[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]

[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.

[ex_dictator317]

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.

[strove]

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.]

[ex_dictator317]

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. ]

[strove]

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.

[ex_dictator317]

[ 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.

[strove]

[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?]

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

[ex_dictator317]

[ 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. ]