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Bellamy Blake was not having a good weekend.
Which was kind of what he had expected, considering it was the middle of the work week and he was only on this rare two-day vacation because he’d been overheard arguing about the training schedule.
With himself.
In his sleep.
He maintained that he had probably been making some sound arguments, but Miller had sold him out to Kane, who had ordered him to take forty-eight hours off.
It would have been longer but they couldn’t afford to spare him.
Then again, it wasn’t like he would be out of reach in the event of an emergency, there was nowhere for him to go in the bunker.
Still, he had grabbed the book he’d been trying to read for the last six months and headed to the Skai-kru meeting room, which had long since been repurposed into a bar.
He’d thought he could grab the couch, sweet talk his friends into bringing him his meals and read his weekend away.
He had barely even got his ass on the seat when Niylah had come to find him because a fight had broken out between a few of the younger Ark kids, which he’d ended just by showing up and ordering them to cut it out, but by this point, people knew he was free and suddenly he was being presented with hundreds of tiny problems that he was usually too busy to be bothered with.
So, he’d handled it like a mature adult.
He’d faked a radio call from Clarke, grabbed his book and taken refuge in his sister’s office.
Which is where O, found him a few hours later, a well-placed kick to his shins preventing him from falling asleep in the arm chair.
“I’m awake.” he mumbled as she sat in her desk chair and rolled over to him, her legs ending up in his lap,
“Great,” Octavia deadpanned, “I’m sterile.”
For a moment, he glances down at her hands, not comprehending, before it clicks in his mind,
“O,” he breathes, reaching for her hands but she snatches them back, so he grips her ankles instead, “I’m so sorry.”
Octavia shrugs, not so much the commander in that moment as she was the eighteen-year-old girl,
“I spoke to Abby, I haven’t had my period in a long time, which I figured was stress, starvation, pretty much all the reasons us girls have had weird cycles since coming down here, but she examined me and told me…a bunch of medical jargon that means I can’t have kids.”
“I already knew this,” she adds, hastily, “The amount of times I’ve been laid out on the operating table while Clarke and Abby tried to get my internal organs back inside my body, I figured kids were off the table…”
“They don’t have to be,” Bellamy interrupted, “You could adopt, like Kane but on a much smaller scale, and with actual kids, not almost adults.”
Octavia managed a smirk, “That’s not the issue big brother, I’m not just a commander, remember? I’m a queen, of an absolute monarchy, even if Azgeda is now part of Wonkru, they’re expecting an heir.”
It had only been a year in the bunker, a year of Ogeda and Wonkru, so Bellamy understands that people were still getting used to the merging of their clans into one. He, too, still considered Skai-kru people as his people above everyone else in the bunker. It would probably take the next four years for Ogeda to become fixed reality, and until then, one of his sister’s perceived duties, was to carry on the Ice Nation’s royal line.
It has Bellamy gunning for revolution on her behalf and when Roan knocks on the door, opening it before either of them could say anything, Bellamy wants to shout at him to go float himself.
“Lunch?” he prompts, giving him a quick nod before looking to Octavia.
“I can’t have kids.” She announces, twisting her head to see him over the back of her chair.
Roan blinks, raising his eyebrows,
“Considering Echo stabbed you and threw you off a cliff, I’d be shocked if you could,” he answers mildly, “Should we eat here or in the mess hall?”
He responds so casually that Bellamy thinks the ramifications haven’t set in for him yet. Octavia seems to be operating on the same assumption.
“You get what this means, right?” Octavia asks, “I can’t have kids.”
He shrugs, “Would you like one of mine?”
What now?
Octavia’s eyes slowly meet her brother’s and the two of them share a glance before refocusing on the king, “How many children do you have?”
He tilts his head, visibly counting in his mind, “Six…I think.”
“This is an impressive head wound,” Abby remarks as she and Jackson try to staunch the bleeding, “How did this happen?”
Roan’s eyes are slightly unfocused but when Bellamy glares at him, he seems to get the message, “I…tripped.”
“Uh huh,” Abby leans back, holding her hand out for more bandages, “And I’m guessing you were caught by a Blake and…judging from the shape of the cut, I’d say…a desk?”
“Paperweight,” Bellamy corrects, before scratching behind his ear, “Hypothetically.”
“Hypothetically,” Jackson deadpans, “You’ll need to keep him awake, he may be concussed.”
Bellamy had planned to kill the guy but he could settle for sleep deprivation.
Roan groans, cradling his head as they make their way from the infirmary,
“I had forgot about your sister’s temper,” he mutters, “Do I need to sleep in a different bed tonight?”
“Try a different bunker,” Bellamy snapped, before wheeling on him, causing the king to take a step back.
“How the hell do you have six kids?!” Bellamy demands, his voice carrying down the hall and startling passers-by.
“Who the hell has three kids and thinks continuing to impregnate women is a good idea?!”
Further down the hall, a door opens and Kane sticks his head out, trying to assess the situation and see if intervention is necessary,
Roan leans back slightly, “Are you done?”
“Oh. I’m just getting started,” Bellamy shouts, “I want the names of the kids, the names of the women and then…”
“They are not my blood-children.” He interrupts, clicking his tongue and rolling his eyes. As if this were all just another Skai-kru eccentricity to be lived through.
What?!
“In Azgeda,” he begins, seeing Bellamy’s unspoken demand for explanation,
“The children of our warriors are known as children of the ruling king or queen, so that if they are orphaned, it is my duty to see to their welfare.”
Oh.
“Okay,” Bellamy groans, pinching the bridge of his nose, “You probably should have led with that, and I should probably go explain it to O, before she puts a bounty on your head.”
“Please.” Roan requests, mumbling something derogatory about Skai-kru under his breath as he walks off,
“Go find Clarke!” Bellamy shouts after his brother-in-law, “Remember, you can’t fall asleep!”
Octavia had been in the middle of moving all of Roan’s possessions from their room to the hallway, with the final destination to be outside the bunker or in one of the prison cells, when Bellamy had arrived and clarified the situation for her.
“Why the hell didn’t he lead with that?!” she demanded,
“Hey!” she snapped at one of the guards, “Move his things back inside.”
Bellamy only shakes his head, “I don’t know, but are you good now? I’m not gonna wake up tomorrow and hear that you’re a widow?”
Octavia gives a stubborn shrug, “I’ll get back to you on that.”
He sighs but leaves anyway, trudging through the bunker aiming for his room,
“Bellamy?” Kane calls, coming out of Trikru’s quarters, “You’re supposed to be off-duty.”
“I am,” he protests, as they walk together, “I haven’t done a single patrol all day.”
“And have you been resting?” Kane asks, his tone filled with doubt.
“No,” he allows, “Because I’ve been busy trying to prevent a regicide and a war.”
Kane shakes his head and claps him on the shoulder, steering him into the bar and looking around at the crowd,
“Clarke!” he calls, “Bellamy was just looking for you.”
Clarke is leaning back against the bar, cup of moonshine in hand and doubt written across her face but she doesn’t say anything as Kane pulls up a stool and sits him down,
“Drink,” he orders, “Relax.”
Clarke looks down her nose as he puts his arms on the bar and drops his head, “How’s your day going?”
“Broke up a fight, prevented a divorce and an execution,” he reports, “Yours?”
“Prevented a mass-poisoning, treated four cases of the clap, and saw Miller naked,”
“For non-medical reasons.” She adds, holding her cup out behind her, not bothering to look as Monty refills it,
“Here’s to productivity,” he smirks, receiving his own cup and they toast each other before drinking deep.
Several hours later, they’re lying back on the couch, their heads at opposite ends and their legs tangled together, neither of them willing or able to walk to one of their beds. Bellamy is staring up at the ceiling and pretending it’s the night sky,
“Are you fertile?” he asks and Clarke snorts,
“Depends on why you’re asking.” She replies, her shoe tapping him in the thigh.
He rolls his eyes, “I have no idea if I can even have kids,” he says, “I never bothered finding out.”
“You probably are,” she tells him, “I’ve seen your medical files, you’re healthy in every other way.”
He hums, “What about you?” he asks, “Can you have kids?”
Clarke sighs, shifting slightly, “I had endometriosis and on the Ark, and was told that I would have a fifteen percent chance of being able to conceive and carry to term…after Mt Weather, my mom discovered that the girl’s implants were no longer working and ran tests on me, I now have a ninety-five percent chance of getting pregnant and carrying to term.”
Bellamy’s blood ran cold and he propped himself up on his elbows, staring at her in horror and she nods,
“Yeah, that was the face Kane made when we explained why we’d need to be pulling the girls from the hundred off work and into the infirmary as soon as possible.”
Silence falls between them for ten or so minutes before Clarke’s speaks again,
“Thing is, I don’t even want to be pregnant,” she confides, “I mean, I like kids, but I’ve seen women giving birth, the blood, the filth, the tearing, and all the complications afterwards…especially down here…”
Yeah, remembering Octavia’s birth had always been good incentive for Bellamy to check that his partners were protected.
“Would you ever want kids?” he asks and she snorts,
“Honestly? I always just assumed that one day you’d find a kid somewhere, orphaned or abandoned and bring it back to camp and I’d be a mother.”
That does kind of sound like something he would do.
“You don’t think I’d come back and just foist a kid on you, do you?” he queries,
“Just hand it off and expect you to raise it?”
She rolls her eyes, “Obviously we would raise it together.”
“Obviously?” he questions and she sighs, “Yes, Bellamy.”
“How is that obvious?”
She’s pushed herself up into a sitting position and is staring at him, opening her mouth when they hear a resounding crash from outside, followed by steps pounding down the hall.
“John!” Emori’s voice reached their ears, “You get back here, right now!”
Bellamy sighed, “We should probably…”
“Yeah.”