#clexaskimmons

Clarke doesn’t acknowledge that Raven’s spoken, just continues to pull things from her pack and place them on the shelves opposite the bed, but Raven knows she heard from the way her shoulders tighten and the fact that she spends a moment too long staring at the shirt in her hands.

 “I didn’t even know you were gone,” Raven says, “Until about three days after, when I finally asked Octavia why you hadn’t come to visit me and she told me you hadn’t even made it through the gates.” Raven waits a moment before adding, “I thought you just didn’t want to see me.”

 “No.” Clarke says, her voice firm. “Coming in, saying goodbye to you, it would have made the whole thing more real. It would have made it harder for me to walk out the gates again. But it wasn’t because I didn’t want to see you, Raven.”

 The way says her name makes Raven think of before, when they would stay up late working out strategies or the best way to keep the camp functioning or just talking; lying side by side in the dark with their shoulders brushing and Clarke’s fingers tracing patterns along her arm.

 Clarke still hasn’t looked at her, is still placing items on the shelves like she needs something other than this conversation to focus on.

 “It didn’t feel that way to me,” Raven says, her voice sounds small and accusing and she doesn’t mean it like that, but a tiny part of her thinks that maybe Clarke deserves it.

 “I needed to be somewhere where I could look at someone and not see a dead persons face,” Clarke says, setting a pale green shell down before finally turning around. “That wasn’t here.”

 “And you’re back now?” Raven asks, running a hand across the soft pelt covering the bed. “For real, you’re not just going to up and leave again?”

 “Not without the rest of you,” Clarke says, coming over to stand in front of Raven. She takes Raven’s chin and tilts it up until she can meet Raven’s eyes. “Not without you. Or at least not without saying goodbye first.”

 Raven lets out a breath and wraps her arms tightly around Clarke’s waist, burying her face in Clarke’s stomach. She feels one of Clarke’s hands come up to cup the back of her head and the other rests against her back, warm through the thin fabric of her t-shirt.

 “Good,” Raven says, her voice muffled. “But I don’t think you should leave again at all, everyone missed you too much.”

 “Including you?” Clarke asks, settling onto the bed beside Raven and tugging her back so they’re both lying shoulder to shoulder. Clarke takes her arm and pulls it towards her, tracing patterns across her skin.

 “Including me,” Raven agrees, letting herself relax. “I think I missed you the most, but it’s a close call.”