come_sailaway | APRIL OPEN LOG: PIRATE JENNY

APRIL OPEN LOG: PIRATE JENNY

[early risers with odd-numbered rooms might notice that the morning sun doesn't quite come through the curtains as much as it usually does; they can peer out the portholes to see their views blocked by black-painted wood. everyone else won't realize something's off until the morning announcements. there's the chime, and Friday speaks, but...]

Passengers, I'd like for you all to join me in the atrium at your earliest possible convenience! We have a… situation!

[there is no bind on their legs; going is their choice. but, who wouldn't? something interesting is happening, at least. for once.

when they arrive, they will find Friday, and find that she is not alone. a woman - tall, dark, with a flowing coat and a lit cigar hanging from the side of her mouth like an old movie gangster - is standing on the raised area by the stairs; they are having a conversation that's too quiet to hear, and the woman's face is nearly as inscrutable. when enough have gathered, Friday steps forward, her empty hands clasped together in front of her, as the woman puts out the cigar on the heel of her boot and tosses it thoughtlessly to the ground.]

Good morning, everyone! I.. I'd like, I'd like to, well, I'd -

[the woman places a firm hand on Friday's shoulder - spins her, grabs her, dips her low to the ground, and kisses her soundly. at the first touch, Friday freezes; but, at the dip, she squeaks, and throws her arms up to hold herself up. the woman returns her to a normal position, and grins widely.]

Let me handle this, Dajutia. Hm? [Friday nods, and the woman turns to face the passengers.] Tau, everyone! My name is Jenny Storm, but all my friends call me Pirate Jenny! And I'd like to think we're all friends, sí? You could call me an... alumnus of the Serena Eterna; I spent a good five years being a thorn in the side of our good Captain! So, when I heard that he was getting up to his old tricks again, I decided to come around and see the fresh meat! And maybe have a bit of a vacation myself!

[she looks at each of them in turn. her grin widens, showing sharp canines.]

Now, I am sure you are thinking, "Señora Storm? You are a pirate! Are you here to rob us of our valuables?" [she barks out a laugh, then shakes her head.] No, no. First off, we're friends; it's Pirate Jenny! And Pirate Jenny is not interested in such things. In fact, I have valuables for you!

[she makes a quick movement: she sticks her pointer finger in her mouth, and then immediately uses that same finger to make some sort of sketch on her palm. seconds later, that same palm closes around a single white rose, which she extends to Friday. she pauses... then takes it, careful, holding it gentle as a bird.]

I may not be the Captain, but I happen to have a little bit of magic of my own! And, for a very, very low price, I can grant you a few small wishes! Trifles from home, maybe - do you like rocket launchers? I am getting very good at rocket launchers!

Jenny...

Okay, okay, no rocket launchers... Machine guns are as big as I'll go, promise!

[Friday just audibly sighs and shakes her head, but there's a clear sort of fondness in it, and Jenny laughs again.]

So, be sure to chat me up, sí? After breakfast! I may not miss much about this damned ship, but I do miss those little omelets!

[she salutes the audience, and then immediately leaves, taking the stairs down three at a time and needlessly pushing her way through the small crowd on her way to the elevators. Friday merely watches her go; her fingers have worried the rose to shreds that fall at her feet.

the rest of the month, until the 13th, is very much the same, with one exception: Jenny's ship remains at the Serena Eterna's side, a sailing ship somehow keeping pace with a modern engine craft. and Jenny doesn't seem to be keeping an especially close eye on it.]

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A jelly...

( fish?

FISH?

maybe clarke doesn't say it out loud, but the implication of jelly fish is so plain on her face she ought to have just spoken the words. there's a brief, appraising once over, a flutter of shock because mizuki... looks so human to her. maybe odd, maybe short, maybe his hair too blue. but not gelatinous, and not particularly toxic. )

I —... don't think we had those where I come from. Not like you, at least. ( maybe not at all, she's only seen the ocean once and hadn't stopped to appreciate the sea life while trying to not die for the millionth time that week. )

I'm — my people are just human. Maybe a little more evolved compared to our ancestors from Earth, but. That's it.

( flesh, blood, easily breakable bones, only weapons which they crafted with their own hands. and on this big wide boat of demons, angels, gods, vampires, monster slayers, necromancers, robots, actual pirates, and now aegir — clarke sometimes feels very small and out of her element. )

[ Hey, that's sea jelly to you, okay? He's NOT a fish, damn it. ]

I don't think my species is very common in anyone else's worlds. I haven't really seen humans, either, though, so this is a new experience for me. "Just" human is still a novel concept to me. And... your worlds, from what I've heard from others, have all been so interesting and different. Much different from my own, anyway.

( oh i wish i wish i was a fish — actually has he thought about jumping overboard and swimming away? inquiring minds want to know, and desire a full report if it ever happens.

but until then — something almost a flush. more of a wince, pained and a little sour. the kneejerk comparison within clarke is to compare and contrast between a world with pleasant sea monsters and a world which literally burned at her heels as she ran from certain death, and finds the juxtaposition stark and wanting. )

And what was yours like?

( yanno, other than cannibalistic. )

Ah... hm, how do I condense my world into something palatable...

[ Give him a moment to consider this, lulling his head from side to side with a hum, trying to think about the things he's learned from others that are... different from what he knows of his own world. ]

Well, for starters, the "people" there are all different species. Usually all with some sort of... um, how would you say... "animal" trait? Like, ears or horns or tails or whatever else. There's all sorts there.

The world itself is full of very extreme natural disasters that we've named "catastrophes." Because of this, most of our major cities are actually massive landships that can move once we determine a catastrophe is going to occur nearby.

These catastophes end up completely destroying the land they hit and leaving a mineral, called "Originium," in their wake. This mineral is very sought after in my world, as it is a great power source for both technology and can also be used by people to use special abilities that we call "Arts". However, people who have been exposed for prolonged periods or come into direct contact with Originium can become infected, and will slowly start to form rocks over their bodies until they finally fully crystalize, forever. This is called "Oripathy," and people with this affliction are treated as outcasts and, while there is treatments available to them, our society has reached a point where people think they shouldn't be treated, but rather, exiled.

Despite this, Originium is a very integral part of our world. It has provided us with a technological boon, and gives us enough energy to power entire cities for eons.

...Ah, sorry, that was probably a lot, huh?

( probably a lot? )

I — no, actually.

( through the seemingly fantastical lens on the story, clarke can still pick out enough familiar notions to root ready parallels to the world she knew. namely, natural disasters and airships, especially since she'd sent a small group of her friends into space in hopes they'd be able to ride out the end of the world right as a wave of radiation bared down on them all. and maybe that was more of a man made disaster, but she has to imagine both types of destruction leave scorched earth in their wake.

almost 100 years in space, and humanity told and retold the same stories over and over again. carefully preserved the books the original grounders had brought with them onto their space stations. wrote down whatever they could remember from before. but that still left gaps in the human history, and only so many fairytales to chew on as little girls grew up behind reinforced portholes looking out across swaths of stars and darkness.

originium and oripathy are unfamiliar by default, but clarke is taking it as commentary on the utterly predictable way society looked down on the building blocks of their world and ignored their suffering so long as it didn't impact the upper crusts happiness. like coal miners suffering from the black lung, or soldiers crippled with ptsd. like the other children on the ark who ate the half rations their parents stole, and would later be executed for stealing, who would later become the sky people's caged canary when it came to figuring out if earth would ever be habitable again. )

So, your cities are powered by the residue of the very thing that would otherwise destroy them? Do your people wish the catastrophe's would stop so you didn't have to move anymore, or are they so accustomed to the benefits of the ( yes she stumbles over the word for a hot second ) Originium that they've come to look forward to natural disasters?

Yeah! Exactly that. [ He's excited that he managed to explain it thoroughly enough for someone to understand. Look at that smile! He's so happy. There's even some theories by scientists that the Originium may even be causing the catastrophes, but that's all just theories right now and a wildly different conversation to have. It's also not Mizuki's forte. He's no scientist. ]

Uh... I don't... really know what the general consensus is. Personally, I'm pretty accustomed to them. [ He takes a moment to fish out one of his gaming consoles. He turns it around and pulls out a battery to show to Clarke. It doesn't look too different from a normal battery, but maybe a little more heavily fortified. ] Obviously I can't open it up to show you what it looks like, but this little thing here will power my console for decades. Just because of the Originium inside.

So, it really is one of those necessary evils, I think. And... well, if the catastrophes are going to happen, regardless, then getting something out of it is nice? Maybe that's just the naively optimistic way of looking at it.

Edited 2022-04-04 07:38 (UTC)

( it shouldn't be surprising that bits and pieces of alien technology made it's way on board with each new inhabitant — hidden either in her bra or under the pillow in her room, clarke has carefully hoarded what was referred to as the flame, with the soul of every grounder commander neatly nestled in the expansive amount of code packed into an item the size of a quarter. and just waiting for another worthy nightblood to take up, clarke excluded because she wasn't born that way, just man-made.

but that battery still intrigues her, and (not at all foreshadowing any future use of originium as a biological weapon) she's holding out her hand to take a closer look if mizuki would hand it over. decades of power? in such a small shell? god — what must the rest of their power sources looked like?

she won't outright say that his opinion sounds skewed by rose colored glasses, clarke ultimately has no idea and no stake in the matter. but, ethics, right? )

I'd think, if your society was advanced enough to harness this element, create batteries with this sort of lifespan, and build floating cities — but still chooses not to treat the disease it causes... Then there's nothing necessary about it. At best, it's negligence, and at worst, just evil.

I agree, actually. That's why I work for an organization that not only treats those who are Infected out of any government's jurisdiction, but also enforces protection and safety to Infected. I'm not saying it's all good or anything, especially since this is an issue that has spurred on quite a few ongoing wars, but... just because I am for this...

[ And at this point, he does pass the battery over to Clarke. Obviously, it's not exactly easy to break or anything like that, but he should still offer a warning: ] And... be careful with it.

... It doesn't mean that I'm one of those assholes who wants those who do have Oripathy to suffer. They are just sick. And it's something we have the ability to make better for them. I think that it's important that we do.

( she'll be careful, cradling the battery in the palm of her less gristly hand as she draws it closer to her face and gives it an appraising once over. it feels heavier than the traditional double-a, but otherwise not that outwardly impressive. the true weight behind this piece of technology is the story mizuki weaves behind it, and clarke's gaze is darting from this piece of show & tell to his face every so often, still hanging on the overarching points of this story.

every world has it's assholes and it's bleeding hearts — and a good deal of the community that fall somewhere between the two. that was just how society worked. though as she's already somehow digested the fact that her tablemate eats (evil) people, it's a bit of a relief to be reaffirmed that he's not part of the former group.

but sitting here, holding what may be the peak of human (and human adjacent) technology in hand, it also sparks a wave of detached nostalgia. musings on society and what makes people people, heavy on her tongue and easy to spill through her teeth now that she's paused in eating. )

Do you want to hear a fun philosophical anecdote?

[ Fortunately for Clarke, "heavily fortified" is no exaggeration here. Although it's not recommended, the sheer hardness of the battery is impressive. It's the sort of thing that even taking a hammer to probably wouldn't work. Which makes sense-- if it's inside a device that can be dropped at any time, it needs to be tough enough to withstand pressure and force. But, that and the weight aside, it does just feel like a normal battery. There's no ominous feeling about it, no surge of energy, her hair isn't standing on end just from being around it... it would be kind of hard to believe Mizuki's stories if something like that weren't so absurd to be making up.

At the promise of philosophy, Mizuki immediately shuffles closer to Clarke, momentarily abandoning his food (well, he grabs a bone to gnaw on, actually, while he listens), and looking to her with stars practically in his eyes. He even sets his elbows on the table and shoves his chin into his hands to give her his undivided attention. ]

( good lord, that was not the sort of response she was expecting here.

maybe it's par for the course, when you come from an irradiated shell of a planet, constantly rife with war and impending doom, but clarke hasn't been face to face with cherubic enthusiasm in what feels like a long time. give her a minute to blink, to look mizuki up and down, and then to maybe lean back a fraction because she values her personal space. but, on to the anecdote with the automatic caveate that clarke can only really speak of the histories of an earth that melted long before she was born: )

What do you think the first, historical sign of civilization was?

( maybe it's less philosophical, and more evolutionary. but one can lean on the other, and they make a good talking point regardless. )

[ He shrugs. ]

I couldn't even tell you what it may have been from my world. [ Had to have been something from his species. Rather, the ancestors of his species? Being aquatic did give them a lot of advantages... But he would have no idea what the signs would be. ] Farms, maybe?? Or some other thing that fulfills a basic need.

In my world, it was the archeological find of a femur.

( clarke can accept that they might be working from two different ends of reality, but doesn't discredit mizuki's intelligence enough to feel the need to gesture at either of their thighs to explain what a femur is. )

A very, very old femur. That showed signs of a long-healed break in the bone. The idea behind that being that, in the animal kingdom, you break your leg and you die. That sort of injury takes at least six weeks of immobilization to heal from, and you can't feed or defend yourself during this time. So someone else stopped, and stayed with this injured person; fed them, brought them water, tended their wound, carried them if needed, cleaned them, and protected them from any outward threat until they were well enough to walk again.

I've always heard that that was the first sign of a functional civilization. Of a sense of community. Things that met basic needs like gardens, arrowheads, and bowls — those could have just been selfish, and self serving tools. But this proof that one person put another's need over their own convenience or wellbeing for an extended period of time is...

( honestly, kind of beautiful. the standard of human morality that clarke still holds herself against to this day; tries and tries again to emulate, even after one failure or another. she pauses for a moment here, long enough to drop her gaze to the battery again before handing it back across the table top. )

The point I was trying to get to — it is important. And it's defining, and says a lot about you if your first instinct is to help the sick instead of demonize them.

( super fucking round about way of saying oh hey, you sound like a good person compared to the rest of your world but here we are, finally on the other side of it. )

[ Mizuki listens very intently, leaning a bit forward as he does. He's not as much of a history nerd as other people, but he is a huge fan of learning about stuff like this. How people might think, even ancient people, is fascinating. There's almost a part of Mizuki that wants to try to interrupt and start talking about the science behind the social need of people and all the psychology that goes behind it, but he's too polite to just cut in.

Besides, this is interesting! And the more he listens, the less prevalent the stars in his eyes are, and the more soft his expression looks. By the end of it, he gives an embarrassed laugh and uses one of his hands to half cover the sudden flush he can feel over his cheeks. Mizuki considers himself a good person, absolutely. A hero? No. But a good person. But to be told as such, so eloquently, so vividly... it's a little fluster-worthy. He does take the battery back, and just kind of rolls it around between his fingers, so he's doing something with his hands as his eyes are suddenly very interested in the table. ]

I... appreciate it. Thank you.

[ ... ]

You have such a beautiful outlook on life despite your circumstances, Clarke. It's a little intimidating to be around someone so... genuine.

( mizuki is looking at her so softly, so enthralled and hanging on every word, and... clarke's never been uncomfortable under the heavy, expectant gazes of a dozens of her companions while mapping out a war plan, or appealing to their pathos in an effort to divert a conflict; never flinched when spitting in lexa's face, or shooting through lincoln in order to pierce the heart of the mountain man holding a knife to his throat.

she isn't even all that bothered by his focused attention while she's talking, but that bookend of a compliment is just... too much. mizuki isn't the only one suddenly inspecting their nailbeds. but clarke will muscle through the unpleasant twists in her guts — guilt, it tastes most like guilt for having apparently misrepresented herself — and make herself look at his face again. )

...I don't want to mislead you. I used to think life on the ground would be beautiful. I think trees, flowers, butterflies, and rivers are the most amazing things I've ever seen. But life is hard, and ugly. Humanity may be great, but humans? They can be so, so brutal, and horrible to one another. And I just —

( going from conflict after conflict after crisis after gutwrenching death, clarke's never had the real opportunity to sit down and digest a lot of what she's experienced in the last two years. if this cruise — this extended moment after her maybe-death, where they's hostages and maybe going to have to murder each other — is going to be good for anything, at least it'll give her a few brief moments to breathe. maybe even to process. but that hasn't happened yet. )

I don't know how I feel about a lot of things anymore.

... That, unfortunately, is just a truth of people in general. I learned from someone a long time ago that people can absorb the good around them, and the evil will expel in turn. For a long time, I tried to live that, travelling the world to explore the stories and learn of the lives of good people.

I very quickly learned that that is a truth of the world, and not just a theory. I've seen it. I know it's true. But, I know that the opposite is also very true. Evil can smother the good inside of them, and in turn, eventually wipe away the good and kind souls that bring beauty to the world beneath the stars.

[ Mizuki looks back to his battery, holding it tightly between his two fingers as if he's meant to be contemplating something, before finally sliding it back into his game console. ]

I think the people who believe in the good in people, in anyone, are not wrong, in a sense. Everyone does has the capability to be good. But by the time that they may decide to find those parts of themselves, they very well may have done irreparable damage. So, unfortunately, humanity needs a lot more than learning and getting along if its future is going to be the bright, beautiful and caring one that it needs to be.

[ He pauses, then reaches over to gingerly touch Clarke's shoulder. ]

So, I feel like maybe you might see things in a way very similar to me. In fact, I think out of everyone on this ship, I understand you the most.

Edited 2022-04-06 03:33 (UTC)

( it isn't that clarke actively tries to remain detached from beautifully spoken, well thought out speeches surrounding humanity and the optimism they deserve to push forward with. it's just that... she's given herself so many pep talks along the same vein, listened to so many stirring pleas from her leaders, her parents, and her friends — only to witness all those good intentions steamrolled by the next world-crisis that snuffed out lives and cared little for the dreams of the people it left ground into the dirt. maybe she'd been an optimistic little girl until the age of seventeen, but had been forced to grow up quickly down on earth, and accept the brutal consequences of living to the point that, sometimes? in situations that felt particularly dire and inescapable? it physically hurt to hold on to hope.

and all of clarke's resilience has been shoved towards escaping this ship. beat the captain and his game, then worry about good and evil as it was represented among humanity. but every point out mizuki's mouth sounds like something she'd have said once upon a time. just because he didn't look at her and see a blood drenched genocidal witch didn't mean clarke didn't remember how easy it was to take hundreds of lives at once with the pull of a lever every time she looked at herself in the mirror. she could hate herself, and the toll of her choices, and in the same breath really, desperately want to believe that none of that made her evil. that she wasn't a terrible person, just living through terrible circumstances.

but circumstances change people. experience change people. evil smothers to good out of the very best, and she was never the prime example of a humanitarian good girl. clarke herself could have used a lot more learning and experience, and just... the opportunity to live a life where survival at all costs wasn't the baseline, and a little room was left to figure out how to find joy in the world, how to thrive. but then she'd maybe-died, woken up on a ghost ship, and felt any chance at actual, real redemption was taken from her in the wake of the deathwave that had leveled her earth.

it feels so uncomfortably vulnerable for someone to look her in the eyes and say they see her; understand her. the friends she'd cherished at home had been quick to say similar things, and quicker to turn on her when that propensity for making hard, ruthless decisions jeopardized them personally. adding one more confidant feels a lot like adding another name to her list of people to disappoint; perpetually waiting for the other boot to drop. and then mizuki goes and touches her, and clarke goes painfully rigid under that hesitant touch. jaw locked, eyes wide with a mixture of alarm, discomfort, and wet — the pressure of so many unshed tears that threaten to well in her lashes as she's reminded that thing she wants most in the world right now is a hug from her mother. that permission to fall apart a little under the tactile contact of someone trusted who'd try their best to put her back together afterwards. she doesn't shrug off his hand, but remains frozen like she expects a kind touch to suddenly start stinging.

(no, not because he's a jellyfish.)

eventually she'll regain a modicum of composure, enough to look away and even busy herself with pushing a few scraps of meat around her plate like she means to start eating again. but what little appetite she'd scrounged up has fled. )

I don't think I understand you much at all, but...

( a toss of a coin, an impulsive decision right here and now about how much she wants to align herself with someone that makes her feel gross, unwelcome feelings that are hard to push back into their bottle. )

I think I'd like to. And I want to hear more about your world. For whatever flaws are rooted in its societal makeup and meteorological system, it sounds beautiful.

[ Mizuki has never had an easy time reading someone's expressions. Sometimes, he's able to pick up on more obvious ones, if he's really looking, but for the most part, social cues and context sort of flew right by him. If he were ever to psychoanalyze himself, he would probably even assume that's why touch is so important to him. Someone's weak attempt to squeeze your hand because they're sad, the tenseness of their shoulders because they're worried or afraid, the desperate grips of someone who needs comfort... it's all things that he understands far better than expressions and words. People don't make sense. Words are confusing.

He gets this, though.

He doesn't know why she's uncomfortable, of course, and he has the common sense to not just ask. But he can work with this. She's not pushing him away at all, and despite how she may be feeling, she's being very amiable. That's good news, right? That makes them friends, right? ]

Really? I would be happy to talk to you more about it! I love teaching people new things-- I didn't get to do it much back home.

... Whenever you're ready, I would like to hear more about yours as well. But I don't mind waiting!

( friends is still a super generous term — especially when she'd actively work to keep as many people an arm's length away as she could, just so there'd be no verbatim repeat of an enemy learning her friends are her weakness, start with bellamy blake — but they could be tentative allies. she could get behind that title, at least eventually; has honestly already compiled an inner circle of confidants and co-conspirators in this quest to beat the captain at his own game, but none of them had offered to eat someone for her, and gazed at her with a soft sort of unearned... reverence? fascination? too intently, for someone who waffled between standing front and center of a group and assuming leadership, or else melting into the background and not being glanced at once.

and, yeah, clarke acknowledges that outside of thinly veiled hypotheticals, she hasn't told mizuki much about her home at all. it wasn't intentional omission, but too much information about the circumstances she'd left behind and wars she'd won tended to drag conversations dangerously close to those raw, barely knit-over wounds along her psyche — that lengthy list of secrets, of hard choices that still hurt to revisit. everyone at home knew what she had done, she'd earned a bloody title and reputation to go along with desperate war crimes. sue her a little if it's nice not immediately being feared because the passengers on the serena eterna don't know just how many kill marks should have been tattooed on her back.

still, she's given others a basic run down, and it feels like the least she could offer in return of how patiently he'd explained his world and fielded her follow up questions. so — )

I was born in space.

( this is the point where she sits up a little straighter, leaning just far enough away that it's no longer easy for him to touch her shoulder. )

About eighty years after a nuclear apocalypse wiped out all life on Earth and made the entire planet uninhabitable.

[ Rude. Fair! But rude. Mizuki settles his hand back on the table and uses his other to prop his head up as he listens. ]

Nuclear... apocalypse? How did the come about??

[ Not that Mizuki is totally unfamiliar with the concept of nuclear warfare or anything, but a lot of the wars from Terra were internalized within their own countries. Which tended to make nukes a little harder to use. ]

Ah, I guess if it was that long ago, you must not know that much about it...? Were you- [ ...Is he allowed to be nosy? Is it okay to ask questions? He isn't sure. ]

... You don't have to keep going if this is a tough topic.

( she actually knows more about it than she'd like to know, having come face to face with the perpetrator about seven months ago — just long enough to be told it would all be happening again in a matter of time. )

It's just history.

( a small shrug, eyes dipping back to her plate to push around a few more pieces of meat before eventually bringing another up to her lips. she'll talk while chewing, like the proper feral child she is, but at least the gross lip smacking is absent. )

A lot was happening. Over population, global warming, war, disease... Earth is completely dry of oil. Terroristic bombings, political assassinations, coups. Potable water was getting harder to come by, and the smog was suffocatingly thick. The Earth was dying beneath humanities feet.

So a scientist created an artificial intelligence with the sole directive of helping humanity, and she took that to mean culling half the population. But tip over a can of paint and you can't really plan on how far it'll stain across the floor. Instead of 6 billion people, the blasts took out almost all 11 billion. Anyone on a space station in orbit — we called them the original Grounders — were far enough away to be spared, but also cut off from their ground bases. For years, they drifted past each other until one day Mir floated by Shenzhen, and they realized life would be better together. The other stations saw this, and they wanted to be together too. When all the other stations were joined they called themselves The Ark.

( her tone slips into something practiced; remembering her childhood, her role in the unity day play's where children walked in circles around each other in place of the twelve spaceships and each recited praises to their ancestorial astronauts.

they never talk about the thirteenth that was shot out of the sky. )

And that's where I was born.

That sounds ridiculously messy. Sounds to me like your world didn't implement enough time outs... [ …A joke. Is he allowed to use those in serious conversations with Clarke yet? Hopefully! ]

Rogue AI, then? That's... [ Harsh! Thank god the robots back on Terra haven't tried to do anything like this. Then again, they're all worked on by the best engineers constantly, presumably to avoid something like this, but... well, there have been certainly a few video games to explore the hypotheticals of if they didn't.

Once again, Mizuki finds himself feeling terrible about a hypothetical that Clarke literally had to go through. ]

So you were born in space? [ Well not like in space, but you know what he means. ] That's really cool! When I was still a young Aegir, I would float along the ocean waves and just stare at the stars and moon for hours. I mean, obviously I didn't have too much else to do, but... [ When you're just a wee jellyfish and you don't have a brain, things happen. ]

… Do you curse your ancestors for putting you in that situation?

( very few jokes are going to land in such a way that'd ever make clarke giggle or crack into side-splitting laughter. but her pulse-less sense of humor doesn't mean she can't aggressively relate to generalizations like that, especially as the unofficial (but kind of official) mother of her friend group. time outs. time outs for everyone would have been hugely effective and probably prevented a lot of suffering, and yet here they are...

but curse her ancestors? )

...No. I could barely tell what to expect between one day and the next on Earth, and I can't imagine it was all that different for them. All of that started long before most of the branches in my family tree would have been grown, and even then — it wasn't specifically my great-great-great grandparents who destroyed the world. It was every single human on the planet, spanning generations. Either through inaction, ignorance, honest mistakes, or blatantly aggressive decisions.

I don't think I could curse humanity without including myself in that. It's not like I had any luck preventing the second Death Wave either.

It's just... from the sounds of things, it doesn't sound like there's a lot of... um, what's the word...? [ He lulls his head for a moment. ] I'd be... hopeless, I guess? All that feels so... damned if you do, damned if you don't. But, then again, I already have a hard time deciding things for myself, so...

[ He scoots himself back over to his food, ripping off a piece of his steak. ]

But maybe getting upset with the people who caused it to be so miserable is just a coward's way of doing thing. Getting mad doesn't fix the problem... But... [ Sigh. ]

...

Do you want to go back?

( he's hit the nail on the head, perfectly summed up her homelife, and clarke's eyes dip in an unspoken acknowledgement of this. she won't say out loud how futile life on earth had proven to be, how hard it was and how useless it felt to persist at times. to do so would be a disservice to the three generations who'd subsisted on the ark before her, all silently pining to smell pine trees for the very first time. and she had, but the immediate second taste hanging on the breeze had been blood, and it's just...

it would undermine all that the dead had sacrificed. for her to be ungrateful about ever feeling the wind on her face, or feeling leaves crunching beneath her feet. )

It's okay to be mad. ( a soft admission, a hint at something beneath a more proper veneer that's subsequently swallowed along with a mouthful of spit. she puts another bite of steak in her mouth and chews. ) But no, it doesn't fix anything. Sometimes it just makes things worse.

( and the whew — does she want to go back? well... )

I do.

( either she'd died in a deathwave and would return to her world to find some semblance of peaceful death where she wasn't forced to play another brutal game for survival, or she'd lived and would at least be able to try to find out if her mother and friends had survived as well. if the nightblood experiment had worked, if life could flourish after a fire. it's like asking her if she wants to live or die, and clarke not being able to come up with a concrete answer either way. neither are the most appealing, but the serena eterna somehow manages to be worse. )

Do you want to go home?

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