Chapter Ten

Harper

"Wow," I hear beside me as I catch my breath. I turn my head to Monty, resting my arm over his body and allowing my sweaty body to calm back down.

"As always, impressive, Harper," he says with a smile.

"Agreed," I laugh.

"We should get to sleep."

"What? You've got a big day tomorrow or something?" I ask with a small laugh. He laughs, a light, happy sound that makes me feel more close to home than I have ever felt before. Maybe I have been alone for a long time. Maybe I haven't known a true home. But up here, laying in bed with Monty, learning with him, talking with him, and being with him…this is home.

"No. But I was going to start a new batch of algae just to see if I can find a different taste, maybe a better taste than what we have. I know Emori and Echo don't even notice but everyone else hates how bad it tastes. I can tell. I'm going to try something," he explains.

"Good. We'll figure that all out," I tell him with a smile. I rest my head down and close my eyes. I think he is trying to tell me about it again but my head feels heavy so I fall asleep easily. It feels like only minutes later when I am woken with a start. I feel like I am thrown to the side. I hit my shoulder and the wall and look back to Monty. He is sitting straight up with his chest rising and falling quickly. He still has sweat on his forehead and shoulders. I put my hand on his back.

"Monty?" I ask with confusion.

He turns to me. His face is scared. I have never seen an expression on him like this one before. His face is skewed into a contortion of pain and terror. But there is something else. A deep sense of regret. His shoulders are shaking when I touch him.

"Monty? What is it?" I ask again. He's not answering. He is looking at me, scared and frozen. I have heard Bellamy wake from nightmares before. He screams. It's loud, even through these walls. But none of us talk about it. I have even heart Murphy once before. But I would never think to ask him about it. Echo paces the halls sometimes. We hear her footsteps. We are all family. We know each other's pain. I had no idea that Monty felt it too. Suddenly shame hits me hard in the chest. I feel tears prick the edges of my eyes and I lean my head forward on his shoulder, keeping my arm around his naked body.

"Talk to me," I beg him.

"Harper?" he asks.

I look up at him, trying so hard not to cry or look sad but I know that I do. I know that he can see right through it all.

"Yeah?"

"Do you ever think about them? About the people we left behind," he says. "Not in the bunker but everywhere."

"You mean your mom?"

He nods slowly and sadly. Maybe he didn't want to say that out loud. I can feel his body tense beneath my fingers.

"She would be proud of you for saving us all," I tell him with a small smile that I know is broken.

"Maybe," he admits. "But I could have saved her. The EMP worked on Raven. I could have saved my mom. I could have saved all of them. Jasper too. He was my brother and I left him there."

I can see the pain on his face so prominent now that it looks as if he might shatter at any moment. I pull him just a bit closer to me, resting my head on his shoulder and holding my other hand out on his lap over the blankets. He takes it, intertwining our fingers.

"You tried so hard to save him. I was there. You were there, sacrificing yourself so that we could live, trying to convince us that there was a better way. I couldn't see it for a long time. But you told me that you loved me and I realized that what I was doing was selfish." I sit up so that I can look to his scared face. "We have so much life up here. Jasper should have been with us but he gave up hope. I almost did. You couldn't have saved Jasper, Monty. Maya broke him. The grounders broke him. What he had to do to survive broke him. But it made us stronger. It made you stronger."

He tries to nod but I can see that he doesn't want to. He is still afraid of what he had to do. He can still see Jasper dying in his arms all of that time ago. It was painful but it was a long time ago. We can't change what happened then. I lean forward and kiss his cheek. He smiles a little but I can tell it is not a true smile.

"You saved me, Monty," I assure.

He intakes his breath fast. I look at him and see a look of surprise and shock. I think that I hurt him for a moment before he nods and then shows me a real, small, genuine smile.

"You're right," he agrees, putting his hand to my face. "I love you, Harper."

"I love you too."

Finally, my Monty leans me in for a warm kiss. When I pull away, looking back into those eyes, he looks lost again. I keep my body close to his. Maybe I can protect him from whatever terror he is feeling inside.

"What happened?" I ask.

He just shrugs. It is not like him to not tell me something. But I know why he is doing it. Just like everyone else around here: they are all afraid. We are all ashamed of what we did and what we felt. We are all hiding our true feelings because we are nervous that if we don't, we will be embarrassed by them.

"We need to have a family meeting tomorrow," I decide.

"What?" he asks with confusion.

"That's right. Everyone needs to get together and talk about something that they did or some pain that they feel or someone that they left behind. We need to be openly talking about this because if we don't, we are going to go back down there and make the same mistakes that we made before. When we return home, we need to be better people. We need to be strong people."

"We have to be the good guys," Monty says with a smile.

I nod.

"In light of deciding that we all need to talk about our pain, I should probably tell you that it was a nightmare."

I nod, listening.

"It was about Jasper. When Clarke told me what I needed to do in Mount Weather, I thought that I could do it. When I did it, it just seemed like another task. It didn't seem like I was going to kill people because of it. But then she and Bellamy were having such a hard time and I realized what I did. Without me, Clarke and Bellamy would have had no lever to pull. Everyone blamed Clarke. They even called her Wanheda. She didn't kill all of those people. Neither did Bellamy." He looks right into my eyes, his face filled with anguish. "I did."

I wrap my arms around Monty and kiss his head as I feel his body shudder. The realization that he is just as much at fault as everyone else is going to be hard for him to grasp. But we are going to do it together. I am not going to tell him that it wasn't his fault. It was. I am just going to tell him the truth.

"And without you, Octavia would be dead, which means that our people would not have a place in that bunker and every single one of them would be dead. Without you, we wouldn't have solved any of the problems that we have. Without you, we wouldn't be here right now, in this beautiful place that we can call home," I whisper.

"Thank you," he whispers back in a broken voice.

He doesn't feel healed this night. I know he won't. But he falls asleep in my arms with the knowledge that he is important to us. Tomorrow, we will make our amends.