Between Us

Stranger

Almost there! 

********

He forgot how much landing can feel like dying.

One moment the pressure is so great it's as if his skull will crack open.

And in the next . . .

Nothing.

It's blackness he blinks from his vision, uncertain if that's because the lights went out or because he lost consciousness. Probably both.

Bellamy shakes his head, slowly at first. His temples pound. "Is everybody okay?" He asks over the ringing that has begun in his ears, but already it is growing dim, to a steady hum. "Monty?" He looks to where Monty Greene has been sitting just moments before, his friend now hidden in thick shadow.

A second passes. Two. Three are gone before he manages to make out Monty's muffled, "Alive."

"Harper? Raven?" Bellamy squints at the dark.

"Bruised but breathing," Raven rasps. "Emori?"

"That sucked," Emori's voice tumbles out from the dark. "And you've had to do that how many times? Are you sure we even landed? That definitely felt more like a crash. John?"

"If we crashed, we'd all be dead," says Murphy around a lungful of smoke.

Something flickers overhead. faint lights flare, dying firebugs in the night, casting the once black room in muted gray hues. Suddenly Bellamy can make out each of their faces, covered in soot and sweat, fear and anxiety.

"And to think I expected the wiring to fry when we were breaking atmosphere," mutters Raven.

"Are we sure we didn't land in the water?"

Bellamy is only half listening, fumbling for the harness. It's as if someone has filled his bones with lead and his fingers move too slow. Too slow. Too slow.

"Well, the ship landed right-side up," Shaw reassures. "That's a good sign."

Finally Bellamy manages to get the clasps undone. His entire body pitches forward before his hands reflexively reach out, palms keeping his head from meeting the steel floor.

He forgot how heavy gravity was too, apparently.

Slower than he's ever moved in his life and slower than he's ever wanted to, Bellamy forces himself to stand. It's as if the weight of the entire ship is bearing down on him, crushing him, but Bellamy pushes past it, forcing one leaden foot in front of the other, moving around debris and to the wide square door. It reminds him of a different time. Of the first time he did this, when the ground was alien to him and the earth a stranger.

He looks up, and his eyes fix on the nondescript lever that waits there, like a sentinel, for him. He's no longer lightyears away, encased in a fragment of the Ark and trapped in the stars. The distance is suddenly, magnificently gone. Now there is just this. One door, one lever, one last move between them and everything else.

A hush falls over the ship as Bellamy reaches out and wraps his fingers around the metal, the feeling of it light, no traces of dread to be found. Not this time.

He drags in a long breath.

Please let her be there, he thinks.

And then he pulls this lever alone.

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

Clarke Griffin is well acquainted with disappointment.

And here she is, yet again, on the brink of breaking beneath the weight of it, when she gathers her binoculars, fits them to her eyes, and traps within their frame a foreign symbol decorating a foreign ship.

A ship intended for prisoners.

Her breath loses its way in her chest. Alarms go off inside her, painting her green world red again. Clarke turns her back on the valley and rushes to the Rover parked along the ridge. "Madi!" It feels like a whisper and a scream at once.

Madi's head appears at the door, dark hair a tangle about her bleary, blue eyes. "What is it? What's wrong?"

Clarke pulls the driver door open and throws the radio in the back before starting the engine. "A ship. It's not ours." The words flame. It's a little Praimfaya inside her chest, burning down the last remnants of hope for an old world.

Instincts Clarke thought she'd forgotten come rushing back in like an unwelcome friend. She shifts the Rover into drive and lets the wheels dig into the dirt.

"Clarke, wait, how do you know it's not–"

"Because I know, Madi!" she shakes her head, keeping her attention fixed on the hill, maneuvering around the rocks that jut from the dirt. Today they remind her of teeth, swallowing everything. "Raven once mentioned it to me. It's a ship for criminals. They weren't . . ." she casts a glance over at Madi, her cornflower eyes big and full of something Clarke can't pinpoint. "They weren't good people."

The moment they hit the bottom of the hill, Clarke pulls the Rover between the trunk of two trees, deep within a pocket of shadow. She kills the engine and motions Madi out of the car. "Grab the guns."

It's an assurance to have the metal in her hands, against her sternum and above her heart, as she eases to the edge of the treeline that overlooks the valley. Their  valley.

From here, nestled at the center of it lies the ship, its door shut, its engines off, a dead fish in a viridescent lake.

Coldness unspools in Clarke's chest, until it is ice water in her veins. Is this why the others didn't make it back? Is this why Bellamy –

Clarke shoves the thoughts away as quickly as she can. Locks it in a box in the corner of her mind. Not yet. She can't think about those possibilities, or wonder at the chances of the Ring crossing paths with Eligius. First she must deal with the stranger at her front door.

She crouches behind a fallen tree and Madi follows, peering over the dead branches just enough to see.

Madi's about to say something, mouth open to frame the words, but she is cut off by a groaning sound that comes from the ship, and Clarke watches as the steel door begins to climb upwards.

They face it from the side, but she can still make out the profile of the person who steps out, their shadow a stark contrast against the fading sun.

Tall. Masculine. Strong.

The coldness in her warms before Clarke even understands why. She's too far away to make out any features, but there is something familiar in the way this stranger moves forward, his attention fixed on the treeline. He turns in a slow circle, as if searching for something. As if expecting something to already be there.

"Madi," Clarke's voice is barely more than a hush between the trees. "Get me the binoculars." She doesn't look away but watches as the figure continues that steady, searching movement, empty hands at his sides. He turns until he is facing her, a silhouette against the light, still looking. Still waiting.

The realization comes softly.

Oh.

He is searching the ground as intently as Clarke searches the stars.

And just like that, she finds she doesn't need the binoculars after all.