Why I Won't Forget You

Run Run RUN

The hallway felt suffocating now, bodies pressing in, voices overlapping, the air thick with panic and alcohol and something too familiar.

Dany had gone pale, standing frozen beside the others—Bellamy, Octavia, Raven, Monty, Jasper. Even the delinquents—the ones Clarke had barely acknowledged before—were here, shifting anxiously, their rowdiness from earlier long gone.

And Olivia—thank God for Olivia—was already taking charge.

"Oliver, get me some damn water and a cold towel," Olivia ordered, snapping Clarke back into the moment. "Now."

Oliver, her twin brother, didn't hesitate. He disappeared down the hall while Olivia gently tilted Madi's head to the side, checking her breathing.

Clarke's grip on Madi's hand tightened, her mind racing, her heartbeat too loud.

This wasn't the first time Clarke had been here.

The panic, the helplessness, the desperate need for control—it was all clawing at her, pulling her under.

Because suddenly, it wasn't Madi she was holding onto. It wasn't this hallway, this party, this night.

It was Noah.

Blood. Glass. Screeching tires. The scent of burning rubber and copper thick in the air. The way his fingers had twitched—just barely—before they stopped moving.

Clarke gasped, her grip on Madi's hand tightening too much.

"Clarke?"

She barely heard Lexa's voice behind her.

The past was suffocating her, overlapping with the present, the weight of failure pressing down on her chest.

She couldn't do this.

Not again.

Not again.

Clarke staggered back, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps. Her legs felt unsteady, like the ground beneath her had disappeared, and then—then the tears came.

Hot, uncontrollable, silent at first, then shaking her whole body.

She was crying.

And that scared her friends more than anything.

"Clarke?" Dany's voice was cautious, unsure. She had never seen Clarke like this—not since Noah.

No one had.

Clarke didn't cry. Clarke didn't break. Clarke was the one who laughed off pain, who masked everything with a smirk and a drink and a perfectly timed sarcastic comment. Clarke held it together.

Except now she wasn't.

Her vision blurred as she turned blindly, pushing past people, past Lexa, past everything—she just needed air, needed space.

She barely made it to the front porch before her knees buckled, her hands gripping the railing like it was the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth. The cold night air stung her damp cheeks, but it didn't calm her, didn't stop the shaking in her chest.

It was all too much.

Madi—so small, so fragile, barely conscious.

Noah—so still, so lifeless, and she had been right there but couldn't do anything, couldn't save him.

It was happening again.

She was failing again.

She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, trying to stop the tears, trying to shove it all back where it belonged—deep, buried, gone.