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When Lincoln sees Clarke again for the first time, she gives him a tiny, unsure smile, like she somehow thinks he isn’t happy to see her.
So, naturally, he tugs her in and spins her around until she threatens to vomit on his face.
“You and your brother-in-law are too alike,” she chastises, but she’s grinning, and there’s no real heat to it.
“Apparently you don’t mind that so much,” he teases, and then glances down at her belly before looking away. It feels too—personal. He’s not sure she even wants him to know. “Are you--?”
But she just beams, bright and happy. Her hair is shorter than it used to be, hanging smooth and curly around her jaw. “It’s too early for the test, but. I’m pretty sure.” She folds a palm to her stomach, almost like she doesn’t realize she’s done it.
Octavia had told him, of course. He’s spent the last few days calming her down. She’d been livid, first about Clarke’s return, and then about her brother’s decision to be with her.
Then she’d stormed into their tent at the village, and snapped “They’re trying to get pregnant! Can you believe that? Having a kid right now? They’re barely adults, themselves! Lord knows they don’t know the first thing about raising a baby—Bell did alright with me, but he was five!”
She’d gone on for a bit, and Lincoln had let her, because he’s learned that Octavia when angry is essentially a hurricane. Meant to be weathered and then, when the wind dies down, put back together.
“They’ll figure it out,” he said, once all the fight went out with her and she slumped against his side. “They always do.”
“What if they don’t?” she asked, sounding more tired than outraged, and he fit an arm around her shoulders, pulling her in. She likes to soak up affection like a cat, often perching on him in inconvenient positions, and stealing all his body heat.
“They will,” he said, pressing his mouth to her hair. “Donfa. Have faith.”
They headed over to the camp the next morning, because she was impatient to see her brother and friends and—though he didn’t say it—Lincoln was impatient to see Clarke. He almost didn’t really believe she’d be there, until he saw her standing uncertain outside Raven’s work tent.
“Octavia told you?” she asks, pulling back a little. She’s worrying her lip, looking over his shoulder, to where Octavia stands, talking with Miller.
“Yes,” he nods, clapping a hand to Clarke’s shoulder. She leans in just a little, and he bites back a smile. Clarke and her sister-in-law are apparently alike, as well. “She will come around.”
“So they keep telling me,” she chirps, keeping her voice light. But he can tell she’s still bothered.
“Donfa,” he says, and she gives a warm smile. In this light, she almost looks like the girl he first saw, still fresh from the sky. It’s a little overwhelming.
Octavia was right—Clarke’s barely an adult. There are a few new pale scars he’s noticed littering her hands and face, from her time away, but. Her eyes are still bright, her mouth still turned up a little at the corners.
Even Bellamy—who Lincoln finds and congratulates later, and then spends the next hour listening to his enormous list of potential names, and the history of each name, and why exactly they would be perfect for his child—is relatively young. He still grins crooked, like a boy, with a boy’s enthusiasm.
Lincoln grew up surrounded by hard men, with strong arms and strong minds, men who never gave an inch, never spoke unless necessary, never smiled unless hidden, and never cried. Lincoln himself had always thought he was different than the men around him. He thought he was strong, but soft. Soft enough for Octavia to fall asleep on, and for the camp’s children to climb and cling to.
He always made a point to smile with them, laugh with them. To show them that it was not weakness, to be happy. To be soft. Soft did not always mean fragile.
But that night, Lincoln lays down beside Octavia in their tent, and he feels old. Too old for his body, for his bones, for the girl asleep beside him.
“Stop thinking,” Octavia grunts, curling so she’s mostly on top of him. She’s naked, and burning up from the furs, and he doesn’t want to move. He tangles his hand through her braids, and she hums low against his skin.
“Sorry,” he whispers, but she just hitches her leg up and slides over his lap.
“Well if we’re awake anyway,” she huffs, but she’s smiling as she leans down to kiss him, mumbling into his mouth. “I’m gonna make you too tired to think.”
“Always so helpful,” he says, but it turns into a grunt as she just slides onto him without another word, so tight he can’t really see straight.
“That’s me,” she agrees, setting the pace, quick and desperate like it always is. They haven’t had a chance to learn how to be slow with each other, yet. He’s hoping they will, soon. He wants to take his time with her.
“So,” she gasps after, falling down against him. He has some of her hair in his mouth, and he can’t form any words yet. “Did it work?”
“Mm,” he hums, and she grins against his neck. But he’s still thinking of Clarke’s unborn child when he falls asleep. He hopes the world will be soft for them.
Clarke is two months pregnant, when she first brings it up. Bellamy’s pretty sure she’s just using it as a distraction from the nerves—Abby’s warned them that the first three months are the hardest, the most dangerous for the baby.
Bellamy’s thrown himself into patching up the rooves for the coming summer floods, and all the heavy lifting takes his mind off it. Clarke, though, doesn’t have much to do besides wander around the camp, checking in on everyone periodically. He has to bite back a grin each time she mentions Mel’s been looking a little tired lately, I’m going to find a spare pillow for her, or Jon’s sprained his ankle again honestly when will the boy stop trying to scale trees like the grounders? She’s already such a mother.
And everyone else already knows, so she’s constantly being stopped, and asked how she’s feeling, and asked if they can carry those herbs for her, and fitting their hands to her belly without asking, until she’s fuming so much that Bellamy has to drag her off so she doesn’t start brawling.
So one night as they’re settling onto their pallet—and she’s ranting again about how many strangers kept offering unsolicited advice on which teas to drink, and which leaves to chew, and the names of their great-great-grandparent that maybe she might like to use—Bellamy shrugs and says “Why don’t you pick up a hobby or something, to keep you busy so they can’t bother you?”
He has his hand over her belly, which he does every night. He did it without thinking at first, not really meaning to, but then Clarke started fitting their fingers together, and even though he can’t really feel the bump, he knows it’s there all the same. Their baby, a person they made. It should probably make him nervous—all the other fathers in the camp have told him they felt nervous—but mostly he’s just ready to meet his kid.
Clarke is nervous, he knows. They don’t talk about it, but he knows her, and he can tell. She’s worried she won’t make a good mother, or that the baby will somehow just inherently know all the horrible things she’s done, and hate her for them.
Bellamy isn’t really sure how to reassure her, how to change her mind. He wants her to be happy about this, and she is, he knows that, but—he knows she’s scared, too, and he doesn’t know how to help with that. He’s good at rallying troops and threatening enemies, but he doesn’t know how to comfort his own wife, and he hates it.
“Maybe I should,” she agrees, muzzily. She’s been tired more and more lately, which Abby has assured him is a good thing, since it means the baby is growing and taking more energy. But he’s still a little worried about it, each time he catches her nearly asleep on her feet around noon.
“Maybe you could teach me sewing,” she adds, and he can’t hold back the laugh in time. He can hear the frown, the annoyance, in her voice. “What’s so funny about that?”
“Clarke, I’ve seen you try to patch your socks,” he teases, and she huffs a little, so he tugs her in as close as she can fit. “Don’t worry, we’ll find something.”
In the end, she doesn’t even need his help. She finds him for lunch the next day, setting her tray down across from him at the crude wooden table, one of many spread out over the lot in camp. They’re based, very vaguely, on an old sketch of picnic tables, from Atomic Earth, but Bellamy’s pretty sure those didn’t have as many splinters.
“Did you know Monroe’s birthday is in three days?” she asks, before even saying hello, and passes him half a sandwich. It’s the dry bread that the woods clan prefers, and some wet goat cheese that drips between their fingers and tastes like heaven.
Bellamy raises a brow. “No, why would I know that? Why do you know that?”
Clarke shrugs. “I asked her.” She waves her wrist so he can see her father’s watch. “The date and time still works, so. We calculated it out. Anyway—we should do something. Like a party.”
“A party,” he echoes, bewildered. When he’d mentioned reclusive hobbies, he’d meant wood carving maybe, or painting, like he knew she did on the Ark. Not birthday parties. It seems like the last thing she should want.
“A party,” she says, firm, and wipes some cheese from the corner of his mouth, licking the stuff from her thumb. She grins when she catches him staring. “I’m not feeling very tired today,” she muses. “Maybe you should fix that.”
Bellamy scrambles up so fast his leg gets caught on the bench and he nearly falls over, and Clarke laughs loud and giddy the whole walk to their cabin. The roof crew can handle things for an hour—he won’t be missed.
He almost forgets about the whole birthday thing, until the next day he walks into Monty’s herb-drying tent. He couldn’t find his wool socks that morning, and wants to ask Clarke if she’s seen them, but gets a little distracted once he’s inside.
Clarke’s there, along with Monty, while Raven looks on from her stool, a cup of what might be the grounders’ bitter coffee in her hand.
“A little to the left,” she directs, and Clarke and Monty obligingly move the enormous sheet of plywood, thin enough to be light but still awkwardly wide. “No wait,” Raven smirks into her drink. “To the right, sorry.”
“Reyes, I swear to fucking God,” Clarke grumbles.
“You shouldn’t swear at all,” Raven says, mild. “It’s bad for the baby.”
“What’s going on?” Bellamy asks, and Clarke jumps and drops her side of the wood, which means Monty has to flail a little, trying not to fall over.
“Your baby mama’s made us a calendar,” Raven shrugs. “She’s worried we all don’t get drunk enough.”
Clarke frowns over at them. “People deserve to be celebrated,” she sniffs. “Your existence is important.”
Raven rolls her eyes at Bellamy a little, but when she turns back to Clarke, she’s all soft affection. “Sure, Griffin. We’ll pretend this isn’t just pre-mom hormones.” Secretly, Bellamy agrees.
But then Clarke sniffles, eyes turned down to the floor, looking sad, and Bellamy panics, crossing over. “Raven didn’t mean it,” he tells her. She’s standing up on one of the drying racks, turned upside down, so he only comes up to her hipbones. He rubs a hand up her calf, soothing. “She’s an asshole—you know how it is.”
“I am, in fact, an asshole,” Raven agrees, limping up, and Bellamy can tell she feels sorry. Clarke never cries anymore, on principle, and while they know it’s the pregnancy, it’s still disconcerting. “I’ll let you hit me, if it’ll make you feel better,” she offers, holding out an arm.
Clarke huffs a laugh, wiping her face. “That only makes you feel better.”
“I’ll let you shoot my gun,” Bellamy chirps, and she grins down at him.
“I just—it’s not a recent thing, okay? I’ve always thought you guys deserved more. I just never knew how to do that. Emergency surgeries don’t really count.” She hesitates a little, and then sighs. “But I do have a lot of hormones right now.”
“Okay princess,” Bellamy says, soft, curving his hand around the back of her knee. It’s not recent, he knows. Clarke’s always felt like she wasn’t good enough, didn’t do enough. She’s always thought she had to take care of everyone, and was always at the bottom of her own list. He’s not sure how to change that, either. “How can we help?”
News about the calendar spreads through camp quickly, and Clarke has every single person stop by to give their birthday, or as close as they can remember, for the ones that were too young.
“I never really had a birthday,” Miller shrugs, when Bellamy mentions it. “It’s sometime in March, I think, because my mom would sometimes give me an extra ration, but that was it.” He’s clearly trying not to seem very affected, even though he is. “It’s cool, what she’s doing. S’nice. A lot of people never got this.”
Clarke spends that night scheduling dates on the calendar, filling in names and approximate ages, and even how much moonshine should be brewed, for some. Bellamy fetches her for sleep a few hours before dawn, and finds her curled up in the stool that Miller added a back to, the week he found out she was pregnant.
He’s working on a crib now, Bellamy’s pretty sure. He’s trying to keep the whole thing a secret, but Monty’s been avoiding him lately, and he caught Miller drawing designs in the sand earlier that week.
Raven’s already made a motorized cart for the kid. Bellamy’s pretty sure his future is going to involve a lot of saying a stern no to all his friends.
He carries Clarke back to their hut, and falls asleep with her little hands tangled up in his shirt, like she’s afraid to let go.
Lincoln and Octavia arrive in the morning. They’ve been by a few times, and Bellamy’s always torn—he loves his sister, and he misses her like an actual limb, and he is so, so happy to see her, always, but. He also loves his wife, and he knows seeing Octavia just breaks her heart all over again, reminding her of every mistake she’s made.
Seeing Lincoln, at least, is good for Clarke. They usually go off somewhere to paint trees. When he last visited, they left for the nearby river and didn’t come back for hours, and when they did, Clarke was holding an immaculate portrait of a salmon, which Bellamy hung up on the wall when she wasn’t looking. It’s still there, and even though she made a face when she saw he’d hung it, he knows she’s still proud, in an embarrassed way, like she doesn’t think she should be.
But this time when they show up, the camp is bustling about, getting things ready for the first birthday party on the ground, while Monroe is on guard duty, pretending not to notice. Surprise parties aren’t an easy thing, in a camp as small as theirs. Abby offered to sedate her for the day, but they turned her down. Bellamy’s only like twenty percent sure she was kidding.
Clarke is in the very center, spearheading the fray, when she sees Octavia and freezes. Bellamy watches, feeling the ache start to bloom in his chest. He’d hoped they’d be past this, by now. But he’d raised Octavia back when he was still bitter towards the world, and he thinks some of it must have rubbed off.
To be honest, he was still pretty bitter when they came to the ground. He was bitter for most of his life—until Clarke.
And now his two favorite people can’t even look at each other for any length of time, and he doesn’t know how to fix it.
Dads should be able to fix things, he’s pretty sure. Clarke’s dad used to fix things. She’s told him stories, about how he’d manage to whip up a miracle cure for anything that went wrong on the Ark. Until the last piece that broke. Jake Griffin couldn’t fix that one, in the end.
Bellamy can fix the things that aren’t important. Faulty rifles, leaky rooves, socks with holes in the toes. But when Octavia cried herself to sleep at night because she thought she wasn’t allowed to be afraid of the dark, even though she was—Bellamy couldn’t fix that. He couldn’t fix it when Atom died and her heart broke, or when Lincoln died and her heart broke all over again. He couldn’t fix it when Clarke broke, shattering right in front of him and wandering off towards the trees, like a dog wanders off to die. Alone, so it won’t be a burden. Bellamy couldn’t fix any of it.
He’s getting ready to step in, to separate them, tugging O off towards Raven’s tent while Lincoln chatted with Clarke. But then Octavia marches up to her, arms crossed, every inch of her tense, like she’s just waiting for a reason to battle.
He’s too far away to hear what she says, and also he’s pretty sure she’s grumbling it, but Clarke tugs her in without a word. Clarke has always been selectively tactile, with people she trusts to hold her weight when she leans on them, but the pregnancy has turned her into a housecat, drinking up affection like milk.
Octavia lets Clarke hold her, patting her side a little awkwardly before melting in halfway, and pulling back. She’s still not smiling, not like she would have a year ago, but. It’s a start.
Bellamy makes his way over to them, close enough to hear Clarke telling O to help slice at the thick-skinned, delicious fruits they’ve been growing in the garden. “You’re the best with the knives,” Clarke shrugs, and Octavia’s grin goes feral.
“Of course I am,” she chirps, giving Bellamy a quick peck on the cheek as she heads off. Some of the charcoal from her face rubs off on his skin, but he doesn’t really mind. She’s started using it as decoration, making swirls around her eyes and down her cheekbones. It’s something the old Octavia would have done, he thinks, if she’d been allowed things like makeup on the Ark. It’s something she does for herself, and he’s glad for it.
Lincoln is already practically covered in children, all giddy and excited for a day off from school. Plus, they heard Jasper and Raven talking about fireworks, so now they’ll be impossible to calm down.
Lincoln would probably make a good dad, Bellamy thinks, watching as he raises his arms, dangling two kids from each, kicking their little legs out.
“Don’t think you’re getting out of helping,” Clarke chides, coming up to wrap her arms around him. He knows it’s impossible that her stomach grew noticeably bigger overnight, but that’s what it feels like. She doesn’t fit against him like she used to, but he might like this better.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says, tugging her hair. It’s growing longer each day, and nearly reaches her shoulders, now. She washed it in the river just yesterday, so it gleams bright yellow in the sun—his favorite color. “Where do you want me, boss?”
“I prefer Your Highness,” she says primly, pointing towards the gate. “You’re on banner duty, so get going.” She smacks his ass as he walks away, and a bunch of cadets whistle from the back.
“Get back to work,” he orders, but Clarke’s wiggling her brows at him, so it’s hard to sound very angry. “Or it’s latrine duty for a month!”
Clarke finds him again around sundown, standing up on her toes to rest her chin on his shoulder from behind. “We’re about to cut the cake,” she says, breath warm on his neck.
“You mean the weird glowing fruit you shaped like a cake?”
“Shut up.” She presses a kiss below his ear and steps back, tugging him along behind her. “Monty and I made candles out of beeswax. It’s a goddamned birthday cake.”
He squeezes her hand a little. “It’s a goddamned birthday cake,” he agrees.
Monroe cries when they sing the old tune, and then again when Clarke hugs her—which in turn gets Clarke crying, wiping her eyes and saying I’m fine, I’m fine! the whole time.
Raven and Jasper did manage to make a few fireworks, though not as many as they would have liked, per Abby’s orders not to waste the resources. But they’re pretty enough, and loud, and a few passing grounders show up to watch with them, a little off to the side.
Bellamy has Clarke in his lap when Octavia falls down beside them on the bench, stretching her legs out with a sigh. “So have you guys picked some weird name, yet?”
Bellamy doesn’t miss a beat. “Patroclus, for a boy.”
“Absolutely not,” Raven barks, aiming her knife at him. She’s recently taken up wood carving, forcing Miller to show her how, and she’s not very good at it. All her figurines just look like crooked lumps of wood. “As that child’s Co-Godmother, I won’t allow it.”
Octavia raises a brow. “Co-Godmother? I’m pretty sure there can only be one.”
“Stop lying to your sister,” Clarke chides, and then cuts herself off with an enormous yawn.
“Wow, already? The sun’s not even down yet,” O teases, and Clarke swats at her lazily.
“I’m building a person, okay? It takes a lot out of me. I am a life factory, right now.”
She’s already half asleep when he half carries her to their hut. Octavia and Lincoln are staying with Raven for the night, which has been the arrangement since Clarke first moved in with him. He’s pretty sure it’s because Raven’s lonely, but—they don’t have that kind of friendship, so he’s never asked.
He tugs off her boots and the pants that he’d sewn extra material to at the hem. It takes a little work to get her bra off, because Clarke keeps trying to roll onto her back while he’s tugging at the tiny rusty hooks.
Finally, he has her mostly undressed and sprawled on the furs, and so he toes off his own boots and crawls in beside her. She immediately curls into him, rubbing her face on his shirt.
“P’nelope,” she sighs, and Bellamy glances down at her, amused.
“What was that?”
“For baby. Penelope. If she’s a girl.”
“Yeah, okay.” Bellamy slides his hand down to the warm skin of her stomach, where her shirt’s rucked up. “Penelope’s good.”
He tells Miller about it the next morning, and the next time he catches him drawing cradle designs, there’s a capital P etched into the headboard.
“Does Lincoln have a birthday?” Clarke asks a few nights later. Lincoln and Octavia only ever stay for a couple of days before heading back to their own village, and they’d left earlier that week.
“Why wouldn’t he have a birthday?” Bellamy finishes up the melted goat cheese in his bowl before handing it off to Clarke so she can eat the warm berries at the bottom.
“He asked about the calendar, and I had to explain about birthday parties, because he’d never heard of them. Do you know when he was born?”
Bellamy bites back a grin. She looks so serious, concerned that Lincoln clearly hasn’t had the yearly celebration of his existence that he deserves. “I have no idea. I can ask O about it.”
“I think we should,” she agrees, easy as anything, and he swipes a kiss to her mouth. She tastes like fruit, and his mouth comes back stained purple around the edges, matching her lips.
“It’s a good color on you,” she grins, teeth pink, and then worries her lip a little. “Next week is my third month.” She keeps her voice purposely light, even as Bellamy goes cold all over.
He has no real reason to worry, he knows. Abby said that after twelve weeks, everything goes pretty smoothly, and Clarke is already on week eight. She’s getting enough food, eating greens for her iron, drinking the teas Monty makes. She hasn’t done any heavy lifting lately, and she’d been getting her period pretty regularly for months before she got pregnant. Every check-up so far has gone well. They’re just a few weeks from being able to hear the baby’s heartbeat, through some sort of amplifier Raven made out of a garden hose and a cup.
It’s going to be fine, he tells himself. But he still reaches over to tug her in.
She leans her head on his chest, on his heartbeat. “I know,” she says. “I’m scared too.”
Three more birthdays pass before Lincoln and Octavia’s next visit, each bigger than the last. Clarke seems to be getting a hang of the whole thing, and she and Monty start experimenting with actual cakes, made from carrots and goat cheese and wildflower honey from the hives they keep at the camp’s edge.
Lincoln does not, in fact, have a birthday, and seems amused when Clarke declares that won’t do.
“We’ll pick a day, just for you,” she assures him, even as he says he really doesn’t mind. “I’ll find one that’s free for the taking, I promise.”
Octavia thinks the whole thing’s hilarious, and she keeps having to stop and laugh each time she thinks about it, throughout the day.
Clarke can’t find a good enough birthday for Lincoln until March, which is a good six months away. She’s clearly not happy about the wait.
“He deserves something now,” she says, voice muffled by the pillow while Bellamy works out the kinks in her back.
“Just think of it as extra time to plan your biggest birthday yet,” he suggests, and bites back on a groan when he rubs at a muscle and she whimpers. “Plus, the kid might be born by then, so we’ll need the excuse to drink.”
“I probably won’t be able to drink for months after they’re born,” Clarke grumbles, only sounding half bitter about it, which is an improvement.
“Don’t worry—I’ll drink enough for us both.”
Clarke clearly tries to hold the laugh in, before just giving up. “You know,” she muses. “When they’re born, we won’t have the place to ourselves a whole lot.”
“I figured that out, yeah.”
She wiggles under him a little, sliding down until her ass fits right against his crotch, and then she arches up against him.
This time he does groan—he’s only human—and digs the pads of his fingers into her hips.
“So we should probably take advantage of it while we can,” she pants, and Bellamy reaches around to grind his palm between her legs so she moans.
“Makes sense,” he agrees, and turns her head around to kiss her.
Lincoln is packing the bags—he’s debating which paints to bring, to show Clarke—while Octavia touches up her charcoal with the little hand mirror Raven found for her last spring, when the cadet—Jon, he’s pretty sure—comes rushing up to their door.
Lincoln knows him as the fastest runner at the camp. He’d won a race, apparently. They made a big deal about it—Clarke and Monty made some sort of terrible cake.
“It’s Clarke,” the boy pants, catching his breath in the doorway, and Octavia leaps up from her crouch. “The baby—it’s—they need you.”
Lincoln knows what it means. He’s seen it in the villages occasionally, when a woman can’t carry the weight of an extra life. Clarke is too early for the baby to be saved.
They take horses, to save time, with Jon tucked behind Octavia, clinging for dear life. He’s never ridden before, and doesn’t look like he enjoys it.
The camp is quiet when they arrive, which is in itself troubling. There are the sounds of metal from Raven’s tent, the scuff of boots across the earth, the murmur of voices around wooden tables—but nothing above a slight hum.
They march up to the medical tent, and find Bellamy sitting on his haunches outside, staring down at his hands on his knees. He doesn’t look up when they reach him, and Octavia slides down by his side.
She leans her head on his shoulder, and Lincoln watches him take a breath so deep it must burn.
He’s seen the Blake siblings like this before, of course, but it feels different, now. More private. So he steps inside the tent.
Clarke is lying on one of the cots, legs drawn up to her chin above the sheets, staring blankly ahead at absolutely nothing.
Lincoln approaches her slowly, sits beside her slowly, waiting for her to ask him to leave. Waiting for her to do anything, really, other than staring. He hasn’t even seen her blink.
“She said I did everything right,” Clarke says, finally, voice hoarse, like she’s been screaming. “She said I did everything right, but—if I did, why is he gone?”
Lincoln tucks her head under his chin, and she starts to shudder, breathing shallow, shaky breaths, trying not to cry.
“In my village, they used to say that when a child was lost like yours was, it’s just because they weren’t meant to be born. So the spirits took them early, to spare the mother more pain later on.”
Clarke breaks, tucking her face in his chest to muffle the sobs, crying so hard she starts to cough and hiccup, soaking his shirt with tears and spit and snot, but he doesn’t pull away. “I would have taken the pain,” she says. “I would have—I didn’t get to meet him. I didn’t get to hear his heartbeat—I didn’t get to feel him, Lincoln. He was inside me and I didn’t even feel—”
Lincoln rocks her like his mother used to when he had a fever, and sings the lullaby too. He doesn’t remember all the words, but it’s in Trigedasleng anyway, and he’s sure she gets the general idea.
It’s a psalm, from the old religion. Donfa—have faith. The words are meant to comfort, but he’s not sure they hit their mark.
Lincoln and Octavia stay in the camp for the next two weeks, only making quick day trips to their village whenever they need a change of clothes. Lincoln doesn’t mind—Octavia needs to be by her brother, and he spends most of his days beside Clarke, waiting for when she’s ready to speak.
There are furs and an old pillow on the floor of her hut, where he’s sure Bellamy is sleeping. He doesn’t know what it means for their marriage, but it doesn’t seem like a very good sign.
Bellamy’s taken a break from teaching, throwing himself into cutting lumber for new cabins, and so Octavia takes over the history lessons, relaying what she remembers, and filling in the blanks, Lincoln’s pretty sure, with things she’s made up.
The birthday parties, out of some unspoken solidarity, have been put on hold for the time being. Clarke begins splitting her time between the herb tent, her mother’s hut, and Lincoln, avoiding Bellamy at all costs. Lincoln understands; her work distracts her, and sometimes, even if she still hasn’t completely forgiven her, she just needs her mom.
And Lincoln, well—he likes to think she keeps him around because he doesn’t push her. He just sits, and waits, and listens. Because what is there to say? What could he possibly know about the pain that she is suffering?
He does wish she would speak with Bellamy, but he doesn’t say. She probably already knows. She probably already wants to; Bellamy was her best friend, after all.
Lincoln’s expecting Clarke to break first, but to his surprise, Bellamy’s the one who finds him at the river. He sits beside him on the rock, staring down at the water, squinting through the sun.
“Has she said anything to you?”
“Not much.” Lincoln isn’t really sure how much he’s allowed to tell Bellamy; he isn’t sure Clarke would want him to know. But—she hasn’t said anything, not really. Nothing important. “Not about the baby. Or you.”
Bellamy runs a hand through his hair, and swallows, and Lincoln reminds himself that he lost his child, too. “She won’t even look at me. I think—I think she blames me for it.”
Lincoln hums. “It’s more likely she blames herself, and thinks you blame her too.”
“I just wish she would talk to me,” Bellamy swears, kicking one of the smaller stones into the water. The splash is so wide it soaks through their trousers, all the way to their knees. Bellamy blinks at the wet material, and then laughs.
But not because it’s funny.
“I’m not equipped to handle this,” he says, digging the heel of his palms in his eyes. “I don’t know how to fix it—I don’t even know what to fix.”
In all the time Lincoln has known his brother-in-law, he’s never once hugged him, and right now it seems like the only thing he should do.
Bellamy is tense for the first seconds, before he slumps over and lets Lincoln take his weight.
“Donfa,” he says, pulling back. “It’s not about fixing anything. It’s about having faith.”
“I don’t even know what I’d have faith in.”
“Have faith in Clarke,” Lincoln shrugs, turning back to the water. “Have faith in your life with her. Have faith in life.”
“It’s not so easy,” Bellamy grumbles, picking at the grass, and Lincoln gives a faint smile.
“My friend, whoever said it was?”
He and Octavia leave the next morning, and collapse into their own bed once they get home, breathing in the familiarity.
“We are never having children,” Octavia says firmly, facing the wall away from him. “I don’t need some mini-me, I just need you. I just need us.”
Lincoln snakes a tired arm around her middle, pulling her close. They haven’t been able to be close in a while, since they’d been sharing rooms in Camp Jaha. He folds his other hand in her hair, combing out the tangles. He can smell the charcoal mixed with her sweat, and presses his face in the crook of her neck, breathing in.
“Just us,” he agrees. He starts to learn her slowly.
The night after his talk with Lincoln, Bellamy moves his things back to the bed. He’s going to sleep with his wife, and hold her if she’ll let him. He’s going to talk about their baby, and he’s going to tell her he loves her, and all the other things he should have said in the last two weeks.
But then Miller finds him, with a half-finished cradle, a capital P etched into the wood, framed by little rosebuds.
“I wasn’t sure you’d want it now,” Miller mumbles, glaring down at the thing, like it might possibly be the reason Bellamy’s child is dead.
He stares at it. “I do. I want it—thank you.” It’s beautiful, and perfect, and Bellamy chokes up as he carries it home.
Clarke walks in just after sunset, and sees it sitting in the corner, and then starts to yell.
Bellamy isn’t really focused enough to know what they shout at each other—he knows he wants to keep the kid’s things out, to remember him by, and he knows Clarke wants to bury them all out in the earth and never see them again—but every time she says my child, he grits his teeth.
“He was my kid too!” he shouts, and that’s what makes Clarke go quiet, staring back at him with wide eyes. “I miss him too,” he says, softer, and she runs over to him, burying her face in his chest.
“He died inside me.” She sounds so broken, and there’s been an ache inside him since the day they lost their kid, like hunger pains, like his stomach was eating away at his insides—but somehow, her sounding like that is worse. “I was his coffin,” she hiccups a little in between the words, and he holds her so tight it might bruise later. “I’m so sorry, Bell—I’m so—”
Bellamy pulls back so he can run his thumbs over her cheeks, brushing the tear tracks. There are bruises under her eyes, like she hasn’t been sleeping, and he knows his probably aren’t much better.
He presses a kiss to one eyelid, and then the other, and then down her face to her mouth. “You didn’t do anything,” he says. “I love you. It’s not your fault. I love you. I love you.”
He isn’t sure when they ended up on the pallet, but they’re tangled up in furs and each other, and her tears are slowing to a stop. His eyes are growing heavy, and her blinks are getting longer and longer.
“I feel like I let you down,” she whispers, and he pulls her in closer, even though they’re already as close as they can be.
“Impossible.” He presses his mouth to her hair, willing her to believe him. Willing her to have faith.
He’s still not sure he does—still not sure he can believe in any sort of spirit that would take his child away from him, but. It’s a nice thought, that they died for a reason. That somewhere, their baby is happy with his existence.
It’s a few months before Clarke can see one of the kids around camp, and not have to turn away, or cry behind a cabin. It’s a few months before she can do really anything, besides getting dressed and hanging plants on the dry racks, before curling up in Bellamy’s arms each night. It’s a few months before she can fall asleep before crying so hard she coughs, first.
It’s her first winter at the camp, and Bellamy’s surprised to learn she hates the cold.
“I thought you’d be the one out rigging snowball fights,” he teases, when he finds her huddled under three deerskins, by the fire.
She glares at him for good measure. “Snow is the thing of horror stories,” she declares, and he laughs, passing her the dinner he picked up at the canteen, and then folding himself down next to her.
It’s been months since they could do this, since they could be like this. Simple, and happy. There’s still the ache, the hold in his chest, and he’s starting to think it’ll always be there, and he knows it’s the same for Clarke too, but—
It’s not hollow, anymore. He doesn’t feel like he’s starving, or struggling to breathe, or drained of everything that isn’t grief, and anger. They might be a little dented, a little cracked, but they’re still whole. They still have this; each other, their life. They still have faith.
That night they fall asleep kissing, long and slow, relearning the grooves of each other, like they’re checking to make sure nothing’s changed. It doesn’t go farther than that—neither of them are ready, they’re still learning to be happy again without feeling guilty about it. They’re still a little bit raw.
Clarke blinks at him sleepily, and his eyes are so glazed that she’s blurry. “I’d do it again,” she says, so soft he almost doesn’t hear it. “I’d do everything again, when it comes to you.”
Bellamy’s fighting to keep his eyes open, because she’s looking at him so adoringly he thinks he might melt. He’s always felt like melting around her. “I love you.” He nuzzles her jaw, and she laughs, low and warm against his closed eyes.
He opens them again. He hadn’t meant to close them in the first place, and isn’t sure how it happened. Clarke laughs again, running a hand through his hair.
“Go to sleep,” she whispers. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
“Promise,” he mumbles, but he’s already drifting.
“Always, Bell.”
He falls asleep to her voice, to her lips pressed to his skin.
The snow melts in February, and so does Clarke.
“It’s almost March,” she explains, when he asks what she’s doing in the herb tent so early. When he just stares blankly at her, she nods towards the calendar. “Lincoln’s birthday is coming up.”
“Oh.” Bellamy tries very hard to speak carefully. “So you’re still doing that?”
Clarke rolls her eyes a little, but she seems fond about it. “Of course I’m still doing it. It’s his very first birthday!”
If any of the other camp members are surprised by the return of Clarke’s enthusiasm, they don’t show it, which is probably for the best.
Only Octavia seems as skeptical as he is, and she finds him during her next visit, after being interrogated by Clarke and Raven about Lincoln’s favorite foods.
“Is she really still doing this?” she asks, and he almost smiles. He may be at fault for a lot of her worse traits, but it’s still nice sometimes, knowing his sister takes after him.
“She really is,” he shrugs, and Octavia studies him, clearly suspicious. “I think it’s good for her, to have something to plan, and work at.”
Octavia nods. “Are you okay?”
Bellamy’s reflexive answer is yeah, of course, why wouldn’t I be? But O was there for his breakdown outside the medical tent. He’d cried on her for hours—she knows how fucked up he was over it all. So she’ll know if he lies.
“I’m getting there.”
She nods a little, accepting, and then sits beside him, where he’s stitching together four torn fishing nets that aren’t usable anymore. “How can I help?”
“Clarke wants a canopy, in case it rains on the night of the party,” he explains, and O cackles.
“I can’t believe you’re sewing the princess a canopy, right now,” she grins, and there’s really no way he can’t laugh at that, because—she’s right. It sounds ridiculous. “Life is weird,” she adds sagely, picking up his spare needle to thread it.
“Life is weird,” he agrees.
Clarke makes Lincoln a wild onion and leek cake, after determining those are his favorite vegetables, and he impressively eats a whole slice without making a face.
“Well princess,” Bellamy passes her a cup of moonshine and swings an arm over her shoulders. The fireworks are due to start any minute, as soon as Raven and Wick stop bickering, and just light the damn things. “I’d call this party a resounding success.”
“Of course it is,” Clarke says primly, snuggling into his side. “All my parties are.”
Bellamy snorts a little, but doesn’t argue. For the first time since everything happened, he’s actually felt happy without thinking of the baby, and wondering how much better everything would be if he was here. And Clarke looks happy. There’s still the hint of sadness, and he knows it’s different for her, because it was inside her, and she probably thinks of the baby every day. She probably has a hole in her too, but he thinks it might be filling over, and he thinks it might be because of him.
“Jasper and Raven are setting up a table for beer pong,” he says, ducking down to press a kiss to her shoulder. “Think we can kick their asses?”
Clarke pretends to think it over, taking another huge sip from her drink, before sliding her hand in his to tug him along. “I have faith in us.”