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CLARKE
"Are you excited to be going home?" Bellamy asked the question, but it was Lexa's soft voice that Clarke heard. In her mind she saw Lexa riding beside her, perched regally atop her horse, effortlessly beautiful. She saw Lexa trying, and failing, to hide the nervousness in her eyes as she waited for Clarke's response. As always, Clarke had known that Lexa was asking so much more than her words let on. Clarke had wondered if Lexa already knew that she had begun to think of "home" not as a place, but as a person... The person who could make her feel safer than any steel walls or high gate ever could.
Yes, Clarke had already started to think of Lexa as her home. But she had been afraid, too afraid to tell her so. She had not been ready. And so she had replied with "I'm not sure Arkadia is my home anymore." And those words had been enough to make Lexa smile. Because Lexa could read Clarke just as clearly as Clarke could read Lexa. And Lexa had known what Clarke had wanted to say, what she could not say. And Lexa had known that Clarke was not ready. And Lexa was patient. And she would wait as long as Clarke needed.
"Clarke?" Bellamy cleared his throat, pulling Clarke back to the present. "Are you excited to be going home?"
Clarke tried not to glare at him. She tried to bite back the bitterness in her voice. "No." She answered. Arkadia was not her home. Polis was not her home. The forest around her... The ground beneath her... The sky above her... None of it was home. Her home was gone now. And Bellamy could never understand that.
Still, Clarke knew that it was not Bellamy's fault. And she felt a small tinge of guilt at the confused frown he was wearing once again. She knew she should try to say something nice or something funny. But she could think of nothing. So she bit her tongue and let the uncomfortable silence between them linger like the mist in the air.
She would have apologized. But she still could not find the words. So she just lengthened her stride and pushed past him silently, moving forward to walk beside Octavia and Indra instead. She knew that she could walk beside these women in complete silence and they would expect nothing of her. They would not try to comfort her. They would not force awkward polite conversation on her. She wouldn't have to put on a fake smile for them. Beside them, she could be sullen. She could be bitter. She could be broken.
Indra was limping slightly. Red circles shone on the bandages Abby had wrapped around her wrists after Octavia had pulled the nails from them and lowered her from the wooden cross. Clarke knew that the woman must be in fierce pain. But Indra was a warrior through and through. And no pain was as fierce as she was. She nodded at Clarke as she fell in step beside her.
It was hard for Clarke to believe that she had once feared Indra. That the woman walking side-by-side with her now had pleaded for her death on more than one occasion. Now Clarke would trust the woman with her life. Indra had erected walls around her heart higher than the Polis tower. But Clarke realized that if you managed to scale them before she cut you down and threw you to your death, you would find that, inside, her heart was uncommonly soft. Perhaps that was the reason the woman guarded it so fiercely. And Clarke could not help but wonder what pain Indra's heart had once known. Because Clarke could see it in the shadowy depths of the woman's dark brown eyes: Indra understood. She had loved Lincoln and she had loved Lexa. And she understood Octavia's pain. And she understood Clarke's pain. She understood.
The trees around them were starting to look familiar. Clarke's mind had wandered so freely as they walked that she was surprised to realize how far her feet had already carried her. She felt a strange twinge in the pit of her stomach as she realized they were now passing within a mile of the dropship. She could turn from the group right now and go tromping into the trees and within minutes the dilapidated remnants of the tattered ship would appear between their branches..
Clarke could barely believe that it was only six months ago that she and the hundred had called that ship their home. They had erected tents made of tarps and parachute material. They had built a wall of sticks and mud. And they had cradled their guns in their shaking arms and called themselves "Grounders." Looking back now, it all seemed so childish. But after all, they had been children, hadn't they?
Only six months had passed. But they were not children anymore. Clarke had found that the ground had a way of aging you that even Father Time himself could not. And Clarke was not the same girl who had fallen from the sky. None of them were.
She pulled her eyes away from the direction of the dropship. She had no desire to see it again. She knew the forest was already starting the process of reclaiming it. Soon enough it would be nothing but a twisted chunk of metal rusting in the green, as unremarkable as the unmarked graves beside it where her friends still laid.
She turned her gaze forward again, back in the direction of Arkadia. They were nearly there. But she had little more desire to see Arkadia than she did the dropship. Neither place felt like home. They were both just pieces of the Ark. And even the Ark, itself, had never really felt like home to her. Arkadia... The dropship... The whole damn Ark... They were all just places she had lived to survive. Maybe that was all that a "home" really was: a place where you survived. But she had dared hope with Lexa that maybe life could be about more than just surviving. Maybe "home" could mean so much more.
No, Arkadia was not home. And she was not excited to be going to it. Not for the first time, Clarke considered the option of not going in. The last time she had approached these gates after pulling a lever, she had turned her back on them and walked off into the trees. But running from her pain had done nothing to ease it. Three months of self-inflicted isolation had done nothing to help her wounded soul heal. And if she had healed at all in the days since then it was Lexa's doing, not her own.
No, running off into the woods again would solve nothing. She could not run from her pain. She knew that now. So, naturally, her next solution was to find something to busy herself with. A task to distract her. Something to fix.
She considered again the option of going with Octavia and Indra. As soon as Octavia had turned her back on Pike's dying body and walked silently from Lexa's room, Clarke had known that Octavia had no intention of ever returning to Arkadia. She had seen it in her eyes... Octavia was not Sky Crew anymore. Clarke wondered if she had ever really been Sky Crew to begin with. Either way, it didn't matter now. Octavia was done with Arkadia. She only walked with them now because they were headed in the same direction and because Bellamy had pleaded with her.
But as soon as they reached Arkadia Octavia would be leaving with Indra. And Clarke knew she could go with them. They would let her accompany them on their journey back to the sea, back to Luna. But Clarke also knew that she would be of little help to them. They did not need her. If anyone had a chance of convincing Luna to return to Polis and lead her people to peace, it was not Clarke. It was the two women... The two Grounders... The two warriors beside her.
Ontari had left Polis in a complete mess. In mere days the girl had managed to destroy everything good and beautiful that Lexa had worked to build. Now, in the wake of ALIE's mess, if the Grounders were going to survive, they needed a new commander. They needed someone wise and compassionate and strong. They needed someone who could hold the Alliance of the Clans together. They needed someone like Lexa. Maybe Luna could be that person.
Yes, Polis was a mess. A mess in need of fixing.
"You're driven to fix everything." Lexa's words echoed in Clarke's mind. She hated to admit it, but, as usual, Lexa's words had rung with truth. Clarke WAS driven to fix everything. She always had been. And she was only now starting to see that not every problem was hers to fix. Polis certainly was not her mess to fix. And neither was this new problem, this nuclear reactor bullshit. She was finally starting to realize that the world around her would always be one shit-show after another. And she was finally tired of trying to fix that, and everything else. She was tired of failing. And she was even more tired of succeeding.
She was done fixing everything. She would let Octavia and Indra handle Polis. She would let Raven and Monty and anyone else who volunteered figure out the goddamn nuclear crisis. Clarke didn't want to deal with any of it. More than anything else she just wanted to sit down. She just wanted to breathe. And, with a sigh of resignation, she supposed Arkadia was as good a place as any to do just that.