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You know what to do.

REYES; Chelsea Cloisters #43

She's locked somewhere inside her own head. She remembers the pain, the screaming, Elias rushing her to the hospital. She remembers that they hadn't been able to find any physical signs of what was wrong with her. She remembers feeling like she was going to snap, like she would do anything to make it all just stop, and then it had. Raven had given in, the pain had gone away, and for one blessed second everything had been okay.

And then she'd ended up swallowed up somewhere inside her own head.

She knows ALIE is in control now, but it doesn't matter how much she fights back, she can't take back control of her own body. It's like being tied up somewhere in the back of her own mind. When she speaks the words aren't hers, and she hates it. To the outward eye she looks perfectly fine, so the hospital had let her go with nothing but a few bewildered looks. Now, it's been over a week and Raven is exhausted and desperate in equal measures. She's been fighting and screaming inside her own head without any visible signs on the outside and everything has been for naught. She can't make anyone see that it's not her, can't take back control of her own body.

With harsh words and a sharp tongue, ALIE has been busily pushing away everyone Raven cares about, but Raven needs them to know. She needs someone to figure it out, someone to help her, but every time she's in front of them she can't make herself heard.

But ALIE wants doubles, wants more of her infecting the minds of others, and so she keeps putting Raven in front of them, like she thinks she can make them crack, too. It's late afternoon and there's a little handful of newly made chips that Raven's hands had unwillingly helped her make in her pocket when she calls Elias and Lincoln over, and all Raven can do is pray they don't come.

It's been over a month since she promised Elias she would try and get help. She's spent so long keeping everything bottled up, the pain in her leg steadily getting worse, but she hadn't realised exactly how much it was getting to her until New Year's Eve. Until she'd thought maybe there was a chance, the smallest chance, that one day this city might decide to use its magic whims and heal her.

It had been stupid to hope, but she couldn't shake the thought. Now, it sits even more heavily than it did before, the weight of dragging her useless leg behind her all the time. On some level she knows that she could go to a doctor, ask them if there's anything they can do. Abby had told her in no uncertain terms that her leg was never going to heal properly, but she'd always tried to help with the pain. Admitting that though seems like giving in somehow, even if she knows she wouldn't think the same if it were anyone else.

It's not the worst pain she's ever felt. She's been shot and stabbed and tasered and drilled into; Raven knows what pain is. It's the living with it day in and day out that sets her teeth on edge, that makes her have days where she doesn't know how to push through it. It's after one of those days that she gives in, leaves work a little early and heads for the nearest clinic. Maybe they won't be able to help at all, but at least she can tell herself she tried, tell Elias that she tried.

She's been sitting in the waiting room for half an hour when somebody suddenly pulls up the chair next to her. Raven offers him a brief, polite smile, but she doesn't pay him all that much attention until suddenly he's leaning across, motioning to her leg.

He tells her that he can tell she's in pain, and Raven is ready to blow him off when he pulls a small vial out of his pocket, shakes it so she can hear it rattle. He tells her it's pain medication, something the doctor gave him after he was injured in the Purge, tells her she looks like she needs it. She knows, on some level, that taking medication off strangers is just about the dumbest thing she could do, but the temptation gets to her. He promises her no more pain and Raven can't help the fact that it sounds alluring, that maybe she won't even have to go and admit aloud to anybody that she's struggling with this.

She takes the vial he's offering, puts it in her pocket and walks out. For the next two days she considers it, trying to decide if she's sunk this low. She should call Clarke, ask her opinion, but she doesn't, because she doesn't want Clarke to know. She doesn't want to admit it, but when the pain gets so bad she can hardly move from her bed she gives in, unscrewing the cap. It's not a pill that falls out when she shakes the bottle but a small disc, an infinity symbol etched onto it. It gives her pause for a second before she figures to hell with it, puts it behind her lips and swallows.

At first there's nothing, which doesn't surprise her. Raven forces herself to stand up, to distract herself by getting ready for a shift at work she probably shouldn't go to, and halfway through getting dressed she stops short. The pain is gone. She hadn't thought it possible, but when she moves her hips to walk there's no discomfort, nothing. Her leg is still useless but at least it's not hurting, and a startled laugh escapes her.

It's been two years since she was shot, and for the first time she can't feel the remnants of it. If she thinks about it, she'll realise she can't remember how it happened, either, but right now she couldn't care less. The pain is gone.

She doesn't know how she ended up here, exactly. Raven remembers walking down the street, remembers feeling her stomach rumble and deciding she should eat, but everything from that point on seems like something out of a fever dream. The place is called The Enchanted Forest of Pizza, and that probably should have been her first clue that things weren't going to be normal. She'd made the mistake of hesitating outside, the lure of pizza overriding her better common sense.

There'd been nothing remotely appetising on the menu she'd glanced at - everything seems to be some weird horrible combination of ingredients that should never go together let alone be on a pizza - but a waiter had grabbed her arm and pulled her inside talking excitedly before she could protest. Now, she's being watched by a handful of creepy terracotta gnomes with jaunty Santa hats as he pulls her through the strangest looking restaurant she's ever seen, seating her at a table that already has a man sitting at it.

"This one's taken--" she protests uselessly, but the waiter is already talking over the top of her, announcing the specials loudly and with a smile that she's pretty sure is going to cause his face to crack.

If nothing else, the gnomes have definitely made her forget she had any appetite at all, and Raven looks at the guy across from her helplessly. She recognises him, remembers him washing up on the beach months ago, looking like hell. Now he just looks as bewildered as she does. "Bodhi, right?" she asks, ignoring the waiter who's still powering on determinedly, almost robotic. "I'd apologise for crashing your table but I don't think I had a choice in the matter."

She's been planning it for weeks, and by the time December 1st finally rolls around, Raven is practically giddy with it. There are a lot of things she loves about Darrow, but Kagura had been her favourite thing by far last year, and she's been waiting impatiently for the reopening all year. Last year, she hadn't gotten the chance to try out the ski slopes, and that's something she intends on rectifying immediately. She knows that Lincoln and Octavia would likely join her without much hesitation - Octavia, especially - but she's got somebody else in mind.

Raven sends Marius a message a week beforehand instructing him to keep the day free, but that's about all she tells him. The rest she intends to be a surprise, even if he'll perhaps regret trusting her later. She tells him to pack warm and meet her at the train station, where she's got bags packed and a bright grin on her face. He'd promised to go skiing with her last year, and maybe it's twelve months late, but she's decided she's still holding him to it.

The station is busy, filled with people who have apparently had much the same idea. She knows Kagura gets ridiculously busy quickly, but she didn't have the patience to wait until things might have quieted down a little. Besides, the atmosphere of everyone bundled up against the cold and waiting excitedly for the train is nice.

"I hope you brought a few of your ridiculous scarves," she tells him when he arrives, beaming at him. Without waiting for him to question it, she points upwards towards the mountains, unable to keep the secret in any longer. "Kagura's open again and if I remember rightly, someone promised me they'd come skiing with me."

Raven had gone to work that morning to find Church gone, and the garage trying to work out how to function without him. Raven's heard of people just up and disappearing but she hadn't had it happen to anyone she knows yet, and it's left her feeling a little blindsided. She'd done her job because Raven is good at compartmentalising, putting the bad things away to deal with later, or never. It's the only way they could survive on the Ground, by pretending that the bad things weren't all happening at once, pretending that she could deal with one problem at a time and be okay. She puts missing people in a box and decides that it's something she'll deal with later.

As soon as her shift is finished she goes to Clarke and Bellamy's place. It's irrational; she knows they're still here, both of them, because she'd texted both of them during the day. She knows they're fine, but she still goes straight to the apartment anyway, needing to see them to make sure. They've all lost so many people back home, she doesn't think she could stand it if she lost them here.

When she gets out of the cab and knocks, nobody answers, but Clarke gave her a spare key, so Raven lets herself in anyway. She'll sit and wait until they get home, and maybe she'll even have coffee ready for them as an apology for her minor freak-out. She busies herself in the kitchen, setting a pot on and leaning against the counter while she waits. Raven closes her eyes, tips her head back against the cupboards and breathes slowly. This is Darrow, not the Ground. No one is going to take them away in their beds, not Grounders or Mountain Men or anyone. This city can apparently make people disappear at will, and that's not something she's thrilled about, but she's determined that it's not going to happen to her people.

A knock on the door startles her out of her own head and she leaves the coffee machine to head back to the font door. If it were Clarke or Bellamy they wouldn't bother knocking, obviously, but she should probably see who it is anyway.

Darrow is a scientific marvel. At least that much she can appreciate. So much of it doesn't make sense, but it only makes Raven want to learn more, to hunt and dig until she can work out its secrets. This is what she's good at, but every time she thinks she might start to understand, all the answers slip away from her again. She misses Sinclair; she knows that she'd be able to debate the logistics with him long into the night, but for now she's on her own.

Her first day here the hospital had given her crutches to use, but Raven couldn't stand the crutches she'd had on the Ground, and she doesn't feel any better about it now. Instead, she spent her first week gathering all the supplies she would need to build a new brace. Parts are a lot easier to come by here than they were on the Ground, thankfully, and she's confident that this time around the finished product is a better model than anything her or Wick had built previously. She wants to rub it in his face, but Wick isn't here, so she has to settle with the small personal triumph of knowing she did a good job.

With it buckled around her leg to support the dead weight and the mechanics of it letting her walk, she feels much better. It's never going to be perfect, and she knows she's always going to be more slow going than she used to be, but she can deal with that. It makes getting around Darrow a whole lot easier, which is a relief, because she was starting to go stir crazy in her apartment. Bellamy and Clarke had been over often enough to check on her, but she's itching to go out and see what this world is like, this world that the War hasn't affected, that isn't filled with people trying to kill her.

Her first steps out the door are tentative, curious but wary, but eventually she gets herself in stride. For the most part, people either smile or don't pay attention at all when she walks past them, which is worlds away from Mountain Men and their drills or Grounders and their spears. For most of the day she's just trying to get her bearings, learning the layout of the city and drinking in everything around her. Eventually, she comes across a garage, and Raven pauses.

She's conscious of the fact that buying everything to build the brace had left her funds a little low, but more than that, she needs something to do. If she's going to be stuck here she needs to be working, to feel useful, otherwise she'll lose her mind. They don't have Zero-G mechanics here, but maybe she can get a job as a regular mechanic. She'd be interested to work with the machinery here, older than what she's used to and different to what they had on the Ark. Determined, Raven lifts her chin and walks inside.

[ooc: raven's been in the city a couple of weeks now and she's now able to be up and around. Find her anywhere in the city that you like, or find her heading into West's Garage]