THREE MONTHS LATER
Aerrow Eroxin opened his eyes as the first rays of the morning sunlight pulled him from his sleep.
He got dressed and walked out of his room, ready to start a new day. He paused just outside the door, taking a moment to survey what his life had become. All around him was the hustling and bustling world of Camp Jaha.
He ran laps around the perimeter of the camp with Raven, whose leg had now fully healed.
He went hunting for food with the other ex-delinquents, all of whom had now been cleared of their crimes.
He helped Bellamy train the guards in how to fight on the ground, working side by side with his brother.
He sparred with Octavia, trading blows with the ever improving warrior in furious intensity.
And, finally, he saw Clarke. Beautiful Clarke. He walked over and kissed her softly, savouring her gentle touch.
He put his arm around her and stared out at the world around him.
Life was perfect.
…
Aerrow's eyes cracked open slowly as he awoke from his dream. He stared up at the ceiling, looking at the golden rays of sunlight that filtered through the cracks of the derelict room. He looked at Clarke, lying next to him, still sleeping peacefully. He leant over and kissed her cheek, before pushing himself off the bed and leaving the room.
Stepping out of the old house they now called their own, Aerrow stood still and took in his surroundings.
The sun shone brightly as it rose over the horizon. The trees rustled in the breeze behind him. Birds chirped overhead as they flew around, embracing the new day. Ahead of him, waves crashed against the jumbled rocks of the shore line.
He took a deep breath in, savouring the salty air of the coast.
Barefoot and bare chested, he began walking along the rocky shore, for no reason other than he could. This was his new life now. Cleo scrambled along by his side, her forked tongue flicking the air as she explored a new environment.
He had only walked a few hundred metres when he saw it sticking out from between the rocks: the end of a yellow and red tube. He narrowed his eyes in curiosity. Something about it seemed familiar.
He walked over and yanked the tube from the rocks. He held it in his hands and studied it carefully. It was about a metre long and covered in flags of nations. He spied some writing on the end of it.
It read: 'May we meet again, 2206'.
Aerrow stared at the writing for a long time. Now he recognised the tube. It was a time capsule. Sent down to Earth from the Ark.
He twisted the ends of the tube, and it split in half. Pouring out of it came dozens and dozens of pieces of paper, written on by members of the Ark ten years ago. The chancellor had thought it would be a good idea for people to write letters to their future selves, and send the letters down to the ground in the time capsule, in hopes of one day returning to Earth.
One piece of paper in particular caught his eye. It was smaller than the others, and a deep shade of purple. Slowly, and with great reverence, Aerrow bent down and picked up the paper. He held it in front of him and read what had been written on it, by his own hand ten years previously.
'Dear future Aerrow,
I am yet to know you. I don't know what you will become or how you will get there, but I can only hope that you are the best that I can possibly make you. I hope that you will possess more knowledge than I could ever impart upon you now, that the things that you will have accomplished shall cast a great shadow over what I have achieved in my comparatively short time in this life. I wish more than anything that one day you get to experience life on the ground but I hope that you never forget where you have come from.
I hope that wherever you go, your passion for life will always be a part of your soul. Through the good times and the bad, you've never given up that fiery passion that keeps you wanting to push back against barriers until they shatter. You can look back at every action you performed in your life, whatever they may be, and know that you did them for all the right reasons.
I hope that you have never forgotten to experience life to its fullest. The time will come where you will no longer be able to do the things that I can, and so I implore you to have lived knowing that you took full advantage of each stage of life. I hope you have forgotten what others expect of you, and pursued your dreams to the best of what you expect from yourself, and that you have the self-respect to know that you can always be better.
I hope that the goals that I have set for you have been fulfilled: that your time spent working towards them was successful, but also that you enjoyed everything else that life has to offer, for there is no gift more beautiful, more precious.
Most of all though, I hope that you can look back and be proud of me: of the person I am now, of who I was, and who I have helped you become. I hope that I am living my life in a manner that you think fondly of in years far from now. I hope that you took the time to care, the time to love, and the time to live.
And if one day you look in the mirror and find the man who stares back at you is barely recognisable as the boy who writes this letter, it is because he is more than this boy could have ever dreamt possible.
Aim high, dig deep, and remember that there is so much more to you than you can ever imagine.
Regards,
Aerrow.'
Aerrow stared at the writing long and hard. He felt his eyes moisten slightly and his breathing become shallower. He had written that when he was eight years old. It seemed like an entire lifetime ago, up there on the Ark, where nothing else mattered to him apart from enjoying his childhood. Back then, as a young, naïve child, he could not have possibly imagined what would eventually happen to him, yet his childhood words somehow rang truer than ever because of it.
Everything he had done, everything that had happened to him, had led him right to this moment. Standing on this shoreline, watching this sunrise, reading this piece of paper. It could not have been a coincidence. It was something so much more than that. It was destiny.
He had suffered more pain, agony, and tragic loss than any one person should ever have had to go through. He had seen every person he held dear killed in front of him. His body had been mutilated and his spirit broken. He had killed dozens of people, spilt so much innocent blood, and finally, he had been captured by the organisation who he owed his very existence to, and then fused with the person he loved – the person he was meant to love – and turned into the person he was destined to create.
And yet, somehow, he had come out the other side, still alive, still intact.
He thought about everything that had happened to him since that fateful night on the Ark, over two years ago, all the people he had met, all the friends he had made. Bellamy, Octavia, Raven, Sai. All of them had been so important to his development, his life. They had shaped him into the warrior, and the person that he was now.
He was snapped out of his reverie by the scratching of Cleo's claws as his faithful Monitor Lizard climbed up the bare skin on his back and rested herself around his shoulders.
A moment later, he felt Clarke's presence by his side. She silently wrapped her arm around his waist and leant in close to him, nestling her head against the crook of his neck. Aerrow in turn let his chin rest on top of her head as he placed his arm around her and held her close, slowly stroking her shoulder.
He was overcome by a surreal sense of closure. Here he was, finally free of the tyranny of battle, war and death. No longer did he have to hide himself away, in fear of himself and what others thought of him. He had his closest friend in Cleo, and the girl he loved right beside him. He was Aerrow Eroxin… Switchblade… Subject X… the last of the Qinta warriors. But strangely, he didn't care about any of those names. None of them mattered anymore. He was finally free.
Holding Clarke in his arms with Cleo on his shoulder, he stared out across the waves at the rising sun, off into oblivion.
He smiled.
THE END
Well, that's it. The End. Not just for this story, but for the story of Aerrow as well. The strain over the past year that I have felt, trying to make this story so much better than Closer To The Edge was, has simply worn me out as a writer, and towards the end of this story I was really struggling to write the chapters, just because I was so burnt out of ideas.
Nonetheless, this has been such a fun experience, writing stories of this magnitude, and I definitely feel as though I have improved massively as a writer over the past 18 months or so, and I hope that showed in this story.
If you've made it this far, thank you so much for reading my work, and I really hope you liked it, because – difficult though it may have been at times – I sure did love writing it.
Thank you.
Gioia99