From The Ashes | The 100 S5 [Bellarke]

|19| Six Years

Madi felt like her thoughts had been turned off.

As soon as Clarke was in the rover, things seemed to shift and blur. Time passed in slow motion, the flash and boom of the raging storm worlds away. She knew she should be frightened, that every time she had to jerk the rover out of the way of falling branches or a suddenly-illuminated tree in a flare of lightning, she should have felt something.

But she didn't.

Her hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel, and she tasted her fear sharp and bitter in the back of her throat, but it was if all of that was happening to a different girl. Madi herself was fine.

Absolutely fine.

***

The storm was dying by the time the rover headlights illuminated the familiar, stacked-block houses of the village. The skies were still an angry, gray-yellow color, but the wind had drifted into a low mutter and the rain had cooled into a tepid drizzle.

Clarke was still silent, and the faces that met Madi's glance in the rearview mirror were tense and worried. She felt the hazy pull of panic on her heartstrings, but it seemed almost lazy, like her body was merely going through the motions of distress.

Madi was worried, but she also couldn't believe in a future without Clarke. Her guardian had always been there, and so she would be fine. Anything else was impossible.

She stopped the rover at Beni's house, a long, low-roofed structure made of scavenged metal and sod, the grass of his roof beaded with water. The once-Podakru healer was Clarke's Second and the one who Madi looked up to almost as much as Clarke. He was tall and silent and strong, and as he stepped out at the sound of the rover's engines, Madi felt the calm his presence always brought.

He would save Clarke. Everything would be fine.

It would.

"Chit's gon daun?" Beni asked, frowning at the sudden arrival. His pale eyes seemed to leap out of his sun-darkened features, even in the dim light of the retreating storm.

Madi couldn't speak.

Clarke, she thought. Clarke's hurt and you need to fix her because I can't.

She sat behind the wheel, her fingers still wrapped tightly around the damp, sticky leather. Her pulse throbbed in her fingertips, hot and racing. She tried to move her jaw, her lips, anything, so she could speak.

It felt like minutes passed as she stayed there, frozen, but in reality it was only a moment.

Madi was saved the effort as Bellamy exited the back of the rover, Clarke's limp body in his arms. Blood was dried in inky streaks across his hands, matching the stains on the bandages lumped over Clarke's stomach.

Beni's features contracted when he saw them, darting a glance at Madi in understanding and concern. A moment later, the two of them ducked into Beni's house, swallowed up by the darkness inside.

And that's when Madi thawed, her breath coming in strangled gulps. It as if someone invisible was bent over her, cold hands wrapped around her throat. Her vision burned and blurred with tears, hot rivulets rolling down her face.

Her door opened and someone was pulling her against them, strong, lithe arms wrapping around her.

"Hey. Hey there. Hey, hey, hey." It was a woman speaking, her voice soft and foreign. "She'll be all right. Clarke's strong, and if anyone can pull through something like this, it's her."