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Camps divide.
Not everyone wants a Chancellor, as much as her mother tries, and with the kids—when they make their triumphant return from Mount Weather, Camp Jaha is too crowded for everyone. Prisoners, they weren’t very good at integrating anyway.
Some want to stay with their parents, if they made it to the ground, but most of them leave, headed into the woods. Bellamy wanted to reclaim the dropship, proud of all their work there, but Clarke wants to move out where they won’t be easy to find, and they meet in the middle.
“You can always come back,” Abby tells her, fitting a few more supplies into Clarke’s heavy pack.
Clarke sighs. They’ve circled this discussion so many times and God, have they fought about it. Abby only relented when she reminded her the Earth would need more than one doctor.
“I’m not leaving forever,” she says, smiling at her mother reassuringly, but she is, in a way. Leaving the nest, they used to call it. They didn’t have that on The Ark. Clarke had cold walls and a hard floor and some nights she sleeps outside when it isn’t too cold, can barely look at the metal of the ship anymore. “I’ll be back. You haven’t taught me everything.”
Abby cups her cheek, eyes watering. “You know more than you think,” she says. It’s so motherly, Clarke resists the sudden urge to burst into tears or roll her eyes, throwing her arms around Abby.
“Got everything?” Bellamy’s rough voice saves her and she pulls back to find him in the doorway, gun in his hands and bags on his shoulders. Octavia waits behind him.
Kane opens the gates for them and they head out. Clarke doesn’t look behind her, and before the tree line Bellamy asks if she’s okay. She waves him off and heads to the front of the group, leading the way.
Raven stays. No one mentions it.
-
They get lost for two days before they finally find the spot they’d picked and Bellamy’s the first to throw his bag on the ground and declare that they will tell no one about it, ever.
Tents go up and fires are built and they celebrate their first night. Jasper, tipsy, leaning over Monty’s knees, asks her, “Clarke, Clarke, that river down there. Is that the one where I almost died?”
Clarke sips from her cup and nods at him. She doesn’t tell him that’s the reason this is neutral territory now.
“Great, great, good to know,” he babbles, arms flapping as he sits back again.
Clarke leans her head back, sighing. She catches Bellamy out of the corner of her eye, crouched down with Murphy, sticks poking at something they’re planning out in the dirt.
She falls asleep in her chair and wakes up with a blanket covering her and someone’s jacket behind her head.
-
She sleeps. She sleeps and eats and sleeps and stays in her tent, and she’s so mad at herself. She can hear everyone outside working, going out for the hunts that feed her and making groups to start building walls again.
She stares at the black of her tent wall, hears it move in the wind, and Bellamy ducks in, feathers ruffled, complaining about lack of resources and that they don’t have the right people out here.
She waits it out, hears his last sigh and then, “We came out here to finally make some progress, you can’t refuse to work, Clarke,” he says. He scoffs. “We’re right back where we started, Princess.”
He leaves, and she thinks she’s going to be sick. Octavia rushes in and she doesn’t see him again for so long.
Jasper visits sometimes with Monty’s food, asks if she thinks the potatoes he’s holding will kill him (they don’t), and she does stitches one someone she’s never met before coming back from a hunting trip gone wrong, wailing that they’re going to lose their fingers (they do).
It rains for days and Clarke needs two blankets and a fur to fall asleep now. Her tent hangs with water and she’s constantly pushing at it, trying to keep the ceiling upright.
Bellamy bursts in, soaked down to his bones. His face is sunken in, weary and drained, and she’s never felt so awful.
“The tents won’t last much longer,” he pants. He shoves at a dip in hers now and they listen to the water slosh to the ground outside.
No one has ever looked at her so expectantly. Helplessly, she thinks. “We should start building,” she says and he falters at her voice, staring. Clarke lets him look.
“The ground’s already frozen,” he tells her.
Clarke huffs, involuntarily, and she can see her breath. She starts to laugh, and she laughs and laughs and puts her head in her hands while Bellamy sinks to the ground and does the same.
When she goes quiet, he whispers, “I’m not going back.”
They are more similar than either of them realizes.
-
Bellamy makes a nice speech and offers the others an out, but no one leaves. They break ground, or try to. They’ve got hatchets and they fashion saws from ship pieces and Murphy heads a team of their strongest in cutting down trees.
In two weeks, they have something resembling half a shack.
“It’s progress,” Octavia says while they watch them work. “It’s slow, but it’s important.”
Clarke nods at her, doesn’t look up from the fish they’re deboning. They’re trying to catch as many as they can to freeze before the rivers ice over.
She can hear an argument start by the builders and someone breaks it up as soon as it begins. She can feel Octavia’s eyes on her; they don’t talk about how she doesn’t get involved anymore, afraid to lead her own people. And they don’t talk about Lincoln, ever, but she knows Octavia visits his village, brings back secrets and supplies.
“No way!” someone shouts next to them, dropping their tools and dashing to the edge of camp. More follow as they look up, happy yells of surprise coming from the wall’s gate.
“Well, look what the—what is it, the cat?” Clarke can hear Monty saying, “Look what the cat dragged in!”
Curiosity gets the best of Octavia and she drops her fish, rushing over to the group forming. A few hurry past her into tents with bags bulging at the sides. At the center, between all the moving bodies, Clarke can see Raven.
She’s drops everything, gone to her tent before anyone sees her leave.
-
Raven stays for over a week and sleeps in Octavia’s tent and limps around the camp with Bellamy, taking in their work. They sit around the fire at night after dinner and she tells them about her and Wick’s projects and that she’ll start figuring out how to get them power in the camp. She boosts morale, Clarke notices.
Clarke goes on night watches and steers clear of engineering. She tries to help Monty salvage their plants and they avoid each other in food lines. Raven doesn’t look at her, and Clarke doesn’t want her to. She comes back after watch one morning and there are bags on her bed filled with medical supplies.
Bellamy sits on the ground in her tent, his usual place now, and goes over hunting parties while she laces up her boots. “I’m taking Monty off this run and putting in Beatrice,” he says. “The kid still can’t shoot.”
She nods at him, meaningless. He likes to run over his notes when they have time in the morning and ask her opinion and it’s not very often that she has one.
“Raven is taking off tomorrow morning,” he slips in at the end. Clarke’s boot thuds to the ground. “There’s a big dinner tonight. I think she’s working with Jasper all day.” He nods at her, his end to their meeting, and leaves, tent flapping behind him.
Clarke thinks about rolling over and edging under her bedding. She thinks about how easy that would be.
At lunch, Jasper tells her Raven’s skipping to finish modelling a heater, something for their tents when they don’t have fire.
She’s doing something with bolts when Clarke walks in. Her toolbox is out and her arms are cranking, working at things Clarke will probably never understand.
Her father taught her manners. Said his kid had no business being rude to people and thankfulness goes a long way. “Thank you,” Clarke speaks up, “for the med supplies.”
Raven’s shoulders hunch but she doesn’t stop working. “They’re from Abby,” she says coldly.
“You got them here, so thank you,” Clarke says. She sits down next to Raven on the bench, figures she’s in this for the long haul. She feels herself start and stop a few times, words just beyond her, and she thinks about leaving. She tries again, “Raven.”
Everything she thought she would say is gone. The things she practiced are lost and she’s muddling through it and Raven still says nothing.
“I remember your face in the dropship, with Lincoln and the antidote,” she says when she can. When she trusts herself with it. “When you grabbed the wires. I remember what you said.”
Raven blinks too quickly and doesn’t tell her to leave, and that’s more than Clarke could ask for. “I forgot about that,” Raven says, and the look on her face says she didn’t think she could.
“I didn’t,” Clarke says, “I-I didn’t forget what you said. I never forgot what you said, you have to know that.”
Raven burst through the atmosphere on a ship completely alone; she’s blown up bridges and walked through space and now one of her legs doesn’t work anymore. This feels like begging a God the stars told them wasn’t real, like taking all you’re given and asking for a little bit more.
“Shut up,” Raven whispers, so quiet Clarke doesn’t know if it’s real. She reaches over and takes Clarke’s hand and holds it in her lap, and she doesn’t look at her. “I know.”
Clarke’s hands have had to be rinsed of blood and dirt and tears, and now Raven’s holding them. It’s the only forgiveness she’s ever wanted.
-
The rain stops. They have a house. It’s small and stable and they can fit beds in it, and they built it.
When they’re redoing hunting groups, Clarke steps forward. “I’ll go out,” she says. “Put me in rotation.”
They stare. Bellamy slaps Jasper in the chest. “Well, get her a gun,” he says, grinning.
-
On days a hunt goes long, he waits up for her group to get back at night, stands and watches Clarke wash her hands and clean her face in the water trough. She knows he’s waiting for her to hit a limit and she hates that she ever gave him a reason to worry.
The sun is setting earlier and earlier, hitting the few leaves the trees still have.
“Ammo’s running low,” Bellamy says lowly. He hands her a towel to dry off, his gun in front of him like a security blanket.
“Of course it is,” she sighs. There’s a headache brewing behind her eyes and she wants to crash. She sleeps less and less these days, hears Bellamy’s it’s not easy being in charge, is it when she closes her eyes. “We need alternatives. We weren’t supposed to be here this long, we should’ve been saving bullets from the start.”
“Okay,” Bellamy says, thinking. “Okay, what about—what about like what Grounders use? They’ve never touched guns and they have armies.”
“Yes,” Clarke breathes. “Okay. Okay, things like spears, knives, more hatchets. Bows and arrows. We should start making new weapons and start people on target practice. Leave bullets for emergencies only.”
She looks up and he’s staring at her, his gun lowered. She can’t place the expression on his face. “What?”
“No, nothing,” he stutters. “It’s good to have you back, is all.”
“Tell the group,” she says softly. “Send Octavia to Lincoln’s, he can help.”
He’s smiling, she can see out of the corner of her eye. “Will do.”
-
She wakes up in the dark sometimes and can’t fall back asleep. It always feels like something woke her, but she never wants to investigate.
Raven’s back, sharing Clarke’s tent this time, and she sleeps like the dead most nights. She brought back more of the heaters she’s been working on and more supplies from the Ark, but her load was smaller than last time. Clarke wonders when she’s going to bring back Wick and stay.
She trips through the dark without a torch, jackets piled over her shoulders with her hands shoved deep in her pockets. Their needleworkers have been going for days, working on entire fur wardrobes for everyone.
Clarke finds his post easy enough, stomping her feet so he’s not scared by someone lurking in the dark. “Are you nodding off?” she laughs, hiking herself up to where he’s perched. He’s got a good spot by a tree, one of the posts she uses.
“No,” Bellamy says, unconvincing. She can just barely make out his face, even with the moon coming through the trees. “What’re you out here for?”
She shrugs but he probably can’t see it. “Why are you? This is your fourth night watch in a row, aren’t you bored?”
“Oh, I’m beyond bored,” he says. “I keep making out faces in all the trees and sometimes I think the ground is moving. But should a terrifying two-headed bear come for our camp, I’ll save us all.”
“You’re going insane, is what you’re saying,” Clarke says. “Get down and get some sleep, Bellamy, someone can take over.”
She can see him smile then, barely ghosting sadly over his face as he looks at her. “Nah, Princess,” he says. “I’m all good.”
Clarke sighs, kicking her feet against the wall. She knows he’s waiting. “Are we stupid, for doing this?” she asks finally.
He moves next to her, the butt of his gun against her arm. There is no wisecrack, no angry tantrum, or annoyed sigh. They’re Clarke and Bellamy in the dark and he tells her the truth. “Yes.”
She closes her eyes.
“And we’d be stupid if we didn’t.”
-
Raven wakes her up when it starts. She bundles Clarke out of her tent with a blanket over her shoulders, childlike glow on her face she’s never seen there before reflecting off the snow. Which none of them have ever seen before.
Bellamy steps out next to her, sleep written all over him, and looks up at the sky with enough contempt for the both of them. Clarke kicks at the ground.
“It’s starting to stick,” she says. She thinks they used to say that, down here.
Raven snorts at her as she holds her arms out, and it turns into a full laughing fit before any of them know it. Bellamy’s forehead creases as he eyes her, expression just shy of terrified. Others are starting to emerge from their own tents and their tiny houses in the middle of it all, stepping into the white blanket inside the walls they’ve been calling safe.
Clarke hears Jasper’s guffaw and he streaks past them, arms windmilling with his face to the sky. Raven and a few more follow him, tongues tentatively flicking at the flakes, cold and excited.
Her face hurts from smiling, she realizes.
“Do they know that we know about California?” Miller asks next to them. He’s in all fur with his arms holding tight to his sides. Clarke sees Bellamy’s eyebrows shift, amused. “Do they know we know about like, surf and sand?”
Clarke snorts. The snow crunches under her steps, just the slightest. She wonders if she’d notice if she’d always lived here. “The Ark wouldn’t have lasted to California, we’re lucky we made it this far,” she tells him and immediately knows it was wrong, the know-it-all, annoying girl answer.
And she sees Bellamy’s face close off. He feigns disinterest and stalks back to his tent, and Clarke sees the river, a destroyed radio, in his retreating back.
Miller shudders one more time before he leaves too, muttering, “Fucking East Coast.”
When the sun’s about to go down, Clarke kicks someone off their watch and takes their place at the fence line. She’d rather sit out all night in the snow than think about who they were in the fall.
In the morning, Octavia measures it with a ruler with inches and units Clarke has never seen before on the sides. “Two inches!” she yells and everyone high fives, cheering like they made it happen.
“It’s probably not accurate,” Bellamy says to her, watching them all kick up the snow.
“It is,” she says flatly. “It’s Lincoln’s.” Bellamy shuts his mouth.
“I give them a few hours before they hate this,” Clarke says. “I already hate this.”
“We’ll have to move out of the tents,” Bellamy says. His jaw clenches as he scans the camp, looking for problems. “Storms are only gonna get worse.”
“It’s fine, Bell,” Octavia says. “Let them have fun with it now.”
The snow’s too fine for a snowball fight, but that doesn’t stop any of them. A handful ends up down the back of Bellamy’s jacket and Clarke has to stop him from reaching for his hatchet.
This is winter, she thinks.
-
They sleep two or three to a bed, holed up in their little houses. It’s their best defense against the cold and, a few weeks in, it’s hardly working.
They’re pummeled every few nights, inches and inches of snow according to Octavia’s daily measurements. Once it reaches their knees they have to fashion shovels and toss it over the camp’s walls. Fewer hunts go out, terrified of the cold landscape, and their rations are hitting new lows.
Clarke has Bellamy call a meeting. They get people from each job in the camp and start discussing.
“What about the tunnels?” she asks. She and Bellamy have paced trenches into the snow and earth in this tent, wracking their brains.
“No, the last hunt checked those,” Raven says. “They’re snowed in.”
Bellamy grunts next to her, shaking his head. “We should’ve been in those weeks ago, Jesus.”
“Something else,” Clarke demands, looking to the others.
“Lincoln’s is too far, no one can make it in the snow,” Octavia tells them. She points to the rough maps they’ve been piecing together since they first landed, traces her finger down to Lincoln’s village near the ocean. “There are plenty more villages, but I don’t know where and I’m not gonna try and find them now.”
“What we need right now,” Bellamy says, “is food and warmth, at the very least. The snow isn’t killing us but the temps drop at night, and that will.”
“I just sent people out, their catch won’t be back until late,” Miller says. He’s the best hunter they’ve got, dead quiet in the trees, and they handed everything to do with tracking and hunting over to him.
“If they catch something,” Monty says. His eyes flick to the rest of them. “Our plants are frozen, they didn’t hold up like the Ark’s.”
The group goes silent. Clarke’s stomach keeps sinking.
“The Ark,” Raven says finally. “I can go back—”
“No,” Bellamy interrupts.
“It’s a few days’ walk, we can send a group—”
“Not in the snow, we don’t even know if they’re still there!”
Clarke’s stomach falls a little more, hitting somewhere around her knees. She’s heavy with guilt, the fear that her mother’s died somehow and she was avoiding them.
“The dropship is still standing,” Barney, their best with weapons, speaks up. “We can all fit, it can protect us from the weather.”
“We’re sitting ducks at the dropship, everyone knows it’s there,” Monty shoots back.
“Like we’re not here? We can split up, see if it’s safe.”
“No, I’m not dividing this camp like that,” Bellamy says, stepping forward. “That’s a surefire way to kill half of us off.”
“Then you want to sit here and freeze to death? We need to branch out and find help, maybe we can try the mountains—”
“I’m not fucking touching the mountains.”
“No one asked you, stay here for all I care.”
“Shut up,” Clarke says. The boys clamp their mouths shut and Bellamy steps back, breathing harshly through his nose. He sniffles once and Octavia squints at him. “This isn’t helping. These options suck, I get that, but fighting doesn’t make them any better.”
“He started it,” Monty says about no one in particular and Miller smacks him.
“Let’s take a break,” she continues. “Everyone go back out, help with what you can. Bellamy and I will keep talking.”
They all shuffle out, Raven waiting for Octavia as she rolls up her maps, movements aborted, annoyed. Clarke tries to give her a small smile.
“Sending a group to the Ark isn’t the worst idea,” she says finally, when they’ve all gone.
Bellamy scrubs a hand over his face for a long time, pinching the bridge of his nose. Clarke waits and she’s so tired, she’s worried they finally broke him for good.
“We shouldn’t have waited this long,” he says quietly. He’s rough, like when he’s just woken up or he’s seconds from falling asleep. Like that day he told her his mother would hate him now.
“What do you mean?” She regrets it as soon as she asks.
“We weren’t thinking ahead. We should’ve left when it got cold, those first few weeks,” he says. He sits on one of the benches like his body will break it, sink right through the ground.
“Bellamy—”
“Don’t you dare ask me why,” he grits. His eyes shine in the torchlight. “We got here and you checked out, okay, I was running things on my own. I couldn’t-I couldn’t move you, Clarke. It’s like you weren’t even here.”
She sits down next to him. His feet keep kicking at the ground as he talks, upset, and she feels like everything in her just keeps emptying.
“Everyone’s looking at me like I snowed us in. I could’ve had us in Texas two months ago.” He wipes at his nose. “Then they’d all complain about the god damn heat.”
Clarke huffs. She watches the tent rustle in the wind. “I’m sorry,” she tells him, and keeps talking over his protests. “We are stuck here. Unless people want to go out on their own, and I’m not going to stop them. It’s too dangerous to move camp now. We’re digging in.”
Bellamy bumps her shoulder. “You’re sure?”
“I think we can make it,” she says, and it’s not the most sure she’s ever sounded.
He nods at her. “Go tell them that.”
-
Two groups head out in the next few days. Clarke, the first time she addressed the camp since they arrived, gave them the option and they took it, and she can’t blame anyone for that.
She and Raven watch the gate close after the second leaves. She knows she asked a few of them to check on Wick. “I thought you would’ve gone with,” Clarke says.
“I wanted to,” Raven smiles at her. “But no, not with this thing.” She pats her bad leg, still encased in the brace.
“I’m sorry,” Clarke offers and Raven waves her off.
“We’re sticking it out, right? I can go when the snow melts.” Clarke nods and doesn’t tell her she’s more confident than the people who are leading them. “You can go back, too, Clarke,” Raven says, and she leaves Clarke in the snow, staring at the gate.
Outside the wall, there’s an enormous crash and belated shouts of, “Timber!” The gate reopens and a team of Murphy’s struggles with a massive tree, getting it inside their ground.
Clarke rushes over, watching them work quickly with the bark. “You’re building more?” she asks Murphy when she sees him, overseeing them all.
“Trying something new,” he says. He looks different now, and Clarke realizes it’s one of the few times she’s seeing him with a clean face, no dirt and no injuries. “We’ve already got the walls. I’m gonna build the best roof this Earth has ever seen.”
“Oh,” she breathes, trying to picture it. She’s very proud, suddenly, of her group of people. Of the things they can do and she can’t.
Murphy rolls his eyes. “I already talked to Bellamy, he cleared everything.”
“No, no, that’s,” she stutters. “Good work, Murphy.”
He smiles sheepishly, and that’s new, too. “Yeah, we’ll see how it goes.”
At night, she lays between Octavia and one of the younger girls, Reina. People around her snore, huddled together, using each other for heat. She’s slept so close to everyone, she can tell when Octavia’s asleep and when she’s not just from her breathing.
“Octavia?” Clarke whispers.
“Mm,” Octavia groans.
“What’s it like,” she asks, “having a sibling?” Reina rolls next to her, kicking her legs in her sleep. Octavia’s eyes open, she can just barely tell.
Octavia sighs. “It’s nice.” She shifts and tucks her arms in closer to her body. Her breath is warm against Clarke’s face. “Bellamy’s good, you know. We’re really good now. And it’s like, I know I have something no one else has.”
On the Ark, everything was uniform. Regulations and rations and as much equality as they could manage so each person had the same thing. Clarke tries to imagine her life without the rule, growing up with someone of your own.
“You know, Lincoln says that some of the villages he knows only have one child per family,” Octavia says. “He’s an only child, too.”
Clarke doesn’t say anything for so long she hears Octavia turn over, breath evening out in sleep. Octavia is someone who doesn’t need to ask why, that’s one of the reasons she’s one of Clarke’s favorite people.
She thinks she had something of a brother in Wells, especially when they were little. At their first camp, she’d stay up with Raven and drink some of Monty’s stash, talking into the night about anything they could. She thinks that’s family, hopes it’s something like Octavia has.
She works with Bellamy every day and knows that it’s more.
-
Murphy’s crew is quick and he unveils their roof in a few short weeks. It’s not so much an unveiling as him telling them it’s finished, by the way, everyone look up.
It overhangs a good portion of their camp, supported by some of the trees that branch over their walls. When they walk under it, Bellamy whistles, impressed. Raven tries to tap at it with the end of her crutch but she’s too short and doesn’t even come close.
“Seriously,” someone says, all surprise. “What the hell.”
“This is really good, Murphy,” Bellamy tells him and he lowers his eyes, ignores all their praise.
“Alright, gather around, gather around,” Murphy calls. “This’ll be used for dry activities only,” he talks over a few snickering in the back, “Sleep here, keep your fires low, keep the snow out. We’ll have to go up top every few days and clear it off so nothing collapses.”
When he finishes, Jasper and Monty start a slow clap no one joins. Bellamy and all the boys slap Murphy on the back, beaming.
They eat their best meal of the winter that night, gathered under their roof on top of blankets that aren’t soaked through with snow. They’re full and content, as warm as they can be.
“Oh, God,” Jasper groans, flopping onto his back. “You delicious deer, may we meet again.”
Bellamy laughs at him, taking a seat by Clarke. His sniffle’s turned into a runny nose, the beginning of a cough rattling in his chest like no one will notice.
“It’s a beautiful thing,” he says to her, grinning.
“What is?” She can’t help smiling back, confused. She’s been wringing her hands in her lap since dinner, so cold they hurt, probably looking some sort of evil villain by now.
“Ah, they grow up so fast,” Bellamy says, gesturing his hands to the ceiling. He’s smooth, fond edges, and her stomach twists with how rare it is to see him like this.
He’s grabbed her hands before she knows it, enveloping them in his rough palms, hissing. “You know we have mittens now, right?” he says. “God, you’re ice, go get a pair.”
She shakes her head, “I gave mine to one of the kids. Monroe said the next one finished is mine.”
Bellamy rolls his eyes, mutters, “Of course you did.” He lets her hands go and she’s sorry, immediately cold without him. “Sit on them or something, we need those hands.”
Clarke sleeps through everyone else waking up the next morning and well into the working hours. When she finally opens her eyes, there’s a pair of fur mittens next to her on her pillow.
-
Clarke’s been taking advantage of the empty target practice range for all of twenty minutes when Octavia stomps by her with a load of firewood and tells her, “Bellamy’s an idiot.”
“Oh?” Clarke asks, lowering her bow, but Octavia’s already gone.
She tries to act like it’s a chore as she packs up her arrows, but she’s not very good on a bow yet and she’s thankful for the break. She heads in the direction Octavia came from, passing groups hoisting up pieces of their wall where they’ve fallen underneath the snow.
“Bellamy,” she scoffs.
He jumps, arms shaking under the wood, rope between his teeth. He spits it out to grunt, “Princess,” looking over his shoulder at her. “I got this one but if you want to watch and see how it’s done, feel free.”
His cough has worsened in the last few days and travelled to some of the others. Clarke’s had to set up an infirmary for anyone showing symptoms and they’re down workers, everyone pulling extra shifts to keep up. Bellamy’s been on strict orders to find a bed and lay in it.
“You shouldn’t even be out here. You need rest,” she says and it sounds like pleading. He screws up his face before she’s even finished, shaking his head. “This is not a twenty-four-seven job, Bellamy, take a break.”
“No.” It’s gruff and invalidating and he keeps hauling up logs and retying their places.
“Right. I guess I took enough time off when we got here.” Hurt flashes on his face like he was the one who killed and had to run away. She wants to scream.
“No one said that, Clarke—”
“I don’t care. I am trying,” she stops. Breathes, and tries to start again. “I don’t have the medicine for you. The last of it is being used right now, in there with them,” she points at their sick house, hopes he doesn’t see her finger shake. “I was counting on you staying healthy, out of everyone.”
“Clarke.” He’s stopped with the fence now, watching her.
“I’ve told you, you need to slow down before it gets worse.”
“Clarke, Bellamy,” she hears behind her. Miller’s there with a few of the hunters Clarke remembers from when they left this morning. “Micah and Ruby just got in, but two are missing. They haven’t made it back yet.”
“Shit,” Bellamy says. In the light of the torches, Clarke can see snow start to fall. Miller’s brow furrows, worried. “How far out were you, do you know?”
“We were near another camp,” Micah says hesitantly. “I knew we were too far and when I started to turn us around, Annie and Samson were gone.”
“Another camp?” Bellamy marches toward him, dangerous. Clarke gives him a warning look. “We don’t know who our allies are out here, we can’t take risks like that.”
“We couldn’t find a damn thing, we hunted for so long we were getting lost,” Micah says, frustrated. “Look, it’s a few hours from here, I can take you to where I lost saw them.”
“No,” Clarke and Bellamy say in unison. “No one’s going out this late, that’s asking for trouble,” she says and Bellamy nods. “We can send a search tomorrow. There’s a chance they’ll find their way back tonight.”
Micah doesn’t look pleased, but he agrees. Miller opens the gate and herds them inside.
“Hey,” Bellamy calls before they leave. “Don’t forget to string up what you brought back.”
Miller stares back at them. “There wasn’t a catch today,” he says, hollow, and he turns away again, heading into camp.
Clarke is up with Bellamy half the night in one of their remaining tents, shivering under her coats as they plan.
“What, are we overhunting?” Bellamy asks. After Miller and the others left, they’d taken one look at the inside of their meat hut and he’d foregone dinner.
“No, I don’t think so,” Clarke says. They’re side-by-side on a cot, her hands in their mittens underneath her thighs as she stomps her feet, keeping her limbs moving. They have a little light from the end of a torch that’s about to go out, and it feels worlds away from even their worst nights at the dropship camp. “The animals in our woods probably didn’t see us as a threat at first. Now they know they’re being hunted and they’re hiding, avoiding the weather.”
“Yeah, they’re a lot better at it than us,” Bellamy mumbles. She can see sweat curling the hair at his temples and he keeps squeezing his eyes shut, weaving as he sits. She takes off a mitten to feel his forehead and he leans into her cold hand.
“And there’s your fever,” she says, shaking her head. He huffs, nodding. “Now your sweat’s going to freeze you to death.”
He scrunches up his face. “Thanks,” he says dully.
They sit a moment, both shaking. “I don’t know—I don’t know if we can spare anyone who isn’t sick,” Clarke says slowly. “We’re way too low on people. We need more hunting and more to take care of the sick and a search party…”
Bellamy exhales slowly. He scooches her over to the other cot and hands her most of his blankets. “Things are bleak, Princess,” he mumbles, and settles back in bed, half asleep with his shoes on.
She makes sure they’re as close as they can be before she settles next to him, sharing the blankets. Sleep barely comes, and she’s awake for most of the night listening to his breaths wheeze, making sure they don’t stop.
Clarke forces breakfast on him in the morning. They meet with Miller in the tent and tell him to gather the last of his hunters. He’s to go to new territory and not come back without food.
“But Samson and Annie—” he protests.
“We’re handling it,” Clarke tells him, and sends him out. While Bellamy gets directions from Micah, she meets with Octavia, puts her in charge of the infirmary.
“What are you doing?” Octavia eyes her suspiciously.
“If we’re not back by tomorrow, talk to Micah,” Clarke tells her. “Do not run out of medicine,” she adds before she leaves, but it’s a worthless demand.
Bellamy brings her a gun. They walk out of the front gate in step with each other.
-
In three hours, they finally hit unfamiliar territory. Clarke’s been marking trees so she can find their way back and Bellamy’s been steadily slowing down, pausing every so often to lean over his knees and cough.
“Micah said the camp’s not much farther,” he pants.
“This might be good for us, you know,” Clarke says. Raven let her borrow her best boots and she feels the difference as she walks, but her socks are still soaked through.
“What, all this exercise?” Bellamy asks. She can see the sweat soaking through the front of his shirt.
She rolls her eyes. “Another camp. They could be helpful.”
“They could be aggressive Grounders who want to kill us.”
“It could be another group from the Ark.”
He lets her have the last word that time. They argue through exactly one and a half rounds of I Spy before they have to quit, and he tries to explain the license plate game to her, which he apparently saw in a movie once.
Clarke’s lost track of time when she realizes Bellamy’s not next to her anymore. She looks around, worry knotting her insides, and finds him leaned against a tree a few paces back.
“You okay?” she asks.
“Dizzy,” he answers, not opening his eyes. There’s a log just off their path and she takes his elbow and guides him over, brushes off the snow for him to sit.
“It’s time for a water break,” she says and starts digging through their packs. “Do you want to eat?” she asks, already knowing the answer, as he chugs from his water bottle.
“No,” he says. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“How much farther?”
“Not long.”
She stands and throws her bags over her shoulders when they’ve sat long enough, starting again. She doesn’t wait for him to catch up, she knows he will.
In the end, he never lags behind, of course. It’s her who’s following his tracks, a dazed zigzag that stumbles along, and she lets him. When Bellamy goes down, she’s surprised it took so long.
He’s rolling, groggy, trying to get onto his knees when she crouches down next to him. She takes his face in her hands, hot hot hot, watches him try pull all his pieces back together.
“Alright,” she says softly, like she’s giving up the fight for him. He’s already shaking his head, throwing her off, all red-faced and sweaty hair. Bellamy on the ground is sad and beautiful, one of the things on Earth she doesn’t think she could draw.
“No, no,” he’s heaving, “We have to keep going, Clarke, we need—”
“Your fever’s too high,” she tells him. That’s her habit sometimes, telling Bellamy things he already knows. “You can’t walk anymore, you’re too sick—”
He’s pissed. His eyes are wet. The snow is seeping into their clothes. Clarke could do without all of these things. “They’re gonna die.”
She shakes her head. This stopped being a rescue mission a long time ago. “They might already be dead. You’re done.”
He groans one last time, his chest shaking. His hand’s so hot around her wrist and it takes them twice as long to get back to camp, holding onto her the whole time, Clarke decides she never wants to be appeased by Bellamy again.
-
Octavia slaps him.
Honestly, it was harder than Clarke would have given her credit for.
They get him into a bed and give him a sick bucket right before it all really goes to hell. He throws up for two days and nearly shakes out of his skin. When Octavia can’t be there, Clarke is, trying to keep water in his stomach.
“There we go. Just like old times, huh.” She lowers the cup of from his lips, lets his head fall back.
“Y-yeah,” he stammers. His body’s stretched, taut and painful in the cold. “God, I used to hate you,” he says before his eyes shut one more time, asleep.
Clarke drinks the rest of his water, hangs onto his used to in her head for the rest of the day.
Octavia breaks the news that all the meds have been used up. Clarke spends hours and hours with Monty to recreate some of what they’ve lost, but when she visits the infirmary later, most of the people they didn’t have room for are gone, beds emptying as people get better.
At night, she’s on the floor of their tent, grinding leaves into a paste that she’s pretty positive isn’t even going to work. Her head jerks up, startled by a noise, and
“Oh,” Clarke says, pushes itself out of her with a little gasp. The tightness in her chest, the one that says she can’t get anything right here, unravels just the slightest when she sees him in the doorway.
“Your fever broke,” she says, stupidly happy. Her arms go around his neck and he hugs back tightly.
“Thanks for helping,” Bellamy says when she steps back. “O said you were there a lot.”
Clarke nods. “Yeah, but it was mostly her. I think it’s probably time for a promotion or something,” she laughs.
He smiles, rueful, and sits on their cot, patting for her to join him. “She said there’s no food,” he says, looks at her worriedly.
Her hands twist in her lap. “There is food, it’s just. There’s not much left.”
“How much?”
“Maybe two days.”
He screws his eyes shut, clenches his fists. “You’re not missing dinner,” she orders before he can say anything. “People need to get their strength back and that includes you.”
His brow’s furrowed, eyes pained, and she knows whatever she says won’t make it go away. “Every person who can stand and hold a stick is out there right now, Bellamy. We’ll have food in a few hours.”
“We’ll starve.” When she thinks about this conversation later, she remembers she couldn’t tell if he was talking about just them, Clarke and Bellamy in that tent, or the entire camp.
“We won’t,” she says. It’s the firmest her voice has ever sounded, even when she was a snob from the sky and thought she knew everything.
They never see Samson and Annie again.
-
Food comes, like she said it would.
It isn’t enough and they all know it. Clarke misses meals and hunger claws at her, keeps her up all night, not like anything ever on the Ark or when they first landed. There’s a group of them, her and some of the biggest boys, who skip out on the meat and eat the last of the nuts they saved from the fall. Bellamy doesn’t say anything, and she knows he’d do it himself in heartbeat. She knows, now, that she was stupid for ever thinking they were so different.
Nobody is sick and the hunts do well and they have food. No one starves.
-
The wind gets impossibly colder. The entire camp packs into their little buildings, one on top of another, and then they pack in even closer, trying to share warmth.
Clarke and Bellamy are the last ones inside during a snowstorm one night, taking their places near the coldest cracks by the doors.
“Oh my—shit, shit,” Bellamy grumbles as he sits, knees folded up to his chest. There are a few torches hanging on the walls, but that’s all the warmth and light they can have in here without fear of fires.
“Be careful not to trample each other,” Clarke calls out. “It’s cold, but everyone needs room to breathe. We’re gonna be here for a long time.”
Octavia’s next to her, tiny frame easily slotting between bodies. She clings to Clarke’s arm and Clarke clings back. “I don’t think I can sleep in here,” she says, big eyes in the firelight.
“Just try,” Clarke whispers.
Clarke dozes, tiredly drifting off and jerking awake when people get noisy. The wind howls next to her ear all night, a shrieking whistle she tries to fade into white noise.
Bellamy’s shifted with all the movement, smack in front of the door draft. She can feel the shivers run through his body, the rumble of his voice when he talks to Murphy next to him. She doesn’t think he sleeps all night.
Her eyes startle open to howling laughter, Octavia twitching beside her. Bellamy’s leaning into her with all his weight and she shoves him off, all their movements clumsy.
“Oh, sorry, Princess,” he slurs through laughter. He sounds drunk, Clarke realizes, and anger fires through her chest. Alcohol was deemed emergencies only weeks ago, when she had to do an amputation. “God, we—we were just talking, me and Murphy.” He trails off into ridiculous giggling, shoulders shaking.
Someone near the walls tells them to shut the fuck up and that sets Murphy off again. “Bell, Bellamy. Do you remember that?” he asks, voice impossibly loud.
“I do,” Bellamy says. He stills and Clarke can see him staring straight at Murphy, still laughing. “Do you remember when you put those seatbelts around my neck?”
Clarke’s blood runs cold, icing out to her fingertips. She whacks his arm and he turns, confused, “What?”
“Shut the hell up,” she says stonily. “Bellamy, switch me places.”
It takes a few tries to get his limbs working, edging over with Octavia before Clarke takes his spot by Murphy. It is colder here, and Clarke starts praying for morning.
They lose three that night.
-
Some people want funerals, which is all well and good except they can’t dig any graves. Murphy’s worried about losing more trees than they have to, wants to build walls for his roof, when the discussion of a funeral pyre comes up.
“Well, we’re not floating them on the ocean three days away,” Bellamy says. They didn’t talk about last night and Clarke doesn’t care.
Octavia feeds the little flame in front of her with more twigs. “It has to be fire.” Her eyes close and she breathes in, steeling herself. “We need the heat.”
“I’m not cooking my dinner on someone’s burning body,” someone says and a few more murmur, agreeing.
Bellamy takes the hatchet from his hip and offers it to them. “Here. If you think you can do better.”
Clarke slips out. She kicks through the snow, her arms around her middle, stomach rolling. A fearless leader, she thinks, making her way to their tent. She thinks she can hear people coming after her and she’s reminded, all too suddenly, that privacy is not something she can have here.
She’s pacing when Bellamy comes in, both of them slow and silent. He stands to the side watching her, wild animal in a cage, and she laughs because this is what those zoos she read about were like. “Clarke,” he says, testing.
He’s above her. She realizes she sat down at some point, ass numb on the ground, elbows on her knees. Bellamy sits on a cot looking torn, like he could run a marathon away from here or never move his legs again.
“At least we’re not keeping count anymore,” she says, smiling and sick. Her voice strains, like it’s taken all it can. “Don’t look at me like that, God, you-you—” Her breath hitches scary fast, how it would when she was young and hurt. “Oh my God.”
Her face crumples and she hides behind her palms as she cries, loud and open. Bellamy’s frozen where he sits and God, hasn’t he ever seen Clarke Griffin sob before?
She realizes this was his spot when he’d sit and wait for her to come back to life. She cries harder.
“Okay, Clarke,” he’s right next to her, maybe down on the ground with her, which is ridiculous. “Come on, like this,” his hands are on her shoulders, too gentle, and she’s going down down down, onto her side. There’s fur underneath her.
She blinks and he’s there, on his side just like her. His knees graze her shins, but otherwise there’s space between them.
“They’re starting the fires,” Bellamy whispers. “You don’t have to be there, yeah?”
Clarke keeps gulping in air and she knows her face is red and blotchy. Random tears slip down, underneath her cheek.
“This isn’t a twenty-four-seven job, you know?” he says, sad smile on his face. “We can take a break, right now, okay?”
She can smell smoke. Her hands reach out blindly, searching for one of his. She holds on, white-knuckled, and closes her eyes.
They sleep.
-
One morning, when they haven’t had new snow in a week, they wake to shrieking.
She flies out of the tent before Bellamy, her socks soaked in the snow before she gets her boots on. Others are emerging and rushing to the gate, a crowd forming. Bellamy’s gun clicks behind her.
Stumbling through the middle is Raven, her arms so tight around Wick’s neck Clarke is afraid she’s going to break it.
“They’re back,” she breathes. “The Ark groups made it back.”
Bellamy laughs, running into the throng. He hugs the people he hasn’t seen in months, scoops up one of the youngest, balancing her on his hip. Raven keeps Wick glued to her side, beckoning Clarke over.
He shakes her hand politely and Raven laughs, teasing them both. “Looks like you’ve done well here, Griffin,” he says. Wick’s looking behind her at Murphy’s epic roof, their little houses dotting the fence line.
“As well as we can,” Clarke tells him and Raven’s smile falters, feels her own do the same.
“Give it to her, Wick,” Raven tells him and they watch him dig through all the pockets on his person before he offers her something, folded a million times and smudged with dirt from the trip.
“From Abby,” he says, and Clarke’s hands shake. “She said she’d kill me if it didn’t make it to you and I very much believe that.”
Clarke can’t bring herself to look at it before she asks. “So she’s…”
Wick nods, “Camp Jaha’s fine and so is she. We had a rough winter, but everyone did, from the things we’ve been hearing.”
It’s a letter. A multiple-page long, yellowed letter that starts with HI CLARKE and ends with love, Mom in her mother’s terrible scrawl.
“Wick,” Clarke says.
“Oh, don’t thank me,” he waves her off. “I wish I could’ve gotten it here sooner, but the storms kept holding us off.”
“No, thank you,” she says and he keeps shaking his head, color rising in his cheeks.
“Anyway, those packs are filled.” He gestures to the ones people are carrying off to tents. “You’ve got loads of rations—the people of the Ark actually had to learn how to hunt, right, and I think they sent you clothes and some more power sources and a ton of meds. Cool?”
Clarke laughs, her eyes stinging. “Very cool.”
Wick smiles at her. “Everyone made it back, Clarke. You should be proud of them. Winter’s nearly over.”
The sun is shining on them for the first time in weeks. Clarke thanks Wick again and Raven whisks him away, murmuring something about, “Could you have taken any longer…”
She refolds the letter again and zips it into a pocket. She has to squint see everyone as they rush around camp welcoming each other. The snow beneath her slushes as she walks.
She feels Bellamy stand next to her, sees their shadows on the ground next to one another. He’s quiet and solid in the sunlight, far from the boy who stepped out of the dropship so long ago. She’s far from the girl who stepped out after him.
“Did you hear,” Clark asks, “that winter is over?”
“Oh,” he huffs a laugh. “No, I hadn’t heard that one.”
“Wick says it all looks good, but I didn’t tell him.” Clarke looks at their fence, their huts, the work they’ve done in their camp, and Bellamy looks at her.
“It does,” he says. “We did good here, Clarke. We’ve done enough here. All things considered.”
“All things considered,” she agrees, voice far away. All the way to their walls and beyond, to the old dropship and the Ark’s campsite, Finn’s grave and the ocean.
“I think you said something about Texas, a long time ago,” Clarke says, smiling up at him.
Bellamy raises his eyebrows, grins back at her. “I think I did.”