Work Text:
Drawing up treaties with the prisoners has been…exhausting. It feels like she’s doing the whole thing over again, except that she’s on the opposite side this time and she manages to get them to talk before exchanging bullets and spears.
So, in retrospect, not as exhausting as the first time around. At most, all she can complain is that it’s a little repetitive.
And she doesn’t have Bellamy by her side, this time. But she tries her best not to think about that.
She still finds time to radio him, most days, an outlet more than anything. Her voice doesn’t break on his name like it did those first few months, and then again at the five year mark.
It’s good for her, she thinks, talking to him. Madi has been a godsend for her sanity—giving her a sense of priority, a schedule, with all her lessons, and most importantly, someone to love—but she is still a kid, and Clarke misses talking to her friends. Misses Bellamy, more than anything. There’s no point denying it.
He was more than a best friend, which sounds overly sentimental to her own ears, but you don’t go through what they did together and not come out of it as each other’s person. So yeah, she misses him like a constant, familiar ache.
Or maybe she misses the person she remembers. Misses what her brain tells her he was. She can hardly trust her memories, now. Can hardly say for sure if he’d looked at her the way she thought he had, six years ago. If he’d really had the persistent aura of warmth that she still imagines.
They’d loved each other. She knows that at least. In what way, it doesn’t really matter. Not now. But she’d loved him. And he her. And they were a team.
And now they’re not.
Clarke smiles grimly as she finishes the walk from the negotiations tent, back toward her camp. Back to Madi. Her new team member.
She gives the girl a quick squeeze when she runs up as Clarke closes their wooden fence behind her. They’ve mostly retired the rover and their vagabond lifestyle for the last couple months, now that they need to stay close by to the newcomers. And their gate is nothing compared to the one that used to surround Arkadia. It’s a border more than a deterrent, and the thought makes her smile with a little more strength. No need for charged wire and guards, not this time.
“Hey kiddo. Finish that math?”
Madi rolls her eyes, but accepts the hug. “Ages ago. I’m almost halfway through one of the storybooks you brought back last time.”
Clarke stifles a laugh and thinks, not for the first time, that Bellamy would love her. It makes her ache, and also reminds that she hadn’t radioed this morning, what with the early meeting with the Martians.
“I get it, you’re a genius,” she says, ruffling a hand through her braids. “You have to tell me about your favorite stories later.”
She leaves Madi with dinner, courtesy of the Martian hunters, given in exchange for more survival tips, before picking up the radio.
“You need anything before I take the radio out? I missed this morning.”
“Nope,” the girl says, her attention already back on the book.
“Okay.” Clarke presses a kiss to her hair. “I won't be gone for more than an hour.”
There’s no danger here, not now that they’re on good terms with the prisoners. Plus Madi is nearly thirteen, and already bristling when Clarke gives her too many boundaries, or doesn’t let her stay at the camp alone.
The sun is just starting to set when she finishes the short trek up the hillside, to the overlook that she thinks gives her signal the best chance at reaching the Ark. The valley it looks down on is desolate as it’s ever been, though she swore she spotted a speck of green last week.
Settling down onto her usual moss-covered log, she fiddles with the receiver for a second, and then sits back.
“Hey Bellamy,” she says on a sigh. It’s how it always feels when she starts these. Like she hasn’t taken a proper breath all day. “Me again.”
It never really stops feeling stupid, talking to no one, but she doesn’t know when she’s going to stop. She’s sure she’ll have to, eventually. Just not today. Not until it stops helping.
“It’s been 2,260 days since Praimfaya. Negotiations with the Mars colony are more like Madi’s lessons these days. Except more about what not to eat and less about literature and math.” She grins down at her feet, hair falling forward. “I keep thinking how much you’d like her. She’s going to be smarter than me soon. She might even beat you out for mythology references. Those are her favorites from the last trip I took to Becca’s library.”
She clears her throat. “Not much news from the rest of the world. The bunker is still radio silent, but with the Martians here we might have the manpower to dig them out, if I can convince them to help. But… yeah.” She trails off into her thoughts. “We’re still here. On the one spot of green on the planet. Surviving. And still hoping, in case this message wasn’t enough evidence of that. I keep thinking I’ll have to stop this at some point. But like I’ve said before—it helps. And I don’t think I could let go of you, of hope.”
“I’m really glad you didn’t.”
Clarke nearly drops the radio. Because the response doesn’t come from through the crackly speaker, but from the tree line to her right. From here. Earth.
She shoots to her feet, heart racing—from fear or anticipation, she can’t tell. The voice is familiar, so familiar it hurts, but she’s spent so long hoping that this feels like it must be a trick. It must be, until she turns and sees—
“Bellamy?”
Because unless she’s well and truly lost her mind, that’s definitely Bellamy. A little older, hair a little longer, but fuck. Still Bellamy. Her mind trips over itself, trying to take in every detail at once.
He takes a couple steps toward her, a small, hopeful smile playing at his lips. Even now, even after six years, she can tell it’s underlied with guilt.
“Sorry we’re late,” he says, and she wants to live in his voice, or collapse to the ground. It’s a pretty equal fight. “Getting up to space was one thing, but coming back down without incinerating ourselves was more of a problem.”
She can’t laugh at the half-joke, can’t even breathe, let alone believe what she’s seeing. Her mind races as she takes a hesitant step forward.
“I didn’t know if you even made it to the ring.” Even now, with him standing here, it seems impossible.
“We did. Thanks to you.” And sure enough, she shifts her eyes to the other six emerging from the trees behind him. Hanging back a little, but here. Alive.
It’s so long ago now, the day she tried to align the dish. The day she lost him. Lost all of them. It’s so long ago that she’d given up on agonizing over whether it had worked. Whether she saved them, or left them stranded in space.
It’s always been in the back of her head, a constant weight, tinged with the smallest flicker of hope, but it’s been so long since she’s let herself think on it, in concrete terms.
And here he is. Bellamy. If he’s not a hallucination, then he must be something infinitely crazier: a confirmation of all her most optimistic hopes. That the rocket worked, that she’d moved the dish in time, that they’d gotten the air turned on, that the algae bloomed on schedule, that, despite every odd against them, they’d survived.
She’s still staring, and when she meets his eyes, he’s looking at her like he’s trying to figure her out. Her chest twinges painfully.
There’s so much to say -- so much to ask -- that she can’t think where to start. He’s got dirt on his face, and she’s sure the rest of them do too, but she can’t tear her eyes from him. She wants to touch him. Make sure he’s real.
“We came down a month ago,” he supplies, shifting slightly on his feet.
She manages to process the words over the part of her brain that can’t stop noticing that she’d forgotten how good his voice sounds.
A month. So long and yet… so short, in the grand scheme of things.
“We started getting your transmissions a week ago. It took Raven a couple days to get a location from your signal because the ship was pretty fucked up from the landing, but once she did, we started out right awa—”
She’s got her arms around his neck before he can finish, when the need becomes so persistent that she can’t repress it. Like she’s been holding her breath for six years. All thoughts of the passed time erased by the earnestness of his voice.
“I missed you so much,” she whispers, voice wavering.
It doesn’t feel like enough. Not compared to what she’s feeling. But his arms come up around her without hesitation—so familiar, but such a distant memory that she can’t believe she’s ever felt something so good before—and she lets the tears fall from her eyes, unrelenting.
“I missed you too,” he says, so quietly and so low that she almost misses the shake in his voice. “Every day.”
“Me too. I radioed. Every day. You never responded but…”
She can feel him swallow, arms tightening around her, like he’ll never let go. “We never got the coms running again. Clarke, I’m s--”
“I—I just,” she cuts him off and shakes her head into the crook of his neck, choking on a watery laugh. Still reveling in the feel of him. “I can’t believe you’re alive. You’re here.”
“All thanks to you.”
She snorts weakly, not bothering to wipe away the sticky tears as she talks into his shoulder, “I’m willing to bet you were a big part of keeping them all alive, up there.”
“We all did our part.”
She pulls back with a laugh. “Good to see you didn’t lose your modesty.”
He shrugs, a smile playing at the edges of his lips. “Survival’s a team sport.”
She recognizes her words coming from his mouth, and she’s not sure she’s felt this light in years. Not even when they first came to Earth.
He’s not smiling anymore as her eyes roam his face, cataloging every new line, every familiar freckle. When she reaches his eyes, her breath catches at the emotion she finds there.
“Fuck, you’re really alive,” he breathes.
She can’t do anything but smile, heedless of the still falling tears. “So are you. And you’re here.”
She barely catches his returning smile before he pulls her back into him, his chin a blissful, comforting weight on her shoulder. Her hand moves up into his hair when she feels his own tears against her neck.
Home, she thinks. This is what home feels like.
*
When they finally pull apart, her eyes fall on the others. Raven first, who already has her arms open when Clarke barrels into them, then Monty, and Harper, and Murphy, and Emori, and even Echo, who Clarke doesn’t think has ever looked at her with such… kindness.
She doesn’t for a second hear their insistence that they don’t need to stay at her camp, that they’ve got a camp of their own, not too far.
“I haven’t seen you all for six fucking years,” she says on a laugh. “You’re staying here.”
She catches herself for a moment, realizing that they’re more their own people than they are hers anymore. “At least for tonight,” she amends. “And longer, if you want.”
“Of course we want,” Monty says, easy as anything. “What are we without our fearless leader?”
She’s heard that your heart can break from happiness.
“You had one of your own,” she says, nodding to Bellamy, and pushing through the tightness in her throat that comes from meeting his gaze. It eases a little when he smiles at her, soft.
“But good,” she says, clearing her throat. “No take backs. Come on, you have to meet Madi.”
*
“So you are real,” is the first thing Madi says when Clarke introduces the group.
“We haven’t quite gotten to manners in the lessons yet,” Clarke says to her friends, mostly because she knows it’ll make Madi glare, and maybe because it’ll distract from her blush.
“Hi, I’m Madi,” the girl says primly, sticking her hand out to Bellamy with a pointed I can be polite glance at Clarke.
“Hi Madi, I’m Bellamy.”
It’s probably pathetic to say that Clarke’s had this dream. All the people she loves in one place.
“Yeah, I figured,” she says. “Did you know that people can have vivid delusions and hallucinations as a result of trauma? I read about it in a psychology book.”
Clarke chokes on air, and Bellamy looks like he’s suppressing a laugh. Behind him, Murphy and Raven are definitely laughing.
“I think I have heard about that, yeah.”
“I thought that was what was happening to Clarke for a while, but she seemed pretty happy besides that, so I wasn’t sure. I’m glad you’re real.”
“Yeah, so am I,” he says, eyes drifting to Clarke’s for a second, giving her the same jolt of happiness it has for the last hour. That’s probably not going away. She hopes it doesn’t, anyway.
“You’re just as smart as Clarke said,” Bellamy is saying. “This is Raven. She’s really smart too.”
“I know Raven! Clarke said you could teach me about rocket science if you ever came down.”
“Well we came down, so I guess I have to now,” Raven says, stepping forward to shake her hand.
The rest of the introductions take a bit of time, but Clarke doesn’t mind. She can’t stop smiling.
*
Once they get the campfire going, Clarke takes a seat at Bellamy’s side—Madi is next to Raven, already hanging on to her every word—and fills them in on everything she knows. About the bunker, and the Martians. They all decide that a trip to Polis is order in the next few days.
Bellamy settles in closer as the night stretches on and the rest have split into smaller groups.
His warmth is so familiar she wants to cry.
“I’m glad you’re happy,” he says, voice rough and thick with emotion, echoing Madi’s words from earlier. “And I’m sorry we left you behind.”
“Hey.” She finds his hand on log between them, laces her fingers through his and squeezes. “If you hadn’t, we’d all be dead now.”
He nods almost imperceptibly, but his fingers still tighten around hers.
“I have been happy though. Turns out that even after the second apocalypse, earth still has a lot to offer,” she teases. “So don’t feel too guilty.”
He snorts. “Yeah, that definitely helps.”
She’s smiling as she tells him everything—all the finer details she’d left out while talking to the group—about finding Madi two years in, about feeling like herself again after that, about how much it still helped, talking to him every day.
In exchange, he gives her stories from the Ark: how they passed the time, how bad their food tasted before they figured out how to season it properly, how they’re broadly all the same people—like he somehow knew Clarke would be worried about that. About fitting herself into their group again
It’s nearly the same as her story: difficult, but exhilarating, figuring out how to survive in a new world, and succeeding at it.
It makes her feel like they were connect this whole time, somehow.
“Hey Bellamy,” she says, after a while.
“Hey Clarke.”
She huffs a laugh, and then lets her head rest on his shoulder.
“I was happy. But I’m happier now that you’re here.”
She can feel the breath he takes, unsteady as hers have been.
“Yeah. Me too.”
*
“Okay Blake, stop hogging Clarke,” Raven says when words have lapsed into silence. “You’re not the only one who’s missed her.”
He turns to Clarke conspiratorially. “Told you nothing’s changed.”
“Cute,” Raven snarks. “Make yourself useful and get us some food.”
He rolls his eyes, but does what she says, dropping Clarke’s hand with an apologetic smile as he heads over to where Madi’s beckoning toward the food from the Martians, from earlier that day.
“How’s the leg?” Clarke asks, tearing her gaze from him.
“As stiff as ever, but not worse, so,” she shrugs, “small blessings.”
Clarke wraps an arm around her. It’s not just Bellamy she’s missed. “A lot of those today.”
“We were always coming, Clarke. It just took us a while.”
“Yeah, he told me. And I… I think I always knew.”
Her eyes stray to Bellamy again, to where Echo bumps a hip against his while they grab food. She must say something, because he laughs and shakes his head before returning the gesture.
“Are they…” Clarke starts, trailing off when she finds the question too painful. Even after 6 years to get over it. She’s probably making what Madi calls the Bellamy face.
But Raven turns to her before she can take it back. Seeing through her, like she always has.
“What, Bellamy and Echo?” She snorts. “Nah. He’d have to stop thinking about you for more than ten minutes for that to happen.”
Clarke tries to think of something to say to that, and fails.
“You should have seen his face when we heard you over the radio. I think some part of him never gave up hope that you were alive.”
She’s going to kiss him. It's not a jarring thought, but it's one that she's been doing her best at suppressing.
Maybe not today, but she’s definitely going to kiss him. Soon.
“Neither did I.”
Raven smiles knowingly. “Yeah, I figured. Neither of you have ever done things halfway.”