#in a lot of ways it's madi i feel the biggest tug for - she has SO MUCH RIDING IN THIS

[queers-of-nassau]

In defence of Billy and Eleanor? kinda?

(you don’t have all the facts? which are? I love them)

Okay, but first things first I think so many decisions they make are bad for them and for the other characters, but they’re understandable and tragic and come from a place of genuinely wanting to protect others or become better, more than being cowardly or knowingly villainous (like when Woodes Rogers does that whole keelhauling bit, hooboy sir, lemme stop ya there) - 

1. hindsight knowledge means we know how this story ends, historically and individually. so we can say nooo don’t do x, it’ll drive you further into bitterness and/or betrayal or but the end of slavery and destruction of colonialism is a good ultimate goal and worth fighting for. For them personally? For people generally? they want to survive and have a good life and protect those closest to them. Especially if this goal is being touted by a man like Flint, whom I love, and who is a bit fucking fanatical in his goals (I sometimes think if Eleanor hadn’t died she would’ve rejoined the cause for Madi, especially once hearing about some of Woodes Rogers nastier deeds). 

2. the reasons for their choices make sense for their characters. Billy’s father figure was killed by Flint and it cemented something he’d suspected from almost the very beginning of the series: Flint has a disregard for other people. and he’s right, Flint cares about the bigger picture and that requires massive sacrifice. Sure, he’s willing to make that sacrifice himself, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s kind of an awful captain (I’m sorry James, I love you and always will).

Meanwhile Eleanor is chained to Nassau more than anyone else. She wants that stability that is impossible to find on that beach and it supersedes her relationships with others, except for the times when she fights against it. (Eleanor - “amazing this place, somehow it leaves no options other than to hurt the ones you love)”

3. it’s so fucking tragic. they’re both so fucking tragic. they’re doing their best and those decisions end badly and in another world maybe that would’ve worked out. Maybe Gates wouldn’t have been killed or Flint would’ve died or he could’ve secured the pardons for Nassau in season 2, or or or... everyone on the show makes decisions that’re often balanced on a knife’s edge of going horribly wrong, but they’re the two most often at odds with other characters after season 2.

4. the story needs to fill the roles. Obviously the story we’re watching, but also the story within the story, the one Silver is kinda telling. Billy in season 4 is against doing what both Flint and Madi want, Eleanor aligns herself with Woodes Rogers (and so does Max) and this makes them Silver’s villains - or later on, in Eleanor’s case, a victim. I always think about how close Max is to falling into this space as well, except she juuust turns it around, which, speaking of...

5. Nassau vs the Bigger Picture. Nassau is so symbolic of what people want, but it also risks becoming all-encompassing - what Eleanor wants is respect from her father, stability perhaps, a healthy kind of love for once, not to be a pirate, etc. Billy wants to help people, in particular those he’s serving with, and maybe for bad things to stop happening to him idk - but these wants become Nassau instead.

While watching there’s no way one wouldn’t side with a slave rebellion, an attempt to destroy colonial rule, and freedom for all over, “I want me and mine to be okay on this island I’ve decided is where all my happiness rests, because I cannot fathom who I am without it.” 

all the characters fall into this in some way or other, but they get killed by it (so do Vane and Teach in a way in my opinion, because they’re drawn back to it) - Jack and Max are near-victims of it too. 

tl;dr I love tragic characters and billy and eleanor are so darn tragic I want to scream

#billy bones #eleanor guthrie #black sails #black sails meta #funnily enough there's a point near the end #when you know flints cause is falling to pieces #and you see how that has also become its own monster #not because it's not admirable but because it risks eating everyone in service to it #and so *I just want to protect me and mine on this island* becomes the goal we're rooting a little bit more for #in terms of max and jack and anne and featherstone and idelle #it's that thing vane talked about - resisting comfort with every fibre of his being #while flint at heart just wanted to find a reason to rest #in a lot of ways it's madi i feel the biggest tug for - she has SO MUCH RIDING IN THIS #and all of these people eventually go - i cant fight anymore... ive found a comfort I'm willing to live with #wanna talk more about madi at some point #she really landed in all these peoples drama and promises and they were just fucking dropped #madi deserves better 17kforever

[chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky]

5x09 Reaction Fic because I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT THINGS AND STUFF.

Summary: The interesting thing about life is that it goes on, even when it stops for you. Clarke and Bellamy didn’t realize the biggest separation they’d face wouldn’t be the past six years. It’d be the past two weeks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

5x09 Reaction fic / the thoughts leading up to the final explosion. Moments in between moments, ft. hits like “Desperate Radio Calls,” “How Did the Conversation Go to Get Clarke on Bellamy’s Bed,” and “The Slap Hear ‘Round the World.”

——-

It was an early spring evening when Clarke first felt the sickening pang of homesickness that she didn’t understand. She never really had a home – she wouldn’t consider the Ark one as it was the place of her father’s execution and her own confinement, and their time on earth before Praimfaya was riddled with so much violence that she never had a chance to catch her breath. Except as she sits on the hood of the Rover, staring at the sky as she always did when Madi was getting ready for bed, she feels an incurable bout of homesickness that won’t go away.

Clutching the radio in her hands, Clarke presses the button without realizing it, the gentle beep causing a longing in her chest that aches and echoes like the depths of a cave. “Bellamy?” Clarke asks, her voice smaller than she’s ever heard it. The longing drips off the one word and she realizes not for the first time that to love someone afar has hurt her more than any Grounder war. Licking her lips, she tries again. “Bellamy, it’s Clarke. I mean, you know that. It’s not like you’ve forgotten.”

She hesitates. “Have you? …forgotten?” She asks, choking over the words.

Ao3 Link is here.

#the 100 #bellarke #bellarke fanfiction #clarke griffin #bellamy blake #post 5x09 #reaction fic #sorry guys #I got angsty #I just have a lot of feelings

[bellarke-addict]

Friends

Season 5, Bellamy and Madi

Bellamy Blake was still trying to wrap his head around one of the biggest shocks of his life. 

Clarke was alive. 

She had survived the death wave. 

And not just survived. 

But thrived. 

She had even cut her hair, dyed it red and managed not to look malnourished or pale despite having lived on the ground and hand-to-mouth for the last six years.

When they had climbed out of the rocket to see her standing there, the rover a few feet away, Bellamy’s mind had gone blank just long enough for Raven to get the first hug.

Fortunately, Echo had been on hand to catch her girlfriend when he’d damn near thrown her aside to get to Clarke.

He had held her tighter than was probably comfortable for her but she had buried her face in his neck, her breath and tears warm against his skin and he had squeezed his eyes shut, praying above him in the general direction of the deities and fates for this moment to be real.

When he had dared to open his eyes again, he had seen something out of place in the back of the rover, something small and thin.

A little girl.

His brain short-circuits and he frantically counts backwards in his head before remembering that he and Clarke had never so much as kissed, there was no way he could have fathered a kid.

He decides that it must have been Roan. He was the only man he could think of that Clarke would have been sleeping with before the nuclear fallout.

His hand comes up and presses between Clarke’s shoulder blades, feeling her against his fingertips and he rubs his cheek against her hair before slowly beginning to release her.

And her reluctance is clear, the way her fingers trail along his arms and how she doesn’t step back or break eye contact.

“Someone you want us to meet?” he asks, jerking his chin and Clarke laughs softly, tucking her hair behind her ear as she wipes her eyes,

“Right, I…Madi come say hi.”

Madi.

She leans back slightly, showing a shy uncertainty that tugs on Bellamy’s heart strings.

It takes him all of three seconds to decide that he could give less of a damn who her father had been. If Clarke was his then Madi was too.

This determination is replaced with confusion when she slides off the rover and ambles over, revealing her height and frame which was already losing the softness of childhood.

There was no way this girl was a day younger than ten.

Clarke slides an arm around the girl’s shoulders, bringing them side by side,

“Everyone,” she calls, “This is Madi, the most bad-ass nightblood on the planet.”

“Second most bad-ass.” Madi corrects and Bellamy chuckles, earning him a grin.

“Nice to meet you.”

Clarke bundles their exhausted, bruised and tense bodies into the rover and drives them to the cave where she’d made a home for Madi and herself.

Bellamy helps build up the fire while she makes beds for them and then brings them food that isn’t algae. Laughing at them as they nearly cry with joy at eating something with taste again.  

After six years of chilled air, they huddle closer to the flames than is safe and Bellamy has to force himself to shift back from the warmth to where Madi was tucked under a blanket.

He takes off his jacket and drapes it over her uncovered shoulders and she turns her face towards him,

“Clarke said you liked really old stories.” she tells him around a yawn and he grins, adjusting the jacket so it would keep her warm.

“I do,” he says, “Do you want to hear one?”

“Tomorrow.” she decides, closing her eyes and falling asleep almost immediately.

“Tomorrow.” He promises, patting her arm once before returning to his place by the fire.  

Madi had been born Trikru, and when her father had fallen sick from the radiation, she had gone to Mt Weather, to search for science which she had heard could cure the sickness.

She had been in the depth of the mountain when the death wave had rolled overhead and afterwards, had headed to Polis for help, finding nothing but ruins.

When she had lain eyes on Clarke, she had been terrified of her.

“I had seen her before, once, in Ton DC,” Madi told Bellamy as she led him to the creek to gather water, “I knew she was Wanheda and was scared because I figured the Commander of Death had caused Praimfaya.”

She darts across a fallen log and he watches her worriedly, but she doesn’t fall,

“But I was hungry and she had food, so I followed her back and she fed me and gave me clothes and talked to me in Gonasleng…English,” she adds and he nods,

“And I figured she was cool.”

First and last time anyone has ever reached that conclusion about Clarke Griffin, Bellamy thinks, ducking his head to hide his amusement and pretends to readjust the buckets in his hands.

“And, she told me all about you guys,” Madi continues, clearly thrilled to be talking to someone who wasn’t Clarke for the first time in half a decade, “She said that you’d tell me lots of stories and Raven would teach me science and how to explode stuff up…”

Not until she was at least sixteen she wouldn’t.

“We’ll do all that stuff.” he promises as they reach the water and he takes a moment to put his hands under the surface, enjoying the sensation of having cold, fresh liquid running over his skin again.

“After we get the bunker open?” Madi suggests and he nods, his heart clenching at the thought of seeing Octavia again, “That’s right.”

She takes one of the buckets from him and crouches over the running water, setting it upright when it was full and he holds out a hand to help her back up.

“Hey,” he says, catching her attention, “I just wanted to say thank-you, for looking after Clarke all these years.”

Madi shrugs, embarrassed by praise as much as any pre-teen, “Well, you’re back now, so we can look after her together.”

Bellamy grins, “Sounds like a deal.”

#bellamy blake #bellarke fanfiction #clarke griffin