stay with me
Jasper is pulled into Raven’s office while Murphy is being watched by a dispassionate Octavia. Ryfe is standing in the corner, looking uncomfortable.
“I need you to ask Murphy about his memories,” says Raven, no preamble.
“Um,” says Jasper, off-balance. “Why?”
Raven sort of gestures to the screen in front of her. “You see this?” Jasper looks; it’s just a string of code, which he doesn’t understand. “This is Murphy. Murphy has ‘forgotten’ all of his bad or painful memories — making him remember them will cause A.L.I.E to rewrite them back into him, which will hopefully distract her from what I’m doing.”
Jasper feels kind of sick. “And what are you doing?”
“I’m getting him out of the City,” Raven says, and her eyes are bright and fearless, and that’s kind of scary. “I’m opening up the Citadel.”
Jasper pauses. “This doesn’t make any sense.” It makes a little bit of sense.
Raven sighs, like, why am I always surrounded by idiots. “Think of them, like, a layered thing. The more you talk to A.L.I.E, the more Murphy sinks to the bottom. By making him remember stuff - that pulls more of him — out of the whole thing — that makes A.L.I.E less. You get me?”
Kind of. Jasper takes a deep breath. “What if he doesn’t want to talk?”
Raven swallows. Glances to the corner. “Ryfe is going to help,” she says.
Ryfe glowers.
—
Ryfe is the one who cuffs Murphy’s hands behind his back. He looks to her, and says “Don’t,” quiet. She pretends that she doesn’t hear him, or maybe she ignores him altogether.
Jasper has never done this before. He knows it has happened: with Lincoln in the top part of the dropship, trying to save Finn; with Emerson in the Ark’s airlock, in an effort to free him; at least a half-dozen times under Pike’s regime, trying to weasel out dissenters, a coup. Knows it has happened to Murphy before, has seen the aftermath; the blood. The bruises.
The way Murphy wouldn’t look at anyone, after. The way he flinched.
“Remember that time you tried to kill Bellamy?” he starts with, because what is subtlety.
Murphy visibly swallows, glances to Ryfe. “No,” he says, reedy.
Ryfe sighs. Ryfe reaches for the shocklash. Murphy scrambles backwards, hits the wall. “Stop,” he says, desperate. “Don’t — Not again —“
Ryfe hesitates.
“I’m working on it,” he promises. “Just give me a minute, okay?”
“You have ten seconds,” says Ryfe, firm, and Murphy takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.
And he starts talking.
When Raven tells them that they can stop, Murphy curls to his side, hoarse and exhausted, and asks for Bellamy.
—
It’s almost over. Clarke is caught up in a discussion with Raven about fire. Monty is doing something with a battery. He has a book of poetry tucked under one arm, his water bottle in the other. Murphy asked for him.
Murphy is lying on his side. Bellamy digs his hand underneath Murphy’s shoulder and lifts him into a sitting position. Murphy make a noise that could be a sob. Bellamy uncaps the water bottle, tips it into Murphy’s mouth. He finishes about half the bottle, then turns his head away. Bellamy sets it aside, doesn’t press the issue.
There are going to be burns across his chest, his stomach. Bellamy isn’t sure if he should check them out, or if he should just wait.
“I wish it had been you,” Murphy says. His voice sounds wrecked again, like it had centuries ago, or maybe just a year, in Arkadia. “I wish you had been the one.”
“I’m sorry,” says Bellamy aloud, ineffective. He moves away, then, unsure of what he can do to help that wouldn’t also be hurt. “You should eat something,” he hazards. “I have a protein bar —“
“No,” says Murphy, almost petulent.
Bellamy stops. “What’s the City of Light like?” he asks, hardly meaning to.
Murphy is silent for a long time. Finally, very quietly: “Everyone I love is dead and it’s sunny out.”
“Oh,” says Bellamy.
“You really sorry?” Murphy asks. He doesn’t ask for what. He doesn’t really need to.
“Yeah,” says Bellamy. He is guilty in every fiber of his being. Sometimes he thinks about walking into the woods and never coming back.
“Don’t let Ryfe back in here,” he says. “And stay with me. Until the very end.”
“Okay,” he says. “I have the poetry book, if you want me to read from it.”
No response. He takes the book out, begins to flip through it.
Murphy turns his head to the side again, spits blood. “Then you’re on the cold hill again, taking the telescope apart,” he says. “Yeah. Read to me.”
Bellamy clears his throat, begins.
“Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.”
“That’s just from Macbeth,” Murphy mutters, discontent. “Read me some actual poetry.”
Bellamy pauses. As far as he knows, the whole book is Shakespeare. He flips a couple of pages, and then:
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.”
As soon as he pauses to take a breath, Murphy goes “Actually, can you shut up for a while? I don’t want to hear your voice anymore.”
Bellamy shuts up.
—
Clarke sticks her head in the room a while later. “Hey,” she says. “We’re almost ready, are you good here?”
“Yeah,” Bellamy says. “Uh, he just said he doesn’t want Ryfe to be here, is that gonna be okay?”
Clarke glances to Murphy’s curled form and then back to Bellamy. “Sure,” she says, cautious. “You think you can take him if anything goes wrong?”
“Sure,” he says, not thinking about his hands on Murphy’s shoulders, holding him down as he struggles, for air, for freedom. Feels the guilt curl in his throat anyway, threaten to choke him.
Clarke leaves again, and then returns followed by Monty, holding what looks like a huge box, and Harper, mostly healed, carrying a metal wristband and another shocklash. Clarke has the bound leather journal that she had carried with her from Polis.
“Bellamy,” she says. “Hold him.”
Harper fastens the wristband around one off his cuffed wrists. Bellamy gets behind him, wraps one arm around his chest. Monty turns on the box. Murphy makes a sound, maybe a whimper.
“It’s gonna take a couple minutes to charge up,” he says. Harper connects the band to the box via a collection of wires. Harper hesistates for a second, and then reaches out and takes Monty’s hand.
Murphy is repeating something, quietly, rapidly. Bellamy bends his head a little, to hear him. It’s just “Kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me,” over and over and over again. Suddenly, Murphy kicks his legs out and slams his whole weight into Bellamy. It’s not really enough to do anything, but it is enough to startle him. He adjusts his grip. Murphy doesn’t try again.
Monty looks to Harper. Harper nods, raises the shocklash, directs it into the band.
Murphy screams. Bellamy’s ears ring from the sound. Then he goes completely limp in Bellamy’s arms, and Raven opens the half-door between the office and the cell. “He’s gonna be passed out for a while,” she says. “Probably the best option is to get him to a bed.”
Bellamy is the one that carries him there.
So it goes.