Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognise.

Thanks for the all the reviews, sorry it's taken so long to update, but I was trying to figure out how to navigate the end of season four in my mind, the result will be this story veering way off of canon from about series two.

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'Wake up. Wake up! WAKE UP!' Alexis' eyes shot open, her eyes darted around for a moment she was disorientated. She wasn't used to be woken up by Rosa's voice in her head.

'Wh-what? Rosa? What is it?' she thought back.

'Get back here! Bellamy's freaking out that you're nowhere to be seen! He wants to organise a search party!'

Groaning she sat up and rubbed a hand over her face, trying to wake herself up, "Why does he know I'm gone?" she hissed, not realising she spoke out loud.

'Uh…I might have told him…'

"You told him! What the hell is wrong with you?!" She heard a groan and an arm tightened around her bare waist, looking down, her eyes followed the arm to the man lying next to her, Roan was waking up. The two were naked from the waist up, they hadn't done anything too scandalous, Roan was wary of the fact that any contact she had with him, would in fact be the first contact she had with anyone, so he took things slow. After their kiss on the forest floor he'd picked her up and taken her back to his cave, tossing her onto the furs he called a bed before settling on top of her. They'd spent the evening 'making out' (referred to as such by the kids from the Ark), at some point they'd both lost their shirts, but they hadn't gone further than that.

'It was an accident!' Rosa exclaimed, 'It doesn't matter now anyway, he wants to know where you are.'

"Rosa, the only two people Bellamy Blake pays attention to are his sister, and you! Damn it Ro! Now he's going to be watching me!" she lowered her voice when she felt Roan shift and sit up next to her. She snatched up one of the furs that they were using as a blanket and used it to cover her naked chest.

Roan's hands slid up her waist and he pulled her back to her chest, "Who are you talking to?" he rumbled, his lips brushed her shoulder as he tugged the blanket down, exposing her to him once again.

"No one!" She replied sharply, "Myself." She finally said, trying not to wince at how ridiculous that sounded, while Roan was aware of the fact that there were other mutants with her, Alexis had never gone into any detail about their powers, that was not her secret to tell.

He pulled back and looked at her with an eyebrow raised, "One of your mutant friends?" he asked.

"No," Alexis shook her head, "Maybe… I can't talk about it!" She finally said, the Prince wasn't an idiot, and chances were he'd probably let it go if she explained to him that she couldn't talk about her mutant friends without their permission.

Nodding in acceptance at her answer, he smirked, "Okay," he thread his fingers through her hair, cupping her cheek, turning her to face him, he placed a long, deep kiss on her lips. He knew that she was new to this type of affection, and he wanted her to get used to his touch. She'd spent a lot of time with him, but he knew that, while she may be in his bed, she was still wary of him, she trusted him with her body (but that wasn't really saying much, given how easy it was for her to heal). She didn't, however, trust him with her mind, there were plenty of things that she kept to herself, and he supposed she was right to. After all, it hadn't been too long ago, that he'd called a meeting with his mother to tell her all about the Mutants living in Trikru territory, (regardless of how that meeting went, it had still been in his mind to use the young Mutant as a way to gain his freedom back).

Pulling back her hands resting on his chest, feeling the warmth under her fingers, she sighed, "I have to go."

"Why?" he asked, "No one knows where you are, no one knows what you are, are you needed somewhere?"

Shaking her head, she stood, finding her top and pulling it on, "Bellamy knows I'm gone, he's thinking about organising a search party if I don't come back soon. And that would be…"

"Bad," Roan finished, "very, very, bad."

"For them, they don't know the land, and your Grounder friends are a little murderey."

"They're not my friends," Roan snorted, "But you're right, you should go, before they find this place. Wouldn't want to have to hurt any of your pathetic Skai People." He slid to the edge of the bed, moving the blankets out of the way, Roan grabbed one of Alexis' hands and pulled her towards him.

"They're not my people," she responded automatically, she'd spent so long hating Dr Griffin, The Chancellor, the rest of the Council, it made it easier to just hate everyone from the Ark. In fact the only reason she was so close to Octavia was because they had grown up so similarly, Octavia hated the people of the Ark too.

Roan tugged her down onto his lap, his free hand running up her stomach, under her shirt, cupping a breast, she shuddered as she felt him stroke the sensitive skin with his strong fingers, "Go back to your camp, make sure they don't miss you and then come back to me." He brushed his lips against hers, "You still have no idea how to defend yourself."

"I can defend myself just fine!" she protested.

"Not without your powers," he replied, "now finished getting dressed, and go, I'll expect you back tomorrow."

Shade was stood at the entrance of the drop ship, staring at the daughter of the woman who'd condemned him to years of solitude, before a very sudden death. No one could see him, the Sun was still low in the sky, casting long shadows, so Shade used his ability and was encased in the darkness of one of them, but he was still able to see, still able to see the object of his rage. Clarke Griffin, logically he knew that what Dr Griffin had done was not her daughter's fault, he knew that Clarke had no idea what he was, and briefly, he thought for a moment that if she'd known about the Ark's policy for mutants she would have raged against it. But it didn't matter, she had her mother's eyes, and her demeanour, everything about Clarke Griffin reminded him of Abby, and he hated her for it. After his parents were floated he never thought he'd hate anything or anyone again, all of his pain and anger turned inward. He hated himself for being a mutant, for being the reason his parents were gone. But looking at Clarke, seeing her smile at the others, seeing her manning the 100's little 'triage' unit, seeing her act like the Doctor that she had been studying to be, all his hate and rage turned outward towards her. It was startling how fast his dark feelings were manifesting themselves, and in that moment he realised that he would have to distance himself from these people. If he was this angry at someone who had nothing to do with what had happened to him, when the Council came down from the Ark, and they would come, there was no telling what he would do. As it was he could barely contain the urge to hurt Clarke, what was wrong with him? Before he lost control and acted on his sudden impulse to encase Clarke in the Shadow that had become his home and leave her there to rot, he fell back into the darkness, moments later reappearing in one of their tree houses.

"Shit Shade!" Alexis hissed, she'd snuck back into camp, let Bellamy see her face, before disappearing into the tree house, not quite ready to confront Rosa after spending the night with her Grounder…her Grounder. And wasn't that a strange thought, after her parents had escaped from the Ark (she refused to think that they were dead, even though she knew that no one could survive that drop), nothing had been just hers. Her clothes – recycled, her bed – reused, her cell – the council's, her friends they belonged to each other, her animal was territorial, and all it wanted was something that belonged to no one else but her. She didn't know what it was, but there was something about the Grounder Prince that felt like it was just hers. "You should be in camp!"

"You're not." He shrugged monotonously, now that he was away from the camp his violent urges had dramatically decreased.

"I let Bellamy see my face," she shrugged, noting her friend's odd disposition. "Shade? What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he replied, moving to leave the tree house, he thought that Alexis was going to be away for longer and hoped that he would be able to have some quiet time away from everyone so that he could settle his mind.

Alexis gripped his arm and pulled him towards her, her senses picking up the lingering scent of rage and a much fresher despair on her friend. She made him sit on her makeshift bed (seat cushions from the Drop Ship and a small pile of furs Roan had given to her before she left that morning), "You can't lie to me Shade, you know that, something's wrong, I can smell it on you."

He shook his head, denial already slipping from his lips, "It's nothing."

Closing her eyes, Alexis took a deep breath, analysing his scent more thoroughly, underneath the pain, rage and despair was something else, shame, he was ashamed of himself and she was almost certain that she could guess why. He'd been feeling the same thing she'd been feeling ever since she'd laid eyes on Wells Jaha, the only difference was, she stopped feeling ashamed of her urge to kill him after her first day on the ground, and she wasn't ashamed to admit that she was glad he was dead. So instead of confronting him directly, she took a different approach, "Can I tell you a secret?"

"If it's that you spent the night with your Grounder then it's not a secret." Shade sighed.

Ignoring the smug feeling she got from her animal when Shade referred to Roan as 'hers' she shot him and unimpressed look, "I want to tell you something that I haven't told anyone else…not even Rosa."

He looked up at her quizzically and then gestured for her to sit, she had her serious face on, and to be honest, anything to distract him from his disturbing feelings would help. "Okay, what do you have to say?"

"You know how, now that we're on the Earth, the animal has been…more active than before?"

He nodded, the mind link that had been established between them afforded them the ability to look into each other's thoughts, but early on, they'd each learned how to keep minds shielded, so that unwanted thoughts didn't float away to the others. But they could all feel the animal in Alexis rattling against the bars of the carefully constructed cage that Rosa had built in Alexis' mind so that the animal wouldn't be found out, (It would have given the Council everything they needed to float her early).

"She's more at home here than she ever was up there," she shrugged, "She's bleeding through, breaking down the cage, soon she'll be here fully, and as much as I'm in control now, I'm going to lose a lot of that when she gets here for real." Her face showing for a moment the worry she felt at the thought that maybe the animal would take her over completely, "She's making me more aggressive, making those feelings that I thought I buried deep come to the surface. I wanted to kill Wells, and as much as I know he wasn't his father, I'm glad he's gone. I still want to end Clarke, it's why I spend so much time with 'my Grounder'."

"He's new territory," Shade muttered understandingly, "he's never hurt you and he doesn't remind you of someone that has."

"He's keeping me calm, giving me a way to deal with this aggression. But the point is, I'm not hiding from my feelings, I'm not hiding from the darkness inside of me. And you shouldn't either."

He opened his mouth to respond but Alexis cut him off, "Shade you want to hurt Clarke, I can see it in your eyes, I can smell it in your scent, don't hide from it!"

"I shouldn't want it!" he snapped back, "I shouldn't want to hurt her, she's never done anything to me!"

"No but her mother has! Look," she sighed, turning and facing him, "after your parents were floated, you turned all your hate and anger on yourself, you never gave yourself a chance to mourn, which was fine when we were up there," she pointed in the direction of the sky, "But down here, everything is just so much more, it's like the fresh air, the light from the Sun, the water from the Earth makes everything heightened. And now that you're away from the Ark, you're actually getting a chance to grieve, and grief doesn't make sense, it doesn't care about what you are and aren't supposed to feel, it just is. Just let yourself feel it."

"But what if I can't control it?" he asked, that was what he was really afraid of, what if he couldn't handle it?

"Then I'll be here, I'll be here to stop you from doing anything you may regret."

"What if it's still too much?" he asked quietly, when the people from the Ark came down, when the Council was on the ground, when the Chancellor was with them, how would he react?

"Then we'll go." Alexis replied.

Shade looked up in astonishment at that, she'd said it with such ease, that it had him looking at the treehouse in a new light. Rosa's bed was on one side of the treehouse, the girls had split the house down the middle and Rosa's half looked lived in. Her bed of seat cushions was made, Lex had given her two of her furs, one to cover the cushions like a sheet and the other to use as a blanket. There were some flowers sitting in one corner, knick-knacks that she'd found on the ground in the other. There was even a small pile of clothes next to the bed. But Lex's side, was decidedly less crowded, there was a large bag that she'd managed to stitch together from bits of scrap from the tents, it held a small selection of clothes, two bottles of water (Rosa had used her Telekinesis to fashion them out of bits of scrap metal that weren't being used), and a large hunting knife. The only other thing on the side of her room was her bed. "You don't plan on staying," he whispered, realising that with all her trips to the world outside the dropship site, she hadn't connected with the people around her. Sure she had him and Rosa and Quinn, and Octavia seemed to understand her in a way that not even Rosa could, but her connections were hollow. She'd been pulling away from her friends, from her family, without them even knowing it.

Smiling sadly, she wrapped her arms around his middle, moving close enough to him to rest her head on his shoulder, "This place is for you and Rosa and Quinn, it was never meant to be mine long term," she admitted.

"I don't understand," Shade replied, it was an unspoken rule, but a rule none the less, that The Four didn't separate, they were a unit, always had been, always will be.

"When the Council comes down, they'll hunt for us, you three, you can blend in, they won't be able to kill you once you've integrated yourself into the group, but I can't connect with the group," she held up a hand to stop him protesting, "don't pretend you haven't noticed it, my animal…she's so much happier on the ground than she ever was in space, she's much stronger here, and seeing the Council…it wouldn't end well for any of them."

"So you're just going to leave?! Where would you even go?"

"Well, while a I was spending a lot of time with 'My Grounder', I wasn't spending all my time with him. I explored, there are places that I can live in, places I make safe, places where I don't have to hear every fucking thing everyone does. I'm happy now, but when they come, it will take everything in me just to stop myself from killing them. I can't stay, it won't be safe."

"So you were what? Just going to sneak off in the middle of the night? Hope we weren't going to notice?"

"I can't ask them to come with me, they try to keep it hidden, but Rosa and Quinn, all they want is to be loved and accepted by people, they spent so long locked up, they need human contact."

"And you don't?"

"I have it," she shrugged.

"What your Grounder?" he scoffed and she shook her head.

"Not just 'My Grounder', the rest of them, the other clans, they talk about mutants, they tell their kids bedtime stories about The Brotherhood, the X-men, the Morlocks. We're myths to them, legends, they don't hate us."

"You've been watching them," Shade said incredulously.

"Like I said, I spend time with Roan, but not all my time. They rely so much on the Earth, I could blend in there."

"In a way you can't with the people of the Ark," Shade nodded, understanding but hating it at the same time.

"The Arkers love their metal." She nodded.

"You said that you couldn't ask them, but you asked me." It wasn't a question, Shade wasn't expecting an answer, but she responded anyway.

"I never thought that you wouldn't want to be around them, the Arkers," she frowned, out of all of them Shade was the most withdrawn, but she'd seen inside his head, she should have known that this was coming. "I should have known that it was a possibility, but honestly I was so obsessed with feeling the Sun on my face, breathing in air that didn't stink of sadness. I should have paid more attention to you."

"That's not your fault." Shade replied, he didn't blame her for any of his feelings, he didn't even know he would have these feelings until he got to the Earth and had them.

"I'm asking you to come with me now, I like being away from the Arkers, I like spending time with Roan, but I love you, you're my family, if you need me, I'm here for you."

"You'd really be okay with me going with you?"

Alexis looked up at him, "If you need me, I will always be here for you." She reiterated, "If you want to come with me, you come with me, I'll take care of you."

"Where would we go?"

"There's a few places that I've looked at, but there's still a lot left to explore…we could do it together…if you wanted."

Shade looked at her, saw the hopeful look in her eyes that she couldn't quite mask, and then he thought back to his feelings when he was around the others, he'd only made enough contact for people to know he was, no more, no less, and he knew in heart that he wouldn't be able to stick around them for long, "I'd like that," he finally responded.

Alexis smiled at him, "Okay," suddenly she got a serious look on her face, "Don't tell Rosa!"

"Oh god no, I don't want the 'Rosa is disappointed in you' face, it's bad enough you're going to get it when Rosa finds out your back at camp."

"Oh crap!"

In a tower, hidden away from the Grounders, two men watched the conversation between the two mutants on a large holo-screen. "What should we do?" one asked.

"We need to take this to the Arsenal." The other quickly responded, "They would make excellent additions to the Programme, especially with the girl's ties to the Ice Nation."

The first man nodded, "It would be beneficial to add a few more pawns to this game."

The second man reached out and turned the screen off with a flick of his wrist, "Come, we should not delay any longer."

"Echo," Queen Niyah of Azgeda called.

The woman was a part of the Queen's guard, and quickly made her way over to her Queen, who sat on her throne. "Yes my Queen?"

"Go to Ton DC, I do not believe that my son was completely truthful in his reason to summon me to the border. Find out what he is hiding!"

Echo bowed, "As you command my Queen." She walked out of the throne room, her mind coming up with a thousand and one scenarios as to what the Prince could be hiding. (Of course, nothing would prepare her for the truth, but that's for another time).

Rosa was chatting with Quinn when Bellamy walked up to them, "So I just saw Alexis," he said, causing her to jump at his apparent sudden appearance.

"What?! Um yeah! She's here!" she smiled at him a little uneasily, shooting a glare at Quinn who was took a few quiet steps back before running off.

"So where was she?" he asked, as the 'leader' of their group, he couldn't have people running off into the wild whenever they felt like it. To top it off it appeared as though his sister was very close to the other girl, he didn't want Octavia to lose someone else she cared about.

"She just went for a walk, fell asleep in a cave, she's fine."

"You know," Bellamy said, not believing Rosa, "I've noticed, she seems to disappear a lot, it's not really safe for her to be out there on her own, especially with the Grounder threat."

'Oh if only you knew' she thought to herself, "It's the people," Rosa finally said, "She spent so long alone, all these people around her, it really gets to her. Makes her uncomfortable, so she spends time alone, and as long as she comes back after she leaves, I'm not gonna stop her."

"It's dangerous," Bellamy insisted, "if she gets caught by a Grounder, she's dead."

"Look I appreciate your worry Bellamy, but Lex can handle herself, if I were you, I wouldn't try to stop her when she leaves."

"Ro, she's your best friend, I can't believe you're alright with her going out there, putting herself in unnecessary danger!"

Rosa nodded, she wasn't okay with it, if it were up to her then Lex wouldn't leave the camp at all, but it wasn't, and she wasn't about to use her abilities to control her friend, her sister, just because it made her feel better, "I'm not, but I tell her not to go, she go's, I tell her to come back before dark, she's out all night, I can't force her to do something she doesn't want to do. And after spending so long locked up, I'm not about to."

"Well what if I talked to her?" Bellamy asked, he could see the apprehension on Rosa's face, he was worried about Octavia losing a friend, he hadn't even considered what Rosa must be feeling, she could lose someone she considered to be her sister. "I know you're worried about her, I can see it in your eyes," his hand reached out rested on her cheek, "let me help you."

Rosa hadn't realised how close she and Bellamy were, and when his head lowered towards her she could only watch wide eyed as he moved closer to her and brushed his lips against hers. But before he could deepen the kiss, they were interrupted by Nathan Miller of all people, "Hey Bell-" he cut himself off when he saw the position the two were in, "Oh, sorry, I'll come back later." He spun around and headed back around the drop ship where the two had been conversing.

"You should probably see what's going on." Rosa whispered as she pulled back breathless, not from the kiss, because it could barely even be called that, but from shock that it had even taken place. She may not have been in the Skybox as long as Lex, but she'd never kissed anyone before.

Bellamy slowly nodded, "I'll see you later?" he asked.

"Yeah, later."

Alexis was walking with Octavia, the younger girl badgering her about the night she spent with Roan, it seemed as though Bellamy was keeping such a tight leash on his sister that Octavia needed to get her thrills vicariously through Alexis. The mutant was finally about to give in, but Rosa ran up to them and interrupted, "I need to talk to you!" she exclaimed looking at Rosa.

"What?" Alexis asked confused, she hadn't felt any shift in her friend's mood that would indicate a problem.

"I'm enacting emergency protocol 14!" With that she rushed off in the direction of their Treehouse.

"Emergency protocol 14?" Alexis muttered quizzically.

"What's emergency protocol 14?" Octavia asked.

"I have no idea," Lex shrugged, "I've got to go, I'll talk to you later."

"You better!" Octavia called as the mutant headed in the same direction of her friend.

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