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“By my calculations, in less than six months 96% of the earth’s surface will be uninhabitable.”
ALIE’s tone is empty, but it’s still enough to tear the air right from Clarke’s lungs. Her first real thought—besides oh, fuck—is that ALIE could be lying: if she wanted the City of Light to survive, then there was really no better strategy than to convince Clarke it was the only way the human race could survive. The only way her friends could survive, even if it was just their minds. They are her weakness, after all.
But when Clarke looks to Becca for any sign of confirmation, her lips pull down into a small frown that tells Clarke all she needs to know. ALIE isn’t lying, and the earth is really becoming radioactive all over again. All those years in space meant nothing: they’d clung so desperately to life and just barely managed to keep their grip for 97 years, and they’d been so fucking stupid to even try. All the sacrifices they’d made for the greater good and for the survival of the human race were all a waste of time. They might as well have died in the original bombs and saved themselves a lot of suffering.
The full force of ALIE’s statement keeps hitting Clarke in wave after wave, and she’s getting swept away in its tide. Nothing matters, or ever mattered. Not the Ark, not the days the 100 spent on the ground, not the alliances with the grounders, not even this moment, right here. Because even if she doesn’t pull the lever and everyone migrates to the City of Light, everyone will still technically die.
Nothing matters.
Clarke’s knees start to buckle under the weight of this, and her breathing starts to get shallow. Becca tries to bring her attention back to the kill switch as tries to steady herself, but ALIE stays quiet. Her silence is a victory in itself.
Clarke is vaguely aware that Becca’s saying they’re running out of time, but all she can seem to do is scrub her face with the heel of her hand and squeeze her eyes shut. Her mind is screaming at her to hurry up and think her way out of it, but she’s so tired. The desire to just…let go is overwhelming, and she can’t even muster the energy to let that thought terrify her.
When warm fingers brush over her own, she looks up. Her heart shatters and pulls itself back together again the second she sees him.
“Wells,” she croaks, and the most profound sense of relief washes over her.
“Hi, Clarke,” he whispers back, and when he gives her a small smile she can almost imagine herself back on the Ark on her couch with Wells, trapped but happy and together.
Even though she knows he’s a simulation, a product of her own subconscious like her father’s watch, she still collapses into his arms and almost bursts into tears at how good it feels. He’s steady and his arms are familiar around her, and she can even feel his heartbeat when she presses her head against his chest. When he tries to pull back from the hug, she holds on tighter and he chuckles in her ear.
“We can’t stay like this forever, Clarke,” he tells her.
“Why not?” she mumbles, but lets him pull away when he tries again.
“You’ve still got the world to finish saving,” he says, smiling and still warm, but reality comes crashing back down around Clarke.
“It can’t be saved, Wells,” she says. “If I destroy the City of Light, we all die from radiation. If I don’t, we all still die but our minds stay connected.”
“You saw ALIE’s methods,” he reminds her. “You know you can’t give up and condemn everyone to torture if they don’t take the chip.”
“But maybe if they knew only 4% of the world will be habitable in six months, they won’t need to be tortured to be convinced.”
“Clarke—”
“Radiation is a slow death, too,” she continues. “People get sick, and then the burns will start, and there won’t be anything we can do for the pain. But there’s no pain in the City of Light. Maybe…” she trails off, and swallows. “Maybe it’s the best choice.”
Wells ducks his head so she has to look in his eyes. They offer no compromise. “You know it isn’t.”
Her voice is small when she says, “What I know is that no one has to stay dead in the City of Light.” Her thoughts turn to Lexa, who she loves, and who she just lost again. But maybe it doesn’t have to be permanent.
Wells’ face softens just a little bit. “It’s not hopeless, you know. Surviving out there.”
“They’re pretty bleak odds,” she replies. Especially against the City of Light’s guarantee.
“But they’re not impossible. You’ve fought the odds before, and you’ve won.”
“But I’m so tired of fighting,” she says, and it’s the crack in her voice that tells her how deeply true this is. “All we’ve done is fight and die since we landed, and it’ll never be over. Even if we did find a place that’s survivable, we’ll still have to fight. It’s just endless, over and over again until we all fall, one by one.” The faces of every dead person she’s known flashes to her mind—all of the delinquents they couldn’t save, all of the grounders they fought, all of the Mountain Men they slaughtered—and she feels the dangerous pull towards the City of Light again.
Wells grabs her wrists, and his grip is so tight that Clarke winces. “Listen to me, Clarke. Life might be a constant fight, but that doesn’t mean you should just give up. It just means you have to appreciate the little things, the good things, that do happen.” He leans closer, trying to make her see. “There might not be any pain or death in the City of Light, but there isn’t love, either. You’ll just be part of a computer program. You won’t really be you anymore.”
At the word love, Clarke’s mind wanders back to Lexa, but she also thinks about all the people fighting for her right now. Her mom. Raven. Miller. Monty. Murphy. Octavia. Harper. Bryan.
Bellamy.
And she knows Wells is right. The realization is heavy, almost as heavy as ALIE’s calculations, but it would be wrong to give up now after everything they’ve gone through. Maybe it was all pointless, all the dying and suffering and fighting, or maybe—just maybe—it wasn’t. But there’s only one way to find out, and so she squeezes Wells’ hand and turns to the kill switch.
Finally, ALIE sees her victory slipping away. “Clarke, the decision you make now is irreversible. It will either be the end of your people, or their salvation.” She pauses to tilt her head. “Are you really prepared to be responsible for the death of humankind?”
The words still land hard in Clarke’s chest, but she does her best to ignore ALIE and hovers her hand over the lever. But she doesn’t place it just yet, and looks over at Wells as a terrible realization pushes to the front of her mind.
“You’ll be gone once I pull this,” she says, her throat getting so tight she finds it difficult to swallow. “I’ll never see you again after this.”
Wells smiles mournfully. “No, you won’t.”
She takes a deep breath, and when she speaks it’s barely above a whisper. “I can’t believe how much I’ve missed you,” she tells him, and the words taste bitter on her tongue after how much time she wasted being angry with him.
She thinks about all the moments that have been empty without him these past few months, and how she’ll see him sometimes in the simplest things. Like in a soft sunrise that barely peeks over the tops of trees, or a deep breath that is so fresh and sweet she can’t remember how stale the air was on the Ark. She thinks about all the things he would love about earth, and she wishes more than anything that he was still there beside her.
But for this last second, Wells is beside her, and he grabs the hand resting at her side. When he squeezes it tight, she tries to commit the feeling to memory as best she can.
“May we meet again,” he says earnestly, and he nods towards the lever. It’s time.
“May we meet again,” she echoes, and she doesn’t let ALIE’s final warnings take purchase in her mind before she pulls down the lever. She holds eye contact with Wells for as long as she can, but eventually everything fades to white and in the next second she’s opening her eyes to chaos in the throne room.
After the flame is removed and Bellamy helps her out of the throne, his hands lingering on her arm a few seconds too long, her eyes sweep over all the people she saved, or maybe all the people she damned.
Bellamy picks up on her dread instantly. “Clarke, you’re not acting like someone who just saved the world.”
“Because we didn’t,” she says, shaking her head. “Not yet.”
“What are you talking about?” he asks, and he sounds absolutely defeated already.
She explains what ALIE told her, and the expression on his face matches the weariness she feels down to her bones exactly.
He clenches his jaw. “How are we supposed to fix this?”
“I don’t know,” she admits honestly. “And maybe we won’t.” Bellamy looks up at that, but she keeps going. “But that doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that we try.”
Bellamy swallows and nods. “We’ll figure something out,” he says, his voice not exactly steady, but close enough.
Clarke nods back, and after a second of hesitation, she steps closer to lean her head on Bellamy’s shoulder. His hand slides across her back gently and stops at her waist, and she closes her eyes and blocks out everything except Bellamy right here, right now.
“Let’s figure something out tomorrow,” she says, and it’s as close to peace as they can manage for now.