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Clarke wakes up terrified, heart pounding in her hears, and the breath caught in the back of her throat.
What day is it? How long has she been sleeping?
The suns shine brightly through the crack in the curtains.
For an agonizing moment, she can't move. Is stuck in place, her body frozen, open and vulnerable. Her eyes flit around the room.
No, no, no, please.
Her fingers twitch, and she jumps up on the soft mattress, she stumbles feeling dizzy. She moved too quickly. Her eyes fall on the calendar nailed beside the door. The date seems to be correct.
You are alright, you didn’t lose any time. You’re ok.
Clarke hears Madi’s voice waling down the staircase. It doesn’t sound different.
Everything is alright.
Clarke scrubs a hand over her face, the skin soft and moisturized. The feeling of it under her fingertips sends chills down her spine. She catches a glimpse of the tattoo on her right forearm - a cute butterfly surrounded by seven black stars - and has to swallow back bile.
The urge to tear it off is overwhelming.
The blonde takes a deep breath, forces her shoulders down, and ignores the crawling all over her skin. All of it feels disgusting, used, wrong.
She opens the door and walks down the hall to the bathroom.
The face that greets her in the mirror is gaunt and pale, with dark circles under her eyes from too many sleepless nights and too few fitful catnaps, surrounded by a halo of conditioned and styled blonde hair. She hates it. Hates how it glows and how silky it is. Hates that Josephine took better care of her body than her.
Clarke should shower, but the prospect of seeing her body turns her stomach. Every time she looks at it, she can only think of all the thing Josephine did with it, all the ways she touched it, moved it.
So she just washes her face and hands and returns to her room to change -that at least she can do with her eyes closed.
Wanheda dresses in her regular clothes: none of those fancy, unpractical dresses Josephine loved so much. It's back to repurposed pants and threadbare shirts. The worn jacket that served her so well during her years in the Valley doesn't fit as it used to. It doesn't feel like the safe armor it once was. How can it, when it failed to protect her so utterly? Everything is off, and Clarke doesn’t know how to make it better.
The blonde stops halfway down the stairs. She can hear the rest of her people talking in the kitchen. If she continues down, she will be in their midst, subjected to their careful scrutiny, to their narrowed eyes trying to decipher if it's really her or an imposter. The tentative truce and start of a friendship she had with Spacekru another of the many things Josephine destroyed.
Her stomach twists. Clarke isn't even hungry but knows that if she fails to make an appearance, her mom will come searching, and then she'll have to answer questions and tell her she is doing great.
The blonde drags her feet down the rest of the stairs. The conversations stop as soon as she steps into the kitchen.
Bellamy stands - Clarke isn't sure if he was standing before she entered the kitchen -, effectively blocking Madi from view, Murphy and Emori throw cautious looks in her direction, Raven forces herself not to stare.
"Good morning, Clarke," says Abby from her spot on the far end of the table, beside the empty chair.
She should be used to their reactions by now; it's been ten days since Josephine was expelled from her body.
Clarke sketches a smile as best she can. "Good morning."
Walking forward feels like a chore, Bellamy steps away from the table to join Echo at the stove, his hand finding her waist like he needs to touch her to ground himself. A wave of shame forces the blonde to look away.
"Do you want scrambled eggs, Clarke?" asks the spy.
No matter where her eyes land, the snippets of memories are all cruel and scheming. "Yes, thank you."
Wanheda takes her seat beside Abby.
The memories of the three months Josephine inhabited her body are confusing and disorganized snippets. Like clips from one of the vids, she watched on the Ark. Some are disturbingly clear, others mere shadows she can't make out. What she remembers best is the feeling of being paralyzed, being betrayed by her unresponsive body. Of screaming at the top of her lungs and nobody hearing her.
When they asked - worried frowns and sad eyes - she told them she didn't remember. It's better that way. No matter what Raven and Murphy believe, she has never wanted to hurt any of them.
Better if they believe she doesn't remember anything, than telling them of how she was screaming at them to let her out, and nobody could hear.
“Did you manage to sleep?” asks Abby, her bony hand heavy on Clarke’s shoulder.
How could you not notice, mom? For three months?
She wants to shrug it off.
“Yes.”
The blonde tries to ignore how Murphy keeps looking at her out of the corner of his eye. Or how Emori keeps shifting in her seat. Bellamy, Madi, and Abby try to make conversation, but it's awkward and painful to listen to. Clarke plays with her scrambled eggs until everyone else flees.
When she raises her head, Bellamy's at the sink, on dish-duty, apparently. From where she is, she can see his profile: the elegant curve of his nose and the hard line of his mouth. If it weren't for his beard, she could probably see him clenching his jaw like he used to back on earth.
"I can finish up if you want," offers Clarke. She has barely tasted her eggs, too full and empty at the same time. She hasn't had an appetite since- she doesn't know anymore.
“It’s fine. Eat up.”
Bellamy's shoulders are pulled into a straight line, his eyes downcast, his head bowed in concentration.
"I –" Wanheda doesn't know how to continue. Her stomach roils, for a moment it feels like she's going to be sick. The memory of her hands fisted in his shirt, catching him off-guard, cornering him like a predator, using his trust against him. Clarke has been trying to find the right words for days. “I remember.”
A plate clatters loudly into the sink. For a long moment, the only sound in the kitchen comes from the open faucet. Bellamy stands stock-still, his eyes closed.
“I wanted to apologize.”
“I thought Josephine was gone.” His voice is eerie calm. “How can you remember?”
Clarke draws a smiley face on her scrambled eggs. "I don't know," stabbing her creation feels oddly satisfying. "I just do."
Bellamy starts moving again, scrubbing the plates and bowls. “Alright.”
"Alright," repeats the blonde, anger coiling in her empty stomach like a snake, rolling under her filthy skin. "Is that all you have to say?"
His voice stays quiet. "What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know." But she does. She wants him to feel what she feels, to hate Josephine as much as she does. She wants to tear Sanctum to the ground and destroy everyone who didn't notice she wasn't there, she wants him by her side as she does it. "Why aren't you angry? You should be angry. You shouldn't be able to look at me. You should hate me."
"It wasn't you.”
The memory of his skin under her hands, of his hands trying to pry her away, him trying to back away and finding himself trapped, is not as awful as the memory of his eyes afterward, the betrayal and confusion and disgust. Or of the feeling of his razing pulse against her fingertips.
The worst part is Clarke had fantasied about it. Back when she was alone on earth, on some of those lonely nights, laying on the hood of the rover, watching the stars, she had thought of her best friend and imagined how his skin would feel under her fingertips, on her lips.
Josephine had tainted that, too.
She had inserted herself into Clarke's life and made a mockery of everything she held dear. And nobody had noticed.
“I am sorry, too.”
Bellamy’s words take her off guard, slamming her out of her dark musings and back into the present, into the sun-lit kitchen, with the worn wooden table and the scrambled eggs Echo made for her.
"What do you have to be sorry about?" Clarke hadn't intended for her voice to be so gruff, but Bellamy doesn't comment. When she raises her head, he's leaning against the sink - standing as far away as he possibly can from her-, looking at her with his sad brown eyes.
"I should have noticed it sooner."
"How could you?" Clarke swallows the bitterness down, but it is like a poison.
“Because Josephine acted nothing like you. And that’s on me, I should have noticed.”
“Nobody else did.”
For three months nobody noticed. They let Josephine drive her body around, tattoo it, take care of it, use it to try to wedge her friends apart. To insinuate herself on Murphy, to assault Bellamy, to be cruel to Madi, and nobody noticed.
Or, whispers a cruel little voice in the back of her mind, maybe they did, but they preferred Josephine over you.
“Madi did. She told us you were acting strange and-" he looks up to the ceiling with its painted wooden beams.
It's a lame answer. It's meaningless and does very little to soothe the anger boiling in her veins.
Bellamy, the wordsmith, the silvertongue that could bring unruly teens to their knees at his feet is a loss for words. He sighs, "I am sorry."
But what else can she do, other than nod her head, accept it and hope she'll overcome this, too?