xo of the rocinante

YOU NEVER KNOW THE EFFECT YOU MIGHT HAVE ON SOMEONE. YOU JUST HAVE TO TRY.

"we did what we had to do," like always. there are no choices on the ark: there are only horrible necessities (unless they want to surrender the last of the human race to certain death). now more than ever, their home is a powder keg. 2500 people are crammed into one 100-year old space ship that no one knows is on its last legs. clarke and her council only have two months to find a solution... well, three months, now.

madi would have been executed, clarke reminds herself. the ark may have had two months, but madi only had one. all crimes committed by adults are capital crimes and madi turns eighteen in a few measly weeks. the only way to help her child survive was a hail mary: sending one hundred prisoners to the ground to see if the earth is survivable.

it won't be survivable, logic insists. it has to be, her heart defies.

naomi picks up the model of the wristband, looking over it while going over possible solutions in her mind. " it works using a one-way communication system, " she begins to explain. " gathers data from them, and transmits it back. the wristbands don't have a receiver- " her words get cut off. as she flickers her gaze to look back at clarke and lands behind the woman on one of the monitors.

FILIP INAROS. her mind scrambles to connect the image of the teen with the memory of the baby she's carried all these years. he's grown. of course, he has. and he looks so much like her, except for the eyes that remind her of marco. it takes all her emotional energy to not cry on the spot. she'd didn't know where he was all these years, and now... he's further away than he could possibly be.

color palette meme:  @jaqobis​​ asked:  naomi + fave purple

epstein drives? whatever those are, raven wants to get her hands on them yesterday. she and her colleagues on the ark used to dream about all the things they could invent if they just had the materials to make them... theoretical science was a form of escapism. she wishes she had spent more time trying to make their theories a reality on the ground, but she was too busy just trying to survive.

the more naomi says, though, the less raven knows. 2350s?! "it's — it's only 2156 now," raven says. right? there's — there's no way the entire ark lost track of 200 YEARS. that's too much time...

echo looks between bellamy and raven. they usually provide answers when technology confuses her... today, they have no answers. "i do not understand," she announces. she turns to naomi — she's been providing information so far. echo doubts she will understand the terminology, but maybe raven or bellamy can...

"it's, uh..." bellamy scratches his neck. how is he supposed to help his girlfriend when he doesn't even understand this himself? "y'know how you didn't know people lived in the sky? we didn't know these people lived further out in space. and they're... uh... from the future..." they could be fucking with him. that would be far easier to believe. "and, uh... those other planets we talked about, like mars — the planet, not the god — though it is named for him — wait, not important — anyway... they live on the planets — well, not those ones, but their own ones, far away... and some, uh, stars, and star-like... places..." translating naomi's revelation into grounder science does not make it easier to understand...

echo, however, is largely unfazed. her understanding of the world was shattered years ago — this is just another addition to that. "so they will teach us about technology, and we will teach them about the ground — as we taught you. that is the trade." she looks to naomi with a dutiful nod. the space woman seems smart; she will learn quickly.

"we don't know if they want to live on earth," raven adds. who the hell would with a ship like this?

echo's brows furrow. "why not?" earth has sunshine and rivers and plants and room to run... it's the best place to live (clearly, the two women are not in alignment — but it doesn't matter. they are beggars, not choosers).

what are you exploring for? bellamy wants to ask. the foreign crew wouldn't be looking here unless they wanted something... and there probably aren't enough resources in that little green patch to support the bunker people and this new space civilization.

but if bellamy asks the crew that and the y have a bad answer, then they may not bring his family to the ground. bellamy can't risk that. instead he asks: "how can we help you land on earth?"

" well, it's, " naomi tries her best to explain in a more simple manner when the other woman - echo he'd said? - expresses her confusion. she doesn't know exactly their life experiences but she guesses space is foreign was foreign to the woman. the technical parts, at least. " how you live on earth, just imagine smaller and kind of similar places. only we live inside metal structures because there's no air. " or well, atmosphere but air gets the point across. " or, in ships like this. " and bigger ones and smaller, and simpler, and more advanced but that's not important right now.

" trust me, the future part is really weird for us too. i don't know how that even happened. " except the protomolecule turned an asteroid into a space station and bend the laws of physics. what're two hundred years compared to that?

she offers echo a smile when the woman speaks of a trade. at least, they're fair. an offer of resources for an offer of resources. it's more than they'd gotten the last time they went on a planet with murtry. " we won't be here for long. " at least, that's what the plan is. " i can't come down, my body can't handle that much gravity. so only holden and amos, who you saw before, will come with you. " she's tried, there's medicine for her muscles and bones to become denser than a lifetime in lower gravity has allowed. but last time her heart failed. she can only visit moons, and planets with much lower gravity than earth's one g.

now, she turns back to bellamy. they don't actually need that much assistance. the roci can easily do a landing on its own and alex is more than an equipped enough pilot. " we just need you to paint the target, and tells us where you want to land. alex, our pilot who's the only one you haven't met yet, " she thinks to clarify in case they worry again about numbers that don't exist in this ship. " can land the ship within a couple hours including all the pre-flight checks. "

" the extra hands will be helpful in securing our storage, but that's about it. " moving crates and locking them in place is hardly an exciting task but it's needed so things don't bounce around during flight.