Chapter Text
Clarke doesn’t understand why it is said that soulmates are one soul in two bodies. Her soul has five bodies and she would give her life for any of them.
The first one she meets is Jasper Jordan. Funny enough, she never once thinks that she might be going crazy, seeing someone else’s reflection where hers should have been in the mirror. She sees him one brisk September morning and it’s like her whole body hums; “Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you”. No qualms about the state of her sanity, nothing but a slow relieved smile spreading across her face at the sight of a boy with goggles perched on top of his head.
“Whoa, I’m hot.”
“No, you’re not,” Clarke teases. “I am.”
She presses her finger to the mirror but only sees his in the reflection, nearly touching hers but not quite. He laughs and so does she.
He might not have been wrong about saying that he is hot because he is Clarke as much as she is Jasper, lines between their respective entities completely blurred until they melt into each other. She laughs in the surgery that day, a scalpel in her hand and a patient bleeding out on the stretcher, but giggles burst from her lips nevertheless and she knows that Jasper must be having a really good day – even if she isn’t.
Later that day, she falls asleep to vibrating basses shaking her body and strobe lights piercing her eyelids just where she can’t reach them. She feels Los Angeles the way Jasper feels it, loud and alive, chemicals making their way through his body as well as hers – ultimate euphoria is the only thing she remembers before floating away.
It’s raining when she meets Monty Green and he sidles up to her, nudging her shoulder with his. When she blinks, it’s dry again and she’s roaming the streets of Boston, but she feels Seoul on her skin.
“It’s been like this for ages,” he pouts. “All rain and no shine.”
She shouldn’t know him, he may as well be a complete stranger, but her soul hums again and all she has for him are smiles. They sit on the bench in a park, autumn leaves crunching under the soles of their shoes, and he tells her about himself in exchange for stories about her life.
“I work for an internet security company,” he offers.
“I’m a doctor.”
“But I’m a hacker. That’s much more fun.”
Clarke tries to look surprised, his gentle features and shy smiles nothing like what she imagines a hacker would look like, but he’s still Monty and she knows what he’s capable of.
“If I could have chosen, I would have been an artist.”
“And you couldn’t?”
Clarke shakes her head, offers no explanation. Monty doesn’t ask.
Miller catches her as she’s preparing her breakfast and it’s like plunging into ice-cold water when she finds herself standing next to him in a darkened room. It feels like blood boiling in her veins and adrenaline makes her hands shake.
“What do you need?” she asks him because he needs something – she can feel it.
Nathan Miller has dark skin, dark beanie and dark gloves on his hands as he presses one ear to a giant metal safe. He looks at her like he considers not trusting her but in the end – he does.
“I need a distraction.”
Clarke nods, runs out into the hallway and stares at the glass panels that must be equipped with expensive alarms. Miller knows that there is a staircase leading to the lower floor and he plans to leave via the rooftop of the building, and so Clarke knows it too.
She never thought about whether she was corporeal when she was sharing her soulmates’ worlds but when she throws a small marble bust at the glass, it shatters and the alarms blaring nearly pierce her eardrums.
Miller thanks her when she returns and then she’s not needed anymore. Her cereal went soggy while she was gone and she plops down on the kitchen chair.
“Huh.”
Raven Reyes is all teeth and grit when she summons Clarke. Maybe they summon each other, Clarke tired of being alone and no one else popping up to brighten her day. Raven is lying on the lower bunk in a room with walls made out of metal and a small window over her head lets in sunlight so vibrant Clarke’s eyes hurt.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” Raven grins and Clarke can’t help but to smile back. They must be somewhere cold, chill is seeping into her bones through her very thin sweater and Raven scoots over and makes some space for her under the blanket.
She’s warm and she’s good and she’s brilliant. Clarke loves her already, loves her like she loves the rest of them.
“Where are we?”
“Antarctica. The Chilean base needed a kickass mechanic,” Raven shrugs, faking nonchalance Clarke can see right through. “And here I am.”
“Did you see penguins?”
“You’re on Antarctica and you only care about the penguins?”
“I like penguins,” Clarke blushes, burrowing deeper under the blanket and scooting closer to Raven like she intends to soak up her warmth. When the girl laughs, the sound reverberates in her chest and Clarke’s skin vibrates where it’s pressed into her soulmates’.
“I did see penguins, yup. Pretty cool. Not as cool as me, though.”
“No one could be cooler than you, Raven.”
She knows it, on a very deep level – it’s something that’s ingrained into her cells. Maybe what romantics say when they want to explain love with science is true – their atoms must have been close to each other at the beginning of time. Universe expanded, galaxies and black holes were created, and still – they found each other every single time.
When she leaves, she’s sorry not to see Raven anymore. The girl is like the sun, all energy and heat where Clarke is restlessness hidden under the disguise of peacefulness. Clarke loves her instantly.
Bellamy Blake is the last one she meets and while she’s standing in the middle of his apartment, breathless, he narrows his eyes at her in distrust.
“Took you long enough.”
“Excuse me?”
He looks kind, he looks charming and he is absolutely beautiful. Clarke loves all of them – loves Jasper who keeps her company with his stories of blowing up the lab he works in, loves Monty for his comforting hugs exactly when she needs them, loves Miller for threatening to punch whoever pissed her off, loves Raven because Raven is like a sunny day after a month of all rain.
Clarke loves all of them but with Bellamy – she thinks that they may be two neutron stars on a path of collision. The explosion they could create would truly be a sight to behold.
But she is back in the present and his arms are crossed at his chest and Clarke feels so small and so vast at the same time. Her fingers itch to touch him, knowing instinctively where to press and where to caress.
It doesn’t feel like she has a choice but even if she did – she’d choose him.
“Well, you met everyone else before you came to me,” he explains, scowling.
Clarke chuckles, lighter, when she realizes what this is about and the thought is so absurd because she loves them all but nothing led her to Bellamy yet. She knew of him, only vaguely, from what the others told her but this – this is different. This is better.
“But I came. It’s the thought that counts.”
He feels like sunshine and smells like saltwater when he finally cracks a smile and buries his face into her hair. Clarke never wants to leave his side. She loves all of them but her heart swells and thrashes against her ribcage when Bellamy is there.
“But you came.”
Her skin crackles with electricity when he drops a hand to her waist and she thinks that there are so many important things to learn about him still, but she presses her lips to his all the same and it’s not kissing – it’s poetry; her lips brushing against his in stanzas, their hands roaming in iambic pentameter and when they stop it’s being overwhelmed by a poem so much you gasp because your bones move and your heart shifts to make room for all the emotions you didn’t know you could hold.
The five of them are Clarke’s precious thing the world’s filthy fingers can’t defile. She keeps them in the shadow between her heart and her soul, and she cherishes them above everything else. They are not only a part of her – they are Clarke.
Wells doesn’t know about them but he must sense something because he just smiles when she offers a sheepish “Rain check?” for plans they made.
“Yeah, go, go.”
She doesn’t tell him that she is now no longer one soul in one body, or even half a soul. She is the universe and she forms a whole galaxy with five other people. If someone told her she could love like this, belong like this, feel it in her bones like an absolute truth, she would have told them it was impossible.
But now – now there is nothing else she can imagine, only the six of them arranged around her living room. Monty is holding hands with Miller, the latter raising a challenging eyebrow at the rest of the group as if to warn about teasing them, but Raven can’t hold it in when Monty addresses him as Nate.
“Oh, Nate, you think you could get me a Coke, too?”
“I think not, Reyes.”
“Come on, I’m your soulmate!” Raven protests, nearly hitting Clarke as she flails.
“You’re a pain in the ass, that’s what you are.”
“Fine,” Raven raises her chin, petulant. “I won’t be fixing your getaway cars anymore, then. You’ll have to find yourself a new mechanic and risk getting screwed over.”
Miller drops a Coke in her lap when he returns from Clarke’s kitchen and she can’t help but to exchange an amused glance with Bellamy, sitting at her right. Their thighs brush, their elbows touch and it’s always hard being far from him.
He’s the one who appears the most often – when she’s hiding away in a storage room in the hospital, a long shift that makes a lump of fatigue form somewhere near her stomach, webbing across her body. He tells her about his day, rubs her back as she lets out ugly, tired sobs.
It’s only with them that she can feel this powerless and powerful at the same time, knowing that even if they see her at her weakest – they know who she is. They give her the sort of strength that only comes with knowing that you can be weak in front of someone and they’ll still know what’s in your core, what truly makes you who you are.
If her soul hums and sings when they are near, its voice is louder and deeper – sending shivers down her spine – when Bellamy is there. She couldn’t choose which one of her soulmates she loves the most, but what she feels about Bellamy is a gravitational pull - force strong enough to bend space and time around them.
She finds that she would do anything for his sister, the day she meets her. Octavia Blake is gorgeous and it’s slightly unfair that both of the siblings look like supermodels. It isn’t just about the defiant set of their jaws, so sharp they could cut glass, and it isn’t about their muscles and Octavia’s curves where Bellamy has planes. They shine from within, mischievous glimmers in their eyes, laughter bubbling up in Clarke’s throat whenever she’s near.
“Is she laughing?” Octavia asks Bellamy, busy trying to dry off her hair. They live in the Philippines and it’s rain season – something Octavia likes to complain about.
Also, Octavia can’t see Clarke. She knows about all of them, the bond between the Blakes too strong for Bellamy to keep it a secret, and she doesn’t doubt her brother for one second. Instead, she takes it graciously – up until the point where she realizes that Bellamy is in love with Clarke.
Then she becomes merciless. But mostly benevolent. Mostly.
“Tell her I’m going to kick her ass if she’s laughing,” Octavia warns.
“I’m not!” Clarke throws her hands up in surrender, even though Octavia can’t see it. Bellamy, however, seems amused and fond, looking softly at both his sister and Clarke.
She knows how much Octavia means to him, knows everything about what he’s had to do to keep them alive and loves him even more for it. Only, Clarke doesn’t know how is it possible to love him even more – how is it possible to love any of them more, when the love she feels already spans over galaxies and takes up the whole universe with the sheer strength of it.
But if anyone can create new universes where there were none, they can do it.
“She says she’s not, but she is.”
“Bellamy!”
“What an asshole! Why do you love her? No – wait – Clarke, why do you love my brother? You do know that he’s like the world’s biggest nerd?”
Octavia and she have a friendship that’s mostly based on Bellamy interpreting on Clarke’s behalf but the girl did add Clarke on Facebook and now their friendship got the add-on of eggplant and alien emojis.
“Yeah, but he’s my nerd.”
“She says I’m her nerd. Also, O, I’d just like to add that there is a reason why they call history nerds history buffs.”
“You are buff,” Clarke grants, and Bellamy kisses her temple.
Octavia squints at them. “Did she say something I wasn’t supposed to hear? Am I going to be grossed out?”
“She agreed that I’m buff.”
“Ugh! Disgusting, Clarke!”
She still sends her a message that night, a short “Thank you”. Clarke understands how much it means to them to have someone they can trust – to have five other people they can trust, but one of them especially.
Everyone has war scars that ache when the weather changes but Clarke would gladly take them on if it meant that Octavia and Bellamy could be happy and peaceful for once.
None of them actually consider how it is possible that this is happening to them. Jasper, Raven and Clarke are sort of scientists of the group and sometimes the three of them talk about it, come up with different possibilities they plan on testing. But mostly, they don’t ever take it for granted and they’re happy to have each other when everything else goes left.
Clarke is on a graveyard shift when she meets Anya, her shoulders sagging and her back aching from too many long hours spent standing, but she awakens instantly under the bruised woman’s intense gaze. It isn’t a humming sound this time – Anya sounds like war drums and impending doom.
“You’re a sensate,” she tells her, pressing a hand to her stomach where blood trickles through her fingertips and drips onto the bed in regular intervals.
Clarke’s hand is still clutching the scalpel in the pocket of her scrubs and Anya – whose name she knows instantly, not even sure why because that woman is not her soulmate, not in the way Bellamy and Raven are – smiles.
“Excuse me?”
There’s a cracking sound when Anya shifts on the bed, hissing with pain, and only then does Clarke remember that she’s a real, actual patient. She lifts up her shirt, inspecting the knife wound on her stomach. They get a lot of patients like that but only one of them so far arose the sound of drums and the feeling of marching into battle.
Two stitches in, Anya is completely still except for talking while Clarke works on closing the wound. It looks bad but it’s not deep, thankfully.
“You are a sensate. That’s what it’s called. How many of you are there, five, six?”
“Six.”
Anya nods, short. “The six of you are a cluster and a woman who was in mine, Lexa, she triggered your birth.”
“Where is she?”
“Dead.”
Clarke doesn’t know the woman – she doesn’t even know Anya, but her breath catches in her throat at the mention of their de-facto mother being dead. It doesn’t sound like she died from a natural cause. If anything, it sounds ominous and Anya’s deadpan voice doesn’t help at all.
“What happened to her?”
“BPO. Look out for them.”
She snaps her gloves off and throws them in the bin, returning to stand in front of Anya. The scene looks surreal like everything does at 3AM when Clarke’s had only three hours of sleep in the last two days but it is happening.
And it feels a lot like they are in danger.
Bellamy and Raven appear next to her as soon as she realizes that there is something to be worried about, panic making her fingertips tremble and Bellamy’s warm hand on the small of her back can only do so much to ground her.
“What the hell is she talking about?”
Anya looks up, a wry smile spreading on her face as she looks directly at Raven and Clarke freezes. She shouldn’t be able to do that, it feels like sacrilege somehow. Raven is her soulmate, no one else’s.
This woman sharing their bond feels wrong, so deeply wrong.
“You’re Raven.”
“Damn right I am!” Raven shouts, standing just a little in front of Clarke as if she wants to protect her. If Clarke could move, she’d do the same, but she’s paralyzed by the sudden fear.
Bellamy shifts his weight and speaks up right next to Clarke, not moving his hand an inch as he studies Anya. “You owe us some explanations.”
“I don’t owe you anything. You are not my responsibility. I am here only to warn you because the sensate who activated your psycellium connection was from my cluster.”
She’s dead, Clarke thinks, and feels the two of them stiffen.
“How can you see us?”
“Eye contact. I can’t share – not like you can, but I can see you.”
After a second, Anya huffs and stands up, wincing in pain as her hand flies to her right side where stitches are protruding from her skin.
“That’s not important and I don’t have a lot of time. You need to be careful of what you do – there is always someone who wants to hunt down people like us.”
And they all thought that they were safe. They all thought they were soulmates, a romantic, childish idea that could explain how it was possible to feel what another feels, to see each other even when there are continents separating them.
Nothing comes without a price.
“Be careful, be quiet and when you notice something odd – move.”
Clarke doesn’t unfreeze until Anya’s left and then she lets out a breath she didn’t know she’s been holding all this time, collapsing on the bed and feeling all strength seep out of her.
Raven’s face is an aquarelle of furrowed brows and lower lip worried between her teeth. Clarke knows that she is trying to make sense of what just happened – she is a scientist, this world’s innate workings spread their arms for her.
Finally she nods to herself, serious, and looks straight at Clarke. “I’ll talk to Monty. We’ll find out what BPO is.”
“Thank you.”
She’s gone from the room like she was never even there but Clarke feels how worried she is, senses when Monty comes to learn what happened and then Miller.
When Jasper finds out, Clarke is all nerves and anxious little chuckles. He was the first one she met and he is still the one who affects her the most.
“Let’s get you home, Clarke.”
Bellamy’s voice is calm but he is worried too – all of them are. If she could, she’d wrap them in a bubble where they could all be safe from the world. But she can’t and her arms are tired of carrying syringes and gauzes, stitching people up and watching their wounds being ripped open.
There’s still a stain where Anya was sitting and Clarke sees it bright and clear underneath the crackling fluorescent lights in the room. If she wanted to fool herself into thinking that this was all a weird dream, it’s impossible now.
“I have to protect them,” she tells Bellamy as they are sitting in the last car of the subway train taking her home. This early in the morning everything seems dreamlike, people’s faces tired and sagging, everyone a little more morose than they usually are.
“We’ll find a way,” Bellamy assures her, squeezing her hand a little tighter on the seat and she sighs because they have to find a way.
Lexa died and Clarke doesn’t know how Anya must have felt about it but she knows that if anyone from her own cluster died it would all be pitch-black darkness she’d allow to swallow her whole.
They are all parts of her and Clarke knows that the stories had it wrong when they told her that she would spend her life searching for the second part of her soul to make her feel whole. She has five and her love doesn’t feel any smaller for being separated into six parts instead of just two. It feels greater, nobler, strengthened where it should have been stretched thin.
She is all of them – Raven’s frost-bitten cheeks, Monty’s relief when he wakes up without a nightmare, Jasper’s humor, Miller’s grin when he cracks a safe – the same she wears when it spreads on his face, and Bellamy’s – Bellamy’s hot skin when the sun caresses it, his restless mind – but she would want to be Bellamy’s everything all the same.
No longer is she only Clarke. Not when she can feel her cluster’s sadness, tears streaming down her cheeks as she walks down the street, butterflies fluttering in her stomach when Jasper first meets Maya. Her heart could find them in the darkest of nights and her soul would always remember what it’s like to be whole.
She is Jasper, Monty, Raven, Miller, Bellamy – and they are her.
There aren’t lengths she wouldn’t cross to keep them safe.
June 2015
Humid air sticks to Clarke’s skin and she doesn’t remember when was the last time she felt this alone. Her skin used to feel snowflakes catching on it when Raven did outside repairs, sun when Miller retired to the coast of France after a successful heist, hurricane rain when Bellamy left home without an umbrella.
Now she only feels what is in her proximity. Her ears catch the sound of thunder rumbling when the weather forecast predicts storms for Boston area, and not when the weather in LA is shit. Her body stays glued to her apartment floor – never transporting while she’s cooking or watching the TV because one of her soulmates needs her.
Anya told them that they were a cluster, that they were all sensates. It’s science. It’s nothing but amino acids hydrolyzing and DNA spirals shifting and mutating. They are sensates, their brain has a different sort of nervous system called psycellium and it allows them to share their lives with each other, share their emotions and share their skills.
Everything that makes them the way they are could be synthetized in a laboratory and over the last few months, Clarke rejected the idea. What they are is soulmates. She could never love someone because her cells allow it – she loves them because her soul recognizes theirs.
And Anya can stick her science up her ass for all Clarke cares.
But if Clarke reached out now, she would find nothing but empty space where five other people once stood. And she misses them. She misses Jasper and how enthusiastic he was about Maya and how trusting he was. Misses Monty and how easy it was to smile when he was near. She misses Raven and her grin, her warmth, her understanding. She misses Miller and the softness beneath his hard shell – displayed only when his soulmates were close.
She misses all of them but she misses Bellamy the most, how safe she felt, how loved, how everything was a dream come true when he was next to her. They were supposed to meet each other soon – really, truly, corporeally.
Every single plan any of them coined fell through and now Clarke is standing in her darkened living room, people outside going on with their lives when she can only stare into the darkness because light hurts, laughter hurts and everything is pain where happiness once stood.
It’s been a month without them, forty three thousand eight hundred and twenty nine minutes, and not a single one in which she didn’t miss them.
Wells comes around every afternoon to check up on her, all compassion and understanding. He knows, it felt pointless to lie to him. And she could never lie to Wells, Wells who grew up with her – Wells who is the first thing she remembers in her whole life. Wells who never betrayed her, Wells who believed she could be better than this monster who allows people to die so she could save a precious few.
Bellamy would say it’s a pyrrhic victory, a victory that is only barely won. The toll it inflicted on Clarke was so devastating that it may as well be a loss. Everything is a loss when she can’t see her soulmates, her cluster, her everything.
Wells sits with her on the couch, TV playing in the background as if it was a morbid soundtrack for this fail of epic proportions she calls her life. Everything feels strangely normal – people commute to work every day, they fall in love, they die and she is stuck in a loop.
“Everyone’s been asking about you, Clarke.”
She knows, and it changes absolutely nothing. She can’t bear to see anyone these days because she is reminded of how relieved Monty looked when he made it after being chased, of how Miller hugged her for the first time – bringing into the embrace everything he couldn’t say with words.
“I know, Wells. I know. But I can’t come to work.”
“Your mom is worried, too. She’s afraid that there’s something worse happening.”
“You know it is,” Clarke turns to him, blue eyes peering into the brown ones and what she sees there would break her heart if she had any to spare. Wells loves her, the best friend she has in the whole world, and when she told him about her cluster his reaction was exactly the same as Octavia’s – he believed her.
She misses Octavia, too. The girl sends her texts from time to time, just checking up on her. Clarke could think that was about Bellamy, just doing what he would’ve wanted her to, but she thinks there is something else.
You don’t abandon the people your loved ones loved. But love is such a weak word for what they had, a connection that transcends time and space, spans across galaxies and all borders.
They were there when the time began, they would be there when time ended.
“I know that this is about your cluster but are you sure that this is the right thing to be doing?”
No, of course she is not. But –
“What else is there to do?”
Wells leaves, like he always does, but she is thankful for the few brief hours of comforting human touch, mindless chatter about work and his girlfriend. She likes Harper – Harper is kind, and she values kindness now. Wisdom is wonderful but kindness is the comforting hands on your shoulders that raise you when you fall.
It feels unfair, to have spent so little time with them. There were so many things she didn’t do – so many things she still wants to do. But there is nothing now, not when she reaches out, and it’s her fault – in many more ways than just one. She would give anything to feel any of her soulmates just one more time.
October 2014
Monty is in danger.
She knows it like she knows that this world is hurtling through time and space at a velocity no one can feel because there is ground under our feet and humans are always preoccupied with tiny details.
It is an absolute truth and it jerks her body from sleep so violently she’s left gasping for breath. And then she’s not in Boston anymore but in Seoul, running through spaces between skyscrapers and her – Monty’s reflection in the glass panels.
“What’s going on?”
“They found me. They must’ve found out that I was researching them and – Clarke, they’re close.”
It’s her fault. She is the one who told him to find out everything he can about BPO after Anya came to the hospital. Everyone was worried but she was the one who turned to Monty Green and told him to risk his life for intelligence.
She didn’t say exactly that but it doesn’t matter now.
They are running through the complexes of buildings and trying not to crash into business people going about their daily lives as they try to keep their own.
“Calm down, Monty, we’ll – we’ll figure this out.”
Miller is her and Miller is Monty and she is all three of them, but he’s there and it brings a relief. Miller always saves them.
“Here’s what you’re going to do, Monty,” he speaks, and it’s with such softness that Clarke realizes the two of them must feel exactly what Bellamy and she are feeling. They are all soulmates, a cluster, but only some of them can love the others and it is incredible.
“Miller, thank God!”
“Yeah, babe, I’ve got you now. Get on the subway, go home and get your passport. Raven is gonna crash the power in the whole block, and that’ll-“
The sound of alarms pierce the calm disturbed only by chatter of people milling about and Miller grins. Lights go out in buildings all around them and people stop to stare. “That’d be Raven.”
“I love Raven,” Monty breathes, flashing a watery smile at Miller who squeezes his hand and nods, more to himself than to any of them.
“Get your passport, but – no, go home, go to the airport and I’ll have someone make you a fake.”
Clarke’s eyes widen. “You can do that?”
“Of course I can,” Miller scoffs, but no heat to it. “What do you take me for?”
“Alright, what’s next?”
“You get on the first plane to Paris. I’ll be waiting for you and I can keep you hidden.”
Monty is relieved and so is Clarke, more because she knows that he’ll be safe with Miller than because she feels exactly what he’s feeling.
She can’t stop herself from placing a hand on his shoulder and whispering, “Thank you, Nathan.”
He doesn’t correct her this time and everything must be going according to plan because Clarke no longer sees Seoul wherever she looks – she’s back in her bedroom, the alarm clock beeping furiously and only faint glimmers of light coming through closed curtains.
When she is checking on one of her patients, a fifteen year-old admitted with a concussion, she freezes in her tracks. Monty is safe. Monty is safe and Miller is kissing him like he’s the first and the last thing he’ll ever kiss and her heart swells with affection, shivers running down her spine because they are her cluster and she loves them more than she will ever know.
They meet in her living room that night. Everyone is huddled around Monty, Raven’s hand is ruffling his hair, Bellamy is holding his hand, Miller is wrapped around his waist, his legs resting on Monty’s thighs and Jasper is touching his shoulder, eyes wet with tears.
Clarke comes to sit in front of him and doesn’t miss the way Bellamy’s eyes cut towards her, worried, relieved, alarmed – everything.
“I am so sorry, Monty.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“But it is. If I didn’t tell you to look up BPO, they wouldn’t have found you.”
It’s Miller who speaks next, rolling his eyes. “Stop torturing yourself, Clarke. It’s BPO’s fault for trying to hunt us down like dogs. Not yours.”
She loves Miller.
Later that night, it’s Bellamy who stays with her and no one has the heart to tease them about it. They all need comfort now and if Clarke wanted to reach out to Raven and Jasper, she would probably find them curled up in her bed, crying and smiling and feeling so much.
It was never painful, being so connected with each other – to feel fear when someone from your cluster feels it, to have tears streaming down your cheeks because you are so sad and you don’t know whose fault it is, to laugh where you should not laugh because a soulmate of yours is happy and bright and no one can contain it.
Bellamy smells of Manila, tropical rain, old books he loves brushing his fingertips across. And he feels like he belongs, has felt like he belongs since the first moment she saw him, as if her soul already knew that it would find its most desired part in him. Her hands know him, her lips only want to touch his and everyone else feels wrong when she knows how it is with Bellamy.
Nothing else, only he and only ever he, like a supernova exploding across dark skies, light finally illuminating the black space. Celestial bodies are nothing compared to him running his fingers down her spine. Scientists can speak about their big bang and atoms but they have nothing – nothing on the soul smiling at Clarke’s soul. They can take their science – she loves Bellamy.
He climbs into the bed with her after a long and gruesome day, and Clarke doesn’t even bother thinking how strange it probably must seem. But he is not strange, the polar opposite of it. She doesn’t know how her apartment ever felt like a home without his presence.
Her bedroom is dark, only slivers of early-morning light filtering through closed curtains, and the only things Clarke can feel are her starchy sheets grazing her cheeks and Bellamy’s soft skin where he is curled up around her. They never talked about doing this, never decided, but they knew when it was that they needed each other the most.
Most of the days, she’s just looking forward to coming home and snuggling up to him.
She’s well on her way to falling asleep, eyes firmly closed and her voice faint when she remembers.
“What time is it in Manila?”
He nuzzles into her neck and she feels what he’s saying rather than hears it. “I just came home from work. Five in the afternoon.”
“What’s it like?”
Her skin crackles with electricity when she shifts to lie across his chest, his hand absent-mindedly tracing her vertebrae over a threadbare shirt she sleeps in. Anything is better than scrubs that reek of rust and medicine-
Bellamy smells like coffee and coconut and she pokes him in the arm, annoyed in that fond way you can only manage with someone you love.
“Come on, I love hearing you talk.”
His mouth curls into a wry smile when he glances at her and she feels her cheeks getting warmer.
“And yet you always fall asleep.”
“It’s because I’m comfortable with you.”
It’s hard to fall asleep these days, her mind is a whirling hurricane of thoughts and feelings that never stops spinning. She sees her patients’ faces, feels caffeine still coursing through her veins and she doesn’t know how it’s possible but it’s always harder falling asleep when she is that tired.
What she doesn’t say is that she wasn’t this comfortable with anyone in a long time. She has one-night stands, enough to not crave human touch but – this is different. There is no one else she trusts enough to fall asleep next to.
“It’s beautiful,” he finally says, eyes fluttering towards the ceiling and a smile playing on his lips. “The sky is a million shades of blue, seeping into the ocean until you can’t tell the difference between the two anymore. There are children laughing in the streets, my neighbor’s baby is gurgling on their balcony and the first lights are flickering. You’d love it.”
Clarke feels the smile in his voice even if her eyes drift shut and now she allows his words to paint the picture for her. His words always sounded like a noble and proud thing, able to weave even most ordinary things into fantastic tales.
In a different life, he would be a man leading people into battles. There would be many of those who would die for him, strengthened by his words.
In this life, however, he is an educator. Somehow, that seems even nobler.
“I’d want to draw it,” she whispers, imagining the colors mixing – blue with a dash of red, lilac sky, dark blue backdrop with stars glistening in the night.
“Yeah,” he chuckles. “You would. Maybe tomorrow, huh?”
“Yes. Tomorrow.”
December 2014
Clarke meets Maya Vie during one of the last sunny afternoons before what will be a long winter, and her heart flutters exactly like Jasper’s.
She knows of the girl, of course, she’s met her – Jasper was excited when he told them about her. “She is a sensate, too!”
After Anya and what has happened to Monty, it is hard to trust other sensates but everyone decided to try to because Jasper likes her. Well, likes her is an understatement. Everyone’s heart beats faster when he’s close to her and no one can help but to be captivated with her small, happy smile.
They tease Jasper but they are all happy for him.
Maya is waiting for Clarke on the last step in front of Clarke’s apartment and she recognizes the small, curled up figure in the darkness instantly.
“Maya?”
Maya looks relieved to see her, tension visibly draining from her shoulders, and she nods. She is not visiting her, she is actually there, and Clarke can’t help but to be confused.
“What is going on?”
“We need to talk.”
Her stomach plummets but she ushers Maya into her apartment, these days not being safe for sensates. The girl follows her in, politely takes off her shoes and her coat, and thanks Clarke for the coffee she makes them.
“Alright, so what is this about?”
“We need to talk in private, Clarke.”
Without her cluster.
“That’s impossible.”
Maya shakes her head, reaching for something in her pocket and emerges with two blue pills on her palm. “It’s not impossible, it’s just going to be tiring. But these pills control your psycellium and they – well – they block out your cluster.”
Clarke recoils instantly, something about blocking her cluster being so deeply abhorrent, verging on abomination. It’s just like having someone who is not from your cluster sharing your link, although with Maya it never seemed as repulsive as with Anya.
“Who would do that?”
“I’m sorry, Clarke, but I need you to take this pill.”
“And why should I trust you?”
“Because if you don’t, you’re all going to be dead.”
There might be a more sensible choice than to take the pill but it’s by far the fastest and Clarke does it, swallowing it with her coffee.
After a minute, it feels like something is clouding her mind. Her vision turns blurry at the edges and she sees Maya stumbling over from the kitchen, draping herself across the couch. Clarke feels queasy, like she is about to be sick any moment now but there is absolutely nothing on her mind.
Where she would once reach out to her soulmates, there is nothing now and she shivers at the sensation.
“I hate this,” Maya comments, gritting her teeth and struggling to sit up. “It feels so wrong.”
Clarke agrees but can’t open her mouth for the life of her.
“I need you to know something, Clarke. I couldn’t tell Jasper because – I love Jasper, but my intentions weren’t exactly honest. Cage Wallace, he’s – he’s a part of my cluster – he sent me to spy on you.”
She can’t feel Jasper but her protectiveness kicks in and Clarke awakens immediately, as much as possible with that drug hazing her mind and making her feel boneless.
“What the hell?”
Maya’s face is blurry – everything around Clarke is blurry but she fights it, sits up as straight as she can. Maybe it’s because of the pills, but Clarke doesn’t think it is – the bile rising in her throat, pain tugging on her insides until she feels her soul shrivel to nothing.
Her cluster should be there to see Maya’s downturned lips and the remorseful look in her eyes, something wicked in the air. It’s the last moment of calm before the storm Clarke can feel approaching.
And then Maya speaks up and there is a pain of a thousand knives piercing Clarke’s skin, until there is nothing more but terror.
“Cage is going to give you up to BPO.”