a/n Thanks for your kind reviews on the last chapter and thank you to everyone who has encouraged me to keep going with this story. I'm finding this quite hard to write, which is a bit odd as usually I can hardly type quickly enough to keep up with all the Bellarke plot bunnies hopping round in my imagination. I'm sorry that this update is a bit short, and that I don't update this story very often, but I'm not giving up on it any time soon!

Bellamy was familiar with the phrase the tension is killing me, of course, but he hadn't realised until Clarke and Madi went on their trip quite how true it could be. As he sat in the Earth Monitoring Station and waited for their evening call he could feel his heart hammering rather overenthusiastically in his chest. He wasn't even sure what there was to be nervous about, all things considered. They had said they would take a radio with them and try to call once a day, so really, from his point of view, the situation shouldn't even be that different from normal. But that logical train of thought could make no impact on the fact that the situation was different from normal, somehow, knowing his family were down there and out on an expedition without him there to take care of them.

"Bellamy?" Emori walked into the room with a concerned expression on her face and a tool that he thought might have been used for soldering in her hand.

"Hey." He greeted her and made a poor attempt at a carefree smile.

"They'll be fine." She at least sounded kind, he thought, rather than dismissive, as she quickly caught on to the reason for his foul mood. "They've already survived the end of the world, they'll survive this little trip too."

"I hope so."

"You'll see. Come on, stop moping and tell me more about Octavia. I'm going to need to be prepared for it when this little one comes along." It was, he thought, the kind of of statement that ought to be accompanied by her placing a maternal hand on her belly, but of course, being Emori, she was instead gesturing at him in a vaguely threatening fashion with that tool that may, or may not, have been a soldering iron.

He was saved by having to pretend to hold a coherent and panic-free conversation by Raven striding into the room. It never ceased to amaze him, really, how she could still stride everywhere in that frankly terrifying fashion despite her brace.

"Do you ever leave this room?" She asked him by way of greeting. He offered a rather feeble shrug in response.

"Be kind." Emori admonished her friend gently.

"He survived eighteen months of thinking she was dead, I think he can survive her going away for a couple of days."

"I don't know if you remember this, but he didn't survive very well."

"I am here, you know." He told them, but was largely ignored.

"We need to fix that door on deck B." Raven told Emori as if he wasn't there.

"On it." She replied, waving the probably-a-soldering-iron and heading for the door.

"We're leaving." Raven informed him, finally recalling his existence. "Go do a workout or something and stop being weird."

He resented that, he decided. He wasn't being weird. He was just in love.

…...

Clarke felt a little pathetic when she admitted to herself that, actually, she'd been looking forward to calling Bellamy all day. She thought it might even have been the thing that got her through the day, through the long drive to Arkadia, avoiding potholes left behind by Praimfaiya, through the painstaking search of her former home. She didn't know why she'd bothered, really. There was nothing here except ghosts.

Well, nothing except ghosts and, of all things, a couple of chests filled with explosives.

She was no Raven, of course, but given that development and the distinct lack of anything that even vaguely resembled lifting equipment she supposed that the new plan was likely to consist of blowing up the debris covering the bunker. Hopefully there was a way to do that without damaging the seal. Hopefully her team of genius engineers would be able to explain such a thing to her.

Hopefully Bellamy was missing her as much as she was missing him.

It was a complete non sequitur, of course, but her brain had always been markedly less good at logic than usual whenever Bellamy was involved. She knew she needed to finish searching the remains of the settlement while she still had the daylight to work by, but she wanted nothing more than to curl up next to the radio and feel the hug of his voice and bask in the warmth of his concern while she mourned for the friends they had lost here. She was aching to tell him about the horror of discovering the bodies in what used to be the dining hall, desperate for him to take some of the burden away from her. It wasn't as if she could share it with a seven-year-old, after all.

She forced herself to keep working until the last glow of light fled from the sky before taking herself back to the rover where Madi was drawing happily. The girl had pottered around helping her to search for the best part of the afternoon but had long since given up on the cheerless task.

"You OK?"

"Yes. Is it time to call Bellamy now?"

She wanted to tell Madi that they should wait until after supper, pretend some semblance of a normal routine, but she wasn't sure she was capable of waiting any longer.

"Yes. Yes it is."

She picked up the radio, and arranged the portable dish in a hopeful manner, and settled down to make the call. She briefly wondered if she ought to let Madi speak first, as had become normal for them of late, but she found herself rather too desperate for that verbal hug to tolerate the idea.

"Bellamy? It's Clarke. And Madi, too, of course. We're at Arkadia. It's been... it's been quite a day. You wouldn't believe it, Praimfaiya has just... it's brutal." She could feel that she was in danger of rambling but couldn't entirely bring herself to stop. "It doesn't look like home anymore, Bellamy. It doesn't look like home. And the bodies. Of the people who stayed. I suppose Jasper is here, and I just – I can't -"

She broke off, crying softly, aware of the comforting warmth of Madi burrowing into her side.

"You're OK, Clarke. You're OK." Bellamy's calm voice on the radio washed over her. "I'll be there with you so soon, I promise. And then we'll find a way to say goodbye to them properly, have a real memorial for them. And we'll rebuild, and we'll make a new home. Together."

She took a few calming breaths before she attempted a reply. "I missed you. All day. All I could think about was how much easier this would be if you were with us."

"I know. I wish I was there too. I'm so sorry I left you, Clarke." She thought his voice sounded distinctly damp now, too.

"That wasn't what I meant. I'm sorry, it came out wrong. I'm pleased you left, because I'm pleased you lived."

"We'll be back together again soon, I promise." There was a short pause before he continued. "I missed you so much today, too. It's silly, because sometimes we only speak once a day anyway, it's just – I felt like I should have been with you."

"You are with us." Madi interrupted now, visibly bored of crying adults and repetitive conversations. "You're always with us, Bellamy. You're with us in the stories Clarke tells and the pictures she draws. And you're with us in your heart, too. Clarke told me that once." She concluded with an air of slight impatience.

"She's very wise, your mother."

a/n Thanks for reading!