Chapter Text
“Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!” The alarm rang too early. Clarke felt like she was rising up out of a deep hole. The alarm kept blaring. “Ugh,” she groaned and rolled over.
She’d just fallen asleep, it felt like. She didn’t want to wake up. They’d argued with Lexa for half the night about how to handle the theft before she’d subsided and agreed to continue the conversation in the morning.
She just wanted to go back to sleep. She didn’t want to continue that conversation. It was too early.
She felt Bellamy’s weight press into her as he stretched out to reach for the alarm.
But the alarm was on his side of the bed. He was the early riser.
“Raven, what is it?” he said, his voice husky with sleep. He sat up.
It wasn’t the alarm, it was their com system. Something on a private coded frequency that Raven and Monty had rigged. Suddenly Clarke was awake.
Raven’s voice came over the com, staticky.. “A destroyer has registered a flight plan to your claim.”
Clarke scrambled up to sit next to Bellamy. She grabbed his hand and spoke into the com. “Monty’s advanced warnings told you?” she asked.
“A destroyer,” Bellamy said.
“It’s happening.” Raven’s voice was without emotion. “That’s what they sent to wipe out the last claim.”
Clarke and Bellamy’s eyes met. They knew what had happened. “Lexa reported the theft. After everything we told her about the charter, she still didn’t believe us and thought she would get special treatment. We went to sleep and she told them.” The muscle in Bellamy’s jaw leapt.
Clarke closed her eyes and tried to steady her breath. When she looked at him again, she knew it was more than just Lexa betraying them. “They wouldn’t have sent a destroyer just for a raid. They’re going to wipe us out. They made the connection between you and Octavia.”
Bellamy shook his head. Not denying. He knew. “They know she’s alive and they know she’s one of the rebel grounders. They knew the whole time. When I asked if she was alive. They knew.”
“Of course they knew,” Raven said. “Now they think you’re on the rebel side, and they’re coming to take you apart.”
Bellamy just nodded. “Thanks Raven. Phase 2. Stay out of trouble until you can’t avoid it.”
“Sometimes you can’t avoid it,” Raven’s voice came over the radio.
Clarke pulled the com closer. “You stay safe, Raven. We need you alive. All of you.”
“Yeah, well you, too.” Raven’s voice almost broke. She rushed on. “You gotta go. Now. We’re preparing here, too. Raven out.”
“Blake-Griffin out.”
There was a beat where Clarke and Bellamy both sat in silence. He turned to her, his face grim. Clarke twined her fingers in his and held on, tightly. “I’m scared,” she said.
“Me too. But there’s no backing out. Everything is going to change from now on.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Just like when we boarded the cryo ship. We had no idea what was coming. We were just jumping into the unknown and hoping for the best.”
He pulled her to him and hugged her fiercely, kissing her hair. “Not just like that. Then we were alone. Two strangers brought together by chance and a mail order marriage agency. Now we’re together, and no matter the danger, no matter the future, I love it, because I’m with you.”
She pulled him down into a desperate kiss. He was just as desperate. Then she pulled away, touching his cheek for just a moment. He was so dear to her. “Let’s do this, Bellamy.”
He grinned at her and his teeth were sharp. “Let’s do it, Clarke.”
***
When they woke Madi, she jumped out of bed, fully dressed. “Yes!” she cried. “Finally.”
“This is not something to celebrate, Madi,” Bellamy scolded.
She shoved her feet into her boots and grabbed a backpack from the closet. “They’re going down. We’re going to take them there.”
“Madi!” Clarke wasn’t sure why she was so dismayed. “They’re coming to eradicate our claim. We’re going to lose everything.”
Madi grinned like a wolf. “We never had a thing. That’s the secret of Eden. No one but the charter ever has anything. Don’t be so grim, Clarke.” She laughed then “None of this was ever real anyway. Now it’s real.” She pulled on her acid rain gear. “I know my part. Meet you at the spot.”
And then she was gone.
Bellamy and Clarke stared at each other. “What did we create, Clarke, the girl is a lunatic.”
Clarke snorted and grabbed his hand. “I don’t think we did that. I think that was 100% grade A Madi. We just thought we’d tamed her.”
“She’s great. Yeah.” He squeezed her hand and took a deep breath. “Now we have to take care of the other member of the family.”
“She betrayed us,” Clarke said, grim.
“I bet she doesn’t think of it that way.”
“Why would she? She thinks she’s right and she thinks she knows the way the world works and we’re naive simpletons who just don’t understand.”
“It always worked for her before why would her privilege fail her now?”
He started back out into the hall and she held him back. “I”m sorry,” she whispered, pulling his hand to her chest. “It’s my fault. I brought her here, took her into our family. I thought I was doing the right thing, but she’s brought ruin down upon us. She’s always thought she had the right to make the world her own and she keeps trying to run right over me and you and… everybody. I never should have—“
“You did what you had to do, Clarke. She forced it onto you and you made the best of the situation. You tried to hold us together. And you did. Look at us now.”
“Terrified and about to lose everything?”
He shook his head. “Strong and prepared. And ready to take control of our lives. If Lexa hadn’t come into this family, maybe we would have kept our claim nice and peaceful, but maybe, maybe not. Octavia was always a grounder. And they knew my connection to her right at the beginning. They just didn’t tell me.” He laughed. “I think we were always a ticking time bomb, stuck between two groups in a power struggle.”
“It’s always politics, Bellamy,” Clarke remembered Polis and Alpha. The whole quadrant. Nothing but politics. “Games and power plays.”
“Yeah, well, maybe we’re done being pawns.”
Clarke nodded. He was right. “Yeah, let’s go get Lexa. It’s our turn to move.”
They pounded on Lexa’s door. It was locked. She always kept her bedroom door locked. She had never trusted them. She said it was just her culture, but it was also her nature. When she finally came to the door, she looked rumpled and sleep flushed. She was dressed in a goddamned silk nightgown. Who wore silk nightgowns on a farm in the middle of nowhere? Clarke could not believe the nonsense. She threw the acid rain gear at her. “Get dressed, Lexa. We have to leave.”
Lexa narrowed her eyes and looked back and forth between Clarke and Bellamy, clutching at the gear. “I reported the theft. The charter will be here soon. You don’t have to worry about grounders attacking us. We’ll be safe.”
Clarke gaped at her.
Bellamy started laughing. “Oh my god. You honestly thought the grounders were going to attack us? There’s no way.”
“We should have told her.”
“Why so she could sell us out?” There was nothing Clarke could say to that, since Lexa did sell them out.
“What are you talking about.” Lexa’s chin was back up. The glare was like ice.
“My sister came to this colony four years before me. The charter told me she was dead. She wasn’t. She is a grounder leader. ”
“Your sister.” Lexa gaped.
“My sister. They lied and said she was dead, instead of telling me she was a grounder rebel. And you told the charter the grounders took our arsenal. And now they made the connection. And they think we’re collaborators. They are sending a destroyer to wipe our claim out and dissolve our holdings, leaving us penniless and holdless. Not just Clarke and I, but you too. Good job, Lexa.”
She took a grip on the weather gear. “Well I’ll call them back. I’ll tell them we’re not collaborators.”
“We are collaborators, Lexa. It was a plan,” Clarke said, as Lexa’s face drained of blood. “It was our plan.” It felt like a knife when she said it. It was the knife Clarke had been holding behind her back the entire time Lexa had been there. When Lexa had stolen her mother’s ship and held her people hostage and then kidnapped Clarke and threatened Bellamy, Clarke had been holding this knife. They’d gotten closer, real friends even, but she was not sorry, because she had not forgiven Lexa for what she had done.
Lexa’s jaw dropped. “You stole my weapons?”
“You tried to steal my claim. And my life. You tried to control me.” The ice in her heart came through in her voice.
“You tried to steal my wife.” Bellamy’s voice was heat.
Lexa stood there, staring. Breathing heavily. Clarke pushed her aside and went to her closet, pulling out appropriate clothes. “Get dressed now, we have to go.”
“I will not.”
Bellamy cocked his head. “You will. I won’t let you be taken by them and used as chattel, and that is what they will do. You are no longer the commander. No matter who you once were, now you are only a commodity to them, and I won’t let that happen. You’re coming with us.”
“You are not in control of me.”
“Dammit,” he muttered under his breath. “We do not have time for this.” He turned to face Lexa. “Listen. You are out of your element here. You keep thinking that you can keep your comfortable world, but you can’t. You are unprepared for whatever they would have lined up for you. None of it is good. None of it will be your choice. If you want to have the least chance to regain some sort of control over your life, and that means for real, responsibility and free will and something of your own, not just pretending to be Clarke’s wife, then you need to come with us now, and use what you know, tactics, politics, military strategy, whatever, and help us and the grounder rebels to take this continent away from the charter and make it a FREE colony.”
Clarke crossed her arms over her chest and smiled as Bellamy’s words hit Lexa, resonated with her. Gave her hope for something that she had lost.
“And get my ship back. We can have our OWN colonists.”
“My MOTHER’S ship, not yours” Clarke broke in. “And you still won’t be commander, but if you contribute, you can be part of the council, like all of us.”
“Oh like this marriage? Equal partners? Without secrets?”
“No. Like a council. With all the other grounders. To make a new society. We could use your knowledge. I know you wanted a more peaceful quadrant, but the politics and tribalism of the stations wouldn’t allow it. We’re far from the old quadrant. We can start over here.”
Lexa looked back and forth between Bellamy and Clarke. “I won’t be married to either of you anymore. It is untenable.”
“Agreed,” Bellamy said.
“You’ll be free. Without a claim no one needs to be married at all.” She said, confidently. Bellamy shot her daggers with his eyes. She laughed. “Unless we want to, Bellamy. God so dramatic. We have an army coming to destroy us and you’re making drama.”
He reached out and snagged her wrist and pulled her to him. “Shut up. I love you.”
“You shut up,” she said, and kissed him. Desperately. Quickly. “I love you,” she said when she pulled away.
“Untenable. I need to be free of the both of you. If this will do it. Let’s go.”
Clarke nodded. This marriage was untenable, but Clarke knew Lexa. She knew that the idea of a continent to rule made her hungry. More than a station. Real land. A planet. If they could use that hunger, they would.
Bellamy kissed her once more. “Get her ready to go. I’ll get the rucksacks.”
He left and Clarke turned back to Lexa who stared at her steadily. “What?”
Lexa blinked slowly twice, and then nodded, as if deciding something. “Call your mother at the capitol. Have her tell Gustus this code. “Jus Drein Jus Daun.” He is security in her building. I made sure. I still have political clout, Clarke, no matter what you think. And we can use it. If you want your mother to join us on this continent, tell her to pack what she needs quickly and go with him. He has a plan in place to reclaim my ship and meet me on the other side of the mountain. With as many of my guards as he can. It must be done quietly and quickly. And at once.” She turned swiftly and stripped the silky nightgown. She was still beautiful, but none of that mattered.
Clarke gaped at her. “You were going to betray the charter.”
Lexa pulled on her outback gear. Heavy socks and leather pants, a tight shirt that wouldn’t get in the way of the acid rain gear. “You continue to think I am a fool. I knew once I got here that it was all a power play. It always is. I would recover mine. I get what is mine, Clarke.” She tied her boots.
“And I am not yours.”
She shook her head. “No. You are not. And frankly, you annoy me far more than you did in my memories of you. So I am relieved that this farce is over, and we can began the real battle.”
“You won’t get to just run roughshod over people, Lexa. We have rights. And power in our own rights.”
Lexa stuffed a few things in a bag and pulled on her rain gear. “We can consider how power is divided later. First we must take it from the villains.”
On that, Clarke was agreed. They nodded and they left.
Bellamy handed them their rucksacks. They were heavy, filled with supplies. Other necessary possessions had been removed and hidden away long before. They were prepared. They were.
The wild bleating of the beasts made Clarke jump. She was keyed up.
The whole herd stormed past the front of the house, and then into the west woods. Trampling the carefully tended fields and breaking through the fence that was, no longer, electrified.
“What is happening?” Lexa cried.
“Madi let them out. She wouldn’t let them be burned alive by the destroyer.”
“Your girl is a beast herself. No wonder she has empathy for them.”
It was half insult and half praise.
“Let’s go,” Bellamy said, heading out for their meeting spot, grim. Clarke caught up to him and grabbed his hand.
“Together,” she said. He smiled. She could see the nerves in his tight jaw. “We’ll be okay.”
He let out his breath and nodded. “Follow, Lexa. Let’s go.”
And they went.
***
The sun was just beginning to touch the eastern horizon, but there was enough light to see by, because their claim was burning. It was a great blaze, rising high into the sky, releasing red sparks to meet the stars.
Nothing was left. The guards had swept through the claim confiscating anything of worth. All the mechanics and mods that were portable were now in the hold of the destroyer. But that was not where the value of their claim lay.
Clarke and Bellamy watched, arms wrapped around each other. They had built this hidden blind in the trees, off on the cliffs overlooking the farm. Because they’d known, they’d known that they might need a place to hide, whether in clear skies or acid rain.
Now the native fronds and vines both hid them from the charter guards and protected them from the burning rain. It was built high enough off the ground that the pooling acid was too far away to affect them with off gassing. The air was clear up here. Even the smoke from their house was blowing away from them. Away.
Bellamy bent his head and kissed her hair and didn’t say anything. She hid her face in his neck.
It had been over a year since they had landed on Eden. When Clarke thought back to her life before, on the other side of the universe, it seemed impossible that she had not always known this man, that this had not always been her home, that this child had not always been hers.
Madi sat at her feet, cross legged, peering through the rails.
Lexa stood as far as she could from Clarke and still be hidden in the shelter, staring with a blank expression that, far from being emotionless, showed how shocked Lexa really was.
“They are truly destroying everything,” she said.
“I think they are pissed that we’re nowhere to be found,” Bellamy said. The deep rumble of his voice gave her solace. She felt it all the way to her toes. “They wanted us for their stable of unclaimed.”
“They’re certainly going to think we’re rebels now,” Clarke said.
“Aren’t we?”
Lexa sneered at the sight of the destroyer finally taking off, laying down another barrage of flame over the destruction it had already created. “ It is a waste of resources.” She shook her head like she couldn’t believe it.
“They don’t care,” Madi said, shrugging. “They like dragging people away in shame. They parade them through the streets when the bring them to town, showing another family that was too weak to survive. Then they get to the bargaining, and each legal aged person has to negotiate what skills and talents they have to give to the charter. Then they’d bundle them off to their new “positions.” As slaves. Oh they don’t call it that, but that’s what it is.”
“Slaves have been outlawed by the interstellar consulate,” Lexa protested.
“That’s on the other side of the universe. Here it’s different.” Madi scoffed. “I’m a slave.”
“No, you’re not,” Clarke snapped.
Madi laughed this time. “I was a slave. Now I’m the daughter of a citizen doctor. Except she’s not a citizen either. She’s a free person and so am I. And so is he,” she pointed at Bellamy. “And so are you.” She glared fiercely at Lexa. “You wanna be a free person or you wanna be a slave? No commanders here.”
“You are a brat.”
“So are you.”
No one had any response for that. What response was there? They all silently watched as the charter ships flew away and their claim burned to black ash.
When the sun was filling the bowl of the sky with blue and pink clouds, they climbed down from their perch.
“I’m sorry, Bellamy,” Clarke said, as the sadness hit her from out of nowhere.
“For what?” he pulled her close.
“For how everything turned out. You came with me across the universe for a claim and a family and a new life. I promised you a claim. And look what you got. You didn’t sign up for this.”
He wrapped his fingers in her hair. “No. I really didn’t. I signed up for the unknown but what I was pretty sure was just the same old shit on the other side of space. What did I get?” His brushed her hair out of her eyes and the sun hit his face as he looked at her. He shone with his love of her. “I got the universe.”
Clarke breath left her body. “Fuck you, Bellamy.” She pulled him down to her so she could kiss him. “We just lost everything and I feel like I won. How did you do it?”
He shrugged. “I think it’s just the adventure. You are a wild ride.” He laughed and she pinched his side.
“I’m glad you think this is all funny,” Octavia said, pushing through the woods, dressed in acid rain gear, interrupting. “But I’ve got a transport for you, out to the outer banks.”
“We’re leaving,” Clarke said. Hardly believing it. Leaving her claim, that she’d traveled he galaxy for.
“We’re getting the fight ready, Clarke,” Bellamy said, “It’s only just begun.”
“Well then, let’s go. You don’t want to hang around a claim that’s been flamed. They keep coming back for a while.”
Octavia guided them towards their strange, scraped together ship. It was nearly invisible in the woods and rain.
“I’m not going.” Lexa balked.
“Excuse me? Are you planning to die in the acid rain?” Octavia answered.
Lexa turned her sharp gaze on Bellamy’s sister, fierce in her warpaint and leathers. “I said I’m not going. I’m getting my ship back.”
“My mother’s ship,” Clarke couldn’t help but add. Lexa glared.
“The ship. We have a ship. We’ve already set the plan in motion. My lietuenant is bringing it to us. To the plateau. He is loyal to me, not to this charter. It means no one has to be stuck on this planet and we have access to the rest of the universe.”
Octavia paused. Looked at Bellamy. He glanced at Clarke before nodding to his sister.
“Yes. We have a space ship. A cryo ship. For travel to the other side of the universe. Which means the charter will no longer have sole access to the planet.”
“We need that. They’ve always had a strangle hold on colonists because of that. People can LEAVE.” The desperation on Octavia’s face was almost shocking.
“Lexa brought it.” Clarke admitted. “She made the plan. I relayed the message to my mother. If it works, her lieutenant will bring it to her.”
“We can’t stay here, though. If they catch you, and they’ll be looking, they’ll take you.”
“I”ll take that risk,” Lexa said.
Octavia set her measured gaze upon Bellamy and Clarke and Madi, who had managed to finagle her way between Bellamy and Clarke. “Are you?”
Bellamy shook his head. “I don’t want a ship. I want to leave. I don’t need the charter anymore. I have everything I could ever have wanted. And I want Clarke and Madi safe.”
Clarke found herself in his arms and Madi stuck her chin out. “We’re getting out of here, auntie. Take us home.”
Octavia paused, clearly torn between the possibility of an actual spacefaring ship and leaving the devastation of the charter behind.
A girl stepped up behind her. “I’ll take responsibility for this one,” she said. Her hazel eyes were hilighted by black war paint, and her curly hair puffed out in a cloud in the humidity. “I”ll take her to the north settlement, it’s near the plateau, and we can keep a watch for when the ship might arrive. And if it does…”
“If it does, you get it to our northern settlement. With the weapons we already have and the ship, we have enough of a centralized power to stand up the the charter.”
“We can declare independence,” the woman said.
Octavia smiled. “You’re right Costia. You pick a crew and take Lexa out to pray for this ship.”
“No praying. Gustus will not disappoint me. It’s in his nature.”
“Fine. No praying. Lexa, this is Costia. She will show you around. You’ve cause a lot of problems, but perhaps my brother and his wife have brought us an answer.”
“Freedom,” Clarke said. “The whole point of this is freedom.”
Octavia smiled. “I like her. Freedom you have, Clarke Griffin-Blake. Welcome to the grounders. Come with us to your new life.”
Costia took Lexa away and Octavia led them to the transport, a hover craft that went longer distances than the rovers, and Madi, Bellamy and Clark piled in. He wrapped his arm around her and she settled back into his broad chest. Madi sat up so she could watch the woods zoom past, so fast that the acid rain barely spattered the windows.
“This is it,” Madi said. “We’re free.”
Bellamy nodded and wrapped his arm around Clarke. “Yup.” He said, and kissed her neck.
Clarke felt like she should feel as if the world had ended, but she didn’t. She felt like this was just the beginning.
The End.