a/n Thank you, lovely readers and reviewers, for the support you show to this story. Happy reading!
The result of the test comes as no surprise, to Clarke at least. Her mother is beaming with stunned joy, so she supposes she had better try to enter into the spirit of things. And she does feel happy about it, of course she does, but happiness is not the strongest emotion of the morning. No, the main thing she feels is relief.
She is pregnant, and Madi will therefore be OK.
Of course, there is still anxiety. There is anxiety about whether her daughter will continue to have fainting spells, and about whether her baby will be whole and healthy. There is a little anxiety as to whether the child she is carrying is even Madi at all, but Abby tells her they will do a DNA test when the fetus is a couple of months older to check. There is anxiety, too, as to how Bellamy will take this news, and how it might affect their relationship.
But yes, mainly there is relief. And an overwhelming desire for her mother to calm down.
"Clarke, sweetheart, this is so exciting. When are you going to tell Bellamy? When are you going to tell Madi?"
"I'm not sure, yet." She makes a show of sitting down at her desk and getting on with her day.
"Can I tell Marcus? I have to tell Marcus. Just think, I'm going to be a grandma."
"You already are, Mum. Madi's been calling you grandma Abby for months." She points out drily.
"You know what I mean. We must have a party, something to celebrate your good news."
"We just had a party." She reminds her, brow quirked. "And I don't think conception parties are a very traditional thing."
At that, her mother at last seems to understand that Clarke is taking the news rather less excitably and rather more cynically than she. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong, Mum. I'm happy about it, of course I am. And I'm so relieved to know that Madi has a future. But I've still got a lot of other things on my mind, I guess."
"You know you can tell me, whatever it is?"
"I know." She lies kindly.
Maybe she is still a little lonely after all, she thinks, as she realises rather abruptly that, in fact, she cannot tell anyone everything that is on her mind, right now.
…...
She decides she will tell Bellamy the result of the test first. And she knows that a braver woman would go and seek him out during the day, would run to him, even, the moment she confirmed her hunch, but she doesn't quite feel up to doing that. Besides which, she argues, it would hardly be rational for her to burst into the middle of his training session just to share a bit of news with him. No, it makes much more sense for her to keep calm and tell him later.
So it is that she plods through a normal day in the Medical Centre, brightened only by Kane popping by to tell her he'd appreciate her presence in his office the following morning, and wades through a great deal of inconsequential chatter over supper. Bellamy comes back to the house with them afterwards, naturally, and the three of them settle on the sofa and watch an old Earth movie of gods and heroes. It passes a little quickly, Clarke thinks, from her place by his side, and her last hours of enjoying his carefree arm slung around her shoulders tick by all too fast. If he chooses to sit with her like this in future, she knows, it will not be carefree. It will be deliberate, if he ever does this again. If he is next to her after this, he will be there by choice.
And that thought scares her, almost as much as the thought that he might not choose to do so.
At last, Madi is put to bed, and the two of them find themselves alone. And as she should have predicted, really, Bellamy is not slow in initiating a searing kiss, and in wrapping his arms about her waist.
"Bellamy, stop." She pulls away from him.
The look on his face tells her loud and clear that he has taken that request badly.
A little flustered at this less-than-auspicious beginning, she makes a start at explaining herself. "I just need to tell you something."
"Yes?" He is frowning, still, and she wants to make it go away, but isn't quite sure how to do so. Perhaps she should just have out with it.
"I'm pregnant." Despite her ongoing anxieties, she cannot help but smile as she says the words. "I'm pregnant, I just found out this morning. We did it."
"That's great news, Clarke." His reaction is neither like hers, nor like her mother's. He looks happy, yes, radiant even, but somehow he's still frowning a little, too, and the combination makes for a rather bizarre expression.
"Yeah. Yeah, it is. Madi's safe. Or at least, we think she is. My mum will do a DNA test on the fetus in a couple of months."
"Great. I'm so happy for you, Clarke." That's really quite weird, she thinks. Isn't he supposed to be happy for himself, too?
"I'm happy for us, too." She corrects him cautiously.
"Yeah, of course. Wow."
There is a beat of silence, and she wonders if she is supposed to be the one to fill it. She wonders, too, why he's still wearing that very odd and slightly concussed expression.
"So you – you took the test this morning? And you didn't get chance to tell me earlier?" So it seems that one of the things playing out on his face must be hurt, then, she realises a little too late.
"Yeah. I just – I didn't want to interrupt you, I guess."
"And you didn't want to tell me that you were planning to take the test, or that you thought you might be pregnant?" This is starting to feel like an inquisition, she thinks, and a distinctly unpleasant one at that.
"I wanted it to be a surprise." She opts for, in the end. It's not the truth, not by a long shot, but based on the way his face relaxes just a little, it seems to be the right thing to say.
"Yeah. Definitely surprised."
He's still standing rather close to her, hasn't moved since that interrupted kiss, and he's beginning to look a bit uncomfortable with that fact. He shifts his weight slightly, and she takes the hint and steps away from him. She doesn't know, really, how she expected this conversation to go, isn't sure what she was hoping for. But she's becoming increasingly convinced that this is not the script, and that somehow, somewhere, something has gone awry.
"Clarke?" He interrupts her thoughts, that inscrutable mess of emotions still furrowing his brow.
"Yeah?"
"So I guess we don't need to sleep together any more?" She gasps at that, chokes a little on her own breath, as she tries to make sense of what he's really asking. But she can't do it, can't read his tone, can't make sense of his careful emphasis, and she curses for the thousandth time the fact that this man is no longer her Bellamy. She was so sure they were making progress, until this. She was so sure she was getting to know him again. And this is certainly the worst possible moment to find out that she was wrong.
She realises he must still be waiting for her reply. In her defence, she's still waiting too. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she's still hanging on for the rest of his sentence, presuming he's going to follow up with something along the lines of but maybe it'd be fun to keep doing it anyway.
He never does.
And there is no way she's going to say it herself. There is no way she is making herself vulnerable to him once more, no way she is putting her heart out there for him to disregard. She refuses to let the loss of this man send her unhinged ever again.
"I guess." She answers at last, tone neutral. It's not much, she knows, but it leaves the door open, at least. It leaves the door open for him to pursue the subject further, if he particularly wants too.
He doesn't. She knows this not because he says it, not in so many words. But because, for all that she can no longer read him, as he stalks out into the night without so much as a goodbye, the front door slamming behind him sends a pretty clear message.
…...
Clarke is in a rather calmer frame of mind, the following morning. She reminds herself carefully and often that Bellamy has ever been influenced by his emotions, and that storming out of her house is a much less devastating scenario than shooting three hundred grounders. Clearly, he got a bit hurt by her not sharing her news with him sooner, but that's OK. She can work with that.
She will have to work with that, because they will have to remain civil to parent Madi together. And, besides which, she fully intends to continue to care about him as a friend at least, even if he has made it clear that she is no longer supposed to care about him as a sexual partner. She is, therefore, entirely in control of the situation and her own emotions.
At least, she is control of the situation and her own emotions until she actually sees him.
As she walks with Madi into breakfast, late and a little flustered at the question of how she is to fit in dropping her daughter at school on the way to meet with Kane, her eyes catch on a familiar head of dark hair. He's facing away from her, but she'd recognise him anywhere, the set of his shoulders, the curve of his neck as he leans in close to his companion across the breakfast table.
As he leans in close to Echo.
She presumes the worst straight away, of course she does. Well, not the worst, because he's at perfect liberty to form romantic relationships with whomever he wishes, now that she has no further need of his contribution to conception. But she presumes, naturally, that the only reason he would be leaning across the table to engage in what is clearly a very private conversation with a woman he loved for several years is that they have picked up exactly where they left off.
She forces herself to take a few calming breaths. The Clarke of old would be unsurprised by this, she thinks. That less-unhinged creature of logic would have remembered that they were only sleeping together for the greater good, and would have expected him to return to the woman he chose as soon as their mission was accomplished. And that Clarke would have noted, too, that she is still in a much better situation than she was a couple of months ago. She has friends, now, and her daughter's future is secure, and really, she shouldn't wish for more.
But this Clarke had to go and get her hopes up. And somehow, even after he stormed out of her house last night, it is not until this moment that she starts to fear that something is very wrong, that perhaps it is not just sex that has disappeared from her life. Perhaps Bellamy himself will disappear too. Yesterday's dramatic exit she could easily attribute to his being a bit hurt about her secrecy, but nothing more serious. But if he's back with Echo, then Madi's dream of a perfect family is about to crumble around her ears.
That thought breaks through her distraction and galvanises her into action. She strides in front of Madi, trying to block her view, attempting to herd her towards a table some way distant where Miller and Jackson are eating together. It has been too long, she thinks, since she spent any social time with the pair of them and -
Too late. Madi is grinning at someone over her shoulder, is stepping round her and heading in the direction of the distressing scene she has just witnessed. Clarke spins on her heel, panic beginning to set in, and takes in the sight before her. Echo is waving at them, blatantly beckoning them over, a small but apparently genuine smile gracing her features.
Well, then. Things just got a little more complicated, to say the least.
With some trepidation, she follows her daughter towards the table. Bellamy seems to have noticed their approach, now, too, and has jumped to his feet and turned to them with a strained smile.
"Madi. Clarke." He greets them with every show of happiness. "I was just telling Echo about the patrol we're going on this afternoon, kid. We're off to sector five to look for wildfowl."
This is a bit odd, Clarke thinks. It is odd because wildfowl do not, in her experience, tend to merit the kind of obviously secretive discussion he was having with Echo as they arrived. And it is even odder because he has told them all this, at great speed and with a slightly flustered air, despite the fact that no one asked.
"I see." She offers neutrally, putting down her tray. She is about to take her seat when she finds herself being pulled into a quick hug, and notes that Bellamy seems to be kissing her on the cheek in greeting.
Odder and odder. Is she to understand that he stormed out of her home last night, but they are still on cheek-kissing terms?
She is silent for some minutes, as is Bellamy. Echo and Madi, on the other hand, are engrossed in a detailed discussion of the new bow Echo has recently acquired.
"How are you this morning?" Clarke eventually asks under her breath, hoping to gain some insight into what on Earth is going on.
"I'm good." He tells her, eating his porridge with a degree of enthusiasm she can't help but feel must be at least somewhat staged. "I'm looking forward to taking Madi out to look for wildfowl this afternoon."
"That sounds lovely." She says without conviction. She has had quite enough of those damn wildfowl, and of the emptiness of this conversation. Is he not going to acknowledge what happened less than twelve hours ago?
"How are you?"
She decides that she will join him in this game of trivialities he seems so set on playing. Surely that is only reasonable. "Not bad. A bit rushed, I need to get Madi to school and then make it to Kane's on time."
"When do you need to be there?"
She checks her watch. "Twenty minutes."
"Let me take Madi to school." He offers, some of that careful cheerfulness leaving his face at last to be replaced by an earnest desire to be of help. Thank goodness, she thinks. Now he looks slightly more like the Bellamy she knows.
"You would do that? Thank you, that would be great."
"No problem." He swallows the last of his breakfast. "You hear that, kid? I'll take you to school whenever you're done eating."
"I'm almost ready." Madi gestures to her bowl. Sure enough, she has bolted down her food with all the eagerness of a hungry adolescent. A hungry adolescent who doesn't like to be late for lessons, Clarke notes.
"What are your plans for the day, Echo?" Clarke forces herself to be polite. For all that she's pretty convinced there's something odd going on here, she certainly doesn't have rational grounds to be rude to Bellamy's former lover.
"Patrol in sector seven. Then teaching an archery class."
"That sounds good." Clarke offers. She feels she is supposed to say something.
"Can I join your class?" Madi asks, all enthusiasm, as she speaks through her final mouthful of porridge. "I'd love to learn how to shoot, and Bellamy always says you're really good when he's telling me stories about Spacekru."
Yes. Clarke rather imagines that he does.
"Maybe one day, Madi." Echo looks uncomfortable, Clarke thinks. Or maybe that's just her face. She's fast losing faith in her ability to read anyone at all, after last night.
"Not today." Bellamy suggests gently. "Let's get you to school. Come on."
Madi gathers her belongings and pulls her mother into a hug. And that is it, Clarke thinks. Goodbyes duly said, they will now be on their way without a backwards glance, and she will be left to eat her last couple of bites of breakfast in an excruciatingly awkward silence with Echo.
She's not far wrong. They do go on their way, and there isn't a backwards glance. But there is, of all things, another warm kiss on her cheek as Bellamy says goodbye. This is only getting odder, really, and she rather wonders where it will end.
The oddest thing is yet to come.
"I don't know why he's lying to you." Echo hisses as soon as Bellamy and Madi are out of earshot.
"Sorry?" She asks, both wondering what the other woman is on about, and also thinking she ought to apologise for the venom she is apparently feeling.
"We weren't talking about patrols or wildfowl or anything of the kind, the idiot." Well, then. Apparently the venom is directed at Bellamy. "He was telling me your news, how excited he is about the baby. And how he's grateful that I broke up with him and told him to make things right with you. And then he was starting to say something about whatever happened last night when you showed up and he decided to start lying to you."
"I see." She says, not really seeing at all. She is very much struggling, in fact, to make any sense of this whatsoever.
"I'm sure there's a reason he's being an idiot." Echo sounds, however, rather unsure.
"I don't know." Clarke says, and it is probably the most honest thing she has said since she told Bellamy she was pregnant ten hours ago.
"No. I don't think he does, either. But you'll get there, you always do. Good luck working it out."
"Thank you."
Well, at least there is a significant positive here, Clarke thinks. At least she can confirm that this is what friendship with a former enemy looks like.
…...
If they are going to get there, they are not going to get there soon, Clarke realises, as the week passes and Bellamy continues to behave in a frankly weird way. He still eats almost every meal with her and Madi, and greets her with one of those rather bizarre chaste cheek-kisses at every opportunity, and comes over to the house every evening to watch a movie or play chess.
But he never stays. Without fail, every night, the moment Madi is safely tucked up in bed he excuses himself and is out of the door almost before Clarke has taken a breath, almost before she has noticed that, yet again, she is to spend the night alone, with nothing but the ghost of his lips against her skin for company. And she misses the formerly rather energetic physical part of their relationship, of course she does, but by the end of the week she knows that it is not what she misses the most.
No, most of all she misses talking to him.
They still speak, of course, harmless conversations over the breakfast table that follow the pattern of that first morning chat about patrols and wildfowl, passing words when they walk by each other in Kane's office about when he will pick up Madi, happy family conversations with their daughter of an evening about books or films or games.
But they do not truly talk in as much as they discuss nothing of real significance. And this is only to be expected, she realises sadly, because the circumstances in which they used to talk so openly no longer exist. She looks back with fondness on the conversations they were sharing only eight days ago, in her bed, wrapped up in one another, sharing in the warm afterglow of sex.
At this rate, without those moments, centuries could pass without her ever truly getting to know him again.
For the first couple of days she is confused, but broadly optimistic. Surely, he wouldn't be going around kissing her on the cheek and being seen so much with her in public if he didn't still care about her? Her optimism begins to wane, however, as she reflects on that over the next couple of days. She's beginning to believe that being seen so much with her in public is a bit of a key part of the puzzle, actually. Because she can't help but notice that he's still pretty demonstrative while they're out and about, and that he always wears a careful smile in the village. But inside her own home, he's becoming increasingly withdrawn.
On the ninth night, he says goodbye without so much as that damn kiss on the cheek, and that troubles her.
It troubles her, too, that the rest of the village are starting to get wind of her pregnancy, are starting to approach her with their congratulations and tell her what a sweet family they make, but she has yet to tell Madi the news. She has just thought, all along, ever since the beginning that, when the time came, she and Bellamy would tell their daughter together.
She realises now that this was a foolish dream. She is in this alone, still, just as she always has been. Bellamy's reticence over the last week proves that, for all that he's playing happily families quite so carefully in public.
She decides that she will have to tell Madi herself. The following evening, Bellamy does not come over to fail to pretend to be happy. He takes himself instead to the bar, and to Murphy's company, and Clarke cannot help feeling a certain sense of good riddance. Spending so much of this last week with a man who is at once Bellamy and somehow not Bellamy has been exhausting. She will therefore take advantage of this occasion to share the news with her daughter.
"Madi? Can we talk?" She asks the girl as she is sketching a fearsome version of her Aunt Octavia wielding a sword.
"Sure." She appears to hear nothing amiss in her tone.
"I have some news for you. I'm – I'm pregnant. And we think the baby is you, so you should be safe now."
"I know." She says, without missing a beat. "Dad told me."
"He did what?" She cannot believe that he would take it upon himself to make this announcement without her.
"He told me. A couple of days ago." Clarke evidently does not do a very good job of hiding her fury at this, as her daughter takes on a conciliatory tone. "Don't be annoyed with him, Mum. He thought I already knew. He thought you'd already told me."
Madi's instruction not to be annoyed is destined to go unheeded, it seems. "He could have tried asking. He could have tried talking to me about it."
"You could have tried talking to him." Madi points out mildly.
No, Clarke thinks sadly. She honestly doesn't believe she could.
…...
That revelation certainly doesn't make things better, in the days that follow. Clarke was aware that any sense of romance she might have imagined was a part of their relationship had long since evaporated into hopeless fantasies, but it isn't until that conversation with Madi that she comes to realise they're not even that good at parenting together.
Occasionally, she catches herself wondering how they ever managed to lead a camp together. Then she remembers that the Clarke and Bellamy who used to lead, back on Earth, and this vastly incompatible Clarke and Bellamy who live on Sanctum now, are very different people. Their names endure, yes, but sometimes she thinks that is all that is left of the team they used to be.
It hurts more, in some ways, than it did before. Before his forgiveness, and before they had a go at caring for each other. Because she knows what she's missing, now, knows what it's like to have a pretend relationship with that man who shares a name with one she used to love. She knows how his lips feel, and how his hips feel, and can virtually still taste that birthday surprise they shared only weeks ago.
It hurts, too, because from the outside, it seems there is nothing wrong. She knows this because none of their friends and family have noticed a thing, blinded as they are by the perfect display of a perfect family that they are putting on. She knows, in fact, that things look better than ever from the outside, since they have started sharing the good news of her pregnancy. And so it is that she is bearing this alone, unable to tolerate the thought of bursting the bubble of happiness that their loved ones are feeling on their behalf. Bearing it alone, as she is beginning to realise she will always, ultimately, bear everything.
Two weeks have passed since that pregnancy test when Bellamy shows up at Medical to collect Madi and Abby shows herself as oblivious as ever.
"Bellamy, how are you today?" Clarke groans internally at her mother's perky greeting, and prepares herself for the challenge of accepting his chaste cheek-kiss with equanimity.
"I'm good." He presses his lips briskly against her skin in between answering her mother's question. "Had a great morning beating Murphy at shooting."
"That sounds like you." Clarke says with a careful laugh. "What are you planning for this afternoon?"
"Fishing. Do you want to come?" She blinks at that, allows herself to consider for a heartbeat whether the invitation is genuine. Whether perhaps, hidden behind all of this odd awkwardness, the man who cares about her might still be holding out hope.
"No thanks." She knows it is the correct answer. "See you later."
"Yeah." He shuffles his feet a little, and she wonders what's going on. This looks almost like nervousness, and doesn't seem at all to fit with the ostentatious joy they have been practising of late.
"What is it?"
"Are you sure you don't want to go fishing? Or – or maybe we could do a family day out some time this week?" She's trying not to look surprised at his question, but she's not sure it's working for her. "It's been a while." He adds in a whisper.
"That sounds great." Madi jumps in. "We haven't been on adventure since your birthday."
"It does sound lovely." Abby agrees.
It doesn't sound lovely, Clarke frets. It sounds awkward, and exhausting, and she thinks it will only make her realise even more starkly how much things have changed in the last fortnight.
But, on the other hand, if she's very lucky, maybe they might use this as an opportunity to try speaking to each other. Maybe, if the universe will allow it, they might even be able to start getting there.
a/n Thanks for reading!