"It doesn't have to end like this!" It was a polite lie, but Clarke had already been told the truth. That's why you're going in the harvest chamber… The words still echoed in her ears, battling for attention amidst her thunderous heartbeat and the cacophony of the water pouring from the dam. There was so much noise, so much light, but still Clarke could only see the still living bodies hanging from the ceiling. The hundred had been so terrified of the Grounder threat that they had been oblivious to the real monsters. The Grounders were ferocious warriors, but they were still people. The Mountain Men, with their art and chocolate, were more alien and awful than anything Clarke could have foreseen.

And her people were next. Time seemed to slow as the gun fell from her grasp. The guards before her—the men sent to keep their secret safe—were shouting, approaching her carefully. Her thoughts raced a mile a minute, trying to calculate the exact length of time her people would have before the chocolate cake ran out and it was their turn to be hung up by their ankles. A couple of weeks, maybe? Surely the doctors—that Singh woman, probably—would want a greater observation period for this next experiment. Or had they had it already? How long was she unconscious in the observation ward to begin with? Hours, like she had first thought? Or had it already been days—weeks—months that she had been unconscious since the slaughter at the dropship? She couldn't know for certain. She could only rely on her gut that maybe her people had time. Maybe had never been good enough for her before, and that sure as hell wasn't changing now.

Her hands went up. She could hardly see them through the terrified anger flooding her system. There was so much blood on those hands: Anya had spoken of a Grounder village burned by their flares. Lincoln's torture. The burned and twisted bodies crumpled outside of the dropship. All those graves sitting just beyond the walls of the camp she'd so desperately tried to keep safe while balancing on the edge of a knife. All of that paled in comparison to the red-soaked monsters before her, masquerading as men.

And her people were next.

"Secure the prisoner." The words weren't meant for her, but Clarke acted on them anyway. The guns lowered for just a second, long enough for the Mountain Men to begin their approach but Clarke turned on her heel and ran. It was eleven steps to the edge, then to the water… She wasn't sure how long she'd be in the air, but she wasn't afraid. She'd fallen further before. She'd fallen from space once.

Freefalling came with a strange clarity. The roar of the water, the vague shouts of the men she was running from, the hammering of her heart in her chest all began to fall away as adrenaline worked to keep her mind free of doubt and regret. Her people. Danger. Her people, her responsibility.

Time was meaningless in that freefall, but finally there was impact. Clarke's head exploded in pain and she struggled for air as darkness suddenly enveloped her. Everything was heavy and slowed as if gravity had increased. Was this what it felt like to drown? Was she—

No. She wasn't drowning. Her head was swimming, but she was slowly becoming aware again to her surroundings and she was lying on her side against a hard, cold surface. She wasn't in water at all, though the ground—no, floor, concrete—was damp beneath her fingertips. She felt pain, but not like she expected. There wasn't burning in her lungs from near drowning, but the sharp ache of trauma in the back of her head. It blurred her vision, causing shadows to dance and sway where there wasn't light to cast them, but nothing could stop her from recognizing her surroundings.

The bunker. The bunker where she and Bellamy had gone to get supplies only to come up almost totally empty handed. There were guns there, yes, but guns weren't much when she was hoping for blankets, tents, and medical supplies.

The pain began to abate some as she scrambled to her feet, assessing herself for injuries as had quickly become habit. She was, for better or for worse, the only medical personnel the hundred had. If she was hurt, she couldn't take care of the others. She'd learned that lesson the hard way when the Grounders sent Murphy to their door. She assessed herself fully. She recognized the clothes she was wearing as her own, salvaged from the dropship and the bunker Finn had found. She knew the knife that was strapped at her belt, though she could have sworn that she had given it to Raven when she went to mess with the wiring for the thrusters. Most of all, though, she knew the watch wrapped securely around her wrist. She wrapped a hand around it tightly, relief overcoming confusion for a moment before her eyes turned to her surroundings once more.

The bunker. How did she get here? There was a gun beside her on the ground, though not the gun she'd just dropped in the mountain. Mechanically, she picked it up. It was slightly damp like everything else here, and the smell of oil pushed back some of the pain as her senses could focus on something new. She quickly examined the weapon, noting it to be in decent shape, though she frowned at the full clip. They never loaded more than four or five rounds into a clip. A full clip was just asking for wasted bullets when the only shooters they had varied between trigger-happy and anxious.

The next errant thought to cross her mind captured her attention. When did she get here? As she stumbled out of the hidden entrance and back into the woods, it was clear that night had fallen some time ago. But it had been day. She could remember the light shining through Anya's hair as she fell—jumped. The light had been blinding as it refracted off of the spray coming from the spillways as the water poured through the dam.

Images warred in her head, memories and thoughts and stimuli all scrambling for attention before her heart all but leapt to her throat. It was dark, and her head still was awash with too much information and noise, but there—in a clearing—was one of her people. One of her lost people.

Bellamy. He was there. He was there, in front of her!

And so was… Dax?

Memories raced back, a terrible overlay of what was happening and what she knew happened as Dax landed a punch across Bellamy's jaw. Bellamy seemed to awaken slowly from the blow, finally shrugging off the influence of the bad nuts that had caused all this trouble in the first place, and Clarke could see the fear in his eyes even from where she stood.

Why was she stood still? She needed to move.

She lifted the gun to her shoulder like Bellamy had taught. She was more than close enough to make the shot, close enough for them both to clearly hear her when she raised her voice, praying her desperation didn't color her voice as the words escaped her.

"Dax, lower the gun!" She said it, her voice steady and strong and not at all reflecting the havoc in her mind. There was still so much going on—so much wrong—and images of the Mountain and Bellamy on the ground, Lincoln tortured, that damn lever, Raven, Murphy, her people, her people, but what mattered most in this moment was that Dax did not lower the gun. All of those threats facing her and the people she so desperately wanted to keep safe were beyond her reach. There was a problem that she could fix.

"Should've stayed down there, Clarke," the older boy was saying. "I tried not to kill you, but here you are, and Shumway said no witnesses…"

Clarke stared at him down the length of the barrel, her mind awash with images. The gun was jammed. Was it? She cursed herself. A full clip meant a clip full of untested bullets. It wasn't a sure thing, but it was close enough that Clarke forced herself to take a deep breath when Dax offered her her life. Bellamy's eyes were wide and afraid in the dark as she lifted the gun's strap over her head, lowering it gently to the ground.

The gun clattered as it fell to the forest floor, almost echoing without the roar of the water behind her. The gun facing her lowered, just like the Mountain Men, and Dax smiled at her as if he were truly relieved. This time, Clarke wasn't the first to turn.

Dax turned towards Bellamy, hefting the gun up again.

"Like I said, Blake. Nothing—" Eleven steps to the edge of the dam. Eleven steps to Dax.

Clarke made as little noise as possible in her approach, daring not alert him until her right hand wrenched his hair back, his head away, and her left drove her blade deep into her target. She fell back, dragging Dax on top of her and away from Bellamy, and twisted to let Dax fall away to the side. She followed quickly, breathing shallow and afraid as she forced the gun away from Dax's hands. She needn't have bothered, though; Dax's hands immediately went to his throat, his first and only instinct to stop the bleeding before it was too late, but the damage was done. Dax scrambled back uselessly, eyes wide with terror and pain as his fingers failed and his lifeblood poured out.

She was aware of Bellamy moving, though that was hardly a surprise. It seemed that no matter where she was, she was always looking for Bellamy, looking for the one other person in this world who seemed to have an idea of the weight she was carrying. He was the only one who truly attempted to carry it with her since Wells… Her eyes were drawn to the blood on her hands, and she drew in a shaky breath.

Blood. There was so much of it. On her hands and in terrible tubes headed for the ceiling, taking it to the Mountain Men to take as their own. But Bellamy was here. He was safe. And she was here.

He was at her side now, crawling to her past Dax's glassy eyes. He gently pried the knife from Clarke's fingers and, as if that were the only permission she needed, sobs began to wrack her body. In that dark corner of the world, Clarke began to cry for the people she'd lost, and the people that she seemed destined to lose.

Published 3:35, 10.4.21