Polis, Part I
In theory Emoris plan was a good one, except it didn’t really worked out. While Murphy sat, blindfolded, mouth gagged and hands tied behind his back, he thought back to the days he and Emori spend without doing any coups. Most of their routine stayed the same, they woke up late, Murphy went outside to find wood and all things eatable in the forest and afterwards Emori made a fire. They drank tea, ate nuts and berries, whenever he found some in the morning. The morning was still a quiet time, but now they always sat side by side and a lot of time was spent kissing.
Afterwards they went fishing or hunting. Murphy dug up worms, but Emori was in charge of the rest, up until it came to cooking whatever they catched. Murphy got quite good a gutting fishes and rodents. They still got a lot of spices left and if they got lucky, they found some fungus, parsnip or wild carrots. Most evenings the food tasted good and filled their bellies. If the nights were clear enough, they still watched the stars, but now they were holding hands while they lay on the soft forrest ground. One night Emori asked him, if he missed his home in space. He remembers the sound of her voice and how her face looked clearly while he was being tortured and asked stupid questions about Jahas chip. That night, just a few days ago, he looked at her and there had only been one possible answer.
“No, it hasn’t been a home for me, long before they sent us to the ground.” That night, as they made love right outside of the cave beneath the stars, he was almost thinking that she could be his home some of these days. But everything had to end sooner or later and that was why Murphy didn’t do trust. Right from the start, Murphy knew that it was only a matter of time until she would go and try to find her brother because well, whatever Murphy meant to her, he wasn’t her family. Wasn’t her people. Otan was. So suddenly Murphy was alone again. It shouldn’t have felt like this. He shouldn’t be hurt like this. You only hurt if you expected more and he clearly didn’t. But Emori exceeded his expectations and came back right on time, before he could be foolish enough to stage a con alone. It was just that it hadn’t helped him at all. If Emoris plan had gone accordingly that would have been their last coup for a while and they would have been off scavenging for trash. Now, as whoever the fuck the bald guy was, hurt him for the past few hours - or has it been days already? - pulled of his blindfold, Murphy could see through blurred eyes, that he sat among the trash Emori and him were supposed to find. Since when where grounder so keen on tech? And why was there a space capsule in the corner?
oo oo oo oo oo oo
It had been a wild couple of days, a dead commander, another AI or whatever the fuck Clarke and this Titus-Guy dug out of the commander's neck and Ontari, crazy and murderous Ontari, who he helped to fake it till she made it or died trying. Being threatened until he joined her in bed, the chain still rustling around his neck, wasn’t part of his plan. But what did he expect? He just learned planning from Emori and her last one had gone sideways too. Murphy was glad he wasn’t a virgin anymore, but sharing the bed with Ontari felt completely different. His body worked efficiently to please her, she was beautiful if you were able to overlook the darkness in her, but it felt like cheating and abuse at the same time. He missed Emori awfully. Murphy just wanted to hug her, cook her dinner and watch the stars. But he really believed what he told her days ago, before he found himself as a captive in Polis. When people leave, they don’t come back. Murphy might never see Emori again, that hurt like crazy and he nearly puked at the thought, but he wasn’t surprised. It was everything he expected.
What he didn’t expect was to see her again in the market in the middle of Polis. Emori normally avoided the capital like she would be burned at the stakes as soon as she sat foot in there. He was surprised but elated when she really met him in the Fleimkepas room. She seemed kinda off that day, but she was clearly in awe with everything she saw in that godforsaken cellar and Murphy was just so happy to see her again. They made love next to a freaking space capsule but after he felt even more like a cheat. He tried to tell her, but unlike her normal self she wasn’t really listening. All in all Murphy shouldn’t have been surprised when he went to see Ontari later that day for the weekly audiences in the throne room and just like that Jaha stood before them to voice his request to the commander and to offer her no more faking. She just had to swallow the chip, like Emori did. Murphy was sick of it. But Ontari, power-hungry and impressionable like she was, threw him into another cell and swallowed the chip like candy.
Over the next hours the cell filled with people, who wouldn’t take the chip but were too important to kill on sight. Funny, that by now he was one of those. When did that happen? But while he was at question-time: why the fuck did Emori take the chip? Murphy knew she hurt. She had every right to. Life on the ground wasn’t easy for anybody he knew, but Emoris past got him in a whole different way. Not only because she became his favorite person, it was more. Murphy knew he was who he was, because of his parents. Because they loved him and they died. His anger, his sadness, his doubts and his courage, hell even his snark was because of them. His parents build the foundation of his existence with love, sacrifices and accusations, everything after that just added to it. For Emori it had been different. Except for maybe by her brother, Emori never knew love. She never talked about her life before they met in the desert. Emori protected her own heart by staging to be a clean sheet. Murphy got it somehow. With her he had felt like a different person too sometimes. It was easy to forget betrayal, torture and murder when he felt her looking at him. Murphy meant what he said to Jaha back on that Island: Pain, Hate, Envy, those were the ABCs of his, but he caught himself growing over the last few weeks. Emori helped him grow, see that he could be more than that. Murphy was in awe of her. If Emori was able to build herself her own foundation, lacking parents and people to guide her, he clearly should be able to expand his, when the time had come. That was why he spoke up, when Indra tried to murder teach Pike, even if the guy clearly earned every cut, she gave him. Slapping and strangling him of their so-called graduation day before being send to the ground might have been the nicest thing the guy had done in the past few months. But Murphy new there was an even bigger threat: ALIE and currently she had the sole thing Murphy wanted to save, before getting out of this godforsaken city.
The next hours were a blur of escaping, fighting and pumping half-dead Ontaris black heart so Clarke would live to save all their asses. Murphy might not remember every minute, a lot of time was spent on autopilot, but he clearly remembers the fear of losing Emori in the midst of this chaos and that he told Bellamy, how he cared about her enough to risk his life while saving her and nothing he ever said might be more true than that. Now that Murphy finally got her in his arms again, Ontais blood all over his hands and sweat and dirt running down his brow, he felt Bellamy gaze upon them. What a strange sight it must be to him and whoever knew him from before, that the little shit Murphy clung to a grounder girl. Murphy felt Emoris body tremble in his arms, she was crying like crazy with her face hidden behind his shoulder, telling him how sorry she was over and over again. He made a shushing sound deep in his throat. Pain, Hate, Envy and whatever they all did in the last couple of hours filled the whole room with crying and screaming. But Murphy only had eyes for Emori. She was the reason he was still there. Saving the world could bite him.
“Everything is going to be okay, ‘Mori”, he whispered, “I have a plan.”
oo oo oo oo oo oo
His plan to take her with him to Arkadia - what a stupid name if you asked him, but everything was better than Camp Jaha - was quickly discarded when shit got bad so fast that Bellamy gave him a gun. For a moment Murphy really wanted to go with them, fight whatever next battle Skykru had gotten themselves into. Just for a moment he wanted to be part of them, but he couldn't. He wasn't a soldier and he was already part of something bigger than himself. He really missed Emori over the last couple of days, he was so scared of losing her and he couldn't risk her running off without him again. So Murphy grabbed the gun and when the others run ahead he just went the other way, back where he came from. He found Emori hiding in the dark, because she was still scared people would chase her away with torches and pitchforks as soon as they saw her disformed hand. Murphy grabbed it without a second thought. Hiding her hand between their bodies they scurried through the masses of grieving and arguing people. What a melting pot this city was right now. Good thing to be out of here soon. Amidst the chaos it was easy for the both of the to slip through the gate and run off to the woods. It was dark already and they decided to make good on a few miles to get away as far as possible from Polis. On their way through the woods Murphy told her what he'd gathered from Bellamy and the others about the new conflict with Aszgeda.
"It's not our fight", Emori told him matter of factly, "Not our people."
"We got no people", Murphy mumbled. And they'll never have, if they always decide to run.
"You are my people." Emori looked over her shoulder, but when she didn't get the response she seemed to want, she grabbed his hand, harder than before and her pace got faster. She was done talking.
They didn't find a cave that night, so they lay down, side by side on the forests ground under canopy so thick they couldn't see the stars. It was almost too dark to see their own hands, but they weren't scared. Emori was still holding his hand in a death grip and Murphy could sense that she was crying silently in the change of her breath. Murphy wasn't sure if he should give her the courtesy of hiding her tears in the dark. He couldn't possibly ask her what's wrong when he knew that everything was wrong. Everything was fucked up. She was cast-out as a baby, her brother was dead, she had been stuck in a simulation over the last couple of days and just when he promised her safety by his people, something she might be longing for, he took it from her just hours later, because he wouldn't fight alongside them.
"I'm sorry", he whispered instead of asking stupid questions. Emoris body stiffed even further and she let out an ugly little sob. Murphy just barely remembered his parents consoling him as a child. They didn't often had to. When both were still alive, they were kinda privileged on the ark, his father working in med-bay, his mother in the library. Murphy was a fairly happy kid, just as he told Raven back in the dropship when he thought they would both die that day. He was loved. Once again this was the problem. We was fucking useless to Emori right now.
Emori rolled to her side, facing him but she hid her face in the crook of his neck. He felt his shirt slightly dampen, but he was glad she took comfort in him. Murphy put his arms around her body and lightly kissed her head. He would have never thought something like her was awaiting him on the ground. Back in the skybox he seldom thought about his future and what it could hold for him. He wasn't sure if they would pardon him when he became eighteen. He had been really young when he fucked up and he didn't kill anyone with his fire, he just wanted to watch the possessions of the guard who floated his father burn, but he wasted precious air and he wasn't exactly a model inmate. But even if they would've pardoned him, life didn't hold much possibilities on the ark for ex-delinquents. Hard labor mostly, low rations, a housing in the lowest stations. Maybe he would've found a wife one day and together they'd would have a child. It would have been a hard and boring life and he supposed he would have died in space either way. Either with eighteen or an old man, just e few decades away from seeing the ground. When he sat in the stupid dropship, he was certain they were all gonna die, regardless what he told Pike just hours prior. Hopefully from the impact and not from breathing radiated air, but they lived and as soon as he sat foot on the earth, he knew that from now on he really was a survivor. If the ark didn't kill him, and the dropship didn't, if even a radiated planet couldn't, he wasn't supposed to die just jet. So, from that day on Murphy fought tooth and nail to avoid death. In this moment, Emori crying in his arms, them both surviving just another disaster on earth, Murphy was stupidly emotional enough to think that maybe he survived this long to be with her.
"Yu're ai Kru, `Mori", he whispered into her hair. "You always will be."