AN: Happy Sunday guys! Hope you've all had a good weekend :) Time for another chapter, some more Raven meddling in this one, though she's switching angles for a while, and some more on Bellamy's view of the Echo situation, so a heads up – Becho will be mentioned in this one. I've already made my opinion on Bellamy not being a cheater clear, I think, so him working through the relationship with Echo is a necessity to get to the good parts of this story ;)

I'm not a doctor or anything like that, so the medical stuff in this chapter is not based in actual science, just FYI.

I own nothing, as usual.

-6-

Bellamy stands frozen as Clarke returns to her bedroom with her book in hand. It feels like she should feel his gaze, burning into her back, but if she does, she doesn't acknowledge it. When she closes the door softly behind her, he lets out a shaky breath and finally feels himself relax.

He nearly had a heart attack when he saw her leaning over the bookcase in those tiny shorts, but he thinks (desperately hopes) that she didn't notice anything off about him. He supposes he should count himself lucky that she, unlike himself, had chosen to get dressed before leaving her room at least… he doesn't want to think about what a Clarke in nothing but a towel would do to him.

He determinedly pushes the distracting images that thought brings to mind away and goes back to his own bedroom, closing the door behind him before hanging the towel over the shower rail in the bathroom to dry. After rummaging around the dresser, where he put the clothes he found during their earlier raid of the living quarters, for a moment he picks a pair of sweatpants. He doesn't bother with a t-shirt, just crawls into bed and pulls the fancy, puffy comforter up to his chest before opening the book.

He chose it at random, really – Clarke's presence next to him too distracting for him to be able to peruse the available selection the way he had wanted to – recognizing the title from some list of books his old English teacher on the Ark had recommended the students read in addition to the books they were actually assigned for their school work. He never got around to it back then, obviously, but figures now is as good a time as any. Either way, he's planning on bringing all the books he can find on the ship down to this new planet if they do end up settling there, so he'll have plenty of time to read the rest of them. Hopefully.

He gets through two chapters before deciding to call it a night and turning off the small lamp on the bedside table. He's not really expecting to fall asleep, if he's being completely honest, even if he is tired in some strange way, but figures he might as well give it a try.

To his surprise, he's out within minutes, and when he wakes up again he knows, without a clock or any other indication, that he must have been asleep for hours.

Nature's calling, so he pulls on a t-shirt and takes care of business before going out into the empty living area and turning on the TV to check the time. The clock on the screen had read 7.36 when he turned it off yesterday, before they had dinner – the only time reference he really has, and he doesn't even know if it was in the morning or evening – so he figures he probably fell asleep around nine thirty or ten at the latest.

When the screen glows to life, the clock reads 8.07. Bellamy has to blink a couple of times to make sure he's seeing it correctly, but it's still there, black against the red background, when he opens his eyes again. He's been asleep for over ten hours? It doesn't seem right, but the evidence is right there in front of him.

He's trying to decide if he should wake up the others – they do have a lot to do, after all – when Raven's door opens and the girl in question emerges, mouth open in a wide yawn and arms stretched up over her head.

"Morning," she says when she spots him, grabbing a glass from the kitchen and filling it with water before joining him on the couch. "Sleep OK?"

Bellamy steals her glass to take a sip of the water himself, grimacing a little at the tinny taste before handing the glass back.

"Great, actually," he replies. "And a lot. We went to bed around nine, I think, and now it's eight."

Raven's eyes widen slightly. "Seriously? How can we sleep for over ten hours after having been asleep for more than a century?" She sets the glass down on the table and takes the remote from him. "You'd think we'd have had enough rest for the next couple of years, not sleep more."

"Maybe it's like when you've been sedated," Clarke's voice comes from behind them, still a little gravelly with sleep, and Bellamy glances over his shoulder. He's relieved to find that she's put on a pair of sweatpants similar to the ones he's wearing himself instead of the shorts from last night. He's not entirely sure he'd be able to hide his reaction to those from Raven, she's way too observant for her own good. Or his.

"Please explain, doctor Griffin," Raven requests as Clarke joins them, taking a seat in one of the armchairs.

She rolls her eyes. "Not a doctor thing," she says. "I just remember when I had my appendix out when I was, like, twelve maybe? I was sedated during the procedure, and for a couple of days after, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow and pretty much slept until someone or something woke me up. I have no idea why, but I figured this might be something similar."

Raven flips through the titles on the TV – she's already picked TV shows and then sitcoms – as she responds.

"I just hope it passes soon. I have too much shit to get done to waste ten hours sleeping every night."

Clarke shakes her head, an indulgent smile on her face.

"Just give your body some time to adapt to being awake again," she says in an amused voice. "I'm sure it's not easy being frozen for years and years just to go back to business as usual like this."

Raven's settled on the first episode of Friends, which Bellamy remembers vaguely from their time on the Ring. He hadn't found it all that funny, but Raven and Harper had gone through all ten seasons in a couple of months and then watched the whole show again a couple of times over the next six years. The opening tune fills the room and the characters dance around in the stupid fountain on the screen.

"Yeah, yeah," Raven says dismissively. "Let's wake the kid up, grab some breakfast and get back to the bridge so we can get the drone sent out and start exploring this planet already. If we're going to waste half the day sleeping we've got to make use of the hours we're actually awake."

Bellamy meets Clarke's eyes and shrugs. It's not like Raven's wrong exactly – they do have a lot to do – but they probably don't have to wake Jordan up or rush through breakfast.

Fortunately, the door to Jordan's bedroom opens at that moment and he joins them in the living area.

"Everybody have a good night?" he asks, leaning against the back of Clarke's armchair.

"Except for the fact that we slept for ten hours, it was great," Raven replies, and Jordan chuckles.

"Yeah, sorry about that, I should have warned you – Dad said that might happen. Something about the levels of Melatonin in the body being heightened for some time after cryo, so you sleep more."

"Raven's impatient," Bellamy supplies, earning an exaggerated eye-roll from the mechanic. "It's one of her many character flaws."

"Oh, screw you, Blake," she counters, but Bellamy can see the gleam in her eyes despite her harsh words.

"Right," Jordan says hurriedly, obviously not picking up on their good natured jabs and trying to deflate the situation. "I'll grab some algae bars for us, and we can bring them to the bridge so Raven can get started while we eat."

"Nah," Raven replies, leaning back against the couch and focusing on the TV again. "No food around the computers, I don't want to have to fix them when someone inevitably gets crumbs or water in them. Besides, I haven't had my Friends fix in ages."

Jordan seems torn for a moment, clearly not used to Raven's quick mood changes, but eventually settles for getting them all bars from the kitchen along with some water and glasses for himself, Clarke and Bellamy. When he's handed out the breakfast, he sits down in the armchair next to Raven and turns to the TV.

"Is this the first episode?" he asks and Raven nods, not taking her eyes of the screen where Rachel, dressed in a wedding gown, bursts into the coffee shop. Honestly, this show is weird… "I used to watch this with Mom when I was little."

Raven glances over at Jordan, a soft smile on her face that Bellamy doesn't remember seeing very often.

"Me too, kid. Me too."

-100-

They end up watching another episode before Raven decides it's time to actually start the work day and ushers everyone out of the apartment and back towards the bridge.

"OK, so I've programmed the system with coordinates for a dozen spots in one general area on the planet's surface," she explains as they walk through the winding corridors, Jordan leading the way. Bellamy's reminded of the story about the Minotaur, and idly wonders if there might be a ball of yarn around to help him find his way when Jordan's not there to act as a guide. He's fairly sure he'll end up getting lost if he's left to his own devices and he's not too keen on that. "So we know where to land later, if it seems like a good place for a settlement. Or so we can find another spot, if it doesn't."

"Smart," Bellamy notes and Raven gives him one of her razor sharp grins over her shoulder.

"Don't sound so surprised," she bites back. "I am a genius after all."

"And humble, too," Clarke adds in a stage whisper, and she and Bellamy exchange an amused look when Raven flips them off without turning around.

"We all know you'd be dead at least five times over by now if it wasn't for me," she says confidently as she hits the button to open the door to the bridge.

"Yeah, yeah, like we could forget that," Bellamy agrees with an eye-roll.

The large window is dark now, both suns obviously hiding behind the planet. For a moment, Bellamy tries to find a familiar constellation, but none of the stars make sense to him. He has no idea how far from Earth they actually are, it could just be that they're seeing the same stars from a different angle, or it could be new stars altogether.

Raven pays the window no mind, heading straight for the computer she was using last night and reclaiming her chair. Jordan and Bellamy pull three chairs over from around the room and they all sit down so they can see the screen too. Not that Bellamy, or Clarke for that matter, understands much of what's on it. Jordan seems to, though.

"No response on the radio," he notes, and Raven shakes her head.

"Nope, nothing. I programmed my tablet so it would alert us if there was, though, so we would have known the moment it happened."

She clicks a few buttons and the screen changes, a bunch of numbers appearing on it instead.

"So these are the coordinates for the drone," Raven explains. "They won't tell you anything, really, not without any context, but I chose a spot on the largest of the landmasses, within about fifteen miles of the sea, or the equivalent of the seas on Earth. A large body of water, anyway. I figured we might want to be fairly close to it, but not too close in case the weather is volatile. Don't want our settlement to get washed away the first time there's a storm."

"What does the land look like?" Jordan asks. "Mountains, woods, plains?"

"We can't get images detailed enough to tell a lot, really, but no mountains," Raven replies. "They seem to be more in the middle of the continent, if we stick with the comparisons to Earth. It seems to be a mix of woods and open areas, which I thought was a good combination – trees for construction and to use as fire wood but open space for building and maybe some farms, growing stuff and keeping animals, if we can find any that resemble our cattle or horses and can be easily domesticated."

"It sounds good," Clarke agrees, glancing at Bellamy. He gives her a nod to show that he's on the same page. "So what do we do now?"

Raven moves the cursor to a little blue square at the bottom right corner of the screen.

"Push this button and the drone gets ejected from the ship and finds its coordinates, collects the samples, and returns here when it's done."

Bellamy gives her an incredulous look. "That's it?" he asks.

Raven shrugs. "I didn't say I had a lot to actually do, just a lot of things to get done," she replies innocently, and he sighs.

"Well, get on with it then."

Raven sticks her tongue out at him but she hits the little blue button.

Nothing happens.

"We won't see it," Raven explains when she notices their blank faces. "It's too small, and it's too dark out there. But it's on its way, promise."

"Kind of anticlimactic," Clarke notes, and Raven snorts.

"Sorry, next time I'll send a missile with it, give you more of a show."

"Probably not a good idea," Jordan says hurriedly.

"Just joking, kid," Raven replies, patting him on the back reassuringly.

"So now we just… wait for it to get back?" Bellamy asks.

"Pretty much," Raven confirms.

"And how long is that going to take?" Clarke wants to know. "Ballpark figure."

"Five, maybe six hours," Raven says. "It's pretty quick, but still, it's a long way down, and I'm not sure where the coordinates are right now, it might need to go all the way around the planet."

"So…" Jordan starts, "more Friends while we wait?"

"Not like we can do much else," Raven agrees, so they make their way back to the apartment.

Raven immediately claims the armchair Clarke occupied earlier, giving Bellamy a look with raised eyebrows and nodding subtly in the direction of the couch. He gives her a quizzical look in return, but sinks down in what is apparently becoming his corner of the couch. A moment later, Jordan nabs the other armchair, leaving Clarke to the couch, and instead of sitting down she stretches out over the entire thing, head on the armrest and feet in Bellamy's lap. Raven gives him a pleased smirk which makes Bellamy realize that she's up to something… he'll have to try to find out what exactly before whatever it is goes any further. But for now, he's happy to watch Ross flirt ineptly with Rachel on the screen and listen to Clarke's snorts of laughter now and then.

-100-

They get through another ten episodes and some more algae bars for lunch before there's a beep from Raven's tablet, alerting them to… something.

"Drone or radio?" Bellamy asks as she taps away at the screen. If he's honest, he's kind of hoping there won't be any response on the radio call, and that they won't find any Eligius descendants, or other humans for that matter, when they finally get down to the planet. It would make things so much easier… but when have things ever been easy for them?

"Drone," Raven confirms absentmindedly, still focused on the tablet.

Clarke turns the TV off, cutting off the end credits to the episode, and pushes herself up from the couch.

"Time to get back to work," she says, stretching her arms up above her head – which makes her shirt ride up a little and expose a sliver of skin that Bellamy's eyes are immediately drawn to – before heading towards the door. Jordan joins her, but Bellamy hangs back a little, waiting for Raven to finish whatever she's doing on the tablet.

When she finally gets up, Clarke and Jordan have disappeared out into the corridor and their voices are fading away, so Bellamy takes the opportunity to corner Raven and call her out on whatever it was she was doing earlier.

"Hey, what was that before?" he asks in a low voice, blocking her way out of the apartment.

She gives him an innocent look and tries to side-step him. "No idea what you're talking about."

"Cut the crap, Raven," he snaps, grabbing her wrist. "You know exactly what I'm talking about."

She pulls free from his grasp and crosses her arms over her chest, but apparently decides to just come clean.

"Fine," she says with a huff. "Excuse me for trying to play match maker."

Bellamy sighs. "Match maker, seriously? You do know I have a…" But he trails off, not knowing how to finish the sentence.

"A what, exactly?" Raven asks, eyebrows raised in a smug look.

"Echo," he finishes lamely.

"You can't even say the word 'girlfriend' though," she argues, "because she's not. I know you two have a thing or whatever, but come on, we both know it's nothing compared to your feelings for Clarke."

Bellamy knows that if any of his friends knows exactly how he feels, it's Raven – she witnessed his breakdown, after all, and after he'd been able to talk about Clarke, and had needed to process his guilt over leaving her behind and his feelings surrounding her in general, Raven had been the one he'd gone to most of the time. But still, she can't just meddle like this whenever she feels like it without taking other people's feelings into account. And he could have gotten over that, Raven doesn't know… OK, he hasn't but the thing is that he could have. The fact that she just assumes he hasn't is probably a sign that she knows him a little too well.

"It doesn't matter, Raven," he retorts. "Echo might not be my girlfriend, but we are in some kind of relationship, OK?"

"Fine, I get it," Raven says. "But just tell me this – do you love her? And I'm not talking about Clarke."

"Of course I do," he replies truthfully.

"Let me rephrase that – are you in love with her?"

Of course she has to go and split hairs.

"It doesn't matter," he repeats instead of answering her actual question, because, really, they both already know the answer to it. He can see that she's about to argue again, but continues before she has a chance. "I'm not that guy, I won't start something with someone else while she's in cryo, that's a dick move. You of all people should understand that."

It's a bit of a low blow and he knows it, but he just wants to get through to her. Raven's eyes narrow, and for a moment he thinks she might actually punch him. It has happened before and he has no doubt it will happen again – they have a tendency to butt heads rather violently when they don't agree on something.

"OK, I guess I do see your point," she instead admits grudgingly. "Can you just promise me that you will do something about this once everything's settled down? I'll back off for now, but I just… I picked up the pieces when you thought she was dead, and now she's not… can you at least see that you've been given a second chance?"

Her voice has lost all fight by the end, and Bellamy realizes that this must be hitting a little too close to home for Raven. Sure, she and Finn had been broken up at the time of his death, and he knows she's moved on from that, but Finn had been her whole life, her family, and that's not something you forget just like that. If Raven could get him back… Bellamy's sure she wouldn't even hesitate.

"I know, OK?" he assures her, reaching out a hand to squeeze her shoulder. "Just… let me figure it out, yeah? I need to do this my way or I'll just end up feeling guilty and making everyone miserable. Myself included."

Raven snorts at that. "That's kind of the default setting with you and Clarke, so forgive me if I don't exactly have a lot of faith in you," she says drily.

"Hey, I resent that!" he grumbles, though he has to admit that she's probably right.

"Resent all you want," she tells him, patting him on the arm in a slightly condescending way. "How about this – I'll give you six months, and if neither of you have gotten your heads out of your asses by then, I will take matters into my own hands?"

He would prefer that she stayed out of it altogether, but he knows that he has to pick his battles with Raven. And it might actually be a good thing to have some sort of time limit to work with – he'll admit that odds are that he'll chicken out at some point, either when it comes to talking to Echo or, if he somehow manages to handle that situation, making an actual move on Clarke.

"I'm guessing that's the best I'm going to get?" he asks drily, and Raven gives him a pleased smile. "Fine, I'll take it."

AN: There we go, hope you liked it! Reviews are always welcome :)