a/n Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, and especially to the anonymous reviewer I can't thank in person. We're approaching the end of this story now - just one more chapter and the epilogue to go. Thanks to stormkpr for checking I'm being vaguely coherent. I'm afraid this is not a happy chapter, but I hope you find it makes for worthwhile reading all the same.

It is the second time in Clarke's life that she has passed out amidst a blood-soaked forest and come round in a sterile room of shocking white. And the horror of it takes her straight back to Mount Weather, of course it does. That is only natural, after all she has been through.

She starts panicking, plain and simple. Inhales great heaving breaths, tears running unchecked down her cheeks. Then she hears her name, and looks round to see Bellamy sitting at her bedside.

Somehow, that only makes her panic all the more.

He reaches out for her hand, squeezes it tight while she sobs. Whispers an assortment of assurances of his love and loyalty and her safety and sanity.

"Madi?" Of course, that is the first question she has to try to ask when she can almost speak coherently again.

"She's fine. Really well, in fact. She's just in the room next door getting some sleep. She suddenly told me she felt better – that must have been when you gave birth – and that she thought you needed us."

"I meant – I meant baby Madi." She feels her breath catch on the name.

"She's gone." He tells her, the cold unvarnished truth, and she starts sobbing all over again.

Somehow, though, this sobbing is a more comfortable kind of crying, more natural, perhaps. This is the steady weeping that comes with knowing exactly how bad it is, rather than panicking about how bad it could be. And yes, it is a horror beyond any horror she has known – and that's saying something, given her past – but at least it is a horror that she can share with Bellamy, as he weeps unashamedly even as he reaches out to hold her close.

She stops crying first, this time, she can hear it in the snuffling noises he hides against her hair as she starts to calm down. She doesn't pull away, therefore, only wraps her arms around him ever tighter until they are both ready to talk.

"What happened?" She asks, easing back just far enough to see his face. "The last thing I remember was that anomaly flash."

"We don't know exactly. You gave birth, obviously, and I guess that anomaly flare took – took our baby. You were passed out by the time I arrived with Madi, we carried you straight back here. You've been unconscious a little over a day."

She nods, not quite trusting herself to speak.

"I wish you hadn't put yourself in danger like that." He continues. "I know you thought you were saving my sister but – I could have lost both of you, Clarke. And Madi. I could have lost everyone I love."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be." He tells her, unexpectedly. "It's infuriating, but it's one of the things that makes you Clarke."

"I'm sorry for scaring you, though. And – and I'm sorry about Octavia." She remembers his sister, horrified that she did not do so sooner.

"Why should you be? She's going to be OK."

"She is? But how?" She cannot understand it. "I didn't get the Jacksonia."

"No. Echo did, though."

"Thank god for Echo."

"Yeah. She's great. She's not you, though."

She manages a weak smile at that, and pulls away from their loose embrace, keeping hold of his hand.

"I'm so sorry you didn't get to meet baby Madi." She tells him. She sort of expected to fall apart over this particular apology, but now that the worst has happened, she finds that there is nothing much to be done except to learn how to live with it.

"Not your fault. It sucks and – and I don't think there will ever be a day when I don't think about her, about what it would have been like to hold her and raise her and love her right from the start." She tears up at that, even as he struggles to get the words out past the lump she can hear in his throat. "But I've told you before that what matters to me is having a family with you, whatever that family looks like."

She nods and buries her damp cheeks back into his chest. And then stays like that, for a good long while, hiding from the world while she regains control of her facial features.

Then she hears the door open, and supposes she had better greet whichever worried relative this turns out to be. She removes herself, reluctantly, from Bellamy's embrace, and turns to face the new arrival.

Then she realises it is Madi, and suddenly she finds that she is not quite so reluctant any more.

"Mum?" Her daughter hovers, hesitant, just beyond arm's reach.

"Madi, honey." Clarke smiles in welcome, reaches out towards her with a clear demand for a hug. "Come here."

She does not need to be told twice. In fact, she does not only hug her mother, but climbs onto her bed and snuggles into her embrace, holding her properly for the first time in weeks.

"I missed you, Mum."

"I've only been out for a day."

"It was a very long day."

The three of them give a strained chuckle at that, but Clarke cannot help but feel that a strained chuckle is a pretty great start, given the circumstances.

…...

She stays in the Medical Centre for a week. It is a strange week, with so many visitors that her head is spinning before the end of the fourth day.

Her reunion with her mother is a beautiful thing. There is simply no other word for it, for that moment of being held in Abby's arms as she weeps, and as they share their sorrow. And most of the weeping is for baby Madi, of course it is, but Clarke cannot help but feel that there are a few tears of happiness, too, for the fact that she has the mother she remembers from her childhood so firmly back in her life.

She doesn't get to see Octavia until the next day, when Clarke is well enough to sit up in a wheelchair while Bellamy pushes her down the corridor to his sister's bedside. It is not a very hug-based reunion, this one, as Octavia still lies prone in her bed, stitches zigzagging her torso, but she seems awake enough to recognise the pair of them and squeeze their hands affectionately.

Even that is more than Clarke thought the universe would allow her, while she lay screaming on that forest floor.

The following day, Raven leads the charge of visitors and of course, Raven being Raven, it really does feel a bit like a charge. She marches in, shoulders proud, arms full of an assortment of packages and parcels that Clarke cannot quite make sense of. She takes in the fierce expression on her friend's face, and is rather glad that she has Madi and Bellamy at her bedside to help her face this.

"I told them they couldn't all come in at once." Raven offers by way of greeting.

"You told who what?" Clarke wonders if she is supposed to have understood that sentence. She thinks it's probably no surprise if her understanding in general is not up to much, right now.

"I told all the people who want to see you that they couldn't all come in at once. But half of them sent gifts anyway. It seemed a bit much, but everyone loves you or something. I thought Madi might enjoy opening them at least."

Clarke takes in the armful of items with new eyes. "You mean people sent all those things?"

"Yeah. I think most of them are food. As if we'd let you starve. But I know for a fact that Jackson and Miller traded half their spare clothes to get you a new sketchbook." Raven deposits the heap of gifts at the end of the bed with little grace and a generous sigh of relief.

"They did?" She is not keeping up with this development terribly well, she suspects.

"They did. I'm not sure how a sketchbook is supposed to cure you, but I guess it's the thought that counts."

"Yeah. It's – that's really kind of them."

She thinks she has got the hang of this, now, eyeing that heap at the end of the bed. There are people out there who like her, it seems, and who want her to be well, and are thinking of her and her family at this awful time. And there is Raven, too, who wants her to know that people are thinking of her, but who wants to stand on the door and guard her against overcrowding.

Then she hears a knock at the door, and it becomes clear that Raven has failed.

"Why are we knocking?" Murphy's voice drifts into the room. "Raven just walked straight in."

"Because we're not Raven." Emori bites back sharply, even as Bellamy laughs and calls out in welcome.

"Hey, Clarke. Bellamy, Madi. How are you all?" Echo eases the door open and gets on with the matter at hand.

"We're getting there." Clarke tells her, with half a smile, remembering that conversation they shared so many months ago.

They will get there, together. This she knows, because they always do.

…...

After that, it seems that the word gets out. Clarke is now well enough for visiting, and half of Sanctum feels the need to traipse into her room with a flower or a sketch or some fruit. It all feels a bit odd, really, as if her bedside table is becoming some kind of eerie shrine, and she thinks that the Clarke of a year ago would have found herself quite self-conscious about all the attention. Would have wanted to hide away and process her emotions in private. But the Clarke of today knows that the only hope she has of making it through this week is with the support of her friends.

But, yeah, she'd gladly lose the bedside table.

She expresses as much to Kane, when he stops by, towards the end of that week in white.

"What did you expect?" He asks, frowning at her as if she has lost her mind as well as her baby. "Of course people would want to pay their respects to you."

She doesn't like that phrase. She doesn't like it at all. She is not dead. No one is dead, and even her lost daughter is really in the room next door.

"Why?" She asks, hurt making her bitter. "Because I'm the commander of death? Because I'm some fierce leader and they're in awe of me?"

"No." His voice is quiet, calm, controlled. "They are in awe of you, but not because of your kill count. Because of the number you've saved. Because every time the universe puts another obstacle in your path, you overcome it. Because you are the strongest person they know, and you keep Sanctum strong, too."

She shakes her head a little, sticky tears at the corners of her eyes.

"Take as long as you need." He says, now, all gentleness, and she finds herself feeling fortunate that this is the stepfather fate has granted her. "Your desk isn't going anywhere. But I'm afraid that bedside table is probably not going anywhere, either."

…...

It is with a sense of relief that she steps tentatively out of the door of the Medical Centre on the day that she is allowed home. Bellamy is at her side, of course, and she wraps her arm firmly around his and allow him to take some of her weight. And Madi is dancing ahead of them, skipping in the late summer sun, shouting out in joyful anticipation of the birthday she is to celebrate the following day.

"Slow down, kid." Bellamy calls over the metres that Madi is stretching out between them. "Wait for your mum."

The girl makes a great show of grinding to a halt and turning to watch their painstaking progress.

"Don't wait for me." Clarke decides, contradicting Bellamy with a laugh. "Go enjoy the sun, Madi. Go back to Medical and tell your grandma Abby she has to take you out for the afternoon."

Madi is not slow in agreeing with that scheme, pulling her parents into an energetic hug before she jogs back to the building they have so recently left.

Meanwhile, Bellamy is chuckling softly.

"What is it?" Clarke asks, confused.

"It's good to see you ordering your mother around again." He tells her. "I've missed that. It was one of my favourite things about our time on Earth."

She is laughing, then, too. All in all, it seems to be something of a day for laughter.

"I'm sure Madi will be ordering me about before long."

"Yeah. It'll be interesting to see what she makes of the commander role as she grows up."

She agrees with that, nodding thoughtfully. "It's good to see her out playing in the sun, too."

"Definitely." He confirms, as they draw close to their own front door. "Here we go."

He unlocks the door, holds it open for her. And she places a foot on that doorstep where Murphy and Ivon turned her world upside down only a week ago. Takes a step, places her other foot on that doormat on which Bellamy stood when she welcomed him home from going missing-presumed-dead all those months before.

Suddenly, it is no longer a day for laughter.

The force of the moment hits her, with all the impact of that dropship crashing to Earth at the very beginning of their story. This is it. She is home, home from her hospital stay. Home from the birth.

Home, without her baby.

She crumples into a heap on the rough carpet of the corridor, an anguished cry bursting from her throat, tears flooding her eyes. She is loosely aware of Bellamy easing the door closed behind her, and of him dropping to his knees by her side, and enveloping her in his arms.

And then, for the longest time, she is aware of nothing but sobbing.

When she returns to her senses, she is not quite sure how long she has been sitting there, mourning so messily, unhinged from the world. She notices suddenly that she seems to be gasping out something about how she should be here, and that Bellamy is murmuring something right back at her about how she will always be with us. And he's holding her so tight she can barely breathe, but she thinks that's probably just as well, given the circumstances. She doesn't seem to be in any state to breathe particularly well anyway, and at least this way he has some hope of holding her together.

He is patient with her. He always has been, she sees that now. He was willing to wait several lifetimes for her, so he shows no sign, now, of begrudging her the long minutes that she passes in weeping.

At length, she hiccups to a halt.

"I love you so much." It seems a much more useful thing to tell him, than to waste time on thanking him for the thousandth time, or apologising for her thousandth failure.

"I love you more than you could ever imagine." He murmurs right back at her. "And I'm going to be here with you, every step of the way."

He holds good on that promise. Of course he does. He is with her that night, when she tosses and turns instead of sleeping. And he is with her the following morning, as she pastes on a smile and attempts to celebrate her daughter's birthday. It is poor but unsurprising timing, she thinks, for them to mark the finding of adolescent Madi so soon after the loss of baby Madi. She supposes that is how time works, that these events should obviously coincide. But, to be clear, she has never got on very well with time.

…...

It is Madi's idea to plant the tree.

Clarke is expecting something of an argument on her daughter's birthday, if she is being honest, or at the very least a sour mood. She is expecting Madi to be a little underwhelmed by the modest gift of drawing supplies that Bellamy managed to put together while she was still in the Medical Centre. She is expecting, too, her little girl to want to go out on an adventure to celebrate the sun and another year of survival, and, of course, she is expecting to have to say no on the grounds of her health. She is not, therefore, expecting the rather different suggestion that greets her in the living room this morning.

"We should plant a tree for her."

"What do you mean, honey?" Clarke does not bother asking who her refers to. She knows the answer to that already.

"You always said that there was that tree in Skaikru religion. And – and you and Dad met in a forest, and you met me in a forest, and I was born in a forest, and found in a forest. And I read in one of Dad's books that people used to plant trees sometimes when people they loved died. And – I know she's not dead, and that she's me, but she was still real, and we still lost her. So can we go on a birthday outing to plant her a tree?"

Clarke cries a little. What else is there to do, at a beautiful suggestion like that?

Meanwhile, thank goodness, Bellamy manages to find the words. "That sounds perfect, Madi. That's a beautiful idea."

After breakfast, therefore, they make the short journey from the mess hall to the kitchens, and ask after Jordan. And, sure enough, he is only too keen to help, leading them in the direction of the farm, and showing them through to the nursery.

"The only young trees we have are apples." He offers up nervously. "I hope that's alright?"

It is perfect, of course, and they tell him so. What other tree could they possibly plant for Madi, with her apple bar obsession, and her parents who started speaking cordially to each other again over a bag of apples almost a year ago?

Jordan directs them to a corner of the farm where they might plant their tree. He then makes his farewells and walks away as they dig the hole together, Bellamy taking the lion's share of the heavy work, Madi contributing with more enthusiasm than skill. And then they put their precious sapling gently into the soil, and pat the dirt back in around it, and stand back and look at the good thing they have done.

Clarke is rather beginning to understand why people used to plant trees for their loved ones, actually. It strikes her as being a rather more pragmatic memorial than a lump of stone. This beautiful seedling will grow, and flourish. It will nourish a new generation, and go from strength to strength amidst the hope of Sanctum.

It will, in short, stand for Madi, in every possible way.

a/n Thanks for reading!