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Two days before Clarke and Bellamy meet Madi through the foster care system, Bellamy calls Clarke during her work break, his voice frantic.
“I had a dream,” he’d said, and just like every other time he starts a phone call this way, Clarke braces herself for a story straight out of a YA novel.
“You had a daughter, Clarke. Smartest kid I’ve ever met,” and she doesn’t question his use of you instead of we because the last time he talked about his dreams, he flew to a space station while Clarke was about to die in the apocalypse. And Octavia was ten feet under the ground in a bunker created by a cult leader.
She’s about to blame his dream on pre-meeting jitters, but he continues before she can do so, his words a jumbled mess of “And–And something goes wrong , and I do something to her that you get so mad at , but I do it for you , to protect you– I’m not making sense, am I?” and “Her name was Madi, I wish you could have seen her" leaving his mouth without giving her time to reply.
The dreams aren’t frequent. And when it comes down to it, they don't really make sense.
Because even though Raven is disabled from the knee down on her left leg, Murphy would run through a desert filled with landmines before he attempted to be involved in being the cause of that.
Because Jasper and Roan are alive (Jasper may have shaved his hair short but he’s not depressed and waiting for something to kill him, and although Roan’s family really did kick him out, being a nurse is a far cry from bounty hunter), and Anya hasn’t died in her arms (they’re friends on Facebook and living in far different cities, and she’s well )
Because Finn Collins really had been dating Raven when he and Clarke fell into bed together, but Clarke didn’t have to kill Finn while whispering that she loves him to spare him from being tortured (the only one who really knows what Finn is up to is Raven, and he is not a topic brought up with ease)
Because even though Clarke and Lexa were in a relationship, Clarke didn’t have to watch Lexa die one day after said relationship was consummated (in truth, they lasted about five months together and broke up because Lexa repeatedly refused to believe that Clarke is attracted to men as well as women, and no matter how Clarke might have felt for her girlfriend, she drew a line at denials of her identity)
Because Gina is real, but she was simply Bellamy's group project partner throughout high school. When he had told her that he had dreams where they were a couple, she joked that he shouldn’t use those pickup lines on Clarke, and Bellamy swears that joke made him realize a lot more things about himself than it should have.
Because when Clarke kissed his cheek with a promise to meet again, she was just leaving for a university out of town, and they kept in touch through all of it. Through sleepless nights with stacks of paper and midday anxiety that one of them won’t make it through the next semester.
Because the two of them hadn’t met on an escape pod to Earth; they had met when they were eight and nine respectively and Bellamy and Octavia had come to live with Kane, her family’s next-door neighbor who was what Clarke assumed would be called the Blakes's godfather, after their mother had to be hospitalized for some complications with her health that Clarke never understood.
It was supposed to be a temporary arrangement. Until it wasn’t.
The first time Bellamy told her about his dreams was about a year after they had met (she was nine, he was ten) and his mother had died just the day before, they were hiding in a fort of pillows and sheets Kane had begrudgingly allowed them to create in his bedroom and Octavia (only about four years old) was sleeping, using Bellamy’s lap as her pillow.
“I had a dream I was in a space station, and we had to hide O on a small place under the floor, but they found her, and then mom died.” He had said, breaking the silence. He didn’t know who they were. He didn’t even remember any details, but after sharing that with her, he started crying again, and all Clarke could do was hold his hand as Octavia slept.
Since then, and for the nearly twenty years that Clarke and Bellamy have been a constant presence in each other’s lives, he's been having dreams that leave him scared or thinking for days, with no rhyme or reason as to when those dreams visit him.
Madi is the first time he sees someone in his dreams before he meets them in person.
Madi is six, she fits the name but doesn't fit the appearance of what Bellamy had seen in his dream, and Clarke knows they’re not looking at a certain adoption by meeting her and fostering her, but she’s enchanted.
The young girl’s father is dead, and her mother is in and out of rehabilitation centers. And no matter how hard they tried, social workers couldn’t attach the girl to any other existing relatives.
On their first meeting, Madi is more defensive glares than anything, but when Clarke opens her arms and offers her a hug, she wastes no time in accepting and hiding her face in the crook of Clarke’s neck. And as he watches, Bellamy thinks he could get used to this.
The first year of fostering Madi goes a little like this:
Bellamy dreams of Madi and Clarke chasing each other in the wilderness, and the Madi in his dreams is far more intense than the one that lives with him and Clarke.
Then he dreams of himself in space as Monty struggles to create something for them to eat, and he wakes up wanting to throw up whatever fluids his stomach might contain.
And when he’s awake, he’s more than willing to follow Madi’s every whim, much to Clarke’s dismay.
She’s not as tactile with him as she is with Clarke, but as he allows her one extra piece of chocolate or looks away from the comic book she hid under her pillow, he thinks her grin is a good substitute.
In the third year of fostering Madi, Murphy and Raven adopt a dog and let Madi name him. And let Madi become his human best friend.
(Madi chooses Picasso, and Raven jokes that art history is exactly what she’d expect out of Bellamy and Clarke’s child, and Clarke feels like she got punched in the gut)
All four of them think nine years old might be a bit too old for what parents call play dates, but it’s pretty much what their meet-ups feel like now, with their eyes almost constantly watching over Madi and Picasso.
Sometimes, his dreams consist of Murphy and Raven and Emori (a girl Murphy dated years ago), and Murphy and Emori break up because Murphy finds himself useless while Raven teaches Emori how to fix and operate machines that Bellamy doesn’t have the energy to figure out from his dreams.
When he tells Murphy about that, he laughs out loud because Emori is married to a woman who makes her so much happier than he did in the year they dated. And even if they squabble too much for it to show, Raven makes him happy too.
So he tells Bellamy to wait until his dream self gets together with Raven.
(They don’t, and he doesn’t tell Murphy how he and Emori make up in his dreams. Or that Bellamy is the one dating the girl Emori is married to. In the same way, he doesn’t tell Octavia or Kane about how he dreams of Octavia forcing Kane to eat blocks of human flesh. Because what ?)
Two years later, Monty and Harper have a child they choose to name after Jasper (and Jasper is ecstatic as if he’s not Monty’s best friend for life). And a woman called Charmaine and her little girl Hope move in on Clarke and Bellamy’s neighborhood.
In Bellamy’s dreams, Jordan is in his 20s and his parents ask him and Clarke to take care of their son before they die, and Charmaine raises Hope with the help of Octavia on a planet where time passes faster.
Around that time, Bellamy dreams of Kane dying and Abby placing his memory in a different person’s body so he’ll survive. It’s not what Kane wants, and Abby has to watch a man she loves die again.
Bellamy knows that despite one being single and the other a widow, and their constant bickering charting to the territory of a couple that might as well have been married for years, Kane and Clarke’s mother are not romantically involved. But his dreams make his heart clench all the same.
(He doesn’t tell any of that to anyone directly involved, but Clarke finds it rather humorous)
As the fifth year of fostering Madi fades into the sixth, Madi starts referring to Clarke as her mother and Bellamy as her father without correcting herself. And it takes all of Bellamy’s self-control to hold himself from asking if they can just adopt her because her biological mother has not made any attempts to gain custody of her. After six years, surely she will simply agree to sign the papers required.
The solution to Bellamy’s internal struggle comes in the form of Doucette, the social worker who calls them bearing the news that Madi’s mother wishes for the couple to adopt Madi as their own.
(In his dreams, he spends months hiking a mountain reminiscent of Hell with Doucette, and he comes out of it with a faith made up by a man that Bellamy thinks he’s only seen on TV, and it all sounds so silly that he doesn’t share most pieces of it even with Clarke.)
As the adoption process progresses, they expect Madi to be more open about feeling angry at her mother for essentially giving her up. Instead, Madi gives Clarke a thick, folded piece of cardboard paper and Bellamy a slightly heavy box with the words “Only open if you’re Madi’s Mom!” and “Only open if you’re Madi’s Dad!” written on them.
Madi might really be angry. And she'd have every right to be, but to Bellamy and Clarke, all she seems to be is giddy.
When they ask her if she means to open the gifts only once she’s officially adopted, Madi shrugs in response, so Clarke opens hers the day she receives it.
As Clarke unfolds the cardboard, a pink hand-drawn flower that heavily resembles a carnation pops up with the words I LOVE YOU MOM written in the most careful handwriting Clarke has seen from Madi.
“We made these on Mother’s Day at school, but I didn’t know if…” Madi trails off, and Clarke kisses her cheeks, crushes her into a hug, and repeats "I love you" over and over like a mantra.
Bellamy chooses to wait until Father’s Day to open his box.
On the day Bellamy, Clarke, and Madi have to present in front of the judge, Bellamy dreams of Clarke shooting him in the chest with a gun. The pain follows him all day, and he's not sure if it's anxiety or if the thought of Clarke killing him, even if it's to protect her daughter– their daughter just hurts so much.
"I dreamed you killed me to protect Madi," he tells Clarke in the dead of the night when it's just the two of them, and she kisses him in response, reaching under his shirt to his chest and finding what Bellamy thinks is the spot where she shot him in his dream and runs her hand over it soothingly.
"No matter what happens in your dreams, I know you wouldn't do anything to hurt Madi," Clarke tells him, and Bellamy lets himself cry then because damn, it might have been just a dream, but he's been holding it in all day and it kept replaying and replaying.
Clarke's palm rests on his chest all night, and Bellamy feels no pain when he wakes the next morning.
On Father's Day, Bellamy falls asleep in the early afternoon and dreams of forgiving Clarke for shooting him and Clarke forgiving him for betraying her because they're alive, Madi is alive, and they have a second, maybe third chance to set things right. And he's sure there are other people with them on that beach, but the incessant tune of the phone ringing jolts him awake before he can tell and it's followed by the best news he could have ever woken up to. The judge's decision has been finalized, and Madi is his and Clarke's daughter officially.
Bellamy opens Madi's gift for him at the celebratory family dinner.
Octavia, Lincoln, Kane, Abby, Murphy, and Raven are with them (along with Picasso who Madi had not-so-secretly been feeding under the table) and watch with growing grins as Bellamy slowly takes the gift out of its box and removes its clumsy wrapping.
It's a mug, Bellamy realizes. It’s entirely white except for one side where it's drawn dark blue and says BEST DAD IN THE UNIVERSE with yellow letters and has a small spaceship drawn under the words.
"It's perfect," Bellamy decides and he's not sure if he said that out loud or not as he gets up from his chair, walks up to Madi, and wraps his arms around her the tightest he can manage.
At that moment, he understands exactly what Clarke felt when she saw the pink carnation.
Madi is his daughter and he loves her so much that it makes every painful memory that comes with waking up from his dream worth it.
He lets Madi go when she starts protesting and moves on to hug Clarke, who anticipates his movements and gets up to return the hug. Bellamy kisses her cheek, then her neck, and tells Clarke he loves her and holds her even long after it starts feeling awkward with their best friends and family watching.
It's perfect. It makes all kinds of bad dreams and doubts worth it.
That night, the three of them squeeze together on Clarke and Bellamy's bed with Madi between them, and Bellamy dreams of building a cabin on the beach while Clarke sketches Madi and Raven playing with Picasso.
For once, he doesn't find himself worrying about what the people in his dreams will do next.