Responsible for survival

Objecting

CLARKE'S POV:

I run my fingers through Bellamy's tangled curls. His hand shakes on my lower thigh. "She'll be alright." I whisper, pulling his head down onto my shoulder.
"What if she isn't?" he whispers, nuzzling into my neck.
"Then we'll kill everyone in Mount Weather." I murmur back, placing my hand over his shaking one and squeezing it rapidly until it matches our frenzied heart beats.

Raven coughs awkwardly above us. Bellamy slides his hand off my leg. "It's time." I nod, and gently lift up Bellamy's head.

"GUYS!" I call across the camp site. Heads poke out of tents, people sit up from being slumpedin the mud. "The ark wants to talk to us. Can everyone come into the dropship? Unless you're on guard duty." I pull Bellamy behind me as everyone swarms up the ramp, gossiping about why we're wanted. I wish I knew too. Raven holds up the mic to me, and it buzzes to life.
"This is Clarke from the ground. Please speak." I hiss, voice to formal.
"Clarke! It's chancellor Jaha. You're all alive." I snort, button on. Someone else, further back in the crowd, yells "No thanks to you." Angry shouts fill the dropship as more and more people think of who we've lost. Raven turns up the volume.
"Now it's your turn to save us." The rest of his sentence is drowned out by everyone screaming, livid. They never helped us. They wanted us dead. But we need to know what's going on up on the ark. I turn towards the almost rioting crowd of kids.
"SHUT UP!" I yell. Most of them do. Some don't, but Jaha's suave voice easily cuts over theirs.
"None of you have any idea what's going on up here." I laugh. And can't stop.
"Oh, Jaha, you see... I've already told them."
"CLARKE GRIFFIN!" his voice is questioning and angry.
" Thelonius, I can berate my own child." My mother hisses, pride edged in her voice. 
"Sorry." Thelonius mumbles. "We need your help. We need to convince the people-"
"Tell them the truth." I hiss, wishing Bellamy had actually killed him.
"We need you to prove life down there is survivable." Everyone laughs, snickering at his stupidity in our people. Ignorance. They know we're alive, do they need more proof?
"Everyone has spoken to parents, and lovers, and friends." I growl, eyes shifting momentarily to Miller, who spent nearly an hour on the radio with Bryan. "They know we're alive."
"NO... as in tell them the truth, what it's really like on Earth." Bellamy bites his lip, laughter lighting up his eyes. "Please. You'll be going after Jake's broadcast-"
"F*** off." I yell. "YOU FLOATED him for that video." Bellamy's warm hand clasps my wrist, prising m finger off the button. I let my hand go limp, and he passes it back to Raven.
"Sure." Raven mutters into it. "We'll do it." She puts it down, and everyone looks at me in shock, eyes bugged. Bellamy wraps two strong arms round my shoulders. Monty opens his mouth to ask the question everyone's thinking.
"The broadcast is my dad telling everyone the Arks dying. Someone found it, floated him and got me arrested for knowing." People nod.
"And now they want it?"
"Yep." I whisper. Someone shouts a volley of swear words in my defense.

My dad's voice echoes out the radio. Bellamy rocks me from side to side, arms still wrapped around me. I hear the swallow when he hears the voice. I guess the first man to care about you leaves a lasting impact.
"People of the Ark, my name is Jake Griffin. I'm senior environmental engineer and deputy resource officer. Today, I need to talk to you about our future.  The things I need to tell you are serious..." I clutch Bellamy's arms as memory after memory of my dad begins to pour in. Laughing at us when he caught a kiss on camera, watching football, twirling me in the air in the Zero-G gym. Tears sting my eyes but I blink them away. I must be harsh, destroy Jaha, but keep the people's hopes alive... "Time is running out. This is an undeniable reality, but we have pledged our lives to make sure that humanity does not share that fate. Now, while there's still time, we must come together and face this crisis head on. I believe it will bring out the best in us. Our strength, our humanity, our faith, that we will come together in this time of uncertainty." The hiss of audio stops for a moment, and a sense of twisted joy comes over me, that we'll never have to explain to these people that they're going to die. Then Jaha's voice echoes out. "There is no longer enough air to sustain us. We sent the 100 down to Earth to see whether it was survivable. They are still alive." That's our cue. Raven takes a deep breath and pushes down the radio button.
"This is Raven Reyes, from the ground. I am not part of the 100. I joined them, during perhaps one of the most terrifying wars I'll ever see. I watched a friend die, watched friends kill enemies. This ground is not survivable unless you are willing to fight with every step." Her eyes skip across to all of us. "The grounders could kill us in half a heartbeat, but they've agreed to help us defeat our common enemy. But the maunon, they're stronger than anything we've ever experienced, with warfare methods we'd thought had been destroyed in the cataclysm." Her hand shakes on the radio, and Atom's pained eyes float in mine. I swallow, squeezing Bellamy's arms. "If we survive this war, the ground will be our friend. But first, we'd have to survive." She motions Charlotte over, who flicks on a little sadistic smile. The radio is bigger than her hand and she talks in a baby voice, one rarely heard. "Twelve people are dead." She giggles, and goosebumps prick along my neck, and Bellamy's arms become energised with fear, and his hairs tickle my chin. She passes it to Monroe, who grimaces at her before turning it on. Her tone is level, guard on duty. They were stupid to kick her off it. "You sent us down with nothing. We had no food, no water, minimal medicine, and four parachutes to make enough tents for 99. We had no weapons beyond a snuck on gun. If the maunon had attacked? We'd all be dead." People cling to her every word, even though we all know our own story. "Raven came down, armed with enough long term storage food and water to last 90 people about two weeks. She came with five guns, a shock lash and bullets. We had to be inventive. Our first meal was a jaguar, tough meat. Since then, we've hunted desperately, for next to nothing. Winter is coming. We have enough food to last us perhaps a month of it." She pops the t, and people jump. No ones eyes leave her though, and she breathes deeply. "We caught a rabbit three nights ago. I had to kill it. We'd left out a trap for the maunon. The rabbit got stuck. It fed half the under 10's. Four people." She lets go and the silence rings. She holds out the radio to Felix, who shakes his head a little, like he's shaking water off, and picks it up. "The sex is great though." Everyone in the room splutters. "Like I think everyone here – well over like 12- has done something. It's been great. You don't need to worry about the one child policy down here. You can just have fun."
"Felix, you're gay." Someone shouted. Probably Eric. Practically everyone has walked in on them 'having fun'.
"True. I am very gay." I duck out of Bellamy's grip and hold out a hand for the radio. I'm suddenly hit by how cold it is in here.
"Hello everyone. It's Clarke. You heard my father tell you of your problems. They floated him a year ago. They arrested me a year ago." I swallow, the cold brush of a gun against my head suddenly a fresh memory. "They've known for a year. If you came down now, more of the population would die of exposure, or dehydration. The water is starting to freeze early in the morning. Tents are doing f***-all in keeping us warm. THAT'S why there's so much sex. Because then people can be warm." I look at Bell. He meets my eyes and nods. "But the grounders are our allies. We defeat the Maunon and they can help us. But they are dangerous. Lovely, kind spirited people. But dangerous. YOU annoy them when you come down and you will not be part of skaikru. Because you'll be dead. But, apparently, they're a great boyfriend." A couple of people snicker, through Jasper's nose scrunches. I take my finger off the radio.

A minute of deafening silence passes.

"Well. Thank you, delinquents..." Jaha's strained voice echoes down the radio. "The ark is dying, but Earth is survivable. We cannot do this alone. We need your help, the people's help, to return to the ground." The radio squeals off.