When bodies fall to the ground…

36 hours earlier…

26th April 2156, around midday

"Here they come. There's too many. Retreat. Retreat! Go back to the village…"

The voice of the Eligius prisoner on the other side of the radio was filled with terror. Madi, Bellamy, and Echo's attack had finally broken through their ranks. The battle was almost over. It was time to end it and restore peace. Clarke closed in on McCreary, ready to give him one last chance to surrender peacefully.

"It's over" Clarke said in a determined voice "Tell your men to lower their weapons, and I lower mine"

Her gun was still pointed straight at Charmaine Dyoza's belly with her unborn daughter inside. Killing an innocent child was far from Clarke's intention. But with every second that passed, it became more and more of a possibility. She was determined to stop McCreary. At any cost. No matter what.

"Boss, what are we gonna do here?", one of the Eligius prisoners asked McCreary directly, realizing that this tie was a terrible situation.

Paxton McCreary looked in shock and pain at the situation that had just unfolded. A crossroads had been reached. A tactical stalemate with no way out. The atmosphere in the cockpit was close to boiling.

Clarke's heart was beating fast. Faster than it ever had. She was not afraid. Every bit of fear was pushed away by the overwhelming adrenaline rushing through her body. Every inch of her body was tensed. Madi would not die that day. Maybe she would. But not Madi.

Madi, Bellamy, Raven, Mom, Monty, Harper, Murphy, Emori, Echo... All of them... She couldn't let them down. Not this time. She had been willing to sacrifice her life once. And now she had made up her mind. She was ready to do this again. To die on this day. She was ready to fix what she had broken and save those she had betrayed.

"If she moves, shoot her" McCreary suddenly turned and went to the console. Clarke knew what was coming. McCreary hadn't thought it through. He thought Clarke would crack under the pressure.

He hastily scrolled through Diyoza's script book. This was not good. He seemed to have one last trick up his sleeve. Something unknown to Clarke and Diyoza.

"Diyoza, what the hell is he doing?" Clarke asked, confused, not quite understanding what was about to happen. She saw Charmaine Diyoza's face. And it confirmed her worst fear. It meant nothing good.

"McCreary" Diyoza took a step forward to address her ex-fiancé. She suddenly realized what his plan was. That he was about to enter the launch code for the hythylodium charge in the cargo bay of the Eligius. 

"McCreary?" Dyoza asked in horrified disbelief. She couldn't believe what he was about to do. But now that Clarke knew of his intentions, it made sense. While Dyoza seemed sane enough to use the Hythylodium only as an instrument of fear and as a last resort, McCreary was willing to do the unspeakable. Clarke had no doubt - after everything she had witnessed so far - that he was fully capable of committing this cruel and devastating act.

"McCreary NO!" Diyoza screamed in shock. He was about to do it. And he had already found what he was looking for. He started to enter the launch code while Diyoza looked at Clarke begging. It wasn't often that a former Special Forces officer had such a look of fear on her face.

"Clarke, you have to stop him," she said urgently, "He'll kill us all.

Her face said it all. A face that was very unusual for a former Navy Seal, and moreover, a clear warning sign. Not many things scare soldiers, especially elite soldiers and terrorists. This was dangerous. Very dangerous.

  Clarke saw that he had typed the first few letters into the computer system.

"Madi... They're all down there... No..." Clarke took a deep breath and slowly placed her finger on the trigger. She was preparing for the worst.

"Shoot him! RIGHT NOW!" Diyoza threw her command at Clarke as if she were still on duty as the leader of her Navy Seal team, and Clarke, her newest private, struggled to carry out a direct fire order.

"McCreary" Miles Shaw stepped in from the side. He stumbled and tried to keep himself upright, still suffering from the effects of torture.

"You can't, this is crazy," Shaw said, trying to appeal to the last hopeful spark of sanity left in McCreary as he found a foothold on one of the computer desks and looked directly at McCreary's gun pointing at his head.

Clarke studied the situation carefully. Then she acted. She pointed her gun away from Diyoza's belly and directly at the first prisoner, who was aiming his pump gun straight at her own head. He had seen neither Clarke's sudden movement nor his own death.  She pulled the trigger and quickly fired two well-aimed shots into his head. He fell to the floor - already dead - with pieces of his skull and brain scattered across the floor. Before he hit the ground, she moved her left hand slightly to the right and fired three more shots at McCreary. She missed his head but hit him at least twice in the torso. Enough to stop him from entering the launch code as he flinched before losing his balance and falling to the ground, dropping his gun in the process.

The other guard immediately opened fire, but Shaw immediately took action, tackling him and shooting him with McCreary's gun, which he instinctively picked up from the ground.

"Raven!" Shaw yelled as he secured the weapon and sprinted toward Raven and hugged her. 

"I'm fine," she replied quickly before he could grab her. They both looked at McCreary, who lay motionless on the ground. Shaw sprinted over and confirmed that he was still alive.

"Tie him up. I'm not done with him yet," Diyoza barked at him in an angry voice.

Raven then looked over at Clarke. "Good shot."

Clarke lowered her gun. It was done. As the gun passed her hips, it felt out of her hand. Adrenaline still coursed through her body. Absorbing not only the shock but also the pain. She could feel her stomach growing warmer. Warmer until she started to stumble. She fell to her knees as her hands instinctively tried to hold onto her stomach. When she looked down at her hands, she could see a dark, warm liquid flowing over them. She collapsed further to the ground, still staring in agony at her bloodied hands. Her medical training kicked in as she pressed her hands to her body as hard as she could. This is bad. Very bad.

Her heart was beating fast. She breathed uncontrollably as the pain slowly but surely began to set in. Not just pain, but panic spread through her. She was prepared for a quick death, not a slow one in agony.

"Wow. This pain is crazy," Clarke screamed in her mind as Diyoza and Raven rushed to her side after realizing something was wrong. Her stomach was burning, as if someone had poured acid over her intestines and set oil on fire as well.

"Clarke! Shit," Raven shouted as she saw the full extent of the damage.

"Easy. Take it easy. Lie down. Quickly..." Diyoza ordered. Her military training kicked in and she immediately began to deal with the situation. "She's been hit in the stomach," Diyoza quickly diagnosed.

Shaw jumped to his feet when he heard Raven scream. He had just finished tying McCreary to some metal pipes, tight and secure.

"Quickly. Grab the emergency kit!" Diyoza ordered him as he already went to get the needed item.

"You kid, come here, help me put some pressure on this wound," she said to Raven. Diyoza had already put her hands on Clarke's, not caring about the blood "Fast!"

"Clarke!" Raven coughed as she fell to her knees. She had completely forgotten about her damaged leg, and now a great deal of pain was the price she had to pay for her actions. But she didn't care as she focused on Diyoza's orders.

"Don't move. Take it easy. We've got you," Diyoza ordered Clarke, who simply couldn't move a muscle. She lay there, completely still. Her breathing had become heavy.

Slowly, Diyoza and Raven stabilized Clarke and replaced her hands, still pressing on her wound, with their own. Their combined pressure on her wound increased her pain considerably. Clarke's hands fell down beside her. One on either side of her body.

It didn't take long for Shaw to return with a large emergency case. He opened it for Diyoza and followed her instructions. "Give us bandages, plasters, scissors, an IV kit and painkillers." 

"On it," Shaw quickly applied as he began to almost dismantle the first aid kit, desperately searching for the items they needed. The case was huge, and it seemed to be designed to handle a lot of different scenarios. On the other hand, Diyoza and her crew had once taken over the ship by force. So perhaps the precaution was justified. For Clarke, this precaution would may prove to be life-saving, since Shaw had already found most of the items.

Clarke was breathing heavily. . She gasped for air. Her body went into a strange mode as she slowly began to feel dizzy. Her heart was beating faster than ever.

"She's one of them," Dyoza analyzed, looking at her own hands covered in her black nightblood.

"Do we have any of the black blood packages in this kit?" Dyoza asked. She seemed to know some things about the Nightblood. Things Clarke's traumatized brain couldn't process or investigate anyway.

"Let me see," Shaw rummaged through the large emergency kit again. "Here, black packs."

He showed Dyoza a closed box sealed by the Eligius Logos and placed it next to his knees.

Shaw kept digging until he had everything they needed. He unwrapped some bandages and prepared some syringes and IV lines.

"Make her free," Dyoza hissed another command to Raven, "Her Jacket and shirt off."

Raven did as she was told, carefully removing Clarke's jacket and ripping open her shirt.

The wound was bleeding heavily. Dyoza still had her hands on it. Every time Dyoza moved even a little, Clarke let out a deep, painful groan. Her mind was almost frozen. It felt like she was watching a first-person movie. Like one of those medical training videos from the patient's perspective. It felt so unreal, except for the crippling pain in her stomach.

"Prepare the bandages," she said to Shaw, "Show me her jacket, quick."

Raven grabbed Clarke's jacket and showed it to her. "Didn't go through. Damn," Charmaine grumbled.

"The bullet is still inside her. We have to get it out," Diyoza concluded.

"We have to get her to the doctors. Abby. Or Jackson," Raven suggested, uncomfortable with the thought of Diyoza performing any kind of surgery on Clarke. It was surreal to be confronted with that image. She was not ready to fear for Clarke's life now. She was still angry with her. But her anger crumbled the moment Clarke collapsed in front of her. No, this was not the time to be angry. 

"We're not going to stop the bleeding with that thing inside her. But I agree with you," Diyoza agreed with her. "If we don't give her blood, she's definitely not going to make it. I'm trying to buy her some time. But if she doesn't see a doctor in the next thirty minutes..." 

"I'm on it," Shaw assured her, and indeed he was already in the process of administering the lifesaving liquid. He broke the Eligius seals on the box and removed one of the medium-sized bags containing Nightblood.

"How much is in there?" Raven asked him.

"750 mil, in all three packages," Shaw replied curtly.

He carefully attached an intravenous line to Clarke's right arm and injected her with the first half dose of a painkiller before proceeding with one of the blood bags and connecting it to the IV lines without hesitation. He hung it up high and checked to make sure it was running steadily.

"Good. Now let's patch up her wound," Dyoza shouted. She looked at Raven, who was assisting Shaw in his efforts.

"Girl, put your hands on her as soon as I take mine off. Then we will bandage her," Raven just nodded at Dyoza's instructions. She was actually impressed by how well Dyoza worked under pressure "Put as much pressure on her as you can, don't worry about it hurting her..."

"3...2...1... Change now," Dyoza announced and Raven quickly put her hands back on Clarke's wound. Clarke's blood was warm as it rushed against her hands. She pressed harder until she felt the full resistance of Clarke's body. Clarke let out a high-pitched moan. The painkiller began to work slowly, giving her only a slight relief from the pain. She tried to compensate for the pain with controlled breathing, but the longer she tried, the more exhausted she became.

Meanwhile, Dyoza and Shaw worked together, trying to bandage Clarke's wound as best they could. Raven removed her hands each time she was told to make way for another layer of bandages and plasters. It was a painful procedure for Clarke, occasionally causing her to scream when she couldn't hold back the pain any longer. Dyoza wasn't squeamish and didn't seem to care much about Clarke's pain. Her main goal was to stop her from bleeding to death - or at least to slow the process as much as possible.

Clarke knew that she was far from being safe. Her body was now in full crisis mode. She had never experienced anything like this. It felt surreal. From the moment she was shot, it was as if she had fallen into a trance. She hadn't said a word. Her body was in total shock. Amazingly, her brain was still functioning even though she could feel her body functions shutting down one by one. She was already having trouble concentrating on her surroundings as she could only focus on Dyoza, who was wrapping bandages around her stomach. The pain ate through her flesh and tissue. It felt like everything in her chest was melting away.

"How bad?" Clarke crackled as she finally found her voice.

"I think your liver is hit, the bullet is still inside," Dyoza quickly replied to her.

Liver... That's not good, though, depending on the case. The liver can actually heal itself and even grow back if the damage wasn't too severe. Clarke was surprised that her brain could actually dig up this information.

The biggest problem would be to stop the bleeding, to find the bullet and to repair the damage. And that was only if the damage was not worse. Clarke had helped her mother operate on livers and other organs before. But in those cases, the patients were sick, and the surgeries were mostly planned and therefore almost unspectacular. If surgeries could ever be called spectacular. 

"Okay, Shaw, now get us in the air, as close to their doctors as possible. We should take the other injured with us and get them to Eligius Hospital," Dyoza said, "This is our best option".

"Good plan," Raven commented as she watched Shaw rush to the pilot's seat and begin to fly the Gagarin. At the same time, he grabbed the headset and began to radio the Valley.

Almost at the same time, McCreary took a sharp breath as he gasped for air. It seemed that he still had a say in the matter. He tried to move, but soon had to give up, not only because he was well secured, but also because his wounds seemed to be causing him considerable pain and affecting his mobility.

"Oh no. You are not getting away from me that easily," Dyoza said angrily when she noticed that McCreary was still moving. She took some bandages and went over to him and began to sloppily treat his wounds, "I will have my revenge on you.

Raven stayed at Clarke's side. She looked at Clarke and her glassy blue eyes looked right back at her. Clarke's eyes had gone dull. She was fighting with her consciousness now. To stay alive.

"Clarke," Raven yelled at her, while her blood-soaked hand pinched Clarke's left hand, "Stay awake." 

To Clarke, her words sounded like a murmur from far behind. Clarke also couldn't hear what Shaw was saying when he contacted the others in the valley. By now the fight must be over. Madi...

"Raven..." Clarke said in a cracking voice. She had to summon all her strength for this.

"I'm sorry. For hurting you... I never meant to... I... just wanted to protect Madi... I made mistakes... Tell Bellamy and the others I'm sorry".

With each passing minute, it became harder for her to concentrate, think, and especially to speak. The pain was so intense that she struggled to take full breaths as each breath began to hurt. As a result, her breathing became shallower and shallower, accelerating the rate at which she drifted into unconsciousness. But she wanted to say her last words before she faded away.

"This is not the time, Clarke," she looked down at her and saw tears streaming down Clarke's face. "Save your strength," Raven begged her.

Although Raven still felt hurt and angry at Clarke, this was not the fate she deserved. In the heat of the moment, Raven almost forgot about Clarke's actions. The only thing that mattered was that Clarke would make it and survive this. Nothing else mattered. Anyway, Clarke had once again taken the risk and sacrificed herself in the end, even though she had contributed to this situation in the first place. There was nothing she could do about it. Yelling at Clarke for everything she did wrong wouldn't help the situation or her condition.

And since Raven wasn't even sure if Clarke was going to make it, Raven tried to be calm and comfort Clarke. She looked at all the blood that was smeared everywhere.

"Not now, Clarke," Raven insisted. Raven knew that it would take time to forgive Clarke. But that was secondary anyway.

Clarke tried to give Raven a firm nod. It was incredibly hard. Not only to go out like this, but to be powerless. She still had so much to say. But her time seemed to be running out. 

Madi... Leaving Madi behind was her worst thought. Never to see her again. To see her smile, to hear her laugh again. Bellamy. She was still angry with him. As he probably was with her. But with Echo by his side and the support of Abby and Kane, Madi would be in good hands. Clarke tried to pull herself together. She tried to think only of Madi and her mother. Her family. Her father. Would she finally be reunited with him? With Lexa? With Finn? And with Wells? Were they all waiting for her? Or was there only emptiness waiting for her? A silent panic attack stabbed through her mind. She had never given much thought to the afterlife. But now it seemed she was only moments away from finding out.

Raven felt the panic rising inside of her. She turned her head and focused on Shaw.

"Radio, Shaw?" Raven shouted before looking back down at her hands. They were still covered in Clarke's warm black nightblood.

"Positive, I try to find the closest spot near them. They have a doctor... Jackson. And some of them were wounded..."

"ETA?" Dyoza asked energetically.

"One minute if you let me do my job," Shaw replied, annoyed by her questions.

"You have thirty seconds, how about that!"  Dyoza growled as she finished administering first aid to McCreary. Though she had only ensured his basic survival, this was not the end. His suffering had just begun.

"He'll be fine," she told Shaw, "Well, not for long, of course," Dyoza had put an evil fake smile on her face when she left McCreary for good. 

"What are you doing with him?" asked Raven as she overheard the conversation.

"I haven't decided yet. Maybe I'll let anyone who wants to give him a proper beating do it... And then..." She moved her head, "Tell me if you have any ideas..." But Dyoza was suddenly interrupted by Raven's scream.

"Clarke!" Raven shouted as she saw Clarke's eyes close for a moment. Her eyes opened again. Her tired eyes were focused on Raven. "It's okay... Raven," Clarke coughed in a hoarse voice. It really was. Something had changed in her mind. She just wanted her pain to stop. And to sleep... "Ai gonplei ste odon..." (My fight is over...)