The red moon shines for all —the survivors can't see it, trapped in a gilded cage that will be their home; the death can't see it, trapped in a fantasy of a world without pain (but with a choice).
The red moon shines for them —two of a hundred, the living souls inside the empty shell of what they once call home. They don't have a home right now, but they are trying and it's hard to go on.
"Why did you change your mind?" Monty asks as they get into the Rover with the last of their possessions (one blanket so they have something to hold on to, a seed of jobi to remember what almost tore them apart). He's shaking when they exit what is left of Arkadia, but neither looks back.
He drives with one hand. The other is between Harper's small hands. The gloves of their suits don't let their skins touch, but Monty knows she's there (tangible, real, alive) and it's what makes him go on (he won't tell her he almost drinks the tea too, for that brief moment when he thinks her dead like the others).
Harper shruggs in that adorable way she has. He smiles, chuckles and steals a look at her through the visor of the mask that will become a second face.
"Because I wanted to."
It's all down to that. They're young, but their ghosts (mother, father, friends) haunt them and will never cease to do it. Every time they look back, the ghosts will be there.
"All I wanted was to choose."
Monty gets it. He understands how important it is to feel in control. More so for Harper who loses her family —even before coming down to Earth— to something out of her control.
He wants to tell her that. He looks at her again and only sees her protective mask (and he's so glad she choses to put it on even if it weights in her heart for not convincing the rest of doing the same). Her eyes are on the road to the bunker (the road home, as they should be) and Monty lets himself hope.
"Will they be waiting?" she asks in a small voice, fearing having made the wrong choice.
He frowns and looks ahead, to where the path is illuminated by the glowing red moon. He can't lie to her; not after all they live in this last day (but what if this is their last day?). Harper is shaking, he notices, and it might be because of the radiation already weakening her or because of the fear they feel (it's just another thing they share).
"Clarke won't let us die," he tells her but doesn't believe his own words.
"Really?" and apparently, Harper doesn't believe them either. "We know Clarke, Monty. She might have been our friend once, but now she's Wanheda and will do what's best for her people."
"We're her people," he reminds Harper, and maybe he's trying too hard because the words are hurried in his lips, almost lost to the silence of the woods. "We came here just like she did."
"And we didn't get the privilege of being selected for Arkadia."
The thought is heavy in Monty's mind. He hopes Clarke won't make him regret this. Letting Harper live only to die because their leader doesn't care for the people they are as long as they share her origin...
Monty isn't stupid (if Raven isn't in the equation, he's the smartest guy he knows) and knows the fear in his mind is his instinct telling him to go back to Arkadia and make the most out of the few rooms still protected from the killing wave and from the food and water still available.
"We have no choice but to trust in her," Monty says because on their own, Harper and he won't survive more than a few nights. "We always have Bellamy to reel her back."
Harper giggles. The sound is darker than the laughter she normally has.
"Do you really believe he can reason with her? She's the one who changes his mind with a look and a pout."
That's also true, but Monty needs something to hold onto (besides the Rover's wheel and Harper's reassuring hand).
"We should have stayed in Mount Weather," he tells Harper, confessing what he has been thinking since the debacle with the City of Light begins. "We would have been safe from the grounders and the killing wave."
She makes the noise she always does when she has deep thoughts. The small sound makes Monty's heart flutter in his chest and he's loving that Harper's alive and there, sharing her thoughts with him instead of being on the floor of Arkadia's lonely halls, accompanied only by the ghosts they once called friends.
"Would we be different?" she asks, thoughtful. "It might have been better, but they would have taken our bone marrow from us. Who knows if they would have taken our will to live too."
He doesn't tell her about how Praimfaya almost takes her will to live; he knows Harper is aware of that but the fact that she's there with him is what matters.
"We'd still be together," he assures her, glancing quickly at her and meeting her eyes for a second. "I'd still love you."
The hope comes back when she looks at him. "I'll always love you."
The red moon keeps shining.