Hello lovelies! I'm back! But with an entirely different fic, whoops! I hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own The 100, nor any of its characters

Chapter One

One Step Behind the Tide

In her nightmares, she was always running. At first, it was through the Ark. The sterilized walls passed in a white blur. Faces had no time to register. Clarke had no time to let them. Her conscious had no idea what she was running to – or from, her instincts guided her instead. The muscles in her legs burned like she'd been running for hours, and just when she felt like collapsing, she reached her destination.

Her father's face appeared before her, grim and serious. Nothing like she ever remembered it. It was then that she realized she was in the float bay. She was about to watch her father die. But this time she could do something about it. The doors were still open, so she jumped forward, throwing her arms around her father only to find he wasn't there. There was nothing. The bay was empty, except for the sound of the doors pressing closed behind her.

Usually her dream ended the her being sucked into the blackness. She would wake with a jolt just before she died, but this time it was different. Instead of floating away, she fell. Down, down, down, until she collided violently with the earth. She lay there for what felt like days, and when she opened her eyes all she could see was destruction for miles.

The trees had been flattened. They burned orange and red as fire consumed the earth. Clarke scrambled backward, away from the heat, only to realize she wasn't the perpetrator of this devastation.

A ship lay burning before her. The exodus ship. The ship her mother was on. Clarke wanted to scream, and she would have, if her eyes hadn't caught movement in one of the windows. It was her mother, banging on the impenetrable glass, fire outlining her bloodied face.

"Clarke," she screamed, her voice somehow piercing the sounds of the wreckage. "Clarke!" she screamed again, only this time it wasn't Abby's voice. It was Finn's. "Clarke, wake up!"

The scene exploded, and Clarke sat up with a scream. Her eyes darted around as she tried desperately to get her bearings. Finn's hands were on her shoulders, his face too close for comfort. Clarke could see Raven behind him, and behind her was Bellamy. She locked eyes with him just in time to see some strange emotion – relief? – pass over his face.

"What are you doing?" Clarke snapped breathlessly. She shrugged out of Finn's grasp and scooted backward until she was out of his reach.

"We heard you screaming, Princess," Bellamy said when neither Finn nor Raven replied to Clarke's question.

Clarke swallowed. As far as she knew, she'd never screamed out in one of her nightmares. Then again, that was before she'd become an orphan.

Orphan.

The thought made her want to throw up.

It'd been three days since she and Bellamy had witnessed the exodus ship go down. Communication with the Ark was still down, the threat of the grounders still ever present. As much as Clarke wanted to break down and give up, as much as she wanted to run out into the woods and berate herself for never saying what she needed to say to her mother, for never forgiving her, for not telling her that she loved her, she couldn't. The hundred needed leading and while she trusted Bellamy with her life, he couldn't lead them alone.

So, instead she held it all in. She focused on keeping Finn's wound clean. She focused on finding food. She focused on her weaponry training. She focused on everything but the growing darkness within her, and she was fine with that. As long as that didn't result in goddamn nightmares.

"I'm fine," Clarke snapped, swinging her legs off her makeshift bed. She stood and she stood tall. She may have been falling apart but there was no way in hell she was going to show it. "I'm going to go check the coms."

Finn tried to grab her arm as she pushed past him, but she ignored it. There was once a time when his touch sent shivers across her skin, when it made her feel like she could do anything. Now, it just felt wrong. It was just a reminder of how she'd been lied to, manipulated. There wasn't a single part of her that wanted to pick up where they'd left off. He'd accept it eventually. Until then, she'd tear herself from his grasp and glare at him until he left her alone. Which was exactly what she did.

The hurt was evident in his eyes, but Clarke held her ground. She may not have had much experience with this kind of thing, but that sure as hell didn't mean she was going to cave.

From the corner of her eye, she could see Bellamy roll his eyes. It was exactly the sentiment she wished to express. She was done with this. She hadn't asked Finn to come here. She hadn't asked for his support or his protection. Hell, she didn't even trust him. Not anymore. All of this, whatever it was, was a waste of time. The crippling fear she'd felt in her nightmare was fading only to be replaced by heavy annoyance.

Raven gritted her teeth and grabbed Finn by the elbow. "You heard her," she said, her eyes carefully unreadable. "She's fine."

"Clarke," he started, only to stop when she interrupted him.

"Go back to bed, Finn," she said, her voice tired. "I swear, I'm okay. It was a dream."

When he still wouldn't move, Clarke pressed her lips together and dodged out of the tent. The cold air hit her like a wall, but she kept moving. Her breath appeared before her in opaque clouds, fast and unsteady.

A hand closed around her wrist, pulling her to a stop. Clarke balled her fist and spun, preparing herself to do the one thing that she'd wanted to do since she found out about Raven: take her control back. But by the time she realized the person who had grabbed her was not the person who had thrown her into this tailspin, it was too late.

Her fist collided with Bellamy's face with impressive force. He let go of her and stumbled backward, his hand coming up to what was certainly going to be a bruise. She gritted her teeth against the pain swelling up in her knuckles. It was the first punch she'd ever thrown, and it would be the last if she could help it. Her thumb felt like it had just been torn out of its socket. Damn, it hurt. And here she was thinking that punches were only supposed to hurt the receiver.

"What the hell, Clarke?" Bellamy growled.

She closed her eyes and let a long breath out through her nose. "That wasn't meant for you." When she opened her eyes again, Bellamy didn't look nearly as angry as she thought he would. "Sorry."

A tiny smirk flashed over his face for a fraction of a second. "Hey, you never need to apologize for trying to punch the spacewalker."

Behind Bellamy, Clarke could see Finn walking back to his tent with Raven. She gritted her teeth at the way he was looking at Bellamy – like he was a threat. As if Finn had a right to feel threatened at all.

"I just want to shoot something," Clarke said, returning her gaze to the one person in this camp that she felt she could trust.

"I thought you were checking the coms."

"They're still down. If they were up, we'd have heard their calls by now. I said it because I needed air. And all of you out of my tent."

Bellamy smiled and looked toward the weapon reserve. "If you want to shoot, you can shoot. But I think I should teach you how to throw a punch first." He nodded down to the way she was still holding her throbbing hand against her body. "Just in case."

Clarke nodded. Her hand may hurt like a bitch, but it was important that she know how to defend herself if she ever lost hold on her gun or her knife. She had plenty of pent up aggression to ignore the pain. For now, at least.

Miller sat guarding the weapon reserve. He looked at Clarke and Bellamy oddly, but didn't stop them from retrieving two rifles.

"Is there a threat?" he asked, narrowing his eyes. "I haven't heard anything."

"We're just going to walk the perimeter," Bellamy told him.

"Everything's fine," Clarke added quickly. 'Stay here."

Miller, the good soldier that he was, didn't ask questions. Maybe that was why Bellamy trusted him so much. He wasn't a leader, he was a follower. He wouldn't challenge an order, and he certainly wouldn't disobey those above him.

Clarke walked side by side with Bellamy toward the gate. Two guards sat on either side of it, keeping anyone from leaving rather than entering. She knew they would let them through, especially if Bellamy was the one giving the order, but their presence still made her stop.

"Wait –" she said, grabbing for Bellamy's sleeve. "Maybe we should stay in here."

He raised his eyebrows at her. "Since when are you afraid of the woods?"

"Since the grounders declared war on us, Bellamy. You should be afraid, too."

"We have these," he reminded her, holding up his rifle. "Besides, if they were going to kill us, they would have already."

"Maybe they're waiting for a chance," Clarke challenged. "Why don't we just use the targets?" She motioned across camp to the pieces of red parachute they'd hung up for training the rest of the hundred.

He looked at her levelly. "You aren't afraid of the grounders. You're afraid that if you go out there you won't want to come back."

"If you think I'd leave you here to lead alone you're delusional, Bellamy."

He shook his head and urged her forward. "You didn't let me run, and I'm not going to let you. Come on."

He walked ahead of her and she stared after him. Was she really that obvious? She'd barely even allowed herself to think about it, but he was right. The urge to shoot, the urge to punch, the urge to run. It was all coming at her at once. She had everyone counting on her. She had a complicated relationship with a boy who had knowingly lied to her. She had a dissenting insurgent for a partner. She had a group of vengeful grounders vowing revenge. She had witnessed the deaths of both her parents. She had so much to deal with, would it be so bad if she could run away from it all? At least, for a little while?

It was so selfish she dared not think about it again. She was a leader. She would survive this. But damn, she really needed to shoot a gun.

Bellamy lead the way through the gate and away from camp. They walked far enough that the camp wouldn't hear gunshots, but not so far that if something went wrong they couldn't turn back.

The woods seemed so peaceful at night. If she didn't know any better, Clarke wouldn't have ever thought there was anything sinister about this place.

"Ready to learn how to punch, Princess?" Bellamy asked, throwing his rifle down onto the ground.

Clarke dropped hers as well. "By the looks of that bruise, I already know," she said with a smirk.

"You hit hard, I'll give you that. But if you don't want to break your thumb next time, you should probably learn how to do it right."

Bellamy widened his stance and motioned for her to come at him. Clarke smiled and dodged forward. Her fist still vaguely ached, but she didn't care. This was going to be fun.

Before she could land a hit, Bellamy grabbed her wrist, stilling her in her pursuit. He stared at her first with an amused expression. "In all your time in lock up, you really never learned the one rule of throwing punches?"

"Looks pretty effective to me," Clarke snapped.

"Never," he said, pulling her thumb from underneath her fingers and placing it over them instead, "hold your thumb. That's why it hurt so damn bad."

Clarke swallowed. "Right."

She pulled her fist back, readying herself to try again.

"Ah," he said, holding his hands up in surrender. "I thought you said you wanted to shoot something."

"More like someone," she muttered under her breath, stepping away.

The wind whistled lowly as Clarke walked back to retrieve her gun from the ground. She pulled it up to her shoulder quickly and fired off one, two, three, four, five rounds into the darkness. After that, she just kept shooting. Awareness that she was wasting ammo washed over her, but she didn't let it drag her down. She fired until there was nothing left. She fired until the numbness in her mind crumbled, until her knees went with it.

"I'm sorry," she whispered from the floor of the forest. "I shouldn't have done that."

Twigs snapped and leaves rustled as Bellamy came to sit next to her. "We have more, Clarke. You know that."

Usually she would have wiped away the tears that were travelling soundlessly down her cheeks, but for some reason she didn't feel the need to. "You're right," she whispered.

"Usually am. But what about this time?"

"I want to run. Like you did. I don't know how long I can do this."

"Hey," he said, using his finger to pull her face toward him. "I've got your back. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. You can close yourself in your tent for a week if you want, I can take care of things for now."

"No, Bellamy – "

"You just lost your mother, Clarke," he said. "You need time to grieve. I promise I will do things your way."

Clarke shook her head. "No. We're in this together, Bellamy. We balance each other out. I need you, and I know that you need me."

"So, what do you want, then?"

Clarke turned her head so she was looking down at her fingers. "I want a lot of things. I want my parents to be alive. I want the grounders to understand that we never meant them any harm. I want Finn to stay out of my way. I want to feel strong again."

Without thinking about it, Clarke leaned over and rested her head on Bellamy's shoulder. She felt him stiffen for a moment before relaxing. He didn't put his arm around her, but it didn't matter. Just this felt like the most comfort she'd received in this place. This was all she needed.

"I can't do anything about your parents or the grounders, but I can keep Finn away from you, if you really want."

She wanted to say that she could take care of herself, but here Bellamy was, offering to take care of one of her biggest problems for her. It was one less thing she had to worry about. And for now, she was okay with it. So she nodded against his shoulder. "What about the last one?"

He released an amused breath through his nose. "You're the strongest person I know. I think you'll feel that again when you realize breaking down doesn't mean you're weak."

The silence between them stretched for miles, but it wasn't uncomfortable. It was soothing. It was just them and the forest. It was like they were the only two people on the planet.

"I dreamed about my parents," Clarke whispered, interrupting the silence with her broken confession. "I couldn't save them."

Her body shuddered and that was it. Every part of her broke. She just hoped he'd be there when it was over to help her piece herself back together.

It's a pretty chill chapter in terms of what I have planned, but there ya have it! This is the first thing I've written for the show so hopefully I can get into their voices a little better as time goes on! Don't forget to review, it keeps me motivated! xoxo Ana