notes: pacific rim au. very dumb. why did i write this i don't know. with the prompt meet me at sunset.
the fire's found a home in me
this is the start of how it all ever ends
they used to shout my name now they whisper it
i'm speeding up and this is the red orange yellow
flicker beat sparking up my heart
- lorde, yellow flicker beat
There are days she feels invincible, dragon-slayer, world-conqueror, king of the castle, invincible. Days where the moves come easy, the drift is smooth, the armor fits, the monster bows. Days she is happy, she is loved, she is powerful and invulnerable and strong. She is strong, most of all, on these magical, lost, fairytale days.
Then Finn falls in love with a doctor's daughter, and the castle crumbles around her. RAVEN REYES, they'd used to shout, youngest, smartest, strongest Jaeger pilot since Thelonious Jaha himself, and her ever-trustworthy partner, boyfriend, family. And now they whisper, RAVEN REYES, GOT HER HEART BROKEN AND LOST HER PARTNER, the words tattooed on her scowls and in her shaking hands.
They're not as quiet as they might think.
Bellamy Blake is handsome, headstrong, hopelessly devoted to protecting his sister, and one of the best Jaeger pilots around. He has about five years of age and twenty kaiju kills on her, which isn't much, all considered, and he hasn't drifted with anyone or piloted a Jaeger since his sister was injured in a fight two years ago. He still trains, though. Everyone watches.
Including Raven. Today, a dreary day that has already seen a skyscraper topple in Japan, John Murphy steps up to spar with Bellamy. She sits alone, watching. Finn and Clarke are across the training room, his arm around her shoulders, both of them content with their compatibility. Raven feels a sharp, aching stab in her heart, and turns back to the duel.
It's not much of a duel. Bellamy stands victorious in less than a minute, Murphy left seeing stars on the ground. Commander Jaha makes a note in his books and shakes his head. Disappointment – they're all used to it, these days. The battles are getting longer and harder, the kaiju are becoming more and more dangerous, and there is no end to the war. Inside their monster-proof walls, compatibilities shift like the wind as people die, people live, people love. Everything is changing, and the apocalypse is taking a toll on them all.
Raven glances down at her raven necklace, a birthday gift from Finn too many moons ago, and back up at Bellamy, helping Murphy up and trading a look with Jaha that indicates a certain degree of weariness. She wonders how Octavia is doing, the only person Bellamy has ever been drift-compatible with. She looks back down at her raven.
Jaha opens his mouth to ask for another volunteer. Raven considers ripping off the necklace, but her heart aches again, and she reconsiders.
Jaha says, "Any more volunteers?" and Bellamy's eyes flit over her section of the audience.
He doesn't even stop to look. Nobody stops to look at her anymore. She has no partner.
Neither does he.
Raven lets the raven drop, cold steel against her heart, and stands.
"I'll do it."
Bellamy's hands still over his staff. Raven smiles.
She'll do it.
Bellamy is good. Bellamy is really, really good. It's no wonder nobody's been able to beat him, Raven thinks, because even she, with all her training and practicing, can only barely hold her own against his raw ruthlessness. He's good, not because he wants to be, but because he has to be. It only makes him more dangerous.
She thinks back on the things she knows about him through the academy grapevine. He and Octavia were in the Philippines when the first Kaiju attacked. They lost their mother. Jaha found them, took them in, raised them at the academy. He had precious few friends even before Octavia's accidents, Nathan Miller, Atom, and Jaha's son, Wells.
Wells, Clarke's partner. Wells, who died three years ago. Wells, whom Raven had met, Wells, who was in love with Clarke and then he died and now Clarke was in love with Finn and Finn was in love with Clarke and she –
Where was she?
There was a thump, and she looked down to find Bellamy on his back, his eyes dark and wide and wild, a half-smile flickering across his lips. Her heart is pounding erratically against her ribs, adrenaline rushing through her, and she can hear his pulse where she has his arm pinned to the floor, loud and vibrant and alive.
She looks up. Jaha is almost smiling. Looks down.
Bellamy twists his wrist, just a little, enough to surprise her into freeing him, and pulls himself up to his knees.
"Reyes, right?" he says, offering a hand to get them both on their feet. "You're good."
Finn's raven against her chest shifts, warmed now by the heat of the fight, and she swallows hard and accepts Bellamy's hand.
"I know," she says, and he smiles for real this time.
She eats her dinner alone in the dining hall that night, same as all the others, except this time she finds a note rolled up and pressed next to her plate.
Quick, loopy words scrawled out on the paper: TOMORROW – meet me at sunset. —BB.
Raven looks up, instinctually searching Bellamy out, but she finds him nowhere in the dining hall, and instead, a smaller, blonder figure settling down across the table from her.
"Clarke," she says, and forgets to sound annoyed in her confusion. "What are you – where's – "
"He's not here," Clarke says, and she looks tired, all of a sudden. "Raven – I wanted to apologize."
"For what?" Raven asks, because it's not exactly like Clarke did anything wrong. It wasn't her fault Finn loved her. Wasn't her fault Finn and Raven weren't compatible anymore. Nothing was her fault. Even Raven, with all the hurt and anger in her heart, couldn't find anything to blame her for.
"For everything," Clarke sighs, running a hand down her curls. "I should never have let Finn – I'm sorry. When I saw you out there today – I guess I never realized…what he meant to you. What it must have been like, to be drift-compatible with him. What you guys had, it was – it was something. Finn and I aren't that, and I don't think we ever will be."
Raven stares at her for a solid minute, then looks away. "Look, Griffin," she says slowly, watching Clarke watching her with baited breath. "Relationships aren't based on drift-compatibility. All that determines is your ability to fight kaiju. You don't have to do that to have a successful relationship."
She pauses, then adds, maybe a bit bitingly, "It does help with the sex though."
To her surprise, Clarke laughs. Raven finds herself fighting a smile.
"Anyway. You guys are happy. I love Finn, and I always will, but he's happy with you. And he doesn't love me the way I want him to, so it's for the best. Don't worry so much about me, it's not a good color on you."
Clarke raises an eyebrow. "You sure seem cool about all this now that you and Blake – "
Raven narrows her eyes. "Me and Blake what?"
"Nothing!" Clarke says hastily, a smile twitching at her lips. "You guys really connected out there, though. I haven't seen him like that since – well, since Octavia."
Raven rolls the note over in the inside of her hand, the light weight of it almost comforting now, like a balm or a prayer. Meet me at sunset. How poetic. "Have you sparred with him?" she asks instead of saying the million other things on her mind.
"Yeah, once," Clarke admits. "We were – we were good. But we were different. We come from different lives, you know. I think it helps to have someone who knows where you come from, because none of us know where we're going, anymore."
"To the bottom of the ocean, probably," Raven suggests, and Clarke smiles again. It feels odd, sharing jokes with the girl her boyfriend left her for, but it feels nice, all the same. "I'll see you around, Griffin."
"Tell Blake hi from me," Clarke says, almost teasingly, as Raven gets up with her tray in one hand and the note in the other. She flicks a balled-up paper napkin at Clarke and leaves, rolling the note over and over and over in her palm. Comforting. It's strange, to be comforted.
Strange, but she likes it.
"Blake," she greets when she meets him in the Jaeger holding room, sitting at the foot of the giant green-and-black Rebel Caesar, his pride and joy. Unused, since Octavia almost died in it.
Bellamy looks up, and his lips quirk. "Reyes," he says in return, and waits for her to sit down at his side before speaking. "I'm glad you came."
"Well, you left a very not-cryptic note, explaining exactly why I should come, so naturally, I did," she says. He fights off another grin and offers her a piece of paper.
She takes it, reads it over. Then reads it over again. "No way."
"Jaha says we can try drifting in Caesar tomorrow," he says, a note of fondness in his voice as he looks over at his Jaeger. "If it goes well…she's yours. Ours."
Raven blinks, folds up the paper, looks over at him. The light dancing through the windows catches off his curls, his cheekbones, his eyes. He looks handsome, silhouetted by the fading sun. Handsome and tired and wrecked. The apocalypse takes a toll on every soul.
"I didn't think we were – I mean, the only person you've ever drifted with is your sister," she says, fumbling for the words, unsure what she wants to say. I didn't think you would want to drift with me.
Bellamy inclines his head. "You beat me," he says, like she needs help remembering the look in his eyes, like she was his salvation, as he lay there on his back beneath her, "I'd say that give you a good shot at drifting with me. Plus, rumor has it, you're out of a partner."
"Rumors are fickle things," she says, even though he's right. Somehow, it doesn't sting as much, anymore. Not like it used to. "I know Jaha does, but do you think we're drift-compatible?"
"Who knows?" he says with an air that seems more like an attempt at carelessness than actual carelessness. He glances over, though, and must have seen something in her expression that makes his face soften. "Look, Raven, I'm not going to lie to you – I'm not an easy guy to drift with. To work with. To fight with."
She bites her lip. "But?"
"I'm not going to pretend you're Octavia. No one's Octavia. And I'm not your – Finn. Whatever." He pauses to make a disgruntled face, and she almost laughs. "But maybe we can try. The whole world is on the edge of collapse, so the least we could do to help it is – is try."
She lets him sit on that for a moment before replying, "How very poetic of you," and he snorts, collapses back on his hands, and she laughs for real. "Finn says I can be prickly." She means it as a challenge, or a warning, maybe.
Bellamy raises an eyebrow. "Finn cares too much," he says dismissively. "I don't have to care about you to understand you."
"Good," she says, tucking her knees up into her chest and resting her head on them, an inverse of his pose, laid back and balancing on his hands. "I don't have to care about you is an excellent way of approaching matters, Bellamy Blake."
Bellamy grins. She thinks he rather likes her, despite his protests. It's kind of nice.
She takes off her raven necklace before drifting with him tomorrow. Finn catches her in the hallway to say good luck, or something, and she lets him, and she smiles, and she walks away. There's not much else to be said, anymore.
"Good to go?" Bellamy asks, up in Rebel Caesar, putting on the last bits of his armor. "How are – how are things with Collins?"
Raven adjusts her armpiece and doesn't look at him. "For someone who claims not to care, you sound awfully interested."
Bellamy makes a face at her that she manages to catch sidelong, and she wants to smile. "You're going to be inside my head soon, Reyes. No secrets, right?"
She swallows, looks up straight at him. "No secrets," she agrees. "I still love him."
Bellamy nods slowly, breaks their gaze first. "I don't blame you. We never forget the people we love."
She wonders if he's thinking about his mother.
Then she doesn't have to wonder anymore at all.
Drifting with Finn was the beach on a cloudy day, the sea rushing through her pulse, rhythmic and steady and comforting, sand beneath her feet, everything simple, everything sweet. Days with Finn in their childhood, his hand in hers, steady, soft, always there. His smile, his touch, his kiss. No secrets, not between them. Only the sand and the sky and the sea.
Until he fell in love with another girl.
The pain comes rushing back, relentless and ruthless, when Bellamy drifts with her, all her worst memories and all his worst memories tangled up and twisted in each other. She feels small again, she feels wild again, reckless again. All her terrible moments, the days she daydreamed of hurting him, hitting Clarke, doing worse, flashing one by one through her mind.
And all his terrible moments – his mother dying, fights with Octavia, fights with Jaha over Octavia, his rage at the kaiju that injured her, those days when she flitted between death and dying – all of them building in her chest till she feels like she might explode. She wants to reach out, wants to scream. Drifting with Finn had never hurt this much.
But then, Bellamy is not Finn. And Finn isn't here, not anymore.
She steels herself and dives into their memories. It's hard to tell where she ends and Bellamy begins, but human lives are not only pain and suffering, she knows this well. There is glory, triumph, love, laughter – and she finds them. Bellamy, with his sister, playing games to make her laugh. Raven, with Finn and the fairytale days gone by. His mother laughs. She has a kind face. Finn smiles at her. He has a kind face, too.
It hurts now, but it didn't always. It hurts still, but it won't always.
When the drift ends, she feels like every nerve of her body is on fire. She feels at home and lost and happy and sad all at the same time. She feels wild, most of all, and she thinks she feels the way Bellamy looked, that day when they sparred and the first spark of something real crossed their skin where they touched.
She catches her breath and looks over at him. He looks lost, too, but he finds her gaze, holds it, smiles.
"Let's fight some fucking kaiju," he says, almost casually, and she laughs.
"Yeah," she agrees, taking off her helmet. "Let's fight some fucking kaiju, Blake."
a/n: if you've read this far, i'd really appreciate a review, especially if you want to favorite!