Clarke wakes up screaming.
Her cries have an almost inhuman quality in the dark emptiness of her surroundings, and its only once she has pressed her hands tight to her ears that she realises the pain she's hearing is her own.
The dew-thick air clings to her skin, close and cold. For a fleeting moment the charred and broken bodies of her dreams still float before her eyes, but then the panic passes and the forest lurches into focus. Breathless, she remembers where she is. What she's done.
The depth of the gloom that presses in on all sides confronts her with how very alone she is now, and for one sharp second she considers returning to camp Jaha, returning to her people.
But President Wallace's words crush this thought before it is even fully formed. "I bear it so they don't have to". This mantra has become something of a talisman to her now, used to chase away her doubts and weakness. She made her choice and this, she believes, is all she has left to offer her people – a way to live free from the burden of what it took for them to survive.
Even though dawn is still a few hours away she sets about gently working the stiffness from her muscles and packing up her meagre camp – she knows from experience sleep won't come again this night.
It has been the same every night for 14 nights. 14 longs days since she turned her back on camp Jaha, since she made the decision she never wanted to make.
Her life since then has been distilled down to three simple tasks. Walking until she is too tired to think, eating as much as she can forage, and sleeping as much as her dreams allow.
As to where she is walking, her final destination seems so irrelevant that she still has yet to give it any real thought. Instead her direction is dictated by one thing and one thing only – the path that will take her as far away from Mount Weather as possible.
She walks until the physical exertion shouts down all other thought. She walks to keep herself from thinking about why she started walking in the first place. She walks to push their faces from her mind - Jasper, Monty, Raven, Octavia…her mother. She wonders if they will ever truly be able to understand why she did the things she did, why she became the person she is now.
Becoming this person has cost her everything. She feels completely and utterly used up. Her one small comfort is knowing that her people have Bellamy looking out for them, that she can count on him to keep them safe.
Thinking of him, their last interaction plays in her mind. That same forgiveness he offered her that she had once given to him.
If only it were that simple.