"All right, now, what is it we've learned? Walk me through it step-by-step."

Madi purses her lips until she's squashed her grin and stares at the stretch of dirt ahead, feigning seriousness. "I turn on the ignition."

Clarke analyzes her, one brow raised. "Then?"

"I check the panels."

"And after that?"

Madi pauses and then snaps her finger. "Seatbelt."

"Seatbelt should be the first thing that goes on you."

"You can't dock points until I've started moving. The seatbelt wouldn't make a difference in a stationary place."

Clarke shakes her head. It's her turn to purse her lips. "Okay, fine. Then what?"

Madi moves her hand onto the shift. "I put it into gear, while my foot presses down the break," she adds for emphasis at Clarke's look.

They stare at each other. Clarke doesn't say anything. She waits, patient.

Madi studies her, eyes narrowing at her silence. "Right?"

Clarke shrugs. "Whatever you think. This is your test drive after-"

Madi floors it.

The rover lunges forward, wheels treading dirt underneath. Clarke's heart stumbles into her throat and she grabs onto window bar as the vehicle bumbles forward. Parts of the ground ahead are pocked in green and Madi must see them as barrier points to avoid because she dodges them, twisting the wheel around with the voracity as if she's been doing this her whole life.

The short girl next to Clarke lets out a wallop of triumph, and she herself can't help but exhale her own laugh of exhilaration.

When Madi breaks, it's with the same kind of force, and it shoves them both back in their seats.

The girl turns to Clarke, hands still clutching the wheel, eyes burning with a fire's intensity. She sits there, breathing hard as if she's just run a mile as Clarke tries to covertly work out the sudden kink in her shoulder.

"I've wanted to do that since forever," says Madi, grinning.

Clarke brushes a loose lock of hair behind her ear. "Well, you certainly didn't waste the opportunity."

Madi's smile broadens. "Like I could."

Clarke laughs as she matches Madi's grin, warmth expanding inside her, a pride as voracious as the girl's need for speed.

Madi's gaze drifts back to the windshield, eyes searching. "Do you ever feel like some things were just born to fly?" she asks.

Clarke's eyes follow hers, out and up, to the single patch of blue in an otherwise still-grey sky.

"Yeah, otherwise birds wouldn't come with wings."

Madi smirks at her as she lets go of the wheel long enough to readjust her hat, disturbed in the drive. "You know what I mean. It must look so different from up there."

Clarke stares, seeing past the blue and through the stars, to a revolving metal ring she must believe is still there. "Different doesn't mean better."

She shrugs. "But you remember. It's not so bad, right?"

Not until you've seen the ground. Not until you've felt the grass. When you breathe air for the first time, instead of air that has been recycled over and over. "It could get lonely," she says. "But I didn't know it until I came down."

"Think I could do it?" Madi asks. "Live up there?"

For some reason, the thought makes the warmth inside Clarke go cold. She doesn't want to think of Madi in the sky, tethered to the stars along with her other hopes. "Only if there was room enough for the both of us," she says.

Madi tilts up her chin and wiggles her eyebrows at her, which doesn't have the same effect, hidden beneath her cap as they are. "Think I could fly a spacecraft one day?"

At that, Clarke reaches over and playfully tugs her hat down to her nose. "Let's just focus on the rover for now."

Madi smiles and pushes her cap back into place. "So what you're saying is . . . I need more practice?"

Clarke catches the mischief glinting in her eyes, dancing like embers. "Definitely. But only this time-"

Madi holds up a hand. "Don't worry, Clarke." She readjusts her harness by grabbing the straps and tightening them. "I remember."

***

This is how the day goes.

In the dim-light of artificial morning, Bellamy wakes up from dreams of Earth. The burning pine of a campfire he thought was real only moments before is really just the fuel exhaust coming from the rocket propellant. He lies there for a couple seconds, wishing, just for a moment, that he could go back to Earth. Then to bury those thoughts again, he gets up. He dresses, and then he heads to the bridge. Most days he skips breakfast because his appetite for what he really wants hasn't been sated in so long that he's stopped having one for the same exact thing.

His boots and the hum of lights are the solitary sounds as he makes his way down the corridors until he's reached the circular room, walls lit up with switches and dials. Levers. He stays away from those.

Seated before the motherboard is Raven, brown ponytail swinging, hands tapping at screens as her eyes scans through material Bellamy couldn't wrap his own head around if he tried. And he has. Many times.

He stretches his arm, trying to work out a knot of muscle. "How're the oxygen tanks holding?"

"Morning to you, too," says Raven.

Bellamy takes the seat next to her. Last week the port side of the ring was struck by debris and punctured one of their oxygen tanks. According to Raven, they lost a few weeks' worth of air before Monty was able to spacewalk to seal it back up.

It was the closest any of them had come to risking their life in nearly four years.

"Seems fine. No leakage. As far as I can tell, Monty's sealant is holding."

Bellamy nods. "Good. If you need anyone to check on it-"

"You'll be the first to know if I do, but I'm not going to risk floating you just so you can have a little adrenaline rush."

Bellamy shakes his head. "That's not why-"

"Sure it is," she interrupts, spinning to face him, "It's why any of us would be glad to put on a space suit. You're not the only one who's bored, Bellamy."

Bellamy leans back in his chair. "I don't need the adrenaline." What he needs is to do something. To feel like he has a role other than the physical force alongside Raven's intellectual strength. For the last four years he's been floating, contributing where he could when he was needed, but he's found out months ago that isolation does not get easier with time. If anything he's run his routine so much he could trace it along the wear marks in the metal floor.

Raven has already returned to her screens, but he knows what she will say. She's said it every time he's felt like this, when the redundancy would reach its mind-numbing climax. Over the years, her words have gone from being an annoying reminder to something that strengthened his resolve.

Just three more years, Bellamy.

Just two more years, Bellamy.

"Just one more year, Bellamy."

He shuts his eyes. "I know."

Maybe that is why tension is building. Because they are getting closer.

And I'll see my sister again.

He thinks about O during all the moments his mind isn't otherwise occupied with work, which has given him a lot of time to think of her. She won't be the seventeen-year-old he left behind anymore. She will be an adult by now, nearly the same age as he was when he first came to the ground.

The thought is a weird one.

"All the things we said we'd do for a little quiet, right?" Raven says. It's a joke cloaked in seriousness.

"That quiet usually included everyone I cared about," Bellamy replies with a doleful smirk, staring up at the metal ceiling. There is a dent in the center from where another piece of debris struck years before. He's gotten better at not thinking about certain things, but it's not as if he needs the reminder. It dawns on him alongside the circadian lights each morning.

"Well, the anticipation only gets worse from here."

He glances at Raven. "Thanks."

A smile toys at her lips, the sad one she wears as if it is a happy one. "Things could be worse, Blake. We could be losing oxygen and not have a sealant cohesive enough to work."

This is a sort of game between them that they play for when the frustration gets to be too much, mediating their tempers at the current situation by being grateful they aren't facing a poorer one. "We could be out of fuel, drifting above the Earth while never being able to land."

Raven shrugs. "We could be dead."

"Or we could be the only humans left alive."

His words seem to bounce around in the sudden quiet. Raven does not try to out-could him. She probably can't think of anything worse anyway. "They're still down there, Bellamy," she says, as softly as only Raven can.

Bellamy cards a hand through his hair. "But we can't know that yet. Not for sure." He looks at her, and he's scared to say it out loud, but he has to, because however much he hates it, it is a possibility. "Say everything goes according to plan. What if, when we go back, there's nobody there waiting for us?"

One thing about Raven: she doesn't sugarcoat. "Then it'll be the ring just with a lot more space," she says, shrugging. "That would be the reality. But it's not yet, and it won't help any of us to expect it to be the one we come home to. So for now, I suggest you do your rounds. See if Monty has fixed the comms. And get something to eat."

Bellamy stands. "Any idea what we're having?"

Raven's reply to him is an unamused look, and Bellamy leaves the bridge feeling a fraction more relieved than he did upon arriving.

***

When he is not working, he is in the training room.

That is what they call it, anyway. It's really just an old storage chamber with enough room to include the rubber dummy Raven created by pulling padding together and securing it around a steel beam. The weights aren't so much weights as they are metal scraps.

But it's enough, and that is where Bellamy can most often be found, hands fisted, knuckles connecting to the dummy over and over again.

He can still hear Lincoln's voice in his head, telling him where to place his feet, how to hold his grounder ghosts Bellamy through the training again, until his hair is damp and his temples are dripping with sweat. He won't return home weaker than he was when he left it. It's also satisfying, having something to put everything into. He'll have to ask Raven for some more padding, soon.

After a few deep breaths, Bellamy sidles over to the weights. He lies down on a metal bench and removes the steel bar. He stares up at the ceiling as he works, forcing every remnant of frustration into hoisting the bar up again and again.

"Don't think too much, or your opponent will see your thoughts in your actions. Fighting does not mean letting your emotions rule. That's how you lose."

Lincoln's words seem to echo in the stillness, far away, from a different training room.

"Don't let emotion get the upper hand. Surviving means keeping your head clear."

"You have to use this, too." Her voice cuts in swiftly, beckoned by a word. That's usually how it goes, and Bellamy pauses a moment before hooking the bar back over his head. His chest burns. His eyes sting from where sweat has dripped into them.

He sits up stiffly, breathing hard, and wipes his face with the scrap of towel he brought with him. His ration of water is gone in a few gulps. Once his heart rate has calmed, Bellamy stands. He needs to check back in with Monty.

" . . . -today. . . . We're . . ."

Bellamy glances up. Comms are back online, he thinks, though to the sound of it, they'll need a bit more tuning. On sore legs he leaves the training room behind and enters the corridor. He stops before the next door and turns to a panel secured on the wall. Beneath a speaker is a square button and he presses it. "Comms are up, Raven. Do you read me?"

He waits, expecting some remark.

"That's . . . -Anyway. The ground is . . . almost ready."

Bellamy's eyes lock on the panel with sudden, rapt attention. For the first time in a while, all the noise inside him seems to go quiet, silenced by the shock that streaks through him. Because it can't be.

". . . Just one more year."

But of course it is.

His fingers loosen, and the towel drifts to the floor.