Project Iphigenia (Bellarke)

Chapter 10

Six Years After Start of Program

It was after that that they began to see death more frequently, like Alex Murphy had been some sort of catalyst. Many adults would have told them they were lucky to be spared until over ten to understand death on the personal level most now did, for a lot of people saw it at a much younger age.

No one could really ignore that one of their own had lost not just a friend, but also a father. Now, almost six years and counting in this after-school group, there was a sort of kinship between the people, an invisible thread that connected them all, despite the varying personalities.

There was only one photograph of Alex onboard the ARK, and that was his council sanctioned work photo, like everyone got when they started their assignments. It was understandable why Murphy wouldn't have wanted that to be the only reminder of his dad, so Clarke took the matter into her own hands. His father's final smile had haunted her for months after, the smile he gave when he hugged Murphy and whispered his final love into his ear, and so it was all too easy to draw it out in perfect detail. She sacrificed one page of her sketchbook to hand him it, and although at first he just stared at it with half-anger and half-pain, Raven assured Clarke that he never went anywhere without it anymore.

"That was a nice thing you did." Bellamy told her, knowing more than anyone how special the notebook was to her.

"He deserved it." She said, never taking her eyes off the movie they were viewing, "It as his dad..."

And although Bellamy didn't understand fully what it meant, for he never had a father, he liked Jake Griffin well enough at this point to realize the despair Clarke would feel if he was floated. In some ways, when he let his dreams get far ahead of himself, he found Jake to almost be like a dad to him as well.

Clarke thought about that day often, and how it had started to change her view of everything she'd been raised to think. She couldn't understand how her mother did this so often, and how the faces and last sounds of those that were floated didn't horrify her.

For the good of the Ark was beginning to simply not be a good enough reason for her.

She was glad to find later that others had similar feelings. The story of the execution of Alex got around their group soon enough, what led up to it and how Murphy himself almost died. In the quiet moments, when the teachers weren't near and no one had passed by the door in an hour, they whispered. Clarke heard most of it, and she was relieved that maybe to think such things weren't as crazy as she thought.

"You gotta wonder," Monty whispered once, breaking the silence while Wells and Jasper played chess and the others watched, "how that could be right?"

"When I'm on the council," Aloysius, or Al as most called him, a capricious child who had grand dreams to be a politician one day, "I'm going to try to fix that. There has to be a middle ground, you know?"

"Not fair, no way. Murphy can be a little out there, but his dad was a great guy. He didn't do it to be selfish, and that should count, right?" Stasia Huron proclaimed louder than most.

Even Bree had a comment on it, "I understand why it was done, but that doesn't mean I agree with it." She was shaking with anger when she said this; the closest to exploding with emotion anyone had ever seen her.

Bellamy had, by far, the most unsettling comment, which he only shared with Clarke in private, a night where both her parents had gone to a meeting. He'd seen them leave, and Clarke had asked him what was bothering him, since his brow was so deeply knit.

"I've been replaying that night. How they just executed those sick people and then slowly I heard the families getting notices about how they'd died under the illness. It was sporadically done, at least it seemed. They were all too good at making the people believe there was nothing that could have been done, and that they weren't just thrown into space. If they've lied about these things before, and they can do it without even flinching, what else have they been lying to us about?" His eyes met Clarke's, and she shivered under the intensity of his gaze.