Raven slowly became aware of a hard floor beneath her. A blue glow to the left signaled she had fallen asleep at her workstation again. But as her eyes slowly opened it wasn't Mecca she saw. It was the innards of a drop ship. On earth, she was on earth.
Slowly, she sat up, rolling her neck to remove the kinks. The blue glow was emanating from a monitor in Clarke's lap. The screen had been pulled away from the mounting system; delicate wires were precariously stretching back towards their nest in the wall.
Finn was nowhere to be seen, he must have gone on another early morning trek. Glancing towards Clarke, Raven decided to continue with the friendly routine. Nothing could be gained by turning Clarke into the enemy.
"For a moment there, I felt like I was still back home."
Clarke spared her an indulgent smile. "Yes, but now this is home. And we need to figure out how to stay alive long enough for the others to join us." She inclined her head back to the monitor, implying she had found something important.
Raven smiled despite herself, Clarke's practicality was so predictable that it was almost becoming endearing. "Okay, so what do you got?"
"The Ark may have sent us down here without any supplies, but they did arm us with knowledge. The ship's computer is loaded with digital media on the Earth, medical books, and survival guides." Clarke turned the screen for Raven's inspection and scrolled through what looked to be an index. Several selections had been highlighted.
"You found a way to make soap! Sweet. What are all those at the bottom?"
Clark's hand arched out and up, motioning to the makeshift medical station and her own head wound. "References to field medicine. I was actually trying to find something on removing debris, I think there is still something stuck under the skin. It would explain the pain and irritation."
Raven couldn't tell if Clarke still had the paleness of the day before, artificial light makes everyone look ghost like. But had Clarke really been in pain this whole time? Knowing her she had probably had other priorities to think about and was only now allowing herself to register her own needs. "So did you find anything?"
"Just what I already knew. There must still be other fragments left behind from when I was hit by that pieced together metal bar." Clarke removed her bandage carefully and Raven had to look away. Her wound looked swollen and full of pus.
"Is it infected? We can get more of those plants-"
"It's not an infection; it's the body's natural response to a foreign agent. All the books say to cut it out but we don't have anything small enough or sharp enough to make a precise cut." Clarke turned the cloth of her bandage to where the soiled side was on the inside of a fold and then carefully tied it back around her head."
"You said the object was metal right? Could a magnet work?"
"In theory it should, I would still need to cut open the skin but wouldn't have to be as careful. Where would we get a magnet?"
Raven pulled the monitor from Clarke's grasp and scrolled through until finding a video file. Once it opened the sound of old earth animals filled the room. Raven tilted her eyes and raised one eyebrow at the baffled look on Clark's face. "The speakers have electromagnets." Raven held the speaker portion of the screen to her forehead. "We can use it like this."
Clarke decided it was worth a try and within ten minutes her splinter had been removed, her pain was significantly lowered, and her head had a fresh but shallow gash. Clarke was surprised at how well the speakers worked at pulling out the metal. It had actually been two small slivers. So small that she likely would not have found them without help.
Clarke also took advantage of her time alone with Raven to learn a little more about Finn's past.
Nothing surprising, he was resourceful and well respected. She was trying to delve deeper when Miller had shown up to take watch over the coms. Bellamy had been true to his word.
Clarke did feel some unease over who was going to guard Miller but Raven had looked as if she would be in close proximity tinkering with the ships other monitors for a while. If they could get them all working, kids could come in and read the survival guides. It might even be feasible to set up video conferencing. If it was safe to communicate.
The Ark had yet to make contact again. The survival of the 100 in the face of the loss the Ark had just suffered must have set off a firestorm. Clarke wondered what the council was saying about the abandoned teens. Her own suspicions that someone had tried to sabotage the mission had been heightened by the fact that she had not been able to find any maps stored in the ships memory. A glaring absence in light of the abundance of other related information. But maybe if other people started going through all the information, a map or two may pop up. Until then, she would keep a careful eye on her own map, the only one in camp.
She also needed to keep a close eye on Marcus and Miranda. Marcus had been lucky; the spear missed his organs, landing in the fatty tissue of his thigh. It was the girl she was more worried about. Miranda hadn't just fallen from a tree. She had stepped on a spring loaded trap and was thrown 15 feet into the tree before hitting the ground. Even without an x-ray it had been clear she had an open compound fracture. On the Ark the girl would have undergone surgery and gotten pins in her leg. Everything would have healed like it had never happened. Down here she'll have a permanent limp.
Octavia noticed Clarke's pensive stance from across the camp and decided the blonde should be having more fun. She glanced around her new group of friends; the game they had just made up needed a fifth player.
Several earlier risers had been milling around the camp after the hunting party left. No one wanted to start working without their full crew so a game was invented to pass the time. The goal was to "make a stitch" by throwing four small rocks onto consecutive numbers on a grid dug into the dirt. The higher the run of numbers went, the higher the score.
Clarke approached the group in response to Octavia's call but felt oddly self conscious. She really didn't have time for games. Looking into the center of the circle, she could tell the object of the game had something to do with how the small stones landed. "I didn't really want to interrupt your game, besides, we need clean bandages." She hedged.
The darker-haired girl to Octavia's immediate right nodded in agreement, as if she had been thinking about the need for bandages for a while. Octavia glanced at her and then back to Clarke. She had an idea. "Why don't you join us in a game and then we can help?"
Clarke wasn't sure the group even wanted her to join them. "I don't really have time for-"
"What? Making friends? Having fun?" Octavia interrupted. She smiled invitingly and slid over to make room for Clarke. The other girl also smiled. The other two group members seemed more curious than anything else.
Octavia noted Clarke's continued hesitation. "We were trying to think of a way to make the game more interesting. Instead of just earning points, maybe we can bet on chore time."
The boy on Octavia's left, Tim if Clarke remembered the name correctly, spoke up, "Right Blake, like you are going to dig a latrine for me." He had to shake the sandy blonde hair out of his eyes in order to give Octavia an appropriately incredulous look.
"No! But I will help you dig one. Say in 10 minute increments?" Octavia had their interest now. The idea of sharing the load with people already awake and willing to help sounded pretty nice.
Clarke was almost sold but... "If I lose, then I spend all day helping everyone else with their chores and the bandages won't get cleaned."
Octavia bit her lower lip, almost as if to keep herself from smiling too brightly. "Well you see, that's where I come in, making bandages is one of my jobs too and I'm winning!"
The faces all seemed suddenly more inviting somehow. Clarke looked back over her shoulder in the direction of the dirty strips of cloth. A few minutes of game play would be well worth the extra pair of hands.
Several hours later Bellamy was slowly making his way back to camp under what should be the mid day sun. It was a little too overcast to tell for sure. The hunting party had enjoyed a successful morning, they managed to bring down two dear and a razorback. Bellamy had let the others take the 'prize' back to camp, claiming he needed to check all the small game traps. The truth was he just wanted alone time.
Ever since contact had been made with the Ark he couldn't stop thinking about Jaha and the 320 people called to sacrifice themselves to conserve oxygen. He felt a familiar pressure at the back of his eyes but pushed it away with the usual anger.
"No one cares that you didn't know about the plan" he whispered. He couldn't use ignorance of the facts to excuse people dying because of something he did. No one else did. And it wasn't like those workers had been the only ones to die or get hurt due to his ignorance and stubbornness.
His list of sins began to pile in his mind until he had to force himself to refocus. His mantra had been growing longer since coming to Earth. Don't let Octavia get hurt. Don't let the people in the camp die. Don't get caught by the Ark. Those were his priorities. He reminded himself that everything else could be dealt with later, when winter was over, or the Ark came down.
Bellamy adjusted the rabbits hanging limply from his shoulder and had an odd image of himself hunting in the snow with an oversized rabbit fur coat. As long as they could hunt there would be some food. But based on what Clarke had been saying, the biggest threat to their lives would not be starvation, but exposure and disease.
Sanitation would be their greatest defense against illness. Bellamy altered his course to check on the progress of the outhouses on his return to camp. There were no shovels so the people assigned to work there would have to remove the dirt with flat pieces of metal and bare hands. He was thinking he might need to assign two crews to work in shifts so that no one was overburdened. Fortunately it had been easy to get the camp to come together and take on all the necessary preparations for winter.
Colder weather was proving to be an excellent motivator.
He scanned the outer edge of the camp looking for three guys chest deep in dirt. His eyes landed on something very different from what he had been expecting. His feet literally stopped working as his mind tried to process the sight before him.
Right there, knees deep in the upturned earth, was Clarke. She was scooping out medium sized chunks of dirt from a shallow hole. Mud was smeared across her cheek and clothing. She was smiling. Right across from her in the same hole was Octavia. Two other girls mirrored their position a few feet away. They were digging a latrine.
One of the guys, Tim, was up to his thighs in another hole close by. He was scooping out much larger sized chunks while amusing the girls with a story. The other two boys each had their own hole about ten feet away. Their attention was more on the removal of dirt.
Bellamy had rarely seen Clarke spending time with people outside her core group. She was laughing at that idiot's story like they were old friends. But she looked worn out.
"What are you doing?" All movement stopped. Had he sounded too harsh? Bellamy went for a softer tone. "You girls had other things to do, why are you helping here?"
He could see now that the dark haired girl at the other hole was Piper. Her mother had been a homeopathic healer back on the Ark. Bellamy had sought help there more than once when Octavia had fallen ill. Piper glanced nervously at Clarke. She had always been shy and skittish. The two boys further off went back to work. Bellamy thought he might have seen Tim roll his eyes but decided to ignore it.
Clarke smiled up at him in a way he knew was just challenging him to say she couldn't help. "Well, as it turns out, I'm really bad at flipping a switch."
Octavia let loose a small snort of laughter. Tim leaned towards Clarke as if he had a secret. "It's is and always has been called a stitch, as in something that is connected..." His mock whisper was highlighted by the laughter in his voice.
Clarke rolled her eyes "Right, like you guys didn't change the name of the game three different times while we were playing?"
"Laugh it up blonde, maybe if you got the name right you wouldn't have lost every round." Tim laughed and then returned to scooping. The girls went back to digging as well. Bellamy had been forgotten.
He's gone for a little more than four hours and already Clarke has a new best friends and a nickname. "I thought you had medical supplies to organize?"
Clarke stopped working again to look up at him. "I did but Piper, Tim, Eva and Octavia helped me finish everything this morning. The bandages are hanging out to dry now." Clarke smiled again, clearly pleased that so much work had been accomplished in one morning.
Bellamy realized she fully intended to continue digging that damn hole. He glanced over at Tim and wondered why he felt he didn't need a shirt in such cool weather. Bellamy had planned on going back to camp to eat lunch and rest, but something about leaving Clarke to finish digging a latrine with that bandage still on her head and circles under her eyes didn't settle well with him.
He slid the rabbits off his shoulder to land next to Piper. "Take these back to camp." The girl scampered off without argument and Bellamy was able to feel that he wasn't singling Clarke out.
He reached in his pocket and pulled out something he knew would get her attention. He tossed it over his shoulder as he casually turned to leave.
She easily caught the item and carefully turned it over in her hands. "Is this an apple?" She called out after him. "Where did you find it?" He continued to make his way into the center of camp, knowing she would follow.
"Bellamy, wait, are there a lot of these?"
He walked on without answering for a little while to keep her following behind him. When he glanced back over his shoulder he saw that Octavia and Eva had stayed behind. Maybe everyone could use a break. "Lunch first, and then I'll show you where I found it and we can talk on the way about the information you wanted."
Word had spread quickly through camp about the visit to the apple orchard. About fifteen of the kids who had finished their chores for the day were eager to get away and go apple picking, They had all gathered containers for holding the apples, including the kids who had been on latrine duty. Bellamy had asked a few of the stronger guys to go help out. All five pits dug in half a day was amazing progress.
Bellamy survived the camp with an odd mixture of pride and trepidation. So much had already been accomplished, but they still had a long way to go.
Light but determined footsteps were approaching him from behind. Bellamy didn't have to turn around to know it was Clarke. She stopped in front of him with an expectant look on her face.
"Ready to go?" His tone was teasing but his eyes were busy assessing if she was up for the walk. Automatically he went to check the bandage on her head, only it wasn't there. On impulse his hand reached out to brush aside her hair. It was soft against his fingertips. "All hair is soft idiot" he reminded himself.
Clarke shifted slightly as his hand approached but didn't try to avoid his reach. His look and demeanor were clinical. "I had to remove some more splinters, but it's healing well enough now."
Bellamy dropped his hand back to his side satisfied she could make the trek. He straightened back to his full height and stepped forward to address the group at large. "Everyone who is interested in something more than nuts and berries, follow me!" He sounded cocky on purpose.
Bellamy led the group out with Clarke close by his side. Their arms brushed as they walked and he wondered why she didn't move away. Although he supposed that if she were any further away, the others might overhear their conversation.
"So what else have you found out?" He had promised to give her information on their walk, and she hadn't forgotten.
"Jones and Monroe were both housed in the minimum security area before the launch. It is right at the opening of the detention center, everyone coming and going had to pass by them." Bellamy lowered his voice an octave before sharing more. "They each saw Shuyman, Kane and former Councilwoman Solomon making visits shortly before we were sent down. About 15 visits total".
"Who did they go to see?"
"I'm still working on that. Jones said Shuyman and Solomon were together for 5 of those visits. Kane came on his own eight times, Shuyman twice."
Clarke nodded but really this information made little sense to her. What could these people want with prisoners- children?
Bellamy wasn't sure what the visits meant either but he did learn one thing of value; "There are several claims of entrapment against Kane going around camp. Kids whose parents work in engineering, farm station, Mecca station. They are the types of kids who would have useful skills on the Earth. Like your boyfriend."
"He is not my boyfriend" Clarke made sure to emphasize her point with a shove to Bellamy's arm. "So you are saying that Kane set out to arrest kids as some sort of attempt to help us survive?"
"I don't know, all I can say is that he was very heavy handed in his arrest tactics and there is a lot of animosity towards him right now."
Clarke filed that away before pressing on to the other last minute visitors. "My mother served with Solomon on the council. She resigned when her husband, the former Chancellor, became ill. Why would she be visiting anybody?"
Bellamy could tell that was a rhetorical question but it was still a big enough question to shift his suspicions from Kane to Solomon.
Both became lost in their own thoughts and the walk to the orchard went by quickly.
"Wow" Clarke had stopped walking, her hand reached out to hold back Bellamy as well. Before them the taller trees thinned out as the ground sloped downwards and hundreds of fruit trees stretched out in rows.
The rest of the group slowly filed in behind the pair. It was a beautiful sight, but survival requires action. "Fan out" Bellamy order. The others ran excitedly into the grove of trees and quickly began filling their containers.
Bellamy took a moment to ensure that the small group who had come to keep watch were being vigilant before moving on to fill his own makeshift sack.
He had only meant to check on Clarke's progress. A quick glance like he had given everyone else. But his eyes snagged on a sliver of white skin exposed on the girl's slender torso as she stretched for an apple.
His hand went out for an apple in the tree in front of him but he couldn't seem to pull his eyes away from Clarke. Her apple was still too high to reach properly so she went up on the tips of her toes. His eyes were drawn downwards by the motion. He took in the outline of her calves, her thighs, her butt. His mouth went dry and he blindly reached into the tree again. Clarke's hand finally wrapped around the apple and he licked his dry lips as her back arched to pull the apple free.
He wasn't even aware he had been staring until she moved out of his direct line of sight. He looked into his satchel and saw it was full of leaves and mealy apples. Glancing around to make sure no one had seen his stupor; he dumped the bag at the base of a tree and began picking ripe apples as quickly as possible.
He ran through his list again, this time making a needed addition: Don't let Octavia get hurt. Don't let people in the camp die. Don't get caught by the Ark. Don't stare at Clarke.
But Clarke could never be far from his mind it seems. "Bellamy! Come see this!" He heard her shout.
He followed the sound of Clarke's voice further into the grove of trees. He couldn't find her though. "Bellamy!" she called again, her voice was pitched a little higher- excitement maybe?
Curiosity pushed him forward until the trees began to thin out and a small grouping of structures came into sight. Nestled in an overgrowth of trees and vines sat two dilapidated wooden buildings and metal shed roughly the size of the 2nd floor of the drop ship. The shed looked to be in decent shape. Clarke had found a standing structure!