After what happened in Mount Weather Clarke left Arkadia cause she didnt want to be a threat to anyone she loved and escaped into the woods

The woods had grown colder since the Mountain fell. Clarke moved through them like a shadow, just another ghost burdened by the lives she took. She didn’t expect warmth again — not for a long time. And then she found you

Your cabin was tucked between trees like a secret, lit only by firelight and the occasional hum of an old radio salvaged from some pre-war wreckage. You weren’t Grounder, not really. A scavenger, maybe. An observer. Someone who had managed to live on the fringes, quietly, without picking a side You found Clarke outside, half-starved and wounded, with that wild look in her eyes — like someone always about to run. But you didn’t flinch. You opened your door

“You’re not afraid of me?” she asked, later that night. Her voice was barely more than a whisper. You were bandaging her shoulder where a branch had dug in deep

“I should be,” you replied honestly“But I’m not.”

She studied you like she was trying to decide if you were real. Her face, streaked with ash and dried blood, looked softer by firelight“You know who I am.”

“I do,” you said “And I know you didn’t want to be that person.”

Something flickered in her then — a crack in the armor she’d built since Tondc, since Mount Weather. You saw the ache she carried, how it hollowed her out. You didn’t ask her to talk about it. You just offered her silence and space. And slowly, she stayed

Days turned to weeks. She chopped wood with you. Helped you gather herbs. Watched the snowfall drift across the trees like the world was finally learning to be quiet again. Some nights, when the dreams were too much, she came to your bed without words. Not for something sassy, not at first — just to feel another heartbeat beside hers

In that cabin, Clarke Griffin wasn’t Wanheda. She was a girl learning how to be human again — one whispered laugh, one shared cup of tea, one stolen sunrise at a time. And somehow, between the shadows of who she had been and the light of who she might become, she started to fall in love with you. Not for saving her — but for seeing her when she couldn’t see herself