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There is death and blood and desperation. There is a wall of fire and heat and a satellite broadcasting to a space station: open doors and closed doors and a girl crying in a bunker. There is a heartbroken boy orbiting the earth. There is the end of the world.
Then there is what comes next.
~~~
Clarke’s first fear, when the world is consumed by fire, is that she is going to die. Her second fear is that she is going to live. She is curled into herself, hands over ears, screaming; screaming as the world around her burns, and she burns with it; screaming until her voice is hoarse and broken and there is only silence surrounding her.
She eventually pulls herself upright. Her throat hurts. Her skin from where she had been too slow to pull off the radiation suit is red and blistered. She hopes her friends are alive. She hopes he made it. She cries, a little. She sleeps, and eventually, she comes back to herself, pulls herself together. She can’t stop living. She’s got to be there to meet him when he gets home. Hi honey, she thinks to herself inanely, Good day at work?
Over the next few days she catalogues food, and water, and oxygen, taking precise notes in a notebook. She rigs up a water filtration system that Raven could probably done in half the time. She figures out how to survive.
After that there is precious little to do, until she finds herself a store cupboard with heaps of scrap paper, and enough spare pencils to sink the ark. Well, she thinks grimly, at least the end of the world will give me plenty of time to work on my drawing.
The days begin to blur into one another, as she draws (Raven and Monty and Harper, and then she stops lying to herself, and just draws him; again and again, desperate to hold onto the colour of his eyes and the exact slopes of his jawline. She draws the pain in his voice as he tells her ‘I’m a monster’, and the relief in his eyes when he finds her after Mount Weather. She draws the way his hair ruffles over his forehead and the quirk of his smile as he says, ‘brave princess’. ) She draws Murphy as well; first as the way he’d carried Monty towards the ship, then as a cartoon cockroach waving a little flag, because it makes her smile, and smiles are few and far between these days. She draws them all: her mismatched patchwork family, but she never draws herself, because they deserve to be immortalized and she does not.
Time passes in uneven spurts- days flashing by in seconds, nights that last for weeks. She knows she is a little broken but decides it doesn’t matter: she’s made it this far, after all. (You still have hope? We still breathing?) No, she thinks. Just me.
It’s tough: Clarke isn’t being dramatic to say she has already been through hell, but somehow, this is worse. At least before she has never been alone: Bellamy had always been rock-solid beside her, his hand wrapped tightly around hers. She aches with the solitude of it. (Please god let him be alive, she thinks, Please.)
Clarke pours her time into her art until, somehow, there is none left: outside air is nearly breathable. Her trial is up, but she does not yet know the verdict. A death sentence or a reprieve?
Four days left to go. Clarke checks all her supplies. Three days. She picks out the drawings she cannot bare to leave behind. Two. She pours out her fear into a radio. One. She huddles in a corner, sick and afraid and shaking. The next day, she rolls back the locks on the bunker door, smiling slightly as she thinks to herself- ‘If the air is toxic, we’re all dead anyway’- and takes her first breath of non-filtered oxygen in months. It is a little burnt, a little smoky as it catches at the back of her throat, radiation soaking the air around her. It is the best thing she has ever tasted. She stands there for a few minutes, eyes closed, head back, just breathing. She thinks she might be smiling a little, despite the tears, and suddenly she misses him so fiercely she cannot breathe.
“Well, Clarke.” She says aloud. “Shit to do.” She feels that fluttering in her belly that has been absent for so long she barely recognises it. (Hope, she thinks.)
~~~
It doesn’t last long.
The worst part about the end of the world, Clarke decides, is the silence. No quiet mechanical hum, no animals in the undergrowth, not even birdsong. She cranks up the volume in the rover, singing along to the songs she knows at the top of her lungs, and humming along to those she doesn’t, just to break the silence.
Nights are the worst: just her and the dark, and the wind murmuring its sympathy. She pours herself into the radio, emptying herself into the void for the slightest chance the void might give back. It never does, but Clarke keeps talking anyway, simply to hear a voice, to catalogue the ever-passing days, to prove to herself she still exists. She doesn’t know what she wouldn’t do just to hear another human voice.
She keeps going, because she doesn’t know what else to do. She tries to clear the debris around the bunker, but it is buried so deeply that she could spend the rest of her life shifting rubble, and she still might not succeed. She moves on, hoping for scraps of green, for signs of life. There are none. She takes blow after blow: the rover; the desert; that goddamned hole in her chest that hasn’t faded for a second. Despair begins to break her down. She falls to her knees in a desolate desert and puts a gun to her own head. She resolves to never tell anyone how close she comes to pulling the trigger.
~~~
Then there are birds, and trees and life, and an angry girl who tricks her into walking into a bear trap. Clarke feels more alive than she has in a long time.
At first, there exists an uneasy truce between them- Clarke starts by upping her hunting attempts, then leaving food in obvious places. The girl never takes any- mistrust too deeply imbedded for that- but one day, as Clarke is yet again trying her hand at fishing- and she hasn’t improved since her last attempt- a voice comes from the shore.
“You really are awful at this.” Clarke nearly falls in. The girl rolls her eyes, then says quietly, “I could teach you, if you wanted.”
Clarke grins, “Yeah.” She says. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
From there on out it is easy, and Clarke rediscovers what it is to live, and not just survive. Madi is a lifeboat in a storm: she is small and fierce and sort of annoying, and the most important thing in Clarke’s world. She knew even if they weren’t the last two people on earth, she would have loved that girl. It is as if all of Clarke’s love that she’d bottled up, that had no place left to go finally has an outlet: like water under pressure with a leak in the system- it bursts from her and Clarke is no longer drowning under it all.
The next five years pass, in hops and skips: in a haze of what Clarke would be tempted to call happiness. Sure, there is the ache of worry and loss that won’t fade; there are the nights she cries as quietly as she can so as not to wake Madi, the nights she spends talking to him through an unresponsive radio, begging him to come home. But then there are long summer days spent hunting together; evenings spent drawing and storytelling and then curling up in front of a fire, full and content. The days she is so, so glad she never made it to the rocket, so that she gets to sit here and listen to her daughter chatter on about the roe she’d seen whilst hunting the day before.
“It was the biggest I’d ever seen! And I think I found it’s watering hole, so if we head there early tomorrow we might be able to catch it- “
Clarke smiles, and lets the night wash over her.
~~~
“Bellamy, if you can hear me, if you’re alive- it’s been 2199 days since praimfayre. I don’t know why I still do this every day…” As she talks, there is a sonic boom from above her, and finally, she smiles. “Never mind. I see you.”
The rocket looks the same as it did when it went up: maybe a little more battered, but the cargo it contained was equally precious. Heart in her throat, Clarke traces its path across the sky: it rocks as parachutes explode from the back: it looks like the back is on fire: is that supposed to happen- Madi presses herself to Clarkes side, equally as speechless as the rocket tumbles from the heavens- Clarke can only imagine Raven at the helm, determination gritting her teeth, the ground spiralling closer and closer-
The rocket disappears into the trees, the crash deafening as it hits. Then there is silence, and Clarke is running, Madi at her side. Smoke pours upward: Clarke can make it out through the trees as she leaps boulders and tree stumps, elation and hope twisting and writhing within her- she keeps running, her heart beat thundering in her ears. She is vaguely aware of Madi behind her, but it doesn’t seem particularly important at that moment. All that matters is reaching that ship.
She takes a break about half an hour later, breathing in great gasps of oxygen- because of course they had to come down on the other side of the valley- then keeps right on running. Madi has fallen behind, but Clarke doesn’t worry- they’ll meet at home later- and that thick column of smoke is getting closer every second. Clarke reaches a small clearing, her muscles burning and screaming for her to rest, but before she gets there, she slows herself, then approaches silently, hand on knife. She didn’t survive six years on the ground by being an idiot, and she needs to see for herself that her friends were safe, before she burst in. (Though what was she expecting, space pirates? Maybe she just needed to get herself under control before she could face them).
He is alone in the clearing, dragging what looks like supplies from the wreck of the ship: beloved dark curls and a bronzed face hidden by shadow. Clarke can’t breathe. He looks thinner, she thinks. Had he been eating enough? How was Monty’s algae farm doing? These bizarre, nonsensical thoughts were overshadowed by the words that had become her heartbeat, beating their tattoo upon her heart.
He’s alive. He’s alive. He’s alive.
Anything else was immaterial.
She must have made some sort of noise, because he flinches and looks up. He has a beard. That thought seems bizarrely important.
“Murphy?” He calls, and oh god, she’s missed his voice so much. “You find water already?”
Clarke tries to brace herself; tries to think of something funny or smart to say; comes up blank. Instead, she steps out of the shadows of the trees and gets out a quiet; “Hey, Bellamy.”
His face goes rigid with shock. He opens his mouth as if to say something, but nothing comes out. Just a strangled, “Clarke?”
Clarke smiles, although tears are already welling up. She tries to think of something to say and instead blurts out; “What the hell is that growing on your face?”
“Clarke?”
She steps a little closer, tries for a smile. He moves towards her as if in a trance.
“You’re…. you’re alive.”
“…Surprise.”
“Clarke.” He says again, and steps towards her.
The rocket explodes behind him.
They are thrown backwards, limp and powerless as the world turns fiery orange around them. Clarke hits the ground hard, her head cracking back against the ground. Everything goes black for a little while.
She drags herself towards consciousness, panic and fear-fuelled adrenaline driving her. She drags her eyes open- a task much more difficult than it should be- and sees Bellamy beside her, just pulling himself upright. His mouth is moving, but she cannot make out the words through the ringing in her ears. She realizes she is shouting too.
“…in there? Was there anyone else-“ He is shaking his head, then he grabs her arm, pulling her up. They lurch to their feet, then stagger their way from the clearing. There is burning debris surrounding them- bits of the rocket, she realizes. The smoke is thick and acrid, but as they push their way towards the treeline- and at some point she had wound an arm around his waist, and he an arm around her shoulders- it clears slightly. Sound is filtering back to her: mainly the roar of the fire behind them, and Bellamy’s ragged breath.
Once they can breathe easily, they stop, sitting down heavily side-by-side against a tree.
“You alright?” He asks, his fingers moving her hair from her forehead to get a look at where she hit her head. She wipes the dribble of blood away impatiently.
“Yeah, I’m fine. You?”
“I’m good.”
Clarke lets out a small huff of laughter. “That was not how I imagined our big reunion.”
“Oh yeah? What didn’t live up to your standards?”
“Well I imagined less explosions and more hugging, I have to admit.” His mouth quirks upwards at the corner- Clarke has to stop herself from staring because god, how much had she missed that small idiosyncrasy- and he lifts his arm around her shoulders. Her head fits neatly under his chin, just as it always had. She pushes her face further into the crook of his neck, breathing in that long-missed scent- mostly smoke now, but that oh-so familiar tang beneath it all that was so uniquely him.
“I didn’t imagine our reunion at all.” He says quietly. “It just… hurt too much.”
In response she tightens her grip around him, and his lips find their way into her hair and stay there.
“You’re late, by the way.” She says, muffled against his skin.
He lets out a dry laugh. “Sorry, honey. Traffic was hell.”
There are the rapid sounds of someone or something crashing through the undergrowth, a shouted “Clarke!” and she gets her hands up just in time to receive an armful of five-foot four angry teenaged girl. “Clarke, there was an explosion, and I thought- don’t do that to me- “
Madi pulls back and falls silent, seeming to only just realize they have company. She eyes Bellamy for a moment- who is looking back with equal curiosity- her blue grey eyes cool and assessing. Clarke holds her breath as the two most important people in her world take each other in. Then Madi’s quicksilver smile flashes across her face as she grins.
“Hey, Bellamy.” She says impishly. “I’m Madi. Clare knew you’d come.”
“Uh, hey.” He manages. “I- how are you, uh….”
“Alive?” Madi intercedes calmly. “Nightblood. He looks exactly like you drew him.” She adds in trigedasleng to Clarke.
“Thanks.” He replies in the same language, surprising Madi. Then, to Clarke in English. “You drew me?”
“Well, I kept forgetting what your dumb face looked like, is all.” He grins, then looks down sharply at the sound of his name through the radio attached at his hip.
“That’ll be the others. They went scouting for a settlement we thought we saw on the way down, while me and Murphy were supposed to be clearing the rocket out of supplies- except Murphy isn’t much of a team player these days and went to find water instead.”
“Hey guys.” He speaks into his radio. “I’ve got some news- meet me a half mile south from the rocket, upwind of the smoke.”
“You’re safe, right?” Clarke hears Harper’s voice crackling through the radio, and feels another frisson of relief tingle down her spine.
“Yeah, I’m good. Better than good, actually. Just- get your butts here, okay?”
Clarke is tempted to say something, but resists. She wants to see them so badly it hurts.
The moment the radio fades to static, she turns to Bellamy. “They’re all okay?” She demands, hating that thread of vulnerability in her voice. He smiles, easing her fears.
“They’re all good. The first year was… hard, for all of us in different ways, especially before Monty figured out a recipe for the algae.”
“How bad was it?” Clarke asks, half-laughing.
“Remember in the first week on the ground, before we figured out how to hunt properly? And all we ate for a while was that god-awful fungus we just hoped wouldn’t kill us?”
Clarke laughs, remembering. “Jasper promised us it was edible, but I never believed him.”
“Algae tasted a little like that, except if it had been left for a month to rot first.”
“Wow, that good huh?”
“Definit- the bunker!” He blurts out, eyes wide and horrified. “O! Clarke, do you-“ The look on her face is answer enough. He falls silent.
“No…”
“We tried to dig them out.” Madi says. “They’re buried too deeply. We didn’t know what to do, we didn’t have the manpower or the technology, but now- “
Bellamy nods, looking a little more put together. “Raven… Raven could build something. We can get them out. It’ll be okay.” He sounds like he trying to convince himself more than her, but she nods nonetheless.
“Yo, Blake! What the hell did you do to my ship-“
Approaching them, Raven falls abruptly silent as she realizes that he’s not alone.
She looks the same, Clarke thinks. Still strong, still Raven.
“…Clarke.”
“Hey Raven. How was space?”
Madi’s hand finds its way into Clarke’s as the others reach them, each falling silent in turn. Monty is the first to crack.
“Clarke!” He throws himself at her, his smile splitting his face in half. Clarke catches him, her own grin helpless in the face of his infectious joy. He spins her round a little, then passes her to Harper, who hugs her in turn, and whispers “I’m so glad you’re okay,” in her ear. Clarke’s cheeks hurt from smiling so much. Raven gives her a hug that nearly cracks her ribs; Emori’s is a little shy, but very heartfelt. Even Echo gives her a smile, (Clarke wasn’t aware her face could do that), while Murphy stands to one side, hands in pockets.
“Thank you for what you did.” He says, a little formally. She grins at him- she can’t help it, she’s been dreaming of this moment for six years- and says from the bottom of her soul:
“You are so very welcome.”
Clarke leads them back to the settlement- only after Raven has seen for herself that the rocket is beyond saving.
“Pretty sure that was your shoddy parking, Reyes.”
“Hey, I wasn’t the one who was supposed to be with the rocket but decided I was too cool for the rest of us-“
“Oh, so it’s my fault the engine combusts, is that how it is-“
Clarke has not been this happy in a long, long time. Madi’s hand finds its way into hers.
“Like you imagined?” She whispers. Clarke glances back at her bickering friends: Bellamy is looking right back, a small, disbelieving smile on his face.
“Yeah.” Clarke replies. “Exactly how I imagined.”
~~~
The night draws around them loosely; twilight darkening the skies, as everyone wordlessly forms a lopsided circle around the fire that Madi gets going. Stories are traded; people tossing jibes and jokes lightly across the circle as if they weigh nothing at all. There is silence as Clarke tells her story, just giving the bare bones of it. Madi chimes in now and again, but mainly there is just Clarke’s voice, fake bravado and false confidence- she will never tell anyone how close she came to pulling that trigger. At the end, there is silence for a moment, then Murphy lifts his glass in a toast.
“Good going, cockroach.” He says softly. Clarke lets out a small huff of laughter, and then toasts him in return.
“So basically,” He says, “You had it pretty cushy down here, while we suffered with Monty’s algae-“
“You know what, Murphy-“ Monty is laughing though, and they all are; her wonderful patchwork family. Clarke lets herself smile, feeling happiness fizzing in her veins like caffeine. She looks up, and Bellamy’s eyes are on her, ignoring the others; and suddenly it might as well just be them; just him and her and the softness in his smile.
She smiles back, just for him, and feels want shoot through her, an almost entirely alien feeling after so long alone. She was familiar with it enough, before, of course.
In the beginning, there had been the human baseness of it: in his guard uniform, inky black hair and bad attitude, and that part of her that immediately went: him. I want him.
The rest of her brain, of course, hated him on principle. They continued to clash, fire and sparks, and if there was a little part of her that got a little too excited when they stood opposite one another, shouting and screaming their arguments to the sky, well, that little part of her wasn’t in control, so what did it matter?
Then there was that day in the bunker, with blood and violence and the broken little boy in the aftermath. There was understanding, and the realization that this would be so much easier if they worked together. After that it is a different sort of wanting; quiet evenings in his tent, talking strategy until early morning, and sure, they still argued, but now it ended with laughter and agreement and peace. It wasn’t the want to fuck him so much then- well it was, but mainly it the want to have him: to spend all her evening in his cabin, talking quietly, to wake up beside him every morning, to have him look at her with that god damned beautiful smile of his.
Looking at Bellamy now, Clarke is reminded of another evening, a little like this. She had just slid a knife between Finn’s ribs, and that evening she sat in front of the fire, knees to her chest, eyes cold and distant, and in so much pain she could barely breathe. She did though: in and out, measured and even: in and out; in and out; in and out. Bellamy didn’t put an arm around her- he knew she couldn’t stand to be touched just then- but sat quietly beside her, and whenever she dared to look at him, he would be looking right back, just an aching softness in his eyes.
Clarke decided that night that she would never try to bridge the distance between them. The people she loved died. Because of her. And Bellamy was nothing less than what made her human: he wasn’t just a boy she loved, but the soul that spoke to her own. And Clark would rather spend the rest of her life separate and distant than risk anything happening to him. So they carried on as they always had, and Clarke would pretend not to see the way his eyes lingered on her when he thought she wasn’t looking, the way his gaze sometimes got stuck on her lips, as if caught there.
Now, his gaze is soft and open, and Clarke breathes easier than she has in a long time. There is the part of her that wants to run, to save him- but who is she sparing here, really? How much of this was the want to keep him safe, and how much was the want to protect her own battered heart?
Enough, she thinks as their eyes meet across that clearing. Enough.
The night draws on, slow and easy, around them. Madi is delighting in her audience, in the company of others, as she tells stories and jokes Clarke has heard half a hundred times before. People eventually begin to peel off, each picking their own cabin: Monty and Harper, Murphy and Emori, Raven and Echo: and Clarke takes a moment to be surprised as they head to the same cabin- she didn’t see that coming.
Clarke nudges Madi gently. “Hey, you wanna head to bed? I’ll be there in a bit.”
Madi glances at Bellamy who is staring at the dying fire, apparently lost in his own thoughts. She smiles at Clarke, and in that smile there is complete understanding, and just a bit of mischief.
“Or not.” She grins, and gives Clarke a little sideways hug. “See you in the morning, Clarke. Keep it down, yeah?”
“Hey!” Clarke begins indignantly, but Madi just grins again and disappears into their cabin. Clarke just smiles to herself, a stupid amount of affection bubbling up inside her for that beautiful, ridiculous girl.
“She reminds me of you.” Bellamy says from across the fire. Clarke smiles at that, then moves across to sit beside him. His arm immediately comes up to come around her shoulders, and she leans in easily.
“I’m pretty sure I wasn’t that stubborn when I was younger.”
“Oh yeah? You sure about that?” She nudges him gently, then winds her arms around his ribs with a small sigh. There is peace for a few seconds, until Clarke blurts out into the silence the words that she couldn't say in front of the others;
“I called you.” Bellamy is silent, confused. “Every day, I called you on that piece of shit radio. I’d tell you about my day, about how scared and lost and alone I was, and then I told you about Madi, and how I wasn’t alone anymore, and about this beautiful valley I found, and how I couldn’t wait for you to see it. Every day, for six years. Sometimes, it was the only thing that kept me going.” Bellamy’s arms have tightened around her to the point of pain.
He says nothing for a moment, then rocks them slightly, his cheek pressed to her hair. When he does speak, his voice is quiet, and the pain in it breaks Clarke’s heart all over again.
“Clarke, I- I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry I left you behind. I’m sorry I didn’t reply. I’m sorry you’ve been here alone-“ Clarke is shaking her head fiercely.
“No, no, don’t be, it’s okay-“
He pulls back a little to look her in the eye. “I’m so goddamned sorry, Clarke.” He says plainly, and the pain in those words is enough for Clarke to finally screw up all her courage, hold it tight between their joined hands, and lean across to kiss him.
His lips are still beneath hers for a moment, just long enough for her to panic- I was wrong, I was wrong- but then his arms are iron bands around her and she is holding him just as tightly, fingers grasping handfuls of his shirt, dragging herself closer, his tears soaking her shirt. His mouth is fierce and wild against hers, and all she can think is finally-
Clarke feels like every part of her is on fire: she feels free and fierce and alive; she digs her nails into the back of Bellamy’s neck, grasping at the short hairs there, and he makes this small desperate noise she didn’t even know he could make. She wants more. She wants it all.
“Clarke.” He breathes, low and desperate, and they aren’t even kissing anymore, just pressing their wet, slack mouths anywhere they can reach. She digs her fingers into his back: real; solid; alive. His face is buried in her neck: he is shaking slightly. Or maybe they both are; it doesn’t matter.
“I love you.” She whispers into his skin. “That’s what I’d say, every day. I knew you couldn’t hear me, so I’d say it to the sky every day, just to prove I could. I love you, Bellamy Blake. I loved you when the world was burning, and I loved you when it ended, and I’ll love you after that too.”
He makes a small, hurt sound from the back of his throat, and kisses her in answer, his mouth desperate against hers. “I love you too.” He breathes, nearly soundless against her skin. “I love you so much, Clarke. I thought about you every day, and I never stopped hurting, never stopped wishing I stayed, so at the very least I could have died with you-“
She shushes him at that, pushing their mouth together again. There is more to say, but she is done with words for now. For now, it is just them: no hesitation, no barriers; just them and the night and all the ways they love each other.
~~~
The morning light filters though open windows, and Clarke wakes slowly, with a sort of gentle happiness she has never felt before. There is warmth behind her, and an arm wrapped around her waist; his chest is to her back, and she can feel his breath stirring the small hairs at the nape of her neck. She has never known peace like this before.
She turns in his arms to see his face: asleep, he could be that boy she fell in love with so long ago. She reaches out without thinking about it, allowing her fingers to trace the shape of his jaw line, that despite her best efforts, she could never get quite right on paper. His beard- and she can still feel the roughness of it against her thighs- seems softer now. His eyes flutter open, and he lets out this massive contented groan, stretching like a cat. Clarke laughs softly.
“Someone’s pleased with themselves.” He smiles at her, half-lidded, sleepy and content.
“Oh, I think so. Pretty sure you agreed with me, as well-“ Clarke cuts him off with another laugh, then tucks herself back against his side. Her fingers trace shapes against the skin of his hip.
“I like the beard.” She offers quietly.
He grins again. “Well yeah, last night you definitely did-“
“Jesus Christ, this is just going to be my life now isn’t it; just crappy sexual innuendos; what have I done-“ He is laughing too, arms tight around her where she had jokingly tried to wriggle away.
There is nothing but peace as he kisses her, not even asking for anything, just a gentle good morning kiss that warms her through to her toes none the less.
“Seriously though.” She says a few minutes later. “The first year we were on the ground you keep your face meticulously clean shaven, despite grounders and ambushes and general death and danger. You then spend six years on a spaceship, with fuck all else to be doing, and you don’t have the time?”
“Well,” He says quietly, “It’s not like I had anyone to impress up there.”
She is quiet for moment. “Oh.” She gets out, a bit lamely.
He huffs a laugh against the skin of her neck. “I had the biggest crush on you in the beginning, you know.” He admits. She smiles.
“Likewise.”
“You know those big arguments we used have, when we were king and queen of our little ragtag group? Those all-out, screaming at the sky, where you’d swear –and god did it do things to me when you swore at me- and you’d be standing in front of me, fists clenched, looking like you wanted to kill me- and god, I wanted you so badly. Just wanted to grab you, fuck you so hard you’d forget your name-“
“How romantic-“
“Or to just take you apart, piece by piece. Then Mount Weather and ALIE and all that shittiness happened, but that want never went away. Mostly by then I’d sort of admitted how fucking in love with you I was, but I never said anything. What if it ruined us? Then I’d think: surely she knows. There’s no way I’m that good an actor, it’s got to be bursting out of me at the seams. The way I’d catch you looking at me sometimes, like your heart was breaking…”
Clarke pushes her face into his neck, barely able to breathe past the lump in her throat.
“I knew,” She confesses.
“Then why? Did you- did you not want me, or-“
“I was scared,” She breathes. “I…I hurt nearly everyone I love, and the more I love them, the more hurt they get, and I loved- love- you so much I thought it would kill me, and I was so scared of getting you hurt. I figured this way, you’d be less likely to become another Clarke Griffin tally, another way I destroy-“
His hands capture her face as he looks her dead in the eye.
“Clarke.” He says seriously. “You’re an idiot.”
She breathes a small laugh. “Well yeah,” She says. “I know that now, but then it seemed to make perfect sense.”
Bellamy lets out a small sigh, then pulls her close again. She can hear his heartbeat, reliable and strong against her. She closes her eyes, gets lost in the thump-thump of it, and the way his arms fit so easily around her.
“Well.” Bellamy says quietly. “We’re here now. That’s what matters right? There’s us and Madi and the people in the bunker, and this beautiful valley that we’re going to make into a home. There’s the future.”
“Yeah.” She says quietly, pressing a kiss to his collarbone. “There’s the future.”