a median of mercy
When the Commander had told him in the dust of his last mission, I will have you trained, he’d brushed it over, forgotten about it.
Of course, the Commander hadn’t.
Her name is Ryfe. The Commander says that she was the lukotwar for Yujleda, the Broadleaf Clan. Was the lukotwar: Murphy was under the impression that it was a permanent position. Either she got out of it okay, or there is no more Broadleaf Clan. Her arms are covered in tattoos: all concentric circles.
Ryfe is tough. She works him hard, but she doesn’t hurt him - when he fucks up, she’s just disappointed, which. Is whatever. She makes him run laps though, and that fucking sucks.
He cuts down his fighting with Bryan to once a week. He starts sleeping in Polis again, exhaustion tearing at his bones.
She starts teaching him Trigedasleng. She says: language is just different words for concepts of things. She says: look, what is this? It’s a thing, not a word.
He says: how do you say ‘don’t be a bitch’ in Trigedasleng?
He’s cleaning out stables for a day and a half for that one. It wasn’t worth it.
—
He struggles through Trigedasleng. He knows very little: lukotwar (spy), ai laik [name] kom [place] (I am [name] from [place]), breja (please), mochof (thank you), biyo moba (I’m sorry), em (an all-purpose pronoun), frag op (kill). He struggles at pulling together sentences, at pronounciation, at understanding.
He’s doing his best.
—
When he’s not in Polis, he works at the dropship: it’s chillier in the evenings now, but winter hasn’t come as early or as easily as he expected it to. Frequently, Bellamy will ask him to join in a hunting party, or a scavenging mission back to Arkadia, and he accepts easily: Bellamy is a good leader for these kind of little missions, and he’s an excellent distraction. Sometimes, he’ll swap out with Jasper on that; he’s also pretty decent as a sniper.
Jasper has a death wish, though, and while it doesn’t matter to Murphy if he kills himself, other people would be upset, so. He’ll cover for Jasper.
The missions themselves are good, but after? When they’re sitting around the fire, and Bellamy has this smile tugging at his face, and Harper finally looks relaxed, and Miller and Bryan have their fingers intertwined. And they don’t mind Murphy in their midst. That’s what he keeps coming back for.
This is the life he’s carved out for himself: working to build a place for himself, coming home with his muscles sore and Bellamy to sleep next to. He misses his dead: Emori, Mbege, Fox, Finn, but there are more things to keep him here, in this world, than joining them. He doesn’t dream of their faces any more: they blur together in his mind.
It hurts, but not in the way he expected it to. And that’s okay.
—
“The Commander is coming to assess your progress today,” Ryfe says. She’s got a kind of obstacle course set up for him by the Polis barracks: mostly high, flat structures he’s been clambering up and jumping off from. The whole thing kind of reminds him of Finn.
“Okay,” he says. He tries to care about it, but finds he can’t. Some days she’ll only speak to him in Trigedasleng, but she must be too nervous about the Commander to risk his refusal to do anything.
She has him run drills until the Commander sweeps in. Raven is with her. That’s. New. He knows that Raven sometimes comes to Polis with Clarke, that they’re good friends or whatever, but he didn’t know that Raven had ever spoken to the Commander. That the Commander had any interest in her.
Anyhow. What a surprise. He doesn’t care.
It is a little startling when he’s crouched on top of one of the structures and Prosper comes in, and Ryfe nods to him. She slants her gaze to Murphy, and, well. He knows what’s expected of him. He’s got his knife.
He gets the jump on Prosper.
“Kill him,” says Ryfe, so he mimes through the act from behind Prosper; his blade here, just below the heart. A sharp shove upward. “Frag op em,” she repeats, more forcefully: kill him.
He drops his knife. “No?” he says, more confused than anything.
There’s a couple beats of silence. Prosper flips him onto his back, has a knee pressed to his stomach, wraps a hand around his throat. He chokes. Prosper’s eyes say: Remember when you killed my brother? He’s failed Ryfe’s test; Prosper’s going to kill him, here and now. He struggles, half-hearted but helplessly. He is ineffectual either way.
Prosper lets him go. Moss isn’t dead. He’s fine. He’s fine.
He raises himself up onto his elbow and coughs his lungs out.
He failed. Prosper offers him a hand up. He takes it.
The Commander and Raven are gone.
—
Ryfe looks him over. He looks fine. She says, in a tight voice: “The Commander wants to see you.”
The Commander’s going to execute him. The Commander’s going to say you aren’t trying hard enough. The Commander’s going to stop all assistance to the dropship.
Stop. Stop. The Commander is likely to offer him a median of mercy.
He goes.
—
It’s not just the Commander waiting for him. It’s Raven, too. She’s got her hands in her lap, twisting together.
The Commander watches him as he enters: her gaze carefully analyzing. She says: “I need you to be lukotwar again.”
No. No. He failed. “No,” he says, and then tries to swallow it. He’d killed six of her students: he still lives. He’s interested in continuing that. “I’m not ready,” he tries to say.
“Not for the Coalition,” she says. “Raven wants to hire you.” Her voice is cool.
That’s. New. “Yeah?” he says, and turns his full attention to her. “Who do you want dead?”
She leans forward, and her voice is iron: “I want to destroy A.L.I.E,” she says.
And. Well. That’s something he can get behind.