CHAPTER THREE
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SHE PEERED INTO THE GREEN FOLIAGE with a smile, itching to leave and walk amongst the trees. Her fingers brushed over the bark of a tree while she looked on in wonder, just nearly taking the first step into the forest before a voice interrupted her.

"Willow!" Wells called out, her turning around reluctantly and facing him with a now blank expression, her smile having disappeared at his arrival.

"What is it now? You want me to follow some stupid rules? Newsflash, I don't care," she snapped, crossing her arms and raising her brows.

"No, it's Bellamy. We can't go on like this, Will, it's going to destroy us," he pleaded, glancing back at the boy that he spoke of, currently smiling and lounging about with no shirt on.

"It's Willow to you. And I don't see a problem. He's just standing there," Willow remarked, shrugging lightly. His face fell even more when she corrected his use of a nickname, but she ignored it as she attempted to push past him.

"Please! Just because of everything that happened doesn't mean that I stopped caring!" Wells cried earnestly, his eyes begging her to listen to him. She stopped dead in her tracks, but didn't turn around to look at him behind her. That would make things much harder than they needed to be.

"But I did," she responded quietly through gritted teeth. Not another word was uttered from Wells's mouth as she walked away, trying to tell herself that was what he deserved. He had done much worse to her and Clarke.

Most of her fellow delinquents ran about, taking advantage of the fact that they weren't on the Ark, doing whatever the hell they wanted. It made Willow almost swell with pride. She didn't care how many times Wells tried to warn her about Bellamy, if this is what he could create then she was on board.

"Oh sweet sweet liberation!" a loud voice rang out from near a smaller crowd near the still burning fire. The very one that she had lit the night before. The boy who had attempted before her was rubbing at his wrist with a grin and the girl he had been with was getting her own wristband removed.

Willow smirked and caught his eye, causing him and the girl to wander over to where she stood near a tree. "Here we meet again," he commented, gesturing around him as if it was some coincidence that they would ever see each other again.

"So we do," she confirmed.

"I think since you and Bellamy are basically our saviors from those dicks up on the Ark, I owe you a proper thank you. So, thank you. Rhys, by the way," he introduced, holding out his hand rather politely despite his mocking and laid back tone.

"Willow," she replied, shaking his hand in return.

"Oh, we know," the girl who he had brought chimed in with a smirk.

__________

Desmond Callahan stormed into the Earth Monitoring Station quickly, not caring much for who objected and who was in his way.
He had been informed of the plans to send one hundred juvenile criminals to Earth in order to test its survivability, and had even given his vote toward it when they were discussing it in the Council.

Abby had been willing to send her daughter and so he was too. But then he had been informed of the more recent news involving her by Kane just minutes previously and was not accepting it lightly without proof.

"Tell me it's not true, Abby!" he boomed the moment he entered, crossing the room to reach the woman standing in front of a hundred different panels with a hundred different faces on it.

The expression that had settled on her face told him all that he needed to know. When he finally reached the front of the room, he slowed down and could feel his heart drop.

Willow's picture was dark and the red words reading 'TRANSMISSION TERMINATED' were spread across her panel. It didn't seem possible to him that she had already been taken away from him. She was strong, he was completely confident she would survive the ground.

"Tell me it's not true," he whispered, the tears in his eyes not being halted by any sort of denial. Reality was setting in and he felt Abby's hand on his shoulder. He let himself steal a glance at Clarke's panel, which had also gone dark. "I'm sorry, Abby."

She pulled him into a hug and he returned it, feeling her shaking her head slightly. "They could always be taking them off. Most of them are dark. It can't be radiation," she explained, her tone shaky and hoarse like his.

"All we can do is hope."

__________

"That's a terrible idea. Like a really shitty idea. Congrats, Clarke, you just won the suicidal idiot award," she commented from her seat in the dropship, idly staring up at the ceiling.

Clarke and the others had returned a few hours previously, gallant heroes to absolutely no one. They didn't find food, only more people who somehow survived all of the radiation. Which seemed pretty impossible and completely stupid to Willow.

And one of the kids in the group, Jasper, had been speared in the chest by one of the remaining Grounders and taken by them. Clarke wanted to take a search party out for him. That didn't seem like a safe bet to her.

"This isn't the Ark, Will," Clarke sighed, continuing to shuffle around in search of supplies that might help her on the journey.

"You're damn right it isn't! We can live down here and we can't live it up if you're...dying it up out there," she argued, gesturing wildly around toward the door of the ship.

"Dying it up?"

"Listen, I can't be clever all the time," Willow defended, putting her hands up in defense lazily.

The tarp that covered the door to the ship rustled and Wells limped his way in toward the two, looking very much like he was trying his best to cover the injury.

"There you are," he said, looking at Clarke mostly, but glancing at Willow out of the corner of his eye, their argument from earlier still likely on his mind. When she didn't respond, he went on, "When my father said they didn't leave us anything, he really meant it."

Willow simply gave him an unimpressed look and crossed her arms, looking down toward the ground. "You're making friends fast," Clarke commented disapprovingly, her eyes drifting to a cut in his arm. "Keep it covered, it could get infected. Nice pack."

He had a bag slung over his shoulder that Willow knew was no work of the Ark, since they had thrown them down there with nothing at all like Wells had said.

"Yeah, seat belts and insulation. I also packed part of the parachute, figured we could use it to carry out Jasper," he explained, looking slightly proud of himself as he did so.

"And this is where I leave. I don't want in, see you later, Clarke," Willow interjected quickly, pulling herself up and pushing through the tarp at the entrance without waiting for a response from either of them.

The sound of laughs and the sight of a variety of people ranging from content to terrified greeted her on the outside and somehow it felt normal.

Wandering over to the edge of the tree line, she sat down at stared into the trees. Other people were out there, survivors. And for some reason, she didn't feel threatened at that moment.

She let her fingertips brush over the dirt and sighed deeply, closing her eyes for just a blissful moment.

"Hey, Callahan!" a deep voice called out from behind her. She didn't move, she didn't open her eyes. Footsteps stopped beside her and waited expectantly for her response. She did not respond. "I'm leaving with Clarke and the others."

"Thanks for the memo, Pretty Boy. I might have just had a heart attack not knowing," she snapped back, eyes drifting open lazily. Bellamy rolled his eyes.

"I'm saying it wouldn't hurt if you made sure people were still on board with our plan," he told her sharply, looking at her exasperatedly through the dark, thick curls that framed his face.

"I'm a woman of my word," Willow told him, face serious, but with a small smirk pulling at her lips. "I still wanna screw the Ark over. You got it."