AN: Because travesty can last forever.
The grounders have a camp, but maybe it would be better to call it a village. The structure of it is confusing, which is probably on purpose, and there's so many of them - poking their heads out of their houses, stopping in their tracks as Clarke and the others trek through - that she is grateful she came back without a fuss, because these people would have destroyed them.
Still, she can't help but be fascinated, on top of every other emotion (sorrow, so strong, fear, and bitter resignation...really, what's one more?) because…it isn't just horses they have, but chickens and dogs of all things, animals living and breathing and surviving.
-then they shove her into a hut which reeks of death, tell her to acquaint herself with the instruments, before locking the door and leaving her to her fate.
(I chose this I chose this I chose this thrums steady through her mind and she begins poking around)
.
.
The first patient they bring her isn't as near death as the last, and Clarke saves him. It isn't easy (nothing ever is) because he's bleeding into this thoracic cavity and his chest is bulging but Clarke has seen this before and she saves him.
He's a young boy, to her at least, and only has three scars.
It's not so bad.
.
.
It isn't until she treats her fifth patient that the grounders let her out without a watcher, although maybe that is only because she has to keep to the village where there are eyes aplenty. Clarke doesn't really care though because it isn't like she would leave if she could, because she had made a deal and was good for her word (knew that if she wasn't good for her word everyone left that she loves and cares for is dead).
She walks through dirt paths and visits the horses, she'd been dreaming of them ever since she'd seen them, and thinks of home.
It's funny now, how that only elicits memories of a camp huddled in greenery and surrounded on all sides by enemies. She wonders how Bellamy is holding up, if Jasper and Monty have finally figured out how to cultivate inside the wall, if Octavia is still as spunky as ever, with her added responsibilities. She thinks of Finn (but not for too long) and Raven, of Miller and Murphy, even Charlotte and Wells.
(fourteen dead was always too many)
Her chest aches.
.
.
Winter is swift to come, and now Clarke is sent on missions with Anya and the rest, because sometimes when the group is injured they also become hypothermic. The grounders have some sort of step-by-step protocol for treating it, which is remarkably accurate, but it is always better to have a medic on hand (for the injured and the dying and the ones best killed before that), and Clarke is grateful because it means she can stretch her legs and explore the world; it is the last blessing she has left.
She still keeps her clothes on from the Ark but wraps herself in a cloak that her watcher had given her. His name is Bryant and, asides from being a bit too silent for her tastes, he isn't the worst person in the world to be surrounded by.
(she doesn't know how many scars he has)
When she is tending to her third patient of the day, a potentially fatal arrow in the side, Clarke musters up the courage (or perhaps it is the interest) to ask about the injuries. About why, if they are no longer fighting intruders like the hundred, are they constantly in battle, and whether or not this has been going on since the war (because they have protocols in place for arrows to the chest, protocols because this is normal).
-and she learns about the clans, stretched across the continent and making uneasy truces along the way, about fighting for your right to territory and the risks expansion poses...as well as the rewards. Anya doesn't say much, but her (new) second doesn't bear the same unwillingness, and before long Clarke is bundled up in a blanket, back at camp, and is listening to the remarkable history of the last ninety-seven years on Earth.
.
She had never, in her wildest dreams, imagined that life would continue throughout radiation and mayhem, and these people aren't terror wrapped in violence, they're survivors.
.
.
Spring comes late, according to Terri (her new helper) and they lose seven by summer. This is apparently normal, but is still too many and Clarke devotes herself to learning everything the grounders have to offer in terms of medical expertise, of herbs and methods and customs. There are things about this planet they know that she does not, and it would be a blight on her self-respect not to absorb it all. Bryant watches her even more carefully than normal and when she falls asleep by the edges of the village she wakes up in her bed.
She isn't sure what to make of everything, it has been months and it is still not enough time (might never be enough time) to acclimate to this new life. So she never says anything except thank you and pass the scalpel and Terri and Bryant whisper behind her back.
She nurses the illness out of the youngest of three boys, children to the local seamstress, and finds herself the new owner of several pieces of leather and fur as a result. There are outfits suitable for the humid heat of mid-June, and ones which clasp in several layers and will protect her from the cold. The latter ones are white (better to hide) and Clarke is taken back to a dream and an operating table and realizes that she is no longer anything but a grounder herself.
(she spends the next several days in her hut, sleeping next to the medical supplies, unwilling to leave)
.
.
When she can no longer stand to ruminate in the same dank room, Terri takes her out to a patch at the edge of the village and shows her where the wildflowers grow. They are beautiful and entirely unnecessary, except Terri says that sometimes it is the things in life which aren't sustaining that are the most important. She says that Clarke has lost her wonder, and that is a crime, so her and the girl spend an entire evening watching petals turn luminescent and talking about boys and stories and family and never about the future.
.
The next day she asks to learn how to fight, how to move through the trees the way the grounders do, and Terri and Bryant become her guides to acclimation (and maybe salvation, just maybe)
.
.
.
Anya calls a meeting in late summer, when food is the most plentiful and autumn is just around the corner, and invites Clarke to join in. Apparently healers have always had an important place in the society of the grounders (they have a name, Clarke knows, their own name, but she'll never be able to think of them as anything else) and it is tradition that they attend meetings such as these. It isn't about war or about strategy, it's about a festival, so there really isn't any risk in her attending anyway.
The point of the day is to indulge in the meats and fruits which don't keep past summer, things which aren't worth smoking or drying out. It is better, Bryant says, to take your fill while you can, for sometimes winter is not so kind and food becomes scarce, and like bears they build on layers now so as to survive later.
(Terri says it is really just a great excuse to party)
The bitterness has leaked out of her by now, left only grudging resignation and teetering commitment, and while Anya tells her she isn't certain of her loyalty, Clarke has proven her word. The festival occurs near the anniversary of her departure from her people, and she's forced to agree that while she might never belong to the grounders, she is never going to leave them either. A life is a life, no matter who's, and they aren't evil, just different.
It has only taken her a year of captivity to accept.
(the festival itself is like nothing she has seen before - Unity Day was always so stiff, the dances on the Ark always monitored, and the parties on the ground had been tinged with fear…this holiday is filled with nothing but joviality and gratitude, and by the end of the evening Clarke is huddled next to a group of women, singing the songs with them, and she is happy
she is happy)
.
When the next day hits and Clarke realizes that celebratory juice isn't so celebratory in the morning, she wakes Terri and the two of them make herbal tea for anyone interested. They spend most of the early hours of the sun walking around camp and handing it out to the most raucous from the night before, and when Bryant stumbles in to Clarke's hut mid-afternoon, saying nothing, but holding a hand flat to his skull and groaning into a cup of tea, they dissolve into giggles as bright as the day itself.
.
.
.
Winter comes, and it is her second winter (her second winter) with the grounders, and this causes the sadness to pour over her again, nostalgia making it nearly as strong as the first time. Thankfully there is plenty to distract her, for politics on the ground are just as unsteady as those in the sky, and Anya leaves for a week to tend to a diplomat's whims, and returns with the urgent need for a healer and the willpower to halt a war.
(allowing one of the other clans' member to die, Terri says, would be seen as the same as killing him themselves, regardless of whether or not it was his own damn fault for tempting fate)
So she packs up her stuff and follows the guards out of the village. The plan is simple, really; some of the warriors scout ahead, pile through the snow and muck and such to make sure that there are no traps or dangers lurking ahead, and then signal back for Bryant and Clarke to follow. Evidently the diplomat (Anya called him a haoele but she said it like an insult so Clarke sticks with diplomat) had chosen to stay in his own 'house' of sorts, a little ways off the grounders' land, and there is real danger in traversing unclaimed territory.
This winter Clarke wears the gifts given to her by the seamstress, is dressed in white furs and silver clasps and dons a mask of her own, to keep the wind out of her face. Her and Bryant stay in the trees, waiting for the sound of a safe path, and she grips her medical supplies tighter to her chest (Anya hadn't explained what the injury was, had just told her to follow and scurried back off and Clarke has no idea what to expect). Bryant has become less of a watcher and more of a bodyguard, because no matter where she is Clarke's skills are important, and sort of like a friend as well, and they watch in companionable silence.
.
It is in the peace of the snow fall, drifting white all around them, that Clarke first hears their voices. It has been a year (more than a year) but it would be impossible to mistake the authoritative-borderline-pompous tone as anyone other than him, and Clarke remembers that she only told Bellamy about staying behind the river, never about expanding in the other direction.
(maybe unclaimed territory would be better asserted as unidentified)
Her heart is pounding in her chest, thrumming like the night she had left, and she glances up at Bryant, who is in the tree branch above her, and raises an eyebrow (as if she is calm, as if this means nothing more to her than another day in the field). Below them she hears murmurs, but ignores it until he eventually nods, a bone-weary sigh escaping him with the muted utterance of, "just until the signal sounds."
She grins, the only part of her face really visible behind the wooden bird on her face, before swinging down and out of the tree. She lands with a soft thump, footsteps muted by the fallen snow, and glances up.
Bellamy and Jasper stare back.
.
.
.