Wick's POV

He doesn't know what happened. He doesn't know why she's so willing, if not pretty much asking, to go home with him. He has no clue why she'd ended up at the party in the first place or why she kept holding on to his hand. All he knew was that he liked it. He liked being someone to her. He liked how she knew he would pick up on her little hints. He was so pleased that for the first time she's not just allowing him to do something, she's asking him.

The ride to his place is quiet but short. She watches out the windshield with him and doesn't say a word. He wants to ask questions but he fights the urge. Tonight wasn't the time to pressure her for answers. Part of befriending Raven was accepting that some things just weren't going to be revealed. "Should we have said goodbye?" he asks as an afterthought, thinking aloud just as much as he was asking her. In retrospect, it did seem a bit rude. Then again, Octavia was nowhere to be found and last Wick had seen Bellamy was when he was holding Clarke's hair as she vomited in the trash can. (She'd gone for round two of drinking and it had a new set of consequences it seemed.)

Raven shrugs, pulling her gaze from outside to him. "It's not like we won't see them again," she comments and he finds himself completely lost in the word 'we.' Not just him or her, but them as a unit. It was a silly thing to focus on. Perhaps the late hour was just getting to him.

He parks closer to the building than he normally does, trying to save her steps without making it obvious. He notices the exaggerated limp in her walk and the way she winces as she climbs the two stairs to his building. The words, 'are you okay?' linger on his tongue. Wick knows better than to ask them though. He was lucky he had gotten away with it earlier tonight.

But then she's on the second flight on the way up to his apartment and she stops, leaning on the bannister so heavily he wonders if her legs were taking any weight at all. "I just…" she stops and bites her lip. "I think I walked too much today." It's a gentle admission.

"Take your time," he says, unsure if offering help would break their momentary peace or not. "I promise not to stare too long," he adds, smiling wide at his own joke. "Get it?" he asks when she remains silent.

Her watering eyes turn into a hard glare. "That was tragic," she says, her voice still tight but her body relaxing. "Where did you learn to tell jokes? Same place you learned to engineer, probably."

They're ruthless jabs but he's happy to take them. If there was one thing that let him know she's okay, it's her ability to still insult him. She pushes off the railing and carefully steps out on her left foot. Her flinch is noticeable but she keeps going anyway. He's one step behind her, thankfully, when she stumbles. Her good leg crumples under her weight and she doesn't stand a chance of regaining her balance. He hooks an arm around her waist and pulls her back up as he goes to stand next to her.

Throwing her arm around his shoulder and stooping so she can use him to lean on proves useful. He rambles as she continues walking, trying to keep her mind off of the struggle. "And that's why I think the fluid dynamic shifts are off which means we'll never get the sort of reaction we need, you know?"

It doesn't really matter if she was listening to a word coming out of his mouth or not. He still waits for her obligatory eye roll and reminder that he was an absolute idiot for even considering such an idea. They reach the front door and her face is red but the look of relief is obvious. He swings the door wide and waits to see if she wants his assistance getting in or not. She moves slowly, but steady enough that he backs off.

"You know, that was both the lamest and most interesting party I have ever been to," he laments as he flips on a light and throws his keys down. The dim glow was enough so she could see where she was going but not enough that she could see the extent of the mess, hopefully.

"Sounds about right," she grumbles as she falls to the couch. "Damn leg," he hears her whisper.

In the kitchen he grabs what he can find to offer as food. Chips and salsa would do for the moment, though he did have hamburger meat in the fridge. If anyone asked him if he had purchased more food for his place just in case Raven stopped by, he would call them a damn fool. Perhaps they were correct, but that wouldn't change the fact that they were still a damn fool for asking.

He pours some water and carries the haul into the living room, using his mouth in order to carry the chips. "Classy," she drawls when he lets the chips drop to the coffee table by opening his mouth.

"Anything for you," he says with a smirk.

Her focus is on her leg as she works the brace free. There's no signs of pain left on her face, only determination as her fingers make quick work. When she's pulled the last strap free she doesn't hesitate to throw it to the floor, a few feet away from her. "Hand over the salsa," she demands, holding out a hand to accept it.

He passes it to her with a grumble of, "you could at least say please." She snags the chips off the coffee table and twists the cap off the salsa. He sits on the floor, her legs hanging from the couch right near him. "We could order something if you want. Chinese maybe?"

"Mu Shu Pork, orange chicken, and chow mein noodles," she answers without missing a beat. Then she flushes red and shoves another chip in her mouth. "But they're closed anyway."

He looks at the time and realises she's right. "Another time then," he promises.

In companionable silence they both snack, the crunch of chips and licking clean of fingers the only sound to break apart the quiet. He abandons the chips sooner than her, leaning his head back on the seat of the couch and shutting his eyes. It wasn't that he was even that tired, just worn. His hand reaches out and rests on the back of the calf of her bad leg. Wick looks up at her, checking for any sign of sensation. She remains intent on her food. He tries not to laugh. But then his hand starts moving, a gentle, squeezing motion up and down her calf, feeling the taut muscles beneath her skin. He ran his thumb roughly along her hamstrings, rubbing it in a circular motion as he slid his hand up and down.

It's probably almost five minutes after he's started when she says, "What the hell are you doing?" Immediately he pulls his hand away, like a child caught sneaking a cookie. She reaches out and smacks the back of his head.

"Hey!" he protests, batting her hand away. "I was trying to help." It was the worst of the four letter words but it slips past without him thinking. "When your back is sore from sitting hunched in a chair or your shoulders tight from working out what do people say?" It's a rhetorical question and she knows it. She just keeps glaring down at him. "Oh, your muscles are tense. You need a massage."

"I haven't been working out my leg," she mutters, a scowl fixed on her face.

Wick shrugs. "Maybe not in the way we think about working out but to your leg you totally have. So I figured since it always gets so sore when it's tense like that from overuse…why not try and make the muscles loosen up."

Raven bites her lip, clearly torn between being pissed at him and letting it go. "Well you can't just touch my partially paralysed limb without asking me, perv."

"Fair enough," he answers, not bothering to apologise. Instead he just puts his hand to work again. "Can you feel that at all?"

Perhaps he deludes himself, but Wick could almost swear he hears disappointment in her voice when she says, "Feel what?"

He moves so that her leg dangles over his shoulder and then he uses both hands, rubbing deep into the muscles. Honestly he didn't know jack shit about massaging but this seemed right enough. He could almost swear he could feel the muscles start to twitch and snap beneath his touch. "Oh," she says in surprise when his fingers dig in further to her leg. "I can kind of feel it now."

"See?" he persists, his hands working even harder because the look of surprise and shock and happiness on her face when she can feel is the best thing he's experienced in a while. "This is what happens when you let people help sometimes."

It's a stupid statement and he's lucky he doesn't get hit again for it. All she says is, "I don't need other people taking care of me." Her words are rehearsed, nearly robotic. It's more of a mantra than a proper sentence. There's no emotions, no conviction even. They're just words.

"Well," he sighs, using his hands to signal her to move down further on the couch. She does and he sits next to her. He points to her leg to ask if it's okay for him to pull it up on his lap and she nods, positioning her back against the arm rest so she's laying out across the couch. "If you don't want other people taking care of you then you have to take better care of yourself."

"I do," she mumbles but then she's looking at her leg and the food on the coffee table and she sighs.

"Do you?" he challenges. He knows she's already doubting her own story. "How far did you walk today?" Raven doesn't answer, picking at some lint on the edge of his couch instead. "Alright let me figure it out for myself. You got up and walked to work this morning and then you stood there probably all day, right?" She nods once. "Then I bet you walked all the way home and then you walked all the way to Octavia's which is how far? Five miles?"

"Four and a half," she whispers.

Wick just shakes his head in response. "Was I right? Or was there even more?" He knows better than to consider there may be less.

She mumbles something under her breath and he leans in asking, 'huh?' so she'll repeat herself. "Here," she finally says, her voice a bit louder than necessary.

"Excuse me?" he asks, his hands momentarily paused in their actions as he tries to figure out what she's saying.

With a heavy sigh she looks up at him and admits, "I came here before going to Octavia's."

She came here first. That's the only thought he has. It is the only thing he cares about. It's the unspoken statement of I wanted you. I trusted you. I was hurt and I looked for you. Maybe he shouldn't let it get to his head but this girl is in his head in so many different ways already that he knows it's a lost cause.

The hands that massage her falter as he takes in her words, processes them through, and realises what it ultimately meant for her. "But I wasn't home." He curses the invite he got tonight and his willingness to go. Everything he needed would have been here if he'd only just waited. "Shit, Raven." He sighs because it's so fucked up that she has no other way of contacting him or anyone else unless she goes to where they are. It's a beyond flawed system.

"It's fine," she whispers with a shrug. She knows as much as he does that it isn't fine. Whatever happened tonight had sent her running, Wick knew what it meant when Raven went running. She ran but she didn't have anywhere to run to when she realised he wasn't there. He'd let her down in a way so unintentional and so very out of his control. The guilt chewed away at him regardless.

"You need a cell phone," he tells her with a shake of his head and tense conviction in his words.

"No," she cuts him off before he can get started on a tangent. "I can't…" she fades, sighs, fixes a stare on him that says he already know what she has to say. "That isn't a priority."

His hand rests on her leg, no more movement just a steady grasp. "What happened tonight?" he asks, attempting to ignore the way fear roils through him and settles in his chest. Maybe if Raven was a different person it would be easy to assume she'd just been seeking friends and companionship and happiness tonight. Because she is who she is, Wick asks the question and braces himself for an answer, terrified of what he might get in response.

There's no immediate reply. It seems the left corner of his living room has drastically increased in its interest to Raven as she fixes her gaze over there and doesn't budge. "It wasn't that bad," she says after several minutes. The words are barely a whisper, an admission so broken and miserable that the words pierce through the moment in time in their quiet.

Wasn't that bad, the words play in his head. Because that meant there had been worse. Anger stirs in him in a way that's unfamiliar but strong enough that he can't ignore it. He was the guy who always had a joke tucked away or a comment ready to relieve the tension. Life was a good time to be had, if you asked him. It was too short not to. But not even the most determined parts of him stand a chance of finding the least bit of humour in anything right now. The world seemed dark and broken and so fucked up. It couldn't have been the universe who brought Raven Reyes to him because he firmly believes if the universe had a say in anything at all, it wouldn't let Raven suffer as she did.

"What the hell does that even mean?" he asks, trying to ignore the way his voice is cracking open.

Her teeth bite down on her lip. He sees the moment that she draws blood, her tongue darting out to lick it away. She draws her eyes away from his carpet to him. He expects tears and sadness and a broken stare. Instead she's all steely gaze and a determined wrinkle to her brow. "It means that I'm fine." The words are strong, a promise to herself as much as it was to him. "But…it also means I-I wanted someone to remind me that I was. That I'm not…" She swallows heavily, a breath of a laugh falling past her lips in frustration. "I just wanted to not feel alone for a little bit, okay?"

And god, she's been alone for so long. She had struggled through her life for so many years. Her solitude was partially by choice. He knew there were so many people in her corner that would take her in if she only asked. But the choice wasn't something she entirely had control of. She'd been so broken and worn down; of course she fought to do what she could to protect herself from any more harm.

"You're never alone, Raven," he tells her. A simple promise that might mean nothing to her but meant everything to him. "I know, okay," his voice is insistent and needy, because he needs her to understand where he's coming from and what he's thinking and just how clearly he gets her. "I know that Finn left you and then he had to go and fucking die on you. And I know that your mom isn't who she should be towards you and I know that you fight everyone on everything because you've never been able to do anything but fight." His hands clench her leg. There's no recognition in her eyes. He knows she feels nothing because the world has insisted on being so damn cruel all these years. "But please, stop fighting me." The words are pathetic and desperate and weak in their pleading.

"I don't know how," she whispers back, her own words failing her as her voice cracks on the last word. Her eyes close and it's now that he sees the tears, one slipping its way out before she swipes it away.

"Just let me help you," he pushes down the urgency in his voice, fighting to rein his emotions back in. "Let all of your friends help you."

She looks up at him with red rimmed eyes and a face that is well worn beyond her years. The answers hover in the air between them. "I'm scared." "What if I'm left behind again?" "What if I rely on someone to help and they let me fall?" He knows what she feels, what she fears. It seems like it should be so easy to fix, mend a broken heart with some stitches and a kiss, but he knows that isn't how it works. Reforming trust and hope and belief in others was going to be a long journey.

She sits forward and reaches out her hand. He takes it without any question or words passing between them. "Wick," she whispers his name, letting it sit in the atmosphere.

"Reyes," he answers, trying to smile, trying to find some light within all of this dark. Also, he loved her name. He wanted to whisper her name as his lips found their way to hers. He wanted to laugh through the syllables as she ghosted fingers over his ticklish spots. He wanted to shout it out when her body was flush against him, sweaty bodies and unbelievable pleasure coursing through them. Her name was like a prayer and it had been so damn long since he'd had anything to pray.

"Will you help me?" she breathes out. There's fear in her eyes but there's also the beginnings of a smile forming on her lips. Her brow relaxes as her hand squeezes his.

"I thought you'd never ask."