a/n Hello and welcome! This is set on the Ark, and the oxygen never fails. Shout out to Daydreamer-bleachlover for the prompt and for beta reading. Happy reading!
Clarke always thought it was Wells. She could have sworn it was Wells, because she was pretty certain that no one else in this place actually liked chess enough to play a move every day for five years.
But based on the confusion currently knotting his brow, she finds herself forced to consider the possibility that she might have been wrong. It's happened before, of course. No one can be right all the time. But she does rather pride herself on her logical thinking so this is getting a bit embarrassing, really.
"What was that?" Wells asks, still frowning.
"I said good game." She repeats, close to wishing the floor of the mess hall might rise up and swallow her.
"But we haven't played chess since lunch last week."
She takes a deep breath, and clings to the tattered shreds of her former certainty, and makes one last attempt to clear this up. "We haven't played chess here since lunch last week. I was talking about the game in the library."
"But we never play chess in the library." He looks almost cute, she thinks, when he's so earnestly confused. It almost makes her regret clarifying that they went to that Unity Day dance as just friends.
And this whole conversation is definitely making her regret bringing up the whole library-chess-situation. She was just so convinced that it was Wells, and after all these years she really wanted to be able to talk openly about the ongoing chess matches that are the highlight of her day.
She sighs deeply and eats some stew.
"Clarke." Wells says sharply, and she remembers abruptly that she never did reply to his last comment.
"You're right." She agrees with a giggle, hoping she might be able to laugh it off. "We don't play chess in the library. How silly of me."
It does not work. "You're Clarke Griffin. I'm pretty sure you don't do silly. Now stop concentrating so hard on your lunch and tell me what this is about."
She considers that offer for a moment, but that is all it takes. Telling Wells what's going on really does seem like the sensible move. She's dying to get this mystery off her chest, has been bottling it up since she was eleven years old, and now that she's accidentally let slip half the story she supposes she might as well finish the job.
"I've been playing chess with someone in the library. I thought it was you, but I guess I was wrong."
Based on the lines still marring his brow, it seems her words have not clarified the situation as thoroughly as she might have hoped. "What do you mean, thought it was me? How do you not know who you're playing chess with?"
"We don't play together, not really. We take a move a day. I do mine on the way back from my apprenticeship. Whoever I'm playing with, they must do theirs on the way to their morning shift, I think. Because even when I used to have school and sometimes I'd sneak out at break or lunch they'd already played."
"How long has this been going on for?" Wells asks, a slightly stunned look blooming in his eyes.
Clarke swallows nervously. "Five years."
"Five years? And you only just now brought it up?"
"I've been wanting to say something for a while. And then today – they won, so when I was on my way here I decided I'd say something to you. Because I thought they were you."
"You couldn't have said something last time they won?"
Another nervous swallow. "They've – erm – they've never won before."
"Well now I'm offended." Wells says, although he sounds more amused than anything. "They haven't won in five years and you thought they were me?"
"To be fair, we haven't played that many games. It's kind of slow going, one move a day."
"I would still have won by now."
Clarke cannot meet his eyes. "Yeah. I know, I see that now. They were – they were really bad, actually, when we started. Like, pathetically bad. I was eleven and I still beat them easily every time."
Wells is shaking his head in disbelief. "How does something like that even start?"
"I just moved a piece one day." Clarke says, trying to keep a casual tone. "I was in the library to read for a bit on the way back from school, and I saw the chess board, and moved a pawn. And when I came back the following day, another pawn had moved and – yeah. The rest is history."
"Oh my God." Wells still looks somewhat flummoxed. "My best friend has been playing chess with a complete stranger ever since she was a little girl. You realise this is creepy, right, Clarke? This could be some old guy who's trying to lure you in."
"Or it could be a hot eighteen-year-old girl who hangs out in the library and wears dorky glasses." She muses, trying not to get too over-excited at the idea. She is sixteen, now, after all, and is quite enjoying fantasizing a little about what she finds attractive.
Wells snorts affectionately. "Good luck with that."
As it turns out, the truth lies somewhere between the two.
…...
Clarke makes no further inquiries as to the identity of her chess partner in the next few days. She simply starts a new game, and sighs with relief when her mystery friend responds in turn. She was a bit worried, she has to admit, that they might give up now they have at long last won a game. She feared that maybe the thrill of trying to beat her had been the only reason for their participation.
She is only too happy to find out that their enthusiasm is not dulled. Well, it's difficult to read enthusiasm in a chessboard, but she likes to think that her partner must be keen on the game at least. Five years is a long time to stick at something without enthusiasm.
Four days after her confrontation with Wells, she moves a knight and gives a satisfied giggle. She's made a good start to this game, and she intends not to lose again.
The guard stationed at the nearby cabinet fixes her with a frown, and she quickly schools her expression into one of the appropriate solemnity. She understands why there have to be guards in the library, of course she does. The few remaining old Earth books are fragile and need to be under careful protection in their glass cabinets. And she knows that they have occasionally been a target for protesters, in the past, when the anger of the lower stations towards Alpha has boiled over and they have sought to destroy what they called the artefacts of their oppression. But it strikes her as utterly tragic that these books people used to enjoy are now firmly under lock and key. She knows the words on the ebooks are identical, but somehow it isn't the same.
Her move duly made, she skips towards the door and towards supper with Wells. She knows he is likely to ask after the game – he has done so every evening since she told him about her arrangement – and she looks forward to updating him. It is a measure of the strength of their friendship, she thinks, that he has shown no hint of jealousy towards the mysterious chess buddy she hid from him for so long.
"You winning?" He asks with a grin, as she deposits her tray before him.
"Please, of course I'm winning. I'm not going to let them beat me again."
"That's my Clarke." He chuckles affectionately, and she glows a little at his words. It is nice, she decides, that she is still his Clarke even since he found out she does not see him that way. It speaks to the goodness of his heart, and the depths of his kindness.
"You're great, Wells." Speaking from the heart does not come easily to her, but she reckons he deserves it.
"I know." He smiles right back at her. "So come on, then. What's the plan? Aren't you eager to meet this hot library dork of yours?"
"You know I am." Clarke laughs. "But what if they turn out to really be an old creep?"
"We need to work out who they are before they work out who you are." Wells decides. "We need a strategy."
"What do you have in mind?" She asks, noting the way that they are approaching even this situation as if life is one giant game of chess.
"You said you think they make their move early in the morning. Let's change our routine a bit, we should go look for them tomorrow morning."
"We?" She asks, with a quirked brow.
"Come on, Clarke. You think I'd leave you to do this alone?"
…...
It's a great strategy, but it seems that it is destined to fail. They arrive within moments of opening time the following morning, on their way to their respective apprenticeships, but the library is absolutely deserted save for a librarian and a couple of guards.
"They must not have got here yet." Clarke whispers.
"Or they might have been even quicker than us. Let's go see if they made their move." Wells suggests.
They head for the table where the chess board lives, but she doesn't hold out much hope. If someone had already been here this morning, surely they would have passed them in the corridor just now? Unless, of course, they have simply managed to disappear into thin air.
They arrive at the game in progress, and Clarke stifles a gasp. There is, it appears, a very real possibility that her opponent has actually vanished into the abyss, because they are not here now, but they have undoubtedly been here this morning. A bishop has been moved.
"That's not possible." She mutters. "We would have passed them in the corridor. But they've played."
"Are you sure they didn't come last night?" Wells asks.
"Yeah. Sometimes I come just before closing, and they haven't played. They're definitely a morning person."
Her voice must have grown louder during this conversation. The nearest guard, a young cadet with dark hair and disarmingly warm eyes, is squinting at her. She fights down an embarrassed blush, although she's not quite sure why. This isn't the first time she's been caught talking in the library, and it won't be the last.
Without pausing another second, she latches onto Wells by the arm and drags him back out of the door.
…...
Clarke tries to catch her mysterious chess opponent several times over the following months, sometimes taking Wells along for moral support, sometimes alone. She goes to the library at every hour she can think of, from first thing when it opens to the last second before closing. She pops in at random times during the day, too, and even nips there quickly during her breaks from her medical apprenticeship. It gets to the point where her mother asks why she feels the need to spend so much time in the library, but Clarke just shrugs and says she likes to read about medical research.
It is almost the truth.
All these months of diligent observation and carefully filed evidence, and she is still no closer to knowing the identity of her secret friend. All she knows is that they make their move some time between closing time in the evening and opening time in the morning. She is certain on this point, because more than once she has been there at these times on consecutive days and found a piece moved in the night-time hours.
She knows something else, too. That dark-haired cadet takes his job far too seriously. He's always frowning at her, whenever she so much as whispers in his presence. She could even swear he narrowed his eyes at her for smiling once, and as for that time she full-on giggled at a silly move her opponent had made – well, that's one noise she won't be repeating in a hurry.
Her seventeenth birthday rolls around, and Wells presents her with a most unexpected present.
"I'm giving you a new strategy." He tells her but, being Wells, he also gives her a precious stick of charcoal to boot. "We're going to find out who your mysterious friend is. Come on."
"Where are we going?" She asks, as he marches her out of the mess hall, interrupting her birthday breakfast.
"We're going to ask the librarians. I can't believe we didn't think of it before. One of them must have seen something. It probably is one of them, actually. They must have access to the chess board while the library's closed."
Clarke feels her heart sink a little at that. Sure, a couple of the librarians are aesthetically pleasing in their own ways, she supposes, but they don't exactly fit those fantasies she's been trying to forget about. It's not always a dorky brunette with glasses, now. Sometimes it's a tall, dark-haired guy whose carefully tamed hair falls into curly disarray when he runs his fingers through it as he concentrates on a book. But that's nothing to do with that overly conscientious cadet who's so obsessed with protecting his precious books and his golden silence, of course not. It is madness to even suggest such a thing.
They ask Julie – a kind lady, but really not the stuff of behind-the-bookcases fantasies – if she can offer them any useful leads.
"I'm sorry, dear." She says gently. "We've no idea. And we've all been wondering the same thing, we notice the pieces moving, you see. We presumed it was a couple of kids having a laugh."
"But the pieces move between closing time and opening time." Clarke insists. "They move in the night."
"That's not possible." Julie shakes her head. "No one has ever broken into this library. We're proud of our security measures. The only people who are here outside of hours are librarians and guards."
Clarke's pulse doesn't pick up at the mention of guards. Definitely not. Because she's definitely not thinking of any particular guards who fulfill their book-defending duties a bit too earnestly.
Wells shrugs in disappointment, but they're here now, so Clarke reckons she may as well make her daily move. She drags Wells back to the corner of the library she loves so much – but she loves it because of the chess board, obviously, not because that one damn guard seems incapable of standing watch over any other cabinet of books. And she's certainly not keen to make her daily move now, rather than coming back later, because she's accidentally learnt anyone's shift pattern. Such a suggestion is preposterous.
She doesn't understand why her favourite guard is always keeping vigil over History and Mythology, but sure enough, there he is. She braves a tiny smile – a birthday concession to herself – and tries not to blush too fiercely when he returns the gesture.
Wells rolls his eyes at her, but he's a good friend so he keeps quiet. Clarke makes her move quickly enough, and then they head out of the door and on their way.
As birthdays go, she reckons this one is off to a decent start.
…...
Her seventeenth birthday heralds the beginning of a new age in her chess-playing career – it is the first day that she manages to exchange two moves with her mystery opponent, rather than the customary one. She pops back later that afternoon – just to see if there are any more clues, and maybe to see if they've swapped shifts on the History and Mythology cabinet yet – and feels the breath leave her lungs in an excited gasp when she sees that her rival has made a move.
She responds, of course, and goes home smiling from ear to ear.
"You seem happy, kiddo." Her father greets her. "Good birthday?"
"The best. I've been playing chess with someone new." She regrets the words the moment they are out of her mouth.
"Oh? What's this new friend like?"
She pauses for a moment, wonders how to go about answering that question. It turns out she can learn a lot about someone by how they play a game of chess, but she's not sure she wants reflect too long on what that might mean about the danger to her heart.
Thoughts duly gathered, she has a go at speaking. "They're determined. They weren't very good at chess at first, but they kept trying. And they're kind – they won the last game but they let me get this game off to a really good start, they were a bit too generous in some of their moves, you know? And I think they have a good sense of humour, they do really silly things sometimes."
Her dad smiles warmly at her, and she wonders if she has given away too much. "That sounds lovely, Clarke. I'd like to meet them one day."
He leaves it at that, because he's rather skilled in the art of parenting a teenager, it turns out. And Clarke spends a nice evening with her parents, and then goes to bed in good time.
She wants to be up early, tomorrow. She's hoping to fit in two moves that day, and the next day, and the next.
…...
She doesn't quite manage to fit in two moves every day, but it happens rather more often than not, in the months that follow. She takes Wells with her ever less often, now, but he still tags along from time to time, still keen to help her solve this mystery.
Clarke finds herself becoming less preoccupied with solving the mystery, strangely. She has her good chess friend, and she has the occasional smiles of that History and Mythology guard, so she's enjoying her library visits whether she knows her opponent's identity or not.
Today, though, Wells does insist on following her, and it seems he is in a belligerent mood.
"Give it a rest, Wells. I don't care who it is." She is only half listening to his suggestions as she smiles at that dark-haired guard. One of his curls is breaking free from his military haircut today, and she sort of wants to reach out and touch it. She can't, of course, so she settles for blushing when he smiles straight back at her. Maybe it's weird that they haven't spoken yet, but after all this time she's not sure how she'd go about starting a conversation. She figures that pointing out he's hot and must like history and mythology is hardly going to win her any prizes.
"You know that's not true." Wells is, it seems, still talking. "I reckon it must be one of the guards. If it's not one of the librarians, it must be a guard."
"Be sensible, Wells. You know it's not one of the guards. Like any of the guards know how to play chess!" Her frustration makes her tone sharp. "They're just taught to shoot things, I doubt their education includes strategy or board games."
She makes her move and returns by the way they came, not allowing herself to pause for longer than a second when she notices something quite out of the ordinary.
There is, just now, no guard standing by the History and Mythology section. For the first time in as long as she has seen him here, he has left his post in the middle of a shift.
…...
That annoyingly attractive cadet is back in his usual location by the time Clarke makes her appearance the following morning. He doesn't smile, though, despite her broad grin, and that hurts more than she likes to admit. She shakes that thought away, and goes to the chess board. But when she arrives there, she is greeted by a shock.
Nothing has changed. The pieces stand as she left them last night, unmoved. Her opponent has not played. She forces herself not to dwell on that, as she goes to Medical and gets on with her day. But when she checks back that evening and there is still no movement, she begins to worry.
No move has been made the following morning, either, nor the morning after that. Panic sets in, then, and she asks her mother if there are any serious illnesses doing the rounds, if anyone has been bedbound recently.
No one has.
She forces herself to wait out the week before she does anything drastic. Perhaps her friend just had to take a break. But when the seven days are up, she still finds the chessboard sadly unaltered.
She sucks in a deep breath and wonders what to do. In the end, she settles for a note. A simple wish that her opponent is well, and a query as to whether there is some reason they have stopped playing.
The following morning, the note is gone, but the pieces have not moved.
She tries again, with a scribbled apology in case she unwittingly did anything wrong. When that has no effect, the following day, she tries making a move on their behalf as well as her own.
Still no change.
In the months that follow, she does everything she can think of. She plays out a few turns, or resets the board completely. She leaves notes, ebooks about chess strategy, sketches of famous plays from days gone by. She even cleans the set with painstaking care and a disinfectant wipe stolen from med bay.
Still, the pieces stand unmoved. And still that cadet who used to smile at her stands, stationary and frowning, next to History and Mythology. He has not so much as met her eye since the day her chess match floundered, and if she's being completely honest she's beginning to wonder if there might be some sort of link there.
She's beginning to wonder whether Wells might have been right, and whether she might have said something horrifically wrong.
…...
Clarke needs a strategy. That's what she decides, in the end. Every obstacle can be overcome with a sufficiently watertight plan. And no chess player worth her salt would give up now, just because the opponent is working through some tactic she has not yet understood.
She has a feeling the guard might have some answers. And apart from anything else, she just misses his smiles. She knows that makes her thoroughly pathetic, thank you very much, but in a situation where she cannot do much to win back her chess-playing friend, she figures she might at least start with her book-loving acquaintance.
She'd like them to be friends, but she figures for that they're supposed to have talked, occasionally, not just smiled at each other in the library he works at.
She decides, therefore, that talking is the place to start. She gets her mother to sign a slip giving her permission to read an old Earth book on the history of medicine, and she dons some cotton gloves and prepares to face off against the most over-protective book-watchman of all time.
"Excuse me, Cadet -?"
"Blake." He answers, biting out the one short syllable of his name even more briefly than she would have thought possible.
"Cadet Blake. I'm Clarke Griffin." He nods. She supposes that's not surprising. Her family does have rather a high profile on the Ark. "OK, well, I have a book slip here."
"Good for you." He makes no attempt to take it.
"Perhaps you don't understand. I have a book slip, so you have to open up the cabinet and let me take out the book."
"Oh, I understand alright, Princess." He spits at her. "Not all cadets are as stupid as you might like to think. I understand that you've used your precious councilwoman mother to help you humiliate me, but I'm not opening this cabinet."
She actually stamps her feet like a child at that. "I'm not trying to humiliate you. I'm trying to get a book about the history of medicine, because I'm a medical intern and this is the History and Mythology cabinet. And I would have asked someone a bit more polite, but I can't, because you're always on this post!"
"Keep your voice down." He hisses. "This is a library."
"I thought the point of a library was that one could actually read the books." She spits back at him.
He pauses for a moment, then his mouth twists into a cruel smirk. "Clever, Princess. Have your damn book and get out of my sight."
With that, he makes a great show of unlocking the cabinet and stepping back to let her remove the precious book. And she does so, clutching it tightly to her chest like a shield even though she knows she is supposed to handle this ancient artefact with care.
"You done?" He asks briskly, locking the case behind her. "You going to get out of here now?"
"No." She shakes her head, gripping that book until her knuckles hurt. "No, I'm not going to get out of here now. Because I like the library, and I used to like how you always protected these stupid books and smiled at me every morning, but now you look grumpy all the time and I don't know what I've done wrong."
He sighs, deeply, but he seems somehow less angry than he was before. "I thought you came here to get that book out?"
"No. No, I didn't." She thrusts it back towards him. "Sorry for wasting your time. I came here to talk to you and apologise for whatever I did wrong."
He backs away, hands held up, and she remembers that he's not actually allowed to touch the books. Of course not – he's only a cadet. He's probably never even spoken to anyone with the authority to issue book slips. She sighs, and wonders how it is that she just keeps screwing up.
"You didn't do anything wrong." He grinds out at last, although from the tone he is taking she is not convinced it is the truth. "You behaved exactly how your mummy and daddy brought you up to behave, and I should never have expected anything different. I just thought – God, I really am stupid. I thought from your chess obsession and the way you loiter in the medical section just because and from the way you have such a genuine friendship with the Jaha kid that you might be different."
"I – I don't -"
"The fact that you used to blush every time I smiled at you, that kind of helped, too." He grins a little, and she actually goes weak at the knees. She's somewhat ashamed of herself, really.
"I'm sorry." She tries, but she's still not quite clear on what she's apologising for. "I didn't mean to disappoint you, but I still don't understand exactly what you're talking about." It hurts to admit it. She used to think she was quite clever, she seems to remember.
"Not all cadets are idiots, Clarke. Some of them care about their education, and would gladly have learnt a lot more if they were born on a higher station. You know, some of them can even play chess."
It all makes sense at that, with a sickening rush that has her stumbling forwards and him reaching out across the space between them. He doesn't touch her, though, not quite. But the gesture is enough to steady her.
"It was you. I wondered. I guess my strategy worked." She gives a cold laugh, disappointed that he's still not smiling at her like he used to.
"Your strategy?"
"Yeah. I got my mum to sign this slip to give me an excuse to speak to you. And I thought then maybe I'd be able to apologise to you – sorry again, by the way." She adds in a rush. "And I wondered whether you were my chess friend and I thought if you were this would be a good way to work it out."
"Your chess friend?"
"Yeah. My chess friend, who is great at strategy and loves history and mythology and is determined and persistent and not an idiot, because not everyone from the stations that don't get further education is." She concludes, a little breathless, wondering if that's a comprehensive enough show of remorse.
It is. She can tell it is, because Cadet Blake throws back his head and laughs, rather too loudly for the location.
"Shh." She hushes him, looking about her in panic.
"I've got to hand it to you, Princess, that was a pretty thorough apology. You're forgiven. I – I may have overreacted a little. I was just disappointed when you said that and I took it as a sign that you weren't who I hoped you were." He seems to find that difficult to say, staring at the carpet and clenching his jaw.
"Why do you call me Princess?" She asks, her natural curiosity cutting through the awkwardness.
He shrugs. "It seemed appropriate when I was angry with you for being from such a privileged family. And now it seems appropriate with all that... benevolent blondness you have going on."
"Benevolent blondness? Dork." She accuses him, her confidence racing ahead of her sense.
"You're the one who pointed out I'm a bit obsessed with history and mythology." He shrugs, then seems to come to a resolution. "I'm Bellamy. Bellamy Blake, your chess partner. A pleasure to meet you." He sticks out his hand in front of him.
She's not supposed to shake hands in the protective gloves, of course. If his hand touches the outside of the glove that could compromise the cleanliness of this book she doesn't want to read anyway. But she feels a sudden urge to rebel, for once in her life, so she reaches out to clasp his hand with her own.
It's a warm handshake, firm too, but it leaves her disappointed. She has a feeling her new – old – friend Bellamy is someone whose hands should be touched without gloves in the way.
"What was your strategy?" She asks as he pulls his hand away. She's not ready to end this conversation just yet.
"My strategy?"
"Were you ever going to introduce yourself? Or did you want to be anonymous forever?"
"Oh." He nods in understanding. "My strategy was to wait until you figured it out." He looks suddenly nervous, staring at his shoes and shifting his weight a little from foot to foot. "With the age gap and all – I thought maybe it might be for the best if it took you a while to get there."
Her heart sinks a little at that, and she finds that the odd combination of careful handshakes and blush-inducing smiles makes a little more sense now. "Age gap?"
"Yeah. You're only seventeen." He's still staring at the floor. "The whole Ark knows everything about you, you're the Griffin kid. I didn't want to – you know."
She is sorely tempted to laugh. All those jokes Wells has made over the last couple of years about creepy older guys and hot young brunettes, and somehow the truth is a little bit of both. "You're hardly an old man." She hazards, fishing for more information.
"I'm twenty-two." He admits, visibly uncomfortable, and it makes her warm to him somehow even more. "I don't see your councilwoman mother being into that idea – a twenty-two-year-old from Factory Station."
Clarke flushes a little with that blatant implication that the age gap and her parents' wishes are the only thing standing in their way. She's rather excited at his accidental confirmation that he sees this playing out exactly the same way she does.
It's time, she reckons, for her next move.
"Then let's not start there." She suggests. "Let's start with you meeting my dad over a game of chess. He's been wanting to meet my new chess friend for months."
Bellamy smiles at that, a real and broad smile that warms her to her core. "You really think he'd want to meet me?" She was right to suspect, it seems, that a large part of his nervousness came from that Factory Station admission.
"Definitely." She is still holding that book, she realises, that innocent book on medical history that has been through so much in recent minutes. "But first – have you ever wanted to read one of those books you guard all day?"
He narrows his eyes at her. "You know the answer to that."
"Great. Because I recently borrowed this book on the history of medicine that I'm not really that excited about. You want to sit down and read it with me?"
His eyes light up. "Sure."
She takes a chair, and gestures to the one at her side. "I'm not sure what aspects of history and mythology specifically you like? I'm sorry if medicine isn't your thing."
"Anything about the Greeks and the Romans, so this will do." He says, with a nod at the contents page she has just opened.
"I'll remember that next time." She promises with a smile, and then she leans back in her chair and the two of them start to read.
It is a pleasant morning, but that is all it is, for now. They set up a new chess game before they part ways, too, and Clarke insists that they should continue with their move-a-day routine so she has an excuse to come and see him every morning. Bellamy is only too keen to agree to that, she notes, as the grin that breaks out across his face at her suggestion threatens to split his cheeks in half.
At length, he decides that he ought to get back to his post, and Clarke decides that she ought not be too late for her apprenticeship. They have countless days ahead of them, after all, for plays and counter-plays, and for getting to know each other beyond what is revealed at a chess board. They therefore arrange to meet again tomorrow, and agree that Clarke will find a time to introduce him to her father, and then they say their goodbyes.
It is Clarke who initiates the hug. She figures there's no sense in having an annoyingly attractive cadet for a chess friend if she can't at least hug him sometimes, no matter how concerned he might be about not rushing her. And it is a beautiful hug, warm and firm, and the strength of it promises good things, she reckons, for their future together.
But for now, of course, there is still the difference in their stations and circumstances, so they take it slow. But they will get there, she knows, one carefully-considered move at a time.
…...
Epilogue
Jake isn't sure why it took Bellamy this long, really. He's been dating Clarke since the day she turned eighteen, for goodness' sake, so why he waited another seven years to propose is beyond anyone's comprehension. Jake actually took the lad to task for it once, and asked whether he was really serious about Clarke, and received a great deal of cold silence by way of answer, followed by a rather hurt sounding explanation that he didn't want Clarke to feel she had to say yes to him.
It's madness. It's all madness. Jake is extremely aware that his daughter was half in love with Bellamy before she even knew for sure who he was. But he supposes that one of the things he loves the most about his future son-in-law is how careful he has always been of Clarke's choices and happiness.
Jake never worried about the circumstances, nor the age gap, and neither did Abby. Clarke was always mature for her age, and Bellamy was obviously too caring for his own good, sometimes. But they understood, of course, that Bellamy carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, and that taking things slow was just his way of managing that irrational guilt he carries around with him.
Well, that guilt doesn't seem so irrational, now. Not since last year, and the discovery of a twenty-four-year-old woman under the floorboards of Bellamy's mother's apartment. Jake can recall bringing the news home to Clarke, that Bellamy had some sister called Octavia, and sitting back to wait for the expected tears or fear or anger.
That's not what happened. Quite the opposite.
"I know." She said, lip trembling, tone firm. "I know all about her, and I've met her. So if they're even thinking about floating him for hiding her, they'll have to float me, too."
No one was floated in the end, though, and Jake still sighs in relief to remember it. Thanks to some improvements he was able to make to the oxygen scrubbers a couple of years ago, life on the Ark is not so precarious any more. It was therefore decided that second pregnancies could be permitted in situations where there was reasonable evidence that a woman's implant had failed, or that she had been sexually assaulted, or both.
Abby took one look at the tears in Aurora's eyes, and the set of Bellamy's jaw, and decided that no further inquiry would be necessary in this case. Jake can still remember the shriek of relief Clarke gave, as she pulled as many of her family as she could hold at once into the most heartfelt of hugs.
So, yes, this day has been a long time coming, and Jake would gladly have omitted some of the more stressful steps along the way. But as he stands here, with Clarke at his side and Octavia at his back, and looks down the aisle of what passes for a chapel up here, he is filled with joy.
Bellamy is standing ahead of them, next to the tree, Vera Kane smiling beatifically over his shoulder. Jake spares the older lady a wave, because he knows full well that Clarke is not paying her any attention. No, Clarke has eyes only for the bridegroom, as he mimes expressively at her about something that no one else on the Ark has a hope of understanding.
It has always been like that, between the two of them. That's why Jake knew, from that first description Clarke gave him of her chess friend, that they would end up here.
He wells up a little at that, but he doesn't allow the tears to fall. The music is starting now, and as he walks his daughter up the aisle towards the man who is about to become his son-in-law, he is determined to keep his emotions in check.
a/n Thanks for reading!