a/n Hello and welcome to a completely unnecessary post-S7 happily ever after fic where our fave couple finally get that drink. I promise I really will update Radio: Active soon, but this little plot bunny just needed to run free. Happy reading!
Bellamy has been looking forward to this moment with roughly equal parts happiness and dread for almost as long as he can remember. This evening, now, this very moment, he and Clarke are about to get that long-overdue drink. For the fist time since he suggested the idea, on another planet, in another lifetime, there is nothing stopping them. They have nothing else to do. The anomaly has been shut down, Cadogan has been defeated.
Echo has been buried.
He forces himself not to dwell on that point, simply clasps the jug of moonshine firmly in his hand and walks towards Clarke. She is sitting on the porch steps of the home she shares with Madi, looking out at the bustling village before them. He can tell, even from here, that she's smiling softly. Something about the angle of her neck and the relaxed set of her shoulders shows him that it is so.
He takes a seat by her side, wraps an arm around her. He's not sure why, but it feels like the right thing to do, just like it felt right in that moment only weeks ago when he stood by her side on the bridge of the Eligius ship. Now, as then, they are looking out onto a whole new world.
Children play at some kind of ball game, kicking up dust as they go. His sister is loudly trying to encourage them to think a little more carefully, to adopt something resembling tactics, but Indra is shaking a head as she watches from her wheelchair and suggesting that it's something of a lost cause. Even from this distance, he can hear Raven's snort of agreement. Or perhaps he cannot actually hear it – perhaps he just knows it is there. Is that not the same thing? To hear something out loud, or to simply know, in the depths of his soul, that it is the truth?
It looks a lot like happiness, this bustling village life he sees before him. And it is for that reason that he is dreading the conversation he knows must come. He knows what Clarke is to him, and what he is to her. But he's fearful beyond belief of voicing it, worried beyond measure that, in doing so, they might ruin everything. That they might complicate what has always been so effortless.
Clarke seems beset by no such concerns as she passes him a glass and holds out her own to be filled. He complies, of course, with her wordless request, but not because he takes orders from her. Just because he's trying to gift her a little happiness.
He takes a deep swallow of moonshine, feels it burn down his throat, softening the way for the words that he knows will not slip out so easily.
"I'm sorry." He tells her, wondering why it is that conversations between them always seem to start like this.
"For what?" She throws back half her drink, then cranes her neck and fixes him with an expectant eye.
"I can't imagine how much it must hurt to call someone every day for over six years and then find out they've gone and fallen in love with someone else."
She shrugs, a small movement impeded by the weight of his arm about her shoulders, and he doesn't think her nonchalance is staged. It is almost as if she is actually unaffected. "It didn't hurt as much as Gina."
"What?" He cannot make sense of that. The two are not even on the same scale, surely?
"I know that's stupid, because I never even saw the two of you together. But people told me. Your sister made a point of telling me. While I was hurting, and alone, you were moving on and finding happiness."
"I think I made it pretty clear that time I handcuffed you that I hadn't done a great job of moving on."
She waves a hand, batting his point out of the way. "The point is, after Praimfaiya, I more or less expected it. I knew that moving on was what you did. And it was obvious that my messages weren't getting through to you, so I thought that it was logical that you'd probably have settled down with someone else."
"You took the way I was looking at you that last day before the death wave, took the way I was brushing your hair off your face, and thought, I know what makes sense, he's going to go fall in love with someone else?" He is absolutely incredulous, and he wants her to know it. But he tightens his arm around her shoulders all the same, just to soften the blow of his tone. And she seems happy enough with his gesture, leaning further into him, in turn.
"It did make sense. The only surprise was that I was expecting it to be Raven."
"Raven?" He cannot fathom the idea.
"Yeah. I guess I didn't see the beginning of your connection with Echo back at Mount Weather. And you and Raven have always got on well, and you did sleep together that one time -"
"You know about that?"
"Of course I know about that. I was in the next room when ALIE was reminding you about it."
He swallows some more moonshine, suddenly even more uncomfortable than he was at the start of this conversation – and that's saying something. "I didn't want you to find out like that."
"What does it matter how I found out? We've both slept with other people. Big deal." He swallows again, thin air this time. Her words seem to imply that they really are on the same page, here, and he can almost hear her silent confession.
"I don't see how you could think I'd see Raven that way."
"You get on well. You challenge each other, bicker and throw ideas around a bit like you do with me. I just thought that, given some time in limited company, you might find that she was quite a good replacement for me."
"You're out of your mind." He notes that he sounds annoyed with her, tightens his arm a little more. That strategy seemed to work quite well a minute ago, he remembers. "When have I ever walked through the middle of an Azgeda army to stroke Raven's cheek?"
She makes a noise of agreement, holds her glass out for a refill. He faffs for a moment, setting his drink down, balancing the jug of moonshine one-handed. No way is he letting go of her, not now. Not ever.
His task accomplished, he moves on to the next thing he knows he needs to say. There will be no moving forward, he knows, without complete honesty, nor without clearing the air between them.
"I loved her." He tells her, plain and simple, his voice breaking on the past tense, and he knows that she knows they are no longer talking about Raven.
"I know. It's OK. I loved Lexa. It's OK." She doesn't mention Finn, he notes. She never does, even after all these years, still evidently struggling to process the complicated emotions that come with killing someone she didn't love as well as she believed she ought.
"I hate that we're having this conversation, now, like this, because she's dead."
"I know." She repeats. "But it really is OK. That's – that's how it has always been with us, with Earth and Sanctum, isn't it? We love people, some of them die. Some of them don't. We – we find happiness with who we can, when we can."
He pours himself a new glass while he takes in her words, then downs it in one. The hardest part is yet to come, the confession he has known he ought to make ever since that moment when they first looked down on this planet together.
"I love you more. I loved you more even when she was still alive."
"I know." He is getting fed up of her saying that, getting fed up of it being true. Her damn head has always kept her half a pace ahead of him, and he'd quite like to hear what her heart makes of his declaration instead. "Leaving her to be imprisoned in Sanctum while you saved me was kind of a giveaway."
"I always wondered whether it was you or Josephine saying that - I guess you care about her more."
Clarke sounds puzzled when she next speaks. "I don't remember that. It must have been all her."
"She was an annoyingly perceptive psychopath." That gets a single wry chuckle out of her, that affectionate noise she has always made to acknowledge his cynical humour.
He refills his glass yet again, idly notes that he's getting through the alcohol pretty quickly, here. He'd better slow down. He has a feeling he might want to remember the outcome of this conversation.
"Does it make me a bad person?" He asks the question, already knowing full well what answer she will give. "That I loved you more, but I was still with her, and now she's dead? That I mourned you for six years, and we're having this conversation when she's barely been buried six days?"
"No. It makes you a good person in a bad situation." She sucks in an audible breath. "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure." He doesn't entirely understand why she felt the need to ask permission to ask. Perhaps he is to expect a very difficult question.
"Why did you stay with her? I – I get that you really loved her. I just – you did say you loved me more." He wonders where to begin answering that. There are quite a lot of factors, and he wants Clarke to understand them all. He wants her to understand that it was not because of any lack of love for her.
"Because the situation was complicated, and it was simpler to stay as things were. Because I made her a promise that nothing would change on the ground, and I knew I'd never forgive myself if I broke yet another promise to someone I loved. Because telling her I wanted to be with you would mean admitting that she'd never had all of my heart in the first place, and I couldn't hurt her like that. But – but mostly because I was scared, Clarke. At first you weren't the Clarke I remembered. I was scared that we wouldn't work any more, or that I was in love with someone who no longer existed."
"And now?"
"You have changed. But I'm pretty sure we still work."
"Only pretty sure? I'm absolutely positive." He sighs in relief, hears the long-awaited declaration of love in her spirited disagreement.
"OK."
There is a pause, certainly too long for comfort. Bellamy takes another drink for something to do, and wonders whether it is the alcohol or the moment that is making his head spin.
Tone carefully light, he asks the ultimate question. "Is this the part where we're supposed to kiss?"
"I think it is." Clarke confirms, head almost buried in his chest. "But I'm nervous about it."
"Nervous? Nervous? What is there to be nervous about, Clarke? I've loved you for centuries, I'm pretty sure an awkward first kiss isn't going to ruin us."
"That's not what I'm nervous about. I'm nervous because everyone I love dies. I'm nervous because – because I could have said something earlier, too, and I didn't because I was scared, too."
"I know." It is his turn to say that, now, as he tries to remember her earlier words. "It's OK. We love people, some of them die. Some of them don't. And we find happiness with who we can, when we can."
She isn't convinced, he knows. Her silence speaks volumes.
He tries again. "I don't plan on dying any time soon. I've waited long enough for you, I plan to make the most of – of whatever we have. And I'm sure as hell not letting you die on me again. That's happened too often already."
"I love you." She barely breathes the words, but it sounds like a victory march, bold and jubilant as it echoes through him. "I love you so much, and I'm ready for that kiss, now."
He doesn't hesitate, then. They have already waited quite long enough. He tangles a hand in her hair and raises her face to his, and presses his lips to her own. And it is everything he has hoped for and dreamed of, everything he ever wanted but was too afraid to ask for.
And most of all, it is happiness, over a dozen decades in the making.
a/n Thanks for reading!