Raven sat with her back against the dropship’s hull and rebuilt the radio housing for the third time that morning because her hands needed something they could fix.
Finn was across the clearing with Clarke.
Again.
Talking in that quiet way that didn’t need her, didn’t want her tools or her fix-it-faster mouth or the year she’d spent building a death trap out of scrap so she could fall to Earth and find him still breathing.
The solder smoked.
She bent the lead and seated it true.
Around her the camp was reorganizing supply runs forming up, perimeter assignments shifting the whole messy human clockwork ticking around one still center.
Jonah stood near the fire with Bellamy, said six words, pointed twice, and a hauling crew that had been arguing for ten minutes stopped arguing and moved.
Nobody’d voted for him.
Nobody’d asked.
He just counted quieter than anyone else and people bent like he had the only map.
Raven didn’t believe in luck that clean.
She set the radio down and crossed the clearing before the part of her brain that knew better could stop her.
Jonah saw her coming.
He always did.
Slant of his shoulders, weight on his back foot the geometry of someone who tracked motion the way she tracked voltage drop.
“Raven.”
“You called the attack six moves out,” she said.
No preamble.
She was tired of preamble.
“Knew where they’d hit, how many, when Clarke should cut and when she should hold.
Either you’re the best tactical guesser I’ve ever met or you’re reading something nobody else can see.”
His face didn’t move.
“I read the situation.”
“Bullshit.” She stepped closer.
Not angry.
Testing.
“I’ve seen good situational awareness.
I’ve had good situational awareness.
You don’t guess lucky on a lit fuse in the dark and you don’t call a diagonal strike on a camp you’ve known for two weeks like you built the map yourself.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to not lie to me.” The words came out harder than she meant.
Finn’s laugh carried across the clearing, and something under Raven’s ribs twisted like a stripped bolt.
“Everyone else gets to lie.
Finn gets to lie about what we are, Clarke gets to lie about what they are, Bellamy gets to lie about giving a damn past his sister.
You don’t get to.”
Jonah watched her.
His eyes were tired and older than eighteen and he didn’t flinch.
“I’m good at math,” he said finally.
“Positions, timing, who’s where and what they’ll cost to hold.
I see the board and I count faster than most people.
“That’s not all it is.”
“It’s all I’m going to tell you.”
Raven bit back the next question.
She should walk away.
This was the part where she walked away and went back to her tools and let the universe keep its stupid secrets because she had enough of her own.
She sat down instead.
Jonah blinked.
Sat across from her, slow, like she was a contact he didn’t want to spook.
“Finn doesn’t know what he wants,” Raven said to the space between them.
To the fire.
To nobody.
“Clarke doesn’t know what she’s allowed to want.
And I’m the idiot who fell out of the sky thinking want was ever the thing that mattered.”
“Raven”
“I’m not asking you to fix it.” She looked at him.
“I’m asking you to not lie about the odds when I ask.
That’s it.
Everyone else in this camp wants to be told it’ll be fine and we’ll all make it and love is enough and the Grounders will stop coming if we just hold hands and sing.
I don’t want that.
I want the truth even when it’s bad.
Especially when it’s bad.”
Jonah’s throat moved.
“Why?”
“Because I can’t fix something if I don’t know it’s broken.
And I’m so tired of everyone pretending the things that are broken are just fine.”
The camp moved around them.
A hauling crew returned with wood.
Cricket sold someone a Grounder knife at criminal rates and grinned doing it.
Bellamy called orders that sounded like questions and people followed them anyway.
Jonah held her gaze.
“The Grounders aren’t going to stop,” he said.
Quiet.
“Anya pulled back because she’s studying us now.
She’ll come again and she’ll come smarter.
The Ark’s descending but we don’t know when or if they’ll make it.
We’ve got maybe forty people who can hold a line and six who shouldn’t be walking yet.
The math doesn’t close easy.”
Raven’s chest hurt.
It was the best thing anyone had said to her in days.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay?”
“I can work with that.
I can’t work with ‘it’ll be fine’ when it won’t.”
Looked like it cost him.
“You want the truth every time?”
“Every time.”
“Even the ugly ones.”
“Especially the ugly ones,” Raven said.
“That’s the whole point.”
He dipped his chin.
Something settled behind his eyes that looked like a promise and a weight all at once.
Cricket wandered over with a canteen and a smirk.
“Elevated heart-to-heart rates apply,” he said.
“Emotional labor, premium listening, finders’ fee on any advice dispensed”
Raven threw a hex nut at him.
He dodged, laughing, and wandered off to haggle someone else.
The fire cracked.
Finn’s voice carried, and Raven didn’t turn to look.
“You’re not going to ask what I want?” she said.
Jonah shook his head.
“You’ll tell me when it’s weight-bearing.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you already did.”
She looked at him the quiet one who’d counted the room, who’d told her the ugly truth when she asked for it, who didn’t flinch and didn’t lie and didn’t try to sell her hope she couldn’t spend.
It wasn’t the mystery that pulled her.
It was the fact that he’d looked at the bad math and told her the number anyway, no cushion, no spin.
Just the count.
That was more dangerous than anything he wasn’t saying.
Raven stood.
Jonah stood with her.
“I’m going back to the radio,” she said.
“You’re going to keep doing your eerie room-counting thing and not telling me how.”
“Yeah.”
“And when I ask you if we’re going to make it”
“I’ll tell you what the field looks like.
No better, no worse.”
Raven nodded.
It felt like a deal the first solid ground she’d stood on since the pod landed and Finn looked at Clarke the way he used to look at her.
She walked back to the dropship.
Her hands were steadier.
The radio waited, half-built, patient.
Behind her Jonah returned to the clearing’s center and the camp bent around him again, a system finding its bone.
She didn’t know what he was.
But she knew he wouldn’t lie to her about the weight when it came, and in a camp built on rations and maybes and blood, that was enough to build on.
For now.