A/N: Just a quick note to say how much I appreciate the love this story continues to get, even when the updates are slower than molasses, and thank you to those of you who wrote reviews as a guest whom I couldn't reply to personally. Your support is highly appreciated! This is going to be a lot slower going than originally promised…not that I exactly promised a specific timeline etc. but just so you know I haven't, and won't give up on it!

Disclaimer: All things The 100 related belong to Kass Morgan and the writers of the amazing TV show – the rest is mine!

Tiny recap:

The door creaked open, seemingly by its own volition, and Savage seized the opportunity to dash forward, barking his shrill puppy barks as he disappeared from sight into the property.

"Savage!" Clarke exclaimed.

She ran after him, pushing aside the heavy door to widen the gap. Then she stopped cold. In the middle of the marbled atrium, among the collection of browned, crackling leaves and tangled draping of wires, a tall stranger stood with her puppy in his arms.

Chapter Thirteen

Clarke

Clarke had once heard it said that animals were trustworthy judges of character. That they could sniff out anger, deceit, or harmful intent towards their owners and would react accordingly. If that was the case, then the grounder holding Savage carefully between his large mitts was the equivalent of a tree hugging hippy. Savage panted away with excitement, his tongue lolling to the side when it wasn't reaching enthusiastically to lick the large man's cheek, and a satisfied look graced his cute puppy face. Could a dog even look satisfied? Well, she could swear Savage did. Her immediate wariness notwithstanding, she hadn't missed the fact that the stranger was being gentle with the exuberant puppy. That scored him some immediate brownie points, but barely. He was still, after all, a stranger.

Coming up behind her she heard Harper draw in a shocked breath. "When you said we were going to see a man about a house, I didn't think you meant literally see a man about a house."

"I'm just that good." Clarke kidded. "Please stand by for my next feat of astonishing psychic prowess."

Harper laughed. "I think your brain is broken. You couldn't have foreseen this at an earlier point in time?"

Clarke grumbled good-naturedly. Of all the concerns they'd contemplated about their possible move, the idea that their chosen town was already occupied by individuals outside of a known clan wasn't among them. They'd assumed an unclaimed territory meant unclaimed land. But it was clear to her that this guy was alone. He stood in the shadows, assessing them – undoubtedly evaluating their numbers and skill set - rather than taking a warrior's stance. Weapons had yet to be drawn, and if she could avoid that happening altogether then at least something would have gone right with the day. The confident I-have-a-clan-that-will-avenge-any-insult-to-me-and-you-offend-me-just-by-existing stereotype she'd come to associate with the grounders was missing. The ones she wasn't romantically involved with or receiving medical care from at any rate.

She wondered if he had been this way for a long time, and what that might do to a person's psyche – but most of all she wondered why he was alone in the first place. Something – some instinctive part of her told Clarke he didn't mean them harm. Her intuition wasn't perfect, but her relationship with Lincoln made her feel like she owed it to him to give his people the benefit of the doubt first. Not everyone meant to kill them. Maybe, just maybe, they could gain another ally.

"Is this your house?" Murphy spoke with a practised air of disregard. "Our bad. We'll just be leaving now."

"I'm Clarke of the Skaikru." She stepped forward, ignoring the deeply aggrieved sigh from Murphy. She gestured to his squirming bundle. "And that's Savage. He's a little excitable, as you can see."

Light streamed from a large, jagged-paned window at the rear of the entrance hall, high above the relic of a grand staircase. The man stepped forward into the warm, yellowed flood that sent scattered shadows across the mucky floor. Among his rough, dark features - the shadow of a beard, the long, burnt coffee coloured straggles of hair drawn back from his face by those purposeful warrior braids of old - she immediately noticed the scars. Intentional, almost decorative, intricate half moons that curved down from his forehead to his cheek bones. His face was angular, handsome – his figure tall and strong, and clothed in the black leathers and furs that were typical of his people. The scarring was new though – aside from the circles used to proudly signal a death count, Clarke hadn't observed these marks.

"I am Roan of Azgeda." He took another step forward and his icy blue eyes rose to meet her own.

She sensed deep intelligence there, and a measure of cunning. Not a surprise. Many of them might look down on the grounders as little more then savages, with strange customs and stranger beliefs, but who had survived an apocalypse on a radiation soaked planet with little to no supplies? Not them. Who had survived and thrived in a violent society that only respected the strong? Not them either. Though they were trying, weren't they?

Clarke smiled tentatively. "Azgeda. I'm not familiar with the word. Is it far?"

"Many days walk from here." He replied. "The cold lands in the North."

"Then you're a long way from home." She deduced. Therefore, unlikely to betray them and run home and return with reinforcements while they slept.

A quick nod. "As are you."

Touché. "We didn't realise this place was already occupied, or else we wouldn't have entered unannounced. We can find other shelter within the town limits…"

"There is no need." He placed Savage on the floor and the pup immediately hurtled into a pile of dead leaves, barking when they scattered like feathers in the wind. "There is room here. One man can only occupy so much space."

"I'm sure there are other structures we could set up shop in, Princess." Murphy hissed in her ear. He probably thought he was being quiet, but the hall acted as a natural amplifier. "Let's get your furry friend and move on before you unintentionally become chopped liver."

Clarke rolled her eyes. She was busy watching Savage have his fun, pouncing on every escapee leaf as though determined to catch them all, and it struck her as somehow perfect. This place felt right. She'd known it as soon as she'd seen the sign for Sky High – pun intended. "Concerned about my life? If I didn't know any better, I'd say you might've missed me, John Murphy."

Murphy looked incredulous. "Did you have a personality transplant that I don't know about? What happened to the strike first, repent later mentality?"

"Much good that would do you all." Clarke mused. "I'm getting mighty tired of being displaced."

"There is no other shelter to be had." Roan interjected with a calm voice. "At least, none with a working roof. Besides, I would welcome the company."

"I bet you would." Murphy muttered.

"Excuse my friend. He's justifiably a little edgy around strangers. Especially of the native variety." Clarke ran her eyes over the room appreciatively for the first time. "And it's just you here…alone?"

"Yes." His stance was relaxed; his eye contact direct and expressionless. He didn't seem to be lying, but Clarke couldn't get much of a read on him besides that.

"I don't know if you had this much company in mind." She stressed. "We're just shy of a hundred, all told."

His eyes widened a fraction, then he shrugged broadly, as though he'd already come to a decision and would stick by it. "There's enough room."

"Alright." Clarke grinned. She clapped her hands together and Savage barked in startled reproach. He scampered to her feet looking for comfort, despite it being her who startled him in the first place. Clarke picked the silly puppy up, murmuring softly. "Let's take a look around, shall we?"

Roan strode towards the arched entrance to the left wing. One of the forest green doors was hanging half off it's hinges and propped open by a large rock. He swung the other one wide and held his arm out gallantly towards her. "Ladies first."

Harper fidgeted at her side. Clarke moved an evaluating eye over Roan, who waited patiently for her to accept his offer of welcome. She smiled at him in a bid for friendship and his answering smile was vaguely flirtatious – his eyes lit and ran down her body in obvious appraisal as she walked past. She'd have to keep an eye on that, but as soon as Lincoln returned he'd know she was taken. As in taken. For now, he was a new friend and ally, and temporarily their best bet at survival in this new place – who knew what secretly helpful information was stored in that brain of his. She fully intended to pick at it.

Bellamy

"If that little twerp doesn't stop flirting with my sister I'm going to rearrange his face." Bellamy spat. "And not in an attempt to make his ugly mug handsome either."

He spied Lincoln's mouth twitching and growled his displeasure. "Tell me again why we couldn't have taken the canoes and ditched him as soon as we docked? This trek is taking too long – too many opportunities for some people to get overly chummy."

They'd been walking for the better part of the day and only now approached vaguely familiar forest. Though if you asked him to tell you exactly where they were he would have been stumped. Bellamy had been patient the first few times Octavia's flirtatious giggles reached him. He'd even tried his hardest to pass it off as genuine gentlemanly behaviour when the grounder had helped Octavia over fallen trees or held back branches for her. But enough was enough.

"You know why." Lincoln stepped lithely around a trunk in their path without a downward glance. "Paddling downstream is an entirely different story to travelling against the current. Hence why it was so easy for both our stalkers to follow us by boat and at speed."

He said the last with a hint of annoyance Bellamy could completely understand. They hadn't made any effort to hide their trail, and consequently they'd attracted not just one tail, but two. The grounders would know their new permanent location once the annoying kid grounder reached home – but then, that was part of the point in moving – letting Trikru know they were learning to respect territorial boundaries. At least neither of their stalkers were Finn, though he could still prove to be a big problem if what Murphy said is true and the already unravelling boy had been tortured. He could now become a positively unhinged problem.

Jasper sent the giggling couple a worried glance. "Maybe I should check on them."

Bellamy clapped him on the shoulder. "Good man."

They watched Jasper gambol ahead and casually insert his lanky body between Octavia and Artigas. The latter sent his sister an amused look that she returned with a knowing grin. Then Jasper turned blatant moon eyes on Octavia, his hands fluttering about her as though to offer assistance she hardly needed when the ground was flat and she had two perfectly working legs of her own. Jesus – you'd think she was a tower-owning, bird-singing damsel in distress with the way these idiots behaved. It could almost make a man long for the days when she hid under the floor at the first sign of non-familial members, well away from hormonal teenage boys. Almost, but not quite. He sighed in defeat.

"I think you just traded one Romeo for another." Lincoln advised.

"No shit." He gazed furtively at his companion when he fell silent. "How you coping being away from your Juliet?"

Lincoln rumbled a light laugh. "We're hardly Shakespearean material."

He grinned smugly. "Nice redirection tactic, but you're not fooling me."

"I trust Clarke to take care of herself." Lincoln followed up his statement with a frown, as though he meant his words, but that didn't mean he liked them.

"But you'd rather be the one taking care of her, am I right?" He surmised.

Lincoln quirked a brow. "You did not strike me as the type to point out the obvious."

Bellamy shrugged. "I'm not, unless it serves my purpose."

Lincoln smiled faintly. "And that would be?"

"Distraction, my friend."

They both gazed ahead at the young and for once, worry-free youths. "Why does it bother you so much?"

He chuckled lowly. "You don't have any siblings; I take it?"

"Births are hard on my people." Lincoln shrugged at the sobering fact. "I would have loved to have a brother when I was a young boy."

Bellamy thought it was sort of ironic, in a sense. The earth needed populating, and the people that had survived here had been finding it hard to see to that duty properly – if you could call it a duty at all. Personally, he was all about the practise, not the sometimes-bountiful results. Meanwhile, the people on the ark could procreate all too prolifically, and there the council was placing strictures and removing civil liberties to stop it happening. His mother was dead because of it.

His grin had a wry slant. "When you finally impregnate Clarke, we'll revisit this conversation."

Lincoln shook his head in denial. Then he stilled, as sudden and deadly as an air lock closure, scanning the forest ahead with wary, darkened eyes. Bellamy felt the first tingles of fear sweep up his spine at Lincoln's single, harsh word. "Stop."

His voice was quiet, but the power of it carried. Octavia and her fan club turned around with questioning gazes, but once they saw Lincoln's attentive stance they backtracked with careful steps. Artigas mimicked Lincoln's pose at Octavia's side and Bellamy almost thought he saw his ear twitching. It kind of reminded him of Clarke's irritatingly cute puppy.

He moved closer to Lincoln. "What is it?"

"People." Lincoln answered in a hushed voice. "Many of them, heading this way."

Bellamy looked around for somewhere to hide. The trees were an obvious choice to him, remembering the wild dogs and the apple grove, but if the grounders were coming then didn't they usually scout ahead in the highest branches anyway? They were pretty much doomed, by his reckoning. It's not as if the grounders would fail to notice five people crouched amongst the shrubbery. But then, he was with two grounders, wasn't he? They'd stand a better chance than he at getting them out of this mess in five non-speared, whole pieces.

He looked to Lincoln for direction, both hating the fact he needed someone else, and applauding his good sense. Clarke didn't know what she was talking about when she said he was rash and didn't know how to delegate – how was this for delegation? He was a pro.

"What should we do?" he hissed under his breath.

Lincoln did a double take, as though the concept of Bellamy following someone else's orders was outside of his realm of understanding. "What do you mean, what should we do? I thought you would be bellowing orders left, right and centre."

"Funny." Bellamy scowled. "They're your people, therefore I'm deferring to you."

"It's kind of you to say so." Lincoln grinned and nodded towards the sounds of trampling grass and breaking branches. "But they're your people too. Take a closer look."

Bellamy looked up in time to see Raven and Miller emerge from the thicket directly ahead, the first of a recognisable crowd looking ragged and irritable, and slightly scared, but a hugely welcome sight all the same. All the pent-up breath went out of him in one fell swoop and he found himself grinning widely at the pair. Raven looked up then and the pure relief that spread over her features made Bellamy's grin widen to shark-like proportions.

She elbowed Miller, who immediately came running forward and they indulged in one of their manly back-pounding hugs that absolutely did not mean they had been worried about each other's well-being. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Octavia and Raven hugging, and Jasper and Monty clutching at each other as though a tornado might sweep one of them away at a moment's notice.

"You're a sight for sore eyes." Bellamy smiled at the converging delinquents who were looking a little teary in their obvious reassurance by the happy accident. He eyed the back edges of the circling crowd and did the mental math before turning back to Raven and Miller with a confused frown. "But where's everyone else?"

Octavia paled at his side, realising as he did that they were short around 40 teenagers. "You lost that many to the sickness?"

"We lost that many to Dax." Raven corrected.

"Yeah." Bellamy frowned. "I heard he's been telling some tall tales."

"Murphy made it to you then." Miller sighed. "I'm glad."

"I want you to tell me everything that happened with Dax." Bellamy raised his voice and looked as many of them in the eye as possible. "But first, let me put some of your minds to rest. The good news is that we've found a new home that should help shore up our problems with the grounders and provide adequate shelter for us all going into the future – Clarke is there right now, sorting things out for us all."

He continued with a grimace. "The bad news, is that you've still got half a day's walk before we'll reach there and it'd be better to sleep than continue in the steadily encroaching darkness."

"Actually." Lincoln broke in. "It'll be quicker to head towards the river, just a few hours in land from here. It'll be a tight fit with the remaining canoes, but we can do it. Even if we have to build rafts to tow."

"Right. You heard Lincoln." Bellamy announced, briefly patting the taller man on the back, much to his amusement. "I know you're all tired, but in a few hours we'll be home and you can all rest. I might even let you off latrine duty for the day."

That got him a few laughs and they seemed to relax under the idea of permanency, as well as knowing their leaders were truly alright and there trying to take care of things again. Bellamy let Lincoln take the lead, though he seemed to be arguing with Artigas, who rather than completing his journey home seemed to have decided to accompany them back to Front Royal.

He turned to Miller. "You did good."

Miller almost looked like he was blushing. "Not as good as you and Clarke would have done."

"I don't know about that." Bellamy shook his head. "Leadership has no simple solutions."

"There's something else you should know." Miller whispered to Bellamy as an aside. "We're pretty sure we heard another drop ship crash back when we were running from the grounder army."

Bellamy felt his gut tighten. "Any survivors?"

"We were too busy escaping the war drums to count survivors." Raven interrupted on a hiss.

"But it's a possibility." Miller rolled his eyes at her in a silent admonishment. Bellamy was shocked when she heeded it. "It'll need investigating."

"Right." Bellamy sighed. "I'll take a leaf out of Clarke's book and say we'll deal with it tomorrow. For now, let's just get back to our new home without losing anyone else."

Clarke

So far, Sky High seemed more than suitable for their needs. It seemed perfect – just like she'd sensed. What little furniture there probably was to begin with was lying in splinters, most likely repurposed for fire wood. The same could be said for the stair rail, conspicuously absent from all but the midway landing of the large steps as they took their journey skyward. The elements had a done a number on the walls, making the aged paint look as though nails had gouged rivulets from ceiling to floor in the faded avocado green and magnolia. Many of the windows at the front and back were still intact, but the large picture window above the stairs had so many of the big panes missing it gave the place a decidedly haunted-house appeal. This aside, the place was dry, insulated, and with any luck, easily defensible.

It was dark outside now, but they'd done their best throughout the daylight hours to patch up the windows in the main hall of the left wing that Clarke had quickly chosen as their common area, and the chill of the night air hadn't reached them. It was further chased away by their liberal use of the convenient grand fireplace and the plentiful fire wood, supplied by a Murphy who seemed keen to prove his worth. Clarke had cleared out several large rooms leading off the hall and mentally designated them for food preparation and storage, and even set aside space for engineering and comms. A small room off the common room would also do as office space for her and Bellamy – she wanted to call it the tactical room, but that meant she was expecting to need it for warring purposes and she was determined they start off this venture with nothing but peace in mind.

An expected lack of indoor plumbing and a healthy (and justified, if Earth history was anything to go by) fear of disease meant they would need to designate an area outside as a latrine, but Clarke had spied some stone outhouses she hadn't had time to examine which could prove perfect. They might even be able to rig together some showers – she delighted at the thought. They'd found plenty of rooms on the upper levels too – enough that many of the 100 could have one of their own, so long as they were willing to double up on occasion. The right wing was yet a mystery to them, though she'd caught Murphy disappearing there for a time as if to reassure himself that a grounder army didn't lie in wait. Her mind had practically swirled all day with plans for farming, water supplies, hunting grounds, and even the possibility of a wall, to ensure their continued security.

She looked around her now at their indoor camp set up which was remarkably like their outside one – centered around the fire with their sleeping bags as they were. Harper was already asleep, and although Murphy pretended to be, he flinched at the slightest crackle from the fire, or the rustle of a blanket. Clarke wondered if it was a side effect of the torture she hadn't wanted to ask him about, or if he was jumpy being back with the people who banished him which led to his imprisonment. Trust would have to be worked on for both sides before everyone was comfortable.

Clarke sighed and snuggled under her own blanket with Savage, who whined in contentment, though she was missing Lincoln with a pang that wasn't sharp, but constant and burning worse than the throb of her abused wound. She hoped he was okay wherever he was – that he was safe and missing her as much as she was him – though she was reluctant to even think of him in any discomfort. Right before she drifted off, she thought she caught Roan's eyes across the fire, blazing into the her own with a light she'd tried hard to put out in their interactions that day. She didn't have the energy to address the issue right then, but she would. Tomorrow she would, she promised herself. Tomorrow.

….

It felt like she'd only just closed her eyes when a throat cleared loudly above her, startling her awake. She was warm and snug, despite the dying firelight, so she looked up into Bellamy's somehow antagonising eyes and frowned her displeasure.

"We were gone for one day. Woman, I knew you worked fast, but not that fast." He sounded amused, but also concerned.

Clarke sat up in shock when she belatedly realised her warmth was the by-product of proximity to another sleeping body – one she was damn sure had been on the other side of the fire before she'd passed out. She stared open mouthed and red-cheeked from a rousing Roan, who arm was loosely laid around her hips, to a sentinel styled Bellamy, and then with growing alarm to Lincoln, who stood staring at her as though the sight before his eyes was too painful to give it more than a passing glance.

A/N: Okay, people. Give me some love if you feel so inclined – it was a bit of a filler chapter, to get them where they needed to be, but hope you still enjoyed it!