AN: Final chapter, how did that happen? There is a short epilogue, I'm hoping to get that up on Wednesday, and then a sequel when I get around to finishing that… but still, it's almost over. I have no idea what I'm going to do when it is, this has been such a big part of my life for so long now, it'll be hard to just let it go…
I don't own anything relating to The 100
Chapter title from "New York City" by Among Savages again. We have come full circle
70
Where the Rabbit in the Hat Is Just a Train in the Fog
It turns out that Bellamy's availability does follow hers, at least for now, but they still have a week off, and they definitely make the most of that time. They sleep late, and most days, one of them wake the other up with kisses that turn into lazy morning sex. They do a Lord of the Rings marathon, and then The Hobbit, and Harry Potter, just because they feel like it. They Skype with Rosamie and Danilo and make plans to visit after Christmas and New Years in Dublin with Octavia and Lincoln. They go to Shakespeare in the Park and watch Coriolanus, Bellamy complaining under his breath about the actors' pronunciation and the less-than-accurate scenery the whole time. They spend a day in the Hamptons, getting away from the heat in the city for a little bit.
Bellamy's assigned his first Transfer on Sunday morning – Emily Hartford, female, 92. COD: Coronary artery disease. It seems like a pretty good first case, the coordinates indicate a nursing home in Williamsburg, not too far from them. He suggests they walk, but Clarke knows how tired he's going to be after and insists on driving.
"We don't need to go inside, right?" he mumbles when they've parked outside the building. "Might be suspicious."
"No, we'll be fine out here," she assures him.
There's a park bench just outside the entrance to the home, which would normally be her first choice, but given it's Bellamy's first time, she's already decided that they're going to stay in the car.
"In the car?" he asks a little amusedly when she tells him as much.
She turns the engine off and shifts so she's facing him. "Which one of us is the expert on this, huh? I know what the first Transfer is like, I don't particularly want to drag you back into the car after. You're pretty heavy and I'm really not strong enough."
He pales a little at that and she wishes she'd been a little more… delicate about it.
"It's that bad?"
Clarke considers the question for a moment, trying to find the right words that will put his mind at rest but not downplay what he's about to experience.
"It's intense," she finally starts. "I know I've said that before, but that's really the best word for it. Even if this woman's had a completely normal life, she'll still have experienced loss – grandparents, parents, maybe siblings or partners, considering her age. I obviously didn't have any memories like that of my own to draw from when I started out, but… imagine how you felt after your mom died and then multiply that by a hundred."
"Shit." He rubs a hand over his face. "That doesn't sound fun at all."
"And you're going to feel like you've… I don't know, run a marathon, on your hands, backwards, while solving Sudoku puzzles and listening to one of those peppy gym instructors and, like, five different songs at the same time. Just completely exhausted, physically, mentally, emotionally. Hence staying in the car."
"OK, yeah, good plan." Bellamy takes a deep breath and leans back in the passenger seat, closing his eyes. The clock on the dashboard indicates that there's a minute left.
"Ready?" she asks quietly.
"After all of that?" He opens one eye to look at her, but his mouth is tugging up on one side. "Never."
"Well, ready or not…"
He huffs a laugh and closes his eye again, and she reaches for his hand, taking it into both of hers, trying to provide whatever support she can.
It's definitely not obvious to an outsider when it starts. Bellamy tenses, back arching off the car seat a little, but his eyes are closed and he'd probably look like he's taking a nap or something if someone was passing by.
It's over in just a few seconds. It's been a while since Clarke was with another Keeper during a Transfer, she had honestly forgotten how quick the process actually is. It feels like it goes on for much longer when you're the one doing it.
There's a moment after he opens his eyes again when she can see him returning to himself, his mind slotting back into itself, processing what he just experienced.
She pulls him in before the tears start, and he buries his face against her throat, huge sobs making his entire body shake.
She's not sure how long they sit there, it might be five minutes, it might be an hour. Eventually, though, Bellamy pulls away, wiping at his wet cheeks.
"Fuck, that was…" he starts, voice shaking, but trails off.
"I didn't manage to prepare you?" she asks.
"I'm not sure anything you said could have prepared me for that," he admits, letting out a deep sigh and leaning back. "Is it always like that?"
"It'll get easier," Clarke assures him. "I mean, it'll take a while, but it will."
"Thank God. And I don't even think her memories were that bad, you know? They were mostly happy, actually, except for her parents' deaths and a sister, a couple of years ago."
"Yeah, it's… the happy memories are draining too, though not as much as the sad ones. I think it's basically that you get all these memories, a whole life-time worth, in just a few seconds. It's emotional overload."
Bellamy just nods, eyes sliding closed, and she takes that as a sign it's time to head home.
He's still shaky when they get there, has to lean heavily on her on the walk from the car to the elevator and then to the apartment, and once she's deposited him on the couch – Bastet immediately jumps into his lap and starts purring, being comforting in her own way – she finds some Ben & Jerry in the freezer.
"Ice cream?" he asks when she sits down next to him and hands him a spoon.
"Sugar," Clarke replies. "You need to get your energy levels back up, I've found ice cream is the most efficient."
He obligingly digs into the ice cream and lets out a content sigh at the first mouthful. "OK, yeah, that does feel good. So I guess this is why I only have one Transfer every other day right now?"
She nods, swallowing down her own spoonful of ice cream before responding. "Yeah, I think that's standard. You'll probably feel better within, like, an hour, but it takes some time to recover fully in the beginning. They don't want to overwhelm you."
"I guess that makes sense."
She turns the TV on and they watch Brooklyn 99 as they finish the ice cream – it was only about half full to start with, and they've earned it.
Their schedules for the next week seem to have been synchronized, in that Bellamy has one assignment every other day and Clarke has two or three on opposite days, so they don't actually have anything else to do today. Which is just as well – ten minutes after they've finished the ice cream, he falls asleep, head lolling back against the couch. She tucks a blanket around him and turns the sound on the TV down a little, and settles in for the foreseeable future.
When her stomach starts rumbling, she orders Thai and waits until ten minutes before it's supposed to be delivered to gently shake Bellamy awake.
He blinks against the sunlight streaming in through the windows, as if surprised it's still the middle of the day, and then stretches. "How long was I out?"
"An hour and a half or so," Clarke replies, getting up off the couch. "I ordered lunch, it should be here soon."
"Mmm, awesome."
He's still on the couch, eyes closed, when the doorbell rings, but gets up when she returns with the food. He still seems a little unsteady on his feet, but doesn't have too much trouble moving from the couch to the dining table, so she fights back the urge to offer her help.
They move back to the couch after they finish their lunch, and even though Bellamy doesn't fall back asleep, they're both only half-awake when Clarke's phone makes them jump a couple of hours later.
"Who's emailing on a Sunday?" she grumbles, reaching for her phone.
"Etsy order, maybe?" he suggests through a yawn.
She slumps back against him and unlocks her phone. "I haven't actually deactivated vacation mode on there, I should probably do that."
"Then it's probably spam or something," he concludes. "How to make a thousand bucks every day from the comfort of your own couch, or, you know, knock-off Viagra ads."
"Or I've won a billion dollars in a lottery I never entered," she adds, but frowns when she gets her inbox open.
"What?" Bellamy asks, noticing of course.
"It's from the account I usually get relocation info from," she replies. "But I've only been here for a little over a year, it's not time to move yet…"
Her finger hovers over the email, which doesn't have a subject line. It's the only email address she's ever known for whoever is in charge of the whole Soul Keeper organization, the one she used to get assignments from before they switched to the app.
Probably the one mentoring assignments come from, these days, though she wouldn't know since the last person she mentored was a guy called Gabriel in the nineties.
Possibly the one she'd get a message from if there had been some sort of misunderstanding, or if they'd changed their minds… but they can't do that now, can they? Bellamy's already started 'working', if they were going to go back on the whole thing, they wouldn't have bothered assigning him his first Transfer…
"Are you waiting for it to do something?" he asks curiously, pulling Clarke out of her musings. "I'm pretty sure just staring at it isn't going to open it."
She elbows him in the chest but does click to open the email, closing her eyes for a brief moment as it loads and taking a deep breath.
The greeting is the same as always: Dear Miss Griffin.
The rest of the email, though, is something new.
Before all else, allow us to apologize for any distress the recruitment of Mr. Blake caused you. As you are doubtlessly aware, this process typically involves the new Soul Keeper being divested of the memories of their previous life, in which case Mr. Blake would have been assigned to a different post. His refusal to let that happen, and insistence that he be allowed to not only retain his memories but be reunited with you, is a situation that we have never been faced with before, and it did take us some time to come to an agreement on how to handle it. Allowing all of this was not an easy choice, but, we believe, the right one for everyone involved in this particular case. If we had known that this would happen before the fact, we might have been able to alert you both of what was going to happen, but as that was not the case, we had no choice but to let the events unfold more or less as planned. We also did not have the option to let Mr. Blake make the transition to Soul Keeper before his mortal life ended, as a requisite for holding that position is that one has indeed passed on from the living.
"Huh," she says.
"What?" Bellamy asks, frowning at her. "What do they want?"
"Apologize, I think?" she replies, the words coming out as a question. "For 'any distress' this whole situation caused me, apparently. You can read yourself if you want."
He snorts and leans in to do just that, and she continues reading too.
As you must have realized by now, we have not assigned another Soul Keeper as Mr. Blake's mentor, assuming that you would prefer to take on that role yourself. If that is not the case, do let us know as soon as possible and we can arrange for someone else to take this duty over. If you are both content with the situation, you may simply proceed as you have been, and we will be back in touch when the time comes for you to be relocated. We assume you and Mr. Blake will prefer to be assigned together in the future, but if that should change, you only have to notify us and we will act accordingly.
"Jesus, are they stuck in the nineteenth century or something?" Bellamy mumbles. "It's like reading Dickens."
Clarke can't help but snort at that. "I assume they're… eternal or whatever. They probably have templates that aren't updated very often."
"Yeah, but still. They would have had to digitize everything in the last twenty-five years or something, they couldn't have modernizes the language while they were at it? And it's a pretty unique situation, you really think they have a template for it?"
She considers that for a moment. "OK, probably not."
They both focus back on the email again.
If you have not already come to this conclusion, we can disclose that Mr. Blake has been allowed to retain his old identity, including social security number, bank accounts, and all personal identification papers and credit cards.
Some intervention was required to make this possible – the memories of anyone not in your and Mr. Blake's closest circle who were involved in the incident on July 27th and 28th have been altered, and there is no official record of this ever having happened.
"Which we already knew," Bellamy points out, and she hums in agreement.
Lastly, we understand that four people have been made aware of Mr. Blake's new status. We did assume this was going to happen when we chose not to alter the memories of said people, but we do hope that this will not lead to any trouble. Needless to say, the world at large needs to remain ignorant of the existence of our kind, though we of course do support revealing your secret to those close to you who you trust to keep it. We will also much appreciate you and your loved ones not spreading the word of Mr. Blake being allowed to retain his memories – though we do not rule out this happening again, it will not be the new norm going forward, and we would prefer it if the Soul Keeper community at large is not aware of this.
The email isn't signed, not that Clarke expected it to be.
"So, the gist of that was to keep our mouths shut, right?" Bellamy says after a moment. "Did I get that right?"
She sighs and closes down the email app. "Basically, yeah. I mean, not that I was planning on bragging about it or anything, but some people will find out, that's inevitable."
"Well, at least we know everything is more or less on the up and up," he continues, and she realizes that he might have also been worried that maybe this wouldn't last. "I'm obviously not the expert here, but it doesn't sound like a threat, right? I mean, they obviously don't want us to talk about it, but there's no 'keep quiet or else'?"
"No," she assures him without really thinking it through, but she realizes that she means it. "If they really didn't want people to find out about this, they wouldn't have let it happen. They're even saying that it might happen again, so maybe they're realizing that the world is changing. You can't just… erase someone's memory and put them on the other side of the country or even the world and just not expect them to ever encounter someone from their old life anymore. The world is getting more interconnected every day. Maybe you're the first one of a new generation of Soul Keepers."
Bellamy snorts. "You know that's exactly what they said isn't going to happen, right?"
"Yeah, but they may not be able to stick to that."
"True."
Clarke puts the phone away again and gets comfortable, her head on his chest. "So we're staying here the rest of the day, right?"
"I'm feeling better, give me a couple more hours and I can probably muster up enough energy to cook, if you want. Or we could go out to dinner?"
"Nah, it feels like a get take-out delivered kind of day."
He laughs but doesn't object, just tugs her even closer and brushes his lips against her hair.
Bellamy seems more or less back to normal on Monday morning, still a little tired, but he gets out of bed when Clarke does in the morning, and when she leaves to get to her first Transfer a little before noon, he's on the couch playing video games, Bastet asleep in his lap.
Her Transfer is nothing out of the ordinary, a middle aged woman who's led a pretty standard life, and she picks up lunch on the way home. Bellamy insists on accompanying her to her second Transfer in the early evening, saying he needs to get out of the apartment and get some air, and since it's a nice night, they then decide to stroll around Tribeca for a while, grabbing dinner before taking the subway back home.
"There's a meteor shower tonight," he says, deliberately casual, when they're walking from the station.
"Yeah?" Clarke replies, eyes straying to the sky that's darkening but still not completely dark. Not that it ever gets really dark in the city.
"I don't know how much we'll be able to see here, but we might catch some, at least," he continues. "It would obviously be better to get out of the city, but you have to drive for a while to get to a place that's dark enough."
He has his second Transfer tomorrow, but not until late afternoon, so it's not like they have to get up early or anything.
"We could do that, right?" she says. If she hadn't been glancing at him, she might have missed the way his mouth turns up at the corner.
"I guess so, yeah. If you want."
"I want, yeah. We can pack a blanket and some snack, have a late night picnic."
"That does sound nice."
So they go back home and Clarke finds an old blanket she doesn't mind getting dirty while Bellamy packs whatever he thinks a nighttime picnic requires in the kitchen. The temperature's still in the mid-seventies, so it's not exactly cold, but she still changes out of the dress she's wearing and puts on some comfier clothes. It's been a while since she last checked out a meteor shower, but she does remember it involving watching the sky for long stretches at a time, and she'd rather be comfortable.
"Ready?"
She turns to find Bellamy in the doorway to the bedroom, a backpack slung over his shoulder.
"Ready." She waits until they're in the car to ask where they're going. "And don't even bother trying to tell me you didn't have a plan for this, just in case I said I wanted to do it."
He rolls his eyes but doesn't deny it.
"Some of the state parks on Long Island are staying open," he starts. "The closest one is Jones Beach, but that's, like, an hour and forty minutes' drive or something. I figured we'll be fine as long as we get down to the coast, away from the city, so I was thinking we just head down to Rockaway. That's just an hour or so, and it might be less crowded than the parks, since they've advertised they're staying open just for this."
"Sounds good."
She turns on the radio and rolls the windows down, and they spend the hour long drive singing along to old classics.
The parking lot at Jacob Riis Park is nowhere near full, but Clarke's pretty sure there are a lot more cars here than there usually is at eleven thirty on the average Monday night, even in the summer. There seems to be some sort of impromptu party at one end of the beach, so they head in the opposite direction, past the crescent of the beach until the party is no more than the base thumping in the distance.
They pass a few others with the same idea – a family with twin girls who look to be around eight, a middle aged couple who are sharing a bottle of champagne, and a group of twenty-something's who seem to be making up rules for a meteor themed drinking game.
They continue for another twenty yards or so past the group until Bellamy apparently finds a spot he's happy with and spreads the blanket.
"So, what've you got in that bag of yours?" Clarke asks, sitting down when he's done.
"Well, I was working with a slightly limited supply," he tells her, peaking into the backpack and digging out a Tupperware bowl. When he opens it, she sees that it's full of Doritos and she has to laugh.
"You seriously packed Doritos in a Tupperware bowl?"
He puts the bowl down in the middle of the blanket and digs around some more, coming up with a can of guacamole. "I didn't want to end up with a bag of Dorito dust, OK?"
"No, that's… it's kind of sweet," she assures him, getting an eye-roll in return.
Next up is a bag of M&M's, half a bag of chex mix – "Those didn't warrant a Tupperware bowl?" "Shut up!" – two Newton bars, a couple of bananas, and some Reese's peanut butter cups.
"Take your pick," Bellamy says, gesturing at the little buffet.
She reaches for the M&M's and he grabs a peanut butter cup.
"Drinks?" she asks after a moment.
"Right, almost forgot."
He produces two soda bottles, handing her one, and they eat in silence for a while, periodically glancing at the sky.
"Time for dessert?" he then asks, and Clarke raises her eyebrows.
"Because M&M's and Reese's aren't dessert?"
"Yeah, fine, you have a point," he admits, digging around in the backpack again. "I was trying to be romantic, OK?"
When he straightens up again, he has a box of strawberries in one hand and a jar of Nutella in the other.
She really can't help the smile that spreads on her face and has to lean in for a quick kiss. "Just my kind of romance."
"Yeah?"
"Obviously."
They get everything else packed away and lie down on the blanket before digging into the strawberries, dipping them into the Nutella.
The moon is large and bright, but they still manage to spot some shooting stars.
"So what now?" Bellamy asks after some time, Clarke's not sure how long. Time seems to have lost all meaning here in the dark, with the streaks of light darting across the sky above them.
"You want to start heading home?" she asks, turning her head to look at him.
"No, not now now, just…"
"Oh… you mean life?"
He nods, eyes still on the sky above them. "Yeah. You've gotten your Etsy store going again, and I'm assuming you'll pick up the library shifts at some point too, right?"
She honestly hasn't thought about it yet – she told them she'd get in touch when she was back and ready to start working again, not giving them any type of timeline, but… it might be nice to get back to the routine she had going before. She did like it.
"I guess, yeah," she says, turning back to the night sky. She thinks she catches a meteor out of the corner of her eye, but she can't be sure. "The homework sessions won't start until school's back, so I might wait until then, just so I can focus on getting you comfortable with… all of this."
Bellamy hums, reaching for her hand and interlacing their fingers, his thumb brushing the back of her hand as they both watch the sky in silence.
"You don't know what you want to do?" she asks when he doesn't pick up the conversation again. "I mean, not that you have to do anything right now if you don't want. It takes some getting used to."
"Honestly? I think I'd go crazy in, like, a month if I had nothing else to do," he admits.
"So figure out what you want," she tells him, because it really is that simple. "I never got the impression that the delivery job was some great calling or anything, but you could probably pick that up if you wanted. Maybe not full-time, at least not now, but a couple of shifts a week, maybe."
"Maybe…"
"Or… school?"
His hand spasms around her fingers and Clarke forces herself to stay quiet as he mulls the question over.
"I mean, I did technically defer last semester," he finally says. "So I guess I could finish that, at least. Get my bachelor degree."
"You should," she tells him. "And then we can look into the teaching certificate program, if that's still what you want."
He starts rubbing the back of her hand again, but it takes him a moment to respond. "I could do that?"
She rolls onto her side completely and pushes herself up on her elbow to be able to look at him properly, even though she can't really see him in the dark. "Of course you could. I mean, a full-time teaching position could be tricky to juggle, but you should definitely get the certification. We'll figure something out once you have, OK? Maybe you could get something part time, or… I don't know, do tutoring or something like that?"
When she finally stops talking, Bellamy lets out a short laugh. "OK, you've convinced me."
She settles back down on the blanket. "Good."
They're quiet for a moment, until a bright light streaks across the sky.
"See?" he breathes.
"That was a good one," Clarke replies. "The type of shooting star you wish upon. Did you make one?"
"I wouldn't even know what to wish for." He turns to her at the same time as she turns to him, and despite the darkness, she knows that he's smiling. "I have everything I could ever want."
