Same thing you are, looks like.

( so, yanno. tripping over one's own thoughts, simultaneously terrified over the fact they've somehow managed to get interdimensionally kidnapped again yet delighted to be off the ship. a little salty about it, perpetually distrustful of the whole concept laid out before them. clarke doesn't want to stay here and fully intends on testing the limits and barriers around, but she's got to admit the pitch of cuddling to protect the universe ranks a lot higher than suffering to power a ship.

and, like. duh it's going to be a hug. how long have you known her?

rita stands up, clarke puts her pack down, and promptly invades the other girl's personal space with a full body embrace reminiscent of their last reunion. a lot relieved, a little desperate. a bonus cheek-to-head press, which allows clarke to quietly mutter while still being heard. )

I'm so glad you're safe.

I think the whole point of this place is getting mushy, right?

( or at least it's one of the main objectives. clarke hasn't quite figured out how bonding as a group helps improve their odds for saving past realities, but in this exact moment she's not thinking too hard on it. one of her best friends, a staunch companion from the last two years, someone she had to learn to love and would now very readily kill for just showed up out of nowhere. she's not here alone after all. and maybe together they can get a jumpstart on whatever method blooms from echo's madness; how serendipitous that in a world where they're asked to make friends, she's got one ready made right here?

and of course they're sticking together from here on out. but... oof, if that second comment doesn't sting a little.

clarke loosens her grip on rita enough that they can lean away from each other and look one another in the face. her brow furrows, mouth pinches at the edges. contrition rules here, and some of the initial excitement is flagging now that she's forced to recognize that they'd both spent an unspecified amount of time in prison cells with no food, water, or way to communicate. and she has no idea if her apology even made it down to natsuno or rita, and who even knows about jade... )

I told you, I — I didn't mean for that to happen. ( the void. another unspecified chunk of time sitting in complete and total darkness, ruled by her thoughts of revenge and worry over her friends, and totally alone. maybe that contributes to how readily she's snagged the other girl into a bear hug, just to reassure herself. )

I didn't mean for any of that to play out like it did, I thought... Even if it was horrible, that it'd be different. I'm sorry, Rita. And that's never going to happen again.

( desperate is a familiar corner clarke griffin often finds herself in, often leading to tough choices and bloody, bloody consequences. so really if there's anyone to blame, anyone who should have known better or tried to stop it, it ought to have been the one at the helm. she ought to have looked hard at that letter, past the offer of salvation, and known it to be a trick. but a fresh wave of optimism and the hero's foil of a sensation of invincibility had carried them from option to action.

she'd chosen for all of them. which is just what she does. and this fresh new start doesn't change that fact; it's just going to have to be something clarke can learn to live with. which is not a new ask — another familiar corner. )

We did. But that isn't on you, Rita. If I'd thought you'd have stopped me, I wouldn't have told you in the first place. ( this is some swell, self-aware, first rate honesty on clarke's part; let's just all pause to acknowledge that. )

But if this is really a new realm, with new rules and a new objective — maybe we can make a deal?

( there's a reason jade had been left in the dark, despite clarke having messaged all three of them at the same time...

but it's true. this is a new day, a new world. old clothes and old friends serving as a stark reminder of where they'd come from, but simultaneously promising new ways forward. maybe the following is an extension of clarke's earlier apology, because — just because they managed to get out of the bowels of the prison ship doesn't mean there isn't a part of this whole situation that's just reliant on pure chance. aurora, echo, the erda, or whatever was responsible for their salvation at the end of the day could have come too late. )

Next time I hold world-ending power in my hands... remind me to wait a minute? Take a breath or something.

( "next time", clarke??? )

( the tiger recognizes its own stripes, but also appreciate them as an evolutionary feature for survival ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and thus they never change. tigers are also lone predators though, and where's the fun in that? also historically extinct in clarke's world, so the analogy really only goes so far.

clarke recognizes the dig, and the corners of her mouth pinch ever so slightly, but she's not discouraged here in the slightest. that's the thing about aligning yourself with fellow slightly unhinged feral teens; if they think it's a bad idea, it probably is. )

Promise. Always.

( and she holds out her right hand, the uninjured one. )

Deal.

( it does feel a little selfish to be happy in this moment, doesn't it? also a little deranged. they've essentially been kidnapped to another realm, and while there's no apparent barrier preventing them from leaving, the one around the ship had been invisible too. aurora has a face at least, but there's still the daunting task of apparently saving a world or two while they're here, and not enough of the rules have been spelled out. the second foot hasn't dropped, the curtain hasn't been pulled aside — but hey, those sure do look like real trees in the distance. and (again, selfishly) so far clarke's only encountered familiar friends, and none of those who seemed dead set on killing her for the part she'd played in tightening the string around the captain's neck.

speaking of which, oh yeah, her hand.

still tied tight with a torn strip of her shirt, black blood soaked through and dried to the point of flaking. it does hurt, but pain always takes a back seat in times of high adrenaline — she's never been good at resting and recuperating. but with rita's added attention, clarke has to look down and acknowledge it doesn't look great.

so naturally, she says: )

It's fine. I stole some gauze and antiseptic from the hospital, I'll rewrap it eventually.

Rita —

( typical martyr bullshit right here, but her injuries really aren't that important at this moment. clarke hasn't stopped to look in a mirror let alone marvel at the fact her face is almost entirely fine but the wound on her wrist remains, but if she had. the conclusion would be somewhere in the middle of aurora ran out of time before the drug wore off and i've always been fated to wear a scar gifted to me by darcy lejeune.

but as it stands, without being waylaid by the heartening discovery of rita mordio parked on the lawn, clarke would have already been halfway out of the little city scape and into the trees. she still wants to get out of here first and foremost.

also historically rita fought her over nose plugs and winced at bone magic, the other girl is not her first choice when it comes to medic.

clarke makes no move to open her pillowcase, but does gesture off towards the distance stubbornly. )

Can we at least get outside of city limits first?

I'm trying to get us out of here before the powers that be realize it was probably a mistake to allow us free reign to just walk around —

( yeah, she's gonna have to just snatch it. )

( picking on the wounded who can't really use their dominant hand to fight back here, are we rita? clarke's even stubbornly dug her proverbial heels into the proverbial ground of this argument, and still it's relatively easy for the other girl to snag that bag. )

Hey! ( comes the expected protest, then the subsequent (admittedly a little half-hearted but fully frustrated) attempt to grab the sack back with an accompanying angry growl from the back of clarke's throat. ) Come on, this is not the time.

( re: the pillowcase — it's honestly pretty well stocked if not poorly organized, and if rita were to unfurl the twisted end clarke had used as a handle, she'll find a solid top layer of prepackaged snacks and water bottles. beneath those are the medical instruments, seeing as clarke had raided the upper levels of the hospital first. gotta dig a little for any gauze, try to avoid accidentally uncapping the needles and getting stabbed, and not shatter any of the morphine vials in the process. )

( bone-deep friendship aside, there's nothing like getting physically one-upped by someone with the build of a toddler to make clarke want to dig her heels in and be Extra Stubborn. yeah yeah enjoy your victory now rita, it only came about because she was physically mangled what feels like three days ago. )

We're the purported "saviors of our universes" here, you really think they're going to let us die from infection?

( still, solid argument on the other girl's part. this world isn't the sterile clean nothing rots here environment of the ship, and it's truly a statement of how clarke's worldview was altered by their time on the serena eterna that she didn't consider gangrene and sepsis an hour ago. there's a minor new bruise blooming in the wake of rita's point, this time entirely on her ego.

clarke lets her rifle and disrupt the contents of the pack, but when bid to sit she doesn't move. just looks a little warily at the bottle of pure alcohol and package of gauze rita's come away with in her hands. )

Can't you just burn it? Jade did that for me once. It was painful but efficient.

( ... oh. judging by rita's reaction, she hadn't known about the couch cauterization all those months back. which is... honestly kinda weird to think about? so many hard moments in their ship-based life shared, it comes as a shock there are still any secrets even despite the two of them not being very good friends at that time.

the mask of surprise across clarke's face is pinched in the corners, head tilted slightly with the unspoken you didn't know? as spells out the story in staccato questions in turn. )

Cauterized my abdomen? Before the diner expedition? And because I was bleeding out all over 109 after Pratt stabbed me?

( okay, first off, deeply offended here because: )

I didn't do a thing! I'd just met him outside in the rain, asked if he was okay and all he could talk about was "culling the weak" and killing everyone on board!

( ah staci pratt, their beloved local mashed potato eating weirdo. something of an unofficial apocalypse cousin to clarke, who'd gone from threatening to kill him if he'd ever misstepped again to embracing him in the middle of sundries upon her return and professing her love for him over an ice cream sandwich. who once got triggered so bad by a bloody vest that he'd definitely proven himself to be anything but harmless, and had been dealt with appropriately. )

All I did was make sure he couldn't actually follow through on it.