Chapter Text
Two weeks pass and her people are still trapped in the mountain.
Clarke dreams of them, their bright smiles and glowing skin, clean clothes and fresh-scrubbed faces, legs and arms plump from added weight. She sees them happy and alive, laughing in the depths of the mountain.
The dream shifts and it’s a different room, a different scene. Jasper hangs by his ankles and Tsing is smirking as his blood drips, drips, drips away. Clarke reaches for him, her knife clenched within a shaking fist, and he smiles weakly as the knife slides easily through layers of skin and bone. “Thanks, Princess,” he says through a bloody smile.
Clarke wakes up gasping for breath, hands pressed hard over the furious beat of her heart. She stares at them in horror, searches for blood in the faint light. Her hands are clean but her soul is heavy and she can’t catch her breath even as her heart stops thudding in her chest. Sleep feels increasingly far away so she tugs on her jacket and laces up her boots and steps out of the quarters she now shares with her mother.
She finds Bellamy by the gate, back straight and rifle cocked, and they’re technically at peace but she knows he’ll never stand down until all their people are safe behind the wall.
He turns as she approaches, and in the warm glow of Grounder torches, he looks very young. When he smiles, he almost looks happy. “Rough night?”
Clarke grips the gate and peers through the slats. Even from this distance, she can feel them watching. They’re technically at peace, but trust is a tough bridge to rebuild.
She’s silent a long time and Bellamy turns back to his post, peers through the rifle’s scope and looks for movement in the trees. It’s reassuring to know he’s always watching too. “What if we don’t get them back?” she finally says and it takes her a moment to recognize the voice as her own. It’s soft and broken and too much like the Clarke she used to know.
He pauses a beat before responding, but when he does Clarke lets out a breath she didn’t know that she was holding because he heard the words she couldn’t say. “We keep fighting.” His voice is strong and firm and doesn’t waver. He lowers the rifle and grasps her hand so their palms mesh and she can feel the promise in his heartbeat: we won’t stop trying, we’ll make Finn’s death matter.
Bellamy returns to the watch and Clarke settles in beside him. She glances his way just once, takes in the hard line of his profile and the determination in his eyes.
It feels like she can do anything so long as he’s by her side.
The mission date creeps closer and everyone has something to say about it.
Abby is technically chancellor and she demands a recap the moment her daughter walks through the gate. Clarke understands it must be frustrating, to wear the pin but hold only a fraction of the power, so she dully rattles off numbers and names and thinks of Lexa.
Her counterpart is also a girl, at most a few years past eighteen, but every Grounder would lay down their lives for her. Clarke imitates her voice, her posture and her tone. She leaves no room for discussion.
“We leave in two days,” Clarke reports and her mother’s face falls.
“I need to discuss this with the Council,” Abby says but Clarke shakes her head. The councilors are well-intentioned people who know nothing of the world they inhabit; they still don’t understand how drastically their lives have changed. There’s no time to discuss and consider; she needs to act.
Clarke channels Lexa as she stares up at her mother. “The decision isn’t up to you.”
“I’m still the Chancellor.”
“Mom,” Clarke sighs. She hates fighting with her mother, hates any interaction that rips open a wound and makes her feel. She has enough on her plate without her father’s ghost making a reappearance. “We need them to rescue our people. The Commander and I came to this agreement and we need to stand by it.” She pauses, lets some of Lexa’s steel gleam in her eyes. “You’re either with me or against me.”
Tears well in Abby’s eyes. “I know you hate when I say it, but you’re just a kid. Clarke, all this shouldn’t be on you.”
Clarke's quiet a moment, long enough for Jake to slide between them. “You knew it would be,” she says. “You told me that I was like dad, that I’d take care of everybody else.” She meets Abby’s gaze and a tear slips down her mom’s cheek. “You told me not to, but you knew I’d do it anyway. This is me taking care of my people.” She takes a step forward, gathers Abby’s hands between her own. “I’ll ask you again. Are you with me?”
Abby’s eyes are watery, but her grip is firm. “What do you need?”
It’s a start.
Jaha has an opinion too.
He’s still confined to the brig and Clarke stops by once a day to check his wrists. She holds up a lantern and inspects the chaffed skin. It’s healing nicely and if he’s lucky, there’ll be minimal damage.
He watches her while she works, with dark eyes that are so much like Wells’. He’s aged since they landed and his beard is almost entirely white. It’s strange to see him like this, hard to endure the weight of Wells’ gaze. She quickly rubs salve on the wounds and reaches for the roll of bandages.
“You’re stronger than I anticipated,” Jaha says and it’s the same deep, commanding voice of her youth. For half a second, she’s back on the Ark and she trusts in the adults that decide the course of her life. She almost believes the words that he says.
“I didn’t have a choice,” she says as she ties off the bandage and inspects his other wrist. The welts are rawer and she adds more salve before applying the bandage.
Jaha is silent as he rubs his jaw with his free hand, and the only sound is his fingers scratching at his beard. “I wanted to die during the Culling,” he finally says, and it’s not what Clarke thought he’d say, but she doesn’t let her hands still. He’s the man who killed her father, the man who sent her to die. She doesn’t want to be with him any longer than necessary. “If I sent three hundred twenty people to die, I thought I should go with them. It seemed like the right thing.”
He rests his fingers against her wrist until she meets his eyes. She spent half her life under his watch. Laughed with him, cried before him, loved his son like a brother. She can’t look away from seeing the life she misses in his face. “What you did was right. You didn’t walk away from a challenge. You found another way.”
It makes Clarke laugh, the kind of laugh that lacks any humor. “I killed someone that I love.”
Jaha’s fingers tighten around her wrist. “I was wrong about your father and I was wrong about you too. I can’t bring Jake back, but I can give you my loyalty. Whatever you need, I’ll support you.” He pauses and Clarke should hate him but the sadness in his eyes makes her gasp. “I’m so sorry for the pain I’ve caused you. I should have believed in you the way my son always did.”
It doesn’t heal her wounds, or bring her father back, but it’s surprisingly easy to let go of the anger. She didn’t realize how heavy it was until it fades away. “I forgive you,” Clarke says. “Finn wanted to be better and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Jaha smiles and all she sees is Wells. She couldn’t save him, couldn’t save Finn, but she’ll fight for this new world until her last breath.
There’s a feast before the mission launches.
Clarke doesn’t feel much like celebrating, but there’s no other option. They need the Grounders to make the mission a success, even if it means abiding by weird Grounder traditions.
On the Ark, a party held little pomp and circumstance. They wore the same clothes, ate the same food, and if not for the masks and music, it would have been like any other day. The Grounders take celebrations seriously and there are streamers looped through their hastily erected fence and flags waving in the wind from atop every tent. Clarke mostly keeps her eyes focused on Bellamy’s back so she doesn’t have to look at the post where she ended Finn’s life, or the ring of his blood that stains the grass.
It’s a small party from Camp Jaha, just Clarke and Bellamy, Kane and Raven. Clarke hadn’t wanted to bring the latter, but Lexa had insisted; her weapons chief wanted to talk shop with the Sky People’s best mechanic.
For all the Grounder’s emphasis on ritual, the feast is a simple event. Lexa thanks the Sky People for joining, toasts the alliance between their forces. She holds up her goblet and waits patiently as Gustus takes a sip; her calm expression twists into something furious when he falls face first into his plate.
“Traitor,” Indra hisses. Within seconds, her spear is digging into Clarke’s throat.
“We didn’t do this,” Clarke insists as Gustus convulses, white foam leaking from his open mouth. “It wasn’t us.”
Lexa won’t look at her as she orders her guards to take them away. Clarke feels her new world crumbling to ash.
She’s locked up with Kane. They’re taken to a tent and forcibly patted down. Clarke finds the exercise tiresome – they were stripped of weapons at the gate – but she doesn’t want to enrage Lexa further. It’s four of them against an entire army. She grits her teeth and ignores the Grounder running his hand up and down her legs.
They’re tied to the center pole, hands bound behind their backs, and Clarke can feel the scratchy fabric of Kane’s jacket against her fingers. She doesn’t know what happened to Bellamy and Raven. She’s the Sky People’s leader, and Kane’s their top general. She hopes Lexa also sees the value in her friends.
Clarke also isn’t willing to find out. She tests her bindings and kicks out with her feet, but the Grounders have done this before. She’s not going anywhere without their say so.
“You’re only going to hurt yourself,” Kane says. “Escape isn’t an option.”
Clarke twists around, tries to see his face. She can make out some of his profile, a Lexa-sized handprint splashed across his cheek. “Got to know the Commander, right?” She stops fighting, but keeps scanning the tent for something useful.
“She’ll see that it wasn’t us. Just give her time.”
They don’t have time. It’s not just Bellamy and Raven. It’s Jasper’s goofy grin and Monty’s enduring loyalty. She even wants to see Miller’s stoic face again. She won’t have that without Lexa’s help. “We’ve come too far for it to fall apart.”
“I have faith.”
Clarke scans her brain for what she can remember of Kane. Mostly that he was an asshole, but that he also grew up in the Cult of the Eden Tree. “Because we came to earth. You grew up believing that we’d return.” He doesn’t respond and Clarke remembers learning of the attack on the Ark, remembers the he also lost someone that he loved. “I’m sorry about your mother.”
“I am too,” he says softly, waits a beat and then continues. “I gave up on religion a long time ago, but I’m not sure that it ever left me. People change. My entire adult life, there was nothing more important than preserving the human race. I put a woman out an airlock for having a second child.” He pauses, sucks in a breath. “Where’s the crime in that?”
“Population control,” Clarke whispers, matching Blake smiles flashing before her eyes.
“Population control,” Kane repeats. “If one person did it, so would everyone else, and it would have been the end of humanity. But I was wrong,” he says and Clarke can’t see him but she can hear the way his voice breaks. “What you did, the world you’re building…it’s going to save us all.”
“Not if we don’t get out of here,” Clarke points out, tugs at the ropes again.
Kane laughs, and when he speaks again, it’s the calm, even voice of the Ark’s security chief. “I’m betting on you.”
Clarke rests her head against the pole and prays that he’s right. There’s only so many times that they can beat the odds.
The culprit is a young mother who lost her son in Finn’s massacre.
They find out the truth when Indra and her team cut their bonds, haul them to their feet, and drag them out of the tent. They’re pushed to their knees and Clarke blinks for a moment, searching for Lexa’s face in the crowd, before she notices Bellamy slumped in the dirt. He’s bleeding from a head wound, more blood caked in his hair, and her heart jumps in her chest as she runs towards him.
She can’t lose anyone else, not Bellamy, not like this. Her hand shakes as she pushes his hair back from his brow. “Bellamy!” She doesn’t care about the fear in her voice, or how it breaks as she says his name. All she wants is for him to open his eyes. He needs to open his eyes.
“Hey Princess,” he says softy and for the first time since Finn died, the nickname doesn’t gouge a hole into her heart. It feels warm and familiar. It wraps her in its arms and soothes away the fear.
She lets out a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob, blinks down at him as he gingerly rubs his head. “That’s gonna scar.”
He kind of rolls his eyes before reaching up and brushing her hair back from her forehead. There’s a bump there too, a curved crescent of a scar that Anya’s rock etched into her skin. “I guess we’ll match.”
She manages a nod because she can’t talk past the knot in her throat. He smiles at her and it might be the best thing she’s ever seen.
Their new world starts with Mira.
Lexa apologizes briefly for detaining them, but not accusing them. Indra stands at her side, her face dark with rage beneath her tattoos. Mira was of her village; this is on her.
“You’re free to go,” Lexa tells them and Raven starts slowly for the gate. She was their prime suspect and has more than a head wound for her trouble.
“Wait!” Clarke calls out, carefully watching Kane help Bellamy stand. He's woozy and probably has a concussion, but otherwise seems fine. “What will you do with her?”
Lexa and Indra turn as one, and the look Indra sends them holds nothing but disgust. “She tried to kill the Commander,” Indra says. “She will pay with her life.”
It’s the answer she expected, but it still makes something burn in Clarke’s chest. Another crime, another person dies. Rinse, watch, repeat. Her people fell from the sky; the Grounders survived a nuclear war; and still, nothing ever changes.
“Not this time,” Clarke says, watches Indra’s lip curl and Lexa’s eyebrows raise in surprise. “We did it your way once. I’d like to do it mine this time.”
Indra reaches for the spear, but Lexa places a hand on her arm. Clarke can see the indecision in her eyes. Grounder justice is vicious, but she needs the Sky People to reclaim her own. “Say your piece.”
Clarke takes a step forward, scans the crowd. “Mallo Coni,” they whisper but the hatred is gone from their eyes. They’re mostly curious about what she’s proposing.
“She committed a horrible crime,” Clarke agrees. “She lost her son. She was mourning.” She pauses, pushes away the final vestiges of her own grief. She did what was best for Finn. There’s nothing left but making it sure it never happens again. “She deserves to live.”
Lexa smiles that familiar sad smile. “Blood must have blood. It is our way.”
“But there was no blood.”
Indra still looks annoyed, but Clarke can see the change in Lexa’s eyes. There’s relief there, a way out. “What do you propose?”
Clarke shifts her eyes to the offender, a slight woman with long dark hair. On her knees and with her head bowed, she looks strikingly like Raven. It makes the choice easier. “You don’t trust her here, so we’ll take her with us,” Clarke says. The woman doesn’t say anything in return, but she shivers violently. “You cast her out and we take her in. We help her atone for what she did.”
Lexa nods her head just once. “She is your responsibility now. We will never lay eyes on her again.” The woman wails and the crowd growls in their own language, but Lexa holds up a hand and the din dies down. “It is done,” she says and holds her head up high as she walks to her tent.
Clarke extends a hand. “What’s your name?”
“Mira,” the woman whispers as Clarke takes her hand and helps her to her feet. “Mallo Bahl,” she whispers. “Please be merciful.”
Clarke smiles, feels the weight lift from her chest. This is what Finn wanted. This is the world he’d hoped for, the world Bellamy promised to her. This is what her world can finally be.
For the most part, Mira takes well to Camp Jaha.
She’s skittish and wary, not unlike the rabbits they saw once on a hunting trip, but she settles in with calm acceptance. She’s been exiled from her people, but offered the chance at something new. She doesn’t turn it down and Clarke likes her already.
She takes quickly to the orphans, and she doesn’t adopt them so much as find a place amongst them. There are ten of them, lost children whose parents died in the crash, or on other stations, or in the case of an underweight redhead, in the Culling. Mira is new to them, a distraction from their loss, and Mira finds comfort in their sticky hands and silly faces. It won’t replace her son, or their parents, but Clarke hopes it will help heal their wounds.
“You did good,” Abby says as she comes up behind her daughter. She’s wiping blood from her hands and it makes Clarke’s heart clench.
“Is Bellamy okay?” she asks.
Abby pauses but quickly nods. “Nothing a few stitches couldn’t handle.”
Her chest eases and Clarke breathes out deeply. “Good, that’s good.”
Abby looks like she wants to say something, even opens her mouth, but closes it so her lips curve into a small smile. “I underestimated him.”
Clarke nods absently, still processing the information. “You underestimated all of us.”
“I won’t anymore.”
Abby winds the rag around her hands and disappears into the med-bay, but Clarke waits a moment before following, takes a few seconds to soak in the sound of children’s laughter.
Raven’s there when Clarke returns to her quarters.
She’s sleeping in the Ark now and there’s a table and two chairs, but Raven paces restlessly. She looks exhausted, dark circles under her eyes and her nails bitten to the quick. When Clarke opens the door, she looks defeated rather than feral.
“Hey,” Clarke says, slowly closes the door and moves towards a chair. There are no guns in the room, but she has a knife in her boot. She watches Raven cautiously as she takes the other seat.
“We need to talk.”
Clarke nods and Raven crosses the room, slumps into her chair. “What would you have done if it was me?”
There are bruises up and down Raven’s bare arms and it takes a minute for Clarke to put it together. Raven, they blamed Raven for Mira’s crime. “You didn’t do it.”
“But what if I did?” Raven’s eyes are like bleeding bruises as she stares at Clarke, her face a living portrait of grief. She loved Finn with all her heart and Clarke took him away. The least she can offer is the truth.
“We would have fought for you.”
“Killed for me?”
“I don’t know.” Clarke thinks she would have tried to save her friend, but not at the expense of Lexa’s life.
“I’m glad.”
Clarke’s head snaps up, and Raven’s face has changed. Her eyes are dark, burning coals. “He killed eighteen people. I loved a boy who killed eighteen people.” She pauses and her mouth flattens into a thin, pained line. “I loved a boy and he loved you. Killed for you.”
“I never asked for it,” Clarke says softly. “Whatever he became, it wasn’t Finn. He wasn’t the boy you loved.”
“But he loved you.” There’s no question in Raven’s voice, just unrelenting bitterness. “He loved you and now he’s dead. He’s dead because of me.”
“He’s dead because of what he did.”
Suddenly everything changes and the anger disappears from Raven’s face. Tears pool in her eyes and drip down her cheeks and she gasps for breath. “I’m the Spacewalker,” she wheezes. “I was over eighteen. I would have been floated, so he took my place.” She grasps Clarke’s hand and stares at her with stricken eyes. “It’s all on me.”
Again, it clicks. Raven’s fierce devotion and inability to let go, the agony in her eyes when Clarke stuck her knife between Finn’s ribs. Clarke knows what it means to carry that weight. “It’s not your fault,” Clarke says firmly as Raven shakes her head. “He might have come here because of you, but his actions are his own.” She pauses, sucks in a deep, aching breath. “Neither of us made him pick up that gun.”
“He was all I had.”
Clarke shakes her head, reaches across the table to brush the tears from Raven’s cheeks. “You have me and my mom, Bellamy and Octavia.” She smiles a little wickedly. “If you’d let him, you could have Wick too.” Raven swats at Clarke’s shoulder. “When we get our people back, we’ll have our family again.” She smiles wider, realizes the truth in her words. It’s not what the ground has taken but what it’s given them that matters. “We’ll have each other.”
Raven’s smile is watery, but it’s real. “Jasper said the same thing once.”
“Jasper’s an idiot half the time, but sometimes he’s right.”
Raven wipes away the remaining tears and when she looks up it’s almost the girl that Clarke remembers. “What next?”
Clarke meets Raven’s eyes, shares the dream she holds in her heart. “We end this war.”
They try again the night before they leave.
It’s a smaller celebration, in the field outside Camp Jaha’s gate, and each side brings its own refreshments. Still, there are drums and harps and food and drink, and Clarke thinks it’s the closest they’ll get to a picnic. For the most part, everyone gets along, and Mira stays true to her word and remains out of sight.
After they eat comes the exchange of gifts. Abby presents Lexa and her generals with knives made from the dropship. The significance isn’t lost on them, and while the Grounders exchange looks, they don’t refuse the weapons. In return, Lexa presents the Ark leadership with hand-carved masks. “To our alliance,” they all call and cheers fill the air, followed by the music, and general merriment, and it stops being about war and starts being about just living.
Later, Clarke examines her mask in the firelight. It’s some kind of bird with intricately carved feathers and she wonders if they mixed up her mask with Raven’s. “It’s a Phoenix,” Lexa says and takes a seat beside her. “According to myth, each time it dies, it's born anew.” She runs a finger over the feathered crest. “I understand you well, Clarke of the Sky People. It does not matter how many times you fall. You’ll always try again.”
Clarke extends her hand to Lexa. “It’s a lot easier when I have people to help me up.”
Lexa shakes firmly before turning her eyes to the various people gathered around the fire, and her gaze eventually catches on Bellamy. He’s holding his own mask in his hands, something vaguely canine, but it’s hard to see clearly from across the field. “Did you know that wolves mate for life?”
Clarke stops playing with the mask and and tries to make sense of what Lexa said. “What?”
Lexa stops watching the party and turns her gaze to Clarke. Her face is its usual blank mask, but her eyes are filled with yearning. “We chose his mask for a reason. I walk this path alone, but you…” She looks back at Bellamy, tall and golden in the firelight. “You have someone by your side.”
She pushes to her feet and moves towards Indra and the guard, leaving Clarke alone by the fire. She stares at Bellamy’s mask and thinks she sees something of its owner in the deep-set eyes and sharp teeth. Bellamy has always seen more than he lets on, fought for more than he claimed to believe in. For a moment, she’s back in that pit and he’s holding her wrist, the only thing separating her from a slow, painful death. He’d wanted her wristband and he’d saved her life instead. He’s done little but stand by her side since.
Bellamy must feel her eyes on him, because he walks away from Monroe and Mel and makes his way through the crowd to her. “Wanna howl at the moon?” he asks and holds up his mask. When she shakes her head, he hunkers down at her side, and while he’s not touching her, it feels like he’s taking up all the space.
“Did you know that wolves mate for life?” she asks, keenly aware of how dumb her question sounds, how awkward she’s acting, but he only puts down the mask and runs his thumb along her jaw.
“Some humans do too.”
“Yeah?” she can scarcely hear her own voice over the thud of her heartbeat.
“Yeah,” he smiles against her mouth, the future shining in his eyes. “Some of us do.”
“Come with me?” she asks later that night. Bellamy’s just finished his guard shift and she’s waiting for him by the gate.
They leave for the mountain in less than twelve hours, but first she has things to do. She swallows hard as he swings his rifle around, muscles bunching under his thin shirt. She also has things to do after.
“Where are we going?” he asks after they’ve slipped through Raven’s Gate and disappeared into the forest.
“You’ll see,” she promises. It’s a short walk from Camp Jaha, although it took them nearly a day from the dropship.
“Wow,” Bellamy says as they break into a clearing filled with bright, shimmering blue. “How did you find this place?”
Clarke steps forward and buries her nose in the softness of the petals, feels the dew against her cheeks. “Finn showed me the first night on earth.” She holds a breath, waits for his reaction.
Bellamy runs his fingers through the flowers. He smiles at her, only understanding dancing in his eyes, and she remembers that she’s not the only one who’s changed. “I’m glad you brought me here.”
She digs into her pocket and pulls out the two-headed deer figurine. “He gave me this too,” she says and settles the statuette amongst the flowers. “Lexa said he’d have no memorial, but he was our friend. I want to give him this.”
“We can come here whenever you want,” Bellamy says and Clarke’s so very proud of the man he’s become, but there’s no reason to return to this place.
She shakes her head. “I put my monster to rest. I won’t be letting it out again.”
He slings an arm around her shoulders, pulls her to him so his heart beats rapidly against hers. “I’m here, just in case.”
“Wolves,” she says and he laughs into her hair, but it’s true all the same.
Their world is still a work in progress, a dream she’s molding into something shiny and new, but it’s easier knowing she isn’t in it alone.