Chapter Text
Clarke lay on the small cot in her cell, staring up at the charcoal sky she had drawn on the ceiling. There was little else to do as there was still over an hour until the guards would come to let her out for her daily hour of exercise. She had languished in this small prison for three hundred and forty five days now. The charcoal scores on the wall beside her confirmed this. Just twenty more marks to go before she celebrated a full year in the compact, temperature-controlled hell.
Normally she would spend this time after lunch studying a medical or science textbook, or sometimes reading a novel. Novels that had more often than not been written centuries before but which held so much wonder and adventure. There were times when she felt like these stories were the only thing that had kept her sane this past year. That and her drawings. But she was unable to sketch out anything new today as she hadn’t received any paper in weeks, and every inch of her sketchbooks were filled with pictures.
She looked around at the other drawings adorning the walls of the small room. Every now and then the guards would force her to clean them off. They would stand by with their guns, smirking at her until all that was left was grey water in a bucket. She never understood why they made her do it, as the pictures were harmless enough. She liked to draw scenes of Earth and what she imagined life on the Ground to be like. She made sure to never let them see how much it pained her to clean them away.
But today she had no charcoal, she had no drawing space, and she’d read the few books she possessed what felt like dozens of times already.
She wondered again to herself why her mother hadn’t tried again to see her. In the beginning she had come, but something in the way Abby spoke about Clarke’s father made her stop in her tracks. When she had apologised, Clarke had known then that she was saying sorry for the part she had played in sealing her father’s fate. Clarke had screamed at her to never come back, that she never wanted to see her again. She told her she would never forgive her. Three hundred and forty five days later and that still held true. But she also knew that she missed her mother desperately and deep down had hoped that she might try again for contact.
She reached under her bed and pulled out the sketchbook she had placed there. Laying her head back on the pillow she flicked through the pages, seeing animals and birds, more intricate images of flowers, geometric shapes and mandalas. Turning towards the centre of the book she stopped on two pages depicting a scene of a moon-lit forest, with great detail having gone into the tall trees that rose up to the night sky above; the Milky Way running vast overhead. Standing in the middle of the forest a dark figure could be seen, wearing a long coat, long braided hair flowing down her back, a sword at her hip, and eyes cast to the sky. Clarke’s gaze lingered on the figure and again she wondered why this person, this girl, kept appearing on the fringes of her dreams. When she would wake she could never quite conjure up the full picture of the girl’s face. Just a snatched detail here and there, and then it would disappear into the ether. Most times she dismissed it as being a confusion of characters that she had read about in books or seen in old movies. Her mind's way of putting herself on Earth and finding a person there to relate to.
She turned the page to a scene depicting a city rising up from the thick forest surrounding it. Except this wasn’t like the cities she had seen in photographs or films from the Before. This city was all dilapidated houses and buildings. Wooden huts with smoke rising from wood burning stoves, but with the rubble of crumbling ruins interspersed between. It was a settlement sprang from the ashes of an almost destroyed city. Almost destroyed but for the towering building that rose up high above all the rest, with a flame burning bright from the top.
Like a candle, Clarke thought.
She was pulled abruptly from her thoughts as the door to her cell hissed loudly signalling that someone was entering. Quickly tucking the sketchbook back under her bed she made to stand. Three sets of guard boots marched in, which Clarke immediately thought was strange as there was only ever one guard to escort her to the exercise area. She scanned their faces as they lined up in front of her.
“Place your hands on the wall, Prisoner 319,” barked the only one of the three that she recognised.
Shumway.
“What’s going on?” Clarke asked, noticing the beads of sweat rolling down the face of the middle guard with the brown floppy curls and the freckles.
“I repeat. Turn around and place your hands on the wall 319. Right NOW!” Shumway boomed, making Clarke jump.
As she turned she saw the third guard dart his eyes towards the curly haired boy, Something felt very wrong about this and she could feel her fight or flight instinct kicking in. But she could do neither so she turned to the wall and placed her palms against it.
“Cuff her, Miller,” Shumway ordered.
She was then turned around and her arms were pulled in front of her and her wrists cuffed. As she turned she caught the eye of the third guard as he locked the handcuffs to her wrists. He had a kind look about him and it almost felt like he was trying to reassure her with his gentle gaze
But any trust that she started to feel disappeared instantaneously when she took in what Shumway said next.
“Wave goodbye to your pretty pictures, Griffin, because this is the last time you’ll be seeing them.”
“I’m being released?” she responded uncertainly.
Shumway laughed mockingly. “You really have spent too much time locked up in here. Released? Did you forget you turned eighteen last week? You’re being floated. Like you should have been a year ago with your father.”
Clarke’s knees felt weak under her, and she thought she might be sick.