a/n Thank you to those of you who reviewed that last chapter. You're the best! Please enjoy another short but sweet chapter. Happy reading!
Clarke walks until her feet hurt more than her heart does. It takes a while. And, yeah, she's aware that she said she'd be back that evening, but she's not sorry to be stretching the definition of evening by the time she gets back to the house several hours after dark. She reckons that being a little late home is not the worst betrayal anyone has committed in this family of late. She opens the door quietly, rather expecting Bellamy and the children to be asleep, and sets about removing her boots.
Then she realises that she was only two thirds right. Bellamy is very much still awake, pacing the living room so heavily she thinks he might well wear holes in the floor.
She peeks around the doorframe, and he stops dead in his tracks.
"Clarke." He rushes towards her, then remembers that she's furious with him. Stops a couple of metres out and flaps his hands hopelessly in midair. "Thank God. I was so worried – I thought maybe you'd had an accident out there or something."
"I'm fine." She tells him. Physically, at least, it is not so far from the truth. She has survived worse than sore feet, before now.
"Good." He can barely conceal his relief, and she finds herself almost hating him even more for being so sweetly concerned for her welfare. This would all be much easier, she seethes, if he were a heartless monster.
"How are the kids?"
"They missed you." He says, swallowing thickly. "They're sleeping now."
She nods. She's not entirely sure what she's nodding at, but she supposes she ought to acknowledge his words.
"I guess you want to talk." She offers, not really looking forward to the prospect, as she steps across the threshold of the living room.
"We – we can if you want. But I wondered if maybe you just wanted to sit and play chess." He murmurs, with a gesture towards the table.
She stops walking, feels the Earth tilt beneath her somewhat. She's being silly, she chastises herself. It is only a board game. But – but somehow it is their board game, and it is the thing that brought them back together again the last time she was anywhere near this upset with him, and it is there, now, on the table, set up and waiting, for all the world as if they planned this appointment as a date, and not as an opportunity to hash out an argument.
She doesn't say a word. She's not sure she can, just now. She takes a seat, and moves a piece forward almost at random. And Bellamy follows her lead, and sits down opposite her, and responds to her move with scarcely more thought. She suspects that this will not be the most skilful game of chess the two of them ever play, but she has an inkling that it may well turn out to be the most important.
Neither of them speaks, for a long time. And she is on the point of doing so, of starting perhaps with something along the lines of a simple how could you, has opened her mouth and inhaled, when he beats her to it.
"I love you." His voice is trembling, but all the same, the words fall on her ears with substantial impact. "I just – I need you to know that, before you tell me all the reasons why you don't love me right now. I didn't do this to hurt you, Clarke, or to hurt Madi. You're both too important to me."
She moves a knight, bites her knuckle a little. Wonders what to do next, regarding both the game and the conversation.
"I love you, too." She admits, at last, crushing a recently taken bishop in her fist until it leaves a mark in the skin of her palm. "That's why I'm so hurt, Bellamy. I don't expect the person I love to do this to me. You're supposed to protect our children, not put them in harm's way. And without even telling me, too. I can't believe -"
She forces herself to break off that chain of thought there, reminds herself that she is here to talk, not yell. Moves her queen to nowhere in particular, and barely spares a thought to wonder whether it might have been a poor choice.
"I was trying to protect them." He mutters, dropping a piece and focusing rather too carefully on picking it back up again. "You've seen the lengths these rebels are prepared to go to, Clarke. How long until they kidnap her and put her on the throne by force, or something like that? Or even try to take the baby? At least this way we're in control of the situation. I was going to ask her to make me her chief bodyguard, obviously, but I never got to explain any of this because -"
"Because I overreacted." She concludes the sentence for him with no small measure of biting sarcasm. "Because I caused a scene. Because I was struggling, just a bit, to sit around and think calmly when this is our daughter we are talking about."
"Because I screwed up." He murmurs quietly, instead. "Because I went about this all wrong and made you feel like I was plotting with my sister behind your back. Because I didn't start by explaining to you how we could protect them, or asking what you thought."
She lets that sit for a moment, takes it for the apology it is. Loses her queen but decides that's probably not exactly her priority just now.
"I never thought about it like that. I never thought about how we could protect them better this way." She acknowledges quietly. "You might be right."
They exchange a couple more moves in silence, as she works up the courage to get to the heart of the argument.
"I think you're right about a lot of it. I have to admit that I don't see a better choice. I just – it's Madi, Bellamy. Our little girl."
"I know." He soothes, reaching out a hand towards her.
He stops half way, of course, remembers that she hasn't forgiven him yet. Retracts his hand slowly, and makes no attempt to hide the tears that start to fill his eyes at the necessity of that action.
"The thing that hurt most was the way you went about it. Planning it with your sister like that, then presenting it to me as if I was supposed to just agree with it."
"I didn't think you'd just agree with it. I thought you'd probably never speak to me again. But I didn't know what else to do. If – if I could take it back, and tell Octavia I wouldn't even consider discussing anything to do with Madi without you there, of course I would."
She nods, once, in acknowledgement of that, leans back into her chair to watch him win at chess. She's played better, she seems to remember, but all the same she is about as happy with the outcome of the game as she could ever have expected, given the circumstances.
No, that's not true. This has, if anything, exceeded her expectations.
"I'm sorry." He tells her softly, and she knows he is not talking about beating her at chess. "I'm so sorry."
She nods again, but she doesn't say the words. Doesn't say that, if he wants forgiveness, she'll give it to him. She's not quite ready to do that, yet.
"You sleep here tonight." He suggests gently. "If you still need some space, I get that, and I can go somewhere else. It seems like the least I can do."
"That's OK." She tells him. "You should stay here. I'll go share the kids' room."
"No, have the bed." He tries to insist. "I'll sleep on the sofa in here."
"No. I'd like to stay close to them, tonight, if that's OK."
"Of course. I understand that. Thanks for playing chess with me."
"Thank you." She murmurs, standing up and heading for the door. "Good game."
The grasp of strategy may have reached an all time low, she suspects, but she thinks it's probably the best chess game she's ever played.
…...
Bellamy sits for a long time and stares at the door, trying to convince himself that the conversation he has just had with Clarke was real. Trying to convince himself that they are still, just about, on speaking terms, and that she's actually willing to spend the night under the same roof as him.
It all seems too good to be true, somehow. Of course, it is also awful, and devastating, and makes him want to retch until there's nothing left in his stomach to throw up. But all the same, it's a hell of a lot better than he was expecting, about eight hours ago.
He carefully resets the chess board, just in case it should prove useful again in the near future. Then he picks up a book, and settles on the sofa. He had better give her a decent head start, he thinks, so that she can take her things from the room they used to share, and use the bathroom, and get ready for bed, without having to walk into him every five seconds. That thought hurts quite a lot, actually. Walking into Clarke every five seconds about the house has long been one of his favourite features of their family life, bringing as it does frequent opportunities for stolen kisses or shared smiles.
Well. It looks like he won't be getting any of those for a while.
He pushes that thought aside and concentrates on Odysseus and his haphazard leadership. He figures he might as well read for quite a while, anyway, because it seems unlikely that he will get much sleep tonight. It seems unlikely, too, that he will take in that much from what he is reading while his mind is quite so chaotic as all this, but it seems that there is nothing much to be done about that.
Some hours have passed by the time he attempts to go to bed. He's not quite sure how many, but it must have been a good number because he's turned a lot of pages. He shrugs out of his shirt, tugs tiredly at his trousers and socks. Leaves his underwear on, unable as he is to summon the enthusiasm to go hunting for anything resembling pyjamas. Turns out the light.
And then he gets into bed, and proceeds to stare at the ceiling. He tries closing his eyes, but then he just ends up replaying the look on Clarke's face when she hissed at him earlier that he was supposed to protect their little girl and baby boy. So he gives up on that one, and stares.
And stares.
No, this is completely stupid. He's obviously not going to get any sleep. With a heavy sigh he admits defeat, and reaches for his book. He turns on a lamp, and turns a few more pages. And then a few more pages becomes a lot more pages, and a sleepless night becomes a sleepless early morning, he thinks, but there seems no point in torturing himself by checking the time.
And then he hears the bedroom door ease open.
He looks up from his book, surprised and confused, to see Clarke appear on the threshold, the deep furrows of her brow throwing shadows in the dim light of the lamp.
"Please don't say anything." She whispers, before he can even utter her name. "Or think anything. Or make a big deal about this in any way but – but I'm going to sleep in here tonight if that's OK."
He nods, a cautious smile playing about his lips. She did say not to say anything.
She barely returns the smile, a tiny quirking at the corners of her mouth which stands in sharp contrast to the exhausted frown in her eyes, and then she slips into the bed at his side.
He freezes a little, and shuffles further away from her. He's expecting polite bed sharing with his currently-rather-estranged-lover to be a bit of a challenge, really, and he figures it will be easier on both of them if he puts as much distance between them as possible. Easier, too, probably, if he continues to read his book with rapt concentration. But that might present a problem, he realises, because he knows she doesn't like it when he stays up late reading with the lamp on, knows that the light disturbs her sleep and – well, she looks like she could use as much sleep as possible, just now.
He sets his book aside and turns out the lamp. Resigns himself to a couple more hours spent staring at the ceiling while the woman he loves lies close by his side, unreachably far away. He tries crossing his arms across his chest, but that's uncomfortable and feels somehow unnatural, so he rearranges himself a bit, hands behind his head, still staring at that damn ceiling.
There is a rustling noise by his side, as Clarke shifts her weight on the bed slightly, tugs a bit at the sheets. And he wants so badly to ask how she's doing, or whether she wants him to leave, or whether there's anything at all he can do to make her more comfortable, but she did say not to say anything.
Another rustling noise. A bit more disturbance of the bedclothes.
And suddenly, against all expectation, there is a warm cheek resting on his chest. And he cannot for the life of him make sense of this, but she's definitely there, and he can tell by her breathing that she's still wide awake, and he wants to ask her what the hell she thinks she's doing but he's guessing that not saying anything still applies. And then, of all things, her arm is reaching across him, too, her open palm resting on his shoulder, her warmth making him feel suddenly very sleepy.
She did say not to say anything. And not to think, either, nor to make a big deal of it. But holding Clarke close isn't something he's ever found requires a lot of thought, actually, so he just goes ahead and does it. Unfolds his arms from behind his head and wraps them around her, instead. Gives the slightest squeeze, then relaxes into the darkness.
The last thing he hears is her breathing change, that particular shift in rhythm that tells him, beyond all doubt, that she is fast asleep.
a/n Thanks for reading!