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The sun is setting, and the sky is a beautiful violet color, soft and muted. This is something that never gets old. She hopes it never will.
“Makes it worth it, doesn’t it, Princess?”
Clarke startles when she processes the words, at the way Bellamy seemingly read her mind, but she really shouldn’t have. They’ve been in sync for so long now. Co-leaders. Partners. They don’t need words to have a conversation. These things all mean something, but she never names it; she’s not sure she could. She’s not sure there are words to describe it.
Clarke knows what it seems like. But with Finn, it was so easy to look inside herself and think, yes, I love him. Finn told her he was in love with her, and despite her heartbreak at the same, she’d thought, yes, that seems about right. It was simple. Even everything with Raven had been standard stuff, easy to name. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall for each other. Boy cheats on girlfriend.
This is nothing like that.
“I hope we can keep this up,” Clarke says, and she nods to Luna’s people. Chatting, having their hair cut, turning the cooking spit. “I hope we can become like that; overcome our pasts. ”
Lincoln’s friend Luna is just as he had described—there’s no war to be found, here by the sea. If Clarke didn’t know any better, she could say that war never even touched them, but it has. This peace has been earned, the same way they’re trying to earn theirs, piece by piece. She's glad the four of them came here to finally visit the place they were supposed to go, back when they left the dropship behind the first time.
“We won’t always be defined by the things we did to survive,” Bellamy says quietly, and it sounds remarkably like something he told her what feels like a lifetime ago. Several heartbreaks ago, really.
She watches Octavia, telling stories to the children. Octavia's smile is bright as her hands mime an explosion.
“I hope so,” Clarke says, looking at him briefly before returning her gaze to the soft violet sky. But the image lingers—the angle of his jaw, the curve of his mouth, the way his dark curls stick out in every direction. It makes her want to reach out, run her fingers through the strands, smooth it over.
She doesn’t do that. What she does is keep her gaze trained on the sunset until he says, “I’m gonna go check on O. Make sure she’s keeping the gory parts out of her heroic tales.”
She rolls her eyes. “She will.”
But Bellamy's already walking away, and she watches him go, inexplicably filled with a sense of melancholy as she does.
“You should stop wasting time.”
The quiet but blunt statement comes from Lincoln, sitting by their lone campfire. She’d forgotten he was there.
She walks over to Lincoln slowly, something inside her making her hesitant, until she reaches him and sits down. Lincoln’s got his sketchbook out. Looks like he just finished up.
The pages depict Octavia, with her hair down, no warrior make-up on. She looks oddly vulnerable without it; they’ve all become so used to her new look. Octavia's depicted to stand in front of the ocean, water sloshing along the rocks at her feet. The waves froth white at their edges. Birds fly overhead. Octavia is looking at something beyond the beach, beyond the beholder of the drawing. She’s smiling.
“That’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“You know, I like to draw, too,” Clarke says, suddenly struck with absurdity that they’ve never talked about this before.
“I know. Octavia told me.”
“I love your style. Your lines are so clean.” Lincoln nods his head in acknowledgement of the praise, and Clarke hesitates. “May I?”
“Of course,” he says, handing her the sketchbook and his charcoal.
She starts out softly sketching lines, then going over them with more force once she’s sure they’re what she wants. But her mind is elsewhere, really. What happened earlier with Bellamy wasn’t an anomaly. She finds it happening more and more, finds herself wanting to do things that she shouldn’t. To run her fingers through his tousled hair, to trace his freckles with her fingertips, to feel his strong hands holding her.
She can’t. It would change things between them.
“So,” she says after a long silence, as she's shading, “what did you mean, earlier, when you said I should stop wasting time?”
“That’s what I mean,” Lincoln says, and she looks up from her drawing to frown at him, but he nods at the page.
She looks back down, and realizes that instead of the beach at sunset she meant to draw, she’s sketched Bellamy's face.
“Oh, god,” she says, feeling herself blush furiously. His curly hair, his broad shoulders, countless of freckles.
Lincoln, bless him, doesn’t tease her about it. But maybe what he does say is worse. “You can’t keep running away, Clarke.”
“I’m not,” she protests. “What happened after Mount Weather—I came back, didn’t I? We’re doing better.”
Lincoln shakes his head, non-judgmental, but firm. “If you’re trying to build something better, you shouldn’t just do it for your people. You have to do it for yourself, too.”
“I’m trying.”
“Are you?” His eyes soften. “I’m not trying to be harsh. But I know what it’s like to be afraid of change, even when it’s something you want. I didn’t think I could ever overcome the need for Red, but Octavia got me through it.” His mouth curves into a small smile. “Insisted on fighting it together.”
Clarke's own lips curl upwards at that, remembering when she said goodbye to Bellamy at the gate. He’d insisted she didn’t have to deal with it on her own. That they’d get through it together.
“I think it’s a Blake thing,” Clarke says, smiling weakly.
Lincoln smile widens. “Perhaps,” he says softly. “Perhaps you need to make peace with your feelings, before you can make peace anywhere else.”
She looks at the siblings in the distance, where it seems Bellamy has joined the storytelling. He’s into it, effortlessly keeping the attention of the grounder children as he speaks, and Octavia watches him fondly.
Clarke's brow furrows. “Maybe you’re right.”
In the shadows of the setting sun: two pages in a sketchbook. Octavia on the left, hair down, smiling at something unseen. Bellamy on the right, sketched without thinking, hasty lines and lots of contrast.
“I like your style, too,” Lincoln says quietly, and she beams at him. “You’re very talented.”
“I’ve got other art supplies back at Arkadia. All sorts of different graphite pencils, erasers, stuff like that. When we get back, you should try them.”
He nods, and she feels a sense of accomplishment; they’ve been merging knowledge with the grounders for a while now. Clarke likes that she can give him a little piece of what she grew up with. “I think I will,” Lincoln says, making her smile and nod back.
Closing the sketchbook, they get up and abandon their campfire to join the one where most are now gathered, listening to the story. It isn’t just the children; she can see grounder adults watching with curiosity. This is what it means to be at peace, she thinks. But as long as her feelings are all knotted up inside of her, she can’t fully enjoy it, can she? Lincoln’s words still echo in her head.
It would change things between them, but things changed the moment she left. The moment Bellamy told her the words she’d said to him to make him stay; the moment they couldn’t make her do the same. The look in his eyes, the moment before she’d leaned in to kiss his cheek and say goodbye. The look of someone who realized he wasn’t enough.
She never should have walked away.
“Orpheus was the greatest poet who ever lived. His music was so beautiful, that when he played, rivers would stop flowing. Winds would stop blowing. And the skies would open up so his wondrous melodies could be heard by the gods in heaven.”
Bellamy's a really good storyteller. He sets the scene well. He even does voices, which makes her smile so helplessly with fondness. Octavia doesn’t look surprised at all; she looks nostalgic. It’s clear the reason he’s so good is years of practise. Clarke knows that this makes Octavia happy—Bellamy telling stories to the grounder children.
He has a really nice voice to listen to, the cadence of it soft and warm. He pauses for dramatic effect often, another thing that makes Clarke smile in a way where she couldn’t fight down the corners of her mouth even if she wanted to.
“One day, his wife Eurydice was bitten by vipers. Overcome with grief, Orpheus played heartbreaking songs on his lyre. The gods were moved, and so advised Orpheus, to travel to the land of the dead. And sing his songs to Hades to bargain for his wife. So it was, that Hades’ heart was softened, and he allowed Eurydice to leave on one condition.”
The sun has fully set, and the night is clear. The stars shine brightly overhead. The air smells like warm bread and cooked meat.
“That Orpheus would walk in front, and never look back.”
Has it ever really been as impossible to describe as she’s always felt it to be?
Listening to him, voice steady and warm, his face illuminated by the orange glow of flames in the dark, realization hits her like lightning.
All at once, she knows. The words have always been there, waiting to be used. It’s suddenly so simple to name, Clarke can’t believe she ever struggled with it in the first place.
“That’s not how the story goes, you know,” Octavia comments beside her as Bellamy descibes the couple’s reunion.
Clarke looks at Octavia, surprised. “What?”
“He always did this when I was a kid, too,” Octavia says fondly. “When our mom told stories she’d never spare a single gory detail but he liked changing them up. Creating happy endings where there weren’t any. It’s because he wanted me to have hope.”
Clarke blinks, taking this in. If anything, it only makes the realization from a minute ago stronger.
“So what happens?” she prompts. “How does it really end?”
Octavia looks at her, one brow lifting.
“He looks back,” Octavia says, something knowing in her gaze. “And he loses everything.”
Clarke stays silent at that, trying not to let on how much the words affect her.
She hurt him when she left. She made him stay, but he couldn’t do the same for her.
“And they lived happily ever after, the end.”
She starts a little when she realizes the story is over, and the kids are being ushered to bed by the adults.
He’s across the campfire, and when she looks over, their eyes meet. She walks towards the ocean. He follows.
The ocean isn’t quiet, but the drop in volume is still significant as they’re far enough away from the chattering people. They don’t say anything for a while, enjoying the tranquility.
“And they lived happily ever after, the end?” Clarke finally teases, tone pitched gently.
Bellamy shrugs, but his smile is sheepish. “Back in the day, O refused to go sleep until hearing those words. I can’t tell a story without them.”
She chuckles, endeared by this, as she’s been endeared by so many things now. She’s felt it for a long time, and it’s about time she stopped running away. But first things first.
“I never apologized,” she says. “For leaving.”
“Clarke…” Several expressions pass over Bellamy's face, gone too fast for her to read, as he seems to consider what to say. Finally, he settles on: “You don’t have to.”
“No, I do. You were right, and I was a hypocrite. When you wanted to leave, I said you had to come back and face it, but then I couldn’t do the same. I said I’d bear it so they didn’t have to, but I wasn’t the only one in that control room. I’m sorry.”
“The choices we made that day are always going to haunt us. But we owe it to those who can’t to live. Build something better," he says. "Getting stuck on past mistakes doesn’t help anyone.”
“Don’t look back or you’ll lose everything,” Clarke says, her smile fragile.
“Exactly,” he agrees softly.
She’s hyperaware of how close they’re standing, a veil of calm and certainty settling over her, standing there by the ocean. She finally has the words to describe it, and she speaks them out loud.
“I love you.”
He goes very still.
Silence falls, filled only with the crashing of the waves.
“What?” he says, quietly, like maybe he misheard.
She takes a shaky breath, but holds his gaze. “I love you, Bellamy.”
He stares, long enough for her to begin to doubt, and then he kisses her.
She has imagined kissing him before, fantasies she always dismissed right after, but nothing she came up with comes close to what’s happening now. He pulls away for a moment, warm brown eyes roaming her face, and he says:
“I love you, too, Princess.” Her heart soars. She isn’t sure whose grin is wider. “God help me, but I do.”
Her hand reaches out, her fingers softly tracing his freckles, while she marvels at the fact that she can do so. The featherlight touches draw a shiver from him.
“I’ll never leave you again,” she says quietly, making his eyes widen slightly.
“Clarke…” His voice is so soft, it’s nearly inaudible.
“Never,” she vows, voice firm.
Before Bellamy can say anything, she kisses him again. Her hand moves to tangle into his curls while he pulls her close, her breath hitching at the contact. She pours everything she has into the kiss, while beyond them, night and sea meet and become indiscernible.
“Oh, come on!”
They break apart, startled, at the sound of Octavia’s voice. She stalks towards them in the sand, Lincoln right behind her. Despite that, Clarke's lips still tingle from the kiss, and she’s overwhelmed, warm and so glad. The feeling goes cold when Octavia arrives.
“How could you do this to me?” Octavia demands.
Her heart is pounding. She’d thought she’d been making progress with Octavia after what happened in Tondc, that they were finally moving forward, but it seems like it’s not enough to win her approval for her brother.
“O,” Bellamy starts, heavy and pained.
Clarke knows he’d give this up in a heartbeat, if Octavia asked. She knows he was raised to always, always put his sister first. The thought of it happening still makes her stomach drop. But Octavia shakes her head, pointing an accusing finger in their general direction.
“For months I’ve had to watch you two be disgustingly in love and never say a word about it. I’ve been the third wheel to your sappy looks and ridiculous flirting so many times, so when Lincoln says you’ll get together soon enough, I say: hell no. Now I owe him my best sword. Thanks for nothing, big brother.”
Bellamy looks up, clearly begging the heavens for patience. “You made a bet?”
Clarke lets out a startled laugh, looking at Lincoln. “Wait, is that why you gave me that advice earlier?”
Octavia actually gasps, looking over at her boyfriend with a betrayed expression. “You diabolical bastard.”
Lincoln's face gives nothing away, except for the smallest quirk of his mouth. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Clarke.”
“I’m sure,” Clarke says, amused. The bet or Lincoln’s motivations don’t bother her at all; she’s glad this wasn’t what she thought it was. Her grin is wide and relieved.
“Unbelievable,” Bellamy mutters, but he’s smiling; that crooked kind of smile that makes her heart give a little jolt.
“No, what’s unbelievable is that you weren’t morons about your feelings a little longer,” Octavia says, glowering at Lincoln. “Damocles is all yours, you little schemer.” Her tone is unmistakably fond.
“You don’t see me making bets about your love life,” Bellamy complains. The siblings start arguing, as Octavia emphasizes how much she suffered as the eternal third wheel and Bellamy insists it wasn’t that bad.
Clarke watches them, smiling, feeling like her heart is too big for her body. She looks at Lincoln, who seems much the same, before he meets her eyes.
“Blakes, am I right?” Lincoln says solemnly.
Clarke bursts out laughing. Lincoln smiles at her, and she shakes her head, and she’s happy. This is peace.
Octavia’s squinting at them. “I feel like we should be offended, Bell.”
Bellamy's grinning. “I don’t think we’ve got anything to worry about,” he replies warmly, with his dark eyes focused on Clarke.
Her stomach sore from laughter, she can’t help but agree.