Clarke

With Bellamy, Clarke walked slowly to the door of Mount Weather. She paused when she reached it, looking up at it- huge and looming- before gingerly touching a hand to the hole that Monroe had drilled in the door. She could still remember that flickering arrow that Lincoln had launched into the hole, blowing the door.

"It was working," she said, brow furrowed, shaking her head. "The plan was working. The door was open."

"Hey," Bellamy said gently, sliding a hand down her arm and curling his fingers around hers. She looked at him, saw the compassion in his eyes. Gently he told her, "It's done now."

"I wish I'd had a chance to talk to Lexa," Clarke said, pulling her hand away from the door, but not away from him. "I wish I could have asked her why she did it." Her thoughts flickered to Eema, but that was something she didn't want to revisit- not now, and maybe not ever.

He let out a heavy breath. "She did it for the same reason any of us ever did anything- for her people. Even the Mountain Men did what they did for their people."

"But how far is too far?" she asked him softly, thinking of the conversation she'd just had with Octavia on the path to this door.

Again Bellamy sighed. "I don't know," he said softly. "Until someone wins, I guess."

Clarke grimaced, shaking her head. "No one ever wins."

Gently he pulled her into his arms and held her, stroking a hand over her hair. "You're right. But we don't have to be afraid of this place anymore. The only thing you're going to find is there are medical supplies and your mother."

The idea of seeing her mother again wasn't exactly a happy one; more than anything else, she felt apprehensive about that particular reunion. In fact, she was surprised Abby hadn't already come running out to find her, but someone had obviously convinced her that her daughter needed to do this in her own time. Clarke was grateful to whoever that person was.

She also knew Bellamy was wrong- she would find memories in there, terrible memories… everything she'd run away from. And she was so scared to face them. Somehow she'd thought that time would make it easier, but it had only delayed the inevitable and made it all feel so much more loaded.

Bellamy gave her as long as she needed, until she pulled back from his arms. "Let's just do this," she said.

Inside, the tunnel leading away from the main door was exactly like she remembered it: huge, lonely, dusty, dimly lit. The inner door had been left open for them by Octavia- no more need to shield the place from outside radiation.

Quietly they moved down the tunnel and into the elevator. Clarke raised her hand and reached for the buttons, then hesitated.

Bellamy reached out and pressed the number for level 3. "You want to see your mom first, right?"

She felt guilty that she didn't, but she nodded her head. The elevator hummed to life and started moving. Clarke watched the flashing lights of the passing floors and just sat with her rising dread. She could feel Bellamy's eyes on her- waiting, worrying.

The elevator stopped on the third floor and the doors opened. She didn't move.

"Clarke," he said gently, reaching his arm out to stop the doors from closing. "You can do this. I'm right here."

She glanced at him, saw the sincerity in his brown eyes, and then she reached out and pressed the button for level five.

Bellamy swallowed and stared at the glowing number, and then slowly he lowered his arm to allow the doors to shut, closing his eyes briefly, clearly steeling himself. "Okay," he said softly. "You're right, we should go there first."

It was, in fact, the last thing she wanted. But she still couldn't stop her feet from stepping out of the elevator and moving down that corridor, now eerily quiet and deserted.

She rounded the bend where she had rushed Maya right after she'd first woken up in the mountain, stopping short in the doorway of the mess hall, just like she had on that first day.

The big room looked the same but so different- still all concrete and arches, lit by the glowing yellow circles in the curved wall. Still filled with tables, though they were no longer laid with pretty runners or set with plates, and all the chairs were neatly tucked into the tables. The flags and tapestries had been removed, the paintings taken from the walls, so the room was now barren and sad.

Clarke looked at the chairs and remembered all the slumped bodies, people who died while eating slices of cake or pie, trying to pass the time before freedom. She remembered the bodies on the floor too, bloody sores leaking onto the carpet, radiation burns blooming on their cheeks, their hands- every exposed bit of skin a cratered, oozing mess.

She remembered the children's bodies too, children who were innocent and had no choice but to pay for the crimes of their parents. She knew they had suffered- they had felt their skin start to burn, they had cried out in pain and fear, collapsed and screamed and trembled and died where they lay, right where they were eating or playing or dreaming of the outside.

She gritted her teeth and shook her head. "If only there had been some way to separate them out," she said softly. "Or if we'd had more time." She looked at him, saw his expression, equally tormented, and felt responsible for that. "I'm sorry, I just-"

"No," he interrupted her gently, shaking his head. "No, it's okay, Clarke… I wish all that could be true too."

"But you don't regret it, right?" she asked him, keeping his eyes- finding it easier to look at his face than the room before them, clean and sterile now but still filled with all the ghosts of the past. "You think it was the right thing, because of Octavia?"

Bellamy let out a long breath, shaking his head. "We saved our people, Clarke," he said. "Not just Octavia, but all of them. It had to be done. They never would have stopped."

"But you didn't want to," she insisted- it was like picking at a scab, painful, but she couldn't stop. "You didn't want to irradiate- you said no, that we couldn't kill those children, and the people who helped us… you tried to stop it."

"Yeah, at first," he said. "But then…"

"But then Octavia," she finished for him.

Bellamy sighed, shaking his head. "Octavia just made the decision easier." He glanced into the mess hall, and then looked back at Clarke. Softly he added, "But only a little."

It was a conversation they should have had six months ago.

"What was it like?" she asked him. "Going back to Camp Jaha… having to live with all of this, day in and day out?"

"We both lived with it, Clarke," Bellamy said softly. "You just decided to do it alone."

She felt tears building in her eyes as she looked at him. "I shouldn't have left you."

"Hey," he said gently. "Look, you came back- that's what matters. I told you I would give you forgiveness and I meant it- you're forgiven for this-" His hand swept across the mess hall. "-and you're forgiven for leaving. Holding onto this… any of this… it's pointless. It'll only torture us more, and we've been through enough, don't you think?"

"But how do you do it?" she whispered. "How do you live through every day, knowing that everyone you see around you is only alive because you killed all these people? Killed children?"

Bellamy cringed and let out a breath. "I don't know, Clarke," he said softly. "I guess, for me, seeing their faces reminded me that we did the right thing. That all of this was worth it… that we had no choice."

Clarke stared back into the mess hall and whispered, "We always have a choice."

Bellamy's hesitation seemed to indicate he disagreed, but when he spoke all he said was, "The right choice, then. We made the right choice for our people."

"And our people matter more," she said, cringing.

"To us? Yeah."

Clarke drew in a shaky breath. "Octavia says I have to stop worrying about whether what we did was right or wrong… she said I just have to live with it. To grieve them, and be sorry, but live with the fact that they're dead because of us."

When he didn't say anything she looked at his face, and she saw a tear working its way down his cheek. She hadn't seen him cry in such a long time- since that day in the woods when he'd told her about his mother, before all of this… when they were still so naïve and innocent, comparatively speaking. She could barely remember what that felt like now.

Bellamy took her hands in his and he pulled her close to him, guiding her hands to wrap around his shoulders as he curled his own palms into her lower back. He tucked her head under his chin and said, "You can do all that," he said softly. "And you can also let me take some of that off your shoulders. Neither of us have to do this alone- not anymore. But I can't just take it, Clarke… you have to give it to me."

"I don't know how to do that," she admitted.

"Yes you do," he said gently. "Take it from someone who knows… guilt and self-hate is exhausting. You have to share it around a little. You know who I learned that from?" He leaned back, curling his fingers under his chin and tilting her face up to look at him. Softly he said, "You."

Her brow furrowed, a couple of tears escaping down her face. "Me?"

"Yeah," he said, stroking her tears away with his thumb. "I spent my whole life carrying the world on my shoulders… for my mother, for my sister… and then I got down here and I felt so worthless and miserable… so guilty for all the things I'd done, and I just kept making it worse. But then you taught me how to live with all that. You taught me I could be useful, I could help people, I could make up for the mistakes I made… that I could be forgiven. I'd never been part of a team before, but that's what we became- and every decision we made, we shared." He pointed into the mess hall. "This was no different, Clarke. We did this together. We can share the burden together too, and we can move on from it together."

A tiny smile had slid onto Clarke's lips as he spoke, and she knew that this was how it should have always been. She'd walked away because she thought it would make things easier, that she could be alone and process and grieve and move past her guilt and then come back home. It had been a crazy idea, and one that masked her true reasons- she simply couldn't face it. Not what she'd done, not how it felt, and certainly not what it would be like going forward, seen as the victorious leader of her people- at least to the remainder of the hundred- and not as the horrible murderer she felt she was. By making the choice to irradiate, she had saved lives and taken them, and in the end she couldn't face this simple truth: that some lives were more important than others. It just depended on perspective.

Even after all she'd been through on the ground so far, at her core was still that privileged child from Alpha Station, naïve and righteous- so the reality of what had happened in Mount Weather, the choices they'd had to make and their consequences, and this ugly truth: that they had killed innocents to save people they loved... that had been the hardest truth to bear.

Clarke cast one last, long look over that room that had been witness to so much death, so much useless loss. Together, she and Bellamy had wiped out an entire population of people- it had been genocide, no more and no less. Justifiable genocide? Yes, from their perspective. But they were just one people, and Clarke had seen enough of the world in the last six months to know that outlook was everything. Nobody ever won, but plenty of people could lose.

Six months ago, they had stood outside the gates of Camp Jaha, and Bellamy had asked her- pleaded with her- to come inside. Instead, she'd walked away. But today she was staying- staying with him, staying with her friends, her mother, her people. Staying despite the heartache it caused, because inside that heartache, there was hope too. She realised now that one would always have to go with the other. Not everything that happened was wholly good or wholly bad; not every question got resolved. Life just didn't work that way, and never had- not on the Ark, not on the ground.

"Are you okay?" Bellamy asked softly, breaking through her thoughts.

"No," she whispered, tearing her gaze away from the mess hall and looking back at him. His eyes were so warm, so compassionate and gentle, and she knew she just had to take what he was offering her: forgiveness, and a chance to start over- to move on, to share her burdens again. She let out a long breath and squeezed her eyes shut, then slowly opened them again. Softly she told him, "I will be."

When he pulled her close to him and kissed her, his lips tasted like hope.

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THE END

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A/N: Hey guys- well, we've reached the end. Like any season of the 100 would do, I've left a few questions unanswered- my own season finale, as it were. Writing this has been such a fun and rewarding experience, and I've loved receiving so many comments from you guys- they have really kept me going, kept me passionate and excited to continue. I'm not ruling out a sequel. But this was always a story about bringing Clarke back, and she's home now. Anything else... that's a story for another day. :)