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Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
- excerpted from "do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas
Light.
Everything is light.
Light and darkness, then light again.
Light and darkness, all at once, but not at all.
Light birthed from darkness, darkness birthed from light, a gentle tenderness not unlike birth. And . . .
. . . and the aching, bleeding, pulsing pain in his leg was gone,
gone,
gone?
His leg is gone.
Not there, like a scar erased . . .
. . . not erased.
Evaporated from his very skin.
His skin that no longer exists.
Traces of memory keep it in place, the idea of scars and skin and legs, but the clarity of oblivion make it all seem so . . . nonessential.
He reaches out with his mind to tell her. Do you see? We’re finally better. We can finally be better.
But like turning around and seeing an empty space, she isn’t there. Clarke isn't there behind him in the empty light-dark-light. Where can she be?
He can feel the rest: Murphy and Emori somehow still sitting closer to each other even when there is no form to sit together. Miller and Jackson intertwined and dancing round. Echo and Octavia float besides someone new. Hope. The name speaks in his mind, like he's known it always without knowing it at all. She brims with some kind of anger he cannot understand. Why isn't she happy? The pain is gone and yet her anger isn't. Jordan too burns with this vicious fire, like something in that past life was still worth clinging too.
He pushes out pain, looking for Clarke. Clarke, who can make sense of this all and can help him understand them, now that she has seen.
"Bellamy, are you there?"
A voice speaks in the dark.
"It's been a thousand days
with no word from anyone . . ."
". . . the little hellion I found has a name.
Today she told it to me for the first time.
It's nice, to have someone to talk to,
someone who can hear me . . ."
"I just hope you're alive, Bellamy.
Please be alive."
Clarke? He asks again, pushing past the people he recognizes into so many minds he cannot comprehend. So many minds, so many species. Innumerable. And yet there is a number, and somehow he knows it exactly. He tries again. Clarke, where are you? CLARKE!
Another mind meets his. Madi, sad and small and scared. Even though the voice of them all is flat, monotone, he still knows this, and still knows it is her speaking.
She’s not here.
Something inside him snaps, or it would if he weren’t fused with the essence of everything. What? But she took the test. She saved them all. Does she have to wait to transcend?
No. She never can.
Why not?
They won't let her. Madi says, but the feeling of her disappears into the void.
No, that's wrong. She has to come with us.
The next voice is not Madi. It is something . . . different.
She is the first test taker to kill another being during the test. There must be retribution. Punishment. Justice.
This isn’t justice. Not for someone who saved us all so many times. He says. He wants to show her that they could be better. That the pain could leave and there could be peace. Bring her here. We can’t leave her alone. Not again.
Clarke cannot transcend.
He thinks back to this feeling of peace. The better angels raising him up with Monty on his mind, explaining what was to come. The loss of pain, fear, hunger. The loss of death. The choice seemed clear then. Accept what he had sought after, what he begged Clarke to understand before she shot him in the leg. Losing everything bad and cruel and awful in the world, to live forever and be in peace. But for this.
He did not realize they meant losing Clarke, too.
Send me back. Bellamy whispers to the void.
What? The void whispers back.
He speaks soft as a mother's kiss but means every word.
You told me it was a choice. So send me back.
Bellamy feels it: it the collective conscience of the universe could blink back at him, it would.
Did you lie? He asks, suddenly filled with madness in a place where anger should not exist. Was that not an option, will you force me to stay?
We do not lie. The void speaks. But no one in all of existence has chosen to return after transcendence.
Well, I'm choosing now.
Are you sure? Once made, the choice can never be undone.
You will not transcend again.
The pressure of a billion billion voices impresses upon him.
Insists this is wrong.
There will be pain. and hunger. and suffering.
But what's wrong is what they are doing.
What they have done to her.
She called you. Every day for six years. Madi's mind again. Small and sad and scared. A child's mind. She has been through so much, but she is still a child. The others are there, too, Raven and Octavia and Hope and Echo and Jordan and people he doesn't even know. People Clarke has saved, clamoring for the collective to let her back. And above all the collective din, her voice, echoing in the dark-light-dark.
"I don't know why I keep calling you.
It's not like you're even there.
But all the same, you keep me going."
Clarke wouldn't to leave him alone, so Bellamy will not leave her.
Looking, feeling, being at all he wanted,
the transcendence he gave everything for,
he gives everything again.
I will not leave Clarke alone. Not again.
Such a curious species. Still driven by emotion, even when you have evolved into beyond it.
"Send me back." He says with a voice, not a mind.
Very well, the collective says, and then he is gone.
Bellamy was nothingness and everything, nonexistence and infinity.
But now he is scars, and skin, and legs.
Materializing on a foreign planet.
Not the cool underground Bardo or the cold majesty of Etherea or the soothing shades of Sanctum or the hot wasteland of Earth.
Bellamy has not been here before.
But he has.
Earth.
He knows it without knowing. Some of the mind that he once had, that transcendent feeling, has stayed with him, it seems. (or maybe the voice echoing in his head was one last gift from everyone he ever knew).
He falls to the ground, feeling the rich soil and looking up to see the trees, large and tall and red, red, red. Bellamy never thought he would see color again, but there are green leaves and blue-clear water babbling in the nearby stream and grey stone.
And the sensation!
Texture. Who knew you could miss texture? Bellamy would spin, if he were in a dress. This brave, bright, beautiful world demands it.
But then his mind hollows.
He is not here to remember what it means to be living.
He is here to help her live.
"Clarke!" He calls out, his voice rusty and raw and rickety. "CLARKE!"
I will find you. He promises, limping beyond into the wilderness without a care or comfort. Blood dribbles down his leg from where she shot him, a shot fired only a day ago or less. Unless he was Collective longer . . .
Bellamy does not dwell on that. He thinks and plans and marches, towards whatever direction she is.
There are many worlds she could be on, but he will cross them all ten times over. He will not let her live this life alone.
Bellamy, where are you? I can't sense you. Did you do it? Did you find Clarke?
A voice in the void.
Such individuals, these humans.
Even within the collective, they already speak up more than the rest of the species.
If it had a head to tilt and ponder in the emotive way the humans did,
the collective might do that right now.
He did. I can feel it. Bellamy's sister says.
Octavia. The voice acknowledges.
I want to go.
What?
Send me to them. I want to go back.
Are you sure? This is -
"A choice I can't make. Got it." Octavia says, her voice strong, her warpaint painting. "I had ten years without my brother and fifty seconds with him. I want him back. For good."
She disappears,
leaving the ether in a
glowing,
bright
dark
bright
BURST.
Octavia's gone. Some human reports, as if they have all not heard the interaction.
Here, everything is known.
Nothing is unknown.
To everyone, and everything.
Knowledge is collective; experience is collective.
Emotion is nothing.
Independence is nothing.
Existence is . . .
both.
No. She's not leaving me again. The next human says.
Hope. The void knows her. Knew her long ago.
A child of the bridge.
A child of them all.
"No. A child of Charmaine Diyoza. A child of Octavia Blake. A child with love and friendship and family. And I want it back."
The reporting human takes Hope's hand, because suddenly there are hands again for both of them. "Me, too."
Hope Diyoza and Ash kom Azgedakru are gone before the collective can acknowledge the second mind by her true name.
Bellamy hears the dog barks before he hears her callings its name. But even though Picasso barrels into him, a sixty-seven pound mass of happy golden retriever, all he sees is her.
Clarke.
She's squinting, like she doesn't believe. "Bellamy?" A hand on her forehead, blocking the sunlight and bringing her eyes soft shade. "Bellamy?"
"BELLAMY!"
And then she is running and running and he is hobbling and hobbling, the mud squelching beneath their feet as they collide and fall into each other's harms. Holding each other. There is crying. Wetness on his cheeks, his chest. Her tears.
"How are you here?" She asks, eyes lined by silver, her cheeks florid. "Did they keep you back, too?"
"No, I came back." He says, voice deep and familiar and known. Known like he hasn't known anything in a long time. "I wasn't going to leave you alone in the universe. Not ever again."
"But . . ."
"Shhh, Clarke. Never again." Bellamy holds Clarke closer. "Somehow, I heard the messages. Every single one. Every single day, from Praimfiya to Eligius IV landing. And I came back."
"You - " She looks up, chin quivering with the threat another round of sobs. "You gave it up?"
"It was a choice. But it was a choice I couldn't make without you." Bellamy says, and he means it. He couldn't do it without her. Not in a thousand lifetimes. He couldn't do anything without her. "Together."
"They won't let me in - "
"And they won't let me back now that I've left." Bellamy smiles, a thing tinged by sadness and joy and loss and triumph and so much suffering. So much pain. But that pain brought him love and warmth and friendship, too. The happy moments, between ending the world and saving it. And Clarke has done so much of the latter that she deserves to have a happy ending. And he cannot have one without her.
Eventually, they rise from the soft forest floor. Besides them, Picasso wags his tail and smiles in a doggy way, lolling his tongue and slobbering on Bellamy's shoes.
"Good boy." Bellamy bends to pet him, to give him a greeting. But the dog is bolting through the woods and away from them. He bounds over a rock and barks louder than he did when he found Bellamy.
They look at each other, communicating without any words in seconds. Even the Collective can't do that. Or maybe it can. But not like Bellamy and Clarke.
And they run together, hope in both their hearts and then Hope in both their eyesights.
But not just Hope. Hope and Jordan, Octavia and Echo, Miller and Jackson, Raven, Emori, Murphy, Niylah and Gaia and Indra, and still more blipping in behind them, children and adults, mothers and fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, enemies, so many bright flares of golden light fading into humanity.
And there, the reason Picasso barks so excitedly still, slobbering on the living human he loves the most -
"MADI!" Clarke screams, cries, runs to her daughter, faster than the wind, faster than the world, faster than the darkness that descended. Because Madi is not just there, but alive and whole and well and smiling.
"I couldn't leave you. I couldn't leave this." Madi says, voice croaking like an ancient crone as her mother sobs in her arms. "There's so much life left to live. I never even got to play soccer."
Behind them, more light flares, although it is slower now. Slowing down.
Octavia comes to Bellamy's side, slowly, hesitantly. "Big brother?"
"O. . ." Bellamy swallows, looking at her. Looking at the Disciple in bright white tunic and pants, holding his little sister's hands. The only Disciple he can spot in this field of Wonkru and Skykru and prisoners and Sanctumites.
"I understand now, Bellamy. I understand everything." She leaps into his arms, letting the Disciple go.
And around them are reunions, people calling to each other, finding the ties that bind them in the world and holding on because now they know what it is like to lose and what some vast, distant creature of the past thought was better.
But we will be better. Better for us, not for the alien hivemind. He thinks. The fighting must end, but they all were pulled here. Pulled by someone they loved and cared for, a uniquely human thing. To love and love and love until it hurts. Now, they must learn to love and love and love until it heals.
And that love, and the possibility and power it possesses -
that is why humanity is worth saving.