Good Luck With Shooting The Moon

By the time I regain consciousness, the coppery taste of blood is thick in my throat. My head’s throbbing too, making my vision blurred and my thoughts scattered. Probably a concussion—that’s what Abby would tell me if she was here right now.

But she’s not. That’s the thought that catapults me back to the present, reminding me of my current reality with searing honesty. Abby isn’t here because I left her in space. Sure, she told me to leave her in space, but that doesn’t make the fact that I did it any better. I left her, stranded in space with Marcus Kane, while I’m here on Earth. Earth. I’m on Earth. And I’m alive.

I fumble haphazardly with the clasp of my helmet, desperate to breathe air that doesn’t smell like it’s been recycled a hundred times before reaching my lungs. I ignore the blood that’s congealed on my forehead, only brushing it with a finger absentmindedly. Still, I offer the gash a small “ow” of commiseration.

It’s hard to describe the way that the air tastes as it fills my body. It shouldn’t taste like anything. Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, and all other elements that swirl through this planet’s atmosphere should—theoretically—have no taste. But Earth doesn’t seem like it cares too much about how closely it abides by the laws of science. The air tastes almost sweet, not like the cold and harsh stuff that circulates through the Ark. This is different. This is beautiful.

I hear a dull hiss as the side hatch disengages, my head pivoting to face the now open door. The sudden movement makes my head throb, but I do my best to ignore the pain. I don’t have time for that.

There’s no time to admire the foliage that appears outside before a face appears, blonde hair framing her face. There’s a sheen of sweat across her skin, dirt still clinging to the places that her perspiration hasn’t wiped clean. A wave of shock flits across her face as she registers my presence. I mean, I’m not entirely sure what she expected to find when she opened the door. A manless pod? In a Russian escape vehicle? Give me a break.

But then, her face softens. “Oh my God. Hi.” Her voice is breathy and simultaneously strong as if surprise isn’t an emotion that she’s used to.

“Hi.” I reply because I’m not quite sure what to say in a situation like this. It all feels slightly surreal, like I’m still dreaming, hundreds of miles away on the Ark. Maybe these past few days have simply been the imaginations of an overactive mind. Or maybe this rusty pod burst into flames somewhere outside of Earth’s atmosphere, blowing me to smithereens, just another addition to humanity’s long history of spacecraft disasters.

The girl gazes around my tiny pod, taking it all in, her eyes bouncing from button to lever before finally resting once again on my face. “Did I make it?” I ask, the words only half sarcastic.

But she nods, the placid look on her face dissolving into a grin. “You did.”

She steps out of the way as I unzip my suit and place my helmet on the empty seat beside me. Abby’s seat. But the girl takes it without saying anything, shoving it into the bag she wears on her back. She takes my suit when I hand it to her as well, folding it carefully before tucking it under her arm. She extends her free hand towards me and I take it, allowing her to lead me out of the pod.

The air is sticky, as if it holds something else besides O2 and it clings to my skin as I take in my surroundings. I angle my face towards the expansive sky, suddenly so bright and warm. I listen to the leaves rustle in the trees above me. Trees. I watch the sun dance through their branches, only interrupted by the water drops cascading downwards towards me.

“Is this rain?” Is all I can manage as I attempt to grapple with the sheer magnitude of the things that I’m feeling.

Once again, the girl offers a nod and a smile, allowing me to take this strange new world in at my own speed.

“I dreamed it would be like this.”

Finally, the girl takes a step towards me, staring straight into my eyes. “Welcome home.”

Home. I haven’t had one of those since…Since—

“Raven!” A familiar voice cuts through the tranquility and I turn to find its source.

When I see him, bounding towards us with his brown hair flapping haphazardly around his face, my body can’t help but run towards him. My Finn. I knew that they couldn’t be dead. I would have felt it if Finn was gone.

He wraps his arms around me, holding me close as his chest heaves, pressing into mine. I rest my chin on his shoulder, clasping my hands around his back. If only we could stay like this forever. Breathe like this forever. If only.

But eventually, Finn pulls away, shooting a sideways glance at the girl who waits behind us. Our faces are inches apart as he inspects every inch of me, registering the gash on my forehead.

“You’re bleeding.” He says. He’s always had a nasty habit of stating the obvious.

But instead of teasing him like I normally do, I just say “I don’t care.”

And I don’t. I can barely feel my throbbing headache as I pull him close, our lips meeting in an embarrassingly passionate kiss. But after a few moments, he pulls away, turning to the blonde girl, still standing with my borrowed suit under her arm.

I take a step back, inspecting the way he looks at her. Like he’s hiding something. They both are. The little twinge of his lip, the slight furrowing of her brow. They each share i secret. Something happened before I got here. Maybe a million things. Things that I will never understand.

The moment passes, and Finn returns his gaze to me, a sheepish smile on his lips. “How did you even get here,” he asks like he doesn’t even really believe that this is all real.

“You know that scrap hold on K deck?” I ask. I’m sure that he’s heard me talk about it before, nodding on autopilot as I drone on and on about my day in M&E.

“You built that from scrap?”

“Like it’s hard?” I reply, laughter invading the ends of my words. “I kind of rebuilt it. I’d do more for your and worse. Just like you would—“

Before I can finish the statement, my headache returns full force, dizziness clouding my vision as the world around me becomes smudged and rippled. I stagger slightly as I struggle to regain my bearings.

But Finn rushes towards me without hesitating, wrapping his jacket around my shoulders and leading me to a nearby rock. He turns back to the girl, moving towards her as she offers him a rag.

I watch as they exchange silent words. She seems angry. No, not angry. Frustrated, maybe. Just another part of whatever secret they share. Finn will tell me soon enough, just like he always does. He’s never been good at keeping his mouth shut.

When he hands me the rag, I press it against my forehead, letting the blood pooling around my cut seep into the dirty cloth. None of this is sanitary, I’m sure. Abby would have a field day.

“I’m Clarke,” the girl finally offers, reaching out her hand for mine. It’s an awkward handshake as I turn her name around in my mind, trying to remember where I’ve heard it before. But then it hits me. Abby.

“Clarke? This was all because of your mom!” I say, the words catapulting from my mouth.

“My mom?”

“This was all her plan,” I repeat. “We were going to come down here together but…if we waited…” I struggle to grasp the details, each one slipping through my fingers like sand. But then it all comes back. Full force. “The council was voting on whether or not to kill 300 people to save air.”

Clarke doesn’t look surprised this time. This isn’t the first time she’s heard about the Ark’s oxygen shortage. What else would one expect from the kid of a council member? Her voice is deadpan.

“When?” She asks. Finn doesn’t look so calm.

That’s when I remember the radio, still attached to the pod’s open door. I push myself up from the rock that I’m sitting on. My stupid headache can wait.

“Today. We have to tell them that you’re alive.”

When I make it to the door, however, all that I find is a gaping void where my radio should have been, still live wires pulled from their sockets by the jostle of re-entry. That’s when the situation dawns on me. Without a radio, the Ark will never know that we’re down here. Abby gets floated. 300 people die. And it’s all my fault.

“It’s gone”, I say, the statement scraping its way through my lips. “It must've gotten loose during reentry. I should've strapped down.” This is all my fault. Abby. Clarke’s mom. That’s all on me.

Yet Clarke doesn’t look disappointed. She doesn’t look sad or frustrated. Instead, rage fills her face, her jaw tense.

“No, no, this is my fault” she spits. “Someone got here before us.”

——————

Clarke fills me in on the situation as she leads the three of us through the woods. She doesn’t look at me as she speaks, instead powering ahead as she rants about some guy that she won’t even name.

He isn’t just “some guy” though. Their relationship is clearly complicated, but she reveals that he’s responsible for the discarded wristbands, leading some of the drop shippers in a Lord of the Flies-esque revolution.

“Whatever the hell they want” Finn chimes in as he struggles to keep up with Clarke’s pace. I don’t know the context, but Clarke seems to understand, nodding vigorously as she continues to speed through the woods.

When we finally catch up to the culprit—how Clarke knew his exact whereabouts, I don’t know—Clarke doesn’t hesitate to pounce on him.

“Hey!” She shouts, her voice carrying through the open woods between us. Woods that she was just telling me were filled with hostile “Grounders” but for some reason she doesn’t seem to care. Before I can hush her, the man turns, grinning.

“Where is it?” Clarke asks, her rage even more fueled by the confident look on the man’s face.

He knits his eyebrows like he has no idea what she’s talking about, suddenly looking like one of the cocky engineers I’ve had the displeasure of working with. Kyle Wick. That’s who he reminds me of. Constantly treating important projects like personal tinker time with limited Ark resources.

“Hey, princess,” He says, his voice a mocking sing-song. “You taking a walk in the woods?” But he clenches his fist like he’s bracing himself for whatever barrage of condemnations is bound to come his way. He knows what he did, he’s just a dick.

“They're getting ready to kill three hundred people up there to save oxygen,” Clarke tells him, adding “and I can guarantee you it won't be council members. It'll be working people. Your people.”

The boy takes a step back momentarily, as if suddenly aware of the astounding fact that the world doesn’t revolve around him. He’s just like an engineer.

In the pause, Finn steps forward, shoving the boy backward. “Bellamy, where is the radio?”

Bellamy. I know that name. Why do I know that name?

But Bellamy shoves Finn in return, his words once again gratingly mocking. “I. Have. No. Idea. What. You’re Talking. About.”

Bellamy. Bellamy Blake. The puzzle pieces click together in my brain, a smile blooming on my face. This guy is Bellamy Blake? Of course he is. Just another asshole that needs to be put into his place, like all the engineer types that came before him.

“Bellamy Blake?” I say, watching as a split second of shock flashes across his eyes as he registers his last name. “They’re looking everywhere for you.”

“Shut up” He quickly retorts.

Clarke cocks her head, turning to Finn and sharing a look. They don’t know what he’s done. How could they, with no radio? They’ve been fraternizing with a bona fide attempted murderer while assuming he was just a garden variety jerk.

“Looking for him?” Clarke asks. “Why?”

I allow the smile on my face to morph into a full-fledged grin as I reply matter-of-factly “He shot Chancellor Jaha.”

I watch as Clarke has a beautiful, beautiful epiphany. Add in a church choir and it would be perfect.

“That’s why you took the wristbands. You wanted everyone to think that we were dead!” More anger makes its way into her voice with every word.

But Bellamy turns, stalking off into the woods in a vain attempt to escape the consequences of his actions. Not a chance. I didn’t come down to Earth in a rusted escape pod just to let some guy off this easily.

“Hey! Shooter!” I fire back as I run to catch up with him. “Where’s my radio?”

I position myself in front of him to block off his path, but he pivots, trying to brush me aside. “Get out of my way,” he growls, in an ineffective attempt at intimidation.

“Where is it” I press, moving closer towards him.

“I should’ve killed you when I had the chance,” Bellamy retorts. Oh wow. So scary. He’s like a discount Nygel, except he has no leverage down here. There’s no council that could float me, nothing to threaten me with. Plus, it’s three against one and Clarke looks like she has some fight in her.

“Really? Well, I’m right here.”

That’s all it takes for Bellamy to blow a fuse, pushing me back against the trunk of a nearby tree and thrusting a knife in my face. Nygel would have drawn blood. He couldn’t kill me, just like he couldn’t kill Jaha.

“Where’s my radio,” I spit.

It takes intervention from Clarke for him to release me, but my point has been made. I’m not one to be pushed around.

Still, Bellamy insists on defending himself. “Jaha deserved to die. You all know that.”

I nod slightly as Finn rolls his eyes. We’re both not too keen on the guy who got Finn locked up. “He’s not my favorite person either, but he isn’t even dead.”

And with that, the tough guy act dissipates, an unmistakable look of relief washing over Bellamy Blake.

“What?”

“You’re a lousy shot.” I let a few seconds pass as reality dawns on him. “Now where’s my radio?”

——————

The radio ends up being at the bottom of a shallow river, a throw's distance away from the woods we found Bellamy in. The guilty always return to the scene of the crime—or at least that’s what they used to say in the cheesy crime thrillers my mom would read during her better periods.

Its brief stint in the river has destroyed its components, but Clarke seems to think I’m a wizard.

“Can you fix it?” She asks as she glances at the water-logged machine in my hands. I know that we’re both thinking about Abby, still up on the Ark. We’re both unsure of how much time she has left.

But I can’t fix it, at least not when it’s like this. “Maybe, but it’ll take half the day just to dry out the components.”

“It’s too late,” Bellamy huffs, eavesdropping on our conversation from a few feet away. Once again, rage bubbles up in Clarke, her cheeks flushed red. Whatever drama she has with this guy is personal. More personal than some wristbands and Chancellor Jaha.

“Three hundred people are going to die today because of you!” She barks. “Do you understand that? Do you even care?”

They continue to argue, but my brain doesn’t process what they’re saying. The gears are already turning in my head. Okay, so there’s no more radio, but Abby is waiting for a signal. Any sort of signal from the ground. That doesn’t have to come in the form of a radio message.

“Hold up,” I interrupt, holding up a hand to silence Clarke and Bellamy’s incessant bickering. “We don’t have to talk to the Ark. The just have to let them know we’re down here, right?”

Clarke nods slowly, looking to Finn for confirmation.

“Sure,” he says. “But how do we do that with no radio?”

Like the perfect person he is, he’s set me up perfectly to fill them all in on my brilliant idea that’s going to save us all.

“There are rockets on the pod. We disassemble them and rewire the fire circuits, connecting them to the control panel. Then, we just tie in the batteries on the drop ship to give them a little kick and, voila! We’ve got beacon flares!”

I don’t get the mounting round of applause that was hoping for but Finn begins to process what I’ve said as Clarke pulls me aside.

She speaks to me in a whisper, our words disguised by the trickling sounds of the river.

A worried look rests on her face, like there are things that she needs to say but she can’t quite bring herself to.

So, I ask for her. “What’s the problem?”

“Nothing.” She fires back, immediately defensive. But the words come out of her eventually. “Well, if we get the rockets to launch, will they see it from the Ark?”

And even though she doesn’t ask, I know that she wants to know about Abby. Her mom, who did all of this for her. Her mom, who might be floated if the Ark doesn’t see the flares.

I answer her with a joke because it feels weird to be vulnerable with someone that I barely know. “Like the good book says, it’s all about burn time and cloud cover. But yeah.” Clarke nods. “But I know your mom will be watching. I've never seen anyone love someone the way she loves you. You know that, right?”

Clarke bites her lip as if the question is more complicated than I could ever know. But I’ve had my own history with mothers. I know how it feels to love and hate simultaneously.

“I did,” she replies.

——————

When we launch the flares, the sky is clear, my stars twinkling at me from above. Finn places his arm around my shoulder as they blast into the darkness towards the Ark. Towards Abby. I can only hope that I’m not too late.