bye_felicia | want to see it all give me more

Entry tags:

darrow : raven

want to see it all give me more

There's little enough for Victra to do in this city that she finds herself falling into a respectable but rather boring routine. Every morning she exercises: runs through the whole city, swims through the ocean to the farthest buoy, goes to the gym and shames muscle-bound men who think they can out-lift her. She practices with her razor until her muscles start to ache. She sees Jesse; she sees Lincoln. She tries to read something but usually fails. She works on the movie when she's scheduled. And she drinks every night. It leaves a lot of down time, during which she finds herself at loose ends.

Today, she takes the long way back to her apartment. Her razor's curled around her arm like an overlarge bracelet and there's still a light sheen of sweat on her. She feels good, from the endorphins exercise has given her. She hears a rumble before she sees the bike, a low roar that breaks through the relative monotony of the city around her. She likes that. She turns her head and sees the speed and grace with which the bike and its rider move, weaving through other cars, the street.

By chance, the woman on the bike seems to be headed for the shop just in front of Victra and she slides into the driveway with a sharp turn. Victra grins.

"Nice bike."

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It's not the same as being out in the country, where Raven can really let the bike loose and break any and all speed limits. She likes the feeling of the wind in her hair, the rumble of the bike underneath her, the way the trees move past her almost in a blur. In the streets it's not quite the same, but she still pushes the limit a little, still drives probably a little faster than she should, weaving through traffic easily.

It's not Zero-G, but it's the closest thing she has in this place to that kind of thrill. She's about halfway home when she passes a bakery and decides that she could definitely use a coffee and something sweet, and she cuts across traffic and pulls sharply into the driveway after a split second's decision.

When she stops, there's a woman watching her, and Raven does a double take. She's more than a foot taller than Raven easily, gold hair and eyes like Raven's never seen. She grins as she takes her helmet off, swinging her good leg over the bike and cutting the ignition. "Thanks," she answers, giving the bike a fond look before she turns back to the woman in front of her. "You should see her when she really gets going."

Victra wonders if there will ever come a time when she isn't at least mildly surprised by who it is that attracts her attention in this city. Shaking off the shackles of the Society is easier here, where she has no choice, where no one except the odious Cassius reminds her of what it means to be Gold, and he does a poor job of it at that. But there are certain aspects that hold on. Her first impression whenever someone appears is based entirely on their coloring. She's as Brown as Brown can be, but Victra tries to rein herself in and not go there. No Brown would be caught dead on a bike like this. Or so she thinks.

"I think I'd like that," she says, grinning faintly. She takes a few steps closer, eyes on the bike, but truthfully she has no idea what she's looking at. "I'm no mechanic," she admits, with a light laugh. She wants to say she's no Orange, but manages not to. "But she sure does look pretty. Did you get her here?"

Raven can appreciate anyone who can appreciate her bike, even if they're intimidatingly tall and gorgeous. She has to tilt her head a little to look her in the eye, and she'd been like an idiot except that she's dealt with worse.

Even if she isn't a mechanic, even if she doesn't know her way around the bike at all, she's clearly interested. That's enough to spur Raven on, and she smiles back, running her hand over the handlebars fondly. "Well, I am a mechanic, and I can tell you for sure that she's a beauty." She flashes her a grin. If the grease stains on her jeans and her hands weren't indication enough of what she does, she's sure the way she feels about her motorcycle is. Raven's gotten to get her hands dirty with all kinds of vehicles since arriving in Darrow, but she reserves a special fondness for this one.

"She was left to me," she explains. "When my old boss disappeared." She doesn't know if this woman is a local or another one who was transported here, but by the look of her, Raven is betting on the latter. Finding out that people could just disappear like that at all had been a shock, and now Raven counts herself lucky every day when she wakes up and Lincoln, Clarke and Bellamy are still answering their phones.

Of course she's an Orange and nothing at all like she looks. She's not even an Orange, Victra reminds herself, but a noColor, someone who's free to make her own decisions and probably has interests outside of the insides of a motor. But it's hard to tell that from looking at her, from looking at the proud gleam in her eyes and smile as she talks about the cycle. Victra wishes she had something like that, something to feel so passionate about beyond war and combat. That would probably make this whole transition easier. To have something to hold onto that transcends dimensions.

Victra's mouth twists a little, tugging downwards at the corners in a discontented frown, at the mention of her boss. She runs her hand along the motorcycle, careful of its balance but wanting to touch it, wanting to imagine what it would feel like to have her own hands on the grips.

"That hasn't happened to me yet, but I don't know how I'd feel," she says. "Jealous that they get out or selfishly angry that it's not me escaping. But I guess getting a nice little gift out of the deal softens the blow."

It's not a surprise to hear that this woman is one of the ones who would prefer to leave, given the chance. Most of the people Raven's met have felt that way, and she seems to be in the minority in that regard. There's no doubt in her mind that she wants to stay in Darrow as long as she can. In the year or so that she's been here, she's never once second-guessed that, and there are days where she wonders if that's selfish, but she can't bring herself to change her mind.

There's nothing back home except for pain and death and war, and Raven's had enough of it to last her a lifetime.

"I'm Raven, by the way," she introduces herself, holding a hand out. If they're going to talk about this sort of thing, she figures she might as well introduce herself. "Raven Reyes. I wound up here just over a year ago. Can't say I'd want to go back, if it happened to me."

The name sounds familiar, but not in a way that Victra can place. Her conversations with people are few, excepting Jesse and Lincoln, those few times with Val, now. Mostly she overhears things, then can't remember where she heard them. The information is what matters, not the people it came from. So she takes the woman's hand in her own and gives it a shake.

"Victra au Julii. I've been here six months and I'm constantly waiting to go back home." She huffs out a laugh. "Not that there's a lot of good to go back to."

She still needs her revenge. She still needs to see the rebellion through. She needs to know what happens, even if it means death for herself when it's all over. She made a promise to Darrow, not in so many words, but a promise nonetheless.

She squints thoughtfully and tilts her head. "You're really happy here?"

"Yeah," Raven says simply, shrugging her shoulders a little. "I mean, sure it's some weird ass city that we can't leave and sometimes Hatchimals try and murder everyone, but it's better than where I came from." She says it with a wry smile. She knows exactly how ridiculous it is that she prefers this place when everybody else is itching to get out, but she doesn't regret it.

She shifts her weight a little to ease off the brace, holding her helmet loosely against her hip. She hadn't expected to have this kind of conversation in the street with a stranger, but it's hardly the weirdest thing that's happened to her in Darrow.

And then she realises where she knows the name given to her, and a grin spreads across her lips. She can't believe she didn't pick up on it from the get go, but now that she has, she's more than happy to continue standing here and talking. She hasn't met Victra but she's heard a lot about her, and she's been dying to meet her. "You know Lincoln, right?" she questions, trying to bite down on her smile. "So maybe you know a little about where I came from."

It does sound ridiculous, and Victra arches a skeptical brow at the statement. Perhaps Darrow, with all its... interesting occurrences is even safer than some other worlds out there. But the idea of being trapped, of being forced into one space upsets Victra so much that she can't fathom why someone would prefer this over freedom.

Perhaps the freedom Victra knows isn't true freedom either. But she has things to do yet, revenge to take and glory to reap.

Her expression shifts when Raven mentions Lincoln. Apparently he's been talking about her to a few people. Victra isn't sure about that. But, then, the only people (person) she talks to regularly knows Lincoln already, so it isn't news that they're... seeing each other. It's different for Lincoln who has more connections.

"Oh. Yes," she says, a little surprised. "I suppose I could understand. I understand why he wouldn't want to go back at least."

They haven't talked about it very much, Raven and Lincoln. She knows her own thoughts on the matter, but she does wonder what Lincoln would do, given the chance. If he could go back and change things, be with Octavia, she thinks maybe he might, but there's nothing to say that he wouldn't go back exactly the way things were.

He died, she knows. She doesn't remember it, knows only because Lincoln had told her, and there's a strange amount of guilt tied to the fact. She can't possibly remember because she didn't live it, but she still feels for him, having to carry the weight of that without her or Clarke or Bellamy to understand it properly. She'd thought it was bad enough herself when she arrived with memories Clarke and Bellamy didn't have, but it's not like she had to remember her own death.

"There are some things I miss," she allows, shaking her head. "There's nothing like Zero-G here, for starters." Lincoln has done his best to try and distract her with an assortment of adrenaline-chasing activities, but it's never going to be the same. There are days she would give up Darrow to feel it one last time, but then she remembers she's better off, and she tries her best to shut it out.

With a gesture back towards the bakery behind them, Raven shrugs one shoulder. "Do you want to get coffee or something?" she asks, suddenly aware of what kind of conversation they're having on the side of the street.

Raven does have a point about the gravity and Victra's expression is raised brows and a slight nod of acknowledgment. Before she properly responds however, the offer of coffee is made. Victra hadn't intended to start a proper conversation about anything beyond the bike when she made her comment. But knowing now that Raven knows Lincoln, is a friend of his, she feels some kind of compulsion to make an effort. Not precisely an obligation. But she's interested enough.

"Sure," she says. It's a good enough way to pass the time and she had slagging hours of time to fill. Victra makes her way to the door and holds it open for Raven.

"I don't miss zero grav myself. We didn't play around in it. Though it does make fighting interesting. I am from a planet that has less gravity than Earth, however. I felt sick the first few weeks here because of the difference. A change in climate wouldn't be a bad thing."

For a minute she thinks Victra might say no, and that would have been fine. Raven finds it relatively easy to talk to anybody, but she knows it's not the same for everybody. She has nowhere to be though and she'd like to get to know Victra. She trusts Lincoln's judgement in most things, and more than that, she's glad he's found somebody. She hadn't thought he would, for a time.

She follows her inside, smiling in thanks as she holds the door open, and makes her way to the counter to order. It amuses her a little, that Lincoln has ended up with a woman also from space. Before the Sky People had crashed to Earth he hadn't known a thing about it, and now she suspects he's heard more about space than most.

"I miss it," she says, and there's a wistful sort of look on her face that doesn't appear when she's talking about anything else. "We never fought in it, though. Didn't do a lot of fighting at all until we got to the Ground, to be honest."

Her brow lifts in mild surprise. She feels more of it, interest and wariness, inside but she doesn't let it show. It's nothing but her training keeping it in, her belief that she has to hide her feelings before they're used against her in some way. She isn't suspicious of Raven, but there's a lot that she doesn't know about her and Lincoln's world. There's too much to know, in some ways.

"You're not a Grounder," Victra says. Since she only knows Lincoln, she only knows Grounders. She knows of Mountain Men and others, but Victra knows that's no equivalent to actually knowing a person. She knows not to make assumptions even if she trusts Lincoln to be straight with her and even handed.

"But you made friends with Lincoln back home? Or mostly here?"

Raven turns with an amused smile at that. Back home there would be no mistaking her for Skaikru, but Darrow strips all of that away. Lincoln is bigger and stronger and covered in more tattoos than Raven is, but in Darrow he dresses the same way she does, speaks the same language. "No," Raven agrees, shaking her head. "They called us the Sky People. Skaikru."

She's talked to Lincoln a little more lately about what that meant for him, how it had been to watch them fall from the sky. In all the time they'd spent on the Ground, she'd never really stopped to think about how it must have been on the other side. She wonders for a moment what Lincoln might have told Victra, but she knows that whatever they'd done to each other once, it's behind them. She's still thankful that they've managed to come as far as they have, but he's the closest thing she has to family, now.

"We were friends back home," she says. "But everything was always so crazy... I guess Darrow's let us become a lot closer." They get to spend more time together here, less of it looking over their shoulders and trying not to die. She loves Clarke and Bellamy and she's grateful that they're here, but Lincoln has become something of a rock, for her.

She frowns slightly, with interest, at the odd name. It strikes her as odd, at least. It has the inflection of something foreign but clearly is based off of something English. It's passing interesting to her how language develops, how names develop. Skaikru makes her think of the Obsidians, how Golds are like Gods, how they come from the sky and they have to rise up, climb up to reach them. Did the Grounders think of the Sky People in that way, gods? Or just Others. It's something to ask him later.

She nods slightly. "Crazy sounds like a good word for it," she says. From what she knows, from the relative chaos of their world -- compared to the ordered Society -- she can easily imagine relationships being jostled and ruined by shifting loyalties and changes in leadership. And death.

"Not that things are crazy here. Just a different brand. Having a common enemy in Hatchimals breeds a strange kind of camaraderie."

Raven smiles at that, laughing a little. She remembers the Hatchimals well, remembers how she and Molly had barricaded themselves inside City Hall and hoped to wait it out. For the most part, Raven refuses to let her leg slow her down, but there are times that Darrow throws things at her and she can't help but admit she's not as fast as she used to be. She's still here though, managed to fight off the Hatchimals and everything else.

"It's a crazy I can handle, at least," she agrees, nodding. There are plenty of crazy things in Darrow, but at least most of them she can deal with. She knows she's stronger than most people give her credit for, and that's part of why she loves Lincoln. He's always believed in her, always known she could handle just about anything, even after what happened with Murphy.

"Is that how you met?" she asks, glancing up at her with a teasing smile. "Camaraderie against Hatchimals?"

She snorts and shakes her head. "No, though I think someone hates me less because we did fight together against the furballs, so that's something." Victra isn't sure what to think of Valkryie, or what Valkyrie thinks of her, but their last conversation had at least been respectful and somewhat pleasant, free from shots fired against each other.

"He found me when I first arrived." Victra doesn't mention the details of how she had arrived, the blood on her hands, the emotional wreck that she had been. That's a story she's only shared with one person, Lincoln, and even then the details were scant and the story not fully fleshed out.

"I was rude and angry and he was calm and honest. I despise liars. I like to think I know when people are telling me the truth, because of that. Even when the truth is completely unbelievable."

Raven smiles at that, nodding. Lincoln might be a lot of things, but he's definitely not a liar. She's never known him to be that way. Even when he was the only one who knew the truth about the antidote that could save Finn, even when she was torturing him and he had no reason to tell her the truth, he'd still never lied to her. There aren't many people she can say that about, and it's one of the things she finds so incredible about him.

"Well, you don't have to worry about that with Lincoln," she replies, though she gets the feeling Victra already knows as much. "I remember when I first showed up here I thought everyone was lying." She hadn't thought any of it was possible, and it could too easily have been another trap of the Mountain Men. It wasn't until she got outside Semele's and saw the sky and the city that she truly believed what she was being told, and even then she'd still kept waiting to wake up back home.

Raven taps her fingernails on the edge of her coffee cup, thinking for a moment of Diana and the way she'd been able to coerce the truth out of Raven with that whip of hers. She hadn't needed to - Raven hadn't ever lied to her - but it had been the only way she would accept that anything about Darrow was real. "Unbelievable is pretty relative, here. There's not a lot I think people lie about anymore. What's the point, when the truth is more bizarre than any lie anyone could come up with?"

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