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You wonder when pain has started to become a consistent in your life.
It want to say it was back on the ark, before earth and the hells of it back when all you had to worry about was a dead father and a mother who barely spoke 2 words to you monthly. Back when the worst thing that had happened to you was failing the physical when trying to be a Zero-G Mechanic and Finn going to prison. You want to say it was back then, when you got used to it, but really everything on the ark seems like child’s play compared to everything that’s happened on the ground.
Nothing compared to a crash pod that had your skull pounding when Clarke first found you and to finding out the boy you loved had been hitching it up with another girl the minute they’d been on the ground. Nothing compared to feeling like your heart was about to beat out of your chest when Finn was heart and when Finn almost died, despite the anger you felt burning in your chest. Nothing compared to the pain of a bullet wound in your leg which led to a knife digging into your skin that had the world turning into nothing but white hot flashes of pain. Nothing compared to learning that your leg could be fucked for life, in a place where running for your life was more common than not. Nothing compared to losing Finn and feeling like the whole world had tipped on his axis and the feeling of betrayal you’d felt at Clarke, one of the few people you’d began to trust on this damn hell of a world. Nothing compared to knives digging into your skin one by one and draining the blood form inside you slow. Nothing compared to a drill in your skin from a bunch of psychopaths who didn’t seem to understand that a drill wasn’t a good surgical equipment piece.
It’s a morbid thought really, to think that you’ve felt so much of it in your 19 years of life that you have begun to tally the amount of times it has made its appearance.
Although at this moment, you feel it’s a little bit justified to be having such dark thoughts. Because although the drill has stopped you’ve apparently won whatever the hell this war was, there’s still a pain running through every single time you move. And as people around you hug and reunite and help free loved ones from the handcuffs on the walls, you release that’s up to you to drag yourself of this table. It’s up to you to do it alone, and again it’s sad that you could probably also tally the amount of times you have ended up having to do something alone.
“Hey. Reyes wait, stop. What the fuck are you doing?”
Then there is a hand pushing back onto your shoulder, and for a minute you’re grateful because your body aches and even that tiny push of movement made the world become blurred and disoriented for a second.
But then the voice continues.
“You just had a god damn drill in your skin, what the fuck are you doing trying to move by yourself.”
And you can’t help the sharp tone of your voice when you snap out, “I’m fine, Wick!”
Because you are shrouded out of iron and steel and after everything you’ve been through you are not going to let a drill be the thing to bend you and break you and tear you apart. And Wick has no god damn right telling you what you can and can’t do after every little thing you have giving and fought through to actually be breathing right now. And he has no right to treat you like some delicate little flower just because he’s finally come to release the world on the ground isn’t as fun as it seems. And you want to screw at him and snap at him and push him as far away from you as possible because you so god damn sick of caring about people just to have them leave you or break you or letting you down.
“Let me help you, you god damn idiot,” the voice is sharp and stern, and the grin that falls onto your lips can’t be helped because there’s something about pushing Wicks buttons that amuses you to no end. And if he’s snapping at you, he’s not treating you like you’re a glass that’s close to becoming shattered pieces all over the floor. “You can go back to being your strong, independent, smartass self, the minute we get back to that damn camp and I’m not worried about you trying to kill yourself walking in this state.”
And when he picks you up, lifts you into his arms like you’re a little girl again, you can’t help but sink into his arms. The feel of not having to hold yourself upright by yourself feels like a welcoming relief and the while the warmth of his body washes away the pain only slightly, but you’ll take it. Because while you don’t think you could handle another let down and disappointing you, you feel safe enough right now to forget that fear for just a minute.
“Damn Mechanics.”
(Plus, there’s still a small part of your brain still functioning that reminds you of a pained gaze and the words ‘don’t touch her’ and the fact that for once someone stayed with you and held onto you before you even had to ask them to, and you wonder if the fear of being let down this time is a completely preposterous idea)
“Damn engineers.”
And if all it takes to get the damn guy to relax and to crack a smile is to let him help you, well then you guess you owe him that much.
---
You don’t leave Mount Weather straight away.
In fact, you don’t leave the building until the early hours of the morning, giving time for people to relax and rest and for wounds to be checked to insure that no one bleeds or passes out before they make it back to safety. Also, despite the fact that you and everyone around you are in a building surrounded by hundreds of bodies, no one feels safe wondering the woods at night when they’ve finally got everyone back safe and relatively unharmed.
So instead, you stay on the floor that are not surrounded by the ghosts and stains of the things that have just happened. You let your wounds be checked and your body be prodded until you are deemed safe enough to make it back to camp without dropping dead, you get wick to hightail you out of the room faster than anyone can blink because you can’t bare the look of pity on some damn guy you’ve never even spoken to before face.
You spend the night in an empty corridor wide awake, with Wick on one side of you and Bellamy Blake on the other. You are all dirty and bloody and bruised and broken, yet no one is whiling to find a place to get cleaned right in that moment. So instead you spend the next hours of the night in a corridor with Wick and Bellamy and Clarke and Octavia and Harper and Monroe and Monty and Jasper and about 50% of the other delinquents that have been on this ground since day one. And while it’s clear to see that half of them aren’t asleep, the trauma and horror of what has just occurred to fresh in everyone’s mind to even think about closing your eyes, you let the silence wrap around you like a blanket of comfort. Because the people you are currently surrounded by are familiar and comforting and somewhat safe in your mind. Because the little group of you curled up together in a corridor in a building full of so much pain and horror, feels like something that you can call a family.
It’s strange really, the idea of family is foreign to you after your father died and your mother became nothing but a stager to you. You’ve never really had a family besides Finn, to reluctant to open your heart up to let it be tossed aside like a useless toy after everything your own mother did. But right now, surrounded by people who are as broken and as bent and as damaged as you, you start to forget that. You start to release that while everything has been hell on earth, literally, the minute you stepped onto the ground; you’ve never really had to do anything alone. That while you’ve been disappointed and upset and furious and let down because of the people around you, you cannot blame them because just like you they’re all teenagers who have had to grow up far too fast in a world so god damn cruel.
And because right now the idea of a family, no matter how damaged and dysfunctional, seems like something all of you would benefit from.
---
It’s an eight hour walk from Mount Weather back to camp, and Wick doesn’t let you down for a single second of them.
It’s ridiculous really, you know that while he is less hurt than you may be there is still blood on his skin and cuts on his body that need time to heal and you know that carrying a 19 year old girl across the forest is definitely not the way to do that. Yet the minute Kane declares that it’s light enough to start heading back to camp, Wick has you wrapped up in blanket and in his arms before you can even blink.
On one hand, you feel your heart flutter at the gesture but on the other hand you feel weak and powerless and like some sort of damsel in distress that can’t look after herself, and you hate it. And it’s that side of your brain that forces you to protest for a good hour of the journey.
“Wick, I’m fine.”
“You’re injured.”
“So are you, you idiot.”
“I’ll heal.”
“You’ll heal quicker if you let me, oh I don’t know, walk?”
“And you’ll probably pass out on the ground two steps in, you heard what they said right? No strenuous shit until they can get you checked out properly at camp, and from what I can see an eight hour walk is definitely strenuous activity.”
It’s infuriating and frustrating and so god damn inconvenient and you want to scream at the top of your lungs. You want to tell the idiot that this is nothing, that it’s not the first time you’d have to have walk somewhere with blood on your skin and a wound on your side. But at the same time, you can feel your body relaxing into his arms because your body is aching and your head is throbbing and you can feel your eyes slipping closed and at this moment in time rest feels like the most wonderful thing in the world.
(And if it has anything to do with the other voice in your head is screaming about how sublime it is to not have to hold yourself up by yourself for once, well nobody has to know.)
---
You wake up a few hours later, four to be precise, to see Monty and Wick in some deep discussion about science that your brain is to groggy to understand right now to your left and Harper stood to your right.
While neither of the two boys seems to acknowledge you waking up, the blonde next to sends you smile. And while it’s small, the corners of her lips barely turning upwards, it’s a smile that you can actually accept. Because for all the smiles you received that are full of pity and sympathy that makes you feel sick to your stomach, this one is full of something inclined towards understanding.
It’s easy to connect the dots together really, while you’d only spared a glance at the Harper when you were all chained to a wall watching as a horror enfolded in front of your eyes that glance was enough to see the complete and utter terror in the girl in questions eyes. That while everyone else seemed to be too consumed in shock to be afraid, the blonde had been pale and trembling and full of dread.
Like she’d already seen it happen before.
Adding that with the understanding, the feel of mutual understanding radiating from her, it’s easy for you to acknowledge that Cage Wallace had been drilling into people’s skin long before you arrived at the Mountain.
(And if the way she and Monty have been radiating towards each other as if trying to draw some sort of mutual comfort of each other, you can guess that it hadn’t been done on one person either.)
It’s a strange thought really, to release that you and Harper finally have something in common. Alibied a pretty sick and twisted thing in common, it’s still something, you figure it’s nice to finally have someone whose not going to be giving you pitiful glances for the next few weeks of your life.
It’s the main reason your actually able to smile back for the first time in past 24 hours.
---
When you give Jasper back his goggles, you release that yet again there’s another person you have something in common with. The look on his face is lost and pitiful and you can’t help but be filled with empathy and understanding. The feeling of losing someone you love, watching them perish right before your eyes is something dark and draining and while what happened had to happen, you can accept that the boy in front of you must be feeling somewhat betrayed by everyone around him.
You are well aware that he and Monty haven’t spoken a single word to each other since that moment you set up refugee in the corridor for the night. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Clarke and Bellamy must have had some help in their plan, and while blaming Monty feels bizarre to you, you can understand Jaspers point of view.
You wish you could say it wasn’t because it’s such a sharp contrast for how you felt with Clarke after everything with Finn, yet lying never helped anyone.)
Saying this, the idea of the two of them not talking is so preposterous, it makes you feel as if the world has been tipped of its axis, and you hope that they’ll be able to make soon.
“They’ll be fine,” Wick’s voice reasons from above you. He looks down at you, an emotion in his eyes that makes something in your gut churn, before continuing. “I knew them before, back in the ark, it was practically impossible to separate the two of them. If anyone can overcome that sort of shit, it’s those two.”
Then he hosts you into his arms firmly, and heads deeper into camp towards the direction of the medical bay as if he hadn’t just answer the fears in your mind in two sentences. As if he hadn’t been able to figure you out, figure out what you were thinking, in a single glance.
Carries on walking as if he hadn’t just made the churning in your gut feel like a volcanic eruption had just occurred inside you.
---
“Hey, Wrench Monkey.”
The roll of your eyes comes naturally, because of course Wick would be able to find you only minutes after you’ve escaped the med bay. Honestly you’re more surprised that he wasn’t out there waiting to haul you of someone and wrap you up in bubble wrap, but you suppose his wounds got in the way of that.
“Hey.”
“You look better.”
“So do you.”
And it’s true, although he was never truly that wounded to begin with the lack of blood on his skins and the bandages around his arms give you some sort of comfort. It shouldn’t, you think, give you more comfort then the blanket still wrapped around you and the fire burning mere centimetres away from you and the fact that it does scares you to no end. You’re so lost in your fear and confusion, so lost trying to sort out what your emotions are basically screaming at you, that you almost miss his next words.
“Clarke’s left.”
It’s like a punch in the gut.
“For how long?”
“Not sure, Bellamy just told me, and thought you should know, that’s all he said.”
In retrospect, you’re glad that Bellamy deemed you important enough to know but on the other hand you wish he hadn’t told you so soon. Because it’s just too soon after everything that’s happened. After the fear and the horror and the death and pain that still courses through your side it’s too soon to find out that you’ve lost someone else in such a short span of time. And of course it’s an irrational thought, because Clarke will come back- the idea that should wouldn’t doesn’t make sense to you at all. And if anyone is the camp deserves a break, Clarke Griffin would be top of your list no questions asked. But right now your armour is wearing to thin and you can feel the cracks begin to split and become bigger and bigger and bigger because all you can think is;
Another person leaving.
“She’ll come back,” Wick’s voice is far too soft and far to gentle and your throat feels tight and you feel like you can’t breathe because you’ve lost so much and you keep losing and losing and losing and you just don’t understand.
“What if she doesn’t?”
(It spills before you can stop it, the fear falling from your mouth in a whisper before you can hold your tongue and keep it bottle up inside you.)
“She will.”
(He sounds so sure, so certain, and you don’t understand how someone can believe so much in another person until you release that you believe him. That you’re starting to believe so much in a person and what they are saying in that very second.)
“Okay.”
(But your heart still hurts and your body still aches and the loneliness you’re feeling is still creeping up inside your chest.)
And then he speaks again, in an even softer voice than before, “it’s okay to cry you know.”
But it’s not okay, it’s not it’s not it’s not okay because you are made of iron and steel and you are already cracking enough and you’re not prepared to fall apart after everything you’ve been through you can’t let one person leaving be the thing that tears you apart.
Yet you can’t help but let a single drop fall from your eye.
Then he’s next to you, arm around you shoulder pulling you closer, and for once you accept it and for once you understand that you need it. You need the warmth and comfort and closeness of another person, it’s something you’ve been craving for so long. You relax closer into his side because you need the comfort of someone who is there and someone who cares and there’s a voice in your head reminding you that Wick never hesitated to stay, never hesitated in doing everything he could to try and help you.
But you’re still so god damn scared.
And you tell him, because after everything that happened he deserves to know what’s actually going on inside your head. And you need him to tell you its okay to be scared, that it’s okay to not know what to do.
And when he does it feels like you can breathe again.
So you curl closer to his body, let him run is hand down your arm and you let yourself place your head on his chest and you let yourself forget about everything else for just second.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
For making that damn brace, for believing in me, for being my friend, for being more than a friend, for be prepared to wait, for staying when I asked, for not leaving when you could have, for trying to protect me, for carrying me back to camp, for holding me.
“For everything.”
He doesn’t reply, but you think he understands anyway.
---
You stay curled up together until it gets dark, no one else bothers you as you sit together and talk and joke and argue like nothing has changed. The sound of laughter and conversation around you as everyone relishes in the fact that everyone is finally safe alongside Wick’s completely ridiculous puns brings a smile to your face.
And then everyone starts to leave and the fire goes out and every beings to disappear into tents for a much needed rest. And your gut starts to clench again because right now you feel safe and secure and everything is peaceful and the open air feels welcoming at this point in time and Wick’s arms around you are everything you need. Right now you don’t want to leave and go back to your tent and back to a confined space yet again, and right now you don’t want Wick to go either.
“Please don’t go.”
It’s the second time you’ve asked him to stay, probably the second time you’ve ever allowed yourself to ask someone to stay. Because while you still don’t know how you feel, don’t know if you’re ready to let yourself fall from someone just yet, you do know you don’t want him to leave yet. Because you do know that in time you could be ready for something, to let someone in again.
And all he does is hold you tighter, pull you closer.
“Not a chance.”
And for once, you believe it.