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The first time Monty sneaks out past the gates is after he finds out his parents didn't survive the Ark's descent.
Wick gives him a route out of the camp and a radio for when he wants to get back in, and Monty doesn’t notice much after that until he realizes his eyes are straining for the last remnants of the sunlight through the forest’s canopy. He’s half a mile from camp when he numbly observes that it probably wasn’t smart to go so far outside the camp’s perimeter alone. He thinks he should maybe be a bit concerned that he’s not bothered by that fact, but then he’s back at camp radioing to Wick and sneaking back in through Raven’s gate, so he lets himself off the hook of holding himself responsible for his own well-being and finds his way to an abandoned campfire.
Miller finds him ten minutes later on the periphery of the main section of camp, listening to the pops and crackles of the fire mix in with the background noises of so many Ark survivors still moving around in the dusk. He thrusts a metal cup into Monty’s line of view before maneuvering his way into sitting next to Monty on the log.
Monty takes the cup from him, briefly sniffing it to check the liquid, before taking a sip.
“Need to stay hydrated, even if it’s getting cooler,” Miller says casually.
Monty glances at him. He’s looking into the fire, arms resting on his kneecaps and a tin cup hanging loosely from his fingers. Monty can’t help but admire how Miller seems to be so comfortable in his own body; even in the moments he’s seen Miller furious, his body always moved with such ease and assurance, like a well-oiled machine.
Monty turns his gaze back to the fire as well. “There’s about a five percent chance that both my parents are alive.”
Miller’s silent next to him, but when Monty turns his head to look at him again, he finds Miller watching him with a solemn look on his face.
“I didn’t even think to ask about them,” Monty says, dropping his head and looking at the ground in front of them, “until today, two whole days after we got back from Mount Weather, until I heard other people talking to their parents.”
He had found his way to the guard who was apparently in charge of trying to keep track of the survivors of the Ark’s descent, and asked about the Argo station. Since it had been damaged and evacuated after Diana Sydney’s mutiny, most of the people from that station had been split between the other stations that were going to Earth, including Mecha, Alpha, and Factory.
“They’re not here in camp, so they weren’t on Mecha or Alpha,” Monty says. “And Factory...“
He trails off, then shakes his head.
“I know it’s statistically unlikely that they survived,” he continues. “But I can’t seem to mourn them, because it doesn’t feel true. I have no hard proof that they’re dead. I haven’t physically seen them since before the Sky Box, and even when I talked to them on video I assumed I was going to see them when they made it down to Earth. I just can’t accept that they’re dead because I have no evidence besides probability and lack of presence.”
Miller lays his hand on Monty’s forearm, and squeezes gently. “Staying in that limbo, not believing in the statistically likely situation, might just make it worse for you.”
Monty looks at him, sees the sincerity in his face and thinks over his words. He must stare too long, because Miller takes his hand off of Monty’s arm, shrugs, and then continues, “But everyone handles grief differently, so do what you need to do.”
“You’re the one who told all the parents about the kids that died, right?” Monty asks abruptly. Miller looks thrown at the sudden shift in conversation, or at least as thrown as Miller has ever looked. “Back when we had video connection with the Ark and they were all still up in orbit?”
“Yeah,” Miller says after a moment, a little uneasily. He’s looking back down at the cup in his hands, and Monty watches his grip tighten ever so slightly.
“How did you know what to say to them?”
“I…” Miller starts, bringing his hand up to his head like he could adjust the beanie that is no longer there. He falters for a second, then runs his hand over his face and continues, “I told them what I thought my dad would want to hear if it was me, I guess.”
Monty thinks that over for a minute, lets his eyes drift across Miller’s face, and takes in the exhaustion that seems to exude from each person Monty’s seen in the last two days.
“What would you want to hear if it was your dad?” Monty asks.
Miller closes his eyes, then looks over to Monty, remorse written on his face. “I don’t know.”
Monty doesn’t blame him for not wanting to think about it; he’s only a little bitter that Miller doesn’t have to.
--
Monty is in the middle of discussing the plants and fauna in the area surrounding Camp Jaha’s fence with Bellamy when one of the head guards approaches them with an issue.
“A girl assigned to the kitchens is refusing to give up her gun,” he tells Bellamy irritably. “One of yours.”
Since Mount Weather, Kane decided to bring Bellamy into the fold of leaders in the camp, to help make decisions with the knowledge and skills he gained from his time on the ground. Kane saw enough of the leader in Bellamy that the kids had seen before the adults came crashing to the Earth to realize his potential in keeping loyalties and swaying opinions. Unfortunately, not all of the adults could put away the prejudices of believing that Bellamy (and the other criminals sent to the ground) had “gotten away” with his crimes without punishment. Apparently you could take the people out of the failing Ark, but you couldn’t take the failings of the Ark out of the people.
No matter how hard Kane and Abby tried to convince everyone that they’re all one people, who needed to work together now more than ever, there are still comments made throughout camp about “them” and “us”. Some of the other guards have started to push off anything to do with the younger kids from Mount Weather onto Bellamy, so it’s not much of a surprise to see the disdain on this guard’s face, though whether it’s about the girl in the kitchens or Bellamy or the guard’s own lack of control, Monty’s not sure.
“Show me which one,” Bellamy says, with more restraint than the other guard showed.
The girl in the kitchen turns out to be Harper, and as soon as she sees the guard reappear in the door of the kitchens, she immediately grabs the gun laying next to her work station and pulls it in close to her body. Monty's seen that reaction so many times before, the instinct to hug your possessions so close to you like if you could fuse it to your torso to make it impossible for someone to steal it away from you, you would. The Ark had made so many desperate to protect what was theirs, even knowing that they could be one slip up, one wrong thing said to the wrong person, one action away from losing everything but the clothes on their back and gaining a whole lot of space.
But without the threat of floating, that instinct, that action, has gained a lot more power on the ground.
Monty follows the guard and Bellamy over to where Harper is watching them as they move through the crowded kitchen. When they stop in front of her, Monty can see Harper’s entire body has tensed and her eyes are trained on the older guard, and he gets a sense of deja vu back to the mountain.
Bellamy must sense something similar as well, because he follows her eyesight to the guard next to him, and then says to him, “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll give the full report to Kane when I’m done.”
It’s probably one of the politest dismissals Monty’s ever heard Bellamy make, but the guard shoots him a look of contempt anyway, before giving one last leer in Harper’s direction and then leaving the kitchens.
Harper’s shoulders don’t relax until the guard has completely disappeared from view, and even then Monty can see how white her knuckles are against the black metal where she’s still gripping her gun.
“Hey,” Bellamy says, trying to catch Harper’s attention from where it’s focused at the door. “Are you okay?”
“They can’t take it away from me! I didn’t steal it from them. It’s mine,” Harper insists, somewhat frantically.
“Okay,” Bellamy says in a kind voice, his body language and tone exuding a calming comfort and reassurance with such practice that Monty suddenly realizes how necessary Bellamy was to Octavia’s secret survival on the Ark. “It’s your gun. But you know that it’s been agreed that only guards are allowed to have guns in camp, for safety. How come you didn’t sign up for guard duty when we started training a few weeks ago?”
“I don’t…” Harper starts, glancing down at the gun in her hands, and then at the people around them. “I can’t…”
Bellamy seems to understand what she’s trying to say, though, because after a few moments of watching her, he nods decisively and says, “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. If you start coming to training tomorrow and work with Monroe to catch up on anything you’ve missed, then I’ll work on getting you reassigned to a station that has minimal movement, but still allows you to be on guard duty. Does that work?”
Harper still looks a bit shaken from the whole encounter, but she nods in agreement to Bellamy’s plan.
Bellamy reaches his hand out, but his palm barely ghosts over the curve of Harper’s shoulder, like he wanted to comfort her but at the last moment realized he never asked for her permission to touch her. He draws his hand back to his gun quickly.
“See you tomorrow morning, then,” he says, already moving to walk away.
“Bellamy!” Harper calls out to him. Bellamy stops, and then lets only his upper half of his body pivot back to their direction, his eyes downcast. When Harper speaks again, her voice is softer and more vulnerable than Monty’s heard it in a while. “Thank you.”
Bellamy’s smile in response is small, but it doesn’t quite hold the same shadow of a grimace that it has in the last few weeks, so Monty thinks maybe he’s making some progress.
After they watch Bellamy duck back out the kitchen doorway, Monty turns to Harper and quietly appraises her. Her hair’s a bit unkempt and her cuts and bruises have started to fade, but he can see the coloring under her eyes has only gotten worse and he’s not sure if she’s actually focusing on the things she looks at.
“Hey,” he says to get her attention. She stops staring at the roots and small vegetables that she had been cutting up before Monty and Bellamy interrupted, and tries to refocus on Monty. “Are you sleeping alright?”
“Are you?” she fires back defensively.
Monty raises his eyebrows and tips his head to the side in acknowledgement, because well, fair point. Still, he points out, “I’m not the one with the responsibility of a gun in my hands.”
Harper looks a little chastised, and finally relinquishes her tight hold of her gun so she can place it on the table next to the cutting area, within reach of her dominant hand. She looks around them to check if any of the other kitchen workers are going to listen in to their conversation, but if they weren’t fazed by the confrontation with the guard and Bellamy, Monty doubts they’d be the type to eavesdrop on a conversation between two friends.
“When we first got back,” Harper starts softly, picking up the knife from where she had dropped it earlier and going back to chopping, “those of us who didn’t have a family with a tent or room got put in those communal spaces inside the station.”
Monty nods. Most of the people who still had families intact were given a tent to set up on the campground, or a small room inside the station where they could sleep and keep their few belongings. Anyone who was left without a tent or a room ended up sleeping in one of the larger rooms further into the station, in a communal fashion much like they had done in the drop ship not so long ago. Monty was lucky; when he came back with the rest of the survivors, Wick had managed to find him a small two person tent that no one had claimed and helped him set it up away from the other tents on the ground. Recently, the weather has been starting to turn towards winter temperatures, but Monty still prefers the fresh stillness of the air outside to the cramped area he would have to endure to escape the cold, so he deals with it.
“I tried it for a couple of nights,” Harper continues, “but I just couldn’t deal with being inside metal again, with all the people piled in like we were locked inside again.” Harper flicks her gaze over to where Monty’s leaning against one of the other tables, and he gives her a half smile of encouragement.
“So I tried sleeping outside, even though I didn’t have a tent. Just found a spot out of the way and kept my gun close to me. But being out in the open like that, it was-- it reminded me of when I was a kid? I don't know if it ever happened in your sector, but in factory sometimes the engines would malfunction and our living quarters would be filled with heat. They always worked quickly to fix it, mostly because I think they didn't think we deserved to have any of the precious heat, and less that they were worried about us getting heatstroke. But when it happened when I was little, I would try to sleep with my blankets thrown off because I was so hot, and I would never actually fall asleep because I was afraid of not having a blanket to protect me from the monsters in the dark. I mean, I know there weren't any monsters then, but down here?"
Harper shivers, and closes her eyes for a moment, before shaking herself and getting back to her point, "I couldn't sleep inside, and I couldn't sleep out there. So I’ve just been walking around at night and catching whatever kind of sleep I can during the day."
“I have a tent?” Monty says, which he realizes sounds like more of a question than him informing her of anything. “Outside. I mean, it’s kind of small and might be a little crowded with us two, but it’s at least some kind of cover against the monsters.”
Harper stops gathering the vegetables into a bowl and looks at Monty as she thinks over his words.
“I’ll think about it,” she replies, finally.
Monty smiles encouragingly at her, and leaves to get back to his own work.
The next morning over breakfast, Monty hears about how Bellamy managed to switch Harper’s assignment from the kitchens to guard duty for the children in day care.
Later in the day, he’s sitting in his tent labeling the plants he’s been finding just outside of the fence on some scrap paper when Harper walks into it with her small knapsack slung over her shoulder, gun still in her hands but held much looser than she’d been gripping it yesterday.
“So, it looks like I’m going to be taking on some more responsibility,” she says, looking down at the gun in her hands, and then at Monty. “I was hoping the offer still stands?”
Monty smiles at her and gestures to the small amount of unclaimed material he gathered over the course of the morning to serve as a bedding for her on the other side of his tent. “Make yourself at home.”
Harper stares at her bed for a moment, and Monty is almost afraid she’s fallen asleep standing up, but then she’s moving towards the bed and sinking down onto it with a grateful expression. Monty takes a few minutes to finish up labeling one of the coordinates on his map, and then looks back up at Harper to ask her how her morning went with Monroe, only to find Harper curled up on her bed, fast asleep with her boots still on her feet, gun laid at the foot of her bed.
Monty’s felt like a monster ever since he reprogrammed the system in Mount Weather at Clarke and Bellamy’s side, but he thinks maybe being this kind of monster isn’t so bad if it can help keep Harper’s monsters at bay.
--
The second time Monty goes past the gates is right after he and Jasper speak for the first time since Mount Weather.
It goes about as well as he expects it to.
He’s been working himself up to approaching his best friend, his only family left, for a few weeks now. The fact that Jasper won’t even look at him has delayed his attempts multiple times, but living in the grey areas, the what if’s, has never been Monty’s style, so he finally goes to Jasper come what may.
“Hey,” Monty says to him, as he pushes the door open to a room inside the remains of Mecha station.
Jasper barely spares him a glance, going back to organizing the chemicals he and his father have managed to produce from the surrounding environment. The silence stretches on until Monty is sure that Jasper’s just rearranging the chemicals into new orders to avoid acknowledging him.
“I … heard about your mom,” Monty says eventually. “I’m sorry.”
Jasper’s shoulders visibly tense, and finally he turns his body so he’s looking straight at Monty.
“Sorry?” Jasper says in a low voice, his entire face as tense as the rest of his body. “Sorry? Like how you were sorry about Maya?”
Monty closes his eyes for a moment. Knowing this was coming and actually dealing with it are two different things.
“Yes,” he says, opening his eyes. “What happened to her was… awful. But we weren’t given a lot of choices in there. Just like the Ark wasn’t given a lot of choice on how to come down to Earth.”
“That is completely different. You had a choice! You knew I was so close to killing Cage. You had to see it from the control center! If you had just waited…”
“What?” Monty asks. “You would’ve killed him and then the rest of the Mountain Men would’ve strapped you to the table until you died from bone marrow extraction too? There was no best case scenario, Jasper. We did what we had to do to save our people.”
“They didn’t all deserve to die!”
“Well, neither did we!”
They’re standing in the same spots as they were when the conversation started, unwilling to move any closer. Monty watches as Jasper curls his fingers into his own hair, gripping out of desperation or despair, he’s not sure.
“Not everything is always in black and white. I know you like to think of yourself as some knight in shining armor, but there is no tale of vanquishing evil here, Jasper,” Monty says, which is possibly the harshest he’s ever been with his best friend. “Maya knew that.”
“Don’t! Don’t even say her name,” Jasper tells him fiercely. “You want to know the last thing she said to me? Huh? ‘None of us are innocent.’ Well, she was pretty fucking innocent in my eyes. And you, you, killed her.”
Jasper breathes heavily, like he’s run through the forest at full sprint. His face is transformed with the fury overtaking him, and, even though his mannerisms and his stupid goggles hanging around his neck are as familiar to Monty as the chemical composition of water, this Jasper is a stranger to him now. There’s nothing he can say to him that will take back the radiation seeping deep within Mount Weather, that will bring Maya back. He’s starting to realize there’s nothing worth more to Jasper than that now.
Monty won’t let himself feel guilty for wishing the entirety of their friendship could be worth more than a few weeks in an underground prison, so he moves to leave.
He pauses at the doorway, then says, “She was right, you know. Maya? None of us are innocent. Not in this world.”
The metal door closing after him reverberates in the silence as he leaves, resonating in his eardrums like the sound of metal drilling into bones. It stays with him until he ducks out of Raven’s gate to the darkening forest, the sounds of Earth and animals that have become familiar to him overtaking his senses.
--
Bellamy finds him the fourth time he sneaks out past the gates.
“Raven finally sold me out, huh?” Monty asks him, peering over his shoulder from his crouched position in the forest, his gathered plants spread out in front of him.
“Hate to break it to you, but you’re not actually as sneaky as you think you are,” Bellamy replies.
“I was sneaky enough the first three times.”
“Debatable,” Bellamy says. “Miller tailed you until you got back within camp boundaries.”
Monty jerks his body to turn more in Bellamy’s direction, unaware of the fact that he had been followed on his previous outings, and by Miller no less. But Bellamy ignores his movement, moving into the gentle reprimanding portion of his speech.
“Look, I get the need to be out of camp, but with the grounders’ alliance falling apart we really don’t know what to expect outside of the gates,” Bellamy starts, like he’s said this same speech too many times and now it’s just a reflex. “It’s not safe and --”
Monty shifts his eyes to Bellamy in time to see him cut himself off with a sigh, his head falling back against the tree he’s been leaning against with his eyes closed. His exhaustion is evident, which is not much of a surprise since he’s practically the only person who went through the Mount Weather experience and didn’t take any time to recover afterwards.
Monty thinks maybe it’s Bellamy’s version of penance; Clarke’s is to let it eat at her from the inside out, isolating herself from any person who she might care enough about to have to save again. Bellamy would sooner stop breathing than stop protecting those he cares about, so he spirals in the opposite direction, expanding the circle of “his people” to encompass an absurd amount.
Monty’s not sure what his own penance should look like, but it's not like either of theirs.
“Just,” Bellamy starts again, opening his eyes again and pulling Monty out of his thoughts, “take Nate with you whenever you want to come out again. Or Harper, if he’s not available. And make sure they’ve got a gun.”
Monty thinks about how he ended up in Mount Weather in the first place, getting captured in the middle of the night while alone in the forest, and the rational part of his brain agrees that it probably would be best to have someone watching his back in the forest, even if the threat of Mount Weather is no longer present. He gives Bellamy a weak two fingered salute, then turns back to organizing the plants he’s been gathering any time he comes outside the gates. He quickly packs them into the bag he brought with him, not wanting to take up any more of Bellamy’s time when it seems he’s already so busy and exhausted as it is.
“Thanks,” Monty says later as they’re on the path back to camp.
Bellamy raises his eyebrows at him, grip loose on the gun in his hands but still aware of their surroundings.
“For not saying I can’t come out anymore,” Monty clarifies. “It … it helps.”
Bellamy watches him for a few steps, before cutting his eyes away back to focus on placing his feet on the terrain. He nods, almost like an afterthought.
“Yeah,” he says. “Whatever you need, Monty.”
--
It’s a whole week before Monty gets the urge to slip outside the gates again, but he resists for a few days before he finally breaks down and goes to talk to Miller about it.
Monty knows there are many other things that should be taking precedent in his thoughts, like his working argument that he wants to present to the new camp council about exploring the terrain around them in the winter, or the one project that Raven and Wick have managed to rope him into and then sworn him to secrecy. But Monty’s brain has always worked at high speeds; the constant rapid-firing of all his synapses is part of the reason he helped Jasper mastermind developing the mind altering drugs that got them sent to the Sky Box in the first place. So it’s not hard for him to work through the rest of his duties while also chasing his stream of consciousness about Miller at the same time.
He’s not really sure how Miller knew about all the times he snuck out, or how he managed to know about his last trip to send Bellamy after him when Miller had been gone most of that day hunting with his father and a couple of other members of the delinquents. He’s been over all his interactions with Miller over the last few weeks, and he can’t think of a time where Miller had given any indication of even knowing that Monty had been leaving camp, let alone guarding him without his knowledge for the unannounced trips.
As much as he and Miller have developed a kind of friendship, he’s started to realize that it’s always been Miller approaching him, bringing an extra cup with him for Monty as he joins him in front of the nightly fires, or coming to stand just behind him at his shoulder during camp council announcements. And if, when he’s not next to him, Monty’s eyes search for Miller in the faces around him and his position tends to gravitate closer to where he finds him, he tells himself he doesn’t really notice it.
So Miller’s skeptical look, eyebrows raised, when Monty finally seeks him out after avoiding him for the past week isn’t that unexpected to him.
Miller's leaning against one of the structures they've been building inside the camp, his father's guard jacket slightly reflecting the lights of the camp. He’s got a half eaten apple in his hand, one he probably swiped from the kitchen when no one was looking since they’ve been getting less and less apples as fall has started coming to a close.
Monty waits until he’s right in front of Miller, his eyes following the sweep of Miller’s hand as he wipes away some of the juice at the edges of his mouth, to bring up what he’s been avoiding for the last week and a half.
“Bellamy told me,” he starts, and Miller doesn’t seem surprised or lost on what Monty’s referring to, so he keeps going. “I can just ask Harper to go with me from now on when she’s free, so you don’t have to follow me.”
“Why?” Miller asks, expression unchanging, and voice sounding like he’s doubting Monty’s thought process.
They both know that Harper’s station in front of the child care section has less rotation, which allows her to be scheduled there away from most of the action for all of her shifts, but also means that she has less availability during the times when Monty goes outside the gates. Miller’s shifts change regularly, since he takes shifts guarding the gates as well as on hunting expeditions, which actually makes it easier for him to barter and switch shifts with other guards. Monty suspects that, along with having Bellamy be partly in charge of guards, it’s how Miller’s been free to trail after Monty on all his times outside the gates.
“I didn’t realize you were following me those other times. I don’t want to be a burden for you to look after. So I’ll just wait on times when Harper isn’t on shift or sleeping, and you don’t have to keep track of when I sneak out anymore.”
“Fuck, Monty,” Miller says dismissively, “if you were a burden I would’ve kicked your ass after the second time I had to track you all over the damn forest.” He shoots Monty a teasing glare. “It would be helpful if you told me in advance though, so I could at least try and get better deals on trading my shifts.”
“You don’t have to--” Monty starts to protest, but Miller cuts him off, rolling his eyes at him.
“Monty, I don’t mind,” he tells him, and Monty can tell by the insistence in his voice that he actually means it, isn’t just saying it to spare Monty’s feelings. “I want to. It’s what friends are for, we look out for one another.” He shrugs.
“Yeah, friends.” Monty pauses, eyes going in and out of focus as he tries not to stare too much at Miller. “I could work around your shifts so you wouldn’t have to trade, you know, if you wanted to tell me your schedule.”
“Yeah. That could work,” Miller says around another bite of his apple, both corners of his mouth turning upwards in an amused smile.
Friends, Monty reminds himself.
--
Growing up on the Ark, Monty never really thought too hard about family and what it meant to him. His mind raced with chemical compounds and electrical wiring, his childhood filled with shadowing his parents when he wasn’t at school until he met Jasper and they became a menacing duo, using their combined brain power for more mischief than good.
While Jasper was certifiably one of the best up and coming chemists in their generation, he didn’t typically branch out into the other scientific fields, unlike Monty who often spent hours in the different sectors of the Ark that should have been spent sleeping. It was during those times he got to know people in those fields who could add to his knowledge, people like Wick in engineering, or Lila, an older woman and one of the top specialists in Tech Control on Go Sci, who took him under her wing and covered for him after his own small experiment with the gravity controls went a little out of control.
As much as Monty had considered those people friends, he’s always been the kind of person to have many acquaintances and only a few close friends. And honestly, for a majority of his life, the only person who ever really lived up to that top tier status for him had been Jasper. He’d never really considered Jasper to be like a brother, at least not based off of what he knew about siblings from the Ark’s archive of Earth films and shows, but he’s always been family to him. Even on Earth, when Monty was hurt by Jasper’s need for popularity and attention and his tendency to brush Monty off in favor of those things, he knew eventually they would go back to how they were. One of them would get mad, they’d stew for a few days, and then they’d be back to best friends by the time they needed each other to have their back once again.
After the disastrous conversation in Jasper’s room, Monty’s thoughts on his trek outside the camp had turned even more somber, with the realization that they probably wouldn’t be following that routine anymore.
Monty had lost his parents and his best friend, left essentially without family, over the course of a month.
But the more time Monty takes outside the gates, or tries to help Harper, or gives Bellamy his opinion on issues with the council and the 47, or feels Miller’s steady, silent presence at his side, the more Monty realizes his family has just taken a new shape on Earth.
He can feel it in the form of Wick trying to charm him into helping with his and Raven’s newest top secret project, in his good-natured teasing as Monty resists, because Wick lays on the charm for pretty much everything. Or in Raven telling him, “We really could use your own brand of mad scientist,” which finally convinces him, because Raven always says what she means.
It’s in waking up from a nightmare to Harper’s calming hushes, her hand gripping his tightly as he fights past the demons in his thoughts. It’s waking up instinctively just as Harper starts thrashing in her sleep, so he can do the same for her.
It’s in seeing the snow fall for the first time, and having Octavia reach for his hand and Bellamy’s simultaneously, pulling them out into the open air with her as her giddiness spreads to the others, a strange but welcome echo from their first time stepping onto the ground from the dropship.
It’s in Miller correcting him to Nate after Monty says his name to get his attention at dinner, in the brush of Nate’s shoulder against his after Monty smiles, hesitantly, and tries out the new name on his tongue.
--
By the time winter really starts to hit, most people have retreated into the metal remains of the Ark and the few wooden structures they had managed to build with Lincoln’s instruction in the short time before the cold weather got too bad.
The days have shortened due to the rising and setting of the sun being closer together, which is an entirely new concept for the Sky people, having lived on a set schedule the entire time they were on the Ark. Still, Monty, and consequently Nate, have refused to let the seasonal schedule interrupt their outings beyond the gate, despite multiple protestations from Abby and Kane. When they had approached Bellamy about it, he had exhaled heavily, his eyes on the woods, and just told them to be extra careful.
So Monty and Nate only adjust their schedules a little to at least try to go out with some light to ease Bellamy’s worries, and ignore the disapproving looks the older adults send their way as they leave each time. Monty’s pretty sure these interactions alone are a good indication of where the Ark adults and former delinquents stand in relation to one another, even after Mount Weather and working together to prepare the camp for winter.
Lincoln’s been monumental in their understanding of the seasons on Earth, and it’s only because of him that they know they’re almost halfway through winter, at which point the days will start lengthening again. So, even though Monty’s shifted his timing as much as he could within Nate’s schedule, they still find themselves out past the gates in the darkness multiple times.
Monty’s actually lost track of the amount of times he’s gone outside the gates now, which is surprising since he’s good with numbers. He’s started to think of his trips less as an escape from camp, though that part still remains true, and more as time he gets to spend with Nate.
Nate isn’t the most talkative person, which is different from Monty’s friendships in the past, (Monty tries not to think about how his go to comparison for friendship is still Jasper) so when he does start a conversation on one of their treks, Monty usually tries to delay their return back to camp for as long as he can.
It’s on one of the shortest days they’ve had this winter that Nate stops at the top of the hill where Monty can still find some medicinal roots, even in the face of snow and frost. From this vantage point, they can see Camp Jaha, as well as the area where the grounders had set up camp while Monty and the rest of the 47 had still been in Mount Weather.
“Do you think she’s okay?” Nate asks suddenly.
Monty glances up quickly from where he’s been digging some roots out of the mostly frozen ground. He takes his time wrapping what he’s managed to salvage in some cloth and putting it in his makeshift bag from camp, the edges fraying from Monty untying and retying it so often on these trips, before he walks over to where Nate is leaning against a large boulder. His eyes are on the spot where the grounders had been so long ago, the pillar where Finn was held long gone, but the clearing where it stood still visible.
The story of what happened with Finn had eventually made the rounds among those who had been in Mount Weather, the first explanation told by Monroe and then spread just by word of mouth by the other former delinquents.
Even now, so long after she had left, Clarke remains a topic that most people purposely avoid, not because she’s been forgotten, but because, well, what could anyone really say? That Nate, who is the kind of person who focuses on only the present, is the one to bring her up-- well, Monty’s surprised to say the least.
“I don’t know,” Monty says, honestly. He’s quiet, as he thinks about where Clarke might be, if she’s even surviving the winter without help from someone who’s been through it before. He thinks about how Bellamy is probably worrying about the same thing, on top of everything else at camp, and murmurs, “Are any of us really okay?”
Monty’s eyes are still on the spot where Finn died, or at least where he thinks Finn died. He thinks about how at least they’re more okay than Finn at this point, that they can literally see proof of their life in the cold air as they breath in and out. Then again, he wonders if Finn’s better off now than when he was tied to that pillar, when his heart was still beating, his conscience still murky with the choices he made.
Monty sucks in a breath, the sharpness of the winter air sending a shockwave through him, like his body knows he needs a reminder that he’s still alive.
Nate looks at him curiously, his way of prompting him without words to talk about whatever’s going on in his head.
“I just … I keep thinking about everything that we’ve gone through, the things that happened to us, the things we’ve done to other people. How does anyone survive it? How does anyone survive themselves? How do we keep going?”
Monty can see out of the corner of his eye Nate watching him for a few moments, before he turns to look back out towards the open fields again.
“Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?” Nate’s voice is quiet but sure, as he recites the words. “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.”
This time it’s Monty who turns to stare at Nate. He’s sure his expression is some sort of mixture of surprise or awe or … well, he hopes that’s all that he’s revealing.
Nate looks to see his reaction, his mouth quirking to the side and eyebrows raising, as he nods like he was expecting whatever’s actually showing on Monty’s face. “I know. No one ever expects the thief to know Shakespeare.”
Monty never really paid a ton of attention during Earth Classics while in school; he would let his mind wander over the complicated solutions he was trying for whatever new scientific project he had going on at the time instead. He doesn’t really have to fake his ignorance when he asks, “Shakespeare?”
Nate looks at him suspiciously, like he’s trying to figure out if Monty’s messing with him, but must see the sincerity in Monty’s unfamiliarity, because his face breaks out into a large smile.
“Yeah, it’s from Hamlet,” he explains. “He’s wondering why someone would continue to suffer the pains of being alive, the things that happen to us, when they could just end that suffering with death, with that final sleep. He realizes that it’s because we don’t know what comes after death, no one knows. And it’s the not knowing that stops us from taking that final action, makes us bear what happens to us in this realm of the living.”
The tips of Nate’s ears are a little red, and Monty’s not sure if it’s because they’ve been out so long in the cold, or if he’s just so unused to speaking about this thing that he loves to someone else, like maybe it’s been a secret of his since even before Earth. Despite the cold, Monty’s chest feels warm at the thought that he gets to experience this side of Nate.
“Sounds like Shakespeare’s got all the answers,” Monty says, impressed. “Maybe I should’ve listened more during Classics.”
“I’m not sure I can give you any other answers,” Nate says almost apologetically, looking up into the night sky.
Monty watches each small cloud of fog form in front of him as he exhales, the water molecules from his breath forcibly and rapidly condensing as they hit the cold air each time he breathes. He thinks of Clarke and Bellamy and their self-imposed penances, of how Harper’s progress seems to reset anytime she has a particularly rough night, of not really knowing who he is anymore, only knowing that he’s not the same Monty he has been for most of his life.
“I don’t think any of us have answers,” Monty says slowly, like it’s a revelation he’s having. Then, “I’m not sure any of us even have questions.”
--
Lincoln tells the camp council that he estimates the halfway point of winter will be sometime in the next couple of days, and so the days will start to get longer soon. He also tells of the tradition his people have of celebrating having made it halfway through the winter, signified by a small feast and giving small gifts to their loved ones. The concept of the holidays had endured even on the Ark, and so the people of Camp Jaha are quick to put together a celebration to combine the two traditions.
Since there’s not an abundance of trinkets or extra rations of necessities to go around, most of the Sky people are going into the celebration with the understanding that there won’t be a lot of physical gift giving to one another. Monty’s not that worried, if only because even back on the Ark when it was possible for him to find some kind of gift for his loved ones, he only ever really exchanged with his parents and Jasper. He’s not really expecting anything on Earth.
Which is why he’s unprepared when Nate shows up in Wick and Raven’s work room where Monty’s been hiding out during the celebration, gift in hand.
“Happy ‘we’re still alive in the middle of a miserable winter’ day,” Nate says dryly, tossing him the unwrapped gift.
Monty catches it and can tell it’s a bag, similar to the makeshift pack he’s been using on his trips to gather the herbs, roots, and plants outside the gates. As he turns it in his hands, he notices that it’s much nicer than the one he haphazardly made for himself from leftover scrap material from the Ark stations. This one is made of furs from animals they’ve hunted while on the ground, and has a double latching mechanism that he’s sure either Wick or Raven made, which honestly is a much better way to secure the bag than the way he’s been tying his pack closed until now. There’s even a strap attached to it so he can carry it and still have use of both his hands.
“I noticed how lousy your bag was getting on our trips, so I kept swiping any furs we weren’t going to use for clothes and got Bellamy to help me stitch it into a bag,” Nate says shyly. Monty can see his one hand scratching the back of his neck, while the other gestures around uselessly as he talks. It’s the most awkward and uncoordinated Monty’s seen him since he’s known him. “Wick made the design for the clasps and Reyes worked her magic to make sure the designs actually worked.”
Monty still can’t form a response, running his hands over the soft mismatched furs and the small, even stitches. The construction of the different parts of the bag would have taken much longer than a week, not to mention how long it must have taken Nate to have subtly swiped the furs so no one would notice the amount of material missing. He would have had to have started this project much earlier than the announcement of the celebration this week.
“Thank you,” Monty manages, finally looking up. “I … I don’t have anything for you.” He feels a sudden weight of guilt, because he didn’t expect this, but he really should have thought to get something for Nate. He’s been going out of his way to make sure Monty can still go outside the gates, working around his schedule and watching his back. The least Monty could do would be to have found some kind of gift for him.
“I don’t need anything,” Nate says dismissively. “But you like it?”
“It’s amazing,” Monty breathes, looking back down at the gift in awe.
“Good.”
Nate’s smile is wide, the kind where his eyes crinkle, and Monty feels like he’s been given a second gift. His brain starts whirring with all the possibilities of what the perfect gift for Nathan Miller might look like.
--
Even with the days becoming longer again, the cold is still pretty brutal, so while the prospect of warmth from large fires outside is enticing, most of the people at camp still prefer to stay inside the station to avoid the wind. There are only a few, Monty included, who stay outdoors in tents and among the elements through winter, so when someone sits down next to him at one of the fires, he turns assuming it’s probably Harper or Nate, mouth open to start a greeting.
When he sees Jasper there instead, staring steadily into the flames, his mouth shuts with an almost audible snap.
He’s pretty sure he’s not going to like whatever Jasper has to say to him after over a month of not speaking to him, so he turns back to the fire and waits. If Jasper wants to talk to him, he’ll have to be the one to start the conversation.
He doesn’t wait long.
“You know, whenever I had a problem I couldn’t solve, the first person I always went to for help was you,” Jasper tells him, voice low. “And so here I am, unable to figure something out, and my first instinct is to find you and ask for your advice.”
Monty breathes in, and breathes out.
“I want to… I don’t know how to-- to not have you in my life,” Jasper says haltingly. “But I don’t know how to forgive you. I want to not hate you for Maya, but.. I’m still so fucking angry. So I’m here to ask you, how do I do it?”
Jasper’s looking to him with a combination of desperation and hope, and Monty can imagine a hundred different scenarios of what he could say to him, of how he could make this better for Jasper, but maybe not necessarily better for him. So, instead, he just tells Jasper the truth.
“I don’t know,” Monty says to him finally. “I just know none of us can stay stuck in the past, we have to keep moving forward. I’m just doing the best I can with that.”
He watches as Jasper’s face falls slightly, his shoulders slumping in disappointment that Monty can’t produce some miracle answer for him like he has in the past. Monty stands up, ready to be done with the conversation before either of them can say anything hurtful to one another.
“Monty,” Jasper calls to him as Monty starts to walk away. Monty stops, but doesn’t turn around. “I’m sorry about your parents.”
Monty dips his head, then continues on his way to his tent.
--
Monty walks into his tent one morning to find Harper slowly putting most of her belongings in the pack she had brought her things in when she first moved in. He stops short just inside the entrance to the tent, the flap still partly open and letting in some of the freezing wind they’re still experiencing.
“You’re leaving?” he asks.
Harper looks up, and gives him a hesitant smile. “Yeah, um. Monroe decided to move back out into a tent before the rest of the families start to once spring hits, and she, uh, she asked if I would share with her.”
Harper has a blush on her cheeks that Monty is absolutely sure has nothing to do with the cold outside, and everything to do with how close she and Monroe have gotten over the course of the winter. What started as a mentoring relationship for catching up on guard training had turned into a friendship between the two girls and, Monty suspects, something probably beyond friendship.
“I’m happy for you,” he tells her. And he is, she deserves to be happy with someone who will be there for her when she needs them, and he really thinks Monroe can be that for her. It’ll be a little strange to go back to living alone again, waking up from nightmares without someone with a shared experience there with him, but he managed before. He can do it again.
“Thanks,” Harper says, finishing her packing. Then, as if she had heard his thoughts, “I asked Miller if he might want to move in with you since I’m no longer taking up the other half. He’s been complaining about being with his dad, so I told him he should talk to you.”
Harper smirks at him, and he’s still gaping at her as she brushes past him out the tent.
He doesn’t know how long he stands in that exact place, looking around his tent without any clue how to handle the new situation he finds himself in, but he knows at least some time has passed when someone bumps into him as they try to enter the tent behind him. He shifts further into his tent to allow for the person to enter, and when he turns around he’s not shocked to see that it’s Nate.
“Hey,” Nate says, in that nonchalant way he has of acknowledging someone.
“Hi,” Monty smiles nervously, which is ridiculous, because he and Nate have become good friends. He really shouldn’t be nervous, even if this is the first time Nate’s ever been in his tent, and now they’re in here, alone.
“I talked to Harper,” Nate says. “She said you might have an open spot for me to stay? I love my dad, but I need to move. We’ll be better if I can find somewhere else to live.”
“Yeah, I mean it’s kind of tight in here,” Monty says, looking around the smaller tent. “But you’re welcome to take her place if you want.”
“Thanks,” Nate smiles, and somehow that jogs Monty’s memory.
“Oh, I have something for you,” Monty tells him.
He walks over to his belongings by his bed and pulls out the gift, and turns to find that Nate has come further into the tent so he doesn’t have to walk too far to hand the book over to him. “I know it’s way past mid-winter celebration, but I wanted to give you a gift, too. I asked Bellamy and Octavia to keep an eye out for this when they went on their short scavenging trips.”
Nate runs his hands reverently over the cover of the book, which is actually pretty intact, a dark red hardcover with discolored gold imprint on the front cover in a decorative fashion. He opens the book and leafs through the first couple of pages to see the slightly faded black ink of the title of the first play. When he looks back up at Monty, his face is full of wonder.
“I guess it’s pretty lucky Shakespeare was a popular guy among the original grounders too, because Bellamy said he found this collection in one of the first bunkers he checked. It’s still kind of late, I know, because it was a while before Bellamy could go on one of his scavenging trips, but--”
He’s still talking as he watches Nate place the book delicately on Monty’s bed and walk deliberately towards him, until he’s right in front of him. Monty stutters over his words as Nate’s hands come up to frame his face and then Monty can’t talk anymore because Nate’s lips are on his, and--
His brain stops whirring at top speed, and that in itself is such a new experience he doesn’t know if his sharp intake of breath is because of that or the fact that Nate is kissing him. He gets his brain working again enough to tell his lips to start kissing back, but Nate’s pulling back slightly to look at him.
“So,” Monty says, a little breathless, “you still want to move in?”
“Nah,” Nate says, his upper lip twitching slightly like it does when he’s being sarcastic. “I like having to work extra hard for things.”
He leans in to kiss Monty again, then pulls back and says, “I’ll go grab my stuff,” and Monty is left alone in his tent again, only slightly bewildered as to what just happened.
--
The remnants of winter have just started to disappear with the approach of spring when Bellamy asks Monty if he would be willing to go on a mission to see Luna’s settlement. Octavia has apparently managed to convince him to see if relocating near the peaceful clan could be a possibility, and Monty can understand why Octavia has been adamant about exploring this course of action. She and Lincoln haven’t been the only ones itching to escape the borders of the camp, both physically and socially.
Unfortunately, with Lincoln abandoning Trikru and unwilling to camp within their terrain without protection, they’ve had to stay with Camp Jaha through the winter, only taking short trips in the opposite direction of most Trikru settlements when the friction became too palpable. Now that spring is here, they seem set on the long trek towards the ocean.
“I’m willing to see if it’s feasible for us and if it would guarantee us peace, without fear of the other clans. But I’d like you to come with, to look at the possible area if they grant us land and see what kind of vegetation and living conditions we might have,” Bellamy explains.
Monty agrees, because it’s Bellamy and of course he’ll do that. It’s not until later that evening that he finds out Bellamy has asked Nate to stay in the camp and hold his place on council and guard matters while he’s gone.
“I don’t like that I can’t go with,” Nate tells him the next morning, as he watches Monty pack some essentials into the bag he had given him at mid-winter.
“You know Bellamy trusts you to have our back with guard and council stuff while he’s gone,” Monty reminds him, although he also doesn’t like that he’ll be gone for so long without Nate there to watch his back.
Nate hums in unhappy agreement.
“We’ll be back before you know it,” Monty says reassuringly.
Nate walks him to the gate where Bellamy, Octavia, and Lincoln are gathered just outside with their things, talking briefly about the best route to get to Luna’s settlement.
He stops Monty before they reach the group, and gives him a long kiss. When he pulls back, he tells him fondly, “Don’t die,” and then pushes him towards the group.
“Parting is such sweet sorrow,” Monty tells him with a smile, still walking backwards. He watches as Nate smiles back almost involuntarily, before Monty turns and walks outside the gates of Camp Jaha, once again.