Notes:

Oh God. Let me tell you.

I just wrote one of the kiss scenes (no, it's not in this chapter, sorry suckkkkaaaa) and it's pretty awesome. Like, it's good shit.

Also, I had a very strange yet very awesome dream the other night, and I would like to share it with you.

So. Open up another tab in your browser.

Go to YouTube.

Look up the video "Sorry" by Justin Bieber (JUST DO IT. I don't care how much you don't like him, I love him enough to have our WiFi name be 'Belieber', even though I'm a big 'ole lesbo.)

Good. Now, before you play it, just imagine that in each scene the lead dancer is Lexa, full cape and makeup. Picture all the background dancers as Grounder warriors.

Yup. That was my dream. Lexa dancing her apology to Clarke with a full group of dancing warriors.

You're welcome.

Oh, and thanks. I'm loving the feedback and seeing people following the story. It makes me feel so great!

Love love love

Dia

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Jos was seriously testing her patience.

The normally quiet and non-intrusive Grounder had been peppering her with questions all day, and when she didn't answer, he had resorted to the tactics that small children use to get someone's attention. Every few minutes, he would give her a sideways glance before stretching his booted foot over the gap between their horses in order to prod her gently with it. This time when he reached his foot over, she slapped at it angrily, and his booming laugh filled the open air of the forest around them.

"Come on, Clarke." He said, trying hard to hide the smile he was wearing and almost succeeding. "You're so stiff and apprehensive that your horse can feel it. You are the very one who always tells me that sometimes talking about one's problems can help."

"I was saying that you and the other Grounders would benefit from talking about your problems." Clarke growled, frowning at Jos before laying across her horses neck and draping her arms to embrace him in an apology for making him restless. She stayed like that for a moment, taking strength from the terrifying animal she had been given to make the journey on.

"There isn't much to talk about, Jos." She said once she had finally righted herself in her handmade saddle.

"What I did at the Mountain...I did it because I had to. I would do it again without thinking twice. They were killing my friends in there. But there were innocents. There were children that had no idea what was going on and had harmed no one and I took away their lives to save others." Clarke paused, struggling to find the words to explain the heavy swirl of emotions that seemed to live within her chest now.

"There were no enemies for me on the Ark." She started, looking down at the braided leather reins in her hand. "At least, none that fought me physically. Until the day I found out about the air supply, I had everything I wanted." Clarke shook her head.

"No, that's not exactly true. I had everything that I could know I wanted. I didn't have all the information. I didn't know what was down here. All my priorities are different now. Everything that mattered up there doesn't matter down here any longer, and I'm having trouble getting used to that." Clarke's horse shifted underneath her, aware again of her emotions and the frustration she was feeling at not being able to adequately explain herself.

"Let me try again." Clarke trailed off, once again pausing to gather her thoughts.

"Up there, I was not a leader. At best, I was just upper class, someone who would never do intensive labor unless it was over a surgical table. I used to read all these books about the Earth, and imagine what it would be like to be down here, but overall I was happy. Oblivious, but happy. I had parents that loved me, a few friends, and a future." Clarke felt the ache at the back of her throat building as she spoke, but it was all coming out of her now like a waterfall, fast and unstoppable.

"Down here, I watched as so many people died. People just like me, young and stupid, and apparently expendable. I found out that one parent had betrayed the other, that the friend that I blamed for my dad's death had covered up my mother's crime in order to keep me from pain, only to find him dead by the hand of a little girl who couldn't keep the nightmares from invading her sleep. I watched that little girl let guilt swallow her whole before she ended her own life, and that was all within the first week.

Down here, I was a leader. Ninety-eight faces looked to me to make decisions to save their lives, and as the number of faces dwindled, the guilt built. Down here, I know more than I ever could have possible known up there, but I don't know how to be happy. I don't know how to erase the guilt, how to wash the blood off of my hands." Clarke refused to look at Jos as she continued, not being able to bear the look of pity she assumed he would be wearing.

"I can't go back. I can't stay. I left because I couldn't look at the faces of the people I saved without seeing the faces of those I had killed to do so. I would've died out there if it wasn't for you and the Floukru people. I owe you and them my life, and I am so grateful, but I left so that I could escape the politics. Now I feel as if I'm being dragged back in. There are bound to be Grounders in Polis who recognize me, who know what I've done. I'm not really sure if I'm ready to face that. I trusted Lexa. I was the one who convinced my people that we all could trust her. When she betrayed me..." Clarke caught herself, immediately correcting her mistake.

"When she betrayed us, she did more than just leave us to the killers. She turned me into one, and I don't think I can forgive that."

Once she stopped talking, Jos and Clarke rode another two miles at least before Jos broke the silence.

"You feel that you are in the middle, yes?" Clarke nodded her head, keeping her gaze trained forward as she absent-mindedly stroked her horse's neck.

"Sometimes the middle is not so bad a place to be." Jos stated simply. When he didn't say anything else, Clarke burst into laughter, and only managed to stop when she saw the look of utter confusion on Jos's face.

"After all that, that's your advice?" Jos nodded warily, looking at Clarke with a cautious expression.

"God, you are such a Grounder!" She said, before allowing the laughter to bubble back up again.

It had been so long since she had looked in a mirror.

Clarke brought one of her hands to her face, wincing as she felt the dips and pits where small scars marred her once smooth features. It had been five days since she arrived in Polis, where there was running water and mirrors and real houses, and she had spent a few minutes every morning so far staring into the jagged reflective surface hung in the small bathroom attached to her room, surprised by what she saw there.

She could get used to the braids. Jos had insisted that she let him braid her hair in a taditional Floukrustyle before entering Polis, and she actually liked it. It kept her wavy hair out of her eyes and face, and the dirt and grease that were a constant didn't seem to show as much. She could also get used to how pronounced her jawline looked. Food was not a given on Earth, and she would probably never again reach the weight she was at on the Ark.

As she surveyed the lines that worry and stress from the past seven months had carved into her face, Clarke thought again how much older she looked. She had always been a frowner, even on the Ark, but now it felt as though her lips were perpetually turned downward at the edges and her brow was forever wrinkled in concern. The scars stood out white or pink in stark contrast to her now darkened skin, and she looked battle worn. All this coupled with the subtle dullness at the back of her eyes aged her far beyond her almost nineteen years.

Finally tearing her eyes away from her own reflection, she grabbed the lever beside the raised basin below the mirror and quickly pumped it. Lexa had been right about one thing, visiting Polis made her look at the Grounders in a whole different light. On the ride there, Jos had explained to her that the Grounders had run pipes they had salvaged from ruined cities under many of the buildings that they had constructed in Polis in order to make water more easily accessible for cooking and cleaning. It had been one thing to hear about it, but seeing it in person was more than a little impressive. While most of the pipes pumped out unheated water, there was a few public bathhouses located throughout Polis with large, steaming hot pools. Jos had told her that these were heated by attendants stoking fires beneath solid floors for twelve hours a day. Prisoners who had committed non-violent crimes worked several laborious jobs such as these to keep the city running. After they had been shown to their rooms in one of the lodging houses many of the other healers were staying in, Jos had tugged her along to one of them, eager to get rid of the dust and dirt from their journey. She had followed with a certain amount of trepidation, but had flat-out refused to enter when she realized just how public the bathhouses were.

Since then, she had made do with pumping fresh clean water into a basin every morning to scrub her body with, reasoning that although it was no shower, it was still way better than the freezing dips she had taken in ponds and lakes since she arrived on Earth. The cold and the fear of river monsters had made those dips too short to actually break through the layer of sweat and grime that had settled over her skin, but here they had actual soap and soft squares of fabric for rubbing your skin clean.

She didn't even care that she had to share this bathroom with the occupants of the four other rooms that had doors leading into it. It was still much less public than the bathhouse had been. Quickly splashing herself with the water, she dragged one such cloth across her face before glancing at the mirror a final time. Honestly, it wasn't the scars or lines of anxiety that surprised her anymore. Instead, as she turned her chin first one way, than the other, she knew that what bothered her when she saw her reflection was more than just skin deep.

Traipsing back to her room, Clarke pulled on her soft leather jacket and laced up the straps that held her boots firmly on her feet. What bothered her when she saw herself in the cracked piece of glass hung on a wall was the same thing that had bothered her the past few days when she and Jos had begun to explore Polis. To everyone else, she looked as if she belonged here. Octavia had been a Grounder from the moment she met Lincoln. Despite having spent all of her formative years on the Ark, she had never been a part of the society that floated so many miles above the Earth. She had spent her life in darkness and secrecy, so when she had the chance to accept a new way of life, she fully embraced it.

For Clarke, it was not so easy. She had belonged up there, gently spinning in space among the stars. Or, she had, until they had thrown her into prison and hurtled her to the ground. Now, every day, as she walked the dirt roads of Polis, she felt more and more as if she was adrift in the ocean that Jos spoke so fondly of. She was neither land nor air, neither Grounder nor Sky People, and she knew that eventually, she would need to make a choice.

Jos's words from their journey echoed in her head as she headed to his room to collect the Grounder.

The middle is not so bad a place to be.

Clarke definitely didn't believe him.

Jos tried to hide his grin as he looked up at his Commander sitting on her throne.

"Leave us." Lexa said,her eyes never leaving Jos's as Indra and the other guards that had been with her in her meeting room exited. Once they were gone, Lexa let a small smile touch her lips.

"You should have written to tell me you were coming, cousin." She said, before standing from her throne and coming forward to grasp his forearm in hers in a greeting.

"You would have told me not to come if I had." Was Jos's retort, and her smile widened before she pulled him forward into an informal hug.

"I think I might have missed you." She said, and Jos laughed in her ear.

"I missed you too, Heda. But I am afraid that you will no longer feel that you missed me after I tell you what I have come to say."

Clarke sat stiffly on the edge of the bed. All of her things had already been shoved hastily into her saddlebags, but she couldn't seem to make her body move. She sat there, still and lost in thought, until a series of soft knocks on her door made her jump. In a flash, the anger was back, and she swiped the back of her hand across her cheeks to eliminate any trace of her emotions.

"Go away, Jos! I don't want to see you!" She yelled in the direction of the door, letter her raw pain fuel the bite in her voice.

Allowing herself to flop back onto the bed, Clarke once again swiped at the tears that were slowly but surely leaking out of her eyes. How many times had people done this to her? How many times had she been betrayed and let down by the people she had the most love and hope for? Clarke and Jos had been walking amicably for almost twenty minutes this morning before he dropped a rather large and trust-shattering bomb on her.

Pressing her fingertips into the puffy skin underneath her eyes, Clarke let out a puff of frustrated air. Why was nothing ever as it seemed? She had thought that her rescue by Jos had been a happy - and livesaving - coincidence. She had thought that her acceptance by the Floukrupeople, grudging as it was, had been a bit of luck. She had thought that she had forgotten about her, and had left her to the woods and the death that they held.

Clarke had shared with Jos, let him see her weak and vulnerable, and if her heart wasn't already blackened and splintered from her life before she met him, it was now. Jos had told her that he had not merely stumbled upon her out in the woods, delirious and dying. Lexa had one of her scouts tail Clarke from the moment she and her people left the Mountain, and when she learned of Clarke's departure from the wreckage of the Ark, Lexa had sent a message to Jos. Jos had been looking for her. Not only had he been looking for her, but was Lexa's cousin, and Cheya was Lexa's mother's sister, and she was so fucking ANGRY.

What right did she have? What right did hehave? Why was everyone always trying to watch her when all she wanted was to be left alone? She had swung at Jos, her hand heavy with the weight of his betrayal, and he hadn't stepped out of the way. She had pummeled him, right then and there in the middle of Polis with her fists, and all she could do was say the same thing, over and over.

LiarLiarLiarLiarLiarLiarLiarLiarLiarLiarLiar

He had taken the blows without a moment's hesitation, and it only made her angrier. She had thought that she had gotten away from Lexa, out of her sight and out of her mind, but instead, Jos had been feeding information to the asshole warrior and they had probably been laughing at her for months. When she was done, chest heaving, she had told him she was leaving, and she had marched off towards their lodging house.

A louder and much more frantic bout of knocking kicked Clarke out her reverie, and just like that, the anger was back. She stomped to the door, lining up a few choice words for Jos on the tip of her tongue before flinging it open to find Lexa's eyes, free of war paint put entirely full of anger, boring straight into hers.

Notes:

Ohhhh yeah. That's right. That's where I'm leaving it.

I'm a bitch, you say?

Well it takes one to know one. So there.