So Memori week was super excellent.
A shout-out to everyone else who created stuff and rebogged stuff, this online community is the absolute best. I honestly think the memori fandom is the purest part of the 100 fandom but I’m biased
And I just want to say that anyone who reblogged my fics and wrote comments in the tags made me incredibly happy, there’s honestly nothing better than that.
(I didn’t finish my freewrite from day seven but I’m planning on posting it further along, and I’m also hoping to edit the other days and post them to ao3 so stay tuned.)
@ my fellow participants… I love the different ways we interpreted the characters and prompts and situations. It’s like we all demonstrated different aspects of this ship and created this huge mosaic that encompassed everything about what makes memori beautiful and interesting.
So basically @dailymemori you did good.
@bombshellsandbluebells deserves an award for editing this so quickly and lovingly. I’m counting this as my contribution to the last day of Memori Week.
Blame @thecarstairsheir for Bellamy’s Cartwheel app (she said I should write that in since I do that too) and blame the movie Good Will Hunting for the end scene.
Pls tell me what you think!
Also on Ao3.
I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure,
I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow
glass, but that comes later.
And the part where I push you
flush against the wall and every part of your body rubs against the bricks,
shut up
I’m getting to it.
Emori knows what John likes.
(Actually, she knows what men like, but since John does fall solidly into that category, despite Raven’s jokes to the contrary, she figures her assumptions are correct.)
She knows he likes it when she smiles at him and loves it when she lets him help her type out assignments or write emails. She knows he thinks the way she texts is cute, and she knows he finds her lack of culinary taste endearing, if not disturbing.
She hates it.
She doesn’t want to know what he likes. She wants to discover him the same way he’s discovering her. He actually knows things now, knows that she’ll laugh when he nuzzles her neck with his nose, knows she’ll blush when he compliments her in front of the entire house, knows she’ll smile when he kisses her on his way out the door to class.
She hates that too. Not the romantic part, but the attachment part. How dare she fall for someone? How dare she feel safe?
All of these thoughts follow her through her Saturday morning. It’s early; the sunrise is warming the kitchen and she’s the only person awake to see it. For the first time in a record three-day anti-caffeine spree, she makes herself a cup of coffee. It tastes like the morning: nice, safe and a little bitter.
There’s that word again. Safe. It tastes sour in her mouth and makes her clench her jaw. It feels like a lie, even though she’s pretty sure it’s not.
She’s not completely convinced, though. She doesn’t think she ever will be.
She sits on the couch with her coffee, across from the TV cart that houses a tiny collection of action DVDs and Monty’s small, rechargeable roomba that he occasionally programs to chase Raven and Jasper around the kitchen. There are dust motes dancing in the sunlight. A clock ticks from somewhere in the house.
After a couple minutes, the door just off the kitchen creaks open, and Raven limps out, reaching for the coffee pot before she even gets to the counter.
“Hung over?” Emori asks before she can stop herself. It’s been too long; she should be comfortable talking to her roommates by now, but every word she says still sinks like a stone in her stomach.
Raven nods. “It’s been too long since I actually drank Monty’s moonshine,” she grumbles. “Usually I just hold a cup of it to be polite, then nurse a beer to keep Luna company.”
Raven, now bearing her own cup of coffee, plops down beside Emori and thumps her bad leg onto the coffee table. Emori looks at the space above Raven’s foot. There’s a tiredness tugging at her she’d rather not explore, but the alternative is a conversation she’s not sure she can handle.
Thankfully, Raven’s not in a talking mood. She stares off into space, eyes landing somewhere to the left of the TV. Emori watches her, the steady rise and fall of her chest, the twitch of her fingers against her leg.
“You okay?” Raven asks after a moment. “I know that fight with your brother was rough.”
Emori feels a lump rise in her throat. “I’m fine.”
She doesn’t sound like it, even to her own ears. She sounds angry and scared and as bitter as the coffee in her mug.
Raven looks at her and raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Are you?”
Emori bites her lip and looks down at her hands. “I don’t know.”
There’s a creak at the top of the stairs. Both girls’ heads snap up and over at the same time. John is standing there, looking mildly freaked out at their synchronicity.
“Morning,” he says after a moment, meandering down the stairs and flopping down between Raven and Emori. Emori leans her head against his shoulder, feeling the worn fabric of his grey sleep shirt against her cheek.
He reaches for Raven’s coffee cup, then, when she smacks his hand away with a disapproving glare, makes a grab for Emori’s. She hands it over willingly, smiling softly at John’s sound of delight when he swallows the warm liquid.
“Morning,” he says again, a special whisper just for her. He passes the mug back to her, brushes his fingers over her knuckles and kisses her forehead. Just like that, all her oxymoronic thoughts of safety and fear leave her. She hates how much she loves being able to snuggle into his side, but she does it all the same.
Raven looks over at the two of them and smiles. After a moment, she struggles to her feet. John looks up at her, then over at Emori.
“I’m not trying to make it weird,” Raven says casually, with one of her rare, genuine smiles not far behind. “I’m just hungry. You want pancakes?”
John grins. “You mean, do I want you to make Bellamy bring us pancakes when he inevitably comes over?”
For some reason, Raven’s chest flushes a deep red. “Um, yeah. Sure.”
Emori lifts her head. “Raven, have you found this house another unsuspecting deliveryman?”
“Or deliverywoman?” John asks, wiggling his eyebrows.
“J, I swear to God-”
The doorbell rings. Raven goes to answer it, relieved to escape this line of questioning. Upstairs, Emori can hear several howls of protest at the sound from Jasper, Monty and Octavia. She feels John’s laughter rumbling through his chest and up to his shoulders.
She’s about to say something when his lips on her skin make her stop short. He kisses her cheek, then her temple, then her hair. “You feeling better?” he asks.
“I’m trying not to think about it,” she answers truthfully. It’s a strange feeling, this honesty. It’s so easy to believe that she is capable of transparency. Sometimes, she can even fool herself.
Raven bustles back into the kitchen. After a moment, she pauses, leans over the peninsula counter and shouts, “Get in here!”
Luna pads into the kitchen, her hands clasped in front of her, like she’s not sure where to put them.
“You could have followed me, you know,” Raven says.
Luna shrugs. “I wasn’t sure.”
“It’s a standing invitation,” John notes.
“Ah,” Luna says, and then falls silent. She perches on the stool between Raven’s room and the back door and watches Raven place a call to Bellamy, presumably for pancakes.
Luna makes Emori nervous. She’s contained, but too much so. She’s like a powder keg; the slightest spark could set her off, but Emori doesn’t know what that spark is. The scars on her knuckles suggest a violent past, a past spent doling out pain. Maybe that’s what Emori senses.
“You alright?” Luna asks her, raising her voice to be heard over Raven, who is succinctly roasting Bellamy for something or another.
“Fine,” Emori says, sharpening her voice just enough for Luna to drop the subject.
John tangles his fingers in the ends of Emori’s hair. To escape the shivers running down her spine, she leans forward to set her coffee mug on the table. Behind them, Monty and Octavia clatter down the stairs. Monty picks up his phone from the dining room table and starts thumbing through it while trying to shield the screen from Octavia’s prying eyes.
“Who’s texting you so early on a Saturday morning?” Octavia asks, dodging Monty’s flying elbow.
“Some square who didn’t party as hard as us, probably,” Raven answers.
“‘Square’?” John asks over Emori’s head. “What, are we living in the ‘60s?”
Monty snorts, but his eyes don’t leave the phone. He starts to type, and Emori clocks the small smile on his face as it grows in size and volume.
“Who are you talking to?” she asks, nearly flinching when her voice makes the room go quiet. John told her once that it only happens because they aren’t used to her speaking up, but it still makes her anxious. She’s used to flying under the radar, to being invisible by her own design.
Thankfully, Monty spares her the awkwardness. “Just someone I met,” he hedges.
Emori thinks about letting it go, but she sees the blush on his cheeks and decides to have a little fun. “Would this be that pretty little blonde you met at the bookstore last Friday? You know, the one you tried to hide from Raven and me when you saw us walk in?”
“Damn it, Emori, you weren’t supposed to tell anyone!” Raven groans.
Emori smirks. John sits up a little straighter and pulls Emori a little closer. “Come on, Green,” he says. “Spill.”
“Her name is Harper,” he says. Raven wolf-whistles, ignoring the slap on the arm from Octavia. “We met at the lab library. She’s pre-med, but for research.”
“Raven looks like she’s about to become a human exclamation point,” John whispers in Emori’s ear. She can’t stop the laugh that bubbles up in her throat.
“What’re we talking about?” Lexa asks as she and Jasper come downstairs. A third set of footsteps follow, and everyone in the room turns to gape at Costia as she makes her way into the kitchen.
“Morning,” she says softly. “May I have some coffee?”
“Damn,” Emori mutters to John. “She’s been here what? Twice? She belongs here more than I do, and I live here.”
John inhales, like he’s about to say something, but then Raven starts questioning whether or not Costia had Slept Over last night (“The capital letters are implied in the tone,” Octavia says) and Lexa starts loudly insisting that Costia just came over really early, all the while Monty just looks relieved that Raven forgot about him. Then Bellamy shows up with breakfast and the whole house dissolves into a quiet kind of chaos-slash-feeding frenzy that abruptly ceases when Raven not-so-subtly herds everyone out into the backyard, leaving Emori and John alone on the couch, curled into each other’s warmth, breathing in the silence.
“That was obvious,” he says drily. Emori snorts and reaches for his hand. He takes her bad hand and runs his fingers over the callouses near what passes for her knuckles. “You want to go out there?”
She shakes her head because she doesn’t. She actually likes this, being alone with him. It’s a strange feeling, this trust in both him and herself.
He runs a finger over the scar under her eye, then shifts so his arm isn’t thrown around her shoulders, but instead resting on the side of her face. She has to look at him now. Damn him.
She remembers standing in his room, chocolate in her mouth, their answer-for-answer game, his fear of touching her, her fear of letting him in. She compares that image with them now, their shy touches and the way his eyes flicker to her mouth every so often, and something warm spreads through her.
“I wouldn’t have been okay with this two months ago,” she tells him. When he laughs, his breath tickles her cheek.
“Me either,” he says, and his eyes go to her mouth again.
She remembers her first morning in the house, how she wanted to bite his lips, and is almost relieved that the urge is still there. He’s so beautiful, blue eyes and sleep-wrinkled shirt, soft hands and careful words.
“Can I kiss you?” she asks.
They’re back in her old apartment and she’s waiting for him to ask, but he’s not, so here she is, tossing back her own fear in favor of something stronger. Love, maybe? That’s too much to hope for. She’d settle for his vague acceptance if she thought it would get her something more than a lifetime of being alone.
“Why are you asking?” John murmurs.
They’re on the stairs and he’s explaining why she terrifies him, why anyone that wants anything from him scares him to the point of hostility. It’s not an excuse, but it’s a reason, a reason she understands.
“Because no one else ever did,” she whispers.
He moves forward and presses his lips to hers. She feels herself gasp, then lets herself sink into the feeling of his hands in her hair and on her waist, his mouth moving against hers, the tentative press of his tongue on her lower lip.
“You belong here,” he murmurs against her mouth. “You belong right here, with us.”
She sighs, reaching up to tangle her good hand in his hair as he kisses her again, soft, then hard, then soft again, as if she’s something fragile, something holy. Her shirt rides up as she reaches for him with her bad hand, and he jerks back as his fingers brush the bare skin of her waist.
“It’s okay, John,” she says, pressing a light kiss to the underside of his jaw. His stubble tickles her nose. “It’s okay.”
They stay like that for a little while, hands roaming under shirts and over skin. Emori realizes that he likes it when she ghosts her hands over his spine, that he lets out a soft groan every time she nips at his mouth. When she finally gets up the nerve to sink her teeth into his lower lip, she’s rewarded with his hands tightening on her waist and his rough, desperate voice gasping her name.
They finally break apart when the back door creaks open and Costia’s apologetic voice announces that she’s just sneaking in to use the bathroom.
“It’s okay,” John says, propping himself up on his elbow (when did they end up lying down?). His voice is still flustered and raspy. Emori feels deeply gratified at the sound. “You can tell Captain Obvious and the others to come back in.”
“He means Raven,” Emori explains to the girl’s baffled expression. Costia nods awkwardly, then disappears into the bathroom.
John kisses her forehead, looking down at her. She smiles up at him.
She remembers his shaking voice: I want to kiss you, and it’s fucking terrifying. I want to fall in love with you, but I’m not sure that I can.
She wonders if it still terrifies him. She wonders if he could ever love her. She wonders if she has managed to trick him into doing so, just another well-done con, or if he chose this all on his own.
Then he kisses her again, grinning like a child, and she realizes that maybe, just maybe, someone actually managed to choose her without any coercion on her part.
The thought makes her want to cry.
Somewhere between cleaning up the kitchen and doing homework, she ends up roped into a grocery shopping trip with John, Octavia, Bellamy and Raven, which is a lot more fun than it sounds, especially since Bellamy seems more and more horrified at the prospect of dragging Raven and John through Target the more time he spends in a car with them.
Bellamy splits off from them the moment they get inside, making a beeline for the books. Raven and Octavia go in search of bread and coffee, and Murphy drags Emori to the frozen vegetables.
“You have to learn to like these,” he says, pointing to the array of frozen green things. “Pick two.”
Emori glares at him. “I’m not a child, John.”
“True,” he says, probably to placate her, “but you do need to eat something even mildly healthy for a change.”
She huffs at him, but agrees, taking out two bags of frozen green beans and tossing them at John, who glares and deposits them into the cart. “Here. Healthy. What next?”
“Want salad?” he asks. Emori wrinkles her nose. “Damn it, Emori, you can’t just eat garbage from convenience stores.”
“Watch me.”
“I’d rather not.” He leads her to the tiny produce section and passes her a bag of lettuce. “Here. Just trust me.”
She lets him lead her around a while more, first to get bread and milk, then to get some chips and salsa. She sneaks a package of cookies and a frozen pizza into the cart, but John pretends not to notice. He does, however, draw the line at a bottle of Coke.
They find Bellamy near the self-checkout stations, thumbing through his phone. The second John sees him, he groans.
“Bellamy, no,” he says as Bellamy looks into their cart, then begins typing.
“Listen, there’s-”
“Bellamy, no,” Octavia says, running up with her and Raven’s cart. “No. No Cartwheel. No.”
“What’s a Cartwheel?” Emori asks John.
“It’s a coupon app that this dumbass insists on using every time we go to Target,” John explains. Behind him, Raven begins another one of her roasts, this one all about Bellamy and his “grandfather-friend tendencies.” Emori can’t help but smile.
As she follows John out to Bellamy’s car with a cart full of food - real food! - and a chest full of laughter, she thinks about all the things she never thought she could have and how close they are to her grasp at this very moment.
It’s nice, but a little disconcerting. It’s nice, but not quite nice enough to make her forget about Otan - not completely.
She stares out the window the whole ride home. It’s just as loud and obnoxious as the ride there, but she can’t find it in her to join in. She looks at John out of the corner of her eye and thinks maybe I should break his heart. Then, maybe I should stop this before it all starts. Then, maybe all of this is more than I can handle, more than I can hold in my two hands, more than I ever deserved.
She wants out. She wants to run. She feels that same flight instinct she’s held onto since the day she was arrested. She feels the same itch that she felt the day Otan first called her, the day she took John to the place where she grew up, the day he kissed her and she actually felt like this life was something more than a hazy dream that would disappear the longer she actually lived inside it.
That’s what this feeling is, she realizes. It’s like she’s living inside a house of glass, and if she touches it, if she dares to think too much, if she dares to settle in and lean back against the wall, the whole damn illusion will shatter and she’ll find herself alone and scared on a street corner or another shitty apartment and this time there will be absolutely no safety net.
“Mori?” John nudges her gently. “You okay?”
He knows. Somehow, he must know what she’s thinking. She blinks, shakes her head, steadies her breathing. “I’m fine.”
She doesn’t look at him. She can’t. She can’t.
“We need to talk,” is the first thing she says when Otan picks up the phone.
“So now you want to?” he snaps. Emori flinches as if she’s been punched. “Where was that last night?”
She hangs up.
“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” John asks. She’s lying in bed. He’s kneeling on her floor, his cheek against the edge of her mattress. His voice is muffled, but still resigned. “I can tell when someone’s about to run. You have that look.”
She aches. Tears prickle at the back of her eyes. “He was all I had,” she says, because what else do you say to a true accusation?
“I know.”
“I literally owed him my life.” She sits up, props herself on an elbow and meets his eyes. “I don’t know how to feel. And I hate it.”
“I think he’s an idiot for not staying for you. For not coming back for you until it was too late. Family’s family.” He looks down and shrugs. “But what do I know?”
She reaches down and starts carding her fingers through his hair, smiling carefully when he leans into her touch with a sigh. The words I love you well up in her, swift and furious, and she has to gnaw on her lower lip to keep them inside.
“You’re beautiful,” she murmurs instead. He shakes his head. She tugs on the strands of his hair just enough to make him groan. “Yes, you are.”
He looks up at her. His eyes are dark. “Question for question?”
She sighs, sits up, and scoots back so he can climb up and sit next to her. They stack her pillows against the wall and lean back. “Sure.”
“Why are you leaving?”
She blows out a breath. “I can’t stay here. This doesn’t feel real.”
John snorts. “Bullshit.”
She shakes her head. This isn’t coming out right. “This isn’t my life, John. This passivity, this easiness, this pattern of school and classes and having enough to eat - it’s all wrong. It’s not mine.”
“You mean you don’t deserve it?” He sounds guarded, but like he’s trying to understand. Emori will take what she can get.
“I don’t.” She looks up at him, willing him to understand. The ache in her chest only grows stronger. “How long until they realize what I am and throw me out? How long before I’m alone again?”
He reaches for her bad hand and begins meticulously unwrapping it. When she tries to pull away, he holds on tighter. “John…”
“Otan left you,” he says evenly, not taking his eyes off her skin, which is slowly bared to him one scar and scab and flaw at a time. He tosses off the wrap and pushes her sleeve up, turning her palm over so he can brush the worst of the scar at her wrist with his fingers. “That was his choice. Your mom threw you out,” his voice catches on the words, “and that was her stupid, fucking choice.”
He crawls over the bed and kneels near her feet. She’s still wearing her boots: ugly things with the soles wearing out. He unzips one of them and pulls it off carefully. “You did some illegal shit, and, yeah, that was your choice.” He takes off her other boot. “But Otan was right there with you. And whatever happened with Baylis, I’m guessing that wasn’t up to either of you.”
He looks at her, dead in the eyes, and there’s no chance he’ll flinch away this time. Secretly, she’s glad, even as she shrinks under his gaze. Ontari has left him, it seems, and she rejoices in his freedom, however slight and fleeting.
“It’s not your fault,” he says softly, resting his hands on her shins. She tries to look away, but he grips her legs until she turns back to him. “It’s not your fault.”
“John…” She almost laughs, she’s so uncomfortable. His words grate against her ears. She wants to run, run now, run far away before his words shake the glass walls just enough to break them all down.
“It’s not your fault,” he says again, shuffling closer on his knees. He stops and kneels beside her, close enough to kiss her, close enough to reach her. “It’s not your fault.”
“Shut up, John.” She tries for anger, but her voice trembles. She pulls her knees up to her chest. Her eyes burn. Her face is warm. Her left hand weighs a thousand pounds.
“It’s not your fault.” He rests his hands on either side of her face. A single tear falls. John wipes it away. “Do you believe me?”
She lets out a dry, choked sob and shakes her head. “You belong here,” he whispers, kissing her forehead.
“This place is not my home.”
“Hey.” He kisses her nose. “Your home is with me. Okay?”
She lets out another sob. She reaches for him, and he comes to her. He wraps her in his arms and pulls the covers over them both. He lets her cry into his chest for the second time in as many nights and then he kisses her until she’s breathless and laughing as tears dry on her face.
The bag she packed hours before stands, forgotten, in the corner.
When she wakes in the middle of the night with a swollen, pus-filled wound from the crescent scar under her eye, Otan groans and swears, punctures it with a semi-clean knife and stitches it crudely, all the while scolding her for letting it get so bad.
“It could have gotten infected,” he tells her while she grips her knee tightly against the pain of the needle on her flesh. “You need to be careful.”
“I don’t care,” she whispers, shifting her eyes away from her brother’s face. “I don’t care.”
All my love to @bombshellsandbluebells for editing this THE NIGHT I FINISHED IT WOW and also for entertaining the headcannons that lead to this fic because honestly I need to chill but she’s all for it.
creation
She thought they would never be caught.
They’re asleep by the fire, Otan’s thin legs a sturdy pillow for her head, her breathing soft enough to lull him to sleep. Their camp is quiet, the rowdiness of a drinking game dwindling along with the firelight and the supply of grain alcohol stolen from a wealthy Polis merchant.
Emori is almost asleep when rough, angry hands jerk her awake. She feels her brother shift, then swear while her head is knocked to the ground, unceremoniously waking her from her half-slumber.
“What the hell?” she asks, half-awake, fully angry. It’s been months since they joined Baylis’ crew and weeks since they proved themselves as loyal. She thought they were finished with these pathetic games of well-worn mistrust. “I was sleeping.”
“You were stealing,” Baylis snarls. Emori realizes one of his seconds has a knife to Otan’s throat. Baylis’ own glints in the light from where it rests near Emori’s heart. “One of you took something from us. A piece of tech.” He presses the knife down. Emori feels her blood sing with fear. “Where is it?”
“Go to hell,” Emori snaps. “We didn’t steal anything.”
Baylis cracks her across the face. The handle of his knife cuts into the soft skin of her left cheek, right above the tattoo. She bites back a cry, baring her teeth instead.
“I said,” Baylis hisses, “where’s the fucking tech?” [Read on Ao3]
She knows where it is. It’s in Gideon’s hands, halfway to the island. Their theft was insurance for a life after this -- a life after Baylis and the others tire of the frikdreina and her brother and cast them out, the latest in a years-long story every mutant knows well.
She looks over her shoulder at Otan. Did you do it? His eyes ask.
No, hers reply. Did you?
He shakes his head ever-so-slightly, fear creeping over them both. They know they are lying. They know what happens to thieves.
Emori is chained in the dark, kept immobile by knots and metal too strong for her aching muscles to break. They come with knives, with crude whips and seawater to burn the wounds they make. She groans, but doesn’t cry out, cries out but doesn’t scream, screams into the silence, but doesn’t beg-
Doesn’t beg until Baylis returns -- this time, with her brother, and she wants to cry because he looks like hell, bruised and beaten, shoulders slumped and eyes dull -- and even then, she says nothing until he moves over her, holds a knife curved like a scythe under her right eye and presses down and down, smothering her, making Otan bloody his wrists to reach her, and in the distance she hears herself begging, but never once confessing.
He throws them out after that. He and his crew take everything they own as payment, and they run.
Emori doesn’t speak for days. Her pleas wasted all her words.
retention
They return to the desert -- the only place that covers their tracks without being asked. They have nothing but the clothes on their backs and the half-full canteen Emori swipes from an abandoned pile of supplies on their way out of camp.
Their first day back, Otan kills a Wastelander -- those soft idiots who think they can live on this barren land -- and takes his horse.
You idiot, Emori thinks, watching the Wastelander’s blood seep into the sand. You can’t live out here - only survive.
She watches until his blood runs dry. Otan lets her.
She likes the horse. She doesn’t name him, but she likes to stroke his soft nose, listen to him whicker and sigh when she feeds him a dried piece of fruit or gives him the last of her water. It soothes the empty ache inside her to make something so innocent happy.
Otan finds her a scrap of cloth to cover her face while the wounds heal. The sand still scrapes against the scabs, and Emori knows they will scar but can’t bring herself to care. She tells herself it’s because her beauty doesn’t matter, but she knows somewhere deep in her gut that she will never feel anything right again.
When she wakes in the middle of the night with a swollen, pus-filled wound from the crescent scar under her eye, Otan groans and swears, punctures it with a semi-clean knife and stitches it crudely, all the while scolding her for letting it get so bad.
“It could have gotten infected,” he tells her while she grips her knee tightly against the pain of the needle on her flesh. “You need to be careful.”
“I don’t care,” she whispers, shifting her eyes away from her brother’s face. “I don’t care.”
He sits back on his heels, wiping her blood off on his shirt. “You were brave,” he says, and she sees her pain mirrored in his eyes. It’s the closest thing to praise she’s gotten from him in a long time, and she takes it, holds it close to her chest and tries to sleep.
They meet Gideon by the water. He’s willing to keep their deal, but they have nothing to trade, so he sends them back out into the Dead Zone to scavenge and steal. Emori revels in it, in the uncomplicated art of the con, the only thing she’s good at aside from pretending she isn’t hungry or thirsty - something she is doing right now as Otan lays a trap for their next mark with an abandoned cart they find near the bottom of a hill.
“Stay here, give them a story and lead them east,” he says, pointing over his shoulder. “Understand?”
Emori doesn’t want to be alone. She only has a knife for protection, and her strength is waning fast. It’s been days since her last meal, and her body knows it. Deep down, she is afraid.
Their horse whinnies. Emori reaches out to pat his side. “I understand.”
He rides away. She winces at the flex and pull of the stitches in her cheek. Her other wounds ache and burn in the sun. She pulls the cloth over her mouth and waits.
realization
She didn’t know there were scars until she catches a glimpse of herself in the water’s reflection.
It’s been more than a few days since she met the boy in the desert, the one she doesn’t allow herself to think about, the one with the laugh caught in the back of his throat and the awkward smile and the stutter and shaking hands as he offered her water.
She gave him directions to the place where he could find her. His companions were searching for the City of Light, but he wasn’t, and she hopes against all that one day, maybe today, she’ll return to the island, and he’ll be there. She doesn’t think he’ll be waiting for her, but maybe she can convince him to forgive her for knocking him out.
It was a survivor’s move, after all.
She leans on the boat’s rail, the searchlight illuminating the dark water below, and looks down, hoping to catch a glimpse of the silvery fish that sometimes swim beside the boat, hungry and curious.
She sees herself instead, and bile rises in her throat at the sight of the half-circle scar under her eye, the gashes along her jaw and cheekbone. They don’t look as harsh as she guesses they would under real, harsh light, but they nauseate her and terrify her all the same.
Otan blows the boat’s horn. Emori glares at him over her shoulder, then relaxes when she sees them start to near the shore. Gideon is there, as is another figure, a man with dark skin, and another whose back is to them.
Her whole body stiffens, tenses like a rope about to snap. There’s so many of them and one of her, and the newly discovered scars marring her skin itch and burn as a reminder of just how dangerous men could be.
The smaller man, the one whose back is to her, turns, and she squints into the dark to catch a glimpse of pale skin and high cheekbones. Is that-
“John?” She maneuvers around Otan and can’t keep the smile off her face when she sees him, thin and incredulous, but obviously, remarkably the same. “I don’t believe it.”
“Emori?”
She breaks into a smile of relief at the voice, that voice , because it belongs to the boy she’s been begrudgingly missing for weeks. It's too good to be true, she decides, and even better than that when he climbs up next to her and leans on the rail, their arms almost touching.
"Jaha found the City of Light," he says, gesturing to his companion, who is kneeling at the back of the boat, a strange silver thing strapped to his back.
She looks at him, raising an eyebrow. "Did you?" When he shakes his head, her heart sinks. "Are you alright?"
Her concern must startle him; he looks at her with a sharpness that makes her flinch. "Y-yeah. I'm fine."
She nods. They stand there, side-by-side, and watch the fog roll over the sea. It's the first time in months she has felt at peace.
retribution
The man tied to the chair isn’t Baylis, but Emori doesn’t care.
After the story of theft and darkness and pain clawed its way out of her stomach and into John’s ears, she spent night after night tamping down the nightmares, the paralysis that seeped into her bones and tricked her hands into being bound by invisible ropes.
She will never feel trapped like that again, she vows. But that’s a futile promise now, now that they’re in this house and this lab with people that might take her and lock her into a glass coffin to bleed and break and die.
No. She doesn’t want this. She will not plead for her life. She will not let herself become a sacrifice for the people that hate the only one she loves.
So she will lie, and she will steal, and she will do everything she was punished for in the dark because if she is going to live, she will gladly pay the cost, because not a damn thing hurts her anymore, not after that night, the one that not even John knows about.
And if she uses not-Baylis as a stand-in for all the pain and fear she has kept hidden in the pit of her stomach, that’s her business.
After the first few hits, John stops pacing and watches her. She feels his eyes on her bloody hands and revels in it, in the terror she feels coming off the unknown man in waves. It’s easy to pretend he is Baylis — the trauma is fresh, the wounds only a little less — and it’s even easier to ease the knot in her stomach with fists instead of truthful words.
John could not stand to look at her if he knew. She would be a dirty thing to him, something used up and sad. She will not be anything less than strong. She will not beg. She has spent too many days and nights at the world’s mercy, and she is so damn tired.
John knows this. He lets her run herself out until her fists and knuckles scream for mercy. She feels the pain, winces at it, but doesn’t want the adrenaline to fade.
Oh, is it rush to make someone else beg before her for a change.
absolution
She studies herself in the mirror that hangs across from the bed she and John share. It’s big and empty, like the house around them, but it’s so soft and makes John smile, so she can begrudge them both this impractical comfort. Just the thought of John’s contented smile as he curls under the warm blankets makes her smile; she watches in mild fascination as her reflection’s lips quirk up ever-so-slightly.
Her eyes are dark. Her lungs ache - that dull, clean feeling after a heavy storm or a good cry. She breathes in, out, and touches the line of her jaw, the top of her cheeks. The scars are finally fading, little more than memories that her fingertips chase. The stitches Otan never removed are lumpy under her right eye, but the scar itself is nearly healed, the combination of sun and time erasing the last reminder of the worst night.
“Did it help?” John asks softly, coming up behind her, pressing a kiss to her temple and winding his arms around her waist.
She leans her head back, tipping her head and nosing at his neck until he leans down for a kiss. “Yes,” she says softly, precisely, and he smiles in the mirror. It’s a mean smile, a proud smile.
“He deserved it. For hurting you,” he says, and the ache is back because how does she deserve someone who loves her enough to fight for her?
She hums, reaches her good hand up to tangle in his hair, watches in fascination as his reflection’s eyes close reflexively. “Many people have hurt me, John.”
“You should beat them all,” he says, pressing a kiss to the soft skin of her arm. Then, after a moment, “Why were you staring at yourself in the mirror?”
She takes a deep breath. “I used to have scars. My reflection is strange to me now.”
He nods, sighs. “I remember. The one under your eye looked like it hurt like hell.”
“Why didn’t you ever ask?”
He shrugs. “If you wanted me to know, you would tell me.”
She turns, wraps her arms around his neck, walks him backwards until he’s sitting on the edge of the bed and she’s standing between his legs. “I want to tell you something. And you’re going to hate it.”
He says nothing. She lets the story pour out of her like a waterfall. When she’s finished, his hands are gripping his knees tightly, and there’s a vein bulging in his neck. The phantom scars she searched for earlier burn.
“I swear to fucking-” he starts, then stops. “I’m going to kill him,” he says with vehemence.
“No,” she says, catching his arm as he starts to stand up. She feels like lead, like she could collapse at any second. “Come rest with me.”
She doesn’t ask for it, but he hears her, looks down at her with a soft gaze and leads her to bed, pulling her to his chest and caging her with his arms. Vaguely, before sleep pulls her under, she marvels at his selflessness. Were the roles reversed, she would not be strong enough to forsake revenge for another’s comfort.
Or maybe she would be. He has always been her exception.
The last thing she feels is his thumb tracing her cheek. When she wakes, she could swear the last of the scar has disappeared.
Shoutout to @bombshellsandbluebells for everything. Y’all already know she’s a rockstar.
Also, so you know, I do read all your tags on my fics when you reblog them and I turn into the human ‘!!!!!’ at them. So thank you <3
So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog
of non-definitive acts,
something other than the desperation.
Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your party.
Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I came to your party
and seduced you
and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.
Then
The con was perfect.
She revels in it as she leaves the club. She’s good at faking, good at weaving clever lies and pretend tears. She can bend anyone to her will, and it feels so damn good.
“Em!” her brother waves to her, weaving through the crowd. He’s been drinking; the color is high in his cheeks, and his eyes are just unfocused enough to make him sway on his feet. “How’d it go?”
She grins, high on success, cocky in her satisfaction. “Perfectly.” Then, with a satisfied grin, “You’re welcome.”
His eyes smile at her, catch on something over her shoulder, and his face falls. “Shit, Em, we have to go.”
She turns on her heel, looking behind her, trying to catch sight of the thing terrifying enough to horrify her brother. “Why?”
When she looks back, Otan is gone.
Emori is a horrible person.
She already knows this, but she reminds herself as she looks in the mirror, the glass still foggy from her shower.
When she had heard John screaming through the walls last night, her first instinct was to yell “shut up!” and go back to sleep. But she wasn’t in prison anymore, and John was shouting like someone was coming for his blood. Still, she hesitated to get up and save him from the horrors in his head.
So yes. A horrible person. [Read more on Ao3]
She wonders what came over her - why she followed him outside last night. Then she wonders why he was screaming, what is following him so closely that he never has any peace. It’s not any of her business, it really isn’t, but the broken thing inside him is clawing its way out, and she’s always been a lover of broken things.
She has three classes today, back-to-back, starting at noon. She waited to get up until she heard Raven, Lexa, Octavia and the boys leave. It’s just her and John now.
The thought should terrify her. Instead, she feels only a flutter of anxiety, one she doesn’t plan on examining the cause of just yet.
She dries off, gets dressed and goes downstairs, her wet hair slapping against her leather jacket, which is basically the nicest thing she owns aside from her knife set.
“Coffee?” John asks without turning around, sliding her a mug. She takes it in her good hand, feels the warmth of the ceramic, sips at it, and grimaces at the taste.
“It’s black.”
“Yeah.” He shrugs. “Cures exhaustion.”
She downs it in mere minutes. Her stomach rumbles but she doesn’t dare go through the fridge. She hasn’t gone grocery shopping yet, and nothing in there is hers. She hasn’t even opened up a bank account, and the $50 sewn into the lining of her backpack is going to disappear faster than she would like.
She doesn’t need to eat - at least, not yet. She needs a job. She needs some sleep. She needs to pretend the last five years were nothing. Not necessarily in that order.
“Do you think I should get my tattoo removed?” she asks John suddenly, breaking the stillness of the kitchen. Anyone else and she’d be shrinking in her seat right now, but he’s different. She senses something in him, a small thing, like a brief flame - something that shivers and aches to be wanted even as he pushes all hope of that away.
They’re one and the same, she supposes - both alike in their hatred and want of the world.
“Which one? The one on your face?” A grimace of guilt shivers over his expression. She wonders why.
“Yeah.” She taps her left hand against her knee. The fingers twitch, sweat in her wrap. She doesn’t take it off. “It’ll keep me from getting a job, right?”
John shrugs, an easy thing. The slim lines of his shoulders are appealing. When he turns his head to look at her out of the corner of his eye, she sees his sharp cheekbones and dry lips. I’d like to bite those lips, she thinks, and then wants to thump her head against the counter in frustration.
“No,” he answers. “Screw them. Cover it up with makeup if you want to, but don’t take it off.”
He says it forcefully, as if he’s pushing words from his lungs with great effort - as if it costs himself something to give them up. She watches him, wary, but he says no more.
“All right then,” she says.
An endless silence stretches before them. His phone vibrates on the kitchen counter. He looks at it and gives a small sound of disgust. She peers at it just as it starts ringing.
“Aren’t you going to get that?” she asks.
“No.” He swears under his breath, then swipes the phone open. “Leave me alone,” he growls, then hangs up.
Emori slips from the stool, reaching for her backpack. She doesn’t look up, and she doesn’t look back.
Classes are blissfully mundane, a departure from crowded prison computer labs, every due date a fight to the finish. She might be “street trash,” as her old foster family reminded her, but she was - is - smart.
There’s a nontraditional student in her beginner’s public health class. Her name is Anya, and Emori likes her instantly. There’s something about her sharp tongue, her harsh tone and her no-nonsense approach to the system’s failings that appeals to Emori.
She rips the lining of her backpack to get to her money, then goes to the small grocery store near the school. She buys cereal, coffee, milk, bread and ham. It costs her fifteen dollars. She also pockets a Swiss Army knife and two chocolate bars. She doesn’t pay for those.
There’s a strange ache settling in her, a longing of sorts - a sadness rising up to choke her. She’s afraid, she thinks, and nervous. What is she doing here? What is she trying to prove? She’s stupid and small and, shit , what if she had been caught stealing. She would have been sent back for sure.
She feels herself shiver in the September heat. She can’t go back. Won’t. She grits her teeth, bares them, frightens a pigeon cooing at the street corner.
“Hey! Emori!” It’s Octavia, standing on that same street corner, books cradled in her arms, her brother at her side. She looks happy, content and safe. It makes Emori want to scream, but she bites her tonge and molds her lips into a smile. She seethes on the inside even as she, but on the inside, she’s seething. She’s a closed book, a ghost in a house of self-made pain. She is nothing if not a con artist. Her ability to fool others with her bravado, sharp smiles and pretty tongue is nothing new.
She watches herself, as if from a distance, greet the younger girl and nod at her brother. She feels relief when he doesn’t nod back.
“How were classes?” Bellamy is asking both of them. Emori lets Octavia talk. She watches herself pay attention, kick a rock off the sidewalk. Octavia is talking about chemistry. Emori is thinking about the feeling of a swing set chain, cold against her forehead. She’s thinking about her naked hand, John’s fingers, his claim that it is “badass” to be deformed and unwanted.
“Mine were okay,” she answers on autopilot when the siblings turn to look at her. They’re so alike with their angular jaws, harsh noses and lips set automatically into fine lines. Their skin is nothing alike, nor is their hair, but if you saw them for half a second, you would know they belonged to each other.
She and Otan never shared that. They were asymmetrical in all the wrong ways.
Bellamy holds out a hand. “May I? I’m going to the house anyway.”
He wants to carry her bag of groceries. What a gentleman, she thinks wryly. She hands it over. The knife and chocolate in her pocket are heavy. The chocolate is probably melting. She takes it from her jacket and tucks it in with the milk to keep it cold.
“Why are you wearing a jacket?” Octavia asks bluntly. “It’s, like, a hundred degrees out.”
“It’s only 87,” Bellamy corrects mildly, but he’s wondering too.
Emori shrugs. “Thought the classrooms might be cold.” The lie is good.
She smiles to herself. Of course it’s good. It’s her.
John has paper taped to his walls.
She didn’t see that last night. She only saw him, his flailing limbs, his contorted body and all the ways his face screamed for help. When she walks past, it flaps in the breeze from the open window. He’s smoking. A bottle of beer sits on the floor.
“Hey stranger.” She taps on the doorframe. “Care for a bite?”
He looks confused until she tosses him a chocolate bar. “Doesn’t chocolate go with wine?” he asks, bemused, tentative.
“Wine’s too bougie for us,” she replies, laughing slightly. “Can I come in?”
He blinks at her. His eyes are blue, rimmed with a dark edge. Beautiful. So beautiful. “Sure.”
She sits on the floor with him. She takes off her jacket, watches his eyes follow her arms, the jut of her collarbone under her v-neck. Chills run down her spine, but in a good way.
He bites into the chocolate, eyes on the wall ahead of them. The paper on the walls are pages from books. From here, she can read some of it, but not all. Lines jump out at her, lines he has underlined, highlighted, destroyed by circling with a harsh black pen.
I’m sorry I came to your party and seduced you and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.
Poor sad thing. Is that him? Someone else? Who hurt him? Why is she here, sitting on his floor, sitting beside this boy who locks his bedroom door at night, but leaves it open in the morning? Why is she here, in the dust, looking out at an endless sky, a college town, the endless possibilities that belong to everyone but her?
“You ever going to tell me what you were in for?”
It takes a moment for her to realize he’s talking about prison. “You’ll have to earn that,” she replies. A smirk, a grin, and he’s blushing, eyes cast down, beautiful lips spread in an almost-smile.
“How do I do that?”
She hums, reaches for his bottle. “Answer for answer.” She takes a swig, hands it back to him. “Who was calling you this morning.”
“Someone I wish I had never met.” A sip, a sidelong look. “Why were you arrested?”
“I was careless. I got caught.” A bite of chocolate, sugar sliding down her throat. Her leg itches. She unties her boots. “What did you dream about last night?”
His eyes darken. “Not being able to say no.” He stiffens, gets to his feet. She scrambles up, and his body shifts to accommodate her invasion into his space. They stand before one another, nearly head-to-chin, arms-to-hands. He takes her left one in his and runs his hand over the cloth. “Why do you hate this so much?”
She’s breathing hard. He is too. He licks his lips, and she feels a shock in her veins. “I- it’s-”
Fuck. The best lies hold truths. So where is her lie? Where is the only thing she has to fall back on?
She looks at his face, eyes searching hers, wide-set over a long nose. “It’s the worst thing about me.” Honest enough to hurt her.
Bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.
He scoffs. “I doubt that.” He turns away. The game is over, and she is standing there, vulnerable, in the center of a room that isn’t hers, a house that isn’t hers, a life that isn’t hers.
“It’s a reminder,” she starts, and she’s whispering. Why is she whispering? “It’s a reminder-” she starts again, louder this time, “that I am nothing. That I will always be nothing. That I am erasable and alone.”
You poor sad thing.
John turns. “Emori.” His voice cracks on the second syllable. “You… fuck. ”
She flinches. On the inside, a knife is connecting with her cheek; the club’s music hammers in time with her heart; her brother is on the other side of bulletproof glass, but he is not himself.
“You are not nothing,” John whispers vehemently, desperately, surging forward to grab hold of her bad hand. “You’re not . Don’t ever say that.”
She looks at his hand on hers. Her eyes fill with tears. Her shoulders tremble once, twice, her hand twitches, and then he’s lurching backward as if she’s slapped him.
“I shouldn’t have- I’m sorry- I’ll-”
“Don’t be.” She reaches into her pocket, wraps her hand around the cold pocketknife. “I...I’ll go.”
He nods, turns away, reaches for the empty beer bottle. She closes the door behind her, hears a loud epithet and breaking glass. The bottle wasn’t meant for her, but the shards on the other side of the wall cut her all the same.
She goes outside after dinner, and sees Jasper lying in the grass.
“You okay?” she asks. He turns his head, and she sees tears on his cheeks. “Shit, what’s wrong?”
He laughs, ugly and broken. The cheerful boy she met last night is peeling off his mask. “Life fucking sucks, that’s what.”
“Care to elaborate?” It’s what one of her professors says. She likes it, likes the way she coaxes ideas out without making them obvious, without making a wrong answer shameful.
“Oh, right,” he laughs again. Someone so young shouldn’t sound so bitter. “You weren’t here.” He pats the grass beside his leg, and she sits. “I had this girlfriend, Maya. But it wasn’t some stupid high-school romance where you get one another off once in a while and kiss under the bleachers.” He sniffs. “It was real. She was real. Real and beautiful and funny. She liked art. Really depressing art, which was fucking hilarious because she was so happy and innocent.”
Emori sits, plucking at the glass with her bad hand, listening to Jasper as he spills his guts, purging himself of a story she understood, the bloody truth of an accident and a bad surgery and a young boy having to watch the girl he loved waste away to nothing.
Bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.
“That sucks,” she says when he’s finished.
“Yeah.” He sits up, groans, rubs the back of his neck. “I’ve been a shitty friend to Monty. I was horrible to him; hell, I tried to kill myself last year, and I don’t think he’s gotten over it.”
“You two are like brothers,” she reasons quietly. “That kind of thing doesn’t go away overnight.”
“Am I ever going to be okay?” he asks, quietly vulnerable. A light on the front porch switches on. When she looks over her shoulder, John is leaning against the railing, another cigarette in hand, close enough to hear Jasper’s question and her answer.
“I think,” she starts slowly, “I think your ‘okay’ has to change. You’ll always want her. You’ll always miss her. But I-” I have to believe it stops hurting after a while. “I think you’ll feel better the longer you live.”
She hears John shift. She isn’t sure if what she said was a lie or the truth. She’s prepared to believe it’s both.
“Have you ever lost someone?” he asks.
The pain, a dull and rusty knife, plunges into her heart. “Yes,” she answers quickly, not thinking, not feeling. She had her time of mourning in a prison cell.
“How did you deal with it?”
She smirks, remembering. John lights a second cigarette. “I started a yard fight in prison.”
Jasper laughs, nods in appreciation or respect. “Did you win?”
She nods. “They said it was too close to tell. But I won.”
They sit in silence for a while, near the tree full of screaming crickets, the abandoned bird’s nest. John goes inside, up to his room. Raven is talking on the phone. A tall girl with long messy hair - Luna, she learns - sits on the railing of the back deck and looks up at the sky. Bellamy sits beside her and they talk. Monty brings Jasper inside. A car rolls past the house. Emori loses herself in the press and slide of the world turning, the rise and fall of her own chest. She slips away into a dazed numbness, a dark place where the world is allowed to happen to her.
“Come inside.” It’s John, back again. It’s dark now. When did it get so late? She hasn’t seen a car in hours. “It’s almost one in the morning.”
She’s about to say something when a car pulls in, tires crunching in the gravel driveway. She turns, squints into the headlights. Beside her, John freezes. He looks like a cornered animal, like a hunted man.
“John.” The windows roll down, but the headlights stay on. The engine turns off. A girl stands half in, half out of the driver’s side. Black hair, tight jacket, plump cheeks, mean eyes. Emori wants to sneer at her just on principle. “You’re ignoring my calls.”
John’s face is the picture of terror. Above their heads, Octavia’s light flickers on. Emori hears a window slam shut, Jasper and Monty’s shouting, Raven’s swearing.
“Get the hell off my property, Ontari,” Raven snarls, banging the screen door open. John flinches. He’s white-knuckling the porch railing.
John starts to move, striding off the porch in swift steps, pushing past Raven and shoving the girl against her car, his hand around her neck.
“Murphy!” Bellamy shouts. Emori scrambles to her feet.
“Not so fun when it’s you, huh?” John growls in Ontari’s ear. “Leave me the fuck alone. I’m done with you, I’m done with your bullshit, I’m done .” He shoves her again. Her head thumps against the car. “Get out and never come back.”
Emori finally moves. “Let go of her, John,” she says, tugging at his arm. “Let go, it’s not worth it. Let go.”
He does. He reaches for her, hands grasping, shaking, fisting in her shirt, closing around her wrapped hand. Ontari glares at Emori, and she feels her blood boil.
How dare you look at me? she wants to ask. How dare you hurt him?
“Is he your bitch now?” Ontari’s addressing her. Emori sees red.
“Fuck off,” Emori spits, turning away, and then Ontari’s hand is on her arm, twisting Emori back around and spitting in her face.
Emori stands there, saliva running down her cheek, hand clenched into a fist, breath coming sharp.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” John shouts, lunging for Ontari, prying her hand from Emori’s arm. “Get the fuck away from her, you sick-”
“Murphy!” It’s Bellamy, all deep voice and righteous anger. “Enough!” He jogs down the stairs and separates the two of them, all but shoving Ontari back into her car. “Don’t come here again,” he tells her, bodily hauling John up the porch steps.
Emori watches Ontari’s tires spin, scattering gravel and grass. Her spit is warm on her cheek. She wipes it away with the wrap on her hand.
“Are you calm?” Bellamy is asking John when she approaches the steps. John looks up at her, eyes unreadable.
“I’m sorry,” he says. His voice sounds broken.
You poor sad thing.
“What happened between you two?” she asks. Bellamy tenses. Raven moves aside so Emori can sit beside John. Octavia, Jasper and Monty are at the front window, peeking from around the curtains, eyes wide.
“You don’t have to say anything, Murphy,” Raven says. It’s a lawyer’s warning. You don’t have to incriminate yourself. You don’t have to lie. You don’t have to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but.
John shakes his head. “We dated until the middle of last year.” Bellamy bows his head, as if he’s resigned to the story. “It...it wasn’t good. Healthy. Whatever.”
He looks up, turns to Raven, then Bellamy. “You know the story already.”
It’s a hint to leave. They take it, walking backwards into the house, closing the door softly.
When they’re alone again, John sighs. “She cut me off from them. I thought she was just jealous. I didn’t mind. But then it got worse; she started-” he clears his throat. “I said no. But that didn’t matter.”
Emori knows what he’s alluding to. Her heart hurts.
“I figured, what’s the problem? My mom was shit, so this was fine. Nothing new. And at least I had someone.”
“Someone loving you their way is better than being alone,” she murmurs. She understands.
He looks at her. The tears in his eyes scare her. “Raven and Bellamy helped me get out. I started living here and it was okay. I’m still...I’m still dealing with it though.” He laughs. It’s ugly. “Which is to say, I’m not really dealing with it.”
He pulls down the collar of his shirt, shows her the ugly scars around his neck. She touches them softly, with cold fingers. He shivers.
Bruised and ruined. She feels sick. Bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.
“I’m sorry for what she did to you,” she whispers.
He sniffs. “It’s over now.”
“Is it?”
He laughs. “Shit. I forgot.” She doesn’t know what he means. His glassy eyes say that he doesn’t either. “No, it’s not, I guess.”
They sit there in silence. It might be her imagination, but the tension is bleeding from his shoulders. He leaves his shirt askew. Every time she sees the scars, she is angry.
“I hope it stops hurting,” she whispers.
“It does. Sometimes.” He reaches for her. She stays deathly still while he reaches out, touches her hair, her cheek that’s still sticky with spit. “I wish…” he shakes his head. “I felt guilty talking to you. As if she would be angry. As if she still matters.”
“Why me?” she asks. “You talk to Raven and Octavia all the time.”
“They-” he sighs, frustrated, out of words. “They’re not like you. They’re not… They don’t understand. You do.” He huffs out a laugh. “I don’t know how, but you do.”
It’s enough. More than enough, actually. She can feel herself smiling, glowing like the fireflies flashing in the tree branches above them.
“I’d like to take you out,” he says softly. She blinks in surprise, shifts when he turns, reaches for her hand. “I can’t promise I won’t be a shitty boyfriend. Hell, I’m not asking to be your boyfriend. I’m just asking for a date.”
It sounds like he’s trying to convince himself. “Okay.” She nods, smiles when he smiles.
“Okay?” He sounds shocked. She doesn’t blame him; she is too. She barely knows the guy. But she knows enough. She knows about his nightmares. She knows his laugh, his little smiles, his love of chocolate, his hatred of his own reflection.
She’s seen enough. Enough to say yes. Enough to pretend she has a conscience.
She takes his hand, leads him back to the house. “Okay.”
This is one massive trope-slash-cliche and I wish I was sorry
Enjoy the Memori coffee shop AU we really didn’t need.
There is implied/reference self-harm in section V, but it’s minor. I’m not taking any chances though <3
i.
You really only choose the coffee shop because it's warm and quiet and those are two things your apartment is not at the moment, not since the heater broke and the December snow started piling on the windows and the music and noise from the second and first floors started drifting up to your third-floor walk-up.
It’s a small place, wood paneling on the walls in an artsy, slightly-disorganized contrast to the smooth floors and the mismatched couches, armchairs and tables. Their coffee is strong; you take it black and curl into the massive armchair near the window, sipping out of a chipped mug and reading over your assignments for winter term.
You’re there for two or three hours when someone flops into the chair across from you, letting out a sigh meant only for his ears. When you look up - and you didn’t mean to look up so sharply, but he doesn’t know that - he gives you a polite smile, then looks down at the cup of coffee in his hands.
He takes it black, too, you notice with interest. [Read on Ao3]
Once he opens his laptop, you study him. He’s maybe a little younger than you, with high cheekbones and blue eyes. He’s pretty, you think involuntarily, then ball your right hand into a tight fist until the pain from your nails on your skin jerks you back to the moment.
When he stretches and stands some time later, you look up and see the sky is pitch-black, the street lights right outside the shop’s window beginning to flicker on. He shoulders his backpack while staring out the window, then turns his body toward you slightly, just enough for you to know he’s talking to you.
“It’s snowing again.”
You look up at him. He has a nice, sharp jawline. “Yeah.”
He looks at you. His eyes aren’t exactly soft, but you don’t feel the need to run from him either. “You taking the bus?”
“No, I walked here.”
He pulls the hood of his jacket up. “Get home safe,” he says awkwardly, like an afterthought.
You don’t know what else to say but, “You too.” It sounds too polite leaving your mouth.
He walks away. You see him board the bus outside. When it pulls away, you swear his eyes meet yours from the window.
You look at the take-out coffee cup he left on the windowsill. When you pick it up, it’s empty. John is written on it in a barista's messy scrawl.
Something in you smiles.
ii.
You see John again the next day. It’s even colder, so you’re wearing your brother’s sweater over two thermal shirts, only one of which is long enough to hide your bad hand. You usually wrap a strip of cloth to hide it, but it froze overnight after getting wet from the leak in the roof.
Damn, your apartment is a mess.
Anyway, he’s there when you arrive and normally you would find somewhere else to sit, but that chair is right near a vent that blows warm air, which sounds pretty damn good right about now, so you sit.
He gives you another nod-smile and you grin back - not a real grin, but a flash of teeth that masquerades as one - and when you sit down, he takes a sip of his coffee and that’s that.
You're so deep into the eight-page paper you're working on - who the fuck told you it was a good idea to take classes during winter break and why did you listen? - that you don't notice him standing over you until he clears his throat and you flinch and blink upwards.
“You were shivering,” he says, a bit gruffly, and hands you a mug that may as well be a bowl with a handle.
“Was I?” you murmur so as not to disturb this moment, this strange moment when someone is standing over you offering you something warm and nice, looking at you with a furrow between his brow as if he’s confused or maybe worried.
It’s entirely unsettling.
He gives you a jerky nod and sits down across from you. The furrow between his eyes gets deeper when you start digging for your wallet.
“For the coffee,” you explain, holding out some crumpled bills.
He shakes his head. You outstretch your right hand, your good hand a little farther, and he shakes his head again.
I don’t want to owe anyone, you want to say, but it comes out as a “thank you” whispered into your backpack.
When you lift your head, a smile is fading from his lips.
iii.
“Shit,” he’s muttering when you sit down in your chair. “Fuck.”
You take in his angry expression and the way he’s slamming the keys of his laptop, and lean forward so he looks at you. “Computer trouble?”
He rakes a hand through his hair. “It just froze and I can’t fucking get it back and I have a project due in an hour and-“
“Gimme,” you say, reaching for the device. He hands it over and you look at it, tapping at the keys smoothly with your right hand and clumsily with your left. The screen fades to black, then whirs to life after a moment, and you pass it back with a proud smile.
“Thanks,” he says, clearing the remnants of anger from his voice. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Then, “are you taking winter classes too?”
Are you seriously talking to him? Your blood runs cold for a small moment, then thaws when he, looking just as startled as you feel, nods.
Your left hand is on display, you realize. It's resting awkwardly atop your knee, the faded bandana ugly in the dim light from the window. His eyes flick to it, then up to your face.
“Are you hurt or something?”
He says it with a tone of concern masquerading as indifferent curiousity. You look at his eyes and find the smallest hint of emotion and it’s enough to trust him.
“It’s not a bandage.” You unwrap the bandana, slowly but surely revealing the rough patches, fused fingers and that scar you never ever talk about.
“Woah,” he breathes, but it’s an admiring woah, the kind that meant “that’s so cool” in middle school. He reaches for it, traces a finger over the tiny stub near your pinky. “That’s really badass.”
You huff out a laugh that’s more relief than anything else. “Liar.” His acceptance of the worst part of you makes your throat constrict and you reach out as a thank-you and apology all at once. “I’m Emori, by the way.”
“Murphy,” he says, but you already know to call him John. “Nice to…formally meet you, I guess.”
You smile, a real one this time. Your stomach clenches. You feel like your skin is on fire, but the nice kind, the kind when you want something so badly and you know you’re so close to obtaining it. It’s the anticipation of the con, only you don’t have to con him into liking you because he already does.
“You too.”
It’s like the first day you met, only he doesn’t give you an awkward look, but grins, all flashing teeth and clever eyes, and eventually he moves his chair a little closer to yours, saying that the vent was warm and he was freezing, but he explains just a little too long, and do you dare hope he’s interested in your company?
(You shouldn’t dare, but you do.)
(When he leaves you his phone number, hidden under your coffee mug, you smile and text him right away.)
(You never stop texting after that.)
iv.
Thank God the coffee shop is open late on Fridays.
Otan is having a party and you need to work on your midterm, so you trudge the four blocks in the snow and single-digit temperature to get there, the thought of the chair by the vent and warm black coffee and John’s nice smile and pretty eyes buoying you.
You had texted him before leaving the house and he said he was in his usual spot, so that’s where your eyes go as soon as you arrive. He’s standing near the window when you burst in, shaking snow from your hair, but you nearly freeze when you see him with another girl. His back is to you, but you can see her, all dark-haired, pale, fierce-eyed and-
And he’s angry with her, hissing between gritted teeth, and she’s got a vice grip on his arm and before you can reconsider, you’re marching over there, tapping him on the shoulder until he turns around.
“Emori.” He sounds relieved? Scared? Both of the above? You take one look at the other girl and do what you do best: act.
“Hey, babe,” you say nonchalantly, wrapping your left arm around his shoulders and looking at the other girl with what you hope is a vaguely possessive expression. “Who’s this?”
“Ontari,” she says sharply, releasing John’s arm and jamming her hand in her pocket. “You’re his girlfriend?”
“Last time I checked.” You keep your tone light, but wary. John’s body relaxes with every moment Ontari’s hands are off him, but you’re sure that if you checked, the place where her grip was strongest would be bruising his pale skin. “Is there a problem here, John?”
“She was just leaving,” John says, wrapping his arm around your waist, bunching the fabric of your still-wet jacket in his hand.
Ontari looks murderous, but takes her leave with a snide “it was nice seeing you” that implies it really wasn’t.
You wait until she walks past the window to release him, but his arm still keeps you close. “You didn’t have to do that,” he says softly.
“Yeah,” you say, swiveling to face him. His hand is warm, burning you through all your layers, and you feel like your heart is about to come out of your throat when you look at his face, now so close to yours. “I did.”
He releases you after a moment, stammering out an apology that you wave off, and insists on buying you a coffee.
“As a thanks for being my knight in shining armor,” he says, a smirk on his face, and you let him bring you a steaming mug and wrap his huge scarf around your shoulders like a blanket when the warmth doesn’t seep in fast enough.
“Thanks,” you say, holding the mug as close to your face as you dare.
He sits down in his usual seat, then looks at her. “So, wait. ‘Babe’?”
You laugh. “Well, I had to assert dominance somehow! I’m sorry, do you prefer sweetheart?” When he starts laughing, you continue. “Honey? Kitten?”
“Oh, fuck off,” he says, but he’s still laughing, probably more in relief than anything else. You laugh with him, and the peace that settles into your bones drives away the cold more than even the coffee could.
v.
He sits beside you one day.
You’ve been texting for weeks and flirting for longer, the incident with Ontari sparking something that feels suspiciously like a crush. Sometimes you wonder if you’re imagining things, but then he’ll say things nearly complementary about your eyes or hair, and you’ll retaliate with teasing, and sometimes you drive one another away, but you always come back together in fits and starts.
You think you want him. And it fucking terrifies you, and you know it scares him because you met his best friend Raven one day when she showed up at the shop to give him his car keys and she whispered “give him time” in your ear when he went to the bathroom.
Now, he’s sitting beside you, his arm so close to yours and you feel like you’re on edge, but also like you’re more at peace than you’ve been in a long time.
So when he taps you on the shoulder and asks if a sentence he’s writing makes sense, you lean over to look. Your head is almost level with his chest and suddenly it’s very hard to keep your mind on the paper and not on how gentle his hand is as it rests on your shoulder.
“It’s good,” you nearly whisper, your heart in your throat. “It’s a good sentence, I mean.”
You know this feeling - not in practice, but in theory - and you like it, you like it way more than you should, you like it enough to want to burrow into it and live here until the weather outside is warm again.
You look up and your faces are inches away. He parts his lips and before you can say something, his eyes flick down to your mouth, then up to your eyes-
And then he leans back, blowing out a harsh breath and apologizing.
“Why do you apologize so damn much?” you ask before you can help it.
“I thought-”
“I would have said no,” you say.
He nods. “Okay.”
Nothing happens after that. You sit side by side and it’s awkward for a while, but soon he’s leaning over the arm of your chair to show you Vines his friends text him, and then you start talking. He tells you about these meme-loving friends, and you talk about the cities you’ve lived in and how college would be so much better if there were less tests and more essays and he asks, innocently, how you can type with your left fingers fused the way they are, so you get to show him your neat trick of reaching halfway across the keyboard with the longer fingers.
He reaches for your bad hand, touching the scar that rests like a rope right above the bone of your wrist. “What happened?”
You shake your head. “Nothing.” Your insides start to quiver. That feeling is back, that feeling that burns you up from the inside out whenever you think of him. It’s almost midnight and you’re tired, but you also feel so alive.
Something dawns in his eyes. He lets your wrist go and rolls up his sleeve to reveal the thin white scars marking his skin in even intervals like a white picket fence. “Like this?”
You want to cry just looking at them. Your only consolation is that they’re old scars and there’s no sign of fresh marks.
“Yes,” you say, and it’s barely a whisper, but he hears you nonetheless.
He pulls his sleeve down and touches your wrist again, lifting your hand so the scar is eye level. “Badass,” he says again and then he keeps his eyes on yours as he presses a kiss to the ruined skin, his lips trembling against your greatest flaw.
“John-” you start to say and he jerks back like he’s expecting you to hit him or run away but you surge forward to kiss him and as his hand cups the back of your head, you find yourself not caring about the cold or the shame or anything else except the warm skin under your hands and the gentleness in his lips.
“You have a tattoo,” he says, and your right hand flies to your cheek because yes, you do, but you wear such heavy foundation that you forget it’s there half the time, and he’s never commented on it before anyway. “That’s-”
“Badass?” you suggest with a quirk of your brow, and he laughs.
“Why do you cover up all the good stuff?” he asks with a pout. You watch in fascination as his pupils slowly shrink, revealing more and more blue. “Your hand, the tattoo. Why?”
You shrug. “The tattoo is so people don’t stare. I hate staring. And I hate this-” you hold up your hand - “more than anything.”
“I think it’s the best thing about you,” he says softly. After a breath, he speaks again. "You're the best thing that's happened to me in a long time."
Hey it’s ya girl back at it again with another Memori modern AU because idk Little Beast wasn’t enough for me?
Endless thanks to @bombshellsandbluebells for being willing to continue the editing extravaganza with me even though you’d think Little Beast would have scared her away HAH
Anyway, this story deals with implied rape (bc Ontari sucks) as well as sexual, physical and emotional abuse. Pls be careful when reading if this sort of thing triggers you. I’m happy to provide more details if you need them.
Go nuts and let me know what you think!
Every morning the maple leaves.
Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts
from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big
and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out:
You will be alone always and then you will die.
Then
“He’s not answering his phone,” Raven says, thumping her bag down on the floor. Bellamy turns from his computer, bracing his hands on the kitchen counter. “I’m worried.”
“I’ll go over there.” Bellamy’s already got his keys in his hand, his phone in his pocket. “I’ll text Miller and Bryan on my way.”
Raven’s brows pinch together. “It’s her. I know it is.”
Bellamy shakes his head. “I know. We need to get him out of there.”
“Hard to do when she cuts him off from everyone. It’s textbook, Bell!”
A sigh. “I know.”
Now
Unsurprisingly, the house is already awake when Murphy drags himself out of bed. [Read on Ao3]
Still half-asleep, he stumbles downstairs, lured by the smell of waffles. Bellamy and Octavia are already in the kitchen, along with Raven and Miller. Bacon sizzles on the stove, popping whenever the younger Blake jabs it with a fork.
“Morning, sunshine,” Raven says jokingly, giving Murphy a side hug. He lets her, though he flinches as soon as she pulls away. His skin crawls from her hands on him, and he hates it - hates it so much he wants to throw up and die, or at the very least, go back to bed.
He takes a piece of bacon from the pan. His fingers ache from the heat. Miller watches him carefully, but Murphy does nothing, says nothing. He eats the meat without tasting it, feeling the delicate skin on his tongue burn.
“Wow, your mouth is, like, indestructible or something,” Octavia comments. “Bellamy would be reaching for an ice cube right about now.”
“You’re one to talk,” Bellamy grumbles. “You couldn’t even handle the pico de gallo Raven made last week.”
“It was spicy!” Octavia defends. “Who in their right mind makes something that hot?”
Murphy sits at the breakfast bar and tunes them out, staring out into space and letting his eyes unfocus, then refocus. They eventually land on the fridge calendar, and he stares at today’s date, where Emori arrives is written in bright red pen.
“Raven,” he calls. “When’s the new tenant moving in?”
“She should be here soon,” Raven replies. “And the least you can do is call her our roommate.”
Murphy rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”
It’s as if their conversation summons her. There’s a knock at the door, and Murphy goes to get it because it’s either that or watch Bellamy destroy the waffle he’s trying to remove from the iron. It’s painful, honestly.
The girl in front of him is small, a little shorter than him, with long, dark hair, wide eyes and full lips parted in surprise. When she speaks, he hears a bit of an accent. “I- Which one are you?”
“What?”
“I only know your names.” She tilts her head. “Are you John?”
There’s something about his name on her lips that makes him shiver. “Yep,” he says, popping the ‘p,’ purposefully stiffening his body language. He looks past her. A van is trundling down the road, away from the house.
Raven chooses this moment to appear behind him.
“You must be Emori,” she says, sticking her hand out and shoving Murphy aside in the same motion. “I’m Raven. We talked on the phone.”
“Nice to meet you,” she says, shaking her hand. Her tone is gentle, but she doesn’t smile. Murphy sees lines around her eyes, but the set of her brow tells him something different.
She is not happy.
The ratty old duffle bag in her hand and the backpack on her shoulders are the only personal belongings she has. Murphy takes the bag from her and leads her upstairs, to the room next to his - the room that used to be Luna’s.
“I don’t know what Raven told you,” he says, dropping the bag on the bed. “This used to be Luna’s room. You’ll meet her at some point - she’s always over here. She moved to graduate housing this semester.”
“Graduate housing? What’s she studying?” Emori looks out the window. They’re on the second floor, so there’s not much of a view.
“Psychology.” He smirks. “She’s not the best person to have around in a house full of fucked-up people.”
Emori doesn’t say anything, just looks at him. Her eyes are brown, he realizes, and full of questions and something darker - something that makes him ache when he looks at her.
You will be alone always , he tells himself, remembering the poem he fell asleep reading last night, the one that almost made him cry, and then you will die.
He had his chance, and it was spent over and over, in a bed and a house that no one wanted, that no one loved.
“This is all you have?” he asks, motioning to her bags, then shoving his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t even see anyone stop to say goodbye.”
Her shoulders hunch forward, her eyes shutter, and he wonders what exactly he said to frighten her. “It’s all I need.”
“Do you want...help?” He thinks better of the question the moment it leaves his mouth. The door is open, but everyone else is downstairs, and the music is loud - too loud - and no one will hear him.
She laughs. The sound makes him jump at first, and then he freezes. Oh , he thinks, letting the sound roll over him. It’s warm and low, tumbling from her throat over her lips. “I think I can manage. But thanks, John.”
He leaves, goes next door to his room, and flops down on the bed. He hears her padding around, her boots thumping against the worn wood. He examines the burns on his fingertips from the bacon. They’ll be gone by tomorrow.
“What do you think of her?” Raven asks Murphy, pointing up the stairs and settling next to him on the couch, resting her bad leg against the footstool kicked haphazardly to the side.
Murphy shrugs. “Seems like she’ll be quiet. Which is good, because I’m not about to share a wall with someone who’s up all night.”
“Yeah,” Raven snorts. “Because I totally picked her to room with us because of your personal comfort and safety.”
“Shut up, Reyes,” he laughs, shoving her gently. She laughs and reaches for the remote, turning on the TV and leaning her head on Murphy’s shoulder.
“I’m glad we’re friends again,” she murmurs. “I’m glad you’re here instead of there.”
He feels himself tense, then relax when she doesn’t say anything more. He hears a creak on the stairs and looks up sharply, sighing when he sees Emori looking down at them.
“You can come down,” he says to her. She looks to him, then to Raven, and descends the stairs like she’s ready to fight, right fist clenched, jaw set. She sits on the arm of the couch, right near Murphy’s arm, and looks down at them both.
“Girlfriend?” she asks.
Murphy shakes his head. Raven laughs. “No,” she says. “That would be like oil and water. We’re just close friends.”
She looks to Murphy. Murphy says nothing, just shifts uncomfortably. He can feel her presence; she’s close - too close - and he almost wants to shy away from her. He forces himself to breathe normally and clenches his hands into fists. Raven doesn’t notice.
“You can sit with us,” he finally says, motioning to the spot near Raven. Raven scoots over so Emori can sit comfortably. He breathes a sigh of relief.
“What are you majoring in, again?” Raven asks her.
“Social work,” she says quietly, toughly, with a firm chin, as if she’s expecting an argument. “I’ve got an associates, but I’ve got to get the bachelors now.”
“Oh, so you’re a junior?” Raven grins. “Me too. I’m in engineering, though, so kinda different. Murphy’s a sophomore, but he’s undeclared.”
Emori looks at him over Raven’s head. “You’ve got time,” she tells him, as if she thinks he’d be worried about that sort of thing. In reality, he can’t be bothered at all.
They turn their attention back to the TV. Raven falls asleep after a while, her head still on Murphy’s shoulder. When he looks up, Emori is looking back at him.
“Settled in okay?” he asks, voice low, heart in his throat. What is he doing? Why is he talking to her?
She nods. “I guess.”
“Glad to have your own room? I used to share with Bellamy - it sucked.”
She shrugs again. Her left hand is wrapped in some kind of cloth, and she picks at it. Murphy wonders why it’s covered up, why it’s so stained, why she feels the need to shrink into the couch. “I shared a room for a while. It’s not so bad.”
Murphy snorts. “I’d hate it. People going through my shit, talking, snoring .” He rolls his eyes. “Bellamy’s snoring was the worst.”
“Well, they had bed checks and curfews, so…” she doesn’t meet his eyes. He frowns in confusion. “Besides, it’s not like you’re allowed to have anything personal in prison.”
She looks up, and their eyes lock. Her defiant chin says what’re you going to do about it? Her eyes plead for acceptance.
Murphy doesn’t know what to say, but he knows he should say something. “We’ve all got our shit,” he says. It’s fucking pathetic, but better than nothing. “Are you reformed or whatever?”
She smiles. It looks like relief, like a sharp knife. “Hell no.”
He likes her a lot more after that.
In rare (read: nearly-impossible) form, the entire house eats dinner together, crowded around the dining room table that is really only meant to seat four. Raven’s idea was for Emori to get to know them all a little better. So far, it hasn’t backfired horribly, much to Murphy’s relief.
Murphy cooks: a pot roast with garlic butter, biscuits and green beans. Emori’s eyes grow wide when she sees the amount of food on the table. He thinks she even mutters holy shit under her breath. She waits to eat until everyone else is halfway done, staring at her full plate and fisting her hands in her shirt.
“Okay, so,” Raven announces once the initial feeding frenzy is over. “Lets throw it back to freshman orientation and go around and say our names and majors and shit.”
“Jasper Jordan, freshman,” Jasper gives Emori a wave. “I room with Monty here,” he points his thumb at his best friend, “and I’m majoring in chemistry.”
“Monty Green, freshman, computer science.”
“Octavia Blake, freshman, criminal justice.” She gestures to Lexa, who’s sitting across from her. “Lexa’s the same, only she’s a junior.”
Lexa finishes chewing her bite of food, then waves at Emori. “What she said.”
“And you already know me and Murphy,” Raven finishes, leaning back and taking a satisfied sip of her beer.
Emori gives a small, general wave, then takes a tiny bite of food. “This is good,” she tells Murphy. “Thank you.”
He nods in reply, then smiles ever-so-slightly when he looks up to see her smiling back at him.
She helps him with the dishes after dinner, loading the dishwasher one-handed and humming along to the music playing from the living room. Octavia and Lexa are printing out their syllabi for tomorrow’s classes, Raven is trying to fix something that could either be a dvd player or a weird-looking roomba, and Monty and Jasper have escaped somewhere upstairs to play video games.
It’s quiet, almost peaceful, and it makes Murphy anxious.
There was a time when he would get in trouble for even looking too long at Emori. But that time has passed, so he looks freely, cataloguing the slope of her nose, the flecks of amber in her eyes, the clumsiness with which she uses her left hand. Her body is buried under layers of clothing, and he sees faint scars under her eye and along her collarbone. Prison mementoes? Or something worse?
She looks up at him, mouth twisted wryly, eyes sparkling, and he realizes she said something, but he can't remember what.
There's a moment of panic, of confusion. What would the consequences be for not listening? But she grins, a flash of white teeth, and says, “Were you looking or listening?”
“You caught me,” he says drily, face the perfect picture of snark and sarcasm.
She chuckles. The sound is warm, like her laugh from before. He feels his stomach do a slow roll. “I asked if you had class tomorrow,” she repeats nonchalantly, like he's not an idiot for failing to pay attention.
He pictures his schedule, then shakes his head. “No.”
“I do.” She shuts the dishwasher and pushes the button to make it start. “I’m going to stay on campus and walk around after, though. Just to see where everything is.”
I'll go with you, he wants to say, but his throat clamps down around the words. She takes her right hand, brushes it against the kitchen towel, then pulls her hair over one shoulder. It's like a muddy waterfall, but prettier.
Murphy shakes his head at himself, then climbs the stairs to his room.
He's woken in the middle of the night by someone shaking his shoulder.
“Get the fuck away from me!” he cries, scrambling backward, colliding against the wall. He will say no this time, he will, he's so tired-
It's Emori. Hair wild, eyes unfocused, confused. Her lips are pulled into a worried line. “You were screaming,” she says, and her voice is rough, ungodly.
“I'm sorry.”
She looks like she wants to touch him. “What happened?”
Murphy shrugs. “The same shit.”
He remembers the dream. A rope, the knife, creaking of floorboards, a broken phone, Raven’s frantic calls.
He can't go back to sleep.
There's a park across the street, and he goes there. He sits on the swings, and Emori follows, like a ghost, because he didn't explicitly tell her to get lost. There’s something in her that welcomes the darkness in him. She takes it in like it’s nothing more than a cup of tea after a long day, like it’s as easy as picking the lock on his bedroom door.
Twice, she inhales, opens her mouth as if to speak. She doesn’t, and he's grateful. Breathing the night air feels like crying.
“I only woke you up because it sounded like you'd be better off here than in your dream,” she murmurs when the sun breaks through the darkness. How long have they been sitting there? An hour? Two? Three?
“Thank you,” he says, and then the guilt rolls over him.
You will be alone always, and then you will die.
He studies her after she leans her head against the swing’s chain and closes her eyes. Button nose, firm chin, right hand clenched into a fist, left hand-
Oh.
It’s long, covered in dead skin and bloody patches and scars, fingers welded together like pincers. It looks like a tree branch. It looks strong. It looks like her. He feels a strange affection for it, for the little nub on the side of her hand near her pinky, for the rippling muscles at her wrist.
“It’s hideous,” she says without opening her eyes, like she knows what he was thinking, like she’s determined to say the opposite.
He reaches for it, and she lets him lift it up, lips parting in a shaky sigh as he runs his fingers over it. He hates rosebud lips, but not hers. “I wouldn’t cover it up,” he says, and he’s so honest he thinks his head might explode. “I think it’s pretty badass.”
Several things happen at once. The sky gets lighter, and so do her shoulders. She laughs, smiles, eyes crinkling at the edges, turning to liquid amber. “Liar,” she says, but she’s still laughing.
He can make someone happy.
“It’s not all you are,” he tells her, echoing Raven, echoing Luna, echoing the shrink he went to see all of once before he found better absolution at the bottom of a bottle.
“It’s all they see,” she replies, eyelids fluttering. The faint arch of a tattoo curls over her cheek, her nose, her brow. Was that always there? He can’t remember. He lives in a fever dream, one foot in the present, the other in a dusty bedroom.
“It’s not all I see,” he says. He sees life, a girl without scars, so soft and hard at the same time. He wants to ask her about prison, about life before and life after. He wants to know if she still wakes up in chains.
She opens her eyes, looks up at him. He imagines she’s leaning against his shoulder. He pretends her warmth is spreading through him, filling him. “I guess you’d better keep an eye on me then.”
He smirks at that, and the fever dream feeling disappears. It’s him and her, and she did have that tattoo last night, only he hadn’t noticed. The birds are chirping, and he sees Octavia’s light on across the street.
He’s so tired. His shoulders slump. He leans his head against the chain again and closes his eyes.
“Let’s go,” she says, standing, boots scuffing the dirt. He doesn’t let go of her hand until they walk through the door.
“You left it unlocked,” Raven says, not looking at her, looking at him.
Murphy ignores her and climbs the stairs. He collapses into bed, shoes on, and waits for Emori to leave.
“I locked that door,” he remembers aloud. “How did you-”
She smirks with a quirk of her brow. “I picked the lock.”
She leaves, locks the door behind her. He throws his arm over his eyes and breathes deeply. It’s a long time before he sleeps.
I’m thankful for ALL OF YOU whether you read my fics, reblog my stuff or just casually wave as you scroll by. Thanks for making this hellsite a wonderful place.
@thecarstairsheir thank you for being the Octavia to my Bellamy, the Lucas to my Mike (u know I’m right) and the Will to my Jonathan. Thanks for supporting my fics and Memori obsession and for screaming about Vines with me.
@bombshellsandbluebells THANK YOU FOR EDITING LITTLE BEAST AND LITANY THEY WOULDN’T EXIST WITHOUT YOUR ENCOURAGMENT I LOVE YOU V MUCH
@maskingtapepoetree thank you for your Memori fics, for ‘I come with knives,’ and for leaving such thoughtful reviews on all my fics. I love you.
@lindseysfandoms thanks for all the messages screaming about school and s5. As the kids these days say, #big mood
@dailymemori yooooo your tags on my fics always make my day thank you ❤️❤️❤️ and also if you’re ever in Philadelphia look me up we must meet!
@daisytachi thank you for the love and support. I’m so glad you read my fics and that they speak to you
