#roctavia

Never-Contented Things!

Raven/Octavia

7k

Rated T

Summary: After her accident, Raven moves out to a small town on the edge of the forest, and begins working in a coffee shop, which is often patronized by queer folk.

One evening, one of them follows her home.

A rejected idea for @chopped100challenge 1.0 Round 1 (Fluff + mythical creatures + coffee shop au + character a teaches character b to do something, involving touch + kissing in the rain)

READ ON AO3.

Tag list below the cut.

summary: The Conclave is soon, and there are things unsaid between Roan and Octavia.

pairing: Roan x Octavia

words: 681

read on AO3

Roan is a warrior, and so is she, and they’re fighting a battle only one can win.

There’s never been a better time – or any time, at all.

He finds her preparing, wielding her sword at the blacksmith’s like she’s one with it. It seems almost like a toy in her hands, the way it looks more like an arm extension than a weapon, and she knows she’ll go far in the battle. He’s a strategist, but so is she, and there are tactical decisions that need to be made before they can reach strategy.

What he is about to do is equal parts a tactic, a strategy, and straight-up dumb.

He closes the distance between them swiftly enough she didn’t have time to lunge at him. Now, only a foot from her, he can see the dark brown in her eyes, the arch of her brows, the curve of her upper lip.

‘We need to talk.’

She huffs. ‘That’s never a good thing.’

rated: m chapter 1/? roan x octavia, canon divergence as of 4.10

okay but like, what if roan didn’t die tho?

The rain has stopped when Octavia leaves the warehouse. She is moving slowly, favouring aching muscles and what feels like a full body bruise. There’s no one to posture for yet. The handful of tokens ring dully together when she walks, metal and bone and glass bouncing discordantly off each other. The square is quiet as she crosses it, the little fountain lapping softly at the stone edges. The water is cloudy now, faintly pink and her stomach churns. The silence gets to her, makes her own breathing seem loud in her ears.

Or maybe she’s just breathing that heavily. 

Her ribs ache with each breath, bruised, maybe broken. The heavy scrape of a boot on the flagstone is so startling Octavia has the sword before her, weight dropped before she even realises she’s moving. Her knees bend, drop her center of gravity low and the toe of her back foot scrapes back so she’s almost crouching. Luna’s blood is sticky on her hand where it dripped back off her blade. She should be alone on the field. Unless Echo never left, or wasn’t the only one who thought to improve the odds for their clan.

Raven/Octavia, Modern AU, ~500 words

*

On her way back from the gym, Raven stops by the coffee place with the good smoothies, thinking perhaps she'll pick up a muffin, too, if they have anything good. Her hair's still a little wet from her post-workout shower. It hangs loose over her shoulders, and she can feel her t-shirt, something old and dingy from the back of her closet, barely any nicer than her workout clothes, dampening against her back. Her gym bag, uncomfortably heavy, is starting to weigh down her shoulder. But she's riding a high of endorphins, the decline of a hard-earned burn through her arms and stomach and legs, and it's a bright Saturday morning and she feels buoyant. It is a buoyant sort of day.

The bell above the door rings as she steps inside.

She slips in at the end of the line to the register, which is longer than she would have liked, and moving slowly enough to allow her to ogle the pastries and deserts beneath the display case glass. Not just muffins, but scones, and breads, and whole fruit pies, various tempting foods she should not even consider and yet—

"Tart?"

She looks up, her eyes narrowing.

What did you call me, bitch?

A girl is standing on the other side of the display, behind the counter, staring at her. Her hair is longer than Raven's and falls straight to either side of her face, and a hint of a tattoo peaks out from the edge of her t-shirt sleeve. She’s smiling a bright and innocent smile, which does not hide at all the sly and knowing look about her eyes.

Raven hikes her bag higher up on her shoulder, and stares back.

"Are you interested in the tart?" the girl asks, pointing to a small tray of little, square pastry deserts, topped with fruit. "They're strawberry."

"Oh."

The girl smiles and sticks her hands in her apron pockets. She looks pleased, more than embarrassed. Octavia, her nametag says, and oddly, it fits.

Raven's almost to the head of the line now, and she has no idea what flavors of muffins are out today, if they have the java chip ones she likes so much, because all she can think about it is Octavia's bright voice saying, "Tart?" and the sharp, deep red of the strawberries, and how when—if—she bites into them, she will be thinking of Octavia, associating taste and sweet, imagined taste.

"Sure," she says, and pulls out her wallet from the pocket of her jeans. “I’ll take one.”

"Full disclosure," Octavia says, as she hands Raven a brown paper bag, and her smoothie, a thick green liquid in a tall, plastic cup. "I made the tart. And," she leans forward, a conspiratorial whisper, "I'm new."

Raven just grins. "In that case," she answers, "I'll have to come back later. Give you my critique."

Octavia/Raven, Canon divergent, ~670 words

Probably the same universe as this.

*

This winter will be harder than the last, and they are not prepared. While Bellamy leads hunting parties and Clarke gathers extra supplies of medicinal herbs, Octavia takes out her needle and thread. She has not sewn in a long time. Never before on Earth. At first, she sits cross-legged on top of their bedspread and pretends she does not know how to begin, even though the knowledge has never left her, and it floats up to the surface with a disquieting ease.

"I didn't know you could do that," Raven says, that night, as she puts her leg up on the bed and leans back in her chair. She says this as if Octavia having hidden talents was a wonder, and Octavia sticks out her tongue at her and scowls.

Raven/Octavia for the @the100rarepairsevent

~460 words, canon-divergent from probably S2, the same universe as this

I know this is also a day late but I want to participate so this is how it’s gonna be

*

When the foundation to the very first cabin was finished, the last of it at last, steady and solid and laid down safely into the earth, everyone cheered. Yelled and carried on. Danced. Hugs all around. Raven put her arms around so many people she lost track, but somewhere in that comforting crush of human bodies, each one held safe against her, and her arms around them in return, was Octavia. Octavia, the hug that lingered longest. What she’s decided since is that embrace was the start. If she celebrated anniversaries, she'd count it as theirs.

When she pulled away at last and looked at Octavia's face in the firelight, she saw an unexpected softness there, her real age around her eyes and in the expression of her lips. She saw sadness and exhaustion etched deep, and fear, and all of this like scars, having nothing at all to do with the day or the night, the celebration, their future. And she felt all of those same scars in herself. So she pulled Octavia close again, this time with her fingers crawling up to tangle in her hair, and Octavia's shoulders shaking and her arms around Raven fierce and strong, their bodies pressed together so close she could hardly breathe.

She wondered if she'd ever truly known Octavia before, or even truly saw her, and from the rush of that strange, maddening, tiring day, from the jumble of details that she later forgot, that question lingered, a thin little tune in her head. The first around which she built her anniversary theory, her sense of beginning and of starting again. The foundation upon which she constructed their friendship: meals taken together sitting and staring at the skyline, their backs to the new houses growing up out of the ground behind, rising, not naturally, but built by human hands of human sweat and toil. Maybe the first true homes of their lives, those houses. More home than Mecha, now leaning into the lake, than Factory, in pieces against the rocks. It was easy to start everything again, knee bumping against knee, hand on knee, to ask the hard questions of each other, and the easy ones.

Sometimes they took walks in the fields and forests, and Octavia helped Raven over the fallen logs or down the steepest paths, and because no one was around, she accepted it. Days her leg still hurt, and she exhaled the bitter ache of it for the trees and the flowers to take in and transform.