A/N: Happy birthday to the wonderful, amazing Rachel (somethingmorecreative1). This is my first ever The 100 story... so please excuse all mistakes and such. This is also unbeta-ed because my beta plans on watching The 100 and this is pretty spoiler-y. Speaking of which, if you haven't seen season 2, then don't read this yet!
This turned out much longer than expected. I feel like I could write double the amount in this storyline alone, but I wanted to get something out before Rachel turns another year older. Expect more The 100 fic to come, and enjoy!
Everywhere she looks, it's green. The rain had just let up, leaving the grass wet and cold, the branches on the trees low, bearing the additional weight of the rainwater. The ground is slick and her boots slide over the mossy Earth, sticking in the mud and leaving prints.
It's a little bit ironic, almost, because it seems that every time she's here she leaves some sort of trace of herself behind.
The air after the rain is dense, sated, and as Clarke approaches the Mount Weather entrance she feels as though the air is heavy not with water, but with dying breaths and unsaid goodbyes. Whispered prayers as parents watched their children's skin erupt with blisters. Final breaths of air that, ultimately, were the reason that they were about to die.
She overturns a rock with the toe of her boot and watches as the bugs wriggle out from the fresh dirt. She wonders if they know that they live in a burial ground. Sometimes, it feels like she's living in one too.
She comes here a lot, but it's never any easier. Just a constant reminder of what she did, who she was willing to sacrifice in order to save her friends. She doesn't regret saving her friends, not for one second. But her hands have scars where she rubs at her knuckles until they've bled, night after night, reliving that day. Searching for any sort of escape from the inevitable slaughter that followed. Maybe she could have done something different. Anything.
If there is some sort of solution, she hasn't found it yet.
Clarke turns away from the entrance of the mountain toward Camp Jaha. She knows the route back and exactly how long it will take her to get there. Yet it seems like it's much farther than it actually is, that there are millions of miles and great expanses of distance between where she stands and where, she thinks, she needs to go.
Yet if she's sure of anything, it's that the past few months on her own have done nothing to stop the pain and the haunting memories. If she has learned anything on Earth, it's that a person can only run so far from his demons before they catch up to him. You can't outrun them. Facing them is really the only way to come out on top.
Clarke is tired of running. She's hungry, she's cold, her hair sticks to her cheeks and drips water in rivulets down her back. It's the end of spring, and here on Earth, that means new beginnings.
Her boots crunch on the burial ground, one step. Then another. Then another. And in that moment, Clarke finds that moving forward one step at a time isn't so hard, as long as it's in the right direction.
Her determination falters when she reaches the edges of the clearing and she sees Camp Jaha for the first time in months. She's not sure she can call this home— but there's a twinge of nostalgia at seeing The Ark crushed into the Earth. In a way, she sort of relates to The Ark, always orbiting something a lot bigger than she could ever understand, and always seemingly out of reach. Maybe it's forgiveness. Maybe it's learning to live with herself. Maybe it's just being able to survive each day without crippling regret.
Whatever it is, she's ready for it.
She steps out of the clearing and hears the shouts immediately. The guards rush to their positions, and she wonders if after all these months she's that unrecognizable. She feels like a stranger to her own friends, her own family, and most certainly, to herself.
"Who's there?" someone calls, and she doesn't recognize the voice.
She opens her mouth to reply, but finds her voice strangely gone. Maybe she isn't ready. Perhaps a small part of her wants them to shoot and end it all.
"I said, who's there? If you don't answer then I'm going to shoot," the guard calls again, his voice warning and angry. She remembers that sort of anger that causes you to do terrible things under the responsibility associated protecting people.
Now, she can hardly protect herself.
"Last warning, drop to your knees and put your hands in the air or I have no choice."
He doesn't want to do it. He doesn't want to kill her.
She doesn't answer, leaving this one up to fate. It's vindictive, she realizes, that she's putting this guard in the position she longs to escape. She's making him choose between protecting his people and ending a life. Making him feel that pain, even if just a little, makes her feel good.
"Alright, I warned—"
"—wait!" a voice shouts from inside the camp. The voice is all too familiar. It brings tears to her eyes and she drops to her knees uselessly, sinking into the dirt.
The gates open and Bellamy runs out, accompanied by the guard who still holds her at gunpoint. She sees recognition flash in his eyes and the look he gives her is vulnerable, for just a moment, as he takes her in.
"Oh my god, it's Clarke Griffin," the guard whispers incredulously, looking at her for a moment before turning back to Bellamy, awaiting instruction.
Bellamy gives her a long look, but any trace of emotion is gone, hidden underneath the sternness of his glare. His hands tighten at his sides and his gaze flicks once more up to her face before he turns around wordlessly and walks away.
The reunion with her mother is what she was dreading the most. There are lots of tears, all from Abby. Clarke is mostly stunned into silence because she never knows how to please her mother and she doesn't think any sort of explanation can fix this.
Abby claims she forgives Clarke for everything, she's just happy to see her safe and back. Clarke thinks cryptically that if forgiveness is that easy for her, then taking a life must have little significance.
She can understand the anger from Bellamy, but the relationship she has with her mother is impossible to put into emotion. There's love and resentment and mistrust all wrapped up into something that is constantly unbalanced and hurtful and, Clarke knows, impossible to ever truly mend.
"You left without saying goodbye. You didn't tell anyone where you were going," Abby comments, and Clarke is split once again. She doesn't deny the comfort of her mother's hug is soothing, at least for a moment. But she tears herself away.
"You know," she says, putting into words what she thinks she's feeling, "you've kept a lot of secrets from me too, mom. Maybe we're really similar, after all."
Her mother releases her, and she exits the room. The door slams shut behind her and she winces at the loud noise it makes. She hadn't meant for it to do that, but maybe it's better that way.
She hasn't seen Bellamy since the incident outside the gate, and she decides that maybe it's best to keep a distance from people for a while.
In her absence, they started building housing. She's not sure if the buildings are permanent, no one is. But at least it's something sort of like home, for the moment. They give Clarke a private room that was going to be used as some sort of supply closet. She feels a flutter of guilt at the fact that everyone else has had to double or triple up in order to accommodate all the people, and yet here she is with her own space.
But she needs it, she really does. It's already cramped on its own, and after months of living out in the open she feels claustrophobic and restless confined by four walls. Her skin itches to get outside, to perhaps help with chores and work because she knows there's always a lot to be done. It's weird though, because she feels like everyone is avoiding her. People give her smiles and sneak looks at her when she passes them in the hall, and for some reason she feels that even if she joined up in some sort of communal work, that wouldn't necessarily make her automatically part of the community again.
The memories of people lost haunt her wherever she goes. The sideways glances by everyone around her aren't enough; the weight of people not actually there is omnipresent. More so than in the woods, she feels like there are always eyes watching her, even when they're not.
It makes it awfully hard for her to feel whole again if she's constantly waiting for the moment for some memory to break her once and for all.
When she returns to her room one night, she finds a pad of paper and a blue colored pencil. There's a note scribbled on the bottom corner of the first page, and she recognizes the handwriting immediately.
"Thought this would be used best in your hands. New pages need new ink. Love, Mom."
Clarke figures it's some sort of apology, albeit a halfhearted attempt at one. She wonders how much longer they can get away with skirting around the real issues between them.
Nevertheless, she opens to a fresh page and drags her fingertips along the empty expanse. The paper is smooth under her touch. The smell of the colored pencil, once inviting, makes her sad. Where she used to see endless possibilities, she's now uninspired. The whiteness of the page reminds her of the whiteness behind her eyelids after an explosion.
Someone knocks on the door, and she closes the pad of paper before she can think too much about it.
"Um, come in."
"I heard you were back," Octavia says, and she's the first person Clarke is truly happy to see.
"For now."
"For now?" Octavia tilts her head to the side in question, and she can see the grimace under her perfectly composed face. It reminds her of the way she can read Bellamy. Or, at least, the way she could.
"For a while."
"Good," Octavia affirms, and she offers a slight smile.
Without asking, she stomps over to Clarke's bed and sits down.
"Where have you been?" she asks, and Clarke doesn't really feel like answering. She shrugs.
Octavia looks amused. "So you've been gone for months, and you don't really know what you've been doing?"
The expression in Clarke's face must be pained, because Octavia seems to get the message and drops it.
"Well it's been hectic around here. They're building houses, but also trying to find a place for us all to move. Everyone is disorganized. Your mother has been a mess. The leadership here isn't great, anymore."
Clarke ignores the last part—her interest is piqued at the fact that they're trying to move somewhere else.
"Do we know where they're trying to move?"
"Not really. Everyone just seems sort of confused. They send out expedition teams everyone once in a while, but after one of them didn't come back, they postponed the trips."
"Hmmm," Clarke muses. "I wonder why they're going through all the trouble of building if they're just trying to find a place to move to."
"Well, wouldn't you want somewhere to feel like home?"
"Sure, then why move?"
"Because look around. This place is scarred with so many bad memories. I mean, for Christ's sake, you sacrificed Finn right outside these walls. Does this really seem like a home to you?"
And if that's not a perfect explanation of the irony Clarke constantly battles with, then she doesn't know what is.
"Yeah, I understand."
"Good. Well, I've got to go do some chores. Gardening and stuff." She grimaces. "Want to join?"
Clarke isn't exactly sure that she wants to, but she also doesn't want to stay in her room and think about what Octavia just said.
"Yeah, okay."
"Great," Octavia beams, and it makes Clarke wish that things were the same as they used to be. "Oh, and Clarke?"
"Yeah?"
"I never thanked you for saving me."
"And killing hundreds of other innocent people." Is Clarke's automatic response.
"Yeah, but you have to do what's right for your family. I've grown up with a brother all my life, and if the roles were reversed in that moment, I would have done the same. There are only so many people you can save, so you've got to do the right things for the ones you care about."
"Doesn't that seem unbearably selfish to you?"
"Sure it does. We can't all be heroes, and we can't dissolve our problems by shooting people into outer space like we did on The Ark. This is the Earth. At least you were actively trying to come up with solutions to our problems, not just make them disappear."
Clarke thinks that she did, in many ways, make those problems disappear. Like wiping out an entire group of people with the pull of a lever. That doesn't seem like a compromising solution at all.
Octavia puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes.
"I don't want to fight about this. I'm just glad you're back."
She marches toward the door, holding it open for Clarke follow.
"Oh and also," she says, glancing over her shoulder, "don't mind my brother. He's glad you're back too, he just doesn't know that he needed it yet."
The weight of the shovel is especially heavy in her hands as she gets to work gardening. The process of raising plants is completely new to her—and really to everyone. There wasn't much of that up on The Ark. But she does enjoy the work, using her fingers to comb through the softness of the Earth and the soil. The experience is weirdly grounding for her.
She uses her hands to poke holes in the ground and sticks seeds in them. Cupping her palms together, she covers the holes with dirt. There's a sort of nervous anticipation there, and she stares at the flattened out Earth for just a moment too long, as if she's already expecting something to start to grow.
The work is, admittedly, tiring, so she stands up and goes to find her water bottle. Clarke trudges over to a makeshift bench, pushing the stray curls back from her face as she walks.
And suddenly he's there, and her mouth goes ever drier than it just was.
"Bellamy?" she asks, her voice small and unsure. She hates the way it sounds.
An uncomfortable silence passes between them, but it gives her the opportunity to really look at him this time. His hands are limp at his sides, his shoulders sunk low like there's some sort of invisible weight pressing down on them. His jaw is firm and his eyes tired. Where they used to just crinkle around the edges when he smiled, there are now permanent creases.
"What?" he scowls at her and she flinches at the coldness in his voice. It hurts. This isn't the Bellamy that she'd grown to trust. This is the same Bellamy as when they first touched the Earth in the drop ship—angry and resentful toward the world. She feels like something she had worked really hard to build has dissipated in her absence, and that realization crushes her.
Clarke steps back, suddenly defensive. "You've been avoiding me," she accuses.
At that, he raises his eyebrows and barks out a laugh, hard and devoid of humor. "I've been avoiding you," he spits back, mocking, and Clarke feels stupid. "That's hilarious Clarke. At least I didn't have to disappear for months for you to get the message."
Anger courses through her veins and she feels her cheeks flush. He doesn't get it. He doesn't know what she's going through. She decided to take on this burden, and he doesn't know what it feels like to carry her own pain and his, too.
"I don't owe you anything, Bellamy.
He looks at her, incredulous. His jaw slackens for a moment before tightening quickly and his hands are in fists at his sides again. His Adam's apple bobs in his throat before he gets the next words out and when he does, he says them with unadulterated honesty. It's brutal.
"When we pulled that lever, we said we were going to do this together. You left, Clarke, and that doesn't seem like together at all."
She doesn't see him for another five days, and she'd be lying if she said it didn't bother her. The sprouts from the seeds she planted are just starting to break through the surface of the Earth. That, in some ways, feels a bit magical. Like she's sort of waiting for her own ground breaking moment to happen.
So when she sees Bellamy that night as she waits her turn in line for dinner, she can't stop herself from being a little infuriated. Really infuriated. If he's mad at her for leaving, then he's certainly being the asshole hypocrite he always has been by avoiding her once she came back.
She approaches the table where he's sitting, glumly picking through his meal.
He looks up at her, scowls, and looks back down at the table.
"Fuck you, Bellamy," she says, and it feels kind of good. She doesn't know exactly what's between them, only that it's twisted since she came back. A part of her—a really small part of her—enjoys knowing that he's suffering like she is. Which is strange, because she thought she was trying to carry his burden for him so many months ago when she left. But being angry makes her feel less dead inside. So maybe, in her own way, it's another escape.
"Go away, Clarke. I have nothing to say to you."
She's not surprised when she lashes out after that, but the intensity of her own voice is unfamiliar to her.
"I don't get why you're so bothered by me. I'd thought you'd have come to accept the fact that people have different ways of dealing with things. The way you choose to lead, the choices you make to save your friends and Octavia, those are on you and I don't tell you how to handle your grief," she spits, and she's not sure what fighting with him will do anymore, because this certainly doesn't feel like healing.
But it gets his attention. He stands up from the table, arms crossed defensively, and leans in so close she can count the freckles on his nose. Maybe that's all she wanted, a reaction, rather than the constant dismissal of her existence.
"I'm not trying to tell you how to handle whatever you're going through. Because believe it or not, I'm going through it too. And it's fucking hell."
"Then what do you want from me?"
He looks at her long and hard, and then focuses his gaze just over her shoulder, seemingly deciding to speak the words that are really on his mind.
"Look at you Clarke. Forget about being a leader. You can hardly talk to other people. You can hardly get up everyday. Whatever you were trying to find when you left clearly wasn't found. I'm not sure why you're back here, but I'm not going to stand around and watch as the best leader this camp has ever had barely has the will to live anymore."
She recoils at his words, and although they're spoken softly they feel like a slap. Time unravels slowly around her and she feels like her boots are hardly touching the ground.
He speaks again, choking out the words like they'd been caught in his throat and he'd been waiting for the right time to say them.
"If that's how you want to deal with this, then fine. But I'm not going to watch you roll over and give in. It's pathetic. And if that happens to you of all people—you, the one person I thought I could count on to be strong, then I don't know how I could possibly live with myself."
It's his own fuck you back at her; she knows it. Everything hurts her in that moment; the pain of his words purely physical. From a medical standpoint, she knows the brain controls emotion. Yet she doesn't understand why the sharp throbbing in her chest feels so forceful and real. Clarke retreats to the safety of her room, and for the first time since she came back, she starts to cry.
Clarke stands at the helm of a giant boat. Around her, waves thrash against the sides, threatening to swallow the ship into the icy black darkness. The sky is swirling, hugely flat, and yet alive. The ocean spray hits her in the face, searing her in coldness.
The boat bobbles in the water, lost and tiny like a flower petal plucked off the stem and thrown into a storm.
A giant wave rolls over the side of the boat and she skids to the opposite side, watching the waves crash onto the dull wood and recede back into the ocean. Behind her, she can hear the screeching and wailing of animals, the cacophony she thinks used to be pleasant, now nightmarish.
"Clarke!" she hears someone call behind her. She turns around and Bellamy rushes from the interior of the ship. He looks around wildly at the storm, and then focuses on her. She can see the fear in his eyes. "The hull of the ship is sinking too low. We have too much weight because we tried to take too many animals."
"What can we do?" she asks, breathless, the wind whisking away her words. She knows the answer.
"We need to eliminate some of the weight," he warns, and the suggestion brings prickling to her eyes. Maybe it's just the saltwater that stings.
"No Bellamy, we're not doing that."
"We have no choice!"
At his words, the boat bends precariously low into the water. The waves slap against the hull with sharp cracks.
"I'm not sacrificing any of the animals. We can save them all." It's desperate.
"Clarke, you know that's not true," he pleads with her.
"I can't make that decision alone."
"You don't have to, we can make it together."
Water starts rising on the deck, covering the tops of her boots. The boat sags deeper and deeper into the water, but Clarke doesn't relent, like maybe hope alive can keep the boat afloat.
"I said no."
"But—"
"No, Bellamy. Go back into the ship."
He gives her one final glare, like somehow he can make her change her mind just by that look alone. And it almost works, for a second she can feel her resolve shake. The wind snaps the sail lines and the boat groans under the weight of the world. No. She's not going to make that decision again. She can save them all, she can.
Clarke turns and stares ahead. The water rises and rises, filling up to her knees. It's cold.
The boat gives a majestic bow and the water floods over the hull, tipping the ship forward. Clarke stands at the front and watches as Noah's Ark gets pulled into the sea.
Summer is in full swing, and she feels like living with herself is a little bit easier. The air is sweet and light. Returning smiles and friendly nods is effortful, but not impossible.
She likes the night best though, when the absence of certain people around camp is less noticeable.
Clarke hasn't interacted with Bellamy since the fight. She's seen him around working on this and that, spending a lot of time at meetings and organizing the guards. Any eye contact between them has been brief, and almost every time it hurts just as much.
Her conditional happiness—if she can even call it that— is interrupted when Jasper finds her one day after their lunch break. He's holding a giant gun.
"Hey, Clarke," he says, conversational, smiling, but the light doesn't touch his eyes in the same way. "There's some sort of diplomatic meeting between us and the Grounders. I was told to give you this," he passes her the gun, and it rests in her arms awkwardly, "because you're going, apparently.
She nearly chokes at that. "What?"
"Yeah, I was told by your mother that you should get ready. We're leaving tomorrow at first light. It's not really a big deal, just something about trading for the upcoming winter with the Grounders, but it doesn't hurt to have you—"
She pushes the gun back at him.
"Tell my mother that if she thinks volunteering me to go is helping, it's not. I don't want this."
Jasper clenches his jaw and conflict flutters in his eyes.
"Spit it out," she demands, the energy coursing through her veins at the prospect of having this sort of responsibility again.
He rocks onto the balls of his feet and rubs the back of his neck.
"Um, so like, your mom didn't volunteer for you to come."
"Then who did?" she asks.
"Blake," he replies, and she opens her mouth to curse out Octavia. "Bellamy Blake, that is."
Her knuckles are bleeding, again. It hasn't happened since she got back. Her thumb bumps along the outside of her opposite hand and she winces as she touches raw skin.
The confusion hasn't left her mind for hours. Bellamy suggested that she should come? That would imply that he values her presence, but she also knows that isn't true. Maybe it's some sort of spiteful thing, to get back at her. Part of her knows that's not the case either; Bellamy might be angry, but he's not manipulative. If she's going to see his anger, it's usually straightforward. This leaves her perplexed and absolutely lost on what she's going to do about it.
She figures she has a few choices. She can refuse to go at all, but something about that screams defeat to her. She can approach Bellamy and yell at him, but the thought of getting into another argument seems futile. Maybe it's what he wants, and she doesn't want to give him that. She can go. But that sort of commitment seems insurmountable to her. She's not ready to face it, certainly not alone. And she doesn't really think of Bellamy and her mother as good company or moral support.
It's Octavia who makes the decision for her.
"You're coming," she says simply, and when she puts it like that Clarke finds she has little leeway to argue.
"But I don't want to."
"Sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do."
"I always do things I don't want to do," Clarke argues, and Octavia laughs.
"You're right. Look, just come along. It's better than moping around camp and you don't even need to join in the discussion if you don't want."
"I have fun moping around camp."
"That's a lie. And I want you to come," Octavia pouts. Clarke smiles.
"Alright, alright," she relents. That smile resonates with her.
"Great. I'll go tell Bellamy," she replies, and bounds out of the room before Clarke can tell her not to.
She's restless that night and morning comes slowly. Her fingers are slow and stiff as she pulls on a light jacket and laces her boots. The sun breaking through the trees is almost a relief, until she remembers the day ahead of her and the implications of what's to come. Though after spending so much time surrounded by nature, she feels a little in synch with it.
She feels light, almost.
Clarke reaches the front of the gates and looks back at The Ark. It's eerily silent—a fire blows smoke into the air, but aside from the crackle of the flames, there's little going on. Guards stand limply at their posts, fatigued from having been up the entire night. She knows in a few hours, the chaos will resume, but for the moment, it's nice.
She's the first person outside, and Bellamy is the second.
His footsteps are inherently familiar to her, so she doesn't bother turning around when he approaches. The morning bliss, though, is ruined and her shoulders tense automatically.
"Good morning," he says, gruff, and she almost reels backward in shock.
Instead, she wheels around in place so that she's facing him, and gives him a nod.
He looks out toward the forest. "Should be a decent walk. Should be an easy meeting. Should all go smoothly."
"If only it were that easy," Clarke comments, nervous, taken aback. He's almost talking to her in the same way he used to before she left. Sure, he's still reserved and uneasy, but she expected anger and it's not there. She wonders briefly what changed.
"If only," he echoes. He seems to think about those words, about how complicated everything is all the time. He gives a scornful laugh and after that, all goes quiet.
For the first time in weeks—months, maybe—Clarke feels like her head clears a little. The silence that settles between them is comfortable. She knows that she doesn't want everything to be the same as it used to be. If time could be rewound, she wouldn't want to relive that situation. Maybe do something differently, yes. But what happened was going to happen eventually. Now she just has to learn to live with that.
"Why did you leave?" he whispers, and the four words sit in the air, nearly tangible. The question is expected, innocent enough, and she's not unprepared for it. Clarke had spent months looking for the answer.
She looks toward the camp gates. She led many pairs of boots out of those gates under the pretense of doing what was right. But not nearly as many pairs of boots had the chance to walk back through. How can she call that right?
She turns to him.
"This was supposed to be their home, Bellamy. This was supposed to be where they were safe. When I was here before, all I could see were the faces of the people who I couldn't save."
He gives her a significant look. "Well when I look around, all I see are the faces of the people you did."
They march through the forest for hours, and it's okay. Not dreadful. She forgot what this was like.
She stumbles over a tree root somewhere along the way, but doesn't fall because of a sturdy hand on her shoulder that props her back up.
"Watch yourself, princess."
Clarke rolls her eyes.
They arrive as the darkness starts to seep through the trees.
"We'll set up camp here for the night and begin discussion in the morning," Bellamy announces. Everyone looks tired and thankful to be off of his or her feet.
Makeshift animal-fur sleeping bags are passed around, water bottles are refilled, and someone starts a campfire. Someone hands her an extra blanket. It feels like camaraderie, or at least as close as Clarke can get.
She sits on the edge of the fire pit, stoking the flames.
"Did you think that by running away, you could take away my pain, too?" he asks, sitting down next to her. Her gaze remains fixed ahead, watching the fire dance and writhe. It reminds her of agony and of peace, both at once.
"I don't know, Bellamy. I thought I could try."
It all does go that smoothly.
Clarke doesn't participate in any of the conversations, just stands behind the other council members and listens to the negotiations. Albeit friendly, there's always an air of tenseness whenever diplomatic relations are being held. The threat of the Grounders attacking Camp Jaha is no longer imminent, but there's enough history behind the two groups that considering themselves aligned is a bit of a stretch. Clarke doesn't think that will ever change—no matter how far you walk forward, your past always keeps your feet just millimeters off the ground. Kind of like a bungee cord.
She wonders if history can hold you back forever, or if one day the cord might just snap.
Still, there are unsaid lies and broken promises between the two groups. Faces that should be there, among the discussion, lost in the crowds, tending to the fire or tucking a child in for the night are no longer there. Some of it, Clarke feels, is her fault. Some of it, perhaps, isn't. It's just life on Earth. Harsh and unforgiving. Here, you can't just float away your problems.
Ultimately, the Grounders have traditions and a lifestyle that The Sky People won't ever understand. She thinks briefly of Lexa, her indomitable spirit and unyielding bravery. Clarke used to think that she would never be like her—that strong-willed and cruel. Her mind flashes to pulling that lever, and she reconsiders.
Lexa would sacrifice lives of anyone for the sake of saving the Grounders. Maybe, she and Clarke aren't that different after all. The definitions of being a monster and being a hero are kind of overlapping, and Clarke isn't really sure where to draw the line.
She thinks it's almost ironic though, because she understands the decision that Lexa made to leave The Sky People in Mount Weather in order to get her own people back. And although it still makes Clarke furious that Lexa double-crossed her, she recognizes why it happened. She can find it in her heart to forgive Lexa and to understand that choice, but she can't find it in her heart to forgive herself.
The walk back to Camp Jaha seems much longer upon this realization and Clarke wonders if the hardest obstacle she ever faced wasn't in fact whether or not to pull that lever, but how to live with the aftermath.
She marches in the back of the group. Bellamy is somewhere near the front. She kind of wishes he wasn't so she could talk it over with someone who knows.
Fall comes slowly. The sprouts that Clarke planted earlier on are fully grown, the straw golden under the warm fall sun. Each plant bows low to the ground, bearing the weight of the fruit.
Octavia approaches Clarke and hands her a rake.
"Harvest time. Kill me," she says, rolling her eyes and sticking the metal spokes into the Earth. She has a cut under her ear—maybe a sparring accident. Although Clarke is happy to do the gardening work, she's tired of the monotonous routine. Living on her own was a constant adrenaline rush, and while life at Camp Jaha is certainly tumultuous, she's not sure anyone could describe it as particularly exciting. The scratch under Octavia's ear, the fresh war paint on her cheeks—Clarke feels something in the pit of her stomach that she hasn't felt in a really long time.
She itches to go back outside the walls, not to leave, but to accomplish something. Camp Jaha feels too small and isolated, the soil is thin and bad for growing plants. There's a whole Earth out there, she realizes with wonder, and it makes her feel kind of small.
"Octavia?" she says, voicing her opinion as they work in tandem. Her arms are sore from the work, and though it's not much, it feels good, honest. Like she's working toward something real. "I think we need to continue expeditions to look for a better place to live. You were right, Camp Jaha is our home now, but it's not going to last. It's time to move on, don't you think?"
Octavia looks up from the ground, surprised by the suggestion from Clarke, of all people. Clarke can't deny that her interest in leading has sparked again. She doesn't want to be a hero, but she wants to accomplish something again. A hero is a silly word, and perhaps being a leader is just part of her nature.
"I'm game for anything to get out of here," Octavia jokes, but her smile is encouraging and excited.
"Get back to work," Clarke snorts, but the idea is there, forming. She supposes she'll have to ask her mother about it at the next council meeting and doesn't want to think much about Bellamy's reaction.
"We're going on an expedition," Clarke announces, ignoring the bewildered stares from the adults around her. Those don't particularly bother her, aside from Bellamy's heated gaze that she can feel across the room. She doesn't care what he thinks.
"I'm leaving Camp Jaha with a group of people to find somewhere to go. This is a home, but this isn't our home. It's time for us, as The Sky People, to move on."
Her mother opens her mouth in objection. "We tried that, Clarke, while you were… gone," she coughs, "and it didn't work. No one got anywhere and some groups didn't come back. It's too far and too dangerous to go without the right supplies, which we unfortunately don't have at the moment."
"I've been gone for months, mom. I know how to handle myself in the woods. This is a volunteer trip only—I'm not forcing people to come if they don't want to. But this is important for us. We're Grounders now, too. We need to learn how to live, not just survive."
The words are painfully true as they leave her mouth.
"You'll never get a team together. People are content here." Abby puts her hands down on the center table in the room, and the other council members nod their heads in agreement.
"Fine. Then I'm going… again," she tacks on the last word, and it's a bit uncomfortable. "Octavia is coming with me. This was never our home."
His voice is sure and strong when he finally pipes up. "I'm coming too," Bellamy says, and then walks out of the room.
"Great. We'll leave in a week," Clarke announces, her stomach nervously fluttering. Her mother frowns but this—this is normal for them. This feels more important than anything Clarke has been doing for nearly a year.
She follows Bellamy out the door, hears his footsteps clatter down the hall and eventually fall silent.
The night before they're set to leave, she packs her backpack. Clarke straps her knife to the side of her pack, watching the blade glow softly in the moonlight that filters through the cracks in her wall. She squints at the light, seeing her reflection in the blade, and wonders how she came to lose the person staring back.
There's a soft knock on her door.
"Come in."
Bellamy is on the other side of the door, his broad shoulders filling up the frame. She takes a step back, instinctively, and fixes her gaze just above the level of his eyes.
"Just making sure you're ready to go in the morning," he says, shrugging his shoulders apathetically.
"I am."
"Great."
He stuffs his hands in his pockets and peeks up at her under the fringe of his hair. It's an innocent gesture, but one that makes Clarke's heart thump a little out of synch.
"Why are you coming?"
"To finish what I start," he says, automatically, like it's a recited answer pointed at her.
"Okay." She wishes their conversations weren't like this—so short and tense. She wistfully remembers the days when she felt she could trust him with anything.
"You forgot your sketch book thing." He points at it with his chin, and Clarke looks at the pad sitting in the corner of her room, dusty and abandoned. The sight of it is pitiful, and even though she's not planning on using it anytime soon, it makes her sad.
"I don't think I'm bringing it."
He shrugs. "Suit yourself. You never know, though, what you might find." His voice is a little rough around the edges and it reminds Clarke of what her mom wrote, that new pages need new ink.
Maybe, this is a new page.
She meets his eyes for the first time in a while, expecting to see his perfectly masked expression. Instead, she finds something there—she's not sure what, but it's something.
"I'm not angry, anymore. I'm not," he says, giving her a look she can't quite read before nodding his head and ducking out of the door.
Clarke knows Bellamy is too proud to give her a proper apology, but she'll take what she can get, and her mind fills in the implied I'm sorry where his words fall just short.
She smiles, brushing off the cover of her sketchbook, and places it in her bag. Clarke notes that just because something is dusty doesn't mean it's broken altogether.
"What did you do while I was gone?" she asks a few days into the journey. The question had been forming in her head for a while, waiting for the right time to be voiced.
Bellamy sighs, hands gripping the gun he's holding as he bends under a low tree branch. All is silent for a bit too long, aside from the crunch of boots, and she thinks she's not going to answer.
"Hating myself," he says, and she's taken aback by his honesty. "Not for pulling the lever—although that still keeps me up at night. Maybe less so than you, though, after seeing how they turned the Grounders into Reapers. I hated myself for watching you leave and doing nothing about it. Then, I hated myself for needing you a lot more than you needed me. I hated not knowing where you were. I hated not knowing if you were ever going to come back. I hated the feeling that whatever dangers you were facing in the woods were preferable to you than being with me," he clears his throat. "Back at Camp Jaha," he adds as clarification.
She stops in her tracks, and he turns around.
"Look, I've always been protective of my family and people I care about. We were supposed to deal with this together, and suddenly that security was gone. You saved those people, Clarke, and it hurts that you don't see it like that. I would do the same thing again without thinking twice. It still hurts me, but it's the truth. Dealing with the pain—that's what I couldn't do on my own. That's what I needed you for."
She realizes in that moment that this isn't necessarily about the deaths that they are responsible for. It's about him caring about her and her leaving him. Sure, Bellamy Blake would gladly give a giant fuck you to people who have wronged him. But if there's one thing he doesn't understand, it's abandoning the people he loves. He'd die for her, she knows, and yet she left him without a second thought.
He thinks she doesn't care and she isn't sure how to change that.
"I'm not leaving again," she swears, and he looks pained at having admitted all of that.
"Then what is this expedition for?" his voice is almost sardonic, still filled with mistrust.
"It's me trying to have a purpose when I get up every day in the morning."
"How can I believe you?"
She considers for a moment. She's never really considered anywhere home, and there's nothing keeping her in any one place. He feels that there's nothing anchoring her to him, and pointing out that there is seems superficial, like an empty promise.
"Because I don't belong anywhere, and you don't either. So maybe we need each other to keep us grounded more than we realize. This pain won't ever go away, Bellamy. The voices, these demons, will only die when we do." Her eyes water a little at that, and she looks away, ashamed at the sound of her own voice. But saying this out loud helps, a little. "That doesn't mean we don't have reason to live right now, though. I realize that now."
A hand cups her cheek and his palm tilts her chin up. The moment is easy; his face is soft and though sincere. His pupils are dilated slightly, and when he looks at her like that she feels not that everything is okay, but that somehow they can find a way to live with themselves.
His thumb traces her bottom lip, his touch excruciatingly gentle, light. But his words carry a more significant weight.
"You need to promise you won't leave me again. I can't live with this by myself." His voice is raw and vulnerable and this—this is her Bellamy. Clarke is taken aback by the sudden insight, the warm swelling in her chest. She's not sure love is the right word for how she feels, but there's definitely something there.
"Together," she says. His hands find hers and this time when she says that word, it's a promise she know she's going to keep.