Two by Two

Set after S01E08 - Day Trip

Raven has restored communication with the Ark. Finn is healing, Bellamy and Clark have made the trip to the FEMA bunker in Washington DC. The kids on the ground are able to talk briefly with their parents, while news of the bombing on the Ark sends shockwaves through camp (despite Jaha's instructions for Clarke to keep the news quiet). Clarke and Raven are the only two who have spoken to the Ark Council over the radio, supplying them with information on ground conditions.

Chapter 1

-The 100-

Clarke scratched at the skin she could reach around her wristband, the metal transmitter an annoyance that most of the camp had gotten used to since they'd crash landed on the ground in what had formerly been Virginia, part of the United States, believed to be one of the countries to strike first firing nuclear weapons at several of their enemies military bases in the early days of the war that had ended life on earth- at least life as anyone had known it.

She listened as one of the Ark Councilmembers droned on about their ideas for protecting the Ark population from the Grounders once they landed. Clarke tried to listen, tried to care, but they were talking about trained guards, guns, and alarms, things The 100 didn't have much or any of. "I think you'll find that conditions on the ground are not as easily controlled as the ones in space, Councilor," Clarke said briskly, her ability to feign politeness a mere memory. "What works on the Ark won't work here."

There was silence, then Jaha spoke in a calm reasoned tone. "We thank you for your input, Clarke, but-"

"But you've been on the ground for three weeks," the councilor that had been speaking originally said condescendingly, "you are hardly an expert on organizing a society, while we have generations of experience. I think we know what we're doing."

Clarke gritted her teeth together but managed to keep her mouth shut. Raven walked past and offered Clarke a sympathetic look.

"I think that is all for today, thank you for your time," Jaha said regally, dismissing the council, short one member since Abby had been evicted, with Diana taking her place, before Diana attempted a coup and ended up taking the only drop ship ready for departure with a band of her fellow conspirators. "Clarke, if you will remain for a few minutes more."

He framed it like a question, but Clarke knew a command when she heard one. She saw her mother come into the council chambers, passing behind Jaha before appearing on camera sitting beside him in her old seat.

"Clarke," Abby breathed, her eyes soaking in the sight of her child. "How are you?"

"No medical emergencies to report," Clarke said in wooden tones.

"Clarke," Jaha said in a gentle tone, "I know you're upset with your mother and I over what happened, but having just lost my son, let me advise you not to let old misunderstandings get between you and your mother. You're family."

Clarke stared at the camera wanting nothing more than to walk away before she started screaming at them. Family? What did they know about family? They'd killed her father for wanting to tell the truth, sentenced her to solitary confinement and would have floated her, but instead had sent her (and Jaha's own son) to Earth to die. Her chest moved up and down rapidly as her breathing grew erratic with emotion, but she forced herself to speak calmly. "If we have more to discuss, I'd suggest we get to it. I have patients to treat and the batteries for the radio don't store much power."

Abby looked heartbroken and Raven frowned at Clarke behind her back, wondering what it was that had made Clarke so angry at her mother. From Raven's perspective, Abby was pretty awesome as a person and a mom.

"Perhaps tomorrow," Jaha intoned lightly, placing his hand on Abby's and squeezing it lightly. "Despite the council's opposition, I thought it best to inform you that the soonest we will send another drop ship will be April."

Her shock at his decree sent the tension rushing out of Clarke's jaw nearly sending her chin to the ground. "What? That's six months!" Jaha said something, but Clarke didn't hear it, her mind racing as she tabulated the additional supplies they'd been counting on from the Ark to help them get through winter. "You said two months, which is one month from now."

"We recalculated."

"You-" she started to say in incredulous anger.

"Arriving in winter is not ideal. In the spring food will be plentiful and we will have six months to prepare for our first winter on the ground," Jaha said confidently.

"And if we all starve or freeze to death it's no skin off your backs, right? And if you have to cull hundreds more people? I guess that's not big deal to you either," she said bitterly.

"Difficult decisions have to be made, Clarke. As the leader of The 100, I'm sure you've already discovered that."

"I'm not-"

"We have decided, and now you know. If you don't wish to speak to your mother, then perhaps now is a good time to end this communication."

Clarke stared at the blank screen for several minutes, her mind racing.

"Clarke," Raven said softly, drawing the blonde's gaze.

"Can you believe them?" Clarke sputtered.

"I don't think the situation is exactly what you think it is," Raven said.

"Don't tell me you agree with them. They're sentencing hundreds of people to death."

"Probably closer to a thousand," Raven said matter-of-factly. "They're aren't enough drop ships for all of them." Once again Clarke felt like her brain had shorted out and her chin had become unhinged from her jaw. "Each drop ship is a slightly different design, but most can only hold about 150 people. Add in supplies and it's closer to a hundred. They lost one to the rebels, leaving them only six more ships."

"How do you know this?" Clarke asked roughly.

"When I was working on the pod with your mom, she talked a lot about what was going on. I listened," Raven said simply. "Whether they cull the population now or leave the extras to die on the Ark, the end is the same. Most of the people up there now are never going to set feet on the ground."

Clarke shook her head, not wanting to believe Raven's words, but knowing she must be right.

-The 100—

That night Clarke relayed the news to Bellamy, who while bitter, took the news much more in stride than she had.

"What do we do?" she asked, sitting on the guard post above the fence next to him as his shift came to an end.

"There's nothing we can do."

"I mean, do we tell them?" She gestured towards the kids surrounding the campfire, their smiles and laughter evidence of their high spirits, still under the impression that the Ark was coming down to help them.

"About the delay or the fact the most of their parents won't be coming?" Bellamy asked darkly.

Clarke shook her head, looking more lost than Bellamy had seen since they'd found Wells' dead body outside of camp.

He bumped his shoulder against hers lightly, drawing her attention and hopefully diverting her dark thoughts. "We tell them that there's a delay, that's all."

"But they'll know! They know that life support on the Ark is failing, that there's not enough air for all of them, they'll know what that means," she whispered furiously.

"You're giving them more credit-"

"Monty will know, Octavia will know, and lots of the others, they're not stupid!"

Bellamy raised one eyebrow, either at her yelling at him or her assertion of The 100's average intelligence. He held her gaze for a minute then nodded. "Then we tell them everything. Then we keep them busy preparing for winter, too busy to dwell on it."

Clarke frowned, but nodded her agreement.

-The 100—

Clarke had thought that the news about the drop ships and the additional culls that would happen on the Ark was the worst news possible. She'd been wrong.

"Clarke, this is a delicate subject, but we need to address it calmly and rationally," Jaha stated, his words putting her back up immediately. "Given that approximately only 500 of us will be coming to the ground in six months, and considering the necessary balancing of knowledge, experience and health, the Council has voted that The 100 begin repopulation efforts now."

Clarke sat silently, blinking stupidly at the camera, certain that she misunderstood or misheard.

"You have got to be joking," she said unevenly, a rush of adrenalin and fear making her jittery and anxious.

"Clarke, I understand your reluctance-"

"I don't think you do," she disagreed. The faces of The 100 flashed in her mind. Some were actual criminals- thieves, rapists, others had broken the Ark's rigid rules, making them unlikely to agree to such outlandish orders, and then there were the kids, six of them were 15 years or younger, including four girls.

Jaha continued as if she hadn't spoken "-but this is an order, not a suggestion," Chancellor Jaha said in a reasonable tone, making Clarke even more tense.

If the Council didn't even see that ordering teenagers who were barely surviving to breed was short sighted and beyond intrusive, then what hope did The 100 have of maintaining other basic freedoms that they had only recently experienced but would not give up willingly to the Ark, not now, and not in six months.

"We don't have to do what you say, we're here, we're free, your authority means nothing to us," Clarke said passionately, her normal level-headedness and calm thought process still in disarray from the idea of ordering 14 and 15 year old girls to get knocked up because the Ark ordered it, not to mention that Clarke was included in the order. "You sent us to die, if you think-"

"We sent you to live," Jaha interrupted. "It was your mother's plan to send The 100 to Earth," he said gently as if Clarke was still the girl he had known who respected authority and believed in her parents' judgment absolutely. But he was wrong. That girl had been replaced by another. Smarter, tougher, and not willing to let injustices pass unnoticed.

"You can't think that I, or anyone else down here with half a brain, would believe that? You sent us without even a simple med kit, no water, not even containers for water, no food, not even a day or two's worth, in case we couldn't access Mt. Weather- which we couldn't. You sent us to test the radiation, nothing more, and now you think you can just-"

"It's not a request, Clarke, it's an order," Jaha said regally, as if his authority alone was enough to justify what they were asking.

Clarke shook her head, denying the order even as her mind raced and her stomach heaved.

"The wristbands do more than monitor your vitals, they are equipped with poison. If you, or any of the others refuse to obey, you will die," Marcus Kane, the council member in charge of Ark security said without apology.

Clarke gasped at the violation, made worse by the fact that her mother had likely designed the wristbands and failed to inform Clarke to the danger. Clarke's expression was horrified as she remembered the first few days on the ground when Bellamy had encouraged the others to remove the shackle and cast off the Ark's authority. Clarke was suddenly thankful that the wristbands had proved so difficult to remove, only one boy managing to pry his off only to die suddenly. Now Clarke knew why.

"You haven't learned anything from human history have you? With the push of a button you would kill us for not doing your bidding?"

"We are striving for the survival of the human civilization, in the grand scheme of things one life is insignificant," Kane said.

"Unless it's your life, or your fathers, or your son's, or your friend's. Oh right, even then you don't care," Clarke said accusingly, shaking her head, fighting down the nausea in her stomach.

"We'll give you two days to inform the rest of The 100, after that we expect to see that you've acted on our orders," Jaha said.

"What does that mean?" Clarke asked cautiously even as the answer popped into her head. "The wristbands. They monitor our vitals. You'll watch us," she cried. "You're disgusting."

"We're doing what is necessary for -" Jaha said impatiently.

"You're raping us!"

"No," Abby said, finally joining the conversation. She'd been voted back onto the council in an emergency vote, despite a few council members' objections.

"You're ordering us to have sex, have babies against our will, what else would you call it?"

"Your chance to be pardoned," Jaha said blandly.

"You said we would be pardoned if we survived earth," Clarke said bitterly, shaking her head again, dread settling over her in a way even her father's death hadn't brought about. She was trapped. They all were.

Clarke heard her name being shouted and took the chance to end the conversation. "Something is happening, I have to go."

"Two days Clarke, don't test our patience."

Clarke paused. "I'm not in charge here, I don't have the ability to force anyone-"

"Convince them," Jaha said.

"It shouldn't be too hard," Kane interjected. "Life or death, your choice."

Clarke swallowed hard and flipped the switch to cut the connection.

-The 100-

Once the immediate crisis (a burned arm) had been dealt with, Clarke gathered Bellamy, Monty, Raven, and Finn on the top floor of the drop ship. As the last of them climbed through the hatch, Clark closed it and turned to look at them, her expression one of desperation.

"What is it? Just spit it out, Princess," Bellamy demanded.

"We need to disable the radio, make it look like an accident or malfunction," she rushed to speech.

"What? Why? I just got it working," Raven protested.

"Tomorrow we need to exhume the bodies, remove the wristbands, find out how to get them off safely. Monty, you were trying to figure out how to use them to communicate with the Ark. What did you lear-"

"Exhume the bodies?" Finn asked in horror.

"Clarke!" Bellamy shouted, silencing her. "What the hell happened?"

"They… The council has ordered us to pair up. To have babies," Clarke said her voice rough as she pushed the words out. "And if we don't, they'll kill us. The wristbands…" Her gaze met Bellamy's. "You were right, we are still their prisoners. They're never going to let us go. We'll never be free."

"We're free, Princess," Bellamy said gravely, stepping forward and taking hold of her shoulder, squeezing it gently. "They don't know it yet, and we're not free and clear, but we will be." He looked from Clarke to Finn and Raven, then Monty before his dark eyes landed on the shaken up blonde again. "Finish it."

Clarke told them repeating it and trying to tell them Jaha and Kane's exact words as much as possible.

"So they didn't assign pairs? How generous," Bellamy mocked.

"Will they really do it? Will they really pull the trigger?" Monty questioned, worry thick in his tone.

"They floated 320 people," Raven said, wondering if anyone she knew had been chosen for death. "They'll float more than twice that before they come down."

"They sent us to die, they won't have any problem in killing us off until we fall in line," Clarke said, meeting Bellamy's eyes.

"The Ark is about survival at any cost," Finn said. "Our lives only matter to them as long as we serve their purpose, our happiness and emotional well-being don't factor in at all." It was an oddly distopic opinion for someone so prone to overt optimism.

"They gave us two days," Clarke said bleakly.

"Don't back down now, Princess," Bellamy said in a tone meant to put her back up. "You brought us up here spouting off plans, so now that we know what those fuckers are up to, let's figure out our plan. No more communication with the Ark, no more orders. And we find out how to get the wristbands off."

"We can't kill the radio outright," Raven disagreed. "They could off all of you as punishment." Only she and Bellamy didn't have wristbands primed with poison. And while she'd come to respect him in the week she'd spent on the ground, in no way did she want it to be her and him against the grounders.

"Or just enough of us to get us to buckle under," Bellamy said, anger resonant in his voice. His sister had been locked up her whole life because the Ark wouldn't allow a second child under any circumstances, and now they were ordering her to breed or die?

"We fake it, pretend to go along with them," Clarke said, her voice steady now.

"What good will that do?" Bellamy questioned. "We need to get the wristbands off."

"It won't be easy, and it will take time," Monty said reasonably.

"Clarke's right, we buy time, work on the wristbands, then, when another storm comes," Raven said with a slight smile.

"We can use it as cover to disable the comms," Monty finished her thought, seeing Clarke and Raven nodding in agreement.

"Then the next question is how do we fake it?" Finn asked and the others smiled in a brief moment of levity as they all imagined a few ways to fool the vitals monitoring.

Ever serious, Clarke worked the problem through her mind, including her extensive medical knowledge. "Simple physical activity, running or jumping in place, will raise the heart rate, but if too many of us just do that-"

"It goes from looking like bad sex to insubordination," Bellamy said.

"Our best bet is masturbation," Clarke said, forcing herself to look around the group, meeting each of their eyes. "But we'll need partners to peak at approximately the same time."

Bellamy raised one eyebrow. "Who knew our Princess was so kinky and sneaky."

"This is serious Bellamy, have you considered that there are four girls here who aren't even 16 years old yet? What we're asking them to do?"

Bellamy cut a hard look at her. "Pretty hard to forget that my sister is one of those girls, she's barely 17, but age doesn't matter here. We're not doing what they say. We have a plan, now let's make sure we're ready to execute it."

Words 3032

-This has been sitting around half written for a few months, and since updates to the Bellarke fics I'm following have slowed down, I felt the need for a new story. Please review if you like it…