Hey guys! I decided to write the next few chapters of my story "Nowhere Found". Here''s a little preview of the next one! Just thought I'd share since I don't know when I will be able to post the full chapter with exams and all! Should be within a week for sure though :) Have a great day and good luck with the 100 finale tomorrow haha!
Nowhere Found Part 2
i.
Abby Griffin has been dead for five months.
Five months since the execution that left Clarke's mother hanging in a state of lifelessness. Five months of struggling, struggling with being polite with the privileged and the Guards, with creating enough medicine to last her until the next Trade.
Five months since she lost her mother. Five months since she became an orphan.
The cabin feels empty, lonelier. Cold and hopeless without the cheering smile of Abby Griffin, without the comfort and wise words she would tell Clarke in order to get through a day in the Ark.
The Ark. Still despicable. Still corruptive.
But the unprivileged society is beginning to fight back.
"When you get older, you are going to learn that some things aren't how they should be, that things should be better."
It's not better. It's different. And the Ark is different. There's been riots, small undiscovered crowds of the unprivileged that storm the streets, that tear down posters of Chancellor Jaha and paint words of rebellion on nearby stores.
Expectantly, with the increasing number of resilience against the Ark, there's also an increasing number of executions.
Fathers, mothers, siblings, and friends. Young and old. Healthy and ill. All of them, it doesn't matter, there's no limit on the amount of lives that the Ark has taken. No amount of hopelessness and grief that Chancellor Jaha has clouded the camp with.
But something is coming. Though Clarke doesn't know whether that something is good or bad.
She supposes it doesn't really matter. Nothing was ever good.
Clarke sighs. She reaches forward to scans her fingers across the piece of paper that lays in front of her. Her mother's note. The words have since been burned into her memory, the last words her mother has ever told her. Her final, last piece of advice.
And Clarke still can't figure it out.
"Trust the Grounders, follow them home, Clarke."
Grounders. She has no recollection of ever speaking of the term before. No memory of ever hearing of it. But she knows her mother, what she wanted, what her father would have wanted.
They want her to fight. Clarke just doesn't know if she can anymore.
She doesn't know how she can.
The silence of the cabin breaks as the horn bristles through the air, reminding the Ark citizens of the Trade that will shortly begin. Clarke is still at the same booth, with the same people, with the same thieves and Guards surrounding the area. That's how it is.
It's a cool day in February, and Clarke glances over at the kitchen table. The pile of medicine that rests on the surface of the wood seems to get smaller and smaller each month. And so do her meals.
School has since ended, and that allowed Clarke the advantage to start her shifts at the medical bay. She's able to get the supplies she requires to make the medicine for the Trade, able to receive a couple additional packs of rations. It's still not much. But it's enough.
For now, living in the Ark, following the law, that's enough.
Enough for her to keep going. To keep living.
But she doesn't know how much longer she can last. Doesn't really care.
ii.
The camp square is swarming yet again with customers. There's the familiar sound of begging, of crying and screaming that Clarke has always been uncomfortable with but has grown to accept. The unprivileged are desperate human beings.
Desperate people make desperate attempts. And those desperate attempts usually get them killed.
Clarke breathes deeply, looks down at her table. She's only managed to sell seven bottles of medicine in the last couple of hours. That's equivalent to nine packs of rations, to three weeks of living.
Or survival. Or whatever.
That's what Clarke has come accustomed to, with the death of her mother. That's what she's come to learn. She'll never be able to live, to be happy, to make other people happy. There's no room for that in the Ark. In the Ark, hope makes you weak. And weakness gets you executed.
It also sure feels a hell of a lot like giving up. She never thought she'd come to this point.
Clarke licks her lips. She exhales, breathes, rubbing her fingers against her palms to remove herself from her state of mind. Her eyes flicker, pressuring against the building tears in her eyes, and she catches herself in a glare with the person at the booth across from her.
Bellamy Blake.
God damn Bellamy Blake.
His eyes are strong, persistent, the familiar intensity she's observed since the moment of the attack in the alleyway. His hair is curly and growing long since the last Trade, and that's the only time she see's him, when he's standing by Octavia, doing what he needs to do to survive.
Clarke looks away. She hasn't contacted him since the days following her mother's death. And he tried, so did Octavia, they tried to help her, to give her extra rations and offer their support. They tried to make the pain go away.
But she refused. Because every time she looks at him, she see's the man in the alleyway. And every time she thinks of the alleyway, she thinks of how it got her mother killed.
And it starts over again. The pain that never ends.
She's seen him once since the tragedy that occurred five months ago, when he came into the medical bay. His arm was bleeding, deep, and she had to perform stitches on him that required about an hour of practical procedure.
An hour of silence. Silence and brooding. There were some things he said, although, some things she learned. She learned he is still working at the factory, that his sister has begun a job at the school, teaching Greek history.
She learned that his mother died.
But then again, she didn't exactly learn that. She heard of it, when it happened a couple weeks after her mother, heard the wailing that Octavia Blake echoed throughout the East end from their cabin. She heard, and she didn't do anything. Didn't say anything then.
She offered her condolences to him when he informed her, and he just shrugged, nodded even. His lips were bruised and he looked tired. He looked too good of a person for this world.
"Hey, Clarke."
Clarke turns to the sound of the voice, eyes widening at the person in front of her. "Graham," she says in acknowledgement.
He smirks his yellow grin. His hair is shaggy and red, dirty, and Clarke looks around, eyeing the Guards that pass by. They know of Graham's motives, of the amount of suspensions he received from the Trade. He's stolen, even from the most poor of the families, but it didn't matter.
He was a privileged. And that meant it was okay.
Graham fingers one of the medicine bottles on the table. It makes Clarke's nerves tense. "I just wanted to come by, see how you were doing with your mother and all."
"I'm fine."
"That's good," he slithers. He eyes the table, his gaze shifting between the medicine and Clarke. "That's good."
Clarke nods. Her mother was usually the person who could deal with the conflicts that arose during the Trade. And he knows that. He knows and that's why he was smart to never try and steal from them before. But now it's not them. Now it's just her. It's just Clarke.
Graham turns away from the booth before she even realizes the two medicine bottles missing from the table.
Fuck.
"Hey," she sneers. She steps away from the booth, her steps trailing behind him as he walks further into the centre of the camp square. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
He glances over his shoulder at her. "Piss off, Griffin."
Clarke reaches forward. She grasps his elbow with her fingers and turns him towards her, her hands tight on his skin. He rolls his eyes, smiles at the Guards that observe them, and it hasn't occurred to her until then that straying people have begun to notice their encounter.
Clarke doesn't care. She doesn't fucking care.
"I can't afford this Graham and you know it." She's pleading now. Desperate people make desperate attempts. "Give it back."
Graham sighs. He gently peels her fingers from his elbow, and places her hand back to her side. He looks at her, and those eyes of trouble are hidden behind his bangs, behind his status. He smiles, softly, sarcastically.
"Why don't you go cry to your fucking mommy?"
There's many options of how she can handle this situation. There's a few stray members of the Ark that has surrounded them now, engaged in the situation and clash of the statuses. She can walk away, easily forget about the medicine bottles and return to her booth without consequences. But she doesn't do that.
Clarke punches him.
Her fists clench, tightly wounded as they strike against the side of his face, against his right cheek. He gasps, his fingers pressing against the redness surfacing his skin as the medicine bottles drop to the ground from their spot in his coat pocket.
Clarke's eyes harden, and she raises her fist again.
"Clarke."
She feels hands on her shoulders, pushing her back, and she knows who it is before her eyes even reach his face.
Bellamy stands between her and Graham, his expression hard. He tightens his hold around the material of her jacket, and he shakes his head, eyes warning in his usual intensity.
"Stop," he demands.
Clarke removes his hands from her shoulders and narrows her eyes. "Get the hell out of my way, Bellamy," she growls.
"No."
His answer sends a shiver of rage down her spine, and she stares at him, the silhouette of the crowd and Graham in the background. His hard expression reflects hers, and she knows he's not giving up. He's not giving up on her.
Her shoulders slump as she sighs. She wants to cry, wants to scream out at the people watching them, yell at them to continue with their day, to not gawk. She's the exhibit of a tragic individual in the Ark, the poor girl who almost got raped, who lost her parents, who punched Graham.
The poor girl who lost her mind.
"Miss. Griffin."
The icy voice of Chancellor Jaha splits through the air. Her fists curl tighter, and she swallows thickly, throat burning in the hatred that surrounds her. His tone is menacing, and she doesn't want to look at him.
But then she watches as Bellamy's eyes shift from hers to glare at a figure behind her shoulder, and she follows his direction of vision, turning to face Jaha and the crowd that parts with him.
Jaha steps forward. His stance of pride is familiar and despicable as a rally of Guards stand nearby in a protective stance around him. "Miss. Griffin," he repeats, this time her name sounds more irritated on his tongue, "I, along with other witnesses, observed you getting in a physical fight with Mr. Graham."
Clarke nods. She won't deny it. "He stole two of my medicine bottles, sir." The title still burns her lips.
"I understand," Jaha answers. Bellamy's breath is hot against the back of her neck where he stands behind her. "Although I am afraid to announce that this act of violence will not be accepted. Starting now, you are suspended from the sequence of today until the next Trade. Please, if you could, pack up your booth and return to your cabin."
Clarke shakes her head in disbelief. "Chancellor - "
"Now."
Clarke blinks. The crowd that has been observing the scene has grown larger, and she see's the recognizable faces of the students she went to school with, the acknowledged expressions of her mother's past co-workers. All thinking the same thing. Always thinking the same thing.
The Griffin girl. The one who's lost her mind.
She hears the coughing of Graham as he stands from the ground, and she doesn't realize until then that her fist starts to cramp. She licks her lips, flexing her palm and turning towards the direction of her booth.
Bellamy is still looking down at her when she catches his gaze again, but this time the wall of armour is gone, and his eyes are softer, sympathetic. And she wonders if he's thinking the same thing, too.
The Griffin girl. The one who's lost her mind.
Clarke shakes her head at him, as if to answer her own question. She's not gone. She's not lost. She pushes past him and ignores the wavering stares as she walks through the crowd.
She bends down to pick up her two recovered medicine bottles, and then leaves the Trade, with a pile of rations much smaller than last time.
Well! There's the small snippet! Hope you guys enjoyed it and are looking forward to the next one!
Happy Bellarking!
xoxoxoxo
