Chapter 17

Two months since Praimfaya. Two months of food rationing. Two months of being locked up in space with the same eight people. They were all being restless. Besides their daily chores, there wasn't much do to. The couples stayed locked in their rooms doing who-knows-what, and the others just lay in bed, waiting for the time to pass. They were finally getting their long awaited and overdue rest…

Bellamy spent more and more time in his workout room. More than once over the past month did he want to get that single bottle of alcohol – The Baton – for himself. But each and every time he would remember Clarke's words to him: the only way to make sure we survive is to use this, too. And so he had. He locked his heart away – or at least part of it, since he still needed it for Jane – and used his head. No use dying drowned in his own vomit. He remembered Jane's father, and refused to die the same way. Hadn't he sworn he would become a Guard so he could float people like that? He was not going to get drunk because of Clarke. She wouldn't have wanted that, anyway.

Jane spent more and more time alone, reading the medical book. But when she wasn't doing that, she spent time with Raven and Echo. The three of them had clicked pretty well together and now they were sticking together. Jane felt she and Bellamy were drifting apart, sometimes. But she had to let him mourn. How long, she had no clue. As long as it took. She didn't want to force herself on Bellamy. But she hoped that two months would be long enough.

She couldn't stand being in the medical bay any longer. It was always so eerily quiet. She needed some noises around her, so she wandered the halls and her steps led her to the Com Room. it was empty, but the buzzing noises of the machines was all she needed. She read for a couple hours, and then put the Tablet down, wandering through the room and the machines. She found the radio and sat in front of it. She smiled to herself and imagined getting a message from someone – anyone; aliens, even – and she turned the frequency button ever so lightly.

Static and weird noises came through. Jane froze. She let go of the frequency button and pushed another one to clear the call.

"… I don't know if you can hear me, but I'll still do it."

"Clarke?" Jane said through the radio, but then remembered the emitters were fried.

"It's been 65 days since Praimfaya. I'm all alone down here, but alive. As you can hear."

Jane was frozen in place in front of the radio. Her first instinct was to go look for Bellamy. If he knew she was still alive, maybe he would get out of his stupor and mourning and be the Bellamy she had fallen in love with.

She scrambled to her feet and grabbed the mike for the general communication system over the Ring. "Bellamy? Com Room, now," she ordered, then ran back to the radio. Clarke was still talking, and Jane pressed the RECORD button. If Bellamy didn't make it in time before Clarke stopped talking, she could prove it.

"I know the Death wave is long gone, but the Earth, as far as I've seen, is all messed up and burned. I hope there's going to be enough food for one in Becca's lab." She chuckled.

"Clarke?" Bellamy said behind Jane. He grabbed the radio. "Clarke, it's Bellamy. Can you hear me?"

"And so, I'm gonna go back inside and I'll talk to you again, soon," Clarke continued, oblivious to Bellamy.

"Clarke! Wait!"

The radio clicked off, and silence filled the room. Jane looked up at Bellamy's face, and she noticed tears streaming down his face. He closed his eyes and more tears spilled down. "She's alive, Bell," she said softly, drying his cheeks.

But Bellamy just stared at her like she was some kind of stranger. He pushed her away and sat where Jane had sat earlier, where she played with the radio's button. He stared at the machine.

"How long have you known?" he asked in his deep voice, not looking up.

"I- As soon as I heard her I called you."

"So this is the first time someone heard her?"

Jane nodded. "Probably. I don't think Raven and Monty checked the radio. The bunker's radio was dead before we left, and we all thought Clarke was dead-"

"Well, she isn't." He seemed angry. Why wasn't he happy about this? Jane was confused and didn't know what to do of this. "Get out," he ordered.

"But Bell-"

"I said, get out!" he shouted. Jane obeyed. Quickly backing away from this new Bellamy she didn't know anymore. What was wrong with him? but as soon as she was out of the Com Room, he locked himself in it. She stared at the doors a moment, then decided to talk to him. She pressed on the intercom button.

"Bellamy? What's wrong? Talk to me."

She heard a chair falling to the ground and angry steps coming towards her. "I said get out," he said really calmly, which chilled Jane to the bone. "Leave me alone."

She backed away and went to look for the others. She found Raven and Echo in the lounging room – they had built couches out of unused beds – and sat there with them.

"We might have a problem," Jane said, staring at her fingers in her lap.

"What's wrong?" Raven said, her eyebrows scrunching down together.

"Clarke's alive."

"What?" Raven said, her heart skipping a beat. "How do you know that?"

"I heard her on the radio."

"Well, that's good, right?" Echo said.

"Yeah, until I told Bellamy." She paused. "He heard her, too, but when he was unable to speak to her – our emitters all fried and all – he completely lost it."

Echo frowned. "How?"

Jane met the two girls' eyes. "He locked himself in the Com Room. And told me to get out and leave him alone."

The three girls were silent.

"This is bad," Raven said. "I've never seen him losing it like that, before."

"Neither have I," Jane said, "and I've known him long before you did. He didn't even lose it when he arrested me and put me in lockup." She frowned, suddenly realizing that he had never loved her as much as he loved Clarke. Her heart had already cracked a bit during the past couple months, but now it shattered in a million pieces. She let out a sob and quickly walked away to muffle her crying.

Raven and Echo exchanged a look. They also realized the same thing. But Echo was Ice Nation, she had served the Ice Queen, and her heart was kind of made of ice, too. She had no idea what to do in this situation. All she knew was fighting and killing and spying.

Raven took it upon herself to wrap Jane into a hug. "Janey, I'm so sorry," she whispered over and over. After a while, Jane took a deep breath and gently pushed raven away.

"Thanks," she said swallowing some more tears. "It's my fault. I shouldn't have made him listen to Clarke." She shrugged and then sat back on one of the couches. She was silent for a moment, fighting her tears. Then, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly and shakily. "Hey, I've been going over some stuff these past few weeks," she said, trying hard to push away the thought of Bellamy locked in the Com Room, waiting for Clarke to call again. "We, as Skaikru, were genetically modified to be able to fight Solar Radiation, which is much higher than the radiation level that was on Earth before Praimfaya."

Raven and Echo shared a glance before staring at Jane. "Your point?" Raven said, noticing that she was changing the conversation.

"Emori and Echo aren't. We can't genetically modify them – no one knows how to do that – but we can give them Nightblood."

Echo frowned. "How? Nightblood is hereditary. How would you-"

"She's a Nightblood," Raven said, understanding hitting her hard.

"So?" Echo said, still not getting it.

"Bone marrow," Raven continued. "If we give you Nightblood bone marrow, you're going to be a Nightblood. And then you won't have a headache any more. Or those sores you still have on your arms? It'll all be gone."

"Wait, you still have sores? What about the medicine?" Jane asked, concerned.

"It helped for some time, but they came back something like a week ago."

Jane frowned. "We need to do this faster than I thought."

She stood and walked away, heading to the Medical bay. Once she was there, she closed the door and slid to the floor against it, tears filling her eyes once again. Several sobs shook her frame. She brought her knees up to her body and wrapped her legs with her arms, resting her chin on her knees. Her vision was blurry, but she didn't care. The only thing shy was aware of at the moment, was that Octavia, her precious baby girl was thousands of miles away, on a radiated planet, in a bunker with no communication, and that Bellamy was also thousands of miles away, waiting for Clarke's voice. Why, oh WHY had she called Bellamy when she heard Clarke's voice?

At least now she had a goal in her miserable life in Space: save Emori and Echo before it was too late. She pressed her palms against her eyes and forced herself to stop crying. She had work to do. And tools to find.