The baby is born the first week of November. She's tinier than he remembers Octavia being, though he guesses he was littler then too. She has a dark cap of hair that Abigail Griffin tells him is all Blake--Clarke was born bald. He would tease Clarke about that, but he's too fucking in love with her and the tiny little person they've made together.
"How is she? She's quiet," Clarke mumbles, and he glances down at her to see her eyes are drooping closed. She's lying down in their bed and he's sitting upright next to her, holding their daughter in his hands so he can stare at her. The baby seems just as worn out by the ordeal of birth as her mother, her dark blue eyes drifting shut as she watches him, oh-so-serious.
"She-" Bellamy has to pause, clear his throat. "She's perfect, Clarke."
Clarke hums sleepily and stretches a hand out until her fingers tangle in the corner of the baby's blanket.
"Good," she sighs, and then her eyes slide shut completely.
"Hi," he whispers to the infant. She's stubbornly trying to cling to consciousness, but she's quickly losing the battle. "I know you don't know me as well as you know your mom. But you've kicked me a lot, and I think that means we have a bond." The baby makes the littlest noise and blinks slowly. "I'm your dad," he says, still in a whisper. "I'm never going to let anything bad happen to you, baby. I promise."
"She loves you," Clarke says; he starts--he thought she had fallen asleep. Her eyes are still closed, and her words are partially muffled by her pillow. "And I love you. But Bellamy, if you don't shut up and let us sleep, I will kill you."
Bellamy's lips quirk up. "Yeah, yeah, princess," he says. But he leans down and presses a kiss to Clarke's forehead, and watches her lips curve into a smile. Then he shifts down on the bed and moves the baby so that she's tucked up against his chest, and he can see both of his girls.
He thinks it's probably the best sight he's ever seen.
It's too much to ask that the kids leave them alone for longer than a day, and once Clarke's up and the baby's been nursed, the first of the visitors come trickling in.
(He'd heard the heated games of rock-paper-scissors taking place outside of their cabin to determine who got to come in first, and the dumbasses are damned lucky his girls are already awake or Bellamy would have marched out there and shut them up with force.)
Jasper and Monty are trying to push through the doorway at the same time when his sister yanks them both back.
"Coming through!" she declares, and drags Lincoln through the door with her.
When the boys' protests float through the air after her, she slams the door in their faces.
"Aunts get priority, losers; you'll just have to wait your turn." Then she turns and tackles Bellamy in a hug. "Congratulations, Bell. Now where's my niece?"
"Hi Octavia," Clarke says dryly from the bed. "Hi Lincoln."
"Clarke! Baby!" Octavia says. Bellamy and Lincoln watch bemused as she strips off her boots and climbs onto the bed until she's side by side with Clarke. "Oh," she says, very softly. "Oh, Bell. Clarke. Look at her."
"Your brother hasn't stopped looking at her," Clarke says.
Bellamy would protest except, well, it's true.
"Lincoln, come here." Octavia gestures at him without looking away from the baby. Lincoln looks to Bellamy first, then approaches the bed.
"She's beautiful," he says after a moment.
Clarke beams up at him. "I know," she says, and they all laugh.
"You want to hold her, O?" Bellamy asks when they quiet.
"Duh. Don't be stupid," she replies, and carefully takes the baby from Clarke's arms.
He watches his little sister hold his daughter, and he remembers when she was small enough to hold like that, and it's been getting colder outside and that's probably why his eyes are watering, alright? Wind chill, or something. Inside. It's a thing.
It is.
Lincoln's watching them too, Octavia cuddling the baby and speaking quietly to the infant. Bellamy feels like he should probably feel some kind of brotherly objection to the look on Lincoln's face, but then he'd have to admit he recognizes it, which would mean admitting he's seen the same stupid look on his own reflection too many times to count in the last half a year.
So he lets it slide.
They call her Ella. Bellamy claims it's only fitting to name their daughter after a princess, given her mother; Clarke gives him a withering glare but not-so-grudgingly agrees to consider it.
As far as princesses go, Clarke puts her foot down against naming their daughter Leia--"Star Wars? Really? We just got out of space, Bellamy!"--and he nixes naming her after the old Sleeping Beauty cartoon, because as much as he loved his mother, he doesn't want to call his daughter Aurora and remember what has been lost.
After a week, they've come no closer to an agreement, and he's pretty tired of fending off hordes of their people demanding to know how the baby is, what she looks like, who she looks like--"She looks like a baby, jesus, don't you all have better things to do?"--what her name is, who gets to babysit first--"Why would I ever leave her with you two? Maybe Monty by himself, but the two of you? Plus a baby? That sounds like the beginning of a terrible joke."
So Bellamy feels no shame in playing dirty. And he brings up what he knows is Clarke's favorite atomic-modern fairy tale movie.
And they call her Ella.
Because the universe hates him, the weeks after Ella's birth are filled with the winter's first snows. It's not so bad at first; Clarke is still healing, so she and the baby stay in the cabin for the most part, and Bellamy's able to spend most of his time there with them by ordering Miller publicly to make sure nobody sets the camp on fire.
(He glared at Jasper and Monty the entire time he was speaking; their faces were offended but they stayed silent, because, well, everyone remembers that Tuesday last month.)
Thankfully their cabin is warm, so she and the baby don't get cold, but it's only a matter of time before Clarke's up and around and, in spite of a new infant, is needed in the medbay. Along with snow comes colds and a spate of twisted ankles from slipping in the icy stuff.
"Don't you think you should wait a little longer?" Bellamy asks desperately on the first day Clarke's going back to the medbay.
"Bellamy," Clarke sighs, lacing up her boots while Bellamy holds Ella. "Harper can't deal with everyone on her own. She needs my help, and things are only going to get worse."
"You can't take Ella with you," he reasons. "She'll get sick. Or in the way."
"Raven's been making not so subtle noises about watching her for a while," Clarke says, and wraps herself in her coat. "Actually, the last time she visited she threatened to tattoo me with a soldering iron unless she got some quality baby time soon. It'll only be for a couple hours; I'll still need to feed her."
"But--what about Wick?" Bellamy tries.
Clarke raises an eyebrow at him. "What about him?"
"He and Raven. They'll get distracted. Too distracted to watch Ella," he reasons.
Clarke sighs. "Bellamy, I love Ella, but if I stay cooped up in this cabin for one more day than I have to, I may be the next one to set the camp on fire. I don't want to leave her with other people either, but we've known since before she was born that we'd have to get back to our normal duties somehow."
Bellamy sets his mouth. "Then we will. We just won't leave her with other people. Not yet."
"What?"
"I'll take her," he says. "I'm not doing much today. I can make sure she stays warm. And dry. None of these idiots know what they're doing with a baby. It's the best case scenario."
To his surprise, Clarke's face blooms with a smile. "Good," she says in a satisfied tone. "Meet me at the medbay in a couple hours for her feeding." She presses two quick kisses to his mouth, another gentle kiss to Ella's brow, takes a deep breath, and then heads out the door.
"Do you think your mother meant for that to happen?" he asks the baby. She doesn't respond, but he's pretty sure the expression in her eyes tells him he just got played.
It keeps getting colder, and it reminds Bellamy of power outages on the Ark, and how he was always terrified out of his fucking mind that Octavia would get too cold, and get sick, and they wouldn't be able to get the medicine she needed because she wasn't supposed to exist.
"Why were you born just in time for winter?" he asks the baby when she's fussing on the bed one morning. She doesn't seem to particularly enjoy wearing the soft little clothes the Trigedakru sent them upon hearing about her birth, but the baby clothes they got from the Ark are far too thin for the temperature. "You couldn't have been a summer baby? Or even spring?"
"Bellamy." Clarke's voice is exasperated. "That's more your fault than hers."
"Don't listen to your mother," Bellamy advises his daughter, which she doesn't seem to appreciate if her growing cries are an indication. "You're a Blake. You could have done whatever you wanted."
"Stop trying to turn Ella against me before she can even hold her head up," Clarke demands. "Now I've got three patients with the flu and you've got the fence reinforcement to check on. Do you want me to take her and drop her off with Raven?"
"Uh, no," Bellamy says, scooping the infant up and rubbing circles on her back. As she calms, he grins at the look on Clarke's face, soft and a little smiley as she watches the two of them. "I'll take her to Engineering."
It's not a lie; he does bring Ella to see Raven and Wick in Engineering. It's just that he's not there to leave her with them. They've offered, multiple times, as have Lincoln, Octavia, Monroe, Harper, Jasper, Monty. Since she returned to Camp Jaha after Ella's birth, Abby Griffin radios at least three times a week with the offer to come and help. Miller's somehow always been conveniently located to hold Ella for Bellamy whenever he's needed both hands free during his days with Ella, and once even Murphy muttered something about watching the little stinker.
(Bellamy had handed Ella to Miller, punched Murphy in the arm, and told him never to call his daughter that again, but that's not the point.)
"You here to finally let us have her?" Raven asks sourly when he enters her workroom.
"Hell no," he says cheerfully. "But you can hold her for a while, if you want."
Raven rolls her eyes at him but steals the baby from his arms. She immediately starts talking to the baby, telling her the names of all of her tools, and what they do, and when Wick walks in with a bundle of fabric and buckles in his arms, he immediately starts protesting.
"Hey, you didn't start on the periodic table without me, did you? I wanted to teach her about the noble gases first!"
"Shut up," Raven sighs. "We've only started talking about conductive metals, haven't we?"
Bellamy watches, amused, as Wick eyes her suspiciously. "Have you finally finished?" he asks when it's clear the other man is completely distracted by the sight of the mechanic with a baby.
"Oh, yeah," Wick says, dumping his bundle onto the table. "Here it is."
"You're lucky I found out about your little request," Raven says. "You should know better than to ask an engineer for a working design, Bellamy."
"Yeah, yeah," Wick says. "You helped, it's better than ever, we all know how this conversation goes."
In a few short minutes, Bellamy has the new sling in position across his chest. The fabric is quadruply reinforced against tearing, and there are multiple buckles that keep it in place, so that if one fails the sling still won't fall.
"Looks good," Wick says with satisfaction.
"I got that from Monroe," Raven says, nodding to one of the other workstations. Bellamy sees a small folded piece of fur, and when he picks it up, it's very soft. "So you can line the sling, but wash it if she makes it gross."
"It's great," he responds, putting it into place. It's thoughtful, but more importantly, it'll keep Ella warm. "Here, let me try it with her."
Raven wrinkles her nose at him, but her hands are careful as she passes the baby back to him. Ella squeaks a little during the transfer, and her eyes are as wide as they can get. He can't help but smile at her, and he absolutely does not care that Raven and Wick are watching as he leans down and rubs his nose against hers.
"Those conductive metals got you all riled up?" he asks her as he tucks her into the sling.
"What can I say? She likes it when I teach her things. She'll probably be earth's youngest mechanic ever," Raven says with a grin.
"Or engineer," Wick adds quickly. "Or engineer."
Bellamy rolls his eyes. "Or you could corrupt your own helpless infants."
When the two of them erupt in flustered protests, he fastens his coat around the sling so that Ella's all wrapped up, as warm as she can get. She can still see up and out a little of the sling, and he grins down at her as she takes in her new situation.
"Thanks for the sling!" Bellamy calls over their voices, and escapes out the door.
Later that day, he's snapping at Murphy over a section of broken fence that should have been repaired yesterday when Clarke finds and interrupts him.
"Hey," he says, surprised. "Time for her feeding already?"
She doesn't respond right away, just stares at him, and he starts to worry at the peculiar expression on her face. But before he can say anything she's marching straight up to him, seizing his face between her hands, and dragging him down into a searing kiss. His shock doesn't prevent him from kissing her right back, because, hey, it's Clarke, and he has a pavlovian response to basically anything Clarke does, though he's a little frustrated that he can't drag her closer because of the baby strapped to his chest.
When Clarke finally releases him, he stares at her dazedly and licks his lips.
"What...uh, what was that for?" he asks. Not that he's complaining.
"You're wearing our baby," she replies.
His cheeks feel hot immediately; he'd ignored every one of their people who had eyed the baby bundled into his coat up until now, but something about Clarke's voice and her expression and maybe that hot as hell kiss has him flushing.
Or it's the sun. Probably the sun.
(Never mind that the sky's dark with clouds.)
"Not like an accessory," he justifies, then clears his throat. "It's just easy. Easier. This way. She's an easy baby. She only cries when she needs something."
"Uh huh," Clarke says with a smile, and leans close so she can peek down at Ella's face. Ella makes another one of her tiny little noises when she hears Clarke and sees the familiar gold hair.
"She has a better temper than either of us," Bellamy rambles on as Clarke moves around close to his side, and he automatically slides a hand down to rest on her hip. She slips an arm around his waist and rests her cheek against him while she reaches into the sling to brush a gentle finger across the baby's brow, her nose, her cheeks.
"Of course she does. She's warm, and comfortable, and curious, and she's got you taking her around the world all day long, so why would she ever need to complain?" Clarke says.
Standing there with Clarke, warm and comfortable and close, watching their daughter gaze up at the world, Bellamy thinks he understands that.