Chapter Two: Worry
When Cliona was two months shy of nine years old, she met a boy named Jonathan.
It was late, past her curfew for sure, but her father hadn't come home yet and she had become concerned. So, like any other self-assured eight year old who thought she could take on the world and win, she'd gone to search for him and had quite predictably gotten herself lost. Even if she did live on the Ark her entire life thus far, she'd always had someone with her when she left her room; be it her father, or Wells, or Clarke, or Nathan, or even her grandmother on the rare occasion her father allowed it. She never needed to know where she was going. They knew for her. She simply followed, and kept up a steady stream of chatter about everything that meant absolutely nothing.
Somehow, someway, she ended up wandering all the way from the Alpha Station to the Factory Station, near the airlocks. It was strangely empty within the Station's halls, she noticed, comparing it to the after-shift hubbub that usually went on in her own station before everyone settled down for bed. Clio wondered why it was so quiet: did the Factory Station just not have this tradition? It seemed unusual, since Argo and Mecha Stations were like hers too.
Feeling the unfamiliar trickles of unease drip down her spine and clog her throat, Clio paused. Around the corner, she could hear her father, and while she wished very desperately that she could run to him, she could also hear the voice of someone else she didn't recognize, and it was enough to make her think twice.
"Please, my son- you don't understand!" the man was pleading. Clio very silently crept closer to where the hall turned to the right, but was careful to remain out of sight.
"Mr. Murphy, you committed a crime, and you know the punishment." Chancellor Jaha, she identified. She'd heard him enough when playing chess against Wells and he'd sit beside them both, offering tips.
"My son is sick, he needs medicine!"
"Which you must pay for, not steal. Close the door." That was her father, his normal soothing, soft timbre sounding hard.
"Wait-" an unmistakable final whoosh, and 'Mr. Murphy' was cut off. Clio knew exactly what was happening, but she never knew her father was involved.
"Open the airlock." he ordered. There was the click of a button, and then... Nothing. For a whole minute, Clio counted, and no one said a word, shuffled their feet, or sighed, or coughed. Just absolute silence. And then Chancellor Jaha heaved a deep breath.
"Marcus, I do believe you might want to escort your daughter back to your quarters."
She jumped, and cringed, wondering how he knew she was there, while her father stuttered with shock. "Cliona?"
Head bowed, she turned the corner very slowly, knowing she was in some deep trouble for wandering around without a chaperone, and then interrupting a Floating. "Daddy, I'm sorry. It's just- you weren't home yet, and usually you are before I go to bed, and even if you aren't you come by to check on me and tuck me in before you have to leave again, and... I just got worried." She finished lamely, feeling about five pairs of eyes on her at once. Looking up, she sought out only her father's warm brown irises. Would he be mad at her? Disappointed?
The only thing he did was sigh (he seemed to be doing that a lot lately, whenever she asked a lot of questions), and turn to Jaha. "Excuse us, Chancellor." The Chancellor excused him with an understanding, sympathetic nod, and then he was walking towards her with his hand outstretched, inviting her to take it. She did so without qualm.
"Who was that man?" she asked quietly, when they left behind the Chancellor and his guards. "Is his son really sick? Shouldn't we do something? I want to help." Her father was shaking, holding tightly on to her hand and it was beginning to hurt. "Daddy? Are you okay?"
He made a strange sort of gasping sound, stopped, crouched, and yanked her around to face him. "Clio, how much did you see?" She opened her mouth but nothing came out; he was frightening her, she didn't mean to make him angry when she went to look for him, she was just worried. His grip around her upper arms contracted even further. "Cliona, how much?"
"Nothing!" she sniffled. "I didn't see anything! I'm sorry I made you mad, I didn't mean to!"
And then his grip was gone and she was enveloped in his arms, her face to his chest. "Oh, sweetheart, I'm not mad. You only... Scared me. I'm sorry." Scared? Her daddy? Impossible, her daddy wasn't scared of anything, not even the monsters under her bed.
"Was Mr. Murphy... banished?" she asked suddenly with a surprising amount of perception, and used the term he himself had used when she was younger. "Like mom?"
He started, gently pushing her away to meet her gaze. She was steady, the only tears leftover from when he'd unintentionally treated her roughly in his panic, and he thought she deserved to know. "Yes."
She bit her lip, and nodded. "And he said he had a son. Do you know him? He's sick, we have to help."
He tried to chuckle but it caught in his throat. "His name is Jonathan." He watched her posture straighten and her expression brighten, no doubt having recognized the name and connected it to a boy she shared a class with. "But I don't think he or his mother would be too happy to see us helping. They're grieving, Clio, do you understand?"
"I understand."
But she wasn't going to listen. From the day she was born he'd always taught her to do the right thing, regardless of the consequences. He may not have taught her consciously, but she'd watched him as she grew up. She learned from his examples.
The next day, she couldn't find Jonathan in class. Rather than finding it discouraging, she approached her history teacher, Mr. Howard, and rather sweetly requested directions to the quarters he and his mother still shared, so that she could give him his homework, of course. None the wiser, Mr. Howard acquiesced, and she told Clark and Wells, whom she was supposed to walk home with that day, that she was given a very important errand from their teacher. She'd catch up to them later.
None of it was a lie: Clio never lied, never saw the point. It was just her own personal code of ethics, the standard which she held herself too. Her father didn't lie either, and he was her idol. She wanted to be just like him when she grew up: honorable, brave, and just.
The directions her teacher had written on a slip of paper and given her were simple enough to follow, and she found the Murphy's quarters easily. For a moment, she could only grin with pride at herself for doing this all on her own. Maybe now she wouldn't have to follow anyone anymore. She could do it herself.
Amping up her smile to its brightest, she knocked on the metal door. A moment passed, and then it was sliding open, a pale woman looking a little worse for wear now standing in front of her. She stared down at her with disgust, and Clio's smile dimmed.
"Hi, Mrs. Murphy!" she greeted, like nothing was even wrong, like she wasn't currently being glared at like she was a piece of trash on the bottom of her shoe. "I came to give, um, Jonathan his homework for today."
Mrs. Murphy said absolutely nothing, continuing her leering while Clio fought the urge to twitch and shift her feet uncomfortably. A fight she promptly lost when Mrs. Murphy leaned down and stuck her face in Clio's personal space. "He's sick," she spat. "I'd hate for Kane's spawn to catch it too."
Clio blinked, rather unsurprised but still hurt by her reaction. She'd gotten this kind of treatment before, and she'd long since grown used to it. "Oh, that's okay ma'am. I don't get sick. Well, not very easily at least."
Mrs. Murphy sneered and rolled her eyes, moving out of the doorway with a muttered, "Lucky you. He's in his room. First doorway on the right," as she went to kitchen area, grabbing a dark bottle and bringing it to her lips. Clio averted her gaze, and rushed to the room Mrs. Murphy indicated before the grieving woman could change her mind.
Jonathan's room was small, much smaller than hers, a few trinkets and toys scattered here and there. Clio caught sight of some kind of plastic dinosaur before the lump on his bed coughed and shifted.
"Hi, Jonathan!" The lump groaned, and she cringed, lowering her voice to a loud whisper as she introduced herself. "Sorry. I'm Clio. We have history together? I just came by to drop off the homework."
"Go away, I'm dying."
A pause. This was not what Clio was expecting.
"Uh...?"
"Didn't you hear me? I said, go away."
She frowned, losing patience with the gentle approach. "I heard you. I'm just not gonna listen."
A mop of brown hair and bleary, reddened blue eyes popped up and peered at her withe equal amounts of interest and frustration. "You're Clio Kane." he stated simply, voice rough and cracking with phlegm. "Your dad..."
Clio nodded solemnly, knowing where he was going with the statement. "Yeah." she answered softly. "I know. I... Saw it. Or, heard it actually. I'm sorry."
Those pools of deep blues widened before he quickly looked away from her and sat up, erupting into a fit of coughs. Acting without thinking, Clio dropped her bag and the folder of homework near the entrance of his room, and darted to his side, grabbing the glass of water on the table by his bed.
"Here," she told him and handed him the water. His hands shook slightly, weakened by sickness, so she put her palms over them to help guide the glass to his mouth and make sure he didn't spill it all over himself. After a few sips, he pulled it away with a gasp, trying to catch his breath again.
"Thanks."
Clio shrugged, taking note how he still wouldn't look at her now that he knew who she was as she set the water down back where she found it. "No problem. Um, so the homework. It's pretty easy. We're still going over the pilgrims, for like, the third day in a row. I mean, don't get me wrong, they're interesting, I guess, but Mr. Howard keeps going over the same thing he did the day before and it's like we're not getting anywhere, well you know how he is. Anyway, it's really just a reading assignment, and then answering four or five questions at the end of the chapter, but I looked at them earlier and it seems like the answers will end up being pretty long-"
"You talk a lot."
Clio broke off with a grunt, though unable to help the grin creeping onto her face, because she'd finally gotten him to look at her again. Even if he was apparently overwhelmed and becoming a little green around the gills. Her eyes narrowed.
"Are you gonna barf?"
"No."
He did. Clio smoothed his hair back and rubbed the narrow space between his shoulder blades throughout his heaving and hacking. Jonathan was incredibly sick, she knew that now, and it caused her some anxiety. His father had stolen medicine for him, didn't he? That's why he'd been banished- floated, she heard the rumors all day. So, why wasn't it working?
"Jonathan," she started cautiously after he had calmed somewhat and began flipping through the folder she brought. "Do you... Do you still have the medicine your father st- um got for you?" His eyes flashed with warning, but he nodded. "Have you been taking it?"
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"A week."
That wasn't right at all, he should have been getting better by now. Flu medication only took a couple days to kick in, Dr. Griffin had told her that years ago, the first and last time she'd gotten a cold. Was the medication no good? "Where is it?"
He gave her a confused glance, but pointed to his dresser. "Over there. Why?"
Clio didn't answer as she rose from her spot at the foot of his bed, picking up the white plastic bottle when she reached the dresser. She instantly identified it as the allergy medication people over on the Argo Station usually took when some of the plants began to bloom. Her grandmother had a bottle just like it in her medicine cabinet.
It suddenly made sense; he wasn't getting better because it was the wrong kind of medicine. The only thing the allergy meds would do would make him sleepy, but it wouldn't address the infection growing in his lungs. Her eyes clenched shut as she gripped the bottle tight. His father had died for nothing.
She had to make it right. She swore she would.
That night was the first night Clio had ever stolen something. She took the allergy pills with her when she left his quarters over an hour later, once they'd finished doing their homework together. He'd knocked out almost as soon as she closed the textbook, so he never saw her pocket it.
Her father never noticed anything when he tucked her in at bedtime. He never heard her slip out hours later, around one in the morning. No one saw her making her way to Ark Medical and put the white plastic bottle of allergy pills back where they were supposed to be and take a similar looking bottle meant for Jonathan's illness. Because no one paid attention to a little slip of a girl barely nine years old.
The following day, Clio paid Jonathan a visit just as she did before. He'd gotten worse, it seemed, a fever ravaging his body and Clio's compassion for the boy only slightly older than herself skyrocketed. "Jonathan, you need to sit up. Please," she pleaded, unscrewing the cap on the bottle of new medication she brought with her.
Jonathan whined and turned over to look at her and then the pills in her palm. "What's the point?" he asked despondently, verging on tears. "They don't even work."
Frustrated, she flicked his ear. "These aren't the same pills," she admitted.
This caught his attention. "What? What about the other ones? What did you do?"
"Returned them and got these. Now take them, Jonathan, before you get any sicker."
Jonathan did, and asked no more questions, which surprised her. However, before she left later on, he called out to her. "Clio?"
Pushing her hair behind her ear, she slung her bag on her shoulder and glanced at him, inwardly smiling at how awkward he sounded saying her given name. "Yeah?"
"No one calls me Jonathan, you know. Not even my mom or da-... My mom."
"What do I call you then?" she queried. He shrugged. "Murphy? That sounds impersonal though. Not very friendly."
"Who says we're friends?" he snarked. Clio only laughed.
"Says me. What about Johnny?"
He shook his head. His mom called him Johnny, but he didn't think he liked that much anymore. "John." he said. "Just John."
She nodded. "Well, then. See ya tomorrow, John."
Every day, she came by, and witnessed him steadily become healthier, until he was ready to attend class once more. They never spoke to each other again, and she didn't know why, didn't try to change it, but she still considered him her friend.
That self-assigned mission may have been her first, but it certainly wasn't her last. She never stole for herself, that was her only rule, and she always made sure she remained anonymous to those she stole for. On the day that marked five years of a successful career as the Ark's very own Robin Hood, Clio was caught, arrested, and brought before her father in the Council Room.
Fourteen years old, and she was a career criminal. She had to admit, it was kind of impressive. Her father and the rest of the Council obviously didn't think so, since they sent her to the Skybox.
Where she would remain until the day she turned eighteen.
A/N: Yay for more backstory! So, I know I said that the first three chapters would be short, but I got like super carried away with this one. And based on how chapter three is going currently, the same thing is happening. I don't even regret a thing.
There'll be maybe one more chapter until it catches up with canon, and then things will start really rolling hopefully, so stayed tuned! Thanks for the favorites/alerts and reviews! Don't forget to leave more!
-Roe
