center"One lives for the lives worth dying for."
- Skyrim/center
centerXXX/center
Clarke opened the door to her mailbox and sighed heavily, she had a feeling this day would come- the day the draft letters were sent out.
In Polis, the draft was simple; anyone between the age of sixteen and fifty were to go off to fight a hopeless war that no one had seen close to an end in over a century. The letters warned you of your last night as a civilian and left you with a foreboding of the trials beginning the following morning.
Clarke sighed, shutting her mailbox and taking the stairs two at a time to get to her apartment on the third floor. Raven had once pointed out that if you were to jump off of Clarke's balcony, it was high enough to leave you with severe injuries, but not high enough to kill you. Clarke thought of that now as she entered her apartment and tossed her bags onto her couch.
She placed the draft notice on her counter and uncapped the top off of a beer:
iMs. Clarke Griffin is to be called to war the twentieth of June to be placed beneath the trials of Alexandra Woods./i
There was a banging on the front door that pulled Clarke from her stupor. She sighed; it could only be one of two people. "Come in!" She called out, leaning back against her counter and took a long sip from her bottle.
"You got one too?" Raven asked solemnly as she shut the door behind her.
Clarke nodded, staring down at the letter until the words began to blur and instead of her name, it read Jake Griffin.
"Who did you get as a commander?"
"Woods." Clarke answered.
Raven nodded, sitting down on a stool at the island Clarke stood in front of. "She's good, she's new but she's been trained by her father her whole life. She took his place when he stepped down."
Clarke listened, nodding her head once more as she took another swig of her beer.
Raven eyed her warily before standing, "Come on, let's get out of here."
"What do you mean? Raven, we'll get shot if we try to outrun the draft." Clarke sounded worried, probably because that's exactly what happened to her father.
Raven fought the urge to roll her eyes; she would never be that insensitive and senseless. "I meant let's go to a bar. No use spending your last night as a free woman holed up in here. It's depressing, and I won't allow it."
Clarke smiled briefly before the small crack slipped from her face. "I need to be at the trials tomorrow without a massive hangover."
Raven groaned, "Where's party girl Griffin that I used to know and love?"
Clarke shrugged, "Dead in the ground beside her father."
Raven nodded, "Fair enough, but you're not pulling the pity card tonight." She told Clarke to finish off her beer before continuing her mini speech. "Come on, you deserve to get trashed and to fuck a stranger before heading off to war and most likely dying."
Clarke rolled her eyes, "This is not a movie, Reyes."
"And you're not the director of this shindig, Griffin. I am, now lets go."
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"Wick, we need alcohol!" Raven announced on her entrance into the dimly lit bar.
Clarke watched her friend walk over to the bar and lean over it to have her cleavage on full display. The blonde rolled her eyes as she followed after the mechanic and grabbed her drink from Wick's outstretched hand. "Thanks." She mumbled before hedging down to the other side of the bar where she saw Bellamy Blake watching Raven out of the corner of his eye.
"Hey there, lover boy."
Bellamy's eyes flicked down to Clarke, who was situating herself onto the stool in front of him. "Princess." He acknowledged as he wiped down the countertop in front of her and slid a paper napkin beneath her drink.
Clarke winced at the nickname from not having heard it in months. Raven had even refrained from using it. Bellamy on the other hand, felt like he had as much ownership to the name as her father did. "Still a bartender, I see." She said.
"Still a snot-nosed brat, I see." He countered with just as much ice in his tone.
There was a moment of silence as they stared each other down before they both burst out laughing, so much so in fact that the other bar dwellers turned to stare at them.
Bellamy smiled, holding out his hand for Clarke to take in hers. "It's good to see you, Clarke."
Ever since her father had passed away, Clarke hadn't really been all too social with her group of friends. "You know, it'll be a year tomorrow." Clarke said, her chin wobbling slightly at the waver in her voice.
Bellamy nodded, his smile turning sad. "I'd tell you that if he was still here, he'd be proud and all of that shit, but it wouldn't be true."
Clarke sighed, "He'd want me to finish what he started."
Bellamy hummed his agreement as he fixed a customer's drink. "Why aren't you?"
Clarke looked up at him with furrowed brows. "Why aren't I what?"
"Finishing what your dad started." Bellamy said simply, moving back over to lean in front of her. "Come on Griffin, where's your fire? It's not like you to take the punches laying down."
Clarke bit her lip, unsure as to whether or not she should tell him. Raven didn't even know her true intentions behind following the draft.
Bellamy continued, "Do you even paint anymore?"
Clarke frowned, beginning to grow irritated at how well he knew her. Even Raven hadn't noticed the lack of dried paint splatters on her hands. She decided to ignore the question and instead confide in him. "The reason I'm not fleeing Polis right now, is because that's what they want you to do. At least ten people die every year because they tried to run. Believe me, I'm not forgetting what my dad started, I'm just finishing it from a different angle."
Bellamy's eyes widened, "You think it has something to do with the camp?"
Clarke nodded, "And its leaders." She drained the rest of her drink under his suddenly worried eyes. She sighed once more, setting the glass down just left of the napkin. "Don't worry about me Bell, I'm practically dead already."
There was a reason she was going to war and not him. There were many rules when it came to the draft; you had to be physically and mentally capable to be drafted.
Wick had lost his mind years ago after spending one year as a camp technician when he nearly blew his own hand off, and Bellamy never passed the first half of the mental test to join the draft. To this day he still won't speak of what happened in that testing room. He had screamed and now suffered from paranoia of a professional degree, and that's all Clarke knew. They had changed the testing after that.
Clarke shifted on the stool, looking out around the bar. It was a Saturday evening with plenty of people milling about and either two or three glasses into their nights. There were people standing around the pool table towards the back, and each corner booth was full.
"Big turn in tonight." Clarke said, more than usual, she might add if she didn't already know why, looking back to Bellamy who was filling her glass.
"Yeah well, nothing tastes more bitter than one last drink before you die." Bellamy said, sliding her glass back over to her, on the napkin this time.
She smiled at the gesture before shaking her head, "I think it tastes pretty damn good."
"You still have taste buds?" Bellamy joked, "I figured you would have worn them down after all the alcohol you've consumed in the past month alone."
So she was a bit of a drinker. Who could blame her when she knew one of the government's biggest and darkest secrets? Just when she was about to respond, she heard a new flow of people pour into the bar, interspersing with the people already there or starting their own groups.
Bellamy sighed, flipping his towel over his shoulder before greeting the newcomers who were getting situated at the bar, readying themselves for a drink.
Clarke smiled lightly to herself. She was going to miss him.
"What're you drinking?" A feminine voice asked a moment later.
"Excuse me?" Clarke looked over at the girl who just seated herself on the stool next to her.
"What are you drinking?" The girl asked again, "I'd like to drink the same."
Clarke furrowed her brows before looking down to her drink, "Scotch, neat."
The girl nodded her head before waving Bellamy down to ask for the same. "So I'm assuming you've been drafted then?" The girl asked once Bellamy had made her drink and walked off to help another customer.
"What makes you think that?" Clarke asked, mysterious was never her style, but she wasn't particularly fond of being read into like she was. As if she was as transparent as tissue paper.
"Aren't the majority of the people in here tonight victim of it too?" The girl asked another question, apparently not too fond of answering the ones posed to her.
Clarke looked around the room again, finding newer faces that all seemed to lack genuine emotion. She understood the feeling. Turning back to the girl she shrugged, "You can only expect that. A night like tonight isn't necessarily one you want to remember."
The girl nodded, a glint in her eye that Clarke only noticed as she raised the glass to her mouth and took a sip. Hissing, the girl sat the glass back down on the napkin. "That's disgusting."
Clarke shrugged, balling up her own napkin in her lap, staring down at it to remind herself that Bellamy would be pissed that she wasn't using it for it's original purpose. Smiling at the fact that she could still piss him off before letting it waver at the fact that she wouldn't be able to for much longer.
"What's your name?" The girl asked. She sure loved questions. Clarke was beginning to think she had signed up for an interview. One last interview like in those books where the children killed each other on a televised event. She wished that was her case, instead of blindly fighting for a government she didn't believe in and to face a war she knew would never end. Not the way it was going now at least.
"Clarke."
The girl smiled at the name, never hearing it before. "Clarke." She tested it out on her own tongue, ignoring the fact that she loved the way it clicked at the end. "That's an unusual name, I don't believe I've ever met someone with it before."
Clarke shrugged, having heard similar comments before. "Well, I doubt you've met someone like me before either." Feeling a bit of a buzz she leaned in to whisper, "I've been told I'm one of a kind."
The girl grinned, holding out her hand to shake, "I'm Lexa."
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Clarke woke the next morning to a thumping in her head, but also at her door. Groaning as she rolled over, a hand immediately found its way into her hair to feel how tangled it was. Last night was a blur, but she definitely knew she had brought someone home with her.
"Clarke wake up, we're going to be late!" Raven shouted from outside the front door, banging repeatedly against it.
Clarke sighed, staring up at the ceiling of her studio apartment. Today was the day her life ended, anything worth remembering anyways.
"Are you even in there?" Raven shouted again, "You better not have ran, Princess or I swear to god!"
Clarke sighed, getting out of the bed and moving over to the door, unlocking it and pulling it open just as Raven nearly tumbled into her, ready to throw her entire weight into the door.
"Good morning to you too." Clarke said, moving back into her bedroom area, making her bed and looking around for anything the girl may have left behind. She didn't like it, but one-night stands tended to leave behind belongings if they wanted more than just one night. She knew this from experience. This bed has seen more people than that entire bar held last night in the past year.
"You need to get dressed." Raven said, following behind her. "We need to leave if we're ever going to make it to the trials."
Clarke sighed, picking up the jeans from off of her floor and pulling them on, a shirt following soon after. The girl hadn't left anything behind. Good, she remembered liking her enough, but she knew the likely hood of her coming out of this war alive and/or sane was close to none. Turning back to Raven she nodded, "Let's go."
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They made it to the compound with three minutes to spare, the steel doors closing almost instantaneously behind them.
A military suit led them into the first building where they were given a bed and a pile of uniforms and work out clothes. They had to leave any and all things from the outside world in a bin, which would be taken to a back room to be looked through before being thrown out, their clothes included.
"You think we can keep our underwear?" Raven joked as she slid them off of her hips and tossed them into the bin.
Clarke rolled her eyes, slipping into a pair mesh shorts and pulling a t-shirt over her head. "Do you think the captain keeps the prettiest ones in a drawer for herself?"
"Ew." Raven grimaced, shoving Clarke's shoulder before turning to pull on her own shirt. "You're disgusting, Griffin."
Clarke chuckled, "Yeah well, I'm surprised you didn't say it first."
Raven held a hand over her heart in mock hurt, "I'm offended you think so lowly of me."
"You mean highly."
They split ways after the military suit ordered them to their respective ranks, telling them their ten minutes were up.
Clarke made her way over to the next building, finding her rank of eight men and eight women all standing in place in four rows of four, all waiting for their commander.
Clarke held her breath as she waited, wondering how long she would need to learn how to hold it under water. It would be a part of training she wouldn't be looking forward to. Not that she was looking forward to any of it. Training was hell.
"Good morning." A feminine voice spoke from behind the group, a woman with her hair braided and adorn in only shorts and a sports bra rounding to the front where they would all see her. Tattoos woven across her biceps and back visible as she stood stock still and straight. "I'm Commander Woods, you'll be seeing a lot of me for the next 90 days."
Clarke froze at the voice. It had sounded familiar, but only until she actually came face to face with the women did she realize that her commander had been the one-night stand from the night before. iShit/i