Disclaimer: I don't own The 100.
Warnings: Torture, bad touching, angst.
Lexa glares into the eyes of the soldier, but it is Cage Wallace, the foul king under the mountain, to whom she speaks. His voice crackles from the radio in the soldier's hands, his tongue seeming to curl around each word.
"Your people will be free. All of them, from now until forever. We will never pursue you again."
He has already spoken the terms once. Lexa has demanded that he repeat them so there can be no misunderstanding. This deal, if she accepts it, will bring peace between her people and the Mountain Men. And all she must do in exchange is forfeit her honor and her hope for future happiness.
She has no choice. She is the Commander, the Heda, and she must protect her people. "I accept."
The soldier smirks unpleasantly.
"Excellent," Wallace purrs.
"Once I sound the retreat, it is over," Lexa says. "You will release my people at once."
"Agreed. And then you will do one more thing for me."
Lexa's grip on her sword tightens. "Our deal has already been struck."
"I'm afraid there's no deal without this final condition. Once your people have been released, you will give me Clarke Griffin."
A bullet to the heart would hurt less. "No," she breathes, but it is a plea rather than a denial.
"She's been the thorn in my side since her arrival. She's proven herself a threat, even without you at her side. I also have it on good authority that without her any alliance between you savages and the people from the Ark will be severed. I can't allow her to remain free. As a sign of good faith, you will give her to me."
Lexa wants to say something foolish, like take me instead. She bites down on the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood. "There is nothing I can offer you instead? Rations for the winter, or my people's assistance constructing above-ground homes once you leave the mountain?"
Wallace laughs, a cold, cruel sound. "There is nothing you could give me that could match the pleasure I will feel stripping the marrow from Clarke Griffin's bones."
Lexa's eyes close. No tears fall.
Clarke has known betrayal before this moment. When she believed Wells had gotten her father floated; when Jaha and Kane, her father's friends, had participated in his death; when she had learned for a fact that her mother had been the one to turn her father in. Yes, she has known betrayal.
Still, Lexa's actions shock her. Watching the Grounders, pale and emaciated, stagger out of the mountain, Clarke feels the way she did when her father was sucked out of that airlock, as if she, too, has been deprived of all oxygen.
Lexa orders her men to drag Lincoln away. The Grounders melt into the forest, the army vanishing into the trees and taking Clarke's last hope with it.
We could have won, Clarke thinks, disbelief rendering even her thoughts numb. We would have won.
"Why are you still here?" she asks when it is just the three of them, her, Lexa, and Emerson, remaining. She stares at Lexa and sees only a stranger. The Commander. Not the girl Clarke had shared pieces of herself with; not the girl she'd kissed.
"Clarke..." Lexa whispers before tearing her eyes away from Clarke and giving Emerson a nod.
It's only then that Clarke realizes the betrayal isn't over, as Emerson levels his weapon at her, as he tosses her a zip tie and tells her to put it around her own wrists.
Shuddering, Clarke obeys. The plastic is cold against her skin. "We could have achieved something great," she tells Lexa. "We could have made what happened at Tondc mean something."
Lexa gazes back in silence, the kohl under her eyes making her look older than she is and far wearier than any person ought to be. She does not say, May we meet again. They both know they never will.
Clarke lifts her chin, squares her shoulders, and glares at Emerson. "Let's get on with it."
Without any prodding, she walks through the door they worked so hard to open and does not look back.
The room they take Clarke to is a slaughterhouse. Fox is bound to a table, screaming as a drill bites into her bones. Most of the remaining 100 are tied to the walls like so many cattle, though Bellamy, Jasper, and Monty are nowhere to be seen. To her dismay, Raven and Wick are tied with the others, looking the worse for wear. Raven gives her a questioning look and sags in despair when Clarke shakes her head minutely.
Cage Wallace is overseeing the doctors' grim work, his eyes gleaming, but as soon as the soldiers march Clarke inside a grin spreads across his face and he barks, "Halt!"
The drill cuts off, and in the sudden silence the only sounds are Fox's sobs.
Cage ambles across the room to Clarke and reaches up to twine a lock of her hair around his finger in a parody of affection. "Well, well. Clarke Griffin. How nice to finally meet you."
"I wish I could say the same." She shoots him her most contemptuous sneer. "You know, I actually liked your father. I'm amazed he created a son as cowardly and deranged as you."
Cage's expression doesn't change as he backhands her across the face. Her head snaps to the side, her cheek stinging though the blow barely fazes her. Anya taught her to take a punch. She grins fiercely as she licks blood from her split lip. "Thank you for proving my point."
"I think we know who's next for harvesting, once we're done with Fox," Cage says. "I'm going to enjoy hearing you scream."
Clarke laughs in his face. "You're an idiot, Cage. There's, what, 45 of us here? Hardly enough to treat every one of your people. But sure. Go ahead and kill us even though bone marrow grows back. Use up a limited resource you desperately need."
Cage tilts his head. "Are you volunteering for repeat treatments?"
"I'm saying you're a fool not to insist on them."
An incredulous smile plays across his lips. "Why are you saying this? You must know we'll kill you as soon as you're no longer useful to us. More extraction just means more pain."
"I'm saying this because the longer I stay alive, the more likely it is I'll find some way to kill you," Clarke said honestly. "I'm also saying it because the fact that our marrow replenishes means you don't need all of us. You can let some of my people go. Let's say half, just to make it fair."
Cage blinks. "What possible incentive would I have to agree to that?"
Yes, Clarke, what possible incentive does he have?
Before she can try to make up a convincing reason, the door opens and a soldier hands Cage a radio. The radio crackles. "How's this for incentive?" an oh so familiar voice asks, making her heart soar. "Agree to Clarke's terms, Cage, or I kill your father."
Clarke sags with relief. "Bellamy."
"You're bluffing," Cage says, but there's a tremor in his voice that says he knows otherwise.
"You've been drilling holes in my people, and you think I'm bluffing? Pal, you don't know me."
"Do as he says, son." That's Dante Wallace's voice. "Clarke's right. If we're patient, we don't need them all. Why get more blood on your hands than you have to?"
Cage taps his lips with his finger, silent for a long moment as he thinks. Finally he heaves a put-upon sigh and nods. "Fine. Name your half that get to go free."
Clarke looks at the tortured girl on the table and the name "Fox" slips past her lips without conscious thought. Looking around the room, other names come easily to her. The few whose parents made it to Earth, including Miller. The youngest kids. The weakest kids. Clarke doesn't name Raven or Wick because she knows Cage would never agree to let them go. Her own freedom, of course, was never on the table.
In the end, she names 23 names and Cage reluctantly nods his assent. The soldiers let them down and push them out of the room. It's less than half an hour later that the radio crackles again and Bellamy tells her, his voice breaking, "We're out, Clarke. We made it. Jasper, Monty and Olivia are with me too." His tone turns urgent. "You've got to survive, okay? I'll be back for you, I swear—"
Cage turns off the radio with a twist of his wrist, cutting Bellamy off mid-sentence.
Only now, knowing some of her people are safe, does Clarke feel the creeping dread of terror at the thought of what awaits her. To free those 23, she has condemned herself and the others to a slow, agonizing death.
She swallows, moistening her suddenly dry throat. "There's one more thing I want to ask of you," she says. "I don't think you'll have a problem with it."
Cage raises his eyebrows. "I'm listening."
"Use me the most. Any time it's a choice between harvesting from me or someone else, take me."
His voice is almost gentle when he replies, "Of course, Clarke."
Lexa and her people massacre a small group of Mountain Men who were sent to capture Abby, Kane, and the other survivors of Tondc. It's an emotional decision rather than a practical one, but it isn't particularly reckless, either. Cage Wallace will never know what happened to his people; none of them survive long enough to radio for help. This is the least Lexa can do for Clarke.
Then Lexa finds herself face to face with Clarke's mother and realizes her paltry efforts to pay for the damage she has caused can never be enough.
"What are you doing here, Commander?" Abby asks, confused. "Where are the others?"
The words try to dry up in Lexa's throat, but she forces them out anyway. She is the leader of her people and she did what she had to do. She cannot allow emotion to make her weak. "I'm sorry, Abby. My people have made a deal with the Mountain Men. We could not help with the attack."
Abby stares back in dumb confusion for long seconds. "You broke your agreement with Clarke?" She could not have sounded more incredulous if she said, Indra wore a tutu and pranced around Camp Jaha singing love ballads? Abby's eyes narrow. "The agreement she killed Finn to protect? The agreement you both allowed Tondc to be bombed for?"
To these questions, Lexa has no answers, none she can speak. She is sure her expression is answer enough.
"Lexa," Abby says, her voice darkening in a way that makes Lexa think of Clarke, "where is my daughter?"
Betrayed, Lexa thinks. Dead, maybe. "Under the mountain. Where I left her."
Abby's hand goes for her gun; five Grounder spears are leveled at her instantly. "She trusted you," the older woman hisses with venom.
It is a struggle not to flinch. "Yes. As she once trusted you."
Kane sets his hand on Abby's shoulder to prevent her from doing something foolish, but there is no understanding or acceptance in his eyes as he looks at Lexa. "I think it's best if you and your people move on, Commander. We will rescue our people without your help."
"Yes," Abby says. She turns blindly toward Mount Weather.
Lexa makes a slashing gesture with her hand and three of her men step forward to stop her. "You will not. That would be a suicide mission, and I will not allow any more of Clarke's people to die for this war."
Abby pushes against one of the warriors, unable to budge him. "You have no say in the matter!"
"I have the superior force here, Abby, which means that I do. We will escort you safely back to your camp. After that, my people will leave yours in peace."
"And what of the Reapers?" Kane says. "What will you do with them now?"
"We accepted their loss once before," Lexa says stiffly. "We will do so again."
Abby looks up sharply, her dirty face streaked with tears. "No," she says, firm despite her grief. "You're going to let us help them. In exchange your people will help us get through the winter."
Lexa can't hide her astonishment. "You would come to our aid, despite everything?"
"The alliance Clarke built with you wasn't just about getting through the war. It was about long-term survival. She wouldn't want to let everything crumble just because she wasn't here to see it through."
Abby is steadier than Lexa expected, unbowed by her grief. This is a woman who condemned her own husband to die, Lexa remembers, whose actions caused her own daughter to be imprisoned and later sent to Earth, an almost certain death sentence. Lexa's betrayal of Clarke, terrible though it is, is still less than Abby's. And Abby knows it.
Lexa cannot trust Abby, not the way she had begun to trust Clarke. Still, she believes the woman to be sincere. "Very well," she agrees. "If the Sky People will honor our original agreement, so will the Trigedakru."
The walk from Mount Weather to Camp Jaha takes ten hours instead of eight, mostly because they have to carry Fox. Bellamy's grip on the makeshift litter tightens as he thinks of all those they are leaving behind, of Raven and Wick, Kendra and Alex and Dayna.
"We'll think of something," Monty tells him, reading his mind. "We'll find a way to get the rest of them out."
Bellamy shakes his head. "You don't know what we had to do—" what she had to do "—to get as far as we did."
"More than you know," Octavia mutters.
"Excuse me?"
She glares at him defiantly, half angry and half in shock. His little sister has been going native for a long time, but in the days since he last saw her the transition has been completed.
"Clarke let a missile fall on Tondc without warning anyone," Octavia says.
Bellamy staggers in surprise and almost loses his grip on the litter. "No. She went to warn everyone—to warn you."
"Lexa convinced her the only way to protect your cover was to allow the missile to land."
He could have lost Octavia, too, Bellamy thinks. He could have lost her for an alliance that fell apart the moment someone breathed on it wrong.
If Clarke were standing in front of him right now, he'd be furious with her. He would rant and rave, maybe even tell her they were through. How dare she. How dare she.
But she's not here. She's being abused and tortured, worse than what they did to Fox, and he will never see her again.
"I'm sorry your life was in danger," Bellamy says softly. "Whatever Clarke did, though—you know she did it for the right reason."
Octavia scowls and kicks a rock in her path. "It would be easier if I could hate her."
Bellamy can't help but smile at that. "I've been trying to do that for months."
They step out of the woods and in sight of Camp Jaha and stumble to a halt. Camped in front of the gates is a large portion of Lexa's army. Bellamy's lips draw back from his teeth in a snarl and he carefully lowers the litter before drawing his gun. "Stay here," he tells the others, creeping forward.
Everyone but Octavia obeys. He shoots her a look and she glares back. "No one knows more about the Grounders than I do," she points out. He can't disagree.
From what he can tell as they creep closer, the Grounders aren't threatening to attack the camp as he'd first feared. They've built a large campfire and set up tents. The Grounder warriors wear their armor, but Bellamy's never seen them without it so that doesn't mean much.
"Lincoln," Octavia breathes.
Bellamy follows her gaze. The Grounder is tied to a tree at the edge of the camp, his face bruised and one eye swollen over.
"We have to help him," she says, leaning forward as if to take the entire Grounder camp on herself.
Bellamy grabs her by the arm. "Wait. We can't just go charging in. We have to figure out what they're doing here."
Before she can snarl at him for that, the gates open and Abby and Kane walk out with a contingent of guards. Lexa ducks out of a nearby tent, going to meet them, and the sight of her is enough to make Bellamy do what he just stopped Octavia from doing. He leaps out from behind the cover and storms through camp, past Grounders who look at him and then continue on their way, and the punch he tries to throw at Lexa would land except that Indra kicks him in the gut before he gets within arm's reach.
"How could you!" he shouts, straining against too many hands that are suddenly holding him back. "We trusted you! We bled for you!"
Lexa's blank expression just fuels his rage, makes him long to dig his thumbs into her eyes and tear off her skull.
"Bellamy," Abby says, but he doesn't listen. He doesn't understand how she can be standing there, talking to her daughter's betrayer.
"Is she dead, then?" Lexa asks, her tone flat.
"Worse." He gives a sharp whistle.
The others stagger out of the woods, pale and drawn and damaged.
"You got them out?" Kane says, watching as Abby and the guardsmen run toward the kids. "How?"
"Clarke got half of them out," Bellamy says. "In exchange, she and the rest will be harvested againand again and again."
Now Lexa does look stricken, which fills him with vicious satisfaction. She doesn't change her stance, though, doesn't volunteer to turn her army back around and do what she'd promised. Not that they have a way in, anyway. Mount Weather has been sealed again, and this time there's no inside man and no way to get one inside.
Kane looks away for a long moment, swallows heavily. Bellamy remembers Clarke telling him once that she grew up as the beloved niece to all of the councilors, though after the first week or so on the ground she hadn't shown many signs of her privileged youth. There's a reason the 100 have always jokingly called her "Princess."
"We have to re-learn how to work with the Grounders," Kane says. "We've agreed to keep the alliance in place."
Bellamy wants to argue that there is no alliance, but he can't. He knows how important the Grounders' help will be in the cold months to come. That doesn't mean he has to like it.
"I'll never make the mistake of trusting you again," he promises Lexa.
She inclines her head ever so slightly. "Clarke had a great deal of faith in you, Bellamy kom Skaikru. I hope we can learn to work together. As a good faith gesture, I give you Lincoln."
Clarke thinks that if none of her people were trapped in Mount Weather with her, she would actually be able to find peace in the hell that becomes her life for the next ten months.
They keep her in the same sterile, white decontamination room she found herself in the first time she awoke in the mountain. For the first month or so Cage orders that she be tied down, for fear she will take her own life. He lets up when the doctors report that restraining her is impeding her recovery and increasing the necessary time between harvesting sessions.
Clarke spent an entire year in solitary confinement, so being a prisoner now isn't so bad. She went through bouts of near madness in her cell aboard the Ark, tortured by her solitude and the memories of her father's death, but eventually she learned how to be alone. This little white cell is just more of the same, though she does wish she had some way to distract herself from thoughts of what might be happening to those she loves.
The harvesting sessions are...bad. They happen every three or four weeks and each one leaves her weaker. The don't give her long enough between sessions to really recover, but that's okay, because every time they harvest from her they aren't taking from one of the others. The doctors tell her three hundred treatments should be enough for every person in the mountain. Clarke will bear as many of them as she can.
In the third month, Dante Wallace becomes a regular visitor to Clarke's cell. He arrives with art supplies and a kind smile that fades when he takes in her bandaged limbs and wan complexion.
She struggles to a sitting position and doesn't object when he helps her. She's sure he brought a guard with him, but he came in alone. He knows she's too weak to attack.
She takes the pad of papers and lays it in her lap. Her fingers are clumsy as a child's as they curl around a silver piece of chalk. She trembles with frustration more than weakness as she drags the chalk across the paper.
Dante sits at her side and watches with eyes as dark as hers.
This is how she comes to know when Cage will send the doctors for her. When her drawings are pathetic and crude, they leave her alone. Once they begin to become more sophisticated—once she can sketch the shadows of the Ark, the kohl under Lexa's eyes—they take her. Down the hall, to a chamber once reserved for transforming men into Reapers. There they strap her down and the drilling begins.
She screams, every time. She no longer thinks it a weakness.
Dante breaks his silence in the sixth month. "Carter died yesterday," he says, rubbing his eyes with arthritic hands. "There were complications with his last session."
She turns her face away but does not weep. She breathes raggedly, in and out, then turns back to him and says, "Your son will take someone else to make up for Carter's lost session. Tell him to take me."
Dante shakes his head. "It's too soon for you."
She grabs his arm. "Tell him," she insists.
His lips purse. Finally, reluctantly, he nods. "We bear their pain so they won't have to," he says.
They take her the next day.
The winter is long and hard, but with the Grounders' help the Sky People survive and flourish. They expand their walls and build a village within, real huts with wooden walls and stone fireplaces. Lincoln and Octavia share a hut; Abby and Kane do the same. Bellamy lives alone.
Kane makes him second in command of the Guard. The decision is less in recognition of his skills than in recognition of the fact that, with Clarke gone, Bellamy is the one the remaining 100—and more than a few adults—look up to. Bellamy takes watch duty as often as he can, prowling the wall with his rifle in his hands and scowling into the darkness. If he expects to see the glint of golden hair, he is perpetually disappointed.
After a while, though, he does see a different girl. Lexa looks different without her face paint; smaller, somehow. On the other side of the fence, every night when she is camped near Camp Jaha, she matches his paces.
"Don't you have somewhere better to be?" he calls out one night.
Her stride doesn't falter. "I am where I need to be."
He shakes his head, though he knows she can't see it. "She wouldn't forgive you, you know," he points out.
"Clarke and I understood each other very well," she says. "I know exactly what she must think of me."
Most nights, Lexa is away, in Polis or visiting the clans or whatever it is the Grounder Commander does to keep her people in line. She comes back to Camp Jaha regularly, though, the way the Ark always found its way back above North America.
Their silence as they pace the wall together at night is not comfortable, but over time it becomes almost companionable. Some of their demons are the same.
Then, one night, when she arrives at the fence she speaks his name. He peers out at her through the gloom, finds her face twisted in an expression that may be concern.
"A village near the mountain has detained a young woman," Lexa says. "They believe she is one of the Mountain Men. I have given orders for her to be brought here, unharmed."
He tries not to think about who must have suffered for that young woman to walk on the surface. "Why tell me? Why not Abby or Kane?"
She shrugs. "For them, I maintain the alliance because my honor demands it. For you, I do it because I wish to."
The young woman arrives the next day and it's Maya, looking less sickly than Bellamy has ever seen her. He watches as Jasper, sobbing, pulls her into a tight embrace, and she clutches him just as tightly. The others from the 100 greet her warmly, as if she is one of them. She comes to Bellamy last, and though he is pleased to see her he can tell by the way she avoids his eyes that she carries no good news.
Often, in the first day or two after a session, when Clarke is too weak even to move, Cage Wallace comes to see her. He smirks at the IV attached to her arm and allows his eyes to crawl over her thinning body before his hand follows suit. The touch is barely sexual; he never removes her clothing. It is all about ownership, his way of proving that no part of her is off-limits to him.
It is almost laughable how much he hates her. He won, after all, a decisive and almost bloodless victory on his side. It takes her a long time to understand that his hatred does not stem from the ultimately paltry resistance the 100 put up at Clarke's behest. No, it has a much simpler root.
Dante is utterly disgusted by Cage, beyond the point of forgiveness. Rather than admit that his father may be right, Cage chooses to blame Clarke.
In the seventh month, Dante enters the room to find Cage standing over Clarke. One of Cage's hands is on her breast. The other covers her nose and mouth, making it impossible to breathe. He likes depriving her of air, enjoys the whimpers she can't contain.
"Take your hands off of her." Dante's voice is low and angry. If it were a knife it would slice Cage to ribbons.
Cage jerks away from her like an Ark child caught wasting power.
"How you could be my son, I'll never know," Dante bites out. "Leave, now, and never return to this room."
Cage, for all his treachery, lacks a backbone. He slinks out like a kicked dog.
Dante waits until the door closes before looking at Clarke. For a long time he has no words. A single tear has charted its path across her cheek.
"Clarke...I'm so sorry. I wish—I wish there were some way I could make this up to you."
It hurts to speak, but Clarke does it anyway. "There is."
Dante collapses into his usual seat beside her cot. "I can't stop the treatments, Clarke. If I tried, they would lock me away again and they would be rougher with you. Too many of my people have tasted fresh air that doesn't burn."
Clarke blinks to moisten her eyes; it seems to take a long time for her lids to fall and rise again. "Someday your people won't need more treatments," she says slowly and carefully. "When that day comes, Cage plans to kill us. The others and me." It isn't a question. She struggles to lift her head, to force him to look her in the eye. "Don't let him. Save the others, even if you can't save me."
Dante rubs his forehead tiredly. "Any of your people we release are just going to turn around and assault us later, Clarke. Once we can freely access the ground, there will be war again. You know there will. It would be foolhardy to provide your side with more soldiers."
War. No. She can't believe it, won't believe that her sacrifice has just postponed some inevitable doomsday scenario.
"There doesn't have to be war." She hates the frailty of her body, hates that she's lying down for this conversation. "We can have peace. Peace between the Mountain Men, the Grounders, and the Sky People."
He heaves a sigh. "I'd like to believe that."
"Believe it. No one believed the Grounders and the Sky People could have an alliance, but I made that happen."
"At what cost? And with what outcome?"
She flinches away from those questions. "That's not the point. The point is that my people will listen to me. If I tell them not to take revenge, they'll listen."
Dante stands and runs a hand through his white hair. "I trust that you are a good person, Clarke. I just can't trust that you wouldn't turn around and seek vengeance against the people who did this to you. I know I would."
She waits until he reaches the door to say, "I could have irradiated the entire mountain."
He freezes with his back to her.
"I could have secured our alliance with the Grounders forever. All we had to do was take out your backup generator before we took down the dam turbines and the entire mountain would have been flooded with radiation. I could have slaughtered your people without losing a single one of my own. I chose not to because lives matter to me. Peace matters to me."
He doesn't speak for a long time. Then he looks over his shoulder at her and says, "I truly believe that in another life you and I could have been good friends."
If there were a way into Mount Weather, Maya would know it. The fact that the Mountain Men let her go just proves that the mountain is impregnable.
"Did you see the others?" Octavia asks as Maya and the rest of the 100 sit around a campfire the night of Maya's arrival.
Maya bobs her head. "Cage let me help look after them, after—after they were harvested. Raven, Wick, and the others."
"Clarke?" Bellamy says.
"No. She was off-limits."
He clenches his jaw.
"How were they holding up?" Jasper asks. He sits as close to Maya as humanly possible, thigh to thigh.
Maya hesitates. "The sessions are hard on them, but they're surviving, for the most part. The doctors are careful to give them enough time to recuperate, though I hear Clarke gets less time between sessions." She bites her lip. "Carter is dead."
Bellamy pushes to his feet and stalks away from the fire. He passes through the gate, unchallenged, and storms to Lexa's tent. A Grounder blocks his path.
"I need to talk to her," Bellamy snaps.
The Grounder doesn't budge until Lexa's voice floats out of the tent. "Let him pass."
The Grounder moves and Bellamy enters. This is the first time he's seen Lexa without her armor and he's surprised to realize how small she is. Smaller even than Clarke, maybe. She gazes at him with that cool impassivity he hates, and so he strides across her tent and captures her lips in a fierce kiss.
She shoves him away, pushes him until his back hits a table, her knife at his throat.
"You have no right," she growls, as if he's taken something from her. "She was my last kiss."
And that knocks the wind out of his sails, the thought that Clarke has kissed this woman, this Judas, but not him. He sags against the table, half-expecting her to plunge the knife into his throat. Instead, Lexa flings it to the side and drags him down into another bruising kiss, all tongue and teeth.
"I love her," Lexa says later, lying beside him on a pile of furs.
He laughs to keep himself from crying. "So do I."
The Sky People will never know how difficult it has been for Lexa to maintain the alliance over the past nine months. The first month was easy, as Abby and the doctors under her nursed the Reapers back to help, returning their identities, their sanity. After that, though, there were many who saw the Sky People as ripe for the taking. How long, they asked, until the Sky People turned on them, until they grew strong enough to be a real threat? Better to annihilate them now, while they were still finding their feet.
When she is not encamped near Camp Jaha, Lexa travels from clan to clan, reinforcing her rule by whatever means necessary. For some clans, all they need are her words to bring them in line. For others, she must make an example of those who speak out against her.
She goes to war against one clan, and the war's only battle is short and savage and leaves the field soaked in blood. In the end, they yield.
Clarke's name is on Lexa's tongue when she kills. In her tent, with Bellamy, it is on her tongue when she comes.
Clarke knows the treatments are close to being done when Dante joins her in her cell, where she's almost completed a sketch of Bellamy, and says, "Describe to me what peace would entail."
She nearly sobs with relief. She sets her chalk on the table and takes deep, steadying breaths.
"We need to learn how to help each other survive," she says, her voice rougher than she intends it to be. "All of us—the Grounders, the Mountain Men, and the Sky People. Your people are going to need help adjusting to living above ground. The Grounders won't honor their deal with you once you leave the mountain and enter their territory, not unless you can negotiate a new deal with their Commander. If your people and mine to go war, they'll wipe each other out—and for what purpose?"
"What's the alternative?"
"I can broker peace. The Commander listens to me. She respects me. My people followed me into war—they'll follow me into peace. I've made sacrifices for the Sky People, the Grounders, and the Mountain Men. I can be the one who holds it all together. There's enough ground for all of us, Dante, if we can just learn to stop killing each other."
Dante purses his lips. "How do I know I can trust you?"
She looks down at the bandages on her legs. "I bear this so they won't have to. Trust that I will bear whatever it takes to keep my people safe, even if it means forgiving everything your people have done to us."
He nods slowly.
"But, Dante—I won't broker peace with Cage." Her voice is like steel. "I won't demand his life, but I won't treat with him as a leader either. If there's to be a peace accord, it will between you, me, and the Commander."
To her surprise, a smile creases his worn face. "I had a feeling you'd say that. To be completely honest with you, I'm looking forward to my son experiencing a coup from the other side this time."
The last marrow extraction session, of course, is Clarke's. Cage oversees it, a sick little smile on his face, and she knows this might be the end. The procedure lasts long past the point where the other procedures stopped, past the safe levels, past the levels a healthy person should recover from with relative ease.
Before they can take her past the point of no return, the doors burst open and armed soldiers pour inside. Cage and his men are quickly secured before Dante steps inside, looking every inch the Mountain Men's president.
"Clarke Griffin," he says, "you and your people have done my people a great service. As of this moment, you are free. I look forward to developing a peace treaty with you and the Grounders."
He gestures and two of his men hurry forward, carefully untying her hands and feet.
"If you wish, we will return you to your people immediately," Dante goes on. "It might be wiser, however, for you to give yourself some time to recover before you make the journey."
Because it will be that much harder for your people to agree to a truce if they see the state you're in now, goes unsaid.
Clarke nods, which just about makes her pass out. "I want to see my friends," she whispers.
Dante smiles. "That can be arranged."
"What are you doing with Lexa?" Octavia asks one day.
Bellamy doesn't pause in the act of tying his shoelaces. "What are you talking about?"
"Don't think I haven't noticed you sneaking over there. Are you sleeping with the Heda?"
He doesn't think that's the right way to describe what he and Lexa are doing. Their encounters have little to do with affection for each other—though there might be traces of that, buried deep down—and everything to do with a desperate need that drives them both.
"How goes your training sessions with the rest of the 100?" he asks, because he has no intention of discussing his sex life with his little sister.
Octavia rolls her eyes. "They're all getting better. Most couldn't beat a Grounder in a fight, but we'll get there. Now stop avoiding my question."
He stares at the oddly patterned fur draped across his hard wooden bed. "Do you think she regrets what she did?"
She mulls that over. "I know Indra better than I know Lexa, but I don't think it's in the Commander to regret her actions. I think she regrets the consequences."
"I think I might go with the ambassadorial team to the sea," Bellamy says. "Kane says they could use someone like me, to lead them."
Octavia's eyebrows draw together. "What about us? The 100? You can't just leave, Bell."
"I'm tired, O. Tired of being in charge. Tired of trying to be Clarke." He laughs humorlessly. "I never knew that just being her could be so exhausting." He picks at a loose thread on his pants. "I need a little time, that's all."
"If you need time, take it. Just make sure you can find your way back to us."
Before he can reply, there's a commotion outside. In a split second, the Blakes are armed and on their way to the gates. A small crowd has gathered, but it parts for Bellamy and his sister. "What's going on?" he asks Monty.
Monty shakes his head. "The Grounders are up in arms over something."
Whatever's happening, it doesn't appear to be an attack on Camp Jaha, so Bellamy motions for the guards to open the gates. He steps out, Octavia and Lincoln at his side. The Grounder's camp is a warren of activity, with warriors hurrying in every direction. Bellamy's feet take him to the center of camp, where he knows Lexa will be.
He finds her in her armor, with kohl painted under her eyes.
"Bellamy, good," she says shortly, nodding at him. "My scouts have reported movement out of Mount Weather. They march under a white flag of truce. We are going to meet them."
"I'm coming with," he says.
She shoots him a look. "Of course you are."
In the end, Bellamy, Kane, Octavia, Lincoln, and Miller's dad travel along with Lexa's group. It takes them most of a day's walk to reach Mount Weather's party, mostly because the Mountain Men are proceeding at an agonizingly slow pace. The reason for their delay is obvious at a glance: sitting above the rest of the group like a queen of old, riding a chair carried by four Mountain Men, is Clarke.
It takes everything Clarke has not to burst into tears when she sees Bellamy, Octavia, Kane, and the others. She expects to feel anger at the sight of Lexa, but the emotion won't come. Instead she is relieved, relieved to find the Grounders and the Sky People together. In all the months that have passed in her absence, they've been able to maintain a relationship. That means this plan might just work.
She's being carried on a chair because she won't be able to walk for at least a week and she refused to be carried on a litter like an invalid even though she is one. Raven and Wick walk alongside her, with the rest of her people trailing behind. She did cry when she saw them, pale and pained but alive and strong, strong in a way that even the Grounders can't understand.
"Lower me down," she tells the men carrying her, men who have had her DNA sewn into their bodies.
Carefully, they set her chair on the ground. Raven sets her hand on Clarke's shoulder as Lexa and the Sky People inch forward, their eyes wide with disbelief at the sight of Clarke and the others alive, if not well.
Clarke musters a tired smile for Bellamy. "What, no hug?"
That breaks him out of his trance. He stumbles forward until he's close enough to touch, his hands hovering over her body as if afraid any contact will reveal her to be a mirage. Finally he presses his forehead against hers, his hands sliding down her shoulders to interlock with her own. He's saying something, fast and low, and it takes her a moment to catch the words.
"You're alive, you're alive, you made it out, I'm sorry…"
She wraps her hand around the back of his neck, then, and kisses him, sealing away his words with her lips. It's a brief kiss and less passionate than she'd like, but she doesn't have the energy for more. It's enough; when she pulls back there's a baffled look in his eyes.
Lexa eases forward then, drawing Clarke's attention. The Commander's face is like stone, but her eyes dart nervously when Clarke looks at her.
"Clarke," Lexa says softly. "I am…glad…to see you."
Clarke can imagine the words Lexa expects her to say. Traitor. How could you. I trusted you. You kissed me and then betrayed me. I'll never forgive you. Clarke understands why Lexa did what she did. She may even forgive her for it, now that she knows Lexa stayed true to her word that the Grounders would help the Sky People survive. It's just hard to look beyond the suffering Lexa's decision caused—Clarke's suffering.
"Lexa," she says. "It's good to see you, too. I'm here on behalf of President Dante Wallace. The Mountain Men are ready to negotiate a real truce."
She wished she could remember how to laugh. Lexa's and Bellamy's expressions in this moment are flat out hilarious.
Dante is painting in his office when he receives word that Clarke has done what she promised: somehow, she's managed to hash out a treaty that guarantees peace between three warring peoples. There's no price to be paid for the agreement now; Clarke has already paid it too many times over.
He brings a small escort with him when he goes aboveground, truly unafraid for the first time in his life. He doesn't let himself think of the child who died to give him this ability.
He meets Clarke and the others in a small clearing in neutral territory. Clarke is clearly unwell, but there's a fire in her eyes he hasn't seen much of in the past few months and that reassures him. The Commander eyes him with clear mistrust, but Clarke's word seems to be enough for her. The other Sky People glare at him with unrestrained hostility, but the fact that they don't go for their weapons, that they stand back and watch, is again proof of Clarke's control. He sees a woman who can only be Clarke's mother and finds that he can't look at her for long without feeling a burning sensation at the back of his eyes.
He never wanted to be the sort of man who would torture children. He hates Cage for making him into that man.
The treaty has been painstakingly scrawled onto three separate scrolls of thick parchment. He reads each copy word by word, making sure they are identical, before he hands them back to the Commander with a nod. The terms are what he and Clarke had discussed. Freedom for the Mountain Men to walk the ground without fear of reprisal from the Grounders or Sky People. Medical and technological assistance between all three parties in times of need. Regular meetings between the leaders of the different peoples to ensure the terms of the agreement are being followed.
One of the Grounders hands the Commander a large quill. She dips it into an inkwell and signs each copy, swiftly. Clarke signs next, and Dante wonders what it means that her people will allow her to sign for them. Is she their Chancellor now, despite her long absence? He will never cease to be amazed by the loyalty this young woman can inspire.
Clarke holds the quill out to him. Dante takes it with fingers that tremble for reasons that have nothing to do with age. How long has he dreamed of this moment, of a time when his people can walk on the surface unimpeded? His entire life.
He signs swiftly. "Thank you, Clarke," he murmurs as he hands the quill back.
"Thank you," she replies. "If you'd been like your son, none of this would be possible."
That, he thinks, is the greatest compliment she can give him.
Later, after a celebration that continues long past sundown, after her mother examines her and then vomits, after the fires have begun to die down and Dante and his people have retreated to their tents, Clarke gets Bellamy to help her stagger away from the crowd to sit on a log near the wall. She leans back and breathes deeply, tasting the fresh, clean air she dreamt of on the Ark and desperately missed in the mountain.
Bellamy watches her with thinly veiled concern. The past almost-year has not been kind to him. He looks older than she remembers, hardened in a way he had not been when the Grounders had been a constant threat.
He clutches a cup of moonshine in his hands. "What now?"
She massages her aching legs. "You're asking me? I'm an expert on war, Bellamy. I was kind of hoping you'd done me a favor and figured out the trick to peace."
He makes a strangled sound. "Do you honestly think I felt anything like peace while you were gone?"
She frowns. "You make it sound like…" She trails off, unable to say the words.
"Like I care about you? Like I love you?" He stares down into his cup. "Yeah, that's about right."
Clarke chews her lip. "I don't understand. You know the things I've done—terrible things—"
"Clarke." Her name, spoken as a gentle admonition, forces her to stop talking. Bellamy sets his cup aside and takes her hands in his. "Nobody blames you for any of the things you've done. We all love you for your devotion to your people." His lips quirk. "I just happen to love you more than most."
She smiles shyly, and for a moment she almost feels like the girl she used to be, the one on the Ark who didn't know how to deal with a boy's flirtation.
"You should know," she says, "before everything happened, Lexa and I—"
"I do know. And you should know that since everything happened, Lexa and I…" He trails off suggestively.
Her mouth hangs open. Bellamy and Lexa?
His cheeks color. "It was a way of being closer to you, as twisted as that sounds. Do you have feelings for Lexa?"
Does she have feelings for Lexa? Can she, after everything that's happened, all that she's endured? She doesn't know. What she does know is that Bellamy's not the only one waiting for her answer.
"I don't know," she says, pitching her voice to be heard by the shadows surrounding them. "Do I have feelings for you, Lexa?"
There's a long moment in which Bellamy stares at her as if she's lost her mind. Then Lexa emerges from the shadows, and if she were anyone else Clarke would say she looks embarrassed.
"How did you know?" Lexa says.
Clarke shrugs. "It's what I would do." She pries her hands away from Bellamy's and clasps them in her lap. "It's been—a rough year." Bones splintering, the drill slicing into her, Cage's hands on her body. She licks her lips nervously. "I'm not the same person I was. I might never be that person again. I don't know how I feel about anything, right now. Do you understand?"
Bellamy and Lexa exchange a look and she wonders whether there's more between them than either is willing to admit.
"We understand," Lexa says.
Bellamy bobs his head. "We'll wait, as long as it takes. No pressure, Clarke. We're just glad to have you back. So glad."
The words are a balm on her soul. Clarke drops her head to rest on Bellamy's shoulder. For the first time in what feels like a lifetime, she is not carrying the weight of the world. She feels more than sees Lexa lower herself onto the log on her other side, a comforting warmth.
The legend of Clark of the Sky People is widespread across the eastern half of North America within a year. Jasper and Maya are married not long after the Triple Treaty is signed, and it is less than nine months later that the first mixed heritage child is born. There are many more to come.
Clarke does not make them wait as long as she expected to.