Pain was Raven's first language when consciousness returned, a foul vocabulary of throbbing temples and something warm -blood, she recognzied that feeling well enough, she'd had enough accidents and injuries- trickling down her forehead. The dropship's emergency lights pulsed an angry red, cut through by the sunlight streaming through the small window in the door, and she was glad for it. She had no interest in experiencing Earth for the first time in the pitch-black darkness of nighttime. Then she remembered her companion, her friend, whose safety equipment wasn't quite as good as her own was, jury-rigged as it was.
"Octavia?" Her voice came out as a rasp, throat raw from screaming during their descent, from the stress that she had put herself through, even from being unconscious. Not the most fun thing that she had ever done in her life, though she had to admit just about anything was better than what she and Octavia had been through…however long ago that it had been. A few hours, at least, she knew that much. A moment later, she tried again. "Octavia? O? C'mon babe, wake up, you there?"
A groan answered her from somewhere to her left. It was pained, annoyed, and somewhat muffled, but the sound was clear and didn't sound like O was badly injured internally. At least, not as far as Raven could tell. She was a mechanic, not a doctor. She'd take what she could get though.
"Oh thank God." Raven breathed, shifting in her seat. Pain shot through her left leg when she tried to move it, and she hissed through clenched teeth, resisting the urge to do anything more vitriolic. "O, talk to me. Are you okay?"
"Define 'okay', Rae." came the groggy reply, followed by the sound of a body shifting. A moment later, Octavia came properly into view, sitting up to reveal that her harness had been partially torn at some point, leaving her to slump out of view when she'd lost consciousness.
Raven fumbled with her own restraints, fingers clumsy and uncooperative as she tried to wake up properly. "Can you move? Anything broken?"
"Everything hurts, so I know that I'm alive, at least." Octavia mumbled, raising a hand to her face and touching it lightly, hissing softly at the pressure. Bruising, probably, not that Raven could see it at the moment given the lighting situation. "But I think I'm in one piece. Where are we? Did we..."
"We made it, yeah." Raven confirmed, finally freeing herself from the constricting straps and shifting herself around carefully to start working on her companions'. "Mind you, with all those course adjustments and shit, I have no idea where 'here' actually is, but we made it to Earth, and that's the important part. Hopefully, it isn't too close whoever was messing with our systems."
"It was definitely -unh, thanks- definitely someone messing with us, then? Not some sort of malfunction?" Octavia asked, grunting softly as the last buckle fell away, letting her move a bit more freely than before, and Raven grunted in acknowledgement.
"No way it was a malfunction. Whoever it was, they were actively countering everything that I was doing. It was way too organized, too methodical and precise, to be a random fault." she explained, shifting her left leg again and hissing softly as it obeyed. Deep muscle bruise, she'd bet. Maybe a sprain. But it wasn't broken, and that was the important part. It would suck, and it would slow her down, but it wouldn't cripple her.
"Guess we'll find out who was trying to kill us soon enough, then." Octavia muttered, rubbing at the back of her neck as she looked around the cramped interior of the dropship, eyes trying to pierce the gloom. "You think they know we survived?"
"If they were tracking us, then yeah, probably. They'd have seen the chutes pop, unless they have no monitoring equipment at all. Which they had to, since they picked us up above the clouds. So they could be a problem, unless we GTFO." Raven shifted again, testing her weight on both feet before quickly deciding against standing just yet. "We should get our bearings before we try to go anywhere, though. Check what supplies survived, would you? Banged up my leg, I need a minute."
The dropship creaked ominously around them, metal settling as it cooled. Octavia reached up to touch the ceiling, which was now dented inward at an alarming angle.
"That doesn't look great, does it." she observed mildly, sounding far too at ease given the circumstances, and Raven shrugged as she prodded at the control panel.
"Could be worse. The hull integrity held. That's all that matters. It's not like we're going to be re-using the damn thing, after all." she pointed out, getting a soft, scoffing laugh from the other girl in response, though Octavia nonetheless turned her attention away from the damage and towards what might have survived. Raven, meanwhile, quickly came to the conclusion that the instrumentation was trashed. 100 year old electronics equipment was made for the kind of stress that it had just gone through. Frankly, the fact that it had worked well enough to get them down and let her fight to maintain control of the pod was a fucking miracle, and one she wasn't inclined to question. "Yeah, the pods fucked. What've you got, O?"
"All the supplies are fine, it looks like. Some of it's a little banged up, but none of it looks unusable, and all the containers opened, so we're in business." came the prompt replay, and Raven grinned as she tested her leg again. Though she winced, it functioned, and she slowly got to her feet.
"Fuck, that hurts like a bitch. Okay. Let's get the door open, get some fresh air in here."
"You sure that's a good idea?" Octavia asked, even as she moved toward the door, not sounding as if she believed it likely but needing to voice it all the same. "What if the air is toxic or something?"
Raven snorted, shaking her head. "If the air's toxic, we're already dead, and so is Clarke. Besides, the hull took damage, remember? We've probably been breathing traces of Earth air for a while now, even if we didn't notice it. We'll be fine" She limped across the pod, wincing with each step, as she joined her friend. "Anyway, we need to get our bearings, see where we set down, figure out how much of a walk we've got ahead of us. And, for that matter, what kind of terrain we're looking at."
Together they reached the for door mechanism, a simple -if heavy- manual release lever that had fortunately survived their chaotic descent. Raven nodded at Octavia, both of them tightening their grips on the handle. "We'll do it together. On three. One, two—"
"—three!"
They heaved the lever down together and pushed. The mechanism released with a grinding screech of metal, followed by a pneumatic hiss as the door seal broke. Bright sunlight flooded in around the edges, momentarily blinding them both.
"Oh my God…" Octavia whispered, raising a hand to shield her eyes. "It's so... bright."
Raven blinked rapidly, her eyes struggling to adjust to the natural light. The air that rushed into the dropship smelled unlike anything she'd ever experienced, though it reminded her an awful lot of what she'd read in old-world books back on the Ark: rich, earthy, alive, even damp. For someone who'd spent her entire life breathing recycled air, the sudden sensory overload was almost dizzying, and she just knew it would be even stronger .
"Fresh air…" Raven murmured, drawing a deep breath. "Real, actual fresh air. So this is what it's like…"
"We'll enjoy it more once we're properly out, so gimme a hand with this. I think it's stuck." Octavia grunted at her, pushing against the door. It had only partially opened, slightly warped from the abuse the dropship had suffered.
"Right, right, sorry." Raven pressed her shoulder against the metal, adding her weight to Octavia's. Together they pushed, muscles straining until finally the door gave way with a screech, swinging outward to reveal the world, their world. Their home.
"Holy shit, O…" Raven whispered, the words spoken without a thought, but whole-heartedly meant, and Octavia mumbled something indecipherable in what sounded like agreement.
It had obviously been an airport, once, back before the Last War.
The cracked tarmac stretched before and around them, nature reclaiming what humanity had lost when the world burned in nuclear fire. Trees —actual trees, big trees, nothing like the small, struggling life of The Last Tree on the Ark— had burst through the concrete in dozens of places, some towering impossibly high. Fallen leaves and crawling vines crawled and sprawled across the ground, and the air was filled with the sound of animals. A cacaphony too full for either of them to stand a chance at identifying any one creature.
"Look at those buildings, they're huge! The size of a station on the Ark, easily!" Octavia breathed, pointing toward a cluster of structures in the distance. They were remarkably intact, despite the war and the intervening decades, though they were metal skeletons with many sections open entirely to the world. They could see the plant life growing in and around and even through them from here, vibrant greens and reds and yellows contrasting sharply against the weathered whites and greys of the buildings.
Raven squinted against the sunlight, eyes still adjusting to the sun and distance both. "Terminal buildings, I think, based on the old pictures I've seen. People would wait in them for their planes, I think." She carefully stepped out of the dropship, wincing as her injured leg took weight, testing the footing. The solid ground beneath her feet felt strange —not the unyielding metal of the Ark, but something with subtle give, and that was an altogether disorienting thing even before her injury was added in- but not dangerous…whatever qualified for dangerous on Earth. Not like she had any real idea. "Come on, let's get ourselves packed up, try to find some sort of identifying features, and figure out where the hell we are."
Octavia stepped out behind Raven, her boots crunching on the mixture of broken asphalt and vegetation. She spun in a slow circle, face tilted upward to the sky. "I never imagined it would be so...so, big, so open! There's no ceiling. It just keeps going."
"Yeah," Raven said, still trying to process the vastness herself. She'd seen Earth from space countless times, but being on it was entirely different. "Makes you feel small, doesn't it? Tiny, even."
"In a good way, yeah. Scary, but awesome." Octavia breathed, getting a somewhat bemused headshake from Raven, before she seemed to shake herself back to reality. "Okay, supplies. and getting our bearings. Right. I'll head back in, pass things out to you. Then we can get moving."
"Sounds like a plan, yeah." Raven agreed, limping toward a relatively clear section of tarmac to create a staging area. She lowered herself carefully to the ground, stretching her injured leg out in front of her. "Hand me the med kit first if you can find it. I should probably brace and wrap this leg before we go anywhere, if I want to keep it from getting any worse. And if we want to get anywhere in a timely fashion."
While Octavia disappeared back into the dropship, Raven took the opportunity to survey their surroundings more thoroughly. The airport's control tower loomed in the distance, its windows shattered but its structure largely intact despite the large gouge carved out of one side. Which was a hell of a surprise, she'd have thought that would have toppled during the war or the time since, especially with damage like that. She'd known that they built things to last back then, but goddamn. As for the ground, the pain had mostly been obliterated by the weather and time, but here and there splashes of faded color -white, mostly- could be seen, and there was a lot less debris than she had expected. Storms must have kept the area fairly clean, she supposed, as little sense as that made to her.
"Here, Rae." Octavia called, emerging with a compact medical kit and several other supply packs, putting most of them down beside her before handing the medical kit over and turning away to keep unloading. A murmur of thanks followed her back to the dropship as Raven opened the pack, looking through it in the hopes of finding a collapsible brace that she could use.
There wasn't of course, things like that were too valuable for a mission like this, no matter how intent the Council had been on making sure that they were 'sufficiently supplied'. Honestly, she was amazed that they had gotten as much gear as they had. If she hadn't already known how desperate the Council was to make a homecoming work, despite Jaha's increasingly concerning behavior -she wasn't sure he was even reluctant about throwing his weight around anymore, not like he had been just a few months ago-, then the fact that they had given her and O so many useful tools would certainly have tipped her off.
"Alright, going to have to make a brace from scratch, then. God, I should have paid more attention in Earth Skills…" she sighed, running a hand through her hair in frustration as she tried to remember what it was she had to do to handle this particular shitshow of a situation. After two minutes of furious, silent thinking, she groaned loudly. "Fuck, I don't even remember how to make a splint or a brace using sticks and shit. What the hell am I going to do?"
"Remember that you've always sucked when it comes to medical stuff, despite bragging before we started that 'the human body is just another machine', and that I was a hell of a lot better with that sort of thing than you were?" Octavia teased dryly, putting down the last of the supplies and closing the pod door with a clang that both was satisfying and full of finality. Raven stuck her tongue out in response, earning herself a snort and a smirk, before Octavia pulled out one of the survival knives and strapped it to her thigh. "I'll find what you need for a splint, be right back. Don't go anywhere, alright?"
"Oh, ha ha, very funny. Like I'm going anywhere with this leg, brat." Raven muttered, gesturing at her injured limb, rolling her eyes as Octavia snickered, before looking at her seriously. "Just don't wander too far, okay? We still don't know what's out there, and if you get to far off we won't be able to help each other if needed."
"Relax, Rae. I'm just going to check those trees at the edge of the tarmac. I'll stay in sight." Octavia flashed a reassuring smile before jogging toward the nearest cluster of trees, her movements fluid and eager despite being as unfamiliar with the terrain and gravity as Raven herself was, like someone finally unleashed from a cage. A pretty apt comparison, Raven had to admit. Clarke had always said that O was meant for more than the life she had lived -she'd said that about all of them, of course, but had always acknowledged that Octavia was even less suitable for a life trapped on the Ark than everyone else was- and, while Raven had always agreed intellectually, seeing it proven true in even these small ways was something else entirely.
As she watched Octavia flit between the trees looking for what she needed, Raven couldn't help but smile despite the pain. The girl moved like she'd been born for this, for Earth. Testing boundaries, exploring with an almost childlike wonder that belied the hardness life on the Ark had forced upon them all. It was fitting, really. The girl who'd lived her entire life hidden beneath the floor was now the first -outside of Clarke, of course- to touch these trees, to feel real bark beneath her fingertips. If they'd been sent down to Earth with the Skybox kids, Raven was willing to bet Octavia would have been the first person out of the dropship
Leaning back on her hands, she looked up at the sky, tilting her face into the light breeze, luxuriating in the feeling, alien as it was. So very like, yet unlike, the ventilation systems on the Ark. It was warmer, for one thing, but it was also real. She'd never understood, and how could she of course, but she'd never understood the difference between air that was artificially generated and air that was real. It felt different on her skin, unmistakably so, carrying a hint of moisture and…and softness that the ventilation systems had never had. Not to mention it smelled like life, which was nothing short of amazing. The hint all Arkers got from the Hydroponics Bay and The Last Tree was barely a hint, compared to all of this. It was awe-inspiring, and more than a little frightening.
And more than a little dangerous, Raven reminded herself, forcing her mind back to their current situation with no small amount of reluctance. They had a mission to complete, and getting distracted by Earth's beauty wouldn't help them find Clarke. They could take in the sights while they walked and worked. Especially as much as she would be slowing them down until her leg had recovered a bit
"Got it!" Octavia called, jogging back with several mostly-straight branches tucked under her arm and a handful of flexible vines. "These should work. The wood's strong but not too brittle, and these vines are surprisingly tough. If I can figure out how to use them instead of any of our bandages, we can save those for something worse."
"Look at you, regular Earth Skills star, huh?" Raven said with a grin, one that was only, oh, 45% teasing. The rest was entirely genuine pride and approval. "Pike and Kane would be proud."
"Shut up, alright?" Octavia rolled her eyes but smiled in pleasure at the compliment all the same as she knelt beside Raven's outstretched leg. "This might hurt a bit, especially when I tighten it."
"Don't try to prepare me for it, just do it." Raven huffed as she braced herself.
Octavia obeyed, working quickly and placing the branches on either side of Raven's leg before using the vines to secure them tightly -very tightly, but not so tight as to risk bloodflow- in place. It hurt like a bitch and would suck to walk with, she knew, but she'd be able to walk, and that was what was important right now.
"Thanks, O." Raven said through gritted teeth once Octavia finished, not particularly enjoying the way it felt, tightly wrapped around her injury. "Not bad for your first Earth-made splint. Looks like you really do have a talent for this, huh?"
"Better than anything I could've done in zero-g, or with any mechanical, that's for damn sure." Octavia replied with a smile, helping Raven to her feet. "How's it feel?"
Raven tested her weight cautiously, wincing as she took a step, then another and another. "Like someone took a hammer to my leg, but I can move. It'll do. Let's get the gear packed up and move out. I dunno what time it is, and the last thing we do is to find ourselves wandering aimlessly through the damn woods when the sun goes down."
"Good point. Nightfall on Earth is a complete unknown, especially if there might be hostile people down here somewhere." Octavia said, looking up at the sky. The sun still hung relatively high, but neither of them had any real concept of how quickly darkness might fall here. "Let me distribute the weight between us. You shouldn't carry too much with that leg."
Raven wanted to argue but knew better. If she over did it and made her leg worse, they'd been in worse shape then if she let herself heal. "Fine. But I'm not going to be dead weight. Give me something reasonable, alright? Once I'm in better shape, we'll balance things out."
"It's a deal." Octavia agreed, dividing their supplies between two packs. She handed the lighter one to Raven, who accepted it with only minimal grumbling. "So which way do we go? Any ideas on where we actually landed?"
Raven squinted up at the sun, then surveyed the landscape around them. "Well, we were aiming for the area around Arlington National Cemetery, but with all of that interference, we could be anywhere within 20 or 30 miles of it instead. Not much further than that, though, we were too low to get too badly off course, no matter how much whoever it is fucked with us. All we can really do is head for that tower over there. It will probably give us the best view of the area around us, and hopefully on our way there we'll get some idea of what airport we're at. There are a few near the old capital, so once we know which one this is, like will get simpler."
"Not easy, but simple." Octavia laughed softly, and Raven had to nod in agreement, a small smile quirking her lips. Like Octavia, she was familiar with the refrain that Clarke had voiced many times over the course of their friendship, and she was just as much in agreement with the truth of the statement as the blonde and her fellow brunette alike. Shaking her head she continued. "Let's get up to that tower, then."
They started walking, taking their time for both the pleasure of being on Earth and because neither of them was remotely used to walking on this sort of terrain. Raven's leg injury aside, of course. Still, without the barriers and hazards that would have impeded them in the Old World, when this place was fully operational, it only took them twenty minutes to make their way from their landing zone to the nearest terminal. The terminal, and the distinctly skeletal metallic wreckage around it.
"Correct me if I'm wrong, Rae, but it looks to me like someone stripped these planes down for parts. Carefully." Octavia sounding like she couldn't tell if she was excited or terrified, a sentiment that Raven understood and agreed with, wholeheartedly. There wasn't much left of the large aircraft, even most of their frames were gone, with only enough remaining to make recognizing them for what they were possible. There was something else about it, though, and she walked closer and examined the hull of one with narrowed eyes.
"This was done by two different groups of people, at least, I would say." she said slowly, running her fingers over the metal. "One of them with modern tools, and one of them without it. There are places where things were taken apart, but then there are places where it was obviously…"
"Torn apart, yeah, I can see it now. It's jagged and ragged." Octavia agreed, running a finger carefully over one such jagged place, before hissing and jerking her hand back quickly, sticking said finger in her mouth and sucking on it gently. After a moment, she popped it out, spat, and examined it critically, sighing in relief when she saw the skin hadn't broken. "Note to self, don't touch the sharp, 100 year old metal stuff."
"Sage advice, O, where would we be without you" Raven smirked, carefully stepping back from the wreckage as she ignored a muttered 'bitch' from her friend. "So we've got evidence of at least two different groups of people. One with technology, and one without. Or at least, one with significantly less tech than the other."
"Could be the same group at different points in time, though, couldn't it?" Octavia suggested, still examining her finger. "Lost their tech right after the war, then had to find it or get it back somehow more recently? Technological regression is totally a thing after apocalypses, right?"
Raven shook her head immediately and firmly. "Sure, but the weathering patterns are different from what you'd expect if that was the case. These jagged tears? They're newer. The cleaner cuts are older." She pointed to where a section had been nearly sliced away. "Someone's been salvaging parts for years, maybe decades. Different groups, different priorities. And the ones closer to the war were done with better technology than those closer to the present."
"That's... weird, right?" Octavia said, frowning as she processed this information and what it might imply for the Earth. "Shouldn't it be the other way around? People rebuilding over time?"
"You'd think so, yeah." Raven agreed, limping around to examine another section of wreckage. "Unless something happened. Maybe whatever group had the tech got wiped out or driven away. Or maybe they're still around but keeping their distance from whoever's doing the crude salvaging. That would explain why they were able to mess with our landing. Problem is…why are they gone, and why were they messing with our approach?"
The implications hung in the air between them, heavy and dark. If there were competing factions on Earth, potentially hostile to each other -and, theoretically, given the actions of at least one group, to them-, that complicated their mission significantly. Finding Clarke was already going to be difficult enough, and it wasn't like simple survival wouldn't come with it's own complications.
"This doesn't change anything." Octavia finally declared after a long moment of silence, her voice firm despite the uncertainty that seemed to darken her eyes. "We already knew that it wasn't going to be easy to do this. We already knew from trying to land that there were people who might be dangerous or pose a risk. We already knew that we had an uphill battle just to find Clarke and pull this off. It really doesn't matter if there's another obstacle. We'll find a way."
"You're right." Raven nodded, smiling at her and reaching out to catch her hand, squeezing it as she abandoned her examination of the wreckage with a final glance. "We keep moving, keep our eyes open, and figure this out as we go. Clarke would do the same for us, after all."
"Damn straight she would!" Octavia said with a fierce grin, adjusting her pack and hooking her thumbs through the straps. "So let's get to that control tower and take a look. The sooner we know where we are, the sooner we can figure out where we need to go, get there, and be with Clarke again."
That sounded good to Raven, and she nodded firmly before taking the first step, Octavia at her side. The two women made their way across the tarmac toward the terminal building, stepping carefully around twisted metal and patches of vegetation that had burst through the concrete. Raven's makeshift splint creaked softly from the strain with each step, the vines occasionally biting into her skin a bit more than was comfortable, but it -and she- held firm. It was helping already, Raven could feel, providing just enough support to keep things from getting worse.
As they reached the terminal building, Raven spotted a faded sign hanging crookedly beside what looked kind of like the 'emergency exits' she'd seen in old books and images, the red paint on the door barely there and the red metal of the handle rusted and worn. Still, a door was a door, and it sure beat trying to walk all the way around to the far side, which would take God only knew how long.
"O, over there, the door" she said, pointing at it sharply, earning herself a swat when her hand strayed a bit to closely and suddenly to Octavia's face. "Ow, sorry. Anyway, look. Emergency exit. Should be easier to get through than the main entrances, which are probably sealed or collapsed by now. Plus, you know, it's right here instead of somewhere else."
Octavia nodded, approaching the ancient door cautiously, a look of mixed skepticism and hope on her face. "You think it'll open? Looks pretty stuck…or like it will fall apart the minute that we touch it."
"Only one way to find out, and we'll get inside either way." Raven pointed out with a grin as she positioned herself beside the door, bracing her good leg. "On three, yeah?"
Together they pushed, shoulders slamming against metal that groaned in protest after a century of disuse. For a moment, nothing happened, then with a screech that set Raven's teeth on edge, the door gave way, swinging inward on surprisingly functional hinges. She'd always heard that the Old World hadn't been big on building stuff to last so that people were forced to replace things, but maybe that didn't apply to places and situations like this. Dust billowed as they stepped through the doorway, motes dancing in the shafts of sunlight that streamed through gaping holes in the ceiling, and Raven took a moment to be glad that those holes were there to keep the air from going bad.
"Jesus Christ…" Raven whispered, her voice unnaturally loud in the stillness.
The terminal interior that was now revealed stretched out before them was a cavernous space frozen in the moment of humanity's downfall. Rows of seats —some toppled, others still upright as if waiting for passengers who would never arrive— lined what must have been a waiting area. Luggage lay scattered across the floor, spilled from overturned carts, several of them torn open with their contents scattered across the ground. A child's teddy bear, its fur matted and gray with age, stared up at them with button eyes that somehow retained their innocence despite witnessing the end of everything, and Raven swallowed heavily because that, somehow, was the most horrifying thing she had seen yet.
"It's like they all just... vanished, in the middle of everything. God, that's creepy." Octavia muttered to herself, rubbing her arms as she shivered in a way that had nothing at all to do with the temperature. She gestures to one of the small restaurants off to the side, where one of the mid-sized ovens was little more than a scorched hulk. "I mean, look at that. That clearly burned out at some point, they didn't even cut the power or whatever when they left. Didn't they have any warning about what was about to happen?"
"Maybe they did, but not enough, obviously" Raven said softly, looking around them with eyes that held a darkness unrelated to their color. "Or maybe they were trying to evacuate and things went to hell faster than anyone expected. The war…we were always taught that the Last War escalated in hours, not days. Most people wouldn't have had time to evacuate, especially if they were already at an airport waiting for flights that never came. Hell, most of these people probably were trying to get away, go somewhere safer or get back to their families."
Octavia made a small noise of sad agreement, her gaze moving from the scorched oven to a counter where cups still sat in neat stacks, toppled over but never claimed. "Clarke would have some philosophical thing to say about this. About how it reminds us of the fragility of civilization or whatever, and how we need to remember the past to keep our people safe in the future."
"And she'd be right," Raven said, smiling despite the grimness of their surroundings, heart lightening at the thought of the girl they were both devoted too. "Though she'd probably use bigger words. Longer ones, too. Come on, we can explore later, if we want to."
They picked their way through the debris, careful not to disturb too much, feeling as if they were walking through a graveyard. Hell, for all they knew, that's exactly what they were doing. Though they couldn't help but notice that, despite the obvious signs of the salvagers they'd noted outside, this particular section of the terminal seemed relatively untouched. Soon enough, they found themselves moving toward what had once been an information desk, now a curved counter with shattered screens and dust-covered keyboards. Behind it, a faded sign still hung from the ceiling: "Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport."
"Well, that answers one question, at least." Raven said, pointing at the sign, as if Octavia wasn't perfectly capable of seeing it herself. "We know where we are now."
"Reagan National, I see it." Octavia confirmed, stepping up beside her, brow furrowed in thought. "So we're what, just across the river from D.C.? That's actually not bad. We didn't land that far off target, right?"
"Five or six miles south-east, I think?" Raven hazarded, thinking back to the map on the Ark, not wanting to stop and start unpacking just to find out for sure. At least not down here. There was a better place to do that. "Let's try and get up into that tower, pull out the maps and make sure before we start walking. Hell, might not be a bad idea to stay there until tomorrow morning. Better than risking getting caught out after the sun sets."
"Good call." Octavia agreed, glancing around the terminal with another small shudder. "Not sure I want to spend the night in here anyway. Too many... ghosts."
Raven nodded, understanding completely. The place had an eerie quality that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up, like they were being watched by the echoes of those who'd been here when the world had come to an end. It was ridiculous, of course —she'd never been superstitious, for all that Clarke had cultivated a certain type of mild deism in her— but Earth was already proving to be a place where her rational mind had to make room for feelings she couldn't quite explain. Besides, a tower was clearly the safer location to sleep than a large open space like this.
"The control tower should be this way, I think." she said, pointing toward a corridor that seemed to lead deeper into the terminal. "Probably some stairs or an elevator shaft we can use to get up there. It's got to be connected somehow, I know that for sure."
"Elevator's out of the question, and I don't know that I want to climb a shaft the hard way," Octavia started to say, only for Raven to snort and start giggling. After a moment of confused staring, Octavia realized what she had said and rolled her eyes so hard she thought she'd pulled something. "Seriously, Raven, keep your mind out of the gutter, would you? This is serious!"
"Shafts usually are." Raven retorted shamelessly, grinning broadly, laughing harder as Octavia swatted her again, harder this time.
"You know, for a lesbian you think about shafts alot." Octavia muttered, and Raven swatted her in return.
"Excuse you, not a lesbian. I was bisexual. Now I'm Clarke-sexual. It's a completely different thing." she protested, meaning every word.
Octavia snickered, her annoyance gone, shaking her head as they started picking their way through the terminal again. "Clarke-sexual. That certainly fits, I guess. God, we're both so far gone, aren't we? Just like Zoe and Harper. What I wouldn't give to have her giving me orders again…"
"Oh? Got a submissive streak, do we? Get lewd thoughts about Clarke bossing you around, huh?" Raven leered, and it was Octavia's turn to snort this time, shooting her a knowing look.
"Please, as if you're any different." she teased, shaking her head, then laughing softly with a faint blush on her cheeks, one mirrored on Raven's own. "I think we're all like that, for Clarke. She just…has a magnetic presence to her. You want to listen to her, you have to listen to her, and that feeling when she praises you…"
"If you get me turned on, I'm making you deal with it." Raven joked, the words slipping out without any input whatsoever from her brain, and her blush went luminescent as she realized what it was that she had said to the girl that she'd often pictured herself in bed with, these last few months.
Octavia's laughter turned into something else entirely, growing husky and warm, her eyes lighting up with mischievous interest. "Oh really? And how exactly would you want me to 'deal with it,' Rae?" She stepped closer, her gaze dropping momentarily to Raven's lips.
"I—" Raven swallowed hard, suddenly very aware of how alone they were in this abandoned terminal, how far from anyone else's eyes or judgment. How far from the Ark, with all of the perils and pitfalls that a romantic distraction would have posed to them once Clarke had left. "I didn't mean... I was just joking around, you know?"
"Were you, though?" Octavia asked softly, still standing close enough that Raven could feel her breath. "We've both been dancing around this for months. Ever since Clarke left, and I think there was something there even before that."
The air between them felt electric, charged and powerful in a way that Raven had only ever felt when she was at Clarke's side, and she couldn't help but dip her head in acknowledgement, because Octavia was right. They had spent more nights than she could remember sleeping in each other's arms, and she had spent plenty of nights getting herself off thinking of them doing more.
"Clarke wouldn't mind, you know," Octavia continued, her voice soft as she reaches out tentatively to take Raven's hand in one of her own. "She loves us, we're hers whenever she wants us and for whatever she needs, but you know just as well as I do that she was thrilled when Zoe and Monroe got together. She would never want us not to act on it if we had something between us, if we felt something."
"I know." Raven nodded, squeezing Octavia's hand gently, deciding it was time to be as just as honest with Octavia as Octavia was being with her. "I think I've always known, ever since we started spending more times together, but these last few weeks is when it really became something I couldn't misunderstand or ignore any longer. Those nights when we'd just hold each other..."
"Because we missed her, because we were closest to her and with each other we felt like we had a piece of her with us," Octavia finished the thought, "but then it became something else too."
Raven's free hand rose to brush a strand of hair from Octavia's face, tucking it behind her ear in a gesture that felt impossibly intimate despite how simple it was. "I kept telling myself it was just because we had so many things in common, but there's more to it than that, isn't there?"
"I did the same, for a while. Probably would have kept going too, if not for this. So if there's more to it…" Octavia agreed, leaning into Raven's touch, pressing her cheek against the taller girl's hand. "What are we going to do about it?"
The question hung between them, heavy with possibility. Raven's eyes dropped to Octavia's lips, her heart pounding against her ribs like a bird trying to escape a cage. Appropriate, under the circumstances, and poetic in a way that she'd never be able to say out loud. She'd never been good with words, not like this, not when it came to emotional things. That particular talent had always lied with others. So instead of answering with words, she closed the distance between them, pressing her lips against Octavia's in a gentle, questioning kiss.
For a heartbeat, Octavia went still against her, and Raven's stomach dropped with sudden doubt. But then Octavia was kissing her back, her free hand coming up to tangle in Raven's ponytail, pulling her closer with an urgency that made Raven's head swim. The kiss deepened, months of unacknowledged tension finally breaking free, and Raven found herself being backed up against the nearest wall, her injured leg forgotten entirely in the heat of the moment.
When they finally broke apart, both breathing heavily, Octavia's eyes were dark with want. "I'm going to take you to that tower, Raven…and then I'm going to take you to bed. Because I'm not interested in waiting any longer, not after that."
Raven swallowed heavily, feeling her core heat and clench at the promise, the intent, in those words…and all she could do was nod silently in desirous agreement.