Chapter Text
I.
Clarke wakes up to the beep of a machine, a dry mouth, and a stabbing pain behind her eyes. When she opens her eyes, she finds herself in a dark room. It’s night outside her window. She turns her head to look around, but the world tilts and pain lances through her skull.
It’s only when Clarke tries to bring her hand up to her head, that she notices the man attached to it. He’s asleep with his head on the mattress beside her and Clarke’s only impression is messy black curls, soft, slow breaths, and a large, warm hand holding onto hers.
She doesn’t recognize the man at all and Clarke tries to pull her hand away without waking him, but he stirs almost immediately. The stranger sits up, rubbing his eyes, and Clarke catches sight of a hard jawline and the barest hint of freckles. She shifts on the bed and it creaks making the man look up. They lock eyes and, God, he’s handsome. Beautiful, even. With expressive eyes and a mouth Clarke longs to paint despite the fact that she gave up on art when her dad died two years ago.
Clarke’s still distracted by the stranger’s face when he speaks. And, God, his voice too. A deep, low baritone that reminds Clarke of vinyl on a record player.
Clarke’s so busy taking in all the details of this stranger that she doesn’t even pay attention to what he’s actually saying until, “Fuck, Clarke, I’m so sorry. I love you and I never should have—"
“You what?” Clarke interrupts. Her voice is hoarse and the words barely make it out. Her head thumps when she clears her throat and Clarke tries to bring her hand up only to this time find it tethered to tubes and wires. Her breath starts to get shallow when she takes in the room around her again, the fog in her head finally starting to clear. There’s a saline bag by her bed and wires hooked up to her heart. A machine beeps beside her and there’s a red button by her hand. Shoes squeak and Clarke catches sight of a woman in scrubs passing by in the hallway. She takes a deep breath and her lungs fill with the smell of disinfectant, fear, and death.
She’s in a hospital and she’s starting to panic.
The stranger’s speaking, but Clarke doesn’t pay attention and interrupts his words with her own frantic ones.
“Where—where am I? What happened?”
The last time Clarke was in a hospital her dad died. And while that was two years ago, this is still too soon. And Clarke has no idea what happened. She has no idea how she ended up here. Without the presence of anyone she knows.
Where is Wells? Where is her mom? Why is this stranger the only person at her bedside?
“Clarke, Clarke, shh. It’s okay. You’re okay. You were in a car accident and you hit your head. Do you remember any of what happened?" The stranger’s voice is calm and her panic doesn’t disappear, but it slows.
Clarke shakes her head, straining to remember. The man beside her takes her hand and she finds the gesture soothing despite the fact that she’s never met him before. Oddly, he seems to know her though.
“I—I’m sorry, are you a nurse? Where’s my family?”
The man lets go of her hand and takes a step back. Something like dread creeps into his features and Clarke’s heart drops in her chest.
“It’s me, Clarke. Bellamy.” She frowns, trying to place where she must have met him. Did they meet before the car crash? No, didn’t he tell her he loved her when she woke up? Clarke feels nauseous, her head hurts and she feels like she’s thinking too slow. She feels like she can’t hold on to too many thoughts at once.
The man—Bellamy—runs a hand through his hair, looking increasingly agitated.
“You—you don’t—you don’t know who I am?” Bellamy’s voice wobbles on the last words.
For some reason, Clarke desperately wants to tell Bellamy that she does remember. She wants to reach for his hand and she doesn’t know why. But that’s the problem: she doesn’t know why. She doesn’t know him.
“I—I’m sorry. I don’t…” she swallows, “I don’t remember."
Clarke watches the words land. She sees them strike Bellamy like a punch in the gut. He falters and takes another step back—another step away. His hand clenches on the nape on his neck and his eyes become two shards of broken glass.
“Clarke,” the way Bellamy says her name breaks her heart. It’s like some part of her knows what he’s going to say even before he says it. “I’m your boyfriend. We’ve known each other for five years."
(It’s amazing how someone Clarke doesn’t even remember can still manage break her heart.)
II.
The doctor tells Clarke she has amnesia. Turns out she’s twenty-five not twenty, but every moment of the past five years is gone.
It’s been seven years, not two, since her dad died and Clarke is a fairly successful artist living in New York city with her boyfriend, Bellamy.
(Somehow it’s Bellamy and not the time that feels like the biggest loss.)
Luckily, though, Wells is still part of her life. He comes to see Clarke the morning after she wakes up and pulls her into his arms like they’re still two kids and Clarke just fell off the swingset on the playground. She cries into his shoulder and Wells rubs circles into her back. She’s tired and overwhelmed and just seeing a familiar face lifts so much off her shoulders. Clarke’s grateful that somehow, through everything, her best friend has always been a constant all her life. She hopes that never changes.
Over Wells’ shoulder, Clarke catches sight of Bellamy in the hallway, two coffees in hand. He stands there, frozen, looking somehow both relieved and disappointed. He’s too caught up in his own thoughts to notice Clarke looking. He doesn’t know that she’s watching when he turns around and walks back the way he came, hardly pausing to throw the second cup of coffee in the trash.
Bellamy’s barely left Clarke’s side since she woke up, but they’ve also barely spoken since. He’s present, but always just outside her reach. He consults with doctors, chats with nurses, fills in friends and family over the phone, but barely even looks at her.
She sees Bellamy break once, while he’s talking to someone on the phone. She sees tears drip down his cheek, but she’s not close enough to hear what he’s saying. And when he returns to the room, his features are schooled back into calm .
“Who was that?” she asks carefully, trying to not to give away that’d she’d seen him.
“Miller,” Bellamy runs a hand through his hair. That seems to be his M.O. when he’s nervous, “Miller’s my best friend. You two… I introduced you two not long after we met.”
Clarke nods. Miller. Another person her accident erased.
But, the truth is, even though Clarke’s the one missing the past five years, it feels like Bellamy’s really the one dealing with loss. Clarke sees it every time he runs a hand through his hair, every time he catches her watching him and plasters a fake smile in his face.
(She doesn’t even know him and she can still tell he doesn’t mean it. She can still tell he’s in pain. He’s a man who wears his heart on his sleeve. Or rather, in his eyes. His eyes tell her truths his lips can’t bear.)
Bellamy’s there when the doctor tells Clarke that there’s a high chance her memory will return. That the damage to her brain wasn’t severe and that they’re hopeful that as her brain heals, she’ll recover the memories she’s missing. But—of course there’s a but—there’s still a small chance that nothing will come back. That Clarke will never recover any of the five years she lost.
Clarke’s gaze goes to Bellamy when the doctor tells her. She catches the flash of raw fear as it flits across his face.
She turns back to the doctor.
“What can I do? How do I help myself remember?” she asks, determined. She doesn’t know what she lost, but Clarke’s smart enough to realize that she wants it back.
“Well, my recommendation is that you go home and take it easy. Let your friends take you to the places you used to hang out and see if anything jogs your memory. The memories will come back naturally when it’s time."
Clarke swallows, “And if the memories don’t come back?"
The doctor smiles sadly, “Then you make new ones."
…
Wells comes back the next day and it’s easier with him there. It’s always been easier to face things with her best friend by her side.
It’s a Sunday so Wells doesn’t have work. Clarke smiles when he tells her that he teaches biology at the local high school. He brings her a hot chocolate (with extra whipped cream) and sits cross legged at the end of her bed, taking up a ridiculous amount of space while he does his best to fill her in on the past five years. But, with so much lost time, there’s only so much he can say.
While Wells catches her up, Bellamy sits in the hallway, working, the door closed between them. And every so often, Clarke’s eyes catch on his form.
“Was I happy?” Clarke finds herself asking.
Wells follows her gaze to the hallway where Bellamy’s talking emphatically on the phone, using his free hand to gesture expressively. It’s endearing and Clarke smiles without meaning to. Bellamy seems to care so much about everything he does.
“Yeah, you were.”
Wells tells Clarke how she and Bellamy met during her junior year of college when Bellamy was the TA for her class.
According to Wells, Clarke’s friendship with Bellamy began with Clarke pouring coffee over his head.
She’d gone back a few days later to apologize when she realized that he’d been right about the mistake in her paper. As a peace offering, Clarke had offered to buy Bellamy coffee and, bizarrely, he’d said yes. Friendship followed easily after that.
“He must have been love with you from the start,” Wells laughs, “No sane person would ever forgive someone for pouring coffee on them that easily."
“To be fair, I was an asshole about how I pointed out the mistake, so I kind of deserved it."
Clarke looks over to find Bellamy’s smiling in the doorway. She smiles back on instinct.
“I hope the coffee at least wasn’t hot."
Bellamy looks at her, half present, half caught in the memory, he shrugs.
“It was worth it."
...
Wells can’t get off work the next day so it’s just Clarke and Bellamy when she gets discharged from the hospital.
She’s in yoga pants and a tank top and the few seconds she’s outside as she walks from the hospital to Bellamy’s car are unbearably hot. It’s New York in July and the temperature’s in the nineties. Thankfully, Bellamy blasts the air-conditioning on the drive to their apartment while Clarke immediately pulls her hair up in a top knot.
They take the elevator to the seventh floor. Wells told Clarke that she’s been living with Bellamy for over a year, but, of course, she doesn’t remember. She follows Bellamy down the hall to 7C and when he puts the key in the lock he looks at her over his shoulder and a memory unfolds, almost pale with the passage of time.
The day they moved in wasn’t as hot as the current one, but they had both been dripping with sweat from lugging all their boxes to the elevator and into the apartment.
Clarke groans at the weight of the box in her hands as she follows Bellamy down the hall.
“God, why did I have to date such a nerd? No one normal has this many books.”
Bellamy stops in front of the door, balancing his own box against the wall to free his hand and turn the nob. He looks over his shoulder and smiles. Sweaty, flushed, and bright.
“I love you,” he says, easy and fond.
Clarke laughs and drops her box in the hallway to pull Bellamy down into—
“Clarke? You okay?”
She shakes herself, blinking away the memory and returning to the present. Bellamy’s standing just inside the doorframe. His hair is different now than it was when they moved in. It’s shorter on the sides, but still long on top. And, in the present, Bellamy wears a frown instead of a smile.
Clarke pauses and looks at him, the reality of how much she lost finally starting to hit her. She was so happy the day she moved in. (Was she that happy all the time with Bellamy?)
It takes her a moment to realize Bellamy’s waiting for an answer.
Clarke swallows, “Yeah,” she says, “Yeah, I’m good.”
She walks into her apartment, determination in hand. She’s going to remember this. She’s going to remember them.
III.
The reality isn’t as easy as she planned. Clarke’s memory comes in pieces. She moves back into the apartment she used to live in. She sleeps in the bed she used to own. But the man she used to share it all with falls asleep every night on the couch.
With Bellamy, things are awkward. How could it not be? She’s too much to him and he’s too little to her. Even their silences feel uneven.
Still, every now and then, they have good moments.
Like the day Bellamy asks Clarke to hand him a book and she pauses tracing her fingers across the cover of The Iliad.
“This is you favorite book, isn’t it?” she asks, her voice quiet enough to be a whisper.
Bellamy sets his laptop aside and stands up. Hope raw in his eyes.
“Yeah,” he whispers, “it is. Do you—”
She shakes her head already knowing what question he’s about to ask. The same question he asks every time she remembers something: do you remember anything else?
But the answer is always no.
Clarke remembers the day they moved in. She remembers his favorite book. She remembers the day they got caught in a thunderstorm and kissed in the rain.
She remembers certain scenes and certain details, but she doesn’t remember enough. And it weighs on both of them.
Being around her other friends helps. There’s not as much pressure. Not as much at stake. Wells comes by all the time, usually with Raven, another friend Clarke remembers, her roommate sophomore year. Clarke meets (or re-meets) Monty and Miller. She learns that she was working with Monty on a graphic novel and that Miller and Bellamy both have jobs at the same museum.
And through all the remembering, re-meeting, re-learning, Clarke tries to remain hopeful—tries to keep believing things will get better. But it’s hard. Everything she doesn’t know, everything she’s lost, and everything she struggles to remember, weighs on her. It’s all so heavy and her knees are buckling with the strain. Her whole life is a reminder of everything she’s forgotten.
She’s grateful when Raven sweeps into her apartment one Friday evening, followed closely by Wells, and announces that tonight they’re getting drunk.
“God knows we could use some alcohol around here. Things have been too serious lately.”
And, well, Clarke couldn’t agree more.
Inspired by the fact that the last thing Clarke remembers is college, Raven suggests that they have a college-style party. Bellamy’s eyes go wide as soon as she says it. He starts to protest when Raven amends her suggestion.
“I just meant that we should all hang out, get drunk on cheap liquor, and pretend that our problems don’t exist.” Raven smiles at Bellamy, “I wasn’t suggesting you throw a kegger, old man.”
“She says like that wasn’t her first thought,” Wells supplies wryly from behind.
Raven sticks her tongue out at him and Wells laughs, the sound warm and fond.
Clarke was surprised at first when Wells told her that he and Raven were dating, but now she sees how they fit. They balance each other out. And Clarke can safely say that she’s never seen her best friend look at anyone the way he looks at Raven.
Raven invites Monty and Miller over and an hour later the boys show up carrying bottles of cheap flavored vodka and a barrage of sodas to use as mixers.
They’re all working adults with significantly lower tolerances than they had in college, so it’s no surprise that it doesn’t take them very long to get drunk.
Music pumps through the bluetooth speakers Monty brought and Clarke smiles as she watches Raven and Monty sway not even attempting to match the beat.
Clarke’s eyes catch on Bellamy when he barks a laugh at the way Raven tries to dip Monty and they end up toppling over. And when Bellamy stands and heads to the kitchen, Clarke pulls her feet from Well’s lap and follows.
“You having fun?” she asks, leaning against the doorframe.
Bellamy stoops to grab another beer out of the fridge before turning to face her. He’s been drinking, but his eyes are clear and Clarke feels out of her depth. She always does with Bellamy. His eyes reveal so much. And she doesn’t know what to do with all the things he lets her see.
“Yeah, I’m having a good time.”
Clarke taps her finger against his beer bottle, “Good, you deserve a drink.”
Bellamy’s smile softens, “So do you, you know.”
“I don’t know, I don’t want to risk forgetting anything else.”
It’s meant to be a joke, but it falls flat. There’s a pause in which neither one of them speaks and Clarke worries that she snapped the moment between them.
She tries to recover it, “Did we used to get drunk a lot? Back in college?”
When Bellamy shakes his head and chuckles, the knot in Clarke’s chest eases.
“No, you and I were always the ones taking care of everyone else. We were always making sure Miller got home alright and Raven didn’t puke over anyone else’s sneakers.”
“Anyone else?”
Bellamy laughs and they head back into the living room together while he tells Clarke about the time Raven puked all over some frat boy’s sperrys.
Clarke spends the rest of the night with Bellamy. Tipsy but aware and kept warm by alcohol and the tilt of Bellamy’s smile.
She does end up having a few more drinks, but she doesn’t realize their effect until she stands up and she sways. Bellamy steadies her with a solid hand on her waist.
“You okay there?” he asks, amused. They’re the last ones awake, kept up by their own talking, but now Clarke’s starting to feel the exhaustion that already hit everyone else.
“Shouldn’t have had that last beer,” she mutters, annoyed at herself.
Bellamy’s smile is too fond and Clarke just barely stops herself from pressing her fingers to it.
“Here,” he says “I’ll help.” He hooks an arm around her waist and it feels like no time at all before they’ve made it to the room. Clarke trips into the bed, not even bothering to pull off her jeans.
“Thank you,” she says into her pillow.
Bellamy’s laugh is warm. God, everything about him is so warm.
“No problem. Need help getting under the covers?”
Clarke nods, too sleepy and too lazy to do it herself. But Bellamy manages to get her upright again and he pulls back the covers before she falls into bed, heavy with the need to sleep.
“I wish I remember loving you, Bellamy” she whispers.
Clarke’s eyes are closed and she can’t hear him, but somehow she knows Bellamy’s still there.
“It would be really easy to fall in love with you,” she murmurs.
She feels Bellamy’s hand brush a lock of hair from her forehead and then nothing else, already asleep.
IV.
Three weeks after the car crash, Clarke remembers.
She’s at the gallery filling out the paperwork on a commission when she walks into the her studio and memory comes flooding back.
The night she remembers can’t have been more than a week before the crash. She’d been at the studio all day trying to get a piece done and it had was already dark outside when Bellamy called.
“Babe, you’ve been working for eight hours. I think you need to take a break.”
Clarke sighs into her phone and sets down her brush. She always loses time when she paints and she and Bellamy agreed a long time ago that he’d only make her stop when she really needed to.
She holds the phone between her ear and shoulder while she uses a grey towel to clean her hands.
“Okay, okay, I’m stopping.” Clarke slides on her watch and notices the time, “Fuck, it’s almost nine o’clock. Bell, please tell me you got chinese food for dinner.”
“You wanted chinese food?”
“Oh, shit, I totally forgot to tell you this morning, didn’t—”
“Turn around.”
She turns and finds Bellamy standing there, holding his phone in one hand and a huge bag of carryout from Clarke’s favorite chinese restaurant in the other.
Bellamy smiles when Clarke drops her phone and rushes over to kiss him. There’s dried paint in her hair and she probably smells like acrylic, but he returns the the kiss happily, smiling when she pulls away from his lips.
He sets the bag of food on the floor and Clarke sits down across from him. They eat their dinner right out of the cartons, sitting on her studio floor. Bellamy snorts when Clarke tries to tell him she loves him around a mouthful of low mein.
“What was that?”
She swallows, “I said, I love you.”
“Oh, see, it sounds different when you’re not saying it with your mouth full.”
Clarke shoves Bellamy’s shoulder and he nudges her back with a grin. She leans over and kisses him, setting her carton aside. She quickly gets distracted by Bellamy’s mouth. She’s been working on this piece for days and it feels like forever since she’s seen him. Bellamy tastes like orange chicken and Clarke smiles when he tugs her bottom lip between his teeth like she loves. She pushes him back until she has enough room to crawl into his lap. Her hands slide into his hair and his breath escapes in hot pants against her lips.
They kiss and kiss and kiss. Like they’re teenagers. Like this is the main event. Clarke kisses Bellamy and makes up her mind about something she’s been considering for a long, long time.
She pulls away, but doesn’t go far, staying close enough that her nose still bumps against Bellamy’s.
“Will you marry me?”
Bellamy blinks at Clarke, the first time in her life that she’s seen him truly speechless. He pulls her back down and kisses her and kisses her and kisses her until they both need to catch their breath.
“You have terrible timing, you know,” Bellamy pants, kissing his way down her throat. “I was going to propose after you finished this commission.”
“You snooze you lose.”
Bellamy kisses her again, “If this is what losing feels like, I don’t mind it much.”
Clarke laughs, “You haven’t even given me an answer yet, asshole.”
“Oh, shit, yes,” he stutters, his laugh breathy and carefree, “Of course it’s yes.”
Clarke doesn’t even realize she’s crying until a tear drips onto her neck. She was going to marry him. She was going to marry him.
It’s too much.
Clarke rushes back to the apartment and shoves the first clothes she can find into a duffel bag. She’s writing the note when she hears the apartment door open and close. Looks like she’ll have to do this in person.
Bellamy startles when Clarke comes into the living room. He’s not expecting her there since she was supposed to be at her gallery all afternoon.
Immediately, he realizes something is wrong.
“Clarke, are you okay? What happened?” Bellamy takes a step forward, but he doesn’t reach for her.
He’s always stopping himself from reaching for her and Clarke’s always noticing how much it hurts him. All Clarke ever does is hurt Bellamy. And she’s about to again.
“I have to go,” she says.
Clarke sees the moment Bellamy’s eyes catch sight of the duffel bag and the reality of what’s happening registers.
“Why? What happened? This morning we were fine.”
“No, Bellamy,” she chokes on his name. “We weren’t fine. None of this is fine.” She swallows her tears, “I asked you to marry me,” she whispers.
Bellamy’s face cracks, “You remembered.” He takes another step forward and this time Clarke takes a step back, “but, Clarke, that’s good. It means—”
She cuts him off, “No, Bellamy, you don’t get it. I remember pieces. Fragments. But I remember the whole picture. I remember telling you that I love you and remember you saying it back, but I don’t remember the moments it took us to get there. I remember asking you to marry me, but I don’t remember our first date.” Clarke’s crying and Bellamy is too, but she doesn’t know what else to do. “I don’t remember enough and it’s not fair to you or to me to keep pretending like half a love story is the same a whole one.”
Bellamy stares at her, his heart bleeding through his eyes. He looks at her for a long time.
“Where will you go?”
“I’m going to stay with Wells for couple weeks. After that, I don’t know.”
Bellamy nods. Clarke doesn’t know if she’s grateful or disappointed that he’s not fighting her on this. He moves to the side so she can walk past. She pauses in the door.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
Clarke pretends she doesn’t hear Bellamy respond with ‘I love you’ just before the door clicks shut.