archenemy | clexa

two

Clarke didn't think Jaha would take 'nothing but guns' as seriously as he does.

After six hours spent all around the Ark, watching the moon and the sun and the Earth, drawing, eating and showering and after a few long goodbye hugs with her mother, Clarke is strapped into the seat of a dropship that could've held a 100 people.

Although Clarke has spent a year in solitary prison, she feels more alone than ever in this dropship. It feels wrong to be there, feels wrong to be in such a big metal box with dozens of seats all alone.

It's cold, the seats are dusty and Clarke doesn't know whether or not she should trust the seatbelts. It's not like she has a choice, but she's pretty sure it's worse to die by hitting a wall over and over again crashing on a deadly planet than it is to simply suffocate by being floated so quickly, it must be impossible to even feel it.

The only comfort she has is the box of supplies that is with her, though food and guns are of no use when one is dead, either.

Clarke is not a person who gets easily anxious or afraid.

Clarke is also not a person who likes the sight of the dropship door closing, her mother still waving, closing her off to an infinite silence, an infinite solitude, seconds of tensions following. She might be sent to Earth any moment now.

Clarke read a book once of a genre called 'contemporary' (those that are a hundred years old but the newest they have that were written on the Earth) where a couple goes on a 'rollercoaster ride'. There's a detailed description of how the girl sits in the metal seat, clammy, sweating, with the seatbelt so tight on her chest she cannot breathe. There's no going back for her. She's in the 'rollercoaster', one of the fastest to exist in that time, she has waited two hours in line with her boyfriend, and now she can't back out,

There is that moment in time when one realizes, right down to the core and so very thoroughly, that one must face the consequences of one's actions. That there is disaster impending and absolutely no way to go back, an entire loss of control.

That's what the girl in the book goes through, once in a rollercoaster, then on top of a 'free fall tower', only it's supposed to be enjoyable, only she chose it. Her boyfriend takes her hand and yells at her, over the noise of all the other people, right before the start, that it's going to be okay.

The rollercoaster ride begins then, but despite the good writing the book had to offer, Clarke could never truly understand the passage. She's been in love, she's flirted, she's broken the rules- all relatable- but she has never ridden a rollercoaster or fallen off a free fall tower.

Now, there couldn't be anything she understands more than those pages. She knows how cowardly that must sound, but she wishes there was someone to hold her hand now, someone to tell her it was going to be okay.

In the end, it's not all that terrible, though. She remembers obsessively clutching her seatbelt, screaming, severe shaking, and then the final impact.

And that's when she notices, after getting up, dusting herself off, checking the ship for damage, that the box with supplies is merely a box with guns.

She saw the food, the rations, the blankets and matches. Did they really just forget?

How incompetent could someone be?

That means Clarke is stuck there now, at the lever of the door she isn't yet ready to open with nothing but guns and a broken radio. Yes. The radio was old enough that it broke at impact without a chance to repair it again. Clarke tries for what must be hours, but a ripped cable is a ripped cable and a smashed radio is a smashed radio. Her only hope left is that wristband now.