[For Clarke & Raven]

[to_survive]

It's been a change having Raven around, but a good one. There are moments with her that brings life on the ground rushing back, the good and the bad, but Bellamy accepts it all. He can't say that life was always good, but they tried their best and he wants to remember the little, good things more than the bigger memories that haunt him at night.

Raven, also, breaks up the routines he and Clarke have built up without realizing it. He gets food for three more often than not now, adds some of their older favorites to his search for weird and crazy food for Raven to try out.

Octavia's presence (or lack of it) is a black hole at his side, but Bellamy finds he can ignore it a bit more easily when the three of them are together as they were the night before, simply hanging out until late in the night. And then it's Clarke by his side in their bed and the world falls away.

Until the morning, when the few too many beers he had makes him regret everything.

He shuffles into the kitchen quietly, mindful of Raven still asleep on their couch and Clarke in bed. He tries to keep the noise down as he cooks the most basic of things he's learned -- eggs, bacon, some toast. A small breakfast, but it smells good and will soon be helping with his hangover, which is all Bellamy really cares about at the moment.

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[willbetested]

Clarke has never been a graceful morning person. The sleep she'd gotten the first few weeks on Earth had been fragmented, full of fits and starts followed by blackout exhaustion. When she'd first arrived in Darrow it hadn't been much better, but now over a year later she's back to her Ark sleeping patterns. Which means she wakes slowly and occasionally grouchily, hogs the covers, and burrows for warmth. So far Bellamy hasn't complained which really only makes her love him more.

She has the quilt from their bed wrapped around her like a cloak as the smell of food pulls her from bed. Bleary-eyed and bedheaded, Clarke throws a careful glance at Raven on the couch, smiling sleepily as she's pleased to see her friend still there. Once she reaches the kitchen, she slides up behind Bellamy and places her head against his back before holding out a demanding hand.

"Bacon me, please."

[notrocketscience]

She's never really had the experience of being able to sit around with her friends and drink too many beers. On the Ark there'd been more important things to do and she ran the risk of being floated for something as stupid as underage drinking. On the Ground there hadn't been any anyway, and they'd been too busy trying to stay alive to even think about it.

All of which means she's not really prepared for the hangover that Raven wakes up with. Clarke and Bellamy's couch is more comfortable than she expected, and she burrows into the covers like she can hide from the morning for another few minutes before she sees Clarke and Bellamy in the kitchen.

"Hey, lovebirds," she calls out, tempted to throw a pillow at them. "Don't eat all the bacon without me."

[to_survive]

Bellamy snorts at Clarke's demand, enjoying the warmth against his back for a moment before turning his head to look down at her hand. He's tempted to smack it away, but he reaches for the plate of bacon instead, putting a cooled off strip in her hand. "You're lucky you're cute."

When he hears Raven's voice, Bellamy perks up and tilts his head toward the living room. "What is this? I'm doing something nice for us and all I get are demands from you two."

[willbetested]

Accepting the strip, she smiles up at him as she steps away, other hand still gripping the blanket. "I know," she agrees before taking a bite, chewing slowly, savoring it. Bacon is definitely one of the better parts of being here.

"We won't," she calls back, chomping down on another bite. Bacon dangling from her mouth she reaches around to grab a few cooled pieces and shuffles out of the kitchen. Entering the living room, she holds out the bacon in offering to Raven. "Besides, I think we can convince him to make us more." Pausing she raises her voice to make certain he hears us. "Because he's so nice like that."

[notrocketscience]

Raven forces herself into a sitting position and blinks steadily as her head spins. Oh, god. Beer, way too much beer. Still, the smell of bacon does a lot to better her mood, and she pulls her blanket towards her to make room for Clarke and her blanket on the couch. Bellamy, she's decided, can stay in the kitchen and do the cooking. Raven would probably just burn it anyway.

"I knew I liked you," she says, taking the piece and crunching it happily. There's still a level of adjustment required for this kind of relaxed domesticity - she keeps waiting for it all to be shattered, to wake up and be in Mount Weather under a drill. Still, if this is some crazy dream she's going to ride it out as long as it will let her, so she shakes the thought away.

"I didn't know you could cook, Blake," she calls back to the kitchen, finishing the rest of her bacon. "Hidden depths, this one," she mutters to Clarke conspiratorially.

[to_survive]

Bellamy's thinking of taking back anything nice he's said or thought about having Raven around. She and Clarke get as thick as thieves sometimes, and he ends up being the unfortunate victim when they get their heads together.

"I am nice," he calls back in response, leaving the stove for a moment so he can turn around and shuffle toward the doorway to glare at the pair of them on the couch. "It's nice of you two to acknowledge my skills."

[willbetested]

"Always." Clarke grins over at him, batting her eyelashes dramatically before sitting down on the space Raven made for her on the couch. It's nice, how light she feels, any headache from last night's drinking vanquished by her own preventative measures. Painkillers and more water than she should be able to stomach, then more when she'd woken up in the middle of the night.

Having a few of her favorite people nearby has made this place feel a bit more real. She's missed Raven, but hadn't let herself cling to the hope that anyone else besides Bellamy would show up. This is wonderful.

She reaches out of her blanket cloak to scratch at her cheek. "Is it just bacon or has your niceness extended to other breakfast foods? How else can I bribe you?"

[notrocketscience]

It's still a little weird watching them together, bantering and flirting, but it's also a little bit nice. Raven's not blind and she knows they had moments on the Ground where maybe if everything had been entirely different they might have had a chance, and she supposes that's exactly what Darrow is. Her throat still constricts a little whenever she thinks of herself having that chance, and she can still see the knife going into Finn's chest when she shuts her eyes, but maybe one day that will hurt less, too.

"Eggs, eggs are good," she calls out, leaning over the arm of the couch to find where she'd taken her brace off the night before. She pushes her blanket aside for a moment so that she can start to strap it back on. If nothing else she'll need it for when they annoy Bellamy too much and she needs to run away from projectile bacon rashers.

"Coffee is also a thing that we should have right now," she determines, but she can't ask Bellamy to do all the work, so she forces herself to stand once her leg is strapped in. "Three?"

[to_survive]

Bellamy knows better than to tell Raven to sit down and let him do all the work -- he knows better than to even say that to Clarke, honestly. The women in his life have always been incredibly stubborn, and maybe one day he'll figure out why he tends to surround himself with them.

"I was going to make eggs anyway," he tells them, trying and failing miserably to give Clarke a pointed look. He doesn't quite grin at her like an idiot, but it's a near thing. "We can talk about bribery later."

He's at least trying not to be entirely disgusting around Raven.

"Come on, Reyes," he tells her, turning back into the kitchen. Bellamy points at the coffee maker, where he's left out the coffee but didn't get around to making something. (Actual, real coffee, even a year later, is still amazing.) "Get to work."

[willbetested]

"Sounds fair to me," Clarke answers with a wink and a grin. It would be so easy to take it a little further, but Raven's here and that wouldn't be fair to her. Not to mention the fact that Clarke's still not all that great at anything resembling cheesily romantic or seductive.

"Yes to coffee, please." She pauses scratching at her knee under her blanket as she watches Raven follow Bellamy. It's only then that she notices something strange about her friend's back. "Raven, I think there's something on your back."

Casting a look at Bellamy to ask for assistance, she notices something on his as well. "Wait, yours too Bellamy. How much did we drink last night?"

[notrocketscience]

Raven has three mugs in hand and is on her way to preparing the coffee when she hears Clarke call out to her. Her first reaction is to crane her neck around to try and see her back but from this angle it's impossible to make anything out.

"What do you mean?" she asks, frowning. "We didn't drink that much." Enough for a slight hangover maybe but not nearly enough for Clarke to be seeing things.

"If either of you went to town with a marker while I was asleep..." she starts to teasingly threaten, but then Bellamy turns and she gets a look at his back properly. "Oh," she says, her tone falling. "Shit."

[to_survive]

Bellamy images he can practically feel the way the mood suddenly changes, and he wishes it didn't have to. That they could go some period of time where something doesn't go wrong or become a concern; but considering how his entire life has stretched out so far, Bellamy isn't sure he's every been worthy of long term happiness.

"What?" he asks, turning as he shuts the fridge door, carton of eggs in hand. With his free hand, he tugs at his shirt by the shoulder, as though that will do much good. "What is it?"

[willbetested]

Letting go of the blanket, Clarke gets to her feet and moves across the room and into the kitchen. A shiver runs down her spine and she knows it's not just from the loss of the blanket. This is something else.

Biting her lip, she frowns at the words as she gets closer. A pit forms in her stomach, guilt washing over her as she reaches out to run her hand over Bellamy's back. "It's words." Turning slightly, she moves to look at Raven's back as well. "You both have words on your back."

[notrocketscience]

The words scribbled across Bellamy's back tell a story that Raven already knows all too well, and it leaves a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Clarke is looking at them both like the floor has fallen out from underneath her, and Raven knows that look.

She places the mugs back down on the counter heavily and makes a beeline for the bathroom, dragging her leg faster than it can keep up. Once she's in front of a mirror, Raven turns, craning her neck around so that she can see, knowing she'll regret it even as she does.

For a moment she almost laughs at the absurdity of it, but then the meaning falls heavy in her stomach. OPPENHEIMER, it says, and Raven sees the dropship explosion flash before her eyes, sees the burned bodies of hundreds of Grounders, her friends mingled among them. She sees the explosion on the bridge, of the turbines in Mount Weather. Raven can make a bomb about of almost anything she touches, and on the Ground it had been easy to pretend like it was necessary. It was them or us, she tells herself, but the name is staring her in the face like a sick joke.

"I am become death," she says to the mirror, the words sticking in her throat.

[to_survive]

Bellamy watches Raven go, his stomach dropping when he spots the word on her back before she rounds the corner and disappears. When he turns his gaze back to Clarke, he has to do everything he can to keep from trying to rip his shirt off as if it will help.

"What does it say?" he asks. If Raven's word is anything to go by, he has some idea of what it will say, but he wants to hear it.

[willbetested]

Her stomach is turning, the bacon that she'd so happily munched on minutes before is threatening to come back up again. Part of her feels that she should be used to this by now, prepared for any sort of dark, awful thing to occur. Her inner voice is scolding, reminding her that life is never quiet or good for long. That she was a fool for thinking they could blissfully escape all that they'd done in the past.

Worry creases her forehead, heartbreak plain on her face as she reaches out to touch the writing on Bellamy's back. "Murderer." Clarke's voice is soft, almost gentle as she breaks it to him.

It isn't fair that two of her favorite people should be called out like that. Pulling her hair over her shoulder she turns her back to Bellamy. "Do I..." she pauses, strengthening her voice. "Do I have anything?"