The chapters are going to be short for now, just as the story picks up and I get the setting situated. They'll get longer, though. Pleeeease review!
Clarke couldn't escape the abyss. The hole of darkness that had been punched through her chest, occupying the space where her heart should have been. Some days, she could pretend it wasn't there. Sometimes, she became too absorbed in her drawings to feel it, but ever since Soren had crushed her only piece of solace, the abyss had opened up, wider until she was sure she'd split down the center.
It whispered things to her; it drowned her in images and memories of her father. The things they'd done. The person he was. The finger toying the air above the release button that would open the chamber to space. The finger pressing it down.
That moment would haunt her for the rest of her life, and her father with it. It was true her best friend had been the one to turn them in, but she'd had to tell him first in order for him to do so. If Wells had kept his silence, her father may still be alive. If she had kept her's, he definitely would be.
Though the guilt never released its hold on her, the anger in Clarke was beginning to lessen, replaced by a veracious desire just to know.
Know how much air the Ark had left.
Know the details of her father's conviction.
And above all, to do something for her people like he'd tried to do, rather than be packed in a steel can and shipped thousands of miles away, until it hit the Earth's atmosphere. And when Soren finally arrived a few days later to escort her to it, Clarke felt the abyss open more, until she was clutching the edge, and dangling over it.
He led her from the cell with a smirk on his face she ignored, out the door and into the something that was reminiscent of freedom but was much smaller; just a grain of hope like that pencil nub, destined to be crushed.
It had been months since she'd walked this corridor. Months since she was back beneath the circadian lights that gave a spectral, ghostly tinge over her skin. Months since she'd glanced at the people walking by her, so close their shoulders brushed.
Days had elapsed since Soren had given her the news of returning to the ground and yet, Clarke still hadn't been given a clear insight as to why Jaha was sending one hundred individuals down three years early. Concern for them flooded in like water-radiation poisioning, toxicity, the necessary survival skills these kids undoubtedly lacked.
But sending down criminals made it convenient. Not only did it reduce the use of oxygen and water and food consumption, but it also provided them with a clean slate. They couldn't float a hundred people in a single day. No, the Council would just send them to the ground, and let the Earth do their bidding for them.
Meanwhile, Clarke was just left in the darkness, still not knowing the extent of it. No one bothered to shed much light for the purpose of easing her fears. Because she was a criminal. Her life didn't matter.
Clarke's heart slammed against her ribs, climbing up until it had taken residency in her throat. Blood knocked against her skull and her vision blurred the farther she was led from her cell, still adorned in images of an Earth she'd soon see. If she lived long enough, that was. Who knew; perhaps the world was just a barren place now, hollow and dead like a corpse.
Then again, Clarke had never really seen a corpse, either. Not passed the point of putrefaction, at least. The last thing the dead were ever surrounded by was shadows, illuminated by eclectic bits of constellations that cocooned them like body bags.
She swallowed and didn't realize her steps had slowed, until Soren pushed her forward.
"Move it, Griffin," he barked out behind her, voice ricocheting down the corridor. A part of her considered slowing down more, if it meant grating on his nerves, but the anxiety that clung to her refused to do anything that didn't focus on survival. But that was an empty hope in itself; there were only two fates offered to her: Die touching the ground, or die grazing the stars.
And for a moment Clarke wondered which would be worse, the radiation poisoning that made you boil from the inside out, or by the frigid temperature, that would freeze you from the outside. She couldn't help but wonder why they didn't kill them and then dispose of the bodies. It would be less painful and more humane but she guessed the Council didn't trouble itself with moral methods. Not anymore, at least.
But as she neared the chamber that held the ship that would be responsible for taking them to the ground, Clarke felt that pit well up in her chest, stronger than it had been for days. It was a hesitancy, a tidal wave of no, that weighed down her feet with each step. It scraped against her mind, like a papercut itching for attention.
Was she really going to do this, she thought. Be led into a tomb? To wait for impact and touch the ground for the first time in question? As a sentence instead of privilege? Her people deserved more than that. Her father deserved more than that.
"And where's this?" he asked her, after having spun the globe and stopped it at random. Clarke stared at the tiny bit of land that somehow had once fit hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, somehow fitted on a sphere the size of a soccer ball. "Africa?" She asked.
Her father smiled, and nodded. "And here?"
"America?"
"Which one?"
She paused. "The higher one?"
He laughed but accepted her answer nonetheless. "North America. That's where some of our ancestors came from. It's where, maybe someday, we hope to go back to."
Clarke stared at him in surprise. He never spoke of the ground so intimately to her before. In Clarke's mind, the ground was just a story, just a wish, like the ones you made on shooting stars. But they lived in the stars now.
"Will you and Mom be there, too?" she asked.
Her father pulled her to his chest. "We'll always be there."
Pain radiated from the pit as the memory surged upwards. But before Clarke could brick it back up, another memory crashed over head.
"How do you know what the right thing to do is?" Clarke asked her father, sitting on their small living room couch and reviewing something on his tablet.
The question must've taken him off guard, because he looked at her in surprise. "Why so philosophical?" He asked, the hint of amusement in his voice.
But this time, Clarke was serious. "I'm starting medical training and I just...How do you judge who deserves help more?" The question had been weighing on her shoulders, the burden of having to one day possibly choose one life the other. The possibility of not being to save anyone at all.
"I know Mom's the doctor and she'd probably say to help the person you can. But I want to know what you think. Does one life really take precedence over another's?"
Her father leaned forward, setting down his tablet in the wake of a controversial question. His brows furrowed in the way they did when he was considering his choice of words, gauging them carefully.
"No one's life should be worth less than someone else's," he said. "But what you're willing to do, Clarke, aspiring to step into this field, is not to save everyone. You can't. You know you can't. No, what you have to offer is a chance." He gave her a small smile. "And your job, not just as a doctor, but as the caring person I know you are, is to make sure they get it."
Clarke's breathing grew sporadic and her head suddenly spun. She slowed again and Soren shoved her once more, until she nearly tripped and went sprawling across the floor.
The entrance was getting closer, and Clarke could destinguish the small, angular window, embellished in the metal door. Beyond it, she glimpsed meandering heads, flashes of young faces, entering the contraption that would take them down, down, down.
If she boarded that ship, there was a high chance she'd never know what she wanted to; what everything inside her screamed to understand. If she boarded that ship, she could be leaving the rest of her people to die, on a failing air supply no one knew of.
Except for her mother. Except for her.
You owe it to your father, the pit whispered. It was taking effort to keep walking now, and Clarke felt a tremor in her knees, that reverberated to her bones and shook her blood.
Another step. They were just meters away from the door, and Clarke could see faces clearly now.
Kids. So many kids.
She cast a glance behind her, beyond Soren, to the hundreds of lives adorning the Ark.
"What you have to offer is a chance," her father's words came back to her. "And your job is to make sure they get it."
Clarke clenched her hands, so hard her nails nipped at her palms.
Do you really want to die in the dark?
She stopped.
No, Clarke thought. No, I don't.
"Hey, I thought I told you to keep movi-"
Clarke moved faster than she realized. One second she was standing still, and the next she'd twisted around so suddenly, and slammed the heel of her foot down on Soren's.
He hissed, bending slightly forward and that's when Clarke drew her knee up, and into an area of his that was left sorely unprotected. There was a grunt and a wheezed breath, and Clarke stood there another moment. Then she stumbled backwards and ran.
Away from him. Away from the door. Away from a ship that would carry her to Earth. And maybe a small, glimmering piece of her genuinely wanted to go down with them, to the place that would breathe life into her drawings.
But the girl born in the sky wasn't yet finished with the stars.