Vernorexia

One of the many intricacies about life on the ground that fascinated Raven was the subtle shift of the seasons. Back on the Ark, each day passed with the same metallic, gray monotony: just another x on the calendar to mark off that didn’t really mean anything at all. Here, every day brought something new.

After months spent huddled together for warmth, the landscape washed over in the same vacant palette of grays, whites, and ashen brown that served as the backdrop for her childhood, Raven was eager to catch those first glimpses of spring. The lake began to thaw, splashes of green slowly started to spread throughout the forest, and the playful melody of birds could be faintly heard outside their tent.

Just as the days grew longer, warmer, Raven began to see the world through hopeful eyes again.

Finn was gone, but she was still here. There was a bullet lodged in her spine, but she was still breathing. Raven Reyes had managed to slip the clutches of death more times than she could count, and there had to be some significance in that.

Spring was the season of her rebirth.

With the surviving members of the Ark now on the ground, she and Bellamy had begun to fall into a semblance of their old lives, and in all honesty, it was a responsibility that both of them were all-too-willing to shed. He still served as a leader, a resounding voice for those left of the hundred, but he no longer ruled alone. Raven still played a very crucial hand in making the camp more livable and communication possible, but she wasn’t the only mechanic anymore. For the first time in what felt like ages, the two of them got a chance to revel in their youth.

While they’d never truly be kids again, they could go for a simple walk in the woods. The two of them could meander aimlessly through the trees and along the streams without the need to track anything, scavenge for food, or reach any given destination. It was one of life’s simple pleasures, but something cherished nonetheless.

She could feel Bellamy’s dark eyes on her back as she stooped to pluck a flower. A thumb wistfully skimmed the vibrant red petals, it was the same kind of lily Raven had come across right after she’d made it to the ground, before her brown eyes darted up to meet his.

With a mischievous grin, she perched up on her tiptoes and quickly tucked the lily behind his ear.

“Well now,” she said with a chuckle while she toyed with his espresso-colored curls. Raven took a step back to admire her work. “Don’t you look pretty?”

In typical Bellamy Blake fashion, his first response was to roll his eyes. “I look ridiculous.”

As he felt for the petals buried in his disheveled locks, she was quick to protest. “Aw, come on, Bell! I picked that one just for you. It wouldn’t kill you to show some gratitude for once.”

The hand immediately dropped to his side, his scowl dissipating in an instant. His lips parted, no doubt armed and ready with some smartass remark, but the words never came. Instead, he simply gazed at her, completely awestruck.

For whatever reason, the expression made her uncomfortable, restless, so she reached for his calloused fingers and forced the enthusiasm back into her voice. “Come on! We’ve gotta keep moving if we’re gonna make it to TonDC before dark.”

Long gone were the nights when she’d clung to him out of sheer necessity: for comfort, to keep warm, to ease the overwhelming sense of loneliness that had once threatened to swallow her whole. No, Raven was certain that she cared for him, almost as certain as she was of his love for her, but she wasn’t quite there yet. She wasn’t ready to hear him say those words to her.

With the way he kept stealing glances at her as they walked, traces of a smile lingering on his lips and the flower still in his hair, she was terrified that she might just say the words back.

Love was giving someone the power to break you, putting yourself entirely in their hands, and here on the ground, that sort of attachment was too risky. Raven knew this firsthand. Still, she couldn’t help but hold his hand so tightly as the two of them went careening towards the ruins of the ancient capital.

While Raven was more inclined towards Earth’s natural beauty, the wide variety of flora and fauna that had somehow managed to thrive amidst the remnants of nuclear radiation, of mankind’s destruction, Bellamy was drawn more towards the stories left behind in its wake. He admired the ruins of the lost civilizations that had lived here before them. He lost himself in tales of war, of bravery, of the noble leaders that had walked this very same path before him.

It was exactly how she knew that, despite his concern for her safety, she could easily convince him to take her to TonDC.

It was amazing how drastic the statues and monuments differed from those pictured in their Ancient Civilizations textbooks back on the Ark. Instead of the pristine, immaculate marble features that had been drilled in her mind, these monuments were jagged, cracked, astounding even in their imperfection. Slowly but surely, Mother Earth had a way of reclaiming what was hers, and it couldn’t have been any more evident than in the outskirts of TonDC. Countless vines climbed up a once-towering and now-deteriorating obelisk. Lush green and violet leaves peaked out from between the cracks of another memorial, the names engraved all doomed illegible from nearly a decade of weather and acid rain.

Once they reached the massive feet of a statue just outside of Lincoln’s village, Bellamy stopped, and Raven watched as his stare trailed up the giant monument. The two of them stood there in silence for a moment, both feeling slightly insignificant cast in the larger man’s shadow.

Bellamy was the first to break the silence. “Octavia told me once that this was the man Lincoln was named after.”

She gave a solemn nod as her eyes followed his gaze, struggling to decipher the lost leader’s weatherworn features. In all honesty, she found herself more attracted to the vines that wound up the columns beside him and the translucent yellow petals that bloomed from them.

A sudden shift in her periphery, and Bellamy was slowly stepping forward, pinching a spindly golden bud between his fingers.

She might have been useless at recalling the names of Old World leaders, but this one definitely jogged a memory. Dandelion.

His voice remained gruff, awkward, as he gently placed the flower in her ponytail. “For you, my lady.”

It was all so much that she couldn’t keep from laughing. “Don’t take this the wrong way, shooter, but I’m pretty sure that’s a weed.”

A defeated sigh forced its way past his lips as Bellamy wrapped her up in his arms. “You’re impossible.”

Raven smiled into the kiss that followed, looking up at him from beneath her lashes. “And you say that like it’s a bad thing?”

No, she wasn’t ready to say those words, but the sensation still swelled in her chest, inevitable and unwavering.