5
Braces
CLARKE
Clarke poked her head through the door to spy Raven still hunched in front of the computer where she had left her. Though now Monty was gone and there was a messy pile of papers sprawled out on the table in his place. Raven was almost as sprawled on the table as the papers. She was leaning far to one side, her head cradled in the crook of her elbow so that her arm wrapped around the back of her head. Her fingers gripped the base of her ponytail and she was yanking it left and right so that her head rocked back and forth, flopping dejectedly against her bicep. Her other arm was extended all the way out. Its fingertips grasped the end of a pen, absentmindedly flicking it up and down rapidly so that its tip beat a frantic "pat, pat, pat, pat," against the table.
She looked frustrated, agitated. She looked exhausted, overwhelmed. She looked utterly defeated.
Clarke hesitated in the doorway. She felt drained from her hangover, and from the physical shock of the icy waters, and from the emotional shock of her encounter with Bellamy. Right now was probably not the best time for either girl to be interacting with another human being. But Clarke was already standing there. So she took a deep breath and opened her mouth.
"Hey." She called.
At her greeting, Raven's shoulders jerked in surprise and the pen went flying from her fingers. It soared through the air and Clarke had to duck as it ricocheted off the door frame behind her head before falling to the ground next to her feet with a clatter. Raven sat up and swiveled in her seat, sending papers cascading to the floor.
"Bell said you were asking for me." Clarke spoke, bending to retrieve Raven's pen.
Raven paused from gathering the fallen papers to glance up at Clarke. She eyed her curiously. "Why are you all wet?"
"Never mind that." Clarke replied impatiently. "What's up?"
With a tired sigh, Raven plopped the papers back onto the desk, not bothering to straighten them. "Do you want the good news or the bad?" She asked cryptically.
"If this has anything to do with saving the world," Clarke replied. "I'd rather not hear either."
Raven didn't laugh. Clarke hadn't exactly expected her to. But she hadn't exactly expected her to fix her with a frown of such fierce intensity either.
"What the hell's wrong with you, Clarke?" She asked, furiously.
Clarke blinked stupidly at her, completely taken aback by the sheer anger in her voice. "What do you mean?"
"I mean..." Raven spat at her. "Why are you being so..." She paused, racking her brains, apparently struggling to find a strong enough word to adequately describe just how atrocious Clarke's current attitude really was. "So... Ornery?" She finally finished and Clarke almost laughed at the choice.
Clarke had been accused of being a lot of things in her life: 'stubborn,' 'strong-willed,' 'hard-headed'... But 'ornery?' That was a new one. But Clarke bit back the laugh before it could escape her because Raven was glaring at her. And the usual soft glint of humor in her eyes was absent. Right now they burned with anger and frustration and Clarke felt herself hardening under their heat.
"While you've been out wandering the woods, walking off your hangover," Raven crowed angrily. "I've been doing the calculations. And ALIE was right. We're fucked. We're all completely fucked. Everyone is going to die. And you... You don't even seem to give a damn!"
"That's because I don't!" Clarke spat back at her. "It's not my problem!"
They stared at each other for a moment, nostrils flared, fists clenched. "What happened to the Clarke I knew?" Raven asked. And the anger in her voice was suddenly gone, replaced by pure, unadulterated disappointment. And the hot anger churning in Clarke's stomach was rapidly giving way to guilt. And it was so much worse.
"The Clarke I knew wouldn't just sit around drinking while people were dying." Raven spoke. "The Clarke I knew wouldn't turn her back on everyone and say 'it's not her problem.'"
"Well," Clarke shot back. "Maybe the Clarke you knew is gone."
"Maybe she is." Raven replied, eyeing Clarke with a look of mixed disappointment and genuine sadness. "Because the girl I see in front of me now... I don't know who she is. But she's not the girl I call 'friend.' She's not the leader we all trust and admire. She's not the person Lexa fell in love with."
It was a low blow. A very low blow. And Clarke felt herself stumbling and reeling beneath it as if struck by a blade, not a tongue. Raven's words were meant to hurt her and they had succeeded. And Raven knew it.
"I'm sorry." She said quickly, dropping her eyes, dropping her voice. She sighed. "It's just... I... I don't know what to do. I need you. I need the old Clarke. I need the Clarke who always stepped up to help, even when it wasn't her responsibility to do so. I need the Clarke who gives a shit. I need the Clarke who cares."
"What if I can't be the person you need?" Clarke asked. And all the anger and the bitterness and the defensiveness was gone from her voice. And all that was left was the fear. "What if I can't fix anything? What if I'm broken?"
Without warning, Raven reached out and grasped Clarke's hand in her own. And there was tenderness in her touch. And there was understanding.
"We're all broken, Clarke." She said. "We all have battle scars. We're all crippled inside. And I found out the hard way... The best braces aren't made of plastic and steel. They're made of flesh and bone. The best braces are the people who hold a hand out and help you get back up onto your feet... the people who give you a shoulder to lean on when you can't stand on your own... the people who wrap their arms around you and hold you together when you feel like you're breaking apart." She paused, staring at Clarke with a different kind of intensity in her bright eyes. "Trust me... Turning your back on the world... On the people who love you... Turning your back will only leave you more broken than before. We need you, Clarke... And you need us."
Suddenly Clarke realized tears were rolling warm and wet down her cheeks. But before she could lift a hand to smear them away, Raven stepped forward and engulfed her, wrapping her arms around her so tightly that Clarke could not even attempt to pull away. And, after a moment of fighting it, Clarke finally let herself crumple and sag in Raven's embrace. And she leaned into Raven and let Raven hold her steady. And she let Raven hold her together. And she let Raven hold her.
And after a long moment in Raven's arms Clarke finally found the strength to stand again.
"Thanks, Raven." She said softly. "I'm sorry." Because she knew Raven, like usual, was right. Clarke had lost Lexa and there was a hole inside of her she could never fill. But she had not lost everyone. There were still people who loved her. There were still people who needed her. And Clarke was hurting inside. And Clarke was broken inside. But she was not the only one. And Raven understood.
"I'm sorry," Clarke repeated. "Sorry for being so ORNERY." She added with a small, weak, but authentic smile. "I don't know if I can help fix this. But I do care. So... Give me the good news, I guess."
"There's not much good news to give you." Raven sighed, plunking back down into her chair. Clarke plopped down beside her, eyeing the papers scattered across the desk. They were covered with messy calculations, complicated math that Clarke did not understand. Many of the numbers, and letters, and symbols were scratched out or scribbled over or circled or underlined. They looked like the scribbles of a mad scientist.
"The good news," Raven told her. "Is that ALIE, though right about everything else, got one thing wrong. We don't have six months to live. The Grounders do. We have seven months, maybe eight."
"We have more time than the Grounders?" Clarke asked, confused. "Why? What do you mean?"
"I've been running over all the calculations, double checking for every variable I can think of, but I keep coming up with the same numbers." Raven answered. She paused, thinking. Clarke could tell she was struggling, trying to figure out the best way to explain her findings to Clarke without making her head explode. "With the current rates of nuclear degeneration..." She began.
"OK..." Clarke cut her off. "Let's just start at the beginning. Did you and Monty find out how many plants we're talking about? Did you figure out where they are located?"
"Yes... Unfortunately." Raven answered. "And Jasper's right... There's no way we're piling into the rover and taking a nice, family road trip to these plants. There are 104 old nuclear power plants in the old United States, alone. And even though only a handful of them are currently failing, once they do it will set off a chain reaction and its only a matter of time until the others follow. And there are another 300 plants around the world in what used to be Japan, Russia, Australia, all over fucking Europe..."
"Yeah, I get it." Clarke cut her off. "What about your idea of disabling them remotely?"
Raven started rambling in engineer speak again and Clarke massaged her temples, tiredly. She had no idea what Raven was saying, but by her tone, one thing was clear... Whatever the science behind it, Raven couldn't shut down the plants from the comfort of Arkadia.
"So..." Clarke interrupted her scientific ramblings. "We can't get to the plants and we can't shut them down from here. So... What's the plan?"
"I don't have another plan." Raven admitted, defeated. "That's why I need you. I'm so lost for ideas I'm actually starting to seriously consider Bellamy's ridiculous suggestion of launching us back into space. You need to help me think of something better." She pleaded. "My plans... Your plans... They always work best when they're OUR plans."
"Well, I don't have any ideas." Clarke sighed with a shrug. She picked up one of the papers from the desk, eyeing Raven's chicken scratches. "If they aren't part of a plan, what are all these crazy scribbles about?"
"I've been calculating the current rates of radiation seeping from the plants, and the projected rates of the continued nuclear degradation to form a time line for survival attributing for..." Raven paused. She must have noticed Clarke's eyes glazing over again. "Let's see... How can I put this simply? OK... I figured how much radiation is seeping into the environment and the rate at which I think it will continue to rise as more plants fail over the next few months. And according to my calculations the concentration of radiation will reach deadly levels in about six months for the Grounders. Seven or eight for us."
"Again... Why do we have more time?" Clarke asked, not following.
"Because of our blood." Raven answered. "How much radiation someone can tolerate depends on the rate at which their blood can absorb and metabolize it. The average human, pre-nuclear apocalypse, like the people in Mt. Weather, could metabolize about .4 to 1 sieverts of radiation per hour without showing serious signs of illness. The radiation levels in the air outside are already at 4.6 sieverts, which is why if they stepped outside of the mountain their skin melted within minutes."
"By my calculations, based on the 'research'" She paused to make air quotes with her fingers. "Cage and those ass-hat scientists in Mt. Weather conducted on the Grounders and our friends... I estimate that the average Grounder can metabolize somewhere between six and seven sieverts an hour. The average Arker, because of our exposure to higher levels of solar radiation in space, can absorb somewhere between eight and and nine sieverts."
Clarke frowned at her, trying her best to follow. "So... We could potentially handle up to nine see..."
"Sieverts." Raven supplied.
"Right..." Clarke continued. "Nine see-whatevers of radiation before our skin starts melting off. So... According to your calculations, we're at almost five right now and we're going to hit..." She paused, waiting for Raven's answer, already knowing she didn't want to hear it.
"Well.." Raven bit her lip, stalling. "Of all the bad news, this is the worst. I estimate that within only a month or two people will start showing symptoms of radiation poisoning. Within six months radiation levels will exceed seven and take out all of the Grounders completely. That's about the time WE will all start feeling sick too. We will have about another month or two before the levels exceed nine and WE will all die as well. Within a year, radiation levels will peak at about eleven or twelve. But no one will be around to see that happen."
Clarke let the information sink into her, seeping like poison into her blood and bones. She wracked her brains. There had to be something they could do. There had to be a way to survive this. There was always a way to survive. You just had to find it.
"What if we go underground?" Clarke asked. "It worked for Mt. Weather... Kind of."
Raven shook her head sadly. "Once radiation hits a level ten, not even slabs of concrete will be able to shield us from it. It will be so pervasive, so powerful, it will seep in. No... If it passes a level nine and we are still here to see it, we will all die."
No, Clarke thought. There was no way everyone was just going to die. She would not allow that to happen. There had to be a solution. She was going to find it.
"So, let's get this straight..." Clarke said, her mind racing again. She had that sudden strange excited feeling she always got just before an idea would pop into her head. She wasn't sure where her thoughts were leading her, but they were definitely leading somewhere. They were jumbled inside of her, but she was sure there was an idea there, maybe even a solution. She just had to line it all up. She was close. She could feel it.
"The amount of radiation you can withstand depends on your blood, right?" She started, speaking her thoughts out loud, lining them up. "And some of us can metabolize more than others, right? So, theoretically, if your blood is powerful enough, you could survive limits that science says are deadly, right?"
"No one can metabolize more than nine sieverts an hour, Clarke." Raven interrupted with a frown. "NOBODY. It's not possible."
"When ALIE blew up the world the first time no one thought it would be possible for humans to survive THOSE levels of radiation." Clarke argued. "According to science, everyone should have died. But they didn't. Some of the Grounders survived. Some of their bodies found a way to handle the radiation. According to science, no one should be able to handle more than... How many did you say? One see-whatevers? But the air outside is already at four and the last time I checked, the Grounders are still walking around, breathing it in, without their skin melting off."
"Yes," Raven conceded. "Some Grounders adapted. But there is a huge, gigantic, monstrous difference between four sieverts and nine, Clarke. No one can adapt to nine. It's impossible."
"OK," Clarke answered. "I'm not a scientist. But it seems to me that when it comes to defining the 'impossible,' science has gotten it wrong before. Science put the human limit at one see-whatever. But the Grounders are surviving four. And if WE can survive seven, who is to say that we can't figure out a way to survive nine or ten or eleven or twelve?" She asked.
Raven was still shaking her head, frowning skeptically. But the answer was close. Clarke could feel it. And suddenly it popped into her mind, clear and solid: an idea. The secret is in the blood, she thought to herself. And for a moment it was like she was back in the middle of the river because the same questions were popping into her head. And they were all leading her to the same conclusion. And it felt like her limbs were going numb. And her mind was finally as clear as those icy waters. And it was as if it was all always meant to come together this way.
Your blood's ability to metabolize radiation was genetic, right? Clarke asked herself. You were born an average human, or you were born an average Grounder, or you were born an average Arker. But what if you could change your blood? What if you could become MORE than average?
"Raven," Clarke said and she felt the excitement bubbling over and spilling into her voice. "You said the 'average' Grounder can metabolize between five or six see-whatevers, right? What about an ABOVE-AVERAGE Grounder?"
Raven just frowned confusedly at her, clearly not following. "What do you mean, 'above-average?'"
And Clarke smiled at her because the answer was so obvious now. The secret to Lexa... The secret to saving the world... The secret was in the blood.