Work Text:
It happens when he’s out in the woods.
Bellamy’s hunting – they need food to survive, since they’ve been on the ground for three months, the Ark went offline a few weeks before and never came down, and well, they’ve got eighty kids, starving and on a precarious peace treaty with the grounders, who already lived on the ground. He’s hunting in the area that’s marked out for them – the grounders have slashed red x’s on the trees about five miles out on every direction from their camp at the Dropship – and it’s not a bad area to be in. There’s a river; a lake; plenty of woods and hills, space to wander and hunt and roam free. It’s shared with the grounders, to an extent, but if anyone on either side ends up with an axe in their head, the war will start up again and Bellamy knows they’re not going to win it.
They’ve laid traps out across the forest, so he’s pretty cautious about looking where he’s going. Every now and again there’s a rope on the ground, tied to a tree, and sometimes there’s a rabbit, caught in it. When that happens, he kills the rabbit, stuffs it into his bag and resets the trap.
Then Bellamy sees something moving through the brush.
It’s big – or, big enough. It’ll feed them for dinner tonight, if he can get it.
Bellamy immediately ducks to a crouch, standing by the tree and waiting silently. For a moment, there’s just silence. Above him, there’s the faint breeze through the branches; speckles of light through the leaves; birds flitting from tree to tree. There’s the sound of his breathing, slow and steady; his hand shifting on his rifle where he aims it at the bush, and there’s nothing. There’s nothing and it’s peaceful and Bellamy wishes it could be like this a moment longer.
Then the leaves move.
Something – an animal, a person, a large stuffed toy (he wouldn’t know) – bounds out of the bush. He sees it long enough to know it’s not a human and takes the shot, missing once, twice, three times. It’s not aiming for him; just running, running, running; dodging around trees and jumping over roots. Bellamy stands, chasing after it. He doesn’t bother shooting – something going that fast wouldn’t be easy to hit, and it’s energetic… an energetic ball of fluff, he thinks.
He chases it until his breathing is laboured and they’re close to the x’s that he can see, just at the tree line. He doesn’t want to cross them. The grounders will – they’ll wander through Sky People territory and no one minds, really. Bellamy doesn’t want to risk it, and he’s chased this damn animal long enough that he should get the kill on his own territory.
Which is why he’s lucky (in a manner of speaking) when the animal stops, suddenly – the sound of metal clapping together and then a wounded howl. Bellamy skids to a halt, swallowing. Raven had figured out the design for the trap, like the ones that were on television, long ago. They were like metal claws, made out of material from the Dropship, with a trigger in the centre. When the trigger was pressed, the jaws of sharpened steel would snap shut.
They’d tested it out on a branch and everyone was silent in fear when they watched it work.
Bellamy creeps forward, gun raised only a little, as he rounds the tree. On the floor in front of him is blood. It’s not a lot – not yet, anyway. It belongs to the ball of brown and black fluff that’s panting and whimpering on the floor. He stares at it for a moment, lowering the gun. It’s not fighting back – it’s just lying there, front paws crossed over its snout and back leg trapped.
It’s almost like a wolf… large and reminiscent of the pictures he’d seen on the Ark. But it’s not a wolf, he can tell that much. It’s a… Bellamy searches for the right word, before it clicks. It’s a dog. Bellamy has found a dog ninety seven years after a nuclear apocalypse wiped out the planet.
“Holy shit,” he breathes, kneeling down in front of the wounded creature. He can’t eat a dog can he? They didn’t pre-bombs; they were tame, house hold pets. The dog doesn’t really look ferocious; just in pain and scared.
It looks up when Bellamy nears, lifting its head and staring at him with wide eyes. Bellamy holds out a cautious hand and the dog takes no time to start sniffing at it. After a moment, a long, pink tongue darts out from its mouth, swiping a lick up the palm of his hand. Bellamy smiles.
“I hope you weren’t just doing that to try a taste,” he mumbles, sitting in front of the dog now. Even with its back leg caught in the trap, the dog seems happy to nudge his nose at Bellamy’s hand and huff into his skin. “You’re not a blood thirsty animal,” Bellamy says aloud, crossing his legs and stroking at the dogs head.
The dog tilts its head in the direction of Bellamy’s hands and he grins. This is a dog – he can’t kill it. “How about I try and fix up your leg, huh?” The dog doesn’t really respond, but Bellamy doesn’t expect it to. He shuffles over to the back leg and frowns at the blood. “This is gonna’ hurt, bud,” he says.
Raven’s shown them how to pry apart the jaws of metal, and he starts by putting the toe of his boot at the edge, where the spikes won’t fall down and pierce his foot. Once he has leverage, Bellamy pulls at the top half, yanking back the stiff metal.
The dog flinches immediately, pulling its foot away and Bellamy lets the trap snap shut. The dog is up now on all four feet, trying to limp away, but its slow going and the leg isn’t helping as the animal moans every time it touches the ground.
“Come on,” Bellamy sighs, following the pup. The dog looks up at him, and Bellamy kneels back down beside it. “I have some knowledge of wrapping up wounds, just sit.” The dog stares at him, and Bellamy presses his hand lightly down on the back end of it. The dog gets the message and sits. Bellamy goes about cleaning and wrapping the wound with the supplies he brings with him for hunts, as the dog noses about the bag he let drop to the ground.
“Yeah, we’re taking them back to camp,” Bellamy tells the dog as he wraps its foot. The dog keeps flinching away, but Bellamy isn’t going to let that stop him. “You could come back with me, you know. That would be cool – I could teach you to hunt and maybe some tricks?” The dog’s nose is still firmly rooted in the bag. “Yeah? You don’t seem to have an owner. I could take you in.” Bellamy finishes wrapping the leg, and places his hands either side of the pup’s face, making them look at each other. “You want to come back with me?” The dog doesn’t respond at first, and then barks, which Bellamy takes as a yes.
“Great,” he smiles, standing and dusting off his trousers. He slings the bag over his shoulder, before starting to tread back towards camp. The dog doesn’t move until Bellamy looks back. “Come on,” he says, voice a little higher. He tries whistling, and the dog barks, bounding over as well as it can with a bad back leg.
Bellamy’s radio crackles to life, then. “Bellamy?” Miller’s voice calls through. “I’m with Monroe and we’re heading back to camp.”
“Did you catch anything?” he asks, the dog looking interested in where the new voices come from.
“Birds, rabbits, a fox. Nothing big,” Miller replies. “What about you?”
“Just some rabbits,” Bellamy says. “I’ll meet you back at camp.” He clips the radio to his belt and the dog trots along beside him. “You’ll need a name, you know,” he muses, more to the dog than to himself. “Clarke won’t let me keep you unless I can prove that I’m attached to you, and that losing you would be hideously traumatic for me.”
The dog barks, and it’s almost like a laugh, so Bellamy smiles.
-
“Open the gates!” He can hear Harper’s yelling as Bellamy reaches the Dropship camp. They’ve expanded slightly from their first month on the ground; giving themselves more space inside the walls, and they’re starting on building some huts because the tents are wearing thin.
The gates are pushed open, and Bellamy heads in, dog by his side and eyes glued to it.
“What the hell?” Harper questions loudly, from where she’s standing on top of the wall. Bellamy shoots her a smile, before looking back down at his dog and continuing onwards. He drops off the bag of game with one of the campers, before leading the dog over to Miller and Monroe by the campfire. He has to walk a little slower because his pup’s leg is really bothering her (he found out it’s a her) and the walk back to camp was long.
“Clarke’s going to kill you,” Miller smiles, crossing his arms. Monroe grins at the dog instead, going straight to stroke it, and the one dog Bellamy found is the world’s friendliest dog and plops her head straight in Monroe’s lap the moment her hands touch her.
“Let her, as long as we keep the dog,” Monroe grins, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “What’s its name?” She’s looking back up at Bellamy now, who’s smiling down at her fondly.
“Her name is Aurora,” Bellamy replies.
“That’s such a pretty name,” Monroe gushes, going right back to stroking the dog excitedly. “Do you like your name, Aurora? A pretty name for a pretty dog!” Miller sends him a look.
“You brought a dog back to camp,” he says dryly. Bellamy grins.
“Don’t act like you’re not excited,” he replies. Miller crouches down next to Monroe and Bellamy does the same. Miller carefully strokes Aurora’s head, letting his fingers sweep over the dark fur, and he smiles.
“Okay,” he relents quietly. “I’m excited. It’s a dog, Bell.”
The crowd that’s slowly forming is moving carefully over from all directions. Bellamy stands up and looks around. “I expected Clarke to get here quicker,” he muses aloud. A few kids look between themselves before she appears in the doorway of the Dropship, a young girl standing next to her. Clarke’s expression is wary as she moves through the crowd and towards Bellamy, and he smiles lazily back.
“I hear you’ve acquired a dog,” she starts, before looking down at the pup Monroe is infatuated by. “I’ve heard correct,” she says under her breath. Clarke looks back at Bellamy. “You know that would feed every person in these walls, right?” she asks slowly. Bellamy nods.
“I’m not killing the dog,” he replies. She opens her mouth to speak. “And neither are you.” The crowd is properly formed now; everyone is waiting and watching to see if they’re going to keep the dog or not. Octavia, Bellamy’s sister, pushes her way to the front of the crowd and stares, wide-eyed. She doesn’t move forward though.
“Bellamy,” Clarke says, trying to keep her voice low. “We can’t get attached to an animal that could be dinner.” Bellamy shakes his head.
“This dog,” he announces, looking around at the campers, “is my dog. She is the official pet of this camp, and if anyone kills her or eats her, you’ll have to face me. Does everyone understand?” They understand, and that’s because it’s a dog and no one wants to eat it, really. Everyone wants a pet dog. Clarke’s not looking amused – maybe because he won’t let her kill he animal, maybe because he made the decision without her consent, maybe both. But he doesn’t mind. He has a pet dog.
Eventually, she huffs.
“Fine,” Clarke decides. “We keep the dog. But she better earn her stay. She better be able to hunt and for the time being, until we’ve got a good supply that will last us throughout the winter, she shares your rations.” Bellamy hesitates before nodding, and it’s like there’s a collective breath of relief throughout the camp. Mum and Dad aren’t fighting anymore. “What’s her name anyway?”
“Aurora,” he replies. Octavia moves forward now, and it’s like the flood gates are opened; everyone wants to stroke the dog, and Aurora is loving the attention; yipping and barking happily as she pants and looks around at all the people who want to be near her.
“You named her after Mum?” Octavia asks, after she’s stroked the dog. Bellamy feels Clarke’s gaze on the side of his head as he nods.
“Yeah,” he replies, and that’s that. Octavia nods, and he smiles, and then announces loudly that everyone better be back to work within the next minute or he’s taking off with the dog and never coming back. A few people joke that they should stay around, then, and he sends them a pointed look before the scurry off back to their places.
“That went better than expected,” Miller says once Bellamy is sitting down at the campfire pit again. Monroe nods.
“I hate it when parents fight.”
-
Aurora sleeps in Bellamy’s tent, curled up at his feet and snoring softly. She follows him around the camp a lot; responds quickly to his whistling when she gets distracted, and likes to lie by the lit campfire and soak up the warmth. She pees a lot, which is something Bellamy doesn’t like to find out – she does it literally everywhere, and more often than not, at complete inopportune times. But, she’s his dog. Aurora is his pet and she’s only been with them a week but he loves her.
“Are you going hunting?” Clarke asks at breakfast. She’s trying to sink her teeth into a particularly gamey rabbit, but it’s just not working out for her – and he can see why. All of the rabbits have been more chewy than not, but everyone’s scarfing them down because they literally have nothing else to eat. He nods.
“Yeah, I’ll take Aurora and a few others with me, and we’ll try and bring back something bigger,” he sighs. Clarke nods.
“Lincoln says a village nearby is happy to trade with us. We could get some furs and medical supplies.”
“Are we running low?” She shrugs.
“Not of bandages, but medicine, yeah. And I expect people are going to catch the flu in the winter, which means we need to be prepared for it.” Bellamy swallows.
“Earth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, is it?” Clarke sighs.
“It’ll get better,” she promises as Aurora limps over, her leg healing pretty quickly. Aurora slips her head onto Clarke’s lap, and Clarke hesitates before stroking the dog behind her ears. It’s almost as if Aurora can tell that Clarke isn’t completely happy about choosing to keep the dog around, because she does all she can to be adorable and comforting whenever Clarke is nearby. Bellamy smiles at his partner and his dog, together. Clarke is smiling softly and Aurora pants happily. “Rory better get used to being a hunting dog,” she continues. Bellamy pauses.
“Rory?” Clarke nods.
“Aurora is a mouthful sometimes,” she replies. “Rory’s cute, too.” It’s the sign that Clarke is accepting the dog as part of the family and Bellamy grins.
“Fine,” he agrees. “Come on Rory, let’s go find some hunters.” Aurora follows him when he stands and leads her around the camp, looking for people without guard duty or huts to build. He finds them sitting on top of the wall, the four of them swinging their legs.
“Want to go hunting?” he asks, looking up at them. The four look down; they’ve become something of best friends in the time they’ve landed – this small group that just gels perfectly, and Bellamy loves them all, and they smile like they’ve been itching to get out of camp.
“Always,” Harper grins, slipping down from the wall first. She lands with a thud before straightening.
“Great,” Bellamy replies, as the other three follow suit. “Get some guns and meet me at the gate.” Bellamy already has his rifle slung around his shoulder, and he takes off towards the gate, Aurora plodding along on his heels. Clarke is doing the rounds; checking on the campers, making sure no one goes catatonic or eats something they shouldn’t. He watches her duck her head into the meat hut, all smoke and heat, before coming immediately back out, coughing.
Bellamy smiles as the kids who were inside come out so she can talk to them.
He and Clarke’s relationship was rocky at first, but Bellamy finds that he cares for her more than anything. He doesn’t know how it happened, but they became linked. They’re bonded, partners and parents for eighty delinquent kids, and there’s always that niggling thought at the back of his mind – the one where he thinks she’s pretty and amazing and could very well have his real children and he’d be happy and set. But he tends to ignore that thought – Clarke wouldn’t feel the same way back, and it’s easier for everyone if he focuses on keeping them all alive.
The group meanders over to the gate, like they’ve got all the time in the world, and Bellamy raises an eyebrow at them.
“No, no, it’s not like I was waiting or anything,” he says sarcastically, rolling his eyes. Miller smirks at him, and Bellamy nods for the gates to be opened.
“Alright,” he says once they’re about a minute from camp. “Harper, take the radio and your girlfriend and go West. Don’t pass the x’s-“
“Don’t step on Go!, don’t collect two hundred pounds,” she continues grinning. “I know Bell, this isn’t Monopoly.”
“And I’m glad it isn’t,” he replies. “I want this to be over within the next five hours.” Monroe snorts, and Bellamy looks to the other two. “Major theft, take petty theft and head South.” Bryan rolls his eyes at the nicknames as Miller laughs.
“Come on, petty,” he smiles, looping his arm through his boyfriend’s. “We’ve got places to go.”
“Shut up, major,” Bryan mumbles, still with a smile on his face.
“Try and catch something big, guys,” Bellamy tells them as they head off. “Rabbits aren’t going to keep us going.” Both Miller and Monroe salute without looking back, almost in unison, and Bellamy knows he’s got to get new friends.
He takes off East with Aurora, bounding along ahead of him and sniffing at every plant she goes near. She’s got unlimited energy, and is actually rather massive when it comes down to it. At one point, she hears something in a tree, and stands on her back legs, front paws on the bark and panting at the birds above them. She’s literally his height. It’s a little nerve-racking.
“Come on, girl,” he says, tapping her on the side. “We’ve got some hunting to do.” They wander about for a while, Bellamy holding her back and telling her to stay (which she does about thirty percent of the time) when he knows a trap is coming up. But it’s scary, knowing that Aurora could be jumping into any one of the traps they laid at any time. He wonders if they could fix it, and makes a mental note for later.
Bellamy stuffs his bag with rabbits whenever he can, and catches two foxes while he’s out. They’ve been going for about two hours; making their way to the limit of their territory, and then walking around the circle, when there’s the sound of an animal, there’s the movement in the brush, and Bellamy lifts his gun. Aurora pauses, looking around silently, before the boar rushes out into sight.
It’s fast, heading straight towards Bellamy, and his shots don’t land; missing the boar by millimetres every time. Then there’s Aurora, raised hackles and growling, jumping straight at the boar before it hits Bellamy, and tackling it to the ground. There’s a fight that he can’t make out; Aurora’s bared teeth at the boar’s neck, and there’s a moment where Bellamy stares, dumbfounded and afraid whilst the boar looks like it’s winning.
But it doesn’t, because he has the world’s best dog, and as the boar huffs, tired and losing, Bellamy takes the knife to its throat and it’s done.
“Shit,” he breathes, smiling. Aurora’s bleeding lightly from a surface wound, but it’s nothing much and Bellamy pulls his dog into an embrace, kissing her short fur. “Thanks, girl.” Bellamy lets go, staring at the boar. “You’re not going to help me bring it back to camp, are you?”
Aurora barks, and Bellamy takes that as a no.
He’s right, especially when he’s dragging back the boar and Aurora is jumping around ahead of him, not helping in the slightest.
-
“So the dog can hunt,” Clarke acknowledges when they get back to camp. Bellamy nods, a few kids taking the meat from him and dragging it all to the hut to get it skinned.
“Aurora saved my ass out there,” he replies. His dog’s sitting across Miller and Bryan’s laps. Clarke nods slowly, looking over to Aurora.
“I’ll make sure to thank her,” Clarke replies. And she does, that night when they’re cooking up the boar – Clarke takes two pieces and doesn’t let Bellamy share his with Aurora, feeding the dog a meal all of her own.
“She deserves it,” Clarke says, not looking up at Bellamy. He grins in return.
-
Time passes slowly down on the ground. They’re not really fighting for their lives anymore, so it’s easy to get lost in the monotony; spend time lying out in the sun and waiting for the day to pass. There’s always things going wrong at camp, sure, but sometimes they can be solved with a simple Fox, take a walk, or a Roma, go help out with the huts when things get too much.
Bellamy takes Aurora on long walks some days; he heard that dogs like those, and tries to get her to the river at least once a week to wash her fur.
They’re not really afraid of the river serpent anymore, seeing as it was worrying when they were given it as part of their land, and Lincoln showed them how to kill one, because apparently there were a lot of rivers, and a lot of river serpents out there. It was as if it was common knowledge on the ground to lure it over and then spear it through the head.
The body of the serpent was dragged out and skinned. Apparently they weren’t good to eat, but the skin and bones could be useful. Bellamy doesn’t know what happened to the flesh, but it’s gone and that means he no longer cares.
He enjoys watching Aurora splash around in the river, rolling about and then shaking herself off to get dry. He has a dog, and he’s pretty sure these are things owners used to do with their pets pre-bombs, and it just makes him feel so normal.
They’ve had her for a few months, and everyone’s gotten used to having a dog romp about – no one tends to go out of their way to stare at her anymore, but no one loves her any less. They’re used to her being around when Bellamy’s walking her back to the x’s, with Lincoln and a group of grounders who’d come to trade with them, and they find another.
“Dogs are pretty rare,” Lincoln agrees, when Bellamy says Rory’s the first one he’s seen. “Some villages just tend to eat them – I don’t think I’ve seen any in Polis or TonDC, either.”
“Well we’re not going to eat you, huh, girl?” Aurora barks, and sometimes Bellamy swears she can understand him, but that just means he’s been out in the sun too long, and Clarke tends to tell him to lie down for a while.
They make it to the x’s and Bellamy says his goodbyes, watching the grounders head off into the woods. Lincoln sticks by him, not following them as he stays at their camp more than his own, these days. Aurora barks, weaving around the trees and Bellamy whistles for her to come back. She stops, looks over, he whistles again and she comes running.
But, so does another dog.
Which is questionable.
Bellamy stares, wide-eyed as the white and grey dog, looking very similar to Aurora, but maybe a different breed, he’s not sure, bounds along behind her. Aurora reaches him, jumping up onto her back legs, hitting Bellamy’s height, but he’s just staring at the dog behind her.
“Lincoln,” Bellamy says slowly. “Am I hallucinating a second dog or is there one right there.” Lincoln pauses.
“No, nope, I’m seeing it too.”
“Great,” Bellamy breathes. Aurora bounces down onto all four paws, before noticing the dog, chasing its own tail and panting happily. She doesn’t seem worried or afraid, just barks, and goes over to sniff the new animal, which responds in kind. “Two dogs. Clarke might actually kill me.”
“She won’t,” Lincoln says after a moment. “She has a pretty huge crush on you, killing you would probably cause her an issue.” Bellamy ignores the word crush because his heart just wouldn’t be able to take it and nods.
“At least my death would probably cause her a single problem,” Bellamy mutters, before kneeling down beside the dog. He’s a boy, Bellamy finds out, and just as friendly as Aurora, barking and licking Bellamy’s face as he tries to stroke him. The dog doesn’t have any noticeable injuries, and well – he’s a cute damn dog.
“You think Octavia would like a dog?” Bellamy smiles, glancing up at Lincoln. His friend is raising an eyebrow at him, but doesn’t seem opposed to the idea. “I think she’d like a dog. More than that, I think she’d like a dog to go out on her runs with her, and join her on trips to other villages.”
“I do all those things,” Lincoln points out. Bellamy shrugs, standing.
“The dog’s more preferable,” he says. Lincoln hits him in the arm, albeit lightly, and Bellamy grins. “Giving Octavia the dog, yes or no.”
“Yes,” Lincoln repents, and Bellamy smiles, whistling for the dogs to follow as he turns back to camp. Lincoln leans down to stroke the new dog’s fur and Bellamy knows he made the right decision, about letting him and Octavia have it – Lincoln’s beaming.
-
At camp, the gates are opened and people stare at him.
“Seriously?” Harper asks, from up on the wall. “Another dog?”
“What can I say?” Bellamy grins. “They like me.” People look at the new dog, pale in contrast to Aurora, and Bellamy looks around. “Octavia!” he yells. People stick their heads out of huts and Clarke wanders out of the Dropship, Octavia next to her. Clarke huffs, like this is so predictable of Bellamy. “I brought you a dog!”
Octavia is positively giddy over having a pet, and she doesn’t let her new pup leave her sight for the next week, literally taking him everywhere with her. She makes him a lead out of old rope, too, for the runs, she tells him, so Ares can come with me, and the camp is once again infatuated by its newest member.
“You brought your sister a dog,” Clarke says, a few days after Ares joins them. “You didn’t bring me a dog.” Her tone is playful, even though she’s raised her eyebrows and Bellamy smiles at her.
“I thought we could share Rory,” he says. “She does have a basket in your medbay.” Clarke studies him for a second before nodding, looking to where Aurora is curled up in the basket that Lincoln made them with old rags and furs.
“You’ll let me share Aurora with you?” Clarke asks, and it’s less light now. It’s serious, like, is Bellamy going to share his dog, practically his child, with Clarke? He nods, seriously, and soft.
“Of course.” It feels more like a confession than he meant it to, but Clarke slowly smiles, nodding, and ducking her head. “What’s mine is yours,” he adds, because if he’s started this, why the hell not going along with it.
“That’s a marriage line,” Clarke points out. The medbay is empty and quiet and it’s just them and why not now. Bellamy nods.
“We already have eighty kids,” he tells her. “Might as well go the whole way, right?” Clarke is silent, studying and beautiful and goddamn he wishes he could just lean forward and kiss her and know that she would want to kiss him back.
“Might as well,” she agrees after a beat. “But, I think I’d prefer to date the person I’m going to marry, before just jumping straight in to death do us part.” They’re in a stale mate, staring at each other, before Bellamy cracks a smile.
“Deal,” he says. “I’m happy to date you, that is.” Clarke smiles too, and it’s happy and peaceful and quiet, until she leans forward to press her lips against his, and suddenly his head is exploding.
It’s colourful and bright; Clarke is grinning and loud and so, so beautiful. Kissing her is like angels singing and wedding bells chiming in old movies he saw once or twice back up in space. She’s soft and delicate under his hands, but she cards her fingers through his hair like she’s made of iron, steel, with nothing to lose and so much to gain.
When they pull apart, Bellamy grins into her lips, pressing small kisses against them because he so doesn’t want to be apart from them yet. Aurora barks and Clarke giggles.
“Shh, Rory,” she says. “Mummy and Daddy are trying to profess their feelings for each other.” Rory just barks again and Bellamy grins.
“Aurora’s just happy for us, is all,” he replies.
-
About a week and a half later, Octavia sits down next to him at dinner. They’re at the campfire, all crowded together for the warmth, because they haven’t figured out the design of camp well enough to get another fire pit, but it’s comfortable; cosy. Clarke is on one side of him, talking animatedly with Raven about the idea of giving the traps a distinct smell that the dogs will be trained to dislike and steer clear of, so they don’t get hurt, and Octavia squeezes in beside him.
“I’ve had an idea,” she announces.
“Good to see you too,” he replies. Octavia rolls her eyes and looks over to the dogs, on the other side of the fire pit. Ares is sitting by Lincoln, trained already (because Lincoln and Octavia are rigorous about training their dog) whilst Aurora is lying across Bryan and Miller’s feet, lapping up the warmth of the fire, and catching little pieces of meat that they throw to her.
“I’ve had an idea,” she tells him again. “Regarding the dogs.”
“What about them?”
“We could get them to mate,” she replies. Bellamy raises his eyebrows. “Yeah – then we’d have more dogs here. Sure, Aurora might be out of action when it comes to hunting for a while, but you can take Ares instead; he hasn’t had much experience there and it’d be nice to train him for that?” Octavia’s rambling and Bellamy watches, smiling slightly as she lists the reasons it would be good to mate them, that she’s obviously prepared to make him agree with her. “Bryan’s already called the next dog, and it would so cute to have little puppies running around here that we could train to smell other animals, and stuff? There are also, like, sniffer dogs? They were pre-bomb, but they could smell out bombs and that would be cool because if we could get them to smell out bunkers we could find them easier? I’m not saying it’s possible, but we could try-“
“O,” Bellamy interrupts at last. She looks over to him, teeth gnawing on her lower lip. “I think it’s a good idea.” Her face lights up, and she rushes forward, enveloping him in a hug, before calling over to Lincoln and giving him a thumbs up.
“I don’t know how we’re going to get them to do it,” Octavia tells him. “But I’m thinking if we just leave them in the same room for a while they’ll eventually do it themselves?”
-
It takes about two months, but then Bellamy notices that Aurora’s stomach is larger than he thought it was, and he knows she hasn’t been eating more, so she’s probably pregnant. He takes her to Clarke, because she’s a doctor.
“A doctor,” Clarke says, kissing him on the cheek when he places Aurora on one of the cots. “Not a vet.”
“Close enough,” Bellamy replies. “You’d still know better than me.” He gets Aurora to lie down, and Clarke feels around her stomach.
“She could be,” Clarke tells him. “I’m not sure but she could be. It would be easier if we had the ultra sound equipment they had on the Ark? But it’s my best guess that she might be pregnant.” Bellamy smiles, pressing a kiss to Aurora’s head.
“Hear that, girl? You might have babies in your tummy.” Clarke watches him fondly for a moment, and he catches the look. “What?”
“Nothing,” she says, shaking her head. “Rory probably shouldn’t go out on hunts until we know, and then if she is we’ll keep her here.”
“I don’t want her getting lazy,” he tells Clarke, who nods like this is a serious matter (which it obviously is).
“We’ll make sure she still gets walks,” Clarke promises. “Just take Ares out for the time being, and then we’ll figure this out later.”
-
Aurora is pregnant, and she gives birth in the middle of the night, a long time later. Things happen during the time in which she’s pregnant – winter, for one, which is terrible and awful and they barely survive, let alone the dogs. There are only a few huts that were built before it hit, and they have little fires inside, which is nice if you’re one of the people living in them. When the cold hits, they decide that they can fit six people to a hut if they squeeze, and everyone else can stay in the Dropship at night. They all wear furs and huddle for warmth; hunting doesn’t happen so they ration out the food and supplies they got in earlier months.
Monty’s moonshine isn’t good by any means, but it gives everyone a warm feeling in their stomach, which is good enough to Bellamy, and he drinks it every night hoping to dear God that it doesn’t kill him.
Aurora and Ares are kept in the centre of Dropship, with people huddled around them on all sides, to keep them warm. It’s a strange day when they realise the dogs are so important to them, but one of them is pregnant and they’re not going to let her get cold just because she isn’t a person.
When the snow falls it’s white and beautiful and everything they could have hoped for. They dance around in it at first; having snowball fights and making snowmen and snow angels. In the mornings, when it’s untouched, Bellamy gets up earlier to check the walls and the gate, so he can have the first footprints in the unmarred snow.
It’s pretty and beautiful, and eventually gets old and annoying – but it’s a part of living on the ground. Three people die in the winter from the flu, and Clarke keeps them on a different level of the Dropship than everyone else, so it doesn’t catch, but everyone has colds and runny noses throughout the entire season anyway. Lincoln promises they’ll be better at this next year.
When the snow finally melts and the world gets warm, it’s like a sigh of relief.
People move back into their tents and they start up construction on the huts again (with more people helping this time, now they can see how great they’ll be next year). The world is bright and getting warmer by the day. Clarke and Bellamy move into the same tent, claiming it’s to open up another tent for someone else, but it’s really because he can’t help himself from dragging his fingers across her skin, feeling the way her heart beats through her chest and her bones feel under his touch. It’s really because she loves to memorise his freckles; telling him that they’re constellations in the day time, and counts them as she kisses them, one by one.
Aurora sleeps at their feet, and sometimes they wake up with her on their chests, but Bellamy’s never found himself minding – not until he’s had the busiest day, with constant construction and taking Ares out to hunt, which – he’s getting better, but he’s nowhere near as good as Aurora is.
That’s the day that he’s woken up by the howling, in the middle of the night, Clarke groaning next to him and rubbing the sleep from her eyes, as Aurora gives birth.
There’s six puppies in total, and Clarke looks after Aurora like a professional after moving her into the medbay. Many people wake up and come to watch the miracle of dog life, Bellamy stroking Aurora’s head the whole time and whispering things into her ear to comfort her.
“I think we’re done,” Clarke announces, after the sixth is born. They don’t know much about puppies, but they know not to touch them much for a while, as Aurora licks them clean and they begin to suckle.
The next few days are full of uncertainty, as they’re not sure who to feed and how to look after them, but Bellamy barely leaves the medbay, sitting constantly with Aurora’s head on his lap, and her babies curled up against her. Whenever the camp has problems – and they always have problems – they just come into the medbay and sort them out there, because if Bellamy isn’t even going to sleep in his own tent with Clarke, he’s certainly not going to go out and settle a dispute over scheduling.
Soon, the puppies are big enough to walk around on their own, and everyone has to keep an eye on them, because they’re likely to walk straight outside on their own and get trodden on by accident. They have their own personalities, all unnamed and tiny in Bellamy’s arms, and he loves them all, and so does Aurora.
He sits outside with them, Aurora’s head in his lap, and the puppies all sleeping in the midday sun.
“So who’s getting the puppies?” Someone asks, from the small crowd that’s formed to sit down and stroke them. Apparently puppies relieve stress and Bellamy’s inclined to believe that, because the days spent with the new-borns have been the most peaceful of his life. He looks up at the group.
“Well, Bryan and Miller get one, because they called it ages ago, as do Harper and Monroe, because they brought in three boars in the last two weeks.” Monroe cheers from wherever she’s sitting and Bryan grins, bringing the little puppy up to his nose. “I think, though,” he continues as Clarke sits down beside him, “the puppies get to go to the people who do the best or the most work? They’ll all learn to hunt, hopefully, but they should go the people who earn them.”
And that’s how it is. The puppies get doled out to different people in each group. The ones who work the hardest with the cooking and the food get a puppy to share, as do those on the construction team, the ones going out and learning Trigedasleng and meet with grounders, and then the final puppy is given to the younger kids – some only eleven – to share.
But the puppies are owned by the whole camp, really, and soon they’re everywhere – so energetic and happy, and Bellamy loves it because Aurora does, too. He gets to take her out hunting again, and God, he didn’t realise Earth could be this great.
-
Bellamy’s out with his friends – there are six of them walking along; Clarke, Monroe, Harper, Bryan and Miller, and the three dogs with them. The puppies have leads so they don’t wander off, but Aurora’s used to sticking by his side anyway.
He can’t say exactly what they’re talking about, because the world just feels too nice and too great in the moment, but Lacey, the puppy Miller named, is yapping, and Jonah, Monroe and Harper’s dog, is barking back.
Bellamy never really took the time to consider before coming down to Earth, that there might be dogs still alive. If he had, this life that he’s living; one with peace and joy; would have been expected. Instead, it took him by surprise; his hand enclosed in Clarke’s and Aurora barking along ahead of him.
Still, he wouldn’t have asked for anything different.