After the End [ The 100 ]

32. Finger guns

the calm

——-[bex]

Someone catches my eye. The brunette wears a ponytail and a red jacket. A natural smirk slides onto her face even as she struggles with the several boxes in her arms. "Great, you can walk," she says, approaching us.

Really? Can I really walk if Octavia still has her fingers as close as three inches to me?

Raven's smirk settles on Octavia before she turns back to me. "Help me hold this, will you, Bex?"

A grimace fills my face directed at the boxes she's holding.

We are preparing for a war.
I need you to get stronger

Like some terrible song, the words repeat in my head.

"Sure. Baby steps, right?" I say with a tight smile.

Raven's smirk dissipates by just a bit as she shrugs. "Okay!"

I've found another person who's immune to my antics.

She hands over the box, so I have to quickly position it so it won't fall. There's a fine gray sand in it that I don't think she wants to spill out.

"Careful! That's important enough not to breathe in," she says warningly.

Raven walks up. Figuring she's heading to the drop ship, I send Octavia a look.

"S'fine. Gotta get something done," she says. We nod, and I leave to follow Raven.

"You think I'll waste too much by inhaling it?" I ask like that's the dumbest thing she could've theorized. I mean, come on.

She chuckles just as we reach the drop ship. A sly smirk lay on her face as her body holds open the tent tarp. "No. I'm saying that living is probably a good enough reason to not inhale gunpowder."

What the fuck? She could've warned me! I grimace as I look down at the fine gray particles.

After that, I try to make myself useful, even though she could've just told me what it was in the first place.

Why did we even have to come in here? I thought she worked in her tent. The drop ship is rank. It smells so sickly in here. There's always some septic smell to it from whenever Clarke is doing her doctor shit. But it's like no one thought to clean this place.

Now that I think about it, it could have something to do with Ali running off to find her psycho girlfriend.

"Just ignore it," Raven says distractedly. "It's bad coming in when you've just been outside, but you get used to the smell," she says, trailing off a little and sending me a look.

"Which is a far cry from home, I'm sure."

Raven again looks up from what she's doing, a shrug on her shoulders. "Mm, nope. Mecha's seen our fair share of chemical and radiation exposure. Trust me, it can get pretty rancid up there."

Mecha? Well I guess that makes sense. Still better than what we got on Arkadia though. "But you're from Go-sci."

Raven laughs again. I don't know what could be so funny. "Uh yeah, from eight to eighteen-hundred. I took my ass right back home after that. Had somebody waiting," she finishes with a chuckle.

Since she isn't looking, I roll my eyes. Finn of course, who else? I remember him briefly mentioning her in the bunker. I've yet to see her explode like Finn implied she would, but I'm still holding onto hope.

"Let me guess, you're Factory station?"

"Proudly," I say with a shrug. I just prefer not to be a slave to the Ark. That's what we are, fixing and making things for Alpha. Some people might say it shouldn't matter to me anymore. We're on the ground now and blah blah. But it meant a lot to my parents, and the Ark somehow thought it was justifiable for killing them.