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When Cytherea is born, Bellamy is the first to hold her. Then Clarke. Then Octavia. And then Raven. Raven cradles the baby in her arms and looks into her deep blue eyes and she's instantly in love.
Later Bellamy pulls Raven aside and tells her that the baby will know her as Aunt Raven, because he and Clarke consider Raven family and so will their daughter. Raven nods briskly and walks away and holds in her tears until the dropship.
By age one Raven has built Cee so many toys that she then has to build a shed to house them all. Whenever Raven isn't setting up communication systems or helping to construct the new water system, she is probably in the drop ship making some new toys. Clarke laughs every time Raven brings a new one over and Cytherea smiles and claps her hands. Bellamy grumbles and tells her she better finish the shed soon because there's barely any room in the house to walk anymore.
Cytherea is two and a half the first time Raven brings her to see the butterflies. She carries the girl over to the edge of the camp and watches as her eyes light up in delight as the glowing creatures circle around them. Clarke is pregnant again and her and Bellamy are having trouble managing their time between running the camp and the baby coming and their daughter and so Raven spends hours with Cytherea lying on the forest floor and watching the butterflies.
Cytherea is at the later part of three, and Clarke has her second baby. Raven plays with Cee while Clarke gives birth and Bellamy calls them in after. Raven sits on the bed with Cytherea next to her as Clarke hands her the baby. It's a boy, and Clarke says in a gentle voice that they decided to name him Finn and Bellamy's hands are on her shoulder.
Raven smiles, tightly, and looks away. She hands the baby to Bellamy and can't even make it out of the house before her tears start to flow. Cytherea slides off the bed and hobbles after her aunt and her parents let her. Raven is by the butterflies and Cytherea sits on her lap and Raven tells her about a boy named Finn with long brown hair and warm brown eyes and a kind smile that shared his rations and saved her life.
By the time Cytherea is five, it's pretty clear that Raven is a glorified babysitter, not that she minds. Cytherea is Raven's constant shadow and Finny is Cytherea's shadow. Octavia's daughter Aurora is the same age as and best friend of Cee, so her and her older sister Lynna are often nearby.
They sit obediently in the dropship and Raven gives long lectures about physics and chemistry and making things work as she works on her current project, because she'd be damned if these kids turned out as clueless as their parents. One week, the five of them barely leave the dropship and when Clarke comes to check on them, she's quickly kicked out. A few days later, four kids triumphantly emerge each with a contraption Raven calls a bike, and Bellamy gives Raven a death glare to which Raven responds with a sweet smile and a shurg.
Cytherea is seven and Raven can already tell she's going to be beautiful, she IS beautiful, and Cytherea complains constantly about her hair getting in her face when she plays. So she stops by Raven's every morning and Raven braids her hair and tells her stories of the Ark.
One day, Cytherea asks Raven to play tag with her and Raven shakes her head no and says that her leg isn't feeling well today. Cee doesn't understand what she means so that's when Raven tells her that she can't move one of her legs. Cytherea can't believe it because she's known Raven since she was born and she never even guessed. And suddenly it makes sense why her dad rarely lets Raven goes out on runs.
That night, she asks her mom about it and her mom shakes her head and laughs. She tells her Raven is the strongest person she's ever met and also the most stubborn. Like your dad, her mom had said, and Cytherea giggles really hard and confesses that she already asked dad about it and he said the same thing about her.
When she's nine, Raven, with Clarke's and Bellamy's permission, takes Cytherea to a nearby pond they know to be safe to teaches her how to swim. They have a variation of races and competitions all day until it starts to get dark and Raven tells Cee that they need to head home now or it's possible her parents will banish Raven.
At age ten, Cytherea is wise beyond her years and sometimes it freaks Raven out a little. She also secretly thinks that all the lectures in the dropship probably have paid off. She watches the way Cee looks out for Finny and the other kids in the village, and listens to her describe the different healing remedies her mom had taught her, and she feels a tightening in her chest because Raven knows she's special and also she loves her so much.
Cytherea is thirteen and her and Aurora visit Raven's place at night to talk about boys. They look shockingly similar, Raven thinks. More like sisters than cousins. Aurora's hair is dark and tumbles to her chest and Cee's had been hacked off above the shoulders in a moment of pre-teen rebellion, but the girls share the same heart-shaped face and small nose. There were both tan from spending the majority of their lives outdoors, but Cee had deep blue eyes where Aurora had bright green. Aurora also wore grounder make up around her eyes, a habit she picked up from staying at her father's village.
Cytherea is fourteen and Finny is eleven when Clarke and Bellamy start taking them to alliance meetings with Lexa's clan. They stay for a week at a time and during that Finny trains with grounder warriors while Cee and Clarke train with the healer. Cytherea thinks she would like to learn how to fight, too, but she really likes training to be a healer. So she asks Finny to teach her on the side.
When Cee and Finny get older, they start spending longer amounts of time with Lexa's clan, and without their parents. Finny stays longer than Cee-months at a time, but Cytherea stays long enough to meet and fall for Lexa's nephew, Jackson, and the first person she tells when she returns home is Raven.
Cee cries when she tells her and Raven takes her to the butterflies and braids her hair and tells her she has to tell her parents.
And she does, and her dad doesn't take it well and her mom tries to calm him down while Cytherea runs to Raven. Raven lets her stay at her place for a while until her dad comes a few days later and apologizes and hugs her.
The next time Cytherea runs to Raven first is when she's nineteen and her and Jackson have been married a few months and she has decided what she wants to do with her life. They go to the butterflies and Cee explains her plans to travel with Jackson to surrounding tribes and train their healers in exchange for peace with the Sky People and Lexa's Clan.
Raven doesn't say anything at first, then tells her that it will be dangerous, and it will be hard to convince your parents to let you do it but it IS a good idea and I'm proud of you.
So Raven goes with Cytherea to tell her parents of her plans and it takes a while, but a year later Cee and Jackson take off on their first visit to a neighboring tribe.
Raven watches her go and then walks over to the butterflies and cries, much like she did the day Cytherea was born and Bellamy had told her that the baby would be calling her Aunt Raven because Bellamy and Clarke considered her family. She thinks of the girl who followed her when she cried, listened to her lectures in the dropship, talked to her about boys, visited her every morning for a hair braid until she got so frustrated that she hacked it off, talked endlessly about the different plant remedies her mom had taught her... and Raven's heart fills with so much love that she thinks she might explode.
She knows then that she really did find family, even after she thought she lost it forever.