xiv. it's all blueberries
✧】xiv. it's all blueberries 【✧
[ day trip ]
"MONTY!"
CLARKE SUDDENLY appears from within the dropship, looking like she hasn't slept in days. All things considered, she probably hasn't. Amery jumps away from Monty, face flushed, heart beating in the uneven rhythm of a faulty transmitter.
Can I kiss you?
The question mixes with the remnants of Monty's breath, the words and the warm air burrowing deep into Amery's skin and crowding her thoughts like overgrown weeds. Snap out of it. She shakes her head once, sharply, turning to face Clarke. Even sleep-deprived and fresh out of life-saving medical procedures, her hair is loose and tied back with two small braids, and she somehow manages to retain some semblance of authority.
"Clarke," Amery acknowledges as she comes to a stop right between Monty and Amery. If the girl picks up on anything, the tension somehow stifling and loose at all at once in the space between Amery and the boy who just asked to kiss her, she doesn't say anything. Amery's thankful for that.
"Hey," Clarke says, exhaustion evident even in her voice. She smiles weakly at Monty, brow raised in question.
"It's up," Monty says, and Clarke sighs in relief, shoulders going slack, empty air like a tangible lifted weight. "I think Jaha wants to talk to you."
"Oh, thank you. Thank you. You're the best, both of you."
She moves to enter the comms tent, but Amery impulsively catches her with a hand on her elbow, unsure even as she acts of what she's going to say. Clarke turns and raises a brow in question.
"Just—I wanted to thank you," Amery blurts, face flushing. "For what you did for Cash. And Finn. Really. You're...thanks, Clarke."
Amery gulps. It's not something she'd usually make a point to say to someone, at least out loud—thank you. But Clarke is the reason Cash and Finn are still breathing. Amery can give her this much.
Monty nods emphatically. Clarke draws her lips into a tight line, nodding slightly.
"Least I could do," she says, and then disappears into the tent.
Monty turns back to Amery, flushed red. He opens his mouth, closes it, does it again like he's not sure what to do know that the line's been crossed, whether he should frantically backtrack or try to salvage it or just pretend it never happened. Amery wants to say something to wipe that panicked expression off his face, but it's like she has no words, either, all of them buried in her chest beneath the words Can I kiss you? and the memory of his breath tangling with hers.
Finally, Monty says, "I'm sorry if—"
"No," Amery cuts him off. "No, it's—"
"Amery?"
Keaton materializes seemingly out of nowhere, standing awkwardly a few feet away. Amery freezes.
Like Clarke, Keaton looks exhausted. But this is a different kind of exhausted—not the kind Clarke carries, with the burden of conflicting leadership heavy upon her shoulders, the pressure of lives hanging in the balance. This exhaustion, Keaton's exhaustion, is quiet and heartbreaking, sunken eyes and pinched brows and the portrait of someone who doesn't know what to do, someone whose heart and will are both so drained they've finally run out of options.
She hates the sight of him like this. Her best friend hurting.
"Keaton," she murmurs.
"I—" Keaton glances at Monty, the corner of his mouth tugging up halfheartedly in a smile. "I, uh—can we talk?"
Amery shifts her weight, glancing back at Monty. He nods without hesitation.
"Monty," Amery starts, but he just smiles. That stupidly soft little smile that sends her heart fluttering like pollen in the wind. And Amery wants to finish her sentence. Wants to say No, it's okay. I wanted to.
I want to.
Keaton clears his throat. "If this is a bad time—"
But Monty just smiles his little smile with an encouraging nod in Keaton's direction and says, "Go."
Before Amery can protest, he's turned around, headed toward where Jasper is popping handfuls of nuts into his mouth with a stupidly wide grin, and Keaton has closed the distance between them. His gaze darts to the comms tent and back to Amery. "Not here. C'mon."
Even at night, the camp buzzes with activity as Amery trails Keaton to a quieter stretch near the treeline. Campers skin animals from the hunting crews, others clean off seats pulled from the dropship walls, all overlaid with the sounds of banter and even... joy, maybe, something new, forged from unfamiliar earth and a stilted sense of freedom from the sky.
Face to face with her best friend, Amery bites the inside of her cheek and fights to maintain eye contact. She's wanted to talk to him, to fix this, but now that she's here the only thing she wants to do is run.
"I, um." Keaton licks his lips as he breaks eye contact, breathes out heavily, and then once again meets Amery's eyes. "I talked to Cash."
Amery says nothing, trying to hide the way her fingers drum anxiously against one another behind her back, but she knows Keaton notices. He always does.
"He—I fucked up, Mer. I fucked up so bad. I was worried," he whispers, voice cracking, "about Cash, and that's not an excuse—everything was building up and I took it out on you and you are the last person who deserves it." He swallows hard.
She should say something, but she doesn't. Any words stick in her throat against her will, caught up in guilt-coated brambles. Eventually, Keaton fills the thick silence again.
"Cash jumped in front of you and that was his choice. And God, Mer, I want you down here. I'm so fucking glad you decided to be a space ninja, okay? I can't—I don't know what I'd do if you weren't here."
Amery shrugs, looking at the ground. "It's okay."
"It's not," Keaton insists. "It's not okay at all, but I'm sorry. And I'm going to do better."
He reaches out a hand and lifts Amery's chin, forcing her to meet his eyes—worried, anxious. Amery gives him a half-smile.
"Are we okay?" Keaton whispers.
"We're okay." Amery breathes out. "I get it. I know you care about Cash. I do too. And this hasn't been easy on anyone." She shrugs.
Keaton's eyes get a little sad, then, and he glances away.
"What?"
"It's just," Keaton sighs, biting his lip, "I don't know if—I don't know what I would do without him. Cash, I mean. And I don't know what I'd do without you. I'm just—I'm so fucking scared of losing you guys."
"I'm scared, too," she whispers. Keaton's expression instantly sobers. "Of... losing you."
She casts her gaze to the ground, a maze of packed dirt and weeds and grass that's somehow managed to spring up through the cracks in the earth. Keaton tilts her chin up, his skin warm, eyes soft, and she suddenly can't recall how she made it through those years without him by her side.
"Amery, I'm so sorry," Keaton whispers. "And I'm sorry I was acting—I mean, about Wells—I know you lost him, too. And not just him. I mean, this shit sucks. For all of us." In Keaton's eyes, Amery sees the traces of his internal warfare, the battles he's fighting in his own mind. Familiar battles, the same ones she's endured night after night, blades stained with guilt and insecurity instead of blood.
Keaton is right. The brutality of the last few days has been hard on everyone. This camp is divided enough already.
So in response, Amery takes a step forward and wraps her arms around her best friend, burying her face in his shoulder.
"We're good?" Keaton murmurs into her hair. She nods against his chest.
"We always will be."
About five seconds pass in a comfortable silence before Keaton says, "So did I interrupt a public display of affection?"
Amery shoves him back, glaring up at him, and Keaton just grins, laughing through his teeth.
They're good.
✧✧✧
Monty tosses a nut into the air and grins victoriously as it lands in Jasper's open mouth, both boys behind the ration table and clearly having been attempting to do this for quite some time. The boys each raise one hand and high-five themselves with the other, both with the practiced ease of someone who's done that embarrassingly often.
"Productive," Amery muses, and Monty's head snaps up at the sound of her voice. He flushes red, the color deepening the tan of his skin—he's gotten darker since landing on the Ground. They all have. His deep brown eyes flicker between Amery and the open space behind her, like he isn't sure whether he should make eye contact, and Amery offers him a sheepish smile that she hopes is somewhat reassuring.
They haven't spoken since the events of last night, not that they've had much of a chance to—this morning, Miller taught her the basics of using a dagger, and she's the kind of exhausted that runs bone-deep. The fact that she lost so much sleep worrying about the Monty situation probably didn't help.
"You know us," Jasper says as he chews on the nut, blissfully oblivious to the charged air between Amery and Monty. Goggles absent from his head of messy hair, Jasper grabs a pack of rations and throws them unceremoniously at Amery's face. They hit her in the nose before falling into her open hands.
"Thank you for that," she says dryly. Jasper flashes her a charming smile.
"Jobi nuts," he says. "Jasper's newest variety."
Amery smiles at Jasper, though her eyes linger on Monty's for a moment. But it's too much. All of it. Monty and his soft eyes and unanswered questions and Jasper's boundless energy and the buzz of camp and the smell of wood burning and meat cooking and she needs to get away, just for a minute.
"See you," she murmurs half-heartedly before beelining for her tent, finding it blissfully empty. Harper and Zoe must be in line waiting to speak to their families. She knows Miller had to break the news to a few parents about their kids today, and all morning people have been filing in and out of the comms tent in varying states of joy, relief, and a numb sort of detachment. Amery collapses onto a sleeping bag and sighs deeply, empathizing with the latter—she's not sure she has the energy to feel much more than numb right now.
Her ankle sings in relief. It feels good to take weight off of it. By now, Amery knows it's nothing bad, nothing too hindering or permanent. Miller wouldn't keep teaching her if it was. But it's annoying, a tangible reminder that even when everything seems okay, something is off.
After a moment of staring at the light pushing through the orange tent canvas, Amery sits up and tears open the bag of nuts. She hasn't seen this kind before, but Jasper was eating them like candy, so they can't be all that bad. She starts popping them absently into her mouth.
They don't taste like anything Amery's experienced before—a little salty, a little sweet, and... something else. A strange aftertaste fills her mouth, but hunger beats curiosity today. She doesn't remember the last time she ate.
For a food as light as the nuts, the seem to sit heavily in her stomach, and before she knows it her eyes are fluttering closed. Unlike many previous nights, she does not dream of Wells, of Murphy, of Charlotte, Atom's blistered body on the ground, her father looking at her from behind glass doors.
This time, her eyes don't stay closed long enough to allow for nightmares.
"Amery!"
The voice is male, older, laced with the sort of quiet authority Amery only associates with one person. She sits straight up, eyes wide, and comes face-to-face with Jacapo Sinclair.
"Sinclair," she breathes.
Immediately, Amery knows something is off. She just spoke to Sinclair on-screen last night, after all, and if anyone else landed on the Ground, the entire camp would know. But her frantically rationalizing train of thought is derailed by the floods of absolute relief washing over her just at the sight of his face.
"I just saw you on the screen, what—how did nobody see—why are you—?" Amery doesn't know whether to shout for joy or run to hug him or cry.
She doesn't have too long to think about it, because then she notices the way Sinclair's fists are clenched at his sides, the way his brows furrow in rarely-seen anger.
He raises a slow, shaking finger, and jabs it at Amery in the air.
"You."
Amery scrambles to her knees, the tent not quite tall enough for her full height—or Sinclair's, but even slouching over to fit inside, his anger is intimidating. She can count the number of times Sinclair has been genuinely mad on a single hand.
"Sinclair, what happened—"
"You know damn well what happened!" he barks, nearly seething. Amery's heart rackets around in her chest like it's not attached to anything and she's half afraid it might fall right out. She can feel the blood rushing to her cheeks, the confusion hazy but fiercely present all the same.
"No, I—"
"You ruined my son's life!" Sinclair shouts, guttural. Amery blanches, wondering if anyone else in this camp can hear his shouts, how he even got down here, and then the words hit her full force.
He's right.
"You broke the law and you let my son get locked away for it," Sinclair continues, waving his arms in the air for emphasis. "I was a father to you, Amery, and you lied to me! You lied to me every single day of your childhood. Keaton didn't jam those doors, you did. You knew they'd float him at eighteen and you stood there and watched him walk away in cuffs."
Suddenly, Amery can't breathe. She's not sure when, but at some point the orange tint of the tent's air gave way to the cooler shades of metal walls, the ground beneath her turning solid and painfully cold, the sense of false gravity pinning her down.
The Ark.
On the floor of her childhood bedroom, the one she and Keaton shared, Amery shakes violently. Sinclair rises to his full height and glares down at her disdainfully. It's not the type of disdain reserved for something insignificant—Amery wishes he'd look at her like a speck of dirt on a clean floor, something to just wipe away and be done with. No, this is so much worse, the look in his eyes like she's betrayed him and ruined everything, and—she did, didn't she?
"I'm sorry," she sobs, unsure of when the tear tracks starting burning their way down her cheeks, breath stuttering in her throat. "I didn't—I'm sorry—"
"You should be," Sinclair says coldly, turning his back. Facing the far wall, he says tonelessly, "You will not return to Mecha. You will stay out of my sight. And if Keaton ever gets out of that God-forsaken Skybox, you will never, never speak to him again."
It's like the ground falls out beneath her, like she's being floated, like she's—oh, she can't breathe, can she—no, not Sinclair, losing Keaton was bad enough, she can't lose him too, but she deserves it—
"Go!" Sinclair growls.
Amery scrambles to her feet, tears blurring her surroundings into shades of gray, and stumbles into the hallway.
Everyone is there.
Everyone.
"You're a disappointment," Harper hisses from against the wall, refusing to meet Amery's eyes. Beside her, jaw set, Zoe glares Amery down but refuses to speak. The fists clenched at her sides are threat enough. Fox's wide eyes stare up at her and Zoe pushes the younger girl behind her.
"Stay away from that one," she warns lowly, and Amery gulps. Oh, Fox.
"How could you?" Raven whispers, tears in her eyes. "Amery, why?"
"Ray," Amery chokes out, but Raven turns her back, Kyle Wick stepping forward in her place.
"I wasted so much time on you," he growls darkly. On his other side, Wells stares at her silently, glowering.
"You ruined my life," Keaton's voice shouts from somewhere she can't see, and Amery's heart does stop this time, she knows it does. She falls again to her knees, hardly registering the pain as she hits the cold, hard floor.
"I'm sorry!" she shouts, but he doesn't care, nobody does. Idly, Amery wonders if this is how Murphy felt, everyone he knew turned cold and wrathful in a matter of moments. She shudders as she remembers the rioting campers, how she joined them, how she didn't stop them as Bellamy kicked the crate from beneath him, and Murphy didn't even kill Wells.
But she did get Keaton arrested. She deserves this.
And then slow, heavy footsteps echo off the walls, and on the floor on all fours, Amery watches a familiar pair of shoes step into her vision. Grease-stained and brown, shoelaces black and fraying. No.
She looks up, shaking.
"Dad?"
The angles of his face are exactly the same, a dusting of red hair evident in the stubble on his chin. Just the sight of his well-loved uniform, Ekker sewn into the breast pocket, makes her tremble. Dad.
Amery's father looks down at her and offers a hand. Relief floods her veins, her skin, and she takes it, letting him pull her up. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knows this is wrong. Her father is not supposed to be here. Neither is Wells, and if she's here, Keaton should be in the Skybox, but—
And then a handcuff is around her wrist, and Amery watches in horror as her father pins the other end to a metal loop on the wall.
"Dad?" Her voice shakes, her hands shake, her knees threaten to buckle beneath her, the world threatens to crumble around her.
"I'm sorry, Amery," he says grimly, shaking his head. "You did this to yourself."
"Dad! No!" Amery scrambles toward him, but the chain is short and the cuff bites into her wrist, and she lets out a guttural sob without tears because at this point, she thinks she ran out.
"Keaton, please—Dad—Zoe, I—"
Amery scans the crowd desperately for help. And then she freezes.
Monty stands off to the side in the front row, staring at her with remorseful eyes. He says nothing, but reaches into his pocket slowly and withdraws something small and green—a leaf.
"Monty?" Amery whispers, the sound broken in the stiff, recycled air.
He looks at her, gives a slight shake of his head, and looks at the ground, his arm falling back to his side.
He lets the leaf go. It flutters to the metallic ground of the Ark.
Jasper appears beside him, wrapping an arm around his best friend. He stomps on the leaf, grinding it under his boot, and guides Monty away through the crowd.
Slumping against the wall, the fight goes out of Amery entirely. She closes her eyes with a shuddering breath and prepares for her inevitable doom.
"Amery," someone says. She ignores the voice. Only bad things can come from opening her eyes now. "Amery." More insistent.
"Amery, what the hell—"
"Stop," she whispers brokenly. Please, please make it stop.
"AMERY!"
A rush of cold shocks Amery to her bones as her eyes fly open and she clutches the material of the sleeping bag underneath her, breathing and heartbeat wild with adrenaline, face clouded with shame. Water drips from loose strands of hair into her eyes.
"What the—"
"Amery?"
She stares up into a very familiar face.
"Cash," she breathes.
"God, Amery," he murmurs, "It's okay, you're okay, it wasn't real. It wasn't real."
It wasn't real. But wasn't it? God, Sinclair's voice, Keaton's face... she looks at Cash again. His face is pale, the skin beneath his eyes a little sallow, and then Amery's eyes dart to where his one arm holds an empty thermos—he dumped it on her?—and his other hand is pressed against his side.
"Cash!" she shouts, leaping to her feet, ankle stinging less than anticipated. "Sit your ass down, what are you doing? Why are you up right now? Where's Keaton? Here," she says sharply, wrapping an arm around him and easing him down onto dry part of the sleeping bag.
"Sorry," he hisses. "Amery, everyone's on crack out there. I couldn't find Keaton, but you need to—everyone is losing it, I think it's the nuts."
The nuts. Hallucinogenic, probably, if that episode was anything to go by.
"Fuck," Amery sighs, burying her head in still-shaking hands, the remnants of whatever sick hallucination that was still roiling in her gut. She has never done drugs. She's terrified of doing drugs, losing control, seeing things that aren't real—exactly what just happened. Bad trip, Monty would say. "Fuck." She flops down beside Cash. "You didn't eat any?"
"I was sleeping," Cash explains. "In the tent."
Right. Amery nods. "Because you're supposed to be recovering."
Cash shrugs half-heartedly. "I'm fine. You were closest. Everyone else is going insane, someone had to stop it—"
"You dumped water on me," Amery interrupts. Cash grins.
"All in a day's work."
"Fuck you," Amery grins. She squeezes Cash's shoulder in thanks. "Okay. I'm taking this," she grabs the empty thermos from Cash's hands, "and I'm gonna do some damage control."
She sighs, pushing to her feet, feeling dead exhausted but knowing she needs to fix this. Adrenaline still thrums in her veins as she tries to shut out the images of everyone she knows, everyone she loves, condemning her. Not real. If everyone else is out there going through the same thing, she needs to move quickly.
"You're a saint, Ginger Ale."
"Get comfortable," she replies. "And do not get up. Or I'll stab you."
"I take it back. Saints don't stab. Plus, that's getting old," Cash points out. "Me and Collins? What ever happened to creativity?"
Amery turns around to admonish him for joking about his near-death, but he's still talking.
"What about an arrow through the heart? Waterboarding? Honestly, you'd think the Grounders have been down here long enough to come up with some fresh ideas—"
Amery rolls her eyes and pushes the tent flaps open. Before she steps outside, she looks back over her shoulder.
"And don't eat those nuts."
Cash gapes and splays a hand across his chest. "Me, voluntarily doing drugs, Amery? Who do you think—"
Amery leaves without letting him finish, failing to suppress the smile on her lips.
✧✧✧
She finds Monty with a hat on, one of those fuzzy ones with flaps that come down and cover the ears, sniffling with a pinecone cupped in his hands.
It's weirdly endearing.
"Hey there," Amery says hesitantly, taking a seat on the log beside him. Monty's made himself at home to the left of the dropship, surrounded by a nest of pinecones and twigs.
"Hello!" Monty gasps, holding the pinecone out for Amery to see. "It's just so—it's so beautiful, look at it," he whispers. He brings the pinecone to his lips and kisses it. "I love Earth. I love it so much. So many pinecones."
"Oh, boy," Amery murmurs. Cash's thermos still sits empty in her left hand. What is she supposed to do with...this?
"You," Monty says seriously, poking a finger into Amery's chest, "are... the prettiest leaf I've ever seen."
The image of a leaf fluttering to the floor of the Ark flashes briefly through her mind, but she shakes it off. Not real. Not real.
How is it fair that Monty hallucinates sentient pinecones and Amery gets... whatever that was? She supposes he has a good deal of experience with hallucinogenics and other... substances, considering what he was put in the Box for.
"Uh," Amery says smartly. "Right. Okay."
"Such a pretty leaf," Monty muses to himself, smiling. His voice is light and a little slurred, eyes wide with dilated pupils.
Monty is high out of his mind and speaking complete and utter nonsense, but... the comment makes Amery blush just a little. She knows how Monty is about his leaves, after all.
Can I kiss you?
Amery clears her throat.
"I can't!" Monty shouts suddenly, and Amery stares at him as she realizes he's speaking to the pinecone in his hand. "Why would you ask me to do that to you?" His brows knit together in furious concern, absolutely aghast.
At a pinecone.
"Monty," Amery says slowly, trying to shove her laughter down and only half succeeding. "What is it... asking you to do?"
"I will not," Monty snaps at the pinecone. Then he purses his lips, as if considering. "You do make a good point."
He raises the pinecone to his mouth.
And he takes a bite out of it.
Half of Amery wants to lurch forward and wrench the pinecone from his grasp. But the other half of her is so stricken by the sight of Monty Green trying to eat a pinecone that she can't. She stares blankly as he chews, wrinkling his nose.
"It tol' me 'oo," he says through his mouthful of pinecone. Ew. "But I can't." He spits the rest onto the ground. Amery looks at the sky and breathes in once, deep.
"Oh, no," Monty gasps.
"What? What's wrong?" Amery asks, and Monty worriedly rubs his temple. He stares up at the sky.
"The moon," he gestures at the sky, and the remainder of the mangled pinecone falls forgotten to the ground. Amery furrows her brows.
"Monty. It's not night."
"The moon, we need the moon!" he cries. "What about the tides? No, no... this won't be good..."
He suddenly straightens up and breaks into a sprint across camp, right toward Finn and Raven's tent.
"Monty!" Amery shouts, but he's already disappeared inside. She curses, rubbing her temple to ease the headache growing there—from the nuts or the horrible hallucination or Monty's antics, she doesn't know. Rising from the log, she makes for the tent, and by the time she reaches it, the flaps part to reveal Monty emerging with teary eyes.
"Nobody here understands physics except for me," he tells her, distraught, grabbing her shoulders. "I have to go find the moon. It's my sacred duty."
"Monty—" Amery starts, but it's no use. Raven pushes through the tent flaps, red jacket in hand, and cautiously surveys the camp, and Monty scampers away to fulfill his moon-finding mission.
Raven's eyes widen and then meet Amery's. "Um."
"Yeah," Amery breathes, and Raven ducks into the tent and tells Finn to come out. She raises a brow at Amery.
"You're sober?"
"Recent development," Amery snorts. "It's the nuts. They're hallucinogens."
"Great," Raven says tonelessly. "This'll be fun." Finn ambles out of the tent and gapes at the chaos around him—one girl laughs hysterically at her own open palms, another sits terrified by a fire long extinguished. One boy runs past muttering about "the trees are talking again," and Amery wishes fervently that she was asleep in her tent.
Which reminds her that Cash is still in her tent, and she needs to find Keaton. Hopefully he's not too out of it, but if Cash couldn't find him, her hopes are not high.
"Where are Clarke and Bellamy?" Amery asks, the thought only now occurring to her. The fact that Clarke isn't running around trying to calm everyone down doesn't strike a good chord in her gut. And Bellamy isn't yelling or furiously brooding, which certainly isn't typical.
"Supply run to some old depot," Raven says tightly, and Amery regrets mentioning Clarke's name. While Raven groans and looks skyward, Amery gives Finn a scathing glare. He winces.
"Okay," Raven sighs eventually. "Split up and make sure people aren't doing anything too crazy? It shouldn't last excessively long. Try to sober them up if they're about to leave camp or jump off the dropship or something."
She seems to regret the statement as soon as she says it, eyes darting to the top of the dropship to make sure nobody's actually about to fall to their death.
"Aye aye, captain," Amery says.
✧✧✧
Keaton sits behind the dropship, curled into a ball with his head between his knees. He's deathly still, and Amery's not sure whether he's asleep.
"Keaton?" she murmurs hesitantly, crouching beside him, but he doesn't respond. "Keaton." She reaches out and shakes his shoulder, gently at first, then obnoxiously hard. "Keaton."
She glances at the now-refilled thermos in her hand, then back at her shaking friend.
She dumps it on his head.
"Fuck!" he splutters, jolting to attention and finding an apologetic Amery grimacing down at him. She shrugs.
"Were you high or sleeping?"
"What?" Keaton blinks groggily up at her, then rubs the heels of his hands over his eyes.
"The nuts are making people see things."
Keaton groans and pulls a ration bag out of his pocket—it's only about half empty. He tosses it away with a wrinkled nose.
"Yeah. I saw shit."
Amery studies her friend, the way his gaze doesn't rest on her eyes but slightly to the left, not quite looking at her, the tightness of his jaw, his slightly downturned brows.
It seems Keaton's hallucinations were more along the lines of hers than talking pinecones and a missing moon.
He sees the question poised on her lips and subtly shakes his head. Not now.
Silently, she offers a hand and pulls Keaton to his feet.
"We're doing damage control," she informs him. The two walk around the dropship in the opposite direction Amery came from, emerging near some scattered campfire remnants.
"That seems like a fun place to start." She follows Keaton's gaze to where Jasper sits on a detached dropship seat, clutching a stick in both hands with white knuckles. Without warning, he jabs it in the air, eyes wide and darting around the camp.
"Lovely."
Jasper doesn't notice Keaton or Amery until they stand directly in front of him, at which point he brandishes the stick in the air, shifting his aim between them.
"Easy," Keaton says, holding his hands up.
"You gotta watch out for them," Jasper says urgently. "They're everywhere."
"Who?" Keaton asks, taking a knee beside Jasper.
"Grounders," Jasper whispers fearfully, and Amery frowns. He looks terrified.
"What's that you're holding?" Keaton asks, gesturing to the stick.
"My Anti-Grounder stick," Jasper says proudly. "Octavia gave it to me."
Amery frowns. "Octavia?"
Octavia giving Jasper that stick means she's not high on the Jobi nuts, right? So... where is she? Why hasn't she come to get anyone?
But Jasper just nods contentedly and goes back to cradling his stick. Deciding he is not in imminent danger, Keaton and Amery exchange a bemused glance and move on. He branches off to talk to a girl shuddering on the ground a few feet away, and Amery turns around to find Fox sprinting toward her frantically.
"Amery! Amery," she gasps as she reaches the other girl, out of breath.
"What's wrong?" Amery asks, scanning the girl up and down. Nothing seems particularly amiss—her dark hair has a few twigs sticking out of it, but that's not necessarily abnormal.
"Look," Fox says dramatically. She flings out an arm. Amery stares at it.
"Your... arm?" Amery says. Fox nods, making an odd sort of squeaking sound. "It... looks fine to me."
"Amery!" Fox cries as she shakes it around and hops from foot to foot. "It's new! I have three arms!"
Oh, Jesus.
Amery decides to take a page from Octavia's Anti-Grounder stick book. If she just tells Fox something is true, maybe she'll believe it.
She nods solemnly, looking at Fox's perfectly normal amount of arms.
"That happens sometimes," she says matter-of-factly. "The only way to fix it is to take a very long nap in your tent."
Fox blinks at her, almost owlishly, and Amery nearly facepalms. Why did she think that would work?
But then Fox says, "You are so smart."
Yes.
Chirping a thanks, she bounds away in the direction of her tent, and Amery lets out a heavy exhale. Wow.
Wow.
"Who's next?" she mutters to herself. Over by a pile of firewood, Kip is sprawled on the ground. Kip, she can deal with. It seems like he might be having a small existential crisis, but at least he's not crying like the boy Raven is reluctantly hugging over by the rations table.
Amery approaches with loud footsteps, aiming not to startle. "Hi, Kip."
Rolling over to see who's addressing him, Kip sighs in relief and stands up unsteadily.
"I'm so glad you're here," he says seriously. "I can't find him and I need to tell him."
"Find who?"
"Cash," Kip says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "He doesn't know about the blueberries."
"The blueberries," Amery repeats slowly.
"It's blueberries," Kip cries. "It's all blueberries! All of it!"
"Blue... everything is blueberries," Amery says slowly, brows furrowing. Kip nods hysterically and grips both of her shoulders.
Amery's never even seen a blueberry.
"Kip—"
"Everything. They're taking over." Strands of dirty blond hair are plastered to his face, pupils blown wide with the effects of the drug. "We have to stop them. And I have to warn Cash, now."
"Right," Amery says slowly. "Um. Why does Cash need to know?"
"What if they take him, too?" Kip says, glaring at Amery like she's very insensitive for not considering this option. "They can't do that. Then he would be gone before I even tell him I love him."
Amery chokes on air.
"What?"
"The blueberries take people, Amery," Kip says impatiently, like that's the part of his admission that shocked her.
Kip is in love with Cash.
Suddenly everything makes sense—the way Keaton tenses up when he's around, Kip's sheer panic in the woods when Cash was bleeding out. Amery's head spins, and she thinks maybe she's not entirely sobered up. Fuck. What does she do with this information? Is it reciprocated? Amery honestly thought that Cash and Keaton...
"Amery," Kip whines impatiently, jarring her from her thoughts. Right. She'll deal with that later. One problem at a time.
"How do we stop... the blueberries?" she asks, mind still reeling.
Kip levels Amery with a very severe look and says grimly, "We eat them."
Amery is in for a very long night.
✧✧✧
After returning Cash to his own tent, leaving him to the mercy of Keaton's mother-henning and refusing to even think about Kip, Amery nearly jumps out of her skin as she turns around to find Monty directly in front of her.
"Sorry," he flushes red as Amery's heart spasms.
"Sober now?" she asks in lieu of a greeting, and Monty grins and nods. "I guess that was just a return to your natural state."
"Oh, shut up," Monty rolls his eyes. His expression morphs from teasing to something a bit more nervous, and he asks, "You got a minute?"
Amery glances back at Cash's tent behind her—Monty's too, she realizes. Keaton's voice, probably admonishing Cash for daring to do anything other than sleep, floats muffled from the interior. She turns back to Monty and nods.
Instinctively, her hand floats to the leaf in her pocket. It's so dry it threatens to crumple between her fingers, and she pulls it out and holds it up to the light with a frown. Monty, in turn, pulls out half a leaf and says, "Oh." He digs around in his pocket for the other half, hardly recognizable in his hand. "I think we might be due for an upgrade."
And then his eyes light up and he does that smile where he bites his bottom lip a little bit just because he can't contain his excitement—patently his I have a dumb idea look. Maybe he's still a tiny bit stoned.
But he says, "Come on. I have an idea." He sets off toward the dropship excitedly, and Amery sighs and follows, wondering when the inevitable, horrible conversation is going to happen.
Monty walks past the dropship entrance and around to the side, where a metal-runged ladder stretches to the very top. Oh no.
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Amery asks dryly, but Monty's already halfway up the side.
He glances down at her and shrugs. "Most of my ideas toe the line between good and completely idiotic."
Amery rolls her eyes and follows, ignoring the slight pang in her ankle as she climbs the ladder. The top of the dropship boasts the same dirty metal as the rest of its exterior, but places them right at the treeline. Monty grins as Amery clambers over the side and joins him near the edge.
He reaches out and ceremoniously plucks a leaf from a branch hanging over the top of the dropship, then hands it to her with a little flourish. Amery grins.
"Perfect." He turns back to the branch to grab one for himself, but Amery stops him with a hand on his shoulder and moves to examine the leaves herself. She finds one nearly the size of her palm, smooth and dark green, and plucks it from its place.
"For you," she says with a raised brow, and Monty smiles as he tucks it into his pocket. Then he makes for the center of the dropship and sprawls out on his back, staring up at the stars. He pats the space next to him expectantly.
"I'll never let you live tonight down," Amery tells him solemnly as she takes her place beside him. "It's my sacred duty." Monty groans dramatically, rolling onto his side to face her.
"Did I eat a pinecone?" he asks, grimacing.
Amery nods. "Well, what choice did you have? It told you to."
Monty groans. "Also, I'm pretty sure I tried to physically fight gravity."
"Did you win?" Amery asks. Monty shakes his head sadly.
"It wasn't an even match. Sneaky bastard, gravity."
"I, for one, think gravity is extremely underrated," Amery replies. She's joking around, but it's true. Returning to the Ark's artificial gravity after experiencing the real thing would feel almost like a cruel joke. Though it took some getting used to, the sensation of being truly grounded is one Amery savors.
"Are you allowed to say that as a Zero-G mechanic?" Monty asks.
"I think I'm more qualified than anyone. Except maybe Raven."
"Don't tell Wick."
Amery smirks, imagining Kyle's favorite expression of mock offense, absolutely flabbergasted, playing across his face.
"You're gonna need to give me a crash course on safe plants," Amery tells Monty, the blades of her shoulders chilled by the metal of the dropship roof. Beside him, staring at the now-darkened sky, she squints to observe the stars interspersed between shadowy tree branches.
Monty laughs, and then Amery amends her statement.
"Actually, maybe you shouldn't be the one to do that, Mr. Crying-Over-A-Pinecone."
She rolls onto her back and realizes the new position places her arm flush against Monty's, allowing his warmth to seep into hers. Just the two of them, pressed together on the dropship roof, staring at the infinite sky. Funny, Amery thinks, how much vaster and freer it seems from down here. On the Ark, it'd always felt like a sort of prison.
Now, Monty rambles on—"I'm not even sure the nuts are inherently hallucinogenic. It might be a property developed upon expiration, I'll have to look into it"—and Amery can't help but smile.
"Why do they name safe plants shit like poison sumac and not put a warning label on nuts that make you see talking pinecones?" Amery wonders aloud, and Monty laughs nervously. Narrowing her eyes, she rolls her head to face him again. "That's suspicious. What?"
"I should probably tell you," he says, still adamantly staring at the sky, "that I was just fucking with you when I said that. That it's called poison sumac, I mean." Amery tilts her head, confused. "I used the same joke on Octavia when we were looking for Mount Weather and she just looked so surprised and then I kind of just kept the bit going. It was actually just a pansy."
Monty finally looks at her. Even in the dim moonlight, he's flushed red.
"Monty," she admonishes.
"Real poison sumac is, uh, really dangerous. Really dangerous. I realize now that that could be an issue." He grins. "So, uh. Eat pansies, not poison." He awkwardly shoots some finger guns at Amery, who glares at him but finds herself unable hold the expression for long. She's laughing before she can convince him she's truly upset.
"Fucking poison sumac," she snorts. "You should maybe be telling Octavia that."
For a charged, long moment, they lock eyes in the night, the sounds of evening fires and rustling leaves the background track to their suspense.
"So," Monty says eventually. Amery almost laughs.
"So."
"About earlier."
"Right. Earlier."
"I'm sorry if I moved too fast, or if that's not something you're interested in, or—"
"Monty, no," Amery breathes quietly but firmly. "I... listen. I'm not... used to this." She doesn't say I've never been with anyone, but Monty gets the picture, listening intently with wide, attentive eyes.
"But I do... I like you."
A smile tugs at the corner of Monty's lips.
"I like you too, Red."
He just looks at her for a moment, eyes soft with something Amery can't quite place.
"I'm not used to this either," Monty whispers after a while, like speaking any louder will break whatever fragile energy sits around the two of them like a bubble in the air.
"We can take this slow," he says after a minute. "We have all time in the world."
On the dropship surface, Monty's knuckle brushes hers, a brief warmth and then gone, like a question.
She laces her fingers through his and smiles.
Truthfully, Monty is probably very wrong. Whatever impact this new environment has on the human lifespan, none of them really know, and between the terrifying Grounders and the lack of winter preparations, Amery's been trying not to think too much about the future. It's...bleak.
But tonight, time feels as infinite as the open sky above them, so she just squeezes Monty's hand and lets her heart beat faster than it should.
"Didn't Jasper give you rations earlier?" Monty asks, and Amery immediately breaks eye contact, realizing too late how suspicious the action makes her seem. It was during one of their late-night sessions trying to make contact with the Ark that Amery confided in Monty her fears about using drugs, the lack of control, the very piece of knowledge he'd thrown back at her as evidence that he knew her well enough to want her, and then... Can I kiss you?
She lets her gaze flicker back to Monty's and reads the concern there. She shrugs.
"Was it bad?" he whispers.
"I saw things," she murmurs after a beat. "People I've disappointed. It was... Cash snapped me out of it."
"People you've disappointed or people you think you've disappointed?" Monty asks after a moment, pursing his lips. Oh.
She shrugs with one shoulder, the other still pressed against the dropship's roof.
"Sinclair. Keaton."
"Why would you have disappointed them?"
Amery draws in a deep breath. Logically, she knows that Keaton's arrest is in the past, that it shouldn't change anything, that he doesn't blame her and doesn't want her to blame herself. But with Sinclair's shouts still fresh in her tired mind, the thought sits like a rock on her chest. And she misses being able to breathe.
So she looks at Monty and says, "Keaton took the blame for my crime and got arrested instead of me."
It comes out in one rushed breath, and then Amery just stares at Monty's unreadable expression, waiting for the ball to drop.
And then he says, "Ames." He raises a brow like she should be having a reaction.
"What?"
"You know he doesn't blame you for that. Didn't Monroe and Harper literally do the same thing? And it was years ago. It's not like you made him do it."
By now, Amery's had this conversation enough times to know in her gut that it's true. But the insecurities floating in the back of her darkest places must always have a form, and this is the one they most often choose to take.
"I know," Amery admits. "But Hallucination Sinclair and Keaton didn't agree. So, you know. Just. Reopening old wounds and all that."
What she can't get out of her head now is the image of Monty's disappointed stare, the sight of him disappearing into the crowd, Jasper's arm protectively around him. The leaf in tatters on the floor. She rubs a thumb across her new leaf, a reassurance.
She knows Monty sees through her half-truths, knows he's aware there's more to the story, but this is more vulnerable than Amery is used to being. Monty doesn't push.
"Bad trip," he says. And Amery barks out a laugh before she can stop herself, because that's exactly what she knew he would say.
"Understatement," she says to Monty's perplexed expression. "Still can't believe you're such a dork even when you're high out of your mind," she adds. "You were going on about the moon's effect on the tides and everything."
"We're changing the topic now," he demands. She says nothing, deciding that if he wants to change it, he has to choose the new subject of conversation. Picking up on her silence, Monty asks, "Did I tell you about the butterfly forest?"
She doesn't know how long they spend on top of the dropship, staring at the sky, staring at each other, savoring the warmth of pressed-together shoulders and their interlaced fingers and the sound of each other's laughter, drifting into open air but still soft and private, only for themselves.
With every conversation, Amery learns something new about the boy beside her. His innocent façade hides years and years of ridiculous pranks and schemes, playful rebellion written into the lines of his palms. He is funny and kindhearted and absolutely ridiculous and somehow, everything that is good.
She does feel like they have all the time in the world.
A crashing noise from the dropship makes Amery jump, and with a wide-eyed glance at Monty, the two scramble to the edge of the roof to see what's going on. Heavy footsteps stumble down the dropship ramp, accompanied by panting.
"He's gone!" Miller shouts in a panic, his voice filling the empty air of the camp and floating up the treeline. Immediately, the camp erupts in confused chatter and exclamations, and Amery darts to the ladder to return to the ground.
"The Grounder is gone!"
✧✧✧
a/n:
sorry that took like, ten years. i am BACK from england and ready to write!
day trip is such a good episode. and there is just...such chaos.
drop your thoughts! they keep me going
please enjoy kristyn's (stilestastic) fanart of fox in this chapter:
[ word count | 7.8k ]
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