a/n Welcome to my latest bizarre headcanon! I've had this in mind for ages and I'm super excited to start sharing it. We're going to see some of our favourite cheesy tropes, including muddled timelines and awkwardly preordained relationships, and get to see our favourite dysfunctional family find their way back to each other. The rating is likely to change after a couple of chapters, for reasons that will become all too obvious.
This diverges from canon at the end of S5. We've got a lonely hurt Clarke, and a lonely hurt Bellamy, and then things start to get interesting...
Clarke doesn't understand why Bellamy has volunteered to babysit Madi, but she's grateful for it all the same. Well, perhaps babysit isn't quite the right word. Madi is, after all, a precocious twelve year old with the wisdom of centuries in her head, but she still needs rather more attention than Clarke can spare right now, as she helps Abby to wade through the mammoth task of collecting and collating the health information of every person in Sanctum.
"When's he getting here?" Madi asks, bouncing on the balls of her feet and making no attempt to conceal her eagerness.
"Soon." Clarke says through gritted teeth as she catches the tray of vials that Madi's excitement has sent wobbling.
"What do you think we'll do? Do you think he'll teach me how to shoot? Or maybe he'll tell me some stories about you and the hundred?"
"Maybe." She says noncommittally, typing out the results of a DNA test and musing that nothing is less likely than that Bellamy will find a sudden enthusiasm for reminiscing about their early days together. He doesn't seem to be enthusiastic about much that has to do with her, these days.
"What do you think -?"
She is mercifully prevented from having to summon up a response by a robust knock at the door.
"Bellamy!" Madi is throwing the door open before she has time to think, let alone time to brush the hair out of her eyes and fix a smile in place. She's not sure why she'd bother to do that, anyway, of course.
"Hey." He says, with a warm smile at Madi and sort of vague raising of his eyebrows at Clarke.
"Hey. So, thanks for volunteering to have Madi for the afternoon." She still can't work out why on Earth he's doing this, what could possibly bring him to spend these hours with the daughter of a woman who abandoned him and left him to die. And she can't entirely work out why she's allowing it, after that whole flame-based-betrayal, but she supposes that trusting this man is a hard habit to break.
"No problem at all. I figured she was probably getting bored of sitting here, and I thought maybe you could use a break."
"Thanks."
"How's it going, anyway?" He gestures at their work in progress. "Got everyone all logged and recorded, or whatever you're doing?"
She chuckles a little at that, at his failure to understand what exactly they are up to. "We've got all the information for Wonkru and Spacekru, we're just entering the last of that now. Then it's on to the Eligius prisoners."
"And then we'll have the most efficient healthcare system in the universe."
"Something like that."
"Well, good luck to you. Come on, kid, let's go shoot some things."
"Shooting some things? Really?"
"Yep. Hunting trip."
"Cool. See you, Clarke." Madi wraps her in a firm hug then runs for the door. Bellamy follows more slowly, an indulgent smile on his face.
"Look after her." She can't resist the temptation to add the request as he reaches the threshold.
"Of course I will." He says, as if he didn't once fail spectacularly to follow that particular instruction. "We'll be back before you know it."
As she closes the door, she just catches him beginning to ask Madi about her morning lessons.
She turns back to her work, and to her mother, expecting the older woman still to be fixated on the screen before her, but finds instead that she is gazing thoughtfully out of the window, to where Bellamy and Madi walk side by side, their faces glowing with similar broad grins, the wind swirling their matching dark hair.
"He could almost be her father." Her mother says wistfully and not a little unhelpfully, Clarke thinks, considering she knows full well how strained their relationship has been since their reunion.
"Yet he's not." She snaps, upset at the all-too-realistic vision her mother's words have conjured, and gets on with typing.
…...
They speak little after that, both absorbed in their tasks, and Clarke has to admit that she's also sulking just a smidge. She doesn't need her own mother, of all people, reminding her how poorly things stand with the man she used to think she was in danger of falling in love with, centuries ago. She prayed that this new planet might be a fresh start, read hope in the way he had stood by her side to listen to Monty's message, but the moment they awoke their friends he made no secret of his hurry to leave her to herself and return to his new family.
She just misses him. She misses him so much it hurts.
She misses the easy way she used to relax into his company, able to talk about oxymorons as the world ended. She misses the way his mouth would curl up into just a hint of a smile sometimes, that special half grin that has seen her through so much. And she misses above all the man who would stand by her side through anything, who held her hand when she stepped out into the City of Light, who anchored her to life through six years on a dead planet.
She only realises she is daydreaming yet again when Abby's voice calls her back to the present moment.
"That's not possible." Her mother mutters, gazing at the data in front of her.
"What isn't?" She asks, curiosity piqued by the shock in her tone.
"Madi's parents are here. Her biological parents. Both of them."
"What? How? They died in Praimfaiya." At least, she always presumed they had. She knows that the nomon Madi lived with as a young child was not her biological mother, has heard the stories of her being found just outside the village where she grew up, but the odds that both her parents are amongst the surviving members of Wonkru seem too small to bother calculating.
"No. They didn't. They're right here. Let me look them up."
She rushes over, wondering what can possibly be going on, and peers eagerly over her mother's shoulder while reads out the five life-changing words they can both see on the screen.
"Clarke Griffin. And Bellamy Blake."
"No." She shakes her head, hoping to dislodge this insane notion from her brain. "No, that can't be right."
"It's true, Clarke. It's all right here."
"No, there's definitely something wrong. I mean, look at her age. That's not her age, that's some crazy list of numbers."
"Becca Franco herself invented that age test and it's been right every time."
"Well, it's not right now." She decides firmly, because the alternative is too terrifying to contemplate. "It's fine, mum. We'll just take another sample when she gets back. I'm sure it's all just a mistake."
"Clarke, I'm telling you, this is not a mistake. I don't know how it's possible -"
They both jump at the sound of Bellamy's voice in the door. She's not sure when he knocked, nor how much of the conversation he overheard, but he's standing right there, arm slung around Madi's shoulders in a way that Clarke finds she is suddenly rather uncomfortable with.
"Everything OK?" He asks mildly, his voice lacking that certain softness she can't help feeling he used to employ when asking that question.
"Yeah, all OK." Clarke lies cheerfully.
"Madi, dear, can we get another cheek swab?" Abby stands up and walks over to the girl, and Clarke makes haste to follow.
"Why? What was wrong with the last one?"
"Nothing, honey." Clarke rushes to reassure her. "The test just went wrong, so we need to do another one."
"How can the test go wrong?" Madi has chosen the worst possible time to become curious, Clarke thinks.
"We don't know, but we'll just do it again and it will all be fine."
"What is this?" Bellamy interrupts, voice carefully controlled, and Clarke realises with a cold flush of horror that while she has been distracted by Madi he has set about reading exactly the words she and her mother have just read.
"Nothing."
"It doesn't look like nothing. It looks like -"
"Well, obviously it's wrong. That's why we're checking."
"What? What is it?" Madi pipes up, reading the tension in the room.
"This report." Bellamy tells her slowly, eyes fixed on the page all the while. "It says that... Clarke's your mother."
"Well, obviously." Madi responds with all the naivety of her twelve years and twelve decades. "She is."
"No. It says she's your biological mother."
"But – how?"
"And... it says who your father is, too."
"It does? Who?"
"Me." He murmurs, so quietly Clarke has to strain to hear him, but based on the smile spreading across Madi's face she has no difficulty in understanding him. "It's me."
"I'm telling you, it's clearly a mistake." Clarke interrupts, pushing down the wobbly feeling she gets at the wonder in his voice. "We'll check it. Do it again."
They repeat the test seven times that night before Clarke is willing to admit that it is, in fact, correct.
…...
Clarke can't help feeling that everyone else seems to be taking the news better than the proud parents themselves. She can't help feeling, also, that probably everyone else does not need to know the news, but it's a small community and there's not much to do in the evenings, so she supposes it shouldn't surprise her.
She was less than shocked when Madi welcomed the undoubtedly true but utterly confusing news of her parentage with, quite literally, open arms. The girl has idolised Bellamy since she was six years old and first started listening to Clarke's stories of his daring mission in Mount Weather or bold rescue of her and a truck full of hydrazine, so it goes without saying that he is absolutely everything she has ever wanted in a father. If her daughter – her daughter, she thinks, with a new emphasis she is still coming to terms with – says one more time that she's so lucky to be Bellamy's child, Clarke swears she will scream.
Her mother, of course, is amongst the large number of people who find the news completely unsurprising. Clarke can't get her head around this, really, because it is literally impossible for the pair of them to have a child born before they met on a planet they did not live on, not to mention beyond laughable that anyone could read anything into the frosty civility that currently exists between them, but she's sick to death of people telling her with a nudge and a wink that they always knew there was something there and her and Bellamy are meant to be.
And that brings her, most perplexingly of all, to Echo, who has just taken a seat next to her. She's not particularly in the mood for a cozy catch up with Bellamy's girlfriend, but it seems she is destined to have one nonetheless.
"We broke up." Echo announces without preamble, without so much as a pretence of greeting. Well, then. It seems she is destined to have a cozy catch up with Bellamy's ex girlfriend.
"I'm sorry?" It ought to be a statement, but this conversation is off to a distinctly odd start and she can't quite keep the question out of her voice.
"Don't bother." She says briskly with a rather frightening chopping motion of her hand against the table. "I'm not the monster Nia wanted me to be. Bellamy taught me that. So when he shows up at the door having a meltdown because he's supposed to have impossibly fathered some child, who turns out to be the commander, with some woman, who turns out, of course, to be you, who he wept over losing for years – well, I can't stand in the way of that, can I?"
"I see." She says, not seeing at all, but not seeing either any better options in the way of suitable responses. Not seeing, either, how it is that Echo has suddenly become quite so loquacious.
She supposes that even ice-cold spies might not be immune to emotion.
"I mean, if I try to stop this, then the commander never exists, I guess. And then we all die in that valley. And I think that removing a commander from existence is probably about as bad as crimes get. There's also the fact that I suppose it'd probably break his heart all over again if he lost this, now, too." She has no idea what that last statement means, so she decides to file it away for later and focus on the whole commander-not-existing thing.
"So you think Madi might disappear as well, then?" She has been worried about this, but she is not well-versed in the nature of impossible parenthood.
"It stands to reason. He said something funny was showing up instead of her age, that it looked like something was wrong with time and maybe that's how she manages to have existed before you met. So I guess if you don't, you know, have a baby now, then Madi blinks out of existence or something. And then we all die back on Earth, so we all blink out of existence." Echo shrugs coldly as she confirms Clarke's worst fears. It is funny, she spares a moment to note, that she is having this particular conversation with a woman whom she used to think might, perhaps, have ruined her every chance at happiness.
"So you broke up with him." She repeats, needing to be extremely sure of this point before she pursues her next line of enquiry.
"Yes. He didn't take it very well." Echo says mildly, as if it's any of Clarke's business how messy the ending is between them. "But then, I suppose he's got a lot on his mind at the moment."
Yes. That does seem likely.
"So you're absolutely broken up. Because you don't want the commander not to exist."
"Yes. I don't want to stand in the way of you two doing... what you were meant to do, or something." Finally, she notes, at this point, Echo seems to be starting to have difficulty in swallowing.
"Right. Well. OK. You're very loyal to your commander, then."
"Yes. It's my religion. And I'm loyal to Bellamy. He's still my family, not matter what and – I didn't want to make this any more difficult for him than it needs to be."
"But not loyal to me." She notes mildly.
"Not at all." Echo confirms, equally neutrally. "But two people I care about would gladly murder me if I harmed a hair of your head ." That's an odd statement, Clarke thinks, because last time she checked there was only one person on that loyalty list who felt anything stronger for her than stale pity.
"Well, there's that, then."
"Yes. Good luck, conceiving the child that will save us all." She says, a little bitterness peeping through at last as she gets to her feet and strides away.
…...
Clarke knows that she needs to speak to Bellamy. Apart from anything else, she knows he will not be the one to start the conversation with her – he may have changed, but she doubts he has changed that much. And Madi is her daughter first and foremost, she still feels this even if she is somehow really theirs. It seems unlikely to say the least that Bellamy might be anywhere near as worried about Madi's potential nonexistence as she is.
Three days have passed since that impossible afternoon, three days in which Bellamy has made a point of spending time with Madi and accepting her overenthusiastic hugs. Three days, too, in which he has made at least as big a point of never, ever, being alone with Clarke, never so much as meeting her eyes if he can help it.
So it is that she decides a rather direct approach will be necessary.
"Bellamy." She walks up to him in the mess hall, her dinner tray held out before her like an unwieldy shield.
"Clarke." He nods a greeting and looks about him in some confusion, scanning the room for the unexpected daughter he expects to see by her side.
"She's not here." She explains as she takes a seat. "My mother's taken her for the evening so we can talk."
"Talk?" He sounds at least a little horrified at the idea, she thinks. This is not off to a promising start.
"Talk." She confirms. "I thought we should. It seems likely that it will be easier to have an impossible child together if we talk occasionally."
"We're not having a child." He says dismissively, eyes fixed on the sludge that passes for dinner round here.
"Well, apparently we are."
"No. No, we are not." Why, she wonders, does he sound quite so angry? All she wants to do is talk. She's not trying to force him to – to procreate, or anything.
"Bellamy. Will you please calm down and just listen to me."
"No, Clarke. I am done talking to you. This is insane. Madi's a great kid, and I want to be in her life, of course I do. I know what it's like not to have a father." He muses a little more softly, before seeming to remember that he is, in fact, furious. "But I'm not part of your life, Clarke. Not any more. You made sure of that."
Before she has time to ask him what that even means, to apologise for the hundredth time, for the hundredth sin, he has picked up his uneaten dinner and marched clean out of the room.
…...
She should have known better, she reflects that night, as she lies awake in her bed and gazes at the ceiling and resolutely refuses to cry. She might not know this post-Praimfaiya Bellamy particularly well, but surely she should have realised that he is unchanged in essentials. That he's still prone to getting emotional and irrational about things that hit too close to home.
Last time he was this angry, she remembers, three hundred grounders died.
She can't let anything like that happen again. She's going to need to be less confrontational, next time she dares to bring up the question of Madi, rouse up less of that confused hurt that somehow turns into rage. She suspects, also, that he doesn't have a lot of people to talk it out with, these days, seeing as he won't talk to her and he's clearly not talking to his sister. So she's going to have to try to make this easier for him.
She just wishes that Bellamy, her Bellamy, was here to make it easier for her, too.
a/n Thanks for reading!