Chapter Text
They only make it a few kilometers, all ninety-seven of them still left alive, when the breath is stolen from Clarke’s lungs because people are dropping out of the trees in front of them. There are gasps behind her, and she hears one of the younger ones shriek.
Clarke kind of wants to shriek too, because she’d just been worried about not seeing any animals yet, but these are people, real people, dressed in heavy furs with faces hidden behind terrifying masks.
Instead, she holds up an arm and calls out a firm “Stop!” She risks a glance back and sees that all of the kids from the dropship have frozen in their tracks. Even Spacewalker, who got two kids killed when they followed his bad example and refused to listen to her demand that they stay in their seats, is motionless and wide-eyed as he looks at the strangers.
They may hate her for being the so-called princess of the Ark, she thinks grimly, but that doesn’t stop them from responding to her orders.
“You speak for the Sky People?” a low voice asks, and she zeroes in on the tall figure just in front of her.
The Sky People. Such a beautiful name for a bunch of fallen criminals.
“I do,” she says, a heavy weight settling in the pit of her stomach.
Wells reaches out and touches her wrist. “Clarke,” he says urgently, but she shrugs him off with a glare.
“Clarke,” the voice echoes, almost curious, and then he’s tugging off his mask––she sees it’s a man, younger than she expected, probably only a handful of years older than her.
“Clarke of the Sky People,” he says, eyes even darker than the pitch-colored paint smeared around them. “My leader wants to speak with you.”
There may be twice as many of Clarke’s people as there are of these strangers, but as she takes in their weapons and stances she has no doubt they could kill them all if they wanted. They have no choice but to do as the man says.
Clarke worries about the supplies her people need from Mount Weather in order to feed themselves, but when she tries to explain that to him, his mouth thins into a grim line and he refuses to speak further on the subject. Instead, he introduces himself.
His name is Bellamy of the Trigedakru, and when she awkwardly echoes the unfamiliar word, he translates for her.
“The Woods Clan,” she repeats. He nods, and weaves around a tree. His people are silent, ranging around the big mass of hers, making sure no stragglers try to slip away as Bellamy leads them all to where his leader is waiting.
“And you survived all this time? How?”
He glances at her. “We don’t give up. We fight. We survive.”
“Right,” Clarke says under her breath. “That clears things up.”
She thinks she sees a smile cross his face, but she blinks and it’s gone.
“Your people call you princess,” he says as she clambers over a fallen log, and when she makes it across she catches him watching her. When he looks away from her, he has to swing wide to avoid colliding with a tree.
“I’m not a princess,” she says. “But my parents––” Clarke swallows at the thought of her father, pulled apart in space; her mother, still up in the Ark, slowly running out of air. She glances back, sees Wells helping a little blonde girl with wary eyes climb over the same log, and fury sours her stomach. “My parents had important jobs.”
“Is he your chosen?” Bellamy asks, following her gaze. “He seems to care for you.”
“What?” Clarke says, whipping her head around to gape at him. “No. No. He’s––no.”
Bellamy raises an eyebrow, and though his face seems calm, she swears she can read the curiosity in his eyes.
“He was the closest thing I had to a brother,” she says shortly. “And then he ruined it.”
“The closest thing?” Bellamy repeats. “You don’t have a brother of your own?”
“No. None of us have siblings. It’s against the law,” she says. Then she wonders. “Do…do you have a sibling?”
“A sister,” he says, and for the first time his voice sounds actually gentle. “Octavia.”
They make it to Bellamy’s village––a real village, with houses and fences and animals in pens!––and as Bellamy embraces a woman with the same dark hair as him, Clarke realizes very quickly that gently is the last way she would have expected anyone to speak of Bellamy’s sister.
The girl seems even younger than Clarke, but her bright eyes gleam from a face dark with the same paint as her brother’s. And Clarke counts no fewer than three weapons (that she can see) on the girl, including a wickedly curved sword strapped to her back. Her jaw is as sharp as the blades she carries as she takes in the delinquents with curious but wary eyes.
“Emo laik Skaikru?” she says to Bellamy, and Clarke gets the gist of the question.
Bellamy nods and gestures at Clarke. “Em laik Klark, heda kom Skaikru.”
“I’m right here,” Clarke says. “I thought your leader wanted to speak to me.”
Octavia looks her over. “When she’s ready.”
Bellamy reaches out, tugs on one of his sister’s braids. “You know she’s ready now.”
The girl rolls her eyes, but waves for Clarke to follow her.
Clarke hesitates, looks at Bellamy. “My people?”
He inclines his head. “Lincoln will stay with them. They won’t be harmed.” Clarke sees a man even taller and broader than Bellamy crouching down in front of one the smallest boys from the dropship. “He’s a good man,” Bellamy adds. “My sister’s chosen.”
He curls a hand around Clarke’s upper arm and starts guiding her after his sister. But his grip is careful, not tight enough to even wrinkle the fabric of her jacket.
So when Wells calls her name, voice anxious, she looks over her shoulder. “Stay with them,” she says. “I’ll be fine.”
Somehow, with this earthborn boy at her side, she feels like she’s telling the truth.
She’s grateful that he stays be her side, tall and still and strong, when his leader–– heda , as he greets her––emerges from one of the buildings.
She is tall and beautiful and fierce, with Octavia at her side.
“You’re Clarke.” It’s not a question, but Clarke nods anyway. “I’m Anya.”
Clarke’s not sure what to do, but when she starts to offer her hand Bellamy’s grip on her arm tightens. So she stays still.
“Your ship landed in our territory. You’re invaders,” Anya says, almost idly, eyes fixed on Clarke.
“No,” Clarke says immediately. “We had no idea earth was still inhabited. We didn’t even know if we could survive on earth.”
“Then why are you here?”
She takes in a breath, pauses, thinks.
We don’t give up. We fight. We survive.
Clarke lifts her chin. “To survive.”
Bellamy moves the tiniest bit, as if surprised by her answer.
Anya considers her for a long, painfully tense moment, and then nods, the smallest smile crossing her lips. Bellamy lets his hand fall away, and even Octavia seems to relax.
“Well, then, Clarke of the Sky People. Welcome to the earth.”
It seems like a dream, too good to be true, that the Trigedakru would welcome nearly a hundred teenagers into their village, finding beds for them to sleep in and food for them to eat.
And then Clarke finds out she’s right––their welcome in TonDC is sincere, but only because of the monsters that Mount Weather holds. They might be young and untrained, but their numbers are significant. Their willingness to show their gratitude by training in the ways of the Woods Clan is just another benefit for Anya’s clan.
When Clarke tells Anya that the cuffs on their wrists are telling the rest of their people that the ground is livable, and even more of the Sky People will likely be joining them on the ground, a somewhat terrifying glee lights the woman’s eyes.
“We’ll make warriors of them all,” Anya promises, though it sounds more like a threat.
“They’re going to make us into killers,” Wells cautions their tenth day on the ground. Most of the delinquents are going through training drills with Anya’s warriors, though some with other skills are busy elsewhere.
Clarke is examining a mostly-healed broken arm on a young boy. After a crash course in Trigedakru medicine with a healer named Nyko, she’s been put to work in her own way.
“Lots of them are already killers,” she reminds him. “They’re being made into fighters.”
Wells sighs, but when she glances at him she can see the acceptance in his slumped shoulders.
“I need you to get behind this,” she tells him when she sends the boy away from her. “We need to figure out how to live here, with these people. Becomes these people. If we want to survive.”
Ten days ago, she wouldn’t have bothered trying to persuade him. Orders or silence would have done a good enough job. But the longer they’re on the ground, and the longer Wells looks at her with that quiet anguish, the more Clarke realizes the truth.
She’s not ready to say the truth to herself, nor to him, because that would mean she’d think of her mother coming down to earth with dread instead of hope.
But she feels the truth, and every day she speaks a little softer to her friend, and the tension in his brow fades a little more.
“I need you to say that you’re with us,” she says now, moving a hand to his shoulder.
Behind him, she can see Bellamy in the distance, watching her and Wells. She smiles at him and he seems to relax, turning back to laugh at Jasper’s attempt at spear-throwing.
She turns back to Wells just as he glances down at her with a faint smile.
“I’m always with you, Clarke. I got myself put on the damn dropship with you,” he reminds her. Then the teasing light in his eyes becomes wry. “But I don’t think you’re having any trouble becoming these people.”
He tugs on one of the many little braids that have made their way into her hair. Bellamy’s done most of them, usually when they sit next to each other by the cook fires each night, and he teaches her his language. Octavia even added some; one night, a horn sounded and everyone was crowded into the nearest buildings. While the acid fog slithered through the air, Clarke sat between the brother and sister, Lincoln across from them, as they quizzed her on Trigedasleng words and braided her hair.
But usually it’s Bellamy’s hands gentling untangling the snarls that inevitably form in her wavy hair, and his fingers that brush against her scalp as he weaves, leaving goosebumps behind.
Clarke brushes Wells’s hand away, and tells herself there’s no reason to blush. “It’s practical,” she defends.
“Right,” Wells says dryly. “Practical. Listen, I’m going to go train.”
“Tell Harper to see me for her blisters,” Clarke says, and smirks when Wells ducks his head, red creeping up his neck.
“If I see her,” he mutters, and heads away.
That night is colder than any they’ve felt before on earth. It’s a welcome change from the unfamiliar heat they’ve been living in since they arrived, but as it gets darker the fire isn’t quite enough to keep Clarke from shivering.
The third time she scoots closer to the flames, Bellamy makes an exasperated noise and hauls her to her feet. Since that first day, when he held her arm and stood by her side, he seems to touch her at every opportunity. She doesn’t mind, because it means he’s close, and she can try to make him smile again.
She’s getting pretty good at it; he seems to smile instinctually when he sees her now, and she’s found out what his laughter sounds like.
“Come on,” he says, and Clarke blinks.
“What?”
“You Sky People are pathetic,” he says, and prods her until she starts walking. He guides her to a little house on the edge of the village; when Clarke hesitates, glancing between him and the door, his face softens until he looks nearly boyish.
“It’s mine. I––” Bellamy clears his throat. “I just––you’re cold,” he mutters.
Clarke searches his face, then nods, and Bellamy holds open the door while she ducks inside. It’s small, just a sleeping area and a fire pit and a little stack of books (books!) on top of a chest in the corner, but she already feels warmer in the contained space.
“Sit,” Bellamy tells her, and after a helpless moment Clarke ends up just plopping down on top of the pile of furs she knows must be his bed. Bellamy busies himself with stirring up the embers in his fire pit until a little fire is crackling, and then he goes and starts digging through the chest.
“What are you doing?” she asks; he responds by dumping a thick fur on top of her.
Clarke’s instantly warm, and she clutches the fur closer out of reflex as she stares at him.
“What…is this?”
He looks uncomfortable, almost a little anxious, and Clarke’s struck by how much more he lets her see now. It’s not just that his face is clean of warpaint, and the pattern of freckles on his skin remind her of something that feels like home. The man in front of her is a far cry from the stoic warrior she met her first day on earth.
“Panther,” he says. “It’ll keep you warm.”
“But it’s yours,” Clarke says, and he shakes his head.
“Now it’s yours.”
“But––”
He interrupts her. “Do you accept the gift or not?”
When she ducks her head, the fur is so soft against her cheek. She breathes in, and even though it’s been in a chest, it smells faintly of Bellamy.
“Yes,” she whispers, drawing it around her, and he grins. He’s smiled at her before, but this one utterly transforms his face, and Clarke is a little bit in awe at how beautiful the earthborn boy looks.
He drops onto the furs next to her, the heat radiating from his body, and Clarke can’t help but lean into him as he starts talking.
He speaks only in Trigedasleng, but she understands enough now to realize he’s speaking of the stars, the constellations they form, the stories that go with them. His deft hands unwind all of her little braids, and Clarke drifts asleep as he murmurs stories about a princess from the stars with hair like sunlight.
He’s gone in the morning, but her hair is bound up in a new set of intricate braids that do an even better job of keeping it out of her face. A dangerous looking piece of carved bone is next to her on the bed, and Clarke puzzles over it before she realizes it’s a pin, to hold the panther fur in place like a cloak.
Bundled up and warm in the predawn chill, Clarke steps out of Bellamy’s little hut to come face to face with his sister.
Octavia’s eyes widen as she takes her in from head to toe, lingering at the inky fur on her shoulders.
“Good morning,” Clarke says, and when Octavia’s eyes dart back up to hers, they’re full of mischief.
“Good morning, sis,” she says.
Clarke’s not fluent in Trigedasleng yet, not by any means, but that particular word doesn’t really require translation.
“What?”
Octavia just smirks and tucks a little wisp of hair back into Clarke’s braid.
“Breakfast is going to get cold.”
Clarke grabs her arm as she starts to turn away. “No, what did you mean by that?”
Octavia frowns, then lets out an exasperated sound. “He didn’t explain?”
Her heart beating too fast, Clarke shakes her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Idiot,” Octavia mumbles under her breath. “Bellamy, not you,” she explains when she sees Clarke’s expression.
Octavia winds her arm through Clarke’s and starts leading her to the cook fires. “He gave you a gift, and you accepted it.”
“Yes,” Clarke says hesitantly.
Octavia smiles a little, runs her hand down the fur. “This was our mother’s. It’s rare to take a panther without ruining the pelt, especially one as flawless as this. It was what first caught our father’s attention about her.”
“Oh. Do you want it back?”
“No,” Octavia replies, suddenly fierce. “It’s yours until you don’t want it anymore.”
“Okay. Why wouldn’t I want it anymore?”
Octavia shrugs, but Clarke can feel the tension in the arm tucked through hers. “If you decide you don’t want my brother anymore.”
Clarke stops in her tracks.
“What?”
She doesn’t see Bellamy for most of the day, only little glimpses of him weaving in between the delinquents as they train. That doesn’t stop her from worrying her lip, and more than once her patients eye her as she huffs angrily, no doubt wondering what the strange Sky girl is on about now.
“I need to talk to you,” is the first thing out of her mouth when she find him at dinner time. The faint smile that had crossed his face at the sight of her vanishes, and a muscle in his jaw jumps as he rises to his feet to follow her.
Clarke manages to lead them back to his hut, but this time she doesn’t bother waiting for him to open the door for her. When he follows her inside, she crosses her arms and glares.
He glares back.
“Why didn’t you tell me what accepting your gift meant?” Clarke demands.
That little muscle in his jaw moves again as he turns to scowl at the wall.
“What does it matter? Just give it back.”
“No!” she says, surprised. “Or…do you want me to give it back?”
He whips his head toward her. “You…still want it?”
“I…” Clarke licks her lips. “It’s nice,” she says lamely. “I like it.”
His eyes go soft. “Good,” he says quietly.
“I just––I just didn’t know what it meant. Accepting it,” she says, and then she’s shocked to realize Bellamy’s flushing.
“It’s a promise,” he says.
Clarke’s stomach feels all fluttery, and she can’t tell if it’s nerves or fear or excitement. “I’ve only been here eleven days,” she says. “I don’t even really know you.”
All she knows is that he’s a warrior, and he loves his sister more than anything, and is fiercely loyal to his heda and to his village, and that he loves the old mythologies, and that he gives piggyback rides to the smaller children even when he must be exhausted from a day of training her people, and that every night since she’s arrived on this strange planet, he’s been by her side at the fires, telling her stories and how to speak in his tongue, braiding her hair so it doesn’t bother her in this strange world of wind and sun and trees.
All she knows of life on earth is that it’s hard, and it’s beautiful, and Bellamy of the Woods Clan has been part of it almost since she set foot on the ground, and she has no clue what life on earth would look like without him.
Well. She guesses she knows him a little.
But he shakes his head at her, a grin crossing his lips. “I don’t know you either, Clarke of the Sky People. It’s not a promise of betrothal. It’s a promise of courtship. That we’ll learn about each other, until you either give back my gift or offer me one of your own.”
“What happens if I give you a gift in return?”
His eyes are as dark as the night as he steps closer to her. “Then I’ll know you’ve chosen me.”
“Like…” She clears her throat. “Like Lincoln is Octavia’s chosen?”
He nods. “Yes. Like that.”
“Okay.”
Bellamy blinks. “Okay?”
“It sounds...nice,” she says, smiling hesitantly. “What exactly do we do?”
He shrugs. “We eat with each other, talk with each other. Go on walks, maybe? I’ve never done this before, only seen others.”
Clarke laughs. “So, everything we’ve already been doing.”
Bellamy’s gaze drops down to her mouth, and even as she realizes his intent, he says, “Well, not everything.”
He moves slowly, eyes darting to hers repeatedly as he draws closer, until Clarke huffs and closes the distance. Her heart is racing, but his lips taste as sweet as his smile.