Chapter Text
Hope… he couldn’t remember the last time that he truly felt hopeful. Of course, when Jordan had woken Clarke and himself, he was hopeful that they could do Monty and Harper’s wish come true and that they would be the good guys and that they could really do better. Even then, he felt more dutiful than hopeful, but now, hope was the last thing that he could grip onto to prevent himself from completely falling as he did on the ring so many years ago.
When Bellamy left Clarke on the ground during Praimfaya, he was a completely broken man and a shell of his former self. Without the head to his heart, he didn’t really know how to go on. For the first few months, he hardly ate, hardly slept, hardly spoke, and spent nearly every minute staring down at the burning Earth where almost all of the people he loved remained, either locked in a bunker far beneath the Earth or burned to death in the death wave.
2199 days later, he finally got her back, and it felt like things were really starting to make sense again. No matter how difficult things were with his sister, how complicated it was navigating the dynamics of his relationship, or dedicating himself to honoring Monty and Harper by being better and taking care of their son, Jordan, Bellamy finally had his head back. The other part to him that he had been missing for so long. Having Clarke back meant that no matter what they would face, they would do it and that they would do it together.
But, if Bellamy’s past has shown him anything, fate is cruel and just as soon as he got her back, Clarke was taken from him again. Paralyzed and her body ripped away from her, a cruel and sick sociopath having possessed her body and claimed to have killed her.
And now, here he was, riding a stolen motorcycle through a forest he has been through a total of two times with the paralyzed body of Clarke tied and slouched against him, having tranquilized Josephine not even an hour ago.
After days of planning in secret with Echo, Jordan, and Madi, and a staticky radio call from Diyoza and Octavia later, their mission was calculated and ready to be set in place. He had made the decision to not take revenge, the hardest decision he has ever had to make in his entire life- including leaving her behind during Praimfaya- but it did not mean that he wasn’t going to do everything within his power to get Clarke back. All Bellamy had to do, was get Josephine alone and away from prying eyes so he could, for lack of better terms, kidnap her and make their escape.
Naturally, this task was easier said than done, and it seemed that just about everyone had made it their personal mission, without knowing, to make it even more difficult. Murphy and Emori kept coming up to him, trying to convince him, and perhaps themselves that siding with the Primes was the best option they had and the only way that they would all be able to survive and they only way to avoid yet another war. No matter how close the three had grown together over the six years they spent on the ring together, Bellamy hardly recognized the eyes that bore into his own. Emori and Murphy had become his family, and while he did still love the two of them deeply, he felt sick whenever he saw them smiling and contently lounging about. Perhaps it is a tad unfair, he thought as his eyes shift from Murphy’s to Emori’s, but still is panged with discomfort and immense disappointment.
“Bellamy, we have to honor her now” Emori nearly whispered, gently placing her hand on his arm in a comforting manner. “She is gone, and just like on the ring if we don’t survive everything she has done has been in vain. Maybe, she can finally be at peace now, y’ know.”
“Yeah. I guess we just have to look at it like that” Bellamy chocked out, a strong taste of acid deep in the back of his throat.
Murphy opened his mouth and closed it again, much like a fish out of water, as if he was searching for something to say and Bellamy made the decision to walk away before Murphy had the chance to make him do something that he would regret and jeopardize the mission he had set in his mind.
Sitting down at the bar, Bellamy ran a hand through his hair nervously. He had asked Josephine to meet with him at the bar, and she was due to be here in 15 minutes. He had made an excuse about agreeing to help them make night blood, and how to fool others into agreeing into being host bodies.
On the dot, Josephine bounces up the stairs, with a cocky smirk that tells him just how much she is enjoying torturing him by controlling Clarke’s body.
“So, Bell” she glanced up at him through her eyelashes flirtily, “you wanted to talk about our little plan?”
Swallowing thickly, he nodded and clears his throat, before glancing around the room. “Yeah. But, um, we shouldn’t do it here. There are a lot of people around who don’t know what is going on exactly. That might affect your ability to keep your little game up.” Bellamy leaned in, just to sell the lie that much more, playing the part of wanting to keep up the facade of having given up.
With another smirk, Josephine reached up and grabbed a lock of Clarke’s hair, twirling it around her fingers. “You’re right. Let’s go outside.”
With that, they made their way back down the stairs and to a more secluded area. Bellamy glanced around again making sure that no one could see them and that he could easily get her to the bike he had hidden earlier that day.
Josephine turned to Bellamy and opened her mouth to taunt him again, no doubt, and it is then that Bellamy struck. Jabbing the tranquilizer into her neck, the look of pure cockiness and confidence drained from her eyes and became clouded with anger and confusion all at once.
Throwing her over his shoulder Bellamy made it the short way to the bike and made quick work of tying her paralyzed body to him before taking off like a bat out of hell.
Grabbing the radio from his jacket pocket, and desperately attempting to not crash, he called to Echo. With a few quick crinkles of static, Echo picked up.
“Gyon au, echo. Dula'm op nau, oso ae coming nau. (Go, Echo. Do it now! We are coming now.)
Echo stood with Madi and Jordan at the dome shut off, ready to flip the switch and run like hell into the forest. In one quick switch, everything was set in place.
After an hour, Bellamy and Josephine were able to meet up with Octavia and Xavier deep into the forest. Echo, Madi, and Jordan had escaped to a cave that Diyoza had been leading them to keep them safe from the temporal flare that was such an essential part of their plan.
“You must be Bellamy,” Xavier stated as he clasped his hands together, seemingly nervously, “and, um, Clarke. Or, Josephine, I guess.”
With a short nod to Xavier, Bellamy dismounted the bike and began to unstrap Clarke’s body from his. Things between him and Octavia were still on thin ice, but as of late the ice had begun to thicken and they were on their way back to being the Blake siblings that they had always been. Glancing down at Octavia’s hand, Bellamy startled and froze momentarily.
“O”
Glancing down at her own hand, Octavia couldn’t help but smile at her brother’s concerned and distressed tone.
“It’s a lot worse than it looks, big brother. Xavier thought that the fix for Clarke could work on my hand too.”
Glancing away, Bellamy gave a curt nod and turned to address Xavier, who was busy examining the stitches where the Lightborn’s had cut open Clark’es neck to insert the drive. The sight made his heart ache. After seeing the video of the first time Josephine took over someone’s body, all he could think about is the pure terror Clarke had to experience in her final moments.
“Thank you.”
It would seem as if Xavier had tuned out to the siblings completely, perhaps wanting to give the two a moment more private, and he jumped slightly at Bellamy’s words.
“What they are doing is wrong. You do not need to thank me for doing the right thing. I have been fighting against the Lightborn's for some time now, and this is my chance to prevent them from hurting someone else with Josephine.”
With that, Xavier turned back to Clarke’s neck and sighed. “We will need to hurry to get her to the infirmary and back in time for the flares. We need to go now.”
Bellamy was taken back at his mention of the infirmary, not being quite sure what the plan was other than to get Josephine out of Clarke and destroy the chip. It was desperate, and maybe a bit stupid, but he needed hope and this was the only thing that could give that to him.
Grabbing a still paralyzed Josephine, Bellamy followed Xavier and Octavia a short distance to what looked like a small village similar to the one Clarke and Madi had been living in back on Earth. It looked peaceful and happy, something that Bellamy desperately wished to be able to provide for his family. Thinking back, there have been very few times that he could remember being truly at peace between wars and facing apocalypses, but he hoped that maybe one day they would all truly know peace and not have to worry about the next threat to come their way.
“Set her down here. I will return with the doctor in a few moments. You will want to strap her down just in case the paralytic wears off.” Xavier instructed and quickly exited the room.
Octavia turned to Bellamy and let out a sigh as she began to tighten leather straps around the arms and legs of Clare’s body. “ So... Xavier says that they have only done this one other time. It was on some guy called Gabriel.”
Bellamy knew that he knew the name, but it took him a minute to properly realize where he knew the name from. “He was the man who made the chip. Why are they named after the man who created the problem that they are fighting against?”
At that moment, Xavier and another young man entered the room. “It’s a hard thing to explain. This is Marius, he will be removing the drive for us. While he works, I will try to explain.”
Bellamy stood, hands placed on his hips and shook his head. “No. No, I need to know what is going on, because I can’t lose her.”
Xavier smiled and gave a small chuckle, understanding how hard it must be to see one of the people you loved used and violated in this way. “I understand how this must look, but we do not have the time to wait. Either Marius begins working now and I explain while it happens, or it can’t happen at all. We have a very small window of time if we want to have any chance at this working.”
Letting out a shuttered breath, Bellamy nodded and allowed Marius to continue. He watched as the scalpel slowly and precisely was drawn over each stitch and an inky black substance began to pool as each stitch broke against the blade. It made him sick to his stomach and turned around quickly, figuring now was not the time to allow his stomach to betray him.
“Gabriel was my father” Xavier began to explain.
“He was in love with Josephine when the mission trip first came down to Sanctum. But, Russel, Josephine’s father, was a man of business and my father worked for him. He tried to keep his work professional and stay away from her, and he did for some time. But the eclipse happened and Russel was deeply affected. He went crazy and killed almost everyone in our camp. He slit throats and bashed peoples heads in with an ax. Gabriel was the only man to get away with this life because he was off scouting for new plants that could be useful.
Once the eclipse ended, Russel was severely distraught, and my father was heartbroken after losing everyone he loved- especially Josephine. For the next 40 years, he tried to make a way to bring her back and as you saw in the video you mentioned, he finally got it too.
Except, Gabriel didn’t feel right about what he was doing, and realized the mistake that he had made. But it was too late. Russel knew how to perform the necessary tasks. So he killed my father and implanted a memory drive in a new body. Once my father was able to, he ran from the palace with a small group of people who knew that it was wrong, and started trying to fight against everything that they had been doing wrong.
He was getting old and knew that his time was up, so he asked to have the chip removed from him. Marius and I were young back then, only 13, but he was brilliant beyond his years and helped his father Guissepie remove the chip from my father. He has been a wonderful friend and I trust him with my life. You can trust him too.”
Xavier took a minute to compose himself and continued on with a sigh. “After that, I made a promise that I would finish what my father had started and we became the Children of Gabriel, the children who were dedicated to doing the right thing and stopping the Lightborns. Like I said, I was 13, and looking back now the name is somewhat childish, but it is a way that I can stay close to my father, remember my mission, and honor his life.”
Bellamy nodded, and reached a hand out to claps it on Xavier’s shoulder, a silent thank you and hopefully, a small bit of comfort for the story that he just shared.
The moment was interrupted when Marius let out a small cough to get their attention and indicate that he was done. Xavier turned to him and raised one of his eyebrows in a way that indicated that he wanted to know where they were standing in terms of the plan.
“I removed the drive as carefully as I could. There were no complications as far as I can tell. It was almost easier than it was with Gabe all those years ago. But, you need to hurry to be able to get to the flares in time.”
Xavier smiled warmly at Marius and gave him a quick hug before releasing the restraints binding Clarke to the table. Bellamy hurried to the table and lifted Clark to bring her to the flares.
The rest of the mission was confusing and hard for Bellamy to understand, but he had to bury his sister and Clarke in a weird quicksand-ish goo. Xavier stated that Octavia needed to be much deeper than Clarke, save for her affected hand, and that Clarke needed to be not that deep, but deep enough to not be overly affected. Bellamy had no idea what any of this actually meant, or what the depth was that needed to be achieved for either. He allowed Xavier to do most of the work but helped in any way that he could.
The two men quickly made their way to the cave where Jordan, Madi, and Echo were waiting, and the five of them waited and hide from the fares.
As soon as she was able to make Bellamy out from the forest around him, Madi ran to him and began hounding him with questions about Clarke and where she was.
“Bellamy!” she shouted, as she ran to him, trapping him with a near bone-crushing hug and looking up at him with such hope in her eyes that Bellamy wanted to cry. He made a promise to Clarke, and he would be damned if he let anything happen to Madi after he had failed to keep Clarke alive. He briefly remembers making the joke about needing a break from keeping her alive and thinks how he would give up absolutely everything to be able to get over this break and get to go back to protecting her again.
“Where… where is she?” Madi asked, sudden panic spreading across her face as she realized that Bellamy had not returned with her mom.
Bellamy smiled softly, his heart warmed at just how much the two of them meant to each other. Gently he placed a hand on the side of her face, as a way of grounding her and to calm her worry, “she’s with Octavia right now Madi. We just have to wait a little longer. We’ll get her back.”
Nodding slightly sadly, Madi gave a small smile. Echo came up to him then, and placed a soft hand on his shoulder, silently asking him how everything went and understanding that he wasn’t sure, but had hope. “She’ll be alright” Echo whispered, her eyes displaying a fierce passion he saw very rarely. It reminded him of when they were back on the ring, and she would hold him as he cried over Clarke.
It was over an hour later that Octavia and Clarke made their way towards the cave. The agreed that they would wait for Bellamy and Xavier by a unique formation of trees not far from the cave, in case the flares were not able to help Clarke as planned, hoping to save Madi from having to confront the fate of her mom so quickly after being filled with hope.
Bellamy wrung his hands together and licked his dried lips nervously nearly the entire walk, to the point that Xavier had to remind him that he had no reason to work himself up until they knew if their plan had failed.
Bellamy sighed and nodded, understanding that his fidgeting was probably weighing on Xavier’s nerves. He was hoping for the best case scenario; that he would walk up to find his sister and Clarke both perfectly fine, but he had an awful nagging feeling that this was not what was about to unfold.
And he was correct. When they arrived he saw Octavia sitting against one of the trees with her head leaned backward and eyes closed. A small smile played at her lips and she looked like the young girl he remembered from when they first landed on Earth.
However, Clarke was nowhere to be seen, and his heart sank. It must not have worked, and now he would have to break Madi’s heart all over again.
He felt as if he might pass out, his knees feeling weak, and his body very heavy. Until he heard a squeal of delight that utterly confused him and brought him out of his misery.
“Octavia! Look what I found! Isn’t this pretty!” A small child squealed with joy, running towards Octavia with a flower held proudly in her left hand. The sound reused Octavia from her peace, and she looked up, smile still present. Laughing, she took the flower from the little girl and twirled it between her fingers.
“It sure is pretty. Why don’t you go show Bellamy and Xavier?” Octavia said, a playful glint in her eyes as she turned to look at Bellamy and stood from where she had been sitting. The little girl gasped, took the flower back from Octavia and turned on her heels.
“Bell’my!” she yelled happily and began sprinting towards him, throwing her arms up as a clear indicator that she was going to jump onto him.
In his shocked state, he barely had time to comprehend what he was seeing and catch the small child as she hurled her body at him. Picking her up and settling her on his hip, Bellamy looked down at the amazingly similar blue eyes that stared into his. Smiling contently the girl wrapped her tiny arms around his neck and snuggled her head onto his shoulder.
“Bell’my! Look at the flower I found! Isn’t it just so pretty?” she asked excitedly, clasping the stem between both of her hands in front of Bellamy’s face.
“Yeah Bell, isn’t Clarke’s little flower cute?” Octavia smiled, teasing him with her eyes. Suddenly everything clicked into place for him and a confused, but nevertheless, happy smile overtook his face and a laugh erupted from his throat.
“Yeah, it is pretty Clarke.”
With that Bellamy set Clarke back on the ground, telling her that she was allowed to run around for a bit longer while he talked with Octavia and Xavier about some grown-up stuff, as long as she promised not to stray too far and stayed in his line of sight.
“Okay! I’m going to find some more flowers!” Clarke proclaimed happily and sprinted a short distance down the path.
Turning, Bellamy looked between Xavier and Octavia with a look of confusion evident. “Care to explain?”
Chuckling, Xavier smiled and looked towards Octavia with a raised eyebrow. “You didn’t explain what we were doing exactly did you?”
Smiling, Octavia shook her head slightly and began to explain. “There was no way in hell my brother would believe the flare would rewind time for Clarke and fix the situation, and even if he did, he wouldn’t have risked it if I told him that this theory was untested and you have only heard of it in a story from your father.”
Bellamy started to argue, before promptly shutting his mouth and sighing, “you’re right, O, I would have never agreed to this if I knew it was a guess from a story. This is playing with life and death. But, thank you. We got her back.”
Xavier continued to smile and nodded towards Bellamy’s gratitude. “Since you were clearly left out of the loop, I feel you may need some enlightenment on where we go from here. As you’ve seen, the temporal flares have restored Clarke and de-aged her.
According to my father, the two other times that this has been done, the child maintains full memories from their adult life, but it is more or less trapped away in their conscious. It is the same way that the Primes wipe the mind to implant the drives. With the drives, the separate the host’s mind into a different file, so to speak, and there is a code on the drive to delete all files outside of the prime’s. Clarke must have been extremely strong and creative since she was able to keep her mind from being erased.”
“That being said”, Xavier paused and licked his lips, dreading what he would have to say next. “ She is a child in every sense of the word, and from will have to deal with all of the memories ass the begin to file out of the file one by one. From what I have learned from Octavia, this may be something quite difficult for her to process and deal with in her mental state.”
Bellamy nodded, thinking deeply of all of the horrendous things that Clarke was forced to do, the lives she was forced to take, and the decisions she was forced to make. He knew how difficult it all was for her to bare, how heavily it weighed on her all the time. He could only imagine that weight on a child.
“It would slowly come to her conscious mind in the form of dreams. The two others had horrendous nightmares and it took them years to be able to accept all that had happened. Luckily, as I have seen from Octavia’s hand, we have a few options here. We could, you know, leave her as a child and let her grow up. Or we could wait for the next temporal flare and have it age her back to her actual age.”
Bellamy bit down on his lip and ran a hand through his hair shakily, weighing both options. He knew that allowing her to have another chance, a chance at an actual childhood, was something that would require her to suffer what no child should ever have to and deal with very heavy adult traumas. It made him think of Charlotte and all that she had gone through. He didn’t want that for Clarke. He also knew that it would leave Madi without her mom and Clarke would be more vulnerable.
“When is the next flare?”
“We don’t know. It could be a week or a month, or more. We will have to monitor the weather conditions to know. Marius’s brother had been measuring for this one for the last week and a half. We will have to wait and see.”
At that moment, Clarke came running back over, with a dozen or so flowers in her hands and the biggest smile on her face. “Okay,” Bellamy said, his eyes following Clarke as she bound about and showed off the flowers to Octavia happily. “We will wait for the next flare, and get our Clarke back fully.”