Homecoming

CHAPTER 30: Clarke

They walked in silence. The only sound was the crunch of leaves under their boots and the rustle of the wind in the trees. The leaves had all brightened into vibrant yellows, velvety oranges, and deep reds. If she didn’t need to keep her eyes on the ground in front of her, Clarke could have gazed upward all day. Shafts of sunlight beamed down through the trees, showering Clarke, Bellamy, and Wells in a golden glow. The air was much colder than it had been just days ago, and it smelled spicy and rich.

Clarke shivered, wishing she had another jacket. They were stockpiling the pelts of every animal Bellamy and the other hunters brought back, but their collection was still small. It’d be a long time until they had enough fur for everyone.

Without a word, Bellamy wrapped his arm around her, holding her close as they continued through the woods. Max had sent word that Sasha’s funeral would be held tomorrow, and they were on their way to Mount Weather.

Wells was walking a bit ahead of them, but Clarke knew better than to call out to him. With all the chaos and excitement of the past few days, Wells had barely had any time to process his losses, and he was clearly grateful for the chance to be alone with his thoughts. Yet that didn’t stop her heart from aching for him as she watched him tilt his head back and scan the trees, as if expecting Sasha to drop down from one at any moment. Or perhaps he was taking in the sight of the brightly colored leaves, trying to accept the fact that he’d never get to comment on their beauty to Sasha, never see them float down and land in her dark hair. That was the worst part about losing someone—finding a place to store all the thoughts and feelings you’d otherwise share with them. When Clarke had believed her parents were dead, there’d been times when she was sure her heart would burst from trying to contain it all.

As they got closer to Mount Weather, however, Clarke jogged ahead to catch up to Wells. She slipped her hand into his. There were no words Clarke could offer to lessen Wells’s pain. She just wanted to remind him that he didn’t have to go through this alone. They were in it together.

They reached the Earthborns’ village just before nightfall. Max opened his door on the first knock, as if he’d known it was them. His cabin was heartbreakingly neat. All the machine parts and half-finished devices that had littered his table had been cleared away and replaced with countless dishes of food. “Please, help yourself,” Max said, gesturing toward the table. None of them felt much like eating, but they sat down with Max and told him what had happened since they’d left Mount Weather. He’d learned about the attack but hadn’t heard about the Vice Chancellor calling a vote for a new Council.

“So, you’re on the Council?” he said to Bellamy, smiling for the first time that evening.

Bellamy nodded, his face reddening slightly with embarrassment and pride. “Yeah, trust me, I was as surprised as you were when they voted me in, but hey, I’m just giving the people what they want.”

“Wells was voted in as well,” Clarke said. “Actually, he was elected first, way before Bellamy.” She smiled from one to the other. Bellamy returned hers. Wells didn’t.

“I’m very glad to hear that,” Max said, placing his hand on Wells’s shoulder. “Your people are lucky to have such a fine young leader. I know you’re going to do your father proud, Wells. You’re going to make all of us proud.”

“Thank you,” Wells said, meeting Max’s eyes for the first time.

As they helped Max clear the few dishes they used, he told them the plan for tomorrow. “It’s our custom to bury our dead at sunrise,” he said. “We believe that dawn is the time of renewal. Endings and beginnings are inseparable, like the moment before dawn and the moment after.”

“That’s beautiful,” Clarke said softly.

“After the Cataclysm,” Max went on, “our ancestors suddenly had to struggle with the idea that light doesn’t always follow dark. That one day, the sun really might not come up again. That’s where the tradition started. It’s gratitude, really, that the sun came up for one more day.”

“I bet Sasha liked that idea,” Wells said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Something in his face had changed, Clarke thought, as she studied him in the flickering candlelight. There was something harder in it, but wiser too. “Max, do you mind if I spend the night in the tree house?” Wells asked.

“Not at all. Though it’ll be pretty cold out there.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll see you all in the morning.”

“I’ll walk you,” Clarke said, rising to her feet. “I want to go check the radio room one more time, if that’s okay.”

Max nodded. “Of course.”

Bellamy stayed behind to keep Max company, and both Clarke and Wells stepped into the night.

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay out here by yourself all night?” Clarke asked as they approached the tree house.

Wells gave her a look she couldn’t quite read, a mix of sadness and amusement. “I won’t be by myself,” he said quietly. “Not really.”

Clarke didn’t have to ask him what he meant. She squeezed his arm, then gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and left him with his memories.

She walked quickly to the Mount Weather entrance and disappeared down into the bunker, back to the spot that had become so familiar to her. She fiddled with the radio dials, her fingers working from muscle memory. She moved through the standard combinations she liked to try, starting with the one that had worked the day she heard her mother’s voice. Her desire to hear it again was physical, a craving.

An hour passed with no results. Clarke wasn’t even sure anymore whether the hiss and crackle of the radio were in her head or coming through the speaker. Her back ached from leaning over the console, and her head had started to throb. Bellamy was probably going to come looking for her any moment.

She stood up and stretched her arms over her head, then leaned from side to side and shook out her wrists. She knew she should shut down the system, but she wasn’t quite ready. One more time, she told herself. Just one. Clarke sat back down and began to adjust the dials.

She was so focused on listening to the tonal shifts in the static that she almost didn’t notice the clomping of footsteps in the hall until they were right outside the door. They were quick and heavy. It must be later than I thought.

Clarke spun around on her seat and looked out the door. “Bellamy?” she called. “Is that you? Max?”

There was silence in the hall as whoever was out there paused. Clarke rose from her chair, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. Surely Bellamy knew better than to play a trick on her at a time like this, after all they’d just been through. Could the violent Earthborns have returned?

Two figures stepped into the room, one right behind the other. Before she knew what was happening, Clarke had been enveloped in two sets of arms, and she was crying tears of joy.

It wasn’t Bellamy.

It was her parents.

The next morning, Clarke, Wells, and Bellamy stood side-by-side on a bluff overlooking a river, shivering in the cool darkness. Row after row of stones jutted from the ground, the names carved on them unreadable at this early hour. Max stood at the head of an empty grave, staring silently down into it. Sasha’s body rested nearby, wrapped tightly in a shroud the color of the dirt that would soon envelop her.

Clarke had spent all night talking to her parents, if talking was really the right word to describe the stream of words, sobs, and laughter that had poured out for hours after their reunion. Her parents were both much thinner than they had been the last time she saw them, and there was a lot of gray in her father’s new beard, but other than that they looked exactly the same.

When she’d finally managed to stop crying, Clarke’s mom had unleashed a series of questions, asking about everything that had happened during Clarke’s trial, her Confinement, and then her trip to Earth. But her father had barely managed a word. All he could do was smile and stare at Clarke, holding her hand as if afraid that she would vanish into the air at any moment.

She told them about being dragged from her cell, about the violent crash, about Thalia and Wells and Bellamy and Sasha. As Clarke spoke, she felt herself growing lighter. It was like she’d been carrying two sets of memories with her for a more than a year—the memory of what really happened and how she’d imagined her parents would react. And now, every time her father smiled or her mother gasped, more of that weight broke off. Clarke was desperate to hear about her parents’ time on Earth, but by the time her mother had finished questioning her, it was nearly dawn.

They decided that it was best for her parents to stay behind at Mount Weather rather than make a sudden appearance at Sasha’s funeral. Although they’d gotten on well with the Earthborns, the memory of the first Colonists’ betrayal was still too fresh.

Standing between Bellamy and Wells, Clarke felt a strange mix of elation and sorrow. That seemed to be how things worked on Earth. There was too much happening, too much to process ever to feel one emotion at a time.

She turned to the side to look at Wells, wondering if he felt the same way, or if his grief were all consuming.

The sun cracked the horizon line, sending orange and pink scouts racing ahead of it into the sky, as Max laid his only child to rest. In a hoarse voice that made Clarke’s chest ache, he shared some of his favorite memories of Sasha, some of which prompted chuckles from the assembled Earthborns, while others left hundreds of eyes glistening with tears.

As he wiped a tear away from his own eye, Max gestured to Wells and asked if he wanted to say anything. He nodded, let go of Clarke’s hand, and stepped forward to speak.

“The connection we feel to other people isn’t bound by geography or space,” Wells began. Although Clarke could see him trembling, his voice was strong and clear. “Sasha and I grew up in two different worlds, each of us wondering and dreaming about what was out there. I watched from above, never knowing for sure whether humans had survived here on Earth. I didn’t know if we’d ever set foot on this planet again or if it would happen in my lifetime. And she looked up”—he pointed at the fading stars, still faintly visible in the dark blue sky—“and wondered if there was anyone up there. Had anyone survived the voyage into space? Had people managed to stay alive up there all these hundreds of years? For both of us, getting answers to our questions seemed so unlikely. But a million tiny forces moved us toward each other, and we got our answers. We found each other, even if it was just for a moment.” Wells took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Sasha was my answer.”

Clarke shivered, though this time, it wasn’t from the cold. Wells had said it perfectly. Everything about their time on Earth had been so unlikely, so astonishing. And yet these months were more real to her than all the years she’d spent on the Colony. Clarke could barely remember what mornings were like without crisp air, dewy grass, and birdsong. She could no longer imagine working long hours under the medical center’s fluorescent bulbs instead of helping her patients heal in the sunlight, like their bodies were designed to do.

She tried to picture what her future would have been like if none of this had ever happened—if she hadn’t told Wells about her parents’ experiments, if he hadn’t reported them to his father, if she hadn’t been Confined, if Wells hadn’t loosened the airlock, if the hundred had never come to Earth—but the scene just dissolved into blackness. There was nothing there but the past. This was her life now.

Clarke watched as a few of Sasha’s friends lifted her body and gently laid her into the ground. She whispered a silent good-bye to the girl who helped make Earth their home, who’d brought Wells back to life when he’d been stuck in darkness. He would be okay, Clarke told herself, as she watched him join the Earthborns in throwing handfuls of dirt into the grave. If she’d learned anything on Earth, it was that Wells was stronger than he realized. They all were.

Bellamy took Clarke’s hand, then leaned in and whispered, “Should we go check on your parents?”

She turned to him and tilted her head to the side. “Don’t you think it’s a little early to be meeting my parents?” she teased. “After all, we’ve been dating less than a month.”

“A month in Earth time is like, ten years in space time, don’t you think?”

Clarke nodded. “You’re right. And I suppose that means that I can’t get mad at you if you decide to call it off after a few months, because that’s really a few decades.”

Bellamy wrapped his arm around her waist and drew her close. “I want to spend eons with you, Clarke Griffin.”

She rose onto her toes and kissed his cheek. “Glad to hear it, because there’s no going back now. We’re here for good.”

As she said the words, a strange sense of peace enveloped her, momentarily softening the pain of the day. It was true. After spending three centuries desperately trying to get back to Earth, they’d made it. They were finally home.