I’m so sorry for leaving this for so long! Thanks for asking!
27 - Rank the seasons 1-7.
I think I already answered this one, but I honestly can’t remember my ranking and I’m too lazy to scroll back and find it. Let’s do it again! No explanations!
1st - Season 2
2nd - Season 5
3rd - Season 3
4th - Season 1
5th - Season 4
6th - Season 7
7th - Season 6
It’s amazing to me, what an outlier season 5 was. I remember hating it when it first aired, but now I love it. Maybe it’s just because I knew how bad it was gonna get.
34 - List five characters who deserved better!
I just answered this, but for fun I’ll list five more, because this is a show that featured a lot of characters who deserved better:
okay pls stick around until the end bc I talk about Things and get sappy about this fic but @bombshellsandbluebells thank you thank you for editing this and loving this and not judging me for flinging chapters that only make a little sense into the void (this is what I get for not doing an outline lmao). I’m v blessed to have you in my life
@maelidpoetree , @sarcasticdebate , you guys have written such LOVELY reviews that I still re-read and get emotional about to this day. Thank you for that, and also for convincing me to not delete Litany those two times. Much much much love
And to everyone else who has loved, read, MADE PLAYLISTS AND EDITS FOR (omg) and supported this fic, thank you. I’m always astounded at the responses to things I write. It’s humbling. <3
(the fic is also on ao3)
I have told you where I’m coming from, so put it together.
We clutch our bellies and roll on the floor . . .
When I say this, it should mean laughter,
not poison.
I want more applesauce. I want more seats reserved for heroes.
Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.
Quit milling around the yard and come inside.
Emori’s glass ornament catches the light from her window and casts beams of cool sunshine in fractures on the hallway wall. Murphy follows those beams to her doorway late on Christmas morning.
He watches as her smaller fingers caress the small delicate etchings there and smiles when he sees the fingers on her larger hand peeking out from the sleeve of her red and green sweater. She doesn’t cover it that often now, and he’s glad; his deep affection for the appendage has never wavered, and he likes seeing it out in the open every now and again, a sign of the comfort she’s found here.
Murphy watches her for another moment before knocking on her open door. She turns. Her hair is messy. She’s wearing the most hideous Christmas sweater he’s ever seen - bright red and green with tiny ornaments hooked into the neckline. He doesn’t have to touch her skin to know it’s warm, from both sleep and sun, and maybe some excitement too, if her flushed cheeks are telling the truth.
“Merry Christmas,” she says softly, a hesitant smile wrinkling the corner of her mouth. “Like my sweater?”
Murphy can’t help but laugh. “It’s...something.”
“Jasper gave it to me,” she says by way of explanation. “He, Monty and Octavia have matching ones.”
“Of course they do,” he grumbles, imagining the look on Raven’s face when she sees, and how Bellamy’s probably going to bust a nut. He must smirk at the thought, because Emori snorts and gives him a tiny smile. “What?”
“Nothing.” She shakes her head. Her hair swishes around her face, and a few strands of it catch on the ornaments on her neckline. “Damn, that’s going to get annoying.”
“Here, let me,” he says, reaching for her hair at the same time she does. Her hands fall back into place as she lets him smooth the hair back.
“Thanks,” she murmurs. Her eyes flick down to his mouth, then back up again. He thinks about saying thought that was my move, but bites his tongue, knowing he might get sucker-punched for it. He’s still not sure where they stand with one another, not after what he did and said, or after their small reconciliation the day after Thanksgiving.
She grins up at him, and suddenly it doesn’t matter. “Hey,” she says conspiratorially, “want to pull a prank?”
Of course he does.
They sneak downstairs and quietly divest the space under the tree of every gift underneath. They hide each wrapped package somewhere in the house; the more obscure, the better. Murphy is immensely proud of himself for thinking to hide his gift to Bellamy on the roof, right behind the chimney, and Raven’s in the oven.
“I hid Monty’s inside the couch,” Emori whispers to him as they scamper back up the stairs. Her eyes are shining with mischief. Murphy wonders if she ever pranked Otan. He also wonders if she’s ever had a Christmas the “traditional” way, but can’t think of a way to ask that wouldn’t be rude. Hey, at least he cares. It’s a start.
They stay in his room until the house wakes up. She walks around and reads the papers on his walls; he sits in his desk chair and watches her move carefully around the small space. Strands of her hair stick to the fuzz of her sweater. She looks warm; she radiates happiness. It’s a good look on her.
He shakes himself out of his snappiness just in time for Octavia’s door to bang open. “Merry Christmas, bitches!” she shouts, yelping as Lexa groans and probably throws something at her head. “Let’s get this bread!”
“Let’s get this- what?” Emori asks, adorably confused.
Murphy laughs and stands up. “Don’t ask. Come on, let’s go see the fruits of our labor.”
They make it downstairs just in time to hear the crunching of Bellamy’s tires on the snow outside and the roar of Zeke’s motorcycle. Murphy holds up one hand, counting down from five on his fingers. When he gets to one, Emori grins as Bellamy hollers, “What the hell?!”
“Nailed it,” Emori singsongs. Murphy snorts.
The door bangs open and Bellamy sticks his head in. “You put my present on the damn roof?!” he shouts.
Murphy grins impishly. “What makes you think it was me?”
Raven opens the oven door, then throws her hands up in exasperation. “Seriously, Murphy? Again?”
“It was my idea,” Emori says, her eyes laughing but her face straight. Raven rolls her eyes, but there’s a smile there that tells Murphy she’s just glad the two of them are working together on something.
Murphy snorts as Monty jumps up to retrieve a package hidden atop the microwave. Emori blinks at him. “Wait… Raven said ‘again’...”
“Oh yeah.” Murphy tilts his head and smiles. “I may or may not have done this last year.”
Emori smirks. “And here I thought I was original.”
Bellamy stomps into the kitchen, tracking snow on the tile. Raven squawks and swats him with a kitchen towel, but he ignores her. “Whatever this is,” he says, holding a damp package aloft, “I don’t want it.”
“You say that now,” Emori singsongs, then leans over to whisper in Murphy’s ear, “It’s a book. He’s going to love it. And I wrapped it in plastic, anyway.”
Bellamy peels off said plastic and drops it in the sink. As Jasper, Monty, Octavia and Lexa clatter down the stairs, he rips off the soggy paper and gives Emori a soft smile. “Thank you,” he says, holding the book up so she can see the cover, even though she’s the one who gave it to him. “I love it.”
Murphy’s heart warms when Emori grins. “I knew it!” she cheers to herself quietly, pumping her fist, a gesture no doubt learned from Monty.
The rest of the house starts ripping into presents too; Raven throws the crow-printed socks Murphy gave her at his head, Lexa races to the kitchen to pour orange juice into her “Classy, Sassy and a Little Smart-Assy” mug from Octavia, and Emori wraps herself up in the massive knitted scarf Murphy found at a street market in the city.
“This is the best present I’ve ever gotten, John,” she says, her smile as warm as the wool wrapped around her neck. “Thank you.”
Murphy’s heart feels like it’s going to leap out of his chest. “You’re welcome.”
When she leans forward to peck him on the cheek, he flinches forward and to the side ever-so-slightly and their lips touch for a brief moment. Monty wolf-whistles and Jasper cheers while Emori covers her mouth with her smaller hand and blinks shyly at him.
“I’m sorry-“ he stammers, but Emori leans forward again, throwing her arms around his shoulders and kissing him soundly on the mouth. “Oh.”
“Get it, J!” Raven yells while Lexa groans something about straight people being unable to control themselves.
“Merry Christmas, John,” Emori whispers. She gets to her feet, scarf still wrapped around her shoulders, and pads to the kitchen in search of coffee, leaving a stunned Murphy and his delighted friends behind.
Breakfast and lunch are haphazard affairs since everyone agreed they’d rather save room for the massive dinner Bellamy, Murphy and Zeke are preparing. Zeke shows up around noon, bearing bags full of groceries and presents. Luna follows him a moment later, Costia in tow. Lexa looks delighted, if not a little terrified, to see her surrogate older sister commiserating with her girlfriend.
“Relax,” Murphy tells her. “This could end really well for you.”
“Or really poorly,” Lexa mutters, eyeing Luna. “Luna’s a straight shooter. She could scare Cos away if she doesn’t approve.”
“My kind of woman,” Murphy remarks, yelping when Raven smacks him upside the head. “Ow?!”
“Your kind of woman is over there, and she’s the jealous type,” Raven says, pointing a thumb at Emori, who’s standing on the kitchen counter, digging around in the cabinet.
“Not jealous,” Emori calls over her shoulder, “Just possessive.”
Lexa wiggles her eyebrows. Raven rolls her eyes, and Luna laughs into her coffee cup.
Bellamy starts to get agitated around three when the roast for dinner isn’t cooking right. Murphy tries to help - it is his crockpot, after all - but quickly gets derailed when he realizes the kitchen is not big enough for all three cooks.
“Sorry, man,” he says to Zeke, whose efforts to shimmy behind Murphy failed after Murphy stepped back, almost whacking Raven’s almost-boyfriend in the head in the process.
“Oh no, no, you’re fine,” Zeke says, quick-stepping over Bellamy’s leg and putting a pan on the counter.
“What did you just say?” Raven calls from the living room, where she’s trying to install the new coding software Bellamy got her for Christmas.
“I said he was fine,” Zeke says.
“How Midwestern of you,” Costia remarks drily.
Zeke raises an eyebrow at her. “How did you know?”
“It’s easy to tell,” she says. “You say words funny.”
Raven hoots. Zeke groans and disappears into Raven’s room, where they’re storing all their coats. After a moment, Raven goes to join him.
“Have fun, Reyes,” Murphy calls after her.
“Fuck straight off, Murphy,” she replies. Emori whistles. When her eyes meet Murphy’s, she stands up.
“John, I forgot to give you your card,” she says. Murphy carefully picks his way across the crowded kitchen and dining room to reach her. She hands him a small envelope, then disappears upstairs before he can even break the seal.
The card’s printed sentiment is lame, but her written words aren’t. To his surprise and embarrassment, Murphy can’t help but blink back some tears as he reads. If anyone notices, they know better than to comment.
John,
Christmas is supposed to be a time for family, but my family isn’t here this year. I thought I would be heartbroken, but I’m not. You are my family, and so is Raven and everyone else. I’m not good at this sappy shit - clearly, since I wrote a swear word in a Christmas card - but I’m going to try.
When I answered Raven’s ad, I had no idea the love and safety you all would bring into my life. Thank you for your part in that. Thank you for loving me how you are able to, and thank you for trying to love me better by loving yourself. I see you, and I love you.
Merry Christmas, John. Never forget how loved you are, by me and everyone else.
-Em
During dinner, they sit at the dining room table and on the floor in the living room, spreading their Christmas Eve feast over end tables and folding chairs that no one wants to sit on for some reason. Murphy sits at the table elbow-to-elbow with Raven and Emori; Zeke and Bellamy sit across from them. Monty, Jasper, Lexa, Octavia and Costia sprawl on the floor, while Luna and Echo take over the couch. Raven tries to play music two separate times - “It’s for the Ambiance,” Octavia says, and Murphy just knows the capital A is implied - but the noise coming from all corners of the house renders that effort more chaotic than mood-setting.
Murphy keeps sneaking glances at Emori. Her eyes shine with excitement and delight as she takes a massive serving of Zeke’s now-famous corn casserole. She grins when Raven starts roasting Bellamy for only getting books for Christmas. She even smiles at Murphy once or twice, which sends his heart rate through the ceiling.
Echo finishes first and starts in on the dishes. Bellamy follows, brushing her shoulder with his hand as he leans past her to start drying plates. Murphy watches them over his shoulder, the confidence in their movements, the ease with which they exist in one another’s space. When he turns back to face the table, he locks eyes with Emori and sees his longing and jealousy mirrored there.
Time slows down in the moments between clearing his plate and ending up in Emori’s room. Somehow he ends up at her bedroom door looking at her back, braced against the window frame, her legs swinging over the window’s edge, hair blowing in the cold West Virginia wind. It’s a mirror of this morning’s moment, or maybe an inversion, since her back is to him in this instance, though her face is turned upward.
“I never had a Christmas like this,” he hears her say to the wind. He steps inside her room but doesn’t shut the door. “With people and presents and noise and happiness.”
“Was it- Did you like it?” He winces at his own verbal ineptitude.
She nods, sniffs and looks over her shoulder. Her eyes glitter in the pale light from the hall. “Come sit with me,” she says softly, beckoning with her smaller hand.
When he’s comfortably seated with his head leaning against the window frame, his body snug between it and Emori’s legs, she rests her forehead on his shoulder and speaks to his upper arm. “I miss you.”
The distance between him is his own doing. The ache in his chest is, too. “I’m sorry.”
How do I cross the line between us? he wants to ask, but doesn’t want to come off either dramatic or desperate, even though he is both, just by nature.
“Thank you for your card,” he says softly. He turns, rests his chin atop her head, and resists the urge to press a kiss atop it. “It meant a lot.”
“I meant it.” Her voice is muffled. She doesn’t look up at him, but he can feel the wrinkle of her forehead through his sweater.
“You okay?”
She lifts her head. There’s a look in her eyes, equal parts caged animal and hesitant human. “If I let you in, you can’t hurt me. I won’t let you.”
Murphy takes a deep breath. Here, on his side of the drawn line, there is everything he is ashamed of. On her side, there is the smile in her voice when she speaks to him and the soft way she says his given name.
“I can’t promise I won’t hurt you,” he says slowly. “But I won’t try to.”
Emori smiles, sudden and blinding. She turns to face him, shifting so she’s straddling the windowsill. The ornaments on her God-awful sweater glint and tap together as she moves.
“Okay.” She kisses him on the cheek, then the nose. He grins. “Let’s start over.”
Murphy leans forward and presses his lips to hers, a proper kiss this time. When she laughs against his mouth, his chest expands. Then he’s the one who laughs as he remembers a line from a particular Christmas movie.
“What?” she asks, pulling away. And then Raven’s voice sounds from the doorway, where she’s leaning against the frame, looking as self-satisfied as he’s ever seen her.
“‘And the Grinch’s small heart’,” she quotes dramatically, a shit-eating grin wide on her face, “‘grew three sizes that day’.”
Emori howls with laughter. The foot dangling from the window kicks in the air. Murphy reaches for the nearest pillow near the foot of Emori’s bed and chucks it at Raven, who shrieks and limps downstairs. Murphy catches up to her by sliding down the bannister and tosses the couch’s blanket over her head, then proceeds to tickle her in the stomach until she goes to her knees, laughing and wheezing and pushing a worried Zeke away.
Murphy looks up after pulling the blanket off Raven’s head and locks eyes with Emori, who hovers at the top of the stairs, one hand on the bannister, one hand on the first step down. It’s a mirror of a moment during her first day at home: her hesitant eyes, Murphy and Raven on the couch, his nonchalant “you can come down.”
An invitation, he thinks. A request, maybe, and certainly an assurance that no matter where he is, she belongs. That no matter where she is, he is wanted.
“You can come down,” he says to her quietly. She takes a step down. Behind him, Zeke helps Raven to her feet.
“You can come down,” Murphy says to her again, remembering waiting at the bottom of the stairs on their first date, awestruck at her beautiful dress and the warmth in her cheeks.
Emori’s feet hit the floor beside him. She slings her arm around his shoulder and he reaches up to play with the long fingers of her left hand. While watching Monty, Raven and Zeke make a nest on the couch to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas, Murphy presses a kiss to every part of her hand he can reach.
“Dear Forgiveness,” he hears her murmur, almost to herself, in that casual, thoughtful way, “I saved a place for you. Quit milling around the yard and come inside.”
She kisses him on the cheek, disentangles herself from him, and goes to sit beside Raven, squealing when the other girl’s cold feet make contact with her bare ankles. Murphy watches them all, lit by the kitchen light and the glow of the TV, and wonders if it’s possible for a heart to break from happiness.
If it is, he supposes, as he leans his forearms against the couch inches from Raven’s head, he’ll gladly handle this kind of heartbreak now until forever.
Yeet yeet babey we did it
The end of this story is bittersweet for me in a strange way. I started writing Litany during a time in my life where I was not doing well, mentally, physically or emotionally. This story became a strange form of catharsis, a way for me to access the dark things in me and process them through the eyes of a character who resembles me in ways I'd rather not think about.
As Murphy and Emori learned and grew and recovered, I tried to do the same. Clearly, I'm not there yet (as evidenced by the two times I almost deleted this fic on a self-destructive whim). But there's always hope as long as you learn how to forgive yourself.
If you're dealing with stuff like this, please talk to someone. A parent, a teacher, a friend, a therapist, someone. My asks on Tumblr are always open (my Tumblr name is the same as here). We all need a Raven, an Emori, a Bellamy and a Luna sometimes.
Thanks for reading this. I hope you liked it. I'll see you soon, never fear :)
Emori and Murphy reuniting and adapting to change between 4.03 and 4.04. Enjoy!
John kicks out the fire, his hand still on her arm. His grip is strong, but there’s an almost imperceptible tremble in his fingers. Whatever he learned today spooked him.
It spooks her too, when he starts explaining. All the people who had died in Arkadia, a fire eating them up from under their skin. The same fire that has already poisoned the bugs and fish, that will eat the Earth up and spit it out, dead and desolated.
“The Arkadians are figuring something out though,” John says next to her as they move down the road, the moon and stars just enough to see by. “And we’ll take advantage.” His confidence in those people surprises her. In her memory, he’s always described Skaikru as elitist and largely incompetent. The faith he’s been demonstrating in them the past couple of days doesn’t fall in line with that.
But measuring Skaikru against the alternative he’s described makes them the clear preference.
“It won’t be easy,” she says, so as to not concede anything, but also to recognize that his stance is valid.
“When is anything?” he responds, but with a note of humor. He reaches for her hand, so that they’re clasped as they continue to walk. “We’ll survive.”
There’s a sureness in his voice, the same as there’s a sureness in her steps, despite the dark and unknown that surround them. She stops, catching his wrist.
When she kisses him, it feels like the first time in a long while. The first proper one at least, with one hand in his hair, and their lips catching. It’s not like how she remembers kissing him in the temple, not like watching herself through a water of a stream, far away and murky. It’s like how kissing him should be, exciting, reassuring.
“I missed you,” she says when she breaks away and puts her feet flat on the ground again. She means today, when she was sitting alone in the cave, but she means from long before that too. As if the chip wearing off compounded all the days where she should have been missing him and wasn’t.
“Yeah well I’m not going anywhere without you anymore,” he says. There’s that flick of his mouth turning upwards, and his thumb running on the edge of her jaw, briefly. She’s glad he doesn’t see her care for him as soft or weak. She knows people who would. That’s part of why she favors John over the rest of them, she thinks. “C’mon,” he says, taking her hand again, “we still have a while to go.”
They need to remain fairly quiet walking down a road like this in the dark, she’s not the only bandit in this woods. But at the right register their whispers blend in with the wind and the rustle of leaves overhead. John takes advantage and tells her what to expect of the Arkadians, as if she doesn’t know all his stories already. She wouldn’t say he’s eager to see them again, but rather just eager in general. Almost as if finding a balance between themselves and Skaikru is a puzzle he wants to crack. She can’t say she doesn’t understand, but she’s still not convinced Skaikru are worth the trouble. She still listens of course, cataloging the information as it comes and attempting to filter for John’s particular biases.
Morning comes harshly, no soft glow slowly strengthening alongside the growing hum of insects or the twitter of birds, instead light breaks over the treetops in a single cut. She squints against the brightness. In the daylight there’s more speed in their steps than she can ever remember them having before. In the past they never travelled anywhere with urgency, never had anything more than a temporary destination in mind. Now each day will dwindle away without the promise of more to come.
The trees thin the closer they get to Arkadia, and her fingers twitch in her glove. She hates how vulnerable they are, in the empty field Arkadia rests in. They’re easy targets to spot, especially from it’s intimidating walls.
The whole structure is imposing really; it reminds her of Polis, with it’s crowds and tall structures and the noise of people that she can hear even from so far away. Skaikru and the clans like to pretend they’re so different, but they all build these little cities, with walls around them to keep others out.
“I don’t like it,” she mutters, loud enough so that John can hear, but not quite so loud that he should feel the need to respond. He squeezes her hand, and she squeezes back, happy to put her energy into something other than the nervous shaking in her chest.
He lets go long before they reach the gate, but the fortitude it gives her means her chin is still lifted by the time they get there.
“Hey!” John calls once they’re within earshot, waving both his hands above his head to show he’s unarmed.
“Murphy?” A voice calls back, and it takes Emori a moment to identify who it belongs to. She’s a young woman, younger than John, probably, with her hair in one long braid down her back, so different from the styles Emori is accustomed to. She’s armed too, although her gun isn’t raised, and her finger doesn’t rest on the trigger. A taller red-haired middle-aged woman stands beside her as they stride forward.
“McIntyre, long time no see. You missed the party in Polis.”
Harper McIntyre, Emori recollects. John had known her before he came to the ground, and had mostly neutral feelings about her. He had mentioned in passing that he didn’t think she was still alive.
“You’re really gonna have to make up your mind about whether you’re sticking around or not,” Harper says, her tone judgemental. “I know the Millers let you in just last night before you ran off again. None of us have time to deal with your shit, Murphy.”
“Figured all of this end of the world business, you’d need as many hands on deck as possible,” John counters with an easy shrug, “and now you’ve got four more.”
“Who’s she?” the woman next to Harper asks, and John’s eyes flick to her like he’s seeing her for the first time, which he might be.
“Emori,” John answers for her, forced casualness in his voice.
“What clan?” the woman asks, her eyes squinting at her tattoo as if she’ll be able to distinguish her based on it.
“None,” Emori speaks up, for once not fearing the repercussions of answering that question. The woman hums, suspicious, and looks like she wants to say more before John cuts her off.
“I’ve already talked to Abby,” he tells Harper, “we have an arrangement. So if you want we can wait here while you go track her down to confirm it, or you could just let us inside instead of playing twenty questions.”
There’s a pause, as the two women weigh his truthfulness. Luckily John is very good with words.
“You still suck,” Harper huffs, but she steps aside, one hand loosening the grip on her rifle. John smirks and winks at her as they pass, because he likes to throw sticks on an already roaring fire. Emori restrains herself from giving him a push forwards as an indication to keep moving. They really can’t afford to antagonize anyone, even in jest.
From the inside, Arkadia is even stranger. It’s shape is noticeable from a distance, but it’s much more pronounced up close. The circle that stretches above all the other structures has people climbing all over it, the sound of metal banging on metal is very nearly overbearing.
They don’t raise much attention as they walk through the community. It seems everyone is too hard at work to notice. Children whose legs haven’t yet grown into running transverse the fields with buckets of water in their tiny hands, passing cups to men with backs hunkered from hard work and woman with burnt faces. The dissonance and movement strike home how dire the situation is. The end of the world is truly coming.
John leads the way into the metal structure, and it’s just as active inside, people rushing from place to place. No one stops them, and hardly anyone stops to look twice; not at John at least. One or two look at her with unease, although her hand is in its glove and tucked deep in her pocket. Their eyes linger on her face instead.
Despite those few looks of distrust, they make it to the medbay without issue. There’s two people in the large room when they get there, and Emori looks to John, who also seems to notice the absence of all those bodies he had mentioned. The remaining sick woman is obviously not an Arkadian, with nearly healed rashes on her face. The other is an Arkadian man who seems to be taking inventory, sometimes stopping to pack away supplies. Jackson is his name, she suddenly remembers, he had been in the city of light, and in Polis.
“Where’s Abby?” John asks, setting his pack down on one of the empty cots.
Jackson doesn’t look before responding, “She’s with Kane, they’re trying to sort out details for the trip.”
“What trip?” John asks, his voice edging towards accusation and volatility. She reaches out, rests her hand on his lower back so the others can’t see, but he can feel it. His next exhale is more controlled, and it doesn’t seem like Jackson noticed his near slip up.
Jackson has paused, no doubt wondering how much he can reveal.
“Apparently there’s a an island lab with medical supplies that Jaha has been to. We think we’ll be able to synthesize nightblood there.” At this his eyes flicker over to the patient, who is following their conversation with her eyes, Emori has been keeping track of her out of her peripheries. There is a tremendous amount of strength in her arms, in the lines of her face, not even something an illness would take away. She doesn’t say anything, even as she knows that attention is being placed on her. There’s a grief about her mouth.
“I’ve been there,” John says, “probably a better person to take you than Jaha considering that’s where he went batshit.” That gives Jackson pause, an uncomfortable crinkle around his mouth. Of course it would, he had taken the chip too. She glances at John’s composed face, the quick way he licks his lower lip. He knows it’s a good line.
Jackson takes the radio off his belt. “Abby, it’s Jackson,” he says into it, “John Murphy and his friend Emori are here, apparently they know about the lab too.”
They wait for a response, hardly any time passes before the crackle of the radio breaks through. “We’ll be down in just a minute Jackson.”
Jackson looks eager to ask questions, but he reigns it in, going back to the task he had been undertaking before their arrival.
“We want to be on that trip,” John says under his breath to her. She turns so her ear is to him while eyes watch the sick woman.
“I agree,” she says quiet enough to match him. “What’s this about nightblood?”
“I don’t know,” he says, and she can tell it bothers him that he’s been gone only a handful of hours and is already out of the loop. “Maybe they’re using it as some soft of medicine? Whatever it is we can get it out of Abby.”
“My blood is immune to radiation, they want to make it for the rest of you.” It’s the sick woman, standing slowly from her perch on the cot. Emori shoots her a glare for eavesdropping on their conversation.
“You’re a nightblood? Who are you?” Clearly she’s not Commander, but logically she should be, with the rest of them dead.
“My name is Luna kom Flokru,” she says slow and lilting, and then, as if knowing her thoughts, “and I have no desire to ascend.”
Emori presses her lips together and says nothing more. There’s something unsettling about this woman, the steady way she’s looking at her maybe, or the grief still resting on her shoulders, threatening at any moment to tip her over. No one has that much composure unless they use it to cloak something more brutal. She makes no comments about Emori though, either too downtrodden to care about her presence, or uncaring to begin with. She’s clearly not the type to adhere to expectations.
Another man enters the room then, his heavy footsteps distracting. His tattoo suggests he’s Trikru, but the hand he rests on Luna’s shoulder betrays that idea. He has dried tear tracks on his cheeks, and his hands are large and covered in dirt. Emori would wager it was from grave digging. Flokru leave their dead to the sea, but without it the ground is probably better than a pyre.
Jackson speaks quietly to them, at least in part tactful of their loss. But there’s an underlying urging towards the next step in the plan.
Any illusion of the Arkadians being implicit in presenting their dominating strategies to reaching their goals is dashed when Abby and Kane stride into the room, Jaha on their heels. All standing with sure direction and assertiveness. She feels John stiffen next to her, and can feel herself standing taller too. The third adult stands a step back and to the left of the other two, but he’s the one her eyes follow. His head is bare now, as if he wants to emphasize his increasing age. She hates the softness in his face, the lack of reaction to the group of people assembled in the room.
“John, Emori, it’s good to see you both,” Abby says, as if she knows her. “You’ve been to the island?”
“Yes, John arrived there with me, and Emori was responsible for supplying the appropriate technology for…the project,” Jaha says with that haughty way of explaining he has. It’s clear he hasn’t yet seen reason to mention them.
“Really? You let him back on the decision making team so quickly?” John says. The comment is directed at Abby, mostly, but Jaha seems to appropriate it for himself. He still has the overly calm presence about himself, like he’s still forgotten pain and anger and grief. Emori is comforted by the hate for him that sizzles under her breastbone.
“In these times we must all do our part, John. I’m glad you see that too.”
“Didn’t I tell you to go float yourself?”
She presses the length of her arm against John’s. This is no place to make a scene, regardless the strength of his anger.
“We’ve all made mistakes Mr. Murphy,” Kane interjects, with his hand presented in a stopping position, and his eyebrows raised in pointed emphasis, “That doesn’t mean we can’t make amends, and continue to help our people in the face of catastrophe.”
John shrugs. “All I’m saying is maybe you don’t want him in the heart of ALIE’s fortress. Just a thought.”
Kane and Abby turn to each other, obviously seeking guidance and confirmation from one another. But Jaha looks at her.
She meets his eyes, sticks out his chin. He knows he can’t look at John, and now he seeks something from her. But there’s nothing he deserves, certainly nothing she’ll give him.
Say you’re sorry for getting my brother killed. She urges. Say you’re sorry for hurting John. Say you’re sorry for stealing my mind.
Foolish wishes. Skaikru, like her people, put little stock in apologies. Remorse and forgiveness are for people too weak to take the blood they are due.
“I have a boat,” Emori says out of a desire to hear her own voice. To establish her value. A gaze and carefully constructed words from a disgraced sky-fallen leader won’t make her silent again. The harsh edges to her words make it clear she is barring his access. “It’ll be fast and safe.”
Kane looks pleased, and Abby surprised. John nudges her with his elbow and flashes her with a smile. They’ve made the better offer.
“That’s good news. You’ll be needed here Thelonious, especially if Raven goes with them. It seems we’re always short of engineers.” Kane says after a short moment of deliberation. He smiles a bit a her, and she remembers him smiling as they stood next to each other while making their way through the Polis tower. This version of him knows joy, even if only in small doses. “So where’s this boat?”
She explains where it is on the river, and Kane takes notes, talking to Abby about rations and personnel and strict time frames. Jaha slinks out, recognizing he is no longer wanted.
“So we leave at first light tomorrow,” Abby surmises. Kane doesn’t look too happy about that, but he nods anyway, squeezing Abby’s arm as he exits. “You continue resting Luna, you’ll need your strength for tomorrow.” Luna lays down, Nyko’s hand on her shoulder, but Emori doubts Luna lacking strength will be a problem.
Abby turns to them, tired but refusing to show it. “Thank you both for your help. Have either of you slept?”
“No, we walked through the night,” Emori answers, grateful both for the opportunity to rest and to be alone with John. Abby nods.
“I can show you a room. We’ll meet at the gate to load the rover at 5:30 tomorrow.” Abby seems eager for an excuse to leave the med bay for a little while so they follow her to a higher level of the settlement. “Unfortunately there are a lot of available rooms now,” Abby says, showing them to where they’ll stay till tomorrow. “The door doesn’t lock, but it should be enough for the night.”
“It’s good,” John says shortly, “See you tomorrow Abby.”
Abby nods once, offers a tight smile and leaves. John pushes open the door once she turns the corner, keeping it propped open just a bit after they enter. It’s remarkably small, with no windows, and a single chair and bed the only furnishings. John flicks on the room’s only lamp, casting the two of them and the left wall into half shadows.
“You’re tired?” Emori asks, sitting on the bed. It’s softer than any place she can remember sleeping, but the blanket is so thin as to be almost irrelevant. She hates to think how cold it would get to be during winter in this metal fortress.
“Sort of,” he says, sitting next to her. “My mind’s all wired, you know?”
She rests her head on his shoulder. She’s tired. Hours had passed slowly waiting for him yesterday, until her eyelids had grown too heavy to keep open, but even then her sleep had been uneasy and unrestful.
John kicks off his shoes. “C’mon,” he says, “you’re tired.” With slow movements he shrugs her off so he can take of his shirt and jacket, then reaches down to undo her laces for her.
“John, you don’t have to,” she says, but he just tickles the underside of her foot in response. “Stop!” she laughs, scooching further back on the bed, and tucking her feet under her. “Uncalled for,” she says, as he situates himself next to her, pulling the blanket back to lie under.
“Ah, but it made you smile,” he says as Emori lays her head on the pillow. The bed is narrow, hardly made for two people, but they fit, no space between their bodies. John stretches to turn off the lamp, and with a sharp click, the room blinks into darkness again, with the exception of the line of light shining through the crack in the door.
John settles his arm under her shoulders after resting his head besides hers, close enough that she’s sure that their foreheads will knock together.
The blanket may be too threadbare to insulate heat, and John’s circulation tends to keep his skin cool with fingertips like icicles, but she feels warm now. There’s a reason she couldn’t sleep last night.
John turns on his side—it’s less cramped that way—and lays his other arm around her. His hand runs over hair, tugging mindlessly on the tied end of her bandana until it unravels.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks, because he’s obviously restless.
“Being back here,” he says, “It’s…I don’t know. I keep waiting for everyone to tell me to get lost.”
“They won’t,” she says. “They need us now.”
“And we need them,” he points out, his hand stilling. His voice is very tentative; he doesn’t know whether he’s okay with their new symbiosis yet. Emori doesn’t trust them, but they were never her people. She can understand John’s division. She had thought for a little while, after meeting him, that Skaikru was different. That they didn’t carry the same torch of blind hatred as the people on the ground, but she’s not so disillusioned now. In their cruelty and crassness they are hardly different. John knows. But if there’s any sort of kindness among them then he knows about that too.
“Do you think this will work?” she asks. There’s no way that these people understand how rare it is to be a nightblood, how lucky you need to be. Emori has never been lucky, she’s not stupid enough to rely on it. Not now.
“I don’t know,” John says into the dark—quiet, as if someone might catch the vulnerability through the walls. She strokes the back of his hand with her thumb to remind him it’s only her. “But if it does, we’ll be some of the first people to get it.” His hand lays under her shirt now, palm cold against her waist as he uses it as an anchor to pull himself closer to her. He swallows, deep enough for her to hear. “And if it doesn’t, the lighthouse bunker is there too. Enough room for the two of us.”
“John…” she says, turning her gaze to his half-lidded eyes. His face is carefully composed but when she cups the back of his neck his jaw clenches and he allows the fear to shine in his eyes. Emori’s convinced there’s no place on Earth or in space that he hates as much as that bunker. “I’m hoping this nightblood works.”
“Yeah, me too,” he says with that special kind of almost-softness he saves just for her. “But we’ll be together, so no matter what it’ll be okay.” It’s a worrying platitude, but one she likes the sound of, so she closes her eyes and turns herself into his chest. “I mean, the two of us? We could totally outsmart Raven and Abby. No problem.”
Her smile breaks out against his skin. She’s missed his teasing jokes, missed his hands and his voice and his almost-softness.
“Hey,” he says, like he’s checking if she’s asleep. She’s turns to look at his vague outline, all dark greys and near-blacks. The darkness doesn’t bother her though, she’s lived in it too long. “We’ve already survived the end of the world once,” he says as he returns to playing with the ends of her hair.
“And we will again,” Emori finishes.
John moves to kiss her, half a smile on his lips. This place is unfamiliar— it has a bed, and metal walls—but the way John kisses her is familiar enough to drown all that away. Like he’s both chasing and settling into her at once. His arm curled around her back and nose nudging against hers.
“We should probably sleep,” John says as he pulls back
“Then go to sleep,” she tells him, but not before kissing, quick, once more.
“Sleep well,” he says and brushes a strand of hair off her cheek.
When she closes her eyes she listens to John’s breath even and thinks about two months. It’s enough time to cup in your hands, enough to slip through your fingers. Next to her John’s heartbeat pounds in his chest. Two months is also enough time to discover a new world, to begin a new life. To fall in love. It has to be enough time to keep it too.
I’m afraid these ended up being very boring examples. I apologise.
Burn:
She turns her head, and her cheek rests against floorboards now warmed by the sun —which burns, but for which there is no brighter alternative.
The dress is wanting for fabric in the bitter cold of January, yet her skin burns.
Sight:
He furrows his brow at the sight of it. (That’s all I’ve got. I can’t believe this.)
Harsh:
He reaches up to slick it back, greasy and unkempt; it would be black as pitch if it was not blanched by the harsh light of summer.
With every word he tears a flower from the dirt. Crossandra. Dianthus. Allamanda. His hands uproot them harshly, but he holds them with careful fingers, reverent and apologetic at once.
Y’all owe @bombshellsandbluebells for editing this and y’all owe both Megan and @maskingtapepoetree for talking me out of deleting this fic and my Ao3 account when things were Bad for the past few months. They’re not Good yet, but they’re getting better.
Thank you to @commanderanya, @daisytachi, @doortotomorrow and everyone else that took the time to reach out to me when I was struggling. I’m really bad at asking for, and accepting help, but know the sentiment was not lost on me and is both humbling and appreciated <3
If you’re still around, I’d love to hear what you think of this. If not, don’t worry.
Also on Ao3
You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together
to make a creature that will do what I say
or love me back.
I’m not really sure why I do it, but in this version you are not
feeding yourself to a bad man
against a black sky prickled with small lights.
Murphy would like to pretend he’s not spiraling, but unfortunately, that isn’t much of an option right now.
Raven is noticing. So is Monty, though he doesn’t say anything, and so is Octavia, which means Bellamy knows. Luna figures it out soon after, and, because Lexa isn’t an idiot, she realizes too. Jasper and Emori are the only two in their group of friends - save for Zeke, who doesn’t know any better, and Costia, who stays out of it - who have no idea.
He likes it that way, if he’s honest. He doesn’t have the energy to explain that the thrill of Emori’s return has worn off, and with that disappearance has come the old familiar fears that he will be alone forever, that no one will ever really want him, that it will always be better to be alone then to have another person leave. That fear only intensifies every time Emori inserts herself into Raven’s conversations, joins Monty and Jasper on the quest to steal his kitchen knives, studies with Octavia and Lexa. She’s a perfect puzzle piece, and he’s a jagged piece of glass trying to fit.
Somehow, despite his downward trajectory, he manages to pass all his finals, and the whole house celebrates that no one failed out of college with a raucous night of drinking and terrible movies. For once, Murphy doesn’t participate in the former, although he does sit through the latter.
“You don’t want any?” Emori asks during a break between movies, taking a tiny sip of the ungodly alcoholic concoction Jasper made for her. The Christmas lights Raven put up the morning after Thanksgiving sparkle in her eyes.
Murphy shakes his head. “I’m good.”
Emori puts her cup down on the coffee table and inspects the contents. “Maybe I should take a page from your book,” she says. “This doesn’t look totally safe.”
“It probably isn’t,” Murphy says. He tries for a casual tone, but it falls flat. Worry flits through Emori’s eyes. Let it go, he pleads with her silently, but he knows better, knows that she won’t drop something as small as a shift in his tone.
Sure enough, she stands up. “Let’s go outside,” she says, catching his hand as she steps past him and tugging him out the door.
There’s a thin layer of frost on the concrete blocks that serve as Raven’s back patio. Murphy scuffs his shoes on the pavement, disrupting the delicate pattern of crystals. Emori wraps her arms around her torso - a gesture that means she’s cold, insecure or both, Murphy’s come to realize - and looks up at him. “What’s wrong, John?”
He expects her confrontation to be accusing, not soft, and he’s so taken aback by the care in her eyes that he forgets to answer for a moment. There’s still time to back out, he tells himself. There’s still time to repair the cracks in his own psyche without dragging her down with him.
When he answers her, it’s with a feeble, “Nothing.”
Emori scoffs a little. “Bullshit.”
“What do you want me to say?” He’s not angry. He just sounds like it. He doesn’t really feel much these days.
He pictures her standing in the kitchen with Raven, laughing with Monty and Harper, cautiously allowing Bellamy and Echo to help her move the furniture in her room so her bed is against the window. She invited him into every one of those spaces, but something always held him back. Something always keeps him from what he wants. Raven would say it’s himself. He would argue it’s his own failures as a human being.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Emori says. Her eyes plead with him.
The closer you get to the others, the farther you’ll get from me, is what he wants to say. “I’m thinking it’s cold as balls out here,” is what he actually says.
Emori scoffs again, this time with frustration. “Ever since I came back, you’ve been-” She starts a little bit, looks him up and down with a quick flick of her eyes. “Is it me? Did I do something to-”
Murphy cuts her off because he loves her, even as he knows he’s losing her. “No. It’s not you.”
She nods, squares her shoulders as if to steady herself. “Then what?”
Of course she won’t let it go. “Just fucking let it go already,” he snaps, and Emori recoils as if he’s struck her. “Go back inside to your friends.” He spits the last word.
“They’re your friends too.” She says it defiantly, stepping closer so they’re almost literally nose-to-nose. “What’s going on with you, John?”
“You know what,” he says, because what the hell, he’s numb anyway, and he’s not even drunk. How much could this hurt? “Maybe it is you. Maybe I’m just pissed off that you came back and just...just took over, like everything is fine.”
Emori looks stung. Murphy knows he should care, but all he can concentrate on is how, for the first time in months, he feels something. “John, what-”
“You can’t take everything away,” he tells her. He’s not drunk, but he feels like he is. He’s hot, then cold, and the whole world is tilting on its axis. “You can’t take over me and Raven and the house and-”
“You’re jealous.” Her statement makes him stop cold. There are tears sparkling in her eyes. “You’re jealous.”
“Damn right. Everyone likes you, and you left. I don’t even have that, and I’ve been here the whole time.”
Emori’s mouth snaps shut. She turns on her heel and stalks inside. In the time it takes for him to catch his breath, a cold wave of fear that has nothing to do with the weather washes over him.
“Shit!” he shouts into the darkness before bursting back through the kitchen door.
“She went upstairs,” Raven says from the living room. Murphy wastes no time in following her. “J, what-?”
He ignores her. He takes the stairs two at a time, nearly tripping over the top stair, and all but careens down the hall and into her bedroom.
The door is open. Emori’s standing in the middle of her room, her hands over her face, her shoulders trembling. From where he’s standing, it looks like she’s sinking her teeth into one of the smaller fingers of her left hand.
“Hey,” he whispers, or tries to. His voice sounds like gravel. “Emori. Stop. Don’t do that.”
“What the hell do you care?” she snarls, turning to him. One of her fingers has teeth marks in it. Murphy sees them when her hand falls to her side. “Get out, John.”
“Emori-”
“NO!” She shouts, actually screams, and Murphy hears the entire house fall silent at once. Costia’s barely-there footsteps on the stairs, followed by Raven’s laborious ones, don’t deter him from meeting Emori’s eyes. “Get OUT!”
She takes a step toward him and, automatically, he flinches. “Emori, why-”
“You don’t get to say that to me!” she hisses. Her voice is livid, but her hands are trembling. “You don’t get to stand there and tell me that I deserve how you’re treating me just because I’m making a home for myself and you’re still punishing yourself for things you can’t let go.”
“That’s not-”
She shakes her head. “Yes. It is. Think, John. You know that’s why.” She scoffs. “You’re just like him. Neither of you really want me to have this.”
“Have what?” All of a sudden, Murphy remembers her standing in a park, flinching as her brother tells her she’ll never have a future. The memory stabs him in the gut. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” Emori whispers. “Oh.”
They regard one another for a long moment. Murphy can hear the rustle of Costia’s skirt and Raven’s uneven breathing. They’re both standing in the doorway, he guesses, or at least, waiting on the other side of it.
“Get right with yourself,” Emori says finally. Her voice cracks. “Then come back to me.”
She turns away. It feels like a door is slamming shut. He wants to rewind time and undo what he said on the patio, but that won’t heal the wound that’s been festering in him far longer than he’d care to admit.
He leaves the room. He goes into his own and lets the tears stinging his eyes fall.
He has a choice. The choice is simple, but the emotions they evoke are not. He can either burrow into his inadequacy or he can allow Emori, Raven and whatever forces exist outside of him to pull him kicking and screaming into the right side of humanity.
“You’re an idiot,” Octavia succinctly informs him as he makes breakfast twelve mornings after his fight with Emori.
Case in point.
Raven throws a spatula at her from across the kitchen, nearly hitting Murphy in the side of the head in the process. “What?” Octavia protests. “He is!”
“This is bigger than Emori,” Luna says sagely from the armchair in the living room. Murphy turns to glare at her over his shoulder. “Isn’t it?”
“I’m not incriminating myself,” Murphy says drily, swiveling on his bar stool to face Raven, who’s raising an eyebrow at him. “What?”
“It is, though,” she murmurs. Octavia is across the room now, so only he can hear her. Briefly, his mind flashes back to high school, when he and Raven would mouth words through one of their kitchen windows, silently asking if the other one was okay, or if they needed rescuing from their mother.
Murphy’s eyes flit to the window over the kitchen sink. The cinder block he used to stand on in middle school is long gone, but he swears he can see echoes of his face, aging over time, always worried about his best friend, always wondering if this would be the night she starved to death.
“Why do you still live here?” he asks suddenly, seeking a distraction, and also truthful answers. “After all the shit your mom put you through here, why didn’t you just offload the house?”
Raven looks taken-aback. “It wasn’t worth it,” she says after a moment. “There’s a bedroom on the first floor, the place was paid for, and it was near college and town. I didn’t want to leave. Plus,” she gestures around the room, “you guys.”
“Even after…” Murphy trails off, the implication of her mother’s death hanging there like a weighted curtain.
Raven sighs. “Yeah.” She shrugs. “Mom isn’t here anymore. I do what I want.”
Murphy can’t fathom that kind of actualization. If the tables were turned and he was still at his parents’ house, he thinks he would’ve burned the whole place down.
He hears a tiny creak on the stairs and turns just in time to see a piece of Emori’s green jacket disappear into the shadows. He wants to follow her. His hands ache for her. He balls them into fists, studies the calendar on the fridge, the one that announced her impending arrival what feels like months ago, just for something to do.
Then, he sees it. Emori Moves Out. There, three weeks away, right before the start of the semester, written innocuously in small red letters.
“What the hell?” he asks, then says it louder when he can’t hear himself over the blood rushing in his ears. “What the hell, Raven?”
“What?” She seems confused, a little irritated, until she follows his gaze. “Oh.”
Raven’s eyes are sad when she looks at him. “It wasn’t mine to tell.”
When Murphy knocks on Emori’s door, he doesn’t expect her to answer. When she does, he’s surprised to feel his mouth go dry.
“You’re moving out,” is all he says after a moment of her staring at him, eyebrow raised, waiting for whatever he thought was important enough to say.
It dawns on him that she probably isn’t hoping for an apology. That hurts him more than anything.
“Yes,” she answers, softly. “I don’t think I should be here anymore.”
She moves to close the door. Murphy reaches for her wrist before she can. “Please,” he whispers, eyes stinging, heart aching. “Please don’t go.”
Her eyes widen. She stares at the place where they touch when she says, “Why? All I do is take everything away, apparently.”
Her voice holds equal parts venom and exhaustion. Murphy doesn’t let go of her arm. “I’m sorry,” he says softly. A tear falls over his cheek and lands on his arm. “I shouldn’t have said any of that.”
“No,” she murmurs, looking up at him. Just like the first time they met, he’s trapped by her eyes. “You shouldn’t have.”
“Can I convince you to stay?”
She sighs. “No. But you can show me why I should.”
He tries. He puts away the paralysis and comfort that accompany his self-destructive desires, and he tries. For her, because he doesn’t want her to leave, he tries.
He forces himself into a routine. Wake up at eight, do housework and help Raven, cook lunch, read a little, watch a movie with Octavia, help Bellamy with dinner. The surprise on Emori’s face when she realizes he’s in a practiced habit of doing things, of playing nice and working hard, is worth it.
“That’s not why you should be doing this,” Luna informs him on Christmas Eve morning. She slept over last night, or so Murphy thinks - he can’t keep straight who Raven’s fucking, and it doesn’t really matter as long as they don’t cheat like that fucker Finn - and she looks more comfortable sipping from his chipped blue coffee mug than he ever did. “You should be doing this for you.”
“You and your masters in psychology can shove it,” he grumbles, even as he spoons scrambled eggs onto three plates and hands one to Luna. “Reyes! Breakfast!”
Raven appears in the kitchen with a clatter and a litany of curses. Her brace strap is caught on a metal rivet. Before Murphy can divest himself of the plates, Emori appears at Raven’s side, speeding down from the stairs and skidding into the kitchen on sock feet.
“I got it,” Emori grunts, disentangling Raven and patting her on the back. “You’re good.”
“Thanks,” Raven sighs, shoving hair out of her face. “I probably could go without it but-“
“No!” Luna, Murphy and Emori all say in unison. Luna laughs shortly. Murphy and Emori exchange awkward glances.
“What?” Raven is either genuinely oblivious or a damn good actress. “Listen, I fell that one time.”
“And you broke half the plates in the kitchen!” Octavia exclaims, sweeping into the kitchen with her arms full of laundry. “We’re still using Bellamy’s.”
“I asked for a new plate set for Christmas,” Raven grumbles to Octavia’s back. As Octavia loads the washing machine, Raven reaches above her to grab a laundry basket from the shelf and thrust it into Octava’s line of sight. “Use this.”
Octavia swats her hand away. “Is this what adulting has come to?” she asks dramatically. “Asking for practical things as gifts? When did we get so boring?”
“Speak for yourself,” Raven says magnanimously. “I am full of adventure and surprises.”
Murphy snorts, as any best friend would, but his mind and eyes are on Emori, on the way her eyes sparkle with amusement as she looks from Raven to Octavia and back again. The subtle shifts of time have been kind to her; the shadows under her eyes are lighter and the glimmer in them is brighter. Her smiles - the best thing about her, in his opinion - no longer hold sadness behind their bared teeth.
“When are we getting our Christmas tree?” Monty asks, breaking Murphy out of his thoughts.
“Are we getting one?” Raven asks, confused. Octavia crosses the kitchen to the cupboards and grabs her mug. Luna, probably sensing the conversation no longer applies to her, reaches for her bag and starts reading a textbook. Emori picks at a scab on her arm. Monty just blinks, confused. “Hello?”
“Gee, Reyes, I don’t know,” Murphy says finally. “Would you like to get a Christmas tree?”
“I want a Christmas tree,” Emori says softly.
Murphy, Octavia and Monty go get a Christmas tree.
“How did you say we do this again?” Octavia shouts in the general direction of her phone. Only her legs stick out from under the tree they’re attempting to set up in Raven’s living room. The sight would be comical, Murphy thinks, except for the fact that he’s not looking much better; he’s covered in pine needles and sap, and his arm hurts from bracing the tree that none of them can figure out how to set in the base.
“Are you sure it’s in all the way?” Bellamy’s tinny voice asks from Octavia’s phone speakers.
“No!” Octavia yells. “That’s why we called you!”
Murphy cracks a smile at the sigh Bellamy heaves. “I’m going to be there in two minutes. Hold on.”
Octavia extracts herself from the tree and brushes pine needles from her hair. Murphy makes a big show of switching the tree’s weight from one arm to the other. Octavia rolls her eyes. “Better make it a minute,” she says into the phone. “Murphy’s holding up the tree until we can screw it into the base. You know he can’t handle more than five pounds.”
“Hey!” Murphy protests as Bellamy laughs. Octavia relieves him of his tree-holding duties and Murphy escapes upstairs to his room before the younger Blake can convince him to help her a second time. The first time was a rookie mistake
He’s at a loss for what to do in his spare time. His old habit of knocking on Emori’s door tugs at his hands, but he pulls away after a moment of staring at the worn brown wood like a pining idiot. Instead, he goes into his own room - leaving the door open in a moment that lacks his usual paranoia - and flings his closet door open.
“What are you doing?” he hears Emori ask him as he rifles through the mounds of papers, clothes and books shoved into the dark corners of the closet.
“Looking for something,” he responds, trying to keep his heart from leaping out of his chest at the sound of Emori’s voice. It’s low, a little cautious, but not angry. He’ll take it. “What’s up?
“You bought me a tree.” It’s a statement, said with carefulness and a little bit of wonder.
Murphy extricates himself, rocks back on his heels, and looks at her. “Well, it’s for everyone but… yeah. Of course we did.”
She frowns. “That’s not an ‘of course’,” she says.
“It is for us.”
After a moment, Murphy looks behind him. The item he seeks is in plain view, for once. “Aha,” he mutters, pulling the heavy cookbook from the shadows.
Emori frowns again. “A cookbook?”
“My dad’s,” Murphy says, touching the stained, worn cover. “All the best recipes are in here. He changed a lot of them. I don’t really go by the book anymore; just his handwriting.”
Emori holds out her bigger hand and lets him take it to hoist himself to his feet. When she moves to pull her hand away, he holds it a little tighter. “You’re not covering it up.”
She shakes her head. “I… I wanted to try it.”
Murphy gives it a gentle squeeze, feeling a deep sort of affection surge through him at the feeling of her tough skin against his. “I’m proud of you.” The words grate on his throat. He hopes she hears the I’m trying underneath.
It’s not his place to say. He thinks about it after the fact and feels relieved when she doesn’t punch him for it.
“Thanks,” is all she says, with a soft smile. Then she tilts her head to look over his shoulder. “Your closet is a mess.”
Murphy looks back at it, at the piles of books and papers spilling out and the mess of dirty laundry on his floor. “Yeah,” he says with a short laugh. “I guess you could say that.”
“I am saying that.” Emori steps around him and kneels down in front of the open doors. “Do you need these?” she asks, scooping up a pile of papers.
“You don’t have to-”
She cuts him off with a wave of her hand. “We don’t have anything better to do. Now come on; do you need these or not?”
Murphy sits beside her and together they sort through his mess, one dirty article of clothing and wrecked piece of paper at a time. Emori finds an old photo album that used to belong to Murphy’s mother and flips through it, smiling at Murphy’s first birthday picture and touching his parents’ wedding photo with the fused fingers of her left hand.
“Your mom looks beautiful,” she murmurs, tracing the fall of the wedding veil with a careful hand. “They look happy.”
Murphy pointedly avoids looking at the picture. “They were,” he says gruffly, clearing his throat. His eyes flit to the cookbook on the floor near his foot. “For a while, anyway.”
“What happened?” Emori asks softly. “I mean, if you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to.”
Murphy shakes his head. This isn’t a piece of him he cares about, not like his abandonment issues and his valleys and mountains. This is the way life was. “He died. He had bad lungs, I guess. Caught the flu from me, but he didn’t get better. He got worse and he died. Mom blamed me, started drinking and died from that.”
It sounds callous, but he thinks he’ll lose his mind if he goes too far back to those times. Ontari had come onto the scene about three months before his mother died. She got him out of the house and the few times when she was kind were good enough for him. Looking back, he was probably just grateful that no one was hitting him. When she made him do something much more damaging, he didn’t mind; he owed her, he reasoned. He owed her for making her put up with him.
Emori frowns softly. “I’m still sorry.”
Murphy shrugs. “At least, when they were both alive, they loved me. And each other.”
Emori nods and goes back to the photo album. Murphy knows better than to believe she’s let the subject drop. She’ll think about it and come back minutes, hours or even days later with another thought, a strange observation, some perspective he never even entertained. It’s who she is.
He loves that about her.
Emori sets the book aside without another comment and goes back to the closet. She pulls out two shirts - both of them wrinkled and stiff - and scrunches up her nose. “John! It’s like you’re in high school!”
Murphy rolls his eyes at her, then yelps when she throws the, admittedly, very dirty laundry at him. “Hey!”
“Get a clothes hamper!” She laughs when he tries to fling a shirt back at her, but only succeeds in smacking himself in the face with it. “I lived on the street for three years, and even I know a hamper is a better solution than this!”
Murphy decides not to touch on the whole “living-on-the-street” thing. Instead, he reaches for the laundry basket of clothes he still hasn’t folded, dumps the clean clothes on the floor and throws his dirty shirts inside. “Happy?”
Emori eyes the clean clothes on the floor, then blinks at him. “You haven’t folded your laundry either?”
“Good behavior comes in small portions,” Murphy snarks, a little bit of truth coloring the frail joke. Emori merely hums and scoots over to start folding his socks.
Is it a little weird to see the girl you possibly love folding your underwear? Yeah. But Murphy doesn’t mind, not when the faint sunlight from the window dances over her hand and she sees him watching. She gives him a tiny smile and rolls his socks into neat balls.
They sit like that for a while in comfortable silence until his closet is organized and his clothes are put away, and then Bellamy breaks the quiet by shouting a litany of curses as what is presumably the tree creaks and crashes its way to the floor.
Murphy and Emori laugh the whole way downstairs, and laugh even harder as Bellamy lays there, on the floor, arms sticking out from either side of a mass of pine needles.
Eventually Bellamy rights the tree. Raven gripes endlessly about the fact that Jasper and Monty’s roomba (“We’re not calling it Stabby!”) was better than a regular vacuum at getting the pine needles out of the carpet, and Lexa and Octavia appear mere seconds after the cleanup ends with arms full of wrapped presents.
“Have you been hiding those this whole time?” Bellamy asks, scratching the back of his neck. When Octavia nods cheerfully, he rolls his eyes. “Of course you have.”
“Can Costia come over to open presents with us?” Lexa asks. When Raven gives her a thumbs-up, Lexa whacks Bellamy on the back. “You should come and bring your hot girlfriend.”
“You have a hot girlfriend too,” Bellamy points out, the wry twist of his mouth emphasizing how awkward it is for him to say the phrase. Murphy is sure he finds it objectifying. “But if Raven doesn’t mind…”
“Everyone can bring someone for all I care,” Raven says casually. “If they can fit, they can sit.”
“Like a cat,” Monty says from the kitchen. Raven doesn’t dignify that with a response.
Murphy looks over at Emori, who’s holding a tiny glass ornament in her hands, presumably plucked from one of the boxes on the couch, which are full of Christmas decorations from Raven’s attic. It’s a small crystal ornament, heavy and solid, with beautiful etchings and a tiny red ribbon to hang it by. Murphy thinks it was a gift from Raven’s grandparents to her mother. Oh well. No love lost there, clearly.
Emori tucks it back in the box after a minute. When she turns her back, Murphy pulls it out of the box and casually crosses over to the dining room table, where Emori’s jacket is draped over a chair. He reaches for it, then remembers he’s trying to do better.
Raven is sitting on a stool in the kitchen, going through his cookbook. “Your dad has surprisingly neat handwriting,” she tells him when he approaches her, the crystal cool in his hands.
Murphy holds up the ornament. “Can I give this to her?” he asks Raven in a low voice.
Raven cocks an eyebrow at him. “Why?”
“She likes it.”
Raven’s eyes shift. They go hard, then questioning, then soft. “Sure.” She shrugs. “Mom never really liked it anyway.”
Murphy tucks it into Emori’s jacket pocket. The pride in Raven’s eyes is unmistakable. For the first time in a long while, he lets himself be proud too.
Yo!! Congrats on 2k!! If you want to ramble about why you like journalism/what inspired you to pursue it, consider this a sign 👀
yeeeet thank you so much <3 and sure why the heck not lol
So when I was seven I just kinda,,,,decided that I wanted to go into journalism. idk what you believe, but I’m a Christian and have been since a young age, and I just Knew that was God’s calling on my life.
There was never really anything else I wanted to do tbh. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a reporter bc they Knew Everything and I was a nosy little kid. When I got older, I grew more and more aware of the public’s right to know and journalists’ role in that happening.
When I got to college, I was told by advisors and teachers that it was okay if I changed my major, that plenty of people do it, etc. etc. and that’s totally Valid but I realized during my first journalism writing class that This Was What I Wanted. Which was wild because I had zero (0) experience in writing for journalism prior to that class (I didn’t have any school newspaper experience in high school bc I was homeschooled wow yikes how did my university ever let me into the major)
I fell more and more in love with journalism the more I studied and practiced it. I believe in the public’s right to know and I believe that journalists should use their unique access to people and information to inform the public. I think that the public should be provided transparent information on the people that serve them and the institutions that affect them so they can make the best choices based on what they want and need.
I cover city and county government in my current job right now. It’s probably the most complicated beat a local reporter can have because it requires a super-flexible schedule (read: I can never make appointments or plans on weekdays because I will nearly always have to cancel) and it also involves a lot of late nights. But it’s not a big deal because it’s what I love (even if in the moment I’m Super Tired lol)
idk that’s what I love about my job and why I picked it but if you have any more questions, I’d love to answer them :) I’m super bad at rambling lol but thank you for asking <3
Hey,, you wanna do 63 + memori for the angst/fluff list?
HEY THIS IS CUTE THANK YOU also this fic is cuteness feat. Amanda failing to write speculative s6 canon….
#63: “I am home.”
“Do you miss it?” Emori asks John once, as they sit under the light of twin moons. Raven had flipped when she saw them, proclaiming them “even better than two suns!”
“Miss what?” John asks, taking off his jacket and draping it over her shoulders. She holds the rough fabric close. It smells like earth and fuel, left over from this morning, when he helped her and Raven move their heavy equipment into their new workshop.
“Home.”
He sighs, looks up at the sky. “I mean, Earth sucked a lot of the time.” Emori huffs out an almost-laugh, both at John’s words and his sarcastic, sardonic tone. “Between people trying to kill me and all the torture and generally shitty experiences, I can’t say I had much time to get attached.”
“It’s not home, then.” She supposes that makes sense. Although, home wasn’t truly a word she would use to describe Earth either, not anymore. Not after spending six years in space with people who made the cold and dark seem warm and safe.
Maybe, she thinks, and not for the first time, home is people, not places.
She almost says it aloud, but when she turns to John, she sees him staring at her, a look akin to wonder on his face.
“What is it?” she asks softly, her eyes searching his. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He shakes his head. “Just...” A smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. “Am I allowed to say nice things to you yet?”
She laughs. The sound rings through the darkness. “I think you’ve earned that. You did help build me a workshop.”
“True,” he says, grinning at her. It’s sudden, like the flash of a knife.
“What were you going to say?” she asks. Subconsciously, she leans a little closer.
“You’re asking me about home. About Earth, I mean,” he murmurs, eyes flicking down to her mouth, then back up to her face. She feels heated and flustered, just like she did the first time they met and he gave her that same look. “But I am home.”
It takes her an embarrassing moment, but she understands. “Oh,” she breathes. “Oh,” she says again, softer. “I didn’t- I thought we weren’t-”
“You will always be home to me,” John says vehemently. “Always.”
After a moment of searching his face and finding only truth there, Emori closes the distance between them, resting her head on his shoulder and twining her longer fingers with his. “You’ll always be home to me too,” she whispers, and closes her eyes to the wind.
Hi, guys! I’m stressed about the first week of class, so here’s a thing to distract me.
@bombshellsandbluebells lent her stellar editing talents to this piece so thank her for helping me <3
Also on Ao3
We were inside the train car when I started to cry. You were crying too,
smiling and crying in a way that made me
even more hysterical. You said I could have anything I wanted, but I
just couldn’t say it out loud.
Actually, you said Love, for you,
is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s
terrifying. No one
will ever want to sleep with you.
Then
“Otan!” Emori shouts, banging her way into the basement, nearly falling down the last two steps, her feet sliding in her too-big boots. “Otan, get your ass out of bed! I hit the jackpot!”
“‘S too early,” Otan grumbles, pulling the moth-eaten blanket over his head. “Why are you so loud?”
“I’m not loud,” Emori says. “You’re hungover.” She pulls out a package of day-old buns and a jar of generic peanut butter. “I got breakfast!”
“Breakfast?” Otan sat up. “Thought we didn’t have money for that.”
Emori shrugs. “Made a deal.”
Otan looks at her mistrustfully, but shuffles out of bed nonetheless, wrapping the blanket around his shoulders like a cape. She slaps some peanut butter on a roll and takes a big bite, hoping it will soothe the ache in her stomach.
“Don’t forget about me,” Otan grumbles.
Emori give him a cheeky smile. “Couldn’t if I tried,” she mumbles around a mouthful. “Make your own breakfast. And clean up. You smell like alcohol.”
Now
Otan seems to know that Emori is going to leave, even before she says anything.
“I kinda figured,” he says gently, ruffling her hair. “This life isn’t yours anymore, Em. I don’t know if jail did something to you, or if it was that kid, but…” He trails off, stares past her for a long moment. “You belong somewhere else now.”
Tears fill her eyes. She wraps her arms around her torso to keep herself from breaking. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Otan stuffs his hands in his pockets - a boyish, uncomfortable gesture. “I left you first.”
It hangs there. Brother and sister regard one another. Emori wants to hug him, but something in her balks at the idea. She can tell he wants to say something, but he won’t. Neither of them ever do.
She shoulders her backpack. She’s wearing John’s thermal sweatshirt. The fabric chafes against her neck. The sleeve bulges awkwardly over her bad hand. “I’ll call you,” she says softly.
Otan nods. She turns to the door. This feels final, like a door closing, a lock twisting shut and rusting there.
“Try not to forget about me,” Otan says suddenly, an echo of a past life, of a girl she supposes she isn’t anymore.
She smiles, carefully, but she doesn’t look back. “Couldn’t if I tried.”
John is standing outside the apartment building, pacing back and forth, running his hands through his hair. It’s shorter now, and he has more facial hair. It’s not a bad look, all things considered. She hopes it means that he’s taking care of himself, even though she knows there’s a high possibility that Raven just sat him down and chopped off his hair with safety scissors.
That’s not a bad idea, she thinks, absently fingering the dry ends of her long hair. Then, John turns to look at her, and she can’t think at all.
“Hey,” he says in a tone trying too hard to be casual. Despite herself, she feels a grin creep over her face. “What?”
“You came,” she says softly. “I didn’t-”
She’s about to say something else, but before she can take a breath, he’s running to her, sweeping one of her arms up over his shoulder and wrapping her in a hug.
“John,” she gasps, burying her face in his shoulder. His arms are tight around her, one around her shoulders and the other around her waist. She can feel him shaking.
“It’s okay,” she murmurs in his ear, squeezing his shoulder. “I’m okay.”
He nods into her shirt, then pulls away to look down at her. “Where’s your jacket?”
She curls her good hand into his sweatshirt that she’s wearing. “This is warm enough.”
He scoffs, shakes his head and starts shrugging off his coat. When he offers it to her, he doesn’t meet her eyes, but she puts it on anyway.
There’s a wall that’s gone up between them, swift and sudden. As quickly as he embraced her, he has shut her out. She fights the urge to do the same, instead choosing to lead him toward the train station, her backpack swishing against the cool nylon of John’s jacket.
They stand on the elevated platform nearly shoulder-to-shoulder. A neon sign hanging from the ceiling announces that their train is 30 minutes away and apt to be delayed because of an incoming storm. There’s a few people milling around, hiding in the shadows, sitting under the overhang, afraid of the promised rain.
A gust of wind blows through, whipping around the platform. Beside her, John stiffens, shivers. His closeness is terrifying; she has to stop herself from leaning into his warmth. His eyes are closed against the cold wind. When he opens them, they’re bright, as if with tears.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks, her voice creaking like broken floorboards. “What’s wrong?”
He looks away from her. “Nothing.” He shivers again.
“Do you want your jacket back?” she asks, already preparing to shrug it off.
“I don’t-” he starts to snap, then catches himself. “No.”
Impatience and anger rear their ugly heads in her. “What’s your problem, John?” she asks.
“Nothing!” His eyes are scared, his posture defensive. As thunder rumbles overhead, she realizes that he is afraid of her.
She backs up, standing under the overhang as rain starts to drizzle over them. John follows her, shoving his hands in his pockets so hard she’s surprised a seam doesn’t rip.
“John,” she says again, stepping forward and ducking to meet his eyes. “John, talk to me.”
“You can’t just stay when it works for you,” he says softly. His eyes are still bitter, but there’s sadness behind the blue fire. “You can’t come back and leave whenever you want. You freaked Raven out. Jasper missed you.”
“Oh, sure, this is about Raven and Jasper,” Emori scoffs. There’s a fist closing around her lungs. It’s wringing the life from them slowly but surely. “It couldn’t possibly be about you.”
“Shut up!” John shouts. She flinches back, and two bystanders turn to stare. The rain comes down harder. “You don’t get to blame this on me! You left me!”
“And now you’re punishing me for it?” Emori cries. “You said you understood! You said you wanted me to come home!”
“I didn’t say I’d make it easy,” he growls, taking a hasty step forward so they’re chest-to-chest. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t hate you for it.”
“Tell me to leave, John,” she breathes. Beg me to stay.
He kisses her instead. When they break apart, he makes a sound like a wounded animal. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re going to have to figure your shit out,” she whispers, her head spinning, her lips still feeling the ghost of his mouth. “I won’t let you talk to me like that again.”
He smirks down at her. “You going to punish me?”
The rain is pouring down now, soaking the pavement and sending wafts of mist under the overhang. Emori sees beads of it shimmering on her glove when she shoves his chest. “Shut up, John.”
He catches her bad hand, holds it close, lifts it to cup his cheek and kiss the wrapped palm. She feels her face fall and her eyes harden. “Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?” John asks, kissing the palm again.
“That.” She tugs her hand free.
“It deserves love too,” he murmurs, reaching for her good hand. Emori doesn’t know what to say to that, so she says nothing. Instead, she takes off John’s jacket and hands it to him. She steps back into the rain, tips her head up to the sky, and lets the cold water sting her face like tears.
“You’re crazy!” John shouts. She tilts her head down to look at him. Her hair plasters to her cheeks. “Emori, get back here!”
“Or what?” She spins in the rain, laughing. Later, she’ll be freezing, shivering and desperate for warmth, but right now, she craves the cold.
I’m going to be okay, she tells herself as the train roars past, its push and pull of wind soaking her even more. This will all be okay.
They both cry on the train on the way home. Emori, from joy, the salt dripping into her mouth, mixing with the rain falling from her hair; John for reasons she doesn’t understand.
“What’s wrong?” she asks him, breathless, her tears giving way to a kind of soft joy.
He wipes his eyes, though there are no tears. He cries like she used to: silent and without a trace. “If you say ‘nothing’,” Emori says, teasing, “I’ll kick you into tomorrow.”
“I don’t know,” he says softly. The train is dark and empty. Rain lashes at the windows. Emori scoots over to be nearer to him. Despite her wet clothes, he leans on her shoulder.
“Love, for you,” he murmurs, almost to himself, “isn’t the usual kind of love. It’s like a religion. It’s terrifying. No one will ever want to sleep with you.”
She frowns. As if of its own accord, her good hand flies up to stroke his hair. “I scare you.” She means it as a question. It sounds more like an accusation.
He doesn’t hesitate. “Yeah.”
She sighs. He stays there, on her shoulder. Her arm starts to go numb. She doesn’t ask him to move.
When they pull into the station outside their college campus - is it still hers, Emori wonders; is any of this still hers? - Raven is there, leaning against the hood of Bellamy’s car, arms crossed, good foot tapping on the ground. Her shadow is harsh in the street lamp above her. At the sight, Emori feels the knot in her stomach tense and tighten.
This is it, she tells herself as she shoulders her bag and shakes John awake. She won’t let me come home. Emails be damned.
Home. She nearly shakes herself, self-corrects. Come back.
“Hey, Reyes,” John says easily, not even flinching when Raven rockets straight past him to wrap Emori in a bruising hug.
“Don’t ever fucking scare me like that again,” Raven murmurs, rubbing Emori’s back with her hand.
Emori fights the urge to rest her forehead on Raven’s shoulder and cry. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, and waits for the rejection.
Raven pulls back just slightly and brushes a strand of hair from Emori’s face. “It’s okay. You’re home now. Lexa wanted to go through your stuff for clues, but I drew the line.”
John rolls his eyes. “You were this close to doing it, too.”
Raven shrugs. “Just wanted to make sure she was okay-“ She stops and twirls a lock of Emori’s hair in her fingers. “Wait, why are you wet?”
John snorts. Emori starts to explain, but is cut off when Raven hugs her again, then ushers her toward the car.
“Tell me later,” she says, fussing just like Otan would, like Bellamy would too, probably. “We need to get you dry.”
John mutters something Emori doesn’t hear. Raven does; she turns around in her seat and smacks him on the leg. John kicks her seat, and Emori retaliates by throwing the tissue box on the floor near her feet at John’s torso.
“I’ll have to tell Bellamy I did end up needing a car tissue box,” Raven says drily, and the three of them speed home.
“Why did you leave?”
Emori jumps at the sound of Octavia’s voice. She’s standing in the doorway, arms crossed loosely over her chest. “Everyone was worried. You had all of this, and you threw it away. Why?”
Emori sighs and kicks her now-empty backpack under the bed. “It’s a long story,” she sighs.
“Is it?” Octavia steps into the room. She and Emori are about the same height, but there’s something about the younger girl that makes her seem that much more imposing. “Because from where I stand, you put yourself ahead of the people that love you enough to want to keep you here.”
Emori takes a careful step forward. “You’re telling me you wouldn’t have done the same if it was your brother?” Octavia frowns. “If it was Bellamy?”
“Bellamy wouldn’t have asked me to,” Octavia nearly snarls.
“That’s the point!” Emori shouts. “You have no fucking idea how damn lucky you are! Your brother would do anything for you.” She remembers Bellamy’s tirade in the alley, his furious face inches from her brother’s impassive eyes. “He would never leave you; he would never ask you to forget about the things you want to help him fix his mistakes.”
She’s run out of tears, but her throat feels tight as if she’s about to cry. “You don’t understand,” she says softly, a broken thing. Octavia’s eyes soften incrementally the longer she stands there.
“I’m sure your brother loves you,” Octavia says quietly. She looks chastised, or at least a little guilty. “In his own way.”
“He does.” Emori nods, sniffles a little bit. “But…”
Octavia cocks her head. A frown creases the skin between her eyes. Behind her, Emori sees another person’s shadow, hovering in the hall.
“He didn’t choose me,” Emori says, finally, throat tight. “There was something he wanted more.”
There’s nothing left to say. Octavia leaves the room with a soft sound that Emori doesn’t have the energy to identify.
The shadow in the hall is Bellamy’s. He enters the room quietly, gently. “I told her not to talk to you like that,” he says, apologetically.
Emori shakes her head. The lump in her throat widens. “It’s okay.”
“That was nice,” Bellamy gestures to the room, “what you said about me.”
“It’s true.” Emori’s voice cracks, because what wouldn’t she give for her brother to care just a little bit more and in a little bit of a different way?
“Oh, come here,” Bellamy murmurs, reaching for Emori, hugging her by the shoulders and letting her sniffle, once, into the soft cotton of his shirt. “It’s okay.”
She doesn’t have words for the comfort she needs, but Bellamy doesn’t seem to mind. She closes her eyes and tentatively hugs him back, her arms around his torso.
“Aww, you didn’t invite me?” Raven leans against the doorframe, grinning slightly. Bellamy reaches his free arm out for Raven, who joins the hug, resting her chin on Emori’s shoulder and placing her hand carefully atop Emori’s bad one.
“You okay?” she murmurs in Emori’s ear. When Emori nods, Raven squeezes her hand. “We’ve got you.”
“Damn right.” Emori can’t see over Raven’s head, but she knows that’s Jasper, and, judging from the footsteps, Monty too. The boys join the group hug, hanging on even when Bellamy staggers forward under Jasper’s exuberant weight.
Emori has to laugh at Bellamy’s soft oof. “I’m fine,” she says softly.
“We know,” Monty says, patting her awkwardly on the head, the only part of her he can reach. “Doesn’t mean we can’t be here for you anyway.”
Emori doesn’t know what to say to that either. She stands there, encased in a knot of her roommates’ love and care, and lets them decide when to let go.
Something has shifted in the house’s atmosphere. It’s as if Emori’s absence, however short, has torn a hole in things that is now mending. Emori isn’t sure how true that is, but she is sure that there have never been this many people in the kitchen at one time.
“Get out!” John shoves Bellamy away from the fridge. “Sit down on the bar stool next to Emori or get the fuck out of my way. Your choice.”
Bellamy retrieves a beer and hastens to the living room, where Octavia, Monty, Jasper and Luna are duking it out over Mario Kart. Emori smiles at John when his back is to her. Lexa lets herself in from the backyard and gives Emori a knowing look.
“You two would be cute together,” Lexa whispers in Emori’s ear. Emori swats her on the arm without thinking about it; Lexa’s surprised laugh carries through the whole house as she goes to answer the door.
“Huh, what do you know?” a young man asks, kicking off his shoes and dropping a bag of potato chips on the counter. “She does have a personality.”
“Leave her alone,” John says, and then proceeds to glare at his back until he plops down on the rug in front of the TV.
“Who is he?” Emori asks, frowning.
“That’s Zeke Shaw.” The name sounds mean in John’s mouth. “I think he’s into Raven.”
“He’s cute.” Emori appraises him. His eyes are earnest and he has the set jaw and close-cut hair of a military man. He looks like he could handle Raven, or at least, make sure she can handle herself. “Objectively.”
“Well, yeah, but…” John sighs. The kitchen timer goes off. “I don’t want her to get hurt. Again.”
The set of his shoulders tell her the same sentiment applies to himself.
“I met Zeke when I came to find you in the city.”
Emori jumps at the sound of John’s voice from the bathroom doorway. She spits some toothpaste in the sink and rinses her toothbrush. “Oh.”
“I saw you watching him,” he clarifies. “Figured you should know he’s not a total stranger.”
“Only a slight stranger, then,” Emori says, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. John doesn’t return it, so she lets it drop and bends over to put away her toothpaste and hide the sadness of her eyes.
He won’t forgive you, she tells herself. Stop trying to earn it.
“Do you regret coming for me?” she asks, voice small, echoing slightly in the bathroom. She remembers holding herself up, arms stiff, mouth bitter, and remembers him tucking her into bed, holding her, lending her his shirt and some of his strength.
Her stomach rolls at the memory. That was where all the horrible things began.
“No,” John whispers, like it’s a bitter confession. “I don’t.” He laughs, sharp. “I probably should. But I don’t.”
She regards him in the mirror. It’s safer that way, a pane of glass separating the two of them, their words and all the things that split them before they even had a chance to come together.
“Can we start over?” John asks, in a rush. That question, and her answer, goes against both of their nature.
“Yes,” she says, and he smiles.
“You know,” Raven begins around a mouthful of food, “you’re pretty good at that.”
Emori looks up from Monty’s laptop. Or, at least, the shell of it. She’s installing a hard drive with more storage, although, from the looks of it, she should probably just build him his own gaming computer. “Oh. Thanks.”
“You should take a computer engineering class,” Raven continues, either undeterred by, or oblivious to, Emori’s standoffish reaction. “You wouldn’t be half bad.”
Emori gestures with her bad hand. “Can’t fix things properly with this.”
Raven raises an eyebrow. “You’re using it fine now.” She shrugs. “I walk funny. People might stare, but it doesn’t stop me. It shouldn’t stop you either.”
Emori blinks. She’d never considered that: that her appearance may not immediately disqualify her from something. After all, it had disqualified her from her mother’s love and from belonging. But maybe…
“Sure,” she says, genuinely. “I’ll look into it.”
Raven grins. “Hell, yeah.”
She does look into it. Fall turns into almost-winter, and she thinks and plans and crams for finals and works long nights to make sure she catches up from her unplanned hiatus. She even goes on a couple dates with John. They turn out better than the first one did; he takes her to the park for a chilly picnic, and they get tipsy and crunch fall leaves in their hands, their conversation evaporating with their breath in the air. He takes her dancing at some lame college event, and she surprises him, and herself, by wearing a dress.
Her favorite date is right before finals season: they stay in his room, and she helps him write out more poems to tape to his walls. There’s something strangely permanent about her writing in his space.
Love, for you, she writes, as careful as she can, is not the usual kind of love. It’s like a religion. It’s terrifying. No one will ever want to sleep with you.
He hangs that above his bed. Later, he kisses her as they lay below it.
The closer it gets to Thanksgiving, the more tense the house gets, thanks to finals and finals-induced stress. Jasper and Monty are at one another’s throats, John cuts back on the drinking to concentrate, but makes everyone miserable because of it, and Emori takes to sleeping in Raven’s room so Raven actually goes to bed at a halfway decent time.
“I like you,” Raven mumbles, half asleep. The clock reads 3:14 p.m. “You’re a good kid.”
Emori laughs drowsily. “I’m older than you.”
“Fuck if I know,” Raven says around a yawn. Emori’s heart warms.
The three-day break for the holiday is a welcome reprieve; even Jasper, an underachiever by his own admission, welcomes the break from studying. John wants to celebrate with a party, but they’re all so wiped out that they spend the day before Thanksgiving napping and watching the worst-rated movies on Netflix.
Emori didn’t even think they were going to celebrate the holiday until John hauls a massive turkey out of the freezer the night before.
“What...the fuck?” Octavia asks, eyes wide. “When did you buy a turkey?”
John shrugs. “You know. Whenever.”
“That’s Not an answer,” Octavia says. “And yes-”
“The capital letters are implied in your tone,” Raven and Lexa say in unison and in monotone. Emori hides a smile. Some things never change.
John bastes and roasts the turkey. Every time he says the turkey is roasting, Raven gets a shit-eating grin on her face that Octavia tries to wipe off by throwing pillows, papers and a magazine at her head. At some point between breakfast and a half-hearted lunch, Harper, Zeke, Luna and Bellamy come over, bearing mashed potatoes, corn casserole, green beans and pumpkin pie, respectively.
“What is that?” Lexa asks, poking Zeke’s glass pan with a finger.
“Corn casserole,” Zeke says, his head inside the fridge.
“Corn what?”
His head pops up almost comically fast. “You don’t know what corn casserole is?!” Lexa shakes her head. “Shame,” Zeke mutters, and spends the next five minutes unsuccessfully attempting to open his beer.
Monty tries to steal John’s steak knives three separate times. The fourth time, he succeeds, and Emori can’t suppress her laughter at John’s howl of rage when he sees his prize knife strapped to the roomba.
“GIVE ME THE KNIFE BACK!” he shouts. “Monty, I’m gonna drop-kick that piece of shit out the front door.”
“Hey!” Jasper picks up the object and cradles it to his chest dramatically. “Don’t insult Stabby.”
“If you call that thing ‘Stabby’ one more time, I’m gonna take you out,” Harper promises, stepping over Jasper and plopping onto the couch next to Monty. Emori wiggles her eyebrows at Raven over Monty’s head when the boy’s cheeks start to flush.
John doesn’t stop fussing over the turkey until Bellamy steals his apron and baster and shoos him out of the kitchen to set the table. He does, in proper form no less, and Emori sneaks behind him and messes up the silverware until John catches her.
“Saboteur,” he calls her, grabbing her around the middle and tickling her sides.
“John, stop!” she says, laughing, squirming away from him and nearly smacking her shoulder on the peninsula. She knocks over one of the bar stools and almost kicks a passing Zeke in the shins. “Seriously!”
John releases her just as the doorbell rings. “How many more people can we fit in this house?” he wonders aloud as Bellamy goes to answer the door.
“How many people can we fit at this table?” Lexa asks, gesturing to the makeshift banquet table that consists of the dining room table, two card tables, a large coffee table with cushions for sitting, and Raven’s desk.
“Hopefully three more,” Bellamy says, leading Echo, Clarke Griffin and Costia into the house. Echo immediately gravitates to Raven and Harper, while Clarke stays close to Bellamy and Costia hovers near John’s elbow as he carves the turkey.
“Can I have a drumstick?” she asks John, who nods. “I can help if you want.”
“That’s Emori’s man, Costia,” Octavia yells over her brother’s shoulder. “You’ve got your own woman!”
“And a fine one I am,” Lexa snarks. Luna swats at her. “What? I’m hot.”
Somehow, Bellamy and John navigate the chaos and get everyone settled at the table. They pause for grace - mostly for Zeke, Raven grumbles - then dig in. Emori stuffs herself on turkey and cranberries - and Zeke’s casserole, which isn’t half bad - and on the laughter and kindness of her friends that fills her to the brim.
“I want to try something,” John says softly, his head resting on her stomach. They’re in her bed, nestled under blankets, watching the first snow of the season from her window.
“Okay,” she murmurs, continuing to card her good fingers through John’s hair. When he lifts his head, her hand falls from the top of his head to the nape of his neck. “Whatever you want.”
He kisses her, soft, and she lets him; she tangles her good fingers in his hair again, but lets out a tiny huff of breath when his tongue swipes over her bottom lip.
“Sorry-” he says, breaking away. “I didn’t-”
“You’re fine!” she’s fast to reassure him. It’s like ripping off a BandAid, she realizes. “I wasn’t expecting it.”
“I said I wanted to try something,” he says, grumpy and cheeky.
She shoves at his shoulder as he moves closer. “Shut up,” she says, but she’s laughing right until the moment their lips connect. This time, he deepens the kiss almost instantly, and she lets him. She loses herself in it, in the soft way he bites at her lower lip, the careful press of his tongue, the gasp he makes when she sighs against his mouth.
“That was nice,” she murmurs when he breaks away, propping himself on his elbow and looking down at her. His hand strokes over her hair. “What was it for?”
He shrugs. Suddenly, he can’t meet her eyes. “What if you leave again?” he says, softly, the guilt in his eyes at that question palpable. “I want to do the things I regret not doing.” He winces. “That’s so fucking cheesy.”
Emori shakes her head. “No,” she whispers, shame and sadness piercing her heart. “It’s not.”
