meadowlarklogs

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WHO: Clarke Griffin + anyone
WHERE: New Amsterdam
WHEN: The very end of November 2511 into December 2511
WHAT: Returning from a canon update, reintegrating.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Likely references to loss of autonomy, death, bodysnatching without consent, and spoilers for the entirety of season 6 of The 100.

[Arriving back in New Amsterdam is a shock to Clarke's system. She wakes up in her bed—her bed. Not Josephine Lightbourne's. Her body. Not Josephine Lightbourne's. Whereas she has handled all of these complications back home, there's still a haziness in adjusting here. Two lives lived parallel. Whereas before, she had been certain that her life would be lonely, barely lived—her mind works to correct. To repair. To adjust. She can't adhere to notions that she held before. It will take time. Adjust. Adapt.

Adapt.

And do better. That's the one mantra that stays with her. Being here doesn't change that. Do better. Josephine had mocked that need, but that just tells Clarke that she was on the right track. That she is on the right track. Do better. So, she will.

Once Clarke has slept about a whole day to feel better, she takes some of her vital signs to make sure that she can manage being on her feet. It turns out that a good night of sleep was all she needed (and a good part of a day, at that). That's fine.

Otherwise? She has to acquaint herself with the city again. A cursory glance told her that she has a lot of reading to do. And a lot of seeing how things are in New Amsterdam proper. Clarke makes a to-do list:

a. get a new job. Giles Bell is surprisingly forgiving about her absence, but she tells them that she doesn't think it's the path she'd like to take. Having an evil scientist in her head really did a number on her, so she's willing to avoid too much science at the moment. She'll be hitting the streets to look for ideas.

b. Ask around about the animals that are getting into the city. Clarke hasn't seen any yet, but she knows they're around.

c. Check into travel to and from the city. This is for a future project, one important to all of the Displaced.

d. Start volunteering. She has enough medical training that she can do that. It's a place to start.

e. Otherwise, just be around for the first time since she came back inside of the walls after the EMP. She hadn't stuck around for long, either. Her disappearance was near immediate after she came back with Jyn and Prompto, vanishing before she even hit her apartment on her way home.

Clarke will look different. Her hair is more purposefully cut, and she starts to tend toward a darker wardrobe, with some splashes of red and blue where needed. She is older by six years, and carries herself in a way where someone may pick that up. But she's not exactly going to go around announcing it, not yet.

She has things that she has to do. A lot of things.]

[ooc: I'll also be putting prompts below! If you'd like a thread with Clarke, hit me up in PMs, on plurk @ medieval, or on Discord @ alison#8996.]

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[Meanwhile, Jyn's "bad friend" belief doesn't hold for Clarke. The fact that her return isn't trumpeted is a good thing for her. It's also reflective of her actions, her disposition. How she approached this world before. While she saw it as a future home, she also was divided. Unsure about how to approach it. Her uncertainty is far less present now.]

The parks are nice. I wish there were more, but I guess they make do with what they have. [All around this particular park, there are lots of little trees that are being planted: a sign of Jovavich's willingness to take Jyn's advice. Clarke doesn't know the source. She's just glad there are more trees on the way.

She shifts her position, sitting back.]

I wonder why the animals don't last. I mean, some of them didn't out there, but you'd think they'd—I don't know. That they wouldn't risk coming here. Not after what's happened. [Or maybe what's happened has messed up the ecosystem so much that they can't help it.

Thing that Clarke still isn't: an environmental scientist.]

[ the saplings are very precious to jyn. they are her tree babies. ]

They might not know any better. I read about these things called turtles-- [ such an innocuous word to sound foreign ] --and when they're just born they know to follow the moon to the water, whatever ties these golden eyed creatures together could have given them the same biological imperative and not... adjusted for the state of the world.

[ maybe. she genuinely doesn't know so any guess is as good as the rest.

she gestures at clarke's sketchpad ]. Is that a book?

[ paper is relatively rare in space, only the oldest and most important books were preserved and jyn had heard of libraries with physical books but she'd never actually seen one in person, all of her books and correspondence had been via datapad or holocubes. ]

I didn't know that about turtles. [When it came to wildlife on the ground, they covered most of the important information. Turtles weren't a priority. Clarke's positive that that information was somewhere in the annals of the Ark, but they—the turtles, that is—weren't within her wheelhouse of interests.

She files that away as a piece of information to track later. If these animals are acting like they have some biological imperative? That could say a lot.] But I do think you might be on to something. If the animals are seeking something out, trying to find a place to belong—it might tie into their eyes being golden. The monster attacks started here, anyway.

[Clarke doesn't follow that up with an explanation about her sketchbook. Having experienced a dangerous venture with Jyn, she's comfortable handing the book over. The artwork within in largely sketchwork. Some of it is of people back home—the picture of a sleeping Lexa is featured, now finished—with Bellamy, Octavia, and a number of others (like her mom and dad) featured within. More recent artwork features a sketch of Markus and Loki on separate pages, as well as her most recent work: a drawing of Madi. It's unfinished, but there's clearly a lot of care going into it.]

[ jyn is careful with the sketchbook and not just because she is inexperienced with handling paper. it'd be terrible if she ripped a page because she hasn't felt paper since she was something like three years old, papa's drawings pinned against the wall of his office.

the sketches are beautiful and jyn is easily absorbed in the careful, sometimes hasty lines of the sketches, lingering on a few that unexpectedly remind her of home -- clarke's parents bring such a rush of memories of her own parents that she has to violently shove them aside as she turns the page to continue, eyes briefly closing. she doesn't need to remember her parents, her nightmares don't let her forget the flash of blaster fire before her mother crumpled into the grass. there is something in the sketch of bellamy that gives her pause as well, determined eyes that are so familiar, but she doesn't stop until the picture of madi, a little feral child, hair in desperate need of a comb, with cheeks still rounded from youth and the ghost of a smile. ]

They're beautiful.

Edited 2019-07-30 18:03 (UTC)

When I could, I used them to tell stories. [There were many things that kept her sane in those two-thousand plus years without nearly everyone she cared about. Calls to Bellamy. Raising Madi. Stories about the people left behind. Clarke only now has to come to terms with how much of that was done in a way that was harmful to herself. That's a part of doing better, too.

Her hand reaches out, fingers brushing over Madi's face. The start of a new collection of memories, at least for now.

Clarke's chin lifts ever so slightly.]

I was separated from a lot of people, save for her. I used it to share. I got better, too, over the years. [The slow, easing in of "I'm a lot older, by the way."]

[ ah, jyn understands that. the loneliness. ]

How many years?

[ it wasn't possible to miss, the change in clarke, but jyn wasn't about to ask until clarke brought it up. she holds herself differently, with a purpose. jyn wonders if it is because of the little girl, she looked about jyn's age when saw started letting her sit in on meetings when people visited the compound.

she turns back a few pages, finding abby's portrait again. ] You look like her.

Edited 2019-07-31 04:59 (UTC)

[Clarke nods, agreeing with the statement. She looks like a good cross between Abby and Jake. Softer features from Jake, the sharper ones from Abby. Her smile and chin, too.]

Six years. When I left this world, I was afraid it would be five. [Her fingers brush over her mother's face. What will happen to her now that Clarke is gone? She wonders what she'll find out. What she'll know about Clarke's absence. Time seems to not matter, so hopefully she'll be able to see her mother again.

Being Clarke Griffin means that she has a plan for that.]

I was away from everyone. Including my mom. [A nod toward the piece of art.] But that's how I met Madi. We were both wayward and—well. Our blood kept us alive along enough to find one another. [Jyn undoubtedly remembers the blood, or so Clarke thinks. It's part of how they managed the woods during the heat, with Clarke giving bits of herself over to them so they could survive together.]

[ jyn's fingers touch the page, but not the portrait itself, feeling the press of grief on her chest. sometimes she can't remember what her mother looks like, can't remember the smell of the laundry soap and floral perfume, can't remember the sound of her voice even if jyn has stubbornly kept the accent she inherited from her mother. her memories of galen and saw are fresh still, kept alive through a recent grief she refuses to process, but lyra only exists in her childhood memories and her nightmares, faded and dim.

she breathes out slowly and carefully tucks her sorrow away, turning the page back to the girl. ]

Madi. [ another girl with black blood, safe from radiation and sunburn. ] Did you find everyone else again?

[ or had she come back to new amsterdam alone, while madi was equally alone? she has to imagine clarke would be less okay with the idea if this madi were alone, but.

her parents had left her behind. ]

I did. Some of them returned to me, while I was able to help the others. [There is a lot that Jyn doesn't know, and a lot that Clarke isn't prepared to tell her. Despite the fact that they've shared blood, Clarke isn't up for telling all of that. For sharing all of it.]

I don't think I would've gotten through that time without her. I didn't even want to go back to that without her. Being here was a reprieve. [She pants a laugh, but it's a little sad. Bittersweet. That can't be worked around entirely.]

[ a reprieve is what jyn is afraid of.

it doesn't change the way she lives her life; yolo is almost emblematic of rogue one and jyn had been always been reckless and wild (to a point) before they all came together. but the idea that all this could slip through her fingers and she could wind up back on that beach has stopped her from being as brave as she could be, as brave as she should be in one particular case.

she closes the sketchbook carefully and passes it back to clarke. ]

You're older than me now.

Edited 2019-08-02 05:04 (UTC)

Six years does that. [She's amused by it. Clarke doesn't care much for her age being one thing or another. She does know that most people will be startled by the passage of time, and what it will mean overall.

And who can really blame them on that?]

You know, I can draw something for you. I did a painting for Fitz once, but I don't think it's my medium. [The painting had turned out fine, but it's yet another thing that Josephine Lightbourne had done. Had taken away from her. She's not exactly keen to share that.] I'm much better with lines, with sketchwork.

I wouldn't have anything for you to work off of.

[ her smile is very small, but no less genuine. that is one of the nicest gifts anyone has ever offered her. she hasn't had many gifts, frankly, she truly appreciates the offer.

she doesn't need to waste clarke's paper on a portrait of herself, she sees herself every day in the mirror and she saw her face on enough wanted holos across the galaxy with one name or another splashed underneath it that she doesn't really need to see it on one of the finite pages of the sketchbook. ]

I understand. [Although Clarke wishes she didn't, she can see the problem there. Isn't that always it? Her head bobs forward, strands of blonde bouncing off her forehead at the same time.]

If anything changes, the offer is open. I won't take that back.

I appreciate it.

[ she does, she really does. as much as jyn wishes she could outrun the past, she clings to the memories of her parents. they're all she has left. if she had a picture of her parents she would immediately take clarke up on the offer. ]

I had a Clarke. My.. mother died when I was small and my-- Saw took me in.

Edited 2019-08-04 05:54 (UTC)

I'm glad you had someone like me. Though I have to admit—I haven't always been the best with Madi. I didn't exactly plan on ... her, you know? Then again, who ever plans on that? [It was easier when it was just her and Madi. Telling her stories. Outlining the heroics of Bellamy, Octavia, Murphy, Raven, and the rest. She knew how to teach lessons through that. It was a way of celebrating who came before, and so Madi could learn.

But it was hard, too, when their isolation became less of that. When all her lessons came to bite her because she had taught Madi to do good and be a hero, and then Madi took the Flame.

Because after all that? Of course she did.]

Does that make it so you have three parents that you miss now?

I'm sure you did everything you could for her.

[ to be fair, saw was also not the best. he hadn't planned on raising a daughter, much less one being hunted by the empire and grieving her parents, much less a girl. he had struggled and tried and done his best, but jyn knows he raised a weapon, not a child. ]

They died.

[ and it strikes jyn at that moment that she was the last of three families whose legacies died with her. there is only a bittersweet solace that she did something with her name; after running away from it for so long, after hiding from her name for so long, at least she managed to do something good with it at the very end. ]

My galaxy is at war. Every war has casualties. [ it is a fact of life in war. ]

Edited 2019-08-04 23:11 (UTC)

My father died when I was sixteen. ["Died" sounds like it was an accident. They didn't even have a war to blame: it came down to survival and little else. Sometimes she wishes it was a war. If war was the cause for Finn killing those people and dying, for Lexa dying, for Jasper dying, for the world dying—it would be easier, somehow. It might feel less like they got ripped away unnecessarily.

But maybe not.]

My point is, war doesn't make you miss someone less. Even when a lot of people died along with them.

It was two months ago.

[ a handful of days, seemingly, before she woke up and was shoved out of the van into an alley here into oktoberfest. a handful of days before her own death on that shimmering beach. it isn't just war that is giving jyn reason to brush it off as something that simply happens. if she thinks about it too much she'll feel it and she doesn't want to mourn galen and saw, not again. she'd already cried so much for them.

but clarke (and prompto) had felt all that grief inside her, aching to spill out, she already knows it's there. it feels less baring to admit the cause of it to clarke. ]

Edited 2019-08-11 05:19 (UTC)

[Two months.

It's been six years and she still feels the ache of losing Lexa every day. At one point, she wondered when it would stop hurting, when she would stop wishing she had her dad to support her, or for Finn to not have made that mistake, or for Lexa to not have been on the receiving end of a bullet meant for her. She always hurts. Even a hundred years in cryostasis did nothing to change that.

And at two months? Where was she at two months? Curling up in a jail cell crying about Lexa, barely able to hold it together. Two months.]

I'm sorry. [She looks off to the side, uncertain.] I wish I could tell you it gets easier. It doesn't. But maybe it does for some. I don't know.

[Not her. Never her.]

[ after repeated loss, jyn has learned how to shut down her emotions, shoving her feelings and memories and heartache under a hatch in a cave to be ignored. not to be looked at at a later date, but to be completely ignored for the sake of her survival. she doesn't have the luxury of an emotional breakdown, she never has.

feeling the emotions bubble up now she shoves them down, angry that the crew of rogue one had battered down her defences enough that any of the feelings could spill through. she'd spent so long making her emotions small and unobtrusive that she had let them atrophy, rogue one breathing life back into them is too painful still.

she wipes the emotion from her expression, replaced with a fragile neutrality. ]

It's fine. [ she can't bring them back, she can't go back. ] I finished what they started.

[ the galaxy was the important part. not jyn, not her family legacy, not that she had made them proud in the end; what they did mattered, what they did was so impossibly important, because the galaxy was free of the terror of the death star. she has to believe it made everything worth it. ]

[Jyn's words resonate with Clarke. Though she had managed to live past scaling that tower to ensure her friends could get off into space, she had felt at peace in the days that followed. While she healed, while the taste of blood left her throat and eventually went away once and for all, she felt at peace. If she didn't get better, it would be fine. Her friends were safe. Her other people were underground, saved in the fullest extent by Octavia and her efforts.

Saved.

So she knows what Jyn is saying. She knows what it's like to hit a point where what she's done matters more than how she feels. The problem is she knows it's never as simple as that. Clarke looks over at her, debating whether or not this is a good time to push. "Not" thinks like the right decision here.

Clarke shoots for a middle ground instead.]

And now you're here. [For better or worse. Clarke remembers her asking about radiation.] So, what now?

Live.

[ which seems so simple, but it has always been something of a rebellion. to live when the empire wanted to stamp her out, to live now when the government considers them criminals, her very existence is an act of rebellion; ripping away a home that should have belonged to the elite, taking a job that should have gone to someone native to the planet, living freely and (mostly) openly.

something brought her to this planet, they have to deal with her now.

that's the surface answer, at least. living after dying is harder, everything feels so fragile. jyn may face the world with a seemingly uncompromising YOLO but she also faced her own death, at peace. ]

Like it or not the planet is stuck with me. If they don't make a place for me, I have to do it myself.

[ manifest destiny. ]

Edited 2019-08-16 05:56 (UTC)

Apparently there's an entire continent that lays barren and deserted here. [The fact that North America hasn't been taken over by new civilization is worrying, but Clarke has a hunch that they could make it work for them. If there is something there shooting down any drones, they can figure it out. It's something that they had to do with Becca's lab, and she's confident that the Displaced can make it work.]

I'm thinking that we won't have to ask anyone to do much of anything for us.

[It's a part of her plan that she intends to carry out and present later on. The bit of information that Octavia received tells Clarke that it might be inhabitable. They just need to fix some things before they get there.]

And if we do it right? No one even needs to know we're there. I'd gladly welcome you as my neighbor.

[ jyn's mouth slants in thought, taking in clarke's words and turning them over. she knows she can personally live that kibbutz life and she knows clarke wants a home for her friends and family, for madi and her mother. they're capable, sure, and jyn wouldn't mind being neighbors with her either.

but that's to say nothing of everyone else. still, it's clarke's hope and jyn finds herself again unwilling to squash even a little bit of it. it's an idea, they can work on it. ]

A whole continent and you want to be my neighbor. [ her brief grin is rakish, teasing to hide the inexperienced way the smile sits on her expression, naturally more suited to seriousness. ] Stop flirting with me, Clarke, I'm not available.

Duly noted. [Clearly not what she was going for in the least, but it's enough to make Clarke laugh. That laugh is probably a first, a major removal from how things had been before. For as much pain as Clarke has had in her life—has had recently—being back her has refilled her with a sense of hope. North America is a possibility. Neighbors are a possibility. As much as Jyn thinks it could be a whole continent, the fact of division sounds painfully lonely.

Clarke's lived that pain, that loneliness. She'll never do it again.]

Friends should stick together. But maybe you're more comfortable with neighbors? Or was that to say you prefer the word friends, but very little closeness?

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