Clarke could not say how long he had been unconscious before waking up. There was no window in the cell he woke to, no sense of the outside or anything to measure time against but when he'd woken he was lying on a stone bed, a stone room surrounding him, a place as sparse as his mother had been contained in.
And that was his first thought.
Mother!
He'd launched upright and the sudden movement sent a searing pain jagging through his chest and back like a hot poker and it all began to come back to him in a flood of memories and emotions. The chase, the crowd, the wave of people, the explosion of magic all around him...the knife in his back.
He fell hard against his bed and slid to the floor, unable to use his arms to catch himself when he found they were tightly wrapped in rope and bound to his chest in a cross shape, deep purple marks in his skin from where they dug in.
He jerked and struggled to no release, his fingers pushed so tightly into his ribs that he lost all feeling. He caught sight of his feet in his struggling to see they were not bound together but were wrapped tightly in leather bags, his toes curled against the ball of his foot.
What is...was it Alouella? She and Wade and Gwen were the only ones who knew...
A click of armor at the door reached his ears and he saw a guard looking in at him, a glare of intense hatred.
“Hey!”
Clarke yelled but the guard slammed the window slider shut and walked away. Clarke struggled to his feet, pain in every single breath like breathing forge embers.
“HEY!”
He screamed and ran at the door, slamming shoulder first into it but it didn't budge at all.
“HEY!”
He screamed again, anger washing his mind in red and pain spurring him on. He kicked the door, pushing himself off balance and backwards onto the floor.
“What happened to my mother!? What happened! What's going on out there!?”
He growled and stood, reason losing itself in his anger and confusion as he pounded at the door, hammering at it until it began to move. It swung out and Clarke ran headlong into a thick wooden shield that flung him back. His cell flooded with elves in armor, shields battering him as they surrounded him and held him down.
Angry curses filled his hearing.
“Murderer!”
“Son of a whore!”
Fists and feet pushed him from blow to blow in the circle of shields until one crushed him against the wall, his bones creaking as weight repeatedly pressed into the back.
“What happened!?”
He cried. Someone grabbed his mouth and held it open. He could see an old elf out of the corner of his vision, half hidden by the shield. His face was turned up so hard his neck was like to have snapped as something wet and warm trickled down his throat. Someone crushed his jaws together even as he tried to spit through his teeth, some trickling down his chin.
He knew the tastes, every ingredient and additive.
Sleeping potion.
He couldn't help but swallow and he was out of the world again.
---------------------------------------
There were no dreams to be had in induced sleep from potions, just the fitful turning and nothingness of restless unconsciousness so when Clarke awoke it was to exhaustion and a feeling of drowning.
He coughed and gasped for air as he bolted upright, water slinging off his face as he tried to look everywhere at once. Guards surrounded his bed, a wall of shields.
In the middle was a wizard, his hands pointed at Clarke in contorted spell casting as water coalesced from the air and gushed over him. He clenched his hands and the spout closed, leaving Clarke gasping on the bed.
He looked at each of them in turn and stood, all of them closing in closer when he got to his feet. It may not have been the smartest choice but, being exhausted, pained and fearing for his life he rushed forward.
The guards parted and a giant hand hooked Clarke by the neck, throwing him back against the wall hard enough to knock the wind from him.
He squeaked and gasped for air, trying to get anything into his lungs.
Wade stood before him, staring him down as the circle made room for one more. Alouella looked Clarke over, eyes up and down, her fingers rising and falling like a tense wave.
Clarke looked between them and they waited for him to catch his breath so he could speak, the drip of water off the edge of his bed the single sound in the quiet. They both looked tired but Alouella positively run ragged. Heavy, sleepless bags under her eyes, a nervous tension that stood her up rigid as the staff she carried so you couldn't tell which was holding up the other.
“Where's my mother?”
Alouella tensed, hands clenching in on themselves.
“That's not why we're he-”
“Where's my mother!?”
He shouted this time, the guards all taking a step forward. Alouella grit her teeth.
“That's not why-”
“Where's my mother!?”
“Shut your god damn mouth! Shut up!”
Alouella roared at him. Her hair was rising, standing on end as the pressure rose in the room, a tingle of electricity in the air that put everyone on edge. Her hand rose, rubbing over her forehead in a way that must have soothed her from the way her hair settled down once more. It was silent for a few moments, everyone afraid to make a sound.
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“I had wondered...I had really wondered what the first thing you'd say to me would be but something told me it was going to be that. You'd talked about the same thing for over ten years and somehow, somehow, I am surprised that your mother is the first thing you ask about.”
Their eyes met and there was something in the way Alouella stared him down that shook him, a sadness, an anger, emotions spilling out of a face too tired to conceal itself.
“We don't know where she is yet. I've been a little busy keeping full scale panic from setting in since most of the government is dead, the queen is away and a few thousand bodies have been removed from the palace and offices and guilds built around the tree.”
“A few thou-but how? You're not suggesting she-”
“She did. Ten years in a cell with her arms wrapped up but her feet free. She rubbed a sentence into the bottom of her stone table, just like water into rock until it eroded away. Her spell...her alteration of reality just made everyone from the roots down here all the way to the tips of the trees die.”
Clarke scowled back and hateful, destructive words wrote themselves in his brain. Anger wrote them out on his tongue.
“Maybe anyone who would kidnap a young woman and keep her locked up for no reason deserved what happened to them. They got what they deserved.”
The guards almost flung themselves at him, violent curses thrown out in a cacophony of anger and exhaustion as the small guard force had been run ragged. Wade threw his arms wide, pushing the guards away, his foot planted firmly in Clarke's chest in case he decided to do anything.
“Stop it, get back!”
Alouella yelled but Clarke pushed harder, yelling over the din.
“I can't believe you'd turn on me like this! You'd side with kidnappers and unjust imprisonment just because your dad said it was okay! Are your morals so weightless that they'll blow away with words?”
“Your mother was a murderer! This just shows what lengths she'd go to! It wasn't just guards, Clarke! There were families in the palace, men and women and children beside the guards and nobles! Just normal people! Don't you care!?”
“I cared! I didn't let you die did I? I saved the people I cared about! What did anyone else do for me!?”
Alouella lost her emotional check, anger venting from her body in the form of lightning, her hair rising, the little tail on her hat standing upright like a lightning rod.
“Who cares that they didn't mean anything to you! Each of those people meant something to someone! If you cared about me so much why not my father!? Do you think I was just so thrilled to climb out of that hole and see my father dead? Do you think I'm grateful!?”
Wade flung the guards away, tossing them out of the door as they grew more unruly with Alouella and Clarke spurring each other on. Clarke faltered when he saw the tears in her eyes, the hitch in her voice. It broke the angry shell on him. He tried to respond but she screamed at him.
“Did you even care or just think you did? Maybe you don't know it but Twinty poisoned you to think of people as tools. Because you never treated us like friends, you irritable, heartless bastard! You played just nice enough that we would be good tools, always at hand! When I didn't want to be used you threw me aside! And Gwen, who-who didn't want to abandon you, helped you and fought for you and thought you were just so good, you haven't even asked about her! What about her!?”
Clarke's throat tightened, tears blurring his eyes. He'd been yelled at, threatened, harmed and attacked his whole life without batting an eye but it made all the difference that someone he cared about and respected was ripping into him.
“And maybe...even though it wasn't you...and your mother would have done it any way...”
She sobbed now, tears flowing through her hands as she tried to wipe them away. Clarke felt crushed into the stone, as though the weight of everyone murdered were pressed on him at once.
“If you hadn't broken in here we wouldn't have had to come after you. My father would still be alive...it's all your fault...it's all your fault, you bastard...”
Clarke wouldn't look at her, every hitching sob pushing a new dagger into his heart, so choked up that he couldn't breathe. Tears streaked down his face and his chin sunk into his chest.
Wade looked between them before leaning beside Alouella and quietly whispering to her. She nodded, sniffing and wiping away the tears and snot, all her emotions dribbling out, everything she'd bottled up when the elven kingdom needed someone to step in with the queen away and all authority dead.
She stepped out of the room and the door clanged shut behind her, the echo fading until Clarke choking on his own emotion was the only sound.
Wade looked down on him, the one person he'd hated and envied and wished ill on for years now curled at his feet. To see him crushed and broken like this would have delighted him in the past but it made him uneasy to finally see it. An emotional breakdown was not something he could punch or yell at and he looked around the room for anything else to see, goosebumps on his skin from being in such an unfamiliar situation.
“Clarke...”
Wade cleared his throat.
“I would have done the same thing. It's your mother. I know why you did it. I'm sorry it ended this way.”
His emotions bubbled up and surged, a sea of anger, hate, sorrow, fear and too many feelings melting together to name, his body hot and cold, prickles rising on his neck. He felt like he could throw up.
Wade looked around the room and wondered where that alchemist was.
“You need to know Clarke that...they're going to execute you. Alouella made contact with the Queen recently and she's on her way back. I figured I'd tell you if there's anything you want me to do with your things. I'll take care of it for you. And I want you to understand that Alouella, as mad as she is, tried to stop them. That you could be as useful as your mother was but they were scared out of their minds. She did what she could.”
Clarke tried to take a full breath but it felt like his lungs were too small, his throat too closed up. He did manage to lift his head which felt as heavy as could be.
“What about Gwen?”
He croaked out.
“She's fine. She did a lot less to cause any of this than you did so Alouella fudged the facts a little for her. She's still locked up so she doesn't do anything stupid but she should go free. I can't tell you where, obviously.”
Clarke laid his head back down.
I do care. You weren't just tools to me...right? I know Twinty said things like that but I didn't...
The door opened and an aged elf came in, large leather case at his side that clanked when he set it down.
“Wade...you found the land shark, right?”
Wade nodded.
“Damn thing nearly escaped but we locked it in one of the labs in its hole. Why are you carrying that thing around?”
Clarke sighed.
“I liked its company. You like animals though so...”
The elf whispered to Wade and he nodded, then nodded at Clarke.
“Alright, I'll take care of it.”
Clarke wasn't sure who he was talking to but Wade suddenly grabbed him, flipping him on his back and forcing index and thumb into either side of Clarke's jaw, forcing it open enough to make it pop.
The elf smoothly put the vial to Clarke's lips and the purple liquid flowed down. Wade pinched Clarke's nose shut and clamped his jaw, Clarke struggling as he tasted the ingredients, picking them out one by one from their subtle tastes.
He struggled harder, kicking, trying to roll until he finally went slack, eyes trying to stay open despite the chemicals shutting his body down. Wade slowly let him go and the elf nodded. Wade put him on the bed and they left him alone with muttered words to the guards outside
Minutes passed before Clarke peeked out through one barely open eyelid. His mouth was numb, the effect of the potion seeping into his skin even as he held it in the back of his throat.
Quietly, silently, he slid from the bed and over to the wall, looking back every few seconds until he found the perfect crack in the floor, a small reservoir to spit the potion into and then crawl back to bed.
Sleep would have been merciful, an unearned reprieve that would let him escape the torturous thoughts but he needed it. He needed the pain and hurt, needed to think and the small voice invading his mind did not shy from this duty.
This is all your fault...
This is all my fault...
His chest was tight and his eyes ached from trying to hold everything in.
Another torrent of tears, the way he tamped his feelings down inside too much for everything he'd done and had happened.
I hurt so many people with one decision...why didn't I stop...why couldn't I stop...
A litany of mental swears assaulted him and he let it hurt him. He deserved it. Anything else could wait but for then he needed to rub salt in his wounds.
You deserved to have one of the few people you cared anything about tear you to pieces...you're a monster...
I deserve this.
He turned on his side to face the empty wall, the hurt and ache sending shivers through his chest as dark thoughts gathered in his head.
I can't fix this.