Chapter Text
Despite the current quiet, they all still felt like they were attempting to catch their breath from running. Six years in peace weakened their ability to keep the air in their lungs as they looked for refuge. Without Clarke leading them through the unfamiliar territory, Eligius would have caught them minutes into their race for survival. Despite her own injuries, she maneuvred through the valley with such grace it could only be acquired with years of inhabitance and awareness.
She led them without missing a beat and with the same amount of duty. He thought that particular detail, the duty she carried, meant nothing changed for her, the feeling of obligation and responsibility for them still lingered in the skeleton of her soul. He believed she remembered her sacrifice the same way he did and the remembrance of it would steer her back to him, the way things were before the fire burned everything including his partnership with her.
He thought she would understand him and be on their side, his side, but when have things ever been simple on the ground? Why would it start now?
Their agreement ended when they reached Wonkru now unearthed from the bunker. Octavia resembled something strange with her army of loyalists marching behind her in fear-tangled wonder. One look at his sister and the bonds with all the others realigned themselves to have Octavia fit somewhere in his family like they were never apart for six years. She would forever orbit around him in the same way she always has—he was tethered to her.
Talks and meetings and truces have led to arguments and glares and silence as he agreed to put Madi in the middle of some of the negotiations, in the center of some of their plans. In his attempt to placate his sister and keep his family safe, he angered his one-time partner.
It seemed they were no longer on the same side. He thought she would care about pleasing Octavia to maintain a part in Wonkru decisions.
He was wrong, so very wrong.
Bellamy peered over his busy hands to see Clarke talking to Madi. It appeared as if they were arguing about something with Madi’s eyes narrowed in fury and Clarke’s hands placed on her hips with clear frustration etched on her brow. Madi stomped away leaving Clarke behind with her hands running over her face and through her hair.
As she began to look up, she caught Bellamy’s eyes with her own. The obvious displeasure on her face cooled into indifference rapidly before she turned and walked in the opposite direction. She walked away from everyone. She walked away from him.
The sting of how they walked away from each other all those years ago panged in his chest. They were back to the way things were in the very beginning of their relationship. Her quick wit and resourcefulness cut him down and made him doubt himself and his indignation to listen to her out of a stupid principle and loyalty to his cause built a wall between the two of them. There was nothing but walking away in those early days. Walking away angry. Walking away frustrated. Walking away scared. They kept walking away until they didn’t until they walked toward one another.
So, he assumed they were done walking away from one another if they had another choice. He thought they had passed this so long ago and never imagined they would revert to old habits, habits they let go for the sake of survival and something else—something like friendship and maybe even love.
His stomach churned with a mixture of guilt and his own irritation with her behavior. Childish was the first word that came to mind about everything she had done to force him to reconsider his position about Madi and about Wonkru in general. He almost did reconsider simply to stop the madness but one look at Monty’s worry-filled face and Echo’s lost eyes stopped him in his tracks. Clarke was wrong about this one. Madi needed to be in the middle. She knew this place better than anyone, better than even Clarke. She grew up here, and Clarke could not be in two places at once despite how cunning and resourceful she could be.
He witnessed how well-trained Madi was. He held no doubt that she could take care of herself as she seemed to have taken after her adoptive family. That, and Madi appeared insistent she be involved in some way. Stubborn to the point of stupidity, Bellamy knew arguing with her would be pointless.
He never thought Clarke would feel differently.
No amount of yelling or tantrums or the silent treatment he was now receiving would change his mind, but he thought maybe it would change hers.
Still staring at the empty space Clarke used to occupy, he did not notice anyone approaching until Echo spoke from beside him, “She’ll come around.” She sat down before continuing, “She must. We don’t have another option, and she knows that. This is the only choice.”
Despite the comfort and happiness, he once would have felt when Echo’s hand touched his knee, part of him wanted to recoil away from her but he kept still. Instead, he closed his eyes once again remembering the night all those years ago when Clarke and he were a team. He stood up and said in a low, dirty laugh without any humor, “Only choice is any oxymoron by the way. There is always a choice.”
Taken aback by the harshness of his voice, she hardened just a little, “Fine, it is the best choice, so she will come around to talking to you again. Just give it some time.”
Time. He believed he had time once, and whatever time he hoped he had was ripped from him by this need for survival. They never had time. Time felt fleeting and as distant as a soon-to-be-forgotten dream.
So, he told Echo exactly that, “We never have time. We are always running from one war to the next. There is always the next thing trying to kill us. How am I supposed to just wait when we may not get tomorrow?”
“That’s why we are fighting, so we can get a tomorrow. That is why she’s mad because she knows that this saves the most amount of people. She wouldn’t be this angry if she knew there was another way.”
Bellamy didn’t respond at that moment as he acknowledged Echo’s reasoning. He knew she had a point. The Clarke he remembered would have agreed with him. She strategized and manipulated the situation to fit her end goals. She was a bad guy for good reasons. This new mother Clarke did not fit into his plan. She was foreign and uncharted and something akin to unreasonable. He never thought he would ever describe Clarke as unreasonable. He never thought he would ever describe Clarke again.
But here he was doing both those things.
Sighing, he sat himself back down not bothering to make himself comfortable as he was not planning to stay seated for long, “I just don’t know how to make her understand to make sure she’ll follow through.”
“You can’t. You just have to trust that she will.”
He settled himself in his seat and waited in the quiet as his mind drifted into something else, a place with possible answers to all the questions thumping in his brain. Echo followed him into the silence without reluctance. She mirrored how he settled himself in his place. As seconds drifted into minutes, they remained just as they were. She yearned to be with him in the easy way they fit on the ring. After tiresome years of attempting to work it all out, they found a routine. All that time trying to gain ground and they found a balance among friendship edging into something more.
Despite her concerns about his sister, she dared hope to push them firmly into something more, leaving behind the uncertainty in their relationship. There was a new unforeseen obstacle to her star-guided wish.
Their hands never left their personal spaces, but their knees grazed one another every few beats. A tender reassurance shared with each graze. Echo was here for him. She was here, and Clarke was somewhere else wallowing in her own pity. She hoped Bellamy would see her as Clarke was now and not who she was six years ago. Clarke may not be dead, but she was buried.
Those minutes melted into hours.
They stayed between comfortable and crushing silence for as long as they could. They busied themselves with minor chores as their hands sharpened tools. They kept themselves still until Echo’s heartbeat drummed up her throat and formed a question on her lips, “How do you think Raven and Murphy are doing up there? After everything?”
Bellamy raised his stare to look up at the dimming sky, “They have to be okay.”
Her eyes moved to the sky too as she tried to muster up the same conviction in her voice, “Yeah…yeah, they have to be.”
A second later, Clarke appeared in their line of sight. No longer discernably incensed, she marched away from a pleading Harper and a rather tired Monty as they attempted to communicate or maybe convince Clarke of something. Whatever Monty said caused Clarke to turn so quickly it made Monty stumble just a little. Her eyes blazed with fury so much, Monty did more than stumble now he stepped back, and Harper placed a hand on his shoulders.
They paused and Clarke reverted to her march into her tent quite a distance away from everyone else. Harper followed her carefully after gently reassuring Monty with soft touches and a loving kiss.
Bellamy rapidly tore his eye from the scene to catch Echo’s concern dancing delicately on her face. Thinking back to the comment not so long ago, he gave another humorless laugh even graver than before, “Trust doesn’t seem enough anymore at least not for her.” He closed his lids to avoid the emotion he knew was bound to be there. It hurt more than he realized, more the moments of motionlessness where he could not ignore the hollowing hurt in his chest where his heart used to be.
Losing something, losing someone, that pain carried him from day to day until it acted as a guiding light in the darkness of endless space. It helped him to be better than he was so no one would have to feel this weight again. He believed it could not get any worse than those insistences where nothing else existed but the harrowing realization that something, that someone was gone forever. Yet, nothing compared to finding that something, finding that someone, only to realize they never were yours to lose in the first place, never yours to find again.
That pain was much worse.
Giving him a small and vulnerable smile, Echo reached out to him once more saying, “It will get better. I promise. We will figure something out.” Her right hand caressed his cheek as she breathed out the word, she thought would bring him the most hope, “Together.”
He had not meant to physically show his ache from hearing the word, but he could not help but flinch when she said it. He shared the word with all of its meaning with Clarke, and it was never meant to be given to Echo. They may have shared years and bodies in a way he never would with Clarke, yet together, together would never be hers. No, he could never give that part of himself to anyone other than Clarke, especially not when she was so close now. She existed on the same physical plane as he did. He could touch her and see her and hear her.
They could be together now.
He heard her suck in her breath as he slowly realized the hurt, he had just inflicted, yet he could not bring himself to care enough to apologize, not in a way that mattered to her. He merely gaped his mouth open with no words spilling out and soothing the air. With nothing left to say, he hardened himself as he looked away from her in shame and relief. Better she knew now they would never have been together the way she wanted.
Echo’s gaze pleading and just a little aching followed his stern face. They glazed over in acknowledgement as she began to accept the thing she understood even before their feet grazed the ground again. Her voice mirrored everything displayed on her features as a quiet surrender forced her to shrink in posture. She spoke in a small and rather broken tone, “So much for nothing changing on the ground.”
Softening at her words, he did not move her way or react any further to her.
She gave a gentle laugh, not in joy but in resignation, “I always thought your sister would be the end of us, all of us. I never thought she was meant to lead not in the way we all needed. But, then again, I never thought Clarke would be alive when we got back.”
“Echo…” he uttered to barricade her from whatever was coming next.
She lifted her hand to stop him from speaking further, “Don’t,” and she pushed herself up, “She was always in the way, Bellamy. I just thought…I thought with time, and I don’t know me you would be able to finally let her go completely. It was stupid of me to think that because she was there with you the whole time even when you were with me. She was there. She is there in everything that you do.”
She paused to collect her thoughts into coherent sentences to make him comprehend she was hurt but not in the way he thought she was, “We’re too different. We spent years up in space with only us. Of course, you would pick me, we would pick each other. On the ground, things are different. There is no peace. We have to be different people to survive down here, and those people, they can’t be together even if we promised we would.”
Bellamy stood up and grabbed her hands as he attempted to formulate anything to stop any of this from happening. All he could say was, “I love you, Echo.”
A sad smile painted her lips, “I know, and I love you too. But this…this isn’t right. And I know you know that.” She moved to touch his face and she lovingly caressed her thumb across his cheek, “We will always be family. That will never change. Everything else has to change though.”
Raising his hands in indignation, he said, “Why? We could try, but you’re just giving up.”
“I’ve seen the way you’ve looked at me since we left the ring. It isn’t the same. There’s this part of you that is going to wonder if I will ever be that person I was before.” She took a big breath and released desperation with an exhale, “And, with good reason, because you’re not an idiot, Bellamy. You see where all of this is going, and you know that I will need to make choices that may disappoint you, that may remind you of that other person we all thought I left behind and with our history this…” She pointed back and forth between them and said, “This would never last that fight.”
“Echo…”
“It’s okay. I always knew we would end. I just fooled myself into hoping there was a chance, this small chance, that we wouldn’t.”
She pulled him toward her so their foreheads would gently graze one another before she let him go and walked away from him.
Alone again, this new blow stemmed from what seemed like a lack of loyalty. He had not realized Echo noticed the difference between them as much as he had. Whenever he hesitated to send Clarke somewhere Echo was the first replacement of which he would think. Guilt wiggled its way into the bottom of his belly as two opposing forces collided with one another.
Echo was family, and she had been for three years—six if he was telling himself the truth. Despite the anger and refusal to forgive, she was there when others were not. Her presence made her family. Here, he was struggling to balance it all. These jagged pieces overlapped in awkward, agonizing ways never fitting perfectly together.
He inhaled deeply as the sun began to set. The shadows of his surroundings transformed the world around him into a much darker, terrifying place. It reflected the reality of his time on the ground. Nothing about it mirrored the serene beauty of Eden.
While he ruminated on his time here, Monty ran up to him. Eyes brighter than when he last saw him, Monty exclaimed, “They landed. Murphy and Raven landed. We weren’t sure it was them when we saw the ship, but Octavia sent Madi and Kara on a scouting mission and she just reported back that they are on their way with the two of them now.”
With that announcement, both Monty and Bellamy caught up with Echo and Emori. They gathered around the council tent as they attempted to wander inside where Octavia and Indra were already waiting.
Bellamy talked first, “Did you talk to them?”
Octavia nodded and said, “Yes, they are on their way. Apparently, they aren’t in great shape, but they were able to escape and bumped into Kara and Madi. They were almost here when we talked about fifteen minutes ago.”
Echo stepped up to insert herself into the conversation, “What happened?”
Indra answered, “We don’t know yet, but I imagine the prisoners weren’t exactly friendly.”
Octavia took the time to consider the possibilities, “Once they get here, we’ll know more about them and then we can strike and take back Eden.”
Bellamy shifted his weight and stared at his sister with conviction, “How exactly are you planning on taking on an advance military?”
“We have something up our sleeve that they don’t.”
Bellamy asked, “What?” Still staring in the direction of his sister, he saw Indra signal for him to look behind with a slight nod of the head. That’s when he heard Harper’s movement as she entered the tent.
Monty walked his way over to her saying, “She listens to you.”
Nodding in affirmation, she addressed everyone but looked directly at Octavia’s dead eyes, “I talked to Clarke. She wasn’t happy about it, but she’ll go. You just have to promise that Madi stays here.”
Bellamy interrupted Harper and stepped closer to the pair, “Go where?”
“She is already prepared to go. She says there is something Eliguis don’t know about that can work to our advantage.”
Bellamy quickly turned to speak to his sister, “You’re going to send Clarke to face an army.”
“Yes.”
Struggling to keep calm, Bellamy continued, “Who’s going with her, and what exactly is she going to do?”
Harper and Monty began to look as if they were preparing for a fight. If Bellamy was going to stand up to his sister, he had allied with them. Emori’s nerves peaked as she watched Bellamy stand straighter and stronger. She did not receive the hero’s welcome as the others did. Another painful reminder of how much of an outsider she was until space, until John. Her gut twisted at the memory of him. He was coming back, but she had seen Clarke’s bruises and John had been with them for longer.
Echo, Echo posed herself behind Bellamy as a shadow. Her face not betraying her thoughts as she witnessed Bellamy give the most emotional response she had seen in six years. The same person caused both. Another reminder of how much she was not the center of his world the way she imagined she would be one day, the way she dared to envision in those dark nights that went on forever—no end in sight, no horizon. It was just the two of them in infinite space and time wrapped in the loneliness of never tasting fresh air again.
Octavia, unfazed by the group, stared her brother down, “She’s going to get us the advantage.”
Bellamy questioned her, “And, why wasn’t I a part of this decision?”
Beginning to appear bored with the conversation, her eyes found the table in the center with a hand-drawn map saying, “I didn’t think you would care since you were for using Clarke and Madi at the beginning. I figured you would agree. It’s the best play, the smart play.”
“Clarke didn’t want to engage with Eligius. You know that, and we shouldn’t have to send her there. We don’t know…”
“You’re right. You don’t know, but that’s why I’m going…to find out.”
Bellamy moved his head to see Clarke walk in much readier to face the elements than when he last saw her arguing with Monty and Harper. He turned the rest of his body to take her in as this was the most, she had spoken to him in the last three days. He yearned for her to just look at him with the same amount of openness and feeling as before, yet she maintained her gaze on Octavia not once engaging with him.
His heart slowly sank, and his ears buzzed as Octavia and Clarke continued their conversation about what was to happen next. The only discernable words came from Clarke’s last statement before existing, “I’ll leave now. I can meet up with Kara and Madi to get some intel before I head out to Eden.”
She left then and Octavia dismissed everyone else as she stepped toward the tent flap. Echo glanced at him one last time before she too left. He felt ill as an unsettling feeling crept all over him. He knew something awful was going to occur soon. Their luck was running out.