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When the dust has settled around Polis, Clarke and Bellamy start to think about where to go, and when to tell everyone that the world is trying to kill them again. The thing is, they’re not really welcome in Polis, but if they’re going to address the reactor situation, they’re going to need all the help they can get, and that means trying to make peace with the remaining Grounders. More than that, it means trying to prevent infighting among the Grounders, who’ve apparently always had a heda to rely on in times like this.
Clarke is not taking on that title. She’s not taking it by force, and she’s not taking it if someone offers it to her. She’s tired of making decisions, she’s tired of fighting back, and she’s tired of feeling like mere existence is a constant uphill battle.
They end up going back to Arkadia, more out of convenience than anything else, and because there are needed medical supplies there. More than one person has been self-harming since the defeat of ALIE, and both Clarke and Abby think the best thing to do is get everyone back to Arkadia and try and assess the mental and physical toll from there.
Clarke feels like the trek back to Arkadia is never going to end, honestly. She’s torn between feeling listless, exhausted at the prospect of trying to save her people one more time, from what seems like an immoveable threat, and feeling the sort of restless energy that requires an outlet. The problem, of course, is that her only outlet right now is moving forward, walking back toward Arkadia, and confiding in Bellamy.
And as much as she thinks they had a breakthrough on the beach, she still knows they have wounds of their own, a divide between them that’s going to take time.
She desperately wants to take the time to mend the rifts between them, to help each other heal. As much as she cares for the remaining hundred, as much as she values the rest of the people from the Ark, the only thing that’s driving her forward, causing her to think more and more relentlessly about how to deal with this latest threat, is the possibility of Bellamy, of finding a way to work together, to be together like they once were.
It keeps her plodding along for hours, her mind slowly turning. She wants to talk to Bellamy, to Raven, even to Monty, but everyone is hurting, and she’s exhausted, and no small part of her is relieved at not having to address her own faults in this moment, not atone for leaving her people when they needed her. Right now, as much as she wants to hurry up and save the world, an equal part of her just wants the monotony of placing one foot in front of another, again and again and again until they’re back at Arkadia.
--
Clarke knows enough to recognize the symptoms of depression in herself, but she also knows that she can neither accept the medicine that is needed much more for others, nor can she buckle under the weight of her own listlessness. She’s only one of two people carrying the knowledge of the coming nuclear apocalypse, and as much as she wants to just let it happen, she also knows that her responsibility is still to the people who raised her, to the people she loves.
It’s the frustrating interchangeability of her depression and her anxiety, though, that has her wandering the halls late at night. They’ve been back at Arkadia for close to a week, and even while she’s doing other things, helping in the med bay, checking in with people and trying to mend fences as much as she can, she feels like she’s chafing against the knowledge of the reactors. She’s desperate to try and address the situation, but she has no idea where to start, and she can’t tell anyone yet, just Bellamy.
And she’s trying to give him space, trying to read him, take care of him in whatever way she thinks is best, and maybe she should just ask him what she wants, but that feels unfair somehow, and the burden of this knowledge is already unfair enough.
When she sees him on one of the benches in the mess hall, sprawled out with his hands behind his head, she pauses, watches him for a minute. She can tell he’s awake just by the rise and fall of his chest, but it’s close to two in the morning, and she’s not sure why he’s here, instead of his bed. She knows he didn’t have a guard shift, and she wonders if he’s as sleepless as she is.
She walks toward him slowly, making sure to make enough noise to let him know she’s there. She got much better at moving quietly when she was away from camp, and she’s conscious enough of the trauma they’ve all suffered to not want to startle Bellamy.
He turns his head as she walks toward him, but makes no effort to move, turning his head back to stare at the ceiling.
She sits down on the floor next to him, feeling uncomfortable with the silence. She doesn’t know what to say to break it, exactly, but she thinks she should say something. Still, it feels worse to bring up the fact that neither of them is sleeping, that neither of them is doing well. She wants to talk about their plan, but even that feels like too much effort.
They stay like that until the sun rises and Clarke has to go to her medical shift. When she finally rises, he gives her a wan smile. She thinks about making a joke about having a good day, but thinks better of it, and reaches down to squeeze his hand, instead. When he squeezes back after a moment, she smiles, her heart feeling immediately lighter.
--
They don’t really talk about their late-night rendezvous, but it happens more and more often as the weeks go on. They don’t really talk about the things between them, either, and Clarke thinks that maybe they should, still, but at the same time, they’re slowly weaving back together, making new connections where there weren’t any, and stitching together the broken parts. Things are becoming easier between them, even without a big to-do about everything that’s happened.
Maybe it’s in part because they’ve brought Abby, Kane, and Raven into the fold about the coming apocalypse, and they’re all trying to deal with that in their own ways. Abby still can’t believe that Clarke didn’t tell them immediately, but after Raven glares at her and Kane gently nudges her, she deflates and nods.
Bellamy and Raven often spend time together, each trying to patch the wounds they didn’t notice on the other person, working to strategize ways to shut down the reactors, to limit the effects of the meltdowns. Still, when the day is over, Bellamy and Clarke find their way back to each other, eating dinner in quiet, then separating for a time.
They almost always find their way back to each other in the night. It starts out that they meet by accident, in the mess hall, near the wall, passing each other in the hallways. They rarely exchange words in the night, but it has become their time, the time they offer quiet comfort for each other.
Still, when Clarke runs into Bellamy one night and sees the dark circles under his eyes, sees the wildness in his gaze that suggests nightmares, she coaxes him back to her room and curls around him. When his breathing evens out, she breathes a shuddering sigh of relief, reminds herself that he’s safe with her.
--
They don’t really talk about that either, but it’s not the last time it happens, and it’s not always Clarke who instigates it. Clarke is still trying to figure out how to explain herself, to gain the trust of the remaining hundred again. Jasper, in particular, has continued to be rough on Clarke, and it’s not that Bellamy doesn’t understand, but – he also knows how short a time they might have left, and while he and Clarke had a horrible couple of months, he also knows that they both have their demons, and they’re better at addressing them together.
He knows she forgives him when he can’t forgive himself. He does the same for her.
When Clarke sits down next to him at dinner, her entire body radiates tension. She glances at him and gives him a tight smile, but her shoulders are up around her ears, and she bolts from the table almost as soon as she’s swallowed her last bite. When Bellamy looks at Miller, he just shrugs, and Bellamy sighs internally.
Rather than waiting to find Clarke curled up in a ball trying to control her breathing against a panic attack, he walks to her door and taps gently on it. When she opens it, her hair is damp and loose around her face, and while she’s still tense, she looks better, and she gives him a better smile than he got at dinner, which he takes as an encouraging sign.
She doesn’t say anything, just waves him in. He sits on her bed, back against the wall, and watches as she tries to run a brush through her hair. She’s been trying to get rid of the matted braids she had, courtesy of her Grounder ceremony, but he can tell it hasn’t been going well for her. When she hisses as the comb hits a particularly vicious snarl, he pats the bed, tells her to sit down, and takes the comb in hand.
When he’s done combing through her hair, it’s lying smooth against her neck for the first time in months, and she’s falling asleep, finally relaxed. He pulls her boots off and covers her with one of the thin blankets on her bed and goes to creep out when she reaches for his hand, murmurs “Stay,” and blinks up at him.
His heart aches a little, and he knows it’s a mixture of heartbreak at her exhaustion, alongside the relief that he has her, that he has Clarke to reassure him when he wakes sweating from nightmares, that she believes in the goodness in him.
He’s not sure how he got so lucky, is certain he doesn’t deserve it, but the relief in his bones is palpable when he curls around her, when she turns in his arms and buries her nose against his chest, the tension leaving her body as she falls asleep.
--
Things don’t really shift between them for days, but they keep seeking each other out at night. It’s only when Bellamy has had a particularly rough shift with the guard, people starting to hear the news about the reactors and getting self-righteous about not knowing that he’s in a black mood, can feel exhaustion tugging at the corners of his mind, but can’t turn off his brain that he finds himself outside, watching the stars pass overhead. It’s chilly out, and he can see his breath, the herald of the winter to come, and he’s not sure they’re going to be alive to see it, but he’s not sure that they’re not either, and the thought of kids playing in the snow makes something yawn wide open inside of him, and he feels a horrible sense of anger and helplessness, and it catches him so off guard that he loses his breath to it.
It’s all he can do to keep going, most of the time, but it all feels so futile, and he’s not really the type to curl up listlessly, but he is the type to be unthinkingly angry, and he’s fighting against it so hard, suddenly, that his muscles are locked and shaking.
Clarke finds him like that just a few minutes after it starts, and she doesn’t lead him anywhere, just sits next to him and breathes against his side, her fingers tangled with his, and he feels tears out of nowhere prickling at the back of his eyes.
He’s never been much for crying, before, either, but everything feels like so much right now, and he’s never been as desperate to survive as he is now, and isn’t that something, after all the surviving he’s done?
Maybe it’s only now that he wants to live, that he’s had a taste of that and he wants to drink deeply, rather than only knowing the flavor of that limited taste. He wants to live and experience the ground, because hasn’t that always been their legacy? That they would one day enjoy the fruits of the ground? No one talked about toil and war; those were a thing of the past, and if they survived the Ark, how could they not survive the ground?
But it was only ever about surviving, not living, and he’s not sure he knows how to live, but he wants to try. He wants to try in part because he has someone he cares deeply about, probably loves, and she’s sitting next to him, helping his mind uncoil just through her presence, and that is somehow everything.
--
They start sending people out to try and manually stop the reactors only a few days after that, and it feels like they’ve been on the ground for years, she feels old in her very bones, but they’ve not even been down a year, she isn’t even nineteen yet, but here she is, traipsing across a landscape that should be so beautiful, and instead just feels bittersweet, the potential loss of all the possibilities it holds nagging at her mind.
She and Bellamy are also separated for the first time in weeks, and it stirs a cold loneliness deep in her heart that doesn’t startle her, but makes her think.
Fortunately, she’s got literally nothing by time to think as she follows Roan and Murphy through the frost-tinged fields, now miles beyond Arkadia. Neither of the two men are inclined to indulge her misery, both of them missing their own partners, one at Arkadia, and the other in Bellamy’s group.
Still, she doesn’t sleep at night, and Murphy keeps looking at her askance as she’s the first one up every morning, but he says nothing. There’s nothing he can do, anyway – it’s not a question of body heat, it’s a question of knowing that Bellamy is safe, that he’s okay, and she can’t know that right now, and she had no idea just how much it mattered to her until she couldn’t check in with him, couldn’t breathe him in.
It’s a revelation, and it’s one that’s all the more noticeable for its absence in her last romantic partnerships. She never felt this way with Finn, and as much as she cared for Lexa, she never felt this urgent need to know that she was okay.
She worries that she’s growing too dependent on him, that being this co-dependent with someone means she’s losing a sense of herself, and that if she ever did lose him, that she would be a shell of a person, and as she considers it, she knows that it’s something that, if she and Bellamy keep on as they have been, they’ll have to talk about.
He’s her haven, her refuge, but she needs to be her own person, too.
--
It’s no small miracle, he thinks, that they manage to shut down the closest reactors. They’re not safe, by any stretch; Raven and Monty’s math indicates that unless they succeed in shutting down all of the closest reactors, they’re still doomed, but if they can manage that much, they’ll survive. There’s an unusual amount of radiation that Arkers and Grounders alike can handle, and they’ll be able to withstand it as long as all the other teams are successful.
When his and Miller’s team succeeds at getting two shut down, he allows himself the smallest glimmer of hope. As soon as he opens that door, however, doubt comes flooding in, followed quickly by the worry about Clarke that he’s been pushing back for the past two weeks that they’ve been apart.
He trusts her, and he knows that she can handle herself as well as anyone else he knows. It’s not that. It’s that he hasn’t been sleeping, and he thinks, guesses that she hasn’t been either, and as much as he doesn’t like the cold and restless nights without her, he’s more worried about her, about her having nightmares or a panic attack, and not being there to soothe her.
He knew, when she left, when she tried to make peace with him the first time, how much power she had over him, how much he cared about her (the depth of his betrayal had no equal, and it was when he realized that, and when he stepped over that monumental chasm to start trying to forgive, that he recognized her importance to him), but it’s now, as they’ve started weaving the pieces of themselves together, that he realizes how much she means to him.
(He thinks, if they make it, that he’ll have the chance to love her, to be in love with her, and the thought makes him feel like he’s burning alive, both at the possibility, and at the potential for loss).
They haven’t had radio contact with each other; the range has been too far, and everyone’s been too tired, but he radios back to Arkadia every other night, and he waits for Monty, or Raven, or even Kane to give him an update on the other teams, but no one offers anything up, and every time he thinks about asking, he feels fidgety and changes his mind.
She’s either okay or she’s not. They’re either going to make it, or they’re not, and him knowing in advance will do nothing to soothe the wildness he’s trying to hold in.
He tries not to push his team too quickly on the way home, but he can tell that Miller is eager to get back as well, and that Emori isn’t waiting patiently either. Everyone wants to know the outcome, and if the outcome is poor, they want to spend as much time with their loved ones as possible.
He waits for three days for Clarke to come back. He does his duty each day, reports to the guard, does patrols, and tries not to fracture at the seams waiting for her. Without her team back, it’s difficult to know if they’re going to survive, and Raven is trying to avoid telling anyone the prognosis for fear of giving false hope, or causing everyone to lose morale and start self-destructing.
The first night he spends waiting for her, he stays in his own room. It’s unusual for them to sleep in his room, but it happens. Still, he lies awake and stares at the ceiling, and after more time than he cares to think about, he takes his boots and his jacket and walks through the maze of Arkadia to Clarke’s room. She’s given him the passcode to get in, and he’s flooded with the way her entire room speaks of her. They have little space, but she has a shelf set up with drawing pencils and a few things she’s picked up on the ground. The chip is still in its case up there, a small shrine to Lexa, and there’s a drawing of Wells next to it.
Besides that small shelf, absolutely nothing is in any semblance of order in her space, and Bellamy revels in it briefly, before collapsing on the bed. It’s not as good as her physical presence, but the bed feels more comfortable for knowing that they’ve spent time comforting each other, healing together in its embrace.
It feels like home in a way that almost nothing else has.
--
When Clarke trudges through the gates at Arkadia, all she wants to do is collapse in her bed and sleep for as long as humanly possible. She knows that she’s going to be able to do that eventually, and that as long as humanly possible is now a lot longer than it was going to be, but it doesn’t mean that she’s not feeling old and grumpy and dirty about having to go talk to her mom and Kane first. She’s going to get to see Raven, which is a bright spot, and the news is good on her end, but right now she’s just too tired to feel the appropriate amount of elation.
Still, the look of open relief on her mother’s face, the way she turns into Kane and holds him close? That’s pretty good. The news that they were the last ones in, that the other teams were successful – all of that is pretty amazing, and the look of joy and pride on Raven’s face, the look of accomplishment is unlike anything Clarke’s seen since the early days on the ground, and that lifts her spirits more than she expected it would.
She exchanges a grin with Raven, but Raven’s grin quickly turns to a smirk as she hustles Clarke out of the council room and on her way down the hall to her room (she’s sure that Raven has no ulterior motives to forcing Clarke on her way; no ulterior motive like a certain arrogant Ice Nation King, not like that at all).
Clarke thinks about going to Bellamy’s room first, but the thought of cleaning off the weeks of travel overpowers her desire to see Bellamy immediately. If she can stay awake long enough, she’ll see him when she’s clean. Otherwise, she’ll see him when he finds out she’s back and lets himself in.
What she’s not expecting is to find Bellamy sitting in her chair, nose buried in a book and hair curling over her forehead. Her door closes with a thump, and he startles, body coiling and ready to fight. When he sees her, his face lights up for a minute before going blank again.
She gives him a tired half smile. “We’re going to be okay,” she says, and she’s barely finished the sentence before she’s wrapped up in his arms, her nose at the junction of her neck, and suddenly she’s crying, tears wetting the neck of his shirt and her body shaking in his arms, and she hasn’t cried in so long, has rarely even had time for tears on the ground, shoving her emotions down instead, and now that it looks like they have a chance, it feels like a dam has burst inside her, and she’s so tired, so relieved, and so sad for all they’ve lost to get to this point. It’s overwhelming, and she thinks she’s the only one who might burst into tears at what is perhaps the best news they’ve ever had, but she can feel wetness soaking her own shirt, can feel the deep breaths Bellamy is taking, and she knows that this, like so many things between them, is a shared moment of grieving for the past, while preparing to greet the new future.
When her breaths start to come slower, she feels even more exhausted, but there’s a sense of renewal lying just under her skin, and it is that glimmer of possibility, of a future, more than anything else, that makes her realize how close she and Bellamy are to each other, how much they’re wrapped up in each other, even though they’re standing, and how good it is to feel the weight of his hands on her back, slowly soothing her.
She feels like she’s being pulled back together in a way that she hasn’t yet, and she’s filled with an astonishing sense of lightness at the realization.
She presses her lips to Bellamy’s neck, lingers there for a minute, then pulls away. She cracks a smile at him and wipes at her eyes. “I missed you,” she confesses, and it feels like a far weightier statement than it is, but when he smiles back at her, she knows the value of those words. He cups her cheek, rubs his thumb across her cheekbone, and she leans into it ever so slightly.
Still, she feels grimy down to her very bones. She jerks a thumb towards the showers. “I’m going to clean up,” she says, then bites her lip. “Will you still be here when I get back?”
He smiles a little crookedly. “I’ve been here for three days waiting for you to come back. I’ve practically made it my own.”
She laughs a little at that, and ducks her head. She thinks briefly of having shared quarters with Bellamy, of having a physical home with him, and she thinks: he is home, and a dwelling, shared space, is just an addition to that.
--
When she’s done in the shower, she drags herself slowly back to her room. Good as his word, Bellamy is still in her only chair, reading quietly. When she comes in, he looks up and smiles at her, and she can feel her heart turn over in her chest. Before she can ask, he takes her comb and tells her to sit on the bed.
She must fall asleep while he’s combing out her hair, because the next thing she knows, he’s tucking her in and preparing to curl around her. His arm drapes across her front, and she laces their fingers together, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. As the darkness of the room closes around them, she thinks that they’ve faced too many twilights together; she’s excited to face the sunrise tomorrow, and every morning after. Together.