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Harper’s dad dies on a Monday.
“Your grand-daddy’s symptoms started showing up in his early twenties back on Arkadia,” he had said.
“Your aunt knew she had it by twenty-five.”
“If I have it, it’s taking its sweet old time taking me out.”
But just like his dad and his sister, and all of the previous McIntyre generations, it got him. Harper’s father started showing symptoms right after turning sixty. His move to Earth after meeting Harper’s mom had been beneficial in delaying the onset of the symptoms, the doctors said.
Earth had given him time.
It was a quick progression, however, once he began displaying symptoms. After that, it advanced rapidly and severely for three months. Her dad pleaded with Harper through glassy eyes to not wait for the disease to catch her like he had, to get the genetic testing done.
“You’re only twenty-six. No planet may have a cure, Harper, but if they find it early, maybe they can treat it. Maybe–,” he hacked on a cough that sounded like it was cracking his chest open. “You could live a full life here on Earth. You can find the love of your life somewhere out there in the universe. You can live to see your babies grow up.”
The last sentence had left him weeping on a sob as tears soaked her own cheeks. It became clearer and clearer that this was the end.
She lost him that night, and scheduled the testing the next day.
Harper’s dad died on a Monday from a genetic disease he refused to find out he had.
By Friday, she learns that she has it too.
It’s been two weeks since she got the news.
Harper’s pulled from her mindless staring on the couch as a pile of papers lands on the coffee table in front of her.
She turns to look at her two best friends standing in front of her, both positioned determinedly with their arms crossed, waiting for her to say something.
“Harper,” Clarke tries first, after too much silence. Harper hates the way she says it.
When they still don’t get a response from her, they both move to settle on each side of her on the couch, squishing the blankets and pillows Harper has managed to bury herself under over the past couple of weeks.
Raven makes the next attempt. “You aren’t going to ask about those papers on the table?”
No, she’s not.
They haven’t left her side since everything happened.
For Raven, that means taking time off from the shop she works at fixing up harboring spacecraft, getting whatever she needs out of her room right down the hall, and then plopping herself back in the living room with Harper.
For Clarke, it means stopping by her and Bellamy’s docked ship every couple of days to restock her overnight bag and to check in with her fiancé, before returning to Harper and Raven’s apartment.
Harper loves them for it.
She knows Raven’s sacrificing work time and Clarke’s giving up travel time in order to make sure she’s not alone, but she also hates that she’s keeping them from their normal lives.
Harper’s not someone who has ever hated anything in her entire life, but lately, she’s hating a lot of things.
She can tell the two of them are having some sort of silent conversation over her head, and through all the numbness she feels, there’s the slightest dash of annoyance settling low in her stomach.
“What are they?” She asks with a voice that sounds nothing like her. It’s miserable and heartbroken, but the words have relief pouring out of Clarke and Raven in waves, identical sighs bursting out of them.
“Remember a few months ago when you mentioned wanting to visit the universe’s top nature reserves?” Raven asks.
It takes a minute as Harper thinks about it, before remembering. It was before everything went to shit.
“I do,” Harper hedges with uncertainty, unsure what the two of them are up to.
The three of them were chatting on the holo-comms – Harper at home after a long day at school, Raven in the shop working overtime to fix a cargo ship, and Clarke describing the newest planet she and Bellamy had ended up exploring.
Clarke’s stories enthralled Harper.
She loved her work teaching at the local school, enjoyed every second with her students… but she also found herself wishing she could explore the universe a little bit herself having never left Earth.
She had off-handedly mentioned to the girls that they should do their own exploring together sometime. Wanting to do it, yes, but knowing it wasn’t realistic.
But now the more she looks at the papers on the table, the more she sees the top one is a map of the local galaxies with dots on the neighboring planets and a red line connecting all five of them.
“Well…,” Clarke continues. “We were thinking that now would be a great time to go. We can take the ship for a week.”
Silence falls after that.
She thinks they’re waiting for her to respond, feels their eyes staring at her hopefully.
“You hate hiking,” Harper says, directing the words to Clarke.
At that, Clarke opens her mouth in protest. “Well–”
Harper doesn’t let Clarke finish before she’s twisting her head to look at Raven. “And you can’t keep calling off work. Plus, what about your leg?”
She watches Raven do the same as Clarke before she’s turning back to Clarke. “And what about Bellamy? You can’t just kick him off his ship.”
Whatever Clarke was going to say stops on a soft chuckle. “Bell can manage a week slumming it with Murphy on his cargo ship,” she starts, reaching for Harper’s hand. “And hiking’s not my favorite thing, but it’s grown on me.”
Harper feels Clarke squeeze her hand reassuringly, just as Raven takes her other hand to catch her attention. “And Sinclair’s got everything under control at the shop.”
When Harper’s eyes glance down at the brace on Raven’s knee, Raven rolls her eyes. “The leg will hold up just fine. We can sleep in the ship, so that will help.”
At their words, Harper turns to stare ahead of herself again. They both keep their grips on her hands firm, and Harper can feel the hope and eagerness hitting her from both ends.
It’s everything she wanted when she first mentioned it all those months ago.
“We’re worried about you,” Clarke whispers softly.
“And we think this could be good for you,” Raven adds on gently. “To take your mind off of everything.”
Harper lets go of their hands, leaning forward on the couch. She grabs the map from the top of the pile, noting that the rest of the papers are informational pamphlets. Her eyes fall on Earth first with a red dot marked right where their current location is. “Ton DC, Eden,” she follows the red line to each Planet, listing them in order. “Eligius IV, Sanctum Prime, Ark–,” she halts on the last one, the name causing a lump to form in her throat.
She clears it after a moment of staring at the name. “Arkadia.”
“We searched the interplanetary database and found a link that mapped out the easiest route via wormholes,” Raven explains.
Harper stares at the paper for another moment, placing it back on the pile carefully as they wait patiently for her to think it out.
She could stay here. She could wallow in what she’s lost, what she will lose...
“I can’t go to Arkadia.” She should want to go to her father’s home planet. But all she can think of is the fact that her grandfather and aunt died on that planet when they were younger than she is now.
Earth supposedly slows the onset of the disease. What if she sets foot on Arkadia and it kills her?
The thought has her heart picking up in pace, just like every time her mind falls down the never-ending path of what-ifs that leaves her gasping in panic.
Clarke takes her hand again. “Then we won’t do Arkadia. It’s the last stop anyways.”
Harper takes a deep breath, inhaling through her nose and exhaling through her mouth.
Then, remarkably, she finds herself nodding.
She glances at each of them, finding matching grins on her best friends’ faces. And while she doesn’t feel capable of joining in, she does feel the slightest smidge of something other than numbness and annoyance echoing through her.
She’s not sure if it’s happiness, but she’ll take what she can get.
Their first stop is TonDC.
The planet is beautiful, if not a little barren and rocky.
“The brochure says that TonDC’s reserve is best known for its boulder fields,” Clarke explains as she holds the pamphlet open in front of her.
Harper glances out the window, watching the planet’s details emerge the closer Raven gets to landing the ship in the local bay.
“I say we pack up a day’s worth of food, picnic, and then head back to the ship to sleep.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Raven calls back to them, the ship shaking a bit as the landing gears find solid ground. She turns in her chair to smirk at them. “We’re here.”
They spend the day doing just what Clarke planned out. They climb a few boulders, take a few pictures, and through it all, Harper keeps reminding herself to smile, to engage.
Her friends are doing this for her. The least she can do is show that she’s grateful for it.
But she knows they can see through her smiles. They catch the gaps of time where she hasn’t spoken in far longer than she normally would.
When they’re settled back in the ship that night, auto-pilot taking them to their next destination on Eden, they snuggle up in one of the cabin beds in an impromptu sleepover.
Harper’s tucked in between Raven and Clarke, and this, more than anything else today, makes Harper smile her first genuine smile in months.
Where Ton DC was rocks and dry air, Eden is a lush expanse of green.
It’s almost like hiking through the forests on Earth, only here, Harper can see shocks of vibrant color that the plants on Earth could never hold.
She follows the designated hiking trail, drinking in the beautiful nature surrounding her, only realizing how far ahead she’s walked when Clarke calls to her from farther back on the trail.
She turns back to where Raven and Clarke have stopped, both red in the face, with Clarke heaving breaths from where she’s leaning against a tree that’s glowing red underneath the bark and Raven resting on a flat rock along the trail with her braced leg stretched out.
“I’m so sorry,” Harper apologizes, feeling guilty for abandoning them on the trail. They’ve been following her for a couple of hours as she’s been silently taking in every neon flower.
Raven waves her off. “Don’t worry about it. Keep going if you want,” she says, gesturing back up the trail where Harper had been. “I just need a break, and I think Clarke needs a quick breather.”
Clarke, who’s now chugging down water as her breaths even out, nods eagerly.
“You sure?” Harper asks, already looking back up the trail.
Clarke settles down next to Raven on the rock, passing her the water bottle. “Don’t worry, we’ll be here.”
Harper doesn’t need to be told twice.
Her eyes catch on a patch of flowers just off the well-worn path. There’s a barely-there path through the flowers, and Harper finds herself drawn towards it. As she walks through them, she lifts her hands on either side of her to graze her hands across the tops of the flowers that are growing to her waist.
There’s blues and yellows and pinks that are so vibrant, she’s mesmerized by them. Harper finds herself with a sense of peace she hasn’t had since her father’s diagnosis.
She keeps walking down the unmarked path, hands gently brushing the flora as she goes and noting how the flower patches are turning to ones with various shades of burning red up ahead.
“I wouldn’t touch those!”
A voice yells from somewhere Harper can’t see, startling her out of her momentary peace.
She halts in her steps, hands just about to touch one of the red petals, but pulling them away carefully.
She looks around curiously, only hearing the sounds of nature surrounding her.
“Flos venenosa,” a voice says from directly behind her, causing her to jump as she whips around to the source of the voice.
She’s met with soft eyes, and a rueful smile.
“I’m sorry?” She finds herself saying, taking in the man in front of her.
He’s cute, should not be her first thought.
“Flos venenosa,” he repeats, gesturing to the red flower Harper was just about to touch. “It means ‘poisonous flower.’ One touch of that and your whole arm would have swollen up within seconds.”
Harper finds herself immediately wiping her palms on her pants at his words.
He watches her movements, eyeing her in amusement. “The other ones you touched are safe. I just figured I’d warn you. You should really be careful about touching foreign plant species.”
“Right,” Harper says, feeling her hackles rise despite knowing he was only trying to help her. “And you know all about foreign plant species because…”
At that, he ducks his head on a smile, looking back up at her with a grin that reaches all the way up to his eyes.
“I’m a botanist,” he explains. “I’m out here getting samples of bark from the lignum ignis.”
“Oh,” is Harper’s intelligent response, feeling like a fool for questioning him.
“The fire trees?” He tries, seeing her confused expression. “The ones that look like they’re burning embers underneath the bark?”
Like the one Clarke was leaning against.
“Right,” Harper says in response, looking down at her boots before glancing back at him. “Well thank you for the warning. A swollen arm would not have been ideal.” Especially with all of the other shit she’s dealing with. “Thank you…,” she carries out the last syllable.
“Monty,” he says, picking up her cue and reaching out a hand. “Monty Green, Edenite botanist.”
Harper reaches out to shake it. “Harper McIntyre. Earthen educator.”
He beams at her, holding on to her hand for a second too long before looking down bashfully in a way that Harper shouldn’t find so endearing.
“Well,” Harper starts again, taking a step back. “Thank you again, Monty the botanist,” she says sincerely.
“Any time, Harper the educator,” he teases, taking his own step back to head wherever he had come from. “Careful with the red flowers,” he warns again, walking backwards while still smiling at her.
“Red flowers,” she repeats, heading back toward the marked trail.
He nods proudly, before turning to continue walking as he disappears into the trees.
She heads back towards where the girls are waiting for her, both looking rested and ready for the hike back to the ship.
“Ready to head back?” Clarke asks, already gathering her stuff to make the trek.
“Uh huh,” Harper says, matching pace with them as they start walking.
“Just…,” she says, glancing around at the flora around them in a new light. “Just keep away from the red flowers.”
Eligius IV is their next stop.
They do spend a small amount of time in its reserve, exploring a bit, but Harper can tell that Raven and Clarke are getting a little worn with all of the hiking they’ve done over the past couple of days.
She suggests hitting the bar in the hub where they had landed the ship and is met with immediate agreement.
Part of it, Harper thinks, is that her friends simply want to hang out and have a few drinks. She also thinks they’re excited that Harper was the one to suggest it.
They find themselves settled in a booth, some type of Eligius specialty drink in front of each of them, as they laugh hysterically at Raven’s impersonation of Murphy.
It feels good to laugh. The alcohol is no doubt helping the matter, but still, it feels good.
“I’m going to go get more of whatever these are,” she tells them as she stands up, her speech only slightly slurred.
She heads to the bar at their agreeing cheers, leaning against it as she tries to catch the bartender's attention. She’s so busy focusing on her task of ordering the drinks, she almost misses the voice speaking to her.
“Harper the Educator,” it says, catching her attention immediately as she looks to find the man from Eden.
“Monty,” she says in surprise. “Are you following me?” She blurts out, her tongue apparently looser than she thought.
To his credit, he laughs it off, giving her that same smile from yesterday, even as his eyes glint with amusement. “I’m actually here with my friend.” He gestures to the man on his other side, who is watching her and Monty’s conversation with a scrunched brow and a look of confused disbelief on his face.
“On a completely different planet,” she deadpans, lifting her brow at him and crossing her arms in front of her.
“My friend Monty here is taking me on a tour of the local planets’ nature reserves to heal my broken heart,” the friend says when Monty keeps looking at her
“No way,” she says in disbelief, mouth dropping open.
“Uh,” Monty says in confusion, glancing at his friend who nods in encouragement before looking back to her. “Yes way?”
Harper laughs. Genuinely, truly laughs.
“Do you guys want to join me and my friends?” She asks, gesturing to where Clarke and Raven are still cracking up.
“We’d love to,” his friend cuts in before Monty has the chance to respond.
There’s some weird silent communication that goes on between them that Harper is too drunk to try and figure out, but they follow her over to the table after she collects her ordered drinks, smiling at Clarke and Raven as they approach.
“Guys, this is Monty Green. He’s a plant guy who saved my arm from exploding yesterday,” she tells them while pointing to Monty. “And this is his friend–,” she pauses when she realizes she never asked his name.
“Jasper Jordan,” he dutifully fills in, waving to the girls before sliding into the booth and immediately chatting them up without hesitation.
Harper looks back to Monty, who gives her one of those bashful smiles she really likes before gesturing for her to slide into the booth.
She wishes she could say she pays attention to any of the conversation going on between her friends and Jasper, but she can’t.
All she can focus on is Monty.
They eventually end up outside the bar on a bench, staring up at Eligius IV’s sky.
Monty knows that Harper and her friends are completing the same trip route he and Jasper are embarking on. She knows that Monty’s a really good friend that is trying to help take Jasper’s mind off the Edenite that broke his heart.
But what she really wants to know is what his mouth feels like against hers.
He’s talking about his research on the fire tree, arms gesturing animatedly as he talks in a way that entrances Harper, when she suddenly can’t stop herself from leaning forward and cutting him off with a firm press of her lips.
His response is instant as he chuckles softly against her mouth, leaning back in for a deeper kiss.
It’s a little wet, a little sloppy, but Harper can’t stop as she keeps trading kisses with him and her hands weave into his black locks.
He eventually pulls back to catch his breath, and Harper does the same, smiling as she remains close.
She’s far too proud of the slightly dazed look on his face.
She watches him blink a few times to catch his bearings. “We should plan on spending a few days together on Arkadia before you head home.”
Harper’s fragile bubble of happiness bursts around her with a lone, innocent suggestion.
She draws away from him, standing up from the bench and looking at him as she blinks and tries to gather herself.
“Harper?” Monty asks questioningly, confusion evident as he watches her step away from him.
Because that should sound great.
The boy she likes seems to like her back. He wants to spend his time on a foreign planet with her.
Except that foreign planet could kill her.
With that, comes all of Harper’s fucked up emotions and the reminders of why she’s here on Eligius IV in the first place.
The panic she hasn’t felt in days claws up her throat like it never left, like it was waiting for the perfect moment to make its appearance known as her breaths grow shallower and her vision blurs around Monty reaching out to her.
“Harper…,” he tries again, even as she continues to step away, shaking her head at him.
It was foolish to live in this fantasy dream for a night, for the past couple of days, where she’s just on vacation with her friends and she meets a cute boy.
“I’m going to die,” she announces, cutting off whatever words Monty is trying to say to her. It certainly does the trick as he stops in his tracks, eyes widening.
To her horror, she starts laughing hysterically. “I don’t know if it will be in a month, in a year, in ten years, in forty,” she rambles, words pouring out of her mouth, unable to stop. “But I do know that it will be painful. And that I’ll be putting anybody who cares about me through a whole lot of suffering.”
She can’t stop picturing her friends watching her hurt the way she watched her dad suffer. She can’t stop them from caring.
But she can stop Monty.
Harper’s heaving in breaths, her lungs tight on the thought of adding another person to her list of people who will be in pain because of her.
She can’t add another.
“I’m sorry Monty,” she manages to get out, even as her breaths come shorter and shorter. “I can’t–,” she says, stepping back again as Monty carefully reaches out to her. “I can’t.”
The illusion shatters with her turning away from him, running towards the ship as tears stream down her face.
Raven and Clarke find her in her cabin bed not too long after.
Mercifully, they don’t ask, just settle on either side of her as they hold her through her sobs.
The ship takes them to Sanctum Prime overnight, allowing Harper to tire herself out from crying and wake up next to them with a pounding headache.
She rubs exhaustion from her eyes with a groan and finds them both looking at her worriedly when she opens her eyes back up.
“Last stop, right?” She asks, ignoring their looks and crawling out of the bed. She can't even understand what happened last night, so there’s no way she can try and explain it to them.
“Okay, we can’t keep doing this,” Clarke says firmly, pulling Harper up short from where she was walking up the Sanctum trail a few feet ahead of them.
At Clarke’s words, Harper turns to find both her and Raven standing on the trail.
“Sorry,” Harper says, though she still wants to keep going. She needs to burn off this anxious energy that has been radiating inside her since they woke up. “We can take a break.”
Clarke shakes her head, standing with her hands on her hips.
“It’s not about the walking,” Clarke tells her, which makes Harper’s brow furrow. “It’s about the fact that you haven’t said a single word about what the hell happened last night.”
Harper feels her body stiffen, defenses rising.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She turns back to keep walking, but Clarke calls out to her again.
“Harper, come on,” she says, trailing after her. “It will help to at least talk about it.”
Harper ignores her, continuing to walk.
“We thought you and Monty were getting on well. Jasper was talking about us all meeting up here and doing the hike together, and then all of a sudden Monty was coming back into the bar all upset and saying that you left!”
She keeps going, hearing Clarke’s determined steps and Raven’s staggered ones following her up the mountain.
“Harper!” Clarke yells, determined to catch her attention.
Harper whirls around. “What Clarke!?”
Clarke takes a startled step back, Raven halting right next to her.
“What do you want me to say!?” She shouts at both of them. “That I liked Monty? Because yeah, I did. That I was stupid and drunk and kissed him even though I shouldn’t have? Because I did that too. That he–,” she heaves a breath, feeling them get shorter just like they had last night outside the bar. “That he wanted to spend more time with me on Arkadia? That that would be the worst idea possible for so many fucking reasons, one being that I could fucking die?”
They’re both staring at her, and Harper can’t stop gasping for breaths she can’t catch. “He has no idea what pain I would cause him.”
Clarke steps forward carefully, reaching out to her. “You don’t have to tell him your whole life story,” Clarke tells her gently, but Harper’s ears are ringing with anger. “It can just be you getting to know a guy you like and taking it from there.”
At that, Harper explodes.
“You don't get it, Clarke!” Her tone has Clarke freezing in her steps as her eyes widen. Harper barrels on. “You get to go home to a man who worships you. You get to marry him and live your life happily without having to worry about how long it will last! No expiration date, no what-ifs, no worry if you even have time to ‘take it from there!’”
Because Harper could see something with Monty. But for how long?
“So please stop trying to understand what I’m going through.” Harper’s sharp words ring out in the silent woods, chest rising and falling rapidly as adrenaline courses through her. Clarke and Raven are staring at her with identical looks of shock on their faces.
“I–,” Clarke starts, then stops, glancing to Raven before looking back at Harper. “I, um–”
Clarke carefully walks around Harper standing in the path, turning around a corner and disappearing out of sight.
Silence rings out again as her and Raven stand on the path, Harper’s breaths finally calming and the reality of what she just said hitting her square in the face.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she whispers, voice hoarse after all of the yelling. She puts her head in her hands. “Oh my god, why did I say that,” she mumbles into her hands.
“You needed to get it out,” Raven says reassuringly, walking up and squeezing Harper’s shoulder.
The guilt that’s coasting through her says otherwise. “But not at Clarke,” Harper argues. “She’s been nothing but supportive, and– oh god, I made it seem like she doesn’t know what it’s like to grieve. She lost both her parents and I said she didn’t know what it’s like.”
Raven’s mouth quirks in sympathy. “She knows you didn’t mean it.”
“When did I become this person?” Harper asks, voice breaking. “When did I become somebody who lashes out at the people trying to help her?”
“I had more than my fair share of outbursts after the accident,” Raven reminds her.
“But I’m not hurt. And I might not get sick for years.”
“No, maybe not,” Raven concedes. “But you did just lose your dad after watching him suffer for months. And then you found out that you’re a carrier for the same disease.”
Harper tilts her head up, eyes pricking with tears.
“Come on,” Raven says, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and turning her in the direction Clarke went.
They find her settled on a rock a little ways up the trail. She lifts her head when she sees them approaching, a sad smile gracing her lips even as Harper walks right up to her and hugs her tight. “I’m so sorry,” Harper whispers to Clarke, who hugs her back instantly.
“I know,” Clarke tells her, pulling back and giving her a reassuring smile. “I wanna show you guys something,” Clarke says, pulling away and moving to step off the path, walking through the trees.
Harper looks to Raven, who shrugs. They follow Clarke until she stops right at the edge of a cliff.
The three of them stand there, looking over the edge at one of Sanctum Prime’s mountain ranges stretching out in front of them.
“After I lost my mom, Bell took me hiking,” Clarke says softly, still looking at the beauty in front of them. “I was so angry at him,” she continues with a chagrined smile. “He knew all I wanted to do was curl up in my bed and never emerge.”
It sounds far too familiar to Harper.
“But he dragged me out hiking, made me climb a freaking mountain, and then brought me to a cliff like this.”
She looks across to Raven and Harper, smile brightening.
“And he told me to scream.”
Harper turns to look at Raven, who looks about as confused as she feels.
Clarke laughs at their reactions, shaking her head and smiling. “That’s what I thought too. But then I tried it…”
And with that, Clarke lets out a yell towards the mountains with her arms stretched wide, startling the birds from the trees below them. Her yell ends on a giggle Harper rarely hears from Clarke.
Raven looks to Harper, shrugging before doing the same – taking a fighting stance and screaming at the top of her lungs. She looks back at them afterwards, bright smile stretched across her face.
Harper thinks they’ve lost it. Somebody could come searching for them, thinking they need help.
But then again, nobody’s here but her and her best friends.
Harper steps forward and yells to the mountains with everything she’s got. And when that’s not enough, she does it again.
She yells for her father.
She yells for herself.
And she keeps yelling, until tears of relief are rolling down her chin and her voice is so hoarse she won’t be able to speak for days.
But for the first time in a while, she feels free.
It’s a week later when there’s a knock on her apartment door.
Harper looks up from where she’s grading papers on her couch, unsure who it could possibly be.
Clarke and Bellamy left on their next adventure a couple days ago, and Raven’s at the shop until tonight.
She walks to the door, opening it to find the last person in the universe she would expect on the other side.
“Monty.” The surprise in her voice says it all. Because no matter how many times she blinks, Monty Green is still there, holding flowers that look an awful lot like the ones she walked through back on Eden.
“Hi Harper,” he says with a nervous smile, looking down at the flowers before looking back up at her shyly.
“Wh–,” she starts, trying to wrap her head around his being here. “What are you doing here? How are you here?”
“Um,” he starts, “Jasper apparently gave my comm number to your friends.” He rolls his eyes, even as a flush rises in his cheeks. “Clarke messaged me a couple days ago, sent me your coordinates saying she thought I should come see you.”
He looks up hesitantly, as if waiting for her to shut the door in his face.
Instead, she shakes her head in amusement. Of course Clarke did. Especially after Harper talked about Monty the entire trip back to Earth.
She reaches out to take the flowers and steps back inside. She places them carefully on the nearest flat surface and turns around when she sees he hasn’t followed her in, still standing at the entrance.
He looks so uncertain, so hopeful, so something that she’s not brave enough to name yet.
What she is brave enough to do though, is reach out to grab his hand as a smile breaks across her face, surprising him as she tugs him into the apartment.
She smirks at the look of wonderment on his face as he stumbles in, and finds herself giggling.
It’s not going to fix everything, she thinks, as Monty finds his footing and steps right into her space to cup her face in his hands.
He’s beaming at her, and she’d dare to say the same unnamed emotion is written across her face too.
No, it won’t fix everything.
But it’s certainly a start.