AN: This is the second and final chapter of this piece. I hope that you enjoy the last of The Destruction and Reconstruction of Clarke Griffin.

Chapter Two: When Shadows Come to Light

When Clarke woke up again, it was under a muted sort of light, different from the harsh whites of medical, and for a moment, she panicked. It had all been a fever dream. She'd had them before. Her hemoglobin would drop too low, her entire blood volume dangerously diminished, and her body would spike a fever in retaliation, trying to work overtime to fix what had been done to it. Once she'd dreamt of her mother, another time, her father. She'd had dreams about Finn and the Arc and giving in to Wallace. She'd never dreamt of Bellamy before, which was the only thing that kept her in the next few minutes.

There was IV tubing in the crook of her left elbow. She'd grown so familiar to the feel of the catheter in place that she didn't need her eyes to tell her that. They were slow to adjust to the low light anyway, and she found herself blinking up at a dark grey metal ceiling. It was wrong. In the harvesting room, there had been a dark grey concrete, but none of this metal, the shine of it, even the smell of it.

She drew a long, steadying breath. Engine oil. None of the biological waste that was the harvest room, none of the sweat or blood that made up a clinical box made for inhuman acts. It was hard, putting that thought together. Her mind was dandelion fluff, light and airy and fuzzed just enough to be swept up in the wind of nothingness to flutter along a few moments.

The next thing it landed on was the gurney she lay on, hard and clinical, with a tattered and bloody blanket stretched across her chest. That was wrong. Even in the harvest room, everything had been clinical. A bloodied sleeve on one of the doctor's shirts was immediately replaced for something clean, sterile, perfect. The blanket wouldn't have been suffered to exist, even in that cell.

And she was warm. So very warm. She hadn't felt that way since she'd been hung upside down that first time, the blood draining from her, making her extremities cold as her body did what was necessary to keep blood flowing to the integral parts of her. Brain. Heart. Lungs. Liver. Kidneys. She knew the human circulatory system didn't have the capacity to shunt blood away from unnecessary systems, but it felt like it did each time her numb fingers or toes struck the metal bars of her cage or drug along the cement floor.

"I want no one in or out of here without my express permission." The voice was far away and wrapped in something gauzy and light, making it seem to float around her head before landing in her ears.

"Abby, we've got to face that the kids might have been too late." Another voice, this one male and strong, tempered with something like responsibility. Bellamy sounded like that sometimes, when he was weighted down with guilt. Bellamy-

"Bellamy," she said, finding her voice stronger than it had been in weeks. She pushed herself upright, failing for the most part and settled for rolling to one side, braced against the elbow that had the catheter in place. She followed that with her eyes, head swimming at the sudden movement, and found to connected to an IV bag, clean fluid drip, drip, dripping down at an alarming rate.

"Blake said she woke up when he pulled her out of there, Kane; she's going to wake up again." This time, the voice was clearer, familiar, tinged with command that she'd heard nearly every day of her before her father was floated. "I'm going to go sit with my daughter, Marcus. I suggest you help the rest of the kids settle in."

"Mom?" Clarke called, trying to make her voice carry. There was a tarp between them, light and billowing slightly in the breeze from outside of whatever they were in, and for a moment, she feared that her voice was weak enough to be caught up in that tarp and kept as hostage as she'd been.

"Clarke?" She hadn't needed to fear, because in the next moment, her mother was there, pushing through that canvass and taking hurried steps toward the gurney, tears running down her cheeks and lips screwed up to keep in a sob. "Oh, my baby girl." Her mother whispered into her ear, arms around her and taking the strain of her weight away from Clarke's shoulder.

Clarke couldn't speak. Couldn't move her arm from beneath her to hug her back, and the other was so very heavy and trapped beneath Abby's own octopus grip. Her mother didn't seem to mind though, because she was rocking them and shushing and muttering apologies and promises like it was the last thing she might ever do.

"Mom," she finally managed, voice cracking in the middle of the word. "Mommy."

"Shh. Shh. Shh. It's okay," Abby's voice murmured in her ear. If Clarke could have cried tears, she would have, but her body had given up on her lacrimal ducts when the dehydration started to become more severe. "I've got you, baby. I've got you." And she let herself believe that, because she didn't have the courage to call this a fever dream or a hallucination or anything else but reality.

"The others?" She did have the strength to ask that though, because there was no other question to ask.

"Everyone's safe, baby," Abby soothed, running her hands over Clarke's limp hair, smoothing it despite the fact that it lay there, lifeless against her skull on its own. Dehydration and malnutrition did that. They also exhausted her, but in that moment, after hearing that everyone was safe, alive, whole, relief did it as well. She sagged against her mother's hold, and the woman lowered her to the bed, a mother's watery smile in place.

"I'm sorry," Clarke found the strength to say a few minutes later. "I'm so-"

"It's okay, sweetheart," Abby said, just in the way she always had, when Clarke had done something worth apology. "I'm so very proud of you." And those words were heavy things, so heavy that they made her eyelids lead and drug her into a sleep the likes of which she hadn't had since before she woke up in Mount Weather.

-RP: When Shadows Come to Light-

Bellamy had carried her the entire way to the elevator. He'd held her there as the floors flashed by in lights. He'd kept her cradled to his chest the rest of the way through the compound and out into the sunlight to the back up team. Abby Griffin was part of that team, and the woman broke down in great, shaking sobs the moment she'd seen her daughter. Bellamy couldn't blame her.

He hadn't let himself look at the girl since he'd pulled her from the cage. In the shadows, he couldn't see much, but he felt it. The light threadiness of her pulse. The nearly weightlessness in his arms. It wasn't smart to carry a comrade across your arms for any great distance. The weight of them put strain on your arms and you grew wearier more quickly. The right way-the way he couldn't bring himself to carry the blonde-was over the shoulder in a fireman's carry.

Even as Abby Griffin's medical assistant took the girl from his arms and laid her out on the ground, assessing and fluttering, his arms did not ache. They should have, his mind supplied. He'd carried a lot of things that had made it so. He'd carried friends, prey, firewood. He'd carried gutted animals that weighed more than Clarke had against his biceps. Even the bag of medical supplies he'd grabbed at random, wildly praying that something-anything-would help, weighed more on his shoulder than she had.

They'd made a stretcher for her, because even with as long as it had taken to find the rest of the survivors and explain to them what had been happening, she still hadn't woken. He'd been one of the people to carry the head of that stretcher while Abby walked alongside, and still his arms had not ached. Still his brave princess had not opened her eyes again, and he was half relieved and half terrified by that.

There had been mutterings about taking the complex by force. The Arc survivors had the firepower. They had the manpower. As they retreated, the survivors of the one hundred on their heels, heads down in shame or looking back behind them in longing, he had to wonder if it wasn't the willpower they lacked. Evil had happened there, right under their noses, and yet...Bellamy caught more than one face with tears of mourning flowing down their cheeks.

Jasper had nearly made him want to strangle the kid. He'd been the most difficult to convince, and finally, it was the cages that did it. Bellamy had drug the wide eyed kid up the flights of stairs to medical and through the side door, shoving him on the floor in front of the cage that had once housed Clarke. Jasper had reached inside, picked up a pale blonde hair, and held it to the half-light. He'd dropped it as if burned, eyes flickering up to the rest of the cages, where some grounders still were caged. The one right above Clarke's cell had slumped down, fingers curling lifelessly around one of the bars.

Others reached out probing hands. Bellamy had dropped a bolt cutter at Jasper's feet then. It wasn't a moment he was proud of, but there were other things he had to do, other placed he'd rather be. Like back on the surface.

"Cut them out, ask them what your mountain men do here," he'd said to the wide eyed teen, and left him there, on the ground to either pick himself up, or crawl into the cage. Jasper had followed then back to Camp Jaha that night, and Bellamy was both proud of and frustrated with the young man as he walked along the stretcher, staring blankly down at Clarke.

That had been two nights ago. He'd helped ease the stretcher down in Abby's medical room and been forced out by the furious and stone faced version of Dr. Griffin. Outside the canvass flap that served as a door, he sat for the rest of the night. Finn was a constant presence, leaning against the far wall, and others had cycled through. Monty. Miller. Raven. Marcus Kane, even. When the morning came, Raven drug Finn away to get something to eat, and Monty of all people took his place against the wall.

"I didn't listen to her," Monty said after several long minutes of silence. Bellamy looked up at the kid to find him staring sullenly at the floor. "She said something was going on, and I just figured...she was slipping without something to defend us against, you know? That she needed that to remain in control of herself."

"Clarke's tougher than that," Bellamy said. It was true. Maybe he needed the constant threat, the danger, the action, to keep his place as their leader, but Clarke never had. She'd simply thrived in whatever environment they'd placed her in.

"I know," Monty said, shaking his head and giving a self depreciating laugh. "That's what's so bad about it. I know. I knew. I just didn't..." When it was clear that the younger man wasn't going to keep speaking, Bellamy sighed and took pity on him.

"You just didn't want to admit that it might all be smoke and mirrors," Bellamy said. Monty didn't nod or acknowledge what he said in any way. "Either did the other forty-seven of you. Don't take it out on yourself." Monty nodded at that and slipped into silence.

Midway through that second day, Monty left. Kane had come not long after and insisted that Bellamy put himself to use. There were raiding parties going out to the mountain to collect the supplies that they would need immediately, and while the Woods Clan wouldn't bother them-Anya had promised him that much-there were no promises that other clans might not be moving into the area to try and capitalize on their weakness.

Being back in Mount Weather made him nauseous. He purposefully avoided the medical bay, where most of the scavenging team had gone. The earlier teams had cleaned out the food stores, and while he was probably supposed to make a turn back through the cafeteria or the med bay, he couldn't bring himself to go either place. One was where they'd kept and tortured his blonde-headed co-leader and the other was the siren song that had made the rest of their people deaf to her concerns. He wasn't really sure which he disliked the most.

What he was sure of, though, was that he wasn't going either place. He found himself filling his pack with clothes, blankets, the odd personal weapon that was stowed away here or there. He grabbed a duffel bag from a closet and went about his business, continuing to pack and wander until he found himself in a dark office, the smell of oil paints thick in the air. The bag nearly full, he considered one of the wide shouldered suit jackets that hung in the corner before shaking himself of the notion. They weren't useful, not in the real world. So instead, he grabbed a thick tablet of blank paper and swept the oils and pastels and pencils into the top of the bag. They could be used for things other than art, thou he wondered if he'd have the heart to turn them over to Kane should Clarke be awake.

The hike back was a long one, and a day had passed since he'd last stuck his head into the medical bay to check if Clarke had woken. He relinquished the supplies save for what was left at the bottom of the duffel and ducked into the ship, past a few wandering Arc survivors and the canvass. The empty cot made a shiver of panic race up his back. It had only been three days since he'd found her, and that empty cot was damning.

"Clarke?" he called, eyes sweeping over the room at large. Maybe she'd woken up and had been moved to a different cot. The room was empty. "Clarke!" he called again, this time disappearing deeper into the ship, past yet another canvass and another, through different areas that had been devoted to food supplies or sleeping quarters or-

"Bellamy," Abby Griffin's voice caught him as he nearly ran through the sleeping quarters. She stood in front of him, clean and without the deep craigy lines around her mouth and eyes. "What's the matter?"

"Where's Clarke?" he asked, relaxing slightly. If something had happened to her daughter, Abby Griffin would be with her, now that there wasn't a stratosphere separating them. She didn't have the haunted, mourning look of someone that had just lost a family member, and a wry but there smile was quirking her mouth.

"Being stubborn," Abby said, eyes flickering up. There were upper levels of this as well, he knew, but the people hadn't been using them as much as the first. They had taken the most damage and were unstable. He sighed. Of course she was.

"I'll find her," he said simply, heading toward the stairwell.

"Blake," Abby called after him. He paused, looking over his shoulder at the woman, who had turned back to her own sleeping area. She turned toward him with two little pre-packaged containers, and as she handed them over, he winced. Space food. "Try to get her to eat that. She wouldn't take anything from me."

"Alright," he said, taking the packages and the canteen that she offered. He had become the sole authority on the stubborn obstinance of Clarke, he supposed.

When he found her, she was three floors up, leaning heavily against an exposed piece of steel. The hull had been torn wide open there, exposing all of the wiring and metal to the sunlight. She was on her own feet, which was a small miracle, but the pillar did most of the support. She didn't hear his boots on the metal, or if she did, she didn't comment. She just stood there, leak kneed and shaking, staring out at the sunlight.

"Ah," he said, clearing his throat to get her attention. "Didn't think about that."

"Think about what?" she asked, but there was none of the firmness of conversation that she normally had. None of the spark and spit of their usual back and forth.

"You wouldn't want to be inside," he said simply, moving to stand beside her. She was close enough to the ripped open edge that if she fell, she could end up spattered along the ground outside, and he didn't infiltrate a secret military base, make nice with the guards to gain access to firearms, and then blow his way through every door in the place just for her to decide she wanted to learn to fly.

"Hmm." She didn't really respond, and only kept looking out at the world. A bright world of color and breeze, with none of the clinical detachment that she'd been in for the past several months.

"Your mother's worried about you," he tried instead, which only earned him a quick look and the shadow of her normal glare. "She sent me up here with space rations, Princess. Did she forget we're on earth?"

"How'd you find me, Bellamy?" she asked instead, turning toward him with a boneless slouch.

"Sit down and I'll tell you," he offered. She complied, slipping down the beam with a gracelessness that he'd never seen in her. He sat across from her, back braced against another support column. They sat there a few minutes, both of their legs drawn half to their chests, feet invading each other's space for lack of room. Bellamy could have easily moved one way or the other, let them both stretch, but he had no desire in that moment, to be any further away from her than he was.

"Anya," he said simply, shrugging one shoulder. Clarke's eyes sharpened at that and flickered up to his face. "She snuck into camp at night, knocked me over the head and somehow got me out of Kane's lock up. I woke up bound and gagged with her sitting a few feet off. She told me about Mount Weather, about you. I'm sorry it took so long."

"Don't," was all she said in response to that. "She told you where to find us?"

"She felt guilty, I think. She said you got her out into some tunnels but that she left you there." He'd wanted to kill the grounder when she'd made that confession, but he didn't need to tell Clarke that, not now anyway, not after he squelched the desire. Kane had declared it too dangerous of a mission, and he'd quickly found a new target for his hatred.

"The others were happier there," she said simply. "They were safe and fed."

"And living a lie," Bellamy said sternly. "No one would have wanted to stay if they'd known."

"Maybe, maybe not," she said, staring back out into the day. "Saw you when they brought you in, you know." And if that didn't force all the air from his lungs, nothing ever would. "Wallace wanted information on the Arc survivors. The types of weapons, numbers, weaknesses. I was being...punished, I think, for not telling him. He said they'd brought three of you in, and I saw-"

"Finn and Murphy and me," Bellamy said, cutting her off. Yeah, that had been all of it at first. Abby and a few of the others had known where the three young men had gone to. They'd made a plan, and Abby would stay behind, riling up the remaining Arc survivors until they followed. Then it would be a waiting game, until Murphy or Finn or Bellamy managed to blow the doors wide open and let radiation sweep through the compound. Anya hadn't been lying. It only took a few long minutes before the screaming started. After that, it had been a matter of time and keeping the vents open. Bellamy couldn't bring himself to care about the dead.

"I have to admit, Murphy shocked me," she said, a ghost of her smile on her old smile on her lips.

"Shocked me a few times too," Bellamy said. "He's the one that found the...room, first. He had a nice stay in medical for some of the wounds the grounders inflicted on him. He's still an ass, but..."

"But he's our ass," Clarke said for him. "He's one of us."

"Yeah," Bellamy agreed. "He is."

"I haven't seen anyone but my mom and you yet," she said next. "I think, maybe I'd like to see Finn and Murphy." Bellamy nodded, dropping the food packets in front of her before forcing himself to his feet. If the princess didn't want to talk, then he wasn't going to sit there unwanted. "Later, please."

"I'll send them up-"

"I didn't thank you," she said, eyes flickering purposefully back to the ground where he'd sat and back up to him. He took the message and slid back to the ground. It shouldn't have felt as good as it did, sitting there.

"You don't have to, princess."

"I do," she countered. He'd seen that look on her face before, as the pair of them leaned back against a tree. When she told him that she forgave him. That completely lost little expression that meant her world had twisted sideways yet again. "I was ready to die there, Bellamy."

"Too stubborn to die."

"No, I wasn't," she said. "If I'd have had the strength, at the end, I'd have used my own clothes to hang myself." He bit down viciously on his bottom lip, trying to erase the memory of swinging by his own neck from his mind. Of the princess coming to save him from that fate, from Murphy. The image of her in her little cell, shirt wrapped around her neck and face pale, nearly made him vomit.

"You didn't though," he said. "You're out."

"Because of you," she said, giving him a half smile. "Thank you, Bellamy."

"Just don't repay me by hanging yourself off the station," he said, pushing himself to his feet. "I'll send Finn up first, keep everyone else out." She made a little humming noise and turned her attention back to the open space outside the station. He found Finn a few minutes later and sent the Spacewalker up to her before sitting down at the end of the stairs. He was almost pleased when she dismissed him after only a few minutes. Murphy was even up there longer, after Finn went to find him. They had more to talk about, he supposed. He knew what it was like to be a prisoner, even if they'd both been held captive by completely opposite people.

-RP: When Shadows Come to Light-

It had been two weeks. Two weeks and Clarke had done little more than glare moodily at anyone that visited her, moved between her bed and the third floor, and drive her mother to worry. Which was all fine and well, except it was about to drive Bellamy out of his own mind. She'd gained back some of the weight she'd lost, but only because of Abby's IVs and the space nutrition packs that only Bellamy could seem to command her to eat.

The final straw had been Jasper, red eyed and frowning, as he'd stormed out of the drop ship, apparently unforgiven for some sin that he'd committed while in Mount Weather. Monty had ghosted after him, face lined with worry, and shot Bellamy a pleading look. They'd all been doing that, as if he was still in charge of anything anymore. As if he could somehow take away months of torment and breathe the will to live back into his ex-co-leader.

Stomping on his way up the stairs, if only to convey his mood and take out some frustration before he had to talk to her. She had a blanket this time, at least, and a pillow he suspected she'd stolen from the living quarters.

"Come on," he said firmly, ripping the blanket off of her and gesturing her upward.

"What?" she asked, annoyance clear in her tone. That was good, he figured. At least she was annoyed, if nothing else.

"It's time to stop hiding," he said simply, glaring down at her, daring her to deny that she'd been avoiding everyone for weeks. She didn't, and instead, she turned on her side, leaving him to stand there and stare down at her. "Really?" he asked. "Fine."

She was heavier than the last time he carried her, but this time, he heaved her over one shoulder in a fireman's carry and ignored the sharp elbows and knees as they thrashed. Her tongue was sharper though, damning him to burn in a special hell, calling him names that should have made her blush. He only smiled though, because it was the most life she'd shown since he'd carried her out of Mount Weather.

"Damnit, Bellamy, let me down!" she raged, and as his feet made contact with the soil outside, he complied, dumping her in a heap at his feet. She sprang up, in his face and angry, cheeks read. "Who the hell do you think you are?"

"The only person not afraid of you," he said, holding his ground. He'd let her rage at him. He'd let her hit him. Hell, he might stand there as she tore him down to the parts that made him up if it meant that she did something else besides stare out of the crashed station.

"Because the great Bellamy Blake isn't afraid of anything!" she said, squinting against the sun.

"That's right," he said, nodding. "Because you know first hand I'm not afraid of anything, princess." That took the wind from her for a moment, and she deflated, a guilty look crossing over her face. He was afraid of a lot of things. Lately, it had been mostly of waking up to hear she'd taken the last step out from that third floor and ended up in pieces on the ground.

"Then what gives you the right to-"

"To make you stop hiding? To make you get out of bed and face it? What gave you the right to tell me that these kids needed me, when all I wanted to do was run?" He'd said it before he realized he was going to, and the angry look on her face faded to a quiet thoughtfulness. Finally, she gave him a sheepish smile and looked around the camp. People had been staring, and the second her eyes flickered over them, sending them scattering back to their business.

She sighed and rolled her head on her neck, watching as a few familiar faces waved at them, smiles wide and excited. A few faces turned away quickly, trying to put distance between themselves and Clarke. He'd have to have some words with them, later, when things had settled.

"I haven't been a very brave princess, have I?" she asked, shoulders slumped.

"No, you haven't," he said, taking a step to stand beside her. He bumped her shoulder with his arm, giving her a little smile. "But you're starting to be."

She nodded and took a deep breath. She was still smaller than she'd been, shadow eyed and slumped, but she squared her shoulders and forced a grim smile on her lips. He fought his own smile, trying to keep the amusement from his features. He watched as she steeled herself, that smile lightening just a touch as she took a step out from the shadow of the station wreckage and into the day.

"Brave princess," he murmured, not bothering to fight the smile on his lips.