Work Text:
Laughter bubbles up in Clarke's throat and it sounded strange even to her when she let it emerge from between her lips. She hadn't laughed for a long time, not since before Finn's death.
The gentle, but firm pressure of Bellamy's hand between her shoulder blades propels her forward. She can't see, his other hand obscuring her view, and is trusting him to guide her around the trees and not into them.
"I swear to God, if you walk me into a tree, I'll set you on fire," she threatened, a smile spilling onto her features. Clarke would have her arms outstretched, but after commanding her to shut her eyes earlier, a smooth box had been dropped into her arms. Clarke cradled it against her chest, her mind flitting curiously between the questions of where they were going and what was in her arms.
"I won't let you crash into anything, and there won't be any reason for you to set me on fire, Princess." A soft chuckle was the echo to Bellamy's words. He let his gaze wander around them, making sure he knew where they were. Several days earlier he'd scouted out the area and scratched marks into a tree every hundred meters or so with a knife, just so he was certain he could find his way again.
"Better not," she grumbled jokingly. "Where are we going anyway? We've been walking for almost forty minutes."
"Almost there, Princess," he responded, pressing only slightly firmer into her back.
The tree's thinned and he guided Clarke out into the open. The darkness behind his hand turned orange and even the backs of her eyelids couldn't keep the sun away. He guided her forwards for only a few minutes longer then finally let both his hands drop and moved in front of Clarke, taking the bundle from her arms. He left her to swing around, drinking in the site of their surroundings.
At some point in the past there had been a house where they stood. There were still remnants of the brick walls creating a rectangular barrier around their feet. The wooden floorboards were rotted and overgrown and the only piece of furniture left was a cracked marble kitchen bench on her far left with a yellowed sink and rusted faucet. Looking out past the furthest wall of the house she could see countless more builds, or remnants of buildings in any case. They were all in varying states of deterioration, though the ones furthest into the centre appeared as of they'd been blown apart by an unimaginable force, rather than torn down by nature. There was a certain beauty to the destruction of a society when you were the founders of a new one and stumbling across the fossils of the past.
"Bellamy, where are we?" she breathed, eyes wide and never ceasing to move across the landscape.
"I'm assuming it was some kind of settlement before the bombs. Everything's over grown and decrepit and the buildings in the centre are completely shattered, but it's peaceful and there doesn't seem to be grounders around here." His voice sounded from several meters away. Whilst Clarke had been busy gasping at her surroundings, Bellamy had moved off into the centre of the building they stood in and was setting something up.
A whisper of a breeze picked up and stirred Clarkes pale locks, blowing strands into her face. She turned towards Bellamy and her eyes widened even more. Laid out before her was a scene she never expected to behold. A patchy rug had been sprawled across the ground and Bellamy was sitting on one side of it. He gestured to the other, beckoning for her to sit down beside him.
"Your mother told me when your birthday was," he explained softly, a wide grin settling on his lips. "I figured we should do something different to celebrate. And since you're the Princess of the 100," his princess too, "we're doing something extremely different."
Clarke didn't know what to say, but trying to smother the smile that was threatening to overcome her face was a lost cause. She beamed at Bellamy, grinning a grin to match his own. All this time on the ground and she hadn't even considered her birthday, let alone doing something about it. The day before she hadn't been entirely certain of the date either. That much was obvious now at least.
She bounded over to the rug and knelt down beside Bellamy. The only thing separating them was a mash of scrap metal sheets that had been welded together into the semblance of a box. Two holes had been punched into the sides and a seat belt was threaded through as a makeshift handle.
Noticing her looking it over, Bellamy couldn't help chuckling. "Raven put it together. It may not be a picnic basket, but it's the closest thing to one that we have." So that was what she had been carrying.
Clarke looked up over the box at Bellamy and they locked eyes. It didn't matter that it wasn't a basket, or what food he'd managed to scrounge together and put inside it. The gesture was so incredibly sweet, so incredibly romantic that her chest swelled with emotion.
Laughter tripped from between her lips once more and it felt as if she'd be smiling for weeks after this day regardless of what happened. "Thank you Bellamy," Clarke chimed happily.
Shaking off her gratitude, Bellamy reached into the box. "Happy birthday, Princess."