memory
John Murphy wakes up all the way all at once. He sits up suddenly and — yeouch — regrets.
His tongue is his own again, so he swears loudly, and here he is again, in an unknown place. Underground. In bed. He was asleep? He was unconscious.
Ryfe is there. “Assessment,” she says, a demand.
“Fuck you,” he says, and his voice is hoarse, and he hurts, and he has never been more alive.
“Yeah,” says Ryfe, rough. “I get it. I fucking get it. Give me an assesment.”
She’s not going to leave. The words are spilling out of him, a habit more than anything else, now: “Headache. Two, maybe three cracked ribs. Broken or sprained wrist. Maybe some — nerve damage? — from being cuffed for so long.” He — leaves out the burns, across his chest, his stomach. He doesn’t want to think about them. “Tired as hell but not really sleepy. Really fucking dehydrated.”
Ryfe presses a glass into his uninjured hand. “Hold,” she says. There are a few tense seconds, and then she says “Drink,” and he obeys. Grimaces at the taste: it’s not water. Something like a smile curls onto her face. He feels sick.
“You have burns,” says Ryfe, calm, even.
From you, he doesn’t say. “I have to go,” says Murphy. It’s kind of coming back to him now: when they were interrogating him, and he was running through the streets of the City, and it was raining but he didn’t have the portable roof anymore, he was just soaked through to his skin, when the drawbridge came down over the moat, and the Citadel, the Citadel —
It had been what Raven was trying to get into. It had been like a dream; all of it, Emori, Mbege, Finn, his father. There are tears at the corners of his eyes. He brushes them away.
“You need to sleep,” says Ryfe, in that same even tone she gets when she’s trying for gentleness.
“I just woke up,” snaps Murphy. “Don’t tell me I need to sleep. I need to talk to Raven.” Then, considering: “Where am I? Where is Raven?”
“North,” is all that Ryfe will say, and then: “I’ll get Raven for you. You shouldn’t be getting out of bed.”
Something in his chest goes warm, don’t leave me, and he swings his legs out from underneath the covers — it is really cold — puts his weight on them all at once.
Everything suddenly hurts worse.
Ryfe reaches a hand out to steady him. He steps away from her, easy, like they’re sparring in Polis, and his face feels hot. The room is a bed and a chair and there’s a curtain over what might be a door, but when he pushes it aside it’s just empty hallway. Ryfe doesn’t try to stop him, and he stands in the hallway, some kind of cave underground system, for several seconds before ducking back under the curtain, returning to the safety of the bed. Ryfe looks relieved, and he hates her, and he is so glad that she is here, and he gets back underneath the covers.
“Ryfe,” he says, and he thinks he might cry for real this time. “When I wake up, you can’t be here.”
She looks away, and then he closes his eyes, and he goes under again, sleep wrapping him like a blanket, like a cocoon, like some kind of comfort.
—
Jasper is curled up in bed, listening to Maya’s music player again, when Ryfe appears in his doorway. He takes out the earbuds and watches as she comes in, without waiting or asking for his permission. “How is Murphy?” he asks.
“Not good,” she says. “Better than expected.”
Murphy, helpless in the cave, talking about how they hung him. Ryfe holding the shocklash on his skin, until he screams. Jasper keeps asking questions, thinking just ten more seconds, just ten more seconds. You can survive anything for just ten seconds.
He shakes his head, as if to clear it, and then says: “We fucked up.”
Ryfe looks away. “It was necessary,” she says.
“Maybe,” he agrees.
Ryfe sighs and comes around to sit next to him on the bed. “Tell me about Maya,” she says.
His heart contracts. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “She’s dead.”
“It matters to you,” says Ryfe, but he doesn’t respond, and they sit next to each other for a long time, not talking. He doesn’t know how he feels about that.
—
Bellamy stops by his room sometime after: the passage of how time works still seems foreign to him, like hourglass sand slipping through his fingers. He stands in the curtained doorway and says: “I have something to show you.”
“Okay,” says Murphy, sitting up, already exhausted.
Bellamy takes his hand, and leads from the cave to a set of stairs, and they go up to an empty house, and through another door, and he is —
He is outside and he is alive and he is free. He is his own again. His body is his body is his body. There is sunlight streaming through the trees and there is snow — crusty white stuff, made of ice, less fluffy than expected — up to his mid-calf. The Rover is parked here, covered in snow, and Murphy takes the steps needed to reach it. He covers his hands in his sleeves, and then begins to brush the snow off of the hood. The cold soaks through his shoes, through his arms.
“Thought you might want to see the sun again,” rumbles Bellamy behind him.
He turns, hops up on the Rover, faces Bellamy. “Yeah,” he says, and the sun is warm on his skin and he is freezing and he wishes he had another layer on, at least, and Bellamy steps closer to him and —
He hasn’t had something that he wanted in so long. He tastes strawberries on the tip of his tongue. “This is good,” he says. “Thanks.” He lets that hang for a minute, and then reaches, takes Bellamy by the lapels of his jacket, pulling him forward. Kisses him slow and gentle, and it hurts. It hurts, and he has spent a long time feeling nothing at all, so he does it again, and Bellamy responds the second time, kisses him back, and it’s like —
It’s like Bellamy is crackling glass, shattered underneath his skin, and he can’t find all the pieces to get them back out again. And it itches, and burns, and it’s the kind of pain he is accustomed to.
Bellamy breaks away, touches his face, like Emori would. But Emori is long gone. “I have hurt you,” he says, not a question.
“Yeah,” says Murphy, an acknowledgement. “You gonna do it again?”
“Probably,” says Bellamy, hardly an admission.
Murphy shrugs. He doesn’t want to think about it. “At least you’re honest.” And then brings Bellamy’s face to his again, until his lips are numb. “Look, I like this, and what we’re doing here, but also, it is very cold, can we go back to your bedroom or something.” Flattens out at the end, so he doesn’t sound desperate.
“Yeah,” says Bellamy. He wraps one arm around Murphy’s back and pulls Murphy off the Rover, and just holds him for a second.
Murphy squirms because he’s insufferable, and also not a child, and Bellamy sets him down.
—
They share space like that for a long time; pressed close together, like they would back at the dropship, snuggled together after Murphy had a nightmare. And Murphy falls asleep again, warm enough to feel safe, and Bellamy lies awake and thinks about damage, and how to control it, and the way Murphy’s skin felt underneath his (cold).
About how to atone for that damage. About how to move forward, from here out. About how to use his guilt, instead of letting it fester.
Hours pass. Clarke comes by later, wakes Murphy with a touch before Bellamy can really stop her.
Murphy wakes all at once, and says, “You gonna cuff me?” sounding disappointed but resigned, addressing Clarke.
“Come on,” says Clarke, ignoring him. “Raven wants to have a meeting.”
“Fuck off,” says Murphy, burrowing under the covers again. Bellamy looks helplessly at Clarke, but she just pulls back the blankets. “Jesus, Clarke, I get it, I’m up, I’m up —“
“Good,” says Clarke primly. “Come on.”
In Raven’s office, nearly everyone who came with them to the cave has gathered. Beside him, Murphy makes a noise, like a gasp, maybe, or a word. Sounds like memory. He crosses to Luna, and she turns to face him, and --
It was not a kiss between strangers, and when it was over, Murphy closed his eyes and rested his forehead in the hollow of Luna’s shoulder, like a man seeking respite, like a man reaching home at the end of the day.
Luna lets him, for a moment, for two, and then holds him at arm’s length, takes him in full measure. “John,” she says. And then, more forcefully, “Lukotwar,” almost a hiss.