So here is a story I started a couple years ago, and I recently picked it back up. It's basically a rewrite of how things could've gone had Bellamy been able to hear Clarke's calls. Please review!

***

3019. -Two months after death wave-

She sits on the stool, elbows on the desk, gaze roving over the screens that reflect in her blue eyes. The computers have a lot to say, but she doesn't speak their language, not like Raven. She's learned some, though, enough to read between the lines; she knows radiation levels have not decreased since the death wave hit, sixty-nine days ago. She knows the bunker may have suffered damage, due to the severed radio connection and how her end only ever delivers a white static. Based off her scans, she knows there's no definitive way to be positive of her immunity to radiation. She doesn't need the computers to tell her she is running low on rations.

She takes a deep breath and grabs the radio head. Her pulse used to quicken when she pressed the receiver down. After a month of silence, it stopped doing that.

"This is Clarke Griffin," she says, feeling her voice bound about her, hollow. "It's day sixty-nine, and radiation levels still show no change. I've tried to contact the bunker, but without any luck." Clarke stops for a moment, just long enough to think about her next words. If she can bear them. "I don't know if they're alive," she whispers, "But I hope they are. I hope you are, Bellamy." Now she stops abruptly and drags in a deeper breath, one that burns her lungs. She clears her throat before continuing. "I'm fine on rations for now, but they won't last much longer. Anyone listening knows what that means." She pauses, as if letting the ghost of static fill in the space of someone's reply. She swallows tightly. "That's it," she says quietly. "I'll update again tomorrow."

She sets the radio back on the desk with a dull thud.

****

"Raven, you have to fix it."

"We've been over this, Blake. I can't. We're two thousand miles above the Earth's atmosphere. An atmosphere that is currently uninhabitable, courtesy of the end-of-the-world-take-two. Besides, no radio is operable through the amount of radiation that takes every frequency and plays jump rope with it."

Bellamy runs his fingers through his hair and clenches his jaw so tight, his jaw aches. Sixty nine days. Sixty nine days of being sealed back inside a metal world with seven other people, some of who he doesn't even like. And those of who he does, he finds himself liking less after two months kept within a three-hundred yard radius of one another.

For days, tensions have been on the rise, between Murphy and Monty, Emori and Echo. Himself and Echo. This ship is a condensed version of the Ark, but at least on the Ark there were quiet places to go. There had been privacy. Here it is harder to afford. At least, if feels like it. There are no woods to lose himself in. No streams to wash off a day's work. No life beyond the seven beings inside. As it turns out, it is easier to be born behind walls than to be forced back into them and after living under an endless sky, the ship is starting to feel less like their hope and more like their tomb. The sensation of feeling trapped is starting to put Bellamy's teeth on edge.

Particularly now, when his feelings of helplessness threaten to overwhelm his frustration. "You're the one who got the rocket up here," he grinds, standing beside Raven as she moves from screen to screen, eyes darting from one to the other in quiet assessment. "You were the one who said a hundred things could go wrong but we found a way to survive on this ship. And now you're telling me there is absolutely nothing we can do to salvage our connection with the others?"

Raven sighs and drops her shoulders. She keeps her gaze on the screen though, but Bellamy doesn't need to see to know she's no longer reading it. "There's only one thing we can do," she says.

He makes the mistake of feeling hopeful. "What is it?"

Raven looks at him, brown eyes resolved. "We wait."

Bellamy grinds his teeth and looks away, staring at one of the screens relaying radiation levels on Earth. No change. "You heard the same thing I did," he says. "She's running out of time." Only weeks ago was it when he first heard her voice, after a month spent believing that she was dead. He doesn't want to mourn her a second time. He can't.

"Clarke's smart," Raven says, returning to her test runs and readings. "She'll figure something out."

But Bellamy does not miss the doubt in her voice any more than he missed it in Clarke's.

***

"Day ninety-two. Radiation levels are the same. No contact has been made between me and the bunker, or the ship for that matter." Clarke lets her gaze wander to the stairs. "I'm . . . almost at my last ration, so I guess I'll be taking a walk soon." she shuts her eyes for a moment, biting her lip just hard enough to make herself wince. "I'll be using one of the suits to see if gradual exposure makes any difference. If not . . . Bellamy, if you're listening, I want you to know that it's okay. And thank you. For not waiting. You did what you had to. I know you'll help keep everyone safe." She takes a deep breath, "May we meet again."

With that, she replaces the radio and stands. The suit she wears makes her movements slow, the color of a sleet grey sky and bearing the same weight as it. She grabs the helmet from the desk and sets it back over her head, trying to tell herself she may not be walking to her death. That there is hope. But if she can't contact anyone, what good will it do her?

When Clarke reaches the door, she checks again to make sure she has not forgotten the small knife. No, it is still there, tucked in her belt, waiting. Ready. She pulls it out and stands a little straighter, facing a slate world, sucked of any color and light. A graveyard. With shaky, gloved hands, Clarke unlocks the door and pulls it open.

A blast of freezing air hits her, so cold it chills her blood. She walks down the small flight before stepping on dirt. Or, what once was dirt. For the first time since the death wave, Clarke is outside. Nd for a dismal moment, she allows herself to see what has become of her world for the second time. The river is gone. The trees are ash. The ground is pulverized into a black dust that clings to the soles of her shoes. North, South, East and West coalesce into confusion. Every direction displays the same dead picture, until Clarke has to remind herself to breathe.

She squeezes her eyes shut until white explodes behind her lids. Her grip on the knife tightens enough to remind her and a calm sweeps past. Keeping her eyes closed, Clarke lifts the knife to her helmet. She aims the tip at the seam running beneath her jaw. And against the black canvas of her eyelids, she reassembles the world as it used to be. Wild foliage rich in blue and purple flowers, spattering hillsides and infusing the air with the smell of pine after a light rain. She thinks of the bubbling brook, folding over rocks and disappearing in a jump over the falls. She draws it like she remembers, willing it back into existence as she catches the fabric of her suit with the knife, and rents it open.

***

He can't breathe. The space is too small, the concave walls bearing down on him like he is caught in a massive hand that is slowly squeezing into a fist. On the other side of the radio is just silence. Clarke has nothing more to say and he thinks she has left. Which pisses Bellamy off for about the umpteenth time that he can't respond. That he is forced to sit and listen to this. Guilt eats away at him, heating his blood until he wants to move but there is nowhere for him to go. I should've given her more time, he thinks. He thinks it every day, every morning her voice comes on the radio. A hundred times more at the possibility of never hearing it again.

He also knows he would have done the same thing over, if he had to.

The door to the small cell he is tucked away inside rattles. The side of it is mangled from the landing, making it impossible to seal from the outside.

Bellamy doesn't even need to look to know who it is; they each know one another down to the simple rhythm of their footsteps.

"What is it, Monty?" He asks, a bite to his words.

Monty stays at the door, looking in on the man seated on the ground over pictures depicted in pencil, of trees and spring water, flowers and sunsets and things that are now nothing more than ash. "Raven asked me to check in on you."

Bellamy says nothing, letting his silence be his answer.

"How's she doing?"

Bellamy's grip over the radio tightens. How do you think? He almost responds. Instead he pulls in a tired breath. "Not good." He doesn't give voice to the possibilities painting out terrible scenarios in his mind. Clarke in trouble. Clarke in pain. Clarke dead. At least he knows his sister is okay, whether that be in a bunker under rubble or not. She has the others and she's safe. Clarke has no one, and she is outside.

Monty lingers by the door, as if debating whether or not to say something. After a few empty moments, he risks it. "Maybe you should stop doing this to yourself, Bellamy. It's only making things worse for you."

This time Bellamy looks at him, shoving away his anger. He knows Monty's words come from a good place, but that doesn't make them any more welcome. "Tell Raven I'll be here if she needs me."

"Bellamy-"

"Was there something else you needed?"

Monty stares at him, monolid eyes sad. They still hold the loss of Jasper in them, open and heavy, like a wound that hasn't healed properly. Maybe they never do.

He gives a brusquely nod. "Guess that's it." He leaves, shutting the door quietly behind him.

Bellamy returns his attention to the radio, as if willing Clarke's voice to reappear on the other side of it. He imagines her walking alone, two thousand miles beneath his feet.

An hour passes. Two. But he doesn't leave. He waits, feeling his heart fall down the rungs of his ribs the longer her silence drags out.

C'mon, Clarke, he begs. Say something. Come back.

But the silence continues until he changes his mind and he decides he would have risked waiting for her after all.

***

The wind burns.

It's like the air cannot decide if it's hot or freezing, so it has become both, a breath of ice one moment before it heats into a vapor fire that caresses Clarke's cheeks and makes her skin boil.

Her breath turns to lead. Her lungs burn until she can't fill them anymore and the world becomes a watercolor mess that runs black and grey. Her boot sinks into the ground and she loses her footing. The impact rubs against her flaming skin and she thinks she screams.

Inside! Her mind shrieks. Get inside!

Clarke fumbles forward to a crawl, breathing in small spurts. The stairs swim before her and she strains for the first, clamoring up on her hands and knees. A coppery tang fills her mouth.

Not yet, she thinks. Not yet, not yet.

She is almost at the top and struggles to the door, gloved hand outstretched before her, eyes fixed just beyond her fingertips. A small ember inside her flares to life. Fight, it demands, Keep fighting.

But the ember fades as quickly as it is born, and Clarke doesn't remember if she reaches it or not.

***

Nearly seven hours have passed since Clarke last spoke on the radio. That's four-hundred-and-twenty minutes of empty radio static. Of possibilities that come to Bellamy so fast they trip over one another in their haste to be the forefront. But they all end the same way, with Clarke's silence.

He rubs his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose; runs a hand through his hair. Raven has stopped by once to ensure everything was still accounted for. She only needed to look at his face to know what Clarke had decided to do and to also know she had yet to respond. Raven told him to give her more time. Maybe she reached the bunker. Maybe she couldn't carry the radio. Maybe a lot of things but the loudest of them all, turning up in volume until Bellamy's ears were ringing with it. She's not immune. She's dead.

They still ring with it, delivering Bellamy a dull headache he's almost grateful for.

He brushes his fingertips over the drawing of trees, smudging the lead with the pad of his thumb. Again he tries to imagine a golden-haired girl angled over the floor as she brings the walls of her prison to life with nothing more than a stub of pencil.

Bellamy leans his head against the wall and shuts his eyes, building a wall against the onslaught of if's and shouldve's, wishes and maybe's that continue to bombard him.

C'mon, Clarke, he thinks one last time. I haven't given up on you yet.

And he still doesn't, not even when seven hours stretch taught into eight. Not when the dull headache turns into a cranial pound. Not when sleep nearly overtakes him, and only the faint crackle of static jars him back.

His breathing stops. He holds the radio in still fingers, his gaze locked on a drawing of flowers sprouting by the door. He waits.

"I'm alive," Clarke's voice rasps from the speaker.