Clarke became aware of shaking.

Her entire body moved with silent tremors and she dug her nails into the ground, ignoring the bite of pain that resonated up her arms. When she lifted them, burnt remains came away and she watched numbly as the wind sifted them through her fingers. Her breathing quickened and Clarke tried to do what she always did, to put herself back together and carry on, until she could spare a few moments to grieve for the dead.

But not this time.

It was as if everything inside her, every action, every reason she had for committing them, every horrible things that her hands had wrought came crashing over her.

Someone reached a hand out to her and she cringed back, holding up her hands as if to ward him off. "Don't touch me, Bellamy," she said, her voice coming out as a gasp. She couldn't be comforted by anyone, wouldn't be. She didn't deserve it.

He crouched down beside her, but Clarke couldn't look at him; she continued to stare at her hands, at the eddies of ash that swirled there. "You didn't know, Clarke," he said in a small voice. "There was nothing that could be done."

"They're dead," She whispered, allowing only that one reality inside, that one undeniable truth no words could soothe.

Bellamy didn't try to sugar coat it. "Yeah," he agreed. "They are. But this isn't Mount Weather, Clarke. And you didn't kill them."

Not directly, no. But couldn't he see the hand she'd played in it? The possibility of this having been avoided if only she'd just stayed away? Let them assume her dead? Because this was the good she brought to them alive.

Clarke stood up, so quickly her head spun.

Bellamy kept his eyes on her, understanding and subtle concern marring his features.

"I'll be right back," she said, and without waiting for a response, began walking towards the woods. Only was it when she was sheltered by them did she let the pieces finally break. Her breathing sawed through her lips and she bent over, splaying her hand on the trunk of a tree. Then came the tears, accompanied by a torrent of guilt that flooded through Clarke until she felt as if she were drowning.

"Why?" She asked no one, anger instantly accompanying the grief. "They didn't...they didn't do anything. They didn't do anything..."

Her rage piqued and she smashed her fist against the tree, bark cutting her knuckles. Clarke did it again, harder, and again, only stopping when her fingers and palms were reduced to a bloody mess and the exhaustion made her sink to the forest floor.

She had tried to be strong for as long as she could; had attempted to separate emotions from actions, but without them, she really was no better than Dante. No different from Cage who'd spliced her own people open. But a part of her understood why. Because emotion and action placed together formed a catalyst. A dangerous thing that once started, could rarely be stopped. It consumed. It burned. And consequently, it would either change the person who held it into something they didn't recognize, or destroy them completely.

******************

Bellamy remained on the sidelines of the ruins, allowing the people to mourn without his intrusion. His wound still throbbed but he'd get something on it soon enough, paying the nag little attention.

A part of him knew it wasn't smart letting Clarke go off into the trees, but she needed the space. This wasn't something he could help her with-had no idea how to, which was something new. Clarke had always been a person who was solidly grounded, in what she believed and the decisions she made. From the start, Bellamy had underestimated her, and realized it only when she'd helped Atom that there was a strength to her he himself didn't possess.

But maybe this time he'd overestimated her. Yesterday, she'd been unorganized, distracted, impulsive, completely uncharacteristic of her. The Clarke he knew was methodical and calculating, waging advantage against weakness in just seconds. He didn't know this Clarke, who after the things she'd endured had made her vulnerable and indecisive.

And if he was going to be honest, that concept jarred him. They'd been a team since the drop ship had first landed on earth. It had been inconvenient and imposing at first, but over time, it had turned into habit. What they decided, they'd done so together. But this...this was something that extended beyond what he had to offer, and he remained where he was, trying to come up with an appropriate timeframe before he'd go after her.

She wasn't gone long, though. Sooner than he expected, Clarke reappeared from the tree, walking towards him with her head lowered.

Another uncharacteristic thing about Clarke.

When she reached him, Bellamy caught sight of her bloodied hands, fisted tightly at her sides.

He wasn't going to say anything, but it slipped out. "Exactly how does that help you, Clarke?" He asked, noting the ribbon of anger woven beneath his words.

She said nothing about it. Instead, she approached his side soundlessly and pulled off the tourniquet around his shoulder. Then she crushed something into her hand and applied a poultice there. Bellamy hissed in a breath at the bite of pain it caused as she pressed it firmly into the wound.

"What is that?" He asked as she redid the tourniquet.

"Clematis flower and comfrey," she answered in a bionic voice. "Clematis eases the pain. Comfrey speeds the healing process."

"When did you learn about plants?"

"When I was here," she answered flatly. She stepped away from him when she was done. "We have to get back," Clarke announced. "Kane needs to know that we're out of time."

Bellamy paused, his brow furrowing in confusion. He narrowed his eyes at her. "Clarke,..."He began slowly, "these people need help."

She looked up at him, finally meeting his gaze and he saw the whites around her irises were bloodshot and swollen. "We can't help them," she deadpanned, repeating his own words back at him. "The Boat People do not accept aid from anyone outside, and I doubt they'll be willing to start with me."

He stared back at her in surprise. "Clarke-"

"Either we leave now, Bellamy, or I go without you," she said, again in that strange voice, both familiar and foreign to him.

He waited for her to take it back or explain further, but she didn't.

After a moment of silence, Clarke just nodded, shifted on her heels, and began walking away.

Bellamy shook his head, feeling somewhat bewildered and he started after her, quickening his pace to catch up. He grabbed her arm and pulled her back, forcing her to look him in the eye. "This isn't you, Clarke," he said roughly.

Clarke looked away, pursing her lips before returning her gaze to him. "Then what is, Bellamy? What am I? Because I don't know anymore."

He struggled for a response and changed tactics, glancing back at the few Boat People pulling their dead from burned homes. "You cant just leave them," he told her.

But Clarke just shook her head. "Why not? I'm doing them a favor by it."

"By leaving them exposed?"

"By getting myself as far away from here as I can!" She bit out, voice turning hard. "I've tried to help, Bellamy. And look where that's gotten everyone. I try and it makes no difference." She stared at him, and Bellamy had the unsettling feeling she wasn't seeing him, but seeing straight through him. "Maybe my mom was right," she said, pulling out of his hold. "Maybe there are no good guys."

**********

The horses had been killed in the gunfire, which added a couple days to the journey back. Clarke took her knife and Bellamy managed to locate a spear and bow to use for hunting, though he was bit out of practice.

The first night they'd set camp,-or not so much a camp as it was a small fire and the dirt floor- neither of them tried to speak to each other and lapsed, for the first time, into an uncomfortable silence. Clarke had laid on the cool ground, staring at the star-studded sky all night.

They started again when dawn broke, and Clarke continued to redress Bellamy's wounds. A few times he'd tried to speak to her, but she'd shut herself down. If they spoke, she didn't want to be reminded of the village and Clarke couldn't afford distraction. She needed movement, and to stay focused, repeating her list over in her head. Get to Mount Weather. Warn Kane. Start planning battle tactics for when the Ice Nation arrived. Anything else beyond that Clarke closed off, blocking it out with walls she'd tediously composed around her.

They came down though when she did manage to sleep, waking from dreams of burning homes and bodies, exchanged images between it and those she'd killed in Mount Weather. She had another nightmare about Dante again, and even one of Cage that jolted her awake hours before the sun broke from the mountains. But there was little solace in waking from them.

Despite that though, Clarke still tried to appear relatively normal. But it was very clear she wasn't fooling Bellamy, who eyed her warily every morning they started off again. Nearly three days Clarke had gone without sleep, two more with a poor quality of it, and it was soon becoming obvious by the blurring of her vision and how she kept tripping over rocks she hadn't managed to see. They were unarmed, though and isolated, with scouts from the Ice Nation undoubtedly nearby. stopping could cost them their lives.

That was enough to keep Clarke moving, even if she was close to collapse.

"We'll camp here for the night," Bellamy announced even though the sun had yet to set, impaling the spear into the rocky ground. They stood close to a babbling stream, the area covered in thick brambles of tree and bush that hopefully be difficult to clearly spot them through.

Clarke shook her head, ignoring the way the world seemed to tilt on its axis. "No, We can't stop."

Bellamy didn't budge. "Clarke, you're help to no one in that condition. Our chances are better if you're rested than if you're not."

"We don't have the time," She insisted.

"We'll make the time."

"Bellamy, the scouts could be-"

"Yeah, they could," he answered passively. "And if they are, they've either decided not to kill us or we're already dead."

He was right, she knew, and didn't so much as cave as her legs suddenly lost their support. She curled up the remaining pieces of her jacket and rested her head on it, too exhausted to argue. "We leave earlier, though," she said.

"If we're not killed before then," he muttered, retrieving a piece of meat carved from a bird he'd caught.

But Clarke was already asleep.

The little girl stood in the shore, kicking water with her feet. Droplets sprung up around her, shimmering like jewels in the sunlight.

Clarke felt a smile tug on her lips and the walls around her disappeared, relief crashing through them as she went to meet the girl. Her hair wove smoothly down her shoulders, a silk curtain cutting across her back. But when Clarke reached the shoreline, the little girl wandered out farther, drifting away from her.

Clarke tried to call out, but her voice was gone and instead, took a step into the glistening pool. But as soon as her foot touched the surface, ice blossomed up, coating the expanse of water in a flaky frost.

Panic gripped around Clarke as she looked back up at the girl, who'd seemed to vanish from sight. Her breath clung to the air and she turned around, searching the huts that lined the shore for her.

But at the sight she found there, Clarke stilled, eyes going wide as she took in the columns of fire consuming the huts, huge tendrils of orange licking up the roofs, reducing it all to ash.

And in the midst of it, stood that little girl, staring back in obvious terror.

Clarke tried to reach her, but it was as if a huge transparent barrier had appeared, keeping her on this side. She slammed her hand against it, shouting, begging, but nothing changed.

She couldn't do anything except watch from this frozen world as the other burned.

********

Clarke lurched forward, her shirt plastered to her back with sweat and she gripped fistfuls of dirt, taking in deep breaths of cold air.

Bellamy shifted in her direction, sitting up slowly when she did. "You all right?" He asked.

Evidently too breathless to speak, Clarke nodded, shaking her head as if she were trying to rid it of something. "Yeah," she assured. "I'm fine."

Maybe Bellamy should've let it go, but he didn't. "Clarke, you need to find some way to stop blaming yourself," he said, gauging her reaction carefully.

He'd never had to be careful around her.

"We've all done bad things," he added.

Clarke wrapped her arms around her knees, fingers still bandaged from the damaged she'd caused them. She took inhaled slowly. "You make that sound like that's supposed to minimize it somehow."

It was Bellamy's turn to shake his head. "No. Bad things shouldn't be justified, they can only be forgiven. But here..." he grappled for the right words. "We were forced into compromising situations where we had to choose between two evils. Choices that shouldn't have been ours to make but they were and we both have to find a way to live with that."

Her eyes skirted away from him before coming back. "How do you do it?"

Belly swallowed his scoff, twisting around to face her more clearly. "There's two sides to every coin, Clarke, and there will always be a second party that can either oppose you or stand with you. And they're the ones that make that choice, even if you do all the right things." He looked at her sternly. "Cage knew that. We may have killed his people, but only because he was willing to sacrifice them."

A line drew between Clarke's brow as she took in his words and Bellamy thought that was it; that she'd turn in on herself again.

But to his surprise, she didn't.

"What are yours like?" She asked.

Bellamy didn't need her to clarify. He knew she was referring to the dreams, but he was still taken off guard that she'd ask. He'd never figured himself as the sharing type, but he'd give it a try, just this once.

"They're usually about Mount Weather," He confessed. "Not just in the control room, but also when I was...trapped there. I'll see all these wires attached to me and it feels so real..." His voice faded away as he recalled the memories, that agonizing feeling of being subjected to whatever torture awaited you.

Before Clarke could use that against herself, he asked on impulse. "You?"

Clarke stared back at him dubiously, allowing a few moments of silence to trickle between them. "Dante makes quite a few appearances," she revealed, her shoulders relaxing slightly as if that information bore a physical weight. "And Cage. What happened in the Ice Nation...sometimes it's them instead." She gave a noncommittal shrug.

Bellamy clenched his jaw, feeling anger swell inside him. "They'll pay for what they've done, Clarke," he promised, speaking of the Ice Nation. "For the lives they took, just as we will."

He looked at her determinedly. "Maybe here, good guys don't exist, but the good in people still do."

Clarke looked at him, her expression somber. "And how do you know when you've lost it?"

Bellamy gazed into her eyes reflected in the moonlight, and didn't look away as he said, "When you stop feeling for those you hurt. The nightmares, the guilt, it's proof that you care, Clarke. And it's when you lose that, that you become like them."

He watched her deliberate over the concept before she offered him the ghost of what used to be a smile. Then she settled back down and he followed suit, using his good arm to prop up his head.

He wasn't sure what provoked him to start humming an old song, as if the melody had come out on its own accord. It was something he used to sing to Octavia, back when she was the only person he'd promised to protect.

Clarke gave him no indication she wanted him to stop and he kept going, letting the tune lull them both into sleep for once free of nightmares.

*****************

When the mouth of Mount Weather came into view, a pit of foreboding settled in Clarke's chest. It worsened the closer they got, until the Philpott Dam appeared before them, now alive with rushing water.

Patrols were stationed by the steel door and they signaled to unlock it, the huge circular piece swinging open. With a final glance cast at each other, they walked inside, the brightness of mod afternoon replaced by cold fluorescent light.

Octavia was the first to appear, throwing her arms around Bellamy and smiling at her brother. But there was something strained in her expression that only worsened as she took in his expression and Clarke's hands.

"What happened?" she asked.

Clarke acted as if she hadn't heard it. "We need to talk to Kane."

As soon as she'd said it he appeared, clad in his usual black gear and eyeing both of them skeptically. His expression turned oblique. "Medical labs," he ordered brusquely. "Now."

"Wait," Octavia intercepted. "Clarke, I really need to talk to you-"

"Later, Octavia," she said.

As Kane turned and began walking down the corridor, with Bellamy and Clarke on his heels. Some waved to them as they passed but Clarke made no move to acknowledge them, walking quickly through the levels until they'd reached the medical labs.

White walls.

White beds.

Abby stood in one of them holding some kind of medication, but put it down as soon as her eyes landed on her daughter. Clarke couldn't look at her as her mom came over and hugged her, an embrace which she could barely bring herself to return. But she stepped out of it quickly, turning back to Kane.

"I take it you failed to form an alliance," he accused.

Clarke spared herself only a breath. "The Ice Nation sent an attack on the Boat People," she said. Her voice dropped a few notes. "Less than a third survived."

Kane just stared at her for a moment, lips pressed into a terse line. "Didn't you say that it would be weeks before they came down?"

Clarke dismissed the twist of guilt that shot through her. "I thought there would be. I found nothing in the Queen's chambers to indicate an attack on the Boat People."

Kane's eyes turned cold, yet burned like lit coals. "You were followed then."

Clarke said nothing. She'd arrived at that conclusion herself days ago.

"I shouldn't have condoned it," he snapped. "It wasn't worth the risk."

"Without numbers, you have to start using strategy to your advantage," Clarke quickly interjected. "Every one they don't have. You could use mines to cut down their Scouts."

"Not if they're watching our every move," he fired back.

"Then use decoys," she proffered. "And the put the real ones somewhere else."

Kane was already processing, taking her suggestions into account. "I'm calling up Matthews. Get Raven and that other kid up here immediately."

For once, Clarke did as he said, leaving him and her mother far behind. Bellamy fell into step beside her, but when they turned the corner, they were met with Octavia, nearly crashing into them.

"Clarke-"

"Octavia," she said, trying to keep her voice even. "I said I'd speak with you later. This is really imp-"

"No," she interrupted, glaring back at her indignantly. "This is important."

Clarke tossed up her hands. "I don't have time to fight you. I need to get Raven." She tried going around Octavia, but the girl whipped out an arm, forcing Clarke back.

"O, now's not the time," Bellamy scolded, but Octavia held her ground. "Oh, now is exactly the time, Big Brother." She pulled back her hand. "Look, I know you've both had a pretty bad day, but I'm hear to tell you that it gets worse. I see that you're both equally in a hurry, but luckily, I only need one of you." Her eyes fell to Clarke.

Bellamy appraised his sister, from her Sky boots to her grounder gear. "What's this about, Octavia?"

She waved him off. "Not you, I promise. But it is about Clarke which is why I need her to come with me now."

Clarke met Octavia's gaze. "This can't wait?"

The younger Blake gave her a tight-lipped smile. "Clarke, I'm not really giving you an option here."

Clarke studied her expression, one she'd seen on her many times. She recognized the finality in it, and nodded. She turned to Bellamy. "Get Matthews and Raven. I'll meet you back in the medical labs."

Suspicion flickered across his features but he nodded and moved on.

Then Octavia was practically dragging Clarke away, down one corridor after the other.

"Where are we going?" Clarke asked, having to walk quickly to keep up with Octavia who discarded her question instantly. "Walk slower, Clarke. It's not like we're in a hurry or anything," she hissed, nearly breaking into a sprint.

Clarke sighed irritability, but quickened her pace, until they'd returned to the steel door, unguarded from the inside. Before Clarke could ask, Octavia opened it, shooting daggers at any questioning glances.

She pulled open the door. "Come on," she said, walking back out into the sun.

"Octavia-"

"Now, Clarke."

One of the patrols told her to wait, but she unleashed a flurry of vicious rhetoric that quickly silenced him. Octavia hurriedly led Clarke past them and towards the trees when Clarke tried again. "Octavia, where are we going?"

Octavia made no move to slow down. "Almost there."

A few yards past the treeline, they were enveloped in woods, the seedy smell replacing the antiseptic one of Mount Weather.

Just when Clarke had had about enough, Octavia stopped so suddenly, it took effort not to ram into her. Clarke's vision roved over the trees, looking for something obvious to explain Octavia's distress. But it wasn't obvious, not at first. Not until a rustle came from the foliage and Indra sitting atop a brown horse emerged.

A small twinge of resentment boiled inside Clarke at the memory of their last encounter, nearly reoccurring in almost in the same place. Clarke didn't feel much contempt to the Woods tribe. She didn't blame them completely for their actions, but she didn't trust them either.

Clarke eyed the woman, brown eyes staring right back.

Seconds passed before they spoke, and Clarke took that as her cue. "What are you doing here, Indra?" she asked, trying to keep her voice as civil as possible.

Octavia refereed. "You need to hear what she has to say, Clarke."

But this wasn't something else she needed to deal with today. "I'm not angry if that's what this is about-"

"This has nothing to do with your emotional trivia, Clarke of the Sky People," Indra snapped. "It is of something much higher in priority." Her voice turned grim. "I come with a message for you."

Clarke glanced once at Octavia, feeling suddenly uncertain, before meeting the grounder's intense gaze once more. "What is it?"

Indra stared back, her eyes boring into Clarke's. "The Commander is dead."