Work Text:
“Hi. It’s me again, Clarke. Just wondering if you wanted to get a coffee, or a chat or something. Give me a call?”
“Hi, Clarke again. Heard from O that you’ve finished your degree! Congrats. I’d love to meet up for a chat sometime. Let me know?”
“Bellamy, I’d like to get together sometime, when you come back from your trip so you can tell me about your adventures. It’s Clarke. Give me a call?”
“Heard about your engagement! I’ve met Echo once, I think, and she seems great. Congratulations. Love to catch up sometime! Bye.”
“I miss you so damn much sometime. We were over a long time ago, and all I want to do is be friends. Acquaintances even! I’ve moved on, can’t you?”
“It’s sober Clarke, just calling to apologize for drunk Clarke. Not sure what I said, but it was probably offensive and unnecessary. Buy you a coffee to make up for it?”
“Hi, it’s Clarke, again. Just calling cause I dropped my phone in the pool and had to get a new one. This is my new number, in case you want to catch up sometime.”
Clarke arrives home at 6pm after a late shift at the store she works at part-time to four messages on her answer machine. She’s popular today! The first is someone telling her she’s won an all expenses paid holiday to Hawaii! She has to provide her credit card number, for ‘security’ reasons and then she can go. It’s a humorous ending to a good day.
It goes downhill from there. The second message is a voice she hasn’t heard anywhere but an answer machine for a very long time.
“Clarke. It’s Bellamy. I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t call anymore. I don’t want to catch up for a coffee. I’m sorry. I’m moved on with my life, and I’m glad you have too, but I really don’t want to meet….”
beeeeeep
“Still me. I really don’t want to meet up. Good luck with whatever you’re doing, and I hope you have a great time with your life, but please don’t call again. Goodbye.”
Well, that was probably inevitable.
If Clarke is honest with herself, it’s been a long time coming. After the third missed call, she was just calling to give herself hope. Hope that maybe, they could be the type of ex’s that smile when they see other at Christmas parties, or ask how the other is doing, when they run into each other in the grocery store. Apparently that is not going to happen. She can understand, sort of. Their break-up, and to be fair, most of their relationship, had been passionate, with the type of massive, earthshaking fights that some couples only have a few times. Bellamy and Clarke had been bellamyandclarke, one word since the first week they met, originally because of their conflicting opinions, ‘discussions’ that spanned weeks to a solid wall, had each other's backs when someone else got in the way. They spoken in raised eyebrows, side smirks and the odd impassioned sigh, a language unto themselves.
The romantic relationship was almost as inevitable as the breakup. That much was true. They had been ‘maybe the one’ for each other, the relationship you second-guess for every minute after it ends.
Clarke had joked that they were Veronica Mars and Logan Echolls, both a little beat up, but ‘spanning years and continents. Lives ruined, bloodshed. EPIC. ‘
They were almost the picture perfect couple, down to the fight that ended it. It was raining, and they had started what was a nothing argument about parking the car on the street at night. It devolved into a screaming match, about money, the apartment they shared, marriage, Bellamy’s mother, both of Clarke’s parents, how Bellamy was too protective, and Clarke didn’t talk about her problems.
They had it out, and it ended with Bellamy slamming the car door shut and walking off down the street in the rain.
Clarke cried in the car for an hour.
It was over.
Bellamy turned hard, the bitten off anger in his tone evident until his boss pulled him aside and told him if he didn’t ditch the perpetual grumpy, he’d be fired.
Clarke turned, if possible, harder. Eyes like ice, she cried that first hour, then never again. She poured that fire into her art, images of burning cities, ruined landscapes that sold big time.
However, that was a long time ago. They’ve mellowed again, in the two years since the breakup. Bellamy met Echo. Clarke met Lexa. They’ve come full circle, albeit avoiding each other.
Everything is ok.
Until the last message.
It is Octavia, voice broken, terror evident.
“Clarke, it’s Octavia. You didn’t answer your mobile, and I need you here. Bellamy was in a car accident.” Octavia muffles a sob, and Clarke drops her bag. “It’s really bad, and they don’t know if he’ll wake up. I’m at Ark Medical. I need you here. Call me.”
Clarke lunges for the phone, dials Octavia’s mobile. It rings twice. She picks up,
“Clarke. Thank god.” Octavia sounds terrified, the edge of tears still in her voice. “I called, and you didn’t get the phone, and.”
“My mobile is flat. What can I do?” Clarke has the phone pressed to her ear with her shoulder, bolting around the apartment, ditching her work uniform, shoes smacking the wall as she kicks them off. She grabs a tote bag, throws in her wallet, a spare top, two jumpers (the hospital is always cold, and Octavia will have bolted out the door), her charger. “I can be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Please come. Lincoln is out of town, and Miller is on a plane from Alaska right now. I know you guys still aren’t talking, but I need you.” In the background, Clarke can hear the muffled sounds of the hospital, low alarms, doors opening and phones ringing.
“It doesn’t matter. We could have never met each other, and I’d still be there. He’s your brother first and my ex-boyfriend second.” Her bag is packed, and Clarke pulls on her most comfortable jeans, t-shirt and shoes she can stand for hours in. “I’m on my way, see you in fifteen to twenty.” She pauses. “He’ll be ok.”
“You can’t promise that.” Octavia hangs up.
In the car, Clarke slams out of her parking space, mobile plugged into her car. In this situation, her first port of call is her mother.
The phone rings, and Clarke prays her mother picks up.
“Abby Griffin.”
“Mum, I’m on my way to the hospital. Bellamy was in a car accident. It’s not good. Who is on emergency tonight?”
“Clarke? Great to hear from you too, honey.”
“Mum. I’m on my way to Ark Medical. Bellamy Blake was in a car accident. It’s serious.”
“Jackson is head of A and E tonight. Walven is covering trauma. I’ll let them know you’re on your way. Anything else I can do?” Times like this make her thankful for the straight to the point, no pleasantries side of her mother. Abby Griffin is good at what she does, namely, overseeing the Ark Medical Centre under Thelonious Jaha.
“Not really mum. It sounds very wait and see. If anything comes up, I’ll give you a call from the hospital. Thank you.”
“I hope he’s alright. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Clarke hangs up, and sits on the speed limit the entire drive to Ark. She parks her car, and as she leaves the parking lot, pauses for a minute, and centres herself. She is here for Octavia. Bellamy is one of the most important people in Octavia’s life, and whatever terms Bellamy and her ended their relationship on, she still cares. She takes a deep breath, and heads through the doors of Ark’s A and E department.
Octavia is curled into the end of a couch in the empty room provided for the families of trauma patients. Her eyes are red, and she stares blankly at the wall across from her. This is not the woman that Clarke knows, the martial arts instructor with the wide smile and mischievous look in her eye. This Octavia looks broken, like she is Atlas holding up the world, and it’s pushing much too hard, it’s too heavy and soon, it will fall.
Clarke will take as much of that weight as she can, take the world from her shoulders, pledge herself as the body on the line so that this ends up ok, that Bellamy walks out of the trauma centre with bruises, but the same man that went it.
“How are you holding up?” Too many years learning this hospitals walls in her mother’s footsteps has taught her to never ask if people are ‘ok’. They’ve just been told some of the worst news of their life, they are not, in any way, ‘ok’.
“I’m still standing. “ Octavia meets Clarke’s eye, and pulls her down to the couch. She pushes their foreheads together, one of Clarke’s hands pressed against the base of Octavia’s neck, the other rubbing calming circles on her back.
“Your brother is the strongest person I know. He will pull himself back from the edge, no matter how close he is. No car is going to get him. I know this, ok? He’s got you, and Echo and Miller and everyone rooting for him.”
“No Echo.”
“Oh.” Clarke pulled Octavia’s face to her shoulder, bringing the other woman in tight, feeling her lose a tiny amount of the tension held in her bones.
“They pulled out on a green light, and the driver of a semi had a heart attack and t-boned them. Echo was in the passenger seat. Bellamy was driving. They said she probably died instantly. Bell was conscious when they got to him, but lapsed after that, probably because of blood loss.” Octavia’s body shuddered as she held back tears.
“If you’re ok for a minute, I can go and talk to the doctors. I called mum, and she’s let them know.” Octavia lifted her head and moved back out of Clarke’s arms. “They might tell me a bit more than they’re meant to.”
“Go. I want as much information, and as basic as it comes. You know how to translate all that lingo.” Clarke pulled the spare jumper she’d packed out of her bag, and handed it to Octavia before heading for the nurse’s station in the corridor.
It was not good news, but it wasn’t the worst either.
Four broken ribs,
Punctured lung,
Broken tibia (currently being pinned),
Dislocated left shoulder
Cracked vertebra.
Plus various contusions, severe bruises, including parts of his liver that doctors were watching closely. No brain bleeds, or brain injury suspected.
He was still breathing (admittedly, with help, see above punctured lung), and that was the critical thing. Everything was survivable, especially as a healthy twenty eight year old who was physically fit.
This last bit was the most important, and Clarke made that very clear to Octavia. Bellamy was not ‘fine’, but he was alive, and he would recover. Clarke blew out a final breath and then burst into tears. It was going to be a long night.
Clarke had never had a particular need for religion, but she sent a thought to the sky that night.
It was “whatever is out there, I’m so glad you’re alive’.