Hands that heal. Hands that hurt.
Before coming to Earth, Clarke had never thought they could be one in the same.
Then she made her first kill. She made her first kill with the same hands that she had used to bandage a wound hours earlier.
The realization made her simultaneously want to laugh and throw up.
Instead, she swallowed down the accompanying panic and pushed forward.
Part of her thought that was the end of it. That same part thought she would never have to take another life again.
Fate had a twisted way of revealing the truth, though, and the next thing Clarke knew she hadn't killed one person but dozens.
She had done it to save her own, although that knowledge didn't take away the guilt.
As time pressed on, Clarke felt her grasp on reality slowly start to slip.
It started with the faces that haunted her dreams. Every time she closed her eyes she saw them – the people she had murdered.
She stopped sleeping.
Then she started to see things when she was awake. Glimpses of dark shadows in the corners of her eyes.
Death, lingering.
Lingering and waiting for her to send one more person to him.
When they brought her a kid, clothes soaked in an impossible amount of blood, her grip, already so precarious, slipped completely.
The kid was gone minutes later, and it was with hands of death that Clarke began to wash the blood off herself.
It came off her arms easily enough. A smear she had on her face was easily wiped away with a wet rag.
It wouldn't leave her hands, though. No matter how much red washed ran off in the water, her hands remained covered in blood.
She hid them in her jacket sleeves, curled up against her body as she left the medical tent.
Every one of her nerves felt electrified, buzzing with the hums of whispers.
More would die.
Clarke ducked her head down – a signal to those waiting outside the tent. They would take and bury the body.
One more dead. More to come.
She was standing at the edge of the tree line, shouting at the shadows to just come and take her already.
She didn't hear Bellamy call her name.
Clarke didn't realize he was there until he was standing right in front of her, eyes wide and concerned.
She reached for his hands in desperation and noticed that his weren't red. She didn't know why she hadn't looked before.
He had taken more lives than her, but his hands were still the same, tan and warm in her own.
Then she did a double take when she noticed her's, pale and no red in sight.
She choked back a sob and suddenly Bellamy was pulling her into his arms. She closed her eyes for what felt like the first time in days, and when she opened them, her vision was clear.
The shadows never stayed when Bellamy was around.
Written for Bellarke Fanfiction's flash fic competition. Check out their Tumblr page for the winner and to see the other fics.
As always, let me know what you think! I was feeling a little dark after the last episode.