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The ground’s been hard for Raven, Bellamy thinks.
Well, Bellamy knows. It’s been hard for everyone. Constantly fighting for their lives, hostility surrounding them in every direction. They can’t catch a break down here, couldn’t in the sky either. But on the earth it’s almost as if they’ll never be safe. For Raven, it’s been worse.
In the sky they could pretend.
No one knew about the diminishing oxygen levels. They didn’t notice the food rations were gradually getting smaller and they certainly didn’t realize that their government was crumbling beneath them. Life seemed great on the Ark, if you were one of the fortunate ones.
But Bellamy knows Raven wasn’t.
She’s told him. Not explicitly, but he figured it out. She grew up not knowing who her father was, only born for the extra rations her mom could get, probably a mistake in the first place. A mistake that made it easier for her mother to drown herself in booze. She says she doesn’t care. Her mother was a jerk, and other more colourful words, but she was her mother. Raven was obedient and would do anything her mother told her to. She didn’t know any better. Her mom trading Raven’s meals was something she thought happened to everyone.
Raven is cautious about eating too much, even now when food rationing is unnecessary. They have hunters going out every day and farmers tending to vegetables, yet Raven barely eats anything. Bellamy thinks she's worried about the day that earth stops providing for them. When the radiation soaked animals stop reproducing, or when the grounders catch the edible ones before them. She’s more worried about the rest of the camp getting enough food than she is for her own nutritional needs.
He doesn’t think she knows that he notices, but it bothers Bellamy. So, when he leads a group on a hunting expedition, and happens across some red berries, he grabs a handful, and confirms if they are edible with Monty.
He leaves them on her worktable with a note saying, “Try these! They’re so good."
He goes back to the berry bush every time he’s worried about her health and if she happens to find a map for all the edible berries he’s found, he doesn’t have to lie that they’re for him too.
Raven knows loss almost too well, Bellamy’s realized. She’s lost the most important person in her life four times.
Finn was the only person on the Ark to care for her. He shared his rations, he kept her company, and he loved her. But most importantly, for Raven, Bellamy, and everyone on the Ark, he saved her life.
Finn could have let Raven get caught, anyone else on the Ark probably would have. Finn wouldn’t though. As Bellamy’s heard too many times to count, he would sacrifice himself for anyone, especially those he loved. And he really did love Raven.
The first time she lost him, he wasn’t that far away. Weekly visits to lock-up, and daily secret stopovers through the vents and it was as if they were still together.
The second time she lost him, he got sent to earth. All the delinquents did, but Raven didn’t care about them, she didn’t know them. Raven would probably do anything to protect the other delinquents now, Bellamy supposes. But back all those months ago, the only thing that mattered to her was Finn.
She had to get to earth, she had to see him again, and she did.
Bellamy has to admit, not to Raven’s face of course, that he didn’t like her at first. Her intelligence and arrogance too similar to his own. They had too much in common, and Bellamy’s distaste for himself mirrored onto Raven. But he was there for her the next time she lost Finn. The time when Raven realized that she wasn’t Finn’s first choice. When Finn let someone else get close enough to him and Raven was alone once again. No family, no friends, and no one to love her as much as she loved them.
Bellamy wonders if he would have done the same. If he was in Finn’s shoes and sacrificed himself for someone he loved. Could he simply forget about loving Raven the minute another person stepped into his life? He knows he wouldn’t, knows he couldn’t. Especially with how much Raven means to him now. Bellamy didn’t help that time. He tried, but he didn’t know Raven then. Didn’t know that even in her most vulnerable state, she still keeps every single one of her meticulously placed wall upright.
Their relationship had grown from that moment. She learned that Bellamy wasn’t as malicious as he wanted everyone to think he was and he learned that he had more people in his life than just his sister.
Bellamy wishes that that was the last time she lost Finn, wishes that he was still alive so he didn’t have to experience the pain he did while listening to Raven’s scream. She was the first person to realize what Clarke did, she gave her the means to do it.
When Bellamy noticed Raven sinking to the ground, he couldn’t stop himself from embracing her. It wasn’t until they were halfway down, and Clarke had stepped away from Finn’s body, that he noticed Finn was dead. Bellamy was too focused on Raven.
He notices when she’s grieving, even all these months later. Because her sorrow hides in her smallest cracks and escapes at the worst times. He sees the way her jaw tightens, how she gets more irritable, how she isolates herself from the rest of the camp and fixates on one particular mission. Bellamy also notices the tears gathering in her eyes, threatening to escape. She does her best to disappear, hide away from the rest of the camp. She doesn't want them to see her at her weakest.
When she gets exceptionally desolate, he’s there with some lame excuse that he needs her. Needs her to hold him, because of the horror he inflicted in Mount Weather. It’s not a lie, he was one of the causes of over 300 deaths. Although, it’s not him that needs support at these times. Bellamy would do anything for Raven. He takes her away, drags her to his tent.
She would never admit to needing someone, especially after losing the first person she cared about so many times. She’d never come to Bellamy for help or to just be held. But she’s always there for Bellamy.
They sit in Bellamy’s tent, hidden from the rest of the camp, clutching each other for support, and talking about whatever they need to talk about. It’s times like these that Raven opens up about her past. She slowly lets Bellamy in, her meticulously placed walls coming down one brick at a time. And Bellamy’s happy.
Not happy hearing about Raven’s tragic past, but happy that she trusts him enough to share it.
The ground has been relentless, especially for Raven.
Bellamy knows that everyone is on equal footing, but with Raven the ground is vindictive. It’s an understatement that she knows pain, that she knows suffering.
The first time he saw her she was knocked unconscious. But the pain of crashing down to earth is nothing compared to everything else that’s happened to her.
Hiding away underneath the dropship to save Bellamy was one of Raven’s more idiotic moments. She saved his life, but changed hers forever. Bellamy’s never been shot before, but he can imagine the excruciating pain she must have been in. Shot through her stomach, with a bullet too far in to be removed, slowly carving its own path to her spine.
Clarke saved every other delinquent she could. Cut them open, sewed them back up. Jasper and Finn’s pain only lasted a few days. But Raven’s injury was much worse. The speed at which bullets tear and rip is worse than anything a spear or knife can do.
Maybe the grounders are right. Maybe they should stop using guns for protection. With the pain and suffering Raven’s been dealt, maybe guns are too dangerous for them.
It’s not like they’ve been trained properly. Even with the shooting lessons Kane’s been giving them, they all have their bad habits that they can’t break out of. And they’ve all seen the damage one bullet can do.
The pain of getting shot was nothing like the pain of getting the bullet out, Bellamy assumes. An assumption based on Raven’s screams. Forced into lockup, he had to listen to Raven’s cries of pain across the camp, something he wishes never to hear again. He wouldn’t wish that suffering on his worst enemy, and on the ground, he has a lot of those.
But with the bullet out, the pain would slowly disappear, only to be replaced with numbness.
That how she describes it to him. She knows her leg is there, but anything she tried to do to move it doesn’t work. As much as he wouldn’t admit it to Raven, he wishes her pain over paralysis, as if having one can remove the other. With the pain, she had hope. Hope that once it was gone, her life would be back to normal. With the numbness, all hope is gone. Her leg and her life will never be the same. She’ll never run, swim, climb or jump.
She likes to keep her mind busy, she did before the shooting, but now it’s everything to forget about never being able to walk properly again. Or that she’ll never be able to help on simple expeditions, without her leg slowing her and the rest of the group down.
He collects thing; wires, scrap metal, old toys, and appliances he finds, and she can do anything with them. She can fix anything, repair it to almost perfect conditions, but her greatest accomplishments is her new creations. Raven can build machines by putting the all scraps Bellamy collects together. Bellamy doesn’t understand how she does it, can’t figure out how she can look at seemingly useless junk and build them something truly useful.
He doesn’t have as much of a leadership role as he used to now that the adults are on the earth, but he still has a pull with the delinquents. So when he organizes trips solely to collect things for Raven, everyone is willing to help.
And Raven can forge them whatever she likes, if it can help her forget how hopeless she feels.
She loves the sky, Bellamy knows, she watches it intently.
When they lived on the Ark it was never dark. There was always a light on in the distance, or the faint red indication of a locked door pervading the darkness. Or the stars.
The stars were so much brighter up there, and there were so many more to see. Up in the sky, the galaxies were everywhere, speckled light in full view. But Bellamy never cared to look.
Raven did though.
Still all these months later, it’s all she talks about. The stars, the galaxies, the constellations being so much brighter on the Ark. He watches her smile widen whenever she talks about them. When she points out the faint patterns in the sky, creating elaborated shapes and characters.
And he remembers every story she tells, most of them the same as the books he used to read. But he loves hearing her tell them, the stories seem so much more interesting.
But the ground has dark nights. When the clouds cover the entire night’s sky, causing the stars to disappear, the moon nowhere to be found. The blackness of the nightfall impossible to see through.
And even though she won’t admit to it, Bellamy can tell she’s afraid. Without the stars, she lets the darkness envelope her. Raven lets every bad thing that’s ever happened to her out in the open to attack her. To slowly pull her deeper into despair. Without the light, she’s irrelevant.
Bellamy doesn’t let her descend into her own darkness. He tells her stories, ones she’s never told him, ones she hasn’t heard. He finds pages of tales that were once in books, telling them when she really needs them. Amusing stories of kings and gods, of humans and animals, ones not too different to her constellations. They spark light into her darkness and help soothe her.
They cut through Raven’s darkness, painting radiant galaxies across her skin.
When the clouds finally clear, the stars illuminating the night sky one again, they create their own constellations. They draw new patterns in the stars to match Bellamy’s stories.
He carries stars in his pockets
because he knows
she fears the dark.
Whenever sadness pays her a visit
he paints galaxies
on the back of her hands.