AN: I had someone request a continuation of What We Must, but really, that was complete, but the idea of continuing in a similar vein was still there, so I figured I might do a little-or not so little-series about that type of world. Possibilities for after Mt. Weather, because I have no idea on how they actually-honestly, possibly-escape that. So, this was born. I hope you enjoy. Everyone in this fandom has been so very welcomeing and you all review fantastically!

Lines in the Sand

Clarke sat on a moss covered log outside of the drop ship. Men and women bustled around her, working together to figure out what the 100 had long ago established. ARC had fallen, and when what was left of the 100 had managed to find their way back from Mount Weather, the survivors had taken over their camp, clearing out the wreckage and replacing it with their own attempted colony. Their idea of a colony should have died with ARC station.

The delinquents had been welcomed for the most part. Clarke had been vocal in the argument that Kane and some of the others had brought up concerning whether or not they should be allowed back into a society that had ostricized them and sent them to die. That had gone well, at least. Clarke snorted as two women emptied a basket of hallucinagenic berries onto a square of tarp and tied it up. If the adults wanted to trip, that was on them. The rest of the 100 would recognize them easily enough after the first time around.

"Something wrong?" Abby Griffin asked as she sat down astride Clarke's log. Abby had taken to doing that, ghosting up on her as if nothing had passed between them in the past year. As if-

"No," Clarke lied as the women took the berries away. It was decided that first night they returned to find Finn living amongst the ARC survivors while Bellamy was tied up in the top floor of the drop ship. The 100, or Grounders, as they had started to think of themselves since Anya and Clarke had reached an unsteady truce outside of the Mount Weather compound, would not help the ARC survivors. Not now. Never again. That first night had been more than any of them could stomach.

"Bellamy Blake is the reason that all of this got out of hand in the first place," Kane said, turning in a wide circle in front of their bond-fire. "If Cancellor Jaha had been able-"

"Bellamy Blake is the only reason that we are still alive," Clarke had cut him off, standing in the flicking light. The eldest Blake was still tied up in the top floor of the drop ship. The youngest was no where to be found. Clarke had felt a particular alliance in that moment, something that flared in the pit of her stomach.

"I understand, Clarke, that you feel compelled to defend him. I understand that young men can be very charismatic, but you have to-"

"Grounders!" she roared, unsure what had taken over her later when she thought about it. The 100 survivors had looked to her immediately, remembering the claim that day that they were grounders now, that they were no longer ARC but Earth. "Am I in any way blinded by the charisma of Bellamy Blake?" The laughter that came from them was answer enough. "Am I wrong in saying that we protect our own. Who went with me to find Jasper?" Bellamy's name was muttered here and there. "Who went to bring Octavia back?" His name fell with more frequency and furvor. "Who stood on that battlefield with the rest of us instead of cowering up on ARC station?" The answer was deafening.

Kane had waved his hands to calm the larger party, because down here, now, the delinquents out numbered ARC-Fall, a term that Clarke had particularly liked when Miller first coined it. They fell silent slowly, but there was a fire in their eyes, a unsnuffable will to continue to be what they were.

"I understand that you've all developed a society down here, but you can't keep living like this. You can't just keep doing whatever you want."

"Whatever the hell we want!"

The cry was met with laughter from the rest of the hundred. Despite the memory of Wells and Charlotte, the corner of Clarke's mouth quirked up in a smile.

"Bellamy Blake will remain in my custody until I decide he is worthy of amnesty," Kane had declared and in several long strides, he disappeared into the drop ship. The 100 had stood around the fire that night, silently watching as the rest of the adults went about trying to bring them into their tasks. It was Abby Griffin that was the first to approach one of them, and if it had been anyone else but Clarke, the united front would have crumbled.

"Clarke, come help me set up a med-bay in the-"

"No," Clarke said firmly. "Let the ARC handle ARC business."

"Until we get Bellamy, you do whatever the hell you want," Miller had said, stepping up beside her. Finn had looked out from behind Abby with wide, lost eyes, but he did not cross that gap. It was instead Jasper that stood at Clarke's other shoulder, Monty behind him. The rest shouted their ascent. It had taken several days for ARC-Fall survivors to figure out that "whatever the hell we want" meant something more to the 100 than it did to them.

Clarke could feel Abby's eyes on her as she stared out at the too-short walls that ARC-Fall had build around the drop ship. Clarke's eyes skimmed up the branches of the closest trees, and in the branches, she could see the form of one of Anya's grounders. They'd been there, day and night, since Clarke had first gotten there. Surveylance, no interference. That had been Anya's terms. Clarke had agreed for everyone. That had been a week ago, and since then, the only of the 100 that had broken down were those with parents that had survived. A mere four of them. Not enough to assuage Kane or Abby.

"Something's wrong," Abby insisted. "You've been staring at those berries like they were a joke for the past five minutes."

"Because you think you're going to survive on berries. The grounders have you so scared you won't send anyone out far enough to hunt. You're a joke," Clarke had replied.

"The last time one of you looked at something like that, we were using poison ivy to weave into blankets."

"And isn't it wonderful that your Ag workers figured out what it was?" Clarke asked, finally turning her eyes toward her mother.

"This temper tantrum has to stop sooner or later, Clarke Griffin!" Abby said, standing up, hands on her hips.

"Neither can Kane's," Clarke had countered. The two women had stood toe to toe for a long moment. Abby had a height advantage, but the semi-auto slung across Clarke's shoulder made her feel a lot taller. The 100 had refused to give up the weapons they'd stolen from Mount Weather, and she and Miller wore theirs nearly around the clock. Clarke look at her mother a long moment then, longer than she had at any one time since they'd found out she was alive. When she'd thought her mother dead, Clarke had been in agony over never forgiving her.

Now, standing toe to toe with a woman that was making the same mistakes all over again, Clarke came to a conclusion that shook her knees. She didn't forgive her. And she was strangely ok with that. Clarke stared at her mother a moment longer, trying to find some redeaming quality there that would out weigh her sins. Finding none, she turned on her heel and walked toward the gate where Miller and two of the 100 stood guard.

"Where are you going?" Abby called.

"Hunting," Clarke shouted over her shoulder, ignoring the protests that her mother made. Miller eyed her a moment when Clarke walked past him out the gate, but he fell in step not long after. She had to admit that working with Bellamy's second was easier than working with the man himself, but Miller didn't know when she was going to flush game from a bush. She couldn't tell when he heard something from the quirk of his head. Miller was a good second, but he wasn't Bellamy Blake.

The deer that the pair carried back between them was dressed by the 100 and roasted by the 100, and it was eaten by the 100 as the ARC-Fall survivors looked on with their edible grasses and berries-and didn't Clarke just anticipate the next hour when the hallucinagenic factors kicked in? There was still a hind quarter spitted and some of the softer insides which has cooked to something that Clarke didn't want to think about, but Miller had declared it theirs. The 100 did not help ARC-Fall. Kane felt differently.

"We share everything equally," Kane said, hands on his hips, his small pistol tucked into a holster at his hip. With the big guns behind them, Clarke didn't mind the pistol.

"Not down here," Miller said, cradeling that big semi-auto in his hands. "Clarke and I went and got this meal. None of yours eat until all of ours have."

"All of our people have eaten," Finn tried to assuage, his doe eyes darting around camp. Clarke glanced at him fleetingly. Finn was a good kid, she decided then, but he was still just a kid. On the ground, they had to grow up. They had to become...whatever they must. Finn hadn't done that yet, and it was clear in the confusion on his face.

"No, we haven't," Clarke answered, walking toward the spit and using a make-shift blade to saw off a large chunk of the meat. "The rest is yours, but there's a price."

"Whatever-"

"Bellamy Blake," she said simply. It had been a demand she'd made time and time again over the last few day. Each time Kane or her mother had come to her with a question or a demand, her price had been the same. They had not been willing to pay it.

"One hour," Kane countered. Until now, it seemed. Until meat-real meat, and when had any of them even had real meat before?-was offered as payment. Clarke had considered a long moment. One quick nod from Miller, and Clarke agreed. It would do them no good to continue with ARC-Fall if they'd lied about Bellamy being alive. Clarke took long strides past Kane and her frowning mother. She pushed aside the tarp of the drop ship and entered it for the first time since that day on the battlefield. Funny, she thought as she climbed the ladder, that day Bellamy had been stuck outside. Today, he was a prisoner inside.

Clarke popped the hatch and threw it back with a practiced ease. Up top, it was dark, but the large holes torn in the ceiling let enough moonlight through that she could make out the reclined form of Bellamy Blake. If it wasn't for the harsh glare he fixed her with as soon as her head cleared the hatch, she could have mistaken him for dead. That glare stuttered and disappeared as soon as he realized who it was.

"Princess?" he asked, voice hoarse, like he had either not used it or over used it for the past several days.

"Yeah, Bellamy," she answered him, climbing through the hatch with his share of the deer speared through the knife. "You have hands to feed yourself?" When he did not answer, she looked over at him. He had sat up, one hand bound to the wall behind him, staring at her as though he didn't believe she stood there. She crouched down in front of him. Still, that half-dazed look stared back at her. Thinking he'd seen the food, she held it out. His free hand came up toward hers, but it reached past, catching her wrist with the tips of his fingers.

"Alive," he murmured.

"The dead don't talk, Blake," Clarke said with more bluster than she felt.

"You were all gone," he said, voice still that hoarse grumble that made her ache.

"Yeah, went on a trip," she agreed, ignoring the way his eyes sharpened. Thinking about Mount Weather was dangerous territory, and her mind had to stay away from that corner of her memory. It had to or-

"What happened?" his voice was back, and his grip on her wrist tightened to that familiar pressure when he was angry and trying not to hurt her.

"Nothing," Clarke said firmly, shaking the memories from her mind and his grip from her wrist. "Eat. Miller and I made quite a scene to get you this."

"Miller's alive?" Bellamy asked, sitting up more and taking the offering. "Who else?"

"About fourty of us," Clarke offered with a shrug. "Some from the grounders. Some from..." Clarke cleared her throat. "Jasper's alive. Raven too."

"Finn was here when the ARC-"

"Saw him," Clarke interrupted, but Bellamy seemed pleased enough to keep eating. Grease dripped down his chin, and Clarke only caught her own movement when her fingers chased it away. Startled, she pulled her hand back, her eyes avoiding his that seemed to have locked onto her. "Kane only gave me ten minutes. Keep the blade. The ARC survivors found some interesting looking berries. You might need it if a grounder escapes in the confusion."

He tucked the blade behind him out of view. Clarke waited until he nodded before she crossed to the hatch and threw it open again. She left him there, but the tips of her fingers and her wrist burned.

It was only a few hours later when the first few started hallucinating. By the time his friend had figured out that there really weren't bugs in their tent, he'd started seeing snakes. The rest of camp followed quickly, and Clarke sat on her log chuckling for a good long while before Miller's shadow cut off her light from the fire.

"It was Octavia last time," Miller said. "Wasn't it?"

"It might as well be us this time," Clarke agreed. "Don't know where we're going to go."

"Figure he'll have an opinion or two on that. Maybe the sea, like we were talking about."

"I gave him a knife, just in case," Clarke said as she stood. With any luck, Kane and her mother-the pair of them had taken to haunting the drop ship like wraiths-would have partaken in the fruit course of dinner that evening.

As it turned out, they had, and Clarke had walked past her mother, who was talking with someone that wasn't there. She didn't want to think about who it might be, and she stopped listening after she had murmured her father's name. Bellamy was waiting for them, awake and at the end of his restraints, working the knife against the metal cuff. He'd slipped a few times, knicking his skin, and the blood had made the slide easier. Miller took over, and in a moment, Bellamy was free and hauled to his feet.

The two men shared something that neither would call a hug, but that made Clarke want to giggle like a schoolgirl. She led the way back down the ladder, ignoring the way that her mother still sat at the bottom, her eyes lost in something that still wasn't there.

"Never thought I'd look forward to seeing those again," Bellamy muttered, taking the gun that Miller offered. Clarke eyed the second a long moment, now bare handed and just standing there with his tattered beenie and jacket. He held his hands carefully still at his sides, as if he was afraid he'd do something with them if they weren't holding a weapon. A problem, that, but one that Clarke couldn't worry about at the moment. Miller was the better shot, and she handed him her semi-auto as easily as breathing. The weight of it was missed for a long moment, but as her mother sobbed her father's name, it ignited something in her feet.

"Clarke?" she heard the pair of them call after her as she fled the drop ship.

She ignored it. Just like she ignored a lot of things. Like she ignored that the ARC-Fall survivors were giving them wide berth. Like she ignored that Finn had been welcome among them with open arms while the rest of them had been kept isolated. Like she ignored that-

Well, she wasn't ignoring it if she considered it again, was she?

The familiar heat of Bellamy a few paces behind her was a welcome thing as they crossed the distance to the gate. It went unsaid that they would have to find somewhere to hide the eldest Blake sibling, and the three of them slipped through the woods without words. It wasn't long before Clarke realized she was the one in front, that Bellamy hadn't had an opinion that he'd voiced, that he was simply following her, trusting her, letting her be what ARC-Fall wouldn't let her: a leader.

She knew where her feet were going to carry her even before she stooped to brush the leaves and littler off of the hatch of the bunker. Her bunker. Her art supply store, and even as she popped the hatch, she knew that by showing Bellamy and Miller, she was damning herself, just a little bit. Because that bunker? That bunker might have had something more that the group could have used. Taking Raven there was one thing, the young woman wouldn't have wanted to go back there for anything, knowing that it was where she and Finn had spent their time. But Bellamy? Bellamy would blame her for withholding anything from the group.

She dropped down into the darkness, snagging the flashlight she'd hung on one of the rungs the last time she had snuck out for more pencils. She swept the area with the light, and after finding it empty, moved deeper inside. Bellamy and Miller still stood at the top. She'd insisted that she be the first down the hatch, and while that had been a battle-masculine pride and all-she'd won by the simple fact that she knew the layout and she'd left the flashlight.

Now, as she walked around, letting the light linger as she lit candles. She only had two of them burning and was working on a third when Bellamy's boots started down the ladder. She glanced over just as he hit the bottom, the third candle lighting everything up enough that she could begrudgingly turn off the flashlight.

"Could have let us know you weren't dead, Princess," he chided, grip relaxing on his gun.

"I thought you'd figure it out," she told him. "Come on, Miller!" HIs head appeared in the hatch, and he looked to Bellamy, who gestured him in with a wave. Always looking to the commander, Clarke thought as she finished another candle. It was enough, and lighting more would be wasteful. She eyed the dull haze and with an indulgent flick of a match, another came to life.

"What is this place?" Bellamy asked, eyes running over the different boxes and the dissheveled bed in the corner.

"Your home until we get things settled," Clarke answered.

"Yeah, but how do you know it's here?"

"Finn found it," she said. A smile flickered over her face as she crossed to one of the shelves. A mason jar of colored pencils still rested there. She had only taken five, and there were another fifteen in there. Two empty notebooks sat beneath them. "Do what you want, but these," she indicated them with a finger. "These are mine."

"Pencils?" Miller asked. Clarke fixed him with a serious glare. "Anything else you want in here, but you leave these alone."

"Alright, Princess," Bellamy snarked, a smile on his lips. "You two should get back. Sun'll be up soon, and I don't want this coming down on you."

"Right," Clarke agreed, and in a moment, she was up the ladder. Miller followed, closing the hatch and kicking leaves overtop. The walk was, as most things with Miller, quiet but pleasant. Until they came to the gate.

"Clarke," he said, drawing back into the shadow of the treeline. She sighed and turned, fixing him with a look she hoped meant that she wasn't in the mood. "We're doing the right thing." She froze at that, studying his face. Did she need the assurance or did he?

"We're doing the right thing," she confirmed. His shoulders slumped for a moment, and with the way something eased in her stomach, she realized that maybe they both did. Before she could say anything else, he was a wall again, Bellamy's soldier that had remained strong through everything that had been Mount Weather. A shiver of something ran up her spine, something that she wouldn't admit was more than a memory.

"Of course," Miller said, stepping by her and pausing only long enough to lay a hand against her shoulder. He gave it a supportive squeeze, and as if his strength could seep down through his hand and into her, that shiver was gone. She was Clarke Griffin. She had survived, and she would continue to survive. "Bellamy said to make sure you got some sleep." He said by way of explanation as he tugged her toward the gate. She went easily enough. Come morning, there would be a reckoning.

-Lines in the Sand-

"Clarke Griffin!"

"Well, Mommy's up," Jasper joked, looking over the flickering campfire that their breakfast was roasting over. Clarke gave him an exasperated smile as she picked at the handful of berries that she'd swiped from their store. With so many fewer mouths to feed, they had more than been able to replenish their supplies, but soft hearted guards had more than once let the ARC-Fall group take their surplus, and Clarke didn't want to think about a shortage. Besides, she'd packed two more handfuls in a bit of cloth with a strip of dried meat.

"This'll be a show," Raven muttered from beside him, nestled between Jasper and Monty. She'd taken up residence there in Mount Weather, after they'd done whatever they'd done to make her whole again. She'd a shadow to her that she had not had before, but she was alive, and for that Clarke might have thanked the Mountain Men. Finn had tried to speak to her a few times, but he had been vocal about his feelings about Bellamy remaining locked up. Raven had come to the-wrong-conclusion that it had something to do with Bellamy's influence on Clarke, which had cemented the last of the wall she had been building agains Finn Collins.

"Clarke!" Her mother's voice was closer, and it had that tone to it that said that she was no longer hunting for her and was instead closing in on a target. Clarke sided and heaved herself up from her position in the log. By the time she turned, her mother was there, mouth turned down into a frown, the lines around it and her eyes more aparent.

"What?"

"Don't you 'what' me, where is he?"

"Where's-

The slap sounded, and the quiet banter from behind her at the fire fell silent. Clarke could vaguely make out Miller coming toward them, that big gun across his shoulder and falling into his hands. Her cheek stung, but there was an odd sense of satisfaction there as well. "This is enough! I've been patient, but you've gone behind my back in this! You could have killed someone with your silence! You still could if you don't tell me what you did with that murderer."

"He's not a murdered," Clarke reminded her. "Jaha survived."

"He shot him in the chest, Cl-"

"Funny, because I thought you said it was Jaha that stayed up on what's left of the ARC to let you all get to Earth. You've got engineers with you. You had supplies. Someone could have rigged a timer. Raven, could have rigged a-"

"Oh, no, I'm not getting between Princess and Queenie," Raven said, hands up in a defeated gesture. Jasper snickered beside her and Monty ducked his head to avoid the glare that both Griffin women sent at them.

"He'd have killed the Chancellor. He'd have killed a man he didn't know. If that doesn't make him a murderer-"

"I killed a man," Clarke murmured, but the words stopped her mother. Clarke fought for a moment for the strength to meet her mother's eyes, but when she did, the look of shock there didn't hurt as much as she thought it might. "He wouldn't have killed me. He wouldn't have hurt me. I slit his throat with a scalpel."

"Y-you..." Abby trailed off a moment. "To protect the others."

"To protect the others," Clark confirmed. "But Bellamy shot Jaha to get on the drop ship to protect his sister. The Chancelor pardoned Bellamy Blake, but you can't pardon yourself. We can't suffer because of that."

"You bring him back here, and Kane will make that decision," Abby said finally.

"It's not his decision to make. Not anymore. Our leader was kidnapped. If somehow, we got him back, then I won't do anything to return him to your custody. Besides, if he got loose? He isn't about to stop and tell me where he's going. I hadn't seen him in weeks."

"Weeks? Why would-"

"That's not something you get to ask about," Clarke cut her off. "We're done here. You have patients, and I have hunting party." She eyed the rabbit that was roasting on the fire with a longing. Jasper fixed her with a look and nodded. She returned it quickly before moving toward the gate. She did not miss that Miller relaxed several feet off, his hand falling off of his semi-auto.

"Clarke?" her mother called after her. "Clarke, we've got to figure these things out. We have to-"

"On the Arc, there was the Chancelor," she said, turning back toward her. "You had your laws. You had a space station. You had everything you could have wanted, and your laws killed most of your populace and sent its children to die. Down here? Down here we have had to do what we had to, but at least we had rules that we decided. We've stood behind them, and we're still alive. Up there? Up there there was never a line, Mom."

"We can make new laws. We can-"

"You don't get it," Clarke said simply with a sad shake of her head. "You've already tried, and you're already failing. You've got the same laws. Kane and Griffin, making the rules and locking up those that didn't deserve it. Killing those that didn't deserve to die, the people that were trying to protect us."

The hunt was over quickly, mostly because Anya was standing not far beyond the wall. The Grounder gave her a long glance before turning and walking away, her steps even and measured, steps that invited a follower. Clarke obliged.

"They didn't come with guns," Anya said, voice firm but not unfriendly.

"No," Clarke agreed. "Something went wrong."

"Something went right," Anya countered. "I saw you smuggle your man out of camp last night."

"You saw?"

"Lincoln saw," she amended. "He and his woman returned to us three days ago. The people of the sea were not as welcoming as they thought they might have been, and the girl missed her brother."

"I can show her-"

"She already knows. She's with him unless they've fought again," she said, a smile quirking her lips. "I did not want to, but I like her."

"Octavia is difficult to not like."

"Not like the newcomers from the sky," Anya said, and there was an edge to her tone that Clarke recognized.

"They're panicking. If they've done anything-"

"They haven't," Anya countered. "But they aren't doing well. One of mine found one of them on the riverbank." The look on her face told Clarke that whoever it was had been killed by either the river, one of the creatures that lived inside it, or by the Grounder than found them. "Mine tried to help, but the bleeding was too much."

"I appreciate it," Clarke said, staring off in the distance. She stopped walking, and Anya took a step beyond her before turning back. "We can't stay with them, can we?"

"You will die if you don't provide a better defense," Anya said, shrugging one shoulder. "You and I? We are at truce, but there are many other tribes, and territory lines change often." Clarke gave a stiff nod.

"They won't like it," she said finally. Anya stood next to her a long moment, just staring out at the forest with her.

"After the war, when everything settled, many tribes came together and fell apart. We only have one that remembers the war, and she is long blinde and most of what she says no longer means anything, but she spoke a long time about why the tribes fractured."

"There's strength in numbers, and they have knowledge that we don't."

"And you have knowledge that they don't," Anya countered. "You're not a child, Clarke Griffin, and as much as it hurts me to admit, you and the boy were better leaders than the ones you have now."

"Bellamy isn't-"

"Don't ask me to use his name, becasue I won't. I made a truce with you because you did not leave me when you could have. He did nothing similar."

"Can Mount Weather be taken?" Clarke asked, but she knew the answer already. When they left, they might have crippled the Mountain Men, left them locked in their fortress shaken, but the mountain would remain theirs. "Then we have no where else to go."

"When you landed in my territory, I did not take it back immediately, but I did try to take it back. In the sky, when someone took what was yours, did you simply give it to them?" The Grounders leader left Clarke with that, standing alone in the forest. When Clarke finally admitted to herself what needed to be done, she found herself outside of the bunker.

Sliding leaves and branches off of the hatch, she slipped down into darkness. Bellamy was not there, but as she lit the candles, she could see the mark of him everywhere. He'd gone through all of the tubs of supplies, sorting them into separate piles along the wall. He had a table of different things he'd scavanged in the woods, and she thought she recognized one of Octavia's jackets thrown over the back of a chair. He had faithfully left her shelf untouched, she realized. The most shocking thing, though, was the mattress that sagged in the corner, stripped of the sheets and blanket that had been there the last time she was in the bunker.

Time passed quickly when she had art supplies within such close proximity, and it was several pages filled with sketches later that the hatch popped open again and Bellamy's feet hit the metal ground. He had his short blade in hand, and when he saw her, he relaxed. Not a moment after, Lincoln dropped down behind him. The grounder seemed more at ease, and his presence was quickly shadowed by Octavia, who crossed the room in several long strides and wrapped Clarke in a hug that shook her back and forth, nearly sending both of them to the ground.

"Thank you," the girl whispered into Clarke's neck.

"What for?" Clarke asked, confused.

"Everything," Octavia replied, and in the next moment, she was gone and back up the ladder. Clarke stood there, confused and dissheveled from the hug, staring wide eyed at the two men on the other side of the room. Bellamy had an amused smirk on his lips, and Lincoln only stared on, a commiserating look on his face. Apparently, the Grounder had discovered that Octavia's emotions often came and went like the tide.

"You've been busy," Clarke observed, eyeing the room. Bellamy looked around, almost prideful as he nodded. The sheets and blanket soon were dumped down the hatch, and Clarke eyed them with a smile. "Spring cleaning?"

"They smelled," Bellamy said by way of explanation. "Someone used this for more than a place to sleep." The past flashed in Clarke's mind. Finn and Charlotte and two nights that ended so differently that they made her ache. When she finally let herself slip back to the present, Bellamy was looking at her as though he knew and Lincoln had busied himself with something on the table.

"I saw your sister earlier," Clarke said, and it took a moment for Lincoln to look over his shoulder, realizing that she was talking to him.

"Anya has been watching your people," Lincoln said. "But she won't go back on her word."

"She didn't." Clarke looked to Bellamy. "She said that we should take back what's ours." He looked lost for a long while, just standing there, hands at his sides as Octavia bustled around him, moving sheets and bedding back to the bed. Clarke knew that look, knew the fight or flight reflex in him that was strongly fight but had a tendency to slip just as completely to flight. She had seen it once in the past, and it had taken all that she knew to do to convince him to flip that switch back.

"That's their fami-"

"We made our own family," Clarke cut him off. "Down here? We're each other's family now. They can stay, but they have to admit when they're wrong. They're going to kill us, and we've worked too hard, Bellamy. You and I? We worked too hard to let Kane and my mother kill our family."

That self assured grin split his face into something that she both hated and loved. Octavia stopped tucking the sheets down around the mattress. She knew him well enough, Clarke supposed, that she knew what that look meant.

"Might as well," he agreed with a shrug. A chidllike hope was hidden in that frown of his that seemed to appear whenever he didn't want to admit that something good happened. As though if he smiled, if he acknowledged it for more tha a moment, it might disappear.

Miller and Jasper were on the wall when Bellamy, Clarke, Lincoln - because he refused to leave Octavia for a group of people that had locked her up for the majority of her life - and Octavia came through the brush toward the new fenceline. Miller stood, stalwart and still at the gate when they approached, but a wide smile spready across his face as Bellamy stepped forward. The big semi-auto that Clarke had given up was back hanging against his hip.

Jasper fretted, like Jasper tended to fret, but the calm that radiated off of the pair eventually sank into him. It was an incredible thing, Clarke thought, as she watched the mousey boy grow into a man. He had survived. Hell, he'd been more of a survivor than any of them, and he had come through it still as kind and charismatic as he had been the day they were taken from their cells. Of course, there had been a hiccup or two, but that was to be expected, and Clarke couldn't help but feel proud of him. She wasn't so blind as to not see where that confidence came from though, who fostered it and encouraged it to grow.

Bellamy Blake was a good man, no matter how much she-or he-didn't want to admit it.

She smiled as the gate was thrown wide and the three young men walked through, side by side by side. Octavia went through after them, anxiousness in her steps. Clarke couldn't help but stand back and watch. Lincoln stood beside her, and he hesitated a moment before walking forward. "You have all grown," he said simply.

"They really have," she agreed, taking that first step forward. It was his turn to hesitate.

"You all have," he reiterated, and he walked past her, leaving her to stand in the gate, wondering at the comment. She had grown, surely. She had evolved from the girl that had stepped off the drop ship, but in what ways? Her mother had seen the changes, and for a moment, Clarke had to wonder if the changes had been good.

What we must.

Clarke shook the thought from her head and walked through the gate. Not far off, Bellamy and Miller were squared off against Kane, who was gesturing toward the drop ship. Abby was not far behind him, his shadow as she had been since they touched down. It was a sad thing, really. Abby Griffin had never been anyone's shadow, never known what it meant to back down. She had never been something less than adamant. Now, down here, in unfamiliar territory, she had wilted. Maybe, Clarke realized in that moment, maybe she was far more like her father than she realized.

As she crossed the empty ground to stand beside Miller, Bellamy, Octavia, Jasper and Lincoln, she couldn't help but feel as though she was crossing a line, one that once she crossed, she could never step back over. The ground might shift beneath her feet, it might tear open and suck her under, and yet, standing beside them as Monty and Raven and Harper and Monroe joined them, she thought that if the earth did open up for them, at least it was on their terms.

Sometimes, you had to draw a line in the sand.

Sometimes, you had to wait for someone to either step over it or leave.

The important thing, is that you draw the line.