Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It is dark and it is cold. Until it’s warm and bright. The brightest light Bellamy thinks he’s ever seen, in fact. Swirling, twisting, and dancing about him, he marvels a moment. Then panic sets in. The same green lights that just a second ago brought wonder now fill him with dread. But as the lights clear, Bellamy notices two things.

Thing one: He is well and truly separated from the group. No Echo or Children of Gabriel in sight.

Thing two: He is being stared at by people he doesn't know, but that look familiar to him, in a place that is so foreign it may as well be a different planet.

The strangers stare at him, a mix of awe and confusion on their faces as they take him in. They stare at his clothes, at his hair, at his beard, at him. They don’t say anything for a bit, and then softly, as the last remnants of green light fade around them,
“Dad?”

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Back on Sanctum ... Clarkey’s POV

Gabriel Santiago might just be her saving grace, especially tonight. He’d been nothing but apologetic for the trauma of Cillian and the Primes, while also being a leader and advocating for his people in their own right. His kind eyes and gentle hands have been patiently helping in medical with her and Jackson all night now. Like the saint of a man he is, he is probably waiting for her and Jackson to have their breaks before he does, just because Gabriel doesn’t think he deserves the rest as much as they do.

It’s as heartbreaking as it is endearing, and Clarke thinks that suits Mister Santiago just fine. The more she watches him work, and the more he meets her gaze with his own, the more her acceptance of her observations further solidifies. Her eyes continue tracking his, and his continue their own, and finally, Jackson returns from his shift at home and shoos them both out the doors. He claims the tension in the room is so thick it could be cut with a knife, and as they step out into the halls, Clarke can’t help but agree. He stares at her, and she meets his gaze with one of her fiercest. Then, with no real warning, her back is against the wall, his mouth on hers.

Clarke tries at first to find the strength to push him away, to save from the mess that is her personal life. Instead, however, she pulls him in closer, almost as if shocked that, after everything, someone still wants her that way. As she begins to reciprocate, feeling her body respond to his, she lets herself imagine a different brown-eyed man, just as Gabriel imagines a different blonde. When she's naked underneath him, holding curls a little too tightly coiled and counting freckles too few in number, she knows he’s cataloging the many ways in which she is a little wrong, too.

“We okay?” Gabriel asks, tightening his hold around her waist while they bask in the afterglow.

“Perfect,” is all she says in response, content to bask in the comfort of his strong arms, even if they’re not the ones she wants the most. And as the world fades to black within Gabriel’s arms, she hears him whisper.

“Goodnight Clarke. Goodnight and sweet dreams and I’m sorry, Josie.”

She wakes up with Gabriel’s arms wrapped around her as if to shield her from the consequences of everything they had shared. Clarke knows with her whole heart that shit will hit the fan from this, but at the moment, wrapped in the arms of a good man, having had her first non-traumatic sexual experience in 7 years, she lets herself enjoy the comfort of company.

“I hear you thinking. It’s too early for that. Go back to sleep,” he says, voice rough from slumber. Clarke, never one for disobeying, does try, to find that while her body is content to sign off, her mind is not. Instead of an easy sleep, Clarke finds nothing but problem after problem circling in her thoughts. Slipping carefully out from Gabriel’s arms to avoid waking him again, she slides on her clothes and heads down into the med-bay to see if her mom or Jackson needs help.

“Hey, Jacks,” she calls when she sees him. “Need any help over there?”

“Yeah, that’d be great,” he calls, rubbing his eyes and sighing. “Your mom is inside still, treating the last of the Sanctum natives and researching the best way to operate on Kane. She would probably love the help, and I would love the rest.”

“Of course, jacks. Go home, rest up, maybe even bribe Miller into making you some tea with those new leaves and some honey.”

“Thanks, Clarke.” Jackson leaves soon after, stopping on his way out the door to thank her once again. Clarke sighs at his retreating form, deciding she has stalled for long enough. Walking into the old Prime med bay, Clarke spots her mother gliding through the makeshift cots and checking vitals. Looking up from her charts, she waves Clarke over with a gentle, if not tired, smile. Having been clean for several weeks her cheeks are beginning to fill in again, and her eyes look clear. Abby looks like her mom again, warming Clarke’s heart with every new smile.

“Hey there, baby,” Abby says, walking up to Clarke with her arms held out and giving her a tight hug. “How is everybody? Did you sleep? Did you remember to eat? Is Madi okay? What about–”

“Ma,” Clarke cuts her off. “That is a lot of questions for this early in the morning. As far as I know, everyone is fine, I did sleep, I did eat, and Madi should be doing just fine.”

Abby smiles at her, “I know I just get a little anxious sometimes, I guess. It’s better now than it has been in a while, though. Thank you.” She gives Clarke one last squeeze, walking over to her desk and sitting on the edge. She stares at Clarke, and Clarke stares back until someone starts coughing and groaning. Clarke heads over to the patient, one of twenty in the right corner of the room, and her mother rummages through the paperwork to find the patient’s charts.

“Luca, a 15-year-old male, was injured in the fighting and commotion. A stab wound to the anterior intercostals, luckily missing anything major.”

“I know, Mom, he’s one of Madi’s friends. Or at least, he was. He looks to be fine, though, just a bit uncomfortable.”

“Just do what you can to alleviate the pain,” Abby says, walking towards the cabinet housing their dwindling medical supplies. “We have some antiseptics left but no medicine stronger than Tylenol, and the supply of clean bandages is running low.”

Clarke moves the boy around, changing the cover on his pillow and the top cover sheet and grabbing him some water. She holds the cup to his face, letting him take small, slow sips every few minutes. When he’s asleep again, she grabs the files stacked on the desk and begins the torturous task of paperwork. She is in for a long day.

Chapter Text

Anomaly… Bell’s POV

Bellamy stares back at the strangers, noting their shocked stares and dropped jaws. His instincts scream at him to turn and run, but he forces himself to stay put. To face them.

“Hello there. My name is Bellamy, and I come in peace,” he says, careful to add emphasis on peace. He does NOT need another war on his hands just because he failed to announce his pure intentions. He continues cautiously when no one tries to shoot him, “I’m looking for my sister, Octavia. Has anyone here seen her?”

He’s about to keep rambling on when a young woman steps forward, with dark ringlets framing her face and eerily familiar icy blue eyes. She studies him, tilting her head from side to side. Passing a judgment, Bellamy guesses. It reminds him of Clarke, the way they both study people as if they have a window to their souls.

She eyes him one last time before deciding his worthiness to live. Yes, she decides. He seems non-violent, non-threatening, and in need of some medical attention. All good reasons to take in a stranger. So when the guards step forward from their assembled spots, she nods her assent. Yes, she signals them. Yes, he lives.

The guards take him by the arms, holding him tight when he squirms. They hold tighter still when the medic comes to set his shoulder, and then they release him to fall into the abyss that is sleep. Into the abyss, he goes.

I N T O
T H E
A B Y S S

When he wakes next, he learns from a guard passing by that he has been asleep 36 hours. They had thought him half dead at 24. They stare at him now as though by touching him, they, too shall drop into sleep for the next day and a half, and by the time Bellamy is bathed and dressed, the looks have begun to bother him. They stare at him like he is a circus act, a freak. He wonders, very briefly, if this is what it will be like for Kane when he is finally awakened from his medically induced coma. An endless parade of stares, comments, unnecessary advice, and the odd affectionate comment. Bellamy could do with an affectionate comment, he thinks. His whole head feels stuffed with cloth, and his ears and eyes, like he’s stuck permanently underwater. Side effects of almost dying and apparently traveling through time and space, he supposes. Bellamy wanders out into the halls just outside his room, deciding rather unceremoniously that every basic need has now been met aside from food and drink. And so he sets off to find some food and water.
He finds the food with little difficulty, and the stares from passersby are only slightly unnerving now. No one goes out of their way to speak to him, but seeing as no one is treating him like he has the plague, he considers it progress. He decides to try to find the girl from yesterday, the one that reminded him so fiercely of Clarke with dark hair, so sets off down a winding hallway to find her. Any direction, even the wrong one, must be better than sitting like an animal in what the old Earth societies called zoos. Anything, he reasons, when people start reaching out to touch him as if the graze of their fingertips against his skin will give them power. Anything, he reasons, when guards come and escort him to a hidden backroom for causing a disturbance. Anything, he reasons, when those icy blue eyes haunting him in their familiarity are the last things he sees as the world tilts, spins, and then goes dark. Into the abyss, he’ll fall once again.

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Anomaly… Octavia’s POV

It is dark, and she is lonely. And then the world is no longer dark, but Octavia stands on a beach, toes in the sand, a pregnant Diyoza by her side, and Octavia is still lonely. Not alone, but so achingly lonely she wishes for nothing more than a good shoulder to cry on and nearly brings herself to tears. She is more lonely now than she was as a child, and considering she’d only ever met two people, that’s a tough record to beat. She dares to glance at Diyoza, holding a hand to her stomach and complaining about the unknown impacts of Anomaly travel on an unborn baby.

Almost as quickly as that mothering side had appeared, it was now gone, becoming quickly replaced with a harsh glare. The glare of a woman who means business. The glare that led her to power, and also the one that says ‘Life is a bitch, and that bitch is mine.’

“Alright Bloodreina, because you are so adapted to killing things, why don’t you go kill us a dinner?” Octavia knows better than to rise to her bait now, a trick she wishes she had learned earlier. At least that way, she could have been saved some trouble with her anger. Now she knows better. She recognizes the jab for the defense mechanism it is, a verbal smack into submission, to help her feel more in control. Octavia thinks, rather ruefully, that she doesn’t want to be the one standing in the way of Charmaine Diyoza trying to control something as unstable as the Anomaly, and decides to follow the command with a mock solute and a middle finger. Of complete respect, of course.

She sets a course for the woods behind their arrival site, going North, or so she assumes. The moss on the trees here may not grow more on the north side of their trunks, she thinks. Despite this, she heads that way, knowing that if all else fails, she can use the moss growth pattern to help her get back.
She listens intently every few steps, trying to discern what animal life is there if any at all. After about a half hour of walking, she begins to hear what sounds like birdsong. It is beautiful, trilling ghastly notes out into the cooling air. A beautiful warning of something to come. The warning seems to be the first link in a deadly chain of events. The trees begin to sway, then uproot towards their ends as if being pulled by a force much stronger than any she had ever seen. Ocatvia’s survival instincts take over, flight winning the eternal war for dominance this time, She sprints, and the trees creaking and cracking as they move around her is enough to make this sprint one for her life. When she reaches the beach again, the green lights of the Anomaly are in full force, a colorful display of chaos in this planet’s sky above. The storm is spirally closer and closer when she notices the people emerging from it. Long white robes and a metallic segmented helmet adorn each of the six moving closer to the. Diyopza, she thinks. The baby. Must get to the baby.

A pinprick hits her neck. Another on her forehead, right between her eyes. The world tips up, the sky her only view. She opens her mouth to cry out for help, only her mouth doesn’t open. With rising panic, Octavia looks around the beach as best she can, noting that the people are much closer now, their faces covered by a filmy screen over the helmet’s edges. She feels hands on her arms and legs, pulling her towards the green lights once again. She tries to fight them; She can’t. Somewhere in the distance, a baby’s wail fills the air, followed by a gunshot. The wails stop, and to Octavia Blake, Skairaipa, and Bloodreina, the murder of an infant is the start of a war. She will fight them, she decides.

As they carry her through the swirling green gates of their world, she sets a trap of her own. She is Bloodreina again, and she will this battle for the child, even if she may not win the war.