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If there's one thing ten months on Earth taught Monty, it's that object permanence isn't a good idea. It's better, from an emotional perspective, to just assume that the people who aren't with him, the people he hasn't seen in a while, the people he lost track of--it's better to assume that all of them are dead. If he can't find someone in ten minutes, he should just accept that they're gone, and mourn them, and if, by some miracle, they come back to him, then he can be happy.
Back on the Ark, he has months to mourn, and he’s planning to take them.
He gets why Bellamy can't. Even if Clarke is dead, Monty knows that he can't think that Octavia is. Bellamy has to believe that the bunker worked, because no matter how much he loves the six of them here on the Ark with him, it's not enough. Bellamy needs something to go home to, but Monty has learned to say goodbye. That's what helps him.
He's letting go of people, until he has concrete evidence he shouldn't.
They've been up for a week when Raven takes his side, as he sees it.
"I don't think we should put resources into communications repair," she says. She's saying it to everyone, but she's mostly saying it to Bellamy. He's the leader; he's always been the leader.
He crosses his arms. "Why not?"
"Would you rather talk to them now or talk to them in five years?"
He falters. "What?"
"Look, we need to get this place functioning. Really functioning. And then we have to get something that can go back down to Earth in five years without burning up, crashing, and killing us all. We don't have a lot to work with. The Ark's in pretty shitty shape. We're going to have our hands full surviving and getting back to Earth. I can work on the comms when I have time, but it doesn't make sense to make it a priority."
"If we can't get back down," Monty says, watching Bellamy's face carefully, "who cares if we can talk to them now?"
"They'll think we're dead," Bellamy says.
"Maybe," says Raven. "But we won't be. That seems more important to me."
His nod is jerky. "You're the expert," he tells her. "You tell us what we need to do, and we'll do it."
"Don't worry," says Raven. "I'll keep you busy."
*
Five years is somehow so much longer than Monty thought. As an abstract concept, it didn't seem so bad, but--that's just under a quarter of his life, up to this point. It's more than five times longer than he was on Earth. It's longer than he's known anyone he's up here with, so much longer.
Some days, it feels like so long he'll die of it, and that's when he gives up on Earth, another casualty of object permanence. He can't live his life thinking about getting down, because what if he never does? If he's living his life just thinking of going back to the ground, then it will break him if he doesn't. And it will break everyone else. Raven at least has the work to keep her busy, but Bellamy needs to go back, needs it like a physical ache, and Harper and Murphy both talk about what it will be like all the time, making the future into a prayer. And it's even worse for Emori and Echo, who didn't grow up here. They hate the Ark, hate the walls, the vacuum of space, hate all of it.
If they can't go back, it's going to be hard, and someone needs to be ready for it.
"We'll get down," Raven says. He's found he's closest to Raven, which surprises him and doesn't surprise him all at once. He and Raven have always gotten along; the only surprise is how it feels like he's betraying Harper, by not talking to her instead.
"I'm not saying we can't do it. But how are we even going to be sure the Earth is survivable again? Are we monitoring that?"
"I'm working," she says. "Either tell me what you're actually worried about or stop talking."
"If we can't make it back, it's going to be tough on everyone," he says. "I just want us to be ready. I don't want--" His throat closes on the words. "We're all we have for sure. We can't lose anyone else."
She pauses, looks at him. They haven't really talked about their losses, and he knows why. It seems strange to bury the dead now, before the dust has cleared.
They might never know what happened to everyone. Closure is impossible, but not everyone is ready to accept that.
"I got it," says Raven. "If I think we can't get down, I tell you first. And we figure out what to tell everyone else."
"Thanks."
"That thing you and Jasper did," she says, after a pause. "The high-five thing."
"What about it?"
"We could do it." His heart stops, but she doesn't notice. "Up to you. If it would help, we can do it. If it hurts, forget I said anything."
"I don't know," he admits.
"No problem," says Raven. She slides back under the ship. "Let me know."
*
He doesn't count the days. They have a calendar, so they'll know when five years have passed, but he doesn't pay attention to it. He keeps busy, and he gets Raven's updates, but he doesn't like the feeling of a clock. He doesn't like acting like this isn't his life, like it's just some temporary pit-stop before the main event.
Which is why he proposes to Harper.
It's not a very good proposal, which is the first problem. They're eating breakfast together one morning, and he says, "Hey, do you want to get married?"
She freezes. "What?"
"Bellamy could marry us. He's basically the captain of the ship. Historically, they can perform marriages."
"Why are you asking me this?" she asks. It's slow, cautious, almost suspicious.
"It's what people do," he says. "We love each other. Why wouldn't we get married?"
He knows it's not a good thing to say. It's not how a marriage proposal is supposed to be. It's not romantic. It's not even convincing. But it's more curiosity than anything.
"That's it?" she asks.
He thinks about telling her everything. Yesterday, he went scavenging in some of the unused quarters, saw a wedding picture, and he remembered that it was a thing, marriage. It's what people do.
If this is his life, he can marry Harper.
"Yeah," he says.
"No," she says.
It doesn't even hurt, really. He loves her, but--he is going to spend the rest of his life with her. That's certain. And it shows into sharp relief how much he doesn't care, that he's not marrying her.
"Okay," he says.
She nods. "Okay."
Once he's done with the meal, he goes to work with Bellamy. Bellamy's taken a shine to the algae, nurtures it like a pet or something. Bellamy doesn't know how to not take care of things, and this is what he can raise, here. A bunch of pond scum.
"You okay?" he asks, after an hour of silence.
"I think Harper and I broke up."
"I'm sorry."
"Yeah, who wants to be stuck in a metal ring with their ex for--"
"One thousand, one hundred and fifty days," Bellamy supplies.
"That's how long we have left?"
"That's how long."
"Does it help?" he asks. "Counting down."
He looks down at his hands, stretching them. Monty's hands still have scars all over them, always will. But they work, and he wasn't sure he'd get even that.
"I don't think it makes it worse," Bellamy finally says. "Nothing helps that much."
"Yeah," he says.
"So, what do you need?"
Monty has to smile. That's Bellamy: always looking after everyone. "Just wanted some company."
"Cool," he says. "I can do company."
*
When Emori gets pregnant, they do all the calculations, how long they have before they can go back versus supporting another life. Another mouth to feed, another set of lungs to share the oxygen.
No matter how they slice it, it doesn't work. Monty and Raven figure out how to induce the miscarriage, and that's it.
"No more babies in space," says Murphy. "Sucked to be a kid on the Ark anyway."
"At least you know you're not shooting blanks," Raven says, and he snorts.
"Thanks, Reyes. Means the world to me."
If she gets pregnant again, Monty doesn't hear about it. That's the last time anyone talks about it.
*
"We're not going to be ready for five years," Raven tells him.
He was ready for this, so he just nods. "Are we ever going to be ready?"
"Yeah. But we need to make sure we can survive until we do. I need to figure out how to tell everyone else. Like you said, we can't lose anyone. And this is--I think we need another year."
"Another year," he says, and it feels like they'll be saying it every year until they die.
But he'll keep saying it.
*
When Raven says the ship is ready, Bellamy doesn't ask if she's sure.
"You don't want to do one last check?" she asks, suspicious.
"Two thousand, two hundred and fifteen days," he says. "We're late, Raven."
"Better late than dead," she says.
"Yeah. So if you say it's ready, it's ready. Let's do this."
It's not hard to figure out where to go; there's one green spot on the whole planet, so if they're going to survive, they have to go there. It's not that far from where they left, which means that if the people in the bunker survived, they should have found it too.
But they might not have. Even if they did, Monty doesn't even know who survived, which of their people got the hundred places. Bellamy asked, when they radioed back, made sure that his sister knew the slots that would have gone to him, Clarke, and Raven wouldn't be used, so he knows that Nathan Miller was already in the bunker, and that Bellamy's spot went to David Miller.
He doesn't know who else he cared about was even alive to get a spot. So--that will be a surprise. If any of them made it.
"If we die, this could have been worse," Murphy says.
"Let Bellamy give the speeches," Echo tells him, and Murphy flips her off, but Monty agrees with him.
It could have been worse.
"No speeches," says Bellamy. "Get us out of here. I don't care if the world explodes, I am never coming back to space."
"Never say never," Raven says. "Time to go home."
*
Bellamy opens the door, and the sun is the brightest thing Monty has ever see. It's brighter than before, he feels like, and the leaves greener. Everything is so much.
And then Bellamy staggers, and Monty's briefly terrified, so sure that the air is toxic, that something happened, that somehow they survived this long, just for--
Bellamy's here; Monty wasn't ready for anything to happen to him. He only has six people, and he can't lose any of them.
But he recovers, and then he's jumping down, running, and when Monty gets to the door, he sees why. He sees her hair first, bright, shorter than it used to be, threaded with red, as Bellamy lifts her and twirls. He's never seen anything like Bellamy's face in that moment, broken open with happiness, holding her so close.
"She made it," says Echo, shocked.
"It's pretty hard to kill Clarke," says Murphy. "Get out of the way, I want to piss on solid ground."
"You're ruining the moment, John," says Emori.
"Yeah, the moment's going to last for like an hour. The rest of us need to start moving."
Monty spots the girl first, this small, scared person, eyes flicking between Bellamy and Clarke and the rest of them like she can't decide where she fits in. Monty elbows Harper, makes sure she sees her too, and then two of them go over together.
"Hi," says Harper. "Are you with Clarke?"
"Yeah," says the girl. "Is that Bellamy?"
"That's Bellamy," says Monty. "I'm Monty, and this is Harper. Were you in the bunker?"
She shakes her head. "Clarke found me."
Clarke finally lets go of Bellamy, in the most limited possible sense. She turns to look at them, but his arm is still wrapped around her waist, holding her half against his chest. "She's a nightblood," says Clarke. "Her name is Madi."
"So it worked?" Bellamy asks, and Clarke smiles at him.
"Obviously it worked."
"What about the bunker?"
She worries her lip. "We're digging them out now. It's--I've got a lot to tell you."
"When are the rest of us getting a hug?" Raven demands, and Clarke laughs, a bright, unfamiliar sound, happier than Monty has ever heard. She goes to hug Raven first, and Bellamy just watches her, this slack-jawed expression on his face. Monty can relate; six years alone on Earth, and Clarke Griffin seems like she finally learned how to smile.
Then again, she wasn't really alone. Bellamy had his algae; Clarke had her nightblood. She had something better to take care of.
She gets to Monty for the hug last, holds him close. "It's so good to see you," she says. "I was so--I'm so glad."
"Yeah," he says. "Me too."
*
Monty ends up walking with Madi, behind Clarke and Bellamy.
"You get used to them," he says. It feels kind of surreal. He's explaining Clarke and Bellamy. He never thought he'd have to do that again.
Clarke is alive. She's right there, walking in front of them, filling Bellamy in on the bunker, the other ship that came down before they did, the state of the Earth. Part of Monty wants to resent not being included, but he can see the way their fingers keep brushing together, the way they're drifting into each other, and he knows it's not really about catching up.
"She talked about him a lot," says Madi, pragmatic. "You too," she adds, like she realizes she's being impolite.
"Like I said, you get used to them. What happened?"
"When?"
"When--you must have been really young. When Praimfaiya came."
She nods. "Yeah. My parents--they didn't make it. When the air got bad, they just--"
"Yeah," he says. He holds up his hands, showing off the angry red scar tissue. "I hurt my hands when the air got bad."
She nods. "They told me to hide somewhere, so I did. There was a place we used to go, when the yellow fog came from the mountain. I went there, and I stayed until I got too hungry to stay."
"That was really brave of you," he says, and she gives him an unimpressed look.
"You don't have to be nice to me just because of Clarke," she says.
"Monty's always nice," says Raven. "It's kind of his thing. You get used to that too."
"And your thing is machines," she says. "Clarke told me."
"That's my thing. You want to learn to be a mechanic?"
She makes a face. "I'm going to have a lot more lessons now, aren't I?"
"You are," says Clarke, without looking back. "It's good for you."
"This is exactly the kind of mom I thought you'd be," Bellamy teases, and Clarke bumps her hip against his.
"Shut up."
*
"They have to be alive," Bellamy says. Madi has gone to sleep, and this new skaikru, the ones from some ancient penal colony, are in their own camp, done with their excavation work for the day, so it's just the eight of them around Clarke's fire.
It's almost unreal.
"They are," says Clarke. "Just because the door is blocked, there's no reason to think they won't be alive."
The bunker might not have been secure to begin with, Monty thinks, but takes a swig of Clarke's shitty moonshine instead of saying that.
"I'm hoping you'll take over the still, now that you're here," she offers, and he lets himself smile.
"No offense, but you should let me."
"I was just keeping it warm for you." She leans her head on Bellamy's shoulder, and he puts his arm around her. Monty isn't sure they've gotten more than a foot away from each other since they reunited, and he wonders what it would be like, to feel that way about someone.
He wonders if he ever will.
"Thanks," he says, and passes the bottle to Harper. She raises it, but doesn't look at anyone as she drinks.
*
Two days later, they clear the bunker door. They still can't get radio communication working, but some of their video systems must be functional, because within minutes, the door is opening, and Octavia Blake is squinting out at the sunshine.
Octavia doesn't feel like someone Monty knows anymore, in the same way Murphy didn't, when Monty saw him in the rover six years ago. In the same way Clarke sometimes doesn't now. The amount of time he's known them is so much less than the amount of time he hasn't, and everyone feels different.
But then she says, "Bell," and Bellamy leaves Clarke's side to run to his sister.
"Thank god," says Clarke, soft, and Monty smiles.
"Thank god," he agrees.
*
It takes a long time to get everyone out of the bunker. According to Octavia, between births and deaths, their total population is actually at 1327 now, and they can only come out a few at a time. It's a long line of people, staggering out and taking in the fresh air.
"I was starting to get worried," she admits. "The babies were small enough that they could share with their parents, but--if we didn't get out soon, we would have had to start culling people."
She says it in a matter-of-fact way, and Monty knows it's true, but it's scary, too. He's glad he wasn't down there. He never wants to be in those conversations. He doesn't want to be that person.
"But you didn't, right?" asks Bellamy. He has Octavia on his left side and Clarke on his right, and Monty can't help feeling a little resentful. It's a guilty, awful feeling, one that makes him hate himself, but--here is Bellamy Blake with, miraculously, everything he wanted.
And here is Monty Green, who doesn't even know what he wants. Who didn't let himself have dreams.
"We didn't," Octavia confirms. "Everyone who was in there, they're still alive. All your people made it."
"Our people," says Clarke.
Octavia doesn't look at her. "They're all my people."
Monty would like to say he's glad that all his people are alive, and he is, of course, but it's a distant kind of gladness. Familiar faces come out, and he wouldn't want them to be dead, but it doesn't matter to him that they're alive. Not like it mattered that Clarke was.
The first to really get to him is her mother, which doesn't surprise him. She holds Clarke close, weeping into her hair, and Clarke clings back, and it's sweet, but it's even better when she hugs Bellamy too, and he looks the most mundane kind of terrified.
Monty almost wants to laugh, but then Abby says, "I'm so glad you two had each other," and they all realize at once that she doesn't know. That Octavia doesn't know either. The eight of them--nine, with Madi--came together, so of course they think they were together, this whole time.
"No," Clarke says, gentle. "I didn't make it to space. But--there's someone you need to meet, Mom."
Madi was tucked into Clarke's other side, shy around the flood of people, and Monty smiles as Clarke tugs her forward, introduces Abby to something like her granddaughter. And Bellamy is there too, watching Madi to make sure she's fine, and Monty has to look away. It's too much family.
Marcus Kane comes out ten minutes later, enjoys a similar if less tearful introduction. He shakes Monty's hand like he's running for office, and Monty wonders, with a sick feeling, if he's ever going to feel that rush, that pure joy that someone is alive, or if that feeling died six years ago, in Arkadia.
And then, there's Nathan Miller.
Monty doesn't care about days. He doesn't care about miles. But he remembers, with a bright, sharp clarity, that the last time he saw Nathan Miller was before Miller went to help out with Becca's lab, and he had thought he would never see Miller again, and even after Octavia told them everyone was alive, he still hadn't really believed it.
His legs start running before his brain knows they're doing it, and he throws himself at Miller like some sort of projectile weapon. He hears the breath go out of him, this oof of shock, and then a short laugh.
"Damn, Monty," he says, one hand cradling Monty's head. He thinks he's crying, and it's a little funny. He never cried on the Ark, but here he is. "Where the hell were you?"
"Fucking space," he says, and Miller laughs.
"Beats the fucking ground."
"I only had six other people."
"Six?"
"Clarke didn't make it." Miller stiffens, instantly, and Monty pulls back. "No, she made it. She's alive. She was just--she was on the ground."
Miller relaxes, and Monty takes him in, greedy. Not letting himself miss anyone made it easy to not notice that he didn't miss Miller more than he didn't miss a lot of other people. He just--he got used to him. He liked having him around. The world seems more survivable, with Miller in it.
"So, she's here?"
"She got a kid."
"What, at the store?"
Monty laughs. "Not a lot of other people to take her, I guess."
"I guess." He considers. "Bellamy here?"
"With Clarke and his sister."
"He really thought Clarke was dead for six years?"
"Yeah."
Miller snorts, shakes his head. "Fuck. He must have been a fucking nightmare."
Monty laughs again, surprised. It's so obvious, but none of them were saying it. "Yeah, well. We were all basically nightmares for a while."
Miller bumps his hip against Monty's as they start to walk. "Bet you wish you were stuck in a shitty bunker with a thousand grounders who kind of wanted to kill you now, huh?"
"How was it?" he asks, curious.
"Six years," says Miller, and Monty nods.
"Yeah. That's exactly what it was."
*
And just like that, they suddenly don't have anything to do anymore. For six months, they were focused on finding a way to live through Praimfaiya, and for six years after that, they were focused on surviving on the Ark and making it home. And now here they are, on the ground, with everyone alive, and Monty wasn't prepared for it at all. It's the future he didn't let himself believe would come, so he wouldn't get his hopes up, and now it's here, and he doesn't have any hopes at all.
They have to make a place to live, of course. Some people are keeping the bunker as a base, but as Octavia said, it was already straining. Clarke was, apparently, living in a rover, which Bellamy is horrified about, even though they were both basically living in metal containers; Bellamy's better at worrying about other people than about himself. It's not news.
"We could build houses," Bellamy says, finally.
"We've never built houses," says Clarke. "We've always modified existing structures."
"That doesn't mean we couldn't build houses," he says. "You don't want a house?"
"I never said I don't want a house. But we don't know anything about building them."
"We can't all live in your rover, Clarke."
"You fit fine," says Madi. It took her a little while to get used to Bellamy's being basically attached to Clarke's hip, but de facto father to Clarke's adopted child is pretty much the role he was born to play, and he took to it with an ease and enthusiasm that surprised absolutely no one. Monty's still not sure if they're officially together or still figuring it out, but his interest is purely academic. It's going to happen, so it doesn't really matter when.
"Yeah, it's really tempting for me to move in with you guys and leave all my friends to sleep in the rain," he teases.
"I'd rather be in the rain than under the f--stupid ground," says Miller, with a quick glance at Madi. They're all working on their profanity.
"If you die of pneumonia after all this I'm going to murder your ghost," Bellamy shoots back. "You're going to sleep under some kind of shelter, Miller."
"My hero."
"Darn straight."
"I want a house," Monty finds himself saying. "A real house. Plumbing and everything. We could figure it out, right? We have supplies. We could make it happen. It can't be hard, to make houses."
"You want to be an architect?" Miller asks, with a sly smile.
"I need to be something, right?" he asks. The sun is warm, and the sky is blue, and the patch of Earth they're living on is small and green and not really enough for the future.
But Clarke says it's been growing. He thinks they could make it grow faster.
"Okay," says Clarke. "Tell us what to build, and we'll build it."
*
Most nights, Miller does sleep under the stars. The buildings take time, and in a way, there isn't a rush. With no timeline, it seems more important to do things right than quickly, and they do have other places to sleep. Bellamy stays in Clarke's rover with her and Madi, but he helps Raven and Echo turn some of their extra material into tents, and most of them sleep there. Echo doesn't know quite what to do with herself, which--she can join the club, but Monty does get that it's different. Some kind of alchemy happened under the ground, and everyone in the bunker came out changed.
Skaikru is least changed, and that doesn't surprise Monty either. He can see the guilt in Clarke's face when Miller talks about it, the knowledge that her choice to try to take the bunker made a rift that hasn't healed yet. They aren't a part of the single group that Octavia leads; they're still allies.
And Bellamy is allied with the other side.
Echo doesn't know how to go back to the grounders or stay with the seven of them, so she divides her time, prowling like a ghost over the world. Murphy and Emori are the same, leaving on their own for days at a time, coming and going with no real schedule. But their loyalty is to the new Skaikru, to the ones who were in the Ark with them, and Monty wonders what it would be like, to really be united.
He stays with Raven, mostly, and Harper, because he doesn't want them to be alone.
But at night, he stretches out on the ground with Miller. Sometimes, David will join them, sometimes not; sometimes Bellamy and Clarke and Madi will come, and Bellamy will explain the constellations. Raven complains that sleeping on the ground will fuck up her leg, so she doesn't sleep out there, just sits and talks.
Mostly, though, he and Miller have two patches of ground, and sometimes they wake with rain falling on their faces, but the rain is clear and soft and safe, and when it happens they laugh and run under the trees until it stops.
"Are you going to sleep inside once we have houses?" Monty asks, and Miller grins.
"Are you going to build me a fucking awesome house?"
"I am."
"Then yeah, I'm going to sleep inside."
The first house, though, isn't for anyone. It's something between a town hall and an inn, which is part of why it takes so long. But Monty has trouble feeling sure what the individual houses should look like, how many they need. Part of him winces away from making Raven her own cabin, doesn't want her to feel alone or abandoned. He doesn't want to force anyone to be alone.
So they build the inn first, this big building with ten little bedrooms around a central living space, where all of them can stay together until they figure out where else they want to be. With rooms to spare, even, for their friends and visitors.
"It looks good," Bellamy tells him, clapping him on the shoulder. "You did good, Monty."
"You know you're not my actual dad, right?" he asks. He's grinning, still. "You don't have to validate my accomplishments. Go tell Madi how good she is at drawing."
"She is good at drawing."
Monty's grin widens. It's strange, sometimes. He can feel so happy, but there's always a part of him, far away, that doesn't feel quite whole, either.
"How many rooms is your house going to need?" he asks, instead of thinking about that. "I'm building yours first. You guys need your space."
"Three," says Bellamy, to his surprise. But then he blushes. "Clarke's, uh--her implant must have gotten knocked out by all the radiation. So we're going to need another room."
It takes him a minute to figure it out. "She's--"
"We're pretty sure. That's, uh--that's where she is today. Going to get her mom to take a look at her."
"Wow."
"Yeah."
"I wasn't even sure you two were--"
"Really?" He smiles. "I would have told you, I just thought it was obvious."
"It was obvious before we went to space, but it hadn't happened yet."
"Yeah, okay." He ducks his head, his smile huge and bright and enough to make Monty's whole world better. Sometimes he's jealous, but--at least Bellamy gets to be this happy. He deserves it. "I lost her for six years, Monty. It took a fucking day."
Monty smiles too, but it hurts. "I can't even imagine."
"I guess not." His voice is a little strange. "I knew what I was missing. That helped." Monty cocks his head, confused, and Bellamy seems to be thinking it over, debating with himself. "I get it, okay? You didn't think you had anything to come back for."
For a second, his throat closes, and he feels like he might cry. "I didn't think we'd come back," he admits. "I couldn't."
Bellamy nods. "But we did."
"But we did."
"I've had something to live for since before I knew I needed something," he says, looking over the horizon. It's easy to forget how much older Bellamy is than the rest of them, because it's never mattered. But sometimes, he'll do this, and he feels like a grownup, while Monty feels like an overgrown kid who's got the world fooled. "So I don't get it. But--maybe you don't need a reason."
"I think your pep talks are getting worse."
"Shut up. Just--I know it feels like you're missing something. We all are. Even me. We can't get back what we lost. But we're still here, and we can keep going."
"What are you missing?" Monty asks, curious.
"Six years," he says, without hesitation. But then, "Jasper. Gina. Lincoln. Monroe. Bryan. Wells. Charlotte. My mother." He closes his eyes. "But I have Octavia, and I have Clarke. I have you and Raven and--fucking Murphy."
Monty smiles. "He's not even here half the time."
"Yeah, he's turning my hair gray." He sighs. "What do you need, Monty?"
"I don't know," he admits. "But I'm not going anywhere. You don't have to worry."
He snorts. "Yeah, if there's one thing I'm great at, it's not worrying."
"Worry about your new baby," Monty shoots back, and Bellamy just grins.
"Way ahead of you." He squeezes Monty's shoulder again. "Seriously. This is good. You're doing good here, Monty. Keep doing it."
"Better pep talk," says Monty, and Bellamy rolls his eyes.
"See if I try to talk to you about your fucking feelings again," he says, and goes into the new house.
When Monty smiles after him, it doesn't even hurt. It's just nice.
*
"I'm worried about you," he tells Raven. Honesty is the best policy.
"Yeah?" she asks. "Why?"
He thinks it over. "You don't have anyone."
"So, you're hooking up with Miller and you feel guilty."
He actually chokes. "What? No! That's not--no!"
"Huh," she says. "Why not?"
"That's not--we're not talking about me," he finally manages.
"Look, you know what I've got?" Raven asks. "A life. I've got Bellamy and Clarke, and I love them. I've got Madi, and I'm teaching her all about tech. I've got Emori and Murphy bringing me weird scrap they find like cats leaving dead mice on my doorstep. I've got you and Miller and Echo and Harper, and I think Clarke's friend Niylah is trying to flirt with me, if you're really worried I'm not getting laid. But that's never really been my top priority. You want to know why you shouldn't worry about me? Central plumbing. And after that, heating. I've got a ton to do, Monty. So you can hook up with Miller and not feel guilty that you're being--fucking disloyal, whatever. You're not. You've got me."
Monty smiles. "Have you been getting pep-talk lessons from Bellamy?"
"Hell no. I'm a natural."
Monty puts his arm around her and squeezes. "I love you. I want you to be okay."
"I'm okay," she says, and Monty finds he believes her, without even trying. Without having to talk himself into it.
"But you'd tell me if you weren't."
That she has to think over. "If I thought you could help, yeah. Like I said, you're not the only person I've got. If it's a Bellamy problem, I'll tell Bellamy. I've got options."
"So I'm, what, your third choice?"
She thinks it over. "Depends on the problem, like I said. You got me, Monty. I know that. We got each other."
"We got each other," he agrees. And then, because it's bothering him a little, "You thought I was hooking up with Miller?"
"Why wouldn't I?"
"Because I'm not," he settles on.
"I guess if I was getting laid, I'd want to be in a bed."
"What, not into tree sex?"
She taps her leg. "Comfort over passion, Green."
"Getting old, Reyes."
"Yeah." She grins. "Who ever thought that was going to happen?"
Monty smiles too. "So you're good."
"I'm good," she says. "And you should think about getting a bed."
*
In Mount Weather, Monty had a crush. It wasn't a big deal, he told himself. Jasper was busy with Maya, busy being some kind of leader, and Monty had been lonely. Once he found out about Bryan, that was what he told himself. It wasn't a big deal, it didn't matter. It was just a crush, and he got over it. He had more important things to do, and then Miller was--well, Miller was in limbo, wasn't he? He was neither alive nor dead. He was Schrodinger's Thief.
And now here he is.
"Do you miss them?" Monty asks him. It's been a week since he talked to Raven, and he's spent most of his time designing Bellamy and Clarke's house. To his surprise, it just feels good. It doesn't feel like he's trying to protect himself from anything.
"Who?" asks Miller. He's been working on furniture, and he's got a knack for it. He's good with his hands.
He has nice hands, too. Monty's letting himself think about that, sometimes. He's not ready to think past that, but it's a good start.
"The rest of our people. Everyone in the bunker."
"It's not like I don't see them," he points out. "They're around. I go and see my dad all the time."
"Yeah, but--"
"I was with them to survive," he says. "And I did. But if I'm living, I want to live with you."
"Oh," he breathes.
"What, you don't want me here?" he teases, and Monty feels himself flush.
"No, of course not. I just--I wish you'd been happy. When you were down there. Six years of being lonely sounds so shitty."
"It sucked for everyone," says Miller. "Pretty sure if I was up there with you, it would have sucked a different way."
"Eating algae," says Monty.
"Being in fucking space."
"Being in fucking space," he agrees.
"Look, if you'd asked me where I wanted to go, I would have said with you," he says, soft, and Monty wants to ask who he means by you. But he lets it go. "But if you asked me what I wanted to do, I'd say survive. And I did. And now I'm back where I want to be."
Monty thinks about it, but he might as well tell the truth. "Good," he says. "We want you here."
Miller rolls his eyes, but he's grinning. "Cool. I was so worried you were going to kick me out."
*
Monty doesn't talk to Clarke much. It's not that he doesn't care about her, or that he feels awkward around her. It's mostly just that Clarke has so many people, he doesn't need to worry about her. She has Bellamy, and her mother, and Kane, and Madi, and--the list of people who care about Clarke Griffin seems endless, and Monty is on that list, but--
Well, it's like Raven said, you go to different people for different problems. And Clarke almost always has someone other than him who's her best option for these things. And he's glad. He has enough people to feel anxious about; he likes to be sure Clarke is taken care of, the same as Bellamy and Murphy and Emori.
So she's the one who comes to him.
She isn't showing yet, but based on all the tests her mother can do, she and the baby are both healthy. She looks good, Monty thinks, and that is tough for him to deal with. It wasn't hard for Clarke, but--he understands why it wasn't. She was sure that they survived, and would come back. She was sure the bunker survived, and she would save them.
Sometimes, Monty thinks he would choke on it, if he believed things like Clarke does. And sometimes he's so jealous that she got that. Six years of being sure.
"The house looks really good," she says.
"Do you have complaints?"
Her smile is crooked. "Why do you think that's the start of a complaint?"
He shrugs. "No news is good news."
"I just wanted to check in. I feel like we haven't talked in a while."
"We're busy."
"Yeah." She hugs her knees, looking up at the sky. "It was really easy, wasn't it? For a while."
"What?"
"A hundred people wasn't so hard. Everyone had friends, and we were all in the same place. I could keep track of everybody. And then I just--I stopped thinking about people for a while. I knew I had to save everyone, but--I didn't even know where you were, or what happened in Arkadia."
"You had bigger things to worry about," he offers. "I get that now."
"I did. But--I don't want it to be like that again. I don't want to have so many people to worry about that I forget about my friends."
"I didn't think you forgot about me."
"I didn't." She smiles, bumps her shoulder against his. "I can't just want to hang out?"
"You hang out?" Monty teases. "Clarke Griffin? Really?"
She laughs. "I hang out. I'm hanging right now."
"I think if you have to tell me we're hanging out, you're not very good at it."
She thinks it over. "So, what do you do when you hang out?"
"It depends." He considers. "I usually just sit with people."
"That sounds nice," she says.
Monty raises her arm, and Clarke tucks herself into his side, and when he closes his eyes, he thinks this is good. This is the level of friendship he wants with Clarke. They can just care about each other. They don't care about each other the most, but they care enough.
"I can't believe you're going to have a baby," he says, and she laughs.
"I know. It's a brave new world."
*
Monty gets sick, and Miller insists on taking him to the bunker.
"Does it not have a name?" Monty asks. He's in the passenger seat of the rover while Miller drives. He's really not that sick, but everyone's worried, so the least he can do is let someone else check him out.
"What?" asks Miller.
"The bunker. Did you just call it that, the whole time you were living there? No name?"
"Tartarus," he says. "The underworld."
"Really?"
"You let a Blake name something, that's what you get. But--they're building over it. They're calling the new settlement Olympus, so at least that's better."
"Those Blakes," says Monty, and Miller smiles.
"Those Blakes."
Monty hasn't really come here much; something about the bunker makes him queasy, just thinking about being down there, trapped with so many people.
He's done with tight spaces.
But the building is going well. They're on the outskirts of the green land, but everyone has been working hard to revitalize the soil, to make it arable. Monty could help, he knows he could, but--he can't live here. They have other people who can do what he does.
He's doing good for himself. They can tell him if they need him. He'll work on expanding his own land, and let them know how it goes.
"My dad's over there," Miller says, pointing out the window. "Skaikru quarters. I've been bringing him my stuff to trade."
"Your stuff?"
"The furniture and whittling."
Monty swallows. "That's what you do with all of it?"
"However I can help, yeah."
"I could help too."
"Help with what?"
"Your dad. Whatever he needs."
"He's good," says Miller, but when Monty keeps looking at him, he shakes his head. "I'll let you know, okay? If I need you. I'm already giving him our spare crops."
"I mean it," says Monty.
"I know."
There's a medical tent, and Abby Griffin is outside it, talking to her husband. Miller parks the rover and gets out, giving both of them a wave.
"Nathan," says Abby, with a nod. "Is everything okay?"
"Monty's running a fever. I thought you or Eric could check him out."
"Jackson's inside, he should be able to check you out." Abby smiles at Monty too. "Is it just you?"
"So far."
"You should stay here until you're feeling better. You shouldn't be around Clarke when--"
"Their house is basically done," Miller says. "They're sleeping out there. We're not going to get her sick, Dr. Griffin."
Abby's jaw tenses a little, but Monty assumes she realizes it's not really her call. So she nods, jerks her head toward the tent. "Like I said, Jackson is inside. I hope you feel better, Monty."
Miller pull the flap back and ducks inside, and Monty follows him. Monty never really got to know Dr. Jackson very well, but he's always seemed perfectly nice. Friendly, even. Monty would have said he liked him.
But then he smiles at Miller, bright and warm, and says, "Nate! What are you doing here?"
"Hey, Eric. Monty's running a fever, thought we should get him checked out."
"It's probably just a bug," Monty grumbles. He knows Miller's first name, of course, but he can't imagine just calling him that, not when no one else does. And he would not have been able to come up with Dr. Jackson's first name if he had a thousand years to think about it.
But they're on a first-name basis. That's fine. They were stuck in a bunker together for six years. Just because he doesn't call Murphy John after six years in space, that doesn't mean anything.
"Yeah, but if it's not we want to know," says Miller. He claps Monty's shoulder. "Come on, get on the examining table."
"Are you hanging around?" Dr. Jackson asks, and Miller seems to realize that it's an examination. He looks away, coughs.
"No, I'll go see how my dad's doing. Monty, I'll be outside, okay? When you're done."
"Thanks," he says. And then he's alone with Dr. Jackson.
Eric.
It's not actually a thing, of course. Dr. Jackson is professional and detached, asking Monty about his symptoms, making sure the illness is nothing they need to worry about as an epidemic or a sign of radiation. Monty hopes he'd feel worse if it was really something bad, but he still can't help the swipe of panic. What if this is it? What if he has some terrible plague, and he has to wander off into the woods to die alone, to make sure no one else is infected? What if--
"I think it's nothing," Dr. Jackson says. "Probably mild food-poisoning. I assume Nate can keep an eye on you, and he should bring you back if you're sick for more than a day or two, but I'm not worried."
"Thanks," says Monty.
There's a pause, and then he asks, "How's he doing? Nate."
"Good," says Monty. "He's good." And then he adds, "Happy." He feels almost defiant about it, for all it's true too. He is happy.
"Good," says Dr. Jackson, with a smile. "I know how much he missed you."
Monty keeps getting caught on the word you with Miller. He doesn't understand why English stopped caring about singular versus plural.
"Yeah," he says, and takes the chance. "I missed him too."
*
"You and Dr. Jackson were friends?" he asks, when they're driving back.
"Dated for a while," says Miller. "It was kind of weird."
"Weird?"
"We hooked up a few days before the world was ending," he says. "Nothing against him, but I really didn't think we were going to have that much time for a relationship."
"Apocalypse fling?"
Miller shrugs. "He's a good guy. It wasn't like it was bad, for an apocalypse fling. Kept going for a while, but--yeah. Burned out, pretty quickly. Mutually." He clears his throat. "What about you and Harper?"
"I thought we should get married. She didn't."
"Shit."
"No," he says. "Not like that. I thought--I thought we should get married, you know? Like as the next logical step. So I asked her, and she told me no. She was right. It was--" He closes his eyes. "I love her. I'll always love her. But it's not like that."
"What about Raven?"
"Raven?"
"You guys seem tight."
Monty opens one eye, sees Miller looking at the road. "I love her too. I love everyone."
"You do, huh?"
"I do." He clears his throat. He can always blame the fever. "Dr. Jackson calls you Nate."
"Yeah."
"So does your dad."
"Yeah." Monty counts to two. "So can you."
"Nate," he says, for the first time, and he sees Miller smile.
Sees Nate smile.
"Monty," says Nate. "Get some rest."
*
The illness does seem to be some kind of mild food poisoning, and it passes in a few days. And once he's well, he finds he really feels well, like a fog has lifted off his whole life. It's not perfect, but his life never has been. The world keeps getting larger and smaller, larger and smaller, like a pair of lungs, and it takes time to adjust to how much air he's getting every time.
But this feels like it could last. And if it doesn't, he can still be happy while it does.
Echo is back with them tonight, brought a few animals she found. There's a dog she thinks they could keep for a pet, and a few birds that might be good for eggs. Murphy and Emori are back too, and they're not convinced.
"You want to eat radiation eggs?" Murphy asks.
"We already eat radiation plants," Echo shoots back.
"Radiation is kind of a default part of the menu," Bellamy says. He's already taken a shine to the dog, of course. "But Murphy's right. How do we know it's safe?"
"I let the dog eat some," says Echo. "She's fine."
"Scientific method," says Raven, and Echo grins at her. "Trial and error."
"We'll give it a few days before we eat them," Clarke says. "To make sure the dog survives."
"Why are we testing on the dog?" Bellamy grumbles, and Clarke kisses his cheek.
"I don't want to test on the dog either," says Madi. "I like the dog."
"You'd like fresh eggs and meat too," says Clarke. "Echo already gave the dog eggs. We just have to see if they do anything to her."
Monty smiles at Nate, and Nate smiles back, shakes his head, and it's such a good night.
Once they've put out the fire, Monty says, "I was thinking about sleeping outside tonight. For old time's sake."
"Yeah?" asks Nate. "You feeling better?"
"I'm feeling fine. And it's a nice night."
"It's a great night," Nate agrees. "I'll get some blankets."
He brings two, one to lie on and one to cover themselves with, and Monty stretches out next to him. It's so strange, to look at the stars now. He's never going back there. Like Bellamy said, he'd rather die here.
He's done with the sky.
"I had a crush on you," he finally says. "In Mount Weather. You were, like, the coolest person I'd ever met."
"Yeah, me too. You were cute."
"I was?"
There's a pause, and then he says, "You are."
"I'd say you're still the coolest person I've ever met, but I think Raven has you beat."
"Yeah, I don't know how I ever won that one."
"I was pretty desperate in Mount Weather."
"What about now?"
Monty smiles, and rolls into him, and Nate catches him. He's smiling with half his mouth, and Monty's heart turns over.
"Now I'm good," he says, and the other side of Nate's mouth turns up.
"Now you're good," Nate agrees, and kisses him. The earth is firm and hard under his back, and the stars are bright above them, and Nathan Miller is kissing him.
Monty is home.