Chapter 1: Red is All Around

The dead lay around like scattered broken, blushing China dolls. Limbs bent awkwardly, torsos slumped gracelessly across the patterned china and stained tablecloths. Red. All red. A trickle. A stream. A river of red winding its way lazily across the pocked concrete. A speckled soccer ball rolled slowly as the slim hand fell from it with a final thump. It rolled and bumped to a halt at Clarke's feet.

She shuddered but kept her eyes open, making herself stare at the ball and then follow the rusty path back to its owner. She had done this. This. This was on her. All of this burning death and broken souls. She stared at the slim, paled red hand. The perfectly trimmed little fingernails, the stark reddened flesh burned away. It looked like meat, and she felt the bile roll in her throat. She fought it back down. Not now. Not here. There was too much still left to do. The living were still hungry.

She made her way outside, walking across the torn earth. It would heal. The grass would grow back, and the birds would break their silence again. Yes, it would heal. She breathed deeply choking on the humid air, as she pretended that she hadn't just left a tomb, a tomb she had created.

The mountain was gone, in its place was a lonely crypt cradling the scattered, broken dead. No cemetery for the dead, no beautiful granite to mark the final resting places, like she had read in the books from before the war. Burying the dead had been civilized before the war, or so she thought; but now…now there was no peace, no polished wooden boxes to hold their bones, just an abandoned gaping hole in a shattered mountain.

"Close it. Close the door. It is time to go," she ordered her people. And so they did. And so they left.

They returned to the Ark, a bedraggled group, silent and wounded, bloodied and angry. She stood there watching the last of her 47 hobble through the gates. She hesitated and looked at Bellamy, her friend, her general, her comrade in arms who helped pull the lever. She couldn't bear it, bear the kindness in his dark eyes as he offered her forgiveness. Forgiveness that was not his to give. And so she turned away, shouldering the burden of her sins and the quiet anguish that she dared not utter.

She walked, and then she walked some more clutching her gun. Her last link to her people, to her life, to her sins. She kept walking, ignoring the blisters that formed and broke on her feet. She stumbled across roots and against trees, pushing forward into the night, until at last she dropped in a graceless heap, too tired to care if wild animals found her. It would be a blessing really, a final benediction, but survival instincts could not be denied.

Eventually she dragged herself to her feet, tucking her gun in the back of her ragged pants. She gathered dried moss and leaves, small sticks. She pulled the flint and steel from her pocket, a gift from Lexa. She tried to ignore how her stomach turned at the thought of the Trikru Commander. She struck them together. Once. Twice, willing a spark to flash into the tinder. She wasn't sure why she cared so much at this point, but she wanted that spark; needed that spark. Finally, it caught. The tinder crinkled and smoked and burst into a small flame. She knelt down and blew gently on it, slowly feeding the fire with sticks.

She looked at the flint and steel in her hand, and then pulled her arm back slightly as if to throw them into the woods, to rid herself of the gift of survival Lexa had given her, to empty herself of the lessons Lexa had taught her. Her fingers tightened and her breath caught. She choked back a sob. She couldn't. She couldn't bring herself to throw the pieces, she still needed that tether to Lexa, even after what the Commander had done, and so she gently tucked them back into her pocket and sat cross-legged in front of her fire.

She poked at the fire with a stick, staring at the glowing embers. Orange. Orangish Red. No red. Red like blood. She choked back a sob as she remembered the slim, pale hand edged in weeping red. She wanted to forget. Couldn't forget. Couldn't afford to forget. This would be her burden. Her penance, consumed by the faces of the dead, their bleeding eyes and ruptured skin. She was drowning in blood. Grounder blood. Finn's blood. Mountain man blood. Children's blood. There would be no rest. No respite. She felt the first tears dribble their way down her face, and she hunched forward toward the hazy embers glowing and swirling, and she imagined she heard them. Crying out for solace. For justice. The dead were hungry.

Morning came, the sun sluggishly peeking over the horizon casting a sickly glow across the tops of the trees. The blonde stirred quietly in her nest of dirt and leaves. She had finally closed her eyes when the stars had started to fade, but sleep had not ensnared her in its slumber. She sat up, ignoring the twigs caught in her hair as she brushed it out of her face. She sighed as she wiped her hands together in a vain attempt at removing some of the dirt.

She hesitated as she looked at the rusted brown edging her fingernails. She turned her hands over, gazing dispassionately at the dark encrusted whorls of her fingers. She spit in her hands and rubbed them together, but it did little to remove the dark stains imbedded into her skin. She sighed and for a brief moment thought she could feel the weight of the stains sinking into her skin, clawing through the sinew of her muscles and settling in her bones like a cancer.

She growled under her breath and heaved herself to her feet, kicking out the smoking embers of the fire, ruthlessly stomping the last flames out. This she could do at least, make sure she didn't leave a fire to burn down the forest. She had done enough damage here to the land, to its people, to her people.

No, not her people. No longer her people. She had sacrificed everything. Her heart, her soul, and hundreds of people all on the altar of survival. Survival of the fittest. The desperate, selfish desire to survive at all costs. Yes, was she really any different than Dante or Cage, who fought with grounder blood slugging through their veins? Was she any different than the Commander, who had sacrificed Clarke and the rest of the Sky People in order to bring peace to her people, in order for no more Trikru blood to stain the ground? No. She wasn't the good guy. Maybe it was true, maybe there weren't any good guys left. Maybe there had never been any good guys.

She turned away from the cooling ash and looked around her, turning slowly, listening to the silence. Silence. Where were the birds? She couldn't even hear the whispers of the wind dancing through the trees. Everything was still as if holding its breath, born down by the weight of what it had witnessed.

She closed her eyes and threw her arms out wide and slowly spun in place with her head tilted back in the flickering sunlight that cut through the dark, twisted trees. She spun once, twice, three times, until she felt dizzy and then she stopped. Her stomach roiled and she fought to keep whatever was left in her stomach down. She hadn't eaten since…since before. With Lexa.

She snarled under her breath, determined to not think about the brunette with the winsome smile that she shared only with Clarke. Her eyes snapped open and focused on the trees in front of her. This way. This was the way she would go. It didn't matter where she went, just as long as she went.

She strode off into the trees, trying not to limp as the ruptured blisters on her feet scraped against the inside of her boots that were slightly too big. She hadn't grown into them yet, these boots that had been worn before her by some other girl, in some other time up in the sky. She had probably been floated, and her boots were all that had been salvaged before sending her into the stars. Boots were priceless, human souls…not so much.

She walked steadily for a couple of hours. At least she judged it to be a couple of hours as the sun slowly moved across the blue sky. She heard water and made her way, picking around giant moss covered boulders, and over fallen snags. She smiled slightly when she broke through the tangled underbrush onto a bed of stones lining a small brook. She hesitated briefly remembering the creature that had almost eaten Octavia.

She scooped up a couple of larger stones the size of her fist and threw them into the water, waiting to see if she disturbed any monsters. Nothing. She picked her way over to a rock that shadowed part of the brook. She sat down and untied and her boots, grimacing as she pulled them off. She almost cried out as she felt the skin on her feet tear away, stuck to the inside of the coarse leather.

She choked back the hot tears. She wouldn't cry. She deserved this pain, feeling her skin tear. After all, she had melted the skin of 300 people, the least she could do was accept her own pain. She gingerly slipped her torn feet into the shallow, cool water groaning at the stinging of her raw flesh. She sat rigidly and then slowly relaxed as her feet adjusted the soothing flow of the water.

"Well. What are you going to do now?" She jumped slightly at the sound of her own voice, hoarse and ragged. She chuckled ruefully. Now she was talking to herself, but what did it matter, no one was there to judge or give her odd looks.

"Seriously, Clarke, what the hell are you going to do now?" She muttered out loud.