CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
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     "WELCOME, SKAIKRU," Lexa greeted, nodding at the guards that poured into the tent. Their people had finally joined them after the Grounder army had been mobilized. Miller's father and Monroe were the first to enter, Clarke nodding with a friendly smile at the latter.

     Monroe looked around the tent in awe, almost not recognizing who she was looking at when her eyes landed on Clarke and Taylor.

     "Package from Raven," Sergeant Miller explained, handing a bomb to Clarke. "Hydrazine. She said it should do the job."

     Their only option was to blow the doors once the power was cut. "Good," Clarke praised, nodding at him thoughtfully.

     "Your mother wanted to be here too," Sergeant Miller assured.

     "I know. But the wounded in Tondc need her more," Clarke told him. He nodded and stepped away back into the group of guards.
Before them was a table with a map of the area and several markers that represented their army's positions.

      "Field commanders," Lexa addressed, looking at everyone who was circled around the table. "Today is the day we get our people back. The enemy thinks it's safe behind its doors. It's not. When it realizes that, it will fight back. Hard. We need to be ready."

     She looked at Clarke after she finished, who turned her gaze to them in turn confidently. Taylor felt the eyes of everyone on all of them, shifting next to Lincoln.

     "This is a rescue mission. We are not here to wipe them out," Clarke affirmed, glancing at Taylor with a nod. Taylor gave her a appreciative look. "There are people inside that mountain that have helped us, children that have nothing to do with this war. We kill their soldiers, their leadership, if we have to. But we are there to rescue our people. Is that clear?"

     There was a murmur of agreement among those in the tent and Clarke nodded.

     "Then let's begin," she stated, moving to look at the model of the mountain. "There are four teams. Two of them at the dam and in the mine are in position already. The third, inside the mountain, is freeing the Grounder prisoners as we speak. It is our job, as the fourth team, to keep the eyes of the enemy off of them for as long as possible. To do that, we have to be in position here."

     Clarke had paced around the table fully and put her hand on the door to the mountain on the model.

     "At the main door. With our entire army. The Mountain Men believe the door can't be opened from the outside," she explained. "So they leave it unguarded. Only it can be. And thanks to our source on the inside, now we know how. According to Maya, the electromagnetic locking system has one flaw. When the power goes out, it disengages. And that's where Raven's team comes in. The Mountain's electricity is generated at Philpott Dam. By now, they've taken the turbine room. It's their job to blow the power. Once they do, we blow the lock."

     Clarke paused and glanced around, making sure that everyone was listening intently.

     "There is a catch. There's a backup generator inside the mountain. If the lock is still functioning when that backup generator kicks in, we'll never get that door open," she revealed gravely. "We'll never get our people back."

     "How much time do we have?" Sergeant Miller asked nervously. "Until the backup power kicks in?"

    "One minute," Clarke answered, not giving exactly a desired response. "That's the window."

     "Small window. Why don't we just take out the backup generator too? Bellamy's inside, why not have him do it?" he suggested, eyes flitting to the diagram of the mountain.

     "Leaving them without power for that long would kill them all. And, as I said, that's not the mission," Clarke reiterated before her eyes went distant. "And besides, we lost contact with Bellamy."

     Taylor's stomach lurched. "What? We did?" Monroe questioned, shocked. Taylor nodded after her question. "When?"

     "After he took out the acid fog," Clarke said simply, evidently trying to push her feeling on the matter deep down.

     When Taylor heard the news, it had only made her more determined to get into the mountain.

     "Bellamy's a warrior, he'll be fine," Lexa assured, Taylor glancing over at her with a mix of shock and appreciation.

     "As the Commander said, once the door is open, the shooting will start," Clarke carried on with her detailed run through of the plan. "And they'll throw everything they have at us. But that's what we want. We want them looking at us. Because while we're fighting at the front door, Indra's team will be escorting the prisoners out the back. Right through the rear tunnels."

     Clarke's hand landed on the spot where the mines came out of the mountain, Taylor thinking back to when she was drawing it out for Raven. Octavia was on that team, which gave her stomach a slight jolt as well.

     But she knew she couldn't be distracted from the task at hand.

     "Once all our people are free, they'll sound the retreat. We'll be back home before Mount Weather even knows they're gone. And that's it, that's the plan," Clarke finished finally, stepping aside to let Lexa take the reins once more.

     "The mountain has cast a shadow over these woods for too long. They've hunted us, controlled us, turned us into monsters," Lexa spoke with confidence. At the last part Taylor could see Lincoln shift beside her. But the effect of Lexa's words on the room was clear. "That ends today. Thanks to our alliance with the Sky People, the mountain will fall. As Clarke said, we spare the innocent. As for the guilty...jus drein jus daun."

     All of the Grounders began to chant with Lexa. Even Clarke joined in, but soon enough all of them were chanting except for Taylor and Lincoln.

     And that was the same sound that soon echoed at the base of the mountain.

__________

     Mount Weather was looming over her, a threat over her head now that she had returned. They had been standing in front of the doors nearly all day, waiting for the power to get shut down.

     As she stared at the concrete doors, all Taylor could see was the kind of suffering her friends were going through inside. The faces of her friends who might have been dead.

     "It's taking too long," Clarke pointed out, torchlight illuminating her worried features.

     "It takes as long as it takes," Lexa replied simply, not taking her eyes off the door. She had learned a lot more patience in leadership than Clarke ever had. "What do we do when it's over?"

     Taylor stopped listening, because Clarke had a bond with Lexa that she felt strange intruding upon. She could see it sometimes when they were around each other.

     It was almost excruciating to be so close, knowing that everyone was in there. It was almost over. Almost.

     The piercing sound of gunfire echoed through the night air, everyone snapping their gazes to where the sound came from.

     "It's coming from the dam," Lincoln said as he approached, looking up at the sky next to Clarke and Taylor.

     "They know we're going for the power," Clarke realized warily.

     "They know we're going for the door," Lexa corrected, suddenly in a defensive stance.

     "Raven and Chandler will get it done," Monroe assured from beside Sergeant Miller. "They're one of us."

     "We've come this far," Taylor agreed, nodding at Clarke.

     "As soon as those lights go on, we can blow the door," Sergeant Miller informed.

      "We'll do the rest," Lincoln said, immediately after he had shouted something in his language at the army behind him.

     Clarke looked down at the detonator in her hand and shifted it around nervously. In preparation, everyone gathered behind a nearby cover of rock as to not be too close when the door blew.

     The lights on the door flickered and Sergeant Miller started the countdown. "One minute starting now."

     Clarke held up the detonator to Lexa and said, "To those we've lost."

     "And to those we'll soon find," Lexa finished, grabbing Clarke's hand in her own as they pressed the button together. The detonator beeped several times, nothing at the door changing.

     "What's happening?" Taylor demanded hurriedly, looking down at the detonator that still appeared to be working fine.

     "What's wrong, why isn't it working?" Lexa followed up when no one responded to Taylor's question.

      "They're jamming us," Clarke realized, grabbing the detonator for herself and rushing in the direction of the doors. "We need to get closer!"

     Her path was cut short by a barrage of gunshots coming from the other side of their cover. Everyone ducked down and Lincoln grabbed Clarke to pull her into cover. Lexa ordered her soldiers to go take care of it immediately.

     "If I can get there, I can trigger it manually," Sergeant Miller told Clarke over the loud cracks of the guns.

      "You can't get there!" Clarke denied, Taylor feeling the seconds tick away, their window shortening exponentially.

     "For Nate I have to try!" he argued. Lexa wasted no time in ordering her soldiers with shields to assist him. Or that's what Taylor assumed when they went into formation and started leading him to to the door.

      "Clarke, if this doesn't work..." Taylor started as they moved off at a slow pace, knowing they had nothing if this didn't work.

      "It has to! Thirty seconds!" she announced, watching them approach the door anxiously.
The Grounders that held the shields began to fall to the gunfire, one by one. Until nothing but a pile of bodies remained where they stood.

     "We'll find another way in," Lexa affirmed as Clarke acquired a distant look.

     "What is our other way in? We've been planning for weeks and this was all we could come up with!" Taylor pointed out, Lexa still steeling herself for the battle.

      "There is no other way, you know that!" Clarke agreed, gunfire still ravaging their ears.

     "We don't need one," Lincoln suddenly alerted, lighting one of his arrows on fire through a nearby torch.

     "Ten seconds!" Clarke counted down, looking over at the man desperately.

     "Lincoln, what are you doing?" Taylor asked, eyes darting from door, to torch, to arrow, to Lincoln.

     He stood up and aimed his arrow for a few moments as Clarke counted down. Lincoln let the arrow fly loose and the part they had carved out for the comb erupted in fire.

      "It worked," Clarke let out, a few heavily relieved breaths accompanying her words.

      "We need to get to that ridge and take out the shooters," Lexa stated, stopping Lincoln in his tracks. "You stay with Clarke and Taylor and when the shooting stops you get that door open."

     He nodded and Lexa rushed over to take care of the shooting immediately after she finished.

     Not long after she left, the shooting ceased. Lincoln slowly rose to a stand, Clarke cautioning him not to.

      "Lexa did it," he announced, looking up at the ridge. Not a single shot left a gun once he revealed himself.

     "We need to get that door open, now," Taylor ordered, gesturing to the door.

      "Clarke, look," Monroe alerted, pouring to one of the shields abandoned on the ground when the Grounders got shot down. It shifted, and a ground emitted from behind it.

      "Make sure he's okay," Clarke told Monroe when Sergeant Miller revealed himself. Taylor followed her out to the open area where she stood with Lincoln. Clarke looked at him with the utmost seriousness. "They'll be waiting just inside the door."

     "Good," Lincoln replied, shouting something to the Grounders behind him. They followed him and the ropes that they would attach to the door to rig it to open when they pulled were out and readied.

     "Train your fire on the door!" Clarke shouted to the immediate army. Lincoln's group was in position to pull, guns and bows pointed at the door.

     "We're going to do this, Clarke. It's going to work," Taylor assured her and Clarke nodded at her.

     A loud metallic creak signaled that the door was opening, the cheers of the army echoing as they saw it crack open.

     But a sudden shout stopped all of that immediately and Lexa was walking down from the ridge with Emerson at her side. Dria smirked from her other side.

     Clarke and Taylor looked at each other, confused, before meeting them in front of the doors.

     "What is this?" Clarke demanded, eyes shifting between the two.

     Grounder prisoners were stumbling out of the mountain into the cold air with blankets around their shoulders, finally free.

     "They're surrendering," Clarke tried answering herself, looking at Lexa intently.

     "Not quite," Emerson said, looking back at the prisoners and then Clarke and Taylor. Taylor watched as not one of their people exited through the doors as the Grounders poured out.

     "You used us," she accused quietly, while Clarke stared at Lexa with heartbreaking betrayal.

     "What did you do?" Clarke whispered.

     "What you would have done," Lexa replied simply, her face blank and her voice monotone. "Saved my people."

     "Where are my people?" Clarke asked through gritted teeth.

      "I think we know exactly where they are, Clarke," Taylor snapped, giving Lexa a hard, unforgiving glance.

     "I'm sorry, Clarke," Lexa apologized, everything about her demeanor suggesting she wasn't all that sorry at all. "They weren't part of the deal."

      Lexa cut off bounds that restrained Emerson and he told her, "You made the right choice, Commander."

      "No — no, we had a plan. We're the only reason you're here," Taylor objected, unable to comprehend what was transpiring in front of her.

      Emerson stalked off for the entrance while Taylor said this, flippant and pleased about the events that had occurred.

     Clarke had tears in her eyes now and Lincoln walked up, looking between her and the Grounders exiting the mountain.

     "What is this?" he questioned.

     "Your Commander's made a deal," Clarke answered, not taking her eyes off of Lexa.

     "And what about the prisoners from the Ark?"

     "Not part of it," Taylor said, stepping back from Lexa slightly as she shook her head.

     "They'll all be killed," Clarke realized in horror. "But you don't care about that, do you?"

     "I do care, Clarke. But I made this choice with my head and not my heart," Lexa defended.

     "Up until ten minutes ago your head was telling you to go through with our plan that was working," Taylor hissed.

     "The duty to protect my people comes first," Lexa told her in the same tone, an angry edge to her voice now. "I hope you realize that, Taylor."

     "Please don't do this," Clarke begged.

     "I'm sorry, Clarke," Lexa repeated.

     "Commander, not like this, let us fight," Lincoln intervened, taking a step closer in earnest.

     "No, the deal is done," Lexa rejected as the sound of the door closing echoed in their ears. A horn blowing followed soon after, the retreat sounded.

      A pit grew in Taylor's stomach as she watched thousands turn their back on the mountain.

     "You too," Lexa ordered, looking at Lincoln. "All our people withdraw, those were the terms."

      "Please, they'll be slaughtered, let me help them," Lincoln attempted to convince, Lexa's expression not changing in the slightest.

     Taylor was dazed, even more so when a group of soldiers started to beat on Lincoln, restraining him by force. They weren't going to let him help, not in his wildest dreams.

     "May we meet again," Lexa told Clarke quietly, turning around to march back the way they came.

     Taylor turned to face the mountain as everyone around them dispersed. Even their own people began to see it was a hopeless feat.

     "Clarke, Taylor, let's go. We'll come back with reinforcements," Sergeant Miller said, Taylor still not grasping that everyone was giving up.

     "Guys, come on," Monroe spoke louder, echoing his statement. Clarke turned around to face her, expression haunted. "It's over. I'm sorry."

     "I'm not leaving them," Taylor whispered as Monroe and Sergeant Miller disappeared into the tree line. Clarke turned around and faced the mountain again, making no move to follow the others.

     "It can't be over."