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Clarke was 12 when she got the first charm.
It was her birthday, and her dad had promised her a surprise.
“Keep your eyes closed Clarke.” Her dad had ordered, mock serious.
“They’re closed dad, I promise!” Clarke laughed.
She felt something close carefully around her wrist.
“Okay.” Said Jake. “You can look now.”
Clarke opened her eyes. Around her wrist was a delicate silver bracelet, with a single charm.
Her eyes widened with recognition. The charm was different, a paint palette and brush, but otherwise, it was the same tarnished silver bracelet her grandmother wore.
“She wanted you to have it.” Jake explained. “Now, for every big thing that happens in your life, you can add a new charm.”
Clarke hugged her dad, and wandered off to open more presents.
She loved the gift, really, but among the other presents, the cake, the party, it faded into he background.
Clarke still wore it, once in a while, because it made her dad smile.
When Clarke was 15, Jake Griffin was killed in a car accident. The emergency operation her mother had performed had gone sour, and Jake was gone.
Clarke cried, she screamed at the world because there where so many bad people who were still alive and well and Jake Griffin was just a cold body.
She screamed at her mother, but also at the world, for its stone hearted cruelty.
A week later, she bought a new charm.
For every big thing that happens in your life.
Clarke laughed bitterly at the thought.
“Your bracelet is so pretty!” Her freshman roommate–Octavia, she thinks– smiles at her, far too chipper for this early in the morning.
“Thanks.” Says Clarke. “It was a gift from my dad.”
Finn Collins is a dick, according to Octavia. Always has been.
She wishes she’d noticed before.
She uncurls her fingers, teardrops falling on he little crescents she had bit into her palm with her fingernails.
There’s a knock on the dorm door.
“Hey, I’ll just tell them to go away, okay?” Octavia says.
Clarke nods.
Octavia opens the door, but before she can get a word out, the person calls, “Calrke? You here?”
Clarke swallows. She knows that voice.
“Clarke doesn’t want to talk, Raven.” Octavia says.
Raven pushes past her. “Well too bad.”
She sat down next to Clarke on the bed.
“Look, Finn is an ass, and I just dumped him, and I’m pretty sure you aren’t taking him back either.” She looks expectantly down at Clarke, who manages to nod.
“Figured I’d rather keep you than him.”
Clarke smiles.
Clarke loves Lexa. She’s sure of it.
It’s like she’s walking in a dream, heavy, sloppy kisses, and stolen moments, sweet and slow like honey.
She calls her mom.
“Clarke, honey…” Her voice is strained. “I’m sure you think this is real. And I know you’ve been through a lot. But sweetie, I don’t think… this…”
“Mom. I’m bi, you know that.” Clarke checks her anger. They’ve come a long way since 3 years ago.
“I’m sure you think that, honey, but-”
She hangs up, fists clenched, a scream of frustration caught in her throat.
She opens her computer and finds a new charm.
Fuck you, mom.
She breaks up with Lexa a month later. She never liked that Clarke was ‘wasting her time’ as an art major.
Clarke holds her chin high, and keeps the charm on. It never was for Lexa, on the whole.
When Clarke graduates, they throw her a party.
They, being not her mom. She hasn’t talked to her mom in a while. No, it was her friends.
Octavia Blake, her brother, Monty Green, Jasper Jordan, Raven Reyes.
They present her with a small box.
“We all chipped in.” Monty said.
“It’s kind of a joke, but also, you know, something to remember us by.” Jasper adds.
She laughs aloud at the little tiara, and hugs them all.
There’s no way she would have forgotten them anyways.
Clarke isn’t sure when she met Bellamy Blake. She remembers vaguely about a shouting match, about something dumb. She always fights Bellamy over dumb stuff.
She also doesn’t know how they got to where they are. Best friends.
She thinks it happened over time. Stuff like that usually does.
There was a process, from arguing, to fun arguing, to arguing with other people, to being friends.
She thinks it may have turned into what it is when my Bellamy opened up to her, when she wanted to fight he world on his behalf, for all it had wronged him.
But to her it feel like a blink of an eye, like yeah. Bellamy’s my best friend.
And some days it really does feel like their fighting together, against the whole world, like today, as he tells her about his annoying colleague, his head in her lap, her playing with his curls.
Bellamy finishes his story, and Clarke is sufficiently angry on his behalf, then they turn on Netflix so they can yell at the historical inaccuracies is some movie.
She actually hasn’t been this happy in a long time.
The day she realizes that she love Bellamy is one of the most terrifying days of her life.
Because she thought she knew what it was alike to love someone, knew that she had really loved Lexa, and even Finn at some point.
But God, she didn’t know this feeling.
On her 25th birthday, Bellamy kisses her.
It’s breathless and desperate, and she melts into him.
“God, I love you.” She says, in a hushed voice.
“Thank goodness.” Bellamy smirks, and Clarke just kisses him again.
Later that night, Bellamy pulls out a small box.
“I got you something.”
She opens the box, and pulls out a small charm.
“I always thought your last name was the coolest.” Bellamy laughs. “Do you like it?”
She kisses him in response.
Mom?“ Clarke said slowly.
"Clarke? Oh, Clarke, honey is that you?” Her mother’s voice cracks.
“Yeah. How are you doing Mom?” Clarke asks softy.
“I’m doing fine. W-why did you decide to call?” She asks, the rest of the sentence unspoken.
Why now, after all this time?
“I thought, maybe, we could start over.”
There’s a long pause.
Abby finally answers her voice thick with tears.
“I’d like that.”
She doesn’t get a charm this time. She’s waiting to see how this plays out, first.
When Bellamy proposes, it’s with a charm.
“I have an actual ring too, I swear.” Bellamy laughs nervously, still kneeling in front of her.
She just stares at the charm, a heart with the words “Will you marry me?” inscribed on it.
She sets the charm down, then pulls him up to kiss him, hard and passionate.
“That’s a yes, right?”
“Of course, dumbass.”
“Just checking.”
Each one of her kids got a charm.
Three small birds hung from her wrist, shiny in comparison to the other 6 but still worn from her constant fingering.
Three little birds for three little miracles.
She watches them grow up, and smiles.
They’re going to come back home.
When her youngest child, and only daughter, turns 12, she removes all the charms, closing them in a jewelry box.
She hands the bracelet to Bellamy, bare, except for one small, shiny charm.
He makes Diana close her eyes as he secures it around her wrist.