eyes so much like Octavia's had once been. "She talked to you."

He stared at her, his thoughts silent. He struggled to understand, moments slipping by until finally, in a softer voice, he simply asked, "Why?"

"She says it's because it helped ground her, but I also think it's because you always understood each other. After everything with the grounders, and the Mountain Men, and ALIE . . . you were there for each other. And then after praimfaya, I think there were times when she needed you there, and the radio was as close as she could get."

At that, Bellamy understood. It had taken him months to adjust to the change on the Ring, not just to returning to space, but also to the absence of the person who seemed to understand him without words. He looked for that in other places, but it had taken a long time to find again. And even then, it wasn't the same. There were no wars on the Ring. No only choices to decide between. Something happened to those who stood side by side through all that. It built a trust between them, a deep understanding of the heart scars they were left with in the aftermath, and when one person was lost, it was felt deeply by the other.

"I wish I could've answered her," he said simply, his words feeling insufficient. He wished he could've heard her at all.

"It's okay," said Madi. She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and gave him a small smile. "You're here now. That's all that matters."