Lightning Only Strikes Once - Clexa

Chapter 6: Muscle Memory

What she doesn't expect is her greeting. She's barely broken into the clearing before three angry people are shoving hand-made blades into her face, and then Murphy is in front of her. He pushes a gun into her face aggressively for a second, then relaxes slightly, but still doesn't pull away the weapon. "Oh, it's just you, Princess."

"What the hell, Murphy," Clarke snaps, shoving away the closest person who's threatening her with a knife. They're all retracting them now, embarrassed by their paranoia, but it takes Murphy a second longer to shove the gun back into his waistband and she bristles at the unnecessary delay.

"Don't bitch at me," he snarls back at her. "Where on Earth have you been? You and Bellamy's slutty little sister? You left ages ago and then waltz back into camp the next day, without her, and expect us to roll out the red carpet?"

"We ran into someone," she says, glaring at him. "A Grounder. There's people down here, Murphy." She forces the emphasis into her voice, trying to act like this is a big deal. Obviously, it's old news for her, making fake surprise difficult.

Apparently it's old news for them as well. "Tell me something I don't know, Princess," Murphy glowers at her. "They rocked up into our camp hours ago and snatched away our fearless leader."

"They what?"

"These psychos appeared, all covered in furs and facepaint, looking for Bellamy. They spouted some Grounder gibberish at all of us, then snatched his gun, threw it to the side, tied his hands behind his back, and rode away with him," Murphy spits to the side, showing his opinion. "Who knows how that moron pissed them off. Or maybe they're just looking for a sacrifice or something. Pascal, Trina and Atom have all disappeared too."

Clarke considers this, forcing herself not to overreact. She knows the Grounders aren't likely to come up to the camp to just take a random person. Pascal, Trina and Atom may have died in the fog like last time, Bellamy isn't so easily explained. Could Bellamy have done something to anger them?

Only one way to tell. "Give me his gun."

Murphy takes a step back. "Hell I will."

"I want to see if he's fired it," Clarke says impatiently. "In case he shot one of them."

"They're savages, Clarke, you really think he did anything to them?" Murphy rolls his eyes. "And the gun's mine now. I'm in charge."

Clarke grits her teeth, her patience officially evaporated. "The gun. I'll fight you for it."

He laughs loudly. "Oh, come on. Like you could fight me."

"I'll fight for her," a voice comes from Clarke's side, deep and sure. It's Wells, glaring at Murphy in dislike.

"Me too," Finn says.

"Oh, so you'll send your boyfriends to come beat me up," Murphy says snidely.

Clarke takes a deliberate step forward. "No, I'll fight you myself. Unless of course you're scared to fight without using a gun. Against me."

Clarke stands in the early morning sunlight, her blonde hair gleaming. She must look innocent and harmless, she thinks, unless you look at her expression. One of Murphy's acolytes stifles a snicker and apparently that decides it.

"Sure thing," Murphy growls, stepping forwards. "If you want to get beat up, why not."

She looks at Finn and Wells. "Stay out of this. Please." Finn frowns, but one of Murphy's people raises their blade in a threatening way, and so he takes Wells' arm, preventing him from stepping between them. Wells turns to look at him, betrayed. Clarke wonders when they became so close they could talk with their eyes, but dismisses it.

Her muscles aren't what they used to be. She's going to have to find a way to fix that, as quickly as possible – preferably not by spending months in the forest, this time. She'll see what happens, what opportunity comes. Maybe one of the Grounders will train her, Lincoln, even.

But, muscles or no muscles, she's fierce and fast and can out-think Murphy, and she has reflexes he can't possible understand. She moves forward, quicker than he was expecting, and has delivered two quick hits to his solar plexus before he can react.

Gasping, he attempts to grab her, wrapping one arm around her middle like a bad guy from a movie, the other one grasping at her hair. She slams the heel of her foot down on the middle of his, causing him to whimper, ignores the pulling pain at her scalp and the tears it causes to spring up in her eyes, and elbows him hard in the throat. He lets out a little gasping noise – echoed by the gasps from everyone surrounding them – and she twists in his suddenly loose grasp and punches him hard in the face. She hears a crunch.

His hands automatically go to his nose, where blood is already starting to stream. Clarke snatches the gun from his waistband and holds it up to eye height, studying it.

A part of her doesn't know why she's doing this. The original Bellamy caused the deaths of hundreds of people on the Ark, and she'd thought that made him want to redeem himself – in this world she hopes to prevent those deaths, which could leave him the same selfish jerk. Or was he the same selfish jerk anyway in the original timeline? He'd said yes, and he'd killed hundreds more to prove it, even after all they'd been through together. She doesn't even know whether she's putting in all this effort to save a good man, a mass murderer, her best friend, her enemy, or something in between.

She just knows she has to find out. She can't abandon Bellamy to his fate, any more than she had it in her to deliberately abandon Charlotte, or Finn, or Jasper, or even Murphy. They are her people. It's nationalistic and ridiculous, but their lives are her responsibility, and she will do whatever it takes to get them through this. She needs them. Her life has been filled with fields of corpses, and she needs something to cling to. The 100 are what she clings to. Their lives are her proof that she had a reason for everything she did, everything she still remembers doing.

The gun has no shots fired. A small, dry part of her notes Bellamy's restraint. But this means there's no reason for this at all. Is it Anya? Is it one of the groups of thieves around this area? People from TonDC?

"Why did they want Bellamy?" she asks suddenly, wheeling back to face the bleeding and prone Murphy. "Did they ask for him by name, description, what?"

Murphy is too busy moaning on the ground to reply, but a tall strong boy she vaguely remembers as Miller does.

"We think they were looking for our leader," he says gruffly.

"What? Why?"

"They kept saying the word 'header'," Miller explains briefly. "We figured that means leader."

"It sounds like it does," says one of the others in an excusing kind of way. "You know, head person. Header. So Murphy pointed at Bellamy..." he trails off, looking shamefaced.

"And they took him," Clarke whispers. Her mind races. Heda. They were saying Heda. Lexa. "Who was in charge? What did they look like?"

Miller shrugs. "A woman, dark paint around the eyes. Long hair, braids, dark at the top and blonde at the bottom."

Anya, thought Clarke, her racing heart slowing once he mentioned the blonde. Before that, she'd thought... But of course. Anya would have been saying 'Heda' because she was looking for our Heda like they thought, or maybe even because she was doing it in Lexa's name.

Which means she needs to get someone to take her to Anya. Fortunately, she's already met someone who knows exactly where Anya is.

Unfortunately, Octavia just stabbed him.