This took. Forever. Sorry. I was really struggling here. I fear these characters don't like me anymore. But I think I know how I want it to end and the climax and the overall moral and all that fun stuff. It's there. I've gotz it, Guys. This chapter I guess is more filler, but it's also pretty important as it just helps mend some things before other stuff comes and messes things up again. XD I'm not even gonna try and guess how many chapters I have left because I honestly don't know. I hate stories where the couple finally kisses and then it ends, so I won't do that to you guys. Anyway, please review!

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Bellamy stormed out of the restaurant with Octavia in tow. I followed close behind, resisting the urge to look back on Jae who we'd left back in the booth. I hadn't heard any indication of him making a move to leave just yet.

It was probably his wisest decision all evening.

When the doors opened, the brisk chill hit me square in the chest, driving its way beneath my sleeves and dragging across my bare skin. We were in the parking lot when Bellamy suddenly stopped. Behind him, I recognized the white Honda. I chewed on my lower lip and tried to think of warm thoughts just as Bellamy turned to Octavia. "Get in the car, O."

His sister looked at him uncertainly. "Aren't you coming?"

"I'll be there in a minute." He tossed her the keys.

Only when she was settled in the car and out of earshot did Bellamy turn back to me, lips pressed in a thin line. "You had no right to do that," he said, and there was a distinct edge to his voice.

I looked at him in surprise. "What? Pay?"

"Yeah, Clarke. Pay. Step in for me. Babysit me. I'm not some kid anymore! I don't need anyone's protection." He tone turned mocking over that last word, like I'd insulted him somehow.

I clenched my teeth, feeling the cold ebb some over my own rising anger that was giving way to adrenaline. "Would you have rather put Octavia in the middle of that?" I challenged, "Have her be the one to play referee?"

He carded a hand through his hair, so forcefully I thought he must've torn out a few strands. "Oh, is that what you were doing? Playing referee and keeping me in place as he's criticizing your grades and your parents? While you're giving him your money?" Bellamy scoffed and twisted away from me.

I took a step toward him. "Is that all this is really about? That I paid for his dinner? You want me to apologize for it?"

He whirled back around. "Yeah. Actually I do. Because that man is not your problem. I get your mentality to fix everything and everyone around you but you can't. I'm not a charity case, so the last thing I want to see is your money in his hands as if I don't have a dime to my name."

I stared at him attentively, holding onto my anger with clenched fists. I wished I had pockets to shove them in. "I'm not going to apologize for bruising your ego," I replied bluntly. "You say you don't want that man in your life so you should have nothing to prove to him. Not your grades, not your reputation, and certainly not your money."

He scrubbed his hands down his face. "It's more than that!"

"Then what?" My own voice raised in volume. "What else is it?"

"I don't want you having anything to do with him!" he exploded. "I don't want you tied to him in any way, whether that be money or association, I don't care. He takes, Clarke! That is what that man does. It's what he will do, however much time passes, and I don't want you near him!" Bellamy shook his head and his voice suddenly dropped. "I don't want you near him," he repeated.

I blew out a slow breath. "So you're allowed to protect others when they need it, when I need it, but I can't do the same for you?"

He seemed taken off guard by the question before quickly shrugging it off. Almost reluctantly, his eyes wandered back to the restaurant, and I could hear the question in them. I knew who they were looking for. "I told you; I don't need it."

I shook my head in disbelief, not buying it. There was not wanting something, and then there was not understanding what it was that you needed. "You're so used to protecting your sister," I said slowly, "ever since you were a little kid. You protected her from the person that's supposed to love her unconditionally." I sighed sadly. "But no one protected you. And I know you think it doesn't matter anymore. That it's too late, and maybe it is. But I'm going to do what it takes if it means being there for you, whether you want it or not. Protection . . . support . . . it's not a privilege. It's something people deserve, a something you were unfairly deprived of." I shrugged. "So yeah, maybe it is late. But it's the best I've got."

I waited for the rebuttal. For our usual bickering to gain traction as it so often did. But Bellamy didn't say anything. He stood stoically before me, uncharacteristically still and even more uncharacteristically quiet. His eyes, seemingly small galaxies with the broken light illuminating from the restaurant at my back, bored into mine.

That was when my heart started pounding again.

I quickly shook myself, and my gaze snapped off from his. I cleared my throat. "Now, if we're done with this, I'm gonna go because it's kind of freezing out here and I am currently jacketless." I turned to leave.

"Clarke?"

I stopped and glanced back, just long enough to watch Bellamy as he stood there for a moment, seeming as if he were debating about something. Then he was pulling off his jacket. Before I could object, he was beside me, draping it over my shoulders and fumbling with the collar, not meeting my gaze. "We really haven't . . . spoken much. How'd it go with your mom? Did you ever talk to her?"

Grateful for the subject change, I nodded, feeling it oddly difficult to breathe in that moment. "Yup, and not much since."

He frowned. "Did she lie?"

"No, she told me the truth, which so happened to be the confession of the lie I caught her in. The details really aren't important."

He looked up, eyes suddenly very close to me. His hands were still on the jacket and I felt trapped between them both. The light from the restaurant snagged in his hair and crackled in his eyes like embers, lit with an intensity I couldn't break away from. As unfathomable as the darkness between the stars.

Bellamy abruptly stepped back, shattering the close proximity. He let his grip on the jacket fall and shoved his hands into his jean pockets. "You should talk to her," he said thickly.

I swallowed, trying to find my voice again. Trying not to wonder why it was so hard to. "I, uh, I'm not sure it's the right time," I said quietly, my previous courage gone. The issue with my mom wasn't about courage though; it was about forgiveness. What I needed was the courage to forgive.

Bellamy looked at me intently. The intensity was still there, but it wasn't as vivid with a yard or so spanning between us. "Your mom won't always be there, Clarke," he said and, more solemnly, "You may be able to attest to losing a dad, but I know what it's like losing a mom. Talk to her."

I didn't know what to say to that, reeling at the small reference to his mother. After seeing it with Jae, I knew what a sensitive subject it was.

As if reading my mind, Bellamy's gaze drifted from me over my shoulder, to where I knew my car was parked. "You should . . . turn on the heater when you get inside," he said simply. "You can return the jacket after break."

I eyed him inquisitively, very aware of the stuttering organ in my chest that was starting off the red alarms in my mind. A warning. I glanced back at my car. "You sure?"

"It's not the first time I've been without that jacket."

I nodded slowly,feeling like I should refuse his offer. But I was too eager to go. To put more distance between us. I didn't want to stay here any longer, not with my heart rebelling as if it were trying to escape the confines of my chest. Something was happening and I didn't understand it. Didn't want to.

I thought I heard Bellamy tell me Merry Christmas, but I was already hurrying down a few available lots over to where I'd parked. I jumped inside and started the car, doing as he'd suggested by blasting the heat. Then I let myself take in a big gulp of much needed air as I tried to rationalize the still pounding of my heart. Adrenaline, I thought.Anger. Maybe it was just the surprise of it all.

But I knew that was a lie. I wasn't mad. I wasn't angry. I was scared. I was scared at the jacket on my back. At the smell of pine and smoke that steadily began filling up the car. That I noticed it. That it took me ripping off the jacket and turning down the heater for my heart to calm. That it calmed, simply because Bellamy wasn't standing there next to me anymore.

********

We had no Christmas tree.

Not this year. Not last year. When morning came, I trudged down to our empty living room that was sadly devoid of twinkling lights and the smell of pine I once looked so forward to. The mantel over the fire place was bare. If anyone came into this house, they would think it was just any other morning and not Christmas.

My dad and I used to be the ones to go on the search for the perfect tree. Full but not too full. It was a requirement of mine that it always had to be taller than me, so I'd have to reach to put on the topper every time. Finn liked to help set up the yard with lights, even though I was terrible at it and wound up just strewing blinking blue bulbs over the grass and calling it good.

When dad died, we stopped getting trees.

With Finn gone too, I had no one to help me with the lights.

So the living room saw neither this year. It was bare and felt somewhat foreign, but I hadn't really even given this season much thought, between everything else. I'd picked up Mom's gift last month. Nothing big, just a new pair of shoes because her white ones were stained and wearing through the soles. They weren't good for her feet, and doctors were always on their feet.

The thought felt strained though, giving her a gift in the middle of a silence I'd declared. But after hearing Bellamy last night, it seemed almost petty of me. "Your mom won't always be there, Clarke."

He was right. I should know. I was becoming very intimate with the reality of death, and how easily it could come and snatch precious things away from you. I wondered what I was gaining from keeping my mom at a distance. If anything, I should be trying to salvage what family I still had, not push the last of it away. It wouldn't be easy. It wouldn't be instantaneous. But forgiveness needed a starting point, and I was trying to be willing. However convincing that sounded.

But I knew one thing was for certain, and that was that nothing was worth the alternative.

So when I found Mom standing in the kitchen, in a ratty grey shirt and pajama pants, I resisted the urge to turn around. "You may be able to attest to losing a dad, but I know what it's like losing a mom. Talk to her." With those haunting words chiming in my head, I pushed through, shoving thoughts of Marcus Kane as far from me as mental distance would allow. I glanced at my mom, who set down her mug at my approach.

There was a question in her eyes as she spoke. Can we talk? They seemed to ask. What she said was,"Merry Christmas, Sweetheart."

I tried for a smile. Some sort of answer. "Merry Christmas." Yes.

Though her hair's state seemed as precarious as her shirt's, tied back in a messy pony tail, she smiled back at me, as if I'd just given her a gift.

She hastily gestured to her mug. "Want some coffee?"

I nodded and she snatched up a black mug from the cupboard and poured me a generous amount. I took it from her, letting the porcelain warm my cold fingers.

Taking it as an offering, I watched as Mom quickly tucked a stray hair behind her ear and walked over to the kitchen table where I now took notice of a package, poorly wrapped in silver paper with a green bow at its center. Mom looked at it before looking back up at me. "You have a right to be angry with me, Clarke. I should have-" She cut herself off, like she didn't want to say too much. There was a pause as she took a deep breath, and pinned me with a serious stare. "I should have told you. And I'm sorry. For all of it. This is . . . " She pushed the package over to me. "This is just something I thought you should have."

I moved over to the table where the package was and gingerly placed my hands over it. The paper crinkled beneath my fingers.

Mom never could wrap well. It was an old joke in our family, trying to guess who wrapped what. It was a game mom's obvious crude tape jobs were always destined to lose.

I stared at it for a moment, lost in a moment from the past. Then I was wondering if this was my cue to run upstairs and grab my gift to her, but I decided I wasn't quite there yet on the forgiveness spectrum, and mumbled, "I got you shoes," instead.

She blinked, seemingly surprised before smiling back at me. "Thank you, Clarke. Mine are looking a little sad these days, aren't they?"

I knew of all the things her shoes touched and managed a smirk. "Just a little."

Despite the tense air, she managed a quiet laugh, no more than a smile with noise.

So I wouldn't have to try and think up something else to say, I started unwrapping her gift, removing the bow and peeling back the tape, taking her gaze as the okay to do so. She always used way more than necessary and I had to flick my fingers to free some pieces that had stuck to me.

I didn't know what to expect. I wasn't one for jewelry or clothes. Medical books were once a big go-to, and though this was too small to be a textbook, it was, indeed, a book.

An old one, judging by the yellowed cover of a man in a space suit. Embossed on the top was the title The Stars, My Destination. I looked at her questioningly.

"It was your father's favorite," she explained, and gestured for me to open the cover.

I did.

I was greeted by handwriting on the inner front page, and didn't have to ask to know it was Mom's.

For my stargazer. I love you with all my heart. -October 19, 2002.

Emotion clogged my throat and I swallowed in an attempt to dislodge it.

Mom reached over and placed her hand over mine. "I know not telling you was wrong. And I know it hurt you. But I don't ever want you to feel like you have to question how much I loved your father. It's one reason why it took me so long to tell you; why I kept putting it off. Because of course I loved him, Clarke. I will always love him." She took a moment and I caught the glaze over her eyes. I could count on one hand how many times I'd seen my mom shed tears. "I wasn't looking for anything after he died," she went on. "I didn't think there was going to be anyone else. I lost half of myself that day, Clarke. I nearly lost you, too. But some things . . . just happen, Honey. And Marcus-" I tried not to flinch at the mention of him-"helped me with that. I had to relearn life without your Dad and there are days still when I don't want to. And you . . . "

Her hand tightened over mine, but her voice didn't waver. "You lost more than anyone should ever have to lose. But you're so strong, Clarke. Stronger than anyone I've ever met, and I know you'll make it through this. Someday. I don't doubt that both your Dad and Finn would want you to. They want you to be happy. They want you to live as bright and boldly as you can, because your heart's too big, Clarke. It needs to love." Her hand rose to my cheek and I didn't try to push it away. "And maybe that scares you," she murmured, "Maybe it terrifies you, and it'll probably make you think you're doing something wrong. But, and this is important, Clarke, don't let your fear keep you from loving, whether that's your family or your friends, or even yourself." She took a shaky breath. "It's not our job to live for those we've lost. It's our job to live."

I didn't realize my hands were shaking until then, and I quickly tightened my hold over the book to keep her from noticing. A hollow feeling resonated inside me as the truth of her words sunk in. Not just their meaning, but the implication that came with them, too. How my mother loved a man but lost him. How she found herself moving on without knowing it. How she might have started feeling things that seemed wrong to feel in the first place.

I wanted to be angry at her for it. I wanted to tell her it wasn't okay. That it wasn't fair and made every memory of my parents lose some grain of truth to them. But then I remembered last night;

The phantom pound of my heart.

Feeling things that seemed wrong to feel.

That I felt them, not four months after Finn.

Not four months after Finn. And I was suddenly hit with an entirely different realization, as I looked back at my mom. It struck with the intensity of brown eyes and refused to go, locking itself away inside me and circling in a dizzying spiral round and round my head.

We are the same.