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Clarke gasps in a breath and tries to wrap her head around what she’s seeing. She turns to Bellamy while keeping her eyes locked on their younger selves. “Bell?!” She sounds slightly hysterical and she squeezes his hand and tries to take a deeper breath to calm down.
“Who the fuck are you?” The younger Bellamy asks as he stands and drags the younger Clarke up and behind him. Atom’s body is lying dead behind them, a gruesome time stamp to when they are.
Clarke lets out a startled laugh. “Oh my god.” A hand comes up to cover her mouth. She turns fully to Bellamy now, “What if we’re really in the past? We could fix it! Change things!” She wouldn’t have to be Wanheda. She could save them from so many mistakes and deaths. Suddenly that thought consumes her and becomes larger than her disbelief.
She tugs on his hand and Bellamy finally tears his eyes away from the scene to look at her, “What if this is just a hallucination caused by the anomaly?” His eyes dart back to their younger selves who are watching them in shock.
“We’re seeing the same thing. It’s not a hallucination. Bellamy.” Her voice softens and she looks at him with pleading eyes, “We could save them. We know what’s coming, we might even be able to prevent Praimfaya.”
“Save us from what? What’s coming?” The younger Bellamy speaks up. Clarke thinks it might only be because she knows him so well, after all this time, that she can see how scared he is.
“From the grounders, from the mountain men, from the second apocalypse.” She looks back to her Bellamy and silently begs him.
“What if it’s not real? What about Octavia?” His voice cracks and the look on his face is desperate. She’s not sure if he wants this to be real or not. She’s not sure if he knows if he wants this to be real or not. If it is, there’s no going back. They’ll change things and be the only two to remember what would have been.
But they’ll change things and know they did better for their people. “What if it is real?” She looks between his eyes, “Bellamy, I want to try. Maybe this is how we can do better.”
He sucks in a breath and closes his eyes for a moment. “Okay, Princess.” He tightens his grip on her hand, “Let’s do better.” The smile he gives her is a bit shaky but she doesn’t mind. She throws her arms around him and holds tight. He buries his head in her hair and hold her just as tightly for a moment.
“What the hell?” The younger Clarke is staring at them in shock.
The older couple pull slightly away from each other and look over at their younger selves. They look so shocked by the embrace and Clarke can’t help but let out a giggle, still high on possibilities. Bellamy chuckles too and turns to them with an arm still around Clarke.
“Get used to it. I’ll tell you right now, this girl means everything to me.” Bellamy is looking his younger self in the eye and nods his chin at the younger Clarke “Don’t underestimate her. She’s stronger than you think.” His younger self glance back at the girl and looks back to Bellamy and gives a nod.
Clarke feels a lump forming in her throat but the grin wont leave her face. She squeezes his waist with the arm she still has around him before looking to her younger self. “And give him a chance. He may be an total ass sometimes but he is the best person I’ve ever known.”
Bellamy rolls his eyes at her, “Gee thanks, Princess.”
She grins up at him and pushes her tears back down her throat. With one last squeeze she lets him go and gets down to business. “Okay, first things first. We need to get to Charlotte before she kills Wells.”
“What?!” The younger Clarke starts towards them, “What are you talking about?”
Clarke takes a deep breath and begins to explain with a brief apologetic look at Bellamy, “Bellamy was trying to help her with her nightmares. He told her to slay her demons while she was awake so she wouldn’t have to face them while she slept. Since her nightmare are about her parents being floated by Jaha, she takes that to mean she has to kill Wells. It won’t happen this time, okay?” She wanted to put a hand on her younger selfs shoulder, try to reassure her in some way, but she can’t bring herself to touch her yet. It’s too weird.
“Shit.” The younger Bellamy rubs a hand down his face and lets out a big sigh. “Okay. I’ll talk to her after I get someone to bury Atom. Clarke, you go warn Wells.” He looks over at them and hesitates. “How old are you guys anyway?”
Clarke is slightly taken aback though she should have expected the question. She looks over to Bellamy and sees his smirk. She knows he’s going to fuck with them and tries to hold back a smile. “Technically? I’m 154. She’s 149.”
Clarke rolls her eyes, still fighting her smile. “Technically, you don’t age during cry-sleep so you’re only 29. I’m 24.”
“Fuck. Okay.” The younger Bellamy rakes a hand through his hair, trying to process. “Okay. You need to come back with us and explain everything. I’ll have someone keep an eye on Charlotte for now. I can’t-”
Clarke took pity on him, “Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to talk to her tonight. It doesn’t happen until tomorrow night and we can just include Wells in our talks.” She looks over to her Bellamy, “We should include the others too. Monty and Harper, obviously. Octavia, Miller, Raven, Jasper.” She frowns thoughtfully for a moment. “What about Murphy?”
If they are changing things he wont be accused of Wells’ murder and hanged by a mob before being exiled and tortured by grounders. He’s still a dick right now though, so she isn’t sure if they can trust him at this point or not.
Bellamy looks like he’s thinking it over as he rubs a hand over his chin. “I don’t know. This is Pre-Emir Murphy but I kind of want to give him a chance.” He smiles wryly and Clarke nods. She’s nervous about him at this point but leaves the decision in Bellamy’s hands. He’s Spacekru after all.
But so was Echo, she thinks, and the Echo of this time is dangerous. Clarke keeps her mouth shut but her brow crinkles in worry. She wants this chance to change things but she isn’t sure if Bellamy has realized the other consequences of that yet. The Echo he knew is gone and the circumstances that shaped her into who he knew will never happen now.
She puts it out of her mind and puts a smiles on her face. “Okay, let’s get going then.”
As they are walking back to the drop ship Bellamy jerks to a stop and pulls Clarke with him, “Clarke, wait.”
He sounds slightly panicked and she turns to him, brows puckered in concern. “What is it?”
He swallows and looks at the ground before looking back at her. He’s nervous or embarrassed. “Sorry, it just- I just realized that when we start changing things, the things that brought us together might not happen.” He looks away again, “That day trip, when you told me I wasn’t a monster, when you gave me forgiveness.” He takes a deep breath and looks her dead in the eyes. She can see his nervousness turn into determination. “We need to sit them down and explain those things too. You have no idea what that day meant to me and that was just the start. I don’t know what I’d do without you and I don’t want to watch them to find out.”
She can feel the tears well up and knows there’s no holding them back this time. “We will. We’ll tell them everything.” And at some point she’ll pull her younger self aside and tell her to grab onto him and never let go, to love him with everything she had. She didn’t want her to make the same mistakes she did.
He tugs her closer and touches his forehead to hers, eyes closed and just breathes in. It’s the relief that they’re on the same page, back in sync with each other. They only have a moment though before the younger Bellamy loudly clears his throat.
When they look over, their younger selves are waiting on them and looking pretty uncomfortable. It makes her snort in amusement and she can hear Bellamy chuckle quietly too. They resume their trek though.
Clarke thinks that maybe, once they save the world again, her and Bellamy might have a real chance at peace.
Clarke and Bellamy hung back in the trees as their younger selves went into the camp. They’d give them a minute to prepare the others for their arrival so no one freaks out too badly.
She looked over at him and grabbed his hand. “We’ll do this together, okay?” They need to present a united and strong front. They needed the others to believe in them so they would listen.
He squeezed her hand and a smile quirked his lips up, “Yea. Together.”