"We all are living in a dream
But life ain't what it seems
Oh everything's a mess"
It is you. Washing your hands for the hundredth time in the river you've just stumbled upon. Your legs just gave out and you fell hard in front of the stream. The cold river may look clean and clear but it's only a mere trick. You see blood, you see blood all over your rough and dirt soaked hands, you see blood travelling down the fast current, far away from you. As if your people's blood hasn't soaked these lands enough already… It is you, trying to pretend that everything is fine, shaking while at it, bent over the river, tears hitting the water surface as if it were raining. You are trying to erase all the dead people that inscribed themselves in the back of your eyelids. Children, innocent men, women. People who didn't deserve the death that you've delivered. Quite willingly too. It is you, trying not to listen to all the voices that started speaking in your head all at once. Condemning, cursing, torturing. You can hear them all the time now, at nighttime it's just ten times worse. You hear your voice among them, it's the voice you hear the clearest. You immerse your head into the ice cold water and scream. You scream that you had no other choice; you scream that they wouldn't have stopped no matter what. Ice cold water fills your lungs and you're gasping for air while your whole body is burning. When you're done, you just helplessly curl up into a ball on the grass beside the river. When night falls, the darkness engulfs and hugs you, crushing your bones, weighing you down, drowning you.
You wake up at the same place sleep took over you last night. And it is you. Battling suicidal thoughts every day since you've left Camp Jaha. All those people have died and you're still alive. Alive and breathing. Alive, breathing, mostly unscathed. How is that fair? You're trying to clear the poisonous fog that is in your head but with no luck. The gun you carry is so heavy in your hands. It's a metaphor as well; maybe all those lives you've taken are latching themselves onto the murder weapon. Maybe that's why the burden as well as the object is so heavy. There are a couple of bullets left; maybe one should be used to end your sufferings? You lift your hand, your sky blue eyes still sleepy and you keep them closed. You put the gun to your head. The cold pistol digs into your temple and it's so easy and so hard at the same time. You sit like this for a couple of minutes until you put your gun down next to you. No, you don't want to die. But you don't want to live either. You deserve to suffer really. And no, there is nothing to look forward to. At least not now, not while you're in this state. You gather some woods and make a fire. Hope you catch on fire somehow.
Bellamy wanted you to share the burden with him. He wanted for you to talk to him, to speak up, to say what's on your mind after the incident. He wanted to be equally responsible for the deaths. But that's not exactly the case. He pulled the lever because of Octavia, because his sister was in immediate danger. You pulled the lever because you didn't want to see anyone else die. They were your people, each and every one of them. You pulled the lever together but of different reasons. Does it matter though? That changes nothing, absolutely nothing. The dead are gone and Bellamy wanted for you to mourn them, your people and the ones you took at Mount Weather. He wanted you to cry, to shout, to say something. But it is not for you to drown other people in your own sorrow. Not even Bellamy. This weight is yours to carry; you bear it so they don't have to.
You don't know how many days you have spent wandering around the forests. You don't know how far away from camp are you, you hope that quite far away. You know they will be looking for you.
You have no idea how much time you've spent by the fire but when you look up, the sky is dark again. That's how you spend most of your days, condemning yourself, wondering what could have been different. Something falls on the top of your head and when you touch it, you feel another couple of drops. Rain? Soon it starts pouring. You don't move, you just sit silently and watch as the drops extinguish the already weak fire. The rain is warm and harsh, damping your hair and skin. But as the night comes, the voices are back again, worse than ever.
The entire world screams your name and in this moment you wish you were deaf. It's easy to cry in the rain.
You wake up again, a little grateful that you didn't dream of faces of the dead. You don't remember the last time you slept to be honest. You're all soaked from the rain and shivering from the cold air of the morning. You're always hoping you'll die sometime soon. By not eating, from the cold of the night, sleep deprivation, sometimes you wish that you'd stumble upon something that might kill you, an animal of sorts, anything really.
"The things that we've done to survive, they don't define us" you remember yourself saying.
"What if you're wrong? What if this is who we are now?" you hear Finn's voice.
Maybe Finn was right. Maybe this is who you are now.
As you stand up, you get ready to aimlessly wander for another day. You need movement, you don't even feel your legs when you're walking but still. Your eyes focus on the canopy of leaves, on the mossy trees, on the green grass and a dirt soaked ground. Your mind is empty when you walk, your mind is empty when the landscape changes.
You find yourself near the dropship. This, this is where everything began. Your life on Earth, away from the Ark, away from your mother, away from the painful memories of your father. Away from civilization. You remember tears of blood. You remember how you've set 300 of Grounders on fire, their ashes scattered across the forest now.
"You're the one who burned 300 of my warriors alive" you hear her voice, reminding of what you've done. She wasn't looking at you, busy playing with her dagger, sitting on the throne. She was trying to intimidate you. She knew war for much longer than you did.
"You're the one who sent them there to kill us" you said, not afraid of the Commander.
You've killed so many people. Those Grounders, Finn, the peaceful villagers of TonDC, the Mountain Men. You saved your people but at what cost. Why is Earth so harsh? Why do we need to kill or be killed? You choke back the tears for the fallen. To make your hurt even bigger because you believe that you need to suffer for what you've done, you visit the grave of Wells. The person who let you hate him for something he didn't do, the person who'd ask now "Clarke, what has happened to you?", the person who was killed not because of his mistakes but of his father's. He was your people and you couldn't save him. Your eyes burn from all the tears that are streaming down your face.
Again, you remember the Commander. You remember Lexa. You remember how she kissed you softly on the lips, her hand cupping your cheek, touching you as if to assure herself that you're real and you're really kissing her plump lips back. You remember how hollow her eyes were the last time you saw them, right before turning around and leaving you. "May we meet again". You were angry, betrayed, sad, lost, hopeless. Kind of similar to the way you are now. Only now the anger has subsided because you did exactly what she had done. You chose your people. Maybe she even was more generous than you, she didn't slaughter your people, she just abandoned them. It was you who slaughtered others for the sake of your people. You're sad because you understand but still, that doesn't mean that you're ready to forgive. "May we meet again". It's hard to hate the person who may be the only one to understand you. It's hard to forgive the person who is able to hurt you so badly. It's hard to have these ambiguous feelings towards someone. You wonder what she'd say after you've told her everything that is on your mind. "May we meet again".
The next day your wandering can't be called aimless.