#Octavia is learning that some people don’t have the comfortable loving home life they do

[gray-doestheart]

Running P;TA3 is such a joy

[katnissmellarkkk]

Alrightttt, I’m on a roll so we’re going onto chappy five 🥳🥳🥳😎😎

I know the movies made the Capitol — re: basically only Effie and maybe Caesar — have those ridiculous made up accents but .... I actually feel like the description of the Capitol accent in the book is supposed to be like the Kardashians or Paris Hilton’s voice. 🤷🏼‍♀️

“Why do these people speak in such a high pitch? Why do their jaws barely open when they talk? Why do the ends of their sentences go up as if they're asking a question? Odd vowels, clipped words, and always a hiss on the letter s. no wonder it's impossible not to mimic them.” Like this is a pretty good description of how Kim Kardashian and her sisters talk. And Suzzy C did say she was inspired by the juxtaposition between war news footage and ridiculous reality television shows so... I think my theory of the Capitol all talking like they’re on the Real Housewives of LA is pretty valid.

Just imagine Paris Hilton as Effie and Nicole Richie as one of her preps

Lolololol this whole section of waxing is reminding me to go get my legs waxed 😭😭😭 straight up calling me out here, Suzanne

I like how Katniss says her stylist “apparently has no interest in seeing her until the prep team has addressed obvious problems.” Like you can tell from her narration she was expecting to feel the same was about Cinna that she does about Effie and her prep team.

The “gritty loam that takes off dirt and three layers of skin” is probably just a strong exfoliator 😭😭😭 my girl knows nothing about quality skincare 🤧🤧 someone build a Panem Sephora

She mentioned them waxing her underarms.... girl, did you have hairy armpits before this? Idk why this revelation is new to me

“Grease her down!” Just sounds wrong 😅😅😅😅 I need to stop being annoying omg I’m like a twelve year old

Hmm it’s funny to me that Katniss refers to Octavia as plump. You’d think in a place like the Capitol body image and weight would be very important. Unless it’s like back in the old, old days when being overweight was a sign of wealth. Which would make more sense so this was an unnecessary thought process curtesy of Samantha

Katniss faking a smile and thanking her prep team shows she does know how to play the game and fake it better than she says.

So ... okay, hear me out, I’m not trying to get over the top or make this into something it’s not but ... the whole stylists / Cinna coming into the room and staring at her naked is a little weird. Especially considering Cinna isn’t Lenny Kravitz who’s like a bit older than her but actually like a twenty-something year old dude.

But okay, here’s the thing I was getting at ... Cinna’s one of the best people in this series and you can’t deny that. Even if you find him boring, he’s still one of Katniss’ closest people. Also he’s probably gay. But like ... what about the other stylists? I don’t wanna be that person who makes everything more than it is, but like, this scene just sounds like a perfect opportunity for some Capitol creep to assault a teenager idk I’m probably making a mountain out of a molehill just ignore Samantha okay.

That’s nice that he complimented her mama though 🥰🥰🥰

So Katniss calls District Twelve the least desirable district but ... doesn’t District Eleven suck too? Like she also later says District Twelve is the smallest and the poorest but doesn’t she also say Rue is worse off than her and Prim? Make up your mind, Suz.

Cinna claims he asked for District Twelve but did he really get an option? 😅 If it’s his first year and Katniss claims the newbies get them anyway 🤷🏼‍♀️ Samantha is once again, reading too much into this.

Awww, Katniss is thinking about how long it would take for her to assemble this fancy meal at home 🤧🤧🤧 it would take her days and the Capitol just has the necessary resources at their disposal and they just takes it for granted. And yes, I’m aware this is supposed to be calling all us readers out who take so much for granted I know. We’re the Capitol.

“How would I spend the hours I now commit to combing the woods for sustenance if it were so easy to come by?” It’s honestly so sad but so vital to her character that Katniss has zero hobbies or real free time. Her life is about surviving. She doesn’t get to live or enjoy very much of her time. She dedicates everything to keeping Prim — and her mother — alive, sacrificing everything a teenage girl should be doing. Sacrificing even the things the other girls in her world get to do. She mentions the merchant girls and the Seam girls who are more experienced romantically and sexually and socially than her. Because she doesn’t get to be a kid or innocent or even happy, in order to focus on her and her family’s survival. And the things she does enjoy, like spending time with Gale or dancing with Prim (mentioned in Mockingjay) she downplays in case they’re taken away, because nothing good is secure in her eyes. 🥺🥺🥺

Okay but what did Katniss’ facial expression give away that Cinna knew exactly what she was thinking? Or is she just less emotionless than she and Haymitch both claim? Ironically I think they’re the only people who call her emotionless which can easily be chalked up to their self-hate and terrible self-esteems.

Katniss is so afraid they’re gonna make her be naked for the parade 😭. Honestly though they’re children that’s so creepy that they’re even allowed to make 15/16/17 year olds be naked in a parade. I mean I know they kill kids every year but isn’t there like child pornography laws in Panem? 😭

“You’re not afraid of fire, are you, Katniss?” Is so foreshadowing 😭��😅😎 Caesar Flickerman’s voice “Katniss Everdeen, the girl on fire!”

Honestly though Cinna is smart to make Katniss recognizable in the arena by leaving her with simple makeup. I know and the sky is blue we all know this already beating the dead horses until the farmer comes home.

“It crosses my mind that Cinna's calm and normal demeanor masks a complete madman.” It’s true though 😅😅😅😭😭 he was always a rebel. I actually think he may have asked for District Twelve after Katniss volunteered, because he saw the potential in her. Poor Peeta. Baby, I’m rooting you for even if no one else is.

Also I always found it a bit .... curious? That Peeta had a female stylist and Katniss had a male one? Not just because of the required nudity, you’d just think men would do better as a boy’s stylist and a woman would make a better girl’s stylist. So yes, my whole Cinna was interested in District Twelve because Katniss seemed like a good symbol for a rebellion idea seems very plausible.

I know I know I know I read wayyy too much into this stuff sometimes a cigarette 🚬 is just a cigarette 🚬

Katniss being relieved when Peeta shows up 😭😭😭 because even if she won’t admit it and even if she won’t let herself trust him, she still sees him unconsciously and completely against her will as a comfort because they’re in this thing together in a way, even if they’re supposed to try and kill each other

And honestly, it’s such a like... relatable feeling? To feel alone and nervous and uptight and then someone who you recognize — even if you maybe aren’t even friends with but you at least know — shows up and you just instantly feel less alone. I’m totally looking at this through shipper goggles and I’m not even ashamed you all knew who’s blogging you were reading ight? 😂🤣🤷🏼‍♀️

“He should know about fire, being a baker's son and all.” And he’s gonna learn a lot more about it when he falls in love — for real, falls in love, not a childhood infatuation — with the girl on fire. 🥰🥰🥰

But also, I love this particular line on a reread because it totally is an indicator towards their future. Like Peeta knows about fire, he’s experienced with how to handle it, and later on, he becomes the only person who truly comes to understand Katniss, who represents fire, in a way that no one else could ever imagine.

Hmmm, Katniss’ point of view here, talking about how Portia and Peeta’s team seem all giddy and air-headed and it’s only Cinna who seems reserved makes me rethink my previous imaginings of Peeta’s stylist. Maybe she’s just a Capitolite idiot and nothing like Cinna. And my baby got a raw deal here then too. Good thing Haymitch loves him more. Just kidding 😅😅😅

But also I wanna know why Cinna is hesitant to accept congratulations for his and Portia’s idea? Wasn’t he at least lowkey excited about it when he pitched it a page ago?

Their horses are coal black 🐴 😅. I like that they went the whole nine yards with the theme. Nothing but the best for the kids on Death Row.

Aww Katniss asking Peeta what he thinks about being set on fire is so sweet and pure for some reason. I just find their commodore here cute ok

“I'll rip off your cape if you'll rip off mine” this is literally their first friend type of interaction and it’s so pure y’all leave me be I’m emotional for them

🙃 Also lowkey reminds me of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” Everyone look away ok I’m sorry

Peeta’s shady/annoyed Haymitch comment and Katniss’ joke at his expense 🤣🤣😂🤣😂😂🥲🥲☺️🥲🥲 they’re bonding it’s so presh

“And suddenly we're both laughing.” I hope they laugh a lot together post-canon 🥲🥲🥲. If they can make the other laugh during their terrible circumstances, then they can make the other laugh anywhere. 🤧 Except in Thirteen because he’s hijacked and she’s certifiable and they’re both so used and abused and 🥺🥺🥺🥺

Okay I have to say, Suzanne Collins really builds up a lot for certain events and then just like grazes over the actual action of said event? Like she builds towards the tribute parade but then kind of rushes through off the actual event itself? It’s a common theme in her writing. And I don’t like it at all ngl.

Oh wait she doesn’t actually rush the parade events the paragraph before just looked like she was about to I jumped the gun 🤣😂🤭 but what I said is still completely true for many events in these books sorry not sorry

I’m definitely reading too much into it but the fact that District One — the favorite of the Capitol — gets snow white horses and District Twelve gets coal black horsies kind of ... seems to imply something .... 🤭

Cinna just lets out a sigh of relief “it worked” like ... way to fill your tributes with hope, dude. “Yeah, you’re totally safe, don’t be scared-OH THANK GOD THAT WORKED I wasn’t actually sure you wouldn’t blow up.” But actually this answers my previous inquiry about why he seemed hesitant I guess he wasn’t even sure this wouldn’t burn them up that’s nice 🤭🙃

It’s a literal trial by fire *cue drum hit* 🥁 aww, I just cracked myself up 😭

“Then he gently tucks a hand under my chin. "Remember, heads high. Smiles. They're going to love you!" This is caught halfway between being very Capitol-y and very father-brotherly and idk which way to take it but it’s kind of cute 🤭

“For the first time, I look at him and realize that ablaze with the fake flames, he is dazzling.” This is such a significant line because Katniss isn’t saying Peeta is technically good looking (like when Haymitch said they were decently attractive) or someone else thinks he’s good looking (i.e Gale, her mother and lowkey Finnick) but she’s saying she herself thinks he’s attractive. Girl, your crush is showing.

"I think he said for us to hold hands," says Peeta.” I’m sure Cinna actually did say that but this just seems like a very good opportunity for Peeta to hold the hand of the girl he has a massive crush on. 😭😭😭

Okay Cinna gave a thumbs up so he actually was saying that but can you imagine Peeta’s excitement right now?

I mean, yeahhhh, there’s the certain death looming over him too but like live in the moment, babe. 🥰😘🤗👌🏻

I like that Katniss says the crowd is at first like 😳😳😳 before they start cheering like they’re thinking “what are these backwoods, hillbilly kids doing this year?”

“At first, I'm frozen, but then I catch sight of us on a large television screen and am floored by how breathtaking we look. In the deepening twilight, the firelight illuminates our faces” okay they both have to be pretty naturally attractive people objectively, because you illuminate my face without much makeup and no one is gonna be cheering.

“Remember, heads high. Smiles. They're going to love you! I hear Cinna's voice in my head. I lift my chin a bit higher, put on my most winning smile, and wave with my free hand.” I wonder what the true difference is for Katniss between Cinna and Effie saying this to her? Maybe it’s that Effie is just outright mean to her sometimes whereas Cinna shows her nothing but kindness from the start and expresses sympathy and understanding? It’s probably that he’s already earning her trust versus Effie who’s just cruel I’m not over her comments on the train ok

“I'm glad now I have Peeta to clutch for balance, he is so steady, solid as a rock.” Right from the start, Katniss refers to Peeta as solid and steady. Idk, I feel like this is something that the movies really misses along the way. Katniss wasn’t always strong or confident at all and Peeta, at least publicly, exuded those qualities pretty well. Samantha’s complaining again ™️ 💁🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️

Also this is just outright foreshadowing how Peeta will eventually become her rock. Or that he will be soon painted a rock ... pick and choose which way you wanna go with this. 🤷🏼‍♀️💁🏼‍♀️😅🤣

“As I gain confidence, I actually blow a few kisses to the crowd.” Okay, see I feel like Peeta really gives Katniss confidence in herself. If he’d been there in District Thirteen and they’d done propos together, she probably would have been a thousand times better.

But also this makes me think Katniss actually has it in her to be a charismatic, confident, alluring celebrity. She just chooses not to. 🤗🤗🤗

But this also reminds me of “She has no idea the effect she can have” okay imma move on and stop focusing on every little detail

I say that every chapter 🤧😅

“The pounding music, the cheers, the admiration work their way into my blood, and I can't suppress my excitement.” Say whatever you want, Katniss is still such a girl underneath it all. She gets excited over people liking her and cheering her on. And I know it’s because it increases her chances of getting sponsors but still

Honestly Peeta trying to showcase Katniss and let her take the spotlight is so selfless and indicative of his ultimate plan to help her win but also ... I can see how Katniss would believe it’s too good to be true and he’s messing with her. That he’s just playing the game to earn her trust, get her guard down and manipulate her later.

See, Peeta is actually framed at the start like the typical, standard YA love interest turned villain. In majority of YA books, at this point the boy is kind and sweet and helpful to the girl until she trusts him completely and then he turns on her and uses everything she gave him to destroy her. But the difference is, Katniss refuses to truly trust him and she is guessing his game incorrectly at every step. And then it’s revealed that it was never a game and he truly isn’t messing with her and everything he’s done that’s seem too good to be true and not even remotely plausible has actually been genuine and heartfelt and that, my friends, is why Peeta is above all other YA love interests. Because Everlark is actually the foil to many of the cliches. That was a long speech over some incoherent thoughts I’m so sorry if you suffered through that.

“It's not until we enter the City Circle that I realize I must have completely stopped the circulation in Peeta's hand. That's how tightly I've been holding it.” Awww he is her rock 😭🤧🥺

"No, don't let go of me," he says. The firelight flickers off his blue eyes. "Please. I might fall out of this thing." Okay this part is so cute and so blatantly setting Peeta up as her main love interest omg 😅 this isn’t the least bit subtle or disguised. But first off, the fact that Katniss is also Peeta’s stability here too 😭😭😭 and second of all, she takes time to notice his blue eyes against the firelight? She was attracted to him from the very start, y’all. That’s indisputable. 👌🏻😎🤧

“It's not really fair to present us as a team and then lock us into the arena to kill each other.” I agree with you, baby, it’s not fair at all. But you two take care of that situation nicely. Or not. Y’all do start a dang war. 🤭🤭🙃🙃

It’s rather ... ironic that it’s District Twelve’s chariot of them all that is pulled up and stopped directly in front of President Snow’s mansion. I know it’s a book, certain details like this are definitively contrived, I know get over it. 🤦🏼‍♀️💁🏼‍♀️

So uh. Snow is a small thin man? Why do I suddenly imagine Danny Devito as Snow 😅😅😅😅🤣🤣🤣🤣 y’all know he’d kill the role

“The darker it becomes, the more difficult it is to take your eyes off our flickering.” Okay, this is such a great line and it’s so significant to the rest of the series? The fact that Katniss — and Peeta, let’s not forget our boy — became symbols of the revolution. Like this line is deep if you think about it. The worse things in Panem got, the more the civilians looked towards Katniss and Peeta for hope 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥰🥰🥰🥰

Omg now after Songbirds and Snakes, we know the national anthem. I’m sorry, babies, that you have to endure that I’ll get you out of there 🙉🙉🙉

I feel like in part, the Capitol camera crew — Cressida, Pollux .... Pollux’s brother... is that you here???? — put so much attention on District Twelve because it would create some resentment and competition between them and the careers 🤭🤗

“I notice a lot of the other tributes are shooting us dirty looks, which confirms what I've suspected, we've literally outshone them all.” Insert Gretchen Wieners “I can’t help that I’m popular!” 😅😅😅😅😅

“I realize I'm still glued to Peeta and force my stiff fingers to open. We both massage our hands.” — they were hanging on so tight 😭😭😭😭

“Thanks for keeping hold of me.” He’s so sweet ☺️☺️☺️ I love him even if he’s kind of an idiot sometimes but so is Katniss so let’s not point fingers

“I'm sure they didn't notice anything but you. [...] And then he gives me a smile that seems so genuinely sweet with just the right touch of shyness” Omg I know Katniss views this as him trying to manipulate her but the fact that he’s actually just admitting the way he’s felt for years is so 😭😭😭😭 if only you’d spit it out sooner, Bready

“he gives me a smile that seems so genuinely sweet with just the right touch of shyness that unexpected warmth rushes through me.” She literally has a crush on her fellow tribute and her first line of defense is to decide he out to get her for making her feel this way 🤣😭🙃

“The more likable he is, the more deadly he is.” The more my crush grows, the more deadly he becomes. I know I’m reading this with shipper goggles but guess what? I’m unashamed. 🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️ who feels guilty for reading this book with an Everlark bias not this girl right here 🙋🏼‍♀️🙋🏼‍♀️🙋🏼‍♀️

“I stand on tiptoe and kiss his cheek. Right on his bruise.” Okay first off, she says cheek here but according to a chapter ago, she claimed the mark was on his jaw... so in other words, she’s incredibly short. If a medium height guy has a bruise on his jaw and she has to stand on her tip toe to reach it... well... hashtag LittleKatniss

And second off.... can you even imagine how Peeta must feel. He genuinely complimented her here, the girl he has had a crush on forever, and she responds by kissing his cheek. He was probably really happy at this moment. And also this probably played further into his buying into her false display in the arena. That here we have her clutching his hand, smiling and laughing with him and kissing his cheek. Idk what I was trying to say necessarily but I made myself sad wow way to go me 🥺🥺🥺🥺🤧🤧🤧

Anyways! Those are my very over the top and too detailed thoughts! Hope you enjoyed if you read this! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳😎😎😎😎😎😎😎🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

[slytherinbarnes]

Sub Rosa [69]

xi. the dark year

Pairing: Bellamy Blake x reader

Word Count: 4.3k

Warnings: allusions to suicidal thoughts from previous chapter (5.01), mentions of death, language, anxiety.

Summary: The march to Shallow Valley begins...

a/n: next week we finish s5!!!! how we feeling!!!! the taglist for this series is open! I hope you enjoy, please let me know what you think!!!

previous chapter // season masterlist // series masterlist

The march is as boring as you expect it to be. 

At some point guns are passed around and you end up with a rifle slung over your shoulder, one more thing you're forced to carry in your trek through the desert. It reminds you of leaving Becca’s lab after Praimfaya and searching for the rover, a story that you ultimately end up telling Bellamy about. And once you get started with one story of your time on Earth without him, he’s eager to hear more. You tell him about going to Polis and then Arkadia, nearly dying until a rainstorm came through and gave you and Clarke water, the sandstorm that destroyed the rover. You tell him about the journey to get more panels, when you and Clarke almost ended it all, and he senses your hesitation when you get to that part, not sure if you should tell him everything. But he reaches out and grabs your hand, threading your fingers together, reminding you that you’re always safe and home with Bellamy. So you tell him just how bad things got, how close to the end you truly were, until the Universe sent a miracle from the sky, a bird that led you to Shallow Valley. 

His favorite stories are the ones you tell him about Madi. How she nearly killed you and Clarke both when you first met her, how she taught you both how to fish, and the two of you taught her English. Learning to drive the rover, and fight, living as a mini family in the valley, waiting for the rest of your family to return. The only thing you don't tell him about are the radio calls. You aren't sure why, maybe it’s embarrassment, maybe you’re worried he’ll think it was obsessive, you don't know. All you know is that he must not have heard a single one, because he never mentions them, and you’re sure he would have if he had heard them. Instead, you skip over all of the calls and focus on the good moments instead, the happy things, not sure you’re quite ready enough to tell him just how desperately you missed him. 

At some point near the end of the first day, Bellamy’s radio comes to life with the sound of Echo’s voice, broken up and speaking Trig. “Belomi, hola. Yu sen ai in?”

Bellamy, come in. Do you read me? You and Bellamy exchange a look, before he steps out of the marching group and off to the side, with you, Monty, and Harper right behind him. He lifts the radio and says, “Echo-”

You reach out and put your hand over his own, lowering the radio for a second. “Wait, Bellamy, do you normally speak Trig like this? Or is there a reason?”

As soon as you say it, you see a look pass over his face, letting you know they don't normally communicate in Trigedasleng. Your warning reminds all of you of something you need to be careful not to forget: the enemy can hear you every time you use this radio. Bellamy lifts the radio again and you pull your hand away, and this time he answers in Trigedasleng. “Hakom Trig? Chit’s skechi?”

Why are we speaking Trig? What's wrong? He releases the button and you all stare at the radio in tense silence, waiting for her answer. “Emo get in bilaik yo’s komba raun. Yo don drop nishiv of.”

They know you're coming. You've lost the element of surprise. The answer hits you like a blow to the gut, making you sick. Without the element of surprise, this war is a massacre. You can see that Harper and Monty don’t look as shocked as you and Bellamy do, and you realize now their Trig must be limited, so you translate, “They know we're coming.”

Their reaction is immediate, the same as yours, and then Monty looks at you and asks, “Clarke?”

The question hits you like a second blow, more powerful than the last. The thought hadn't even crossed your mind, but your twin was the only other person that knew about the eye in the sky that could have snitched. You shake your head, anger flaring within you at the danger she has just put all of you in, and you grind out, “It had to be.”

Echo must start to worry about the silence from your end of the radio because she comes back on to say, “Belomi, yo gaf bak yo klin. Osir don hon daun ‘mo mavrik, den yo’s klir, komonou. Ba yo nou na komba hir nowe.”

Bellamy, you have to go back. We have their pilot, so you're safe for now. But you can't come here. You and Bellamy watch each other as she speaks, both of you translating the words at the same time. It’s weird to see him so proficient in Trigedasleng considering the few words he knew before he went to space, but when you think about it, teaching Madi English made you fluent in Trig too. Both of you are so different from the people you left behind, past versions of you now burned away by Praimfaya, but somehow your comfort with Bellamy hasn't changed. There’s so many new things you have to learn about him now, but there’s no doubt in your mind that he has your heart and you have his. 

Bellamy lifts the radio, shaking his head, though Echo can't see it. “Nou na kom au. Chilja: osir nou na bak op, en osir nou na hod op. Kom fai sintaim osir kamp ouder. Yo gada daun in na lok osir op klir trei. Pas daun, nou mori noumou.”

Not possible. It's a long story, but we can't go back and we can't stop. We're five days out. You have that long to find us a safe way in. After that we run out of rations. You can see the devastation on Bellamy’s face at this new dilemma you've all somehow found yourself in. Echo’s voice comes through the radio one last time before falling silent, “We're on it. Be safe, over and out.”

You can hear the worry in her voice, and a wave of anxiety washes over you, wondering if that worry is born from affection. But Bellamy being Bellamy, must sense your thoughts, and he reaches out and puts his hand on your cheek, whispering, “I love you, my radiant moon.”

“And I love you more than the stars.”

He smiles at you, one of those bright ones, and you realize this is the first time you’ve said those words to him since he came down to Earth. His smile is infectious, and it makes you smile, both of you temporarily forgetting your impending peril until Monty clears his throat and mutters, “The eye.”

The smiles drop from both of your faces, suddenly brought back to the present, and you shake your head. “Uh, right. We should probably tell Indra.”

“And Octavia.” You nod at Bellamy, agreeing, as he passes the radio to Monty. “Keep an ear out for our friends, in case they call again.”

“Will do.”

And with that, you all rejoin the army, and you and Bellamy march off in search of Indra. It doesn’t take long for you to find her, exactly where you last saw her: marching with Gaia and the other faithful. As soon as she sees the two of you approaching and catches the expression on your faces, she steps away from everyone, giving the three of you some privacy. You and Bellamy let her know what’s going on quickly, and a look of alarm passes over her face before she quickly regains her composure and nods towards the front of the army. “We need to inform Octavia.”

The three of you quicken your pace and make it to the front, only to be stopped by Miller. “What do you want?”

You can sense the anger radiating off of Indra and Bellamy in waves, so you walk slightly ahead of them, shifting Miller’s focus to you. “We need to talk to Octavia.”

He looks at you, skeptical, and you give him a pleading look. “It’s important, Miller. You know we wouldn't be here if it wasn't.”

You know he recognizes the truth in your statement, because he motions to a pair of guards walking nearby. “Disarm and follow me.”

You glance at Bellamy and he nods, agreeing to the terms, so you hand the guy to your right your rifle and knife before following Miller. Bellamy and Indra both follow you, and Miller announces your arrival to Octavia before stepping back slightly, but he sticks close enough to keep an eye on all of you. Indra is the first to speak, “You're marching us into a massacre.”

Octavia doesn't turn to look at any of you, her eyes firmly locked on the horizon ahead. “We'll see.”

“Echo radioed. The enemy knows you're coming.” She bristles slightly, and you can tell the news is affecting her even though she tries to pretend otherwise. “We don't need to worry about the missiles, but they're moving their weapons into position.”

Indra adds, “It's safe to assume that since there's only three realistic ways into the valley, that all three will be heavily defended.”

Bellamy, who has stayed silent as you and Indra do most of the talking, finally quips, “Echo's scouting now, looking for the best way in. But since we can't go back because you burned the farm, and since we can't stop because we'll starve, we thought we should let you know that you've killed your people.”

You look at Bellamy in shock, not expecting to hear the words come out of his mouth. You’re pissed at Octavia too, but you’re not eager to cross her again, your near death experience still too fresh in your memory. You grab his hand and whisper his name as a warning, “Bellamy.”

But he ignores you and snaps at his sister, “Enjoy your walk.”

He drops back and you glance at him and then to Indra, silently apologizing before you drop back and follow him. You get your weapons back and secure them to you before jogging after Bellamy and catching up to him near the back, but you can tell from the expression on his face that he doesn't want to talk. So instead, you slip your hand into his and stay by his side, allowing him his anger for now. 

-

Eventually night falls and the marching stops, giving all of you a temporary reprieve from the long journey, at least until morning. 

You and Bellamy set up your tent and then build a fire, and Monty and Harper set up their tent nearby before joining you around the warmth of the fire. All of you sit and eat your rations in silence before the other couple bids you both goodnight, leaving you and Bellamy alone. You finish up the last of your rations, just enough to keep you full for a few hours, before you pull out your Grounder knife, looking over the notches on the handle. By your count, it’s now missing a few, and as you start to wonder what you can use to add the next few lines, Bellamy’s hand reaches out to you, his own knife in his grip. You look up at him, taking the knife with a nod of thanks, unaware that anyone knows that you actually keep up with your knife kills. You might be embarrassed if it was anyone other than Bellamy, but judging by the look on his face, he seems to understand. You don’t count the kills like trophies, the way others might, you count the kills to remind you of what you’ve done. At this point, it’s hard to know how many people you’ve killed with guns, explosions, or levers that bring radiation. But this knife reminds you of the personal ones, the lives that you took in close proximity to another person, close enough to see the life drain from them. It’s a way to remind you of your humanity, a way to remind you that each of these kills affected you in some way, the same way the forgotten kills affect you, whether you realize it or not. 

You add two tallies for the two Eligius prisoners you killed, before you pause and consider Cooper. You didn’t use this knife to kill her the way you usually would, but you did use it to cut a hole in her glove, sealing her fate before she even woke up. To you, it’s enough for you to know her death should stay on your mind. You shouldn't sweep it under the rug as another casualty of war. You need to remember how willing you were to kill her if it meant it could save everyone else, which ultimately didn’t happen. Cooper is dead and Wonkru is still marching on the valley, worms be damned. 

As you add a third tally for Cooper, bringing your knife kills up to ten, you glance over at Bellamy, his gaze turned away from you. You take note of his clenched jaw and angry expression. “We have to talk about it eventually, Bellamy.”

“No, we don't.”

“Both of our sisters betrayed us.”

“Your sister betrayed us, probably to save Madi. And though it puts us in a shitty position, I can forgive her for that.” Bellamy turns to look at you, pulling in a deep breath. “My sister put us in the fighting pits together, after she forced you into making a deal that would save my life but end yours. She did that knowing how I feel about you.”

“Only after my sister ratted us out and left us there. If we’re keeping count, Clarke has betrayed us twice. And you’re right, both betrayals were probably to keep Madi safe, but at what expense to everyone else? To me? To you? I love Madi, she is my niece, my family, and I’d do anything to keep her safe. But sometimes Clarke’s decisions are reckless when it comes to Madi’s safety. She listens to the storm within her, just like you used to do, and doesn’t stop to consider every angle, every possibility. I’m not letting her off the hook that easy.”

Bellamy is quiet for a while, both of you thinking of your sister related drama, and when he finally speaks, his anger has cooled, though not completely, and his voice is soft. “I just can't forgive Octavia for nearly taking you from me. Not after I just got you back.”

The words melt you, your anger towards your sister forgotten as you reach out to comfort Bellamy. You pull him in for a kiss, understanding his fear of losing you, because you lived with it for six years when you lost him. When you pull away, you rest your foreheads together, keeping your eyes closed as you sit and enjoy the fact that you can even do this. Because Bellamy is back, and he loves you, and you’re alive, despite Octavia’s best efforts. You whisper, “You’re gonna have a hard time getting rid of me now. I don’t want to let you out of my sight, I’m so afraid of losing you again.”

He pulls away so he can look at you, his expression sad. “I have the same fear. It was so hard being on the Ring without you. It felt like a ghost was hanging around with me at every moment. I was searching for you everywhere, always disappointed when you weren’t there.”

You feel tears well up in your eyes, and you kiss him again, hoping it helps. This time when you pull away, he wraps you up into his arms and turns his face to the sky. You follow his gaze, both of you tracing constellations, and for the first time in six years, he asks, “Tell me about the stars?”

You look at him, feeling a rush of affection as you do, your voice cracking with emotion when you whisper back, “Of course.”

-

The second day of marching is just as awful as the first, though it’s now punctuated with an air of anxiety as you all march one day closer to your massacre.

The second night, all of you retire early, too tired to sit around and talk, but you wake up a few hours later, wide awake for some reason. You glance over at Bellamy, smiling down at his sleeping form, so peaceful as the worries of the world don't reach him in his dreams. Not wanting to disturb him, you quietly crawl out of the tent, taking the radio with you, just in case someone calls. 

As you sit outside and look at the stars, you nearly jump out of your skin when the radio comes to life. “Belomi, hola.”

Bellamy, come in. You pick up the radio and answer, “Nou Belomi, en's ai. Wanlida.”

Not Bellamy, it’s me. Wanlida. You add your Grounder nickname at the end, not sure if she recognizes your voice. She immediately answers, “Osir don strat.”

We have a plan. You smile at the radio in your hand, feeling a rush of gratitude to your friends on the other side. “Tel ai op.”

Tell me. Echo immediately relays the plan to you in Trigedasleng, and at times, you start to think about how weird it is to be carrying on a conversation with your boyfriend’s ex. And though you get flashes of jealousy when you think about them together, you start to marvel at how talking to her now isn't that bad. Though maybe it’s because you have something to talk about, and it has nothing to do with Bellamy. Still, as soon as you get the plan from Echo, you both exchange goodbyes and you run back to your tent to tell your boyfriend the good news. As soon as he knows, you both go to Indra next, as usual, and tell her the plan. Once she knows, you look at Bellamy, both of you aware of what you have to do next, and he nods, looking reluctant. 

You both walk to Octavia’s tent, and the closer you get, the louder her voice grows. You can tell she’s having a strategy meeting with her advisors, one that does not include an encouraging plan. “We're gonna take heavy fire, but as long as we stay together, we can still do this. Does everybody understand?”

You and Bellamy are both stopped at the door by the guards, and Bellamy demands, “We need to see her now.”

Octavia’s voice comes from inside the tent, granting you both permission. “Let them in!”

As soon as you step inside, you scan the room, looking at the advisors, before your eyes fall to the map on the table in front of Octavia. “You don't need that.”

“The spy found us a way in?”

“Yes.” Bellamy turns to look at the advisors gathered around. “Everybody out.”

They stand frozen in place until Octavia dismisses them, and then they all exit quickly, leaving the three of you alone. Bellamy walks closer to his sister, and you hang back, sensing that he has something he wants to say to her. “Before I tell you this, we need to set some things straight.”

“I'm listening.”

“This war that you're so anxious for is about to be fought on the last survivable land on Earth. That is monumentally stupid. But it's here, and in four days, when we march on that valley, we are gonna fight this the right way.”

“Does the right way end up with us winning?”

Bellamy shakes his head, annoyed that winning is all she cares about. “It ends with us accepting the other side's surrender. Once they lay down their arms, we share the valley with them. No executions. No fighting pits. Real peace.”

“I accept your terms. Now, tell me how to win this war.”

Bellamy steps away, already done with the conversation. “Indra has the details.”

She calls out to his retreating figure, “Bellamy...this is how it was meant to be. You and me. Fighting side by side.”

Bellamy stops beside you, both of you now standing near the exit of the tent, and he reaches out for your hand before turning to face Octavia. “I'm not fighting for you. I’m fighting for la lune, who you were willing to kill a few days ago. I'm fighting to get back the rest of my family, and I'm fighting so that we can finally build a future here.”

You see a look of hurt pass over Octavia’s face as she realizes he doesn't consider her part of his family, but if he sees it, he ignores it. He just turns back to you and walks out of the tent, guiding you along after him.

-

The next three days of marching are almost continuous, as Octavia decides against stopping to camp 3 nights in a row. Instead, you stop for an hour or so twice a day before continuing the march to the valley. Finally, on day 6, you arrive at the final camping spot, just outside of the valley. You all pitch your tents during the day and spend most of it resting, because as soon as the next day dawns, the war begins. 

You and Bellamy crawl out of your tent sometime after nightfall, finally rested after so many days of marching, and you both sit around a small fire and talk, keeping yourselves distracted from your nerves, the way you used to before he went to space without you. Monty comes over as you chat, sitting down on your other side, splitting his rations into three. “Last of the rations.”

You and Bellamy accept his offer with a nod of thanks, and as you all savor the last bit of food you have, Monty turns to look between you and Bellamy. “Look, if you want us with you at the front-”

Bellamy cuts him off, seeing the reluctance on his face, aware of Monty’s dislike of killing. He shakes his head and motions between himself and you. “No, we got this.”

You nod, adding, “You stay. They're leaving the tents here, and once the fight is over tomorrow, you can come and join us.”

Bellamy looks up at the stars, and then over to Monty. “I told Octavia we're taking 80 acres, on the Eastern edge of the valley. Grow something other than algae, okay?”

They look at each other for a long second before they break into smiles, and you grin at the interaction, glad to see them both happy, even if it’s just for a few minutes. Eventually, Monty leaves to go find Harper, and you and Bellamy watch the stars before he suddenly asks, “The last time we were in the desert marching to war, you said something that I never got to ask about.”

You glance away from the sky, and over to him. “What’s that?”

“You said you have a house in the valley, built for two. Did you mean for us?”

“No, I was definitely getting it ready so I could share it with some other guy.” Bellamy laughs, remembering when he asked you to move in with him, and you laugh too. “Yes, for us, if you want it. It’s the perfect size for us, slightly larger than the room we had at Arkadia. It’s got a kitchen and a bathroom, but the best part is the bedroom.”

He gives you a suggestive look. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

You laugh and playfully hit his arm. “Not for that reason. It has a window on the roof that opens up to the sky. During the day it lets warm sunshine in, and at night you can see the stars.”

He smiles down at you, tugging you closer to him, whispering against your lips, “It does sound perfect for us.”

He pulls you in for a kiss and you let yourself get lost in the kiss, reminding you of how wonderful it is to be wrapped up in his arms. As the two of you start to pull away, someone clears their throat, and you jump apart, slightly embarrassed. You look up to see Indra looking down at the two of you, and you swear she’s hiding a smile as she nods towards Octavia’s tent. “Last strategy meeting, and they want you both there.”

You stand and follow her to the tent, the last three to arrive, gathering around the table that features the new map, drawn for your plan. Octavia looks at Bellamy, nodding at him to begin. “At dawn, our group in the woods will open fire on pillbox one, in position A here. At the first sign of attack, McCreary's forces at point B and C will converge to reinforce A, thinking that's where we're coming through.”

Octavia muses, “Leaving the other two doors wide open.”

Bellamy glances at you, and you finish the plan, pointing down at the map. “We'll come through here, point C. Now, if we time it right and we move fast, there won't be any resistance.”

Indra mutters, “Once we're in the woods, we take the village.”

Miller finishes, “Once we're in the woods, we win.”

All of you look up and around at each other, making sure everyone understands, and Brell is the first to nod. “Okay, I'll tell my people.”

Miller turns on her, growling, “Your people?”

Indra breaks up the argument and snaps, “Save it for the enemy. Spread the word, we go at first light.”

Everyone starts to dissipate, and Octavia turns her attention to you and Bellamy. “Tell Echo I said well done.”

“You can tell her yourself in two hours.” Bellamy grabs your hand and leads you from the tent, eager to end any conversation with his sister. The two of you head back outside and over to your fire, deciding to spend your last few hours before the war together, enjoying each other’s company. Though your victory seems imminent, you never know what will happen in war. The tides can change at any second, and you could lose, people could die. Which is why you and Bellamy stay huddled together, making sure each of you know just how much you love each other. 

Just in case.

-

next chapter

[poppykru]

This is a collection of my favourite canonverse fanfiction. I actually started reading bellarke fanfiction last year when season 6 premiered so a lot of the fanfics you see are old and popular within fandom. Nevertheless, I love them and they deserve the recognition for how awesome they are. 😊 I went through my bookmarks twice and I am sure I still missed some, but this is getting really big and has now taken me so long to compile so this is the list. I’ll update it once the show is over. For now though, enjoy! 

To all the writers, thank you for your beautiful works! I appreciate you so much! 💖

Most are one shots because that is just my preference for format. Some fanfics are within the universe, but not part of canon (e.g. Ark AUs) so I have put at at the bottom under Canonverse AUs. I tried to list them in order of time in canon but some were difficult to classify. 

One more thing, this is a Bellarke fic rec. If it was a general the 100 fic rec, this would include some great non-ship fics I’ve read or other ships. I might do a mini fic rec with those. (Also, I’ll probably post a big AUs fic rec, because my true love is AUs and i have read some masterpieces everyone needs to read!)

With that I am done. I hope you enjoy my collection and please don’t forget to show all these amazing fanfic writers some love - give kudos, bookmark, comment! Let’s support our content creators! 💖

Single Chapter

Inconceivable by @johnnyjaqobis​

Explicit | 8,798 words

Bellamy and Clarke have to perform a ritual to seal a grounder aliance. It’s unconventional.

Just the Beating of Our Hearts by @hiddenpolkadots​

General Audiences | Fluff | 4,683 words

He leans into it, tilting his body towards her where she still stands between his legs, and they’re so, so close, breathing in each other’s air before his eyes flick up to meet her gaze and then— Abby opens the door and steps out of the supply closet. “Clarke.”

or, 3 times Bellamy gets hurt and one time he isn’t.

Strong as an ox by @wellsjahasghost​

Season 1 | Teen and Up | 5,399 words

Clarke tries to rescue Bellamy from some Grounders holding him captive, but things don’t go quite as planned

Here we go Season 1 The line between love and lust does not exist.

Meet me in the Morning by @argyledpenguin​

1x03 | Explicit |Time Loop AU | 25,375 words

“I guess one of us is messed up,” he said, “and it’s part of our hallucination that the other is, too.” He paused. “Seems appropriately hellish that my mind sticks me with you.” She pursed her lips. “Likewise.” Clarke is trapped in a stupid time loop, and guess who’s trapped with her?

Sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles by @viansian​

Season 1 | Mature | Angst | 10,858 words

“I have spent my entire life afraid of men thought to be gods,” he finally says. “I’ll tell you a secret, princess: these men? The ones who claim to be deities? Their blood isn’t ichor. They bleed red like the rest of us, and sometimes they need to be reminded of that.” or Clarke is abducted by the grounders. Bellamy freaks out.

and just as the sun chases after the moon (i will always chase after you) by @viansian​

Post season 1 | Teen and Up | 12,013 words

He had once gone into hell for Octavia. He wonders at what point he had begun to love Clarke as much as his sister.

In the Silence Between Worlds (that’s where I’ll find you) by @viansian​

Season 2 | General Audiences | Fluff | 12,647 words

It’s a goddamn tragedy that both of them could be so incredibly in love with each other and yet neither could notice it.

aka everyone knows Bellamy and Clarke are in love except for Bellamy and Clarke.

I loved him first by emmaofmisthaven

Season 2 | Teen and Up | Unrequited Love | 1,306 words

Clarke is missing and Bellamy is going after her. From Octavia’s POV.

Eight Minutes Against a Tree by @cupcakesandtv​

Season 2 | Explicit | 2,320 words

Clarke and Bellamy use each other to relieve tension.

The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Sky Person by @ponyregrets​ 

Season 2 | General Audiences | Fluff | 2,320 words 

Clarke and Bellamy don’t know how to relationship.

Here be Dragons by ms_scarlet

Post 2x08-2x09 | General Audiences | Hurt/Comfort | 1,121 words

“Well, here we are.” She gestures towards the space beyond the electrified wire in front of them. “We fell from space only to find a pit full of monsters except they didn’t warn us that we’d find them in ourselves.”

All You Have is Your Fire by @hawthornewhisperer​

Post 2x09 | Teen and Up | Angst | 2,402 words

Bellamy didn’t think he could survive Mount Weather. But he did, and somehow the aftermath is almost worse.

Do you look like me? Do you feel like me? by heroic

Post 2x16 | Teen and Up | 511 words

There are some selfish wants Clarke will not allow herself, even when everything is dirt with decomposing bodies.

Gifts by winterwaters

Post season 2 | Teen and Up | Fluff | 4,154 words

Bellarke are at a grounder festival. Clarke is pretty and Bellamy is flustered. Fluff.

What We Have to Do  by ms_scarlet

Post season 2 | Teen and Up | Hurt/Comfort | 4,910 words

As the air turned cooler, the forest burst into color and the leaves started to fall, and all Bellamy saw was death and decay. He realized that Clarke had been gone longer than he’d known her. He’d lived most of his life without knowing her, so it didn’t seem like it should be such a striking realization, but crashing to Earth was such a cataclysmic event, he realized he’d been thinking of it as a new life beginning and now she’d been out of it longer than she was there.

This One’s for the Faithless by @argyledpenguin​

Post season 2 | Explicit | Angst | 22,645 words

“He couldn’t worry about her, about how she’d fare, and whether she’d find her way home eventually, or make a home with strangers, learning to forget the friends she’d killed for. He needed to worry about those friends, to look after their people like she’d asked him to. “She doesn’t need us to go after her,” Raven said. “She knows how to survive.” They’d trust her to return when she was ready, and to look after herself in the meantime.”

who cares if we're trashed by @probably-voldemort​

Season 3 | Teen and Up | Fluff | 2,180 words

"Propose to Bellamy." Murphy said it like it was easy, like she wasn't drunk off her ass, like she wasn't hopelessly in love with him. "Unless you're chicken."

The End Where We Begin by katebishoop

Pre 3x06 | Teen and Up | Kid fic | 10,553

Clarke and Bellamy are tired of war and bloodshed. So they run.

Hungry Hearts by @insideimfeelinpurrdy​

Post 3x16 | Explicit | Hurt/Comfort | 5,663 words

We all swallow lies when our hearts are hungry.

Field Medicine by storyskein

Post season 3 | Teen and Up | Fluff | 3,558 words

Clarke decides that Bellamy needs to learn first-aid because his bandage wrapping technique is pitiful.

I’ve Got You Here by ms_scarlet

Post Season 3 | Explicit | Hurt/Comfort | 18,383 words

“Here.” He thrusts one of the cups at her and she sets the rake aside to accept it. “You owe me a drink.”

Five Years Later by storyskein

Post Season 3 | Explicit | Fluff | 6,845 words

Five years later, and everything is finally right

To the Order of Night by storyskein

Post season 3 | Teen and Up | Fluff | 2,620 words

Bellamy and Clarke hang out after a long day of preparing for Arkadia’s exodus. Drinking, poker, and cuddling ensue.

Soap by @verbam​

Post Season 3 | Teen and Up | 3,571 words

Perhaps because of the late hour, or the heat limiting most duties to half day shifts, the hammam is surprisingly empty when they reach it, their voices going hushed in the echoing room. Clarke realizes as she glances at Bellamy that they’ve never been entirely alone here together. They’ve rinsed off here together before, but that’s easier when they’re surrounded by their friends: Bellamy distracted by Brian snapping a towel at him and Jasper splashing everyone in cold water. Clarke tends to sit with Raven, stretching their legs out on the warmed metal after they’ve scrubbed down and enjoying the steam and hubbub of Arkadians around them.

Right Within Your Heart (This is How It Starts) by @prosciuttoe​

Post Season 3 | Teen and Up | Fluff | 6,270 words

Bellamy has never had a enjoyable Christmas. Clarke seeks to rectify that.

Cold Bones by @insideimfeelinpurrdy​

Season 4 | Explicit | Major Character Death | tw: depression | 4,152 words

The world dies screaming, protesting violently at every turn, fighting for survival. He dies silently, whispering reassurances into the radio, walking fast and with purpose but without hope. The apocalypse can’t be stopped, and there aren’t enough lifeboats. Bellamy decides to take himself out of the equation.

if it was safer underground, we wouldn’t be on a boat  by heroic

Season 4 | Teen and Up | 1,005 words

Did you feel it, too? Clarke wants to go back and ask, lean herself against the bark and look at Bellamy in the night. Do you miss this too, when everything hurt and we still thought we could be better than we are?

And If My Heart Should Stop by @octannibal-blake​

4x06 | Teen and Up | Fluff | 1,905 words

The one where bellamy decides it’s time to tell Clarke how he feels.

Whenever the End by @sometimesrosy​

4x11 | Mature | 2,173 words

It’s the night before the conclave and the end of the world is nigh. Clarke and Bellamy needs to sleep and Clarke convinces him to share her bed. But waking up in his arms crosses the distance they’ve kept between them.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the apocalypse by @kindclaws​

4x12-13 | Explicit | Time Loop AU, Exes to Lovers | 16,407 words

Bellamy and Clarke keep reliving the last few hours before Pramfaya.

Just enough, but not enough by @rycewritestrash​

Post Seaosn 4 | Teen and Up | Fluff | 1,173 words

They’re leaning against the rover, sharing an apple, back and forth, discussing their plans for the day when Bellamy says, “We should get married,” in the same tone he’d use if they were talking about what’s for dinner.

The Silence by @sometimesrosy​

Season 5 | Teen and Up | Reunion fic | 5,872 words

Clarke and Madi stumble upon spacekru, finally returned. Everyone greets her, except Bellamy.

Think of Me as Time of Day by @octannibal-blake​

Season 5 | Teen and Up | Reunion fic | 5,872 words

Three times Bellamy misses Clarke and one time he doesn’t have to.

You’re Just Another Recovering Heart by @prosciuttoe​

Season 5 | Mature | Pining | 10,814 words

Bellamy gets into the habit of writing letters to the girl he left behind in the six years they’re apart. But as it turns out, Clarke’s alive, and she’s read them. Or: the fallout of a love confession six years in the making.

Forty Yards by @the-most-beautiful-broom​

Season 5 | Teen and Up | Angst | 3,825 words

Bellamy and Clarke are caught in the crossfire of an Eligius/Wonkru battle, and in the fury of it all, Bellamy refuses to leave Clarke behind.

I’m so fucking happy you’re alive/swear to god I’m down if you’re down  by heroic  

5x13 | General Audiences | 679 words

He wants to go back there, to press his hands against the bare skin of her back, to breathe her in.

I Feel Like We're as Close as Strangers by @eyessharpweaponshot​

Season 5 | Explicit | Angst | 7,277 words

“This isn’t about Madi," Bellamy tells her, voice even and certain. "It isn’t about me leaving you on Earth." Clarke’s expression is steel but he can read the discomfort off her a mile away. She’s holding her arms too tightly, her teeth clenched like she’s said too much. "This is about Echo." Even though he knows it is, his heart is still belting in his chest while he waits for a response. The knowledge is overwhelming - because if this is about Echo, it means Clarke might…she might… "Why would this be about Echo?" Clarke says blankly, like she’s bored - like he’s way off the mark. He’s not. "You tell me."

Astra inclinant  by @hermesmultivitamins​

Post season 5 | Not Rater | Sharing A Bed | 1,814 words

The inevitability of Clarke and Bellamy is obvious to everyone except themselves. Or, the story of how it took 130 years and two planets for Clarke and Bellamy to realize what everyone else already knew.

Do You Feel the Way We’re Falling out of Touch? by @eyessharpweaponshot​

Season 6 | Explicit | Time Loop AU, Angst | 13,279 words

Clarke and Bellamy are over and he has moved on, it’s just something Clarke has to accept. They have a job to do and that’s what is important now. They spend the entire day at odds with one another, being distant and lying about their true feelings. When they’re stuck in a time loop because of their inability to be honest though, it’s time to start admitting some things - and it turns out to be a little harder than expected.

Bad Moon Rising by @bettsfic​

6x02 | Teen and Up | Angst, Hurt/Comfort | 1,700 words

Afterglow by @queenginnys​ 

Post 6x10 | Teen and Up | Love Confessions | 1,085 words

Bellamy and Clarke have a lot to discuss after Clarke survives Josephine.

Sick of Losing Soulmates by @pawprinterfanfic​

Post 6x10 | Teen and Up | Hurt/Comfort | 4,884 words

Clarke and Bellamy talk after the events at Gabriel's. After almost losing her again, Bellamy intends to not let emotions go unspoken.

Our Own Stars by bellofthetolppl

Season 6 | General Audiences | Angst | 3,477 words

Bellamy gets hurt when he tries to find Octavia after she disappeared in the Anomaly and once Clarke finds out, she goes crazy. Kind of like 6x10 but the roles are reversed and she's worried sick about him. 

feet on the ground, head in the sky by fathomless

Season 6 | General Audiences | Hurt/Comfort | 2,547 words

three times Bellamy kissed Clarke's forehead and one time she kissed his.

Like Being Submerged in Your Contradictions by WelpThisIsHappening

Season 6 | Explicit | Fluff | 4,491 words

She supposes she's not surprised.

Clarke probably should have expected it. After all, her romantic track record is not really all that impressive. But. She hoped. And to say that she's a little disappointed to find out sex with Bellamy is not as great as she wanted it to be is an understatement.

So now he wants to talk about it. Figures.

The House Don't Fall When the Bones Are Good by @ponyregrets​

Post Canon | Teen and Up | Afterlife | Crossover with The Good Place | 6,019 words

Clarke wakes up and has a conversation with a man wearing a bowtie.

We Burned Bright by @marauders-groupie​

Mature

Collection of canon-compliant drabbles

Multichapter

Small Favours by @kay-emm-gee​

8 chapters | Season 1 | Teen and Up | Fluff | 24,203 words

Small favors born out of sheer necessity (part I, part II) forge a unique intimacy (part III, part IV, part V, part VI) that brings forth intense chemistry (part VII, part VIII).

 Or, how Bellamy & Clarke take their time falling in love.

Survivor’s guilt by @wellsjahasghost​

4 chapters | Post season 3 | Explicit | Angst, Kid fic | 102,671 words

“There’s no one else to live for anymore.” Clarke utters those words without too much emotion. They’ve had time over the years to reflect on all the people ripped away from their lives. It’s no longer a fierce, stabbing pain, just a kind of endless ache that surges and subsides with every breath they take. After all their efforts, they failed. The story of the SkaiKru would die with them. “We’re the last of our people.”

Bellamy finally looks up at her tone of voice and after a pause he says, slowly, “We don’t have to be.”

Hold me Still by bellofthetolppl

9 chapters | Season 4 | General Audiences | Angst | 45,863 words

“I can’t see, what’s happening to me?” or Bellamy is blinded in an accident.

The Twelfth Level by @jemleofan​

13 chapters | Canon-compliant until 4x03 | Explicit | 62,085 words

The death wave is rapidly approaching. Clarke and Bellamy make a startling discovery: Cadogan’s cult has survived underground and is willing to shelter Skaikru from the impending disaster. But at what price?

This one’s for you by @andthelightbulbclicks​

48 Chapters | Post season 4 | Slow Burn | 60,535 words

Ficlets glimpsing at those 2,199 days, and after…

The Price of Peace by @chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky​

18 chapters | Season 6 | Teen and Up | Angst, Hurt/Comfort | 11,0987 words

Upon landing in the new world, it seemed like humanity finally had a chance at peace. When suddenly something is taken from them, Bellamy and crew must find a way to navigate this new world when it feels like it’s falling apart.

Bury A Friend, Try To Wake Up  by @talistheintrovert​

7 chapter | Teen and Up | Angst | 75,289 word

A few weeks after settling in to the new planet, Clarke seems to be acting strangely. Almost like she's two different people. Bellamy is determined to get to the bottom of it.

Canonverse AUs 

Single Chapter 

Winners Don’t Always Get Lucky Breaks by @cupcakesandtv​

Explicit | Ark AU, Arranged Marriage, Domestic Bellarke | 23,501 words

Bellamy and Clarke are roped into Abby’s political games and have to get married. 

Just as You Are Mine by @prosciuttoe​

Explicit | Arranged Marriage AU, Grounder!Bellamy | 23,637 words

In hindsight, marrying a total stranger may not have been one of Clarke’s brightest ideas. (Clarke seals an alliance with the Broadleaf clan by marrying Bellamy Blake.)

Darkest of marks by @important-metaphors​

Explicit | Ark AU, Angst | 21,162 words

After Jake Griffin’s prediction about the system failure turns out to be wrong, Clarke is given a second chance on the Ark. Janitor Bellamy Blake may or may not complicate everything for her.

Shadows Run From Yesterday by @important-metaphors​

Explicit | Ark AU | 14,053 words

Thirteen nations have operational space stations at the time of the bombs and Clarke Griffin is among the survivors. When she loses those dearest to her, she finds an ally in the person she least expects.

In My House on the Hill (there is room for you still) by @argyledpenguin​

Explicit | Ark AU, Angst | 24,066 words

“There were nights when the clinic was busy, forcing Clarke to scarf down a snack in between patients. But those nights were rare. Usually, there was time to take a break for lunch, to sketch for an hour, to talk to Bellamy, or to try to. It turned out that Bellamy wasn’t a talker. Or a friendly, pleasant person in general. But she got used to it. To him.” Clarke meets Bellamy on the ark.

Multichapter 

How You Stay Alive by @wellsjahasghost​

3 chapters | Explicit | Reincarnation AU | 88,303 words

You and him will live again by my hand. But whether you fall in love again is entirely up to you.” Nine lifetimes where Clarke and Bellamy meet again, and again, and again.

In his heart of hearts by @bilexualclarke​

2 chapters | Explicit | Ark AU, Enemies to Friends to Lovers | 12,808 words

She looks at him expectantly when he walks in, daring him to say something. His interactions with Clarke since their first day have consisted of “hello” “goodbye” and the occasional glare when he scoffs at something corny she says to a patient. But right now, he can’t help but take the bait. “Mommy pull some strings for you, Princess?” Clarke deflates a bit, and for a second it dawns on him that maybe she was waiting for him to congratulate her? But then, “Go fuck yourself.”

Bound by the secrets we share by troubledpancakes

4 chapters | Explicit | Ark AU | 48,523 words

Ninety-seven years ago, a nuclear apocalypse rendered planet Earth unlivable, leaving only the four-hundred people on the twelve space stations as its survivors. Over three generations, these twelve nations joined together to form the unified Ark Station. To preserve the human race, the leaders of the Ark implemented strict measures including: capital punishment for anyone over the age of eighteen, a ration system based on job placement, and the arrangement of marriages based on genetic compatibility. If the human race was to return to Earth, it had to be strong to survive. Clarke Griffin turned eighteen and celebrated her birthday with a marriage ceremony.

[travllingbunny]

The 100: 7x02 The Garden

I love this episode. Mostly for the beautiful and emotionally complex Octavia-centric flashback story, for all the exciting revelations about the nature of the Anomaly and time dilation and the overall story of this season (all the exposition was done in a surprisingly natural way and never bothered me), and the way the two timelines were interwoven. It says a lot that I wasn’t even bothered by the lack of Clarke or Bellamy  - or the fact that this episode featured only 6 characters (plus some extras in suits), one of which was a deranged minor character we’ve never seen before. Episodes focused on a small number of characters and plots often feel more coherent. 

Comparisons between The Garden and Eden are obvious, the two even have basically the same title, and many similarities and contrasts, so I rewatched Eden yesterday, and I’ll be writing a post about that episode soon, too. I rewatched the entire show just before season 7 started, but season 5 is the only one I’ve never written reviews of, so this seems like the right occasion. it will also be interesting to rewatch Red Queen after this.

One of the things that I noticed rewatching season 5 is how well the cinematography has been used in seasons 5, 6 and 7 and how it differentiates different worlds. The ruined Earth in season 5 was mostly in sepia, yellow and grey tones, looking like a gloomy desert - except for Eden, which had normal colors. Sanctum has bright colors - it’s beautiful, but a little too colorful, almost psychedelic, dangerous. Skyring in this episode mostly seen in soft light and blueish-green colors - a peaceful paradise. 

Or is that a prison? A solitary/house arrest? I love this duality - it can be both. The most beautiful place can be a prison that drives you insane, if you’re all alone.

One garden, two serpents

Isolation is a theme we’ve seen on The 100 with many characters: Clarke was in a solitary for a year, distracting herself with drawings, then alone roaming around for 3 months, then forced to spend 6 years on a deserted planet, but she was only completely alone for the first 2 months, when she was fighting with nature and lack of food and water as much as with loneliness, and she was talking to Bellamy every day - who couldn’t even hear her - and hoping to see him again. Murphy was alone for 3 months in a fully stacked bunker on Becca’s island, but comfort is no help when you’re all alone, only have one and the same videos to watch and music to listen to, and you don’t know if you’re getting out. Octavia was the Girl Under the Floor for 16 years, and she had her mother and brother, but no one else; then she was locked up for a year; and after all the fighting, including the 6 years in the bunker with 1200 people she ruled over (which was maybe the time when she was more lonely than ever!), she ended up spending 10 years of her life on a planet with a family of two people - again - and no one else, and - just as when she was a child - with little hope that she will ever have a chance to meet anyone else. And here we see the effects of a  prolonged isolation from everyone else, with poor Orlando (that’s what he’s called in the end credits), the prisoner who dug out dead bodies and used a creepy doll just to have an illusion of friends. 

Unlike Clarke in 5x01, Octavia did not have to struggle with loneliness or fight to survive, but the paradise in which she had accidentally ended up in was also a prison of sorts, since she could not get out of it and was likely to spend all her life there, without ever seeing her brother or any other people, except for Diyoza and Hope. Like Clarke, Octavia found a family, and a child to take care of, but unlike Clarke, Octavia did not become a little girl’s adoptive or substitute mother.

The title evokes Diyoza’s line from 5x13: “One garden, two serpents. Eden never stood a chance.” Instead, they got to have their paradise here, until Octavia’s attempt to send her brother a message brought the Disciples from Bardo there to capture them. I’m not sure if that was a bad or a good thing - since that was probably their only way out of Skyring. 

(There’s also a literal garden in the episode, and  this was the first time we saw Octavia farm the land since 4x09, when she learned how to do it on Ilian’s farm. That was the last time Octavia tried to escape her darkness by having an idyllic farm life and a relationship, at least for a few days before the end of the world comes, but her past came back in the form of those people who recognized and attacked her - and she realized she wasn’t cut out for peace and rode into Polis looking for a war. She wasn’t ready at the time to give up violence. In season 5, she insisted that “Farmers won’t save the world, warriors will” - which Monty proved wrong. And now, Octavia has become a farmer.)

But Octavia’s paradise was forced on her, and it was clear that she and Diyoza didn’t really feel the same about living the rest of their lives on Skyring. The difference is, Diyoza doesn’t have anyone else in the world she cares about - everyone she once cared about has been dead for centuries. and she has given up on trying to change the world. She obviously wanted to do it once, when she was fighting “the fascist government who tried to take my home” and blowing up buildings, but she’s now tired of the violence, after being a terrorist/rebel, then a prisoner of a big corporation, again a rebel fighting against that corporation to save prisoners from being left to die just because they were deemed expendable, then she led another war - which ended with her baby-daddy destroying the Earth, and now she’s tired of the violence and wants to have a different life in peace with her daughter, who she didn’t even want to teach fighting of any kind. She’s also content to live without ever reuniting with the rest of the human race. Maybe partly because she was quite hurt to learn that she was supposedly in history books as one of the worst people ever. (Which she really shouldn’t have taken seriously - since it was Russell who said it, so these “history books” can only be Sanctum history books, written by Russell or his family members or other Primes. They left Earth around the time when Diyoza was just arrested, so it’s unlikely they even knew what history books said about her in the next few years - and even if those history books said so, they would be history books written under the same government Diyoza was fighting against.)

Octavia, on the other hand, still has other people she cares about in the world, most of all her brother. Not only did she leave a time when she knew Bellamy and others are likely to be in danger from the Primes - and she had no way of knowing they had learned the truth about the Primes by themselves - but they parted on bad terms and with unresolved issues and with no catharsis, and Bellamy would probably be left thinking she really died when he left her on Alpha - instead of learning that she did resolve her issues and find peace.  She didn’t know that her attempts to get back the way she came, through the lake, would never work - if she had succeeded, she would have probably ended up on Bardo instead. Ironically, only when she made peace with the fact she couldn’t go back and sent a letter in a bottle, it ended up alerting the Disciples - but it all eventually resulted in Octavia ending up back on Sanctum in the same place she left (whether she escaped and came back from Bardo or through some other planet?), and got the chance to tell Bellamy in person that she understands him now. 

There’s some ambiguity about Octavia’s relationships with Diyoza and Hope - at times it seems that Octavia is Hope’s co-parent: she lives with them and is closely involved in raising Hope, after all - not exactly like an aunt who just occasionally visits and plays with the kid. All three of them are shown as a close family unit. However, Octavia does not see herself as Hope’s mother - nor does Hope see her that way. She is “Aunty O”. Hope has a mother, and not an absent or inattentive one, but someone like Diyoza, fully focused on raising her daughter. Octavia and Diyoza may be seen as sisters - with “Aunty O” and Octavia telling Bellamy in the letter that she loves her like she loves him even though she’s a ‘pain in the ass’. Or they could look like “an old married couple”, as Diyoza called them back in season 6 when they were finishing each other sentences.

(But if we’re supposed to think that Octavia’s and Diyoza’s close relationship never got sexual in any way, in spite of the fact they lived together for 10 years without any other adults around and with almost no hope they would ever see another adult, then I guess one or both of them is really extremely heterosexual, real 0 on Kinsey’s scale. If we’re supposed to think that. Technically, we don’t know for sure.)

Anyway, this ambiguity of whether Octavia was a co-parent to Hope or not has caused some debate on Twitter about what degree of responsibility Octavia exactly had towards Hope and whether she was allowed to leave her. But even if Octavia is seen as a co-parent, I don’t subscribe to the idea that every adult, especially a woman, who comes into the situation of taking care of a child must immediately forget about all other relationships, concerns and desire and subjugate their entire life to taking care of that child. Especially when it also means that the child will be isolated from the world at large. I didn’t think it was healthy when Bellamy’s whole life revolved around protecting Octavia, either, or when Clarke, after escaping Polis in season 5, thought for a moment that her and Madi living all alone, as they did during those 6 years, would be an OK future for either of them.

Octavia may not have thought the whole time dilation through (yes, it’s quite likely Hope would be old or die before she returned from Sanctum with the other people, since she’d need time to find Bellamy and others, explain things to them and back them go back, but she still had hope (no pun intended) that both she and Hope could have more of life than and was still fighting to make contact with her people on the other side. Diyoza may have been right about the time dilation, but how did she imagine Hope’s life was going to be in the future? Yes, if Octavia left, Hope would end up alone after Diyoza died. But if Octavia stayed, Hope would still be left all alone after Diyoza and Octavia died, and never got a chance to meet anyone else, have any other kind of life, be a part of the human race.

One may argue Diyoza was being selfish, trying to keep Octavia there, and she certainly did take away Octavia’s choice and forced her to stay. Though, in her defense, she thought she was saving her life - but it was still was one of those “I’m making choices for you because I know what’s best for you”. And it wasn’t her whole motivation - it was mostly about wanting to keep Octavia there as a part of their family unit. Octavia called her out on the fact that it wasn’t all about Hope, it was about their relationship, too. Which certainly seemed emotionally intense, with Diyoza being hurt and sort of jealous at the thought that Octavia would leave her and Hope and that she may love her less than she loves her brother. 

The episode played a lot with the parallels between Octavia and Bellamy, with O using what she had learned from Bellamy to take care of young Hope the same way. And the parallel between Octavia and Hope as “Girls Under the Floor” were even more obvious, even before Hope literally had to go under the floor to hide from the Disciples. That would put Diyoza in Aurora’s role and Octavia in Bellamy’s. It’s not a perfect parallel, as Bellamy didn’t  have any other strong attachments to anyone or any other family while Aurora was alive. But, while Aurora seemed to have no other vision for the future except focusing fully on hiding Octavia, Bellamy tried to give his sister an opportunity to meet other people and live a life - by taking her to the dance - and Octavia was similarly the one who wished to bring other people to Skyring and was giving Hope the hope (!) she would meet them.   

The Three Stooges and the Anomaly

(Thanks @jeanie205​ for that moniker LOL) The one thing that brings down this episode (I’m taking away half the point from it) is the very unlikely degree of plot-induced incompetence that the trio of Hope, Echo and Gabriel displayed throughout this episode - so they could get stuck on Skyring, maybe for 5 years:

Hope knew the bridge was under the lake - she should have known the note could get washed up!

How come Hope didn’t know there was more than one door to the cabin? Or if Orlando built the other door, or someone else who was there while she was away, how come none of the trio noticed that other door?

Even the windows looked big enough for someone to come in. Why didn’t at least one of them stand guard in the cabin? Or at least somewhere close where they could see what’s happening in the cabin? Why were they both sitting somewhere outside? They weren’t even close to the door. Did they think Orlando could only come into the cabin from one direction?

Why didn’t Gabriel take the memory viewer with him when he ran out? Come on, dude, that’s one of the most important things you have there, and you know there is a deranged guy outside, and you just leave it there?

Still, I enjoyed this part of the story, too, especially with all the new info we got - which got me speculating the whole week - see my theories  here.

Gabriel is so adorable as an old man scientist in a young body and even the fact he is more interested in the Anomaly than in any living human is kind of endearing. We also got a glimpse of the nerdy young doctor who was once crushing on Becca before going to the mission and meeting Josephine.

Echo is finally starting to justify her main character billing this season, getting an actual storyline rather than tagging along around Bellamy, and she is already a much more enjoyable character. She hasn’t actually changed much yet - but she’s now put in the position as an audience surrogate, wondering what the heck is going and asking question like “Where is Bellamy?” while Hope and Gabriel spout exposition (they do it so well though that you don’t even mind it).  It helps a lot that she’s not around any of the Spacekru, so we don’t have to deal with the forced “we’re all close family due to the 6 years off-screen, which we spent in utter boredom and without any actual dangers we’d have to deal with” dynamic. Instead, now a character she’s interacting with (Hope) and Echo’s own hallucinations are constantly calling her out on her past actions, which helps fix the issue that season 5 created - the impression that Echo is the one character who doesn’t have to deal with the consequences of her past actions, with her past being simply waved away with “they spent 6 years with her and she’s now one of the good guys” (Although, while I like Hope calling Echo out, Hope got it wrong - Echo didn’t kick Octavia over the cliff after stabbing her, Octavia tripped and fell. But that’s not the first time in the show the writers Octavia has misremembered an event.)

This will be the second time Echo is stuck somewhere in a peaceful place with just a few people for 6 5 years. How much of this will be off-screen? It certainly helps that we’ve already seen her interact with Hope and Gabriel in two episodes, and the dynamic between Hope and Echo is developing, with Echo starting to comfort Hope when Hope showed vulnerability behind her fast-talking snarky exterior. 

Echo still doesn’t seem ready to “face her demons”, since her reaction to her own hallucination telling her she’s still just a killer and asking her who she is if she doesn’t have someone (Bellamy) to follow, was to ignore it and try to kill people and now swear she’ll kill everyone she needs to in order to get to Bellamy. But I assume this is just the beginning of her long overdue character development.

Was there significance to Echo plucking the flower and then looking at the sky? Was it simply her starting to appreciate the beauty of the planet? t It reminds me of how Clarke was  touching the flowers in Eden in 5x01.

Other observations:

Technically, I guess this episode was really Hope-centric, since she was the only character in both timelines. 

I’m not sure what exactly the scientific explanation is for Octavia’s arm healing the moment she got to Skyring. How does the whole temporal flare thing work? 

"What is it about Bellamy that makes otherwise sensible women willing to die for him?” - I see what they did there. I bet this is a hint about what the focus of a lot of this season is. Hope meant Echo and Octavia, but we know that Clarke’s storyline will also soon become about looking for Bellamy “her missing people”, “her family”, “people she loves”. On the other hand, I’m not sure how much it makes sense for Hope to ask that - she must have heard Octavia’s stories about Bellamy, so she’d know what it is about him that’s so special - his devotion to those he loves and how ready he is to do anything for them. But maybe Hope felt some of that same jealousy Diyoza did, or her mom’s jealousy rubbed off on her, because Octavia kept trying to get back to her brother.

It’s interesting that Octavia named “Bellamy, Clarke and Madi” as the main people she wanted to bring here. She didn’t mention Raven or Miller (as she would if she was talking about the Delinquents as a family going back to season 1, or even her mentor Indra, or friend Niylah. Just Bellamy and Clarke and Madi - as a part of her family she wants to bring. There’s no reason why she’d see Madi as her family but not Indra, so this definitely seems like Clarke and Madi are seen as Bellamy’s family and a package deal in Octavia’s eyes. (And that’s before she even witnessed what happened in 6x10.) Not that surprising considering Octavia’s “another traitor who you love” comment from 5x08 and her dislike of Echo. Ironically, almost killed all three of them as Blodreina, which is maybe also a sign of how much she’s disconnecting from that role - even though she hasn’t gone through her 6x09 Face Your Demons hallucination yet.

It turns out Octavia was older than Bellamy in 6x09-6x13. The green box was probably her peaceful life on Skyring that she did not remember. But the red box was the unfinished business with her past. It seems that she was changed psychologically by her time on Skyring even without remembering it.

Hope is now the third child raised on stories about the Delinquents. Little Hope liked Murphy, just like Jordan did  during his “rebellious phase”. Madi, however, was an Octavia fan.

I guess Orlando saw Hope’s name written on the door, since it doesn’t seem they ever met before. But where did the creepy doll come from? 

If prisoners all end up insane as he did - and they probably do, after such long periods of complete isolation - that’s a really messed up way of making people into “true believers”, by breaking them completely. A solitary confinement that’s years long? Cruel.

The Bardo symbol (Phoenix) was seen in the bucket and bottle Octavia was using, which proves that the Bardo people had already been on the planet before Octavia and Diyoza ended up on it.

If Orlando had no one else to dig out, I guess they always make sure to bring the prisoners back after they’ve served their sentence. But they probably killed Dev.  I hope we get the story about Dev and Hope in flashbacks. Seeing what his facial expression was at the time of death, that guy certainly didn’t die a natural death.

The Becca cameo was cool, and this was a whole new face of Becca, kind of cheeky and funny. But her comment that time dilation is “sexy as hell”... um, OK, Yeah, how lucky you get to “get to the future faster” and possibly die before getting a chance to ever reunite with anyone else you know? To be fair, she did not expect all the others in the mission to die and leave poor Colin on his own.

Gabriel “had to be sure she (Josephine) was really gone”. But maybe a part of him deep inside hoped she wasn’t..

So the Anomaly was already there when Colin Benson crashed on the planet. Hmm... that seems to go against my theory that the Anomaly Stones were made by humans at some point during the previous 230 years, but I’m still not giving up on it. Eligius 3 must have travelled longer to Skyring, if it is so far away from Earth and Sanctum,  I don’t think that “Beta” meant that Skyring was the second stop of Eligius 3 - maybe the planets were graded by how good conditions they had for human life. Which would put Sanctum and Skyring at the top, but Sanctum was closer. And with all sorts of time shenanigans going around, maybe there’s some way that the Anomaly Stones could have been placed there by humans. I just can’t believe that it was really some alien race millions of years ago, especially with the Anomaly symbols looking like Greek letters, many of those used in physics or math,  the gender symbols, and the infinity symbol is there, too. 

This was one of the rare episodes of The 100 where no one died. Though we did learn about some people’s past deaths.

Rating: 9/10

[kor-ra]

Fun challenge for you based on your recent tags: Explain to me, someone who has never watched a single episode of the 100, why you ship Bellarke? I am curious, and I'm hoping this is entertaining for you to do lol

Oh gosh ok you asked for it, the flood gates have been opened. Sorry this took so long to answer but I wanted to explain it in the best way I could (or at least try to). I’m going to do a short version and a long version so people don’t have to read my entire explanation lol. Also I’m only going over the plot as it relates to their story, so there will probably be some holes.

Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake are soulmates, plain and simple as that. The growth that they have had since the first season till now has been a long and winding road. They were enemies then became co leaders then best friends and now are (hopefully) on track to admitting that they love each other. The amount of parallels the show draws between them is insane and they both have such a profound understanding of each other due to their shared leadership role and constantly being the person that the other one goes to when they need someone to comfort them. Time and time again they choose each other, even during some of the most difficult decisions they will ever have to make. Their growth almost always comes back to how they influence each other to try and be better people. Canonically, they make better decisions when they are together: The Head and the Heart. They cannot exist as their full selves without each other in their lives because their lives have become so intertwined with each other that they are fundamentally different people when they’re apart. No matter how often they’re apart, they always find a way back to each other. And if nothing else, the gazes and longing hugs that they give each other just oozes love and understanding.

Ok that was the short version. Here’s the Long Version🤪

Ok so Bellamy and Clarke definitely did not start off this way. From the very first episode they are at each other’s throats. Clarke is trying to be the practical leader to get these kids to survive while Bellamy is the dynamic leader inspiring these kids to “do whatever the hell they want”. They don’t see eye to eye and Bellamy even says he’s willing to cut off Clarke’s hand to get what he wants. This doesn’t change until 1x03 when Bellamy sees Clarke mercy kill Atom, another kid on Earth.

This girl, who he thought was a pampered princess, was able to make this tough decision while he couldn’t. After that they begrudgingly try and coexist together. Then “Day Trip” happens and Bellamy and Clarke go off on their own and almost die by a rogue delinquent. They kill him and while they’re recuperating Bellamy wants to run away from all the hardships and mistakes that he’s made. Instead of holding it against him, Clarke gives him forgiveness (“if you want forgiveness, I’ll give it to you ok, fine you’re forgiven”)

For the first time they are truly vulnerable with each other and make their first decision to lead together. This is the turning point. From then on they co lead together, sharing the burden and responsibilities of leadership and being the person that the other depends on. They don’t always get along but they learn to rely on each other. The season ends with them separated at the end of their first big battle. Clarke closes the drop ship door to save her people from the enemy and she thinks he didn’t survive the blast outside

S2

Bellamy and Clarke are separated (a common occurrence that you will soon find out) Clarke is trapped in Mt. Weather and although the rest of her people are comfortable there, she is determined to get out and find out if the rest of her people -cough cough Bellamy- are alive. Bellamy likewise also starts to look for Clarke. Angst and drama ensues, but the important part is that we get our first ever Bellarke hug and man is it a good one (and an absolute fan favorite)

Like Bellamy is so stunned by the way she RUNS and wraps her arms around him and slowly after the shock hugs her back. But this hug cements just how important they’ve become to each other. From here on out they protect each other. Bellamy saves Clarke from being poisoned, he volunteers to go into Mount Weather and Clarke (originally) violently opposes it saying that “She can’t lose him to” in reference to losing the boy she loved, among other things (imo this is when Bellamy starts to develop real feelings for Clarke). Finally towards the end of the season when they face off against the “big baddie” they have to make the choice to kill hundreds of innocent people among the guilty to save their own people. An impossible choice, and Clarke being the self sacrificial puppy that she is wants to “bear it so they don’t have to”. But Bellamy won’t let her do that, they’re going to share that heavy burden. And they pull the lever together

So they return home, people rescued and the guilt hanging high above their heads. But for Clarke the guilt is too much to bear and she tells Bellamy that she has to leave. And Bellamy BEGS her to stay, even repeating that same line that she said to him in the beginning of the show. However, she leaves him and her people behind, which would lead them both down a path of hurt.

S3

And hurt they do. Clarke leaving didn’t fill the hole of guilt in her heart, and Bellamy was left to (try lol) and heal his broken heart on his own. I will also say that both Clarke/Bellamy get their own significant other with Lexa/Gina respectively and this is because (imo) they both go down paths where the other is not in the picture I’m so certain that if they stayed togehter, they would’ve been together and that’s why they’re always separated. But then for the first time in the 3 months since she left, Bellamy finds Clarke, while she’s being taken captive and literally DROPS EVERYTHING to rescue her. When he finds her it is the most tender thing.

This is soon interrupted when Roan (her captor) comes back and Clarke BEGS him to save his life, saying “I’ll do anything. I’ll stop fighting just please don’t hurt him.” Bellamy gets stabbed in the leg and and Clarke and Roan get away. Unlike a normal person, Bellamy Blake is hopelessly in love and devoted to Clarke so he STILL TRIED TO GO AFTER HER WITH A HOLE IN HIS LEG AND WE GET THIS BEAUTIFUL SCENE RIGHT HERE

Cut back a little while later Clarke is safe in Polis with Lexa, trying to unify their two clans and Bellamy finds her again. He tells her to come back to Arkadia (their home) but she says she needs to be here (in Polis). This breaks his heart and is what sets him literally down a VERY DARK PATH of murder to try and justify a war (complicated stuff, what matter is he fucks up). Clarke eventually does come back to Arkadia only to find a very angry and heartbroken Bellamy who tries to justify his actions (You Left Me). They have a very Bellarke™ talk full of emotion and love.

And just when you think everything is going to be alright, he handcuffs her to a chair lol. And they spend a good chunk of the season apart.

When the going gets tough however, they know that they need each other. And after episodes of not speaking to each other they have another one of their Bellarke™ talks and hugs where Bellamy says “I was so mad at you for leaving. I don’t want to feel that way anymore” And then they hug like this, like c’monnnnnnn platonic my ass.

I’m going to speed up for the sake of getting to more stuff. But they end season 3 as they always do, fighting the evil together. Other highlights include Clarke’s (brainwashed) mom using Bellamy as her 1st choice to sacrifice in front of Clarke. There’s also a cute hand holding scene hgngnghngg

For all the angst however, this is the first season when other people call them out on their feelings (mainly Bellamy’s tho) for each other well Octavia already called him out during the first hug but that doesn’t count because She knows him too well. His other friends call him out for not being devoted to his old girlfriend Gina (who died) and Murphy comparing his feeling for Emori (his CANON love interest) to Clarke.

S4

Ok, I know a lot of this post has been focused on Bellamy’s feelings and that’s mostly because Clarke has had a love interest in every season so she hasn’t had time to recognize her own feelings. However during s4, we get to see the extent of just how much Clarke means to Bellamy as well. There are a lot of moments in this season so I’m just going to try and focus on the big ones/my faves.

(This isn’t super important, but in the 1st episode of s4, Clarke is still grieving her gf Lexa who died and IMMEDIATELY AFTER, we get a cut to Bellamy like way to be subtle guys. no platonic explanation for this edit)

Ok basically what you need to know about s4 is that the world is going to end by a nuclear radiation cloud thingy called Praimfaiya and it’s up to Bellarke (along with some other peeps lol) to save everyone from it. So one of the things Clarke has to do is write a list of 100 people to choose for a potential bunker. So of course Clarke puts Bellamy on spot 99 but can’t bring herself to write her own name. So Bellamy who is sleeping on the couch wakes up because his Clarke is sad sirens are going off to tell her to put her name down. (If I’m on that list, you’re on that list) Still she can’t do it sO BELLAMY DOES IT FOR HER (because this boy needs her to be with him). and then he puts his hand on her AND SHE LAYS HER HEAD ON HIS HAND....so tender.

Ok so a few episodes later Bellamy (and Kane) get held hostage and Clarke has to sacrifice part of a large shelter that they need to escape Praimfaiya for them, it’s a tough decision but one that Clarke obviously makes. (Literally the only reason Bellamy was even taken was because Roan knew how much he meant to specifically Clarke). I can’t find a gif, but trust me it’s worrisome

Ok god next episode is when we start getting into that high stakes shit (THAT I LOVE). So basically Clarke and Bellamy are going to be separated AGAIN and right before he leaves Bellamy says this

LIKE IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ARGUE THAT HE WAS NOT ABOUT TO CONFESS HIS LOVE TO HER LIKE CMON PEOPLE LOOK AT EVERY TROPE OF THIS EVER. Clarke of course was like “No, we will see each other again” but uhufhdjejdwkndwk he was going to say “I love you” in my book

Ok now towards the end of the season, most everyone in Skaikru is in this Bunker except for Octavia and most of the grounders (people on earth who survived the original radiation). I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this yet but Octavia is Bellamy’s younger sister and throughout the show he has sacrificed so so much for her and risked a lot of things to keep her safe. So now when Bellamy learns that Octavia is alive and outside the bunker he rushes to open the door for her. But here’s the catch: if they open the hatch, there’s a chance the radiation is bad and everyone in the bunker (THE HUMAN RACE) would die. However, because Bellamy needs to save his sister he’s willing to take that risk. For Clarke, that isn’t though and POINTS A GUN at him. But Bellamy says if she shoots she’s “going to have to make it a kill shot”. AND SHE CAN’T BRING HERSELF TO SHOOT HIM. CLARKE CANNOT KILL BELLAMY EVEN IF IT MEANT SAVING THE HUMAN RACE. Of course it was fine but still man c’mon.

And then later in order to try and lighten the mood, when they’re trying to drive the rover, Bellamy makes Clarke laugh and IS SO DISTRACTED BY HER SMILE HE CRASHES THE CAR. ok moving on

OK HERE IS THE BIG LEAGUE MY FAVORITE BELLARKE SCENE IN THE SERIES. So Bellamy and Clarke have this big heart to heart cause Clarke thinks she’s gonna die and it is the softest scene ever. So Clarke, thinking she’s going to die says “You’ve got such a big heart Bellamy. People follow you, you inspire them because of this (his heart). But the only way we’re gonna make sure we survive is if you use this too (his head aka what Clarke represents in their relationship” AND TO THAT RESPONDS “I got you for that” IN THE MOST TENDER WAY LIKE THEY’RE SO IN LOVE. And also they have one of the best bellarke hugs of the show.

So Bellarke and like 6 of their friends head off to the space station to avoid the death wave. However, the satellite that allows them to get in isn’t working, so Clarke sacrifices her self to go and fix it while the rest of her friends can go to space. Bellamy makes the HEARTWRENCHING DECISION to leave her behind in order to save the rest of his friends from the death wave. So Spacekrew go up to the station to wait 6 years until Earth becomes habitable while Bellamy grieves Clarke’s death.

Except she’s not dead

Clarke has special blood called “nightblood” that made her immune to the radiation. She spends the next six years on the only available plot of green land left with her adoptive daughter Madi (who has nightblood and she found when she survived the radiation.) So for the next 6 years CLARKE CALLS BELLAMY ON THIS RADIO EVERY DAY. This radio doesn’t even work, but Clarke calls him anyways to keep her sane and (imo) this is when I truly think Clarke realizes the depth of her feelings for Bellamy, because I for sure wouldn’t call my platonic buddy EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. for 6 years (THATS 2199 DAYS) like c’mon

S5

Ok so 6 years have passed, and Clarke is waiting for Bellamy + Co (Spacekru) to come back to Earth. But before Spacekru comes back, another ship lands on Earth full of escaped prisoners who have been cryogenically frozen for the past like 150 years. So basically they come to Earth, capture Clarke and hold her hostage, while Madi (her adoptive daughter) escapes.

Literally a little while later Spacekru finds their way back to Earth and stumble upon Madi who tells them Clarke is alive, much to all of their shock but ESPECIALLY Bellamy (cause ya know the love of his life is back from the dead). So he goes to find and rescue her his wife from the prisoners. When he finds her they threaten to shoot him on sight, but he has leverage. He can send a signal back to the spaceship so, he trades 283 lives in order to save Clarke because of course he does.

Bellamy and Clarke finally have their moment to reunite 6 years in the making and it’s as soft and sweet as you could ever expect it to be and they have another one of their classic Bellarke™ hugs.

Ok so happy ending now for them right? They’re finally back together !!! Well NOPE because after Bellamy was done grieving Clarke he got himself a girlfriend :))))))) named Echo (context Echo was an assassin/spy the “bad guys” until end of s4, then she went up to space w/ them) but Bellamys whole schtick is forgiveness, which he learnt from Clarke COUGH COUGH . Anyways when Clarke sees them making out for the first time she is let’s just say ~taken aback~

and the second time she sees them she looks straight up heartbroken !!!

Now that Clarke has finally realized her feelings for Bellamy he’s with another girl :///// But Clarke still holds a very dear position in Bellamy’s heart and we see that when he confronts his sister. Remember Octavia? The sister who he would do anything for??? Well now she’s kinda lost her marbles and became an evil dictator when she was leading everyone in the bunker. So now due to ~plot~ Octavia wants Clarke dead. Bellamy CANNOT have this happen. I mean he just got her back !!! And he pleads for Octavia to save her life and Octavia says this

HIS SISTER WHO KNOWS HIM BEST (well besides Clarke lmao) CALLED HIM OUT ON HIS FEELINGS. And the best part is that Bellamy doesn’t even try to deny it. Then he says “I can’t let you kill Clarke , O” AND PROCEEDS TO POISON HIS SISTER. THE ONE WHO HE HAS RISKED HIS LIFE FOR LIKE FOREVER (she doesn’t die tho) Bellamy choses Clarke over her without hesitation, and that has come a long way my friends. 

Ok while, we’re riding this high it gets kinda worse. So, remember Clarke’s adoptive daughter Madi? Well now Spacekrew wants to put this thing called the flame (ok sorry I glossed over it before but it’s really important to the show, I just hate it !) which all previous leaders of the grounder people had, in Madi’s head because she’s the ~destined~ leader (it’s confusing I know just roll with it). Clarke is like fuck no because she also hates the flame (queen) and doesn’t want Madi to become a leader and carry that burden. So Bellamy locks Clarke up to get to Madi, but then Clarke grabs Madi and leaves Bellamy to die in Octavia’s apocalyptic fighting pit to fend for his life.

Not looking great right? Bear with me for a moment lol. So flash forward to the end of the season and one of the prisoner dudes accidentally sets off a bomb that’s going to destroy the one green valley that was left. Bellamy is pissed at Clarke for leaving him to die, but Clarke was only trying to save Madi but doesn’t know how to fix this. Then Madi (our mini bellarke shipper) tells Bellamy how important she is to him. Like this girl probably watched her make these calls every morning, SHE KNOWS

And just like that Bellamy cannot be mad at Clarke anymore, because he realizes the bond and isolation and dare I say LOVE she must have for him to do that. So they all make it back up to space as Earth explodes for the 2nd time (RIP). So remember that prision ship with cryogenic pods? Yea so now basically everyone who is on Earth is going to rest in these pods until Earth heals itself. Except it doesn’t (at least not in the 10 years they had hoped for). So two of Bellarke’s friends and couple named Monty and Harper stay awake and spend their remaining years finding another planet to live on. And when they find one 125 years later guess who they picked to wake up first. You guessed it, the co leaders themselves Bellarke. So they have a tender moment watching the sun rise over this new planet

S6

Ok this is the last season before we’re caught up but my god it’s a big one for Bellarke. Ok so the season starts off on this new planet and everyone is distrustful of Clarke for what she did on Earth to protect her daughter and make ONE personal sacrifice when she sacrifices everything for everyone all the time god Anyways, on this new planet due to this like “red sun” they hallucinate on the surface and Bellamy says to Clarke “I don’t need you anymore Clarke”(remember this it’s important). After the red sun fiasco, the actual residents of the planet show up (they were descended from an earthship that came there like 250~ years ago).

(I can’t believe I almost forgot to put this but Bellamy tells Clarke about the radio calls before they hallucinate and it’s such a whole some scene and helps to bridge the gap between them once more)

So the people show Bellarke + crew their customs which includes a ceremony where they repent and let go of their past mistakes. Clarke uses this to apologize to Bellamy for her actions as she declares to him “Hey, you’re my family too. I lost sight of that. But I promise I will never forget it again” like boyo that scene brings me to tears like fuck !!! and then once again they have a classic Bellarke™ hug and god it’s a GOOD one.

So yay, they’re on good terms !! That means something bad is about to happen again per usual. So it turns out the leaders of this group of people have been alive for 100s of years using these “mind drives” to back their consciousness up and put into new bodies when their current body dies (fun!). And take a guess as to who has the special blood and can be a new host :))))))))))

Clarke gets stolen and *dies* so Josephine can take over her body. While Josie!Clarke fools everyone for like an episode, guess who is the first to think ‘hey that’s not really Clarke’ ofc our boy Bellamy. AND THEN THEY GIVE BELLAMY AN ENTIRE EPISODE TO GRIEVE CLARKE LIKE HE IS THE ONLY ONE WHO LOOKS THIS SAD THROUGHOUT THE EPISODE. way to be subtle JR

But then guess what !!! Clarke isn’t dead. She’s trapped in her own mind, but very alive. And you’ll never guess how Bellamy finds out. Josie!Clarke taps her fingers on her legs and Bellamy interprets it as morse code that translate into “ALIVE”. LIKE IMAGINE TRYING TO EXPLAIN TO SOMEONE THAT YOUR SUPPOSED DEAD WIFE BESTIE IS STILL ALIVE CAUSE SHE SENT YOU MORSE CODE, LIKE MY BOY I KNOW YOU LOVE HER BUT THAT’S QUITE A STRETCH.

Anyways, this sends Bellamy into overdrive mode, because goddamn it he is not losing her a 3rd time. Throughout the next episodes we see Bellamy prioritize Clarke over everyone, including his girlfriend Echo when she is in danger. He risks himself and even the lives of others to try and save Clarke to get Josie out of her head. And it all culminates to this masterpiece of a Bellarke scene.

Clarke’s heart stops and she won’t get up and Bellamy arguably becomes the most desperate he has ever been. He whispers, “the head and the heart” before LITERALLY BECOMING HER HEART AND PERFORMING CPR ON HER AND BANGING ON HER CHEST TO GET HER TO WAKE UP (HOW MUCH FURTHER CAN THEY TAKE THIS METAPHOR). Even when Octavia gives up, Bellamy yells at her that she’s not dead. “I need you” the first time he has openly admitted that he PERSONALLY needs her in his life. “You’re a fighter Clarke now get up and fight”. Clarke literally (in her mindspace) finds the will to get up and fight by hearing Bellamy’s voice. And like a miracle she wakes up and AN ICONIC AND BEAUTIFUL Bellarke™ hug occurs, even though it looked like she was literally about to kiss him !!!!!! Like tell me these aren’t heart eyes ?!!??!

So then for the rest of the few episodes Bellamy is still super protective of Clarke but they have to split up again because ~plot~. BUT WE HAVE ONE MORE GREAT HURT/COMFORT BELLARKE MOMENT IN THE FINALE. Clarke’s mother had just died, and who does she seek in a crowd for comfort: Bellamy...hopefully you know this by now. God they give each other such meaningful looks in this last scene and have another once again iconic Bellarke™ hug, but it’s a hug where they run into each other like from s2 !!!!! parallels

So they end s6 closer than ever and now we’re all caught up in the present to s7 and lemme be honest besides 7x11, it’s been a HORRIBLE bellarke season, but last episode has had things shake up finally god. So basically everyone assumed Bellamy was dead (including Clarke!!!), but *surprise surprise* he’s alive, but as they soon find out he’s been brainwashed by an evil cult. NOW IT’S CLARKE’S TURN TO SAVE HIM BY BEING HIS HEAD LIKE HE WAS HER HEART LAST SEASON (or I at least hope so). As of writing this post, Bellarke isn’t canon but I’ve been watching this show for 5 years and these two have such a hold on my heart it’s embarrassing, but I hope this explained to you why I and many others will be ridiculously obsessed when it comes to them hehe. Pray for us to be canon, we only have 5 eps left for this beautiful story to come to a conclusion.

[aerisahale]

paid in full (chapter 3)

Pairing: Clexa (Clarke Griffin x Lexa kom Trikru) Length: 1,461 Summary: Clarke struggles with the peace of her new life post-Ascendance. With her face fresh in her mind, Clarke wants Lexa, fiercely. Apparently, The Ascendance isn’t finished granting miracles. Chapters: 1 2 3

-

The forest is quiet in the warm sun of the afternoon. The forest floor is still damp where the trees were too thick for enough light to shine through. The leaves squelch more than crunch under her feet and it is not a feeling Gaia enjoyed. The warrior in her cringes with every noise. Then she reminds herself that there is not much left to find her but a few wild animals.

When she reaches the edge of Wonkru Village, the small home they were building a few minutes walk from the treeline, she starts smelling something that makes her stomach growl. She has fasted this morning in observation of the Fleimkepa’s Thursday ritual, spending that time and then some meditating on her purpose in this post-Transcendence reality. Wandering further, she finds Niylah tending to a pot over the fire burning at the center of their village. It is the source of the smell and her stomach announces her presence quite loudly.

The blonde woman turns and smiles at her. “Would you like some?”

“Please. Thank you for this meal.” Gaia dips her head in appreciation, hands wrapping around the bowl handed to her, taking pleasure in the warmth that radiates from it. Bringing it to her face, she takes a deep breath, meat and vegetables swirling to create a mouthwatering scent and she doesn’t waste any time in taking a sip of the steaming broth. “This is very good.”

Niylah’s smile widens. “Jackson has helped me find some herbs that are safe to eat and I’ve been experimenting with them. Miller caught some rabbits in a trap this morning and I had a few I thought would go well with them. I’m glad you approve.”

In the ensuing silence, Gaia continues to savor the warmth of the rabbit stew in her hands. Contemplating her place has left her unusually off-kilter despite the way her Sunday meditations usually ground her. She surprises herself when she hears her voice ask, “Do you think the time of the Fleimkepa is over?”

Niylah is quiet for a moment as she stirs the pot of soup and her eyes are warm when she finds Gaia’s dark eyes. “Perhaps it’s not what you want to hear, but if we are the last of humanity, then yes. The Flame is gone, the time of the Commanders is truly at an end.”

Staring for a beat longer, it takes just a moment too long for Gaia to nod in understanding. Niylah smiles a sad smile at her. “I’m sure there are some among us who would enjoy hearing the Fleimkepa’s history, though. Just because your purpose has fled does not mean that your legacy has to follow.”

Another nod. Setting the empty soup bowl into the bin at the edge of one of the tables, Gaia heads towards her home.

--

The afternoon finds Clarke and Lexa huddled into their, admittedly yet bare, home. The bed is the most comfortable place and Clarke is still in awe that Lexa is hear with her. Their lovemaking had come to an end again and now they just lay together, skin to skin despite the sticky sweat making it somewhat uncomfortable.

“Tell me what you’re feeling,” Clarke whispers, trailing fingers down the tattoo on Lexa’s arm, curious in it’s very existence.

“Unmoored. I remember the events that have taken place since—since my death.” Clarke’s breath hitches when Lexa’s voice catches. That moment is her greatest source of pain. “But none of that is a suitable replacement for experiencing them.”

Clarke pulls her into a kiss. “I am the harbor at which you can tether.”

“You are, Klark. You are. I am not unexperienced with holding wisdom I never attained myself. I just need time to adjust.”

Clarke’s lips press to her shoulder, murmuring against her skin, “How does a new Commander traditionally fare, after they’ve just taken the Flame?”

“We spend a lot of time learning from the Fleimkepa’s. The new Commander often inherits the previous Commander’s Fleimkepa. The immediately previous Commander’s experiences and insights are going to be the most prevalent. For generations we were warned of Sheidheda’s dark influences. I am sorry for what he did to Madi.”

Shaking her head, Clarke rolls onto her elbow, eyes bright and intense, “You taught my daughter—and reminded me when I forgot it—that love is not weakness. You were there for her. None of what happened to her is your fault.”

Lexa’s eyes soften and she pulls Clarke into a long, slow kiss, hand cupping her cheek. “Madi would have been an awe-worthy Commander.”

Contemplating the note of sadness in her lover’s voice, Clarke spends the time remembering the curves and lines of Lexa’s face. “Aden would have been as well.”

Face falling, Lexa refuses to squeeze her eyes shut and shed the tears that have gathered in them.  When one traces a path down her cheek anyway, Clarke rubs it away with her thumb before enveloping Lexa in her arms, holding her tightly. “It’s okay to mourn. You must feel like you just lost him—all the Natblida—just yesterday.”

In the privacy of their home and the safety of Clarke’s arms, Lexa cries for everything she lost.

--

Gaia is passing in front of Octavia’s house when a particular chanting catches her attention. She comes around the side to the back, finding Levitt on his knees, head bowed, reciting words like he’s done it thousands of times before. Her foot steps on a branch and his head snaps up, catching her in his sights.

“I do not mean to intrude,” she says, lightly.

“No intrusion, you just startled me.” Levitt offers her a kind smile, resuming the quiet invocation under his breath.

“You need not hide your faith from me. In fact, I’d very much like to hear it, if I may?” Gaia folds herself into a sitting position adjacent to him.

He hesitates a moment and then continues out loud. His words speak of a final battle, of tests and ending, of faith in a prophet who helped them Transcend the light. This is the faith of the the Transcendence and Gaia soaks in the words, mulling them over and holding them up against her own faith. It is several minutes before he appears to finish. “For the Good of All Mankind.”

“Your faith has come to fruition. That must feel uniquely satisfying.”

“I can’t say I don’t have doubts, even now. The Shepherd believed that rescinding love and personal connections would lead us to Transcendence, but he did not live by his own teachings, not at the end, at least.”

“It can be heavy to bear when our idols to do not live up to our standards. For what it’s worth, he was human.”

“Ah, I am not sure that humanity would find you destroying a child’s mind.” Gaia raises a brow at him and Levitt explains, “The Shepherd chose to destroy Madi’s mind in pursuit of his daughter.”

Gaia sucks in a breath through her teeth. “Oh, Madi!”

“From what Clarke has said, though, the Judge indicated that Madi chose to stay within the Trancendence, with people her own age.”

“Is that a life with people, in such a sense?”

Levitt shrugs. “I can’t say.”

“It was the situation with Madi, then, that would have you rescind your beliefs, deny yourself the Transcendence for which you lived your life?”

Levitt appears thoughtful, before saying slowly, “I can’t say it was any one thing. Octavia taught me what love for another looked like. The Shepherd displayed it for his daughter and that is when I began to doubt. When he asked me to destroy Madi’s mind, having me removed for refusing, that was when I knew that he was as infallible as the rest of us. He was wrong about the Transcendence being a war. I can’t help but wonder if he’s wrong about other parts of the Transcendence.”

“Enough doubt that you would risk forever?”

“Yes,” Levitt says, so fiercely that Gaia is rocked by it. There is a moment of companionship between them, on the buoy of love amidst the stormy seas of keeping faith. Levitt eventually smiles again. “Tell me, Fleimkepa, what are the virtues of your convictions? I would like to hear your faith, as well, if you don’t mind.”

Gaia’s heart soars at the opportunity. “The Fleimkepa tradition was born with Kalliope Pramfleimkepa…”

It is dark before they find themselves turning away to bed, but Gaia has found a friend in Levitt in the hours spent comparing and sharing their faith. It instills a peace within her that she could not find that morning. There are more things in life than just faith, and she intends to find every good part.

[aproblematicpanda]

2, 3, 12!

Hi Tee! ♥ First let me just say: GREAT URL CHANGE. I FULLY SUPPORT IT AND I LIKE THE WAY YOU THINK.

2. Are there any popular fandom OTPs you only BroTP? To be quite honest I don’t really know what counts as “popular” so I’m just going to go ahead and name ships that I’ve seen people ship, whether they’re considered popular or not I’ll leave that up to you. Raven x Murphy is one that comes to mind. I don’t know if a lot of people still ship it, but I think it was gaining quite a bit of popularity in season 5 (I believe there even was a cut scene of Raven kissing his cheek but that could’ve been in season 4, honestly I’m such a terrible addition to this fandom, half the time I barely even know what I’m talking about). But I don’t see anything romantic there. If anything, I see Raven as sort of like Murphy’s big sister - she’ll tease him and call him names and he’ll give her a hard time but if it comes down to it, they have each other’s backs. So a sibling dynamic or just really great friends. There used to be a lot of bad blood between them and to be honest I’m still not entirely comfortable with Raven being best friends with the man who permanently wrecked her leg albeit not on purpose. But the show is terrible at addressing stuff like that so 99% of the time I just ignore it I guess? Anyway, I think they have an interesting dynamic and I always enjoy their scenes together, but never in a romantic way. Then, and Nicole is going to kill me for this but I’m going to say it anyway, there’s Octavia x Gabriel. Again, I don’t know if a *lot* of people ship it, but quite a few of them do and I don’t know, they just don’t do it for me I guess? I mean they’re both hot and they look amazing together, but in season 6 I feel like Gabriel only looked at her like she was a piece of a puzzle he was trying to solve, not a woman, and I just don’t get a shippy vibe when I look at them. That being said, I do think they make a good team and I could get on board with them having a great friendship. I just don’t see a romantic relationship blossoming there because honestly, this man will never look at any woman the way he looks at that damn anomaly. Also, I have not forgiven him for mentioning his friends in 7x07 and then only calling out “Echo! Hope! I’m sorry!” because Octavia should’ve gotten a mention there. Yeah, yeah, he spent five years with them but if I’m supposed to ship him with Octavia, then he should’ve said her name, too, and that’s that. And then obviously there’s BeIIamy x CIarke. At least I know for sure there’s a popular one LOL. I don’t ship them romantically, I never have. But I also don’t think they make a great BroTP, I’m just mentioning them in my reply so you’ll be absolutely positive that I don’t see any kind of TP whatsoever when I think about those two. Other than that I guess I’m pretty down with most canon romantic ships I guess? Wouldn’t have turned anyone into a BroTP instead, and I don’t think there are any (popular) ships left that I feel strongly about so here you go! 3. Have you ever unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion? Oh my god, so many times. Usually it’s because they have a very, very *wrong* opinion about Octavia or because they ship B x C and reblog them far too often. In the past I would’ve replied to those wrong opinions or made anti-gif sets to prove my point about the ship I mentioned but then I grew up so nowadays I just unfollow (and when they tag their shit incorrectly I even block them when I feel like it - I also have two people who I blacklisted via XKit so their posts and edits won’t show up on my dash, I don’t want to block them because it’s not that they tag incorrectly and I do want to allow them to keep reblogging stuff I make because sometimes they do, it’s just that they have such terribly wrong views on Octavia and the gif sets they sometimes make make me want to throw my computer out the window so I figured it was best to just make sure I don’t see their stuff on my dash, *ever*). 12. Is there an unpopular arc that you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why? Ehh... This is a hard one, because I think sometimes fandom tends to disagree on what does or doesn’t count as an arc. But for the purpose of answering this question I’m going to go with Echo’s... I’m not going to call it “character development” because that makes it sound like she used to be a bad person and then she changed and that’s not what happened. She was never a bad person. Let’s call it Echo’s journey. She started off as an antagonist (which is why it bugs me so much when haters like to call her out on “trying to kill Octavia”: she was on the opposite side, of course she was going to do shit that the protagonists don’t like, that’s what happens when you’re on the opposing team, it’s called story-telling). There’s our group of “heroes” (god I hate it when the show calls them that) and then there was Echo, on the other side, siding with the people who wanted to harm “our heroes”. But then those people cast her out after she did everything she could think of to keep them safe (I’m not saying she did the right thing by cheating in the conclave but she did have noble intentions for doing what she did) and she had nobody anymore, until Spacekru took her in and her loyalties shifted from her former clan to Spacekru. We don’t have a lot of information about what went on on the Ark, but I like the little bits and pieces we did get. I like that it’s canon that she didn’t tell anyone much about herself, that she’s not an open book at all, that she’s closed off, distant, doesn’t let her true feelings surface because it makes her vulnerable and if there’s one thing she learned from life at a very young age, it’s that she can never appear vulnerable, ever. And I like that in season 6 and especially in season 7, she is forced to deal with what happens when she can no longer repress her feelings but instead has to let them out. Is she coping with them in a healthy way? No. Of course not. Not at all. But what did you expect from a woman who saw her parents die when she was just a little kid, who was forced to murder her best friend in self-defense and then use said friend’s name as her own and who was from then on trained and used as a (child) soldier to do someone else’s dirty work? Do you honestly expect someone who carries around that much trauma, who has this many wounds that she could never allow to heal, to deal with losing the man she loves in a healthy way? I think it’s fascination to see her wrestle with those feelings, feelings she can no longer repress or ignore, and I honest to god hope the show will allow her to work through that grief eventually without turning her back into the coldblooded woman she used to be or, god forbid, give her some kind of sacrificial death to "make up for all the bad shit she did”. Echo’s not a bad person, in fact, she’s a far better person than most of our “heroes”. Being able to do what needs to be done doesn’t make her evil, because most people on this show would be evil then. Echo is a severely traumatized young woman who hasn’t had a sense of home in decades and then, when she finally found it, when she finally learned to open up and let herself be soft and vulnerable again with her new found family, it was ripped away from her again. And I think that her journey is one of the most compelling ones of all characters because she goes through so much and yet here she is, ready to fuck shit up to get shit done. I can only hope she’ll get to soft epilogue she deserves, after a lifetime of being at war. Salty Ask List

[brokendevilwrites]

Who says i love you first? Nerd!Clarke or Popular!Lexa?

Hallooooo.

I did a thing. Hope it answers your question:

Before Lexa actually says the words ‘I love you’ she tries three whole times.

She’s been thinking about it for a long time and Clarke’s been teaching her things about psychology and body language and she’s pretty sure, just from those few lessons, that Clarke probably is deep in like with her too. Dilated pupils and open body language and initiating intimacy.

She’s kind of sure about it.

And it’s almost been a year of them being together which, in lesbian, is like ten years so she’s sort of overdue on saying it and moving in together and one of them should probably be pregnant.

(She really needs to stop reading stories online before she goes to sleep.)

---------------------------

The first time Lexa tries to say it is on a warm Wednesday.

She’s warm and sated and relaxed after missing her last class of her day. It wasn’t really her fault; she went to sit in her car during a break in lessons and then she fell asleep.

She wakes up to a very annoyed Clarke Griffin tapping on her window, books pressed against her chest in a very distracting way, and it’s hard to find the little huff Clarke lets out anything less than attractive as she unlocks the car and the blonde drops into the passenger seat.

Part of her wonders if she should say sorry but Clarke isn’t her teacher and her dream was kind of nice. Plus the weather is warm so it heated up her body to a nice temperature and, honestly, if Clarke wasn’t scowling it’d be a pretty great afternoon for her.

“You can’t just not go to lessons because you want a nap,” Clarke scolds and Lexa hums along to a song on the radio, knowing that Clarke’s lectures can go on for a little while and she’s really not all that sorry that she missed one lesson. “What if you were caught? These are some of the most important years of our lives and you’re napping through them.”

Lexa chuckles at that. She knows Clarke is mostly annoyed because her debate team has lost a member through them moving schools and she’s stressed about exams and they haven’t seen each other much. So she lets herself get yelled at because Clarke needs the release and, honestly, she’s really hot when she’s angry.

“You���re going to be involved in the best years of my life,” Lexa tells her and Clarke snaps her jaw shut so quickly that Lexa actually turns away from the road to look at her. “Clarke, it’s one lesson out of the hundreds I’ve had. I didn’t mean to fall asleep and in the grand scheme of things, high school really isn’t that important. If I promise to not skip another lessons just to nap will you smile again?”

Clarke eyes her warily. “Are you just saying that to make me stop being annoyed at you?”

“Yeah,” Lexa laughs and she reaches across to lace her fingers with Clarke’s. “Now stop being annoyed at me. We have, like, two hours before my mom gets home and I’d rather spend them with my tongue in your mouth than listening to you yell at me about the best nap I’ve had this week.”

“Lexa,” Clarke blushes but she doesn’t argue that she also wants to make out in the free time they have. “I could tell that you were enjoying it. You have little red marks on your face from the headrest and when I found you your mouth was wide open.”

At that, Lexa almost falls into herself. To everyone else she’s perfect and popular and has absolutely no flaws. To Clarke, she drools in her sleep and wakes up with the worst bed head in the world.

Nobody else can ever see her like that.

She’s kind of in love with that thought.

I love you, she thinks. I love you, I love you, I’m in love with you Clarke Griffin.

What she says is, “Ihad a dream about you,” and judging by the wide grin on Clarke’s face that pretty much just as good as the words pounding in her head.

---------------------------

The second time she almost says it she is completely entranced by Clarke’s boobs.

Honestly, she’s starting to think that Clarke knows exactly what it is that she’s doing when she dresses up for their Friday night dates.

Ever since sleeping together--which, by the way, woah--Clarke has become this...Vixen. This Aphrodite with sculpted features and a wicked tongue. She’s still Clarke; still sweetly nervous in crowds, still party-shy, still quiet and observant and quietly leading her friends without them knowing.

But she’s also...Clarke.

Hot. Inviting. Dangerous.

And Lexa was pretty sure for a long time that the g-spot was a magical spot inside a girl but ever since she’s pressed Clarke’s she’s turned into a confident, radiant, sexual woman and Lexa doesn’t really know what to do with all of that.

Like, she’s still in high school.

She’s way too young to die from sexual frustration.

Right?

“Clarke, Lexa’s here!” Abby smiles tightly at Lexa as they wait at the bottom of the stairs and Lexa smiles back in a way that screams “I’ve-seen-your-daughter-naked-and-wet’ and she tries to wipe it from her face but she really can’t. Because she’s totally seen Clarke naked and wet.

And now she’s thinking about it.

“How is school going?”

“Great,” Lexa squeaks out before she remembers that Abby doesn’t actually hate her and she clears her throat. “It’s getting harder but I guess they’re just preparing us for college.”

Abby hums at that and tugs at the sleeves of her green shirt. “And you’re ready for college?”

“I don’t think anyone can be ready for anything,” Lexa replies diplomatically and she licks at her upper lip quickly. “But I’m excited for a new challenge.”  

“You’ll do well. You both will,” Clarke’s mom decides and Lexa breathes out, sure she’s on the woman's good side now. She doesn’t think she’s ever been on her bad side but she knows it’s always good to keep up the good impressions. “Where are you two going tonight?”

When she’d walked in wearing a gold mini-dress she felt Abby’s eyes on her immediately. And it wasn’t in a good way; it was in a way that knew she wanted a rise out of her daughter and she wanted to look good like she did it. But the gold complimented her eyes and she needed to look good for the restaurant.

And Clarke.

Mostly Clarke.

“I got us a table at Trikru,” she says and Abby looks impressed. It’s one of the better restaurants in the city and she knows the waiting list is long; but Lincoln’s mom is the head chef and sometimes it’s who you know, rather than what you know, that gets you places in life. “Clarke’s been busy with school and her clubs that I wanted to treat her.”

Before Abby can say anything Clarke makes her way down the stairs. Upstairs she can hear the voices of Bellamy and Octavia and she smiles, knowing Clarke’s best friend had dragged his sister over to help and it calms her knowing that Clarke was probably just as nervous to look good for tonight as she was.

Going to Trikru was never a surprise; Clarke isn’t a fan of them and Lexa likes showing off and she knows Clarke has made an effort, much like Lexa had tried to, and that image alone makes her heart pound.

Lexa knows Clarke has boobs.

She’s very, very, very aware her girlfriend has boobs.

But Holy Shit -- Boobs.

Generally Clarke sticks to shirts with a high neckline, ones that tie around and cover her chest, because she tries to divert attention away but--like she mentioned earlier--Lexa is pretty sure her girlfriend is trying to kill her now.

A plunging neckline, one that stops above her damn belly button, is what grabs her attention first and the sheer material between the black fabric of the dress does nothing to hide the smooth, pale skin exposed to Lexa’s eyes. 

The dress cups Clarke’s chest perfectly, her cleavage on show thanks to the large slit down the middle, and she doesn’t know how much time has passed but she knows she’s staring.

Abby knows she’s staring.

Bellamy and Octavia know she’s staring.

Clarke giggles.

Because of course Clarke giggles. Because as sexy and as hot and as delicious as she is; she’s still her Clarke. That snaps Lexa out of her daze, her eyes a little darker, and she smiles at the beauty in front of her.

“You look incredible,” Lexa says, proud of herself for not tripping over her words or her feet as she steps towards her girlfriend. “You always look amazing but...Clarke, you look incredible.”

“So do you,” Clarke whispers and she lifts a hand to push a curled hair behind her ear. It falls back down naturally, heavier due to its styling, and Clarke blushes. “That dress makes your legs look...Wow”

Lexa has heard compliments all of her life. Her eyes are beautiful, her legs are long, her lips are perfect. Exes have lavished her with kind words and admirers have whispered compliments in her ears. But nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to the shy smile Clarke gives her when she finds her attractive.

Just knowing she has any type of attention from Clarke sets her on fire.

“I love you,” she tries to say but it sounds like, “I can’t wait to show the world how amazing my girlfriend is.”

And it’s almost enough.

---

The third time she almost says it she’s glad she didn’t.

Luna Murray has stuck around for longer than Lexa begins to feel comfortable with and she doesn’t know what to do. Usually she’s level-headed and calm, and she knows Clarke knows that Luna likes her because they’ve spoken about it and Clarke asked Lexa is she trusted her and she did, she does, but Luna is still there and it’s starting to drive her a little crazy.

Because Luna understands jokes about dead politicians that goes over Lexa’s head and Luna knows that Bal du moulin de la Galette is a wondrous painting even though Lexa thinks all the faces look exactly the same.

Luna gets Clarke in a way that Lexa is still learning to understand.

“You need to stop,” Lincoln warns one afternoon in the gym and Lexa frowns in the mirror.

She kind of hates being in the gym--it smells and all people ever do is flex and upload to Instagram--but ever since she told Monty to ‘shut the fuck up’ when he interrupted Clarke, she’s not been allowed back in the debate room so she waits for Clarke after school by hanging out with Lincoln.

“Stop what?” She asks but she knows exactly what she’s doing and she lets out an annoyed grunt when Lincoln takes her phone out of her hand and rolls his eyes at her. “Hey.”

“Stop stalking Luna,” he chastises and deletes Lexa’s search history because he’s a good friend and because the poor girl hasn’t done anything wrong. He knows Luna kind of likes getting under Lexa’s skin and, honestly, he has to admit it’s been quite funny to watch Lexa seethe quietly when Luna puts her hand on Clarke’s shoulder -- but it has to stop. “Have you spoken to Clarke about it?”

Lexa nods, annoyed. “She thinks I’m being dumb,” she says but that’s not true because Clarke would never call her that. “She says that if I trust her then it shouldn’t matter that Luna wants to fuck her but that’s some messed up logic because I’m not going to sit back and let her worm her way in.”

Lincoln lifts a weight casually and Lexa frowns because, surely, nobody should be that strong at seventeen. “I don’t think she’s actually trying to steal Clarke from you.”

“Good. Because she belongs to me.”

And that sentence, right there, is where Lexa really wishes she could turn back time.

“I like to think I’m an individual and I don’t belong to anyone,” calls across the gym and Lincoln stops lifting his weight stone-cold half way up his torso. Which, honestly, would be really impressive but Lexa has kind of something else to focus on. “And I’m not some possession or someone to just ‘fuck’, Lexa.”

If Clarke swearing wasn’t enough to let Lexa know she was in trouble, the girl slamming the door on the way out is.

“Go,” Lincoln says and his eyes are wide.

“What do I say? We were just talking,” she looks at her best friend and he shrugs. Which, of course he fucking shrugs because he’s a seventeen year old boy and he’s avoiding the wrath of Clarke Griffin. “Lincoln.”

“I don’t know. She doesn’t like that you spoke about her like she’s some kind of...prize, I guess,” he says and lowers his weight. “And I know you didn’t mean that but you might have to explain it to her.”

Lexa blinks because that sort of makes sense.

Sometimes Clarke doesn’t always understand when Lexa says things like that; she prefers to be seen as independent and strong and Lexa is all about feminism but she really also wants Clarke to understand that she’s hers. And not in a possessive way -- just in…She’s just...

She’s hers.

She doesn’t know how else to explain it.

“Clarke, stop,” she calls out when she catches up to her in the parking lot and she frowns when the girl keeps walking. “Clarke. You’re not walking home. Get in the car with me and we’ll talk about this.”

“Don’t tell me what to do. I’m not some...some...Pet!”

Lexa stops because a) she knows she isn’t and b) she wonders if Clarke knows what else that could mean.

No.

Probably not.

“I never said you were. Just stop,” Lexa finally catches up to her and grasps at her wrist, effectively stopping the girl from stomping across the parking lot and walking home when Lexa’s car is right there. “That’s not what I meant by any of that.”

“So what did you mean? Because it sounded to me like you still don’t trust my friendship with Luna and I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do to prove it to you that I don’t want anyone else.”

“It’s not you that I don’t trust.”

Pulling her wrist from Lexa’s hold, Clarke glares. “I can’t tell Luna how to act any more than you can tell me who to be friends with.”

“She makes me uncomfortable.”

“She’s my friend.”

Lexa is seconds away from actually stomping her foot and she briefly wonders when she became this person. People used to flirt with Costia all the time; hell, she’s been at parties where Costia has made out with people in front of her. And never, not once, has she ever felt her heart race with the fear that someone else could take her girl away.

“And I’m your girlfriend,” Lexa grits out. “Surely that has to count for fucking something. Surely my feelings come before that of some new girl that has just turned up and turned your head.”

“She hasn’t turned my head! Lexa, what are you talking about?”

“She’s everything you should want!” Finally, finally, finally it comes out and Lexa feels the weight fall from her shoulders like an avalanche. Her voice cracks, her body droops and Clarke looks stunned for the few seconds Lexa takes to breathe. “Clarke she’s smart and she’s in, like, the top ten percent of our year or something. She’s traveled and she understands art and she hates parties. Her dad is, like, some freaking author or whatever the fuck he is and -- Fuck!”

“Stop swearing.”

Lexa rolls her eyes at that but it’s fond. Because Clarke knows what it’s like to be overwhelmed and she’s letting Lexa know it by focusing on one thing at once to calm her down.

“She’s exactly the girl I always figured you’d be with. When we were in chemistry and I was trying to flirt and see if you liked me, you’d ignore it all and I figured it was because you didn’t like girls like me. And then I heard you were with Niylah and she’s quiet and sweet and all of those things too. So I thought maybe I just wasn’t your type. And then suddenly I was and we...You fell for me too, which was like the biggest surprise, and it’s like I’m just waiting for you to figure it out.”

Clarke moves closer, slowly, like she’s approaching a wild animal and Lexa shakes her head at herself in annoyance. She isn’t this girl. She isn’t insecure and she doesn’t care and she hates that this is who Clarke is turning her into.

But she isn’t fighting it either.

“I’ve never been afraid of losing anything. That’s why I do what I want or whatever the fuck it is my reputation says about me. I don’t have anything to lose and now I have you -- And you think it’s possessive, I get that, and I’m totally on board with you being your own woman. But you’re mine, Clarke Griffin. And I’m yours. It’s not some power play or some bullshit emotional abuse -- I just want to belong to you and I want you to belong to me. I want your needs to be my needs, I want to share it all. I just want it to be us against the world, you know?”

There’s still a frown on Clarke’s face, her eyes radiating with something Lexa can’t quite read, but she lets her head be tilted down to meet Clarke in a soft kiss.

Hands rest on full hips and Clarke’s hands move to press against the back of her neck and Lexa sighs into her mouth; tired and emotional and she’s pretty sure she’s in love.

“You’re everything I want,” Clarke finally says and Lexa nods because she trusts that, she trusts Clarke. It’s her own insecurities that have caused this. “I’m sorry Luna makes you feel like that and I apologise if I’ve done anything to make it worse but I promise...I’m yours.”

“Clarke,” Lexa sighs, her eyes closing. “Don’t say that if you’re not comfortable. I just wanted you to get it.”

“I’m yours, Lexa.”

“Clarke.”

“I’m yours.”

Lexa smiles and presses her lips against Clarke’s again. It takes like “I love you,” but she hears instead. “I’m yours too.”

And she’s never said anything more honest in her life.

---

When she finally says it Clarke pretends she can’t hear so she says it again and again and again.

The movie playing isn’t the best movie in the world but it’s Friday and it’s date night but Clarke has the worst period pains of her life--she claims--and Lexa doesn’t mind staying in because the weather is kind of humid and that always makes her hair frizz up. 

Next to her Clarke has curled up into her side, her hands wrapped around her bicep and her head on Lexa’s chest. For a solid ten minutes her girlfriend had tried to sync their breathing up, to see if she could, but she’d almost passed out and when they finally settled down from their giggles they fell into a comfortable silence.

Her phone has lit up a few times, enough that it caught Clarke’s interest, but she ignores it for the movie and the girl laying beside her. Fridays are for them and she doesn’t care if Mila Kunis is in town and throwing a rager; Friday is for Clarke.

(Although, if it was Mila Kunis she could probably convince Clarke to go.)

(It wouldn’t be hard. She seen her girlfriends search history.)

“Say I’m a bird.”

Lexa laughs at that and looks at the mess of blonde hair on her chest, completely enamored. “We’re not even watching The Notebook.”

“Say I’m a bird,” Clarke shrugs and even through the material covering her chest, Lexa can feel the smile. “Say it.”

“You’re not.”

“Say it.”

“You’re a bird,” Lexa laughs and it’s so stupid--that whole scene makes absolutely no fucking sense--but it makes Clarke wriggle closer to her and she wonders if Nicolas Sparks would appreciate a thank you letter.

“Now say you’re a bird.”

Clarke lifts her head and there are little creases on her cheeks from the fabric of her top and her hair has matted to her face a little; but her eyes are bright and her smile is wide and when Lexa kisses her she tastes like ice-cream and soda.

“If you’re a bird then I’m a bird.”

Clarke hums happily before she runs her thumb against Lexa’s lower lip. “I love that you do that even though you hate that movie,” she whispers and Lexa’s heart fucking pounds at the words ‘I love’. She knows Clarke has been hinting at it for a few weeks, and Lexa knows she’s felt it for at least two months, but they’re teenagers and they’re nervous and Lexa quite likes the build up if she’s honest. “I love a lot of things about you.”

“Yeah?”

She expects Clarke to sing sweet about her eyes and her hair, her flawless skin, her hair and her hands and how she sings in the shower but only after Clarke has stayed the night.

“I love your patience with me. I know I’m not easy and I don’t always pick up the right social cues but you’re always there, you never judge. I love how selfless you are; how you always open my door to the car first, even if it’s raining, because I know how you hate it when your hair gets wet and your makeup runs.”

Clarke blushes as she speaks and her eyes don’t always quite meet Lexa’s but she knows she’s being truthful. She can hear it in the quiver of her words, in the way her body presses tighter against her.

“I love that you still want me to be yours, even after all this time. I love that you’re sitting through this even though I know you’re not big on romance and speeches and all of those things that you think made a bad story. Sometimes, when you’re not here and I can’t sleep, I think about all of these things and it helps me sleep.”

“Why, is loving me boring?”

And Lexa knows exactly what she’s just say, she knows what she’s implying, and her heart beats faster and faster and faster as Clarke smiles slow and calm and ready.

“Loving you is the easiest, scariest, most worthy thing I’ve ever done.”

Lexa swallows at that because Holy Fuck.

Holy Shit.

Clarke presses a happy kiss against her lips and settles down again, ten minutes of the movie passing easily while they were busy speaking, and she feels Clarke’s hands leave her bicep to rest across her stomach instead. 

She knows Clarke isn’t looking for a reply--she’s too perfect for that, too patient and kind--but Lexa knows, she’s so sure of it.

“I love you.”

“Hm?”

“I love you,” she clears her throat a little because her voice is scratchy and she tightens her hold on Clarke’s waist. “Clarke.”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“Sorry. What did you say?” There’s a giggle in Clarke’s voice and she wriggles against Lexa a little in happiness, which only makes Lexa laugh loudly. “Can you say that again?”

“I’ll say it forever,” she decides and Clarke sits up again, resting her forehead on Lexa’s. “I love you.”

“Again.”

“I love you.”

“Again.”

Before she can reply, Clarke kisses it out of her mouth.

Not that she minds.

Forever is enough time to make sure Clarke hears her correctly.

[filmfanatic82]

AO3 Link (HERE)

Chapter 9: Clarke (III)

There’s something up with Raven.

A major something.

A something that Clarke can’t seem, for the life of her, to pinpoint, but yet still knows it’s there. Bubbling just beneath the surface of her best friend’s nonchalant smirk and unwavering air of cool confidence.

Raven will never flat out admit it. No. Clarke knows better. She will have to be the one to ask. And then ask again… And again… And possibly a few more times after that. That’s how it works with Raven. Clarke has to be the one to poke and prod until almost the point of utter exhaustion before Raven will even consider revealing any of her cards.

Clarke first learned this about her best friend back when they were in fifth grade and Raven had started showing up to school with an array of peculiar injuries. First, it was the three-inch gash above her left eyebrow. The one that Raven had said she had gotten from falling off of her BMX bike while riding to school. And then it was the black eye. Another spontaneous injury from not paying attention. But that was the first clue for Clarke. Raven always paid attention… Always.

So Clarke asked the question. The one that none of the adults around them seemed to want to ask.

Was everything ok?

And Raven swore it was. Again and again. Even went as far as stopped talking to Clarke for well over a week, when Clarke wouldn’t let it go.

But, then one day, Raven didn’t show up to school and Clarke knew that the question needed to be asked again. One more time. And she was determined not to give up until Raven, her very best friend on the face of the earth, gave her the real answer.

Clarke hadn’t been prepared, though, to handle the truth behind the answer. The cold harsh truth that not everyone had parents that loved and cared for them. That protected them and tucked them in at night in the comforts of a warm bed and a comfy house. That some people were handed the short end of the stick when it came to the life they were born into. A life where they were simply an afterthought -- if a thought at all-- and survival meant learning how to fend for oneself at too early of an age.

That day had resulted in an impromptu trip to the hospital where Clarke had held Raven’s hand as her mom re-set Raven’s broken and stitched her up in more places than Clarke wanted to count. And also an unspoken understanding between the two of them. Clarke would always ask, regardless of how hard the question might be. And Raven would let her.

Clarke had meant to pull Raven aside before they had left Lexa’s house but there had just hadn't been a good moment to do so. No, not between getting ready for the party and Lexa…

Okay. Maybe there had been one too many moments with Lexa. But, then again, is there ever enough? No. Not for Clarke. Lexa is nothing short of oxygen for her. Clarke needs her presence-- her touch-- to breathe.

“How the hell can someone so tiny take up so much room? Move over,” Anya says giving Octavia an extra hard nudge in the shoulder.

“Fuck off, Woods,” Octavia fires back, throwing an elbow of her own. “And I’m not tiny.”

“Whatever you say, baby Blake.”

Clarke glances over her shoulder at the human sandwich that is Raven, Octavia, and Anya in the backseat of Lexa’s Range Rover and can’t help but let out a chuckle at the sheer absurdity of it. “You guys better quit it or Lexa’s gonna turn this car around.”

“Fucking ridiculous,” Anya muttered under her breath and gives Octavia another shove.

Octavia once again goes to retaliate, but Raven stops her before she can make contact with Anya.

“Here,” Raven unbuckles her seat belt and shifts her body, making room for Octavia. “Lean up against me.”

Octavia moves towards Raven, re-positioning herself right into Raven’s lap as she does. Raven instinctually wraps her arms around Octavia’s waist and silently signaling to Octavia to relax. The space between them melts away to the point where it is almost indecipherable when Raven ends and Octavia begins.

“Thanks, Rae,” Octavia says in a voice barely above a whisper and Raven gives a simple nod in response.

Clarke watches the entire exchange transpire through the rearview mirror and can’t help but take note of it all. The words. The looks. Even the light but telling touches. It’s all entirely familiar… Too familiar.

It’s the same underlying electricity that flows between Clarke and Lexa whenever they are in each other’s presence.

It’s love.

Raven is in love with Octavia.

And it’s a more than strong possibility that it isn’t the unrequited type of love.

Suddenly Clarke is hit with the overwhelming urge to ask the question again. And as soon as humanly possible… Even if she isn’t fully ready to hear the answer.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

“Hey, Rae?” Clarke calls out to the taller latina as the group piles out of Lexa’s car twenty minutes later and onto the sidewalk in front of Murphy’s house. “Got a minute?”

“Sure,” Raven replies, holding back from following Anya, Octavia, and Lexa.

“Clarke?” Lexa pauses as well at the odd request.

“It’s fine, baby. Go. I’ll catch up with you inside.” Clarke motions for Lexa to keep on walking and then turns her attention back to Raven.

“What’s going on, Griff?”

“Are you…” Clarke trails off as a surprise wave of nerves crashes down upon her. She runs her hands through her wild mane of blond curls and attempts to hide the growing sense of internal doubt with a smile. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Clarke--”

“No. I mean it, Rae. This is me… asking you… if you’re okay.”

An uncomfortable silence falls between the two of them as the sounds of the house party in the near distance fills the surrounding night air. Clarke searches to grab hold of Raven’s eyes, trying her best to project nothing but reassurance that whatever it is, that it’ll be okay. It always is.

That’s been the deal since the start.

“I don’t know.”

The words punch through the night, grabbing hold of Clarke’s full attention. “Is it Finn?”

Raven lets out a harsh laugh and Clarke suddenly catch a glimpse of fear hiding deep within Raven’s chocolate brown eyes.

“You two broke up?”

“Something like that.”

“Did he…” Clarke trails off, realizing that the question isn’t the right one she needed to be asking as soon as the words start to leave her mouth.

“No. But that would’ve been easier.” Raven runs her hands over her ponytail, trying her best to mask her emotions bubbling up from beneath the surface of her cool and confident exterior. But it’s too late. Clarke can see the truth. It’s itching to break free from Raven’s lips.

She just needs to ask the right question. One that Raven can’t dance around.

“This isn’t about Finn, is it?”

Raven doesn’t respond. She can’t. Every ounce of energy she has is going towards keeping her walls from crumbling.

“Rae, is there something—“

“Clarke?” Lexa’s voice cuts through the steady ambient party sounds, stopping Clarke mid-question. “You coming?”

Clarke’s eyes dart back towards the house and spot Lexa’s silhouette lingering in the doorway. “Yeah, baby. One minute.”

As soon as Clarke looks back, she knows that she missed the moment. The hint of raw emotions is now nowhere to be found on Raven’s face. It’s been magically replaced with her trademark smirk and a devilish glint in her eyes.

“We’ll talk later, Griff. Promise.”

“Okay,” Clarke replies giving Raven a reassuring smile in return. “Later.”

“Good. Now c'mon. We’ve got a date with Murphy’s beer pong table.” Raven throws her arm around Clarke’s shoulder and, without another moment’s hesitation, steers the two of them towards the house. Clarke willing gives in but can't help shake the nagging feeling churning in the depths of her stomach that it's a mistake.

The question needs to be asked… And soon. Before the answer is forced out at the worst possible time.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

“Jesus. What kinda drugs do they have me on?” Anya blurts out as Clarke and Lexa make their way into the hospital room.

“Hi,” Clarke says quietly, trying her best to force a smile onto her face, but it doesn’t fully reach her eyes.

It's bad…  

Beyond bad…

The kind of bad that suddenly detonates like a grenade, blowing any semblance of normality to shreds and leaving all those in its wake left to somehow piece together the tattered remains.

It’s the same exact bad that ripped her dad, Jake, away without any warning whatsoever.

One minute Clarke had been struggling to get through her freshman year Bio midterm and the next, she was flying down the 405, desperate to get across town to the hospital -- her mother’s hospital -- where her dad had been taken. But it hadn’t mattered in the long run. Jake had never made it to the hospital. Instead, he had died on the way there, in the back of an ambulance, having not been able to be resuscitated after suffering from a massive heart attack while mowing the lawn.

Octavia had been home at the time and had the unfortunate luck of not only finding Jake but also having to be there in the ambulance when the paramedics all but formally called time of death.

They had never really talked about it much beyond that day in the hospital when Abby delivered the devastating news to both Clarke and Bellamy. Then again, Clarke never really talked about anything related to Jake after that day. Not to Octavia… nor Abby… or even Bell.

Instead, Clarke simply packed up the shattered remains of her already broken heart and buried them deep down inside, in a place where no one could tamper with them again.

No. Clarke intimately knows this kind of bad first hand and all the potential damage it will bring to anyone it touches.

“Hey, Ahn.” Lexa’s voice cracks on the tail end of her sister’s name, sounding unusually fragile and scared.

Clarke instinctively reached out and gently places her hand on the small of Lexa’s back and instantly feels the nerves radiating off of her. She knows she shouldn't do it. That even though it's a simple gesture, it's still yet another step across the line… The line that Clarke swore that, up until this point, she would never consider crossing.

But, old habits die hard… Especially habits that happen to involve the only person that Clarke has ever truly loved.

“I’m hallucinating, right? You two can’t be here… In the same room… together?” Anya rambles on, ever so slightly slurring her words thank in part to the cocktail of painkillers coursing through her veins.

“No. We’re really here,” Clarke responds.

“Shit. Rae’s so not gonna…” Anya trails off as a twisted look of sudden horror spreads across her face. “Raven… Oh god, Raven… Where is she? We were in the ambulance and… and… Oh god, please tell me she’s okay. She’s gotta be okay. She has to be…”

“Wait. Raven was in the car with you?” Clarke asks in stunned disbelief.

“Yeah. We were on our way to meet Lexa for brunch. Her and I. We were fighting and… Oh god… She… She…” But the rest of Anya’s sentence is lost in a series of gut-wrenching sobs as the recent memories crash down upon her. She struggles to catch her breath, causing Lexa to immediately snap out of her own thoughts and rush to her aide.

“Lexa, I--”

“Go, Clarke,” Lexa cuts Clarke off as she ever so carefully rubs gently circles on Anya’s back. “Go find Raven. We’ll be okay.”

Clarke gives a nod, unable to find her words, and then takes off out of the hospital room. She races down the semi-crowded corridor, barely cognizant of her surrounds as her mind hones in one thing and one thing only… Raven.

Fuck. Raven.

Of course Raven had been in the car with Anya. They’ve been together for the better half of the last four years and living together for well over two.

That’s why Raven hadn't been in the waiting room when they had shown up to the hospital.

Clarke mentally kicks herself in the ass for not coming to the realization sooner. Sure, the chaos of Lexa physical presence is partially to blame for her lack of coherent thoughts but she knows that it isn't the only reason.

Clarke's relationship with Raven has been complicated for years now. Ever since the brutal aftermath of Murphy's party.

Clarke had sworn that things wouldn't change. That whatever had gone down between Raven and Octavia, was between them and wouldn't affect their friendship.

But of course, it had.

How could it not?

Raven had taken advantage of her little sister… Or at least that had been the general rumor.

It was yet another question that Clarke had never asked.

“Clarke?” One of the nurses calls out, snapping Clarke out of her thoughts. She slows down her pace and as a young dirty blonde woman in salmon colored scrubs approaches from the opposite direction.

“Hey, Harper.”

“Thought that was you. What are you doing here? Thought you were off until Thursday?”

“I am but my friends… Do you know which room the second patient from the car crash is in?” Clarke asks, trying not to dive too much into the details. She knows better. Harper always means well, but the girl loves to talk and there’s the strong risk that offering up too much information will only lead to a full-blown conversation, which Clarke doesn’t have the time nor the patience for. Not now.

“You mean the DUI that was brought in an hour ago?” Harper responds. “One of them was just moved to room 315.”

The word DUI catch hold of Clarke’s attention for the briefest of seconds, throwing her slightly off-guard. Part of her craves to know more. To ask the question that’s bubbling up from the depths of her subconsciousness, but this isn’t the right time. So instead, Clarke tucks that piece of information away for safekeeping.

“What about the other? Female. In her 20s. Latina--”

“Oh her… Yeah, she was just taken up to ICU. Really rough shape. Coded a few times on her way here… She’s a friend of yours?”

Clarke gives a simple nod in response as she bites back the hint of tears starts to form in her eyes. “Yeah.”

“Ah. That makes so much now.”

“What does?” Clarke asks, trying to follow along.

“There was this person who showed up in the ER, who refused to leave the girl’s side. Wasn’t in the accident or anything, but seemed to know the girl. Gave everyone a shit ton of attitude when they tried to get them to leave and said that their mom was head surgery here. They even forced their way into ICU--”

“O…” The name leaves Clarke’s lip like a reflex. “That’s my little sister.”

“Knew it! Zoe so owes me twenty,” Harper exclaims with a gleeful smile. “Is she single?”

“What?” Clarke questions.

“Your sister? Is she single? Not asking for me, but Zoe’s totally interested if she is.”

“I… I don’t…”

“She’s queer, right? I mean no one looks like that and doesn’t at least fall somewhere on the rainbow spectrum,” Harper follows up, completely oblivious to Clarke’s present state. “I thought maybe non-binary too, but you just said sister, so I’m guessing--”

“Harper,” Clarke interrupts. “What room?”

“Huh?”

“My friend. What room in ICU?”

“Oh. Think it’s 12,” Harper replies.

“Thanks.” Clarke doesn’t wait for a response. She takes off once again down the hallway as a new set of questions invade her already cluttered thoughts.

Octavia’s with Raven? But Octavia can’t stand Raven. At least not since…

The two can barely tolerate being in the same room together, let alone…

Queer.

Is that it? Why wouldn’t have Octavia said something? After all these years. Clarke has never given her a reason not to feel like she couldn’t…

Non-binary.

That’s the word Harper used.

Again, why wouldn’t she…

Is that even the right pronoun?

And where does Raven fit into this? Or has Raven… Has Raven known all along? Is that why--

“Shit,” Clarke exhales with a heavy breath of air as she comes to a sudden halt in front of the door window of room 12. She instantly spots Octa…

No.

O.

O sits in the corner of the room, knees tucked underneath their chin and arms wrapped tightly around them, slightly rocking back and forth. Their eyes locked in on one thing and one thing only… Raven.

Clarke stands there, simply watching her younger sibling through the doorway, unable to move as a tsunami of guilt-laced clarity crashes down upon her.

She’s been asking the right question all along…

But just not to the right person.

[closetcasefabray]

Blue + Yellow (2/2)

so i’m never drinking again (meaning i’m not going to drink until a few days from now), but i did some stuff around my apartment & recovered before looking this over. it’s in decent enough shape i figured i’d post it on my night in. so here's the second/final part of b+y, a soulmate clexa au. thanks for the likes & reblogs <3

(i also have some ranya companion bits & other cute shit in my head from this. hit me up in the asks or message me if you wanna know anything.)

(Part 1 / 2)

Blue + Yellow

Part 2 / 2

Once you’re old enough to be trusted on a computer, your parents let you use your dad’s old laptop (with safety settings programmed in, courtesy of your dad being a computer engineer and generally a protective father). You spend hours reading stories online about people seeing color. The romantics talk about how life burst into color as soon as they set eyes on their soulmates. The realists are more prevalent, like you, and they tell of their search for their soulmate, having seen color gradually after a few days. Some even reject the idea of soulmates completely, finding different kinds of love with other like-minded people. 

Your heart breaks when you read about the people who never see their soulmates again—whether a war-torn nation dividing them, or travelers who board a plane back home only to start seeing color as they leave, or sometimes death. But you feel reassured when you read about those who have lost a soulmate and find love again with someone else. Still, your heart aches at the idea of giving up on finding Lexa, even more when you wonder if she’s given up on you.

Your parents did all they could when you told them about Lexa those years ago, a few days after coloring with Lexa in the park, but they couldn’t get much information because of child protection and privacy reasons, especially because Lexa had been in foster care with her half-sister before moving. With a different last name in a city of millions, you know you’ll never be able to find Lexa, but that doesn’t stop you from searching Facebook and social media most nights. 

Once puberty hits, everyone talks about seeing in color. You never hide the fact that you have been able to see colors since you were five, but you don’t like talking about it much. It’s often something you keep to yourself and your paints. Most kids in your small town know it’s unlikely and often hope they don’t meet their soulmate here, but that doesn’t prevent their hormones from kicking into full gear.

When a new student arrives in the spring of seventh grade, you’re not surprised when you hear Octavia (amongst several others) has a crush. You’re also not shocked to hear that Bellamy confronts him after baseball try-outs that same day, telling the new kid, Lincoln, to stay away from his sister. You decide you like Lincoln when you hear he dodged Bellamy’s first swing and in turn gave the Blake boy a bloody nose. Neither of them get into trouble since it happened far enough from school grounds, but Octavia does get in trouble for giving her brother a fat lip as soon as he gets home for starting a fight with Lincoln. 

After punching Bellamy, Octavia calls you.

“I can see colors like you now,” Octavia says excitedly. “Just... wow, Clarke. You never told me how beautiful it is.”

She ends up rushing off the phone when her mom gets home and sees a beat up Bellamy holding bags of frozen corn to his nose and mouth.

Although Octavia is grounded for the first month of their relationship, there isn’t anything or anyone who can stop Lincoln and Octavia from falling in love because both puberty-stricken thirteen and twelve-year-olds knew as soon as they saw each other in fourth period English. It really is beautiful, seeing the world in color, but you don’t have the heart to tell Octavia that the colors you see haven’t been as bright since you were just a kid in a park.

Your mom never asks, but you know she’s thinking it when you tell her your top choices for college—Columbia, New School, NYU, Fordham, CUNY. You don’t talk to your mother often, not since your dad died two years ago, so you think she might not want to scare you away from opening up by asking questions.

“I like the idea of being somewhere I don’t have to drive to get to the best art in the city... or the world for that matter,” you say one night over dinner.

She nods in understanding. It is true that the city has that benefit, but you’re not sure if you’re rationalizing it more to yourself or your mother.

You drove enough to get your license, but you hate it. You’ve grown more comfortable riding in passenger seats because Octavia luckily loves to drive, and she talks and plays music loud enough to stop you from thinking too much. But it’s still too easy to get in your head when you drive on your own. You still tremble in your seat at large intersections, and your hands sweat as they hold the wheel because you don’t think you’ll ever forget the sound of metal being crushed and the silence that comes after.

“So wait,” your roommate slurs with a chuckle, “you’re telling me... you decided to come here... because you think your soulmate might still be here?”

“Way to make me sound like a total sucker, but yeah, pretty much,” you confess before downing another shot.

You just had the entire art department rip into your sophomore year portfolio, so you decided to put some distance between you and the art world and get drunk with Raven—a computer engineering student who transferred from UMass back to her home, New York City born and bred.

“You’re not like a sucker. Pretty sure you just are one, but I’m a bitter asshole,” Raven says with a smirk.

You smile and clink your beer bottle with hers before taking a sip.

Raven has good reason and you’re sure you would be much angrier with the world if in her shoes. She met her soulmate when she was fourteen, and they fixed cars and built things with their hands together. Then they were sixteen, riding on a motorcycle they had fixed up together, a car didn’t see them, and Raven just remembers waking up in the hospital with a shattered leg. “I can still see colors,” she said that night the whole story spilled out of her, “but it’s all... faded, I guess. Colors are pretty dull in my eyes.”

“Do you think it’s stupid?” you ask Raven. “That I thought I could find her again?”

Raven shrugs. “Don’t put your life on hold for someone who isn’t here right now,” she says. “If you really are soulmates, things will work themselves out. Until then, have fun, make art like you weird liberal arts kids do. Do whatever. Doesn’t mean you have to fall in love.”

“Makes sense,” you agree as Raven pours you both a shot and opens a couple more beers.

“Of course. I know what I’m talking about; I’m in the sciences.”

You kiss a boy who also sees color, but nothing about him feels special or makes your heart race. You both know you’re welcome distractions for each other, but he knows his soulmate is never coming back and you might always be looking for yours.

You kiss a lot of people and sleep with a few others too. Some can see color, some can’t, and some you don’t bother asking. It’s fun and nothing close to love, so it fills the gaps between those times you think about a little girl who brought green into your life and then everything else. You wonder what she looks like now, if she’s cut her hair, or if she’s somewhere thinking about you.

You fall for a girl with long, light brown hair. She has the opposite curse—born colorblind like everyone else but informed by doctors that she will never see colors. She has to learn to love the hard way—heart first. When you’re lying next to her in bed, and she hums as you trace her jawline, you wish you could love her the way she deserves.

You think she’s always known and that’s why she never said “I love you” because the response would be a lie or an apology.

She’s standing in front of you now, smiling that sad, knowing smile. “You showed me color in a different way,” she says before kissing you softly for the last time. She leaves you in your studio with your hands covered in verdigris.

You don’t know if it’s the lack of sleep or your eyes playing tricks on you again, but you swear you see a flash of green eyes and dark hair on your morning commute. You don’t know if it’s because you’ve been busy and single for the past couple of months, but you feel your heart swell, your blood flowing through your veins to your fingertips. You just know that when you get to your studio, your paintings look a little brighter and your hands find the paint on their own, blending the perfect shades for your last piece of your senior presentation.

Your advisor introduces you to more of her curator friends and they praise your work as you stand in the gallery beside one of your paintings of an eclipse, half the canvas is a haunting cerulean, the other half painted bright shades of yellow.

“I assume you gave Ms. Griffin the A she deserves?” jokes one of her colleagues.

Dr. Miles grins and hugs your shoulders. “I wouldn’t dream of giving her anything lower than that,” she says with pride.

Dr. Miles had been so impressed by your senior project, she invited some friends from MoMA to your show at the campus art center. You were already elated to have your work being viewed by such important people, but when Dr. Miles called you during senior week to ask if you’d like to feature your work at a gallery in affiliation with PS1, you almost burst. You could hardly process what you were hearing and when you did, after hanging up your phone, you screamed and jumped around your apartment, much to Raven’s hungover chagrin.

Since it was rather last minute, Dr. Miles managed to sort out most of the details while you prepared for graduation. Still in your apartment until the end of May, you were able to help move your work to the small gallery space in the Lower East Side on Rivington with some help from Raven. It didn’t feel real until you saw your name in the brochure for New York City Museums’ Summer Tour.

You excuse yourself to greet your mother and her boyfriend, Marcus Kane. They’re beaming as they look at all your work on display, but mostly they look happy together. You smile because your mother’s found a kind of happiness you haven’t seen since your father passed away. Of all people, you’re glad the first person to put paint in your hands is now the person adding color to your mother’s life again.

You give them both a hug and kiss on the cheek, asking how they like the city since they stuck around after your graduation. Someone offers them wine, and Marcus happily takes a glass and mouths to you, “Fancy,” and wiggles his eyebrows, making you laugh.

“Wow, your work is selling quick,” Marcus notes, sipping from his wine.

You’re surprised when you take in how many red dots are stickered next to several of your paintings.

“You’re taking us out to dinner when you visit,” your mom teases.

“I like lobster,” Marcus adds before wandering off to look at more of your work.

You find him a bit later in front of your favorite piece. It’s mixed media, with various New York debris scattered around the edges with the blur of a subway train speeding through the center, featuring green eyes that stand out from the grey. You didn’t put a price on it; you want to hold onto this one.

You’re taking inventory of all the sold pieces and confirming contact information with buyers as Raven continues texting you from across the street as she waits for you to wrap up. She keeps sending you ridiculous ideas of how to spend your newfound relative wealth.

You’re in the back office when you hear the door open.

“Raven, I gave you the passcode to help me move my stuff here, not so you can treat it like an extension of our apartment,” you say as you round the corner, flipping through the contact paperwork. “I’ll just be ten more min—”

You forget how to speak as you blindly set down the stack of paper on the desk, unable to look away from the figure in front of the door.

“Sorry. Your friend told me the passcode... I’d have come earlier, but I had to take the train in from Connecticut.”

You remember everything: the laughing leaves, the charcoal skirt, her brown hair, and those eyes.

“My sister only told me a couple of hours ago there was this art gallery I had to see,” she says, offering a small smile as she takes a couple tentative steps toward you. She picks up one of the small pamphlets about yourself and the exhibit. “Blue + Yellow,” she reads, “Still your favorite color?”

You nod, still struggling to find the right words to say. Maybe it’s because you never let yourself plan this part out; all your energy went solely into making her appear again. Now she’s here, right in front of you.

“Clarke Griffin,” Lexa says like she’s trying it out, putting the pamphlet in her pocket. “Clarke, with an e, Griffin...” She lets out a small laugh. “That would have made things easier.”

You let out a laugh of your own. “And you’re Lexa...”

“Woods. Well, now anyway, once my parents adopted me,” she explains.

"Woods,” you repeat. “Suits you. Woods, forests... like pines.”

Lexa’s smile broadens at that and you wonder if she’s played your last conversation as children over and over in her head like you have, as if sifting through memories for clues to find each other again.

“Is it stupid of me to have dreamed of meeting you again here?” you ask.

Lexa shakes her head. “Only if it’s stupid of me to have read every art section of every New York magazine for the past five years,” she admits, blushing lightly and looking away from Clarke. She notices your unsold mixed media piece and stands in front of it. “It must have been you,” she says, almost to herself as she deciphers the subway and her own eyes gazing out, “but I also thought I saw you walk by me or waiting on the opposite subway platform for years.”

“If it’s any consolation,” you say, standing beside her, looking at it as if from her perspective, “I thought that too. I painted this after I thought I saw you in March. Everything was grey in the rain, but then I saw you... Or thought I did.”

You watch her take in the painting, a look of awe. “Yeah, it must have been you then,” she says, lifting her hand to her chest as if she felt you too. Her eyes trace the grey-blue edges filled with bits of New York—a MetroCard, a crushed coffee cup, a newspaper, and a faded piece of paper with a simple cartoon boat with half the sky colored blue. “It’s always been you,” she says, reaching out as if to touch it but stopping herself.

She turns toward you. “Sorry, this is... a lot.”

You nod dumbly. Lexa smiles and takes your hands in hers. Your artwork breathes with you, seemingly radiating colors off the canvases. They’re singing as they all come back to you in full.

“I spent all my time hoping to find you again... I didn’t put much thought into what I’d say,” Lexa admits with an embarrassed half-smile.

“We have time,” you give her hand a squeeze. “You being here is... We don’t need to talk at all.”

Lexa closes the small distance between you and presses her lips to yours. Every stroke of your paintbrush for seventeen years has been a wish for this moment, and if magic exists, you’re sure it’s in art because Lexa is wrapping her arms around you, holding you, and you’re kissing her back. Like neon buzzing butterflies in your stomach, all the light and color makes its home in you and you’re in love exactly as it was supposed to be.

When you part, you’re looking into those green eyes and you don’t want to look away or wake up if this is all a dream. Lexa blushes under your gaze and you let out a laugh like a breath you’ve been holding in. “Hi,” you sigh.

“Hi,” she says quietly in return, her eyes shimmering like those leaves in the wind. “Would you like to get dinner with me?”

“Now?”

“Yes. Right now.”

“I’d like that. I just, uh,” you keep Lexa’s hand in yours, pulling her with you to grab your phone and keys from the back office, unwilling to let her go now that she’s here. You laugh when you see Raven texted you about a dozen messages, concluding with, you’re welcome. have fun. i’m going to meet with octavia and lincoln to help those poor souls around the city. you owe me several rounds. xox.

You walk out of the building hand-in-hand, and the city’s fast pace and noise welcomes you back to reality. It doesn’t feel jarring with Lexa still beside you, and you sigh contentedly. The city doesn’t feel lonely, seeing it the way you do now.

“I painted a sunset for you... well, several, actually,” you tell her as you walk down the street toward one of the restaurants Lexa likes nearby.

“Any paintings of your hair and eyes?” she asks, smiling at you and almost walking herself into the streetlight pole because she can’t take her eyes off you.

You laugh and kiss her cheek as you wait for the crosswalk sign. “I’m not a fan of self-portraits,” you say, “but you don’t need a painting of me now; you have me right here.”

“You’re right,” Lexa says, and that same look of awe washes over her again because she touches your hair, tucks it behind your ear, and leans down to kiss the corner of your lips. “I’ve missed you... That’s what it feels like.”

Like coming home, you think.

“I’ve missed you too.”

So you ignore the walk sign and kiss her again, under the golden glow of the streetlight to start making up for all that that time spent apart.

fin.

[emorality]

SIX YEARS IN SPACE  ⇢   A TIMELINE OF EVENTS.

because emori had very extensive character growth over her time in space for six years,  i’ve compiled a timeline of how she grew over the course of those six years.  subject to change / be added to the more i develop her.   do not reblog. 

THE FIRST YEAR.  the year we learn.  

it felt like a miracle for emori to even have found a way to stay alive through all of this.  she didn’t belong to a clan that would welcome her into the underground bunker  /  frikdreinas were no more,  except for her,  and it was something she was still trying to process.  thankful that she wasn’t locked in an underground bunker with hundreds of people who still didn’t accept her kind,  yet scared because she didn’t know what to make of the people she was surrounded with just yet.  she clung to john for a long time,  as she always did,  knowing he was the one person she would always feel safe with.

raven was the first person she started to open up to.  she saw a part of who she was within raven,  but there were differences that emori couldn’t achieve just yet.  raven was intelligent and strong and powerful all on her own,  and despite her disability,  people still valued her.  it made emori see that she could be valued in the same way,  too  ——  and she wanted to work for that.  raven was an inspiration to her,  her brain unlike anything emori had ever seen before,  and she was intoxicated by that.

emori has spent so much of her life around tech,  but she has never learned what it meant or what to do with it.  she told it,  and she delivered it,  but she never lingered with it.  now,  she was surrounded by so much of it in a place where she actually had the ability  (  and approval  )  to learn more about it.  it gave her a chance to stick closer to raven,  to learn as much as she could from her.

realization struck that she was about to spent five years in a world that was so unlike the world she had grown up in  —-  a world that had never given her sanctuary or a home.  seeing how much raven did to get them here,  how hard monty was working to ensure they had a food source,  how clarke continuously risked her life to save them,  it gave emori reason to believe that things were about to be different than they ever had been before,  and she could make use of that.  for so long,  she’s been pushed aside,  told that she didn’t belong anywhere,  made to feel like she wasn’t valuable  ——  but she could be here.  if everyone was doing their part to keep them all alive in space,  then so would she.  she had the chance to let her guard down,  even just slightly.  raven took her under her wing as her assistant,  and though emori had been a slow learner,  given that she had no base for most of the things she was taught,  she was attentive and determined to learn more here than she ever had in her life on the ground.  

raven becomes more than just a teacher.  emori has the chance to see that she can have a real friend,  too.  raven is the key for emori to be able to open up to the others eventually,  too. she might not realize it,  but raven showed emori that it was okay to befriend the others,  too.  she felt safe enough with raven in a way that made her feel like she could be safe with everyone else.  

THE SECOND YEAR. the year we understand.  

as she becomes more familiar with the tech she’s surrounded by and the ark that is now deemed as her home,  she finds herself fascinated about more and more.  she seeks out bellamy and monty to hear about their experiences on the ark.  specifically,  bellamy  ——  who has a lot of strong connections with the people they left behind.  his stories about octavia remind her of herself,  in a way  ----  both of their existences had been forbidden.  seeing the way bellamy speaks of her with such pride eases emori’s mind even more.  through his stories,  and seeing that skaikru hadn’t all been the villains she made them out to be before,  she was able to understand their lives a bit better.  

this is also the year she begins to open up a bit more about her life,  too.  in the past,  she has only ever opened up about her experiences when it benefitted her in some way  (  when she could use those stories AGAINST someone else.  )  but now,  she realizes that getting to know people doesn’t always have to be that scary.  she’s still careful with it at this point,  though.  she doesn’t open up until she has a real opportunity to and she waits until someone else has opened up first.  it’s how she feels she can still protect herself,  a safety net she can fall back on in case she regrets opening up about her life.  but the more she exposes about herself,  and the more the others make it obvious they don’t hold her past against her,  the more she feels comfortable continuing to open up.

she also starts to be more comfortable asking questions.  she used to be afraid to reveal that she cared about them and their lives,  but now,  it’s a little easier to admit it.  it’s easier to show that she has a genuine interest in them  ——  one that isn’t feigned,  like it normally had been for her.  she starts to ask questions about every little thing ——  how the ark operated,  what their lives were like,  what the people were like,  what prison was like,  how they survived,  what they were told,  everything.

because she’s starting to feel braver,  this is also the year she tries to work things out with echo.  echo is the one she feared most when heading up to space,  given that they were both from the same world  ----  and in that world,  echo’s kind is trained to despise emori’s kind.  she felt like she was saved from five years of torture being locked in an underground bunker with other earthborn people,  but that didn’t mean she could let her guard down against echo.  it wasn’t that she didn’t trust her specifically; it was her people.  she had kept her distance from her for a long time,  but towards the end of this year,  she gradually tries to talk to her more,  testing the waters with her to ensure her own safety,  because at this point,  that still comes first.  as they begin to open up to each other more and more,  emori realizes that they’re not all that different.  

THE THIRD YEAR.  the year we grow.  

emori has finally gotten to a point where she feels safe with the others.  she has accepted that none of these people pose a thread to her.  they’re kind,  warm,  and accepting  ——  the kind of people she has never come across before.  she is sleeping easier now,  realizing that she doesn’t always have to be on guard waiting for whatever threat could unexpectedly come her way.  she is able to start opening up to the others about her life experiences and how she became what she had.  through finding comfort in the others,  she realized something about herself:  she doesn’t want to be the cruel person she thought she was forced to be on the ground.  she wants to take these experiences and allow them to make her into a better person.  this is largely in part of getting to know harper better  ——  someone who’s demeanor had been so opposite of her own.

she takes a chance and decides to stop wearing her glove.  she’s hesitant at first,  knowing that this usually put a target on her back on the ground,  but part of opening up meant revealing her true self to the others.  she doesn’t say anything to anyone about it when she stops wearing her glove;  she acts natural,  as a way to test the others to see if they intend to draw attention to it.  when no one does,  she finds comfort in that.  she realized that they truly do accept her for the person she is;  that the culture from the ground that isolated her away from everyone back there isn’t true for those from skaikru.  after a trial run with it,  she decides not to wear the glove at all,  packing it away but not throwing it out because she knows that eventually,  she will have to wear it again once she’s met with those on the ground.  

not having to cover her hand brings out a new side of her:  someone who is more confident in a way that isn’t feigned solely as a way of manipulation.  though she has never been ashamed of her hand,  there’s freedom in being able to expose it without worrying that she will be killed or condemned for it.  a genuine happiness follows,  smiles coming more easily to her now than they had before.

it’s not just about being able to expose her hand,  it’s about getting to relax for the first time in her life.  all her life,  she has always been actively working to survive.  but now,  she just gets the chance to live  ——  and it’s because of all those who are around her now.  she is learning more about life,  acceptance,  other people,  emotions,  and self-growth.  she’s comfortable in her own skin in a way that she doesn’t have to hide any parts of herself,  and she is more ready than ever to be a bigger part of this family.

she also learns what it means to forgive.  she watches as echo and bellamy start to patch things up,  the way they seem to connect on a level that no one else does.  in the past,  emori has always believed that once an enemy,  always an enemy  ----  but she sees them,  and she sees that isn’t true.  she never truly understood what the word  ‘ sorry ‘ meant and she never believed it held any weight.  anything she’s learned about apologizing and forgiveness,  she begins to learn from these two.  

THE FOURTH + FIFTH YEAR.   the year we experience.  

through these years,  emori learns a lot about experiences that she’s not used to having.  the simplest experiences ——  like laughing and smiling,  playing games,  learning what it’s like to be part of something.  that’s what she sees this as  ——  the first time she’s ever been part of a group of people who love and care for one another.  and it’s not just that,  but it’s something so much deeper and stronger too.  she is learning what it means to be a family.  she is learning that it’s okay to smile when she feels happy,  and it’s okay to laugh when she finds something funny,  and it’s okay to tease the others when the mood is right.  these have never been things she’s been able to comprehend,  especially the last one.  she was never comfortable smiling and laughing and teasing freely when she was on the ground all alone.  there were too many dangers and threats,  so much that she didn’t understand about social interaction because she never had the chance to properly learn that.  john taught her a lot about all of that prior to coming to space,  but she learned a lot more from being an intricate part of this group.

these years are the years she accepts that she is part of a family.  she accepts that she is a valued member to the rest of them,  that she matters to them,  that she is loved and cared for by them.  it’s also the first chance for her to realize that she can love others,  too.  she knew what it was like to love a significant other,  but now,  she’s learn what it means to love people beyond that.  she’s learning that you can love your friends,  too.  she’s learning what it means to be loved unconditionally.  

she’s also learning to let go of selfishness.  for most of her life,  she thought she had to be selfish in order to survive,  but that’s not true here.  here,  to survive,  they can’t be selfish.  she’s learning that there are lives more valuable than hers,  lives she intends to protect,  and she realizes that losing any one of them could be devastating,  despite never truly experiencing real grief before.  there are little things she starts to do that she’s never really done before,  like offering the others some of her leftover algae,  sharing some of the items she thought to be hers,  simple actions such as asking one of them how they’re doing.   she is learning that the world is bigger than herself,  that she doesn’t have to have such strong walls up against herself when there are other people around her who matter,  too. 

THE SIXTH YEAR.  the year we fall apart.  

the tension is starting to become noticeable for everyone.  it’s past their due date back to the ground,  but they still have no way of getting there,  despite their efforts to find a way every day for the past five years.  

emori feels closer to raven than ever,  trying desperately to keep up with her and learn everything she can,  knowing that they were already supposed to be back down on the ground by now.  emotions and stress are higher than normal,  everyone wanting to ask the question but afraid of speaking it out loud:  when can we go back home?  emori becomes defensive with every member of their family whenever they bring up their journey to raven,  doing her best to protect raven from her own emotions that are likely to get the best of her because of the stress.  

emori spends more time with raven than she usually does,  attempting to move some of that weight onto her own shoulders,  but ultimately feeling like she can’t quite get to raven’s level.  while she used to hold her own inabilities against herself,   she has finally learned to believe in herself and won’t let any of those insecurities get in the way.  she had the best mentor she could have asked for,  and she’s desperate to show raven what she has taught her.

emori and john spend even less time together.  the time they spend together is often filled with small arguments.  emori can’t comprehend why john is angry with her,  because she has come to be so proud of herself and everything she’s learned here, and she doesn’t know why he doesn’t feel the same way.  the more she learns and the more determined she is to help raven get the ship back down to the ground,  the more she starts to realize the lack of effort on john’s part.  while communication has always been something they were good at,  it fails them now.  neither of them can relate to the other,  they can’t talk things out,  they can’t tell the other about their insecurities,  so they pull apart instead.

emori’s desperate need for approval from the first person who ever saw something special in her isn’t met,  and because of that,  she can’t stay with him.  she doesn’t know how to look at him or talk to him without getting angry,  despite still loving him.  she moves out and moves in with raven instead.  it’s her first chance to finally allow herself to grow as this new version of herself without the chains of this relationship that once had been so isolated from everything and everyone.  she has accepted that she has a bigger family now and that john is no longer the only person in the world who cares about her.  she wishes he could step up and prosper the same way she has over these years,  but she doesn’t know how to encourage him with that,  either.   she is no longer someone who has to cling to this person just because he’s the only person she has;  she has other people in her life willing to support her,  and she has learned to accept that.  

emori spends this year desperately trying to make contact with the ground,  knowing that the people in the underground bunker should be out by now.  when she’s not working on that,  she’s trying to help raven get their ship back to the ground.  she becomes even more focused on her work  -----  late to dinners,  staying up for a longer time at night,  and pulling away from john because she feels like this is her responsibility as raven’s assistant and as a valuable member to this family.  

[chasholidays]

Prompt: Bellamy is there for Clarke through the loss of her dad, Wells, Finn, Lexa & pretty much everyone else in her life ever.

Bellamy is eleven when Octavia comes home and says, “Clarke’s dad died.”

His reaction is kneejerk, automatic. “No he didn’t, O. That’s not not what die means.”

“He did so! Mrs. Park told us. They were in a car crash and her dad died and Clarke got hurt so she isn’t going to be in school for a while. We made a card for her and everything.”

He swallows hard. “Really?”

“I wouldn’t lie about that,” she says, and he knows that’s true. He thought she might not know what she was saying, but that’s different from lying. If she’s sure, and she seems to be, then it must be true.

“I know, I’m sorry. That’s awful. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Nothing happened to me. But I was thinking we could go visit, maybe?”

O and Clarke aren’t exactly best friends, but Clarke’s been over a few times, and Bellamy likes her well enough, for an eight-year-old. She’s no more annoying than any of his sister’s other friends. Even a little less annoying, sometimes.

“Do you know what hospital?” She shakes her head, and he nods. “Okay. I’ll come pick you up from school tomorrow and ask Mrs. Park if she knows about visiting and stuff. They might not want anyone to come by yet, it’s probably really tough.”

“Okay. Thanks, Bell.”

“Sure.” He gives her a smile. “What do you want for dinner?”

Mrs. Park appreciates his concern, but as she expected, he says it’s probably not a good idea to go visit yet. Maybe in a week.

So Bellamy comes back, obedient, a week later, to ask if she thinks Clarke might be ready for visitors.

“We just want to make sure she’s not alone.”

Mrs. Park smiles. “I believe her mother said she was home. Let me just give her a call for you.”

He feels a little guilty, going to Clarke’s actual house; he doesn’t know her mother, and even though he’s escorting his sister, he can’t help thinking he’s a little out of place.

The woman who opens the door looks a little young to be her mother, and her smile is weary. “May I help you?”

“I’m Bellamy Blake,” he says, “and this is my sister, Octavia. She’s in Clarke’s class at school. We just wanted to check in, if she’s ready for visitors.”

“Let me go ask Abby,” says the woman, with a smile. “I’m sure Clarke will be happy to see you.”

It feels like a lot of checking in, but he guesses he can’t really blame anyone. It must be pretty tough.

Clarke’s mother smiles, shakes both their hands and thanks them for coming by, says Clarke hasn’t had many visitors yet. Her arm is broken and she’s shaken, but she’ll be happy to see some friends.

Bellamy lingers outside the door at first, awkward, but Octavia tugs. “Come on, Bell. Don’t be weird. Hey, Clarke,” she says, soft.

Clarke looks up from her book, eyes a little red, but smile steady. “Hi, Octavia. Bellamy. Thanks for coming.”

O nods. “Mrs. Park told us what happened. I’m sorry.”

“Thanks,” she says, looking down at her hands. “How’s school?”

She and Octavia talk about friends and school for a while, and Bellamy lets his eye wander, checking out the room, as large as his and his sister’s put together, full of books and toys and love.

Pictures of her dad, too; they look like they’re close.

“Where’s the bathroom?” Octavia asks, and when Clarke gives her directions, Bellamy finds himself suddenly alone with Clarke.

She looks about as uncomfortable with the whole thing as he is, so he shifts closer. “What were you reading?”

“Frog and Toad Are Friends,” she says, holding it up. “My dad used to read it to me.”

“Yeah, I used to read that to O when she was a kid.”

“You’ve been taking care of her for a while, right?”

“Forever, yeah. She’s my sister.”

“And you guys don’t have a dad.”

“No.”

Clarke nods. “But you’re okay.”

It feels like it might be too strong a word, but–they are, right? Most of the time. “You will be too,” he says, because that feels like what she’s asking. “I’m lucky, I don’t remember when my dad died, but–you’ll be fine. Eventually.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” He clears his throat, smiles a little. “If you ever need–someone else to talk to. I’m around. I know you’ve got plenty of people, but–”

“Thanks. That’s nice of you.”

“I mean it,” he says. “If you ever want an older-brother type, I’m around.”

“Okay,” she says, smiling a little. “I’ll let you know.”

He doesn’t really believe it, and he doesn’t hear from her for years, honestly forgets about her, for the most part. She and Octavia drift apart as they get older, moving to different friend groups, still in classes together sometimes, but not friends, not really.

It’s five years later, at the end of his sophomore year, when he leaves work at the deli on main street to find Clarke waiting for him, this small, scowling form leaning on his car, arms crossed over her chest as she pretends not to be watching the door.

“Clarke, right?” he asks, once he’s remembered her all the way.

“Hi.”

“Either you’re waiting for me or you didn’t know whose car this was,” he remarks, and her mouth tugs up at one side.

“I was waiting for you.”

“Why?”

“Do you remember when my dad died?”

“Yeah.”

“You said I could come to you if I needed someone to talk to, and I do.”

His first reaction is that she must be incredibly hard up, but that’s not really a constructive thing to say. And it’s not like he’s unwilling to help some poor kid who needs some company. If she is hard up, that just means she really needs it.

“Okay. Driving, walking, sitting?” At her frown, he clarifies, “Where do you want to talk?”

“Oh, um–driving is fine. If it’s–if that’s okay. Sorry, I know this is–really weird.”

“It’s fine, I don’t mind.” He unlocks it. “You can even have shotgun.”

She snorts, soft. “Wow. Generous.”

“Don’t say I never did anything for you. Anywhere in particular you want to go?”

“Not off the top of my head.”

It should probably be weirder, but Arcadia isn’t that big a town, and he does know Clarke. And she’s probably going to do all the work here.

“I’m just going to drive around, then.”

“Thanks.” She waits until they’re in motion before she says, “I had a fight with my best friend. Which I obviously couldn’t talk to him about, because the fight’s with him, and if I tell my other friends, they’ll get involved.”

“So you want an impartial third party?”

“Pretty much. And I saw your sister and that reminded me—you offered. Sorry it took me so long to take you up on it.”

“I’m amazed you remembered.”

“It was a shitty time,” she says, sounding like she’s forty, not thirteen. “You were nice to me.”

“And now it’s another shitty time.”

“Not nearly that bad. Thank god,” she adds.

“So what happened?”

“He told me he liked me. Like, you know. As more than a friend. And I told him I didn’t like him back. And I guess he was pretty sure about it?” She sighs. “I don’t know. I wasn’t even—I don’t want to date anyone yet.”

“No?”

“How old are you again?”

“Legal to drive you. Sixteen.”

“I assume you remember how stupid dating is in middle school. It lasts like a week and all you do is hold hands and maybe get a couple bad kisses in.”

“Wow. You’re jaded for thirteen.”

“I don’t want to screw up my friendship with Wells for that.”

“Maybe it would be better.”

“Maybe. But I don’t like him like that.”

“If he’s your best friend, I doubt you lost him,” he finally says. “Yeah, it’ll be kind of awkward for a while, and getting rejected sucks, but—he’ll probably get over it.”

“I know. I still feel like I did something wrong.”

“You didn’t. It’s not your fault you’re not interested in him.”

“Is this just what you do? Brother for hire?”

“If you were my sister I’d probably be threatening to beat Wells up. Which would suck, I like Wells.”

Clarke snorts. “You know Wells?”

“He’s in the Latin club.”

“Of course he is. I like him too, just not—“

“For dating. I get it.”

“Thanks for listening.”

“Like I said, any time.”

She moves up to high school next year, and they nod when they pass each other in the halls, talk if they happen to be in the same place for long enough.

Her sophomore year, she comes back from the summer with her hair cut short and dyed red in one patch, and she learned to dress to accentuate her body type instead of hiding it, which he feels like an asshole for noticing, but it’s really noticeable. Clarke Griffin got hot is a popular topic of conversation, even among seniors.

Which is probably why he hears when she starts dating Finn Collins, and why when he hears that Finn died, suddenly, in a car crash, he goes to her immediately. Without even thinking about it.

Her mother opens the door this time, not the family friend from before. “May I help you?”

“I’m a friend of Clarke’s, I wanted to—“

“Oh. Yes, of course. Let me see if she’s up for company.”

“It’s Bellamy,” he tells her. It feels like it might make a difference.

He doubts she remembers him, but she smiles anyway. “I’ll let her know you’re here, Bellamy.”

The way up to Clarke’s room is the same, and he didn’t realize before how stuck the memory was in his brain, how much it stayed with him. It didn’t seem like such a big deal at the time.

The door is ajar, and he knocks softly before pushing it open. Clarke’s eyes are red, but dry, and he offers her a small smile.

“Thought you might need someone to talk to.”

She throws herself at him, shaking with tears like a dam is breaking, and he just holds her, rubbing soothing circles on her back, saying words he doesn’t actually hear himself.

He’s not sure how long it takes for her to cry herself out, but she says in his arms even after, taking the comfort, and it’s not until she pulls back that he lets her go.

“Don’t apologize,” he says, before she can say anything.

Her laugh is still watery. “Can I thank you?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks.”

"You’re welcome.”

They’re mostly friends after that, albeit in a strange way. He makes sure to check in on her for the first few weeks, and he keeps checking in for a while after that. Some of his friends tease him about it, flirting with the hot sophomore, but it’s not really like that. Maybe if it wasn’t his senior year, if he wasn’t already into college, he might try something, someday. Once the pain had faded.

As it is, she comes to his graduation and kisses him on the cheek and thanks him for everything, and he says, “I’m still available for long-distance conversations, if you need them.”

He means it, like he always means it, but he doesn’t really expect anything. They’ve never been the kind of friends who just chat. But the first week of his freshman year, Clarke Facebook messages him to ask how college is going, and suddenly that’s a part of his routine. She’s a junior this year, starting to get into looking for colleges and full of questions, but that quickly turns into casual conversation.

“When did you and Clarke Griffin get so close?” Octavia asks, when he comes back for spring break and makes plans to hang out with her.

“Just kind of happened,” he says, with a shrug.

They don’t see a lot of each other, even when he’s home, but they still chat almost every day. She talks him through his breakup with Roma sophomore year and brags about finally getting to help him with a breakup for a change. He helps her work through a bisexuality crisis a few weeks after that, and then he goes through one of his own when he gets a crush on and somehow manages to date a guy the year after that.

Her senior year of college, Lexa happens, and he kind of wonders if that’s it for her. It seems pretty serious.

She calls him when they break up, a first for them, and he’s so shocked he nearly drops the phone. “Hi?”

“Hey. Lexa and I broke up.”

“Shit. Sorry.”

“I kind of saw it coming.”

“Yeah.” They’d talked about it, but he’d mostly been rooting for them to make it. Except for the small, mostly ignored part of him that still thinks Clarke is kind of pretty and kind of amazing and kind of one of his favorite people in the world. “Still.”

She sighs. “Yeah. But we were going different places, and that was–it wasn’t negotiable for her. She’s moving to California and she doesn’t want to do long distance. So–we broke up.”

“I’m sorry. Are you still thinking you’re going to come to Boston?”

He thinks his voice comes out even on the question, like he doesn’t think about it all the fucking time and wonder. She certainly doesn’t seem to think it’s weird, just says, “That’s the plan, yeah. I’ve got an interview in a couple weeks, can I crash on your couch?”

“Yeah, always. Any time.”

She comes down a few times, and he never says anything, never makes a move, but he’s so aware that they’re both single now, that she’s moving to his city, to his neighborhood. That she’ll be close he could see her whenever he wanted to.

He helps her move into her new place and she buys him a pizza, and he doesn’t kiss her, spends a week aware, all the time, of how he isn’t kissing her.

Then she shows up at his door.

“Hey,” he says, cautious.

“Hey. I need to talk to you about something?”

“Yeah, of course. Is everything okay? What happened?”

“Miller’s not home, right?”

“On a date.”

“Okay.” She lets out a break. “I think I’m in love with you. And you don’t have to be–I know you probably still think I’m your second screw-up little sister, but I thought I should double check in case–”

“I don’t,” he says, and kisses her.

“You’re not going to have anyone to talk to if we break up,” he tells her, a few hours later, when they’re cuddled together in his bed, warm and sated and close.

She yawns and kisses his shoulder. “I know. I’m not worried.”

“No,” he admits, with a smile. “Me neither.”

[travllingbunny]

The 100 rewatch: 4x07 Gimme Shelter

This is the first  of my favorite episodes of the season. The second half of season 4 is much stronger than the first.

The main event of this episode is the first “black rain” – radioactive, potentially fatal rain, which all the characters try to run and take shelter from, but the episode is very character-focused, with small, intimate scenes of characters interacting with just one or two other people (sometimes not even in the same location). There are some expected and some unexpected character pairings. The black rain is just a catalyst to see how the characters feel about themselves – some are desperate to survive, some feel that they don’t want to survive, some are desperate to save everyone and feel like a failure if they don’t.

Again, we have three main plots in three different locations, with different groups of characters: as people in Arkadia quickly ran back into the ship, but some remain outside, Bellamy goes in the rover, trying to save a Delinquent and his father who are far away from Arkadia;  there’s a development in Octavia’s relationship with Ilian, while they take shelter in a cave, which ends up having a surprisingly positive effect on her; and the third plot is focused on Emori and gives her a lot of screentime and development, as she starts fearing she would be made a guinea pig for the new Nightblood solution and is determined to do everything to avoid that fate. Harper also gets a subplot of her own, for the first time.

After the fake alarm about black rain that Jaha used in the last episode to save Ilian from an angry mob, this time the real black rain falls and causes the people in Arkadia to all quickly run inside in panic, and go on to wash themselves. (Realistically, they should have been washing their whole bodies rather than just the upper body – but this is a network show after all, and actors supposedly refused to take off their pants…)

In the chaos that happened when a bunch of people ran towards Arkadia, Harper didn’t help a man who tried to hold onto her, and pushed him away, obviously scared of falling down herself – but he fell to the ground and got exposed to a too big a dose of radioactive rain, before he was dragged inside when everyone else was already inside. After he gets severe radioactive poisoning and is certain to die, Harper feels deeply guilty. Kane tells her to go and tend to the main in the med bay, but this doesn’t help assuage her guilt, and after the man dies, it causes her to feel terrible about herself for the rest of the season, and was no doubt one of the reasons why she developed suicidal tendencies.

Bellamy’s storyline is simple but effective, due to really good acting and good writing. He takes a rover and a slightly torn anti-radiation suit during the rain to go find two people from Arkadia who have found themselves far away - a man called Mark Colton, who asked for help by radio, and his son Peter, who was one of the Delinquents, and who is already suffering effects of the exposure. This would be more meaningful for the audience if we had known Peter (most of the 100 were just extras that we never really got to know), but it is understandable why Bellamy is all the more motivated – he’s felt personally responsible for saving and protecting those kids, almost like he’s always felt responsible for his sister. Throughout this, Kane keeps talking to him on the radio, on a private channel, while Mark is calling him and desperately asking for help on another line. Bellamy’s mission fails because the rover gets stuck in the mud and Bellamy cannot get out to fix the problem while it is still raining due to his suit being torn, though he actually almost did that, before Kane managed to change his mind. He is desperate to save these two people now – “we save who we can today” – because his guiding motivation in life, ever since he was tasked with the responsibility for his sister at the age of six, has always been protecting and saving, and he feels he has failed to save or caused deaths of so many people. Most of all, he feels like he has failed with his sister – he is not even sure if she is alive, since she walked into the woods on her own, and he’s worried about what Octavia’s state of mind is now and that he barely recognizes her (“What is she now? Is she even alive?”).

Kane tries to convince Bellamy that Octavia can take care of herself, but also that he should stop trying to save everyone: “You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved”. Kane genuinely cares for Bellamy and tries to play a pseudo-father role to him, and though Bellamy, this time, shows a certain annoyance with that when he tells Kane (“No more lessons���), he does take Kane’s advice to heart – he repeats it at the end of the episode, and it informs the way he deals with Jasper and the rest of the people who choose not to survive Praimfaya in the upcoming episode. But when Kane tells Bellamy that his mother would be proud of the man he had become, and that he certainly is, Bellamy reminds him: “You floated my mother”. This is a very interesting moment, and one I’ve always liked, because it shows that forgiveness is not such a simple, yes-or-not thing for Bellamy. Even though he has accepted Kane as his mentor and forged a strong bond for him, even if he has maybe mostly forgiven him, he still refuses to forget and ignore the past.

Surprise, surprise, Octavia and Ilian run into each other in the woods again, or rather, he’s managed to find her again, and even though he is gruff and keeps saying she doesn’t need his help, he says he owes her because she didn’t kill him (?!), Huh, well, that’s an interesting point of view. “You could have murdered me, but you didn’t, how nice of you”. I guess Ilian must not have experienced much of actual decent human behavior, if these are the standards he judges people by. They are forced to run for cover and hide in a nearby cave together. Ilian seems to realize that she’s also damaged and messed up like he is, and talks about his trauma – constantly seeing his family’s faces everywhere, the memories of nicer times with them, and the awful things he did to them (he killed both his father and brother, as we saw, and cut his mother’s fingers, which is why she bled out from in the end). He tries to get her to talk about what happened to her, but she refuses and tells him that they are different and that she’s a much darker person: he feels the way people are supposed to feel when they kill someone, but she doesn’t feel anything. She is suicidal and walks out in the rain, and Ilian saves her. Then, as he is trying to stop her from running out of the rain, she kisses him and begs him to have sex with her to make her feel something. This “make me feel something” trope is pretty common, and it wasn’t hard to predict that things would develop that way between those two. Up to this point, nothing was unexpected, though it worked, due to really good acting – Marie Avgeropoulos sells dark!Octavia and suicidal Octavia really well.

After sex, Ilian prepares to go back to his farm, and invites Octavia to come with him if she wants. Octavia lingers a little, then throws her weapons in the fire and goes after him, offering to take him home by giving him a ride on her horse Helios to his farm. This was the first thing that was a bit unexpected to me in this story the first time I watched it. After how dark thing this relationship started, with Octavia almost killing Ilian to take out her issues on him, and with how generally edge-lordy she has been, I didn’t expect this relationship to develop in a more positive way, and so quickly. It’s not a rushed romance like so many others in the show because, for once, we’re not supposed to think they’re in love, they are just both screwed up and damaged, Octavia is grieving and having a rebound, Ilian has been through worse and has no one left, but they’ve bonded, he certainly helped her heal to an extent, and finding someone more messed up than he is probably has helped him, too. Octavia seems generally drawn to people who are gentle and with a positive outlook on life and who can balance out her anger and aggression, even though I’m not sure if anyone can really heal her, since she has been damaged all her life, due to the way she grew up. She was damaged way before Lincoln died, and way before she was sent to the ground, even way before she was arrested and her mother executed. But, at least for a moment, she chose to and genuinely tried to have a positive human relationship and go live peacefully on a farm, instead of using violence and murder to numb her feelings.

Clarke arrives to Becca’s lab and reunites with Abby, she learns some bad news about Raven’s condition, obvious from a scan of her brain (but Raven, just like Jasper, Monty and Jaha, doesn’t appear in the episode), and in turn, Abby learns the bad news about the lost barrel of hydrazine, which means they cannot go to space to synthesize Nightblood there.  But Abby tells Clarke about the new plan: they can make people Nightbloods with Luna’s bone marrow, but they would have to test someone in the radiation chamber to see if it works. Obviously, this is disturbing as they could kill the test subject, but Clarke insists they have to do it in order for everyone to survive. Abby is more tormented over the moral implications of it – Clarke has already been there and is already used to having to make terrible choices that her old self from early season 1 would have been shocked by. Later, Kane tells Abby over the phone that her humanity is her greatest strength, but: “We need to survive. Then we can all find our humanity back.” Words that will become Abby’s motto, and remains that for years.

After talking with her mother in the lab, Clarke goes with Emori to the residential part of the lighthouse, which feels very comfortable - Murphy is cooking, music is playing, and Clarke goes to take shower and finds a bed, and for a moment, she is enjoying it probably thinking about how nice it would be to have real, domestic, normal life, instead of this constant fight for survival. This is different from the makeshift rooms in Arkadia, or the palace-like glamour of Lexa’s tower – it’s like a regular home from back before the apocalypse.

But while the next episode is focused on Clarke’s and Abby’s moral dilemmas, this one is a big Emori episode. Emori has overheard Abby’s and Clarke’s conversation in the lab, and, immediately concluded that she will be the test subject, as the outcast, the one they don’t care or need, and is determined to avoid that fate. Whether they would have been able to make that decision on their own, we don’t know, and it’s debatable, but Emori is right that she seems like the obvious pick if they would have to choose someone as “expendable” – it wasn’t going to be one of the doctors or the king of Azgeda, Abby was obviously not going to want to test Clarke, and Emori had no real ties to anyone other than Murphy, who wasn’t exactly held in high regard by himself. I’ve always liked Emori because she was a well-written anti-heroine with a backstory that explained her personality – since early childhood, she’s been used to distrusting people, thinking that she is an outcast that everyone finds disposable and that she has to be really ruthless to survive – and I really liked that the show here showed both how ruthless and how manipulative she can be, while not making her into a villain.

This episode also has interesting interactions between Emori and Clarke – two characters who had barely shared scenes before. A thief breaks in, and Emori overpowers him, and claims he is Baylis, a man who used to torture her and her brother. On first watch, I completely believed her, and I bet most viewers did. Emori is that good at putting on an act – she has been practicing all her life, after all – that the audience is fooled alongside Clarke and Murphy, She uses truth for deception – telling Clarke that she, Clarke, with her privileged upbringing, and family who loved her and told she was special, doesn’t know what it’s like to be cast out, thrown away like garbage as an infant, because of the way she was born, and be forced to steal and kill since an early age. Clarke admits she can’t know that, but knows what it’s like to feel like you have to kill.

Emori asks Clarke if she has ever killed for revenge, Clarke shakes her head – this is true, she has never done it. It was always out of necessity - to protect someone, to survive, to free herself, or a mercy kill. Even Dante – that was about desperately trying to prove to Cage that she was serious. The one time she thought she could kill for revenge was Lexa in 3x03, for very personal feelings of betrayal, and she wasn’t able to go through with that. She even passed the opportunity to kill Emerson for revenge in Polis, because it could have jeopardized the peace she was fighting for, which was much more important.

But Emori is actually not looking for revenge here, either – it is out of necessity, too, or what Emori considers necessary. She beats up “Baylis” and acts like she is going to kill him, while he insists he is just a scavenger trying to find food for his family, but Clarke suggests they make him a test subject instead. If they have to potentially sacrifice someone – Emori has just made the decision so much easier for everyone: they can feel better if they know the person they are maybe going to kill in a human experiment is an abusive monster. He isn’t, actually – not that he is a good guy, either. He’s a thief who broke into the lighthouse and attacked a person and may have killed Emori… but by the same standards, Emori would be also considered bad, she’s also robbed and killed to survive, and so has Murphy. As “Baylis” is injected with Nightblood, Emori cooly admits to Murphy that she doesn’t know the thief and that he is not Bayli, she just wanted someone else to get tested instead of her. Instead of being shocked, Murphy admires her even more than before: “Now that is a survivor’s move”.

This episode makes for almost a two-parter with the next one, God Complex, where this storyline gets its resolution.

One of this episode’s biggest strengths is the amazing music - both Tree Adams’s score, and the song “State of the Art (A.E.I.O.U.)” by Jim James, which plays over a montage of various scenes near the end of the episode.

Timeline: Like most episodes, this one takes place very soon after the previous one – since Clarke, Roan and the barrels of hydrazine were on her way to the lab at the end of 4x06, and they get there at the beginning of 4x07. Which means this takes place about two weeks since the start of season 4/end of season 3 (i.e. the time when Clarke shut down ALIE and the City of Light).

Body count: As we find out at the very beginning of the next episode, 18 Sky people died from exposure to the radiation, including Louis (the man that Harper didn’t help), Mark Colton and his son Peter. 

Peter is the first Delinquent to die in season 4. That means 57 Delinquents have died so far, and 43 are still alive (including Clarke, Octavia, Monty, Jasper, Miller, Harper and Murphy).

Rating: 9/10

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5x01 Eden Review

WHOA!!! I can’t believe we are already here again. The hiatus sucked, but I’m so glad that it’s back. I’ll do these every week! Review of 5x01

CLARKE - Perfect. I was such a fan of the slow burn. All I wanted was her descent into depression and loneliness and then for her to find Eden. The fake out was on point. IMO, this was necessary. She made it two months and some change before she broke down. Whether she was calling out to God, or Earth, or the Universe, it didn't matter. She experienced true loneliness and depression and hopelessness and it was necessary. I like that the focus was mostly on her in the beginning so that we could also feel her loneliness. Small discoveries that made us feel comfortable were dashed away just as quickly. When the solar panel broke, I felt for her and was amazed by her strength. One of my favorite moments was her realization that the vulture meant that there was a way for her to survive and begging it to take her to its home.

CLARKE/MADI - Child of the corn, am I right? She obviously was being hidden from the Flamekeepers purposefully, yet her training made it seem as though she'd still trained for the conclave. She does not appear to be just a way for Clarke to grow, but rather her own character and I am very intrigued. She's won me over with the way that she idolizes Skairippa. Suddenly, the conversation from the trailer between Madi and Octavia makes so much sense. The dynamic between the two of them post time skip felt so lived in. Props to their chemistry. Even when Eligius came down and interacted with them, Madi was strong and while she learned some of that from Clarke, from her training we know that she was brave as well. The final sting of, "There are no good guys" set the stage for the rest of the season and I'm very much sold on the Eden Clan.

SPACEKRU - Becho will have their own section below. Obviously, Murphy being exiled is a big deal. He and Emori broke up around six months ago and it does not seem to be going well. She still loves him and if I wasn't sure that she will die on the ground, I would say I'm still rooting for those two to work through things. Raven is desperate to get back to Earth, but she seems to have healed. I believe that on a meta level, we as the audience need to heal/get over things as well. How often does the fandom hold on to something and refuse to let things go/move on/heal? If, after seven years of knowing Murphy, Raven can forgive someone and move on, it's not problematic, it's forgiveness, and goes to speak on the type of person that Raven is. It makes sense that Monty would be wary of going out to Eligius and I understand his motivations/lack thereof, but with Harper in his corner, he'll be okay. I remember that they mentioned the IUDs were taken out and I know Jason hates babies on set, but man, that family right there is something special. I hope they make it all the way, which means someone is going to die.

BECHO - Shipped since season 2, and I'm honestly glad that they gave Bellamy a real girlfriend instead of a Fridge like Gina, and this one makes sense. I understand hating Echo. Bellamy hated her for around four years counting the year he met her on Earth. But to hold on to a grudge for six years is excessive, and frankly, when you're interacting with someone in a non savage, life threatening environment, and you get to see the softer sides, the humor, the passions, the dreams, it makes sense. Their relationship had chemistry as well as that lived in feeling, just like Clarke and Madi's. I don't believe that Echo is going to be a stagnant character just for Bellamy/Clarke either. She's got her own issues going on. She feels accepted in the sky, yes, but Earth has nothing but the memories of her being banished, and what the thoughts of those that banished her are. She's three dimensional. She's a foil for Bellamy in the sense of him wondering what Octavia will think of him/them. There is so much to mine from this relationship and I hope that it is well developed.

ELIGIUS - They were barely shown, so I will reserve judgement on them. They are basically serial killer Captain Americas, people out of time, and as they progress in the season, I'll decide then what I think.

BUNKERKRU - MAN. OH. MAN. Octavia as the Red Queen? YES. Some people wonder why all of those grounders might listen to a seventeen/twenty three year old woman? Do they not remember Anya's second or the Nightblood kid that Lexa had in case they died? The grounders would listen to those who had the right to the power, no questions asked, but as we know from the trailer/previews, Octavia is going to make that power hers and I am SO excited for it. Next week is basically going to be the Bunker's origin story and I'm all aboard.

OVERALL - Solid premiere. I give it an 8/10. My only gripes would be that so much was already known, but considering we waited like hell for the trailer and when we saw it were happy with it, I can't complain too much. I'm hoping that this season resets Clarke for me, being that I wasn't a fan of hers for around three seasons now. Madi was a nice surprising highlight as was every interaction that came from Spacekru.

I love discussing, so definitely feel free to share your thoughts as well.

[sometimesrosy]

Tagged by @tracylorde thank you! and i’m glad you’ve come over to the dark side of writing fanfic too.

1. what is your most popular fic by kudos? comments? bookmarks? are they all the same?

kudos Proof Canon AU fake marriage where Bellamy and Clarke must marry to secure an alliance. This one has a lot to do with Clarke helping Bellamy recover from his trauma and learn to believe that he deserves love and happiness. Not slow burn. They get busy right away. And it causes problems.

comments Got You A series of interlinked story prompts set in canon AU after season 3. No second apocalypse. It’s mainly about how Bellamy is helping Clarke recover from her trauma and stop being afraid to love. Slow burn. A bit of angst in there that I think is why the comments are tops. Everyone freaked out. It was awesome.

bookmarks: The Air Is Fine Up Here This is an Ark AU set 5 years after the show, but in a world where The Ark’s air system is fine. It’s the political environment that is destructive. Second children are not illegal they are just shunned. Clarke is a doctor with an illegal clinic in Factory, and she meets Bellamy because he is doing gladiator fights to earn money to support Octavia. It’s pretty plot heavy. It was nominated for a best Ark AU on bellarke fanfiction awards a couple years back, so it was my most popular for a long time, but the others have caught up.

2. do you have a favorite of your fics? if not, do you have one you’re most proud of? why?

Coming Home, which is a modern AU with a divorced Clarke and professor Bellamy, where she comes back to her college town and discovers who she is again surrounded by her friends. So it’s got some themes of the show. I wanted to think about what kind of “apocalypse” would be that devastating in the real world. So I made it this kind of divorce/abuse thing. But it’s not about the divorce, it’s all about the recovery. So it’s not personal at all. (okay it is. although it’s still entirely fictional, not a memoir in the slightest.) I’m also really proud of the bit of humor in this. 

3. what fandom/ship (if you write for more than one) is your favorite to write for?

The 100 Bellarke

4. do you have any fics that got more popularity/attention than you expected? if so what were they?

Contracting and Expanding, this weird little child birth fic that I wrote because I was frustrated that women and girls don’t seem to understand what childbirth is really like. Like it’s this kind of open secret, and it’s so romanticized sometimes. I added a second chapter to wrap it up over a year later. I’ve never really understood why it is one of my most popular one shots. 

5. where do you get your ideas/inspiration from? do you have a fic that you feel is particularly unique in that area?

I have a WAY different path to fanfiction than most of you. It wasn’t a thing when I was a kid. There was no internet. I started writing fantasy and science fiction when i was 15, but it was all original because I didn’t know of this concept. And there was certainly no community for it. Nowadays I think writers build their chops with fanfiction, explore, experiment. When I got to fanfiction, I’d already been through that stage and was taking my writing SO SERIOUSLY. Fanfiction let me get the fun back, and lowered the artificially high stakes that I had created in my head. Writing is so psychological and the writing process is basically a writer fighting the demons in their head in order to get words on a page. Fanfiction was like a big FU to my demons, because I was going to enjoy writing again.

Most of my writing inspiration comes out of my history, my reading, my curiosity, my questions. Me. I’ve been such a Fantasy/Scifi geek for so long though, that a lot of it is based on that. Fanfiction, though, allowed me to write general fiction, without the pretension of literary fiction, which going to school for English/Creative Writing had conned me into thinking was the only deserving writing (screw you academia.) Ha. I actually wrote about Clarke as a professor and Bellamy as a student in Academic. Be aware, I was not an academic. I got out of college and started waiting tables so I could be a writer/artist. Ha. Like in The Arkadias/Just Having Fun Clarke/Bellamy povs for the same story. Okay. So my inspiration either comes out my real life or out of my scifi/fantasy reading. Or wish fulfillment and my love of fake marriage tropes ala The Carriage House.

6. do you have a favorite character to write POV for?

honestly it alternates between Bellamy and Clarke. I suppose I might have more from Clarke’s pov. I’ve never checked.

7. what’s your favorite sidepairing to include?

Raven and Wells maybe. I don’t do too many side pairings. I’m more into the platonic friendships.

8. do you have a fic you feel is underrated in comparison to your other fics? or you just wish more people would read?

Maybe Moonshine. Because I turned it into an original novel that I’m still working on and I really like it, but I can’t blame anyone because I left it unfinished it when I decided to adapt it. But it’s like a preview of my novel.

9. what’s something you would go back and change in one of your fics?

I think I did go back and change an Echo ex Bellamy girlfriend to Gina. 

Oh wait. I would have made everyone older in The Valley, part 1. It started out as a soulmate HS witches AU, but I tried to explain the sharing skin marks and it got pretty dark and very sexual. It’s the most sexual of all my fics, and I think it’s a little icky that she’s only 18. I like the concept but the HS thing was a mistake. Just like I don’t think I should try for writing smut, I also don’t think I should try for YA fic. I’m just not a YA writer. Or maybe it was the wrong story to try on. I had to drop that story. It went down a path that was more complicated than anticipated.

10. what is your favorite sort of comment to receive on a fic?

It’s kind of cool when people take quotes from the work and talk about what they meant or how they affected them.

11. what are your favorite genres of fic to write? (e.g. modern au, hurt/comfort, fluff, angst, etc.)

oh, sometimes I feel the need for Modern AU fluff ( a lot actually) but my favorite is probably Science Fiction, like not post apocalyptic, but space.

12. what are your favorite tropes to write?

Hands down, fake marriage/dating. Canon AU. Modern AU. Space AU. I’ve got a fake marriage for all. I’ve got a MULTI FIC fake marriage for all. And I’m not sorry.

13. do you write fics similar to what you enjoy reading or completely different? both?

The science fiction and the canon au is similar to what I used to enjoy reading IRL. But I’m in a phase of reading very gentle fiction. Fluff and easy reading. Comfort reading, so what I mainly read in my fanfiction is modern AU fluff fics.

14. what’s your writing process like?

My fic writing is a lot less planned out that my original novel writing. Probably because I already have the characters straight in my head and if I’m doing canon, I have the world too. 

So what happens is I get an idea that excites me. It starts spinning around in my head and I want to see what would happen if I put Clarke and Bellamy in that world. Sometimes I have an idea about where it ends up. Sometimes I don’t have any idea (except for Bellamy and Clarke always get together, but i may not know how.)

Then I go with the inspiration and write furiously for however long. When I’m posting a chapter every day or three? That’s this phase. Then I hit a snag. I’ve run out of inspiration or doubts have infiltrated my story or I don’t know where the plot goes next or life has gotten messy and ruined my focus, or maybe the story just got complicated and I need to work out the snag. My pace slows down. I start taking on other projects, writing or otherwise. I figure out the snag and work my way back into the story (or occasionally) I decide that story is either too complicated and drop it, or I decide that I’ve actually finished the story and need to wrap it up. 

15. multi-chapter, oneshot, or drabble?

Multi-chap. At heart, I’m a novelist and I have a hard time not thinking about how the tropes got to be the way they were in the story, so I build a world around them and create things to make them more logical or deal with cause and effect. And I also have a hard time leaving short stories the way they are, without continuing with what comes next. Sometimes when I read one shots or drabbles, I really don’t understand how the fic writers can simply not write what comes next. How do you keep yourself from continuing? My urge is to keep exploring the characters, story and world. I have finished multichaps that I could keep going with, but I have moved on to other stories.

16. if someone was only going to read one of your fics, which would you want them to read?

That’s a hard one. I think each one has something different to offer and I like them all. I put so much effort into the multichaps so I’m going to stick with one of those and pick the one I’m writing right now. Into Eden. It’s a space colonist AU and is turning out to be my longest fic ever and I think I’d count it as a novel. It will have a beginning, middle and an end, and there’s quite a bit of world building and conflict. It’s a fake marriage/mail order bride where Bellamy is the bride. If I can take a trope and put my personal spin on it so it’s a unique story, that’s what I’ll do. And that’s what I am trying to do here.

i’m really bad at tagging and this is why i don’t often do these things. it gives me anxiety so I’m only tagging a couple and if i missed you and you want to do it, please pretend that I tagged you because I actually want to hear EVERYONE do this. I think this stuff is interesting and it’s always good to think about your writing and your process. @mareebrittenford @marauders-groupie @the-ships-to-rule-them-all 

for ease, the questions are copied blank, after the jump. (good idea kat)

1. what is your most popular fic by kudos? comments? bookmarks? are they all the same?

2. do you have a favorite of your fics? if not, do you have one you’re most proud of? why?

3. what fandom/ship (if you write for more than one) is your favorite to write for?

4. do you have any fics that got more popularity/attention than you expected? if so what were they?

5. where do you get your ideas/inspiration from? do you have a fic that you feel is particularly unique in that area?

6. do you have a favorite character to write POV for?

7. what’s your favorite sidepairing to include?

8. do you have a fic you feel is underrated in comparison to your other fics? or you just wish more people would read?

9. what’s something you would go back and change in one of your fics?

10. what is your favorite sort of comment to receive on a fic?

11. what are your favorite genres of fic to write? (e.g. modern au, hurt/comfort, fluff, angst, etc.)

12. what are your favorite tropes to write?

13. do you write fics similar to what you enjoy reading or completely different? both?

14. what’s your writing process like?

15. multi-chapter, oneshot, or drabble?

16. if someone was only going to read one of your fics, which would you want them to read?