Build Some Bridges
Disclaimer: Anything you recognise belongs the folk that make 'The 100' TV show.
Part One
By the time Clarke makes it back to Camp Jaha, seasons have slipped by. Somehow, with her wandering and growing and learning to live with herself again after the horror of Mount Weather, it's been six months. It's been one of those six months where everything changes; for Clarke and for the Arkers both.
She's tired: the kind of bone-deep tiredness that comes from too much soul-searching and not quite enough food and the strain of always having to watch her own back, keeping alert to any danger she might ignorantly stumble into. There are gorillas and snakes and poisonous berries. There are Grounders who might hurt her because they don't know who Clarke of the Sky People is, or because they do. There's the deep, biting cold and rainstorms and steep mountain sides and slippery rocks and deep ravines and fast-flowing rivers and all this big, scary, wonderful world that can hurt her in a heartbeat. Clarke has survived it, but she's changed. Six months of being utterly alone has forced her to confront, well, everything. This new Clarke—this woman who let the missile fall, who knew that sending Bellamy to likely death was 'worth it', who pulled the lever and who has made some kind of almost-peace with it all—she's tired and she is ready to come home.
Home, if that's what Camp Jaha ever was, or was on the way to being, has changed too.
'We've had to build some bridges,' Kane says, by way of explanation. They're sitting in the med-bay, two days after her return, after Abby has declared her daughter fit and well. It's been two days of rehydration, nutrition boosters and Abby generally fussing over an otherwise physically uninjured Clarke. Clarke has let Abby get on with it: she's missed her mom and, anyway, the med-bay is a nice halfway house to ease back into human interaction without being swamped by the rest of her friends all at once. Except, as it turns out, she doesn't have many friends left at Camp Jaha. Half of them have moved to TonDC.
'It wasn't practical to let Lexa's betrayal at Mount Weather fester into outright hostilities.'
It's not like Clarke can disagree with Kane's assessment of the situation. The Trikru still rules the forests that the Arkers have made their Camp in and Clarke's people are in no position to be at war with their neighbors while they're still getting on their feet. The shocking part is how they've gone about cementing the renewed alliance. While Clarke's been talking herself down from self-loathing on her unscheduled walkabout, Kane and Abby have been arranging political marriages between Trikru and Skaikru.
'Don't looked so shocked, honey,' Abby says. 'It's the oldest way in the book to generate goodwill between two groups of people. Make their family your family. Everybody agreed it made sense, and it was an easy way to help ease tensions between us and the Grounders.'
Clarke nearly chokes on the water she is sipping.
'Easy way for everybody except those of us forced into a marriage against their will,' she says, incredulously.
'No-one was forced,' Kane says, leaning against the empty cot bed opposite. 'We discussed it openly with the Camp. Octavia and Lincoln were the first to volunteer. They were hand fasted three months ago, along with two other couples. A handful of people on both sides also volunteered to enter courtships.' At Clarke's blank look Kane continues. 'That's a kind of pre-marriage arrangement the Grounders told us about. They use it where inter-village or inter-clan marriages have been common as a method to keep bloodlines varied and bring people with new skills into the villages. The courtship agreement runs for a full cycle of the seasons, giving both parties the chance to opt-out of the 'marriage', consequence free, at any point during the year. Or, if they want, to become hand fasted at the end of the courtship.'
'Sounds like a bad romance novel,' Clarke mutters, mutinously, thinking of the battered, ancient novels they'd had on the Ark, yellowing pages belying the pulse-pounding, bodice-ripping stories contained within.
'Less to do with romance than practicality,' says Abby, shrugging her shoulders gently. 'You'd be surprised at how many of our people are ready to find some security and settle down to making real lives for themselves on the ground. People are tired of just surviving. They want to make friends and have families, to find some simple satisfaction in life.'
'Once Bellamy and Lexa set a leader's example, it was actually surprisingly easy to find willing volunteers from both sides of the fence.'
And that, right there, in case you're wondering, is the point at which Clarke's world falls sickeningly away from her.
::: ::: :::
It turns out that Lexa really wants to make this re-forged alliance work. Enough to decide to be the first to take one of the Sky People in marriage—enough to tie herself to one of the most respected Skaikru warriors and leaders. Enough to make Bellamy her husband.
It happened at the beginning of the summer. While Clarke was scrambling down the side of some godforsaken foothill, Bellamy was getting married. To Lexa. He's been living with Lexa all this time. Sleeping side by side with Lexa. Fucking Lexa.
Clarke feels the shock of this knowledge reverberate through her whole body and it hurts way more than she feels like it should. Sure, she knows that there was never anything acknowledged between Bellamy and herself. They had found a way to work well together as leaders, when they were needed as such. They had come to rely on each other, to be each other's partner but, Clarke has to admit, it had never exactly been more than that. Not anything spoken out loud. Not anything she can call him on, or hold him to. She knows this feeling now though: this punch to the gut, these phantom hands crushing her ribcage. Clarke Griffin knows heartbreak when she feels it.
Raven is sympathetic to Clarke's misery. It seems that the events at Mount Weather were enough for Raven to move on as far as Clarke is concerned, to put Finn and Clarke's role in Finn's death behind them, for the sake of their friendship and a fresh start. With the uncanny insight that the mechanic has always had into Clarke's thoughts, Raven calls her on her mooning over Bellamy's marriage.
'It sucks,' Raven says, peeking out from behind her workbench one morning. Clarke's hanging around Raven and Wick's working quarters for the company under the guise of dropping off breakfast. 'Your timing sucks. Maybe if you hadn't done a runner after Mount Weather—' She shrugs, not bothering to soften her words, as per usual, 'but you did. And Bellamy had a choice to make, and he made it, and you weren't even an option on the list at the time. So now, it's time to move on. Get yourself together, 'cos now you're back on the Council you won't be able to hide from Lexa and Bellamy forever. And you don't want to make a dick of yourself when you run into them.'
It's true. Despite her age, Clarke's considered somewhat of a war general by the Arkers and the remaining delinquents follow her lead above the actual Chancellor, so she'd had little choice but to accept the Council seat that Marcus and her mother had offered upon her return. Add to that the fact that the Grounders view her as the Sky People's princess, and it's fairly obvious that it won't be too long before her political duties put her face to face with her old ally (new ally?) Lexa.
When Bellamy left for TonDC, he took quite the entourage with him. Octavia and Lincoln, obviously—who would be stupid enough to try and separate the Blake siblings on a good day? As well as some of the adults who had formed Courtships with Trikru, Monty, Miller and Harper all opted to go with Bellamy. In fact, if Raven hadn't stayed at Camp Jaha, Clarke thinks she'd be going stir crazy right now from the loneliness. Funny. Half a year without speaking to another human being and now that she'd back, Clarke feels lonely. She misses Bellamy more here than she ever did while wandering the countryside aimlessly—and she'd have said she missed him a lot then. If nothing else, she'd do a lot for the chance to see her other friends again.
'I miss all of them,' Clarke says, playing with a wrench on the surface in front of her to avoid Raven's shrewd gaze.
'Uh-huh.'
'I do,' Clarke says, insistent. 'If facing Lexa and Bellamy is what it takes to see Octavia and Monty and the rest of our friends again, I can do it. I'll have to.'
As it happens, the opportunity comes sooner than Clarke expects.