Lightning Only Strikes Once - Clexa

Chapter 67: Like Father

"Awesome speech last night," Raven says as Clarke enters the room, not looking up from what she's fiddling with – another grenade, it looks like. Raven's been churning out far more grenades than they're ever likely to need. She claims it's because they're easy to make and can be stuffed with anything as shrapnel, but Clarke remembers they weren't really something she focused on in the other world, which makes her suspect that the compulsive grenade-production has more to do with Raven's unresolved romantic issues than with anything approaching practicality. Anya was outspoken about her enjoyment of grenades, after all.

"How did you know it was me?"

"The way you walk," Raven says absently.

"We may be spending too much time together," Clarke says dryly in response. She looks up at Wells, inviting him to share the joke.

Wells is sitting on the bench beside the grenade-in-progress. These days, when he's not with Clarke, he's with Abby, and when he's not with Abby, he's with Raven. It's like he doesn't want to leave any of them alone. Like he's scared what could happen. There's a suddenness in the way he reacts to unexpected noises or movements that reminds Clarke of herself, and she knows it's a response to his father's death.

He hadn't blamed her. Not for a second, even though she blamed him for a year for her father's death and he was far less culpable in that. Clarke almost wishes he would blame her – or at least get angry at her for raising his hopes, suggesting that his father might still be alive. She'd be angry if it was her. But he's reacting – really well, actually. There's a gauntness to his cheeks that wasn't there before, and dark shadows under his eyes, but otherwise he seems fine. He's even been friendly to the Maunon, more friendly than half their people.

"Hey, you're the one who keeps coming to see me," Raven points out, looking up now to give Clarke a smirk. "You could be in the mechanical construction hut with the others, if you wanted to watch people fiddling with metal. But you come here 'cause I'm hot."

"You could be in the mechanical construction hut with the others too," Wells says to Raven, smiling slightly. It doesn't perfectly reach his eyes, which are still filled with exhaustion and grief, but he tries.

"They asked me to help hook up the surveillance system," Raven says, looking disgusted. "Do you know how boring and simple that is after you've been making grenades and EMPs and radios pretty much from scratch? I told Sinclair to call me when he has something more worthy of my time."

Clarke raises her eyebrows at Raven, well aware that Raven wouldn't spend time apart from Sinclair – the closest thing she has to a parent – for such a flimsy reason. "Really? That's really why you're avoiding them?"

Raven flushes and bends her head over the device. "Okay, we've definitely been spending too much time together. You're right." She sighs and then says, "They're trying to nag me into staying here instead of going to Polis. Appealing to my Ark loyalty like that's an actual thing. Asking me how I can bear to leave Finn."

Clarke grits her teeth. "You should tell Sinclair to get them to stop. That's not okay." Finn's continued insistence that he doesn't want Raven around while he's adjusting has hurt her considerably, Clarke knows. It probably hurts her even more that Finn already seems to have entered a casual relationship with the woman who's supposed to be counselling him.

Over the past week, the little room Raven's co-opted into her workshop has become something of a haven for Clarke. It's pretty much the only place where she isn't organising people or explaining rules or quelling arguments. Even conversations with her mother seem to have become a battleground, and that's probably her fault – she's different now. But she can duck in here and it's just Raven building something and snarking, and Wells watching her build things and being amused by her snark. Clarke would never have pegged them as having anything in common, but all the time spent together, and their shared concern for and rejection by Finn, seems to have bonded them.