Chapter Text
Clarke lay in a bed, in a room, in a house that had once been her home. She hadn’t been back here since she left for college, had only been in town since for quick lunches or dinners with her father, always at times where her mother had been away for some conference or simply just in the middle of a long shift at the hospital. Now she was here, and as much as she didn’t want to be, hated what had drawn her back, she couldn’t help but let nostalgia wash over her. The smell of her childhood enveloped and suffocated her at the same time, and she couldn’t sleep. There were too few sounds outside the window and too many thoughts in her head, and so she did the unthinkable.
She reached for the cell phone on her nightstand and dialed the number from memory. Octavia had deleted the contact from her phone when she stopped speaking to her brother, but for some reason it was stuck in Clarke’s brain.
The phone rang for a long enough time that Clarke started to feel embarrassed. She knew for a fact that he was practically an insomniac like her, but if she had called him on a night where he had actually managed to fall asleep, she would feel bad.
When it clicked and Bellamy mumbled a vague, “Hey Clarke, is everything okay?” Clarke had to catch herself from sighing in relief just at the sound of him. She could just picture him pushing his glasses away as he rubbed his eyes and frowned at his phone wondering why, after almost a year of complete radio silence, she was calling him now.
“Did I wake you? Because you can just ignore me and go back to sleep if I did.”
“No, no… I was grading some papers, my phone was just in my jacket.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to interrupt I’ll just –“ He interrupted her before she could offer to hang up just like she knew he would and somehow that made her feel even worse. She shouldn’t still be able to do that.
“Clarke it’s fine. What did you want?” His voice is at the same time curious and agitated, and she feels a little bit like crying, even though that’s basically all she’s been doing for the past couple of days.
“I kind of figured Miller would have told you by now, but um, yeah… My dad died?” When she says it, it sounds like a question, and she’s not sure what she expects the answer to be.
“Oh… I’m so sorry Clarke, can I do anything?” And it’s just like him, the eternal big brother, wanting to take care of her.
“No, um, just this is fine. I couldn’t sleep and I wanted to hear your voice so…”
It feels almost like a confession and a sin at the same time, because she is not supposed to do this. Octavia is one of her best friends and she has cut her brother out of her life and Clarke’s by extension. If Octavia knew she was doing this, there would be a fight and she felt shitty enough already but.
Maybe it was because she was under the same roof as her mother for the first time in years, maybe it was because she had put her dad in the ground only hours earlier but she felt defiant and carefree. This conversation, illicit as it may be, was making her feel better. And why shouldn’t she do whatever made her feel better? Bellamy was quiet for a couple of seconds, which felt longer than they probably were and then he sighed into the phone.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. But I’m serious, let me know if there’s anything at all I can do.”
“I will, but this is helping. You make me quiet, you know. I think I might even be able to sleep.”
“You should do that then.” He was whispering now and there was a longing in his words that she felt reflected in her own. “But I’m glad you called Clarke.”
“Me too.” And then he hung up and her mind was no longer crowded with thoughts but quiet, in peace, for a stolen few moments. She turned around in the too small twin bed and went to sleep, phone still in hand.