AN: Second part of the big reveal! Will Bellamy believe Clarke? Will he be able to forgive her for lying to him? And, of course, there's still one big thing left to tell him…
I don't own anything relating to The 100
Chapter title from "What it feels like" by Swedish group Kent. The song is available in English but for any Swedes out there, the original is "Kräm (så nära får ingen gå)". Both versions are cool!
20
I Am Every Tear You Cry
Clarke stays completely still until the tears stop streaming down her cheeks. She opens her eyes, takes a shaky breath, and goes into the kitchen to splash some water on her face.
When she gets back to the couch, she turns on the TV in hopes of finding something to distract her, and picks up her phone from the coffee table.
Not going great
It's only a few minutes after noon, and Raven was pretty drunk last night, but her reply still comes in almost immediately.
he bail?
No, he's in the bedroom, said
he needed to think
r u surprised?
Clarke pauses, thumb hovering over the screen. She's not, really, but at the same time… yes, she expected him to have trouble believing her and, if and when he did, to be angry. But somewhere deep down, she had also expected them to be able to talk about it right away, work it out…
Yes and no
I didn't think he'd believe me
right away, and I don't know
if he does
And I expected him to be angry
that I've lied to him
But I guess I thought we'd just
talk it through until he realized
that I was telling the truth and
that I never wanted to lie to him…
still there tho
rmb wick?
didn't talk 2 me 4 a week
Of course she remembers when Raven told Wick, she had been there. Well, not during the actual conversation, but in the week after, when Wick had gone MIA and Raven had been furious on the outside, to hide that she was really worried that he would leave her and incredibly sad, because Raven doesn't show those kinds of emotions.
She also remembers when Wick came back, full of remorse and begging Raven to forgive him. How she had given him a long look, arms crossed over her chest, before caving and throwing herself in his arms.
God, she hopes she'll get that. Her phone buzzes in her hand again.
need me 2 come over?
She has to smile at the question.
No, I'm OK
I'll let you know if things change
Raven sends a heart emoji and Clarke sends one back before turning the ringer off and putting the phone away, trying to focus on the TV.
She finds a channel doing a marathon of Jeopardy and forces herself to pay attention, saying the answers out loud when she knows them. She keeps the volume low, constantly listening for sounds from the bedroom, but there's nothing.
After an hour or so, she needs to go to the bathroom, but instead of disturbing Bellamy, she uses the guest bathroom. It feels wrong, but she just can't bring herself to face him before he willingly comes to her.
A while later, she puts on another pot of coffee and drinks two mugs in rapid succession. It does nothing to help with her nerves, only makes her more jittery, unable to sit still without tapping her foot against the floor or drumming her fingers against the arm of the couch.
She loads the dishwasher when she's finished her coffee, but it's not full so she doesn't start it. Instead of going back to the couch, she crosses the room to one of the windows facing the river, leaning her forehead against the cool glass and gazing out at the grey day.
The first day of the new year. 207 days left for Bellamy.
Will she get to spend any of them with him? Right now, she's not so sure…
She sighs and curls up on the couch again, pulling her legs up under her and wrapping a blanket tightly around herself. She glances at the clock – twenty minutes before two. She'll need to leave in about an hour and a half to make it to the Transfer at Madison Square Park by four. She knows she should probably eat something before that too, but just the thought makes her stomach turn over.
With an enormous effort, she manages to push all other thoughts from her mind and focus only on Alex Trebek. The first question is easy.
"What is Wild Wild West?" she says out loud to the empty room.
"Yes."
"Quotable women for six, please."
"On August 10, 1945 this former first lady wrote 'the times now call for mankind as a whole to rise to great heights'."
"Who was Eleanor Roosevelt?"
Clarke turns her head so quickly at the sound of Bellamy's voice that she's surprised she doesn't get a crick in her neck. She fumbles for the remote and turns the TV off when she finds it.
"Hey."
He offers her a small smile, but it's a real smile, and sits down next to her on the couch. Not right next to her, a few inches away, but at least he's there.
"Hey."
She doesn't know how to ask the question, so she just watches him, fingers tightly wrapped around the blanket that she's clutching to her chest. He's quiet for a long moment too, eyes intent on hers, before he sighs.
"God, you look like a puppy that's just been kicked." He lifts one arm and rests it against the back of the couch. "Come here."
Clarke scoots closer until she can bury her face against his neck, and his arms go around her like always, holding her tight. She feels new tears in her eyes and tries to blink them away, but they escape anyway.
Bellamy's lips brush against her hair. "I'm sorry I overreacted, OK?"
She shakes her head against him before turning just slightly so he can hear her. "You didn't overreact at all, you have every right to be mad. I'm sorry I've been lying to you, I really didn't want to but I didn't know what else to do."
He starts rubbing her back in a soothing motion and Clarke feels herself relax, if only just a little. There's still more to this that he doesn't know, but maybe, just maybe, they'll be OK.
"I get it, OK?" he assures her. "You were right, I wouldn't have believed you if you told me right after we met. I probably would have thought you were crazy."
"And you don't now?"
"No. I believe you." He lets out a chuckle. "Honestly, I don't see why you would go through the trouble of coming up with all of that, faking those photos, if this is just some sort of big hoax."
"It's not, I promise. I wouldn't do that to you."
"I know." His hand slides into her hair, nails scraping lightly against her scalp in the way she loves, and she lets out a deep sigh. "I love you, Princess."
For some reason, the declaration makes her tear up all over again, and she shifts slightly, so she can wrap her arms around his neck. "I love you, so much, I'm so sorry."
"Hey, no. Stop apologizing."
She nods mutely and tightens her grip on him, feeling his arm wrap more securely around her waist too.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she does remember that she has a Transfer to get to, so after a few minutes of letting her senses calm in the circle of Bellamy's arms, she reluctantly pulls away.
"I actually… I have a Transfer a little later today," she tells him hesitantly.
"Oh. Do you need to leave now?"
"Not for an hour or so."
He nods. "You know, we got sidetracked earlier and you never told me how you get your assignments."
She realizes that he's right.
"I have an app."
He just stares at her. "I'm sorry, I thought you just said that you get assigned souls to send to the afterlife through an app."
"Maybe because that's what I said." She grabs her phone from the table, figuring it's easier to just show him. "Here."
She opens the app and hands the phone to him.
"So this is your schedule for the week?" he asks, and she nods. "What happens if I click on one of them?"
"You open that particular Transfer," Clarke tells him, clicking a Transfer she has on Thursday. "This is all the information I get: name and age for the person in question. Date and time of death, and cause of death."
"How do you know where it is? There's no address."
She clicks on the coordinates at the bottom of the screen and it changes to a map. "There you are."
"This is, like… high tech," Bellamy notes, handing her back the phone.
"We're hip, we move with the times," she tells him with a smirk.
He raises an eyebrow. "I'm fairly certain no person has ever said that who actually did move with the times." Before she can think about it, Clarke reaches out and shoves his shoulder lightly, but to her relief, he just laughs. "How did you get assignments before the app?"
"Email. And before that, good old fashion snail mail, which is how I got them when I started out. It took a long time for things to change on that front."
"And you got physical maps back then, or what?"
Now he really does sound curious, like he wants to know more about it.
"Usually just an address, sometimes maps, if it wasn't in a town or something. Getting coordinates and interactive maps has really made everything easier."
Bellamy considers her for a moment. "Could I download that app? I mean, is it in the app store?"
"It is, and you could. But it would just look like some sort of abandoned beta version of a game, I think, you have to log in using your fingerprint."
He whistles quietly. "You really are high tech."
"Told you."
"So this Transfer you have today, where is it?" he asks, changing the topic slightly.
"It's on the corner of Madison and East 26th." She hesitates for a moment before charging ahead. "Actually, Raven suggested I take you to it. If you didn't believe me. Apparently, it's going to be a car accident, she figured it would be a way to… give you visual proof, I guess."
He considers that for a moment. "I… I can go with you, if you want?"
"You don't have to."
"No, I… I think I want to. I mean, I do believe you, really, but it's still…"
"A lot to take in," Clarke finishes for him. "I get it. But just if you're absolutely sure."
He nods determinedly before glancing at the clock. "I am. How about if we head out now, maybe grab some lunch on the way?"
The idea of food still makes her stomach grumble in an unpleasant way, but maybe she'll be able to work up an appetite on the way.
"OK."
They both change before leaving the apartment, bundling up against the cold day. The train is pretty empty, despite it being well into the afternoon by now. Clarke supposes most people just lounge around on a day like this, ordering take out, enjoying the last actual holiday before they have to go back to work.
She's still not particularly hungry when they emerge onto 14th Street, but Bellamy is insistent, so in the end, they compromise and grab Subway to go. She manages to finish almost all of her sub, at least enough for him to be happy.
They get to the spot with about ten minutes to spare, and Clarke leads the way to a bench just a little ways along East 26th. There's traffic, because there always is in New York, but not as much as there would be on a regular weekday. Pedestrians hustle up and down the sidewalk on each side of the street, but they don't have to dodge out of each other's way.
"So what do you know about this person?" Bellamy asks quietly after a few minutes, glancing around as if he's expecting someone to be eavesdropping.
She pulls her phone out and opens the app.
"Sarah Horowitz, female, 34," she reads. "January 1, 4:01 PM. COD: road traffic accident."
"So there's not really any way to tell who she might be," he says.
She hesitates for a moment. She could tell him about the Numbers, how she can tell who it is she's there to Transfer if she can see their forehead. But then he might ask about his own, and she doesn't want to have that conversation out here.
"Not really, no," she replies, which isn't technically a lie – she's spotted a few Numbers since they sat down, but none of them have been zeros, so she hasn't been able to identify Sarah.
"You don't need to, like, touch her to be able to transfer her soul?" he asks after a moment, eyes widening. "With you not being, you know, invisible, that might be tricky…"
Clarke can't help but laugh at that. "I told you it wasn't just like in Dead Like Me. No, I don't need to touch her. I don't even have to be that close to her, sometimes we can't be, like if someone dies in their home in a high-rise or something, or in buildings there's no way for civilians to access."
He nods. "Right. Makes sense."
The time on her phone changes to 4:00 and she shuts down the app and puts the phone away, scanning the intersection to their right.
She doesn't spot Sarah until a few seconds before she's gone. A bike zips past them, weaving in between the cars, the red uniform of a messenger company flashing between the vehicles. Moments later, there's the screech of brakes and a loud thud.
She has just enough time to grab Bellamy's arm before the memories flood her mind.
When her eyes focus on the street in front of her again after the images have stopped, she can feel Bellamy watching her. She takes a deep breath before turning to face him. Behind him, in the intersection, traffic has stopped and people have gotten out of cars. Someone's yelling about calling 911.
His eyes are wide, boring into hers. "What the hell was that?"
"That was a Transfer," Clarke replies. "I guess I never got around to telling you how they actually work."
"No kidding? It was like you… went into a trance or something. I tried to get your attention, but nothing, you were just staring straight ahead, but like you couldn't see anything, you know."
She's been with Raven and other friends when they've done Transfers, so she knows what it looks like to an outsider, but it's still odd to hear Bellamy describing her during one.
"Come on, let's get out of here," she says, getting to her feet, a little shaky but not too bad. He stands up next to her and slips his hand into hers, which makes her heart soar in her chest.
"So she's… gone?" he asks, glancing over his shoulder.
She nods. "Yeah."
They head in the opposite direction, along the park on East 26th.
"OK, tell me what it was that I just saw," Bellamy says when they've turned the corner onto 5th Avenue.
"You know how people who have had a near death experience sometimes say that they saw their lives flash before their eyes?" she asks.
"Yeah?"
"Well, that's basically what a Transfer is like for me. I see flashes of the person's life, their most… powerful memories, I guess."
"Like a movie or something?"
Clarke shakes her head. "No, it's like I am them, you know? I see their memories the way they did, experience those moments as them – what they see, hear, smell, feel." She shudders a little at the memories of the births of Sarah's two kids that she just had brief flashes of a moment ago. "It's hard to explain."
He doesn't respond immediately. "That must be intense," he finally says, glancing at her.
"Yeah, that's why Transfers are emotionally draining. How much they affect you depends on the person, their memories, your own experiences."
"So bad memories are harder?" Bellamy rightly concludes.
"Yeah. I mean, at first, I was a mess after every single one, experiencing people's happy and sad moments, especially the sad ones – the loss of loved ones, especially. These days… well, you get used to everything, you know? So standard Transfers, like this one, they don't affect me as much anymore."
"But there are still difficult ones?"
"Yeah. The day we met, I had just done a Transfer in Central Park. A man, 53 years old. His dad was an alcoholic during his childhood and he was beaten and locked in closets and cupboards when he didn't behave the way his parents wanted him to. He got out, though, met a nice girl, got married… then their daughter was killed in a car accident, and his wife took her own life… in the end, he started drinking too. That one was hard."
He squeezes her hand. "I'm sorry. But this one was… better? Strange word, maybe, but you know what I mean."
"I do," Clarke assures him. "And yes. Not a lot of sad memories – she lost her grandparents in her teens, that was about it. Birthdays, graduations, her own wedding, the birth of her two kids… she had a happy life."
"That's good," he says with a sigh. "Earlier, you were talking about when you have a lot of souls to transfer at the same time, like during disasters, how that was harder."
"It is. You don't get the individual memories the same way you do with single Transfers, it's more like… you know when you're in the middle of a large room with dozens of people around you and everyone is talking at the same time? You can't really make out what anyone is saying, it's just a murmur of different voices and words, but it's all these impressions fighting for your attention, pulling it in different directions. It's kind of like that, and it's really tiring. I couldn't get out of bed for days after the earthquake in San Francisco."
Bellamy nods thoughtfully at that, but doesn't ask anything else, and they continue in silence to the train.
In fact, he doesn't say anything more about it until they're back home again.
"Do you ever…" he starts when they're seated on the couch. "I know it wasn't possible this time, but sometimes you must be able to tell who it is that you're there for. Do you ever think about… intervening?"
Clarke frowns. "Intervening?" She thinks she knows what he means, but she wants to be sure.
"Yeah. Like, say someone's supposed to… I don't know, drown in a lake. It's obvious who it is, do you ever think about warning them?"
God, it's the opening she's been both dreading and hoping for. She takes a deep breath.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because it wouldn't make a difference, they would still die."
"Well, yeah, everyone does, eventually. Except you, apparently."
She shakes her head. "No, I don't mean eventually. Say that I did warn someone who was going to drown not to get into the water or whatever. I would just be delaying the inevitable. They would stay out of the water and instead they'd get hit by a bus on the way home. Or fall in the shower and break their neck. Or have an allergic reaction during dinner. There would be something else, and they would still die, because that's their day."
Bellamy's brow furrows at her words. "Their day?"
"Their day to die. Everyone has a day that they're going to die, there's nothing me or anyone else can do about that."
"You mean like fate?"
She shrugs. "I guess you could call it that, yeah." She pauses, taking a deep breath before she continues. "Fate, destiny, kismet, call it what you want. The point is, everyone has a Number."
"A number?"
"Yeah." This part she has prepared, even practiced to herself, so she just launches right into her explanation. "When you're born, you get a Number, which is the number of days left until the day you're going to die. With each day, this number counts down, until it gets to zero on the day in question."
Clarke watches as he tries to wrap his mind around the concept.
"So it's sort of like an internal clock, counting down?" he finally asks.
"Well, it's just days, not hours or minutes or seconds," she replies. "And it's… not really internal."
"What do you mean?"
OK, this is it. No turning back.
"Normal people can't see the Numbers, so you won't be able to, but… Soul Keepers can."
She can't help but glance at his forehead when she says it, and Bellamy of course notices. His hand flies up to press against the spot, covering his Number.
"It's here?" She just nods quietly. "So what's… what's my Number? I mean, you don't have to tell me the exact number if you don't want to, I don't know if I want to know the day I'm going to die but… ballpark figure. You know, how many years do I have left."
She knows what he means – he just wants a rough estimate, not an exact timeline. She squeezes her eyes closed for a moment before speaking. "Two oh seven."
His hand falls into his lap and he just looks at her for so long that Clarke almost starts worrying that he's gone into shock or something. After a while, though, he clears his throat.
"Two oh seven as in two hundred and seven days?"
She nods. "I'm so sorry."
"That's… when is that…?"
He trails off, but she answers anyway. "July 27."
"Well… fuck."
Silence falls over them, interrupted by a meow from Bastet as she jumps onto the couch and butts Bellamy's leg with her head. He reaches out a hand almost absentmindedly and pets her.
Clarke wants to ask what he's thinking, somehow reassure him – which she knows is impossible – but she forces herself to stay quiet and wait for him to take the lead.
"Is that why you're telling me?" he finally asks after a few long, silent minutes. Then his eyes widen. "It's OK that you are, right? You're not going to get in trouble for telling me about this whole thing?"
She chooses to focus on his second question first, mainly because she wants to think through her answer to the first one. "No, no, it's fine," she assures him. "It happens… OK, not all the time, but definitely pretty regularly, and there aren't any rules or anything against it."
"So other Soul Keepers, they tell… Norms?" he asks, hesitating a little at the last word.
Clarke nods. "Some do, yes. Usually when they're in some sort of long term relationship with someone, either a close friendship or a romantic relationship. It's… really inevitable, after a while, once it starts to get obvious that we're not aging."
"Is that usually when you'd tell someone? When you can't get out of it?"
It's not like she has a ton of knowledge on the matter – apart from Raven, only Harper in their friend group has done this, as far as Clarke knows, and her boyfriend broke up with her when she told him.
"I don't know if that's how everyone does it, but the people I know who have told their partners have waited until then, yes. Six, seven years or so is usually when we're reassigned to a new city, since we can't stay too long in the same place without people starting to notice that we don't age. I don't know, really, but maybe they wait until then to make it easier if the partner can't handle the situation. A clean break if it goes badly."
"But that's obviously not what's happening here," Bellamy concludes. "So the reason you're telling me is that I'm… dying."
Hearing the words out loud is like a knife being twisted in her gut and she has to take a deep breath before she can answer.
"It's part of it," she agrees.
"And if I hadn't been, you wouldn't have told me?" he pushes. "You would have waited six, seven years, until you had to leave New York? Kept lying to me the whole time?"
His voice is calm but Clarke can sense the anger just below the surface.
"I honestly don't know," she admits, holding up a hand when he opens his mouth to say something. "Just listen to me, OK? I don't know. Because I've never been in this kind of situation before. I've never told anyone about being a Soul Keeper, because I've never had any kind of relationship with a Norm. So yeah, maybe I would have waited. I really can't tell you because that's not the way things are and I can't just… magically know how I would be thinking or feeling if it was."
"Fair enough, I guess," he says.
"But for what it's worth, I really have hated lying to you," she continues. "Even the little lies, like when I've had Transfers and you've been home and I had to say something to get out of the apartment. It's been slowly eating me up inside and then when you told me about Octavia, and you said you didn't want us to have any secrets…"
Bellamy gives her a scrutinizing look. "Is that why you were having trouble sleeping?" he asks. "I didn't even realize, but that's when it started, wasn't it?"
"Yeah." She shrugs. "It felt like you were making an effort to be open and honest with me, and I was just lying through my teeth almost every time I opened my mouth…"
He reaches out to squeeze her hand. "I'm sorry it was my fault you had trouble sleeping."
"No, it wasn't."
"It sort of was, though." He pauses, lets out a sigh. "I just… the whole thing with O, it felt like I had been deliberately hiding it from you, brushing off questions about her when you asked, and I hated it. But it's not the same thing, so I am sorry it made you feel that way."
Clarke offers him a smile. "It's OK. It gave me the kick in the butt I needed to actually figure out a way to talk to you, tell you everything."
"Well, in that case, I'm glad… I think. I am glad you told me about the Soul Keeper thing, just… not sure about the rest yet."
"I get that."
They both go quiet for a moment, but she can tell from his furrowed brows that Bellamy's thinking hard. After a little while he clears his throat.
"I've been trying to figure out what made you bolt on Halloween, since it obviously wasn't getting over a rough breakup." He pauses to look at her, eyebrow raised. "Or was it? Just not Lexa? But why wouldn't you just use the actual breakup as an excuse instead of claiming it was one that happened… decades ago?"
Clarke shakes her head. "No, the breakup thing was just the excuse Zeke came up with when Miller asked for my number to give to you. I guess it was the most reasonable one to him, which I get. I've been single for over ten years, so no rough breakup recently. The reason I used Lexa was that she's really the only bad breakup I've had, strange as that may sound. Me and Wells, we just sort of grew apart, we're more like siblings these days than anything. And Niylah, even though we were together for a couple of years, it was never really serious, so when it was time for both of us to move on and we didn't want to be posted in the same city, we just sort of called it quits, no hard feelings."
Bellamy nods thoughtfully. "Those are the long term relationships you've been in?"
"I know it doesn't sound like a lot, considering how long I've been around… it took me a while to get into the swing of things enough to even consider a relationship. And, well the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries weren't exactly ideal for dating, it was all courtship and marriage, even among us Keepers… I met Lexa here in New York in… 1912 I think, and we became a couple in 1913."
"And you broke up in 1936, so… wow, twenty-three years."
"Yeah. Not that long when you live forever," she notes with a half-smile. "The breakup was hard, at the time, she did actually just leave pretty much out of the blue, and it took me a while to let anyone in after… Wells and I had known each other for… over seventy years when we were both posted in London at the same time, without knowing any of the other Keepers there at first and we sort of just gravitated towards each other. We ended things in 1971, and after that, I guess I wasn't really interested in anything long term for a while. With the sixties and seventies came the sexual revolution, so suddenly it was fine to date casually or have flings that didn't lead anywhere. It was over thirty years before I even considered a relationship again, and Niylah and I never really got past the semi-serious dating in the two years we were together." Clarke takes a deep breath. "But you were asking about Halloween."
"Yeah."
She wants to tell him, doesn't want to hide anything anymore, but like with everything else, she's not sure how he'll react. Could this be the final drop?
"That was the first time I saw your Number," she reveals, watching him carefully for any kind of reaction.
But Bellamy just nods. "I kind of figured. And you panicked."
"Yeah. I told you I've never been involved with a Norm before, because I just… I've seen how these things go. Some people really can't handle finding out and end things right away, while others might think they're fine with it only to realize that it's not that much fun to have a partner who looks thirty years younger. And even if that doesn't happen…" She trails off, a lump forming in her throat.
"If that doesn't happen," he takes over, "we eventually die."
"Exactly."
"Just not usually this quickly."
Clarke lets out a laugh that sounds more like a sob at his attempt to joke about it.
"So yeah, I panicked. I had already been doubting whether it was a good idea to get closer to you, and that was basically confirmation that my first instinct to stay away had been right. But even so, I think I knew, somewhere deep down, that it was already too late at that point. I wouldn't have been able to stay away from you if I tried… which I obviously did."
"And I messed that up by showing up at the library."
"No." She reaches for his hand, a little tentative, but he interlaces their fingers and gives her hand a little squeeze, which she takes as encouragement. "You just… sped up the inevitable. After this last month or so, I have no doubt whatsoever that we would have bumped into each other again if neither of us had done something at that point. I think maybe the universe is trying to tell us something."
Bellamy smiles at that. "You know, I figured that one out when I pulled you out of the way of a cab."
"Yeah, well, you're obviously the smarter of the two of us."
He laughs briefly before his eyes widen a little. "Hey!" he exclaims, as if something major has just occurred to him. "That's why you were being all weird, asking what I would do if I…"
"Yeah," she cuts him off, not wanting to hear him talk about dying again. "I mean, my brain really was sleep deprived, I'd had, like, a total of eight hours of sleep in three days. I think maybe I wanted something concrete to focus on, you know? Like, 'oh, I've always wanted to… drive Route 66' or whatever. Something that I could make happen without having to actually tell you. It's stupid, I know."
"No, it's not," Bellamy disagrees. "It's really sweet."
She looks at him for a moment before continuing. "So will you let me do that?"
His brows furrow. "Do what?"
"You said you'd want to travel, remember?" she reminds him. "If money wasn't an issue, you'd want to go to all the places you've read about – Italy, Greece, China…"
"If money wasn't an issue, yeah."
"And it's not," she tells him. "I have the money to do this, more than enough."
He just stares at her for a long moment. "You're serious."
"Yes." Clarke gets up from the couch and pulls him up too. "Come on."
She drags him to her desk, where she powers up the computer and opens a browser.
"What are you…?" he starts, but trails off when she navigates to her internet bank and logs in.
She opens her debit account.
"This is the account I mainly use," she says. "It's where my salary goes, where I get payments for the paintings I sell on Etsy, where the rent from my house in San Francisco or this place, when I'm not living here, comes in."
"You have a house in San Francisco?"
"That's not the point right now, but yes. Can you just look at the numbers?"
Bellamy sighs but does as she asks him to, and she can see his eyes widen when he takes in the amount in the account, then even more when he sees what she gets paid.
"That's more than I make before taxes," he notes, trying to keep his voice light but not quite succeeding.
"Maybe that's one of the draws during recruiting," she says with a shrug. "Good pay and not a lot of work. Emotionally draining, sure, but not so much physically."
"Plus, you don't pay taxes," he notes.
"Yes, I do," she retorts. "Don't ask me how it works, but I'm 'employed' by SK Ltd. and me and other Keepers pay taxes like everyone else."
He just stares at her for a moment before shaking his head. "I still don't see how you don't question all of that more. Where does that money come from? It's not like you earn money for a company by doing those Transfers."
She considers his words for a moment before replying. "Maybe they have other sources of revenue? I honestly have no idea, but there's no point thinking about it, it's not like I'll get any answers."
He shrugs. "I guess that makes sense. You can't just go around questioning your entire existence all the time, you'd go crazy."
"Exactly," she agrees, turning back to the computer. "So… what do you say? Round the world trip, ancient Roman ruins, the Parthenon, Great wall of China…"
He sighs. "I just… OK, so you make a lot of money, I don't see why I should let you spend a huge chunk of it on taking me on some trip."
She doesn't respond, just clicks to open her savings account.
"It wouldn't be a huge chunk," she says as he stares at the screen.
"That's… a lot of numbers," he says after a long moment.
Clarke turns her back to the computer so she can face him, waiting until he looks up at her before she speaks. "I'm not showing you this to make you feel bad, OK? I just… I want you to see that I can do this, if you let me. I honestly don't spend that much money, it's not like I pay rent on this place. I donate money regularly, but even so, I have way more money coming in than going out. I also have a stock portfolio, but Raven's in charge of it and I can't access it on my own. I can get her to show you, though, there should be quite a bit of money in that, it's been a while since I sold anything and reinvested."
He runs a hand over his face. "No, that's… it's OK."
"So will you let me do this for you?" she asks, voice pleading. "And it wouldn't just be for you, either, it would be for me. I'm being selfish here, really. Getting to do something to make the next six months or so the best they can be, getting to experience all of these things with you… I want that for me, too. OK?"
Bellamy looks away from her, back at the screen behind her, and then closes his eyes. "Can I… can you give me a little time to think about it?" he asks. "Just a few days. I need to really wrap my mind around all of this."
She takes a tentative step towards him and, when he doesn't move away, another, so she can wrap her arms around him and lean her head against his chest. His arms go around her too and she feels his chin against the top of her head.
"Of course."