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(The Dropship Camp - Half an Hour After Clarke Left)
The anxiety that gripped the dropship camp felt like a chokehold. The shadows danced around the flickering campfire, the light highlighting the tension on the 100's faces.
Under the darkness of the night, a new kind of terror began to stir.
Charlotte moved like a ghost. Driven by the horrifying memory of her parents' execution and the belief that she must eliminate her demons: AKA the son of Jaha.
Wells lay against the dropship hull, every single breath he took felt painful, the effects of the makeshift bandage applied in the woods barely containing the blood loss. The wound was getting hotter, and the infection was spreading rapidly.
Suddenly, a shadow appeared behind him.
Charlotte raised the jagged piece of scrap metal, a crude, makeshift weapon. The sudden glint of the blade against the dim firelight was the only warning Wells received.
Just before the slash could land, he rolled violently to the side, dodging the blow. The metal scraped the dropship wall with a painful shriek. Wells yelled for help.
Monty was closest. He sprinted, throwing himself onto the struggling figures, tackling the much smaller Charlotte and pinning her on the cold ground.
"What the fuck was that??"
"ARE THE GROUNDER HERE???"
"Bro, shut up."
The whole camp woke up due to the commotion.
Bellamy, alerted by the fuss, barreled out from the makeshift perimeter, his pistol already in his hand. He surveyed the chaos: Wells bleeding again, Monty holding down a girl, and the wide-eyed fear of the surrounding faces. He didn't see an attempted murder; he saw a threat to his rapidly disintegrating control.
"Who told her to do this?!" Bellamy roared, pushing Monty away from Charlotte. He needed order. He needed a villain. His eyes swept the crowd and landed on the figure universally despised.
"It was Murphy!" Bellamy screamed, projecting the lie into the mass of terrified faces. "He planned this! He filled her head with lies and told her to finish Wells off! He is a murderer!"
The lie spread like wildfire. Murphy was already the center of the camp's frustration. The exhaustion, the fear, it all found an instant, easy release.
"I SAY WE FLOAT HIM!" The cry started as a single voice, quickly multiplying into a chorus of rage. "Execute the murderer!"
Bellamy recoiled slightly. He hadn't expected the mob to move so fast. The crowd, driven by a savage need for finality, pushed a shocked Bellamy aside, dragging Murphy, who was screaming and struggling, toward the high winch cable of the dropship. Bellamy shouted warnings, tried to push people back, but the tide of bloodlust was too strong.
They slipped the rough noose around Murphy's neck. He clawed desperately at the rope, his eyes bulging in pure, paralyzing terror.
Just as the mob pulled tight, a desperate voice sliced through the chaos.
"STOP! He didn't do it!"
It was Charlotte, her face streaming with tears, horrified not by the murder she tried to commit, but by the mob's brutal injustice. "He never did anything to me! I wanted to kill the Chancellor's son! I tried to kill Wells! It was me, just me!"
The confession stunned the mob into silence, their hands frozen on the rope.
Amidst the chaos, Clarke returned. She materialized from the dark tree line, soaked with rain and mud, a bundle of antiseptic seaweed clutched in one hand. She watched the dropship with a shocked face, the winch, the dangling boy, and the faces of the executioners.
Clarke tore into the silent crowd. She reached for the rope, pulled her hunting knife, and cut Murphy free.
He dropped, hacking and gasping, tearing the rope from his throat.
The mob was spent, their murderous energy suddenly replaced by shame.
Murphy scrambled to his feet, eyes wide and feral, staring at the faces that had sentenced him.
"FUCK YOU ALL!" he screamed, his voice ripped with hatred and betrayal. He turned and vanished instantly into the darkness of the forest.
The show was over. The camp dissolved into shamefaced silence. Clarke ignored Bellamy and the crowd. She had more important things to do.
Soon enough, she reached Wells. And hugged him.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, dodged just in time. But the wound opened again!" His voice was filled with exhaustion.
Pulled back.
"Wait for me, I will apply the seaweed on Jasper and will be back."
Wells smiled and closed his eyes.
***************
20 minutes later, she was back, with Wells
An old bond began to renew.
The priority was Wells. Clarke prepared the fresh seaweed antibiotic, crushing the leaves into a potent paste and mixing it with hot water. She worked slowly, making sure she did not mess it up, and cleaning the new bleeding. The anti-microbial strength of the seaweed was astonishing. The heat radiating from his leg subsided rapidly, and the pus discharge stopped.
Wells was finally stable. The only concern now was his fever.
Clarke stayed by his side, tending to him, the relief in her chest a warm, steady counterpoint to the cold anger she felt toward her mother. They talked for hours, the dropship serving as their temporary bubble of peace.
They did not speak of the Ark's collapse or their fathers. They spoke of the past: their first attempts at drawing, the time they managed to prank their friends into believing that there was a zoo on the arc. They laughed, releasing all the tensions they had built up during all these years, and a sound they hadn't shared in years.
"Remember that awful poetry competition?" Wells wheezed.
"The one where you wrote about the curvature of the solar panels, and I recited something about the dignity of hydroponics?"
"They gave us zero points, but your father still made us both attend the awards ceremony," Clarke laughed softly, leaning in close to check his bandage.
The years of resentment melted away, replaced by the deep-seated bond of genuine friendship and something else. Wells had sacrificed everything for her. She had almost lost him twice. She realized that the Wells she had always hated had been a protective shield, a wall against a much harsher truth.
Outside the dropship, Finn approached the door looking for Clarke, needing to apologize, to explain the fear that had driven him to shoot Wells.
But when he saw her, he paused. He saw Clarke's face, softened and bright, leaning in close to Wells, who was glowing with happiness and relief.
Finn saw the laughter, the shared history, the clear line of something deeper than friendship drawn between them. It was a bond that his own recklessness, his own panic, could never penetrate. The bitter taste of jealousy and loss filled his mouth. He was an outsider now, replaced by the man he had almost murdered. Without a word, Finn turned and left, his shoulders slumped, leaving them to their reunion.
*******
The morning brought a terrifying discovery: Charlotte was gone.
Bellamy, knowing the girl was a ticking time bomb, asked for volunteers for a search party.
Clarke, needing to escape the suffocating anxiety of the camp, volunteered. Finn, desperate to regain her trust, offered his tracking skills.
"I don't need company," Clarke said, her eyes devoid of warmth.
"You need me, Clarke," Finn insisted, his voice low and urgent. "No one else here can track. You need to find her before the sun sets, or Bellamy's people will."
Clarke knew he was right. His skills were unmatched in the group. "Fine," she conceded, the word sharp. "But you follow my lead. We find her, we bring her back."
Much to Finn's annoyance, they left after Clarke made sure Wells was stable.
They tracked Charlotte's light trail for hours. The search was fruitless; the forest had swallowed the frightened girl whole.
Just as they conceded defeat and began making their way back, Finn spotted an irregularity: a faint geometric line cutting through the moss and vines. They followed it to a section of rusted metal, almost entirely concealed by a hatch of a hidden bunker.
Suddenly, the sky turned dark. The air thickened, and rain began to pour down hard.
"We can't get back to the camp in this," Finn shouted over the deluge. "We'll break an ankle or lose the trail entirely."
Clarke nodded, shivering violently. "We stay here."
They worked together to open the heavy hatch and rushed down into the dusty safety of the old bunker.
The forced intimacy of the small space, the sound of the rain roaring above, immediately stripped away their pretense. Finn, seeing her close, her face softened by the lamplight.
He knew this was his chance.
"I'm sorry about Wells, Clarke. I was scared. I know I screwed up. But... I-I think I love you. I need you. I need to be with you, not just to lead, but to survive."
Clarke heard the sincerity, but the words felt hollow. The memory of Wells's pained confession and the image of Wells's sacrificial love, coupled with Finn's reckless violence, solidified her choice.
She looked at him with firm eyes. "No, Finn, I can't. I need time to think. I need to figure out what is real and what isn't."
She moved away from him, retreating to a far corner of the bunker, leaving Finn alone with the echoing sound of the rain and the bitter silence of her rejection.
(Trikru Village - Two Days Later)
The air in Anya's tent was cold and quiet. There was a map on the table. Anya and Mike stood studying the route to the 100.
Outside, two figures arrived. Indra and Lincoln moved into the tent, their movements stiff from two days of sleepless tracking and observation.
They saluted the Chief and the Blad-de-Trikru.
"Report," Anya commanded, her voice cutting through the silence.
"They are not warriors, Chief," Indra said, direct and disdainful. "They are a disorganized mob. Loud, clumsy. Their perimeter is scrap, easily bypassed. They are weak, soft children. I don't think they will be a threat."
Lincoln, his face grim, added the crucial detail. "They have guns; we were able to spot one. We saw one shoot another in the leg during a panic. They are armed and utterly unpredictable."
Listening to the full report, Mike relaxed.
'I was way too pragmatic, maybe we can solve this without any bloodshed'
Anya walked slowly around the tent, thinking. "They possess guns, but lack the will and the skill to use them. They are dangerous only to themselves."
Mike observed, resting his hand on the map. "The guns must go. If they panic, those guns will kill our people. We must disarm them immediately."
"Total confrontation is costly," Anya countered. "The goal is removal of the threat, not mass slaughter."
"Then we try to get them to surrender," Mike said. "We don't attack the camp. We offer them a peaceful end to this."
"But we still need to take the guns away; those things can cause a lot of deaths," Anya told them.
"Leave that to me," Mike added, a smile forming on his face.
Anya smiled and nodded in approval. "I will leave the situation in your hands."
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