While everyone is busy trying not to cry and acquainting themselves with Jordan, Clarke moves towards Diyoza and Indra.
Ignoring Octavia's and Miller's presence she talks to them in hushed whispers, "What do you think we should be doing first."
Diyoza and Indra are thinking, when a voice jars Clarke, "Why don't you make another list?" Miller's voice rings out and a hush falls onto the crowd.
Clarke turns her gaze onto his rigid figure, he is shaking with anger. This is probably something he has been keeping in since a long time. Octavia gives him a warning stare but he doesn't notice his eyes resolutely on Clarke.
"Decide who's gonna live and who's gonna die. Like you did during Praimfaya."
Clarke shudders there's smell of parchment and ink in the air and logistics of life expectancy of every Arkadian floats through her mind. Miller's voice brings her back, "Lets let you decide who gets to see the planet and who keeps sleeping. Like you decided it was okay for me to live and for my dad to be tossed out to the fire, where he burnt because someone didn't do their job and test the nightblood properly but were lucky enough to be injected so they could live the years in a green valley without any consequences.-"
He opens his mouth to speak further but a 'shtck' sound interrupts him and then there's a sword at his neck.
"Apologize."
Clarke doesn't know when Madi retrieved her sword, but it's at Miller's throat. The sword is shaking, Clarke follows her gaze down the sword to Madi's form which is shaking with anger and unshed tears.
"I said apologize." Madi reiterates.
"Madi…" Clarke sounds, caution in her voice.
"No Clarke! He doesn't know anything. None of them do. They don't know about the sickness radiation brings. They don't know it was 58 days after praimfaya that you finally reached the valley. They don't know about the burns you have still on your back. They don't know that the first thing you did when you found the dead of my village was give them a proper send off. They don't know about what happened at the five year anniversary."
Clarke sucks in a breath she didn't know that Madi knew about it either. The feel of a pistol and taste of copper in her mouth overtake her, so she is powerless to stop what comes out of Madi's mouth quite in time.
"They don't know about the 2199 -."
"Madi." Her voice has a tone of warning now.
Madi stops herself, but the sword remains at Miller's neck.
Clarke takes halting step forwards, crouching down in front of her Clarke gently takes Madi into her arms. A moment later the sword clatters to the ground and Clarke barely keeps in a breath of relief.
"Hey it's okay now. I'm sorry. It's okay." Turning to Miller she says, "Why don't you go to one of the barracks and take a breather. We'll call you if we need you."
Miller huffs but doesn't argue, turning on his heels he leaves the bridge.
Clarke takes Madi's face in her hands, wipes the few tears that have leaked. Giving her a smile she straightens up.
All eyes are on her, she doesn't meet anyone's gaze too afraid to see what she'll find there.
"So Indra, Diyoza any thoughts."
"We need to make contact with the Ground." Diyoza is the one who speaks up.
"The last time we landed on a planet we thought was inhabited we ran into traps that killed my men."
Clarke cracks a smile and hears Murphy's chuckle resound from somewhere.
"Yeah that happened to us too."
A whoop and cries of Apogee ring in her ears and she finds Octavia's eyes knows she's remembering the same events.
"Ok so how do we do that? Shaw? Do you think you and Raven and Jordan can look into it? Jordan has been perusing the Eligius III files he'll help."
She almost falters at Raven's name and risks a glance at her, she is staring back. She averts her eyes quickly.
"Madi I need you to meditate pull up any information Becca has on Eligius III, see if any of it made its way into the AI."
Madi nods glad to have something to do.
She glances over to Bellamy, he is looking at her with pain in his eyes, Clarke blocks it out focusing on the task at hand.
She walks over to him, he is flanked by Echo, Murphy and Emori. Echo is looking at her with fury in her eyes, she doesn't know why.
"I'm gonna go with Madi get a nice quiet place to meditate, call me if they find anything?" she gestures towards Shaw, Raven and Jordan who are sitting at controls trying to do their best.
He nods, for a second it seems like he wants to say something but he shuts his mouth.
Clarke turns and leaves with Madi.
They have found a quiet quarter to get comfortable in. Clarke instructs Madi to take the correct pose, slow her breathing, concentrate on her thoughts and let the information flow.
It's a quiet moment afterwards when she hears footsteps coming down the hall. Glancing at Madi to make sure she is not disturbed. She quietly goes to open the door.
She comes face to face with Raven a hand raised to start knocking. She puts a finger to her lips points to Madi then exits the room closing the door lightly behind her.
She raises an eyebrow in question, trying not to remember Raven's hurt look when McCreary appeared to take her away.
"We found a way to contact the Ground, Bellamy said to retrieve you."
Clarke nods wondering why it was Raven who came to call her but way too afraid to voice her questions.
"So… radiation burns?"
Clarke jerks coming out of her mind to stare at Raven who is Resolutely staring back at her not averting her eyes even for a second.
Her hand involuntarily goes to touch her lower back where some burns still hadn't receded, Raven's sharp eyes follow her movements.
"Yeah they were all over my body when I woke up but they healed quite quickly."
Raven sucks in a breath. "Madi…"
"Oh no, She wasn't exposed to the death wave, only radiation so she had fever and vomiting but that was over in a few days or so she told me."
Raven ponders the implications of what she has revealed, if radiation sickness took days to heal how long did it take for radiation burns?
"58 days…"
Clarke closes her mouth, remembers the taste of sand a parched throat feel of hot metal of a gun pressed to her temple.
"I really don't want to talk about that."
Raven scrunches up her eyebrows her lips in hard line, but nods anyway.
"2199." It's not a question, it's a statement.
"What about it?" Clarke asks avoiding her gaze.
They're almost at the bridge. Just a few more steps.
"It wouldn't have anything to do with this pen drive Jordan gave me with the message 'Radio Calls' would it."
Clarke stops in her tracks. Turning to Raven she notices that she has stopped too and is holding a pen drive up to the light.
In a moment of child like petulance brought on by abject fear she swipes for the drive. But Raven is too fast she quickly encloses the drive in her fist.
"Ah so it does." Raven cackles. Clarke doesn't even get to enjoy the easy comradery that exists between them too focused on the enclosed fist.
"Raven that's personal, give it back."
"Nah. You see calls are supposed to be between two people and belong equally to both so this belongs to us as much it does to you."
Clarke grows angry, "You didn't care about them when I was sending them so why would you now?"
She knows she's let something slip when Raven's eyes grow watery, "2199." She mutters under her breath, looking up at Clarke she breathes out, "Clarke everyday? You called us-"
Whatever she was going to say is cut off by Jordan appearing. "Hey, where have you guys been? We've been waiting for-" he trails off when notices the stare down between the two women.
Clarke breaks it first giving Jordan her best reassuring smile she starts walking towards the bridge. Stopping for a second she turns back and says, "Without fail."
Back on the bridge she joins Diyoza who's standing to the side away from everyone else. Noticing her hand on her bump Clarke curses herself before speaking up, "When we're done here let me have a look at you. All that cyro sleep couldn't have had been good for the baby."
"You're not gonna put a gun to it again, are you." Diyoza smirks.
Clarke lets out a surprised laugh, "No. I'm not."
She then notices the silence and looks over to see that everyone is giving them weird looks. They're probably wondering why she they both are being so familiar with each other. They don't understand the burdens Clarke and Diyoza both carry as leaders who tried their best for the sake of humanity and failed.
Doing her best to steer the conversation towards important matters at hand, Clarke clears her throat and asks, "So what have you found?"
Jordan is the one who responds, "so we found the rest of the Eligius III files but the method dad tried to decode the coordinates is not working we have nothing on their research into the planet."
Clarke is startled for a moment at hearing Monty so casually be labelled as a dad but pushes the thought aside, "What about communicating with the ground."
Raven shakes her head, "The ships systems at present wouldn't work. Even if they were strong enough to penetrate the radiation filled atmosphere of the Earth. The radiation on this planet is totally different we can't get a signal through."
"About this radiation," Emori spoke up, "if it's soo strong what about us? Will we be able to survive down there?"
"You won't."
Clarke turns to find Madi entering the bridge. She searches for any sign of distress on her features and releases a sigh of relief when she finds none. Madi comes to stand by her side and she places a hand on her shoulder and is pleasantly surprised when a hand comes up to clutch at it.
Madi stares ahead though, "I was able to get a lot of information from A.L.I.E., the radiation levels on the planet the predicted atmospheric concentration and the reason why members of Eligius III were given nightblood."
She pauses for a moment to let it sink in, "Only Clarke and I can go down."
There's a hubbub of noise at that particular revelation.
Raven's voice returns silence to the room, "We shouldn't be so sure of that either, we don't know if the nightblood solution worked for the Eligius III we only have theories and hypotheses to go on."
The scent of antiseptic overtakes Clarke, she is injecting herself with a black liquid, 'I bear it so they don't have to.'.
"I'll go down first."
"No!" Bellamy shouts.
Clarke matches his gaze, "You know this is the only choice, we need to make sure that the ground is survivable. And I have the best chance at finding that out. Check if it's survivable for the rest of you without receiving nightblood. If it's not survivable for you without the nightblood solution I'll come back up and synthesize more. I can do 5 extractions maximum, then we'll have to wait a while for it to settle then we can do two to three extractions each to make more. Or maybe I'll find the Eligius III people and they'll have a solution. But for anything to happen I need to go and investigate. It's the only option." She is breathing hard by the end of her rant.
There's silence as everyone digests every point she has made, she knows Bellamy is trying to find loopholes.
"I'll go too." Madi speaks up.
"No, absolutely not!" Clarke says aghast.
"Why not. If you can go why can't I?"
Bellamy is looking smug.
Clarke scrambles for an excuse, and in the weirdest turn of events its Octavia who comes to her defence.
"Because you are the Commander." She speaks her voice quiet.
Clarke catches on quickly even as Bellamy frowns, "Octavia's right." Now that's something she never thought she'll say. "You are needed here, you will be needed when we wake the grounders up to keep the peace. We can't risk you."
"And we can risk you?" Surprisingly its Murphy who speaks up.
"You are not risking me." Clarke smiles through her pain, "Have you forgotten I'm Wanheda the Commander of Death, Honorary cockroach. Death can't defeat me."
She knows that she's bluffing, Murphy knows that she's bluffing, everyone knows that she's bluffing. But she looks into his eyes and pleads with him to not say anything more, miraculously he doesn't.
She looks back at Madi, knows that if she hadn't had the A.I. in her she wouldn't have listened to reason. But the fact was she did and had the previous Commanders whispering in her ears, making her choose what was best for her people.
So Madi nods.
"Do you know how to fly a ship?" Raven says, she somehow manages to look both furious and resigned.
"Shaw can take me, and remain behind pressure sealed doors when I open the hatch. He can come back when I've disembarked and come to pick me up in two days."
Raven looks hurt and is about to protest, when Shaw speaks up, "I'll stay with you."
Clarke jerks her head to stare at him her lips parting protests about to escape her, when she is halted by his raised hand.
"Listen there could be various situations that happen on the ground, you could have to leave early or stay late, and there's no means to contact the main ship from the ground but radio will work on the ground and we can communicate that way. I won't ever leave the ship. Also on the ground I can work from the other end to establish a reception with the main ship, while Raven works this end."
Now how does one argue with that logic. By admitting defeat.
Clarke lets out a huge sigh and unable to form any words just nods.
"So when do we leave?"
"Right now."