This is my first story for The 100. I really hope you guys like it.

Clarke POV

I was officially lost.

Wasn't that my whole goal? I wanted to go somewhere that no one would find me, neither the Grounders or my own people. There was this idea I had that not facing my problems would make them go away. But the farther I walked into the forest, the more lost I got, the more I realized that my demons were going to follow me wherever I went. Never again would I be alone, those faces of Mount Weather would haunt me for the rest of my life.

It's your fault Cage, I thought. We all could have lived. You made me do this, we had no other choice.

I sat down on the ground and leaned my back on a tree. Sleep had evaded me for the last two nights. The first night I slept, all I could see were the faces of the kids lying on the floor of the bunker. Mothers, just like mine, were holding their children even after death. Jasper's face after Maya died was probably the worst- I might as well have killed one of our own. After that night, I decided that I didn't deserve to sleep. But biology was starting to take over my body and it was just a matter of time until I naturally collapsed of exhaustion.

Taking a deep breath, I looked up at the stars. The stars turned into the bursts of light that had been the 300 bodies they had floated back up on the Ark in order to make more time for the rest of the people. Pulling my eyes away from the stars, I looked into the forest. At first all I could see were the glowing plants, but that turned into a replay of the drone strike of Lexa's village. If I closed my eyes, all I could see was Maya's face. Not only were the memories engrained in my mind, my vision was being taken over as well.

A stick broke under something's foot. Animal? Human? To be honest, humans scared me much more than animals did. An animal might kill me, but they wouldn't drag it out for their own pleasure like a human might. I reached for my gun and clicked the safety off, getting it ready to aim.

The intrudor jumped out of range of my gun as soon as he saw it.

"Shit, Clarke, careful where you point that thing."

Standing before me was the last person I would have expected to come across or to find me.

"Lincoln?"

I breathed a sigh of relief.

"You have no idea how happy I am to see you," he said, sitting down next to me.

"Look, you're going to have to tell my mom or Bellamy or Octavia or whoever sent you out here to find me that I'm not back," I said apologetically.

"Actually...Lexa and I made a deal," he said.

I looked over at him for an explanation.

"When I went back, I brought back Cage's head," he explained. "For that, Lexa said that she wouldn't kill me for betraying her again. But, she told me if I could find you and convince you to come back to Ton DC with me, then she'll let me and Octavia back."

Lexa.

Her betrayal had played over and over in my mind. Of course I was angry, I had the right to be. But given the same chance? I probably would have taken the same deal. She had betrayed me to save dozens of her people. I, on the other hand, had committed mass murder in order to save mine. Both of us had put our people first before our own personal morals. How could I blame her for something that I had done as well?

"Interesting proposal," I said. "And how could I refuse you after everything that you've done for me and my people?"

"I can't and won't force you to come with me," he said. "And I'm not going to guilt trip you either. It's your choice, but I'm not sure how long you'll survive out here on my own."

"No, I guilt trip myself into doing things," I assured him. "This is never going to go away, is it?"

He was silent for a few minutes, pondering what to say to me. Lincoln was someone that everyone stopped to listen when he spoke because everything that came out of his mouth was something important- and usually right. I was anxious to see what he would say about all of this. If anyone knew how to deal with identity issues, it would be the Grounder that fell in love with one of the Sky People, the Reaper that came back from the dead, and the man who had questioned the ways of his people since he was a child.

"You had no other choice, Clarke," he said.

It was like a broken record player. Those words being repeated over and over by everyone.

"Yeah, that's what everyone keeps saying," I muttered. "But the guilt. It's going to eat me from the inside out. My sleep will be haunted by nightmares for the rest of my life. My own mother will never look at me the same."

It felt nice talking to someone other than myself or the people I had murdered. Even if Lincoln was the last person I had pictured talking about this to. Or maybe I was just insane and Lincoln was just a hallucination.

"Guilt is something that we all have to live with," he said. "But we still have to keep on living. You are one of the main reasons that your people and my people haven't slaughtered each other already. With you, the alliances are shaky, but without you? It won't last more than a week or two."

Personally, I thought that he was just exaggerating, but he was right. After everything that I had worked for in order to secure the alliance, I was obligated to see it through. We'd killed the Mountain Men, but after Lexa's betrayal who was to say that our original treaty was still in place? I was the only one with a connection to both leaders- with Lexa's feelings and the chancelor being my own mother.

"Do you think our people will ever truly get along, other than just for the sake of us not killing each other off?" I asked.

"I think there's going to be animosity for a long time. A month ago we were in a full on war. We can't go from that to being best friends in that short period of time. But I think Octavia and I and then you and Lexa have shown that there's hope."

His voice was contradictory- full of ambition, but weighed down by doubt. He sounded exactly how I felt.

I tried to resist my yawn, but I couldn't.

"My father always used to tell me that once you're tired enough, you'll be in such a deep sleep that the nightmares can't get you," he told me.

"I'm fine-

"You need to sleep, Clarke," he said, cutting me off. "The decisions you need to face will be much easier to make when you're delirous from exhaustion."

When I woke up, I wasn't in the forest anymore.

I was in a building made of stone. It wasn't one of ours- it was definitely a Grounder tent. I must have been pretty out of it if Licoln had been able to carry me all the way to Ton DC without waking me up.

I could hear the familiar shouts of Grounders training outside. What were they training for? Were they preparing to go to battle with my people again? Did they even know that all of the Mountain Men were dead? Maybe they were just so used to this way of life that they would never stop training until they died.

Someone entered the room. That someone was Lexa.

"You're awake," she said, stating the obvious.

"Yeah," I croaked, still dehydrated from not drinking water in two days. "What is this place?"

"This is your new home if you want, Clarke," she said.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any suggestions.