AN: This was actually the first of this series I started, and it has taken the longest to complete, mostly because I didn't like half of it for a long while. After some switching about, I'm happier. Let me know what you think!
Lighthouse
Clarke felt Bellamy behind her, growing further and further away as she walked toward the forest. Her heart hammered beneath her rib cage, rebelling against the calm of her mind as she left. Just left him there, standing between the woods and Camp Jaha. Each step made her sick, her body revolting against the idea of separating from everything she loved after fighting so hard to get it back. Except, she had to protect those things, and the poison in her would do only the opposite.
So, she left, disappearing between the trees and letting her feet carry her for several hours, until the ache in her heart was as painful as in her feet. She stopped for the night, sleeping under the shade of a towering pine, the smell of sap and greenery making her nostalgic for a time when smoke and gun powder didn't cling in her nostrils. Sleep came in fits and starts, colored by every shade of red.
The red of blood, thick on her fingers.
The red of lips mouthing forgiveness.
The red of blistered skin.
The red of emergency lights.
The red of muzzle flash and bomb ignition.
The night passed, and she woke to a red sunrise. There was a saying about a red sky in the morning, and a vague sense of unease haunted the pit of her stomach as she sat around, rubbing at the blood dried into her clothing and beneath her fingernails. A dark color nearly black, the blood was no longer red, no longer the bright of her nightmares, of the world behind closed eyelids. She rubbed and rubbed, collecting the cool dew of the morning air on her hands and scrubbing it into her face and arms, hands and legs, even the delicate space between her toes, watching as little tendrils of darkened water slid down to the grass beneath her.
She needed a real wash.
The spring she had swam in with Finn both so long ago and yet only moments in the past, was not far off, and she stripped as she went, tucking her leather jacket into her pack and rolling her hair up to the top of her head. The warmth of the day built thick and hot. The spring water was crisp and cool against heated skin, and as she scrubbed, her skin turned that same red. Out in the warm air, she considered her clothing, sweat soaked and dirtied with the remnants of bomb blasts and a war.
She threw them into the water, dunking and wringing them out over and over again, watching as the water fell away dirtied. With the blood and dust gone, she sat naked in the sun, letting the rays turn her shoulders pink until her clothing dried. She was pulling on still damp pants when the first of the clouds started to roll in, chasing the settling sun. Lightning lanced across the sky, screaming out its cry in a gravel voice so low that it rumbled against her sternum.
Red sky at night...
The thought of Camp Jaha, still struggling to regroup, made her sick. It lit her feet, and in a matter of moments, she was running through the undergrowth, back the way she had come. The rain started not long after, playing a tinkering, droplet-beat against the canopy. It only fell on her when a branch grew too heavy and dumped its load to the forest floor below. A hot, humid mist churned beneath the uppermost branches, and Clarke breathed the mess in as she ran.
She'd walked for a day, and all the while she'd never realized how she'd meandered. With Camp Jaha in front of her less than forty minutes later, it became clear. She'd not gone far. She couldn't go far.
Red like her heart.
Red like the blood on her hands.
Red like her pain, should she lose anyone else.
She'd fought too hard to watch anything happen to those she loved, and while she knew the darkness in her own chest would cripple them, she could watch over them without that weight slipping onto their shoulders. So, she watched, just past the edge of a corpse of trees, as the camp retreated in from the storm, as all but the guards hid in the skeleton of Arc Station.
The wind picked up, blowing rain in sideways on her little sanctuary in the trees. The skies screamed out over and over, and after a few long moments, she was forced to retreat back deeper into the forest, where even there the rain was starting to come down through the canopy with ease.
She retreated deeper into the forest, mind aimlessly wandering over the various places she'd sheltered over in the past, trying to find some that didn't make her heart stutter in her chest. The half-buried car where Finn had found that bottle of whiskey. The little cave where she and Bellamy had weathered over the acid fog. The bunker that had meant Bellamy teaching her how to shoot and finding new weapons. The art supply store where-
She swallowed against the twinge in her chest and resigned herself to a night of misery beneath a thick stand of trees. Cold from the skin to a deep recess in her core that was far too deep for any rain to touch, Clarke stared moodily out at the world.
Another challenge. Another fight.
Lightning flashed one more time in front of her eyes before a shivering, feverish sleep took her. The red came. The red went.
She woke still cold and shaking, but the rain had passed. The vague unease ate at her until she was once again watching over the Arc, its people already coming to life and escaping out into the day to right the wrongs of the storm. Not so long ago, Clarke would have been among them, digging drainage ditches to chase the little flooded areas away, cleaning up fallen branches and debris, assuring there were no sick or injured.
"They faired better than they might have." Lincoln's voice startled her, though by now, she should expect the grounders to be able to come and go without her knowing. If entire armies could be gone in the course of ten minutes, a single person could appear like smoke.
"Not as well as they could," Clarke said, eyes sweeping over possible problems, things that would need fixing and soon.
They sat in silence, watching and waiting, until two familiar faces wandered toward the gate still in the early morning sunrise.
Octavia was beautiful, Clarke decided in that moment. The young girl had always been pretty, of course. She'd been a pretty little bird kept caged up, bursting free and stuttering in flight for the first time on the ground. Now, grown into her wings, she was beautiful.
Fierce, even. She'd taken half of the grounder braids out, leaving the other half in an odd half-bound, half wild mess that suited her completely. She'd abandoned the heavy war paint around her eyes, but there was still a stark inky contrast against her skin.
"Everyone's growing up," Clarke whispered softly, eyes flickering over from one sibling to the next.
"They're waiting for us," Lincoln said when Clarke fell silent. She was grateful for the distraction, unwilling to let herself get caught up in watching Bellamy the way she'd studied his sister.
"You should go to her," Clarke told him as she gave him the same focus she'd given the youngest Blake. Lincoln had always been a strong, stoic man with a set jaw and squared shoulders daring the world to present challenge.
As the sun filtered down into their cover, lighting coffee skin, she thought, for the first time, he looked delicate with his deer eyes and clean jaw. Unlike Octavia, he'd abandoned all of his grounder war paint, cleaning his skin of hair and ink and paint. He'd even left behind his weapons, standing in front of her in little more than a ragged tunic and breeches.
Yes, she decided as his doe-frightened eyes locked on Octavia, Lincoln was far more delicate than she'd ever seen him. The kind of delicate that disappeared with a touch or light wind. The kind of delicate that got you killed.
"She would forgive you," Clarke said.
"So would he."
The delicacy disappeared from him then, turning sharp and bitting. Dark eyes bored into her very soul, reading her and bringing every insecurity she'd ever had to the surface. Clarke only nodded and turned back to the pair of siblings as they stood in the early morning sunlight.
They didn't stay long. Octavia left first, shouting something in grounder into the forest, voice hard and angry. Her movements held none of the little caged thing that she'd been upon first leaving the Arc. Now, she was a warrior, part grounder and part delinquent, but none of the thing she'd been in the sky. There was no Arc Station in Octavia Blake. She'd taken every last ounce of her that had been the cowering thing beneath the floor boards and ripped it from her person.
As Clarke looked on, she couldn't help but feel a bit of jealousy at that. Clarke was still the girl in a cage, trying to create life with charcoal and cement. She was just as afraid now as she'd been in the Sky Box.
Octavia might have been the pretty little girl chasing butterflies and flinching at shadows, but she'd grown. She'd grown well.
"Maybe," Clarke finally said, startling Lincoln from his introspection. "He would forgive me, but I'm not ready to forgive myself."
She let herself look at Bellamy for the first time since she'd left him stuck between two responsibilities. Where Octavia was sharp edges, he'd softened. He'd grown into a different kind of strength, the kind that was a deep well, hidden from view most of the time until someone had to draw on that strength to bolster their own.
Clarke had taken that strength from him time and time again over the months since they'd fallen to the earth, and yet, she'd not seen it so clearly as she did now, as he stood out on his own, facing the forest as the sun rose high over his head, lighting his skin and his hair. Where Octavia was angry, scowling and shouted out at a missing Lincoln, Bellamy smiled.
He stood there longer than his sister, shoulders and face relaxed and so very welcoming. As someone shouted out his name from inside the compound, he turned, shouted back, and faced the forest one last time. His lips mouthed something that Clarke had no hope to hear from so far away, and he left.
"Maybe we don't deserve forgiveness," Lincoln said, and with a self depreciating sneer, disappeared back into the forest. Clarke stood and watched over the camp until a group started to accumulate at the gate, striking out to hunt most likely. She ghosted back around them, practicing things that Lexa had taught her. Quiet. Stealth. Silent observation.
Some things, she supposed, some things Lexa taught her were good. Far better, far more useful, than the things Wallace taught her. There were some things they taught her together. Like how to do what needed to be done to save your people. If pressed, she might admit that they were both good leaders, good for their own people but not others. She wondered if that was how Jaha saw things. How all adults in power saw things.
Lexa was little older than her though, and she had been more cutting than any of the rest.
Clark sighed as she trailed the hunting party. There were no familiar faces among them, but she enjoyed watching them, listening and seeing how close she could follow without being caught. As it turned out, she could nearly walk behind them. They were all Arc Station, unused to the sounds of the ground, and Clarke's added footsteps were little more than their own to them. They were, unsurprisingly, unsuccessful. To be fair, so was she when they'd first come down, but in the small hours of the morning, she'd learned how to set snares and fish to fill her belly and those around her.
If each night one of the Arc Station traps caught a turkey it shouldn't have or one of their too wide nets caught a brook trout, no one was the wiser, and it made a little bit of Clarke's guilt at leaving them disappear. Just like each morning as she watched Bellamy Blake stand outside at sunrise, cool dew clinging to his shoes, watching the forest. She'd made it a point to be there, on the other side of the wide clearing between the fences and the tree line, to watch his faith in her shine through his eyes.
The first time her lighthouse disappeared, she drifted. He was gone three mornings before she saw him again, and if he looked tired and had a new cut above his brow, she wouldn't acknowledge it, not until Lincoln told her about the hunting party.
After the fall of Mount Weather, there had been mixed feelings concerning the Sky People, and while most of the grounder populace was content to let them have the land they'd taken, territory boundaries had never been discussed, there was no formal treaty, and several tribes still took offense to the children of the sky coming into their land. Such a group, a small family unit, had found Bellamy and two others stalking a doe when they'd been taken.
It had been three days and only Indra's grudging respect had saved him. There would be no power on earth that would save them from Clarke.
TonDC had been rebuilt for the most part. There was still evidence of the bombing on charred metal and in the eaten up land, but the grounders were nothing if not resilient. As she walked through the gate of the village, her weapons stripped from her and the same confidence in her step that she'd had the first time, the people melted around her, whispering as she went.
Clarke of the Sky People
Mountain Slayer
Sky Princess
Queen of the Moutnain
They whispered names that she both was proud of and that made her ache, and when she neared the center of the village, she was met by the empty face of their Commander. Clarke stared her down, trying to draw on all of the strength she'd found before the mountain and again after.
"It's good to see you, Clarke," Lexa said, though her tone of voice was empty.
"I wish it was," she answered. "I'm here to discuss the truce that we had before the Mountain and what it's going to take to keep it."
"The incident with your second was unfortunate, but he was returned to you-"
"Bellamy isn't my second, and I am not the leader of the Sky People, not anymore. I'm here as a mediator." She paused, looking around at the uncomfortable looks of those still listening to them.
"You don't have anything to barter with, Clarke," Lexa said, the sliver of softness to her disappearing.
"I have the mountain," Clarke countered. A whispering went up amongst those close enough to hear. "I'm not above turning the mountain on you, Lexa. I've done worse things to protect my people."
"We'll talk in my tent." It was a victory, she knew, even before she walked into the tent, even before they laid out territory and hunting rights and punishments for breaking the treaty. She left with it curled in her fist, inked into paper and signed by both sides.
In the morning, as the sun rose, she met Bellamy on that field, the dew off the tall grass clinging to her skin and making her shiver. She met his glance from yards away, able to look him in the eye for the first time since the mountain, since she'd left his sister to the wrath of a missile. She held the rolled paper out before he could speak, proud of her accomplishment.
"What is this?" he asked, though his eyes were already reading. "Clarke, what did you do?" he asked a moment later.
"I made sure you were safe," she said. "And I'm not sorry for anything I had to do or threaten to make it happen." He nodded, rolling the parchment back up with a reverence that she'd never seen him use.
"I've been waiting out here for you," he said, though the lightness to it was deceptive.
"I've been here," she admitted. "I'm not ready to come back, Bellamy."
"Then I'll keep waiting," he said, carelessly shrugging a shoulder. She nodded, leaving him to stand in the clearing yet again. This time, as she walked away, there was none of the crippling pain in her chest, none of the guilt anchoring her to the ground.
She slept that night, as the sky faded into redness. There was an old saying about red skies at night. The color would follow her through the next several weeks until she fell asleep inside the gates of Camp Jaha yet again, and it lit up her dreams.
The red of Bellamy's lips pressed against hers.
The red of the blush on her cheeks after.
The red of Raven's jacket as she hugged her.
The red of Jasper's ears as he apologized.
The red of the sky as it set beyond the gate.
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