AN: another little drabble series, because what the hell, I can't stop

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"We could go in from the back." Raven suggests, drawing an imaginary circle around the figures on the board.

Almost immediately Clarke shakes her head. "It wouldn't work. The Lokota have sentries positioned here," she moves the small iron figurine to the back of the map, reaches for the thumbnail and slides it to the adjacent spot "and here."

Bellamy nods with her. "It would be a massacre to try a frontal attack for the same reason."

They're resting in some shit hole of a campout – Clarke had read Wu-Mart on the front sign but as far as Bellamy was concerned it was an abandoned warehouse that creaked far too often and didn't have any useful resources at all, unless you counted this shitty game board they were trying to plan an attack on – with forty-somewhat children sleeping on linoleum floors within eyesight. Monty had cracked open his last store of moonshine and was passed out in the corner, Jasper curled around his ankles, so it's only him, Clarke, Raven, and Spacewalker up at the moment.

"What about that move we used at the Sauk camp?" Clarke says, frowning at what was either a dog or a horse, the piece too rusty to really need a distinction. "Where we had the one group to draw them out, and another to sneak in?"

She pushes the dog/horse in one direction, along with the iron, and points at the opening. Bellamy licks his lips and runs his teeth along the bottom of his tongue, considering it.

"We would need more ammo." He admits, glancing up at her. "That only worked because of Raven's little parlour trick."

Raven frowns. "Excuse you, that wasn't just some parlour trick, that was highly explosive aluminum and chlorine compounds that I scrapped together out of thin fucking air and it worked, didn't it?"

Finn reaches over and rubs his hand over her shoulders, which is just too patronizing for Bellamy to watch so he turns his gaze back to Clarke. She's staring at the map – well, it's more of a crappy marked up mess of what once was a menu board, but semantics – and is picking at the fraying edges of the damn thing, eyebrows scrunched together. He knows this means she's tuned them out, because there are bigger battles then whatever the fuck is going on between Spacewalker and Raven, post-Sauk (which was the last camp at which Raven could walk without a cane) and that is what the hell they were going to do about the hostage situation.

(It was kind of fucked up that they had a hostage situation at all, because normally between him and her they can keep track of their dwindling numbers, but sometimes the kids got frisky and thought wandering off was a good idea, especially since they've been travelling for the last two months, from city to city, and it's honestly just been too long since the last crisis, so of course they need another reminder of how easily shit can hit the fan. He knows that Clarke's taking it harder than most, only because Tristan had been something of a nurse to her doctor, had all but imprinted on her, following her around and spouting Ms. Griffin this and had even once called her mom (not that Clarke had actually meant to tell him that). He was barely fourteen, so Bellamy hadn't worried too much, but here they were, and hindsight's twenty-twenty and all that.)

He watches as Clarke shifts in her spot on the floor, her hands drifting to rub against her pant leg, toying with a loose thread on the inseam. She's biting her lip and then she's looking back up to Raven. They only have a little bit of light at this point, using the faint shine of some sticks that when you crack them in half they glow, so he can't quite make out the look on her face.

"So we don't have the resources for anything that bright. How about something that just makes a lot of noise?" She asks.

"What type of noise?"

Clarke clasps her hands together. "Something like gunfire."

Almost immediate Bellamy catches on, because of course a decoy doesn't need to be real. "We could have a group with the guns, run them along the perimeter."

"A false attack?" Finn grins. "That is the least violent option I've heard from the two of you all month."

Ever since the rescue from Mount Weather, where Clarke gained a hardened shell and tighter lips, Finn's included her in his jabs about peace and priorities. Bellamy likes to think it has only made her more secure in her choices, and besides, he likes her better with bloody hands and a feral smile.

"Well Raven," he says, "can you manage that?"

She's looking around the room, despite being able to only see to the nearest shelf, bereft of pretty much everything but games and model airplanes. "Yeah," she says, slowly, "I think I can get something together."

Clarke leans forward. "How long?"

"A day, maybe two?"

He nods. "Perfect. We'll get you a group together in the morning, scavenge some supplies."

She doesn't say thanks, but two weeks ago she could have grabbed all the shit she needed herself, so he keeps his mouth shut.

"Miller can go with you two," he continues, gesturing to the unhappy couple, "for the decoy, and I'll take a rescue group in behind. We have a pretty reasonable guess that they're holding Tristan here," he points to the top hat, "so we can risk attacking close to dusk, keep things as confusing as possible."

The hat's positioned in the bottom left quarter of what they think the Lokota camp looks like, so it's a daunting run, but a necessary one.

Clarke meets his gaze. "I'm going with you."

She can't stop moving, but he thinks it's probably only one fifth nerves, and the rest is eager bloodshed on behalf of one of their own. "You sure?"

She cants her head and grins at him, and it's all teeth, and also a massive turn-on, not that he tells her that.

"Yeah," she says, "I'm sure."

"Alright," he matches her smile, "then we start in the morning."

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