Kass Morgan: Homecoming

Her eyes darted from one dazed and battered survivor to another. An old man sat on a large piece of metal torn from the dropship, his head in his hands. A young boy with a bloody face stood alone, just a few meters away from a tangle of sizzling, sparking wires. Oblivious to the danger, he stood staring blankly up at the sky, as if searching for a way to get back home.

All around lay the broken bodies of the dead. People with the ghosts of heart-wrenching good-byes still on their lips, people who’d never even gotten a glimpse of the blue sky they’d sacrificed everything to see. They would’ve been better off staying behind, taking their last breaths surrounded by their friends and families instead of being left here, all alone.

Still a little unsteady on her feet, Glass staggered toward the nearest figures on the ground, praying with all her might that none of the lifeless faces had Luke’s strong chin, narrow nose, or curly blond hair. She sighed with bittersweet relief as she looked down at the first person. Not Luke. With equal parts dread and hope, she moved to the next body. And the next. She held her breath as she rolled people onto their backs or pushed heavy chunks of wreckage off them. With each bloody, battered stranger, she exhaled and allowed herself to believe that Luke might still be alive.

“Are you okay?”

Startled, Glass jerked her head to the side to follow the voice. A man with a large gash above his left eye was looking at her quizzically.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said automatically.

“You sure? Shock can do crazy things to the body.”

“I’m okay. I’m just looking…” She trailed off, unable to shape the mass of panic and hope in her chest into words.

The man nodded. “Good. I already checked this area, but if you find any survivors I missed, just shout. We’re gathering the injured over there.” He pointed a finger into the darkness where, in the distance, Glass could just make out the shapes of bent figures hovering over still forms on the ground.

“There’s a woman, over by the water. I think she’s hurt.”

“Okay, we’ll go get her.”

He signaled to someone Glass couldn’t see, then broke into a lurching jog. She felt a strange urge to call out, to tell him that it was better to look for the missing Thomas first. Glass felt sure that the woman would rather bleed out in the water than face a lifetime on Earth without the only person who made her life worth living. But the man was already gone.

Glass took a deep breath and willed herself to keep moving, but her feet no longer seemed connected to her brain. If Luke were unharmed, wouldn’t he have found her by now? The fact that she hadn’t heard his deep voice calling her name through the din meant that, at best, he was lying somewhere, too hurt to move. And at worst…

Glass tried to resist the grim thoughts, but it was like attempting to shove a shadow. Nothing could keep the darkness out of her mind. It would be unimaginably cruel to lose Luke mere hours after their reunion. She couldn’t go through it again, not after what happened to her mother. No. Choking back a sob, she rose onto the balls of her feet and looked around. There was more light now. Some of the survivors had used the burning pieces of dropship to create makeshift torches, but the jagged, flashing light was hardly comforting. Everywhere she looked, Glass saw glimpses of mangled bodies and panicked faces emerging from the shadows.

The trees were closer now. She could see the bark, the twisted branches, the canopy of leaves. After spending her whole life staring at one solitary tree, it was startling to see so many all together, like turning a corner and facing a dozen clones of your best friend.

Glass turned to glance at one particularly large tree and gasped. A boy with curly hair was slumped against the trunk.

A boy in a guard’s uniform.

“Luke!” Glass shouted, breaking into a jerky run. As she got closer, she saw that his eyes were closed. Was he unconscious or…

“ Luke! ” she cried again before the thought could gain traction.

Glass’s limbs felt both clumsy and electrified, like a reanimated corpse. She tried to speed up, but the ground seemed to be pulling her down. Even from a dozen meters away, she could tell: It was Luke. His eyes were closed, his body slack, but he was breathing. He was alive.

Glass fell to her knees by his side and fought the urge to throw herself across him. She didn’t want to hurt him any further. “Luke,” she whispered. “Can you hear me?”

He was pale, and over his eye there was a deep cut, which oozed blood down the bridge of his nose. Glass pulled her sleeve down over her hand and pressed it against the cut. Luke moaned slightly but didn’t move. She pressed a little harder, hoping to staunch the bleeding, and looked down to survey the rest of him. His left wrist was purple and swollen, but apart from that, he looked okay. Tears of relief and gratitude sprang to her eyes, and she let them slide down her cheeks. After a few minutes, she took her sleeve away and examined the wound again. It looked like the bleeding had stopped.

Glass put a hand on his chest. “Luke,” she said gently. She ran her fingers lightly over his collarbone. “Luke. It’s me. Wake up.”

Luke stirred at the sound of her voice, and Glass let out a mangled sound that was part laugh, part sob. He groaned, his eyelids fluttering open and sinking closed again. “Luke, wake up,” Glass repeated, then brought her mouth to his ear, just like she used to do on mornings when he was in danger of missing check-in at work. “You’re going to be late,” she said with a small smile.

His eyes opened again, slowly, and fixed on her. He tried to speak, but no sound came out. Instead he smiled back.

“Hey there,” Glass said, feeling her fear and sorrow melt away for a moment. “It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re here, Luke. We made it. Welcome to Earth.”

“You look exhausted,” Sasha said, tilting her head to the side so her long black hair spilled across her shoulder. “Why don’t you go to bed?”

“I’d rather be here with you.” Wells suppressed a yawn by turning it into a grin. It wasn’t hard. Every time he looked at Sasha, he noticed something that made him smile. The way her green eyes glowed in the flickering light of the campfire. How the smattering of freckles on her sharp cheekbones could be as fascinating to him as the nighttime constellations were to her. She was staring at them now, her chin pointed upward as she gazed in wonder at the sky.

“I can’t believe you lived up there,” she said quietly before lowering her eyes to meet Wells’s. “Don’t you miss it? Being surrounded by stars?”

“It’s even more beautiful down here.” He raised his hand, placed a finger on Sasha’s cheek, then gently traced a path from one freckle to another. “I could stare at your face all night. I couldn’t do that with the Big Dipper.”

“I’d be surprised if you lasted five more minutes. You can barely keep your eyes open.”

“It’s been a long day.”

Sasha raised an eyebrow, and Wells smiled. They both knew that was a bit of an understatement. Over the past few hours, Wells had been kicked out of the camp for helping Sasha—the hundred’s former prisoner—escape. That was before he ran into Clarke and Bellamy, who had just rescued Bellamy’s sister, Octavia, thereby proving that Sasha’s people, the Earthborns, weren’t the enemy they’d once appeared to be. That alone would’ve been a lot to explain to the rest of the camp members, most of whom were still a little uneasy around Sasha, but it was only the beginning. Just that evening, Bellamy and Wells had made a shocking discovery. Although Wells, the son of the Chancellor, had grown up privileged on Phoenix, while Bellamy, an orphan, had scraped by on Walden, they were in fact half brothers.