It's good that you see it as a second opportunity. You don't have to. There was a time when I thought someone here had come from a perfectly normal life. I envied her. I couldn't even fathom what that was like. For a little bit, I thought it might be the same for you. How you carry yourself—you know? I admire it.
You're right, though. I always had to think about it. On the Ark, crimes were always punishable by death. The people who committed them were floated, and if you were under eighteen, you'd be locked away in a separate part of the ship. The 100 [Canon namedrop, aw yeah!] of us that were locked away were chosen to go down. We were expendable. Systems on the Ark were failing, so they needed appropriate test subjects to send down. It was better that it was us than anyone on the Ark who hadn't been convicted for a crime. There was always the chance that once we turned eighteen, we'd be floated anyway.
That kind of thinking, that kind of behavior—the worst part is that once we got down, we had no choice but to hit the ground running. But we were just kids. So, there were only a few of us who did. Who could.
I had to take care of them. Even when everyone from the Ark finally came down, I couldn't stop. It took the "adults," so to speak, a long time to accept that there weren't any acceptable losses among our numbers. But it was us ... the "kids," we're the ones who learned about war down below. Learned from our mistakes in encroaching on the wrong territory, or trusting the people who offered us salvation from the atrocities outside in the woods that had grown after the radiation subsided.
I'm giving you context because in all of that, I started to justify a lot of my actions by survival. I used that line against someone else, but I was just as guilty of it myself. We all were.
Being here, it's like I have to relearn how to think about the world. I'm glad I have some friends helping me out along the way. And yes, the little things do help. Like donuts and fake coffee-based iced drinks.
god this tag is so long, incoming clarke griffin monologue
You're right, though. I always had to think about it. On the Ark, crimes were always punishable by death. The people who committed them were floated, and if you were under eighteen, you'd be locked away in a separate part of the ship. The 100 [Canon namedrop, aw yeah!] of us that were locked away were chosen to go down. We were expendable. Systems on the Ark were failing, so they needed appropriate test subjects to send down. It was better that it was us than anyone on the Ark who hadn't been convicted for a crime. There was always the chance that once we turned eighteen, we'd be floated anyway.
That kind of thinking, that kind of behavior—the worst part is that once we got down, we had no choice but to hit the ground running. But we were just kids. So, there were only a few of us who did. Who could.
I had to take care of them. Even when everyone from the Ark finally came down, I couldn't stop. It took the "adults," so to speak, a long time to accept that there weren't any acceptable losses among our numbers. But it was us ... the "kids," we're the ones who learned about war down below. Learned from our mistakes in encroaching on the wrong territory, or trusting the people who offered us salvation from the atrocities outside in the woods that had grown after the radiation subsided.
I'm giving you context because in all of that, I started to justify a lot of my actions by survival. I used that line against someone else, but I was just as guilty of it myself. We all were.
Being here, it's like I have to relearn how to think about the world. I'm glad I have some friends helping me out along the way. And yes, the little things do help. Like donuts and fake coffee-based iced drinks.