"Murphy!"
Avery called after the boy, jogging to catch up with his retreating figure. He stopped in his tracks, staring back at her and waiting for her to get to him before continuing.
"What's up?"
"Just wanted to chat. I've barely spoken to you since we got here."
It was true. After many chats in the Sky Box, Avery would've thought they'd be closer now they were on the ground together. But instead, she found that Murphy happened to be on the other side of a number of arguments that had already happened.
"Then let's chat." He teased her wording choice, and she rolled her eyes.
She found herself a little lost for words then; realising she didn't know what to talk about. She ran through a few things in her mind as they came to a stop outside the Dropship.
"You know anyone else here? The only people I'm really familiar with are Clarke and Wells, and even then I've only spoken to Clarke."
Murphy shrugged, looking over the people milling about thoughtfully. "I knew a few of the guys from before the Sky Box. Everyone knows Finn - obviously - and then the Earth's royalty of course, just like you."
She scoffed at how dramatic he was over Clarke and Wells. It seemed like he hated them more than Bellamy did, which was odd considering he was following Bellamy's lead rather than the other way around.
"I don't like them either, Murphy." She paused. "But you've got to admit, you can't seriously believe taking the wristbands off is a good idea."
Murphy looked at her as though she had just committed mass genocide. Actually, Murphy probably would've looked less disgusted if that was true. He was looking at her as though she had just declared her love for Clarke.
"Are you serious?"
He watched her for a few moments, expecting her to burst out into laughter and tell him that she was joking. When she only blankly stared at him, he exhaled a breathy laugh.
"Avery, it makes the people on the Ark suffer. They locked us up like criminals; they deserve to suffer for a while."
She shook her head refusingly, but Murphy wasn't done yet. He still had more reasons for hating the Ark, more reasons that she could relate to.
"It's the Ark's fault our dads are dead, why should they get to live down here as if they didn't do that?"
That was the whole reason they were friends in the first place.
It took Murphy a few attempts to get a reply out of the girl back in the Sky Box. At first, she was so devastated about being stuck in there that she was angry at everyone and everything; even the boy she had never spoken a word to in the cell next door.
When he dismissively brought up his father one time, she found herself intrigued enough to reply. His father was floated for stealing medicine for him. She was put in the Sky Box for stealing medicine for her father.
Similar stories, minor differences.
And that's how they became friends. Bonding over the shared trauma that the Ark had brought to them.
The one big difference was: Avery was learning to get past it. Murphy was still angry.
She left Murphy's question unanswered.
Leaving the boy alone, she wandered into the Dropship instead. Clarke was climbing down the ladder from the second level, followed by Wells, who she was seemingly trying to prevent from going with them to save Jasper.
Wells was determined in trying to change the girl's mind, but Clarke was stubborn. Avery moved closer towards them, watching the pair argue and finding that she saw a lot of herself in Clarke.
"Clarke, he's right." Monty stopped his work on the communications to offer up his thoughts. "We need him. So far, no one else has volunteered."
"I'm sorry, Monty, but you're not going either."
Avery felt her heart dropping at this. She didn't want to burden Clarke further - surprisingly - but if Monty wasn't going, she didn't want to either.
And besides, she might genuinely be able to help him with communications.
When her dad got sick, she'd spent the majority of her time by his side, in case he got drastically worse. She'd pass the time by reading, a lot. She was barely fifteen when she got onto books about technology and although all of the knowledge may not have stuck in her brain, she had a basic understanding of it, which would make her a lot more helpful to Monty than anyone else around.
Aside from this, Jasper was his friend. To Avery, it felt wrong to exclude someone from a rescue mission helping their best friend. She knew Clarke wasn't going to let up, but she'd feel terrible if she went without him, even if they brought him back alive.
"Like hell I'm not. Jasper's my best friend." He replied firmly and defensively.
"You're too important." Clarke said simply, and Avery watched Monty's expression only grow in confusion. "You were raised on Farm Station and recruited by engineering."
"So?"
The girl couldn't help but laugh at his casual cluelessness. Monty looked to her then, and she shrugged lightly, simply finding it funny that he didn't see his value the same way they did. Admittedly, it was also kind of sad.
"So?" She copied his word choice, smiling lightly. "You know which plants are safe, which are poisonous. I think we'd all die if you didn't stop us from touching poisonous stuff. Not to mention that you're our best chance of contacting the Ark."
"What's up here," Clarke tapped his head gently. "is gonna save us all. You figure out how to talk to the Ark and I'll bring Jasper back."
Reluctantly, Monty nodded, falling back. It broke Avery's heart to see his dejected expression, wondering if there was a way for her to try and make it any better. She ultimately came to the conclusion that staying back from the rescue mission as well could do the job.
And she wanted an excuse to talk to him.
"You need a hand with any of it?" She blurted out, a little nervously.
Monty looked back at her suspiciously. "I thought you didn't want the Ark to come down. You tried to take off your wristband."
Avery shrugged, fiddling with her wristband then and feeling the guilt resurface. The girl she was back up on the Ark would be too stubborn to admit he was right, but the girl standing in front of Monty found it within herself to do it.
"You made some good points yesterday. We need medics, and farmers, and engineers. We can't do it alone."
Monty was clearly surprised by the fact she listened to him. He watched her in awe for a moment, not knowing what to say in response.
"So do you need the help, or...?" She asked, feeling awkward. "Cause I can go with them if you want."
Monty's face flashed with something she couldn't recognise and he scrambled to respond. "You can stay!"
He cringed at the way he said it so eagerly, but Avery only smiled. The boy looked sheepishly to his feet before shrugging, meeting her eyes again.
"I could use some help."
Clarke, who was rummaging around the Dropship looking for possible weapons, was entirely oblivious to their conversation. It was shocking that Avery was being considerate in the way she went about it, almost feeling guilty about the pressure Clarke was putting on herself.
She approached her casually, Clarke looked up to see her and mentally prepared herself for whatever bullshit Avery was going to say. This only made Avery want to be nicer to her; seeing as Clarke clearly wasn't expecting it.
"I think I'm going to stay behind with Monty. I've got a little bit of tech experience from back on the Ark so I think I could help."
Clarke's face flashed with surprise. If she was expecting the girl to say anything, she expected something about why they hadn't left to endanger themselves already, not that she wanted to miss out on it altogether.
"Are you sure?" She asked carefully, not wanting anything to fall back on her and have to face the wrath of the girl.
"Yes." Avery stopped herself from becoming impatient, as internally she was saying: why wouldn't I be sure? I just told you what I wanted to do.
"Of course. Wherever you think you're best."
It was Avery's turn to be surprised by Clarke's behaviour. She expected to be met with suspicion and hostility to her own civility, but instead, Clarke was returning it.
Of course, she wasn't the one being hateful in the first place; that was Avery. Really, she had no reason to hate Avery. She only treated her the way she was being treated.
Finn appeared just as Clarke turned towards the exit of the Dropship. She greeted him expectantly, but the look he gave in return spoke clearly on what he thought of it all.
"I'm not going anywhere. And neither should any of you." Finn looked between them all in disbelief. "That spear was thrown with pin-point accuracy from 300 feet!"
Avery scoffed. "I think Jasper's screams after we legged it kinda tell us that it wasn't exactly pin-point accuracy. It didn't kill him."
"Yeah but if we don't get to him soon, he very well may die." Monty said impatiently, clearly anxious about his friend.
"That's not going to happen." Clarke reassured him.
Finn still looked dead-set against it, and Avery was starting to wonder if the lack of people going on the rescue mission would mean that she did have to go.
"Spacewalker?" Clarke looked Finn up and down in disapproval. "What a joke. You think you're such an adventurer when you're really just a coward."
"This isn't an adventure Clarke. It's a suicide mission."
She didn't reply to his defensiveness. Instead, she brushed past him as she left the Dropship. Wells followed after, instructing Finn to build a wall around their camp whilst he 'looked out for Clarke'. Avery only just refrained from yelling that Clarke could look after herself, despite not liking the girl.
The real kick in the teeth for Finn came from Monty. The boy had been quiet for a while, thinking a lot of things over before he approached Finn.
"Jasper looked up to you."
Monty turned back towards the Dropship, heading up the ladder onto the second level so he had space to work quietly on communicating with the Ark. Avery and Finn stood awkwardly together for a long moment, before the boy ducked his head away and turned out of the ship.
The girl followed where Monty had disappeared up the ladder, finding him sat on the floor in the corner of the room with a spare wristband in his hands. He looked up to her quickly, before looking back to his work.
"So, what do you think you need to do with it?"
She settled down beside him, watching him expectantly. He passed the wristband between his hands a few times and then inspected it, running his fingers over the spikes previously indented into someone's wrist.
"I don't know." He finally said, deflated. "But what I do know is that we're definitely going to need it to make contact. Everything else is fried. They're the only things that are keeping us connected to the Ark."
Avery pondered this for a moment. She desperately wanted to think of something, anything, to prove that her staying behind actually had some use to Monty and to communicating the Ark; even if she was heavily against it only the day before.
Miraculously, a tiny flame of an idea sparked in her mind. It was as if God (not that she believed in one) was sensing how important this was for her. She ignored the fact it was less for the Ark's purpose and more for Monty.
"Shut up a second." She said, needing silence to try and let the idea ignite and grow in her mind. He threw her a questioning glance, as if to say he hadn't been speaking in the first place, but she was too distracted with letting her thoughts snowball.
"When you take off your wristband, it doesn't die straight away, does it?"
Monty blinked for a few seconds, running it through in his head. "I guess not, no. There's probably a moment which the system inside takes to shut down. Why?"
"So what we need is a wristband to take off and try and connect it to the communication system before it dies, right?"
Monty's eyes lit up, and Avery guessed that she had done something right. The boy looked ecstatic; like a scientist who had just discovered a new chemical reaction or whatever scientists discover.
"You're a genius."
"That's a first."
Monty began to ramble on about understanding the wristbands first before trying anything drastic, looking over the one in his hands carefully again. Avery just felt satisfied with being helpful, deciding that if it turned out to be a dead-end - which she'd prefer it wouldn't - then at least she came up with something.
"Do you think Bellamy was acting weirdly earlier?"
Her unusual and random question made Monty pause in his work, his eyes flickering up to look at her questioningly. She didn't even realise she had said it until he looked at her, but only shrugged.
"Um, I don't know. He's always a bit weird."
She hummed in agreement, but it didn't stop her from replaying the moment in which Bellamy was telling them all to take off their wristbands, that they weren't criminals, and that they should want to be free without the Ark.
It was suspicious.
"Yeah but," She hesitated, not knowing how to put it into words. "there's just something up with him. Something he's not telling any of us."
Monty's brow furrowed in concentration. "What do you think it is?"
"I don't know." She sat back, folding her arms across her chest. "But I'm gonna find out."
Only a few minutes later, Monty sent her off to fetch a blade he had spotted earlier on the lower level of the Dropship. She obliged, quickly getting up and brushing off any dust particles on her clothes.
Heading down the ladder, she scoured the ground, quickly spotting the small blade Monty wanted. Just as she was about to head back up, she saw Finn's figure leaving the Dropship, and suddenly felt a strong desire to go scold him for not helping Clarke to save Jasper.
Growing thoughts of hypocrisy were forming at the back of her mind, seeing as she had also stayed back. But she was being helpful to Monty. What was Finn doing?
"Hey! Finn!"
Finn heard her voice, looked like he wants to glance back for a moment, but instead just kept walking across the camp. Avery wasn't afraid to shout to him louder, gaining looks from other Delinquents who were clearly thinking her to be crazy. Eventually, he stopped, grabbing her arm and pulling her over towards the trees and out of earshot of other people.
"What?" He sounded impatient and exasperated, and she tried to hide the smile dancing across her lips at how easily she annoyed him.
"I know I'm not with them, so I'm not really one to talk, but you should be there Finn."
He sighed in exhaustion, knowing exactly what she was talking about even though she was being vague. Running a hand over his face, his then drew to the blade in her hand.
"Why do you have that?"
"I'm helping Monty try to contact the Ark, he needs it for some reason- Hey! Quit changing the subject."
Finn couldn't avoid the topic without her scolding him and bringing it up again. She held the blade instead behind her back with two hands, out of view.
"Why aren't you with them?" She went to answer, but Finn put the pieces together from her telling him about the blade. "You're helping Monty." He said himself.
There was an awkward silence in which Avery realised she was scolding a boy that she had never spoken a word to only two days prior. Finn didn't really look convinced by her.
"It could've been you, you know." She blurted out, the words almost sticking in her throat.
Finn's eyebrows furrowed together, not quite understanding.
"Jasper went across the river instead of you. If you went, you'd be the one with the spear in your chest."
She spoke bluntly, and now Finn looked entirely aware of what Avery meant. His skin paled, and he looked as though he had seem a ghost.
It was a shame he only acted that way when he realised it could've been him in that situation, and not just because he was upset for Jasper.
"You know where Jasper would be, if that was the case?"
Finn was silent, but he knew the answer to the question. Avery didn't have to say it, but she wanted to seal the last nail in the coffin to try and persuade him to go.
"He'd be going to rescue you."
And it's what made him go after Clarke to save Jasper.