"Has she said anything yet?" Bellamy asked after returning from his patrol duties.

"No." Murphy sat at the table with his bandaged hands in his lap. Clarke spooned some blood portage into Kevin's mouth, the kid making a face as he swallowed. "But she's hand fed me and Kevin twice, changed my bandages twice, washed the clothes, dishes, and, well, the house - twice. Oh, and thrown out all her art supplies, but she could only do that once."

"Don't be a dick." Bellamy smacked Murphy in the temple and then knelt next to Clarke and brushed her hair behind her shoulder. "Hey. What's going on with you? Let us help you."

She dropped the bowl, dark red mush spilling over the table, before bolting up to the loft.

Murphy's gaze cast down as his eyebrows rose. "I see we're still trying to force her to get better on your terms and running her off."

"Is Clarke Mommy gonna be okay?" Kevin asked, tearing up and sniffling.

Bellamy pulled Kevin into his lap and hugged him. "Of course li'l man. She's just had a really hard time lately."

Scoffing, Murphy headed up to the loft. When he lay beside her, she turned to stare at the wall. He exhaled. "I get it, you know. Well, sorta. You gave up everything to try and help the Ark and got locked up, then thrown down here. You gained a bit after getting here, but had to give that up to try and save everyone on the dropship. You sacrificed Miller to keep peace. I think you even spared him the worst. You didn't tell him that he'd attacked the grounders for no reason. That they weren't after the guns, but after the other junk. You risked Fox and Harper like your mom risked you. And then you ended up losing Fox anyway. You killed your mother to save Anya, and you lost her anyway. And you tried so hard to save Finn. Experimenting on the other Reapers, hurting and killing them to try and save him, but failed. You've given up so much and it feels like none of it worked out.

"But you need to see what you have accomplished. Shaw's the healthiest village around. We have clean water running into our homes and a proper sewage system. Every home has enough reliable heat so that no one will die of exposure in their sleep. You've honed your medical abilities, and got Monty to do the same, so now people can get treated for things and live when they would have died before. You didn't let anyone kill Fo- Harper or Monty's mom, or Sterling or Monroe or any prisoner that survived that didn't try shit after capture. They all have a place here thanks to you. You saved the Mt. Weather kids. Kevin adores you. I think Bellamy's smitten with you, which is why he's being an ass right now. And hey. You got me. I won't leave you until they pry my cold dead hands away. You're too much fun.

"And if you need quiet, you can have it. I'll just shut up and be here if you need me. If you want to ignore me, go ahead." When she didn't move or say anything, he settled in and studied the slatted ceiling as he listened to Bellamy tell Kevin a story about a girl running from a witch. She turned herself into a pond. The witch drank every drop of that pond, fell sick with an incurable illness, and then died when the girl cut the witch in half from the inside The girl, alive and well, returned to her village and they honored her as a hero. Because heroes are the ones that beat their demons, even after the darkness swallowed them whole.

"Mommy can do that, right, Papa Bell?"

"Of course she can. Mommy can do anything."

'You're not helping, Bellamy,' Murphy thought as he heard Clarke's breathing grew harsh.

The sound of Clarke's voice woke Bellamy up. He lay there listening to her and Murphy talk in hushed tones.

"I'm not upset about all I've lost. I'm upset, I guess, that I'm not upset about it. And the more I look at my life the more I believe that I've only ever gone through the motions. That I've only ever put on the play of what people expected Clarke Griffin to act like. Act's the perfect word, since it all feels like an act. An act I fooled myself with on some superficial level."

"But deep down you always knew, right?" Murphy asked.

"Yeah. And what I don't understand right now is why I'd play out the emotions even with no one around or around people that wouldn't care."

"That's easy to answer. We all have a deep need to fit in. In my experience the more different the person, the more they want to fit in. Or at least appear like they fit in."

Bellamy fumed in silence as he listened to this conversation. How could Clarke deny being upset? Her behavior had been getting more and more moody lately. With every loss, she got more despondent. And Murphy filling her head with bullshit about her emotions only being a mask so she could fit in wouldn't help her.

With Kevin sleeping next to him, Bellamy decided not to say anything now, but rather wait until he could talk to Clarke alone. That way Murphy wouldn't be there to contradict him, and Kevin wouldn't have to witness it.

"But I know what it's like to be happy and angry."

John's reply sounded muffled. "Just not sad or attached."

"No, not sad. Not attached." Clarke yawned and the loft creaked.

"Night, Clarke."

"Night, John."

Their light breathing signified sleep within a minute, but Bellamy couldn't close his eyes for the rest of the night.

For breakfast, Bellamy did his best to serve Kevin something he'd like. Poor kid got his entire world yanked out from under him, and they had little to offer him in return. Bellamy made him a rag doll, but it didn't seem enough. He just wanted to do everything he could for the kid. Octavia had outgrown her need for him, neither Clarke nor Murphy seemed to have any real use for him, he didn't lead anyone anymore, but he had this tiny little person that for some reason hero-worshipped him.

In the insomnia of the last few days, he studied recipes and tried to find something to make out of the ingredients they had on hand. The best he could do was a crunchy salad with dried wild onions, dried sow thistles, dried chickweed, dried cress, some nuts and laurelcherries. He hoped that adding the cherries would help since Kevin didn't like anything they'd fed him except berries. The only ones they could still get were the laurelcherries, since they still hung from trees, edible only when they started to shrivel. He even managed to get some mint to flavor the water. Not enough to put in the salad too, but who wanted to eat and drink the same thing?

Bellamy had just set the water down, when Kevin said, "Can I have spots on my face one day like you do?"

"They're freckles. I got some of them from the sun lamps on the Ark but they exploded since getting here. So you may end up with some too. More likely when the weather gets warm, so don't expect it overnight, okay buddy? And if you don't get any, that's okay too. You're a good looking guy just the way you are." Bellamy's smile was wide and the edges around his eyes crinkled.

"Neat." Sliding onto the bench at the table, Kevin picked a cherry out of the salad and ate it. "These are okay but I like the red red ones more."

"Hey, you might want to eat the stuff you probably won't like first. That way the last flavor in your mouth is the stuff you like. And you cleaned your teeth already, right?"

"Yes, Papa Bell." Kevin stabbed his fork into the green stuff and munched. "And how'd you get so smart?"

"I already made all the mistakes and figured out what not to do. And now you get to avoid a lot of the bad stuff, so long as you keep listening to me."

Kevin had stopped paying attention. Seemed Bellamy found a mixture of food that the kid liked. So he began sanding the edges of the blocks he'd cut into rough cubes.

"Papa Bell, you're the best! You can even make yucky stuff taste good!" Kevin paused his breakfast and ran around the table and hugged Bell and kissed his cheek. "I love you!"

Too shocked to move for a second, Bellamy felt happier than he had in way too long. Wrapping his arms around the toddler, he kissed the top of the boy's head, and then said, "I love you too. - But you still have to finish your breakfast."

"K."

"Hmm, family." Bellamy went back to sanding with a smile on his face, the kind of smile he knew would pop up every time he thought about this moment for the rest of his life.

Clarke decided to return to her duties the next day. Monty leaned against the wall of the fisa house, looking toward the door as if uncertain if he should enter or not.

"Your mother's asked about you every day since she got here, you know." Clarke leaned against the wall next to him. "You didn't even stop by to see her before we started the Reaper project."

"She always expected me to get into agriculture and botany. I think I got into computers and engineering just to spite her. Turns out that I'm fair enough at all those things to do more than she ever did. Being decent at agro, and botany, and engineering made me able to see structures in organic compounds that aren't even in the records we recovered from the wreckage." Monty sounded far off, but Clarke didn't understand his problem and her silence urged him to explain. "I'm afraid that she's going to be upset that I surpassed her. That I'll have to assign her as my assistant and that'll humiliate her."

"Monty, she loves you and I think she'd be proud of what you've accomplished here." Clarke put her hand on his shoulder.

"No offence, Clarke, but you haven't been able to predict much."

"You're right." She pushed herself off the wall. "So either come in or go home. There's no point in just standing out here."