Archive of Our Own

or: a quieter word for love

they call us meaningless destruction, they call us furious wrecks but oh, we know the reason to our rhythmic blaze. we know the purity that stems from scorching rage. and one day we’ll be ashes and at last they’ll know it too. and how they’ll mourn and how they’ll yearn for the truth of us together, for the knowledge of–

what a restoring rapture we were to each other.

what a glorious ruin we were to the world.

[Amrita C.]

In the years to come, this will become history taught to the youth: the proud return to Earth, the victory over the ground, peaceful negotiations, repopulation, the implementation of democracy. There will be stories of heroes who made it all possible, and you will memorize their names and their likenesses carved in stone.

History is written by victors, so it won’t be written in blood. There won’t be mentions of harsh winters taking lives, of disease and hunger, of land taken by force, of thousands of faceless people murdered with just one switch or just one bomb, of more people slaughtered with blades and guns, their faces covered in dirt and blood, eyes filled with hate and eyes filled with pain. Killing is easy when you can’t feel a thing, it’s a little harder when you feel too much, but you do it anyway to survive. Or so you tell yourselves. History won’t mention it either. In the chronicles of New Earth you won’t find the names of all of those who died and of those who survived against all odds, or the things they did to make it happen. You certainly won’t read about how they felt everything.

You might read this and that about Raven Reyes or Bellamy Blake, meaningless snippets and soulless references, but you certainly won’t read everything. And there is a story underneath a story here, much bigger and splendid and terrible than you could ever imagine. Raven and Bellamy, the genius and the protector, young leaders from the Ark who stole their way down to Earth for the only family they had, who fought and killed and loved with all their might. Who lived until they didn’t.

You won’t read the whole truth about them in history books, but if you listen carefully, you can hear the tales, the rumors, people telling others of the scary things they did for love and of the beautiful things they did for love. There won’t be any likeness of them carved in stone, which is a shame, in every story they are gorgeous, they are light and fire. And if you seek carefully, you will find traces of them in romance novels and in legends, the young lovers from the Ark, who sought forgiveness, who rebelled and traveled the world and who finally died at an unknown age, together or not, but come to think of it, in real life lovers rarely die at the same time, don’t they?

It’s year 2291 CE and year 142 of New Earth Calendar.

In the years to come, the story I am about to tell you won’t become history, but you should pay attention to it anyway. Perhaps some of it is true. Perhaps everything is.

You are listening to Radio Horizon.

Let us begin.

***

The only touch she trusts is Bellamy’s. His hands are soft and steady at the hollow of her back; it sets her body on fire, she ignites and burns, almost disappearing in the gold light of dawn falling through the cracks, and when he finally kisses her with lips that are dying to kiss her, she melts and her insides ache and seethe and turn to dust. She swears to herself she will memorize it, learn it by heart: his fingers at her face and warm breath at her neck, sunlight spilling on his freckles, his body against her own, alive and beating, and hers.

Underneath all that fire, he says:

“I never want to be without you.”

Raven thinks she is in love. Knows that he is.

*

But that comes later.

Let’s start from the beginning.

ONE.

Summer.

THE HEART THE HEART THE HEART [...] / I CANNOT GIVE IT WHAT IT WANTS / ALL I HAVE IS A PAIR OF FAULTY HANDS / AND AN OPEN, HAUNTED MOUTH.

[Amrita C., Manic Ache]

When Bellamy steals the radio, all it takes is one glance, once second to notice her face is covered in blood. She is unconscious, dead perhaps, taking into consideration that she just fell from the Ark in a pod that looks like she made it herself. He is preoccupied with destroying the radio before someone else gets to it, but if he weren’t, he would notice how pretty Raven is; he would probably vaguely remember her from the Ark from those few times they passed each other on the dark, narrow hallways of Mecha Station.

What Bellamy wouldn’t notice though – because how could he? – is the fact that this exact moment, Raven’s descent from heaven, altered everything. She was the omen, the harbinger of inevitable change, and her destiny was marked in her name. They thought she was a shooting star, they all made a wish, and perhaps they didn’t get what they wanted, but they certainly did get something else: what they needed.

*

It’s hard to keep track of time on the ground. He thinks they crash in the late summer, but he never paid much attention on Earth skills, and the changing of seasons down here was not occupying his mind when stuck on the station with nothing but black outside. First few days Bellamy scratches a line with a pocket knife on the side of the drop ship. From what he heard from Nathan, it’s a method the delinquents used in prison to count how many days until they get out. But some days Bellamy forgets to mark another day passing, some days he is too tired or too worried about Octavia. Some days he doesn’t even register sun setting down or rising up, the weight of the decisions he has made leaving everything else blurry. He thinks he kicks the box from under Murphy on the ninth day, fails to save Charlotte that night, and that Raven lands on Earth the day after that.

He stops carving lines after a while. They are not ever getting out anyway.

*

“Do you remember the first thing you said to me?”, Raven asks him much later, her hair, long and loose, making her face somehow softer, somehow kinder.

He remembers slamming her body against a tree, Raven pulling a knife at him, dangerously close to his face. Before that he remembers her saying, voice low, eyes dark and daring: “Well, I am right here”; and oh God, she was. Suffocating in her heavy presence, overwhelming in the way she engaged him wholly. They collided and from that moment on, Bellamy suspects, he never stopped falling.

But he doesn’t remember his first words said to her, not exactly.

“Something about killing you, right?”, he asks and starts planting soft kisses on her arm as a form of apology, because even though he could never kill, he did leave her to die.

“No,” she smiles and makes a funny little sound when he kisses her jaw; it’s barely audible and she tries to cover it, but it’s there, he feels it under his mouth. “You said shut up. I was furious, the nerve of you.”

“Now I know better that to try and silence you.”

“Damn right. And don’t you forget it. I will say anything that’s on my mind.”

He looks at her, suddenly serious, and Raven frowns visibly concerned.

“I hope so,” Bellamy says simply and lays his head on her chest. Her heart pounds like a wardrum.

*

But I digress.

Where were we? Ah yes, stuck on Earth, under hostile sky and stars long dead.

*

Earth changes you.

Life on the Ark was never easy, not for the unprivileged kids at least, but nothing that happened to them in space – bodies deprived of adequate vitamins supply, reduced rations, or even hypoxia – could prepare them for what awaited for them on the ground.

Earth might no longer be irradiated, but it’s still poisonous.  

Bellamy sees traces of it in everyone. He tries to save them, but just like his little sister had said: “You can’t protect me from this one, big brother.” Earth is bigger than he is and he can’t really morph his body into shield, can he?

Doesn’t mean he stops trying, though, but the ground wreaks havoc with him, too, and sometimes being there for someone isn’t enough. Sometimes being there for someone is too hard or too impossible.

He is there for Raven when she learns about Finn and Clarke. Puts up false bravado, tells her he doesn’t really care, she is mistaken if she thinks he does, and through these lies she sees perfectly clear. So he wraps his arms around her and lifts her from the ground (Earth is poisonous), but it doesn’t help, it’s not enough, never enough, she says so herself.

And when she takes a bullet for him, for quite some time he can’t quite look her in the eyes, guilt dimming his vision. Her scream echoes in his ears long after Abby cuts Raven’s skin with a knife and no anesthesia. “I’m sorry,” he wants to say, “it’s all my fault, I wish I could take away all your pain, I wish we could swap places.” But he can’t look her in the eyes, and he can’t wrap his arms around her and lift her from the ground without fracturing her spine, so he says nothing, does nothing. Wishing and hoping is a mistake anyway, so instead he leaves the camp to look for his people.

--

Bellamy will not easily forgive himself for this cowardice, but it will happen eventually. One day, Raven will say:

“Don’t think about it anymore. I understand.”

“But how can I not think about this? I couldn’t run away fast enough.” He will vaguely recall telling the same thing to Finn just before their first battle with the Grounders. Finn running away from the fight or running away from his obligations with regard to Raven; Bellamy will never have any doubts which of the two aggravated him more. His sister, his responsibility. Anything less is incomprehensible.

“I was not your responsibility,” Raven will say. “You owed me nothing.”

“I owed you everything.”

“You need to stop thinking about it,” Raven will insist with storm forming in her eyes - and Bellamy can say this, because he has witnessed a thunder few times already, this sharp crack after lightning tearing the sky in half - and tenderness at her fingertips brushing his hair. “You had more important things to do.”

He had people to save. He somehow managed not to let down forty-four of them. Not enough, never enough.

--

He comes back eventually, with Octavia by his side, and when he sees Raven supporting her weight on crutches and dragging her left leg across the ground, guilt is still there, taking roots deep inside him, but there is also something new: overwhelming need to hold her close, to touch and embrace, provide comfort. And, once again, he does nothing of that sort.

Instead he asks her, making sure no one is there to hear it, “How are you?”

He half-expects her to brush his question off, shrug, all bluff and bluster, but instead she declares without looking at him, “I want to escape this body.”

Earth changes you.

Bellamy can’t morph his body into a shield and Raven’s body is not really a weapon, no matter how hard and sharp she is.

But Raven strikes anyway and Bellamy decides that he is ready to take the blow. (From her or for her, doesn’t really matter, and sometimes there’s no difference at all).

*

The blow comes faster than he could ever expect, and harder than he could ever imagine. Finn dies and Raven crumbles to the ground. Bellamy tries to soften her fall with his own body, but Raven’s is weighted down by her grief, and it’s so powerful it almost breaks them both. This is how he imagines earthquake.

To this day he can recall with perfect clarity the animal scream that escaped her mouth and lungs, the way she almost choked as if she was drowning, his own surprise at the fact that she didn’t spit out her heart in pieces. If he closes his eyes even now, he can see Raven’s broken face, sense her heavy and lifeless body when he was holding her tight; he can feel Raven’s hot tears on her right cheek where he was cupping her head. He can still hear echoes of her shriek.

“I am here, I am right here.” He is, he’s not running away this time.

There’s not much he can do, he knows. Nothing will help her now, it’s not just going to be okay, and it will hurt as long as it will hurt; but he stays with her on the cold ground, until she becomes numb, until her grasp on his collar loosens and her breath evens. He thinks she might be asleep, but when he looks down at her face, her eyes are wide open, staring into the dark sky. Everything around them is ominously quiet as well, still as a mountain, as if the nature herself was reflecting Raven’s tormented soul. There is no wind creeping between trees, no cloud wandering through the horizon. Everything awaits motionless for what comes next.

“Finn is dead.” Raven’s hoarse voice breaks the silence and the wind rises, as if it has been awaiting her command the entire time, carrying her words down the hills. She is looking now at where Grounders are untying Finn’s body from the pole. He follows her gaze, but Clarke and Commander are nowhere to be seen, probably discussing the alliance in a tent. Bellamy thinks lowly of this coalition based solely on murder and revenge. Thinks about what more they will have to sacrifice, wonders from whom are they going to seize this time, now that Raven has nothing left.

“She killed him,” Raven croaks. “She killed him with my knife.”

Anger fills her up like an empty vessel. And perhaps, for a while, she was just that: empty but for a broken heart, bloodless veins, and hollow bones.

It is understandable that she would cling to what she knows best: her anger. It’s ferocious, all-consuming and devastating, but Bellamy lets this fire forge in her. He figures it’s better than feeling nothing.

He imagines himself in Raven’s place. He imagines that he would lose his only family, that it was Octavia who died, not Finn, and he feels as if being crushed by the void, burned alive and flayed. The thought alone makes it hard to breathe and he wants to help Raven so much, but this time he won’t swap places, he won’t, he can’t lose O. It would break him, he wouldn’t get up after that like he did after Aurora’s execution, because what would be the point anyway? So he is quite surprised when Raven shifts in his arms, when she pulls herself up, leaning on him for some kind of balance. Wordlessly she reaches for her crutches, and he watches astonished as she heads towards Grounders and Finn, purposeful and threatening to anyone who gets in her way (and they don’t, everyone, be it Sky People and Grounders, deviates from her path), carried by nothing but her rage.

He follows like a shadow, only few steps behind, close enough for her to reach if she needs to, far enough for her not to suspect him of being worried that she might fall.

Raven kneels down beside Finn’s body and cups his head in her shockingly steady hands. Bellamy waits.

“You can go now.”

He understands. Sometimes being there for someone isn’t enough. Other times it’s the only thing possible. Earth changes you. He hopes it doesn’t break you. He hopes there are stories other than the one of Pompeii, other outcomes than ashes. Maybe sometimes after volcano erupts there are things left standing.

The summer is heavy with a promise of thunderstorm.

Raven doesn’t sleep all night.

He knows, he doesn’t sleep either.

TWO.

Fall.

And everyone knows: I have a body that sings itself into beast,

A body that takes takes takes, a body wanting to break more than anything. [...]

It is nearly winter now and I am holding myself closed at each seam.

My body remains a dull blade. My mind

begs strangers on the street for relief.

[Amrita C., Ghazal for the Wingless]

“You can go now,” Raven says time after time.

Time after time, Bellamy leaves. Time after time, he comes back.

In a different life, she could be gentle and kind. She could reciprocate his tenderness with one of her own. But her heart is filled to the brim with grief and pain that leave place for nothing else. Maybe someone else, someone better and more righteous, could learn from those things, from death and tortures and cuts deeper than the bones. But for Raven pain is just pain, it hurts and then it hurts some more.

There are three layers of human skin - epidermis, dermis, hypodermis - and somehow people managed to cut through all of them and tear them off; there is nothing protecting her bare nerves now.

Earth’s structure comprises of four layers, Raven remembers: crust, mantle, outer core, inner core. She thinks crust might be the equivalent of human skin, and she wonders if this – unbearable anguish due to nerves exposed – is how Earth felt after nuclear devastation.

Atmosphere is even more complex, constituting of five layers – exosphere, thermosphere, mesosphere, stratosphere, troposphere – Raven knows it all, Raven has been there, felt through all of them and burned.

So how the hell did she end up here?

Abby tends to the wound on her arm, the one that bleeds the most, where Lexa’s knife probably cut through muscle tissue. Bellamy is lingering by her side, and when he touches her temple, she is determined to focus on everything else but that: they way wide plants climb the walls, forcibly entering the space that was not meant for them, sprawling on the cold stones of the hall. The way some leafs are more brown and orange than green. She wonders what the purpose of the building was before the annihilation, before it became Grounders’ headquarters, half rock, half forest. She can feel her own blood spilled on the feasting table around which they have gathered quite recently to shake hands with people who killed Finn. She tries to dig her fingernails into the table, but stone is unyielding and she doesn’t have the time that was granted to the bine.

“I’m so sorry,” Bellamy murmurs once, as if the whole thing has been his fault. She can’t stand it. Can’t stand being anything else than angry. Certainly not grateful, but being alone right now might be worse, so she says nothing, until it’s over. Until Abby stitches her, patches her up the best she can with what she got (not much, some alcohol to sterilize wounds, cloth to dam the bleeding and then to toss on the floor, one crooked needle to pierce her skin, all three layers, she thinks).

Until it’s over, she lets herself have that: Bellamy’s comforting warmth near her, contrasting with the cold table beneath her. His dry hands contrasting with her sticky blood. If it makes her vulnerable, so be it. When she shuts her eyes, she can feel his breath, so she keeps them open, gazing everywhere but his face. It means nothing.

“You can go now,” she says to him after Abby leaves, when she is able to feebly pull herself up on her elbows and sit properly.

“Are you sure?” Bellamy asks, frown visible on his face, brows furrowed; he looks like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands deprived of this inseparable gun of his. He seems out of place here (but don’t they all? Sky People don’t belong on the ground, it seems), he seems lost and he seems so desperate to help her, she almost believes he could if shown the right direction.

“Yeah,” she says after a while. “You can go, I will be fine.”

She won’t. She sits alone in the building that lost its purpose and she can feel her skin burning up and itching in the places where the needle and thread went through; it’s doesn’t feel right: she isn’t stitched up quite right, like a patchwork made of materials that don’t match, welded poorly, bits and scraps of raw flesh sewn inside out.

Her whole body trembles when she wipes the blood from the table.

*

Are you listening still?

Good.

Before we continue, there is something, one truth, you need to understand about Raven Reyes and Bellamy Blake --

Every now and then, she lets him save her.

*

On a third day after Mount Weather (this has become a point in time in their camp, a beginning of an era), Bellamy comes to Raven’s tent with a bowl of soup – nothing fancy, hot water with some herbs, from what she can tell, but she suspects he made it himself – and she greets him with a clenched jaw and teeth gritting together, but mostly with fury blazing in her eyes. Raven is not surprised when he recoils two steps, but she will not soften her will for him.

“How are you?” he asks sheepishly, grasp tightening on the bowl.

“Don’t pretend you care,” she responds in a heartbeat. “I don’t need your sympathy.”

It hits him like a ton of bricks, her rage and resentment, she can see that. She sees other things, too: the way he is surprised at first and tries his best not to get annoyed, but the furrow on his forehead gives him away. So transparent, so easy to read, always wearing his heart on a sleeve.

“I got you something to eat.”

“You can go to hell with your damn soup.” Raven scoffs and stares at him defiantly, challenging him in the most obvious way, and it’s working: Bellamy gets angry, his mouth a thin line, all colors escaping his face. He did nothing to deserve such reaction from her, she knows that. But maybe that’s exactly the problem – he did nothing and she’s been lying in this sweat-soaked bed, feeling useless, for three days now.

“What the hell is your problem?” He asks, voice low; his eyes almost immediately widen in terror and she can tell he regrets his words. Everyone in camp knows exactly what Raven Reyes’s problems are, she made sure of it (no, she didn’t).

Oh, how she terrifies.

He might try to apologize but it’s too late. She is coming at him like a guided missile, with bared teeth and venom dripping from her fingers.

“Can’t look at me, huh? Poor broken Raven with poor broken leg, tortured again, half dull from the bomb exploding right next to her.”

“Stop,” it sounds like a word of warning, the way Bellamy says it, short and demanding and rough – a soldier to the core – certainly not a plea. His knuckles are white from grasping a bowl too tight, his eyes darker than a second before, as if storm was forming in them, something dangerous coming her way. It’s electrifying.

“What? Since you are already pitying me, it’s only fair you should know what for exactly.”

“Raven,” he growls and closes his eyes in hopes of calming himself.

She pushes herself up on her elbows, hard and unforgiving and yearning to feel something other than the desperation, somehow different than inadequate.

“Come on, why are you withholding? Coward,” she spits the last word, looks at him with nothing but contempt.

It does the trick finally. He throws the bowl on the ground, soup sinking fast in the ground. When he opens his eyes again, fury in them almost matches her own. He moves toward her, arms shifting, one foot in front of the other. He leans on her bed, stern face right in front of her own, contending. Silence lingers between them for a moment. She never takes her eyes off him. He seethes, but he refuses to be provoked. In another time, she might have found his restraint endearing, admirable even, but now she is unsatisfied, now she is hungry.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” She yells. She needs something from him, but she isn’t certain what that is and it makes her angrier, it brings tears to her eyes. “What? Why are you looking at me like that? Say something!”

“You think you are the only one who got hurt out there?” he says finally, spits his words through gritted teeth.

It stops her in her tracks, because yes, she was so absorbed by her own despair she haven’t had the time to think about him. She assumed that, since he made into and out of Mount Weather, everything went fine, albeit a little bit improvisation was necessary at times. The shock caused by this realization must be evident on her face, because Bellamy shakes his head and sighs. He sits down at the foot of her bed, hunched and vulnerable, suddenly devoid of energy.

“I am sorry, I didn’t mean that,” he whispers, looking down at his knees. She doesn’t expect that, and she finds herself defenseless against his honesty, all her bluster melting away, wrath muted. “I should have come sooner. I thought you have… someone.” He seems unexpectedly aware of his hands, twisting his fingers and there is a strange tune in his voice, but she can’t quite pinpoint what it is. “Someone taking care of you.”

“Wick,” she says. The name tasting bitter on her tongue. “Well he ain’t here, is he?”

He tilts his head in her direction, looks at her with something resembling curiosity.

“Why?”

“Wick wants me to be happy,” she says it like it’s an answer to his question. Maybe it is.

“But you’re not.”

“No.”

Maybe she is all alone here, because she isn’t happy and this is all everyone ever wanted: for Raven Reyes to be happy.

She’s resting now, back against the handmade pillow, legs outstretched. She closes her eyes and evens her breath and for someone watching them from a corner she might seem almost sleeping, almost at peace. “I’m angry. I’m tired. I’m in so much pain. I miss Finn.” Her voice breaks a little, but when she opens her eyes there is no trace of tears in them, dry as the desert.

“Maybe you should stop worrying about what Wick wants,” Bellamy says quietly, “and start thinking about what you need.”

“And what do I need?”

“Well, I thought you might need something to eat, but it’s too late for that damn soup now,” he looks at the empty bowl and she smiles lightly at the phony look of utter despair on his face.

“Yeah, maybe I am a little hungry. Actually I can feel my stomach rumble.”

Bellamy touches her foot through the blanket before getting up.

“I will get you another one.”

She stops him by reaching to grab his hand.

“Won’t it be selfish of me?”

“Another soup?” he jokes. “I think we will manage. Might be hard, though.”

“No, you nerd. You know what I mean. With Wick.”

Raven looks up at him, hungry for confirmation that she indeed isn’t a bad person for not being what Wick wants, for not giving him what he wants.

“After everything he has done…” she starts, looking around the tent, on the cluster of old parts on an improvised desk or a pile of clothes in the far corner, anywhere but Bellamy’s face. She is ashamed of herself, she realizes in revulsion. For whole three days she felt at fault. Longer. Since sleeping with Wick, she felt culpable and all that guilt finally wore her off. She is exhausted.

“Hey,” Bellamy interrupts her abruptly and squeezes her hand. She wasn’t aware she was still holding his. “You owe him nothing. You have nothing to be sorry for,” he says and for a while she’s afraid he might be reading her thoughts, but she calms herself down; there’s no way he might know.

“I slept with him,” she blurs unexpectedly. “When you were in Mount Weather. I slept with him.” Raven doesn’t know why is she saying this to him. Maybe she wants to come clean. Maybe she wants him to understand the whole picture.

Bellamy seems taken aback for a second, and he seems hurt for even shorter amount of time, but she diminishes it to her vivid imagination. He quickly composes himself, squeezes her hand once more and smiles encouragingly.

“It changes nothing. You don’t owe him shit.”

She is surprised by his lack of resentment and judgment. By the force of conviction in his voice. She must not look persuaded, because he takes a step back and kneels beside her bed, their hands still linked together and she suddenly feels conscious about it, about her whole body, unwashed and bruised and broken beyond repair.

“Stop feeling sorry for being unhappy or angry or tired. You can feel like that, and if Wick doesn’t understand it, then he’s an asshole”. He inhales deeply and audibly, bracing himself for what comes next out of his mouth. “You are what you are. And Raven? I always admired that about you. The fact that you are so unapologetic about yourself. It is at times, irritating as hell, and you are a massive pain in the ass, but regardless, it is you. Take it or leave it.”

Raven nods slowly as his words sink into her consciousness. Her brows knit together; perhaps she hasn’t quite figured him out yet, perhaps Bellamy is more complex than a radio or a walkie-talkie she can built and pull apart whenever she wishes to.

“And when have you became so smart?” she teases him, smiling with a corner of her mouth.

“Don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation to keep,” he smiles back.

“Yeah, no mistaking you for someone who cares.” She scoffs and lies down, letting go of his hand and adjusting pillow beneath her head. In the corner of her eye she can see Bellamy shaking his head and grinning.

“Okay, I’m gonna go for that soup now.”

He grabs the bowl and takes off to leave. She stops him one last time, before he disappears outside the tent.

“Bellamy.”

“Yeah?” He looks over his shoulder. Autumn sun, milder than two weeks ago, dim and blurred, is hitting one half of his face, highlighting his freckles.

“Maybe I don’t know what I need yet. But I sure know what I don’t need.”

“And what is that?”

“I don’t need fixing.”

“I know.”

“And Bellamy?”

“Yeah?”

Next words are hard for her, she exhales them quickly, as if sharing a secret she promised to keep.

“Thanks for coming.”

He shrugs flippantly.

“No problem. I will be right back with your soup. Oh, and Raven?"

It's her time to say, shortly: "Yeah?" 

“You bit him.”

She must look dumbfounded, because after few seconds, Bellamy graciously explains: "The guy in the Mount Weather."

“Oh," there it is. "I did”, she says matter-of-factly. She is quite proud of that, her act of defiance. Mountain Men thought they had her all figured out, loud girl, who is all bark and no bite, but oh, Raven Reyes bites too.

“How does human blood taste like?”, he wonders suddenly.

Raven shrugs.

“Like metal, of course.”

“Why of course? Do you go around drinking human blood every day? Are you a vampire?” Bellamy jokes and there is such a difference in his posture while compared to when he walked in her tent not so long ago. She feels somehow lighter too.

“No, you nerd. Because of the iron in our blood.”

"Right, of course, so obvious." He squints his eyes at her and when he steps out of her tent eventually, Raven can hear his indistinct mumbling: "You are a nerd, nerd."

*

One day, years later, their group - what’s left of Sky People anyway - walks through vast empty landscape, yellowish grass tall enough to reach their knees. They look for a safe haven for their little community, new settlement with healthy water and fertile land for farming, with adjacent villages open for trade and forest rich with animals to hunt. Raven doesn’t bother to attempt to disguise her contempt with running from Grounders once again, different Tribe, different war, but she is stunned by the nature itself, by the enormous areas that sprawl for miles and miles, in which you could almost pretend you are the only person left in the world, safe and sound.

They walk for hours and see absolutely nothing but the horizon in front of them, and at one point they pass a single tree that catches no one’s attention but Raven’s. It’s barren, leafless but somehow still seems like the strongest thing here, full of life, just sleeping. For a reason she doesn’t completely comprehend, she stops to stare and reflect.

“What’s up with you?” Bellamy asks, right after touching  her elbow lightly. He stops, too, of course he stops, looking down at her leg, afraid it’s sore again.

“It could fall and no one would be around to see it.”

He looks at her face then, the way he sometimes looks at her, piercingly and all-knowing, a little concerned.

“You don’t know that. And besides, isn’t the fact that it even grew here on this wasteland more interesting? I mean, come on, how the hell?”

“I bet Monty will have a perfectly reasonable explanation once we ask him.”

He nudges her shoulder lightly, smiles and then slips his hand in hers. She feels a little better, braver. Even the ache in her leg soothed to some extent.

“Come on, Raven. I got you. And this melancholic shit doesn’t suit you.”

She looks right back at him as if she was trying to soak up the sun, devouring his freckles and wrinkles around the eyes, dark curls falling on his cheeks and light scars on the nose. Looking back through all those years, she understands that he is telling the truth: he has her, all this time he has been around.

“You still got my back?”

“Always. It’s a really nice back.”

She smiles and he winks playfully. Melancholic shit or not, she realizes that perhaps they are not the only people left in the world, but for now, they are safe and sound nonetheless.

Right now, they got it as good as it gets down on Earth.

*

There is another story in a different point in time - it is fall as well, the second one they witness, so perhaps not so momentous as the first one - of him touching the small her back, saying: “You did good”. Her replying, “Wouldn’t be possible without you”. In a grander scheme of things, it might not be the most crucial or groundbreaking milestone, but we will get to it anyway.

To the touching, to the second fall, to the good things.

THREE.

Winter.

Now, do not misunderstand me;

when I call myself a shell / I mean–a used up bullet casing.

As in, the aftermath of something lethal / As in, an echo of inflicted evil.

[Amrita C.]

Imagine a story in which heroes can stay heroes; righteous and selfless and brave. A story in which every decision they make is a good one, so guilt doesn’t creep into every corner of their souls. A good tale. A fairy-tale.

You might have guessed already, this isn’t this kind of story.

Imagine instead that our heroes are angry and bitter and afraid. Full of grief and disappointment, because the world they live in is ugly and nothing they hoped for, imagine that their survival is painted in dark red and that, perhaps, every breath they take is a stolen one.

They are full of love, too, but how do you let it out knowing you could choke?

How do you accept anything but the bad and the ugly?

No, love doesn’t have a place in such a story. Nor does forgiveness.

But you might have guessed already, this isn’t this kind of story either.

Not quite.

*

“What happened?”

Raven storms into his tent with a surprising force considering her leg is still swollen so much she had to put aside her brace and start using crutches again. It’s been a week since their first conversation after Mount Weather, and Bellamy is happy to see Raven walking around camp and demanding answers like it’s something everyone owes her. He smiles vaguely with a corner of his mouth and arches his brow.

“Huh?”

“You asked me if I thought I was the only person who got hurt out there.”

He flinches as if someone had slapped him. He said those words in anger and he shouldn’t have, but sometimes his mouth acts faster than his head.

“Sorry, I-”

“I didn’t come here for your apologies, I’m not angry. I just want to know what happened.”

Bellamy sighs and puts down the gun he was cleaning with methodical thoroughness. Pointing his head at a corner, he wordlessly offers Raven a chair salvaged from the Ark. She sits down on it and straightens her legs in front of her. He has to overcome a sudden urge to massage her pain away.

“May I interest you in different story? Maybe a joke?”

Her face is a blend of irritation and impatience.

“Cute.” She scoffs. “Stop dicking around.”

He lets out a short laugh, sharp and controlled. He figures, he might as well tell that story to someone else than Octavia. Second time should be easier. But memories rushing back still make him dizzy and he wishes for a second that he could be somewhere else than here.

“They tried to drain me of my blood. Hanged me upside down from a ceiling and put all these tubes in me… This is what they did with all the grounders they captured. How they kept alive.”

Raven’s face gets dark suddenly, her breath becomes quicker and Bellamy fixates on how the artery on her neck pulsates, her anger now makes him calmer somehow.

“Fucking animals,” she manages after a while and he thinks she must have used all of her self control not to destroy something. Her hands are squeezed into fists.

“Not all of them.”

“Stop excusing them.”

“I’m not, it’s just that…”

“I’m glad you are okay.” She interrupts him and suddenly straightens her back, as if this confession demanded courage from her, as if she would raise up and run to him if only she could. Bellamy’s gaze wanders to her leg again and this time he doesn’t stop himself, shortens the distance between them and looks at her for permission. It takes more than few seconds, but she nods eventually, and once she does, he positions himself on the floor next to her chair and takes her leg onto his knees.

“I’m glad you are okay, too,” he says and moves his hands across her calf. Raven gets stiff at first when he starts massaging her but she relaxes after his movements become more confident, after he learns the right pressure. He tries to be gentle. Watches her face for the slightest sign of pain. But it doesn’t appear; instead her forehead smoothes and he registers that her peacefulness makes him calm more so than her angers does.

“Clarke was wrong, you know?” She says out of sudden and he must admit hearing that name takes him by surprise, Clarke is rarely the topic of their discussions. “I’ve told you this once, in the tent, before you went undercover into Mount Weather. And I still think so. It wasn’t worth it. Risking you, I mean.” Raven doesn’t look him in the eyes when she says it, but he knows she means it. He can feel her body trembling, can hear her voice trembling.

“Thanks.”

She gets up after that, clumsily reaches for her crutches. His hands feel empty after she leaves, his head too full.

*

With Clarke gone, the delinquents look to Bellamy for leadership. The way some of them stare at him, makes him believe that maybe they would follow him even with Clarke present in the camp. It’s a heavy burden to carry and it’s even heavier when faced with opposition from the adults. (Sometimes it occurs to him how ridiculous that sounds, as if he himself hasn’t been an adult for a long time now).

He thinks about separating several times a day but then there’s always something that stops him. His fear, his reason. There’s a strength in numbers, he calculates, and they would need strength for what’s to come.

The first touch of winter is cruel and even though they have seen first signs, the omens of what’s to come, they are far from ready when the temperature drops below zero. Bellamy hasn’t anticipated the cold so deep and piercing it reaches the bones.  He hasn’t anticipated winter nights to be so long. It’s getting darker much earlier, days are short and grey, and though he has learnt about all of that on Earth skills, the reality still comes as a surprise. He starts missing the sun in the middle of January, he thinks. The nearby lake freezes around that time and they start melting snow for water.

Some of them get sick.

History won’t mention this part, Bellamy notices once. Dying from a fever so high you start bleeding from your nose is ugly and gut wrenching. It’s not a story you want to hear about. But he wonders if there is a way to memorize the dead as more than an ugly ending, more than a warning.

He is watching Abby and Jackson as they take care of growing number of patients moved to the dropship and he is glad, for once, that they stayed, the delinquents and the adults. There is strength in numbers.

He gathers their camp together, says:

“Fit as many people as you can in your tent, stay inside, keep warm.”

Raven comes to his bed under the cover of night. She opens the tent just for seconds but brings cold with her. She tiptoes past where Octavia and Lincoln are sleeping and stands by Bellamy’s bed, trembling. He opens his arms for her, and Raven keeps her clothes on when she slips in them, under the blanket.

It’s the first time and it feels like they have done it forever.

“Monty and I finished building a heater,” she says into the crook of his neck , her voice small and tired but proud. “It’s in the sickbay. Second one should go faster.”

He holds her tighter, wants to kiss her forehead, but instead focuses on finding her hand, finding every cut and burn. He can’t really see them in the dark, but he feels them under his fingers, broken nails and rough imprints.

“I knew you would figure something out”, he whispers finally. “Thank you.”

Raven falls asleep short after that. With a scent of her skin he breathes in a relief as well.

*

Imagine a story:

She lets him save her, so he saves her and in turn she saves everyone else.

Or something along these lines.

*

“Do you think I am a good person?”

Raven asks him this question while working on a new weapon and death traps designed to kill anyone who trespasses on their territory. They figured they need something to defend themselves in case Grounders break their oath and once again attack them in their weakened state. Heaters helped but people are still getting sick, they are still dying. It’s the end of January, he supposes, and winter has already taken few lives.

Bellamy stops mending their clothes and from his corner of the tent looks at her slim fingers which can built a landmine from scratch, how flippantly they bend the wires and adjust the metal bolts. She never stops working and there is no hint of remorse in her tone when she speaks, it’s just a question, not even very curious one, “do you think I am a good person?”, she could just as well ask about the weather.

It takes him by surprise and he doesn’t even try to hide it.

“What do you mean?”

“Like from a moral point of view,” she asks after spitting out the loose part she just bit off of the device. “Do you think I’m morally good person?”

“I… don’t think I am the right person to answer that.”

“Why?” She arches her brow and finally looks at him, her focus on conversation at last.

He shrugs, but there is something stuck deep in his throat that is hard to swallow and it gives him away. Raven must see through his bluster, because all of sudden she seems alarmed. Her fingers motionless, her face a worried grimace, her eyes on the line of his throat.

“I’ve done plenty of shady shit myself,” he says finally and what an oversimplification it is. One line to describe the weight of every decision he has ever made dragging him to the ground.

Raven doesn’t say anything, simply looks at him, and he thinks that maybe she is searching for answers, but then he remembers he didn’t ask any questions. He sighs heavily and there is this feeling again: being conscious of his own breathing, air in, air out, not too fast, not too slow, panic slowly creeping into his soul, this should not be this hard.

“Jasper still can’t look me at me without twisting his lips in hatred.”

Still not a question.

“Well, you will never please everyone,” Raven offers ineptly, half joke, half advice. An answer, maybe. He is still trying to remember how to breathe.

“Cute.”

“I won’t give you forgiveness,” she says in all the seriousness she could muster. Her eyes are fixed on him and he doesn’t dare to look away. “I’m not blaming you for anything. You shouldn’t apologize for what you had to do.”

“But…,” he stops abruptly. There are so many possible endings to this sentence: but what if I did not have to do that; but what if I blame myself; but there were kids in there. Raven doesn’t give him the time to choose just one.

(And this is the part history won’t mention either, her stone cold gaze, the ferocity in her clasped jaw and hatred in her chest, when she finally says through her teeth):

“If you hadn’t killed them, I would go back and blow them all to hell.”

He stays silent for a while and then he starts mending clothes again, absent-mindedly, because it’s the only thing he can manage right now.

“It’s not on you,” he hears Raven as if he was underwater. He wonders if this is her siren song but then he remembers, she doesn’t want to drown him, she wants to help. He looks at her and with a concerned look on her face, he comes back. Clarity washes over him like a wave.

“Do you think history will mention Ring of Fire? Or the thousand Mountain Men killed?” he asks bitterly, guilt and contempt evident in his face.

“If there ever is be any history. Maybe we will all die in few years.”

“But you see, that’s history, too. There is always history,” he says absently.

When he looks back at Raven, the new weapon is lying on her lap, and she is playing with some loose wire vacantly.

This is them, talking about war, talking about killing.

It doesn’t come easier for him. Killing doesn’t come easier with practice.

He snaps his eyes shut, he waits, the quiet stretches on.

*

She amazes him. At times she seems as if she belonged among stars, but in his arms, in the summer rain or threading through deep snow, she feels like the only real thing. A creature made of stardust and with hands full of Earth, she is burning. Bellamy has seen once a forest fire, in the summer two years ago, when every living thing was dry and barren and praying for rain. He saw Raven’s face, then, when fire was consuming everything on its path; she was not afraid. Bellamy thinks Raven understands fire the way she understands mechanics, the way she understands stars: instinctively.

“You are force of nature, aren’t you?”, he asks her once (or twice, or maybe he stopped counting long time ago), his arm almost numb under weight of her head, but this is nice, her body radiating heat right next to his. Winter is kind this year and with Raven by his side, under mended blankets and with improved hand-made heater that Raven worked on over autumn, he feels almost too hot in their little hut. Be he won’t complain about that, never. He is calmer now, wiser and they were prepared for what’s to come, all of them, since Grounders that they have made alliances with taught them few useful tricks. The relocation helped greatly as well.

“If I am the force of nature, then what are you?”

“Brave, I guess.”

“I believe the word you are looking for is crazy.”

Bellamy laughs, low sound at the back of his throat. He pulls her closer, pulls her on tip of him, her body pleasantly warm, and here, finally here, still here. He knows her skin and he thinks he might know everything that’s beneath it.

“Yeah, maybe that’s the right word.”

He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and Raven kisses him on a collarbone.

“Crazy,” she repeats. “And good. And mine.”

The thing is: she understands him, too, the way she understands stars, the way he understands her, instinctively.

*

The way Bellamy sees it:

What they needed those first few days after landing on Earth was luck and someone to save them. Ark send them Raven and she was thrown in the middle of a fight that was not her own. She was thrown in the middle of it, so she did the best thing she could: stood and fought with every fiber of her being, kicked and screamed and bit, but no matter how hard she dug her claws, she couldn’t scratch her way out. There was no way out.

The way Bellamy says it:

(Is different, depending on occasions.)

Sometimes it’s simple; her recovering from Grounders’ biological weapon, bridge destroyed, him standing next to her, not touching, not yet: “You did good with that bomb.” Her leaving the camp, him stopping her, standing close, hand on her arm, briefly : “We need you.” Her laying with a bullet in the spine and him alive because of her, the noose having left a print around his throat: “Barbecue Grounders, I like it.” Her building a heater, him hugging her and breathing her in: “Thank you”.

Sometimes it’s difficult, getting his point across, words failing him, words inferior to turmoil in him, to the way Bellamy Blake feels about Raven Reyes and the thousands ways she saves them. Saves him.

Her plowing her way through brushwood, gritting her teeth stubbornly whenever her leg is an obstacle, looking for resources, looking for new free territory to claim. Her building a power generator, a bomb, an electric fence. Him knowing they would be prey without her, dead without her.

“You know, in Celtic mythology, raven is closely connected with battle and goddess Morrigan.”

Their first spring is approaching, the world uncovers all that was hidden beneath the snow for last three months and Raven’s boots are falling apart. He makes a mental note to fix them later.

“And you know I don’t know shit about mythology,” Raven barks, but she smiles with a corner of her mouth.

“Morrigan was, among other things, a prophetess and because of her, ravens were associated with oracles.” Her faces lengthens in a studied effort to make her look bored. He knows better now to get fooled. There is a spark in her eyes that gives her away. “Ravens are believed to be able to foretell the future, could smell death before it happened.”

“Well, that’s… something.”

“But they knew other powerful secrets, too. For some, they were harbingers of death, for others they were guides.”

“What’s your point, exactly?”Raven stops in her tracks to look at him properly, brows furrowed, eyes focused. He shrugs.

“Dunno. Just think it was cool how you fell from the sky and started getting shit done.”

She tilts her head lightly to get the hair out of her eyes and after some consideration, she breaks out in laughter.

He wonders if this is the first time she laughed after Finn’s death – real laugh, not forced smile, nor sharp grin, baring teeth to the world. No, not that, but a laugh straight from her belly, light and careless.

He looks at her perplexed and after a few seconds he grins widely, stupidly proud.

It’s a nice moment until it lasts, until something previously pushed to the back of Raven’s mind comes knocking, making her serious again, intense as ever. She looks around and finds a fallen tree nearby, limps her way to it and sits down, gesturing for him to do the same. Bellamy complies and braces himself for a question forming at her lips.

“Do you miss the Ark?”

“Not really. Earth is hard, but at least…” He spaces out for a while, searching for the right words. Raven voice brings him back.

“You are your own man, right?”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“I missed the Ark at first. The Mecha Station, the hum of engines you could hear in some parts of it, the way I was familiar with every little thing, every turbine. It had no secrets hidden from me, you know?”

“And then you landed on Earth and brought those secrets with you. Told you, harbinger.” He tries really hard, but it’s way too easy to detect bitterness in his voice. He remembers those three hundred people who died in a vacuum because he didn’t listen to Raven.

Raven is too lost in her own thoughts to notice his own trip down the memory lane.

“I’m thinking about going away for a while,” she says suddenly and he feels as if something hit him hard in the head. “I heard what you said to Nathan few days ago. And I agree. We can’t go on like this. Living in unfamiliar and hostile environment, loosing sleep in fear of unknown enemies and next winter.”

He stays silent, in sharp contrast to the turmoil in him getting louder and louder every second.

“I don’t want Earth to have secrets hidden from me, you know? I don’t want us to be lost. I don’t want to be lost…” Her voice breaks for just a second and he reaches out to touch her hand. How stupid it was of him to think he helped, that she was feeling better. He goes back to the first time when he stopped her from leaving the camp. He wonders if he should do the same now. His body is not really a shield, he remembers. But hers seems to be a weapon at times. And as she had said, she doesn’t need anybody to fix her.

“Raven, we need you.” He tries weakly, selfish as it might be.

She snaps her head up, tenacity sharpening her features.

“I know. I am going to take some technology that I made and Grounders might find useful. I will trade with them and hopefully open some trade routes. Like you said, Bellamy, it might get us some allies.”

“Why you?” He doesn’t recognize his voice, it sounds like it belongs to a child,  small and desperate and flat.

“I need to get away for a while,” she offers. “I wanted to ask you to come with me, but they need a leader. And you are the best one.”

He hopes his smile looks less broken than it feels.

“I will draw maps of the land,” Raven says with a face that seems to mirror his own. “Maybe we will find some place better suited for farming and all that crap you want to do.”

He can sense by the way her body stiffens next to his, by the way words leave her mouth faster than bullets, that for some unfathomable reason Raven wants his approval, wants him to be okay with her decision.

“Told you,” he says as lightly as possible. “Ravens are considered guides in come cultures.”

Raven’s laugh is short and small but he can feel a relief washing over her. He looks down at her leg then, and the brace surrounding it. Squeezes her hand tighter.

(The way Bellamy says it:)

“I found an old car few miles west. Wanted it be a surprise later, but I guess you will need it now. You will fix the car and I will do something about your boots. Their condition is lamentable.”

(The way Bellamy feels it:

Don’t leave me here alone. )

*

Imagine: she’s not quite saved yet and he is not forgiven, but together they find something else than grief and disappointment, something they hoped for, maybe.

Maybe in this story heroes can be righteous and selfless and brave. Not always, but sometimes.

We shouldn’t deal in eternities anyway.

Right?

FOUR.

Spring.

Your bright,

It bleeds into everything.

[Amrita C. , ways in which you are the sun ]

The sun hangs low in the sky when Raven makes it to the ruined city.

She faces the sundown and closes her eyes, embracing the feeling of liquid gold washing over her, softening her edges. Raven supports her weight with one hand on the mask of a car. The sensation of the engine cooling down beneath her fingers helps her concentrate and think on her next steps. She clearly had made it far. Raven could tell that even without a counter showing over one thousand miles - she doesn’t take the amount at face value, though, given the counter was completely fried before she fixed it preliminarily, not enough time to do the proper mechanic job. She left the woodland behind yesterday morning and it has been significantly easier to drive after that. Roads are riddled and bumpy but still more accessible than paths in the forest. The landscape transformed within few hours, yellow and red where green and brown used to dominate. Flora is different here too, she notices quickly, plants more sparse and more resilient, adapted to the shifting sand caressing their roots. But air is brisk and fresh somehow, not so resinous, different than what she got used to.

From up the hill she has parked on, she has a nice view of the city. Concrete buildings with shattered windows here and there, reflecting the orange-stricken sky. She thinks of Bellamy suddenly, how his face brightens up whenever he smiles at her, and something in her soul feels lighter, warmer, and that something is singing for him, somehow hoping, wishing he could hear it despite the distance between them.

Raven feels the quiet sort of longing creeping up her bones. It’s neither aggravating nor pleasant, it just is. And it’s probably why it takes her a while to notice she is no longer alone. A stranger’s gaze is locked on her, vigilant and piercing. It’s a woman in her fifties, maybe early sixties, with face wrinkled and stained, but without any additional marks or tattoos. She is propped up on a wooden staff, but her stance is not hostile. It’s not open either, Raven rebukes herself, and she knows better than to underestimate anyone.

When the woman speaks, it’s in a language Raven understands. It takes her no more than a second to remember her mother’s tongue. She replies with what she hopes is a kind smile.

“Soy Raven de la Gente del Cielo. Vengo en son de paz.”

*

She travels there again few months later, with the rest of their camp, while the fall is still young and gold. It’s a long journey on foot, takes them more than six weeks to get to Nuevo Lardo. But winter is supposed to be mild here, and the environment is not strange enough for them to get sick. Water tastes the same, food similar enough. And natives invited them to open collaboration and trade as they do not harbor any hostility towards them. Clans here have never heard of Mount Weather or of a village lost to fire after one of the signal flares landed there. They can start anew, with a clean slate, empty but of what they carry within themselves. Raven is too smart to believe she will escape her pain, and she knows Bellamy will never be free of his guilt, but together they might find something different to even the scales.

Bellamy’s standing next to her, touching her back - just like so many times in the past and many more in the future - so very proud of her. “You did good,” he says quietly and his breath caresses her ear.

“Wouldn’t be possible without you.”

And it’s true. Without Bellamy’s political influence, his stubbornness and gift of persuasion, they would have never moved here. Sky People would rather have grown roots in Arkadia, in its winter-hardened ground and crimson red fields. Which is not so unusual after all; to become attached to something you finally get after wanting it your whole life. This is how a piece of polluted Earth turns into the cause of war. “We paid in blood for this land,” some said when Raven came back from her expedition, with freshly drawn map of their potential new settlement, “We’ve fought for it, it’s ours now”, and Raven knew Bellamy understood this argument on a very deep level, used it himself the first time they were forced to flee. But the uncomfortable truth was: it’s never been theirs to begin with, and it will never be theirs, no matter how much they fought. You can’t make something yours by force, Raven learned. “Some of us died here,” others argued. And that, is what Raven understood the most.

She remembered Finn’s heavy head on her lap. She would never escape her pain.

But all Bellamy did was clench his jaw and straighten his back.

“And do you want more to die here?”

The fingers on his gun loosened, as if he would like nothing more than for it to disappear. He is a soldier without a taste for war, and Raven could hear the unspoken question stuck at the back of his tongue, “Do you want me to kill even more?”. She reached for him, put a palm across his shoulderblade. His back was in knots, so she pressed gently to relieve the pain. He looked at her then, softly and with a light in the corner of his eyes. She marvels sometimes at how quickly things change. Not so long ago, whenever she thought of Bellamy, she envisioned him with a weapon, with an inseparable gun in his hands. After Mount Weather all she can see are his dark old eyes that rarely brighten up and bloodied palms that touch her ever so lightly, as if he is afraid he might soil her.

“If Raven says it’s a good idea, it’s a good idea,” Bellamy said then. “But we won’t force our will.” Raven nodded. She, too, is tired of dictators and manipulators. “Let’s agree we will do it in a new way. With an open debate followed by anonymous voting.”

There was no more arguing after that. If there was, they heard of it no more.

*

In the grander scheme of their lives this might not be the most crucial or groundbreaking milestone, but it was a realization.

For Raven it was realization that she has a purpose even with her leg crooked and broken. It was hope.

For Bellamy, that he might be a better leader than before even with all the mistakes of the past. It was a chance.

And for us, the listeners, it is realization that once they did set their minds on something, there was no stopping Raven Reyes and Bellamy Blake.

Here is another fact for you. Soon, they will realize that too.

They will realize many other things as well. Amongst them:

Love might yet have a place in such a story.

It is a promise.

*

As for history, it will mostly forget about this occurrence as the first democratic vote that shaped Sky People’s society known today.

Nevertheless, it’s worth to note that it was. A milestone.

*

The first time Raven realizes that eventually she is going to be okay after Finn’s death is because of Bellamy.

A few months have passed since Finn, winter took its sacrifice in a substantial number, and they are still not done with burying some of the dead. Winter does not end gracefully either, it leaves everything brown and dead after snow melts and Raven almost misses it, covering the earth, white, cold and deadly, but pretty and silent. She is still deaf on one of her ears, her leg still permanently painful and lifeless.

This winter, she thinks little about Clarke. Raven hopes she had found someone out there in the forest, because she knows no one can manage on their own down on Earth, but that’s about it. Clarke made her choice and left them bearing consequences of their actions in Mount Weather. Left Bellamy bearing consequences. Raven guesses she doesn’t think of Clarke, because she thinks of Bellamy too often, watches his heavy steps and guilt weighing on his shoulders too often. His stride seems to get lighter when weather gets warmer, however, and beginning of spring, he almost looks as if he has come to terms with the responsibility of being a leader.

When Abby tries to ground Raven, confine her to the small space of their camp, excusing it with worry about her well-being, all Raven can muster is pettiness and anger.

“I’m not your daughter, Abby” she spits out. Abby takes a step back and it’s Bellamy who holds Raven steady with a hand on her shoulder.

“Raven is going with us on this scouting mission. We need her,” he says and just like that Abby gives up.

Later, when they are out of sight, in Raven’s workshop, she slides down on a chair, grasping her leg to relieve the pain. She looks up at Bellamy who is watching her with concern. Her throat is tight when she tries to shape her fears into words.

“I won’t be able to keep up the pace.”

“You walk as fast as you walk,” he says simply.

She laughs a little at that.

“Well, it won’t be much.”

“It’s more than enough.”

She isn’t sure if they are still talking about walking or about something else entirely, but Bellamy drops to his knees in front of her and, just like that, starts massaging her leg, and she thinks that perhaps it’s enough. She’s enough. She will be okay.

“Would you massage my back if I came to our tent tonight?”

Our tent, she says. She realizes after the words come out of her mouth. As if sharing the bed in the dead of winter nights has somehow made it theirs. Bellamy smiles brightly at her.

“Of course.”

“Great, because it fucking hurts like hell.”

Raven isn’t sure if she is talking about back or leg, or about something else entirely, but Bellamy still doesn’t leave, and she thinks that perhaps it’s enough. He is enough.

She will be okay.

He tells her the story of Morrigan the same day. She leaves their camp one week later.

*

Boots that Bellamy repaired last for the whole travel period, and every time Raven walks through a puddle and her feet don’t get wet, she thinks of him and the time he spent mending them.

When Raven comes back, he asks about that first, standing so close to her she can feel his breath slightly more shallow than usual, as if he just managed to catch his breath a second ago.

“Your shoes passed the test?”

In response, she closes the distance between them and hugs him tightly, feeling something stirring inside her chest, like relief, maybe.

“Sorry I left”, she says just above his shoulder.

She can feel him loosen up in their embrace, his muscles giving in.

“It’s okay,” a whisper, barely audible, but so close to her skin, she can feel it crawl alongside her neck.

The need to explain herself is stronger that his unconditional forgiveness.

“I was afraid that I forgot who I am without the pain. But then I figured, it will most likely never go away.”

“Raven…”

“So I left to find out who I can be with all that pain.”

There’s a silence resting between them. It’s not thick and uncomfortable, rather just a pause allowing them to collect their thoughts. And Raven for once waits patiently for Bellamy to find the right question to ask.

“And did you figure it out?”

Raven smiles. She might not have it all figured out already, but she has time. She is someone who can still help and she is someone who can make sure that Bellamy won’t have to stain his hands with blood anymore, won’t have to risk his life; it’s not worth it. And for now she can share with him one of the few truths she is sure of.

“I guess I am,” a stop, a short breath and a jaw unclenched, “someone who missed you.”

Raven can feel Bellamy’s laughter in his entire body when he holds her, buries his face is her neck deeper. “I missed you too.”

Maybe she never really knew what home was, because - she realizes - she never felt anything quite like this, right in this moment, with Bellamy’s arms and breath all around her.

And this is exactly how she feels: like finally being home after a long journey, relieved and solid, safe.

There is this sunlight feeling again. She closes her eyes and slowly, she lets herself have this. Slowly she melts.

*

Bellamy’s mouth is rough and chapped when she kisses him their second year on Earth, on the last day of March, or maybe the first of April, it’s hard to keep track of the time on the ground. It’s the middle of the night and it’s just the two of them in the hut for six, on the bed they shared this past winter more times that she could count - not because it was so cold or because they had to, but rather out of habit, because they could not imagine it otherwise.

But not like this, never likes this; his lips taste of loneliness too long to endure, like maybe they had been withering all this time without her. Maybe in this life, Raven decides, she can still be gentle and kind. She grabs his head in the palms of her hands and draws him closer, deepening the kiss. She can feel him shift beneath her, and then put one hand on the small of her back, touching her with just the tips of his fingers. And she can feel him smile against her lips and it’s better than his laughter when he holds her, and then he is kissing her back, eager and hungry and so incredibly, mercilessly tender. When they kissed for the very first time, she remembers, in a tent similar to this one, in what feels like ages ago now, his kiss was confident, steady. This now is different. As if maybe he is not sure if he is not dreaming.

She pinches him right below the ribs.

Bellamy makes a surprised sound, and looks at her, accusatory. Raven can’t hold her laughter for long.

“Cute,” he scoffs, but he is smiling too, stupidly wide, with wrinkles around his eyes and small dimples in his cheeks. And when he rolls her over and leans above her, kissing her again, it’s hasty and greedy. She moves up her hips to meet him, and he groans into her mouth.

In the future to come she will wonder on few occasions if this was the moment she finally realized she was in love, not quite whole again, but getting there. More often than not she will come to the conclusion that not, she was not so self-aware then of this feeling taking roots inside her heart. Love slipped into her bones unnoticed, like a thief in the middle of the night, and maybe it was long before this kiss, maybe it was the first time he had stood beside her like a shield against everyone else, or when he massaged her calf with cautious fingers, or maybe when she slipped into his bed and under his blanket at night and he opened up his arms widely. Either way it was growing and growing until one day her body would have burst at seams without her saying anything, without her saying I love, I love, I love. So one day, she will.

For now, the only thing she says is:

“I think we should get a hut just for the two of us.”

And afterwards Raven asks:

“How do you feel?”

He leans in, tucks her closer to him and kisses her on the forehead, the most chaste gesture she’s ever experienced.

“Free,” Bellamy replies after few seconds of consideration. She bites gently at his collarbone.

“You can stay now.”

So he does. Time after time, Bellamy stays.

*

Teaching Bellamy Spanish is easier than she would have expected. He has a love for words and natural talent for languages and Raven thinks that maybe it runs in their family; Octavia too started using Trigedasleng in no time at all. Perhaps they were brought up in bilingual environment when they were kids, which none of them really remembers. Perhaps it’s because of his geeky interest in Latin. Bellamy learns with a curiosity of a child mastering speech, and a determination of someone who understands an importance of it. They don’t have much time until move down South and knowing Spanish would be more than helpful there. “It is to show respect,” Bellamy insisted when he tried to persuade her to teach. It was a good argument.

They start their sessions at the end of each day and Raven catches herself looking forward to the evenings whenever she has an actual time to think during few breaks at her workshop. Designing new devices destined to help them with the move to Nuevo Lardo is taking most of her energy, but strangely she is never tired of listening Bellamy talk in her mother’s tongue. She notices how days are getting longer because they finish their lessons later and later each day, natural light making it easier for them to read and write. Before summer can truly begin, Bellamy knows enough verbs to try familiarize her with very simplified Greek myths in Spanish, though he helps himself with English more often than not when a part proves too hard to translate. Which is all the time. She still finds it strangely endearing.

It’s getting harder for them to focus when the temperature rises and the air around them gets heavier and thicker, making the world somehow dimmed, less real. She looks at her surrounding as if through lenses, as if even the closest thing was far far away. She never witnessed this face of summer before. Lazy and detached, spring colours washing off slowly but surely, sun blazing in the sky without mercy. It might be just her nerves less exposed, but all of her past seems to hurt less somehow.

Maybe due to this distance she can sense in herself, one of these evenings Raven confesses to Bellamy the truth about the space walk, something only she and Finn knew about, and somehow it feels like a betrayal of sorts.

“You understand now, right? He was locked up because of me, he was sent down here because of me. Everything that happened to Finn is my fault.”

“Everything that happened to Finn is nobody’s fault. It’s just consequences of the choices he made a long time ago”.

“You always blamed yourself for your mother’s death,” she backfires before she has a chance to stop herself. The pain of the old wound reopening is all too visible on Bellamy’s face. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s alright.”

There is a silence between them and she knows it’s not alright, but it’s going to be. Bellamy won’t hold this against her. But he thinks of his mom for a while, and she tries not to think about hers, so she thinks of Finn instead. Bellamy is the first ready to talk, eyes fixated at her, a little bit of fascination in the corners, and it feels nice, still being able to surprise him.

“So you walked among stars. How did that feel?”

She tells him the same thing she told Finn, when he asked, all those years ago on the Ark, but since it’s Spanish lesson and she feels against all odds kind of playful, she chooses a different language.

“Libre.” She still remembers the feeling.

Bellamy looks at her with something resembling jealousy. She supposes his sense of responsibility successfully prevents him from ever feeling free. He had adulthood thrown at him far too early and it made him too old for someone so young. Raven wishes she could made him feel better, but there’s no way he is ever going to space again, so walking among stars is not an option. She goes for the second best thing instead.

“But in the space you don’t see stars and most of them are long dead anyway.”

Hanging on something that’s been dead for years, loyal to the fault.

Maybe it’s time she let go.

“Do you know it’s almost a year since we landed?” She changes the subject swiftly. It occurred to her recently. She still is not able to say how she feels about it. It somehow seems like it both passed in a heartbeat and lasted a lifetime. They are both young and old and this dichotomy it not unfamiliar for Bellamy, because he looks at her now just as she feels.

“A year?”

Just a year. Already a year.

And through all this only one constant.

Raven pokes Bellamy on the nose.

“And you are my best friend. You know that too, right?”

He smiles. Of course he smiles.

*

Seasons change, winter blossoms into spring and after a while Raven becomes restless again, the old rhythm of her bones trying to escape her body and the place she’s been too long confined to.

Bellamy doesn’t seem surprised when she approaches him, limping and dragging her foot across the ground; it’s the residues of the winter wreaking havoc in her leg, it’s the years that have passed.

“I need to go somewhere,” she says simply. “Maybe the sea. I always wanted to live by the sea, you know.”

He nods, but doesn’t say anything, waiting. Finally, she asks, “Will you come with me?”

“We could built a boat and sail the ocean. Become pirates.” He grins and for a while she sees a glimpe of the young boy he once must have been. She’s not sure if he ever was carefree, but he seems carefree now, and it makes her feel warmer and lighter than before.

“You are such a nerd,” she laughs. “Let’s do that, then.”

“You are a nerd, nerd.”

She has seen it all over the years: the silence of snow, the cruelty of blizzard, warm whispers of the wind and the impending scream of a hurricane, the gentle touch of summer rain and demanding presence of sun in the desert. She has seen the loneliness of mountains as well as the sorrow of forest in the winter. She has seen the blackness and emptiness of the space, and the abundance of Earth.

She has never seen the rage of the ocean, the waves forming and crashing, water and sand gently apologizing to her feet.

She believes she would like to witness that.

She thinks she could understand water as she understands fire. As she understands Bellamy.

FIN

the hunger in me / knows the burning in you.

i think you and i / were dreamed into being / by the same / long forgotten star.

i think you and i / should never be apart.

Amrita C.

But this is not the ending.

Not at all. Not even close.

*

The only touch he trusts is Raven’s. Her hands are rough and coarse at the base of his neck; it floods his mind with soft water, cold and calm, and he can feel deep cuts from wires and places where her skin weren’t stitched up quite right, but she is whole and solid and when she finally kisses him with lips that are dying to kiss him, he breathes and comes to life. He swears to himself he will memorize it, learn it by heart: her fingers in his hair, moonlight spilling on her scars, her body against his own, alive and beating, and his.

Underneath all that water, she says:

“I never want to be without you.”

Bellamy thinks he is in love. Knows that she is.

*

In the years to come, this won’t become the history taught to the youths:

He dies first, leaving Raven old and wrinkled, with iron in her blood, and family by her side, and loneliness shaping slowly around her love for him, but she likes solitude now. She talks with Octavia sometimes, tries to look after her, because Bellamy would like that. Octavia is happy and he would like that too. Raven carries loss around quietly, gets angry at the world quietly, as she learned all too well over the years. When she finally screams letting the world know about grief in her lungs, she screams so loud mountains carry echo of that sound and some say you can hear it to this day. She loves with a force to be reckoned with.

And when her bones get restless, her body too small to contain her, she goes to the ocean, which welcomes her with raging waters.

I want to believe that she died happy, surrounded by people who cared for her.

Perhaps she died without saying anything, perhaps she said her goodbyes.

Goodbye, children.

Good night, my loves.

Perhaps all was forgiven and underneath all the stars, she said:

“I never want to be without you again.”

You wanted a tale about heroes larger than life and of love bigger than death, you wanted a happy ending. There are some rules every story should follow. Every love story, for example, should end with a kiss. This one started with one and ended with something else entirely but there’s a perfectly good reason for it: sometimes people transcend the story of their lives and this is what happened here, and for that I won’t beg forgiveness. Whatever Raven Reyes and Bellamy Blake were to the world - the ruin and the rebirth, harbingers of change, leaders of the new world, the genius and the protector, young leaders from the Ark, lovers from romance tales - is nothing compared to what they have been to each other.

And now you are a one step closer to the truth of it. I hope you understand more, I hope you feel more.

It’s year 2291 CE and year 142 of New Earth Calendar.

You have been listening to Radio Horizon.