Chapter Text
In a way, the first few months are the easiest. There's too much to do, he's too focused on their survival to spend much time thinking—and balancing on the knife-edge between life and death is familiar, if not exactly comforting. They don't turn the normal lights on at first, with no power to spare until Raven fixes the solar panels, so they work with emergency lights and scrounged flashlights, which means that there's no real 'day' or 'night', and he mostly falls asleep when he's exhausted all other possibilities. It turns out that you can't just leave an entire space station on its own for six months without things breaking down, and that plus the damage caused during the exodus means that everything needs fixing, and everything—air, water, food, power—is critical.
It takes him a while to notice when things slow down. Raven never stops, and Monty's always busy, but once the oxygen is running smoothly, the water purifier has been connected to the ship’s systems, the algae farm is up and running, and the solar panels are (mostly) functional, they run out of urgent stuff for the rest of them to do. They've all had a grounding in basic spaceship repairs by now, even Emori and Echo, and they know how to keep the Ark ticking along. It takes a while, but he slowly winds to a halt.
Which is a problem, because it turns out that Bellamy's not very good at free time.
At first, he focuses on emergency planning—what to do if the oxygen breaks, if the artificial gravity fails, if they get hit by space debris on any part of the ship. Any and every emergency that he can think of is planned out in detail, with every variable covered and no one forgotten. Then he starts running drills, to see how quickly they can get to the rocket ship, how quickly they can get into their spacesuits, how quickly they can get the oxygen or the artificial gravity up and running. He drills them until they're perfect, until he can't shave off any more seconds, and then he drills them some more—until one surprise drill in the middle of the night, when Murphy shows up and promptly socks Bellamy in the jaw, and tells him to work out his problems during the fucking day.
It's more of a shock than actually painful, so he cuts back on the drills and starts teaching Murphy how to throw a punch.
Fighting lessons are a little more popular than endless drills. Harper is the first to join them—she's good, but she could use some practice—and then Emori. The latter is lethal in her own way, with moves stolen from a dozen different fighters, but she's never had any real lessons—and while Murphy rolls his eyes at Bellamy's sudden mother-hen instinct, at least he doesn't say anything. Echo merely observes at first, but her exasperation finally gets the better of her, and she starts showing them how to fight, Azgeda-style. Raven and Monty join in when they're not otherwise occupied. Monty doesn't see any great need for it, but he likes the exercise. Bellamy is careful not to go easy on Raven. She doesn't say anything about it, the first time he uses her bad leg against her, but she keeps coming back for more.
Gradually, slowly, they find a comfortable rhythm. He can do this. Five years. It's not forever. He'll still be in his twenties when they go back and find their people. It's just five years.
---
The sixth year is the hardest.
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Somehow, he wasn't expecting Harper to be the one who comes to find him, when he doesn't get out of bed one morning. It's not that he can't, he's not sick, it's just... what's the point? It's another day on the Ark, another twenty-four hours to get through, like the two-thousand-odd days before, and like tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that...
Raven still has hope that she can solve the landing problem, and he has faith in her, he really does believe that she'll work it out eventually—but it's a numb kind of faith, like an autonomic function. Raven is a genius; it's as simple as breathing.
He got through five years of this with an end in mind, a goal to focus on: that after five years, the Earth would be liveable, and they could all go home. He kept himself going, kept them all going. He had a purpose. But somehow, he just can't seem to summon the energy any more.
He'll get up soon. He just needs a few more minutes.
There's a knock on his door. When he doesn't answer, it opens, and Harper sticks her head into the room.
"Hey, Harper. Something up?" he asks. That sounded normal, right?
"I'm thinking yes," she says, coming in and closing the door. Two strides take her across his room to the bed, and she sits next to him, and then shoves him with her hip. "Move over," she orders. When he shifts to accommodate her, she stretches out next to him, a little higher up in the bed, pushing and pulling until he rolls onto his side, towards her. He winds up with his face on her shoulder, their arms wrapped around each other. She smells warm and sweet, and her hand strokes gently through his hair. He closes his eyes and swallows against the unexpected sting of tears.
He hasn’t cried about their situation, not for five years. He's cried about other things—he's not sure he'll ever really stop mourning Clarke—but never about being unable to go back to the planet. He's not even sure why it matters so much to him. He spent six months on Earth, less than two percent of his life, the rest of which he's spent on the Ark. And yet he misses it, with a yearning so strong that it's making him desperate, like he might just suit up and hurl himself at the planet, let his body burn up in the atmosphere rather than stay one minute more in the silence of space.
"I just want to go home." His throat closes over the words, and he's probably squeezing her too tightly, but Harper doesn't object.
She doesn't tell him that they'll get there eventually and that he needs to get a grip, or point out that they've already survived five years, and waiting a little longer won't kill them. She doesn't tell him that he's just going a little stir-crazy and he'll feel better again soon. She doesn't tell him he needs to keep himself occupied. She just says: "I know."
It's enough to tip him over the edge. A sob catches him by surprise, and then another—and then he's gone.
There's definitely something to be said for catharsis. Harper holds him through the storm, hand running through his hair and down his back, and he's probably made them both soggy and disgusting, but they've experienced worse.
Eventually, he dozes for a while, and when he blinks open crusty, puffy eyes, Harper has shuffled down so her head is on the pillow next to him. She's snoring softly, and he feels an overpowering wave of fondness for her, and for the others who are surviving up here with him.
It still hurts, but the pain has dulled a little, and he knows that he can hang on, that together they can do it. It's going to take a little longer than he hoped, but someday they'll go home.
---
It's been just over six years. Raven estimates it'll be another couple of months to work out all the bugs in her plan to get them all safely down to the planet, and he's prepared to be patient, because he's damned if they're going to survive this long only to burn up in the atmosphere, or crash and explode, or any of the other likely catastrophes. They've all learned to cope with it in their own ways, and he's confident that they can make it through.
So of course that's when an unknown spaceship lands in their hangar bay.
"Bet you wish you'd run a drill for this," says Murphy, and Bellamy glares at him because he's right, dammit. But it had honestly never crossed his mind that there might be someone else out there. Someone with transport.
The ship has controllable rocket boosters, and it's easily big enough to carry all of them. Fuck, with a ship like that, the journey to Earth would take maybe twenty minutes. His mouth is dry with wanting. Six years and three weeks, and after all the work they've put into it, now home is twenty minutes away. Could it really be that easy?
If they're friendly, great. If not, he's taking that ship.
"Prisoner transport?" says Monty, dubiously. He catches Murphy's look. "I know, I know—I'm just saying, we should be careful."
Bellamy nods, and clicks his radio. "Raven?"
"All set. I've isolated the door controls, including the hangar bay door. If need be, I can eject them out into space in a heartbeat. If they've activated the mag locks, the ship will stay put—if not, we've still got plan A."
"You are a terrifying badass," Bellamy tells her.
"Yeah, I know. Just find something fixed down to grab onto if that happens, hold on really tight, and remember not to hold your breath. I've got you."
"Okay, got it."
"Heads up," says Murphy, as the hatch begins to open.
A solitary figure walks out, encased in a spacesuit, and stops to look back at the ship, as if to check their parking. They put their hands on their hips.
"Pretty big ship for just one person," observes Murphy.
Bellamy isn't really listening. His heart is pounding suddenly, adrenaline flooding his body.
"At least we should be able to take them without much of a—Bellamy, where are you going?"
He's moving before he even knows why, his conscious mind refusing to believe what his instincts are telling him. There's a rushing in his ears, drowning out the voices that call him back.
The figure turns suddenly, and freezes at the sight of him. He picks up speed, but it feels like he's floating. Part of him wonders if this is it, if all the years have got to him at last, and he's having a complete breakdown. Because it can't be, it can't be. She's dead. She's dead, and he's losing his mind.
They're scrabbling with the clasps on the helmet now, and when it comes off, the first thing he registers is blonde hair. The sudden, shocked silence behind him tells him that he's not the only one seeing this, that maybe this isn't just a figment of his imagination.
She takes a wobbly step towards him, and suddenly he's there in front of her, and he doesn't know what to do with his body. It takes him a couple of tries to get his voice to work.
"Clarke?"
She gives a laugh, or possibly a sob, and reaches for him, and that's it, he doesn't care any more if he has lost it, because this is perfect. He wants to live forever in this moment, the one where Clarke is in his arms, definitely both laughing and crying now. He doesn't know when they sank to the floor, he doesn't know what his friends are doing, or who else might come off the ship, and he doesn't care—all he knows, all he can think about, is that Clarke is somehow impossibly alive and here. He's shaking, clinging to her so tightly that they might never pry him away.
"What the fuck?" he finds himself breathing. His thoughts are a jumble, he can't even work out what he wants to ask first, or whether he shouldn't even bother talking, but just go with what he most wants to do. "Jesus, Clarke... what the fuck?"
She laughs, and wipes her face on his shoulder before she lifts her head, eyes running greedily over his face, like she's missed him as much as he's missed her. "Need a ride?"
Bellamy gives up, gives in, and kisses her.
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END.