#huge shoutout to ‘you threaten my family I will kill you’ 100%

[soullessjack]

there’s so much love for how insanely-ruthlessly protective Cas is but the same is never given to jack when he’s the one being insanely ruthless about his family….it’s a cryin’ shame, i say

[bombshellsandbluebells]

Nomon

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The 100 (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Echo, Echo & Spacekru Summary: Echo is pregnant. Somehow, Bellamy is the last to know. Or: Echo struggles with the idea of motherhood and finds support with her new family. Set before Season 5 while Spacekru is still on the Ring. The title means "mother" in Trigedasleng. 

(Also featuring Spacekru Doctor Murphy because I said so.)

Also huge shoutout to @infernalandmortal for still being the best editor ever! Love you!

(Read on Ao3)

Echo recognizes the symptoms immediately. She’d seen them in her mother when she was young – watched her grow sick, then achy, then large with child, though Nia’s scouts had taken her from her village before she could see her sibling born. Sometimes, when Bellamy talks of Octavia, as he often does, or Emori of Otan, as she rarely does, Echo wonders what the child would have been like – a sister as fierce as Bellamy’s Octavia? A brother as soft as Emori’s Otan?  

If she had grown up with the child, if she had known it and helped her mother raise it, would she be more comfortable with children? Would that temper the overwhelming terror that threatens to devour her the very moment she realizes what’s growing inside of her?

A war would be easier, Echo thinks. A fight she could handle. Violence and bloodshed have been sown in her since she was young; it’s as simple and practiced as breathing. But what does she know of being a mother? What does she know of creating life instead of taking it?

Her stomach twists itself into tighter knots with every hour that passes since the realization.  She feels constantly sick, unsure if it’s the worry or the child. Either way, she feels adrift – shaky and unbalanced in the same way she felt when she first came to space. Her world feels rocked, tipped on its side, and thrown into chaos.

She doesn’t tell Bellamy.

It isn’t worry for his reaction, but that telling him will cement it into something certain, as if the child is only a possibility until she voices it aloud. And maybe she does worry slightly for his reaction – that he might laugh at the idea of her with a child, that he might find the concept of her as a mother as ridiculous as she does. Most of all, she fears the news will strangle this thing that’s grown between them as soon as Bellamy starts to question why he chose her to build a life and family with.

Won’t he want a better mother for his child?

So she keeps the secret buried within her, lets her stomach twist and writhe and her nerves pile up inside of her and tries to hide it from him. Bellamy notices anyways. While they lay in bed one night, he smooths a land down her back. The ends of his fingers bring goosebumps to her skin. “What’s wrong?” he asks softly.

“Nothing,” Echo lies, and, though she’s good at lying, she can’t disguise the way her body tenses at the question.

Bellamy, with his hand and eyes upon her back, notices that too. “It doesn’t seem like nothing. You’ve been upset all week.”

The truth is a terrifying thing she cannot voice, but she doesn’t want to lie to him, either. She’s lied to him enough in the past; the thought of doing it again, doing it now when he trusts her enough to share himself with her, makes her insides burn like they’re on fire.

“I’ve been thinking about my mother recently,” Echo says, because it isn’t a lie – not exactly. “Something reminded me of her a couple days ago, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking of her.”

“Oh,” Bellamy says, then falls silent. It’s clearly not the answer he was expecting. “What was she like?”

“I don’t know,” Echo answers truthfully. “I was taken to train as a spy when I was young. I hardly remember her.” Bellamy’s told her many stories of his own mother. It hurts that she can’t do the same – that all that still exists of her are a few hazy details without the frame to place them in. Did her mother look like her? Did she have her eyes? Was she kind?

“I’m sorry,” Bellamy tells her sincerely. Echo knows he knew his own mother well enough to miss her dearly when she was gone and that he still holds the weight of that loss like a shackle around his ankle. She’s not sure he’d understand the way she views her own like a stranger.

“We all lose people. I’ve made my peace with it.” She’s not quite sure if she’s lying to him again or not, but if she is, it’s a lie she’s already told herself many times. “I remember this one song she used to sing me,” she adds suddenly, the melody drifting into her mind. She sings a line softly, aware that it’s butchered in her voice.

“That’s beautiful.”

Echo rolls her eyes. “Don’t flatter me. I can’t sing.”

Bellamy laughs. “You’re right – it sounded terrible. What’s it mean?”

“Blossom of snow, may you bloom and grow,” Echo translates. “I don’t remember the other lines.”

“That’s beautiful,” Bellamy repeats. “I just used to sing Rock-a-bye Baby to Octavia. That one’s not as pretty.” At her confused look, he sings a few lines of it. He’s no singer either, but Echo thinks his rendition sounds much nicer than hers. His voice is deep and gravely; it sinks into her chest and settles near her heart. She pictures him singing this to a young Octavia – and then the image shifts, and it isn’t Octavia he’s singing to, but their child.

It’s only Azgeda’s many years of training that help her keep her emotions hidden.

“See,” Bellamy says. “Not much. Yours was a lot prettier.”

“It was nice,” she manages, and then, daring, brave, and terrified all at once, she asks, “Have you ever wanted children?”

Bellamy looks caught off guard. His eyes are wide, his eyebrows high enough that they’re half-hidden in his wild hair. He trails his fingers down her arm, draws little circles on her wrist, then trails them back up towards her shoulder as he thinks about it. “I think so,” he says finally, words coming slowly as he gathers his thoughts. “Before Octavia got locked up, I thought about it. But I couldn’t even take care of her –“

“Stop,” Echo commands. The steel in her voice makes him pause, eyes flickering up to her in surprise. “Did you not protect your sister in the Conclave?” It’s a sore subject to bring up – and one that took them years to overcome – but it’s worth the discomfort she feels at the memory to convince Bellamy he’s wrong. “And I’ve heard the stories from the others about your camp – you protected her many times there. You protected your people in Mount Weather. I watched you stop a war without violence. You can protect people, Bellamy – you do.”

It’s one of the reasons she loves him. Protection is not a foreign concept in her world – she herself had been taught to give everything of herself to protect the interests of her clan and queen – but Bellamy’s version of it is. Protection for protection’s sake – purely because people deserve to live because they’re people, not because he’s sworn his loyalty to them. He hadn’t talked down the Skaikru man with his gun on Roan just because Echo would kill him if he didn’t – he’d done it to prevent more fighting. Echo has only ever known how to help win wars – never how to prevent them.

“Not always,” Bellamy argues, voice quiet, but it’s an argument that has lost most of its weight after years of carrying it. Every year it grows lighter. Hopefully one day it will be gone completely.

Before she can answer, Bellamy changes the subject. “I always thought about having more than one kid.” And then he laughs and the bitterness in it is tangible. “Which was stupid, of course. I knew the laws, and I didn’t want to lock one of them in the floor, but – it was nice growing up with a sister. Octavia and I always had each other. I didn’t really have friends growing up, but I think O and I were probably closer than most friends are. We tell –” He pauses, swallows something like grief. “We used to tell each other everything. I wanted my kid to have that.”

She doesn’t say, I had a sibling I didn’t know. She doesn’t say, I wish I could understand what that was like. She doesn’t even say, You might get to have that soon, if you wish.

What she does say, because it feels safer, is, “You could have had that on the ground.”

Bellamy frowns. His finger picks a spot on her arm and sticks, circles there around a scar she doesn’t remember receiving. “Not really. We were always fighting and trying to survive. Bringing a kid into that didn’t seem right.” His forehead wrinkles as he thinks about it. “I like kids, though. I think I’d want one – someday.”

The secret stirs inside her, but she’s too scared to voice it, so she stuffs it down deeper and wrestles with it until she falls asleep.

It eats at her. Lying has never bothered her before, but after all the time it took to earn her family’s trust, being dishonest feels like another betrayal. She will tell them, Echo assures herself – just not now. Not until she’s ready.

But as the days pass and she stays silent, she grows more agitated. By the time a week has come and gone, she feels desperate to spill the secret cased within her body – feels desperate, at least, to share her uncertainty and fear with another person. It should be Bellamy, she knows. After nearly two years of knowing each other in ways Echo didn’t realize you could even know another person, there’s very little she’s kept from him – she has opened herself up so many times for his viewing and given him permission to dig inside of her. This should be no different. And yet it is.

She goes to Harper instead; of all of them, she trusts Harper the most to keep the matter between them – and she’s been a source of support and comfort in recent years. Echo finds herself needing that now more than ever.

“Are you sure?” Harper asks when she’s done speaking.

“Very,” she says dryly. “I’ve missed a month.”

“Oh,” Harper says, taking that in. “Why haven’t you told Bellamy yet?”

Echo opens her mouth to explain and falters. I don’t know, is the truth. I’m scared, is also the truth. She isn’t sure which answer she hates more.

Harper catches on to her uncertainty and lays a comforting hand on her arm. “Hey, it’s okay. I won’t tell him before you’re ready.”

“Thank you,” Echo says, and then she finds herself opening her mouth and adding, “I don’t know anything about babies.”

The youngest children she had ever been around had been those of warrior age, and her only role had been to train them, not to mother them. There’s something far more chilling about the idea of a baby, young and vulnerable, reliant on her for everything.

“I do. They’re not that bad,” Harper replies easily. She doesn’t sound nearly as terrified of the prospect as Echo feels, and Echo hates herself for resenting her a little bit for it. Why couldn’t it have been Harper with the child growing inside of her, if she was so prepared to handle it?

“You have experience?” Echo asks. It comes out more cutting than she means for it to. She wishes she could blame it on her changing body, but she doubts that’s the cause.

Harper nods. “My neighbor had a baby when I was like nine or ten. Her husband died a few years earlier, and she had to work, so she needed someone to watch her during the day. My mom volunteered. And then when my mom was busy, I got to be the babysitter. They’re really not that bad, I promise. Not any harder than being a spy.” She nudges Echo’s arm gently as she says it.

It’s meant to be a joke; Echo can tell from her grin that she’s trying to lighten her mood. Still, Echo wants to argue – being a spy was easy, because it was all she had ever known. Raising a child will be the most difficult thing she’s ever done.

“You don’t have to tell Bellamy until you’re ready,” Harper tells her as they head back to the others. “But you should go to Murphy for a check-up.”

“You’re pregnant?” Murphy repeats dumbly. His face filters through a series of emotions and settles somewhere between shock and uneasiness. In a way, it’s more reassuring than Harper’s confident support had been – at least Murphy is on the same page about the issue as Echo is. She doesn’t feel as inadequate next to him as she did next to Harper.

“Yes,” she confirms.

His face settles even further into uneasiness. His eyes keep flicking towards the exit, like a cornered animal trying to flee. “Why are you coming to me?”

“Because Harper suggested I get a medical check-up.”

“Oh,” Murphy says. “Right.” Even after years of serving as their healer aboard the Ring, he still always looks surprised when people treat him like one. She wonders when – or if – that will ever wear off.

They walk to Medical in silence. Out of the corner of her eye, Echo watches Murphy glance at her frequently, eyes catching often on her stomach, even though it’s hasn’t grown enough yet to be visible.

“I’m surprised Bellamy didn’t come with you,” he says finally as they enter Medical and he pulls up his tablet. “Would’ve figured I’d have to deal with his overprotective hovering.”

“I haven’t told him yet,” Echo explains. She watches Murphy pause in his actions. His eyes jump up to hers in surprise.

“Really?” He raises an eyebrow. “Relationship problems? You guys breaking up or something?”

“Hardly,” she scoffs, hoping she makes it sound like she finds that possibility far more absurd than she really believes it is. “I just haven’t decided how to tell him yet, that’s all.” Murphy stares at her for a moment as he takes that in, then he shrugs and goes back to clicking around on the tablet in his hands. “Don’t –“ she starts, suddenly nervous.

“I’m not going to tell him,” Murphy interrupts her, sounding both bored and annoyed with the conversation all at once, which she’s come to realize is a particular skill of his. “You think I want to be the one to break the news? No thanks.”

Worry stabs her insides. She takes a deep breath to steady herself – without it, she thinks she’d spill everything in a torrent of worry the moment she opens her mouth – and calmly asks, “Do you think he’d be upset?”

Murphy pauses. He looks up at her, then grows awkward as he catches her eye and looks away again. “I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Does he like kids?”

“He said he wanted them.” Echo holds tight to that conversation, uses it to steady herself and keep her footing. Bellamy will want the child – he said he did.

“Well, yeah, but,” Murphy starts, and Echo’s chest grows tight with terror at his coming words. She can hardly breathe as he says, “That doesn’t mean he wants them here. I mean, it’s already hard enough keeping the seven of us alive. A baby’s going to suck.”

Echo’s silent during the rest of the check-up, only speaking up to answer the questions that Murphy prompts her with. The air of Medical is heavy. It pushes her unrelentingly towards the ground, and it takes great effort to not let it show – to keep her spine straight and her head high.

Afterwards, as she’s about the leave, she sees Murphy eyeing her again. It isn’t just the confusion or uneasiness of before – his gaze is intense as he turns something over in his mind. it makes her pause. She’s learned to trust when he looks serious.

“What?”

His mouth twists. “We’ve got a year left, right?” Echo nods, confused by the change in subject. “How the hell are we going to take a baby in a rocket?”

It’s as if he’s laid an actual blow on her. She hadn’t even considered that.

“I know you don’t want to tell Bellamy yet for some reason, but…” He pauses, shrugs. “Maybe you should tell Raven.”

“Are you shitting me?”

Of the few people Echo’s told so far, Raven is by far the angriest. She tries not to flinch under the force of the other woman’s words.

Raven mutters a curse under her breath and runs a hand roughly over her face, dragging at the skin. “What, Bellamy couldn’t keep it in his pants for one more year?” she snaps.

Echo bristles. “It wasn’t intentional, I assure you.”

“Do you know how hard it’s going to be to get a couple-month-old baby down in a rocket safely? Like it wasn’t already hard enough.”

Echo can’t help but feel defensive. She hadn’t planned to do this, and Raven’s anger is only making her feel even more aversion for the child growing inside of her. Feeling guilty and terrified and defensive, she throws something at Raven that she knows will hurt. “I tought you didn’t even know if we could make it down in another year.”

Raven flinches. It breaks the anger, and she’s left looking upset and vulnerable. Echo doesn’t feel at all better for it.

“Sorry,” she says. “Raven, I’m sorry.”

Raven nods, accepting it, though there’s still a terrible guilt behind her eyes that never fully goes away these days. She sighs heavily and takes a seat on her bed, then pats the spot beside her. Echo takes it.

“How are you holding up?” she asks, sincerely, after releasing a deep breath.

Echo tries not to crumble. She tries to stay resolute and strong. She tries to put up her mask.

Maybe it’s that the act of telling so many people has worn her down. Maybe it’s Raven’s anger, or the guilt about complicating the rocket situation, or the all-consuming fear that she will destroy the life of the child within her and lose Bellamy in the process. Maybe it’s all of it together. Whatever it is, Echo breaks.

Outside of Bellamy, it’s always been easiest for her to be vulnerable in front of Raven. She buries her face in her hands and sobs in a way she hasn’t since Roan banished her and stripped her of everything that made her who she was. She feels just as directionless now – how does she even begin to think of herself as a mother? How does she remake herself again, when doing it the first time was the hardest thing she’s ever done?

A hand rubs at her back; she angles herself into her friend and takes comfort in her arms, in the warmth of Raven’s body beside her and the steady beat of her heart.

“Hey,” Raven says softly. “We’ll figure it out.”

“I don’t want it,” Echo gasps, her voice cracking. “I’m going to be a terrible mother.” It burns her throat coming out, but once it’s free, it crumbles the floodgates she’s built inside of her and every other fear spills out with it. “The child will hate me. Bellamy will hate me.”

“Are you going to feed the kid?”

The question is so sudden that it startles Echo out of her crying. Baffled, she turns to face Raven. “What?”

“Are you going to make sure your kid gets food?” Raven asks again.

Echo nods dumbly.

“Are you going to trade the kid’s food away for booze?” Echo shakes her head. “Are you going to ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist when you’re too tired to deal with it?” She shakes her head again. Even if she can’t help resenting it a little – for there’s no question that the thing inside of her will change the routine she’s finally settled into – she would never deny it what it needs. How could she, when doing so was her duty as its mother? Even if she doesn’t understand motherhood, she understands duty.

Raven pats her on the shoulder, then wraps her arm tightly around her. “You’re going to be a better mother than mine, then. And I turned out just fine.”

Echo collects herself. She wipes the tears from her face. “I don’t think it’s fair to compare my child to you,” she says, the humor creeping slowly back into her voice.

Raven laughs. “Damn right. I’m one of kind.”

Echo sits with Bellamy in their room the next night, sharpening her sword while he mends another shirt Murphy has managed to rip. There is little reason for her to do so, but it gives her hands something to do while her mind wanders, and it has always been a relaxing habit for her.

Nights like this are comfortable – and something Echo can only describe as soft and warm. They have grown familiar enough with each other that they don’t need to fill the space between them with words. Sometimes, Echo has found, simply existing beside each other is enough.

But on this night, she does not find the peace and comfort she normally does. Even the mindless, familiar act of tending to her weapon fails to settle her raging mind. She finds herself watching Bellamy far more than her sword and nicks herself once in her distraction.

Bellamy is soft on nights like this, as he quietly mends clothing or reads books, smoothing out the ragged, forgotten pages as he goes, speaking up occasionally to read aloud a line he finds particularly interesting or to share an anecdote from his day – or occasionally, Echo’s favorite, to tell her stories of his childhood when they come to mind.

On Earth, she had known him as a warrior with hard edges, just as she herself had been. There had always been something different about him – a kindness she had rarely experienced in the people in her life that pulled her in and captivated her – but he had still been harsh in the way the Earth demanded he be.

Space, Echo has found, softens things. It softened Bellamy until he was someone new to rediscover – a different sort of person entirely to anyone she had ever known, soft and gentle, preferring knowledge and books, and unfailingly supportive of the family he had chosen.

He would make a good father, she can’t help but think. He would be gentle and kind with a child, as supportive of them as he was with the others aboard the Ring. He would read aloud from his books and tell them stories and encourage them with kind words.

It’s easier to picture Bellamy as a father than herself as a mother. He will approach their child with the same earnest way he approaches all things: with his heart fully in it and without an ounce of hesitation. Echo doesn’t know if she can do the same. She doubts she can.

Bellamy loves fiercely and easily – perhaps too much, sometimes. Echo thinks her own heart is too hard for it. It struggles with love. Sometimes she fears she only has so much of it to give. Maybe she’s already given all of it away to the six people on the Ring.

Maybe there’s no more love left for the child.

She opens her mouth to speak, but her voice is strangled before the truth can escape. She closes it again and wraps the still-bleeding cut on her finger with a strip of fabric she rips from her shirt.

The group of them tend to take their meals together. It’s a routine Echo treasures dearly. She delights in the laughter of her friends, the antics of Murphy and Monty as they squabble over something unimportant, and the reassuring reminder that she is still offered a seat at their table. The familiarity of it is almost enough to make her ignore the thing inside her for a while and let her weary mind rest.

But this time, Monty catches her arm as she moves to leave. Echo turns to find he’s watching the others trickle out of the room, and it’s only when they’re the last two left that he says, “I have an extra portion for you in the kitchen. I figured you’d want to eat it in secret.” He frowns. “Since it’s still a secret.” There’s something odd about his tone and his expression – something like both support and disapproval all at once.

Echo freezes. “Another portion?” she asks stiffly and fights the urge to wrap her arms around her stomach, as if that would hide the truth from him. Which would be pointless, of course; he already seems to know. “Harper told you.” It’s very nearly a groan. She feels betrayed.

“Only because she was worried,” Monty rushes to assure her. “She knew you weren’t eating enough.”

Echo follows him silently into the kitchen and accepts the additional plate of algae without comment, wrestling with her emotions as she eats. That’s four people that know now. Sharing the secret has actually been a relief in many ways – she has been hungry lately, and Murphy’s instructions, pulled from the medical files that he treats as law, had demanded she eat much more than usual, but she’d been unwilling to tell Monty the reason why and had decided instead to suffer the hunger in silence.

But at the same time, every time someone knows, the child becomes a little more real, and with it, Echo becomes a little more panicked.

“I’ll sneak food to you if you’re so determined to keep it a secret,” Monty tells her as she’s finishing. In that moment, the disappointment seems to overwhelm the support. “But don’t just skip eating. You and the baby both need it.”

She thanks him and doesn’t admit that the word “baby” spoken so casually nearly makes her throw up what she just ate.

She feels even guiltier now that Monty knows. Now four people know before Bellamy does – the very person she should have gone to first.

She can’t help pulling away from him that night, keeping her back to him as she lays in their bed so she doesn’t have to see his face. It doesn’t make her guilt any easier to handle; her stomach still rages like a ferocious storm, pitching and wailing. She doesn’t speak to him that night, though he tries to start a conversation many times; she fears that when she opens her mouth a torrent of apologies will spill out, and though she knows she will have to tell him the truth soon, she wants at least to be composed when she does.

Echo knows Bellamy is wounded by her silence, but she holds it still, trying to fall asleep quickly so she can mask it as exhaustion. When he tries to pull her close, her skin crawls with shame where he touches her, so she pulls herself out of his grasp and shifts towards the edge of the bed. She doesn’t have to turn to sense Bellamy’s hurt behind her.

She tries desperately to ignore it, but it’s impossible. The tempest within her grows larger. She wonders how long it can rage before it tears her apart from within, before the shell of her snaps and shreds with the force and all of them see the truth of her – lost, cowardly, and the very furthest thing from a mother she could be, fearing and half-despising the thing within her in equal parts.

Bellamy won’t stay with her when he sees all that, she knows, and that insidious little thought is enough to spin nightmares as she sleeps.

In the morning, she feels as though she’s hardly slept at all. Her body is fraught with exhaustion, her mind worn and weary from the constant anxiety. She sits for a long time on the edge of their bed, eyeing the vacant spot beside her, trying to quell the storm inside of her before she meets the others for breakfast.

She’s sick once, before she makes it to the common area, and she can’t quite say whether it’s the sickness of pregnancy or simply nerves. As she takes a seat and gratefully accepts the plate of algae Monty hands her – despite the fact that the very smell of it turns her stomach – she notices Emori staring at her shrewdly. Echo feels, perhaps a little ridiculously, like one of the other woman’s many machines under her gaze – gutted and ripped open, all her parts exposed. The grounder-turned-mechanic has the same look of fierce concentration that she does when she works on the ship or listens to Raven’s careful instructions. Echo feels like a problem the other woman is trying to solve.

It takes her an embarrassingly long time to figure out why Emori is watching her so intensely, and she can’t help the heat that flushes her cheeks when she realizes, though she manages at least to keep her expression flat. A glance towards Murphy, who seems determined to avoid Echo’s eyes, confirms it for her. Surprisingly, she doesn’t feel anger – only bitter acceptance and an exhaustion so great it seems to pull at the very essence of her.

It was foolish to tell Murphy and not expect Emori to know soon after. Echo doubts there are any secrets kept between them; what one knows, the other will know soon enough. It very often makes her jealous; she’s never been sure if she and Bellamy could ever reach the level of easy closeness and unity that Emori and Murphy have achieved. Right now, though, it only makes the shame burn hotter, because how could she ever reach that place if she deliberately hides things from him.

And then realization falls over her as suddenly and chillingly as if she’d fallen through the ice into the frozen, winter water below. That’s everyone now.

Everyone but Bellamy.

Echo twists herself into knots all day. Her thoughts are a fragmented jumble of panic and worry, rehearsed and rejected confessions buried amongst imagined rejections. Her stomach remains in a constant state of nausea; she throws up several more times throughout the day, until little else comes up but bile.

She hides herself in her and Bellamy’s room, alternating between pacing the room like a caged wolf and laying on the bed. The day passes slowly, but eventually, it nears late evening, and Bellamy returns to the room.

“I have something to tell you,” Echo says as soon as Bellamy enters, before her fear can keep her silent.

He is clearly caught off guard by her urgency. “Oh, okay,” he says, and then his face twists. Echo can read the irritation in it. It rides the hard line of his mouth and the deep furrows of his dark eyebrows. “Does it have anything to do with why you wouldn’t talk to me last night?”

“Yes,” Echo admits quietly. She watches Bellamy wrestle with that answer, looking somehow both relieved at the truth and even more frustrated all at once. He sighs deeply and takes a seat on their bed, then looks at her expectantly.

Echo falters. She’s held onto this secret for so long that the fear attached to it has grown comfortable inside of her. How much force will it take to pull it out? “I –“ she gasps, feeling as if she can’t take in enough air to breathe. Feeling as if she’s under the ice still, freezing and drowning and trapped.

She’s horrified to feel tears on her cheeks. Her composure is gone, the years of training from Azgeda no match for her fear. Her body reacts like a mindless, panicked animal.

Bellamy, equally panicked at her sudden change, rises quickly from his seat and reaches a hand towards her. It hovers uncertainly in the air as he stares at her with wide-eyed shock. “Echo, what’s wrong? What is it?”

How does she say, I have lied to you again? I have betrayed your trust once more. I have saddled your child with a mother who cannot love fully and isn’t fit to raise it.

“I’m sorry,” she manages, and that’s all it takes for Bellamy to surge into action. He closes the distance between her and wraps her tightly within his arms. From her place of safety, Echo shudders, sobs, and breaks. The tears come faster than she expects. The sobbing steals the air from her lungs, until she’s hiccupping and gasping against him. It has been a long time since she has cried like this; it nearly feels like her body has forgotten how, tripping unsure into the motions of such strong emotions.

Through it all, Bellamy rubs a gentle hand across her back, murmuring soft words she can’t quite make out into her hair.

When it’s all spilled out of her and she feels empty and exhausted, she manages to regain control over her words. “I’m pregnant,” she says quickly, before the fear can strangle her again.

Bellamy tenses. His hand stops its gentle massaging, freezing in the middle of her back. For a minute, he forgets to breathe. “You’re pregnant?” he repeats dumbly.

“Yes,” she whispers. It seems it’s all she can say. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re –“

Echo chances a look at his face. He doesn’t seem to know how to respond, struck dumb with the news. He stares at her with wide eyes, mouth awkwardly shaping words he doesn’t seem to know how to voice. Finally, he manages to speak.

“I think I kind of helped,” he says weakly.

Echo stares at him in confusion.

“You said you’re sorry. I’m pretty sure I kind of helped make the – the baby, though.” He gives her a weak smile. His hand resumes massaging her back.

“I don’t know what to do,” she admits, disgusted with the way her voice cracks in the middle. “I don’t know anything about children, Bellamy.”

“Well, luckily, I have some experience.”

She turns to stare at the wall, unable to keep looking at him, but he cups her cheek and gently turns her face towards his. His gaze is warm. She doesn’t feel she deserves it. “You deserve someone better to start a family with.”

His other hand comes up to mirror the first on her other cheek. “No, I chose you because I love you. Because you’re loyal and determined and incredible. And our child –“ He falters at those words. And then he smiles, wide and full of joy, his eyes crinkling with it. “Echo,” he gasps, voice reverent. “We’re having a baby. We’re going to have a family.”

“You want that?” she can’t help but asking, staring intently at his face, checking for signs of dishonesty. She can’t find any.

“So much.” His words are as happy as his grin. Her heart flutters wildly. For the very first time, she doesn’t feel sick at the knowledge of the child inside of her.

“With me?” she nearly whispers.

Bellamy stares at her. He brushes at the tear tracks on her cheeks. The ice is melting underneath his gaze; she feels finally like she can pull herself free of the water and breath again.

“So, so much,” Bellamy says.

Echo feels warm.

When it happens, all Echo knows is pain and Bellamy’s voice, panicked as he yells at Murphy, gentle and filled with love as he squeezes her hand and tells her she’ll be fine. There’s chaos – her, in pain and screaming curses in Trigadasleng while Raven tries to tie her hair back, Murphy, in a state of panic like she’s never seen him as he forgets everything he’s ever read in the face of an actual birth, and Bellamy, shoving him aside and taking over.

The others hover around the edges of the room, and though Echo can hardly focus on them at all, she appreciates their presence.

After the baby comes and she hears its cries, she only has a brief moment of relief before the pain returns. With it comes more chaos, more panic, and more screaming, the room sent into a flurry of frenzied activity.

And then comes a new cry. A second baby, following just shortly after the first.

Siblings.

She loses track of time for a moment, and comes to when Harper places a bundle gently in her arms, smiling proudly down at her. “It’s a boy. Bellamy has the girl.”

A boy and a girl, Echo thinks. A brother and a sister.

The others leave the room. Only their small family of four remains. Bellamy has a stupid grin on his face. Giddiness bursts out of him as he stares down at the little girl that already looks so much like him. Echo hopes they both continue growing to resemble their father. She wants desperately to see them keep those dark curls. She wants them to have their father’s eyes, loving and kind.

“They’re beautiful,” Echo says. Her voice is still hoarse from the earlier pain. Exhaustion pulls her body to the bed; she wants to stay awake forever and watch the man she loves hold their children, but her body wants sleep.

“They are. Siblings. Echo, they’re siblings. There’s two of them,” Bellamy says, his sentences stumbling over each other in his excitement. His eyes turn on her, and Echo finds herself on the other end of his overwhelming love and joy, and, suddenly, she realizes that perhaps she can love as much as Bellamy can – because her love for him is more powerful and overwhelming a force than anything she has ever known before.

“What should we name them?” she asks, voice nearly a whisper.

Bellamy looks back down at their girl – their girl, Echo thinks wildly. They have a daughter. And she has a younger brother. Their son.

“Diana, for the girl,” Bellamy answers softly. “Apollo for the boy.” He has a familiar grin buried in the corners of his mouth, and Echo cannot help but roll her eyes with fond exasperation.

“What book are those from?” she asks.

Bellamy turns slightly pink, though his darker skin hides most of it. “Roman mythology,” he admits, looking sheepish. “They’re twins. Am I that predictable?”

“You are,” Echo says. She can’t contain her grin; it overcomes her entire face.

What had the child been like, she wonders suddenly, her brother or her sister? Had her sibling wished they’d known her, like she often wishes? How would it have changed her to grow beside them? Had her mother mourned her when Nia’s scouts stole her away? How would she feel if she watched the same happen to this little girl or this little boy with Bellamy’s eyes and curls?

She thinks it might ruin her. She thinks maybe they already have ruined her, because their entry into this world has snatched away any picture Echo could imagine of a life without them.

She has been remade twice now, and that cannot be undone.

But she thinks herself better for it.