Chapter Text
"Did it feel good playing god, Clarke?"
"Shut up, Murphy."
"Oh, so the princess talks to the Disposable's now, huh?"
"I mean it! You hear that?" Sure enough the screams filled the room, silencing even Murphy.
"Who is that?" Bellamy met Clarke's eyes, his concern mirroring her own. They shouldn't leave, too many things could go wrong. All it would take is one of them to snap, to lose control, for it to get bloody.
"Who cares?" Murphy practically whined, boredom chipping away at his already short temper. As long as it wasn't Emori, he usually didn't care enough to...well, care.
The screams continued, more strained this time and Bellamy leaned his head back on the wall. There were too many things going on. "We can't just leave them like that, something could-"
Without waiting for him to finish, Clarke called out after the screams. "Miller? Jackson? You all right?"
Murphy opened his mouth but was cut off by a look from Bellamy, now wasn't the time.
It was Miller who answered, his voice hard to hear over the other man's panicked wails. "It's Jackson, Clarke! Something--somethings in him! Jackson!"
Clarke stood up, only to be pulled back by her chain. "Bellamy, give me my key! I have to-"
"No. You can't go out by yourself, who knows what's out there, what the eclipse will do to you."
"Let her go Bellamy, what's one more life, huh? Oh wait, it's Clarke, how silly of me," Murphy rolled his eyes, and rubbed at his nose. "She's too important to die, right?"
"Murphy." Bellamy growled, never taking his eyes off Clarke. He wasn't going to lose her again, especially to something this stupid.
He only shrugged, unfazed by Bellamy's tone. "Just tellin' the truth."
Jackson let out another blood curdling scream and Clarke pulled at her restraints again, they were wasting time. "Bellamy, give me the damn key. I'm the only other doctor, he needs me. And the nightblood should protect me from the radiation, just like the fence. Now."
Besides, the others had their tranquilizers, and Clarke had no doubt they'd hesitate. Hell, they'd probably do it just for kicks.
Although Bellamy looked like he'd rather gouge his eyes out, he tossed Clarke the key. "Now give me mine, someone should come with you."
As her cuff fell to the ground, sympathy in her eyes, Clarke shook her head. "I'm not going to let you get hurt again, be responsible for you getting hurt again."
Without waiting a second more, she ran out of the school the school towards the ear piercing screams.
Bellamy pulled at his chains, "We can't let her go out there by herself-"
Murphy held up a hand, "Who said anything about we? If Clarke wants to call in that death wish of hers, who are we to stop her? Hell, why should we stop her?"
Bellamy didn't know how much of this he was willing to give the eclipse credit for and how much was just Murphy being an ass. He was leaning more towards the latter.
But if the watered down version for a kids book was warning them about a bloodbath, this was going to go downhill from there. "If this eclipse can drive friendly farmers to murder, what do you think it'll do to Clarke? To Echo? You honestly want Emori out there unprotected?"
No matter how much good Clarke had done, how much justification she had for her actions, there was still blood on her hands. A crazed Clarke and a city full of people who have openly expressed their bad blood with her...wouldn't end well.
Murphy huffed, "How are we supposed to get out of here then, hmm? You thought about that yet?"
He wasn't buying it and raised an eyebrow. "Murphy, I've known you for a hundred and thirty years. Don't even try it."
With a smirk he slipped a scalpel from the sleeve of his shirt. "Always come prepared, man. Our last shitty planet taught me that at least."
Damn it. Clarke couldn't believe she had fallen for that, she should have known better. Now they were two tranks down and the eclipse no closer to being over. She started to walk towards the school when a voice stopped her.
"You think you're better than me, huh, Clarke?"
That voice made her blood run cold. It couldn't be. He was dead. Finn was dead, she had--
"Killed me. You killed me."
She whipped around, but there was no one else in the gravel courtyard. It couldn't be real, it was the eclipse, just a symptom of the eclipse.
"You hated me for what I did but what about all the blood on your hands?"
"I didn't--"
"Hate me? Yes you did. And you know it, hell, even I could see the satisfaction in your eyes when you put that blade in my gut. I guess the Commander of Death likes to get her hands dirty after all."
"You're the one that murdered a village. I have never enjoyed killing someone, it was never my first choice." Why the hell was she responding? It was just a hallucination. That's it. He was gone.
There was no sound for a heartbeat, her words echoing throughout the empty yard.
"What about all the people you've killed? All the innocents you've forgotten. Are you sure you never enjoyed it?"
Shit. Clarke needed to get back to the school.
This wasn't real.
It's not real.
It was just the red suns.
Wells was long dead. She had stood at his grave. He was gone.
"Nothing to say? Of course you want to run away. From your past. Your conscience. Your due penance."
"I-I've never forgotten them, not a single one." Silence relapsed again. Her own words reverberating through her bones. Had she forgotten them? Should she care more--
The voice that came next, was nearly enough to shatter her heart right then and there. "Have you forgotten me, Clarke? Have you ever looked back? Thought of me once since you sat on my throne and took the Flame with such dishonor?"
"L-lexa, you know I have, every day. I still re--"
"How many times have you made the wrong call? I could have been saved, you would have found away without pulling that lever. Now I'm dead. Jasper's dead. The kids and families in that mountain, in my home, are all dead."
Clarke whipped around again, the ghosts of her past shifting the air around her, wisps of a memory. She wanted to scream, scream that they were wrong and she wasn't some soulless murderer.
But the words didn't come.
Clarke had killed. She had oceans of blood on her hands, she was responsible for the death of a planet, of countless lives.
Countless families.
Countless children.
Countless innocents.
"Why do you do it, Clarke?"
"M-mom?"
"Yes honey, I'm here too."
"No, no, no. You're on the ship, you're not dead."
"Not yet, but it's only a matter of time. Haven't you noticed? Everyone and everything around you suffers. Everything dies."
"I don't- I don't want it to be that way, Mom. I want all the killing to stop, that's why we're here, for another chance." Clarke tried to calm her wavering voice to no avail. She needed to leave, she needed to--
Her mother had never thought she was a monster. Abby loved her. She--she forgave her.
Right?
"Oh, Clarke don't you understand? The killing will never stop, it follows in your wake. You destroyed mankind, destroyed Earth. There isn't a way to stop it....unless..."
"Wh-what? Unless what?" She would do it. Anything. She would always do what had to be done.
"Look down."
So she did, and saw the knife in her hand. Clarke didn't remember grabbing it, last she had seen it, it was on a table inside.
"How is this supposed to help?" But she already knew the answer. It was the only answer.
"Cut out the virus."
If she was gone, then humanity could flourish and grow, without her curse in its wake. So she didn't wait for her mother's response as she raised it to her throat, just piercing the skin.
As her tears matched the slow trickle of blood down her collarbone, Clarke hesitated. She didn't quite know why, this was what she had to so for her friends, for Madi.
She set her jaw. For Madi.
The crunch of gravel behind her gave Clarke only a moments notice that someone else was there.
Murphy sighed in relief at the sight of Clarke and her leather ensemble, if only because this meant he and Bellamy could stop wandering around the city.
Then he saw what she was holding.
"Clarke... put the knife down."
She turned around to face Murphy, who didn't allow his expression show his increasing panic. "How'd you get out here?"
He took a cautious step forward, one hand extended towards her. "Give me the knife and we can talk about it."
Before she could respond, Bellamy jogged in behind Murphy, stopping his tracks as he too saw Clarke.
Her lip trembled but the knife remained unmoving. "I can't, Murphy. I-I have to do this, for all of you, I have to. They're right, Murphy you're right...death follows me everywhere. Follows Wanheda everywhere."
Bellamy stayed quiet but his eyes kept flickering back and forth between the knife and Clarke's face.
Murphy, if he was being honest, didn't hate Clarke enough to let her kill herself. Other situations, sure, but self pity was his thing.
"Hey, hey. Who's They? Jackson? Miller? They didn't mean--"
"No, not them. Everyone else. All the skeletons in my closet. Lexa. Finn. Wells. Shaw. The mountain men. Grounders. The hundreds of innocents unlucky enough to be in my blast zone. Hell, the entire fucking planet!" Clarke's words were barely comprehensible between shuddering breaths. Do it. Just do it.
Murphy didn't know how to shine a positive light on most situations, let alone what he had just yelled at her for and hour earlier.
Bellamy was staying oddly quiet, he noticed, he usually was the first to jump to her defense. He was the president of the Clarke-Is-the-Best Club...usually.
So Murphy decided to switch tracks. "Well...um, what about Madi? Your Mom? They need you."
Clarke just shook her head, salty tears flowing into her exposed and ever deepening gash. Why couldn't they could just understand?
"Don't you get it? They're better off without me, safer without me."
"They-they aren't, okay? They choose to stay with you because they love you and-"
"So did Finn! And Lexa and Wells! I lost them because I was selfish, putting all of you on the line because I'm not willing to do what it takes...it's selfish." All these years she'd thought it had all been selfless, burning away her soul for everyone else. But maybe it was the other way around.
"Look Clarke...maybe it is. But the voices you're hearing aren't real, it's just the eclipse. So...let's hand over the knife. If you still want to off yourself tomorrow, be my guest. But we both know that if you really wanted to, you would have already."
"I-I--"
"Clarke."
Her face crumpled, she wanted it to be over. All of it. But he was right, she had tomorrow when they weren't around. She could wait, for one more goodbye, if she wanted to.
Clarke slowly took the knife from her bloody throat and let it's blade hang by her thigh. "But...what if..."
"Don't worry about it, it's over, okay?"
She nodded slowly and let it fall to the ground, the clatter echoing. What if she was wrong, what if this was the wrong choice? Which one of her loved ones was next?
She only had so many left.
"Weak," Bellamy said in a quiet but vicious voice, glaring at Clarke with fire in his eyes.
The only thing that told Clarke it was real was the turning of Murphy's head. Or was he in her head too?
"You're weak, Clarke. You don't hesitate to kill everyone else, to put your life before theirs, but you can't even go through with it."
No. No, he wouldn't-he didn't--"Bellamy I-I don't understand. You know better than anyone that I've never put-"
"What about the missile that hit the summit? Leaving me in the pits to die? What do you call that?"
Murphy knew they were screwed, Bellamy and Clarke's arguments were destructive enough when they were sane.
He couldn't let them get into a fight right now, especially on grounds of fucking morality, of all things. "Hey, Bellamy I think we should just go back to the school. Discuss this later."
He scoffed. "Since when are you the saint, Murphy? You've betrayed us, your people, even more often than Clarke, which is saying a lot."
Before Murphy could respond, Bellamy punched him square the jaw and sent him spiraling to the lake's shore line.
Clarke was frozen in place. Stuck in between realities. She had started another fight, caused more pain.
Bellamy leaned down over him, pulling him up by his shirt collar. Murphy was just another friend she couldn't save, adding to the ever growing red on her ledger.
"I won't let you drag us down with you, Murphy."
Punch. She couldn't move.
Punch. She should have had the guts to do it.
Punch. She couldn't watch this anymore.
Clarke took a step forward, still unsure how to get through to him. "Bellamy! Bellamy, you have to stop! Let Murphy go."
He paused and let the limp man fall from his grip, splashing as Murphy fell into the bloody water. A wave of relief came over Clarke until Bellamy turned around, his expression told her everything she needed to know. She'd seen it in the mirror too many times. He was ready to kill her.
"You're no better than him, Clarke. Hell, you're worse! So if you think that anyone wants you here, wants you alive, then you're wrong."
"Look, I know you don't--y-you can't mean that, Bellamy."
He chuckled darkly taking slow steps towards Clarke, which she was all too aware of.
Clarke could handle the voices, she could handle Raven and Murphy's insults. But she would not--could not--handle it from Bellamy. Not him. He was one of the only people alive that could convince her to pick up that knife again.
The blood and water had soaked through his dark clothes indistinguishably, dripping onto the gravel as he walked. "Oh, I mean it, Wanheda--"
"Don't call me that."
"--This is just me talkin'. I don't need an eclipse to know that, to know that we would have been better of if you had just pushed that knife a little harder."
Then he lunged at her, though Clarke had braced herself, his weight gave him an advantage as he pinned Clarke down.
With a quick swipe at his leg, she pushed him off and got into a halfway standing position. Bellamy's hand caught one of her ankles and Clarke knew what was going to happen a second too late. He pulled her back down again, her head hitting the rough stones hard enough to rattle her teeth. Bellamy wasted no time, pinning her down again, this time expecting her.
Before Clarke could make another move against him, he released her wrists and wrapped his hands around her neck, pushing Clarke into the ground. Blood spilled out from under his hands as he squeezed the air from her throat.
This wasn't her Bellamy. He was long gone. Maybe he had been gone for a long time. But this one was ready to kill, a look she had hopped to never see on his face again.
No words, no screams, no gasps came from Clarke, only empty breaths. He had cut off her air almost as abruptly as everyone else had cut her out of their lives.
Her hands reached out, grasping for something-- anything when Clarke's fingers brushed the hilt of her dagger. No matter how far she stretched her hands wouldn't wrap around the leather, which if she admitted it to herself, changed nothing.
Clarke wasn't going to hurt Bellamy, especially if it was just to save her life. It wouldn't be worth it. Her throat was on fire, her lungs were on fire. Black spots crept across her vision as she ran out of oxygen and blood in her veins.
This wasn't how Clarke wanted to go. It's not like she wanted some big, history making battle scene, but she wanted it to have meaning.
If she had any left, it would have knocked the air out of her lungs. Clarke wanted to mean something. It had been a while since the thought had occurred to her.
Then it was gone. He was gone.
Her legs felt a million pounds lighter. Her throat took deep rasps of air. Reality slapped Clarke in the face.
With a sledge hammer.
A barely conscious Murphy had pulled Bellamy off, but he was already losing that battle. He'd kill Murphy, then her. She would not have Murphy's blood on her hands too, would not let anyone else die. Clarke made a dive for Bellamy's discarded backpack, praying he had a tranquilizer left. Then she made a split second decision and pulled the pin. She barely had time to blink before the gas engulfed the shoreline in a sea of green.