Apologies for the delay in this chapter. Among other things, I've been busy re-writing the original 'Closer To The Edge' (because it was awful by my own admission), so stay tuned for that going up really soon. In the meantime this chapter takes a different turn than what a lot of you were probably expecting and shows a totally different side to Aerrow's character.


I WAS BORN OF THE WOMB OF A POISONOUS MAN

BEATEN AND BROKEN AND CHASED FROM THE LAND

BUT I RISE UP ABOVE IT, HIGH UP ABOVE IT AND SEE

Over the following days, despite the welcome he had received from his friends, integrating back into the lifestyle of Arkadia proved to be even harder than Aerrow had anticipated.

Other than Octavia, Lincoln, Bellamy and Raven, and a few other surviving members of the original hundred delinquents, no one really seemed all that happy to have him back. The ordinary citizens were scared of him at best. At worst, they wished him dead. The shadows cast by his crimes were long, and people's memories were even longer. There had been outrage when he wasn't floated for (allegedly) murdering six people on the Ark, and in the aftermath of the bloodbath he was unofficially bestowed the nickname 'switchblade' by the citizens. Seeing him ruthlessly cut down eighteen members of the guard on the ground only compounded their intense fear and hatred of him, and there were many who still wanted his head on a stake.

Avoiding these people was easy though. Hardly any of them recognised him thanks to his altered appearance, and Aerrow barely interacted with anyone anyway. Despite his once popular status on the Ark, he had lived on the very fringes of society since the day Arianna's throat was slit. Solitary confinement didn't exactly provide much time to socialise, and in his two years spent inside that lonely grey cell, Aerrow all but forgot how to interact altogether.

Not that he wanted to. In his mind, humanity was a plague, seeping into every corner of this beautiful world, poisoning it with its conflict, its ego, its insatiable lust for power and control. Maybe this was something that had been instilled in him by Hans Van Dyke, or maybe it was something he had simply observed in his time as a nomad. Either way, Aerrow simply didn't have the desire – or perhaps the heart – to strike up a conversation with anyone anytime soon.

In fact, he spent hardly any time in the camp itself. He largely spent his days wandering the surrounding woodland, climbing to the peaks of mountains, or simply running with the wind, relishing the freedom of his actions, totally immersed in the sensations of the wind in his hair, the dirt beneath his feet, and the Lace Monitor by his side. It was his way to escape the chaotic scene of Arkadia, the demands and judgements of strangers, and his own world of pain. When he ran, nothing else mattered. It was just him and Cleo, scurrying along beside him. He had learnt through a combination of his own actions, the Qinta, and the earth itself that his was a free spirit, and his heart would always yearn for this, and that no one could ever take this individuality away from him.

And every time he left, he finally came to a stop at the same location: at the top of a small waterfall, in a clearing at the top of a hill, about halfway between Arkadia, and the hundred's original camp. And every time, he would pause for a moment, look up at the afternoon sun bathing the landscape before him, and sigh wistfully. For it was here, directly beneath his feet, in a subterranean cave, that he experienced the happiest moments of his life.

He did this for a reason. For deep down inside him, there was another reason he never spoke to anyone anymore. A sadder reason.

No one would understand him.

Not like Sienna had.

She was his exact mirror image. She was the one person he never had to hide himself from, his true self. The entire time he was with Clarke, he could feel a slight withdrawal from her, from the darkness within him. Sienna wasn't like that. She knew he was a killer, but unlike Clarke, she hadn't resented that, or tried to change him. No, she had simply understood him. And that was something he hadn't found in anyone since, and that was why he never spoke to anyone. Octavia was perhaps the only person who came close, but even she was shielded from the deepest, darkest sections of his heart.

And that was the real reason he stood where he did. The cave underneath him was where he had gotten together with her, where they had conceived what would have become subject X. He never went into the cave itself, long ago he had sealed the entrance so no one could ever set foot in that special place again. No, he just stood above it in silence, maintaining some sort of fantastical connection with his fallen soulmate. Such moments reminded him that she was always within him, literally, her DNA forever combined with his. It only served to compound his misery.

"She is still with you, inside your head. She still lives, in a manner of speaking, through you."

The words of his Qinta mentor rang constantly inside his head. Where once they had been a comfort, now they were nothing more than the most offensive insult.

Eventually, his loathing would be interrupted by the coming of the night and he would be forced to return...

...home?

When Aerrow was within the camp walls, he kept to himself, out of the way of everyday life for the other citizens. He spent his time lurking behind the main structure – what was once alpha station – inside a small shelter he had put together out of sheets of metal. It wasn't very large, only maybe four metres in length, and two metres in height and width, but it was inherently his and that alone was a comfort in a world he still wasn't sure he wanted to be a part of.

Despite the warm welcome they initially gave him, day by day his friends came by to see him less and less, either forgetting he was even back, or simply not wanting to talk to him anymore due to his... recalcitrance. Only Octavia came by regularly, an act he appreciated more than he would ever admit.

He did have two interesting encounters, however.

The first was when Kane came by, offering him a uniform, a pistol, and a position on the guard. Needless to say, he left very shortly afterwards, still carrying the very much unwanted items.

The second was when Octavia marched into his shelter, pulled him roughly to his feet and dragged him out into the daylight and over to the main station, citing that there was something he needed to be a part of.

She didn't say anything more than that and when Aerrow walked through a final doorway, his uninterested expression quickly turned to one of shock when he saw Bellamy hit the ground, hard.

Lincoln stood over him, covered in sweat and breathing hard. Beside him, his hands were clenched into tight fists.

Stifling a grunt, Bellamy – equally bare chested – quickly rolled backwards onto his feet and came back at Lincoln with a flurry of punches and kicks, all of which the grounder parried with not a small degree of difficulty.

Aerrow watched, stunned, as the two continued their brawl. What the hell was going on? Why would they be fighting? Why wasn't Octavia doing anything?

Suddenly, with an impressive burst of speed, Bellamy broke through Lincoln's defenses and landed a couple of hard hits to his temple and torso. Lincoln was forced backwards by the assault, but just when Bellamy was going in for the kill, the grounder fought back brutally quickly. He grabbed Bellamy's arm, twisted around and threw him over his shoulder, slamming him into the ground.

Bellamy grunted, winded, and could do nothing as Lincoln knelt down on top of him, drew his hand back into a fist and-

Stopped.

Aerrow narrowed his eyes, confused, as Lincoln instead stood back up and gave Bellamy a hand getting back to his feet. "He had me." Lincoln spoke, "But he was too aggressive."

It was only now that Aerrow noticed that gathered crowd of ex-delinquents, and suddenly everything became clear. This wasn't fighting. This was training. Something that evidently Octavia wanted him to participate in.

"Whatever you say..." Bellamy muttered, trying to nurse his pride as he slipped a shirt over his head. "Aerrow," he said as he walked over, "Glad you could make it."

Aerrow struggled to find his words. "What he hell is all this?" he asked eventually.

"What does it look like?" Bellamy answered nonchalantly, "We're training. Kane finally realised that if we're going to survive down here, we need to learn how to fight."

"Is that so?" Aerrow replied, eyeing Bellamy warily. He had a bad feeling about this.

"Yeah, we were hoping you'd give us a hand. There's no one better than you, after all."

Aerrow felt his heart sink. His hunch had been correct.

"No." He replied quickly.

"What?" Bellamy started in confusion.

"I don't want to teach anyone. This is not my fight anymore."

His words were rushed and nervous, but the strength behind them was apparent, something which went unnoticed by Bellamy.

"What are you talking about?" The older man said, still smiling, "We need you now more than ever."

Aerrow had no time to respond as Lincoln threw him a bamboo staff, which he caught awkwardly.

"Bellamy I'm telling you I don't want to-"

His protests were suddenly drowned out by cheers from the onlooking delinquents, who were suddenly filled with a new energy at the realisation that Aerrow was now going to be involved. His fighting skills had become something of a folk legend among them.

Cheers of "Go on, Aerrow!" Grew louder as Lincoln set himself to make his first attack.

"NO!" Aerrow suddenly screamed, instantly silencing everyone. Even Bellamy looked a bit shell-shocked, finally realising that he was being serious.

Aerrow traced his eyes back and forth around the crowd frantically.

"I'm not training anyone!" He kept his voice loud and his words forceful. "You don't want to learn how to fight! "Because when you enter a fight, you do so only expecting to win."

He paused, as he felt tears welling up in his eyes as the emotions steadily grew within him, threatening to burst free once again. When he next spoke, his tone was softer, but all the more painful. "You never stop to think... what you might lose."

And with that, he threw the staff to the side and walked out of the room.

Aerrow stormed back through the corridors of Alpha station.

He bumped roughly past several others, some of which turned around to complain but Aerrow never looked back. His fists were clenched tightly beside him and he was seriously debating if he even wanted to stay.

He was so... so through with everything. He never wanted to fight anyone again. He had already lost enough. He'd had enough of everyone expecting him to still be the same as he was when he'd first landed on the ground. They knew nothing of who he had become, what he had endured to get there. The fact that they didn't even try to understand why made his blood boil, and it all came back to the exact reason he didn't want anything to do with anyone.

And Octavia...

She had been the one that brought him into that whole spectacle in the first place. After everything they had been through together just days previously, and everything she had witnessed, he would have thought that she out of anyone would understand. But no...

He was forced to stop and just lean against the wall in despair. No one would ever understand...

He was pulled from his self-loathing by the sound of someone shouting angrily nearby. Out of curiosity, he went over to investigate. It sounded a lot like-

He rounded a corner to see Raven standing in the middle of the corridor, shouting at someone who appeared to be a doctor. As Aerrow got closer, he recognised the subject of her wrath as Jackson, the one time assistant to Abby Griffin.

He clenched his fist and stemmed the anger that came with the thought of Abby. She had been the one who had turned him over to Oblivion. She would have been the death of them all if her own daughter hadn't put a bullet between her eyes. In the end, she'd got what she deserved, but her death still left a gaping hole in the already slim medical expertise of Arkadia, one that Jackson had evidently filled.

"Not clearing me medically to work is the same damn thing as firing me!" Raven shouted as Aerrow walked up

"Raven... your leg-" Jackson began

"My leg is fine!" The enraged mechanic cut him off

"No it's not!" Jackson replied sharply, "and doing your job is only making your conditions worse!"

Injured or not, Raven looked like she was about to deck him, and certainly would have done had Aerrow not intercepted her swinging fist.

"Hey calm down, calm down!" He told her as gently as he could while continuing to hold her straining form at bay.

"Let me go Aerrow!" Raven fired at him, twisting out of his grip and shoving him backwards.

"Raven. Calm down." Aerrow said much more sternly, fixing his eyes on hers. He saw the pain riddled in her features. It reminded him of himself. "What's wrong?"

"I don't need your help." The girl hissed at him, "Everyone thinks they know how to help me. Make me stay in camp, don't let me work, ask every time I need to reach something on a high shelf. But I'm not that person! People can't just expect me to change because they think they understand me! They don't!"

Her words hit something deep inside him. There was something in the mixture of rage and pain that flowed freely in her eyes, the frustration at the constraints of society. Something he could relate to.

"Raven." He told her quietly, yet firmly. "I understand."

He saw her eyes flash with indignation momentarily, but he did not flinch. Finally, she softened.

Somehow, she believed him. He didn't quite know why at first, but then he realised: she had only been hearing lies from people, things she did not want to believe. But in him she had finally found someone who was telling the truth, someone who did understand her. And then he saw her shoulders slump in defeat, her face taking on the appearance of someone who could not fight anymore.

Aerrow wrapped his arm around her shoulders and guided her out of the room. "Let's get out of here." He whispered to her soothingly. Raven simply nodded and leaned closer into him as she limped along.

He brought her out of the main station and into his own improvised shelter, where he lay her down on the elevated sleeping platform.

"When did the pain start?' He asked as casually as he could manage.

Raven looked down. "After the explosion at Mount Weather." She answered quietly. She sounded like this was the first time she had actually told anyone, which somehow didn't surprise him at all.

"Three months?"

"It's nothing I can't handle!" She told him defensively

"No it isn't." Aerrow replied quickly, "You're lying."

"You don't know-"

"Raven." He said firmly, silencing her. "I know."

Under the intensity of his stare, she couldn't help but relent and finally give in to the truth. Aerrow saw how hard it was for her, and how much it pained her to finally admit that she was in need of help. Raven was one of the strongest, most independent people he knew. He also knew how hard it could be to admit not just to others, but to yourself that you were in trouble.

"So what?" The mechanic sniffed, "You're going to try make me feel better?"

"No." Aerrow replied calmly. "I'm going to try and help you."

Raven was about to scoff at what was surely another imperious speech about her leg never healing and the only thing she could do was try to reduce the pain but there was something... different about Aerrow. He wasn't like the others. He wasn't one to lie, and certainly not one to give false hope. He never did anything without a purpose, and there was something in that personality that made her trust him.

"How?"

He began by getting her to strip down to just her underwear, exposing as much skin as possible to the air, and lying face down on his bed.

Even he was unable to suppress a gasp when she peeled her shirt off, revealing her scar ridden body. Much like his own, her torso bore dozens of small, thin scars inflicted by the blades of grounders, from a time when they believed she had tried to murder their commander.

For a long time, he could only sweep his eyes up and down her relatively small body, taking in the amount of damage to it. She had gone through more than anyone else since landing on the ground. Maybe not as much as him, but the difference was she didn't deserve any of it. She had landed a pure soul, unscarred by life. Now she was anything but.

Then she lay down, revealing the biggest scar of all, a huge distorted semicircle of scarred flesh on her lower back, a consequence of improvised surgery to remove a bullet in her spine. He had been there for it. The surgery had saved her life, but not the feeling in her left leg.

Aerrow distracted himself by warming a series of small pebbles over a flame and, strangely, extracting saliva from Cleo's mouth.

"What are you doing?" Raven asked him curiously.

"When I was with the Qinta, they taught me that pain is an obstacle, and that there are infinite ways to overcome it."

"What are you going to do to me?"

Aerrow didn't answer. Instead he began running his fingers along Raven's skin, starting at her feet and moving up, lightly grasping with his fingertips every few centimetres, sensing her body's reactions to his touch.

As he reached her thighs, he found it harder and harder to focus on what he was doing, and not get distracted by the heat from her skin. Much like with Octavia all those nights ago, his body's natural urges threatened to overcome him as he pressed gently against her firm flesh.

He very deliberately skipped straight from her thighs to her lower back, and the moment he came into contact with the scar above her spine, she let out a squeal of pain and recoiled backwards.

"Whoa, take it easy." He soothed, restraining her until she calmed down before retrieving the pebbles from the fire.

One by one, he placed them on her bare skin, trailing them down either side of her spine in very precise locations. They hissed ever so slightly when they were first put down, but he had been careful not to overheat them. When she asked what he was doing, he explained that the stones led to increased blood flow to that section of her body, and by trailing them down he was building a dense network of capillaries leading directly to her damaged spinal chord, greatly accelerating the healing process and giving her a chance to walk again.

Once all the pebbles were in place, he pulled out some the herbs that he'd hastily gathered from the food stores and began grinding them up. While not the same mix as the ones he'd carried from the Qinta, they were still better than nothing. Once they were sufficiently ground, he added them to the Lace Monitor saliva and coated the end of a scalpel in the mixture.

On seeing the scalpel, Raven was suddenly filled with fear, her mind taking her back to when she was being cut open by the same instrument. She tried to move away but Aerrow placed a firm hand in the centre of her back. "Relax, Raven, it'll only hurt for a second."

His words did nothing to reassure her. Before she could reply, he quickly and calmly drove the scalpel under her skin, right into the damaged section of her spine.

As it turned out, 'hurt' proved to be something of a lie. Raven was no stranger to pain. She had been shot, cut open, and had bone marrow drilled out of her, but this was on a whole other level. She wailed at the burning hot fire that engulfed her. Her entire lower body felt like it was being dipped in red hot lava. She thrashed around on the bed, desperately trying to escape the agony, but it just kept escalating. She thought she was going to die

And then he was there, kneeling in front of her, grasping her hands firmly in his. Her senses were distorted through the pain. He was saying something but she couldn't make out what it was. Her vision turned blurry but one thing remained in perfect focus: his electric blue eyes. And through the pain, she realised something: she was not alone. He was there for her, just as he had been when the bullet was being dug out of her spine.

Finally, mercifully, the pain began to die down and she simply collapsed down on the bed, exhausted.

Aerrow took a deep breath in then exhaled slowly, relieved that she had made it. He had never actually done that procedure before, but had hopes that it would work. The combination of the healing properties of the herbs and the greatly increased tolerance to pain brought on by the venom-laced saliva meant that Raven would hopefully be able to walk comfortably again in a few weeks.

He settled down next to her, rubbing her shoulder softly.

"I know how you feel, Raven." He said suddenly, his voice quiet. "To have everyone try to force their opinion on you, on what they want you to do, who they think you should be."

"What do you mean?" Raven replied, voice still a little croaky.

"I'm not the same person I used to be." He told her carefully. "Everyone thinks I am but... the person that I was... I just can't..." He cut himself off and looked away as water built in his eyes yet again.

They dried immediately when he felt Raven grab his hand gently, and he turned back towards her in surprise. She raised her eyebrow mischievously at him.

"You feel like a drink?" She asked.

In the corner of the mess hall, two figures sat up against the wall: Aerrow and Raven.

It was well after dark, and they were the only ones in the room. Alcohol was no longer being served but it turned out Raven – being Raven – had her own stash.

Aerrow eyed the cup of slightly discoloured liquid in front of him cautiously. Raven was already up to her third shot, but this was still his first.

There was good reason for his hesitance. He had never once actually drunk any alcohol. In fact, he had resolutely avoided it, both on the Ark and the wild parties at the delinquents' original camp. He'd believed firmly that nothing good could come of it.

Even now he wasn't sure. Somewhere deep inside him he knew he probably shouldn't drink this, and that if he did, he was throwing away one of the few remaining pieces of who he used to be. What would Sienna think if she saw him now?

But she wasn't there! He reminded himself. She was gone, and she was never coming back, there was no point living in a world of hope.

He looked back down at the untouched shot glass in his hand.

Fuck it.

In one movement, he bought the glass to his mouth and downed the lot.

The sharp taste of the moonshine stung the inside of his mouth and burned his throat as he swallowed it. Beside him, Raven burst out laughing at the look of disgust on his face. His first thought was that the foul liquid was the most horrible thing he had ever tasted. But his second thought was that he wanted more.

And so they continued into the night, trading shots. Aerrow quickly got the hang of drinking and caught up to Raven. He barely noticed as the room became progressively more and more blurry. He didn't care. All he cared about was the strange sense of warmth spreading through his body, radiating out from his centre. He had never felt like this before, but he sure as hell didn't want it to stop. For the first time in so long, he felt good.

"Who would have thought that big bad Switchblade was such a party animal!" Raven remarked drunkenly as she leaned her head on his shoulder.

At her joke, he threw his head back and laughed.

Raven froze.

She had never heard him laugh before.

It was a fact she didn't even realise until she heard it. The entire time she had known him, he'd always been so serious, or so sad that she had never even been able to comprehend the idea that he would be able to laugh. It was quite high pitched, and not very voluminous, but it was still a laugh, and it sounded good. She had never seen this side of him before, she suspected no one had, but suddenly she was filled with a desire to keep exploring it. Suddenly, she wanted to hear him laugh again and again and again.

Eventually though the alcohol ran out, the cheerful mood began to die down somewhat, and the two simply sat up against the wall, leaning on each other in silence for quite some time before eventually Aerrow spoke.

"Do you miss him?" He asked simply.

Raven tilted her head up to look at him. "Who?"

"Finn. Do you miss him?"

Raven was momentarily stunned into silence, but when she finally understood what he had just asked, she was quickly filled with a deep sadness at his memory. "Every day." She sniffed. "Do you miss Sienna?"

Aerrow gave no answer. He simply sat upright and nodded.

Looking at him, at the pain and the sadness in his eyes, she finally understood what he meant by knowing how she felt. It wasn't understanding what it was like to be judged, or even be in pain, it was understanding what it was like to lose a soulmate.

"Is it really that bad?" She mused aloud.

"What?"

"Dying." She said simply. The word hung heavily between the two of them.

"I always used to think it was a punishment." Aerrow answered eventually, "But now... with everything that's happened... I can't help but wonder if it would be a gift."

He paused

"There's only one way I can see Sienna again..." He continued, "I just wish..."

He cut himself off, spying something in the corner of his eye.

Leaving the sentence unfinished, he got to his feet and staggered across the room, still feeling the effects of the alcohol. Raven followed him, curious to see where he was going. She caught up to him just as he sat down at a grand piano – another item that had been appropriated from the Mount Weather supply bunker.

She watched in silence as he pressed down on a few of the keys, making a simple, yet melodic tune.

"You know how to play that thing?" she asked in surprise.

Aerrow nodded absent-mindedly. "My father taught me when I was younger, before he..." He trailed off, focussing instead on playing the melody of his choice. And then, to Raven's surprise, he started to sing.

I wish I could remember every second we had,

I know I tried to count them all one by one, one by one.

Take every memory we ever made,

I want to live them all one by one, one by one.

As he played, he seemed to totally zone out and forget that she was even there, losing himself to the music and the tragic message of the song. He was no singer, but something told Raven that wasn't why he was playing.

And I swear that I'm not going to lose you now,

I'll keep you in my life somehow and,

Even when the lights go down, down,

I could never lose you now.

Un-noticed by either of the two, another person had entered the hall, hearing the tune and coming to investigate.

Even though we're not so close here,

Maybe you could pick me up still,

'Cause I can't stop falling down, I can't stop falling down,

And I'm not going to lose you now...

"That belonged to Mount Weather!" Someone growled an instant before Aerrow was slammed into, tackled off the stool and hurled violently into the floor.

Raven jumped back in shock as the two figures wrestled on the ground.

Aerrow rolled on top of his attacker and finally saw who they were.

"Jasper?" He breathed in disbelief.

"Grave robber!" The enraged delinquent shouted at him, throwing a vicious punch at his nose. Aerrow recoiled but the alcohol had affected his balance badly and he toppled over onto the ground. Jasper seized the upper hand and began pummeling him with punches.

Aerrow simply lay there on the ground, taking the hits. A part of his brain was telling him to fight back, but he resisted. No, he was going to take this. He deserved this.

"What the hell is going on?" Someone else shouted as the lights to the hall were flicked on, revealing Octavia, Bellamy and Kane standing in the doorway.

The two Blakes quickly rushed forward and separated them while Kane simply strode forward in disbelief.

"Jasper what's wrong with you?" Octavia yelled at him angrily.

"Ask him!" Jasper shouted back, pointing at Aerrow, "He killed them. All of them!"

"What are you talking about?" Bellamy asked, annoyed.

"He means Mount Weather." Aerrow interrupted, breathing hard. "Oblivion irradiated the Mountain. I killed them all." His voice was tinged with pain as he spoke, the happy tone he had shared with Raven only moments ago was long forgotten.

"That doesn't matter!" Kane said sternly. "As a matter of fact, it's Mount Weather that I need to speak to you all about."

"What?" Bellamy questioned.

"The supply bunker. We need somewhere to store the members of farm station until we can construct more rooms."

"No way!" Octavia replied fiercely. "The grounders will never allow it!"

"They will if we can make them see that we aren't the bad guys." Kane told her firmly and confidently. "Places are not evil. People are."

Octavia was silent for a long time, before eventually she spoke. "Ok." She said quietly, before turning to face Aerrow.

"Are you ready to face your fears?" She asked him seriously.


Song is 'Lose You Now' by Lindsey Stirling and Mako.