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They’ve gathered in the large room on the outer side of the Ring where Bellamy has pulled two long, metal tables together for everyone to sit. Emori looks down, at her hands, at the ground, otherwise she’d just be looking at everything. This entire structure, this great building in the sky, is tech. More tech than she’s ever seen. She feels foolish staring at it in front of the Sky People, but it’s hard not to be amazed.
Bellamy stands at the head of the table, frowning. “Where’s Echo?”
Everyone looks around at each other, shaking heads and shrugging.
“Haven’t seen her,” Raven says, unbothered. “So what?”
Bellamy sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “So, this is important,” he insists. “I want everyone to be here. It’s not fair if we leave Echo out.”
It’s been a few days since they arrived, and Bellamy wants to set up rules. When to eat, when to sleep, who does what work and when. On principle, Emori resents this. She’s not used to being told what to do, never needed anyone telling her anything to keep surviving, but she supposes she sees why having a system here would be good. They’ll have to learn to rely on each other, up here.
Harper sighs quietly, pushing away from the table. “I’ll go look for her.”
“Actually, we’re all going to look for her,” Bellamy says, staring the rest of them down. It isn’t a suggestion.
Murphy groans. “I just sat down,” he whines, slouching in his chair.
“We’ll find her faster if we split up, work together,” Bellamy counters, already heading for the door. “Meet back here when you find her.”
His footsteps are loud on the metal floor. He’s upset. He wants control. He misses Clarke, and Octavia. Might be easier to feel bad for him if he wasn’t such an asshole.
Murphy blows air out of his mouth, puffing up his cheeks. “Awesome. Can’t wait for the next five years of this.”
Raven snorts and rolls her eyes at him. “Come on, Murphy. Be a team player,” she teases as the rest of them begrudgingly stand up, ready to search. Not many places she could be, really. It will go faster with all of them searching.
Murphy smiles, more of a grimace, and rises to his feet as well. “Not exactly my strong suit, but I’ll give it my best.”
They scatter in different directions. Emori pauses in front of the big room to think for a moment, and then her feet are taking her to her destination before she even realizes where she’s going.
Emori finds Echo curled into a tight ball, sitting pressed against the round window hidden back in this dark part of the Ring, one of the few somewhat obscured places here that still has a view. Tears shine on her cheeks in her reflection on the glass, the glow of the planet below casting her in a pale, sickly light.
“Hey,” Emori greets her quietly, looking away because this pain feels very private and she has absolutely no idea what to say, if she should even say anything. She settles for sitting down nearby, propped up against the wall.
Echo does not speak, just sniffs and sighs, fresh tears rolling down her face before she brushes away them on the tops of her knees. Strange, tight black trousers. Clothes from the skeleton of Skaikru’s old house, floating abandoned among the stars, left behind here by people who are probably dead. Emori wears them too. They sit together in the not-silence, because it turns out that living in the sky is very loud, all the time. The Ring hums and growls like a living creature, holding them all in its echoing, hollow body.
Of course Echo would be here. You can see Earth perfectly from this window, right now.
“I don’t want to assume,” Emori begins, pulling at a stray thread on her glove. “But if anyone up here could understand what you’re going through, it’s probably me.”
She glances at Echo, then lets her gaze linger. The warrior has turned to look at her too, cheek resting on her knee, two burning bright Earth spots reflected in each of her brown eyes. Despite the tears, her face is smooth and calm, the occasional twitch of her brow the only betrayal of the emotion Emori walked in on.
“I am not like you,” Echo croaks in Trigedasleng, breaking their eye contact to look out the window again, a fresh tear streaking down her cheek before she can brush it away.
Emori scoffs, then laughs bitterly. Of course, she has to deal with this. Why should Echo saving her life mean anything? Maybe it was naïve of her to think her mutation wouldn’t matter in this place, that Echo might understand. Anger rushes hot under her skin.
“I was just trying to help you,” she continues in the warrior language, the language of the stranger, of enemies. “But I guess you don’t want help from someone like me.”
Echo’s eyes widen and she shocks Emori by reaching out and gripping her wrist, holding tightly. Not to hurt, just to hold. To touch her, close to her hand but not there, because she’s sensitive about it. The intimacy of it is electrifying.
“I’m sorry,” she says, voice low and serious. “That’s not what I meant, I swear.”
“Then say it,” Emori growls, ripping her wrist free of Echo’s grasp and reflexively pulling her glove into her chest. Heat blooms on her cheeks at being so defensive, but she wasn’t just Azgeda; Echo was a part of the Queen’s guard, and then the King’s. It feels fair to assume she would hate Frikdreina, even if she was banished herself.
Echo’s brown eyes jump back and forth between Emori’s before she looks away, out at the planet simmering in the distance. She draws a deep, shaking breath, then releases it slowly, closing her eyes.
“I know how to survive among the trees,” she begins quietly in their language. “And the mountains, and the prairie, and the sand. In any village in the Coalition, I knew how to make myself useful, how to become one of them.”
Her eyes open again, and she looks at Emori, gesturing around them. “I do not know anything about machines,” she confesses, casting her eyes to the ground. Not like Emori, then. “I know metal from the inside of the Mountain, inside of the cage. I’ve never even seen a boat like yours before we crossed the sea to the bunker, and then we were in a rocket and now we live inside of a machine.”
Emori nods, heart rate picking up. She’s going to name it, that clawing hunger they both feel inside, the howling that lingers behind every thought, every moment.
“The walls and floor are hard and cold, there’s always, always noise,” Echo continues, voice tight. “No one likes me, no one trusts me, and I wouldn’t know how to help run things even if I tried. I’m useless. It wouldn’t matter so much, my banishment, if I were on the ground. At least there I could fend for myself, live with the land until I found somewhere to stay. But now the ground…”
Tears well up in her eyes, and she bites her lip. “The ground is gone. I cannot smell the trees, I cannot hear the rivers, I cannot touch the dirt under my feet. This noisy air is a lie. There will be no snow, or rain, or a light breeze, or a cloudy day for five years,” Echo’s voice trembles and lapses into whisper, her forehead now resting on the window, fingers tracing patterns over the glass. Longer than five years, actually, if they can’t figure out how to get back down. But Emori doesn’t say that.
Instead, she closes her eyes. Compared to the desert or stealing and starving in the woods with John, being on the Ring for the past few days has actually been kind of nice, from her perspective. They didn’t have to run anymore, they were just safe, and they would be for years. It’s so dizzying, the enormity of this idea, that it dries her mouth to think about it for too long.
It’s only a matter of time, though, before she feels the way Echo does, before grief and longing for the place they left behind begins to settle in. The air she misses already, especially after they all almost choked to death on arrival.
“What if it’s gone forever?” Echo interrupts her thoughts, tone flat and face stony. “What if the ground is dead? Why am I-“ she stops, eyes flicking to Emori, apprehensive.
Emori nods, encouraging. Each second that passes, the others are getting closer to finding them. The time they have to themselves is limited and slipping away, and Emori needs to hear what Echo is going to say.
“Why am I here? Why should I live, while the ground dies?” she continues, chin trembling. “What’s the point?”
Echo really isn’t like Emori; she actually had things to lose, and she lost them all at once, right after the other. The loss is real, and obvious, because there’s no way she would be saying any of this to Emori if it weren’t true. She has nothing left to lose in being vulnerable.
Emori sniffs, thinking. How many times has she wondered the same thing to herself, alone out in the cold sand with Otan, rejected and despised by their family, their clan? How many times has she wondered if maybe they were right, that she should just disappear, that her life has no value? What makes things worth surviving for?
“You find new things that matter,” she settles on at last, holding Echo in her gaze in a way that feels almost defiant. “Or you make them. You decide what your life is worth, and then you claim it, because now there’s nothing anyone can do to stop you.”
It takes Emori a moment to process what she just said herself, but once she does, she knows she believes it. Echo simply stares at her, lips slightly parted and eyes jumping back and forth between Emori’s, searching for something.
Before Emori can say or do anything else, she hears the stomp of Bellamy’s boots on the metal and he appears, catching himself on the corner and leaning toward them both.
“Oh, there you are,” he says, clipped and awkward, visibly aware that he has interrupted something significant. He addresses Emori. “I told you to come back when you found her.”
Echo’s face closes off immediately, and a bitter little smile twists her mouth. “Had the whole crew looking for me, huh?”
“We’ll be right there,” Emori replies a little harshly, widening her eyes at Bellamy to get him to fuck off. “Just-“
“No,” Echo interrupts her, rising in one fluid movement and swiping at her eyes one last time. “It’s fine.”
Bellamy looks at them both, a little bewildered, then nods and leaves, mind always moving toward what’s next. His feet stomp away, and for just a moment, they’re alone again.
“I am grateful it was you that found me,” Echo says quietly, oddly soft. She looks like she’s ready to take flight and follow Bellamy down the hall, muscles coiled tight.
“Me too,” Emori agrees, tilting her head for Echo to follow her as she heads for the meeting room. They walk the whole way next to each other, each silent and thinking.
It might be nice, to have a friend up here. Someone to spend time with other than John, anyway. Five years is a long time, and so is a lifetime if they never find a way to get back down. There’s no reason not to try and make peace with Echo, and every reason she should, so why not? This is an opportunity for them both to make new lives, far away from the things that hurt them before.
Bellamy nods as they walk in, and once Harper and Raven return and join the rest of them, he starts talking. Echo catches Emori’s eye from across the table as they sit down and gives her a little smile, like they have a secret, which makes Emori’s cheeks burn again, only not in anger this time.
This time she’s not sure what she’s feeling, only that it feels precious, like a seed in the dirt, reaching out into the world with one delicate green tendril. They may be far away from the ground, but things can still grow here. As Bellamy talks and exchanges questions with the group, Emori looks around at these people, people she will build a life with. What will they grow, together?