AN: After catching up (my own version of catching up anyway) and watching the first three episodes of season two, I had a new idea, which is going to be a bit of a long one-shot (or a two-shot) depending on how this writing process goes. I hope you enjoy it!

Chapter One: The Death of a Lark

Clarke felt the hands close around her arms, pulling her forward, toward that old, rusted door. Toward the clinical light and cleanliness beyond. Toward...

"Clarke!" Her name was shouted somewhere behind her, and one of the guards turned, dropping her elbow and running down the hall. The door was open. She fought, lashing out with an elbow and catching her guard in the temple. He shouted at her, and she was able to see the guard that had left her running down the tunnel, Anya, feral and slack jawed, staring at her a long moment before turning and running.

They wouldn't catch her. The grounder leader, even weak, was more than capable of holding her own, and Clarke took a sick sense of pride at that. Anya would go free. Clarke had at least robbed the Mount Weather survivors of one of their blood cows. She was snatched again and drug by her neck and hair back through the door, lashing out with her feet and fists, gripping one of the face masks and ripping it off. The man's screams shouldn't have sounded so sweet as he crumpled to the ground and screamed out his pain at the radiation eating away at his skin.

She caught one of the others in the stomach with a knee, but by the time he'd dropped her hair, another had gripped her bicep and pulled hard, tearing at the sutures in her forearm and wrenching it behind her back. Something sharp exploded at the back of her head, and that was the last thing she knew for an unknown amount of time.

-RP: The Death of a Lark-

"Ms. Griffin." She heard her name repeated, and struggled to clear the cotton fuzz from her mind. "Ms. Griffin, I know that you are awake."

She forced her eyes open and stared at the grey walls that seemed to sway slightly. A piece of her hand refused to move from her eyes, and reached up to move it only to find her hands were bound above her head. Or, as the world sharpened around her, below her head.

"What-"

"It might take you a few minutes, to bring everything back, but I assure you, Ms. Griffin, you know where you are and you know what is going to happen." That was President Wallace, and if she craned her head to the left, she could see his alligator shoes, shining even in the dim light. Her forearm ached as she swayed upside down. It had been sutured closed and bandaged again, and there was an IV line below it, red with her blood.

"You're using my blood to transfuse with," she said, voice hoarse.

"You're a bright mind; it's a tragedy that we had to come to this," Wallace said, stepping around to stare down at her, his face drawn down in a morose frown, as if someone had taken away something that he'd wanted.

"You're the one kidnapping grounders for their blood," Clarke said, trying to ignore the whooshing sound in her ears. She shook her head, trying to clear it enough to focus on her surroundings and make a plan.

"I really wanted you to be part of our new generation," Wallace said. "I had hoped that you might take a position on our medical staff here. It would be beneficial to have someone of your genetic resistance for recruitment."

"You're going to have to kill me," she said. "You're not going to convert me."

"I'm not looking to convert you, Clarke. I'm just here to pay my respects and to tell you that it didn't have to be this way. This isn't want we wanted." She almost believed him as he stood there, his eyes running down her arm to the plastic tubing.

"I'm not going to sit here and be your blood bank," she said, meeting his eyes the best she could upside down. "You'd better just kill me."

"We waste nothing here, Clarke," Wallace said, turning on his heels, the faint click of his wooden soles sounding on the concrete floor. Clarke let her head fall back, staring straight ahead at the blank wall. She hung there, upside down and drifting, for several hours before she was lowered bonelessly to the floor and drug to an empty cage. The door was shut and padlocked as she lay curled into a ball at the bottom.

They felt her alone long enough each time to gain some of her fight back, and she would kick and thrash against firm, clinical hands until they had to knock her out. She lost days that way, she was sure, hanging upside down or laying unconscious at the bottom of her cage. She'd made six scratches against the floor of her cage, one for each time they'd drug her from the collection area to her cell. She thought there were at least two days between each collection, but she couldn't be sure. They fed them regularly, but she'd slept through meals.

She'd scratched eleven lines in the floor the first time she had an opportunity to make good on her promise. The physician who'd drug her back to her cell had hung the lock in place and had become distracted with the beeping of one of the machines before she'd closed it. Clarke supposed she looked as helpless as she'd felt, but she'd managed to pull herself silently past the door and stole the lock from the latch. She'd been unable to pull herself to her feet, but the woman had returned not moment later, trying to force her back into the cell. Clarke waited until the woman was behind her, trying to drag her backward when Clarke lashed out, striking the woman in the temple with the heavy metal lock.

The woman crumpled behind her, bouncing her head off of the concrete.

"Sorry," Clarke mumbled, using the cage to haul herself to her shaking legs. Wrapped in the white linen and netting, she shook with each step she took down the line of cages, wild eyes watching her as she went. She made it halfway to the door before she collapsed, shouting in frustration.

She crawled the rest of the way to the door, trying to force the heavy iron thing open without success. She struck it with her fists, groaning in anger. Tears of frustration stung her eyes until one of the orderlies came to check on their missing physician. She'd been knocked out by the door that time, and the last thing she thought as the butt of the gun came down on her temple was that the repeated head injuries were going to start doing something one of these days.

-RP: The Death of a Lark-

She'd stopped carving little marks into the floor after her fourth failed escape attempt, and they had stopped letting her off the machine until she passed out. It took them long enough, really, but by then, she'd lost so much of her strength that it wouldn't have mattered. Her legs wouldn't support her even after the two days of rest they gave her, and when she looked at her arms, she could see where the atrophied muscles inserted into her bones.

Medically, she knew that to go from where she'd been physically to where she was wouldn't take very long. It could happen easily in a month, more than easily. It didn't make the fact that she couldn't support her own weight any less difficult to swallow. She isn't sure how long its been when she's hauled from her cage by two orderlies and propped up in a wheel chair. They wrap a warm blanket around her and take her to a sterile while room, where the two men strip her and wash her with clinical hands. She's wrapped in a robe and put back in the wheel chair before she's rolled down into the dining hall, which is empty except for Wallace who stands and smiles at her when she is rolled into the room.

"Clarke," he says, voice pleasant. He nods to the orderlies and takes her wheelchair in his own hands, easing her to the table, where a bowl of soup smelling vaguely like meat is placed in front of her. It turns her stomach as she eats it, but her hands shake so badly that they spill most of it into the table cloth. It reminds her that she needs more than the thin broth that they're provided, so she stomachs as much as she can get to her mouth.

"I had hoped we could speak," Wallace said after she finished. Their bowls were cleared, and he leaned forward on the table, looking at her over steepled fingers.

"I have nothing to say to you," Clarke manages, though her voice is harsh and crackling from disuse or misuse, she's not sure which.

"I think, perhaps, you might change your mind," Wallace says, looking at her with a clinical eye that softened nearly immediately. "I can make this all stop, Clarke, if you cooperate with a few of my questions." Clarke does not respond, more because she's too tired from her journey and less because she wants to be obstinate.

"Ask," she finally manages after he just looks at her for five long minutes.

"It's rather simple," Wallace said. "All I want to know is a little information about who might have been on the Arc stations that fell to the earth."

"No," she said, voice as firm as she could make it. "No survivors. Doesn't matter."

"Then perhaps, I can exchange some information for what you might have. There were survivors, both from the fall of the stations and the war you had with the native populace." And if that didn't spark her attention, nothing ever would again. She forced herself to sit upright, her shoulders as square as she could make them, and stared at him.

"You lied," she said at length.

"A leader does many things they aren't proud of for their people, Clarke," Wallace said. "Your people have become at home here. The rest of your people could do the same, within reason. But I need to know that they will be receptive to being brought in."

"I wasn't," Clarke said.

"And look where that got the both of us," Wallace said, voice sad as if he truly regretted the outcome. Maybe he did, Clarke thought, but that didn't stop him from carrying out his crimes.

"I'm not about to tell you what to say to bring more people here to end up like me," she said, proud of herself for being able to string so many words together. Wallace's lips turned down in a deep scowl.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Clarke," he said, nodding to someone over her shoulder. "I will see you in a week, and we'll see if your thoughts have changed." She was pulled backward in the wheelchair, redressed by those clinical hands, and put back in her cell. She hung upside down the next day until she passed out. When she woke, she was hung up again. And again. And again.

She only knew a week had passed because she woke sitting in that same wheelchair, at the table, with another bowl of soup in front of her. She was unable to feed herself, and only took the offered spoonfuls of brother from Wallace because she couldn't remember eating since the last time she'd sat in front of him.

The broth revolted in her stomach, but she clamped her mouth shut, refusing to allow it to escape. It might be the last food she got for another week, and it would stay down.

"Have you changed your mind, Clarke?" Wallace asked. She raised her head at that, scowled and closed her eyes, letting her head fall back to the side. She heard him sigh. When she woke again, she was hanging upside down, and she only managed to remain conscious for a few moments before her world bled to nothingness.

Her third dinner with Wallace went differently.

"I have good news for you, Clarke," he said, sitting down across from her as he had so many times. She didn't have the energy to ask, and he knew it. "We've retrieved three of your people." She let herself look at him then, looking for some sign of deception. "I can see that you're not going to believe me, so I've arranged for a little tour."

He pushed her wheelchair to an elevator and down several long halls until the familiar isolation wing came into view. She was eased along several empty rooms to the very end, where three doors were closed. The class was opaque, and she could see nothing through it.

"We've made some changes, since last you were in here," he said, recognizing her look of confusion at the glass. "Can't have anyone attacking my people."

He pushed her up to a long, mirror that ran several feet along the wall. He pressed a button along the wall, and the reflective property disappeared. She was glad when it did, as it let her pretend like she hadn't seen her reflection. Inside, it was fairly dark, but on the cot she could make out the hunkered form of someone sleeping. Brown hair fell over a pale face and eyes large even behind closed eyelids.

"This one they call John Murphy," Wallace said from behind him. "Not as smart as you were, I'm afraid. Rather foul mouthed." Clarke let herself sink back into the chair. Murphy would do her no good, especially asleep and on the other side of a one way window.

She was pushed along to another door. "Finn Collins is a bit of a different story. He was pleasant when we brought him in." The mirror in front of the new room cleared and she looked through to a familiar sleeping face, turned toward the door as it dozed. Finn. Something ached in her at that. Finn would love this place, deep beneath the earth.

"The last was rather quiet, though I'm sure you'll be able to tell me if he's usually that way," Wallace said, pushing her again. Mr. Blake is a bit older than the rest of you, isn't he?"

When that mirror cleared, the room was well lit. The bed was empty, and Bellamy was sitting on the floor on the far wall, staring resolutely at the mirror, as though he could see through to the other side. He had a firm set to his lips, neither positive or negative, and a fire in his eyes that she remembered so well that it was frightening.

"Bell," she managed, trying to reach up with one of her shaking hands. She made it to the bottom of the window, bracing her fingers against the lip there.

"He can't see you, my dear," Wallace said sadly. "Unfortunately, due to your behavior, none of your people can see you again, but if you cooperate now, I can make one of these rooms yours for the rest of your natural life."

Something about the fire in Bellamy's eyes, the fact that he and Finn and even Murphy were there and alive and not burned to death somewhere by the drop ship, gave her strength. She let her hand fall away from the mirror and closed her eyes against the image of him there, on the other side.

"No," she said simply. Wallace wheeled her back to medical without another word.

There were not dinners with Wallace for a very long time, and she had long ago given up on anything but dying in the small cage.

-RP: Death of a Lark-

Clarke woke to gunshots, several of them that came in quick succession like the popping of fireworks she'd seen on old movies as a child. Someone beneath in medical was screaming, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Even if she did, she wouldn't be able to do much but push herself into a leaning position against the wall of her cage.

The new grounders shifted in their cages, two of them speaking to each other in low, hushed tones. They would learn, she thought as she closed her eyes against the continued pop, pop, popping of the guns below her. They seemed closer, and the sound echoed off of the walls. Someone shouted something, but the words were garbled and meant nothing to her. The door screeched as it was forced open, and she sighed, folding into herself.

"Go," she heard a firm, masculine voice say. She tried not to move, not to even breathe. If they thought she was still too weak to be conscious, maybe they'd save her the rack for a few more blessed hours.

"Open it," the voice demanded, closer this time. Her cage door have a faint hiss as it slid open, and she sighed, giving up her game. She didn't have the strength to open her eyes. Another loud pop came from right above her head, and one of the grounders screamed out a guttural cry. Were they killing them? Making room for fresher bodies?

"God, Clarke," a voice said, familiar and shaking. "Come on, Princess, come one." She knew that nickname. She'd been the Princess, hadn't she? Hadn't someone with that voice called her that once? "Please, Princess, just open your eyes. Please." And strong hands were pulling her from the cage, gentle and shaking, and sitting her upright, calloused fingers running across her cheek and down her jaw to her pulse. "Thank-" A sob cut off whatever he'd been going to say, and she felt a light tapping at her cheek, as if asking her to wake but too afraid to cause more hurt. She wanted to tell whoever it was that they couldn't hurt her anymore than she already was.

She cracked her eyes open as she was picked up in one quick movement, her head rushing at the feeling. Darkly tanned skin and hair was all she could see, and her forehead pressed against an impossible warm neck, the pulse strong against her own skin. She felt something moving as he walked, knocking against her hip and his thigh before bouncing out again. A gun, maybe, her mind supplied. It would account for the popping.

The light from the medical wing nearly blinded her, and she groaned against the pain in her eyes.

"Easy, Princess," that voice said, shushing her as it went. "I've got you." The quick patter of footfalls was nearly deafening in the silence, and the voice that followed was loud.

"Oh, God, Clarke." The voice paused, as if stuck on what it was going to say next. "Do you need help with her?"

"I've got it, Spacewalker," said the man who carried her. "Just get Abby ready. I'm taking her up now. She can't wait."

"Maybe I should bring Abby down here; she's going to need the supplies here." No. No. No, her mind ricocheted. Not here. Not anymore. She forced her eyes open, blinking against the lights and raising her head enough to run her forehead against the jaw and chin of the man that carried her. Finn stared at her, wide eyed and blinking, a few paces off. "Clarke," he said.

"Get me out of here," she managed, but the words were hard to understand even to her own ears.

"You heard the lady." She sighed and let her head drop back down to the shoulder that supported her. Finn must have run off, because he was gone in the next moment, as the man laid her down on one of the hospital gurneys. She tried to clutch at the fabric of his t-shirt, but he pulled away easily. "I've got you," he assured, and she let herself be left on the bed a few long minutes. When he returned, she made her eyes open, focus, concentrate.

"Saved by Bellamy Blake," she managed before she had to close her eyes and let her head fall back. "Thank-you."

"Always," he said, and in the next minute, she was being lifted again. She lost consciousness before the cold medical lights faded behind her eyelids.