Chapter Text
It is spring when Clarke returns to the woods. The season has long since settled – leaves growing green and vibrant, and the forest alive with sound. The forest is muggier than she remembers – air thick with the kind of dampness that clings to the walls of the throat and cloys in the lungs. Clarke is just grateful that she did not have to trek through the winter; she has far less interest in dealing with snow.
She has been following the same trail since the start of her journey, only now it comes to a crossroads. The left path should continue straight to Tondc, then past it to Polis, and it is this path that she should take – but the rightward branch, she also knows, will lead her to Camp Jaha. Clarke pulls at the reigns to halt her mount. The fawn-haired horse huffs and Clarke pats idly at his neck.
‘Izvir,’ she mumbles. ‘I didn’t bring you along for your opinion.’
It has been two days since Clarksburg – the last port of harbour before the desert, the last place she left herself for second thoughts – and for a moment she considers turning around and going straight back to it. No one would call her a coward, regardless of how much of one it would make her.
Beneath her Izvir nickers and it sounds a lot like a laugh. Clarke scoffs and rolls her eyes, pulls the reigns to lead him rightward and nudges at his side with the toes of her boots.
‘You may be right,’ she says, closing her eyes and breathing deeply as he begins to plod along the path towards her former home, ‘but that doesn’t mean I brought you along for your sass, either.’
It is another hour or so before anything begins to look familiar – and even then it takes twenty minutes of recognizable rock formations before Clarke is entirely sure that it’s not just her mind playing tricks on her. The trees are not as she remembers them – but then, she was only there a month in all, back in the beginning, and the seven years since have changed what little she knew. She wonders what else has changed – what else she is going to find when she crests the hill overlooking the crashed remains of Alpha Station.
(She wonders who took charge in her wake and whether or not they did a better job.)
Izvir picks his way over roots and stones beneath the trees and follow the trail up the hillside. This is it – this is the last rise before her return. She will reach the top and the guards will see her, outlined in daylight, and there will be no more chances to turn back to Clarksburg, and sunlight, and sand. She considers it – it would be no terrible thing to turn back now, just a tug on the reigns – but Izvar turns his shaggy head to look back at her over his shoulder with large, dark eyes, and the thought halts in her head.
‘We do not belong here,’ that look seems to say. ‘But if I do not stumble then neither should you.’
‘Too right,’ she says tells him with a nod and a wan smile. She reaches the crest of the hill and pulls Izvir to a stop. She expects to see Camp Jaha sprawled at the bottom of the valley, large and overwhelming – but what she finds instead catches the breath in her lungs. She swallows thickly, and her heart races with something that feels a lot like fear.
Where Alpha Station should be there is nothing but fallen metal, broken fences, and burned, trampled land. The last of the Ark is no more.
It is not, however, vacant. Clarke spots a few people moving through the ruins, and even with the distance she can identify their garb as Trigedakru in nature. There are four horses tied by the trees at the edge of the valley – theirs, obviously. Closer to the ruins is a wagon tied to two bulls with a blonde Grounder stood beside it, and as Clarke watches the scavengers bring scrap to him and show him their finds. If he shakes his head they throw the waste aside, but when he nods the pieces are tossed onto the back of the cart.
It is a salvage team, she realises, going through the wreckage of the people she left behind. And all of them – all of the people she saved, dirtied her hands for – they’re all gone.
Clarke’s chest tightens and the back of her throat burns, and she urges Izvir forward and nudges him again to speed him to a trot. She wants these strangers to see her, has little care for stealth; they have numbers on her and she knows that already, but they may have answers too. The valley shows signs of a battle long past – old tents burnt and rotting, covered in weeds, vines working around the fallen fence line, swords abandoned to rust in the dirt – and she needs to know: who did this? Where did the Skaikru go?
She is only feet away from the fallen gate and approaching fast when she hears the shout of alarm. She pulls Izvir to a stop and waits for the scavengers to meet her. They funnel out of the ruins and surround her, swords drawn. Their blonde leader steps forward with his blade in hand.
‘Speak before we cut you down,’ the man calls in fluent Trigedasleng, and the direction marks him well as their leader. His voice is familiar, if only vaguely so – some half-forgotten moment from years long past – and she focuses her gaze on him.
There is a large scar down the left side of his face, half covered by a leather eye patch, and the hair on his chin and the line of his jaw is too much to be stubble and too little to be considered a beard. Garbed in leather and furs, and ravaged by time, he is almost unrecognisable – and from his wary glare she knows that he does not recognise her well either (can’t much blame him, they hardly knew each other at all) – but after a long moment Clarke’s foggy mind calls a name to mind.
Practiced ears identify the sound of the notching of a bow behind her – her answer is taking too long, it would seem. Her hands rise calmly to hang in the air – empty, the universal white flag – but she cannot keep her irritation from twisting her features. She did not come this far to fall to paranoia and an arrow in the back, and she’s got far too many things left to do to die here now.
‘Kyle Wick,’ she calls calmly, slowly moving a hand to pull back her hood and bare blonde hair. Her Trigedasleng is clipped, but legible. ‘I am pleased to find you alive.’
He stares back at her with something regarding alarm in his eyes, and she watches as it slowly gives way to recognition. His smile, when it comes, is large and his laugh is booming. He calms his crew with a short order that she doesn’t quite catch, but Clarke doesn’t dismount until their blades are sheathed and they return to work.
Wick approaches her when her feet are on the ground and she is knotting Izvir’s reigns behind his neck to keep them from catching on anything. When she is done she pats twice at the horse’s shoulder; Izvir lets out a low whinny and plods off to graze on whatever grass he can find in the scorched valley.
‘It’s been a while, Clarke,’ Wick says, and he transitions to English now that they are alone. She wonders if it is because it is most natural for him – or because he knows that Trigedasleng is less comfortable for her. ‘We thought you were dead. Don’t go thinking I’m not glad or anything – but why are you here?’
‘Business, originally,’ she tells him idly. ‘I’m ferrying papers to Polis on behalf of a clan to the West. This… detour – was entirely personal.’
The engineer nods and turns to look back across the wreckage of his former home. Clarke keeps her eyes on his face, sees the pain flash quickly across his features before he manages to school them.
Clarke knows that look. Clarke was worn that same expression for seven years.
‘What happened here, Wick?’ she asks lowly. ‘Where did everyone go?’
He looks back to her sadly and sighs, reaching up to adjust his eye patch with anxious fingers. She knows before he speaks that she will find no straight answers here.
‘War happened, Clarke.’ He pauses and purses his lips, and seems to think his answer over before he continues. ‘I would say, but I’m sure the Commanders would prefer it to come from them.’
The years have taught her many things, patience king amongst them. He is hiding something – many things, most likely, given the number of years that have passed – but it’s clear that his silence is not intended to cause her harm so she nods her acceptance and allows him to keep it.
‘Well,’ she says lightly, ‘I was on my way to Polis anyway. Why not plot another point on the list of reasons why?’
He tries to smile and doesn’t really manage it, but the pull at his lips makes the scar on his face more pronounced. He calls out another order to his men in Trigedasleng and they shout back a vague affirmative in return. She follows him into the metal scrap that is all that remains of Camp Jaha, back to the loaded cart, and finds his crew packing up.
‘You should travel home with us,’ he tells her. ‘A lot has changed, Clarke – a lot you’re not going to like. But the hedas will give you any answers you seek.’ He hauls himself up onto the seat of the wagon beside a young Grounder. He pauses, furrows his brow in thought for a moment, and then he smiles – fully, this time, and it even reaches his eye. ‘Raven’s gonna flip when she sees you.’
He flicks at his reigns and the bulls start forward, wagon trundling after them. Clarke watches blankly as he goes, the rest of his men moving out towards their horses.
The notion seems absurd: Raven living in Polis? Her memories cannot match motive to action there at all. Raven who hated the Grounders – Raven, whose first love was killed at their behest – living in their capital? It’s unsettling. But by the way Wick is dressed, the language he speaks, the bodies that follow him – and god, the remains of this camp and the scorched earth around it – it is clear that a lot more has happened here than just what she has heard in whispers over trade. Clarke is not sure she is ready for whatever she will find.
She could still go – turn back to Clarksburg and shake her head ruefully at the village sign like every time before, send a hawk across the desert and go home. No one would know – no one but Wick, that is, and his likely giant mouth. No matter how many years have passed she knows – knows – that with news of her survival someone would be sent to find her. They would need to know, to see her well – and she needs to know too: where they are, how they are, what she condemned them to by leaving. She cannot turn back now; she has come too far.
‘Hey Clarke!’ Wick calls back to her, and she doesn’t remember much of him at all, but his sarcastic tone has apparently stuck with her for over half a decade because she identifies it immediately. ‘By all means, take your time! The hedas are definitely the most patient people I know!’
The appeal jolts her into motion and she lifts her fingers to her lips and whistles – three short notes ascending. Izvar trots back to her at the call, stops at her side and tosses his head as if to say 'well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?'
‘Hush, you dumb horse,’ she whispers to him as she hauls herself into the saddle. He nickers at the address. ‘This is not the hard part.’
That will be Polis, apparently, and every reunion awaiting her within it – Raven and whatever other Sky People reside there, the heda – “hedas”, Wick said, as in two, and apparently that wasteland rumour was true. It has been seven years of washing her own bloody hands and never finding them any cleaner, of building herself up into the person she should have been – and despite the fact that Kali handed over the papers herself and told her to ride for Polis and that Kass has been saying for months that it is time, Clarke is not sure that she is ready for any of this at all.
She urges Izvir on, though, because the sooner she gets this done the faster she can return to the sands and forget it ever happened at all.