Earth is blood. Red, warm, sticky on her hands. Rusty, crusted, dried under her nails. Slick on her fingers as she sutures a wound, thick on her fingers as she pulls the knife out. It is what the ground smells like to Clarke. She used to think she knew the smell of metal, was immune to it, living on the Ark, but the iron tang of blood follows her now, never leaves.
Earth demands blood, payment for their presence here. It has taken from all of them, over and over again. It collects in different ways: branches scraping their cheeks, rocks colliding with their temples, thorns tearing at their palms. Arrows piercing their legs, spears stabbing their abdomens, swords slicing their skin. She has been one of the ground's prime targets. Give me more, it growls, more. She feeds it with her own, sometimes with that of others. They must be blood brothers now, she thinks, the ground and her. She assumed satisfaction had been reached.
Foolish girl, she realizes too late. Earth wasn't done with her yet, oh no. Her tab isn't nearly paid. It still considers her in its debt, allowing her to walk its forests and drink its water and breathe its air. More, it hisses, give me more. She walks into the spear (take me) but Earth laughs in her face: not yours, silly girl. Then she understands. It wants his blood. It wants to bleed her out in a different way this time.
Her people used to talk about death in terms of ashes and dust, but they are strangers here now, and Earth has no need for those things. Blood must have blood, it snarls. The knife goes in, and she imagines it sliding not into his stomach, but into dirt, plunging through bedrock until the ground beneath her shakes and trembles and cracks, wailing its death knell as blood sprays up from the wound, soaking her, returning all the drops it has taken from her people, the drops they have taken from others to feed it. It coats her hair, her face, clogs her nose, her mouth. She's inhaling blood, drowning in it, breath stuck in her lungs because the knife is out, and her hands are red, warm, and sticky, and Finn is dead. The Earth isn't wailing, it's Raven, and the shaking is from Clarke's unsteady legs that stumble her away from the price she has paid, with blood on her fingers and a hole in her heart.
It is done, the ground whispers gleefully. The debt is paid.