Archive of Our Own

It takes Raven five hours to get back to the closest safe house without teleporting. By that time, the lancing pain in her back has spread out to curl around the entire lower half of her body. Her vision spots. Every dragging step she takes threatens to pitch her forward into the concrete.

Jasper finds her lying on the back porch, blood that isn't hers crusted over half her face. She's phasing in and out of consciousness when he shakes her arm. It sends a new throb spiraling down her spine. She moans, throat scratchy and dry, and cracks an eye open to see his concerned face swimming about two inches away.

"Please be okay," he murmurs feverishly, and hefts her up, over the threshold of the house. He nearly trips over the coffee table in the process of depositing her stomach-first onto the ugly patchwork couch. "Come on, come on." Raven swallows and meets his eyes again. "We've been looking everywhere for you. What happened?"

"Everything was going alright at first," Raven croaks. "We got in without the alarms going off. Wells took one. Bellamy took the other. The third was supposed to go with me but—" She swallows thickly. "He was unstable. They must have been testing him with—I don't know. He blew up three meters away from me. No time to find Octavia. We had to run."

"And your back?" Jasper asks. Raven shies away when he prods at it. The corners of his mouth turn down. "Okay, I'm calling it, you have to see her," he decides, fingers already reaching into his pocket, and Raven scowls. "I'm gonna do it if you won't."

"I don't need her. I'll be fine. And—" A tendril of pain shoots up into her chest and she almost chokes. Her vision goes red for a second. She tries to focus. "What about—the mutants we saved? They need her help way more than I do."

She puts so much emphasis in her voice that he actually wavers for a moment. Almost changes his mind, even. Raven can see it all over his face. But then her back twinges again, knotted through with pain. She lets her face slip into a grimace and Jasper's expression goes steely with resolve. He pulls his phone out and steps away when Raven reaches up through the ache and attempts to snatch it away. "She has time to spare. You're a priority, too, you know." His fingers fly over the screen. "Look, I texted her. Too late, done deal."

"Jasper—" Raven tries again, but Jasper lets out an exasperated sigh that nearly lifts the sofa off the ground, wind twisting in a mini-cyclone around its legs. A wave of nausea hits her, then; she dry heaves into the scratchy fabric of the couch, tongue backing up in her throat.

"Jesus, Raven." She blinks blearily up at him. Three months staring into this guy's face on the regular and it's still a little unsettling sometimes, how fucking huge his eyes are. "Hey. You're with us now. You don't have to do this alone anymore." He lets the couch down, taps a finger against Raven's bloody temple. "Try to get some rest."

"Okay," Raven says, and passes out.

There's a hand pressed against her tailbone when she wakes up. Raven tenses automatically, but it doesn't last long—her muscles scream in protest and she falls limp across the couch again. The hand lifts off. "I let myself in," comes a familiar voice, even and measured as usual. "Hope you don't mind."

A thin hand sets a sweating cup of water on the floor. "Kinda late to be angry about it, you're already here," Raven mutters, but she still reaches for the cup, tips her head back to pour half its contents into her mouth. The rest splatters down her shirt and onto the sofa.

"Calm down," Clarke says, faintly amused. "It's not going to disappear."

Raven drops her forehead against the armrest and just breathes for a second. Then: "You didn't have to come."

"Don't be stupid," is the firm response. "You need me."

"I don't—" Raven protests, but a trail of heat races down the center of her back before she can finish. Her shirt makes a rending sound in the air as Clarke rips it in half. She cups a hand against the last knob of Raven's spine, warm and insistent, and—"Fuck."

The first time Clarke did this for her had been in late September, barely a month after Raven joined the underground mutant network and started participating in their missions. It was also two days after Octavia was captured. They'd thought that she was the only casualty in the immediate aftermath of their latest raid on Mount Weather—but then Raven had teleported into the facility during the ensuing search-and-rescue party and nearly ripped her own spine out. She'd gotten out with Wells and Jaspy holding her up, throat thick with spit and blood and mucus. Afterwards, Bellamy had stormed in through the front door of the safe house, Clarke hot on his heels, her face pale and wan. He'd taken one look at the mess of Raven's back and asked Clarke, "Can you fix her?"

She could. She had. It felt odd and uncomfortable, suction pulling hard at Raven's skin wherever Clarke's hands landed, but by the end of the session, there was no more pain. That was the important thing. It didn't hurt anymore.

This time, the healing touch doesn't seem so foreign. It's intimate, almost, the careful way Clarke handles her body—which is a stupid thought. Raven's only been with them for three months, but she knows the way of things; Clarke does this for all the mutants who get fucked up on their missions. Playing doctor, stitching everyone up to fight another day, usually with her bare hands. If necessary, she'd use her abilities. Par for the course.

Today it only takes Clarke an hour of steady, radiating warmth to fix her. A weird sense of loss hammers in the hollow beneath Raven's breastbone when Clarke shifts away and sheaths the glow of her hands, wiping her fingers on her jeans.

She shakes it out of herself and sits up gingerly, testing the twist of her back. The pain's receded. "Thanks," she mutters. It comes out a lot more mulish than she intended, but Clarke smiles.

Raven moves to stand, but Clarke pushes her back down by the knees and says, "Don't get up yet," her head cocked to the side. "Wait five seconds."

"What's happening in five seconds?"

"Two—one—"

Someone fucking blasts down through the safe house's chimney, blows out the flimsy grate covering it and skids to a stop next to the coffee table. Raven blinks when Bellamy's sooty face scowls at her. "Uh, hello?"

"Don't uh, hello me," Bellamy says, brushing his knees off. He leans in close, wrinkled nose covered with grime, and Raven scoots back into the couch, swallowing. "Why didn't you tell me you were still injured?"

"I wasn't—" Raven's brow scrunches with displeasure. "I was fine."

"Yes," he says coolly. "Which is why teleporting almost ripped your back open? Again?"

Raven holds his gaze for another minute before looking away first, down at the chipped varnish of the coffee table. "I just wanted to help. I always—just want to help."

Bellamy straightens and runs a hand through his grimy hair. "I know. And you're really good, okay? No one's saying you aren't. Running the raids has been a lot easier with someone who can teleport involved." His mouth twists. "But the Mountain Men have caught on, too. I'm guessing the force field surrounding the place specifically targets your ability now?" He nods when Raven doesn't immediately respond. "Listen, Raven. You've done a lot for us, but I'd prefer it if you were at 100% before coming back out with us." He shares a look with Clarke before turning back to stare at Raven, brow furrowed. "And this isn't just for your benefit. It's also for the rest of the team. You're lucky no one else got hurt today because of your stupidity."

The urge to retort surges up in Raven's chest. From over Bellamy's shoulder, Clarke meets her eyes and sharply shakes her head. After a moment of mulish silence, Raven snaps her mouth shut.

Bellamy scowls. "We already lost Octavia. We can't afford to lose anyone else. Not before we find her again."

"So what am I supposed to do?" Raven blurts out, waving a hand in the air. She ignores Clarke and focuses on Bellamy's stony face. "Just sit around and learn how to basket weave? I want to be out there."

"And I'm telling you," Bellamy says, "you need to stay put."

"Fuck Bellamy," Raven mutters later, after he's blasted off through the chimney. "Fuck his house arrest. He can't keep me here. I can teleport."

"I wouldn't, if I were you," Clarke says. They've moved to the kitchen by now, Raven rifling through the shelves for something to eat. She passes on the instant oatmeal and considers the cereal cabinet. Clarke leans against the entrance and gestures at Raven's back. "I patched you up as well as I could, but no one really knows what the Mountain Men did to their defenses. Your spine nearly burst out through your tailbone today. What's going to happen the next time you try to teleport?"

"You suck at playing devil's advocate," Raven says. She slides onto the marble counter and stuffs a handful of stale Cheerios in her mouth. Gross. They aren't even Honey Nut. "Why are you still here, anyway? Don't you have to look at the mutants we broke out?"

"Monty and I already patched them up while you were out," Clarke says. "Plus, I have to keep monitoring your back."

"For what? I thought you had magic hands." Raven twists, letting the muscles in her lower back ease into a stretch. "I'm supposed to be good as new, right?"

Clarke clasps her hands behind her back. The perfect little schoolgirl. "I fixed all the physical damage, but you know as well as I do that it probably wasn't everything."

Raven pours herself another mouthful of Cheerios and grinds her teeth. "This is such bullshit." She hops off the counter and paces back into the living room with a granola bar fisted in each hand.

"Maybe," Clarke concedes, following her at a light jog. "But you haven't tried to leave yet, have you?"

She's too busy stuffing half a granola bar down her throat to verbally respond, but she does throw Clarke a supremely unimpressed look.

Clarke sighs and folds herself into an armchair. "Look, I know Bellamy doesn't pull his punches—"

Raven swallows around a lump of dried cranberry. "I don't need your sympathy, Clarke."

"—but he's right. He wasn't just talking about being physically hurt. What if they've tracking your signature now? Activating your powers could lead them to any of the safe houses."

"If everyone spent their entire life terrified of hypotheticals, nobody would get anywhere." Raven brandishes one hand and gestures broadly at the ceiling. "I don't think I'd care so much if it wasn't so boring." A beat, and then, grudging: "At least with you here I've got someone to talk to."

"There are other ways you can help," Clarke puts in, folding her arms. "You were a techie, right? Before the Purge forced us into hiding?"

Raven snorts. The Purge. Right. She keeps forgetting that's what they call it. Aside from raiding the government's anti-mutant establishments, the underground resistance specializes in being dramatic as all fuck. Raven likes keeping things simple. She just calls it the Murphy problem.

Ten months ago, the general population had been given irrevocable proof of the existence of superhumans when John Murphy, then a college student, burst into human flame and burned down the National Institute of Health for wrongfully incarcerating his late father. After a second attack on the White House, President Jaha declared an indefinite state of national emergency. Right-wing politicians seized control of Congress and pushed the first containment laws through, a hundred various protocols and stipulations designed to track mutants down and restrain them. For peace and public safety, they said.

At the time, Raven was just finishing up her masters in mechE at MIT. She, like thousands of other mutants living in the United States, hadn't really given the 100 much thought. But in June, the military had begun to enforce the new anti-mutant laws in earnest. If only healthcare legislation had that kind of turnaround time. The first wave of the so-called Purge happened in Baltimore, and the rumors spread in rippling whispers. Mutants were being killed in their beds, were being sent to Guantanamo, were being taken to government facilities where horrific tests were performed on them. The press, for the first time in history, had remained silent. Probably stymied by a governmental gag order. Raven, out of an acute sense of self-preservation, had immediately dropped off the grid.

Three months later, after piecing together all the information she'd gathered online and through word of mouth, Raven hitchhiked from Boston to DC and made first contact with the resistance.

Clarke's still searching her face, waiting for an answer. Raven licks a piece of granola off her thumb and shrugs. "I was a mechanic, actually. I am a mechanic. I tinker." She leans forward, elbows propped on her knees, and lets the corners of her mouth turn up. "Got anything for me to tinker with?"

Clarke smiles. This time, it's sharp, almost dangerous. Raven's chest thumps once, twice. "Yeah," Clarke says. "We do."

Mutant HQ is like something right out of an episode of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so it's kind of a miracle the place hasn't been discovered already. At first glance, the interior of the sewage system they've converted looks deceptively rundown, but all the pipes are sturdy, and the patched-together machinery thrums with steady electricity. There seem to be multiple passageways leading out into other areas, like a makeshift greenhouse for Monty and a launching pad for Bellamy.

Since joining the resistance, Raven's been to mutant safe houses all over the greater Baltimore/DC area, but never HQ. A mere fraction of the mutants involved in the underground movement have been to the main base of operations. Apparently Bellamy's philosophy operates under the assumption that less foot traffic means less opportunity for discovery. "Ergo, essentials only," Clarke explains, rolling her eyes. "His words, not mine."

"So why am I here?"

"Easy," Clarke says. In the dim, flickering light of the sewer, some of the lines on her face smooth out. Suddenly, she looks exactly her age. "I trust you."

It's a far cry from Raven's first impression of this operation, not least because the first time she'd met resistance reps had been in a tiny rowhouse in West Baltimore. In the middle of Raven's interview, Wells Jaha had walked into the room and folded his arms across his chest. The President's son, the first mutant they'd found after Murphy's rampage. The first one they'd decided to lock up. As an example.

Raven understood the value of an interrogation, of playing your cards close to your chest, when it was what you had to do to survive. But Wells was a blindsiding confound that she didn't know how to interpret. She'd leapt up and pulled a knife on him, hand shaking with nerves and adrenaline and fear, and said, "You're supposed to be dead."

Clarke had calmly stepped over and put two fingers, hot as brands, against Raven's throat. "Touch him," she said, "and you will be."

Not an auspicious beginning. Bellamy managed to talk her down by clarifying that Wells, and in turn, his father, was one of the founding pillars of the resistance. "The President can't openly defy Congress, especially not with the vast majority of the public in favor of containment. So he sent Wells instead, because he knew we would need him."

It made sense, of course. President Jaha's tacit support explained the resistance's success and access to resources, and Wells' force fields kept the safe houses safe.

But Raven has never liked feeling threatened, and her nascent irritation with Clarke turned into full-blown dislike when she was assigned to babysit on Raven's first mission. Back then, they'd been less raids on containment facilities and more mutant recovery missions. A group of them were sent to pick up a twelve-year-old mutant. Charlotte had been living at an orphanage since her parents were killed, and displayed latent telekinetic capabilities. Raven suggested straight-up taking her, consequences be damned, but Clarke had wanted to talk to the girl. Coax her into coming voluntarily.

Bellamy had gone with Clarke's plan out of trust for her instincts. Bad move, considering Wells was with them. "Your father took my parents away," Charlotte screeched, heavy furniture and all her belongings whipping around her tiny body, too fast for anyone to edge in close enough to stop her. They left when she sunk a colored pencil two inches deep into Wells' throat. A day later, she'd disappeared.

It took Clarke three sessions to heal Wells. Raven hadn't said I told you so, but it'd been a close call.

Raven's only half-listening to the details of Clarke's introductory tour, which is why she almost misses the engineering department completely. "Hey, hotshot," a familiar voice says behind her as they step closer to the foul-smelling greenhouse. "Don't worry, you'll get used to the mulch."

Raven whirls around. "Holy shit," she says, punching the newcomer's shoulder. "Wick?"

Wick holds his shoulder and pretends to groan. "Ouch. Watch it, dude." Raven launches herself forward and flings her arms around his neck. "Whoa. Good to see you again, too."

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Wick laughs. "What do you think?" A harmless fizz of electricity leaps from his nose to hers, and Raven lets go of him, shocked. "Helping, obviously."

When Raven turns around, Clarke's looking back and forth between them, uncertain. "Wick was one of my TAs at MIT," Raven says hastily. She grins. "I was his best student. Actually, I was probably better than he was."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Wick complains.

Clarke shakes her head, smiling. "I'll leave you to it, then." Before Raven can say anything, Clarke jogs back down the hall, blond hair bouncing against her back.

Wick leads her deeper into the engineering wing, past messes of knotted wiring and something that looks like the remnants of a space shuttle escape pod. "What are you working on?" Raven asks, cracking her knuckles.

"A working long-range radio system," he says, electricity webbing between his hands. "I'm trying to make them respond to specific human signatures instead of specific frequencies, so they'd effectively be uninterceptable. Sure you can keep up?"

"Please," Raven says. She catches the walkie-talkie he tosses at her with ease, fingers already itching. "I was born ready."

The next morning, Raven wakes up to her lower back thumping with pain. She tries to roll over in her bunk and it's like her spine's turned into goo. "Fuck," she rasps, nose buried in her pillow, sweat beading above her mouth, along her hairline. She isn't sure how long she drifts, light-headed but the touch that jolts her out of it is—once again—Clarke's. The cavalry coming in for the rescue.

"Where does it hurt?" she asks.

"Back," Raven bites out. "Near tailbone."

"I can try to synthesize some sort of poultice," comes Monty's clear voice to Clarke's left. "It should help with the swelling."

"No," Raven says, even as Clarke's warm hands ruck her shirt up and settle against her back. "I don't—"

"Monty, go," Clarke says sharply. "Raven. I know you hate the idea of depending on me, but it's my job to help you." Her fingers press into the groove of her spine and Raven sucks in a quick breath. "This might hurt."

It does, but Raven grits her through the pain. Latches onto Clarke's level voice rise over the sickening crack of her spine as she explains everything she's doing, picking Raven apart and putting her back together the way she should be.

"It's not just you," Raven says later, wrinkling her nose at the stench of Monty's pain patch. Smells horrible, but it has pleasantly numbed the lower half of her body.

Clarke glances over from where she's wiping her hands on a towel. "Not just me, what?"

Raven crosses her legs and studies the motor oil on her hands. "I don't like depending on people, period. Burned too many times. If I want something done right, I've always just done it myself, you know?"

"Ah." Clarke's smiling again, eyes crinkled. "I thought you might be holding a grudge because of the Charlotte thing."

Raven sniffs. "That would be childish."

"Uh huh," she says. "Good to know it's just your inherent bullheadedness."

"Hey!" Raven protests, but she's smiling, too.

Wick's power is manipulation of electrical energy. "So you're saying you cheated your way to a double-E doctorate thesis," Raven says, watching him fingerzap one of the radios.

"I can't help it if I'm just naturally gifted," Wick says, grinning broadly.

"You'd think it would've made you a better designer," Raven tosses out, pointing at her table. "This is a mess."

Wick snorts. "Hurry up with it, will you? I'm getting old over here."

Raven rolls her eyes and goes back to her own walkie, twirling the screwdriver in her hand. The radios are pieces of shit, honestly, but Raven's never met a piece of coal she couldn't turn into a diamond.

A typical day at HQ is pretty quiet, with a slow trickle of mutants coming and going. Wells comes by occasionally to check that the force fields are holding. Monty's usually either puttering around the greenhouse or hanging out with them in the engineering workshop, throwing nerdy suggestions out of left field, like "maybe we could build Pacific Rim jaegers and break everyone out that way!" Wick even seems pretty excited about that prospect, until Raven points out none of them are actually neuroscientists, and that despite all the raids they aren't exactly trying for a war of aggression.

Bellamy checks in from time to time, usually to ask how they're doing with the radio project. "I want you to know that what you're doing is really important," he tells them, that awkward puppy dog look in his eyes, and Raven has to resist the urge to reach out and pat his tangled mop of hair. Throw him a bone.

"Thanks for the speech, boss," she says, saluting instead.

Bellamy winces. "I'm not trying to be—these aren't orders. I'm not trying to control you. You're working with me, not for me. We're in this together."

"Gonna break out into a High School Musical number?" Wick inquires, catching the pair of tweezers Raven throws at him.

"Please spare us," Raven says, making a face. "I've heard you singing in the shower. Not pretty."

Bellamy tosses his hands in the air and leaves the room to the sound of Monty's laughter.

Clarke's gone for most of the day, taking care of recovering mutants at the safe houses, but she comes back in the evenings to check on the phantom ache in Raven's back. "There's nothing physically wrong with you," she says after the fourth morning Raven wakes up shivering in pain.

Raven raises an eyebrow. "So you're saying it's all in my head."

Clarke shakes her head, brow furrowed, and for the first time since Raven's known her, she looks lost. Confused. "Not necessarily."

Raven shrugs her hand off and swings her legs off the bunk, hobbles upright. Clarke dogs her to engineering, eyes narrowed at her back even when she sits down at her table in the workshop and starts fiddling with a gutted receiver. Monty slides in a few minutes later, a grin plastered on his face.

"Morning, Raven," he says, and whips something from behind his back. "I think I might have something that'll help with the pain."

Raven squints at the bag in his hands. "No," she says slowly. "Monty, you didn't."

"Medicinal marijuana?" Wick says, shooting out of his chair like a magnet.

"Worth a shot, right?" Monty gives her a big wink. "Don't worry, there's totally enough for everybody."

Raven turns toward Clarke and watches with lucid clarity as the reckless, irresponsible twenty-something in her wars with every other instinct in her body. "We don't have time to get high, you guys."

"Speak for yourself," Wick says, plucking a neatly rolled joint out of Monty's proffered bag. He lights up with a goddamn blowtorch.

Raven shrugs and grabs one herself. She uses a match, the flame dancing between her fingers. Takes a deep drag. Monty gives her a look, as if to ask well? "This is really good stuff."

He beams. "I cultivated the strain myself."

Clarke is still standing next to Raven's workstation, fingers twisting in the pockets of her jeans. Raven takes another puff and holds the smoke in her mouth before thrusting the joint in Clarke's face. "Live a little, princess," she says, and sends her a crooked grin.

Clarke snatches it out of her hand and bites her lip. Raven blows rings out of her mouth as Clarke brings the joint to her mouth and inhales. The next moment she's hacking up a lung. Wick pounds her back. Behind them, Monty's giggling again. Raven glances over to see something green and leafy dancing in his palm.

All the tension in Raven's shoulders seems to bleed out all at once. The last time she'd smoked anything remotely illegal had been in Boston, under wholly different circumstances. A frat party that her roommate had conned her into. She'd definitely had to be high to last through the entire evening. Six months later, Raven and everyone else sitting in this tiny underground alcove has been on the run from the government since July—but still, her situation now seems better. She wants to be here.

When Clarke returns the joint, their fingers touch. Raven shakes it off and tosses herself back in the makeshift hammock Wick had hung up between two pipes. Monty sits cross-legged next to her swinging calf, blowing smoke out of his nose. The entire wing looks bright and shiny, like someone's dialed the contrast way up and vomited Technicolor paint everywhere.

"How did you get here, Monty?" Raven asks, voice rough. "What did we ever do to deserve you?"

Monty chuckles, the sound ringing through the workshop. "You asking for real?"

"Sure," Raven says, heaving her lolling head up with a hand. "I want to know."

"Was studying biochem in college," he says. "But flunked out because Jasper and I were too focused on our little side project. You can imagine how my parents felt about that."

Not really, Raven thinks, squinting at his face, but lets him continue.

"When they came to take me, my parents didn't try to stop them." For a moment, he almost looks crushed, face crumpling, but the next minute he's smiling again, shaking his head. "But it's alright. The Mountain Men weren't able to do very much with me before Dr. Griffin got me out."

Raven slants a glance at Clarke's bowed head, blond waves sliding down over her shoulders. "Dr. Griffin?"

"Yeah, Clarke's mom. She's, uh, one of our contacts in the mountain. No way we could get in without her help."

Clarke's head shoots up, eyes blinking rapidly. "What are we talking about?"

"Your parents," Monty says, taking another deep drag of the joint in his hand.

Raven's eyes narrow. "What exactly is it that they do?"

The silence stretches on for a long beat. Then, Clarke turns, gaze lucid, and says, "My mom's a doctor. My dad was one of the NIH's leading researchers in superhuman abilities. He was one of the first people to find out about us, mostly because of me, and he wanted the world to know. He thought we could do great things. But everyone else wanted to monetize or weaponize or institutionalize it—and then the Murphy thing happened, and it was like the whole world decided we were too dangerous to live normal lives." Raven's never heard her sound so savagely bitter. "I haven't heard from him since the Purge. The government probably got rid of anyone who openly defied the 100."

"Oh," Raven says, at a loss. Clarke seems off-kilter too, but from the topic of conversation or the weed, she doesn't know. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright," she says, rallying herself, like a clam shell closing right before Raven's eyes. Still, it's as though a light bulb has switched on in Raven's head. The huge chip on Clarke's shoulder makes a little more sense now. "It's why we're doing this, right?"

Before the effects of the weed even have time to wear off, Wick's already rattling away at one of the radios in his corner of the workshop, damp remnants of a joint hanging from his lips. Raven slides over to watch him work, head pleasantly cottony. "Can't believe you can still hold a screwdriver," she comments, sliding onto the bench and crossing her legs.

Wick shakes his head and takes another drag. "Au contraire, my friend. I work best while high. I can't believe Monty's been holding out on us for so long."

Raven reaches out lazily, index finger trailing over the buttons of another walkie. She hefts the thing in her buttery hand, a thousand times heavier than it should be, and feels something like a heartbeat thump against her palm. She inhales sharply. Wick, thankfully, doesn't seem to notice, but across the room Clarke turns her head, eyes zeroing in on Raven's face. Raven sticks her tongue out and drops the radio. It's not important. Probably just the weed, anyway.

She must doze off next to him, because the next thing she remembers is Jasper hissing over a crackling noise of feedback: "I can't believe you guys smoked without me!"

"Maybe next time," Monty says, sounding unrepentant, but their bickering is quickly drowned out by Wick's incredulous voice.

"It's really too bad you missed out on Monty's Magic Mary Jane," he says, and nudges Raven's shoulder to wake her up. "Because I think I finally did it. We'd been going about it all wrong—if we consider the mutant the conduit instead of the radio—God, how had we not seen it before—"

Raven blinks blearily up at him. The radio, the one she'd been holding before she fell asleep, is strapped against his wrist like a bracelet, glowing a soft green. "It works?"

Wick grins at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "Only one way to find out."

On the big recon mission scheduled the next weekend, Bellamy brings the radios. Raven spends the entire day biting through each of her fingernails. The minute they step back through the tunnel, she's on her feet, Clarke and Wick flanking her sides. "Well?" Wick prods, watching Bellamy shuck his tranquilizer pack. "How'd it go?"

For the first time since Raven's met him, Bellamy's actually smiling. "The radios worked. You guys did it. Congratulations."

Wick lets out a loud whoop and squeezes his arm over Raven's shoulders. Something warm, like satisfaction, settles deep in Raven's ribcage. Her fingers clench into a fist.

"And—we found Octavia."

Clarke's eyes go wide. "What? Where is she? Why isn't she with you? Is she okay?"

Bellamy scratches the back of his head, looking sheepish. "She, uh. She actually said—"

Wells rolls his eyes and butts in. "Her words, verbatim: What made you think I even needed rescuing? Did it ever occur to you that I got caught on purpose?"

"Sounds like Octavia," Raven says, wry.

"She's been running recon inside Mount Weather, but didn't have a secure way to contact us—until now." Bellamy waves one of the radios. "We left one with her."

Clarke frowns. "I don't get it. How's she been able to stay hidden for so long?"

"Remember how we thought she didn't have a superpower?"

The radio snaps on with a loud crack, and everyone jumps. "Hey," comes Octavia's fuzzy voice through the receiver. "Did you miss me?"

Jasper elbows his way to the front. "Where are you, Octavia?"

"Relax, dude. I'm fine. You know how we thought I was a normie? Turns out my power is total invisibility. Inexistence, almost? Like, none of their tech works on me, and they didn't bother with power dampening collar. Bad move. The minute they put me in cuffs, I just disabled them and walked out of the cell they put me in. They've been looking for me forever, but they're never going to find me. I've been chilling out in an old storage room."

"That sounds dangerous," Jasper interrupts.

Bellamy scowls. "Believe me, I tried to convince her to come back with us."

"Sorry, big brother, but this is more important." Her voice turns serious. "I can get you a map of the entire Mount Weather facility by the end of the month. It's been slow work because I'm trying my best not to get caught, but you guys, this place is huge. And what they're doing to the mutants—" A fizz of feedback as she exhales. "Well. You saw what happened to Atom."

Raven closes her eyes. The one who'd exploded on their last search-and-rescue mission.

When she opens her eyes again, there's an unreadable expression on Bellamy's face. "We'll wait for your word, Octavia. Don't use the walkie unless you absolutely have to."

With the radios working, Wick's next project is designing a better tranquilizer gun. Raven, though, gets roped into helping Clarke. "Sorry in advance," she says, on the way to their first house call of the morning. "I don't know much about the inner workings of the human body beyond Biology 101."

"That isn't why I asked for you," Clarke says. "Not looking for a nurse."

"What is it, then?"

"I need you to help design a temporary prosthetic." They push through the force field barrier around the safe house and stroll through the front door. Raven sends her a questioning look. "It takes a lot of time for me to grow someone a new limb. I need a piece of equipment that will react to that progress."

Raven stops at the foot of the bed Clarke leads her to. She recognizes him—Nathan Miller. The mutant Bellamy had taken during the last raid. "You need Wick, not me. He can design something like that. It's his ability. I'm just a mechanic."

Clarke clears her throat and says, carefully, "That isn't totally true, is it?" She steps closer and abruptly takes Raven's wrist in her hand. "You know what I'm talking about."

Raven's mouth is so dry. She thinks of the pulse in her hands last week, like the radio was trying to talk to her. The new twist in her chest when her body, like a newborn, had tried to talk back.

"When I was still in med school," Clarke continues, "I had this pet project. Studying the cellular basis of the mutations that give us our powers, you know?" Her face scrunches as she tries to find the right words. "Raven—try to explain it to me. How do you teleport? Really think. How do you get from one place to another?"

Raven's power had manifested when she was thirteen, sitting on the front porch of her third foster home in as many years. At school, they were learning about the Large Hadron Collider. She'd scribbled down an answer to the next question of her physics homework and thought idly about visiting one day. A simple daydream, except that the moment the vivid image flashed through her head—she was there. In the flesh. Shivering in the snowy Swiss winter, wide-eyed, breath puffing out of her mouth in thick clouds of white, nose two inches away from the gate. The next instant, mind reeling, reaching for home, she crashed back into the rocking chair on the front porch, knees slamming into the old wood.

Mom, my first period came was a lot easier to share than mom, I can be halfway around the world in less than a minute if I think about it hard enough. That evening, she'd eaten enough dinner to feed the entire family, hunger gnawing at her stomach even when the last bite of casserole was gone. After that, she'd limited her experiments in teleportation to locations that wouldn't burn the week's calorie intake to a crisp in the blink of an eye.

"I—" Raven's voice cracks. "I think about where I want to go, and then I force my body there." Pick myself apart, molecule by molecule, and throw myself headfirst toward my destination. "I didn't have to learn it. It just came to me. Naturally."

"But then you stopped," Clarke says, words tripping over each other now, in her haste to speak. "Stopped teleporting so much. And—when I saw your back last week, after the raid—I should have had to grow you a completely new spine. But I didn't need to. It was like, after the first time, your body had learned. You were holding yourself together, somehow, even though that shouldn't be your power."

"You think my power's trying to come out in a different way?"

"Yes! Exactly."

"Why?"

Clarke's brow wrinkles. She sits down next to Nathan's bed. "That's the part I'm still trying to figure out."

Raven sinks on an empty mattress, biting on her thumbnail. "Our powers—when we use them, it's like exercising any other muscle, right? And it comes to us as naturally as breathing. Like when a baby learns how to walk, it just does it. It doesn't know every tiny detail about how its leg muscles are moving, because it doesn't need to. It just puts one foot in front of the other. We do what we think we can do, because we don't know anything else. In science, too—one thing can have infinite applications." Raven licks her lips, nervous, almost agitated, her head honed in on something just on the cusp of her understanding.

"When you first used your power, it was to teleport, so I think you just assumed that was the only application, but what if it wasn't, what if—"

She cuts off abruptly as Raven raises her hand. She closes her eyes, and instead of turning her immense focus on herself, tries to reach out and take hold of a box of rubber gloves on the other side of the room.

The only other time she'd tried this had ended with a dismembered fish at the bottom of its bowl and a new foster home. She remembers, now, how she'd been so excited to teleport with the only pet she was allowed. Afterwards, she'd never done it again. It wasn't worth it.

Her range and control are much better now. When she opens her eyes, the box of rubber gloves is hovering over the table, spinning slowly like a top.

"Holy shit," says Clarke.

In the morning, Raven wakes up to the pulsing pain in her back again. She grits her teeth and powers through it. Sits up, shirt already drenched through with sweat. When Clarke steps in, naked concern on her face, Raven puts a hand up, panting, and says, "Let me try."

"You sure?"

"Of course," Raven says, grinning. "I got this."

She'd thought about it all day yesterday, playing the past two weeks over and over in her head. It had felt, in the instant she'd teleported out of Mount Weather, like a piece of her spine had been ripped out by the force field. But if her superpower wasn't teleportation, but something more like particle manipulation—at the subatomic level—it would explain everything. The heartbeat in the radio. Being able to lift something with the power of her mind. Every morning, her body trying to help Clarke heal her, because it knew instinctively what Raven didn't—that she had the power to do it herself, all along.

Clarke arranges her face down and rucks her shirt up, a familiar routine by now. This time, though, she steps back and doesn't touch her at all. In the center of the bellows of Raven's chest, she can feel that razor-sharp part of herself activating like an x-ray, illuminating all the passageways of her body, every infinitesimal cell thrumming with life inside her. Wrapped snug around the base of her spine is something foreign, glowing blue, like one of Wells' force fields. A piece of the one surrounding Mount Weather that she hadn't been able to notice on the way out, so tightly entwined in her cell structure that it's no wonder Clarke hadn't been able to do anything.

"Don't overthink it," Clarke says, her voice soothing, an anchor to hold onto.

She doesn't know how long it takes her to pick every piece out. When she opens her eyes again, her hands are shaking, the pounding in her head like a timpani, but the pain in her back is—finally—gone.

"Look at that," Clarke's saying, a small smile on her face. "You did it all by yourself."

Raven flushes. "Yeah, well. Couldn't have done it without your help. So—thank you."

Clarke's face dips close, and Raven almost raises her own—to do what, God only knows—before fingers hit her philtrum. They come away red. "Hey," she says, a fine divot appearing between her eyes. "Your nose is bleeding."

"I'm also starving," Raven says, sniffing, and her stomach rumbles, as if on cue. "I haven't—that took a lot out of me."

"I'll get you something to eat."

"Wait," Raven croaks. Clarke pauses at the door. "What did it look like?" she asks. "When I took the force field out of my spine."

Clarke's eyes shine a pale blue in the low light. "Incredible," she says, and Raven believes it. "Now get some rest."

Raven sleeps.

She's out for a good thirty hours, apparently. When she wakes, stomach eating itself from the inside out, she grabs a granola bar from the stockpile and goes running for the first time in ages. Past the smell of coffee wafting out of the Starbucks on each corner, down the tiled pavement, interweaving through the crowd of morning commuters, dodging people as they come out of their houses and apartments buildings on the way to work and school. Funny, how the rest of the world turns on, happy and oblivious. Her mind goes blank a mile into it, until all she can feel is the burn in her calves and the breath leaving her chest in measured pants, sweaty hair sticking to the nape of her neck. The rhythm is always the same. Her body reacts in predictable ways. Put one foot in front of the other and you know exactly what you're going to get, every time.

No matter how old you are, it's still easy to think you can outrun anything.

She's dripping with sweat by the time she gets back to HQ, hands on her knees, breath wheezing out of her. To their credit, no one asks. Clarke hands her a clean towel. In the engineering wing, Wick's pulled out a bunch of old equipment for her to cannibalize into a temporary prosthetic.

When Raven levitates the first three leather straps with her mind, Wick drops the tranquilizer gun in his hands. It lands on the table with a loud thud. The dart discharges from the chamber almost too quick for the naked eye to follow, but Raven watches it move toward her slow as molasses, before she makes it quiver to a stop an inch from her left ear.

"That's new," Wick says, breathing out. He steps forward, tentative, and plucks the tranquilizer dart out of the air.

"Ha," Raven says. "Tell me about it."

It's a little frightening, how easily she gets used to the new routine. In the mornings, she accompanies Clarke to each safe house. Nathan's leg is progressing nicely. Raven takes out one of the screws in his brace and rearranges the supporting beams. Monroe's regaining use of her right hand with the help of Clarke's patient healing. The younger mutants they recovered from all along the coast have a whole litany of pains and aches that need fixing.

It occurs to Raven that she's never really seen Clarke in her element. Not like this, anyway, her brow wrinkled with concentration, hands shaking with the tell-tale tremor of fatigue after they fall away from the fourth fever she's taken care of that morning.

"Hey," Raven says, drawing her away and pressing a cold bottle of water into her hand. "Take a break. No use killing yourself over this." The corner of her mouth twitches. "You're much more useful to us if you're alive."

Clarke lets out a huff of laughter. "Thanks," she says, and chugs half the bottle down.

Raven takes to training in the evenings, testing the true extent of her new abilities with a boot camp of her own devising. Wells sets up defensive force fields a few corridors down from main HQ, and Wick volunteers some of his heavy duty tech for Raven to spar with. Clarke seems faintly surprised when Raven voluntarily asks her to monitor her vital signs. "You want my help," she says flatly, crossing her arms.

"I mean. I could do it alone, but I'd rather not." Raven grins when Clarke raises her eyes to the ceiling. "Plus, consider it payback for me helping with your house calls."

Neither of them say much during Raven's sessions beyond the occasional "Have you tried this?" and "Do you think this would work?" but somewhere over the course of the past two weeks Raven's gotten used to Clarke's quiet companionship. Understands a little better what makes her tick. The living, breathing girl behind all that armor.

She volunteers as Raven's first human subject when she tests side-along teleportation. They pop out of existence in the middle of HQ and push through Wells' force field like a pin through cloth, before reappearing right on the waterfront promenade, completely deserted at two in the morning. Clarke staggers against the red brick. Takes a deep breath in, fills her lungs with the briny air, and leaps up to peer at the waves lapping against the boardwalk. "Is that always what it feels like?" she asks, sounding almost reverent, and Raven feels something warm in her chest expand, like she's a hot air balloon.

You should let your hair down more, princess, Raven thinks, stepping forward to join her at the railing, and says, "Yes."

By the end of the first week, Raven's stopping simultaneous projectiles fired from 360 degrees with ease. Two days later, she can disarm the weapons before they've even been fired. "You could probably take out all the armaments on Mount Weather if you tried," Wick says idly, watching his new guns descend slowly to the floor as Raven brings her arm down.

Raven sends him a grin. "Probably," she says, and tosses her ponytail back.

Bellamy skids in on his launchpad at the end of that session and brandishes a cylindrical tube in his hands. "Octavia finished drawing up the blueprints," he says, laying them out on one of Wick's tables. "She says the staff are preparing for a visit from the President, so that would be the best time to strike."

"Strike," Clarke repeats.

"You heard me. Now's the time to move." Bellamy leans against the table and looks at Raven. "What do you think?"

Raven gestures at herself and lifts an eyebrow. "You sure asking for my opinion is wise? I'm not great at this planning thing. Usually I do first and think later."

"Maybe," Clarke says slowly, "that's what we need." Raven meets her eyes over the plans. A spark alights in Clarke's steady gaze. Something like awe. Something like hope. "You were right about Charlotte. Maybe this is the perfect time to do something." She pauses, a stray piece of hair falling into her face as she bends over the map. "Do you think you can teleport all of us to Mount Weather the day the President arrives?"

Raven's palms itch. "Yeah," she says, smiling at the determined set in Bellamy's jaw, Wells' fists on the table, Monty's expression of unadulterated glee. Clarke, staring at her like she's the answer they've been looking for. "I can. We're going all in. Here's the plan."

On the morning President Jaha steps out of his tinted limousine and onto the front lawn of Mount Weather Mutant Containment Facility, the press is already waiting for him, packed shoulder to shoulder with their cameras and microphones out, brought there by Wells' anonymous tips. Mixed in with the crowd are the inconsolable parents whose children had been taken from them. Bellamy's idea. Pathos and ethos. To break the story, they're going to need both.

Before the Secret Service can do much more than try to rope people back, Raven and her friends have appeared on the steps leading up to the big double doors. Before pandemonium can erupt, or anyone in the facility can react, Raven's already closed her eyes and, with a flick of her wrist, disabled every weapon within a twenty-mile radius. Dr. Griffin should be taking care of everything else inside.

Still, they try sending a chopper from the mountain. Raven watches it come, raises her hand, shuts off the engine, and slowly lowers the aircraft to the ground. The pilot steps out of the cockpit, discombobulated, and jabs a finger at them.

"They're dangerous," he shouts, running across the lawn toward them. "You don't understand! Neutralize the threats!" A moment later, one of the Secret Service agents surrounding the President wrestles the pilot to the ground.

"Hey!" Raven yells, stepping forward, her voice ringing out in the ensuing silence. Clarke's hand is warm against the small of her back. "We didn't come to fight." In her front pocket is a draft of the manifesto Wells had written up, demanding humane treatment in return for their cooperation. It isn't much, truth be told, but it's better than hiding in the shadows. It's a start. "We're superheroes, and we're here to save the world."