Those Griffin Girls Will Get You

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Jackson had been training in medical for about four years now. Abby Griffin was smart, strong, and tough when she needed to be. But somewhere along the line in the last four years, Jackson had started calling her 'Abby' instead of 'Doctor Griffin'. In spite of Jackson's effort to keep himself closed off from others after his mother's death, guarding his heart, not ever wanting to become close enough to anyone again that could cause him so much pain again, Abby had slipped under his radar. He felt like she had some maternal feelings for him now, maybe. It wasn't hard to understand how she could feel that way. When they'd met, he was a promising kid who was clearly so alone and lonely and in pain that he thought he did a decent job hiding. He did his best to bury himself in his studies and not love her back, but he'd failed. He loved her like family now.

It had taken longer with Clarke.  Again, Jackson instinctively wanted to guard his heart still, but it wasn't until he turned eighteen and been assigned his own apartment that he'd realized why he denied Clarke the same openness he gave her mother. He'd subconsciously seen her privilege. She'd grown up with it. She got to go home to her nice quarters and her loving, upper-class family every night, while he was a kid from Farm Station who went home to the orphanage dorms. It was an unfair thing to hold against a little girl, but he hadn't even realized he'd done it at the time.

In the two years since his eighteenth birthday, though, he'd started to let her in more and more. He had his own place, he was getting better and better in his chosen field every day, and was developing a sense of self he hadn't had since his mother died seven years ago. It was hard to let her in. But Jackson loved Abby, and Abby loved her daughter. How could Jackson continue to deny Clarke? Eventually, she almost felt like a kid sister. Which was terrifying and wonderful at the same time.

Jackson was finishing up one day in medical, sterilizing equipment for the next day, when he heard someone come inside. Glancing over his shoulder briefly, he recognized that blonde head before turning back around to his equipment. "Hey, kiddo," he called over his shoulder, smiling. "How were classes today? Any cool new drawings to show me?"

Tag: Clarke Griffin

[Clarke Griffin]

Clarke often went to medical after school. If she didn't have much homework, she would get to help a bit, watch a bit, do tasks a student could carry out. She knew she was privileged in getting to do that. But what point would there be in wasting that privilege? So she took it and hoped she would one day be able to use it to become a good doctor. It was one of the reasons why she tried, hard, to not let the other kids talks get to her. Some of them were just that: Kids, frustrated in their position, one they could help as much as Clarke could help her privilege. 

When she came in, she hook her head at Jacksons question. Not today. Today she tried not to draw or doodle during class, even though it was hard. Making doodles of the topic helped her remember, but others called it names and said she would fail because she didn't pay attention - despite how this was her way of memorizing things. 

"Classes were pointless." She finally admitted. "I fail to see the point in learning recipes of herbal teas for illnesses on the ground helps our earth skills in the slightest." The idea of teas, that made sense to her, perfect sense. But to learn full recipes that was pointless. "The long exposure to radiation will have cause mutations in most of the plants - if plants still exist. So most of the damn ingredients won't even do what they did in the past. So where's the point? They should rather keep on teaching us something we might be able to use." Clarkes gaze fell to something dark in the corner. "Is that blood over there?"

@severitysoftly

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"Language, young lady," he scolded when she said 'damn', but he was grinning too much for it to even sound serious. Abby probably wouldn't like Clarke using that word, but Jackson thought it was sort of funny hearing a twelve year old 'curse'. Besides, it was just the two of them in here, and he knew Clarke probably knew where it was safe to use that word and where it wasn't.

"Shouldn't be," he responded to her question about blood. He was careful about blood. He had to be. He followed her gaze and saw what she was looking at. "I think I spilled some of my coffee, actually," he said. "Do you mind getting it? I won't tell on you if you don't tell on me." He continued sterilizing what he was working on. "I think the idea is that when we bring the Ark back to Earth, hopefully the Ark garden will still be intact. Those plants and herbs won't be mutated beyond recognition or their current uses. We can try growing them on the ground, and if it doesn't work, we've still got hydroponics and synthetic soil to use." His mother had been a farmer. He didn't get into the gardens much when he was young, given the security around them, but he'd been impressed by them as a child when he had seen them with his mother.

Tag: Clarke Griffin

[Clarke Griffin]

“Sometimes I wonder if you’re like a million years old.” Clarke chuckled. Damn was no longer bad. After the nuclear apocalypse she learned lots of things changed their meanings. Some held onto meanings. For Clarke words were less a problem than others. She knew that sometimes a nice sting of curses were as helpful as actually punching it out. “Whats there to tell?” Clarke asked Jackson. He was just a man like everyone else. People dropped things all the time. She sure did. So a bit of coffee was no bad. Clarke picked up a cloth and started to clean as he talked.

“Would the soil be enough, though?” She asked him as she scrubbed at the stain. It was gone soon enough and she grabbed disinfectant to make sure the floor was really clean. Everything there had to be absolutely sterile after all. Nothing could be spoiled with germs of any kind. Death by coffee was unheard of in that context though. “I thought we are to repopulate the ground, is there enough for many more people? We are already so many.”

@severitysoftly

[Deleted]

Jackson only rolled his eyes at the assessment of his age and kept working with a smile. He was pretty used to being teased about stuff like that. The kids in the orphanage calling him boring or a nerd. He knew Clarke wasn't trying to be mean, though, so it didn't bother him. His machine beeped, and the took out the freshly sterilized instruments and started to put them away.

"That sort of planning is someone else's problem," he said, smiling. He assumed there was some sort of plan in place to expand farming inside the Ark, should the ground not be able to provide them healthy enough soil to grow crops for an expanding population. But that's wasn't something he was involved in. He finished what he was doing and leaned a hip on the table he was standing by, looking over at her. "You wanna go grab dinner or are you too cool to hang out with million year olds?"

Tag: Clarke Griffin

[Clarke Griffin]

“Just half a million.” Clarke answered with a chuckle, obviously not meaning it. He wasn’t that much older than her, closer to her age than her parents. It was still sometimes weird for her to have him around. It was almost like having a sibling, though she couldn’t even know what that felt like. Nobody she knew had siblings. But he was close enough. Yet sometimes so closed off, that Clarke was confused by the distances. 

“I would love to. Under one condition.” Her bright smile gave away, that she was in no way thinking of something back. “The earth rises in the east window soon. Can we sit east`?” She loved earth rises. The sun was boring, but earth was the hope, their hope. And for her it was an inspiration. To dream and to draw. She loved to imagine what the earth looked like now. Often she imagined it coming back to live after humanity destroyed it. It was green again, glittering in the light of the sun and sometimes a night she imagined light, like a city. But that was just her imagination.

@severitysoftly

[Deleted]

Jackson's smile grew a little when she said she'd love to grab dinner with him, and then even more at her suggestion of where they should eat. "Sounds like a plan," he told her, getting a few things on his desk in order before locking his files up for the night. He took a quick look over medical to make sure nothing was out of order before gesturing Clarke to head out with him toward the mess hall.

"Been a while since I've watched the Earth rise," he admitted. He was still smiling faintly. He didn't have friends really, so he mostly worked and trained during the day, and studied or read at night until he fell asleep. It was probably a good thing Clarke showed up tonight to get him out of his routine. "Probably a good time to remind myself what we're waiting for," he said, his tone a little teasing, but it was true.

Tag: Clarke Griffin

[Clarke Griffin]

According to the schedule theirs was not the generation that was meant to go back to the ground. “We might never see that, but out children.” If they survived. The one child policy was a short term solution, but could not be maintained forever, Clarke knew. It shrunk the population so the ship could survive, but one day they would have to allow for the population to grow again. If they managed to get to the right point. “Can you imagine it? Our kids might one day be able to look outside their window and see the sun rise! I wish I could see it from the ground. They seem so beautiful in hose pictures and movies.” But it would probably remain a dream.

“What would you want to see on the ground?” Everybody had some kind of desire to see something. If it still existed. Clarke had so many things she wanted to see. Most of them natural phenomenons. “I want to see the northern lights! I really really want to see them from down there. They’re no fun from up here. But have you seen the pictures of them?”

@severitysoftly

[Deleted]

Jackson only let out a small huff at the suggestion of their children seeing earth from the surface, as if the idea of children was a little overwhelming. Clarke was still just a kid, and at twenty, Jackson didn't feel ready for kids. And considering he tended to prefer male company, he wasn't likely to be having his own. Though he thought one day when he was older he might adopt, and help out someone like himself. After a moment, he chuckled softly at her excitement of their kids being able to see the sunrise from the ground and how beautiful it sounded. "Hard enough to imagine having a kid," he teased, but let her go on as they walked.

He knew exactly what he wanted to see the most if he was ever on the ground, but before he could answer, Clarke said she wanted to see the northern lights. "Oh, nice! That's a good one. Yeah, they look beautiful," he agreed, answering whether he'd seen pictures of them indirectly. "I would want to see the ocean. It's hard to imagine seeing it up close. Something so vast it touches every single continent, connecting one shore to another millions of miles away."

Tag: Clarke Griffin

[Clarke Griffin]

The ocean. That was a beautiful thing, too. It was, as far as she knew from her studies the source of all life. Even the source of theirs, millions of years back that was where life came into existence first. It was all so fascinating. The ground meant life in so many ways. It was where their people came from. 

“Imagine swimming in it!” She said. “Imagine learning how to swim!” Because right now not maky people could swim. One or two on hydro could, for obvious reasons, but the most couldn’t. There was simply no reason for it. And Clarke thought she wanted to see fish, actual fish: they looked fascinating on the recordings, but she wanted to see them, to feel their skin, because that was just such a weird concept to her, slippery, semi-hard things that covered them. “Imagine a sun set over the ocean, Jackson!”

@severitysoftly