Actions

Work Header

Promises

Summary:

Raven's grown up with stories about her parent's kind of love and no actual parents. Wick's grown up with something to prove and nothing to lose. Together, they're not half-bad. (Wicken, two-shot, canon until season three.)

Notes:

Disclaimer: I don't own the 100 or anything but the plot. All details not stated in the show were fabricated by me, but sadly, I did not produce the actual series. Otherwise I wouldn't be writing this.

A while ago I started this in my documents while I went through season two. I really liked wicken because of the dynamic between the characters and the way the show decided to develop their relationship onscreen. Unfortunately, season three dropped all this awesome development and now my new favorite person in the series was nowhere to be seen. It was then that I began writing this post. (Side note, the title comes from me listening to the song Promises by Incubus, courtesy of my dad's influence. He continues to ruin me for modern music influence; all my favorite songs come from the eighties or earlier. I'm constantly playing catch-up.)

I hadn't meant to make it a full-fledged thing but I saw it again a few days ago and decided to finish it up and submit it. There's a pretty small deposit of stories centered specifically around this couple so I guess I'll be adding to it; seriously, they deserve much more attention. But, as someone who hasn't seen the later seasons (I stopped in season three because I was getting too frustrated with the plot, honestly, what happened dear god) this is only canon up to the end of the second season. Don't read it if you're not a fan of that, I guess?

Anyways, thanks for taking a chance on this and I hope you like it, anonymous reader.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: But Not For Me

Chapter Text

Raven Reyes' father had told her stories about him and her mother, when they were younger. He was a headstrong young lad absolutely infatuated with the future Mrs. Reyes, a beautiful girl with a slight soft spot for the aspiring astronaut. He'd always get a particularly vivid spark in his eyes when he described her, innocent as a lamb at sixteen, cautiously toeing around him. They'd been friends since the cradle, you see, and their families had lived down the hall from one another. Soulmates, he'd refer to them, taking his wife's hand. Meant to be.

Whenever another guy tried to take her out, her father would step in, even before they were dating. Whenever someone so much as frowned at her, or tried to pick a fight, her father would sock him in the jaw, utterly thoughtless. It got him in some trouble back then but it was worth it, he'd say confidently, to see the smiles of relief that would bloom across her lips, pulling them into an exasperated curve.

"Love, Skylark," he'd rumble affectionately, "isn't about all the fireworks and the frenzy. It's not about the sparkles and the warm pit in your stomach. It's about not hesitating, about putting someone else's needs above your own, about sticking around even when you don't have to, because there's no where else you'd rather be. Your mom and I, we don't always get along, but we always make up. Because love is knowing, despite everything, that they make you better. And I've known that since forever." Then Raven would be tucked into bed, nice and snug and incredibly loved, and her father would kiss her on the cheek while her mother smoothed down her unruly curls.

Her father was always there for her until the day a containment breach occurred and he ran out of oxygen, leaving behind a woman that didn't quite learn how to live without her husband and a daughter that didn't understand how she could survive on her own. Her mom, only half a heart, took to the bottle and traded herself and her possessions for favors. Raven took to mechanics, because machines were something she knew she could fix with enough time and patience, and they didn't smell like liquor. Only engine grease, bitter fumes, sweat and tears - the stuff of hard work and creation. Empires are built on technology, and Raven Reyes was too little and too damn stubborn to give up on life at age seven.

It was then when she met Finn, and at first it was a godsend. Finn was not like the other children of her grade, the ones that thought Raven was too much, that she felt too strongly and she talked too loudly about her dreams and her remaining hopes. Raven didn't know how to stop pouring out everything; didn't they think the same things, that the stars were too vast and far away not to be touched, that each scrap of machinery had the potential to become a new world, that the spaces between molecules were fascinating? No, Finn was not like them. Finn liked to build and to mold, like her. He was the boy who lived across the hall, who snuck her rations when her drunken mother forgot, who made her a raven out of twisting slips of silver (not a Skylark, not like her dad's stories, but close enough). If she squinted, it could almost be her parent's tragedy, a romance so long in the making it was practically a fairy tale. Anyways, Finn was good, if nothing else. His hand didn't automatically rush to hold hers and he didn't spring into action whenever other boys stared, but that was alright. He was hers, for however long he'd stick around, and when she kissed him for he first time he didn't run away. The dark haired boy had stayed, because she'd asked him to, because he'd furrowed his brow and said the words 'is this what you want' and she'd answered with 'yes, please'.

The problem was, Finn was not her father. When the lockdown happened, when she was in her spacesuit and panicking, he had done the unthinkable; Finn had frozen up for a few seconds, barely noticeable to anyone other than Raven herself. She'd known, right then, that Finn would never be the type of man she'd grew up waiting for, and she'd quietly made peace with that fact. The mechanic was practical; perhaps all the fairytales were wrong. That kind of love only exists for her parents, the type of people who dot their i's and blush across vacant rooms. That kind of love destroys those it leaves behind. This is not it, what she has in Finn, but no one can say it's not sacrificing. No one can say it's not the type that inspires jail time, or even a trip to earth.

If her best friend takes a fall, she'll make one too. Hell, she's the kind of girl that will willingly strap herself into a winged death trap and pray for deliverance in an ancient spacesuit, launching in a coffin of her own making, in order to make sure Finn's not dead. He'd do the same for her, and that's love, right? It's messy as hell, it's ugly and ill-defined, but metal ravens mean something. They're supposed to be a promise.

As it turns out, Finn is exactly the same. She's relieved to see that he's alive, he's thriving, he's got a life he can live free of rules and regulation. The only problem is, when she puts herself in danger again, all for them, he's scared solid. Finn's terror is clear, rimming his irises, a great pause coating his thoughts.

When Clarke falls, there is only a blind, reckless sort of determination. There's no thinking, no decisive action, just him saving the brilliant blonde.

So that's what it looks like, Raven cannot help but ponder. That kind of abandon. That's the kind of love they had, didn't they?

Raven puts Finn to rest. She doesn't need another ghost in her closet, nor is she going to be the sort of girl that hoards another person's soulmate.

She may be cruel, when she wants to be, but she's not the bad guy. At least, she won't be for them.

It's only when the Ark crashes to the ground that she meets Kyle Wick once again.


Wick had never been one to take anything from anyone. He much preferred earning what he needed off of his own merits, thank you very much.

Apparently that had been the way of his grandfather, a man who had once known what it was like to roam the ground before the fallout. As a boy, he'd dreamed of blue skies and open meadows, grass long and lush and spanning out as far as the eye could see. The original Kyle Wick had been an engineer, and a hell of a good one, too, otherwise he never would have made it onto the Arc. But he started from nothing, so the story goes, and he pulled his way up through university and life via sheer pigheadedness and talent and sweat equity.

Wick never wanted to be Kyle Wick the sequel, which is why he went by his last name exclusively. He was proud of his family, but like his grandfather, he was going to do everything he hoped to accomplish with no damn favors, no shortcuts, no excuses. Wick was going to work twice as hard as anybody ever did and he was going to fly twice as far; maybe even down to the ground, if he was clever enough. Ain't that the dream.

When he'd gotten assigned to the bureau of engineers, he hadn't been surprised. This was slaved over, premeditated to a fault. The man had busted his ass to get into this job, and he'd continue to work some more. He would laugh and joke, make idiotic puns at his coworkers, but he would do anything to continue keeping the Arc up and running. That was destiny.

He met Raven Reyes on an assignment, patching up a few faulty patches of wiring while she detailed the corresponding fuse box. That, too, felt a little bit like destiny.

At first, she was utterly silent, entirely consumed by the task at hand. She was kneeling rather uncomfortably between the wall and the metal tubing he had cut open and begun to reroute, stitching in new cords and snipping the others. Despite the uncomfortable position, though, her brow was furrowed with tightly-wound determination, her tongue slightly escaping the corner of her mouth. She must be the youngest mechanic in over five decades, he thought as he'd watched her work. No fuckin' wonder.

"Staring at my ass?" she drew out in a deadpan, not looking up from the fuses as she ran her hands across the grooves. "Because I'm not sleeping with you. I've got a boyfriend." Wick had let out a choked laugh, taken by complete surprise. Of course, he had eyes, but he had to admit that even to his deluded brain, viscous banging against the wall hadn't been part of the itinerary for the day. (Perhaps if she were unattached, he could have been persuaded to pencil it in, though. Alas, he wasn't a total douche and thus wouldn't be sanctifying this specific corner of the mechanical.)

"Though I'm sure that would be a lot more fun than this, not at all, actually. That a common problem?" He responded with instantly, shaking his head as if in confirmation of the words.

The brunette blew a strand of hair out of her face, squinting at a dent in the metal. She didn't double-take at all, merely raising an eyebrow as if surprised he hadn't known. "Oh, you'd be surprised. Pervs, all of them." (She clearly thought he was a naive idiot. She might not be wrong.)

"One of the disadvantages of being young and beautiful?"

She snorted, then, not the least bit amused. "Hand me a wrench, won't you?"

"Your wish is my command, Grease Monkey."

"You think you're very clever," she'd said, rolling her eyes and shoving him lightly. "It's adorable, really."

"Almost as cute as me dropping a pipe-bomb into your bedroom tonight," he answered with faux-cheer.

"Too much collateral damage. You'd get caught up in the explosion." She didn't skip a damn beat.

"Have a little faith," he gasped dramatically, hand over heart. The girl held out her hand, brushing him off.

"Still need that wrench." Wordlessly, he handed it to her, letting their fingers brush far longer than strictly necessary. The woman didn't concede an inch, and that more than anything put him off. Wick wasn't a womanizer, but he knew how to win over the occasional girl when he wanted to. It was easy - a smug comment there, a veiled compliment, and the caveat, a warm puppy-ish smile, were usually enough to make any females in the vicinity swoon. However, the mechanic was both un-single and almost insultingly immune to his charms, a combination that simply didn't occur in nature. Whatever she was made of, it was tougher stuff than what he had experienced.

Suddenly he wanted to slice her open, just like the piping, and see why that was. He had only felt an intense burn for something once, that need for something so fiercely that it boiled your blood, and it was when he looked out over the deck of the Ark and saw the wide expanse of open space, ripe for the taking.

"The world is yours, son," his father had told him, and he'd done everything in his power up until now to explore the whole of it, to learn what made engines tick and why molecules behaved the ways they did and what stars were made of. He'd surrender a year of his life for a second to touch real dirt, a living machine called 'earth' beneath his feet, for a second.

And god, he wished he knew this girl the way he knew his sciences.

"I'm Kyle Wick," he told her in that moment, and she actually turned away from her cramped corner to smile tiredly back.

"Raven Reyes," she replied with, and he should have known just by looking at her - it fits like nothing else would. It's a bit unnerving, how much she interests him already. "Awful to meet you, Wick."

('Wick'. Not 'Kyle Wick the Second', but Wick.

She got him in one.)

"Hate you too, boo."

"Damn engineers," she muttered beneath her breath, not upset in the slightest.

"Damn mechanics," he repeated in a singsong voice, returning to his job. It was the start of a disjointed but easy camaraderie that they both fell into instantly.


"Hey Reyes, bet I could twist off these bolts quicker than you."

"I could do that in five seconds blindfolded, Wick, that's not exactly a challenge."

"It's not a challenge, it's a bet."

"Find a new bet then, I'm already done," she huffed, unscrewing the last screw. Damn, she was fast, and a lot stronger than she looked.

"Fine, then, I bet you I'm better at having fun than you."

She grunted, rolling her eyes. "It's not a bet unless there's stakes, genius. Now you're just being stupid."

"You're a real stick in the mud, huh?"

"And you," she responded, batting her eyelashes falsely, "are nothing but charming. What a pity that I'm taken."

"Why thank you, 'milady." The engineer smirked, wiping fresh engine grease off his palms. "I dare you to fall madly in love with me, Rae, that's the deal."

"That's not how this works, Kyle, that's not a bet either."

"I bet you it is." He clinked his tongue out at her. "Admit it, you're just infatuated. Can't say I blame you, with this physique."

"Get back to the bypass mainframe, tough guy," the mechanic snorted, shoving his face and leaving a sooty hand print behind.

He walked around like that all day. Though she hated to admit it, he managed to make her smile. That didn't happen for just anyone, unfortunately.


Sometimes, Kyle Wick adopts people. He just clicks with them, finds a like mind, and he stubbornly decides to never let them go.

Raven Reyes becomes one of his favored few when she, on their third joint project, spritzes the ex-head engineer in the face with blackened grease and Wick laughs so hard he can see stars. She doesn't apologize to the stunned man, nor does she feel bad when he so clearly invaded her breathing room and hadn't been watching where he was going.

"That," Wick wheezed out in between strained laughs, "was fantastic, Raven."

She throws a stray bolt at his shoulder. "Get up or it's you next, Wick."

The mechanic would never admit it - he knows her much better than she thinks - but he's her friend, and she's probably not even mad about it. She thinks he's the brightest idiot she knows. He thinks she's nothing less than absolutely astonishing.


"Kiss, marry, kill: Jaha, Kane, and Abby."

Raven pretended to consider that statement for longer than five seconds.

"Kiss Abby, marry Kane, kill Jaha," she answered, blowing a strand of hair out of her eyes.

He grimaced with much regret. "Of those three options, you pick Kane? Why?"

"Jaha's too old for me and I'm not into girls, so I doubt a marriage of convenience to our esteemed councilor Abby is going to work out. I guess I'd feel bad if she died, though, she's got a daughter our age. Really, there's only one way to go about it." She smirked. "Your turn. Me, my boyfriend, and head of engineering. Who gets knocked off first?"

"The boyfriend, obviously," he replied. "Can't murder my boss, but really it's a pride thing. I can't have my wife date another guy on the side, huh, princess?"

"First and last time you get to call me princess, sweetie."

"Babe, you can call me sweetie all you want," the man grinned, and when she smothered another smile behind a frown and a well-placed jab from a screwdriver, he took it in stride.


Raven hadn't been good at trusting people, but Wick was the kind of person you trusted easily, without warning or consent.

Maybe it had been his cheesy non-serious pickup lines or the way he fought with her endlessly (because he had, quite frequently and without a pinch of malice, though some sparking anger began to flash in his eyes whenever she'd mercilessly tear apart his invention concepts), but she found an unlikely ally in the blonde engineer. When they're assigned together, they trade stories and jokes and sips of coffee, smuggled in and paid for with traded ration cards.

She wouldn't say they were friends, exactly, because she didn't know how to make those, let alone keep them. Wick, though, was fascinated with her past, with her as a person, and every single time he learned more he acted as if some sort of secret had just been unearthed. At the time, she had had Finn, and he was supposed to be enough. Her and him, crusaders from the hall, two idiots against the world. Girls like her were lucky to sink their teeth into even that much.

However, if she were ever forced to name it out loud, she would reluctantly say that she enjoyed the company.

(So yes, they were friends despite the squabbling and squirming.

So what the hell did that have to do with anything?)


"Blue or red, Rae, you got six seconds left."

"I'm not picking, Wick, that's stupid."

"C'mon, I told you I'd chuck red out of the pantheon! Four seconds."

She grimaced with faux disdain. It's no good anymore - he can see right through it in a heartbeat. "Is this really necessary?"

"Blue or red, Reyes, quit stalling."

"Blue, alright? I'd rather never see the color blue again than never see red." He whale-moaned behind her; her taste was horrific and he regretted associating with her.

"Blue is supposed to be the color of the sky, Raven, the water by the sea. If I ever go to earth, I want to see miles and miles of blue, stretched out behind real grass and real trees, real sand beneath my feet." He shook his head, jolted from a rather pleasant fantasy he tried not to entertain himself with fully. "How dare you pick red, Raven, you utter hack."

"I just . . ." the brunette started, but when she realized what she was going to tell him, she paused. That was too much, even for whatever Wick happened to be. "I prefer red. Fires, brick walls, whatever. Pick a reason." Sensing he'd hit a nerve, he instead came over and gently ruffled her hair.

"Hey, red's pretty neat, too." He scrounges up a blueprint out of nowhere, brandishing it like a coveted prize. He poured his heart and soul into this latest schematic and it would truly be an honor to get it debunked by this clever girl with too much on her mind. "Want to nitpick, brainiac?"

Slowly, Raven grinned at him, ripping the paper from his hands. "It's a theoretical nightmare, Wick. Is it even made to operate outside zero g? Because a shuttle of this size and style would have to be propelled by . . ." When she smiles, something loosens in his chest. Good goes around, he supposes. But then, maybe it's just nice to focus on fixing up a mortal engine as opposed to a machine. She's a fine-tuned piece of machinery, that's for sure, and he'd give anything to learn how to make her tick.

(What she doesn't tell him until she accidentally stumbles into the engineer's block half-asleep is that her mother's eyes were blue. "Cornflower blue," she'd mused, dead to the world, "except for the drinks. When she drunk, it was . . . it was grey, greeeeeeey . . ." She trailed off, exhausted and clearly out of her conscious mind. He would call her behavior drunken, only Raven didn't drink a lot - probably because of her mother.

"C'mon, space ranger," he prodded gently, carefully picking her up and escorting her down the Ark. In the quiet hours of the night few remained awake, which was fortunate - fewer questions, fewer lies he'd have to make up. It was about as peaceful as life could get inside the metal monstrosity: a dark haired girl with warm breath musing across his chest, her thin, nimble fingers tucked against her breastbone. In any other scenario, he may have smiled.

When he finally got to her unit, Finn was waiting across the hall, pacing back and forth with worry. Wick had never really talked to Raven's beau, mostly because there was no reason to, but he came across as . . . alright. Adjusted, the right person at the right time. Nice enough, attentive enough, and if he treated Raven okay then there was no room for Wick to say anything.

Not that he had a right to say anything. Not that he wanted to.

"Thanks, I was beginning to think something might have happened," the other boy breathed, relief easing away some of his wrinkles. The dark haired welder cared about Rae, and that was all she needed at the moment. Someone to look out for her.

Though she might be sprawled out in his arms, Wick was not her someone.

"No problem," he managed, trying to display some semblance of sincerity. "Anything for our resident queen mechanic."

"Cornflowers," the young mechanic muttered, cheek tucked into the side of his shirt as he handed her off. "Lots and lots of blue . . ." Wick was hesitant to leave but her boyfriend seemed to have a handle on things. He knew where Raven kept her painkillers, what drawers her pajamas belonged in, how to put her into bed. Wick did not.

"Let's get you out of those boots, Raven," Finn soothingly told her, coaxing her back to moderate lucidity, and the engineer walked back to his quarters alone.)


Raven was always used to being alone. To someone else, that might sound melodramatic, but it wasn't so much depressing as it was an uncompromising fact of life. She wasn't good at making friends, nor was she good at keeping them. Finn stayed because she asked him to, because she laid out her intentions in no uncertain terms and told him that if he wanted to hang out with her he better decide if he was in or out.

Her comrades at the mechanical headquarters are not like that and neither are the polite acquaintances from whom she picks up supplies. Friends come and go, save Finn, and when someone looks into Raven's eyes and tells her, 'I'm here to stay', she nods and smiles and thinks to herself liar. However, if there's one thing she can say about Kyle Wick it's that he's not afraid to be brutally honest. He says, "Not bad, Raven," and the brunette can believe him. She doesn't know if he really cares about her, not the way her father's stories always led her to believe people should behave, but he's a someone who cheers her up whenever Finn isn't around. He notices when she cuts her hair and he delights in her squeals whenever he manages to get the jump on her (which isn't often, admittedly, so perhaps some pride is deserved). He's the sort of person that could make a girl get used to being less alone, and that's dangerous. Up in the Ark, death lingers around every corner and she can't focus on Finn+Raven and work and living while trying to puzzle out someone else, too.

Still, he understands her, and that's more than she could hope to ask for from a boy like him with a smirk like that. Wick is a good person, despite being . . . well, despite being Wick. She doesn't know how serious he is or what he hopes to get from her, but willingly or not she's along for the ride. She'll bite; they are, impossibly, friends.

Ish.


She walked into the room and it's - he can't help but notice her in a way that has nothing to do with being seen. She never does anything, never lets him have an inch of leeway, but his eyes go to her all the same. Sure, he checks her out, but he keeps his hands to himself because it's really not like that at all. He sees unexpected strength, spirit, humor, and a dash of brilliance, and when she teases him - no one really gets a jab in like Raven Reyes. So whenever she's rerouted over to engineering for the day, he makes note of it in his schedule and remembers to take the late shift.

"Haven't seen you in a while, Grease Monkey," he told her casually, trying not to let her know just how fond he'd grown of these joint assignments. (God, he lived for them, but he'd never let her know that, of course - she had a boyfriend, after all.)

"I guess not, huh?" she sighed, eyes glossy. There was no sniffling, no idle hands or sloping backs, just the lack of an insult, and that alone was enough to tell him something was wrong. He scrutinized her face, eyes narrowing at the points, and he saw the first crack in the facade: a smudge of eyeliner on the side of her temple, almost invisible, brushed away hastily by the pad of her thumb.

"Are you okay, Rae?" he asked, attempting to remain pragmatic and at least pretend he still gave a flying frick about the maintenance tunnel repairs they were slated to do.

"I just . . . it was a day, Wick, and I just cried a bit, it's fine. I'm still able to work today so don't worry about carrying my ass." At that moment, the engineer had to sit down. Somehow, his companion had cried earlier today and some utter screw up penciled her in for an assignment. Raven could cry, period, and forget to wipe away the evidence.

That wasn't Raven - Raven was hard as nails, fierce with words and with wrenches and with wires. Raven Reyes did not cry, and Wick was not afraid to bash some heads in to keep it that way.

He set down his tools and inched over to her much like one approaches a wounded animal - not that anyone on the Ark knew what that was like, of course, but they'd all seen documentaries. There is fear there, the possibility of a final kill, but succeed he must. No one should ever leave a hurting Reyes to her own devices.

"Raven Reyes," he spoke firmly, gripping her shoulders and practically breaking her neck back into position (she was doing her damnedest not to meet his eyes), "you are a horrible liar." At first she bit her lip, clenching and unclenching her hand, but then she smiled wobbly, skin stretched far too thin.

"Finn's in the box," she replied, and when her eyes water over this time he is present and ready for it. They sink to the floor, his arms pulled tight around her, and though she doesn't completely go to pieces he still feels the dry heaves of her lungs, knows that a few splotches of mascara are going to remain on his shirt until next laundry day. She does get up, eventually, and stiffly stretches out her limbs - the floor was cold and uncomfortable, inhospitable in most capacities. He followed after and warmed her up a package of hot chocolate, the old powdery kind he'd been saving for his birthday. She doesn't, in fact, get much work done, despite her many protests, but he convinced her to lie back and take careful sips while he pounded nails into the barren walls. He wouldn't say she was all better, nor was she necessarily broken to begin with, but by the end of the afternoon Raven was far more stable, more grounded and with a renewed sharpness in her gaze.

"Wick, I -"

"My pleasure, Raven," he shrugged her off, handing her one of his flannels. "You'll need this. The heating systems are getting repaired tomorrow and it's going to be freezing tonight. Promise you won't get into too much trouble without my thorough supervision?"

With a lopsided, almost real grin, she slid into the sleeves. Normally she'd protest to this blatant favoritism, but normally they pretended to be at eachother's throats. Somedays you needed a tangible reminder that someone was on your side, that you weren't all alone in an unfeeling universe. He could be hers, if she wanted him to be.

"No promises, you complete tool," she called back, and he didn't see her on his shift schedule for another three weeks, after which the mechanic seemed infinitely better. He never got back his plaid flannel, though, and he never pressed for it either.

(There are few people in life Kyle Wick will not hesitate to protect and even fewer he will sacrifice for thoughtlessly, without even knowing what he's doing. Up until that point he'd never given up a rationed bag of cocoa mix he'd been squirreling for five months or a flannel his dad gave him when he was nine and the cuffs pooled over his wrists, but for one Raven Reyes with a beaten-down smirk and tired eyes, he hadn't blinked.

That was the first time he seriously considered the fact that he might be in trouble.)


The first few months without Finn are torture, absolutely devastating to Raven. She gets a handle on it after a week or two has gone by, is able to shove it down into a drawer with all her other regrettable memories, but there are still moments when the creeping guilt escapes its careful box and screeches 'your fault your fault your fault all your fault'. She visits, because she should, because Finn at least deserves that, but she knows that he would not be held if he hadn't tried to surprise her. It is all the more crushing when she leaves his holding cell and lets out a gasp of relief, ever so grateful to be free despite not being worthy of the luxury.

Raven Reyes suffers because here is another example of someone she loves, hurting, without reprieve. And though it's not entirely her blame to carry, she was not enough to save him.

It's times like these when she needs levity, work, and an excuse to scream. She's very fortunate, then, that she's more frequently assigned to one Kyle Wick; with him, she often partakes in all three.


Wick normally doesn't get involved with girls on a more serious note. It's not that he sleeps around a lot, either - he's not exactly a womanizer, though he's had a few casual flings to his name. But the thing is, he never saw the point in falling in love, going through all the old-fashioned courting rituals of an era long past, and then getting married and having Kyle Wick the Third and dying at age fifty. In the Ark, people die daily. You look around their suffocating spaceship and you see low oxygen radars and crumbling machinery and dwindling rations. Wick cannot afford to fall for some nice girl and live out a half-baked dream when it's hard enough just to take care of himself, to ensure the survival of the ship. He cannot bring a baby into this world and ask it to be grateful. He's not that selfish.

It's too hard is really what it boils down to. How is marriage going to fix anything, and how is he going to be able to keep going on when his hypothetical beau leaves or dies or fails to keep up with him and his expectations? He doesn't need another hole to patch up; it's just not fair. Wick has endured enough pain to last a lifetime, thank you very much. He will not mess this up because there won't be any relationship to mess up.

And then Raven Reyes showed up and now she's getting better, getting stronger again. He thinks a big part of her emotional recovery is snorting at his cheesy jokes, leaning on his side when she's exhausted, complaining about his latest inventions. Regardless of whether or not she knows it, the unsinkable Raven Reyes needs him.

Whenever she awards his efforts with a smile, no matter how small, something flips in his stomach. Something needy, pulsing, that wants to be let out. His hands go sweaty and his ears grow hot and suddenly he's smiling back without any conscious thought.

Oh no, he thinks to himself as he looks deep into his bathroom mirror, I need her, too.

(It was one thing to acknowledge that she was pretty, talented, witty, and strong. It was another thing to start to like his attractive mechanic friend in a way that was slightly more than platonic. Need is a whole other ballpark, one he was quite certain he never wanted to enter. It's too easy to strike out on an open field, and he just can't take those sorts of risks. Raven never got the memo; she's lording over the pitch, waiting to pull a fast one on him.

She's really something, isn't she?)


When she launches off into space, she tries her best to concentrate on Finn, on the ground, on Abby's message. Instead, in her fiery vessel, she finds herself thinking about all the people she's left behind. It was her father's home, her mother's (not the drunken slag she became but the proud woman she used to be, the one with a mighty laugh and happy blue eyes, the one who loved stories and magic), and Finn's parents'. There was all her acquaintances in the mechanics' chambers and all the neighbors with small children who played in the hall when the evening came. She remembers being seven and alone and being seventeen and a natural mechanic, the youngest in decades. She recalls touching the stars in a fit of adrenaline and then doing it a thousand times over through legal channels, how the guilt would slip off her shoulders for a few seconds whenever she zipped up a spacesuit.

At the end of all that Raven thinks about all the plans over the next week that she was supposed to complete, all the repairs she will not be there to do. With a crooked smirk she thinks about Kyle Wick, rewiring the central control system all on his own. He's going to whine all night, she muses, about how I stood him up. The ridiculous thought is almost enough to make her wish she could turn back. In that moment, surrounded by molten metal and the infinite black of the cosmos, she realizes with a start that the person she will miss the most is probably an infuriating engineer.

(His father's flannel is still tucked into her bag. Though she didn't think to grab it, she stowed it away without even second-guessing it, instinctual as a sigh.

It feels good when she's on the ground. Nights are cold and Raven is in dire need of a warm embrace; somehow, Wick has saved her ass again.)


"Where is Raven Reyes?" he asked the scheduling manager. Wick, though trying to hide it, is mentally besides himself. Raven is not the type to miss an assignment, even if she's dying. "She was supposed to be blocked in with me for core system repair and reprogramming this morning. She's usually very punctual."

She's usually very punctual. God, he's a real tool when he's angry. Or jealous. Or bitter.

Or just scared out of his mind, as the case may be.

"Reyes, Raven," the distracted woman echoed, numbly clicking her fingers across her tablet. With a frown and a crease of her brow, she showed him the results. "It says her contract was reneged for the day. She's either been called back in by the council or the mechanical head for reassignment or she's out of commission. Either way, she's not showing up to work. You're on your own today, kid." She looked him up and down with mild sympathy, pursing her lips. "Do you want to file a complaint or coordinate with the mechanics for a new partner? I can have someone pulled in for an hour or two."

"Reneged," he swallowed. Wick took a step back.

(Breathe, he has to remind himself. In, out, in, out, all the air rushes through like clockwork. A brilliant machine, the human body.

If only his chest wasn't so tight and heavy all the sudden, so full of horrible and consuming worry.)

"I don't need another partner, thanks," he told her, trying to regain careful control of his lungs. Instead of working, Kyle Wick took his first off day in months, probably to the great disdain of some other reassigned engineer. He toured all the common areas, her quarters inside and out of the mechanic's wing, her workshop, her astronaut prep zone, and the less than legal back alleys of the ship. Raven Reyes had vanished without a trace, and it hollowed out a very specific, very vital section of his heart. Somehow, no Raven meant no more illicit smiles, no more not-so-fake-flirting now reserved only for her, no more shredded blueprints. And the absence of all those things meant, quite simply, no more Kyle Wick.

(When he does eventually find out where she has been sent, he still dreams of earth. He's always wanted to touch the dirt, to roll down a hill and climb up a tree and see if snow is as cold and pillowy as the stories say. He wanted to see if the starry sky was as never-ending and gleaming as he'd been told it was and if skinny dipping in moonlight really did turn water and shadows into a second skin. He wanted so much, so much that his senses would be full of it, so much that every glance was a new adventure, a symphony of sound and sights and splendor.

After knowing she's on the ground, he also dreams of campfires with two sticks roasting over the flames, climbing willowy trees with familiar laughter coming from down below, brushing a thumb across her cheek. She's taken, but that doesn't matter too much to his brain, which insists upon these impossible things with a yearning rivaling just about anything he's wanted before.

He thinks, just once, about tangling his fingers in a cinnamon colored hand, passing her a coffee with the other. She'd be sitting at her desk, exhausted and wrapped up in one of his old jackets, and he'd come up behind her and produce the caffeine and rub her shoulder and just grab it, because her fingers were there, because he wanted to. Because she'd smile through all the exhaustion and her pinkie would glide over his and it would just be as simple as Raven and Wick, just taking her hand.

Following thoughts like that, landing on earth becomes less of a distant fantasy and more of a goal, solid and unyielding. If Reyes is down there, he'll just have to chase her. Kyle Wick is many things, but a quitter is not one of them, and he won't quit on her.)