( this is it, then. they've been waiting for this moment for weeks, all the anticipation of losing teeth and it's going to be a bad one culminating in a damn near rush to once friday unveils the metal detector. clarke watches one or two people step through the security gate, seemingly vanish where they ought to have reappeared on the other side, and immediately turned to make a beeline for her cabin. she'll return sum fifteen minutes later in full apocalyptic war regalia, kitted with a gun on one side of the holster and a rough made knife in the other. doesn't matter if the ambient temperature around the ship is uncomfortably hot, it's better to swelter and be prepared than be comfortable and maybe forget something. she also has that rucksack from sleepaway camp, rattling with extra ammunition, a set of car keys, notebooks and pens. all is divested into a bin at friday's bidding, clarke a temporary picturesque example of grim faced cooperation if it'll get her through this new method of worldly transportation faster.

and it's finally her turn to step through the metal detectors and — this is going to be fine, right? bad, maybe, but ultimately fine and maybe they'd learn something new by the end of this excursion. teeth set, brow furrowed, and ignoring the way her heartrate picks up in anticipation, she's stepping through the archway. )

( and out into a shiny new reality. literally shiny, the sunlight streaming through the windows and hitting the metal edging on the diner tables is temporarily blinding after the fluorescents of deck zero. clarke moves to lift a hand to shield her eyes, but finds her arms full of everything she'd put in the tray and is unwilling to drop it. she gets one good sweeping look around the room before the pain starts — like something blunt has just been cracked through her temple and her entire field of vision suddenly goes a bit wonky. hazy but searingly bright at the same time, spots of multicolored light dancing about while the entire restaurant backdrop slants at an alarming axis. it hurts, it hurts so intensely that for a second she has to wonder if this is what they were doomed to endure the entire time out on this trip. it certainly feels like torture; like every neuron in her brain is melting into a barbed point, like her eyeballs might give to the building pressure behind them, like she's going to tip sideways and lay on the tiled floor in full scale convulsions.

but, stubborn as her nature, she forces herself to move a few tables away from their arrival point before absolutely giving in to the weakness of the human body against headaches. dumps her bag and weaponry onto a polyester lined seat of a booth, and bends to press her forehead to the glassy tabletop like it'd offer any cool relief.

and that's exactly where she stays for the duration of the splitting headache. shivering, retching every so often, and silently begging it to stop. this wasn't what she'd expected, and missing being gassed in the tender was not on her august bingo sheet. clarke doesn't even realize she's been magically stripped of her protective leather jacket and redressed in a red and black 1950's aesthetic from head to foot.

all that effort, ultimately nothing, because now she's dying for the next three minutes.

eventually the pain inside her skull with subside and clarke will gather her belongings, ignoring the cotton state of her tongue, try and fail to figure out where to put her gun in this tight belt and venture outside the doors to — )

( a blazing hot parking lot. this time she manages to rearrange her armful of personal effects enough to bring a hand up to shade her eyes against the relentless arizona sun, sets about scanning the horizon and then the neatly parked arrangement of cars. clocks the retro chevy's, thunderbirds, spyders, even a corvette and then —

oh.

sticking out like a sore thumb among sleek paintjobs, bubbled hoods, and recognizable brand symbols there sits rover 1 in all it's dusty, dinged, apocalypse weathered glory. the very sight of a vehicle from her home world — the very one she'd been riding shotgun in not that long before her death, at the end of the world with some of her most treasured people at her side, decked out in hazmat suits and scared — evokes some weird mix of longing and elation in clarke's chest. it hasn't been that long since bellamy blake disappeared from the serena eterna, and he'd been driving last time they'd tried to outrun death which... probably doesn't mean anything significant, right? the potential thematic matching up will be done later, stopping dead in her tracks with a slight gasp. natsuno's presumably behind her, they tend to walk into the jaws of death as a team, and he's going to need those vampire reflexes to avoid just outright slamming into her back. suddenly, aggressively, dropping her rucksack and digging through the miscellaneous war detritus at the bottom until she's pulling out an equally battered and ancient set of keys like a magician surprised by their own magic. )

Oh my god, it's really here.

( was being gifted cars unheard of? absolutely not. did it still feel like it held the potential to be a trick when given a nautically wrapped box of keys from your homeworld but not being able to actually look at or touch the vehicle in question? yes absolutely. but somehow the most underwhelming surprise still hits like a kid walking into a dark room, flipping on the lights, and finding the makings of a surprise party splayed out in front of them. clarke's not outright beaming, but her eyes are wide and bright, tell tale excitement right down to the way she rocks on the balls of her feet while pointing out the rover to natsuno. and can't finish a proper sentence. )

Look, that's my — do you want to — do you know how to drive?

( it's not until later, after returning from driving lessons and comedic scare tactics with jade and natsuno out in the desert, that she truly digs into the messy internal dressings of the rovers. ( a. ) alone for a moment and able to just sit in the car. looking at all the seats and imagining vestiges of her friends where they'd once been, fiddling with the audio hookup and even going so far to drag memories of the smell of cramped bodies in the cab; sweaty and dirt caked, sometimes with the tangy scent of blood that sat deep on the back of one's tongue, and the ever-present overhang of gunpowder and hydrazine.

this is basically the prompt for folks who love a mad max wannabe car to oogle the rover's grimy, dinged appearance, and be subsequently spotted by clarke through the barred windows and waved at. or accosted proper if they deign to get a little too close: opening the doors, kicking the wheels, someone please climb on the hood and touch the mini gatling gun.

or ( b | cw: mass suicide at the end of the world references are inevitable ) pass by some time later, when she's unearthed a specific set of goggles from underneath the back bench of the rover.

maybe for a second she doesn't realize what she's holding but they're instantly recognizable for clarke, and when she brushes a thumb across the reflective lens covering and feels an immediate swell of emotion lodge so tightly in the back of her throat that it hurts. first she presses the goggles to her mouth, like that'd do anything to stifle the abrupt sob that slithers past her teeth. like a parting goodbye kiss for a friend long gone. fresh hot tears well in the corners of her eyes, catch in her lashes, but eventually spill over and gather beneath her chin anyways when she drags the ancient eyewear down to the middle of her sternum and hugs it so tightly that the hard rims around the eyes bite through the fabric of her shirt and will likely leave indentations in her skin.

this should be a private moment, but the back loading door of the rover is wide open and she's not thinking about the potential of someone sticking their head in out of idle curiosity. no, she's thinking of jasper jordan, and how she never got to properly apologize or say goodbye. )

( another day, another trip through the metal detector, another era appropriate outfit.

there's no denying it's hot as hell out there in the semblance of the nevada desert. even if the second day emulates much of the first and clarke spends most of her time out driving, it's inevitable that she'd return to gil's diner regularly — a sweaty, dust covered mess in need of hydration. today it's about half past noon that she pushes open the doors of the jonathan rocket's style establishment, approaches the silent version of friday behind the counter and asks for water, but loses herself in pondering aloud why the menu images of the vanilla milkshake are so big and look so good. it's a classic restaurant industry communication blunder when she's inevitable served a tall ice water, condensation thick on the glass siding of the cup, right alongside the most offensively delicious looking blended ice cream drink and the chilled metal mixing cup full of thick, beaten leftovers. clarke doesn't even get a word in edgewise about how she'd never asked for this frozen treat before friday is skating away to serve other customers, and.

what's she going to do, just let it melt? come on, she's a warlord with questionable morals and a reckless streak, but not a complete insult to the human race.

so you'll find her tucked away in booth near the door, water untouched and swiping a finger through sprinkle topped whipped cream. or like, five to ten minutes later, when she's neck deep in a horrendous brain freeze and going to start complaining her stomach hurts, because people aren't supposed to finish an entire milkshake that quickly, clarke, god.

multiple milkshakes will be consumed through out the day until she's managed to try every. single. flavor. so help me barbatos... )

( so far, nothing outwardly atrocious has happened, and the almost serene peace that comes with driving in the desert all day is eating her alive. it's the same strange sort of suspense she'd held in her chest during the sleep away camp, only made ten times worse after ruminating for so long on what it would be that made this particular outing "a bad one". there's very rare moments — in the middle of accelerating down a twisting dusty road, yanking the wheel and watching jade and natsuno's souls metaphorically leave their bodies, or patiently but insistently demanding natsuno try flooring it while teaching him to drive, or that first sip of a strawberry milkshake, or taking in the scent of land, fake or not — where clarke feels something other than dread, but in the end it's all very second verse, same as the first.

there is a whole lot of waiting and watching. she straight up hadn't gone back to the ship last night, just sat in a vinyl covered booth seat and stared out the window, half expecting the sky to snap or ground to shudder and split. maybe caught an hour or two of sleep on the bench, slipping down just below the tabletop after heat exhaustion won out. and this afternoon of the third day is the same, save now clarke's seated low in the driver's seat of her rover and staring moodily out across the parking lot.

when's it going to start, when's it going to start, when's it g — oh, i recognize the back of that head. palamedes is presumably doing his own thing, winding through cars, and the idea of picking his brain in regards to the logistics of putting wards on the wall paneling of the rover stirs clarke to get out of her seat. feet planted on the center console between driver and passenger, and sticking her head and torso out the open sun roof to flag him down. )

Pal — hey, Pal!