SO sorry it has taken so long to post. Luckily, I've only got two chapters left of this. I was going to end it right after this one, but I kind of want to add more background to the Hundred's circumstance without Bellamy and Clarke's influence. I'm ending it on Clarke's POV, so make that three chapters left. Three, that's it, I SWEAR. Please review!

The world was too big.

Never had Bellamy stood in a place greater than the twelve Stations composing the Ark. Never had he seen a place capable of housing more than two thousand people. And, once upon a time, Earth had housed billions.

Those billions were gone now, lost in the explosions and swallowed by the fire. The few who had managed to evade the bombs by burying themselves in the ground would've been found by radiation, sooner or later.

Years ago, Octavia had once asked him about Earth. What had happened down there, she'd wondered. Where were all the butterflies now?

And Bellamy had looked down at his sister, her beating heart a broken law, his responsibility, and had told her the truth. "A long time ago, there was a nuclear apocalypse, that covered the ground in massive explosions and ripped the world apart. But some very smart people found a way to build a flying machine that would take us to the stars, where we would wait until Earth became safe again."

"Like Noah's Ark," Octavia replied, and Bellamy had just smiled, because what else could he do after confessing to a six-year-old how broken that world really was?

But now, standing on the ground for himself, before columns of trees stationed side by side like soldiers preparing for war, Bellamy found it wasn't as ruined as he'd once thought, which left him a lot of options for where his sister could be and no one around to ask where she might have gone.

He resisted the urge to hit something.

"Hey."

The sound of Clarke's voice broke through Bellamy's reverie and a small hand settled on his forearm. She peered up at him with eyes too blue to make much sense of. Eclipsed between shadow and sunlight, she looked like something ethereal, the princess from Octavia's stories given flesh and bone. He didn't even notice the grime caked on her clothing, or the torn fabric of her shirt. They were alive, which made her one of the best things to look at.

Bellamy clenched his jaw and forced his gaze back to the treeline they stood in front of, a couple hundred meters from the crash site. He stared into the forest, as if expecting Octavia to come running through it any second now.

"What if she's not here?" he asked. "How are we even sure the coordinates were right? We could be on South America for all Sinclair knows."

"If he thinks we're close to the dropship, we should trust him until proven otherwise."

Bellamy clenched his hands, wishing he could silent that pestering fear probing his mind, thoughts of a hurt Octavia or a lost Octavia. The thought of no Octavia at all. "The One Hundred came down a month ago," he said in a strained tone. "They could be anywhere by this point."

Clarke moved in front of him, too short to block his view of the trees, but not too short he missed the halo of golden hair from his periphery. He lowered his eyes to hers. "Do you honestly think they would've separated so quickly?" she asked, expression pleading. "They knew their best chance of survival was staying together. If they did leave, they probably didn't go very far. Jaha spoke of an underground military base. Mount Weather."

Bellamy inwardly grimaced at the mention of the Chancellor. They weren't on the Ark anymore, so what did that make the Council on the ground? He wasn't exactly warming to the idea of a new Chancellor. "How do you know about that?"

Clarke shrugged. "My mom told me. So that's where we start."

Bellamy arched a brow at her. "'We?'"

Her eyes narrowed fractionally. "You didn't really think I was just going to wait around here, did you?"

Bellamy opened his mouth and then closed it, trying to choose his words carefully. But then he discarded that idea and shook his head at her. "No. Clarke, we don't know what's out there. It could be dangerous-"

"What part of any of this hasn't been dangerous, Bellamy?" she challenged. "Ducking the authorities? Spacewalking? We were all preparing to die just hours ago."

"Which is exactly why we shouldn't press our luck," he growled.

"I don't believe in luck."

"Clarke-"

"Look," she demanded, sky eyes determined. "I've got the map to Mount Weather. So the only way that you're getting there is if I'm coming with you. Got it?"

Bellamy glared at her, but she matched it with equal willfulness, unwavering in that infuriating way of hers and after a few heated moments, he finally relented. "Has anyone ever told you how stubborn you are?" he asked, almost tiredly.

"As a matter of fact, yes," Clarke said, the ghost of a smile touching her lips. "But he wasn't from around here."

The ground felt as if it were constantly shifting. For the first half of the hour, Bellamy tripped and stumbled over every rock and clutch of grass embedded in the hard soil, unaccustomed to the strange terrain beneath his feet.

To his ire, Clarke seemed to have less trouble, but she added no commentary to his struggle. Instead she spoke of the change in gravity and body mass, of which Bellamy just huffed in acknowledgement, not really paying much attention to her words. The ground was too uneven, the sun too blinding. Even in the canopy of trees, his eyes ached from the strain of such brightness. Only a year ago, he'd been a soldier. Quick on his feet. Now he felt slow. Caged.

Every instinct urged him to go faster. He wanted to charge through these trees to find this military base as quickly as possible, but his own body wouldn't let him. There was a deep twinge of pain in his shoulder still that throbbed every now and then. The weight behind his eyes worsened. His legs felt less like bone and more like rubber. But he forced one foot in front of the other, and kept going.

An hour or so later, he heard it. The foreign sound of surging power that he first took for some kind of turbine. But of course, this was Earth. There were no turbines here. Bellamy closed the last few meters quickly and came to a stop upon a large, flat boulder. His legs were shaking from the exertion of the walk, but his discomfort dissolved as he took in the sight of rushing water, carving a wide pathway through the forest, waves capped in silver thread. A river.

On instinct, Bellamy looked across at Clarke who was already staring back at him, smiling again. He decided right there that her eyes were also the color of water. Sky and water and sunlight. The colors of Earth.

Tearing his gaze away, Bellamy turned back to the river. He cast a glance up and down its long stretch. He stepped close enough to the rock's edge to see over to the meandering current below. "How deep do you think it is?" he asked Clarke. Her guess was as good as his. Maybe she'd been taught how to find a way across a river in Earth Skills. Seemed like a helpful lesson to know right about now.

Clarke surveyed the river, lips pressed into a thin line, before dropping to her knees on the rock. "I can't see the bottom." She stretched out on her stomach and reached down until her fingers grazed the water's surface. "It's not cold enough to become hypothermic." She retracted her hand and extended it to him. "Hold onto me and I'll see if it's shallow enough to cross over."

Bellamy smirked down at her. "Can't swim, Princess?" he asked, his tone borderline smug. He knew she couldn't swim. Neither could he. Nobody could. There was never enough water on the Ark to spare for them to learn.

Clarke shot him a look. "I'd rather have something to hold onto just in case."

Bellamy dropped his smirk and glanced around at the tall trees they'd emerged from. His eyes snagged on something tucked into a low branch and an idea came to him. Two tugs later, he produced a thick vine. "This should work."

Clarke pulled herself up and eyed it warily. "What if that just deposits us in the middle of the river?"

"I didn't come all this way just to drown in a little water," he said. But he did propel the vine outwards with a swift jerk of his wrist that vibrated up his arm and jumped across his shoulder blades to his healing gunshot wound. He tried not to wince as they watched the vine sail across the water, its shadow flickering over the dips and eddies of the current, before it returned fluidly back.

Bellamy grabbed the vine once more and gave it one last, hard tug. "That's good enough for me."

Before Clarke could object, Bellamy tightened his hands around the vine, took a step back, and launched himself off the rock.

His weight threatened to yank him into the water, but he managed to hold on as the river blurred below him, the trees a sweep of green. Bellamy felt his heart hitch as he cut through the air.

The ground rushed up and Bellamy dropped. His knees buckled as he collided with the dirt, rolling once and coming very close to bashing his head on a pointed rock. Bellamy bit back a groan as he pulled himself to his feet, trying to ignore the lances of pain dancing through his shoulder.

He looked back out across the river where Clarke stood with the vine in hand, unable to read her expression from the distance. "Bellamy?" she called, her voice strangely hollowed over the expanse.

"I'm fine," he called back to her. "Your turn!"

He watched, almost bemusedly, as Clarke fitted her hands more securely around the vine and squared her shoulders. There was only a moment's hesitation on her part before she let herself go, sunlit hair whipping out behind her as she flew forward. Bellamy tried to help ease her fall, but she slammed into him with a force that knocked them both to the ground. The air left Bellamy in a pained gasp.

On top of him, Clarke went very still for a moment before apologizing and removing herself from him. "That shoulder will never get a chance to heal like this," she said, and extended a hand down to help him. "I'll take a look at it tonight. Maybe my mom can find something to ease the discomfort when we get back."

"It's fine," Bellamy said, almost defensively. Like he was about to ask help from Abigail Griffin. No, he definitely wasn't that desperate yet.

Bellamy ignored Clarke's outstretched hand and picked himself up. So long as he wasn't bleeding to death on the ground, he'd deal with the pain. He'd let Clarke take a look later, if it appeased her, but not now. Not while they still had half a dozen miles between here and the military base to dissolve. And that was only if the map was accurate.

They continued on in silence, and Bellamy listened intently to his surroundings, making sure not to miss anything. He was aware of every snap and crunch that sounded in these woods and they only worked in putting his teeth on edge. Everything was just crunching leaves and breaking twigs and the distant whistle of a bird that had made him jump the first time he'd heard it.

His fists were aching to connect with the trunk of a tree when he spotted something ahead, and he felt himself come to an abrupt stop.

Squat and boxlike, it rose from the ground like a cracked tooth. He almost didn't recognize it from the outside. But he'd been beyond that door once before. Had gazed at it through stretched fingers. He'd watched it seal shut.

Bellamy was running before he knew it, slipping and nearly plowing into the dirt in his haste. Behind him, Clarke shouted at him to wait, but he couldn't listen; his need to know overwhelmed him in one colossal wave that swept him up and carried him forward. Memories of a young girl filled his mind. All big blue eyes and brown hair and a scared voice asking for Bel.

The pain in his shoulder disappeared as he broke through the last of the trees, into a small clearing littered in broken sticks and ash flakes carried over by dried fire pits. The ground was packed with the weight of many, many shoes that had left impressions in the dirt. Before him stood the dropship, ominous and silent, door gaping open like a mouth.

Empty.

Bellamy turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. Dimly, he heard Clarke come to a stop behind him, but he wasn't paying her any attention. He only had eyes for the dropship and this camp and the one question whispering, gaining volume in his head until it was screaming.

Where is everybody?

"O?" her nickname burst from him before he could think better of it. He listened as the sound of his voice echoed once and faded through the trees.

He cupped his hands around his mouth. "Octavia!"

In that moment, Bellamy hated Earth. With all of its strong colors and smells and hugeness. He hadn't seen one butterfly on his journey here. Not one.

"Bellamy-" Clarke started, but he waved her off.

"Just help me look," he snapped and sprinted for the dropship. He shoved aside the plastic tapestry and surged into its heart.

There wasn't much to find; the inside of the ship was just as bare and skeletal as the rest of the camp. It all hinted at having been inhabited, but gave away nothing as to when those inhabitants might have left it behind. Maybe Clarke was right, and the Hundred really had gone to that military base. Maybe Octavia was there now, alive. Safe.

Still, he checked the hatch before he left the dropship and walked back down the gangway to where he'd left Clarke just moments before. She wasn't there anymore, and Bellamy scanned the camp until he caught a flash of blonde hair.

Clarke was standing just beyond the camp's borders, her back to him, and he made his way over, still bristling over the vacancy of this place. He didn't like the feeling it gave him, like those that had been here had left in a hurry.

Only when Bellamy came to a stop beside her did he catch what she was staring at.

For a second, he didn't know what the swells of pocketed dirt were; he'd never seen them outside of books or the screen-stories they'd sometimes play in the Library back on the Ark. But he stood in what appeared to be rows of them now, his boot not inches away from one only recently dug.

Graves.