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.*･｡. HOOD! .*･｡.
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004.
LIVE WITH IT.

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   As the daughter of a mechanic, Robin knew stuff.

   She was always messing with his tools, as a kid. Little Robin had loved watching her father work and would follow him to work the days she was 'sick', sitting with him for hours on end as he fixed all that was broken. He was good at his job. That was what made him so respected both in mecha, and in engineering. Daniel Loxely was as good a mechanic as he was a man. And he had himself a gifted daughter, too.

It came easy to Robin.

There was no reason why, but she just understood it. Mechanics came naturally to her, more than medicine and math. Robin knew how to change air compressors by the time she had turned eight.

No wonder she got an engineering apprenticeship. Jacapo Sinclair was the ark's chief engineer, and he had watched Robin Loxely as she grew up. She was the daughter of a good friend, and they had both noticed how talented she was. Robin liked mechanics, and in all honesty she was good at it too, so Sinclair offered her spot on a team of apprentice engineers as soon as she was old enough to be trained up. At first, Robin was uncertain. Engineering was a larger scope than mechanics, more to it, but she had given in to it with a small bit of convincing. And, she enjoyed it. Robin met some cool kids, in that job — Raven Reyes, Wick, Monty. It was good. Not as goos as being an undercover criminal running from the guard, but Robin liked it nonetheless. It made her feel like close to her father, like she was making him proud of her.

Turns out, she shouldn't have bothered. Her father couldn't have been very proud — he never visited when she was in the skybox. It was a long six months without him, and now would be a longer six more if they couldn't contact the ark to assure the ground was safe enough for them to follow.

Did she even want to see him?

Robin wasn't sure.

But, there was one thing Robin was sure about: that some sorta miracle would have been damn helpful to her, around about now.

Monty was right — almost everything was fried.

She scoured through the wires under the control panel and tried to splice them, and put them together in hopes to make something of it. Robin bad been trying since the group had left. Her aim was to riffle about on the roof, but it was all pretty much useless.

Nothing was salvageable. Robin was good at mechanics and a dab at engineering, but, judging by the fact most panels on the roof of the dropship weren't even present, she had a feeling it would be a lot harder to communicate with the ark than she thought. It made her lips purse, and dropped the wires to look down at her wristband. It was starting to chafe, and the metal was annoying every time that it bumped against something, but it might have been their only hope of the ark following. Would they be enough?

Who knew?

Sighing through her nose, the girl returned to the wires that were sat under the control panel. She had ripped off the metal covering and it left everything exposed.

   A lot of them were completely singed. Others were ripped and a vast majority were dead.

   She had been aimlessly splicing wires — the best she could with no solder and only scrap metal — for the best part of an hour, and Robin had yet to gain anything from it. Occasionally there'd be an embarrassingly small flicker of power, but over than that, the wires felt like a lost cause. Perhaps Robin was being pessimistic, maybe it was what she needed to be; perhaps she was wasting her time.

   Robin pulled out another wire and used her scrap metal to make a cut about an inch down, throwing away the covering and in turn exposing the wire. She grabbed the last wire and positioned them next to one another, ready to do a pigtail splice, licking the very tip of her first two fingers, gripping the metal and giving them a twist.

    "Fuck—!"

   She tossed the wires away, not caring where they landed, cursing loudly at the new pain in her hand. Robin groaned.

   Glaring, the girl stomped her foot.

   It was childish, but they had just shocked her.

   Luckily for her, Robin had been shocked before, and much worse than that. However, that didn't mean it didn't hurt. It really hurt, so alongside the prior pent up frustration that came with being sent to earth in a group of one hundred teenagers, two of which had been the reason she got caught and thus sent down here, and the fact her chances of contacting the ark and talkong to Sinclair were getting gradually slimmer until they vanished into nothing, Robin became a swearing mess. The profanities came out in angry huffs, whispers of irritation, and she was so angry that she totally forgot about the wires and picked them up again, only to yelp and drop them. Eyes shut, she sucked her finger.

    "All good up here, princess?"

   Robin was caught off guard as she span, reaching for the metal and tossing it in the direction of the sudden voice. Call it survival instinct.

    "Hey, hey—" they ducked, and the metal flew over them.

    "What the hell?" She seethed with a glare. "Don't sneak up on an engineer, asshole!"

   They put their arm down from blocking any hit from their face, eyes wide as well as irritated. Robin didn't let her glare falter when she saw who it was — the tall, freckled guard who strapped her in on the dropship and later argued with Clarke.

    "Are you crazy?" He snapped.

    "Yeah! I fuckin' am!" Robin hissed.

    "Jesus..." he muttered, rolling his eyes at her. He looked her up and down as she turned back to the wires and kicked them aside with her boot. "You good?"

    "What?"

    "Heard a yell, wanted to make sure nobody fried themselves on the first day." It was snarky comment and she shot him a glare, but it didn't appear to bother him as much as her glares had bothered Clarke and Wells earlier on. He had a pretty solid one of his own — death stares came pretty naturally to him. "So?"

    "I'm fine, casanova."

    "Sorry, I asked." He scoffed.

    "Cute," she mocked him. Taking a moment, Robin let her eyes rake over him. He was older, and his hair gelled back was making him look like an asshole, as was the line between his brows, and it seemed impossible that a man so young could have so much stress in his life that it aged him a further three years. Or, maybe that was the hairstyle and the guards uniform.

"Got an attitude," he clenched his jaw. "Noted."

Robin rolled her eyes. Something about him was irritating. But, she didn't find him as irritating as Wells Jaha — who had floated a little, not saying that he wanted to help her but also not leaving her alone — so, perhaps he wouldn't be so bad in the long run. Maybe.

   A moment passed and Robin decided to return to her work — it was pretty much useless, but she preferred wasting her time on the wires than on the man still stood before her.

    "Gonna stand there, all day?"

    "What?"

    "Make yourself useful," Robin criticised after another eye roll. She jutted her jaw to the control panel in signal for him to come over, which he did rather reluctantly. "You got any experience in mechanics? Engineering?"

    "I was a cadet," he said.

   She rose a brow.

   He grit his teeth, "Cadet turned janitor."

    "Impressive," Robin muttered. Ignoring the glare he sent her, an angry look that hardly affected her at all, she crossed her legs left over right and said; "Lemme see your hands," he gave her a weird look, but did as he was told when she rose her brows. She squinted at his palms, "Calloused. Good," she picked up the two wires she'd tried to splice and held them out. "Hold these." Again, he did as he was told to and waited for what to do next, "Put them next to each other and use your other hand to twist the wires," she explained. It seemed easy enough, so he shrugged and put them together. "Ay— twist with precision, thumbelina!" He did it again, "Better."

   When they were connected, a spark came from the metal and his fingers tingled with electricity. He didn't have the same reaction as she did, but he did wince a little, so Robin didn't feel as stupid. She told him what to do and he did it with mere eye rolls and big huffs, and soon enough they had three wires spliced together.

    "Stay put," Robin stood up.

    "What's this for, anyways?" He asked, ignoring the way she had commanded him around like a dog.

    "Hopefully, if it works..." she trailed off as she glanced over the control panel. Robin started pressing the buttons she recognised as useful, "Hey, twist them together," he did it, "Okay... hopefully, if I press this... we should have ourselves some power."

   His face paled, but he didn't have time to stop her.

   As she twisted a dial, the lights came on in a flickering dance and  the screen above them illuminated Jaha's face. Robin grinned and clapped her hands, wishing deep down that her father could see her now, and twirled on her heel. But, when she looked at the dude, he wasn't smiling like she was. Her face faltered and she furrowed her brows, about to ask what was up with him when a large spark and a pop! came from the control panel. A shriek passed her lips and in the shock of it, Robin covered her head with her hands. Quickly, a strong face as she had yet to see him not sporting in their presence, he dropped the wires and shot up from where he'd been knelt, and raced towards her. He tugged her back and grabbed a jacket that'd been discarded, using it to smother the building flames. They took a step back as it smoked.

   The lights shut down and the screen went black, and all that the pair could do was watch as it died out. Robin groaned in irritation.

    "Stupid, freakin'—!" She yelled.

    "Hey—"

    "We were so close!" Robin shrieked and kicked the metal sides of the control panel, only to feel it straight through the toe of her boot. "Son of a bitch!"

   Robin grabbed her boot and cradled it, yelling profanities as she hopped around aimlessly. It looked as though he was planning on saying something, but he slammed his lips shut when the head of a boy he didn't recognise popped up from the hatch. New boy was a but shocked by the scene but ultimately didn't care, instead took a moment to clamber further up the ladder until he was half a man, his waist was inline with the flooring.

    "Am I interrupting something...?"

    "What, Jace?" Robin spoke with held breath.

   He rose his brows at her tone, eyes flickering over to the guard as she placed her foot back on the floor.

    "I don't like your tone."

    "Jacapo Sinclair, over here, blew a fuse." Cadet said, "Literally."

   Robin glared at him, "Asshole." Watching him roll his eyes at her, she turned back to look at Jace and ignored the pain in her foot as best as she could. She'd had worse. "What did you want?"

    "Okay..." deciding to look past the attitude and the weird scene he had just watched, Jace recalled why he was looking for Robin in the first place. "Murphy's looking for you," he explained. "Wants a spell-check."

    "Huh?"

   His head vanished before she could ask, and Robin was left with no choice but to follow him. She climbed down the ladder, leaving the guard alone on the upper level. Lips pursed, he glanced at the control panel with a deadpan face — after a moment, he stormed over to the wires and grabbed them in his fist, ripping at least half of them out of the wall.

   Letting out a breath, he nodded and followed after the pair. If it was who he expected, he wanted to meet this Murphy — the crazy kid that had picked a fight with the chancellor's son. He would be helpful to him, at least. He was going to need crazy.

   It wasn't long until he caught up to them.

    "You spelled die wrong, idiots."

    "C'mon Robin, lighten up." Murphy smirked.

   Robin? Eyeing the girl up and down, her arms crossed and with a seemingly permanent unamused expression, he nodded slightly for no real reason.

    "Learn to spell, an' maybe I will." She drawled out, rolling her eyes. Murphy's face soured, only slightly.

   Before much else was said amongst them, Wells Jaha appeared a few metres away. Robin lowered her stare into a glare and shifted, her jaw tight as the muscle feathered. Everything about Wells had an awful effect on her. Truth be told, she hadn't cared much about him before he had smacked her around the head. Sure, she didn't like anyone born with a silver spoon in their mouth and money in their diapers, but Wells Jaha was an empty name to her. He wasn't really relevant until she had aimed a gun at Clarke and he'd given her a concussion that sent her off to the skybox. Wells Jaha caught the hood. Of all the people.

    "Find any water, yet?" John Mbege asked him.

    "No, not yet." Wells said, yet to look up. He adjusted his boots and straightened up, catching sight of the teenagers around him. "But I'm gonna go back out if you wanna come—"

   He cut himself short.

FIRST SON
FIRST TO DYE

    "Y'know— my father..." Murphy rubbed at his nose with his left hand, the one that held the scrap knife from the dropship. He was always one to be theatrical with his crimes. "...he begged for mercy in the airlock chamber," he clenched his jaw tightly and looked up at Wells with dark and dead eyes. "When your father floated him."

   It only fazed Wells for a split second before then he brushed past them, "You spelled die wrong, geniuses."

   Robin quirked a brow, "Bad, Jaha."

   Wells looked at her, something unknown behind his eyes, and he stopped in his tracks. But upon seeing the challenge on her face, as if waiting for him to say something that would piss her off and give reason for her to pounce, he swallowed a sigh and carried on with a bump against her shoulder. Robin sent him a dirty look — which was expected and Wells could feel it on his back until he was a full metre away.

    "If you're gonna kill someone, it's probably best not to announce it."

   Robin spared the guard-cross-janitor a look and sighed through her nose, giving the same look to Murphy and Jace, then span on her heel and trudged back to the dropship.

    "Where you headed, sweetheart?"

    "Back to work."

————

   Robin Loxely had intended to do the round on the top of the dropship one more time, to see if she could find anything else to try and contact the ark since some idiot had ripped the wires out of the control panel.

   Asshole.

   She would have been angrier if the wires hadn't already been a dead-end. They were totally worthless, so it was time for Robin to find something significantly less worthless and more useful. But, to her chagrin, her third search of the roof was coming up as empty as the last two she had done. Robin kept searching, though — she felt like she had to. Sinclair had implied it was down to her to find a means of communication and handle the technical stuff that no one else could, so that was what she needed to do.

   It was down to Robin Loxely.

   The only person who could help was Monty, but seeing as he'd trotted off with the five best friends, she was on her own with this.

    "Find anything?"

   Robin's jaw set at an angle, "Get lost, princey. Kinda busy."

   Wells heaved a sigh. He knew that Robin Loxely wasn't keen on him; she had made it pretty clear. Then again, he wasn't keen on her either. She was the hood — the criminal that stole from alpha on numerous occasions, who broke the law and didn't even care. She was also the person that had aimed a gun at Clarke's head like she was participating in child's sport, and acted like she was allowed to do it. As though she played by her own rules. Which, he supposed, she did. Most of the criminals down here played by their own rules and Robin Loxely was no exception. After all, she had repeatedly stolen and then successfully hid away. When they caught her, they called for a celebration in alpha station.

   His father had congratulated him. He wasn't only Wells Jaha: son of the chancellor, but now he was Wells Jaha: son of the chancellor, end to the hood. One hell of a title, really.

   But, the more he thought about it, the less he liked it. Truthfully, it had felt good for a while. Although, it soon weighed down heavy on his shoulders. Perhaps the hood wasn't such a bad criminal. None of the lower stations seemed to think so. In fact, most had thrown a fit upon hearing that their vigilante was taken over to the skybox.

    "Can I help?" He asked.

    "You can help by going down that ladder, slipping, and snapping your neck on the way down." Robin sent him a sarcastic and tight smile over her shoulder, watching his face drop before returning to the panels. "Bye."

   Okay— Wells frowned at the response, ouch.

   It was dark by now, and Robin was finding it harder to see what she was doing, and Wells noticed it.

    "I hear that the communications system is totally dead," he said and watched her shoulders tense up in irritation. Did Robin want him gone that bad? Maybe Wells should have taken her advice and thrown himself off the dropship, "I went to the control panel. All the wire are messed, smelt like smoke." He told her what she really already knew, "Up here's not much better, is it? I—"

    "Do me a favour, Jaha? Shut up."

    "I'm just tryna help—"

    "Well, don't. Just don't, okay?" Robin snapped, "You've helped enough, already."

    "What?"

    "You know, what."

    "You want me to apologise? I'm not gonna apologise for getting a criminal caught," Wells narrowed his eyes. "You were stealing! Do you know the shambles you left alpha station in?" He noticed that her whole body had gone rigid, but he ignored it completely. "You got people floated for losing medical supplies! Innocent people just trying to do their jobs! All because you wanted to take more than a person is allowed! Because you wanted to break the law— do you even know how many lives you ruined as the hood? People got floated because of you—!"

    "That's on your dad, Wells!" She swung around, "Not me!"

    "He didn't make the rules—"

    "But he enforced them!" Robin yelled, "He's the one who killed all those people, that's his fault. I was taking from people like you who have everything and giving back my people; the people that needed the help that your father wouldn't give."

    "My father," Wells stumbled, "My father—"

    "Is a dick, Wells. He's a murderer," the girl told him, firmly. She took a sick sense of joy in his glassy eyes and trembling chin as she stepped towards him.

   Time for a reality check.

    "Do you know how many of my people died? People who can't afford medicine, or food, or clothing! Those people died because of your people! Your father was letting them die because they meant a whole lotta nothing to him!" Robin watched him inch backwards on the roof and she silently hoped he would fall, was that bad? "When I stole, I gave it to the people who needed it. You think your daddy shared based on need? I stole based on need, Wells! 'Cause nobody else was doing anything, were they?"

    "You held a gun to Clarke's head," he rasped out.

    "Yeah— and you saved her, but now she hates you, too." Robin rolled her eyes, "Was it worth it, Wells? Worth the end, you got?"

   It didn't take a genius to know that Clarke and Wells weren't the good old buddies they had used to be. The tension around the pair was thick and choked everyone else around them.

   Robin didn't know why; she also didn't really care. But, it bugged her that their friendship had been the reason she got caught and it had only been floated alongside every other worthless person — as seen in the eyes of the ark. Wells had only been there because he'd gone with Clarke, and he had stopped Robin in a pitiful attempt to play the hero. Robin wished they had fallen out sooner, maybe then she never would have been sent to the skybox.

    "I don't know."

    "At least you've started being honest with yourself," she spoke in a pitying tone. "Y'know, the day I was arrested, I was in medical to get some medicine for this boy next door to me. He was sick, spent all day and all night coughing— his parents knew he was bad, and they begged your father for better medicine." Robin crossed both her arms over her chest and stopped in front of him, looking into his eyes with determination. They were ablaze with fire. So bright, Wells could see them through the darkness. "He told them that it was against the rules, and his life wasn't worth breaking the law. A kid's life wasn't worth shit, in his eyes..." she watched his crestfallen face, and took a final step so they were stood chest to chest, a slither of space between them, "You know what happened to the kid next door to me, Wells?"

   His twisted face said it all.

    "He died."

   It was thick between them, and Wells gulped before moving and giving himself room to breathe. Robin was intense.

    "That one is all on you, Wells." She said.

    "I guess it is," he nodded.

    "I didn't kill your precious Clarke, but at what cost?" Robin was testing his patience, seeing how long it would take him to crumble. "She hates you, and an innocent kid is dead." She shrugged, "Can you live with that?"

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