Chapter Text
Enemy of my Enemy
Chapter 1
Clarke had been dreaming of death since she had woken inside Mount Weather. Her sleep was filled with monsters and pain and no matter how often the doctors told her she was suffering from PTSD or paranoia; Clarke had known something wasn’t right. She had known that Mount Weather was too good to be true, that the shinning, perfect exterior of the mountain had to be hiding a secret evil. And because she was Clarke, because of her father and because the long weeks she had spent trying to keep her people alive, she had gone looking for it.
Clarke didn’t think she could ever have imagined this though.
The room off the hospital ward was something out of a nightmare. Like animal carcasses, two grounders had been strung upside down from the ceiling. Their bodies swayed, limp and dressed only in scraps of bandages, their fingertips skimming the floor. Despite appearances, the grounders weren’t dead, they twitched, fighting against unconsciousness, faces scrunching in pain. Clarke hurried past them only to stop once again, horror locking her muscles.
The rest of the room was filled with cages; they were stacked like children’s building blocks, arranged in neat rows as far as her eyes could see. And in each one was a hunched up, half-dead grounder.
Clarke moved between them, feeling almost like she was floating, her hands shaking at her sides. The grounders war paint and clothes had been removed and they had been reduced to something barely human; cowering, pale naked skeletons who watched her with drugged, defeated eyes. Clarke looked between the cages and the strung-up grounder bodies, her eyes lingering on the multiple cannulas that stole away the grounder’s blood and swallowed, sick with horrifying understanding. This was the dirty secret beneath Mount Weather’s smiling, kindly image. They had created a living blood bank.
From the bottom row of cages, a familiar face peered up at her through a mane of dark gold hair. Clarke's stomach clenched and she felt her face twist in shock. “Anya. “she breathed.
The fierce grounder leader watched her, barely conscious as Clarke threw herself to her knees in front of the cage. Clarke had only ever seen Anya painted for war and it felt wrong to see her like this, bare and reduced. Anya’s head lolled, not strong enough to keep herself upright and for the first time since Clarke had entered this room of horror, she felt fury kindle inside her alongside her fear.
“I’m going to get you out of here.” Clarke hissed urgently; tugging uselessly at the padlock on the cage.
“No.” Anya’s eyes were unfocused, pupils were blown wide, but she moved quicker than Clarke expected and snagged Clarke’s wrist before she could move away. Anya’s words were scrapped through a raw throat. “Her first.”
Still held firm in Anya’s grip, Clarke twisted until her gaze rested on the cage behind them. The caged grounder Anya gestured to was sat sphinx-like. Where the other grounders pressed against their bars, eyes rolling and arms reaching, the girl remained in the depths of her cage, her features hidden in the darkness. Clarke squinted trying to make out her face and caught a flash of green eyes.
“Anya, no…”
“Her first,” Anya repeated fiercely and her fingers biting warningly into Clarke’s skin. Recognising Anya wouldn’t release her until she agreed and knowing even while drugged and injured Anya was stronger than her, Clarke nodded, murmuring her agreement.
Anya’s eyes narrowed before she released her and Clarke darted back out of the row of cages, snagging off a section of pipe. For a moment Clarke hesitated.The grounders were not her friends. Strangely, shared history - blood as it was - had humanised Anya to Clarke in a way that made these cages and torture unbearable to see. That had made it easy to promise to free Anya. And there was the other part of Clarke, the colder harsher part of her that had seen Anya and weighed up the possibility of an alliance or a least a truce while they escaped. But the girl Anya had gestured to was an unknown, and if Clarke released two of the grounders, she would be outnumbered. They might decide they didn’t need a slow, clumsy sky girl.
Anya met her gaze, mouth tightening as if she could hear the thoughts of betrayal running through Clarke’s head. “Please,” Anya said, the word mangled on her tongue, vowels twisted until Clarke almost didn’t recognise it. Clarke suspected that Anya had never begged for anything before in her life.
Clarke scrunched up her face and swore, cursing herself even as she levelled the bar into the lock on the girl’s cage. The lock snapped off and the cage door creaked open. Before Clarke could move away, the girl in the cage surged forward. Clarke tried to stumble away but the grounder was faster, one hand gripping her wrist and the other pressing against her mouth, muffling the cry of shock.
“They’re here.” The girl hissed as Clarke strained against her. The locked entrance beeped, opening to the sound of approaching heeled shoes. Clarke went limp in understanding. The green-eyed grounder retreated into the cage, and Clarke followed her, her heart in her throat and her wrist still held tight in the girl’s hand. Clarke tugged the cage door shut behind her and they both pressed themselves as far as they could into the shadowy depths of the cage.
The Mount Weather doctor moved slowly around the room; her disinterest at the horrors of the room somehow apparent in the leisurely tap of her shoes. Ears straining Clarke tracked the doctor’s movements; listening as she paused and poked at the strung-up bodies. Then the doctor turned towards the cages.
Clarke’s heart started to race, the pounding in her ears so loud she was sure the sound must be echoing around the room. Each step the Mount Weather doctor took seemed to take an eternity; a millennium passed between each breath. Clarke felt like she might pass out, her fear stealing her ability to regulate her breathing. If the doctor saw her, she was dead. If she was dead, she would never save her friends.
The hand locked around Clarke’s wrist squeezed suddenly. The pressure was firm but gentle; lacking Anya’s bruising roughness. Distracted, Clarke glanced up. The grounder was staring straight at her, her eyes unblinking, almost luminously green. In the small space of the cage, their faces were only inches away, close enough that Clarke could feel the heat radiating off the girl’s skin.
The doctor took another step closer. Any moment know she would see them.
Around them, there was a surge of cries. Grounder who had laid defeated and cowering surged against their bars, rattling the cages. The Mount Weather doctor flinched, stumbling backward. She huffed in annoyance before retreating, the clicking of her shoes echoing away into the distance. Then she was gone.
As soon as the door beeped behind the doctor, Clarke spilled out of the cage.
“We have to go; we have to leave now,” Clarke said, her voice shaky. She thrust her arms into the cage, adrenaline making her prepared to drag and carry the grounder girl out of the cage if needed. Instead, the girl deftly skirted Clarke’s outstretched hands, unfurling from the cage like a cat, graceful and powerful. Unlike Anya and the other grounders, her eyes were clear, her movements steady.
“Come on,” Clarke ordered, reaching out to grab the girl’s arm, tugging at her forearm. There was a low rumble of noise in the cages around them, a sudden burst of dangerous energy rippling like a wave through the grounders. They shifted and edged as close as their cages would let them. The hairs on Clarke’s neck prickled, her hare brain letting her know of a danger that she didn’t quite understand. She dropped the girl’s arm. The girl quirked an eyebrow, an expression which in any other circumstance Clarke would have read as amusement.
The grounder girl glanced back at the cage, “Shut the cage door. We need to keep our escape hidden for as long as possible.”
The girl said it with such certainty that Clarke would obey her that she didn’t even wait for Clarke to complete her order before turning away. Clarke, always quick to follow a logical suggestion, moved to do as the girl commanded. When she got back to her feet, the girl was on her knees, pressing her forehead against the metal bars of Anya’s cell. From inside her jail, Anya did the same. Clarke bit back her urgings to hurry, knowing somewhere deep in her gut the significance of the gesture. This was an acknowledgement, a goodbye.
Shivering with fear fuelled adrenaline, Clarke scanned the room for an exit. There was a heavy metal door in the far corner. A warning sign printed in red across its front made Clarke sigh in relief. If it was dangerous to the Mount Weather people it was exactly where she wanted to go.
“We have to go,” Clarke said finally, apology and desperation in her voice as she moved towards the door.
“Go Heda,” Anya whispered and the girl nodded sharply and took off after Clarke.
The metal door was heavy, too old to move smoothly and it groaned in protest, metal grinding together. Hands joined her and the grounder girl yanked hard, her strength forcing the door to open. “Come on!” Clarke panted, slipping through the gap.
The girl followed, hesitating in the doorway. Her unflinching gaze scanned the room, lingering on cages and the tubes of blood and the bodies strung up from the ceiling. Clarke got the impression she was burning the memory into her mind, soaking in the pain and degradation.
“Jus drein jus daun.” The girl said, her voice a growl of feeling. Her words rippled across the room, kindling something in the grounders. A rumble of voices rose, combining and layering until it reminding Clarke of war drums. The grounders rattled at their cages, strained against their jails. They were repeating the same phrase as the girl, banging the metal.
It was, Clarke realised, a war cry.
Their escape from the mountain was a blur of fear. Clarke wasn’t sure how they had navigated the underground maze; at some point in their mad dash, the grounder girl had started to pick their course, her strong legs eating up ground as Clarke struggled to match her pace. Years cramped into the Ark hadn’t exactly encouraged her physical strength and soon Clarke was sweating, nauseated and struggling to drag air into her lungs. Only the memory of the skip full of dead grounder bodies discarded like rubbish kept her burning, shaking limbs moving.
They turned right, sprinting around a damp corner of the tunnel and tumbled into the sunlight. Clarke stumbled, leaves crunching beneath her feet. She blinked against the watery light as it strained to reach them through the tree cover. The air was sweet; Clarke hadn’t realised how stale, how stagnant the air inside the mountain had been. She inhaled, eyes closing in almost relief.
The grounder girl had stopped too, pausing a few paces ahead of Clarke. She glanced over her shoulder; her eyes even greener against the foliage.
“We can’t stop.” She said. From the tunnel the sound of soldiers running, boots stomping an ominous death beat echoed. Clarke nodded and they started to run once more.
Clarke didn’t know where they were going; every inch of the forest seemed the same, unfamiliar. She had a basic idea from her map of how far away Mount Weather was from the dropship but she didn’t know where the tunnel had emerged, she didn’t even know if they were heading in the right direction. Clarke glanced at the grounder’s back, her mind spinning ideas and strategies like a chess game. The girl’s pace was relentless; she scaled up hills, agile as a cat, her feet nearly soundless despite the leave covered floor. The girl seemed to know where she was going but Clarke had no intention of walking into a grounder village. She needed to find Bellamy and Finn.
With a cry, Clarke stumbled, dropping to the ground. The girl spun at the noise; her face unreadable as she took in Clarke’s slumped position in the mud
“Please,” Clarke panted, “I just need to stop for a moment.”
The girl sighed. “We can stop here; we should be far enough away from the mountain.”
“Thank you,” Clarke said, trying to inject as much sincerity as she could into her words. The grounder tilted her chin up in recognition of Clarke’s words but didn’t respond. Clarke supposed it was too much to think the grounder would thank her for rescuing her.
They moved together to sit behind a fallen tree, agreeing without conversation that they should try to stay hidden. Clarke let her head drop back against the dead tree trunk behind her. She sighed, her limbs were shaking after their run, shivers running through her bones. When she glanced to her right, the grounder was in a similar position, her long neck stretched out and her eyes closed.
Clarke stared at the girl, contemplating her as she tried to decide what to do next. The girl looked, especially in her borrowed clothes and with her eyes closed, more like a child than a warrior. Like Anya, she was slender as a tree branch, muscles and bones, and not much else. Her jawline was razor-sharp, eyes huge but unblinkingly intense, giving her appearance a strange mix of vulnerability and uncanniness. Clarke thought of Anya and wondered if all grounders looked so fierce.
Clarke winced at the memory of Anya. This grounder, she reminded herself, wasn’t Anya, she was an unknown variable. But she had helped Clarke escape the tunnels and she hadn’t tried to attack her yet or abandon her. And Clarke still needed her to get back to the dropship, she needed her to find her people.
“Are you done?” The girl asked lazily, tilting her head and cracking open one eye to stare at Clarke. Clarke felt her cheeks heating, embarrassed as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t have.
“Sorry… I just.” Clarke paused, “I’m Clarke.”
“I know who you are, Clarke of the Sky People.” The girl said, her lazy voice sharpening like a blade. Her teeth flashed, a predator’s warning. “You burnt three hundred warriors alive.”
Clarke tensed, swallowing down the smell of burning flesh that filled her nose. The girl was staring at her, waiting.
“They were sent to kill us,” Clarke said finally, her voice hard. The grounder remained unmoved, her face unreadable and Clarke exhaled sharply in frustration, feeling herself losing control, the threads of her plan unraveling. “Look, we have to work together, we have to go and get help. The mountain men took my people too - ”
“I saw no sky people in cages.”
Clarke felt her words fault, flinching at the girl’s cold accusation. “They took us all, they’re prisoners just like your people.”
The grounder huffed disbelievingly but instead of the argument Clarke expected, the girl next pointed question took her by surprise. “If they have all your people, what help could you get.”
“There are more of us coming from the sky, soldiers.”
“More guns.” The grounder said shortly and for a second a flash of something appeared behind her eyes. The emotion was unreadable to Clarke, but it was enough of a tell and she latched onto it, pressing her advantage with hurried words
“Yes guns, we have a lot more guns. And bombs. With our weapons and your people’s knowledge of this land, we can free both our people.”
The grounder’s face was silent, her face back to stone and for a moment Clarke was afraid that she had lost her, that like Anya she wouldn’t be able to see beyond their animosity. But after a moment the girl nodded, a tiny sharp movement of acknowledgement.
Clarke sighed, slumping in relief against the dead tree.
“Clarke,” the girl said slowly, her tongue clicking on the hard K in Clarke’s name, rolling the unfamiliar sound thoughtfully. “I am Lexa.”
Clarke looked over at her, scanning the grounder’s young, beautifully fierce face. “Lexa.” She repeated.