The sun was starting to drop behind the mountains when the blackened ruins of Ton DC came into view. When she'd walked away from Bellamy at the gates of Camp Jaha earlier, she really hadn't known where she would go, only that she couldn't be there.

She'd been walking for about an hour when she'd realized she'd started on the main path through the forest that led to the abandon remains of grounder village and then she hadn't been able to think of going anywhere else. Considering all she'd done in the past weeks, it seemed fitting that she should be alone at ground zero of one of her darkest moments.

After blasting the dropship rockets and killing three hundred Grounders-though she'd reasoned that away with self-defense and not having a choice-she didn't think she would ever feel worse than that moment she'd seen the charred bodies and comprehended exactly what she'd done. But she'd been wrong, and proven that to herself over and over, the justification of doing what was needed to save her people leading her further and further down a dark path there was no coming back from.

The lengthening shadows cast by the setting sun across the ash-dusted crater in the middle of Ton DC threw everything into sharp relief. She dropped down to sit on a chunk of broken concrete, wrapping her arms around herself as the coming night-chill made the air bitter.

She wanted to blame Lexa or Cage for the loss of life, the destruction of this once-thriving community, if only to make herself feel even the slightest bit better—but there were so many souls weighing on her conscience, the burden of those who'd died in Ton DC probably didn't make much difference. But no matter how many times she replayed that day in her mind, considered other choices she could have made, it all brought her to the numbing conclusion that she wouldn't have done things differently, not if it had meant risking Bellamy.

Apparently she could stomach the deaths of hundreds of innocent people to a point, but the thought of anything happening to Bellamy made her want to curl up in pain. But after Finn, who could blame her? Bellamy was the only thing left she had to hold on to from before, the only thing that reminded her that once she'd been a normal girl, living in confinement on the ark and dreaming of one day seeing the ground, never having a clue what a nightmare it would all turn out to be.

And that was partly why she'd had to leave Camp Jaha, and leave him. She wasn't that girl anymore and never would be again. She didn't know what or who that made her, the only thing she knew for sure was that it hurt to be there with them all in a life she could no longer have.

A scuffling noise sounded behind her, and she shot to her feet as she spun around, pulling out the gun she'd brought with her—the only thing she'd brought with her.

A Grounder crouched at the rim of the crater, leaning on a machete and staring at her with a blank expression. He was dressed a little differently to other Grounders she'd seen, his clothes a little lighter and less-bulky, despite the cold weather. He had a tattoo extending up his neck and cutting over the line of his right jaw, while his ear-length hair was a mess of dreadlocks and braids interwoven with beads. He didn't look that much older than her, certainly no older than Bellamy.

After everything that had happened with Lexa, and everything that happened before the alliance, she had no doubt that more than a few of the Grounders wanted to kill her.

"I don't want to hurt you." Her voice didn't exactly come out even, but she held her ground as he rose and took several steps closer. "I just want to be left alone."

"You're the girl-Heda of the Skaikru. Klok, sha?"

"It's Clarke and I guess there's no point asking how you knew that." Between standing at Lexa's side and killing Finn, there probably wasn't a Grounder on Earth who didn't know who she was.

Despite the fact she had her gun pointed at him, he walked closer to her, stopping less than three steps away. She wasn't going to shoot him, probably even if he tried something. She couldn't stomach anymore death.

"So when the Heda of the Trigedakru sounded the retreat, you ran away from your people?" His expression took on a condescending edge. "Is that how the legendary Klok deals with failure?"

She lowered the gun, a faint echo of anger simmering underneath her weariness. "You don't know anything about me, so don't go making assumptions about how I deal with failure. Like I said, I just want to be alone."

Slipping the gun away again, she turned her back on him and returned to sit on the chunk of concrete, not caring if he rammed that machete right through the middle of her back. It was probably no less than she deserved.

"If you want to be alone, then gonot. This is my camp and I don't plan on leaving any time soon."

He walked past her, descending further down into the crater and then going over to where a makeshift camp had been set up between two leaning slabs of concrete.

The sight made the simmering anger burn upward, and before she even realized what she was doing, had shoved to her feet and followed him down to his encampment.

"You can't set up camp here."

He had his back to her, removing items from a bag he'd been carrying and not reacting in the least to her words, as though she hadn't even spoken. The anger sparked hotter and she grabbed his shoulder.

"Hey, I'm talking to you. I said you can't stay here."

He turned on her so suddenly, her heart slammed into her ribs and she took half a step back, but didn't get very far since he'd grasped her wrist in a bruising hold, keeping her close to him and the depths of a wrath-driven fire that burned in his dark green eyes.

"The alliance is over; you're not a Heda of Gonakru any more. You're just a girl, all alone in the trimani with no say over anything, especially me."

He let her go with a shove, and she stumbled back a step as he turned to continue unpacking his sack.

She rubbed her aching wrist, glaring at his back. "Its disrespectful to those who died here, like sleeping on top of their graves."

He stilled, his shoulders tensing. "You aspired to lead us, but don't pretend you know anything about our ways or what we view as disrespectful."

He cut dark glare over his shoulder at her, slowly reaching out to wrap his hand around the handle of the machete where he'd left it sticking upright out of a burned log.

Was he going to kill her after all? A surge of fear burned through her like acid, but she clenched her fists instead of reaching for the gun again.

Blade in hand, he stepped closer to her. "Do you still wish to fight someone, Clarke? Take out your anger on me for the Maunon who still hold your people?"

She crossed her arms, the tightness she'd been feeling in her chest since she'd pulled the trigger on Wallace returning to steal her breath for a long moment.

"The mountain men don't have my people anymore." She glanced away from him, but all she could see beyond him were ruins, ruins that she'd had a hand in creating. "I killed them all. I went into that mountain and killed every single man, woman and child, innocent or not, so that my people could walk free."

The grounder took a step back from her, and she looked back at him to find an expression landing somewhere between awe and disbelief on his face.

It was exactly why she wanted to be alone. The judgment of her own conscience—what was left of it anyway—was hard enough to bear without facing anyone else's. And this grounder looking at her like she was some kind of mythical warrior was worse than condemnation. She didn't deserve to be respected for massacring a whole entire people, she deserved to be shunned.

"I'm a killer. I kill people." The confession escaped, falling off her tongue with more than a little defeat in her tone. "Just like I killed the people in this village."

Those words seem to bring him up short, his brow creasing in confusion. "What are you talking about? I thought the Mounon were responsible for attacking Ton DC."

"They pushed the button to launch the missile." She crossed her arms, cold seeping into her blood. However, it didn't seem to be coming from the icy air, it seemed to be coming from within her. "But I knew. I knew it was coming and I didn't warn anyone. I could have saved so many people, but instead, I walked away and let them die. I might as well have killed them with my own hand."

The grounder moved all of a sudden, grabbing the front of her jacket and hooking a leg into hers, slamming her into the ash-dusted ground, knocking the breath out of her chest. He came down on top of her, pushing his blade into her throat.

"You. You could have stopped this? You're no warrior, you're a bringer of death."

She gasped against the ache in her ribs as her lungs started working again. "I know. Everywhere I go, everything I do, people die. Too many people."

The blade against her throat pressed harder and she felt a trickle down the side of her neck. His enraged expression darkened, his gaze dropping to where he held the knife. No matter that she'd fought so hard to survive, in that second, she wanted to die, just wanted the aching pain in the hollow where her heart and soul had once been to stop.

But he didn't swipe the knife across her throat. Instead, he muttered in a slightly different Grounder dialect and shoved to his feet, stalking away into the deepening night shadows.

Coughing at the release of pressure, Clarke rolled over, clamping a hand on the small cut in her neck. It didn't feel long or deep, it was just a small nick, definitely nothing that would kill her.

Instead of getting up, she laid there, wondering how many other grounders had lain just like this, too weak to get up, watching everything around them burn, listening to the screams of the injured, maybe screaming themselves, praying death wouldn't take them, but wanting release from their pain.

She closed her eyes as the dark and cold seeped into her, her last companion as the haunted night shadows closed over her.