AN: So time for the big reveal with everyone else – hope you like it!
I don't own anything relating to The 100
Chapter title from "Forever Young" by Alphaville
67
Heaven Can Wait, We're Only Watching the Skies
Clarke's frozen in her spot for long enough that Wells gets up to get the door. For a moment, she worries that it will be the first tip-off, but then she remembers that she's barely left the couch over the last two days. Nobody will think it's odd that they're greeted by someone else – it would probably be weirder if she did get the door.
Sasha, who's sitting next to her, squeezes her hand when they hear footsteps and voices getting closer, offering her silent support, and Clarke squeezes back.
Octavia immediately slumps down next to her, leaning against her side, and Clarke wraps an arm around her. "Did you sleep OK?"
"Yeah, but I still feel, like… like I'm dreaming or something," she replies, sniffling a little.
"I know." Clarke tightens her hold and gives Lincoln, who's sat down on Octavia's other side, a small smile that he returns.
Miller and Jackson have been ushered onto the chaise by Raven, who's pulled up chairs for herself and Zeke on the other side of the coffee table. She gives Clarke a questioning look, and she nods discretely. Might as well get it over with, it's not like it's going to get any easier.
"Is anyone really hungry?" Raven asks. "We figured we'd order lunch, but there's something we need to talk about first."
Miller and Jackson exchange a look and Miller shrugs. "We're fine to wait for a while," Jackson says.
"I don't care, I'm not hungry anyway," Octavia says, ignoring the look Lincoln gives her. "We need to… to plan the funeral, right?"
It hadn't occurred to Clarke that Octavia might think that's what they wanted to talk about, but it should, of course.
She tries to keep her breathing even, not let the words get to her, because they have no meaning. Bellamy's fine, he's in the bedroom, she doesn't have to plan his funeral or do any of the other things she's been dreading for the last… eight months, if she's honest.
"No," she tells Octavia when she's gotten her voice under control, squeezing her lightly. "That's not what we need to talk about right now."
Miller frowns at that, but before he can ask, Raven claps her hands together.
"Right. So it's been a while since I did this, feel free to jump in or take over any time," she starts, giving Clarke and Zeke significant looks. "Should we maybe start with establishing where everyone's at religiously? Last time I did this I just had Christianity to deal with."
Octavia straightens up, a confused look on her face. "Bell wasn't religious at all, he hated it. Mom always said her parents were really religious and that's part of why they kicked her out."
"I don't think any of us are particularly religious, right?" Miller says, glancing at Jackson and then Lincoln, who are both shaking their heads.
Raven nods. "Great, no ingrained religious beliefs to navigate. So what I'm about to tell you is probably going to sound a lot like science fiction." She pauses and frowns. "Or maybe fantasy? I've never been good at telling those apart."
"I think fantasy," Zeke offers, and Wells nods.
"Yeah, definitely fantasy," he agrees. "Science fiction is stuff based in science while fantasy…" He trails off at Raven's raised eyebrows. "Sorry, not really relevant."
"What does this have to do with… anything?" Octavia asks impatiently. "I don't get… what are you trying to do?"
Raven gives Clarke a meaningful look and she reaches for Octavia's hand, squeezing it lightly and smiling slightly when the other woman turns to her, eyes beseeching. "I'm sorry, I know this must be… I don't even know. But if you just listen, I promise everything will make sense."
"What will make sense?"
Lincoln leans closer, rubbing Octavia's back consolingly, his voice gentle when he speaks, "Let's just listen to what they have to say, OK?"
She still doesn't look happy about it, but she does nod.
"Right," Raven picks up the conversation again. "So none of you have a strong religious belief, but can we all agree that everyone has a soul? An essence, something that makes you who you are." She waits until the four Norms have nodded, all looking even more confused, before she continues. "When you die, that soul leaves the body and needs… we can call it help, to move on to the afterlife."
Octavia snorts. "I'm sorry, are you trying to pull some 'he's in a better place' crap? My brother just died, I don't care if he's… floating on clouds playing the harp."
"Octavia…" Lincoln tries, but she shakes off his hand and crosses her arms over her chest, glaring at Raven.
"I understand, and I promise that's not what I'm doing," Raven says, voice gentler, maintaining eye contact with Octavia until the other woman looks away. "OK, where were we… right, the soul needs help to move on. That's what we do."
It's not what Clarke had been expecting, honestly, but she supposes it's… efficient. And Raven's never been one to beat around the bush.
"I'm sorry, who are 'we' in this scenario?" Miller asks, at the same time as Octavia says, "What do you mean, what you do?"
"A bit more background might have been good, babe," Zeke notes, but he sounds fond.
"You take over then," she suggests, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms over her chest. "If you think you can do it better."
Zeke shakes his head. "I thought you had actually done this before."
"Give me a break, it's been over a century and a half."
Clarke's not sure if it's intentional, but it certainly makes everyone pay attention.
"Right," Zeke says with a nod, eyes darting between his four very attentive listeners. "If we can just… not focus on what Raven just said for a few minutes, I'm going to try to explain this better."
"You want us to just… forget that she just told us she's a hundred and fifty years old?" Miller asks incredulously.
"Two hundred and one, if you please," Raven pipes in and Zeke gives her an exasperated look.
"Not helping, babe." He takes a deep breath and turns back to the others, who are all watching him with various levels of confusion on their faces. "Getting back on topic – like Raven said, when someone dies, their soul leaves the body, but it can't move on without help. That's where we come in. We call ourselves Soul Keepers, and we act as a… portal, would probably be the best way to put it, which the soul needs to pass through to get to the afterlife."
Octavia lets out a noise, somewhere halfway between a sob and a snort. "I'm sorry, this is insane. Are you actually trying to make us believe that you're some sort of… grim reapers that go around collecting souls or whatever, and that Raven's over two hundred years old? I'm sorry, I don't buy it."
"I know it must sound crazy," Clarke says, reaching for Octavia's hand again, but she pulls it out of her grasp. "But it's the truth."
Octavia watches her for a long moment, eyes narrowed. "Fine, say it's true," she finally says. "I don't believe you, but just for argument's sake, let's say it's true." She turns back to Zeke. "Go on."
He rubs his neck, looking from Raven to Clarke. "I think this is when we switch to visual aids, right?"
Clarke nods and scoots forward a little, so she can open the photo album to the first page, where there's a sepia tinted picture of Raven and Finn. It's from around a decade before Clarke was 'born', from what she knows was their wedding, even if it's not obvious from the actual photo – Raven is wearing a period appropriate dress and Finn a morning coat that Clarke's pretty sure he had for many years after that day.
"This looks like something you could have taken at a ren faire or something," Octavia says dismissively, barely glancing at the photo.
Lincoln is leaning over the album, though, one hand hovering an inch or so above the page. "No, this is… this is old," he muses.
"Eighteen fifty-seven," Raven tells him, a small smile on her face that makes Clarke wish she could offer her some comfort. But Zeke picks up on it too and wraps an arm around Raven, who offers him a slightly brighter smile.
"So you were already, like, forty in this photo?" Octavia asks. "Got to say, you age well."
"We don't age at all, actually," Zeke replies, voice a little sharper than earlier and Octavia at least looks a little apologetic.
"And who's that?" Miller pipes in, nodding at the photo.
"His name was Finn," Raven tells him. "We were together for… forty-four years before he died."
"So you can die but you don't age?" Miller asks. "How does that work?"
"No, he wasn't a Soul Keeper," Raven explains. "We don't age or die."
She leans forward to flip the page, revealing what Clarke's pretty sure is the first photo of the two of them together, taken by a passing-through photographer in eighteen seventy, if she's not mistaken.
"And how old are you?" Octavia asks, voice cold and distant.
"A hundred and fifty-one," she replies. "So Raven still has half a century on me."
"Oh please, I'm still younger than you at heart," Raven teases and Clarke rolls her eyes, turning the page again.
They go through the rest of the album slowly, each photo bringing up questions that they try to answer as best they can. Lincoln mostly comments on the quality of the actual photos, and he and Raven go off on tangents about the technology now and then, all the advances she's seen in her lifetime, while Miller asks about events or places depicted, which Wells knows the most about even if it's something he wasn't actually present at. Jackson doesn't contribute a lot, mainly frowning at the photos, and Octavia pipes in with biting remarks when someone new appears in one of the pictures.
"OK, so is everyone onboard?" Raven asks when they get to the last page. "Anyone still having doubts we're telling the truth?"
Octavia heaves an exaggerated sigh. "Fine, we believe you."
"I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the logistics," Jackson says, voice thoughtful, and Clarke realizes that he must have been thinking about this while they went through the album. "You say that you don't age, but you're all clearly adults. I'm assuming you didn't just… come into existence like this, so how does that work?"
Clarke offers him a smile that she hopes conveys how grateful she is for his question, since it's the natural transition to the next part of the reveal.
"Should we maybe order food before we get started on that part?" Sasha suggests. "It'll take a while before it gets here."
Clarke's stomach growls at the words and she glances at her watch, realizing that it's already been an hour and a half. "Good idea," she agrees.
They settle on Thai and take a couple of minutes to figure out what everyone wants, and then Raven calls in the order. Clarke hears her add extra spring rolls and an order of Kari fried rice with chicken, Bellamy's favorite.
"OK," she says when she's hung up. "Let's get on with it, I want to wrap this up before the food gets here."
"So, like we've already established," Zeke starts, "we don't age, but as for how we become Soul Keepers… in all honesty, that part's always been a bit of a mystery even to us. We have always assumed that we live normal lives and are… recruited, for lack of a better word, when we die, at which point we become Soul Keepers and stop aging."
"Assumed?" Octavia questions, looking more curious than annoyed for the first time. "You don't actually know?"
Clarke shakes her head. "No. When we… wake up, that's what it's like. When we wake up, we have no memories of our past lives. We know who we are and what we're expected to do, we have the type of knowledge of the world you'd expect from an average person, but that's about it."
The room falls silent for a long moment, and then Octavia sighs. "This is so weird."
Zeke snorts. "I can only imagine."
"And I still don't understand why you're telling us all this," she goes on. "I mean, it's fascinating and all, and I suppose it would eventually be a problem, you guys not aging, we'd definitely catch on at some point, but not for years. So why now?"
"Because I wanted to be able to see you guys again."
Even though she was half expecting it – she's sure he's been eavesdropping on the conversation and just couldn't stay away any longer – Clarke still jumps a little at Bellamy's voice. Before she can recover, Octavia gasps and scrambles to her feet, pushing past Clarke and Sasha to get to her brother.
"What the hell!" she exclaims when she does, punching him – hard, by the look of his wince – in the shoulder before throwing herself into his arms.
He holds onto her tightly, one hand starting to stroke her hair when she bursts into tears, murmuring something Clarke can't hear. She turns from them, wanting to give them a little bit of privacy, and focuses on the other three.
Lincoln is looking a little shell-shocked, which isn't surprising, really, Jackson is gaping at the scene in front of him and Miller is blinking rapidly.
Nobody says anything as the siblings reunite, and after a few minutes, Bellamy ushers Octavia back to the couch. She refuses to let go of him, though, and Clarke and Sasha move over a little so both of them will fit in the spot Octavia vacated earlier.
"OK?" Clarke asks quietly, looping her arm through his when he's sat down, and he leans in for a brief kiss.
"OK."
"No!" Miller exclaims. "Not OK. None of this is OK! What the hell is going on?"
"Nate…" Jackson tries, putting one hand on his boyfriend's shoulder, but he shakes it off turning on Bellamy, looking angrier than Clarke's ever seen him.
"No. They told us you were dead, OK? They let us believe that for two days. Was that some sort of sick joke?"
Octavia leans over and actually flicks him in the temple, which seems to get through at least some of his anger. "Are you really that stupid?" she asks when he's focused on her. "You saw Clarke, just like I did, do you seriously think she would joke about something like that?"
It's exactly what Clarke was afraid of herself, but at least Miller seems to be the only one who believes it. One out of four isn't that bad. And she's pretty sure it's at least partly shock, and that they can talk him around.
The expression on his face shifts at Octavia's words and he glances at Clarke. "No, that's not… of course not. I'm just trying to understand, because none of this makes any sense."
"Actually, it makes perfect sense," Jackson tells him, earning a glare. "Not… OK, the whole thing is still really weird, but this at least explains why they would tell us."
Miller's eyes are still narrowed, but it looks like a lot of the fight has gone out of him. "I still don't like it."
"It's not like we had a lot of options," Bellamy tells him with a shrug. "Look, none of us knew that this was going to happen, OK? If we had we would have handled it differently. But since we didn't, it was this or… fake a funeral and then Clarke would have had to either come up with a good reason to leave in a few years, or she'd just have disappeared. Would that have been better?"
"No!" Octavia exclaims, glaring at Miller. "Stop being an asshole, Miller. This is good."
He stares back for a moment before slumping back against the couch, rubbing a hand over his face. "I know, OK? It's fucking… it's… I'm so fucking happy to have you back, man, but this is a lot to take in."
Bellamy snorts. "Trust me, I know."
"So you say you didn't know this was going to happen," Jackson says. "But you knew it could happen, right?"
Clarke glances at Raven but she just shrugs, making no move to answer the question.
"In theory, yes," she says. "But like Zeke said, we don't actually know how it happens, how new Soul Keepers are recruited. The assumption among the majority of us has always been that it's normal people who die and are turned into Keepers, but that's nothing we've ever really had confirmed. And even if it was a possibility, there aren't that many of us. The odds that Bellamy would actually be chosen were slim and I think… I know I, at least, tried to not think about it too much because if I did, I might get my hopes up and then if it didn't happen…"
She doesn't finish the sentence, can't, even with him next to her. He squeezes her hand reassuringly.
"You never said anything," he says, voice gentle.
She looks up and offers him a small smile. "Like I said, I didn't want to get my hopes up. And you had enough on your plate with the whole…" She has to pause and take a breath. "The dying thing, I didn't want to dump even more stuff on you."
"Hang on," Octavia's voice breaks the moment between them. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Bellamy freezes in a very convincing imitation of a deer caught in the headlights. "You haven't covered this part?"
"I thought you were listening in the whole time, you didn't hear everything we said?" Clarke retorts.
"Just for the last fifteen minutes or so," he says. "I was trying to figure out if you had ordered food yet, I was getting hungry."
"We have," Raven pipes in. "It should be here in, like, half an hour."
"Great." He nods, avoiding his sister's searching looks. "That should give us plenty of time to talk about the whole… Numbers thing."
"What numbers?" Octavia demands, crossing her arms over her chest. "Clarke made it sound like you knew you were going to die or something."
Bellamy offers her a tentative smile, but apparently her initial elation to have her brother back is basically over, because she doesn't even flinch. "I did, yeah."
"What the hell, man?" Miller exclaims. "And you didn't tell us?"
"I thought about it, OK?" Bellamy tells him. "But in the end I didn't want to… I don't know, I didn't want you guys to have to worry about it. I didn't want it to… taint the time we had together."
Miller snorts. "That's poetic and shit but come on. I don't know about the rest of you but I would have preferred getting to say goodbye."
Octavia's nodding. "Me too." Her eyes widen almost comically. "That's why you were so weird at the airport in Vegas? You knew it was the last time we'd see each other."
Bellamy reaches for her hand and she at least doesn't pull away from him. "Yeah, that's why. I'm sorry, maybe I did make the wrong decision, maybe I should have told you."
"It's kind of a moot point now," Raven points out, helpful as always.
"But…" Octavia starts, turning to Clarke. "You said the paramedics didn't know what happened. If you knew it was coming, you would have known why too. Right?"
"No, that's…" Bellamy pauses, trying to find the right words. "I didn't go to a doctor and get a diagnosis or something. That's not what happened."
"Then how the fuck did you know?" Miller asks, though he sounds more curious than angry, which is a relief.
"That's where the Numbers come in," Bellamy tells him.
"OK, then explain what you mean with those damn numbers," Octavia exclaims.
Bellamy looks around at the other Keepers in the room. "Does someone with more than twelve hours of experience want to take this?"
Wells nods, and Clarke's grateful that she doesn't have to.
"OK, so when you're born – or it might be earlier, actually, I don't know, it doesn't show up in photos – you get a Number," he starts. "Call it fate, destiny, whatever you'd like. This Number is the amount of time you have to live, in days, and from the day you're born, it counts down, until the day you're going to die. Normal people – we call them Norms – can't see these numbers, but we can." His eyes dart to Octavia's forehead, where 23,629 is clearly visible. She frowns and lifts her hand to her face, rubbing at the spot.
"What?"
"That's where your number is," Wells tells her.
She looks up, as if she can see it somehow. "Well, what is it?"
"O," Bellamy warns. "You don't want to know that."
"Why not?" she retorts.
"He's right," Raven says. "You don't want to live your life counting down to your death. There's a reason you can't see the Number yourself."
Octavia still looks like she might argue, but Lincoln puts a hand on her arm and she lets out a long breath. "Fine, you're probably right."
"But that's why you told Bellamy," Lincoln surmises, turning to Clarke.
She nods. "Yeah. When we met, or, the first time I saw his Number, anyway, it was two hundred and sixty-eight. A little less than nine months."
The memory of that night still makes something icy scratch at her insides, which Bellamy must either realize or notice, because his arm around her tightens. She gratefully leans her head against his shoulder.
"She tried to avoid me at first, though," he says and she elbows him lightly in the ribs.
"It was… self-preservation."
"So that's what that was?" Miller asks, sounding thoughtful. "You freaked out because you found out he was going to die soon?"
"Basically, yeah," she confirms with a sigh. "I've always had a no Norms rule, or at least nothing more than a one-time thing…"
"For this exact reason," Bellamy interjects.
"For this exact reason, yes," she agrees. "But he's stubborn, so…"
"Oh please," Raven says with a snort. "You were this close to breaking when he tracked you down."
"You did say that," Bellamy reminds her. "I'm just irresistible, I guess."
Clarke rolls her eyes. "That must be it."
Octavia's been quiet for a long time, but now she gets involved in the conversation again. "So that's why you agreed to the whole… round-the-world trip thing? I did think it was really weird, since you've always hated to accept any kind of help."
"Yeah," Bellamy says with a nod. "She was sneaky about it, too. Before she even told me about all of this, she started asking what I'd want to do if I found out I only had a year to live and got me talking about all the places I'd want to visit… then when she'd told me the truth, she was like, 'so you'll let me take you on that trip, right?'. I didn't agree right away but… she can be very persuasive when she wants to be."
"OK, ew, we don't need to hear about Clarke's powers of persuasion," Octavia declares.
"All I did was show him my bank account," Clarke assures her with a laugh.
"And it was very persuasive."
"And that's why…" Octavia starts, looking down at her and Bellamy's hands in her lap. "That's why you looked me up, too? You weren't going to be passing through really, right? You found me and added Dublin to your plans?"
"Yeah, that's why I tracked you down," Clarke confirms. "I was just glad you didn't have a common name, so it wasn't even hard. And Dublin wasn't on the list originally, but Bellamy was fine with me adding places too, I didn't even have to come up with an excuse."
He snorts. "I guess I'm just gullible and want to believe you don't lie to me."
"It was a good lie, though."
"It really was." He turns to Octavia. "I was planning on finding you when we got back to the States. In hindsight, that wouldn't have been a good idea, but I didn't know you were all the way over in Europe, so…"
Octavia moves away a little from Lincoln to wrap her arms around her brother. "God, after Raven called us… I mean, once I'd gotten over the initial shock, I was so mad at myself for staying away so long."
"Hey, it's OK," Bellamy assures her, wrapping his free arm around her and kissing her hair. "I was just glad that we got to reconnect at all, OK? I had pretty much resigned myself to never getting to see you again."
She lets out a half-choked sob. "I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have taken off like I did back then."
"Hey, hey, no. We talked about this, remember? And it's like I told Clarke when we were up in Bellport – I don't know where I would have been today if my life hadn't unfolded the way it did. You leaving… it sucked at the time, but it did make me the person I am today."
There's a knock on the door at that moment, and Clarke squeezes Bellamy's hand before slipping out from under his arm to get it, Raven getting to her feet as well. He gives her a smile and wraps his other arm around his sister as well, mumbling comforting words into her hair as he rubs her back.
"That went about as well as I expected," Raven says quietly when they're in the entranceway.
"Yeah, I was thinking the same thing," Clarke agrees, letting out a long breath which it feels like she's been holding for hours.
"Hey, be happy, babe," Raven tells her. "You got your guy back, you're not going to have to fake your own deaths in a few years so his friends and family won't get suspicious, you're in the clear. I mean, if you think about it, you basically won the lottery."
