gotta keep my job somehow
Lexa does something complicated with two swords. It’s like her whole body is her two swords, and she lunges with them. When she’s done, she holds out a hand to Murphy, and he takes it. Leans on her.
She is dressed the way she was when he first met her, when she tortured him for information on Skaikru’s army, a century ago. War paint over her eyes, battle-dress already soaked in blood. She is corded muscle and deadly and he does not make the mistake of underestimating her though she stands a head shorter than him. She takes him by the shoulder and pushes him an arm’s length away. “You good?” she asks, careful.
He was kicked in the stomach, in the back, several times before she got to him. He moves his tongue around his mouth, wary, and spits out a measure of blood. “Yeah,” he says.
She lets go of him. “We need to get to the Citadel,” she says. “Do you know the way?”
Hesitates. Shocks across his torso, like a map. “Yes,” he says, sure of it.
“You sure?” she asks, finding him apparently lacking.
“I can run,” he snaps, feeling the way his tongue moves across teeth that might be broken. “Doesn’t your chip, like, do something?”
She shakes her head. “There’s some protection,” she admits. “But less and less. We need to hurry.”
So they run.
—
When they get into the innards of the Citadel, someone who looks like ALIE but less — sharp? — is waiting for them. She only has eyes for Lexa. “Commander,” she says. “And?” Slides over to Murphy. “Her quarry?”
“Becca prom heda,” says Lexa, which. He hopes this conversation doesn’t slide into Trigedasleng. “Lukotwar.”
He has his knife on him. He copied over, near as he can tell, from reality. It could work. “You want me to kill her?” he asks, not very subtly.
Lexa raises one imperious hand. He stops what he’s doing. “How do we do it? The City of Light. A.L.I.E takes control of them. We’re here to stop it.”
We.
“You pull the killswitch,” says Becca, affronted. “But the Commander does that. How did he get here?”
“Fuck you,” spits out Murphy, bitter and exhausted and unreal.
“You do it, Mofi,” says Lexa. He looks to her. She reaches out, and touches his shoulder. “You want to kill Jaha?”
More than anything he has ever wanted before. “Yes,” he says, and tries not to let his desire leak into his voice.
She gives a kind of smile. She nods to the lever across the table. “Pull the kill switch,” she says. “And I’ll make it happen. He’ll be out in the killing field. I can keep him there.”
“The Commander does it, how did he even get in —“ Becca is saying, high-pitched and anxious and terrible —
“Do it,” says Lexa, on top of her, and her voice is stronger, and this is why he went to Arkadia in the first place, because he was told to, because he wanted to be useful, because he had been commanded —
Murphy pulls the lever.
—
Opens his eyes to warmth and dust and his mouth dry. Curls in on himself, wanting to protect the soft skin of his belly, and then he hears Raven say it. “The whole City is down. It’s —“ a pause, tapping of buttons. “It’s gone. It’s all gone.”
Relief sparks into laughter for her, and there’s the sound of handcuffs being unlocked, and Lexa coughs. Silence. Then, the Commander’s tired voice: “Clarke. Finish it.”
Clarke’s small, strong hands at his shoulders. Pushes him onto his back, pulls up his shirt. Swipes over his unfinished tattoo with something cold. “I want,” he says, and she pauses. First time for everything. “I want Bellamy.”
Rolls to his side, pushes himself up onto his hands. Headache makes itself known, pulsing and sick in the base of his skull. Bellamy’s there, hand to his shoulder, concern. Presses a water bottle into his hands. He drinks gratefully, hands it back.
“Murphy,” says Clarke, almost gentle.
“Yeah,” he says. “I got it, gimme a second.”
Raises himself onto his knees, braces himself against Bellamy and takes off his shirt. Bellamy’s warm hand settles across his shoulders, keeping him steady. And pinned. It’s fine.
Clarke’s hands are steady. It hardly even hurts.
“Are you ready for the next one?” Lexa asks.
He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Yes.”
Bellamy’s hand tights across his chest. “The next one?” he asks, gruff.
“It’s another tattoo, Bellamy, keep up,” says Murphy, lightly. “Gotta keep my job somehow.”
Bellamy’s hand doesn’t loosen, but he doesn’t ask any more questions.
Lexa swaps out with Clarke, takes the needle in her hand. “Where do you want it?” she asks.
“Like it matters what I think,” says Murphy.
Lexa looks like she wants to contest this statement, but she holds her tongue. “Your shirt’s already off,” she says. “Your chest? Here?” Below the hollow of his throat, on the bone hidden beneath. Just where the collar used to rest.
“Sure,” he says, because he doesn’t care. He wants her to stop touching him.
It’s two thick lines spaced slightly apart from each other. They are not perfectly straight. “You have two days,” she says, packing away the tattooing supplies.
He gives her a sharp nod. Bellamy lets him go. He pulls his shirt back on. Fabric feels rough against his skin. Arm hurts. Straps his sling back on. Doesn’t help much. Half-turns. “Can I borrow your gun?” he asks. “Not for long.”
“What for?” Bellamy asks, even as he hands it over, because of course they’re all so curious.
“Finish the job you started,” says Murphy, vicious. “Kill Jaha.”
Clarke makes a sound, glances frantically to Lexa, who remains stone-faced. “Murphy, you can’t —“
He can, and he is going to enjoy it. “I don’t choose who to kill, Clarke. I was ordered to do this. I am an —“ tastes them, spits them out, “asset of the Coalition.”
Clarke hears her own words thrown back at her and her lip trembles. Like she’s going to cry. Murphy revels in it, but not for too long. “Raven,” he says, and she looks up. “Can you drive me? Just to the killing field, outside the Dropship."
—
Raven understands revenge, like Murphy does, the bitter ache of it in her throat, her lungs. She had used him as a tool to complete her avenging, and in turn, she will help him complete his. Equivalent exchange.
He stares at the gun in his lap, one hand turning it over and over again. “You know how you had me tortured back in the caves?” he says, unexpectedly.
Yes. “It got you to the Citadel, though, didn’t it?”
“Sure,” he agrees, not looking at her. “But I spilled my darkest secrets out to Jasper and you and I learned that my mentor was willing to torture me and I didn’t need to know that. Why’d you ask her, instead of Bellamy?”
“Thought you had a thing with Bellamy,” says Raven, neutral.
Murphy is silent for several moments. “Already know Blake could take me out if he needed to,” he says. “Know he would, if he had to. Just wanted someone on my side that I could trust to stay on my side.”
“You thought Ryfe would be that person?”
He scowls, glances out the window. “I’m just saying. You shouldn’t have fucking tortured me. That was a bad call.”
“Needed to be done,” Raven says, even-keeled.
“Didn’t,” he counters.
“Yeah?” she snaps. “Well it worked, didn’t it. You found the Citadel. You took down the City of Light.”
“I didn’t have to get tortured to do that,” he snaps. “All you have to say is like ‘yeah, that was kind of bad’ or show like, an inkling of remorse, Raven.”
“Yeah?” she says, and feels the heat rise in her cheeks. “But I’m not remorseful. The end justified the means. We defeated a greater evil, and you were in pain for twenty minutes. You’re fine now, it’s not like it’s a big deal.”
A short pause, an intake of breath, and then Murphy screams “Fuck you!” loud enough that Raven jerks the Rover a meter to the right.
“Fuck you,” snaps Raven back, and pulls aside. “If you want to walk the rest of the way, you can. I don’t have to drive you anywhere.”
She expects him to take a deep breath, to apologize, for escalating what isn’t really a big thing. She did what she had to do in the moment. It was for the greater good.
Instead, the Rover reverberates from the force of Murphy slamming the door.
—
He finds Jaha in the field an acre out from the dropship, where Lexa tortured him. Across the bridge. The killing field. Jaha is trying to gather dead bodies, tending to the wounded. It doesn’t change anything. “John,” he says, as Murphy approaches. “I’m glad to see you made it out. I could use some help with the dead.”
Sure you could. He takes the steps forward, and he says: “I want you to know this. This isn’t for my father. This isn’t for Lexa. This has always been between us. This is for me.”
Jaha’s brow crinkles, confused. “What —?” he starts.
Murphy pulls his gun out and shoots Jaha point-blank in the head. It feels good.
He leaves Jaha’s body in the field with the other corpses.
There is no blood on his hands.