a/n Thanks to ebwalker for being the most steadfast and awesome reviewer. You rock, as do the rest of you awesome readers. On the off-chance that the guest who reviewed "Echoes in Eternity" reads this too - thank you so much! That review absolutely made my day, and it's great to know that my portrayal of Echo is winning her fans. Thank you to Stormkpr, too, for betaing. This is in danger of turning into an Oscars acceptance speech, so I'll stop there. Happy reading!
The days on which they eat breakfast together are growing fewer, now, while Madi becomes increasingly unwell. They miss about one morning meal out of every four, at the moment, as Clarke finds herself somewhere between six and seven months pregnant, and finds herself juggling frantically the many different demands on her time. She wonders quite how maternity leave works, in these circumstances. She supposes it's something she ought to bring up with Kane sooner rather than later.
Today, though, Madi is full of energy, and will soon be full of porridge, too, judging by the enthusiasm with which she is wolfing down the uninspiring contents of her bowl.
"What are you up to today, Madi?" Octavia asks.
"School, which will be boring. Then lesson with Gaia, which will be boring but at least useful."
"That's not very kind, Madi." Clarke chides gently.
"I'm not being mean." The girl shoots back, indignant at being thus accused. "She told me that today's lesson would be boring but useful."
Bellamy laughs. That seems to be happening increasingly often, these days, despite the variable state of their daughter's health. "She's got you there."
"Your history lesson won't be boring, I hope." Octavia defuses the situation gently.
"What do you mean?" Madi asks.
"I'm teaching it." Octavia explains. "So I hope it won't be too bad."
"You're teaching me today?" Madi's eyes go wide at this idea. "Really? But I thought you were learning how to be a doctor for the guards?"
"I'm doing that too. Multitasking runs in the family." She's got a point there, Clarke has to acknowledge. "So I'm teaching your history lesson this morning and then going to Medical this afternoon."
"This is going to be so cool." Madi enthuses, doing a wonderful impression of a carefree child.
"How's the training going, O?" Bellamy asks with every appearance of genuine curiosity.
"Pretty well, I think. Abby says I'll be ready to go on missions within the next month or so. How's it going with the cadets?"
"Really well." Bellamy cannot keep the grin off his face. Happiness looks rather good on him, Clarke thinks. No, that's not quite what she means. She thinks most things look good on him, now she thinks about it. In fact, she seems to remember having told him this morning that nothing is a rather good look on him, too.
"I hear you've got a good selection of family portraits on your desk." Octavia teases him merrily. It is good, Clarke decides easily, to see that merry teasing has become a feature of their relationship again.
"That might be true." He concedes.
"How are you doing, Clarke? Has Kane worked out what your job actually is yet?"
"Well I'm not deputy Kane, that's for sure." She says lightly. "Echo's taken that title. I'm not sure. I seem to be in charge of accommodation, but also overseeing training and education. And drawing a lot of maps."
"Surely it's obvious?" Bellamy says, turning to look at her with an expression she can only describe as loving. "You're not deputy anyone. You're Clarke Griffin."
…...
Clarke begins to think, in the days that follow, that Bellamy might have been onto something with that. Only Clarke Griffin, she likes to think, with a newfound sense of self-confidence, could balance the care of a sometimes-sick daughter, with running half of Sanctum, and regular shifts in Medical.
And being in love, of course. That seems to take up a fair amount of time, too, between the movies that really must be watched and the games of chess that need to be played and the bed that is simply begging to be occupied.
But she's not distracted by any of those things right now, of course. Because right now she's doing the doctor bit of her job, splitting the morning between a couple of consultations and her ongoing project to analyse the potential medicinal uses of the herbs that grow on this moon. She's had a little luck in this field, now, has found a couple of plants with antiseptic properties, and one strange flower that contains tiny amounts of a chemical that was used on the Ark to treat heart conditions.
"This could be really useful." She tells Abby, who isn't entirely listening, she suspects. "If we can find a way to extract it efficiently, and concentrate it enough to make an effective dose."
"Do you ever take a break from saving people?" Her mother asks, brow quirked. "Just for a few minutes?"
"I take breaks all the time. I have lunch with my friends, and I spend time with Madi and Bellamy." She argues, unexpectedly annoyed at the question. She likes to think she's been doing quite well at taking care of herself in recent months, given the circumstances. She has certainly been making a point of talking to people, and not working so hard as to impact her health.
"I didn't mean that as a criticism. I meant it as a joke, but I'm sorry. I know it was a bad one." Abby sighs a little, pushes her chair back from her desk. Looks up and meets her eyes. "I'm so proud of you, Clarke. I've always been proud of you, of course, but recently, seeing you work so well with Marcus, while building a happy life for yourself with Bellamy and Madi too, I've been especially proud."
Clarke brushes at her eyes. Not because she's crying, of course. Although, to be clear, if she was crying, that would be understandable, because it's been a big few months. Heavens, it's been a big few years.
"Thanks, Mum. This might sound weird, but I'm proud of you, too. For beating your addiction and becoming the Mum I love again."
"You know what got me through it? Having the daughter I love by my side."
…...
Clarke is becoming suspicious of Bellamy's ongoing inability to play chess. He's an intelligent guy, with a decent grasp of strategy in most other areas of his life, and he's played a lot of chess in recent months, so she cannot entirely believe that he's still so hopeless at the game. It is almost as if he isn't really trying, perhaps. As if he is content to be on the same team as Madi forever, maybe. Or as if he's spending more time staring at Clarke's face, or holding her hand under the table, than contemplating the board.
Today he doesn't even bother pretending to care what Madi selects as their opening move. He seems to be a bit preoccupied, Clarke thinks, with perfecting an annoyingly attractive smile.
"Mum?" Their daughter pipes up, sounding a little exasperated. "It's your turn."
"Sorry. Your dad was distracting me." Damn it. She probably wasn't supposed to admit that.
"He didn't say anything." Madi's gaze flickers between the two of them, understandably confused.
"No, he didn't." Clarke agrees mildly.
"It's OK, kid. I've got a plan." Bellamy stage whispers. "You play chess, I'll just pout at your mum. We're bound to win."
They laugh a little at that, and Clarke represses the urge to point out that he wasn't pouting, as such. She focuses, instead, on making a passable attempt at playing chess, and the game proceeds in comfortable silence for a few minutes.
Then Madi speaks, and the atmosphere in the room becomes rather less comfortable.
"When – when do I go into the anomaly? And how is it going to work?" She asks, in a rather small voice, and Clarke jumps in shock, caught metaphorically napping. She thought they were having a cheerful evening together, but she feels rather less than cheerful now.
"We don't exactly know, Madi." Bellamy explains gently. "We think that probably baby Madi will go into the anomaly, and then go back to the village you grew up in, and then you'll stop getting sick all the time."
"Baby Madi?" She looks aghast at the thought. "You mean I don't get to play with her? And – and you guys don't get to spend time with her?"
"It seems that way." Clarke confirms, trying very hard not to cry in front of her daughter.
"You might get to play with another baby sister or brother another time." Bellamy murmurs, reaching out to clasp Clarke's hand. "We've been thinking that we might like to have more children in the future."
That distracts Madi from her horror, if only briefly. "You really mean that? I might get another little brother or sister?"
"Hopefully." Clarke tries for a small smile.
"But – but you're going to give up baby Madi to the anomaly?" She returns, devastated, to the matter at hand.
"We think we might have to." Clarke explains, holding it together through sheer force of will. "It's going to be horrible, of course, but we don't think there's any choice."
Madi nods thoughtfully at that, and returns to the game of chess. And, yes, in the hours to come, Clarke will curse herself for thinking nothing of this. She will blame herself for not digging deeper into her daughter's sudden disengagement from the conversation, the abrupt fading of her horror. And she will come to think that, actually, she should have realised that Madi was hatching a plan.
But for now, she only sighs in relief, and brushes away her tears, and gets back on with playing chess.
…...
It is pure chance that she hears the door open. This is, in some ways, the most worrying thing about this whole situation, that were it not for a nagging backache and a sleepless night, she might not have realised that anything was amiss at all. But, as it is, she is awake, and she does hear the door open – and close again – and so she does know that, in fact, something is very much amiss.
She shakes Bellamy awake, none too gently, and sets about babbling in his general direction while he blinks sleepily up at her.
"Bellamy? Bellamy, please, I need to you to wake up. I just heard the door open, and close again, and I think I heard it lock so it must be someone with a key but Madi's the only person with a key but what if it's someone breaking in?"
"You just said it must be Madi." He rubs at his eyes and sits up. "Calm down. No one's breaking in. But why would she be opening the door in the middle of the night?"
It takes Clarke exactly four seconds to figure out the answer to that question.
"The anomaly!" Bellamy is still staring at her in sleepy confusion, making it quite plain that her response has not helped him in the slightest. "The anomaly, Bellamy. We were talking earlier about how there's no choice but to give up baby Madi and then she suddenly stopped complaining and she's always loved all those stories about you being a heroic idiot and now she's going to go and try to sacrifice herself, or something, and it's all -"
"Clarke, hey. It's OK." He spares a moment to wrap an arm around her shoulder and squeeze once, and then hops out of bed and pulls on just enough clothes to be vaguely decent. "I'll go get her. If you're right I'm sure I can catch up before she gets there. No harm done."
"I'll come too." She decides, leaping to her feet, moving more quickly than she has moved in weeks. "Just let me -"
"Clarke." He's already at the door. "You can't run. I'll be back soon. I promise."
And then he is gone. And she understands why he's gone, of course she does, because if her hunch is right – and she's pretty sure that her hunch is right – then he needs to move quickly, and can't hang around for a pregnant woman to slow him down. But all the same, it's more than unpleasant, to sit here, alone, in the middle of the night, while the two people she loves the most are sprinting flat out towards an unknown danger.
There is no point in trying to sleep. That much is obvious – she was struggling with sleep enough before her daughter ran out into the darkness. She gets up, puts on her gown, and walks into the corridor for something to do. Wanders to the living room, and neatens the stack of books by the side of the sofa. Straightens the sketchbook that she left lying on the table at a jaunty angle, sets up the chess board with painstaking care.
Decides that, in fact, it would be more useful to put the chess set away again. Does so, precisely and diligently. And then, actually, she thinks that it's long past time she cleaned this table. When did it last get so much as a casual wipe-down? With that decided, she moves the sketchbook, too, and grabs a cloth, and puts a great amount of attention into her self-appointed task.
By the time she hears the door open again, the house is cleaner than it has ever been, and she is a nervous wreck. And then she hears two voices in the corridor, and she wilts with relief.
"Madi?" She throws her arms around the girl in a rather desperate hug. "Thank goodness. What were you thinking?"
"I was thinking that if I went into the anomaly you could have a life with baby Madi." She says, voice small, and Clarke notices, now, that she is also pale and shaking.
"But what about you?" Clarke asks, horrified.
"I think we should get Madi back into bed before we talk about this." Bellamy suggests, with a trembling hand on her shoulder. "She's just fainted again."
"You – you have?"
"Yeah." Madi acknowledges, eyes downcast, slumping against the wall, pulling away from her mother's embrace and, presumably, from the sickness that comes with it. "I didn't get anywhere near the anomaly. I got dizzy not long after I left the village, and passed out only about half way there."
"She was still out when I got to her." Bellamy mutters damply, beginning to usher their daughter towards her room.
Clarke follows behind, trying to keep up with these developments. "Why would you ever think we wanted you to do that, Madi? It's insane. We love you."
"But it doesn't seem fair." The girl replies, lip trembling, as she sets about getting back into bed. "Because you're so excited about having a baby, and I'm sure she'll be really cute, and it doesn't seem fair that you have to say goodbye to her or that she has to go into the anomaly when she's only tiny."
"But we love you." Clarke repeats, with careful emphasis. "We're having this baby in the first place to protect you, so that you don't disappear or something. And yes, it's horrible that we think we might have to give baby Madi up, and we don't know how or when. Because we love her, as well. But if that's the only way, then we'll have to do it."
Madi shakes her head. "I couldn't do that."
"Let's hope you never have to." Bellamy mutters gruffly, dashing away tears. Clarke spares a moment to notice that he's in a rather bad way, crying openly, not far off sobbing. But, love him though she does, Madi is her priority right now.
"Madi, I know this is difficult, and you feel like you should do something to help. But you have to promise us that you're not ever going to try to run off and sacrifice yourself like this again."
"There's no point." She responds, a stubborn set to her jaw that brings out the resemblance to her father. "I can't get anywhere near the anomaly without fainting anyway."
"Please, Madi." Clarke can feel the tears coursing down her cheeks, now, too. "Please just promise that you won't even try."
Her daughter gives her a thoughtful look, every inch the commander. And slowly, firmly, she gives a single nod. "I promise."
"Thank you, honey." She pulls her into half a hug, trying to avoid bringing her daughter into contact with her baby bump, and feels Bellamy wrap his arms around the pair of them, too. "We'll work this out, I promise. Together."
Madi falls asleep again quickly after that, exhausted by her illness and, Clarke suspects, by all that running. It is tempting to stay and watch over her all night, of course it is, but that is obviously not a realistic course of action. And Clarke trusts her daughter, and finds it surprisingly easy to place her confidence in that promise not to attempt anything else stupid in the near future. And then, too, Bellamy is still visibly upset, and she would rather deal with that in the privacy of their bedroom than at their daughter's bedside.
"Come on." She takes his hand, and tugs him gently towards the door. "Let's get some rest."
He shakes his head and sinks instead into one of the chairs by Madi's bed.
No. She's not having that. Sitting here all night torturing himself will do none of them any good.
"Bellamy." She perches on the seat at his side, but does not allow herself to get too comfortable. "Beating yourself up about this isn't going to help. You'll be much more use looking after her tomorrow if you sleep now."
"I will never be any use to her." The words burst out of him, louder than she thinks is really wise around a sleeping patient, and the tears spring up anew in his eyes. "I think I proved that tonight, Clarke. I didn't notice what she was planning, and I didn't notice her leave. I didn't even notice her passed out on the forest floor until I almost fell over her. I have to be the most incompetent father in the universe. It's lucky she's got you, too, or she'd be - she'd be dead by now." He chokes off into a sob, and she reaches out to pull him into an embrace. It's not the best hug they've ever shared, what with the awkward angle and the substantial obstacle of her belly, but it seems the only viable response right now.
"That's complete rubbish." She tells him as she pulls away, exhaustion and worry making her short with him. "You'd do anything for her, and she knows it. So you can't read her mind? I think that's excusable."
"Says you." He bites out. "You always seem to know everything she's thinking. How do you even do that?"
"I've had six years of practice, Bellamy. You've had, what, ten months? I think you're doing great."
She lets him digest that argument for a moment, waits for him to finish telling her what he's really so upset about. She's pretty sure she already knows, actually, because she can read him pretty well, these days, but it seems like it will be good for him to say the words.
"I'm never going to get those years back, am I?" She doesn't bother answering, because she knows that he knows the answer. "We're going to have to say goodbye to baby Madi, and there's no way I can ever catch up on all that time I missed with her."
"You were there with us every step of the way." She murmurs, rubbing a hand over his back in a way that she hopes is vaguely soothing. "You were with us in all of those pictures and stories, and in those radio calls."
"I wasn't there for you, Clarke. I didn't answer."
"But I knew you would have done, if you could." She can feel him relaxing, little by little, but there's a long way to go, yet. "Come on. You must be freezing, and exhausted. Let's go to bed."
"I don't want to go to bed." He insists. "I want to sit here, and make sure she's OK. If I can miss twelve years of her life, and six years of yours, I think I owe you both a couple of hours now."
She feels her heart break at that, feels it fracture into a thousand pieces on his behalf. She is utterly fed up of the universe conspiring to ruin this man's life, even more furious about it than she is about the damage done to her own.
"This family isn't built on debts and responsibilities, Bellamy." She mutters, her own throat growing thick with tears. "It's built on love."
He looks up to meet her eyes at last, frowning at her as if he can't quite fathom that idea, yet at least no longer looking quite so utterly determined to make a martyr of himself over this.
"We're going to bed." She informs him, standing up, then reaching down to press her lips to the crown of his head.
He nods, once, and pulls himself effortfully to his feet. Entwines his fingers with her own, and allows himself to be led in the direction of the bedroom. Shrugs out of his minimal outfit, shivering with some combination of cold and sadness that she doesn't much like the look of. It makes the doctor in her a little edgy, she notes, as she slips out of her robe, and the two of them climb into bed.
"You doing OK?" She asks him as he lies in a too-carefully-straight line on his back.
"I'm doing better." He tells her, no longer audibly weeping.
He's still lying like that, though, stiff, and frozen, and obviously not himself, and she hates it. And, in fact, she rather intends to do something about it.
"Come here." She whispers, reaching out to make a start on manoeuvring an arm around him. "Let me hold you."
She expects objections, somehow. The Bellamy she knew months ago, back at the beginning of this time-twisted attempt at a family life, would have shrugged her off, she thinks, would have told her that he didn't need any help of hers.
But this Bellamy seems only too willing to cuddle close to her, head resting awkwardly on her too-large breasts, arm hugging her as tight as he dares. And she makes a point of breathing slowly, calmly, and deeply, and sets about stroking his hair gently, and murmuring what she hopes are reassuring words of comfort into the space near his ear.
"I've got you." She tells him, because she has. And if she has anything to do with it, she always will. "And I love you so much, and our little girl is so lucky to have you in her life."
He sighs deeply, and nuzzles a little further into her chest. "I'm the one who's lucky to have you two. Thanks for looking out for me, tonight. I feel awful about it, you shouldn't be having to take care of me as well as Madi."
"I want to." She tells him firmly. "I want to be here for you, just like you've been here for me so many times. The only way we're going to make it through giving up baby Madi is if we look after each other."
He hums a little in acknowledgement of that, relaxes a little further. She gathers her courage, and says something that she thinks he might find a little odd.
"It means a lot to me, that we share things like this, too. That after everything, we're still here for each other when we're at our worst. That's part of who we've always been, isn't it?"
"You're right." He agrees, beginning to sound sleepy. "It's part of what we are."
This time, neither of them bothers to claim that they liked what they were before, better. This time, it is no longer the truth.
a/n Thanks for reading!