Authors Note:

Hello! This is my first time ever posting stories on this website... so don't judge me if I severely mess up the formatting or whatever. :)

This has lots of spoilers if you haven't read the first three books!

By the way, this story has exact dialogue from the books, which I do not own.

This story sprung from the plot bunnies I got when reading Cress, and they haven't gone away. This is basically all the chapters with Thorne in them, just from his point of view. Early on, it will mainly focus on Thorne and Cress but as I add chapters, other characters will make appearances. It will follow the plot of the book (with a few added scenes here and there).

I think that's it. Again, this is my first time ever posting here, so forgive me if I mess up!

Anyways, let's begin. Enjoy! :)

It was like he was awakening from a deep, deep sleep, one filled with darkness and pain and strange sensations. He struggled to pull himself out and to wake up but his thoughts were muddled, his head heavy.

Thorne twitched.

A loud gasp made his heart race. "Mr. Thorne?" said a voice – feminine. "Wake up. We're all right. Please wake up."

He moaned as memories began flooding back. The thaumaturge. The girl. The satellite. Falling. He tried to sit up but found himself still restrained by the blankets, plus it hurt his head to move.

"C-Carswell?"

That must have been the girl from before, the hacker with all the hair. He wondered if that was real or if he had just imagined it. He did hit his head pretty hard. Crescent? Was that what the thaumaturge said?

He pried his eyes open to a night blacker than coal. "Wha – huh?" He blinked and shut his eyes again, too in pain to try.

"It's all right," the girl said. "I'm here. We're safe."

He licked his lips. "Thorne," he said, testing his voice. "Most people call me Thorne. Or Captain."

"Of course, Tho – Captain. Are you in pain?"

He tried to shift into a more comfortable position but his hands tied in front made maneuvering more difficult. He clenched his teeth as a particularly sharp flare of pain sparked in his skull. "I feel like my brain's about to leak out through my ears, but otherwise, I feel great."

He felt her fingers inspect back of his head. "You hit your head pretty hard," she remarked. He grunted in response and began to wiggle his hands out of the knotted, ratted blanket. "Hold on, there was that knife..."

"It fell off the bed," he reminded her. He opened his eyes again, struggling to pinpoint even the slightest light source. Where would they have landed that had such dark, dark nights?

"Yes, I saw it... there!" Fabric rustled as she reached to get it. The bed frame creaked as she fell back with a yelp, somehow tied to him.

He frowned. "I don't remember being tied together before."

"I'm sorry, my hair gets everywhere sometimes and... if you could just... here, roll this way."

So he hadn't imagined the hair. He felt her fingers pinch his elbow lightly and she nudged him onto his side. Scowling, he held himself still while she draped over him.

"Are you sure it's over–" He stopped when he felt her already sawing through the blanket. "Oh. You have a good memory."

"Hm?"

He listened to the scrape of the knife on the blanket and sighed with relief when it fell away. He rubbed his wrists and then reached toward his head. Something – her hair? – was still holding him back but he ignored it and pulled harder.

She crashed into his chest, though he was more focused on inspecting the back of his head to care. "Ow," he muttered.

"Yeah," she agreed.

"This bump is going to last a while. Here, feel this."

"What?"

He ran his hand along the ground until it brushed against hers and he pulled it to the back of his head. "I have a huge bump back here. No wonder I have such a headache."

When the girl spoke again, she sounded flustered. "Yes. Right. You should probably, um..." Her voice trailed off.

Thorne's eyebrows furrowed and he pulled at a lock of hair that had tangled around his arm. "We need to do something about this hair."

"Right. Right!"

He felt her shift away, stop, and begin to rearrange the many tresses.

"Maybe it would help it we turned on the lights."

She paused. "The lights?"

He tilted his head, thinking aloud. "Are they voice activated? If the computer system went down in the fall... spades, it must be the middle of the night. Is there a portscreen or something we can turn on, at least?"

"I... I don't understand."

How couldn't she see that they needed light? He exhaled, growing frustrated. "It would help if we could see." Thorne pried away a few strands of hair on his wrist and waved his hand in front of his face. "This is the blackest night I've ever seen. We must be somewhere rural... is it a new moon tonight?" His scowl deepened. "That doesn't seem right. Must be really overcast."

"Captain?" The girl's voice was tense. "It's... it isn't dark. I can see just fine."

Dread squirmed in his stomach. He blinked once, twice, three times. He swallowed. "Please tell me you're practicing your sarcasm."

"My sarcasm? Why would I do that?"

He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. Please, please, please... He opened them again, saw darkness still, and began to blink rapidly. He rubbed at his eyes, but the black remained.

He cursed.

The girl was silent.

Thorne felt his pulse quicken with anxiety. "What happened? The last thing I remember is trying to get under the bed."

"You hit your head on the bed frame, and I dragged you under here. And then we landed. A little rocky, but... that's all. You just hit your head."

"And that can cause blindness?" The word that had not bothered him until this day was acid on his tongue. He felt himself searching desperately for a solution, something that could fix this problem. He couldn't be blind – wouldn't be blind.

"It might be some sort of brain trauma," she suggested, her voice timid. "Maybe it's only temporary. Maybe... maybe you're in shock?"

Thorne settled his head on the floor. So he was blind. Fine. He was trapped with a girl who'd been stuck on a satellite for seven years and was probably a little crazy. Fine. He would deal. Careful to sound strong when he spoke, he said, "We need to do something about this hair. Where did that knife go?"

She pressed it into his hand and he lifted his hand, reaching slowly forward until it landed on her nose. She flinched at the sudden touch but didn't complain. He slid it to the side of her head and grasped a fistful of hair. "Sorry, but it grows back." Then he cut through it. He sawed through lock by lock, one handful at a time. The girl held perfectly still. He was glad of that – wouldn't want to accidentally stab her or anything. That would ruin the point of the rescue. Not that it had gone very well so far.

Finally, he cut through the last one. "I think that's it." He tucked the knife under his leg for safe keeping and buried his hands into her short hair, working out the remaining tangles.

He grinned with satisfaction, but weakly. He hoped it looked convincing. "Maybe a little jagged on the ends, but much better."

He sat back and listened to her assess her new hairstyle, purposely not letting himself think about the other thing.

"Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome." He brushed away the hairs that still clung to him.

"And I'm really sorry... about the blindness."

He tensed, but he didn't let it stop him. "Not your fault."

"It is kind of my fault. If I hadn't asked you to come rescue me, and if I had–"

He waved his hand, cutting her off. "It's not your fault. You sound like Cinder. She always blames herself for the stupidest things. The war is her fault. Scarlet's grandmother is her fault. I bet she'd take responsibility for the plague too, if she could." He picked up the knife and shimmied out from under the bed. He spread his arms in a wide circle, pushing away any debris and potential death-traps before pulling himself up onto the edge of the mattress.

"The point is," Thorne continued, "that witch tried to kill us, but we survived. And we'll find a way to contact the Rampion, and they'll come get us, and we'll be fine." He was trying to convince himself – to steady his squirming nerves, calm his ragged breathing, slow his pounding heart. He exhaled shakily. "I just need a moment to think," he said. "Figure out what we're going to do."

When the girl remained silent, Thorne lowered his head and clasped his hands in his lap. He felt trapped, even more so than before. He couldn't see beyond this blackness that had stolen the world from him, couldn't see past the impregnable curtain hung in front of color, of everything he knew. Every time he blinked, his brain told him to expect the world, but every time, he was disappointed. There was nothing.

He was blind.

He swallowed back the bile rising in his throat. What was he going to do? What were they going to do? The girl had never been to Earth – and now Thorne couldn't see it. At all. It wasn't going to work and he couldn't win against it. It was impossible.

His hands began to shake. Could he still help? Would he even be able to walk without tripping? He didn't know. He didn't know so much and that knowledge was pounding down on him with every shaking, rattling breath he took.

He pressed his trembling fists onto his legs. This was a battle, an internal battle with external effects – and he would fight. He was Carswell Thorne, after all, and Carswell Thorne would fight. And he wasn't alone. He had the Lunar girl, and they would find Cinder and Iko and Wolf and Scarlet. He would go back to the Rampion, they would help him, and they would save the world.

That's how he decided it was going to happen.

That's how it had to happen.

After three carefully measured breaths, Thorne tilted his head up and drew a smile to his face. "Let's begin again, with some proper introductions. Did I hear your name was Crescent?"

"Just Cress, please."

It sent a wave of anxiety through him when he realized that the world around him lived and breathed color, that this girl – Cress – was a part of it all, yet Thorne was separated by the black hanging over his eyes. He should've been able to see her, to look at her when she talked to him, like she was certainly doing now, but he couldn't. He couldn't.

He clamped the thought down – hard.

Thorne extended his hand toward her and when he felt hers in his, he tugged her closer and pressed a kiss against her soft, smooth knuckles.

"Captain Carswell Thorne, at your service."