3

Moonshine

CLARKE

"You look like you could use a drink." Jasper stated, plopping down beside her with a half empty bottle of moonshine. He plunked a smudged glass down on the table before her but Clarke just reached impatiently past it and snagged the bottle by its neck, wrapping her lips directly around it. The clear liquid burned her throat, filling her stomach with heat, and making her eyes sting. She welcomed its fire.

"Uhh..." Raven laughed. "I think she could use more than one drink, Jasper. We all could. We're gonna need more liquor."

"I'm on it!" Jasper said, rising from the table and limping from the room.

Clarke let out a small sigh of satisfaction, already feeling the alcohol seep into her blood and relaxing her. She handed the bottle to Raven. "You were brilliant, by the way, Raven."

"Oh, I know." Raven answered with a cocky smile. She accepted the bottle and took a deep slug. "Of course, I did have a little help." She added, passing the bottle to Monty.

"Yeah, right." Monty laughed. "I was busy shooting Jasper in the leg and tying him to a chair. The computer stuff... That was all Raven."

"Aww, shucks, you guys." Raven laughed again, snagging the bottle back from Monty. "You're making me blush." She took another swallow and offered the bottle back to Clarke. "You weren't so bad yourself, Clarke."

"Yeah... Well... I had help too." Clarke replied. She had tried to hide the sadness in her voice but by the awkward silence that followed her words it was obvious she had failed.

"Uhh..." Jasper broke the silence, reappearing through the door clutching not one, not two, but three bottles of the pungent clear liquor. "Did I miss all the fun already?"

"Naw..." Clarke forced a smile. "We were just waiting for your wise-ass to join us."

"Speaking of asses..." Raven cut in. "Where's Bell?"

"Saying goodbye to Octavia again." Clarke answered. "She won't come inside. She asked me to say goodbye to you all for her. She says sorry she's not saying goodbye in person, but... Well..." Clarke paused awkwardly, digging a fingernail into a deep scratch in the table. "Like I said, she won't come inside. I think she just wants to be far away from this place. Can't blame her, really." She added, thinking of how she had felt sitting in Lexa's throne room. Surely everything in Arkadia reminded Octavia of Lincoln, just as everything in Polis reminded Clarke of Lexa. "I told Bell he needs to let her go. She's not a little girl anymore. But you know Bell..." She paused to put on the deepest voice she could muster, her throat already growing raspy from the moonshine. "My sister..."

"My responsibility." Raven finished for her in her own deep voice.

Clarke felt a strange tug in her cheeks and suddenly her forced smile spread into a genuine one. She let out a loud bark of laughter.

"I hope I sound much more manly than either of you two, buttheads." An authentically deep voice spoke and Clarke turned to see Bellamy strolling towards them. Clarke laughed even harder at the frown on his face. It felt strange to laugh. It felt good.

"Oh, Bell," Raven called. "Pull that stick out of your ass and come drink with us. There's plenty to go around."

Bellamy pulled up a chair and plunked down beside Clarke. Raven handed him a bottle and he accepted it, but he didn't drink. He just stared at the bottle in his hands, watching the liquor slowly swish side to side as he tilted it. "I think I've lost her forever." He said in a small voice.

For a moment no one said anything. Clarke reached out and put a hand on Bellamy's. "No you haven't." She said softly. "Not for forever."

"I don't think O's ever going to come back to Arkadia." Bellamy said sadly, staring down at Clarke's hand on his own.

"Yeah, maybe not." Clarke answered. "But that doesn't mean you've lost her forever."

"She told me that Lincoln was her 'home.'" He argued, pulling his hand free of hers and rubbing at his eyes. He plunked his forehead into his palms, staring down at the table dejectedly. "She'll never forgive me for what happened to him."

"Lincoln was her home." Clarke admitted. "But, Bell, you're her family. And that never changes. Forgiveness takes time, Bellamy. A lot of time. But she'll come round eventually."

"Clarke's right." Jasper cut in. "Forgiveness is hard for some people. I mean... Look at me... I've been a real dick for the past three months." He let out a small, bitter laugh then dropped his eyes to the tabletop. "I'm sorry, you guys."

"You had every right to be a dick, Jasper." Clarke replied, giving him a small, sad smile. "Maya was a good person. I never wanted to..."

"Maya was doomed the moment we stepped foot into that mountain." Jasper sighed. "Actually, the whole damn mountain was doomed long before that. For months I blamed you guys for Maya. But you didn't kill her. The radiation did. ALIE did."

"Maybe so." Clarke answered. "But I'm still sorry."

"I know." Jasper answered, lifting a bottle to his mouth. He let out another sad sigh. "So am I."

"So am I." Monty added.

"So am I." Bellamy echoed him.

"God, we're a cheerful bunch." Raven commented. "Some party, huh?"

"Yeah... I think I have more fun drinking alone." Jasper laughed. It still sounded forced, but it was a little freer than the last. "Maybe I should go get some cards." He suggested. "Strip poker, anyone?" He asked, wiggling his eyebrows first at Raven and then at Clarke.

"Tempting as that sounds," Monty said sarcastically, rising from his chair "And I hate to break up the party and all, but I'm gonna head to bed."

"Give Harper a goodnight kiss for me!" Raven called after him in a teasing voice.

"And for me!" Jasper laughed.

Monty paused in the doorway to roll his eyes at them. But he was blushing and the corners of his mouth pulled into a tiny smile he could not conceal.

"Monty and Harper?" Clarke asked as Monty disappeared down the hall. "Really?"

"Really." Raven smiled.

"Since when?" Clarke asked..

"Officially? About two days ago." Raven answered. "Took them long enough."

"Took them long enough?" Clarke repeated, confused. Monty and Harper? She thought again, still trying to wrap her head around the idea of them as a couple. She had never detected anything between the two of them. But then again, she hadn't been around either of them much lately. It seemed like an odd pairing to her. But who was she to judge? She was happy for them. A little taken aback, but happy. "I didn't see that one coming at all." She remarked, turning to Bellamy. "Did you?"

Bellamy shrugged his shoulders. "To be honest, I always kinda thought Monty was gay."

"What?!" Raven laughed. "Monty... Gay?"

Bellamy just shrugged again. "I guess sometimes my gay-dar is a little off."

"Yeah... Sometimes... Just a little." Raven said sarcastically, still laughing as she caught Clarke's eye and gave her a knowing smirk.

Clarke shouldn't have been surprised. Of course Raven had picked up on Clarke's feelings for Lexa. Raven was as sharp as the bird after which she was named. She rarely missed anything. Still, Clarke fixed her with a small glare that was meant to silence her, but only sufficed to make the girl's smirk widen even further. Jasper's eyes flicked from Clarke to Raven to Clarke again and he gave her a curious look, but Bellamy seemed completely oblivious.

"Well, anyway." Bellamy said. "I'm happy for him. The man deserves a little loving."

No one replied. A heavy silence fell. It seemed that they were each lost in their own thoughts. It suddenly struck Clarke that every one of them sitting at this table was single, and not one of them by choice. Every single one of them had had a lover ripped from their arms by death. Clarke could only hope the fates would be kinder to Monty and Harper. Because Bellamy was right... Monty and Harper both deserved love. But then again, didn't they all?

"Yeah." Raven finally broke the silence. "He does. Monty is a good guy. A real good guy. No matter what he says, I never would have been able to find the kill switch without his help. By the way," She paused, turning to Clarke. "I have to ask... When you went into the room with the switch, I expected you to flip it right away. But you... Hesitated. For a minute there, I was worried you weren't going to do it. What happened in that room? What did ALIE say to you?"

Again, Clarke should not have been surprised. Raven had been tracking her progress in the City of Light from inside the walls of Arkadia. She had "seen" Clarke enter the room. She had "seen" Clarke hesitate. And of course she had rightly surmised that ALIE's words were responsible for her hesitation.

Clarke chewed on her lip, wondering how to answer. She had yet to tell anyone about the newest crisis. She still wasn't ready to deal with it. But Raven was staring at her expectantly. Raven knew she was holding something back. Raven rarely missed anything.

Fuck it, Clarke thought. She had to tell people sometime. She might as well do it now. "The world is dying." She said frankly. "We have six months."

"What?" Bellamy asked. "What are you talking about? Six months for what?"

"To figure out how to save everyone again." Clarke sighed. "And this time I don't just mean Arkadia or Trikru. I mean EVERYONE."

"What the hell happens in six months?" Raven asked.

Clarke frowned thoughtfully. She wasn't sure she knew how to explain the situation. She wasn't even sure she had understood what ALIE had told her, herself. "ALIE told me there are nuclear reactors falling apart or something. They are leaking radiation and they are going to melt down? Or explode? I don't know..." She paused, trying her best to explain. "I do know she said six months. In six months ninety-six percent of the earth's surface will be uninhabitable."

"Global nuclear macro-degeneration?" Raven asked, eyes wide.

Clarke just stared at her blankly.

"Are you saying we're going to have a second nuclear apocalypse?" Bellamy asked. "You're kidding me, right?"

"Well, shit." Jasper said as Clarke shook her head at Bellamy. "With our luck... I'm guessing Arkadia's not part of the four percent, is it?"

"I have no idea where the supposed 'four percent' is." Clarke answered. "Probably Antartica. Or maybe Timbuktu? Who the fuck knows?"

"So what do we do?" Bellamy asked.

Of course he was staring at Clarke. All three of them were looking to her for an answer. She was the "fixer," after all.

Clarke snagged a bottle and leaned back in her chair. She took a long swallow and then shrugged. "Fuck if I know." She answered. She could almost taste the bitterness of her words on the back of her tongue. "I'm done trying to save the world."

"We need to shut them down." Raven spoke, ignoring Clarke's indifferent attitude. "All the power plants."

"How do we do that?" Bellamy asked.

"No doubt there's a lever to pull." Clarke answered with a dry chuckle. Done... She was so done.

The others still ignored her sarcasm. "First we would have to locate each of the failing plants." Raven answered.

"And then we'd have to get to each of them and find the levers to pull?" Jasper asked, skeptically. "How the hell are we going to do that? What if they are on the other side of the country? Or the other side of the ocean? Or the other side of the planet?"

Raven didn't answer right away. Clarke could practically see the cogs turning in her brilliant brain. Sometimes Clarke half expected to see steam escape Raven's ears like it did with Yosemite Sam's ears in the old cartoons she had watched over and over again as a child on the Ark.

"Maybe I could rig a way to shut them down remotely." Raven answered thoughtfully.

Jasper gave her another skeptical look. "How good do you think the chances are of that working out?" He asked. "I mean... I know you're legit a fucking genius and all, Raven. But..."

Raven didn't reply. She didn't have to. Clarke could tell by the look on her face that the answer was "not good." The chances were "not good."

"Maybe we're going about this all wrong." Bellamy suggested. "Maybe instead of trying to figure out a way to save the world, we should be trying to figure out a way to LEAVE it."

"What?" Jasper replied. "Are you talking about going back into space?"

"It worked once before." Bellamy argued.

"How are we going to get to space?" Jasper laughed. "You have a rocket ship in your room that we don't know about?"

"Look around." Bellamy argued. "We're living in a goddamn space station. Surely we could salvage parts of the wreckage and build something. Right, Raven?"

Raven raised her eyebrows skeptically. "Jasper's right... I am a fucking genius. But even I couldn't get us off the ground in this piece of shit, clunker." She said, kicking the wall beside her with her good leg, sending a metallic 'clang' ringing through the room.

"Even if we could get off the ground..." Clarke cut in, rejoining their conversation. Listening to them debate, she had the strange desire to laugh. She wondered if maybe it was the alcohol running through her blood. But the whole situation seemed so ridiculous to her right now that it was absurdly funny. "There's no way I'm going back to floating around in a damn tin can. I'd rather melt to death down here in this hell-hole."

"Clarke's right." Raven spoke. "Well maybe not about the melting to death part... But about the rest of it. Even if I miraculously found a way to get us back into space, where would we go? We left the Ark completely crippled, dying. We wouldn't have enough supplies to sustain a community, let alone maintain a viable population for preserving the human race and repopulating the planet. And we could only take so many people with us. How would we decide who to leave behind? And how long would we have to survive up there before the earth became inhabitable again? Another 97 years? 197 years? There's no way of knowing. No, Bellamy... I don't think space is going to be a viable option this time around." She finally finished.

"So we're back to option number one!" Clarke chuckled bitterly. "Running around like chickens with our heads cut off, looking for levers to pull. Sounds tempting... But I think I'll pass this time around. The last six months have been nothing but running from one crisis to the next, trying to fix everything. I'm not wasting my next six months too, especially if they really are my last six months. I've got better things to do." She paused in her monologue of bitterness to take another swig from her bottle. "Better things... Like sitting here and drinking."

The others were frowning at Clarke, clearly confused by her indifferent attitude. The Clarke they knew didn't sit around and let others do the fixing. But Clarke wasn't so sure if the Clarke they knew existed anymore. Maybe that Clarke had died with Lexa in the City of Light. The others were disappointed in her. She could see it in their faces. But she was used to disappointing people. No matter how hard she tried to do the right thing, someone was always disappointed in her.

Yes, the others were disappointed in her. But for the first time, Clarke found that she didn't care. She raised her bottle out into the air in front of her as if to cheer them. "You guys have fun saving the world." She said. "I'm done. The world can go float itself."