Work Text:
Clarke first finds magic at ten years old. It comes as a sudden tingling in her fingers, a white hot shot of light from her palms. She follows it to the shore by her house where a young boy kneels, digging oysters from out of the mud.
His name is Bellamy, and he's claiming dinner for his mother and sister from the saltwater. He's twelve and says he doesn't believe in magic, says his sister is silly for still having faith, so Clarke calls him an idiot and shows him the way her fingertips still shine.
She likes him right away.
The magic always finds her when she needs it, a guide to places and information that aid her. She doesn't control it, doesn't act as anything more than its vessel; even when she's sixteen and crying with the crush of her father’s death, rage and desperation spilling through her hands until Bellamy slides onto her bed, wraps himself around her, pulling her fiery fists from where the wall has become a sun.
There is always Bellamy.
He is the only person her magic has ever found.
In the spring after she turns twenty-one, the magic wakes her early in the morning. She stumbles into pants and shoes, throws a sweatshirt around her shoulders, and ventures out into the dawn. Everything is damp, the air heavy with salt.
She follows the light springing from her hands to the trees on the edge of town. The grove is quiet and dark under its shadows, her fingertips small beams that pulse with the brush of leaves as she walks.
In the middle is Bellamy, sitting on a rock and throwing pebbles into the stream carved out by heavy rains. He hears her coming and smiles.
There is a softness to the morning, an easiness that comes with the world just beginning to wake. A shaft of sunlight falls through the branches as Clarke sits next to him, warm and dappled, illuminating his curls and splattered freckles with the hope of a new start.
He looks young again.
Clarke lets herself reach out, lets her fingertips soothe over his brow, the curve of his cheekbones, the cut of his jaw, the small scar that falls above his lip. His skin shimmers under her touch and he's smiling gentle and true, eyes clear, and she knows.
"What are we waiting for?" she asks, voice sliding over the stillness of the world.
Bellamy laughs, bright and pleased as he brushes his hand through her hair, tucks the strands blowing in the breeze from her face and kisses her. It's natural; the push and pull of them, the electric hum that comes with her thrum of magic intensified.
He is the only person her magic has ever found, and she thinks it's because he is a magic of his own.
When his hand clasps hers, they glow.