Chapter Text
Consciousness returned in a slow, agonizing drag. At first, the pain felt distant and muted, as if it belonged to someone else. Then the reality of her body rushed back all at once—the fire of the burns, absolute exhaustion, and a crushing ache that made even breathing hurt.
Through the haze, the soft scrape of metal against stone drifted through the darkness. Then, a familiar voice: “You should probably stop trying to die.”
Clarke didn’t question it. She didn’t think about the logistics or how it was possible; she just let the relief wash over her until it threatened to bring tears to her eyes. He stayed. The certainty of it settled deep into her chest. Bellamy hadn't left her.
A weak smile touched her lips. Of course he hadn't. He was always impossibly stubborn, always throwing himself into the fire for the people he cared about.
“Bellamy…” she whispered, forcing her eyes open.
The scraping sound cut short. In the ensuing silence, a low chuckle filled the space.
Clarke froze. The realization hit before her blurry vision could even register the room. The voice was wrong—too deep, too measured, too careful.
When the room finally came into focus, she saw the familiar skeletal framing of Becca’s lab and the radiation chamber. But sitting just a few feet away, a whetstone in one hand and a knife resting across his knee, was a man with piercing ice-blue eyes.
The fragile hope she’d been holding shattered into dust.
“Roan?”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “A disappointing discovery, I know.”
She could only stare. Bellamy staying behind would have been impossible, but this? This made no sense at all. Roan had died weeks ago. Or at least, he was supposed to have. Yet here he was, sitting in front of her as if the apocalypse hadn't just swept over them—the former King of Azgeda, alive, real, and undeniably not Bellamy.
Roan set the whetstone down on the edge of the console, the faint clink echoing sharply in the quiet lab.
“How the hell are you alive?” Clarke asked, her voice a raw, cracked whisper.
“Kings are hard to kill, Clarke,” Roan said, a faint, humorless smile touching his lips. He picked up a cloth from his knee and slowly wiped the blade of his knife.
Clarke shook her head, her mind scrambling to piece the logic together as a fresh wave of agony radiated from her skin. “But the death wave... the radiation. Even if you survived the Conclave, Praimfaya should have killed you.”
Roan paused, looking down at the blade in his hand before meeting her eyes.
“Do you remember when we were all hiding out here? When we had Luna strapped to that table, trying to figure out how to make Nightblood?” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “You weren’t the only one desperate for a cure. While you and Abby were distracted with your science experiments, I took a vial of Luna’s blood. Just a precaution.”
Clarke’s breath hitched. He was a Nightblood.
“I didn't think it would actually work,” Roan admitted, standing up. His boots sounded heavy against the floorboards as he walked toward the main console. “I thought there was a good chance it would just kill me on the spot. But obviously not.”
He tapped a blunt finger against a dark, unresponsive monitor.
“I knew about the rocket. I knew you and Bellamy would try for the Ark if the bunker fell through, so I rode a horse to death to get here. But I missed the window.” He turned back to look at her, crossing his arms over his chest. “I thought that was it. I figured I’d spend the rest of my days inside these walls, entirely alone, until the rations ran out. And then you showed up.”
His eyes narrowed slightly, remembering.
“You burst through those doors, the sky behind you was literal fire. You managed to close the door, and you collapsed.”
He gestured vaguely to her injuries. “I dragged you to the cot, cleaned the burns, and here we are. Turns out, Wanheda is just as bad at dying as I am.”
Clarke absorbed the information, the sheer absurdity of it temporarily overriding the agony in her body. Roan was a Nightblood. He had stolen the cure right under their noses, survived a death match, raced the apocalypse on horseback, and was now casually sitting in Becca’s lab while the rest of the planet burned to a cinder outside.
"So..." Clarke swallowed hard, her throat feeling like sandpaper. "We're it. We're the only ones left down here."
"As far as I can tell," Roan said, sliding his knife back into its sheath with a crisp clack. "Unless some people found a very deep cave, you and I are the entire population of Earth."
He walked over to a metal table, picked up a tin cup of water, and brought it over to her cot. He didn't offer a gentle, comforting touch—he wasn't Bellamy—but he hooked a heavy hand behind her neck to lift her head just enough so she could drink. The water was cool, cutting through the ash and smoke coating her throat.
When he let her head rest back against the thin pillow, she looked up at him, her eyes tracking the bandages on her arms.
"Why did you take care of me?" she asked, her voice cracking. "You didn't have to. You could have just left me on the floor."
Roan let out a low chuckle, walking back to his chair and sitting down. "You did the hard part yourself."
He leaned back, resting his ankle over his knee.
"But you were burning up, and you looked pathetic lying there. Besides, look around. The world is dead. The clans are gone. Azgeda is gone. I'm not a king anymore, and you're not the Leader of Skaikru."
Clarke bristled at the word pathetic and Roan looked at her, his icy eyes completely steady.
"Out there, we were enemies, then allies, then enemies again because our people demanded it. But in here? In here, we’re just two ghosts who refused to cross over. I patched you up because if I have to spend the next five years trapped in a box, I'd rather do it with someone who actually knows how to survive."
Clarke closed her eyes, the weight of the next five years settling onto her chest like lead. Five years. No Bellamy. No Raven, or Octavia, or her mother. Just the ruins of the world, a high-tech laboratory, and the former King of Ice Nation.
"Five years," she whispered.
"A lot can happen in five years," Roan replied, his voice settling into the quiet of the lab. "First, we get you back on your feet. Then, we figure out how to live."