Clarke stepped around the man at her feet, blood still soaking into the ground. There was a ringing in her ears but she ignored it, still looking at the body whose own eyes had broken from hers and now stared blindly towards the trees.

"We have to keep moving," she said, her voice sounding distant. Quickly, she made her way over the rough decline and fetched her gun. The cool steel of it bit into her palms and for some reason, she didn't find its presence very comforting.

When she returned, Clarke felt Bellamy's gaze on her, wary and maybe a bit questioning, but none of it leaked into his tone. "Stay behind me," he told her. "Their bodies will be found soon enough."

Clarke nodded and started walking, keeping her eyes to the sides and behind them as they tread hurriedly across the embankment and into the thick cloisters of trees. Above, Clarke couldn't help but steal glimpses of that smoke, the size of it leeching the blueness from the sky. They were getting closer to the camp and though they couldn't yet make out the screams, the ghosts of them clinging to the light breeze haunted her.

Clarke's hand tightened over her gun. She pictured the bodies of those dead Scouts, lying defeated, the unbeatable Nation stripped of a few more of its soldiers. A part of her expected to feel relieved; to feel some trace of satisfaction in that small victory. But those who went looking for pleasure in blood never found it, and that included Clarke.

They moved deftly. Clarke aimed her gun at every sound, every rustle of trees. The sun crept higher overhead, but was soon hidden behind a thin blanket of smog, casting everything a watery yellow. They were just over the crest of another hill, a couple miles from the camp, when a popping noise sounded, shattering the stillness and freezing them in their stance.

Clarke looked back at the rising smoke, the curls of flame she imagined were there. Maybe it was just her imagination, but she thought she caught a flash of orange. "Why haven't they put them out yet?" she said, and she heard the twinge of desperation there. This was what she'd been afraid of; that they wouldn't be prepared. That they wouldn't be organized. That they'd fail to do what needed to be done.

"We have to move faster," she told him, and resumed her trek, now almost a sprint. Bellamy didn't argue and he kept ahead of her, watching the trees. Clarke expected more Scouts to appear. For gunshots to break out around them, but no Scouts replaced the three dead ones and she kept going, until the burnt aroma of smoke started to make her eyes water and she could catch the small spurt of flames, licking at one of the treetops.

Her heart sunk in her chest and she almost moved around Bellamy, to hurry up and get there. Already shouts were consuming them, until Clarke couldn't remember when they hadn't been there, and the flames grew more visible between the trees. For just a moment, Clarke marveled at it, at the irony that a Nation built beneath the ice would rely so heavily on fire.

"Clarke, your left!" Bellamy shouted and Clarke drew her gun in that direction, just as a figure clothed in black descended. She fired a round and caught the man in the leg, sending him kneeling to the floor. She turned back to Bellamy, glimpsing the two, three, men in heavy cloaks, waving like an omen of death. One of the three held their own firearm and Clarke went for him first. At least she knew she'd been right; the Ice Nation had stashed more guns somewhere else.

A bullet whizzes by her head and Clarke flinched back, sending more of her own. There was a bitten cry but Bellamy finished him, with one bullet punched through the man's chest.

"We have to go around!" Bellamy shouted at her and she gave him a stiff nod. She started off to the left, eyes roving over the trees as she moved through them, clutching the gun with white knuckles. From this distance, she glimpsed the statue ahead, glaring down at the ground around its foundation.

She made towards it, no longer in a hurried gait, but an all-out run. Her vision blurred as she tried to keep everything in sight. The trees, the camp, the forest floor. In front of her, Bellamy suddenly stopped, and Clarke secured her the butt of her gun on her shoulder, ready.

He glanced back to her and Clarke caught a sadness there, but it was vague beneath the hardness in his eyes. Fear settled like a stone in her gut as she came up beside him, and paused in front of the broken boy at their feet.

Koma.

Inyo crouched beside him, hand on the young man's chest, fingers stained red. Clarke could tell he'd stopped trying to staunch the bleeding and she could see why. Four patches of crimson decorated Koma's chest. One for each bullet. At best, he'd died by the first one-strait to the heart. A swift death. At worst, he'd suffered internal bleeding, and drowned in his own blood.

"I'd promised his mother that I would look out for him," Inyo murmured, his voice devoid of emotion. "Yu gonplei ste odon," he whispered, and lifted his hand to Koma's eyes, staring up at the grey-stained sky. He shut his lids.

Clarke's grip tightened on her gun. She'd anticipated something like this to happen. It was war. People died. People that deserved to live. Would it have turned out different if Clarke hadn't made him go?

"How old was he?" she asked Inyo.

The Grounder took up his gun again. He gave her a hard look, but it seemed to have been there already. "Sixteen," he breathed.

Clarke gave it a moment to sink in. Then she was moving again, towards Tondc. They were losing ground fast. Their hold on this war was slipping through their slick, red fingers. If they lost today, that was it. She couldn't surrender and draw everyone to Mount Weather. It wouldn't be a haven. It would become a prison, and they'd turn to sheep, in line for the slaughter.

An explosion erupted, and the ground shook beneath her, nearly tossing Clarke sideways. She kept steady though, until she stood before the doors. Clarke looked back to the treeline, as if their Ice Queen would just appear there; she willed her to, but there was nothing, just the sound of bullets and explosives, just the feel of the earth rocking under them, lulling this world to sleep.

"Clarke!"

The call was slight over the cacophony of noise, but Clarke heard it the second time, eyes snapping to the source of it. Relief flooded her and she could feel it from Bellamy too, as Octavia ran over to them. A Scout materialized before her but Octavia moved quickly, driving a blade into his shoulder as Bellamy fired a single bullet. The Scout stood for an extra beat but then bent over and hit the ground in a lifeless heap.

"Did you find her?" Clarke asked before Octavia had even reached them. She needed to know. She needed to find their leader and end this before Tondc went up in flames.

But Octavia shook her head. A smear of blood caked her left cheek and she wiped at it with her arm. "Lincoln and I split up. I don't know where he is. But if he found her, I'm thinking this would've stopped by now."

Clarke bit out a curse. "How many dead?" How many more until this goes from surrender to genocide?

"The bombs bought us some time," Octavia said. "But it's running out." Her eyes suddenly turned somber. "It doesn't matter how much we prepared, Clarke. The Ice Nation is twice the size of Tondc. Twice the man power. We never really had a shot."

Clarke knew this. Even with the assistance of Mount Weather, bombs and technology, and guns, the Ice Nation had the advantage of mass. Of more soldiers skilled in combat than the Grounders.

Another bomb exploded, and a ripple shuddered through the ground again.

"She's here somewhere," Clarke hissed. "She wouldn't stay in the Ice Nation after their armory was blown. She's vulnerable there. Octavia," she turned to her. "Check the bodies. Their faces. I doubt she'd put herself in the middle of this, but I want to make sure."

"And if we don't find her, we die," Octavia said. It wasn't a question.

Clarke looked at the fire, leaping over the doors. She felt the heat of it on her face. "Some of us will die. The rest will be used as guidelines, to help them understand the tech. They'll be tortured for it, until they've lost their usefulness and death becomes a mercy."

A Scout appeared to their right, but Bellamy sent a round of bullets hurdling towards him. They buried themselves inside him and the Scout collapsed.

"Lincoln and I caught one," Octavia said. "Tried to get information out but they offed themselves before we could."

"Threats won't work," Clarke replied curtly. "Torture won't work." Nothing worked. Nothing was working. The people she'd sworn to protect were dying. Her people. Anger pulsed through her, mingling with desperation. It ran inside her as hot as the flames still stinging her cheeks. No, there had to be a way because no one was unbreakable. No one was impervious to pain. It couldn't be denied, and Clarke looked back around her.

She moved away from Octavia, keeping her gun aloft, as she strayed from the doors. One yard. Two yards. Three.

Something tripped her and Clarke lost her footing. She snatched up her gun and swung it around. It connected with something, and the breath went out of him. She shoved, but hands were suddenly on her. The brilliant spark of pain erupted over her shoulder blade, and Clarke hissed in a breath, and the hands tightened on her. She twisted around, meeting empty grey eyes.

A moment later, the Scout was being dragged off her and Bellamy pushed the barrel of his gun into the man's neck.

"Wait!" Clarke said, pulling herself to her feet. She looked at the Ice Scout, his gaze cold and murderous. "I want him alive."

"I'd like to see him dead," Bellamy replied, but he lowered his weapon and grabbed the man's hands, twisting them painfully behind his back. The man didn't protest. He seemed deadly calm, unconcerned and unafraid.

With his hands secured, Octavia helped so Bellamy could grab the man's mask and pull it down. It was strange to Clarke, to see Ice Scouts without their masks. She'd seen only one other, locked in the torture chamber of their nation. For some reason, he'd wanted her to see his face. For some reason, she'd been surprised that he'd had one.

Bellamy's free hand went around the Scout's jaw, prying it open. "Any cyanide pills on you?" he asked, his tone mocking. "Because you won't get a chance to use it."

Clarke took a step closer and raised her gun to the man's knee. She fired.

The Scout barked out a muffled cry of pain, but he endured it, as she knew he would. It was just a flesh wound; she couldn't have him running away. Clarke caught Bellamy's eyes and he seemed to understand. She took another step forward.

Clarke wasn't a proponent of torture. She repelled against the idea, the reminder of torturing Lincoln branded vividly into her memory. But this wasn't a potential ally. This wasn't her friend. This was a man who would never become either. But then Clarke had an idea; there were worst things than torture. And that was the thought of torture. The mind could conjure impossible amounts of pain. Could capture the picture of it without experience, without anything to go by. The idea painted itself.

Another explosion sounded, but Clarke paid it no mind and took a step forward until she was right before the Ice Scout. Yes, she was angry. She was burning on the inside out with it. But above that was desperation and the desire to keep her people, both Sky and Grounder, breathing.

"Clarke," Octavia cautioned. "What are you-?"

The sound of her unsheathing her small blade was her answer. Clarke lifted it to the man's face, the glinting tip of it caressing his cheek. He seemed unfazed by it, completely and utterly empathetic towards its presence.

"I know you've undergone torture," Clarke said, her words sharp and tethered together by a thinly-veiled threat. "I know you've had your fair share of pain at the hands of your leader. I don't doubt you know your poisons or how well you can endure a weapon laced with every kind of it." She took a step closer until her eyes burned into the Ice Scout's, as dull and metallic as wet stone. "But you were exposed only to your methods. We have our own and unlike your people who don't always know where they're cutting, I do. I know how to make you bleed out quickly, with just a single cut. Or how to do so slowly, drop by drop. I know how to incapacitate you; to paralyze you. To stun you with two thousand volts of electricity until you boil on the inside."

She lowered the tip of her blade to the black cloth and a piece of it tore through. "But there are also older techniques. Like the one implemented ninety seven years ago. Do you know what it was called? Lethal injection. They'd begin with anesthetic and then a drug that immobilizes you. To the point you cannot even speak. Your muscles lock up and the only thing you can do is wait for the last drug; potassium chloride. It runs through your blood, to the heart, and stops it."

Clarke's gaze bored into his as she continued, her voice falling flat and cold. "And you want to know the worst part?" she asked. "If you're in pain, if the anesthetic didn't work, if it wasn't used at all, no one would know. No one but yourself, the only person who can't manage the words. You are literally kept, trapped inside your own body, waiting for death." She brought the blade back up to his pale skin. "So you might fear what your Queen can do to you if you make it back. But you have greater reason to fear if you don't."

The Scout stared back at her, and she could feel Bellamy's and Octavia's gaze on her, too, but she didn't look away. They were out of options, out of choices, and though she didn't want to go through with her threats, didn't want to be the one to deliver it however bad and tainted this man's soul was, he was still a man. He was still human.

"I am loyal to my Queen," the Scout said, his tone low and guttural. "And like her, you will not spare me."

Anger shuddered through Clarke, but she kept her voice steady. "I am not like your people," she said coldly. "I do not kill in cold blood. I do not slaughter a village in the middle of the night. I do not desecrate hundreds just because I see them as a threat or just because I see something of theirs I want for myself. You've made the mistake of assuming everyone is like you. And maybe I am, in a way. I have blood on my hands, but it's a burden to me. Not an honor. And that's all you have, isn't it?"

"I am fighting for my people's lives," she continued. "For families, for children, for tomorrow, but what do you fight for? Recognition? Power? And after that? Who do you share it with? What do you do with it? What's the point?What's the point in gaining the entire world if it costs you your soul in the end?"

The Ice Scout smirked but Clarke felt the quickening of his heartbeat, pounding beneath his armor. "Your words have no impact. I'd rather die by your methods than live with the disgrace of treason."

"Clarke," Bellamy said, and she heard the warning there, of the fire, of their time, dwindling down.

She didn't let the pressure sound in her voice. "Your people may have survived all these years on the ground," she said, leaning forward until the black cloth ruffled against her arm. "But mine came from up there," Clarke gestured with her eyes above. "And we have knowledge long lost to you. If you want power or recognition, you won't have it for long. Every empire before you has fallen. Every ruler has watched something of theirs burn. And you're no exception. You've built your empire on the sand, no morals, no purpose, and it will fall."

The Scout smiled, wicked and gruesome. "You underestimate my Queen," he said, almost gleefully. "You will look everywhere except the right place. She is in your blindspot."

Clarke dug the blade deeper until a bead of red bubbled to the surface. She was about to say something else, to try anything, but then she paused, and narrowed her eyes. Suddenly she stood before a different Ice Scout, blade replaced by a longer one, soon to be coated in blood.

She hides among her own people, Clarke's words echoed back to her. She forces them to fight her battles alone.

You will look everywhere except the right place.

Clarke's eyes rose to the doors of Tondc.

She is in your blindspot.

Her body stilled. Her heart hitched up, climbing into her throat and she stepped away from the Scout. "She's in the camp," Clarke breathed.

Bellamy's eyes met hers. "She's what?"

"The Ice Queen," she said. "Your Queen, is in Tondc."

She looked back at the Scout to see a glimmer of something. Fear? Trepidation? She saw nothing, but she knew. Clarke took back her gun and with the hilt of it, slammed it down on the Ice Scout's head. There was a crunch and he slouched down. He wasn't dead. Not yet.

Then Clarke was running, towards the entrance to Tondc, the explosions, the fires, still dancing beyond the doors. Now they were open, and she slid through with Octavia and Bellamy at her heels. Inside, it was as bad as she'd been led to believe; Tondc was alive in flames. They licked up at the stone houses, sprang across the ground. People littered the area around them, the dying, the dead. Dark stains of scarlet lay dribbled around them, like spilled paint.

She gazed around, through the thick smoke to the running Warriors. More bullets sounded. More men dropped. More arrows flew upwards and struck the ground nearby.

"Look for a mark!" Clarke told them. "Something noticeable. They wouldn't risk accidentally killing her."

They started moving through the camp, firing back at the Scouts that had managed to wheedle their way inside. Now they began to break through them, a mass of dark cloth trickling through the gaping doors like a black river. Like poison.

Clarke's eyes roved over the camp frantically. She caught the sight of a young girl, a child, draped across the ground. Her mother must have kept her from going to Mount Weather; assumed this safer. And now the child was dead.

Clarke kept moving, gazing into the face of every Grounder. Warrior and civilian alike. Man and woman. She looked to the left, where the safe house was and made for it. The building was on fire, but it was small and sputtering. She hurried to it, stopping as another bomb blew, as another grenade tossed dirt over her, until she was at its doors. It was locked from the outside and Clarke shot at it. Once, twice. Nothing.

A hand went to her arm. "Watch out," Bellamy told her, and she took a step back as he raised the hilt of his weapon. It came down with a loud snap, and the lock broke from the door. He kicked it open, aiming his gun forward.

They were met with shouts, with the blinking eyes of injured Grounders and older members that had refused to seek sanctuary at Mount Weather. But Clarke was already searching. Some raised blades, until they saw their faces and relaxed some. Clarke looked into every set of eyes. Every pained expression. Then her attention landed on the dug out, a small tunnel leading out as an emergency exit.

"I'm going around," she told Bellamy, moving out of the entryway and behind the outside of the safe house. An explosion came closer, just over the wall, and she felt the heat of it nip at her face. But Clarke didn't slow down and she made it to the dug out, opening in an isolated corner of the camp, hidden by brush.

There was no one. No trace of someone coming through. Clarke turned in a circle. Blood roared in her ears and her entire body was shaking but she looked carefully.A hunter waiting for it's prey.

And stopped.

Passing beyond one of the houses, moving with caution, was someone clothed in women's garments. Grounder garments. But it was the red cuff around her left sleeve that caught Clarke's gaze, sewn into the fabric around the border. She knew it. From her time spent in the Ice Nation.

The mark. The Queen.

Clarke started walking. Fast. And it was like a magnetic pull that suddenly had the woman peering back, over her shoulder, for just a moment. Clarke met her eyes and it was like she returned to that chamber, glimpsing a pair of irises so black that the flame from the torches seemed to dance in the void of empty sockets.

I will find your Queen. And when I do, I'll kill her.