Chapter 24 - From the past to the present

"We will be there shortly, hold on boy."

The grounder woman tried to soothe the boy in an almost soft tone, sensing his charge's discomfort. A small part of her was feeling sorry for the child and that he now was suffering, but at the same time, another part of her was screaming at her to kill the skai boy and be done with this entire charade of goodwill, but as a mother, she wouldn't forgive herself if she kills the poor boy, especially since he didn't kill anyone yet.

"W…why?"

"Not all of us are savages, besides, you remember me of my late son."

She had not lied, when she told him that he remind her of his late son that died in a skirmish against the Azgeda. Trikru children grew up amongst the warriors and they are taken from time to time, to the fights. It wasn't rare for Trikru children to seriously hurt themselves during their first fight, some even die due to their stupidity, but in the end, only the strong ones survive.

"How, d..did he die?"

"In a battle lead by our Commander's right hand. They were outnumbered, yet in the end, our enemies were the ones to lose the most, not us. Unfortunately, no one returned home alive, not even our commander's right hand nor our son."

She and her husband had always believed that letting their son learn the harsh truth and the painful method of being in constant danger was the best way of training their boy for when he would grow up and join the Commander on the battlefield.

Wells could only incline his head mutely in acknowledgment, although he had no idea what the woman's definition of "shortly" would be, but he knew that this was his only way of surviving his wounds. The more they walk, the hard it was for him to remember the way back, and thanks to how dizzy he was, this thought seemed impossible to achieve.Especially when he did not recognize anything during their walk. When they arrived at the end of a tree line, Wells breathed out a deep sigh of relief, when they suddenly broke through the tree line, revealing a village with a sign that read TonDC directly in front of them.

The woman immediately carried him into the healer's hut and laid him down on one of the cots.

"I will fetch Nyko, don't you die on me now."

She shouted at him, before quickly running after what Wells presumed to be the doctor of their tribe.

He tried to sit up again as soon as the door closed behind the woman, trying to look around the hut for anything that may tell him where he was, but even though he was slightly dizzy from the blood loss, he could still recognize some things here and there, albeit with a little bit of struggle. For the first time in his life, Wells had never been in such a building before and the hut looked vastly different than the dropship he called home. Looking around the room, he saw a lot of different herbs hanging from the ceiling in dried bundles, and the shelves which lined the walls were filled to the brim with different sizes and shapes of pots alongside various small bottles. The hut could not be compared on any level to the medical bay in the Ark, so he wondered how the healer of the grounders might work. The air in the hut was quite heavy thanks to the various herbs and blood stains that were scared around the middle of the room where a wooden table was located.

His gaze was still fixed on the table when the woman returned with two men following closely behind her. The man that seems to be the healer was as bulky as the other male grounders he had seen so far. The grounder had dark hair braided back and a thick dark beard. His face was adorned with two huge tattoos and his blue eyes looked kindly at him. While the other grounder was your typical grounder that harassed their camp.

Wells nodded his head at the healer, still wary of how the grounders may react to him. The memory of Leon and how badly injured he was when they found him, still haunted his mind.

The warrior reciprocated his nod with one of his own while the healer crouched down next to the bed the boy was lying on.

"Let's take a look at your fingers and see if we can at least save the rest of your hand."

The healer said in a kind voice, completely different from what he thought. Most likely the woman explained to him everything that had happened and how Wells got his fingers cut by that little girl.

Nyko thankfully finished his examination quickly and got up again to look through one of the shelves filled with a variety of different pods. Wells could not see what he was searching for, but right now he didn't care about that. The only thing that he wanted was to quickly finish this whole thing and sleep the pain away. Whatever may happen tomorrow would be tomorrow's worry.

"While it's a pity that you lost three fingers, luckily for you, I should be able to stop the blending and save your life," Nyko told him over his shoulder, still searching through the shelf. For the grounders, a broken bone or a bruise was a better injury than having their legs or arms cut off. After all, healing a broken bone was easier than trying to live without an arm or a leg.

Wells inclined his head with a hint of relief in his eyes as he looked at the grounder disinfecting his wound with some ointment. The whole process took a little over ten minutes, but in the end, it did save his life, for which he was grateful, especially to the woman that saved his life. After the healer was done bandaging his wound, the other grounder walked forward looking at Wells.

"Why were you attacked? And who was the one that stopped the attack?"

"I don't know why the girl attacked me, but I guess my predicament was thanks to my father being a leader of our people. As for the guy that united us…my people see him as a leader, someone that stood against their enemy for them."

"Lincoln, let the boy rest. You can talk to him in the morning."

"Indra's orders were clear, Nyko. We need to know their objectives."

"Then do your job of watching them and let Mara and I talk with the boy.

"That's what happened to him. Now can I leave?"

"You are free to leave Lincoln and thanks for telling us that one of our friends was alive. We all thought he was dead."

"I have already told you, Leon, that this fight between our people will only benefit the mountain men and the reapers. I'd rather fight them than fight a bunch of teenagers like you guys."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, but still this group of teenagers fends off all of your attacks until now. So I like our chances."

Lincoln didn't say anything after that, but I could see the doubt in his eyes, and while I'm sure that his people had fought the mountain men before, they had never fought against almost a company of armed people at once.

After he told us how they saved Wells and judged Charlotte, I let him return to his village, but not before reminding him of our deal. Before Lincoln could leave our camp, a shadow slammed into him, tightly hugging his waist.

Unsurprisingly, Octavia was against leaving Lincoln for some reason and while I can understand that love can turn us into mindless idiots, I wasn't going to let her leave this camp, at least not today. Even though she could use some training from him, I promised Bellamy that I would keep an eye on his sister for the time being.

Unknowingly to me, Octavia and Lincoln had already talked about how she would get trained by him and how often should the two of them meet.

As soon as Lincoln left our camp, things returned back to normal. Looking around the camp, I saw Miller and Monroe training a few people on how to use the rifles, and thanks to the dummy rounds that we found, we could train people without wasting our precious real bullets. After I greeted them, I walked toward the medical tent where Finn was recovering from his wound. While he wasn't in any life-threatening danger, Clarke was stubborn in her decision which left Finn bedridden for a few days.

When he saw me, he just rolled his eyes, knowing that I didn't come here to just see him.

"Good morning, sleeping beauty. How's your wound?"

"It's getting better, but I'd rather be out there than stay in this bed."

"Tell that to your girlfriend. If she says that you can leave then you are free to do that, but without her accord, I'm not going to let you out."

"Yeah, I know…Leon, I have talked with Raven earlier this morning. I apologize to her for what I have said and done to hear. While we aren't together anymore, I hope that she would at least agree to remain friends, after all the time we spent together."

"You don't like her anymore?"

"No, what was up there was a mistake from both of us. We shouldn't have got together at all."

"Your friendship, right?"

"Yep, that was the worst thing that broke between us. Also, you should talk to her. Raven's worried about you as well and from what I know, you didn't have the time to talk to her after we brought her back ."

"Would you look at that, Finn Collins is trying to set me up."

"Just go, Leon. You won't lose anything, I promise."

Leaving the medical tent, I slowly start to walk towards the only place where I knew Raven would be. As I was walking, memories from when I was locked back on the Ark start appearing in my mind, alas only the good ones came back. Those were the only times when someone had actually come to talk to me other than Finn or the guards.

By the time I arrived at the tent where Raven slept and worked, I had already gone through all the good times between the two of us and to be honest with myself, these times were the only ones that I would cherish in the future. Anything else could be buried deep in the darkest corner of my mind, never to be unburied again.

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