she's real
It’s raining in the City of Light, which seems a little strange to him until he feels the water on his skin, soaking him through, and he remembers how much he likes rain. He’s holding something in his left hand: somehow, he knows to press a button on its handle, and it shoots out above him. He raises it above his head.
It’s like a portable roof to protect him from the rain. Neat.
In his other hand, he’s holding a paper cup. He can feel the warmth through the paper, but there’s a lid on the cup, so he can’t tell what’s inside. He raises the cup to his lips and drinks from it anyway.
Hot cocoa.
It burns going down his throat, like maybe he’s sad? But he isn’t sad, he’s just. It was warm.
He takes another sip. It’s good. He likes it.
He’s going to fucking kill A.L.I.E.
Nah. What he’s going to do, right now, is get out of the rain. He’s standing on a street, and there are people bustling past, and they’re good people, and they’re friendly but not too friendly. And that’s okay.
He ducks underneath the awning of one of the buildings, and sheathes his portable roof. It’s a business building. A cafe, like the ones outside Polis, kind of. Maybe he could get some more hot cocoa.
Then you’re in the world again. His throat feels warm, even though he hasn’t drunk any more. He doesn’t want to go in there. He goes back out on the street with his portable roof, keeps walking.
***
It had started out with questions about Clarke. He was tied to a chair in that weird church-dungeon; his hands in front of him, his legs tied to the base. He had spent most of his time unconscious, and the rest of it being questioned. Answering, or for the most part, screaming.
And then: Titus asks him about the City of Light, and he doesn’t have anything to tell him, and Titus discovers that he hates being choked, and they grow to know each other better, in the worst possible ways. That’s the afternoon he escapes: Titus is gone longer than usual and he pulls into consciousness long enough to bite the ropes above and off his wrists. The door is locked, but — He pulls the metal pole out from the space shuttle to fight with — space shuttle? POLIS. POLARIS. That’s. Interesting.
And then Titus finds him, and they fight, and it goes poorly for Murphy, obviously and Titus’ knee is at his throat and —
He begs as best he knows how. “No, no, no - hey. If I tell you what you wanna know about the chip, okay, please, you know it has something to do with Polaris, right, and the space station it came down from, right, I can show you, please, please, I can show you —“
Titus presses down until he’s certain that this is it, the end forever, and then he lets Murphy up. He’s on his hands again, and then standing, coughing. Everything hurts. He points to the space shuttle; here, look at it. “I’m guessing you think that it’s Polis, because the A and the R, they burned off during re-entry. You see?” Titus is impassive. “Okay, you see that?”
Titus says: “All I see is a man who would say anything not to die.”
Okay. Fair. “That may be true,” he agrees. “But so is this: Polaris? That’s part of our story, too. It was our thirteenth station.”
“My faith has got nothing to do with yours,” snarls Titus.
Ha. Faith. “Trust me, I have no faith,” he snaps back, and, steady now, Murphy. “But look. I can prove it to you.” He gets the torch off the wall, uses it to point to the drawings on the wall. “The end of the world. The mushroom cloud. That’s why we had to stay in space. You guys call us Skaikru, right? That’s why. Polaris, as the story goes, is the only station that wouldn’t join Skaikru. So they blew it up.”
Titus nods. “That’s a novel concept,” he says. “Continue.”
And he’s caught up in the story now, and: “Anyhow, I’m thinking that this person. She somehow got out in time, right okay? Because look, here she is again. She’s there, surrounded by all those, I don’t really know what those are.”
“The first natblida.”
Right, whatever that is. “Natblidas. There she is. This woman, fell out of the sky, right?” And he’s staring at the wall, and he’s hardly paying attention to Titus, but what did he think would happen, anyway? “Just like us.”
And Titus says: “We are nothing like you,” and he’s hit over the head with something, and everything goes blurry and painful, and then, mercifully, dark.
—
Eventually he gets to the end of the street, and he turns right. Here, there are less skyscrapers; more buildings are houses. He walks up to one that feels familiar. It’s sunny now, so he puts away his portable roof. Actually, he just drops it, and it disappears, and it’s not his problem.
He knocks on the door. There’s a couple seconds, and there’s uncertainty in his heart, and then Emori answers.
Emori.
“John,” she says, and then, “I’m sorry,” and it doesn’t matter what she’s sorry for, because she’s here and she’s not dead and he crosses the threshold to her, and his arms are around her and she’s real and she’s real and she’s real —
You’re not a creature in body
“Emori,” he says, and that’s all he needs to say, but he keeps going anyway: “Emori, where are you?”
“I’m right here, John,” is what she says, and. That’s not the answer he was looking for. He lets his hands drop, really looks at her. He picks up her hand, both hands, holds them together.
“Something’s wrong with you,” he says, but he can’t really pick out what, exactly. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” she says, and then she says, “I was a stain on the bloodline,” flat, like she —
Not that the image is false, but that the relation is false.
Like she believes it.
He looks at his own hands. They’re the same that they’ve always been. Are they? He can’t remember anymore.
He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, tries to remember what he came here for.
***
That time, he had been sure that he was dead. But he wakes up again, against all odds, against all expectations. He is in a cage, like — Not like when he was with the Grounders, that first time. That cage was made of wood, and this one is all metal, except — There’s a blanket, folded up at the bottom, so that his knees aren’t on bare metal.
It’s big enough to let him kneel with his hands folded in his lap. It’s just wide enough so that he can sit cross-legged. He can lay down as long as he curls all the way around the bars.
The only thing that matters / is not putting me in a cage.
In the future, Titus will take him out of the cage, show him drawings of the Spirit of the Commander, try to explain to him how the Flame chooses, how the Flame passes down the wisdom from all past Commanders, how the City of Light chip is an affront to his whole thing or whatever.
And he hurts Murphy: knives and burns and bruises, and every time, he gets shoved back in the cage. That’s mostly what he remembers about Titus, but A.L.I.E wants to know about the things that Titus told him, so he does his best. Replays the whole thing over and over again for her, until finally the memory is gone.
Good. He doesn’t have any particular fondness for that one.
—
As per Lincoln’s directions, they drive towards the ocean, following old trade routes until they get to a shoddy, small cabin. Lincoln gets out of the Rover and knocks on the door, Octavia tucked in beside him. A woman answers the door; Lincoln looks a little startled, but then he laughs and nods, and he gestures for the rest of them to get out of the car and come inside.
Raven takes her screens and shrugs the backpack over her shoulders. The woman brings them into the cabin, and then down a flight of stairs, into a cave passageway. The woman touches the wall, and the whole hallway lights up. Her face is all odd angles and black ink, across her forehead, the bridge of her nose, her cheek; “Please,” she says, half-turning. “Call me Luna.”