I finally figured out a bit more what it is I'm doing with this fic, but I think I like the direction. The characters seem a bit more challenging to keep into . . . character, so I really hope they don't seem to deviate from their idiosyncrasies. Let me know if you think they are or why, or if they're pretty in-character. And please review! They keep the motivation alive.
"Day three-hundred-and-sixty-eight. I went to Polis and found the tower. As for the bunker . . ." Clarke hesitates, uncertain. Should she tell him? Would she want him to, if it were the other way around?
"It's fine," she lies. "So you don't have to worry about Octavia. I on the other hand could really use some company." She hates the hitch in her voice. Today she is unable to bury it. "I miss you," she whispers, tears thick in her voice and she bites her lip until it almost bleeds. "I miss everyone. I miss people. I don't know how I'm going to do this. I don't even know if you're hearing anything that I'm saying and a part of me hopes that you're not. I don't want your guilt, Bellamy. I don't want to cause you pain. Some days are just hard. Really hard. So . . . if you are hearing this, I need you to stay alive, all right? Don't give up, and neither will I."
Sitting in the cell with his back to the wall, Bellamy's hand tightens over the speaker. "I don't know how I'm going to do this," her voice fills the room, its echo suspended in the air.
He releases a shaky breath and purses his lips. His fingers tremble the more his frustration grows. If only he could do something. Anything. Anything at all, but sit and listen to the break finally hit. He shuts his eyes, gritting his teeth against the torrent of memory. Ten minutes on the clock. A closing door. This is what Clarke would want.
"I don't want your guilt, Bellamy."
He scoffs quietly to himself. Of course he knows that. Just like he knows he couldn't have changed what happened if he could. Yet the guilt lingers. There must have been something I could've done different, is a song to him that just plays and plays, no matter the fact that he can't do anything about it now. Not ever.
"I don't want to cause you pain."
Is she? Not directly, no. It's the knowledge of her being down there, alone, that makes the guilt thrum, just as it would if he didn't receive the calls at all.
When he'd first heard her radio call, it had lifted a burden from his shoulders. It had given a piece of solace back to him. But then he picked up on the hurt in her voice. The weariness, as he got a taste through her words what saving them had cost her. And still does his conscience suffer the weight of her hurt, as if he had been the one to inflict it himself.
At the start, he'd been sorry. That faded, though, when he knew that if he could reply, she'd immediately disapprove of his regret. Keep yourself alive. Keep them alive, is what she'd say. So he kept his guilt to himself, as he does now, silent but indelibly there, pressing against his sternum like a second heartbeat.
"Don't give up, and neither will I."
"Sounds like a promise," he mumbles, leaning his head back and staring at the ceiling above. "I won't break it if you don't."
The vehicle trudges through the ash and debris well enough. Winds have increased over the last few months, making travel a little more manageable. Above, the sky remains in a perpetual bad mood, maintaining an impenetrable sheet of 's decided to use the day for more distant scavenging and she takes her time, stopping every once in awhile to step out and look. Scavenging for what, though, is harder to pinpoint. She doesn't know what she expects to find each time she opens the door and climbs from the Rover, exchanging one barren plate of ground for another. She supposed she's just looking for something nameless. A something in a nothing world.
But Clarke doesn't find it, so she moves on.
It is because of the dropship that Clarke is able to locate the Hundred's camp. The last time she was here there had been trees where now there is empty dirt; a home where now there is only ash. It is nothing like she remembers and her eyes prick as she stands in the clearing. She closes her eyes and tries to call back the memories, but the smell of ash is too heavy. The longer she stands there the more her boots seem to sink into the ground. She can't even find the graves.
Back in the Rover, Clarke makes the drive to Mount Weather. Or where Mount Weather once was, now reduced to ruin before the deathwave and pulverized to fragments after it. Now there is nothing but broken rock and a shattered dam, forming a monument of rubble.
Here, the memories are louder. She can't tear those down, and she stays long enough to ensure there's nothing that can be salvaged before she returns to the Rover again and heads back to Polis to scout the area.
In the empty seat next to her lies the radio. She didn't want to miss her update. Plus, its presence is an odd comfort; no matter how alone she feels, there is the chance that her words are going somewhere and she will gratefully grab onto that hope as much as she can for as long as she can.
On the outskirts of Polis, Clarke shuts of the engine. She will leave the Rover here, just outside the ruined city; she doesn't want her fuel to run out before she's figured out how to manufacture more from an alternative source. Becca's lab will help with that. As for now, it stays.
Clarke shoulders her pack and grabs the radio, holding it under her arm as she heads into the leveled city. A light breeze brushes over stone and whistles through cracks in demolished walls, composing a haunting melody from the ruins of homes. Clarke's footsteps are a solitary sound she's grown accustomed to and she maneuvers through the city with ease. When she reaches the mound that used to be a tower, she is not surprised to find the bunker is still buried, but it's hard to look at nonetheless and she quickly passes it by.
She readjusts her grip on the radio, doing a thorough sweep of the city. Just like the camp and Mount Weather, there is nothing to be found beyond the continual rain of ash and broken rock. There are a few indications of a past, but they seem wayward now and out of place; a burned pan, melted tools. A piece of metal warped beyond recognition. Clarke gets turned around and finally she deigns to stop and rest, setting down her pack and using it as a makeshift seat. Balancing the radio on her knees, she takes out her canteen and stares out at the capital. She recalls the bustle of activity that used to fill the roadways. The sound of creaking wood and padding feet. Horse hooves on stone and the low hum of conversation. Life.
That is the something she aches for and she finds herself fighting tears. It's not forever, she reminds herself. It's only for now. Even if the others don't return, she will find a way to exhume the bunker, whether that be with explosives or rigging up the Rover to dig it out stone by stone. If her friends don't come down, the people in the bunker will need her.
Clarke rubs the tears from her eyes and looks up, gaze catching on a shape ahead.
A shape that . . . moves.
Alarm shoots through her, the echo of old instincts. She blinks and squints her eyes.
It must have been a mirage, a trick of the light. Maybe it was her imagination. She watches and waits, and after a few moments, Clarke shakes it off. No, nothing. She grabs her radio, and stands, snatching up her pack again. But still her gaze drifts back to that spot, between the piers of rock ahead, within the most condensed part of the city. Focus, she instructs herself. Perhaps she should just head back to the Rover. Put her time into producing some alternative fuel for it. But it's as if there's some force inside Clarke telling her to wait. To watch.
And sure enough, that movement comes again, like a wave of cloth. A blur of action she can't make out from the distance, accompanied by a whisper the wind seems to carry down, down the road.
Clarke stares, her heart skittering, her pulse jumping. No, not a mirage. Not her imagination. It is something moving, just North and nestled in the ruins.
Her heart stutters and every joint of hers locks I place. Then the marble cracks, andshe grabs her pack. She grips the radio tightly at her side before making a beeline for the ruins. It's probably nothing. It's probably nothing.
But from here it definitely seems like something, and that alone means everything.
The pack slaps painfully at her back. Sand climbs into her boots, but she doesn't care. Her thoughts dissipate. There is only her and the spot ahead and nothing draws her attention away until a high keening blares, resounding down the shattered walls. Clarke comes to a halt, a coat of sand dusting her from the waist down. Her eyes snap to the radio that delivers to her a whistle of static.
Her breath stops and for a beautiful moment, she thinks the Ark is trying to contact her. Or maybe it's the bunker that's found a way. She thinks it's someone.
But nothing else happens. No one speaks. And after a few moments have passed, Clarke takes a slow step back, heart sinking as another possibility hits her.
After retracing her steps a few yards from the direction she came from, the keening quiets. The static dies, and Clarke feels the implication like a physical blow.
No one is contacting her.
She's traveling out of range.
Clarke looks at the radio, speaker secured to its side. Then her gaze drifts back to the ruins where that flash of movement had been. She could leave the radio here and come back for it, but the sand would damage the wiring. She doesn't know how to clean sand out of a radio panel and Clarke looks between the two, suddenly feeling very fragile, like any move at all would cause her to shatter.
What is chasing after that worth?
Is it worth all she has left?
How much is that, if it's anything at all?
With shaking hands, Clarke unhooks the speaker head and thumbs the receiver. "Bellamy," she says, her voice wavering ever so slightly. She does not take her eyes off the ruins.
"If you're hearing this, there's something I have to do . . . and it might just cost me losing the signal. So if you don't-if you don't hear from me again, I'm sorry." She blinks back tears. "Maybe it's for the best." She stops, words failing her. So close. She is so close to staying where she is, and maybe she would, if that strange echo of something didn't start. But it does and Clarke knows she must find out what it is.
"Keep them alive, Bellamy," she says as she starts walking. The static returns, drowning out whatever sound that lay ahead. "Bring yourself home."
The radio spits out that high keening once more, so loud she wonders if anything can be heard anymore."May we meet again," she manages, because it is all she can say. Then the keening explodes into a discordant sputter that climbs and crackles as Clarke's walk becomes a run. Sand kicks up in her wake as the ruins near. The radio seems to scream in protest.
Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe he never even heard her.
But then there's the chance, however small, that he did. That they all did. And if that is the case, then it's already too late, and she will just have to live with dying to her friends a second time.
He almost misses her radio call. They almost always occur in the late afternoon, but it's only mid-morning when he's returned to his room to change from a grease-stained shirt to a clean one and the radio crackles.
He stops, turned partially to the radio that lies by his bed, his drawer open.
At the tone she uses, he knows there is something wrong. "Bellamy."
His shoulders tense and he turns around, clean shirt forgotten. She's not supposed to radio yet. It's not her usual time.
He walks over to his bed and takes a seat. He dips his chin to the receiver. "If you're hearing this, there's something I have to do . . . and it might just cost me losing the signal."
He stiffens and looks from the floor to the radio, warning signs flashing in his mind. He doesn't like the sound of this. Not at all. "What-?" he breaks off abruptly, knowing she can't respond. What happened? What is it she has to do? And he knows this is Clarke, but can she possibly be less vague about it?
"If you don't- if you don't hear from me again . . . I'm sorry."
Her words shut him down, and Bellamy does not move. He is frozen, gaze fastened on the radio as he grapples to get a hold of his bearings. Habits die hard and as his survival instincts kick in, there's nothing he can do from up here but let the scenarios build in his mind. What does she mean, if he doesn't hear from her again? Where is she going? What. Is. Happening?
"Maybe it's for the best."
He cards a hand through his hair and shakes his head. "What are you doing, Clarke?" Why won't she tell him what it is she's doing?
Static starts, clouding her voice. "Ke-ep them a-live, Bellamy."
The static grows and Bellamy hits the speaker with the butt of his palm. "No," he murmurs, voice loud in the quiet of his room. He shakes the whole radio. "No, c'mon, don't do this, Clarke!"
"Bring your- . . . self home."
He shakes his head, anger igniting inside him as the sound of static reverberates off the walls. It feels as if the air has begun to leech from the room.
"M . . . ay we me-et ag-ain."
His fingers tighten over the speaker, as if he can trap her voice between his hands and keep it there, but he knows he can't. It's just static now.
His vision blurs and he waits, praying the signal is not lost. He tries to believe that she will find a way back, because she always has, even when the odds are stacked against her. She will find a way back.
But a minute becomes an hour that becomes two, and still her voice does not appear again. The room remains quiet, other than the echo of static that never breaks and does not stop.