AUTHOR'S NOTES: Here we have a little one-shot for Raven, just some speculation before the episode gets out. It's a little odd, a little dark, but hopefully it's all good.
Also, the woman from the hospital was originally intended to be Abby, but I can't write her character very well so it's up to you whether it is Abby or not.
MIRACLE
Raven's not stupid.
In fact, she prides herself on being far from it.
(One of the cleverest girls on the Ark, they whisper. Then again, they're not really on the Ark anymore. They're on the ground. New dangers, new problems, new possibilities.)
But sometimes she's just stubborn. Even as a little girl, she'd never been the meek little child that had been expected from the Reyes family. The Reyes family, with the father who was nowhere to be heard of, and the mother that never left her compartment without a bottle in her hands.
They certainly didn't expect anything from the skinny little girl who looked like she could collapse of starvation at any minute.
But wrong they were, weren't they?
She still remembers her childhood days like a vivid book. Sometimes she's even scared to remember. Opening that book is frightening.
Faintly, she wonders whether it would be easier to forget. But forget she can't. She tries to lose herself - in sex, in drink.
Like mother, like daughter, she thinks crudely.
But she can't forget. So instead she remembers.
...
Tiny little Raven Reyes cries when she thinks no one is watching. It's not particularly difficult - after all, who would want to set their eyes on a skinny little girl with sunken eyes and a sharp tongue?
Her mother's not cruel, she tells herself every night as she cries herself to sleep. She's just lost. Confused. Somewhere inside is her true mother, the one who cares and laughs and loves her.
Sometimes, if Raven is really, really lucky, she'll catch a glimpse of this woman. She'll catch the way her eyes twinkle as she grins, or the way she feels when she's hugging her daughter tightly. But these moments are few and far between, so Raven clings to them tightly.
Most of the time, her mother's a mess. She's too young to understand at the moment, but when Raven's older she'll remember the empty bottles strewn in the trash, the opened medicine bottles spilling pills onto the table-tops. Sometimes mama sobs. Sometimes she curses and cries and screams profanities to Raven and whoever else is willing (or unwilling) to listen. But most of the time, she's just not there. Sometimes she stares blankly at the walls and sleeps, completely ignoring her daughter's gentle taps on the shoulder. Most times, Raven's mother simply disappears. Leaves wearing fancy clothes and doesn't come back for days at a time.
Raven quickly learns to fend for herself.
...
She remembers the first time her mother hits her.
She's five, just returning from her first day of learning. As expected, no one had approached her. She'd had been that one slightly off kid in the corner of the room. Nonetheless, Raven was a trooper.
And so she rushes home that day with a proper (proper) smile on her face.
Her mother's in a bad mood. Raging and screaming, curses flying from her mouth. Raven enters just in time to see a bottle of pills being hurled at the wall.
Swallowing, she offers a bright smile to her mother and rushes to tidy up the spilled pills, kneeling down to scoop the white tablets into the bottle. "Mama, I learnt some stuff today," she says in an all too bright voice, "Do you want to hear?"
But her mother appears uninterested, because her mother (one of the most beautiful woman on the Ark, she'd heard someone say once) whips around, hair flying loose, and screeches, "Where have you been?"
Raven swallows then, and her smile wavers for a split second. Her fingers hasten in picking up the spilled contents. "Don't you remember, mama? I went to learn some stuff today, it was-"
and then comes the slap. It's by no means a gentle one, and the force leaves her eyes watering and her ears ringing. Gasping, she raises a hand to her cheek and stares in horror at her mother.
"Leaving your poor mother all on her own while you go and play," she scoffs crudely. "How shameful."
"I'm sorry, mama," Raven stutters, feeling the tears begin to pool in her eyes as her mother rises and grabs a bag from the table. "I just thought-"
At this, her mother whirls around until she's eye to eye with her daughter, pretty ivory eyes suddenly dangerously sharp. "Don't you ever do that again," she snarls.
Raven's not entirely sure what she's done wrong, but she nods anyway, her lip quivering. "Yes, mama."
Her mother doesn't say another word, only grabbing her bag and sauntering out of the room - but not before staggering and slipping another pill in her mouth.
It's the first, but it's not the last.
...
She remembers when she decided to stop being tiny, shy Reyes and become bold, bright Raven instead.
She's sick of being that little girl in the corner, the one no one ever pays attention to. The one that's always there, but not really ever noticed.
So she tries harder in her learning. Soon, she becomes top of the class in one thing only - mechanics. It's like it's meant to be her calling all this time, because her fingers glide into position easily, her mind clicks and she knows what to do before the teachers even tell her. Soon, she's being told that she has a bright future in store, that she could go far in life if she tries hard enough.
Raven doesn't tell her mother. That little detail would only ensue trouble, that's for sure.
...
She gets thinner. Skinnier and skinnier, until there's nothing really left but skin dragging over outjutting bones and gaunt features.
Raven doesn't really know where the rations go. One minute they're delivered to their compartment as per usual, and for a moment she often contemplates sneaking one to eat. But then her mother, with perfectly trimmed hair and a bottle peeking out of her left pocket scoops up the rations before Raven can even do anything.
She doesn't see them again. Maybe mother keeps them to herself, maybe she's giving them to people who really need it, Raven reassures herself. Mama's doing a good thing, surely.
But one day, when she's back early from classes, she hears voices coming from their compartment. Peeking around the corner of the open door, she finds her mother holding out almost all of the rations to a smug looking man, who palms her a small package in return and leaves.
Later, in the dead of night when her mother's out like a light and she's doing her best to be quiet, she discovers several bottles snuggled into packaging paper.
...
While Raven gets skinnier, her personality does not.
She inflates her ego. Snaps at anyone who decides to make a wrong move, boldly spits cutting remarks at anyone who she deems worthy enough to insult. Sarcasm is a big part of her life, and she spends most of her school days finding new ways to put herself out there, ways to place her ahead of everyone else, put her up on a higher pedestal.
Her classmates think she's an arrogant know-it-all with no respect. She thinks that's better than being a meek little girl who sits in the corner.
Raven doesn't dare to let her words loose when she's at home.
...
Raven collapses.
...
When she wakes up, she's in a clean white room. Cords that she can't name (nor can be bothered to) protude from her arms, running off into confusing machines that beep hauntingly at her.
She panics and tries to flee from the bed, but then there's a kindly woman blinking down at her, pushing her gently (but forcefully) back down onto the bed.
"Hey there, it's okay," the woman soothes. "You're fine. You're just getting healed up right now. Several of your classmates found you collapsed on the floor when they were going home, and the teachers got to you shortly after and brought you here."
"Teachers?" Raven echoes, her voice hoarse and scratchy.
The woman reaches over to wipe her forehead with a damp cloth, and when she pulls away she sees black ink stained on the material. She knows that's it's marker ink.
"Kids are cruel," the woman says by way of explanation, and turns to wash the cloth. "Do you remember what happened before you collapsed?"
"I was.." She doesn't really know what to say, honestly. The lights are too bright and the blankets too tight and the room is too white. "Dizzy."
"You're malnourished," the woman says. "Have you been getting enough to eat?"
There's memories in brief flashes, her mother sliding rations out of their compartment, sneaking off into the middle of the night, the sting of her mother's palm against her cheek.
"Yes, I have," Raven nods firmly.
It's not her first lie, but it's not the last either.
...
He finds her sobbing in a corner. He's a bright-eyed, dark haired boy with far too long locks and a curious manner about him. She's just a weak, skinny little girl with a falsely sharp tongue and an absent mother.
She yells at him to go away through a flood of tears and a curtain of stringy hair, but he stays and looks at her instead.
"You're that girl, aren't you?" he questions. "That girl who was being mean to Ellie."
"If you've come to yell at me for being mean to your friend, you can leave now," she snaps, twisting away to hide her tears so she doesn't seem weak and expecting to hear footsteps walk away from her. They don't.
"I haven't come to yell at you," he says simply. "I think that was brave. No one ever says anything to Ellie and gets away with it."
She stays silent at that, because she isn't entirely sure what to say or how to say it. Instead, she lets the tears drip down her cheeks and waits for him to go away.
"And also," his voice is a beat shyer now, "I thought you looked lonely."
It's then that Raven finally turns to look at him, suspicion broiling heavily in her gaze. She expects a laughing face, a cruel smile and an attempt at a joke. After all, people are cruel. She learned that a young age. Instead, his eyes are genuine, even slightly shy, if she's going to look into it too much.
"I don't need you," she retorts sharply, hardening her features into what she hopes is her scariest demeanor.
"But you need this, right?" And then suddenly he's holding out a ration packet to her with a welcoming smile and an earnest look. When she doesn't take it immediately, instead shooting him a questioning look, he shrugs and offers, "I stole it."
"You'll get floated." She's seen it before - once a pale, red-haired woman had been dragged kicking and screaming away from her stick-thin son as packets of rations fell from her pockets. They never saw her again.
"I live life on the edge."
It's the grin that finally makes her accept the gift. The smile so full with mischeviousness and cheek and yet somehow all the good in the entirety of space.
His smile only grows wider as she accepts the food and he's quick to introduce himself, making himself a comforable spot on the floor across the narrow hall from each other.
"Finn."
"Raven."
...
Raven finds an unexpected friend in Finn.
It starts with the small things; little nods as they pass each other in hallways, the occasional 'hello' from his end of things, the briefest of conversations as they are the only ones left in the room (horrifingly simple things like 'how's your day been', or 'did you finish your last assignment').
Then it spirals into bigger things. Slipped rations under tables, fleeting smiles of comfort and the thrill of doing something forbidden.
One day, she catches him wandering the halls aimlessly, and she knows without a doubt that he's on his way to steal something.
"How do you do it?" she asks unexpectedly.
He offers her a smile and a wary glance around before saying, "I'll show you, if you want. But you have to promise not to tell."
"I won't."
It's a promise that's kept, and soon enough they're tugging each other down hallways and running with a feeling of exhileration and the breaths. stolen from their lungs.
When he smiles, she smiles back.
...
Her mother gets floated.
She's numb with emotion. Adults tell her that she should be glad, that her mother had been a horrible influence on her, and now she was free to do as she wished.
Instead, she remembers the brief moments where her mother was sober (because she's old enough to recognise that now), and the rare times that they'd spent laughing and smiling and curling up under the ratty covers.
Finn understands, and when she visits the hallway where she'd cried and ended up meeting him as a little child, he's waiting there with a bag by his side.
When she's done crying it out, they go to raid the rations.
Old habits never die hard, especially when they know exactly how the other moves and their hearts are perfectly in sync as they let the thrill of rule-breaking envelope them.
...
They return to that hallway for her fifteenth birthday, and she finds herself marvelling at the rate that they've grown.
(Either that, or the hallway's just shrunk.)
Where there used to be enough room to curl up and play footsies with each other as they leaned on opposite sides of the hallway, now they can stretch out and touch the other end of the wall if they try hard enough.
They sit like they did as little kids, leaning on their respective walls with their legs tucked up to each other and their heads pressed to the wall so that they can hear the gentle thrumming of the Ark engines. They're probably sitting closer than socially acceptable, but Raven and Finn have been invading each other's space for as long as she can remember, so it's not in any way awkward.
They whisper secrets and jokingly dare each other to do stupid things until there's the call for curfew and they know their time is almost up. Almost, but not quite.
Finn hands her a necklace with a tiny metal bird on a chain and it's the most beautiful thing she's ever been gifted. He helps her put it on with a promise to never ever leave her, and as ice cold fingers ghost across her neck, she thinks that maybe things are looking up. Things are changing, for better or for worse.
And then he extends a hand to her and she grabs it without hesitating and suddenly they're running again, with their pulses racing and their hands clasped tightly. They don't need the rations anymore, but it's hard to break.
Maybe things aren't changing, she reflects numbly as they laugh carelessly and she presses a finger to his lips. Maybe it's love.
...
The next time they return to the hallway it's his birthday, and they both know what's going to happen once curfew is announced. Maybe she's addicted to stealing. Or at least, she's addicted to stealing with Finn.
She's thought a lot about the sudden realisation that she had on her birthday - more than she cares to admit. Raven's never been the best with feelings, she's blunt and sarcastic and nothing like Finn, who knows just the right words to say and is an eternal peacemaker.
The thing is, Reyes is sure he feels the same way. Well, maybe not love. She's not entirely sure she loves him. Maybe just like, in that school girl crush sort of way. But they've shared each other's personal body space for as long as she can remember, and they've had lingering hand brushes that have lasted far long than normal.
So why is she afraid? If there's one thing Raven prides herself on, it's being brave.
In some ways, that's what makes up her mind.
Right in the middle of his sentence (he's speaking in that wide eyed way that shows he's suddenly inspired about something), she tugs him closer to her and leans forward to press her lips against his. It's not anything like she's heard a first kiss is like; not sweet or innocent or tentative. No, it's fiery and bold and probably far too daring and she's most likely scaring him off-
But no, he's kissing back just as eagerly, and soon they're all hands and teeth and breathy smirks as she runs his hand through his hair and he pushes her against the wall.
And when they're done, he holds out his hand and they take off on another adventure into the depths of the Ark because really.. things never quite change.
"I think I like you," Finn whispers once they're back at her (empty) compartment, empty-handed. She doesn't care, they don't raid so much for the rations but for the fun.
"Of course you do," she snarks, but she's smiling wider than she's ever had before, "I'm amazing."
...
They argue. He takes oxygen and goes on a spacewalk, just like he's always dreamed of. She doesn't speak to him for days, and when she does seem him again, it's through the bars of a prison cell.
...
Earth is amazing and beautiful and everything she's ever wished for. Blood's trickling down her forehead and everything hurts but she doesn't care because the air is clear, the flowers are bright and Finn is right there, safe and sound.
It's everything she's ever wanted, and for a moment she forgets about everything but the fresh air in her lungs and the breeze tickling at her nose and the feel of Finn's lips against hers.
Then there's Clarke.
...
The bird on her necklace thumps against her heart with echoes of a boken promise.
...
She gives the necklace back. They're finished.
(It probably looks better around Clarke's neck anyway.)
...
There's promises to blow the Grounders to the goddamned sky, and then suddenly there's pain blossoming in her spine and tears in her eyes and Clarke is saying something and Finn's gone and then the boy who she's been trying desperately to murder starts to open up to her and..
what the fuck is going on?
...
There's a bullet in her spine. There's a bullet in her spine and she's probably gonna be paralysed and there's nothing she can do but grit her teeth and demand that something be done about it as she looks to Finn for help.
(And later, nothing to do but scream as Abby does something about it.)
...
Wick helps. They banter. They bicker. They bounce off each other and it's not so much a spark but a firework - but it's not necessarily a bad one.
There's a lot of eye rolling and bad jokes involved, but whenever she falls (which happens to be quite a lot thanks to Murphy's trigger happy side) he's right there to pick her back up again.
And she will admit (grudgingly) that his leg brace isn't all too bad. Even if she did have to make quite a few adjustments to it. After all, engineers are so.. rudimentary. Or at least that's what she tells Wick.
...
Finn's killed someone. Someone's. A village of innocent people. Part of the same peope who tried to murder them, but.. innocent all the same. He's wearing a look of such depression that she doesn't know what to do.
Wick insists on her giving him a few words. It's almost surprising, being that Wick doesn't like Finn very much. Whether it's because he broke her heart or killed innocents, she's not sure.
But the thing is, she doesn't know what to say. Raven could be cruel; she could tell him that he's a jerk and that he deserves everything he's getting. Or she could be sympathetic and sweet, tell him that nothing's fault. But she's not really feeling any of those, so instead-
"Suck it up."
That should do the trick. And if not? Well, he's got Clarke hasn't he?
...
Raven's been through hell. And she's still alive, still breathing and standing (barely, thanks to Murphy's trigger-happy side).
It's somewhat of a miracle. Then again, they're all somewhat of a miracle. So you know what?
She says bring it on.