They've come such a long way, sometimes Bellamy can barely believe it.

This is one of those moments, sitting on the steps leading to his house – he has a house, goddammit, with walls and doors and even windows – as he sharpens his knifes and looks around him. The village is quiet tonight, summer evening with the sky turning red and yellow and pink, people spending those last few lazy hours by the lake. Once upon a time, he hadn't thought it possible – the laziness, the peace, being able to enjoy themselves instead of fighting for survival. Some of the kids even attempt to play the guitar, one they've found in a nearby bunker, along with novels and art supplies much to Clarke's delight. This is good, Spacewalker says, civilizations are built on art.

Bellamy likes the sound of that.

Maybe this is it, after all – maybe they're done fighting the nature around them and are settled into moving forwards into history. He's heard people, especially the adults, talking of wedding and babies. He likes the sound of that too; life is always better with the laughs of children to brighten your day.

He's so focused on the task at hand, polishing his hunting knife before they go on an expedition the following morning, that he doesn't notice Clarke until her body shields him from the sun. He looks up to her then, hair a golden halo around her pretty face, only to frown when he sees what she's carrying.

A notebook – the expensive kind, leather-bounded and all – and a pen.

"Creative writing? Really?"

She rolls her eyes, never one to be deterred by his sarcasm. "Memoirs."

The frown deepens. "Why?"

She always has the most peculiar ideas – fishing boats and painting the walls of the houses and living with the Ark survivors – but this one is the oddest of all. He's still young, only twenty-five, and doesn't see the point of writing about that joke he calls a life. It's not like people would be interested anyway – they're interested in her, the princess with her bright hair and even brighter mind, the leader and the healer. She's the kind of woman you write poems and symphonies about, the kind of woman who stays in history when all her contemporaries are long forgotten.

He's just a janitor with a chip on his shoulder and more luck than anyone else on this damn planet.

Clarke sits next to him, and she drops the notebook in his lap while she's at it, never one for delicacy. "O. and Raven both promised to write theirs, and Jasper has been scribbling like crazy for hours now."

Of course he would be the last one to hear about her fancy of the moment. Typical.

"Listen," she adds, looking at him in the eyes. "You decided to shoehorn your way into history the moment you shot Jaha. That's just a fact. And I'd rather have us remembered the right way than let time distort our story and change the facts. Hence, memoirs."

She pokes the notebook on his lap with one finger, in that determined way of hers – the one that means business, and she won't take no for an answer. He's been at the receiving end of that look for far too long now, his stubbornness butting heads with hers every time. She always wins. Nobody's surprised.

"In two hundred years, I want a kid to be a smartass by saying 'whatever the hell you want', only for his friend to reply 'yeah, I know who Bellamy Blake is too'."

Her voice reaches a lower octave in what must be the worst impression of himself Bellamy has ever heard. (The memories are old and foggy in his mind, but he remembers that moment with sharp precision, remembers wanting to slap himself for being so obvious in his love of history in front of her, like it would suddenly make him less imposing or something.) Still, it manages to make him smile anyway, because he's a moron and a goner when Clarke tries to be funny – she fails, more often that not, but watching her desperate attempts at humour are entertaining enough as it is.

"I don't know," he replies, grabbing the notebook and opening it. The pages are so white, barely touched by dust and time, that he doesn't want to ruin them with that awful scribbling he calls handwriting. "If I do this right, do you think I can change the definition of 'princess' forever?"

Clarke's blush is such a rare, yet adorable, sight that he can only grin when red appears high on her cheekbones as she looks away. He wants to hug her or maybe kiss her, until her entire face is flushed and her eyes darkened – is about to do just that, actually, when she jumps on her feet and takes a few steps away from him and towards the town hall.

"Just do it, okay?" she says, pointing a finger at him.

…

He isn't all that surprised, a week later, when she comes to bed with the notebook tucked under her arm. She doesn't comment on it, and neither does he, as she settles with her head in his lap and opens the thing to the first page. It's as lazy as summer evenings go – the soft sound of music and life in the background, the smell of barbecue lingering in the air – and he spends it playing with her hair as she reads his every thought.

The memoirs speak of the Ark and corrupted guards, of his mother's sacrifice and his rookie mistake – of the first dreadful days on Earth and his pathetic attempts at dictatorship – of the nightmare Mount Weather and Finn nearly dying on him – of settling by the lake and into this new life of theirs.

Nail of the thumb stuck between her teeth, Clarke hums under her breath in appreciation, and even chuckles sometimes at his poor attempts at cracking a joke here and there. But mostly she remains silent, and kisses him thoughtfully when she's done.

"You need a title," she whispers with a brush of her lips against his.

"I'm working on it."

And centuries later, when scholars write thesis and papers about that period of history, 'The Princess forced me to write this: Bellamy Blake's Memoirs' is always on the work cited page.

(Along with 'Guy with the goggles', 'Spacewalker, Earthwalker', 'Clark Griffin, An Autobiography', and 'Life and Times of Raven Reyes'.

But, well, he likes his title better.)