a/n Thank you to those lovely reviewers who left lovely reviews on the last chapter. You made my day! Thank you also to Stormkpr, who continues to be the greatest beta a penguin could ask for. Please enjoy this chapter, which features Some Important Developments!
It is a beautiful day for a beautiful family day out, Clarke decides, as they leave bright and early the following morning on their journey to the lake. The air is growing warmer with the very first hints of spring, the suns glowing weak but determined in a cloudless sky. It is hard to believe that there was snow on the ground here, just six short weeks ago, when they last walked this way together.
It is hard to believe, too, that her daughter was ill in bed only two days ago, as she watches her running ahead down the path now. And it is hard to believe that Bellamy and Octavia still get angry with each other over nothing in particular, and hard to believe that her mother has ever depended on those traitorous little pills.
It is hard to believe, really, that anything could ever be wrong on this miraculous moon that has gifted them their second chance.
Just as the sky is clearer, now, so she finds that there is rather less fog clouding her mind, these days. She's finding happiness all too easy, of late, for all that she is still anxious about her daughter, and upset when she thinks about saying goodbye to her baby girl. Somehow, despite such things, her default state is currently a rather more cheerful one.
She's beginning to wonder whether the universe actually hates her so much after all. Maybe, she muses, it was all something of a misunderstanding.
Bellamy has stopped chatting with his sister, now, has stopped laughing at her jokes about nothing in particular. Clarke cannot quite keep track of the ongoing ebb and flow of tension between them, but there's nothing new in that. She remembers, all too well, their interactions back at the dropship, the changeable mood and fluctuating dynamics, and that was long before the fighting pit. She shrugs a little, and greets Bellamy with a smile as he drops back to join her.
"You OK?" He asks, all concern, reaching out to grasp her hand. "Is there a reason you're on your own back here?"
"Not really. I just like watching you all look so happy."
He smiles at that, a smile rather broader than she ever remembers seeing him wear on Earth. "Just imagine how I feel, then, watching you look so happy and pregnant."
She laughs at that and shoves him a little with her shoulder. He makes a show of stumbling at her action, makes a joke about how he cannot get her back because – has he mentioned this recently? - she's pregnant.
She finds herself wishing that the weather hadn't improved. He rather deserves a snowball to the face, she thinks, for that.
They continue down the path together, fingers intertwined, laughing at the antics of Madi and, if they're being honest, also the sight of Kane letting his metaphorical hair down. Abby walks just before them, shaking her head as they watch the little girl and her step-grandpa competing to see who can find the coolest insect, of all things.
They come to an abrupt halt, all of a sudden, at a place where the recent retreat of winter has left the path flooded ankle-deep in water. Madi is staring at the sizeable puddle – it is, perhaps, more of a pond – with a wrinkled nose, and Kane wears a substantial frown.
"It's only water." Clarke points out, a little exasperated. "We've all survived worse. And what happened to everyone wanting to celebrate spring by taking a swim?"
"I want to swim in the lake." Madi pouts. "I don't want to swim in a muddy puddle."
While they have been talking, it seems Kane has arrived at a solution. He turns towards Abby, a determined set to his brow, and sweeps her into his arms.
Clarke tries very hard not to giggle at the sight of the leader of Sanctum attempting to engage in romance. It becomes only more challenging as her mother squeals in delight, and Kane starts stomping through the flood. The pair arrive at the other side, and turn to heckle the three of them where they still stand before the puddle.
"What are you waiting for, Blake?" Kane calls. "Get over here."
Bellamy laughs, and turns to Clarke. "I bet you'd think it was a bit pathetic, if I carried you like that?"
"You know me too well." She agrees, shaking her head at the thought.
"Good. That's that settled, then. Madi, do you want a piggyback?"
He doesn't have to ask twice. Their daughter jumps onto his shoulders, and he sets out through the mud, Clarke keeping pace alongside.
…...
Abby reckons that there is no particular reason why Clarke should not swim, if she takes it easy, but Clarke isn't inclined to push her luck. She is quite happy to spend the morning sitting on a fallen tree, watching her family play at an assortment of games, all of which involve more running and falling in the sand than her current condition readily allows. Bellamy offers to keep her company more than once, but she sends him cheerfully back to join in the fun every time. And, really, she feels that she is joining in the fun just by being here.
The picnic lunch is a triumph, courtesy of Octavia, who accepts their thanks for providing it with a smile and a shrug.
"I think Jordan must have heard good stories about the whole family." She explains. "It's always a bit too easy to convince him to make us a picnic."
"Monty and Harper would have loved this place." Bellamy muses, but for once, the words do not sound mournful. Clarke squeezes his fingers gently, and he continues to speak. "They'd be so proud of us all for how things are going here. They always talked on the Ring about their dreams for a peaceful little village, with the kids going to school. I think they'd have liked picnics by the lake, too."
No one tries to respond to that, as such. Bellamy has said everything there is to say on the matter. There are a few murmurs of agreement, and a moment of impromptu silence.
Then Madi decides that it is time to swim.
"Do you not want to wait for your lunch to settle, first?" Clarke asks, aware that she is fast turning into a fussy mother hen.
"We've been sitting here talking for a while." Madi points out. "I finished eating ages ago."
Kane gives a good-natured chuckle. "Come on, Commander. If you say we're swimming, I guess we had better swim. Abby?"
"I'm in." Clarke watches her mother drop her trousers without warning, and is relieved to find that she is wearing a swimsuit underneath.
"Me too." Octavia decides.
"You coming, parents?" Madi asks
"I'll sit and watch." Clarke says. "But you go on and have fun."
"I'll stay with your mum." Bellamy adds, wrapping an arm around her waist.
That decided, the swimmers set off into the lake, with a good number of exclamations about the coldness of the water and chill in the air.
"What did they expect?" Bellamy asks, shaking his head with an indulgent smile. "It's barely spring."
"It does look beautiful though." Clarke murmurs.
"Yeah. You sure you don't want to join them?"
"I might do in a bit. I might just go in up to my knees, or something."
"OK. Whatever you want."
She smiles to herself a little at that, compares this Bellamy by her side today with the whatever the hell we want Bellamy of years gone by. Compares him, too, with that Bellamy who fell somewhere in between, the impulsive hero of rescue missions, the devoted bodyguard. The friend.
Somehow, she finds herself loving this version most of all. The lover who makes her feel beautiful, yes, but also the steady companion who will, she knows, stand by her no matter how things turn out with their little girl and the anomaly. The caring father, and the friend who makes her smile.
Well, then. It would appear she has got her wish. It would appear that she has stumbled upon that logical love she was looking for, that well-founded and complete certainty that Bellamy belongs by her side.
The thought makes her happy, of course, but it is also cause for a fair amount of panic. She supposes she ought to tell him, but she's not sure whether he'd want to hear it. Apart from anything else, there is no guarantee that he feels the same, for all that she is starting to have her suspicions. And, added to that, she feels a desire to get it right, this time round. After all those unfinished sentences between them, she thinks she owes them that much. She needs to say the correct thing, she reckons, and pick the perfect moment.
As if he can sense her panic, Bellamy tightens his arm around her a little, and presses a kiss to her forehead.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing." She assures him. "Nothing at all." To be fair, nothing is wrong, as such. No, if anything, something is finally right.
He lets it go, although she's pretty sure he can tell she has something on her mind. Reading one another comes fairly easily to them, these days. But he does not pursue the subject further, simply sits by her side, skims a gentle thumb over the curve of her belly.
"I don't think life gets any better than this." He whispers into the scant space between his lips and her ear. "Not for me, at least. You, and our family swimming in the sunshine. I can't imagine anything more."
It's a nice sentiment, but she swears to herself, in that moment, that there will be even more than this, for him, in time to come. This man she loves deserves everything that is good in life, a horde of happy, healthy children, and a loving, stable home, and she will find a way to make it happen.
In the meantime, she turns her head a little, presses her lips briefly to his. "It really is good to see you happy."
He takes a deep breath, and she prepares herself for the difficult words which he is, presumably, about to say. "I can't believe I ever imagined my life without you in it."
"I can't believe I ever made you think you had to." She whispers right back at him.
She feels him lean his cheek against the top of her head, and she picks up his hand, and toys with his fingers a little. He breathes out a long sigh, and she finds herself wondering if this is what peace feels like. If maybe this is it, the doing better that has eluded her for so long.
She gives a little shake. There has been, she decides abruptly, quite enough deep thought for one jolly day out. It is time, she reckons, for a spot of swimming.
Or, at the very least, a spot of awkward pregnant paddling.
…...
When Madi wakes up sick the following morning, Clarke's good mood of the previous day flees with quite some haste, and she finds herself wondering if the visit to the lake might have been their last family day out for quite some time. She fusses over her for a moment, fetches her a cup of water and fixes her some breakfast from the remains of the picnic, and then goes to speak to Bellamy.
He is still lying in their bed, curled around her vacant pillow, eyelashes throwing shadows onto his cheek in the early morning light. He looks so young, somehow, so much like the man she first met, and so carefree, that she can hardly bear to wake him. But she knows that he would never forgive her if she let him sleep in while Madi is sick.
No, that's not true. He's forgiven her for worse. That is, perhaps, a figure of speech she ought to avoid in future.
She leans across and places a soft kiss on his cheek, resting a hand on his upper arm.
"Bellamy?"
He stirs a little, blinks sleepily up at her. "Clarke?"
"I'm sorry for waking you, but Madi's sick."
He is instantly awake at that, sitting bolt upright in bed, her hand falling uselessly away from his arm. "She is?"
"Yeah. The usual headache. Could you sit with her while I go grab some things from the office? And then I can swap with you and you should be able to get to work in time, as long as -"
"Hey, Clarke." He wraps her in his arms, runs a calming hand in circles over her back. "Remember to breathe. She's going to be OK, and there's no reason for you to go running across the village in a panic."
She gives a hollow chuckle at that. Perhaps she is panicking, just a little. Perhaps he might have a point.
"OK. No running across the village. Only brisk walking?"
"That's better." He agrees, pulling away so she can see the half smile in his eyes. "Go on, then. And take your time. I've got this."
She nods, once, and reaches in for a parting kiss. "I'll see you soon."
"But not too soon." He reminds her, starting to gather some clothes. "No running."
She follows that instruction, barely. She limits herself to what can only be described as more of a trot as she hurries across to her office, and picks up the pile of paperwork that needs her attention today. She scrabbles around her desk for a few minutes, checking that she has everything she might possibly require. She leaves a scribbled note for Kane, too, sparing only a moment to observe with a little surprise that he is not already here. Maybe he is working slightly less ridiculous hours, she wonders, now that he has her help. Perhaps she might even go as far as concluding that things are all working out for the best.
Having grabbed what she needs, she rushes straight back to the house. She has been gone scarcely fifteen minutes, she knows, but all the same she cannot shake the feeling that she ought to be by Madi's side, and that she cannot delay Bellamy's arrival at work, and that she must, in fact, get back to the house as soon as possible.
She opens the door and makes straight for her daughter's room.
"That was quick." Bellamy comments, before she can utter so much as a single syllable. "Are you sure you didn't run?"
"No running." She promises him with a strained smile. "We're all good. I've got everything I need to work from here for the day, if you want to get going?"
He doesn't get going. In a move she cannot quite understand, he sinks into one of the two chairs that have appeared by her daughter's bedside in the last fifteen minutes, and stretches out with every indication of leisure.
"I don't need to leave yet." He says with a shrug. "Chess?"
She gets it, then. She understands what he's doing. He's trying to keep her calm, trying to help her relax before she spends the whole day cooped up with only a sick child and her own anxiety for company. Trying to support her, just as she tried to support him when Madi fainted earlier in the week.
They seem to be doing quite well at this whole relationship thing, she notes.
"Sure." She agrees. "Why not? Chess with breakfast."
She settles on the chair by his side, and tries not to think too hard about whether these chairs might become a permanent fixture of her daughter's bedroom, for the next few months, if she continues to be ill quite so often.
…...
It has been a better day than Clarke expected, but that is, she concedes, not saying much. She has got some work done, and although her concentration is not exactly at its best she is broadly satisfied with what she has achieved. Madi has been a perfect patient, happy to read quietly by herself for the most part, but offering, too, the occasional cheerful topic of conversation. Clarke is a little in awe of her daughter, really, for managing to be so upbeat, today, and for coping so well with the crushing disappointment she must feel at this abrupt contrast with the happy good health of yesterday.
"Do you think I missed much at school today?" Madi asks, late in the afternoon, as she sets aside the second book she has finished that day.
Clarke makes a mental note to set Bellamy the task of sourcing her some more reading material, and wonders how to answer the question.
"I don't think you'll fall behind. A lot of what I taught you back on Earth, and the things grandma Abby teaches you about Biology, and your dad teaches you about History, are quite a long way ahead of where your classes are up to. But I'm sorry that you missed out on a day with your friends."
"That's OK." Madi seems largely unfazed by this. "I got to hang out with you. And I don't have a lot of close friends at the school anyway."
Clarke has noticed this, but given the perilous state of her daughter's physical health and, indeed, her actual future existence, the question of whether she's a bit socially isolated has never really made it to the top of her priority list. Maybe that makes her a bad parent, she wonders now. Or maybe she's only human.
"Does that bother you?" She asks carefully.
"Not so much since Dad started with the cadets." Madi shrugs. "I guess I have more in common with them. I know they're all older than me but they like to go places and do things."
"That's great, honey." Clarke wonders if it is a normal part of motherhood, to feel quite so hopeless at these kinds of conversations.
"It's kind of weird, though, because I'm the Commander. I thought at first that was why they wanted to make friends. But I think now that maybe they really do want to get to know me."
She doesn't quite know how to answer that one. She doesn't even know these youngsters, beyond their hopelessness at a wide range of tasks, and has no idea what their motivations might be. "I'm sure they -"
She is mercifully saved from having to pretend to have anything useful to say by the sound of the door unlocking, and something of a commotion in the corridor.
"That must be Dad." Madi says, with something of a question in her voice, apparently wondering just as much as Clarke is what on Earth can be going on.
They do not have to dwell in ignorance for long.
"Guys?" Bellamy peers around the bedroom door. "Madi has some visitors. Is it OK if they come in?"
"Visitors?" The girl seems confused, to say the least. "I guess they can come in?"
Bellamy steps into the room, opening the door wide as he does so, and admitting three teenagers Clarke vaguely recognises as cadets.
A glowing smile breaks out across Madi's face. "What are you guys doing here?"
"Officer Blake said you were sick. So – so we asked if it would be OK if we stopped by to see you." These words come from a small, dark-haired boy who looks, Clarke thinks, barely older than her daughter. He is plainly terrified at the thought of asking his commanding officer anything, let alone entering his house, and her heart rather goes out to him for going to such lengths out of friendship for her little girl.
"It's good of you to come over." Clarke gets to her feet and holds a hand out towards the boy. "I'm Clarke, Madi's mum."
"Pleased to meet you, Ms Griffin. I'm Yan." He executes a very polite yet slightly wobbly handshake.
"You really can call us Clarke and Bellamy when you're in the house to visit Madi, you know." Bellamy says with a gentle smile. "Clarke, this is Bea. And Ayva."
She reaches out to shake the hands of the two girls in turn. "Welcome, all of you. Make yourselves at home. Can I get anyone a snack?"
"No, thank you, Ms Gri – I mean, Clarke." Ayva demurs carefully.
Clarke's not having that. If these three teenagers are so keen to take her daughter under their wing, the least she can do is make them feel welcome. Without further ado, she slips out of the room to fetch what is left of the picnic, the sound of Madi's laughter following her down the corridor as she goes.
…...
Clarke is exhausted by the time she collapses onto the sofa that evening. She hasn't exactly had the most active day of her long life, but between the stress of Madi's illness and the nagging tiredness she's starting to feel with the advancement of her pregnancy, it is all she can do to put her daughter to bed before her legs give way beneath her.
Bellamy takes a seat by her side and reaches out a hand to clasp her own.
"It was good of you to bring her friends over." She tells him.
"It was their idea." He shrugs. "I was impressed – and maybe a little surprised – that they had the guts to ask."
"They can't be scared of everything." She laughs.
"No, they're great, actually. But they've lived a good part of their lives underground with a fighting pit to worry about, and now they're on a moon we hardly know. It's no surprise they're a bit twitchy."
She nods in agreement, but feels no great need to say anything in response. He seems content just to sit and hold one of her hands, and she finds herself using the fingers of the other to trace the line of the jagged scar that will serve as a permanent reminder of that day she nearly lost him to a Titan. She can't believe, now, looking back at that incident, that she ever let him go out on that mission without telling him how much she cared about him, even then. When she thinks that, were it not for Echo, she would never have had this chance to have a family with him, nor to fall in love with him all over again, it brings tears to her eyes. There's no reason, she supposes, why that day should be any different from any one of the dozens of other days she has nearly lost him without saying goodbye, since they met each other on a hostile planet all those decades ago. There are numerous different ways she could have lost him, and countless more in which she might lose him yet.
She cannot bear that thought. Today, of all days, when he has been so supportive of her, and hot on the heels of that moment of peace they shared by the lake yesterday, she finds herself suddenly very averse to the idea that Bellamy Blake might die without knowing quite how much he is loved.
"What are you thinking?" He murmurs, as she freezes in panic, and stops tracing that scar where it meets the line of his sleeve. "You know you can tell me."
And suddenly, with that, she finds that yes, actually, she can tell him. Telling hims things comes a lot more naturally to her, now, than it did at the start of this unexpected attempt at parenting. And sure, she wanted to plan this, and wanted to get the words right, but in this moment, that does not seem quite so important as just telling him. And, yeah, she's a little worried that he might not feel the same way but really, in the grand scheme of things, does that matter?
If he can forgive her for betraying him in Polis, she's pretty sure he can forgive her for daring to love him out of turn. A few ill-timed words of love are surely no great crime by comparison.
"I love you, still. Or rather, I love you, as you are now, too, at least as much as I loved you before Praimfaiya. And I get it if you don't feel the same way, of course I do, but – but I just needed you to know."
For one, horrific moment he is perfectly still, frozen in time, eyes wide, staring at the living room wall.
Then he throws his arms around her and squeezes her tight and starts kissing her hair, and it would all be a little bit frightening, she thinks, were it not for the words he whispers along the way.
"I love you, too. Even unhinged."
There is only one good response to that, she decides. Being hugged is all very well, and it's really rather a lovely hug, but she very much needs to pull away just far enough to kiss him.
She's kissed Bellamy a lot, in recent months. Done more than kiss, him, too, but somehow this meeting of lips and hearts is the most intimate of the lot. He's taking his time a little more than normal, taking it slow and gentle, apparently in no rush to tangle his tongue with her own, today.
She wonders if this is what happiness tastes like.
"I was wrong." He tells her, when he pulls away, after long minutes which feel, somehow, far too short. "When I said yesterday was as good as life could get. My life very recently got a lot better."
"Yeah." She agrees easily, reclaiming that hand she was holding before her life changed, substantially, for the better. "Mine did that, too."
a/n Thanks for reading!