[open]

[strove]

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.]

Comments

[strove]

It's okay. I just wish you not noticing was under better circumstances. [Clarke debates telling her that she was definitely hurt during that time, almost to lighten the mood, but drops it. No need to drop that on Caroline. After all: where would she even begin? The time she got shock collared? The time she got thrown into jail and left there while her best friend put a dangerous piece of technology into her daughter? Or, hey, the more obvious: the time her life got ripped away as someone literally stole her body?

Lots of bad.]

I should tell you now. I was gone for six years. I'm still willing to help with what we discussed before, it's just—["I've changed." Being a mother has changed her. But that still feels shallow. Clarke is in the process of overcoming the worst of her habits and tendencies. That much is clear. Doing better is a work in progress. Every day has to count.]

Well, it has less to do with the arrangement. That's fine. It's more that I might not be ... recognizable at times.

[gasping]

Wait, six — [ caroline stops, brow furrowing in obvious confusion, her muffin piece dropping back down to her plate, crumbs bouncing in its wake. she almost says you don't look six years older, but then, maybe clarke does. maybe it's caroline whose sense of age is skewed by her own relatively recent immortal worldview. if damon could be a hundred-something and still look vaguely twenty-five, what does six years really look like on a girl in her twenties?

so, she guesses it must be true. it's not like clarke has reason to lie about it. settling back in her chair, caroline blows out a breath. ] That was a fast six years, then. You've only been gone a couple days here.

[ time is confusing. too much for her brain to comprehend... which means caroline just accepts it as fact and keeps going. not much else she can do. ]

You still look like Clarke to me, though.

[ which is to say, in somewhat less poetic terms, that caroline still recognizes her. as someone she trusts, as part of their collective group, as someone she's slowly starting to consider as a friend. maybe not the person she'd go to for gossip and movie night, but for something important. ]

[strove]

Admittedly, I'm not sure how that works here. Trust me, it was six years there. [Six years and a lot of days. Clarke knows the exact number up to a point, but not after that. She hasn't even brought in the complication of going to sleep for over a hundred years in cryostasis. Aside from the passage of time marked by Monty's video, Clarke doesn't feel like those hundred years happened at all.

She does think Caroline believes her. It's just strange to say. To explain. To offer over.]

I've gotta say, I'd be worried if I looked too different. I spent most of those six years relaxing after a point. [And then, again, the hundred plus year nap.]

Though don't read into that too much. I found a way to be back to my non-relaxing self soon enough. [Lightly said. As if she knows herself well. (She does.)]

[gasping]

[ a soft exhale isn't quite a laugh, but it's warm and agreeable all the same, a sound of amusement that's matched by the soft quirk at the corner of caroline's mouth as she takes a bite of her muffin. ]

Not... [ the implant does the calculation ] two thousand, one hundred, and ninety days exactly?

[ if there was anyone who would have counted the days, she thinks it might be clarke. but if they don't know they went back, would clarke have known to count the days? probably not. and that's why the question isn't meant to be serious. ]

What was relaxing like for you? You were in space, right?

[ she realizes, as the words come out, that she doesn't know nearly as much about clarke's world as she thought she did. ]

[strove]

No, actually. [Though Clarke knows that people grasp that she was born in space. It's after that that things get convoluted—in part because of the tragedy and war inherently linked to the rest of it.] About six months before I remember coming here the first time, my people had left space to settle on Earth below. It was survivable again, so we left the Ark where we had lived for a century and tried to make a home in a better place. [It's a tidy explanation. There will be the bits of information that sneak in: the horrors. Clarke's intensity and relentlessness. Something like that is rarely born of a peaceful life.]

The problem is that the reason we were in space eventually came back to cause problems. You know nuclear reactors? They have failsafes in place most of the time to protect them from wiping everything out if there is nuclear warfare. [Okay, so the big hints are coming sooner.] Everyone had to go into hiding, sans me. I, well. I survived in a place that we started calling Eden. The last spot of green on the planet. It was ... nice. I drew a lot.

[She did connect with Klaus over art, after all.]

[gasping]

[ caroline knows what nuclear reactors are, sure. but it's the same sort of limited, tangential knowledge as rocket science, brain surgery, and mechanical engineering — she knows of these things, but if you sat her down and asked her how it worked or what its dangers were, caroline would mostly just blink.

at least in the future, you can google things without needing a computer, so she does. she also promptly closes all of the tabs when she realizes that it's way above her honor biology science experience level. ]

I didn't know you were an artist. [ she learns more about clarke every time they talk. it's not a judgment call, but simple surprise, pleased about the development. ] What do you draw?

[strove]

Sketches mostly. I was working on trying some paints before I left, but it's not really my interest. I draw things I remember. Portraits of things in motion. [It's not as if she's going to tell Caroline that she used them to remember her friends, almost afraid of the ease with which she could lose them. That would definitely be a lot to give away.

And like it or not, Clarke is not going to be in touch with her emotions as much as she'd like to be. Driven by action, by motivation—it's always hard to be anything but this way.]

My sketchbook came a while ago. I can show you some of what I had, and what I had been working on since.

[gasping]

You would?

[ she's admittedly taken a bit by surprise at the offer. there's not quite the same level of emotional weight to clarke's statement, but for caroline, art is a private thing. she thinks of clarke's sketchbook the way she might have considered elena's diary — a private, personal thing, something only to be shared with special people at the right time.

caroline had never asked to read elena's diary, and elena had never offered. it was a bridge between them, a gap of 'what is she thinking' that caroline never quite got across when she was still alive... and after she'd died, it just hadn't been important.

a pang of regret mars caroline's normally sunny expression, but it comes and goes like a summer breeze as she picks up the last bite of her snack. ]

I'd love to see them, if you want to show me. You don't have to, though, if you don't want to.

[strove]

[It "helps" that much of her art was shared freely with the prisoners from Eligius IV. If she had been sensitive about anyone seeing it, her concerns for her daughter undercut that emotion and set it aside. Caroline has, at least, proven that she wants to do good. Her morality is skewed, living in a reality that Clarke doesn't fully understand—but it wouldn't be the first time. Understanding takes time. And she still questions Loki's more whimsical statements six months later.]

I don't mind. I—ah, I used them to tell stories. I raised a girl named Madi. She was part of my relaxation for a while, you see. Becoming a mom. [Clarke doesn't flinch at this, so it's clear she's settled into this identity. She does look over at Caroline warily, wondering how she'll accept this knowledge.]

It helped that I could draw the people I was talking about. I think I would've told her about the people here, too, if I was allowed to remember them. I'm a little sad to say that I wasn't.

[gasping]

You were a mom?

[ it's not said as a judgment, or even really in disbelief. clarke's easy adaptation to motherhood seems more like a natural extension of her bossy, overbearing ways than anything else — if anything, it almost seems like literal motherhood has calmed her. an outlet, caroline guesses.

but the question comes, and it's almost wistful, a pang of jealousy aching that caroline shoves down before she can think about it too much. the reality is simple: caroline is dead, and clarke is not. clarke can be a mom, and caroline cannot. there's nothing to be jealous of. ]

I bet you were a really good one.

[ sincere, soft; the smile that accompanies it is a little forced, but it's genuine all the same. she does believe that. ]

[strove]

I am one. [It's meant as a soft correction. Madi still lives. Clarke clings to that notion, clings to the knowledge that her mother is alive, that Bellamy can use his head and heart and save them, that they're going to have a chance here when Sanctum hadn't worked out. What had become Clarke's temporary salvation has become her permanent one. It's a notion she'll cling to every day.] Just because she's not here doesn't mean—I'll see her again. [There's something defensive about this, though Clarke's head bobs forward, a little guilty. It's nothing that Caroline said or knows.

And at the same time, Clarke doesn't note that she's a good mother. In many ways, Josephine had been right: she had dropped the ball there. Severely. All she can do is live by Monty's words when she's back with her daughter. That goodness isn't implicit in her correction. She only wants to make sure the tense is correct.]

Before I left—I thought I'd be alone. And then I found Madi, and she and I lived together. And now every day is going to be about making sure she's safe. [So, maybe not that bad, not when it all shakes out.]