Summary: Clarke leaves for uncertainty. There is just one more thing to do at the place where it all fell to pieces until she can cease to exist.
Trigger Warning: Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
Roughly 4,700 Words, One-Shot
Pairing: Bellarke (implied)
Continuation of S2 Finale.
No copyright infringement intended.
Notes: Unbeta'd and written in the dead of night. This needed to get out, thus the faults are all my own.
Resurrection
It's a cold night and there isn't much hope for a warmer hide-out anymore. What blankets were left, they took back to Camp Jaha the last time. Now, Clarke is barely covered by a torn and burnt piece of parachute. She is pitifully cold but she deserves that. She wonders if she might freeze that very night. She has not thought ahead much. Winter is coming fast and she has no idea how to get through that alive, she doesn't know if she wants to. Plus she can't stay at the drop ship. That's the first place her mother will come looking for her in the morning, right when people will start to wonder where she is and Bellamy won't cover for her any longer.
She knows he will for some time, because he understood. He does that. Just…understand what she needs. And he saw that he had to let her go when no one else would have. That is why he was the only one she told, the only proper goodbye she allowed herself. Not even her mother…she didn't even say goodbye to her Mom. With a pang she thinks about what this will do to her, that she will be causing her mother the pain of losing the child she fought so hard to get back and there's an unexpected, bitter cackle lodged in the back of her throat as she just adds that to the ever growing list of wrongs she did to people. She is getting good at this. Just chalking it up to being a monster. She is crying again.
When she thinks she can't possibly cry harder, she inexplicably remembers something Bellamy said before she left, about deserving a drink…and she imagines, in flashes and involuntarily, how her night would've turned out if she had stayed and gotten hopelessly wasted with Bellamy. She would be incoherent by now, probably on the verge of passing out and Bellamy would be right beside her. That was a given. He would be swaying and his words would be dull but he would lift her from some makeshift chair and carry her to her cabin in the ship and he would put her into her cod.
"Stay with me," she whispers into the darkness, breath condensing in the cold, with her eyes closed, trying to conjure up the feel of his hand and the smell of his skin. He says something that sounds like "Of course" and then he climbs in next to her, spooning. Clarke smiles because she feels a tiny bit warmer and that's nice.
"Don't throw up on me," Bellamy says and they giggle because they're too drunk to remember how she killed so many innocent people just hours before. She wants to tell him something that will never cross her lips again but she cannot, even in her imagination, she cannot even allow herself to picture something like that. Something like love that could mean hope and a future. She doesn't deserve it. So she sticks to the moment, just dreaming him pressed against her body, keeping her warm, keeping her together.
Maybe that will get her through the night. and maybe through some more of those to come.
Clarke wakes stiff and with a soar throat and back. She allows herself a minute to come to her senses before bracing the wild again. She has stocked up on parachute cloth and some not tasty but at least non-poisonous berries which grow close to the dropship and then she walks. She walks for hours on no set trail, thinking but not about where she is going. It is nearly night when she realizes where her feet are taking her. But it's getting dark and she won't get there until morning, so she decides to make camp near some very sharp rocks. They will keep her back covered and the wind at bay. The parachute helps too, but only the thought of Bellamy lying next to her puts her to sleep. It feels like a memory then, even if she is just remembering her own conjured up images.
It takes nearly another day until she is back where it all went to pieces. The thick door which held Mt. Weather for decades ajar. She does not want to be there, she wants to run away and crawl into herself and maybe sleep or maybe die but there is no other way. No one to do it but her. She has to stay. Clarke owes the Innocent of Mt. Weather - all those people she killed - she owes them at least this.
She rips away bits of the parachute and knots them around her nose and mouth, pulling tightly and then she goes in. The elevators have stopped working so she has to prop open the door to the stairs. As she starts to descent there is nothing out of the ordinary yet. Everything is still intact, everything looks exactly like it has since before the big war. But around level three she can start smelling it. Death and gore and guilt. She stops several times, gagging and composing herself, insisting she goes on.
The last time she took those stairs was on her way out, leading the remaining band of her original 100 and those who came to their aid, back out into the world. She remembers those who could rushing to the surface and everybody else following slowly but without looking back. No one saw what they left behind. Only Clarke knew. She could never not know it again.
On level four the smell is worse and on level five, Clarke darts back onto the stairs to press her palm flat on her mouth and try not to throw up all over herself. She can only go back in after minutes of getting accustomed to the foul stench of the decay she set in motion.
When you enter via the staircase, the first room of importance you pass is the control room, to your right. The door is open and that sickly sweet smell gets worse. Behind the console she can see his feet sticking out. The first man she ever shot while looking him in the eyes. Dante looks pale and wrinkled in death, somehow tiny and frail. Clarke can't even see him right, she is crying again. She stands above him, for minutes, unable to move or think one coherent thing besides I killed you and when she springs back into action, it is rushed and clumsy, because she cannot stand to look at him a moment longer, cannot bare the memory of the light leaving his eyes after she pulled the trigger.
Clarke is no Monty and so it takes a lot of fumbling and curses under her breath until she has the back up generator kicking in and another ten minutes to figure out how to set the elevators into action again. When every lamp flickers green on the control panel, she does what is left to do and drags Dante out by his feet, through the corridor and to the elevators. He is heavier than she anticipated but she gets him there and into the little cabin. There is more bodies in the dorms, four in total, three guards and the doctor. The drill he used to put a hole in Raven's and her mother's legs is still in his radiation burnt hand. The smell is so bad that Clarke has to dart for the trash chute and loose what little breakfast she'd had. Getting the large men to the elevator takes five times as long as it did Dante...but she is far from finished. The biggest and hardest part of what she needs to do awaits at the end of the hall.
In the dining room every body has stayed in its place, just gathered in mass as it seems. Clarke has nothing left to throw up. It's not her stomach that hurts now, it's everything and anything else. It's all she can do to stay upright. She wails and screams and wants to lie down next to them and just stop existing. A man died with his head on his plate. In the middle of the entrance lies Maya, sweet brave Maya who helped Clarke and the others unquestioningly that they would find a way to save her. She is the first one Clarke drags to the elevator. And she goes on dragging, the women first, then the men and then, hours later, she drops to the ground, not moving because there it is, finally, the sight she dreaded most. She deliberated taking the gun from the last guard still in the hall and adding her corpse to the others..to the small ones.
Huddled in the corner, all together, some holding on to one another, one wrapped in the arm of a woman who has crouched above him before dying, lie the children of Mt. Weather. Their little bodies are bloated, like their edges have diffused, their burns brown and black and the skin thats left green and purple. Most have their eyes shut in horror but there is one girl with long brown hair, thick like Octavia's whose eyes stare at her, bulging out of the skull, unblinking and accusing. You killed me, she says, so loud it makes Clarke want to smash her head against the wall. You killed all of us.
Clarke does not know how long it takes and how she manages to start moving again but one by one, she carries the children out. The oldest is maybe ten and she can barely lift her but she does. She wonders how she can stand anymore and she wonders how many bodies the two elevators can hold, but those are little people...light people, it will hold them. Her heart feels crumpled, like a raisin, when she is done. The last person she has put into the second elevator was a woman around her mother's age, clutching a necklace that must've held some meaning to her. Clarke thinks of all those stories these people must've had, all those lives filled with little moments, gems and kisses that she took from them forever. She pushes both elevators up and sets the ventilating system to full force to try and get the smell and bacteria out. There is an air cleansing protocol that she sets to run while she makes her way back up the stairs.
It has become night over the mountain and she spends the night half dreaming of dead children, and half in comatose exhaustion, leaning against the elevator doors as if protecting what's inside for one more night could possibly make up for getting them there in the first place. Bellamy has no place in her thoughts that night.
The next morning Clarke runs on autopilot and desperation. She builds a huge pile of wood she gathers from the rim of the forest and gathers until the sun is warming up the early winter air to the point where she can feel her fingers again. Then she drags the people from the elevators to the open space. All of them together, the children in the middle, as if they were safer there. All but two are on the pyre when she goes down to get gasoline and matches and their bodies burn while Clarke digs two graves. Like she has practice in now..she dug Wells grave as she dug Charlotte's, even if that was just symbolic.
When she is done she rolls Dante into the one and Maya into the others. She wishes she could've made that more dignified but she doesn't have rope to lower them down. Ante lands face down with a terrible crack of bones breaking but Maya lands on her side, awkwardly, but you could think she was sleeping if it weren't for the radiation burns. She covers them up again. That's faster than digging the grave. She sets out to find some rocks as twilight and the cold start creeping in.
The white stones she finds for Dante's grave reflect the last light of the day in a strangely beautiful way and she lays them out like a circle somewhere where is heart would be. She does not know why but that somehow feels right. Maya gets a bush of some faintly purple, glow-y flowers. This way Jasper will always know where to find her, even in the dark.
The fire has burnt down and Clarke thinks how she got to a place when she is not put of by the smell of burning human flesh anymore. When it's all done she stands between the graves and the ashes of the pyre and feels empty. Void. Done. What is left for her to do? This was it, this was the one thing she still had to do, the one thing that had kept her going, but now she was done and now there was nothing else. Nothing else but to die herself. She did not see another way out. She would never go back to Camp Jaha, she could certainly not go back into the mountain and she could not just retreat back to the woods. Well, she could, but to what end? There is nothing left for her anywhere.
So Clarke decides to die. The first gun she finds is on level two but she does not want to die below ground. She wants to look at the sky and die outside, like maybe she should have long ago. The gun is heavy in her hand but also reassuring. It's also cold at her temple but then again, everything is cold. Clarke looks up at the stars, her hair nasty and sticking to her forehead and neck, smelling of death, the stars do not care for it, she thinks. But her hair will never smell like anything else ever again, just death, and that's a weird thought too.
Up there, where it all began, everything is still. Maybe if she had never said a word about her father, maybe if he had never figure out that something was wrong, maybe they should all have just run out of air and died...together, like the mountain men, maybe she would have had time to make peace and to say goodbye to everybody. Maybe she would have gotten to hug Wells one last time, to meet Finn and Raven...and Bellamy. Bellamy. Even with her eyes still trained at the stars she can see his face, his smile and the way his freckled skin stretches above his bones when he laughs. At least she got to say goodbye to him. There's an off little smile on her lips imagining him, she thinks she will hold on to that thought when she pulls the trigger and clicks the safety off. She is ready now.
"Clarke," she can hear his voice in her head, clear as day.
"It's okay, Bellamy," she says to the stars, "I'm okay, I'm going home."
"Clarke," he gets louder in her head, more urgent, "don't!"
"It's-", she means to reassure him but then she is tackled by brute force and a swift hand relieves her off her weapon. She screams out in reflexive defence, ready to fight even though deep down she instantly knows it's him. They topple to the ground from the momentum of Bellamy's attack, yet somehow he still winds own beneath her so she falls on him. He holds her uncomfortably tight when she regains hold of herself, afraid that she will reach for the gun that landed a few feet away and finish the job.
"Clarke, I can't let you do this," he says, dead-set, "you can't run away. Remember when you said that to me? You said I am forgiven and that I can't run away, you can't run away."
It's pitch dark but she can see his freckles still.
"Did you know that it was my birthday, a couple of days after I killed Finn?" Clarke says and she has no idea why, "I'm eighteen and I killed hundreds of people within the last three months."
"Clarke." She knows what he means by that, that she had no choice and that she was never acting alone but still.
"I don't deserve to live, Bellamy," she insists, yet still unmoving, "I need to not..be alive when all of them are dead."
"No," he insists, "no, because your job here isn't done, our people still need you, I still need you."
Clarke says nothing. And when she doesn't move either, he sits her up, repositioning his grip so he holds her hands and wrists to keep her as immobile as she was half on top of him.
"I was right where you are that day in the woods, with the gun right where yours is and you told me that you needed me and you made me come back."
"I can't go back," Clarke says quietly, for the first time really meeting his gaze.
"And I won't make you," he replies calmly, "but I can't let you die, I can't leave you alone if you'll run away to kill yourself. I just...I can't let you do that. You don't get to leave me alone in this place."
Clarke's wrist twitches on its own and somehow Bellamy releases his hold on her, as if he knows her next move is not to reach to the firearm but up to his face. She puts her palm flat on his cheek, just looking at him, at the freckles on his nose.
"I know you think you need to pay and to atone," he says, "and you will, you can, but by being here. Please." And then, after another moment: "If not for you then for our people...and if not for them for me. Please?"
Clarke releases a breath which she was not aware of having held and her muscles pull and stretch on their own, making her nod ever so faintly. And Bellamy smiles.
He makes her get up, coaxes her to concede the control over her limbs and mind, and he tucks the gun away. He pulls her on, towards the mountain and she shakes her head no, and puts down her heels but he squeezes her hand with a soft firmness exclusive to him alone.
"Come on, you'll get pneumonia out here," he says, "I won't let you die by outside forces either."
Clarke concedes. She is very tired suddenly.
The elevators still reek of death and decay but Bellamy pushes the button to take them down to six and leads her into another, dimly lit hallway. Down here everything runs on half power and low lights. He keeps a slow but steady pace, except when they pass the school corridor, there he drags her after him faster, past more corners, past many, many doors.
"I've learned my way around here pretty well when I tried not to get found out and killed," he says and his voice sounds odd in the tomb-like silence so many levels below the ground.
Almost at the end of one particular hallway, he uses his shoulder to bust open a door to a quaint quarter, made up of a living-, bath- and bedroom which she can make out after he lights some strategically placed oil lamps.
"The water runs on a separate generator, you should be able to take a shower," he informs her, "I..um, I would rather give you your privacy but I will watch you, if I think you're planning on revisiting that plan of joining the others up there."
Clarke shakes her head, earnestly, but not trusting herself to speak. Thinking of speaking there seems wrong, as odd as it seemed. Still, three days ago, someone else went to take shower just like she does now, someone she probably carried outside and burnt today...maybe the little girl with the unblinking eyes or the woman with the necklace.
She feels Bellamy's eyes on her all the way into the bathroom, and as a show of good faith, she does not close the door all the way. Just enough to peel out of her stained, dirty and awful stinking clothes unseen. The mirror is small and she is thankful for that. She does not look into her own eyes and the few patches of scarred and blotchy skin she catches, she means to forget. Despite the circumstances, the shower, although ice cold, does a good job of reviving her. When she steps out, her hair dripping and body pink with circulation, she almost feels like herself again.
On the toilet seat lies a towel and clean clothes. If this was Clarke on the ark, she would've most definitely minded someone walking in the room while taking a shower but Clarke on the ground is just happy to have clean clothes and to hopefully never see the old ones again.
She finds Bellamy changed into new clothes as well. It almost makes her laugh, because they're at least two sizes too large for him and it makes this big man look like a lanky, awkward youth.
"You look better," he says and sits down on the bed.
"I feel better," she says and talking is weird but she can bare it, "somehow human..if only barely but still. Thank you. For everything."
Bellamy smiles and then nods his head to the bedside table where there's two glasses filled three fingers full with a golden-brown liquid. "So, about that drink..."
Clarke furrows her brow, not sure if she likes the possible implication of drinking in someone else's house to their demise. Or drinking as in celebratory drinking at all.
"No, not like that," Bellamy hurries to say, picking up on her wariness immediately, "Just to take the edge off, just because we are totally and entirely screwed up...and to help sleep without dreaming."
"Okay," she concedes again and sits down next to him while he hands her a glass.
"Their fight is over," says Bellamy and toasts upwards, ever so subtly.
"Em gonplei ste odon," Clarke echoes in the grounder language and downs the burning liquor in one gulp. Bellamy does the same.
"We can't stay here," Clarke says, "and you have to go back."
"I know," Bellamy nods, "but not tonight."
With that he scooches over and crawls under the blankets, holding it up for Clarke to do the same. She hesitates for a bit and catches his eye.
"I can take the couch If you want," he says instantly, catching her drift and sits up straighter, ready to jump away from her if she only makes a sound.
Clarke shakes her head, it's stupid. Bellamy would never exploit the situation, he hadn't even thought about that possibility as was made apparent by his reaction. So she lies down beside him and he reaches to kill the light by the bed.
"No!" She stops his wrist mid-move, "Please, leave it on. And..hold me? Just for a bit, just so I don't...fall apart." Clarke can not bare to look him in the eye but her need for support is greater than her pride and deep down she know Bellamy won't deny her.
He doesn't. And although it still takes a while to fall asleep and although she still wakes in terror seeing dead children, Bellamy always wakes with her, and lies back down with her too.
The next day, after Bellamy let her sleep in far longer than she would have liked, they walk back into the forest. They steer very clear of the dropship where Bellamy knows Abby has dispatched a search party to, while he was sent to look for her on the off chance she went back to Mt. Weather. Instead they make their way in twists and turns to the old family bunker Clarke and Finn had found. Clarke sets herself up with enough food from Mt. Weather to last her at least three weeks and a huge bag of art supplies taken from Dante's oval office and then Bellamy promises to tell the others that he missed her and has no idea where she went and she hugs him goodbye...long and fiercely, having to promise many more times not to do anything to herself.
"I will be back once the coast clears a little," he says, "probably in a week or so, in the night."
And with that he is on his way. He turns around after a few paces, just looks back at her and smiles again and for the first time Clarke thinks that she has something to look forward to again.
He comes back two weeks later, in the middle of the night. He brings supplies and clothes and soap and blankets. And news.
"We are moving the ark to the mountain," he says grimly.
Clarke just nods, "I figured...they would be stupid not to. It's safer there."
"I know but it feels wrong."
"What about the grounders? Won't they take offence if we take the the mountain back?"
"We still have a truce with Lexa," Bellamy says and Clarke heart skips a beat. Lexa. It still hurt, the betrayal..the wasted chance at a..well, at what? A possible possibility somewhere in the future, should that future have any hope of being bright ever again.
"This time I set the terms," Bellamy says, "If there will ever come a time where Sky People and Tree People fight together again it will be as one, no more deals with enemy parties ever again..and until then they keep to their territory and we have the mountain."
Clarke smiles. And somewhere in the back of her mind a tiny voice says that while Lexa might have been someone for her for some far of brighter day, Bellamy is the one who sees her through the darkest ones.
Bellamy visits her every other week for the next five months and she learns through him how the ark is moving up the mountain, bit by bit, how they are building makeshift houses around the perimeter and start to farm, how they start trading with the grounders at the dropship and how Raven and Vick have requested housing for two and everything settles down. Clarke settles down too, she paints...first on the paper she brought and the steady supply Bellamy keeps smuggling in for her, and then on the walls until there is no surface unpainted and she finds a way to keep the voices in her head melow and the burning children in her dreams less frightening. And it never seems to end until the day that it does.
It is her mother who bursts out the trees when she comes out to the moonlit meadow to greet Bellamy with one of those hugs that last longer each time, and demands that she come home. That the computers picked up a weird signal, something that looks like a nuclear bomb on the radar, even if that can't possibly be but still, that she had had everybody worried for too long and that it is time to come home. Bellamy mouths an apology for not realizing that he was being followed but there's a part of Clarke that isn't unhappy about going back in all honesty. Just a little afraid.
"I'm just afraid of starting over," she says to him, right before the new gates of Sky Mountain, "I don't know who to be in there anymore."
"Hey," Bellamy mutters, his hand closing around hers, "We're gonna get through his. I'll help you figure it out."
And Clarke looks up at him, for the millionth time as it seems, and knows she would be dead a hundred times over if it weren't for Bellamy Blake and that she never can think of dying ever again because there is no way that she will leave him alone in this world. Not again. Not ever.
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