Archive of Our Own

July 23, 1691

Her boots were already dirty when she met him.

The hem of her dress stained with mud, running and running only to finally melt into the light of the tavern. Hundreds of silhouettes in the window, bathed in yellow glow. Music louder than her thoughts, the musician’s boots knocking against the hardwood floor.

She noticed him immediately. How could she not? He was the brightest thing in the room, even if he was trying very hard not to be. One shoulder pressed against the wall, haphazard, head bowed as he spoke to a girl whose face she did not recognize. So many strangers in Arkadia tonight.

Clarke Griffin smiled and stepped inside.

This was the first time she had seen Bellamy Blake and she did not know yet that he would be the death of her.

But his eyes – oh, his eyes. She should have known.

July 30, 1691

They danced around each other for days. She bowed her head in greeting at the store, he stepped aside on the pavement in front of her coven’s house and smiled. There were freckles on his cheeks, thousands of them, and Clarke felt the itch on her tongue – she wanted to ask if he knew.

Her mother said it was bad news.

“Strangers always are. And those Blakes? Wayfarers. No family, no blood in this town.”

“And yet, they came.”

Abigail Griffin’s lips pursed into a thin line and Clarke laughed. “Won’t you let it go, mom?”

“Something’s not right about them and I know it.”

She didn’t listen. Wells was already waiting for her at the tavern and now she knew the stranger’s last name. Bellamy, whispered like an incantation in dark corners or, well, fairs. She knew his name but still did not know his purpose.

This time her dress wasn’t muddy and her boots weren’t caked with dirt. This time, she knew that the girl with sharp cheekbones and sharper eyes was his sister. It was so easy to cross the floor and brush his shoulder in passing.

The way he froze in his tracks gave her delightful ideas.

“Bellamy, isn’t it?”

His nod was curt, polite. Clarke could feel his sister’s eyes on her back.

“I’m Clarke. Clarke Griffin.”

She eyed him for a second or two, observing this complete lack of reaction where he used to be pleasant when they saw each other. Then she turned to his sister. “You must be Octavia.”

Octavia’s name was whispered, too. But only in corners much darker than those of Arkadia’s rumor mill. She was wearing a purple ribbon around her hair and it might not have been a sign but Clarke took it as such.

“I am, yes. And I know you. Your mother is Abigail Griffin.”

“So ask me.”

The girl swallowed and then her face cracked at the cold façade she must have learned to carefully put up. Now it was a wild grin, all her teeth showing. Someone was going to fall in love with her and Clarke hoped she’d know how to say no.

“Are you a witch, then?”

“Octavia – “

“Ah!” Clarke exclaimed, turning around to face Bellamy in all his furiously red-cheeked glory. “He does speak, then. And yes, Octavia. Magic tends to run in the family.”

Mostly on her mother’s side. Potions and spells were as natural as breathing. And so when Octavia smiled in response, Clarke did, too.

This close, she could see how battered their clothes were.

“What brings you to Arkadia?”

 “My sister believed it to be a good place for a new start.”

“That it certainly is,” Clarke acknowledged, bowing her head. No one could hear them anyway, the tavern as crowded as it was every Friday evening. Somewhere in the crowd, there was Wells, too. She wondered what he’d have to say about mysterious siblings whose magic she could feel even on the first night.

It was different from anything else she’s felt – stormy. A crackle of thunder, a whip of lightning, all that radiance and then darkness. It intrigued her, pulled her in. Octavia kept talking, faster and faster, and Clarke did listen, but she was aware of Bellamy’s presence more than anything else.

When the night winded down and Octavia had promised to come by the coven house before she left for their lodging, everyone found a place to be. Clarke ended up next to Bellamy on the dirt road.

“Are you on the run, then?” she asked when she’d had enough of silence. He’d been polite enough to offer to walk her home but it was barely midnight and she didn’t feel like sleeping. Not when July was hot enough to make her head swim with fantastical possibilities.

Bellamy chuckled - the first time she’s heard him do that. Usually so dark and brooding that it put a smile on her face now but she said nothing. “You could say that, I suppose. After our mother died, there were questions. Octavia is so young, her magic was showing. We thought it would be best to leave before- “

He didn’t have to say it. Clarke knew as well as anyone that just one wrong look was enough to be accused of witchcraft these days. Burn for it, too.

“I understand,” she said instead and leaned a hand on his arm. Beneath, muscles. Beneath, magic. Thriving and coursing like a river.

Bellamy Blake, such a strange thing.

“Miss Griffin – “

She laughed at that, hasn’t been called Miss Griffin ever since she taught children how to paint months ago. “It’s Clarke, actually. Unless you would like me to call you Mister Blake?”

Bellamy swallowed hard at that and she stepped closer, emboldened by the secrets they shared. It was so hard to love someone plain when you were brimming with magic. He, of all people, should have understood.

“Oh, maybe you would like that.”

“Bellamy is fine.” Another hard swallow and then a smile, inky curls falling into his eyes. “Actually, it’s more than fine, Clarke.”

The first time they make love is underneath a sycamore tree, her favorite, and Bellamy Blake tastes like raw cherries. He tastes like death too, but Clarke doesn’t understand why until much later. Sadly for his bruising kisses, too late.

August 1691

She loved the thrill of him, mostly. Her second favorite were his stories. It was as though he had managed to learn infinitely more than she had, even though they were of similar age. They lay underneath the sycamore tree, escaping the heat, when Clarke wasn’t needed by her mother and when Bellamy wasn’t needed by his sister. She drew sometimes and he brought her charcoal. He told stories and she brought her heart.

It worked even though she had no words to express why she didn’t mind that everything and everyone could see them, if they only walked past a rosewood bush and emerged into the clearing. How shameless; Clarke in his lap, his shirt missing, her skirts rucked up. Hazy and sated and blissful, all that shining skin on the dark ground.

Some days she imagined the sycamore scolding them. Others, she imagined the sycamore approving, weaving its branches closer until it has shielded them from Arkadia, from the world, from everyone who would dare to say no.

He told her about his magic, performed spells just for her. “I like stories better, though.”

Clarke laughed and laughed, pretended that wasn’t obvious already. Enjoyed the stars he put in the sky for her eyes only. What a curious magic to have.

“I can’t blame you. They are good stories. But I like the stars, too.”

So he told her about the stars above his hometown. About his mother, Aurora Blake, who was good with a needle but even better with magic. How she could summon whichever wind she needed, whichever man or woman. All were accepted around her table.

“She didn’t raise us differently, either. There was just one rule. No dabbling in death.”

“It’s the worst kind of magic there is.”

Bellamy nodded. “She knew it but she never taught us.”

Clarke remembered the years when her mother was teaching her. All shadows and ash, days turning into nights and nights turning into days, devoid of life and color. It was necessary knowledge, her mother claimed, but Clarke saw nothing necessary in learning how to feel out the thin line between life and death. Always more frail than anyone would have thought.

She let Bellamy lull her to sleep with better stories. Stories of voyages across the ocean, sea salt sticking to his hair and harsh wind whipping Octavia’s cheeks. Travelers looking for a new life. All equally burdened.

“But we are here now. And for that, I am grateful.”

In his arms, Clarke was grateful, too.

December 1691

It was easy to forget what their kind suffered in the world when Arkadia was so cozy. The first Christmas decorations were put up, streets aglow with flames coming from houses, snow hanging heavy on the branches.

Even the coven house seemed to be more alive during the holidays. In their eyes, they did no wrong to their religions. Witches in Clarke’s coven wanted to help and heal. Never tie knots and bind someone’s will, never raise what should never be raised. Only help their town. For Arkadia was a good town and they were good people.

Octavia seemed to be getting along well with everyone. She and her purple ribbon, all but dancing around the house, forgetting to take a scarf in the cold weather and making whoever was closest chase after her.

Some days, Bellamy would come to pick Octavia up after nightfall. Clarke would pretend not to know him and it always burned in an exquisite way, the same kind of pain that came with his teeth in her shoulder, dark marks everywhere. It was easy to pretend, especially if she knew that just a flick of her wrist would be enough to make her footsteps leave no sound as she snuck out to see him.

“Won’t you come to the meeting just this once, Bell?” Octavia would ask.

“No, O. This is not where I belong.”

In his eyes, Bellamy Blake did not belong at all. He told Clarke as much every time she would try the same pleading Octavia did, but with different means. It was a rare thing, to be a man and to possess magic, but Bellamy was the exception.

“I am happy when Octavia is happy but your coven is no place for me. I was a coward and I was selfish. That is not what your coven needs.”

“You’re not selfish with me, though.”

He’d laugh, brush away a curl that somehow always found its way to her cheek. “Well, I am terribly fond of you. Maybe you’ll make me a better man someday.”

As though she didn’t have dirt on her hands, a part of the reason he said the dreaded three words when he did. It was nothing but a regular night, her feet in his lap as she drew and he read, comforted by knowing that the fire is warm and no one else is at his home. And then he said it.

He said “I love you” so simple that she would’ve thought she misheard it. “I love you so much, Clarke Griffin.”

There was no mistaking the tone of his voice, the shift in magic, stiffening her spine and sending her heart and head into a whirlwind.

“Why?”

Bellamy blinked. “Because you understand.”

Because you understand that we all do terrible things to protect the people we love.

Like she did with her father, like she did for Wells. What was taking a life if it meant saving a life?

The only difference between them was that she did not think that made them any less deserving of life. It changed nothing. Magic still wanted them.

“Alright.”

“Alright?”

Clarke nodded, putting her sketchbook to the side. “I love you too.”

He still wouldn’t join the coven and after a while, she gave up. It was enough, having him like this. More than a witch could ever ask for. After all, her first love was the world that gave her the body and soul she had. A man like Bellamy Blake meant living on borrowed time and spilling borrowed love anyway.

A child, she pretended not to know.

February 1692

She could have loved him for so long, she was sure. He would have joined the coven for her and for Octavia, and for finally being able to ask her to marry him. Their beloved sycamore tree still guarded them with all its might but Clarke was tired of hiding and Bellamy was tired of believing that he deserved nothing more than that.

They could have had so much, she was sure. Octavia and Abby laughing together around the kitchen table. Bellamy with his head in Clarke’s lap, joking with Wells. Harper and Monroe, fingers intertwined and happy. And magic.

Magic stirring the pots and magic making the flowers bloom in the middle of the winter. Magic in the streets, burning daylight into the night. Magic in the salon and magic on the porch. Honeybees and rosemary groves, summer summer summer until they’ve had enough and until they’ve willed magic to change it into autumn so they could rest.

They could have had it all, Clarke was sure, a lifetime full of joy, had it not been for the cursed February, always more bitter than her sisters, finding ways to stunt her own growth while pretending that she is better off.

Octavia laughed in the street that day, dancing for the world to see. Especially for Lincoln Woods in his uniform, with his kind eyes. How quick her feet were, how easy her smile. February, much warmer than any before, with Bellamy just minutes away from arriving.

A new story for every day, and he hasn’t disappointed her yet. Even her mother’s eyes had grown kinder on him. Now that she knew the Blakes possessed magic and needed sanctuary, goodwill abounded.

All was well and then it was not. Horse hooves at first. Neighing, as terrible as murder. The clouds shifted, a sunny day rotting rotting rotting. Clarke pressed her hands to her ears and she didn’t look, an abomination of a thing, something very thin hanging by a thread and she couldn’t look – she was a coward, see, Clarke was a coward but she was alive, alive as long her heart was beating, she was –

“Clarke! Clarke, please!”

His voice, as bad as the neighing and the hooves, what a storm, but she ran outside, something foul in the air, something wrong and uncanny. So why was Bellamy screaming, why was everything happening so fast? Tripping over her boots. Falling and landing on her hands, a splinter drawing blood. Strange colors. The world – strange, all wrong, as though someone had broken it and you could never unbreak what you’ve broken so you put it back but it could never be right.

Octavia lying in the street. The neighing, still.

Lincoln and Bellamy and all that blood, now on Clarke’s hands, now in the dirt, now cold cheeks, now no line connecting life and death to be unwound only when the time is right.

But the time was not right.

“What happened?”

“A white mare just came out of nowhere.”

White mares were for curses only and she didn’t listen to Lincoln, knew better than that. She looked at Bellamy instead, the terror of it all settling into her bones.

“Please help her, Clarke. I know you can. Please, I’ll give you anything.”

Making bargains with witches, never a good idea. Only fairies were worse, only fire was worse. A witch. A witch. A dead witch, in her arms. A living witch, in her body. Strange things, bodies. All muscles and tendons, barely scraped from whatever was left after making this world. She should have been a forest fire, a lake at least.

Life, not water, spilled through her palms.

“Clarke, please.”

Bellamy, broken like his sister, mismatched parts like this poorly assembled world. Something in him raw and open, shattering and shattering like he doesn’t know when to stop. Oh but his mother never taught him how fragile life is.

Everyone was around them now, all these voices and just one missing – Octavia, with her purple ribbon, with her whirlwind of a smile, well, wasn’t that pretty? Shouldn’t the world keep seeing that?

“Please.”

Clarke’s mother was shouting somewhere but Octavia had no mother to shout after her, to take her lifeline into her hands and pull, refuse to let go.

Octavia, such a sweet thing and now Clarke, now Bellamy, now Lincoln and the whole town around them. The earth rises so easily and that was the first thing Clarke thought when her mother showed her how to bring a bird back to life. This was not a bad thing, this was helping. This was healing. Just a different kind.

A bird, a bird, but Octavia’s soul was a bird, too, and Clarke smiled as she found it. Smiled as she felt her own blood mixing with Octavia’s in the dirt. Rising rising until it was just the two of them and that purple ribbon, its ends frayed. Clarke’s bones strained but she pulled anyway.

“Clarke, please.”

Bellamy’s voice on repeat in her head, calling to Octavia now. It was a swamp, this death was. Not all were but this one was, such a swamp when Octavia deserved a field at least. Lots of wind. Freedom. Her magic always felt like a thunderstorm.

Come home, Octavia. Now’s not your time.

Oh, all of Clarke’s bones cracked and then fell back into place. It was dark until it was light, terrible until it became wonderful, death until it became life and as dust rose, dust settled.

Octavia spouted and coughed in Clarke’s arms and then threw herself into Bellamy’s.

The sky was blue and the world was right again.

The shackles placed around Clarke’s feet and hands, though. Those were very heavy.

April 1692

They burned her until she was down to a match and then she burned again.

When her mother came, Clarke did not speak.

“You gave your life for that girl. Why, Clarke? I taught you better.”

When Wells came, Clarke did not speak.

“Octavia is alright. No one else is harmed. Bellamy told me that you two love each other. I promise I will keep them safe.”

When Harper came, Clarke did not speak.

“You have a week left. I am so sorry, Clarke.”

It was only when Bellamy came that Clarke spoke, and she did it as though she was starving for something more than bread. No one thought to feed a witch destined to burn at the stake soon enough. That, she understood.

“When they burn me – “

“They are not going to burn you, Clarke,” he interrupted, grabbing her hands. She clenched her teeth not to show that it wasn’t just the bruises – there were broken bones and broken pride and everything about her broken except her will. She did what she came here to do. This wasn’t even a risk. She was a witch. She would live again.

“They are, Bellamy. The pyre will be glorious, I’ve been told.”

Instead of pain, she made a plan.

“Take my ash and my bones and bury them underneath the sycamore tree. Then come back in the night, Bellamy, and bring me back.”

“Clarke, you can’t die. You can’t die.”

His grief split her open, too, and she cupped his cheeks in her hands. It won’t be long now before she can touch him without shackles. Before she can love him like Bellamy Blake ought to be loved – freely..

“A new start, Bellamy. All you have to do is listen to me.”

“My mother never taught me, Clarke.”

“There is nothing to teach here. You will know what you must do when the time comes.” A moment of silence, his eyes wide. “Promise me, Bellamy. Promise you will come back for me.”

“I promise, Clarke.”

The men came in and the shackles around her wrists rattled down the corridor, Bellamy’s hand no longer in hers. Only empty air in her palms, turning around until it felt like her spine would crack. Bellamy ran after her until he was stopped.

“Clarke!”

It wasn’t her name anymore.

She was something much older, something much wiser.

And at midnight, she would no longer be dead.

In the end, the fire did not hurt at all.

**

They buried her ash beneath the sycamore tree and Clarke waited.

She was not below the earth. She was not above the sky. She was just as cursed as the one she loved, magic tethering her soul to the roots of the sycamore tree. Where it once protected them, now it cast chains upon her.

The world changed as she waited and oh, she waited for a very long time.

No one ever came.

2017

Death chews her up and spits her out into the twenty-first century as they cut down the sycamore to make room for asphalt.

In this life, she remembers everything and Bellamy remembers nothing.

She meets him in the new coven house built upon the foundations of the old. Where lavender once stood, now mint and peppers hang. Children run down the street and her magic buzzes like static. The world has changed but Arkadia still reeks of tragedy if you know where to look.

She doesn’t even have to look for him – he finds her on his own, arms full of grocery bags and a smile curving his mouth instead of a frown. She wishes she could want to carve him open, find the sticky hate in his chest and smear it across his face. Marking him a murderer. Marking him the destroyer.

Instead, all that comes out is rage and blind grief, pounding at his chest as pickle jars roll across the floor, as every glass shatters, as her fury makes the windows rattle. Bellamy Blake looks at her and he doesn’t remember his fingers inside her. His skin on hers.

But he holds her down. They wrap her into magic that is numb more than it is alive, as wrong as the world around them. Clarke Griffin may not know a lot, she’s been dead for so long, but she knows that this world crawls under her skin and she can’t rest.

“Who is she?”

“Clarke. The woman from the stories.”

Their voices repeat it like it’s a cautionary tale their mothers had told them. A witch falls in love with a man who promises he loves her back but won’t raise her from the dead. They were more. Once, they were in love like summer, sticky sweet and pouring like maple syrup. She should have seen the rot.

Her bones, covered in moss. Her ash, scattered in the wind. Nothing decayed except for her.

They let her out of the room, her chest blue from pounding at it with whatever she had – when magic wouldn’t listen, fists would. When she sees him, all she sees is despair and grief and curse written in invisible ink across his body, across his soul, marking him a foul thing.

This time she comes so close to severing his lifeline. She never forgot the knowledge her mother gave her; how to find the pulse in the darkness. After all, it was all she had. When he died as she lay in the ground, her anger made thunder and lightning pour from the cleaved sky.

“I don’t know what happened! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

So easy, with her nails on his throat, so easy to do what he had done to her. At least he would get death. All she got was nothing. Watching the world for all these years, hoping that he would come back.

And then Octavia appears, so much younger in this life, eyes bright and smile open wide like she’s forgotten the hooves and the neighing. Ten, maybe twelve – not much older. Not ruined.

(Still the feeling of her blood on Clarke’s hands.)

“Hey Bell, is Raven – “

Everything is smashed, the doors hanging on one hinge, everything creaking, a high-pitched noise that sends her blood rushing and curling. Her magic is all wrong, this anger is completely right but there is Octavia and there is a purple ribbon in her hair and Clarke –

Clarke lets him go.

“You died in my arms once,” she tells Octavia and gets up. Bellamy is still on the floor, Raven has her arms around Octavia, Gina and Monty are holding the doorknobs as though Clarke is a hurricane threatening to whirl through their living room. “You were a forbidden thing and I –“

It comes to the girl much sooner than it comes to Bellamy.

“And you took pity.” Octavia nods. “I remember. Thank you.”

Forbidden, wretched things always had better memory than everyone else. Clarke should know. She is one of them.

“Will you let my brother go?”

She negotiates with her as though she is a monster.

(Maybe, maybe.)

“He left me to die. He killed me.”

Bellamy chokes out a sob on the floor but when Clarke looks at him, there is nothing.

“And now he does not remember. They turned me into a tragedy to warn children. History let him have his peace. I did not get that privilege.”

She can’t hate him but she can feel him and it is that much worse. That he should get to forget while all she could ever do was remember, remembering his stories until she nearly forgot her own name.

And now she has to feel him, has to feel the damage she’s done.

Maybe it’s not enough to make her kill him but it’s enough to make the room explode again, doors slamming shut. Everyone else is on the other side of the wall and Bellamy is under her, above her, inside her, everywhere and every bit of him and of his magic feels cursed, feels perfectly right.

She knows the exact moment when he remembers because grief cleaves his face open like her anger once broke the sky. It’s raw and ugly and dirty, and his body is not wracked with sobs but she can see everything in his eyes.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, oh my God, I am so sorry – “

She stops listening at some point because it’s all he would he say and she doesn’t know if he’s crying and sobbing or if she’s imagining it, he’s still on the floor and there should be hooves and neighing somewhere, this February is dirty and too warm, it hates them, everything has always hated them.

The broom clatters to the floor when she takes a seat by the wall, as far as she can get from him. Outside, everyone is gone, the coven house devoid of its occupants. Bellamy is rising to his knees but he will never reach for her.

Love is such a terrible thing when it rots.

“Why?”

She drops her head to her hands, throat constricted and dry. The air in the room is stale, there is salt on her tongue.

“Why, Bellamy? It would have taken nothing out of you, I made sure.”

He doesn’t say a thing and she watches him, shameless. His freckles are the same and his eyes are brighter. Hair even worse than before. Once, she ran her fingers through the curls and he joked how he could never tame it, no matter what he tried. “I don’t mind, I love it like this.”

They were in love once, that’s what the stories forgot to mention. They were in love equally, with him holding her feet in his lap, with her holding his hand when no one looked. They could have been happy. They were happy. Nothing about him was cruel.

Nothing about him is cruel now, either. She can still see the bad blood on the floor between them, as though it is both his and hers, reaching the walls and the corners of the room, getting underneath the floor, dripping into the ground, has a life of its own.

“Why?”

Is it years that she waits for his answer? Does an empire fall by the time he drops his head to his chest and opens his palms?

“Because we had to run. Octavia would be next.”

The windows don’t rattle.

They break.

*

There are certain words people offer after a tragedy. Clarke found that none of them are enough to comfort her.

Between her and Bellamy, there is only silence. They work around each other as they rebuild the house.

“You don’t have to help,” she tells him when he appears in the morning. She tries not to feel him out but he’s there, she knows he’s coming from miles afar. He’s hers, in a dirty way that only a curse could bind.

He shrugs. “It’s my fault, too.”

They start with the foundations, the cracks in the ground. Bellamy rebuilds the walls and Clarke fixes the windows. Together, they drive out the smell of blood.

At the end of the day, it is still silence as their magic works together. At some point, words itch at her tongue, she wants to say – look, look how terrible you’ve made me, I’ve turned a loving house into a ruin for you.

But it’s a curse that binds them together so it’s best not to.

In this life, it’s Octavia who comes to pick him up after nightfall. She does her homework in the kitchen as Raven supervises. Clarke wants to say that she is sorry but she still wants to hate him, a part of her feeling as though it’s not justice if she doesn’t. It was not his fault and yet, that meant nothing as she lay decomposing for centuries.

“Were you happy?” she asks in the attic. The tiles on the roof are missing, rain pouring in through the empty skeleton. When she blinks, the sky is clear. “After you left Arkadia.”

Bellamy sighs with exhaustion she knows very well. For a second, she thinks he is going to lie but then he gives up, says, “Yes. Yeah, we were happy.”

She can’t find it in herself to fault them for that. If things were any different, it’s all she would have wanted.

*

The Blakes’ clothes are battered in this life, too. She watches them in the kitchen, pretending to brew her tea for longer than necessary. Bellamy and Octavia’s heads close together, looming over her math homework as though they could frighten it into submission.

“Even witches have to go to school, huh?” she asks and they both freeze.

Then Octavia grins like she did before. Open and wild, no tragedy on her palm. Just the purple ribbon and a beauty mark shaped like a butterfly.

“Unfortunately. Unless you know a spell?”

Something melts inside her chest and Clarke smiles back. “I might. Finish your homework and we’ll see.”

She doesn’t imagine the way Bellamy ducks his head and smiles.

*

It took three hundred years for her to learn to hate him.

She’s loved him for much longer.

The muscle memory of it sticks by her. It catches her off guard at worst times – everyone in the living room, his body too close to hers. Like she could just stretch out and lie in his lap, like he could find her hand on the floor and tangle their fingers together.

He smells of cinnamon still. The curse only smells like roses and she doesn’t mind. The broken promise marked him forever and it was a high price to pay but looking at Octavia, she understands. She would do terrible things to save the people she loves, too. They always had that in common.

“Did you know that they portray you as bitter?” he asks one night when they’re the only two people left, everyone else gone to sleep and Octavia curled up in Clarke’s bed upstairs. It’s a strange life they lead but it’s theirs and so it is good. “Everyone imagined that being betrayed would turn you into a monster.”

“So that’s the part that no one told me.” They scare little children with her. Warn them to pick their lovers wisely even before they have come to understand love. “Well, I’m not bitter. Aggressive, maybe.”

He chuckles, lips wrapped around the beer bottle. June with its warmth finds them on the porch. “Maybe.”

“Yeah, maybe. You got a problem with that, Blake?”

This time he does look at her when he smiles and despite the curse, the light around him gets a little brighter.

“Not at all.”

She doesn’t imagine their shoulders brushing as they bid each other good night, both of them lingering in the hallway for a little too long. She can’t forget it – can’t forget the anger, can’t forget the feeling of him. The reason for risking her life to save the thing he held most dear.

Was it worth it? No.

Clarke would do it all over again.

“Good night, Bellamy.”

His skin is still warm to touch.

*

They fall asleep together in late July and wake up entwined. She kisses him just as the dawn breaks outside, the world quiet like they are forgiven. Clarke hides in the darkness just so nothing in the light would notice what she’s managed to steal but that morning, it feels like no one is looking.

It feels like she is free.

“This changes nothing,” she tells him and Bellamy nods, props up on his elbows to capture her lips.

“I know.”

He still tastes like raw cherries and there’s no sycamore here but there is a little blue house and there is her body, thirsty for him, there is her soul that hasn’t forgotten what he made her feel once upon a time, before the cold ground, before the centuries of looking up and not seeing, before being alive and dead at the same time.

She is still a witch and her magic, as wrong as it is these days, remembers his. God, he still tells the most wonderful stories and she laughs when no one can see, wraps her arms around her body to keep herself from shattering because she can’t want to shatter him.

It’s unfair and it’s horrible but she lets him kiss every inch of her body anyway, knows that she is walking to his doorstep just to have him kick her out and she could be the front door mat, she would do it willingly.

After, she holds him in his arms and breathes in the smell of him.

“This can’t happen again,” he says.

“I know.”

*

August loves them best. The corn fields rise high and they haunt them at night, dry stalks cracking under their feet. Octavia wears her best shoes and Raven’s pointy hat; Raven wears her grease on her hands.

Bellamy joins them.

In this life, he is in the coven and the words of “I don’t deserve it” don’t cross his lips.

Under the full moon they create magic far from being cursed, spawned from joy and good things. Octavia’s ribbon shines in the moonlight and Clarke finds that she can live with the static buzzing in her veins.

Bellamy kisses her between the tallest stalks, steals the kiss with laughter on his lips. Clarke forgets their words of never again. Always, she’d want this always. She hasn’t lived for a very long time and the feeling of Bellamy Blake’s body pressed to hers is like hard candy between her teeth. All she wants is everything.

“I fell in love with you when you showed me the sycamore tree,” he confesses. “I haven’t even kissed you then but I knew it.”

“And then we were shameless.”

“We were perfect.”

*

This time it’s not just a coven. It’s family. Monty and Jasper with their moonshine and candy for Octavia. Raven with her fireworks. Gina with the light. Monroe and her prophecies carved from the neon stars. One night, she stood underneath the sky and demanded it give her the future.

It did not say no.

Even Murphy and Emori, trading bits of their magic for easy money, saving the special kind for special people. Tying knots to bind will and then healing to wipe their conscience clean.

A family, with Octavia getting tutoring in physics from Raven and history from Bellamy, economics from Emori and chemistry from Monty. A family who sits around the kitchen table and gossips or creates magic, trades fortunes for moonshine even though there is no trading needed at all.

In December, they bring in a huge Christmas tree that Gina turns golden with a flick of her wrist. In December, they wear matching ugly sweaters and no one is cursed. Bellamy tells stories in front of the fireplace burning with real logs for the first time in the year, and Clarke doesn’t pretend she’s not happy.

It’s Christmas when they’re too sated and sleepy to forget propriety so they lay in the living room together, Clarke’s head in the crook of Bellamy’s elbow, the house cat curled beneath their feet. There is a garland wrapped around them, the work of Murphy and Monty, but Clarke can’t even care.

It’s so easy to say it in the end. After all, this is the new beginning they wanted and after everything, she gets to make this decision.

“I love you, Bellamy Blake.”

She can feel him tense up and then –

“Why?”

“Because you understand.”

Because you understand that we have done terrible things but the most terrible thing might be loving each other after everything.

“Okay.”

“Yeah?”

He presses a kiss to the top of her head.

“I love you too.”

*

In February, she knows a tragedy will follow and she feels it before Raven tells her. Then she can hear the ghost of brakes squealing, the sickening crunch of bones.

Tragedy is always the same and Clarke has had enough practice.

When she reaches the hospital, Bellamy is sitting by Octavia’s bed and his brow furrows when he sees her at the door. Octavia is more bandages and bruises than a girl and seeing her like this breaks something in Clarke.

She would die for them again. She would.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to help, of course.”

It’s only when Bellamy smiles despite the dark circles around his eyes that she realizes that there is no death in the air. The machines keeping track of Octavia’s vital signs beep steadily.

“Not this time, Clarke.”

“What have you done, Bellamy?”

Because Octavia may be broken but she is alive and Clarke’s heart plummets.

Bellamy doesn’t move from his seat, a book left open on the nightstand, a huge teddy bear already in place in the corner of the room. Outside, February is bleak and grey. In the room, Clarke thinks there is hope.

“Did you really think I would let you do it again? It’s a new life, Clarke, and I still remember what you told me. When it came to it, I knew what I had to do.”

When she takes his hand, she can’t feel the tragedy looming.

The curse dissolves in his eyes.

Octavia lies silent on the bed, every spilled drop of bad blood vanishing as her bruises fade, and Bellamy looks at Clarke.

“I killed you once. Never again.”