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She knew it was a bad idea to separate, but when Dante wasn’t in his cell, Bellamy insisted on going to look for him.
“He may be our only chance, Clarke,” he had said, his eyes burning into hers like he never wanted to look away. His jaw was clenched and his eyes were sad, and he looked more determined than Clarke had ever seen before.
For days, Bellamy had been fighting every single second to keep the rest of their people safe, and now he was failing. Their marrow was being extracted, they were being bled dry, and afterwards they were being discarded like trash. If there was any chance in hell that Bellamy could still find a way to help them, he would take it, and Clarke knew this. She took a deep breath and nodded slightly.
He gave her a grim nod in return, and reached up to squeeze her forearm in reassurance.
“Be safe, okay, Bellamy?” she told him, her voice tight. Even thinking about him in danger again made her feel unsteady.
“I will. Hopefully, I’ll be back with Dante soon.” With one last lingering look that made Clarke’s breath catch in her throat, Bellamy turned away and left Clarke and Monty alone in Dante’s eerie white room.
Clarke shivered as she recalled sitting in this very room a few weeks ago—was it only a few weeks?—as a prisoner. So much had happened, but so little had actually changed. She was still fighting to get everyone out of this godamn mountain, and she still felt like the room was suffocating her. How could four walls have that much of an effect on her?
Clarke looked down at her hands, her dirty, grimy (bloody) hands, and she thought about how stained she was compared to how pristine the room was. She’d done so many horrible things to get inside this mountain to save her people, and so much blood had been shed because of her actions. She could practically feel Finn’s blood dripping from her hands and onto the floor, leaving a bright red streak that looked like a wound. She could almost see ash and dust from TonDC on the floor where she stepped, her boots tracking in the burned city wherever she went. Clarke was dirty, and it was especially obvious in the blankness of this room.
Clarke shook her head and turned towards Monty, who was clutching his arms to his chest like he was afraid his chest was going to unravel. She met his eyes, and all she could see in them was exhaustion.
“Can you get us into the command room?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Monty said quietly. “It’s this way.”
So Monty led the way out, and Clarke bid a final farewell to the white room. She tried to leave her guilt inside it’s walls, but the weight on her shoulders remained just as heavy when she left. She sighed in disappointment, allowing herself one fleeting moment of weakness before she set her jaw and straightened her back and followed Monty through the cold and abandoned halls of Mount Weather.
After weeks of thinking about the atrocities committed behind these walls, Clarke had built up the image of Mount Weather into a practically impenetrable fortress, with danger and enemies behind every corner. But as she and Monty kept walking, quiet and unnoticed like ghosts, she began to reshape the image of the Mountain in her mind: it was simply a prison for all the residents, and they could never escape the cracked paint and dank smell like she had. Like her people still could. Humans live in Mount Weather, she reminded herself with a cringe, not monsters.
“We’re here,” Monty said, bringing Clarke out her thoughts. He gently pushed on the door, and it swayed open. No one had even bothered to close it properly when this level had been vacated. Monty looked to Clarke before going in, as if asking her permission.
“Let’s do what we need to do,” she said, her voice hard.
They pushed inside and Monty sat behind one of the keyboards. He cracked his knuckles and furrowed his eyebrows in concentration before he began typing like a madman, doing incredible things that Clarke couldn’t even comprehend. She tried to be patient, but she was feeling antsy and ended up pacing. She’d hoped Bellamy would have been back by now, and she was starting to worry about him. She laughed morosely, with absolutely no humour. There wasn’t enough room left in her to add Bellamy to the list of those she was worried about right now. He’d be fine—he had to be fine.
After a few more minutes of listening to Monty tap keys, the monitors before Clarke blinked on, and suddenly she could see the whole mountain. She could see families huddled together in the dining room on Level Five; she could see guards standing watch over almost every square inch of the fifth level; she could see a restrained Raven screaming as Mountain Men drilled into her leg, blood dribbling to the floor; she could see Bellamy hugging a wall, his gun at the ready, as he neared a corner. It was too much to see, and too much to process all at once. She scanned the screens, looking for Dante, but she was coming up empty. Her eyes darted back to Bellamy’s screen right as he rounded the corner. His gun flashed as he shot at the Mountain Men who were waiting for him. One of the guards fell, but one stayed standing and next it was Bellamy that crumpled to the ground.
“Bellamy!” she cried and rushed to the screen. She pressed her fingers against Bellamy’s grainy figure, as if that would help anything. She could do absolutely nothing as she watched a wounded Bellamy get dragged down the hall, leaving a red stain in his wake. Clarke’s heart was racing, but the blood was pumping from his leg, so the wound wasn’t fatal as long as he didn’t lose too much blood.
She swallowed hard and turned back to Raven, who looked like she was wailing and crying and screaming, but the drill just kept going deeper and deeper into her bone. Clarke squeezed her eyes shut, panic gnawing and terror slicing at her heart.
“Clarke,” Monty said, placing his hands on her shoulders. He leaned close, and she could hear him breathing shallowly as he whispered, “We need to do something. They’re dying down there.” His voice cracked on the word dying.
“I know,” she whispered back. She opened her eyes and saw silent tears trailing down Monty’s cheeks and dripping off his chin. Her heart was so sore she was sure it was never going to feel quite right ever again.
“I think I have an idea,” she said and Monty pulled back his hands. She looked to the screens again and pointed at the radios on the belts of all the guards. “We need radios.”
They scoured the Command Room desperately for radios, and it took way too long to find them. They were hidden behind a box of batteries in what seemed to be a supply closest, and by the time Clarke had one turned on, Bellamy was being dragged into what she was thinking of as the Torture Chamber.
A man in a suit who could only be Cage watched as Bellamy was hauled in, and Clarke watched a vicious smile creep onto his lips. He recognized Bellamy in his tattered guard uniform: this was the mole he’d been searching for, and now here he was, unconscious and at Cage’s mercy. Clarke’s stomach dropped as Cage ordered the guards to exchange Raven for Bellamy.
Raven was barely conscious anymore and didn’t move as she was released. The Mountain Men practically dropped her on the ground near the other prisoners, and then they lifted Bellamy onto the chair. He was still out cold, and he could do nothing as they cinched the binds at his wrists and ankles and neck.
Clarke didn’t think as she turned on the radio and said with in a low voice, “If someone doesn’t hand their radio to the President right now, I am going to kill every single one of you.”
When Clarke took her finger off the speaking button, Monty exploded, “Clarke!”
“You said earlier you could hack into the Mountain’s filtration system, right?”
“Yes—”
“I need you to do that now, Monty,” she said, her voice firm.
Monty swallowed and nodded, then sat down and started typing again. Clarke loosed a breath, praying Monty could figure it out quickly and her bluff wouldn’t stay a bluff for long.
She watched as one of the guards brought his radio to his face and said, “Who is this?”
She winced as she realized it was Emerson. “You know who it is.”
His face fell when he registered her voice, and for a moment there was pure terror on his features. He promptly handed the radio to Cage.
“This is President Wallace,” he said, not really sounding concerned.
“If you don’t stop drilling into my people, I will eradicate everyone in this Mountain,” she said coldly. She wiped her face clean of emotions and watched rigidly as Cage’s nonchalance faltered.
“I can’t do that,” he replied, but his voice was strained this time.
She saw him say something to Emerson, who then gripped his gun and started to head for the door.
“Monty, I think Cage is sending us a gift,” she told him. “Can you lock our door?”
“No problem,” he said, and a few seconds later there was a loud click and the door was locked.
“I would seriously reconsider, Cage,” Clarke warned as the Mountain Men ripped open Bellamy’s pants and readied their drills. “I am not playing around anymore.”
“Neither am I, Clarke,” he said.
The drills were lowered to Bellamy’s flesh.
“Cage, stop!” She bellowed, her fear bursting out of her all of a sudden. She couldn’t catch her breath.
But it was too late, and the drill plunged into Bellamy’s thigh. The pain roused him, and he woke up screaming. Clarke couldn’t hear him, but she could see him sputtering and screaming through the screens and her heart was obliterated. She watched as he grit his teeth and tried to stop screaming, but with the bullet wound probably still throbbing and now the drills into his bone, there was no way to brace himself against the pain.
Clarke’s voice shook as she growled, “Cage, if you don’t—”
Instead of replying, Cage brought the radio down to Bellamy’s face and pressed the speak button. She could hear his agonized screams through the speakers, and she had to fight hard not to cry. It was the most guttural, inhuman sound she’d ever heard and it was grating against her ears. She felt like someone had stepped on her heart, and then ground it into the dirt with their heel.
She spun towards Monty, desperation clinging to her as she yelled, “Have you figured it out yet?”
“I’m almost there,” he said, his voice stricken.
Cage finally pulled the radio away from Bellamy and said to Clarke, “You hear that? That’s the sound of me not believing you’ll kill everyone in this Mountain.” He paused and looked directly towards the camera when he said, “You wouldn’t kill all the people that helped you hide your friends.”
“You’re not leaving me much choice, Cage,” she replied, her voice so sharp it was slicing right through her skin.
“You’re not a monster, Clarke. You wouldn’t.”
For a moment, Clarke just watched Bellamy writhe in pain through the screen, and then she looked at everyone else handcuffed to the wall. They were all in line: eventually, the Mountain Men would methodically murder every single one of her people. She looked at Miller, at Harper, at Wick and Kane and her mom—her breath caught as she realized she hadn’t noticed her mom before—and imagined them as corpses in some garbage bin on a lower level. She needed to stop this slaughter.
“Clarke,” Monty said quietly. “I’ve done it.”
She tore her eyes from the screen and met Monty’s tormented ones. He gestured to a lever on the dashboard. “Just push that down, and the filters will reverse. Instead of keeping the outside air out, the filters will pull it in.”
Clarke nodded solemnly and walked slowly to the lever. She placed one finger on it, hesitantly, like she was afraid to touch it. She brought the radio to her mouth again.
“Cage?”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m going to give you ten seconds to stop, and then I am going to irradiate the entire Mountain. Please, I don’t want to do this.” She was crumbling apart on the inside, but she only gripped the lever tighter on the outside.
Cage did not reply, having already made his decision, and Clarke counted to ten, and then twenty, and then thirty, and still she did not pull the lever. She was suffocating under the weight of this decision—she knew it had to be done, but God, she did not need any more guilt piled up inside her.
There was a bang on the door when Emerson finally arrived, and Clarke snapped into a new resolve. She would do this. She would do this for her people. She looked one last time to the screens, and watched as Bellamy kept screaming from behind his gritted teeth. She would do this for him. She couldn’t let him, or anyone else die. She sucked in a deep breath and slowly lowered the lever, feeling a coldness spread over her as she did.
*
The blinding pain had almost pushed Bellamy over the edge back into unconsciousness when it stopped abruptly. The drill was yanked out as he heard coughing and gagging all around him. He cracked open his eyes to see sores forming on faces and blood spraying from coughing mouths, and he knew the radiation was going to kill every single Mountain Man in the mountain. People began to collapse with heavy thuds to the floor, and some even toppled against his chair. Like flies, they dropped.
Clarke, he managed to think, and then he burst into tears. She had to shoulder the decision to murder hundreds of people all alone. She’d singlehandedly slaughtered an entire civilization. Clarke, the girl who had fought so hard just to save her own people, had just eradicated another group of them. This is going to fucking break her, he thought. She was strong, but he knew how deeply she felt guilt, and how the burden of all these dead people would push her past her breaking point. His throat was raw from the screaming, and then the sobbing.
He hadn’t noticed Cage leave, but when Clarke and Monty stumbled in, he was nowhere to be found. While Monty searched the guards for keys to the handcuffs of all the people shackled to the wall, Clarke rushed right to Bellamy’s side the moment she walked in. She cried as she undid the straps on Bellamy’s binds, and he watched as tears spilled over her eyes and tumbled down her cheeks. When he was unbound and could sit up, she collapsed against his chest and buried her face deep in his chest.
“I thought you were going to die,” she sobbed against him.
He stroked her back and buried his face in her hair as she cried. He whispered reassurance, and he already started to tell her she did the right thing—the only thing she could—but she just pressed herself closer to him and didn’t say a word.
*
Later, after Clarke had left camp and Bellamy let her go, he kept seeing Clarke’s figure as she walked towards the woods behind his eyes. Her shoulders were hunched over more than usual, and he couldn’t help but think of Atlas, a Titan from Greek Mythology: he held the entire weight of the world on his shoulders, all by himself, with no one to help share the load. Bellamy’s breath hitched, and he imagined the world balanced on Clarke’s shoulders—just Clarke’s, and no one else’s.