#ravickff

She pushes herself to her feet and grabs for her cane, still a bit wobbly and unused to the brace. She’s halfway to the door before she remembers herself and stops to glance back at Sinclair. “Uh, permission to take a break, sir?”

Sinclair’s tone is gentle when he answers. “Permission granted, Reyes, but Chancellor Griffin’s got her under lockdown treating her injuries and making her rest. I doubt she’ll be up and about ’til morning.”

“I’d like to be there just in case, sir,” she says without hesitation.

Sinclair gives a short nod. “Go on, then.”She’s heading for the door again almost before the words are out of his mouth, but she pauses momentarily and looks over her shoulder when he continues speaking. “Reyes. You did a good job on the beacon today.”

Raven twists her lips up into a wry smile. “Lot of good it did. And I didn’t do it alone,” she adds, eyes darting to Wick for the first time since Sinclair entered the room.

He feels his eyebrows shoot up, because Raven Reyes doesn’t hand out compliments easily, even off-handed ones.

”It did,” Sinclair says firmly. “Clarke Griffin says your beacon’s what brought her to Camp Jaha. She wouldn’t have found us otherwise.”

Raven’s eyes meet Wick’s again. Their beacon didn’t accomplish its intended purpose, but judging by the expression on her face he’s going to put it down as a win in his book. They can figure out a different way to find the other Ark stations.”

Like I said, you did good work today, Reyes. I don’t want to see you back here before morning,” Sinclair says sternly, and it’s just like his usual effortless way of managing people. He runs a tight ship, but usually succeeds in acting like an indulgent father to all his minions at the same time. Wick partially attributes it to his years working for Jake Griffin, who ran Engineering in much the same way.

Raven smiles gratefully and all but runs out the door, leaning heavily on her cane.

Wick watches her go. She hasn’t spoken much about her time on the ground, only work-essential information in passing—things like don’t even bother trying that frequency, it’s been jammed for three weeks and don’t eat those nuts, you’ll be tripping for 24 hours. But he can tell from the way her eyes go all soft and sad every time anyone mentions the missing delinquents how deeply she cares about them. And Wick’s not an idiot—he doesn’t need it spelled out for him to see that her romantic relationship with Collins is over, and that it probably has something to do with how quickly the kid high-tailed it out of camp to find Clarke Griffin. He can hear it in the brave way she says Finn’s name—the few times she’s mentioned him—when she insists his mission will be successful. The little shit hurt her, that much is obvious, and Wick can’t quite help it if his fingers curl into fists every time anyone speaks his name.

And there’s the mystery, because that pained expression didn’t cross her eyes for a second when she heard Clarke Griffin’s name. There’s a story there between the three of them, and Wick would bet a week’s moonshine ration that it’s not the stereotypical one most people would assume it was.

He’s startled out of his thoughts by the sound of Sinclair clearing his throat, way too loudly to be genuine. “All right over there, Mr. Wick?” he asks dryly. “Or do I need to call Reyes back to do your work for you?”

Wick shifts on his feet, running a hand self-consciously through his hair. “No, sir. Just running specs in my head.”

Sinclair eyes him askance, voice dripping with sarcasm when he says, “I’m sure.”

Sinclair’s been eyeing him suspiciously for the better part of a year. Wick’s used to it by this point. And he doesn’t mind so much, as long as Raven’s not around to see it. He’s not ashamed of…whatever it is Sinclair suspects him of.

He works late that night and crashes under his workbench with a blanket and a pillow. Beds are at a premium these days, and he sleeps deeply enough that the floor doesn’t feel much worse than a bunk.

Raven doesn’t make a reappearance until the following afternoon. Wick’s alone, trying to bring a cracked solar panel back from the dead, but he looks up at the sound of her uneven footsteps. She’s got dark circles under her eyes and two little worry lines between her eyebrows and before he has time to push the thought away he wonders how she looks so damn pretty even when she’s clearly exhausted.

She collapses on a rickety stool across from him, props her elbows on the workbench and pokes at a loose wire protruding from the panel. “Isn’t this a little beneath you?” she asks, but she can’t even muster up a teasing tone so the words come out flat.”

No one else to do it,” he replies lightly. “Up to me to be a jack of all trades.” He glances up at her, and nothing. There’s something weighing on her mind, that much is obvious, but he might have to ease her into talking about it.

”Raven,” he says, to pull her attention away from the wire. “I totally set you up for that one.”

She says nothing, just raises an eyebrow.

”Master of none?” he prompts, voice laced with honest disbelief.

Her mouth twitches the tiniest bit. Success.

He sets his pliers down and leans on his elbows, mirroring her posture and meeting her eyes. “Hey,” he says, as softly as he dares. “What’s up?”

“Clarke’s fine,” she begins, using that guarded tone she has when she’s putting up a mighty effort to mask her emotions. “I saw her this morning.”

Wick wants to ask if she slept at all, but he bites his tongue. Raven is prickly when anyone dares to fuss over her.

”Everything’s changed now. We were wrong; the grounders don’t have them. They’re in Mount Weather; there are people living there, have been for the last hundred years. Holdovers from the U.S. government, Clarke says. They have this huge underground fortress, technology, lots of food. They grabbed the survivors from the dropship, 48 of them including Clarke.”

Raven’s voice catches a little over the low number, and Wick tries not to flinch. Less than half of them survived then, these kids he essentially owes his life to, him and every other person at Camp Jaha.

”Clarke wanted to leave and they wouldn’t let her. They told the kids no one survived the Ark landing. Anyway, long story short, she escaped by herself to get help.” She swallows hard. “And half the search party Abby sent out looking for her came back this morning.”

Wick finishes the thought so she doesn’t have to. “Finn’s not with them.” It’s not a question.

She presses her lips together and shakes her head. “He’s still out there looking for her.”

If Collins’ apparent obsession with the Griffin girl bothers her, she shows no sign of it. “Somebody’s gotta go after him,” Wick says with resignation, wondering if she came to ask him if he’d be on the search team. It doesn’t make sense—he has zero experience shooting a gun and hardly any more than that trekking around in the woods—but there’s something cagey in her expression that makes him think she came here to ask a favor. Raven doesn’t ask for favors. It’s going to take her forever to spit it out if he doesn’t nudge her along.

Before he has a chance to do that very thing, she shakes her head again. “Abby won’t allow it. Says the guards are spread too thin, and she won’t let Clarke go either.”

Now everything snaps into place. Wick pushes off his elbows, rubbing the back of his neck and chuckling a little. “Okay, Reyes, spit it out. What do you need me to do?”

She sits up straighter, eyeing him up and down warily. “I didn’t ask for help.”

Wick raises an eyebrow. “It was implied.”

Raven opens her mouth to reply and then snaps it shut again, chewing on her lip for a second in a very uncharacteristic show of hesitation. She studies his face for a few long seconds, looking for something there, and he waits patiently for her to find it.

Her expression shifts when she does, back to her usual steely determination, and she leans forward on the workbench again and lowers her voice. “Clarke’s taking the Blakes with her. I said I’d get them guns and switch the fence off long enough for them to get out.”

Wick gives a low whistle. “That’s a pretty modest promise. Next time maybe set the bar a little higher.”

She bristles at his tone. “Look, I’m not asking for your help. I trust you not to tell anyone, and all I need you to do is make yourself scarce when I shut down the fence’s power supply for a few seconds.”

Wick scoffs at that. “Come on, Reyes, that’s not a one-man job. Even you can’t be in two places at once.”

That earns him a dark scowl. “I’ll make it work.” She leverages herself off the stool and heads for the door. “I’ll be back in half an hour,” she throws over her shoulder. “Make sure you’re not here.”

“Raven,” he says, even though he knows that won’t stop her. It’s deja-vu—the radio beacon argument all over again. He sidesteps the workbench and catches up to her in a few long strides. “Raven, hold up.” He snags her arm, but she’s already stopped and turned to him, so he lets go.

She’s looking up at him expectantly, but when he’s this close to her the height difference always flabbergasts him. She’s so strong, so fierce, so larger-than-life that he always forgets it until he’s standing right next to her. Who’s he kidding, he nearly forgets it even then, because physical proximity to Raven does something funny to his body, like she’s a planet and he’s a satellite pulled inexorably into her orbit. No going back from there, but he stopped trying a long time ago.

”I’m in,” he says simply, lips twitching at the irony. If only she knew how deep.

She blinks once, giving him that you’re an idiot look. “What?”

“Your plan already involves me turning a blind eye. If I’m gonna break the law, I’d rather do it actively.” He spreads his arms wide. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

She glances over her shoulder as if someone’s listening in, then steps even closer to him. “Punishment for a felony is shocklashing.”

She looks so concerned it’s almost humorous. She’ll put herself in danger without hesitation, but anyone else tries to do it and she balks. He smirks. “Still better than floating.”

She huffs out a laugh, shaking her head and eyeing him like she’s questioning his sanity.

”Come on, Reyes, you gonna stand here trying to talk me out of it, or are we gonna do this thing?”

She holds her hands up in surrender, like she’s the one doing him a favor. “Fine. If I radio you within the hour, can you shut the fence down long enough for them to slip out?”

“You got it,” he says, turning to grab a pair of walkies off his workbench and tossing one at her.

She tucks it in her leg brace, eyeing him for a second like she thinks he’s going to change his mind. “Great. Well I’d love to chat, but I’ve got an armory to raid.”

She flashes that arrogant grin he’s been sorely missing, and it’s so distracting it takes him an extra second to process her words. “Wait, what?” he blurts out, following her towards the door again. “Tell me you’ve got a better plan than that.”

Raven laughs, gives her ponytail a casual flip. “Please, Wick. Like I’m dumb enough to walk in there myself. I know a guy.” She shrugs a shoulder. “The less you know, the better.”

His worry must show on his face, because she slugs him in the arm. “Relax. I can trust him. He’s my friend, Finn’s friend. You just worry about your job.”

Wick backs away, hands in the air, waving his walkie ostentatiously. “Glued to my ear, Reyes.”

Once she’s gone, he goes back to work on his busted solar panel, mostly to distract himself, fingers tapping a nervous rhythm against the table while he tries not to think of Raven risking her ass and thanks his lucky stars Sinclair’s busy with the council so he doesn’t need to add lying to his mentor to the day’s schedule.

Wick figures the gun heist goes off without a hitch, because less than thirty minutes later the walkie crackles to life next to his hand, and her voice comes across it, low and confident. “Shut ‘er down, Wick.”

It’s so easy it’s almost laughable, just a matter of making sure no one sees him at the circuit board, one flip of a switch and it’s down. Forty-seven seconds later, her voice cuts across the silence again.

”They’re clear.”

“Roger that,” Wick says, then flips the switch back on, and no one’s the wiser, for now. Most the guards wouldn’t know a live wire from a dead one unless it zapped them across the face.

He manages to frankenstein together a working solar panel using spare parts and some elbow grease (which he does know something about, thank you very much) and he exits Engineering before Raven returns, determined to get it reinstalled in its proper place half a dozen meters up the side of Alpha station before dinner.

Hours later, he’s seated in the mess hall with a couple of buddies, poking glumly at his protein ration, wondering what the hell they’re doing on the ground if they can’t even eat some real meat finally. He tunes out the inane chatter around him as a few more people join them at the table, complaining about being assigned latrine digging duty for the day as if it’s the worst thing that could possibly happen to them. The sound of Raven’s name snaps him back to attention.

"What?” he says sharply.

”I asked,” one of the guys—Wick thinks his name is Tait—repeats patiently, “if you heard about Reyes.”

“What about her?” Wick asks warily.

”She helped the princess and those Blake kids leave camp. Chancellor confronted her about it at the bar, right in front of everyone.”

Wick lurches to his feet before he even realizes what he’s doing. “Is she in lockup?”

“No, the chancellor slapped her and took off. Reyes got off easy—guess they’re not handing out punishments for felonies anymore.”

Wick feels his face darken. “Say that again and I’ll make sure you’re on latrine duty for a month.” He leans forward and yanks Tait’s tray off the table before he has a chance to touch it, heading straight for the door with it.

”Hey, that’s my dinner, asshole!” Tait shouts, but Wick ignores him.

Raven’s still sitting at a table near the bar, hands clasped around a cup of moonshine and staring off into the middle distance. Everyone’s going about their business around her, but Wick can see the way they’re skirting her like she has a contagious disease.

He plops the dinner tray in front of her and takes a seat across the table. “It’s no three-headed fish, but it sure tastes like home.” He leans back in his chair, tips it backwards onto two legs. “Really takes you back. Stale air, piss water. The glory days.”

Raven says nothing, just tightens her fingers around her cup. Wick studies the familiar lines of her face, the red mark on her cheek even the darkness can’t quite hide, the way she’s sort of shrunk into herself. She doesn’t even tell him to leave her alone, and that’s how he knows she’s really hurting.

”So we’re felons now?” he asks conversationally.

Raven’s mouth tightens. “No, just me.”

“Come on, Reyes. I’m a grown man. Don’t cover for me.”

She glances up at him. “I knew she’d figure it out. Just didn’t know how she’d react.”

He drops his chair back to the ground and holds her gaze, all trace of humor gone from his voice. “It was a shitty thing to do.”

Raven smiles faintly. “She thinks I did a shitty thing.”

Wick has no answer for that, because the situation is just shitty all around.

They sit in silence for a few minutes. Raven takes a drink from her cup, sets it down, taps her fingers against it, rubs her cheek distractedly. When she speaks again, her voice is hoarse, a false note of dismissiveness in it. “Could’ve been worse, right? Better than a shocklashing.”

Wick tips his head in acknowledgment and lets the subject drop. Maybe she’ll discuss it with someone else. Or bury it deep inside where she can tell herself it hurts less. Whatever the case, she’ll handle it in her own way.

She sits forward in her chair suddenly, elbows propped on the table. “Hey, I’m sorry, Wick.”

He stares at her in confusion. “For what?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Sinclair’s going to hear about it. He’ll know I had help.”

Wick fidgets uncomfortably in his chair. He’s already steeled himself for this. It’s not like he’s never broken the law before—little things here and there that he never got caught for. But the fence is all Sinclair—his boss, his friend, his mentor, the first person who gave him a real chance—and this feels like a betrayal of all that. He doesn’t regret doing it, but still. It stings. “Hey, it’s not like he can fire me. My skills are at a premium right now.”

For once, she doesn’t have anything scathing to say about that, and they regard each other silently across the table, understanding passing between them.

Wick heaves a dramatic sigh. “The ground sucks, Reyes.”

She snorts softly. “Tell me about it.”

“Sucks less than the Ark though.”

Raven throws her hands up. “Whoa there, Pollyanna. I can’t handle your optimism right now.”

Wick rolls his eyes and sits back in his chair.

”Wick,” she says suddenly, staring into her cup instead of at him. “Why’d you do it?”

“Gonna need a little clarification. I do a lot of things.” He slaps a shit-eating grin onto his face.

She gives him a withering look. “Why’d you help us?”

He raises his eyebrows and holds out a hand for her cup. She rolls her eyes and passes it over without comment. He tips it back, bracing himself for the burn of moonshine and spluttering a little when there’s nothing but the cool wash of water over his tongue. “What’s this?” he asks indignantly, holding the cup out.

”It’s called dihydrogen monoxide,” she says dryly. “You should try it sometime.”

“Not my fault that the only palatable liquid on the Ark was moonshine,” he grouses, downing the rest of the water. He doesn’t think he’ll ever stop appreciating how fresh and clean water is on the ground, how he can drink as much of it as he wants.

”You didn’t answer my question,” she prompts, watching him curiously.

Wick sets the empty cup down and slouches back in the chair. “Tell you what, Reyes. I’ll answer if you eat that.” He jerks his chin towards the protein ration sitting untouched on the tray in front of her. She hardly slept the night before, and he’s guessing she hasn’t eaten all day. She’s got no one making sure she takes care of herself—not that she’d even listen to them—and she’s running herself ragged. He’s gotta pick his battles, but he thinks he’s won this one.

Her lips twitch. “Fine.”

His voice turns serious when he answers, at odds with his casual posture. “The way I see it, none of us would be alive and on the ground if it weren’t for those kids. You all saved our lives. It’d be a pretty crappy way to repay that by cutting even a single one of them loose in the woods.”

Raven’s pinned him with the full intensity of her gaze, and he tries not to fidget in his seat, because it’s the damn truth, but it’s not the entire truth. “And,” he adds softly, “you’re my friend, and friends help each other out when they need it. Even when the friend is probably the most stubborn person on the planet, and refuses to actually ask for help in the customary human manner, using words like please and—”

”Shut up, Wick,” she says, fighting an actual smile and half-losing the battle.

And that’s all it takes—that quick flash of teeth and the little crinkles at the corners of her red-rimmed eyes—and his heart does that strange squeezing thing again. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

”Damn it,” he mutters under his breath.

”What?” she asks, tiny smile still hovering at the corner of her mouth.

OCTAVIA.

"Reyes!" Wick greets her with a breathless grin. He’s flanked by an engineer and a mechanic, who pause a few feet away. (They’re a little afraid of Octavia, which Wick finds endlessly hilarious.)

"Wick," she replies. "Enjoying the party?"

According to Sinclair, it’s New Year’s Eve. Three days ago, a joint attack with the Grounders succeeded in crippling Mount Weather. So naturally, everyone is incredibly drunk.

"You know me," Wick says.

"Yes, I do." She wants to mock him, she really does, but she’s already had enough of Monty’s brew that she’s not sure brain is up to the task.

"Wick, let’s go," the mechanic says, gesturing to a poorly concealed homemade firework beneath his jacket.

Wick hesitates, but Raven waves him off. “Go on. Just don’t blow your hand off, okay?” He gives her a clumsy salute and follows his companions.

Raven takes a deep swig of Monty’s brew, ignoring the pointed way Octavia is staring at her. When Octavia doesn’t stop staring, Raven slams her mug on the table. “What?”

“‘Enjoying the party?’” Octavia repeats. “What’s happening there?”

"Oh, god. Nothing, okay? He’s like — Wick is just this idiot engineer, but he helped me after I was shot. We’re friends. It’s nothing, okay?”

"Sure," Octavia says, and for a girl who spent her first sixteen years in a hole in the floor, she’s really got sarcasm down.

ABBY

 Wick wakes with a start –

– and immediately regrets it. He’s been in fist fights, he’s fallen to Earth in a century-old scrap heap, and he’s been electrocuted by his own inventions more times than he’d like to admit.

But he’s never felt anything like this. Closing his eyes doesn’t help much – there’s sunlight pouring in from somewhere, and now, he has the beginnings of a migraine – and he groans. “Hey,” a voice above him says. Its owner blocks the sunlight, so Wick opens his eyes cautiously. 

"Dr. Griffin," he greets. "Um – what am I –"

"Well," Abby says, leaning over him to peel back the bandaging on his shoulder, "you were shot." Whatever she sees, she seems satisfied, because she redoes the bandage. Wick, for his part, feels less pleased. They’re still short on any pain meds. "The bullet nearly did its job, too. You were in surgery for hours."

Again, Wick rode to Earth in a scrap heap, so until now, he thought he’d understood almost dying. Turns out, he hadn’t. It must show on his face, but Abby smiles, squeezing his uninjured shoulder gently. “Thanks,” he finally manages.

 "Couldn’t let you die, anyway," she tells him. "Jackson had to drag Raven out of here four times."

"Raven Reyes?” Wick says. He can see it: Raven yelling, Jackson struggling to haul her out. He’d laugh, but he’s sure it’ll make his shoulder feel worse.

 Abby laughs. “Of course. You’re lucky. She really cares about you.”

He can’t help it – he laughs.

 CLARKE

"Thanks for this," Clarke says, pulling up a stool next to Wick’s workbench. She hands him her watch – her father’s watch, Wick remembers. "I’d ask Raven, but…"

Wick nods. These days, the tension over Finn’s death has eased, but he isn’t sure Clarke and Raven’s relationship will ever fully heal. “No problem,” he assures Clarke. “Reyes would probably say you should’ve gone to another mechanic instead of an engineer, but  don’t worry – I’ve got this.” 

Clarke smiles, a little weak, and asks, “How is she, really? We don’t talk much.” 

"Well, you know Reyes: always an open book." He shrugs. "Some days are worse than others. But she’s strong –" Incredible, he doesn’t say – “so she’ll get there.”

Clarke hops off the stool and moves it back to Raven’s bench. “Just let me know when you’re done with it, okay?”

"Sure," Wick agrees.

At the door, Clarke pauses. “It’s good that she has you.” Her smile is broader now, more believable. “You two are good together.”

"What?" Wick says to an empty room.

SINCLAIR

She’s half-asleep at her work bench when Sinclair pushes a mug of Monty’s moonshine across the table to her. “Mount Weather just sent a delegate to negotiate a ceasefire,” he says, turning to hand a mug to Wick. “Drink up.”

Wick grins. “Don’t have to tell me twice.”

Raven takes a swig of the moonshine, then says, “What now?”

"Now, Kane arranges a meeting between the delegate, our leaders, and the Grounders, and we celebrate." He grins, and she’s never seen him so animated before. It’s unsettling. "Take the night off. It’s beautiful out tonight. You two could slip through that piece of the fence you’ve disabled, take a walk."

Raven glances at Wick. He shrugs, as if to say, “of course he knows about the fence.”

"I don’t know," Raven says. "What if the negotiations fail? We need to finish repairing these radios."

"Not tonight. Tonight, I’m going to confiscate a jug of that moonshine and spend more than a few hours with my wife. And you two are going to take a break." He takes the radio from Raven’s hands and puts it on the shelf behind them. "Take that walk. If you can’t enjoy this win, just enjoy each other."

Speechless, Raven watches him leave. “What?” she says to the empty space where he stood.

Wick just chuckles. “Well, I guess we have our orders.”

"Does he thinks we’re – together?” Raven says, tossing tools into her toolbox. She pushes stripped screws off the table. She’s not avoiding looking at him, not really. Her work area is just a mess. “Like we’re in love or something.” She laughs, cringing at how fake it sounds.

"Come on, Reyes," Wick says, walking around his workbench to hers. "We’re a little in love."

"Hang on, Reyes. Who says I welded myself in by accident? It was a nice supply closet, end of a double shift. I just wanted a little peace and quiet so I could take a nap.”

Raven laughs and rolls her eyes. “Creating more work for the rest of us, as usual.”

He chuckles, and they walk in silence for a while, at her pace, which is so slow she wants to scream in frustration. It’s not helped by the fact that their route lies through the forest and up the incline of a hill. When she’s not dragging her leg through the underbrush or hoisting it over fallen logs, she’s taking a breather, trying not to pant from the unfamiliar exertion. He doesn’t say a word about it, just follows her lead. Bellamy and Clarke trail behind them, guns in hand, protective as always. There’s tentative peace with the nearby Grounder tribes, but there are worse things in the woods than Grounders.

Her bad foot catches on a root and she teeters momentarily, trying to regain her balance. Wick’s hand goes for her elbow and she smacks it away, leaning hard on her cane to counteract the momentum.

"I’m fine," she snaps.

He holds his hands up in surrender. “Okay.”

She can feel Clarke and Bellamy’s concerned looks boring into her back, and she’s glad they’re behind her so she doesn’t have to see them as well. She knows they care about her—she appreciates that—but she can’t stand pity. And these days it feels like she sees pity everywhere, even where it doesn’t exist.

She moves forward again, one slow step at a time, and tries not to pant when she asks, “How much farther?”

Wick squints up the hill. “Half a mile maybe?”

Raven snorts. “Maybe? You’ve made this trek half a dozen times. You should know.”

"Well, excuse me for not acing Earth Skills like some know-it-alls I could mention."

Raven heaves an exasperated sigh. “You’ve been working on this radio tower for weeks. I still don’t understand why you need my help with it all of a sudden.”

Wick claps a hand to his chest, an exaggerated expression of shock on his face. “What was that, Reyes? Do my ears deceive me, or—”

"Yeah, you heard me," she grumbles.

He throws out an arm, declaring to the forest at large, “At long last, she admits one of my designs needs no improvements.”

Raven sneaks a glance over her shoulder. Clarke has a tiny smile on her lips, but Bellamy frowns at Wick and orders, “Keep it down.”

Wick gives him a short nod, turning to face forward again and muttering, “Buzzkill.”

"Go easy on him," Raven protests, quietly enough that Bellamy won’t hear her. "You don’t know what he’s been through, trying to keep everyone alive. Can’t all be like you."

"Oh yeah? How’s that?"

Raven’s mouth opens and closes as she tries to find words to explain how Wick is. “Happy,” she says at last, although she’s not quite satisfied with the word.

He snorts, wipes a hand across his mouth. “Life’s been pretty sucky in general for all of us. Might as well find the humor in it.”

Raven doesn’t say anything, because this is what she likes about Wick. He tells it like it is—no pretenses, no lies. He acknowledges the darkness, but he doesn’t let it dim his light. It’s comforting to be around him. She likes being around him.

She’d eat his hideous leg brace before admitting it, though.

"So the tower…you’ve got a better signal range up here? Six stations unaccounted for still, and they could be miles away, on the other side of the mountains, systems down." She tries not to think of all the dead already found at the Factory station site, burning up in the atmosphere on Arrow station. She wants to believe that there are other Ark survivors out there, but it’s a slimmer hope the more time passes.

"Worth a try, anyway," Wick says grimly, like he was privy to her morbid thoughts. "Higher ground is better. I need you to walk me through that thing you do to prevent the mountain men from jamming the signal. Step by step."

"Step by step, huh?" Raven grins. "What, they don’t teach you how to follow more than one instruction at a time in engineering?"

"Maybe because our instructions are far more intricate than yours."

"Get me out on a zero-g repair and I’ll show you intricate.”

"You caught me, Reyes," Wick says, with a lopsided grin. "I just had to find an excuse to get you out here on a double date."

Raven raises an eyebrow. “A what?” she asks, injecting a challenging note into her tone.

He gives her an exaggeratedly scandalized expression. “Oh come on. You know, back in the good old days, two couples would go out together, get a milkshake or something.”

Raven gives him a generous amount of side-eye. “Cool your jets, Wick. We’re missing a few things. Two couples. And the milkshakes. We’re literally missing everything that makes up a double date.”

He shoots a glance over his shoulder, then leans closer to her, asking in a low tone, “You sure about that?”

Raven glances back too. Clarke and Bellamy are still walking side by side, guns in their hands, exchanging quiet words every once in a while. They’re comrades-in-arms, co-leaders, friends. All of those things are a small miracle in themselves, considering where they started from. But what Wick is suggesting…she hasn’t even considered it. Have they? Somehow she doesn’t think so.

She turns back to Wick, leaning close to him to whisper, “Don’t let them hear you say that.”

"Why, think Bellamy’d give me ten shocklashes for it?"

Raven laughs, shakes her head. “I’d put my money on Clarke.”

"What about you?" He waggles an eyebrow.

"I’ll settle for this," she says, and leans away so she can smack him in the arm with her cane.

He rubs his arm, mouthing a theatrical “Ouch.”

"There’s more where that came from," she warns, "if you speak the words double date again.”

When they reach the top of the hill, the view momentarily takes Raven’s breath away. It’s mostly clear of trees, so she has a line of sight to the mountain range, meadows interrupting the endless forest, streams winding their silver-blue way through the valleys, Alpha station in the distance. She hasn’t seen anything quite like it on Earth yet. Her time with the hundred was spent primarily in the dense woods, and she hasn’t left Camp Jaha once until now. They’re on a mission, but she can’t help taking a few precious minutes to herself to appreciate the beauty.

What is it all for, if not for this?

She turns to look towards the east, and instead sees Wick, who’s looking not at the beauty of nature but at her. He glances away, but not before she catches the soft look in his eyes, the half-smile on his face. She blinks a couple of times, startled. Has he always looked at her like that?

She turns to point her cane at his radio tower instead. It’s about five meters tall, cobbled together with a lot of scrap metal, but it looks functional. “That it?”

"No, it’s that tree over there," Wick replies, voice dripping with sarcasm.

Well, she deserved that. This hill’s been completely reclaimed by nature—possibly never marked by civilization—and the tower stands out as much as their dropship ever did in the woods. Still, she mutters the obligatory, “What a piece of crap,” and starts toward it.

Wick slides his pack off his shoulders and follows her. “Why, thank you,” he calls cheerfully after her.

Clarke follows too, stands by Raven at the foot of the tower as they both look up at it. “Hey,” she says, “Bellamy and I are going to patrol the perimeter of the woods. You okay here?”

Raven nods and pats the handgun sitting snugly in its thigh holster on her good leg. It’s a miracle the four of them were allowed to leave Camp Jaha without a guard escort, and an even bigger miracle that the rules regulating firearms usage have been relaxed a little. But Clarke is a miracle worker, and a month on the ground has finally made the Ark residents see that on Earth, everyone has to be a soldier.

They settle down to work—Wick climbs the tower while Raven sits below and shouts up instructions to him, one by one as he’d asked. It takes the better part of an hour, and she forces him to make several equipment adjustments that he grouses irritably about, but in the end, she’s satisfied that they’ve set up a far-reaching signal that the mountain men won’t be able to block, for the time being anyway.

Wick climbs down, brushing his hands off on his pants as they study their handiwork with satisfaction.

“Looks pretty good,” he says, a trace of genuine pride in his voice.

“Well…I’m not ashamed to say I worked on it, at least,” Raven allows.

Wick groans. “Reyes, you’re killing me! Can you just for once admit—”

“Nope.” She turns to make her way over to Clarke, who’s sitting on a patch of grass working on a map. She’s been working on it for weeks, adding in bits and pieces of the terrain she covers. It’s her pet project, trying to reconcile the differences between the hundred-year-old maps they own and the way the land looks now, so they can know as much about their new home as possible. Bellamy’s pacing at a distance, keeping a watchful eye on everyone.

“Should we start back?” Raven asks Clarke, who looks up at her.

“Are you rested enough?”

If she’s honest with herself, her muscles are still aching in protest. No one else needs to know that. “Yeah, I’m good to go.”

Wick appears at her side, dropping his pack to the ground and unzipping it. “Well, that’s too bad, because we’re going to take a load off and eat.”

Clarke looks hesitant, eyes shifting between the two of them.

Bellamy walks up, gun slung over his shoulder now. “Is it done? What’s the hold-up?”

Raven’s not about to be the one to slow them all down. She’s determined not to be a liability. “Nothing, let’s go.” She takes a few steps forward, keeping the wince off her face, but these three people know her well enough to see right past that. Damn them.

“Come on, Blake,” Wick says good-naturedly. “Half an hour won’t be the end of the world.” He yanks a ration pack out and tosses it at Bellamy, who catches it one-handed.

He looks down at it, then up at Wick, then Raven, and finally Clarke, where his eyes linger. She gives a tiny, nearly imperceptible nod. “Yeah, okay,” he concedes, and sits down next to her.

Raven lets out a silent breath, grateful to all of them for forcing her to rest while making it seem like it isn’t about her at all. She sits down where she’s standing, and Wick brings her a ration pack and a bottle of water. She eats and drinks with abandon, exhaustion finally catching up to her, sneaking glances at the beautiful landscape stretched out in front of them every once in a while. It seems wrong, somehow, to stare at it too much when some of their people might be out there in it, dying.

Wick leans in, murmurs, “You can look at it for more than five seconds, you know.”

“Can I?” she asks quietly, and it’s not really a question. She’d thought there could be nothing more beautiful than Earth from space, but it turns out nothing compares to sitting in the midst of it. Earth is beautiful and deadly, and if she stops to look at its loveliness too much, she might forget about the deadly part.

“Yes,” he says, voice gone soft and serious. She glances up at him, and he’s giving her that look again, like she’s what he climbed all this way to look at. Not the mountains, not the rivers, not the endless green, her, and no one’s really looked at her like that before and she doesn’t know what to do with it.

She doesn’t have to, though, because he raises his bottle in a toast like it has moonshine in it instead of water. “To a job well done.”

She clinks her bottle against his, takes a drink, then adds, “Half well done. I wasn’t here for all of it.”

He makes a sound of disbelief and shakes his head, but Raven can see him smiling despite himself. It’s her turn to study him now, how different he looks in the sun than he did on the Ark, hair lighter and eyes less brown and more green than she’d thought. It’s a strange sensation, like she’s finally seeing him for how he truly looks, and it strikes her with sudden clarity that he didn’t drag her up here to work on the radio tower, not really. She could’ve written down the instructions, sent them along with him. He dragged her up here because she needed to be here, to get out of Camp Jaha, to breathe freely, to feel like herself again. To carry herself here, step by painful step.

She wants to thank him, but she doesn’t have the words. “It’s beautiful,” she says instead, and she could be talking about any number of things.

Wick nods towards Bellamy and Clarke, who are now both bent over the map, eyes intently following the path of Clarke’s pencil. Clarke sits back with a satisfied smile, studying her handiwork, and Bellamy studies her, out of the corner of his eyes like he thinks no one’s looking. And suddenly, Raven sees a flicker of something she’s never noticed before, and maybe Wick’s not totally wrong.

“What do you know?” he says under his breath. “Looks like we’re on a double date after all.”

Raven wakes to whispers. A few feet from her bed, Finn and Abby stand in a half-circle with a guard she doesn’t recognize. Someone has dimmed the lights in medical, throwing a mess of shadows around them. Finn’s shoulders are tense, and the guard keeps glancing over his shoulder, but it’s Abby’s face that tells the story. In this light, she looks just like Clarke. Battle ready.

"You’re leaving," Raven says to Finn, when he returns to her side.

"I’m going to find our people, Raven," he whispers, smoothing her hair. The gesture is familiar, but the comfort of it is a lie. Her stomach clenches.

"You’re going to find Clarke."

He doesn’t deny it. “I’m sorry,” he says.

She turns her head, leans away from his touch. “Don’t be.”

Raven remembers starvation, the feeling of an empty gut.

The first time Finn fed her, Raven’s mother looked so relieved when she found out. So unburdened.

So it isn’t Finn she’s afraid to lose, really, but someone. The problem is, Finn has always been her someone. Her only someone.

He’s the first person to choose her, and in the end, what she fears is that he’ll be the last.

Sometimes, Abby sits with her. Raven doesn’t ask about the scars just visible under the hemline of her shirt. Abby returns the favor by keeping questions about Raven’s progress medical.

Mostly, they talk about Clarke. Raven hasn’t spent much time with her, but she knows she’s strong, stubborn like her mother, and so she gives her all her stories. She tells Abby all the headstrong, reckless things Clarke Griffin has done and survived, and Raven watches her hope grow.

"Thank you," Abby says every time, brushing hair from Raven’s eyes or squeezing her hand. 

It’s this glimpse of motherly affection that haunts her.

A week or so passes. Abby starts to wear the Chancellor pin, squares her shoulders, and raises hell. To be honest, Raven’s a little proud.

But it’s lonelier.

Then one afternoon, she’s taking a radio apart – busy work, really – when Mecha Station comes to her. It’s a motley collection of mechanics and engineers, mostly those without families. It’s a little awkward, given the unspoken – and okay, sometimes spoken – rivalry between the two fields, but it’s good.

A couple of the mechanics start trying to gauge her height, promising a pair of crutches. 

One of the engineers, Wick, just laughs. “Crutches? We can do better than that.”

She rolls her eyes, joins in the mechanics’ debate about the best pieces to use for the crutches, and tries not to grin at the engineers crowding around Wick with their ideas.

The mechanics deliver on their promise: a few days later, she’s fitted with a pair of crutches, and she starts hobbling around Camp Jaha.

It’s slow at first, and Abby doesn’t like her wandering too far from medical, but just moving on her own feels so good.

Wick likes to trail her, commenting on her speed or the slight height difference in the crutches or the way she grimaces when her arms get tired. 

"All you have to do is ask," he says one evening. At Abby’s insistence, she’s returned to medical. Tomorrow, she’ll find a place with the other Mecha Station leftovers, but tonight, she’s having her first decent meal in weeks. "We have some great designs."

"I’ve seen your designs before, Wick. I think I’ll stuck to the crutches."

He laughs, but takes a seat on a bed near hers. “You are coming back to work, right? Before Finn took off, he told us a few stories about the things you’ve done here.”

"Can’t just sit here feeling miserable, can I?"

"No," he agrees. "You can’t."

"This is a mess, Wick. None of this makes any sense." They’re sitting at his workstation, going over designs for a transmitter.

"What? It makes perfect sense. Look." He turns the tablet in her hands so that it’s sideway. "This piece fits here, and then–"

"Have you ever built anything? Because this really suggests that you haven’t.”

"Maybe you just lack vision, Reyes."

"No, I don’t think that’s it."

But she starts pulling the pieces in his design from the shelves, laying them out according to his schematics.

They work in silence, and when she hits a wall, he helps her build. In the end, he’s mostly right – the design works – and he proves surprisingly adept at the mechanical part of his job. “Look at you,” she says, watching him fit two pieces together, “you could almost be useful.”

He grins.

The radios don’t work. She’s tried to mimic the design she used at the dropship, but for some reason, the radios won’t communicate with each other.

Instead, they just emit a high-pitched beep, mocking her. 

She throws one across the room, relishing the sound of it smashing against the ground and the silence as both radios go quiet.

"Well," Wick says from behind her. "I don’t think that solved it.”

"Shut up."

"Why don’t you take a break? Eat something?"

Raven sighs. “If you don’t have any ideas, just leave.”

"You know, Reyes, you don’t have to be the best at everything. You can ask for help."

At dinner, she finds him at one of the smaller fires, eating alone. Standing behind him, she notes that he’s watching Finn with Clarke.

"Is this why you’re unhappy these days?" he asks.

"I’m always unhappy, Wick," Raven tells him, taking the seat next to him.

"That’s not true. You’re happy when we – when you’re working."

"Yeah," she says, "but it’s all I have. It’s always been something I could be better at. People noticed me." She glances at Finn. "For a while, I had him, too. He noticed. But now – now, it’s just work."

"So what you’re saying," Wick says, turning his body towards hers and away from Clarke and Finn, "is that I should stick around. Make sure you have plenty of work."

"Something like that," Raven agrees, rolling her eyes.

"Okay, I will." He turns back toward the fire. The sun is disappearing behind Alpha Station. "Idiot," he says, nodding toward Finn.

"No," Raven says, "That’s the thing. Clarke isn’t – she’s incredible. Like her mom."

"Maybe, but you are, too." He shrugs. "Idiot."

She grins.

Later, after the fires have burned out, they walk back to their tents together. They’re greeted by mechanics and engineers as they go, people playing games or settling in for the night. It’s strange, this feeling of fitting into something again. But it’s good. Better than Finn, because with this group – her people – Raven’s heart is finding bigger ways to love.

"Reyes," Wick says, as he’s about to step into his tent.

"Yeah?"