CHAPTER 7 : THE ONLY WAY

11/02/2019

Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz.

Raven, still half asleep, didn't immediately understand where the sound came from. Actually, she didn't understand where she was either. Her headache indicated she'd drank a lot, and with a little effort she finally remembered going out with Clarke the night before. "I need to forget who I am tonight" her friend had told her. And Raven had gladly accepted. She'd just broken up with Wick and she needed to forget who he was. Asshole.

She opened her eyes just a little bit, but enough to recognize the room she was sleeping in. She wasn't at a stranger's house, which was a relief. She was in Clarke's room, or more so Abby's gest room. Her friend really needed to find a new place to live. Speaking of her, she was laying just beside Raven, deeply asleep. And the buzzing she heard a minute ago was probably coming from her phone. Since it'd stopped, Raven closed her eyes, still tired. She didn't even know what time it was. Just as she was falling back asleep, the phone started buzzing again.

Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz.

Oh, hell no, she thought. She took one of the pillows beside her and put it on her head, determined to sleep. The buzzing stopped. Raven's body relaxed. Silence, at last. A few minutes passed.

Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz.

"Oh, fuckin hell, Clarke! Answer your damn phone or turn it off!" Raven grumbled.

Since her friend didn't seem to move, and the phone kept fucking buzzing, Raven threw the pillow beside her and straightened up.

"Clarke!" she called again.

She turned around to face her, pissed. But the blond still had her eyes closed, and clearly hadn't heard anything. Clarke wasn't one to sleep a lot, but once she was asleep, the world could be ending and she still wouldn't wake up. Raven cursed her for that. She crawled on the bed, reaching for the bedside table across from her. Half of her body was on Clarke, crushing her. She hoped it would bother her enough to wake her up, but the blond barely moved.

"I hate you," Raven mumbled.

She picked up the phone and sat on her side of the bed. Her frustration was at its highest point, so she answered without even looking at the number.

"What?" she aggressively said.

She hated Clarke, she hated this phone, she hated Wick, but most importantly she hated the person who kept calling again and again. Because of them she couldn't sleep, so whoever it was didn't deserve her sympathy.

"Uh, h-hi," a guy answered.

He had a deep voice, which was in total contrast with his insecure tone. Raven frowned, she didn't recognize him. Before she could ask who he was, he started to speak again.

"I uh… I'm sorry if I got the wrong number… I, uh, I was looking for Claire Graham?"

"Claire Graham?"

So, the guy had called not once, not twice, but three fucking times in ten minutes and woke Raven up for the wrong number? The thought alone made her blood boil.

"Yes, uh… a friend of hers gave me this number. Jasper Jordan? Maybe you know him?"

She knew Clarke had a friend named Jasper. But Clarke wasn't Claire… whatever her last name was.

"Yeah, maybe. Who are you anyway?" she asked, irritated.

"Oh yeah, sorry, I didn't introduce myself. Uh… Bellamy. Bellamy Blake."

Raven froze.

"What?"

"What what?" the guy said, confused.

"What's your name again?"

"Bellamy Blake. Why?"

Bellamy.

The Bellamy.

Raven glanced at Clarke, peacefully asleep. She thought about Clarke's sadness. She thought about all the things she wouldn't tell her, about all the nights she would spend by her side as Clarke cried herself to sleep. She thought about Clarke's panic when she found out she'd told Raven about Bellamy. She thought about what she'd told her at the bar. "He still doesn't who I am anyway. He doesn't even know my real name," she'd said, before ordering another shot.

"Who are you looking for again?" Raven asked Bellamy.

"Claire Graham," he repeated.

Claire Graham. Clarke Griffin.

Damn it.

Raven bit her lip. She had an idea, but it could end badly. She could regret it for the rest of her life. Clarke would never forgive her. Maybe she shouldn't do it. It wasn't her choice to make.

"Hello?" Bellamy said.

Raven had been silent for too long, and she still didn't know what to do. She knew what Clarke would've wanted. But she knew what Clarke needed, too.

"Yeah, I know her," Raven finally told him.

"Oh," he said. She could hear the surprise in his voice. "I thought…"

"I misheard," she cut him off.

She would regret this decision, she knew that. But she couldn't help but feel like it had to be done.

"So, this is her number?" he asked, still confused.

"Yeah. She's busy right now."

Clarke was snoring beside her.

"Great," Bellamy sighed, relieved. "I'm sorry to bother. I just uh… I'd like to see her again. To work on a project. She told me she had a lot of work but…"

"No, no, it's fine. I'm going to take care of… the work. I'm one of her colleagues."

"Oh, you're a painter too?"

Raven's eyes widened. She thought about her garage full of tools and pieces of cars and machines she spent most her time in.

"Uh… yeah," she said.

She couldn't draw a tree properly.

"Anyway. Don't worry, she'll call you back soon," Raven reassured him.

If she succeeded in convincing Clarke to do so. Which was going to be hard.

"Okay, great. Thank you so much."

He sounded much more confident and relaxed than earlier. Raven winced. She hoped he wouldn't be too disappointed if her plan didn't work out. She couldn't force Clarke into talking to him again.

"You're welcome."

She hung up, now fully awake, and waited for Clarke to wake up.

~oOo~

"I want you to leave." Clarke said, her voice shaking, as she went down the stairs.

Raven was close behind her, carrying her stuff. She winced at the words.

"Clarke, I'm sorry." she told her for the hundredth time. "I wasn't sure what to do…"

"You could've just hung up!"

"He would've call you back."

"So what? This wasn't your fucking choice to make!" Clarke shouted.

Raven paused, watching her friend's eyes fill with tears and her body shake. She'd never seen Clarke like this. She was beyond mad. Raven knew her decision would have consequences, but maybe she'd underestimated the effect it would have on Clarke. So yeah, she regretted it. But that didn't mean she shouldn't defend herself. She took a breath and tried to speak as calmly as possible.

"What about his choice?"

Clarke's eyes widened, shocked.

"I can't believe you just said that to me."

"Clarke…"

"How fucking dare you? You made a decision for me and for him! You had no right!"

She turned her back on Raven and started walking towards the front door, passing by the kitchen where Abby was drinking coffee. She got up from her chair, frowning.

"Girls, what's going on?" she said, as she put her mug on the table beside her.

Raven followed Clarke, pursing her lips. She gave Abby an apologetic look. Abby crossed her arms, waiting for an explanation.

"Nothing," the blond said.

Abby frowned.

"Clarke…"

"Raven just needs to leave," she said, clenching her jaw.

She opened the door, clearly indicating Raven didn't have a choice. The brunette resisted the urge to strike back, frustrated that Clarke wouldn't listen to her explanations.

"Good luck, Abby," she said instead, walking out of the house.

Clarke slammed the door behind her. She didn't wait for her mother to speak before she said, her voice firm:

"I don't want to talk about it."

Then she headed back to her room, leaving Abby to her confusion, and cried for hours.

~oOo~

Only hunger convinced Clarke to get out of her bedroom. She'd been in there for hours, curled up in her bed. She felt miserable, betrayed.

She knew Monty and Harper wanted her to talk to Bellamy, but Raven had made this choice for her. She knew Clarke wasn't ready. She knew how hard it was for her. Still, Raven had decided on her own. As if Clarke's opinion didn't matter. But it wasn't her life, her past at stake. It wasn't fucking fair.

She went down the stairs, her steps heavy. She felt completely drained of energy and she had an awful headache. The alcohol from the night before wasn't helping.

She found Abby in the living room, seated on the couch with boxes all around her. Clarke walked past her and went straight to the kitchen to pick up some food and some aspirin. She returned with a plate full of home-made sandwiches and a glass of water she put on the coffee table, then sat on the chair next to her mother.

She ate quietly, watching her mother go through the boxes she'd probably taken from the garage. Abby didn't acknowledge Clarke's presence, but she didn't seem angry. A few minutes passed before Clarke finally spoke.

"What are you doing?" she asked her.

Abby sighed.

"Your father gave me this pretty watch one day. You know, with the red band? Anyway, I broke this one yesterday."

She pointed at a small watch on the other end of the coffee table.

"So, I'm looking for the other one. But I can't find it for the life of me," she continued.

"Did you check in your jewelry box?" Clarke shrugged.

"Of course I did."

Abby closed the box she was holding and put it down beside the couch before picking up another one. As she started digging through it, they became silent again. From her chair, Clarke could see a bit of what was inside. There were a bunch of random objects that belonged to her dad—a glasses case, an old wallet, a t-shirt with paint on it… Her dad had died eleven years ago, but Clarke still felt a little heartbroken. She was only sixteen when he had his accident. His death had changed her forever, even if it took her some time to realize it. She was good at losing the people she loved, apparently.

"Are we going to talk about what happened?" Abby suddenly asked, her voice calm.

Clarke's body tensed. Abby wasn't looking at her, she just kept searching for the watch, as if she'd just asked about the weather.

"I'd rather not," Clarke said.

Abby straightened, and finally stared at her. Her eyes went down her face: her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth. She noticed Clarke's joined hands—her attempt to keep them from shaking. The more she looked at her, the more worried her mother seemed. Clarke looked down. She didn't want to see that.

"When your father died…" Abby started.

"I'm not doing this," Clarke said, getting up from her chair.

"Clarke, please."

She was heading for the stairs, but something in her mother's voice stopped her. She wasn't just asking, she was desperate for Clarke to listen her. She closed her eyes, sighing. She knew she was being unfair to Abby. When her father died, she avoided her mother for months. When Wells moved to Canada, she refused to talk about it. When she came back here, two and a half years ago, she didn't give her an explanation. She'd never told her why she'd spent so many nights crying alone. But Abby was always there, making sure she was eating, giving her space, inviting her friends. She didn't deserve this treatment and Clarke knew that.

So, after a few seconds of hesitation, she slowly went back to her chair, and waited to hear what she had to say.

Abby seemed relieved.

"When you father died," she repeated, "I thought… I thought that if I didn't think about it, the pain would go away. That I would just forget."

She stopped, tears in her eyes.

"So, I worked even more than I already did. I smiled, I talked to people as if it'd never happened. As if Jake was still alive. And it worked pretty well, at the beginning. It was easy to forget when I was operating on patients and saving lives."

Abby crouched down in front of her daughter and took her hands in her own.

"But when I was home, it felt like I was going to die. The memories, the pain…"

She stopped for a while, maybe because it was too hard to talk. Clarke swallowed, tears forming in her eyes, too.

"What I'm trying to say," Abby continued, "is that the only way to move on is to face what happened. As long as you're avoiding your past, you won't be able to think about the future."

A tear fell on her mother's cheek, which she immediately wiped away. Abby got up and picked up one of the boxes on the ground. Clarke was completely shaken by her mother's words, to the point that she didn't trust herself to speak.

"Now I don't know what you've been through, baby. But I'm not stupid. I see how hard this is for you. And maybe this is the way to get through this, once and for all," Abby concluded, her tone reassuring.

She put the box on Clarke's lap, a sad smile on her lips. She squeezed her hands once more, then went upstairs, leaving her daughter alone. Clarke took a deep breath, trying to calm down. She never expected Abby to say such things. Maybe because they'd never talked about it, Clarke imagined her mother didn't want to get involved. She was so wrong. She was her mother, after all. Maybe she shouldn't be surprised.

She looked down at the box, intrigued. She carefully opened it, but stopped the second she recognized what was in it. Pencils, drawings… and pictures. From almost three years ago. She'd put them in the garage when she'd come back here, and never touched them again. Her heart raced at the thought of her mother finding the box and looking through it. What had she seen? What had she thought? Clarke fought the urge to go and ask her.

She stayed still, thinking. Abby was right, she couldn't avoid this forever. She had to be brave. She had to do this for herself.

She took the first picture out of the box.