This idea came to me after 4x12, when I was trying to convince myself that leaving Clarke behind was far too predictable for the writers to actually go through with it. Still, I was intrigued by the idea of our core characters being stuck together in relatively close quarters, and what situations could arise from this.

So this is and AU collection of snapshots of life back on the Ark.

I don't know if I'll continue to add to this, it depends on how inspired I get as I go. No promises.

In this AU Clarke, Bellamy, Raven, Monty, Murphy and Emori all made it to the Ark. Harper and Echo did not make it! I have a rough idea of an AU 4x13 to explain how this came about, which I may or may not write and post as a later chapter.

Disclaimer:The characters and settings depicted in this story are the property of the CW. I own nothing.

Contiguity

noun

the state of bordering or being in contact with something.

PSYCHOLOGY

the sequential occurrence or proximity of stimulus and response

Day 42

We'd been on the Ark for barely over a month and we were already a breath away from killing each other. I guess we were all so focused on surviving the Death-wave that we didn't think about how six people, or even eight, could spend five years without seeing or speaking to another soul and not drive each other crazy. Add to that our less than luxurious lifestyle up here and all the issues we already had with each other… each of us is basically a bomb just waiting to go off. And once one goes, two more are sure to follow. If anyone gets to Emori, Murphy goes off, once he's on the rampage Bellamy and I try to calm him down, sometimes with the help of Monty or Raven, and Murphy can set either of them off without much effort. And then Emori feels like everyone is against Murphy; we soon found out that Emori's protective streak can be quite explosive.

Raven and Monty are constantly bickering over everything that could go wrong on the Ark and how to fix it. At one time this wouldn't have been that big a deal, but losing Jasper and Harper changed Monty, and he has no patience for Raven's moods anymore. We've all lost people, but something about Monty's heartbreak has made me even more protective of him than I used to be, so I'm usually quick to jump to his defence. That's when things get really nasty. We all have our ways of hurting each other, but when Raven is wound up she gets particularly vicious, throwing every bad thing her target has ever done in their face. With me she had the most ammunition. Finn, the bomb on TonDC, Mount Weather, taking Luna's bone marrow, leaving everyone behind after Mount Weather… She knows just how to rip me open and Bellamy knows it, just as he knows how much I beat myself up about every one of those choices every single day. So he's instantly there, telling Raven to back off. If Murphy's up for a fight that's when he'll jump in, just for the hell of it, and usually we all end up turning on him because while the rest of us may have gotten people killed trying to protect our people, Murphy just went on a murder spree so what right does he have to judge? And then Emori jumps in and before we know it six time bombs have detonated, one after the other.

It's exhausting to say the least.

In that month Bellamy and Murphy have acquired multiple new scars because I refuse to waist sutures on their fist fights - when something in engineering inevitably blows up, Raven and Monty will need them.

We've established a routine for the aftermath of these blow ups. Monty is usually the first to walk away, ending up on a viewing deck, staring at the planet that took so much from him, but he still longs to go back to. Raven inevitably finds a machine to tinker with to calm herself down; Murphy and Emori retreat to their compartment for hours, Emori only emerging to ask for supplies if either of them have cuts that need tending. And Bellamy and I, we generally just collapse wherever the fight had happened, leaning on each other just to remind ourselves that we're not alone. Sometimes we sit for hours in silence before one of us will crack a half-hearted joke, or just bump our shoulder into the other, and then we just get up and get on. That or some other disaster will draw our attention.

No one ever apologises. We don't need to; we know that we're all over our issues. Or at least as over them as we're ever going to get, and it's just the confinement dredging them up. So, we have an unspoken agreement that once things have cooled down, all is forgiven and everybody moves on. Still, Bellamy and I know that we need to find something for everyone to do when we're not fixing one of the thousand problems that could kill us, otherwise we won't make it a year stuck together.

Yesterday was our biggest blow up yet. It started with the algae farm malfunctioning, which immediately had everyone on edge because the prospect of starving to death was about as attractive as the Death-wave had been. We all gathered around as Raven and Monty inspected the damage.

"Can you fix it?" Bellamy voiced the worry on all our minds.

"Probably, but I won't know how or how long it will take until I figure out which component caused this mess," Raven muttered.

I looked at Bellamy, hearing the beginnings of frustration in the mechanic's voice. One glance and I saw that he too could sense the tension that would inevitably lead to an explosion and we couldn't afford that now, not when our only food source was in danger of failing.

"Ok," I started, "we'll give you and Monty the space to figure it out. Radio if you need anything, yeah?"

"Probably best, this could take a while," Monty agreed.

I let out a quiet sigh of relief when Murphy nodded and towed Emori out of the room. I followed them with Bellamy at my back and the two of us headed to the command centre, which we'd claimed as our own safe haven. Bellamy's hands twitched slightly, as we went, and I knew he was missing the comforting weight of his rifle. With no one to fight up here and all our threats being of a mechanical nature, I knew he had been feeling useless. We'd spent so long fighting that Bellamy had forgotten he'd been helping us survive far longer than we'd been at war. He didn't realise that he was what was keeping the six of us together. For all the questionable decisions that were thrown in our faces, the others still looked to us as leaders, and the only reason and the only reason I could handle that up here was because Bellamy was keeping me together.

"We're only a month in," he broke the stressed silence between us, "what else is gonna go wrong?"

"Please don't say that," I huffed, causing Bellamy to chuckle and reach for my hand. This was a recent development for us, just taking comfort and strength from the lacing of our fingers, even when one of us wasn't likely to get killed executing some plan or other. I didn't know if I should be reading anything into it or if it was just a testament to how stressful it was trying to keep us all alive on part of a space station. Judging from the knowing looks and subtle innuendos Raven had been sending my way since we'd been up here, she was certainly reading more into it.

"I think we should make some kind of game room," Bellamy announced out of nowhere.

"What?" I laughed. "We're on the brink of starving and you want a ping pong table?"

"Don't be dramatic, Raven will sort the algae farm out, no one's starving," he rolled his eyes and tugged on our joined hands to roll my chair closer to his. "I'm thinking it could help with the fighting. We're six competitive, argumentative people with nothing to do but take stress out on each other, a few games could give us somewhere else to channel the frustration and boredom. Or at least a better place to cool off."

I pondered the idea for a second before nodding. "That could work. It could also give us something else to fight over and make the situation ten times worse…" Bellamy laughed and pulled me against him as exhaustion took over. "But I don't have any better ideas so it's worth a shot."

"We'll survive Clarke," he promised against my hair as I wrapped my arms around his waist, leaning against him so that I was more in his lap than perched on my own chair. "We always do. And so far, we've even managed to do it without killing Murphy."

I laughed and felt the last of the tension leave my body. I was just convincing myself to pull away from the embrace when I felt Bellamy tense beneath me as he swore under his breath.

"What-" I started to ask but as soon as I raised my head I saw the security feed that must have caught his eye. Raven was laying half under a machine, her leg brace nowhere to be seen, trying to reach for her walkie while Murphy was straddling Monty's chest, fists raining down on his face as Emori pulled at her boyfriend's shoulder, trying to stop him. Bellamy and I sprang from our seats and sprinted across the Ark to break it up before some serious damage was done. I could hear Bellamy shouting into his own walkie as we ran but there was no reply.

I didn't even slow down when we got there, I just ran at Murphy, tackling him off my friend and tried to pin him long enough to calm him down.

"Stop it before you kill someone you idiot!" I screamed.

"Well maybe I should!" Murphy hissed.

Shocked, I fumbled in my attempts to restrain him long enough to be shoved backwards, and everything went black.

The first thing I registered when I came to was a dull throbbing in the back of my head. I reached back to feel for the damage and hissed as the movement caused a stinging in my arm. Finally prying my eyes open, I examined myself in the dim light and found that someone had done a lousy job of inserting an IV line, leaving several punctures in my arm to be irritated by the tape that was securing the line. It was only after I critiqued my care that I realised that I shouldn't need an IV line for a simple bump on the head. I pulled myself into a sitting position and looked around the med bay – which was really just a compartment where we kept all of our meagre medical supplies because our actual med bay was down on earth – and saw Bellamy slumped in a chair next to the bed I was laying in. He looked stressed, even in sleep, and I began to worry over what could have happened while I was unconscious.

With another glance around the room I saw that the line in my arm was just a saline drip and there were two empty bags in the trashcan next to my bed, so I assumed I had been unconscious for a while. I felt around the bandages on my head and figured I probably had a concussion, but there didn't seem to be anything more serious going on.

I was reaching out to shake Bellamy awake when the compartment door opened and Raven came in. "You're up," she announced the concern on her features melted into a relieved smile as she saw I was awake. "How are you feeling?"

"Li-" my voice broke and I realised my mouth and throat were as dry as sand paper.

"Hold on, I'll grab you some water." Raven disappeared into the bathroom and came back with a cup.

I choked a little on the first sip, but soon realised how thirsty I was and had to force myself to slow down. "Thanks," I whispered, deciding not to wake Bellamy just yet. "Other than a headache and my arm feeling like a pin cushion, I'm fine.

Raven chuckled. "Yeah, sorry about that. Monty's eye was swollen shut, Bellamy had banished Murphy and Emori to the other side of the Ark and he was freaking out about you not waking up, so you were stuck with me. Turns out I make a lousy doctor."

I laughed a little, ignoring how it enhanced the throbbing in my skull. "I think I should teach you guys a couple of things about health care."

"It's probably in your own best interests that you do."

"How long as I out?" I asked.

"About two days."

My eyes widened. "Two days! What the hell's been going on? Did you fix the algae farm?"

"Seriously? That's your reaction to being unconscious for over forty-eight hours?" 'Did you fix the algae farm?'" She asked incredulously.

"It's kind of an important problem to solve Raven!" I reminded her.

"Oh relax, Monty finished the repairs while I explained to lover boy over there that I couldn't build an MRI without taking the Ark apart," Raven huffed, exasperated.

"What?" I laughed, ignoring the 'lover boy' comment. "He actually asked you to?"

"Yep." She continued as she pushed my legs aside to sit at the end of the bed, "We were all worried when you didn't wake up right away, but Bellamy was pacing and brooding and knocking things over the whole time. Then when it hit the six-hour mark and you still weren't even stirring, he went insane. Just about demanded I build an entire hospital and then tried to break his hand on Murphy's face." I looked back at the man sleeping at my bedside and frowned at the bandages that wrapped his right hand. "Don't think I missed you not arguing the 'lover boy' thing by the way," Raven added and I could hear the sly smirk in her voice.

"I'm concussed," I argued. "Doesn't mean anything. Can you wake him up for me?"

"Sure thing. I'll give you two a minute and go put Murphy out of his misery," she said as she pulled her bad leg over the side of the bed.

"Murphy?" I asked confused.

"Yeah, the guy's all cut up, thinking he might actually have killed you. He didn't even fight back when Bellamy went after him. Who'd have thought little cockroach'd developed a conscience huh?"

I blinked at that, not really surprised that Murphy could feel guilt – he wasn't a complete sociopath – but more that he had shown it.

"Hey, Bellamy wake up."

Bellamy woke with a start, bleary eyes focusing on Raven for a moment until he saw me sitting up and nearly pushed her out of the way to get to me.

"Clarke!" he exhaled in pure relief. His hands skimmed over my arms and hair, as if checking me for any new injuries, before he cupped my face and the tension finally released from his shoulders. "You scared the hell out of me."

"Sorry?" I offered with a small smile, raising my free arm to pull him into a proper hug.

Bellamy chuckled into my hair. "You should be. We're all screwed if we have to figure out a way to survive up here without you."

I half-heartedly smacked his shoulder and pushed him back just enough to see his face. "Stop giving me all the credit. Up here it's Raven's head we need, and you've got the heart covered," a sheepish smile tugged at the corner of his lips. "I'm just along for the ride."

"Now you're just being an idiot." Bellamy pulled away and settled on the edge of the bed, "How are you feeling?"

I squeezed the hand that had somehow ended up in mine. "I'm fine. Itching to get rid of this line," I gestured to the IV, "but I'm ok. What about you? How bad is your hand?" I reached for the bandaged limb as Bellamy tried to swat my hands away.

"It's fine. Raven freaked out and went overboard with the bandages." I began unwrapping his hand to check the damage for myself, tugging him firmly towards me when he tried to pull away again. "Really Clarke, it's just cuts and bruises."

"Hmm," I finally found the last layer of cloth and surmised that one of his fingers was sprained but there was no serious damage. "How's Murphy? If you're this banged up he's got to be suffering a little."

"Emori iced his face. He's fine, Murphy always is."

"And Monty?" I asked, vividly remembering Murphy landing blow after blow as Monty was unable to defend himself.

"Looks like hell, but also fine. I think he might have lost a tooth though." I shot him a disapproving look at the amusement in his tone.

"Did you find out what the fight was about?" I began re-wrapping his hand, strapping his bad finger to its neighbour this time.

"Poor wording of Monty's part and a major over reaction on

Murphy's," Bellamy rolled his eyes, clearly finding the whole situation a little ridiculous. "Emori offered to help with the repairs and Monty said it was a job that needed two hands."

"Ah," I winced sympathetically. "Well did getting my head caved in at least put a stop to it?"

"Yeah," Bellamy scoffed. "But I'd rather you try something else next time."

I laughed and the throbbing in my head intensified. Bellamy frowned at my small moan of pain but I waved him off before he could say anything.

"Just help me get this thing out of my arm. We should get a start on that game room before one of us picks a fight that'll get someone killed."

Bellamy unhooked the drip and helped me patch up my abused arm before pulling me into a tight, almost desperate hug. "I can't lose you Clarke," he mumbled against the top of my head.

"Nobody's losing anybody," I promised, squeezing him just as tightly. "We haven't survived… Well, everything, just to kill each other now." After a few moments, I pulled away, climbed off the bed and tugged him in the direction of the door, ignoring the slight dizziness standing brought on. "C'mon. There's work to do."

"There always is."

Thanks for reading, please leave a review.

Prompts for future chapters are welcome, but I make no promises to fulfil them. You never know though, you might spark an idea.

I have made some slight alterations to this chapter as it had to be earlier in the group's stay on the Ark in order to fit with the timeline I worked out for some future chapters. No actual plot points have been altered.