Chapter Text
53 Days after the death wave hit, Clarke had made it back to the bunker in the rover with the rations and supplies she’d brought from Becca’s house. But when she got there, she’d discovered that the building above the bunker had collapsed, and there was now just a mountain of rubble there.
Huge pieces of cement covered the place where the stairway down to the fleimkepas’ chamber had been, where the bunker was.
Clarke stood next to that giant pile of rubble with her eyes closed, her hand on a huge block of cement, knowing that Lexa was down there. Alive in that bunker. Could fucking feel her down there.
She tried every channel on the rover’s radio to reach her. But never got an answer.
Tried to pull at those concrete blocks for a week straight, until her hands were a bloody mess and her whole body ached … But there was no getting around the concrete. She knew with every fiber of her being that Lexa would find a way out though. Would find a way to save her people and bring them to the ground.
But she also knew that Lexa thought she was in space … and that Lexa wouldn’t be out of that bunker for 5 years ... Lexa could survive on the surface as a nightblood, but she had no reason to come out early now …
God how Clarke regretted her lie, telling Lexa that she was going to space with her friends.
But Lexa had sounded so broken, so completely wrecked over the radio as she’d begged Clarke not to risk her life by staying on the ground that Clarke had just said the words into the mic. Had made the promise just to placate her, fully intending to call Lexa back and tell her that she’d stayed after she’d gotten her friends safely into space. If she survived. But then the radio at Becca’s lab had stopped working when the death wave hit Polis … And now, Lexa was in the bunker and she was locked out, with no way to let her know she had survived and was still there.
Clarke didn’t have enough food with her to stay camped out at the bunker for another week, let alone 5 years. And she needed to stay alive until then.
So she drove back to Becca’s compound, filled up the rover with water and food and then started to roam. To explore. To see what was left of their world.
She went to Arkadia first, to find whatever supplies she could in the burned black metal structure of the Ark. Went to where Trikru had been. Drove through miles and miles of nothing. Of vast desert.
She found her way to Shallow Valley, a valley filled with trees and flowers, with birds and living creatures and a huge lake of fresh water.
The place was entirely pristine.
Appeared to be completely untouched by the death wave.
Honestly, it was so beautiful that when she found it, Clarke started to question whether she had survived the radiation after all …
When she’d hiked into the valley, she found the remains of the community who had lived there too. Their little village of wooden houses. Their rainwater collection tanks. Their barn and garden and field of corn. And their dead bodies … so many dead bodies … covered in radiation burns. She emptied their pockets, removed all but their underclothes from their fragile bodies … thinking she might have to use the material for something someday … and then she gave them the best funeral she could. Built a pyre in the Grounder way ... Told them that their fight was over … Wished them safe passage on their travels … And thanked them for the home they had left her.
She found a little girl hiding in the woods there too. Madi. A nightblood child who was maybe 8 years old, who had survived the radiation.
And after weeks of leaving out extra food for the girl, drawings for the girl, and being lured into a bear trap and having all of her stuff stolen by the girl, they had become friends. In a year, they were family. Madi had taught Clarke how to fish, which plants were edible, how to survive in the valley. And Clarke had taught her every trick she knew from her earth skills class on the Ark, taught her how to draw, taught her better English, taught her all the age appropriate lessons she could remember from her own schooling.
But Madi was mostly just interested in Clarke’s stories about the 100. About life on the Ark. About Polis. And about Lexa. Lexa became Madi’s hero. That was no surprise of course. Lexa was Clarke’s hero too. And Clarke couldn’t keep the emotion out of her voice when she told Madi the stories about her. And the more Madi asked for the stories, the more Clarke told and retold them, the more she realized just how good and noble and brilliant Lexa actually was. And just how much Lexa had loved her.
“So … all the other clans wanted to get rid of her … and you were mad at her too?”
Clarke nodded at Madi, who was curled up next to her by the fire, looking at the drawing of Lexa in Clarke’s sketchbook.
“But then … she made Skykru the 13th clan, and she swore fealty to you …,” Madi added, thinking it through … the story she’d probably heard dozens of times in their 2 years together, “And … because she did that, you backed her, and they couldn’t get rid of her. You helped her … even though you were mad at her … ’cause she made you that promise … And … if she hadn’t let Skykru join, if she hadn’t made you that promise, you wouldn’t have helped her, and she probably would’ve been killed?”
Clarke looked at Madi for a long moment, “Yeah … I guess … But her promise … it wasn’t just politics … She was trying to make things right with me.”
Madi scrunched up her nose, “I guess. That was pretty smart though … How she tricked you like that.”
Clarke nudged Madi’s foot with the toe of her hiking boot, “She didn’t trick me.”
Madi smirked at her.
“You weren’t there …,” Clarke looked away, “She did so many things to protect me … when she didn’t have to … When it could’ve gotten her …,” Clarke’s eyes filled with tears at the memories of just how much Lexa had risked for her, time and time again … At the time, Clarke hadn’t understood Grounder politics well enough to fully grasp just how much Lexa was risking for her … But she understood now, with the perfect clarity of hindsight … Having seen the consequences of Lexa’s commitment to her play out at massive personal cost to her time and time again …
“She’s gonna find a way out of that bunker …,” Madi looked at her, “I know she will.”
Clarke nodded and wrapped an arm around Madi, pulled her in close. Rested her chin on top of Madi’s black braids.
Lexa would find a way out ... if the people in the bunker didn’t kill her first … as they’d tried to do so many times in Lexa’s years as Heda. As they’d tried to do so many times in just the time that Clarke had known her …
But even if she did make it out, who would Lexa be then?
After 5 years of living in that bunker, going through who even knew what kinds of hardships. After 5 years of thinking she was gone ...
Thinking that Clarke was in space wasn’t all that different from thinking that Clarke was dead … someplace totally inaccessible … Some place so far away that it was hardly worth thinking about at all really.
She could hardly imagine Lexa living underground … Lexa indoors … in a confined space … with no horses or tents or bustling city or coalition of thousands to watch over.
God … how Lexa must be grieving that loss …
She loved her people so fiercely. Had given them everything of herself … her life, her blood … had worked so tirelessly to create peace and stability for them … And in the end, had only been able to save such a small fraction of the now 12 clans …
Clarke would have given anything to be there to help her through that grief. To be there to remind Lexa to focus on what had been saved instead of what had been lost … as Lexa had once done for her … She hoped that someone was doing that for Lexa now. Maybe Gaia would. Maybe her mom would. Maybe Kane too.
She knew Lexa was a pro at shouldering crushing burdens. That she wouldn’t let anyone see how deeply she felt the weight of every lost life. But this setback was so massive. Starting over. Having to rebuild everything from scratch. From nothing. The way the commanders before her must’ve had to do a hundred years ago, after the first praimfaya. Everything Lexa had built had been lost. The hundred years of progress she’d built it on. All gone.
If anyone could cope with a loss like that and stay focused on what needed to be done now to give her people the best chance of survival, it would be Lexa.
But could anyone cope with a loss like that?
Over those two years, she’d called Lexa every day on the radio she’d pulled out of the rover, even though there was never any answer. Said all the comforting things she would say if she were there in the bunker by Lexa’s side. Said all the things she wished she’d said to her. Told her she thought about her so much. Told her how she dreamed about her. How she missed her so fucking badly she could hardly breath sometimes ... And she told her about Madi. About the valley. About how she couldn’t wait to show it to her. Couldn’t wait for Lexa to see this place so full of life. That Lexa would love it. That there was peace there. Happiness. What Lexa had always wanted to give her people … Told her she would have something beautiful to look after and protect. Lexa would have that again.
And every month, or whenever the sandstorms would allow, Clarke and Madi took the rover through the desert and back to the bunker. Tried to contact the people inside over the rover’s radio. Just in case. Tried futilely to pull the huge slabs of concrete away with the rover’s winch. Looked for any sign that the rubble over the bunker had shifted. Looked for any sign that the people in the bunker were working toward coming out early in their radiation suits. Any evidence at all that Lexa had found a way out without one. She was a nightblood after all, just like Clarke and Madi. She could be on the ground if she found a way out … not that Lexa would think she had any reason to be out on the surface, away from her people. As far as she knew, every living person on Earth was already with her in the bunker.
On every visit to the bunker, they checked that the stones they had laid out were still in place. Were still clearly readable. The stones that spelled out, “Lexa Come to Shallow Valley. Safe. - C. G.”. They had spelled it out three times, on each side of the giant pile of rubble so it couldn’t be missed. Or in case one of the messages got messed up when the people in the bunker finally dug or blasted their way out. Clarke put down a stone underneath the message for every time they had visited too. And soon enough, there were 24 of those stones. Two years of visits. Of waiting. Of hoping.
Clarke put her arm around Madi’s shoulders. She was getting taller now. Was 10, according to the birthday Clarke had given her, and that they celebrated with fresh raspberries during their growing season in the valley.
“It’s getting dark,” Clarke sighed, “We should go.”
Madi looked up at her, “Just a little longer?”
Clarke nodded, pulled some jerky out of the rover and handed it to her. Ate quietly beside her as they watched the sun set.
Clarke wasn’t religious, but these monthly visits had become her religion. This pile of stones her church. She tried not to think of it as a tomb. Tried to think of it as more like dirt. As the place life would spring forth from. This pile of rocks marked the place where her person was. It was the foundation they would build on. Together.
——
At the end of the evening ritual, Lexa closed the session and wished everyone a restful sleep, and then headed up to the entrance of the bunker. She pulled off her leather top, laid it over the guardrail so she was just in her tank top and pants. Hit the button on the wall to clean the decontamination chamber, opened and then sealed the big metal door and climbed up the metal steps, pushed open the hatch.
“You’ve made good progress …,” Indra greeted her in a radiation suit when Lexa had stepped out of the hatch and into the fleimkepas chamber, “The stone looks to be holding where you changed direction … We’re getting there.”
Lexa nodded, slipped on a pair of safety goggles and a headlamp, tied a bandana over her nose and mouth and picked up a metal spike, along with one of the huge repurposed war hammers by the entrance to the tunnel.
She didn’t need to do this. Others could work at chipping away the sandstone in shifts throughout the day to get the surface even faster.
But as a nightblood, she didn’t need a protective suit. Could pound and pound and pound away at the sandstone as much as she liked without having to worry about any little tear in the suit from the tools or the jagged rock walls killing her from any trace amounts of radiation in the air. And she didn’t want to risk losing a single one of her people.
She was done losing her people.
She also didn’t have to deal with the discomfort and humidity of working up a sweat in a radiation suit.
And it would still be years before the people in the bunker would be able to be on the ground without radiation suits anyway. There was no rush.
She had far more time than even she needed to dig them out herself.
And coming up to the tunnel to hammer into the stone had become her own nightly ritual.
There was something almost meditative about it. Swinging the hammer. Bashing away at the stone. She found more peace in it than she did in the evening ritual.
The people in the bunker took comfort in the evening ritual though, the nightly memorial to those who had been lost.
They needed to grieve.
To process their losses. To honor those in their clans who weren’t in that bunker … all those who hadn’t survived. Even now, a little over two years in, they still needed it.
Without that ritual, there would have been so much more squabbling, so much more pettiness and bitterness and selfishness for her to have to deal with.
Even Skykru took part in the ritual now.
They hadn’t for the first few months. Had turned up their noses at “the Grounders’” grieving traditions, with the exceptions of Markus, Octavia, and Abby … and a few of the other less prejudiced members of Skykru. But eventually, Skykru had come around. Most of them anyway. And of course, Skykru had been the clan who needed it most of all. Their dream of a life on the ground, the dream that their people had been waiting a hundred years for in space had been snatched away from them so cruelly … so soon after it had finally become a reality. The dream that Clarke had worked so hard for, had sacrificed so much of herself for … to give to her people.
The nightly rituals, the memorial, the candles, honoring the memories of those they had lost, together, all the clans shoulder to shoulder … It was important. Gave everyone a place to put their grief so it didn’t build and warp and explode out of them in the worst ways. It gave Lexa a place to put her grief too … Her grief over losing everything … over losing Clarke … losing what could have been … the life they should have had together.
Losing Clarke was a selfish thing to mourn.
She knew that.
Clarke was alive. That was all that mattered. Even if she was an unfathomable distance away, floating in space. Clarke’s heart was beating. She was breathing. She was with her friends. Safe. But Lexa allowed herself to silently mourn the distance that separated them all the same. Allowed herself to silently mourn the countless losses of her people. Of the animals and trees. Of the birds and flowers. Of the beauty of the world that had been lost.
The flame had already given her glimpses of what to expect on the ground. The nothingness, the emptiness that the earliest commanders had had to confront after the first praimfaya.
If that was what awaited them on the surface, the people in the bunker would need such rituals. Would need to find comfort in their bonds with each other when they saw it.
And the evening ritual was helping to forge those bonds, within the clans, as well as between them. Despite the many, many differences between them, everyone in the bunker shared the same loss … The loss of so many of their people, of the ground, of the forests and rivers, the loss of fresh air and sunrises and certainty.
And Lexa was determined to make sure that they got something back … Even if it was only sunrises and sunsets over a barren wasteland.
Even if it was just a view of the stars.
Whatever was awaiting them outside, whatever there was to be had, Lexa was going to make certain her people got it.
It was grueling work. The hammering away at the sandstone. But there was hope in it too. Much more hope than she got from sitting still. Dealing with all the administration and squabbling of the clans she had to manage each day.
For the most part though, things were on track in the bunker. They were getting enough to eat from the farm. Gradually learning to cooperate. To collaborate. To trust one another. They had made it through that hard first year, the transition to life underground, the terrible tasting but nutritionally excellent food, the austere surroundings and depressing concrete walls. Had made it through an attempted power grab. And they’d made it through the fear of learning about the collapse of the building overhead.
Lexa had rallied her people though. Had worked with the engineers from Skykru to estimate the size of the footprint of rubble above the fleimkepas chamber to figure out the best angle and direction to dig to get out from under it. She had told her people that the stone was not insurmountable. Had praised her people for all that they had already overcome and promised them that they would overcome this obstacle as well. Told them that weapons would become tools. That sweat and effort would become inches, then feet, and then a tunnel of stone that they would walk out of into the sunlight when they emerged to reclaim the ground once again.
And there was a clarity of purpose in the task. One goal. Clear and undebatable that everyone could get behind.
Given Skykru’s estimates of the size of the task, and how long it would take for the surface to be safe for them, Lexa honestly could have waited another year to start tunneling. Probably two years even.
But being indoors all the time had made her pretty stir crazy.
Nothing could have prepared her for the way the minutes and hours and days stretched and stretched underground.
Two years had already felt like a lifetime.
The Sky People were made for this life. Were used to living in a confined space. But Lexa was not. Neither were the rest of her people. They were made for wide open spaces. For forests and lakes, for camping and fishing and climbing trees. She didn’t know what remained of the world outside the bunker, but she desperately wanted to find out. And she was one of the very few people who could leave the bunker safely to find out.
The first time she’d tried though, she had been met with crushing disappointment.
She’d been optimistic when she pushed through the hatch that first time and was greeted with the familiar sight of the fleimkepas chamber. It looked exactly as she remembered it. So much so that a part of her couldn’t help but hope that when she pushed open the door and ascended the stairs up to the ground, she would find her bustling city of Polis, find her people miraculously spared.
It had been so hard to take the word of Skykru during those first months they’d been underground … their warnings that even a natblida should wait before opening the hatch because of how deadly and pervasive and sneaky the radiation could be … How the air itself would be poison. How anyone, even a nightblood, even someone in those in suits, would need to follow a strict decontamination protocol to avoid accidentally killing everyone inside the bunker.
But she had waited. Had learned the decontamination protocol. Memorized it. Practiced it over and over again as she waited.
And after all that waiting, when she’d opened the door to the stairway in the fleimkepas chamber that led up to the ground, all she found was a wall of stone. The stairwell now filled with thick slabs of solid concrete from the collapsed building above. Concrete that was harder to tunnel through than even the sandstone walls of the fleimkepas’ chamber.
They were trapped. In the one place that was meant to keep them safe.
Lexa had insisted on being the first one out of the hatch. Wore a radiation suit just as a precaution. Had come alone just in case there was any safety risk.
When she’d opened that door up to the stairs and seen that wall of solid concrete, she’d turned around and slumped down to the floor, put her helmeted head in her hands.
She allowed herself that one moment of weakness. That one moment to grieve yet another trial her people would have to face.
And then she thought of Clarke. What Clarke would say to comfort her. The sympathetic look Clarke would give her. The feeling of Clarke holding her. Thought of how much Clarke had sacrificed, injecting herself with nightblood. Testing a dangerous experiment on herself for just the chance that if it worked, their people would survive the radiation and be able to live on the ground.
Clarke had risked everything, her life for just that chance. And they still had a chance. The people in the bunker were alive. All of them. Grumbly and ornery, but still strong. Still filled with the will to live.
And as long as they had that, Lexa would would put her own drive to save them to good use.
Her enemy now had no weapon. Only required patience and effort and determination to defeat. And the stone that trapped her people would yield in time to the force of her will.
Lexa would look up at the night sky and see the stars again. The place where Clarke was.
Lexa had stood up, turned to face that wall of rock standing between her and that view, and ran her hands over the impossibly hard concrete. And then ran her hand over the sandstone walls of the fleimkepa’s chamber ... Chipped at it with an axe from one of the cabinets of weapons the fleimkepas kept. Watched a chunk of sandstone slide down the wall and crumble to the floor.
It would be hard work. But not impossible. The flame told her that this was a relatively soft sandstone, was far from the hardest surface to tunnel through, far softer than the concrete in the stairwell. That it would yield to a hammer and spike.
When she had told the clan leaders of her plan, they had wanted to send up teams to dig. But Lexa wouldn’t risk their lives. They would have to be so careful not to damage the radiation suits on accident. And the fewer people coming in and out of the bunker, the better. Less risk of carelessness with the decontamination protocol killing everyone in the bunker.
Lexa and the other natblidas were the ones best suited to hammer away at the stone given their invulnerability to even the slightest trace of radiation that might be slipping through even the tiniest cracks in the concrete in the stairwell. But the tunneling itself would be dangerous too. Tunnels could collapse. So Lexa hammered away at the stone by herself. She was the only person in the bunker with a team of people trained to replace her. And Aden was ready if that time came.
None of the clan leaders liked her doing the tunneling of course.
Even Skykru recognized the value of her leadership by then. How the flame had helped her figure out how to address a scare about a food shortage in the farm early on. How her presence created a sense of calm, a sense of certainty and order that helped keep everyone relatively sane and well-behaved.
The clan leaders didn’t want to risk losing her in a tunnel collapse.
But it wasn’t their call.
She had more than enough time to dig them out herself. Had replacements for her at the ready. And she wouldn’t risk anyone else’s life.
Lexa would give her people their view of the stars back.
And as she walked into the tunnel that night, a little over two years into living underground, she closed her eyes as she walked, letting her fingers trail along the sandstone walls of the tunnel she’d built, concentrating on the feeling of the tunnel’s floor angling up toward the surface under her feet. A little curve of a grin curling into the corner of her mouth.
She was getting close.
Had hopefully made it outside the footprint of the collapsed building above that would have just fallen in endlessly to erase any progress with concrete if she’d tried to tunnel straight up. She’d had to dig at a slow incline … through the sandstone bedrock under Polis.
Lexa hefted the hammer, placed the spike into the slab of rock in front of her, hit it with the hammer with just enough force, until it the spike was stuck in the stone, and then she wheeled back and gave the hammer a hard swing with all her might. Heard the satisfying crack.
And she kept going.
An hour.
Two hours.
Three.
Four.
She should probably stop.
But it was so fucking satisfying watching the rock buckle and split from her determination to give her people a life on the ground, filling the tunnel with the dust of the stone’s silent surrender, one hammer blow after the next, stepping over sheets of rock as they slid free of the wall in submission.
Lexa kept swinging. Slamming the spike into the stone with the big hammer. Dust sticking to her sweaty arms. Swung again and again until she heard a rumble and instinctively stepped back, in case the stone collapsed in to crunch her toes or her bones …
But nothing came.
And after waiting a minute, she placed the spike in the stone and swung again. Swung hard at the stubborn rock for trying to scare her back. Heard it crack and buckle, saw a spider web of cracks stretch through the stone … and then stepped back quickly as a whole sheet of stone crumbled into the tunnel. She felt a little rush of cool air hit her sweaty skin. Looked down at the rubble at her feet and in the light of her headlamp saw … a gray cobblestone … the kind of cobblestone that lined the streets of Polis.
The first sight of anything she had seen of her city in over 2 years.
Her head snapped up and she the saw a small black hole in the roof of the tunnel before her. Saw the jagged edges of more gray cobblestones poking out around the black hole.
She tapped the spike into the stone and reared back, swung the hammer with all her force. Hammered at the stone over and over again to make the hole bigger, her adrenaline surging until the floor of the tunnel was filled with cobblestones and she was panting so hard from the effort she could barely catch her breath. Bashed away at the stone until she looked up and saw a black hole in the tunnel’s ceiling big enough for her to crawl up through over the rubble.
She stepped up onto the pile of broken stone, shoved her hammer up through the hole and up onto the surface, reached up and felt the rough cobblestones under her hands. Felt a rush of cool night air on her sweaty skin as she pulled herself up. Out. Onto a Polis street.
The light of her headlamp whipped around as she sat on the ledge taking it all in … big heaving breaths rolling through her chest, her legs dangling down into the hole. The muscles in her arms aching and throbbing.
She couldn’t see infinitely far in the light of the headlamp … but what she could see looked … bad … Oh god … So bad. Rocks. Rubble. Collapsed buildings. Everywhere the light of her headlamp touched.
Polis.
Her city.
Her home.
It was destroyed.
Utterly destroyed by the force of the death wave.
She let out a heavy sigh … feeling her heart tear open at the reality, at the future that lay ahead for her people.
Living in these ruins … surrounded by the ghosts of all they had lost …
And then she looked up at the sky full of twinkling stars … where Clarke was … Looked up at the beautiful view of the night sky that she hadn’t seen in years … Looked up at it for … how long she wasn’t sure …
And then she wiped the sweat off her forehead, pulled down the bandana covering her mouth. Pushed herself up onto her feet. Dusted off her hands and turned around.
Saw more rocks.
More rubble.
More collapsed buildings.
Saw the huge mountain of broken concrete slabs over the place where the stairs down to the bunker had been. Where the building had collapsed.
God it was fucking gigantic.
But she had defeated it. With determination. With patience. One hammer blow at a time.
She started walking over to her defeated adversary to growl the worst profanities she knew to it, but before the reached it, her foot caught a rock and she tripped. The headlamp shook as she caught herself just a split second before she hit the ground.
The ground.
God.
She was on the ground.
She stood up, dusted off her hands and looked down, her headlamp illuminating the offending stone … or … stones … there were a bunch of them here … all roughly the same size … all in a line … or … a little curving trail.
Lexa cocked her head to one side, looking at the trail of stones, the way it curved … Like a C … And there were more trails of stones …
‘A pattern … man-made …’ the flame whispered in her mind.
She took a few steps back and raised her head a little, widening the circle of light from her headlamp as she looked out at so many trails of stones … there were … a lot of them … one like an X ...
Lexa stepped through the maze of stones, turned around and looked out at them again from the other side, took a step back … the light of her headlamp following the trails of rocks …
Was it … her name?
The circle of light from her headlamp passed over more letters written out in stones as her head turned … and then all the air rushed out of her lungs …
Lexa Come to Shallow Valley. Safe. - C. G.
Lexa’s jaw fell open.
What?!?
C. G.?!?
A message from Clarke written in the ruins of her city?
Lexa shook her head.
Clarke wasn’t on the ground.
Clarke was in space.
She looked out at the trails of stones again.
Read the message again.
And again.
The message, the reality sinking in a little deeper each time.
Who else could it possibly be?
Who else knew where the bunker was?
Where she was …
And the stones from the rubble … they had to have been placed there after the death wave for the letters to be undisturbed …
It had to be a a natblida … a natblida who knew where the bunker was …
Lexa crouched down by the stones, reached out and touched them to make sure that they were actually real.
Clarke.
She was … here?
She … hadn’t left ...
She had never left.
And … she was okay?
Safe?
In Shallow Valley?!?
That … wasn’t even that far …
Six days away?
A serious trek without horses … but … 6 days … 7 or 8 if the weather was bad … away from Clarke …
Not an impossible distance away. Not miles of empty air and cold space away.
Here.
On Earth.
On the ground.
And she was safe.
Lexa’s heart was hammering in her chest.
She covered her face with her hands, her eyes prickling with tears … And then tilted her head back and looked up at the stars. And a huge grin spread across her face.
Goddamnit Clarke.
She wasn’t in the stars. She was under them. Just like her.
And she was safe.
Lexa had never been so happy to be lied to in her entire life.
She walked all the way around the massive pile of stones where the building over the bunker had been. Saw the letters spelling out the same message on all three sides.
Lexa Come to Shallow Valley. Safe. - C. G.
Lexa was grinning so hard her cheeks hurt.
Clarke was there.
In Shallow Valley.
She was alive.
She had been here. To the bunker.
Clarke’s hands had touched these stones.
She had stood where Lexa was now standing.
Lexa swiveled the headlamp around. Found the hole she had bashed her way out of. Found the hammer and pulled up more of the cobblestones around the edges, widening the hole a little further, and then lowered herself back down.
She stepped and slid over the loose stones on the tunnel floor, headed back inside to decontaminate ... and start her planning.