When the world is too noisy to sleep
The happiest of birthdays to @katchyalater!
For six years, the world had been too quiet. With just Madi to talk to— and precious few animals, especially the first few years— the world had been silent as a tomb most of the time. It had driven Clarke nearly mad, and when everyone came back to her in the span of two weeks, she’d rejoiced in the cacophony of the people she loved.
But now it felt too noisy. Even at night, when everyone was asleep, Clarke’s small compound was filled with sounds. Cots creaked and people snored, and guards paced the perimeter with guns that clicked and boots that snapped twigs and crushed leaves under their heels. It felt odd, resenting the noise when she’d spent so long wishing for it, but nothing had been the way she imagined. Her mother refused to speak of what happened in the bunker, and Octavia and Kane looked haunted. Abby had taken to Madi the way Clarke knew she would, of course, but there was a guilt in Abby’s eyes whenever she looked at Clarke that made Clarke’s skin prickle.
And Bellamy— Clarke had wanted him to come back to her for so long, and now that he was here she didn’t know what to say to him. He’d changed more than she imagined, and even though she’d told herself over and over again to expect him to change, part of her was still surprised he had. It wasn’t just the beard, either. There was a peace to him that hadn’t been there before, a stillness, a deliberateness that surprised her. The Bellamy she remembered had never hesitated— that had been her role. But now he was the one preaching caution and diplomacy in dealing with Eligius while Clarke urged action. It made her feel off-kilter, like the time the canoe she made tipped over and suddenly she was under water and didn’t know which way was up.
Clarke threw off her blankets and decided to go for a walk rather than toss and turn some more, but she hadn’t gone more than fifty yards when a guard challenged her. “No one leaves camp at night without a direct order from Octavia,” the woman from the bunker explained.
Clarke fought the instinct to argue and walked over to the fire instead, picking up a stick from the ground and tossing it petulantly into the crackling flames. “Can’t sleep?” Bellamy’s deep, reassuring voice asked from behind her shoulder.
Clarke shrugged. She had spent six years imagining telling him everything, memorizing details so when he came back there wouldn’t be any space between them, no moment left untouched. But now he was here, real and solid and warm and standing just behind her, and she couldn’t find the words. “Too noisy,” she said gruffly.
Bellamy fell silent and she hoped he’d walk away, leave her alone with her black mood. “I’ve got an idea,” he said, and Clarke risked a look back at him.
She couldn’t read his expression. She hated that— not knowing what Bellamy was thinking was unimaginable to her once upon a time, but now it felt like he was a stranger. But she nodded and let him lead her around the corner from the outbuildings to the rover. Bellamy grabbed an extra sleeping bag from the bunker’s stash and handed it to her, opening the back of the rover as he did so. “I slept in here last night,” he explained. “I’d forgotten how goddamn loud crickets are.”
“Those are frogs,” she said, a tiny smile creeping across her face. She accepted the sleeping bag and lifted herself into the back. She and Madi had slept in here countless times, but only when they were scavenging. It hadn’t occurred to her to use it at the compound. Bellamy paused with his hand on the door and she looked at him awkwardly.
“Sleep well, Clarke,” Bellamy said.
“Wait,” she said when he went to shut the door. “Didn’t you finish your guard shift a few hours ago?”
Clarke narrowed her eyes, piecing it all together. “You can’t sleep either, can you? You were going to sleep in here again.”
“It’s fine. I got a decent night’s sleep last night. It’s your turn.”
“There’s plenty of space,” she said impulsively. “We could...share.” She felt unaccountably nervous in offering, mostly because in the two weeks since he’d been back she hadn’t been able to figure out just what he and Echo were to each other. She didn’t think they were together, but then sometimes there would be a moment of familiarity— her hand on his lower back, or him smiling at something Echo said in a council meeting— and Clarke would be plunged back into uncertainty. It felt silly and selfish to admit she was jealous he had moved on, but she was.
“Better one person snoring than three dozen,” she replied.
Bellamy looked back towards the compound and nodded. He took a second sleeping bag and climbed in after her, waiting for her to scoot over to one side before unrolling his pack. Sharing with Madi had been easy, but Madi was considerably smaller than Bellamy and definitely didn’t have shoulders as broad, so it took a few moments of shuffling and fumbling before they were comfortably laying side-by-side.
Clarke rested her cheek on her folded arm and considered him. It was darker in here, and much quieter. She could hear his slow, even breathing. “Who told you you snore?” she asked quietly. There were plenty of people who could have told him that, she reasoned— his mother or Octavia or Gina, or even Miller. But she had a deeper reason for asking, and she couldn’t stop herself.
Bellamy didn’t respond right away. “Echo,” he said finally.
Clarke hated herself for her jealousy. It sat uneasily in her gut, curdling and churning, competing with anger and regret and a heaping dose of self-censure. She had no reason to feel this way, because Bellamy had thought she was dead for six years and he was never even hers in the first place. She had no claim to him, she’d reminded herself hundreds of times over the past two weeks, and therefore had no right to feel like she’d lost him. “I’m glad,” she made herself say, because she was, truly. She wanted him to be happy and whole, and if Echo was the person who made him happy now, she’d learn to live with it and wouldn’t let jealousy poison her. She’d let Bellamy go and be happy with her family having come back to her, and that would have to be enough.
Bellamy made a soft sound like a snort. “She told me when we were breaking up last year,” he said, and he sounded like he was smiling. “Said she was glad not to have to sleep next to someone who snored like a bear anymore.”
Clarke wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Oh,” she said, so he’d know she was listening. “I’m...sorry?”
Bellamy’s sleeping bag rustled like he was shrugging. “We both knew it wouldn’t last. But there wasn’t much to do up there, aside from each other.”
Clarke let out a surprised giggle at that. “So I spent six years fighting for my life and becoming a surrogate mom while you spent six years having sex with everyone?” she teased.
“More or less,” he said, chuckling. “Not Murphy though. I still draw the line with him. He did try to hang me, after all.”
“Only because you tried to hang him first,” Clarke laughed, and Bellamy barked out a laugh.
It felt good to laugh with Bellamy, and Clarke felt the thick wall of glass that had surrounded her since they returned start to crack. More than once someone from the Ark would say something and Bellamy would laugh unexpectedly, clearly an inside joke, and Clarke would feel more lonely than ever. But maybe this was just temporary— maybe she could work her way back to them, even if she’d never share those same experiences. She couldn’t make up for what they’d lost, but they could make new memories.
Clarke fidgeted to get more comfortable, and Bellamy’s arm came down around her shoulders. “Here,” he said, and shifted her so she was resting on his chest instead. “That okay?”
Clarke blinked back unexpected tears. In the six years post-praimfaya she’d slept with Madi curled into her hundreds of times, but that was different. Clarke was Madi’s comfort then, and whatever peace it gave her to have Madi slumbering in her arms was profoundly different from this moment. She curled around him, letting his warmth seep into her bones, and draped her arm over his chest. “I talked to you,” she admitted. “Every day. I’d pull out the radio wherever we were and I’d try to contact you, and then I’d tell you about my day.”
Bellamy’s muscles tightened at her confession. “The ark?” he said carefully. “Or me?”
“You.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “You were what kept me sane, more than anything. The memory of you, of how much you believed in me, of— just you.” Her throat was thick with unshed tears and Bellamy carded his hand through her hair.
He cleared his throat. “I talked to you too,” he said. “It was different, because I never thought I’d see you again. I thought you were gone, but I couldn’t let go. I tried, I really did, because I thought you’d want me to, but I couldn’t. So on nights when it felt too much, or when I was going crazy from having to see the same six people over and over again, I’d find your mugshot in the database and ask you what to do.”
Clarke nuzzled closer to him, the pain in his voice like a knife to her heart. “What did the others say about that?”
“I never told them. They’d think I was crazy.”
Bellamy pressed his chin into his chest to look down at her. The light was dim, barely enough for her to make out his pupils, but his eyes were glassy. “Because that’s what we do. We tell each other things we can’t tell anyone else,” he said roughly.
A wave of emotion threatened to overwhelm her, so she steered them into calmer waters. “My mugshot isn’t exactly the best picture of me,” she said lightly.
“I thought it was nice,” he replied, matching her tone.
She felt like ice in the grip of a spring thaw, slowly drip-drip-dripping back into being. Clarke put her head back down on Bellamy’s chest and tangled their legs together. “I missed you,” she whispered into his shirt. “I missed you so much.”
“I missed you too, princess,” he said, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “But we’re here now.”
The vice squeezing her heart eased slightly. “Good night, Bellamy.”
