a/n Thank you to the lovely readers who reviewed the last chapter! Shout out to DayDreamer-BleachLover for the question that kick-started some of the content of this chapter. Happy reading!
Bellamy had indeed managed to restart that conversation a little later, once Madi was safely asleep, and had endured a slightly squirm-inducing discussion with Clarke about what, exactly, an intimate radio call might involve. And then he had taken himself off to bed – and if he was being honest, he had stayed awake thinking about exactly what they'd discussed for a little too long – and then, at last, he had fallen asleep and dreamed some pretty vivid dreams.
So it was that he found himself, this morning, in need of a rather particular favour from Raven.
"Hey." He made his way into Earth Monitoring, features arranged in a careful smile.
"Hey." If Raven thought it was odd that he had decided to show up here before breakfast, she did not choose to mention it. "How are you?"
"I'm great." He told her, a smidge too much honesty breaking through in his overenthusiastic tone. He was in danger of sounding like a lovestruck teenager in the midst of his first crush, at this rate.
Then again, maybe that wasn't so far off the mark.
"And how's Clarke?"
"She's great, too. That was... kind of what I wanted to ask you about, actually."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Is there some way that we could – make the radio portable? So that I could chat to Clarke from my bedroom or wherever?" It was rather lucky, he thought, that his skin tone was not exactly the blushing type.
"You want to be able to take the radio into your bedroom." Raven repeated straight back at him, brow quirked. "Any particular reason?"
"No." He squeaked a little. "No reason."
"Right. So I'm sure it's normal to be this uncomfortable about asking me whether you can take the radio you use to talk to your girlfriend into your bedroom for no reason."
He didn't have a good response to that. He just shrugged and hoped that his old friend would take pity on him.
She did, thank goodness. "I can probably make it work, set up an earpiece like you used in Mount Weather or something. Of course, any creep who wanted to listen in could still intercept the signal at the main box here, but I doubt even Murphy is sick enough to do that."
"I – you mean – erm -"
"Don't worry, Bellamy. We'll make you a door sign or something. Heaven knows you two idiots need all the help you can get."
He was about to defend himself – and Clarke, of course – most vigorously against that charge when he heard John Murphy scream. And that wasn't a sound he had ever expected to hear, really, but now that it reached his ears it all made perfect sense.
Emori must be in labour.
And it seemed that any more discussion of door signs and no good reasons would have to wait for another day.
…...
Clarke was glad that Emori had decided to give birth in Earth Monitoring. Really she was, because otherwise there was no way she could have been there over the radio from the ground, and listening to her friend scream for several hours had to be a substantial improvement over not knowing what was going on at all.
All the same, it was not exactly pleasant, to be listening in on this and unable to do anything much to help. Monty was manning the radio, passing on Bellamy's occasional requests for advice and Murphy's constant requests for reassurance, passing back in the other direction Clarke's soothing recommendations to be patient and stay strong for Emori.
At least Madi was hardly complaining, enjoying a day without lessons and with endless time to play at bear trap to her heart's content.
Things were starting to pick up, now, on the other end of the line, with Monty reporting ever more frequent contractions, and then that they could see the baby's head, and then, at long last, that it was over.
Except it wasn't over for Clarke, not yet. Not until Harper's voice was there, too, confirming that the baby was breathing, and looked healthy as far as they could see, a lovely little girl.
Finally, she allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief, and pass on her congratulations to the whole family.
"Thanks." Harper said, audibly excited. "They say to tell you that they're calling her Charlotte, as if anyone expected them to call her anything else. Do you want to speak to Bellamy? He's kind of gross at the moment, but I guess if you can't see that you might not mind."
Clarke let out a relieved laugh. "It's OK. Let him clean up. I'll speak to him later."
"If you're sure." Monty agreed, even as Clarke heard a very familiar voice disagreeing in the background.
"Bellamy -" That sounded like Harper, trying to argue with him.
"I won't touch the damn radio, then." She could pick out Bellamy's actual words, now. "You press call and I'll just talk."
"I can hear you, you know." Clarke piped up, rolling her eyes at no one in fond exasperation at his apparent desperation to speak to her.
"Good." He said, and she could see in her mind's eye the stubborn set of his jaw. "I just needed to tell you I love you, and that I can't wait to deliver our kid one day. There, Harper, I'm done."
Clarke gave a giggle, shaking her head at his foolishness. "I love you, too. Go clean up. I'll be here when you're done."
She didn't know how long it might take him to see to the newborn and for the happy family to be comfortably relocated to their own room. She didn't know, either, whether there might be other priorities just now for her friends in the sky than talking to her. So it was that she decided to do something a little more useful than sitting about and waiting to hear his voice again.
She picked up a sketchbook and went to seek out Madi. And then the two of them made their way outside, and sat at the edge of the trees, and made a start on drawing the forest before them.
"Why do you always draw butterflies?" Madi asked, now.
"I don't always draw butterflies." Clarke argued. "I draw people more than I draw butterflies."
"The things you draw most often are Bellamy, Lexa, me and butterflies." Madi insisted. "Why do butterflies make the list?"
She paused for a moment, wondered how to go about answering the question honestly but also usefully. "I loved the butterflies when I first came to Earth, but not as much as Octavia did. So I guess it helps me feel close to her, even though she's in the bunker. But it's more than that, too. It reminds me of being younger, I suppose, and being more innocent. You know I've told you stories about – some of the difficult things I've had to do. Killing people who wanted to hurt my friends. The butterflies remind me of a time before that."
"That's silly." Madi decided, with all the naivety of her years. "Just because you had to kill bad guys doesn't mean you're guilty. But the butterflies are really pretty."
Maybe a child could be capable of being wise as well as naive, she wondered.
They passed a little more time drawing together in a comfortable silence, Madi choosing to work on a portrait of Bellamy. Clarke thought that was a bit silly, really, given the view of trees and animals before them, and the fact that Madi had never even seen him in person. But she supposed that it was sweet, at least, that the little girl wanted to draw her long-awaited foster-father, and she had to admit that there were so many sketches of him littering their house that it couldn't be anything but reasonably accurate.
As the light began to fail, they made their way back inside. And there was no guarantee that Bellamy was ready to speak to them yet, of course, and he surely did have other priorities right now besides speaking to them, but all the same, she couldn't help but hope.
She was not disappointed, when she entered the living room to the sound of his familiar voice issuing from the radio.
"- suppose you must have gone out to catch dinner, or something. I hope you're both OK. I guess I'll speak to you later."
"Or you could speak to us now?" Clarke suggested, picking up the handset. "And not dinner, actually. Drawing."
"Hey. Good to hear from you." He said warmly, as if he didn't hear from them at least once a say, every day. "What were you drawing?"
Madi joined the party at that, wresting the radio from her mother's grasp. "I drew a picture of you, and Clarke says it looks really like you!"
"You – you did?" Bellamy appeared to think that was moving, rather than strange.
"Yeah. And she said she's going to stick it by her bed so she can see you smiling at her every morning."
"OK, Madi. That might be a little much." Clarke suggested, slightly embarrassed.
"What? He loves you." She said, with a seven-year-old shrug. "He's not going to think it's weird."
"She's right there." Bellamy agreed easily. "I think it's sweet."
"Sweet? You think I'm sweet?" She asked, a little incredulous.
"It's not the first word I'd pick, I guess." He admitted. "I might go for awesome, or something. But I do think having a picture of me by your bed might be sweet."
"I'm leaving." Madi declared, with an unexpectedly tactful sense of timing. "You guys are going to be boring grown-ups now, aren't you?"
That did seem to be the case, Clarke had to concede, as they both bade Madi goodnight and sent her skipping on her way.
"There's something I need to tell you." Bellamy muttered when she had left, and Clarke found herself somewhat daunted by the seriousness of his tone.
"What is it?" She asked, trying very hard not to panic.
"I don't think I look like your sketches any more." He began, sounding more than a little sad. "I didn't take care of myself very well when we first got here. I've only started training again since we got the radio working and -"
"Bellamy. Stop. I genuinely don't care." She heard him suck in a breath at that. "I don't mean that in a harsh way, I mean of course I care about you being worried. But I mean – I don't care what you look like. It's been years. Things change. And as long as you're still you, which I know you are because I talk to you every damn day, we're all good."
"You mean that?"
"Of course I mean that."
"Great." He still sounded tense, and she couldn't quite work out why.
"What's wrong?"
"I... I kind of have a beard. Half a beard. I don't know, it's stupid. I didn't shave much when I thought that you were – were gone. And then I guess I never really have since I got you back."
"You have a beard?" She could not quite believe that development. A little weight gain, or the occasional crease around his eyes, sure. But a beard? That was not something she had imagined.
"Half a beard." He corrected her, sounding absolutely mortified. "It's crap, really. Kind of wispy and pathetic and – and I'm going to shave it off as soon as we've finished this conversation."
"Don't bother." She recommended, trying to sound more caring than impatient. Clearly, for some reason, this conversation was important to him. "I'm not going to see you for years, and when I do I'll be more interested in kissing you than worrying about whether you've shaved."
"But – I just – you've been imagining me like I used to look, haven't you? And now, if we – if we go ahead with this radio sex idea – you'll be thinking of someone who doesn't even exist any more."
"Of course I've been imagining you like you used to look. I didn't know to do any different. But now I'm imagining you with a wispy and crap half a beard. And guess what? I'm still in love with you. And I'll be thinking of you like that when we're having our... intimate radio chats, and that will be fine." She concluded her rant, and took a deep breath. Listened carefully to the silence, at the other side of which he was, presumably, trying to collect his thoughts.
"It really doesn't bother you?"
"It really doesn't bother me. And I bet it looks a lot better than you think. You always seem surprised by your own good looks." She hesitated for a moment, but she knew that this was the moment to reveal a slight appearance change of her own, too. "There's something I need to tell you, too."
"There is?"
"Yeah. I cut my hair. As in, I really cut my hair. It only reaches just past my ears. It just seemed more practical, while I'm stuck down here trying to keep myself and a kid alive and there's no one around to see it and tell me I look stupid."
"I don't think it'll look stupid." He told her slowly, evidently taking her concerns seriously. "I'm imagining it now. I think it probably looks really hot, actually. And, obviously, I'm still in love with you."
Well, then. It seemed they had both been worrying about nothing.
…...
John Murphy had spent years practising the art of unhappiness. He had rather thought that was his calling in life, until he met Emori, and decided that, perhaps, there were at least occasional moments of good to be grasped, too.
But now, it seemed, happiness seemed to have crept up on him. He could find no other explanation for the smile he could feel splitting his cheeks, nor for the warm bundle of life he held cradled in his arms.
"Is she OK? Is she hungry?" Emori murmured, eyelids already drifting closed again with exhaustion. She should be asleep, he thought, should be getting her strength back, not fussing like this.
"She's fine." He reassured her, stroking Charlotte's perfect cheek with a gentle finger. "Go to sleep."
"I don't take orders from you, John."
"It's not an order." He soothed. "It's a request. I would like it if you would get some sleep, so that you can recover quickly and get back on with being your bad-ass self and bossing me around."
She laughed a little, snuggling into the pillow. "Wake me up if she's hungry."
"Yeah." He agreed, thinking it was probably the quickest way to end this conversation and get her to rest.
"And wake me up if she cries, or if you need help. Or if anything happens to -"
"Nothing's going to happen to her." He told her, a little fierce. "She's our daughter, Emori. You know I'd do anything to keep her safe."
"I know, John." She whispered, words beginning to lengthen with the drowsiness of oncoming sleep. "You're a good man."
He wasn't so sure about that. But he was working on it.
a/n Thanks for reading!