a/n Hello and welcome to "On The Ground". This diverges from canon ten years after the destruction of Shallow Valley - the Earth is safe again and our faves are going down to the ground. There will be angst, there will be fluff, there will be unforeseen hazards, and there will be Bellarke as roommates... eventually!

If you were hoping that my next longfic would be "Thicker Than Water", never fear - I plan to write that after this! Thanks so much to everyone who supported "Together" and made me super motivated to get straight on with writing this.

Huge thanks to Stormkpr for betaing this. Happy reading!

Bellamy wakes up to the sight of Clarke's face.

Of course he does. Foolish of him to think that sixteen years, a betrayal and a girlfriend would be enough to shake her off.

"Hey." He's still lying in his cryopod as he greets her and has a go at giving her a tentative smile. They were on speaking terms when they went to sleep – just about – so it seems worth a try.

"Sleep well?" She asks, with the slightest hint of a warm curve to her lips.

"Yeah." He wiggles his neck experimentally, then makes a start on sitting up. "You?"

She nods, steps back to give him space to stand. And so here he is, standing at Clarke's side as he always used to stand, wondering if maybe, things might go back to normal, now.

Not a chance.

That's when things start to unravel. That's when the distance between them stretches out once more.

That's when it all goes wrong, for perhaps the thousandth time.

Monty walks in the room. Just Monty. Monty Green, the ultimate pacifist. And Bellamy's pretty sure he doesn't mean to bring conflict in his wake, because that's not his style. But just by existing, it's like his most inoffensive friend is reminding him of everything that has gone wrong since he left Clarke to burn. Monty's a decade older, for starters, his age clearly visible in the lines around his mouth. That wouldn't have happened, were it not for Clarke, Bellamy thinks. Were it not for her stand-off with McCreary and the destruction of Earth, there would have been no need for the ten-year nap, nor for Monty and Harper to stay awake. Were it not for Clarke, he wouldn't be sitting here in someone else's pyjamas on a ship full of strangers.

And were it not for Bellamy, Clarke would never have found herself in that situation at all.

Were it not for him – and his decision to put her daughter in danger – she would have had no reason to flee, leaving him to face his fate. He knows what it's like, to drop everything and run to protect one person. He knows because that's exactly what he did when he followed his sister to the ground.

His sister, who is now a monster he no longer recognises.

He shakes that thought off. There is no sense in dwelling on it – he needs to use his head and get on with working out what happens next. That's what he does, now, since the day he left Clarke.

"Monty. Hey. How's it looking?" He asks, all forced brightness.

"Earth? It's getting there. Safe but barren." Monty explains.

"Barren?" Clarke jumps in, because of course she does. "What do you mean?"

"I mean there's a lot of desert. There's the odd patch of green, but no real forests."

Bellamy frowns. "Then why are we awake?"

"Algae." Monty says with substantial enthusiasm, as only Monty can. "It's safe to live down there now. I figure we can eat algae and use it to fertilise the wasteland. Just a small group of us at first, then we wake everyone up when we've got more farmland in a couple of years."

"A small group?" Clarke asks, twisting her mouth in a way that Bellamy cannot make sense of. He figures he might have understood her expression, sixteen years ago, but now he hasn't the faintest clue why she looks like she's eating a pine cone.

"We woke you guys up first. It felt right, you know? Let's go sit down with Harper and decide who else to wake up."

Monty's an intelligent guy. Bellamy is sure of it. But he is way off the mark with his assessment that waking up him and Clarke first felt right, he decides.

In fact, as she falls in step behind Monty without meeting his eye, Bellamy is pretty sure nothing could feel more wrong.

…...

Clarke wishes Bellamy would stop giving her those funny looks.

She knows she broke something between them. She knows he despises her, knows that he must be suspicious of her right now. He doesn't need to rub it in by staring at her as if he thinks she has a rifle hidden up her shirt.

She gets it. She's a danger to him – she proved that in Polis. She's a danger to everyone, she's pretty sure. She managed to get her father killed, and Wells, and Finn and Lexa and so many others. Bellamy should be grateful he survived her loving him, she thinks sourly. He should be grateful that he got out of there on that rocket while he had the chance. She's trouble, and maybe it's for the best that they both know that, now.

But he really doesn't need to keep staring at her like that.

She ignores him, as she takes a seat at Harper's side and asks after her health. And then a precocious eight-year-old appears on the scene and introduces himself as Jordan, and that's a welcome distraction. Talking to her friends about their joy in parenthood is far more productive, she thinks, than fretting about the facial expressions of a man she used to love.

"We need to decide who to wake up." Bellamy interrupts their cheerful conversation about the child.

"That can wait a minute." Clarke chastises him instinctively.

She forgot, for a moment there, that they're not allowed to bicker any more.

"I'm sorry." He says, not sounding sorry at all. "Just trying to get things done around here. I hear I'm supposed to think through my plans."

Well, now. That was a low blow.

She doesn't cry, because she's already shed too many tears over this man. She spent six years crying for him, and she refuses to be so pathetic any longer. She simply ignores him, and shows Jordan a resolute smile.

"We don't have to rush." Harper hops in to smooth over the tension. "But if you want to start talking about it, we can."

"We'll need Raven and Emori." Bellamy states, right away.

"And Jackson." Clarke contributes. That seems a better idea than suggesting her mother, just now.

"And Echo." Bellamy adds. Of course he does. That's how love works. Love is wanting a person by your side, even if they are not actually going to bring anything useful to the situation.

No, that's petty. Echo's a great spy and a competent strategist. Bellamy is right to suggest that they need to wake her up.

"Murphy as well? And Miller?" Monty asks, to her surprise. She was certain that Miller was unpopular with Bellamy, these days.

Apparently some people are easier to forgive than others, she notes, as Bellamy nods and makes another suggestion. "And I'm guessing Clarke will want Madi awake."

There is a taut silence. Clarke does not want Madi awake, as it happens, but it seems like Bellamy is still capable of interfering in her business, even if he is no longer capable of smiling at her for longer than twelve seconds at a stretch.

"I'd rather she stayed asleep. I think she'll be safer." Clarke says mildly. There is no sense in pointing out, just now, that she'd be a hell of a lot safer if Bellamy hadn't put a chunk of code in her brain.

"Of course." Monty jumps to his feet, all forced perkiness. "Let's go wake them up now, then."

"Now?" She rather thought she might get at least an hour or two to collect her thoughts before the next event of her eventful life unfolds.

"Now." Bellamy decides, standing too.

Well, then. It looks like she's not in charge round here any more.

Bellamy and Monty get on their way, striding through the door as if they cannot leave fast enough. That's a shame, Clarke decides. She's never going to learn how to communicate more peacefully with Bellamy again if he won't even stay in the same room as her. And she feels like she's barely seen Monty since Praimfaya, and she'd have quite liked at least ten minutes to catch up on the last ten years.

She ought to be used to feeling like she's not in control of her own life, by now. She ought to be used to watching things unfold around her, whether she likes it or not.

"Clarke?" Harper's soft voice interrupts her thoughts.

"Harper. Yes. Hey." She stutters, less than coherent. The last couple of minutes, coming hot on the heels of the last sixteen years, have her scrabbling for her wits.

"I wanted to tell you a bit more about Jordan, if that's OK?"

"Go ahead." She pastes on a smile. Jordan is a sweet child, and is her friends' son, and she'd love to hear more about him.

"Great. It's just – we wanted to ask you as soon as possible. We were hoping that you'd agree to take care of him if anything happened to us. You and Bellamy, between you, like the godparents some people had on the Ark. Not because we're planning to have an accident, of course, but – we thought it was best to make plans, after all the bad luck we had last time we were on the ground. We've made a little video diary, like a will, in case anything does go wrong."

Clarke gapes, shocked. Shocked at Harper's words, shocked at her bad timing. Shocked beyond belief that anyone in their right mind would think her an appropriate godmother, after everything she's done.

"Nothing is happening to you." She growls – recycled words, repurposed from another era.

"No, hopefully not." Harper gives a nervous giggle. "Just in case. And maybe it would do him good to have godparents anyway, you know? My godmother taught me how to sew."

Clarke forces herself to nod. "Yeah. Yeah, of course. I can teach him first aid." It seems a better idea than teaching him mass murder.

"So that's a yes?"

"Yeah. Of course. I'd be honoured." Horrified, honoured – what's the difference, really?

"Great. Thanks. We just knew it had to be you and Bellamy – who else could we trust with our little boy?"

Clarke thinks that she wouldn't trust the two of them to take care of a spare right boot together, just now, let alone a living, breathing child.

…...

Bellamy thinks too hard, as he walks to the cryochamber at Monty's side and fails to engage his friend in cheerful reunion conversation. Thinking too hard is a bad habit he seems to have picked up since he left Clarke for dead – he's pretty sure it's not what she had in mind, when she told him to use his head.

In his defence, he figures there's a lot to think about right now. He's almost ashamed to remember how easily he smiled at Clarke when his cryopod opened, just as he is almost ashamed to remember smiling at her and inviting her to the bridge before they took their long nap. He's not supposed to be in a good mood with her, he's pretty sure. She betrayed him and left him for dead.

Although, to be fair, he's done both those things to her, before now.

Anyway, the point is, she can't be trusted. And if she can't be trusted, and he's now in love with Echo instead of her, then he doesn't really have any reason to smile at her at all, does he?

Somehow, though, not smiling at Clarke seems to take a surprising amount of effort.

They are half-way to their destination when Monty asks a most unexpected question.

"So you'll be godfather, right?"

"I'll what?" He's still fretting about Clarke, so he doesn't immediately understand what his friend is talking about.

"You'll be Jordan's godfather. Keep an eye on him, take care of him if we fall into a spiked pit. That kind of thing."

Bellamy picks his jaw up off the floor and nods. It's not so surprising, now he gives it his full attention. He was close friends with both Harper and Monty on the Ring. See? He's not so bad at thinking things through when he has to. "Yeah, sure. I'd be honoured. Thanks."

"Thanks." Monty grins. "We knew it had to be you and Clarke."

"Me and Clarke?" His voice breaks a little on her name, but he does a decent job of hiding it with a cough, he thinks.

"You and Clarke. The dream team." Monty says, with that slightly dopey smile of his.

Bellamy's staged cough turns into a very real choking noise.

"I don't think that's quite right." He offers, when he can speak again. "We're not in a good place."

"You will be." Monty states it as if it is a fact, still casually swinging his arms as he keeps walking. It's like he thinks his words are trivial, Bellamy muses – like he thinks that reconciliation between them is so certain as to not even be worth discussing.

Bellamy doesn't respond to that. Monty is not an argumentative type, but he knows from long experience that he is determined, and that there is never any sense in attempting to change his mind on something.

Instead, he asks a different question.

"Why doesn't she want to wake up Abby? I – I understand about Madi. Of course – that's on me." He should never have mentioned it, in fact. But some stupid, impulsive part of him thought that inviting her to wake the daughter she loves so much might make her smile. "But surely she wants her mother?"

Monty shrugs. "I don't know. Have you considered asking her?"

"You know I can't do that."

"I know you can do that, Bellamy. You can. The way I see it, there are two people in the universe Clarke cares about more than the human race. Madi, and you. So ask her the difficult questions. Have the uncomfortable conversations. Isn't she worth it? Isn't that woman you once walked through an army for worth that, at least?"

Bellamy snorts. "She's not that woman any more."

"How do you know?"

"What do you mean?"

"How do you know she's not that woman? Have you even given her a chance? Have you talked at all about what happened in Polis, or anything that happened while we were on the Ring?" Monty appears more angry than Bellamy has seen him in quite some time, and it brings him up short. If Monty – whose moral compass he trusts – is telling him that he ought to give Clarke a fair hearing, maybe it is the truth.

"She called me on the radio." He doesn't mention how often she did that, because he's not quite ready to mention that to anyone, yet. He's not entirely ready to admit it to himself. And he's certainly not ready to own to the visceral reaction he had on first learning the news, as the world ended yet again. He can still remember, now, how he felt nausea rising in his throat as Madi told him – in fact, he thinks maybe he hasn't stopped feeling sick quite yet, even a decade later.

It turns out that learning the woman he used to love called him every day even while he was hooking up with her former enemy was a recipe for a substantial stomach ache.

"She did?" Monty asks, calling his attention back to the present.

"Madi told me. That's what made me – that's why I invited her to the bridge that time. And then I wondered whether that had been the right thing to do." He remembers, vividly, wondering whether the invitation stemmed from sentiment, or from guilt at his poor repayment of her loyalty all those years, or actually wanting her there.

Monty snorts. "It was the right thing to do. You're angry with her, I get it. And I get that she's angry with you. But don't confuse anger for hatred."

Bellamy's not worried about that. He's more worried about confusing nostalgia for love, and remembering not to smile.

He wakes up Echo, first. That seems like a logical course of action when he's fretting about falling back in love with the memory of a woman who no longer exists. Then he wakes up Murphy, who high-fives him from his cryopod, as Monty wakes up Raven and Emori.

"Well?" Raven is asking questions almost before her pod is open. "Are we good? Earth back up and running?"

"Almost." Monty nods. "We're going to go get set up. The dream team."

If Monty uses that phrase one more time, Bellamy might just end up punching his most unobjectionable friend in the face.

…...

Clarke makes herself scarce and useful as much as she possibly can, when the others who have been woken up arrive back to the bridge. She hides in a corner, finds herself a computer, and calculates how much water the group of them will need to stay alive.

It's not the first time she has sat in a corner and made water calculations, and that thought alone is enough to bring a tear to her eye. She remembers the day she was left behind, the day that more or less this same group of people left her for dead. And she remembers most of all saying goodbye to Bellamy while they stood around and planned out the water rations. He didn't realise it was goodbye at the time, of course, but she did.

She shakes that thought off, and continues trying to blend into the background. She suspects she's not really made for it – she keeps getting distracted from her mission to remain invisible by interesting opportunities to offer her opinion to the wider discussion.

Just now, for example, Raven is arguing that they ought to wake up Shaw.

"He's a pilot. We need him." She states, all fire.

"He's Eligius. We need him like we need a sword in the stomach." Echo says, dismissive.

"Raven has a point." Monty contributes, nodding carefully.

Murphy is having none of it. "She just wants her boyfriend. We don't need him at all. We have Raven and Emori and Monty. We don't need another mouth to feed."

"We've got enough water." Clarke pipes up, because apparently she is physically incapable of staying out of the decision-making process.

"No one asked." Raven snaps.

"Raven." Bellamy shoots her a quelling look. "That's relevant. We have enough water. Monty, could we feed one more?"

"We could feed another half dozen if we wanted to. If we wanted to wake Abby or Madi." He mentions, looking Clarke right in the eye.

She shakes her head. "That's not the point. We could wake Shaw, if Raven thinks it's best."

Bellamy nods. "Great. It's possible. Shall we vote on it?"

Raven agrees, sullen but no longer fizzing with annoyance.

"Great. All those in favour of waking Shaw?" Everyone in the room but Echo and Miller raises their hand. That's hardly surprising, given Echo spoke out against it and Miller must barely know who Shaw is. Even Clarke joins in, after some consideration. She would like Raven to hate her less, and this seems like a good start on that front.

Raven doesn't thank her, of course. "I'll go get him." She says, and leaves the room without another word.

Clarke goes back to staring at her screen. Even with one more addition to their party, they have more than enough water in the system. She's about done here, she decides, but she doesn't know where else she could usefully hide next.

She's about to go check the medical inventory when Bellamy appears at her shoulder.

She supposes she ought to speak to him. He's right there, a slightly expectant look in his eyes. But she cannot for the life of her think of what to say. She spent six years practising speaking to this man, but now she's all out of words.

He solves that problem for her, in the end, and gets the conversation rolling. "Hey. What are you up to?" His tone isn't warm, exactly, but at least he doesn't sound angry.

"I've done with the water projections. I was just going to go to the medical -"

"Woah, Clarke. You don't need to do everything yourself. You're not on your own any more."

She snorts, because she's pretty sure that's completely untrue. She is absolutely and totally alone, and she knows it, for all that she's in a ship full of people. But that's OK, she figures – she has a lot of practice at being alone.

Rather than acknowledging Bellamy's surprisingly kind lie, she moves onto a new topic.

"Where are we landing? Are we taking the whole ship or just the smaller transport ship? Has Monty got a plan?"

"He didn't tell you?" Bellamy sounds surprised, which Clarke thinks is sweetly naive. No one has told her anything useful – except that she has a godson now – since she woke up.

"No." She shrugs, as if being left out of plans is no big deal to her.

It is a big deal, to be clear. It's enormous. Making plans is literally her only useful skill. It's what she does – it's her role and her identity. And if what she did in Polis, that one scared move to protect Madi, is going to rip that role away from her, she doesn't know what she'll do.

Bellamy, of course, is oblivious, that polite frown still fixed to his face.

"We're landing near Polis. There's some patches of green round there and Monty thinks we might be able to salvage some things from the ruins of the bunker. We're taking the whole ship down, so we don't have to leave anyone alone up here."

That's almost a shame, Clarke thinks. She mightn't have minded staying up here. Alone but for three hundred ghosts – that sounds like her kind of company.

"Great." She nods, tries for a little smile. That's what she would do, she thinks, if she were really looking forward to going back to the ground, if she were really OK with being left out of the plan.

To her utter shock, Bellamy almost smiles in return. At the very least, he stops frowning, and she decides that probably counts as a minor miracle.

a/n Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think!