Chapter Text
It was hours later, after their conversation turned to happier things and then even their laughter had come and gone, when the adults could not ignore the fact that the intervals between each yawn coming from one of the kids dwindled down to mere minutes and Emori finally called it.
“Alright, time for bed. If you yawn any harder you’ll dislocate your jaw.” She said as she got up and held a hand out to Luca to help him stand.
“That’s very unlikely.” Jackson protested with a grimace, but his squeamish reaction was ignored as Luca chose to heed the grounder’s warnings and get up so he could be led to the bunkers where the kru slept until they built homes above ground. A few of the adults decided to call it a night as well and got up to follow them, while some stayed around the fire. It wasn’t cold enough to force Octavia to take shelter, and the warrior often preferred to sleep near the fire in the open air in a sleeping bag much to Levit’s dismay, and the ones who stayed only lowered their voices so they wouldn’t disturb her.
“Bedtime, ai strik natblida.” Clarke spoke softly as she gently shook Madi’s shoulder, who was fighting to keep her eyes open. It went to show just how tired she was when she didn’t fight the woman about going to bed like she usually did.
“Yu seintaim?” Madi asked sleepily as she got up with Clarke, leaning heavily against her.
“Sha.” Clarke reassured her as she wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tucked her against her side. They lingered for a moment to tell the others they were heading in and bid them goodnight, getting a chorus of acknowledgements as they turned to leave.
Clarke led them to the room she’d taken. Sleeping arrangements had been set up so that most of them ended up sharing rooms for comfort more than lack of space, while the couples preferred taking rooms to themselves for privacy, and everyone stayed close to the shared bathrooms which Raven took care of fixing as one of her first projects after their return with some help from Miller and Jackson.
Clarke shared her room with the mechanic along with Gaia, Echo, and Niylah. The bunk beds were all sized with one person per mattress in mind but Clarke led Madi to her own bed rather than lead her to one of the empty bunks knowing that the girl would want to share for at least her first night. The girl gave no protests, slipping under the covers and moving to take the side nearest the wall while giving Clarke the other side, but as soon as the woman had laid down Madi shifted so that she was practically laying on top of Clarke with her head on her chest directly above her heart. Clarke let out a sound that was somewhere between a content sigh and a chuckle as she thought of how Madi used to sleep like that all the time when she was little.
“Chit?” Madi asked curiously as she shifted so she could look at Clarke, but she could barely see past her jaw from her angle.
“I was just remembering how you used to sleep like that, back when you were small enough to lay completely on top of me. Your little boney knees would dig into my sides the whole night and you’d sometimes grab a fistful of my hair and tug. It drove me crazy but if I even tried to shift from underneath you you’d whine and I never had the heart to put you down.” Clarke recalled affectionately as her hand went to Madi’s back and she patted it in the familiar two taps rythme.
“I’m too big to do that now. I’d probably crush you.” Madi mused with a nonchalant shrug, and Clarke felt her shift to try and ease her weight off of the woman a little. She quickly stopped her by pressing her hand firmly against the girl’s back to keep her there. The mother practically could not stand the idea of not feeling the whole weight of her daughter against her, wanting to feel every ounce of the person she had missed so painfully. However, she could not say that and instead she teased.
“Crushed to death by the person I love the most in this world doesn’t sound like a bad way to go. Speaking from experience, I’ve suffered worse fates. Bear traps, however,…” Clarke trailed off with a grin and playfully poked Madi’s side. Amusement quickly melted into concern when she heard the girl whimper as she tried to press closer to her and she was startled to feel her neck growing damp from what could only be Madi’s tears.
“Hey, what’s wrong? I’m sorry, honey. We always joke about that. You know I don’t actually blame you, right?” Clarke asked, confused as to why her daughter was sensitive to a joke they’d made dozens of times.
“It’s not that, just…” Madi sniffed as she tried to speak through the tears and exhaustion, and Clarke wondered how much of her reaction could be blamed on her poor girl being overwhelmed. “Don’t- don’t joke about you dying. It’s too real to joke about after what happened with Josephine.”
The girl whimpered, her face burrowing deeper in the crook of her neck as Clarke pulled her closer in a hug and sighed, her mind going back to the night she lay paralyzed awaiting her fate and terrified. She can’t even imagine what her daughter must have gone through when she suffered the same fate.
“I’m sorry, baby. But I’m here now, clir? I’m not going anywhere.” She promised softly, determined to not leave Madi’s side until she was old and frail and the girl was prepared to let her go. Madi was still sniffling, and Clarke could barely make out her words when she whispered.
“I’m sorry.”
Confusion swarmed in her mind and Clarke softly asked, “What for, honey? You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
“That I didn’t fight harder. That Cadogan got the code and that the test took place and humanity would have been condemned if it hadn’t been for you and the others. You saved everyone and you got punished for it when it was all my fault.” Madi explained, her words blurring together and edging on incoherence as she tried to fit in everything she had never gotten a chance to say to her mother, “You were stuck here all alone again. And if the others hadn’t come, I wouldn’t have taken so long, I would have come right away. But I would have ended up in Shadow Valley so what if I’d been too late? What if you’d decided to stop? You almost did before you met me. If you ended up alone again and it got too much to bear you would’ve- you were alone, Mom. I could have lost you. I came so close to losing you so many times and it terrifies me. I still need you. I’ll always need you. I-“
Clarke, who had been shell-shocked by the girl’s sudden rant, cut her off, unable to listen to anymore of her daughter’s pain as she was near hyperventilating, “Hey, stop. Stop. Madi, look at me. Look at me.”
Clarke took her chin in her free hand and tilted it to gently force her to look at her. “I’m here. I’m right here, see?”
She reminded her, taking the girl’s hand and moving it to her neck, guiding her fingers to her pulse point, proof that she was real and very much alive. Madi sniffled and pressed her fingers a little more firmly against the subtle thumping. Clarke stroked her hand, trying to get her to relax, “It’s all over now, baby. We’ve been through a lot, come out of it with a lot of scars. But the bad part has ended and we made it out. We’re going to be okay now. What you’re afraid of didn’t happen, and nothing bad will, I promise.”
“How do you know? How can you promise that after everything we’ve been through? Something bad always happens. It’s like we’re cursed. No one cheats death as many times as we do. We’re going to run out of luck.” Madi said with a tone of defeat, and Clarke was surprised to hear such pessimism from the young girl who was usually hopeful and optimistic in childish naiveness.
Clarke was the logical one- look before you leap, keep your wits about you and all that. She tried to raise Madi with a little bit of her head but mostly Bellamy’s heart with endless will to survive and fierce capacity of love. She was supposed to take after him and not her. Clarke knew she shouldn’t have told her all these stories with the bad parts, she shouldn’t have shared with her the time she almost killed herself before she’d found the girl when she’d almost given up all hope, and she sure as hell shouldn’t have said the things she did when she thought Madi was too delirious to remember as the terrible memory resurfaced in her mind.
Madi had gotten sick one winter, after she’d fallen and cut herself on a sharp rock when Clarke was supposed to be watching her. They were down by the riverbed, looking for berries when it happened. She had turned for one second, turning back just in time to see her little body falling to the jagged rocks but it was too late to get to her in time to catch her. Clarke rushed to her, scooping the girl into her arms as she held out her palm with blood pouring from it and crying hysterically. She had done her best to clean the nasty cut, but it still got infected and she did not have the medicine to treat it. Then Madi got a fever. The both of them went days without any sleep as Madi’s body tried to sweat out the illness and Clarke spent every moment watching over her little girl.
It only got worse until Madi was wailing in pain and the sound went through Clarke like a knife twisting in her gut as she did everything in her power to ease her child’s pain. She carried her and swayed and paced the floor of their home for hours until her arms burnt with her weight but she didn’t dare let her go. During the worst of it, Clarke lost it herself and started crying alongside Madi, feeling completely helpless and wishing it was her and not her kid. She talked to her, told her stories to try and distract her, and it ended up with her mostly talking to herself. That was when she told her that she couldn’t lose her, that if she lost her Clarke would have nothing and no one to live for and she couldn’t go back to that. If she had lost Madi, Clarke would have taken her gun and made sure she wouldn’t have to suffer another second of that fate. But she didn’t have to, because Madi got better, and Clarke swore the night she started recovering that she’d never let anything hurt her again. She resented herself for failing to follow up on that promise, resented herself for putting a burden on Madi she should not have to bear.
Clarke pulled her daughter closer so she could lay her head on her chest again and the woman resumed carding her fingers through her hair. Despite how worked up she'd gotten, Madi almost immediately melted under her ministrations, quickly calming down again, but with how she held a fistful of Clarke's shirt in a death grip she knew the girl was still not reassured.
After a stretch of silence passed, Clarke started speaking slowly as she tried to find the right words, “Maybe I can’t promise nothing bad will happen. But I promise I will do everything in my power to make sure we’re okay. I promise we’ll be fine.”
"But how do you know?" Madi asked again in frustration.
"I just do." She answered, perhaps unhelpfully. But she did her best to explain what she knew in her heart, "It's a mom thing. Our instincts tell us if there's danger nearby so we can protect our yongon.”
Madi seemed to ponder her answer, and Clarke couldn't tell whether it satisfied her or not. She seemed less anxious than before, but she still did not seem quite settled. Rather, it seemed to her like the young girl was distracted, thinking about something else. Clarke stayed quiet and waited to see if Madi would share what was on her mind with her or deem it unimportant. She wanted to know what kept her daughter in this quiet, contemplative mood, but she also wanted her to get some sleep, not liking the shadows under her eyes and how prominent they were even in the dim artificial light from the hallway.
It was a few seconds before Madi broke the silence again. "Does it- Do you think it's weird? I could stop…if you want."
She suggested softly, her tone suddenly going from loud and frustrated to shy and hesitant. The reason for the switch, along with the meaning of Madi's offer, were completely lost on her. With perplexion wrinkling her brow, Clarke pressed for clarification, "Stop what, baby?"
When Madi stayed silent, not supplying any explanation, Clarke tried to shift to face her, but the girl only burrowed her face in the crook of her neck and mumbled something instinctively, Clarke struggling to pick up on the muffled words.
“What’s that, strikon?” She managed to move away enough that Madi’s mouth was not directly against her skin and she finally heard the girl tentatively ask.
"Calling you Mom."
Clarke was surprised by the question, unable to think of any reason as to why Madi would think she'd have an issue with her moniker, unable to think of any reason Madi would not think she would be anything other than thrilled to have her call her that. When she took too long to answer from her shock, Madi took it as hesitancy, which only confirmed the pre-teen's fears. "I mean, I'm already twelve, probably closer to thirteen now. I know you're too young to be a mother to a teenager. We're better suited as sisters."
She frowned at that, and she could not tell but Madi was frowning as well, feeling like she had ruined something unspoken between them. Clarke never indicated that she saw Madi as her sister, or treated her in that way, and she wondered what had the girl come to that conclusion. Suddenly the blonde felt a tug of doubt in the nature of their relationship, “Do- Do you see me as a sister?"
She asked, and the speed by which Madi shook her head in answer reassured her. Clarke could not interject before she rapidly started babbling again, "But I could be your sister. The others, they don't have kids. Indra and Gaia don't really count because Gaia is an adult so they're all free to do whatever they want. They have responsibilities towards each other but not towards a kid. If I'm your sister, I wouldn't be your responsibility as much as I would if I was your daughter."
Madi explained to her, her hand moving from Clarke's shirt to toy with a lock of her hair, small fingers coiling a strand of blonde hair around her index and uncoiling it over and over again as she spoke. The gesture warmed her heart. Practically from the moment she had found the girl, Madi had been fascinated with her golden hair. Twirling it around her fingers every night as they fell asleep. She got distracted by the action, accidentally letting her daughter keep her fast paced monologue going.
"You wouldn't have to worry about me, and then if anything bad happens you wouldn't have to put your life on the line again like before. You'd finally get to rest. And I could still be a Griffin, right? I know I didn't ask when I took your last name, but I thought it would be okay since it's Skaikru custom. I should have asked before putting it into the tablet. I just thought.. I guess with everyone returning.. It was always just us two, but you had people coming back. You had Spacekru and you had family in the bunker, loads of them. My clan was gone and it didn't mean anything to be Madi kom Louwoda Kliron kru anymore. There was no Louwoda Kliron kru."
"Madi-" She finally tried to stop her but the girl kept pushing onward.
"So what was I? I froze when I had to write my name on that stupid tablet and I really didn't want to write my clan because it just confirmed that I didn't belong. You were the only person I had left, so I thought maybe if I took your name, that would mean something. Maybe it would mean I belonged to someone. Even if you got too busy to look after me, if you had to go back to your real family, I'd still have part of you. If I was a Griffin then I could be part of your family, too. And the name just stuck, Clarke. The school didn't understand what krus meant and I didn't want to stand out anymore than I did being the commander of an army in a class full of something the seda called sixth graders and all the other kids had last names and parents they could go home to and I just-"
"Madi, stop."
Clarke’s emphatic command got the girl to pause long enough for her to catch her breath and for Clarke to speak. At that point she hadn't even been sure if Madi was talking to her or to herself. The girl had wiggled out of her embrace and was sitting up now, looking slightly frantic and out of breath as she barely paused to take in air. Her face had turned red and her eyes were glistening with unshed tears and it broke her heart seeing her like this.
"First off, you don't need permission to be a Griffin, you just are. You've claimed your right to that name years ago." Clarke was quick to reassure the girl, placing a hand on her forearm to try and get the girl's attention. Madi did not react, and for a second Clarke thought she didn't hear her. When the girl finally met her eyes, her expression was not one of contentment but rather had morphed into a miserable pout and she looked seconds away from bursting into tears as she went on in distress.
"But I can't be! I don't deserve it! Griffins are brave and strong. They're born leaders and they protect their people. You were faced with impossible choices and you made all the tough calls so your people didn't have to. And I couldn't even keep the code from Cadogan! I couldn't save you!" Madi cried out, her voice raising an octave higher before she gave in and started sobbing.
The woman wasted no time in gathering her daughter up and into her arms, tucking her to her chest and rubbing her back to try and calm her down, whispering reassurances as her little girl trembled in her arms with each sob that broke out of her. Her baby had carried the weight of the world on her shoulders and now carried the guilt of failing it, and she was only just a kid. But she had not failed the world.
"Shh. It's okay, baby. You did so good, and I'm so proud of you for being so brave." Clarke cooed softly as she started to rock them back and forth. "No one could have fought harder than you did. Levitt told me himself that they'd never had someone last that long under the M-Cap. You were every bit a Griffin when you fought Cadogan just like you were every bit a Griffin when you took the flame to keep me safe, or when you went after Sheidheda. You overpowered him to save my life. I’m here because of you. I’m here for you."
She pulled back so Madi could look at her and see that she meant every word. Madi was reluctant to let her go for a moment until Clarke diverted her attention by cupping her face in her hands, brushing away her tears and catching the new ones as they fell.
"I know you're a Griffin because I raised you. And I know Mom would have been laughing at the irony and thanking you for turning out too much like me, just so I can learn how hard it must have been for her having me as a daughter, having her heart run into danger headfirst with no care for her own safety, all for the sake of her people." Clarke said with a hint of amusement, burying down the sadness that came with the realization that the cycle ended with her, that Madi will never have her own child to drive her crazy and Clarke will never get to fondly remind her of all the times she gave her premature grey hairs for pulling the same exact stunts. And her own mother wasn't here. She never got to see them at peace, never got to tease Clarke as she complained about all the times Madi gave her a hard time. She never got her own chance to live, the same chance she fought so hard to give to Clarke.
She continued, brushing away stray strands of hair out of her daughter's face so she could see her big sky blue eyes looking back at her, seeking her out, searching for something, hopeful. "You're mine, Madi. You belong to me. The others are like family, they're like the brothers and sisters I never had, but you are my family. I spent the best six years of my life being your mom, and I don't intend to stop anytime soon. Nothing is going to hurt us here, but if a threat comes up, I won't hesitate to protect you with my life because that's what mothers do. I can't turn off the part of me that wants to take care of you, Mads."
Madi slumped against her, hands coming up to rest on top of Clarke's as her forehead bumped against hers and she held it there. Still sniffling lightly, the girl admitted, "I don't want you to."
“Good. Then it’s settled then.” Clarke said with a satisfied smile, moving her hand to cradle the back of her neck where she could still feel the surgical scar from where the flame had been removed. It looked and felt exactly like the one she had. “You’re my baby, and I’m your nomi. Forever, Madi.”
She used her hold to guide Madi's head to her chest, and with her other arm wrapped around the girl's waist she pulled them both down back to their lying position, Madi still resting on top of her. The girl shifted her legs, settling them in the space between Clarke's knees, resting her full weight against her, one arm tucked under Clarke's neck while her other hand rested on the woman's collarbone.
Instead of feeling suffocated, Clarke felt safe under the comforting weight of her daughter, feeling each rise and fall of her chest as her breathing steadied while she stroked her long black hair, humming a lullaby she remembered from her mom to help her baby fall asleep. She only remembered two, and one of them she could never sing again, because it brought her back to the time she almost killed her own daughter, and before that to the very first time she was forced to take another's life, losing her first shred of innocence with it. Even if it was out of mercy for both times, it still haunted her too vividly for her to dare hum the lullaby she associated with the darkest moments of her life.
Just before Madi slipped off, Clarke placed a gentle kiss on her forehead and whispered, "Ai hod yu in, ai strik natblida."
It was muffled and weighed down with drowsiness, but Clarke heard her daughter's soft reply. "Ai hod yu in seintaim, Nomi."
Her heart still fluttered at the moniker, and for the first time since Eden back when it was just the two of them, Clarke felt completely at peace, with her daughter sleeping in her arms, wanting for nothing else in the world but time with her.
And they had plenty of that.