AN: Demon on a Lead was done in my mind, so please forgive me if this falls short of fantastic. I had a hard time getting the old brain juices flowing again toward writing this. With the writing of this, I declare The Big Damn Challenge closed. You will be getting a total of eight different installments (one new ficlet, one continuation of Who We Must, and six to this unless people who I messaged tell me differently). The ficlet, Decontamination, was the meeting of promise number one. I have seven more to go, and this is the start!
Demon on a Lead - Part Two
Breathe Color
Clarke heaved a great sigh as she pushed herself up from her knees to stand under the streaming sunlight of a cool spring morning that was threatening to turn warmer than it should. It had been several long weeks since they'd truly had a winter night, but it wasn't so far from the next that she'd forgotten how severe that time had been.
She brushed her hands together, trying to rid them of the soil that still clung between her fingers and underneath her nails. An Ag-worker, she was not, but in Earth and Sky, everyone did a bit of everything. It wasn't for lack of desire for other employment, especially for the light-eyed young woman.
Her back ached. Her knees ached. Her shoulders ached. Her head was starting to take on that heavy awareness that meant a dehydration headache wasn't too far off. All in all, Clarke felt better than she had in days.
Lexa had committed to their alliance with great fervor once she realized that Clarke and Bellamy weren't returning to Camp Jaha, not for good at least. It had been four days since Clarke had walked out Raven's Gate one final time, and in those four days, Lexa had shown her support in the silent way that all grounders seemed to have mastered.
The first day, there had been three men, all broad shouldered and fierce, there to help clear away the bodies of the dead. Those of the one hundred were buried alongside the rest while the grounders were taken for their own death rites. The removal of the dead had taken the entire day and all of Bellamy and Clarke's strength.
"Hey," a voice called, and Clarke pulled her mind from the past. She recognized the hesitant tone, and she glanced murderously down at the planted garden. It was late enough into the spring that a frost was near impossible, and Lexa had offered just enough to get them started. That had been Clarke's responsibility since the sun had risen.
Now, though, she had no task for her hands, no excuse for her time.
"Clarke, come on," the voice said again, and Clarke finally turned toward it. Raven stood there, arms crossed beneath her breasts, succeeding in both making herself smaller and looking annoyed at the same time. "We need to talk."
"You need to go rest, Raven," Clarke countered, eyes flickering behind her toward the drop ship. The mechanic had spent all of her time that morning getting anything up and running that she could, rigging the door and making small repairs.
"I'm half-crippled, not half-dead," Raven said sharply, dropping her arms and taking a step forward. "What are you going to do? Avoid me? Clarke, we have a village of twelve. Just talk to me and get it over with."
Raven was right about that, at least. A village of twelve, and no grounders to distract her with spears and arrows. Clarke did a mental head count. That first night, it had only been herself and Bellamy. Raven, Monty and Jasper had arrived the next morning, all smiles and eager laughter. Later that night, as dusk had fallen, Miller and Wick had come through the darkness, sheepish smiles in place and Miller's father trailing behind them. Raven had raged for a few moments but had calmed to the engineer's wit. Just that morning, Octavia and Lincoln had become permanent fixtures, no longer flickering back and forth between living on their own and checking in.
Just over Raven's shoulder, Clarke could see Miller and his father, diligently working on digging post holes. While there was peace with the Woods Clan, walls were a comfort, and the pair had taken it upon themselves two days ago when they'd risen. Now, nearly a quarter of their planned camp was wreathed in tall, tightly bound tree trunks and branches.
"Clarke!" Raven shouted, startling the blonde from her distraction.
"Yes," Clarke said finally, nodding to her. "Come on. We can talk in the drop ship." It would be abandoned at the moment, with Wick out with Bellamy and Lincoln, learning what could kill him and what he could kill. Octavia had taken Monty and Jasper to drag water up from a nearby stream. They were all traitors, really.
The drop ship had been cleaned out, gutted nearly, and everything had been put out in the sunlight until the ship could be made as clean as they could get it. Raven's blood had long ago been scrubbed away with river water, but still, Clarke had a hard time looking where the girl would have once lain.
"Bellamy said that it wasn't Finn that's bothering you," Raven said, straight and blunt as ever. At one time, Clarke had admired that quality. Now, she wished that it would disappear.
"No," Clarke said after a moment, turning to face the mechanic. They had eased themselves against opposite support beams, eight feet between them wider than eight feet had ever been. Raven accepted that and waited for more, but as Clarke tried to open her mouth, she found the words couldn't come. She had no explanation, not really.
"If you don't want to talk to me-"
"At first, it was Finn," Clarke said, cutting off the hurt tone with a soft, hushed voice. "It was his blood under my fingernails and his weight against my shoulder." She paused, tilting her head back enough so that she could stare hard at where Raven's support beam met the ceiling. "He thanked me, though. He knew, and he was afraid. I took that away."
"Then what is it?" Raven asked, pushing off of her pillar and coming to stand in front of Clarke, her crippled leg a half step behind her every time.
"The only thing I heard from the time he said thank-you until the grounders were leaving was you," Clarke said simply, still staring at the ceiling. "Your screaming, and every time I don't hear something else, even now, it's in my head."
Raven stood there, only a few paces in front of Clarke, and neither of them knew where to go from that statement.
"I don't blame you anymore," Raven said. The words felt like a settling point, like half an excuse and half forgiveness.
"You should," Clarke said. She still wouldn't meet Raven's eyes, and the pair of them stood there for a few long minutes. To Raven, standing there, lost on one leg and weighed down with a guilt she didn't know she could hobble away from, she thought maybe that might have been the end of things between them.
"No," Raven said at last. "No, I shouldn't. I should blame the grounders for their justice. Or Finn for killing those people to begin with. I put the shiv in your hand, Clarke, and at first, I did blame you. It took me longer than it should have to not anymore."
"It makes sense for you to blame me," Clarke said, at last her eyes dropped down to meet Raven's, and for a long moment, the dark haired young woman wondered if she'd have rather Clarke kept avoiding her gaze. It was a heavy thing, looking into those light eyes. Responsibility was heavy. Guilt was heavier. Both lay there, on the girl's shoulders, and for the first time, Raven realized that Clarke should have just still been a girl, too young to really have even chosen a career yet, at least one that she was serious about.
"No, it doesn't," Raven said after a long moment. "It makes sense for me to be angry and hurt and childish. It made sense for those things to happen for a few days, Clarke. I lost Finn a long time ago, and down here, I got to see a part of him that I never did on the Arc. He got to be a person that he'd never been allowed up there, and he had to pay for that freedom with his life, he would have more than readily."
"You don't have to-"
"I'm not trying to make you feel better. I'm trying to get you to understand that we have to move forward. You and I are alive. We're friends, Clarke; we're going to stay that way." Raven watched her for a few long moments, waiting for the weight to disappear from her shoulders, from the little lines around her eyes that shouldn't have been there yet, from the way she held herself.
Slowly, those shoulders sagged.
Quickly, the lines disappeared.
Steadily, she straightened her spine.
"There's our Rebel Princess," Raven said with a smile, and Clarke returned it with one of her own. "Bellamy will be happy."
"It's been killing him, hasn't it?" Clarke asked, pushing away from the pillar and stepping forward, letting Raven loop her arm with Clarke's own. The pair took a few steps toward the door of the drop ship, toward the bright sunshine of a spring afternoon.
"You should have seen him when I wouldn't let him out Raven's Gate to go find you that first night," Raven said.
"I'm glad you didn't," Clarke answered. "I needed a few days."
"You don't blame me for my reaction, and I won't blame you for yours," Raven offered. Clarke nodded absently, but for the first time in nearly two weeks, it was quiet in her mind. The bone deep screaming had gone, and in its place was a sweet silence filled only with the sound of the wind through the camp.
"Deal," Clarke said, breaking the silence. Raven's smile turned from happy to sly int he matter of a moment, and the dark haired girl broke from Clarke to disappear over to a bin they'd salvaged from the wreckage.
"I've got something for you," Raven said, holding out a small black canvass bag. Clarke's sharp eyes flickered over it without recognition. "It's from Abby."
"I don't want any-"
"Take it, Clarke. You trashed your art supply store." The words sunk in quickly, and a hot, licking flare of shame curled up from her stomach.
"I didn't...It seemed so childish, keeping those things for myself, and then, when I realized how ridiculous it was, I wanted it gone. I can't be the little girl drawing in her Sky Box cell, waiting to be floated. Not anymore."
"You haven't been that person in a year," Raven said, holding out the bag, forcing it into Clarke's hands. "Your mom said you'd want it, that she'd replaced what she could before they came down. She does love you, Clarke."
"Yeah," the blonde said easily, flipping the canvass flap open and pulling out an unfamiliar sketchbook and three black charcoal pencils. Before, on the Arc, Clarke had always preferred to draw in black. Everything was a muted grey in space. Now, on the ground, anytime she drew in black it seemed not worth the effort. "She loved who I was up there."
Raven watched Clarke stare at the dark tips of the pencils, confused for a few long minutes as the silence stretched on. Her mind reeled, trying to pick up on how the gift would have gone so wrong so quickly. In the bunker, there had been a well kept stash of bright colors and pastels, all lovingly kept safe until Clarke had shattered. Colors.
It hit the mechanic quickly.
They'd all changed on the ground, so fundamentally that who they were in the past was hardly recognizable in who they'd become. On the Arc, they'd all been a grey washed version of themselves. The ones that weren't ended up in the Sky Box. On the earth, they'd inhaled the colors of the world around them, and it had infused every aspect of their lives, changing them as completely as anything else they'd experienced in their lives.
"I like who you are down here," Raven said. Light eyes jumped from the tips of those pencils to her, and a slow smile spread over her lips.
"Yeah," Clarke murmured, gripping the pencils tighter in her hand before holding them out to Raven. "For you and Wick. You need something to work with for designs and calculations. I'll find something else."
Raven took them without complaint or question.