An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The 100 (TV)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Emori/John Murphy (The 100)
Characters: John Murphy (The 100), Emori (The 100), Trey, Zev (The 100)
Additional Tags: Season/Series 07, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Missing Scene, Murphy-centric
Series: Part 83 of The 100 Fics
Summary:
Murphy is no hero. He should never have tried to lift that mantle. But, when he sees the children in the tavern about to be sacrificed for their parent's beliefs, he decides to do the right thing.
As usual, it doesn't go as planned.
Summary: Emori was born with black blood and a mutated left hand. One of those things granted her the opportunity for leadership and acceptance, the other barred her from ever hoping to have either. Emori has long since accepted that the spirit of the Commander will never chose her, and has carved out a different life for herself. Until four strangers offer her a chance to ascend, and, more importantly, a way to get back to John Murphy.
[Canon Divergent AU from 3.13/3.14]
Written for The 100: Chopped Fanfic Challenge hosted by @dylanobrienisbatman and @littlefanpire. Super excited that I won first for the use of the canonverse theme, the character swap trope, and the ‘everyone thinks you’re an asshole but you’re nice to me’ trop, as well as first overall!! Thanks to everyone who voted. You can check out the other fics here!
Emori loves her boat. It’s been the one constant in her life since her early adolescence. A means of escape and survival, a place of shelter and sleep. She’s fallen in love on this boat, with herself, and the world, and a boy. In her head she sometimes calls herself Emori of the Boat People. She loves her boat, and there’s someone on it.
Emori drops her freshly caught rabbit and unsheathes her knife, still dirty from her kill.
The boat had been well concealed, and Emori is forced to tamper down her annoyance at it being found to focus instead on using the thick brush to conceal her movements as she creeps onboard.
The closer she gets the more she’s able to gage about the trespasser. He’s younger than she first thought, tall and skinny, maybe malnourished. Hardly capable of putting up a decent fight. But he’s also yelling, in Gonaslang, and in conjunction with his clothes its clear he’s skaikru.
“Guys!” he calls, and Emori knows she needs to act now, before any of his reinforcements arrive. “We’re looking for the boat people, right? I found a boat!”
There’s an answering call, muffled by distance, but then the sound of movement, and Emori knows she’s running out of time. The kid is searching through her stuff now, hunched over as he picks through her tech, and although something in her prickles at the sight of this stranger handling her things, she also recognizes it as her last opportunity.
With practiced grace she leaps onto the boat, her landing so soft that they don’t even sway in the water. It’s a simple matter after that to take him by the collar, haul him away from her things and throw him belly down onto the deck, her knee in the center of his back pressing hard enough to cause discomfort. The knife finds its place at the nape of his neck and he grunts, trying to reach back and push her off, but she takes his wrist in her gloved hand twists it till he yells.
“Tell me what you want with my boat and I won’t kill you,” She whispers into his ear. The words come out as a hiss and her breath makes the hairs rise on his neck. She has to make sure he fears her.
“We’re just looking for someone named Emori! We’d heard she’d have a boat!”
The use of her name surprises her, but not enough for her grip to loosen.
“Who told you that name?” She asks, and her prisoner starts moving again, wriggling in an attempt to break free. As if on cue his back-up breaks through the treeline, but there’s only two of them: a petite blonde woman who looks at the situation first with worry before it settles into grim determination as she looks to the older man at her side, his gun aimed at Emori.
Emori pulls the kid in her grip to his knees, her body shielded by his. The knife finds its way to the front of his neck. There’s a faint scar there, where someone has cut his throat before, so she presses the edge of her knife to that point, to remind him of the pain. He goes still.
“Eject the magazine from the gun and kick them both away and no one has to get hurt.”
The man with the gun hesitates, looks first to her knife, then her hostage and finally over his shoulder.
“We don’t want anything from you, just information,” he says, voice low and gravely, but he begins to lower the gun holding up his free hand in what he probably assumes is a show of good faith. As if information is nothing.
“Bellamy, wait. What if she’s chipped?” The woman on the bank says and Emori blinks.
“Bellamy Blake?” She says, her mouth forming the words without her mind’s consent. The gun is raised again and the posture of all three of the strangers becomes lined with tension. They’ve suddenly become more dangerous.
“How do you know who I am?” He barks, and she can see him weighing the risks of taking a shot, his eyes falling to his friend with concern.
She takes a risk before he can. “John told me.”
Bellamy’s eyes shift, uncomfortable and uncertain. His gun doesn’t move, but his finger on the trigger softens.
“John Murphy? You know John Murphy?” The blonde woman asks, her eyes wide with something like excited relief.
Emori’s mouth pinches. Of course she knows John Murphy. Knows the sharp spark is his eyes when they outsmarted a mark, knows how his voice sounds in the morning, knows about his scars, the ones on his body and the ones in his mind, knows what his hands feel like running up her thighs and cupping her breasts and tracing her jaw.
That knowledge burns now though. It’s eating her up inside, when she considers it against the memory of him shaking his head, fear in his eyes, as he was dragged away and she did nothing. He might be dead now. He could have died days ago while she dawdled trying to fit together the flimsiest outlines of a plan to get him back.
This is the first time she’s allowed herself to think of that possibility, his name in this stranger’s mouth a trigger to all the worst case scenarios when before she was able to convince herself to rely on the cleverness of his mind.
“I do,” she says, but has no opportunity to elaborate or ask questions because the boat rocks, unsettled, and Emori turns her head to see a fourth member of the party, a girl with sharp black hair, sword in hand. She doesn’t have a chance to yell a warning before the girl springs forward, her sword swinging in a wide arc, and Emori is forced to shove her hostage to the side, so she can parry with her knife, the sword’s sharp edge just catching on the hilt, close enough that she feels wind from the motion move her hair. She forces the path of the sword to her right, then grabs the girl’s wrist with her gloved hand to limit her control of the weapon. Emori tries to pull her opponent closer, knowing that her knife will be useless against the wider range of the girl’s sword. They wrestle over the blade for a moment, before Emori’s elbow connects with the girl’s jaw making enough of an opening to kick her down.
But their struggle was enough time for the former hostage to recover himself, and rush her. He tackles her to the ground using his momentum and the leverage of his height. With the breath knocked out of her he’s able to land one punch, sending the back of her head smacking into the deck, and making her nose sting in sharp pain.
He stops in the assault, which makes him a fool. One punch is not enough to keep her down. He seems confused, and his distraction allows her to deliver a swift knee to his gut and push him off her.
Her attention turns back to the female warrior who has reclaimed her sword and Emori is thinking about the possibility of pushing the two of them overboard and starting the boat quick enough to get away, when the hostage exclaims behind her.
“Wait! You’re Emori?”
The warrior’s stance becomes less hostile. Although her expression remains the same, held together by anger. It might be set like that.
“Well, she’s a nightblood. And she feels pain.”
Emori feels blood drip onto her lower lip and quickly brushes away the trickle coming from her nose.
The other two are on her boat now as well, and Emori doesn’t like it. She takes a step back. She can’t fathom what they might want with her. No one’s cared that she has nightblood for a long time, skaikru should least of all.
“You are Emori, right?” The blonde asks, stepping forward, seemingly unaware that Emori doesn’t want her close. “I’m Clarke, and this is Bellamy, Jasper, and Octavia. We’re friends with Murphy, and we need your help.”
“Friends who hung him from a tree?” She snaps back, satisfied by the way Clarke flinches and Bellamy looks to the ground. Octavia mumbles something inaudible, but obviously rude, and it’s only Jasper’s hand on her shoulder that seems to take the venom from her eyes. “Why should I trust you, let alone help you?”
“You’re the last Natblida,” Clarke continues, with desperation Emori notes. She reaches into a concealed pocket on her chest to pull out a small box which she opens it to reveal a tiny piece of tech, like one of Jaha’s chips, the sacred symbol, ALIE’s symbol, emblazoned right in the center. “Lexa died,” Clarke says, something hopelessly empty in her eyes for a moment, “and her spirit has chosen you to be the next Commander. Titus entrusted me with the flame to give to you.”
Emori scoffs.
“You want me to be the Commander?” She asks, the idea honestly funny. All four pairs of eyes are fixed on her, and Emori isn’t sure she’s ever had this much attention put on her in her life. Clarke must misinterpret the comment. Her next statement is still desperate, but insistent now too.
“Titus told me about how you ran from your conclave, and I know it’s frightening to lead, but—”
“Of course he told you I ran,” Emori interrupts, almost laughs. She hasn’t had reason to think of that self-righteous bald man in years, but her hatred for him still bubbles, just below the surface. Memories of how happy she had been to come to Polis as an accepted novitiate are now clouded with bitterness over her own naivety when she remembers how she had been neglected or excluded in all aspects of the training the other nightbleeders were groomed in. All of that she might have been able to deal with if it weren’t decided at the most final moment that she wasn’t even deserving of a warrior’s death in a competition for what should have been her birthright. Cast out again, it was then that she began to recognize it as the pattern of her life.
“I didn’t flee the conclave because I thought I would lose. They kicked me out because they were afraid I would win.”
Clarke’s eyes narrow, as if she can’t comprehend being lied to by the old flamekeeper.
“I can’t ascend,” Emori says, her left hand curling into a fist. “No one will ever accept me as Commander.” As a child it was a hard truth, but the thought of it no longer stings. She’s moved on from who she could have been.
“You don’t have to be Commander,” Bellamy interrupts, a statement that Clarke doesn’t seem too keen to accept. “You just have to take the flame so we can stop ALIE from taking over everyone’s minds and ending the world.”
Emori’s thoughts starts spinning with this admission, she doesn’t know why they didn’t start with that.
“Jaha’s ALIE?” She asks. “In the City of Light?” She remembers John’s explanation of what had happened to the old man, the offer that he had made to go to a place without pain. Remembers also ‘the bitch in the red dress’, the one who had first ended the world.
“Yeah,” Clarke confirms, “She’s turning people into mindless minions who take away free will. If you take the flame we can figure out how to stop her.”
Clarke holds the little rectangle between two fingers, pressing it into her line of vision, and Emori thinks of the reasons she should refuse. There’s clear danger in what they propose and little benefit. Still, ALIE might come to prove herself a nuisance for Emori in the future, and she doesn’t often have the reassurance of allies. Having ones who don’t seem to wish her harm is better than any future opportunity will be. And she certainly wouldn’t mind them owing her a substantial favor.
“Okay,” she agrees, and all four of them seem to relax by at least a few measures.
“I need to put the flame in the back of your neck,” Clarke explains, and it takes more self control than Emori is willing to admit to stop herself from flinching at the way Clarke brushes aside her hair. Her fingertips on the first notch of her spine are oddly shaking, as is her voice when she whispers words Emori has never heard. “Ascende superius.”
There’s a feeling like a needle entering the back of her neck, cold enough to halt the flow of blood in her veins before it changes sharply and starts to burn like a cauterization across the length of her spine. She yells, her back arching in unpleasant ways that only abate to an aching throb pressing out from inside her head to every inch of her skull.
The pain subsides quickly, except for the headache, leaving a warm prickle to dance through her blood. Emori blinks away the tears that had welled in the corners of her eyes to see Jasper crouched in front of her, his hands hanging loosely in the air just in front of her shoulders. She doesn’t remember falling, but she accepts his hand and lets him pull her into a sitting position.
“Are you okay?” he asks, once he’s satisfied that she’s settled.
Her mouth feels thick, like her lips are so swollen as to make talking difficult, but she nods anyway. Despite the bodily discomforts she feels largely the same.
“Do you know how to stop ALIE?” Clarke asks, not one to stray far from sight of the goal it would seem.
Emori rubs the center of her forehead in an attempt to ease the headache and closes her eyes. She doesn’t know if it will help to stimulate whatever is supposed to happen, but at least she won’t have to be aware of all the eyes pressed on her.
The idea comes to her in flashes of memory: The backpack she had stole from Gideon clutched in one hand, opening it with her knife, John holding it over the water in a successful exchange for her life.
“There’s a backpack,” Emori explains piecing together the information slowly, “That’s what ALIE is stored on. Destroy it and we destroy her.”
“Yeah, I remember that,” Jasper says sitting forward in interest. “It’s what Jaha used to make the chips, I think.”
“Well, where is it?” Octavia says, sharp.
“Last I knew Jaha had it.”
“Yeah,” Jasper confirms, “he was really protective of it.”
“Well then where’s Jaha?” Bellamy asks. They look to each other in dumb confusion until Clarke hatches a plan.
“Polis probably. If he’s trying to get as many people chipped as possible. It’s even more densely populated than Arkadia.”
“I can’t go to Polis,” Emori says, a reflex. “I’ll be killed.”
“What did you do?” Clarke asks, in the same breath as when Jasper questions, “Why?”
“Is it for the same reason why you couldn’t ascend?” Clarke continues, clever enough to find the commonality. Emori admits nothing, shifting how she sits so her hands are tucked under her thighs.
“The twelve clans are intolerant. They’ve been trying to erase my existence for my whole life, I’m not going to let them.”
“But now you’re the Commander,” Clarke tries, as if she’s been able to learn in the short time that’s passed since skaikru fell all the ways of the people on the ground. “They’ll respect you.”
Emori thinks about laughing in her face, thinks about spelling out her ignorance to her letter by letter, thinks about just kicking the lot of them off her boat. But she doesn’t move or speak, thinks instead about finally carving out a place of acceptance for herself.
“Please,” Clarke says, desperation setting in, “You said yourself this is how we stop ALIE. And Murphy’s in Polis.” Emori hates that she’s right to know those words will cause a squeeze of longing in Emori’s chest. Hates too that she was already planning on going to the Capital in the flimsy hope that she could trade her scavenged ALIE tech to Titus for John’s safe return without even the reassurance of the spirits of the Commanders shifting in her mind.
“And we’ll protect you,” Bellamy adds.
“Alright,” Emori says, wondering where all her common sense has gone. “The river will take us straight there.”
Polis sits on the Wide River, and Emori would never typically travel on it when it was so commonly used for commerce by various villages along its banks. But speed is of necessity so she risks the danger, finding comfort to in the fact that Bellamy has a gun.
She starts the boat, guiding them to the mouth of the river, not too far down the shore. It’s unerringly quiet until Bellamy breaks the silence to speak into a radio to someone named Raven, informing her of the events of the afternoon. The others fall into deliberation after that, and like so many before them they seem to forget about her once she’s left their frame of view. She stays still and keeps her breaths quiet so that she can eavesdrop.
“Are we doing the right thing?” Clarke says, maybe rhetorically. “All we really know about this girl is that most other grounders hate her and that she’s John Murphy’s girlfriend? None of that is really giving me a vote of confidence. I mean, think about what kind of person you have to be to fall in love with him.”
“Lincoln trusted her,” Octavia says. “And Murphy might have been a lying killer, but his body count isn't as high as some people's.”
“He was still always kind of a dick though,” Jasper says, more bored than harsh, trying to neutralize the rising heckles of the little group, but still the comment irritates something in her chest at the lack of understanding his so called friends have of him. “He’s the one that shot Raven.”
“It’s the best choice we have,” Bellamy says in a way that’s final. “If she’s working an angle it can’t be worse than anything else we’ve seen.”
The others seem to agree with that, and they go quiet.
“Come on,” Bellamy says, “Daylight’s dwindling, this might be the only chance we have to sleep for a while. We’ll take shifts to stay up with Emori, I’ll go first.”
Emori might question why they feel the need to have one of their own group stand guard, but it seems a waste of energy to pinpoint the level of trust they’re placing in her.
Bellamy lingers on the lower dock for some time, eyes trailing over the three others as they drift off, but soon enough he comes up to meet her. Let’s his gun hang loose at his side.
“Where’d you get this boat?” He asks, as if too strike up a conversation, or peel information from her. But he’s no spy, and when she looks in his eyes there’s something close to sincerity. Even still she lets the silence sit while she considers lying.
“I acquired it from a previous owner. Made some improvements myself.”
“Impressive,” Bellamy notes, “you’d get along with Raven. She designed the motorized Rovers we use.”
Emori hums. “I don’t generally get along with people.”
“Sorry about my sister attacking earlier,” he says, as if he thinks that’s the root of her social trouble. “I’m sure we can all get along given enough time. I mean apparently you get along with Murphy, that’s no easy feat.”
“It’s not that hard.”
Bellamy’s stance shifts were he stands next to her, in disagreement perhaps, or plain awkwardness.
“If you don’t mind me asking, how do you know each other?”
It’s probably the black ink of the night that prompts her to answer the question so openly, darkness conceals all sorts of vulnerability. It lets you expose some of the bleeding pieces of your heart to the fresh air.
“We’re lovers.”
“Huh.” A funny expression plays across Bellamy’s face, surprise, confusion, amusement. The need to defend John flashes sharp in her.
“I know you hate him,” Emori says. “But he’s…” She thinks of the way he had seen her, the day they first met, when she had carted him and his friends from the desert to the island and he had stood where Bellamy now stands, asking about her solitude. He had looked at her the same every time she returned to the island to hand off new tech. It was the care and a cool softness and understanding that convinced her to start taking him on the trips. It’s what made her fall for him too. “He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“You’re right,” Bellamy says after a long pause, one which Emori didn’t think he’d try to bridge again. “I hated him for a long time. Now though...a lot of things have been put in perspective.”
“As they should be,” Octavia says behind them, standing at the bottom of the stairs. “It’s my shift for watch.”
Bellamy looks as if he’s thinking to protest, but he moves away from Emori without much complaint, looking to his sister for some type of compassion. But she presses her eyes closed as he passes.
Slowly Octavia comes up to take a position next to Emori, taking the assignment of guard seriously even when there’s nothing to see except the reflection of the moon against the water.
The wind picks up several times making them both shiver, but neither of them talk about it. Emori is just beginning to think they’ll spend their time together in utter silence when Octavia’s hoarse voice breaks the quite.
“You knew Lincoln,” she says, and Emori would have to be far more pigheaded to not noticed the layers of grief that coat the name.
“Not well,” Emori says, although she remembers the one time they had spoken very clearly in her memory. It had been a good con.
“He mentioned you a couple times,” Octavia continues, seemingly not satisfied by Emori’s answers. “He spoke highly of you.”
Emori turns her head away. A person like Lincoln would. He was a skilled warrior, but too soft. A few lies about a fictional safe haven for the misplaced had gotten her a large supply of medicine. Seemed better than telling him it was for the boat dwelling clan of one.
“He’s dead?” Emori asks, turning the conversation so that her own viewpoint of their relationship won’t come to light.
“Yes,” Octavia whispers, not that Emori needs the confirmation.
“That’s a shame,” Emori says, thinking of the ways to endear herself to this vulnerable girl. “He had a good heart.”
Octavia scratches at her chest, then stands with a sudden jolt, distancing herself from Emori as if she’ll be able to shake off the weight of heartbreak with movement alone. Emori licks her lips, and is forced to acknowledge that she’s been attempting to do the same these past long days.
Exhaustion pulls at Emori like a riptide, the desire for sleep a sudden and deadly call. Octavia stands at the stern, her eyes looking to the river behind them, and despite her habits Emori doesn’t think the girl will attack her in her sleep.
She stalls the book and picks a spot away from the others to lie down to sleep, just for a few hours. But her sleep is not restful.
She dreams of the crack of a gunshot, a flaming cinder planted in her stomach that spreads to consume her flesh. There’s sobbing and gasping, and then pain choked yells. Someone else’s black blood drips out of a closed fist, warping as it lands on the flame. The sacred symbol on the blue tech transforms into the same symbol installed in a geometric backpack, one she had once killed for. The tech of its belly uncovered and shining in dim light for precious few seconds before the blunt end of a spear comes crashing down on it. From the corner of her eye she can see John’s face, dirty and handsome, like the day she met him. Exhaustion pulls at his eyes, and all she wants to do is to turn her head, reach out and soothe the worry from his skin. But then synapses disconnect, wires break, and Emori wakes with a start.
“The City of Light’s been destroyed,” she says into the cool air of the night. Octavia is the only one awake, but the others stir at her outburst.
“It’s gone,” Emori repeats, “Someone else destroyed the backpack.” She doesn’t mention who that someone is, but her heart thuds with the knowledge.
“It can’t be that easy…” Clarke says, and Emori wonders if the girl feels lost because she wasn’t able to fulfill her savior complex or because paranoia is what has kept her alive this long. “How do you know?”
“I saw it,” Emori says, unsure how to explain something she doesn’t know herself. Perhaps it has something to do with the interconnections of the tech, but Emori has no way to know, and doesn’t particularly care either.
“Raven it’s Bellamy, come in.” Emori looks over to see Bellamy speaking into a radio, hope that’s known too much disappointment rising behind the depths of his eyes.
“You’re lucky I wasn’t asleep Blake,” a disembodied voice comes back. “I’ve actually been meaning to tell you guys, I think I can create a backdoor through the key into ALIE’s code to find a kill switch.”
“Wait, is the City of Light still there?” Bellamy demands, and even Emori, who is sure of its destruction, holds her breath in wait of the confirmation.
“What do you mean is it still...oh my god. It’s gone. There’s no more code.” Comes back the voice, a crackle that pours relief out into the open air. “We did it.”
“Not us,” Bellamy corrects, “Someone in Polis destroyed the server ALIE was on. We’re on our way there now. We’ll get our people back and then we’ll start to rebuild.”
“It won’t be that easy,” Octavia says, dark and sharp into the silence the click of the radio had returned. “Some people still have things to atone for.” She stands as if to move away from the group but there’s little space to go on the small boat. Jasper gets up to follow her, the pair of them speaking in hushed tones as they lean over the railing to watch the first rays of dawn bring light to the day.
Bellamy and Clarke watch them for a moment before turning to each other, their own quiet conversation concerning plans and technicalities. Emori stands so she can get the boat moving. She won’t be able to sleep any more.
“Emori wait,” Clarke calls out, “We need to talk about rebuilding.”
“That doesn’t concern me,” she says.
“It should now that you’re Commander.”
Emori has no intention of lingering in Polis, she’ll find John and then the two of them will get the hell out. He’s probably already trying to leave now that the City of Light is gone, they’ll need to get there quick if she wants to intercept him.
“That can wait till we get to Polis.” For now she plays along.
Clarke seems to accept this, although not without a suspicious pinch of her eyes. Emori gets them moving again, and tells them they should be at Polis before mid morning.
As they continue down the river, she begins to think she overestimated. They don’t encounter a single other boat along the way, and despite passing the banks of several fishing villages they don’t see any people either.
“Is anyone else really uncomfortable?” Jasper asks, when the tower of Polis has come into view. There are sounds, finally, coming from the city, but none of them bode well.
“Yeah,” Octavia agrees. “And I think there’s someone following us.”
“What?” Bellamy says, moving to stand next to her, using the scope of his gun to look out to the place where Octavia points. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”
“I can’t make anything out for sure, but there’s been movement for the past couple of miles. At first I thought it was just an animal, but it’s been following the line of the river too closely for too long.”
“It’s someone on horseback,” Bellamy confirms.
“They won’t be able to catch up,” Emori says. An animal that can fatigue is no match for the swiftness of her boat. None of them seem to take any comfort at her words, all of them turning their ears to listen for the pound of hooves. Emori is more concerned about what awaits them in the city.
She’s right to worry. Polis is soaked in blood, it sits in pools among the cobblestones, weeps out of bodies that are nailed to crosses or that lie already dead in the center of the streets. In her memory Polis always smelled like iron, but it was the ashy type that came from fire and blacksmiths; now it’s wet and red, thick enough to taste.
Jasper looks nauseous, and Clarke heartbroken. Bellamy squeezes his eyes shut for long stretches of time, as if to ward of the sting of a violent memory. They walk silently through the streets, avoiding the sobs and outraged cries of mothers and children and friends. There’s an odd urging in the back of her head to call them to action, say some fancy words of condolence before putting them to work, but Emori shakes her head to dislodge the suggestion.
They make it to the center square without being stopped, or even looked at twice. And it’s there that Clarke finally breaks the silence.
“Mom!”
There’s an odd assortment of grounders and skaikru brought together before the entrance of the tower. And even as Clarke rushes into her mother’s embrace, tensions between the two simmer, suspicious eyes and barked insults threatening to bring the situation to a boil.
“What’s going on?” Bellamy asks of a bearded man, tear tracks the only lines of clarity on his dirty face.
“The grounders are blaming skaikru for the deaths that occurred under ALIE,” the man says, his head bowed, but his gaze remained fixed on the accusers.
“But we have our dead too.”
“It’s the tech,” the older man says, his hand on the muzzle of Bellamy’s gun to keep it pointed down. “They think we’re the ones who created her.”
“Aren’t you?” Questions a new voice, cool and sharp. It’s owner is a tall woman, her furs characteristic of Azgeda, but her face bearing none of the traditional scarring.
“Echo…” Bellamy says, recognition and then desperation playing across his face.“We’ve suffered as much as you. And now we have to help each other.”
“Skaikru is incapable of helping us,” Echo says, regret mixing with her harshness to create something heavy. “I’m sorry Bellamy, but Azgeda is taking command of the city on behalf of Commander Ontari. No one leaves.”
“If it’s on Ontari’s order, then where is she?” Clarke steps up, and the two women wear matching glares. “You don’t have any authority here.”
Echo lifts her chin. “Take them all prisoner.”
There’s a scuffle then as the two groups approach each other and Emori turns her head to look for a route of escape, but before any of them are dragged away in chains, Jasper’s voice breaks through the struggle like the crack of a whip.
“HEY!”
Emori wouldn’t think it enough to distract heavily trained Azgedan soldiers, but there’s enough influence in his voice to catch them all unaware.
“Is this really what we’re doing now? We all just got our minds back from a crazy AI who made us torture people we love, and we’re all turning against each other again? If this can’t draw us together, then we’ll always be at war. We have to try and work together.” Jasper is frantic in his insistence, and convincing too. Emori sees more than one soldier lower their sword.
“The boy is right,” says a warrior woman coming out of the tower, but Emori pays her hardly any attention because John stands to her left, his eyes shifty and distrustful as he looks out over the crowd. Until he sees her.
“Of course Trikru would say that when it suits them,” Echo snaps back, and the two start a squabble about the old feud, but Emori couldn’t care less because John is alive, and he’s here, and his mouth is forming the shape of her name.
She’d run to him if there weren’t so many people in the way, screw the fear of making a spectacle of herself, it would be worth it. Instead she’s trapped between two groups a pin drop away from a fire fight.
“I say it because you don’t have any authority here. Ontari kom Azgeda is dead, and until a time when a new Commander can ascend, the council of ambassadors will speak for the needs of the clans. Not Azgeda alone.”
Silence, by definition, should not have a sound, yet Emori swears it rings through the crowd at the news.
“Except there already is a new Commander,” John says, his voice not raised, but still able to carry through the crowd, his sardonic tone catching on all their ears. She’s almost surprised when he singles her out with a casual point, but his eyes remained locked with hers, wider than how he normally holds them, willing her to understand him.
Trusting him is easy. She takes one of her knives off her belt and nicks her palm, the cut oozing tar that starts to trickle down her wrist as she holds her hand over her head for the crowd to see. The grounders in her vicinity take a step back, a familiar motion, but one that is now associated with awe rather than disgust.
John is then able to make his way through the crowd to her, he reaches out, her gloved hand slipping into his easily. He smiles at her, small, almost not there, but still he lets it crack through the pretense for her.
“Murphy?” Bellamy questions, but he’s already pulling her away, and only manages a glance over his shoulder for his former friend.
“I got this Bellamy.”
Emori isn’t yet positive about what they’re lying about, but it’s easy enough to follow his lead, to find a place at the base of Polis tower and prepare to bullshit her way through this.
“This is Emori, she’s the last Nightbleeder.”
“And who are you?” Someone calls out, one of the Azgedan guards.
“The flamekeeper,” John says, his tone accusing the man of idiocy. Emori studies John from the corner of her eye, wanting to ask him a thousand questions but refraining for the sake of the con. God, she taught him well. “Now why don’t we go up there,” he says with a point up there tower, “where she can recite the lineage and we can figure this thing out without spearing each other.”
The warrior John was with, Indra, some part of her brain supplies, steps forward then, eyeing them with no small amount of suspicion, but seeming to fall into support of them anyway.
“Let’s go,” John whispers in her ear as the woman starts calling for representatives from each of the clans to ascend to the tower and for those left behind to start building pyres for the dead. John guides her inside the tower, first into a main hallway before pulling her off to one that was narrow and easy to miss. Her memory of the building from her childhood seems wildly insufficient.
“We could still get out of here,” he says, their pace nearing a run now.
“We won’t make it out of Polis.” Not with tensions running as high as they are. And especially not after they put themselves on display like that. “Might not hurt to have a lot of power. And your old friends owe me now.”
“Okay,” John says, coming to a halt. They’ve arrived in the same hallway they originally started in. They've ran a circle. Now there’s nowhere to go but up.
“Okay,” Emori agrees, stepping into the old elevator, John joining her a moment later after miming something for the two men who are inexplicably still standing by the wheel waiting to turn it. The doors haven’t even closed before he wraps his arms around her, two hands strong and firm across her back.
“I missed you,” he says, his arms squeezing tighter as she presses her forehead into his shoulder, allowing herself to sway just a little bit.
“I missed you too,” she breathes back, forcing herself to step out of his embrace so that they can start getting on the same page only to fall back into it when the elevator stutters to a halt, upsetting her balance.
“What was that?”
“Don’t worry about it,” John laughs, brushing down her hair. “I told the guys to stall us halfway there. Gives them a break, gives us time to talk.”
“Yeah,” Emori breathes, her hands squeezing his forearms. “How did you know I ascended?”
John exhales deeply. “No one’s shut up about nightblood since I got here. Remember that time you pricked your finger making fishing hooks? I knew you had it, and I knew Clarke had the flame, and that you were with her. But mostly I was just bluffing. Been doing a lot of that lately.”
Emori huffs in laughter. “That’s a big risk John. Hardly a survivor's move.” She tries to sound berating, but mostly she’s too charmed by how his mind works. His daring and quick thinking.
“It was worth the risk, if it could get us both out of there.”
“But now we’re here,” Emori notes. And John nods, his hands falling to cup hers, fingertips staining from where she cut herself. But no, stain is the wrong word.
“We’ll go along with it for now, until a big enough distraction comes along for us slip away. How does that sound?”
“Perfect.” Emori nods, wanting nothing more than for them to get back on their little boat and to leave the complexities of society to flounder on the shore.
“Okay, now that all that’s settled, I’m going to kiss you now.”
“Please,” she mumbles into his lips. There’s no patience in the kiss, both of them seeking too much from each other—reassurance, comfort, presence—for it to be chaste. He backs her against one wall, clutching at her waist, tongue playing at her bottom lip while she reaches for the back of his neck to pull him closer.
She kisses at the corner of his jaw, and when she moves to the sensitive parts of his neck he gasps her name without shame. His thumb presses into the point just behind her ear, his other fingers tilting her jaw up so their mouths can collide again. Her gloved hand tugs uselessly at his collar when he slots one of his legs between hers and she’s on the verge of asking him to take it off so she can feel his skin when the elevator starts moving again with a jolt, sending their foreheads knocking into one another.
“Shit, sorry,” he says, soothing the spot with his thumb. She copies the motion and he smiles fully this time, just for her. A moment later the door dings open.
The body of the former Commander lies on the steps in front of the throne, stabbed to death it would seem.
“Shit,” John says. “Indra and I didn’t move her.” He explains how he and Indra had come to kill her after they destroyed the City of Light. “She really deserved it,” was the story’s culmination, John’s voice shallow and dark. They move her corpse to a vacated room and leave it at that, the floor dark and dirty enough that her blood doesn’t leave too much of an imprint.
The others begin coming up in batches, first the skaikru she had escorted on her boat, but then many others, mostly faces she doesn’t recognize; people who have just been informed about the existence of the new Commander and look at her with curiosity. John stands a little in front of her, protective, which she finds so sweet she doesn’t bother to remind him of the fact that she’s the much better fighter. He passes the time by whispering how she’ll have to recite the names of all the former Commanders, and makes a big deal about brushing off any of the representatives who approach in hopes of talking to them.
The room fills too quickly, but it also seems to take far too long. But at last the final elevator arrives and in unspoken recognition all the room goes quiet, attention placed solely on her. So many eyes.
“The Commander will now recite the lineage.” The words sound so boxy and improper in John’s mouth, but everyone but Emori seems convinced.
Standing in front of them, in front of a throne, makes her think she should quiver. John stands next to her and fighting the urge to hold his hand seems more difficult than any of the tasks she’s completed in the past day. But despite those things, her stance is firm as names and faces flash in her mind. She doesn’t realize she’s saying them out loud until she peels her eyes open to see the various degrees of surprise written across the faces of the crowd.
John looks to the room as if in challenge before announcing to them all. “Commander Emori.”
She’s often thought that her name felt empty without a following clan title, but she’s always liked the way John says her name.
“One of you sound the horn,” John orders. “Let the people know they have a Commander.”
A man at the edge of the group begins to move, but doesn’t make it to the balcony before a new arrival breaks through the gathering.
“Not so fast,” says a strong square man, pushing his way past people.
“Roan wait!” Clarke calls out, only to be ignored, as is Echo who seems to say something sounding a lot like “My liege!”
“The pair of you are frauds!” Roan calls out, his finger and glare accusatory. “That man is a skaikru imposter and the girl is nothing but a frikdriena!”
Actual gasps of shock rumble through the room, but no one yet makes a move for a weapon. Confusion setting in first.
“You might think you’re so smart, using your little boat to hide away all these years, but you couldn’t even shake a tail. It just makes obvious what you are. A coward and a stain.”
“Back up,” John growls even if he can’t hold a candle to Roan in terms of intimidation. The man turns his focus to him instead.
“You have big talk for a dirty rat.”
“King Roan,” that’s Echo by his side now, her hand on his shoulder a gesture made to pull him away. “Even if what you say is true, Ontari’s dead. She’s the true Commander now, we all saw.”
“Don’t make me question your loyalty to Nia’s ideals, Echo,” Roan says. Without even a glance to accompany his words, Echo’s arm drops and she takes a step back.
“I question your loyalty to your mother’s lust for power when she had you banished,” Emori counters, the knowledge pressing on her without warning, like a headache. Roan flinches ever so slightly at the words.
“Fine,” he says, “You’ll get your peace for now. But I’ll never accept a stained Commander.”
Emori blinks with utter boredom. It’s funny how this man thinks she will crumple to insults now after hearing them her whole life.
He storms out of the throne room after that, followed by at least half of those gathered. Clarke looks intimidated by their leaving, the gears in her mind clearly turning, but their exit is undermined by the bellow of the trumpet, reverberating through the streets of Polis.
Emori doesn’t care much either way, it’s not like she’s planning on staying Commander for long.
“You know I was actually expecting that to go a lot worse,” John says, offers her a tired and funny smile. She caves and reaches out to hold his hand.
“It did,” Bellamy says, his face more pale than can be natural. In his right hand he holds his radio, wrist shaking as he presses down a button. “Raven, tell them what you told me.” His eyes are afraid as they survey the room, and a pit drops in Emori’s stomach as the crackle of a voice makes an announcement.
“There’s a wave of radiation coming. We’re all going to die in six months.”
Summary: Murphy’s loner celebrity status means that he’s pretty content to make his own music and mind his own damn business, or so he thinks. But when an interview answer leads to a collaboration with The Dead Zone’s frontwoman Emori Ramiro they’re made to confront the loneliness in their jobs, and how they might rectify it together.
[A Modern Memori Rock stars!AU based on @diyozas amazing edit]
“So, where do we start with this whole collaboration thing?” It’s the first time she’s sounded fully sold on the idea, and his feet stop their insistent bouncing and settle firmly on the ground.
He scratches his neck. “I’m kinda notorious for being horrible at it,” he says, just to warn her about what she’s getting into. Some selfish part of him has already decided that he’s going to make this work with Emori. They haven’t even finished the meeting and he’s already looking forward to seeing her again, getting to know her determination better.
“I don’t exactly have much experience either,” Emori notes.
“Well you weren’t responsible for the most infamous band breakup in the twenty first century so…”
“You’re really tooting your own horn there. I was personally devastated when One Direction broke up.”
He almost snorts from laughing so hard. “I think we could make something great,” he says, something like butterflies in his stomach, but more promising. Nervous and powerful and threatening to spill out.
[AO3]
Murphy shows up for the Entertainment Weekly interview a half hour early. Punctuality isn’t generally one of his strong suits, but being early means he has time to finish his coffee and get in the right headspace. It’s not that he hates interviews, per say, it’s just that he’s notoriously bad at them; always saying something a bit too asshole-ish or otherwise bad for PR.
But Abby has him under strict orders to behave this time, and while forgoing a filter might be more true to life, it does make Abby’s job two times harder. And despite everything he doesn’t want to be a prick to his manager; she’s good to him.
So he finishes his coffee and constructs neutral answers to the questions he anticipates the interviewer asking. She’s probably hoping for something juicy, considering the interview is supposed to be about Delinquency’s breakup, but it’s been five years; he and Bellamy gave up on hating each other ages ago—you might even say they’re friends now. It’s nowhere near as dramatic as the media likes to think it is. But a bad quote from him could definitely make it seem that way.
He fiddles with the cord of his earbuds, listening to Something to Erase. Most wouldn’t consider it a calming album, what with its themes of abuse and neglect and heavy rock guitar, but it’s an old favorite of his, and its familiarity settles on his shoulders like a warm blanket.
“You’re early,” Bellamy remarks, just at the end of the seventh track, stepping off the elevator along with the interviewer.
“Fuck off,” Murphy says, stuffing his phone and earbuds into the pocket of his jeans, and then turns his attention to the interviewer. She introduces herself as Kara, and seems professional in a harsh and cool way, down to her pressed blouse. Good. He hates the overeager ones.
They settle down for the interview, him and Bellamy exchanging banter that Kara’s tape recorder eats up, and move on to small talk, easing them in for the bigger questions. The first few are about the breakup: What went wrong? What made it difficult? Do you regret it?
They are all questions Murphy had more or less anticipated. Bellamy takes the brunt of the answers. Quotes their differences in musicality and opinions, along with their hotheads. Says yeah, the change of direction in life was really the hardest. Mentions politely that they couldn’t regret it when they look at where they are now. He talks about what Mbege and Roma are up to, and Murphy feels like a bit of a dick for not knowing about Roma’s new modeling career in Europe or Mbege’s work in producing. His thumb is starting to bleed from behind the corner of the nail he keeps biting down on.
Kara notes all of the responses down with grace, even though something on her face suggests she’d like just a little bit more bite behind the answers. She looks to him for that.
“Do you think you might ever work together again, having a bit more age and perspective?” Kara asks.
“Nah,” Murphy is quick to say. “The whole thing was a failed experiment. We’re friendly again, but we work better apart.”
Kara nods shortly, and looks to Bellamy for confirmation, who agrees easily.
“Yeah, Murphy’s better off doing his own thing. Doesn’t like to answer to anyone.” Bellamy’s mostly teasing but Murphy can’t help but roll his eyes at the answer anyway. It’s not like he’s some anti-social diva, he works with his producers just fine after all, but he supposes being a lone wolf is part of his image now.
“Just in a hypothetical sense,” Kara says, turning back to him, “Who would you pick as an ideal collaborator?”
“An ideal collaborator?” he repeats, stalling for time. There’s a question he wasn’t expecting. He doesn't really pay attention to other musicians outside of listening to their music. In general he wants to know as little about other people as possible and that extends to celebrities who might double as his peers. But one band does come to mind.
"Probably The Dead Zone," he says, itching his nose. He had watched an interview with them on Youtube in between vine compilations one night when he couldn't sleep. He remembers the bands' discomfort at having to sit down with one of the late night Jimmys and seeing himself in Emori's off-color jokes and Otan's resting bitch face. He also remembers nodding along when they talked about their songwriting method, the chaotic writing and scrapping and bursts of inspiration that came at weird times of night. Maybe it's just because he was listening to them before he came for the interview, but in a perfect world he wouldn’t mind sitting down with them and hashing something out. "I mean genre wise we overlap almost completely, and I don’t need to tell you Emori’s vocals are great, she’s completely fucking exceptional." He could never manage to balance harsh syllables and aching crones the way she does, it's kinda amazing the more he thinks about it.
The interviewer is suppressing a smile for some reason as she jots down a few notes. Bellamy is giving him a weird look too, and normally he'd call him out on it, but he knows Kara is itching for some animosity to sprout between them, and he's under strict orders to be friendly, so he settles for delivering a questioning tilt of his head. But Bellamy just averts his gaze, still wearing that same smirk.
“The 100 has done a fair few collaborations, and I’d be happy to work with any of those artists again,” he supplies moving the interview along. It wraps up not too long after that, Kara thanking them ad nauseum and telling them they can expect the article up before the end of the week.
“Want to grab something to eat?” Bellamy asks as they make their way out. It’s an awkward time between lunch and dinner now, but Murphy’s never really been one to turn down food.
There’s a cafe down the street that Bellamy swears up and down is great, and at this weird time it’s mostly empty. The hostess gives them a poorly lit seat near the back.
“So how have you been, really?” Bellamy asks once they have their respective drinks. It’s Murphy’s third coffee of the day, but it’s frigid outside and he had slept like shit so he takes scalding gulps as Bellamy warms his hands around his green tea.
“I don’t know why it’s so hard to believe I’m actually doing fine. I’m still riding that post tour rush.”
Bellamy shakes his head. That’s one of the things they had fought over the most when they were still in a band together. Bellamy hadn’t wanted to be on the road for months on end when he had a sister back home, but Murphy lived for movement, for new cities with weird bars and diners, for being miles away from his hometown. It’s still his favorite part of being a performer, even if it gets exhausting.
“So you’re gonna take it easy for a bit?”
“I don’t know what that means,” Murphy jokes, although he’s kinda under orders to be doing just that. Even if he has two notebooks full of mismatched chords and fragmented lyrics waiting to be stitched together. Abby’s certain that he’s gonna burn out if all he does is churn out music, but he knows it’s the opposite. Sitting still isn’t an option.
“So you’re gonna see if you can make that thing with The Dead Zone pan out?” Bellamy says, finally taking a sip of his drink.
“That was just a hypothetical,” Murphy says with half an eye roll.
“Seemed pretty sincere to me.”
“I mean, if it were on the table, sure,” Murphy says, setting down his empty coffee cup. “But I don’t know the band at all, I just think their music is good.”
“I just think it would be good for you to work with other people—” Murphy rolls his eyes again. “—so you can make some friends in the industry. Lay down some roots, start to feel a part of something. You don’t have to be a loner.”
“I’m twenty fucking six, Bellamy, you can stop mothering me any time now.” Murphy crosses his arms. He has enough friends: Bellamy and Raven. Clarke, if he feels like putting up with her. It’s more than he had in high school. And generally speaking he’s pretty happy, the anger issues are in check, and he’s making more money than 16 year old him could imagine. If he wants to stay in his lane and mostly out of the public eye then that’s his prerogative.
“It’s just an idea,” Bellamy shrugs.
“Yeah, whatever.”
Murphy moves through the obligatory questions about Bellamy’s life and work. Of course he’s doing great, and Murphy really does his level best at caring. But soon enough the conversation fizzles and Murphy slaps down a few dollars for the coffee and slinks out of the cafe.
There’s a voicemail from Abby that he missed and he sends her and Jackson, his overly calm PR guy, a text letting them know that he didn’t fuck up the interview.
When he gets home he slumps on his couch and half-watches reruns of Mythbusters. His head is somewhere between buzzed with caffeine and mindless from exhaustion and it makes him answer Abby’s follow up texts more sharply than really necessary. Or maybe it’s the conversation with Bellamy that’s irritating enough to start a headache. He hates that all these years have passed and Bellamy can still take a hammer directly to all these things inside him he likes to keep in the corners.
He wakes up in the dark on his couch at half past two in the morning with a drum solo beating against the back of his eyes and no memory of falling asleep. An infomercial for exercise equipment blinks across the TV and a blonde woman blabbers on about self improvement before he snaps it off and trudges to his room.
His narrow bed is far more comfortable but it also invites dreams about vinegary wine and leather couches and the same video always on repeat. In the morning they taste like loneliness in his mouth.
He doesn’t go to the studio at all that week, per Abby’s wishes, but he hardly moves away from the keyboard at his place either. There’s a bassline that he finally straightens out, and he spends several hours too many trying to find the right synonym for stillness before scrapping an entire verse. Friday sneaks up on him, and he probably would have forgotten that the article was coming out if Abby hadn’t emailed it to him with a quick nod to his ‘interesting answers’ and a reminder to check his twitter.
If it was up to him he’d be a ghost a social media, mostly because of the whole ‘social’ part, but as someone who has miraculously achieved a modicum of fame in this day and age it’s a bit of a necessity. He could have Jackson run it for him, but that would mean turning his public image over to someone else, a thought that leaves an itch at the back of his neck. And as far as he can tell no one else would be able to pull off the right level of snark anyway.
His notifications are always off though. He really doesn’t need to see tweets about fans wanting to suck his toes, or whatever. But today it seems like everyone is more concerned with the admittedly well written EW article.
Or more concerned with his quotes from the EW article taken out of context. For some reason him liking The Dead Zone’s music is newsworthy. Even People Magazine hopped on the bandwagon. Figures.
He manages to read ten tweets before his fingers drift to the keyboard.
is there a reason you’re all going into
overload? @deadzoneemori is a great
talent. this isn’t news.
He taps send without much forethought. In part it’s genuine curiosity, but he also wants to make sure the band sees it. Bellamy’s nagging must have been really effective if he’s putting himself out there like this. He puts his phone face down on the coffee table, and decides to make himself some eggs.
The distraction works for the most part, and it’s half an hour later before impatience has him checking his phone again.
Emori Ramiro actually replied.
Don’t worry. I know.
I’m on the phone with our manager. How
serious is this offer?
An anxiety settles into him that he hasn’t felt in years. Like audition nerves, or first date jitters. But he was always good at overcoming those.
dead serious. why not?
He smiles at his own rudimentary word play, and also, maybe, because he feels excited about something. It’s so rare that the future seems full of potential.
Of course it means something a little different to Abby when she calls two hours later.
“You know you’re supposed to give me a heads up before you go off and make plans like that.”
“Come on Abby, it’s a good idea. Right?” There’s a long pause on Abby’s end, her way of saying ‘I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed’ in a manner his own mother wouldn’t even have considered trying to pull off.
“It’s not a bad idea. It’s lucky for you that their manager Sinclair is an old friend of mine and that you work under the same record label.”
“So you think I’ve got this whole collaboration thing in me?” He asks, finally able to stop fidgeting with his sweatshirt strings. Approval isn’t something he generally seeks out, from Abby or anybody else, but he does like when he gets it.
“Of course I think you have it in you, John,” Abby says, “We have a meeting next Saturday.”
So soon. In the industry it seems like things take forever half the time, bogged down by strict schedules and contracts and red tape. His manager is a bit of a miracle worker.
Saturday comes faster than expected, one of the benefits of not having an entirely structured work week. They meet in Sinclair’s office, a modest room that seems far more lived in than Abby’s office. With a single large window that lets in plenty of natural light, and a worn couch against the far wall where the frontwoman of The Dead Zone sits.
Emori Ramiro looks more or less the same as in every music video he’s seen her in, long dark hair, a glint behind her brown eyes like sunlight catching on the sharp side of a knife. He’s always liked her as a musician, but he doesn’t think it would be hard to like her as a person either.
“Hey,” she says, offering her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Uh, yeah, it’s-it’s nice to meet you too.” He blinks a few times, shakes his head sharply once in an effort to remind himself that he shouldn’t be noticing how pretty she is.
He introduces himself to Sinclair instead, only to learn that they’ve met before. Turns out he’s Raven’s manager too, something he should have remembered if Abby’s stern glance is anything to go by. They start into all the technical stuff right away, schedules and contracts and copyright, stuff he does a poor job of processing.
Emori is rocking in her chair opposite him, and when he shoots her a weighted ‘I’m dying of boredom’ glance she mimics it with an actress’s precision. His muted chuckle seems to be enough to motivate her to interrupt Sinclair and Abby’s negotiations.
“We don’t have to figure out anything official yet,” Emori says, “we can just play around, see what we want to commit to?” She looks to him for confirmation.
“Yeah, doesn’t seem right to make big plans now.”
That promptly sets Abby and Sinclair into another back and forth, although a much briefer one. The pair shuffle out of the office a brief moment later, something about moody rockstars on their lips, leaving him and Emori alone.
“Don’t get me wrong I’m really excited to work with you. Meetings are just…” He shakes his head.
“I get the feeling. I think I liked it better when I was doing everything myself, but you get big enough and can’t really book your own gigs anymore.”
“I never did any of that,” he admits, “I’m just impatient.”
“I don’t find that too surprising,” Emori says, coming over to sit next to him. There’s half a second of awkward fidgeting, Emori tugging on the fingers of her winter gloves, before she continues. “Why did you wanna work with us?”
“Because you’re music is great,” he answers, a bit confused by the question.
“No one’s made a serious offer to ever work with us before.”
“You’re shitting me,” he says, sitting up a little straighter, investigating Emori’s face to see if that is indeed the case. “People find you that intimidating?” He asks when he finds no signs of deception.
“I don’t think that’s the case,” Emori actually laughs, but in a bitter, cautious way. Something on his face must demonstrate confusion because she shakes her head in wondered surprise. “You don’t know.”
He feels distinctly like he got off the wrong exit of the highway, he shakes his head slowly.
“I’m a curse,” she says, “Always have been.”
“Seems superstitious,” he says, only to be met with Emori’s knifelike gaze. She’s serious. People don’t carry around knives unless they’re afraid of being hurt. “I don’t follow.”
“You know The Alliance?” She asks after a held pause, referring to a pop-rock group that’s as popular now as it was a decade ago.
“Course, they played the Super Bowl two years ago.”
“Yeah, well they started in the town next to us. We used to play at the same mall, do the same open mic nights. Just ran into each other a lot. I don’t know if me or Otan or Sienna did something to piss them off, or if they just hated the competition, but they’ve had a vendetta against us for years now. And when they went big they had enough influence to essentially get us on a blacklist.”
“That’s...fucked up,” he says. Music shouldn’t be about competition, and he can’t understand why anyone would want to tamper down talent like Emori and her band.
“Yeah, it was hard to get people to work with us and to gain a following for a couple years, but we got a record deal anyway, so they can suck it.”
“Screw ‘em,” he says with conviction, and Emori seems to soften a bit, her knife sheathed.
She shrugs out of her jacket only now, her scarf and gloves following. Her left hand has a slight deformity to it, her thumb small and awkwardly bent, and fingers long and fused. It’s something he thinks he should’ve noticed before.
“I was born with it like this,” she says, seeing him notice. “First part of the curse. My mom thought I wasn’t worth raising.” He can tell from the way she tucks her hair around her shoulder and neck that there’s more to the story but he doesn’t pry.
“Well screw her in particular. It’s pretty badass.”
Emori chuckles, somewhere between disbelief and amusement. “So, where do we start with this whole collaboration thing?” It’s the first time she’s sounded fully sold on the idea, and his feet stop their insistent bouncing and settle firmly on the ground.
He scratches his neck. “I’m kinda notorious for being horrible at it,” he says, just to warn her about what she’s getting into. Some selfish part of him has already decided that he’s going to make this work with Emori. They haven’t even finished the meeting and he’s already looking forward to seeing her again, getting to know her determination better.
“I don’t exactly have much experience either,” Emori notes.
“Well you weren’t responsible for the most infamous band breakup in the twenty first century so…”
“You’re really tooting your own horn there. I was personally devastated when One Direction broke up.”
He almost snorts from laughing so hard. “I think we could make something great,” he says, something like butterflies in his stomach, but more promising. Nervous and powerful and threatening to spill out.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Emori says, fishing out her phone. They exchange numbers, with plans to reconvene with fresh ideas somewhere more comfortable. It’s a particular torture an hour later when he’s lying on his couch staring at her contact information. Can he text her now? It’s only been an hour, and he doesn’t want to be pushy or insistent, he vaguely remembers something about a three day waiting period until it occurs to him that that rule is about dating. At risk of getting lost in his own head, he buckles and sends her a short message.
She replies quickly and eagerly, if the number of exclamation points is anything to go by, and it does a lot to dissuade his worries. She doesn’t seem to have a problem with coming over to his place, and once the plans are set the conversation turns away from the professional. They complain about New York construction and list their favorite places to get coffee and the banter is so easy Murphy doesn’t realize two hours have passed till Emori mentions that she has dinner plans.
They say their goodbyes and then he tucks his phone away to make his own meal. Chopping onions does little to distract him from thinking about Emori or the plucking feeling in his chest.
The next day she sends him a Delinquency tag yourself meme with no context other than a caption reading ‘I’m you.’ He laughs at the offbeat descriptions, Bellamy’s in particular, but ultimately has to agree that it’s accurate enough for him to claim his description for himself. It’s a deep dive into google images for him to find a decent Dead Zone version only for it to spark debate between them about if Emori can rightfully tag herself as ‘Emu’.
The day before she comes over he spends undue amounts of time face down in his pillow explaining to himself all the reasons why nothing is going to happen between them. They’re going to hang out and write a fucking awesome song together and he is not going to catch feelings.
The pep talk is more or less futile.
“Just the two of us?” He asks, ushering her inside the next day.
“You just get me, sorry,” Emori says making herself comfortable. “I basically do all the writing for the band, nowadays.” She spends a lot of time getting her guitar out after that, too long really. He considers not questioning her about it, normally he wouldn’t, but if they want this song to be any good they’ll have to get to know one another a bit.
“Why is that?” When Emori returns with a confused look he corrects himself. “Why are you the only one writing the music?”
“Oh.” She’s tuning the guitar know, ear turned to the strings. “The first album was all songs me and Otan wrote together growing up, before we got the record deal. We were really close back then. Now though-” she shrugs, “-we don’t have the same ideas about things as we used to.”
“I guess that makes sense,” he says, an offer at condolence. He’s never been good at understanding the whole sibling thing.
“I think it’ll be nice working with another person again.” There’s a nervous lining to that statement, like the alternative is an empty recording booth or to be stuck with just her own thoughts.
“Yeah,” he says, tearing his gaze away from Emori’s hopeful smile. “Speaking of…” He hands her his song-writing notebook. “That’s everything I’ve been working on recently, so you can get an idea. Sorry about my handwriting.”
He scratches his nose as Emori sets the guitar aside and flicks through the notebook. There had been a lot of internal debate about whether he’d show it to her or not. The notion usually left him feeling like a picked open scab, exposed and vulnerable, but as he watches her eyes flick over the musings of his mind it doesn’t feel so bad. She’s serious about it, seems to know it’s a big deal for him. A couple times her mouth will twitch with a smile, like something in it is good, or she’s excited to be able to read it.
“That’s usually how I start,” he says, when he can’t bear the silence anymore. Emori looks up.
“It’s great stuff, John.” He’s so touched by the compliment he doesn’t even register the use of his first name until she starts singing the fragmented lyrics that she’s singled out as her favorites. “‘Due north, a simple instruction/if only I knew how to work a compass.’ I really like the sorta sense of, lost direction. Wandering.”
“Yeah, I don’t really like stillness,” he says, “but one day...I wouldn’t mind stability either.” He can’t believe he just said that. Can something feel like a lie in your head and come out sounding truthful from your mouth?
“Yeah,” Emori says, musing, turning back a few pages, “Like ‘I’m dragging myself to the promised land/it’s more desolate than I imagined’.” She doesn’t sing it like he would, the vowel sounds are longer and all of it less droning. It’s like seeing the lyrics in a mirror’s reflection. He really likes it. “It’s hard to know what to put your faith in.”
“I have no faith,” he says. Emori blinks. She has knowing eyes.
“Me neither,” then, “That could make a good song.”
They spend the rest of the afternoon debating what sort of themes they want to work with, taking some of his lyrics and some they come up with together and trying to make them work. They agree to put loneliness at the center, focus on the ways in manifests and how they try and fail to combat it. It’s a start, and one with potential, even if they’re not yet positive what sort of beat it’s going to fall on.
She comes over again the next day so they can keep the momentum going. He hadn’t realized it was snowing until he saw the flecks of white in her dark hair.
“You cold?” he asks, taking her guitar case as she shivers and unlaces her damp boots. “I can get you something to drink.”
They sit on his couch and drink coffee as Emori warms up, somehow managing to talk about everything but their song. He likes to think he has some bizarre touring stories but Emori seems to have him beat at every turn, going into detail about how they got lost in Ohio on their way to Cleveland and ended up camping out in a corn field by sweet talking the farmer who owned it even though he had no clue who they were. In exchange he tells her about the time Jaha, the record’s vice president, had tried to sell him speed at a party once only for Emori to jump in and tell him he’d attempted the same with her.
“Was he high off his ass and trying to tell you that it’d take you to the city of light, or something?” Emori laughs.
“Yeah, I was like, ‘Paris is across the ocean’. I may have also called him dude to his face.” Emori’s laughter has her shoulders rocking to nudge against his. When she collects herself she lets her head lean against the back of the couch and doesn’t move away from the point where they’re touching.
“City of Light,” she says, eyes closed against the brightness of his overhead lighting. “Sounds fake. Like it’s too good to be true.”
“Like a place you put too much faith into only for it to suck.” There’s an idea in his head that he’s trying to grab with words. Emori perks up, easily catching on.
“I like a good metaphor.”
They move off the couch after that. Hunkered down over the kitchen table they’re able to work out the chorus, one about high expectations that get dragged down. He settles at his keyboard after that, and Emori drags over one of the kitchen chairs, and the two of them play around with chords.
“I thought you were a drummer originally,” Emori says when they get stuck.
“I started with piano, actually,” he says, considers opening up a little more, and goes for it. “My dad taught me. He was better than I’ll ever be, played recitals and stuff when he was young.”
“He died?” Emori has a perceptive ear, all musicians need one, but rather uniquely hers is able to translate to human observation too.
“He got a shitty conviction and then got killed in prison, yeah.” He plays the gasping bridge of “Flu Season” almost unthinkingly. “Then I learned drums during my rebellious teenage phase.”
Emori’s lips pinch at the tonal change but she goes with the flow.
“You know I wouldn’t have thought that phase ended.” He smiles in gratitude as she continues. “I learned guitar during my rebellious pre-teen phase. One of my foster mothers said that I wouldn’t be able to play because of my hand, so I taught myself out of spite.”
He’s noticed the unique way she holds the frets, only using her two longer fingers, putting down pressure at different points along the digits rather than just the tips. It probably makes for interesting calluses, but it seems to suit her just fine.
“That’s really badass.”
“I think so too,” she says. “I made Otan learn bass and a couple years later we moved and our neighbor Sienna knew drums and that was history. Did Delinquency really meet in detention?”
“Where did you think the band name came from? We were all unoriginal seventeen year olds with authority problems.”
Emori teases him by playing the main riff from “Whatever the Hell We Want” the band’s biggest hit. It was probably one of two songs on the album he and Bellamy ever really agreed on. He still plays it at shows sometimes.
Their session crumples after that, the pair of them playing or singing over each other until Murphy realizes how hungry he is and goes into the kitchen to make them some quick sandwiches. They talk more over the simple dinner, and even though in the grand scheme of things they didn’t get a whole lot accomplished, it still feels like one of the most productive days he’s had in a long time.
She comes over one more time before the weekend, and he goes to her place on Monday where he spends nearly two hours perusing her CD collection instead of doing anything productive. They book a studio room on Wednesday to try and work in a more neutral environment and Emori sorts out the song’s rhythm, fast during the verses before a lull in the chorus until it peters out at the end.
On Friday they meet Otan and Sienna at the studio so they can work on the incorporation of their instruments. It’s a grueling couple of hours, but by the end of it they feel almost done; he and Emori agree there’s one missing piece they need to figure out and then they can work towards getting it recorded.
He invites the band over for dinner afterwards, all the lessons about being personable Abby and Jackson have beaten into him over the years making an appearance. But Sienna has a young son at home, and Otan claims to have an outstanding plan to meet up with some friends so it’s just him and Emori.
“Does your brother not like me?” He asks on their way back. “Cause that excuse seemed kinda made up.”
Emori hesitates, and that would be telling if it weren’t for the huff of exasperation that followed. “I think he knew we wanted for it to be just the two of us.” She doesn’t quite look at him until, “Right?”
He considers answering with the more fair and welcoming response but ultimately he agrees with a quiet and telling, “yeah.” For a moment he thinks they may have come to an understanding with one another—they both want it to be just them—and that has to have larger implications, but Emori pushes the conversation forward and he has to tuck the thought away.
“So what’s for dinner?”
“Stir fry,” he says, and then has to go into a lengthy tirade when Emori questions his cooking skills. But she helps him chop vegetables against her doubts, and seeing her working in his kitchen, sneaking M&Ms from the bag in the cupboard and singing under her breath to the playlist they made earlier in the week, has him feeling warm in a way that has nothing to do with the stove.
“Ok I take it back,” she says once they’ve tucked in. “I guess I’m going to have to make you cook for me more.”
“Anytime,” he says with sincerity. Emori smiles, in that soft, surprised way she sometimes has and it doesn’t fall off her face even as they drift to talking about the session and then to a prank Emori had pulled on Otan a couple months ago and then of course Murphy has to explain the classwide prank war that happened his senior year and they end up lingering at the table long after their food is finished.
Doing the dishes is a slow process, even considering the small number of plates. And it’s not that Emori is particularly bothered with seeing her face shine in the ceramic, if anything she wants to stay longer, judging by the small steps she takes about the kitchen, making sure there’s no rush.
“You, uh, wanna watch a movie or something?” He offers, because it’s not like he wants her to leave either. “I don’t have much in the way of desserts, but…”
Emori accepts readily, and they settle on his couch half watching The Goonies as they attempt to throw M&Ms into each other’s mouths.
“Can I come over tomorrow?” Emori asks when all the chocolate has been eaten and the credits are rolling. “To finish the song,” she adds after a beat.
“‘Course,” he says, fighting the urge to play with her hair like he has been for most of the night.
“I have a meeting in the afternoon, but I’m free in the evening,” Emori says getting to her feet with tired effort. He follows her to his door. “Thanks for dinner, John,” Emori says, then steps forward to give him a hug. It’s a long hug, longer than it needs to be, tight and warm and comfortable. He learns that his chin rests perfectly on her shoulder.
“Goodnight,” she says as she slips out of his place, leaving him standing in his living room with a pounding heart and the thought that they’re both probably fucked.
She texts him the next day around five thirty telling him not to eat because she’s bringing takeout. She arrives forty five minutes later with a still warm pizza and a smile.
“Since you cooked last night,” she explains as they settle at his kitchen table, eating as they look over their notes and playback the preliminary recording Emori has on her tape recorder.
“I don’t think it’s a music problem,” he says around his third slice of pizza, after they’ve mulled in silence for a while, “I think it’s a lyric problem.”
“Yeah,” Emori agrees, scratching her brow, “I think the message got lost, or changed, somewhere along the line.”
Murphy flips to the front of the notebook, the new one he started just for this collaboration, and glances over the list of ideas they made.
faith (non religious)
optimism/pessimism
how to achieve ideals?
abandonment
loneliness
physically & metaphysically lost
discovery, leading to neg. consequences
Emori points to the fourth item. “I don’t think abandonment fits.”
He rests the point of the pencil next to the word, considering what she’s saying. It’s inclusion had been Emori’s idea originally.
“I think it’s important though,” he says, “It’s what’s contributing to the feeling of being lost, being alone.”
“But that’s more of the prelude,” Emori says, “The backstory of the song. Sure, the loneliness was fueled by abandonment, but it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. Maybe it’s not lonely at all. You could still be trying to find something—the city of light—with another person.”
Her voice trails off at the end, like she’s not even sure if she’s convinced herself of the argument.
“So we make it more concise,” he suggests, “We don’t need to paint the entire experience, just one moment.” He crosses out abandonment and loneliness, to see where that leaves them. “Maybe it’s about being afraid to put your faith in something new. Feeling lost about what to do.”
“I like that,” Emori says, after a held moment of consideration. “Sort of being afraid of the future because of potential disappointment but wanting to live it anyways.”
“Okay,” he breathes, “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Except they don’t make anymore progress that night. Emori, despite her numerous near convincing arguments, is very tired from her day and can’t be made to focus.
They text back and forth the next day, suggesting lyrical changes they can make, sometimes a single line, sometimes more. The amounts to which they agree vary widely, and Murphy thinks it has to do with the way the words look in blue speech bubbles—it’s just not productive.
He suggests that they sleep on it, his brain feels picked clean, and he can’t see how Emori is doing any better. She agrees, but even over text he can sense her hesitation. And the same feeling duels in himself, the satisfaction of finishing the song combatting with the notion of what happens when they’re finished. Emori came into his life out of nowhere, he doesn’t want her slipping out of it in the same way.
Whatever this stage of inbetween is that they’re in, he hates it.
It comes up on Monday, when they’re dissecting the lyrics yet again.
“It just feels like a different song,” Murphy says. It’s the due north lyric, which is already in its third version. He’s near positive it’s impeding the song, but he also knows both he and Emori are too fond of it to scrap it entirely. Besides, a song about going on a fool’s errand holds a lot of potential.
“A different song of ours?” Emori asks, emphasis heavy on the last word.
“Yeah, I think so,” Murphy says. He hadn’t wanted to think about what would happen when they finally got the song nailed down. Part of him thinks Emori would like to spend time with him even when they weren’t working on a project, but now he doesn’t have to risk finding out. “We could do an EP?”
Emori nods, reaches out to squeeze his wrist in excitement, then draws a box around the discarded lyric, as if to indicate they’re packing it away to save for later.
Murphy sleeps late the next day, his dreams oddly calm despite the clear memory of a knife. It makes the time before Emori comes over shorter, filled with updating Abby as to their progress.
She sounds genuinely excited over the phone when he mentions how well it’s been going, and how much he and Emori seem to be meshing as artists, and it gives him new hope that they’ll figure out the song.
Emori is as eager as ever, and after a couple hours they’ve managed to reframe the themes of the song as planned. The song is good, easily one of his favorite pieces, but they still agree that something is just a bit off. Like there is a final piece that will click right into place if they could just find it.
But his voice is strained from singing and it still isn’t fixed.
“Wow it’s dark out,” Emori notes when they’re taking a break.
“Cause the sun sets at like, four thirty this time of year,” he says, marking down a change on his sheet music. Then considers her words. “Oh, do you need to get home?”
“No, I don’t have anywhere else to be,” Emori says, “And I want to be here.” He’s selfishly grateful as Emori strums the opening cords, indicating they should start from the top again.
It’s a long night, one that eventually degrades to them lying beside each other on his (thankfully carpeted) floor. His ceiling isn’t anything to look at, but Emori has fun with seeing faces and animals in the spackle.
“It’s a little boy in a meadow,” she says, and he shakes his head because he really has no idea what she’s been saying for this entire conversation. Emori flicks his shoulder, as if it’s his fault that their brains don’t find the exact same patterns in everything. “Too bad he doesn’t have any friends.”
“Oh, I know this piece,” he finally contributes, “John Murphy circa age ten.”
“Did you not have friends growing up?” Emori asks, the playful tiredness morphing into its melancholy cousin.
“Not really.”
“Me neither. Just Otan.” Her head lolls to the side to look at him. “I’ve been missing him recently, we see each other all the time because of work, but it’s not like really seeing each other.”
“Like you’re just going through the motions together?”
“Yeah,” Emori says, picking her head up with a smile. “See, you get me. That’s why I’m so glad we’re working together. Our last album…I felt so alone in it. I’m not used to music being like that.”
For him music has always been a way to pick himself raw. Clawing at feelings inside himself and exposing them so that they might start to heal. But working with Emori, being with her, has added another step, putting a balm on the wound, encouraging it to get better.
“I think...the reason the song isn’t working quite right is because we aren’t the same people we were when we started writing it.”
He expects Emori to mention the mere two and a half weeks they’ve known each other. Instead she says, remembering, “we cut out loneliness.”
He nods, some of his hair sticking up because of the static of it dragging against the carpet. Emori reaches over to brush it back. Her fingers linger around the shell of his ear.
“It’s late,” Emori says, maybe with regret. “I should get going.”
“I’ll call you a car,” he says. The two of them sway while they wait by the door, the long conversations of the day leaving them with silence now, as they make eye contact only to break it, over and over.
He sleeps with restless anticipation, the kind that comes the day before a new discovery one is expecting to have. The morning is rung in with four new messages from Emori that force Murphy to squint at the time stamps.
Emori
ok I know it’s 3am and you’re gonna think im crazy, but I think I cracked City of Light
Emori
On the surface it’s about dashed dreams and faith, like we were talking about
Emori
But really I think it’s about falling in love
Emori
And i KNOW love songs aren’t either of out styles but this works, at least in my head at 3am, I’ll come over tomorrow and we can finally hash it out (and I’ll try to get some sleep before then lol)
He considers the messages while he showers. It might work, he won’t know until she gets here, but he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to talk to Emori about love for hours on end. He will though. He’ll do it gladly, even.
Emori is at his place by nine, two coffees in hand, and nothing on her face suggesting she got a max of five hours of sleep last night. In fact, she’s smiling.
“So it’s a love song?” He asks once their situated at his kitchen table, coffee gulped down.
“Yeah, think about it,” Emori says, scooching over so she can compare his notebook to the stack of post it notes she brought along. “Falling in love is about opening yourself to vulnerability right? And having faith that the other person will...love you back.”
He nods slowly in dawning understanding, the beat of his pen against the table a churning undercurrent. Three weeks ago he would have claimed to know nothing of love, but he thinks he’s starting to get the idea. “So the City of Light is really a metaphor for love?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. That...makes a lot of sense.” Emori’s eyes are alight with the thrum of victory, and she doesn’t seem able to keep a smile from her lips. “I wouldn’t have thought you had so much love insight.”
“It’s sort of a new development,” Emori says, then clears her throat. “So we rewrite the chorus a bit, and maybe slow it down?”
It’s a scramble after that, reaching over each other to write things and then cross them out, holding their breath as the other drums a rhythm against the table or holds a note. They almost trip over each other on the way to the keyboard, where they share the single chair.
But an hour later the song is finished. When they sing it for the first time, it doesn’t come out the way it’s meant to be sang. Softer than it might ever be again.
Hide and wait or risk the stakes
I’ve never been one to take the bait
Of an even score or a glittering shore
I’m more comfortable in this zone of war
It was the end of it all when an old man told me
At the horizon is where you start your story
So I dragged myself to the promised land
It’s more ravaged then I imagined
City of Light, what do you hold?
Chances are I’ll never know
Tell me, why should I go?
There’s reward in the final mile
The upward tick of you pretty smile
And I want to hold you with these hands of mine
But do I have the courage to make us entwine?
I’m like Caesar at the Rubicon
with all the world watching on
To see if I can open my arms
But what if your embrace is too warm?
City of Light, what do you hold?
Chances are I’ll never know
Tell me, why should I go?
Is it a leap of faith if I’ve got nothing better to do?
You whisper in my ear
It is when it’s you
It’s you
It’s you
Emori’s voice seems to shiver on the final note, her gaze fixed on him as his fingers relax over the keys. Her eyes are wide and her mouth parted as she takes steadying breaths. There’s a feeling in him like crying, or laughter, emotion so strong it has to spill from his body. He presses it into Emori’s lips instead.
Her mouth falls open as she kisses him back, her breath shuttering until the arm wrapped around his shoulder pulls him closer. Her waist is warm under her shirt, where his hands rest; it’s been so long since he’s kissed someone he had forgotten how comfortable it can be. How happy it can make him. Although maybe that’s just because it’s her.
He pulls away so he can tell her, stopping only to kiss her cheek.
“I have feelings for you,” is what he manages to say.
“Really?” Emori laughs, and he almost can’t believe she’s being sarcastic right now, except he knows it’s exactly why he’s falling for her. “Me too,” she says, more sincere, “I couldn’t sleep last night because I was thinking about you, and that’s what finally made the song click.”
He had suspected that Emori felt the same way, but the confirmation in conjunction with the kiss has his heart pounding. “I love it,” he says, “the song.”
Emori laughs as she nods and then kisses him again.
hey here’s a really rough draft of some of my favorite headcanons combined!
Memori week day six: fluff
It’s on a night when the sky is a sated, dimming green that John first mentions the sky rite of marriage.
(full story under cut)
teinawon
i.
It’s on a night when the sky is a sated, dimming green that John first mentions the sky rite of marriage.
They’ve returned to New Arkadia, which they do every now and then after returning from the trading circuit, and now they’ve settled down in their own small cabin, listening to the festivities of their friends outside. Emori enjoys seeing some of their friends for moderate increments of time. She always speaks with Raven about whatever project she’s working on (“Shop talk,” John teases them) and Bellamy about history (she’s not done learning) and Niylah and Octavia about inter-clan diplomacy. She still isn’t welcome in every clan circle, but she’s formed a kind of attachment to the two women, especially Niylah, with whom she used to trade and still occasionally does. (Though she no longer slips small items away from the other woman’s shop, which she is in the process of re-establishing.)
But her favorite part of the day is, and will always be the silence of sunset. She breathes a sigh of relief upon entering whatever space she and John have for the night, removing her coat and hand wrap and settling into bed with him, even if that bed is a pile of furs and coats, even if it is a patch of grass or sand or stone.
Sometimes they make love (which they have down to an intense familiarity-- something she’s always willing to challenge) and sometimes they just speak. As long as it has been that they’ve been together, two separate people are always changing and growing, and one of her favorite parts of their togetherness is watching that change, seeing the person John is and has been and will become. Someone undeniably hers.
When he mentions it, they’ve just finished the one and have embarked on the other.
“So where are all the married grounders?” is how he brings it up.
She half laughs while pulling a thin cotton blanket over her bare knees. He barely uses the generalized term for people of the ground anymore. “Married?” she asks.
“Yeah, married. Two people joined for life, that kind of thing.” He props himself up on his elbow and runs a finger over a scar on her hip.
“I’ve heard the word,” she says, amused. “I just didn’t think it happened anymore.”
He chuckles. “Yeah, maybe not.”
This has been a good day, a successful trade season. The past year of being back on the ground has brought its fair amount of hardship, but they get by. They always get by. She smiles under his gaze, never fully used to how sharply blue his eyes are.
“Sangedakru has a ritual called teinawon,” she says after a moment. “It isn’t like… marriage, not really.”
“What is it, then?” His hand moves to her midriff, his fingers running over her naval. He has nights where his appetite never diminishes. This might be one.
“A vow of loyalty and protection between two or three people,” she says, trying to remember what little knowledge she has of the can she was cast out of as a child. “Sometimes between partners like us, sometimes between a parent and a child. Sometimes clan leaders do this to prevent infighting.” Like any rite of the culture she was born into, it’s something she is legally exempt from.
“Hmm,” John says, and leans down to kiss her on the mouth. She responds hungrily, eager to forget what can be forgotten about how the world used to be.
ii.
“Reyes, how much did Finn teach you about jewelry-making?”
Murphy figures Raven can help him with this. But maybe he should have considered possibly not bringing up her dead ex-boyfriend. She seems to take it in stride though, merely pauses from the engine she’s working on and glares over at him, a hand on her hip.
“What do you want, Murphy?”
“Well, I’m going to ask Emori to marry me.” He waits for the reaction.
“About freaking time. Go on.”
How anticlimactic. But he explains his idea and she says she’ll see what she can do.
On his way out from her work tent, he sees Clarke across the square, leaning down and speaking with a band of three kids-- they’re small and dirty and one of them has a scrape across her cheek. The oldest looks no more than seven and has only one eye, overlarge and dark on the side of her face. Where the other eye would be is a patch of puckered skin. He approaches Clarke as soon as Harper leads them away.
“Who are the street urchins?” he asks and she looks up at him with that mixture of annoyance and familiarity he knows so well.
“A group of nightblood children is coming here from the south,” she tells him. “We didn’t know about them. They’re the first few to arrive.”
“Are you sending them to Octavia?” Ever since re-integrating the thirteen clans to the ground, Clarke, Octavia and Niylah have been working on finding homes for her band of nightbloods. The children are passionate about not fighting in a conclave, and Niylah’s first chosen commitment in her role as ambassador is to prevent that situation from arising in their new society.
“We’ve spoken about them already.” She bites her lip. “We might have to put the oldest, Axis, with a skaikru family.”
“Why is that?” he asks, but he already knows.
iii.
It’s starting to get colder, and Emori knows she and John need to be packing up soon, traveling to warmer places, to the outskirts of various clans with goods from New Arkadia.
A few weeks before leaving, they sit around a fire with Raven, Harper, and Nathan. A strange thing about they way they’ve all transitioned out of youth; they’re quick to laugh at nearly anything. Nights like this are filled with laughter.
John is glancing over her shoulder and she turns around to see Niylah with five or six children from various clans.
“Those are the nightbloods I told you about,” he says, and she remembers the conversation from the night previous. “See that taller one, with the dark hair?”
She is taken aback. She hadn’t believed it. “And she’s a nightblood,” she says softly. Imagine that. She looks up and stares at Emori with her one eye, cautious. It must be strange, Emori thinks, to be both celebrated and hated for your blood. She waves with her left hand, making sure the child can see it.
Hesitantly, a grin breaks the girl’s face.
iv.
Murphy is pacing the next morning. Raven had given it to him the night before, while Emori was off talking to Axis, and it was heavy in his pocket. Literally.
Now is the time to do it, isn’t it?
Emori is still sleeping in the bed, one foot sticking out from under the blankets. Her hair will be thick with knots, and she’ll yawn herself awake soon and ask him if he’s making her breakfast.
He hears her stir. Still staring out the window, he takes a deep breath and dives in.
“When my people get married, they wear rings. On the second finger of their left hand.”
He can feel her watching him. Go on, the silence seems to say.
“I’ve been planning-- well. I didn’t want to give you a ring for your right hand. So I got you this.” He pulls it out of his pocket.
Emori slips out of bed and takes it from him, her dark eyes clouded in fascination and maybe some sleep still. “It’s beautiful,” she breathes.
Raven did a good job on it, and Emori is known for appreciating decent craftsmanship. The bracelet is thick pewter, engraved with patterns of leaves and flowers, and delicate chains lead to two smaller bracelets that can be clasped around her fused fingers.
“John,” she says, looking up at him, eyes brimming with something.
“So I guess I’m asking you to marry me. Or to teinawon with me,” he says, and the words are all a rush and she’s kissing them away, anyway.
“That’s not how you use that word,” she says when they part, and he laughs.
v.
After a month of marriage, Emori notices that she has stopped wearing her hand wrap. It only makes sense. The band she now wears across that hand deserves to be seen, to be appreciated for its beauty and meaning. John even has a similar one, a bracelet connected to a smaller wedding band, and her heart aches whenever she looks at it. She would have never thought she would have this. Not in a million lifetimes.
They stop back at New Arkadia after another month of travelling, and she sees Axis hiding under a table in Raven’s workroom.
“I see you have an apprentice,” Emori says and Raven sighs.
“She’s actually not bad at this stuff,” she tells her, “but I’m crap with kids. Hey. Get out from there,” she says sternly, and Axis only giggles, not budging an inch. Raven goes back to wiring the radio she’s working on and Emori crouches down.
“Is this where you live now?” Emori asks very seriously.
“Yes,” Axis says.
“How would…” Emori pauses and wonders if this was how John felt those few months ago. “Would you like a new home, Axis?”
“With you and Mopey?” she asks, because that’s what the nightblood kids have taken to calling John.
“Yes.” She and John had talked about this decision at length over the past few months. Neither of them felt particularly good at taking care of children, or taking care of anything really, but something about Axis fit. She hadn’t been allowed to be a person, as a child. She’d been born after praimfaya and had been intermittently revered for her blood and reviled for her deformity.
Sometimes, Emori wondered how her life would have turned out if every day hadn’t been a struggle to get to the next. The journey had taken her to John and she wouldn’t take back even a split-second of it, but she still wondered. Living with John, befriending his people, this had all lead her to reevaluate what a child’s life is supposed to be. Even in this new society, a frikdriena doesn’t have the same opportunities as other children, even one with dark blood.
Axis crawls out from under the table and dusts off her scabby knees. She shrugs, putting up a shield Emori is all too familiar with. “I guess,” she says.
“You guess?” Emori says, amused. The girl grins a little, and Emori suddenly remembers what she had told John about the rite of teinawon. How it can bind together a couple, or a family.
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay,” Emori repeats.
Summary: During the 5+ years aboard the Ark, Murphy stumbles into becoming the designated doctor.
(Or: The Space Squad struggles to survive on the Ring, and Murphy learns how to make friends.)
Relationships: John Murphy/Emori, Murphy & all of the Space Squad, background Marper and Bellarke
Chapter Summary: The algae farm team takes on a shitty job. Harper and Murphy share a breakdown.
Once again, tremendous thanks to @infernalandmortal for editing! She's the absolute best!
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Chapter 4: Hunger
During their second week aboard the Ring, Emori finds a small bag of seeds stashed away in one of the rooms, and, instead of taking them to the Supply Room with the rest of what she finds, she takes them straight to Monty.
Their possible food problem is sort of an open secret aboard the Ring. Neither Bellamy or Monty have officially announced it to anyone, but it seems to have passed through the group regardless. It lingers now, always, everywhere. Bellamy’s announcement that they were cutting food intake down to two rations a day had been met by everyone with trepidation, but not resistance.
Emori fidgets as Monty inspects the seeds. The skin of her forehead is bunched and wrinkled with worry, pinched tight between her dark eyebrows. “Will these grow more food?” she asks, and Murphy can hear the note of fear threaded through her otherwise calm voice, though he doubts Monty or Harper can pick up on it. Emori’s a master of hiding her emotions.
“It’s hard to tell,” Monty says. “’I’m not sure what plants they are, exactly, but it doesn’t make sense for anyone on the Ark to keep anything that isn’t edible.” He smiles up at Emori. “It will be good to have something to eat besides just the algae. Thank you.”
Emori gives him a half-smile, one corner of her mouth twitching up.
Great job. I love you, Murphy wants to say, because saying it out loud has become addicting in the last few days – maybe because of the way Emori smiles at him afterwards, and maybe because he never thought he was actually capable of it – but he feels self-conscious with Monty and Harper standing there. It’s not like it’s a secret that he loves Emori, but it still feels too intimate a moment to share with anyone else.
Instead, he gently grabs her hand as she walks by and squeezes it. “Great job,” he says, and she beams at him, leans forward to peck him on the lips, then leaves the room.
He watches her go, and when he turns back to the room, he sees Harper staring at him, her eyes narrowed, her gaze hot and piercing. It feels like he’s being dissected. He glances away awkwardly, letting his eyes fall to the floor. Murphy’s not sure what Harper sees, but, after a moment, she turns away from him without a word.
Monty hasn’t paid any attention to the two of them since Emori left. He’s deep in thought, his eyes focused on an empty corner of the room, glancing between it and the seeds in his hands. After a few minutes of silent contemplation, he looks up at the other two watching him expectantly.
“Can we plant those?” Murphy asks. “Because I’d personally love a backup in case the algae doesn’t grow.”
“Maybe,” Monty says slowly, the gears almost visibly turning in his head. He looks back at the empty corner. “But there’s a problem.” He falls quiet again.
Murphy sighs. “No need to drag out the suspense. Just tell us.”
Monty breathes in deeply, steadying himself. “Okay, there’s no garden set up in the Ring. We lucked out because the algae farm was already here, but we don’t currently have any way to grow these. We don’t have soil to plant them in.”
“So they’re useless,” Murphy concludes, and his body sags with resignation. Of course. Finding a new food option while their current plan is failing is just too good to be true, and the Ring seems determined to do everything it can to kill them. They’re just as fucked as they were the day before.
“Not necessarily,” Monty agues. His hands are clutching at the seeds, holding them tightly – preciously. Murphy perks up at that, and out of the corner of his eye, he can see Harper beside him grasp onto this kernel of hope, leaning towards Monty eagerly.
“Can we create a garden somehow?” she asks.
“We can,” Monty says, “but it won’t be easy.” He hesitates, biting at his lip, and Murphy braces himself for the hit. “We have to make manure with our waste.”
There’s silence. It seems anticlimactic for just a moment, and then it registers. “Okay, I’m not a great farmer,” Murphy says, “so I might not have understood you correctly. You’re suggesting we use our shit to grow our food?”
Monty shrugs. “We did it all the time in Farm Station.”
“Well, that’s one thing I could have lived forever without knowing,” Murphy jokes, but there isn’t much humor in it.
“The food grown in it is fine,” Monty assures him. “It’s just the farming that’s…” He pauses, and finally lets his features twist with disgust. Still, despite his grimace, he sounds only resigned as he adds, “Not fun.”
“Now I see why you put me on farm duty,” Murphy groans, running a hand through his hair. It’s starting to get too long, the ends falling into his eyes often enough to be annoying. “This is payback.”
“If that’s true, why am I here?” Harper asks, and her voice is light. It seems like a joke – and not one at Murphy’s expense. He glances at her, and he notices that her lips are quirked up into what might be considered a grin, even if she does seem as repulsed by Monty’s suggestion as Murphy is.
“I don’t know, McIntyre,” Murphy replies, grinning back. “It’d be rude to speculate about your relationship problems.”
He means it as a joke, but maybe it comes out more biting than he means it to, or just a little too mean to be funny, because Harper’s grin disappears, and her features sharpen once more.
“Dick,” she mutters, and it sounds like rejection – like a wall going up again. Well, he tried.
“So how do we do this,” Murphy asks, because hell, if it’s between dealing with shit or starving to death, Murphy knows which option he’s picking, even if his stomach does roll just at the thought of it.
“I don’t even know if it will work!” Monty exclaims, voice sharp and reedy, and it’s like he becomes a different creature in that moment, one frantic with worry and stress as opposed to his usual calm. His hands clench tight around the seeds. They’ve healed spectacularly well over the two weeks they’ve been here, and though they’re covered in rough, discolored patches of scar tissue, Monty seems to have no problem using them.
“There’s too many unknown variables,” he continues. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to compost without the composter from Farm Station, I don’t know what kind of seeds they are or how long they’ll take to grow – it could be just a few weeks or it could be over a month! And who knows if we’ll even be able to grow it here after we compost the manure - and I don’t even know if the algae is going to grow at all now that Raven’s fixed the heaters. These seeds could be an additional source of food once our rations run out or they could be our only option. I don’t know!”
Monty’s panic is terrifying. Up until now, he’s stayed outwardly calm in the face of every challenge, and Murphy realizes that he’s been using him subconsciously as a gauge for how fucked their food situation really is. If Monty’s panicking, things are worse than he thought.
Murphy’s not prepared to starve to death. He wasn’t prepared five months ago, and he certainly isn’t now.
“Monty,” Harper’s voice is like steel. It’s a firm and sturdy voice, like something that could weather a storm and stay standing, tall and strong. Murphy remembers the small, fragile girl with delicate features he met in the Skybox. Had she always been hiding a steely strength, or had the Earth ripped and pulled it out of her?
“What?” Monty snaps back, and it’s meant to sting.
Harper takes the hit, but doesn’t flinch. “Work with what you do know,” she says, voice steady.
Monty blinks at her, his panic fading slowly away. It's still visible in his eyes, but he no longer seems to be drowning within it. He opens up a drawer and places the bag of seeds carefully inside, then clutches the corners of the drawer and sags against it, letting it take his weight. “Okay,” he says, and already his voice sounds calmer. “Murphy, I need that tablet.”
Murphy hurries to go retrieve it from Medical. By the time he returns to the farm, Monty is once again a picture of calm determination. Harper stands beside him, one hand rubbing circles into his back. She pulls back as Murphy enters, giving Monty room to stand as he takes the tablet from him.
“Okay,” he says again, pulling open a program to write in, and Murphy makes a note to ask him how later so he can create an official inventory for Medical that isn’t just stored in his head. “If we all keep taking two rations a day,” he says aloud as he jots down numbers, “we’ll be out of food in 17 days. Even if the algae starts growing now, that’s cutting it pretty close, and it isn’t anywhere near enough time to compost the waste and let the seeds grow. Composting with the composter took three weeks – without it, I’m not sure, but we can try to build something similar and hopefully do it in about the same amount of time, adding, let’s say, five days to build it. The seeds will take three or four weeks to grow. Longer, if we’re unlucky.”
He does the math silently for a moment, then looks up. “We need to make it at least six more weeks on the rations we have. If nothing’s growing at that point, it doesn’t matter – we’re dead anyway. Bellamy said we have,” he pauses, eyes flicking up towards the ceiling momentarily as he thinks, “238 left as of today. If we go down to one ration a day for the seven of us, we’ll make it to five. But if we go down to one ration each every other day – or one half ration a day – we’ll make it almost 10. And since we won’t have to make it to 10, every few days we can have an additional ration to keep our strength up.”
He circles the final number, 68, with his finger, and the heavy weight of what he’s said settles over the room and its occupants.
“One ration every other day,” Murphy repeats slowly. “For six weeks.”
Monty nods, looking grim but determined. “And we pray the algae is ready in two.”
When Monty announces the plan to the group that night, the other Ark-born kids take the news with about the same level of concerned resignation as the algae farm team had. They’ve never had to ration so extremely before, but they’re no strangers to going hungry.
Murphy remembers a period of about a month when he was ten. A fungus had infected an entire crop of food, and the food supply dropped dangerously low. The entire Ark population had been forced down to one ration a day until the numbers were deemed safe – and even then, it had been a slow process working back up to the standard daily ration amounts.
He knows the other delinquents in the room remember that month as well as him, and though that wasn’t nearly as bad as what they’re planning now, the Ark has prepared them all for things like this.
Emori takes the news well. Her mouth tightens, and he sees her hand clench tight at her side, her nails biting white crescent moons into her skin, but she only nods, resolute and prepared and far too used to going hungry.
Echo, on the other hand, pales as Monty explains, her face drenched white with horror like it so often is with paint. Her eyes, wide and scared, flit around the group. Seeing their resignation, she tries to hide her own terror, but it slips through the cracks in her stony mask – in the sweat beading on her forehead, in the trembling of her body. Murphy can’t find it in himself to care much.
She’ll get used to it. Just like they’ve all had to.
Monty recruits Raven to help build the composter, since she’s taken care of most of the urgent, life-threatening problems aboard the Ring already. When she meets Monty and Murphy in the supply room, she still looks frazzled and slightly manic, worn thin with exhaustion. Her hair is no longer in its signature ponytail, but pulled back into a messy braid. It’s starting to shimmer in the lights, greasy and unwashed, just like the rest of them. It’s unusual to see her so unkempt and grimy, because even when she was slowly dying in the lab she’d looked clean and put together. It takes Murphy right back to the dropship – the two of them sitting beside each other, filthy, bloody, dying.
He shakes that thought away.
Raven and Monty pull pieces from the supply room – sheets of loose metal, spare nuts and bolts, even some tools – and Raven congratulates Emori on what she’s managed to scavenge from the Ring. Emori preens from where she stands in the corner, watching Raven and Monty move about with interest.
The supply room is impressive. Murphy’s been in it briefly once or twice, but he hasn’t paid much attention to the remarkable amount of work Emori, Echo, and Bellamy have put into it. There are racks and shelves pulled from various other rooms around the Ring and arranged in neat rows. Bellamy, with Echo’s help, has arranged the items Emori brings him into an organized system, complete with labels handwritten on duct-tape: metal, plastic, blankets, so on and so on.
Monty and Raven fill up Emori’s makeshift cart, and Murphy helps them drag the pile into the algae farm, over to an unused corner of the room, where they start unloading, laying the pieces out along the floor so they can see them all. Murphy and Harper stand off to the side, curious and anxious, but clueless as to what their resident mechanic and engineer are actually planning.
For the next few days, Harper and Murphy tend to the algae farm, watching carefully for any signs of growth and swallowing disappointment each time, while Raven and Monty start building something. Murphy isn’t quite sure what it is. It appears to be a cylindrical metal container on some kind of stand. Whenever he tries to ask for more of an explanation, Raven shoos him off testily. He remembers what Raven’s like in her anger – and how hard she can hit – and wisely stays out of their way.
Instead, he goes to Medical, using the program Monty used to create a written inventory of their supplies. Afterwards, he thinks of the supply room, of Bellamy’s careful organization, and takes Bellamy the list.
Bellamy is surprised when Murphy hands him the tablet and explains what he’s done. As he reads, his eyebrows lift up high on his forehead. Echo watches them from where she’s stacking odds and ends on a shelf.
“This is good work,” Bellamy tells him. Murphy lifts his chin with pride, feels himself standing just a bit taller. Damn right it is, he thinks.
“We’ve already had two injuries,” he says instead. “Figured it’d be good to actually keep track.”
“It is,” Bellamy agrees with a nod. He glances back down at the list of items, mouth twisting like he’s eaten something sour. “It’s not much. We’ll have to be careful.”
Murphy leaves the tablet with Bellamy so he can add his items to it – one massive inventory of what they have available to them for the next five years – and turns to leave.
“Hey, Murphy,” Bellamy calls as he nears the door, and he turns his head to look back over his shoulder at him, raising an eyebrow. “Good job.”
Thank you, he thinks, but doesn’t say. I’m more useful than you thought, huh? comes next, but he swallows that one back down too.
Just like last time, Murphy hates the stupid part of him that perks up at Bellamy’s praise and flutters excitedly in his chest. The younger him – from what feels like lifetimes ago, but is just months – would have given anything for Bellamy’s praise. Now that he has it, Murphy finds he doesn’t want it.
The person he is now, after everything, doesn’t have to rely on Bellamy to make him something worthwhile or impressive like he’d once thought the older man could – he can do that for himself. He has done that for himself.
After everything Earth’s thrown at him, Murphy finds he’s not as impressed with Bellamy Blake as he once was.
Besides, he can’t let go of the hanging. It feels both like ages ago and just yesterday. And two weeks ago is a fresher wound – in the bunker with Bellamy’s arms tight around his neck, unearthing every single screaming fear and nightmare of suffocation from where he’d stuffed them away in his head. And Bellamy – unconcerned. Unrepentant.
Murphy’s not sure he even wants his friendship, anymore, if it were offered.
“Just trying to help keep us all alive,” he says dryly.
The walls are looming as he leaves. The air seems thinner. Murphy focuses on breathing.
Monty and Raven, when determined, work fast. They finish the composter on day three, well before Monty’s estimate. They’ve moved it out of the algae farm and into an unused room, on the more secluded side of the Ring, far away from everything else.
It’s the second day they’ve had to go without food completely. Murphy feels empty and weak. His stomach growls frequently with angry want. In his head, he compares it to a black hole, because he remembers learning about them years and years ago, and it seems that starving is making him poetic.
“Ta-da,” Raven says when Harper and Murphy arrive. Her voice is listless, even though her eyes are bright with triumph. Her hair is starting to fall out of its braid again, the free strands clumping together with sweat and grime.
“It’ll work?” Harper asks.
“Hopefully,” Monty says, which isn’t tremendously reassuring, but probably as good as they’re going to get. “But now comes the fun part,” he adds, voice thick with sarcasm.
“And that’s my cue to leave,” Raven jokes, but again her voice is flat, the humor tempered with exhaustion and hunger. “Have fun, guys.”
What follows is one of the worst things Murphy’s ever had to do – topped only by surviving physical torture and very nearly starving to death once already. He thinks it’s only the cockroach in him that helps him get through it.
The toilet on the Ring stores their waste in vacuum-sealed bags. After two weeks, and between the seven of them, there’s a decent number of bags. The three of them gather them up and take them to the room with the composter.
They have little to protect themselves from the smell, but they’ve tried to do the best they can with strips of blankets tied securely over their noses as makeshift masks.
It’s not enough. When they cut open the bags and begin dumping them into the composter, the smell is nearly overwhelming. Murphy gags, bile rising in his throat, and he watches Harper hold her breath, cheeks puffed out almost comically despite the situation.
It’s awful, unpleasant work. Murphy’s stomach rises and crashes in constant waves of nausea, and he nearly throws up several times. He’s not sure what would come up if he did, since his aching stomach reminds him it’s already digested everything he fed it yesterday. Bile, maybe?
The whole process seems to take hours, despite how quickly they work. When Monty finally slams the composter hatch closed, and motions towards the door, Murphy nearly cries with relief. The machine begins spinning with an awful, clunky hum as the three of them rush out of the room, nearly tripping over themselves in their haste. Murphy makes it out first, and, as soon as Harper and Monty follow him out into the hallway, he slams the door closed to keep the smell from escaping to the rest of the Ring. It’s obvious now why they’ve used a room so far from everything else.
The stale, recycled – but thankfully, not malodorous – air of the Ring hallway is a relief, and the three of them take in large, gulping breaths. Murphy yanks at the strip of cloth around his face, and, when that only pulls the knot tighter, wrestles it up over his head, tossing it to the ground. He swears the smell sunk into the fabric at some point.
“That,” he says, the word a sharp, harsh sound, “was fucking awful,” and there is a moment of unvoiced agreement as they all ruminate on that statement, on the past couple hours of work, and, frankly, on the past two weeks aboard the Ring – every minute of which has been a continuing nightmare of uncertain survival.
The composter churns on behind them, the monstrous humming muffled from the door.
“I can’t get the smell out of my nose,” Harper says suddenly, and her voice is strained. It takes Murphy a moment to realize it’s on the verge of hysterical laughter. “I think it’s burned in there.”
There’s a beat of silence. Then Murphy starts laughing, because the whole situation is ridiculous, and, after everything, they might still starve to death, and honestly, what the hell else can he do?
The other two stare at him in surprise. Then Harper dissolves into hysterical giggles. She moves to bury her face in her hands, then immediately thinks better of it and throws them out in front of her, as far from her nose as she can manage.
“That was awful,” she says. “Just – god – just, awful. Float me. “
“Fuck this stupid space station,” Murphy gasps out between laughs. It feels good to say. He says it again. “Fuck this stupid, fucking space station.”
They make a weird duet together, with their slightly manic laughter – Harper’s high-pitched, airy giggles and Murphy’s booming laughs. Monty watches them silently, and Murphy wonders if he thinks they’ve lost their minds. Hell, if they have lost their minds.
They deserve a breakdown or two, he thinks. After everything.
“I don’t know how I’m going to eat anything that grows in that,” Harper says as her giggles taper off. She continues to hold her hands out in the air in front of her. “I’m just going to keep thinking of this.”
“I’d eat anything right now,” Murphy says, honestly. His stomach feels achy and hollow, and its only day four.
“Even shit food?” Monty asks dryly. It comes out muffled from the blanket still covering his face.
Murphy snorts a laugh at that, but it’s not the half-deranged laughter of just a minute ago. “Yeah, even shit food,” he agrees.
A weird feeling settles in the hallway. It’s not quite victorious, since nothing about what they’ve just done feels at all victorious, but it is something. It’s fighting back, at the very least, against the thing that keeps trying to kill them. This gives them another chance. It might even give them five more years.
Murphy had never really thought of the delinquents as a team, and certainly not one he was a part of. As he regards the three of them in the hallway, all starving and hungry and disgusting in equal parts, he can’t help but think of them as one.
Even if it doesn’t work, they’ve fought back. And they’ve done it together. He thinks maybe it's easier to survive as part of a team.
[Post 3.02: Wanheda, Murphy and Emori’s adventures on the road are chronicled as they grow to mean the world to each other, featuring stealing, making out, disclosure of feelings, and other shenanigans.]
“I’ll scare your ghosts away, then,” he says, not uncomfortable, but not comfortable either, and desperate for a subject change.
“And I’ll scare away yours.”
It seems Emori has the unique talent of catching him speechless. Never for long, of course, but still.
“Okay,” he says, because it kinda feels like they're making a pact.
“Okay,” she agrees with a little breath that might be a laugh.
Summary: Post Rubicon, Emori doesn’t quite know how to feel about stealing from skaikru.
“It was an easy con, Emori, what are you so rattled?” Otan asks and it’s clear that she won’t be able to brush off his questions this time. But the problem is that it was an easy con, and she can’t help but wish that it had been harder, had dragged on a little longer.
Knot tying is easy and familiar, and the thing with which Emori focuses on so she doesn’t ruminate on the last couple of hours. The reins of the horse that she calls Gappie, but that Otan refuses to name, are familiar in her hands, as are the handles of the cart. She needs familiarity right now, needs the imprint on the handle that’s worn down to shape of her hand, and the smell of the leather tethers.
“It’s good,” she says to Otan in their language, and he kicks the horse forward. She has to step over John’s arm where it’s limp on the ground before she can hop into the cart, and for a moment she thinks she can see it twitch.
As Otan guides the horse she watches the members of skaikru, ostensibly to make sure they don’t make any attempts to follow, but really she just has her eyes on John. Jaha is kneeling over him now, trying to wake him, but they turn a corner around a dune before she can see if he was successful.
“What’s wrong?” Otan asks, the concern in his voice more in relation to his distrust of the people they’ve just robbed and less in regards to her personal well-being. Before the con he had quite a few qualms, considering how unfamiliar they were with skaikru, and she knows that he probably trusts them less than any one of the clans simply for their unpredictability. That shouldn’t be surprising of course, Otan hates change, hates anything that’s new. She’s glad she doesn’t have to explain how different skaikru are; she doesn’t yet quite know herself how to feel about them.
“Nothing,” she responds easily, although it is of course untrue. She keeps waiting to feel the swell of satisfaction that comes from a good con, but it doesn’t come. Her mouth just tastes like sand.
“Emori…” Otan presses because he knows her too well.
“We should stop soon, take inventory,” she interrupts. Otan turns over his shoulder to look at her, but she only rolls her eyes at his prodding concern.
They stop as she suggests shortly after. There isn’t much tech, although nearly every pack has a gun in it, but there’s plenty of food and water, more than enough to last a couple more weeks and their journey out of the Dead Zone.
Emori splits one of the rations for Otan and her to share for their meal, and Otan is reaching for a canteen when she recognizes it as the one she had drank out of earlier that day.
“Can I have that one?” she asks, more eager than she had meant to. Otan glances at her with confusion, as he has since they reunited, but he hands it over regardless.
“It was an easy con, Emori, what are you so rattled?” Otan asks and it’s clear that she won’t be able to brush off his questions this time. But the problem is that it was an easy con, and she can’t help but wish that it had been harder, had dragged on a little longer.
“I didn’t think that there are people like that,” she says.
“People like what?”
Emori shrugs, trying to explain it to herself and to Otan at the same time.
“They were just so different,” Emori finally settles on. “It was something new, exciting.”
“All people are the same,” Otan says, and he’s right, and she agrees, has no doubt that if she had stuck around a bit longer they would have shunned her too, but that doesn’t change the way John hadn’t so much as flinched when she showed him her hand.
“There was a boy,” she adds, “I liked him.”
She expects Otan to berate her, but instead he looks at her like he finally understands the itch she’s felt on the inside of her chest since she denied Jaha’s offer to work together.
“But it doesn’t matter because I’ll never see him again,” she says. The sandy taste in her mouth persists, so she opens the canteen and drinks the last of John’s water.
vaguely based on ‘story of your life’ by ted chiang
starring: yet more bitter season one/two murphy!
Memori week day five: angst
Murphy calls the visions dream-memories, because they’re as bizarre and alien and fucked up as dreams, but they feel familiar when they come to him. Slightly faded and worn along the edges or something.
It first happens after he tries to hang Bellamy. He’s running away from camp so swiftly that he thinks he must be delirious. He can taste the blood and sweat in his mouth and behind him, Bellamy and Jasper watch his departure, likely dismissing him as a threat, dismissing him in general. He doesn’t know what to do with this crumpled up violence in his chest so he runs and runs and...
And then the dream-memory emerges from the corner of his mind.
(He’s back on the Ark but it feels dusty. Empty. A woman stands next to him and he can tell from how she’s standing that she does this a lot.
“John,” she says (who the fuck even calls him that), and he can read a million words into that one. She’s looking at stars, not the rotating marble of ground below. “How long would it take to get to one of them?” she asks.
“A hell of a long time,” he says, dream-him, and their hands slide together and entwine.)
The memory ends and he’s aware of his surroundings again. He is running. He is running.
(full story under cut)
finifugal
Murphy calls the visions dream-memories, because they’re as bizarre and alien and fucked up as dreams, but they feel familiar when they come to him. Slightly faded and worn along the edges or something.
It first happens after he tries to hang Bellamy. He’s running away from camp so swiftly that he thinks he must be delirious. He can taste the blood and sweat in his mouth and behind him, Bellamy and Jasper watch his departure, likely dismissing him as a threat, dismissing him in general. He doesn’t know what to do with this crumpled up violence in his chest so he runs and runs and...
And then the dream-memory emerges from the corner of his mind.
(He’s back on the Ark but it feels dusty. Empty. A woman stands next to him and he can tell from how she’s standing that she does this a lot.
“John,” she says (who the fuck even calls him that), and he can read a million words into that one. She’s looking at stars, not the rotating marble of ground below. “How long would it take to get to one of them?” she asks.
“A hell of a long time,” he says, dream-him, and their hands slide together and entwine.)
The memory ends and he’s aware of his surroundings again. He is running. He is running.
---
When the next dream-memory hits him, he is shivering in a cluster of trees, bleeding and alone (for now). He’ll be damned if the grounders catch him again, or if he crawls back to camp in seek of whatever benevolent execution Clarke has in store for him.
(And then he sees it in his mind-- he’s tripping along the trees with that woman, who happens to be as quick as an arrow. She’s a grounder, he realizes now, noting the pattern etched onto her face and her easy, violent familiarity with her surroundings. He follows barely behind, their hands clasped again. Some sort of warm bullshit clouding his veins.
“Shh,” she says and brings the both of them to a halt. And then, “Go now. As still as you can.” She kisses him on the mouth, as though to bolster him, and grins something sharp with her eyes, which have some cruelty in them but also laughter. Well. Then.
Obediently, he curls up in the middle of a bare dirt path. Footsteps approach.)
---
He doesn’t know what to make of the dream-memories. They flood him at the worst possible times and it’s like he’s losing whatever fragment of sanity he has left.
He’s back at the fucking dropship and in front of him, Raven is bleeding. He is bleeding too. Are they are a point where causation doesn’t matter? Knowing his luck, probably not. He did this. A stirring of blame in his gut, nauseating and stubborn. He’s too weak to push it away.
When it comes down to it, Murphy hates the messes people are inside. Psychologically, that is. The blood and guts are startling, but honest. All violence does is let that ugly soup spill out. Still.
(Looking at Raven, he suddenly sees it or dreams it or remembers it: Raven, speaking to the woman from the other visions. The woman is on a table, some sort of indifferent steel medical bed.
“They’re gone,” Raven hesitantly tells the woman, who is sitting up on the table and rubbing her arms with her hands. And in the dream, Murphy is brimming with rage, a more refined kind of rage than he’s used to, something focused on the hurt in the woman’s eyes. The vulnerability.
She turns to him and touches his cheek shakily. The hand she uses is bizarre and beautiful and he presses it to his face, feeling his eyes well up, the feeling her warmth on his skin overwhelming.)
---
As he tries to play nice with the assholes at Camp Jaha, he’s haunted by the memories that haven’t happened with this woman he doesn’t know and it stops being a weird annoyance, or a sign that he’s going off the deep end. It’s too much.
It’s too present.
He sees the curves of her face flame-lit, graced by shadows, and feels the ashes on his lips and hers. Bullshit, how soft he feels, and how intermittently soft and rough her skin is, searing the tips of his fingers.
He remembers fucking on a pile of furs-- a feeling like a pulling in his chest, like something opening.
He thinks of meeting her for the first time, her skin rough and warm in the desert, and feels with memory’s dimmed sensation the cool metal of her knife and betrayal.
One night, he listens to a story she tells him, up in the quietness of space. She is restless, and he is hurting with a kind of helplessness, a trapped, aching feeling.
“Emori,” he says, “it’ll be soon, okay? Just an extra year. Raven’s almost done, you know that.”
She glances at him sharply and then quiets her energy and sits on his lap. They are on a bed, in a room on the Ark that is clearly theirs. His arms automatically curl around her, his fingers playing with the soft underside of her elbow.
“Did I ever tell you about the month he locked us up?” she says. Her voice is rich with pain. Like a voice filled with blood and all that shit life has trapped deep inside of it and he wants to wrap his hands tight around the neck of whoever made her feel like this, the Murphy of the dream does and so does the Murphy of the now, who is sleepless at Camp Jaha, listening to the grounders call for Finn’s surrender.
In his dream-memory, she is weeping. He has never held something so fucking gently in his entire life.
---
He joins Jaha on his fool’s mission because running is what he excels at. He never excelled at anything in space except setting shit on fire, and that was probably all because there was nowhere to run.
When his supercilious leader tells them to set up camp the first night, more memories flat his way. Roasting a rat over a fire with Emori. Watching her spacewalk with Raven, her face full of fascination with the slow, inane movements. Bickering with her in a cave, putting a barricade over his heart, tearing it down.
One of the nights, as they approach the desert, he envisions being in a ship with her, a small one. For some reason Bellamy is there, and so is Raven, and Monty, and Harper, and another woman he doesn’t recognize. But Emori is next to him and she could be the only person there for all he cares.
“Soon,” she says, the word rich with promise. She meets his eyes and the warmth in them mixes with a nervousness, and he knows he feels the same.
“Yeah,” he says, kissing the top of her head. She smiles at him and the ship is descending now, and he feels a sudden twisting in his gut, like he already knows--
---the landing is jagged and rough and he is screaming at Raven, at Monty, at fucking anyone, and his hand is tightly clasped around Emori’s still and where did the time go? so much time and no, he’s not letting go, absolutely not, and he pulls her out of the burning vessel as Harper and Raven pull out the others. They are on the ground now, they are on the ground, they’re here, they’re--
“Emori,” he says and the bite of air and smoke furls around him and goddammit no this does not get to happen, life doesn’t allow them to survive this far only to--
And he is saying, “Emori, we’re here, we’re here, just breathe. Come on, Emori, please, we’re…” and his words stop turning into words and everything is the body he’s holding, unmoving, unbreathing, small, bones as thin as paper--
And he wakes up in the desert, screaming into the ground.
---
They’re approaching the border of the desert, the Dead Zone, as Jaha calls it. In the early morning, after getting cursed out by the rest of the travellers, Murphy paces along, his few possessions slung over his shoulder and his breath sporadic. The panic is still there, coursing through his blood, telling him to move, to outrun this, whatever it is.
Because he doesn’t have to meet her.
He doesn’t have to discover the softness, the whatever between moments. He doesn’t have to grow to actually give a shit about someone only to have them ripped away, reduced to a dying thing and then a death, more crap in a life filled to the brim with absolute crap.
Because who gave life that fucking right?
Murphy’s fate is his own. He could turn away from these memories or dreams or whatever the hell they are and whatever the hell they mean and run back toward Camp Jaha, run and run and run and never come back.
(And then comes a cruel memory, a small one from the Ark: “I have nothing but shitty memories of this place.”
So she kisses him gently on the cheek and says, “Let’s make some sweet ones.” The glint in her eyes could blind the stars.)
---
In an hour, Murphy’s knees ache. He is shaking with rage at himself. Each step hurts more than the last but he keeps moving and he must be completely gone, there must be nothing in him that makes sense anymore because he doesn’t care about things making sense anymore.
There’s only one thing he cares about.
Murphy’s travelling companions don’t pay his moods any mind, and he says nothing as he walks through the sand, step by fucking step, towards the seemingly abandoned cart.
He has someone to meet.
