Once again, Bellamy found himself looking up at the stars after living among them.
As the night fell thick and dark, and the voice of the villagers filled the cooling air, he felt the years between his time on Earth slide away into the past like that time had become nothing more than a distant, weightless memory.
Clarke wasn't lost to him – she was right here, laughing at a witticism of Murphy's. His heart lightened at the sound, and he watched the joy crinkling at the edges of her eyes and mouth, lighting the blue of her fire-lit gaze.
He was home.
"So," a young voice said, as someone settled down on the wooden bench next to him. "You're Bellamy."
He looked over and found the curious, gray-eyed inspection of the girl who'd driven the rover during those terrible hours after their escape from the colonists. Her braided brown hair was tucked under an oversized cap, and the skin around her mouth glistened with grease from the chunk of meat she held in one hand.
"That's me," he acknowledged with a faint smile.
"Clarke's told me lots of stories about you," the girl said, biting into the meat and talking around the mouthful, her words muffled. "I mean, she told me about the others, too, but she talked about you the most. She also radioed you every day, no matter what. Even when you didn't reply. Did you hear her?"
Bellamy shook his head slowly as he glanced over at Clarke once more, their gazes meeting across the few feet of table and people that separated them. Emotion surged up into his throat, hot and choking.
Every day?
Clarke had radioed him every single day without fail. She'd been the static crackling overhead in the Ring, as regular as clockwork. She'd been alive, and he could have known.
Every day.
~ ~ ~
Bellamy stayed as the rest began to drift from the remnants of the celebratory feast back to their homes.
Raven and Wick lounged by the fire, while Clarke saw Murphy and Emori slip away, their intentions clear. Monty had been invited into the rover by Madi to listen to Jasper's old music files, and the faint sounds of music filtered out into the quiet – strumming guitars and crooning voices.
Clarke knew that the Eligius colonists were a problem that couldn't be ignored, but she also knew that they could wait until tomorrow. Beni had left the feast early to set a watch around the village, so there wasn't the chance of any surprises.
She glanced over at Bellamy, taking in his familiar features once more. He was looking up at the sky, his hands loose in the pockets of his old Guard jacket that she'd kept for him in the hope of his return. When she'd given it to him that morning, her wound healed enough to allow for movement, his smile had been incredulous.
"I thought I'd never see this thing again," he'd said, slipping his arms into the worn blue material. The jacket had still been slightly too-big, which meant that it was perfect. "I wonder if the Guard made it through O's reign."
"This maybe been the jacket of a Guard once," Clarke had replied, reaching up to fix the collar where it had been crumpled under against his neck. Her fingers had felt electric against the warmth of his neck, the tension between them almost tangible. "But I always saw it as yours – nothing more. Plus, it gets pretty cold here at night now; you're going to want something warm."
Beni had come in after that to change the bandages across her stomach. She could have done it herself, but her Second insisted on making sure she was healing properly himself.
Now, Bellamy turned his gaze from the stars to hers, and Clarke's heart pulsed sure and steady with the love she felt for him. She'd loved him for longer than she'd realized, and then even longer without him in the six years apart.
So why couldn't she tell him?
"Madi told me about your stories," Bellamy said, a quiet smile pulling at one corner of his mouth. "And how you radioed every day." His features darkened, the warmth in his gaze clouding over. "Clarke, if we–"
"Don't," she said, shaking her head. "We can't change the past, Bellamy; we can only live for the future."
He nodded, but she saw the weight of his past griefs in the tightness of his jaw and the tears glittering unshed in his eyes. Clarke had tried to imagine what it would be if she'd thought he was dead, but she hadn't been able to because a world without Bellamy Blake was one she didn't want to think about.
She had missed him for six years, but he'd mourned her.
Clarke stepped forward and wound her fingers through his, and holding tight. He closed his eyes and returned her grip, the warmth of his hand steadying around hers.
~ ~ ~
The chill of the night was suddenly erased by the quiet heat of Clarke's hand in his.
Bellamy closed his eyes, her grip centering him in this moment right here. If this was all that ever happened, it would be enough. He thought of Clarke in all the ways she'd ever anchored him, the two of them facing the impossible side by side. Desire was an afterthought, because she was so much more to him than simple, animalistic wants.
He wondered what would happen now – an idle curiosity. In the two nights since she'd been bedridden from her wound in Beni's infirmary, he hadn't left her side . . . but she wasn't that weak now.
~ ~ ~
A few minutes later, Clarke felt exhaustion weighing heavy in her bones. While she'd survived her wound, it still was taking its toll on her, even with the healing help of the bliden hod klin which had enabled her to leave her bedrest after a day. And as she began the short path from the village center to the building she and Madi called home – though the girl rarely slept inside, preferring the rover instead – she kept her fingers laced through Bellamy's.
They'd missed too many moments in the past. She wasn't letting another one slip away.
Inside the dark warmth of her home, Clarke lit the lamp just inside the doorway, the orange flame casting dancing shadows across the meager furnishings of the two-room building.
The first room was part kitchen, part workshop, with gun and radio parts scattered across a table set against one wall, and the remnants of a fire sitting cold and black in the hearth opposite. A mural stretched in charcoal shades of gray and black across the longest wall, shadowed sketches of landmarks of before drawn across the uneven cement blocks – their old dropship camp with the slapdash wall, TonDC with the crumbling statue of President Lincoln, Arkadia with the tall ring of Alpha station curving over it, and the once-tall tower of Polis.
"I didn't want them to be forgotten," she said, watching as Bellamy's eyes widened in wonder and memory when he saw the mural.
"Remember when things were as simple as us against the grounders?" he asked wryly, lightly tracing the lines of the dropship camp wall. He shook his head. "Man, was I ever a pain in the ass back then."
"Yes, but you were our pain in the ass," Clarke replied, smiling when he flicked his gaze over to her. "The ground changed all of us."
A long moment passed, in which their gazes tangled together and locked tight. Those three little innocent words that held so much weight rose once again to the tip of Clarke's tongue, and she didn't stop to wonder if this was the right moment, because maybe there weren't any right moments on the ground, only moments.
Like this one right here.
But in the space between her thoughts and the decision to speak them, Bellamy stepped forward.
~ ~ ~
Bellamy had never been one for words; his feelings had always been better expressed in actions.
Like when he wanted to tell Clarke just how much he loved her, and had wanted to say it so many times before, he just couldn't find the words to express the depth of his feelings. Anything he thought of felt cheap or too small. He knew why she'd kept her hand in his as she took him into her home, and he knew the expression glimmering in her gaze as her lips began to part.
He didn't want to miss a single moment with her, but he also didn't want to stand forever in this odd, awkward battle of glances and almost-confessions. They'd had enough of those in their past.
And so he stepped forward, slid his palms along the smooth curve of her jaws, and kissed her.
It was a slow kiss, soft and careful. She tipped her chin up and he dipped his fingers into the soft hair along the nape of her neck, the strands fine and silky to the touch. He tilted his head and she curled her hands around his upper arms, her grip light and hesitant.
And then, as if by the simple touch of their mouths a fire had been lit, the kiss shifted from a gentle hello into something more. There was now an urgency to their quickening motions, Clarke's fingers sliding up his arms and tangling into his hair as her mouth slanted desperately across his.
They clung to each other, pressing closer and closer, even though there was hardly any space between them.
~ ~ ~
Clarke wasn't aware of the short trip from the front room into the back of the building, only that the flickering shadows of the lamp shifted into the soft dark of her bedroom. Everything else she knew was Bellamy – his hands on her waist, now sliding up to her shoulders; his mouth bringing delicious heat across her own, and then pressing against the soft hollow of her neck.
When she fell back in slow motion on the furs of her bed, Bellamy's arm around her shoulders, Clarke gasped in pain. Her wound twinged annoyingly – not a terrible kind of agony, but enough so it wasn't easy to ignore – and Bellamy suddenly lifted his head.
"I'm fine," Clarke said, her fingers tugging on the front of his shirt. He'd lost his jacket somewhere along the way from the front room to the bed. "Just . . ." – she leaned up, pushing the pain aside as she pressed a long, lingering kiss to the side of his neck, his pulse leaping under her touch – "don't stop."
And so he didn't.
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I don't think I need to say anything with this chapter . . .
Vote and comment, please!