Murphy feels warm. That’s the only word he can think of to describe transcendence. It’s not a feeling that Murphy can easily put into words.
Peaceful, maybe.
But mostly just...warm.
It’s a good ending, he thinks. It’s a nice ending.
But.
(Because of course there’s a ‘but.’)
It’s not the ending any of them want. Any of them deserve.
It’s not about deserve, silly, he can hear Emori say, but still, he can’t shake this feeling that something doesn’t feel quite right.
Murphy opens his eyes. He’s standing in the kitchen of Becca Franco’s mansion. He looks down, studying his hands. They look...normal. Long fingers, scarred knuckles, thin wrists. He’s definitely not glowing, which is good, he supposes.
“John Murphy,” comes a voice, and Murphy’s head snaps up. “Charlotte?” he asks, incredulous, staring dumbfounded at the little girl now standing across from him in the kitchen.
She hasn’t aged, still the same kid who’d stepped off the dropship with the rest of them, some one hundred and thirty years ago. But there’s something about her eyes, something old and...all-knowing. She smiles, like Murphy’s figured it out.
That’s when it clicks. The eyes, the way she’s standing...
“Okay,” he says, appraising, because he’s always able to roll with the punches. “Not Charlotte.”
“Very good,” Not-Charlotte says, still wearing that weird, sly smile. “We take the form of someone important to you. In your case, your greatest failure.” She says it so calmly, so matter-of-fact, but Murphy can’t help but picture Charlotte’s broken body at the base of that cliff. His jaw tightens. “She shouldn’t have died,” he admits quietly. “She didn’t deserve…”
“A curious concept,” the being wearing Charlotte’s face interrupts. “Deserve.” She says it like she’s testing the word, like it’s the first time she’s said it. “What do you deserve, John Murphy?”
He opens his mouth to answer, but Charlotte holds up a hand, silencing him. Clearly, she doesn’t want an answer.
Or maybe, she doesn’t need one. Maybe his fate is already decided.
Charlotte beckons to him, and Murphy steps after her, trailing behind her small form to stand at one of the windows. There’s panic forming slowly in his chest. Is she trying to tell him he doesn’t deserve transcendence?
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she whispers, gazing out at the vast landscape beyond. It’s not Becca’s island, like Murphy was expecting. Instead, he’s looking out at an endless purple sky, filled with stars of every colour, like the mansion kitchen is suspended in space.
Murphy glances between it and Not-Charlotte’s enraptured face, feeling a mix of confusion and frustration. He’s never liked people who speak in riddles. He wishes this...thing would just get to the point already. “Yeah, it’s great. Why am I here?”
“So impatient,” Not-Charlotte tsks, and Murphy doesn’t have a good answer to that, so he just shrugs. “Yeah, well.”
Not-Charlotte ignores his obvious snark. “Do you know where ‘here’ is, John?”
“Murphy,” he corrects quietly, mostly out of habit.
“You’ve transcended,” she says, ignoring him, clasping her hands serenely in front of her. “Some might consider it a great honour, to be able to leave behind all one’s earthly concerns and join the universal consciousness. After all, here, there is no pain, no fear, no death.”
“Does sound nice,” Murphy mutters, unable to look at Charlotte anymore. It’s unsettling, seeing the kid’s face but hearing her talk like...that.
Especially when she asks, knowingly: “You know all about pain, don’t you John?” Murphy shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “How do you--”
“I know everything about you, John Murphy,” she says, as if it’s that simple. “You’ve lived a life of hardship. Of suffering. Yet when given an opportunity to leave all of that pain behind, you hesitate.” Charlotte’s brow furrows, puzzled. She looks to him expectantly, waiting for his answer.
Only, Murphy doesn’t have one to give her. “Your guess on that is as good as mine, chief. Since, apparently, you know everything about me,” he says, running a hand through his hair.
Charlotte grins, amused, and it’s the first genuine smile Murphy’s seen from her. “Then apparently,” she echoes, glancing at him pointedly, “I don’t know everything.
“Never before have I seen anyone refuse transcendence. Until today,” she continues, eyes wandering back to the purple sky outside, like it might hold the answers she seeks.
Murphy digests this, turns it over in his mind. Until today, no one has refused transcendence. “Who?” he demands, fixing Charlotte with what he hopes is a penetrating stare.
She smiles cryptically. “What do you think?”
Murphy shakes his head silently. He’s thinking of Emori, of how scared he is of never seeing her again.
Not-Charlotte must pick up on this, because she tells him in a gentle voice, “Transcendence is a choice, John.”
He’s never been good at the whole trust thing, so he asks, “What’s the catch?” (In his experience, there’s always a catch.) Charlotte shakes her head, still staring emptily out at the purple expanse.
Murphy swallows. Transcendence is a choice. His choice. “I wanna see my friends again. Emori. Raven.” Bellamy.
Charlotte, to her credit, hardly looks surprised. “Then go,” she says, gesturing to the window once more.
Murphy turns to look, and the purple sky is gone, replaced by green trees and white sand and blue water. Earth. He’s back on Earth.
He looks back to ask Charlotte something, but she’s gone. So is the mansion kitchen. He’s on the beach, the woods to his back, and nothing but sand and water beyond. His heart stops for a second, thinking he’s alone, but then a familiar voice calls out to him.
“Hey! Murphy!” He glances in the direction of the voice, and grins when he sees the familiar red jacket. Raven is running across the sand towards him, ponytail swinging, as fast as her hobbled leg can carry her.
He takes off running too, meeting her halfway.
She looks as happy as he’s ever seen her, a huge grin splitting her face as she reaches up to pull him into a crushing hug.
“Woah, hey,” Murphy says, taken aback. He’s never really been the hugging type.
“About time you joined us!” Raven exclaims, pulling back and giving him a playful shove. Murphy’s brow furrows. “Us?” Raven grabs his arm. “C’mon!”
They walk together down the beach, rounding a corner obscured by craggy rocks and gnarled pines.
“Hey, there he is!” comes a shout. Murphy squints against the blinding sunlight reflecting off the water. “Is that...Octavia?” he asks. Before Raven can answer, another voice calls out, followed by another, and another. “Murphy!” “Hey, Murphy!” “‘Sup, Murphy?” He sees Echo, Jordan, Miller.
Everyone. Everyone is here. Murphy looks at Raven, surprised. “Is this for real?”
She grins. “As real as I am.” Her hand slips into his, warm, calloused, solid. Definitely real, then.
Murphy stares at their intertwined fingers, then back down the beach at the group of his friends. “You all chose to stay?”
Raven nods. “Transcendence sounded cool and all, but…” she trails off, shoulders lifting in a shrug. “I don’t know. I always pictured the end to look a little more like this.”
Murphy opens his mouth to reply, but someone is sprinting across the beach towards him and Raven, hair flying behind them in the wind.
He realizes a second before she collides with him who it is. “Emori!”
“John,” she breathes, throwing her arms around his shoulders and pressing her face into his chest. “John.”
“Emori,” he repeats, burying his nose in her hair. Over Emori’s shoulder, he sees Raven watching them. She’s got this look in her eye that Murphy can really only describe as ‘wistful.’
Murphy doesn’t know exactly why he does what he does next, but he does know it feels right.
“C’mere, Reyes,” he says, beckoning. Emori nods, reaching out for Raven too. Her brown eyes widen, and she shakes her head minutely. “No, no, guys, don’t let me get in the way —“
“Raven, you could never,” Emori soothes, and together, they pull her in, wrapping her into the middle of their embrace. She slots between them perfectly, like she fits, and Murphy lets out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding.
“Better?” he whispers to Raven, who nods, her hair tickling the sensitive skin of his neck. “Yeah,” she breathes. Emori gives a pleased hum, leaning her head on Raven’s shoulder. They stand like that for a while, just holding each other. “This is nice,” Raven murmurs. Murphy nods, leaning over and pressing a quick kiss to Emori’s forehead, and then, impulsively, to the top of Raven’s head. She smiles up at him fondly.
Eventually, Echo picks her way across the sand to join them. “Took you long enough,” she teases. Murphy rolls his eyes. “Good to see you too, Echo.” She laughs, reaching out to give him a good-natured punch on the arm. “I’m glad you’re here, Murphy.”
“We’re missing someone,” Murphy says suddenly, looking around at the three of them. Their little family is short one member. “Did Bellamy…?”
A shadow crosses Echo’s face, and then it’s gone again, buried deep. She shakes her head with a shrug. “Octavia didn’t say.” Murphy can tell she’s still upset by Bellamy’s betrayal, even if she’s trying hard not to show it.
“He would’ve wanted to transcend with the other Disciples,” Raven says, a note of bitterness in her voice.
“Hey, now,” comes a voice from somewhere behind Murphy. “Have a little faith.”
Murphy knows that voice. He doesn’t think he’s ever turned around so fast in his life.
Sure enough, Bellamy Blake is standing there, dressed in his old guard jacket, hands stuck casually in his pockets. He’s smiling at them, brown eyes twinkling.
“You son of a bitch!” Murphy cries, throwing himself forward. Bellamy catches him before he connects with his chest, tugging him into a massive bear hug.
“Hey, Murph,” the older man murmurs, and Murphy lets out a broken noise that’s halfway between a laugh and a sob. “You asshole,” he chokes out. “We thought you’d left us.”
“I’d never,” Bellamy says, and Murphy can feel the rumble of his deep voice in his chest. “Never,” he repeats, arms tightening around Murphy, and it’s all so achingly familiar his heart feels like it might just implode.
After what feels like forever in Bellamy’s hold (and yet somehow, no time at all) Murphy pulls back, knowing he must look a total wreck. Red face, snotty nose, watery eyes, the whole ugly deal.
The way Bellamy looks at him makes it not matter at all.
There’s a split second where they all just stand and stare at each other, before they all pile in again, clinging to each other like nothing else in the world matters.
Murphy reaches out his hands, finding Emori and Raven and Bellamy and Echo all there to meet him, and he feels something almost like...whatever the hell he felt when he transcended.
There’s a name for that feeling, he realizes, even if he hasn’t felt it in a long, long time.
Belonging.
“I love you guys,” Raven bursts out suddenly, looking like she’s about to cry.
Murphy smirks at her. “‘Course you do. We’re family, Reyes.” She chokes out a wet laugh. “Yeah. Family.”
Echo pulls back first, the ever-practical Azgeda spy in her unable to bear the prolonged show of emotion. Still, her eyes are filled with warmth as she looks at them and says, “Come on, then, family. I hear Indra’s going to catch us some fish.”
Together, they set off down the beach to join the others, clinging to each other’s hands.
And Murphy feels...warm.