a/n Thank you, lovely reviewers - shout out to the wonderful Cookie who always reviews but I can't PM you my thanks! Yes, those last couple of months did fly by, but the timeline is going to slow down a little again now that Clarke is about to start actually speaking to people once more...

Thanks to Stormkpr for betaing once again. Happy reading!

Madi copes with the uncertainty that follows rather better than Clarke does. That's not saying much, really, though, because Clarke does not cope. She struggles enough for the first week, while everyone around her is insisting that the missing team are probably fine but just having a technical problem.

Then the day that they ought to have arrived home comes and goes, and she finds herself falling apart completely. The irony of this is not lost on her, given everything she has done in recent months in the name of avoiding any opportunity for the loss of this man to send her unhinged, but she is too overwrought to escape her fate on this occasion. The knowledge that Bellamy is, most likely, dead, and that he died thinking that she hated him, is the worst thing that's ever happened to her, she thinks.

And that's saying something, given her life story.

She tries in vain to convince Kane to let her set out to look for them. She could take Raven's rover, she argues, at least part of the way until the ground becomes impassible, and that way she might find them quickly and easily. Or at least find the bodies, and something approaching closure.

Kane is having none of it. He tells her in no uncertain terms that it is too great a risk, that he cannot send yet more troops out there when he does not know what has become of the original team. That this spell of heavy snow is not suitable for a search and rescue mission. And that, above all, there is no way she is going out there pregnant. He must see in her eyes, though, that she is set on doing it anyway. That she will run out of this village barefoot and alone if that is what it takes to find the man she realises, too late, she ought to have kissed goodbye.

But then, of course, Kane reminds her about Madi. That the adolescent Madi needs her mother, and that the unborn Madi needs her to stay safe and well. Reminds her, too, that there is no way Bellamy would want her to risk her own or her child's wellbeing on such a fool's errand.

Reminds her that nothing mattered to him more than his family.

That is what does it, actually. It's that casual use of the past tense, the knowledge that even Kane has given up on them ever coming home.

It is time to tell Madi that her father is dead.

…...

Clarke wonders why it always seems to snow when her life is going to pieces. She remembers the snow that lay about them before Praimfaiya, cannot help but compare it to the snow she sees falling now, beyond the window, as she sits on the sofa beside her daughter and prepares to break the bad news to her. The girl should be out playing in that snow, she thinks, not sitting here about to have her youthful optimism shattered. And she knows that this is what will happen, because her daughter's outlook has been a little too positive for her own good since Bellamy went missing. She keeps talking about what they will do when her father gets back, oblivious to the way those around her are so careful, instead, to make plans based only on if.

"Madi." She begins carefully. "We need to talk about something."

"So talk." Her daughter barely looks up from the book she is reading, a loan from Bellamy before he walked out into the winter.

"It seems that – that your dad probably isn't going to come home, Madi. I'm so sorry, really but... but we think he must be dead." It is a struggle to get the words out through her tears, even though she has rehearsed for this.

"You're wrong." She says calmly, turning a page.

"What?" This is hardly the hysterical response she was expecting.

"You're wrong, and I'm a bit disappointed in you, to be honest, Mum. Of course he's coming home. He always does. Wasn't that the point of all those bedtime stories you used to tell me?"

"Madi -"

"It's what the flame tells me, too." Her daughter sounds annoyed now, and she can't really see any grounds for that. Maybe it's just grief, she supposes, surfacing as denial.

"What do you mean?"

"The flame tells me that I should always have faith in Bellamy. That he always comes through. And I hardly think Lexa would want you to give up on him now."

She feels the force of that as an almost physical slap. "Madi -"

"No, Mum. You don't get to give up on him. I know the rest of this stupid village already have, but you are supposed to believe in him." Maybe it is just denial, she reminds herself firmly, but all the same it seems to have stirred something within her.

She has given up on him too easily in the past. It is true. Isn't that what she found herself realising, the moment Kane told her he'd gone missing?

Surely, then, she ought to support her daughter in not giving up on him now.

"Maybe, Madi. Maybe you're right. I – I don't know." She cries a little more, wonders how to continue speaking. "I don't know what to think, any more. All this is just such a mess, and I feel so guilty. Because – because I fell out with him, just before he left."

It is somehow a relief to get the words off her chest, and she begins to relax into this comforting heart to heart with her daughter.

She is rather shocked, therefore, at the girl's angry response. "Be honest, Clarke. You fell out with him three months ago."

…...

It only gets harder, after that. Madi is annoyed with her for her lack of faith and her lack of honesty. Raven is annoyed with her for her excess of fretting and excess of loitering in the workshop, still somehow vainly hoping that a message might come through on the lazer-comm. And most of all, Clarke is annoyed with herself, for making such a mess of that precious chance at a peaceful family life. But it is, she observes sadly, very typical of her to have done so. She's never been much good at realising how much she cares about anyone until she has lost them.

Echo is, somehow, the only person not visibly annoyed with her. She can't quite make sense of that one. Perhaps that friendship, that bond of caring for the same man, runs deeper than she thought. Or perhaps her friend is struggling with the guilt of staying home while that team went out without her, just as she is struggling with the guilt of that ill-timed argument.

It is two weeks, now, to the day, since Bellamy left on that supposedly week-long mission. Madi is asleep – or is, at least, hiding in her bedroom and using her early night as an excuse to avoid her mother's miserable company – and Clarke is sitting on the sofa and reading a book that belonged to her daughter's father. She didn't used to be a big fan of reading, she seems to remember. But they say that grief can change a person, and besides which, borrowing his books makes her feel close to him, somehow. He might well be dead in a snowdrift somewhere, but if she closes her eyes, she can almost smell him by her side and -

She starts from her reverie, thinks she heard a noise. It sounded like the key turning in the lock, but that doesn't seem at all likely. There are only three people on this moon who have a key to that front door, and the only two still alive are already in the house just now.

But then there is another noise. A noise which is, unmistakably, a particular, familiar, knock at the door.

She has jumped to her feet and dashed out into the corridor before he has even got the door closed behind him. And sure enough, it is Bellamy, and he is very evidently not dead. No, he is alive, and well as far as she can see, with no visible injuries beyond a bit of windburn marring the curves of his cheeks and the tip of his nose. And his beard has grown out a bit, of course, and his hair is dishevelled and he has quite obviously been wearing the same filthy set of clothes for the last fortnight. But as he shifts his weight nervously, a hint of a smile playing about his lips, she thinks he might just be the most beautiful sight she has ever seen.

There is only one appropriate response to this development, of course. She throws herself at him. There is no other word for the way that she winds her arms around his neck and presses her lips to his in a kiss that is three months overdue.

For a heartbeat, she is worried about kissing him. What if he pries her arms gently from around him, tells her kindly that he cares about her in a rather less kissing sort of a way?

No, that's not worth worrying about. Not in the grand scheme of things, not compared to the dead-in-a-drift concerns of the last fourteen days. A polite rejection from her closest friend is a risk worth running, she thinks, in the interests of honesty, and of trying.

And as it turns out, she needn't have worried at all. Sure, he stays frozen for perhaps half a second, apparently struggling somewhat to process this development. But then his arms close around her waist, and his lips begin to respond to hers, eager and urgent, desperate, even.

It is, without doubt, the best kiss she has experienced in centuries. Perhaps even the best kiss she has experienced in lifetimes.

He breaks away eventually, and she swallows back disappointment. They do need to talk at some point, she supposes, but she was really rather enjoying that and -

It turns out he has pulled back only far enough to scatter kisses down her neck, to start exploring towards her collarbone and then her chest. This, she can cope with, she decides rather easily.

"Are you OK?" She asks, while her mouth is not occupied. "We thought – we thought you were -"

"Shh." He murmurs against her skin. "I'm alright."

She sighs in relief as he moves away from her neck and back up to look her in the eye.

"We can talk later. But – I'd quite like to keep kissing you now, if that's OK?"

By way of response, she closes the gap between them. And she's missed him really rather a lot, and is really quite excited that he's back from being missing-presumed-dead, so it shouldn't come as any great surprise when her hands get a bit bolder, start exploring his firm back beneath his shirt, or start pulling his hips flush against her. And, to his credit, he doesn't seem surprised by this. Not at all. He simply gets on with caressing the curve of her bum, with brushing his fingers softly against her breasts, with whispering her name against her lips in between kisses.

Confidence bolstered by these developments, growing increasingly convinced that they are, in fact, on the same page, she reaches for his belt.

"Are – are you sure?" He asks, and she steels herself to be open and honest. To put her heart out there, and know he won't let her fall apart. It's what she should have tried months ago, she has come to realise while he's been gone, and she very much intends to make up for lost time now.

She nods, once, and his face relaxes into an expression even she can read. He looks, she thinks, utterly delighted.

"I don't want to hurt the baby." He mutters, apparently expending a great deal of effort on trying to be sensible, trying to convince his head to rule his heart.

She's done with that. She is so, completely, done with that.

"We'll work it out." She tells him with certainty. "We always do."

They definitely do work it out, on this occasion. She makes short work of stripping him, and he makes short work of stripping her, and she is so excited that she does not even bother pausing to observe that he smells like a dead Titan carcass.

Not that she's ever smelled one of those, to be fair. He smells like she imagines a dead Titan carcass would smell.

But this is hardly the moment to dwell on such things, as she leads him to the sofa, and pushes him back against the cushions, and climbs into his lap. And he welcomes her with open arms, quite literally, holding her close and scattering kisses across her face, then twisting to nuzzle into her chest, and it's so much happiness that she thinks her heart might just burst.

Wanting him to feel some of that happiness, she reaches a tentative hand down to explore the length of his cock.

"You might not want to do that." He suggests with a strained chuckle. "This might not last very long if you do that."

"I'm not sure this is going to last very long anyway." She points out. They're both panting between kisses already, and he's not even inside of her yet.

She reckons it's probably time to do something about that. She rearranges her legs, lowers herself rather less carefully than would probably have been wise onto the length of him. Kisses him hard, swallowing his groan. Makes a start on rising and falling against him, urged on by his hands which seem to be everywhere, now on her butt helping her to find her rhythm, now on her nipples, driving her to distraction. And he's moaning her name, and it sounds every bit as good as she remembers. She's crying out his name, too, aware that Bellamy has rather too many syllables to roll easily off the tongue in a moment of passion, but too ecstatic to care.

She was right. It doesn't last long, on this occasion. She's been riding him for scarcely minutes when she feels herself fall unhinged in the most beautiful of ways, enjoys clenching around him for all she is worth. And he's there, too, burying his face in her hair and choking on a strangled gasp. It is, she notes, a new contender for the shortest screw of her life. But somehow, right now, that doesn't seem like a bad thing.

After all, it gives them more left of this night, more time to try again. And again and again and again, perhaps.

"Welcome home." She whispers, when she can speak once more.

He holds her even tighter at that, something she didn't realise was possible until he does it.

"I missed you." He tells her, voice raw from sex and emotion and, she thinks, possibly also a few tears.

"I missed you, too. I'm so sorry, Bellamy. For – for before."

"I think I got that." He tells her, and she can hear his smile. "I'm sorry, too. Good job forgiveness is what we do best?"

"Yeah." She answers the question she knows he is asking, wondering all the while if, perhaps, she ought to climb out of his lap eventually.

As if he has read her mind, he reaches for a kiss, and then starts easing her off of him. She is about to protest, to tell him that she'd quite like to stay here all night, when it becomes clear that all he has in mind is rearranging her into a slightly more sustainable position, sprawled across his thighs, legs out along the sofa.

She is, of course, only too willing to comply.

She wraps his arms around her – just in case has hasn't taken any of the hints she has dropped so far – and asks the questions that have been on her mind since he opened the door.

"What happened? How are you here?"

"Kane sent me." It seems he has rather misunderstood the thrust of her question. She didn't mean here, in the house. She meant here as in alive. "He ordered me, actually, to come straight here and tell you I was OK. He seemed to think you might want to see me."

"He was right."

"I gathered."

"But that wasn't what I meant. I meant what happened out there? You've been missing for weeks but you come back unhurt?"

"A lot of snow happened, that's the short version of the story. We couldn't get back. And Miller dropped the comms unit in a river, that didn't exactly help."

Something in the flippancy of his tone breaks her. "Do you have any idea how worried we were? Not even worried. We – we thought you were dead. I thought you were dead. I thought you were lying there in a snowdrift somewhere, and that you'd died thinking I hated you."

"Hey." He presses warm kisses to her hairline between words. "Hey, it's OK, though. I'm here. And I'm OK. I'll always come back to you, Clarke. You know that."

"That's what Madi said. She's – she's a bit angry with me. I didn't do a very good job of having faith in you."

"As long as you didn't start a relationship with someone else while I was gone, you've got me beaten." She can hear the nervousness in his voice, hear that this is perhaps his greatest fear.

Why did she ever let herself believe she couldn't read him, anyway? What are a few months of miscommunication set against all the time that has passed between them?

"I didn't." She confirms easily, decides it's time for another kiss and gets to work on that.

A few more minutes pass, minutes of lazy kissing and of cradling one another close. Clarke supposes that, probably, they ought to get on with facing life eventually. That perhaps she still ought to be the sensible one, sometimes.

She pulls away from his lips and makes a suggestion. "We should wake Madi up, tell her you're home safe."

"Yeah. I should maybe put some clothes on first, though." He suggests with a chuckle.

"Maybe you should shower first." She counters, with a pointed slant to her brow. "It's a good thing I'm so into you, because you stink right now."

"You're so into me?" He picks up on her clumsy phrasing with a smirk.

"What gave it away?"

He doesn't answer that. He kisses her instead, and tells her something that makes her day, unbelievably wonderful though it has already been. "It's a good thing I'm so into you too."

With that established, he lifts her none-too-elegantly off of his lap and gets to his feet. She shows him to the bathroom, coaxes the rather idiosyncratic shower into life for him, and goes in search of towels. She doesn't have anything particularly suitable for him to wear, so she settles instead on lending him her robe, and leaves that in the bathroom for when he is done. She throws on some clothes of her own and sets out on a hunt for food, next. If Kane sent him straight here, she figures that he must be tired and hungry. But the mess hall isn't open at this time of night, and as the residents take every meal there that means the pickings are a bit slim when it comes to what she has on hand right now. She finds a couple of ration bars, pours a glass of water, and sets them down on the living room table.

She forces herself to take a seat at the table, too. She sort of wants to go check on how he's getting on in the bathroom, confirm that he hasn't suddenly disappeared again, but that seems like it's probably not a very rational thing to do. It seems like something that unhinged Clarke of recent days would do, and she's trying quite hard not to be that Clarke, tonight.

He emerges moments later, hair damp and smile broad, her robe entertainingly small on his much larger frame.

"Looking good." She teases him with a grin.

"What's this?" He gestures to the snack on the table before her.

"I thought you probably hadn't eaten. Sorry, it's all I could find."

"Thank you." He seems oddly touched, as he takes a seat and demolishes half a bar in one mouthful.

"You're welcome. I was trying to guess what you might need after a fortnight trapped in the snow."

"You're doing pretty great so far." He reassures her even while chewing. It's a little gross, she supposes, but nothing she can't overlook. "We've covered one hell of a reunion with you and some decent snacks. Now all I need to do is see my daughter and sleep for several days."

"Is that what you have planned?"

"Well, Kane's given me some time off. I'd like to spend tomorrow with you and Madi if that's OK?"

"Of course. We'd like that a lot."

"Great. But yeah, apart from catching up with you two I plan on doing a lot of sleeping." He finishes the last of the snack, dusts his hands down on her robe. Realises that he's just done so, and looks at her with an apologetic grin.

"Come on. Let's go tell Madi the good news." She decides, taking his hand and tugging him towards their daughter's bedroom.

She knocks gently, then eases the door open. Watches the light from the corridor spill across the girl's sleeping face, and whispers the words she thought she would never have the chance to say.

"Madi, honey. Wake up. You're father's home."

Their child makes some incoherent noise, begins to stir a little.

"Madi?" Bellamy approaches the bed, towing her with him. "Madi, it's me."

The girl's eyes blink open, and she takes in the rather comical sight of her father standing before her in his odd outfit. "Dad?"

"Yeah, kid. It's me. I just got back."

"You did? But somehow you've had time to change into Mum's robe?"

"Well, I took a shower first."

"He did kind of stink." Clarke adds for good measure.

That is what does it, it seems. That is the moment that Madi decides that this is, in fact, actually real and not some product of her imagination. She throws herself at her father in a rather fierce hug, and Clarke joins the party, too, and the three of them are reunited for the first time in far too long.

"I knew you'd come back." Madi says at last, as they disentangle themselves. "I knew it."

Clarke feels tears crowd her eyes, blinks them away determinedly. This is an evening for happiness, she resolves.

"Go back to sleep, Madi." She suggests now. "You can catch up properly in the morning. We're going to spend the day together tomorrow."

"We are? But – but I have school? And don't you have to do that town plan for Kane?"

"I think your dad coming home safe is a bit more important than that."

Madi wastes no time in agreeing with this assessment, and agreeing that going to sleep now is an acceptable trade off if it means a family day tomorrow. With that, therefore, they say goodnight, and close the door, and find themselves standing in the corridor and looking at one another, hands still very much intertwined.

For the first time since Bellamy opened that door, Clarke finds herself feeling distinctly awkward. So they've established that there's some mutual attraction going on – so much seems obvious. And she's demonstrated, too, that she cares about him enough to want him not dead and enough to offer him two measly ration bars and a cup of water.

She's not sure where they go from here.

Bellamy, on the other hand, seems to know exactly where they go from here, as he leads her in the direction of her bedroom. And she could definitely get on board with this idea, she decides, cheeks heating at the mere thought of it. And maybe, in fact, this has helped her to work out what she needs to say next, what her next attempt at trying might consist of.

"So I know we don't need to sleep together anymore, but I was thinking it might be fun if we did it anyway."

He looks a little startled at that, but he's smiling, so things can't be all bad. "I was thinking that, too. Definitely. But – but that honestly wasn't why I was headed in here."

"Oh." Well, now she feels foolish.

"I'd like us to do that again another time, of course." He rushes to assure her, appearing strangely nervous. "But – but I was wondering if – would it be OK if I got some sleep? Would it be OK if I stayed here tonight?"

This day has already marked itself as very definitely the best day of her life, she knows. How could the day of his miraculous homecoming be any less than the best day of her life? But with that question, she thinks, he has rendered today absolutely unbeatable.

"I'd like that." She tells him, reaching up to kiss him softly for good measure.

He disentangles his fingers from hers, and slips out of her robe. Pulls back the covers, and climbs into the same side of the bed he occupied on the night of his birthday, all those months ago. And she takes the hint, too, shedding her clothes and climbing in next to him, pressing so closely against him that she thinks, probably, he can hear her heart beat. He wraps his arms around her, and she thinks that this can't be a very comfortable position to go to sleep in, but it would appear that neither of them really cares, just now, about such trivialities.

"Goodnight, Clarke." He whispers, and places a soft kiss on her forehead. "Sleep well."

She feels a moment's panic at that, because they've not talked, not really, not yet. And that's a vital piece of the puzzle, she knows it is, and it's all very well for them to start screwing again, and for him to be staying the night, but she wants him back in her life in every way, not just to fulfil her shallow girlish fantasies. And she gets that he's exhausted, of course she does, but surely they need to say something about what has happened in recent months.

She can do this, she resolves, bolstered by the warmth of his arms. She can show him that she's trying.

"I thought you were only sleeping with me because you had to." She tells him, even though the words try to stick in her throat. "I thought you were only speaking to me because you had to. I'm sorry."

"I thought you were only with me because you had to be, too. I guess we were both wrong?" She can hear everything he's not saying, somehow, suddenly, just as she always hoped she would remember how to. All of the insecurity and hope, nervousness and excitement.

And one last, miraculous, chance.

"It seems that way." She confirms, and feels his chest deflate with relief. "Can we – can we maybe start over? And have another go? I know that I screwed up, Bellamy, but I promise -"

"Clarke." He cuts her off, quietly but firmly. "I can't believe you even have to ask that, after this evening. To be clear, I definitely want us to have another go."

"You do?"

"Yes. But - but I don't want us to start over. You were right, all those months ago. The mistakes we've made – they're part of who we are now. I don't want us to forget about them, but I do forgive you."

It's more than she deserves. But, then again, Bellamy Blake has always been more than she deserves. Perhaps it's time she stopped dwelling on that and lived a little.

"Thank you."

"Pretty sure you've still had to forgive me more times in total."

"Shall we maybe not keep score on that one?"

He chuckles softly at that, drops a few more kisses onto the crown of her head. Then gives an impressively loud yawn. And then she's laughing too, stifling giggles against his chest and rejoicing that, for once, good fortune is on her side.

"Get some sleep, Bellamy."

"If you insist."

She reaches for a goodnight kiss. "Please don't go missing again any time soon."

"I'm staying right here."

…...

Clarke leaves Bellamy to sleep in the following morning for as long as she can. They haven't made any particular plans for the day, of course, only that they intend to spend it together, so when she awakes to the sound of him still snoring softly, she tiptoes out of the room and makes a start on collecting up their discarded clothing from the night before. It is for the best, she thinks, that she should clear that out of sight before Madi surfaces from sleep. Holding his filthy garments at arm's length, she drops them in a heap at the foot of the bed, before taking up the book she was interrupted in reading the previous evening and settling herself into a sitting position against the pillows to read.

She hasn't tried reading in bed before. There's never seemed any real point to it, until today. But as an activity that passes the time and makes her feel close to the wonderful man who's currently curled up beside her, it turns out it's not a bad choice at all.

"I recognise that book." Bellamy's voice, thick with sleep, interrupts her focus.

She jumps a little, looks down into his smiling face. "Erm, yes. It's one you lent Madi."

"Since when are you into reading in the mornings?"

"Since today, actually. But I started reading while you were gone." She admits quietly. "It helped with missing you, somehow."

He sits up at that, wraps an arm around her. "I picked some plants for you, when I was missing you. I know that sounds stupid, but there's a load of pathetic bits of frost-damaged plants in the pack I left at Kane's. Anything I didn't recognise and thought we hadn't documented yet. I thought – god, this does sound stupid – but I thought that maybe if I came home with a load of new herbs for you to play with in Medical, you might start speaking to me again."

"I was going to start speaking to you again anyway." She tells him, blinking away tears that spring to her eyes at this evidence of his desperate thoughtfulness. "I decided that as soon as Madi gave me your message, and we went to the workshop the next morning but you'd already lost contact."

"We lost the comms unit pretty soon after I spoke to Madi." He confirms sadly. "You were really on your way to speak to me? Even before I gave you a fright and disappeared?"

"Yeah." She gives up on any hope of reading this morning, puts the book aside.

"That's good to know."

He pulls her in for a lingering kiss. And lingering kisses with Bellamy are, she thinks, probably one of her favourite ways to spend a morning, coming a close second to enthusiastic lovemaking with Bellamy, but she has to concede that they don't really have time for this, today.

She pulls away reluctantly and explains herself in an apologetic tone. "We don't have time for that before breakfast. You slept in quite late. If we're going out for the day you need to get home and change and I need to get Madi awake and ready."

"You're probably right." He drops a teasing kiss on her nose.

"We'll have plenty of other opportunities." She suggests, slightly nervous as she wonders exactly how this new phase of their relationship might work.

"We'd better have." He smirks at her, then rolls out of bed and heads for the heap of clothes she has left for him. "These are disgusting. What on Earth possessed you to screw me when I showed up on your doorstep dressed like this?"

She knows it's supposed to be a joke, but the sorrow is still too recent for her to find it funny. "I'd missed you."

He turns at the tone of her voice, meets her gaze and holds it. "I'd missed you, too."

He starts to dress himself then, pulls his trousers on, T shirt following close behind. Give his jacket a considering sort of look before shrugging and chucking that on, too. Doesn't bother with the pair of socks that Clarke thinks could probably stand up on their own, laces his boots straight onto his bare feet.

"I'll see you at breakfast?" He asks, reaching out a hand towards her.

"Yeah." She closes the distance, squeezes his fingers gently. Reaches up to give him a kiss of farewell. "See you soon."

He leaves, then, striding out of the bedroom, and she hears his progress down the corridor, hears the front door close behind him.

He doesn't slam it, this time.

And then he is gone, and she has to take a deep breath to remind herself that, this time, he is coming back. And she will see him again, and soon, just as soon as she gets on with her day. She puts on some clothes that seem broadly appropriate for a family expedition into the snow, and sets out to her daughter's room.

"Madi?" She knocks at the door, peeps her head into the room.

"Mum. Hey." The girl is fully dressed, bar shoes, and appears more than ready to face the day. Why, then, is she still hiding in here? "Was that Dad leaving I just heard?"

"Yeah." There doesn't seem any point lying about it. "Why didn't you come out and say hello?"

"I thought you guys might need some time to sort things out. Did you do it?"

She chokes a little at that, hoping her daughter does not mean quite what she thinks she means. "I beg your pardon?"

"Did you apologise and kiss and make up and tell him you love him, and all that?"

"Something like that." She mutters, and avoids eye contact by bending to pick up a stray sock.

She hasn't told him she loves him, of course. Because she doesn't love him, not quite, not yet. He's still not the man he used to be, and she's beginning to understand that, actually, he never will be. And anyway, she is not that same girl, so if he did find some way to magically turn back the clock, they would find themselves seriously mismatched. But this new Bellamy, the one she's still finding her way around, he's quite something, too. And she's looking forward very much to the pair of them getting to know each other, together.

So, no, she doesn't love him yet. But she knows now that, if the universe stands still long enough for them to work it out, she will.

a/n Thanks for reading!