Title: "A Case for Shame"
Author: Lila
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing: Clarke
Spoiler: "Blood Will Have Blood, Part II"
Length: one-shot
Summary: The war is over and now Clarke has to live.
Disclaimer: Not mine, just borrowing them for a few paragraphs.
Author's Note: Thank you to Sol on A03, who requested a sequel to "Tales of Brave Ulysses" that turned into this fic. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and appreciative of support from awesome readers. Title and quote courtesy of Moby. Enjoy.
"Cut off your nose to spite your face."
Clarke carries Bellamy with her into the forest.
It's the scratch of his stubble on her lips and the steady strength of his arms holding her tight, his woodsy scent of pine and sweat. He smells like victory, like liberation, and under it all, the acrid stench of the things they did to bring their people home.
Clarke shivers and pulls her coat tighter. She picks up the pace, like if she walks fast enough or far enough, she'll burn herself clean. It's cold this afternoon, even with the sun shining brightly overhead, and her breath gusts in little white puffs, crystalizing in the air as the day wears on. She keeps walking, doesn't feel any different.
She hikes an hour before realizing what a terrible plan it is. She's deep into the woods, far removed from the makeshift trail her people's feet tread into the grass on that long walk back from the mountain. It's just her and the trees and the stupid jacket Lexa talked her into wearing. It's not armor or even finely made, but a mark of valor, of leadership Lexa had said and firmly strapped a seat belt over her cleavage. The gloves are warmer, albeit marginally so, but covered in sparkly pieces of metal. At the time she'd appreciated the gesture, the authority it gave her over Lexa's army, but now she's kicking herself for thinking she could survive the winter in a flimsy jacket and fingerless gloves.
For a moment, just a moment, she stops and turns her head, stares at the legion of forest behind her, the path of trampled leaves her boots have carved through the underbrush. Anyone looking could easily track her, but she gave Bellamy specific instructions and she trusts him to follow them. "Take care of them for me," she'd said, trusted that he'd do that too. It makes her smile, just a little bit, to think how differently she'd have felt only three months earlier.
The moment goes on too long and she even takes a step forward, grabs a branch hard enough to scrape her palm, but it's the only thing keeping her from tearing down her self-made path. She made another promise to Bellamy, to bear their guilt so they can heal, and she can't break that vow.
She glances around the quiet clearing, all trees and leaves and moss covered logs, a world devoid of the trappings of the civilization she fought so hard to save. It might be the first time she's stood outdoors without a single shred of steel or chrome in sight. She doesn't have the right tools, but she can learn. There are animals in these woods, roots and berries and fresh mountain streams. "Like the dropship," she says, immediately realizes the flaws in her logic. A hundred teenagers came to the ground with nothing but the clothes on their backs, but they had each other. She closes her eyes and it's that first day, arguing with Wells and flirting with Finn and worrying about the challenge in Bellamy's deep, dark eyes. They'd survived "whatever the hell we want" and created something meaningful from the wreckage, but now they're rebuilding without her.
When she opens her eyes, nothing has changed but her resolve. She rips off those ridiculous gloves and takes stock of her limited supplies. So long as there's a knife at her hip and a brain in her head, she isn't really alone.
She exhales and straightens her spine, prepares to rebuild her world with her own two hands.
Lincoln isn't dead but he still brings ghosts with him. They curl over his arms in intricate blue patterns, watch her from behind flinty eyes, rise in a bumpy red scar on the palm over his hand. They make her remember the things she did to survive.
She's trekking aimlessly through the trees when he finds her, looking for a cave or a bunker – something – that will shield her from the elements. Even a stack of branches will do. She saw a teepee once in a history class textbook; with a bit of effort, she thinks she can fashion one by nightfall.
It's nearly dark when she gives up – gives in – and studies a fallen tree trunk, contemplates if she can curl into the narrow crevice between its splintering wood and the hard ground to bed down for the night. She's pantomiming how to angle her body when she hears the crack, a heavy booted foot stepping onto a brittle twig. Slowly, she pulls her knife from her belt, holds her gaze wide and focused as she turns, fingers gripping her weapon the way Lexa taught her. "Slash, don't stab," Lexa had said during those long hours in her tent waiting for Bellamy to save the day. He had, the way Clarke had known he would, and she carries with her every lesson learned that night as she faces her opponent.
Lincoln is reclining against a tree, arms crossed over his chest while he regards her stoically. His face is its usual blank mask, but she thinks she sees amusement in his eyes. How long did it take her to turn around? Half a minute? Even a blind Grounder could have slit her throat in fifteen seconds. She bites down her grimace as she slides the knife back into its sheath. She's untrained but she'll learn. After all, she has nothing but time.
There's a bag at Lincoln's feet and she recognizes the bright red seat belts that could only come from the Ark. She remembers how hers cut into her chest as the dropship sprinted through the sky, remembers thinking the journey would kill her if the ground didn't. It's the same now, as she realizes why Lincoln's here, who sent him and why he came. That same suffocating feeling settles in her chest and her fingers brush the hilt of her knife.
"You can tell Bellamy to go fuck himself. I'm not coming back."
Lincoln steps away from the tree and drops the bag at her feet. "That's good, because I'm not here to bring you home."
Home. The word rips through her, deepens the heaviness sitting on her lungs. She's not sure she ever had one. A home is love and loyalty and her mother killed her father. Whatever that was, home was never part of it.
"So what? You fancied a stroll through the woods?" She crosses her arms over her chest and does her best to look tough wearing a jacket covered in metallic detailing.
"Do you have a plan?" His tone isn't mocking, but it's irritating all the same. She doesn't understand how he can be so calm around people who've tried to kill him over and over again.
"I…" she starts, but soon realizes there's nowhere for her sentence to go. She has no plan, no skills or supplies, nothing but the poorly insulated clothes that Lexa gave her and the determination in her mind. She glances at the pack. "Do you maybe have some food in there?" Lincoln shrugs but Clarke pushes away the irritation and opens the pack. There's a heavy wool sweater and leather gloves, nutrition packs and sticks of dried jerky. A dented metal water bottle and a small pot of mashed seaweed. It won't get her through winter, but it's a start. It's a chance.
Lincoln's hard at work when she finishes examining her supplies, furiously rubbing two sticks together and blowing on a thin stream of smoke. They learned how to make fire in Earth Skills a lifetime ago. Clarke remembers how Wells' eyes sparkled as he raved about all the things he'd do if they ever made it to Earth. He saw the ground but was cheated of so many of the secrets it held. Instead, the responsibility had fallen to her and there's blood on her hands that will never come off. Wells would have found another way, but Wells is dead and everything he could have done died with him.
She blinks back tears and focuses on the steady motions of Lincoln's hands. "You should rest tonight," he says, adding small twigs to the flames as his fire grows. "Tomorrow, your lessons begin."
Clarke scoots closer to the fire and hugs her knees to her chest. "I don't understand. If Bellamy didn't send you to bring me back, why are you here?"
"It's not so easy on your own," Lincoln says, looks pointedly at the fire. It's grown large enough to produce a comfortable heat, and when she doesn't stray too far, she's actually warm. Or warm enough to survive the night without losing any fingers or toes. She would have never been able to do that without his help.
That flare of irritation bubbles through her chest and she angrily bites off a piece of jerky. Just the day before, she was commanding an army and today she can't even make her own fire. "Is it that obvious?"
Lincoln calmly eats a piece of his own jerky. "There's no weakness in asking for help."
She scoffs. About the only thing guaranteed amongst his people is their intolerance for weakness.
"Octavia found me in the woods," he says quietly. "I'd killed another clan's second." He pauses, waits until Clarke meets his eyes. "I was trying to eat him."
"You were a Reaper again." She puts the jerky back in her pack, her appetite completely gone.
"I couldn't fight it. Bellamy was captured." He looks away, stares deeply into the flames. "I thought he was dead. I thought Octavia would never forgive me. I already knew I'd never forgive myself."
"But she did. Forgive you, I mean."
He nods. "She gave me a choice, told me that we could fight it together or I could crawl away and die alone like a coward." He smiles, just a slight quirk of his lips, but the love it conveys is written all over his face.
It takes Clarke aback, all that emotion shining in his eyes, but it helps her understand, why he and Octavia never stop fighting for each other, even when all hope seems to have been lost. "Is that why you love her? Because she doesn't give up?"
His smile widens just the tiniest bit more. "I love many things about her, but it's not why I chose her. Octavia and I…we are always on the outside looking in."
Clarke thinks she understands. They have little in common but seem to speak a language all their own. They're completely attuned to one another's needs, how the other thinks, even when they say nothing at all.
"You and Bellamy are the same."
She jerks her head up, expects to find laughter glinting in his eyes, but they're deeply serious and his observation couldn't be more wrong. Before she was a princess of the ground she was poised to inherit the Ark and there have always been eyes following her every move.
"I was the inside." The words feel ugly on her tongue, bring forth too many reminders of how many strangers' lives were altered by the decisions she made.
Lincoln shakes his head. "You lead because you can't turn your people away. Now, Bellamy takes your place because it's who he is."
"I left him to take care of them," she reminds Lincoln, stares at the fire so he can't see her face, won't see the shame there. Clarke gon Skai Kru, the Trigedakru called her, whispered her name like a goddess of myth, like she could bring down the mountain with just the fire in her heart. She broke the mountain and slew its people and left her own to pick up the pieces. Some warrior princess she proved to be.
"You asked why he sent me." Lincoln reaches across the fire to rest his hand over hers, so the blistered patch of skin in his palm rubs roughly over the back of her hand. "He let you go, he's waiting for you to come back." He pushes to his feet and stares out into the trees. "Get some sleep. I'll take first watch."
Shakily, she rolls to her side and punches the pack into a makeshift pillow. She thinks she hears Bellamy in the night breeze, the promise he made to her, the one she makes for him. "I'll take care of them," he whispers in her ear. She wakes the next morning feeling barely rested but ready to face the challenges ahead.
Lincoln gives her a crash course in Trigedakru survival. She learns to start a fire and coax that thin trickle of smoke into a real flame. She learns to catch fish and trap rabbits and squirrels, separate hides from their muscle and bone, sew the furs into something resembling clothing. She's terrible at most of it, but soaks up the basics, and with time, thinks she'll prove proficient if not exemplary. On the second day, Lincoln shows her how to walk without leaving footprints, to trek through the forest without making a sound, and she's so focused on covering their tracks that she fails to notice that they've arrived at a small cave.
At first it could be any place a Grounder calls home, with a spear propped by the door and a pile of furs in one corner, but then Clarke notices the drawings etched into the cave's walls. There are trees and a river and she thinks she recognizes Ton DC on the far wall, but it's the mushroom cloud that clues her into the cave's owner.
"No," she says firmly. "No way."
Lincoln drops her pack beside to the makeshift bed. "You'll be safe here."
It's not the cave per se – she's come to terms with needing help to survive – but she can't take more help from Lincoln. She still doesn't understand why he's here, why he's gone so far beyond what Bellamy asked of him. "Why are you doing this?" He ignores her question and begins unpacking the supplies. "Seriously, Lincoln. We tortured you, electrocuted you. How can you be so forgiving?"
His hands still and he looks at her, calm and cool and so steady that a flare of irritation joins the guilt in her belly. She doesn't think she could be so forgiving if she were in his place. "I'm no longer Tri Kru," he says and something shifts in his eyes. Pain, Clarke thinks, grief and regret. She keeps her gaze steady so he can see how well she understands. "Ai laik Linkon kom Skai Kru," he whispers. "Yu laik kom heda. I only do my part to help."
Her cheeks turn red, shame replacing the irritation pressing against her heart. She wonders if Bellamy will ever forgive her for leaving him to lead their people on his own. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "I don't deserve any of this but I can't afford to say no."
Lincoln nods and lays out the jerky and nuts that make up their dinner. "Life is too short to hold hate in our hearts. We are different people now, Clarke. Move forward and do not repeat the same mistakes. That is how you repent for your sins."
He takes a bite of jerky, effectively ending the conversation. Clarke still has little appetite but eats anyway, knows she needs to keep up her strength to survive the days ahead. She lets him take the first watch and contemplates his words as she struggles to fall asleep. There will never be enough time to atone for her sins, but tomorrow is a new day – there's a lifetime of new days ahead her. She can't change her past, but she can fight, with everything she has left, to make the future different.
They spend their final day hunting so she can demonstrate what she's learned with the bow and arrow. It's a poor showing but he assures her that she'll get better with time, and she believes him. It's the only way she thinks she'll make it through this.
"Would you like me to bring back a message?" Lincoln watches her gravely as he shrugs on his pack.
Clarke bites her lip, so many words battling for dominance in her head, all the things she wants to tell Bellamy, all the things she should have said when she kissed him goodbye. "I'm sorry. I trust you. I know you won't let me down."
She says none of those things, wants to believe he already knows them about himself. She doesn't have an answer for him though, can't give him days or weeks or even years, but she can give him another promise that she intends to keep. "Tell him that we'll meet again."
"Leida, ai ukot," Lincoln says, bows his head as a sign of respect. "Goodbye, my friend."
"Mochof, Linkon kom Skai Kru. Thank you for everything."
It doesn't feel like enough but he nods his head and accepts her apology, footsteps fading into nothing as he leaves her alone with her ghosts.
The next morning, she takes stock of her surroundings. There's not much but it's clear that Lincoln could let his guard down in this place. He's already shown her how to light the fire and vent the chimney, so it's a small table that catches her eye. A wooden cup filled with thin sticks of charcoal sits on the ragged surface, a stack of blank paper resting beside it. Clarke pauses in her ministrations, fingers itching to grasp a pencil. She tells herself that they're Lincoln's things, off-limits to his reluctant guest, but he packed up some items before he left the night before and he leaves little to chance.
Clarke studies the mushroom cloud for a long minute, analyzes how Lincoln depicted the end of their world in muted browns and golds. It's not so different from the bomb on the bridge, Tris gasping for breath through the blood and death in her lungs. She looks away, but her eyes land on Ton DC before Finn spilled its blood and she burned the survivors to ash. Tears blur her vision and she angrily wipes them away. She doesn't get to feel sorry for herself, not when so many people died at her hand.
"None of us were innocent," a voice says and Clarke whips around, finds Maya perched on the table. She's dressed as Clarke left her, in that pink, woven sweater and jeans. She had one like it on the Ark, tattered and torn, but pink to match her rosy cheeks. She remembers that girl. Hates that girl. Misses that girl. That girl didn't know betrayal. That girl didn't understand sacrifice.
"You're dead," Clarke manages to say, scrambles to remember what she ate for breakfast. No. There weren't any jobi nuts mixed in with her acorns and jerky.
Maya shrugs and picks up one of the pencils. "I was an artist too." She glances at the wall, face scrunched in concentration as she examines Lincoln's sketches. "He's not bad, but you're better." She puts down the pencil, a contemplative expression on her face. "I couldn't draw more than a stick figure, but it didn't stop me from trying."
Clarke nods along, remembering a stack of art history books when she stole Maya's keycard.
"We had classes in the bunker," Maya continues. "I was halfway through a course on the Expressionism when…" she trails off, makes a vague gesture. "Well, you know."
"When I irradiated the mountain," Clarke manages to say, wonders if this is what it's like to lose her mind. She's standing in the home of a man she tortured, arguing with a woman she murdered. She can practically feel what's left of her sanity slipping away.
"None of us were innocent," Maya repeats. She looks very young and very sad, like a girl whose life was cut short at seventeen. Tears pool in her dark eyes and her chin wobbles despite her attempts to keep her expression from falling.
"I'm sorry." Clarke's crying too and her voice catches on a sob, but she thinks Maya still understands. "I didn't have a choice. It was my people or yours and they were counting on me…they're always counting on me." She sinks to her knees, buries her face in her arms and cries until her head aches and her eyes burn, until she's soaked through the woolen fabric of the sweater Bellamy gave her and her thighs scream for relief.
She sits back on her hands and brushes the last of the tears from her eyelashes, glances around the room in search of her guest. Maya's gone but the pencil is on the table where she left it. She stares at it, terrified to look away, worried that if she breaks eye contact, it will be the moment when her sanity finally snaps. A long minute passes and then another, and then she feels foolish for staring at the pencil like it will animate and start scribbling on the walls under its own power. Then, she laughs, laughs until tears pool in her eyes for a different reason, because she's alive when Maya's dead and what does it matter if she's gone a little crazy?
She picks up the pencil and finds a blank space on the wall, sketches an outline of the Ark, the wreckage of Alpha Station rising so high it almost touches the sun. For a moment, she lets it hang in the sky before scratching wispy clouds over its face. The sun becomes a moon, full and glowing, three hundred stars twinkling across the horizon like beacons of hope. She draws the mountain next, soaring and bold, a hundred flowers decorating its slopes. She works through the night and into the following morning, rubs the back of her sore neck as she examines her handiwork. She's given the Mountain Men the sky, returned TonDC's people to the earth. She can't bring them back, but she can give them a monument. She can make sure that they're remembered.
A new feeling settles in her chest. It feels a lot like penance.
It's three more days before she kills the rabbit. It was a lucky shot that she didn't want to take, but she had little choice – the jerky ran out the night before and she can only survive on melted snow for so long.
The rabbit is a skinny little thing with a soft brown coat and mournful brown eyes, but its tiny chest isn't moving when she checks her aim. She managed a clean kill, right through the heart, and she thinks it didn't suffer during its final moments. She sighs in relief and closes its eyes, pulls out the arrow and drops it on the ground. She ignores the drops of blood staining the dry leaves, focuses on slicing the hide from the muscle the way Lincoln showed her. The knife slides easily into the rabbit's side, like butter she thinks the expression goes, easily separates the fur from the flesh.
"You're doing it wrong," Atom says and Clarke jerks her head up. The world spins, blurs then revives in a rush of color, the bright greens of early fall replacing the wintry expanse of gray and white.
Clarke falls back, barely catches herself with her hands, the temperature suddenly dropping a good ten degrees.
Atom doesn't notice the cold though and watches her keenly in nothing but a ratty blue t-shirt. "Stab, not slice," he adds, taps a thin cut on his neck. "Remember?"
She swallows hard, unable to take her eyes off the wound. She put it there her second day on the ground. "You don't have the guts to make the hard choices," Bellamy had said. "I do." He'd stood before her, practically vibrating with his challenge, tall and strong and so ready to prove himself. She'd be the one to prove herself to him. He might have held the knife but she'd made the hard choice – she'd landed the deciding blow.
She remembers how easy it had been, slipping her knife through the thin skin of Atom's neck, severing the artery, watching the light fade from his eyes. They were blue, bluer than the sky above, and she'd hoped it was the last thing he'd seen. Everyone deserves something pretty in their final moments.
He smiles at her kindly, young and handsome and forever seventeen. Clarke can't remember the last time she felt young. Not since she took a life. Not since Wells died. Not since she watched a little girl throw herself over a cliff or slit a man's throat or burned three hundred Grounders alive.
A hot, sharp lump lodges in her chest, spikes of fury driving into her head. She hates Atom for dying, for setting her path in motion, for making death her gift. She hates her mother for sending her to this place, for knowing her better than she knows herself, for understanding the responsibility she would feel. Mostly she hates Bellamy for hesitating that day in the woods. For being a coward. For being weak.
"I hate you!" she yells, lashes out at Atom with wild arms and legs, kicking and screaming at all of them, her mother and Wells and Charlotte and Lexa and Octavia and Jaha and Bellamy. She screams until her throat is hoarse and she runs out of energy, tripping over her own feet and landing awkwardly in the dirt. She turns her ankle as well, not enough to break or sprain, but enough to hurt.
She sniffles a little and massages her wounded leg, searches the clearing for Atom. He's gone, because he's isn't real, but that angry feeling is still in her chest because most of all, she's angry at herself.
She's angry for running away, for abandoning her people, for leaving Bellamy to deal with the fallout. "I need you," she'd said the night he tried to bolt. "We all need you." He'd listened and he'd believed and he'd stayed.
"It's okay, you know." This time, a different voice, soft and so familiar it makes her chest tight from the memory of him.
"It wasn't worth it," she responds. "The alliance broke and you're still dead."
"Look at me, Princess," he says and she glances up, finds herself staring into soft brown eyes. It's a face she loved, a face she betrayed. He smiles at her, that boyish smile that makes him look young and so beautiful it breaks her heart. "You did the right thing."
She shakes her head. "I left them."
Finn shrugs. "You know I'm not Bellamy's biggest fan, but they're in capable hands. You deserve time to heal."
"We did it together," she protests. "We pulled the lever together."
"He isn't happy unless he has people to boss around. Now he has an entire camp to tell what to do." Finn smiles and Clarke can't help the slight curve of her lips. He's not wrong.
It's then that she notices the dark red staining the deep blue of his shirt, spreading slowly across his stomach in a macabre bloom. She reaches to staunch the flow of blood, but he shakes his head and steps back. "Ai gonplei ste odon."
"I killed you," she whispers, blinking back fresh tears. "I killed you."
"I murdered eighteen people, Clarke." His face has never been more serious, his eyes hard, somber pools of brown. "You saved me the pain of eighteen deaths." He reaches for her hand, fingers brushing over hers. "You saved me. Now it's time to save you." He smiles one last time, lips ghosting over the back of her hand.
"Finn, wait. I – " she starts but he's already gone and at the edge of the clearing the sun is sinking behind the trees. "Save yourself," he'd said, and she hears the message behind his words: she needs to get better or she's no good to the people she left behind.
She brushes her hair from her face and braids it into a neat plait, wraps her sore ankle and retrieves the dead rabbit. She finishes skinning it in the dying light and limps back to the cave. She cooks her meat and eats her dinner, drinks a glass of water to stay hydrated. She's warm beneath her furs, her belly full of the food she caught herself, and she sleeps through the night, deep and dreamless so she's actually rested when she awakens the following morning to a world on fire.
There's a loud boom and she bolts from her pallet, sparing only a moment to shove her feet into her boots before she's sprinting into the weak morning light. A dark mushroom rises over what used to be the mountain, climbing so high it almost blocks out the sun. She thinks she hears cheers too, a faint chant of "Jus drein, jus daun." "Blood must have blood."
She watches for a long time, until the cloud starts to dissipate, gray tatters spreading across the bright blue sky. She doesn't understand it, but it still feels like a sign. Her fight is not over, but blood doesn't need to be spilled. She gathers her things to meet her fate.
She's ready the next time they find her.
It takes her the better part of the day to reach the mountain, moving slowly on her gimpy leg, but she's determined to get there. She still doesn't understand why her people blew up it up but she knows they're behind it. No other explanation makes sense.
From exhaustion or nerves, her feet slow as she nears her destination, and she braces herself for what she'll find ahead. "You abandoned him," she tells herself. "Whatever he throws at you, you'll take it." She's repeating the mantra in her head when she arrives, panting and sweaty but mostly relieved because she's still alone. She finds traces of her people – a broken ax, an abandoned tent, a semi-circle of doused campfires – but for all the signs, they're already gone. Mount Weather is too, a gaping hole where a mighty fortress once stood. It's an impressive sight made more remarkable by the destruction it didn't cause. A few trees were singed and the clearing is littered with debris, but the mountain didn't destroy the world when it fell. She can't help but smile – her people are learning too.
She stows her pack in the tent and picks up the ax, holds it in a defensive maneuver as she slowly makes her way to the front door. The heavy steel is warped but still standing, cracked open ajar just the way she left it, but the inscription is new, carved into the scratched metal in Bellamy's uneven block letters. They all learned to read and write on the Ark, but actual writing with pen and paper had been rare, and none of them have great handwriting. She peers at Bellamy's attempt. "And we hereby commit these souls to the deep. May they be remembered forever, until there is no more pain, no more suffering, and the abyss itself shall give up her dead and return them to us."
It takes her a moment to recognize it – The Traveler's Prayer – the Ark's hymn to its dead. She'd said those very words after her father was floated, as she stood over Wells' grave, when she thought she'd watched her mother plummet from the sky. They're words of comfort for the dead they buried and those left behind, or the people she put in the ground. They might not have been innocent but she still thinks it's fitting. She'll always remember what she did on this mountain but she doesn't want history to forget them. She doesn't want anyone repeating her mistakes. She traces the words with her finger, wonders if there will ever be a time without pain or suffering, when the world will truly be at peace. She hopes she's there to see it.
"You're not dead yet," a voice tells her, but she doesn't start or jump out of her skin. This time, she's ready, and she smiles broadly as she turns to face her dad.
"Was it you?" she asks. There has to be a reason she's still here when so many others have fallen.
"Sorry, kiddo. I don't have that kind power."
She nods sharply, her smile falling as tears fill her eyes. She's so happy to see him, and yet it hurts so much, a raw, chafing wound that reminds her how much she's lost. She'd thought she'd never get over the pain of losing Jake, and yet she survived to keep losing the people she loves. To take away what other people love. She's not the girl he thought she was.
"Hey, hey," he says and takes a step closer, wraps an arm across her shoulders and tugs her into his side. She feels the strength of him, solid and broad beneath her cheek, holding her up like she's still small. "Don't cry. We don't get to do this very often."
"I'm a bad person," she chokes out, throat closing around her confession.
"I heard what your mom said – there were no good guys."
"You would have done it differently. You were so brave, you…" She trails off, unable to utter the words.
"Died for my efforts?" He watches her sadly. "My fight is over, but yours is just beginning." He gestures at the clearing, the trees that are still standing despite the damage inflicted upon them, the sky spreading cool and blue and infinite behind them. "You don't get to give up just because it's hard."
He said something similar in the bunker. She'd been drowning under the weight of her people's needs but she'd had Bellamy to keep her afloat, to share the load. To share her guilt, her struggle, her success. There had been so much pride on his face the day they completed the wall, the first time Miller brought down a deer, when they returned to Camp Jaha with the people he saved. It had redeemed him, bringing them home, opened the door to the man he was meant to be.
"Bellamy says that I'm forgiven." She brushes away some dirt and drops onto a fallen log to stretch her legs.
"You should listen to him," Jake says and sits down beside her. "He's a smart kid."
"It's not that easy."
"Why?"
"Because I don't deserve it!" She shoots from her seat and paces the clearing, cuts wide, even circles through the dirt while her dad watches her steadily.
"Forgiveness isn't about what you deserve. You know that."
"But what if I never forgive myself?" She whispers the words, almost afraid to hear them aloud, but she's said them and there's no taking them back. She can't imagine a life time of feeling like this, like she can never fully catch her breath, like there will always be ghosts nipping at her heels.
Jake cups her face in his hands, rough and but also smooth, and she closes her eyes and breathes him, the engine grease and oil of her youth, and it makes that hollow place in her chest fill with warmth. "You won't know unless you try." He presses a gentle kiss to her brow. "Try, kiddo. It's all you can do."
He's gone when she opens her eyes, but his words take root inside her, burrow deep and sink in their claws. This isn't the girl she wants to be. She doesn't want to hide in the shadows; she doesn't want to be afraid to live her life.
Strong fingers clap down on her shoulder, long, tapered fingers that held her hand on her first day of school and dug graves for the dead, the hand of her best friend. His fingers are whole, mercifully whole, as he turns her to face him. "Hi Clarke."
"Wells!" she gasps and tries to hug him but he steps out of her reach, watches her with the calm, easy smile that drove her nuts when they were kids.
"We all have our roles to play," he tells her, smiles at her with his warm dark eyes, looks at her like she should know what to do. He always knew what to do, but she doesn't and the frustration boils inside her.
"I'm not you!" she cries, wishes he could understand how hard this is for her, how hard everything is for her.
"And that's a bad thing?" he asks, raises his eyebrows and looks at her like he can see right through her. He always could in the past.
"Shut up, Wells," she sneers and looks away. Being in charge always came easy to him, the Chancellor's son, the Prince of the Ark. Even when she thought he betrayed her, he never once strayed from his convictions. He was never anything but good and moral and right and yet he's gone and she's still here. It has to be wrong.
He's still watching her when she meets his eyes, and the same calm expression on his face makes her want to scream. How many dead seventeen-year-olds can one girl take? He smiles though and it reminds her of their first moon dance, how he touched her while they waltzed, like she was made of glass, like she might break. He isn't looking at her like that now. He's looking at her like she's strong. Powerful. Like she holds the fate of the world in the palm of her hand. She did, once, pushed that lever and brought down the mountain in one smooth thrust.
"Remember who you are," Wells says and she does, remembers a little girl with a blonde braid stepping into the sunshine, blinking at all the possibility spreading out before her. It's been a long time since she's seen that girl, but she thinks it's still possible to get her back. "Remember," Wells whispers. "Remember what you can do."
She blinks and he's gone but Bellamy's at her side, looking at her with a trusting, faithful gaze. "Looking to you, Princess," he says and she smiles because she knows what to do. Once, she was become death, destroyer of worlds, but she is so much more. Or she can be. She will be.
It's another week before she goes home.
She sleeps in the shadow of the mountain, hunting in its woods and shivering in her thin tent. She sleeps, she eats, she puts herself back together piece by piece. She can't change the past, but she can move forward – she can do better. She takes the first tentative step towards Camp Jaha, thinks she feels Finn smiling down at her.
There's a shout at the gate and then it's swinging open, a trio of armed guards escorting her into the yard. "Welcome back, Commander," the tallest guard says, but she's cut off before she can correct him.
"Clarke!" her mother calls, sprints across the camp with Jackson trailing behind her. She can see the pain on Abby's face, remembers the drill poring into the bare flesh of her thigh, but her mom pushes through, keeps pushing until she's close enough to throw her arms around her daughter. It almost makes Clarke laugh; she's never given much thought to where her stubborn streak came from. "Honey, you're home."
"Yeah, mom," she says softly. "I'm home."
Abby has private quarters and they use them to talk, to catch up, for Clarke to explain where she's been for the better part of a month.
"But you're better now?"
Clarke nods. She told her mom about the mountain and the cave, but the ghosts are her own. She carries them with her so she never forgets. "I'm getting there."
She says the same to Harper and Monty, Raven and Wick and all of her friends. They tell her they have nightmares or hear voices. Raven's leg has healed enough for her to return to work, but she can't abide the sound of a drill.
"I'm working on it," she says over moonshine that night. "They took enough from me – they don't get to take my machines too."
"They took something from all of us."
"He's doing a good job." Raven looks too innocent as she peers at Clarke over the rim of her cup.
"I didn't ask."
Raven rolls her eyes. "He's with Lexa but he'll be back tonight. He'll want to see you."
Clarke isn't so sure of that, but she has more pressing things on her mind. Bellamy and Lexa? What the hell happened while she was gone?
Raven laughs. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend, remember? They made some kind of alliance, blew up the mountain in exchange for supplies to get us through winter."
"But Lexa? Really?"
Her friend's expression changes, grows almost wistful. "He missed you. We all missed you, but he missed you most of all. She helped, I think." Raven looks at her knowingly. "She understood what he was going through when no one else could."
Clarke swallows hard. Once, Lexa had been her friend and something more, but mostly, she'd shared her burden. She also carried her people on her shoulders, held together their world through strength of will alone. She'd never thought anyone else would ever understand that burden. Only now, does she realize that she was so very wrong.
"C'mon. I'll walk you to his tent."
It comes as little surprise that Bellamy would sleep outdoors when so many of the others had taken refuge in the relative comfort of the Ark, and it only confirms how right she was to choose him, emphasizes how wrong she was to leave him to do it on his own.
She's waiting only ten minutes before he arrives, pauses at the entrance while his eyes adjust to the torchlight, to the appearance of his own ghost.
"I heard you were back," he says flatly and sits across from her at the small table. He's come far in the world, this wouldbe assassin, with quarters to match his newfound status, but his eyes burn with the same rebellion as the day he fell from the sky.
"You did well," she says after a long minute of staring at her hands, suddenly unsure of what to say to him. There had been a long speech she'd practiced on her walk from the mountain, but in his presence, the words fail her. Nothing she says will make up for how deeply she betrayed him.
He looks very tired and even in the dim light, she can see the dark smudges under his eyes. It brings tears to hers, seeing how badly she hurt the person she cares about most.
Silently, he reaches over and brushes the tears from her cheeks, lets the pad of his thumb linger over her closed eyelids. It only makes her cry harder, how kind he's being to her, and he drops to his knees at her side and pulls her into his arms. "It's okay," he croons. "Were all okay."
"I'm sorry," she whispers into his neck. "I shouldn't have left. I shouldn't have left it all on you."
He pulls back and brushes her hair from her face, a few wavy tendrils that have slipped from their ties, tangles his fingers in the long strands falling down her back. "You're right. You shouldn't have left." His words hang in the air, all her regret pressing down on her chest, but then he smiles, so broad and bright it makes her feel like she's standing in the sun. "You told me to take care of them, but you forgot one part. Without you, there's no them."
"And then I left."
"But now you're back." He pauses and his smile slips a bit. "You are staying."
She nods, feeling unexpectedly shy. She's put so much on him already and now she's asking for more. "We'll figure it out together, right?"
"Right." He drops his hand and reclaims his seat, looking a little nervous himself. He clears his throat. "So what next?"
"I think," she says with a smile. "I'm ready for that drink."
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