Chapter 3: Falling Through

Time passes slowly in solitary and Clarke finds solace in four things: her father's memory, his watch on her wrist, the ring and chain around her neck, and the drawing pencils her mother had somehow managed to get to her in the first few days of her confinement. Clarke almost cried when the stiff-shouldered guard handed them to her without a word.

She never draws people. She sometimes itches to draw her father, Wells, or her mother, but she never does. As much as she would love to have friendly faces to look upon as she awaits her death, Clarke thinks it would probably be cruel to see them but never hear them or touch them again. It would haunt her to feel as though they're staring at her, but could not interact with her. Often, she thinks she would have broken this rule of hers, thinks she would give just about anything to be able to draw and see the man she was wed to when she was fifteen. But she doesn't know his face, so she can't draw him either.

Instead, Clarke creates a world around her. She imagines what Earth must have been like, remembering pictures shown during her classes, and brings it to life around her. Plants, animals, insects, famous structures and landscapes—Clarke imagines it all and draws it with her pencils. Clarke thinks the guards didn't know what she was planning to do with the pencils, because each one during those first few weeks of rotations would often stop longer than necessary when handing out rations or performing inspections. Some even watch her work for a time before moving on. This silent audience is the closest to company she has while she's in solitary.

In a small corner of her cell, she keeps a tally of the days. The rations are too important a part of the Ark for it to function differently in the Sky Box, so Clarke is sure it's a pretty accurate calendar. The pencils were given to her on her third day in the cell, and she hadn't decided to keep a record until her seventh. That day, in a corner, she made seven small marks.

Months tick by, the marks on her wall increase in number, and as Clarke slowly approaches her eighteenth birthday, she forces herself to mentally prepare. While the review will happen, just like any other, Clarke knows without a doubt that they will float her just like they did her father. In her case, as with others she is now sure, the review is simply a formality. They can't risk her being put back into the Ark population…not if they want to keep their secret.

Clarke wonders if she'll get to see her mother one last time. She wonders if Chancellor Jaha will be there…if his son will be there. At this point in her time in solitary, Clarke is glad she never drew his face on her walls. He is the only person she told about the problem her dad discovered, so he had to be the one to tell the Chancellor—his father—what her dad was planning to do. She hates him for that—for getting her father floated, and for them locking her up here.

On particularly bad days, Clarke finds herself wondering if they'll bring her husband to see her get floated. It seems unnecessarily cruel, but at least then they'd both get the chance to know who the other was. Would they allow him the choice to opt out before telling him, or would they just tell him? Would he be sad at her death?

Clarke draws more fervently in those last two months leading up to her eighteenth birthday in order to cope. Drawing helps to get rid of the anxiety and the fears that increase with each passing day.

One morning, determined solely by the fact that she hasn't received rations yet, a guard interrupts her drawing. He asks her to face the wall. Clarke is confused. She's seen him bring her food so many times now, and he and the other guards haven't asked her to face the wall—like she's a dangerous prisoner they have to keep in line—since that first month. When he asks her to hold out her right arm, she starts to panic. She doesn't know what he's trying to put on her arm, but the only reason anyone would have to take her out of her cell at this point is to float her.

"No, no," she protests. "It's not my time. I don't turn eighteen for another month."

It's too early, she panics. She's certain of this. She's kept too careful a record to be a whole month off. She's not ready to die. She hasn't made peace, she thinks, and she hasn't figured out what to say to her mom or Wells or the Chancellor, if she gets the chance. She doesn't know what she'll say at her review. She isn't prepared.

She fights the guard when he tries to take her father's watch from her wrist, and hopes no one takes it or her ring and necklace from her. She'll die with them on, she vows.

She runs out of her cell for the first time in what she's certain has been eleven months and sees every one of the others being herded out as well. None of them are going to get a review, she realizes. Her father's problem is being dealt with at the expense of teenagers' lives. The guard exits her cell then and calls out to her. Despite knowing she has no chance, she gets ready to run. She has to do something!

Then her mother calls out to her and Clarke turns around. She hasn't seen her mother since the day her father was floated, and despite her instincts to the contrary, Clarke can't help but turn around and let her mother embrace her. She demands to know what's happening and asks her mother point blank if they're executing them all, but her mother shakes her head.

Her mother tells her they're all going to the ground—to Earth—and Clarke's panic increases. Her mother tells her that things have changed, that they're getting a second chance. She caresses her cheek, and Clarke's nerves tingle at the sensation. No one has touched her in so long. "I love you so much," she tells Clarke.

Clarke wants to say it back, but her eyes catch her mother's own necklace and ring, and her eyes widen. She grabs hold of her mother's clothes tightly. "You have to tell them I accept. He has to know, and you have to promise to tell him, Mom."

Her mother's face tightens and her lips purse for the briefest of moments before the softness returns to her face. "I promise," she says before Clarke feels a sting in her back. Her mother holds her tighter as blackness overwhelms her.

When next she awakes, she's strapped into a seat, and her right wrist stings from the wristband they must have forced on her after they drugged her. Wells sits beside her, and when he tells her he got himself arrested so he could go to Earth with her, she wants to scream or hit him or something. The voice of his father comes on all the monitors, and Clarke tries to listen to the only direction they've been given, but the connection isn't great, and one of the boys unbuckles his seatbelt and floats over to her.

"Get back in your seat," she orders him. "You could die."

She sees the defiance in his face, but he does go back over to his seat, but not before two others try to follow his lead. Clarke yells to the others to stay in their seats, that it isn't safe, and the Chancellor's voice becomes so distant that it may as well not be there at all.

Somehow, she does get them back to their seats just before the parachutes come out, jerking them around. As they fall toward Earth, Wells tries to apologize for getting her father arrested, but that's not good enough for her. "I can't die knowing you hate me," he tells her.

"They didn't arrest my father, Wells, they executed him," she bites back. "I do hate you."

With that said, she faces forward. Her left hand briefly grazes her father's watch before reaching up and pulling out her ring. Clarke clutches it in her hands and closes her eyes, but not before noticing Wells looking at her hands. She doesn't say anything about it, and neither does he.

The dropship shakes and rattles. Clarke hears the kids screaming around her, but she doesn't see any of it. Her hand holds tight to the ring, as if appealing to a guardian angel to keep her safe.

Suddenly, all sound disappears. Everyone seems to hold their breath for a moment before reacting. Seatbelts start to click open, and Clarke's eyes open once more. She hurriedly tucks her ring back under her shirt and undoes her seatbelt before pushing her way to the staircase.

"Stop!" she calls to the man with a hand already poised on the handle. "The air could be toxic."

-x-

After his mother is floated and his sister is locked away, Bellamy is fired from the guard. It doesn't bother him all that much. He only wanted to be a guard to please his mother and earn a better position to later help Octavia. Now that neither of those applies, he doesn't protest when Shumway knocks on his door for a surprise inspection (the first in his life to actually be a surprise) and informs him that he'll have to apply for a new position on the Ark.

No one speaks to him; no one even really looks at him anymore. It's as if they're afraid to be floated for just knowing him. Bellamy thinks it's ridiculous; if he hadn't been floated for his association with his mother's crime—they'd said he was too young at the time, that he was conditioned to keep the secret—then obviously no one else was going to get floated.

In the coming weeks, after he's been allowed the position of a janitor, he hears whispers. They say he's lucky to have a job at all—lucky to be alive even. Some days he disagrees and wishes they'd floated him with his mother. Others, he agrees with them and is thankful that he's alive for his sister, even if he can't see her.

After three months, Bellamy petitions the council for visitation like most of the kids in the skybox are allowed to receive, but he is denied. He realizes then that he's in a very precarious position. It is within his rights to repetition, but he is also painfully aware that his position is also unprecedented and if he makes a nuisance of himself, he could cause more harm for him or his sister. Hating himself even as he comes to the decision, Bellamy doesn't repetition. He doesn't want to hurt Octavia's chance at getting out once she turns eighteen—whatever slim chance she has at not being floated for a crime she didn't even commit.

For the most part, the months go by slowly in a monotonous pattern. During the day Bellamy toes the line, keeps to himself, and does his job. Then, later, when he's alone in his room, his hand reaches for the ring, and he wonders when he'll finally hear about his mysterious wife.

The way he figures, there can't be too many months left to wait. After all, how young do they marry them off? He figures he'll hear soon, and has been steadily more confident in the idea of a future with her—whoever she may be. He has been providing for others since as long as he can remember—he could be a good husband, he is sure. Sometimes, he begins to have doubts, though. She's obviously not from Factory Station like him because the whole point of the program is to encourage unity between the stations. She'll probably realize who he is—a disgraced janitor from Factory—and decide she doesn't want a future with him. Why would she? Why would anyone?

One day, Shumway visits him for the second and last time. He tells him that his sister is being sent to the ground and that he could get Bellamy on the ship if he does something for him.

Bellamy nearly falls over himself to agree to the plan, even without knowing what he has to do. It is only then, after he's agreed, that he thinks to ask what he has to do.

"Kill the Chancellor," Shumway tells him, his voice hard and matter of fact. He hands him a gun, and Bellamy turns it on him. None of this would be happening if it wasn't for Shumway. It doesn't take Shumway long to talk him out of shooting him—the guy who got his sister locked up because he wouldn't let Octavia leave the Unity Day dance—if only because Bellamy hears truth in his words. If he kills Shumway, Octavia leaves for Earth alone. He'd never see her again, and Bellamy refuses to let that happen.

Bellamy doesn't hesitate after that, and follows Shumway out the door of the room that had been his home for the last twenty-three years. Everything begins to move quickly. He already had some practice with guns from being in the guard, and his determination to not leave his sister alone propels him forward. He is quickly and covertly guided to the Chancellor, and minuets after being told to kill him, he is pointing a gun at him. Bellamy only hesitates for a moment before pulling the trigger, his mind flashing back to Octavia's frightened face as they took her away and his mother's voice telling him to be brave for his sister, followed by her expressionless face as she was floated. Then, with the sound of the gun echoing around the room, Bellamy pockets the gun and turns to Shumway. "Take me to my sister," he demands, his voice devoid of emotion.

Bellamy is handed a guard's uniform, which he is instructed to change into. Only too happy to be out of the bloody clothes, he does so without question. Once he does, he is led to a dropship being loaded up with kids. His eyes widen when he notices just how young some of them are—not even thirteen! His eyes dart around to find Octavia in the swarm of children and guards. Shumway's hand tightens on his shoulder.

"She's on the second level," Shumway says, his voice low and quiet. He nods upwards at the staircase and then to the guards escorting the kids. "They think you're going with them as their guard. Don't give them any reason to doubt that."

Bellamy nods, and they part ways. He stands around on the first level, watching the kids being strapped into the seats. Some of them are alert and looking around. Most are silent, not willing to make anyone angry, while others are talking with those seated nearest to them. Others still are unconscious—must not have come willingly. All of them look confused. Upon a closer look, he notices that they're all wearing wristbands. Bellamy tugs his uniform down over his wrist to obstruct from view the fact that he doesn't have one too. Finally, as the kids seem to be mostly accounted for, Bellamy makes his way up to check on his sister. Lying still in her seat, her eyes closed; she must have been one to fight back and not go quietly. Bellamy resists the urge to smile.

He heads back to his seat on the first level and prepares for the descent. The second he feels it, he reaches his right hand toward his chest and the metal ring hanging there. He silently apologizes to whoever she is; a sorry for not staying, despite wanting to, and a sorry for not being able to explain any of this.

The descent is almost peaceful for awhile. It feels like what he always imagined floating outside the Ark would feel like. Then the dropship starts to jerk a bit. The noise gets louder. The Chancellor's face blinks on the screen a little while later, and Bellamy resists the urge to roll his eyes. Not long after, everything seems to be going to hell.

The retro-rockets aren't firing and the ship is quickly plummeting to Earth. Bellamy closes his eyes. At least he won't be alone anymore, he finds himself thinking, at least he'll finally be free from the loneliness of the past year. A loose piece of metal inside the dropship flies at his face and cuts his forehead.

Bellamy reaches a hand up and winces when he touches the open wound. Didn't go very long without being covered in blood, he finds himself thinking as he wipes it on his pants. Blood continues to drip from his head even as the parachute finally deploys and the dropship crashes to earth. It isn't hard enough to kill them all, and silence reigns around him. Even alone in his family's quarters, Bellamy has never experienced a silence this quiet before. Taking advantage of it, he quickly gets up out of his seat. "Stay back!" he yells at the kids trying to follow him.

He walks over to the dropship door and puts his hand over the handle. The moment of truth.

A voice from the floor above stops him. "Stop!" a girl cries. "The air could be toxic."

He turns toward her and watches her climb down the ladder. "If the air's toxic we're all dead anyway," Bellamy retorts, mesmerized by the blonde.

She pushes her way thorough the crowd of kids forming around him. Her eyes immediately widen as she gets a good look at him. "You're hurt," she says, her voice soft and her eyes nearly overflowing with concern. The girl reaches out a hand toward him and Bellamy backs away.

"I'm fine," he says. He moves to turn back to the door when another voice rings through.

"Bellamy?"

Bellamy smiles when he looks up toward the ladder this time. "My god," he says. "Look how big you are."