Work Text:
The click of a door closing shut brings Clarke’s blonde head out of the mug of hot coffee she’d been blissfully drinking. She blinks in bewilderment at the familiarly tousled brunette tip-toeing silently away towards the front door in denim shorts and a wrinkled white tee hanging off one shoulder.
“Raven?” Clarke squeaks. She sets the mug down before she drops it from shock.
Raven’s head snaps up towards the kitchen, her dark eyes wide with surprise. “Clarke? What are you doing here?”
“Octavia needed a hard shove out of bed and into the library. She’s taking a shower and plotting my demise,” Clarke replied. She blinked twice more and shook her head. Her eyes traveled towards the closed bedroom door from which Raven had made her exit before settling on her best friend once more, her eyebrow rising. “Raven, tell me you didn’t.”
Raven heaves a sigh, her shoulders rising and falling in a careless shrug. She abandons her exit strategy and joins Clarke at the small breakfast bar at the kitchen island. Grabbing Clarke’s steaming mug, she takes a deep swallow before Clarke can log a token protest.
“I was weak, Clarke.” Setting the mug down, Raven levels Clarke with a serious look. “Possibly, I was also not sober, but mostly I was weak.”
Nodding, Clarke sneaks a hand around her mug and pulls it free from Raven’s grasp. She narrows her eyes as she lifts the mug back to her lips when Raven reaches for it again.
“But you know,” the corners of Raven’s lips sneak up into a sly grin as she speaks, “if those peace talks fail and it turns out we’re in the middle of the end of the world, I can honestly say that I’ve got no regrets.”
“I really don’t want to be hearing this,” Clarke mumbles darkly into her coffee.
Raven grabs a banana from the nearby fruit bowl and waggles her eyebrows suggestively before beginning to peel it. Clarke rolls her eyes at her friend when Raven takes a large bite and grins wide, her cheeks full.
“That’s gross.” Octavia pipes up from behind them. She’s toweling off her wet hair and padding over to them in bare feet. Reaching over Clarke’s shoulder, she grabs blindly for the mug of coffee. Clarke sighs wearily, too used to this routine to protest, and moves the mug in the way of her searching fingers.
Taking a large gulp of coffee, Octavia grabs a handful of grapes and deftly jumps up to sit on top of the opposite counter. She crosses her legs and settles one elbow on her knee before leveling Raven with a glare. “Freshmen year, I had one rule, Raven. Do you remember that rule?”
Clarke snickers and slides off her stool to make herself another cup of coffee. Standing beside Octavia’s spot on the counter, she places another mug under the dispenser and pushes the button for the boldest brew Octavia’s got.
“No sleeping-” Raven begins, her tone dry. She waves her hand at Octavia dismissively and takes another bite of her banana.
“No sleeping with my brother!” Octavia cuts in and finishes loudly with a sweeping flourish of her hand to point towards his bedroom door.
“See, when you put it that way, I just figured you meant it more as a reminder to yourself given that your brother is undeniably a fine specimen of the male species.”
Clarke snorts loudly into her coffee at the same time as Octavia shouts, “Deny! Oh my god, Raven,” and punctuates each word with a thrown grape at Raven’s head as the other girl laughs with sadistic glee. “He’s turned you. I don’t even know who you are anymore!”
“You were drunk when you made that rule, girl,” Raven protests, protecting her head from the grape assault with raised hands. She swipes one out of the air and pops it in her mouth with a toothy grin at the same time as Octavia’s next throw lands squarely in the middle of her forehead.
“It still stands!” Out of grapes, Octavia settled for a glare entirely lacking in venom. “Or at least it did until last night.”
“And this morning,” Raven added cheerily.
“Do me a favour and just dump that entire fruit bowl over your head,” Octavia tossed back with little heat.
“Can I get an apple first?”
Their heads swivel in unison, Octavia and Clarke both with mugs of coffee to their lips and Raven with a mouthful of banana. Bellamy stands shirtless in front of the bedroom door none of them had heard open.
“Raven, throw him an apple.” Octavia’s eyes narrow at her brother. “Hard.”
Bellamy throws his hands up in a gesture of peace. Sweatpants slung low on his hips, his short hair disheveled from sleep, and a grin playing at the corners of his lips, Clarke mentally reminds herself that it was perfectly fine to find Bellamy Blake mildly attractive as long as she reminded herself of the deep rage he inspired within her every time he opened his mouth.
“I had one rule, Bellamy.”
“Just the one?”
“No sleeping with my friends.”
“See, I just thought that was more of a reminder-”
“Shut up,” Octavia snaps at him, her eyes closing in frustration as Raven laughs heartily and lobs an apple at Bellamy who catches it easily. “Just shut up.”
Bellamy settles himself at the breakfast bar in Clarke’s empty stool. Taking a large bite out of the gleaming red apple, his eyes settle on Clarke slowly sipping her coffee. “You’re awfully quiet.”
Clarke takes her time swallowing as she looks between Bellamy and Raven. She shrugs. “It’s none of my business.”
Bellamy chews thoughtfully, swallowing hard before he points his apple at Clarke with a raised eyebrow. “That’s never stopped you before.”
Her face impassive, Clarke refuses to rise to the bait. Instead, she calmly replies, “I’m turning over a new leaf.”
Both of Bellamy’s eyebrows fly up into his hairline and he responds before he can stop himself. “You need to turn over a whole new tree.”
Raven’s hands fly up in exasperation and Octavia mutters, “Here we go.” Her head falls back against the kitchen cupboards with a soft thud.
Scowling, Clarke promptly forgets to remain calm. Pushing off of the counter behind her, she sets her mug down onto the island and leans in. Her blue eyes narrow to chips of ice. “You’re hardly the person I’m going to be taking advice from.”
“Princess, the only advice you ever take is the advice that gets you to wherever it is you’ve already decided you’re going.”
“They’re called plans, Bellamy,” Clarke snaps back as they descend into an old argument.
Raven’s sudden frown as she reaches for the back pocket of her shorts goes unnoticed by the two arguing and by Octavia who’s continuing to softly thump her head against the kitchen cupboards. Reaching for the remote, Raven flicks on the screen inset into the wall behind them and cranks up the volume.
Clarke’s eyes lift from Bellamy’s intensely dark gaze mid-sentence at the sight of an explosion blazing in the sky onscreen. Bellamy twists around, a stinging retort dying on his lips.
“Breaking news. Reports are now coming in of a bright flare up in the night sky over Moscow. Thousands of people are reporting having seen what looked to be a large explosion in the sky followed by many smaller bright streaks of light. We’re just confirming the reports now. We’ve reached out to officials with NASA and are awaiting a response, but unconfirmed reports are saying that this could be the International Space Station – the site of the latest round of peace talks with the Rathalian representatives.”
Clarke’s stomach falls to somewhere in the vicinity of her feet. She thinks she hears Octavia gasp and cry out behind her, but she’s hearing everything except the newscaster’s voice as though she were under water. Bellamy’s dark head twists back around until his eyes find hers, sad and haunted. She knows what he’s thinking – knows because there’s only one thing it can be. Tears lodge painfully in her throat, her heart seizes, and she’s hoping against everything she knows to be true that he’s wrong.
Raven grabs her hand, she thinks it’s Raven, and squeezes until it hurts.
Her father’s supposed to be on the ISS. Her father’s supposed to be leading those talks.
“We have confirmed the reports now. NASA will be releasing an official statement shortly, but we can confirm that the ISS, the International Space Station, has been destroyed. I repeat, according to senior NASA officials, the ISS has suffered catastrophic damage due to several large explosions and has been destroyed. There were thirty eight people aboard the ISS including the Rathalian contingent. There are no expected survivors.”
Her father’s dead.
They are at war.