Chapter Text
Clarke isn’t sure how long she has been walking. It could have been hours, days, or even weeks for all she is aware of. A low burn has ignited in her knees, and her feet are positively aching. She welcomes it.
There’s a knot in her chest which keeps coiling tighter and tighter with every step she takes. She knows what she has to do to stop it from suffocating her. She knows she has to deal with the past twenty-four hours. To let the grief, the anger and the utter anguish flow through her.
And yet, the numbness that has settled over her mind like a blanket covering a lightbulb ultimately keeps her feet moving. She doesn’t want to let go of that. Not until she’s far enough to be sure no one from Camp Jaha will be able to follow her. Maybe not ever.
A deep rumble erupts from Clarke’s stomach, reminding her she has eaten nothing since before the march to the mountain. And yet, she grits her teeth and keeps pressing one foot in front of the other, unwilling to stop.
Not to find food.
Not to find shelter.
Not even to find water.
I don’t deserve those things.
Plus, Clarke is sure that once she stops walking, the plug keeping her mind muted will be pulled, and there won’t be any going back from that. Clarke swallows harshly, her throat parched at the lack of moisture.
At least it can’t break me. I’m already broken.
The hours continue melting into each other, and eventually, Clarke registers the blackness that has settled over the earlier blue sky, and she estimates that she’s been walking for a minimum of twelve hours. Clarke continues to ignore the exhaustion pervading each of her limbs and the painful clenching of her stomach. Instead, she balls her hands into fists and wills herself to keep going. She can’t help but cling onto the hope that maybe, if she walks far enough, her demons won’t catch up to her.
It doesn’t take much longer until Clarke’s knees wobble and give out, unable to support her weight any longer. She drops roughly, making no effort to soften the blow. From there, her emotions finally claw their way through the numbness that had consumed her.
A violent sob rips out of Clarke’s throat as hot tears trail down her cheeks. Her entire body trembles, and her breaths come as short, shaky gasps. Clarke surrenders herself to it, there’s no point in doing otherwise. Trying to contain it would be like placing a pebble before the tide and hoping that it will hold it back.
What have I done?
Clarke’s shoulders sag through a wave of dizziness, and it drags her down until she curls herself into a foetal position. Her emotions pass through her in waves, each one leaving her more breathless than the next. By now, she’s shaking so uncontrollably that she’d probably give herself a black eye if she tried wiping at the steady stream of tears flowing across her face. She wishes she could drown in them.
The horrors which drove her away from Camp Jaha come back to her as a series of vivid images.
Raven’s screams as the Mountain Men drill into her bones.
Bellamy’s expression after she put a bullet in Dante’s chest while making his son listen.
Monty’s hopelessness when he showed her the lever.
The football she saw when she stepped into the dining hall, the same ball she had seen children play with when she was trapped there. Children who had their lives taken because she valued her people’s lives over theirs.
The blisters and burns that formed on unknowing, innocent people whom Clarke subjected to a painful and gruesome death. People that had nothing to do with Cage’s decisions.
Jasper’s desperation and heartbreak as he held Maya, a girl who sacrificed herself over and over again. A girl who deserved to live.
It’s too much. Clarke shuts her eyes and brings her hands to her head, fingers curling tightly in her hair, as if she could turn off the images that flash so clearly in her mind. Somehow, Clarke slumps even further into herself, her sobs echoing in the otherwise silent forest.
The overwhelming sense of failure hits her next. She had vied so hard with the Grounders to agree to a rescue mission rather than an all-out slaughter. It could have worked, would have worked. She had trusted them.
No. I trusted Lexa.
A wave of nausea overwhelmes her at the thought of the Commander; the catalyst to her agony. The blood and dirt that caked her skin and the hard set of her jaw acting as a paradoxical contrast to the tender and vulnerable girl that had kissed her merely hours beforehand. There’s nothing in her system to throw-up, but the sharp taste of acid at the back of her throat has her shuddering just the same.
Clarke trusted Lexa, a mistake that forced her to single-handedly murder over 300 innocent people.
If her body wasn’t paralysed in its position, Clarke would gladly slam her head against a tree. Was it all a lie? Was she merely a pawn in a twisted war strategy? Her people shut down the acid fog. Her people exploded the turbines and blew that door open. What did the Commander do in return?
I should have known better.
Clarke’s mind flashes to her conversation with Octavia before going into the mountain, and each word exchanged feels like a further blow to her chest.
“Everyone is always counting on you!”
“Well, what do you want from me?” Clarke yells back, tears of desperation threatening to spill from eyes.
“You trusted Lexa. You let a bomb drop on TonDC. You let all of those people-” Octavia continues mercilessly with a cutting revulsion in her eyes.
Clarke’s nostrils flare, her body shaking when she shouts, “I am doing the best I can!”
“Yeah, well that’s not good enough.”
Not good enough.
I failed.
People are dead because of me.
These words repeat in Clarke’s head like a mantra, an endless loop. There’s no escaping what I’ve done. Panic seizes her being, and her breathing becomes so frantic that she barely manages to rasp out “I’m so sorry” before succumbing to the pull of darkness that her hyperventilation caused.
Clarke wanders through an eerily familiar corridor on the Ark. Cold seeps into her bones and she shivers when her breath turns to icy clouds before her. She doesn’t remember it ever being this cool.
Clarke looks around and tilts her head in confusion, “What am I doing here?”
“I think you know, kiddo,” A familiar voice says from the end of the corridor.
“Dad?” Clarke croaks with a crack in her voice. She can’t help the warmth that blooms in her chest, she just misses her father so much. She knows he would revel in the life, the colours and the scents on the ground. Whenever she sees something new, she wishes nothing more than to share in the joy and purity of it with him, and it hurts every time she realises she can’t.
She runs towards him, but before she can throw her arms around his shoulders, he turns and starts walking down a corridor to the left.
Clarke stares at his retreating figure, trepidation sinking into her voice, “Dad? What is this? Where are we going?”
Her footsteps echo in the abandoned corridor until she is walking by his side. She scans his face, looking for any hint to why they are there, and Clarke realises that his features are more hardened than they ever were. There had always been a distinct twinkle in his eyes, one that speaks of the love and care that only a father can give… It’s missing.
“You don’t remember this particular part of the Ark?” He asks, his voice lacking any of its usual warmth.
Clarke is about to tell him she doesn’t, but suddenly, it hits her. She gasps and stops, not wanting to take one more step.
The last time she was going in this direction was the day Jaha floated her father. She remembers kicking the guard that was holding her back after they arrested him and running frantically towards the airlock where she knew they were taking him. Clarke had known it would traumatise her to see her father being floated, but she just had to be there. She had to tell him she loved him one last time.
He pauses when she is no longer keeping up with him, and he turns to pierce her with a dark look. “It’s time, Clarke. You have to pay for your crimes against your own people before answering to the others. You weren’t there to save Wells. The riot you started had John Murphy falsely hanged. You were part of the reason why Charlotte jumped off that cliff. You killed Finn. You let a bomb fall on Octavia and Kane. You-“
“Stop!” Clarke shouts, familiar with the way her chest tightens further with each accusation. “Please, stop it,” she continues in defeat. “I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. I never meant for any of that to happen.” Clarke finishes while a fresh round of tears slide down her cheeks.
“And yet, it did.”
Clarke’s soul feels like it’s being shredded to pieces. The disgust in his eyes is too much to handle. Her fists are clenched so tightly, she’s sure that blood is trickling out of crescent-shaped cuts.
A small part of her knows that she must be dreaming. Her father is dead, and she thinks that he would never blame her for the things she has done since coming to the ground. Or would he?
Clarke closes her eyes and takes a strained breath. After opening them again, the scene has changed slightly.
When she realises where she’s standing, terror crawls through her skin like an incurable disease.
Clarke is standing inside the airlock. Her dad is hovering in front of the control pad.
She slams her hands against the glass doors, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please don’t, Dad! I never meant-”
Her words die in her throat and her vision blurs from her tears.
“We both know you deserve this, kiddo,” He says with a sinister smile that she has never seen on him before.
Clarke releases one last cry of desperation as the force of gravity sucks the air from her lungs, her body hurtling backwards into the vast nothingness.
Clarke jolts upwards with a sharp intake of breath. She’s panting heavily, but she tries to bring her breathing back to a normal pace. Passing out again is definitely something she wants to avoid.
It’s still dark, the only sounds being the slight rustling of the leaves in the trees. Clarke draws comfort in the familiarity of it, and tells herself, wills herself to believe that it was all a dream. Not that it helps much. She’s still trembling from watching her father’s harrowing smile while floating her for all pain she has caused her own people. People who, as their leader, she was supposed to protect and take responsibility for.
Suddenly, Clarke hears the angry crunching of leaves getting closer and closer. She whips her head around to face the direction from which the noise is coming. Clarke stands up and narrows her eyes, attempting to see through the darkness. Her heartbeat is pounding in her chest, and she’s surprised the ground isn’t shaking from the force of it.
Clarke edges towards a tree and leans against it, pulling her gun out of its holster. She doesn’t dare to breathe for fear of being found. Still, the footsteps keep coming, and she realises that whoever it is isn’t even trying to be quiet. The thought of that irritates Clarke greatly. They should be scared of her. Not the other way round.
“I know you’re behind the tree, Clarke.”
Clarke freezes. Her left eye twitches and the spark of fury lights a fire within her. She grits her teeth, almost painfully so, and steps away from the tree. She aims her gun straight at the green eyes that had once made her feel safe and comforted, but now make her blood run cold until it feels like ice in her veins.
“What the fuck do you want?” Clarke spits out. She surprises herself, never having heard her voice infused with such hatred before.
“I want you to pay for your crimes against my people.” The Commander answers cooly, her stoic mask firmly in place. Even so, Clarke could usually see beneath it. She wasn’t kidding when she told Lexa that she sees right through her. But now... she can’t see anything in green eyes that portray anything other than apathy, and it’s enough to make an involuntary shudder pass through Clarke.
That sounds familiar…
Clarke narrows her eyes, hands beginning to tremble with rage. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t pull this trigger”
“You won’t.” She replies while taking a step closer, leaving no place for doubt.
“No? And why is that?” Clarke’s hand tightens around her gun. She has to fight the urge to step back with the Commander’s advances.
I will not let her intimidate me.
“You know you deserve to suffer for your actions. Why else would you have run away from your people to be lost in the middle of Trikru territory?” The Commander says, continuing to move closer until her forehead is pressing resolutely against the barrel of Clarke’s gun.
“You’re damn right I deserve to suffer for my actions. Actions you forced me into taking! You’re a coward, Lexa, their deaths are on you too!” Clarke is yelling by the end as a tingling flares through her hands. The audacity the girl before her has to track her down only to tell her she has a debt to pay to her people. If anything, it’s the other way around.
“I’m not talking about the lives you took at Mount Weather, Clarke. You must pay for your crimes against my people. Your flares that killed a village of innocent people. Your bomb on the bridge that killed Tris, and 28 others. The fire that took 300 of my warriors. Finn killed a further 18 innocent people for you. Being a leader means you must accept the consequences of your decisions.”
Clarke instinctively closes her eyes when the Commander mentions the innocent lives taken. She doesn’t regret burning the warriors that came to wipe them out, nor the bridge as it was self-defense. It was war; kill or be killed. But the rockets sent to signal the Ark? And Finn killing those villagers? Those are things that will haunt her for the rest of her days.
Each unnecessary death that she helped cause hangs on her back like a ton of bricks she carries around every day and every night. Except it’s not physical… No, this weight presses on her soul. It pushes and pushes, and she knows she can’t do anything to lessen the load. For what can one do to make up for an innocent life lost?
I bear it so they don’t have to.
When Clarke opens her eyes again, she is no longer holding her gun. Naturally, she tries to move her hand to her hip to check if it’s there, but she realises she can’t.
Her hands are tied.
Behind a tree.
“You will exact this debt by death of a thousand cuts,” The Commander announces, now standing a few feet away. “Jus drein, jus daun.”
Jus drein, jus daun? That’s rich coming from her. Didn’t really apply to the Mountain Men, did it?
Clarke looks around, and only then does she notice the line of warriors that have seemingly appeared out of thin air. As far as she can tell, there are hundreds of them, all waiting with a dagger in hand. She recognises the first in the line… Tristan; the Grounder sent to wipe out her people. The man she burned in a ring of fire, along with hundreds of others.
Clarke’s breathing picks up rapidly once again, and her eyes flash everywhere, trying to discern what is and what isn’t real. She connects the similarities between the scene before her and what she had just experienced on the Ark, and she realises that she must still be dreaming.
I never woke up in the first place... How do I wake myself up?!
She hears movement and snaps her head back to Tristan, whose lips curled into a devilish smirk. “You won’t wake until we have gotten what we deserve, Wanheda”
Wanheda? Clarke wonders without voicing her question. She doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing what she had been thinking.
If this is just a dream, then they can’t actually hurt her, right?
He slowly puts his knife against her left shoulder and draws a deep gash all the way to the right side of her torso. Clarke can’t do anything but let out a shrill scream and thrash hopelessly against the tree. Red, hot blood gushes from the wound, and a vicious stinging sensation leaves her vision going in and out of focus. This definitely feels very real.
Clarke desperately tries to undo the ties around her hands, but it’s useless. The next warrior is already walking towards her, dagger raised.
Clarke’s eyes dart from side to side again, frantically looking for a way out of this. “Please, stop! Lexa, please, this isn’t you!”
The brunette doesn’t show any sign of acknowledging Clarke’s words, and it reignites the rage that was temporarily subdued. Clarke wonders what kind of a sick game her subconscious is playing right now, to make her beg for mercy before the girl that tore her heart to shreds before leaving her to die.
When the next cut slices down her right arm, she refuses to cry out. Clarke will not let herself be weak in front of the Commander anymore than she already has, even in a dream. She clenches her teeth so tightly that she thinks they might break and settles on letting out quiet whimpers instead. Clarke closes her eyes and tries to focus on the pain that she deserves for the innocent villagers. If only to make it slightly more bearable.
She quickly loses count of the slashes, but when she hasn’t felt a new burning sensation tear through her for a few seconds, she opens her eyes.
It’s almost comical, she thinks, that the scene has changed once again.
Clarke is once more standing in the dining hall of Mount Weather, staring at the hunched over bodies of the people she killed, the pungent smell of burned flesh dominating her senses. Bile rises at the back of Clarke’s throat, and she drops to her knees.
I did this.
Truthfully, Clarke was expecting to find herself here at some point during this twisted lucid dream. How could she not?
“Hello, Clarke.” A voice she had hoped to never hear again asks from beside her.
Sitting at a table next to one of the blistered and burned bodies is Dante Wallace.
When she turns to face him, his eyes are surprisingly free of judgement, “It’s a difficult thing, isn’t it? Facing what you have done.”
Out of everyone in that Mountain, Clarke knows that Dante would have understood her actions. He was a person who may have tried to negotiate with the Sky People if Cage had not undermined him. Dante didn’t enjoy bleeding the grounders, but he did it because his people would have died without doing so. He disliked forcing the Sky People to donate their blood and bone marrow even more, but after Cage’s actions, he encouraged it because he knew that peace was completely out of the question. Just like Clarke hated pulling that lever, but she did to save her people.
And so, Clarke remains silent. There aren’t any words to express her sorrow for what happened.
“The man to my left, his name was Harry. He was an engineer in the turbine room, and his wife, Dayna, was a teacher.” Dante stands up and walks to where a child lies beside a group of others. “This was their son, Ethan. His parents were always chasing him, he had a knack for running to places that were out of bounds.”
He lets out a pained chuckle, “We put the entire mountain on lockdown once because he crawled through the vents to the warehouse. No one knew where he was, and we eventually found him sitting between a bunch of picture books he found there. Though his parents were adamant that we shouldn’t reward him for his mischief, I secretly let him keep the books.”
This is worse than death by a thousand cuts.
Clarke didn’t realise that tears had slowly fallen from her eyes until he finished talking, his voice tinged with a profound melancholy.
Clarke always believed that it’s the small quirks and oddities about people that separate them from others. Whether they be endearing or downright annoying, they all make up the person.
Clarke loved getting to know new people on the Ark. She always made sure to make effort with the kids in her classes who were shy or didn’t have anyone to talk to. Her father often told her that no two people are the same, and everyone has something to offer.
He also told her that there’s a reason people are the way they are. Someone isn’t being friendly to you? Surprise them by showing kindness in return. Clarke had many friends on the Ark because of these philosophies that she took to heart. As a result, many opened up to her, and hearing their stories and struggles meant that Clarke became quite intuitive and empathetic, as well as an amazing doctor-in-training. She loved working with children the most, they naturally seemed to gravitate towards her.
And yet, she was never afraid to call people out on their behaviours, especially when they were being downright malicious. After all, the balance between compassion and self-respect is a fine one.
“This girl’s name was Ariana,” He recounts while crouching down and running his hand through jet-black hair.
“She had quite the attitude at only 7 years old. She probably could have given orders to our guards and they would have done what she said without question,” Dante says with a certain fondness in his voice that speaks of a deep love for his people.
He gestures at two fallen women at the table closest to where the children lay. “Her parents died of a radiation breach when she was still a baby. Sara and April adopted her.”
The next few hours went by like this, with Dante telling Clarke about each person whose life she took. While absolutely devastating to hear, Clarke finds an odd comfort in knowing the names of these people. They deserve to be more than a number in Clarke’s mind. From now on, whenever she thinks of the sacrifice she had to make, there were actual people that she could think of.
And yet, she’s barely suppressing her sobs by the time Dante finishes talking about the last person who was lying with a baby cradled to his chest.
What gave me the right to do this to them? What makes 47 of my people more important than 350 of theirs?
“Now that you have names and stories behind my people, you will join them in their fate.” Dante declares, his voice a bitter contrast to the loving tone he had taken on while talking about his people. He was clearly an outstanding leader to his people, getting to know each and every one of them.
I would pull that lever 1,000 times over if it meant that my people were safe. What does that make me?
“What does that mean?” She asks hoarsely, not sure if she even wants to know the answer.
“Goodbye, Clarke.”
And with that, Clarke is on fire. Every inch of her body melting from her skin to her core, the white-hot burn raking through her being. She lets out a piercing scream and falls, her shoulder taking the brunt of her weight. Clarke is helpless to do anything but writhe and thrash as blisters form all over her now dark red skin.
When Clarke jerks awake this time, she scrambles to her feet and sprints as fast as her still throbbing legs allow her. Clarke’s feet pound on the leaves beneath her, the chilly night air shocking her throat and lungs as her breathing becomes faster. Whether it be the burning of her lungs or the sharp pain in her knees, she just needs to feel something physical. Something beyond the emotional torture she just endured.
Clarke wonders how she is supposed to keep living, keep breathing with the horrific images branded in her mind’s eye. Will she ever see anything else again?
Being conscious becomes unbearable once again when a deep hatred for herself leaks into every fibre of her being. She remembers every person who Dante told her about, and she halts in her tracks to hold herself against a tree, nails digging into the rough bark.
“I can’t do this,” Clarke whispers into the dark silence, and it’s a confession, an admission of weakness. Her face scrunches up in pure anguish as she tries to think of a way to make it stop. Clarke’s eyes slowly wander downwards to the gun fastened at her hip, the weight of it suddenly more than she can stand.
Fresh tears stream down her face anew while a trembling hand reaches down to pull it out of its holster.
The gun is deathly cold to the touch, it’s blackness a stark contrast to her pale hand. And Clarke thinks it ironic that she is still allowed to touch an object capable of such destruction after committing a crime so heinous as genocide. Slowly, she presses the barrel under her chin, her heartbeat picking up with a ringing in her ears.
Is this the part where my life flashes before my eyes?
Clarke feels like she is in limbo, balancing on a weak tether between life and death. That period between inhaling and exhaling or the day before the first leaf falls, signifying the end of growth and the beginning of deterioration. Time seems to slow, and she barely hears the safety of her gun being flicked off.
Instead of her life flashing before her eyes, she sees her mother and father, Raven and Bellamy and the pain she might cause them and her people in the wake of her death.
And finally, the tether snaps.
“NO!” Clarke shouts into the darkness, dropping the gun to the ground with a loud thump. She looks down at it and kicks it away from herself, again and again until her toes are bleeding.
“I am not dying like this,” She vows to herself, reasoning that she doesn’t even deserve death as a way out of her pain.
Clarke runs again, in the opposite direction of where her gun now lies. Part of her knows that leaving without it is quite stupid because she’s defenseless without it, but she can’t bring herself to care.
I don’t trust myself with it.
Suddenly, a surprised yelp echoes through the trees when she trips on a root, the momentum from her running causing her to propel forward. The fall doesn’t stop once she hits the ground though, and she realises that she’s tumbling gracelessly down a large hill. Just my luck. Clarke groans as rocks and roots dig into her sides, her body at the sole mercy of gravity.
After rolling to the bottom of the hill, Clarke hisses in pain when a sharp rock slices through her left temple. Blood gushes out of the wound as everything goes hazy, and the last thing she is aware of before passing out is a figure hovering above her, mumbling what seems to be a string of curse words under their breath.