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Demelza deeply dislikes being pregnant.

With just under two months left, if the doctor's predictions are accurate, she feels as if she's gotten as large as she possibly can, and she knows all at once that isn't the case at all. There will be more weight added to her frame in the coming weeks, she'll grow rounder still, more uncomfortable, and until their child is born, there isn't the slightest thing she can do about it.

But she dislikes it all the same. She dislikes it even more when those around her are rude regarding her state, though at least in such a case she can turn her anger outward.

Shopping in the grocery stores has become unbearable for her with the lack of space and the cool, strange smelling air pumping from the metal holes in the ceiling, so she's taken to enjoying what are called farmer's markets. They remind her a little of shopping at home and the open space gives her more freedom to move her cumbersome frame around without worrying she may be getting in someone's way, though apparently she's still too wide for the likes of some.

"Jesus, could you waddle a little faster," someone mutters from behind her and Demelza turns with a frown, catching sight of a man not much taller than she is. Even after all these years, in situations such as these, it's her instinct to size the other person up and see whether she might best them in a physical confrontation. In this case she's quite confident she can.

"I'm that sorry," she answers in a voice that makes it clear she's anything but. "I'm with child, you see, and-"

"Like I care if you made the dumb mistake of getting knocked up," the guy snaps in response. "Get out of my way before I knock you down."

That, as far as Demelza is concerned, is a threat toward her baby, and she feels a cold curtain of rage descend over her. Planting her feet in the dirt, she shifts her basket from her right hand to her left, freeing her dominant hand to curl into a tight fist at her side.

"Just you try it," she says, her voice low with anger. Demelza is willing to fight right in this farmer's market, seven months pregnant or not. "I'm certain you'll regret it."

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Raven likes the fresh air of the markets, likes the feeling of the sun on her face. Grocery stores are still kind of a novelty, but she likes this even better. Raven likes anything to do with the outdoors, likes anything that's not being cooped up on a space station. The smells of different foods makes it even better, and her stomach is already growling as she makes her way slowly through.

She's about to pause for a piece of fruit that looks like it might have come from Eden itself when she hears a man's voice, and then Demelza's. Demelza is hard to miss, both with her accent and her clothing, not to mention the state of her pregnancy, and Raven finds her easily enough. It only takes her a moment to march towards them, brace be damned, and when she gets there she pulls roughly on the man's shoulder from behind, dragging him to face her.

"Hey, watch it," she says, her tone clipped. "You don't have to be an asshole."

Ross will be so angry with her. He's asked her so many times not to get into fights, to avoid them if at all possible, but she can't avoid this. To back down would be an insult to herself, to their child, and now, with Raven here to help, it would be an insult to her new friend, too. For someone to offer her support in a time like this means Demelza can only offer it back.

To do otherwise would be out of her character and she can't allow herself to be anything but exactly who she is.

"Jesus, what the hell is wrong with you?" the guy asks, but Demelza can hear a bit of a waver in his voice. He hadn't expected this at all when he had decided to be rude to her. He hadn't expected to have to face down two women.

"Nothing is wrong with her," Demelza answers. "She simply doesn't like when men are rude for no reason. Nor do I."

Raven doesn't punch him in the face straight away, but it's a near thing. She figures she should know what's happening first. Her temper has gotten her into enough trouble in the past and Demelza looks like she can hold her own, if the determined look on her face is anything to go by.

"What's wrong with you?" Raven retorts, lifting her chin. She knows she looked tougher before the brace, but she also doesn't care. He can take it for a weakness if he likes, he'll be sorely mistaken when she punches him in the jaw.

"Everything alright?" she asks Demelza, pointedly ignoring the man between them. She has no doubts that he'd try to say everything is fine, so her concentration is on her friend. If she says she has this in hand, Raven will leave her to it, though she'll be sure to keep an eye on things. But she's not about to go anywhere until she's satisfied that this man will leave Demelza alone, one way or another.

"Yes, I'm fine, thank 'ee," Demelza says, stepping around the man to join Raven. "Shall we leave?"

"Yeah, get out of here," the man snaps. "No room for bitches like you around here."

In the time Demelza comes from, bitch isn't quite the insult. Having spent a good amount of time in Darrow, however, she's come to understand it's now used in place of words of her time, cutting, hurtful words like slut and troll, both of which she's been called more times than she would like. So when the man uses that word, uses it on someone Demelza has come to consider a friend, someone who is only helping her, she can't hold herself back any longer.

Spinning on her heel, very nearly overbalancing in her expanded state, she swings blindly, hitting his chin out of sheer luck. It's not a good punch, not her best, but he's not expecting it and he stumbles back, looking at her in shock.

"You do not get to speak to my friend like that," Demelza hisses. Her knuckles throb already, but she knows it's worth it. She can feel Raven behind her and to her side and that gives her more courage than she could hope for otherwise.

For a moment Raven almost thinks they'll leave without a fight. Really, they're in the middle of a farmer's market and Demelza is heavily pregnant and Raven's leg is still in a brace, no matter how many times she wishes otherwise. The last thing they should be doing is getting into a fight, but the man snaps out bitch and Raven narrows her eyes.

She's been on edge ever since she got here, and maybe that's what does it. She'd been on the brink of getting drilled open when she turned up here, confused and miles away from home in a time that she doesn't recognise or fully understand. She's lost most of her friends and Abby and Finn and people look at her on the street like she needs their pity. Then the whole secret thing had happened and Raven had to walk around for a week with that kind of truth on her back, watched Clarke and Bellamy do the same, and she'd had no one to hit for it.

Raven's needed an outlet for her frustration since she turned up on the bartop at Semele's, so the only reason she doesn't hit the man is that Demelza does it first.

She grins before she can help herself, and then she moves to lean over the man as he hits the ground. It's a good punch, far better than she had expected of a sweet girl like Demelza, but Raven knows better than anyone than looks can be deceiving. "She doesn't like assholes," Raven explains sweetly. "I wouldn't say anything else, if I were you."

For just a moment she's embarrassed, worried Raven might judge her for not being nearly the lady she's been expected to be in the past. Ross has reprimanded her for behaviour such as this, he'd been so terribly angry when she had jumped upon Jud's back that day, but he'd been stealing from them and she had worked so hard on the pie he'd taken that she had just been so terribly angry. The same thing has happened here again and she waits for the reprimand, surprised and delighted both when Raven smiles.

She thinks even Ross wouldn't judge her now, understanding Darrow as well as she does, but there are times when she's still afraid she's not as good as people expect her to be. That Raven seems pleased by what she's done makes her happy.

On the ground, the man grumbles and brushes off his pants, his hands shaking in irritation, but he doesn't say anything else. Not yet, at least. He seems too embarrassed.

"Oh, we should go," Demelza says to Raven. "I've been told 'ee can get into great trouble for something such as this." And she doesn't want to be the cause her friend gets in trouble, nor do she want to be taken to gaol in this state.

On the Ark this would probably be cause for being floated. It's a tiny bit of a thrill, knowing that while maybe not acceptable, this kind of behaviour won't get her killed anymore. There's no one here to take her falls for her this time, and she'll never let that happen again, besides.

"Let's go," she says, taking Demelza's arm and steering her away from the man on the ground. She hopes that the punch will have knocked some sense into him, at the very least.

Once they're far enough away, blended back into the crowd of the market, Raven turns to grin at her. "I never would've thought you had it in you," she says, impressed. "You've got some right hook."

Demelza laughs and flexes her hand, which hurts very much now that she's had a bit of time to think about it and she knows she won't be able to hide the bruises on her knuckles from Ross. "I had six brothers," she says, looking over at Raven with a small, embarrassed smile. "Even when I was often the one caring for 'em, I still had to know how to knock 'em off one another. Or me. Terrible brats, all of them."

And she misses each and every single one, but most especially Drake. He had been the youngest, her beloved Drake, and they had shared the most of their father's abuse. She for daring to look like the wife he'd lost in childbirth and Drake for having been the baby to kill her.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have gotten 'ee involved in such things," she says, although Raven's approval still pleases her greatly.

Raven watches her flex her hand, spotting the stiffness and the way her knuckles are starting to colour. Raven's a mechanic, not a doctor, but she's seen Abby work plenty of times. They're passing a small stall selling tie dyed clothing, and Raven pauses for a moment to buy a small scarf. It's no bandage, but it'll do for now, she supposes.

"Here, give me your hand," she instructs, and wraps Demelza's hand carefully with the scarf, tying it off around her wrist. It'll keep it strapped and tight for now. Raven doesn't think anything is broken, but maybe they should see a doctor later, too.

"Does it hurt much?" she asks as she finishes, stepping back. "I probably shouldn't have goaded you," she says on the edge of a laugh. They probably shouldn't have done it but she doesn't necessarily regret it, either.

It's a terribly sweet gesture and Demelza looks down, watching as Raven ties the scarf around her hand. It isn't that no one has ever taken care of her -- Ross has, certainly, and Verity in her way -- but for someone who has been taking care of others and herself from such a young age, it's still a nice gesture, one that warms her throughout. Raven perhaps isn't much younger than she is at all, but Demelza has been a mother of sorts since she was twelve years old.

"A little, but I'll be fine," she assures Raven with a sweet, pleased smile. "Ross won't be too happy with me, but if I tell him the man was being rude to my friend, I suspect he won't stay too angry for long." He's likely to threaten her with the back of his hand, but Ross has never once meant it in more than jest and she knows he'd never hit her. Not after taking her from her father for the same offense.

"Besides, he deserved it," she decides. "You and I, we have nothing at all to be sorry for."

"Back home that kind of behaviour would have gotten me in more than just trouble," she says lightly. Raven's certainly heard of people being floated for less. But she's on Earth now, a version of it that's more like the books and videos they'd always been shown than what she ended up encountering on the Ground. This is Earth before the bombs, before the radiation, a sight that Raven was never supposed to see. Odd, how things turn out.

"Tell Ross it was my idea," she offers, though she doesn't know the man at all. "If it helps any." Demelza doesn't seem the type to put up with a man who treats her badly, so Raven doesn't think she's in any real danger of having Ross be cross with her, but she's willing to cop it if need be.

Besides, Raven knows a guy who can do magic, if either of them ever get into any real trouble.

"More than trouble?" Demelza asks, glossing over the rest, as there's no possible chance she'll blame Raven for her own decisions. Ross has learned to live with a wife who has a bit of an uncontrollable temper and he's said himself many times how little it matters here, how little they need to worry about status or being a gentleman and a lady in a place like Darrow. Demelza doesn't always believe him, but at least she knows she can use it against him should he call her behaviour unbecoming.

"What do 'ee mean, more than trouble?" She knows so little about living in space, though she's read many books on space travel now. Most of it she still doesn't understand and she has to get some of her friends to explain things to her, but there aren't really any books about living in space. For that she has Raven and Bellamy and Clarke to explain things to her when they don't mind.

"Breaking rules on the Ark meant getting floated," she says, before she realises that Demelza probably won't understand any of what she means. She thinks for a moment, trying to work out how to explain it to someone who had no concept of being able to go into space, back home. "You broke the law, you got thrown off the ship, out into space, you know? It was basically an execution." She hesitates, thinking about how that was supposed to be her, if not for Finn's intervention.

"Anyway, it's better here, obviously. No Kane, less rules, no space." That last part is a bit of a lie; Raven does miss space. She misses working in Zero-G, but she also knows that there's no cause for that here, no way it will ever happen again, and she's resigned herself to that. She'll get by working at West's, and knowing that even if some things are a little less awe-inspiring on the Ground, at least she's safe.

"That's horrid," Demelza says, staring at Raven in shock. "That isn't justice at all."

With so many years between them, she'd have thought the system of justice would have become much more fair, but it appears not to be the case.

"Our laws were harsh as well," she says. "Poor men were often sent to prison for the smallest in... inf... the smallest crimes while rich men were able to get away with nearly everything. And transportation was common, too. Men sent to sea for ten years, sent away from the families they were only trying to feed, leaving their wives and children without any way of knowing if they'd survive, if they'd ever return."

Raven shrugs. It was bad, but it was also how she was raised, and to a point she understands it. Living in space means cutting a lot of luxuries, means not being able to tolerate mistakes. A mistake up there could mean the end of the Ark, and she understands why that could never be allowed to happen.

It doesn't make it less horrifying.

"I guess they were willing to do anything to survive," she says. Things might have been different on the Ground, maybe, once they had settled in. If they were ever able to settle in without something trying to kill them. "I think Darrow's probably better for both of us," Raven muses. She doesn't know much about where Demelza is from but nothing she's heard so far makes her too eager to experience it herself.

"I think so, too," Demelza says, then she reaches out with her uninjured hand and takes one of Raven's, squeezing gently. Like Demelza, she's strong because she's had to be. Living in a place like that, having to make sacrifices, knowing the smallest mistake could mean death, it all sounds so much like where Demelza grew up.

She had spent months wondering if one day her father might kill her. The way he had hit her when he got in his cups, how hard the blows had been, whether with his belt or a switch or even just his hands, she knows eventually it would have been her skull crushed on the floor or something worse. It's why she'd needed to leave. It's why she is the way she is, strong because she's had to be.

"I'm that glad you're here, Raven," she says. "And I'm that glad we've met."

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