Work Text:
The notebook comes from Lincoln –it’s the first in a long list of silent gifts, of careful apologies that Bellamy doesn’t dare say out loud and gentle forgiveness that Lincoln extends because he’s a better man than Bellamy has ever been. The notebook is leather covers and rough, yellowish paper. For a long time Bellamy keeps it hidden, unmarked. Life is a constant afterbirth, life is a constant state of hunger and fear and his hands have been covered in blood for as long as he can remember. He doesn’t want to stain those pages with his touch.
He opens the book for the first time the day Octavia names the camp –Raven’s camp, their home, something that they can name and own and clean out of blood and misery to turn it into a haven. His fingers are almost clumsy around the pen he stole from Camp Jaha before leaving –he knows how to hold rifles and knives, how to sew leather and fabric and gaping wounds, but it’s been months, ages since he last had a chance to write. He scribbles on the top of the first page an approximate date, his handwriting uglier than he remembers it.
September - AVENTINE
The fire expired sometime short past midnight, and the half-moon overhead is the only light shining on camp. Lincoln’s eyes are dark –the lines under them, darker. They’ve found the decomposing corpses of three reapers in one of the tunnels a couple days ago and Lincoln looks haunted, exhausted, devastated. “The only thing we can know to be true is death, my mother used to say.”
Bellamy suspects this might be the first time Lincoln’s mentioned his family to him. He doesn’t know what to make of it –doesn’t know what to say or what to do, how to ease the weight on the man’s shoulders. There is a long, pulsing silence, only interrupted by the hoot of an owl, a whistling breeze. Lincoln looks at the forest, Bellamy pretends that he’s not looking at Lincoln.
“She’d say everything else is just… a memory. A story we tell ourselves to make death less painful,” he finally continues, a half-assed smile ghosting across his lips and quickly vanishing. Bellamy looks away from him, out of the watchtower. “She died of a lung disease, and I became a healer.”
There is a movement in the trees nearer to the gates, Bellamy takes his hand to the revolver at his hip –the owl hoots once more, then picks up flight and quickly raises above the forest. It’s not the hunting party they are expecting, it’s not any of the possible threats they are dreading. Bellamy sighs, half disappointed and half relieved. Still –Octavia is in that hunting trip, out there, away from him. Away from Lincoln.
Neither of them dare say it, but their worry is palpable. I became a healer, Lincoln doesn’t say, because I didn’t want to let death take anyone else from me. And now he holds onto his weapons, useless. I became a guard, a criminal and a soldier, Bellamy doesn’t say, because I couldn’t allow anything to happen to my sister. And now he can only pray.
January - Five of our people left and only three of them made it back, but they didn’t come alone. Three scared children were with them –the smallest of them clutching Miller’s hand, babbling in a dialect that Lincoln could hardly understand. They’re the kids that people don’t want, kids born with missing limbs or weirdly-shaped extremities, children of the nukes. Octavia was carrying the oldest on her shoulders, promised them a home and a family without hesitation.
The first snow over their new camp arrives just in time to muffle the yells and curses that come from Carla’s tent. It’s crowded inside –Jack lets Carla claw at his arm, Bellamy presses a wet cloth to her forehead, Monroe prays in Hebrew as she cradles the baby’s head. (The first thing the kid will see, when she can finally open her tiny black eyes to the world outside, will be Aventine like something out of a legend, covered by a white mantle, the even whiter sky above.)
Raven is still awake when he finally makes it back to their tent –fiddling with a radio that, Bellamy knows, works perfectly. He doesn’t ask what’s wrong (he knows that she would resent it). Instead, he finishes drying his just-washed hands with his shirt, and goes to sit at her side. Raven gives him a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes and scoots further up the bed, so they both can sit comfortably.
“They haven’t decided on a name yet,” Bellamy tells her, soft, trying to feel his way around until he manages to get a hold of what, exactly, has placed this storm over Raven’s head. She looks up, but her expression doesn’t change. “I think they’re gonna ask Octavia for her opinion, it’ll be terrible.”
Her soft chuckle is more honest than the previous smile. She puts the radio on the wooden box that they use as a night stand and turns back to him. “How–”
“Healthy. Strong. Loved.” Bellamy tells her, and it’s as much a reassurance to her as it is to himself. We are building a home where no children is unwanted, he doesn’t say. That is the only way to justify all this death. It won’t wash the blood off our hands, but we can try.
“I got myself sterilized two days after turning eighteen,” Raven says, and Bellamy tries to find anything –in her voice, her eyes, the way her fingers are fidgeting with the sheets– that points him in the right direction, something that’ll let him know what she’s feeling so he can help. But, after a too-long silence, Raven talks again. “I’m glad I did.”
Bellamy throws an arm around her waist, guides them both to lie face to face in the tiny bed.
March - The Earth is a cruel place. We can be better than those before us. We can try.
It rains for three days straight –constant, stubborn, heavy rain. There isn’t much to be done but try to keep the gunpowder dry and press against each other in the dropship and the few proper houses they’ve managed to build.
The wet clothes hang from the dropship’s ceilings along with the drying meat and the bags of nuts and seeds, the tents have been folded in a pile on a corner and everyone’s belongings are messily scattered along the too-small space. Bellamy catches sight of Nathan, trying and failing to convince two of the older kids to go annoy Octavia instead of him. Monty is climbing up the ladder to the upper level, carrying two bottles of hooch under his left arm.
“You two gonna hole up in the workshop?” Harper asks, grinning up at him. Bellamy tries to glare at her, but her mocking smile doesn’t budge. Bellamy snatches the bottle of water from her hands.
“You know how Raven gets if she can’t work for too long,” he says, trying to get the conversation as far away as possible from what Harper’s eyebrows are suggesting. Not that it isn’t true, but he isn’t sure that Raven would feel comfortable about him talking about their relationship… Actually, she probably wouldn’t give a shit, but he definitely doesn’t like it. Harper seems to get it, because she doesn’t push the matter any further.
“Come on, grab a blanket, you’re gonna get cold as hell inside that tin can.”
The tin can in question is an old yellow bus that they found at the very skirts of the Ice Nation and had to roll back to camp with the aid of three horses. Raven spent months repairing it, stripping the interior completely and turning it into a workplace where she could stay for literal days without needing to move more than a few feet. They don’t yet know how long it’s going to rain so, just in case, Bellamy grabs a couple books along with the blanket.
April - We were raised in a culture of fear, shame and secrets, and I’m not sure we know how to do better. (The rain managed to get half of the gunpowder. Where does war end and rebuilding begin?)
The camp doubles in size by its second anniversary. A dozen tri-kru join them because they know Lincoln, Octavia shows up with a new lost kid every time she goes out hunting. Some of the people who’d originally chosen to stay at Arkadia end up changing their minds, losing their faith in a system that is still so strongly scarred by the Ark’s legacy. As long as they can help in some way, Aventine opens its doors for everyone.
Bellamy’s notebook is half-full by its second anniversary. He carefully writes down the name of each book that finds its way into camp, keeps count of bullets and bags of dry seeds, copies the names and characteristics of the most basic poisonous plants and its antidotes in case of an emergency, scribbles the poems that the skai-kru remember and the songs that the tri-kru have brought with them.
Raven steals it occasionally, when Bellamy leaves it on her worktable or near their bed and she needs to write something down urgently. He opens it to find designs, equations or, once, a quick note that read “kill Monty if he doesn’t return green screwdriver”.