Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; if you're on this site, you know the drill. Also, thanks are owed to athingofvikings, who gave me a much-appreciated sounding-board for a few aspects of my planned world-building for this particular crossover; hope you like it.

Feedback: Appreciated as always.

AN: This takes place just a few days after the last chapter; enjoy the results as these two worlds start to come together…

The Dragon of Wanheda

It hadn't taken long since leaving Camp Jaha for Clarke to recognise that she could have thought things through more clearly.

She was still certain that she'd made the right decision to get away from the rest of the Ark after everything that had happened- she needed to get away from everything that reminded her of what she'd done in Mount Weather- but she could have taken a little time to gather more supplies than the gun in her hand and the clothes on her back. As it was, once she'd reached the forest she'd spent her first couple of nights resting in trees if she could find a sufficiently wide branch at a decent height, choosing branches that weren't so high that she couldn't reach it but high enough that most animals couldn't get to her and most humans wouldn't spot her unless they actively looked up. After those first couple of nights proved the theory, she'd turned her attention to the matter of defending herself, managing to create a basic 'hammer' with a thick rock and a sturdy branch combined with some creepers that she'd used to kill a fox that had found her one evening.

The next couple of hunts hadn't been pleasant, but after using one of her last bullets on a grizzly bear that had almost killed her, she'd a couple of early hunts, she'd managed to make a tentative trade of the bear's carcass for a decent knife and a wolf-skin that she could use as a blanket. Her weapons were still limited and her experience at surviving out here was essentially all self-taught, but at least she knew she wasn't going to starve to death.

With her supply issues dealt with, Clarke had spent the last week or so walking away from the areas she'd already visited, and could only hope that her current path was leading her in the direction of what she was looking for. With the knowledge that her people were safe for the immediate future, and no urgent need for her to act as the leader she'd been forced to be ever since arriving on Earth, she had made up her mind that her first goal would be to visit the ocean, and she'd work out her next move from there.

The walk had been a long one, of course, but she'd spent enough time studying the maps of Mount Weather and the surrounding country to at least be sure that she was walking in the right direction; so long as she kept an eye out for the appropriate landmarks, she was cautiously optimistic that she'd hit the coastline soon enough.

Her first experience with water on Earth might have led to Octavia and Jasper nearly getting killed, but no matter what possible dangers might exist in the ocean, Clarke wanted to see it at least once.

When she finally climbed over a hill and found herself looking at the long spread of blue that indicated the sea, Clarke came close to sitting down and succumbing to her exhaustion now that her goal was in visual range, but when she saw the vast metal object lying on the coastline, a new surge of energy struck her.

Virtually all of the exterior struts and pylons had been burnt or torn off as it came through the atmosphere, and the large dome at the end of it must have been lost during its final descent, but she had studied the history of the Ark long enough to recognise Arrow Station when it was separated from the rest of the station.

"Oh God…" Clarke whispered to herself, eyes widening and a tentative grin on her face as she made her way down the hill towards the crashed station. If she was right that people didn't come this far out among the clans she'd encountered so far, it may be that she was the first person from the rest of the Ark who'd made it out to this particular crash-site.

She still wasn't ready to go back to her friends and family after everything she'd had to sacrifice to save them, but if she could just find a few survivors here, she might be able to do something for them, and maybe she could even actually save someone without having to kill anyone else…

The closer she came to the fallen station, however, the easier it was to see that there was nothing she could do to help anyone there. Arrow Station had apparently been fortunate enough to strike the edge of a sloping cliff, so it had come to a comparatively smooth stop at first, but when it hit the sea rather than just exhausting its momentum on its own, the resulting backlash and rapid temperature shift had basically pulverized what was left that might have still been inhabited. A few interior fires were still burning even weeks after the initial impact, and Clarke could see no sign of human activity around it, which made it clear that nobody had survived the crash to do anything with the remains.

As she took in the tragedy before her, Clarke was briefly lost in a new wave of grief and frustration with herself for ever believing that Earth would give her a chance to save a life, but she soon fought down the tears that threatened to come from her eyes and continued to walk forward. Even if everyone on the station had died, she could still see what she could do about giving them a decent burial before she started working on salvaging anything for herself; Mount Weather's residents had been left where they fell, but she would see what she could do for these people. Picking up her pace as she ran through the trees, Clarke kept her gaze fixed on the rising smoke that indicated the presence of the station, but her advance came to an abrupt halt when she heard a loud roar from the beach up ahead.

"Crap," she said, keeping her voice low as she considered the implications of that particular roar. She still had a couple of bullets in her gun if she was dealing with a predator that had taken up residence in Arrow Station, but she'd prefer to save them for when she was absolutely certain she had no other option but to kill something, and no other way to guarantee that she could pull it off.

Taking a deep breath, she checked her back for the 'war-hammer' she'd created earlier and shifted the pace of her approach to the beach, maintaining a brisk pace that focused on hiding behind trees and rocks as she made her way towards her target. As she drew closer to the large burn-mark left by the crashed station, Clarke noticed a few bodies lying around, but for the moment she refused to look at them too closely; if she was about to face the predator that had done… anything… to them, looking at its handiwork wouldn't help anything.

As she left the forest and walked on the edge of the beach, Clarke's first clear glimpse of Arrow Station confirmed her earlier assessment. The main body of the station was reasonably intact, but after the various external struts had been torn off, the station itself had taken some serious damage, ranging from obvious burns around the area where the struts had been to a couple of points along the station that had clearly exploded outwards at some point during the descent.

However, Clarke's private debate on whether or not she should try and examine the station's interior right now came to an abrupt end when she saw the source of the roar she'd heard earlier. Taking in the sight of the creature lying on the beach a short distance from the station, Clarke couldn't restrain a broad smile spreading across her face for the first time since Mount Weather had fallen.

The creature's colour was a surprising shade of deep red tinted with orange that she hadn't expected to see on this particular breed- she was sure that the picture in the pamphlet had been blue with hints of yellow- and obviously the pictures had done little to demonstrate the scale of the creatures compared to humans, but there was no way she could be looking at anything other than one of the creatures that had been the subject of her father's lifelong fascination.

"A dragon," Clarke all but whispered to herself, still smiling as she studied the creature. "You're still alive…"

She didn't know if there were more dragons or if this one was just the unlikely sole survivor, but either way, Clarke felt like she'd almost walked into a dream; after months of believing they'd been wiped out along with everything else that had been good and fascinating about Earth, she was actually looking at a dragon. Mind racing over the long-lost but never-forgotten pamphlet as she studied the creature, she soon confirmed her initial identification of it as a Windstriker based on her father's tales of the various dragons in the Sanctuary; smooth skin, a long neck and tail with wide jagged wings stretching out from a squat but sturdy central body, short arms and long muscular legs, spikes sticking out all over its back with a single large horn on the tip of its snout and a smaller horn under its chin…

Despite her initial joy at this discovery, it didn't take long for Clarke's smile to falter as she studied the dragon in depth. In general the creature presented the imposing presence she'd always enjoyed imagining when she heard her father's stories, but that smile faltered when she took in the way the dragon was crouched and the unpleasant angle at which it held its right wing.

"You're hurt," she said, voice rising as she stepped forward. As though it had only just registered her presence, the dragon turned to look at her, letting out a low growl as it tensed its shoulders despite the accompanying wince of pain.

"Easy!" Clarke said, tossing her hammer to the side and raising her hands in a gesture of surrender, praying that this dragon was intelligent enough to recognise that she wasn't intending to harm it; from what she remembered, Windstrikers just attacked their foes with extremely hot air rather than actually breathing fire, but that was still dangerous if she took a blast of it to the face. "I'm just here to help you; you're OK, do you hear me? You're OK, you're safe, I'm not going to hurt you…"

As the dragon snarled at her, Clarke noted that it seemed to be slightly less hostile towards her than it had been in its 'introductory' growl. It was still giving off a low rumble in its throat, but it seemed to be slightly more hesitant about acting aggressively towards her, as though it was starting to recognise that she wasn't going to cause it any further pain.

Whenever she looked back on that moment later on, Clarke could never explain what had prompted her next decision, but as the dragon looked at her, still snarling in pain and fear, she raised her arms and began to hum loudly while carefully walking towards the creature. Recalling a tune from one of the films her father had managed to find on what remained of the Internet, depicting a bitter knight forming a friendship with the last living dragon, Clarke began to hum the tune, watching with a smile as the dragon looked at her, curiosity gradually replacing its hostility. As the tune built to its crescendo, Clarke lowered her arms, her left falling to her side as she held out her right hand and slowly advanced towards the dragon, timing her breaths to match the tune she was humming without breaking the rhythm.

Finally, when she and the dragon were so close that the dragon's nose was practically in front of her, Clarke steeled herself and reached out towards the dragon's face, the creature responding to her action by taking that final step forward so that she was now touching it directly. For a moment Clarke was startled, but soon relaxed and began to stroke the creature, its scales surprisingly warm despite the fact that it was naturally a lizard that she would have expected to be cold-blooded.

"Wow…" she said, smiling tentatively at the dragon. "Hey there…"

As she reached her hand around to stroke the Windstriker's lower jaw, she scratched a certain point and the dragon suddenly fell to the ground, letting out a blissful moan as it rolled over onto its left side to leave its injured wing exposed. A quick glance down its body revealed something that Clarke was going to interpret as a sign that this dragon was male, mainly because she had to think of it as some kind of gender and things sticking out felt more masculine than feminine to her.

"Ouch," Clarke said, walking over to carefully examine the wing. This close up, she could see the way its wing had bent, along with a couple of nasty-looking cuts in the membrane. She couldn't be sure exactly how this injury had happened, but given that this creature was close to Arrow Station, she guessed that the dragon had gone to investigate the crashed station shortly after it 'landed', and something had fallen off Arrow Station to strike the Windstriker's wing. When she glanced back at the station, she even saw a couple of holes in the lower half of the station with metal piled around them on the sand that might have been the exact place where the dragon had been injured, even if it was impossible to be sure what hole might have caused the injury.

Clarke hated herself for even thinking it, but she was suddenly glad of that minor collapse; if this dragon hadn't been forces to stay here, she would have never known that these incredible creatures still existed…

Putting that momentary ambiguous thought aside, Clarke turned her attention back to the assessing the condition of the dragon's wing. Judging by the twisted angle of the wing and the scratches around the wound, Clarke guessed that the dragon had managed to remove whatever piece of Arrow Station had caused the damage, but it was clear to Clarke that the Windstriker couldn't do anything more to help itself.

"OK," Clarke took a deep breath as she looked at the still-'dozing' dragon. "Just… wait there… I'm here to help you…"

As the dragon began to stir, Clarke ran her hands cautiously over the damaged wing, feeling her way along the twisted limb until she found the point where the bone had been broken. She quickly moved to 'slot' the bone back into place just as the dragon got up, the dragon letting out a brief pained roar as it turned to face her before its snarl shifted to a more curious stare as it realised what she had done.

"How's that?" Clarke looked at the dragon with a tentative smile, her hands still on the injured wing. "I still need to tie this together, and you should probably give it a little time to heal, but if you don't strain yourself, you should be good as new… soon… I think…"

Clarke wished that she sounded more positive about that, but when dealing with a species she'd never expected to encounter as a reality, the best she could do was hope that her existing knowledge of biology could be adapted to treat this dragon.

"You probably shouldn't fly until we're sure this is healed," she continued, her hands tentatively running over the injured wing, "but if you'll trust me, I think I can help you get better…"

The dragon looked at her with an expression that Clarke would have called thoughtful if it wasn't for the fact that she didn't know how intelligent the dragon was, before it reached out to butt her chest with its nose, rumbling at her in an approving manner.

"Thanks," Clarke said, tentatively stroking the dragon's horn. "So… what do I call you? I mean, you're pretty much stuck here until I can get your wing back in working order, so if we're spending time together, I'd prefer to have something specific to call you rather than 'dragon' or 'Windstriker'… Wells?"

The look the dragon gave her somehow managed to seem condescending even if she doubted the Windstriker understood her exact words.

"Yeah, probably not…" Clarke acknowledged; Wells had been a good friend, but he didn't have the strength that would fit with this dragon. She had already ruled out naming it after anyone who was still alive, and she didn't know anyone in Mount Weather she wanted to honour in that manner. She briefly considered 'Bowen' or 'Draco', but even if that film had helped her tame the dragon, naming it after a fictional character felt like she would be cheapening the nature of its existence. Assuming she was right about the dragon being male, 'Anya' was also off as an option, and she definitely wasn't going to name this guy 'Finn', while 'Jake' seemed like a strange name for a dragon…

When the idea hit her, she was amazed it hadn't been her first choice.

"Griffin?" she looked at the dragon with a hopeful smile. As though in response, the dragon let out a low rumble that seemed to suggest satisfaction, looking at Clarke in a manner that she could swear was a smile.

"OK then," Clarke nodded at the dragon. "Griffin it is."

Maybe people would think that she had named this dragon after herself, but as far as Clarke was concerned, this dragon had just been named after her father, who had spent so many years dreaming about the dragons he believed to be dead. If she couldn't bring him to the ground directly, she would give this dragon a name that would honour him and everything he'd meant to her over the years, and do her best to care for it the way he would have wanted her to.

This could be the last dragon on Earth, and I am not going to leave it to suffer from that wing if I can help it.

AN 2: Can anyone identify the film that had such an influence on Clarke's attempts to train her dragon?