a/n Thanks for the lovely reviews on that last chapter. Drama ahead! Happy reading!
Octavia doesn't hesitate. As soon as she has formed her plan, she sends for Bellamy. And, thank goodness, he does not keep her waiting, either, and by the time he arrives and they start their discussion, it is only evening on that frightening day that saw Tomas give his life for her safety.
She pushes that thought firmly aside, and gets on with setting out her plan to her brother.
"I think I've worked it out, Bell. There's no way I can win them back from here. What we need is a new leader, and much as we might like the idea of a democracy, the former grounders will only respect absolute rule by kind-of-divine right."
"What do you have in mind?"
"Madi takes the flame -"
"No. Absolutely not." He cuts her off before she has had chance to explain even a tenth of her plan. "You want my eleven-year-old daughter to put that thing in her head? No."
"She'll be twelve by the time we hand over power." Octavia points out calmly. "People have taken it younger than that before now."
"Yeah, and died bloody deaths not long afterwards." She has to admit, this conversation seems to be going even worse than she expected.
"We're at peace now."
"And how long do you expect that peace to last with a twelve-year-old in charge?" Bellamy is looking at her as if she has lost her mind. "I love her, and I think she's brilliant, but she's no match for a thousand seasoned warriors."
"She won't really be in charge, Bellamy." Octavia knows she sounds annoyed, but she would have explained this earlier if he would only listen. "She'll be a figurehead to unite Wonkru behind the flame. An elected council will really be in charge, probably you and Clarke and Indra and Kane."
"Oh." Bellamy's anger melts abruptly at that. "I see."
"I've thought it through, and it's our only choice." She informs him, trying not to sound too condescending. "The only way to get Wonkru to fall in line is to have them led by a strong personality they respect, who has won a conclave or has nightblood. Or both. Now I'm guessing you're against a conclave, seeing as it would consist entirely of members of your immediate family."
"Yeah, not really a fan of that idea." He no longer looks angry, but he looks far from happy.
"So there we go, then." She sits back in her chair, waits for him to admit defeat. No, that's not quite right. Defeat implies that this is a bad thing, and she can't let him think like that.
"So she'll have a council?" Bellamy repeats, brows furrowed. "She won't actually have to do anything dangerous?"
"She won't actually have to do anything at all."
"You know Clarke is never going to go for this." This is, of course, the moment that Octavia knows she has convinced him, but she keeps a cautious expression pasted onto her face out of politeness. "She's seen what the flame does, and how people get caught in the crossfire."
"That, big brother, is why you're going to be the one to suggest it to her."
…...
Bellamy doesn't know why he's doing this.
No, that's not true. He does know why he's doing this, that's the problem. He's doing this because he thinks it's probably the only way to stop what remains of the human race from wiping each other out in a stupid squabble over power.
But Bellamy doesn't want to be doing this.
If he walks back into his living room, that evening, with the air of a man going to his death, that's because he isn't entirely sure he will survive this. There is a decent chance, he suspects, of Clarke lynching him for even suggesting that Madi takes the flame. And if she doesn't, he expects that this conversation might at the very least ruin their relationship, and he's not sure he can survive without her, any more.
But he doesn't think he has a choice.
She's sitting on the sofa when he enters, a sketchbook across her knees, a face that is unmistakably his own springing into life on the page before her. And he wants so badly to freeze this moment, this beautiful woman with whom he lives a beautiful life, smiling softly at him as he enters the room.
But the real world is out there, knocking at the door.
"What did your sister want?"
"She has an idea. For how to stop the unrest. And I want you to know that we've talked it over, and I wouldn't be suggesting it if I didn't think it was the only choice. So, yeah, I'm only suggesting this because – because we're agreed that it's the only way forward."
The look she is giving him is already somewhat scared, he notes, as he lowers himself onto the sofa by her side.
"So in this plan, decisions are made by an elected council. It would likely consist of us two, and Kane, Indra, people like that. People we trust and respect." Perhaps he is laying it on too thick, he wonders, but he wants to make the good points particularly clear before he progresses to the bad.
"OK." She says it as if it is a question.
"In order to unite Wonkru, there would be demand for a single leader according to their tradition. You're familiar with that, of course. Nightblood, a conclave, the flame."
"Don't patronise me." She bites out, and he suspects from her tone that she has already put the pieces together.
"Madi would take the flame."
"No."
"She'd be leader in name only, remember, because of the elected -"
"No."
"-council, so she wouldn't -"
"No."
"-be in any danger, or have any real decisions -"
"I said no, Bellamy. Why are we even still having this conversation?"
"Because it's the only choice, Clarke. Please, think about it logically."
"No. You do not get to do that. You do not get to offer my daughter up as some kind of sick sacrifice to the mob, then justify it by using my own words against me."
"Our daughter, Clarke." He hopes his voice sounds soothing, but based on the fury in her eyes he hopes in vain. "I wouldn't be suggesting this unless I thought it was safe. This way, Eden is ruled in effect by a democracy, and O gets to step down and live in peace, and -"
"So that's it, then? Your sister's tired of cleaning up the mess she made, so my little girl has to put her life on the line?"
She really does seem to have forgotten that Madi is his daughter, too, he notes.
"No, Clarke. There's more to it than that."
"Really. Care to explain what I'm missing?"
She stares him down, and in that moment, he cannot find any more words.
"No. Thought not." She gets to her feet abruptly, sketchbook sliding to the floor. It lands awkwardly, that sketch of his face crumpling beneath the weight of the other pages.
Then she stands on it, and that hardly helps.
"I can't believe you'd even dare have this conversation with me." She bites out, burning with anger. "You know better than anyone how much I hate the idea of someone I love having that thing in their brain. You know how – how much I've lost, because of the flame. And I refuse to let you put it in Madi."
"Clarke, please. Just sit down and let's talk -"
"No." It is abrupt, and it is final, and is accompanied by her stomping towards the door. "There is nothing to talk about. Now if you'll excuse me -"
"Wait, Clarke. Where are you going?"
"I don't know." She bites out. "I guess I'll go sleep at my mother's. That'll be fun. I get to choose between a drug addict or a man who'd willingly put his own daughter's life in danger."
"Clarke, you don't have to leave." He knew she would be angry, but this development has taken him by surprise. "I'll go, if you need some space. I can go to my sister's and we -"
"I am getting out of this house." She informs him, barging the front door open as he trails behind her in something of a panic. "And you had better not follow me."
With that, she disappears into the night.
He stands there, on his own doorstep, for a good thirty seconds before he realises he is crying. It's damn inconvenient, but as he watches her retreating back he finds himself assaulted by an onslaught of memories of this precious doorstep of their precious home, and ends up dwelling longer than can possibly be good for his sanity on the thought of that first night they lived here, when he sat in this very spot and ate the dinner she had cooked for him, and shared her warmth while he mourned the loss of dozens of strangers.
Today, it seems, he is mourning the loss, instead, of the relationship that means so much to him.
He dashes aside a few tears, but it seems a bit pointless, really. There are more to replace them. And there are more thoughts, too, to replace those memories of this damn doorstep, thoughts about whether she will ever come back, and whether he will have to make this impossible choice about the flame alone, and thoughts about how much he loves her, and how much she is gone.
It takes him longer than it should to realise he's not alone.
"Dad?" He spares a moment to be surprised, because his daughter does not often refer to him quite like that. She must be concerned about him, he figures. He observes too that Madi has taken his elbow, and is trying to draw him back into the house. "Come back inside. Come on."
"I – I don't think I can." He stares at the place where Clarke vanished into the darkness, hoping that perhaps she will suddenly reappear.
"I think you have to." His daughter says quietly, urging him across the threshold and closing the door behind them. "Do you want to sit down and talk about it?"
He looks up abruptly at that, and meets her eyes. "Talk about what?"
"I heard." She says simply. "You weren't being very quiet."
"I'm so sorry, Madi. We didn't mean to upset you -"
"Stop it, Bellamy. I'm not such a small child any more. There's no point hiding this from me. If I'm ready to take the flame, I think I'm ready to cope with my parents having a blazing row about it."
They have, by now, made it back to the sofa, and Madi carefully picks up Clarke's discarded sketchbook and sets it down on a table.
"I'm going to do it." She informs him conversationally, as if this is a matter of no great importance.
"What?"
"I'm going to take the flame. You're right, it's the best solution. And I'll be taking it of my own free will, so Clarke won't be able to stay mad at you for long."
"I'm not sure it's as simple as that."
"She'll come round."
He sighs heavily at that, thoroughly convinced, in this moment, that nothing could be further from the truth. He rubs a palm across his tired eyes, allows his head to sink into his hands.
"I love your mother." He mutters, scarcely loud enough for Madi to hear. "But I love the human race more."
She laughs at that, an incongruously carefree sound.
"I'm not sure that's true, you know. Didn't she once think she had to shoot you to save the human race? And she couldn't do that. And that was before you even properly got together. Are you saying that she loved you more, back then, than you love her even now?"
"Madi, I'm not really sure this is a time for teasing." He raises his head with considerable difficulty, attempts to adopt a paternal glare.
"I'm not really sure it's a time for sitting around moping." She says pointedly. "The decision's been made. I'm going to go tell Octavia first thing tomorrow that I'm doing it. You need to come up with a plan for how you're going to talk Clarke back round, and then you need to get some sleep."
"You sound more and more like Lexa every day." He tells her, feeling the ghost of a smile about his lips, as he thinks of the stories Clarke has told him of the woman she loved. "Are you sure you've not already got that chip in your brain?"
"Not yet, no." She tells him with a grin. "This is just my adolescent rebellion phase."
He laughs at that, slightly begrudging himself the joy, and sends her back to bed with a hug.
It is beyond stupid, he cannot help but feel, to take seriously the advice of his eleven-year-old daughter, but he does so all the same. He sits on the sofa, and stares at that sketch of his smiling face, and attempts to come up with some perfectly wonderful plan that will convince the woman he loves that he has not just betrayed her and everything and everyone she cares about.
He doesn't get very far. He plans no magic words, and no romantic gestures. And by the time he goes to bed, some hours later, he is no closer to knowing how he will fix this.
No, that's not quite true. He is barely closer to knowing how he will fix this. He has achieved one thing, and one thing only.
On the living room table sits a chess set, perfectly laid out, ready for a game.
a/n Thanks for reading!