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When she was younger, Clarke used to dream of the ground. Her father used to bring books with pictures and stories of life on the ground but on the Ark; books were scarce and hard to come by.
She read stories of the wars and the hard times they brought that lead to her life on the Ark in the first place. She couldn't fathom why anyone would want to destroy such a place. She longed to run through the grass and breathe actual air rather than the recycled air on the Ark.
Unlike a lot of the population on the Ark, except a lucky few, she was given freedom to wander around although her mother didn't like it when she went near the factory stations and often tried to deter her from going too far with comments like “they’re not like us” and “you won’t be welcome there.” But this was hard for a six-year old to wrap her head around, so when her parents were working, she always explored the other stations although she never interacted with anyone rather she preferred observing those who lived and worked there. Perhaps her mother’s comments had a bigger impact than she’d care to admit. She stored her observations in her mind until she reached her home and was safe to recall all the sights she’d saw that day.
She was ten when her father brought home a sketchbook alongside a small piece of charcoal from the market place. The book cover itself had a few tears in it but the paper itself remained untouched. She was astounded; now she could finally store her observations on paper.
Since everything on the Ark was scarce, she didn't want to waste her paper on trivial drawings so it took her over a week to decide what she’d like to draw first; it was the view of the Earth from the observation deck. The drawing itself wasn't the best, filled with crooked lines and smudges from the charcoal but she was only ten and she was just getting the hang of it.
By the time she was fourteen, half the book was filled with sketches both of people and her imaginations of the Earth. The first person she drew was her father, when she was eleven, and once she felt it was perfected as much as it could; she showed her father. This was a big deal to her; she’d never shown anyone her drawings before not even her best friend Wells.
When she sketched, it allowed her to escape from reality. She no longer had to worry what others thought of her; she was free. She could focus on the gentle strokes of charcoal on the page and perfecting her shading.
Everything changed when her father was floated and she was locked up in the Skybox. She no longer had her sketchbook or could walk around the Ark for inspiration; now she only had her memories. After a few days of a routine of just eating and sleeping, someone managed to smuggle in a piece of charcoal into her cell. She had a feeling it was her mother but she couldn't be sure since she didn't know what happened to her after her father’s floating and her own arrest. Clarke didn't know if her mother was alive or not. She wanted to remain optimistic and have hope but as the days went by without any word her hope slowly faded in that she was numb to feeling.
Sketching then remained her escape although without the presence of paper or her sketchbook, she made best used of the resources at hand and her drawings occurred on a much larger canvas; the four walls of her cell.
...
Now on the ground, she had no escape. Her days were filled with tasks of trying to keep her people alive alongside her co-leader Bellamy Blake. They both shared the tasks but it weighed down on both of them. Bellamy was different to Clarke; he was brought up in the very stations that her mother warned her against when she was younger. He was quite tough and closed off as a result of his upbringing and the pressure that was thrust upon him at a young age to raise his younger sister in secret.
At the start, he’d been quite rash in his decision to remove the wristbands and his maintained a carefree attitude of doing whatever the hell he wanted now that he was on the ground away from the council that floated his mother and locked his sister in a cell just for being born. It turned out that his carefree attitude was a front for his plans to stop the Ark from coming down to the ground as he had done something terrible and unforgivable to get onto the dropship; something that would take him away from his sister again if the council ever found him.Even his decision to leave an unconscious Raven behind as he stole her radio to prevent the Ark from contacting the ground was for his own benefit .
But against all odds, he was pardoned for his crimes with her help. She’d stopped him from running away and abandoning the camp forcing him to face the consequences of his actions head on. It took a lot of convincing on her part seeing as he was as stubborn as it comes, much like herself but she failed to admit it.
He was her equal even if he refused to acknowledge it. Bellamy often saw the world as it was; he didn't believe in sugarcoating things which was opposite to how Clarke liked to live her life as short or as long as it may be. She often let her heart aid her decisions first rather than looking at the long term implications that her decisions may encounter. They balanced each other out; the head and the heart.
There were times where she missed the freedom that came with drawing especially when everyone was asleep, except the few on patrol duty, and everything appeared to be still and calm for the time being. Luckily she often found herself busy with the tasks of running the camp and running their own makeshift version of a med-bay for the sick and injured. It was a given that their people often ended up injured; they were still teenagers after all.
Looking across the camp they built together, she made eye contact with her co-leader. Maybe he’d be her escape.