a/n Here's a Becho fic diverging from canon at Praimfaya! I've been wanting to write this for ages but only just got brave enough to bite the bullet. Please note it's my particular brand of Becho that's founded on the idea that Bellamy loved Clarke first, so please go and find something more to your tastes if that doesn't suit you.
I'd like to politely ask you to give this fic a miss and not leave hateful comments if it's not your thing. It features a lot of heavy themes as well as characters and relationships I know not everyone likes - but they are characters and themes that are important to me and that's why I'm writing them. Please observe the content notes carefully.
Content notes: grief, miscarriage, neglectful and abusive childhoods. Pre-fic main character death.
Bellamy looks for her everywhere, when they first come back from space.
Of course he does. He hasn't got used to the idea that the Earth exists without her, yet. That the world has gone on turning although she's not there. He could handle her being absent on the Ring, because that was a change of setting and he wasn't expecting her to be there, somehow. But now they're on the ground again his heart hasn't quite caught up with his head. Earth without her is stranger to him than his sister's warpaint or the endless desert or the prisoners who have appeared armed to the teeth.
It's the strangest thing of all, to come back to the ground where he fell in love with her, and to find out that she's not here.
He keeps looking. Every time he opens a door, he peeks behind it as if she might just be hiding there. Every crowded room in the bunker, he scans the group for her much-missed blonde head. And as they walk through the dunes, he gazes out onto the horizon, just praying she'll be there, cresting the next hill, arms wide open and eyes filled with love.
He keeps looking for her, because even after six long years without her, he is not ready to lose Clarke.
…...
Echo notices of course. Spy. The spy who loves him, whether he deserves it or not. He should expect her to notice. But he's so tied up in his own fascination with the shadows and horizon and what's around the next corner that he never thinks of it until she speaks up.
She approaches one evening in the desert, as he's standing and staring away from the fire.
"Hoping she'll stick her head out from behind Miller's tent?" She asks softly.
He jumps a mile. Not because her presence or her voice have taken him by surprise, but because he feels caught in the act of being unfaithful to Echo, somehow.
"I know she won't." He says. Better she thinks him just disloyal, rather than disloyal and delusional.
"But that doesn't make it any easier to stop looking." She concludes, tone level.
He looks at her, sharply. "You're not... annoyed?"
"Why would I be annoyed, Bellamy?"
She pauses, sucks in a breath. He expects her to say something breathtakingly honest and a little harsh – perhaps about how she knew full well he was in love with a dead woman when he got with her, thank you very much. Honest and a little harsh is how he thinks of her, love her though he does.
But then she says nothing of the kind.
"I've been there." She mutters, still in that same level tone. They've been together three years and he's still hopeless at reading her emotions.
"You've been there?" He asks, wondering what she means.
"I've searched the horizon for a dead woman." She says, short and brutal. "You're not the only person who's ever mourned the one who got away, Bellamy."
He's momentarily stunned. In the last six years, the most he's ever got out of her is that her parents are dead, her queen ruined her life, and she doesn't want to talk about it.
So that's why he's gentle when he prompts her now. "You want to get it off your chest?" He asks.
She laughs a hollow laugh. "Not really. That's not why I'm telling you. I'm telling you so you know you're not alone."
"Thanks." He mutters inadequately.
She nods. She doesn't hug him, because for all they're a couple, they're not that into casual physical intimacy. But she does reach out to squeeze his shoulder, which is something.
"It's the feeling that she never even knew." Echo says quietly. "That's the problem, isn't it? What might have been?"
"The one that got away." He confirms, thinking back to what she said earlier.
"Mine was a woman on Nia's guard. Mira. We'd been talking a lot and touching too much and for the first time in my life, I thought I could have something good." She huffs out a loud sigh. "So much for that. I went away on a spying mission and by the time I got back she was dead."
"I'm sorry that happened to you." He offers feebly.
To his surprise, Echo squares her shoulders and stands a little taller. "I'm not. It could be worse. I'm sorry she's dead, of course I am. I was falling in love with her. But life happens and it taught me a thing or two. It taught me it's OK for even spies to have feelings sometimes. It's OK for you to have feelings about Clarke, now, too."
"But I don't want to." He says, tearful, shaking his head. "I am sick and tired of grieving her. Will I ever stop?"
"No."
He starts crying in earnest, then. Echo steps up, leans into his side.
"You'll never stop grieving her. But you'll carry on living anyway. It will become less... sharp."
He nods. Even that sounds like progress, honestly. "How?"
He's not sure what he's expecting. He supposes maybe the suggestion that he should try to throw himself more wholeheartedly into his relationship with Echo and his friendships with the others and into useful things like building peace.
Whatever he is expecting, it's not this.
"You start by saying goodbye. And by telling her you loved her."
…...
Days pass and still Bellamy looks for Clarke.
He tries to do what Echo suggested, and say goodbye, and find a kind of state of accepting his love and loss. He can see what she means – it would be healthy to admit to himself that he was in love with Clarke, and that he's grieving the relationship they never had as much as he's grieving her actual life. And if there is a life beyond death, and if Clarke can hear him, still, he figures she deserves to know after all these years.
The problem is, he's not great at saying goodbye. He tries to do it, in the desert the next morning, staring at the sunrise and thinking that the golden light reminds him of Clarke's hair. He hasn't got a body to bury, because she's miles away and turned to ash. So he figures this is as close to a funeral as he can manage, as he faces the light and tells her how he felt.
But it doesn't work. He catches himself looking for her, not ten minutes later, when he joins the queue for breakfast rations and she's not standing right behind him.
So he says goodbye to her once more, tells her in a whisper under his breath that he loved her, again.
That doesn't work, either. Another fruitless search as they approach the crest of the next hill. Another whispered confession. Eventually desert turns to forest and he catches himself looking behind trees, whispers an apologetic word or two of love every time.
Eventually he decides that maybe this is a coping strategy in and of itself. Maybe this is just the way he mourns her, at least for now.
…...
He doesn't often talk to Echo about it explicitly, but it's a comfort to know she understands. Yet as weeks pass by he begins to wonder whether this is the healthiest situation in the world – to have her supporting him while he mourns the woman he loved first.
Of course, that's what their relationship has been built on from the start. But it hits harder, now they're back on Earth.
Many things hit harder now they're back on Earth.
So that's why he decides he needs to have an explicit conversation about it with Echo.
"Do you mind?" He asks her late one night, as they lie side-by-side in their tent. "About Clarke?" He clarifies, realising Echo cannot actually read his mind.
"Do you mind about Mira?" She asks in turn.
"Of course not."
"There's your answer." She shrugs and it dislodges the blankets a little. "Clarke's more recent and you're still processing, so I get why you feel uncomfortable about being with me at the same time. But it's normal to love more than one person in the course of your life, Bellamy. People do it all the time. Did you mind about Finn or Lexa, when you loved Clarke?"
"No. I just loved her." He says, because obviously he did.
She hums, an affirming sort of a noise.
"I love you." He says, and it occurs to him that it's the first time he's said it since they landed. He was in the habit of saying it occasionally in space, but he simply hasn't been able to manage it since he's been stuck on looking for Clarke.
"I know you do." She says, non-nonsense as always. "And I love you. That's all that matters."
It's not the same as loving Clarke. That was something that happened to him, all at once, quite without his permission.
Loving Echo is more of a choice. He chose to hook up with her on the Ring rather than be alone. He chose to see her good qualities as their relationship matured, chose to take things seriously with her and put in the effort to make it work.
It's not that loving Clarke was easier. There's nothing easy at all about falling in love with the commander of death – by comparison, this comfortable routine with Echo is much more straightforward. It's more that it was instinctive, whereas loving Echo got off to a rocky start, seeing as they used to be enemies. In many ways, he thinks, loving Echo was a case of using his head over his heart at first – seeing that she had exactly the kind of determination and pragmatism and loyalty he found so attractive in Clarke, and pursuing it to see whether he might actually fall for her, in time.
Huh. Head over heart. There's Clarke still guiding him from beyond the grave.
…...
They settle in Shallow Valley. Bellamy signs up for the new allied council, because of course he does. He's got to take care of their people, seeing as Clarke is not here to do it any more.
He still looks for her in the council room, though. He still finds that he is surprised, every time he looks to the seat on his left and finds that it is filled by Kane, not her.
But in general, he doesn't look for her so often, these days. He likes to have a look and a word of love when he's out in the trees – he still associates trips through the forest with that first walk to the depot they took together.
But really, he thinks he's adjusting quite well, now. This is Earth. Clarke is dead. But the birds go on singing anyway.
…...
He asks Echo to marry him. Honestly, he's never felt so confident about anything in his life. What could make more sense than marrying the woman he's been with for almost four years, now, and starting a calm domestic life in this peaceful village with her? After a lifetime of dealing with the unexpected, a nice predictable future with a woman who is rather comfortably compatible with him sounds like the stuff of dreams.
Raven disagrees, of course. He goes to ask her to make a ring, and she tries to refuse.
"I just don't think it's a good idea." She says. "I'm not sure it's fair on either of you when – when you loved Clarke."
"Loved. Past tense. And Clarke is dead." He pauses, jaw tense, and tries to decide how to explain himself. "Are you saying she'd want me to live alone? Because the Clarke I knew – the Clarke I loved – she wasn't like that. She cared, even if you didn't always see it. And she wasn't such a hypocrite, either. She loved Finn and Lexa. She'd understand that I'm capable of loving more than one person in my life."
"I'm not saying that. I'm not saying she'd mind." Raven swallows loudly, looks away. "I'm saying – that I don't think you love Echo. Not in the same way you loved Clarke."
"Of course I don't love her the same way. She's a different person." He's getting annoyed, now. "It's like you and Wick all over again, Raven. You couldn't believe that was love because he wasn't Finn. But it was. And I will not make that mistake."
"If you're sure."
"I'm sure." He bites out. "I'm sure. I love her. We fit well together. We enjoy living together and sleeping together and taking care of each other and honestly, that's more than many marriages are built on."
That's the bottom line, he thinks. He read a lot of stories as a kid – tales where Paris was overcome by love and took Helen to Troy, or where Achilles was spurred to attack by losing Patroclus, quite against sense or judgement. And really, loving Clarke was a bit like that. Loving Clarke was marching across battlefields and risking life and limb, and he doesn't resent that for a moment, but it's just how it was.
Loving Echo is safe. It's comfortable. And he thinks more love stories should be written about love like that.
So that's why he stands there with a sullen set to his jaw until Raven agrees to make him a ring.
…...
He tries to marry Echo in a small ceremony, but his friends and family aren't having that. Somehow half the village is there, including some of Azgeda who seem to have decided Echo is not such an outcast, now.
She treats him to a cynical half-smile when she enters the church and sees the size of the crowd.
That's the moment he knows beyond all doubt that he's made the right decision.
…...
He knows Echo is pregnant before she does, he's pretty sure. She's still not much of a talker, and that's fair enough. But to balance that out he's got even better at looking and listening, has made himself something of an expert in understanding her.
That's how relationships work, see – or at least, it's how this relationship works. Two people working tirelessly and continuously on being good together. You don't make a marriage last by taking love for granted.
When she tells him she's expecting, he kisses her deeply and pulls her in for a long hug. They're getting more inclined to hug around the house, since they've both relaxed a little into their new life on Earth.
"You're going to be a great mother." He tells her.
"I hope so. I'm not sure. You know my childhood was a mess." She says, a little dismissive, but not entirely avoiding the subject.
"Then you'll work at it and learn how to do better than people treated you." He says. If there's one thing he's learnt, since coming back to Earth, it's that no ability is ever entirely fixed. You can improve at anything, if you take it seriously.
"You'll be a natural." She predicts. "After all that practice with your sister."
"Yeah. Look how that turned out." He jokes. Octavia is doing better now, but there's no denying that the bunker they came home to was not a happy place.
"She's doing alright. It could be worse."
He used to think that it could be worse was a pretty negative expression. His mother used to use it to hush him, whenever he moaned about their circumstances. But with Clarke he made something more of the concept – a sort of gallows humour whereby as long as they were still breathing, there was still some reason for optimism.
But with Echo, it's grown even further. With Echo, it could be worse means actually things are pretty damn good.
…...
The pregnancy ends in a miscarriage.
It's like losing Clarke all over again. In much the same way, he loves his baby desperately, then loses them before he gets the chance to love them like they deserve to be loved.
He tries to go easy on himself. He accepts that he's grieving, and that's fine. He tells his unborn child how much he loves them, time and time and time again. And he does everything he can to support Echo, who talks about her feelings even less than usual in the immediate aftermath of the rush to the medical centre.
But when she does talk, about two months later, what she has to say is interesting. They're lying in bed together one night when she comes out with just one snippet of explanation.
"I didn't love them yet. I hadn't let myself get attached. I know it's common to lose a baby like that. I think what I'm grieving is – is the idea. The perfect family future with you and a kid. After everything we've been through, I wanted us to have that."
"We can still have that." Bellamy rushes to assure her. "Whether we have that through you giving birth to a child, or through adoption, or through being happy together childless. What I have with you is more happiness than I ever expected to have. If this is as good as life gets, that's plenty good enough for me."
"It could be worse." Echo offers, with a self-conscious chuckle.
He thinks that's all he dares ask for, when he's lived through the end of the world.
…...
When their family does grow, it doesn't grow in the way either of them could have predicted.
A child is found in the forest. It's the strangest thing. She's fourteen years old, and she claims she's been living alone since Praimfaya.
Honestly, Bellamy would struggle to believe that. How could any kid live alone through six years in this valley, then avoid the notice of Wonkru and the Eligius prisoners for two years more? But he does believe it, because he's met the child. Madi, her name is. She's surprisingly physically well considering the circumstances. But her lifetime of isolation is obvious in her skittishness, her difficulty making conversation, her lack of life skills beyond the most childish of basic essentials.
In short, she's had a terrible childhood. And that's why he and Echo adopt her.
It's not going to be easy. They both know that. But it's the only choice they can make, in the circumstances. They've both had terrible childhoods, in very different ways. If there's one thing they are committed to, it's making sure no one else has to go through anything like that.
It feels like a fitting tribute to Clarke, too. He fell in love with her caring for a bunch of teenagers. Maybe he'll be able to say goodbye to her for real, now.
Who's he kidding? He doesn't want to say goodbye to Clarke. She's part of his story, now, woven into it every bit as much as Echo or Octavia or Madi.
So that's why he tells his daughter the stories. That's why he tells Madi about a brave woman – her aunt, more or less – who knew how to be strong but kind and compassionate, too. Who at the end of the world would still insist on pulling the rover to a halt to help injured strangers.
That's why he tells her that Clarke's legacy is everywhere, on Earth.
…...
Taking in Madi has an unexpected outcome – Echo becomes far more forthcoming about her own past.
"It's the stories." She explains tonight. "I love listening to you tell Madi all those stories. I think it's probably more use to her than learning how to add up or load a gun. And I want to be confident enough to tell her my story one day."
"That's a good idea." He offers, encouraging.
"Yeah. So I'm practising on you. Tonight I'm going to tell you about my first day with Queen Nia."
She does. She tells him every painful detail, from the bed of cold stone to the bone-deep exhaustion and the constant manipulation of all the young initiates. It hurts. It hurts Bellamy just to listen to it, in fact, and he's so proud of Echo for making it through the tale.
This is love. Listening and learning and helping each other to lighten the load is love.
And screw all those long-dead poets who thought otherwise.
…...
Bellamy never stops looking for Clarke, even when they have lived in the valley for years.
Why should he? He's not hurting anyone – not even himself. Peeking around trees and scouring crowds and whispering words of love long lost is part of who he is, now. It's how he's healed and grown. It works so well for him that he starts whispering words of love to the baby they lost, too. And he's certainly not hurting Echo. Many people fall in love more than once, and that's perfectly valid too – he feels confident about this, now.
He knows he won't find Clarke, of course. His heart and head step in sync a little better, these days, now he's matured somewhat. And now he knows what it is to feel safe and stable – that has certainly helped, as well. He doesn't have to waste so much emotional energy on fearing for the people he loves as he did when he was younger.
Madi flourishes. She doesn't suddenly become the most confident child in the world, of course. But she gradually grows out of her anxiety and learns more about how to live with people, and Bellamy knows that her future is a bright one. They all have a bright future, here, in this miraculous valley.
It could be worse. That's what he tells himself, day in, day out, with a wry self-indulgent smile. It's what he tells himself when he's reflecting on the fact that this life has brought him more happiness than he has expected or deserved.
And through all the years of his life, he knows he will keep looking for Clarke. But that's OK, because along the way he has found a family, too.
a/n Thanks for reading!