title where does everyone go when they go? (let me ask you)
fandom the 100
characters/pairings raven reyes, kyle wick, bellamy blake, monty green, mentions of jasper jordan
rating k+, but in keeping with the tone and content of the show
author's note during season 4; with only the barest touches of canon, but does include a canonical character death.
summary raven has friends, despite evidence to the contrary. title from p!nk's "i am here".
It isn't until Wick comes barging into her workshop, left eye swollen almost shut, that she gets her first clue.
"Look, Raven," he takes a deep breath, "I know we didn't exactly part on great terms, but I don't think it merited setting your attack dog on me. You have something to say, you say it to my face."
Immediately her hackles rise and she's struggling to clamber to her feet, but Wick drops his eyes and lowers his voice.
"I thought our friendship meant at least that much to you."
It's enough for her to falter, just a little. No, they hadn't really been friends on the Ark, but now? Yeah, they were. And it did mean something to her, even though their relationship hadn't progressed in a way that made either of them happy. She didn't have a problem going to Wick if there was something to talk about, but the thing was, there wasn't.
At a loss as to what to say, she gestures at his eye. "You should go to medical and get that taken care of."
He winces, but it seems to be more out of embarrassment than pain.
"Yeah, your boy doesn't really pull his punches, does he?"
Raven's brain tries to wrap around that. She hasn't had a boy since Finn, when Wick and the other mechanics had talked about him the same way. What did your boy do now? They'd groan, when she showed up to work deliriously happy, knowing they would have to hear about it the entire time she geared up. They spoke about him like a kid, like they didn't know what the hell Raven saw in him, but they wouldn't push, because it was clear she was happy.
"What boy?" she asks, instead of following that trail of thoughts into a dark place.
Wick's eyebrows shoot up, or at least as much as they can given the bruising.
"You know, your boy," he repeats, like that's supposed to mean something, like they're back on Mecha or even at the dropship, and Finn is still alive, still hers. "Tall, skinny. Horrible hair."
She wrinkles her nose. Her mind has been engrossed in a rover repair all morning, and it's hard to think of people's names, instead of the list of parts she desperately needs. Especially people who both know her and would punch Wick. Admittedly, everyone who's ever worked with the man has wanted to punch him at least once, but not many have followed through. And never on her behalf. Finally, her brain dredges up an image. Two images, actually, a before and after, superimposing on each other like most of the people that she knew on the Ark or at the dropship and now, post Mount Weather.
"Jasper?" she guesses, eventually.
"I guess," Wick shrugs. "He didn't exactly introduce himself before laying me out."
"But why?" Why would Jasper punch Wick? Why would he punch Wick for her?
Wick's jaw tightens and he won't meet her eyes.
"Because of what I did to you," he mutters.
More confused than frustrated, but feeling it eat at her all the same, she pushes at the table to stand. "You didn't do anything to me. And I definitely didn't tell Jasper that you did!"
God, she wants to rip her hair out. After ALIE, she'd thought…. Well, she'd hoped, really, that it had helped pull Jasper out of rock bottom, that he wouldn't need to crawl into a bottle every night, that he and Monty might even have patched things up. And it looked like all those things had happened. His hair was finally growing out from soft fuzz into tiny curls, making him look less gaunt and more his age, and he'd even been taking food with his drinks. But now, starting fights and lying?
"I guess it's more of what I didn't do. I left, Raven," she opens her mouth to interrupt, but Wick holds up a hand to stop her. "No, I know you didn't really want me there, and I know that there was some nasty shit said by both of us, but you were still going through things, Raven, and I left you to it. I didn't just leave you as a - " he waves a hand mindlessly, searching for a word neither of them know, "potential boyfriend or whatever, I left you as a friend. To deal with all of it on your own."
There's a silence between them but it doesn't hurt, at least, not like the last one.
"You were dealing with shit, too, Kyle," she says, finally.
He grins, an automatic response to her using his first name.
"You know, Monty's still doesn't have anything on Sinclair's," he says, the non-sequitur almost jarring, except that that's just how his mind worked. "We'd be doing the man a disservice not to have a toast in his honor, before we take it down." Her heart pangs, as it always will, thinking of her mentor, but she smiles all the same, accepting the invitation for what it is.
"That sounds good," she says.
Wick grins at her, that same boyish smile, before turning to leave.
"See you around, Raven," he calls over his shoulder and she waves, feeling like this is how she wished they had parted, so many months ago.
She means to go after Jasper as soon as Wick's gone; she's standing up and everything, but as his footsteps fade down the corridor, she finds herself sinking back down to settle on the bench. Her eyes wander out the window, watching the bustle. From here, it always looks like same, whether they're fighting for their lives or not. Normally the sounds of the camp irritate her; her ears are trained to listen for noises that shouldn't be there, an indication something's broken, and that's practically impossible to do with hundreds of people all around her. But now, with Wick's bright smile so clear in her mind, his voice bouncing around her ears, she kind of misses the camaraderie. She's not happy about how they parted, no, but she knows it was for the best, for the both of them. She thinks Kyle will always want something from her that she doesn't know how to give, and that Kyle, in his truest form, will always be more annoying than endearing to her. But it had been nice, for a while, to share her space, to bounce ideas of someone, to have a friend.
You still have friends, she thinks irritably to herself, which brings her right back around to Jasper.
What exactly had he said to Wick? Jasper had been a lot more physical after Mount Weather, the alcohol making him both short tempered and reckless, but punching Wick? It doesn't sit right with her, and she knows it'll bother her until she confronts him. But still, she can't get herself to stand up and leave. Frustrated, she turns back to the rover part, twisting it around and around until the solution presents itself. It always does, in time.
She doesn't seek out Jasper that day, or even that night. The rover's secrets reveal themselves to her, and she's up all night tinkering with it, knowing she can fix it without taking it apart completely, but wanting to do it just because she could, and because she's still learning about how the rovers tick. She wants to be able to see their entire layout behind her eyelids, and she's not there yet.
Sometime in the small hours of the morning, when even Arkadia is relatively quiet, only crickets and the night patrol up with her, she drags herself to the cot in the workshop. Sleeping here is hell on her hip, but walking all the way back to her room sounds like a far worse idea. And Abby would kill her if they found her passed out in the hall, and she can't quite handle a showdown with the Griffins, not yet. Maybe not ever, if she's being honest with herself.
(She knows that Abby took the chip to save her. It hurts, so much worse than a slap across the face. If ALIE hadn't gotten Abby, she wouldn't have gotten Arkadia.)
So she forgets about Jasper. It's fine, she'll talk to him tomorrow.
When Raven wakes, it's to pain, which she expected, and the smell of food, which she didn't.
She cracks open an eye and sure enough, there's a plate on her worktable, having edged out a few of the rover pieces she was looking at last night. There's a pale apple, neatly cut, and a small portion of fish. She pushes herself up slowly, pleased that the ache in her right shoulder is completely gone; as soon as her forearms finish scabbing over, the last remnants of ALIE will finally be gone from her body.
As predicted, her hip is screaming, but at least she remembered to take off her brace, so it's not as bad as it could have been. She's casting her eyes around the workshop trying to remember where exactly she'd tossed the brace before a freckled hand holds the very item out to her.
She knows she's been on the ground too long when this fails to send her heart into her throat.
She grabs the brace out of his hand, attempting to be a little gentler than she really wants to be, this early in the morning, knowing that he's the one who had brought her breakfast.
They're both silent while she gets the brace on, struggles to stand from the cot (he doesn't help her, but he's standing close enough that she knows he'd be there if she falls), and hobbles the few steps to the table.
She raises her eyebrows at him as she appraises her meal, but his expression doesn't change.
"You weren't at dinner last night," he says, instead. "Or breakfast this morning."
"Are you spying on me?" she asks, but there's no heat.
This time, he's the one who raises his eyebrows at her. Between the two of them, they've got some great eyebrow game, if she does say so herself.
"Clarke send you?" she asks instead. Though that doesn't seem right to her either. Since ALIE's destruction and Clarke's bombshell announcement that the planet is going to kill them all, without any help from Grounders or AIs, they've been holed up with the Chancellor and the council, making all sorts of plans. Neither have the time or the energy to follow her around, or have her followed. Besides, what's missing a few meals when compared to the apocalypse?
She's so absorbed in her own thoughts that she almost misses the twitch at the corner of his mouth, like he wants to smile but has long since trained himself not to. Like he knows a secret she doesn't. It feels like a piece of the big brother that only Bellamy knows how to be.
"Not Clarke, then," she mutters, narrowing her eyes at her apple. It would suck that the world's going to end just as they've finally started figuring out to grow fruit.
"You shouldn't be skipping so many meals, Raven," is what he says, clearly ignoring her. It shouldn't irritate her, but it does. She's not Octavia, and she doesn't need someone babying her. "Your friends would like to see you every once in awhile, you know."
Her friends? It echoes her thoughts of yesterday. After what she did with ALIE, as ALIE? Monty killed his mother, to help her, and it didn't even work. Clarke almost lost her mother because Raven couldn't take the pain. She feels sick as she realizes that they're all becoming orphans, and she's to blame.
Because she is who she is, she says instead, "You didn't need to see me before."
She doesn't look at him to see how it hits; she knows how to hurt and she takes no pride to see the damage she causes.
"Raven," Bellamy says softly, and she doesn't want to see the look on his face, in his eyes. She doesn't.
"I have work to do," she says, and pushes off the table. If she were alone, she'd slide herself to the end, and hop over the other side, where everything is set up for her to work, but she won't do that in front of him. She doesn't want to think of how she had once stripped herself naked before this boy, but now she can't bear for him to see her do what she has to to survive.
"Thanks for the food," she mutters, dragging her bad leg in a way that strikes fire up her thigh, but will get her away from him the fastest.
She doesn't look up as he leaves, so she doesn't know if he looks at her. She doesn't know if she wants him to or not.
Her morning with Bellamy sits with her all day, leaving a sour taste on her tongue that has nothing to do with the food. Bellamy cares, she knows that, but the work she's doing is important. When Clarke figures out how to save them, again, they'll still need Raven to build something or take it apart, and she's still learning things about Earth technology. With Sinclair gone, the remnants of Mecha are barely holding together as it is. If she tried to drag Bellamy or Clarke away from their meetings and mission just to hang out, they'd be irritated too.
Part of her is screaming that it's too little too late, that no one cared when she was so desperate she'd said yes to ALIE, and another is saying that she should appreciate her friends reaching out, that she should hold them close while she still can, and Raven would very much like all of those disparate parts to shut the hell up.
I'm awesome, she thinks forcefully to herself. And I've never needed anyone else to tell me so.
She should probably be embarrassed that she doesn't really start to put it together until Monty shows up. He's alone, which is unusual nowadays; if he's not with Jasper, he's almost always with Harper, and she doesn't blame him. They should all be so lucky to find love at the end of the world.
He comes in like he's been doing it every day, finds a spot to settle in as he peruses a tablet in one hand and sketches out circuitry pathways with the other. Beyond a nod of acknowledgement when he walks in, they don't speak.
The afternoon passes quickly, as she moves on from the rover part to its entire engine, and works on making the solar cells that power it more efficient.
When Monty gets up, she barely notices.
"Dinner," he jerks his chin at her. His hands are in his pockets, and his tablet and notations are neatly stacked on her work table.
Raven blinks at him, slightly startled at how much darker it had gotten without her noticing.
"I'm good, thanks," she says. "Can you get the lights on your way out, though?"
Monty rocks on his heels.
"Harper's meeting us there," he says. "They switched her to the night shift, so she's been sleeping all day."
Which answers her question as to why Monty was with her, but doesn't explain why he's still standing there.
Finally, he heaves a sigh. "She's lonely, you know? She's on guard duty all night and she sleeps all day, and she barely sees anyone but the other guards."
"So, go to her al- "
"So, she'd like to have dinner with her friends, okay?" Monty talks over her.
Raven blinks up at him for a few more seconds, not sure when she and Harper had become friends. Although she supposed being part of the 100, or 100-adjacent, as she and Bellamy were, tied them together in ways no one else from the Ark could understand.
"Okay," she says softly. "Okay."
Monty grins, and in contrast to the afternoon, chats her ear off the whole way to dinner.
It becomes sort of a pattern.
Someone, usually Bellamy, but sometimes Harper, too, will bring her something to eat in the morning if she doesn't make it to breakfast, which is most mornings. They'll chat, briefly, before Bellamy has to go be a guard, or Harper can't stop hiding her yawn.
Clarke, Octavia, or Monty will stop by sometime in the early afternoon. Clarke and Octavia both like to go outdoors, Clarke bemoaning the Council's idiocy and Octavia itching to kill something. They're both carefully aware of her limits, and though their claims that they've tired long before her ring false, she lets them go. Monty, if his current project allows, will sit with her in relative silence as the afternoon hours grow long. Once her rover repairs are finished, she works on smaller projects she knows they'll need before long; solar cells, water purifiers, and radiation detectors. She slowly lets Monty accrue more space until he can fit a whole circuit board on her work table. Every once a while Wick will swing by, usually with commentary that has either one or both of them throwing spare nuts and bolts at him until he laughs his way out the door.
It's nice, or as much as it can be when the world is ending.
But now that she barely take a step from her room without having someone keep her company, there is an empty space where she keeps expecting to see a tall, lanky someone.
Wick hasn't mentioned "her boy" since that first day, but neither have any of the others. Admittedly, they don't seem to be specifically avoiding mentioning him, but she feels the lack more keenly as the days go by.
"What's up with Jasper?" she prompts Monty one afternoon, as they both tinker on radiation shielding.
If she wasn't watching him so closely, she wonders if she would have noticed the way his hand grips just a little tighter before releasing. Every other part of his body remains relaxed, but she's been sitting next to him too long, for too many days, to not see it.
"Nothing," he says nonchalantly, focusing on his tablet.
"Then where is he?"
Monty glances up at her quickly before poking mindlessly at the tablet.
"Around."
Raven has never had a deep well of patience, and the closer they get to nuclear apocalypse, the less she has.
She reaches over and yanks the tablet out of Monty's hand.
"Hey!" he starts to yell, but she cuts him off by slamming the tablet onto the table. She's fixed these a hundred times; she knows they can take it.
"What's. Going on. With Jasper."
Monty sighs and runs his hand through his hair, a gesture that she's sure he got from Bellamy.
"Nothing's going with him, I swear. He's just," Monty waves his hand around. "Around."
Raven resists the urge to shake Monty. Before she can think of a way to word her questions without yelling, Monty continues.
"He's not drinking that much, anymore, but he's not doing very much else, either. Sometimes, he gets this weird look on his face…" Monty trails off. "He just stands there and smiles." Monty fiddles with some spare wiring. "I thought he was getting better, after he - "
Suddenly he stops, his eyes widening.
"After he what?" she prompts.
Monty opens and closes his mouth. Eyes narrowing, she repeats herself.
"After he what, Monty?"
"After he punched Wick," Monty finally says.
Raven doesn't know what to say. She knew she should have talked to Jasper then.
"You don't look surprised," Monty says, squinting at her.
"I'm not. I knew he punched Wick. He came here, right after it happened."
"Wick did?"
"Yeah," she shrugs. "We hashed things out." She doesn't know why she's explaining herself; Monty's been here for a multitude of Wick visits, has seen the way they joke and talk; no bad blood left between him. But rather than assuring him, Monty's eyes have grown even wider.
"Did Wick say anything?" he presses. "About Jasper?"
"No-o," she draws out. "Should he have?"
"No! No, there's nothing to say." Monty drops his shoulders, losing some of his tension. "It's just. That was the last time I saw Jasper care about anything. About anyone."
"Oh," she says, soft.
"I'm worried about him," Monty admits, even quieter than she had been.
Raven opens her mouth to respond, not sure what exactly she's going to say, when one of her alarms start going off. She and Monty lock eyes, for one fearful second, hearts in their throats.
"Acid rain," they say in unison, before Monty is reaching for the radio to let the guard know. It's bare seconds before they hear the alarm echo across camp, Miller's dad's voice calmly telling everyone to head inside.
She should be ashamed, how quickly Jasper fades from her mind when all she can hear are klaxons and the faint, ominous sound of rain.
She's not worried about it, though. She'll find the time to talk to him. She will.
She doesn't find the time.
Their promised six months become less than six weeks becomes mere days, and then the world is burning, and she's losing her mind, all alone.
When they come for her, the absence of their tallest, awkwardest, most bruised soul, hurts more than she could ever find the words for.
Monty presses well-worn goggles into her hands and the tears she thought had dried drip down her face to land on the plastic.
They're tucked into her spacesuit, close to her heart, when they break atmo.