A/N: This is just a little fic I've been writing to pass the time until the new season begins. It's my way of coping!

She'd been walking for eight days and sleeping on the cold ground for eight nights before she ran into another human being. She drank from the river she followed, foraged for food along the ground, slept poorly through the night because it was too dangerous to light a fire and too dangerous to fall into a deep sleep of unawareness. She was bone weary with exhaustion, filthy, and yet she never once thought of turning back.

A couple times she'd heard some of the grounders hunting in the distance. She would double back and give them a wide berth. She didn't want to see another human face. She didn't even want to see her own when she knelt down by the river.

But it was inevitable that she would come across someone. The ninth day had been nothing but rain all morning. She was forced to stay beneath the brush where she had slept the night before to keep the brunt of it off of her. She liked the rain, but the damp clothes and cold would likely end up making her sick. Sick meant weak. Weak was something Clarke could never afford to be again. Weak was the girl who sketched dreams in charcoal on the floor of her cell on the Ark. Weak was the girl who would party hard after curfew on the Ark and sometimes sneak into another bed. Weak was the girl who believed her mother infallible. Weak was the girl who found peace and safety in her father's arms.

Clarke wasn't weak anymore. Not when she stepped off the drop ship to see the blackened earth and the charred remains of those who had attacked them. Not when she squeezed the trigger to shoot the man who had bombed TonDC. Not when she shot President Wallace in the chest to prove a point. Not when she pulled that lever and murdered hundreds of men, women, and children.

No. She wasn't weak. She wasn't anything anymore. She was a faceless girl with no name wandering the woods.

The rain stopped by early afternoon and she ventured out again. She would have to start looking for a more permanent place to set up camp, somewhere dry and sheltered. She wasn't going to walk forever.

It might have been the rain that threw her off, the forest sounded different after a heavy rain. Creaking and groaning all around from the weight of the water. Maybe she was just too tired. Either way, she didn't pay close enough attention to her surroundings and that's why the arrow that whizzed past her nose and embedded itself in the tree next to her was a shock.

Clarke poised to run, but a girl stepped out from behind a thicket with a bow in her hands, another arrow already notched and leveled straight at her head.

She wasn't much older than Clarke, maybe twenty two. She had long black hair that hung down her back in a single braid. She wasn't wearing grounder armor or warrior paint, but she looked strong and very sure of herself. There was little doubt that arrow wouldn't find its target if Clarke played this wrong.

She asked her something harshly in Trigedasleng, but Clarke didn't understand it.

"I'm sorry, I don't-"

"Skaikru!" she exclaimed angrily and readjusted her aim with more purpose this time.

"I mean you no harm! I'm unarmed and alone!" Clarke said hurriedly, pulling her jacket open to show her lack of weapons and held her hands up in surrender.

She did, however, have a very large knife in her boot and a gun pressed against her back. She just didn't think she'd be faster than the arrow right now.

"Mak! Hod op!"

Clarke's gaze shifted to see a young girl girl run toward them. She must have been hiding behind one of the trees. This one wasn't more than fourteen - frail looking and pale, not the picture of health that the older girl with the deadly weapon pointed at her was.

The older one barked something in Trigedasleng. Clarke was pretty sure she caught the words "dangerous" and "kill" which didn't exactly make this situation any better.

The young girl replied quickly with a shake of her head and stepped up to Clarke carefully. She was warned off, but ignored it. Clarke met her eyes squarely, not a threat, just strength.

"It's you, isn't it? The leader of the Skaikru?"

Clarke didn't know which answer would get her killed or let her live. Fortunately, she didn't have to reply.

"Wanheda."

Hundreds of dead bodies. Seemingly burned. Skin sloughed off. Eyes open and unseeing. The stench of rot in the air. A mountain turned into a hollow mass grave.

Clarke forced the images back, swallowing them down with such bitterness she didn't think was possible, and focused again on the young girl. Her skin was sallow, her hair stringy and flaxen, her face too sharp and angular for someone so young. All the Grounders had the harsh lines of a body that had known days without nourishment, but she looked as though she'd gone through much more. There were angry red scars lashed across her wrists. The mark of a longtime captive.

The realization left her cold.

"You were one of the prisoners."

"I saw you..." she replied tentatively, "that night when we were released. You were standing in front of the Great Door with the Army behind you."

'Lexa, please, don't do this.'

Clarke shook her head to rid the sound from her ears, but the image wouldn't fade, and her chest seized with pain.

"News of what you did after we escaped has spread quickly. You're a legend. Destroyer of the Mountain. Keeper of the Sky. Wanheda."

"Does that mean I get to leave without an arrow in my chest?"

She waved behind her for Mak to lower the bow, speaking rapidly in their foreign tongue. After a few rounds, the older girl looked at Clarke in surprise.

"Nou get yu daun, Mak," the younger girl said softly.

Clarke recognized that. Do not worry, she had said.

Mak looked at her again and after lingering a long moment, she made her decision to accept Clarke, and gave a firm nod. With that, she turned around and began to walk away.

"Come," she said. "We are hunting for our village's meal tonight. You will join us."

"I appreciate the invitation, but I'm just going to-"

"You must come with us. My family will want to thank you for what you did. It will be a great honor for our house."

Clarke's face hardened along with her voice. "I'm not what you think I am."

She was unfazed. "You killed the Maunon. It is because of you that I stand here free. I know who you are. Now, come."

Clarke really didn't want to go, but she couldn't deny the deep rumbling of her stomach that ached for more than just a handful of nuts and berries. So she followed.

"My name is Litta."

"Clarke."

"Apologies for the misunderstanding before. My sister and I were hunting when we ran into you. There have been some thieves nearby these past few days, stealing hunters prizes for themselves, killing the hunters. We thought you might be one of them."

"I understand."

They walked alongside each other in silence. Clarke's boots stomped across the forest floor heavily while Litta seemed to glide across. Sticks and leaves were crushed beneath Clarke's feet, but Litta didn't even seem to touch them. She never broke a twig. She walked swiftly and with precision. Clarke was a clumsy oaf next to her.

The word kept echoing in her head. It wouldn't leave her alone.

"What you called me..." she swallowed hard, "what you called me before. What did that mean? What does...Wan-"

Mak reappeared in a flash. "Kamp raun hir. Dei trilipa-de," she said quietly before darting off again into the brush with her weapon held tight.

Litta smiled and turned to Clarke. "We should have a good meal tonight. She says there's a deer not too far off." She waved in the direction Mak had disappeared. "My sister does not speak gonasleng so you'll have to-"

"Why do you?" Clarke interrupted curiously. She was grateful for the interruption. Somehow, she didn't think she wanted to know the answer after all. "You're too young to be-"

Litta bristled. "Gonas, warriors, start as soon as they are able. We all make our choices. Mak is one of our traders. She journeys to far away places in search of necessary supplies and barters with the other clans. My father is gona as are my brothers and as am I. I have studied the Warriors language from birth. I was on a scouting mission with three others when we were captured by the Mountain Men. They managed to trap us after the acid fog."

"How long were you in there?"

"Six moons."

Clarke didn't understand at first, but then she recalled her Earth lessons and remembered that a full side of the moon was only visible once a month. In space, you don't really think of seeing things in two-dimensions when you live in 360.

Six moons meant six months. Six months in those cages, in that dungeon at the pit of the mountain, surrounded by people being dragged out, drained, and murdered every day. Every day for six months – half a year. How was this girl standing here right now?

"I was too small to be a good donor," Litta went on to explain with the same grim expression. "They said they were going to wait until I was older to sacrifice me. My comrades did not meet the same fate."

"I'm sorry."

There was a loud thwack that came from the right of them, followed by an animal squealing and screeching for its life. Within seconds, the cries stopped and the woods were silent once more.

Litta shrugged. "All that came to pass, was meant to."

Clarke wished she believed that.

"And it seems were meant to feast well tonight," the young girl added with a smile.

Litta had a pole strapped to her back and she pulled it free just as Mak appeared again with blood stained hands. She gestured for them to follow. Litta didn't hesitate and started jogging after her sister. Clarke caught up with them both and watched as they bound the dead deer's feet and strung it up on the pole. They carried it between them, the bar resting on their shoulder, and made their way back to camp. Clarke thought about offering to take Litta's place in carrying the animal, it looked like she might buckle under the weight of it any moment, but she knew enough about the Trigedakru way to know that such an offer would be considered a grave insult. So she just continued to walk alongside the sisters silently. They walked for about a half an hour before a small village came into view. It looked just like the last one she'd been to.

Did they really all look the same or was she being haunted by her past?

Dead bodies littered the ground. Finn stared at her with wet brown eyes, pleading.

'I did it to save you.'

Wanheda.

"There will be many who wish to meet you."

Clarke wished she could say the same.