Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There's a madness in the cavern
A darkness that can blind
And when it's every man for himself
No one's getting out alive

- Joy Williams, Canary

Monsters Among Us

Follow sweet children, I'll show thee the way
Through all the pain and the sorrows
Weep not poor children, for life is this way
Murdering beauty and passions

Hush now dear children, it must be this way
Too weary of life and deceptions
Rest now my children, for soon we'll away 
Into the calm and the quiet

- Fox + Hound, Come Little Children

Canary

Abandoned News Affiliate
Raleigh, North Carolina

Alicia leaned over and lifted Clarke's arm to check her watch again. 

"They'll call," Clarke responded automatically, her gaze so focused on the signal indicator of the long wave radio that she was barely blinking. 

"They didn't last month."

"They will this month."

Alicia let go of her arm, lighting a cigarette. She took a few puffs before handing it to Clarke. "Something must have happened."

Clarke opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted by static crackling from the radio, followed by a deep and familiar female voice. 

"This Alexandria hailing Ark station, do you read us, Ark Station?" 

Clarke smiled as Alicia dove for the handset and snatched it from the cradle. "Hope? What the fuck happened?" 

"The Saviors happened," Hope replied grimly. 

They exchanged a darkening, somber look, and Alicia's throat tightened as she asked, "How many did you lose?"

"Two. Glenn and Abraham. It was--" Hope paused, straining to keep the emotion out of her voice. "Brutal. This Negan guy is just.. a really sick fuck."

Clarke's stomach turned upside down. Glenn had been their radio contact a few times when Hope and Echo had been dealing with other things; he'd seemed like a sweet kid, and he was going to be a father soon. 

Alicia looked as heartbroken as Clarke felt inside. "Oh, my god. H-how is Maggie?" 

"Not great." Hope sounded overly formal in her vague response, and quickly continued by smoothly turning the conversation around. "What about you guys?"

Alicia, however, appeared in a bit of a daze, and Clarke gently took the handset from her and depressed the button. 

"We're fine, Hope," she replied, tucking Alicia's hair behind her ear lightly. "Just outside of Raleigh. Charlie and John have a pretty bad stomach bug, but other than that we can't complain." 

"Oh," Hope sounded surprised, but not necessarily in a joyful sort of a way. "Hi, Clarke. What about Luciana?" 

Clarke worked her lower lip between her teeth as Alicia began to gather herself. "She's.. pretty much  the same." 

"I'm sorry for that," Hope responded genuinely, before her voice returned to an overly professional tone once more. "Is, uh, Alicia still there?" 

Clarke lifted an eyebrow at Alicia, addressing her privately as she handed the radio back. "I told you. She literally despises me." 

"She doesn't despise you. She just.. likes me a better," Alicia replied, shrugging. Off Clarke's look, she conceded, "A lot better." She pressed down the button in time to capture Clarke's mildly indignant huff. "I'm here."

"Are you okay?" Hope replied easily, her voice suddenly taking on a comparatively affectionate, practically gentle cadence. 

Clarke gave Alicia a smug, but mildly insulted look, whispering, "Hates me, totally in love with you." 

Alicia's cheeks quickly reddened as she rolled her eyes dismissively. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just worried about Maggie and the baby." 

"Me too," Hope admitted. "She keeps saying she feels better physically, but we spent the last week at Hilltop and she definitely doesn't look better."

Alicia and Hope continued to chat about the other residents of Alexandria and its neighboring settlement, Hilltop. There was a tiny seed of jealousy that always accompanied these calls, and seemed to linger longer and longer after listening to the two of them chat like they'd known one another their entire lives, but it had, as usual, rapidly begun to be overtaken by boredom. During a lull in their chatter while Hope was briefly off the line, Clarke gestured as she stood up. 

"I'll leave you two love birds alone in your nest, gonna go check on Flukru."

Alicia nodded, reaching out. Clarke clasped her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze and a kiss before she headed back to the hallway where they'd set camp. 

♾

John was sleeping and looked peaceful enough; ostensibly the worst of his tangle with the vicious bug was past and he'd soon enough be back to his usual self. 

Charlie, however, was a completely different story. 

 Clarke found her shivering in a cold sweat, her face pinched up in pain and her cheeks glowing a deep rose with a high fever. 

"Charlie?" Clarke quickly knelt beside her bedroll, feeling first the girl's ears and then her chest. "Oh my god. June!" 

"Clarke," Charlie sobbed softly, curled tightly into a ball on her side. "It hurts really bad."

June rushed in, already wearing a look of concern, ostensibly at Clarke's tone. 

"Charlie, can you lay on your back for me for a minute and let me see your belly? Where's your pain the worst?" Clarke asked, all business as she helped guide the girl onto her back. June had already brought the thermometer over, and placed it beneath Charlie's tongue as she indicated the region between her navel and right side. 

Clarke and June exchanged a serious look, and June snuck a peek at the thermometer. After a moment she met Clarke's gaze again and nodded her head very slightly with a darkening expression. Whatever number it was, the fever was high. 

"Here?" Clarke asked quietly, gently palpating the spot on her stomach. Charlie's back arched hard, and she howled in agony, clutching at her gut as she instinctively rolled away from Clarke's painful touch. 

Clarke swallowed hard, and the look on June's face confirmed that they'd come to the same conclusion. 

"Charlie, sweetheart," June began gently, sitting on the bedroom beside her child. "Do you still have your appendix?"

Charlie's frightened eyes peered up from her balled up form beneath damp, matted brown hair, and a verbal response became quickly unnecessary. 

♾

"If we wait too long and it bursts--"

"We don't have a choice. We can't operate in the middle of a field. We don't even have the equipment, even if we wanted to."

John Dorie rubbed his face, looking more stressed than anyone had ever seen him look before, including June. "We're gonna have to split up. Now, I know we said we wouldn't, and we haven't, and we shouldn't, but-"

"That's just the ugly mustard we've got," June finished quietly. "The Swatty won't make it fast enough. We take the bike, get Charlie to Alexandria. It's what, six or seven hours straight?"

Clarke stood up, already pulling her coat on. "Give me five minutes to fuel up and we'll head out."

♾

Nobody was happy about the plan--least of all Clarke, who found it nerve-wracking to drive the rusty old motorbike even when it wasn't through and around dead traffic and dense trees. June, who was more concerned about Charlie than falling off, was just barely hanging onto her while John cradled an intermittently conscious Charlie in the sidecar, whispering reassuring things to the sweat-soaked, feverish child. Clarke's knuckles were white with stress, and her mind blessedly empty beyond her primary goal, thanks to her gift of remarkably focused tunnel-vision.

Save Charlie. That was the mission, though it was one that she was becoming less and less confident in the longer it took them to make the last leg of the trip. She found herself wishing like hell that there'd been room for Alicia to come, too. She always knew what to say in situations like this, the magic words that would somehow make her believe they'd make it through this, too. 

"Don't let the bugs eat me!" Charlie screamed at one point, swatting away imaginary zooming insects and corkscrewing herself inside John's grasp. June tightened the loose hug she'd been holding Clarke in unconsciously, her body giving an instinctual shudder as she and Clarke realized in tandem that she was probably going septic. 

Clarke pressed the throttle as hard as she could and felt June lean into it, as though her body directionality could encourage the half-rusted motorcycle to get to Alexandria faster.

But after a moment, Clarke did the same thing. Just in case.

Chapter Text

Wear me, wear me out
It's all strung out
You found what carried you
Fall out, everyone fall out
Get lost in this town

Some road that's getting worn
At our feet, at our feet now
Longer still, withstanding the most I will
Still be the most I can
Drying out, dragging down now

'Cause I got older and we got tired
Heaven I know that we tried

- Gordi, Heaven I Know

In This Town..

The Swatty made remarkably good time despite the cluttered road, and Al had somehow managed to spearhead a full reunion just as Charlie was waking from the anesthesia. Clarke suspected there had been much more off-roading than even the Swatty was intended for, but at least they were all together once more, and Charlie was incredibly comfortable in the clinic, where Dr. Denise had made sure she had top shelf antibiotics and painkillers after she'd removed the offending organ. She'd also prescribed a diet consisting of primarily juice and jello, which had suited Charlie just fine. 

Alexandria was much bigger and more comfortable than they expected. The entire settlement, practically a village's worth of mansion sized houses, was surrounded by a thick, high, and incredibly sturdy industrial steel wall. There was running water and electricity in the manufactured off-the-grid community, and it was such a relief when Clarke was able to take her first hot shower since they'd left Texas that she actually released a few tears as she had climbed into the strong, scalding stream. 

There were way too many new faces and names to keep track of, and they quizzed one another as Clarke combed her hair at the sink, listening to Alicia's occasional happy moans as she showered.

"Which one is the blonde, Maggie?"

"Beth," Alicia corrected. "Beth is the blonde, Maggie's the one with the cute haircut."

"Right," Clarke grabbed a toothbrush and almost sobbed when she saw the accompanying tube of toothpaste. "Daryl's the one with the long hair and permanent glower. And he's usually with--Carol. Right. Daryl-and-Carol, Daryl-and-Carol. And Carol is uh--" Clarke trailed off, opting to stick the toothbrush in her mouth since she had nothing else to add. 

"Carol's the one that makes cookies and took our guns away," Alicia reminded her. 

"Right. Her. Serial Mom."

Alicia snorted. "You got that energy, too?" 

"H'oh, yeah," Clarke spat into the sink, rinsing her mouth. "I definitely don't want that woman as an enemy."

Alicia peeked around the curtain at her, with her sudsy, bubble-coated hair piled loosely on top of her head. "I wouldn't want any of these people as an enemy," she admitted. "Beth seems like the softest one of them all, and I'm pretty sure she could still kill me and sleep just fine afterwards." 

"Like a baby," Clarke agreed. "Who's the one that had the little pigtails, the one that kept fist-bumping everyone?"

Alicia smiled, wiggling her fingers at Clarke, who took only a moment to realize Alicia was asking for a toothbrush herself. As she grabbed it and the paste and obediently handed it over, Alicia replied, "Tara. She seems really sweet, too." 

Alicia popped back behind the shower curtain and Clarke listened to the sounds of her brushing her teeth in the shower as she headed back into their room and began rummaging through the bin of clothing someone had dropped off for them. 

"I can't believe there's an actual party happening. I never thought I'd see that again," Clarke said, starting to pull a few items out. "How dressed up do you think we're supposed to get? I mean, what does optional formal wear even mean?"

"I dunno," Alicia called back. "I don't think it atually matters, they just want to welcome us and, you know. See if we know which fork to use for salad, I guess."

Clarke tugged loose a beautiful, flower print green sundress with a plunging neckline, her pupils dilating slightly as she imagined Alicia's bright eyes and sharp jawline hovering above the shoulders. She set it carefully on the bed, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she did so.

She paused, then moved closer to it, studying her unfamiliar reflection. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen herself, much less this way: clean, with neatly combed hair and bright, clear skin. Her eyes looked surprisingly dull, though, and the deep, dark rings beneath her eyes were heavy with exhaustion and stress. She'd lost an awful lot of weight, and it made her look even more foreign to her own eyes.

"You okay?" Alicia asked over her shoulder, scaring the shit out of her. 

"Jesus," Clarke gasped, rubbing her face with embarrassment. "I didn't even hear the shower stop."

Alicia raised an eyebrow, looking vaguely amused as she caught sight of the bed. "Did.. did you lay out an outfit for me?"

"Of course not," Clarke flushed, glancing at the dress, and then back to Alicia. "Well, I guess, kinda, yeah. I didn't mean to, and obviously you don't have to wear it. I just thought that might be a good option for the party tonight. It, you know, really.. matches your eyes."

Alicia smiled, leaning in to lightly kiss her cheek. "You're almost sweet when you really put your back into the effort, you know."

♾

"Are you seeing this?" Alicia whispered nervously, standing just outside the arched courtyard entrance, her nails digging into Clarke's flesh where their hands were tightly clasped together in fear. Their hearts pounded wildly out of rhythm, and a steady stream of sweat formed in the narrow valley between their palms. 

Clarke swallowed hard, blinking a few times. "Uh-huh."

Alicia blinked. "Are we going crazy?"

"I think so," Clarke confirmed, shaking her head in disbelief. "Because if we aren't, there's a tiger over there and it's casually eating a piece of cake and nobody else cares."

"I see you've met my good friend, Shiva," a jovial male voice boomed.  Clarke and Alicia turned in tandem, letting out a combined gasp of surprise at the sight that greeted them. 

"I am King Ezekiel," he continued merrily, the medieval set of dress robes he wore serving as if to confirm that fact. 

Clarke opened her mouth, but found her verbal skills lacking, and opted to just point at the tiger.

"She doesn't bite," King Ezekiel reassured her with an infectious laugh. "Unless I ask her to, anyway. Politely, of course; though I suppose there's really no other way to address such a magnificent beast, then, is there? Always politely." 

Clarke and Alicia smiled nervously, and the King gave them a bow as he continued, "Excuse me, I have a lady to court, I'm sure you understand." 

They watched silently as his robe flowed behind him, his purposeful walk aimed directly at Carol.

"Well, that was.." Alicia gave up, having no idea what it had been. 

Clarke nodded in agreement, then glanced at Shiva nervously. "So. You wanna go anywhere that's away from the tiger?"

"Yep." Alicia was already headed in the opposite direction, and Clarke followed after her quickly.

"This might be a weird question," Clarke began once they were well out of range--but still well within line of sight--of Shiva. "But I think it's fair, considering."

"Hm?" Alicia replied distractedly, her eyes still locked on the tiger as a teenaged boy with a bandage wrapped around one eye brought her another plate and knelt beside her, scratching the tuft of hair on her chin affectionately. 

"Was the US under a monarchy before the walker-ocalypse?" Clarke asked, feeling immensely stupid as she did. 

"I don't--ah, wait, what?" Alicia snapped out of it and clued in to the conversation by looking at Clarke with the same level of disbelief she had when they'd first met. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Clarke gestured back at Shiva. "King Ezekiel."

"No, Virginia, there was no Santa Claus or US monarchy," Alicia shook her head a little. "And let me say what a horrifying idea that is, jesus. We had enough problems without a deeply inbred family running things. At least, not all of the time." She gestured back towards where King Ezekiel stood with Serial Mom Carol, leaning casually against the railing of the pavilion. "I don't know what that's about, but the man owns a trained tiger, so I'm not gonna ask, either."

"Smart plan," Clarke approved, letting go of her hand to grab them each a bottled beer from a large tub of ice on the ground. "You know, I've never actually had just.. beer."

Alicia smiled, taking both bottles from her and opening each one in turn with her teeth. Clarke looked duly impressed at the party trick. "Good. I never get sick of watching you try new stuff. It's always like a little adventure, a road trip of facial expressions, and the final destination is always a question mark."

"Oh god," Clarke groaned, rolling her eyes. "Shut up and give me my alcohol, would you? Cornball."

Alicia huffed as she handed Clarke one of the bottles after taking a spiteful sip from it herself. "I keep forgetting to thank Charlie for teaching you so much gonasleng. I wonder how she feels about snakes. Maybe I'll hide some in her bed."

"You're using gonasleng incorrectly," Clarke replied coolly, smirking behind her bottle as she took her first sip of Porter's Stout. 

"Clarke, Alicia," Daryl called out, waving them over. He indicated their dresses as they approached, though Alicia was still glancing behind them at Shiva with concern. "Well, you two clean up real nice."

They blushed and Clarke replied, "Thanks. So do you."

A snort came from the woman beside him, who was critically eying Clarke from beneath a blonde pixie cut. "He didn't even change his shirt."

"Sorry, Mom," Daryl drawled in reply. "She was being nice. You should try it sometime. Clarke, Alicia, meet Hope."

Hope smiled flirtatiously, her stunned eyes lingering just a little too long at Alicia's strong jawline and the low cut of the dress she wore. 

"Holy crap," Hope breathed out with an audible gulp beneath it. "You're even hotter than you sounded."

Alicia quickly flushed red, looking away with a shy smile, though truthfully it felt kind of nice to be appreciated that way.  "Oh, god. Wow. Uh--thanks," she replied with a nervous giggle. "So are you."

It was Hope's turn to blush, and the tips of her ears burned in a thick streak that shot across her elfin features, coating her high cheekbones and upturned pixie nose a deep shade of rose. "Thanks."

Clarke rolled her eyes at the same time Daryl did, and when he nudged her lightly and asked, "Smoke?" she was all too happy to sneak off to perch on the tailgate of a truck with him. 

They sat quietly, sharing a cigarette and gazing up at the stars that were twinkling above. Sometimes she got so caught up in all the ground-based bullshit that Clarke honestly forgot how beautiful the cosmos were; how big the universe really was, and how much life was truly out there. 

"You miss it up there?" Daryl asked, watching her study the sky.

Clarke shrugged. "The ground was always the dream. It's been hell to make it down here. What would it make me if I went dreaming about going back to space after all that?"

"Hm," Daryl grunted quietly. "Human."

"Maybe you haven't heard, but I'm a metahuman, thank you," Clarke joked in a bragging tone. "That's what Eugene said, which means I'm basically Batman."

Daryl took the cigarette from her with a disgusted look, shaking his head. "You high, Goldilocks? Batman ain't no metahuman. He's just some rich white guy, knows how to fight. Don't talk about Batman if you don't know about Batman, Clarke."

Clarke laughed, surprising herself with the unfamiliar sound. "Maybe you can teach me about Batman."

"Uh-huh," he grunted. "Right after I teach you how to sit your carburetor the right way. The damn thing's open a mile wide."

"It's a deal," Clarke agreed, tapping her bottle against his. 

"Whatchya think of Porter's Stout?" Daryl asked, twirling his bottle in a small circle until the label showed. "Me and Eugene's labor of love."

Clarke made a face. "No offense, but it tastes like piss."

Daryl didn't look offended, merely amused when he responded lightly, "It's beer. It's s'posed to."

"Sorry," Clarke studied the bottle momentarily, once again marveling at how strange life could be sometimes, then shrugged and took another sip. "I guess I'm just more of a moonshine girl."

Daryl studied her for a moment before looking away with a little smile. He sounded amused as he nodded, almost to himself. "Yeah, alright. Fair enough."

♾

"Jokken skrish," a strangely toned voice from behind them interrupted Hope and Alicia's flirtatious banter in total disbelief, and they turned towards the sound in sync. "Heda?" 

[Fucking shit]

"What?" Hope looked back and forth between the woman and Alicia in confusion. "Who's Heda?"

Alicia felt her chest caving in as she replied dully, "Me. But not really." 

Hope laughed a little, though it was clear she didn't understand the joke, and slowly her laughter trailed off when she realized neither of them were joining in. She went quiet and, when no further information was given, her voice took on a tone of concerned annoyance as she continued to look between them. 

"Okay, I give up. What the hell is going on?"

The tall woman set her jaw, replying without taking her eyes off Alicia. 

"Good question, because there's no way this is actually Lexa kom Trikru."

Hope gave a slightly nervous chuckle. "No. Echo, this is Alicia." She repeated herself slowly, over enunciating each syllable of her name. "Uh-lee-shuh."

Echo tilted her head to the side very slightly, her eyes flicking rapidly along the length of Alicia's hairline, searching beneath the updo and finding, of course, precisely what she expected to find. 

"The Flame?" 

"I'm not Lexa," Alicia quickly interjected before things got any further out of hand. "I'm not. Believe me, things would be a lot easier if I was."

The way Echo was looking at her--and, she noted, the way Hope now was, too--made her feel incredibly self conscious. It was clear that they'd both quickly come to the same accurate conclusion: that there was a definite reason neither she nor Clarke had ever mentioned Alicia's resemblance to the Commander Echo, too, remembered and would surely also see. 

There weren't too many reasons Alicia herself could think of besides the correct one, which meant even fewer theories for anyone else. The way their sharp, searching twin gazes took her in, then rapidly morphed into a form of understanding sympathy made it pretty obvious pretty quickly that they'd guessed right, though. Alicia just shrugged, feeling incredibly uncomfortable as she cleared her throat and gazed around the party.

"Someone's gotta have some moonshine stashed away around here somewhere, right?"

♾

Abandoned Hunting Lodge - Abilene, Texas 
Three months after lab explosion

The searing pain in her neck and head suddenly gave way to a painless, and in fact mostly sensation-less, nondescript, lilac-colored room.

"Who are you?" Alicia asked, taking in her very first visitor, who had brought with her a beautiful hand thrown pot, intricately carved and painstakingly painted in a process that would have taken weeks with Grounder technology. Inside it grew an intensely beautiful cluster of baby peonies; her favorite flower. A little tag hung from a stem that bore a small heart doodle and Welcome.

She was more petite than Alicia had imagined her looking, with golden brown hair that flowed around her narrow shoulders, half done up in tiny braids that looped and twisted around one another to form a complex latticework. Wide, solemn eyes twinkled like twin auroras above a pixie nose and full lips that likely held a contagious smile behind them. She had asked who the girl was, but of course she already recognized her; there was only one person she possibly could be, and the thought stole the very air from Alicia's lungs. 

"I think you already know the answer to that, Alicia."

God, Clarke was going to be incredibly pissed. 

"Madi Griffin," Alicia breathed out in reverence. "Clarke's daughter. I'm-"

Madi smiled as she hopped up onto the table, her skinny legs dangling as she idly bounced one foot side to side. 

"I know who you are, dummy," she interrupted, but her tone was warm and friendly as she gestured to the plant she'd brought, which had doubled in size and now bore an assortment of other flowers as well. "I mean, the basics. I couldn't help knowing peonies were your favorite. Some things transfer and we absorb them even when we don't mean them to. I heard you wish the room was filled with flowers, so I thought I'd be your welcome wagon. I haven't gone digging around in your mindspace or anything, if you're worried about that."

Alicia blinked. "I uh--wasn't. I am now, though. We can just, uh, wander around other people's brains here? That's a little unsettling, isn't it?" 

Whenever Madison had caught her asleep with her face pressed inside a textbook, she would joke about Alicia gaining knowledge by osmosis, but that appeared to be the shape of things in reality now. She wondered briefly if she could absorb better coping mechanisms and interpersonal relationship skills from it, too.

"Pretty much," Madi shrugged. "We mostly respect each other enough not to, though. And you can always imaginate a lock or something, if you have secrets. Someone has to really want what's behind it to go through the effort to get it. That's pretty much our currency system around here. Things you don't care about people knowing, they can know freely. You called it--osmosis?"

Madi paused for half a heartbeat. "And that's how it works, because I didn't know that word before, or have need to know it. That's how it works. And sometimes those less important things, you know, fall out of our pockets, like a coin. And other people, if they're listening for it, can pick it up and find out you like peonies best." 

"Imaginate?" Alicia asked tiredly. That was something she really hadn't considered; other people freely wandering into her brain whenever they wanted to. People like Lexa. People like this helpful but exhausting child, whom she had only just realized she was currently completely dependent on in this new world. 

The irony of it all. 

Though to be fair, the list of things she had considered before forcing June to stick the Flame in her was significantly shorter than the list of things she hadn't. In fact, her sole consideration in the matter had been wanting to meet Lexa for herself--something that had seemed like a terrible idea literally the instant she'd felt the Flame pushing past her spine. She suddenly filled with dread at the very idea of running into Lexa and that was when the deadbolt had appeared on the door. 

"I made it up. Just like you made up that lock. It's a mix of imagine and create. You just think of something, and you make it," Madi gestured around them. "This is where? Your bedroom?"

Alicia nodded, only just realizing it herself. They were indeed standing in her bedroom back in El Sereno, and the realization felt like a knife slicing open her heart, followed by a soothing rush of comfort as a few things adjusted themselves to wherever their homes had been before her father died. 

Killed himself, taunted a distant, ghostly voice in her head. He was a coward and so are you. 

"Are you sure?" Madi teased, and Alicia gazed around in fascination at their surroundings. The village was nested inside a thick plush forest, and would have been perfectly camouflaged by the thick tangle of ivies and creeping vines and roots, if not for the brilliant rainbow palette it was decorated in.

"What is this?" Alicia breathed in awe. "It's the most beautiful place I've ever seen."

"This is home," Madi replied very quietly, her voice laced with a combination of wistful remorse and bitter regret. "My village, Shendo."

Alicia's shouldered finally relaxed a bit, and she walked closer, moving beside Madi to follow her gaze. "Which one is yours?" 

Madi lifted her arm and pointed first to one building, and then another. "I lived there when I was small, and that's where Clarke and I live. Lived."

"She doesn't live with you in here anymore?" Alicia found that incredibly hard to believe; something must be wrong, if the Clarke here had abandoned the Madi here. She couldn't imagine anything other than death causing it in any other world, for sure. 

"She doesn't live in here anymore at all," Madi spat bitterly. "Thanks to Bekka Pramheda."

Alicia weaved briefly on her feet as she absorbed what Madi was telling her. "She deleted your Clarke?"

"I will return the favor one day," the child snarled in reply. She crossed her arms and began to pace, her outfit morphing into one that featured body armor and a long red sash that hung from an oversized shoulder pauldron. "Somehow."

Heda, Alicia realized;  then realized that although she had no idea what that meant, she suddenly did have an idea what that meant. She was beginning to understand that gaining knowledge in the Flame appeared to be simply a matter of being willing to absorb it. She didn't even have to ask after things she didn't know; when they came up, the Flame simply placed the knowledge in her brain, or her mind, or her mindspace, like the world's most efficient butler. 

"Becca has really never done even a single thing to call her reputation as a life-ruiner into question, has she?" Alicia muttered rhetorically. 

"No," Madi shook her head, her expression still incredibly severe. "Anyway, I'll let you get settled in here. If you need anything, just, you know. Think about it," the diminutive Commander advised.

"Wait," Alicia called out, and Madi paused.  "Do you want me to give Clarke a message when I wake up?"

Madi's face took on a dark but unreadable expression when she replied severely, "No, thank you. The only message I have for Clarke is a question I'd rather ask her myself."

Alicia looked at the young girl with concern. "Do you mind if I ask what--"

"Why it was you that went back for the Flame. Why she didn't, when she knew I was here. Technically, she's abandoned me twice now, and I'd like to know why."

Alicia gave her a troubled look, but had no answer to give to Madi, so she just replied softly, "I'm sorry." 

"It isn't your burden to bear," Madi replied stoically. "Anyway, you probably shouldn't tell her about me at all," she mused. "I don't want to talk to her through you, and she'll be really mad."

"Yeah," Alicia replied miserably. Clarke was going to be pissed at her already, but there was no reason she could see to drag Madi down with her. And honestly, considering what the kid had been through and how she was feeling about her relationship with Clarke(s?) in general, and the fact that she'd lost her own Clarke--well, maybe for the time being, the kid deserved to have her wishes respected as far as this went. 

"I won't say anything," Alicia swore, despite the ache deep in her gut warning her that she was making a mistake when she made that promise. "Our secret."

"Good. It was really nice to finally meet you, Alicia," Madi said, turning to her and giving her a slight bow. "And listen, you should know that not everyone here is safe. I'm not just talking about Becca, or being deleted from outside. There's someone here--"

"Sheidheda," Alicia intoned, the unfamiliar word sliding across her tongue and lips with a sour, poisonous sort of a taste, and memories flashed rapidly through her mind as it struggled to adapt to the rate of information exchange the Flame was capable of. She shuddered as the memories processed, feeling sick inside. "The demon? Why didn't Becca delete him, too?"

Madi shrugged, resting her hand around the handle of her dagger as she began to leave through the door of what had once again become Alicia's former El Sereno bedroom. "If you figure out the answer to that, let me know. In the meantime, watch your back and don't believe a word he says. If you listen for danger, you'll hear him whispering, trust me."

Madi glanced towards the ceiling with squinted eyes, her jaw twitching as though he was whispering to her right then. Maybe he was. The girl certainly looked haunted as she shook it off and appeared wearing a tank top with a loose pair of sweats sling around her hips, her hair tied in a loose, messy bun that fell slightly toward one side of her head. 

A stark departure from the Heda of only a moment ago, who sounded even more haunted than she looked when she met Alicia's gaze with intense solemnity and added, "He's always whispering here."

And just like that, Alicia was alone behind a locked door in the mindspace, listening to June in a panic as she tried to wake her unconscious body. 

The child has a good heart. We both know what happens to people like that, Alicia Clark. Your mother, brother. Remember that before you take advice from her. Remember this, too, because Madison Clark most assuredly would agree with me when I say jus drein, jus daun.

Alicia shut her eyes tightly, shaking off the sharp, charismatic voice. 

In addition to the clear and present lack of privacy even behind a lock, there would be no rest in the mindspace, either. That much was becoming incredibly clear and quite quickly. 

Somehow, despite the odds against it due to how terrible of one it was to start with, this was turning out to be an even worse idea than she'd anticipated. 

"Jok," she cursed in Clarke's strange but all at once familiar Grounder language, processing what Sheidheda had said in the tongue she was now in possession of a full digital lexicon for. That could come in handy, at least. Certainly it helped her to understand that Madi hadn't spoken of the man with a child's colorful elaborations; rather Alicia found herself stunned by how much the girl had downplayed his venomous, lingering presence. Like smoke that hadn't fully cleared from the room, Alicia could simply sense his existence, and realized she wasn't sure if it was because he was in proximity or because he wasn't.

She wasn't sure which would be worse. One thing she was sure of, as she realized what his parting words had been, was that nothing good was about to happen. 

Blood must have blood. 

"Nomonjokken skrish."

[motherfucking shit]

Chapter Text

Some things don't sit right this close to midnight
You're someone else in this light
It's just like you to take me down with you

Feed off each other's issues, we both know 
There's no use talkin' 'bout what I owe you
I want back the old you

Busy doing damage instead of repairing you and I
Then you go and take advantage of me 
And I can't stand it every time

You're gonna say something you don't mean
So just before you take it too far, 
Hold my ears, say "la da da di da"

- Lennon Stella, La Di Da

La-Di-Da

Al let herself into the clinic quietly, hoping Charlie was asleep. The last thing she felt like doing was hanging out at a party, and keeping the kid company was a good excuse to avoid socializing. It would defeat the purpose if Charlie was conscious and looking to socialize, too. 

"Hello?" A cute blonde with a cherub's face and dark rimmed glasses looked up from the table she was cleaning. 

"Oh," Al paused. "Hi, sorry for just barging in. I'm, uh, Al. I'm Charlie's friend."

"I'm Denise. I have the painkillers so I'm her best friend," she offered lightly, adjusting her glasses on her pert nose. "She actually just fell asleep. I can come find you at the party when she wakes up again, if you want."

Al shook her head quickly. "No, no, that's okay. Thanks. As a matter of fact, I was gonna just hang out here, if you wanted to take part in the, you know. Festivities," Al gestured towards the door. 

"Oh, I wouldn't have gone either way. Parties aren't really--aren't really my thing. They never were. Crowds, noise," Denise explained as she circled another bed with the disinfectant spray. "People." 

"I get that," Al confirmed, grabbing a cloth and helping her clean the blood and viscera that covered it. "What happened over here?" 

"Before the party started." Denise paused and stood straight, adjusting her glasses uncomfortably and biting her lower lip briefly. "One of the kids snuck outside the wall with their bike and crashed it."

Al clicked her tongue worriedly, scrubbing at a thick smear of dried blood. "Did they make it?"

Denise cleared her throat. "No."

Al paused, her voice softening sympathetically when she responded, "I'm sorry."

"It's probably better that way," the physician admitted softly, waving one arm in a sort of hopeless gesture. "A nine year old double amputee in this world?"

"In any, I guess," Al replied. 

Denise looked at her then, her brow furrowed. "That's a bleak view. We weren't always running for our lives before."

"We weren't," Al nodded and gestured between them and the still-sleeping Charlie, her face hardening. "But kids in Afghanistan were. In Cambodia, Rwanda. The child soldiers from those places did nothing but lose their limbs and run for their lives. None of them ever had walls to protect them, either." 

Denise adjusted her glasses once more, seeming to slip into some sort of comfort zone as she rejoined Al at the bed with a fresh cloth in hand. "What did you see? What happened to you?"

Al stopped, frowning. "What are you talking about?"

Denise squinted, studying her for a moment. "I'm guessing journalist or military. That's what took you overseas, where you saw what you saw. Whatever it was that convinced you the old world was just as terrible and dangerous as this one. Maybe in some places it was, but you're remembering in your peripheral," Denise gestured, turning her head to the side and flipping her hands from one side to another in sync as she explained, "So it's almost like your true point of view is skewed sideways, even to yourself. And that's a completely normal trauma response. But Al, not every single kid in the old world was a child soldier."

"That's an exaggeration." Al let out a puff of air she hadn't even realized her lungs were clenching onto. "Not every kid in this world is either."

Denise gestured at the body bag set on a clean bed that Al hadn't noticed before, ostensibly awaiting burial. A grave hadn't even been dug for the uncomfortably small form yet. 

"No," she agreed quietly. "They aren't, are they?"  

Mollified, Al swallowed hard and looked away, sticking her thumbnail in her mouth and biting at it idly. Denise, seemingly nonplussed by the whole thing, returned to cleaning up the clinic around a sleeping Charlie and a silent Al, humming a familiar and somehow reassuring yet unrecognizable tune for her patients as she did. 

♾

"Hey Rick," Daryl called out, waving to a stressed out looking man with at least a few weeks' worth of thick beard covering his set jaw like a shield. "Rick, c'mere."

Rick approached, forcing his face to form into what vaguely resembled a tense smile. Daryl gestured to her. "This is Clarke Griffin."

"Morgan's new friend," Rick confirmed, holding out his hand. Clarke shook it, marveling at the combined strength and gentleness of his grip as he held on and lightly covered her knuckles with his other hand. "Rick Grimes. I'm Morgan's old friend. I can't tell you what it means to everyone, you trusting us with this. I know things are kind of hectic right now with the Saviors, but we won't let anything happen to your people. Morgan said you'd want to be reassured about that. And your friend Echo is my head of security, the keeper of keys and grounds around here, so to speak. Figure you can trust her, at least."

Clarke nodded, her shoulders relaxing as he let go. "Thank you, Rick. I appreciate that. Everything you guys have done for us, really. Mostly the toothpaste."

Rick laughed then; a true, deep, guffaw that started from his gut. "I get that. My wife Michonne, she's got a special place in her heart for dental hygiene too. If you ask her, she might even share some of that bubble gum flavored stuff Daryl managed to dig up for her. Make it a priority to suck up to this one. He's always got an eye out for treats."

"That's really sweet of you," Clarke looked at Daryl, who was looking away and waving his hand uncomfortably as he grunted in response. His cheeks were red beneath the long hair he was trying to hide behind, and he seemed to be burrowing deeper into his angel wing vest with embarrassment. 

She guessed at the end of the day, everyone had their armor. 

"Whatever," he muttered. 

Rick clicked his tongue. "Don't let him fool you, Clarke. He's the guy you want to have your back. I know I'm glad he's got mine." 

"Dad!" a voice echoed from across the street. It was the young man from earlier that had been feeding the tiger. He jogged up, holding the soft white bandage around his right eye in place as he did. "I've been looking for you," he announced breathlessly as he reached his father. 

Rick clapped the kid on his shoulder affectionately. "Clarke, this is my son, Carl. Carl, this is another of Morgan's new friends."

"I know. Clarke." Carl pushed up the brim of the sheriff's hat he wore and gazed at Clarke kindly with his lone eye. "How's Charlie? Can she have visitors yet? I want  to introduce her to my sister."

Clarke faltered briefly, her arm already extended for a handshake. He gripped her forearm and gave a confident Grounder-style shake as he patiently awaited a reply. 

"Uh--good, she's much better," Clarke finally managed, returning the familiar greeting as Rick and Daryl exchanged an amused, but proud, glance. "Especially now that she knows you guys have applesauce."

Carl smiled warmly, letting go. "I'll sneak her some extra jars of it on our way, then. Nobody can yell at me, I'm the leader's kid."

"Carl," Rick admonished with a lingering drawl. 

"What?" Carl blinked innocently, giving him a mischievous smile. "You said to make them feel welcome." He turned back to Clarke with interest as Daryl snickered. "Do you know her favorite food? I mean, you know, from before?"

Clarke smiled. "Pizza. She's a pizza fiend."

"Good to know," Carl's eyes sparkled mischievously. "It was nice to meet you, Clarke." 

"You too, Carl," she replied honestly. She tried not to watch too closely as he and Rick turned their backs on herself, Hope, and Daryl to have a quiet, hurried exchanged. Ostensibly they were discussing whatever it was that had sent Carl looking for his father in the first place. 

She watched them quietly, feeling a sharp pang in her heart as she involuntarily focused on Carl's sheriff hat, remembering.

There's a new sheriff in town, Daddy!

"He's a good kid," Rick watched his son run back to where Beth waited for him with a stroller. Clarke's eyes grew wide, and her knees wobbled slightly. 

"There's a baby here?" she asked, feeling the ground shift beneath her unevenly. "I haven't seen a baby since--" 

Clarke stopped, her blood chilling in her occipital. The last time she'd seen an infant, it had been after the destruction of the City of Light. It had been cradled closely in the arms of a woman who was hysterically sobbing on her knees in Polis square. The impossibly tiny remains were already donning a burial shroud, and the mother's desperate wails of hopelessness at her unimaginable loss had cut them all to the quick. Bellamy, especially. He had thrown up under an archway repeatedly until he spat blood, muttering senselessly, "I killed them all," to himself in between heaves. 

Clarke tried her best to reassure him, but she knew from experience that he was seeing through the shroud over the little corpse and the face that lay beneath it was already Octavia's. She knew that much for dead certain. She knew it because after Praimfaya 2: Revenge of Praimfaya, when she was alone in the night with only the company of Lexa's bloody abdomen and last sharp wheezing gasps of wisdom, her face and voice frequently became Madi's instead. 

Both of them, two peas in a pod, John Dorie would say; teachers at heart, right up until the end. Both stubborn brunette Commanders were equally determined to shed their own light onto Clarke's footing for her; to keep her on the right path. Bellamy, too, and perhaps he had taught her most of all. He had marched beside her from (almost) the day the dropship dropped anchor, had made whatever leadership mistakes Clarke hadn't, and ultimately their shared learning experience had made them both stronger and, at least she hoped, more level-headed. 

Surely, more prepared for whatever bullshit came next. 

"My daughter. Judith," Rick responded while studying her carefully. Clarke could imagine why. Strand had historically had more than a few choice words to say when it came to having babies in the apocalypse. Especially on purpose. He's been rightfully shut down about the issue, but he surely couldn't be the only person to find energy for judgement even now. Rick had probably heard it often enough that he'd simply started anticipating it.

"Can I--" Clarke gestured at the stroller, where Beth was already waving her over with an amused smile as she picked Judith up. 

Rick smiled as well. "Be my guest."

Clarke didn't bother responding, and found that somehow, she'd more or less teleported to the stroller. 

"You have good timing," Beth handed Judith to her with a gentle drawl. "Stinkerbell just had a bath, so she smells like vanilla."

"Definitely not what she smelled like a little while ago," interjected a slim girl with a narrow jaw and long brown hair that half hid a haunted but kind face. 

Carl smirked and put his arm around her shoulders. "I told you not to let her have any frosting. Clarke, this is Enid."

"It's nice to meet you," Clarke replied, and she was sure under literally any other circumstances it would be downright lovely. Her brain was entirely focused, however, on the beautiful, tiny, blue-eyed, dirty blonde, smiling child she now held in her arms. Judith let out a nonchalant baby sound and immediately started playing with the tiny braids cascading down her shoulder without a hint of unease at the introduction of a new person. 

Clarke let out a single, body-wracking sob she didn't even realize was building up inside her until it had escaped. Judith startled a little, and she felt like floating herself for scaring the most miraculous thing she'd ever held in her arms. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sca--"

But the toddler was already back to poking and twisting the apparently intriguing strands of hair, thoroughly unaffected, and Beth gestured at her as Clarke inhaled the sweet vanilla scent of her head with closed eyes. "A lot of people react like that. Most of us thought we'd never see a baby again, much less hold one. Judith's pretty used to it."

"She's amazing," Clarke murmured, bewitched by Judith's new fascination with her father's watch. Judith tapped it pointedly with her index finger, then leaned over and pressed her open mouth to the watch face with a giggle, as though she meant to eat it. "What are you doing, you goofball? Are you eating my watch?"

Judith squealed and wiggled enthusiastically in her arms, kicking her legs out repeatedly as she babbled, "Ya! Ya! Ya!"

Beth laughed as she wiped some drool from the corner of Judith's mouth and bent to retrieve the sock she'd flung to the floor in her enthusiasm. Carl reached out and tickled her bare foot. "She does that with everything now. If she likes it, into her mouth it goes with a battle cry."

"Hmm," Clarke observed, gently redirecting Judith's attention away from the unhygienic accessory. "Sharks do the same thing, but they're testing if it's something they want to eat. Are you a baby shark, Judith? Is that what you are, would we find a license plate in this little belly?" Clarke questioned the toddler, lifting her up to bow a raspberry on her stomach. 

"She would eat a license plate," Carl kidded. "And Enid would be the one to let her."

"At least that would be easier to clean out of my hair when it came back up," Enid replied, giving him a hard nudge in the ribs. "Wouldn't have smelled like that, either." 

"You're really good with kids," came a soft voice. Clarke turned quickly, instinctively holding Judith closer to her chest as she did. Alicia was standing there with a strange but ultimately sad look on her face. 

Clarke blushed and took one more covert sniff of Judith's hair. "Thanks. You want second dibs, before June gets here?" she offered the baby to Alicia and indicated her chin up the street towards June, who had just noticed there was a baby as well. 

Alicia didn't even respond; she was too busy already taking Judith into her arms. Judith, excited to make yet another new friend, easily magnetized herself to Alicia and began investigating her lips with exploratory but violent pokes that Alicia dutifully winced and endured. 

"Ba?" she asked. 

Alicia smiled with a joy in her eyes that was damn near unfamiliar to Clarke. "Definitely ba."

♾

"Hey! Harrison Ford! Where do you think you're going?" Daryl asked, collaring and lifting Charlie into his arms despite her protests and flailing bare feet beneath her hospital gown. 

"I want to see the tiger!" she slurred, her eyelids heavy with painkillers. 

"The tiger went to bed already," Daryl lied, shifting her into his grasp more securely. "I'm real sorry."

"Oh. What about Carl?" Charlie asked, giving up her fight instantly and settling into the protective grip around her. 

"Carl?"

Daryl showed her off to a few concerned faces as they headed back to the clinic. They all looked relieved, and Clarke rolled her eyes and mouthed of course to Alicia as they danced. Seemed it wasn't out of character for Charlie to go running off, and Daryl made a mental note of it to let perimeter patrol know they had another potential wayward pup to look out for. 

"He came with a baby and applesauce and a friend who can French braid. He's super cute, and he let me wear his hat. He got shot in the eye," she dutifully informed Daryl, as if he didn't know. "The cute one. Did he go to bed, too?" she sighed dreamily. 

"He did, and don't go falling in love with him, either. Enid won't walk away without a fight, and you can't even walk," Daryl rolled his eyes at himself for even humoring the teen drama as he carried her limp body up the steps, her head lolling tiredly against his shoulder. 

Charlie let out a long-suffering sigh. "Enid's cute too."

Daryl sighed and shifted her weight to open the clinic door. "Special delivery. You offerin' a reward for fugitive hormonal time bombs?"

"Oh, thank god," Denise announced, scrambling up from the floor. She'd been practically prone on it, her glasses bearing a thick coating of telltale salt from a panic attack. Tara was beside her to one side and Al to the other, clearly trying to comfort the surgeon-come-psychiatrist, who had to have been beside herself when she realized her patient was AWOL. 

Her face was flooded with relief as she continued, "Charlie, I turned my back for one minute and you-- you--"

"You could have popped your stitches," she finally decided on, clearing a path for Daryl to the bed. 

"Don't tell Mom and Dad," Charlie said in a conspiratorial but extremely loud whisper. "They think I'm still in the clinic."

"No deal, Shortstack," Daryl firmly declined as he carefully placed her on the pillow. "I'm ratting you out the minute they get here."

Charlie whimpered. "What? No.."

"Unless," Daryl said, pulling the blankets up a little further for her as he sank into the chair beside the bed. "You think about sharing some of that applesauce there with me." 

Tara raised her eyebrow. "Are you seriously blackmailing a child?"

Daryl snorted. "Ain't you flipped one off?"

Tara, who actually had done so, replied by demonstrating her flipping off abilities once more and making a face. Charlie tilted her chin up sleepily to address Daryl as Tara and a still-ruffled looking Denise began to get her settled. 

"There isn't actually a tiger here, is there? Carl was just teasing?"

"A tiger, and a king, too. Knights, horses. All that good shi--stuff," Daryl replied easily. "And they live in a castle, in a place called The Kingdom.

Charlie's eyebrows were on the ceiling, and there were tears rapidly forming in them. "Dude, I swear, if you're lying to me, it's the meanest thing anyone's ever done in my whole life." 

Daryl chuckled sympathetically. "I promise, I'm not lying. It's all real, even the tiger. Her name is Shiva. I'll make sure you get to meet her first thing tomorrow, but only if you promise to keep that scrawny ass of yours in bed until the doc says otherwise."

Charlie considered it as Tara brought her another blanket for the night and Denise assembled a fresh bag of IV fluids, shooting Daryl a grateful look. 

"Deal," Charlie finally decided, settling back to wait for John and June to smother her with inevitable affection, relieved that she'd been safely retrieved. 

♾

"Can I ask you something? About the Flame?" 

They were making up the bed, still wearing their party dresses. Alicia took a deep breath. 

Well, it's about time this came up.

Alicia thought of the anxiety and the hopeless, crushing weight that she felt about asking whether it was true that she was Lexa's mirror image; whether it was possible that Clarke really did simply love her face rather than her. Already sensing the truth and dreading it.

She had an idea of how Clarke must be feeling at the moment, and decided to give her a break.

"I was wondering when you'd ask. No, I've never met Lexa."

"What?" Clarke looked incredibly surprised. "I figured that was why you went back for it in the first place."

"It was," Alicia shrugged weakly, her shame scrawled all over her face. "But when it came down to it, I guess I actually didn't want to know. So I never went looking for her, and she never came to me, either. I swear."

Clarke looked at her unsurely. "What do you do in there, then? Are you alone?"

"Not exactly.'  Alicia looked away uncomfortably. The truth was, she felt like the real answer might be even worse; that Clarke might have an even harder time bearing the truth than she had so far done with the idea of Alicia and Lexa hanging out.

"Alicia?" Clarke pressed.  "Who do you talk to?"

"I, uh.." Alicia shifted her weight from one foot to the other as she stalled, closing her eyes guiltily. 

"It's not Becca," Clarke said flatly, since she already knew the answer. She couldn't really imagine anyone spending time around Becca if they didn't have to; least of all Alicia. No, it had to be even worse than Becca, worse than Lexa, and Clarke had likely already figured out who it was long before the current conversation. She just hadn't wanted to confirm her suspicions. That's why she hadn't asked in all this time.

That's why they'd both been living with their eyes closed ever since Abilene.

"Alicia," she followed up again, this time with a hint of warning in her tone, but her voice quickly became desperate and cracked slightly as she asked, "Who is it?"

Alicia swallowed hard, her face a full mask of sorrow and shame and sympathy and worry when she finally responded quietly, "Madi."

Clarke stared at her for a full minute without responding or otherwise reacting, her gaze a complicated and ever-rotating kaleidoscope of rage, betrayal, grief, jealousy, and even what looked to be some low-key and hopefully temporary hatred. She dropped the pillowcase she'd been holding, and slowly turned and walked out of the room without a single word. Alicia felt her stomach drop to the ground.

Fuck.

Clarke was even more upset than she'd anticipated, and that was saying something. It was entirely possible that Alicia had just torn open a wound between them that would never heal, and she felt sudden doubt that honesty was the best policy; at least in this situation. 

Maybe she had just destroyed everything. Maybe she had done something completely unforgivable and now Clarke hated her.

Maybe that was for the best. 

Or maybe Sheidheda's disembodied voice had simply been right that first day, and she shouldn't have taken relationship advice from a 12 year old. 

Chapter Text

I guess I could say I've learned to live this way
But it's still hard to find reasons to stay alive
Accepting I'm pointless isn't the hardest
When it's so completely obvious

I reach for me but I'm not there
It's so lonely but who cares
I always wonder why I'm here
It's fine, it's okay, I'll die anyway

- girl in red, i'll die anyway

Reach For Me

The air in Alexandria was absolutely stifling the next day under the weight of Alicia's recent confession. Clarke had slept on the couch in the living room, still wearing her party dress. By the time Alicia's exhausted body had woken after crying herself to sleep, the blonde had already made a pot of coffee and left the house. 

Needing to feel useful, she went looking for Echo and found her debriefing two friendly men, Heath and Aaron, about their latest run and the next run they were suggesting. When Heath handed over the map they'd drawn, she snatched it from Echo's hands before she'd even had a chance to look at it. 

"Doesn't matter where it is, I'll take the next run. I need to get out of here for awhile."

Echo sat back in her chair, crossing her arms on her chest and studying her suspiciously. "I don't think it's a good idea for our natblida savior to go putting her life at risk for some canned goods and bandages, Alicia."

"Me either," Alicia replied. "Which is why I'm not taking her."

Echo lifted an eyebrow. "I meant you."

Alicia blinked dumbly. "Clarke's the savior."

"Interesting take," Echo replied, but her tone seemed to indicate that she very much meant quite the opposite. "Considering that you're the only natblida made outside of a lab by someone we have access to, and now you bear the mind drive of Bekka Pramheda to boot. Seems to me that makes you more objectively valuable than Clarke. So why should I just let you go off on a supply run and risk losing such an important asset?"

Bypassing the fact that she didn't have as much access to Becca as Echo seemed to think, Alicia huffed indignantly, her brow knitting determinedly. "Excuse me? Let? I know you're the all-time greatest warrior-spy of The Ice Nation or whatever, but nobody lets me do shit, I don't care whose lieutenant you are. Rick Grimes does not scare me."

"It's just Ice Nation. There's no 'the',"  Echo replied easily, squinting at her. "And Rick Grimes scares everyone." She chuckled a bit, dropping her arms and leaning forward on the table once more. "I knew I liked you, Alicia Clark. Who will you take on the run?" 

She held out the clipboard containing the runner's roster, but Alicia just shook her head, a little surprised that Echo had so quickly agreed; not to mention how understanding she had looked regarding Alicia's need to run away. Maybe the girl wasn't as cold inside as her demeanor and hailing clan might indiciate.

"I thought I might ask Hope," Alicia decided. "I don't know if running errands is really her thing, but--"

Echo's face quickly returned to its normal stoicism, but her voice gained a slight, very sudden sharpness. "Hope is needed here. Take Beth or Niylah, they've both been complaining about boredom and feeling useless."

Alicia nodded amicably, but her stomach was rapidly tightening from Echo's reaction.  She'd seemed almost--jealous? How strange, when there was nothing to be jealous about; she didn't know exactly the nature of Echo and Hope's relationship with one another, and it seemed like maybe they didn't even know yet themselves, but she and Hope were friends. Just friends, and definitely staying that way. 

Alicia had more than enough trouble in the romance department already without adding to it. 

♾

Beth declined the mission because she didn't want to leave Maggie yet, and visits to Al, Strand, the Dories, and even Morgan all went similarly. There was a definite sense that Alexandria as a whole was crouched in a foxhole, and Alicia seemed to be the only one feeling claustrophobic about it. 

At least, until she went to the pantry to finally locate an annoyed Niylah trying to convince Olivia, who was near tears, that nobody would miss a few bottles of bourbon. 

"But Rick counts them," Olivia insisted weakly. 

Niylah patted her shoulder gently. "Then I'll only drink half the bottle, and refill it with water. Just stick it in the back. By the time it's the last one left, nobody will care if it's a little weak. Trust me, I've done it before." 

Agreeing with Niylah but still feeling pretty bad for poor Olivia, Alicia knocked on the doorframe. 

"Hey. Niylah, would you want to go with me to--"

"Fuck, yes. Let's go," Niylah interrupted to reply, apparently uninterested in the details of the mission, and though Alicia had only even spoken with the woman once before, she was rapidly becoming a fan. 

♾

The Slaughtered Lamb Tavern
Richmond, Virginia

Once she finished recalling the awkward, overly brief and civil goodbye between herself and Clarke, Alicia let out a belch and laid her head on the counter, emitting a liquor-soaked combination of a sob and a sigh. 

"Can I ask something about you and Clarke?"

Niylah smirked behind her glass as she polished off the remaining amber liquid. "Oh, this is sure to be good. Hit me."

Alicia considered it for a moment, and Niylah stood to fix herself another drink quietly, giving the brunette's poor under-the-influence brain time to sort itself out with a patience cultivated over many years of dealing with depressed drunks. 

Finally, Alicia propped her head up on her elbow against the bar, her lips curling just a little too slowly around her slurred words.

"So when you--when you were, yunno, doing it, I mean, like, you know, actually, literally, in the act of, you know, doing it-doing it," she rambled, tapping the worn wood of the bar with her index finger determinedly, like she'd just made a very important point. 

"Uh-huh," Niylah encouraged with amusement, rejoining her. 

"Did you, you know, ever feel--" Alicia paused briefly, struggling even in her inhibition-lacking state with the concept as a whole; never mind her ability to verbalize the awful thing. "You know, that the sex, and everything else too, it just, did it seem like you were--"

"A substitute for Lexa?" Niylah finished knowingly, but sympathetically. She took a sip of her drunk and shrugged half heartedly. "I never felt otherwise with Clarke. And," she pointed out gently, but pointedly, "I wasn't even wearing Lexa's face." 

"How did you, you know?" Alicia made a few vague gestures in the air with the hand not currently supporting the significant weight of her drooping head. "Live with that?"

"I couldn't really say," Niylah gave her a sad smile. "Easier than living without her, I guess."

Alicia let out a loaded sigh and took another shot with a sluggish grimace. "I get that."

Niylah, who was despite her resolution to stay sober enough to babysit a good five or six sheets to the wind at this point as well, folded her palm against her cheek, propping her own head up on the bar as she looked at Alicia with heavy eyelids. 

"You deserve better. Treatment, you know," she elaborated. "There's nobody better than Clarke."

Alicia groaned, resting her forehead against the bar and folding her hands across  the back of her neck with a whine. "Why is that true? Clarke's like, so hot, and good, and funny."

"A real panther in the sack, too," Niylah murmured wistfully, polishing off her drink and tossing the glass to the ground, watching it shatter with a heavy sigh. 

"God, I know," Alicia groaned in response, banging her forehead lightly against the bar. "Why can't Lexa just, you know, go away? Or stop having my stupid face, at least?"

Niylah clumsily rested her hand on her back and gave her a few reassuring pats. "There, there. You have a very smart face."

Alicia stopped thumping her head, and instead turned to look at her blonde companion once more, resting her cheek against the smooth mahogany and studying the other woman. 

"I really do look like her, don't I? I mean, it's not just a passing resemblance, or Clarke being Clarke, is it?" she managed, visibly trembling as she finally asked the question she'd been dreading asking someone besides Clarke--or Becca, who would have said anything to manipulate anyone if she thought she needed to. It was the question she had been avoiding for so long and so hard, that she'd even conjured up a complex code lock to seal the door between the so-called walls of her mind space and Lexa's. 

Just in case. Because she thought if she met Lexa and, as she expected to, found her to be everything that Clarke said she was, everything that Alicia feared she was, that the proverbial bubble would burst one way or another, and what was between her and Clarke would be permanently broken.

 She didn't want to know, not at all; it was only that part of her needed to know.

Niylah just gave a very slow but incredibly emphatic nod of confirmation to the wall she was suddenly interested in, taking a drink as she did. 

"H'oh, yeah," she responded. 

Alicia lifted her head, looking at her in dismay. "Seriously?"

Niylah finished off her cup with a gulp and set it down, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand before twisting on the seat to look at her.

"You could be twins. I can't believe Clarke didn't run screaming the first time she saw you," she elaborated. "Because that's what I wanted to do, and I don't even believe in ghosts."

"How do you not believe?" Alicia asked a little bitterly, looking crestfallen at the confirmation of her stolen/borrowed face. "We live in a world full of ghosts. Clarke regularly bangs the one in her head."

"Walkers aren't ghosts. They're not human anymore, but they're definitely alive. Dead things don't eat," Niylah pointed out reasonably. 

"Well, I feel pretty haunted," Alicia shot back, reaching for a bottle of whiskey, but Niylah quickly swatted her hand away, indicating she'd been cut off for the time being. "Anyway, what would you call Lexa if not a ghost? Sucking all the joy out of the room like a perfect, haunty, succubus."

Niylah shrugged. "She's Clarke's soulmate."

"You don't believe in ghosts, but you believe in souls? And them having mates?" Alicia tossed her glass to the ground in annoyance, twisting on her stool to face her fully. "And anyway, you don't know that. Just because-"

"I do know that, and so do you," Niylah interrupted in counter. She fixed Alicia with a lifted brow as she offered, "The question is, can you live with second best?"

"I've never felt otherwise," Alicia murmured quietly, feeling a tiny explosion go off and destroy something inside her chest that she no longer remembered the name of. Something was gone, but fuck if she knew what it used to be.

"With Clarke?" 

Alicia blinked slowly, faded images of blonde hair and the sounds of shouting matches swirling around the memories inside her clouded mind. 

Something about soccer practice, drugs, and a college acceptance letter stained with melted ice cream cake. Lonely nights of cable movies and leftover toroi and boil-up, followed by a big bowl of hokey pokey ice cream. Sneaking wine and cigarettes and listening for the indignant howls of a boy trapped inside a man's body, raging against the woman whom he seemed to feel had sentenced him to the hellish existence he was doomed to lead. 

She remembered Travis holding Madison back once, after she'd slapped Nick in the midst of their first fight as a newly blended family. Nick had barely blinked, either at the slap or as Madison screamed bloody murder and corkscrewed wildly in Travis's arms, trying to reach her emboldened offspring. 

Alicia hadn't thought about or even reacted to the entire production that night beyond a tired, dismissive, and ultimately sarcastic welcome to the family that she'd muttered as she moved past Travis and Chris towards the stairs. Now, though, she gazed at the moment through the lens of what she'd since learned that she hadn't known then. 

Mostly through the lens of the knowledge that Madison Clark--the immeasurably strong and wildly independent widow, dangerously dedicated mother of two, and everyone's favorite guidance counselor--had murdered her own father. Not in cold blood, she supposed, considering the man had been fairly close to evil if not completely aligned with it quite yet; but still. Her own father? Even if he had it coming--and surely, he had--well, Nick could be truly awful, too. He had a kind heart, yes, but the years of addict life had turned him quite selfish and cruel, manipulative and violent. 

A threat, even. Sometimes. 

So what was to say that Madison Clark would never have found a justifiable reason to put her hands around Nick's throat, too? Who was to say she wouldn't get tired of saving him all the time when he clearly wanted to die, and decide to help him out?

Certainly, Alicia had felt like it often enough, and what struck her was how clear it suddenly was that Travis had feared the very same thing. All of his actions--including his initial longstanding denial of the walkers and his delusional desperation to believe that the military, the government, or a stranger with a ranch would save them--suddenly made sense. 

He was terrified of Madison being the one to bear the weight of keeping them all alive, because at the end of the day, he already knew what she was capable of, and he was afraid of her. He knew what would happen to someone she thought was a threat, and he'd known it since that first night. When he'd held her tightly in his arms and just out of reach of her son, knowing how close she was to following the time-honored tradition of animals who devoured their own offspring.

Travis had known exactly what kind of monster lived inside Madison Clark, and was trying to save her from it all along. If the monster had looked like that even way back then, he could only have imagined what Madison's monster would manifest as in this world. 

"Ever," she finally answered Niylah with uncomfortably brutal honesty. "I've always been the runner-up."

Niylah looked at her with a combination of sympathy and worry. "You know that actually makes this even worse, right? That you don't have a comparison? You might even find out you actually like first place."

Alicia shrugged sadly as she pushed herself off the stool, gripping the bar tightly for balance. "Don't really see the opportunity to find out presenting itself, so it's a moot point." 

Niylah's eyes flicked in a rapid triangle between each of Alicia's emeralds individually and then her lips, and Alicia felt her cheeks and chest suddenly heating up. She recognized that expression.

It was hard to tell who was more surprised when Alicia leaned over and pressed her lips to Niylah's, resting her hand on her side as she did, but even in her deeply drunken state, Alicia was pretty confident it was her.

Uh-oh, and oh, no. 

♾

Alicia woke up in a massive tangle of blankets and bedding, her skin overheated and coated in dried sweat. Her head throbbed with hangover and she felt like she was throwing up in at least four different dimensions. 

That number doubled and so did the severity of her nausea when she realized a collection of dark blonde braids was lightly tickling the tip of her nose.

"Oh, no," she whispered to herself, studying the severe lines of the jagged tattoo running up the length of Niylah's spine, feeling like she was having an out-of-body experience.

"No, no, please fuck no. Oh, this isn't gonna end well," she added unnecessarily, the potential full force and effect of her drunken decision starting to align itself to its path as the worry and regret built up rapidly behind the storm clouds already gathered in her darkened forest eyes.

"Does anything?" Niylah muttered in annoyance, burying her face deeper in the coat she was using as a pillow. "No offense, but can we worry about how much Clarke's gonna murder us after we've slept more? I mean, it's not like we can unfuck, so we might as well feel hungover and guilty and well-rested."

Alicia covered her face with her hands, groaning loudly. "Oh, my god, I can't believe this."

Niylah let out a heavy sigh, reluctantly turning her face sideways and opening one eye. "That's a no on the sleeping, then?"

"How can you sleep after what we did?" Alicia moaned, curling up into a ball on her side. 

Niylah stifled a yawn. "Maybe 'coz it was highly aerobic? And thanks to Carol's beet and acorn cookies, I'm really out of shape."

Alicia rolled onto her back, pulling a pillow over her face and muffling a shriek of frustration. 

Niylah just blinked at her, unfazed. "Okay, that's fair. But now that you've gotten that out of your system, can we please sleep for a few more hours?" she begged.

Alicia silently waved her hand, indicating that she should feel free to go back to sleep. After all, Niylah was right. They couldn't unfuck, as she'd so succinctly put it. There was nothing that she could do--truly, nothing either of them could do--and frankly it had always been easier for Alicia to have a good, solid, cry if nobody else was around to witness it.

Thankfully, it didn't take Niylah long to pass out again, and Alicia visually scanned the tribal markings and deliberate row of scars (kill marks, the Flame informed her) spanning the peaches-and-cream span of her back for a few minutes before the tears finally showed up. 

I'm not ready to be with anyone. Not yet.

Maybe Alicia hadn't been, either. Maybe they never would be, and maybe now it didn't even matter. Maybe fucking Clarke's ex was the final needle-poke to the delicate bubble they'd been existing in, and now it would shatter and the entire world would flip sideways again. Maybe Clarke would take it as an indicator that Alicia would no longer stand for second place, and combined with her revelation about Madi, she'd just be disqualified from the race altogether.

In sleeping with Niylah, Alicia had more or less presented Clarke with an ultimatum, however inadvertently she'd done so. By indicating she required more, she'd essentially asked Clarke to choose between herself and Lexa, and nobody needed to see any more of that particular show to know what Clarke's answer would be, least of all Alicia herself. 

It was a given, and not just because Lexa was her soulmate or whatever. It was a given because nobody had ever picked Alicia first. Not even her own mother. 

So what reason could Clarke possibly have to do so?

♾

They'd spent most of the trek home in silence, each of them lost in their respective thoughts. It wound up being a good thing; if they'd been talking, they wouldn't have heard the snarls until it was too late.

They lay shivering and pressed tightly together in the drainage ditch in hopes the thick mud would camouflage their scent from the migrating herd. There were dozens of them marching along slowly, almost as if they had a particular destination in mind. 

Niylah's knuckles were a translucent white around her sword, her face nearly as bloodless as she mouthed, "Something's off."

Alicia nodded her agreement very slightly. Something felt wrong, felt different. Not the mere existence of the herd itself, of course, but the seeming purpose with which it trudged along. Almost as if something--or someone, she thought with a haunted shudder--was leading it. 

Just as she began to deal with the deepest levels of the horror behind that possibility, an even more terrifying reality revealed itself in a manner that sent bile flying up into Alicia's digestive tract. She vomited into her hands and down the front of her chest as quietly as she could, noting the sick look on Niylah's face and filing it away as evidence that she wasn't crazy; that Niylah had heard what she had heard, too. 

Just there, very faintly amidst the chorus of growls and groans, in between the sounds of dragging feet and dripping fluids, a very quiet voice had rasped in perfect cadence, "Find them."

One of the walkers had spoken.

Alicia pressed her cheek into the mud, letting the tears flow freely down her face. 

"Eugene was right," Niylah whispered miserably once the herd was well out of earshot. "He said it once. This is our extinction event. It's all over."

Alicia blinked amidst her tears, feeling remarkably empty inside. She wanted to say something, anything at all to the contrary. But the rasping hiss of the walker's voice was still echoing in her head, and she quickly realized there was nothing to say. 

"No," Alicia finally countered, her gravelly voice barely audible. 

"It's not over. It just doesn't belong to us anymore."

Chapter Text

Get me out of this place, before I cause more damage
A small price to pay for building houses out of matchsticks
And when things get too hot, you've got me to blame for

Every fire that breaks out in every lover's name
Running from lions never felt like such a mistake 
Like a deer in the headlights I won't know what hit me

Don't forget, we've got unfinished business
Stories yet to unfold, tales that must be retold
I regret not knowing when to put an end to all this madness

- All Time Low, Running From Lions

Ugly Mustard

Clarke dumped her coffee into a lidded cup and quickly changed out of her dress. Her shoulders were sore from laying tensed on the couch all night, pretending to be asleep every time Alicia came in to check on her. 

The house, massive though it was, felt like a shoebox and it was a relief to finally step out into the fresh, crisp air. The sun was barely up, but she headed to the clinic anyway. 

She'd check on Charlie and offer her medical assistance to Dr. Denise. Maybe talk to Maggie or to Michonne, the latter of whom she still hadn't met, and ask what chores needed doing around Alexandria. They probably wouldn't trust her with much yet; at least Carol wouldn't; but surely she had other skills that could be put to use besides surgery and shooting and being the savior of humanity. 

She wasn't sure what those talents were, exactly, but maybe she'd finally have a chance find out. 

♾

Digging wasn't exactly what she'd anticipated, but it was what Denise had finally, when pressed, asked for help with. She'd obviously known the child well, maybe a regular patient; Clarke didn't ask. She'd merely hugged the emotional stranger and reassured her that digging a grave was just what she needed. 

Even a disturbingly small one. 

Clarke huffed and wiped her sweaty brow on her arm, mentally rearranging her morning plans to make time for finding and holding Judith until I feel human again.

Strand had no idea what the fuck he was talking about. Every time Clarke felt herself filling with doubt or wanting to climb the wall and never come back--a phenomenon that had occurred over a dozen times just since they'd arrived--she pictured Judith's bright face and bubbling laugh. She thought of Daryl carrying a limp Charlie like the precious cargo she was, and Carl proudly hugging Enid close. 

She thought of Madi, running after a soccer ball. Of Lexa, wishing she could have. Of herself, growing up dreaming only to find out soccer was a game for when there was a ground. So was baseball, as it turned out. Football, too. Animals and pets, protein from anything but plants. 

Cowboys. Cowboys were for the ground. Also siblings, as Bellamy and Octavia would eagerly attest to. Mercy was for the ground, too, but there hadn't been much evidence for it yet here that Clarke could recognize. 

Except..

Except for the people who died for Judith; the ones that could have simply abandoned her. People did it all the time in any world, and Strand had been right regarding the increased risk factor of having a wailing infant around, at least. But Echo had told her that Judith and Carl's own mother had died just to bring the little golden light into this world for everyone; into a world that needed the sparkling presence of innocence more than ever. John and June had taken the risk on with Charlie, and all of Alexandria had done so with Enid, who had been orphaned early on.

If not for them, for hope, for the future, why bother fighting in the first place, really? 

Maybe life should be about more than just surviving. Don't they deserve better than that?

The reminder had oddly enough come to her in Lexa's voice, despite being nowhere near the sanctuary of the mind drive. Clarke continued digging with renewed gusto, feeling the familiar comforting sting of bursting blisters on her hands as she tried not to see Madi's face beneath the shroud. As she tried not to hear Lexa's voice anymore. 

She couldn't help it, but in the end it was maybe a blessing in disguise to have such horrors occupying her attention. Because it gave her less space for other concerns, and the one thing she didn't think about at all, thankfully, was Alicia. 

♾

"Klark," Lexa chided. "You're angry at her for hiding Madi when you never even asked, and angry at her for being hurt by--" Lexa paused, searching; then simply motioned between them. "This?"

"Yes," Clarke replied petulantly, jabbing a fingertip into the plush bed she sat on. Once Alicia had left for her 'only a two-to-three day mission; you won't even miss me,' with Niylah in tow, she'd been hoping for a few minutes' relaxation with Lexa in bed before she went looking for more work to keep her mind off her personal problems. Instead, she had found Professor Lexa awaiting her, dressed to the teeth in full Heda regalia. 

"Madi is my daughter."

"Yes, but you already knew she was there. It was why you didn't go back for the Flame once Becca's gonplei ste odon," Lexa reminded her gently. "And when Alicia did, you knew I would never seek her out, just as surely as you knew that Madi would. She is, after all, your daughter."

Clarke looked away from Lexa's scrutinizing gaze uncomfortably. "Either way, Alicia should have volunteered the information. I shouldn't have had to specifically ask."

"Hmm," Lexa, who was now dressed more casually, but still wore lightweight armor. As though she didn't want Clarke to forget that she wasn't in the mood for any bedroom shenanigans today. "And what about every time Alicia has asked you specifically what we do in here, and you told her that it didn't matter? An active lie, not even a sin of omission as Alicia's was."

"Are you spying on me?" Clarke asked, a hint of accusation in her voice. "That's a little creepy and inappropriate, isn't it?"

Lexa took a heartbeat to breathe, then studied her quietly. "Clarke, truly, what about this strange version of us in here isn't creepy and inappropriate?"

Clarke shrugged a little, gazing at her lap since she didn't have an answer; at least, not one that she wanted to admit to. 

"What are my parents' names?" Lexa asked suddenly. 

Clarke paused momentarily, waiting for the sudden absorption of the information she'd come to expect from her mind drive, but Lexa held a tiny green sprout of a memory in a protective clay pot up to show her she'd summoned it from her own mindpsace's lush, wooded garden. 

"No cheating," she admonished. 

"I thought maybe you didn't remember them," Clarke swallowed hard. "I don't know. We never talked about it."

"Mm," Lexa agreed, the pot and plant disappearing. "We never talked about a lot of things, did we? You know little about my life before you, and I know perhaps even less about yours."

Clarke's stomach sank. She really didn't like where this conversation was going. "Lexa, I swear to god, if you're about to minimize what we have just to make a point--"

Lexa huffed with mild annoyance. "Of course not, Clarke. But I am going to remind you that it is what we had, a long time ago. You have something with Alicia that you will never be able to have with me. The gift of time, Clarke."

Lexa gestured around the brilliant, sunny room in Polis tower. "This was just one, singular, moment. A beautiful, truly perfect moment. But still, it was only one small moment in an entire life. And yet you are trapped in it, and I have stayed with you, even though it felt wrong. It always feels wrong, Clarke. Our moment ended, and we still haven't left it. It's just.. selfish."

"Then why be here at all?" Clarke challenged angrily, her eyes rapidly filling as she turned a hard glare on the Commander. "And don't you dare say it's for me, because I've had to live without you for a long time, Lexa. If we're wrong and I'm being selfish, why not make it easier on us both and just go?"

Lexa lowered her eyes quickly. "Because I am selfish too."

After a moment however, she picked her head up and her voice took a firmer tone. "You think you are the only one of us who grieves for what used to be, Clarke? You aren't. I can't even be entirely sure for myself whether I am truly me or just your idea of me. But I am sure I have the ability to think for myself, and I am quite sure that I have feelings that can and frequently do hurt," Lexa admitted, and a little bitterly. 

"Whatever this existence amounts to, it is my fate," she elaborated, pacing the room slowly. "And I will admit to you, Clarke, that often I find myself wishing death was the end. Because this endless monotony, this forever of unpredictable nothingness, might yet turn out to be a fate worse. So I take solace in our visits, and it has made me selfish. And though I knew it was wrong for all of us, I allowed you to use me to build a wall between you and Alicia."

"Use you?" Clarke returned resentfully, standing as well. "I'm not using you."

"Or Alicia?" Lexa returned her serve easily. "Were you using Niylah, or have you got a justification for her, too? I understand Clarke. This life is hard, and painful, and running from it--doing the wrong thing--it is so easy. Luna learned that the hard way. It led her down a dark path alone when we might have stood together. She didn't believe I would do the right thing either, and stand with her if she refused to fight. She was wrong to think so little of me, and I was wrong to think the same of her."

Lexa knelt before her, her glowing, sad eyes searching herself earnestly. "It is so easy to do the wrong thing in this world. So easy that we often don't even know that we've done the wrong thing until it is too late. Until it is done. And we must shoulder that regret tenfold if we don't do the right thing the next time we face similar circumstances."

Clarke opened her mouth, but Lexa's hand flicked in the air, begging her continued silence. Surprisingly, it was granted, and Lexa continued the lesson. 

"I did the wrong, easy thing when I stood before you at the gates of Mount Weather. And I did the wrong, easy thing again the first time we made love here. Because I wanted to take comfort in you, and you wanted to hide in me. We know these things were wrong, and the knowledge of the pain we have caused, we simply must bear now."

Lexa gently pushed Clarke back onto the bed and sat beside her, gazing at her intently as she cupped her hands around a single of the blonde's, pleading with her in both voice and gaze. "And now, we should both do what is difficult, but right."

"What's that?" Clarke whimpered, her emotional dam bowing and creaking as it prepared to give way. 

"Say goodbye," Lexa smiled sadly. "Say goodbye, for now."

The dam burst. 

"Lexa, no," Clarke immediately replied, her eyes widening as she pulled her arm free and instead took hold of Lexa's narrow shoulders with both hands. "Stop it. We aren't saying goodbye. I'm not going to lose you again."

Lexa's eyes were filling with tears now, too, and she gently pried herself free from Clarke's increasingly desperate grip. "I love you, my Clarke. I won't say may we meet again, because I already know for certain that we will."

Lexa took a step back, freeing herself entirely from Clarke's grip with the saddest expression Clarke had ever seen on anyone before. "The dead are gone, Klark. The living are hungry."

"Lexa!" Clarke sobbed, her fingers searching and clenching through the air to grab hold of even a scrap of the Commander's clothing; anything to prevent her from leaving. It was no use; Clarke found only massive amounts of air between her fingers, and  absolutely none in her shriveling lungs. "Lexa, please! I love you!" 

But Lexa was gone. 

Again. 

♾

Alicia had been dreading returning to Alexandria and having to face Clarke, yet it still hurt to find out she'd simply left with Aaron in tow and wouldn't be back until later or possibly even the next day. Once she and Niylah had debriefed Rick and Echo on the herd they'd encountered and, ostensibly, the people somehow camouflaged by and leading the herd, she, Niylah, and Echo headed out to find and update Maggie.

They found her in the park, sitting on the gazebo and looking a million miles away with Hope, Beth, Tara, and Daryl. 

Unfortunately for Alicia, while she'd been busy recounting the tale of the talking walkers for Rick, Niylah had somehow found time to tell Echo about their indiscretion. Echo had in turn told Hope, and Hope had clearly relayed the information to Tara. Tara, who kept looking at her with a kind of pity that, for some reason, didn't feel condescending at all. 

Also unfortunately for Alicia, everyone except Daryl seemed to find she and Clarke's wreckage of a relationship a far more fascinating topic than the trained walkers, especially once they found out she'd left without so much as a note. 

 Hope, at least, tried to comfort her by pointing out, "They'll be back really soon, and Aaron will keep her safe. You guys can talk things out and make up then."

Alicia shook off her gentle touch uncomfortably. Frankly, she still had Niylah's scent all over her, and the most vulnerable version of Clarke's voice was in her head calling she and Hope lovebirds again, but this time with a sadness that was more painful than a physical attack.  

"I don't think Clarke is ever gonna even speak to me again," she admitted miserably as she sank onto the bench next to Daryl, who was carefully whittling the handle of a shortbow. 

"Just 'cause you went drunk spelunking with her ex?" Tara asked distractedly, filling in everyone who hadn't already figured it out from the bucket line of gossip. 

Maggie choked on her water at the same time as Hope did and they both entered coughing fits as Niylah looked on with an unamused expression. Beth snickered under her breath and Alicia prayed for the ground to open up and swallow her, while Daryl, true to form, just looked at them in disgust and continued about his carving business as though nobody had said anything. 

"Oops," Tara followed up sheepishly. "Sorry. I just meant it's not the end of the world. Hasn't Clarke been sleeping with her other ex for like, ever?"

"Does that even count as an ex?" Beth asked, looking troubled. "If you're still hooking up with them?" She looked even more troubled as she added, "And does it count as hooking up if one of them isn't real?"

"I mean, you don't have to be committed to someone to have sex with them," Hope replied diplomatically. "But if you're committed to someone else when you're doing it.. even if the person's not real. I mean. She's real enough, right?"

"Is she? And it's not like I didn't know," Alicia contributed miserably. "How could I not? And doesn't that kind of inherently give her permission?" 

"Knowing and agreeing to it aren't the same thing," Niylah said firmly, and beside her, Maggie nodded her agreement emphatically. "Clarke won't even admit what's going on in there, never mind ask if you're cool with it."

"Thing is, I would be if she'd just be honest," Alicia admitted quietly, and mostly to herself. "The lying to my face thing, that's the part that hurts."

"Men suck," Enid announced, joining them on the gazebo with a bag of jerky. "Are we complaining about men? And if not, can we please start?"

"Not you, Daryl," she added. "You're not like, you know.." the girl trailed off, gesturing as if he was supposed to know. 

"A real guy," Tara offered helpfully. "You're more like our spy behind enemy lines, so you can stay."

Daryl just groaned tiredly and got up, walking out of the gazebo without a single word, his expression one of pain as he headed anywhere but the clearly dangerous lion's den that was rapidly forming. 

"What did Carl do?" Niylah asked Enid, who was already passing the jerky over. 

"He's so stupid. Charlie clearly has a crush on him, and he keeps flirting with her because he thinks it's cute. I think it's mean. He's playing with her feelings, and when I called him on it, he said I was jealous because she was paying attention to him. Can you believe that?"

Tara stuffed a strip of jerky into her mouth and gave it a few chews before she spoke around it. "I think it's both cute and mean."

Enid looked indignant as she snatched the bag back. "Okay, Charlie is cute. First crush and everything. But Carl? Carl is an idiot."

"Most of them are," Tara observed, seeking the jerky once more. 

Maggie cleared her throat as she leaned forward. "Guys? This was supposed to be a meeting of Team Alicia, not the She-Woman Manhaters Club. Maybe we should get back on track."

Niylah bit her lip, looking reticent. "Let me talk to her, Alicia. Let me explain what happened. I know what to say to Clarke."

Alicia fixed the other woman with a look of horror. "I think I'd rather go back to the drunk spelunking conversation."

♾

Clarke pulled the six pack of soda out of her bag as she walked up the clinic steps. She felt oddly refreshed for having only been gone for the better part of the day, and it had been nice to spend time with Aaron. He was funny, and kind, and a humanitarian through and through. 

He'd lost someone, too, at the start. Someone who still tainted his new relationship in a lot of ways that he couldn't help, and some ways that he admitted he probably could, if pushed. 

They'd ultimately had a lot to talk about, and Clarke had returned with both a determination to fix things with Alicia and a cluster of grape-flavored sodas for self-confessed pop addict Denise. A thanks of sorts, for saving Charlie's life and, so she'd heard from Charlie, becoming Al's therapist. 

She had only just handed the sodas to an immensely grateful Denise when Carl burst through the door of clinic, totally out of breath as he shut it behind himself.

"The Saviors are here," he announced, pulling out his sidearm and training it on the door. "Get Charlie downstairs," he commanded Clarke and Denise, who both moved quickly to do so.

But not quickly enough. 

The three men were barely even through the doorway before one grabbed the sodas from Denise and another picked up a jar of Charlie's applesauce and opened it up, seemingly nonplussed by the gun Carl held. 

"Put it back," Carl commanded, his arms steady as he quickly trained his gun on the applesauce guy. "That doesn't belong to you."

"I think it does." The man just chuckled and dipped his pinkie finger into it defiantly, licking it slowly and keeping his eyes on Carl the entire time. 

"She your girlfriend, cyclops? You like 'em young, huh?" the man asked with a dark smile, motioning to Charlie, who was frozen in terror in her bed. 

Carl swung. 

His fist, still clenched around the gun, connected with the man's cheek and the jar dropped to the floor and shattered. Clarke used both the opportunity and a half-assed leg sweep to knock one of the other men down, and Denise jabbed the third with a syringe of something she'd had concealed in her fist. 

Carl rolled over the broken glass with his arms around the man's throat as Charlie screamed for help. Denise's attacker collapsed on the ground in a seizure, and she quickly moved to help Clarke. 

Clarke's battle wasn't going as well. She was piggybacking the man, but he was twice her size easily, and he slammed her against the wall repeatedly while rotating, trying to scrape her off him like gum off a shoe. Denise stiffened her hand and slammed it as hard as she could into his solar plexus, and he dropped to the ground with a strangled cry, Clarke still attached to his back. 

"Thanks," Clarke called as she grabbed the man's gun from where it had fallen and slammed it into his head, knocking him unconscious. Without missing a beat, she stood and fired it into the skull of the man tangling with Carl just as he bashed the teen's face into the bed railing for the third time. Then she turned and aimed the gun at the man Denise had injected just as the door slammed open again. 

"Well, what's happening here?" boomed the older man who entered first, with a small milita of high powered weaponry behind him. 

Everyone froze. 

"I'm Simon, nice to meet everyone. You might remember me from our last little pow wow in the woods. If you weren't there, I'm sure you heard about it. What an ugly business. And this, here? Attacking my people? God, that just means even more ugly business for yours. It's too late for that, but we really don't want to rack up any more of that today, do we? Of course not. So you'll cooperate, now, and hand over that applesauce, and we won't have to kill any more of you than we already do. Seems like a win-win to me."

"A win-win would be your people picking on someone their own shoe size instead of a couple of kids," Clarke shot back fearlessly. "You want your applesauce, come and get it, asshole."

♾

Niylah eventually left, claiming she had more hangover to sleep off. She had only been gone perhaps twenty or so minutes when it happened.

They all stood in unison at the sound of the gunshot echoing off the massive steel Alexandrian walls. 

"Walkers?" Hope asked, already pulling her knife out as she jogged down the gazebo steps with the others in hot pursuit. 

"I should go check on Judith," Beth hissed, but Hope was already shaking her head as the group approached the nearby front gate. 

"It's not walkers," she announced darkly and suddenly, as the field of play came into view for the others, unnecessarily. 

"Everyone here? Good, let's take attendance, then. Rick Grimes? Helloooo? Rick, where the fuck are you, you giant-dick-swingin' son of a bitch?" He smashed a bat he held against the metal door of the settlement a few times. "I came here specifically to see you, my guy! You'd better be here." 

The last sentence had lacked the mirth the man's other words were coated in, and in fact was a clear threat. His bat, she suddenly realized, was wrapped in a thick encasement of barbed wire, and Alicia's stomach dropped. 

"Negan?" she guessed, her chest tightening. Beside her Maggie nodded, rooted to the spot, and took in a sharp gasp of breath at the same time Alicia's did, her entire body going tense as she was visibly transported back to a time and place of her own personal hell. 

Carl, Clarke, Denise, and Niylah were kneeling on the ground at the front gate, each of their hands clasped behind their backs. Carl and Clarke were bleeding, and Carl's cheek was already beginning to turn a deep, dark, angry purple where he'd taken something oblong across the face. The slight bruising streaks beneath it faintly suggested the shape of a hospital bed railing. 

Beth and Alicia reached out in tandem and grabbed each of her hands, and after a moment, Alicia felt a trembling Tara grab her other one, her eyes locked on Denise's bowed head. They stood pressed tightly together like a protest blockade as Rick and Echo cautiously approached the macabre threat display with their hands empty and positioned well in sight. 

Negan gave Rick a knowing, amused look. "There's the man of the hour. Hope you had enough time to clean up the mess I left you last time. Man, that was a lot of brains everywhere when I," Negan clicked his tongue and gave his bat a few practice swings in the air, wiggling his eyebrows. Maggie turned green, her knees locking up. "Real sorry about that, but it looks like you've probably got cleaning products around here somewhere anyway. Still, I hope I won't have to leave you another big mess, Rick. Those flowers you got planted back there are real pretty. Be a shame to have your kid's other eye blown out all over them."

"Well, well," Negan continued booming as he turned from Rick without waiting for a response, swaggering to the front of the kneeling lineup and twirling his bat casually. "What do we have here? New friends for Lucille, maybe? Quite a Russell Stover assortment of people I wouldn't have thought had it in them to nut up. Color me embarrassed!"

"Hey, Blondie. You ever see Forrest Gump?" His voice took on a heavy affectation of a Southern drawl in what was clearly meant to be a poor Rick imitation. He even tucked his thumb in his belt after scratching his beard, a gesture she'd already come to associate with Rick as well. "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." 

Negan took the bat and used it to brace his hands against the ground as he squatted directly in front of Clarke, who already wore a feral sort of expression. The glee suddenly evacuated his eyes as he crouched and studied her with a dangerous edge to his tone. "And what did we get with you, Miss Monroe? Besides one hell of a rack. How'd you like to come back to my place and take a closer look at my bat, sweetheart? It's even bigger than you think, I promise."

Clarke bared her teeth defiantly as she spat on his foot. "Go float yourself."

Negan immediately exploded into a laughing fit, and Alicia dropped the comforting hands she'd been gripping as the ground shifted away beneath her suddenly unsteady legs. 

"Oh my god," she whispered, feeling the blood rush from her face. "Clarke's gonna get herself killed." 

"Worse than that," Maggie replied, staring at the familiar scene with her throat constricting around her words. "She's gonna get somebody else killed." Off Alicia's look of concerned confusion, she finally pulled her gaze from the past and let it land on Alicia as Beth set her hand on her shoulder reassuringly. 

"When it was us up there before?" Maggie began explaining, her voice hard despite the pain etched into her enraged face, and her eyes finding something in the lineup no one else could see; likely Glenn's face. "He said he would only kill one of us, as an example. Abraham was our warning shot."

Alicia swallowed hard, her voice quivering around a question she already knew the answer to. "What was your husband?"

As her gaze found Negan again, Maggie's cerulean eyes reminded hers of Clarke's when they'd looked at Becca. The blame, the pain, the rage; it was all there as they hardened. The willingness to get herself killed for revenge. That was there, too. Alicia knew it when she saw it; for fucks sake even if Clarke hadn't come stumbling into her life, she'd seen it plenty enough in the mirror. 

"Big mistake," Maggie replied coolly, and Alicia got the distinct sense that it had been. 

Rick and Echo exchanged a glance with one another on the front line, where Negan was finally catching his breath. 

"What's your name?" he asked, standing up and brushing the dust off his pants."

"Clarke. Why, you wanna get matching tattoos?" she sassed, causing Alicia to nearly stumble backwards as the world weaved. 

Negan smirked dangerously. "I'm always in the market for another super hot wife to add to my large collection of super hot wives. So how about it, darlin'? Big honor these days, I'm in heavy demand. Hey, uh.." He squatted again and glanced around secretively before continuing.

"And Clarke, before you answer, you should know that's the equivalent of being a queen now. I mean, sure, I'm not a king like this guy over here, who better get home soon and make sure my melons are ready to go," he shot a glare at Ezekiel, who was worriedly swaying in place with his arms across his chest. 

Negan turned a dazzling smile back to Clarke. "I don't have a tiger, was always more of a dog person, myself. Always loved the bitches. I've got everything else you could ever want, though. You got a favorite food? Negan's got it. Miss the smell of a fresh linen-scented Yankee Candle? Negan's got a whole crate of the fuckin' thi--"

"Boy, you really like to hear yourself talk," Niylah observed with exaggerated boredom from beside Clarke, who was clearly about to sock Negan. 

Alicia felt her heart drop into her stomach when she realized Niylah had drawn his attention deliberately. She was trying to protect Clarke, something Alicia felt incredibly conflicted about. She was glad the attention was off Clarke, but the way Negan was eyeing Niylah with the scent of fresh blood in his eyes..

"And I don't believe we've met either, Sugarplum." Negan positioned the tip of his bat uncomfortably close to Niylah's head, gesturing at her and looking at one of his men. "What's this one in for?"

"Hoarding," the man replied. "Mostly booze. The good shit, too."

"The good shit!" Negan turned back to Niylah with an impressed look on his face. "A woman of taste. I can respect that. But you know the rules, sweetheart, and hoarding is a big no-no. Especially booze. Especially if it's the good shit," he emphasized, violently swinging the bat around Niylah's flinching shoulders. "The good shit is my shit. That's the law here, and I thought I made that pretty clear when I caved skulls in the last time around. But here we sit, and we have learned nothing."

Despite her obvious fear, Niylah tilted her head slightly and blinked innocently at the wood and wire only an inch from her eye.

 "I have a problem," she said very seriously. "But I'm seeing a therapist." 

"You're mouthy," Negan informed her in a dangerously quiet tone. Without warning, he grabbed Niylah's jacket collar and dragged her across the pavement without empathy, tearing the flesh from her arms and legs as she struggled against him. "I don't really like mouthy. Not if you don't have a rack like Marilyn to apologize with, anyway."

He flung her face down into the ground before everyone, and Clarke leaned forward on all fours with a wretched sob as Maggie wrapped both arms around Alicia to steady her. Hope was crying silently, and Carl's hand was twitching at his hip where his gun normally sat.

Not a breath passed from the lips of any of the Alexandrians or their allies as Niylah lifted her wounded face up from the ground and calmly spat blood before bringing her gaze to Negan's and panting, "I guess that means no marriage proposal for me?"

Negan gave a mirthless chuckle before he forced his boot against her back with almost his full weight behind it, pushing her flat against the ground by her spine. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled her head back, positioning his face next to hers as he addressed her conversationally. 

"You know, I don't like to hit women. Kill 'em, sure, why not? But hitting one, that just doesn't feel right. I'm a nice guy at heart. I love kids, football, barbecues, high powered automatic weaponry. All the great American standards. That whole Nice Guy thing, though, might've led you to think that you could run that mouth and nothing bad would happen."

Negan let her up off the ground, but squatted again and grabbed her chin, digging his fingers into the hollows of her cheeks and squeezing painfully to push her to her knees once more. She gasped as he warned her darkly, "The next time you steal from me, I'll put my iron on that pretty face of yours before I make you decide which of your friends here you want to watch die first." He motioned at the rest of the lineup with his bat, then noticed with apparent interest the look on Clarke's face. 

"Oh?" he asked, intrigued. "Is this one yours, Clarke?" Negan let out a booming laugh that seemed to scrape and scratch as it bounced off the high metal walls of Alexandria. "Well, history does repeat itself, doesn't it? It's like the Love Connection in here, and we've even got a former contestant in the audience! Hey, Widow. Where you at, baby? I know you're here."

He looked around quickly, his cruel gaze turning gleeful when it found Maggie in the crowd. "There she is. She knows how this story ends, right? Right?" Negan mimed swinging the bat a few times in a downward motion with a laugh, and Maggie's breaths came so quickly in her heaving chest that it rapidly became unclear where one breath ended and the next began. "Good times. I'm sure you heard about that, Clarke. It was a great show, I bet some bits of her husbands brains are even still stuck in Lucille from when I bashed his fucking skull in. I mean, I even popped his eye out and everything, it was pure art. And you know why I bashed his fucking skull in like a beer can? I bashed his fucking skull in like a beer can because you people are too busy making noise to fucking listen."

He grabbed Niylah by her ear and roughly pulled her up onto her knees, looking her in the eye and directing her evenly, "So stop clapping. Otherwise I'll have to perform an encore."

"Niylah, don't," Clarke breathed onto the wind, hoping her almost silent plea would find the woman's ears nonetheless. 

Niylah squared her shoulders and set her jaw, giving Clarke a brief reassuring look before turning a hardened gaze back to Negan. "Is it too late to refund my ticket?"

Everything moved impossibly fast after that, and it took Alicia's spontaneously combusting brain cells a moment to realize that although the gunshot had come from Negan's right hand before she'd even realized he had the sidearm drawn, Niylah was still on her knees and gasping for breath. Several screams echoed off the metal walls, and it took another moment for Alicia to realize what had happened. 

In the center of the street just slightly adjacent to the house where Rick and his family lived, Olivia lay prone. Her glasses had fallen to the ground and broken beneath her cheek as her body had slammed into the pavement, and a thin stream of blood was already on a course for the curb as it rushed from the bullet hole in her forehead. 

Niylah let out a cry of disbelief, and Alicia felt Hope turn away to vomit through her sobs against a nearby tree.

Negan blew on the tip of his gun and gave it a twirl before putting it away. He looked down at a distraught Niylah, who was folded in half on the ground beneath the crippling weight of what had just taken place. He held his hand out to one of his men and wiggled his fingers until a bottle of bourbon appeared in it. 

Slowly pacing before Niylah, he opened the bottle and took a generous gulp from it. After a moment of thoughtful pause, he nodded with lifted eyebrows. 

"You were right, Simon. This is the good shit. Nothing like a good stiff one after a hard day's work." Negan lowered the bottle and held it out to Clarke, giving her a lecherous look. "So how's about it, sweetheart? How would you like a good stiff one?"

Clarke, to her credit, and likely only because of his proximity to Niylah, merely continue to look on silently in disgust, despite her clear struggle to remain in any control of her actions at all. Meanwhile Negan, on a clear adrenaline high and quickly getting bored, turned back to Rick, who looked even less in control than Clarke did. 

"Rick," Negan's voice carried a tone of warning with it. "I thought I told you to quit looking at me like I shit in your chocolate milk. I did you a favor, my man. Who's idea was it to put the fat chick in charge of food stores, anyway? No wonder we got a theft problem, Rick. You may as well ask a heroin addict to babysit your drugs. Good to know you'll be supplying even more food for my people next time around with that one gone. Hell, she probably accounted for half your food. You're welcome."

"More?" Carl exploded, unable to help himself. "You took almost everything we have already! We can't even feed ourselves and you want us to go find you more? Go float yourself," he spat, giving Clarke an instantaneous migraine. 

"Carl," Rick snapped, looking exhausted and terrified. 

Negan moved to Carl, his interest piqued. "Take off that bandage." Carl silently crossed his arms, his jaw setting. "Now, or I'm staying for dinner. How does your baby sister feel about spaghetti?"

Carl's eye filled with even more rage as he slowly began to reach for the gauze around his head. 

"There we go. Now we're making progress." 

Carl took in a shaky inhale of breath as he unwound the bandage carefully, and Hope grabbed Alicia's hand once more, squeezing it tightly. When he had finished, he gazed up at Negan defiantly, his extensively scarred eye socket on full display and hatred burning brightly in his remaining eye. 

"Jesus christ, kid. Look at that fucking thing! I mean, my god, it looks like someone set off an IED inside a camel's ass in there! That is gross as fuck!" Negan's laughter boomed throughout the community once more as he inspected Carl a little closer, tossing his cowboy hat aside to the ground for a better look. "Oh man, can I touch it? Please let me touch it!"

Carl winced away from the man as involuntary tears began to form behind his functional eye. 

"Oh, come on, kid. Don't cry," Negan sounded surprisingly almost reticent about it, and it occurred to Alicia that the man appeared to have some strange soft spot for kids. Very strange, for someone who bragged about bashing in skulls. 

"I just meant it looks badass. Shit, if I had that much big dick energy, I'd be waving it around all over. I don't wanna see that skanky ribbon around your face again, kid. The women are gonna be begging you to bang them when they get a load of that nasty thing, believe me. Hell, you might even get someone like Marilyn someday. Just not today," he warned, waving the tip of the bat in tiny circles at him. "I've got first dibs on that fine piece." 

Something caught his eye then, and Clarke quickly realized with a sinking feeling what it was as he approached her with an unreadable look on his face and squatted before her once more. 

"So, Marilyn. You wanna tell me what the hell is up with your blood?" 

Chapter Text

Growing up a little at a time then all at once
Baby girl, no one's gonna feel the pain for you
Your dreams and inner visions, all your 
Mystical ambitions, they won't let you down
Do your best to trust all the rays of light

Everybody wants the best for you
But you gotta want it for yourself, my love
Secrets from a girl who's seen it all

Welcome to Sadness
The temperature is unbearable
Until you face it

- Lorde, Secrets From A Girl (Who's Seen It All)

Welcome to Sadness

"So, Marilyn. You wanna tell me what the hell is up with your blood?" 

Clarke set her jaw, glaring back at Negan defiantly, Niylah's gasps of horror and the gunshot still ringing in her ears and crashing around inside her skull. 

"Go f--"

"Think," he cut her off, jabbing the tip of the bat hard against her forehead. Her eyes couldn't help but see the blood and bits of viscera and flesh scraps caught in the barbed wire, and she tried incredibly hard not to discern whether it was human or walker. "Very. Hard. About what we just learned, and what you're about to say. No more second chances for anyone here."

He pointed the bat to Niylah instead, but his eyes stayed locked onto Clarke's. "I asked what's with your blood."

Clarke swallowed hard, gazing at Niylah's fearful and tear stained face. She didn't know where Alicia's was in the crowd, but she could imagine what it looked like, too. 

"I don't know," she lied. "Everyone from my cult had the blood."

Negan lifted both of his eyebrows. "Your cult? Come on. How stupid do you think I am? Please be honest." 

His bat hand was swinging dangerously close to Niylah's head, and Clarke felt the world of hell below the pavement she knelt on rumbling with ravenous anticipation alongside him. 

"I am," she insisted, doubling down on her story. 

There was no way in hell she was telling him the truth, and if she had convinced wise, critical Alicia she was in a cult by telling her the truth, she could certainly convince Negan--who seemed to think his wooden stick was sentient, for fuck's sake--that she was in a cult by telling him that very lie. He still looked skeptical, though. 

Not good. 

"It's true," Echo called out loudly, walking towards the center of the spectacle with an ease and poise that Clarke had always envious of. 

Echo never showed an ounce of trepidation, though Clarke knew she was likely shitting herself in fear, too. But she, of course, had ice in her veins when she stopped only inches from Negan. She nonchalantly reached down and grabbed the tip of his bat with white-knuckle strength, putting her hand between the bat and Niylah's head as she squeezed the razor wire around it. She rotated her hand quickly around it without so much as a breath, then held her hand up so Negan could inspect it. 

The skin of her palm and fingers was absolutely shredded practically to the bone from her action, and thick, murky blood ran freely down her arm as she calmly stood with her hand outstretched. 

Echo was a Nightblood, too. She'd failed to mention that; though they hadn't exactly had a lot of time to catch up, to be fair. 

Clarke fought to keep her surprise and mild bemusement at bay as Negan unwittingly squared off with Azgeda's very own Grim Reaper. 

Hope he's wearing a cup if he's gonna piss her off.

Negan circled Echo slowly, obviously sensing another predator lurking on the horizon and sniffing for blood in the air. She watched him assess her with a dangerously confident look and only her eyes followed his movement; her head remained stiller than a signpost all the while. The blood rushed down her arm from the excessive wound, and yet Echo remained as nonplussed as she'd been before she had practically torn her own hand off. 

"Jesus fuck, Rick. You're gonna have to tell me where you keep picking up all these babes. I mean, this place is like the goddamn Playboy Mansion. I might have to call my realtor and get me a sweet little place here, too." 

"I wouldn't advise that," Rick offered very simply, his eyes flicking toward Echo. 

"Aww, come on, Dad," Negan pretended to pout, and then his voice took on a lighter cadence as he sang, "Won't you be my neighbor?" 

Rick crossed his arms. "You got the answers you wanted, now, right?" 

Echo continued to eye him sharply, giving him no quarter. He held up his hands in surrender. "Fine, it's a cult of weird-blooded but super hot chicks."

"Happy to help," Echo replied, ripping the sleeve off her shirt and wrapping it around her hand lazily as she meandered back over to where Rick stood, still calm-faced but clearly ready to howl at the moon at any further provocation from the Saviors. 

"Are we done here?" 

Negan scratched his chin. "Almost. As I understand it, several jars of my applesauce were broken today, so that bill has to be paid."

Rick cleared his throat. "I'll get the jars myself."

"No," Negan commanded, blood  in his voice again. "I tell you, Rick. You don't tell me. Besides, I'm feeling a lot less sweet than I was earlier. I think I'd like something a little more spicy, now."

His eyes fell on Clarke, who shuddered internally and felt sick. "I'll take Marilyn. We'll call it even."

There was  a brief scuffle in the crowd that she was positive was someone preventing Alicia from launching herself at the Saviors and starting a war they would absolutely lose, and Clarke silently prayed to the universe, and any other entities that might be listening. 

"That's not gonna fly with my people," Rick just shook his head. "Listen, I'm sure we can just-"

"Hey!" Negan boomed, effectively silencing even the cicadas with his clear cessation of patience. "I said half your shit, and half? Is what I fuckin' tell you it is. Clarke here was your shit, and now she's my shit instead. Go ahead. Test me, Rick. I'm begging you, man."

The last thing she wanted to do was leave with Negan. She had a distinct feeling that if she did, she wasn't going to see Alexandria or Alicia or anyone else ever again. But the danger in Negan's tone and his behavior so far made her deeply hope he didn't, in fact, decide to test Negan. 

Echo shared a meaningful look with Clarke, who swallowed hard, then nodded almost imperceptibly. 

"I'll go," Clarke said, finally getting off her knees and holding her arms up in surrender. "I'll go with you and I won't fight. No more blood. Please." 

She scanned the crowd where the scuffle had been quickly as she spoke, until her eyes found Alicia's horrified face. Maggie and Beth were holding onto her, and she looked terrible, like she'd been vomiting through a torrential downpour of tears.  She probably had been, and Clarke wanted more than anything to rush to her side. Reassure her, somehow. Apologize. Fix it. 

Say goodbye, at least.

But if she asked to say goodbye, it would extend the process of the Saviors leaving, and, worst of all, Negan would know that Alicia was special. He had seen her affection for Niylah instantly, and was all too happy to have it as a weapon. She remembered the blood on the bat, and thought of Maggie's husband. Saw the bits of flesh as human, then as Alicia. Saw Negan lift it over Alicia's head in her mind's eye and then..

Dying inside with every heartbeat in her tin can chest as she did, she continued scanning the crowd as though there was nothing of interest to be found in it. She felt her soul shredding apart as she turned away without so much as acknowledging Alicia's existence. 

♾

The Sanctuary was fairly impressive in its own way, Clarke had to admit. Not quite so much as Alexandria's spread of large, beautiful homes was, but the industrial factory felt oddly more homey to her than the cozy mansions had. She was incredibly used to living inside a tin can, after all. 

She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, exactly, as far as Negan's intentions for her went. She'd thought perhaps she'd be used as a lab rat, maybe, or slave labor, or--she shuddered--an unwilling wife. 

What she hadn't anticipated, though it should have been fairly obvious, was becoming simply a run-of-the-mill prisoner of war. Even after she'd been locked in a windowless room full of bright lights, her brain refused to process the entirely new level of hell she was entering. In fact, it took until so many hours had passed that it must have been some ungodly hour of the morning before she realized they weren't going to turn off the harsh fluorescent lights at all. 

Still feeling oddly at home, as though her head were merely drooping to the desk in Earth Skills after a long shift at the clinic, Clarke pointed out to herself that it was a great deal better than becoming that asshole's pet. Despite the massive circadian rhythm violation going on, Clarke was oddly comforted by the sudden and long-missing solitude as well, and she curled up on the icy concrete floor and easily fell asleep. 

Sanctuary, Day One

It was a dog food sandwich. She knew that because she'd watched him make it. Dwight; that was his name. Negan had apparently put the man in charge of overseeing her sentence, and as she took in the severely burn-scarred left side of his face, she wondered if it was the result of the iron Negan had threatened Niylah with. 

She got pissed off all over again. 

Dwight gave her a strange look when she nonchalantly picked up the sandwich and began to devour it hungrily. It didn't taste all that much different from some of the meats she'd had back at the Dorie Ranch, and in fact, had a spicy sort of bite to it that was nearly tasty if she didn't think too hard about what it was. But then she couldn't help but think of the thick, fluid-filled insects she'd been almost entirely dependent on after Praimfaya and almost had trouble containing a smirk. Then she nearly laughed as her mind's eye painted a picture of them offering Niylah a dog food sandwich, as though she hadn't lived off human flesh at one time. Even mildly stale bread, as it turned out, tasted pretty decent to Clarke's unfamiliar tongue. 

If bright lights, isolation, and dog food sandwiches were the best Negan had to offer, this was going to be a piece of cake. 

Sanctuary, Day Three

The music wouldn't stop. It had been playing since what Clarke estimated to be late afternoon on her first full day at Sanctuary. 

It was an upbeat, danceable song recorded in the old world language French. Normally Clarke may have actually enjoyed it, but she estimated that she had now heard it roughly four hundred times a day for the last three days. 

She wondered how much longer this would go on before she simply died from insanity.

Alors on danse, alors on danse, alors on danse, alors on danse
So we dance, so we dance, so we dance, so we dance

Et là tu t’dis que c’est fini car pire que ça ce serait la mort
And over there you tell me it’s over because the only thing worse would be death

Qu’en tu crois enfin que tu t’en sors quand y en a plus et ben y en a encore
When you finally think it’s over, there’s more and then even more

Ecstasy dis “problème” les problèmes ou bien la musique
Ecstasy says problem, problems or maybe it’s just the music

Ça t’prends les trips ça te prends la tête et puis tu prie pour que ça s’arrête
It grabs you by the guts, takes you by the head, and then you pray for it to stop

Mais c’est ton corps c’est pas le ciel alors tu t’bouche plus les oreilles
But it’s your body it’s not heaven, so you block your ears even more

Et là tu cries encore plus fort et ça persiste
And there you yell even louder and it continues..

Sanctuary, Day Seven

At least in the mindspace, the music was distant and slightly muffled; though it was a lonely place without Lexa. She called out many times, but there was never an answer, even when she'd broken down sobbing and begging for the Commander. 

Sanctuary, Day Eight

Dear diary,

I can't actually write in you, because after Abilene, I burned you. And there's nothing in the cell with me besides the bright lights and the music and the putrid stench of dog food and waste and regret. 

Anyway, I never should have said the things I said to Alicia. Not in Abilene, not when she told me what I already knew about Madi. I should have been nicer to her, and now I won't be able to tell her that because I'm gonna go crazy and die. 

I never said the things I should have said to Lexa, or to Finn, either. Maybe I should have learned something from that. 

Anyway, time to go crazy and claw at the wall until my fingers bleed again. See you never. 

Sanctuary, Day Nine

"If you'd just cooperate, you know, this would all stop."

She ignored him. 

"At least let the doctor treat the wounds on your hands, then."

An exhasperated sigh.

"He can't do it if you're kicking and biting at him!"

Fuck you, you fucking fuck.

"There's no use in sticking it out, Clarke. It's just stupid. Negan would make you a god around here if you'd quit fighting. That's what he did for me."

Dwight seemed genuinely upset at her lack of cooperation; at the abuse she was willing to suffer at Negan's hand. He seemed upset at her lack of response, too, and she almost felt bad for him. At least, until she got another glimpse of the atrocity that was his face, the pronounced-ness of Negan's mark, and realized that even after that, he was still here doing Negan's dirty work for him anyway. 

"How'd that work out for you?" she muttered through parched lips, scratching at a healing sore on her thigh from laying on the concrete all day, day after day.

Dwight gave her a bit of a pointed look. 

"Well, I'm not in a cage."

He tossed the dog food sandwich onto the ground next to her.

"And I'm having a BLT for lunch."

He left, then, and she waited as always for the music to start again, and after a moment it did. But it wasn't the tune that had been drilling a hole in her brain for over a week already. It was a country song, the kind her dad had always listened to on the Ark. Even the tinny echo of the notes off the steel walls sounded right, and when she heard the lyrics, Clarke felt her chest beginning to collapse.

You can starve me for affection til my soul's just skin and bone,
And make the words "I'm sorry" feel the same as throwing stones.
In a room full of you, I might be standing all alone
But love don't die easy..

I will stand in the thunder and shiver in the rain
While I'm tied to the mast of a leaky boat in a hurricane
But I will find my way back to you  even if it's all in vain
Love don't die easy..

Clarke slumped back to the floor, leaving her sandwich untouched as she began to cry, and then to sob with every single sickness she had stored up in her soul. She cried and cried until her throat and nose and eyes were raw and burning, and then she just lay on the ground like an abandoned scrap of clothing as the song started over again for the fifth time.

Sanctuary, Day Ten

She finally stopped crying at the country song that hadn't stopped playing on a loop since her last conversation with Dwight.

She finally stopped eating the dog food sandwiches Dwight brought.

She finally stopped calling for Lexa in the mindspace.

She finally stopped calling for Alicia in her nightmares.

She finally stopped fighting; stopped caring. 

Stopped existing.

Finally, finally, after all of the years, and the trauma, and the pain, and hurt, and disappointment, and failure, Clarke finally.. just.. 

Stopped.

Sanctuary, Day Twelve

"Klark. What are you doing? This is not the time for a nap," Lexa hissed. "You must find a way out of here!"

"Lexa," Clarke sobbed with relief. She lay prone on their bed, her dark-circled pale appearance mirroring accurately her current physical state. "Lexa, you're here."

She reached out for Lexa, but Lexa crossed her arms and stepped back with a shake of her head. "Clarke, you have to get up. You have to get out of here, and find a way back to Alexandria."

"There is no way back," Clarke snapped defeatedly. Lexa had finally shown up after all this time, and it was just to yell at her? "You could just stay here with  me, and make it less painful."

Lexa gave her a small, sad smile. "Clarke. I have already done my part to make your life less painful. This one is solely  your burden to bear, my love.  And I cannot stay."

"If you're just going to abandon me anyway then why bother helping now?" Clarke demanded, accusation burning behind her eyes. "Just go away and leave  me alone. I'm done, don't you get it? I quit."

Lexa sat on the edge of the bed very carefully, warming, but only slightly. She was clearly struggling with her own desire to simply scoop  Clarke off and whisk her off into some happy region of the mindspace, and Clarke had never wanted anything  more.

 "I've never seen you in need of rescue. And I hope never to again, my love. You've never had to be told to fight before."

"Okay, fine. You told me," Clarke returned grumpily, rolling over in the bed. "I'm going back to my giving up now."

Lexa crossed her arms defiantly, losing patience. "I should tell you that if I take your pinkie in here, you will feel the true to life physical pain of it."

"What do you want from me?" Clarke demanded with an exasperated sob.

"I want you to remember all the lessons you've learned!" Lexa replied a bit too loudly.  "You're behind enemy lines, and you're fighting everything tooth and nail, just like you did at Mount Weather. Had Anya not been there.."

Clarke sat up then, finally. "I thought you were gonna stay out of my memories."

Lexa shrugged. "You're thinking it very loudly yourself the other day. What's the first rule of subterfuge?"

"Never let them know what you're thinking," Clarke whispered, remembering. 

"A spy does everything they can to not draw attention to themselves while they find their footing, right? Spies blend in."

"Blend in," Clarke repeated, her mind already spinning with memories as Lexa touched her cheek gently with a knowing smile.

It won't be denied, it just does what it does
There ain't no way to kill it when it's coursing through your blood
Shoot an arrow through my heart, the heart keeps on beating
Love don't die easy, my love won't die easy..

Sanctuary, Day Seventeen

Once she became docile and cooperative, it was surprisingly easy to gain freedom. She had her own room, and a job assignment at the clinic, and a girl with a bar code tattoo came by to ask what if there was anything she wanted. 

"A ride home?" she replied. 

The girl rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I have a lot of work to do, so if there's nothing you actually want--"

"Ramen," Clarke blurted. The likelihood they'd have it was low, sure, but--

"What else?"

What else? Was she serious?

"What.. kind of stuff do you--"

"You know what," the girl said, mildly annoyed. "Just take whatever you want. Tell them you're in 13-G, and to talk to Dwight if there's a problem. The marketplace is down the hall to your left, the clinic is to the right but the doc won't be in til tomorrow, so. Have fun and keep your nose clean or it's back to dog food sandwiches. Capice?"

Clarke had no idea what that meant so she just nodded, and the woman left promptly. Take whatever you want, she had said. Not what Clarke needed, what she wanted. In a world where--god, how gross. 

With a heavy feeling in her gut, she headed down to the market. 

♾

Alexandria

Rick himself had issued the order very generally, that the gate wasn't to be opened for any reason without him present, but it seemed fairly clear from the fact that his wife was stationed at it wearing an AR-15 and a stern look, that he specifically expected Alicia to be the one to attempt it. 

Michonne was tall, with long, neatly dreadlocked hair that she wore bunched behind a pretty scarf wrapped around her crown. She looked at Alicia first with a challenge in her eyes, but softened quickly when she saw Alicia's shoulders slump in defeat and t he disappointment in her face.

"We're gonna get her back, Alicia," she offered firmly. "We don't leave people behind."

Alicia collapsed into the grass, feeling the pebbles beneath digging into her bare legs and pressed her weight down harder on them. The sharp pinch was reassuring.

"I need to go after her," she replied miserably. Her body was an ocean sized bag of cement, her soul a fragile bottle of liquid flame burning deep from her throat to her belly. "What if she's being tortured, or kept as a pet for that asshole or something? What if they try to figure out what her blood is for? She didn't want to be a lab rat, Michonne. That's why we left Texas." 

Michonne glanced skywards briefly, seeming to consult with the universe in some way before she took off her gun and hung it over a nearby fence post. She sat in the grass beside Alicia quietly, saying nothing for several minutes, just remaining a reassuring presence as Alicia sniffled and hiccuped herself back together a bit. 

"It's not easy, loving people like them, is it?" Michonne asked quietly. "Like Clarke, like Rick. The first ones to run headlong into danger." She smiled a little. "They adopt every stray that wanders across their path. Gotta fix everything for everyone, all the time."

Alicia nodded, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve and feeling immeasurably small. "How do you make it stop?"

Michonne gave her a brilliant smile before she laughed softly. "If you figure that out, let me know. I practically had to sit on Rick to keep him from running after Negan's convoy himself. That gun isn't in case you try to leave, it's in case he does."

Alicia let out a small, soft chuckle, and cleared her throat, pulling her knees up to her chest and picking idly at the blades of grass beneath her. "I guess if we made them stop doing stupid shit, they'd stop being them, huh?" 

"I guess they would," Michonne replied pointedly. She reached over and gave her a reassuring pat on her back. "Go to Maggie's house when you feel up to it. Beth kidnapped Judith for the day, and those girls could use a friend, too."

Alicia shrugged a little. Holding Judith sounded like good therapy, and Michonne had been kind, but she wasn't sure she wanted to be around people just then. "I'm sure Beth has plenty of friends. She doesn't need one around that won't quit crying."

"Strand told me a lot about your mom, you know," Michonne stood up slowly, with a bit of wisdom glittering behind her warm eyes. "You should ask Maggie and Beth about their dad when you go over." 

Defeated, Alicia stood up and brushed the dirt and grass clippings from her legs. "Okay."

"Wait," Michonne leaned over and picked a tiny bluebonnet from the yard behind the fence. With great care, she tucked Alicia's hair behind her ear and set the little bloom in place there. She gave her a smile, picking up her rifle once more. 

"That's a little better." 

♾

Sanctuary, Day Seventeen

Clarke headed back to 13-G with a small, hand-made messenger bag on her shoulder. Tucked inside were only a few items: a few packs of ramen, several books, a sketchbook with a packet of drawing pencils, and a little rag doll rabbit she thought she'd give to Maggie for the baby when she got the hell out of this place. 

She pushed open the door, desperate for a nap.

"Hello, sweet cheeks." Clarke startled, banging her elbow against the doorframe. Negan sat in the arm chair, his bat resting against his knee under his palm. "Finding everything okay?"

"Why am I even here?" she replied with a scowl, rubbing her arm and leaving the door open, lest he think he was welcome. "You have plenty of people here, it's not like you need me."

"That freaky deaky blood of yours. Before this relationship of ours goes any further, I wanna know.." Negan lifted the bat, pointing at her with it. "What you know."

She sighed and took off the bag, setting it on the bed. "I already told you what I know. The cult injected us with something as kids that changed the color of our blood. You wanna know more than that, you're gonna have to head to Texas and ask their bodies yourself. I'll be more than happy to give you the address."

Negan chuckled lightly. "You did tell me that, and we both know it's bullshit. So now I want the truth."

"It is the truth. And I was really looking forward to a nap. Been kinda hard to sleep the past couple weeks, you know. So what else can I do for you, Negan?" She crossed her arms, feeling genuinely  completely exhausted in both a physical and mental sense. 

He smirked, but seemed to accept her lie about her blood; at least for the time being. "You think over my proposal?"

Clarke gave him a blank look. "What, being a wife? You're serious? Why the fuck would I marry you after everything you've done? Jesus, why would anyone?"

"You can ask the bodies themselves why," Negan shrugged, standing up. "Dwight's wife did. Comes with a lot of perks, goldilocks. You really ought to think about it."

"Is one of the perks you canning it with the stupid nicknames?" Clarke muttered. "Might be worth it just for that."

Negan laughed. "God, you're hot. I bet you're a real viking in the sack, too. Think it over.. Clarke." 

The way he said her name send a cold shiver up her spine that rendered her teeth frozen inside her skull. 

Clarke pulled the top blanket off the bed just in case Negan had been anywhere near it, and tossed it to the floor. She pushed the armchair in front of the door, then thought better of it and added the desk and bookshelf; the only other heavy furniture in the room. Then she shucked off her pants and climbed into it without bothering to change, and curled up on the thin but comfortable mattress. She closed her eyes and listened to the tinny echoes of people up and down the steel hallways and tried to pull her exhausted mind into thinking she was back on the Ark; still a child, falling asleep to an industrial lullaby. 

She lay in the dark with her eyes shut as the tears began to fall freely, and she wondered what Alicia was doing at that very moment. 

♾

Clarke did think Negan's offer over, and for quite some time. 

Three whole days, actually, passed as she considered it and explored all Sanctuary had to offer. She quickly adapted to her job assignment at the clinic, and eased herself into a mode that was almost comfortingly familiar. Sanctuary, with its industrial aesthetic and widely divided social caste system, was not at all unlike the Ark had been, and the recognizable routine warmed a bit of her inside that she'd thought long beyond thawing. 

The culture was even similar in how they doled out punishment, Clarke had realized as she was forced to watch someone get half their face ironed off for stealing medicine from Negan. She thought about Murphy's father, dying for the medicine his son needed. She thought of Madi, and how there was no situation where she wouldn't be willing to die for the beautiful child whose life she was responsible for. She thought of the things Abby had done to save her; to save their people. She thought of Judith, and Maggie's baby, and Charlie, Carl, and Enid back in Alexandria. 

She thought about her lessons with Echo, and then she thought about Negan's offer some more. 

♾

"Glad to hear it, sweetheart. Of course, like anything else, there are rules. And rule number one is you don't ever, ever cheat on me. Unless it's with another wife, of course. But I gotta be there for that. You can cover the rest later with your fellow super hot wives."

"I have some conditions of my own," Clarke ignored him, her arms crossed on her chest as she addressed him. "First rule, quit it with the nicknames. You sound like an offensive cartoon and it's gross. Second, any part of you that touches me without my explicit permission, you're not getting back. Marriage or not."

"Well, shit, Clarke. This is feeling like a business negotiation than an act of love. You're sucking all the romance out of the moment," Negan chided her, scratching his chin idly. 

Clarke eyed him coolly. "Your point?"

"My point is, wear something pretty tonight for the honeymoon, babycakes. We gotta put on a real nice show for the kids, you know. Get them excited that their king is taking another wife. The kids love a good show," he mimicked pressing an iron to his own cheek, then a mock whispered scream. The crowd had, indeed, seemed to enjoy the spectacle as much as the crowd had enjoyed Lexa and Roan's terrifying duel to the death, or the Conclave for the bunker. People would always cheer for blood when told they should.

"My point is, I would really hate to fuck up that gorgeous face of yours until it's unrecognizable if this proposal of yours turns out to be bullshit," he warned her, sounding incredibly serious and even more dangerous.

"If it were bullshit," Clarke pointed out reasonably enough, she thought. "I would be nicer to you. I'm not gonna pretend to like you, that wasn't in the deal."

Negan smirked. "Touché. And don't worry, Clarke. You're not the only wife that hates me. As long as you put out, I don't really care how you feel about me on a spiritual level. I'll have someone bring you a dress."

And with that, he was gone, and Clarke was alone in her room again. 

For now, anyway.

♾

Welcome to Sadness: 
The temperature is unbearable until you face it
I will leave you to it, you'll be fine
And then when you're ready, I'll be outside
And we can go look at the sunrise by euphoria 
Mixed with existential vertigo? Cool.

- Lorde, Secrets From A Girl (Who's Seen It All)

Chapter Text

 Are you, are you coming to the tree?
Where the dead man called out for his love to flee

Are you, are you coming to the tree?
Where I told you to run so we'd both be free
Wear a necklace of hope side by side with me

Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight in the hanging tree

- James Newton Howard & Jennifer Lawrence, The Hanging Tree

Necklace of Hope

"What are you doing?"

Echo was on one of the gazebo benches with a few maps and assorted notebooks. She was sipping from a cup filled with what smelled like kombucha, and Alicia made a face at the scent as she approached. 

Echo blew a few stray hairs off her face. "Picking runners for a mission."

"What mission?" 

"Supply run. Long term," Echo waved her off, a little too dismissively. "We need to start going out farther for more supplies as long as we're bending a knee to the Saviors."

Hmm. 

"Whatever it is, Hope and I will do it," Alicia volunteered. 

Echo fixed her with a concerned look. "No."

Alicia frowned, her brow knitting in confusion. "Why not? She said she was itching to go on the next run, and right now this is the last place I wanna be. Is this because of the Nightblood thing again? Because that makes me the safest candidate for runs, technically."

"It's not because of your blood." Echo sighed heavily and gave up on her task for the moment, repositioning herself to face Alicia. "It's because I don't think the two of you should be out there alone with one another. Especially not with Clarke missing." 

Alicia crossed her arms over her chest defiantly in disbelief. "Are you.. jealous that your girlfriend is spending time with me?"

Echo let out a guffaw, holding her stomach. She laughed in a way Alicia hadn't even known she'd be capable of; it actually morphed into an almost girlish giggle in between gasps for breath, and Alicia felt drunk. 

"I am not sleeping with Hope," Echo finally managed to gain control of her laughter as she stood up, gesturing at herself. "And if I was, I would have absolutely no need to be jealous, trust me."

Alicia faltered briefly; she'd been suddenly slapped with a very distinct sense that the woman wasn't idly bragging about her bedroom skills. Her id went haywire for a moment with imaginary images of what that might look like before she caught herself. 

"No," Echo corrected, gesturing for Alicia to stroll the mostly empty street with her. "It's because I know what happens when a flame meets a powder keg. And Hope has been burning since she was a child."

"How am I a powder keg for Hope?" Alicia asked, shuffling beside the badge-wearing warrior with defeat slumping her shoulders. "I wouldn't hurt her."

"You're dangerous. Both of you. You're angry and you want to make others feel your pain, and you encourage one another's rage. Some people make the best parts of ourselves shine the brightest. Others.."

Alicia hummed thoughtfully. "Explode?"

"Boom," Echo offered sympathetically, pausing to lean on a railing along the footpath. "Look. I'm not telling you not to spend time with her at all. In fact, I'm happy she finally has a friend who isn't also family. All I'm telling you is to leave her out of whatever it is that's going on between you and Clarke. If you need someone to talk to and I won't do, there are plenty of people around here way more level-headed than Hope Diyoza to choose from."

"Hey," she added reassuringly. "Some of them have even had relationships before, too. Hope is.. still a child in a lot of ways," she finished diplomatically. 

Alicia leaned beside Echo and sighed heavily. "Sheidheda spoke to me when I first took the Flame. He warned me against listening to something Madi was saying. He pretty much implied that I shouldn't be taking any advice from a child."

Echo raised one perfectly arched eyebrow. "I never thought I'd say this, but just this once, Sheidheda was right. You--" she paused, trying unsuccessfully to hide her clear shock as she processed. "You talk to Madi? Jesus. No wonder Clarke went off the deep end."

"Gee, thanks. I feel better already," Alicia grumbled, folding over to hide her face against the railing with a groan. "Clarke will never forgive me." 

"She will," Echo said confidently. "Because she's Clarke. She operates on a delay, but eventually she will clue in to the fact that you're a human being with feelings, and realize how much she must have hurt them to drive you into someone else's arms."

Alicia let out a dry laugh through her sniffles. "Maybe your Clarke would. Not this one. She won't care, trust me. I probably did her a favor, since she can be with Lexa guilt-free now."

Echo clapped her on the back lightly but pointedly. "Okay, enough of the self pity. You sound like Charlie mooning over, you know.."

Alicia let out a teary chuckle. "Everyone?"

"Everyone," Echo agreed. "Clarke will come to you, Alicia. I know that because whatever the complications, she obviously loves you very much. She knows she's been doing you wrong, because Clarke is a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them. She knows exactly what she's been doing, and maybe the favor you did do for her was giving her a wake up call. Reminding her that you exist, and you're worthy of being loved, too."

Echo continued, and Alicia listened quietly as she spoke. "She'll be devastated, and scared, and broken, and she'll need to confess her crimes. She'll be the one who reaches out to you because she can't live with what she's done." 

"How can you be so sure she can't?" Alicia asked in a hollow voice. 

Echo shrugged. "Clarke never could."

♾

Once Echo shooed her away, Alicia wandered the edges of Alexandria for a bit until she found herself loitering around the de facto town hall/community center/church. Father Gabriel was struggling with an armful of boxes, and she grabbed a few of them from him instinctively.

"Thanks," he said, nudging the door open with his foot. "Ladies first."

Alicia obediently headed inside, then followed him over to a table, where they set the boxes down. "What's all this for?"

Gabriel dabbed some sweat off his face with his sleeve and began unloading a mismatched set of bibles from one of the boxes. "Mass and bible study tonight. I have what I believe is a lovely homily on Ephesians 5:21 planned, if you'd like to stop by."

Alicia picked up one of the bibles from the stack on the table and ran her fingertips over the worn leather before setting the book down again. "Thanks, but I'm Jewish."

"I don't think so," Gabriel replied easily, leaving her to unpack the remaining boxes and beginning to unfold the chairs from along the wall. 

"How would you know?"

"I know everything." Alicia raised an eyebrow and Gabriel smiled kindly. 

"Then maybe God told me." She snorted. 

"Okay, what I do know, then, is that you have nothing else to do, or you wouldn't have been lingering outside like a lost soul. And I do love trying to save those. So why don't you help me set up these chairs for tonight? And if you'd rather not talk, you can just listen to me talk at you for awhile, and maybe you'll take away something useful from hearing an old man babble."

Alicia sighed heavily. She liked bible study better when she'd attended it at Broke Jaw Ranch. At the ranch, 'bible study' was just a smokescreen for getting high and giggling at a disembodied walker head with the other naive young adults that had lived there. That sounded more desirable, but she really didn't have anything better to do, and a distraction might keep her out of trouble while she tried to work out a plan to save Clarke from the Saviors' compound.

"Fine," Alicia mumbled reluctantly, beginning to help him with the chairs. "Wheel of morality, turn, turn, turn. Tell us the lesson that we should learn."

Whatever he had to say surely couldn't hurt, at least.

♾

When Negan returned from his meeting, Clarke was beneath the covers already, facing the wall and expertly feigning a light snore. She heard him curse, and then a rustle as he discovered the note she had left stuck onto Lucille's barbed wire. 

"Oh, goodie. I don't get laid and now I gotta do homework on my honeymoon, too?" he muttered as he unfolded the paper. 

mr. president,

don't be disappointed. 

you weren't getting lucky tonight either way. I told you I had some demands, too, and Sherry already set up a meeting for all the wives with Simon and Dwight for tomorrow to talk the dirty details if you want to come

1. no more ironing faces

2. you have kids down on market row & in the narrows that are starving & sick when you have food & medicine, are you serious?

i want to believe you're not an irredeemable and possibly totally psychotic piece of shit. i really do. i want to think there's something decent left inside everyone, even someone like you, but you haven't done anything to support that theory yet. 

just something to think about while you sleep on the couch sweet cheeks

- marilyn 💋 

"If I wanna come," Negan muttered. "Hilarious." 

She heard him sigh heavily, and then the squeak of the springs beneath him as he simply crawled onto the couch. 

She genuinely hadn't expected that level of agreeability from a man who enjoyed cracking skulls and ironing faces so much, even if she was allegedly asleep already. Frankly, she'd expected him to poke her with the bat until she woke to give him what he wanted; what he required.

And yet, he was pulling the threadbare afghan around himself and curling against the back of the couch with a few annoyed mutters as he shifted around the uncomfortable springs beneath him. After a few moments, his breathing became deep and even, and within ten minutes Clarke was sure he was asleep, his homework assignment folded up inside his shirt pocket as he began to snore quietly. 

Well that was an interesting, if unexpected, development. 

Hmm.

♾

Alicia picked up the green flower print dress she'd worn to the welcome party, fingering the soft collar lightly; the dress that Clarke had laid out for her that first evening in the remarkably sweet gesture that had set Alicia's heart shivering with joy in her chest. 

Clarke had thought about her, offhandedly and in such a genuinely affectionate way. Even after everything. Even after Abilene, and the Flame, and the fear, and the uncertainty, and the lies. Even after all of that, Clarke had thought of her. 

And when she had put the dress on, and then asked Clarke to zip her up..

♾

"Zip me up?" 

Alicia gently swept her hair over one shoulder, tilting her head and exposing her bare neck as though Clarke were a vampire she wished to tempt with the long, graceful line of her delicate throat. Clarke may not have been a vampire, however thirsty she looked, but Alicia's strategy worked. Fingers gently whispered against her shower-fresh skin, and it occurred to her that they should have sex in the shower as soon as humanly possible. 

She'd never done it, but a few of the romance novels Madison had left laying around during Alicia's pubescent stage had shower scenes that she had always found fantasies of absolutely intoxicating; and more so than ever in the moment, as she pictured Clarke's writhing, naked body in all of the most wicked positions she could remember. 

"Do I have to?" Clarke murmured, her fingertips pushing the flowered dress's back open further and tracing the rapidly warming skin there. Her lips brushed the back of Alicia's neck, and she shuddered, unconsciously leaning into the blonde. 

"Mhm," Alicia responded, not even believing it herself. "Party, remember? Formal wear optional party."

Clarke's lips had found a particularly sensitive spot just behind her earlobe, and Alicia's legs went to jello as Clarke urged their bodies closer together with a rapidly-growing need in her rapidly-darkening irises. 

"Party's not going anywhere," Clarke reasonably pointed out without missing a beat. Her deft, crafty fingers had eased the dress past her shoulders and Alicia gazed at her with drunken lust and a wicked grin as she shrugged the garment to the floor. "Hell, we could have our own party here. Clothing optional."

"You don't think we should try to make a good impression by not being horribly late?"

She hadn't even begun to dress, actually, except for the dress, and Clarke let out an incredibly audible gulp when she realized the brunette was completely bare before her. 

"Oh, to hell with the party," Clarke decided for them, quickly shucking her own dress to the floor before grabbing Alicia's hand. 

Clarke tugged her closer, and they shared a deep, desperate kiss, their breath coming quicker and more closely in sync the longer they lingered. Tangled up in one another, they fell to the bed in a flurry of hands and hips and hurried moans. 

The first and second rounds of their love-making had been furious and over far too quickly, leaving neither satisfied. The third time had been lazier, and Clarke had taken great care to draw Alicia's pleasure out; edging her until she let out a sob, her spread legs bent double beneath Clarke's weight as she was tormented. 

The fourth time had been impressively acrobatic, though they'd have to figure out a way to explain the new holes in the wall, what with the odd angle they had landed at. 

The fifth time was practically magical, and Alicia, who hadn't been able to breathe for several minutes afterwards and still wasn't entirely sure where her legs were, turned her head and tucked her fingers beneath Clarke's weighty arm. Shifting her own thigh out of the way, she read from the circular band and let out a huff of displeasure. 

"Late. Late-late. We gotta motorvate before someone comes looking for us."

"Hm, too late. Someone came," Luciana cleared her throat from the doorway, where she was smiling at them good-naturedly. "More than one someone, looks like. You two might want to come up for air. People want to meet their new lord and savior." 

"God, please don't call me that," groaned Clarke, who was far more nonplussed about their nudity and limb arrangement than Alicia, who was blushing as she pulled the blanket around the parts of her that weren't resting beneath Clarke. "Especially considering the whole Negan thing." 

♾

Negan.

And just like that, the joyful memory shattered and was replaced once more by the gnawing, unbearable feeling of loss that had so deeply saturated every moment since Clarke had disappeared. 

Alicia pressed the soft fabric to her face, convincing herself she could still smell the faint whisper of perfume Clarke had been wearing on her wrists the night of the party. She'd spent most of the evening hanging affectionately off Alicia's shoulders, and they'd even stepped away to the gazebo for several stolen kisses that had felt exciting and almost new again. Drunk on cheap wine and each other, spinning in tandem around the dance floor and giggling as the bubbly moscato they sipped warmed their insides against the cool autumn winds.

Daryl wandered by at one point, a limp and babbling Charlie cradled carefully in his arms, and she and Clarke had chuckled at Charlie. 

Charlie; who had killed Nick. Put a bullet right in his--

--a code, to never do it again--

--and it had gone on for so long, Nick coughing and choking and gasping as saliva and blood foamed and sprayed from his blueing, quivering lips--

--to accept everyone, to protect everyone--

She'd been so relieved to see Charlie.

Alicia wondered, as she buried her face deeper into the dress that still smelled like Clarke and joy and warmth, if Nick was somewhere in the universe just then, hating her for it. 

--for peace.

♾

Alicia lowered the dress, her jaw set now that she'd made a decision. She glanced at the clock on the wall, and tossed the dress away as she stood up. 

Hope would be starting her perimeter shift soon, meaning nobody would miss either one of them. 

"Sorry, Echo," Alicia mumbled as she double checked the stolen pistol tucked in her waistband, hoping nobody would miss that either. 

"For my clan, for my queen, for my kin," Alicia whispered boldly to herself, feeling Madi's pride reverberating throughout the mindspace. She'd been right about Enid; the girl had known exactly how and where to get the gun, and not only told Alicia about the secret sewer tunnel out of Alexandria, but had also offered to cover for her.

Maybe turning to the kids wasn't the best plan, but it had been weeks and none of the other adults seemed to give a damn about Clarke. Not enough to go after her, anyway. 

Fuck Negan. Fuck the Saviors. And frankly, fuck Rick Grimes, too. This was her family, and she had a feeling if it had been Michonne or Carl that the Saviors had taken, he would be a little more eager to do something.

So, sure. To hell with him, too. 

Alicia firmly knocked a bullet into the chamber with determination just as Hope crossed the street outside towards the armory. The blonde powder keg stopped and glanced briefly up to the window, giving Alicia and her flame a tiny, nearly imperceptible nod.

Time to go. 

Chapter Text

In dreams I walk with you
In dreams I talk to you
In dreams you're mine, all of the time
We're together in dreams, in dreams

But just before the dawn
I awake and find you gone
I can't help it if I cry
I remember that you said goodbye

It's too bad that all these things
Can only happen in my dreams

- Roy Orbison, "In Dreams"

In Dreams

Alicia and Hope had made it as far as the burned out husk of a house where Strand had hidden the bulk of the Take What You Need boxes. A true survivor's move, considering the arrival of the Saviors so soon afterwards. 

They'd begun to load several of the packs there with supplies when a bright light rolled across their heads. Hope jumped up with her knife already flying at the light, but the shadow behind it easily slid out of the way without fanfare. A voice sighed in the dark. 

"Your wrist still hesitates just before the snap when you're startled. Predictable."

"Echo?" Hope squinted into the light and Alicia stood as the flashlight beam moved sideways, granting them vision again. 

"Going to bed after patrol, Hope? Really? And Alicia, you should know better. Kids have big mouths. Enid obviously told Carl, who let it slip to Beth, who confided in Maggie, who thought I might have a few concerns about you two absolute fools going off all half cocked to Negan's compound. Giving him two more prisoners, or walkers for his walls." 

Off both Hope and Alicia's shared look, Echo raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. "Oh, you didn't know he has walkers on the perimeter? What a shock. You didn't even recon his outermost defenses before you set off on this suicide mission."

She looked at the brunette very pointedly and frankly with more disappointment than Alicia was comfortable with and said with a simple shrug of one shoulder, "Boom." 

Alicia lowered her eyes guiltily. Echo was right and she knew it, and she couldn't feel anything but regret about her decision. 

Hope, however, had mirrored Echo's stance right down to the crossed arms, and was looking at the girl knowingly. "The famous spy lives after all. You did recon his defenses."

"Uh-huh," replied Echo. "Bi-weekly since he murdered our people. Weekly, since he took Clarke and most of our food. You thought I was doing nothing; that Rick was," she accused them both accurately, looking mildly hurt by their shared assumption that what looked like nothing to an outsider had in fact been nothing. 

Everyone is an outsider to a spy, the Flame informed her. You should have known better.

Azgedan loufa; natblida natrona, hissed Sheidheda. You are even more foolish than I already believed if you trust that one. Her loyalty is as lightly attached to her as her loafers. 

[Ice Nation spy. Nightblood traitor]

Hope smiled a little at Echo, whose sharp cheekbone was now reflecting the minute shards of light. "You're wearing white paint." 

"Yes."

Alicia blinked slowly, trying to get where Hope already had. 

Hope relaxed her stance and looked proud. "They're tiny, but I see them now. Under your brows."

Alicia searched and squinted in the poor lighting for a moment before finally confirming it. Two identical tiny slashes now lay at the outermost corners of the warrior's delicate eyebrows, accenting the healed ones just below. She also had, as Hope pointed out, a very faint and fine--you didn't want to reflect moonlight to walkers after all--coating of white paint on her high cheekbones, furrowed forehead, angular chin, and the curve of her jaw. 

"What does it mean?" Alicia asked dumbly, despite the fact that the Flame had already informed her. 

"It means the pain is over, and it's time to fight. It means she's not here to bring us back to Alexandria at all," Hope relayed, her proud gaze still locked to Echo's dangerous smile in the dark. 

"No, she's not," came a firm southern voice from the shadows. 

"Maggie?" Alicia searched the dark in surprise as Echo stepped aside to reveal a small cluster of other shadows standing in the slivers of moonlight. "The baby, you shouldn't be out here. What are you doing?"

Maggie's jaw was set firmly and proudly with determination as she lifted her chin a little. "What Glenn would have done. What our Daddy would have. We won't lose anyone else, especially not to that bastard."

"We?" Alicia asked, feeling a strange warmth beginning to spread through her body despite the low temperature and frigid wind whipping around her admittedly increasingly underfed form.  She shivered and hugged her coat tighter as voices and faces cut through the dark on either side of Maggie.

"I'm a better fighter than you'd think," Beth offered. "And I can track, Daryl taught me how to."

"She's a whiz with a crossbow, too. Good and silent for the way there and the fence, but I also don't believe in bringing a knife to a gunfight," said Tara, her gun clicking as she loaded a pistol into the chamber with a sweet smile. "So I always bring both everywhere. Let's saddle up, posse. We have a natblida to round up."

"Can I ask," Alicia began quietly to Echo as they fell into step with the rest of the pack. "What pain is it that's gone if we haven't gotten Clarke back yet? Are you that sure of yourself?"

"I am that sure of us," Echo corrected confidently. "But these marks aren't for Clarke. We're getting her back, so there won't be any pain."

"Glenn and Abraham," Alicia realized. Echo straightened up, squaring her shoulders off and quickening her pace a little. 

"They were my friends, too," she said simply, before the full warrior mask slid into place and she moved ahead, leaving Alicia trailing the others, alone in her head.

Well, mostly. 

As alone as she ever was in her head these days. 

♾

"That's incredibly distracting, Madi," Alicia snapped. The child stopped her incessant pacing and faced Alicia with her arms crossed. 

"You were sloppy, both of you! You got caught and risked the whole mission!" Madi huffed accusingly. "You blindly risked Clarke's life on a plan you weren't entirely sure of."

Alicia felt downright embarrassed, there was no way around it. This.. this fetus was scolding her, and the worst part was she was absolutely right. 

"I was sure of it at the time," Alicia mumbled weakly, and Madi looked aghast. 

"Well, then that's our problem, isn't it?" Madi frowned, looking from her, annoyed. 

"You could be a little nicer," Alicia pointed out. Didn't she have enough shit in her head, without a toddler pointing out all of her failures and then judging her for them? And to boot, all of it accompanied by the tone and expression so reminiscent of Clarke when she was angry that it was uncomfortable. 

Madi looked like she was about to say something else unkind, but then her face fell. She sank onto the chair and gazed up at Alicia, looking incredibly small with defeat in every inch of her narrow slumped shoulders. 

"I'm sorry. Honestly. It's just--it's Clarke. You know? What if that sicko had your Mom, Alicia?" 

"I know," Alicia replied sympathetically, resting her hand on the girls shoulder reassuringly. "We have Echo and the others now. We'll get Clarke back."

♾

"You trusted me, too," Lexa said, but there was an unkindness, an icy cut in her sharp tone. "You trusted me enough to turn your back, and for that I stabbed you in it at Mount Weather. What makes you think she's any better than me? She'll hurt you, too. She already has. Everyone does. We all let one another down, and I see that now. It is simply the way of humans. I didn't see it sooner and now look what's happened."

Clarke gazed around the mindspace, confused. "What are you doing here, Lexa? You said you wouldn't come back again."

Lexa gave a mirthless chuckle, crossing her arms at the wrist behind her back as she began slowly pacing, regarding Clarke with hurt and anger in her deep jade eyes. 

"And now you aren't even happy to see me? What happened to, maybe someday you and I will owe nothing more to our people, Clarke? What happened to someday?"

"We have a great future behind us," Clarke mumbled as she stood up and headed for the door. "I have to go, Lexa. Negan has Alicia. God, I don't even remember falling asleep."

"You did," Lexa assured her coldly. "Beside the man who kept you prisoner. Who killed Olivia, hurt Carl and Niylah and threatened Charlie."

Lexa turned on her heel and gave Clarke a disapproving sneer. "He killed Glenn and Abraham, too, but they weren't exactly your people, anyway, were they?"

"They're all my people," Clarke replied dismissively, yanking hard at the door. It wouldn't budge. "I have to go, Lexa. I'm sorry."

"Are you?" Lexa asked, cocking her head as she approached, looking interested. "Are you truly sorry, Clarke, for your crimes?"

"They're not my crimes!" she snapped, angrily kicking the door. She headed for the other door, the one that led the long way around the outer edge of Polis Tower. The one meant for a Commander to exit secretly, in the event of a coup. 

The one she wasn't ever meant to know about; that she hadn't ever known about; only Lexa would know. 

She headed for it. 

"Oh, I know you've convinced yourself of that, Clarke. But tell me something: you believe the me in your head is really me. Right?"

"Maybe not this version of you," Clarke replied suspiciously, crouching down to pull a hidden panel from the wall beside the Commander's personal bathtub. "You're kind of stressing me out. But yeah, usually."

Lexa continued emotionlessly. "And the version of me, and of yourself, in the City of Light? The version of me in Madi's head, reminding you I was there constantly. All real? All Clarke, and Lexa?" She stepped a little closer, searching Clarke's eyes desperately. "Was it real, Clarke?"

Clarke stopped, letting go of the loosened panel. It swung slowly where it was still connected with part of the wall as Clarke sat back a little, her voice strained with emotion. "All of it. Everything about us was always real, Lexa."

Lexa shook her head a little, looking disappointed and confused. "Do you know why I don't feel like I can believe you, Clarke?"

Clarke frowned, looking up at her with hurt in her eyes. "Why?"

Lexa knelt to meet her gaze evenly, swallowing hard as she replied, "Because if you truly believed all of those things were real, you would believe your crimes were, too. In which case, you might think you deserve to be exactly where you are, and think you still owed something more to your people. Is that true?"

Clarke leaned back with the weight of recognition. It was practically a semantics argument, and she wanted to fight back; but Lexa's logic was unfortunately quite sound. 

If those versions of Clarke were real, then this one was; they all were. Then she was Clarke Griffin, Wanheda, Princess, et al. Then she'd done it all; killed them at Mount Weather. Tried more than once to save Skaikru at the expense of the Grounders, just as Lexa had predicted she would do, given the same choice. 

Clarke's crimes were Clarke's crimes; regardless of what hardware she was running these days. The software was the same; the Individual Consciousness Code of Clarke Griffin. If this was Lexa, she was Clarke, and Alicia--

Was in trouble. 

"I'm not asleep," Clarke replied adjacently, choosing not to deal with her own hypocrisy for the moment. "I'm unconscious. And you aren't Lexa, you're my brain trying to reconcile trauma. I've been hit in the head, and I need to wake up. Alicia's going to die if I don't. Negan will kill her when he finds out it was her. 

"We all die. Death is not the end, Clarke. You know that better than anyone."

Clarke let out a scream of frustration as she abandoned the inaccessible tunnel and gave the paneling a solid kick for good measure. "This isn't real; you aren't. Lexa would never hold me against my will."

Lexa snorted. "I had Roan tie you up, put a bag over your head, and drag you across the greater expanses of Azgeda so I could lock you in my tower and make you join my coalition."

Clarke gave her a severe scowl as she went back out to the bedroom and looked around. "That's how I know you're me; because I am way more bitchy to myself than Lexa ever could be. She was trying to protect me. She was right to. You? You're wrong, and I'm done listening to you," Clarke informed her, grabbing an iron meant for stoking a fire and going back to the door. She wedged the edge of the spike into the doorframe and began trying to pry it open. 

Lexa watched her for a moment. "You really want to leave? You really want to go back to that world, to those people?"

Clarke didn't even pause in her prying. "Yep. I'm ready to wake up now."

"I thought this was what you wanted," Lexa gestured around the room. "Just the two of us. Your brain is dying, Clarke. Don't you see that? I'm trying to protect you again."

Clarke paused then, frowning. "No, I'm not dying. I'm just unconscious. I got hit in the head with something, that's all."

"After what?" Lexa prompted, looking highly concerned. 

Clarke frowned, furrowing her brows as she searched her memory. "I don't.. um. I can't remember."

"Walkers. There were walkers loose in the compound. And you climbed away, but you fell off the platform because.."

"I was bitten," Clarke suddenly remembered. "Fuck. I was bitten?" But she didn't need Lexa to confirm it; her arm had begun bleeding before her as she remembered. She gulped, tugging her sleeve down over the angry-looking bite. "So what? It doesn't matter. I won't turn."

"So, infection. Blood loss. You barely survived last time, and you only did because Becca kidnapped you and did surgery. Gave you medicine so you would heal. Someone just attacked Sanctuary with a herd. Wife or not, Negan isn't going to help you once he figures out it was your people, even if someone manages to find you laying there under a pile of rubble in the middle of a massive walker attack at all, anyway."

Lexa sounded and looked equal parts and get and sick as she shook her head defiantly, "It was for nothing. All of your pain was for nothing, Clarke, all of your suffering for your people.. All of mine. I was wrong. Wrong to leave you. Wrong to force you to stay, to lead. I am sorry if you think I am being bitchy, but that doesn't change the truth. And the truth is, I was wrong. Stay with me. Let your pain go, Clarke. You've earned it."

Clarke stopped, going back over to Lexa and reaching out to touch her chin gently, her eyes searching the Conmander's earnestly. 

"I was wrong," Clarke admitted. "You are you. Which is why you know I have to do this."

"Do what?" Lexa asked worriedly. 

"Now that I know it's really you?" Clarke abandoned the door and tossed the iron away as she jogged over to the balcony. "If my own brain won't let me wake up, then maybe yours will." 

"Clarke? What are you doing?" Lexa chased after her with panic lining her voice. 

"I'm gonna wake up, and you're gonna help me," she replied, gazing out over the wide swaths of forest and valleys spreading out in a logarithmic spiral that began at Polis Tower. "Whether you want to or not."

Lexa didn't have time to respond before Clarke had taken a deep breath and unceremoniously pitched herself from the balcony. Lexa's eyes flew open and she screamed, "No!" as she ran after Clarke's disappearing form. 

Lexa raced to the balcony and almost stumbled over the edge of it herself as she gripped the railing. She leaned over just in time to see Clarke's body disappear between the churning waves that had suddenly appeared.

Clarke plunged into the icy depths of the newly formed ocean she'd trusted Lexa to create, and let out a joyous cry in the form of a cluster of large bubbles when she didn't splatter across Polis Market. 

She'd fallen deep, though, and her lungs were already craving release before she'd reached the apex of her descent underwater. She let another tiny cluster of bubbles go, her lungs straining as she began to kick her feet towards the surface. If she could just get there, she knew she would wake up in reality. The blurred outline of the sun grew larger as she moved towards the surface, her chest clenching. 

Something soft and malleable but firm slid around one ankle above Clarke's boot, and she struggled to free herself from whatever it was. She fought against the pressure until what she realized was a hand had wrapped entirely around her ankle and begun to pull her deeper under the surface. 

"No," she screamed with the last of her breath, kicking at the hand. It was a walker, she saw now. It had long dark hair and white, sludgy skin. It was swollen from all the water it had absorbed, and Clarke saw only now that the walker was trapped beneath a wooden beam that was easily nine or ten feet across. The walker held her tightly, its water-fractured skin oozing dark, dead blood as it continued to reach for Clarke with its other hand. 

Searching the silty bottom quickly, Clarke caught sight of a shining blade hidden beneath the sand. She grabbed the axe and began to hit the beam, her lungs feeling as though they were shattering; tearing into shreds and bleeding from lack of air. 

Come on, Clarke, move your feet, she thought. 

"Are you asking me to dance?" the walker, who she couldn't believe she'd only just noticed was Alicia, snarled back. 

Walker Alicia dug her nails into Clarke's tender flesh and pulled her down, down, and deeper away into the darkness as her lungs finally burst and gave into the emptiness.  

I'm sorry I couldn't protect you this time, my love..