6 Year Gap

Chapter 2

As we exit i feel jake make his face again. "What?"
"Nothing, its nothing"
I know something is definitely up but I don't want to say anything until we get to the cave.  We get inside we go to the back and try to store everything.

Our cave is not one of the best you can find around but its pretty decent. It is pretty deep about 20 meters in length.
The cans in the pile the clothes he managed to get I hang up on a hollow that is slanted at a 90 degree angle and can let things hang from it. I also grab the clothes I washed yesterday and I begin to store them away. Meanwhile he gets the skins he started this week and begins to stretch them again before he can make more. Although we still have modern supplies we can't rely on them forever. We've got to be able to grow and make by ourselves. We didn't waste a year of survival training for nothing.
Once we get everything put away,we open up a can and begin to share. The corn is salty and sweet,like the old toffee they used to have at the station.
I can tell he's thinking the same thing as me and I wait for him to say it.
"Tastes just like-"
"the toffee I know" I finish for him.
He smirks at me "remember how much we would fight for that damn candy? We almost killed one another for it."
"To be fair it was the only sweet thing we could get from earth"
"True" he wasn't just saying that. Back in the station it took a long time for shipments and mail from Earth to get here.It was always materialistic things family members couldn't send through the online computerized face timing we were allowed on our free time -kick nacks, hand written letters,snow globes and other stuff. I remember Frankie would always get books her brother would send her. Sadly for her she could never help herself and would finish them in a week. She would have nothing new to read for months. It was like that for everything; the things that we could only get from earth would finish and  we wouldn't get anything for months.Except for that toffee. We never really know who got it and we never really liked it but They were the sweetest thing that lasted the most. We cadets would go on the search for them like they were jewels.
I turn to look at Jake and I see he's making the face from earlier. He never makes that face,or at least doesn't do it often.
"So," I begin " are you finally going to tell me?"
"It's just... what do you think would have happened if they had never explored this planet? Or if they outright didn't have any more exploration."

Oh crap.

It's hard when we bring up philosophical questions like these. More often than not we end up in and argument so bad we won't talk to each other for weeks.
No matter how angry we get we still ask those questions. They keep us sane. It happened accidentally.
The first day we were alone by ourselves, just after Johnny died. I told him  I didn't want to turn off the fire because I was scared of the dark. He told me I was being stupid because the darkness was the natural stage of this universe and we only knew light because on both planets we lived in we  had the stars that were close to us. I argued back that the planets only had life because of those stars and we should be scared of it because darkness meant that life can't go on. That night he turned off the fire but I learnt to build one for myself.
I come back to the present and and answer him.
"The human race would have ended and we wouldn't be alive."
"No I didn't mean that."
"Then what did you mean?" I try to stop the annoyed tone from creeping in but I cant help it
His eyes narrowed and his voice took his condescending tone like if I were stupid"Couldn't there have been another way.? Couldn't they have found a way to stop our planet from wasting away so quickly and over populating? "
I think and remember what they told us in school, the earth was dying and they had found a way to stop it. Of course this happened after many died and the world like Jake said wasted away until finally so many were dead that the United nations created the fleet.  They found the answer to the problem : space travel. After many years of trial and error with even more deaths we had begun to repair the earth. The population shrunk and the fleet began to grow into an almost untouchable force.
"Probably," i admitted " but they didn't find it"
"Well they should have" his voice was getting agitated it was always like him to put the blame on someone else.
"But they didn't and now we're stuck here so deal with it"
" I have been dealing with  it I've been stuck with you haven't i?"
Involuntarily I flinched at his words.
He tried a different angle " alright fine, maybe we are stuck here but we shouldn't have been. If the fleet is so smart they why didn't they predict this would happen."
I hated when he tried to think of thing that shouldn't have happened. Wether or not they should have, we couldn't change them. "They can't see the future"
"No but they could have predicted the outcome they could have studied it more " he insisted.
"They didn't they probably thought they knew enough they already had dinos on earth before plus it probably didn't happen all around here probably just us." It seemed like our luck things had just been too good " Besides it's too late the only thing we can do is try to survive"
" We shouldn't be, we shouldn't be just hanging on we should be living" he complained "this is their fault"
I knew I shouldn't try to push him when he was about to let it go but I couldn't help it  "This is your fault too you know"
He grew angry " MY fault?!? How is this MY fault"
I looked at him "You chose to join the fleet"
My words did their work and his face fell. He didn't answer me and I thought that was that. I turned around but suddenly I heard his words
"So did you"

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A.N - thanks for reading. Also for a moment I couldn't remember what A.N stood for and I got so confused for a sec lol anyway thanks.