This was the hardest chapter. Oh my gosh. It was hard because it includes a lot of the original dialogue from The Calm (episode 11) with my own twist of events. Sorry, I was busy working on my own novel and procrastinating over this one. I think it'll have about four more chapters but dang, this could actually go on for a whole other book. But I'm not doing that. I still have to edit this so please ignore the mistakes. Oh, and I screamed during all of that second episode. Bellarke is happening, Guys. It's on its way.
Her mother wasn't there.
Clarke surveyed the broken room, her heart hitching in her chest as she turned in a slow circle, eyes cast to the floor. Unconscious figures lay around her and her eyes searched their faces, wet with sweat and tracked through with grime, but none were Abby. Earth Monitoring was small and it took only a moment for Clarke to come to terms with the fact hat her mother wasn't among them.
Clarke's chest throbbed, but she swallowed the fear and turned her focus on the people that needed it.
"I can't get a pulse!" someone screamed. Clarke whipped around. It was the guy who had been speaking to Kane earlier, broad-shouldered and sandy-haired. He was stooped beside an unresponsive man, skin a deep russet color, his face covered with a mask.
Clarke's medical instincts kicked in and she dropped to her knees beside the both of them. "Move," she ordered, and the guy's brown eyes met hers. She clasped her hands together and pressed them over the man's chest, beginning compressions. Clarke counted down the seconds. She'd seen enough people die today and was ready to blow into the man's mouth when his eyes suddenly flew open.
He coughed, gripping onto the mask and swallowing lungfuls of air.
Clarke sat back, her own breath heavy. She glanced down at her hands, still stained with flecks of blood from earlier. She'd just saved a man's life with the blood of someone else on her hands. "You're okay."
She shook that thought out before it could become too deeply rooted, looking back at the guy sitting on the man's other side. He was gazing at her with a look of approval, upper lip lined in stubble. "Impressive, Griffin."
Clarke raised an eyebrow, ignoring the surge of guilt that shot through her at the praise. "You know who I am?"
He scoffed, much too lightheartedly for the lethal situation they were in. "Kind of hard to ignore the poster girl calling Doomsday. Or, Doomsday Part Two. I'm Wick."
Clarke smirked, "Remind me to shake your hand later," she said, helping the man lying on the ground into a sitting position. She looked pointedly into his face. "You're going to be all right," she told him. You're okay. "We're getting you guys out of here."
"Or, to be more accurate," Wick interjected, "We're sort of hoping your guys will help us all get out of here."
Clarke cast him a warning look, before asking the oxygen-deprived man his name. His breath fogged the mask and he pulled it off long enough to talk. "Sinclair," he wheezed, dark eyes looking back and forth between her's and Wick's. "Now hurry and tell me, how're the other Stations?"
Clarke pursed her lips, looking over at Wick, who faltered for the first time. "I'm not gonna lie," he mumbled with a shrug, "they're in bad shape. We have electrical fires and a few Stations without oxygen. Power's out in all of them, as far as I can tell. But it could be worse. We could be dead."
The man pulled off the mask again. "That's bad."
"Which is why keeping you alive is relatively important."
"And the Chancellor?"
Clarke looked over the room, eyes landing on Bellamy who was staring at someone supine on the floor. Jaha.
He was alive, Clarke could see, by the breath fogging under his own mask and Bellamy met her eyes briefly. His own look haunted, lips tucked into a thin line.
She turned back to Sinclair. "He seems to be doing fine."
"Help me up," Sinclair wheezed, and Clarke abided, sliding under one arm as Wick supported the other. Sinclair swayed a moment but managed to stay in an upright position, eyes squinted in the direction of Jaha. Clarke looked back to him herself, an uneasy feeling settling in the pit of her stomach at what she found.
Jaha was staring at Bellamy, but not with the same anxiety the others were. Maybe Clarke was just imagining it, but she thought he seemed almost impressed. The chancellor rose to his feet, waving off the help of Kane. "Bellamy Blake," he said, words reaching around the room as he stood tall. He didn't even sway. "The man who shot me."
The tension stretched all the way to where Clarke stood, as tangible as the heat in the failing air.
One of the men on the floor struggled to get up, eyeing Bellamy as if he were something dangerous. "Step back, Chancellor!" But Jaha stayed where he was.
Bellamy grimaced. "It was nothing personal," he said, but Clarke thought she heard a slight waver in his voice.
Jaha narrowed his eyes. "The taking of a life should be very personal."
"Except I didn't take yours," Bellamy murmured. "But you have. You've done your fair share of taking." A cold fury radiated deep within his voice, inching towards the surface and at risk of spilling over the brink.
Kane stepped forward, exchanging a look between both Jaha and Bellamy. "I think that's enough."
"I think I should remind you that it was Shumway who gave me the gun. The gun to kill you," Bellamy said, disregarding Kane's words. "That seems worth mentioning."
"Chancellor, move back!" that same man shouted again from across the room, short of breath and weary.
An odd mix of anger and resentment formed inside Clarke's chest, ingrained so deep it chafed against her bones. She stood from her crouch and stalked over to Jaha, ignoring the tinny voice that told her this was Bellamy's fight. It was, she knew, but that didn't mean he should go without support.
Jaha's dark gaze fixed on her, the faulty lights of the screens making his eyes glow. He simpered when he looked at her, which somehow made her anger worse. "I'm sorry to say that your mother isn't here, Clarke."
She stopped beside Bellamy, his presence inviting compared to the rest in this tight room. "I know. This is about Bellamy." She looked over at him, his lips still pursed, eyes hooded and low.
"Clarke, I appreciate your candor, but-"
Clarke cut Jaha off, ignoring the caveat Kane shot her. "Bellamy has paid for his crimes, and for crimes that weren't his to pay," her voice rang throughout the room. "But if you want to make it out of this, you'll need all the people you can get, which includes the both of us. Here, Bellamy isn't your shooter. And you are not our Chancellor. Right now we're just people trying to figure out a way to survive."
At that, Jaha smirked, gaze flickering between her's and Bellamy's. His expression turned condescending. "Excuse me if I don't feel very inclined to work beside the man who tried to have me killed."
"Why not?" Clarke asked, injecting some faux sympathy into her voice. "We're willing to work beside the man who had my father and his mother killed."
His smirk vanished and Jaha's eyes skirted from hers. He took a step forward, towards Clarke and though she wanted to withdraw, she didn't. She couldn't manage to give him the satisfaction.
"That was part of the job," Jaha told her quietly. "There are rules and there have to be repercussions for breaking them. But it doesn't give me any pleasure when they're enforced, especially when it came to Jake."
"No," Clarke bit out. "You don't get to mourn him. You don't get to feel like you lost a friend. I understand that you were following the law, and that may have made you a good leader, but it doesn't make you a good man."
She broke away from his gaze and turned to the room. Eyes met hers, watching her with a look of skepticism and scorn. She distantly noted that Wick wasn't with them. "As of now, we're pardoned of our crimes." She looked back at Jaha. "Because you'll need all the hands you can get, and we won't help you to the ground if we think another cell is waiting for us down there."
This time, Jaha actually smiled, but it felt demeaning. "That's valiant of you, Clarke. If only there were a way to get to the ground. We have no launching power. And I'm estimating, from the damage, the death count must at least be-"
"Around fifteen hundred," Kane answered automatically and Clarke looked over at him, his brows knitting together, "from what we could tell. Whole Stations could've been lost. What's left . . . I can only assume the others succumbed to hypoxia."
"Hey, Guys, I found something!" Wick suddenly shouted and Clarke looked towards the room's exit. He hurried over to the middle of the room with a sluggish Sinclair in tow.
Jaha held Kane's eyes for another moment before looking to Wick. "What'd you find?"
An eager glint sparkled in Wick's eyes. "Data from the Exodus launch. The monitor says that service hatch beta was manually sealed before the launch from our side." He looked excitedly to all of them in turn but Clarke just glanced at Bellamy who seemed just as confused as she was. She was about to ask what this meant, but Kane spoke first. "There was someone in the Service Bay?"
Oh. They were talking of other people, possibly still alive on the ship.
"Are there survivors?" One of the the other men in the room asked.
"So they jumped ship at the last moment?" Jaha asked.
Kane shook his head. "Maybe Sydney threw them off. Maybe they were a threat." He turned to Sinclair an Wick. "Could they still be in the Service Bay?"
Wick scratched at his chin. "Well sure. If they hunkered down and got lucky, yeah they could still be ticking, but they won't be for long."
Kane's grim expression lifted at that and he exchanged an zealous look with Jaha. "Well how do we get to them?"
Clarke wished she'd studied those blueprints of the Ark more closely, but waited for Wick as patiently as she could, as he tilted his head back and forth in silent debate. "We . . . I guess we could try the maintenance shaft," but the doubtful look he shot Sinclair made a leaden weight fall into Clarke's stomach. "It's sealed on both sides, so you'd have pressurization-"
"And it's pressed right against the fuel pods," added Sinclair. "Without power to the coolant system it'll be very hot in there."
They lapsed into silence, broken a second later by Kane's sigh. "I-"
"I'll go," Bellamy suddenly proffered from beside her and Clarke blanched. No was her first thought. It came out of nowhere, hitting her squarely in the chest. She whirled on him. "Bellamy, you can't-"
He looked down at her and some of the hardness in his eyes disappeared. "Clarke, I'll be fine."
But Clarke shook her head. He couldn't know what that shaft held. Couldn't know for certainty if he's make it through. Maybe it was too narrow for him. Maybe . . .
Maybe she'd have a better shot.
"I'll do it," Clarke said, the words out before she could stop them.
Now it was Bellamy's turn to object. The hardness reappeared again, onyx eyes blazing. "You're not going in there," he snapped at her with surprising harshness. "I'm-"
"I'm smaller," Clarke said, turning so she was speaking not just at Bellamy, but to everyone. She looked at them pleadingly.
But it was Kane who spoke. "Blake is right. It is dangerous. We aren't even sure if there's-"
"I can reach it," Clarke told him firmly. Maybe it was selfish of her to offer herself up instead of Bellamy, but in that moment, she didn't care. Clarke would gladly be selfish if it meant keeping those she cared about alive. She'd meant what she'd said in the Prison Station. I can't lose you, too. Bellamy mattered to her now; as a partner, as an ally, as a friend.
"And I can do it in half the time it would take any of you," she pointed out.
Kane appraised her. "That's . . . also true."
Bellamy moved in front of Clarke before she had a chance to say anything, blocking her, protecting her. "You can't actually be considering this," Bellamy hissed, voice rising until it teased the border of a shout. "I'm the one who's going in that shaft."
Clarke pushed her way past him. It was like forcing over a wall. She looked at Wick. "You said so yourself those people are practically out of time. You don't need big and strong, here. You need small and fast and standing around arguing that I'm not that is just going to cost the people in the Service Bay their lives."
"Shut up, Clarke," Bellamy snapped at her. But Clarke knew what those around her did; she was their best bet, whether Bellamy saw that or not.
"She's right," Kane deadpanned, meeting Clarke's eyes. "Time is of the essence. And Clarke would make it through faster."
"Then it's done," she said.
Bellamy turned around again, towering over her. "No, it's not. This is insane."
Clarke looked up at him, taken somewhat aback by the outburst. "If you so much as scream, I promise, I will kill you." It was incredible how far they'd come. She splayed a hand over his chest as he stared hard at Kane. "You said you'd be fine," Clarke told him. "Why shouldn't I be, too?"
He looked away from Kane and down at her and this time, the hardness in his eyes didn't subside. It shattered, into a million small pieces that showed an emotion Clarke couldn't place behind them. It was bare and it was vulnerable and it was so very un-Bellamy.
"I'll be fine," she repeated. I'm just crawling through a hot shaft to the Service Bay that may or may not even be there, she thought to herself.
But she knew better than to ask anyone how it could possibly go wrong.
<>*<>*<>*<>*<>
"You'll need this battery to open the door to the Bay," Wick told Clarke as they traversed the corridors, extending a small bag to her. Clarke took it and flipped open the lip, revealing a box tucked inside, about the size of her palm. A coil of wire connected to the base of it. "You're going to hook this end piece up to the door's panel and turn on the battery, got it?"
Clarke nodded.
"Are you sure about where this thing leads?" Bellamy asked. He'd insisted on coming with them to the shaft opening, striding beside Clarke with a dark look on his face. He lowered his voice. "What if this guy's wrong?"
Wick glanced across at Bellamy, from the opposite side of Clarke. "I'd be a terrible engineer if I were. And it's not guy. It's Wick. Just . . . in case you were wondering."
Bellamy didn't even look at him. "I think you're confusing me with someone who cares."
They turned onto another corridor, still cast in shadows. They were warded off though by their three flashlights. The echo of their footfalls swirled around Clarke, her anxiety doubling when Wick finally came to a stop.
"There it is," Wick said, making a motion with the flashlight's beam and Clarke's gaze fell to a squat panel with the words Authorization Only written in a bold, blood-red text. "Doorway to freedom."
Or certain death, Clarke thought dryly but gave a nod outwardly. She looked back at Bellamy, words suddenly failing her. "I'll be okay," she said again, but this time, she didn't know whose benefit she was saying it for; Bellamy's or her own.
He looked about ready to say something, but Clarke acted first. She rose on her heels and wrapped her arms around his neck, unconcerned by the way he froze. Then he thawed and his own arms were around her, circling her waist and practically lifting her up.
A weird feeling fluttered in Clarke's chest, warm and languid. For the first time since she watched her father being taken away by the Guard, she felt safe.
It ended much sooner than she wanted and Clarke unwound her hold on Bellamy and stepped back. His eyes bored into hers as the sucking noise of the panel door being opened came from behind her. She broke away from Bellamy's gaze and turned to Wick, bending down to look into the small, dark hatch.
He pulled back and met her eyes. "It's not that hot," he said confidently.
Clarke frowned.
"So it's a little warm," Wick amended. "Sinclair doesn't know what he's talking about."
Now Clarke knew he was lying but she gave him a small smile anyway. Her eyes fell back to the hatch and she felt her throat tighten. She gripped the small battery in her hand and crouched down in front of the entrance.
She was greeted by a hot draft, singeing her cheeks and burning her eyes. Her vision turned watery as she shown her flashlight up it, revealing a set of metal tubes she'd be forced to crawl over.
The air in her lungs suddenly felt very thin. She took a deep breath, the heat going down her throat and making her insides feel just as hot. "Okay," she called back to Wick and Bellamy. She wanted to turn around and get a last look at them, but wouldn't let herself. She put all her focus in lying as flat as she could, ignoring the scorched metal rods burning through the front of her shirt. They bit into her bare forearms as Clarke started crawling, the heat growing worse the farther she went.
It was smothering, as choking as smoke. Every drag of breath burned her nose and she let out a muffled cry as the rods grew even hotter beneath her.
Second-degree burns, she thought. It wasn't enough to do permanent damage. Not yet anyway.
She forced herself to go faster, gripping the flashlight and battery with white-knuckles blotched red. Sweat beaded on her lip and ran in small rivers down her temples. It pooled on her back, making the fabric of her shirt stick to her like a second skin. Her breath came in shallow spurts and she stared ahead. She thought she could see the end of the shaft and Clarke didn't waste any time. She struggled over the burning rods, feeling as the heat kissed her arms, her wrists, her fingers. Feeling as it melted off the first few layers of tissue.
Clarke crawled another meter and was met by a sealed vat. A lever protruded outwards from the left side and Clarke grabbed it. A numbed feeling shot up from where she touched it as Clarke pulled it down, and it took another moment for her brain to register the pain of it. She cried out, splashes of darkness erupting over her eyes. She snatched back her reddened fingers as the door hissed and slid open.
She clamored out as fast as she could, losing her hold and falling to the floor the rest of the way. The heat disappeared and Clarke was left with just the pain, her fingers quaking around the battery and flashlight. She cast its beam around the room.
She was at the end of a corridor, facing a transparent door, as wide as the corridor itself. She flashed her light over it and caught the sight of bodies strewn inside the room. The Service Bay.
Clarke blinked back the stars in her vision and rose to her feet. The door's panel was already off, wires spilling out like a damaged organ, bleeding and broken. Clarke pulled out the battery, nearly dropping it in her hurry to get the door open. She prayed she wasn't too late as she followed Wick's instructions. It was hard to see through the thick binds of wire and to reel in her focus, Clarke imagined the end piece she held as a scalpel, the wires a plexus of nerves she needed to meticulously maneuver through.
There. Clarke plugged in the end piece and turned on the battery.
For one terrible moment, nothing happened. Then the door opened and Clarke stumbled inside, flashing her light around.
Slowly, the room stirred to life, hunched figures sitting up, closed lids blinking awake. Clarke checked them all, telling them to get up, to breathe. She stopped at one figure, their head turned away and Clarke bent down.
"Hey," she told the person, placing a gentle hand on a frail shoulder. "You have to wake up. C'mon." She reached over and turned the person's head to get a better look-
And went still. Clarke's hand under the person's chin froze. She stared at the woman's familiar face, coated in sweat and dirt. Their eyes fluttered open.
"Mom?"