Chapter Text
Arkadia is a restless city. It’s a city that tosses and turns, even in the dark, quiet hours of the night. There is still pain, still suffering despite the lack of people on the streets after darkness sweeps over them.
Clarke balances on the rooftop, her hood billowing in the wind that howls along the skyline. She’s a part of that skyline now, if you look closely enough; a hooded, costumed woman perched atop a building, listening to the city cry.
Gradually, she lowers the walls of her mind, spreading her consciousness over the surrounding blocks to observe, unsure if she wants to hear what she’s searching for. Sounds of humanity rapidly crowd her mind: an over-anxious performer practicing, their annoyed neighbor, a fighting couple, someone crying over lost love. Nothing she can act on.
This part of patrol will never get easier, she’s sure. Clarke is eager to prove herself, to finally use her powers for good, but hoping for tragedy to befall an innocent person so she can intervene feels like the opposite of what a hero should do. At least, that’s what her limited research of old superhero movies tells her.
But there’s a murderer on the loose. Clarke thinks she’s allowed to want to catch them, and she can’t unless they attack. It’s okay to be eager as long as she gets there before they hurt someone.
It has to be a fellow metahuman; there’s no way they would’ve made it past the high security places to pull off such high-profile kills.
Whoever it is, they have guts. Clarke will give them that. Taking down three prominent government workers in a week is no small feat, even for a stronger meta. Maybe they’re a phaser, or have invisibility. Surely stealth is a part of the picture here.
Clarke pauses her mind sweep and presses her hands against her mask. It doesn’t have any special properties outside protecting her identity, serving as a reminder of why she’s here in the first place:
To finish what her father started.
That would be easier if she had any knowledge of what he was doing before he died, but she’d been a kid then. She had only just gotten her driver’s license—her powers had only just started coming in. Her father was a telepath, like her, with telekinesis stronger than she could ever dream of developing her own.
Three years. It’s been three years without him, and she’s only just found the suit he left her.
There was a note attached to the suit’s flexible grey and black fabric. Clarke reached for it with delicate fingers, like it might unravel at her touch, and read in her father’s handwriting ‘Do good. Wear the mask. Tell no one.’
Tell no one, she thinks bitterly, because that worked so well for him.
He had to have known. He couldn’t have left her that note without knowing what would happen to him.
Clarke smooths her hands over her face, over where the mask cannot protect the exposed skin of her jaw from the night air. It’s in these times she’s grateful for her dad’s ingenuity, particularly the warmth of her head to toe suit. Her face may be a little cold, but she’s sure she’ll still be able to patrol even in Arkadia’s harshest winter.
She presses her gloved hands to her face, sighing at the warmth her suit provides before redirecting her attention back to the streets below.
That’s when she hears it.
A panicked man’s voice rings out in her mind. ‘He’s here! Get upstairs, get as far away as you can. We’ll hold hi—’
The voice is silenced almost as soon as it begins, and Clarke can’t find the person it belongs to when she searches.
She scrambles off her ledge to drop to the next rooftop over, using her powers to soften her landing. Adrenaline pumps through her system as she closes her eyes to search for more panicked voices, praying she isn’t too late to save them.
The panicked man’s consciousness is gone. Clarke is confident enough in her powers to know that means he’s dead.
After a few agonizing moments with nothing to hear but the billowing wind, Clarke feels more pain and panic isolated in a building a block away.
Exerting as much energy as she can into locating the fight without taking away from her levitation, Clarke leaps from the rooftop, doing her best to ignore her stomach as she free falls for a few floors before righting herself. The streetlights race under her as she propels herself toward the commotion, attempting to pinpoint the exact floor.
She stops trying to latch onto individual minds when the third one falls silent in two minutes. Instead, Clarke focuses on the cloud of panic on the tenth floor of Alpha Tower, though she senses the lone person ascending to the twelfth floor—probably the person the first man told to run.
They’ll be trapped upstairs unless Clarke gets to them first.
She shatters a window on the twelfth floor and hopes this person won’t charge her for the expense in return for her saving their life. Gunshots and the sound of fists hitting flesh echo up the staircase.
People are still alive there, still fighting a battle they must know they can’t win.
But there’s a chance Clarke can.
Unable to leave the guards behind to die, Clarke races downstairs to stop the meta from killing more people.
When she turns the corner, the smell of blood hits her like a brick wall. Bodies litter the floor, identifiable as guards only by the patch on their jacket sleeves. What used to be an office building is torn to pieces, cubicles decimated by the meta fighting the last guard in the rubble.
Every inch of the man before her is powerfully built, even under the armor of his costume. Broad shoulders give way to a tapered waist, the sheer power of his movements visible in the sharp contrast.
He jumps in and out of the guard’s range, a blur of red and black in the flickering office lights. There are seconds where Clarke swears he’s teleporting as the lights strobe, but it’s evident his power lies in strength. Maybe agility as well, or maybe his strength just gives him an extra boost.
He wastes no time after striking down the final guard, punching with a force so great that Clarke hears bones snap from where she stands. The guard falls to the ground gasping like a fish, his chest caved in from where the meta’s fist landed. His glazed eyes fall on Clarke in the doorway as he lays there, leading the meta’s gaze to her.
For a moment the blazing anger in the meta’s eyes makes Clarke wonder if he’s an elemental in addition to his super strength. She doesn’t know if that’s even possible, but she can’t rule it out.
The red of his suit makes his brown eyes look like an arsonist’s daydream; Clarke thinks he could burn this building down with sheer force of will.
“You here to save the day?” the meta sneers at her, his foot hovering over the skull of the gasping guard. His voice is rough with an unnatural rasp. Some people aren’t lucky enough to get a costume with a voice modulator from their superpowered fathers.
She hears the challenge, the doubt in his voice and straightens her spine, hoping her short frame doesn’t undercut her confidence.
“What if I am?” She narrows her eyes at him, intending to keep him talking while sending out a few feelers to his mind. If she can understand why he’s here—
“Wait!” Clarke cries. The meta eyes her warily, but stops an inch shy of the guard’s nose. “He can’t stop you. You don’t have to kill him.”
“He knows my name,” he sighs, his voice disappointed yet resigned in a way that makes Clarke uneasy. “I have someone to protect.”
He looks at her then, anguish alight amidst the fury in his eyes, and Clarke almost pities him.
And then he brings his boot down.
There’s a sickening crunch and the sound of blood rushing onto the rubble, the guard’s limp limbs hitting the ground. Clarke fights the urge to rush forward, fights every instinct to save him. She’s been working under her mother long enough to know what it looks like when someone is beyond saving.
“You don’t know my name,” the meta starts, wiping his boot on the office carpet. “But are you going to try to stop me?”
A threat hangs off the end of his question, and Clarke can see herself on the floor among the guards; her brain, her only weapon, spewed out among the office supplies; her family at another closed-casket funeral for a Griffin superhero that refused to back down from a hopeless fight.
Her brain.
Clarke searches for the person upstairs and finds them on the top floor, their thoughts reading similarly to a 911 call. The police will be here soon; she just has to hold this meta off until then.
“I’m not going to try,” she starts, smirking at the obvious relief on his face. He doesn’t want to kill her. She’ll use that to her advantage. “I’m going to stop you.”
His costume hides most of his face, but not his mouth, which slips from an near smile to a grimace.
He rolls his broad shoulders and lowers his stance. “Then I’m sorry for what I have to do.”
Clarke closes her eyes. “Me too.”
Just as the meta takes off for her, Clarke wills the rubble of the room to rise and crash on him. She doesn’t want to kill him, just slow him down.
Realization dawns on his face just as it’s covered by debris, and Clarke doesn’t spare him another glance as she darts out of the room. She barricades the door, rips the stair rails from their posts to create barricades behind her, and takes off for the top floor, levitating herself up the rest of the staircase.
Burying someone with super strength may not have been one of Clarke’s better ideas, she realizes as she hears pounding on the door she left the meta behind. She counts to five before the door blows off its hinges, clanging as it falls to the floors below.
She doesn’t dare look back at him. She has to trust that she’ll be fast enough. She can do this.
At the top of the staircase is a hastily barricaded door. Clarke huffs a laugh at the shoddy lock and broom handle once she opens it. As if that would keep the man downstairs at bay.
The click of a gun registers in her mind, as does the fear radiating off the man holding it to her head.
“Are you with him?” he demands.
“Would you trust me if I said no?” she counters, turning to him without a care for how his finger tightens over the trigger. “You’d be dead if I was.”
She takes in his business attire, the blood that is clearly not his own spattered on the pristine fabric, and thinks of the guards who gave their lives for him downstairs.
“Listen, we’ve got a minute at best before that maniac busts down the door, so I need you to tell me why he’s here.” Clarke looks at his shaking hands still holding the gun. “I’ve already jammed that, so you might as well put it down.”
Hesitantly, the man lowers his weapon. Clarke reads Kaplan on his corporate name tag.
Footsteps pound in the staircase, metal groaning as the meta dismantles Clarke’s barriers.
“Look, he said he was protecting someone. If you can promise their safety—”
“No. I’m protecting people too.” He cocks his gun like Clarke jamming it means nothing. “And the only way to do that is to put the son of a bitch down.”
“If you promise their safety—”
“I said no . I appreciate your help, but this isn’t your fight.” Kaplan sets his sight and his gun on the door just as it rattles from the sheer weight of the meta’s steps. It bangs once, twice—Clarke wills it to hold in place—three times.
There’s just enough time between the door flying off the hinges and the meta sprinting into the room for Clarke to throw a desk at him. It doesn’t do much to deter him, but it gives her an opportunity to haul Kaplan out of immediate danger. She hears the click of his useless gun over her shoulder and rolls her eyes.
“You bitch,” Kaplan curses. “I’m sure he’ll thank you for saving his life before he takes both of ours.”
Clarke shoves him in a corner a little harder than necessary. “Stay put.”
She turns back to face the meta, who seethes with rage as a whirlwind of ordinarily harmless office supplies crash around him; chairs, desks, computers, office decor.
Even from where she stands, Clarke can see the way his eyes narrow at her. “You don’t seem like the type to protect murderers.”
“Really?” Clarke crosses her arms among the chaos, smirking as he dances to dodge her ammunition. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like I’m stopping one.”
“You have no ground to stand on,” he grunts as a paperweight catches his jaw. A bruise blooms on his tan skin. “You have no clue what you’re talking about.”
“Then tell me.”
He barks out a harsh laugh. “And why would I do that?”
Clarke realizes that he’s breaking free a moment after he bounds toward the desk where she left Kaplan. He’s trying to get past her, not go through her, so Clarke plants herself in his way.
It happens faster than Clarke can manage. One second she’s lunging into the meta’s way, the next pain explodes all over her body.
He punched her, but barely, if the ease with which he crushed the guard’s chest is any indicator. It’s still enough to send Clarke flying. Pain erupts from her jaw when his fist lands, but it’s nothing compared to the agony in her head.
Grief—agonizing, all-consuming grief—courses through her when the meta makes contact. White-hot anger and fierce love accompany it, but every cell in her body screams with the sheer pain of it all. She’s never felt someone else’s emotions so viscerally. She’s only felt grief like this once in her life.
She speaks without thinking and saves Kaplan’s life in doing so.
“He killed your parents,” she croaks, suddenly aware of the tears that escape when she blinks at his stiff frame.
He pauses. “Mom,” he corrects. “And my sister too if I’m not careful.”
“We were merciful to let Aurora have one child,” Kaplan emerges from the desk with his gun in hand. Clarke knows it won’t work, but he must bank on her not telling the meta.
Or he’s trying to kill the meta before Clarke finds out the extent of his guilt.
The meta stiffens at the sight of the gun, shooting Clarke a glance before turning back to the man in front of him.
“She was too volatile,” Kaplan continues. “She risked lives every time she stepped outside. To let her raise a child was unsafe, both for you and those around you. Her powers should never have been passed on.”
Clarke can see the muscles in the meta’s jaw tick as Kaplan drawls on, undeniably trying to buy time.
“And what does she do with that second chance? How does she repay us? With another betrayal.”
“With an accidental pregnancy,” the meta snarls.
“There are ways to deal with such things.” Kaplan’s face is snide and proud.
The meta tenses, poised to strike, and he’ll find Kaplan defenseless when he does.
Kaplan turns his steady gaze to Clarke, his intentions clear on his face: either he dies, or I do.
Clarke could unjam his gun. She could.
But he killed a man’s mother, and it sounds like he intends to kill a child.
It also occurs to Clarke that he knows this meta’s identity and hasn’t made a move to expose it. Clarke notes the gruesome murders of the past week, the ease with which the meta crushed a man’s skull. He must be powerful to inspire so much fear. Even now, Kaplan doesn’t name him.
That or he’s killing everyone before they have time to utter his name.
In her deep thought, Clarke nearly misses the meta grabbing for one of the knives strapped to his thigh.
She sees a glint of silver through the air and stops it mere inches from Kaplan’s nose, but it’s too late. The meta knows Kaplan’s gun won’t work and lunges forward before Clarke can change her mind.
Clarke throws herself into the fray without hesitation. She focuses first on the meta, knowing Kaplan is the lesser threat.
She weaves in and out of his guard, landing punches wherever she can. His armor makes it more difficult to find soft spots, but she lands a solid blow to the back of his neck where the helmet and collar of his armor don’t cover.
One punch. All he has to do is land one good punch, and Clarke is done for. Dead. Adrenaline pumps through her body. She will not be sent back to her mother in a box. She will not be sent back to her mother in handcuffs.
She will not be sent back to her mother at all.
“This won’t bring your mom back,” she grunts, ducking below the swing of his arm.
He parries her blow and steps back to rush her again. “No, but it’ll save my sister.”
“And what happens when it’s done? They won’t stop looking for you.” A thrown punch. A miss. Regroup. “How will you protect her from prison?”
“Too late for that,” he growls. “And I’ll die before I let them take me.”
“Where does that leave her?”
“Alive without anyone knowing her name.”
Resolution blazes in his eyes, his very soul burning like liquid flame. Clarke realizes in this moment that there is no reasoning with a man on a warpath, and that’s exactly what he is.
But that doesn’t mean he deserves to die.
She remembers his pain, the way it burned her entire body, and it makes sense for him to be on fire.
His anger is a firewall keeping her out of his mind. Every move he makes against her is pure instinct, a reflex done without a second thought. Reflexes take too much to read into while fighting for your life. Clarke has to keep her focus on moving, not trying to get in his head.
Of course, then he lands a punch.
Clarke has seen bones break before; she knows what it sounds like.
She raises her hand to block his blow only for pain to shoot up her arm, electricity and agony running up her nerves. The ground rushes toward her, or she to it, and she slams against it.
A gun clicks somewhere behind her, but she can’t locate it to jam it. Her head is swimming, her arm throbbing, and it’s all she can do to stay conscious.
“Any last words?” Kaplan smiles. She can hear his arrogant smile.
Clarke turns to look at the standoff. The meta is a few feet away from Kaplan, who has his gun pointed squarely at the meta’s face.
She summons the last of her strength only to face a choice. She could subdue the weapon in Kaplan’s hand, but the meta is a weapon himself. Occupied by the blinding pain in her arm, Clarke doesn’t have enough energy to stop both.
All she’s wanted to do her entire life is save lives. Now she finally gets a chance, but only at the expense of another. To take a life to save one is a paradox Clarke didn’t sign up for.
Two people can die here, or one person can.
Kaplan’s smug grin flashes in front of her even when she closes her eyes. The meta’s pain joins it.
She hears the click of a gun.
She jams it.
Kaplan pulls the trigger, but nothing happens. The bullet tugs against Clarke’s wishes, wants to bury itself in a body, to tear through flesh, but she keeps it in the chamber. For a girl whose only crime was being born instead of a grown man making his own decisions. That’s who she will save today. She can deal with the meta after.
The meta lunges forward when the pieces click together. Clarke figures it’s her punishment to watch the man she’s sentenced to death die.
She doesn’t expect it to be quick or merciful, but it’s over in seconds. The meta closes the distance between Kaplan and himself, grabs a hold of him, and breaks his neck. A life taken, just like that.
Kaplan’s body falls in slow motion. His knees hit the ground as the gun falls from his limp hand, clattering uselessly to the floor. Clarke watches him fall forward, body stiff with lingering fear of death—fear that will outlive the man it once belonged to.
The meta turns toward her, his frown deep as he looks from Kaplan’s body to Clarke crumpled on the ground.
Clarke struggles to her feet, ready for a fight. Her right arm is the broken one, luckily. She can still throw punches with the left if it comes to that.
“Why did you let me kill him?” The meta’s voice is gruff, confused. He looks at Clarke with narrowed eyes.
“You’re not the only one who’s lost someone,” she manages.
His face hardens. “I know. What changed your mind?”
“Your sister.”
“So, what, you’re just going to let me go on my way?”
“No. I saved your life today, that doesn’t mean I won’t save someone from you later.”
He tenses, his fists clenching like second nature.
“You can’t protect them all,” he insists.
Clarke shrugs, wincing when the movement jostles her arm. The meta’s eyes drop to the way it’s bent, taking in how it hangs uselessly by her side.
Shouting echoes up the staircase, the unmistakable sound of someone barking orders reaching Clarke’s ears.
She levels herself with the meta, straightening her spine and looking into his blazing eyes.
“Maybe not, but I can try.”
Trying, Clarke has since discovered, is a child’s strategy.
But she was a child when she looked her first meta in the eyes and promised to try, so desperate to prove herself, to make a difference.
She has long since lost track of the number of metas she’s faced, but she knows exactly how many lives she’s taken.
One.
The argument has played out in her head so many times, and this is its conclusion on kinder days. She not only allowed this man’s death, but she played a part. She made the choice.
She killed Kaplan.
Those who came after him were the ones Clarke was actively fighting to save; there was nothing more she could do for them aside from lay down her life. If she did that, who would defend the next person on that meta’s list? And if they fought on opposing sides, their death was an accident, not something Clarke made a conscious decision to allow.
Today has not been so kind.
Today marks six years since that fateful night, the first time Clarke got blood on her hands without the intentions of saving the life of the person it belonged to.
Today she thinks of every life her mistakes cost. She thinks of all the people who came after Kaplan and her not doing enough to save them. The meta beat her to them every time, killing each with the same ease as Kaplan.
Nero, she heard them call him. It was a name he gave himself: the madman of Rome.
Clarke hadn’t had the luxury of naming herself, which seems more like a burden the more she hears The Psyren—mind pun and all. Whatever journalist coined the name deserves a raise, she thinks as she pulls her short hair out of her scarf. Winter is early this year, and unkind in its return.
She walks the streets as Clarke Griffin, a med school dropout and struggling artist. Not the daughter of Abby Griffin, not the kid Jake Griffin left behind, but as herself.
Yet the line between Clarke and The Psyren is blurry on the best of days. It’s hard to cleave your life into two clean halves. She shoulders two burdens, impossible to separate in their inherent overlap.
Faces pass Clarke on the busy sidewalk, and she wonders how many of them have loved ones she’s failed to protect. Six years is a long time to fuck up, and when Clarke fucks up, people die.
Her phone buzzes in her coat pocket, dragging her from her thoughts long enough to pull it out and frown at the screen. A text from Wells beams up at her, asking if she’s almost at their favorite coffee shop. Clarke doesn’t bother responding and instead makes quick work of the single block separating her from her best friend.
Cold outside air gives way to the welcome embrace of the coffee shop atmosphere, enveloping Clarke in warmth and the sweet smells of coffee and pastries. She skips the line and searches the tables, knowing he beat her here with enough time to grab them both drinks. His insistence upon buying her coffee when they meet up used to rub her the wrong way, but his generosity is far less frustrating on this side of becoming a med school dropout. She’ll paint him something next time he needs a gift for someone at the fundraisers he goes to.
The burden on her shoulders gets a little lighter at the sight of Wells amidst the chaos of weekday coffee rush, not because he bears any of it, but because he makes her forget the ugly side of her life for a while.
It’s not that she doesn’t want to tell Wells—hell, Clarke knows it’d make her life easier—but whenever she wants to, she thinks about—
“Hey, Clarke!” Wells appears in front of her in her distraction. “Thanks for coming, I know this week is hard for you.”
That. She thinks about that statement and the baggage it holds.
Clarke gives him a soft smile and hopes it looks less like a grimace than it feels. Judging how the corners of his mouth stutter in their attempt at a grin, it doesn’t.
There are so many things she wants to say to fill the silence between them, and she can voice exactly zero of them. What a friend she is.
Wells notices the way she swallows uncomfortably and hands her a coffee before she can burst into tears. Their fingers brush on the handoff, catching Clarke off guard. She’s gotten better at controlling her telepathy, but sometimes it gets out of control when she isn’t prepared.
She’s never prepared around Wells.
A wave of loss washes over her, and she withdraws like she’s been stung. She sees Wells adjusting his tie in the mirror, solemn and stoic as he heads to the wake. She sees herself in a black dress, unable to offer him a hand to hold as they lower his father into the ground.
She pulls back from his mind and sees her own gloved hands holding Thelonius Jaha as he dies, fear in his eyes that she could have spared him from had she gotten there five minutes earlier.
Wells doesn’t know. He can never know.
But that means lying to him, and often. That was one skill Clarke was never eager to develop, but that’s the life she chose. Lies roll off her tongue more often than the truth. Given the opportunity to weigh them both against each other, Clarke couldn’t promise the scale would tip in favor of truth.
Like now, when he asks her how she’s doing and she tells him she’s fine. He doubts her of course, raising a suspicious eyebrow, but he doesn’t push. That’s one of Clarke’s favorite things about Wells: his boundaries (and his respect for her own).
Well, most of the time.
“Your mom wanted me to give you her love,” he says, lifting his coffee cup to his lips like a shield from her responding glare.
“You can keep it,” Clarke grumbles, taking a drink herself. The hot coffee scalds her throat on the way down, but the pain is grounding. It gives her time to think while Wells continues talking, ignoring how much she doesn’t want him to.
“How long is it going to take you to forgive her? You still have one parent, Clarke.”
“Yeah, and that parent is the reason I don’t have two,” she snaps. The coffee in her cup hums with energy, a manifestation of the anger that wants to explode.
Shutting down her powers is now second nature. A few deep breaths, some focus on her own brain and her walls coming up, and her coffee swirls to a stop.
“Clarke, I’m worried about you,” Wells starts, his eyebrows scrunching together to prove his point. “You don’t get enough sleep, you don’t go anywhere, you—”
“I go places,” Clarke protests. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Okay, you don’t go anywhere without me.” He crosses his arms at her, a sad sort of smugness on his face, like he doesn’t want to be right.
Clarke drops her gaze. “I went out with Maya a few weeks ago.”
“Scoping out the new gallery while on the clock doesn’t count.”
Silence hangs heavy between them, straining against the white noise of the coffee shop with each passing second.
Clarke is the one to break it, her tentative and solemn voice out of place in the jostling energy of morning rush.
“What do you want me to do?”
Wells sighs. “I don’t know. But Clarke, you’re 25. It’s not too late to do the things you want to do.”
“What do I want to do?” Clarke asks, unsure how Wells would know the answer when she herself doesn’t.
“Leave Arkadia, for starters. I don’t think you’ve ever said it, but I know you hate this place. It holds too much pain for you.” An almost shameful look settles on Wells’ face. “And I don’t know what’s keeping you from throwing yourself into being an artist, but I can tell you’re still holding back. I saw your profile after all that art therapy. You’re talented. Why haven’t you put any of that out there?”
“You want me to sell the art I made to cope with my dad’s death?”
“No! God, no. I just don’t understand why—”
“Yeah, you don’t understand. Wells, I love you. You’re the most important person in my life. But you don’t know what you’re talking about. For my sake, I need you to stop.” Clarke tries to keep her voice gentle, knowing his intentions are pure, but she can’t help that some bitterness seeps in despite her effort.
Wells senses the boundary she’s putting up and ducks his head, respecting it and her. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I crossed a line.”
“You did,” Clarke agrees. A smile tugs at the corner of her lips, and she lets them rise. “But you were trying to help.” It’s not your fault you can’t.
“Speaking of trying to help,” Clarke leans forward and sets her chin in her palm, “how is being Arkadia’s newest hero treating you?”
“Oh please, it’s not like I’m wearing a mask,” he deflects.
“No, you’re fighting as yourself, which is even braver. Also more reckless, but I’ll give you this for now.”
“I don’t know if you could call speaking at a few protests heroism.”
“Wells, let me congratulate you. You’re doing more against my mother than I ever could.”
There’s a second where Wells inhales, intent on proving her wrong, until Clarke raises an eyebrow at him and he deflates.
“I just think the registry is wrong,” he shrugs. “And I’ve got the resources to do something about it. I have to use that.”
“Not everyone would,” Clarke counters. “That makes you a hero.”
He moves to protest one more time until Clarke slaps his hands over the table.
“Take the compliment and tell me about how it’s going.”
A look of undeniable pride crosses Wells’ face as Clarke prods him.
“It’s… slow, to say the least. But I think we’re making progress. People are mobilizing, and it helps that Arkadia metas are a lot, uh, quieter than the ones in other big cities. There are still some rogue forces, but it’s not like we’re in New York. It’s a lot easier to convince people not all metas are bad when they haven’t burned down half the city.”
“If you don’t give yourself some credit I’m literally going to kill you.”
“Okay, I made some progress at the last Alpha Tower fundraising banquet. I didn’t get much time with your mom, but Kane and I got to talking about the registry after dinner.” Wells leans in closer, excitement beaming on his face. “He can’t say much, but I can tell he’s against how they’ve done it. I don’t think he’ll come out with it without more assurance that destroying the registry will do more good than bad, but I think he has good intentions. I can work with good intentions.”
Clarke purses her lips and “That’s where you’ll struggle with my mom, I’m assuming.”
“Clarke, I know you don’t want to hear this, but she thinks the registry is a good thing. She’s just too far removed to see the pain it’s causing.”
“I think she’s been close enough to see the pain it’s caused from day one.” Clarke swallows, angry at herself for her emotionality.
Wells hangs his head. “Maybe I won’t have to change her mind to change the policy then.”
Clarke meets his eyes, praying that he’s right. “Hopefully.”