Hey guys! Another day, another chapter huh? How've you all been?

So there are a couple things that I would like to say. First is about reviews. The last couple that have been sent in aren't showing up on the fic for some reason and I don't know why. I've emailed support about it but I'm not sure what they can do, if anything, about ones that were sent in when whatever went wrong went wrong. But I just wanted to let you know that I got them, even if I can't reply to them here.

So to 123a456e: thank you very much for your review. To Queen Nan: We'll just have to see, eh? ;) And thank you for the spectacular review, and for continuing to read this story. To soulterror: There's gonna be a lot more of the grounders from here on out, hopefully. Hope you stick around for what's to come. And to the guest, thank you, I'm glad you enjoy Anya and my story. Keep being awesome!

(Okay wait I just checked and the reviews are there.)

Another thing I'd like to talk about is Trigedasleng again. Someone asked for translations right after what's spoken. I've said before that I feel like having that as the case all of the time takes away from the language. That being said, all the translations are there, usually right in the same paragraph as the phrase or word.

Last thing, regarding the recaps at the beginning of each chapter: I've got mixed reviews on these, one saying they're helpful and another saying that they should be cut - either in length or completely. I try to keep them as short as I can while also grabbing important things, y'know? The longer the last chapter was the more there is, usually. So, what's your opinion? Please let me know.

I think that's it for now, so we can get into the next chapter of Once More.

Disclaimer: I think you guys know the drill by now.

Before:

"Usually heda stays in Polis." Clarke nodded. That was what she'd thought. "It's much different there than anything you've seen down here Clarke. Octavia would love it."

...

"What could the sky girl possibly have that we need?" Lincoln looked at Clarke who nodded shortly. ... "A way to cure the Reapers."

...

He was taking her actions onto himself and Clarke was touched that he would actually do that for her.

...

Clarke stood a little straighter in place. Lexa was close.

...

"My home isn't really here anymore anyway. I've never been quite like them and when I found Octavia, my heart chose a new home."

...

"All people are dangerous goufa. ... That's why Clarke is here, to tell our heda that she wishes to form an alliance between our people like heda did with the twelve clans."

...

"I can help." She said. "I told you my mom was a doctor and I worked beside her. Let me try and do something. Please?" ... She nodded.

...

"I breathed for him." She simplified. "But there was air around his lungs and he couldn't get full breaths, which is why there is now a pen tube in his chest. His lung will heal up soon enough and then he can take the tube out."

...

"Holt owes you a debt of blood. It will be interesting to see what you do with it."

Now:

It only took a couple minutes for Lincoln to find her and when he did, it only took a look from Clarke to get him to explain.

"A debt of blood is a big deal to us, Clarke; something we take as seriously as our leadership and alliances. Owing someone a debt like that places the person owed at the same tier as heda to the person who owes it, maybe even higher. Just as blood demands blood for wrongdoings, it does so for giving someone their life back."

"So what you're telling me then is now I'm responsible for a man who most likely hates me and my people." Clarke said with a deadpan. Lincoln gave her an apologetic smile and Clarke sighed. "Great. That's just fantastic. Remind me why I volunteered again?" Lincoln's smile turned into one of slight amusement.

"Because it's who you are, Clarke. You are a strong leader in your own right. You take care of strangers just as you take care of your own people."

"Lexa would say it was a weakness, caring like that." Clarke pointed out, looking at the ground and playing a finger through the dirt.

"She would." He conceded. "But it is also strength. Sometimes the line between the two is hard to see. When you care, you have people to fight for, people to make you stronger. At the same time, the people you care for could be used against you and that makes them a weakness."

Lincoln turned to her. "In a position like yours, like heda's, people you care for are going to be in danger either way. It's up to you whether you want to be happy with them for as long as you can; keep them close so you know that they're safe, or whether you want to push them away and make yourself miserable while also making them vulnerable; not being around to keep them away from danger."

Clarke looked over to Lincoln and smiled softly. "You've thought about this, haven't you?" He laughed lightly and shrugged.

"With Octavia, I knew she was going to be in trouble – that was out of my hands. But it was my choice whether I wanted her to be in trouble and not know how to defend herself or keep her close and teach her the rules of the ground, how to take care of herself when she would need it the most. Not that I don't think she would have learned, but I wanted to be a part of it. She was so strong, even before she met me." Clarke saw Lincoln smile as he remembered and she sighed.

"I'm sorry, Lincoln. I don't know why we're here and if I could change it so you were back there with Octavia, I would. Mount Weather was down and Cage was dead… Everyone could have lived in peace." He shook his head and looked into the flames dancing in front of them both.

"Even though I didn't agree with them, the Commander's choices would have cemented her leadership to the new heads of the clans and kept the alliance together with a common goal – that goal being to unite against the Mountain – and she would have done it without spilling another drop of blood from her people.

"Our peace may have lasted with them while the Maunon were still a threat to everyone, but when you did what you did in there… No more Maunon. The coalition might have held, and our alliance with the Sky People might have held for as long as the Reaper threat was still that, but who knows what would have become of everything if we were still there.

"Now, we have a chance to do better for our people, Clarke. You can cement an alliance, and I will be here to help you. I don't know why we were chosen, but we were, and it's up to us to make the best of it that we can. You've already started doing this for your people and, because of your actions, the Commander is already looking at your people with interest instead of hostility.

"She didn't want to war with you before, but the alliance was fractured in the beginning because of what your people had done. Whether they meant to or not." He said when Clarke made to interrupt. "But this time you were attacked and you didn't retaliate. You didn't push back until your people were killed. She was intrigued and made different decisions than she did before. Your people are safe from mine as long as they can protect themselves from the natrona."

Clarke was quiet for a long while, thinking about all that Lincoln had said. He was right, she knew that. Her decisions this time were yielding better results than the last time. What he had said about Lexa's decisions at the Mountain made sense.

She was past forgiving Lexa, she had done that.

Her decisions were the best for her people, she knew they were the best that Lexa could have done. Even if they still stung in the quiet recesses of her heart that spoke emotions about the Commander she had had before; before being given a clean slate. She had said she wasn't ready, but that didn't stop her from the feelings that had grown in the short time she had known Lexa.

She wasn't sure how much she could hide from the Commander when they were face to face again. Lexa had always seen past her leader persona.

Clarke shook herself and looked at Lincoln and smiled teasingly.

"You know, I think that's the most I've ever heard you speak at once." Lincoln huffed out a quick breath and turned back to the fire. She could see the smile tugging at his lips though and chuckled.

"Get some sleep Clarke, we can go to Ton DC in the morning. It will take us a day and a half to get there. Maybe Anya will lend us horses and we can move quicker." Clarke laughed softly.

"You really think she would give the skaigada a horse?" She watched as Lincoln shrugged.

"Perhaps not earlier today, but after what you did for Holt? There is a greater chance that she will consider it." Clarke smiled softly and nodded, moving to do as Lincoln had suggested and settle in to sleep.

ooOoOoo

She was walking, they all were. But she was leading the group of grounders and she could feel their judging stares at her back. So many. If looks could kill, she thought she would probably be dead. Then again, if they could kill, she would probably be dead dozens of times over by now.

They walked through the quiet camp towards the dropship where they were keeping Reaper Lincoln. Bodies were scattered all along the ground and Clarke felt the stares intensify. She was having them walk through a graveyard of their own people and she wasn't even blinking. But internally she was screaming. Screaming out into the void at the cruelness of everything. These people didn't need to die. But they attacked and so the Sky People had fought back.

Clarke wanted to turn around, wanted to apologize for each and every death, but she couldn't turn. Clarke felt like she was a passenger in her body as she continued forward. She was screaming in her mind, screaming for her to stop. She needed them to know that she had no other choice. She needed Lexa to know.

But she couldn't. She was forced to see each and every body they passed, seeing the burnt faces, crying out in death, turned away from the ship and trying to escape. Some of them were her people, but there weren't as many as there were grounders.

The walk felt endless and Clarke soon started to see the burnt faces of Mountain Men on the bodies she passed. But these were different, they weren't blackened, burned to a crisp. These faces were colourful; red and peach and brown and orange. Each face crying out against an invisible enemy.

Clarke tried to close her eyes but she couldn't. She was forced to look at the endless faces passing her by. The endless faces of people she had killed.

Soon the walk was at an end and they were inside of the dropship. Clarke didn't know when they'd gotten there but they were and she looked behind her. She saw Lexa whose face was stoic but Clarke could see the emotion behind the Commander's mask. Could see the hope in her eyes. Hope for a better future without the threat of the Reapers to take them into the Mountain.

Without the Reapers, the Mountain Men would have nobody to go out and bring back prisoners. Not with the effectiveness that their self-created monsters were bringing them in. One Reaper was worth at least five of their own warriors in terms of bringing in more subjects.

Clarke felt her dream-self's back straighten as she moved up the ladder, opening the hatch only to find her heart in her stomach and her mom staring dejectedly at Lincoln's unmoving body. Clarke heard herself cry out and move towards Lincoln as the rest of the grounders come up. She heard Lexa talking about them betraying her.

He was dead. Lincoln was dead and their hope was gone.

She heard screaming, voices calling out. She didn't recognize them, they weren't grounders. She didn't recognize them, they weren't Arkers. She didn't recognize them and they all piled together like a white noise of screams.

"Wake, Clarke."

She saw her mother's attempt to bring Lincoln back with a guard stick. People were still screaming.

She felt the crackle of electricity in the air and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

More screams. Indistinguishable from one another.

She wasn't breathing, she was watching, waiting with bated breath to see if it worked.

Screaming. "Wake up."

Lincoln was alive.

More screams.

"Wake up, wake up, wake up!"

"Just as blood demands blood for wrongdoings, it does so for giving someone their life back." Flashes of chest compressions ran through her mind. Lincoln thought he owed her.

"CLARKE!"

"No!" She woke with a start, her throat raw as she screamed herself hoarse. She saw Lincoln at her side and looked at him with wide eyes. For a moment, all she saw was the Reaper and shuffled back as quickly as she could. After a moment though, she caught his eyes, filled only with concern, and her frantic breathing lessened minutely. She tried to give him the best apologetic look as she could but he only kept looking at her with concern.

She looked behind him when movement caught her eye. Anya was leading a group of three grounders, Tris behind her, trying to keep up with her much shorter legs.

"What's happening?" Anya asked when they neared her and Lincoln.

"N-nothing." Clarke said, taking deep breaths. "I just… I had a nightmare. I'm sorry." She watched as the Trikru stowed their weapons but caught Anya's stare.

"I have heard those kinds of screams before, skaigada. They are not normal terrors." Clarke thought Anya looked intrigued, she caught the miniscule tilting of the warrior's head. "What could have happened to you that you should scream like that, like there are kripa in your mind." Not like, Clarke thought. I definitely have demons that I should deal with. Anya wasn't asking a question though, not really. It was more like she was making a statement to herself aloud.

Tensions were running high though, especially after that nightmare, so Clarke got angry and stood quickly, moving towards Anya.

"Just because I come from the sky doesn't mean I haven't seen things, because I have. I have seen things you will never understand." Clarke said lowly. She was standing toe to toe with Anya now, looking up at her and holding her own. "I watched my father die in front of me, being pulled out of an airlock all because he wanted what was the best for my people. He was sentenced to die and I watched it happen.

"Just a couple of days ago, one of my people died protecting me from one of yours because I was too weak to do it myself. I was too weak to protect her. She was as old as Tris and she died because some of your people decided that what was best was to attack my people without giving us a chance." Clarke was close enough that she saw the slight widening of Anya's eyes before her face was once again a stoic mask of contemplation.

"Just because my people don't live like yours doesn't mean they aren't as ruthless. So don't think that you know us, don't think you know what we've been through. Everyone down here on the ground was sent here to die. We were criminals where we came from and every one of us did something to warrant a death sentence." With that, Clarke realized what she had done and stepped back, her eyes open slightly wider in shock. She looked around and saw Tris looking at her in worry.

Clarke gave the girl a half-hearted smile before she turned and grabbed her pack, moving away from camp and into the forest. She didn't expect anyone to follow her, didn't want anyone to. She needed some time to herself to sort some things out and get some much needed fresh air.

Clarke wasn't sure how long she walked, but she knew it wasn't too far. She could still see small fires crackling away when she turned back to look at the camp site. She leaned her head against a tree and then took a breath before looking up. After a moment, she glanced towards the camp site and then looked at the tree again, searching in the dark for… Ah, that.

Clarke shouldered her pack and grabbed onto the lowest hanging branch she could find, tugging twice at it to make sure it was sturdy before pulling herself up onto it. She grunted as she steadied herself, bringing her feet below her and standing slowly on the branch, a hand against the trunk for support. She smiled to herself before looking around again and finding the next branch.

Clarke kept moving upwards. It was slow going, but when she made it as high as she could go, she sat down, her breathing laboured. Her arms burned but she grinned to herself as she looked down and out, leaning back against the trunk of the tree. Her grin only lasts a moment though; a short, peaceful moment where she forgot why she was out here and not in there. But when she does remember, when her mind flashed with the images of crisped bodies and burnt faces, she closed her eyes and tried to forget. She couldn't deal with this now. She had to be strong and make it through for her people. She needed to be strong for them.

Clarke heard a rustling and opened her eyes, looking down towards the ground. For a second she was dizzy with vertigo but it passed quickly when she saw that Tris had followed her and was making her way up the tree at a much faster pace than Clarke had done.

"What are you doing out here?" Clarke asks quietly as Tris pulls herself up onto the same branch she's sitting on. The girl is quiet, looking at her in contemplation, and shrugs at the question.

"Nobody should be alone when they don't have to be." She said. Clarke's heart was suddenly in her throat at the simple phrase. She watched a slow, easy smile come across Tris' face and stayed motionless as the girl leaned forward to take Clarke's hand. Clarke took the contact and suddenly she was crying.

She didn't know why. Not because she couldn't pin point a single thing, but because there was so much. There was so much emotion pent up, left to fester and grow until this point of breaking. She held Tris' hand and cried against a tree in the earliest hours of the morning and with every tear she could almost feel the weight easing off of her shoulders.

Tris didn't say anything else, she just sat silently with Clarke. She moved closer though, in between Clarke's legs that were hanging off of either side of the branch. She hugged her and Clarke held her close.

Clarke cried for her loss, cried for the people she had been taken from, cried for the people who had been taken from her. She cried for her Father, for Wells, for every single one of the hundred who had died on Earth. She cried for the people of Ton DC and for the innocents in the Mountain who had died because Clarke wanted them all to pay for their transgressions. And for them, they had paid with their lives. She even cried for the grounders who had attacked the dropship, the ones they had burnt to a crisp to save themselves.

She wasn't sure how long they stayed like that, but when Clarke ran out of tears to cry, they continued to sit. The moment was broken when something flashed in the sky.

Clarke looked up and so did Tris, and they both watched as a ship came crashing through the sky. Clarke knew right away that it was the Exodus ship, and she also knew that, like last time, it was coming in too hot. Too fast. The parachute didn't deploy and Clarke's heart was again in her throat as she watched it explode on impact in the distance.

She didn't cry though, she was all out of tears for the night. Instead, Clarke got angry. She didn't blame Raven, it wasn't her fault that she hadn't been able to stop Mount Weather jamming the ship, she knew that. She also knew Raven might blame herself for it, for not being able to stop it. But it wasn't her fault.

No, it was Mount Weather's fault, and Clarke swore right then and there, to herself and to anyone listening, that she would have her revenge. She would have justice for her people and for every single grounder that the Mountain had taken. She would make every single scientist, guard, and leader fall. The Mountain would fall again, and Clarke would live to see her people safe. Blood would have the blood it demanded.

Her mother, oh god. Clarke felt sick and unknowingly held Tris tighter. Her mother had been on the Exodus. Clarke bit the inside of her cheek and closed her eyes.

"Clarke." She heard Tris say. She looked down at the girl and realized she was holding on too tight and immediately let go.

"Sorry Tris." Her voice was rough, but she smiled softly. "Let's get back, huh?" Tris nodded and scooted backwards before making her way down the tree.

Clarke took a good amount longer but gave Tris another smile when she reached the ground to find she was waiting for her. Together they walked back to the camp site and when they got there, Anya was immediately in front of her with Lincoln in tow. She saw the look he was giving her and Clarke knew that he knew what the Exodus coming down meant. She gave him a nod before turning to Anya.

"Was this your plan, Klark kom Skaikru? Gain our trust so when you bring your warriors down, we will go without a fight?" She was reaching, they both knew it. But what Clarke didn't know was why. Why was she suddenly pushing for distrust? "You come here wanting peace, knowing you could not finish a war if you started one, and then you bring more from the sky to give you a better chance? Is that it?"

Clarke looked at Tris who was moving away from the two. Good, Clarke thought. She shouldn't get into this argument.

"What…" Clarke stepped back before her anger resurfaced. She knew it was misplaced but Anya was accusing her of something that they both knew was wrong. She put on her best glare that had Anya taking her own step back before speaking again. "I swear, Anya, that's not it. The people in the Ark will die if they don't come down here!" Anya just shook her head and looked behind her at Lincoln.

"You took responsibility for her Lincoln. Right now it is my decision that she has betrayed the trust shown to her. As such, you are both banished from my camp. You are lucky that the Commander is intrigued by your people or else you would not be here." Clarke looked on with wide eyes as she spoke, not believing what Anya was doing.

"Sha, Onya." Lincoln said. Clarke turned to him and he gave her a look telling her not to argue any more. Clarke sighed, they were headed out today anyway towards Ton DC. She could redeem herself, she knew she could, but it would take time. Anya was a good ally to have, especially given her relationship with Lexa.

Lincoln and Clarke started walking out of the camp but Clarke turned around to get one last word in.

"I will show you that you can trust us, Anya. Even if 'us' only includes the hundred of us sent here in the first place. I'll show everyone that we can work together, and live together." With that, Clarke turned and continued walking out.

"She's just scared." Lincoln said when they were far enough away that no one would hear them. Clarke shook her head, staying quiet. "They all are. Even with Lexa's orders, so many think your people will be like the Maunon. We lose so many people to the Mountain that we're scared your people will start doing the same or, worse, join the Mountain. Your people can walk in our air, you are much more dangerous in that regard."

Clarke sighed and looked at Lincoln. "I get it Lincoln, I do. Fear of the unknown and all that. I meant what I said though, I'll prove that we can be trusted. I don't know how, but I will." She saw him smile and gave him a small one back before focusing on the path in front of her.

"I know you will Clarke."

Ooooookay, so, we're getting close to meeting our beloved Commander again. Anya's a little ruffled but she'll come around... won't she? Two of our favourite ladies will also be back soon and we'll have the crew back together and being generally awesome.

If you missed it on the Author's Note before the chapter, there is something that I'd like to know: Your opinion on the recaps before the chapters. Yea or nay?

And as always, reviews are appreciated and encouraged. Feel free to leave questions and concerns in them as well as comments!

Thanks again for reading guys! Hope you have a great week and I'll see you all on Saturday!

-Bad Wolf