InsaneJournal

red alert log: clarke and sirius

characters. Clarke Griffin & Sirius Black setting. During the Red Alert Plor; Random Hallway warnings. Injuries, talk of death, war, violence. description. Sirius is injured, Clarke helps him out and there is some bonding over war and badness and it's far less awkward than it should be considering he looks like her dead ex-lover. status. Complete Log Even after the months on the ground, there was a part of Clarke that was used to the feel of being in space. It was a feeling she had missed without knowing she’d missed it and she spent a lot of her free time wandering the corridors of the ship, trying to get a better sense of her. The Enterprise was very different from the Ark and it was still something to get used to. Recovering quickly from a stumble as the ship hit [...] something, Clarke spotted the figure on the floor and slipped through a closing door just barely before it sealed shut, leaving her in a small stretch of corridor with [...] Sirius Black. She couldn’t think about what they’d hit or the almost familiar sounds of the red alert sounding through the ship as she knelt to check for a pulse. Clarke let out a sigh of relief as she found that his heart was still beating. He was still breathing. That was something. He looked so much like Finn. Too much. She had to fight against the memories that haunted her so she could focus on making sure he was okay. Fortunately, that was something Clarke had plenty of practice with. Working quickly, she used what supplies she had to stitch up the cut on his head and tend to the rest of his wounds. The fact the he was still out worried her, but a check of his vitals told her he was still stable. She took that as a good sign and sat back against the wall in a position where she could easily keep monitoring his condition. Sirius couldn’t see anything, but his head was swimming in the darkness, and he tried to make sense of why it was throbbing in pain. But for the longest time he couldn’t open his eyes. So he drifted off to sleep, uncertain of how long. When he came to, the light nearly blinded him, and his head still hurt. Slowly, the world came into focus. He was in a corridor, on the spaceship he’d been living on. He meant to laugh at the idea of living on a spaceship, because it was still bloody mental. But it came out as more of a cough. Which caused someone to stir, and he looked to see who it was. Clarke. However they were meeting, this was probably wasn’t ideal. “Hey…” he offered. “What happened?” Clarke hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but eventually she did. She didn’t know how long she’d been out when the sound of a cough made her jerk awake quickly. Her relief was almost palpable when she saw Sirius was awake, but she couldn’t really answer his question. “I’m not sure,” she said honestly. “You were already unconscious when I found you. How are you feeling?” The relief on her face was tinged with a little worry. In the moment, she was too distracted by that to even think about how closely he really did resemble Finn. “My head hurts,” Sirius said simply, propping himself up on his elbows. He reached his hand up to touch the two spots that were throbbing, surprised to feel the stitches. “What… it’s like my head’s been sewn up…” he wondered out loud. “Is there a mirror? Why are we out here, anyway?” None of this made sense, and he looked to Clarke for answers. And then he suddenly realized he didn’t know if he had his wand or not. Reaching toward his pocket, which hurt more than it should have, he found it and took it out to examine it. Still in perfect shape. Brilliant. “That’s because it has,” she told him. “You’re welcome.” She laughed out loud when he asked about a mirror and shook her head. “Sorry, you’ll have to wait until later to admire my handiwork,” she teased. It felt good. Clarke couldn’t actually remember the last time she’d felt light enough to just joke around with someone. “The ship hit something,” she explained. “I’m not sure what you were doing when it happened, but I found you here. None of the doors are working, but they’re fixing it. We just have to wait it out until they can get us out of here.” What had he been doing? Sirius considered that for a moment, trying to think back to the last thing he remembered. Then a door ajar jogged his memory a bit and he forced himself into a full sitting position and pointed toward it. “I was uh, exploring a bit,” he mentioned. “Trying to see if the ducts, if that’s what they are were big enough to crawl through.” Then he’d fallen. “Hit my head, it seems.” And his shoulder. “Did you… do some Muggle medical thing? Rather than a spell?” Looking over at Clarke he added sheepishly, “Thanks, though. And uh, nice to meet you? Sorry it’s been like this.” Clarke rolled her eyes a little at his explanation. “Hit your head really hard from what I could tell,” she said, nodding her head. “You had some pretty deep cuts and I don't have a magic wand, so I had to use science. I guess that's probably weird for you.” Waving off his apology, she shook her head. “Don't worry about it. I'm just glad you're okay.” She hoped he was, anyway. She didn't exactly have the right instruments to check but in her original assessment she'd decided he probably just have a concussion. “So you’ve done all this before?” Sirius asked. “And you’re doing alright with the fact that I look a lot like Finn? Because you know, it’s okay if you’re not. Or if you want to talk about him, while we’re stuck here. Or if you don’t want me to bring him up at all, that’s okay too.” It was a weird topic, but even with a potential concussion, Sirius wasn’t one to dance around the issue. He wondered how long they’d been stuck and how long before they weren’t. “I’ve treated worse than cuts and a probable concussion without having much to work with,” she said, nodding. “It would have been easier if we were in sick bay, but I’ve learned to work with limited resources.” Studying him now, he looked better. Less pale, more alert. She hoped that was a sign she’d been wrong about the concussion, but she knew she should try to keep them awake just in case. Clarke shrugged when he brought up Finn. “I didn’t know him for very long, but we- I cared for him. He’s been gone for almost 5 months now. Sometimes it feels more like 5 lifetimes.” So much had happened since then. The mountain, Lexa, Alie, the impending wave of radiation that was going to kill every last living thing on the planet. The resemblance brought back some painful memories, but she hadn’t loved Finn the way she’d loved Lexa. Mostly, she just felt guilty for the part she’d played in his death. “There’s more that you’re not saying,” Sirius said, watching Clarke. “I mean, we do have time, unless you’re lying to me and I can get up and go back to my room now…” And he didn’t really think she was lying. He didn’t know what she was thinking about, but her expression had changed. “What was the world like, where you came from?” he asked. Clarke hesitated in answering his question. It was hard to find much good in the life she’d come from. “I was born in space,” she began, “on a space station. We called it The Ark. It was made when space stations from 12 nations merged together after a nuclear apocalypse left the Earth uninhabitable. That was about 97 years ago.” “Oxygen was precious on the Ark, so criminals were punished by being floated out into space,” she continued, her voice quiet. “Juveniles were placed into holding until their 18th birthday, then we were floated, too. About a month before my 18th birthday, we were sent to the ground - me and 99 other kids - to find out if the human race could survive down there again. The good news is we could, but the bad news is we weren’t the only survivors of the war and we’ve been at war with the Grounders ever since. Finn was a casualty of that war, but he wasn’t the only one, not by a long shot.” Her story was horrific, and Sirius’ eyes widened as he listened to her. For as terrible as the forthcoming war was, this sounded even worse, somehow. “Wait, so if you hadn’t been sent down as test subjects on earth you’d have been floated out into space just because you turned eighteen?” Sirius asked. “And I thought the blood purity rubbish was ridiculous… Why even bother waiting then? What was magic about eighteen? They felt less guilty?” Clarke shrugged. “I guess so. Sending us to the ground wasn’t much better. It was a long shot. They sent us because our crimes--” she made air quotes there-- “made us expendable. They didn’t know if the radiation had faded enough for us to survive, but the Ark’s life support systems were failing. If we’d stayed in space, we all would have been dead soon, anyway.” She paused. “That was my crime. My father knew our systems were failing and he wanted to warn our people. The chancellor found out and he was floated. They locked me up for trying to help him.” It sounded horrible, but it was easier to see both sides of it after the months she’d spent on the ground and the things she’d done, the sins she’d committed, just to keep her people alive. She told herself it was because the human race needed to survive, but that didn’t always help her sleep at night. “Bloody hell,” Sirius muttered. “I’ll stop feeling bad about the years I had ahead of me in prison.” Despite the fact that everything was sore and it hurt to do so, he reached over and placed his hand on Clarke’s shoulder. “I’m sorry you went through all of that.” And maybe was still going through it, at least in her mind. “I mean that’s so beyond what I could even imagine, I don’t know what to say.” He fell silent for a moment and then added quietly, “How are you doing, now that you’re suddenly here?” If only he knew all of it. Clarke wondered if he would be so sympathetic if he knew the whole story. Some of the things she’d done to survive didn’t exactly paint her as the hero of the piece. She told herself it was what she’d needed to do to save her people; that was the only way she could live with the guilt. “Sometimes I feel guilty for being happy here,” she admitted. “I know we couldn’t go home even if we wanted to, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to. I was glad to leave my responsibilities behind.” Shaking her head slightly, she laughed. “It’s funny. Most of my life, getting to the ground was the dream. I never thought I’d be so grateful to be in space again.” “What, you’re happy that you’re no longer damned if you do, damned if you don’t?” Sirius asked. “Your life consisted of slowly, or maybe rather quickly, running out of oxygen and dying, or fighting in a war that you probably weren’t all that prepared for to begin with… So no, I can’t imagine why being on this ship is a relief,” he said quietly. “Someone pointed out to me that this is a second chance,” he told her. “One of my best mates is here, but almost twice as old as me. He knows what happens and my friends here are pretty much all dead, and so am I, only a couple of them didn’t have to suffer as long to get to that point. So while I know I should be back home, fighting our war? Here I don’t end up in prison, blamed for the murder of my best friend.” He glanced over at her, the sudden movement a bad idea. “It probably won’t help, but you don’t need to feel guilty.” Clarke wasn’t sure how she should feel. What he said about this being a second chance was true, but it didn’t undo the past and it didn’t change the fact that there was a new threat to her people at home, that she should be there helping to find a solution. She couldn’t shake that responsibility she felt to them. She wasn’t the chancellor, there was nothing official saying she was in charge, but most of them looked to her to lead them. She couldn’t do that when she was here. “I guess I can’t really help it,” she admitted. “Maybe it’s a second chance for me, but what about my people? They’re not here. They could be dying right now and I’m not there to stop it.” Maybe it was egotistical to think that, but it was true. “What about you?” she asked him, trying to change the subject. “What’s your life like?” Considering he’d just given her a rundown, he thought maybe she wasn’t quite as ready for the topic change as she hoped. So he just shook his head, ignoring the throbbing, and reached out to hug her, doing his best not to grimace but thinking it was worth it anyway. After all, she’d healed him even if he did look like Finn. There was that. Clarke did really want to know, beyond what she knew from the books, but she didn’t want to admit she’d read books about his life. She didn’t even know if he knew they existed. She let him dodge her question, understanding how it felt to not want to talk about certain things and leaned into him a little, accepting the comfort he was offering. He wasn’t Finn, she knew that, but she thought maybe she’d like to be friends with him, anyway.