Clarke continues to stare at you, tears and pain of betrayal clear in her eyes.

Your heart pounds somewhere beneath your breast as it breaks for the last time, she'll never forgive you.

You know that she understands, you pray that she does but you know that you've lost any hold you had on her heart.

You understand the pain she feels because, somehow you have always been able to feel her pain as if it were your own. The difference is, you have had many years practice of stomping it down.

Feelings are weakness.

This time they claws at your chest.

You know that when you get back to your tent, you will cry yourself to sleep while your people celebrate this victory.

You break from her eyes to watch the last of your people stumble out, it is done.

When your eyes meet hers again; they are hard in a way you haven't seen before, not from her.

It scares you, because you know you have finally ruined her.

"May we meet again." you say, and turn to walk away.

Your men nodded to you as you join them on the path, back into the woods. Back home, perhaps to Polis where you can separate yourself from this night.

It's not hiding. It's not. Your people are freed and you no longer have reason to stay.

You hear the grinding of metal as the door begins to close, and then you hear a shout.

"Clarke!"

Its one of the Sky soldiers and it nearly stops your heart.

You spin around just in time to see her slip through the door and disappear.

NO!

Before you have time to think, you are sprinting.

You can not hear your people calling after you, "Heda!"

You scrape your shoulder on the metal door as you just barely slip through before it closes.

The hall before you is empty and now you have a minute to understand what just happened.

You are inside the mountain.

You came in after Clarke.

You had not anticipated such a drastic and reckless move from her.

You expected her to regroup with those of her people who remained on the mountain, though it was few.

You expected her to make plans.

You would have had men watching, from the shadows. Keeping an eye on her, as she sought a new way to save her people.

You would have allowed yourself to smile when news of her eventual victory reached you.

And maybe you would have snuck away, to watch her celebrate with her people.

Maybe you would have sent Lincoln, perhaps with an offering of peace to show that your people would no longer consider the Sky people enemies, but merely neighbors.

You could have lived with the pain of never having her heart, buried it with everything else.

You can not live with the pain of her death. With the thought that when she is captured, she will be bled so that the murderous men of the mountain can walk on the ground.

You can not live with the idea of once again, allowing your heart to be sacrificed to your enemies.

You understand now.

So you take a deep breath as you draw your sword, and move forward.

Because Clarke is your heart and this time, protecting your heart does not mean burying it.