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1. Raven
When they first arrive on the Ark, and there’s air in their lungs and cold metal under their feet, no one moves. They’re strewn across each other in the same positions they collapsed, with Echo’s leg resting on Bellamy’s, and Raven’s shoulder jabbing painfully into her side. It hurts, but it’s not like the pain of Nia striking her across the face, or having the marrow drained from her body. This is not a reminder of her mistakes, but a reminder of her success. She is alive, and Raven is alive, and right now, that really is the best case scenario.
Raven is the first one on her feet after what must be a few minutes, but feels like a forever that stretches out into the stars around them and makes Echo feel sick. Raven stumbles as she regains her footing, gets used to the artificial gravity, then stares at the rest of them. “Clarke would tell us to get up,” she says flatly, then reaches down and takes Echo’s hand in her own. It takes Echo a moment to realise Raven’s gesture, and for a second she relishes in the warmth of Raven’s palm before letting her help her to her feet.
“Thank you,” she tells Raven, who offers her a short smile. It’s not friendly, but it’s kind, and Echo marks her down as safe in the notes she’s been keeping in her mind. This is one person who isn’t going to hurt her.
“Raven,” Harper calls for her attention, her voice soft. She’s holding one of Monty’s gloves in her hand, and with it, an alarming amount of his flesh. Monty, for his part, just stares at it. She had expected him to scream at the sight of his ruined hand, but he’s either tougher than that or simply doesn’t care anymore. Or the radiation damaged his nerves to the point of numbness, and he can’t feel anything at all. She doesn’t know him, but she hopes for everyone’s sake that it’s the first one.
She surprises herself with how quickly she looks to Raven for an instruction. Before now, it had clearly been Bellamy leading the group, but he’s silent and unwilling, so Raven has taken his spot without hesitation or complaint. “Right,” Raven says. “Harper, Murphy, take Monty to medical, do what you can. Bellamy and Emori, I need you to find out what resources we have at the algae farm. Echo, with me.” She touches Bellamy’s shoulder as he passes, and there’s a whole conversation in the way they look at each other that Echo can’t read. She tries to extend it to Monty as well, but his whole body seizes up at the touch and he shrinks back. Echo sees the hurt on her face at that.
“Where are we going?” She manages to ask as they split from the group.
Raven smiles again, and it undoes the knots in her stomach. “We’re going to check on the tech,” she tells her. “See if we can get movies up here or something. It’s not an emergency, but I’ve dealt with enough of those.”
“Movies?” Echo asks, and Raven’s laugh bounces off the walls.
“Well now I really hope we can get some,” she says. When they reach the room Raven had been looking for (and Echo has no idea how they found it at all because everywhere here looks the same) she drops lightly to the ground by the wires to get a better look. She’s seen some basic tech before, but this is a confusing mess and there’s no way she can figure this out.
Before she can get too lost in her thoughts, Raven coughs awkwardly and Echo lifts her head to look. “I can’t crouch like this,” Raven says tightly. “I need to adapt my brace.” She looks at Echo like she’s expecting her to get a message. When she doesn’t, Raven frowns. “Okay. I’m gonna tell you what to do, and you have to follow me exactly.”
“Raven, I don’t-”
“I’ll explain it! Just let me try.” Raven sighs. “I wish I had Clarke.” Her face shifts as soon as she says it. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I only ever did things for my people. Same as her,” Echo replies, because even though Raven looks guilty, she has to defend herself.
“Can you see a green wire?” Raven says, cutting her off. She clearly doesn’t want to have this discussion right now, but Echo thinks Raven is looking at her a little differently. Maybe when the loss of Clarke isn’t such a fresh wound, Raven will consider her side of things. Right now, it’s an untouchable subject.
“Green wire.” Echo holds it up slightly when she finds it, a weak burst of triumph in her heart at getting something right. “What now?”
Raven says a lot of words she doesn’t fully understand then, but it’s enough to understand the basic idea, and when she follows the instructions, there’s a huge crackle of static above her. Bright lights blare from the dark screen and suddenly there are loud voices and strange, forced laughter. For a moment, Echo is too stunned to speak. “Sitcom.” Raven says. For the first time since they arrived, Echo sees all the grief and pain in her eyes lit up by the bright lights of the screen.
“I’ve never seen this,” she says as she climbs to her feet, partly because it’s true, and partly because she can’t look at that face anymore.
“You’ve never done much of anything,” Raven says wryly.
“That’s not how I was raised,” Echo replies. “Even if we had...this, I’d never be allowed to watch. I was raised a spy. I was either fighting, or teaching someone else to.”
“Oh,” Raven says simply. “Well, you set up the TV and you’ve never seen it, so I guess you get first pick.”
It’s a genuine offer Raven has extended, and with it, an olive branch Echo wants to accept.
Nia would have killed her already for this.
Nia isn’t here.
It’s not as easy as that, so she forces a smile and pushes back the dull panic rising in her chest. “Yes,” is a simple and safe reply. She doesn’t refuse suggestions.
Raven must notice her apprehension, but it’s only an addition to just about every other crazy thing she has to deal with right now. She won’t question Echo further, at least not right now, and for that, she’s grateful. It’s a small mercy.
“I should check on the others,” Raven says, then after a second, “We should.”
“Okay,” Echo replies. On instinct, she continues. “Who first?”
Raven narrows her eyes. “You can make your own suggestions, you know.” Echo freezes, and Raven must notice her panic because she sighs and says, “Bellamy and Emori. They might have found something useful.” She’s frustrated, but she’s kind, and it’s more than Echo usually gets, so she smiles back at her.
They leave the room together, and Raven starts talking about something that Echo doesn’t really understand, but she thinks she might want to. She’ll ask Raven about that later.
It’s nice to have something to look forward to.
2. Bellamy
Echo sees Bellamy a lot, but he almost never speaks directly to her. She doesn’t think it’s entirely deliberate- she generally moves around the Ark like a shadow and doesn’t join the group discussions (she has not earned a place in this group) whilst he spends his time watching the Earth burn at the window. Echo avoids that window. Space is horrible and claustrophobic, but looking down at her home makes her heart ache in a way she can’t chase off with a fight.
It’s for this reason she surprises herself when she ends up there one day after a tiny ration of what they managed to bring from Earth.The algae farm isn’t running yet- only Monty knows how, and no one has tried to ask him yet. He’s refusing to share a room with Harper and when he’s in his own room, no one can coax him out. Raven says it’s his hands and he’ll come around. Murphy says it’s his mind and he won’t. Echo says nothing in these discussions.
It’s another one of their debates that leads her to come and hide by the windows where no one will look for her.
It would have been a perfect plan if Bellamy wasn’t already there.
He’s standing at the centre of the window, one palm pressed to the cold glass, staring down at the Earth. “I took my sister here,” he says, and Echo starts at the fact he has already noticed her presence. She had been planning to back away. “Her first time out of our room. And the last.”
“Oh,” Echo replies, because she doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and she’s not sure she’s allowed to ask.
“She got arrested. The sibling rule.” Bellamy doesn’t elaborate. He knows she is smart, and it’s not difficult to figure out what he means.
“I’m sorry.” It seems the appropriate thing to say, and the right moment to bring up what’s been weighing her down for the month they’ve been in the Ark. “That I hurt her, and anyone else. I never wanted to fight, she was supposed to surrender and-”
“It doesn’t matter.” His voice is part genuine, like he really does understand this, and part a warning to drop the topic. He’s going mad without Octavia. With a heavy heart, he seems to have accepted that Clarke is dead, but the radio silence from the bunker is causing doubt for his sister that’s even worse. “What if she’s dead? What if the other clans hate her and I left her there to die? It’s as good as killing her.”
Echo steps up to the window.
“I had a brother,” she says, and she says it mostly to fill the terrible silence, but also because it’s been nagging at her to tell someone, to prove that she really does feel the same aching losses they do. “He was eight years younger than me, so it was always my job to look after him. And that was all the time, because he wasn’t well. He got sick all the time, and he couldn’t fight. Or do much for himself at all.”
Bellamy says nothing, but he is watching her now, clearly listening to her story.
“I killed him,” she says, because she hates the idea that she’s putting Bellamy under this brief illusion that she is good and loving, and that bad luck took her brother away. “I was told to. He was useless to our cause.” She hasn’t talked about him in years. He was condemned to a repressed memory long ago, another order she carried out. Her stomach hurts like she’s hearing those instructions all over again. “So I killed him.” She repeats it, just to make sure he’s got the message. “He was a child.” Never say how young.
Bellamy is still staring at her, like he’s weighing up all the things he wants to say, questions he wants to ask. Echo knows without asking that he’s imagining an order to kill Octavia. What would he do? Probably something braver. “Were you forced to? I mean, threatened?”
“It was implied,” Echo says weakly. It always was. Follow the orders or die. That was how she lived. How she still lives. Most of the time, she’ll hover near the room they’ve decided to use for breakfast, waiting for Raven to tell her what to do. If Raven says nothing, she stays in the same place in case she touches something she’s not meant to. It’s a difficult habit to shake.
“What was his name?” Bellamy asks, and she’s startled by how gentle his voice is, uncritical in the face of a horrible truth. She doesn’t deserve that.
“Friedric,” Echo replies eventually, and saying his name for the first time since a screaming fight with Nia feels like a weight off her shoulders. “He was called Friedric. I named him that.”
“That’s a nice name,” Bellamy says idly. He doesn’t speak again, but there’s a shift in the air. Echo thinks that maybe he likes her a bit more now. She knows she likes him. When he comes back to them, he’ll be a great leader.
Until then, she’ll be by his side.
3. Emori
It’s weird, Echo thinks, that she hasn’t really spoken to Emori sooner. She’s the only other Grounder in space with her, though that’s sort of lost its meaning now. In her defence, Emori hasn’t reached out to her either. She’s adapting to space a lot better than Echo. When she’s by the windows, her eyes are wide with excitement and curiosity, not fear and loneliness.
She talks as well. Not just to Murphy, although she does spend a lot of time with him still. Echo knows Emori has a knack for technology and spends time with Raven doing something she doesn’t understand. She gets along with Harper and Bellamy too, relishing stories of the Ark before it was just seven grieving people, and the ground whilst it was still an adventure. Echo has even caught her sat with her back against Monty’s door, talking to him through it. Words drift back occasionally, which is more than most of the others can say. Apparently. She hasn’t really tried to talk to him yet.
The point is, Emori is thriving. That’s probably why they send her after Echo the day she has a panic attack at yet another dead end and flees from them, ignoring Raven’s questions and Harper’s worried eyes. It’s probably Harper’s idea actually. She seems to know everyone well, and even Echo can agree that her instincts are usually good with people.
So Emori is the one knocking on her door, even though she’s left it open to ward off the creeping claustrophobia. This is a point in her favour- most people just barge straight in. “So,” she says in a voice laced with sympathy and the message that she absolutely is not going away, “What’s going on?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” she says flatly. “It’s hardly a mystery.”
“True,” Emori shrugs. “But I thought you might want to explain. Or talk about it.”
“And?” Echo raises an eyebrow.
Emori smiles. “And they told me to ask that. John laughed, though. He gets it.”
“He doesn’t,” she snaps. “He doesn’t know me at all.”
“You know you’re not the only Grounder here, right?” Emori scrunches her face up. “I may not have a clan, but this is my first time in space too. John helped me with that.”
“Oh,” Echo says. “I thought you liked it.”
“I do! That doesn’t mean I instantly adapted to being here. It’s freezing! And so dark .”
“ So cold,” A laugh escapes her with the words. “Earth was never like this.”
Emori looks glad to see her smile. “I miss the sun,” she continues. “So does everyone, but they only had six months of it. They’re just...readapting.”
“I miss it too,” Echo nods, realising that despite everything, she might actually have quite a lot in common with Emori. “I used to have this painting of the sun and all these clouds on my wall. It was from when I was really little, the sun had a smiling face. I never got rid of it, though. It was the only thing that made my room feel like mine.” She hasn’t thought about that painting for a long time, but suddenly she misses it like crazy.
“I didn’t have a room,” Emori replies, but it’s not a dig at her, just a comment. “I have this though!” She reaches into the cloth around her head which she still wears sometimes, and gently pulls a pin from it. It’s metal and old, clearly a relic of the world before the first apocalypse. There’s a tiny bronze sun decoration on the end.
Echo reaches out her hand, still shaking from her anxiety, and gently touches it. It’s warm, unlike everything else on this hell ship, probably from being wrapped up against Emori’s skin. She hesitates, waiting for Emori to pull it back and shout at her for overstepping boundaries, but she never does. She just holds it out, a small smile on her face.
Eventually she moves her hand back, curling it into herself like it’s done too much. “It’s pretty,” she tells Emori. “We had things like that.”
“Maybe I stole it from you then!” Emori laughs a little, and Echo laughs too. “I’ve had it a long time, I don’t really remember where it came from.” She slides it back into her hair. “I always kept it up here because people wanted to take it.”
“I think if I tried to take a pin from someone in Azgeda, they’d kill me,” Echo contemplates, and Emori looks sympathetic.
“Your childhood sucked,” she says. “All the riches, but no fun.”
“It’s not really about fun,” Echo replies, probably a bit more sharply than she needs to. The need to defend Azgeda never quite goes away, even though thinking about the things they made her do makes her sick to her stomach. “It’s about nobility, and-” she contemplates her next words carefully. “And it’s about fear. And power.” It’s true, but she’s never said it before. Azgeda terrorises people, inside and outside their own faction. She misses the family they gave her, and the absolute, certain loyalty she felt for them. That was when she knew exactly what she wanted. Now there’s no one left to give these orders, barely anyone alive at all. For all she knows, the bunker failed and she really is the only one left.
For the first time, that might not be such an awful thing.
“Rules are overrated,” Emori says. “Really. I adapted here because I never had any solid set of expectations. This is just another place. Admittedly, a miserable one, but people make a home.”
Echo frowns. “I don’t know how to be a part of it.”
“Raven and Bellamy like you! I don’t think you’re too awful,” This part is said teasingly, with a nudge of her foot. “Harper definitely wants to get to know you. She’s lonely, I think.”
“But she talks to everyone,” Echo whispers.
“Well. Yeah. But her boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend, or whatever he is, won’t talk to her. She feels guilty.”
“About what?”
“That is definitely not my story to explain. Ask one of them. It’s a weird icebreaker, but it’s not really a secret.”
“Maybe,” Echo says distractedly. She does want to talk to people, but the idea is suffocating.
Before Emori can challenge her any further, there’s the sound of something falling over and Murphy swearing. It’s a sound she’s grown used to. “I should probably go help with that,” Emori smiles bashfully. “I have more questions about the Azgeda lifestyle, though. Prepare yourself.”
Echo finds the smile easily this time. “I’ll answer.”
“Excellent.” Emori breezes out of the door with a laugh, calling for Murphy.
Echo thinks for a second, then follows her out of the door to see what they’re up to.
4. Murphy
When she catches up to Emori, she’s helping Murphy put things back in a pile of boxes. They’re filled with strange glittery things, all in reds and silvers and greens. “Apparently,” Murphy huffs, stuffing what looks like a giant glittery star into one of the boxes, “It’s nearly Christmas.” He roots in the box and pulls out an angel made of wool. “Who the fuck made this?” Echo just stares in bewilderment.
Emori, meanwhile, has dug out a string of tiny lights. “Will Raven know how to work these?” she asks. “I want to see how they look.”
“Raven flew us into space and landed us on the Ark,” Murphy says dryly. “I’m pretty sure lights are in her repertoire.”
Emori nods, eyes bright, then dashes off down the corridor.
“What is all this stuff?” Echo asks. Maybe this is a good conversation starter. She kneels down by the box and picks up a long thread of shiny green material.
“That’s tinsel,” Murphy says, a wry smile on his face. “Did anyone tell you about Christmas? I explained it to Emori. She’s...very excited.”
“No?” Echo replies.
“Well. It’s supposed to be like a celebration of Jesus’s birth, once a year, but no one here is that religious, so basically we’re gonna hang up all these decorations and sing annoying songs.”
Echo is still confused, but she nods. “Right.”
“Normally we would get each other presents and stuff, but that’s not exactly an option here. So decorations and songs. We’ll probably get drunk a lot.”
Okay, that sounds appealing. She hasn’t really drunk a lot with the others, but the alcohol that they’d found early on makes her feel lighter and calmer. It makes the other’s weak jokes funnier too.
This doesn’t sound like a bad tradition, so she dangles the tinsel in front of her face and lets it swing. “What do we do with this?”
Murphy takes it from her and heads over to one of the bars running along the wall. He winds it around the bar carefully and steps back. “Ta da,” he deadpans.
It’s not magic. The tinsel doesn’t transform the place into something beautiful and exciting, but she can imagine that with this stuff everywhere, it wouldn’t look that bad. “How much of this stuff do we have?” Echo asks, staring at the boxes laid out in front of her.
Murphy returns to the stacks. “A lot. There’s these too.” He finds the little woolen angel again and Echo realises she’s magnetic as he sticks her to the wall. “We should round everyone up. I think some people could benefit from the Christmas spirit.”
Before either of them can get up, the speakers crackle and a tinny musical voice blasts out.
And the bells are ringing out for Christmas time!
She’s heard bits of old music from the Ark before, but the vibe of this is entirely different. It’s warm, fun music that makes her feel soft and tingly, like she’s been drinking. “Hey, I know this,” Murphy’s smiling now. “It’s a duet. My parents used to sing it.”
“Are they in the bunker?” Echo asks.
“Long gone,” Murphy shakes his head, a flash of hurt on his face. “My dad was killed for stealing medicine when I had the flu. My mom wasn’t interested in hanging around after that.”
“Sorry,” Echo says. “Your dad sounds brave.”
“He was,” Murphy replies. He’s bent over the boxes like he’s looking very hard for something, but Echo thinks he probably just doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. She notices he never asks about her parents. It’s pretty obvious that they’re not around. Whether he avoids that out of tact or awkwardness is a whole other issue.
Either way, the topic is dropped pretty quickly. The survival missions are in the past, and now their new goal is to pull off the best Christmas celebration possible given that they are seven people trapped in space with minimal resources and a bucketload of trauma.
It’s one of the better tasks.
Bellamy coaxes Monty out of his room- he’s running the algae farm now, but has been doing little else until now. Now, Echo is watching as Bellamy attempts to balance a glittery plastic star on Monty’s head, as he swats gently at his legs. He’s smiling, one of the first times Echo has seen this. “He looks like shit,” Murphy says flatly, noticing Echo’s eyes on him. “Also, stop staring at him, and watch me.” He’s balancing on a stool, trying to hang golden fairy lights (this is what he calls them anyway) from the ledge. “Echo, I swear to God I will fall on you.”
“Sorry,” Echo turns her attention back to him and holds the stool steady. “Those make it look much nicer.”
“Shame I can’t pursue some design career. Or party planner.” Murphy hops off the stool and admires his handiwork. “Very glittery. Merry Christmas.”
“Very festive!” Raven approaches. She can’t exactly bounce in artificial gravity with her leg in a brace, but Echo thinks she would if she could. “We’ve got five years of this, so no one break anything.” She disappears again (she’s taken Christmas on as her own personal mission) and Murphy rolls his eyes at Echo. It feels like they’re sharing a joke.
“Christmas is serious business now,” he says, a note of fondness in his voice. “I don’t think we know how to chill anymore.”
Echo thinks it’s probably spending time with Raven and Bellamy and the chat she just had with Emori that make her confident enough to say, “We can if we drink.”
She’s starting to regret her boldness at Murphy’s expression of surprise, but it melts away as he breaks into a smile. “I like your style,” he comments. “Let’s see what we have.”
A short exploring of their stocks finds a frankly ridiculous amount of alcohol. “Thank you Jaha,” Murphy whispers, pulling out a few bottles. “This is enough to get smashed at every event for all five years. We’re gonna have stuff to take back .” He clinks the bottle he’s holding against hers. “Cheers, Echo.”
“Cheers,” she replies, and pops the cork to take a swig. Murphy laughs at her as she chokes a little, but it’s not mean. He opens his bottle too and follows her lead.
When they stumble back to the main room, Bellamy raises an eyebrow and says, “Crazy kids.”
Murphy laughs and pats Echo on the back. “Sure, Bell. We’re having fun, though.” He adopts a mocking tone. “Isn’t that what Christmas is about?”
Echo appreciates him for that. She’s learnt from Raven, shared secrets with Bellamy, found similarities with Emori, but Murphy is someone she can have fun with.
That’s been sorely missing in her life.
5. Monty
The term ‘Christmas Day’ doesn’t really matter to any of them, since they don’t have presents to exchange and their only plan is to eat the last of the edible rations from Earth before returning to algae and playing party games, of which Raven knows plenty. Every day is Christmas on the Ark, and Echo’s been enjoying it, but she suspects it’s starting to get to Monty, especially with two weeks left before the actual event.
He leaves his room now, which opens the door for him to run into her in the supply cupboard whilst she’s looking for something to tie her hair back with. “Monty,” she says, only as an acknowledgement of his presence, but he jumps out of his skin. “Sorry,” she apologises as he slumps against the wall to collect himself.
Murphy was right. He does look like shit.
He’s too thin for the clothes he’s wearing, and the skin on his hands is red and irritated where he’s clawed at it. There are dark circles around his sunken eyes, and they’re red enough that Echo can tell he’s been crying in here. “Um,” she says, which is hardly eloquent but they’ve barely spoken until now. He’d be the elephant in the room if he was large enough to have a presence. Instead, he just haunts the place. “Should I get someone? Murphy?” It’s a shot in the dark. Monty seems to like talking to Murphy. She suspects it’s the fact that he doesn’t talk to him like a therapist.
“Just leave me alone,” Monty closes his eyes. “Why does everyone keep trying to talk to me?”
“I don’t,” Echo offers uselessly. “We never talk.”
Monty laughs humorlessly. “It’s appreciated.” It looks like speaking takes physical effort. He’s not been sleeping well. Echo knows this not from talking to him, but from the fact that he either spends the night crying and screaming at the walls, or wandering the halls like she does sometimes. They’ve bumped into each other on these trips before, but they always pretend not to see each other.
“What are you doing in here, anyway?” She still hasn’t found a hair band. She’s not really looking because it gives her an excuse to stay in the room. It’s definitely not going to be in this box of nails, but he can’t see that so she keeps searching.
“Nothing,” Monty replies. “Hiding. Bellamy wants to talk to me.”
“Ah,” Echo says. That makes sense. Bellamy’s speeches are sweet at the best of times, and downright torture at the worst. Given that Monty’s whole life seems to be the worst of times (stories she still doesn’t know) his evasion of Bellamy makes sense. “Good luck with that.”
“Thanks,” Monty says distractedly. He looks anxious. “He’s gonna find me anyway. There’s nowhere to hide up here.”
Echo decides now is not going to be one of her profound moments of connection with someone. Besides, she thinks she can borrow a hairband from Harper. She always has them, and Echo doesn’t really know why she ties her hair up anyway. It’s pretty down.
That has nothing to do with anything.
“I’m gonna head out,” she tells Monty.
She’s on her way out when Monty calls, “Echo?”
“Yes?” She turns slightly, surprised.
He gives her a strange, forced smile. “Can you please make sure Harper has a nice Christmas? The others too. I don’t want them to be sad.”
She shakes her head, bewildered. “I think you can manage that, Monty,” she tells him, and closes the door gently behind her as she leaves him in the supply room. It’s a weird thing to say.
She doesn’t think any more of it until the next day, when she is gently shaken awake by Emori. “Echo,” she says, her voice gentle but firm. “You need to come to medical, something’s happened.” She doesn’t say anything else. As Echo hurries after her, she runs through possibilities in her mind. Emori is fine. Murphy must be too, or she’d be with him. There’s not much of a chance to contemplate anything more before they reach the room they’ve decided is medical.
Of course. It should have been obvious.
Monty is on the bed, unspeakably pale, his hair stuck to his forehead with sweat. The room smells like sick, and it’s immediately clear what has happened. His words the day before, pleading with Echo to cheer up his friends suddenly make a terrible kind of sense. He had asked that of her, then swallowed pills and tried to die.
It’s no thanks to her that he’s alive now, surrounded by the others. Harper is perched on a stool, stroking his hand, saying nothing. Her eyes are glossy. Echo understands why Monty had been worried now. Harper crying is a terrible sight. “I think he’s okay,” Murphy says, breaking the heavy silence. “He’ll be out for a while.” His voice is strained, like he’s trying hard to keep it steady.
“Raven got up in the night to sort some computer thing out,” Emori says for Echo’s benefit, nodding to where Raven is lurking near the bed, biting her thumbnail. “She found him by the window.”
“Why now?” Harper sighs. “What triggered this?”
“I talked to him,” Echo whispers. “Yesterday. He told me to make sure you have a good Christmas. I didn’t realise-”
“Not your fault,” Raven says straight away, and her sincerity makes Echo’s chest hurt, because how could she not realise what he meant? The others are nodding as well, and despite these terrible circumstances, she suddenly feels very lucky to have such friends. “It’s his first Christmas without Jasper, or his parents. It sucks.”
Echo knows the name. She’s heard it whispered in quiet conversations between the others, or as the one word she can pick out of Monty’s incoherent nightmares. She has no idea who he was, but he was important.
“Clarke would know what to do,” Bellamy says, voice cracking.
“Clarke isn’t here,” Murphy says sharply. “We’ll be fine, but that’s not helping.”
Bellamy nods tightly, and they settle into an uncomfortable silence.
By some bizarre coincidence, or perhaps just the universe trying to stir shit, she happens to be on Monty watch when he wakes up. He blinks blearily up at her, and seems almost relieved. “Hello,” she says.
“Echo,” he croaks out. “I’m glad it’s you.”
“Me?”
“You won’t make me talk,” he says. “And you can’t talk about him either. Or any of it.”
Echo does know some of it. Bellamy has told her his role in Mount Weather. Murphy has warned her that Azgeda killed his father. His mother and Jasper are mysteries.
They sit in silence for a while. Echo’s shift is a few hours, and she thinks Monty would rather avoid the talking right now, so she doesn’t call any of the others. Eventually, he tilts his head to look at her and says very softly, “Jasper was my best friend. This is where it started.”
And he tells her a story. About how they were inseparable to the point of being arrested together, how Monty had crushed on him, and Jasper had been speared. He tells her about Maya and what he did. He tells her that his mother came to the ground and took the same chip as Echo. That he shot her fatally in a forest at night to save Octavia. Then how he had held Jasper in his arms as he’d led a cult to their death and that he’d never said he loved him.
With each word of the story, images form of Jasper Jordan and Hannah Green and Maya Vie in her head, crystal clear. She remembers Maya now from brief fleeting glances in the harvest chamber. She had been kind. These ghosts that have been haunting Monty for months change in her mind. They stop being mysteries to solve, and turn into people. People with histories and personalities and last words.
It’s a long story and she isn’t the chatty type. Neither is Monty, so when he finishes it, he just holds onto her hand and cries. She says nothing, but holds it back tightly and thinks of the people she has lost and let go of.
It hurts, but she knows that they can build their lives back around the rubble.
+1. Harper
Christmas Day arrives to be met with surprising enthusiasm from the group. Monty is on his feet again and whilst he’s still being carefully watched, his close shave seems to have changed his outlook on life. It’s a void he’s never going to fill, but he’s learning to live with it, and right now, he’s wearing tinsel around his head and singing that Christmas song from the first time Echo ever heard about Christmas. She’s learnt that its name is Fairytale of New York. New York sounds nice, but Murphy’s high pitched falsetto for the woman’s part matched with Monty’s inability to make it through a line without laughing is ruining the magic. They’re all a little bit drunk.
They’ve all sat through a series of Christmas movies that Murphy has given increasingly harsh reviews and Raven has slept through. Echo and Emori have nothing to compare it to, and stayed enthralled through the entire thing. A lot of it was completely nonsensical and the outfits they were wearing were really very strange, but she didn’t really mind.
There’s another movie on, something featuring a girl hiding her true identity as an elf and also finding love and restoring the magic of Christmas to a small town. It seems like a lot of work. They’re not really watching though. Bellamy is still trying to explain the plot of the last film to Emori. Echo is listening in, filling in the gaps in her knowledge. Santa sounds like a far more threatening man than she thinks he’s meant to. Raven is providing colour commentary and reviews for the impromptu concert.
Harper is sat next to Echo, a warm body that shakes every time she laughs at something going on. She laughs a lot. Ever since she talked to Monty about the things said between them back in Arkadia, she’s been brighter. They’re officially broken up, not that it hadn’t been over for months anyway, but it seems a lot more friendly than it was before, and their cover of ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ was admittedly pretty funny. Harper’s singing voice is nice, and it sounds like it belongs on one of their Christmas CDs with girls singing about love and happiness and for some reason, kissing Santa Claus.
“What do you think?” Harper turns to Echo, face flushed pink.
“Hmm?” Echo replies, not sure what she means, but that might just be the alcohol and the million distractions.
“Your first Christmas!” Harper elbows her. “I feel bad. We didn’t get to exchange presents or have a big plastic tree or any of that Christmassy stuff.”
“I’ve got nothing to compare it to,” Echo shrugs. “I only know what those things are because of the movies.”
“Christmas movies are not the best comparison for an actual Christmas,” Harper shakes her head, the reindeer antlers she’s wearing on a headband bobbing with the movement. “I promise you when we get back to Earth, we’ll do it properly.”
“This was still pretty great,” Echo glances around the brightly decorated room and the people in various states of chaos. “How did we miss out on this tradition?”
“Bad luck?” Harper suggests, and Echo flicks one of her antlers.
“Even if we knew, Azgeda wouldn’t have celebrated it.”
“Azgeda sucks!” Harper announces a little too loudly, raising her bottle and spilling some of her drink onto the floor, making herself giggle. “You’re Echo of Spacekru! The best clan,” she says wisely, eyes wide.
“I’ll drink to that,” Echo clinks her bottle against Harper’s. “Maybe you should stop, though. You’re getting silly.”
“I know what I’m doing,” Harper says sincerely. “Trust me! I am not a lightweight. Went a bit crazy the first few nights on the ground. If Monty starts making moonshine again, you are going to see a side of me I am not proud of. Lines will be crossed.” Her tone is mock serious.
“I will definitely start making moonshine again,” Monty chips in, draping his tinsel around Harper’s neck. “My head’s getting itchy.”
“You’re sweaty and disgusting!” Harper calls after him as he pads away to join Bellamy’s explanation of elves. He’s not listening.
“You’re gonna wear it anyway though, aren’t you?” Echo smiles.
“Absolutely,” she chirps. “Christmas spirit and all that. I am feeling very festive. I won’t stop until I’ve fulfilled every Christmas stereotype. Which reminds me-” Harper jumps to her feet, stumbling slightly and offers Echo her hand. “I have another idea.”
“Is this ending in you stabbing me in a deserted hallway?” Echo asks, but takes her hand without hesitation anyway. “That’s a terrible Christmas. I don’t remember stabbing in any of the movies.”
“No stabbing!” Harper laughs, dragging her out of the room.
In the hallway outside the main room, there are a few Christmas decorations hanging lamely about. What Echo has never noticed before is the tiny sprig of a plant tucked into the rafters and hanging over them. “Was that always there?”
“Um. No.” Harper is a little pink. “I put it there a few hours ago. Well, Bellamy did. I couldn’t reach.”
“Did you bring me out here to show me?” Echo is a little confused. “It’s nice, Harper.”
“It’s mistletoe,” Harper says, like it means something. Then, “We’re under it.”
“Mistletoe,” Echo repeats blankly.
“Oh! Right. You, uh, you kiss someone under it. If you find yourself standing under mistletoe with someone, you have to kiss them. So. We’re under it.”
Echo may not be the best at reading people, but that’s a pretty obvious cue, and one she’s happy to follow. She steps forward and gives Harper a soft kiss on the lips. Harper’s hands come up and thread into her hair, thumbs on her cheeks.
She hasn’t been this close to anyone in a long time. It’s nice. It’s really nice. Harper pulls away and laughs, a little surprised. “I’ve been trying to figure that one out for a while,” she says eventually.
“I think I have too,” Echo replies, thinking back to all the moments when she’s been looking at Harper, or she’s crept into her mind. “Merry Christmas?”
Harper beams and holds out her hand for Echo to take. “Merry Christmas, Echo!” she replies, and they walk back down the hall to the party.