Common Ground ⇥ Bellamy Blake

[ seventeen ]

[edited 7 February 2017]

•••

Raine had always been naïve – her overly optimistic point of view on things always clouded her vision. As a child, she would stand in front the largest window on the Ark and watch the Earth spin before her wide eyes. Her hands would be pressed against the glass, the tip of her nose flattened as she longed to travel beyond the piece of glass separating her between life and death.

Raine's mother would watch her, her lips turned downward and her arms crossed tightly against her chest. She had seen the same look of awe before – in Raine's father, before he killed himself that was. The deluded man had climbed into a space pod, intent on reaching Earth, and released himself into the atmosphere. She was forced to watch as the man she loved plummeted away from her, towards the very planet that used to be their home. She could only guess he died on impact.

Raine was too young to fully remember her father. She could only remember the blurry outline of his tired face and the calloused hands as they picked her up and spun her around. Although she may have looked like her mother, she was every bit her father's daughter. She had the same wanderlust for Earth; the same naivety that would one day get her killed.

Raine wasn't dead yet, but she sure as hell felt like it. Her naivety to believe that Bellamy Blake, of all people, had the capacity to love beyond himself was what would eventually kill her. When she had hallucinated Bellamy, floating out beyond the Ark lifelessly, she had refused to believe it – to believe that he had died and left her alone. Now, she longed to be able to experience that; the peaceful numbness that came after so much pain and misery.

Hadn't she suffered enough already? Didn't she at least deserve some form of numbness, or even better, some form of happiness? At first, she had believed that that happiness was with Bellamy Blake. He had made her angry at first, then undeniably happy. He had slowly worked away the rough edges to reveal the beautifully sculpted masterpiece that was Raine Thompson.

He had built her up, just to tear her down.

The scene in front of her eyes had already been seared into her mind by the time she had somehow managed to stumble from the tent, Bellamy's cries bouncing off her ears. Bellamy and Raven in a passionate embrace of tangled limbs and locked lips, Raven's bare skin for the whole word to see. Bellamy's horrified face as he recoiled from Raven, his eyes landing on Raine's devastated features.

Raine's former words were now just a fragment of her imagination, a sliver of what could have been in a perfect world. 'I love you' had never sounded so stupid to Raine, and this was the girl that had wanted nothing more than to experience Earth. Now, she wished she had been floated, because it would've saved her all this pain.

Raine's first instinct was to spew out a rude comment, but she couldn't. Her head was screaming yes but she couldn't seem to control her mouth. So, she turned tail and ran. She ripped the tent flap aside and stumbled out into the chilly air, her entire body shaking, as she wanted nothing more than to just disappear.

"Raine, wait!"

His voice – once considered a lifeline; a warm embrace – was now like a kick in the gut. It picked her up just to be the one to knock her down again. Raine's foot caught on something and she went tumbling towards the ground. Her injured wrist was jarred painfully as she landed and she let out an anguished cry.