Summary: Clarke runs away from Camp Jaha and from Lexa, but destiny has other plans that lead Clarke right back into the arms of a certain brunette warrior. Clexa. Post 2x16.

Rating: M, violence, language, and sexual content in later chapters.

Disclaimer: I do not own The 100 or any of their characters, I am just borrowing them for my (and hopefully your) entertainment.

Merger

Chapter 1

Downfall

The last bomb falls in a flash of light. Green, blue, yellow, orange. The blast is horrendous taking out the entire city of New York is an instant but the pressure of the blast extends all around. The neighboring states and the neighboring parts of Canada stand no chance as a wind crashes through sending houses and buildings crumbling to the ground and cars flying through the air.

At the end there's nothing left. Not a single building standing in it's entirety, not a single car in one piece, not a single living soul...that can be seen.

Underneath the rubble of a large building there's a young girl. Long, brown, wavy hair riddled in curls. Smooth, sweet tanned face. And green eyes that can pierce through souls and leave anyone trembling in their wake.

...

Clarke wakes up with a loud gasp. That dream haunted her nights worse than the memory of burning flesh and crying children. The blonde is not sure when she passed out but she has discovered that this is a normal occurrence in the desert. After hours of walking in the heat she often passes out without even realizing and she has that dream, or dreams along the same time line.

How did Jaha and Murphy do this in search of this mysterious City of Light? Not that she was looking for that place or that she even deserved to find it, but she figured the desert would be a good place to come to terms with everything that happened in the mountain.

There she could burn the way she had burned so many others: the 300 Grounders by the dropship, Finn with a knife in the gut, Grounders and her own people in TonDC, the innocent men, women, and children of Mount Weather.

It is as if nothing can burn her enough to make it even. No amount of betrayals by a green-eyed Commander that had actually captured a piece of her heart, no amount of disappointed looks from Raven, Octavia and Jasper, no amount of burns from sand underneath her feet burning through her leather boots and no amount of sunburns on her face and exposed patches of skin to the scorching sun could ever match up to the burns she had caused.

Bellamy's forgiveness and her mother and Kane's support isn't enough. She needs a just punishment for her crimes. Maybe dying of thirst and heat exhaustion in the desert was the just means.

But then she has these dreams about grand cities being bombed leaving behind a few children as survivors and none else, and she wonders if there's a cause for them. If there's a cause for her.

The men that went with Jaha and returned said that the desert was worse than the forest by far but had an aura of magic to it.

Though it wasn't the magic that attracted her to the place. It was the nasty conditions and the new terrain. The forest reminded her of acid fog and Pauna, and a beautiful, smooth-faced Commander looking at her serenely, the moonlight streaming through the small windows of a cage illuminating her gorgeous features and expressive eyes as she's telling her that she should've left her behind because sacrifices always needed to be made for survival.

In the desert she can burn and hate her for the betrayal which only causes more burn within her because it is for her that she burns where she had once burned for Finn.

Clarke sees a figure in front of her. A tall man clad in Grounder armor but with a cape and clothes of blue decorated with small snowflakes on all the borders. She tells herself it's a mirage and walks away from him.

She left Camp Jaha nearly a month ago and had not seen a single Grounder since, she wouldn't start seeing them in the middle of the desert.

Three more Grounders appear. They look different than the other one. Their armor is nearly covered entirely with white clothes covering every inch of skin leaving only their eyes visible.

Clarke backs away from them and into a broad chest that sends her tumbling down to the sand. "Who are you?" she says her vision blurring as fear does not mix well with dehydration and hunger.

The man in blue says nothing merely stares at her.

She can't make out his features before everything turns black.

...

500 children. No adults over the age of 18. The eldest of them range from 14 to 18 and number only to fifty. They were the ones to search through all the land of the Eastern hemisphere and gather the children.

There are more in the South that are just as destroyed and alone, living off trees and animals. But they do not speak their language. There's some in the North barely living in the snow and harsh conditions.

There's some across the ocean that they cannot reach, but they know about them because of the ones that escaped harm on ships and boats. They travel between the hemispheres bringing news and trade but live solely in their boats.

There's 12. 12 groups of children led by teenagers, surviving off their resources however they could.

The young girl with the green eyes is in that group that has no resources. They were all from cities where everything was provided for them. Like handed to them on a platter. All the adults of the city abandoned them long ago when the bombs started falling to a tall mountain far away.

The eldest of them all and the leader showed them flyers of this survivor bunker built on a dam to protect them from the bombs. They could live there and build a society and stay there until the radiation had passed.

A group of one hundred children ventured out to this Mount Weather to join the adults but later a group of scouts found their bodies burned by some sort of yellow fog that left them unrecognizable.

The rest of the four hundred needed a resource so they raided cities to try to find supplies. They built cities out of remains and planted all the seeds they could find to try to create a food source.

What they didn't expect was in a short time, too short to be normal, to be surrounded by large trees and plants. What were once large cities that people longed to go to, were now thick forests with nooks and cranies that attracted all sorts of animals that were never seen or heard of in any of the old science and history books.

Another 150 children died in this effort but soon enough they grew strong. Natural selection had taken place and they were not only surviving and strong, but they became the strongest clan out of the twelve clans.

There was the Grass Nation of the south, the Ice Nation of the north, Desert Nation of the west, Boat Nation in the waters to the east, and beyond that there were the Metal Nation, Stone Nation, Sand Nation, Fire Nation, Water Nation, Mountain Nation, and Glass Nation.

They were known during development as the Anarchist Nation without their order or even a guarantee of survival, but eventually they became the Tree Nation. The strongest of all the Nations even though their numbers were small.

Or in their own language, the Trikru.

...

Clarke awakes with a gasp when a bucket of water splashes her in the face. Though the wake up call was icy she struggled to swallow as much of that water as she could.

The man in blue says something that sounds like Tridgeleslang but is not. The other three Grounders wrapped in the cloth approach her and start handing her a jug of water, and large plates of food.

If Clarke wouldn't have been famished and dying of thirst she would have refused the help but now she doesn't hesitate to take the offered treats and dig in.

"What are you doing here Skaiprisa?" The man in blue says.

"You know who I am?" Clarke says in between a mouthful of food.

"You are the only reason your people are still alive right now and the clan alliance still stands," he says.

"What are you talking about?"

"A scout from Trikru checked upon Camp Jaha after seeing the slaughter of Mount Weather's..."

Clarke visibly cringes at the words and feels very suddenly like throwing up.

The man in blue sits across from Clarke and says, "we were right then in assuming this was by your hand?"

Clarke lets her blue eyes fall to the ground to try to stop herself from crying as she nods once.

The man juts his chin up proudly. "Heda said you were representing us after the retreat, you are a hero to all of our clans. You have accomplished our goal."

"Jus drain jus draun."

He nods. "Well the scout checked out Camp Jaha to see if Heda could establish some sort of alliance between our people again."

"I was not there."

He nods. "We assumed you were dead. And when your people abandoned the site and transferred that huge chunk of metal to Mount Weather we feared the worst."

Clarke's head shoots up. "They moved into Mount Weather?"

He nods. "They tore off the door and created a large city out and into the mountain. We could see the fire of the funeral all the way to my clan."

Clarke observes his attire and says, "Ice nation?"

He nods. "I am called Tristan."

"I thought the Ice Nation hated Trikru."

"That was my mother," he says solemnly. "I tried to save that poor girl Costia, not because I knew Heda would kill my mother but because I do not believe in the slaughter of innocents."

"Lex-I mean your Commander," Clarke corrected. "Killed your mother?"

"I was one of the ones who cut her when she was tied to the pole."

Clarke wants to throw up. "I killed the man I loved before they could submit him to that torture."

"Finn," he says with a nod. "It was a risky move Skaiprisa."

"So your Commander," Clarke changes the subject. "Thinks I'm dead?"

"Thought," Tristan says. "After Camp Jaha was moved Heda was convinced they would launch missiles at us for her sacrifice of your people. Trikru started preparing for a battle that they knew they would lose so all the clans united together to fight. In Polis we gathered the best armies of every single clan all around the world."

Clarke gulps and shoots up off the ground, tears slipping out of her eyes and she cries, "They wouldn't attack you! They want peace! Please tell me you didn't attack them!"

"We did not," Tristan says. "The last of the army to arrive was the Boat Nation who had transferred over the nations of the Eastern Hemisphere and your people spotted them arriving while on a hunt. Your second and your peacemaker, Kane were led to Polis by the former Trikru members Octavia and Lincoln and assured Heda that they would not attack them."

"M-my...second, I don't have a second."

"Sure you do," Tristan says. "He led the Skaikru in your absence, the one you sent into the Mountain and freed our people from the inside."

"Bellamy? No he's not my second!"

"You must learn the proper definition of that word Skaiprisa," Tristan says with a grin. "He is the one who informed us that you left camp not died as we thought and that your people had no intention to enact revenge."

"He's right," Clarke says relaxing and sitting back down across from Tristan. She resumes eating and says, "so Lexa sent you to find me?"

"No Skaiprisa," Tristan shakes his head. "Heda ordered a large feast to celebrate our alliance and then suggested everyone go back home but the army refuses. They do not trust anyone but you and they watch your people night and day waiting for a reason to attack them."

"But they are no threat."

"They can reestablish the acid fog, and they have guns and missiles," Tristan says. "They are most definitely a threat. So all the generals got together to discuss a solution. Heda's deal saved people from every single one of the twelve clans since the Mountain Men captured people on boats too, including my sister, Echo. Every single one of us owes Heda everything for sacrificing her warrior's pride to take that deal. Indra pointed out that you had a connection with Heda saying that she noticed several of the same things happening with her that also happened with Costia's death."

"We had no such connection," Clarke says with a snarl.

Tristan looks shocked for a moment at the reaction but then nods. "Perhaps she is mistaken, we do know however that Heda has been very distant and sad and you are the cause of it. So we decided to split up and find you and bring you back to Polis."

"What if I don't wanna go with you to Polis?"

Tristan motions to the other Grounders who step forward with large maps. Each are maps of Mount Weather but from different angles. Clarke could see rows of X's set into circles and other shapes all around the Mountain completely surrounding it.

"These are the camps of the army set hidden around Mount Weather," Tristan says. "In total over three thousand men. All with arrows pointed at your people, waiting for one little slip up."

"But they're innocent."

"Then you have nothing to worry about and we'll leave you to wander around the desert," Tristan says. "They'll never slip up and after a few months, maybe a year the army will grow tired and head back home."

Tristan stands and the other three Grounders stand and roll up the maps. "Wait, where are you going? What can I possibly do to convince your people?"

"There are many options but I think the most effective will be a merger," Tristan says.

"What is a merger?"

Tristan sighs softly. "These are three of the best warriors of the Desert Nation army, Kallen, Miko, and Leng. You can stay here as long as you like and they'll attend you for whatever you'd like. I'll be leaving tomorrow morning to Polis. If you want to help your people join me, I'll tell you all about the merger then."

AN: Hey I hope you liked the first chapter of this story, I have several more written but I love feedback. Reviews are one hundred percent welcome, but please no flames, I am a fan of kindness :)