The room was spinning a little as Clarke tried to stand. Not only were the effects of the transfusion still subsiding, but seeing Lexa one final time was still fresh in her mind and her heart ached, wishing she were still as real as she were in the City of Light.
Abby grabbed her arm, holding her steady. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah. I'm just a little woozy still."
Bellamy butted in, "Why don't you sit while we try to find a way down?"
"No, no it's fine. My mom is going to need help checking the wounded. You guys go, I'm already feeling better."
Bellamy shot a concerned look to Abby and she nodded; it meant 'Take care of her.'
Once Bellamy and his team left, the room was filled with groaning and anguished people. The others were dead or in shock. Abby immediately ran to Jackson to snap him out of his shock.
"Jackson! I need you to listen to me, I need help so I need you to hold on to your feelings right now so we can get to work." He simply nodded and slowly stood up with Abby's help. Clarke stood over Pike's body, checking his pulse. He was definitely dead, Octavia made sure of that.
Clarke surveyed the area once more and took a few steps to see over the balcony, watching the people run around in daze after being in the City of Light. The looming threat of an enemy they couldn't fight sat on her shoulders like two tons. How was she going to tell everyone that after all of they had been through, that they were still doomed?
A few days later, who ever was left made their way back to Arkadia. The council was meeting to finally hear what happened with ALIE in the City of Light. The council now consisted of Kane, Abby, Bellamy, Raven, Indra, and Clarke. They were all looking at Clarke, waiting for her to start speaking. Their stares bore into her like white hot beams and she didn't know where to start.
"Um. So." She cleared her throat."While I was in there I met Becca. She was the one who showed me the kill switch. She shuffled uncomfortably. "What took me so long was while I was trying to finally stop her, ALIE told me something, something that has to be true. There's no way she was lying because Becca confirmed it."
"What is it?" Kane insisted.
"Earth has about 6 months left because it's turning into the worst radioactive waste land we ever thought possible. We wont survive it. It will start slowly with acid rain, people will start having symptoms and eventually it will wipe us all out."
Clarke looked up at their faces and they were all blank. She was expecting some kind of shock or fear but nothing, from any of them. Kane had his arms folded, standing behind the chair he never sat down in.
"Well, your reactions are not what I expected."
A laugh came from Kane's mouth then, "I think it might be that it's just such a normal thing to finally kill us, after everything we've been through anyway. An evil, emotionless AI, a dying Ark in space, a crash landing into Earth, a crazy man on a mountain who wanted our blood, violent territorial tribes, no offense to you Indra, and what wipes us out is radioactivity."
Bellamy started laughing too then, and it was chain reaction. The whole table was laughing, and even the great Wanheda let out a small chuckle. Kane was right; of course the thing they suspected would kill them to begin with has finally caught up with them.
The laughter quieted after a few moments and Raven was the first to speak. "So are we going to try to do anything to stop it? Cause like Kane just said, after all we've been through, I'm not going down without a fight."
"Well, that's what I told ALIE before I hit the kill switch, that'd we'd figure something out."
"What exactly did she say was going to kill us?" Abby asked.
"She said there were over a dozen nuclear facilities around the world that were already beginning to break down. She said that over ninety six percent of earth will be uninhabitable by the time it happens."
More silence.
"What about the other four percent?" Indra stated.
"Raven, do you think there is anyway to narrow down which four percent might be untouched by the radioactivity?"
"uh, maybe? It would be a long shot but maybe I could figure out some trajectories with Kyle." She was already standing. "I'll also see which facilities are closest to us. Maybe there's a way to slow them down to buy us some time, or maybe we could move camp further away."
"Good ideas, Raven. Update me when you get somewhere." Kane called to her on her way out of the door.
"Alright, as for the rest of you. Let's keep this quiet until we can get some information back from Raven and Kyle. I want to have every possible answer for our people when we finally call a meeting."
Everyone nodded and some yeses were heard.
"What if there is no solution?" Clarke was looking down at the table as she spoke.
"Then that is what I'll tell everyone and we will just have to be grateful for our final days."
Clarke nodded, not as optimistic as the rest but still, she had some resolve that Raven may find an answer.
"Alright then, everyone. We'll meet again when we have progress, good or bad." Kane looked to Indra as she was filing out of the door after Abby, "If you could keep this quiet amongst your people as well, that would be great. I don't want anymore uprisings until we know more." Indra simply nodded and walked out.
Bellamy caught up with Clarke down the hall, on her way to her room. "Clarke! Wait up! I wanted to talk. Do you have a sec?'
"Yeah." She said, simply.
"Come somewhere with me?" he asked.
Clarke's eyes had questions but she let Bellamy lead the way.
A little while later they ended up at the drop ship.
"Why are we here?" she asked, confused and slightly annoyed.
"Cause this is where it all started. This piece of junk is what brought us to this hell hole and now look at us." He laughed. "I really brought you here though, because seeing as we may actually die this time around, I want to start looking for some redemption and I thought it would be best to start by apologizing to you."
"To me? Why?"
"Because when we first met I was a royal dick to you and to everyone else for that matter. I thought about killing you, maybe once or twice, and then I got to know you and never stopped thinking about it." Clarke actually laughed that time. "And then after I said I would look after our people, I turned into this person I never wanted to be, just because of how angry and guilty and I was." He paused. "So for all of that, I am truly sorry."
"Bell… We've all done things, whether directly or indirectly to each other that we regret. I accept your apology."
They both sat down at the entrance of the drop ship, and listened to the birds sing nature's song.
"I'm sorry too," Clarke proclaimed. "I never wanted to leave. I just felt so empty. I felt like nothing in the world was ever going to be good or whole again if I was part of anyone's life. I'm Wanheda, the bringer of death. I chose to kill 300 innocent people and I live with that every day and having that burden inside me was too much; I couldn't function normally anymore. I-"
Bellamy cut her off, "Clarke, I carry that burden with me too. I look in the mirror and barely recognize myself because of it, but there was no other choice. Either we were going to die or they were."
"I know, but that doesn't make it any less wrong. "
There was more silence. Bellamy agreed too much with her last statement to continue.
"I'm sorry for leaving you too, Bell. We grew so much together out here. We learned from each other, and trusted each other. It was wrong of me to leave you when you felt the same way I did. I realized that no one else would understand how we feel but us. I can't imagine how alone you must have felt."
"I ended up going on a killing spree so that might give you a bit of a hint as to how I felt."
"Point taken."
"I accept your apology as well. I know it was hard for you to leave. I wanted to go with you, honestly. I wanted to get as far away as I possibly could, but I remembered Octavia and I couldn't just go. I wish I could have done what you did. I'd take the place of Wanheda any day."
"I'm not sure the hair would suit you."
Bellamy laughed again, a deep laugh, and it was music to Clarke's ears; to make at least one person happy for once.