title: a day in the life (of one montgomery green)
summary: Monty's guilt has been slowly tearing him to pieces since the genocide at Mount Weather, and only a certain guard can help put him back together. Set during the months between S2 and S3.
because "monty" has gotta be short for something, right? this is my love letter to everyone's favorite underappreciated sin-nnamon roll, since we can never give that boy too much love.
A cage no larger than 4x4, a drill pound pound pounding into his skin, gloved hands dragging Harper away, laughing at her screams. A dark room full of computers and blinking lights, the key to his salvation no more than a foot away. He pulls the lever into position (even though he doesn't want to, can't bear to—), each inch agonizingly slow. And then the lights start flashing red and an alarm starts echoing and he looks down at his hand and sees that his skin is peeling, blistering and melting and now he can see bone and—
Monty jerks awake, sweat matting his hair to his temples, chills running up and down his spine. He heaves in deep breaths until his pulse slows and his fingers loosen on his blankets, the adrenaline leaving his veins. As he calms, he brings his shaking hands into his lap and examines the smoothness of them, the lack of injury. He reminds himself that he's safe now, that it was just a dream, and he glances toward the morning light filtering through his quarters' window to drive the point home.
When he's sure that he can leave the room without looking like he's just walked through hell and barely lived to tell the tale (which he has, but semantics), he throws on some clothes and makes his way outside, hoping that some fresh air will drown out the lingering sensations of the dream.
Sometimes he can still hear the faint hum of the monitors, the clacking of the keyboard as his fingers typed in the initiation code. He can still smell the traces of rotting bodies and blistered skin, the faint aroma of chocolate cake. But most of all, he can still see the betrayal on Jasper's face (how could you let this happen), the beginnings of an impregnable wall cemented together with all of his anger and disappointment and misery. It seems like, every day, the barrier between them grows higher and higher, and now Monty looks at it and it just seems so insurmountable. He finds that all he can do is quake at the base of everything he's lost and everything he will never get back.
But he's not the only one who's been irrevocably changed, who's slowly crumbling to pieces. They're all falling apart, in one way or another. Bellamy thinks no one notices, but ever since Clarke disappeared, he's been a mess. Monty's taken to leaving a bottle of moonshine (newly minted, personally brewed) outside of his room every night. He's never told Bellamy that it's him, but Monty finds the empty bottle at the foot of his own door every morning anyway.
Before Clarke left, she'd pulled him aside, hugged him and asked him to look after everyone, to look after Bellamy, for her. It was one last order (one last plea) from the girl who saved them all, so how could he say no? But when he looks at Bellamy, when he sees how lost he still looks, he can't help but think he's failing.
The only person he seems remotely like his old self with is his sister. Who is, coincidentally, nothing like her old self. Octavia's changed, and Monty will be the first to admit that he's terrified of her. Sometimes, when he rounds a corner and he's greeted by black leather on black war paint on pointy sword, he's afraid that he's going to pee himself. Not to mention, all of a sudden Lincoln is a permanent fixture around camp, when last he knew the Grounder was tied up in the Dropship and pissed. Octavia assures them that he's a gentle giant, but judging from the fact that she's taking all of her cues from the Grounders, he's not quite sure he believes her.
Miller and Harper are the only ones who seem as confused as he does by just how thoroughly everything's changed since they were last surrounded by fresh air and trees instead of concrete walls and lies. They're the only ones who were imprisoned in the Mountain alongside him, who can really understand the horror of what he's been through. And even then, they can never truly understand because they weren't in that control room when he pulled up those access codes and flooded Level 5 with an influx of death. Because, when they returned to Arkadia, their parents were waiting for them with open arms and smiling faces. Because, when they walked through the gates and he scanned the crowds, the gnawing truth set in: his parents weren't the ones who made it down.
He's happy for them, he is. But sometimes, it feels like he's under a constant barrage of Miller and his Dad patrolling the walls together, Miller and his Dad grabbing a drink together, Miller and his Dad existing together. He sees the two of them, and he can't help the jealously he feels bubbling up from within, can't help how, in the darkest corners of his soul, he wishes that it was his parents alive instead, David Miller a comet of burning debris in the atmosphere. He knows that all of the Ark stations that fell from the sky aren't accounted for, that there's still a chance his parents could be alive, but it's been a month and, every day, his hopes dwindle. Just another mark to add to the growing list of people he's lost since the Dropship landed all those months ago.
He's been trying to focus on all of the people he does still have with him, but it's not as easy as it sounds, and he's found that throwing himself into the work of rebuilding Arkadia is one of the easiest ways to shove the memories from the forefront of his mind. Planting vegetables in what arable land they do have (he's one of the few delinquents left from Farm station), helping Sinclair wire electricity through the debris of the Ark, assisting the rest of the engineers with odds and ends around camp.
Which reminds him about that loose panel in hangar bay two that Sinclair asked him to fix.
Monty stuffs his hands farther into his pockets and makes his way toward the Mess Hall, hoping to grab something quick before he starts (hoping to avoid the path that takes him directly adjacent to the wall and the guards that man it). As he approaches and the doors part with an audible hiss, Monty lifts his eyes from the floor and then stops dead in his tracks.
Sitting at a table directly across from the bar is a mess of hunched shoulders, disheveled hair, unkempt stubble. Of course, of course, he's got a cup of moonshine in hand, alcohol dribbling off of his chin.
Monty's hands fidget in their pockets.
He tries not to dwell on how early it is and how Jasper looks like he hasn't left his seat all night. But he knows that that's an impossible task—that he can't just shut all of his worry away—so he counts the number of empty bottles that litter the table and he immediately knows that today is going to be even worse than usual. If that's even possible.
Lately, Jasper's entire being has become a veritable minefield of hostile glares, drunken arguments, reckless behavior, and Monty doesn't know where to step to avoid the rubble that remains of his broken best friend. It's like Jasper doesn't even care what happens to himself (to anyone) anymore. He's constantly picking fights with the guard, Lincoln, Bellamy. His name has become synonymous with "provocation," his presence followed by hushed whispered and nervous glances whenever he enters a room. And when he does, everyone looks to Monty as if he's Jasper's keeper, as if he can just wave a wand and magically make him better.
But Monty can't perform miracles, especially when they have no interest in even trying to be performed.
Honestly, Jasper's complete and utter disregard for his own well-being is really starting to piss Monty off. So he decides that he's not going to be cowardly about it; he rallies his courage and starts forward, planting himself in the seat across from Jasper and setting his gaze on the man who used to be (still is) his brother.
"Hey," he says, and he means for it to come out confident, sure of itself, but it only comes out as a pathetic whisper.
Jasper's eyes flick over to him for the briefest of moments, and then he's staring down into his glass again. "Hey."
At least it's not the silent treatment.
Monty leans forward and laces his hands together in front of him. "Did you sleep at all last night?"
Jasper ignores him, circling a finger along the edge of his glass with a quiet but constant screech.
"When was the last time you were in your quarters?"
"Have you been eating lately?"
"Have you talked to Abby lately?"
In between each question, the screech of the glass continues. And more than Jasper's sullen glares, his quiet scorn, the guilt that will never stop gnawing, it's that sounds that breaks through all of Monty's carefully laid defenses. His hands begin to shake in a way that he's immediately ashamed of because Jasper hasn't said anything yet but he knows, he knows, how this is going to go. So his voice quavers when he finally chokes it out. "Talk to me. Please." So much for confidence.
Jasper's finger finally halts its movement. "What do you want, Monty?"
"I—I want you to understand. I want you to get better."
Jasper laughs (a mangled sort of sound that grates on Monty, taunts him). "Not possible."
"I don't know how many more times I can tell you 'I'm sorry.'"
Jasper's gaze is stony when he finally drags it up to Monty. "You can start with 381 times. One for each one of the people you murdered."
That hits Monty like a punch to the gut, almost knocks the wind out of him. He knows that he had no choice, that he had to do it, but he'll do anything to get back to some semblance of normal, to patch Jasper back together. "If that's what it takes."
His best friend doesn't bother to hide his contempt as he rips his eyes away and goes back to circling his glass. After a moment of heavy silence (that is suffocating Monty, that's louder than anything he's ever heard before), he finally says, "You and Clarke should have just let me die."
Monty goes hollow all over. "You don't mean that."
"Don't I? Death by spear certainly seems a lot faster than death by heartache."
"Don't be dramatic," Monty scoffs (it comes out more like a plea).
"It seems like a pretty dramatic situation to me." Jasper shoots Monty a pointed look. "I wonder what it felt like when you melted her. How long it took for her skin to liquefy and her heart to stop beating."
Monty opens his mouth to speak but no words come out.
Jasper takes another swig of his moonshine. "Still swimming in excuses, I see. Like always," he sneers. "If you don't want anything, then leave me alone."
Monty swallows his explanations and clenches his hands into fists, trying to keep his temper under control. "I want you to—I want you to snap out of it. I want you to acknowledge that you have a problem and get help. I want you to see that losing Maya is not the end of the world." (i want my best friend back.)
And then Jasper explodes.
He surges out of his seat and slams his fists into the table, knocking over his glass and gnashing his teeth and drawing the attention of every person in the room. "What the hell would you know, Monty!? What would you know about anything besides mass murder and betraying the people who are supposed to be important to you? Betraying me!?"
"I didn't… I don't—"
"You killed Maya—you killed her and you want me to just forgive you? When you have no idea how it feels!?"
And then Monty's own anger slips out from under his tenuous control and he's erupting right back. "You think I wanted to do that? You think I wanted to kill—to end an entire civilization!? That I don't know what it feels like to lose somebody? You don't get a monopoly on grief, Jasper!" he shouts, the faces of every single person who helped them in Mount Weather, every single one of his slain friends from the Dropship, his neighbors on the Ark, flashing by. The guilt clawing at his throat and narrowing his focus to all that he's done and can never undo. His eyes water, and there's a rushing in his ears as his new reality hits him again in full force.
"I lost—I lost my parents, Jasper. My parents," he says, drowning in it.
And then all of his fury abandons him and he collapses into the seat behind him, stares dazedly at the overturned glass on the table.
He thinks that maybe Jasper hesitates for a second, that he's about to take Monty's hands and say he understands and that they can get past this, but then Jasper is yelling again, hurling accusation after accusation. Each one of them barrels into Monty and strikes true, burrowing with their poisonous roots and settling in for the long haul. His chest feels riddled with holes and Jasper must hit something vital because now he can't feel anything at all. Which he thought was what he wanted, he thought would make him happy.
But all he feels is numb.
He doesn't know how to fix this. If he even can fix this. He wants to—god he wants to. He understands what Jasper's going through, maybe not in the exact same way, but he understands loss down to his very core—he just can't seem to communicate that to Jasper without crashing into a brick wall of bitter hatred every time he tries to escape the labyrinth of his own remorse.
It's almost funny how ineffective his words are in comparison to Jasper's—his meaningless cannon fodder to Jasper's nuclear missiles. So Monty's prepared to accept this latest volley, unsure of what else he can possibly do, when all of a sudden, there's a slap on his back that jerks him back into awareness.
"Monty, my man! I've been looking all over for you."
Wick.
Monty cranes his neck to take him in, the stark contrast between the grin on his face and the volatile storm of emotion coursing through the room a shock to Monty's system. But any relief at Wick's booming voice is immediately squashed by the dark look that passes over Jasper's features. Wick charges on anyway, and Monty tries not to be jealous of his ostensible ignorance. "Didn't Sinclair tell you to fix that faulty panel in bay two? Day's not getting any younger."
Monty swallows the lump in his throat. "Yeah. I was heading over there..."
"And ended up at the bar? Not quite sure booze and electrical engineering are the best combination. Or booze and eight in the morning, come to think of it…" he trails off.
Out of the corner of his eye, Monty sees Jasper's hands clench into fists at his sides. "This isn't your business," he snaps.
Wick raises his eyebrows and finally looks at him, as if just realizing that he's there. "Oh, hey, Jasper. And here I was, thinking 99 bottles of beer was just some stupid song."
"Fuck off, Wick."
"Only since you asked so nicely."
And then he places his hands on Monty's shoulders and gently squeezes until he's supporting himself on shaky legs and an even shakier constitution. Wick steers him away from the table (from his own undoing) and toward escape, but when the doors part, Wick stops and calls over his shoulder, "You know, drunk is not a good look on you."
Jasper takes another swig from his glass and then raises it in a decidedly derisive salute. "See you on the other side, Wick."
"Not likely."
And then they're exiting the room onto Arkadia's main thoroughfare, sterile metal walls no longer caging Monty in, the fresh air like a boon to his beleaguered soul. When they're a good distance away, Monty shrugs out of Wick's (comforting) touch and whirls around, shooting him a half-hearted glare. "You didn't have to do that."
"That did not look like an argument you were winning."
"It wasn't an argument."
Wick huffs in mock annoyance. "If you're going to be so ungrateful about it, next time I won't be your knight in shining armor."
"Didn't ask you to."
Wick only beams an open-faced grin at him in return.
Monty's spirits lift like they do every time he's with his fellow engineering apprentice, like they always have, even back on the Ark. In the month since everything happened, Monty can't help but notice that, in that devil may care way of his, Wick seems absolutely fine, unbothered by the shadow of Mount Weather. (but Monty knows better. he's known Wick since Sinclair recruited him for Engineering, and Monty doesn't miss how he goes quiet when Raven has trouble crawling under that Rover she's been working on, when there's a loud bang from somewhere in camp and Wick tries not to flinch.)
But his other half? Raven's a mess, and he's having a hard time juxtaposing this irritable shadow of a girl with the headstrong mechanic who did nothing but save their asses all those months ago. She spends a lot of time at Finn's headstone or prowling the cargo bay, pretending as if her leg isn't killing her (he's never been particularly violent, but he's going to throttle Murphy if her ever gets his hands on him—snuffing out Raven's fire is no easy task—). Not even Wick's playful banter or general lack of the doom-and-gloom spell that the rest of Arkadia seems to be under can make a dent in her walls. In fact, Monty thinks that Wick's just making it worse. The way she's constantly snapping at everyone and everything reminds him of—
(his parents' herb garden and goggles and secret handshakes and getting baked on the Ark's starboard window bay—)
"I gotta go," Monty says, choked with sudden emotion, words stumbling over one another in their rush to get out. He lurches away, but before he can make his retreat, Wick is grabbing his arm and halting him in his tracks.
"Hey, do you need help with the job?" he asks, voice deceptively light, betraying nothing but his usual good humor. "I seem to recall teaching you everything you know…"
Monty scoffs. "As if." And it comes out a little watery, but he's glad for the distraction nonetheless. "If I want it to take a century, I know who to ask."
Wick smirks. "In your dreams, kid."
Monty offers half of a smile back, and then he's wresting out of his grip and hurrying away. This time, he doesn't care that he passes by the gates and David Miller waves at him (despite all the vile thoughts that Monty's sent his way these past few weeks). Doesn't care that he catches Bellamy forlornly staring out the gates and into the trees. That a certain thief he was hoping to see is nowhere in sight.
He doesn't care, he swears.
After he clears his head, he finally finds his way to the hangar bay, relieved that it's mercifully empty, and squints until he spots the loose panel, sparks shooting out from behind it. He crouches at the offending wall, unhooks the supply belt from around his waist, and palms a screwdriver, prying the panel from the wall and revealing the wiring beneath. He sighs at the mess of frayed cords and severed connections and almost bemoans how long it'll take him, until he remembers that he doesn't really have anywhere else to be (doesn't have anyone to go to). So he hunkers down and lets the delicacy of the work, the concentration it takes, distract him from a chorus of images and accusations (murdererkillerbetrayer) that he'd do almost anything to forget.
He's so engrossed in aggressively ignoring his memories that it's only when Nathan Miller is leaning against the wall at his side and clearing his throat that Monty notices him.
Monty's usually the kind that startles easily, but he's afraid that one wrong move could shock him into a twitching puddle of drool on the floor, so he only cranes his neck and takes in the crispness of Miller's guard uniform, the gun at his belt and the confidence in his pose.
"New patrol?" he asks.
"Nah. I saw you come in here and just thought you could use some company. Figured I could show you a thing or two about… whatever that is," he laughs, gesturing at the mess of wires and circuitry in the exposed wall.
Monty snorts and then resumes tinkering with the circuit board, but this time his hands are a little less steady and his face feels about three degrees hotter than it did before.
When Miller slides into a sitting position at his side, back against the metal paneling and hands clasped over bent knees, not two feet away from Monty's bowed head, Monty almost jerks his screwdriver into the wrong chamber and short-circuits the whole grid. He's about to blame his fuck-up on post-Jasper jitters until he remembers that Miller knows as much about engineering as Monty knows about shooting a gun.
So he only coughs into his other hand and refocuses his efforts. "How's the guard training going?" he mumbles.
"Fine. Though Bellamy's been riding me hard lately, especially since the Grounders won't let us more than ten miles outside our perimeter and the Commander placed that kill order on Lincoln."
Monty fiddles with the jumble of wires with his free hand as he listens. The harsh reminder of the precariousness of the Sky People's position sends a new bout of unease skittering down his spine. Like they haven't already dealt with enough. Like the Grounders don't owe his people their lives. Will they ever catch a break?
Apparently unfazed, Miller plows on. "Mostly, Harper and I have been helping Reyes and Wick fortify the wall, but when push comes to shove, I doubt anything can keep an army of bloodthirsty Grounders out. My Dad says—"
At that, both he and Monty still.
Monty sees him shift awkwardly out of the corner of his eye. "What?" Monty asks, if only to break the uncomfortable silence.
Miller grimaces, looks like he just swallowed a handful of jobi nuts, but then he's setting his jaw and continuing. "He says that Kane and Chancellor Griffin are working to make things more fair—that they've been meeting with a Grounder lieutenant named Indra."
Monty vaguely recalls the name from somewhere, but he finds that he's not curious in the slightest. It's already been a long day and he's done hearing about politics and embargoes and death threats. So he shoots Miller some side-eye and smirks. "Maybe if Indra's anything like Octavia, she can scare the Commander into submission."
Miller snickers. "Yeah. Or maybe she'll just make things worse."
"Don't know if that's possible."
Miller grunts in agreement but then heaves a weary sigh. "Bringing me down, Green. I come here to let loose and I'm honestly just feeling so attacked right now—"
"Just shut up and let me finish this," Monty says, grinning down at his grease-covered hands. "Then you can complain at me all you want."
"I'll hold you to it."
And then quiet descends over the empty hall. They sit like that, in companionable silence, while Miller distractingly bobs his head and drums to some private beat, while Monty tries to ignore the boy next to him and do his job, not frying the Ark's mainframe in the process. They sit like that until an exasperated voice cleaves through their stolen moment of peace.
"Montgomery Green?"
Monty glances up from his work and furrows his brow when his gaze alights on the source of the interruption.
Gina Martin. She's one of the survivors from Mecha station. They've exchanged a few words before, but nothing more than "get him out of my bar" or "he's scaring away customers" when Jasper's acting up again. He's pretty sure she only knows him as one of the few surviving members of the original 100.
He's also pretty sure that he saw her sneaking out of Bellamy's room last night.
"That's you, right?" she says when he doesn't immediately respond, frowning in Monty's general direction. "I don't know why he seems to think I'm some errand girl—I have a business to run. But Sinclair is looking for you. Says to report to Agro when you finish up here."
Monty nods at her. "Yeah, thanks. I'll head over when I'm done."
Gina fixes him with a long look (he hopes she doesn't notice the gauntness painting his features), and when she doesn't back down after what he'd normally deem an appropriate amount of unnecessary eye contact, he looks down at the pliers in his hands so fast that he knows he'll feel a crick in his neck later. Hopes that that'll make her go away.
But it doesn't, and then her voice is echoing in the emptiness of the hall again.
"Also, your friend is still at my bar. If I think for even one minute that he's going to cause more trouble, I won't hesitate to call the guards."
Monty tightens his grip on the pliers and grimaces. "Sorry." After a beat of expectant silence, he drags his gaze from the floor and offers her what he knows is an artificial smile. "I'll take care of it."
Gina's eyes widen, and Monty's not sure if he's imagining it, but he thinks that she looks a little guilty. "I know it's not your fault… just— Moonshine is not what he needs right now," she sighs. "Look… I may not have been there in Mount Weather with you… but he's not the only one of you who frequents my bar." She tries in vain to wipe the frown from her expression. "He needs his friends."
Monty registers what she's saying, hears the words coming out of her mouth, and he expects her to look accusatory (sanctimonious), but instead, she just looks tired. Nonetheless, there's a rushing in his ears. Like he doesn't know that. Like he hasn't been trying to be there for Jasper, to get through to him— He knows that Gina's just trying to help, to ease their collective pain in any way she can, but she doesn't know anything about what the 100 have been through.
He's accosted by a sudden surge of animosity. But then he's immediately ashamed of himself because he knows himself—he rarely ever gets angry. Especially not irrationally. Especially when he knows that Gina means well, as blunt as she might be. Especially when he knows that she's not trying to condescend to him.
But lately, it's like every one of the Arkers who wasn't sent down as a sacrificial guinea pig, who didn't have to wage guerilla warfare against the Grounders, who wasn't mercilessly drilled into in Dante's ninth level of Hell, refuses to step down from their well-meaning soapbox. Everywhere he turns, he's met with sympathetic (patronizing) smiles, a palpable current of pity, amicable (but ultimately worthless) advice.
In their quest to make him forget the horrors of all that he's faced, they've forgotten that they can never understand what he and the other survivors of the Dropship have endured. They act as if Monty just needs to wake up one day and decide that there's no blood on his hands (that he's not responsible for the genocide of an entire civilization), that all of the friends he lost are in a better place and the future is just so bright, all he has to do is look—
It seems as if, every day, someone is preaching that it'll be okay, that everything's going to be all right.
And he's just so. sick. of. it
But Monty's never been confrontational, so he only plasters on a tight-lipped grin and nods.
For a second, he thinks that Gina can read every miserable thought that's crossed his mind in the lie on his face, but then she's straightening her shoulders and nodding back. Satisfied, she turns on her heel and leaves.
As soon as she's gone, Miller cocks an eyebrow. "Montgomery?"
"What did you think 'Monty' was short for?"
"I don't know. Montague?"
Monty laughs, a soft sound that quickly tapers off into silence. "What does that make Jasper? A Capulet?"
Miller smiles, but the pointed look he fixes on Monty erases any humor behind it. "Nah. I don't know if 'medieval blood feud' is really your guys' style."
"No. But dead girlfriends sure are."
For a minute, Miller just purses his lips, says nothing. But then he's angling toward Monty until their knees are just touching and he's fixing his stare on a spot of oil staining the metal floorboards between them. "Hey, man. I'll be the first to say, I didn't trust Maya. I don't know if I ever did. And now I kind of feel like an ass, but it's the truth. But no matter what I thought of her, no matter how much she didn't deserve it? You had no choice. You saw what they were doing to us; they never would have stopped."
Monty brings his hands to his lap. "Maybe, but we don't know might've happened. I might've not had a choice, but I took theirs away too," he says.
Miller is silent for so long that Monty wonders if that's the end of it, if Miller agrees and has decided he'd rather not deal with the emotional wreck that Monty has become. But then his voice is ringing out and it's steady, sure of itself in a way that Monty's hasn't been in a while.
"I may not like it, but I understand where Jasper is coming from. If it had been Bryan instead of Maya, I don't know what I would've done. Honestly, I would probably hate you too."
Bryan.
The name hangs between them like a tangible thing that feels like another weight on Monty's chest (for a whole slew of reasons that he will gladly stick his head in the sand to ignore).
After a moment, Miller continues on. "A part of him will probably always hate you."
"Well, don't sugarcoat it."
Miller chuckles. "Hey, jackass. I'm trying to say something profound here."
Monty bows his head a little when he gestures for him to go on. "Sir, yes sir."
Miller snorts and then fixes his eyes back on the floor. "I don't think I'll ever forget the sounds Fox made when they strapped her to that table." He taps his skull. "They'll be in here. Forever. Which is why I can understand why you had to do it. But he can't—not right now. He's too close to it—to you. And asking him to snap out of it is only going to make him angrier, Monty. I know it's unfair, but he's human—we're all bound to act like fuck-ups every once in a while."
Some of us more than most, Monty thinks. (and he doesn't mean Jasper.)
"Maybe I'm just talking out of my ass, but you know him, Monty. Better than anyone. Maybe it's as simple as not saying anything at all. Maybe it's just about being there for him." He pauses and then look sheepishly back up at Monty. "Am I making any sense? I feel like I'm rambling."
"No, it's—you're right," Monty mumbles. He thinks back on his (train wreck of a) conversation with Jasper this morning, of his desperation and telling Jasper it's not the end of the world. Monty knows that, right now, words are meaningless; platitudes and apologies and false promises are the furthest thing from what Jasper needs.
His best friend might be unwilling to look past his own grief, and that might make him irrational, but feelings have never made much sense, have never been bound by logic. And in all honesty, Monty can't really say what he would think of Jasper if his parents had died on that floor instead of Maya, Jasper the architect of their destruction. It's a series of hypotheticals and a phantom pain that he knows words simply wouldn't be able to solve.
He suddenly remembers that stupid argument he and Jasper got into back when they were still at the Dropship, when Jasper's newfound infamy after the incident at the bridge on Unity Day got the better of him. He remembers how words failed them, only made the rift between them worse, and it was only when Monty found him failing to hit Raven's homemade bomb and offered him another gun that Jasper smiled at him and whatever dumb thing they were fighting about was put to rest.
They didn't need to talk it out—they just needed to be there for each other. It's such a simple realization, that Monty wants to kick himself.
He's considering attempting to do just that when Miller is catching his attention again. He's angling himself in front of Monty until Miller is all he can see, the blue of his guard uniform, the faint smile dancing across his lips, the open honesty in his expression.
"I have no idea what you're spacing out about, but if you didn't hear a word I just said, just know one thing. We're all grateful for what you sacrificed in there. If it weren't for you and Bellamy and Clarke, we'd all be dead. You saved us all, Monty." He doesn't look away from Monty's eyes, and the look in them feels more like a lifeline than anything else has lately. "Give Jasper time. It might take while, but one day, he'll see that. He has to." He places an encouraging hand on Monty's shoulder that lingers for maybe a second too long, and then he offers a small smile and hauls himself to his feet.
"Profound enough for you?"
Monty feels a warmth spreading through him, and all of a sudden he feels lighter than he's felt in weeks.
"Yeah, jackass," he grins.
"Good. I gotta get back to my shift, but find me at the Mess later, yeah?" And then he shoves his hands in his pockets and walks away.
As Monty watches his head disappear around the corner, he thinks of their quiet moment before Gina arrived, of Miller bobbing his head and playing the air-drums to some private beat. And he suddenly knows what his next step will be in breaking down that insurmountable wall between him and Jasper. He doesn't give himself time to second guess it because he knows Jasper, almost as well as he knows himself.
He knows that it might only make a dent, but at least it'll be a start. So he turns to the wires in front of him and gets back to work.
The next time that Chancellor Griffin leads a supply run to Mount Weather, he volunteers to join. Their vehicles stutter to a stop outside, and he joins them as the metal doors groan open and the group shuffles into what remains of the Mountain.
The bodies have long since been cleared away, but it's like Monty can still see the ghosts of all the people he irradiated (murdered) drifting through the concrete corridors. Like he can still hear the piano playing in the rec room, feel the children brushing by his legs as they chase a soccer ball around the corner. Like it was only yesterday.
He wants to do nothing more than curl up in a corner and drown out all of the sensations assaulting him, find another faulty panel and fix something that he's actually capable of fixing.
But he came here for a reason.
When the rest of his people make for the supply rooms, he heads for the dorms and only blanches a little when he takes in the still unmade sheets, the bags left unpacked and the antique radio at the foot of his old mattress. He shoves down his growing nausea as completely as he can and narrows his field of vision until he's darting forward and winding his way through the rusted metal of the bunk beds. He rummages around the room until he finds what he's looking for. And then he races for the exit as quickly as he can.
When they return to Arkadia, he sets the package outside of Jasper's door and returns to his quarters, where he promptly collapses onto his sheets and succumbs to sleep.
The next morning, Monty's planting corn in the field behind the horse stables when a bead of sweat wets his eyelashes. When he lifts his head to blink it away, he catches sight of Jasper walking past, bobbing his newly-shaven head and with a spring to his step that Monty thought he might never see again.
His best friend's steps falter, and he turns his head toward Monty, sheepishly tightening his grip on the object in his hand. Monty follows the cords of white trailing from Jasper's ears to the small plastic rectangle that is Maya's old music player.
Jasper looks as if he wants to say something, and he hesitates. But then he only raises his chin and offers a tentative smile.
After a moment, Monty smiles back.
{fin.}