a/n Thank you lovely readers and reviewers, for being lovely and reading and reviewing. Huge thanks, too, to Stormkpr for betaing once again. Happy reading!
Clarke stops trying after that. Of course she does. She's only human, and the fates seem determined to test her to the limit of her sanity. Well, that limit is fast approaching. And she is going to back away from the precipice before she goes tumbling, unhinged, over the edge.
She doesn't call him again, sends Madi instead with cheerful encouragements and the message that she has far too much to do in Medical. And then she sits at her desk, and gazes blankly out of the window, and tortures herself by wondering what the two people she cares about the most on this moon are discussing without her.
He comes home in one piece, thank the heavens, and right on schedule, and she is in Kane's office discussing food supplies as the whole group of them walk in to report back. And so, of course, she greets him with a careful smile and proffers her cheek for that damn peck.
Yes, just as she expected. Just as cold as she remembers.
And then because these are soldiers, about to make their report on a mission, she excuses herself and runs out into the night.
After all, things that might get people killed are just another area she has given up on.
…...
Bellamy seems to take the hint, after that, and maintains a little more distance. He is even more physically distant, too, and those public displays of what one might expect from a happy couple decrease in number even further. And this is good, of course it is, because she was finding all that rather exhausting, but all the same it has her worried. Will people realise, now, that something is wrong?
It is with this thought in mind that she starts to avoid interacting with him in public, makes a point of minimising occasions where they will be expected to be together. She is determined, for example, that there will be no more family outings, at least until she has her emotions back on a slightly more even keel. She just can't face the thought, right now, when she's still getting her head around the changed state of their relationship. And it's probably her hormones, too, she jumps to reassure herself, that's probably something to do with the fact she keeps finding herself crying at nothing in particular.
Unfortunately, no one seems to have told their family that a family outing is not on the cards.
It is easy enough to put off her mother. She points out that she is busy, as is Kane, and that really it's a bit too cold, now that winter has set in, for a family outing to be an enjoyable thing. There will be more family excursions when spring comes, she promises, and the flowers are blooming and everyone is less preoccupied with the question of how they are to keep Sanctum fed.
It is harder to put off Octavia.
"Clarke." The woman she occasionally tortures herself by thinking of as a sister-in-law plops into a seat opposite her at lunch. "Long time no see."
"I've been busy." It's not that far from the truth, after all.
"Yes. So my brother tells me." Octavia has her brow quirked, as if inviting reply, but when Clarke does not speak she presses on. "So when are we next taking Madi out for the day?"
She chokes a little on what she thinks is a parsnip, and tells herself that it is a good thing that Octavia is feeling secure enough in her place in the family, these days, to try to initiate cheerful days out.
"I'm afraid I'm busy for the next couple of weeks. I've got to help Kane keep everyone fed through the winter, you understand, and with this weather more people are needing Medical attention, too." None of those things are lies, as such, but she has to admit that she might perhaps be stretching the facts somewhat.
"Oh." Octavia's face falls. "I'm sorry to hear that. I think – taking Madi out always does all of us good, you know?"
"Yeah." She seems to remember that might be true, actually, but there's no point dwelling on the happy memory of Bellamy's birthday too long. "You know, you'd be welcome to spend some time with her while I'm busy. Go out with her and your brother, have a Blake family day out."
She does want her daughter to be happy, after all. And she wants Octavia to be happy, too, and Bellamy, and all the people she cares about. She's only struggling a little to be happy with them, just now.
"That would be OK?"
"Of course. Madi would really enjoy that."
"Great." Octavia is grinning from ear to ear, and Clarke wonders what that feels like. It's been too long since she last experienced happiness like that. "I'll have a chat to Bellamy about it."
Clarke is only too glad that Octavia volunteers for that task. Chatting to Bellamy is one duty she is sadly struggling to fulfil, of late.
…...
Days pass, and become weeks, and Clarke is so busy with her less-than-necessary tasks that she scarcely notices the stretching of time. It's only reasonable, she tells herself, to spend quite so many hours in Medical and in Kane's office. She doesn't have a foolish social life to waste her time on, since she stopped hanging out with Bellamy, and started avoiding their mutual friends for risk of being forced to closer to that edge of unhinging. And her daughter is surrounded by people who love her, and is taken on adventures by her father or aunt or grandparents almost every afternoon and the vast majority of evenings. And Clarke makes sure to spend some quality time with her every couple of days, of course she does, but it seems only fair to let the girl catch up on the time she missed with these other relatives who were not around when she was younger.
The only inconvenience of her pregnancy so far seems to be this emotional upheaval. She is certain that her expectant state is the primary cause of her tearfulness and low spirits, and that this estrangement from the baby's father is only a relatively small part of the problem - after all, it was specifically to avoid distress that she shielded her heart from him in that fateful conversation about their no-longer-necessary sex life that is now fading into the mists of time.
She's three months pregnant now, and she can scarcely believe it. She's experienced no nausea to speak of, and is yet untouched by aches and pains.
No, she has only these damn tears that keep leaking inexplicably from her eyes to trouble her.
And Raven. It seems she has Raven to trouble her, too.
"Clarke. It's me." Her friend announces herself as she marches into Medical.
"Yes." She agrees mildly, blinking away a few rogue tears as she reads a great deal of nothing on the screen before her.
"You're coming to the bar tonight." Raven informs her, tone strident. "I can't remember the last time you came out to have fun. Emori reckons it's not since Bellamy's birthday but that can't be right. So you're coming out tonight."
"I can't come tonight." She fishes for an excuse, finds none, and presses on regardless. "It's silly to come to the bar when I'm pregnant and can't drink."
"You were pregnant and couldn't drink the last time anyone actually remembers seeing you there."
That catches her on the back foot. She pauses, looks up into Raven's eyes, then realises that doing so is a colossal mistake. Her friend looks really rather concerned.
"I don't want to." She says, voice beginning to quiver. "I don't want to come and have fun, because I don't feel very fun."
Somehow, suddenly, Raven is hugging her, and that's a bit unexpected. She supposes they're as close as two people can be with the history they share, but hugging is still not something they bother with very often. And certainly not this prolonged and rather intense kind of hugging.
"I know, Clarke. I know." Raven murmurs reassuringly. "But it will do you good to get out and see people. You've been working too hard, and being pregnant can't be easy. If you won't do it for yourself, at least take a night off for the sake of the baby's health."
Now that, she can do. That, in fact, she can agree to all too easily. She needs this baby to be OK more than she needs anything else in this life.
"OK, then." She pulls away from the hug and wipes a hand across her eyes. "I guess I'll see you tonight."
…...
It is probably the last time, she thinks, that she will be able to wear her preciously practical dress for quite some months. It is a little snug around the breasts already, but the flared skirt still flows perfectly smoothly over the very slight curve of her belly. She knows it's a bit excessive, to put her dress on just to drink water with her friends, but something in Raven's words about it doing her good to get out and see people has touched a nerve. Perhaps, she thinks, it might do her good to put on a dress, too, to make a little effort and try to enjoy herself. And she expects that the company for the evening will be Raven and Echo and Emori, and they are just the sort of supportive friends who she supposes will comment cheerfully on her outfit without making too much fuss. At least, she thinks they're supportive friends. She's seen so little of them recently that she can't entirely remember.
She drops Madi with Abby and Marcus, and sets out for the bar. She's a little later than she would have liked, having wasted precious seconds in talking herself into putting on this dress, but at least that means that she will have to endure less of the evening than if she'd arrived early, she supposes.
She makes it to the bar, heads to their usual table. The decor seems to have changed a little in the last three months, she notes, a few items of optimistic artwork adorning the walls and making the place look a bit less – well – makeshift. And then she returns her gaze to the table, takes in Raven and Echo and Emori, just as she expected them. Takes in Murphy, too, and that's OK. She can deal with Murphy.
Realises that, of course, her daughter's father is sitting there, as well, his back to her as he chats to Raven.
"Clarke." Echo is the first to greet her, and at the sound of her name, Bellamy's head turns so quickly she is surprised he does not clutch his neck in pain.
"Clarke." He echoes, as he jumps to his feet, shifts a little as if not quite sure what to do now.
Apparently reaching a decision, he pulls her into a quick hug, gives her a quick peck on the cheek.
"I didn't know you'd be here." He offers by way of greeting, eyes faintly narrowed in Raven's general direction.
"I didn't know you'd be here." She throws back at him, eyes very much narrowed and boring, she hopes, something of a hole in Raven's forehead. She can't believe that her friend has set this up, has engineered this moment to throw them into each other's company. And no doubt they will all be watching the two of them, will be ready to over-analyse every awkward interaction between them and -
"It's good to see you." He says, sounding almost as if he actually means it, and that seems a bit odd. He saw her only hours ago when he dropped off Madi, and he hardly bothered saying a word to her, then.
"You, too." She lies carefully, before taking her seat.
The conversation starts up again around them, some cheerful discussion of a young man in Echo's archery class who's so incompetent that he hit a nearby tree instead of the target.
"He sounds ridiculous." Raven crows, accidentally a little unkind, Clarke thinks, as she sometimes can be. "You should throw him out of the class."
"He's quite sweet, though." Echo offers thoughtfully, gaze fixed on her drink.
"Sweet?" Emori repeats with an air of disbelief. "You didn't say he was sweet earlier, you said he was hot."
"Maybe I did."
"Something you want to tell us, Echo?" Murphy prods her with a coaster for good measure.
"Not yet." She says with a grin. "I'll keep you posted."
"You should invite him out for drinks with us." Raven suggests, even as Clarke prays for the floor to rise up and swallow her. She is not ready, she thinks to gossip about the possibility of Bellamy's former lover starting a new relationship. She just came here to sip water and put on a smile.
"Yeah." Bellamy agrees with Raven, smile warm. "Bring him out to meet us some time."
"Would you be OK with that?" Echo asks outright, never one to avoid the difficult questions.
Clarke envies her for that, in this moment.
"Of course." Bellamy seems to find it the easiest question in the world to answer. "You deserve to be happy."
"I was hoping you'd say that. Now that you two are together I thought that maybe I should try meeting someone new."Together? The two of them? What planet is Echo living on, exactly?
Bellamy, of course, gives no sign that anything is amiss. "Good for you."
Clarke stares into her water and waits for the evening to be over. She is fed up, she decides, of everyone choosing to believe that all is well. She is about ready to scream, or to break down in tears right here in the middle of having fun, and if one more -
"You know something?" Bellamy's voice breaks into her thoughts, pitched low in a whisper as he leans towards her a little. "That dress was my favourite birthday present. I should have told you at the time but – well – I guess it's too late now."
She swallows back tears at that. Not at the idea it's too late now, nor even at the thought that so much has changed. No, she can't quite process the fact that this dress was his favourite present, when she was so sure at the time that he enjoyed even more the birthday surprise that followed it, when she sucked him off, kneeling at his feet upon rough carpet.
She supposes that's just another thing she thought she knew about him that is, it turns out, absolutely and completely incorrect.
…...
Bellamy still comes over to their home, albeit rather less often. Increasingly he takes Madi out for the afternoon, or even invites her to his quarters for the evening, so when he shows up in Medical to insist that, tonight, he really must spend the evening with them at their house, Clarke begins to suspect that something is afoot.
She asks no questions, though, because asking difficult questions is Echo's talent, not hers, these days. She seems to remember that she was a rather braver woman once, too, more prone to probing where it wasn't expected of her, but she's just so damn tired of taking all the risks that life can throw at her. She therefore agrees in a distinctly placid manner, and he appears at the door, and Madi chooses a film, and the evening passes much as such evenings do.
The film concludes, and Madi gets to her feet.
"I guess it's bedtime? Am I seeing you tomorrow, Dad?"
"That's – that's actually why I wanted to come over tonight, kid. I'm going away for a while tomorrow." Clarke feels the air rush out of her chest, but Madi seems far less bothered by this development.
"You are? Where? How long for?" Madi asks, all curiosity.
"North again. To find out how the Titans are behaving now that it's the middle of winter. For a week, hopefully, and we'll have the lazer-comm so we can speak whenever you want."
"Cool. Are you excited?"
"Yeah." She's pretty convinced that's not the truth, but it's not her place to determine that, she supposes.
"Cool. Well, stay safe. And I'll see you next week."
With that, Madi pulls him into a hug that lasts, perhaps, a moment longer than usual, and then she is gone, and in the silence that she leaves behind her Clarke could swear she can hear her own panicked heartbeat.
"When were you going to tell me?" She asks, trying very hard to keep control of her voice. "And why do you keep doing this, anyway? What happened to staying with your family?"
"My family doesn't seem to need me anymore." He bites out. "You didn't seem to care, last time I went."
"I think we've established that I always care, even when I do a terrible job of showing it." She reminds him, tone bitter.
"That's an understatement."
"What?" She's lost track of what he means, yet again.
"You've been doing a pathetic job of showing it, recently."
"Like you've been any better." She shoots back at him, before she can allow herself to think too hard about the truth of his words.
"At least I've been trying." He snaps, voice rising in pitch and volume to the point that she's pretty sure Madi can hear them. Heavens, she's pretty sure the whole village can hear them. "Do you have any idea how infuriating it is, the way you always hide your emotions? I think you're even hiding them from yourself, half the time. It's impossible. How is anyone supposed to get close to you?"
They're not, of course. That's the answer. If no one gets close to her, then losing them can't send her unhinged. But she senses that he wouldn't find that a very helpful comment right now, so she brushes his words under the metaphorical carpet and sits there in stony silence.
"I'm done with this. I am more than done with this. I am going to go and do something useful with my life. Kane needs me to lead this mission, and I do not let people down. And right now, going and fighting a herd of Titans sounds a damn sight easier than raising a child with you."
The door slams again, of course. He's getting good at that, now.
…...
It takes a lot of energy, not dwelling on what Bellamy has said to her, but she manages it. She manages it very well indeed in the first couple of days that he is away, keeping herself busy with entirely useful tasks like calculating how long their stock of bandages will last and experimenting with the use of Jacksonia in a poultice. She manages it perfectly well, in fact, until her daughter goes to call him on the lazer-comm.
She does not accompany her. There does not seem a lot of point, if he is done with this. She sits at home, and draws sketches of Wells and Finn, Jasper and Lexa, Monty and Harper. There is something oddly comforting, in moments like this, about drawing the people she has lost. Now that these people are dead, she cannot lose them again.
Not like Bellamy whom, it seems, she is destined to just keep on losing, time after time after time.
There is the sound of a key in the lock. Her daughter reenters the house, and bowls into the living room, and wraps her in a very firm and extremely zealous hug. And she's a bit confused, really, because she said goodbye to her scarcely an hour ago and this seems like a slightly excessive greeting for such a short separation.
"Are you OK?" Clarke asks carefully.
"Yeah. I'm good. That was from Dad."
"It was?" She cannot make sense of this. What was from him, exactly?
"Yeah. He gave me a message for you. He said to give you a really big hug and then tell you that he's really sorry, and that going on the mission was his only choice. He said you'd know what that meant."
"Yes." She allows herself to hope, because she doesn't think there is any other way of interpreting that message. "I think I do."
"Good."
"How – how is he?"
"Why don't you go ask him for yourself?"
"Madi, please." She knows she sounds desperate. That's because she is. "Is he OK?"
"He's fine. Cold, he said, but safe and sound, and no sign of the Titans yet. They're beginning to wonder if they hibernate. And he said – he said he's missing us. Both of us."
He is? What happened to being done with this? She shakes herself mentally, and comes to a decision.
"Madi? When you go to speak to him next – would it be OK if I came with you?"
"I knew you'd say that." Her daughter says, grinning triumphantly. "I told him we'd both be there tomorrow. He didn't believe me, bet me a new book that I couldn't get you to speak to him." Well, then. That settles it.
"Looks like you're about to win yourself a new book, then, honey."
…...
Clarke's intention is to stop by the workshop the following evening, on the way to supper. That is a conventional time of day for social lazer-comm calls, she seems to remember.
She doesn't last that long, in the end. Not even vaguely. Instead she suggests to Madi that they take a quick detour on the way to breakfast, and tries to ignore the amused glint in her daughter's eyes.
"I knew it would all turn out like this." The girl teases her joyfully. "I knew you'd both stop being idiots eventually. Come on, Mum. Let's go make Dad's week."
That might be a bit optimistic, Clarke thinks, but all the same she walks willingly towards the workshop with Madi. And she allows herself, in the light of her daughter's sunny outlook, to take a second look at a few of the things that have happened in the last couple of months. Considers, in particular, that last argument they had before he left, and that message he sent via their daughter.
Allows herself to wonder, just for a moment, whether maybe he was trying, after all.
They soon arrive at the door to the workshop, and open it, and step inside. And Clarke is rather surprised to see quite so many people here at such an early hour. At least some combination of Emori and Raven and Shaw and some of these other folks she vaguely recognises from engineering must be on duty, she supposes, tasked with staying on standby at the comms unit. But surely not as many as this. And she can't for the life of her work out why Kane is here, nor Jackson, nor the half a dozen military men she does not know as well as she would, if she were doing what Bellamy apparently thinks would be more useful.
Why on Earth are they all here before breakfast? And deep in conversation, too, heads close together, a murmur of concerned chatter filling the air.
Something is wrong, here. Something is very, very wrong.
"Hello?" She speaks up from her place near the door, and a couple of dozen heads look up to take in the two of them.
"Clarke. Madi." Kane begins to cross the floor to them, Raven hot on his heels.
"We were just here to speak to Bellamy." Clarke says with some trepidation.
"Yes. Well." Kane shifts from foot to foot, clearly uncomfortable to say the least. "He's a little late for check-in. Nothing to worry about, we hope."
She feels the ground shift beneath her, staggers sideways into Raven. Notes that Emori seems to be there, too, with an arm around her shoulders. There definitely is something to worry about. The presence of so many people and so many concerned expressions makes it plain as plain can be. But she mustn't fall apart completely, she reminds herself. She has to stay strong for Madi.
Has to keep it together for her little girl, whose father is currently out there in goodness only knows what kind of trouble, and thinking she hates him, to boot.
If he's even still alive, that is.
She tries in vain to gather her scattered thoughts, but it is no good. She is beset by images of everything from Bellamy's face against the pillows of her bed to his arm ripped open by one of those savage beasts, and it is sending her head spinning at a mile a minute.
"Why don't I take Madi to school?" Jackson offers, stepping forward, clearly taking the news of Miller's disappearance rather more stoically than she is taking Bellamy's. He's had longer to adjust to the news, perhaps. And it seems unlikely that he thinks Miller died hating him. "I think you'd rather be at school than sit here waiting for news, yes?"
"Yeah." The girl agrees easily, somehow seeming much less stricken than Clarke finds herself. "Thanks, Jackson. I'll see you later, Mum? And you can tell me what news there is then."
The two of them exit the workshop, and Clarke finds herself sitting on a chair that has at some point been acquired from somewhere, looking up at Kane's concerned face. She has only one question, somehow, only one thought that is clear enough in her mind to bother expressing.
"How late is a little late?"
Marcus swallows with visible difficulty. "Eight hours late."
She loses the plot completely at that, weeps and crumples against her chair even while Raven tries to tell her that the news is not necessarily as bad as all that. Maybe they have just had a technical problem with the comms unit, she suggests. In fact, they are likely all alive and well, only unable to get in touch with them. And if that is the case, they could well be back at the village within days.
She doesn't bother replying. She is too busy weeping, and sorting through her thoughts, and coming to a rather ill-timed realisation that she has, without doubt, been an idiot. That she realises it now should come as no surprise to her, she supposes. Timing has never been their best thing.
Kane moves away eventually, heads to his office to decide what is to be done now. Raven goes back to the comms unit, to tinkering with it in the hopes of revealing whether the problem is a technical one. Clarke stares at the floor, and counts the specks of dust, and reaches a decision that, of course, comes all too easily now that Bellamy might well be dead.
She promises to herself, and to any deity who might still care about the human race, that if she gets another chance to make things right with Bellamy she won't blow it. She knows she had her second chance a long time ago. And it's not her third chance, either, or her fourth, or even her seventh.
But if he comes home, she won't ever push him away again.
a/n Thanks for reading!