Clarke doesn't remember standing. She doesn't remember moving. The green valley falls away, and there is just this. Just them.

Her messages play in her mind, words spoken over static and met with only silence.

"This is Clarke Griffin and it's day sixty-nine . . ."

"You did what you had to do. I know you'll keep everyone safe."

"As it turns out, the world is a really small place when you're the only one left in it."

She knows she's running, slowly at first, then faster and faster, stumbling over loose rocks she doesn't see hidden beneath the grass, the torrent inside her a mix of awe, relief, and . . .
Fear. It's mostly fear, filling her up the closer she gets, demanding her to move quicker, because maybe she's finally cracked, and this isn't actually happening. Maybe he isn't even here, and she will wake up to find herself on a straw cot clutching a dead radio to her chest.

"Day three-hundred-and-sixty-eight. I went to Polis and found the tower . . . "

"It's day nine-hundred-and-ten . . ."

"Day one-thousand-eight-hundred-and-twenty-six."

"It's been safe for you to come down for over a year now . . ."

So many messages she's left, floating on frequencies among the stars. Now Clarke Griffin stops, letting the air collect in her lungs, the desperate ache to speak too great, because she needs to make sure it is real.

It is her last message, but this time, she does not need the radio.

She will never need the radio again.

"Bellamy!"

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

It cuts across the valley, brilliant and clear, like a ray of light piercing through the dark.

His name. Just his name.

And it is enough.

A jolt runs through him and he turns to the sound – it is like he is falling from the sky again, only this time the pressure is not in his head but in his chest, building and building until he thinks he might not survive after all.

But then his gaze catches on something gold, and all of that pressure disappears.

The years evaporate. The clock restarts. It was yesterday when Bellamy got on that rocket. Yesterday when he left her behind.

For a moment, he just stands there and stares, unable to move his legs while everything is motion inside him, his thoughts a torrent of goodbyes and embraces and static and together.

"The heart and the head."

"I can't lose you, too."

"You still have hope?"

"We still breathing?"

The sun and the sky and the crunch of earth suddenly seem very far away, their significance eclipsed by a woman with short golden hair and eyes the same shade as the ocean.

Even from here, he can see that everything he remembers is still in those eyes.

Then everything outside of Bellamy is moving, too, his heavy legs carrying him forward. Her name is on his lips but he can't tell if he's speaking it aloud if it is just a roar inside him.

He doesn't blink, too afraid that if he does, she will disappear yet again, into that fold of memory and under the breakers of his own guilt. But she doesn't disappear. Instead, she only comes closer. Closer and clearer until suddenly Clarke is standing right in front of him, and her arms are wrapping around his neck and Bellamy can feel her, alive, warm, and right here in his hands. She smells like the trees. Like pine and earth and sacrifice and home.

"You're alive," Clarke whispers, the words an exhale of relief against his skin. It's a sound of incredulity and a million other things crushed in between.

Bellamy's arms tighten around her waist, marveling at this, at her. For the first time in six years, it does not hurt to breathe."Thanks to you," he manages against her hair. But then his own words remind him of old horrors, and he's tightening his hold on her all over again, as if that can keep the past away. "I'm sorry, Clarke. I'm so sorry I left you."

She withdraws enough to look him in the eyes, and Bellamy is reminded of the last time she looked at him, on a dying world through hazmat glass.

With tentative fingers, she reaches up and touches his cheek, the gesture familiar, as if she has done it a hundred times before. "Bellamy, you did the right thing." Despite the tears swimming in those ocean eyes, she speaks firmly, her voice devoid of any doubt. "And I am proud of you."

A hundred emotions catch in his throat that for a moment, Bellamy can only stare at her. Then he is pulling her against his chest again, because he needs a second reminder that she is here and they are both alive. He will need more of them, he's sure. "I know," he whispers. "I heard you. Clarke, I heard everything."

Bellamy feels her go still for a moment in his arms before she is again looking up at him, eyes rounded in shock and what can only be hope. "Wait, you . . . you heard my radio calls?"

Bellamy nods, shoving away the shadow of memories before they can resurface. Even here, standing before her, there's still that familiar weight in his chest, bearing down just above his sternum. It's lessened some, but it hasn't gone completely, and he suspects it will be quite a while before it does. "I heard them." The words spill out, fast and desperate and everything narrows down to this moment, because she has to know. "We tried to answer them, Clarke. We tried for years, but the radiation levels kept interfering with the signal, and we . . . we couldn't. I couldn't."

What a weak response.

She doesn't know how he waited for the sound of her voice to break over the intercom. She doesn't know he ventured out on more than one spacewalk in an attempt to fix the signal, until they couldn't spare the oxygen for it. She doesn't know what hearing her voice for the first time did to him. Or what hearing it for the last time did, either. He answers her in stars when it's entire universes exploding inside him, but the rest will have to come later.

Because finally they have a later.

She lets him go just enough to look at him again, her expression kind and all things reassuring. "You're answering them now."

He tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. It seems some habits don't break, even with the years. "I'm sorry it took so long. I wish I could've done it sooner. I wish . . . "

He wishes a hundred other things on a hundred other shooting stars.

But Clarke knows. And while he may not be able to say it here -not yet at least - he lets her see it, seemingly everything and all at once.

I wish I didn't leave you behind.

I wish I never had to make that decision.

I wish you had been there with us.

I wish I'd been here with you.

I wish that, just once, I could've answered, if only to tell you that you weren't alone.

His wishes sound a lot more like regrets.

Bellamy knows she sees them all – and when she draws him close again, she may as well be speaking directly to them, her next words quiet, like a promise. "Bellamy, it was worth it. You all were worth it." Then with tears in her eyes, Clarke Griffin smiles, the sight more brilliant than the sun, and he knows she is speaking the truth.