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***
Bellamy was hiding from Clarke. To be fair, he was actually busy. Running a camp with almost two hundred kids, sending out hunting parties, building up their stores for winter, and keeping up with the final construction for individual homes took a lot of work. Plus, both he and Clarke had to make sure everyone was keeping to their schedules (another addition by his co-leader: individual schedules everyday for each person, so they got their assigned work done, ate three meals a day, and attended mandatory classes that ranged from Ancient Mythology to What Mutated Plants Will Kill You If You Eat Them…how she found time to sleep was a mystery he still hadn’t solved, even when they happened to pass out in the same bed).
Ever since they lost contact with the Ark over a year ago and joined with the Grounders at around the same time to defeat the Mountain Men and rescue the remaining hundred, the truce between all the clans was holding strong. Their idea to use the Grounders already inside the Mountain as their army worked perfectly, Clarke, Anya, Bellamy, and Lexa sneaking inside to release everyone. They were forced to kill every Mountain Man, something that still haunted Bellamy and Clarke, as there were children inside, but without their blood supply, they would have died anyway. They also solved the riddle of the Reapers, Clarke able to cure them, including Lincoln.
Since they had worked so well together, other clans respected them and became much more willing to teach the remaining hundred how to survive, while they helped teach them how to use the technology inside the Mountain. Clarke had also nearly convinced Bellamy they needed to become the 13th Clan, something that would protect the hundred and the orphans from all the clans that somehow knew exactly where their gates were and knew they would be warmly welcomed into camp, accepted as one of them.
“Bellamy Blake!” Bellamy heard from behind him. He hunched over a little as he cursed the fact the new cabins were built so far apart (so new rooms could eventually be added), he now had nowhere to run. Eventually, he turned to find a beautiful, and furious, blonde standing behind him. He grinned at her and Clarke just rolled her eyes. (If he ever needed a reminder of her utter indifference towards him, just spending time with Clarke really did the job. And it’s not even that she meant to be rude; she was just immune to the natural charms that had women falling into his bed when they first arrived on earth, but had never worked on Clarke…not as though he wanted to sleep with Clarke. That was ridiculous. And the fact that he hadn’t slept with anyone since Raven, when she was trying to forget Finn and he was trying to forget that Clarke was missing…with Finn, was a complete coincidence.)
“I have been looking for you all day and you have been avoiding me all day!” Clarke cried out, stomping over to him. The crunch of the fallen leaves just reminded Bellamy how much closer to winter they were getting. They survived their first one on the ground thanks to the generosity of the Commander and Trikru, but they had spent the year since the ground thawed preparing themselves for winter so they could survive on their own. (Lexa never said it to his face, mostly because she didn’t say much of anything to anyone’s face who wasn’t Clarke, but he had a feeling whether they survived winter without help would be the deciding factor on whether they joined the Coalition.)
“Well, I know your schedule is free now, so we’re talking,” Clarke ordered him, spinning on her tough, leather boots (another gift from Lexa to their people) and striding to her cabin. The fact that Bellamy and Clarke’s cabins were the last to be built, a little away from the village that had grown up inside their ever-expanding walls (now to keep out animals, not Grounders), and near each other (close enough to easily link the cabins together and add on more rooms) was another complete and total coincidence Bellamy ignored.
“In,” Clarke said, opening her door. Bellamy immediately toed his boots off, not wanting to track mud over her floors, then went straight to her grate to start Clarke’s fire (this might be something they did often when they talked about the running of the camp…or just spent hours talking to each other, needing someone to lean on when the burden of leadership became too heavy).
Clarke flopped down on her bed, groaning a little as she opened and closed her hands, keeping her fingers limber in the cold. While Nyko had taught Clarke and Monty about all the medicinal plants down here, Clarke was still their primary doctor, meaning she was almost always busy. (Harper had decided to become Clarke’s apprentice after the Mountain and Dr. Tsing, but she had flashbacks that could leave her crying in her and Monty’s cabin for hours. Surprisingly, Murphy was her other apprentice, but his bedside manner was decidedly lacking, except with the jumpy orphans he took a weird shine to; only Emori, a Wastelander who had shown up a few months ago, could really control him and she apprenticed with Raven).
“Hands again?” Bellamy asked redundantly and Clarke managed to roll her eyes at him while also looking at him upside down. It was pretty impressive. “If you’d keep on those gloves I made you-“.
“I can’t stitch people properly with them on, you know that,” Clarke repeated for the umpteenth time. “But hey…”. She turned over, laying her head in his lap as he stretched out against the bed. “You know I appreciate them. Honestly, the best present I’ve gotten on the ground.”
“Aw,” Bellamy said sarcastically as Clarke elbowed him. They sat there in the quiet for awhile, listening to the village bed down for the night, before Clarke started talking, her voice overly sweet.
“I told Lincoln and Octavia. I guess Anya, Indra, and Trikru are so excited to celebrate this old earth holiday with us.” Clarke smiled as Bellamy groaned. “So there’s no getting out of it, Blake. We’re officially having Thanksgiving, Sky People and Grounder-style.”
“This was not the story we were taught about the Pilgrims and the Indians,” Bellamy pouted. “Actually, people running from their homes, only to find surprising strangers and living together to survive? Never mind, this might be the exact story we were taught.”
“Yeah, well, let’s just make sure it doesn’t end the same way and we stay peaceful with the natives where we crash landed, got it, Columbus? And I swear to god if you start lecturing me about the actual history of Christopher Columbus, I’m kicking you out into the cold.”
“Fine,” Bellamy said. “I’ll lecture you in the morning.” He dodged Clarke’s elbow that time, both of them curling up together to fall asleep. (It just made sense to heat one cabin. Saved on logs. There was definitely not anything else going on with the two of them sharing a bed where Bellamy could smell Clarke’s apple-scented hair whenever he wanted. Nope, nothing.)
***
“So, uh, Thanksgiving?” Miller asked the next afternoon as they were hunting (Octavia was insisting on turkeys, so Bellamy and Lincoln had turned it into a competition to see who could bring in the most). “This is a weirdly happy holiday, boss.”
“I told you to stop calling me that,” Bellamy said quietly, certain he had heard a wild turkey call a few minutes ago. “And, yeah, Clarke thinks it’ll be good for us, bonding our village, plus celebrating with Trikru.” He shrugged.
“Ah. Clarke wanted Thanksgiving.” Miller sounded so damn smug. “Well, of course we can’t break into our winter stores, so everyone’s wandering the woods for seasonally appropriate food. Got it. Because Thanksgiving is such a bonding experience and Clarke wanted it.”
“I swear, I will shoot you.”
“Can’t, Mom counts our bullets and she’ll know it was you. And Dad can’t shoot his kids,” Miller said almost gleefully as he moved away.
“‘Mom and Dad’,” Bellamy mimicked childishly, annoyed that Jasper and Monty’s nicknames had spread around the village and even more annoyed that he just automatically responded to it at this point. (Seriously, the orphans would be introduced to ‘Bellamy’ and ‘Clarke’ and within a week, would be calling them ‘Dad’ and ‘Mom’.) Finally, he saw two wild turkeys, quickly shooting them and adding them to his group’s haul.
Everyone came back that night excited, having gathered pumpkins, squash, tons of root vegetables that hadn’t frozen, and Monroe had stumbled onto a lush thicket of berries. (Literally stumbled, apparently, as she was in the medbay when they got back.) Bellamy was also feeling quite proud that his kids managed to find three more turkeys than Lincoln’s (although he was a little suspicious that Trikru let them win).
“Thanksgiving!” Octavia said, hugging Bellamy’s arm as the stood at the gate, watching everyone stream safely inside. “I know we’re doing it a little earlier than used to be traditional…well, maybe, who can tell with this weather and the fact that we kind of stopped having any sort of calendar after we lost contact with the Ark, but still. It’s our first holiday on the ground, Bell! We’re celebrating our first year of survival.”
“That’s certainly something to be thankful for,” Clarke said from behind them, smiling when Octavia hugged her before wandering off to do whatever it was that Octavia got up to near the end of the day. (Bellamy wasn’t even sure if she and Lincoln lived in that cabin they built for them or went back to Ton DC every night; he definitely knew they didn’t eat with them every night.) “So, who won? Us or Trikru?” Clarke planted herself by Bellamy, leaning against him a little.
“We did,” Bellamy said with a grin. “Although I think they let us. But, that was nice enough, in its own way.”
“True.” Clarke glanced around at the excited kids comparing the food they had gathered; their village had a child as young as ten and a few who were older than Bellamy, but everyone who came to them automatically understood that Bellamy and Clarke ran things. “You know, I was thinking.”
“That’s never good.”
“Rude,” Clarke said with no heat behind it. “We should name this place. All the grounder villages have names except ours.”
“We’re not grounders,” Bellamy reminded her. Clarke swiped a peach from a basket going by, biting into it and moaning slightly (which was a totally normal thing for Bellamy to notice and have absolutely no reaction to the sound at all).
“Aren’t we, though?” Clarke asked after a moment, finally swallowing that sinful peach Bellamy was definitely not jealous of because who in their right mind got jealous of fruit? “We’ve lived here a year, mostly in peace. And the people who make up this village, they’re from every clan and even some from no clans at all. We’re not really Skaikru anymore. I’m not sure who we are, but, before figuring that out, let’s figure out a village name.”
“Well, we know we’re on the East Coast of what used to be the United States. We could pick an historically accurate name.”
“You are such a nerd,” Clarke sighed fondly. “And I’m pretty sure Ton DC took the historically accurate name. Unless we want to be, like, Beltway or Sonian.” Bellamy gave Clarke a side eye.
“Sonian? Are we too good for the ‘Smith’ part? And we are not naming our village after a road,” he said emphatically. Clarke smiled at him almost smugly.
“Well, I guess it’s a good thing I called for a campfire tonight to discuss potential names.” Clarke started walking to their meeting hall, Bellamy racing after her in a panic. Once they actually started the construction for houses and buildings for jobs (the medbay might have been built first, but that was just practical, it had nothing at all to do with the grateful, jumping into his arms, hug Clarke bestowed on Bellamy when she heard), they stopped meeting around literal campfires to keep themselves warm and to spend time with friends. Clarke, because worrying was in her DNA, started telling Bellamy their kids weren’t getting enough social time. So a meeting hall was added to their list of buildings.
They used it for a variety of things; lots of people had dinner in the hall together (sometimes breakfast too, if someone couldn’t cook it themselves), they held their mandatory classes there, planning sessions about construction, education, jobs, etc, would take place there if they needed more than individual members of each job group. But the best feature of the meeting hall was their campfires, which happened twice a month. Clarke claimed she just didn’t have time to think of a new name, but Bellamy knew better. For Clarke, campfires reminded her of their time at the dropship. Of the original hundred. Of the first group of kids they had ever been responsible for. Campfires were a part of their first home on the ground.
Their campfires (along with the spontaneous ones Bellamy or Clarke could call) was a time to socialize and let loose. Raven had found a stash of old music and she, Emori, and a few of the mechanic’s other apprentices had set up speakers so they had songs to listen (and dance) to. Jasper and Monty always provided stills of moonshine, different flavors almost every time. If there were camp-wide announcements, those happened before the party started. So calling a campfire to discuss a village name meant they would be dealing with drunken delinquents shouting out ridiculous suggestions.
Bellamy thought Clarke might have actually lost it, until he walked into the meeting hall. That buzz of energy from their successful hunting and foraging day had spilled over into dinner and early drinks, everyone excited about celebrating an actual holiday on the ground. Few of the Grounder kids had ever even heard of Thanksgiving, let alone celebrated it, so having a holiday from old earth was beyond exciting for them. All the kids from the sky might know the story of the Pilgrims landing in what once was the United States, but none of them had celebrated either (holidays weren’t really a thing on the Ark). Celebrating a holiday that revolved around what you were thankful for seemed like the perfect way to start off any new traditions their village might bring to the ground.
“Okay, children,” Clarke called out over the dinner din, having to stand on an old box so they could see her (while Bellamy just walked over, their heads still almost equal in height). “First, congratulations on today and on winning the turkey competition!” Everyone whooped and hollered. “Now, I have an idea that I really want you guys to think hard about. My idea: our village needs a real name. This isn’t just Skaikru’s village anymore. It’s all of ours. This is our home. So figure out a name that would mean something to you. We don’t need any suggestions today. But talk to each other and find me or Bellamy when you do have suggestions. Okay?” A chorus of “yes, mom” made Clarke roll her eyes as she hopped off the box. “Anything to add?”
“Nope,” Bellamy said. “We had a good day today. And our cooks are going to need some extra help the next few days to get ready for Thanksgiving, so if you can get out of your apprenticeships, kindly do that. Otherwise, let’s have a great campfire.” The kids cheered as Bellamy led Clarke over to their normal table, Octavia, Lincoln, Raven, Murphy, Emori, Harper, Miller, and an orphan from Azgeda, Zeph (who was casually dating Miller) already seated, while Jasper and Monty moved a moonshine still inside.
“Village name, huh?” Raven asked, passing some venison. “That sounds so permanent.”
“Isn’t this place permanent? Isn’t this home now?” asked Harper as Monty slid next to her, kissing the top of her head. Jasper joined Raven, the two of them currently in the middle of this weird dance around each other (and their respective traumas), making the whole camp curious to see if they’d end up together. He definitely brought out a sweetness to Raven she barely showed anyone else.
“Of course it’s home,” Clarke said. “Which is why we need a name. There’s almost two hundred of us here. We’re living in peace and we’re probably going to be a part of the Coalition after winter. So, this is it. This is our lives.”
“Doesn’t the next part of a village becoming a permanent settlement involve babies?” Murphy asked with a smirk, the others booing him.
“Almost everyone who lives here is still a damn baby,” Bellamy grumbled. “We’ll think about procreating when our general population age isn’t sixteen.”
“You know,” Jasper said, resting his cheek on his hand, “sometimes I forget Dad’s actually smart, then he starts talking about procreation and general population ages and I’m just reminded what a big old nerd he is.” Everyone else laughed as Bellamy casually threatened to murder Jasper, something that happened more often than anyone could keep track.
Clarke and Bellamy spent the campfire leaning up against one of the walls, talking about everything and nothing. It reminded Bellamy sometimes about how far they had come from their first days on the ground, when he was certain this privileged princess had no right to make any decisions and arguing over everything, to her becoming the person he sought out if he was just feeling lonely. They still argued (a lot), but if you had told Bellamy a year ago that they would be arguing over Clarke’s absolute insistence that Renaissance writers were superior to Greek and Roman ones, he would have laughed. (And then continued to argue with her, because she was clearly wrong.)
They also watched out for the kids during campfires. Most people knew their alcohol tolerance by this point, but sometimes someone would go a little crazy, or sometimes Monty and Jasper would tweak their moonshine formula and it would suddenly have a little too much alcohol than normal. (Clarke hated those days, as her medbay would be full in the morning with hungover kids and then full in the afternoon with kids who hurt themselves because they weren’t paying attention due to their hangovers.) But campfires were an important part of camp life and neither Bellamy or Clarke would give them up.
***
“I hate cooking,” Octavia groused as she plopped down beside Bellamy a few nights later. The cooks for the village were grabbing as many people as possible to help prepare food (even trying out a few recipes) for Thanksgiving. Somehow, Octavia had been drafted and she was not pleased. “I hunt and fight, Bell. That’s what I’m good at. Not having a bunch of kids whining about whether pumpkin pie is real or not and could we actually find a recipe to make it.”
“Wait, who’s arguing that pumpkin pie isn’t real?” Harper asked as she sat down for dinner. “None of us have had it, but it’s real.”
“Yeah, it’s not like a weird, Thanksgiving myth,” Miller added as he and Zeph joined them. “There are lots of myths about Thanksgiving that definitely aren’t true, but pie isn’t one of them.”
“Oh my god, is this the pie fight again?” Clarke asked as she slumped next to Bellamy, grimacing at her stew. “Do you know I had five kids in the medbay today who got into fights over the reality of pumpkin pie? Seriously, they literally fought about it. I need someone to find a cookbook in one of the bunkers we excavate just so we can prove it was real.”
“Well, much to the cooks’ dismay, they don’t think they have the ingredients to make it, so they’re making some weird, mashed pumpkin dessert with all that cinnamon Emori brought with her,” Octavia said. Emori frowned at that.
“I’m not sure I would have shared all my herbs and spices if I knew they were being wasted on mashed pumpkins,” she said. Murphy just snorted.
“They should have just asked me.” Everyone at the table except Emori looked at him. “I know how to cook, I learned on the Ark. Plus, my nana passed down a bunch of recipes that I memorized. I know pumpkin pie was in there.” Now everyone was staring at Murphy, but instead of shock, they looked pissed. “What?” he finally asked.
“Murphy, you were in the medbay when the pie fighters came in,” Clarke said sharply. “Why didn’t you ask to be excused from work to help the cooks?” He frowned slightly.
“I didn’t really think about it.”
“Unbelievable,” Jasper groaned as Raven threw her hands up in frustration.
“You, tomorrow, cooking, got it?” Clarke said, pointing her spoon at him for emphasis. Emori elbowed him not very discreetly and Murphy quickly nodded yes. “I hate our kids sometimes,” Clarke mumbled as she laid her head on Bellamy’s shoulder (while he ignored how her hair smelled like Monty’s apple shampoo).
“No, you don’t, they just frustrate you,” Bellamy said, not at all creepily turning his head to smell her hair better, being caught by Raven, and blushing really hard (because there was definitely some sort of indoor heatwave happening in the meeting hall, affecting just him; that was a real thing). “Besides, just remember you have a holiday to look forward to in two days. So whenever you feel like murdering someone, just say, ‘This is not in the spirit of Thanksgiving’.” Everyone laughed, the tension at the table breaking.
Bellamy and Clarke spent most of the evening going through suggestions for village names in her cabin. Some were completely ridiculous and unusable (Monty and Jasper’s dual ideas of “okay, hear us out: either Pot-topia or the Garden of Weed-en” had gotten them both immediately assigned to the cooks after they were forced to empty their pockets just so Bellamy and Clarke were sure they weren’t slipping jobi nuts into the food). A lot of the names were also in Trig, which, while it would prove they really were accepting Grounder traditions by naming their village in their language, not a lot of the hundred spoke Trig very well. (They knew important words, like “stop”, “run”, “dangerous”, “friend”, “enemy”, etc, but mostly just words that would keep them alive.)
“I think this is impossible,” Bellamy said, looking through his list of suggestions. (Both he and Clarke had kept a list of what people told them they thought the name should be and they had been comparing and going over pros and cons of most names.) He was currently stretched out on Clarke’s bed while she scowled at her list from her desk and Bellamy definitely didn’t notice the adorable way her nose was scrunching at the paper as if it had personally wronged her.
“No, not impossible, just difficult,” she gritted out. “We need a name.” Bellamy sat up at her tone. After a year with Clarke in his life, running things by her side, he’d gotten really good at reading her. She was the person he knew best on earth (and, sometimes, when he let himself, he thought the opposite was true as well).
“This isn’t just about a name, is it?” he asked. Clarke looked up at him, frowning slightly. “Just like it’s not just about Thanksgiving. What’s really going on, Clarke?” She sighed, then blew out the candle at her desk, padding over to the bed in her thick socks and slipped under the covers with him, resting her head on his chest. He waited, patiently, carding his fingers through her hair as he listened to the fire pop. Finally, Clarke sighed.
“You remember at dinner before the campfire? How everyone was talking about how a name makes this place permanent, how much it makes it our home? I don’t think I realized I was doing it, at least not consciously. But it’s like I’m still desperately trying to set down roots here, prove that we belong here on the ground as equally as anyone else. That this will be our home forever. And I’m not saying that people won’t leave the village, move away, decide living under our tyrannical dictatorship is too much for them”, Bellamy chuckled at that, “but the Ark’s…gone. Everything we ever knew, all the people we knew on it, they’re gone. This is it. It’s our lives now, for better or worse, and I want it to be better. I want to make sure we don’t screw things up the way the Ark did, with such strict class systems and rules. I want our home to be a place everyone feels safe and equal.”
“Okay,” Bellamy said after a long moment, “there’s a lot to unpack there, but can I start with the obvious that you might be purposely avoiding?”
“Okay,” Clarke said warily.
“What you just said about the Ark being gone? We all stopped paying attention to exact dates, once we lost contact with the Ark. But you didn’t, did you? And we must be right around a year after the Exodus ship exploded and we lost contact with everyone. Which means it’s been a year since our only home disappeared. So are you grasping onto the idea of new traditions and permanence because it’ll give you that sense of safety and home back? Or is there more that I’m missing?” Bellamy waited as Clarke buried her face in his chest.
“The Exodus ship exploded a year ago last month,” Clarke finally said, her voice muffled, before she moved her face so Bellamy could hear her better. “I didn’t…I didn’t expect it to bother me so much. I thought I had made my peace with never knowing exactly what happened up there at the end, especially when we discovered Mount Weather destroyed the Exodus ship. But I think the fact that I was the only person who knew what day it was and life just went on as usual, completely normal, for the village just…got to me somehow. For some of us, two thousand people we knew died a year ago that day but in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter. Our lives were still happening. We were still alive, still surviving and living and creating this village.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Bellamy whispered, a little hurt Clarke hadn’t confided in him, but more worried about her state of mind. Not his. Never his.
“I didn’t want to worry you. You worry about so much already, it wouldn’t have been fair to add this on top of everything else.”
“Princess, that means you worried about it alone,” Bellamy said kindly but firmly. “You also worry about everything that happens in this village and when you didn’t tell me, you were just adding to your stress, instead of letting us share the burden like we always do.”
“I thought…I thought you might think I was being a little silly, too,” Clarke admitted, her voice small. Bellamy was so shocked, he didn’t say anything, until Clarke’s tiny, “forget it,” reached his ears and he both started panicking and having his heart break simultaneously.
“No, hey, hey, I just, I never would have thought you were being silly, I was just so surprised you even said that, I didn’t know how to respond. Listen to me: despite your problems with her, you lost your mom that day or maybe whenever the Ark finally ran out of oxygen. You’re right, we’ll never know what actually happened to the people that weren’t on the ship. But you can’t carry that for the fifty of us that are left. The Ark’s always going to be a part of our story, but we’re the lucky ones. It was the beginning. Our story might have started on the Ark and the mistakes they made up there, but we’re making our own damn stories here. And they’re going to be amazing ones.”
“Amazing, huh?” asked Clarke, a smile in her voice.
“Yeah. We’re going to have holidays and a village with an actual, appropriate name and families and futures. Maybe that’s the most important one of all; all the kids that have come to us, no matter their clan, they weren’t looking for anything but safety. Maybe a better home than the one they left. But we’ve given them a chance for a future, a real one. That’s something to be thankful for.” Clarke’s eyes widened as she suddenly sat up.
“I know what we should call the village,” she said. Bellamy could see her grin in the firelight.
“What?”
“I’ll tell you if you tell me something,” she said. He groaned, pulling her pillow over his head (because it was easily accessible, not because it smelled like apples and sunshine and everything Clarke that made up what was good in the world…totally ridiculous reason to put a pillow over one’s face).
“I used to play this game with Octavia, I’m not playing it with you.”
“Well,” Clarke said, dragging away her fragrant pillow, like the cruel woman she was, “you know I can only possibly want you to answer one question because I can only have one name for the village. So we’re not really playing a game, we’re trading information.” Suddenly, Bellamy sat up too so they were practically nose to nose. (He could have sworn Clarke’s breath hitched and she leaned into him a little, but that would be ridiculous. Right?)
“What’s your question, Princess?” Bellamy finally asked, not even embarrassed that his voice was rougher than normal.
“Will you move in with me?” A strange ringing started in Bellamy’s ears and he was certain he heard Clarke wrong, until she started rambling like she always did when she was nervous. “See, because, I like you, Bell. Actually, more than like, but I don’t think we’re quite ready to use the other l-word yet. But I really think we will be soon. Now, I could be annoyingly practical about this, saying, ‘oh, we’d only have to heat one cabin’ or ‘oh, it just makes sense, logistically, to have all of the village’s paperwork in one place’ or even ‘oh, we practically already live together and it’ll make the kids happy’ but I’m not going to be annoyingly practical about this. I’m asking if you’ll move in with me because it’ll make me happier than anything else possibly could. Because you make me happier than anything else could.”
“Even the gloves I made you?” Bellamy asked with a laugh, causing Clarke to start giggling (and he just had a new favorite sound).
“Yes, living with you and also just you, Bellamy Blake, in general, make me happier than the gloves.”
“I would love to live with you,” Bellamy said, leaning forward slowly, before kissing Clarke. She hummed happily (and he just had another favorite sound) and Bellamy knew that this was home. Not the cabins or the jobs or the village. It was their people. And for Bellamy, home was one particular woman in his arms who smelled like apples and drove him crazy and he loved more than anything on earth.
“So,” he whispered as they finally broke apart, Clarke chasing his mouth a little. He rested his forehead on hers. “What’s the name of the village?” Clarke started giggling again as Bellamy rolled them over, certain it was going to be a long night.
***
The day of Thanksgiving had bright blue skies and a cold nip in the air. The kids were dressed up (as well as they could), with pieces of jewelry or colorful scarves. Everyone was gathered outside the meeting hall with a few wagons to take all the food they had prepared to Ton DC, but Clarke and Bellamy wanted a quick word before they all left. Bellamy had kindly grabbed Clarke’s box from inside and helped her up.
“Happy Thanksgiving!” she yelled, everyone cheering. It really had been a group effort to bring the holiday together and Bellamy was excited to celebrate with the people he cared about the most. “Okay, I know you guys are all really excited about getting to Ton DC and having a first Thanksgiving, our first holiday ever, on the ground. Two really quick announcements, then we’ll be on our way. First, some very fast construction needs to take place in the next few days.”
“I thought we were done with construction for the year?” one of the kids asked.
“So did we,” said Bellamy. “But, well, Dad and Mom have finally gotten their act together and we need to link our cabins.” There was a long moment of silence, then a cacophony of noise so loud, Clarke nearly fell off her box.
“Is Jasper crying?” she yelled in his ear. Bellamy glanced over to see that, yes, Jasper was crying. He grinned and kissed Clarke, making the kids cheer louder as Jasper screamed, “It’s finally happening! This is what I’m thankful for, not jobi nuts!” (They really needed to put him up for adoption.)
“Okay, shut up!” Bellamy finally yelled, but he couldn’t keep the grin off his face. “Clarke has one last announcement.”
“We have a name for the village.” That quieted everyone down quickly. “First, this was not an easy decision. We had so many great suggestions and, frankly, some really stupid ones, cough, the United States of Murphlandia, cough,” Clarke said dryly as Murphy just shrugged, smirking. “However, Bell and I ended up picking the name. It wasn’t one of your suggestions, but I hope you’ll still love it. Besides, after a quick consult with Lincoln, the name actually means the same in the language of the Sky and the Ground. So our village is now named Haven.” Lots of pleased murmurs broke out, everyone smiling at each other. A lot of people looked really moved.
“This place, our village, it’s become a haven for all of us,” said Bellamy, holding onto Clarke’s hand. “Those of us left from the Ark, we’re the last people that will ever live in the sky. It took a war for us to prove that we belonged here, but the dropship and then this ground, our village, became our haven. Those of you who have come to us were looking for haven; a new home, a new family, somewhere safe where you could have a future.”
“Haven is all of ours,” said Clarke. “It doesn’t belong to one clan. It doesn’t belong to any clan. It’s ours. It’s our home. Our port in the storm. Our refuge from a fierce world that has been harder on us than on most. All of us here have suffered. Yet we still built this. Our Haven. Our home with our family. So everyday, but today especially, I’m thankful for all of you. For being my family. For creating someplace safe that will live on into the future, for our kids and their kids. For being the greatest starter kids your Dad and I could ask for, and no, Jasper, I’m not pregnant, do not faint into the turkeys. So happy Thanksgiving and I hope Haven will remain your home forever.”
Clarke smiled at Bellamy as she hopped down, the kids starting to chatter excitedly around them. Bellamy slid his arm around Clarke’s waist, watching everyone get ready for the trip to Ton DC.
“A haven for those lost, but now they’re found, huh?” Bellamy said. Clarke just shrugged, her cheeks pink from the cold and making her blue eyes look like the color of the sky. “Love it, Princess. And I’m thankful for our family here too.”
“But?” asked Clarke, knowing him better than anyone.
“I’m most thankful for you.”
***