Bellamy hears the rocket take off behind him and the ceiling of the bunker close behind it. He fights down the rising urge to panic. The choice is made, he tells himself. Alea iacta est. He wonders, briefly, if this is how Caesar felt when he realised there was no going back. This odd mixture of fizzing excitement, terror, and absolute confidence that he has made the right decision. Except, he muses to himself, Caesar had a choice. And Bellamy Blake didn't have a choice, not really. Because no way was he leaving Clarke Griffin to face this alone.

As he walks away from the space where the rocket used to be, he runs through his plan in an attempt to keep calm. He has to admit, it doesn't really work. The plan seemed better, somehow, when it was being formed in snatches in between getting Monty back and loading the rocket. It seemed more like a plan that could keep two people alive and less like a vague assortment of hopes and dreams.

Stage one: Wait for Clarke to get back from sending the signal up to the Ring. By Raven's reckoning she has about 10 minutes from now. Close the door after her. Simple, as long as she makes it back in time. Hopefully avoid death by radiation.

Stage two: Hang out in this bunker until the death wave has passed. Some time during those couple of months, get Clarke to make him a nightblood. Hopefully avoid death by angry-short-blonde-woman-who-can't-believe-he-stayed-behind-for-her.

Stage three: Go find some nice survivable bit of Earth. Survive there. Hopefully avoid death by starvation and death by radiation and death by Other Unforeseen Hazard.

Yeah, he's had better plans. This one seems to involve quite a lot of potential deaths to avoid. But, on the plus side, it involves Clarke, and that already makes it a whole lot better than the plan where he was the man on the inside of Mount Weather, or the plan where he let Pike brainwash him into slaughtering a camp full of allies. With that thought, a half smile on his lips, he walks purposefully towards the doors of the bunker. Checking the inner door is closed against the radiation, he opens the outer door and gets on with waiting for Clarke.

With about five minutes to go, he's getting somewhat nervous. Smoke rises in the distance – although not as distant as he would prefer – and threatens to block out the weak sunlight. Still, he reminds himself, Clarke always comes through. Surviving against impossible odds is what she does best. It has to be.

A couple of minutes later, and he doesn't need to check the clock to know that she's nearly out of time. The world is bathed in a sickening orange glow, and Bellamy is praying to every deity he can think of to let her live. He's half way through the travelers' blessing for the fifth time when she comes literally sprinting for her life over the fast-melting snow. The moment he sees her, running towards him, he knows in his heart that she is safe because no way is Clarke Griffin going to let a measly nuclear apocalypse stop her from living her best life when she's this close to safety.

…...

Clarke is confused, to say the least, when she wakes up on a soft mattress, wrapped in soft bedclothes, in a soft pastel-painted bedroom. She hasn't slept this well since she was a small child on the Ark who knew nothing of the hard life of the ground or the harsh force of the elements or the hard decisions of adulthood.

She's even more surprised when she turns her head a few degrees to the right and sees Bellamy Blake, whom she's pretty sure she remembers instructing to get on a rocket to fly to space in the recent past, with that expression on his face that is almost a smile.

"Hello, Princess. Nice of you to join me."

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Watching over you." He says it like it's the most natural thing in the world.

"Where the hell is here anyway?"

"Dammit, I knew that stage two was going to be the tricky one." He grins at her.

"Stage two? Stage two of what, exactly?"

"Stage two of the plan" he says, like that explains everything, and then he realises from the look on her face that actually it explains nothing so then he bites his lip and wonders where to begin.

"Would you mind explaining to me, please, what the plan is and also where I am?" she asks with infinite patience and control.

"You're in one of the bedrooms at Becca's bunker. You got a bit irradiated on your way back from the mast but you seem fine now. Nightblood's good stuff, you see. The plan is admittedly not a very good one," he confesses "but it was the best I had at the time. It's a plan for how you and me are going to survive Praimfaya. You see, step one was for you to get back into the bunker safe and sound, which you did, so well done." He thinks he might be in danger of rambling. "Step two was for us to chill here for a while until the death wave has cooled down a bit. We've got a good couple of months of rations and I found a lot of books, so we won't be bored." Yep, he realises, definitely rambling. "Of course, some time while we're here it would be really useful if you could make me a nightblood so I don't die when we attempt stage three of the plan, which is, unsurprisingly, to leave the bunker and attempt to survive for the next five years. So, yes, plan." He finishes with something of a flustered air, expecting her to pounce immediately on everything that is wrong with this crappy, pathetic, non-plan of a plan.

She surprises him, instead, by smiling softly. He thinks that maybe she's still more ill from the radiation than he realised.

"To be honest, Bellamy, that sounds like the best plan we're going to get."

"Yeah, I reckoned it only ranked about number three on the list of my all-time worst plans." He grins, relieved that at least they're both alive for now.

"I do have one quite important question though. What happened to the bit where you were all supposed to be on a rocket to the Ring?"

"The others went. I stayed."

"Why?"

"I think you know the answer to that, Princess."

a/n Thanks for reading! Next up: Raven reacts to leaving both Clarke and Bellamy behind.