hi. i just wanted to pop in and say that you were in my recommended blogs and i recognised the st. claude lyric in your blog title and i think that song is pretty rad, and also your blog is really cool too. so. yeah. hope you're having a nice day. :)
It’s really a beautiful song, one of my fave for sure :)
Hey Nico. I'm a huge fan of your work and I have very fond memories of our conversations via fanmail, about our lives, gay rights, travelling, etc. I hope you feel better soon, because you still have to come visit Antwerp and stuff yourself with waffles and fries. Until then, my thoughts are with you.
Summary: Three midnight conversations. Set in an alternate universe, in which Clarke and Raven knew each on the Ark, and Anya never died.
A/N: Merry Christmas from your Secret Santa! I hope you like your gift and that you have a very happy holiday season!
Three Night Scenes
Everyone is asleep.
Well—not everyone—the uncertainty in the air is sure to cause some sleepless nights, and not just for her. But this hallway is deserted, and quiet, and as she walks down it she imagines her cane is making loud, clanging sounds against the metal floor. She imagines she’s announcing herself, waking the station, taking up space and invading, and she’s not sure if this is strength or a new weakness: always announcing oneself. She’s not sure if she’s the same person she was the last time she walked this hallway, but she knows that it’s not the same Ark.
No, the Ark on the ground is not the Ark of the sky. There is no machine hum. There is no life in it. When she stops and closes her eyes and stands very still, she can pretend she doesn’t know where she is. Not her Earth home, the air too stale and the ground beneath her too unyielding. Not her station, the sound that comes to her only an anti-sound, a lack of sound, a nothingness.
If she stands that way for too long, her hearts starts to pound in an unpleasant way, like panic forming.
Outside, in the real air, (Earth air) a part of her she’s still not used to comes alive. A part deep-buried and inherited, which thrills to the night chill and the sharpness in her lungs when she breathes in.
And to something else.
Clarke is standing outside one of the tents, her back to Raven. She jumps when Raven touches her shoulder, which shows how far off in her own world she was. She’s usually impossible to sneak up on.
“Can’t sleep either, huh?” Raven asks, and tries to smile, as if this were small talk. Clark looks back at her with an expression someone else might find blank, onto which someone else might read resentment, even, or annoyance. But Raven knows her better than that. She’s exhausted and she’s worried and she’s beating herself up.
Raven wraps an arm around her and pulls her close. Clarke crumbles against her immediately, squashing down into a smaller form just to fit right there in the space where shoulder becomes chest, and Raven’s so terrified that Clarke’s about to lose it and cry that she leans her weight on her good leg, throws down her cane, and hugs Clarke properly, arms around her, body crushed close.
Clarke doesn’t cry, but she doesn’t speak for a long time, either.
“If tomorrow isn’t better,” she mumbles finally, “I don’t think we’ll ever get peace. They’ve been treating Anya like a prisoner. I can’t even start negotiations when it’s like this.”
“Well can you blame them?” Raven answers, her voice a little hard. Its edges surprise her, too, but she toughens her expression when Clarke pulls away. “Well can you? It’s not like we have any reason to trust them—”
“We have their self-interest. You didn’t see what’s going on in that mountain—”
“You told me what’s going on. That’s not the point.” She feels lopsided and off balance, but Clarke’s still close and she can’t show it. “A shared enemy might not be enough. Maybe you should acknowledge that.”
Clarke looks like she wants to snap something back, like it’s right there on the tip of her tongue. Why aren’t you on my side?
And Raven wishes Clarke would ask, so she could answer, Because it goes without saying that I’m always on your side.
Clarke stoops down, picks up Raven’s cane, and hands it to her. “If it’s not enough, our friends will die. They’ll be in those cages next.”
Raven shakes her head, takes a step forward, presses her hand to Clarke’s cheek in a gesture not quite sweet, reassuring only because it is insistent. This is my touch. This is me, here. With you. “Not a chance. We won’t let that happen.”
It’s a promise so bold it might be a lie. But Clarke closes her eyes, and melts into it.
Everyone is asleep.
Well—not everyone—there are the night crews, of course, and the insomniacs. And Raven herself, who just can’t pace another moment in her too-small claustrophobic room. No. Her thoughts spiral down smaller and smaller with each circuit, until two chase each other back and forth, yes and no, and that’s no way to solve a problem, or make a decision like this. She heads to the library. It closed for the night hours ago, so she knows she’ll be alone at least.
The lock itself isn’t a problem. Locks haven’t been a problem since she was ten, and with seven years of practice, she could break it in her sleep.
On the other side of the door (sibilant hum, click open, sibilant hum, click close), there is an almost-black room, long and narrow, a bank of screens to the side all dark—and one at the end, glowing. And someone sitting there, turned to look at her, little more than a shadow in the dark but clearly startled at the bit of quiet noise in the otherwise no-noise room.
“Who’s there?” she asks. A voice Raven doesn’t recognize.
She steps closer, a strange calm within her—more than she’s felt since this afternoon, since—perhaps it’s the tremor of nerves she hears in the other girl’s voice. She sees her face now by the light of the screen: round and soft, blond hair pulled back in a braid. The girl is still staring, but she seems less frightened now: not that she sees Raven’s not a guard, but just another kid, there’s nothing to fear.
“Raven,” she answers. Does she know her, maybe? A name feels on the tip of her tongue. “How’d you get in here?”
The girl flashes an id card. “My mom’s on the council.” An attempted arch of an eyebrow. “You?”
There it is. Half-bits of memory come together, almost-thoughts settle like almost-thoughts always do, and she pulls out the chair at the next terminal and sits down. “I have my ways. You’re Clarke, right? The Griffins’ kid?”
“I’m Clarke,” she answers, and makes it sound like a correction. “Will you tell me why you’re here, at least?”
Raven opens her mouth to answer, but the response that comes is too personal, and even if she knew Clarke, she’s not ready to hear the words out of her own mouth. “You first,” she says, instead.
From the way Clarke turns away from her, she can tell it’s something personal with her, too. So she’s expecting a stalemate, and when she hears, “When I wake up in the night, dreaming of Earth, I sneak into the library and read about it,” somehow its unexpected sadness fells every barrier at once. Raven’s instinct says: tell her everything.
She just clears her throat, and says, “Oh,” and Clarke forces a smile and says, “I’m sorry. That was a morbid. In a we’re-all-going-to-die-in-space sort of way.”
Raven echoes the same smile, and rolls her eyes: Oh hey don’t worry about that. Then she leans in. “Do you want to know the much more…ordinary reason I’m in here?”
Clarke’s watching her too carefully, like her secrets are already there scrawled across her face. A tiny little nod of the head.
“My best friend kissed me today. Like my… he’s been my best friend for so long, he’s practically my brother, type best friend. And I don’t know what to do.”
Saying the words makes her heart flutter, as if they were hidden, taboo words: maybe it’s because Clarke’s a stranger, or because the room is so dark and the light from the computer screen too bright, or maybe it’s because Clarke is looking at her longer than any stranger should be looking at her and it feels like anything could happen now. When Finn kissed her, it surprised her. A total out of nowhere thing. But there’s a whispering thought in her now, one she wants to ignore but she just can’t, which says: if this girl kissed her now, her only question would be why did you wait so long?
It’s nonsense.
“Did you kiss him back?” Clarke whispers.
The Ark hums around them. Raven only notices the machine hum when she’s by herself, when she’s working. That’s when she listens to the station, lets it speak to her. But now it’s yelling, yelling. Enveloping them, just them, and the rest of the Ark fades away.
A tiny little smile. She shakes her head. She should be guilty, but she’s not. And she breathes out, “No.”
“Then I don’t know what there is to think about,” Clarke whispers. “Sounds like you’ve already decided.”
Clear and true, like pieces sliding into place, she knows she has.
Everyone’s asleep.
Well—not everyone—not Clarke, and not the person behind her, watching her. The mountain, in the distance, looms large over them. Set against the dark sky, the only sky Clarke knew for years, it seems to taunt her. That sky was her world once, and now only this. Nothing beyond this mountain, cracking it open, setting its prisoners free.
“You’ll be no good in battle if you’ve had no rest,” the person behind her says.
Clarke steps back, turns in the same movement, and underneath her heel leaves crack and a twig snaps into two. “I’m not the only person in the camp who’s awake,” she answers.
“I heard you moving,” Anya says, as if anyone could hear that noise, as if she hasn’t been roused from her own light sleep. She’s seen the inside of the mountain too. She’s put herself on the line for the alliance, too. “You can’t hide your thoughts, or your worries. Your people have stopped for the night, they won’t be here until tomorrow.”
Clarke shakes her head. “I’m not thinking about—”
“You are. We can’t make a move until Raven gets here. She’s the key to taking out the dam.”
After a sharp rush, when Anya interrupted her, when she thought perhaps they’d speak of something besides war and strategy, when she thought perhaps Anya could see the most hidden worries of her heart—her adrenaline falls again, and in its place a heavy fatigue. She sits down on the nearest rock, pass her hands over her face. “Raven is the key,” she nods. There are other important players, people without whom the plan will fall apart: Bellamy in the mountain, Indra and Octavia in the tunnels, the warriors at the gate. That’s the design: perfect pieces slotting perfectly together. Yet. For Clarke, it is Raven at the center of it all, and if she could will her faster through the forest, she would.
“Will you sleep or not?” Anya asks, voice a bit weary and perhaps a bit bored.
Clarke just shoots back: “Will you?”
Anya’s eyes flick up and over Clarke’s head, beyond her, to the mountain top, and she is silent.
“We’ll take it down, Anya,” Clarke insists, her voice hard, and confident. It isn’t a promise: she cannot offer Anya that. It’s a prediction, almost a mantra. The mountain won’t survive them. Not a chance.
3. If you could learn a new skill, what would it be?Ehhhhm, it depends. Do I have to take classes or can I just instantly do it? If I’d have to take classes I would love to learn play piano and if I can just instantly do it I’d like to be able to draw.
37. What would you do if you found $50 on the ground?Keep it somewhere other than in my wallet so I have some money left when I think I don’t.
46. What is your favourite season? Why?Fall! I love the leaves and the weather cooling down and snuggling up in my coat or bed with tea and candles and fairy lights and just read or watch a series
