I.

Clarke is lucky enough never to have traveled alone. She's lost friends, sure - fuck, everyone has, these days - and none of the people she travels with now were part of her original group who fled to Phoenix refugee camp, all that time ago. But she's never faced the gut-wrenching darkness on her own, never scrambled away from the clawing hands on her knees without a hand to help her up, never fallen asleep without the comfort of knowing there was someone on watch to keep them safe.

So when they come across Octavia, she can't stop her heart from going out to the girl. And once the dust has settled, and the last of the undead has stopped moving for one final time, and Finn turns to her with a look on his face that says 'let her stay', Clarke can't refuse. Even though they've come across more bad people than good in this dying world, there's something in Octavia's eyes that tells of unspeakable horrors and unimaginable loneliness. And Clarke can't condemn a girl barely her own age, can't pass the death sentence that forcing her out on her own would almost certainly be.

And so their little group gains one more. And none of them recognize it for the miracle it is until they meet Bellamy.

Octavia fits into their band perfectly. She's smart, and brave, and resourceful, and kind - plus she's remarkably skilled with a bow, shedding some light on how she survived on her own all this time. But never once does she mention that she had a brother, so when Clarke finds herself staring down the barrel of a stranger's gun, she has no idea that the events she set in motion six months ago with the saving of Octavia's life are about to come to fruition.

She had sent the others out to forage, in groups of two - Octavia and Jasper, Finn and Raven - while she and Monty set up camp in an abandoned shed. Monty had been fiddling with the radio he's been trying to make, because although it's been a year since the dead stopped dying, Clarke still has hope that there are other refugee centers out there. Phoenix may have fallen, but the other camps may still be intact. The ARK Initiative hasn't necessarily failed.

(Nearly a year, with no word. Clarke knows in her heart there will be no miraculous end to this nightmare. But still, she hopes. It's the only damn thing she allows herself these days.)

So there had been just the two of them, and they'd been tied up enough in what they were doing to not notice the intruders until it was too late. Clarke kicks herself over it now. How could they have gotten so careless?

There are three of their attackers, all men. The one with the gun trained on Clarke's forehead seems to be the leader, as he's the one who spoke with the most authority - when Monty argued 'you can't do this', it was he who replied 'this is the apocalypse, kid. We can do whatever the hell we want'.

Now, he just keeps up a stony silence as the other two ransack what few supplies Clarke and her friends have. They're just packing up to leave, and Clarke allows herself to hope that maybe they'll let them live, won't waste ammo on a group of kids just looking to survive, will take what they can and leave, so she can assess the damage and move on.

But then the others get back, impeccably timed as always, and everything changes.

Octavia's never mentioned a brother, but as soon as Clarke hears the other girl's voice call out 'Bellamy' - haltingly, questioningly, unable to dare, to believe - she knows. She knows.

The man with the gun freezes, his jaw clenching, some unreadable expression flitting across his face, before he turns. Seeing Octavia again is like a punch to the gut.

'O?' His voice is deep, rough, like he hasn't spoken in years, and Octavia crosses the space to be at his side in an instant. He falters, right hand still trailing his gun by his side, left reaching up to hover by her shoulder, wary to touch, as if she'll disappear. Finally he chokes out 'look how big you are,' and Octavia grabs him, pulling him in close, and they hold each other like they're the only thing keeping the other standing, an embrace that is desperate and hopeful and longing.

Bellamy tries to get Octavia to leave with him - 'just the two of us again, O, like it always was' - but she refuses, and Clarke feels something spring up in her chest at the other girl's loyalty to the life they've built together, as a group. So Bellamy disbands his henchmen, and follows Octavia instead.

Clarke doesn't know what to make of him, can't trust him, can't see him in the same way Octavia does. But still, she's willing to make concessions. Octavia has proven herself time and again to have been worth the risk of taking her on, and Clarke can only hope that her brother will prove to be the same.

She's doesn't want to talk to him, but he seeks her out anyway.

'Thank you,' he says, gruffly, as he hands her back the pack his friends stole from her at gunpoint. 'For my sister's life.'

And she wasn't sure what she was expecting from Bellamy Blake, but that certainly wasn't it.

II.

It was just meant to be a routine supply mission. She'd left to get medical supplies as she'd spotted a veterinary clinic, and she'd taken Bellamy along with her because she was tired of arguing with Finn, and if there was one thing she could count on Bellamy for, it was not to start idle conversations.

But now here they are, locked in the clinic with their one exit route thoroughly blocked by grounders. (They call them grounders for the earth they refuse to stay in; no one has the stomach for the z-word anymore, not after it was bandied about like candy during the first few gory weeks of the apocalypse, not when it represents Romero fans who can't shoot straight and don't respect the danger the undead pose, people who died early on and rose to kill again. When Bellamy first heard the term 'grounder' he laughed, like it was something ridiculous, but even he started using it eventually.)

'Back door's jammed, there must be something on the other side keeping it closed,' he says now, returning from the back of the clinic with a grave look on his face. Clarke knows it's bad. The grounders outside are battering themselves against the front window, and why would a veterinary clinic have floor-to-ceiling glass anyway? It's just the sort of stupid thing to get them both killed.

She leaves Bellamy to keep an eye on the grounders outside while she heads further into the clinic, looking for a window, a door, a flimsy piece of wall - anything, anything that can be used as an escape route. There's nothing. A small window in the toilet that might be big enough for her in a squeeze but certainly not Bellamy, and Octavia would never forgive her if Clarke left her brother here to die.

'Anything?' Bellamy calls back to her.

'Not yet,' she replies. The back room is full of animal cages. It's damn creepy, and she lives in fucking horror movie 24/7. 'How're our friends out front?'

'Energetic.'

'That makes some of us,' she mutters under her breath. She tries the door Bellamy found, but he's right, it's completely jammed. If he couldn't budge it, there's no way it's opening, and they can't risk ammo trying to shoot out the lock only to find it's blocked on the other side.

The sound of shattering glass sends her head snapping towards the main room, where Bellamy will soon be holding off what she guesses is about fifteen grounders.

'You good?'

'Ask me again in five minutes, princess. Can we put a rush on that escape plan?'

Shit, shit, shit. This is so not how she had planned on dying, not stuck in a fucking vet's office with Bellamy fucking Blake.

And then she looks up.

'Hey, Bellamy, there's a skylight here.'

'Can we get to it?'

She casts around the room, searching for anything they can use to get up there. 'Gimme a sec.'

Bellamy starts to answer, but she never hears what he was going to say because the glass finally shatters and he fires three shots in quick succession.

They've officially run out of time, and Clarke dashes back into the main room, pulling out her machete and hacking her way over to Bellamy so she can drag him behind her to the skylight.

'Give me a boost,' she orders, and he slings his rifle over his shoulder, cupping his hands to allow her to reach the ceiling. Her fingers scrabble with the mechanism on the skylight, but it's old and rusted and was probably locked anyway, and grounders may move slowly, but they're not that slow, so she pulls out the pistol her mom gave her when this all started and shoots the glass once, twice, till it shatters and she can pull herself up through it, bloody hands slipping on jagged glass.

'Bellamy!' she shouts, lying prone along the roof and reaching down to him. He reaches up to grab her hand and she pulls - fuck, he's heavier than he looks - and he's just got his hand on the edge of the skylight when she suddenly feels him being yanked down, and his legs are surrounded by grounders, all clawing up at him. She heaves on his hand until his upper body is mostly through the gap but the grounders are persistent, using each others' bodies, climing over them to reach for Bellamy's feet, two of them with a death grip on his ankle, and Clarke rolls to one side, reaching for her pistol, and shoots them both in the head.

And then Bellamy is on the roof, lying panting to one side, and she's gazing up at the sky, listening to the moans of the grounders beneath her and her own ragged breathing, and wondering how the fuck they're both still alive.

She laughs, the euphoria of almost dead catching up to her, and Bellamy looks across at her quizzically.

'You're crazy, you know that?' he says, but there's an amused twinge to his voice.

'The whole world is fucking crazy,' she responds with a grin that he can't help but return. 'But we get to see some more of its insanity.'

'You're a strange one, Clarke Griffin.'

'Fuck you.'

She drowns out the moans of the dead with her laughter.

III.

Clarke knows something is wrong the moment the others return to camp, from the way Finn runs ahead of the group before turning to check on the others, from the way Jasper hovers nervously around the others, but most of all from the look on Bellamy's face.

It's Octavia.

'Clarke,' he shouts, the moment he's in earshot, and he wouldn't risk exposure for anyone else. 'Please, it just happened, and there's blood, and- tell me she's not bit, oh god, please, I can't-'

She's never heard him break down before.

'Bellamy, I'll do what I can, but right now I need you to calm down and tell me what happened.'

Octavia's lying on the ground, and there's blood everywhere. She's unconscious but her pulse throbs in her throat, and that's a good sign, Clarke forces herself to think, it's good because she's alive and Clarke can keep her that way. She washes her hands with a little of the alcohol they have, saving the dregs for disinfecting Octavia's wound and ordering Finn and Murphy to get out the little medical equipment they still have - a few bandages, some herbs she's managed to collect, a needle and thread. Then she peels back Octavia's shirt, sticky with blood.

There's a long gash down her side. But no bite marks.

'She's not bitten, Bellamy,' Clarke says gently. 'But this is deep and she won't be okay to move for at least a day.'

'I'll stay with her, then,' Bellamy says defiantly as Clarke begins to clean the wound.

'We'll all stay. We don't abandon our own.'

She doesn't have to look at his face to recognize his expression of gratitude.

It takes her half an hour to clean, stitch, and bandage Octavia's wound, and Bellamy never leaves his sister's side. Clarke is unable to persuade him to sleep, either, but it turns out she won't be getting much sleep either because he comes to wake her around midnight. Octavia's feverish. This is what they both feared.

Bites will turn you, but she can thank her scientist mother for the knowledge that the bite is not what's important. The introduction of any undead bodily fluid into the bloodstream will do the trick. Saliva introduced through bites simply happens to be the simplest, especially because of the cannibalistic nature of the grounders, but if Octavia's wound came into contact with any grounder blood, then it's curtains all the same.

The fever is the first sign of conversion.

'It could just be a fever, right?' Bellamy says for the third time, and Clarke knows he's not talking to her. She's doing all she can, using her limited knowledge of herbs to create a simplistic poultice and trying her best to keep Octavia cool. Infection shouldn't be setting in this quickly. None of the signs are good.

Around three, things change. Octavia wakes up for a second, and looks around, disorientated. Bellamy is by her side in an instant, murmuring soothing words and stroking her hair, but she just looks straight through him, and the pain on his face cuts Clarke to the quick. She feels like an intruder, as Bellamy holds his sister's hand and talks to her, calming her back to unconsciousness. She doesn't realize he's crying until his voice cracks.

He asks her if Octavia will live as dawn is pricking the edges of the horizon.

She tells him she doesn't know.

They make the most of a second day in the same place, sending the others out to forage and build up supplies while she and Bellamy remain at camp. Conversation is kept to a minimum, the atmosphere too tense for idle chatter. Octavia doesn't wake up again. Her breathing is shallow, and Clarke can't hold out much hope for her survival.

But it's so fucking unfair. The sight of the siblings, of Bellamy so desperate for his sister to live, and her memory of their embrace on being reunited, the fierceness of their love for each other, and of the consuming nature of Bellamy's desire to protect Octavia at all costs, makes Clarke so angry at this new world they live in, because those two have survived against all the odds, found each other in a world gone to shit, and for what? For a month of life and love followed by a swift and pointless death? Octavia has to live, goddammit, because otherwise what is the fucking point?

The fever breaks that evening, and Clarke has never been so utterly relieved in her life.

'She's gonna be okay,' she all but sobs, her breath catching, the emotions of the past 24 hours catching up to her.

Bellamy looks as bad as she feels. He doesn't say anything, but Clarke looks away because she can tell he is crying.

Once again, however, she finds herself being thanked by Bellamy Blake for saving his sister's life. The others are asleep, but something woke her - not lack of exhaustion, certainly - and she finds herself checking on Octavia once more. Her temperature is returning to normal, her breathing no longer labored, the color returning to her cheeks. Whatever the fever was, it was not a sign of conversion, nor was it life-threatening. She's gonna be okay.

'You keep saving my sister's life,' Bellamy says quietly, and Clarke is taken aback, because she almost thought he was asleep, slumped over by his sister's side.

'Everyone keeps saving everyone's life,' she replies. 'No one can make it out here alone anymore.'

'No,' he agrees, looking down at Octavia's sleeping face. 'I'm not sure we ever could.'

They lapse into silence, and for once Clarke feels comfortable. The world may have gone to shit, and flesh-eating dead may be roaming the earth, but tonight, one good thing has happened. She'll take that.

'I thought she was dead. Before.'

She hadn't expected Bellamy to start speaking again, but she doesn't need to ask what he's talking about. Octavia was traveling with Clarke for six months before they found Bellamy, and she has no idea how long Octavia was on her own before then. But the siblings were obviously separated for a long time. Too long.

'We were in a camp. I was military, got her a place in Section 17.'

Clarke winces. That refugee center was the first to fall, in the muddled confusion of the first few months. Thousands died overnight.

'It'd always been just her and me, y'know? Through foster care, and then trying to make a living, and then… the apocalypse. I was on patrol the night everything went down. I tried to go back in for her, but… I thought she was dead. No one could've survived that.' His voice lowers. 'I wished I hadn't.'

'But she wasn't dead,' Clarke says gently, and Bellamy's eyes meet her own, as if he is only now fully aware that he's been talking to her all this time. 'She wasn't dead, she was alive, and you found her again.'

'And now you've saved her.'

Clarke shakes her head. 'I think you saved each other.'

IV.

They manage to get separated, running from a horde of grounders maybe 30 strong, dashing headlong through the forest in an attempt to escape the shambling mass behind them.

Clarke only stops running when she finds Raven, and only then because the other girl is sitting propped up against a tree, surounded by bodies.

'Hey,' she smiles weakly, and Clarke's heart drops to her boots because she knows that look, she saw it on Wells' face before he turned, on Charlotte's before she shot herself, on Atom's before he begged her for a mercy killing.

'Raven, we need to keep moving,' Clarke tries, but Raven just shakes her head.

'My leg is broken, Clarke. I'm not going anywhere.'

'No, you'll be fine. Come on, I'll help you up.' She refuses to believe that they'll lose another of their group, that the bright, friendly, brave young woman she's come to think of as more of a sister than simply a friend will die. Not today. Not Raven.

They make it three steps before Raven falls, and there are tears of frustration in Clarke's eyes now because it's all just so fucking unfair.

Apparently they outran the rest of the grounders, because when the bushes rustle a warning at something approaching, it's the other members of their group that appear through the trees. They all seem to know what's happening instinctively, but it's Bellamy Clarke turns her tear-stained face to.

'She can't walk,' she says as decisively as she can, standing and facing the group.

'We can carry her,' Finn replies, equally as certain.

Clarke has no idea how she speaks around the lump in her throat. 'No, we can't. Her leg is broken. The bone has shifted wrong, or something, and… She's bleeding internally, Finn, and I can't… Maybe if my mom was here, but not me. Not me. I can't do it, I'm sorry…'

He's not listening to her as he goes to Raven, as he kneels by her side and looks at the wound. Finn, always so hopeful, so eager to see goodness in the world, even one as dark as this. But even he can see there's no hope.

'Leave me a gun,' Raven says, and she's slurring. Shock, concussion, Clarke doesn't know. It doesn't really matter now. 'I can finish this myself.'

'I'm staying with you,' Finn says defiantly, but Raven cuts him off.

'Like hell you are. Only one of us has to die, idiot. Go out there and live while you've still got a fucking chance. Otherwise you're just snubbing all of us who don't.'

'Raven-'

'Leave me alone, Finn.'

'I love you.'

Her voice softens. 'I know you do, idiot.' She looks up at Clarke. 'You look out for him, okay? He's damn stupid sometimes. And all of you need to get going, that horde could be approaching at any minute.'

Clarke crouches by her friend's side, hands her a pistol. 'It's loaded,' she says quietly.

'Thank you.' There's gratitude and understanding in Raven's eyes. 'I want all of you to tell your kids nice stories about me, okay?'

Clarke chokes out a laugh. 'Okay, it's a deal.' She stands, looks at her friend one last time. 'May we meet again.'

Raven just nods.

They've been walking for ten minutes when they hear the gunshot. Clarke's heart stutters, and she looks at Finn. But his eyes are stony and his jaw is clenched, and they continue in silence.

Jasper and Monty find some moonshine in a crapped out old car they pass on the road, and that night they share a drink, clustered around a campfire. The air has a crisp November coolness to it, but the fire throws up sparks into the air that dance on the smoke, and the moonshine warms Clarke's gullet as the drinks, despite the awful taste. Bellamy's face is distorted through the flames, the heat bending his image. And Raven should be here.

'To Raven,' Clarke says, tipping the moonshine when it comes back to her, and the others all raise their eyes slowly to her. No one has really spoken since Raven died.

But it feels wrong, not to talk about it. Not to acknowledge that they've lost someone, that they're grieving. Funerals have always been for the living, and Clarke can't just go on, ignore what just happened. She's lost too many people in a haze of blood and death, lost them on the road with no chance to stop and fall apart. She can't do that again. She needs to take a moment to be someone who just lost a person they care about.

'She was the best friend anyone could ask for,' Clarke continues. 'Even though I thought she was kind of a bitch at first. But she was funny and brave and kind, and really good with guns. I know I owe my life to her, probably a hundred times over. But I also owe so many evenings of laughter to her.'

She swallows, not sure how this will go down with the rest of the group, not sure if they just want to drink and forget about it all or if they, like her, would rather put Raven to rest with words and memories.

Finn interrupts the quiet.

'She was a brightness in the dark,' he says quietly, voice thick with tears. 'And I loved her, so so much. Even if I couldn't be what she wanted, I loved her, and I needed her, and-' His voice breaks, and he stops, only for Octavia to pick up where he left off.

'I think everyone loved her, in a way. You couldn't really help it. She was so fierce and strong.'

The flames spiral into the air.

'Hey, remember that time I almost shot myself in the foot and Raven wouldn't let me have a gun again for three days?' Jasper pipes up, and a slightly chuckle goes around the group.

'She always was one for gun safety,' Finn admits.

'She treated those guns as though they were her own children,' Bellamy says.

'We wouldn't have gotten this far on the radio without her, either,' Monty chimes in. 'I think she made part of it from an old milk carton.'

'There's definitely a bit of pencil in there as well,' Octavia says with a smile. 'I remember watching her put it in, she was so serious, and I just couldn't get over that it was a bit of broken old pencil.'

They laugh, and the air feels lighter, filled with Ravens of old who was inventive to the last, fiercely protective of her weaponry, violently in love with Finn, passionate and brave and scary and kind.

'To Raven,' Clarke offers again, and this time she is met with smiles, watery and sad, but smiles nonetheless. And it still hurts, the pain in her chest is still aching and sharp, but when Bellamy leans forward to pour a little moonshine on the fire - 'for Raven' - and the flames leap up into the air, she knows they'll be alright.

V.

The men's names are Dax and Murphy, and they really want Bellamy dead.

Murphy has his arm across Jasper's chest, a blade pressed to his throat, and he's smiling lazily across the train tracks at them. Why Jasper was on his own, Clarke doesn't know; all she knows is that they came out of nowhere, and they're threatening Jasper's life if Bellamy doesn't go with them.

Bellamy makes the trade.

'You can't,' Octavia insists, and Clarke is inclined to agree - they can't let Jasper die, of course, but negotiating with these guys isn't likely to get them very far at all.

Their warnings are cast aside, however. Bellamy hands his gun and his knife to his sister, kisses her on the head, and fixes Clarke with a stern gaze and the promise that he'll be back soon, and if anything happens to Octavia in that time he'll hold Clarke personally responsible. She tells him that she wouldn't expect anything else.

So he goes with them, disappears into the trees, and immediately the others are looking to Clarke for answers.

She doesn't know when it happened, but at some point Bellamy became something of a colleague of hers, someone to rely on, to share the burden of leadership. She feels his absence acutely.

For want of a better plan, it's all they can do to simply follow Dax and Murphy as best they can, Finn putting his tracking skills to use to tail the two men.

They've made camp in a barn, it seems, and Clarke and the others press themselves against one wall of the wooden structure, Jasper and Monty keeping their eyes open for any stray grounders in the area. Clarke can hear low voices from inside the barn, but is unable to make out any actual words. Until Murphy starts shouting, that is.

If she didn't know they were planning to kill Bellamy before, she's certain of it now, because it seems that they believe Bellamy left them to die - led them through the wilderness only to abandon them in the dark the moment he found a better offer. Where was his loyalty?

The main door to the barn is locked - probably thanks to a wooden beam across the door on the inside - but Octavia finds a ladder up to what seems to be a hayloft, so Clarke positions Jasper and Monty outside the main doors, a gun each, while she and the others climb the ladder and crawl across the loft to the edge, taking care not to be seen.

Murphy has his gun out, pointing at Bellamy's head. But that's not nearly as concerning as the noose around his neck.

'We can take them,' Octavia growls from beside her, but Clarke makes a shushing motion with her hand. She can't see Dax. He could be just below them; he could be somewhere else entirely. She doesn't like the uncertainty. Uncertainty means risk, which means death.

But they can't let Bellamy die.

She's hesitated too long, and suddenly Murphy kicks the stool out from underneath Bellamy's feet and the rope goes taut; Octavia makes a cry like a wounded animal and Murphy's head snaps upwards; Clarke barely has a chance to push the other two back before he shoots up at them.

And she can hear Bellamy choking.

She crawls to the edge again, getting off a couple of shots in Murphy's direction, but neither catch him, and instead he turns to the doors, where Jasper and Monty will cut him off.

Except they don't, because grounders are attracted to sound, and gunshots are loud.

The hayloft is too high to jump down from and there's no ladder, but some of the grounders outside are already beginning to turn their attention to Bellamy inside, and if they don't get to him soon he'll be dead from asphyxiation or the bite.

'Get the ladder we came up on!' Clarke shouts to Finn, who dashes to the other side of the loft, pulling the ladder up and bringing it to her; the moment it's placed on the ground Octavia is climbing down it, heading straight for her brother. Clarke sharp-shoots from the hayloft, catching the two grounders closest to the siblings, before climbing down herself, closely followed by Finn.

Bellamy is coughing and his neck is painfully bruised, but he'll live. Unless the grounders get him, of course.

Clarke turns her attention to the grounders outside, and Murphy and Jasper who are valiantly fighting them off. There are only five left, the ground littered with bodies, and Clarke dashes to help them even out the numbers, her machete swinging.

They find Murphy's body twenty feet from the barn doors, along with the grounder who was eating his intestines. Dax is nowhere to be seen. Until that evening, that is.

Bellamy's voice is hoarse, his throat painful, but there seems to be no permanent damage from the time he spent swinging from the end of a rope. Clarke can't begin to express how relieved she is, but she catches his eye every now and again and she knows he can tell. He always could read her like a book.

That night, they sit by the campfire, and Clarke tells him not to almost die again.

'I'll do my best, princess,' he says. 'Just for you.'

She can't tell if he's teasing her or not.

The others are asleep when Dax appears, but she and Bellamy are still sitting up. Technically they only need one on watch duty, but Bellamy's already had one close call today and Clarke isn't willing to risk him dying again. It turns out this was a good decision, because Dax seems set on finishing what Murphy started.

'We had a good thing going,' he says spitefully, gun leveled at Bellamy's chest. 'And you ruined it, and now Murphy's dead.'

'Murphy's dead because he was an idiot,' Bellamy retorts, but Dax just snarls.

'Murphy's dead because of you! You say you were protecting us, but all you've done is get us killed. How long till you get this new 'group' of yours killed, huh? What about her?' He motions to Clarke with his gun, and Bellamy sees his chance, lunging for him and trying to bat the gun out of the way. It goes off, and for an awful second Clarke thinks she's hit, because in the tussle the gun had ended up pointing at her - but then Bellamy disarms Dax and she realizes no, she's fine, it's just her paranoia, and really Bellamy kind of needs her help right now.

She runs towards the fighting men in time to see Bellamy take a fist to the face and go sprawling; Dax turns on her, and before she knows it, she's on her back, his knee pressed to her stomach, pinning her to the ground as his finger tighten around her throat and - fucking hell - is this the way she's going to die?

And then suddenly Dax's fingers slacken and the falls on top of her like a lead weight. Her face is splattered with blood, she realizes as Bellamy pulls the body off her, throwing the stone he used to batter Dax's skull to one side.

'You alright?' he asks, voice still raw.

'Yeah.' She doesn't sound nearly as shaky as she feels.

'Give me your knife,' he says, and she reaches down to her boot, pulling it out, watching with detachment as Bellamy stabs Dax in the head once, twice, so he won't reanimate. He wipes the blade on the grass, hands it back to her. 'Thanks.'

She breathes deeply, hands trembling. She hasn't been that close to dying in a while. You forget what it feels like.

'Thank you,' she says later, as they're lying down to sleep, Finn taking the next watch.

'Don't thank me,' Bellamy replies.

'Why not? You saved my life.'

He doesn't say anything, and she assumes he's not going to answer. But then, 'Dax was right.'

She props herself up on her elbow to look at him. 'About what?'

'About me. I killed him, I pretty much killed Murphy. I nearly got you killed.'

'You saved me.'

'From danger that I created. I… Maybe you'd all be better off without me.'

'What are you talking about?'

'I'm a monster, Clarke. All I do is bring death and destruction, and you… You don't deserve that, none of you. This world is full enough of death without me making it worse.'

'You did what you had to in order to survive. No one can hold that against you. Not even yourself.'

'But-'

'But nothing. You've saved all our lives, more times than I can count. We need you, Bellamy. We nearly lost you today, and I can't… I need you to be okay. We're a team.'

His mouth quirks up at that. 'A team, huh, princess?'

She rolls her eyes. 'Shut up and go to sleep, soldier.'

I.

Clarke turns and swings her machete into the closest grounder's skull, sending black blood flying in an arc. She pushes the body off the blade with her foot before turning to slice another, hacking at its neck until the head disconnects in a spray of gore and spinal fluid.

'Clarke, behind you!' Finn shouts, and she turns to see another, all teeth and dead eyes, and she stabs it efficiently through the mouth and into the brain. It twitches, and stills.

She wipes the blade of the machete on the grass, but in truth grounder blood is a bitch to get off. It sticks, black and bloody, to everything, and smells like death.

'You guys alright?' she asks, turning to face the others. Jasper and Monty give her a thumbs up, Bellamy's busy checking Octavia over for bites, and Finn…

Finn's looking at her with an unreadable expression. 'Clarke…'

She looks down. Oh.

Suddenly her knees feel like they're about to give way under her and she stumbles; Finn is at her side in a moment but she waves him off. It's just her going into shock.

'I'm, um, I'm gonna sit down,' she says shakily, finding her way to a bit of grass not covered in gore and lowering herself gently onto it.

Bellamy appears then, and she knows he can tell instantly that something's wrong.

She smiles up at him the best she can. It's probably more of a grimace than anything else. Comforting.

'Is she bit?' he asks with characteristic bluntness.

'I'm not dead yet,' she answers irritably. 'You can still talk to me, you know.'

He swallows. 'Well?'

She raises her forearm for his inspection.

'I guess that answers that, then,' he says, and she doesn't think she's ever heard him this quiet.

Jasper and Monty are standing solemnly to her side, she looks over to them now, motioning to their packs. 'Keep the medicinal supplies topped up, okay? Between Jasper and Octavia, you should have a pretty good idea what to do. Broken bones need to be reset then splinted, stitches should be used economically as we don't have a huge amount of thread, and avoid cross-contamination. Use alcohol if you have it, but if not water will have to do.'

'Clarke-' Bellamy starts, but she holds up a hand to silence him. This is important, so important, if they hope to survive. She'll be leaving them short of a leader, and though she absolutely trusts Bellamy to take care of them, it'll still be hard. She has to give them the best chance she can.

'Keep moving, you know the drill. Find high ground, avoid densely populated areas. Get the radio to work. Find other survivors, but always trust your instincts, and always protect the group above others, got it? The greater good is only any use as long as you, you, this group, are alive.' She turns to Bellamy. 'For god's sake, Bellamy, you've got to keep these fuckers alive. It's all I've done for the past year and a half. But,' she says, looking him directly in the eye, 'I'm giving you permission to do whatever is necessary, got it? These people survive. You make that happen, whatever it takes. You're a good man. You'll do right by them.'

Her head swims, and she blinks a couple of times to clear her vision.

Apparently it was more than a couple of times, because when it finally clears she's lying on her back looking up at a ring of worried faces.

'Oh,' she says.

'Clarke-' Octavia begins, but stops almost immediately.

'I'm okay,' Clarke assures them, but her arms aren't working properly so maybe she'll just lie here for a little bit longer. The grass is really soft, and the sky is kinda pretty. 'I'll be okay.'

Bellamy kneels by her side, and she smiles sadly at him. 'You alright there, soldier?'

'Don't worry, princess,' he murmurs, the pet name coming as easily to his lips as the kiss he presses to her forehead. 'I've got you.'

'I love you,' she says as he snakes his arms underneath her torso, lifting her up slightly. 'I love all of you. Thank you for being alive. Please stay that way. For me.'

Finn is crying. She thinks she might be crying too, but she can't tell.

Everything is starting to blur now.

'Thank you, Clarke Griffin,' someone says, and she thinks it might be Bellamy, but she can't really tell, because her heartbeat is getting loud, and her breathing is jagged, and her head is fuzzy, and…

The hands around her are Bellamy's though, she knows that.

He kisses her cheek, smooths her hair, cradles her shoulders.

She feels cold metal against her temple.

He'll do it right, she thinks, with a mixture of pride and gratitude.

Then, oh god, I'm going to die.

I'm going to-