Avery and Octavia were no longer the only ones watching the strange scenes of the high Delinquents. Raven and Finn had emerged from their tent and were now each swamped with either crying teenagers or Connor, who seemed to need reassurance that he was the most beautiful broom in a broom closet of brooms.
Avery could see Finn lingering outside the Dropship, watching everyone in their deluded state. The girl realised then that although she had seen Finn since Clarke saved his life, she hadn't actually talked to him about the fact he was still alive.
She redirected Connor back over to Raven - who looked less than grateful to have to handle the boy for much longer - and approached Finn with an awkward shoulder nudge. The boy stared back at her in mild confusion, intrigued to say the least.
"I'm glad you're not dead." She said bluntly.
Truthfully, Avery and Finn didn't know each other all that well, but she had seen too many Delinquents die for her liking. So even Finn surviving - who she was currently disliking for stringing along Clarke and Raven - was a positive.
"Thanks." He replied, the undertones of his voice indicating amusement.
"You still haven't talked to Raven about Clarke though, huh?"
Finn exhaled a heavy sigh, exasperated and frustrated with the topic he never intended to get so out of hand. He never thought he'd see Raven again. But that didn't justify how he treated them both.
"Avery, I-"
The boy's sentence was cut clean off by a figure darting from the Dropship and stumbling towards the two of them. The man had a red hood casting shadow over his face and obscuring his features, but he clearly had a larger, stronger build than any of the Delinquents.
It was the Grounder.
Octavia did it.
Neither Finn nor Avery could find the words to say at that moment, instead just staring him dead in the eyes as he began to size them up as potential threats. When Finn tilted his head ever so slightly to the side, pointing out the exit route in the most perfectly subtle way, the Grounder's eyes flashed with confusion, but also relief.
"That way." Avery confirmed, her voice hushed in fear she'd attract the attention of someone nearby. "Go as far as you can."
He didn't need to voice his gratefulness, just nodding rigidly, and turning away with his shoulders hunched in a jacket that Avery was sure Octavia nicked from someone else in camp. The girl couldn't help but think of the young Blake then, how she told Avery that the Grounder saved her life.
"Wait!" She called out, startling the man as he whipped back to look her in the eyes. "Thank you for saving Octavia."
She said it so simply, and she couldn't miss the way his face softened at the mention of Octavia's name. She didn't know of the extent to which he had a soft spot for the girl - not yet, at least. He nodded once again, more firmly this time, as if to say of course.
And when he disappeared out of sight, Finn and Avery only shared one look that said they wouldn't be speaking of that moment to anyone - excluding Octavia.
Octavia!
Avery let her feet take her into the Dropship, and stopped directly in front of the girl. Her eyes looked wild with something Avery didn't know, and her hand shot down from where her fingertips had just skimmed over her lips as if in awe. She blinked up at the girl who immediately begin to gush about how glad she was the Grounder escaped.
Octavia only seemed to be half listening, humming as a gentle indicator she was picking up Avery's barely strung together sentences. Her glazed eyes suggested she was much more preoccupied with whatever had happened before the girl appeared. And then it became too much to keep inside.
"Lincoln kissed me."
She blurted out, hands then clamping over her mouth in disbelief she even said it. Avery's face scrunched in confusion, mind flickering through the Delinquents she knew of in search of someone familiar with the name Lincoln.
She found no one.
"Lincoln?"
Octavia couldn't stop a small smile slipping onto her lips, visible when she reluctantly took her hands away from her face. It dawned on Avery in the moments before Octavia admitted it, but when the words, "The Grounder." passed her lips, she couldn't help but join her in grinning.
"Someone's getting lucky on Earth huh?" She teased, nudging Octavia enough times to make her cheeks flare up red.
"And you're not?" She countered, both of them knowing who she meant without even the slightest hint of his name.
"Tavia.." Avery dragged out her name, shaking her head in refusal.
"Oh come on! When are you two gonna get past this awkward pretending not to be in love stage and just admit you like each other already?"
Avery stared at the girl with a blank expression, entirely unimpressed with how Octavia was exposing her, but the other girl wouldn't stop smiling back at her. Avery had to advert her eyes to avoid her own smile growing.
Because the girl had hit the nail right on its head. It was so much easier for Avery to simply pretend she didn't have those feelings for Monty, because when she admitted it aloud, it all became very real. And when it's real, it's scary.
"You know," She had to ignore Octavia's triumphant expression as she began to talk. "Monty's completely off his head on those nuts so I don't know what it means, but he was saying some weird stuff earlier."
"Go on..."
"I told him to take a nap in my tent and he joked about me getting him into bed before taking him on a date."
It took a moment, but then Octavia had burst into laughter. Avery watched, unimpressed, as the girl doubled over in giggles, wiping tears from her eyes as she pictured it.
"No way!" She finally spluttered out.
"He was high." Avery pointed out, to which Octavia raised her eyebrows in silent argument that she was attempting to deflect.
"He likes you."
"I'm just gonna go now, okay?"
The young Blake said nothing against that, still laughing from what Avery had admitted. Slipping out from the Dropship, it wasn't difficult for Avery to weave through people in hopes of getting back to her tent for some rest.
And then she realised Monty was sleeping in her bed.
"Need somewhere to crash?" Raven's voice drawled from behind, her grin then coming into view as the girl sidled up to Avery.
Avery shrugged, not really certain of the answer. Monty was in her bed, so she couldn't sleep in there. Or could she? It's only sleeping.
No. It's too weird.
"I think I'm okay for now." She replied, deciding she'd stay awake for a little while longer to try and figure out if she should head back to her tent or not.
She spoke a little uncertainly, but Raven didn't push it. Instead, the girl stretched out her arms in a yawn and tilted her head up to the sky to look at the stars.
"This might sound really sad, but this might literally be one of the best experiences of my life." Looking back down from the stars speckled across the black sky, she cast a glance to the people around her, the effects of the hallucinogenic nuts wearing off slowly. "Seeing everyone making a fool of themselves? Priceless."
Avery let a genuine laugh pass her lips, agreeing that the events of the night were without a doubt some of the funniest she had ever seen. But she was also sure that Raven's job on the Ark must have been filled with experiences beyond her wildest dreams.
In the tiny square window provided in her ever so homely (not) prison cell back in the Sky Box, Avery would stare up at the stars and think of an alternative world in which she would've been able to train as a Zero-G Mechanic. She wasn't even particularly interested in it, but she just wanted freedom from the Ark.
And she supposed - in a fucked up kind of way - Earth did give her that freedom.
"You're a Zero-G Mechanic." She stated with a sly smile. Raven tilted her head curiously, wondering where that sentence had come from. "You must've seen better views doing that, right?"
"The spacewalks." Raven realised, looking up at the sky again.
If she ignored the tops of the trees just edging into her vision as she stared upwards, she could only see the dotted stars across her vision. She could almost pretend she was out there again, except she was looking from the angle of Earth, not the Ark.
Avery watched her in awe; the way she had entirely focused in on the memory of spacewalking as soon as it was even implied. She couldn't help but wish she had something like that she could be as passionate about.
"I had views of the entire Earth. But it's not like when you're in the Ark," Raven began to explain, her eyes filled to the brim with euphoria upon recalling it. "You're in the atmosphere. You're actually out there, just floating. It's so quiet, and peaceful. There's nothing else like it."
And when they fell into silence after Raven had stopped talking, Avery could picture herself in that moment. She found it mesmerising.
"It sounds amazing."
"It really was."
Avery couldn't help but smile stupidly then, almost like she was realising her own fascination with the sky for the first time. The way the black sky faded into deep blues and purples across the line of the milky way, adorned with tiny white stars like speckles of paint. She found something comforting in the night, because although it was dark, the stars shone more brightly than anything in the day.
Since coming down to Earth, she'd become so much more appreciative of everything. Without all of the stupid responsibilities she had up there before the Sky Box - because somehow prison gave her relief from those responsibilities - she could really stop and see everything that was around her.
And it was beautiful.
Raven's eyes flickered up to Avery, catching her amazement. She could read the girl well, easily telling why she was so gratuitous of it all. She was slightly unsure on how to probe the topic, not entirely clear on where the girl was in the stage of mourning her dad.
"Hey, listen, I've been meaning to say I'm sorry your plan to help your dad didn't work."
Raven came to the conclusion it was best to just go head first. She understood what it was like to lose someone, and she knew there was nothing worse than people trying to skirt around the topic.
"I heard he passed away a while after you got locked up. I'm so sorry."
Avery was less fixated on Raven's condolences and more so on the fact she recalled the events that drew them to knowing one another in the first place. To her, it was a huge deal, but she didn't expect the same of Raven.
"You remembered why I asked you to draw the map." She stated.
It was simply out of pure shock Raven could recall it. The girl blinked back at her blankly, confused by the sentence.
"Of course I did. Why wouldn't I?"
"Lots of people don't seem to remember an awful lot about me." Avery said with a shrug.
Raven's face broke out into a grin, and she leaned forward to affectionately punch Avery on the shoulder. "Well I'm not lots of people."
Avery somehow dragged Raven into patrolling the camp with her, just to ensure no Delinquents were wandering out into the woods whilst tripping on the nuts. However, everyone's side effects seemed to be subsiding, and the girls instead took the opportunity to learn the extent of each other's ever so depressing backstories.
It was relatively normal to meet people who had lost someone whilst living on the Ark. In fact, it was less normal to meet someone who hadn't lost someone whilst living on the Ark.
And speaking of, Avery had finally caught sight of the recently emerged Monty, who was walking side by side with Octavia. The boy was one of the few people she knew who had not lost a parent or a friend to floating, or any other tragic death. She thought it made him much more innocent than other people; much more like how people their age would be, if it weren't for the Ark.
Raven had become distracted by Finn, waving off Avery distractedly, and leaving the girl to wander over to her two friends. She found that Monty's previously crazed eyes were now relaxed as normal, and he was stifling a yawn as he walked alongside Octavia.
"Rough night?" He asked Octavia gently, to which the girl's face suddenly flashed with a realisation that she should probably pretend she was affected by the nuts.
Avery couldn't go down this route; she gathered that Monty could remember enough to know she wasn't high.
"Yeah, my head..." Octavia rubbed her temple, emulating a headache. "Killing me. You?"
Avery and Octavia shared a look and both of them struggled in stifling their amusement at the latter's acting skills. Monty didn't notice this, his face scrunching in an attempt to remember a single thing.
"I'm pretty sure I ate a pinecone, cause it told me to."
Avery couldn't suppress a laugh at the reminder of Monty's fascination with a pinecone. "Correction," She began, holding up a finger. "I stopped you eating a pinecone. You really wanted to, though."
Monty's cheeks flushed with colour and he ducked his head in embarrassment. Avery continued to tease him, poking him in the side as she playfully taunted the boy with a pinecone she spotted on the ground beside their feet.
Octavia looked between them with the same smile on her lips as the one Avery had when hearing that Lincoln had kissed her. She shot Avery a sly wink before slipping away, thinking herself smart by leaving them alone.
"Did I say anything super weird or embarrassing?"
Monty looked frantic and reluctant upon asking, almost like he was expecting the worst to have happened. Avery was on the verge of laughter, remembering everything that had happened with not only him but all the other high Delinquents that night.
"Actually scratch that! I don't wanna know!" He added, hiding his face in his hands briefly before meeting her gaze with a distraught look.
"Monty, you didn't." Relief flooded through the boy's expression, and Avery almost felt bad to tell him the truth. "You only joked about me getting you in bed before taking you on a date."
His face immediately looked mortified.
"Oh god."
As much as Avery found it hilarious that he was so caught off by it, she felt a little bad about how embarrassed Monty looked, and so as she giggled, she swore to him that the moment was funny. She also chose not to mention what he said about her missing his lips, considering the thought of those words made her heart leap out of her throat.
"I'm seriously going to have to get high with you next time though, cause you looked like you were having the time of your life."
Monty's memory of it all was very hazed; only being able to pick out pieces of what went down. He could vaguely remember making Finn angry over something - uncertain what it was - and Avery erupting into laughter on a few occasions. None of the specifics were focusing in his mind.
And Avery seemed to be loving it.
He couldn't find it in himself to be mad at her. Not when she was giggling softly, eyes shining with something Monty didn't know, but he loved it because she did.
"Yeah I guess I was. I think at one point I was talking about the moon-?"
"He's gone! The Grounder's gone!" Miller's panicked voice ripped through the camp, immediately invoking hysteria within the Delinquents.
The conversation between the pair was instantly dropped, and Avery could feel Monty's eyes on the side of her head as she kept hers firmly on Miller. Although she didn't look at him, she sensed he knew she had something to do with it. Although, he didn't know how.
"What if he brings other Grounders back?" Jasper asked anxiously, picking at a thread on his sleeve.
"He'll kill us all."
"Or worse."
Shouts of paranoia and erratic fear began to bubble up in the crowd, too powerful for Avery to find the words to shut it down. She glanced to Monty helplessly, finding that same worry in his eyes. She couldn't blame him, after all, they had no idea what Lincoln's friends could do.
"Let the Grounders come." Bellamy's voice cut clear through the camp, the boy's face bloodied up significantly more than when he left that morning. "We've been afraid of them for far too long, and why? Because of their knives and spears. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of being afraid."
Bellamy shared a glance with Clarke, almost like it was a look for guidance. The girl nodded, and Avery felt her heart pick up as the two of them released the weight of what they had been carrying on their backs.
Guns.
The sight of the weapons made appreciative whispers flare up, with some people even looking eager to get their hands on one. Avery couldn't understand this. To her, it was a sure-fire thing that someone was going to abuse the power.
Although a fair few Delinquents had made their happiness clear, there were also people like Avery, who were less than pleased with the whole ordeal. Finn's frown was as clear as day, uncertainty was shadowing Raven's expression, and Monty was pretty unreadable.
"These are weapons, ok, not toys, and we have to be prepared to give them up to the Guard when the Dropships come. But until then, they're gonna help keep us safe." Clarke explained.
"And there are plenty more where these came from. Tomorrow we start training, and if the Grounders come, we're gonna be ready to fight."
Although Bellamy and Clarke's gift of guns to the camp was supposed to be a nice sentiment, Avery couldn't stop the feeling of discomfort creeping over her. It all made it so much more dangerous for them, let alone the Grounders.
"What do you think of all this?" Monty gestured to the weapons with a slight shrug.
People were already milling about the guns, trying to scope out which ones they wanted. Avery wrinkled up her nose, feeling the drop of uncertainty in her stomach. And then, she pictured one person in her mind - the person she thought she'd want to fight most in the world - and came to realise something rather profound.
"Honestly? I don't wanna fight anyone."