Edited: 10/2015
Summary: Down on the ground, the 100 are their own worst enemy. But it seems as if they keep forgetting it. (Diverges after "Day Trip")
Trigger warning: This story deals with mature themes such as aggressive violence, sexual assault, and rape.
Blanket Disclaimer: I don't own it, and I make no profit.
The Person (I should have been)
Chapter One
"But she's wrong about hell. You don't have to wait until you're dead to get there."
Susan Beth Pfeffer, Life as We Knew It
Fog enveloping the camp creates blue shadows out of the tents and muffles laughter to whispers carried by water droplets. People cluster around flickering fires and none of the guards carry guns today—not when it would be too easy to mistake a friend for foe, or a tree for that matter. Clarke stands by Donna, a girl of fourteen years old who was arrested for illegal trading. Her sobs are punctuated by gasps for air and whimpers, but the cold interior of the drop ship echoes her despair. Clarke focuses on the slab of metal where Finn lay dying a week ago. Donna's skinny legs dangle over the edge and her red hair is braided to the side.
Clarke thinks Octavia would know how to comfort this child. How to wrap her in a hug or murmur comforting words, but not Clarke. She could only rest her hand on Donna's knee and bow her head, allowing the once-smuggler to weep in the only place one could find privacy in a world of cloth walls.
Someone enters the drop ship, but apologizes and back out before Clarke can tell them to leave. It takes a few more sniffles and choking sobs before Donna is calm enough to drink the water offered.
"Have you noticed any other changes?" Clarke prompts. "Although you've missed your period, there are other explanations. Not getting the proper nutrients or being under a lot of stress can cause a woman to skip a month."
Donna's eyes look down at the muddy floor. Clarke wonders if maybe she should try to keep the drop ship cleaner, but with dozens of people going through each day, it seems ridiculous to try. Donna hunches and mumbles. Frowning, Clarke has her repeat what she said.
"My breasts have been really sore. I mean, I know they ain't much, but they hurt. Same with my back." Donna blushes.
Clarke nods, unperturbed. "Okay, anything else?"
"Just been tired a lot, is all."
The caress of the rain fills the drop ship. It sounds like two hands rubbing together to keep warm. Clarke looks towards the plastic covering the door. No-one has come in yet, and she doubts their privacy will last much longer.
"Hey, why don't we go up to the top. No-one will bother us there, okay?" she says. Donna nods and slips off the table. She is knobby knees and long arms and too young—like Charlotte or any of the 100. "I'll meet you up there; don't touch the guns, okay?" Clarke says. She watches the girl climb up the ladder before turning to find Bellamy.
He's waiting right outside the drop ship, water clinging to his eye lashes and his hair frizzing from the humidity. His arms are crossed and he stares down a collection of people, keeping them from entering. A few stare back, but most just shuffle closer to another or go find a tent with waterproof material to share. Bellamy sees Clarke and steps to the side.
"Alright, go ahead," he says to the crowd. They grumble and retreat inside the drop ship, but no one challenges him. The fog has lightened enough that standing at the entrance, Clarke can see the expanse of camp. The wall juts at irregular areas from poor design. She doesn't say anything to Bellamy as people trickle in. One person stops to ask if she could check on him later because he's been feeling dizzy. She smiles and nods and gets the guy to leave.
"We have a problem," Clarke says, pulling her hair off her neck and twisting it into a bun.
"You're gunna have to be more specific than that because we've got several problems," Bellamy scoffs and steps down from the ramp. Clarke follows. The slip-resistant strips prevent her from sliding the last few feet to the mucky ground.
Bellamy leads them to the side of the drop ship. Mud squishes over the sides of his soles and clotting along the ridges of his damp boots.
Clarke rubs at her eyes and whispers, "That girl I was seeing, she might be pregnant and—"
"So?" He stands facing her. His shoulders tense up and he lowers his head, looking prepared to charge. "That's a good thing, princess."
Clarke doesn't—can't—speak. The mist becomes a drizzle. Her hair tickles the inside of her ear. His eyes look like the earth dug up, exposed and angry. "For real, Bellamy?" she huff and steps closer. Octavia's laughter ripples through camp. He's not 21 with a mop as his daily companion because his mother was floated and his sister was arrested. He isn't on the Ark where being second born is a crime. And Clarke isn't the counsel, here to pass judgment on a desperate mother. (That last one is easiest to believe.)
"It's not that she might be pregnant that's the problem. It's how she got pregnant." She pushes Bellamy farther from the entrance of the drop ship.
He yields, but teases, "Don't tell me you still think the stork delivers the baby."
"No, but there's a consensual and non-consensual way of getting pregnant."
Bellamy grasps Clarke's wrist, pressing her father's watch into her skin. "Are you sure?" The muscle between his thumb and index finger bulges. Thenar. The name of the muscle group comes unbidden to her mind.
"Do you know who the real criminals are here—the dangerous ones?" she asks instead.
He shakes his head and lets go. "Some I do know from being a cadet, but after I got demoted…I didn't have access to that type of information." He presses his knuckles onto the side of the drop ship. Skin against steel. The rain coalesces into fat droplets that roll down from the canopy tinged yellow with fall.
"Okay." Clarke's eyes drift to the tents. Some had light, casting shadows of the occupants on the walls. Other are black, sleeping masses.
"I'll start with Murphy's old crew," Bellamy says, his voice rising out of the murky twilight like the howling of an owl.
"Let me know when you do." Clarke thinks about the grounder they tortured and knows they won't repeat the same mistake. Then, she thinks about Wells and how willing he was to help people who hated him. Charlotte and how she just wanted to hold Clarke's hand. She thinks about Murphy's sneer and grinds her teeth. "We do this together."
"Together," Bellamy agrees. It is no longer raining.
Clarke rips off the head set and throws it on the table. She squeezes her hands together and swallows all the bitter, hard words she choked on during her discussion about herbal birth control with her mother. She wanted to talk to Jackson, her mother's assistant. He would have sputtered and blushed and pushed around papers, but Clarke would have sat there, a tight smile on her lips as she waited for him to collect himself. But no, she got her mother:
"Dr. Griffin, can you please send information on herbal contraceptives."
"Clarke, have you—are you—I'm here if you need to talk—"
"Dr. Griffin, several couples are interested in copulating, but understand the ramifications of such actions without proper planning."
"Oh right, but…are you? I mean, we never really got around to talking about it, but we can now if—"
"Mom, can you tell me what I need to know or not?"
"Um, yes, give me a moment…are you sure you don't want to talk about this?"
"Mom."
From there, it was professional and didn't broach upon the subject of Clarke's sex life. She wrote everything her mother said as well as detailed descriptions of the plants and where they are commonly found. Her mother warned that STDs were eradicated on the Ark, but it was still possible the delinquents could develop these diseases. Just one other thing the 100 to think about while they scramble for the next day's meal.
At the end of the call, the screen froze, showing Clarke a still of her mother. High cheek bones; thin lips; bags under her eyes. And then she remembers her father saying, "You look like her." Clarke hangs up before any fumbling attempts at saying goodbye can happen.
Static flicks across the empty screen. Watching the erratic spasms of radio waves settles Clarke's anger. She brushes quivering tears from her eye lashes and steps out from the curtain separating the radio from the rest of the drop ship. It provides the illusion of privacy for when someone wants to talk to their parents, but for Clarke it sometimes seems as if all privacy is an illusion here at camp. And yet, I had no idea a girl was being sexually abused, she thinks.
A brisk wind weaves through camp, fluttering tent flaps and fallen leaves alike. Most parts of the forest are still green, but she suspects those would never change. Other parts flood the tree tops with red and orange and gold. Sometimes a blush of pink. Between pages of her notebooks and journals, she stashes away her favorite leaves, hoping to preserve them for a time when she might try to mimic their colors and curves and veins.
She finds Jasper and Monty with others who are familiar with horticulture sorting through nuts, berries, and plants. They make sure nothing toxic slips into their food supplies again (they were lucky the nuts only caused hallucinations). She steps between them. They look up and smile at her. It's almost as if they're smiling at each other through her.
"I need your help with something," she says, peeling away brown casing at the base of some pine needles.
"Shoot!" Monty mimics a pistol fire with his hand. Mocking shock eases onto Jasper's face.
Their playfulness brushes around Clarke. She wants to smile. She can't. "Are you familiar with either lithosperumum or arisaema triphyllum?" Clarke stops to zip her jacket up. (Autumn or fall, it doesn't matter what you call it because it's still the season before ice and snow and frostbite. Winter is coming, Bellamy and she say whenever they go through their meager supplies.)
"Yeah." Jasper turns his back to the table and leans towards her. "I thought you and Finn weren't rolling together anymore?"
She scoffs and throws a pine cone at him. "Why does everyone think it's for me?" She settles down. "So do you know what it is and what it's for, then?"
Monty nods, he rolls a walnut between his hands. They're stained black from peeling back the thick skin to reach the shell. "Yeah, we used to grow it along with cannabis for kids who couldn't get birth control."
"I thought it was automatically added to our meal pill," Clarke says. She rubs away sap on her fingers.
"Well, maybe in your sector of the Ark, but not in others. Sex was a luxury," Jasper sighs and then blushes, hair falling across his eyes. "I mean," he stutters and shuffles broken nut shells around the table. "Adding birth control to pills was expensive. It took up finite resources that ended up going to a privileged sector of the Ark. Just another class division."
He readjusts his goggles, realizes mid-way his implications, and rushes out, "But not that it's your fault or something, Clarke. Cause you know, just product of the environment. You didn't rig the system—" He squeezes his mouth shut. Clarke wonders how many ways he could apologize without saying sorry. Jasper groans and ends by saying, "But we don't have to worry about that type of stuff here."
Clarke scoffs, "I don't think we can ever stop worrying about it."
"Sex?" Monty leans against the table, weighing a walnut and blueberry in each hand.
"Class division?" Jasper adds.
"Babies," she clarifies, a weak smile on her face.
"Oh, yeah," the guys acknowledge, their facial expressions mirroring each other.
"Well, it shouldn't be a big deal. Both plants are pretty common." Monty throws the berry in the air and catches it in his mouth. His teeth have splotches on them the next time he smiles. "You're sure gunna boost your approval ratings with this idea!"
Jasper looks at Clarke's hands. They shake. "What else do you need?" he asks. He's familiar with the twitches of anxiety.
She glances down the rest of the table. Jordan laughs at something Evy said. They are the youngest delinquents, both eleven and accomplices in crime. They smuggled moonshine until they refused to deliver to a man on Phoenix who kept skipping payment—that was their crime, crossing the wrong person who had the right amount of pull. "Daucus carota or Polygonum. There were others, but I don't think they're native to the area we've landed in," she says.
"Queen Anne's Lace?" Monty leans into Clarke's line of sight. He crosses his arms. "Yeah, we know that one pretty well, too." Jasper stares at the ground. "Most awkward conversation I ever had with mom," he says, trying to lighten the mood. He avoids serious like he avoid grounders.
"You want us to keep it on the DL, boss?" Jasper asks, he focuses back on the black walnuts, peeling back their green skin.
"Yeah." Clarke nods. "I don't want people just taking it without my supervision. I don't know the complications that could arise.. A plant or two should be okay." She sighs, rubbing a pine needle between her fingers. If she ever had to explain to someone what life smelled like, she'd say the spice of pine cones and needles. "The other stuff is fine, though. That I need as much as possible or a way for us to grow it on our own," she says. Her voice rises to its normal level. She's stunned to realize her body knew to drop her speaking tone without a conscious thought.
Monty says, "You're the doctor—and a woman. We trust you."
Jasper agrees, his lopsided, twitching grin filling his face. "Let us know if we can help with anything else."
She grabs a handful of pine needles to put in her pillow because she needs to remember what life smells like. "Thanks guys," she says.
"Hey Clarke!" Monty jogs the steps between them. Jasper watches. "Look," he pushes his hands deep into his pockets. She can see the bulge of his fists. He maintains eye contact as he says, "The girl, who the Queen Anne's Lace is for…look, if she needs anything, let her know she can come to me, too. Like I said, my mom went through it and it was a hard process for her and I don't think I can stand knowing someone else is going through the same thing she went through."
Clarke licks her lips. "Yeah, Monty, of course."
He nods his head a few times and heaves out, "Well, see you around."
"Bye."
Jasper claps Monty on the back when he returns to the sorting table. They smile and keep working. Clarke goes back to the drop ship to eat lunch with Bellamy and to meet with Octavia on the census she started. To her, Donna's visit to Clarke and her new responsibility of gathering training experience and criminal history from each delinquent are isolated events. Clarke wishes they were.
They split a pawpaw between them. Bellamy slices it with his hatchet, juice dribbling down the blade. Octavia take her time picking out the slick, brown seeds. When Monroe and her scouts first came upon the cluster of pawpaw trees, with their large red flowers blooming and the fetid smell of rotting meat, she averted the area thinking it was some grounder kill zone. It wasn't until Richard, a guy who hacked his way into the Ark's point system instead of studying his agriculture books, overheard Monroe talking about it a week later and realized what she found.
Clarke uses her teeth to pull the meat away from the browning skin. They eat with their eyes down, savoring the sweetness as much as the silence. Boxes of ammunition garnered from the bunker fill most of the top floor of the drop ship now. Raven adds a new box every time she completes a dud-check. (More boxes are in her tent than here.) And out of the twenty-four guns stored in oil, only four are checked out. The guards on rotation sign their names on the wall with charcoal from the fire.
Octavia wipes her fingers on her pants and passes a sheet of paper to Clarke. There's 102 names. Fourteen are crossed off. The two newest graves were from this past week. Thomas fell into a grounder pit, impaled in one too many places for saving. Bellamy climbed down and held the boy's hand as fluid filled his lungs and he choked on his blood. Jose broke his wrist slipping on wet rocks. He staggered back to camp, his ulnar bone poking out. Clarke took Bellamy's hatchet, cut it off, and cauterized it. Jose died with Clarke's fingers pressed against his neck, feeling his pulse fade.
"Who'd you have write it?" Bellamy asks, gesturing to the paper.
Octavia doesn't look up from her slice of fruit. "Philip. He's the kid who tried to steal the Tree on the Ark."
Clarke pauses. "Why didn't you write it?" The letters are neat and in pen so it won't smudge.
"I don't know how to. I didn't go to classes. Remember? Lived under the floorboards. Arrested for being born."
Bellamy rips the skin of the pawpaw into a pile at his feet. He sits on a chair pried from the second floor. His forearms press into his knees; his head bowed.
Clarke clears her throat and looks back at the list. Her eyes ache so she asks instead, "Anyone suspicious?"
"We need to watch out for Harry, Fran, Lucus, and Erin. They were the ones who backed Murphy up. They were arrested for violent crimes, too. I know Quinn tends to be more handsy than a lot of the girl's appreciate," Bellamy says. He rubs at the stubble along his jaw. He tries to shave as often as possible because his beard comes in patchy, if at all. That's what he told Clarke when she found him scratching a knife along his neck. (She thought he was finishing what Dax set out to do, but didn't need to tell him because he saw it in the way she didn't look way from the knife until he was done shaving, and every time after that.)
"Quinn is just a flirt," Octavia defends, leaning back on the carpet of panther fur. Her hair blends into the shimmering black. Clarke can tell where the bullets Wells fired to killed the animal singed through.
Bellamy scoffs, his mouth twists into a sneer. Teeth barred and ready to fight. Clarke interrupts, "Thanks for this, Octavia. It'll be really helpful to make sure people are working in area they're most suited for." She isn't looking at the list; she stares at Bellamy. He stares back.
Octavia mumbles, "Whatever," and leaves. The hatch slams down the same moment Bellamy flips the chair he sat on. He paces a few times before settling and facing the wall with the names of the guards with guns. One of the name is Erin's, a buddy of Murphy's.
Clarke watches his back expand because he loves his sister too much to let it all out so he sucks it in, instead. She stands and eases the hatchet away from his stiff hands. He complies, but doesn't turn around. Clarke grips the hatchet. It's cold and deadly. It embodies everything he and she strive to be here on Earth. (But neither of them are cold. They feel too much. Passion and drive is all they have to get them through the nightmares and up the next morning.)
"Quinn was arrested for raping a girl." His voice rasps like a handsaw through wood. "And she think he's just a flirt."
She presses her hand into the space between his shoulder blades. His heart beats travel to her finger tips. So much power. "She wouldn't be the first girl to read a guy wrong." She feels his shuddering breaths and smells the stench of too many days without a bath. Chemically, sweat and tears are composed of different molecules, but their production can be due to the same stimulant. Clarke closes her eyes and sees Charlotte standing at the cliff's edge. She only wanted to hold my hand.
Author: Just to clarify, the event that have happened in "Unity Day" have not occurred. I have my own plans for grounder interaction.
Yes, this is Bellarke, but more of a slow burn. (But that's how we all like it, isn't it?)
Thank you for reading. I would love to know what you think!