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Wells is by her side as she walks through the city and down to the water where they're meeting Lexa and Jasper for lunch. He is smiling and laughing with her and they're betting on who they will side with when they watch the next game. Not being committed to one team means that it doesn't hurt if they lose. It's not hard when you don't have loyalties.
She draws the mountains until her hands are covered in charcoal and graphite. She paints the people in the plazas chatting with one another in their trench coats whenever they stop walking endlessly. She catches herself drawing different constellations composed of hundreds of small stars, ones she's never seen before, almost like they had been flicked onto the backs of her eyelids and she copied them onto paper. There's a familiarity to them. There are also times when she paints butterflies that look incandescent and on the canvas. Lexa likes those the most, says they remind her of home. Little black birds dot the corners of the pages of her sketchbooks. She dreams of two-headed deer sometimes and big, goofy looking goggles and doodles them as well.
Tonight she dreams of pulsating red and orange lights, cries coming from all around her. The screams stop almost as soon as they begin and the lights melt into the flickering of campfires and the screams are from joy and merriment.
She's standing next to a man not much older than her. Dark hair curls over his eyes and they glimmer with mirth at something she's said. Affection blooms in her chest and her cheeks hurt from smiling. She reaches out for his hand and he twines his fingers with hers and pulls her to his chest where she rearranges herself to be tucked under his arm. The man chuckles and presses a warm kiss to her hair. He feels safe. He feels like home. She looks at the fires and other kids as a sense of utter peace settles in her chest before turning back to him.
Suddenly she feels colder. The fires have gone out and the other kids have disappeared. Clarke and the man are propped up against a tree gazing into the night. His smile remains as he talks to her, but his face is bloody, beginning to bruise, and his hands have a slight tremor between her own. A trick. His mouth doesn't match what she is hearing.
"Clarke?"
He sounds pained and desperate, "Clarke, I know you're in there somewhere. I'm not going to lose you, not again, you know that. I can't go in and help. You promised you would come back, and I trust you. It's not real. Please, come back...I need you."
She looks around trying to find the source of the voice, but it's just them in the woods. The trees and the ground are warped. Furs tickle her back instead of the breeze, her eyelids feel like bricks but she keeps them open and looks to him. He is the only stable thing in this place.
"Bellamy..." recognition and regret pull at her heartstrings.
The smile has been erased and fresh wounds bleed on the bridge of his nose and his jaw. He looks older, wearier, and she feels a weight beginning to compress itself around her lungs like she can't breathe. She swears she sees his hand come up to her face, but he hasn't moved. If anything he's almost too still now, save for the frown pulling on his lips and the tick in his jaw. Still, she feels a soft weight rubbing over her cheek and the sensation of something gripping her hand surges. She tries to squeeze back at the pressure but something stops her like she's a rubber band that's almost reached its breaking point.
He vanishes with the forest.
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She shoots up and sinks into Lexa's arms. No matter how many times she has these dreams either her or Wells is always there when she wakes up, ready to give her a hug and reassure her that it wasn't real, that she could stay here with them.
"It just felt so real, it always does."
The hand smoothing over her back pauses, then, "nothing can hurt you here."
Things don't feel as right after that. It feels like she's been here for a long time, but nothing seems to change, except for the dreams. That man, Bellamy, is always in them, and when she focuses on him the weight on her cheek and the pressure on her hand returns.
The people she used to draw seem to blur one moment before snapping back into focus. A large black bird begins to follow her around as if it is keeping watch on her or trying to tell her something. The air itself smells heavier if there was any way to describe it. It is not clean anymore, but old and musty, something similar to rust is mixed in it as well. The woman in the red dress who she had seen when she arrived here sometime ago follows her too, her head cocked to the side and her hands clasped in front of her. She's always in her peripheral vision now, except for when Clarke notices something being not quite right, like Wells missing two of his fingers or Lexa's eyes being surrounded by paint as dark as charcoal as she stares her down. Then the woman in red is right in front of her, studying it seems.
Days pass and people start fading away. Jasper is gone. Her mom and Jackson are gone, so is Marcus. But her dad is still there, and so are Wells and Lexa. She still feels light, but the suspicion that something is wrong grows in her. She grows restless. Starts to notice the buildings are beginning to crumble. She loses consciousness sometimes now, Bellamy, is always there, always talking to her. She remembers that he is important to her. Clarke thinks she might even love him. She thinks it's his hands running over her face and her arms and her hands, even when she comes to and it's Lexa doing those things and she tells her again that it isn't real. But now she doesn't say that the dreams aren't real, just that it isn't real, that she needs to wake up and come back.
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The wind is roaring, dread overwhelms her
as Lexa tugs on her hand as they weave in and out of buildings and alleys. The world goes dark and she feels herself stumble.
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Up.
Down.
Dragged in.
Thrown out.
Only she doesn't know what is up and what is down anymore. But she thinks that up is wherever Bellamy is. Where Raven is, and her mom if she made it out alright.
She hears Bellamy's muddled voice.
"Raven, what's happening, she's still not responding! Can you see her!"
Static crackles, "She's there, but she fighting it, she knows that something's wrong."
"If she's trying to come back then what's stopping her!"
She wants to tell him that it will all be okay, to brush the wild curls from his brow and hold his face in her hands and stay that way until he knows she won't leave him again if she has the choice. She wants to be by his side. She is going to come back to what is real, she just has to figure out how. She doesn't want to hear anything close to the amount of pain in his voice come from him again. Ever.
"I don't know! Keep talking to her. She needs an anchor! Her vitals and brain activity jump when you do. Just keep talking-"
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The voices fade and her stomach drops down, she feels sick. Opening her eyes she sees Lexa above her. They're on the steps downtown near their favorite park. She's gathered in her arms.
"Clarke, you have people to go back to. I know you, I know you are in there, somewhere between this figment and the the real world. If you do not leave now you will die. Your fight is not over."
Lexa's hands begin to run over her hair and face with an air of desperation. She takes Clarke's hands in her own and kisses her knuckles. She slides one arm under and around her shoulders to cradle her to her chest and moves her hair to drape over one shoulder.
It feels like a bolt of electricity shoots through the back of her neck and everything ALIE has repressed from her comes flooding back. Lexa is dead, so are Wells and her dad. Bellamy is real and alive.
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She came here on a mission, help take out the City of Light and save those trapped inside of it. It had been going so well. She and Roan had gotten in, but when they encountered Jaha he didn't believe their story about Roan wanting to meet with Ontari to give her the Flame and Clarke in exchange for leaving the people of Azgeda alone. He knew the Flame was in Arkadia, he knew Raven was able to get back into the code, which meant ALIE knew where Bellamy and Octavia were waiting for them on the lookout. At that the dread that had been building in her exponentially increased. She had been shaking. They had lead Roan to the prison, she still doesn't know if he is alive or not, but they had forced her onto her knees and offered her the key. It was all for naught anyway, they said. The bodies of those around her were withering from lack of food and water. Some of them had fallen over either dead or alive and too trapped in the City of Light to correct themselves. She refused and they had taken her up to the throne room. Then Kane, of all people, brought out Bellamy, a knife pressed to his neck and rivulets of blood already dripping down it, staining his collar. Blood bloomed across his shirt at different points and she could tell he was having a hard time standing up. The incident with Roan replayed in her head.
"No, no, no," she mouthed, her eyes locking with Bellamy's which were unmasked to her and he let her see the fear, panic, anger, and concern.
None of it was directed at himself, except for anger maybe. Concern for her. Fear for their people. Panic because what now?
"The key, Clarke," Jaha soothed.
Bellamy tried to fight back, "Clarke, don't-!"
Kane's knife pressed deeper into his neck and he seized up as the trickle of blood on his neck grew.
"Don't hurt him! Please, Jaha, I'm begging you! I'll do whatever you want, just don't hurt him!" she had screamed, pleaded, and almost toppled forward as tears began to run down her face with fervor. It was so much worse compared to when Emerson had forced her to beg as she watched her friends lose consciousness in front of her.
"If you take the key, Clarke, then we will not let any more harm come to Bellamy Blake," Jaha said to her as he got down to her level and held the key between his fingers in front of her lips.
"I can't let you die because of me, Bellamy," she couldn't help the sobs that broke from her throat.
She could see his frame shaking as she swallowed the chip. Jaha had smiled and let her go. Kane backed away from Bellamy and he collapsed onto his knees. She knew she only had a few seconds before ALIE wormed her way into her mind. Clarke collided with him and took his battered face in her hands and pressed her forehead to his to look him in the eyes and not see Jaha and Ontari on the sides. He was nearly sagging against her but he kept his eyes open. When she was kneeling, begging for his life, she had seen resignation in them, he was ready to die that very moment, but now they were filled with as much strength as he could muster.
"Bellamy, I am going to come back. I promise you. I'm not going to leave you again, you have to know that," she choked out.
He had been shaking under her hands,"Clarke-" he was going to lose her and he had only just gotten her back.
"I'm so sorry. We'll get out of this somehow. Raven will get in and-"
Her face lost all of the tension that had been there only a moment before and her hands slid from his face. She looked over her shoulder and nodded at something he couldn't see. She stood and looked back down on him.
"No, Clarke, stay with me. You have to fight it!" Bellamy began to panic, searched her face for something beyond her features where he could still find his Clarke, not this impression ALIE left in its wake.
Nothing.
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"Love is your strength, Klark kom Skaikru. I should not have tried to convince you otherwise," she smiles soberly and rests her forehead against Clarke's.
"Your people love you, Clarke, and someone who loves you and needs you just as fiercely as you love and need him is waiting, you just have to let yourself. Go. Live."
Clarke closes her eyes as the City of Light goes black having broken down completely. Where she had been cold in Lexa's arms, warmth radiates around her. She can tell there is something trying to pull her back into the darkness, and she is so tired that she almost lets it, but that warmth is there pressed to her forehead and fanning across her face. The weight that had gripped her hand in so many dreams is there and she is able to squeeze back, however weak her grip may be.
The breathing stops. Shaky fingers run through her hair.
"I'm right here, Clarke, I'm not going anywhere. Together, remember? We're going to get through this, but you have to come back to us, to me."
His voice is rough as always, but it's strained. She knows he's crying when something wet falls on her cheek.
"Give her a minute, Bellamy. She'll be fine, it's Clarke. You saw it get taken out of Raven, you know it works," she hears Murphy.
The weight in her eyelids is dissipating and she makes the effort to push out the last bit of darkness.
"I can't lose you, too," he whispers in her ear.
She comes out of it the way she went in with her head pressed to Bellamy's and him cradling her in his arms.
"Bell-" she croaks, unable to finish.
"Clarke!" he croaks, tears staining his cheeks, "You're okay. I've got you, you're safe," he doesn't make a move to wipe the tears from his face, instead he focuses on the color and warmth returning to her cheeks under the brush of his thumbs, the light coming back to her eyes, the way she reaches up and tangles her fingers with the ones cupping her face.
"Bellamy, Octavia, someone come in!" Raven's voice fills the room and Bellamy's brow furrows, not wanting to leave her side.
Murphy ends up grabbing it, "Raven, it's Murphy, over."
"Holy shit, you're still alive. Never mind. Is Clarke alright? Did she make it out?"
Murphy looks over at Bellamy and Clarke and manages to crack a smile. Bellamy's brushing the hair from her face and if she had the energy the smile she is giving him could be called a beaming one.
He manages a fond smirk,"Yeah, the princess is alive and well. Bellamy's taking care of her. And ALIE?"
The room tenses. Murphy thinks he hears Clarke whisper that she's gone.
"It's gone, permanently," she sounds proud.
Monty's faint voice can be heard in the background,"Jasper's okay!"
"If Jasper's okay, does that mean that everyone who was chipped is alive?" Octavia asks.
Pike, Murphy, Indra, Bryan, and Miller start breaking down the barricade they had made in front of the door. They know that at least Kane and Emori would be out in the hall. They throw the doors open and Abby rushes to Kane's side and Murphy to Emori's. From where he's sitting Bellamy can see Emori and Kane beginning to stir, alive and healthy.
"Clarke, they're okay. Everyone is alive," Bellamy assures her.
She laughs, it's watery and broken, but it is the best sound he has heard in months.
"You know you were there with me, in the City of Light?" Clarke says quietly.
He pulls back to look her in the eyes with a quizzical expression on his face.
"Bellamy, you are my anchor. You weren't in the city like the others, but I dreamed that you were with me. I was able to figure out what was real and what wasn't because you wouldn't let me go."
He doesn't know what to say, but she can see fresh tears begin to swell as he searches for something. She kisses the back of his hand and that brings him back to the present with her.
He can't manage to say anything beyond her name alone and when he does it comes out breathy and full of heart. She loves him, but she knows that they both need time to grieve, rest, and maybe even begin to live for what might be the first time in peace. Right now the world around them doesn't exist. They are both alive, and that alone is enough to begin moving forward by each other's sides.