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They land in what must be the beginning of fall. The days are warm, but the nights have a decided coolness to them, and it isn’t long after their first trip to Mount Weather that the air turns crisp. Then someone brings back an orange leaf and they all marvel. It’s beautiful, but it’s a warning. Death is coming if they aren’t prepared. And there’s only so much food they can move out of Mount Weather before the snow starts. Not to mention the fact that they don’t have time to build enough cabins for everyone.
“We need to move into Mount Weather.” Clarke plants her feet and squares off against Bellamy, staring him down through the campfire.
“Hello to you too, Princess,” he sighs as he shifts his hatchet to flop down against a log. “Give a man a chance to eat in peace, would you?”
Clarke ignores him. “You said you’d think about it. The nights are getting colder, and we haven’t heard anything else from the Ark. We need to make a decision.”
Bellamy shoves a hand through his hair. “I know.” What he really means is that he knows the Ark’s not coming down, and they’re finally going to have to face the fact that they’re on their own. The last of humanity.
They all know. But no one wants to be the first to say it.
“We really need the medical equipment.” He doesn’t react. Clarke huffs. “Wells is getting antsy.”
“I know, Princess.”
“He’s getting worse, Bellamy. Everyone’s wound tight. We need to give them an outlet. Plus, we need to make the move while we still have time to store extra food and fix up the place.”
“I know, Clarke!” Bellamy doesn’t normally snap anymore, mostly because he’s finally realized they’re all on the same team, and he’s too tired to waste the energy. But he’s been under a lot of pressure too, lately. They all have.
So Clarke lets out a breath and lets the tension seep out of her shoulders. This isn’t a fight; she needs to remember that. Bellamy is her ally, has been since she asked him to go with her to the bunker Kane told her about instead of Finn (who was reconnecting with the girlfriend he hadn’t told her about) or Wells (who kept telling her she needed to forgive her mother), and they’d wound up high and crying under a tree because they had to kill Dax to save their own lives.
“I’m sorry. I just – I’m worried. Charlotte’s teeth chattered all night last night.” She sinks down on the log he’s resting his head against.
“Shit.” They’d also bonded over their mutual concern over Charlotte, and it was Bellamy’s idea that Clarke keep the girl in her tent to help with the nightmares. But during the day, Charlotte followed him around like a shadow, not Clarke. Perhaps more significantly, Bellamy let her.
“I know we need more shelter than we have here, but I don’t want to be trapped under some mountain.” He sighs. “I don’t want to trap them under some mountain.” He scrubs his hands over his face, and Clarke knows he’s thinking about Octavia being forced under the floor for sixteen years.
“Hey,” she says gently, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You aren’t trapping them. You’re saving them. Saving what’s left of humanity. And we can always come and go. Day trips and stuff. It’s only going to be for this winter, Bellamy. We’ll be bettered prepared next year.”
They sit there a moment, watching the stars, and Clarke tries not to worry. Tries not to feel alone. Finn used to seek her out, used to make her share what was going on in her head, but that was before Raven came down. And now Clarke feels used. Like a placeholder – someone he only cared about just in case he never saw Raven again, so he wasn’t lonely.
And Wells, well. She’s not blind or stupid. You don’t let someone hate you and follow them to certain death anyway just because you’re a good friend. But…Clarke only loves him like a brother. Plus, she’d spent a year in solitary hating him. She’s still relearning how to be best friends.
Octavia doesn’t really speak to her anymore either, since Clarke didn’t intervene when Bellamy was hanging Atom from a tree overnight. And really, their friendship had always been more circumstantial than anything else anyway. Ironically, sometimes Clarke feels like Bellamy is the only person she can really be vulnerable with now, just because she was there when he cried under a tree that time.
“Do you think we can really do it?” he asks tiredly.
“Hm?”
“As far as we know, we’re the last of humanity. The last of the grounders, the last of the Ark. Do you really think we can rebuild all of civilization? Have cities like Before?”
Clarke looks around at the ninety-seven kids around them. “I don’t know. The population problems alone will be more than enough to give us a headache, not to mention establishing more reliable food sources and building secure houses… I don’t know.” She’s been trying not to think about what it means that they are – literally – the last people on earth. “Rebuilding what it was before – I’m not sure that’s possible. Or even what we want. But…I think we can build something worthwhile. Prove that humans can live together in peace and freedom. As equals. You’ve taught me that, Bellamy.”
He has to keep a pretty tight rein on the delinquents sometimes, they are teenagers after all, but he tries to allow them as much freedom as possible without putting their safety at risk, even Octavia. Sometimes Clarke wishes that didn’t mean delinquents literally fucking around anywhere and everywhere, but she supposes that will eventually solve their population problem. Or parts of it, at least.
“Bellamy!” Murphy’s across camp, but you wouldn’t know it, the way his voice carries. “If you don’t come tell Chancellor Junior to get his grubby paws off my stuff, I’m gonna gut him like the pig he is.”
Bellamy rolls his eyes and gets up with a groan. “Cool it, Murphy,” he snaps. “I’m coming.” He glances at Clarke. “If you see Roma or Bree, tell them not to wait up. I’ve gotta go moderate.” And as he stalks out into the dark, Clarke has never felt more alone. Even Bellamy has Roma and Bree around, though she admittedly doesn’t understand how that arrangement works.
The next day, Bellamy gives them all a speech, explaining why they need to move into the bunker at Mount Weather for the winter before inspiring them with visions of building a permanent home for themselves in the spring. “This is our world now,” he says. “We can create the society, the home that the Ark always promised but never let people like us have. We can have our own rooms. Our own houses. Our own land. Our own families without any stupid regulations. We’ll make this world whatever the hell we want!”
“Whatever the hell we want!” Murphy and Mbeg yell back.
“That’s right. Come spring, you can build whatever the hell you want.”
And when he says it like that, Clarke finds herself chanting with the rest of the crowd. Even Wells joins in.
The move is unpleasant. Even though they’ve been on the ground for a while now, leaving the dropship behind makes Clarke feel anxious. She tells herself it isn’t logical, but she can’t help it. Their little ramshackle camp has been her home for months that felt like years. And the hike to the mountain while carrying all their stuff with them is hard.
But they make it, and Raven and Monty finally get the heat working. Jasper finds an old music playing device, and that makes sweeping the cobwebs out of the empty rooms that could have saved so many a bit more bearable.
Winter is miserable, because it feels a bit like being back on the Ark with the crappy rations and being stuck underground. But Bellamy and Wells come up with a rotation that allows everyone as much time above ground as possible, spreading the meager collection of winter clothing they have as far as it will go. Jasper and Monty play music and throw parties almost every night, which Clarke is glad about even though she grumbles about the noise to Wells for the first month of snow. The delinquents get destructive when they get bored.
Still, despite the added shelter, people get sick, and Clarke spends most of a month in sickbay working to keep everyone hydrated and recovering, trying to stay ahead of the flu. They lose a few kids anyway. Roma is one of them, and Bree is inconsolable. Bellamy just looks more tired and haggard than normal, but he doesn’t say anything to Clarke. He doesn’t say anything to anyone. He just takes a long look at Roma’s body, squeezes Bree’s shoulder, and walks away.
Miller finds her in the infirmary three days later. “Bellamy hasn’t come in yet.”
“So?” Clarke asks. She doesn’t mean to be brisk, but it’s lunchtime and she’s got fifteen patients she’s trying to get fed and only Harper and Monty to help. If Bellamy needs some extra time outside today, well, he’s earned it.
“He went out when Roma died, Clarke. He hasn’t come back since.” His face is dead serious. As the son of a guard, Miller never exaggerates.
Shit.
“Give me your jacket.” He does. She gives him the bowl of broth she was spoon feeding Sterling. “Do everything Monty and Harper tell you.” And then she runs for the exit.
He can’t have left her. He damn well better not have left her to take care of these kids alone. Her fist clenches even as she climbs up the latter to Bellamy’s typical guard post. He better not – Oh god, he better not be dead.
She pops out to find Atom standing guard with his rifle, stamping his feet and blowing on his fingers. “Clarke?” he asks, confused.
“Where’s Bellamy?”
Atom’s brows scrunch together. “Bellamy? He hasn’t been on watch since the day before last–”
“Fuck. Who relieved him? Did they say where he went?”
“No, it was Miles, why?”
“Find him. Make him tell you everything he remembers,” she orders. “Bellamy’s missing.”
She scrambles down the mountain toward the old munition bunker. It’s the only place she can think of he’d have to go, besides the dropship. And she bets that’ll be the first place Atom checks after he tracks down Miles. Clarke is out of breath before she’s even a quarter of the way there, the air cold in her lungs and slogging through the snow like walking through quicksand. She doesn’t even have a gun; if she encounters a panther, she’s toast. But she keeps picturing Bellamy frozen to death and she’s so inexplicitly angry with him that she can’t stop. Sure, she’s the doctor of the camp and Wells the administrator, but Bellamy is their leader – the heart of their little colony that reminds them that surviving, living is worth it. He keeps them sane just like he kept Octavia sane and hopeful all those years she was hidden away.
They won’t make it without him. She won’t be able to make it without him, and she’d told him so back when he was going to run, before they got him pardoned and the Exodus ship crashed. Before they were a hundred kids alone in the universe.
It’s only when the tears start to freeze to her face that she realizes she’s crying.
It makes her angrier.
When she gets to the clearing around the bunker, it’s dusk, and everything is eerily still. There’s no tracks, no sign of Bellamy. She trudges to their tree. He’s not there either. Relief at not finding his corpse overwhelms her, and she collapses, sobbing in the snow.
It’s only after all the light has faded and her legs are fully soaked with snow and numb from the cold that Clarke realizes how stupid she’s been, running off like this. She tries to stand or even crawl to the bunker, but she can’t make her legs move.
Idiot, she thinks, curling up in a fetal position. Bellamy might not be a corpse under this tree, but you will be.
And then what will their people do? She’s the closest thing to a doctor they’re ever going to have again. She’s doomed them all.
Clarke wakes up to angry cursing and a slap to her cheek. Or at least, that’s when she becomes semi-conscious. She can’t get her eyes open more than a millimeter before they roll shut again. She’s just so tired she can’t.
There’s more cursing (she’s pretty sure at her). Then she’s being thrown over a shoulder, somewhat painfully, as blood is forced to circulate to new places. But she must black out again, because the next thing she knows, someone is peeling all her wet clothes off of her and laying her back on something soft and dry – if not warm. She’s naked now, and she should probably feel more alarmed about that than she does.
Something soft is laid over top of her, and then rough hands start rubbing aggressively and painfully at her toes on one foot and then the other. She whimpers as blood starts to flow back into her feet and it feels like she’s being stabbed with millions of tiny needles all up and down her legs.
The hands move on to her fingers, and the pain is almost worse.
When they leave her, she passes out briefly again. But soon there is a source of heat radiating towards her face and not long after that, the press of someone’s warm skin as they slip in behind her and pull her close. They trap her feet between theirs with a hissed curse, and then they interlock her fingers with theirs.
“This better work, Princess,” they whisper, breath warm against her ear.
Clarke hums and falls asleep again.
Clarke wakes up with her nose pressed into the hollow of a distinctly masculine throat, hands pressed to a very masculine chest. And she’s very naked. Clarke tries to remember what happened, but all she remembers is being cold. Now she’s sweating. Carefully, she tries to pull away, but thick arms band around her tighter.
“Go back to sleep,” a deep voice rumbles against her ear. Bellamy.
Shit. She sucks in a deep breath and throws her body back, but it’s still not enough to break his hold. In fact, all it does is rub a very intimate part of her against a very hard part of him. Clarke freezes. Just when she thought it couldn’t get any more awkward… At least he’s still in his underwear.
Bellamy hisses. “Stop that. Go back to sleep, Princess.” And he turns them so she’s on her back and he’s on his stomach, pressed up against her side and face buried in her shoulder. Her mind whirls with questions, but he’s warm, and it’s the most human contact she’s had since she made the mistake of sleeping with Finn, and she’s run herself ragged with the flu outbreak, so eventually she lets herself relax and close her eyes. She falls asleep quickly after that.
The next time she wakes up, it’s because she’s cold. Or, colder than she was a moment ago. When she opens her eyes, Bellamy is buckling his belt. He spares her a glance.
“Welcome back to the land of the living.”
“What happened?”
He snorts. “You were sobbing under a tree, half frozen when I found you.” He shrugs his shirt on. “I saved your life. You’re welcome.”
Clarke rolls her eyes, because she doesn’t know what else to do. “Thanks. It was the least you could do, since I was out here looking for you in the first place.” She doesn’t think about what’s she’s said until she sees how he’s frozen. Sobbing under a tree. Fuck. He was never supposed to know that had anything to do with him.
“Why?” he asks, guarded.
Clarke tries to shrug it off. “Miller noticed you were missing. I figured he’d have already checked the dropship.” It’s close enough to the truth, anyway. “So this was the obvious place.”
Bellamy whirls around. “So you just ran out here on your own through the snow? You’re smarter than that. You almost died, Clarke.”
She grits her teeth. “Don’t worry; you’ve still got the idiot market cornered. I thought you were dead, Bellamy! You didn’t tell anyone where you were going or for how long – Did you even bring supplies?” He tosses her a water bottle, and she frowns down at. “You could have told us,” her voice is a whisper now. “I was afraid–”
“I would’ve thought you’d be glad to get rid of me, Princess,” he snorts again. “Not run out on a suicide mission.”
Clarke glares up at him. “I already told you I can’t do this without you, you ass. What else was I supposed to do?”
“Not get yourself killed, for a start.”
“Well, I didn’t!”
“Yeah, only because I wasn’t dead and was here to save your life!”
She pulls the blanket closer around her, more self-conscious. “Thank you, for that.”
“Yeah, you’re welcome.” His tone is so mocking it makes her flinch. He sighs and tosses her shirt at her head; it’s dry. “I’m tired of people dying and not being able to stop it.” His eyes slide back toward her. “So I guess I should thank you too.”
Swallowing thickly, Clarke nods. “I’m sorry, you know.”
He shrugs. “Thanks.” He throws her bra at her too. “I know what it looked like on the outside. And it was like that, at first. But…after Raven and the radio…” He swallows and turns his back to her. “Well, I realized that it was more about not being alone, you know? Her and Bree – they were the real thing. They just wanted me to protect them. So, I tried.” He brings his fist down on the table with the totes so hard it makes her jump. “I swear I tried,” his voice breaks on the words and his shoulders shake.
Clarke pulls her clothes on and walks over to him. She wants to reassure him that none of them would be as safe as they are now without him. That he inspires all of them to want to live – and makes sure that they’re safe enough that they can. That no one can stop sickness and death, not even her.
But it doesn’t feel like the moment for that. So she just covers his fist with her hand. Eventually, he flips his over so that they just stand there for a long moment, clutching onto to the promise that they’re not alone. And there’s something about this that feels more intimate than the furious sex she had with Finn.
Winter ends, and they have eighty kids left alive. And now, Clarke is really worried about the population problem. If people keep dying, there goes genetic information they’ll never be able to get back again, gone forever. But everyone has been fucking like rabbits, and how is she supposed to tell a bunch of kids that they have to have kids so that humanity won’t die out in another hundred years? They don’t even have houses yet.
She wonders what her mother would do in this situation. Tries to imagine her face when she realized what Clarke was entertaining. Clarke snorts as she pokes at the fire in front of her. She’d be appalled.
“Gonna share with the class, Princess?”
She jumps and tries not to blush. So Bellamy stripped her naked to save her life. That was it, and she’s an adult. Mostly, anyway. The point is, she’s capable of maintaining a professional working relationship. And if he wants anything more, he sure hasn’t acted like it.
So she shouldn’t be blushing now, is the thing. Clarke shakes her head. “No, just thinking about pointless things.”
He frowns. “Sure you were. And Murphy’s gonna make out with Jaha any day now. If you’re going to lie, at least make it believable, Clarke.”
She can’t help the way her lips twitch. “No, trust me, it’s pointless for you to worry about this. You’ve got enough on your plate with the cabins to last you a whole year.”
They’d decided to build cabins that were reasonably close, but still mostly out of sight of each other, for privacy. It’s a new luxury all of them are eager to indulge in. But that means setting up a makeshift camp for everyone tasked with building cabins until one is raised, and then marching everyone off to the next site when it was done. They’ve built three so far, and already Clarke can tell Bellamy’s exhausted mentally and physically. Trying to keep everyone on task has been a pain in the ass. Clarke had been called away from her job daubing the mud in-between logs to treat injuries more times than she could count – just because of carelessness and stupidity.
She’s praying that no one gets themselves killed.
And thus how she devolved into population replacement rates.
Bellamy sighs affirmation, leaning back against the log they’d pulled up around the fire yesterday. Clarke winces when his back pops. “Fair enough.” But he gives her a speculative look from the corner of his eye without raising his head. “But don’t pretend you weren’t thinking about how best to get them to pair off and populate these cabins we’re building.”
Clarke starts and stares at him. “How–?”
He rolls his eyes. “Give me some credit, Princess. I can do math just as well as anyone from Alpha.”
“I never said you couldn’t,” she mutters. They sit in silence a moment. The fire pops. “Do you have any ideas then?”
Bellamy scoffs. “I’d hoped that that would take care of itself.”
“Me too,” she sighs. Pursing her lips, Clarke considers a moment. “I didn’t think they’d give birth control to delinquents who were marked for death anyway, but I guess they did.”
“Can you take it out?”
“Well, yeah…but I can’t just do it without consent. They’re only good for seven years at most, but until they become harmful if left in, I can’t just yank them out and force these girls to start having babies.”
Bellamy cuts her a look. “Of course not. But think about it. After we have the cabins built, that’s it. We start trying to cultivate food, but we’ll always be doing that. This is our lives. No preparing for a job on the Ark, no restrictions or rationing. There’s no reason for people not to settle down. To be honest, there really isn’t anything else for them to do, and once they find out that we need more labor if we’re going to farm, well…that’s incentive right there.”
Clarke frowns. “Environmental constraints did make the heterosexual family unit the most evolutionarily efficient in the past. But this isn’t Little House on the Prairie, Bellamy.”
He shrugs. “Of course not. It’s not like we’re setting rules here, Clarke. As long as people are taking care of their children, it doesn’t matter to us how they work out the details, does it? We’re also not telling them they have to have kids. I’m just saying that once everyone realizes that this is the rest of our lives, they’ll start to want them on their own. So just let it be known that you can take the IUDs out.”
Clarke hates the blasé way that Bellamy talks about it because she wants a plan. She wants to be able to run equations on birth rates and make sure that they’re going to make it. She wants to have rules to make sure these kids become good parents and don’t have kids before they can be good parents. She wants to make sure everything runs smoothly for everyone and no one gets hurt – physically or emotionally. “Pairing up permanently is going to cause a lot of heartache.”
Bellamy arches an eyebrow. “Can’t stop people from living, Clarke. There was heartbreak on the Ark; there’ll be heartbreak on the ground. That’s how it goes.”
“But – What if someone abandons a child? What if a couple splits up before a child is born? What if–”
He’s practically laughing at her now, the ass. “What are you going to do, Clarke? Assign everyone a reproduction partner and tell them that they have to be good co-parents or else?”
She hates the way it appeals to her for a second because of the way it could be so logical and neat – she could track genetics and make sure no groups were intermixing too often. But as soon as the thought pops into her head, she knows how awful and dehumanizing that would be.
Bellamy must see her deflate, because his smirk softens a bit. “Don’t worry, Princess. Life will find a way. It always does.”
Clarke wraps her arms around her knees. “How can we build a society, Bellamy?”
He finds another piece of wood to put on the fire, considering. “Well,” he says finally, “We’re not building from scratch. The Ark wasn’t perfect by any means, but it got some things right – like thinking about how our decisions might impact the community as a whole. We’ve been taught to judge people who selfishly take more than their share, and that’s been a saving grace down here. Even if people don’t listen, they don’t want to be the asshat who gets someone else killed. And family life was the only thing that made the Ark bearable, so no one will be surprised that it’s the same on the ground. So we make laws about the big things, and trust people to make rational decisions for everything else. Eventually, the culture we create will regulate itself.”
It’s Clarke’s turn to scoff. “And how do we create a culture, Bellamy?”
“By our actions,” he says softly.
Clarke sleeps on it, and the next morning she catches Bellamy before he rouses the camp and marches them off to some other building location.
“Have you given much consideration to cabin assignments?”
He shrugs. “I just want everyone to have a roof over their head, so no, I haven’t got that far.”
“Well,” Clarke licks her lips, “I was thinking about what you said last night. And I think you were right.” His eyebrows shoot up. “It’s time we trust people and let them take ownership of things. This is our lives from now on. So I did some math too. Most of the kids they sent down were sixteen, like Jasper and Monty. And we’ve almost been here a year, so everyone’s aged up a bit. Charlotte and all the girls under fifteen now will fit in one house with Bree to watch over them, and all the boys in a cabin with Miller. That gives us an extra cabin for administrative meetings and other things we might need. Why don’t we tell everyone that they’re responsible for choosing a location for and leading the building on their own cabins? We’ll support and mediate and help of course, but that way everyone can come up with a living situation they’ll be happy with.”
Bellamy grins. “And asshats like Murphy who have no friends to help them build?”
“Shouldn’t be asshats and then they’d have friends,” she smirks. “But even he could offer to help people with their cabins in return for help on his, if he wants it. Or, he can build by himself, whichever he’d prefer. But the point is, they get to start taking responsibility and you and we don’t have to plan it all.”
“I like it, Princess. We’ll have a celebration tonight. Let them blow off some steam and give them time to start working out where they might want to live and with whom.”
Clarke can’t help her teasing grin.
“What?” he scowls.
“With whom?”
“That’s the rule – it’s always whom after a preposition.”
She laughs. “Bellamy Blake, the secret grammarian. What happened to whatever the hell you want?”
“Doesn’t apply to using proper grammar,” he says, but he’s smirking and his eyes are sparkling. This is the happiest she’s seen him in a while, and yeah, they do deserve a celebration tonight. “Let me go inform the troops.” He bumps against her shoulder when he leaves, and Clarke rolls her eyes and tries to hide her grin.
The kids respond with astonished silence when Bellamy makes the announcement. A few jaws drop. Wells scowls.
“You mean we don’t have to build everyone’s cabin if we don’t want to?” Miles asks.
“That’s right,” Bellamy says. “But they don’t have to help you either. We’ll be operating on a quid pro quo basis.”
Fox’s nose scrunches. “What’s that?”
“This for that,” Octavia says. “Like bartering.” She turns to her brother, hands on her hips. “Atom and I are going to live in a cabin together then.” Atom pales, but although Bellamy’s left fist clenches, he just shrugs casually.
“If that’s what you want, O.” He looks out over all the delinquents. “If you’re over fifteen, you can do whatever the hell you want, as promised. After your cabin is built, you’re free to start your life – partner up and have kids even. We hope that those with skills will continue to teach them, but this isn’t the Ark. Have kids when you want, as many as you want.”
This is her cue. “In fact, medically speaking, it would be best for us to maximize genetic diversity as much as we can. So the sooner you have kids, the better.”
“Are you going to start popping out kids, princess? Or are you just asking us to?” Murphy sneers from the back.
“As soon as I’m settled, I will be,” she says before she can think about the words coming out of her mouth. “But if you don’t want to have kids, you don’t have to. Whatever the hell you want, remember?”
The crowd murmurs. From the corner of her eye, she sees Raven turn to Finn, beaming. Wells swallows and looks away, jaw clenched. Fox flicks a glance at Sterling from under her lashes. Jasper’s looking at Octavia in a way that breaks Clarke’s heart. At last Bellamy raises his hands for quiet.
“For now, let’s celebrate. We’ve survived the winter, and we’ve finished the first step of building our own society on Earth. Now we can finally be free.”
“Moonshine!” Jasper hollers, and the rest cheer and follow him to the still.
As the crowd disperses, Clarke turns to Bellamy. “You handled Octavia moving out well.”
He shrugs. “Haven’t lived with her for two years now. And Atom’s a good kid. I was scared of guys like Mbeg and Murphy trying to take advantage of her when we first landed. But Atom seems legit. So if that’s what she wants…”
Clarke can’t help her smile. “You’re a good brother, Bellamy.”
“At least someone thinks so.” He puts his large hand on the center of her lower back and gives her a gentle push. “Now go have fun, Princess. Sounds like you’re scoping out a babby-daddy tonight.”
She takes a half-step before she freezes. “Oh my god. I did say that didn’t I?” Slapping her hands over her face she moans, “I’m such a fucking idiot.”
“Not ready for children? Little late for that; you’ve been taking care of eighty-some for almost a year now.” He sounds like he’s grinning, damn him.
“Who could I have kids with, Bellamy? Finn? I’d rather die. Wells? That’s a recipe for heartbreak. Jasper? He’d be sweet and do his best, but…everyone knows he’s really in love with your sister. Murphy? I hesitate to argue that his genes should be passed down.” She feels like she’s hurtling toward a cliff, her breath coming in short gasps. “I don’t even know who I’d want to share a cabin with. I mean who would want to share with me? I’m boring and uptight, and I worry too much about everyone, and people will be waking me up in the middle of the night when they need a doctor– I refused to forgive my own mother. What if I’m a horrible mother? What if my kid hates me?”
“Whoa, slow down there, Princess.” Bellamy turns her gently and puts both hands on her shoulders. “One crisis at time. Murphy was just being an ass, okay? You don’t have to have kids if you don’t want.”
She shakes her head. “No, if I’m asking others to do this, I need to do it too. Lead by example. And I do want kids, I just–” she waves her hands at the delinquents vaguely. “But it’s not like I’m ever going to get any more choices than I have right now. So I might as well just pick someone I guess.”
He snorts. “Yeah, no wonder you don’t have all the guys lining up. Not exactly a romantic, are you?”
Blushing, she looks down and fidgets with her fingers. “I used to be. Before solitary. Before having to keep everyone alive meant thinking practically all the time.” After all, hadn’t she believed that she could help her dad warn the Ark and everything would be okay because people would band together to find a solution? Could you even get even more Romantic than that?
“Fair. None of them really inspire romance either, I imagine.”
It’s kind of him not to mention Finn. That’d been romantic – the glowing forest, splashing around in water for the first time, the two headed deer he’d made her, the candles in the bunker, the shooting star – it had all been so romantic until Raven made her grand romantic gesture.
Clarke shrugs. “True. But I don’t think I want romance now, exactly. I just want someone I can trust. Someone who won’t lie to me but will always have my back.”
“So that’s why you’re not shacking up with Wells.”
“Yeah,” she says thickly. “He was my best friend. I think of him like a brother, but I know how he feels. And maybe on the Ark…In that life I probably would have fallen in love with him. But he lied to me the one time I needed the truth more than anything else. If he hadn’t, maybe I could have talked to my dad about it. He seemed to understand and forgive mom before they floated him. Maybe he was just acting for me too, but I don’t think so.” She runs a finger along the edge of her watch. “And then I would have had a year to work through forgiving mom before they sent us down here. Maybe I wouldn’t have been a bitch to her right before she died.”
Bellamy’s mouth ticks up in a bitter smirk. “Doesn’t mean her death would have been any easier for you to swallow, Princess. Trust me.”
She does, she realizes. Her hand finds his. “I’m sorry. She didn’t deserve to die. None of you deserved it.”
He squeezes her hand back. “Yeah, well. O’s children won’t have to hide under the floor. They’ll never want for anything either. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Neither will your children,” Clarke says softly, turning to look up at him.
He looks down at her in surprise. Then he laughs. “I never thought I’d be able to have children.”
“What?”
Bellamy not having children of his own is like the sun falling out of the sky – impossible. Unnatural. He’s so good with Charlotte and obviously cares for her. He’d raised Octavia too, and despite Octavia’s surliness, he did a good job. She was strong and smart and brave – and happy and loved.
“Well, I couldn’t exactly bring a girl home to our apartment. Couldn’t move out of mom’s place either, because someone had to be there to take care of Octavia when she died. Even if it wasn’t for that, I couldn’t have kept O fed and a kid of my own too. So, I figured I had just swapped the kid I might have had someday for her. The council didn’t like that too much. Of course, I didn’t know about the air problems then.”
He shrugs again and goes to pull away, conversation over, but Clarke tightens her hold on his hand. “We’re not on the Ark anymore. You can have as many kids here as you want.”
“I’m not knocking up a teenager, Clarke.” He tugs his hand back and stalks off to bark at Murphy to fucking leave Miles alone, for fuck’s sake.
The next morning, eighty hung over kids huddle around the breakfast fire. But, Clarke notices, there are some definite couples that weren’t so obvious yesterday. After they’ve eaten, Harper stands up.
“We’ve been talking, and we’d like to make a few adjustments to the plan.”
Bellamy raises an eyebrow. “What sort of adjustments?”
“We’d like to have a promising ceremony. Like a wedding. So that everyone knows who’s serious and who’s not. And we want to have a town like in the old Earth movies. With houses close enough to run to if people need help. And stores – in the sense that everyone has a designated place to work and to go to get what they need. Like an apothecary. And a doctor’s office. And a market to trade food. And buy clothes.”
Bellamy shrugs, but Clarke sees the smile tugging at his lips. “Sure, if you all want. But you have to build it.”
Harper stands firm. “But we have your support? You’ll help us?”
“Of course. But I think we should all build ourselves basic shelters first.” The kids nod, and Harper smiles. Then she holds out her hand to Monty who takes it and stands with her.
“Will you officiate the ceremonies?”
That takes him aback, Clarke thinks, but he nods. “If you want. I’m sure Wells or Clarke would be happy to officiate too, if you want.”
Wells smiles a genuine smile. “I’d be honored to be part of the first weddings on Earth in a hundred years.”
Monty looks at Harper and smiles. “Well, we’d like to go first, if that’s okay. We don’t care much who does it.”
So Monty and Harper pick a large oak tree in the clearing beside the administration cabin, and Miller walks Harper down the aisle Charlotte and Fox have created with what flowers they could find. Monty takes her hand, and beside him Jasper tears up as Bellamy carefully binds their hands together with Octavia’s red hair ribbon. He has them swear to respect and love each other forever, in sickness and health, to death do them part. And then they kiss, bashfully, given the size of the crowd. The delinquents whoop and holler and cheer.
“Now,” Bellamy says. “Who will help build them a house?”
“I will,” Jasper says, stepping forward.
“So will I,” Miller says.
“Me too!” Charlotte jumps up from her seat between Fox and Bree. The girls stand with her, and suddenly twenty delinquents are promising to help.
“Well hop to it,” Bellamy grins. “Daylight’s wasting.”
Laughing, Monty leads them off, telling Harper he knows the perfect spot for their home.
“Who else would like to build now?” Bellamy asks the forty kids who are still seated on the grass.
Raven stands, and Clarke’s stomach sinks. “Finn and I would.” She grins down at him, but Finn refuses to look up and meet her eyes.
“Let’s let someone else go first,” he mutters.
“Why?” She sounds exasperated, like this is an old fight. “We’ve known each other since we were kids, we’ve been dating for years, and we’re in love. You were willing to die for me, Finn. How can we get more ready than that?”
“Not now, Raven,” he snaps and stalks off.
Raven tilts her chin up in a way Clarke has to admire. “Well, I want a house now. If anyone helps me, I’ll design you a kickass house with indoor plumbing.”
“Sweet,” Murphy says, kicking at Mbeg. “Let’s get started.”
“Can’t say no to an offer like that,” Bellamy grins, and the rest of the delinquents follow Raven off to her preferred building site with him.
Clarke wants indoor plumbing too; she just can’t make her feet move. Wells comes and sets a hand on her shoulder. “It’s not your fault,” he says.
“Isn’t it?”
“He didn’t tell you. You couldn’t know.”
“I knew he was a flirt. I should have known there was a risk.”
“We thought the Ark was dead. Stop being so hard on yourself, Clarke. It was a mistake, but you didn’t do it to hurt anyone. He’s the douchebag. He should bear the guilt, not you.”
She shrugs and plucks at some grass absently.
Wells clears his throat, a clear sign that there’s something he’s been dying to say. She raises an eyebrow. “Who do you plan on living with?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?! You told Murphy you’d have a baby once you were settled, and you don’t know with who?”
“Whom.”
“What?”
“When ‘who’ follows a preposition, it’s whom.”
Wells rolls his eyes. “Whatever, Clarke. Are you just going to sleep with a bunch of random assholes? Is that your grand plan for genetic diversity?”
Clarke stands up, feeling like he’s slapped her. “Don’t lash out at me just because you wanted us to be together, and I don’t. I never promised you that. You choose to get on that dropship, Wells. I never asked you to.”
He reels back. “No, you sure didn’t. But I’ve known you since you could walk, Clarke. And I know that if you have a baby with anyone but someone you trust and love, you’ll always regret it. So don’t be stupid just cause you think you have to do everything yourself.” He stalks off after Bellamy and Raven.
She winds up helping Charlotte and Bree drag off the brush from the trees Miller and Jasper cut down to build Monty and Harper’s cabin. The methodical work gives her something to do, for which she’s grateful, but it gives her too much time to think. Twisting and turning the past two days over in her head again and again until they tangle her up like vines. Clarke’s looking forward to dinner and then slinking off to curl up by herself in her tent when Finn appears.
“Clarke, can I speak to you?” He glances at Bree and Charlotte. “Alone?”
She shoves past him. “I can’t imagine there’s anything you could say that I’d like to hear.”
“Clarke—” he cries. “Just wait. Please.”
She doesn’t. She nearly makes it to the clearing when he catches ahold of her wrist. He yanks her around and in the moment she’s still, he breathes, “I’m in love with you.”
Wrenching her wrist free, Clarke backs away. “No, you’re not.”
“Yes!” Finn sighs and lunges at her again. “Just let me explain, okay? I grew up with Raven. I thought that was love, but it wasn’t. Not romantic love. But with you—here—you’ve reminded me of who I am.”
“Oh? Is who you are a liar?”
“I didn’t lie to you! You never asked. And you said the Ark was dead, not me. So yeah, I moved on without telling her, but under the circumstances, how could I? We hadn’t had sex for a year, Clarke. It was already over.”
In that moment, Clarke sees her life with Finn stretch out before her: They laugh, and he brings her flowers he finds on his adventures for no reason. He spoils their children. But he could never be tied down, not really. He loves adventure too much, and anxiety claws at her throat. No, once she had a child to worry about, he would drive her crazy. It never would have worked between them, Raven or no Raven, Ark or no Ark.
She shakes her head. “No Finn, you’re in love with the excitement and the romance of landing on Earth. You don’t even know me. And I don’t really know you. I got caught up in the infatuation and the way you made me see the beauty of the world instead of just how it could kill us. But that wouldn’t have lasted, Finn. I care about you—I wish you well, but I don’t love you. I’m sorry.”
He looks devastated. “I broke up with Raven for you.” He takes a menacing step toward her. “I hurt the woman I’ve loved since I could talk for you.”
“No,” Clarke snaps. “You did it for you. You wanted something new and fun, but you didn’t stop to think if it could last or even if it was something I wanted now. I told you before we left for Mount Weather: It’s not. That hasn’t changed. Don’t blame me for your arrogance and shortsightedness.” And she turns to stalk off to the fire.
Bellamy hands her a bowl as she sits down beside him. “Alright there, Princess?”
“No,” she snaps again, shoving the spoon in her mouth.
He just raises an eyebrow, and gives her the chance to explain. When she doesn’t, he gives her the current numbers on how many people have paired off. It’s more than she expected, but less than she hoped.
Bellamy’s not bothered. “Give it time. As people settle down and split off, it will make the others more antsy, and they will too—if nothing else to make sure they’re not alone.”
Clarke frowns. “Is that a good reason for people to be together?”
He gives her that sideways look again. “That’s been most people’s reason since the dawn of time, Clarke. That and sex.”
She supposes that’s fair enough. So really it comes down to finding someone you can live with without losing your mind, but who you also want to fuck. Still asking a lot, she supposes, in the grand scheme of things, so why wouldn’t you grab onto that once you found it?
They finish Raven’s house before they finish Monty and Harper’s. To everyone’s shock, Wells moves in with her. “Why not?” he’d asked a bit defensively when Clarke had asked. So she told him as long as he was happy and left it at that. After, Bellamy’s group starts working on Octavia and Atom’s cabin, despite Murphy’s whining.
As revenge, he starts tormenting Clarke. “Still looking for a babby-daddy, princess? I may not be Alpha stock, but I can at least get it up, even for you if you ever stop looking like you’ve got a stick up your ass.” She rolls her eyes and carries water to Miller and Miles, who are sweeting buckets in what now must be summer weather.
When Bellamy hears, he snaps at Murphy to shut up. He doesn’t, of course. “Oh ho ho, are you volunteering for babby-daddy duty, Bellamy? Didn’t think that was your style. But if the king wants to fuck the princess, well…I’m not stopping you.”
One day she walks out of her tent to Bellamy beating Murphy into the ground. “Bellamy! Stop!” She rushes forward and tries to pull him off. “What are you doing?”
He ignores her and lands one last punch. “Say a word about her again, and I’ll sew your mouth shut,” he growls. And then he stands up and stalks off toward the building site.
Clarke’s on duty at Monty’s today, so it’s dusk when she realizes that Bellamy hasn’t come back with everyone else. Stomach churning, she jogs out to Octavia’s half-built cabin, and sure enough there he is, on the roof nailing on shingles.
“Bell!” He looks down at her. “What on earth are you doing?”
“Making a roof, Princess, what’s it look like?”
“It looks like you’re sulking.” She climbs up the ladder to sit down across from him. “Wanna tell me what that was about this morning?”
He sets his hammer down carefully and studies her a moment. “Why aren’t you working on your own place by now? Monty’s is almost done. Monroe would live with you until Jasper wakes up and screws his head on straight. Or literally anyone else, Clarke. What are you waiting for?”
Oh. So they’re having this conversation. “What about you? What didn’t you move in with Raven? You’d have been the perfect revenge fuck and she’s not a teenager.”
“I know. I was.” Clarke hopes her wince wasn’t as noticeable as she’s afraid it was. “Didn’t help her though.”
“Is that what Murphy was goading you about? She’s known him since they were kids. No one could make her forget that, Bell. Not even you. I’m sure you’re reputation’s safe.”
Snatching up his hammer, he slings it off the roof. “That’s what you think I—for fuck’s sake, Clarke. I don’t give a damn about how good this bunch of kids think I am in bed.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Clarke blinks, not quite believing him.
“You! You’re the fucking problem! It didn’t help her, and it didn’t help me either, because the whole time I felt like I was betraying you—which is ridiculous, because you and Finn—”
“There is no me and Finn.”
Bellamy stops, midway through a word. “What?” He blinks. “But he loves you.”
Clarke looks down at her hands. “Yeah, well, I don’t love him. Can’t really love someone you can’t trust, you know? And anyway, I think the whole thing was more infatuation and the excitement of being on Earth. He wanted a challenge, and I’d been in solitary for a year, so anyone showing me any attention, really caring about me after what happened…I was lonely.”
He looks down and processes this. “You don’t want Finn.”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“I cried under a tree in the snow and almost died because of you; I thought it was obvious.”
He gives her that intense look, the one where he’s trying to take all of her in at once and memorize her or something. Then he leans forward and kisses her.
Bellamy kisses exactly like she’d expected Bellamy to kiss: a little too reckless and intense, with a little too much teeth, but also like he means it, like he’s happy—a little possessive and tender in turns. Her toes curl, but when he pulls back he looks a little distressed.
“What if this is just because you’re lonely? I don’t want—If it’s not real, Clarke, I can’t. Not after Roma…”
She frames his face with her hands. “Maybe it is because I don’t want to be alone anymore, but in a good way. Out of all the men on Earth, Bellamy, you’re the only one I can imagine living with until I die. The only one I want to talk to; the man I most respect and trust. The only one I want to hold me when I’m cold and tell me when I’m behaving stupidly. To touch me. The only man whose baby I want to have.”
This time when he kisses her, it’s even more overwhelming—indescribable, really.
“Babies,” he mutters when he eventually pulls back to let them breathe.
“Hum?” she asks against his lips as he kisses her again.
This time when he pulls back, he moves to her neck. “We’re on the ground. No rules. Babies.”
“Sure of yourself, aren’t you?” she laughs. Then he does a thing with his mouth that demonstrates precisely why he’s so sure of himself. He grins against her skin. She runs her hands through his hair. “O-okay. Well, we are on the ground, so…we should probably get off this roof first.” He continues his trajectory, pressing her back against the roof. “Gravity,” she offers weekly, just because she feels it needs to be said.
He lifts his head to look up at her under those bangs. Dear god, but she feels that in her ovaries. “Think about what a fun story it’ll be to tell our kid one day.”
“How we had sex for the first time on a roof?”
“How they were conceived on a roof.”
“That’s my goddamn roof, Bellamy, don’t you dare!” Octavia shrieks. He flips her off, still biting bruises just beneath Clarke’s collar bone, until Atom finally drags her away.
As it turns out, it’s not so fun telling your baby girl the story of her conception, so naturally Octavia tells her for them, every chance she gets. “It’s payback,” she sniffs. “For defiling my eyes and the roof of what was supposed to be my house.”
Murphy cackles from the corner of Jasper’s pub. “Please, we all knew the house was really for them. You’re just sore because you lost the betting pool.”
“And the house,” Octavia emphasizes.
“Yeah, well. Weren’t going to let your nice be born in a tent in a snowstorm, were you?” Wells drawls sarcastically.
“Not after Bell probably enshrined that roof tile in gold afterwards,” Octavia sighs.
“Can we please stop talking about mom and dad having sex, Aunty O? I’m faced with too much irrefutable evidence already,” Helen mumbles.
The grownups laugh again. “Yeah, genetic diversity my ass,” Murphy says, taking a shot of moonshine. “That’s a pregnancy kink, is what that is.”
“No!” Raven cries, batting her eyes mockingly. “It’s for the greater good. Repopulating the planet.”
“Speaking of,” Murphy reaches a hand out to his wife, a development no one saw coming (except Helen; Helen had known since she could talk that that was in the cards). “Best do our part.”
Helen gags. “I hate all of you. Every single one.” And then she packs up her baby brother and all the rest of her siblings before taking the long way home. Surely mom and dad have had enough alone time by now. She swears if she has a new sibling in nine months she’ll run off and marry Jack Murphy. See if dad thinks it’s so funny when it’s her having sex on a roof.
(Bellamy doesn’t, for the record.)