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Clarke has dreamt of seeing her friends again for so long that when she actually sees their silhouettes on the horizon at dawn she almost doesn’t believe it’s real. It takes Madi, tugging at her sleeve, her persistent chorus of “Is that them? Is that them?” for Clarke to accept that this time, it’s not a hallucination.
“I don’t know,” she says, because she still can’t believe it’s true. “Go back inside, Madi. I’ll let you know when it’s safe.”
She hears Madi leave and presumably enter the lab but Clarke’s eyes are locked on the approaching figures. She wills herself to move, to step towards them, but she’s frozen with shock.
Six years.
Six years, and at last, they have returned. She counts the figures, as weighed down with baggage as they seem to be, and tries to recall the names to match to their emerging faces.
And there is one, running ahead of the others, that makes her no longer be able to stand still.
Bellamy.
They collide almost painfully, grabbing onto each other, holding each other tight. His smell. She’d forgotten his smell. Her tears fall on an inhale. She can feel his warm breath against her hair. The others are approaching. These woods are not safe. But.
“Bellamy,” she whispers.
She hears him sob in response, his arms tightening impossibly further around her. “Clarke,” he says, and it sounds more like a prayer than a greeting. “Clarke. I knew it. I knew you’d be okay. You saved us. Clarke. You saved us.”
His cheeks are tear-stained when he eventually pulls away. He looks older. Tired. His hair is shorter. His eyes darker. She wonders if the last few years have been as trying on him as they have been on her, and not just in terms of survival.
She barely has time to take him in before someone is pushing past him and into her arms. Raven. Oh god, Raven. She’s the most beautiful thing Clarke has ever seen.
Clarke cries fresh tears as they hold on to each other tight, and Bellamy only stays back for a second, before he’s back, clinging onto them both, his tears welling in the crook of Raven’s neck.
Clarke brings her hand up, tangling her fingers in Raven’s shorter, looser, hair, before pulling her head down to rest against her shoulder, cradling her.
Raven laughs her sobs into Clarke’s chest. “Oh god I’m such an ugly crier, I’m sorry.”
Clarke feels Bellamy huff a laugh against her head and Clarke barely registers the slight motion that makes her press a kiss atop Raven’s head.
“It must be group hug time,” drawls a familiar voice, and Clarke looks up to find Murphy with a lopsided grin on his face, Monty and Harper not far behind him, and can only laugh when they join the party with ridiculous enthusiasm, jumping up and down to try and get closer to Clarke.
Clarke is openly crying as she pulls them each into her arms. “Oh god, I missed you guys so much.”
They part, eventually, and Clarke sees the reason Emori stayed back. She’s holding the hands of two young children.
Clarke smiles and huffs a sound of disbelief. They had children. The young boy with dark hair is presumably Monty and Harper’s, but the toddler… Clarke looks to Bellamy, who gives a smile, and then to Raven, who gives a slight shrug, and she’s so happy for them that she can barely feel her own heart break.
“Come on,” she says gently to the children, “Let’s get inside. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
It’s no surprise that Madi takes to Bellamy immediately, as six years in space have apparently not changed the size of his heart. As everyone gets settled, he starts telling her stories of space with ridiculous enthusiasm, while Raven stays behind to ask the questions that need to be asked.
“So… you adopted a kid.”
“You had a kid,” Clarke counters.
Raven gives a half-shrug with a sound of agreement. “Guess that makes us even.”
Clarke’s eyes linger on Bellamy, on his wide smile as he bends down to scoop up his daughter from the floor, and she says, “I guess so.”
Raven is smart enough to read through Clarke’s bullshit though. “Look,” she says, stepping in front of her to block the view of Bellamy. “I know this is weird, alright? But six years is a long time. We missed you, you know that, but you couldn’t have expected him to just… hold off. We didn’t even know if you were alive, Clarke.”
Clarke averts her eyes. Did she, on some level, expect him to wait for her? She closes her eyes in guilt as she realises, yes, yes she did. And how incredibly selfish was that?
“Hey,” Raven says, and gently places two fingers underneath Clarke’s chin, raising her eyes to meet her own. “You’re an important part of us, Clarke, that’s not going to change.”
Clarke smiles softly at her, though she knows her eyes must be too watery for it to seem at all genuine. Raven returns the weak smile, her fingertips brushing against Clarke’s skin as she retreats.
Their child is named Penelope, so called after the myth of Odysseus, and she has brown curly hair and a miniature version of her father’s nose. She’s a sweet girl, just turned two years old, and has a habit of watching Raven in silent awe, in a way that Clarke can at least understand.
When they finally retire for the night, fresh food in their bellies, drinks still on their tongue, and blankets scattered around the floor of the lab, Clarke walks past the sleeping family - Bellamy on his back, Raven tucked into his side, and Penny sleeping peacefully on his chest - and she finally feels the loss for what she doesn’t have.
She holds back a sob. She has no more tears left to cry today. But a much worse weight takes residence in her chest, pressing down onto her, as she makes her way outside of the lab and into the quiet, expansive night.
Clarke is woken, hours later, from her perch atop the lab by an insistent tugging on her arm.
“Clarke? Clarke?”
She grunts, recognising Madi’s voice, and forces herself to wake up at the note of worry in her voice. “What is it, little nightblood?”
“You said it’s dangerous outside. The Crims are still here.”
“I know, Madi, I know,” she mutters, and her eyes adjust to see colours of dawn on the horizon. “I shouldn’t be out here, and neither should you.”
“So why are you?”
“I…” Clarke breaks off, running her hand over her face in frustration. How was she supposed to explain this?
“Are you sad, Clarke?”
“No, I-”
“Your friends are back. You’re meant to be happy.”
Clarke swallowed her discomfort. “I am happy. I’m just… also sad.”
Madi frowns, but she’s a smart kid and works out at least the gist of it. “Because things have changed?” she hazards. “They’re not how you thought they’d be?”
Clarke nods, stiffly. “I guess so.”
Madi shrugs as if this is a mild inconvenience. “They are still your family. You told me that once, remember? No matter what changes. Family are family.”
Clarke smiles at the sunrise and pulls her daughter to her. “That’s right, little nightblood, and don’t you forget it.”
They start planning that morning on how to access the second dawn bunker and find the others.
There is still so much to know about each other’s past, and sometimes they will reference an event on New Ark that Clarke wants to question, and, likewise, there are many things about New Earth of which they are not aware.
It’s nice, if odd, to have the lab full of people once again, especially when it’s full of laughter as it often is when Jordan, Monty and Harper’s child, is in the room. He’s a troublemaker just like his namesake, but with a heart of gold, and already playing big brother to the little Penelope. They had clearly formed a family, in space, but have welcomed Madi with open arms, and for that Clarke is grateful.
They split up around midday and Clarke is only mildly surprised when Bellamy offers to go hunting with her so that Madi can stay behind and help Raven with the schematics. She knew, eventually, that he’d want to talk to her.
He doesn’t though, not until they are walking back with two rabbits and a rucksack of fruit between them. The air is thick with tension but Clarke doesn’t know how to break it; she spent every day, for two thousand days, talking to him, and now, she’s speechless.
He must see the lab approaching and panic at the closing window of opportunity to speak openly because he suddenly grasps her wrist and forces her to stop. “I have to-” he starts. Then, tries again, “I thought of you. Every day.” His eyes are wide, earnest, looking at her in that way he does, like her opinion is the only thing that matters. “Clarke…” his hand tightens on her wrist. She can feel her pulse point thrum through her to him. “You must know that I-”
She breaks her hand from his grasp. She doesn’t want to hear his declarations. Not now. Not when it’s much too late.
“You have a daughter,” she reminds him. “With Raven. Whatever we could have been… it’s too late. It can’t happen. You know that.”
He shakes his head. Stubbornly. Disbelievingly. (Some things never change.)
“I don’t want it to be like this.”
Clarke shrugs, unkindly. “It is what it is, Bellamy. The sooner you realise that the better.”
Their first attempt to open the bunker fails, or rather, their attempt to even leave their boundary fails, the Crims having pushed them back, Echo with a nasty wound in her side to show for it.
Clarke patches her up and lets her take the sole bed that her and Madi usually share. Emori stays with her and Clarke goes to wash the blood from her hands. She’s doing it mindlessly, numbly, until a gentle touch on her shoulder sharpens her focus, and she realises that her hands are long ago clean and white with cold.
“Hey,” Raven says softly, and picks up Clarke’s numb hands, drying them gently with the towel. “We’re going to try again, okay? We’re gonna get them - Abby, O, Miller - all the rest. A few Crims and a mound of rubble won’t stop me from finding your mum, okay? I’m Raven Mother Fucking Reyes, ain’t nothing gonna stop me.”
Clarke chuckles weakly. For six years, she’s had to be strong; to care for herself, and for Madi. But only one day after Raven Reyes returns to Earth and she’s already waging a war on behalf of Clarke. Her hands are gentle as they clean Clarke’s and her ministrations continue long after necessary, fingers tracing over skin with the utmost delicacy. Clarke wonders if Raven missed this as much as she did.
“We’re good, right?” Raven asks, out of the blue. She clears her throat and throws down the towel, perhaps having realised that her sudden question broke the quiet moment. “I mean… I know you and Bellamy must have talked yesterday…”
“You’ve got nothing to worry about, Raven.”
Raven reaches out to grasp Clarke on the wrist, almost identically to how Bellamy held her yesterday. “That’s not what I meant,” she whispers. “I know you two are… I don’t think I’d even mind if…” she shook her head. “Never mind. I just meant, we’re still family, right?”
Clarke smiled, not at all forced this time as she lay her hand over Raven’s and promised, “Always.”
That night, Madi goes to sleep amongst the other children on the mess of blankets, all huddled around Monty who had been telling them a bedtime story with far too many gruesome details. Clarke watches them for a while, a sappy smile on her face, thankful that at long last, Madi has other people in her life. They’ve somehow made a family out of the end of the world.
She returns to her work, trying to figure a new way out of the boundary, and she must have been at it for hours because when she next looks up, she is the only one awake in the lab, working by the light of a single torch. She looks around, first at the bundle of children around Monty, then, up to where Murphy and Emori sleep on the balcony, and then, finally, her eyes fall upon Bellamy and Raven tucked together on the far side of the room.
She sees them whisper to each other, Bellamy placing a soft kiss against her cheek.
Clarke tears her eyes away, unable to shake the feeling that she’s invaded a private moment. In her hurry, she drops her pen, and in the quiet of the large room, the sound reverberates loudly. Clarke cringes and glances at the children, thankful to see them still sleeping, as she hurriedly retrieves the fallen pen.
When she rises, she feels Bellamy and Raven’s eyes on her. She turns away, attempts to go back to her work, but then she hears soft, padded footsteps and the warmth of his presence behind her.
His hand falls heavy on her shoulder and the simple touch brings far more comfort, far more feeling, than it should warrant. She’s tired. She’s lonely. She just wants to curl up in his arms, surrounded by his warmth and his scent, and forget the last six years of separation.
“Hey,” he says, and his deep, sleep-heavy, voice rumbles through her. She feels every vibration, and it excites her in a way she’d almost forgotten.
His hand slips down from her shoulder to her lower back and Clarke’s eyes flutter closed at the sensation. She subtly presses her legs together, trying to suppress the sudden desire that surges through her at the gesture.
“It’s late. Come to bed.”
I’ve fallen asleep, she tells herself, I’ve fallen asleep and I’m dreaming.
She opens her eyes and turns her head back towards him, needing to reassure herself that he’s real. He’s watching her with soft eyes, painted even softer by the torchlight. His hand falls from her back to entangle with her fingers and every movement sparks electricity throughout her.
“I…” she starts. “Raven?”
“Is waiting,” he insists, with a tug of her hand. “Come on. The plans can wait. Come sleep with us. Just sleep. It looks like you need it.”
“I don’t…” Clarke starts, again. “Why?” she manages. “Why would you…?”
Bellamy’s expression shifts into one of sympathy and he inches forward to press a kiss into her hairline, his thumb still rubbing circles on the back of her hand. “We’ll speak later,” he promises, and she can feel the words on her skin. “But for now, please, even if it’s just this once, let us take care of you.”
She lets herself fall into his eyes as they bore into her own. He wears his heart in his eyes, always has, and she’s never been able to look back without feeling as if she’s seen too much, knows too much of his deepest self. He loves her. She’s known it for longer than she could dare to admit, always too afraid to recognise it. But, here, now, there is no mistaking that look in his eyes. She wonders if hers mirror the same.
“Okay,” she says, though it’s practically a plea.
He presses another kiss to her forehead, extinguishes the torch, and then leads her by their entwined hands towards Raven.
Clarke’s heart is already beating erratically even before Raven takes her hand and pulls her into their warm nest of blankets. Raven stretches and tangles her bare leg with Clarke’s as she pulls the blanket higher over Clarke’s shoulder, letting her hand linger there, fingers reaching up to play with the ends of her hair. Clarke’s heart aches at the touch and she sighs happily, nuzzling further into Raven’s embrace, their foreheads coming to rest together.
Clarke’s hand slips over Raven’s back and Raven practically purrs when her thumb starts tracing circles against her spine. “Mmmm,” she says, arching into the touch, “Perfect.”
“Careful,” Bellamy teases as he comes to lie the other side of Clarke. “Or the others will think we’re doing something more than cuddling.”
It’s a joke, surely, but the way Raven bites her lip, her eyes blown wide and dark, makes Clarke think that perhaps she wouldn’t be opposed to ‘more than cuddling’. It would be all too easy, Clarke thinks, to cross the distance between them and take her lips between her own.
Before she can follow the thought to conclusion, Bellamy is pressing up behind her and giving her a different set of distractions. His arms are still strong, still muscular, despite the time away from Earth, and when he puts them around her, she feels safer than she can ever recall feeling.
He breathes a sigh into her skin and she’s already on fire when he follows it with a lingering press of lips to her bare shoulder.
Clarke’s fairly sure she makes some sort of pleased moan as Raven’s soon snorting a laugh and teasing Bellamy for causing any rumours himself. Clarke smiles through their bickering, especially when it turns into teasing touches, and then, gentle, sleepy, touches, shared between the three of them.
She falls asleep, feeling safe and warm and loved, with a smile still lilting her lips.
It is late when she wakes and she rolls over in the tangled sheets to find the source of the laughter that woke her. Monty is chasing Jordan around the dining table as Penny bounces on Raven’s knee and Bellamy, ever the father, shouts at Murphy and Madi as they join the game of tag to “keep the noise down! Or you’ll wake Clarke!”
Clarke laughs and saunters over to the table, placing her hand good-naturedly on Bellamy’s shoulder. “Too late for that,” she says, and leans over him to steal a slice of his apple.
“What time is it?” she asks before Bellamy can retaliate. “Anyone checked on Echo yet?”
Harper jumps up onto the table, earning a scowl from Emori who had been preparing more fruit not two inches away. “Yeah, she’s okay,” Harper reports. “Awake. No sign of infection. Had plenty of water. We were gonna change the dressing later and try some food, if that’s okay?”
Clarke nods. She knew there had been several medical emergencies on New Ark and Monty had said earlier (in that proud, husband-like way of his) that it was Harper that had taken it upon herself to learn some medical skills. “Yeah,” Clarke says, “That sounds good. Thank you, Harper.”
Clarke feels a tugging at her shirt and for a minute wonders when Madi got so short before looking down and seeing that the perpetrator this time wasn’t Madi at all, but Penny, reaching over from Raven’s lap to fist Clarke’s shirt in her little hands. “Hey, stardust,” Clarke whispers down to her, “Whatcha doing?”
Penny looks up at her with wide, curious eyes. It’s the first time Clarke has dared to get this close - to see the result of her best friends’ love first-hand - but Penny is beautiful and there’s no mistaking the hereditary curiosity in her eyes.
“She’s probably after a cuddle, the little trickster,” Raven says with a mischievous glint in her eye. “She pulls you in with all these cute little moves and then she’ll poop in your flight suit right before launch.”
“Oh, come on,” Bellamy protests with a mouthful of fruit. “That was one time.”
“Uh, yeah,” Raven says mockingly, “and a pretty crucial time, if you remember. We nearly missed our window.”
Bellamy shrugs. “She’s two. You can’t hold it against her.”
“I can, and I will, thank you very much.”
Clarke laughs and nearly cries with it, overwhelmed with happiness at the once-familiar sound of her bickering friends that has been absent for too long.
Raven offers Penelope to Clarke and Clarke happily accepts, picking the toddler up and into her arms. Penny’s too old and too heavy to cradle properly and she seems uninterested in staying still anyway so Clarke ends up helping her walk around the old lab with her little hands encased in her own.
Penny soon stumbles across some old bits of tech to play with and Clarke laughs at how much she takes after her mother, absently kissing the little bundle of dark hair on Penny’s head. She looks up to gauge the parents’ reactions only to find them both already watching Clarke and Penny, with warm, indulgent smiles.
They decide to wait until Echo is fully healed before carrying out their new plan to approach the bunker. They finalise their plan and then Raven gets to work on making some kind of portable lever they can use to help shift the debris atop the bunker.
“Can I help?” Madi pipes up.
Clarke hadn’t even realised she’d been privy to the meeting. The kids were meant to be entertaining Echo upstairs (under the watchful eye of Harper, of course) while they finalised the plans. If she’d known her daughter was eavesdropping, she probably wouldn’t have made their odds sound quite so dire. But, Madi’s been through worse.
“With what, Mads?” Bellamy asks as he rolls up the map of the bunker. “We can’t take you with us, it’s too dangerous, you know that.”
Clarke nods in agreement.
“I know but…” she looks at Clarke as if to ask permission, even though Clarke doesn’t know what for, before her eyes flicker over to where Raven is gathering materials. “I can build things.” She turns back to Clarke with her well-practised face of innocence. “Can I help Raven? Pleeeeease?”
“I, er…” Clarke lifts her eyes to Raven, raising an eyebrow in question, to which Raven just shrugs. She turns back to Madi and assents, “Okay, little nightblood, if you’re careful and do exactly what Raven tells you okay? She’s going to be working with some dangerous things.”
“Yes!” Madi screeches, tackling Clarke in a hug and nearly sending her backwards, before running towards Raven. “Thank you!” she shouts over her shoulder.
“No running near the workbench!” Bellamy shouts after her, though it’s futile, the pair of them already skipping off towards inevitable destruction like it’s Unity Day. He sighs, like a tired father, and Clarke squeezes his shoulder in sympathy as the others disperse.
He angles his head towards her. “If those two haven’t formed some kind of dangerous science duo by the end of the day, I’ll be damned.”
She nudges him playfully with her elbow. “Raven’s like an idol to her. Come on, it’s sweet.”
“It’s deadly,” he counters.
She smirks and can see the playfulness behind his charade. The urge to kiss him sneaks up on her again as it did last night, and her skin flushes with it. He said they’d talk about it, but they haven’t yet. He’d said “just this once” though and that implies enough for her. It was more than she expected, probably more than she deserved, and so, if it was just the once, that was fine by her. Besides, the memory of their arms around her, of her waking up in a warm bed to the sound of their children playing, could probably sustain her through another Praimfaya if she needed it. She’ll be okay.
Bellamy is right. Raven and Madi are a force to be reckoned with. They emerge from the workbench that evening with not one, but three, devices they could use to uncover the bunker. And, a secret handshake. Madi continues to talk about how great Raven is for a good percentage of the evening and Clarke is not surprised in the slightest when Madi picks Raven to be her partner for hide and seek. Clarke’s oddly flattered though, when Bellamy insists that Clarke should be Penny’s.
The children fall asleep after Monty’s bedtime reading again but Clarke is too tired to keep working and so after a quick check on Echo, she enters the old office with the intention of a nap on the desk chair. What she gets instead though, is an eyeful of a very naked Murphy entangled with Emori on the floor. Clarke quickly backs out the door with a cringe and an apology, not sure if she’ll be able to look them in the eye anytime soon. Clarke isn’t the only one that uses the office for privacy, it seems.
Clarke retreats back into the main room, her plan to subtly avoid the Bellamy and Raven situation truly scarpered, and finds a dark corner as far away from the others as possible. She’s barely laid her head against the wall and closed her eyes when Raven comes to sit beside her. “You not joining us tonight then?”
How Raven can talk about what they’re doing (or not doing) so casually, Clarke will never understand. Her forehead wrinkles in confusion, “I didn’t think you’d want…”
“Oh for fuck’s…” Raven trails off, banging her head against the wall. “He didn’t talk to you, did he? He was meant to, the damn coward. Find out where you’re at, tell you where we’re at, talk about arrangements, you know, if you even want any of that. It was meant to be a conversation.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” Raven says, throwing her hands up in despair. “Oh.”
“You want…?”
“Yep.”
“And he wants…?”
“Yep.”
“And so you need to know if I…? For both of you…?”
“That’s about the long and short of it, yeah. I’d try to be okay if you only wanted him, though. Or neither. Or whatever. As I say, it’s meant to be a conversation.”
“Have you…?” Clarke starts, wringing her hands in her lap. “Have you done anything like this before?”
Raven’s mouth twists as she thinks. “Not properly. I’ve had casual arrangements. But, we’re parents now, right? Gotta be responsible. So here I am, talking about it first, instead of just outright kissing you and hoping for the best.”
Clarke feels her brain short-circuit at the words ‘kissing you’ and for a minute that’s literally all she can think about. Lips. Hands. Touch. Her exhale breathed against her lips. “Er,” Clarke manages, ungracefully, when her brain comes back online, “You’re right. That’s… that’s a conversation.”
Raven shrugs against the wall and it rubs their shoulders together in a way that’s starting to feel natural. “If you’re not ready to say, one way or the other, that’s cool. No pressure. We just figured… we’d put it out there. We survived the end of the world, you know? Dancing around something like this now just seems… I don’t know. Stupid. Insignificant. We like each other, and he likes you, and you like him, and I like you, so-”
“And I like you,” Clarke interrupts before Raven can have any doubts.
“Right,” she says, and a beautiful smile begins to form on her face. “So, that’s where we’re at.”
Clarke nods again, her mind still a little stuck on the whole kissing thing.
“So,” Raven says, standing up with the aid of the wall and offering her hand to Clarke, “Do you want to join us?”
Clarke wakes early the next morning still entangled with Bellamy and Raven. She panics, a little, at what this must look like. In principal, she doesn’t mind the others knowing, as she’s fairly certainly Echo has entanglements with the others that may not fall into the usual relationship models and so they’re probably pretty open minded, but… she has no idea how to explain why she is spending her nights with them, especially when they’ve yet to decide how serious it is themselves.
She also has no idea how to explain it to Madi, who is probably old enough to know that adults don’t usually sleep next to other adults just as friends.
Her fear is founded when she extracts herself from the bedsheets to find Madi waiting at the table for her, playing mechanic with some parts and tools.
“Don’t put that stuff on the communal table, Madi, that’s what the workbench is for.”
“Raven did it.”
Clarke sighs. “Then I’ll tell Raven off later too. We eat from this table. We make bread on this table. It’s meant to be clean.”
Madi swipes the tools from the table onto her lap but she doesn’t actually move to put them away, her eyes instead flickering behind Clarke to where Bellamy and Raven are still sleeping.
“You don’t sleep alone anymore,” she says bluntly.
“Uh, yeah. Sometimes I sleep next to Penny’s parents. We’re good friends.”
“Oh okay,” she says, toying with a part, “That’s nice. I like the new people, they’re cool. Jordan’s a little brat but at least he’s not totally useless. Penny is, but I guess that’s just because she’s little, maybe she’ll be more fun when she’s grown up some more. I wanna teach her how to hunt.”
Clarke smiles at her indulgently, she really does love Madi like her own child. “I’m glad you like your new family, little nightblood. Hopefully we’ll find the rest of our people soon and you can meet more of my friends. And my mom,” she adds with a sad smile, “I think she’d love you.”
Madi reaches over the table and places her hand over Clarke’s comfortingly. “How could she not?” she asks with a grin. “I’m awesome.”
Clarke laughs. “You are spending far too much time around Raven.”
Clarke comes back from scouting the forest the next day to find Bellamy waiting for her inside, pacing the corridor nervously.
“Everything okay?” she asks.
“Yeah,” he says, though he doesn’t look it. “And outside?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t look like the Crims have breached the perimeter, but I think I see some activity in the distance, we’ll have to careful next time we go hunting.”
He nods, and for a minute she thinks that’s all this is, just business, before he steps a little closer. “I just want…” his hand comes out to cup her shoulder before running it down the rest of her arm, “wanted to talk to you.”
Hope starts bubbling beneath her chest as he says this and she steps further into the shadows of the corridor, affording them more privacy. “Yeah?” she asks coyly, “what about?”
He huffs a laugh as her arms come to circle his neck. “Oh, I think you know what about, Princess,” he flirts as his hands come to rest on her waist.
He seems to get lost in his thoughts then, flirtation abandoned, as he watches his thumb smooth across the skin of her exposed hipbone. He sighs and shifts so his forehead is resting against hers, breathing her in.
He doesn’t move away to speak, instead looking at her through his long lashes, his breath ghosting against her lips. “I have wanted you…” he admits, “for so long, that I…” He breaks off with a pained wince but his other hand comes to cup her cheek, stroking so softly that she could cry with the noticeable restraint of it, the way every touch feels like years of pent-up pining coming to fruition.
“I know,” she whispers back, the words broken with intensity. Her hand comes to cover his, and then she turns her cheek to place a gentle kiss onto the palm of his hand. “I was so afraid,” she confesses. “Everyone I love dies, and I couldn’t… Not you too. I needed you to live.”
He shudders with repressed tears and clings to her as he finally says the words they both know have been true for years, “I love you, Clarke.”
She pushes forward and they fall into a kiss, so intense, and so consuming, that she can feel every day of their six year separation in it.
“I love you too,” she gasps when they break for air.
He does cry then and she kisses away each and every tear.
Clarke’s pretty sure Raven knows what happened between them just from the goofy grin on Bellamy’s face when they re-enter the lab. He’s in such a good mood, swinging Jordan from his hands and consequently starting an impromptu dance party, that Clarke is pretty sure all the adults in the room suspect what has transpired between them.
Bellamy keeps looking over at her as she prepares the rabbits for dinner, smiling in such a distracting way that she nearly skins her own fingers as a consequence.
Raven comes over as she’s about to start on the vegetables and takes the knife from her hands. “Okay, Griffin, I’m officially taking over before you lose a finger.”
Clarke blushes a little at having been caught, and pushes the wooden board with the vegetables towards her.
“I know he’s cute but I’m seriously worried about your health right now,” Raven teases as she starts on the potatoes. “I take it you two, uh, worked out your kinks then?” Raven knows exactly what she’s implying if the quirk of her eyebrows and her crooked smile are anything to go by.
Clarke shakes her head with a laugh. “You could say that.” She turns around and leans back against the table so she can see Raven side-on, and then whispers earnestly, “You okay with that?”
“Hell yeah,” Raven says with emphasis. “He’s stupidly happy right now if you hadn’t noticed.”
They both look up to see Bellamy doing an exaggerated dance move, something like a waltz, with Madi standing on his boots and grinning right back at him.
“Yeah,” Clarke says with amusement, “I noticed.”
Raven laughs and elbows her good-naturedly. “So, go on, did I miss anything good?”
“Why?” Clarke asks coyly, sidling closer to Raven, “Want a demonstration?”
This time it’s Raven that nearly loses a finger. Clarke laughs as the knife hits the block and covers her hand over Raven’s on the knife. There’s a tension here between them, thick, and unexplored, that makes Clarke want to keep her hand moving, see what else will make Raven’s brilliant mind grind to a halt. She has a few ideas.
“Maybe later,” Clarke suggests, and retreats her fingers from Raven’s hand slowly, enticingly.
“Yeah,” Raven says, breath stuttering. “Later is good.”
One by one, they all fall under Bellamy’s spell, and Clarke doesn’t remember the last time she danced so freely, so unburdened, since a child. For the first time since they were reunited, it truly feels like a celebration. Even Echo comes down and manages a very gentle twirl in Murphy’s arms. They eat, they dance, and then, later, when even Madi is exhausted from dancing and curled up in her new spot by the younger children, Clarke approaches Raven with her lip caught between her teeth, and pulls her into a slow, sensual dance.
They only manage a few turns before Raven’s leg starts to protest and they stumble back towards the table. “You know what I want?” Raven asks, tracing the back of her index finger down Clarke’s cheek.
“What?” Clarke teases, resisting the urge to follow her base instinct to pull Raven straight into her lap and go to town right here and now.
Raven leans down to whisper in her ear. “I want to sit down. And not on a chair.”
Clarke feels her face flush at this filthy declaration and bites her lip as her eyes flicker around the room, checking for eavesdroppers. The kids are mostly asleep though, and everyone else is minding their own business, except for Bellamy who’s looking straight at them from across the room, a bashful smile on his face.
She can barely form the words to say ‘yes’ but she tugs on Raven’s hand and as soon as they’re out the sight of the others, she pushes Raven against the wall and kisses her. Raven’s hands tangle in her hair immediately and Clarke licks the moan right out of her mouth. They make out until Clarke can barely breathe and then she grasps Raven again and they stumble into the empty office, closing the door behind them, just before they fall to the floor.
Raven makes sounds almost as filthy afterwards as during, stretching and curling their naked bodies together. “Okay,” she says, propping her head on her hands to look at Clarke with a wolfish grin. “Remind me why we’ve spent the last ten years not doing that, because that was awesome.”
Clarke laughs and reaches up to push a stray strand of Raven’s hair behind her ear. “Awesome, huh?”
Raven hums in agreement before bending down and brushing her lips against Clarke’s. After sex, a kiss should be insignificant, but somehow this gentle display of affection feels more intimate than anything else they’ve done. Raven fools around, she laughs throughout, and it would be easy during the act to think it was just some fun for her, but, this? The gentle touches afterwards? The whispered confessions? This makes Clarke’s heart ache with want.
“Hey, Raven?” Clarke says, holding her close with a hand on the back of her neck, thumb circling the pulse point, “I’m glad you suggested we do this.”
Raven smiles again, all crooked and open, and it’s the most beautiful sight Clarke can ever recall seeing, except for when she saw their ship in the sky.
A knock on the door sends them skittering apart before Bellamy’s voice follows, “Can I, er…?” he clears this throat. “I was wondering if…”
Raven’s shaking her head, laughing, whether in relief or mockery Clarke’s not sure, but she opens the door before Bellamy can finish any of his redundant sentences, and Clarke gets to watch with amusement from their pile of shredded clothing on the floor, the slack jawed expression of Bellamy as Raven stands naked before him. He seems to struggle with the English language even more than he had been.
Raven smiles, taking pity on him, and pulls him into a kiss, closing the door behind him with her other hand. Bellamy’s still looking at her dazed when she pulls away.
Raven turns back to Clarke with a flirtatious smile. “What do you say, Clarke? Up for more fun?”
Bellamy makes love to her, at first, like she’s going to break; every touch as charged and as meaningful as it was during their first kiss. It drives her crazy, her head actually spinning, until her impatience outweighs his romanticism and she pushes the pace forward until Raven has to kiss the screams of ecstasy out of her mouth.
It’s different this time when they fall asleep together, no longer any barriers between them. Clarke’s drifting somewhere between wake and sleep when she realises she’s yet to say it. “I want this,” she murmurs into Bellamy’s chest, and clutches at Raven’s hand at her side. “I really want this.” And she feels them both kiss her in response.
“Alright,” Murphy says a couple of days later, the morning they’re about to set out for the bunker. “I’m gonna ask this once, and then never again, and please, dear god, do not give me any details, but… I am right in thinking that this twosome-” he says, pointing at Raven and Bellamy behind them as they suit up, “is now a threesome?” he says, indicating Clarke, and then back at Raven and Bellamy.
Clarke has to bite her cheek from smiling too widely. “Something like that,” she says.
Murphy holds his hands up. “Ooookay. Cool. Never talking about it again. Gotcha. Makes sense.” Then he seems to sober up and adds, “Madi know yet?”
Clarke shrugs and goes back to checking her gun. “She’s just got a whole new family and about to discover, I hope, a thousand more. I think the discussion can wait a little while.”
Murphy nods solemnly. “Makes sense. She’s a sharp kid though. I wouldn’t leave it too long if I were you.”
Clarke looks across the lab to see Madi loading up their gadgets for the road. “Maybe… If it comes up while we’re gone?”
“Sure,” he nods. “I’ll tell her that her momma has been having naked sleepover parties with little Penny’s parents, got it.”
Clarke glares at him across the table.
Murphy raises his hands again. “Okay, okay, I’ll tell her that she’s got two new parents or whatever other sappy shit you want me to say.”
Clarke sees Raven approach Madi at the workbench, making some last minute adjustments, while Bellamy cuddles Penny in full battle gear as if saying goodbye.
“No,” Clarke says, watching her family. “That’s good. Say that.”
Getting past the Crims leaves its scar and they’re exhausted and wounded by the time they make it to the bunker, but Madi and Raven’s bag of tricks does its magic, and soon they are climbing down the ladder and facing their second reunion in as many weeks.
Bellamy and Octavia literally fall to the ground together in relief. The others greet old friends like no time has passed at all. And Clarke notes that there’s a handful of new children here, as well. But, Clarke is only looking for one face.
She sees her then, pushing through the crowd as people surge past the newcomers to scramble into the outside world. “Mom,” Clarke cries and falls into her arms. Abby holds onto her tight, crying openly as they cradle each other. Kane is only a step behind and he squeezes her shoulder and gives her a tight nod, before going to Bellamy and out of sight.
“I knew you’d make it,” Abby says, pulling away and holding Clarke at arm’s length to examine her. “I just knew you were still alive.”
There’s a mass celebration that night, a huge bonfire and songs into the night. Murphy and Emori appear sometime after midnight, the exhausted children in their wake, and no one dares tell them to go to bed as humanity celebrates its freedom once again.
Clarke lies back, her head pillowed on a log, as she looks up into the starry sky. She spent six years looking at the same sky, imagining her friends were looking back. And now they were all here, reunited. Bellamy lies beside her, cradling his sleeping daughter in his arms, and Raven sits on the log behind them gently running her fingers through Clarke’s hair. Clarke’s eyes flutter with contentment as she lies between them, so happy and peaceful that it feels like a dream.
She watches as Madi plays in front of the bonfire with children of her own age for the first time since Praimfaya, and looks across to her mother and Kane only to find them also watching Madi, having met and loved their grandchild like Clarke always knew they would.
Her family surrounds her, safe and happy, and as dawn approaches over the horizon Clarke can think of no better way to greet the new day.