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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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[By time Octavia finally gets there, Clarke has ordered a basket of French fries. They're warm—a sign that her patience had given out not too long ago, and the order took even longer to make its way to her. She pushes the basket forward. A small ramekin of ketchup accompanies it. There's no way for Clarke to really know what Octavia's had here. Her arrival hadn't been properly handled on Clarke's end, and as thus, neither was anything that followed.

She did a poor job of taking care of her people. Nothing new on her part, but it's also something that she can't just walk away from and pretend it didn't happen.]

Have some. They're good. [Clarke is buying time. It's not because she doesn't want to have this conversation, but because this conversation will be difficult. Talking to Octavia has always been difficult. Looking at her now, she can see the shade behind her eyes, a tension to her body that wasn't there when her eyes finally belonged to her again. Clarke can't guess what happened out there in the woods after Bellamy banished Octavia. What she does know is that she can't bring that about herself. She can't pretend that she can.

All she can do is call upon what she thinks Octavia might want to do. Ask for an alliance and see if they can work toward friendship. Perhaps Clarke can do better. Perhaps Clarke can earn that.]

I don't know how much you knew about the Primes before you got here. I don't know how much you want to know about things with Bellamy. [Clarke suspects that it's still raw, but it's hard for her to guess. To know.]

I'm willing to answer any questions about that, but first: I want to say I'm sorry. I say it a lot, so I'm trying this new thing where I make my actions agree with it. I just ask—well. Actually, it's kind of a long story ... [She huffs out a laugh.] But I know that no matter what I ask, you won't take anything I do. So I don't have a lot to ask. I just want to try.

[To do better. To answer to Monty: both the old man, and the subconscious version of Monty that she conjured up out of necessity. The one who let her know that she needed to live. Who reminded her, maybe indirectly, that he never wanted anyone to give up. Not Jasper. Not anyone else. That would be failure when it comes to Clarke Griffin, the person with an unstoppable will.]

I do, however, have something I'd like to work with you on. Something that I think ... we're uniquely suited to do together. [An olive branch of sorts. Something they can undoubtedly see eye to eye on. At least, that's what Clarke hopes.]

[ The mouthful of fry — better than she had expected, more flavorful than most of what she's been offered — is a fortunate barrier against any interjections. Octavia's expression twists with the need for it more than once, but it isn't until Clarke has broached her last topic that she manages to fully wash the bites she's taken down.

With Clarke's drink, no less. ]

It's hard to know anything when you've been banished.

[ Ostracizing her had been Bellamy's choice, but being left to the wilds and made to fend for herself hadn't been the most damaging blow. The bunker had prepared her for the worst of it, isolated without a true anchor — without allowing herself to lean on another as a pillar of strength — but nothing could have readied her for his refusal to acknowledge her as his own blood. As if she were a family secret to shame and hide away, just as she had been on the Ark.

For all that the injury remains, Clarke isn't the source of bitterness in her tone. Not now. If anything, it has found its target in Octavia, aware she's deserved every ounce of repulsion she's received. Speaking on the topic of Bellamy any further would be rubbing salt in the wound; she leaves Clarke's offer where her brother is unconcerned untouched, unwilling to hear it.

Afraid to acknowledge it when he isn't here. Gone, without a trace, as Rey had told her. It only sparks her paranoia again, makes her jaw shift as it leaps to the forefront of her mind. ]

You must be desperate if you're asking Blodreina for help.

[ And for a chance to do better, as if Octavia is a beacon for absolution, though she doesn't comment on it to either encourage or discourage it. Despite herself, she can't help the small part of her that hopes for Clarke's success in that endeavor. If even Clarke can absolve herself and receive forgiveness, then ...

She shakes it off. That would be too much to hope for. ]

[If it were up to Clarke, Octavia wouldn't have been left out there. She was brought back for a reason, given a chance to be around people for a reason, and then forced to stay away. Clarke doesn't know how well she would have handled Sanctum. How would she take these people killing their own to only save themselves—and literally no one else? Odds are that it would look bad to her. Worse than Clarke did when she killed one of Madi's followers point blank, knowing that Lexa was there, whispering names into her ear.

But that's the thing. She can't be that person. That isn't doing better. What is? It's a hard measurement. All she can really do now is try.]

I'll fill you in on everything. [It's a promise. No need to keep Octavia in the dark, to leverage any of that. If she's been spending time with Gabriel, she ends up knowing the truth of it all anyway.]

But that can come later. For now—yes. I do need Blodreina's help. [No, she thinks about that. Shakes her head.] I need Octavia Blake's help.

[A beat. She nudges the fries closer to Octavia, indicating that she can have the rest. If they need more, she can order more.]

Two quick things. First, a couple months ago, we were thrown into these dreams where we had the chance to impact reality. None of us could figure out why we could. And then, before I left, I learned that the power inside us may be ... godlike. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen the changes we made. Seen what we could do. Now, you'll remember—we learned this world was dying. Is dying. It may be happening even quicker. But if I'm thinking about this correctly, we might have the power to save this world. To rewrite that wrong. [A beat.] To do what we couldn't do before, three times over.

[They weren't even alive the first time the Earth died. But the second? The third? Clarke was hopeless, helpless. Unable to do much of anything. She even recognizes that she exposed her people to that when she let Bellamy past her, when she destroyed the City of Light, when she first stole the bunker and messed everything up, making it so that she could rip away that hope once and for all.]

[ I'm not Octavia Blake.

The denial sits sharp at the end of her tongue, a weapon against no one but herself. The Octavia she'd known had suffered the same fate as Lincoln, the last vestiges of her smothered beneath the mantle of Blodreina. If not even Octavia could resurrect what had been lost, it's unlikely that Clarke Griffin could manage it.

For a fraction of a second, she dares to hope this world could. It's a foolish thought banished the instant it comes, replaced by a skepticism she doesn't bother to hide. It twists her expression, elbows planting themselves on the table. That, at least, is a sign she intends to stay to hear Clarke out. ]

Cassius couldn't factor us into the calculations. [ Or so he had implied, to some degree. She doesn't have Raven or Monty to verify, to translate or ponder that. In fact, she has no one — no one but Clarke, promising to spill secrets when Octavia has no other source to validate them.

It doesn't sit well with her, but the world's collapse is a greater evil. ]

How do you expect us to save it, even with our powers? We barely even know where to start, Clarke.

Cassius was an AI designed for travel into space, just as ALIE was designed to help humanity solve its problems. [Clarke knows that she had far more interaction with ALIE—and ALIE's creator, Becca—than most. But Becca was both a genius and a maker of many problems. It seems that the real way to help humanity is to keep it from making more problems. But then: how can they truly do much of anything? How can they feel pain? It's not a real solution. It wasn't when ALIE offered it to her before.

They can't lose sight of the limitations when an AI does something like the EMP, like what ALIE did when she tried to deplete the world's population down to nothing. Solutions may involve calculations and make sense on some level. That doesn't make it the right one.]

Our powers outside of the dreams don't matter. Inside, they mean everything. I don't know where to start, but we did change this world's reality. Things aren't how they were before. [Maybe it's harder for Octavia to grasp it. It's not as if she was there.]

Would showing you some of the changes help? [Help her accept. Help her push through and make being here matter.]

You know how crazy you sound, right?

[ Since she's awoken here, nothing has made much sense — nothing beyond the outbreaks of violence and the promise of another world disintegrating before their very eyes. Part of Octavia expects they'll aid in this one's destruction next. Poetic justice, in a way, for the atrocities they've committed.

If she were ever the type to roll over and accept the fate handed to her, she might wash her hands of it. But she isn't, and even considering it feels like a betrayal to Monty's memory, to Wonkru's sacrifice. Octavia's eyes pinch closed with a sigh that wants to heave out of her in all of its fatigue, but she restrains it to a breath as they reopen to fix on Clarke.

Insane or otherwise, Clarke wouldn't sound so confidently hopeful if it was anything but the truth. There isn't any doubting that. It's merely Octavia's inability to wrap her mind around the concept so smoothly, so easily — or perhaps her unreadiness to do so. ]

Fine. Show me.

[Proof comes easily. It's more of a matter of Octavia believing it. Clarke wonders if the proof will come in her pushing this notion at all: trying to show that they can do something here. She's surprised that Octavia hasn't asked her what's wrong with Sanctum, or maybe she doesn't care. Narrow focus. They'll get to that, anyway.

Clarke sends her a single thread: this one. It's over the Morningstar network, so it's pinged through there, but Octavia should get the notification easily enough.]

You can find records of him. You can even see websites adapted to his existence. [Ardyn Sky.] He's one of us, Octavia. None of that is possible.

[Except for the part where the dreams come into play. That's what makes it possible.]

[ Like this, it's indisputable. A wrinkle carves itself into Octavia's forehead, deepening with consternation. The reality of it feels impossible — but rather than inspire hope, it plagues her with doubt. No one should harness that power.

The last time they had been entrusted with anything close to it, Earth had withered. But it's more than that — more than the distrust she harbors, more than the resentment she has carried, more than Monty's final words of inspiration.

Above all else, she cannot trust herself not to hunger for it as she once had, avaricious and warped. ]

I have no choice but to believe you. That doesn't mean I trust the Displaced with that much power.

[ Is what Octavia eventually settles on, a prideful manner of admitting her skepticism has been acknowledged and assuaged in one measure. Believing Clarke and this Ardyn Sky is a necessity. Accepting her role in this, her power to change it, is a necessity — the same way she had stepped into the role of a leader despite knowing she hadn't been designed for it. ]

Where do we start?

[Making Octavia see makes Clarke believe that she can draw anyone else into this plan. Every part of their life before tells Clarke that it might have been the hardest part. Her and Octavia have never been friends, have only fleetingly been allies. It was Octavia who had always sent that point home, that lesson. Time and time again, Clarke had plunged forward, and it was Octavia who sent her spiraling back down to Earth.

(Or had tried. When it came to Lexa, Clarke wasn't easily convinced. Wouldn't be convinced. There were reasons for that, too.)

But then there's the next part, the hardest part: admitting she doesn't know where to start.]

I don't know. Getting back into the dreams is the first step. A number of us were determined to help some people when we first got there, but I was going to stay behind. Help out around here. I ended up headed to New Tokyo anyway. There's something implicit within us that will help us get there. We just—we need to figure it out. [Her gaze flickers onto Octavia and off as she explains herself, explains that she doesn't know where to start.]

I know that's nothing. I know that. But there are people among us who will help. And ... let's just say that every time I've pointed out that we don't move in a united movement, I've received a lot of pushback. A lot of them see each other as a united coalition. I don't think it's realistic, but we have to bet on them believing that of themselves.

You're right. That is nothing. You need to have a better strategy than hope, Clarke.

[ Than just a premise, an idea, waiting to be planted — and nurtured by Clarke's desperation. That lack of foresight could get them all killed, slaughtered as Wonkru had been — led into the fire by a leader who hadn't been able to see beyond her own need to seize the valley.

To make their sins worth it.

If Clarke is seeking comfort, Octavia has none to give. None to spare, when she cannot even console herself. They need to brace for the reality of the situation rather than sugarcoat their odds with meaningless hope. Hope won't save them, after all; only action will. ]

Figure it out. What happened before the first wave of dreams occurred?

[That sharpness is why Clarke knows she needs Octavia at her side. They've both made mistakes. Clarke's done it many times for her people, but she can justify them. She thinks that Octavia's are less justifiable, but then, that might be because she hadn't made them. Objective perspective and all that. Josephine is still a sing song voice in her head, distant and gone, but the memory remains. Judging Clarke for what she did to Madi. What she did to many people.

Never truly sacrificing herself.

(Despite everything, Clarke still believes Josephine was right on that one. Clarke can be willfully blind when it comes to destroying herself.)]

There was an attack in New Tokyo. Monsters showed up. Bigger than ever before. [A pause. A beat of consideration.] When it happened, our people acted. They wanted to help, and put together a ... a delegation of sorts to do that. Called on political favors and left.

There could be something to those attacks.

[ From Octavia's perspective, at any rate. As a soldier, a warrior, it's only natural her focus would fall to the threat of violence. The Mountain Men, ALIE — no matter how accustomed Skaikru had grown to acts of warfare, there was always a new means of destroying them they hadn't yet discovered. Hadn't yet envisioned.

But it doesn't add up with the rest. The Pyramid should have inspired the same if it had been spurred on by the prospect of bloodshed, of protecting what was theirs. Octavia has to begrudgingly add, after a moment, ]

Or the sense of unity.

[ It sounds like a lot of bullshit, absurd and too sentimental for her liking. Too reliant on the rest of the Displaced to return to that state of being, more than that. Octavia's frown deepens, pulling tight at the crinkling corners of her mouth. ]

We can't wait until the next attack to test some theory.

Edited 2019-09-06 06:23 (UTC)

We weren't all unified. [That doesn't count for anything. It's not even a correction. Clarke says it to fill the space as she thinks, grabbing a pair of French fries and dangling them between her index and thumb while she debates what it is that Octavia's said. Yes, it makes sense. The attacks were something. But what? Many people have tried to explain the creatures away by saying that they were experiments, but were they?]

But I don't know that we needed to be. Even if I didn't go to New Tokyo, that didn't mean that I wanted things to remain like that. Seeing a world fall apart ... [Clarke trails off, shaking her head. The two of them grew up with the knowledge of a ruined world. No single person was behind it, not even Becca. Yes, she created the AI, but Clarke is reluctant to put the blame at her feet. It's far too complicated for that.

Maybe it was enough to want to change. But that doesn't make any sense. Clarke looks at what happened in June. None of them could just undo Cassius' killings. Those thousands of people are still dead.]

I feel like we're missing something critical. Like there's something I shouldn't be overlooking, but I don't know what it is. I've known for a while that it's unlikely that those monsters were ... created. Mutated or evolved. But—[Her shoulders rise and fall in a single, simple action. No answers. No way around it. She just doesn't know.]

We're not from this world.

[ In some sense, it had been difficult to arrive at that level of acceptance, distrusting what she could not control and all the more resentful of it as a consequence. Beyond that, what was to miss of a world that had never truly been theirs, taken from them before they were born? Destroyed before they could ever hope to touch it? Sanctum had been a wake-up call all on its own, a manner of informing her that her choices had not mattered.

Every sacrifice she had made as Blodreina had gone in vain. Useless. Misguided. This new world hasn't changed that. But rather than mull on it for long, Octavia discards the thoughtful expression that's seized her and continues, ]

Who's to say the monsters are?

[ It doesn't feel like it's gotten them any closer to an answer, but Octavia leaves that suggestion hanging as an avenue that hasn't been considered. Another route to explore. ]

That's occurred to me, too. [That feels like a theory Clarke produced ages ago, in contrast to what everyone else said. Some of the things she's heard are more complicated than just having some influence of a god inside of them. Far more complicated.] But I'm not sure it adds up, not with some of us being held in a facility with monsters, or the fact that everything about us is so ... orderly. Like we're gathered before we're released.

[In hindsight, the comparison to Mount Weather hasn't failed. It's not unlike when she was held in a room until it was time for her to be released from quarantine. But it's strange to think of it that way.]

I can't think of an alternative, though. Not one that explains what we did in those dreams, or how we undid it. Unless there's some balance in the harm done by something that's entered this world, but that's obviously not something I know. Not well, anyway.

[ Octavia's shoulder rolls into a shrug. Casually projected, at a first glance — but if one dives deeper, it's clear that the absence of any answers has brought a stiff discomfort into her expression. Even in the bunker, she'd acquired a strategy, had a handful of answers to tackle the next problem; here, she's woefully behind and empty-handed.

More than that, she hates to admit Clarke is far more educated in this realm than Octavia could hope to be. ]

That's your area of expertise. [ Admitted with a flatness, keeping in line with her unaffected demeanor. ] Not mine.

[ The science shit, especially. Octavia's only success there had been to collect samples, fighting off beasts in stairwells. ]

We collected a few samples from the facility while we were there. [ And she'd nearly had her spine ripped out over it, though she fails to address it. To even acknowledge that moment of vulnerability, and Daenerys's efforts to drag her to treatment. ] I don't know how helpful it'll be. But we do need to consider we're not the only ones who can change our reality with dreams.

[The suggestion actually startles Clarke. For all that she's argued toward needing to look at other things, she's never considered that someone else could be rewriting the reality they know. Is that possible? And if so, do they have better control? This kind of power shouldn't even be in their hands, much less in a world that never asked for them.

But what about anyone else?]

The samples will help. We've looked at them in the past, and it's possible that they'll look the same. I saw some ... mutated animals outside of the walls, though Jyn would have a better idea of where those samples went. [Her absence cut into any amount of research she might've been able to spearhead. That's always an issue in and of itself.]

As for the rest—I'll have to consult with Loki. On the likelihood of it. And on whether we would be immune to the effects of it. [Would they even have a way of knowing?]

[ Jyn. Loki. All names she fails to recognize, but those she files away. ]

I'll consult with my own contacts in the meantime.

[ Businesslike and to the point, she doesn't offer details before that, the standard Octavia way. Clarke doesn't need her fingers in what she's planning, Octavia reminds herself; more than that, she has never been one to share. Not now, a self-perpetuating prophecy in how she has largely isolated herself from intimate, involved connections. ]

Let me know what you find. [ Because, as it stands, Octavia believes they're only spitballing ideas. There is too much of a gap for her to give a solid strategy, to offer any insights beyond what she's already given Clarke. Without another word, she rises, pushing the half-eaten plate of fries back toward Clarke. ] Thanks for the fries.

[ It sounds a little too dry to be genuine gratitude, but she gives it, regardless, as she pushes away from the table to head to the exit. ]

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my inbox ate this. i'm here to (finally) give you this tag to wrap this up!