Clarke thought her world ended when that rocket took off, stranding her in Praimfaya, and sentencing her to death.
But she survived that, barely, and she pushed on. This though, might just be the end of her word.
Clarke knows she's fucked up already, from her father's death, her mother's betrayal, a year in solitary, all the death, war, and murder.. from killing her lover and having the other murdered, by being hit by the death wave, by being left behind and alone on a dying planet. Clarke managed to push through it all though, she bore it so no one else had to.
This, this she doesn't think she can bear. This might be the final straw, the last of what she can handle, her breaking point.
As she sobs over the body of her child, his skin purple and white, his eyes never having seen, his lungs never having breathed; she breaks like she never has before.
The worst part? That no one is here. No one to help, no one to comfort her, no one to witness her child's existence except her.
She screams at nothing and yet everything. She'll never know why he died, why he couldn't breathe any air or see any light. Why he was stolen before she even got to hold him, why his own mother couldn't save him?
She passes out from exhaustion, stress, and blood loss, and she clings to her son as she does. She wakes up, reminded instantly of the loss by the cold little body resting on her chest. She screams and sobs more then, she might've done it for hours for all she knows.
On the Ark her mother referred to them as 'children born sleeping', at the time she thought it was a poetic way to put it, but now she wants to rip the head off whoever dared create that phrase.
Her son wasn't born sleeping, he never even got the chance to sleep! His first breath, his first cry, his first drink, diaper, crawl, step, word.. he never got the chance to have any of those.
It's hard to explain the way it rips your chest open, the way it hollows out your insides, the way the world around you loses a bit of color. It's the worst thing she's ever felt, it's almost inhuman, this pain.
Losing Augustus before even meeting him, it broke more than just Clarke's heart. It broke her mind, her soul, her will to live... It broke her.
A few days after his birth, Clarke puts her son in the single cryopod within Becca's lab. She can't say goodbye, she can't never see his face again, she can't be the only one to ever see his existence. So she freezes him in the pod, where he can't deteriorate, where he can still be seen, where he can exist with her despite not getting the chance to live.
The pod is in a small room off the main lab, hard to notice if you're not looking for it. She found it months after Praimfaya, while she searched every inch of the damn place. That's also where she spends most of her days now, with her son. She talks to him, sings to him, draws him, and admires him.. A part of her knows she probably shouldn't be doing all this, that it isn't healthy, but the part of Clarke that would care about something like that, well, that part of her died with Augie.
Clarke is sleeping with her head on the table in the cryo room when the outer door to the lab opens. She knows instantly because an alert goes off briefly, she rubs her eyes and looks up at Augie, her beautiful boy. She pushes herself up and trudges out of the room, walking into the main lab area and waiting for whoever is coming. "Clarke?" she hears someone gasp, she scans the 7 people across the lab and her brows furrow. "Why are you here?" she asks them, aren't these guys in space?
"What do you mean?" Monty asks her, "You're supposed to be in space" she informs them flatly. Raven steps forward, "It's been 5 years, we're back now" she explains gently. Clarke thinks about that, yeah, they were supposed to come back in 5 years, "It hasn't been 5 years" she tells them confidently, she would know if it had been 5 years. Augustus would be 5 for heaven's sake. Harper approaches her hesitantly, "It has been 5 years" she argues lightly.
