Disclaimer: I do not have any claim to the characters or plot used in this story.
A/N: This is my take on how Clarke might had worked on handling the utter silence of the Earth after Praimfaya. R&R please!
Silence
When they had first gotten to the ground, Clarke had found the sudden quietness of the night frightening. Up in the Ark, there was always a constant thrum of air scrubbers and electric lights going. On the ground, there was just a different kind of silence. There was always the rustling of leaves and cracking of tree limbs and the soft sound of flowing water somewhere in the distance. This new kind of silence made her feel alone in a world infinitely larger than the one she was born in. In time she learned to enjoy those moments of silence, because usually they were interrupted by some sort of emergency.
Now, after the end of the world, again, there was another kind of silence. This wasn't just the silence that came from a lack of human activity. This wasn't the calm before the storm kind of silence. This was the silence that you felt down to your core in the aftermath of death. She'd felt tastes of it before, after closing the dropship door and later in Mount Weather. But the first time she heard that silence after Praimfaya, it felt like it was rooting down into her soul.
It was so silence and empty that she felt like the blood had been drained from her veins and the air from her lungs. She was forced to her knees as she was struck full force by how much death had happened. This wasn't the aftermath of war. This wasn't the remains of a massacre. This was the blank, dead planet that had been wiped clean by a power far greater than anything on it.
She found herself gasping for breath and fighting back the blackness that tried to settle over her vision. This was a kind of existential panic far beyond what she had ever felt. It felt like the Earth itself was trying to consume her. Like it wanted her to pay the same price that the rest of life on Earth had succumbed to.
An image of Bellamy and the others in the ring, and everyone down in the bunker flashed in her mind. She grasped at that thought like an anchor and used it to pull herself back from the pit. All life was not gone. She HAD to believe that Bellamy was still alive. That her mother was still alive. Because if they hadn't made it, that meant that humanity was dead and that everything she had done to preserve it meant nothing. And even here, in the aftermath of the apocalypse, Clarke couldn't accept that all of it was for nothing. Even after she had managed to pull herself from the depths, she could feel the silence tugging at her. She could feel it threatening to pull her back down.
"I am alive." She had meant to say it just to affirm that fact to herself, but in the emptiness, her voice echoed and carried. Just for a moment, the silence was stopped. She liked that. So, she found herself repeating it. She yelled it as loud as she could. Because even if the world had gone silent. That didn't mean that she had. She still had a voice and a lot to say, so even if no one ever listened, she would keep talking. She would keep humming and singing and stomping around. Because that giant, silent world needed reminding that it wasn't over yet.
That's why she had kept up using the radio every day, even once it became clear that they couldn't call back. Even when she could feel the darkness tugging at her, telling her that no one was answering because they were dead. She kept radioing every day because it reminded her that the silence hadn't won. As long as she could break the silence, she could hope. And as long as she could hope, she would choose to believe that the silence would end with the dangerous radiation levels.
Even when the radiation levels became habitable by normal people, Clarke still talked into the radio, because it was habit. And because she needed that time to force herself to continuing hoping that a day would come that she would see him…them again. She kept using the radio because that part deep inside of her that raged at the silence was still fighting, and she knew it would keep fighting until they were home.