Summary:
Humanity fled to space to survive the atomic war which destroyed the planet.
When a hundred teenagers get sent to the ground, eight thousand years later, they come to discover a world of ice and fire.
Or, The dropship lands on Westeros.
Notes:
Okay, so I know it makes no sense for the Ark to survive thousands of years in space - but I really don't care. This whole thing is indulgent as hell! I just wanted my delinquents to meet my asoiaf kids.
Bellarke is the only confirmed pairing.
Also keep in mind english is not my first languange, so expect mistakes - lots of them!
CLARKE
She woke up thinking This is the day I die.
On the Ark every crime no matter how small was punishable by death – unless you were underage. Clarke had just turned eighteen.
The smell of cold air and dust greeted her instead, a dampness, almost moisture which she had become accustomed to in her year of prison. However, it was with a startle that she realized she was not in her cell.
She blinked quickly, wondering.
And then – noises, chattering?
She had been in solitary for 345 days, talking to no one but herself for so long she forgot the sound of other voices, and yet …
"Prisoners of the Ark hear me now."
She knew that voice, it was Chancellor Jaha's. In that fraction of second she also noticed being surrounded by other people, young – she realized, like her. And they were – in a dropship?
What the hell was going on? Where? Why?
"You've been given a second chance, and as your Chancellor, it is my hope that you see this as not just a chance for you, but a chance for all of us, indeed for mankind itself. We have no idea what is waiting for you down there. If the odds of survival were better, we would've sent others. Frankly, we're sending you because your crimes have made you expendable."
The chattering of the kids on the ship with her grew to be almost painful to the ears. "Fuck you, Jaha!" someone yelled.
No.
"Those crimes will be forgiven, your records wiped clean."
They weren't really –
"The drop site has been chosen carefully. Before the last war, Mount Weather was a military base built within a mountain. It was to be stocked with enough non-perishables to sustain three hundred people for up to two years."
They were being sent to the ground, she closed her eyes.
She had known she was going to die since the day she was arrested, but she was always somewhat sure it was going to be a painless death – and the heart lurched thinking about her dad.
Radiations would be anything but.
"Mount Weather is life. You must locate those supplies immediately."
It made sense for the Ark to kill them all – she mused with cold rationality. The Air System was collapsing, and so was the Ark. With a hundred people less, they would be able to survive longer. The engineers could probably find a way to repair with the time brought.
But what about her mom? Did she vote for her kid to go die on the ground?
She was slammed against her seat suddenly, when the ship dropped without warning. The whole place began to shake. The floor rattled, panels loosening in their bolts as the light flashed and dimmed.
They were shunned into obscurity for longs seconds – centuries, praying to make it out alive. The ship whirled and so did her stomach. She closed her eyes and thought of her dad.
Her ears popped as the ship collided with something hard and the all noises stopped. Her vision blurred from the impact as her head slammed against her seat harshly.
She opened her eyes slowly and blinked at the silence in the room. People started to roar around her, fiddling with their seat belts to get out, like animals in a cage.
She was unlocking her seat belt too, when she noticed it. On the left wrist, a word, almost faded.
Survive.
Clarke felt tears at the corner of her eyes, as her heart gave a sorrowful twist. Mom.
She was feeling a mess of love and pain deep into her belly, but as kids around her grew louder and louder she put everything in the back of her mind and rose from her seat.
I will.
OCTAVIA
She was born the second child of a poor woman on Factory Station – and all her life she waited to die.
She did not expect to be first person to walk the earth in eight thousand years.
When the ship had crashed on land, she had been one of the firsts to get out of her seat belts and run for the door. They would die anyway, at least they'd die seeing real sunlight, breathing real air, walking real ground – before the radiations got them.
The man who seemed in charge, standing at the opening of the dropship, as she made her way through a gamble of squawking teenagers, was tall and had the kindest eyes and was her brother. He seemed to be in somewhat heated conversation with a really intense blonde girl. Her heart pounded painfully in her chest.
He saw her too, and time stopped.
"Octavia," he whispered, seemingly forgetting about the discussion he was having. "God, look how big you are," he placed his hands on her shoulders, as people watched them curiously. She didn't even notice them.
She hugged him – she had never believed she would see him again. She thought she was going to cry.
Burying her nose deep into her neck, she breathed again – it was like going home.
Suddenly she took a step back, aghast. "What are you wearing? A guard's uniform?"
Guards were the reason their mother was dead.
He grinned, "I borrowed it to get on the drop ship. Someone has got to keep an eye on you."
They were interrupted by a blonde head and cold words. "Where's your wristband?"
She turned to sneer at the girl, the one who was arguing with Bellamy, older than her with shockingly pretty eyes. "Do you mind? I haven't seen my brother in a year."
There were gasps all around them as the girl in front of her looked into her eyes with wonder.
"No one has a brother." Someone whispered.
"That's Octavia Blake, the girl they found hidden in the floor." A female voice yelled.
She made to lash out at those who were screaming at her, at her brother – at her mother – but a hand stopped her.
"Don't O! Let's give them something else to remember you by." He beamed at her.
She snorted, "Yeah? Like what?"
"Like being the first person on the ground in eight thousand years." His voice quipped, a dimple sinking in his check as he looked down at her.
She was mesmerized by the mere idea.
It happened fast – the dropship opened and suddenly they were bathed in a light so white and pure it made their eyes sting. Blinking, she moved forward as if in a trance, breathing and marveling.
They had landed on – what she decided looked like a dark and misty forest, overlooking a blue, stormy sea, like one out of a movie. It looked like a dream. She thought faintly they might be on a rocky island – the sound of the sea so dizzying and powerful.
She hovered a foot out of the dropship for a split second and parted her arms, as if to hug the world, with awe. It was that beautiful.
The first who touches the ground loses, she heard in the back of her mind.
Jumping, her feet touched the ground, water splashing around her legs, freezing.
She opened her lips, hand outstretched towards the sky.
"WE'RE BACK BITCHES!"
And people cheered her on.
BELLAMY
Trees were huge, like actually very tall. Bellamy could barely see the top. He bent down to touch the ground, and wetness met his fingertips – cold and refreshing like nothing else. The damp soil beneath his hand made him gasp quietly.
As the cheers around him kept going on and on, he turned around to look at the sea – it was definitely the sea he thought.
Water seemed to go on forever, he marveled, and it moved cyclically towards the shore in waves, as if to welcome them.
A hand on his shoulder shook him. It was Octavia. "I don't even have words," she said, breathing out in disbelief.
"Yet, you talk," Bellamy grinned. She rolled her eyes playfully and he turned again towards the see, "It's a dream."
Two girls screamed as they run past them, splashing in the water like they wanted to catch the waves.
"We should round these people up," he mused aloud, making her sister turn to look at him quizzically. "See what we should do now. Build a camp, for one."
She nodded, albeit hesitantly, "Just a bit longer." She asked, closing her eyes to breathe.
He smiled, looking around, and nodded.
He felt the sun on his face, and the sounds of the wind – the taste of salt on his tongue.
"Yes, a bit longer."
Bellamy could tell at least an hour passed before the rude, blonde girl from before marched towards him like a queen on a war path.
He had to admit she kinda looked the part, a crown of blonde tresses the only one she needed.
"We have to round these people up," she quipped, stopping just before him. She had startling blue eyes, he noticed.
Bellamy crossed his arms on his chest and stood as tall as he could, a trick to look at her from upside down.
"Who are you again?"
She didn't look nearly as impressed as he wished, watching him with condescendence, "Who are you?" She shook her head, "We have no time for all this posturing. I don't know what happened but I'm fairly certain they dropped us on the wrong mountain – or place." She took a breath, raising her hands to show him a map, "I have no idea where we are."
Bellamy took a moment to think, "Show me."
She did.
Eight thousand years ago, humanity fled extinction in the only way they knew – leaving behind the planet they had destroyed in a senseless war. What remained of the human race had recorded and stored every piece of information they could about their planet in libraries and archives opened to a selected part of the public.
Bellamy didn't know much about what Earth had been before the war – didn't know anything about it now.
Back then, the world was composed by continents, six of them: Asia, Africa, America (North and South), Antarctica, Europe, and Oceania. At the time of the bombings only twelve countries had Exodus ships in the sky – Australia, Canada, France, Japan, United Kingdom, Uganda, Brazil, China, India, Russia, United States and Venezuela.
Talking about countries at the time was like talking about stations now, Bellamy supposed. Only their borders were seas and mountains and deserts, whereas the Ark was made of titanium, aluminum, and carbon.
When docking procedures started in 2044, the twelve stations thought captivity in space to be the best – only – option.
Two hundred years and then humankind could go home.
But then the Ark found Hythylodium, the greatest source of power of the fifth industrial revolution, and mankind began to mine it and use it to sustain water and air systems – after that Agro Station began to produce natural soil and then it was flowers which turned to plants, which turned to fruits.
And so, thousands of years passed.
The ground was a dream to everyone, a myth – no one ever thought they could ever walk it again. Studies said the planet had been completely survivable for at least three thousand years, the atmosphere had changed but not drastically – theoretically, the arkers could live on the ground any day.
Bellamy had no idea why a hundred juvenile offenders would be sent down to test out this theory, but he intended to make the most out of it and did whatever was necessary to get on the dropship when he found out about it.
Reuniting with his sister was the only thing that mattered.
Now, they just had to survive.
"We should be here," said Clarke, pointing a green spot on the map, surrounded by different shades of brown. A valley, at the foot of a mountain. "But, did you notice? There is no 'green' here. We should have landed on a plain, or a valley, near a mountain – but we didn't."
Bellamy nodded, looking around, "I was pants at Earth Skills, but we are most definitely on some kind of island or peninsula overlooking the sea." He clenched his jaw, "And I see no damn valley."
The girl was calm, but tense. "We landed somewhere else – my guess is the atmosphere was powerful enough to change our course." She shook her head, "It doesn't matter now. If we don't drink or eat in the next twelve hours, we'll kneel over from exhaustion and then we'll starve." She said abruptly
Despite the mess they suddenly were in, Bellamy could feel the corner of his mouth rise in a grin, "You are a ray of sunshine, aren't you?"
For a moment she looked like she would bristle, but then she relaxed, almost smiled, "More like realist."
He hummed, somewhat amused, then he blinked at the thin, stony soil beneath his feet and the dark forest before them. "That map was made thousands of years ago, it's not much of a stretch to think that time changed the conformation of this area."
Blue eyes froze him. "I'd rather think we were dropped on the wrong place. Without Mount Wheater we're not equipped to survive, most of us don't even know how to start a fire."
Bellamy knew she was right. "That is a matter for later." He decided. "Now we have to find a place to set up a camp," he tapped the ground with his foot, "this won't do."
Her lips settled into a thin line, "If there's a forest, there is a chance there may be a river or a lake somewhere nearby."
Bellamy nodded, "Okay then, we're marching as soon as I get these people to gather around," he took a split second to make a decision, "I'll need your help with that."
She took a breath, turning around to do just that, but he stopped her. "I'm also gonna need your name."
She looked at him, "Clarke. Griffin."
Bellamy was taken aback, because while he might not know her, he knew there was a Griffin on the Council – the most respected doctor on the Ark. Her mother or grandmother almost certainly. And yet she had also been sent to the ground to die.
If he had not needed her he probably would have mocked her. Being a privileged didn't make a difference when it came to death.
He shrugged instead, "Let's make it quick. I have no idea when it might go dark."