Chapter Nine: Cataclysm
She unlocks the door to Bellamy's pod quietly – he'd given her a key so that she could come and go when he wasn't there. She sets her bag down on the coffee table and tip-toes to Bellamy's room. It's the middle of the night, but she has just gotten off of work. He's sleeping soundly in the middle of the bed, so she changes into one of his shirts and a pair of his shorts and slips in next to him. He wakes up just enough to mumble "Hey, babe" and wrap his arm around her. By the time she settles in, they're both sound asleep.
Bellamy blinks his eyes open in the morning and smiles at the back of Clarke's head. Her back is pressed against his chest and they're tangled together from their fingers, all the way down to their legs. He smiles, content to lay there until she wakes up. It's another hour or so until Clarke blinks herself awake, turning in his arms and kissing him quickly. "Have you been awake long?"
"Not very" Bellamy says, bending his neck to kiss her again. She smiles into the kiss, running her hand down his back and under his shirt. He hums into her mouth, his fingers finding the exposed expanse of skin between her shirt and shorts. Her hand gets tangled in his shirt and she laughs into his mouth before tugging it up his body, pushing him back just enough to pull it off of him before they fall back together.
The rest of their clothes fall away soon after. It's not the first time they've had sex, but they're still new enough at each other's bodies that it's all still a discovery. They take their time, exploring each other gently and letting their hands wander.
After, she settles against him, her head on his chest, listening to his heart beat while he cards his fingers through her hair. She's half way to back asleep when his chest rumbles and his voice fills the room, "I have work soon".
"Noooo" she whines, dragging the word out and snuggling closer to him. He lets out an easy chuckle and the noise makes her so happy she leans into her arm and props herself up to kiss him. He returns it easily, and she thinks, for the first time in her life, that she found where she wants to spend the rest of her life.
After a while, they get out of bed and redress, joining Octavia in the common room. She's eating an apple that Clarke brought after work the night before and she tosses Bellamy an orange when she sees him, smiling at the pair. Bellamy eats about half the orange before handing the rest to Clarke. "I gotta go". He kisses the top of Octavia's head and then kisses Clarke, waves a little as he walks out.
Clarke and Octavia play chess for a while before Clarke has to go home to Alpha and do some laundry, "I'll see you later, though." Bellamy has promised to cook dinner tonight, and as much as she teased him, he wasn't bad at it. "It's my last day on night-shift, so the schedule will be more normal soon" she reminds Octavia who smiles in return. As a part of medical training, they all had to spend a fortnight on night-shift, it wasn't bad except that her and Bellamy kept missing each other and it was a horrible schedule to keep. Clarke wanted to stay with Octavia, but an accident the night before had left her scrubs stained and disgusting.
She gets to Alpha and opens the door quietly, "Anyone here" she calls out and does an internal happy dance when silence greets her. She washes her scrubs and hangs them on the line, then turns to grab a hair tie off the cabinet next to her. But she bumps into the cabinet instead, looks at the forming bruise on her arm and scowls before realizing that she's knocked the hair tie behind it and to the floor. She reaches blindly behind it, the tips of her fingers grazing the worn carpet until they connect with something. What she pulls up isn't a hair tie though, it's a memory drive, it looks like it might be a home movie.
She plugs it in and she's not sure what she's expecting to see; the time her, Wells, and Avery did the Unity Day play maybe, or when she learned the periodic elements and her dad tapped her saying them in sequence, but whatever she was expecting did not prepare her for her father's face filling the screen and telling her that the Ark is running out of air. She checks the date on the video and realizes that this was the reason he was floated. All that time spent wondering and searching for answers, and the truth was behind a cabinet in the common room the whole time. She's practically hyperventilating when she plays it again, doesn't notice the door open and then inch closed behind her.
She thinks about how she's always cold when she's on the other stations, always needing a sweater that she sheds on Alpha. Avery always thought they pumped less oxygen onto the lower stations, she'd called him a conspiracy nut and rolled her eyes, but she feels silly for not believing him now. He'd always believed that they did it to keep the working class weak and exhausted and unable to rise up, but now she understands that they did it because the air is running out.
It's a while before she gathers herself, she takes deep steadying breaths and wipes crocodile tears off her cheeks. She has to tell someone…has to tell everyone, wants to start with Avery and Bellamy. She shoves the drive into her pocket and yanks the door to the pod open, stumbles backwards when her mother, Jaha, Kane, Shumway, and two guards she doesn't know are standing there.
Her mother tells her that she has to come with them, that it's for her safety, that she loves her. Clarke wants to throw up, or hit someone, and when it's clear that she won't just follow them, the guards grab her arms and drag her. She yells 'there is no air' at everyone they pass and kicks her feet but in the end, it doesn't matter, they push her into a cell on the Skybox while her mother tells her that it's for her own good.
Bellamy hears about what happened later that day (The Council does not release details, just tells those who ask that she has been imprisoned) and rushes to the Skybox. They won't let him see her though, not even when he shoves his credentials in their face. Bellamy has to go home and tell Octavia what happened that night, admit that he has no idea what is really going on, while she cries next to the ingredients for the dinner that he was going to make. He holds her on the floor while she cries, and she doesn't say anything when he pulls thick tears from his own cheeks.
Bellamy tries four more times to see her, or even just get information about what happened, over a two-week span before desperation leads him to knock on Avery's door. Avery opens it and steps aside, looks like he's been expecting him. Avery looks bad – sleep deprived and angry with red rimmed eyes. "I don't know anything either" Avery tells him as Bellamy hears the pod door click shut behind him. "I've talked to everyone I can think of – Wells has no idea what happened, and her mother knows but won't say anything" Avery hits the wall, "I can't…she's in solitary, they won't let anyone see her" he finishes in a low, angry voice.
Nine weeks later, there is a malfunction in one of the oxygen scrubbers. They're going to have to shut it down to repair it, so everyone in Factory has been told to sleep in the Hydra cafeteria. It's inconvenient for most, it's catastrophic for Bellamy and Octavia. Bellamy goes to his mother, begs her for help – and she tries, in the only way she knows how, begging the guard she sleeps with and offering herself to him, but in the end, she says she doesn't know what to. Bellamy doesn't know what to do either – doesn't know how to keep Octavia both alive and hidden and doesn't have anyone to turn to.
In the end, the knowledge that Clarke trusted him is what leads him to knock on Avery's door. Avery steps aside to let him in, but Bellamy asks him to follow instead. When Bellamy opens the door to his pod and lets Avery walk inside, Octavia is sitting in the middle of the room. Avery's eyes flick between Bellamy and Octavia a few times before he starts to laugh, "Yeah, that makes sense" he says when he catches his breath. Then he introduces himself to Octavia. Bellamy thinks maybe they should have told him all along.
Avery doesn't have any contacts on Alpha that might help them – what Bellamy had been hoping for, but he knows a guy on Agro who is good with computers and owes him a favor. He leaves and returns a few hours later with an ID card and no idea if it'll hold up. But they don't have a lot of options – he can't let his sister suffocate under the floor in their pod. So, they drape Octavia in blankets and sandwich her between them for the walk.
When her ID scans and she is let through, Bellamy thinks he might sob with relief. The three of them find a spot in the corner to claim and sit down. Bellamy goes to get them something to eat and they talk while they share the meal. It doesn't take long for conversation to move to Clarke and Octavia's eyes are glassy when she's asks quietly if they think she's okay. Avery and Bellamy share a look, then Avery puts a comforting hand on Octavia's knee, "I think she misses you, but I think she's fine.".
They talk for a while longer, getting increasingly tired, when all the sudden Octavia is being pulled up by her elbow. Bellamy and Avery scramble up to see Shumway staring at Octavia. "Who are you?" he asks, scanning her badge. She stammers out her name, giving the fake last name on the badge, and leans away from the man.
"Leave her alone" Avery says while Bellamy moves to stand between his sister and Shumway who looks at them for a long moment before pulling out his tablet.
It all unravels pretty quickly after that.
It doesn't take long for Shumway to realize that Octavia Williams does not exist and from there he figures out the sibling thing pretty fast. Bellamy begs him to stop, to let them go, swears he'll do anything for Octavia's freedom, even float – and means it. But Shumway is not compelled, so Bellamy takes a swing, wants to fight their way out, but he's hit with an electric shock before he can move and everything goes black.
He wakes up in the Skybox. He's told the council is deliberating his fate. They let him out just long enough to watch his mother float. She's walked to the airlock by the very guard who she was sleeping with to keep their secret – he has to protect himself now, and he does it at Aurora's expense. He hugs his mother, whispers an apology in her ear, and then watches her get sucked into space. Wonders when that will be him. He's glad Octavia's not there to see it.
Four days later he's brought in front of the council. They're not going to float him, but they are going to strip him of his status – he can't be trusted to uphold the law when he let his mother break it, after all. They only give him five minutes to say goodbye to Octavia. He begs them to let them trade places, but they insist that she'll stay in lock up until she turns eighteen and then get a review, like everyone else who breaks the law. He tried to argue that she didn't break the law, was just born into it, but nothing he says matters anymore.
He holds Octavia to him, tells her that it'll be okay. That she's stronger than she thinks. That she should behave, do what they tell her and they'll let her go when she's eighteen. That if she can get through this now, she'll be able to have a real life later, one that doesn't include cut outs under the floor boards and hiding in the shadows. He prays he's not lying to her.
He's given a new job assignment in sanitation and sees Avery there on his first day. They'd taken away his maintenance job too and Bellamy feels like shit for dragging him into this. Avery shrugs off his apology though, "I'm glad we tried – it's what Clarke would have told us to do…well, she might have had a better plan". They both chuckle, with no real humor behind it.
When things go to hell, Bellamy thinks, they go quickly. Less than three months ago, his life was almost perfect. He hated that his sister was always stuck inside, but at least she was alive and thriving, he was with a woman that he loved, in a job that he thought would keep them safe. And now he had nothing. He didn't understand how things could change so quickly.
He only sees his sister once a month for too many months – prison visitation only occurring that often. Sometimes Avery comes with him and it's almost like having Clarke's voice in the conversation. They always try to see Clarke, are never let to.
Clarke hears someone say that they're opening the dropship door downstairs and yells that the air might be toxic. She hears a voice yell back that if the air is toxic, they're all dead anyway. And while that's not all together untrue, it is a little short sighted. She's been in solitary lock up for too long for the crash landing to be the only thing she experiences before she dies.
She climbs the ladder and sees two people embracing by the door – she thinks it's a couple, people meeting in the Skybox and falling into 'love' wasn't uncommon, there wasn't a lot of entertainment there. But they pull back and she catches sight of his wild curly hair and she feels like she's been sucker punched – all of the air leaving her lungs at once and she breaths out his name.
Octavia sees her first, throws her arms around her and jumps up and down a little, pulling her forward to where Bellamy is frozen into his spot, looking how she feels. When Octavia lets her go, Bellamy reaches out a hand and trails it along her hip lightly before grasping it, wanting to make sure she is real and in front of him. His lips crash onto hers a moment later and her tears hit his cheeks.
When Octavia pulls the lever that will open the drop ship doors and lets her feet be the first to hit Earth soil in 100 years and lets out an excited whoop before "We're back, bitches" Clarke laughs into Bellamy's mouth as the rest of the occupants of the drop ship funnel out around them.
They both have a million questions and a million things they want to say. But that can wait, for now Bellamy mumbles 'I love you' against her lips as they pull apart, smiles when she says it back, then holds out his hand. She takes it and they walk on the Earth for the first time together. Octavia comes and stands with them, and Bellamy can't describe his happiness.
So, even though I wrote this a while ago, I've been putting off posting it as I don't feel quite as 'done' with this universe as I thought I would when I got to this point. I might go back and add some short 'in between' chapters with moments that I wanted to put on originally but couldn't find a good place for.
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