RETURN {the100} ✔️

46.

Red.

The color was a bright reminder of the life that I now lived in. A life that was constantly surrounded by the color, it was odd how a single color could mean so much. It was just a color after all, it held no more meaning than being what it was; a color. Yet, it meant so much more. It could mean love, a burning passion for something. It could mean anger, a hatred so strong that it was all consuming. It could mean death, a fluid that flowed out of your loved ones. So many meanings for a single color and I understood them all. 

This one single color could control me. I understood it, why it was the way it was and why it appeared when it did. It always was a reminder of what has happened or what was to come. Even now, as I starred at Miles's blood stains on my hands, I knew why it was here. Why the color now, was controlling my actions. With Theo looming over my shoulders, staring at me as I scrubbed the color from my hands, I knew why it was causing me so much grief. This one single color made me remember it all, all the good and the bad that had happened.

I was a completely different person because of this single color. It changed me. Made me adapt to a new life, a life that I never thought I'd have. I thought I would never seen a day past my 18th birthday and yet, I had. I had completely forgot about it, the time had gone by so much differently here on the ground versus how it had been on the Ark. On the Ark time dragged, every second limped along. I had been so focused on the countdown to my birthday back than. Now? Now, time went fleeting past me. My brain was so focused on surviving that I hadn't even noticed that my birthday had already came and gone. 

It was strange how something like my birthday, an important event, meant absolutely nothing to me now. It had been such a large focus on my mind and now I hadn't even thought of it until this very moment, and why? Why, now was it occupying my mind, when there was obviously so much more I should have been worrying about. A countless list of worries that were going on, heck, one of the kids from my camp was laying bleeding after being shot by arrows and here I was, worried about how I had forgotten my own birthday. 

It was such a selfish thought and concern. Yet, it bugged me to no end. This all on its own was slap of my new reality; how old worries now seemed so petty. God, how I had changed in such a short amount of time. Was it a change for the good? That was the question. 

Only God knew.

"You're gonna rub your skin off," Theo pulled my attention back from my own self, "if you keep at that."

My  eyes flickered up to him and than back down to my hands, they were red and raw from rubbing them against my pant legs. The red blood stains were now gone, but their lingering effects were still embedded in me. Glancing back at Miles, I watched him as he tried to shift his body into a more comfortable position. His face was scrunched up in a grimace and he grunted before giving up and laying back in the spot I had last left him in. 

"What are you doing here," my gaze never left Miles, as my mind tried to refocus at the trouble at hand. Miles had been shot, Clarke and Finn were kidnapped, Theo was saved me, and a grounder army was marching to kill my people. Nothing was adding up. 

"Wh-what," he hesitated before regaining his composure, "what do you mean?"

"I mean," crossing my arms, I returned to looking at his emerald eyes, "why are you here, with me. When your people just kidnapped my friends."

"Oh," he looked down, "uh.. Anya, she needs Clarke's help."

"Help," I shook my head in confusion, "what could she possible need from Clarke?"

He was silent for a moment, looking at me and than turning his head back towards Miles who was still bleeding out from the wound on his leg. He needed Clarke, she would have been able to stop the bleeding, she was a healer-