Chapter Text
The air was growing colder as Clarke walked through the forest, straying farther and farther away from Camp Jaha. With each step she took, Clarke felt the feeling of numbness and disconnect that she had been experiencing for a long time slowly begin to clear. She was becoming acutely aware of herself and her surroundings, where before it had felt as though she was running on auto-pilot. The survival of her people had been the only thing on her mind for so long. Now that the surviving members of the 48 were safe inside Camp Jaha with Bellamy watching over them she didn’t know what to feel. Her emotions were warring with each other. First relief, then overwhelming sadness, then anger… Over and over they changed and shifted as her mind replayed the last few weeks. The most prominent feeling was exhaustion. It felt as though she had lived a thousand years in the span of mere days.
It had been more than a few hours since she had left camp and the weight of her actions was still heavy on her shoulders. She had left because she needed a reprieve, some sort of absolution. Before she had that, she couldn’t face her peers. It hurt far too much and she was tired of hurting.
Clarke pushed through a patch of overgrown ferns, damp from the melting snow, and found herself in the clearing where the dropship stood. With a layer of ash still coating the surroundings and the bones of both friend and foe surrounding her, the place looked dead and unwelcoming. Once upon a time, though, it had been home for Clarke. Remnants of all the work that she and Bellamy had put into their camp still remained. Blackened tent poles were scattered about, some still standing up as skeletons of the homes they once supported.
Clarke’s foot kicked at a bent tin cup that had been discarded as she made her way into the abandoned dropship. It had since been cleaned of anything useful, likely by Grounder scavengers. Her fingers delicately brushed over the scratch marks in the metal wall where she, and later Bellamy, had marked off the number of days since the dropship had crashed to Earth. After being captured by Mount Weather, however, it had been impossible to keep track of. The concept of time simply wasn’t important when war was imminent and the lives of your friends were hanging in the balance.
On the third level of the dropship, she came across a tattered piece of parachute. Clearly not in good shape, whoever had cleaned out the dropship figured it wasn’t of any use. Clarke, feeling absolutely exhausted (when was the last time she had truly slept? She couldn’t even remember), crawled underneath it. The dirty red canvas barely covered her body, but it would do for the night. She would continue on her journey tomorrow, she decided. She had no clear idea of where she was going, but anywhere far from the battlefields that had plagued her short time on the ground would be fine.
It was here that she fell asleep, truly and deeply for the first time in so long, surrounded by the ghosts and ashes of the past two months.
~
Clarke felt warm as she stirred, curling a heavy woolen blanket between her fingers. Before she opened her eyes, she noticed a strange, familiar smell. It was the smell of stagnant, recycled air with a hint of metal. There was no freshness, no sharp pine or the moist smell of dirt wet from the rain (petrichor, Bellamy had once described it). Instead the air around her was almost sterile. Slowly, she opened her eyes, blinking fiercely to clear her vision. Despite the darkness, she realized that she was no longer in the dropship. Clean, slate-grey walls of steel surrounded her, with nearly every inch covered in aged sketching paper. Clarke’s eyes danced from page to page, recognizing the romanticized charcoal sketches of earth. Panicked, she threw back the dark grey blanket and jumped up from an old steel framed bed. She clutched at her chest, feeling her racing heart and quickened breaths as she looked down at the dark grey Ark-issued pyjama tank top and sweat pants she was wearing.
Somehow, she had fallen asleep in the dropship and had woken up in Alpha Station.
Clarke’s mind was racing – who had brought her back? Bellamy was the only person she had told that she couldn’t stay in Camp Jaha. She knew, without a doubt, that he would respect her wishes, no matter how much he didn’t like them. However, it was inevitable that he would’ve told the rest of the camp, particularly her mother, where she was. Clarke, having regained enough composure to think, pushed open the bedroom door and strode out into a spacious kitchen area. This was the same apartment she had lived in while growing up on the Ark. She recognized her mother, Abby, whose back was turned towards her. Clarke noticed how clean her hair was, tied neatly back in a French braid. She was wearing her turquoise blue surgical scrubs, and her black boots were without a single nick. Clarke frowned in confusion. Sure, they had ways of washing their clothes on the ground, in the river, but no one had been truly clean, as Abby was now, since landing on Earth.
“Mom?” Clarke called out, feeling more and more like she was in some alternate reality.
“Clarke!” Abby gasped, wheeling around with her palm placed flat against her heart, “You startled me!”
Clarke looked down at the cool metal floor beneath her bare feet for a moment before meeting Abby’s gaze again. There was a look of concern on her face as she moved closer to Clarke.
“What are you doing up so early? Are you feeling all right?” Abby asked, her hand coming up as if to feel Clarke’s forehead for her temperature. Clarke stepped back out of her reach,
“Yeah, I’m… I’m fine, I…” Clarke stuttered. Her thoughts were racing a mile a second, when she came to a sudden realization, “What day is it today?”
“It’s Thursday…” Abby answered slowly, “Are you sure you’re feeling okay, honey? You’re pale.”
“No, what’s the date today!” Clarke ignored her, urgency in her voice.
“It’s September 12… A month before your sixteenth birthday…” She replied, slower than she would speak to even her most disoriented patients. Her eyes narrowed as she studied Clarke with worry.
“Right…” Clarke whispered weakly. September 12, 2148 – a year before the dropship launched a hundred juvenile delinquents on a suicide mission to Earth, or so Clarke had experienced. The concept of reality had completely left her as she tried to make sense of the situation. The dropship, the grounders and mountain men, the war… Had it all just been a dream?
“Clarke, honey, stay home and get some more sleep. You don’t’ have to go to school today.” She heard Abby say. She shook her head.
“No, really, I’m fine. I just… woke up funny…” Clarke explained lamely, trying and failing to come up with a reason as to why she was acting so strange. Abby’s eyes were practically slits as she scrutinized her daughter, but decided to let it go.
“Okay… I have to get to medical and prep for a surgery, but stop by my office after school for a minute and let me know how you’re feeling.” Abby told her, grabbing her coffee mug off of the counter. She placed a quick kiss to Clarke’s temple before heading out of the apartment door towards the main commons of Alpha Station.
Clarke stared at the closed door to the apartment for a long time after Abby left, her words echoing in her head. It was September 12, 2147. A whole two years behind the world she thought she had just gone to sleep in.
Surely, people didn’t have dreams that were so intricate, so detailed. She couldn’t possibly have imagined a world in which there were different cultures of people that survived on the ground, with their own language to boot – all of the evidence the Ark had gathered over the past ninety some odd years showed that no one had survived the last bombs that were dropped. No one was that imaginative, were they?
Clarke sat down on the worn couch of her living room with her confusion growing every second.
“Morning, kiddo.” A deep, warm voice behind her broke through Clarke’s inner turmoil and she felt her heart drop into her stomach.
“Dad!” Clarke all but cried, jumping off of the couch and throwing her arms around her father, Jake, as he staggered back in surprise.
“Well hello to you, too!” Jake laughed, holding his daughter as tightly as she held him. Clarke felt his large hand stroke her hair and she nearly started sobbing. “Everything okay, kiddo?”
“Yes,” Clarke choked into his shoulder, her eyes tightly shut, “I had… a bad dream.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Jake asked soothingly, still stroking Clarke’s hair. She hadn’t felt so at peace than did she right at this moment for a long time – or so it seemed.
Clarke shook her head against his chest, reveling in the feel and smell of her father’s familiar grey sweater, “No. I’m just glad you’re here.” No, I don’t want to talk about the dream I had where you were dead, I’d become a monster, and the world was at war.
“I’ll always be here for you, Clarke.” He answered quietly, with such a confidence that she was on the cusp of crying all over again.
It was just a dream.
“I love you,” She whispered into the soft fabric of his sweater, smiling when he repeated the sentiment,
“I love you too, Clarke,”
She held onto her father for a moment longer before pulling back to look up into his good-natured face and kind blue eyes. He was here, he was real, and he was alive. This fact alone was enough to start easing the panic of waking up in the past, or rather, waking up from a dream that was so realistic she could’ve sworn that it had actually happened.
“You better get cleaned up and dressed there, kiddo. You’ve gotta leave for class pretty soon.” Jake smiled at her, “And I’ve got to get down to Engineering… Sinclair has some reports for me to review.”
Clarke nodded and watched as Jake grabbed his worn out leather jacket and a bagel before coming back over to her to give her one last quick hug.
“Have a good day, Clarke. I’ll see you at dinner.” He told her happily, smiling as he waved to her while making his way out of the apartment.
~
Clarke had dressed quickly, pulling on the familiar pink cotton sweater with the crochet back that was gradually falling apart. She dragged a brush through her blonde hair and pulled it up into a messy bun that rested at the nape of her neck. She admired how clean and straight her hair looked in the mirror for a millisecond before grabbing her backpack and notebook, heading out of the apartment and into the main commons of Alpha Station. In the time it had taken her to get ready, Clarke’s confusion and panic over her dream had eased off. That’s all it had been, a dream. She had convinced herself that she had seen all of the people she had encountered in her dream on the Ark – she had read that a person didn’t create people in dreams, they were simply faces that one had seen before, whether they consciously remembered those faces or not. The language she had heard the “Grounders” speak was probably just gibberish, or perhaps she had read something similar to it somewhere, too. She convinced herself all too easily that there was a logical explanation for everything she had encountered once her initial shock wore off. It wasn’t as though time travel was possible and it was easy to accept the horrors that she had created and endured as a figment of her imagination.
She hitched her backpack further up onto her shoulder as she walked through the commons, taking in the Ark citizens both young and old scattered around. They were sitting on benches, standing groups, and others were just passing through. The sounds of easy chatter and laughter were enough to muffle the constant machine hum that was ever present – a sign that the Ark still sustained the life aboard her. The relaxed atmosphere felt foreign, like a long lost memory, and to Clarke it was so incredibly nice. Just then, she felt a small tap on her arm. Spinning around, Clarke came face to face with the boy who was, who is, her best friend. Wells Jaha stood in front of her, holding a dark backpack similar to hers and giving her a wide smile.
“Morning, Clarke!” he greeted her brightly. She felt complete happiness bubble up within her as she took in the sight of her childhood confidant. He was wearing a clean, slate gray t-shirt with navy cargo pants. He took one of her hands in his and placed a cinnamon roll into it.
“I brought you some breakfast, here,” he smiled before opening up his notebook, “Okay, I’ll quiz you.”
“Quiz me?” Clarke laughed in confusion.
“For the Earth Skills test today? Remember?” Wells gave her a strange look.
“Right, yeah, it must’ve slipped my mind.” She sighed, shaking her head, “It’s been a weird morning.”
The pair started walking towards the room where Alpha Station held its most senior classes. Clarke started to nibble on the roll that Wells had given her, savoring the sticky sweetness of the icing mixed with the warm spice of the cinnamon. Treats like this were a rare commodity on the Ark, unless you were privileged enough to have a council member for a parent. That thought made Clarke feel uncomfortable. The hierarchal class system that the Ark had developed over the past century was something that they were all used to and familiar with, but that didn’t make it right.
“You know, I think this is the first time you haven’t been prepared for a test!” Wells chuckled, “However will you get that medical internship now?” he teased, speaking in an exaggerated, exasperated tone.
“Shut up,” Clarke lightly smacked him on the arm, “It doesn’t matter. I bet you I can answer any question you throw at me.” Wells smirked at that.
“Challenge accepted,” he replied, quirking his eyebrow up, “Okay, true or false? Plants that are red in colour are always poisonous.”
They began to round a corner into a side hall where the door to the classroom was.
“Fa-“ Clarke began, but was cut off when she collided with something tall and solid. She let out a small gasp of surprise as two large brown hands gripped her forearms to steady her.
“Careful,” A warm, deep voice broke through her shock. She felt the thumbs that held her forearms slowly stroke up and down once and she dragged her eyes up to look into the face of the person she had walked right into. A jolt of recognition coursed through her veins as her eyes danced across the tanned face, taking in the smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose, the dark mahogany eyes, and the slightly arrogant tilt to his full lips. Affection for a person that, in reality, she hadn’t even met was so strong in that moment that she couldn’t move, let alone speak.
She was looking up into the face of Bellamy Blake, the only person on Earth that she had trusted implicitly. Or, so it had been, in her dream.