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Chapter 1 - Subtle Moon
A crackle of radio static squalled through Bellamy’s dreams.
You must think I’m nuts for talking to you every single day, even if you can’t hear me. Madi thinks I am. But...it keeps me sane, I think…
The radio flared as he tossed in the covers of the bed. Echo shifted beside him to give room to his restless turning. Her steady, dark eyes followed the bead of sweat trickling down his brow. He had been like this every night since praimfiya. Since the ship had broken the atmosphere. Sometimes restless murmurs came from him, as he fought back memories or enemies in dreams, she could not be certain of which. She also did not think it wise to ask. She just watched him with her hunter’s gaze, understanding more that way than words would ever tell.
She placed her hand on his chest, and the warmth and pressure of it seemed to calm his restless fretting for a moment. His movements eased and his brow unknitted itself. She moved up to brush his temple with the back of her knuckles, letting his dark curls fall into her palm.
“Shhh. Sleep,” she whispered to him, withdrawing back into herself and closing her own eyes.
Bellamy, um...I don’t know what to say. It’s been 2100 days since praimfiya, there’s still so much time left before you guys can come back down from The Ring. I feel like I’m losing my mind waiting. Thank god for Madi. You should see her, Bellamy. She’s beautiful and strong. She reminds me of mom… Clarke’s chuckle broke into static again as the transmission faded.
“Clarke…” Bellamy whispered, fidgeting restlessly in his sleep again. Echo watched, her eyes growing distant, withdrawing inwards with the pain. As she had observed him, night after night, beseeched by nightmares and guilt, she began to see things that his waking mind could never tell her. He had been her only tether to family, home, and a beacon of strength for her when her world collapsed on Earth. But she knew, deep down, that he had never been hers alone. It was a fool’s gambit to love, and loved she had. And perhaps some part of Bellamy believed that he could love her and be only hers.Echo had watched many men fall under her hand, and in their last moments, and in their failing conscious minds lived the truth of their hearts. Only death and dreaming could bring it forth, and it was more a binding oath to their desires than any words they could offer.
Bellamy had loved Clarke since the beginning. It was clear to anyone who stood near them. But they had done so much to hurt one another, and Echo was nothing if not loyal and passionately protective. And what was left to protect? Earth was gone, burnt to ash along with all her people, Azgeda or otherwise, the commanders, everyone. The people she loved were long dead even before then, and with them died her heart. She had been a fool to think that any man could have awakened it in her.
Fed up with the thoughts, Echo leaned up and wrenched the covers off of herself. She strode toward the door. At the sound of Bellamy’s discomfitted moan she hesitated, hand on the doorhandle and looked back at him. He seemed small, almost fragile, coiled amidst the messy bedsheets, curls tossed astray over his eyes. She pitied him, and she loved him, and the feeling was too much to bear. She turned and disappeared.
In the mess hall she found Raven, who had in one hand some kind of operations manual, holding it up to read, and the other fidgeting with a ratchet, spinning it against its gears. She looked up as Echo’s shadow caught her eye. Her smile was friendly, but it was no balm of gilead.
“Hey. Hungry?” Raven inquired, tilting her head so her ponytail bobbed over her shoulder. She pushed a bowl of algae toward her on the table. “It’s the Monty special again.Bon appetite.”
Echo did not smile, but she admitted to herself that a change in company was a relief. She sat down across from Raven at the table and pulled the bowl toward her. She stared dismally at its contents before downing the green liquid in a single slug. She grimaced slightly at the aftertaste and slimy texture on her tongue.
Raven chuckled. “Ya never get used to it,” she said, wrinkling her nose in agreement. “Monty was a brilliant guy but not much of a cook.”
Echo’s eyes softened slightly at the humor. She lifted her chin to indicate the book in Raven’s hand. “Some light reading?”
Raven folded the book over her thumb, looking at the title which read Advanced Mechanical Systems, Hangar Deck and Part Installation for Sectors 200-900H . She looked back to Echo with a slight shrug. “It’s pretty good. Little dull in the romance and action department though.”
Echo cracked a small grin in spite of herself. “I guess you can’t complain if there’s not much to choose from,” she replied, but the sound of the words coming out of her mouth struck her close to home. She dropped her gaze ruefully to the algae dregs in the bowl. Her face drooped down into its usual solemn facade. She heard Raven sigh, imagining the look of pity she must be giving her. She hated it.
The table bench creaked as Raven lifted herself awkwardly from it, swinging her leg bearing the prosthetic support over it. Echo looked up to see mischief twinkling in her dark eyes again. Raven tossed the manual onto the table and instead held her hand out to Echo, nodding her head down the hallway toward the main bridge. “Come on. You can help me figure out how to fix the broken bridge door. Thing hasn't slid right on the track since they sent us to the ground the first time.”
Echo hesitated, looking at the hand being offered to her. However, a second glance at Raven’s wiley expression drew her in. Echo’s eyes smiled slightly as she took Raven’s hand and stood to follow her.
For a few hours, Echo leaned against the wall outside the captain’s bridge handing Raven tools and holding flashlights for her as Raven’s ponytail bobbed and swayed. She listened as Raven chatted about mechanical pulleys and struts and hydraulic systems and things Echo had only recently removed from her mind as magic and begun to understand as a form of science. Echo’s mind tried to draw her back into her silent brooding, but it was difficult to remain sullen in the presence of such a firespark of curiosity and charm that Raven was. Echo found herself laughing at the wise cracks and even offering a few of her own.
Once Raven seemed satisfied with her tinkering, she leaned back on her knees, wiping shining sweat from her brow, smudging oil on her forehead in the process. “That should do it. Annnnnnd….” she hovered two exposed wires near one another and touched their frayed ends, causing a small shower of sparks to alight between her hands. Suddenly, the bay doors slid shut with a smart click.
“Perfect,” said Raven, beaming at Echo, proud of her success. Echo smiled back and her eyes lingered for a moment over Raven’s features. Even in the sulky electronic light of The Ring, Raven’s skin shone with a lovely smoothness, her brown eyes twinkling with humor. Perhaps there was a balm in gilead, thought Echo idly, turning her own dark eyes away from the sight. She flinched slightly as the tip of Raven’s hair flicked her shoulder as Raven scooted to her side and leaned back against the wall beside her and closed her eyes.
“Six years is a long time,” she said after a long pause.
“Yeah. It is.” Echo replied.
“What do you think it’ll be like….when we get back down there?”
Echo thought of Clarke, feeling at once angry and sad. “I don’t know,” she said mildly, trying to disguise her emotions, something she was skilled at doing after many years serving as a ruthless assassin and spy. But the veil was thin, and she knew it. Raven seemed to as well.
“He does love you, you know.”
Echo looked over to where Raven was still leaning her head against the wall, eyes closed. She opened her mouth but shut it again just as quickly. Raven peered out from under one eyelid at her. Echo felt bare, vulnerable. She tried to backpedal into herself, hardening her gaze again. Raven laughed, turning toward her.
“He’s also not the only one,” she said, holding out her hand to Echo again as she had before. Echo’s emotions seethed like a storm behind the stony expression, but her eyebrows broke, giving way to a small sob. She shook her head, dropping it into one hand. She could feel Raven’s arms encircling her. She leaned into them, dropping her cheek onto Raven’s shoulder as the tears came. Raven stroked her hair, rubbing her thumbs along Echo’s shoulder.
“He loves Clarke,” choked Echo. “I have no one…” her tears felt heavy like muddy rain falling into polluted rivers. They splattered onto the hard, cold metal floor.
“Shhh. No. You are not alone,” she murmured quietly into Echo’s hair. Raven knew all too well the pain that came from a lover’s heart changing. When it felt like they were all that was left at the end of the world and even they would leave you.
“Besides, what do I look like, stale algae? Do I look like no one to you?” Raven said, the humor returning to her voice as she leaned down and looked at Echo with an expression of mock offense. Echo lifted her tear streaked face to look at Raven. A choked laugh mixed with a sob escaped her. She shook her head, expression fighting between sorrow and smiles. Raven brushed the tears away from her cheek and took Echo’s face in her hands. Mere centimeters apart, Raven’s warm brown eyes met the gaze of Echo’s cool dark ones.
“You are never alone. Remember that,” Raven whispered. She smiled, placing a kiss on Echo’s forehead. Echo never remembered a moment where she had felt more whole.
125 years later, on a different moon far away from where they had started, Echo found herself wandering out of the Palace of the Primes, having been cut down by Bellamy’s words telling her that she felt nothing. He had accused her of being cold, emotionless, scolded her for not grieving their fallen friends openly as he was. She could feel the familiar ice hardening in her veins as she receded into herself. She walked briskly toward the tavern-like building where the people of Sanctum served their liquors. Just outside she spotted Raven, sitting on a bench, hands folded under her chin, staring hard into the distance. Echo vascillated at the door to the bar before turning and sitting down next to her. She said nothing, but her presence spoke for her.
“She thinks she can just waltz back in here and call the shots after sending all those people to die. She’s as bad as her mother. Heh. Abby. I mean what the hell. Did she expect that I’d just forget that she tortured me and Shaw? Forget that she experimented on people to turn their blood into--” Raven stopped, shaking her head. Her nose wrinkled with a sour disgust.
Echo breathed a sigh, listening and holding the space as Raven’s anger writhed in the pause. She agreed with Raven, but she also knew the burden of being a leader after having watched many commanders in her time make bad calls and strategic follies that resulted in the cataclysmic loss of life. She thought of Queen Nia, who had been cruel in her punishments but fair in her teachings, even if she was only interested in her own agenda. She had made Echo a warrior, taking away her family but giving her back a new life in which she had survived. Even Lexa, the wisest of the commanders she had ever known of, made decisions based on her heart that cost hundreds of lives at Mount Weather or because of the coalition. It was never easy making the tough decisions. Someone was always bound to get hurt. Even her rivalry with Clarke did not make her sprout hatred, for how could she hate someone whose position she pitied as well.
After a thoughtful silence, Raven’s wrath seemed to have cooled to a simmering boil. Echo stood and offered her a hand, nodding toward the tavern door. “Come. Have a drink with me,” she said simply.
“Don’t gotta ask me twice,” relented Raven, taking her hand and starting inside after Echo. Together they knocked out a bottle and a half of Sanctum’s finest before they were both wheezing with laughter.
“No, no, I swear to god it’s a tiny toy of this motorcycle and he actually said, ‘dangerous curves ahead,’” laughed Raven after explaining to Echo what the euphemism meant, since she wasn’t familiar with the terminology of driving vehicles on roads. Echo was tipsy enough not to care about the meaning as much as she cared about Raven’s unbridled joy at telling her the story.
“Sounds like a winner, but was he a warrior?” Echo asked, a sparkle in her own eye as she poured another round into the shot glasses.
Raven took up the glass and downed it in a single swig. “Not like you mean, but he was a fighter, you know? Yeah. In his own way,” she said, swaying slightly with the drink. Raven blinked her eyes to clear the spinning and laughed again, looking over Echo’s features as she downed her own drink. She couldn’t help but notice Echo’s strength and grace as she clinked the glass on the table, not even a glimpse of pain in her expression at the burn of the alcohol. Raven’s teeth toyed with her lower lip.
“You know, Echo, happy looks good on you. Don’t get to see it very often, but I like it,” she said nodding in approval. Echo’s fearsome gaze was leveled on her after a moment, sending shivers down Raven’s spine. A smile broke over Echo’s harsh features like sun over the horizon on a cold winter morning. Raven’s breath caught in her throat and she began coughing. Echo slapped her back a few times.
“Lightweight,” she said. Raven gave her the finger, causing Echo to let go of a rare laugh. Once the fit had passed, Raven looked up and sighed, thinking about Shaw again. She really missed him. Her heart deflated a little at the thought. But in a split second decision, she climbed to an ungainly stand, swaying slightly as she did.
“Yeah, well, this lightweight is heading off to bed,” she said, giving a crooked smile. Echo’s glow dimmed slightly, but she returned to her reserved expression. Raven watched her, almost changing her mind about leaving. She placed her hand on Echo’s head for a moment.
“Good night,” she said before turning to walk out of the bar.
Echo watched her go. “Good night.”
Echo’s mood dwindled like the candle on the table burning low, slipping back down into darker thoughts. She poured herself more drinks as the time went by, and her mind roiled around inside her, bringing with it memories of a cellar catching fire and smell of burning hair. She barely noticed when Bellamy sat down across from her.
With glazed eyes, she stared at him. “You know the best way to get rats out of their hole?”
Some time later, Raven lay crumpled in Echo’s arms, weeping uncontrollably as they knelt in the reactor chamber where Hatch’s wife had cornered her and held a knife to Raven’s throat. The bay and control room were empty except for them, but Raven had returned after that incident, bent on her own destruction. Echo had talked her down from the ledge, working a knife out of her hands and bringing her from the precipice of certain doom safely into her embrace.
“It was my fault they died,” Raven cried, clinging to Echo’s arms. “I made the choice. I locked them in here, I--” her voice broke off into haggard sobs. “I’m so selfish, so stupid. I’m no better than any of them!”
Echo held her tightly as if afraid she might burst apart in her hands. She felt the burn of Raven’s emotions in her own soul. This little bird, untainted for so long, finally understanding the true depths of regret. Echo knew the feeling all too well, and she wouldn’t wish it on anyone, most of all someone as good as Raven. She pulled Raven back from her by her shoulders. Raven’s eyes were red and swollen with grief, her face a mess of tears.
“No. You are not better than them, but you’re not worse either. You did what you had to do. You saved hundreds of lives.”
Tears flowed down Raven’s cheeks again. “But who am I to decide who lives and who dies? I shouldn’t have locked them in, I--”
Echo shook her head. “Making impossible decisions is hard enough without punishing yourself for it. You made the call you thought was right. Forgive yourself for that.”
Raven’s sniffles slowed as she stared into Echo’s deep, brown eyes. After a moment, her sobbing calmed and she nodded her head, letting her hands drop into her lap. Echo watched the shift carefully, never taking her steady gaze from Raven’s face. She could sense the strength arising in her as Raven steeled her resolve again. Two fiery brown eyes lifted to hers.
“Thank you,” Raven’s voice was almost a whisper. A feeling flowed through Echo’s muscles like cool water. Her hard gaze softened. With gentle hands she reached again for Raven’s face and wiped away tears before leaning close and drawing Raven into her again. Raven’s arms slid easily around Echo’s body as she buried her face in Echo’s hair. They both breathed a sigh.