Before The Dawn
the-clarke:
Clarke’s head was spinning. Her emotions ping-ponging back and forth with every new bit of information. Raven had never sounded like this before, not that Clarke had encountered. Pleading. Desperate. Clarke instinctively steeled herself against it. Too firm willed in stumbling through figuring out her feelings, usually, the hardest way possible.
This made her feel vulnerable. Like Raven has had something over her this whole time. Like something she’d used to trick or use Clarke somehow.
She found herself shaking her and taking a step back, an awful feeling rising in her stomach.
“I’m not him, Raven.” Clarke all but snapped. And once she said it she knew, that’s what hurt the most.
Not that Raven couldn’t find the words. Not that she had known her soulmate and Clarke never would. It was, admittedly, something she could sense making its way under her skin but Clarke had to face a simple fact, she’d never believed. It sounded cold, even to her, but the fact that her soulmate was dead was hardly surprising. Jarring and sudden but certainly not unbelievable.
It was that he, Finn, was what made Raven interested in her. Raven had just admitted it herself; she was hoping to feel closer to him through Clarke. He was a ghost between them, Raven’s ghost and Clarke suddenly saw their closeness in a different way. It was too much at once.
She took a breath after her sharp words and crossed the kitchen back toward her bedroom. Clarke paused in the doorway, forcing herself to fight the need toward flight and simply locking herself in her bathroom.
“I think you should go.” She said slowly, barely turning back to face Raven.
Raven blinked and almost flinched under the force behind Clarke’s words. She could see and hear how much she’d hurt Clarke and hated herself for it. For all the times she’d felt guilty when they were together it was nothing compared the sick feeling churning currently in her stomach. She shook her head ever so slightly and had to process what Clarke was saying because it wasn’t what she expected all. Of course she wasn’t him. Whatever Raven had thought she wanted that first day couldn’t help but change the more she knew Clarke.
Raven watched Clarke start to leave and she wished desperately there was something she could say. Words that would make all this less awful. There weren’t any, that was the problem. She’d betrayed Clarke’s trust while simultaneously ruining both their relationship and whatever thoughts Clarke had held for her future soulmate.
There was too much uncertainty on where they stood, but Raven didn’t deserve to get to ask what exactly Clarke meant in telling her to leave. Instead she grit her teeth and nodded shortly. All the experience clamping down on her emotions over the years came in handy in a moment like this.
“Okay. You’re right. I shouldn’t have-” Raven felt another apology die in her throat. There was so much she’d fucked up. This moment had always been something of an inevitability in Raven’s mind. Clarke telling her to go. She had to accept it now.
“You know where to find me,” she added so quietly to Clarke’s back she was unsure if the blonde would even hear before she left. The only thing to go right for the morning was how quickly her uber got there and how she was able to make it back to her apartment before tears finally broke the surface.