a/n Hello and welcome to another very fluffy Valentine's appropriate oneshot. Loosely inspired by something I saw somewhere on the internet - I forget where - about how the show is already Clarke and Bellamy's love story even though we don't (yet!) have canon Bellarke. This is set post S6. Happy reading!
Their love story has already been written. Clarke knows it has.
There was that prologue, so many years ago, an illegal girl pushed screaming into this world, and the loyal brother who swore to defend her.
The opening scene, with a rocky landing and the air might be toxic. The tension beginning to climb with a trashed radio and a meteor shower of guilt. And then chapters coming thick and fast, forgiveness and sickness, a hostile mountain and a shining city. And then into a second volume, a new home, a new enemy. Some new hope, as she is willed back into the world of the living by the simple fact that he needs her. So far, so good.
There's just one small stumbling block. They don't quite seem able to agree on a genre, the pair of them. Have never quite sat down and established that this love story is, in fact, a love story.
It's a story about love, of course it is. He loves his sister, she loves her father. They both love their people. And they love each other, fiercely, for all that they have never quite decided to use the word. No one saves anyone quite so often, nor forgives anyone quite so readily, out of indifference. Nor even cordial companionship.
Clarke can only sit and wait for the day that Bellamy turns to the same page she has been on for a while. She can still remember the moment she realised this was a love story, the second that she reshelved it with romance once and for all. It was, of course, the very chapter where she realised she had lost him, the scene where he kissed another woman so joyfully in that desert reunion.
It was bound to happen like that, she realises it now. Every good tale needs a few twists and turns.
It seems that yet another setback is upon them when he strides back into Sanctum, face lined with grief. And she runs towards him and throws her arms about his neck, of course she does. She is the heroine of this love story, even if he is still working out how to be a hero.
"What is it?" She asks him, because it is clearly something. "What's wrong?"
"It's O." He chokes out, voice raw. "She – she just vanished. The anomaly. I don't know how, and I don't know where she's gone. And I need to go find her."
"What do you mean, find her?"
"Gabriel says he can show me how to enter the anomaly. But he says that I might be gone a long time, so I came back to grab some kit. A very wise woman once told me to practise using my head before I rush into danger." She smiles at that, even through the tears she can feel flooding her eyes at the sight of him so distressed. "And – and I wanted to say goodbye to you. Just in case."
"Don't you dare." She is shaking her head, now, horrified at what he is suggesting. "Don't you dare say goodbye. This is not how our story ends."
He is silent for a moment, taking in her expression, a thoughtful look on his own face. "How does our story end?"
"Well it sure as hell doesn't end with you going out there without me and dying on some stupid rescue mission." She settles on saying that, in the end. She cannot tell him the truth, that it ends with happily ever after, and with a picket fence and a hoard of children, not while he has yet to notice that they are the main players in this particular romance.
"I have to go, Clarke. She's my sister."
"I know you have to go. But I'm going with you."
He doesn't even argue with that, just narrows his eyes for a fraction of a second. And then he nods, once, with an air of resolution. "OK, then. But you'd better not get yourself killed again. Our story doesn't end like that, either."
They get on with the practicalities, then, gathering their supplies, shouldering their packs. And because she is Clarke, and he is Bellamy, there are interludes of desperate comedy even amidst the tragedy that is the loss of his sister. Bellamy pulls on a pair of winter socks, at one point, and does not realise they are worn out beyond saving until Clarke pokes fun at his toes poking through the holes. And then she spends an interval of precious minutes they can scarcely afford to waste on precisely calculating that they cannot carry rations to last longer than five weeks, only for Bellamy to point out that, if this takes longer than five weeks, being hungry is probably the least of their problems.
"That's not funny." She chastises him, but she fears she might almost be smiling. "I just think it's sensible to think about a thing like this before we leave."
"Yeah, sure. We're about to disappear into a puff of green smoke, but I'm sure it'll help to know how many calories worth of ration bars the pair of us can carry."
"You're lucky you've got me around to think of things like this." She tells him, a little peeved that he is making light of her attempts to be of practical use to this mission.
"I know." He agrees, all trace of laughter replaced by overwhelming gravity, and by his fingers inexplicably wrapped around her hand. "I am lucky to have you. And not just for this. But I think we should get going now."
She agrees all too readily with that. People may look to her as the leading lady in this tale, but she knows full well that when it comes to missions and mystery and a good bit of old-fashioned adventure, Bellamy ought to be the one calling the shots. After what he managed at Mount Weather all those years ago, she's pretty sure she'd feel safe following him into the jaws of Hell. And that's just as well, because she's not convinced that the anomaly and the jaws of Hell are so different, if she's being honest.
They talk a little on their walk through the forest. Inconsequential things, blatant distractions from the task that lies before them. He asks about Madi's favourite activities as a child, and she asks about evening entertainment on the Ring. And it is pleasant, actually, so long as she overlooks the glaring omission of the matter at hand. She is not sure that they have ever had time before now to dwell on trivialities quite like this - they have always been a bit busy trying to save the world.
He sticks to his script even as the horizon begins to glow green, even as she starts to think that she can feel the horror of the unknown starting to press at the corners of her consciousness. He tells her that they used to mark her birthday, in space, because he was obsessed by fears of forgetting her and wanted to preserve her memory for posterity.
She suggests that an annual memorial might have been overkill on his part. That maybe, as a fan of all those tales of heroes, he could just have occasionally told her story, instead.
"It wouldn't have been enough." He declares, still striding inexorably through the undergrowth as she strives to keep pace by his side. "I needed something solid, something fixed every single year. I was scared that if I just told your story it would start to fade, and I'd do it less and less often until I was an old man and my great-grandchildren wouldn't even know your name."
She tries not to dwell too hard on the intensity with which he voices that fear. She suspects that, if she does, she will end up hoping, and in her experience, hope is simply a pretty word for the foreshadowing of disappointment.
"You could have written it down." She suggests, to move the conversation on from her own ill-omened optimism.
"I don't think I could. I think that's one of the reasons it hit me so hard, thinking I left you to die. Because I was still working out how – how I wanted our story to end. And then – then you were gone, and I never got chance to work it out." Yes. She can rather understand that he might have struggled with that most tragic of cliffhangers. "So I couldn't have written it down, because I didn't know what to write."
"You could have started at the beginning." She suggests gently. "Boy meets girl. Add in a radiation-soaked planet and a lot of drama."
"When you say it like that it sounds like a love story."
She doesn't answer that, because she can't. Because she cannot tell from the tone of his voice whether or not he thinks that's a bad thing, and because she's not quite sure how she would survive knowing either way. She simply keeps walking, one careful foot in front of another.
Until, suddenly, she is not walking any more. Suddenly his hand has clasped hers, and he is pulling her round to face him, and then his other hand is seizing her shoulder and his lips are pressed to her lips.
She thinks he has lost the plot, to begin with. She cannot entirely work out why else her closest friend, who happens to be in a relationship with another woman, should be kissing her in the middle of a dangerous mission. But as the moment draws on, and his mouth becomes more curious, and his tongue more insistent, she realises that this is rather too persistent to truly qualify as temporary insanity, any more.
She pulls away first. Not because it isn't a lovely kiss – it's really at least a little magical – but because she has rather a lot of questions about this recent development.
"What... I – what?" It is not the most coherent contribution she has ever made to intelligent conversation, but she's rather proud that she managed to get anything out at all, given the circumstances.
"Isn't that how love stories are supposed to end?" He asks, an infuriatingly smug smirk about his infuriatingly kissable lips.
"No." She cannot resist the opportunity to correct him, just one more time. "This love story ends with a cottage in the village, and a picket fence and a hoard of children."
"What's a picket fence?" He doesn't seem that interested in the answer, she thinks, for all that he asks the question. He seems rather more fascinated by playing with the ends of her hair.
"I don't know. It's a thing happy families had in the old Earth stories my dad used to read to me. Didn't the Romans have picket fences?"
"The Romans definitely did not have picket fences." He assures her as they start walking again, hand in hand. "But we can have one, if you like."
"Won't Echo mind?" This feels like the sort of thing she ought to check up on, if she's supposed to be the rational one, and all.
"She shouldn't. We're not together any more. I may be a bit of an idiot when it comes to you, but I wasn't actually going to start kissing you while I was still with her."
"How heroic of you." It is surprisingly easy to tease him about it, now that she no longer fears that he might have done just that.
They walk in comfortable silence for a while, hands intertwined, sharing occasional kisses. And it is rather beautiful, really, and peaceful, and it is everything Clarke has wanted but for one remaining obstacle.
The anomaly still lies ahead.
They do not stride straight into that puff of green smoke Bellamy was so flippant about earlier. They stand for a moment, together, and take in the scene before them. And Clarke curses her luck that, of course, no sooner have they managed to establish that they are on the same page than this new danger rushes up to greet them. She just cannot catch a break. That is, she is beginning to think, the story of her life.
Of course, Bellamy is right there, ready to keep her centred. Ready to see her through the next twist and hold her hand through the next turn.
"Come on. We should get going and find Gabriel." He tells her, pressing warm lips to her cheek one more time. "We'll be alright."
"You think so?"
"I know so. This is not how our story ends."
a/n Thanks for reading!