AN: Like I said before the last chapter, there will be more of an overlap between a couple of chapters going forward. The first part of this chapter, up until the break a little more than halfway through, sort of runs parallel to chapter 12, giving you the landing day from Clarke's POV, but then we keep going after the end of that chapter. Just so you're (hopefully) clear on the timeline!
As always, I don't own anything related to The 100. Enjoy!
-13-
It's been an excruciatingly long day – not really time wise, it's only been seven, maybe eight hours since Madi's speech on the ship. But emotionally. For some reason, it's draining to keep an eye on the guy you're in love with and his girlfriend, and then try to stay as far away from both of them as you can, all while overseeing the initial steps of a colonization.
Convincing the Grounders that this strange, new planet is their new home is surprisingly easy. Nobody argues after Madi's speech about the Flame and new beginnings, and some of them even look excited as they file out of the cryo chamber. Clarke supposes a lot of them have bad memories of Earth, especially the years spent in the bunker, and a new start, whatever form that may take, might feel like a blessing.
The landing goes smoothly, and after everyone has some time to take in their new home, they manage to get them working together fairly quickly. Since they set the tents up the last time they were down here, they can start moving the extra cots from the ship into them quickly – two cots per tent, so the people staying on the ship also have beds. Clarke's pretty sure she sees a group of Grounders set up some sort of camp just beyond the tree-line as well, just bringing some tarp and blankets. Which she can understand, she and Madi spent their fair share of nights sleeping under the stars after Praimfaya and she always woke up wonderfully rested after those. At the time, part of the draw had also been the feeling of being closer to the Ring, to Bellamy, during the dark hours, being able to spot the tiny light moving across the sky – or at least she used to tell herself that she could – before sleep pulled her under, but still.
They split the tasks between them, so one of the explorers is always with a group venturing beyond the immediate area around the ship. Clarke is grateful for this, since it means it makes it easier for her to avoid Bellamy and Echo. She happily leads a bunch of people armed with whatever containers they were able to find on the ships down to the lake where they gather water that will hopefully last at least the rest of the day. Raven has said that she'll be able to rig up some sort of pump system so they won't have to haul water all the time, but for now, this is the best, and only, solution.
When they get back to camp, Bellamy and Shaw have taken two other groups into the woods to gather food, giving her another respite, and she makes sure to be busy in the ship, setting up the makeshift med bay with her mom and Madi, when they eventually return.
She manages to keep herself occupied all day, only catching glimpses of him across camp now and then and quickly turning away when she does, but eventually, the first sun sets and then the second one is on its way down, coloring the sky in shades of pink, purple and gold. The essential tasks are finished, the initial frenzy is dying down and people are settling down for the evening – fires have been started around camp and Grounders, Arkers and Eligius alike are grouping off around them, munching on the fruits and berries and nuts that have been gathered during the day. Her mom has just given Marcus another dose of morphine, which will hopefully let him sleep through the night, and Gaia and Murphy, who are staying in the med bay until Abby gives them the all clear, have been brought food and don't need any immediate attention.
Which means Clarke has nothing more she can do to avoid joining the others.
"Come on," Madi wheedles her from where she's perched on a stainless steel table in the med bay, kicking her legs against its sides. "I'm hungry."
Clarke checks Murphy's bandage for the third time this afternoon and doesn't answer.
"If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were avoiding something," Murphy notes, voice lowered so Madi doesn't hear. "Or someone. Trouble in paradise?"
Clarke rolls her eyes. "Not sure what paradise you're talking about, but I'm still going to go with 'it's none of your business'."
"Whatever. All I'm saying is I've put up with enough of Blake pining over you, so please, for all our sakes, put the poor guy out of his misery."
She ignores the butterflies that Murphy's words set off in her stomach and just manages to not point out the elephant in the room – namely Echo – in favor of a simple but hopefully efficient snub.
"Again, none of your business."
She leaves Murphy's bed before he can say anything more and goes through the same routine with Gaia. The girl is quiet as Clarke checks her incisions and wraps her back up.
"Thank you," she says with a squeeze of Clarke's hand when she's finished.
Clarke offers her a smile. "My mom will spend the night here, so just let her know if you need anything, OK?"
Gaia returns the smile and nods.
"Right, food," Clarke says, crossing the room to Madi. She figures she can eat quickly and then claim she's tired – which isn't even a lie – and go to bed early. "Let's go. Mom, you too."
Abby looks up from where she's sitting next to Marcus' bed and Clarke can see that she's about to argue. "You need to eat too, you're no good for him if you pass out because you're starving."
Abby sighs, but does join them as they leave the ship, Madi happily skipping ahead of them. She pauses for a moment when they reach the camp, before she spots Raven, Shaw and Emori around one of the fires and pulls Clarke along in their direction.
"Finally done for the day?" Raven says as Clarke sits down next to her. "I've barely seen you."
Clarke shrugs. "It's been busy," she replies, and it has. Still, Raven gives her a look through narrowed eyes, as if she wants to question the statement, but doesn't say anything.
"How's John doing?" Emori asks from Raven's other side, reaching for a big bowl that's sitting on the ground in front of the fire, filled with fruits and berries, and handing it to Clarke.
"He's a pain in my butt, so I'd say he's on the mend," Clarke says, taking some food for herself before passing the bowl back to her mom, who's sort of lingering, unwilling to sit down and get too comfortable. "Seriously, though, he should be just fine, as long as he actually takes it easy and gives himself time to heal, right, Mom?"
"He should be, yes," Abby says.
"I'll make sure he does," Emori vows, and Clarke believes her.
"Mind if I join you?"
Clarke looks up at Jordan's voice and smiles. "Of course not, go ahead."
He takes a seat next to Madi, who offers him the bowl of fruit and berries she's just grabbed some from.
"So, does everyone have a place to sleep?" he asks after taking a bite out of a large, apple like fruit that tastes sweet.
"We're over there," Clarke says, nodding towards the corner where she's claimed a tent for herself and Madi, clear across the camp from the tent that she saw Bellamy deposit his things in earlier. She really doesn't need an unwelcome soundtrack on their first night here, she knows she'll have enough trouble sleeping as it is.
"I've got a tent for me and John, but I guess I'm on my own for now," Emori notes.
"I'm sleeping in the med bay, you're welcome to stay there as well, if you want," Abby offers. "We have a couple of extra beds in there."
"Thanks, I'll think about it," Emori replies.
"We're right back there," Raven says, gesturing with her thumb over her shoulder. "How about you, kid?"
"I've decided to take it slow, so I'm sleeping on the ship for now," Jordan replies. "I like the outdoors, but I think I prefer having an actual roof over my head."
"Just give it some time, you'll learn to love it," Raven says, looking around as she speaks. "Hey, where's Bellamy? I haven't seen him in a while."
Emori chuckles. "Or Echo. I'm sure they're off somewhere getting… reacquainted with each other, if you know what I mean…"
Clarke suddenly has trouble swallowing the berries she just put in her mouth. Don't think about it, don't think about it, she repeats in her head, swallowing hard and washing the food down with some water.
"I just saw Echo over by the water station a moment ago," Jordan says, oblivious to Clarke's internal struggle or the fact that he just eased it, if only for a moment. "So I kind of doubt it."
"And there are children present," Raven notes. "Let's keep the S-E-X talk to a minimum."
"I do know how to spell," Madi pipes in drily. "And I know what sex is, I'm not a kid."
"Right, did Clarke give you the talk?" Raven chuckles.
"Nope, no way," Clarke says, finally having found her voice again. She hopes nobody notices that it's shaking slightly. She clears her throat to try to keep it steady as she continues. "Didn't really see the point when it was just the two of us on the whole planet."
"That would be a pretty efficient contraceptive, yes," Raven admits.
"What's contraceptive?" Madi asks.
"Something we're going to talk to my mom about once you're old enough," Clarke tells her in her end of discussion-voice. Luckily, Madi knows from experience not to push when she uses it and goes back to her food.
She feels Raven elbow her lightly in the side and turns to face her. Sorry, her friend mouths quietly and Clarke shrugs. No big, she mouths back, but she's filing this away for the future – since Raven was the one to bring it up, she can be the one to give Madi the talk when the day comes.
The topic of conversation reverts to more neutral areas, thankfully, Emori asking question after question about the new planet, and Clarke finds she's actually enjoying herself.
It's completely dark, the fires casting ethereal shadows on the tents and making the trees nearby appear larger than they really are, as if they're looming over them, when she spots Bellamy by the tree line. At first, her stomach does the swoop that she's gotten used to whenever she's seen him in the last few weeks, but then she sees Echo beside him, the two obviously engaged in some sort of intense conversation, and it plummets again. She quickly averts her eyes when Bellamy pulls the other woman into a hug.
"Come on, Madi, time for bed," Clarke says, standing up and popping the last of her berries in her mouth.
Madi's face falls. "No, come on, it's not even that late yet."
"It's been a long day, I'm exhausted and I know you are too," Clarke reasons. "Tomorrow's going to be a lot of work and I want to get a good night's sleep. Please."
"Go on, kid," Raven says. "We're off to bed soon too, you won't miss anything."
Madi still looks like she's considering putting up a fight, but in the end, she stands too, giving Clarke a murderous look before she storms past her in the direction of their tent. Clarke sighs.
"Kids, am I right?" Raven gives her a smirk.
"She's not even a teenager yet," Clarke grumbles, and her mom laughs from behind her.
"Oh, you have so much to look forward to, honey," she says in an amused and not-at-all comforting voice. "I think I'll go check on Marcus and the others one last time and then turn in too. Night, all."
She squeezes Clarke's arm and disappears in the direction of the ship.
"Right, sleep well, everyone, see you tomorrow."
A stream of goodnights follow her as she walks to her and Madi's tent, deliberately not thinking about the scene she witnessed by the trees a moment ago. She knew this was coming, it's not a surprise. It hurt, and it's going to hurt for a while, so she'll just have to get some distance until she can move past it. She refuses to even consider the fact that she might not be able to – it might not have worked over the last six years, but things are different now.
-100-
Clarke's plan works surprisingly well over the next few weeks. They start cutting down trees and building up on the hill, where Bellamy takes on a sort of supervisor position, overseeing the work but also doing actual building himself. Raven and Shaw are able to adapt machinery from the ship into sawing machines, which simplifies and speeds up the process considerably, as well as the machines Raven promised for moving timber up the hill from the valley. Clarke isn't really involved in the actual construction, she and her mom are in charge of the med bay as Jackson is more of an asset on the building side, so she manages to keep to herself most of the time.
Bellamy usually works late into the evenings, until the suns have set, so Clarke arranges her schedule accordingly, taking the morning shift in the med bay and going to bed early in the evenings. They usually spend a few minutes in each other's company during breakfast, but Clarke's always almost done by the time he sits down with his food and it's the same during dinner. The promise they made of eating together in the mornings way back on the last day of exploring is always there, somewhere in the back of her mind, and even more so when she catches the way his face falls when she makes an excuse to leave just moments after he's arrived. Her behavior must be confusing him and probably hurting him, too, and knowing that kills her, but the alternative, staying and trying to make conversation, being nice to Echo when she shows up, is worse. So she's being selfish, putting her own wellbeing before his, even though it hurts just a little bit more every time she turns her back on him.
The only time they really spend more than a few minutes in each other's company is during the weekly council meetings. They've set up a temporary council during this initial phase, and to Clarke's surprise, she's one of the people elected to be on it – everyone got to pick two people, and the ten with the most votes, as well as Madi, who's technically in charge as the Commander and is supposed to have the last and final vote on all issues, were chosen. Apart from herself and Bellamy, the council consists of Miller, Diyoza, a guy from Eligius called Ben, Indra and four Grounders that Clarke doesn't know. The upside is that there are always nine other people at these meetings, so she can keep to her side of the room and avoid being right beside Bellamy and having to actually interact with him.
She knows it's not an arrangement that's going to last, not in the long run, especially not once the construction phase is over and they get on with actually living, but for now, she just about gets away with it, and she hopes that she'll at least have started getting over him by the time she's forced to spend more time with him. Raven gives her long looks sometimes, and even corners her in the med bay one day though she manages to get out of it. She catches Bellamy staring at her from the other side of the camp more than once, and sometimes he stops what he's doing as she passes a building site, looking like he's about to say something, but she quickly turns away when she accidentally meets his eyes and busies herself with something to avoid him coming over and trying to talk to her. He hasn't tried too hard so far, and she hopes that means he understands that she needs some time and space.
They finish a large mess hall first, intended to be used for meetings and as a dining hall and social space according to need. After that, they move on to kitchens, smoke houses – they've managed to hunt both deer, rabbit and boar and all have been deemed safe for human consumption by Abby, as well as a few types of fish they've caught in the lake – storage buildings, a workshop for Raven, Shaw and Jordan, and a proper med bay before they start on individual cabins.
Despite Clarke's objections, she and Madi are among the first group to get a cabin. It was decided early on that the people with children would get priority when it came to housing, and even though she's more mature in many ways, due to the AI, Madi is still one of the younger kids in camp, as no children were born during the years in the bunker, courtesy of Abby's stash of contraceptive implants from the Ark, which all women of childbearing age now have.
So by the end of their first month on the ground, Clarke and Madi move into their little cabin with a living area in the middle and a bedroom on either side. There's even a small washroom just inside the door, with a sort of toilet that's hooked up to Raven's plumbing system – they have to pour water into it to flush, but it's miles better than the latrines Clarke remembers from their Dropship days – and a wash basin connected to a water tank on the roof, which means the water is heated by the suns during the day. Raven's water system is coming along nicely and will be hooked up eventually, and she claims she might even be able to arrange proper showers at some point, even if it's not a priority at the moment.
Clarke's favorite thing is the fireplace in the main room. A few of the Grounders have experience with masonry and they've used rock from the hilly area west of the lake to make stone fireplaces in all the cabins, for cooking and keeping warm once winter comes – they're still not sure how cold the winter will be or when exactly it will arrive, the temperature has dropped a little since they landed, but not really that much. Still, it's better to plan for every eventuality than be surprised by a freezing winter.
After the med bay is finished and they move into their cabin, Clarke spends most of her time up in the settlement, which makes it harder to avoid Bellamy since he's working there all the time. He's still living in a tent down in the valley, but everyone's started eating their meals and socializing in the mess hall in the evenings, so Clarke takes to trying to cook and eat in their own cabin most days, even if Madi usually insists on eating with the others in the mess hall.
"I thought you and Bellamy were OK," the girl says one evening when she's reluctantly agreed to join Clarke for dinner in their cabin. "You said you talked about the radio calls and the bunker and everything… I thought that meant you'd be hanging out more."
"We're fine," Clarke says with a sigh, hoping against hope that Madi lets it go.
"Is it about Echo?" Madi asks. Of course she's too perceptive for her own good… Clarke's never actually come out and said it, but she's sure Madi's figured out that she's in love with Bellamy by now. She heard a lot of the radio calls, after all.
"I just… I need some time, Madi," she says. "It's hard seeing him with her, I'm trying to work through it but it's going to take a while, OK? I'm not stopping you from spending time with them, you can whenever you want."
"But I want to spend time with you too," Madi replies. "And they don't kiss and stuff, like Raven and Zeke, and Emori and Murphy do. She's not even around that much, you could come hang out when she's not there, right?"
"We'll see, Madi," Clarke half-promises, deliberately keeping her answer vague and at the same time trying to not read anything into the girl's words. Raven had said that Bellamy and Echo didn't act like a couple much, it's probably just something they like to keep private. Which Clarke is insanely grateful for, she was uncomfortable enough when she accidentally walked in on Raven and Zeke with much too little clothes on a week ago, she really can't even imagine what it would have been like if it had been Bellamy instead.
But she knows that she can't avoid him forever, and the situation comes to a head about a week after her talk with Madi, much sooner than she had hoped.
Gaia and a couple of other women have set up a school of sorts in the mess hall during the days, teaching all the children in the settlement about the plants and animals on the new planet, or at least what they know about them so far, and about the history of the Earth, wanting to make sure they don't forget where they come from. Madi comes home every evening babbling about ancient wars and names Clarke vaguely remembers from her Earth history classes on the Ark. It's nice since it means Clarke doesn't have to keep the girl occupied and can focus on her own work in the med bay during the day, but it's bad since it means she doesn't have Madi as an excuse or buffer when she wants to get out of a situation.
Like today.
The med bay is unusually quiet, no new injuries from the construction work in the last few days so all beds but one are empty. Clarke inventories the meds they still have from the ship – they're working on figuring out which plants have medicinal properties, but so far they've only found one that's good for headaches – and cleans the entire room, but her mom eventually sends her home in the middle of the afternoon.
"There's no point in both of us hanging around here doing nothing," Abby reasons. "I'll come get you if I need you, but try to relax for once. You've been going a hundred miles an hour all day, every day since we landed, you can't keep this up or you're going to crash eventually, and you know it."
Clarke's about to argue that everyone's been working hard – they're trying to build a society basically from scratch, it's going to be hard work for a long time still – but she recognizes the look in her mom's eyes and realizes that there's no point.
"Fine," she agrees grudgingly. "But come get me when you need me."
"I will."
With a wave to Luka, who's in the only occupied bed with a bad cold, Clarke leaves the med bay and heads off in the direction of the mess hall. She figures she can sneak out some of her favorite berries and spend the afternoon reading – they brought all the books from the Eligius ship and have set them up in a corner of the mess hall as a sort of library, and she's working through the collection slowly, currently reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
She spends a few minutes talking to Mara, who's in charge in the kitchens, and then heads towards her cabin with her haul.
Which brings her by one of the current construction sites, and before she even realizes it, she hears Miller's voice.
"Hey, Clarke!"
She stops in her tracks and lifts her head to where he's perched on the roof of a new cabin that's being built. With Bellamy, of course.
"No work in the med bay today?" Bellamy asks after a moment.
"No, your guys must be getting better at not falling off buildings and cutting themselves with the saws," she replies, almost falling into their easy banter from before.
He laughs at that and runs a hand through his hair before he speaks again. "We're about done for the day here, you want some company?"
She looks around, half-expecting Echo to jump out from behind a corner and ask her what she's doing. Which of course doesn't happen.
"I was actually looking forward to spending some quality time with Pip and Estella," she says.
"Ah, reading Great Expectations?"
"Yeah. Maybe some other day?" It's an empty promise, but she just wants to get out of the situation.
He nods, though she can see the disappointed look in his eyes, and she turns away quickly before she caves.
She lets out a relieved breath when she reaches her cabin, letting the door fall closes behind her, but instead of the click of the latch, there's a bang as the door is pushed open again so hard it hits the wall, and she spins around to find Bellamy in the doorway.
"When are you going to stop avoiding me?"
AN: I'm evil, I know ;) Hope you liked the chapter, and if you did, feel free to let me know – reviews are always appreciated!