Chapter Text
“What were you thinking, Clarke?” Abby Griffin is droning on in the front seat about how irresponsible it was for Clarke to sneak out with her friends on a night like this. Clarke, for her part, is a little bit remorseful. She does feel bad for making her parents come out in the snow, and for ruining their family night by blowing them off to hang out with her friends. The lame party at Atom’s cabin wasn’t even really worth it.
She’d had fun with Raven and Octavia, sure, but Jasper had promised to make this party “extra” special, and he and Monty hadn’t shown up until much later. By that time, the booze was gone and Bellamy had dragged O from the party while Clarke was waiting in line for the bathroom, leaving her without a ride. Instead of taking Jasper up on his offer, she’d ended up calling her dad and begging for a ride home.
Now, her mom has been droning on almost the entire way home about how disappointed she is in Clarke. She should know better, right? For most of the ride she has had her head down, staring at her hands clasped tightly together in her lap, and feeling ashamed and embarrassed. She looks up to protest when her mother starts to say something about consequences and missing the upcoming basketball season, but her dad beats her to the punch. He catches Clarke’s eye in the reviewer mirror as he comes to her rescue.
“Abby, let’s not be dramatic here-” Her dad isn’t able to finish his sentence though, because in the next second the car is swerving on the icy road and then careening over the edge of the bridge to the frozen stream below. After that Clarke sees red and then nothing at all.
~~~
1 Year Later
“Are you coming over later?” Octavia is looking at her like she already knows the answer to her own question. Every day Octavia asks the same question, and every day Clarke gives her the same answer. She knows that Octavia hopes that one day the answer will change and that finally, finally, things will be back to normal.
Clarke hopes one day her answer will change too. She hopes that one day she’ll open her mouth, intending to say “no,” but “yes” will come out instead and things will just be good again. For now, though she answers the same way she always does, not even looking up from the anatomy book she has been diligently studying all through lunch.
“Not today, Octavia. I have to study.” Right after the accident, Octavia would continue to push until Clarke was on her last nerve. She’d slam whatever textbook she was reading and walk silently to the library for the rest of the period to cool off. Now, Clarke can feel Octavia’s sad eyes on her for a bit more before she gives up and settles into the conversation going on a little bit further down the table.
Clarke continues to read her textbook, and blocks out the usual Friday afternoon chatter going on amongst her friends. Clarke hates Fridays the most. It means the weekend is on the horizon, and the weekend means a whole two days holed up at home with her mother. A year ago, Clarke never thought she’d live for the times when her mother was on call for the whole weekend. Now, it’s all she wishes for. If living with her mother while her father was alive was difficult, living with her after his death is unbearable. Only one more year. Clarke repeats to herself over and over again as she moves onto her chemistry textbook, studying for the premed scholarship that will undoubtedly be her ticket to freedom.
~~~
Clarke is navigating her way through the crowded hallways after her last class, head down and books clutched tightly to her chest when she runs into Bellamy Blake. Which of course makes sense, because why would she be able to make a clean break from this hell hole?
“Hey, watch out there, princess.” A long time ago, she and Bellamy used to resemble friends. A year older than her, her best friend’s older brother, and her annoying neighbor, she could almost count him as her own brother. If only she hadn’t fantasized about him on a regular basis.
Now, when she looks at him to throw out an apology she sees the pity poorly hidden beneath the humor in his brown eyes. It’s the same look Octavia gives her every time she looks at Clarke. It makes her stomach twist and her blood boil for reasons she can’t even justify to herself, let alone to anyone else. She clutches her books in a painful grip and mutters a harsh “sorry” before she quickly side steps him and continues on to het locker. In another life they would have bantered back and forth until he broke out that wide smile of his and she was inevitably late for basketball practice. In this life he doesn’t even try to grab for her arm as she brushes him off.
~~~
When Clarke finally walks in her front door the entire house is blissfully silent and Clarke lets out a relieved sigh. This empty silence means that her mother is gone, hopefully for a majority of the weekend. This silence is different than the extremely loud one that encompasses the house when her mother is around.
That silence is marred by her mother’s voice in the back of her head whispering over and over again that it’s all Clarke’s fault her father is dead. It’s made even wore when she and her mother end up in the same room and she catches her mother’s accusing eyes for half a second before Clarke looks down at the floor and makes a quick exit.
“Hey, Buzz. Looks like it’s just you and me tonight. Clarke kneels down to scratch the large golden retriever behind the ears. “What should we watch first? Arrested Development marathon or the new House of Cards?” Buzz responded by licking her face and Clarke scrunched up her nose and laughed at his antics. “Okay, Arrested Development it is.”
So, like every other weekend before, Clarke curls up on the couch with her best friend, a nice spread of junk food, and turned on Netflix. She makes it through the second season of House of Cards, some of the fourth season of Arrested Development, and is almost finished with Scrubs when her mom walks through the door at four p.m. the following day.
“I thought you had an Anatomy test to study for?” Clarke pauses her latest episode and looks up at her mom leaning on one of the large columns that opens up into the living room. She is focused on the mail in her hands, flipping through the pile Clarke had left for when she walked in the afternoon before. Clarke can still hear the slight edge of voice saying all the things she really means by her little comment. “You should be studying. In your room. Away from me.”
Clarke clears her throat a bit before answering. She considers coming back with some snarky comment, but she really just wants to get out of this room without her mom turning those sad eyes on her. It’s been a whole year and her mom’s eyes still hold all the grief they did that day she woke up in the hospital a widow. Instead, she just agrees and packs up her things before making her way upstairs to her room.
She leans her back against the door when she and Buzz are safely inside her bedroom. She lets go of the blanket she had been clutching tightly to her body like a shield that could protect her from her mother’s condemning stare, and watches as it pools at her feet silently. When she looks back up, her reflection in the full-length mirror catches her attention.
Clarke squints her eyes a tiny bit, and tries to see if her eyes still hold that same, fresh grief her mother’s sport. She doesn’t find it though. Just blank resignation stares back at her through her father’s eyes. Clarke just lets out small breath and heads straight to her desk, pulls out her thick Anatomy textbook, and begins to quiz herself over the nervous system.
~~~
Clarke aces her anatomy test and is in a pretty good mood by the time lunch rolls around the following Monday. She’s set up camp at her regular table, her chemistry book propped up in front of her as she skimmed through the upcoming chapter. She catches movement out of the corner of her and she lifts her head to greet Octavia. Instead of Octavia though, she finds a boy standing in front of her, holding a tray and smiling down at her.
“Can I sit here?” The boy has soft-looking brown hair that hags slightly in his face, and Clarke’s mouth goes dry when he drags a hand through it.
“Uh, sure,” is all she manages to say. The boy doesn’t seem to mind though. His smile grows wider and he sits down across form her at the table.
“Cool.” Clarke knows she’s staring, her mouth hanging open and eyes wide, but the boy doesn’t seem to care about that either. He just picks up his fork and digs into the heap of food on his tray that slightly resembles lasagna, and then introduces himself with a forkful of food hovering just above his tray. “I’m Finn, by the way. Just moved here from Stuttgart.” He takes another bite of his food and then explains himself further. “Army brat.” He smiles again and then he looks at her expectantly as he shovels some more food into his mouth.
Clarke watches him for another second or two. His eyebrow quirks up in confusion before she realizes what he’s waiting for.
“Clarke.” She pauses a bit too long, trying to come up with something clever to say to the cute boy sitting across from her, but her brain is a little too slow. Before she can say anything else, her friends descend upon the table and effectively ruin the beginning of the moment she had been about to share with the very cute Finn.
The rest of the table introduces themselves to Finn. By the end of lunch he has not only charmed his way to a probationary spot in the group of friends, he has also intrigued Clarke enough to blurt out an offer to show him around town later. The bright smile he sends her way before they head to their respective classes has her looking forward to something for the first time in a year.