Chapter 1

It was scarcely a month after she'd returned from her walkabout that a Grounder rode up to the gate of Camp Jaha with a request that Clarke of the Sky People attend a gathering of the clans that was to take place in Polis the following week. Bellamy Blake, who met with the Grounder at the camp gate, thought that it sounded not so much like a "request" as a "demand."

"I'll pass the message along," Bellamy told the Grounder, an older man dressed in full battle gear, while at the same time pointing a gun at the man's midsection. They were not at war with the Grounders. No battles had been fought since the defeat of Mount Weather months earlier, but Bellamy was taking no chances. His experiences of Grounder behavior had left a bad taste in his mouth. Above all, he thought, they were not to be trusted.

The Grounder had asked to speak to Clarke personally, and for a moment it looked as though he might argue the point. But the gun Bellamy had pointed at him was apparently persuasive.

"Your leader would be well-advised to attend," the man said finally, scrutinizing both Bellamy and the weapon. "The invitation comes directly from our heda," he added, as though that should obviate the need for any discussion.

"Lexa has requested Clarke's presence?" Bellamy's brow wrinkled. Why the hell would Lexa ask for Clarke after what happened at the mountain?

The man simply stared. "Clarke kom Skaikru will be expected one week from today at the Great Hall in Polis," the Grounder said again. "She may bring others with her if she chooses. Perhaps her second, Belomi kom Skaikru," he said, his narrowed eyes signaling his recognition of the man standing in front of him. Before Bellamy could respond, the Grounder had pulled on the reins of his enormous horse and galloped back towards the forest path.

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"And that's all he said?" Kane asked. "No reason given for the meeting at Polis?"

When Bellamy shook his head, Kane looked thoughtful.

"Have you told Clarke?" he asked.

Bellamy was silent a moment. "Not yet," he answered finally. "But I would never keep this from her."

"Of course not," Kane agreed. "I just wondered...would you like me to pass it along?"

Kane tried to make the question sound casual, but Bellamy knew it wasn't.

He hadn't talked much to Clarke since she'd returned. After the initial enormous relief that she was back safe and sound, it seemed like there was so much that needed to be said that he didn't know where to begin. Somehow, it had felt like there was a wall between them, and Bellamy didn't know how to get over it. Or through it. Or around it. So maybe, without even realizing it, he'd begun to avoid Clarke, and apparently Kane had picked up on that.

He dodged the man's question now by asking one of his own.

"Shouldn't this be brought before the council?" he asked. "Not that Clarke isn't...free to go wherever she chooses."

Bellamy felt his chest tighten at the thought of Clarke voluntarily leaving again. Not, he admitted to himself, that he'd given her any reason to stay. He'd been polite, friendly even. But after everything they'd been through together, it all seemed so superficial. He wanted his relationship with Clarke to be so much more...substantial than that, but he hadn't yet found the courage to risk telling her that. Or the words to make it happen.

"But if this is meant as some kind of diplomatic mission," he continued now to Kane. "If Clarke is going to be representing us, negotiating for us, shouldn't the council...Abby...weigh in? Take a vote or something?"

Kane's smile barely turned up the corners of his mouth.

"You're on the council, son," he said. "If you, Abby, and I decide this mission might have a positive influence on our relationship with the Grounders, that would be enough to sway the others. And then we'd not only allow it, we'd encourage it."

Kane saw Bellamy's frown and understood why he might be against Clarke taking such a journey. He clapped the younger man on the shoulder and gave him a wry smile.

"I understand how you feel," he said. "But before we start worrying about whether or not the council should approve, let's see if Clarke is agreeable. We'd never consider pushing her to attend, so if she wants to avoid it..." Kane's voice trailed off as he let Bellamy finish the thought in his own head.

Bellamy gave a short nod. "I guess we won't know what she thinks until we ask her," he said finally.

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She was in med bay. It seemed, since her return, that Clarke was always in med bay. Unless she was sleeping. Or, very occasionally, eating.

Since she'd landed on Earth, Clarke had spent all her time worrying about the welfare of her companions. Or what was left of them. But before - before Finn, before Tondc, before...the mountain - she had divided that time between fixing their broken bodies and being their leader, a task she'd shared with Bellamy.

Since she'd returned to Camp Jaha, she'd buried herself in the healing, spending every day - and sometimes half the night - in the med bay. It seemed clear to Bellamy that Clarke had no interest in picking up the mantle of leadership again. He wondered what she'd think of this request.

When he and Kane entered the med bay, Clarke was just finishing up with a patient. He was not one of the original hundred, but an Arker who had yet to learn about the perils of life on Earth, where the very ground you walked on could be treacherous.

"It's only a sprain," she was saying reassuringly. "But stay off that foot for a few days or it won't heal properly."

The patient, an older man in a guard's uniform, looked sheepish as he left, as though he were ashamed that he'd tripped like a child on the Earth's uneven terrain. Bellamy nodded sympathetically. He remembered how cocky he'd been when they first landed, but he'd soon learned that the planet had mastery over them all and they'd be well-served to remember it.

His preoccupation with the patient had taken Bellamy's attention for a moment, so he was almost startled when he looked up and saw Clarke's surprised gaze on him. This is stupid, he thought. It's not like I didn't know she'd be here.

Bellamy cleared his throat as he and Clarke continued to stare at one another in uncomfortable silence. He heard Kane's sigh.

"Is something wrong? Have you...hurt yourself?" Clarke's voice broke into the quiet.

Bellamy shouldn't have been surprised that she'd think that, considering this was his first visit to med bay since her return to camp.

Kane sighed again, shaking his head, happy that he wasn't still as young as these two.

"We've had a courier from the Grounders, Clarke," he said. "He came to the gate with a request to see you."

Neither man could have missed the expression of dismay on Clarke's face.

"Don't worry," Kane assured her. "The Grounder is gone now. Bellamy spoke to him and told him he'd pass along the message."

"What did he want?" She turned toward Bellamy as she asked the question, and he could see the apprehension on her face.

Bellamy watched her carefully as he responded, trying to gauge her reaction.

"There's going to be a meeting of the clans in Polis next week and they've...requested...your presence."

"But...why?" she asked, clearly perplexed.

Bellamy shrugged.

"The request came directly from Lexa."

Bellamy saw Clarke's face tighten at the name, which was hardly surprising considering how Lexa had betrayed them all at the mountain. For her to now request Clarke's presence seemed to Bellamy to be the height of arrogance. But then again, that's what he'd come expect from the Commander.

"But...you have no idea why they want me there." She made it a statement and looked to Bellamy for confirmation.

He shook his head. "No, but the Grounder did say that you could bring others with you. Your...second, for instance."

He knew Clarke no longer considered herself a leader, or that she'd ever had such a thing as a "second," but her eyes narrowed when he added that bit of information.

"And were any specific names mentioned?" she asked, her lips curving just slightly, and her arms folding across her chest.

"I may have heard 'Belomi kom Skaikru'," he offered, as his mouth twisted in a wry smile, his eyes drifting downward and then back up again to hold her gaze.

Kane thought it wise to interject himself into the conversation at this point, before the discussion became too...personal.

"Listen, Clarke," he said. "After everything you've been through, neither Abby nor I would try to pressure you into doing this. But, think about it," his voice became excited as he considered the possibilities. "If you go there and meet the other clan leaders, you might be able to negotiate a lasting peace for us. Lexa and the Tree Clan already refer to us as the Skaikru. If we could get that recognition from the other clans, just think what that would mean to our chances of survival here on the planet."

Clarke was silent for a moment. "Does...my mother know about this?" she asked finally.

Kane shook his head. "We - Bellamy and I - wanted to know how you felt about taking on such a responsibility before we told Abby. And I mean it, Clarke. If you don't want to do this, please say so now and we'll understand."

Clarke turned to Bellamy again. "And if I don't show up?" she asked. "Tell me the truth, Bellamy. Did it seem to you as though I had a choice in this?"

"Dammit, Clarke!" Bellamy said, exasperated. "Of course you have a choice. The Grounders can't force you to go. I'd stand in front of the gate myself if anyone tried to make you leave."

Clarke grabbed onto his arm, and heat shot through his whole body. It was the first time she'd touched him since she she'd come back, and Bellamy was practically riveted to the spot.

"I know you would, Bellamy," she said with one of her soft smiles, the first one she'd sent his way in a long time. "But I don't think it's a good idea to antagonize them. And Kane is right. A lot of good could come from this meeting. For all of us."

Clarke pulled her hand from Bellamy's arm and seemed to draw into herself as she made her decision.

"I'll do it," she said. "I'll go to Polis, meet with the clans. But I'm definitely going to need my second," she added, eyeing Bellamy.

"Of course," he said, nodding, his expression determined. "I'd never have let you go without me."

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While she was skeptical at first, Abby Griffin eventually understood the wisdom of Clarke accepting the "invitation" to meet with all the Grounder clans at their capital. But, like Kane, she was reluctant to put her daughter through additional trauma after what they'd all so recently suffered at the hands of the Mountain Men.

"Are you sure you can handle this?" she asked Clarke doubtfully. "Are we...would we be asking too much of you after everything you've been through? I don't want..."

Abby paused, choosing her words carefully.

"We just got you back, Clarke," she told her daughter, watching her closely as she placed her hand on the girl's shoulder, an unusual gesture of affection from the repressed Abby. "I just don't want something else to happen...something that would make you feel you had to leave us again."

Bellamy felt himself tense up as he waited for Clarke's answer. There was no way he was letting her wander off by herself again. Ever. Even if he had to tie her down - or tie himself to her. But he wouldn't say that now, here in this company.

Clarke covered Abby's hand with her own and shook her head.

"Don't worry about that, Mom," she said. "I learned a lot of things about myself while I was away, and since I've been back ho...here." She stumbled over the word, as though she didn't know exactly how to characterize Camp Jaha. "I learned that you can't run away from guilt. Or regret. It follows you everywhere, and you just have to learn to live with it. So you might as well be with the people you like. The people you trust."

She glanced at Bellamy out of the corner of her eye, just a fleeting, almost involuntary glance, gone before he could even react to it.

Bellamy worked hard to keep his jaw from dropping as Clarke's words registered. It was more information about her state of mind than anyone had learned since she'd returned several weeks before, as abruptly and unceremoniously as she'd departed. But it filled him with relief to know that she wasn't considering leaving again. Looked like he could stop saving that rope he'd been keeping under his cot. Just in case.

Abby was silent for a moment, then finally nodded her agreement as she turned toward Bellamy.

"What do you think?" she asked him. "Should we send a large contingent with Clarke? A show of force?"

Bellamy considered, eventually shaking his head.

"The camp needs to keep as many bodies as possible right here," he told the chancellor. "Not only for security, but because the weather is finally warm enough to begin building in earnest. But if we could take Lincoln," he continued, "that would be enough. He's been to Polis, knows the way. And he could help us out with all the Grounder mumbo-jumbo that we aren't familiar with. And of course," Bellamy added wryly, "he's not bad in a fight."

"And that's all?" Abby asked. "Just Lincoln?"

Bellamy huffed out a laugh. "I think it goes without saying that where Lincoln goes, so goes Octavia. I'm not stupid enough to pretend otherwise."

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Despite his current fragile relationship with the Grounders, Lincoln was more than willing to accompany Clarke and Bellamy to Polis. Octavia, to no one's surprise, had other ideas.

"Bell," she said to her brother in exasperation. "Why do you have to go with her? If she wants to answer Lexa's siren call, just let her go on her own."

Bellamy's eyes narrowed in confusion. "What the hell is that supposed to mean, O?" he asked, puzzled, because if there was anyone who understood the meaning of the term "siren call," it was Bellamy Blake. But Octavia refused to elaborate, so he shoved the remark away in the back of his mind to be pondered over at a later time.

This bitterness toward Clarke that Octavia couldn't seem to let go of had led to many arguments between the siblings. The disputes had tapered off somewhat as the Sky People struggled through the winter, only to resume with a vengeance when Clarke finally returned to Camp Jaha in the early spring.

Octavia had tried every argument to change Bellamy's perceptions about Clarke, but it had always come down to the same debate, each of them presenting their differing views over and over.

It had been his own idea to go to Mt. Weather, he kept reminding her. If he hadn't, they'd never have found a way to turn off the acid fog. Without that, they'd never had gotten close enough to the mountain to release their friends.

And Octavia couldn't have it both ways about Tondc either, he'd told her. No one regretted the loss of all those lives more than Bellamy. He hated to think what his body count was now, the total number of lives he'd been in some way responsible for ending.

But he was equally sure that he would never have been able to stay hidden - and alive - if the Mountain Men had known about him earlier, if they'd been looking for him for days instead of just hours.

"You would have found another way," she'd tell him stubbornly, arms crossed defiantly in front of her, her response never changing no matter how many times they discussed it. "I know you would have."

"What way?" The next line was always his and it, too, never varied. "Clarke had so little time to make that decision, O," he'd say. "I don't know what I would have done in her place."

The argument always ended with him reminding her that if Clarke had decided the other way, and if Bellamy and the others had died as a result, Octavia would probably still be heaping blame onto Clarke. Hating her this time for a different reason.

"But I could have died, Bell!" That was always her closing argument. The one she kept hoping would sway him.

And his never wavered either. "I know, O," he'd agree, "but you didn't. Maybe if you had I'd think differently about what happened, maybe I'd be able to blame Clarke...hate Clarke..."

"Fat chance of that, big brother," Octavia would huff. And there they'd come to an impasse, with never any resolution, both of them unmoving in their positions.

"You can't see her for what she is, Bell," she'd flung at him recently, adding a new line. "You're so blinded by your feelings. She doesn't deserve to have you feel that way about her," she'd added in frustration.

While Clarke was away, Octavia had accused him of brooding. After Clarke returned, Bellamy had watched his sister warily, wondering if her antipathy would become overt, if not physically, then verbally. But for the most part, Octavia contented herself with keeping her eye on the situation. Watching him. Avoiding Clarke. Bellamy had wondered how long it would be before she exploded in frustration.

And now he was asking her to accompany the two of them to the Grounder capital. Bellamy pondered fleetingly if Octavia might just let Lincoln go without her. After all, she was bound to hate every aspect of the trip. Not only would she be required to spend hours in Clarke's company, but she'd be forced to spend a majority of that time watching her interact with her beloved brother.

And if the prospect of those were not enough to turn Octavia's stomach, the idea that they were all answering a summons from the despised Lexa would surely curdle her blood. It was the perfect trifecta of circumstances guaranteed to disgust Octavia. So on reflection, Bellamy thought that she just might opt to stay behind.

But he was wrong. When she failed to sway Lincoln from what he considered to be the right course, Octavia merely heaved a sigh and began hurriedly to pack. Her hatred of Clarke, if that's truly what it was, clearly took a back seat to her love for Lincoln. So there would be four in their party, after all.

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Lincoln had estimated that it would take them two days of steady walking to reach Polis, necessitating a night spent in the forest. Since the Grounder was well-acquainted with the route to the capital, Bellamy let him take point on their journey, while he himself became the rear-guard. That left the two women in the center of their ambulatory caravan.

At first, Clarke attempted to take advantage of what she saw as an opportunity to engage Octavia in conversation, but after several rebuffs by the younger girl, Clarke drew back, putting plenty of space between herself and the other woman. She slipped so far behind, in fact, that she was essentially walking along beside Bellamy whenever they were not forced into single-file formation by the narrow forest path.

"So are you not speaking to me, either?" she asked in frustration after several minutes of uninterrupted silence.

Bellamy turned to her in confusion. "What do mean?" he asked, answering her question with one of his own.

"Octavia won't speak to me...and now it seems like you won't either," Clarke said.

Bellamy was perplexed by the hurt he could hear in her voice, so much so that he stopped dead in the middle of the path and grabbed her arm, pulling her around to face him.

"I'm sorry about Octavia," he said. "I've tried to explain things to her a dozen times...make her understand that being...a leader isn't always easy." He shrugged. "I figure she'll get past it in her own good time."

Bellamy paused, frowned. "But I'm not not speaking to you, Clarke. I just...well, I didn't want crowd you. Haven't wanted to...force conversation on you. I figured you'd tell me when you were ready to talk about what happened to you. Is that what you want to talk about?"

She was silent for a moment, reflecting on what he'd said.

"You've tried to explain things to Octavia?" she said. "What things?"

IBellamy sighed. "Mostly about what happened at Tondc," he responded.

"But...you and I...we've never talked about it, Bellamy. How could you know anything about...why I did...what I did?"

"Octavia told me what you said to her. About trying not to give away my position. Not that it was personal," he hastened to add, as he focused on letting her know that he understood her motives were detached. Strictly business. "I know you, Clarke. I know you were only trying to...preserve the rescue plan. Ensure it's success."

Bellamy stopped speaking when he saw the startled look in Clarke's eyes and the faint blush on her cheeks.

"Is that what you think?" she asked quietly. "That it wasn't personal? That I didn't care about your welfare?"

He caught his breath. How should he answer those questions? Should he say he knew the rescue was more important than he was? Or that he hoped like hell that she gave a damn?

Bellamy was saved from making a decision about his response by the sound of his sister's voice shouting from several hundred yards down the path.

"Bell! What the hell!" she bellowed from the top of a hill that she and Lincoln had already crested.

Lincoln's voice followed, softer, but still perfectly audible in the quiet forest, even across that distance.

"We cannot stop if we want to cover enough ground today," he reminded them matter-of-factly.

Clarke turned away from Bellamy and took a step along the path toward the two up ahead.

"Clarke," Bellamy said, grabbing her arm lightly. "What...what did you want to talk about?"

Clarke shook her head. "It doesn't matter," she said. "Lincoln's right. We shouldn't stop unless it's...important."

She turned again toward the top of the hill.

"Wait!" he said, loath to drop the conversation now that it seemed she might be willing to talk to him. There were so many things they needed to say to one another.

"This conversation isn't over," he said quietly to Clarke's retreating back.

Bellamy watched her walk slowly away, and just as he'd finally decided she wasn't going to acknowledge his remark, she turned and looked at him with a blank face and a quick nod.

He let out the breath he'd been holding. It's a start, he thought.