All right, guys. Here is the final chapter. And I think this will likely be my final Bellarke fic as well, which is kind of sad. Thank you to everyone who has continued reading. It means so much! 

***************

Embraces. Smiles. Clips of stories volleyed back and forth when Bellamy can manage to keep his attention on one of his friends long enough to catch them. It is as though time has stopped, but for once, he's is in no rush for it to start again.

"Bellamy, I have someone who's been waiting a long time to meet you." Clarke smiles and then she inches over, resting a gentle hand on the shoulder of someone younger.

Brown hair framing a heart-shaped face. Eyes the color of the sea.

For a single heartbeat, Bellamy is thrown back in time. He is a teenage boy, his legs dangling over a gaping hole in the floor. From the shadows below, the voice of a little girl beckons him. "Bell, come on! Just try again!"

But the boy can't, and it makes his chest physically hurt to have to tell his baby sister that he has grown too much and cannot comfort her from the dark anymore.

"Bellamy Blake."

His name on this girl's lips pulls him back to the present and reminds him that no, this is not Octavia.

She holds her small hand out to him diplomatically. "I'm Madi."

He knows he is still staring, but the girl is staring too, until Bellamy starts to wonder how many radio calls this girl was there for, because she does not look at him as if he were a stranger. He guesses in a way, he's not. And a jolt runs through him when he realizes that she is looking at him like he's a piece of the only world she's ever really known.

Suddenly that tightness between his ribs lessens, if only for a moment, temporarily pushed aside by the gratitude he can't seem to breathe past. Because if not for this girl that reminds him so much of another, he knows returning to the ground would have looked very different, and Clarke would not have been here to welcome them home.

He takes her small hand in his. "It's . . . it's an honor to finally meet you, Madi." He leans down until his next words are for her and for her alone. "And thank you."

She arches one brow at him. "For what?"

He looks at her earnestly. "For saving someone very important to me."

Madi smiles, an action that pokes dimples in her cheeks. "You don't need to thank me for that. We saved each other." She shrugs, like it is obvious. "That's kind of what we do."

Bellamy smiles and glances up, just in time to meet Clarke's eyes. "Yeah, that's what we do."

***************

"Madi, slow down!"

The girl dips in and out of Clarke's view, her riot of dark hair disappearing and reappearing behind the trunks of trees. She's faster than a squirrel, an impossible force to keep up with, and Clarke knows she's lost before they've even started.

Trees break open and Clarke spills out into the valley, a smile tugging on her lips. The smile is still there as she looks up, across the wide expanse.

It's wrong. All of it. Everything seems to tilt on its axis, like the very world suddenly wants to buck her off, and Clarke wishes that it would, because what was green just before is gone, and what was just home is now fire.

No, the protest is a small thing in her chest at first, because this can't be happening. It can't be. It can't.

"Madi!" She's screaming it before she can hear her own voice, running forward and at the flames as if she can scare them off. "Madi!" must be a brush fire, she thinks. Maybe –

The scene ripples before it changes abruptly. The fire is still there, but now it is behind a glass helmet she knows will break, sweeping towards ground she knows will burn.

Her body seems to move of its own volition, and Clarke is again running, running suddenly across snow instead of grass, her feet like lead, because of the things she knows, above them all, she knows she will not make it in time.

But it never stops her from trying.

Sometimes she gets close enough to see the windows of the dropship before it launches. Other times, she never makes it off the antenna pole. This time though is a little different. She stumbles over the ground, tripping over rocks buried beneath the snow, running until the fire coming towards her feels like it is within her, turning everything to embers and making her choke on the ashes of the memories she'd thought she'd buried.

Maybe it will be different this time, she thinks as she runs, her muscles screaming. Maybe –

But it is not different, and she watches the rocket catapult into the sky before the scene shifts yet again.

She is back in the valley. This time, it is not burning, but it is certainly dead. The grass is nothing more than scorched ground beneath her, the trees that once surrounded everything now charred pieces of wood.

Dread unspools inside her and Clarke turns in a slow circle, trying to see beyond the ruin to what she knows must be there, somewhere, because it was at one point.

Wasn't it?

"Madi?" She says it like a question, and she says it quietly, as if afraid to disturb this fragile air, that by doing so, it will bring the rest of this strange world down on top of her.

"Bellamy? Raven? Hello?" And then, louder. "Is anyone here?" And then, because the panic is making it hard for her to hear her own voice. "Is anyone here?!"

Someone must be. She's not alone. She can't be.

She can't be she can't be she can't–

A noise sounds, distant at first, and familiar. It buzzes like a fly, and Clarke's eyes drop to the ground, searching until she finds the source.

With shaky fingers, she reaches down and grasps the small square body of what she once saw as a friend. And when she stands, Clarke realizes she knows one more thing:

All that ever existed in the valley was her, and the radio she now clutches in her right hand.

*************

She's sitting up before she's fully awake, her heart pounding in her throat, the images of red and the ghost weight of her radio fading from her empty palm.

Clarke pulls in an unsteady breath, taking in the familiar shadows of her home. The only thing that burns is the small fire she sits beside, its flames benign, friendly even.

Clarke inches away from it before settling back down, taking in the night sky above her.

The stars look different tonight. A little less distant. A little less lonely. For the first time in a very long time, they don't make her heart ache to look at. No, the moment Bellamy and the others landed was the moment the stars were free to just be stars again.

But there's another weight now - one that hasn't eased, even after six years. Clarke can feel it pressing in, from every side and on each of them, everything counting down on some invisible clock. Raven estimated that it would take until dawn to drain enough of the remaining rocket fuel to blow the bunker open, and Clarke will find out if two miracles really can happen within a day.

"How often do you have them?"

A small jolt goes through her and Clarke glances over to where Bellamy is, stretched out at the cot closest to her, second only to Madi. Monty and Harper took to one of the huts, and Raven took the other. Echo and Emori were not as eager to be behind walls again, and Murphy was not eager to be far from Emori, which left the rest of them outside, tucked around a dying fire.

That fire catches in Bellamy's eyes now, and Clarke doesn't know how long it will take before she grasps the fact that he is back–that they're all back–and that unlike her nightmare, this is real.

She doesn't need to ask what he's referring to. "It was just a dream," she says, more to herself than to him.

Six years hasn't changed the way understanding fills his dark gaze. "I get them too."

Clarke tries to swallow and isn't entirely sure why it's hard to. Just yesterday, he was trapped in the sky. But tonight, Bellamy is here, so close she has only to reach out to touch his hand.

Again, he understands her before she speaks a word, and his fingers enclose around hers. Bellamy cushions his head with his arm and he turns to her. She searches his gaze the way that he searches hers. Clarke wants to tell him he doesn't need to worry. She's fine. Better than fine. They have bigger things to focus on. But the remnants of the dream remain, drifting down like embers and burning her, until she must accept the fact that there seems to exist some pain that cannot be healed within a day.

So instead, Clarke says, if only to keep his mind off other things, "What are yours about?"

Bellamy draws in a slow, deep breath, but he doesn't look away from her. He doesn't hesitate. They both know that theirs is a loss no one else but the other can grasp, the grief of the one who left, and the grief of the one who was left behind. "Some of them are about leaving you," he says gruffly. "Most of them are about you dying alone. Or us getting back . . . too late."

She'd assumed as much.

"How about you?" he asks, softly, his hand warm and real around hers.

She's the one who hesitates. A minute slips away, followed by another, because she doesn't want to tell him. Doesn't want him to feel guilty, or find a way to blame himself for it. But after everything they've been through, Bellamy deserves the truth. "Mostly they're of being alone. And finding out that none of this is . . ." real.

She doesn't say the word, but it hovers between them, a somber and heavy thing in the late evening air. "But I meant what I said," Clarke adds quickly, giving his hand a reassuring squeeze. "And if I knew that this would be the outcome, I'd do it again."

Bellamy tries to smile, but it's not something that lasts, and it dies before it's begun. "How honest were you?"

She looks at him in confusion.

"On the calls," he clarifies. "How . . . how bad did it get? Because there were so many times, Clarke, I could hear it in your voice." He shuts his eyes for a moment, only to open them and look down at their enclosed hands, as if to remind himself too that this is real. "I could hear when you wanted it to be over. And there was nothing I could do."

Clarke weighs her words carefully, measuring them out one by one. "It . . . I had bad days. But those ended when I found Madi. The really bad ones, anyway. And there wasn't a moment after her when I wanted it to be over."

In his dark eyes the firelight flickers, and she knows he believes her.

"Are you . . . are you glad you got my messages?" Glad doesn't seem like the right word, but she chooses it anyway.

In response, Bellamy's hand tightens over hers. He looks back up at the stars, as if speaking his next words to them. Maybe it's easier. Maybe, like for her, it's a habit. "Clarke, I was so grateful for those calls. When the radiation eased up enough for us to receive that first one . . . It was the best sound in the world. But every time I heard one, I felt so helpless. It was almost easier when I thought you were . . . gone, because then I could at least tell myself you weren't hurt or in pain. But," slowly, he shakes his head, and his eyes meet hers again. "To hear it all, and know that you weren't okay . . . I thought it would be easier to not hear them at all. Until you went radio silent, and I couldn't hear them. And suddenly, it was the worst thing imaginable." He swallows, hard. "So yeah, in the end I'm glad I got them."

Invisible fingers seem to tighten around Clarke's chest and suddenly she has to blink to keep the tears at bay. "Maybe it would've been easier if I hadn't carried around that radio. But I couldn't . . ." she lifts her shoulder haplessly. "I wasn't ready to accept a world that didn't have you all in it."

Bellamy runs the pad of his thumb across the back of her hand, comforting. "Well, now you don't have to."

Clarke returns her gaze to the sky. Already the edges of the horizon have begun to lighten, turning the navy-blue of night into the hazy purple of a coming dawn.

Bellamy's fingers tighten around hers suddenly. "It's almost time."

She swallows. "You know, before Madi, I didn't fully understand why you did some of the things you did for Octavia." she gives a small shake of her head, remembering. Regretting. "But I get it now. When you have someone like that to protect . . . it changes you."

From her periphery, she sees Bellamy nod. "I'm scared, Clarke." He murmurs it like it's a confession, his voice unsteady.

"I know." So is she. "But hey, if I can survive a radioactive apocalypse, and if you can survive six years on a remnant of the Ark floating through space, and if a little girl can survive the end of the world . . . I don't think there's any reason to stop hoping now." She looks over. "Do you?"

Behind him, the fire is fading. The purple of early morning is softening to a blush pink. Soon the sun will spill over the ridge, and the valley will fill with gold.

Bellamy turns toward her. His eyes are still afraid, but the corner of his lip turns upward. "Are we still breathing?" he asks quietly, the words an echo from a different life. Another world.

And yet, there still exist some things that are too stubborn to change.

Clarke smiles. She squeezes his hand again and returns her attention to the scene above, as if the beauty of the dawn holds the promise of beautiful things ahead. The promise that Octavia will be okay. That her Mom will be okay. And today, Clarke will let herself believe it.

She'd always viewed the constellations as things trapped, points of light stuck in the shadows. But only now, after all these years, she realizes she had been mistaken; it's the darkness that is the hostage of the stars, not the other way around.