Chapter 14
Raven had no idea what to do with herself. She had a bad feeling about all of this. It doesn’t take much to start a lynch mob, after all. It seemed that most of the group already hated Murphy, and now he’d gone and done something that would give them an excuse to get rid of him.
Hopefully, Lexa could keep control of her people.
“Murphy, start before the crash. What did you do for a living?” Lexa was calm and Raven hoped that would rub off on the shifting crowd around her. Their anger was tangible, and if she was going to prevent further bloodshed, she needed to calm them.
Murphy glared down his crooked nose at her. “Why does it matter?”
Lexa heaved an obvious sigh. “Because clearly this whole mess involves Bellamy’s life before the crash, it’s only fair you share yours.”
Murphy rolled his eyes. “I’ve been unemployed for a year now. Before that I was a contractor working in construction.”
Lexa nodded. “Had you ever met Bellamy or Jasper before?”
Murphy shook his head.
“Okay, walk me through what happened before, during, and directly after the crash.”
Murphy shrugged. “We were on a plane, plane stopped flying, bam. Crash. I got lucky, wasn’t hurt, so I just sat in the shade while you and Clarke got everything organized.”
Raven swallowed down pride. Of course her Clarke would take charge even in the face of disaster.
“In the line for water, you and Jasper got into a fight. What was it over?”
Murphy shrugged. “Jasper was a fucking lunatic. I said something about an impromptu beach vacation and he flipped shit. Said things like people had died and I was insensitive. Then he punched me in the face. Broke my nose.”
“Who stopped the fight?”
“We all know who,”
“Answer the question, Murphy. We don’t want to leave any gaps.”
“Bellamy,”
“Were you upset that Bellamy broke up the fight?”
“No, glad he got that asshole away from me, but he was completely unreasonable about it. Sent me away like I started the damn fight.”
“The next morning, what happened?”
“My nose hurt like hell, we were all hungry, thirsty, scared out of our wits, I wanted some water. That night while everyone else was blabbing around the bonfire and complaining, I made a knife out of the wreckage and cut into the bark of one of the trees. It’s pretty damp once you get deep enough, take a big shred of the bark and suck on it, helps curb the thirst. Jasper tried to take my knife away, then he tried to take my tree. I told him to get his own. I worked my ass off on that tree, but he and his buddy Miller wanted that damn tree so they started sizing me up, tryin to fight. I could take Jasper’s skinny ass, Miller too in a fair fight, when we started to fight Monty came in trying to break it up and he really just got in the way. Feel bad though, Monty’s not bad, might have hit him in the ribs or something, I dunno.” Murphy shrugged. “But then Bellamy stopped it with his yippee kiyay bullshit shooting off in the air thinking he’s some sort of cowboy. Let them off without a problem, treated me like shit. Look, I’m an asshole, I don’t care. I’ll shout it from the rooftops, tell my goddamn grandmother. I don’t care. But fact of the matter is, Bellamy is worse. And Jasper fucking deserved what was coming to him.”
Lexa raised one hand to stop Murphy’s tirade. “One question at a time.”
Raven leaned towards Clarke, resting her chin on the blonde’s shoulder. “Lemme guess, lawyer?”
Clarke nodded, giving Raven a smirk. “What gave you the hint?”
“Okay, Murphy, the last incident occurred yesterday. You fought with Bellamy, and then came ashore to fight with Jasper again, and then you killed him while everyone else was, eh, distracted.” Lexa tilted her head. “Explain what happened during your fight with Bellamy. Who instigated it?”
“Fuckin’ Bellamy!” Murphy grumbled. “He starts asking about what I know about him, the secret, where his shit was. Turns out it was drugs, and then he punched me. We fell off the raft and he nearly fucking drowned me. Pissed me the hell off.”
“And the incident on shore?”
“I was pissed! This asshole set me up to be killed! For what? A snarky comment? Come on! He deserved the shit he got.”
“Thank you for telling us the truth, John.” Murphy made a face but said nothing else. Lexa took a breath and turned back to the crowd of survivors. “Okay, Bellamy, your turn. Clearly, you have something to do with this. Take Murphy’s spot.”
Bellamy stood with a grimace and walked, passing Murphy silently to have a seat. His eyes drifted to the girl sitting behind Raven, Octavia, she thought. His sister. “That confession session though-“
“Rae, hush.” Clarke murmured. “This is very serious, people have died.”
“I know.” Raven huffed.
“Okay, Bellamy. You’re a federal air marshal. So explain to us the drug situation. Yesterday we bore witness to a confession of sorts, but we don’t have the full picture. Give it to us.”
Bellamy rolled his eyes. “Lincoln was my sister’s boyfriend. He- I didn’t think he was very good for her. His friends tended to get into trouble. Anyway, I have this cop buddy, told him I’d do him a favor if he could get rid of this kid for me. He did, and so I hopped on this flight to Japan with a bag of coke. I brought Octavia with me because, well, I’m her guardian and I couldn’t very well leave her alone while she was upset about her boyfriend getting locked up. The plane crashed and I lost my bag. I wasn’t worried about it until Jasper came up to me on the walk down the beach telling me that he and Murphy found it. Said something about telling the cops once we got off this island. I mean, just because we’re away from civilization doesn’t mean the law won’t come down on me later. So I panicked. I was going to make Murphy tell me where it was so that I could get rid of it. When he told me that Jasper was bluffing, I figured he had it.”
“See? He’s the fucking criminal here!” Murphy shouted. Lexa turned to him, fixing him with a silencing glare.
“I can’t very well punish you for what you did to Lincoln. That will have to wait until we’re off the island.” Lexa was stone-faced, and even Raven had to admit it wasn’t fair for Bellamy to go unpunished for the shit he pulled. “But clearly you can’t be trusted to remain unbiased. I won’t be giving you your gun back. And I expect you to follow my every order from now on. I’ll be giving you labor tasks to complete from now on until you prove to the rest of us that you can be trusted with our lives.”
Lexa turned to the survivors now. She crossed her arms and leaned against the rock Bellamy sat on. “Thank you Bellamy, I’ll leave you to sort out what this means between you and your sister privately.” She looked to Clarke and then Anya on Raven’s other side for a brief second before she began to speak again. “We’re not here to discuss whether Murphy is innocent or guilty. We know he killed Jasper. But we need to decide what, if anything, we are going to do about it.”
Lexa paused uncomfortably. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to offer up my personal opinion.” She glanced to Murphy and back to the crowd. “It’s true that Murphy hasn’t gotten along with the group, but that’s not to say that he’s a valuable asset to our survival. I’d like to remind you all that Murphy had solved his own thirst, and though we’d appreciate it if he had shared this knowledge with the group, that sort of thinking is invaluable. He also was responsible for the sled idea we used on the walk here. He’s the reason we have so much of what we do. Murphy is a natural survivalist, and we need the creativity that comes with the forceful drive to survive.” Lexa shifted again. “On the other hand, violence amongst ourselves will guarantee our deaths. Especially now that we have very little chance of connecting to civilization. I think, instead of punishing him, we should reform him. Let him into our ranks, to participate and benefit from our teamwork, and work towards a cohesive crew. But this isn’t my decision to make. This is ours. So, before we make our final decision, would anyone like to say anything?”
Bellamy grunted in affirmation before standing up again to face the crowd. “Listen, I’m no saint. I’ve done some bad things. But I’ve never killed anyone. We can’t let this guy just kill one of us. Who’s next? Hope no one accidentally pisses him off next.” Bellamy rubbed his face with one of his large hands. “We have no room for killers here. We have enough people trying to kill us as it is.”
“Thank you Bellamy. Anyone else?”
This time Emori stood. Raven had never had a conversation with the girl, but she’d watched Clarke change the dressings on her hand, revealing two missing fingers. Emori nodded towards Lexa, and Lexa nodded back. “Listen, John isn’t as bad as you guys seem to think he is. He’s not a killer and he’s not a psycho. A psycho is the guy who sets another man up to be imprisoned just because he doesn’t like him. A psycho purposefully tries to hurt other people for his own gain. John, he’s just been trying to survive. Can you blame him? Jasper proved to be a threat to his life so he got rid of the threat.”
“A person shouldn’t be ‘gotten rid of’ like trash.” Miller retorted.
“He shouldn’t have acted like trash.” Murphy snarled.
“That’s enough.” Lexa snapped and everyone straightened. “Now, we need to decide on our next course of action. Do we punish him or reform him? If you believe he should face punishment, move to the right. Reform, to the left.”
Raven startled as everyone sitting around her stood and shuffled around to order themselves. She had no real opinion on the matter, she had other things to worry about, so she followed Clarke to the reform side. They were joined by Kane, Emori, Octavia, Aden, Anya, and Tris. That wasn’t enough. Of the seventeen voters, since Lexa abstained from voting to prevent a tie, eight voted for reformation and nine voted for punishment.
Lexa pursed her lips. “Very well. It seems the majority has voted for punishment, now it’s time to decide what we will do.”
Clarke had furrowed her brows in disappointment by the time Raven turned to her. “I would have thought your mom would take our side on this.”
“I don’t know.” Clarke murmured. “She’s only seen the worst of Murphy so far.”
“We need just punishments. What ideas do we have?”
“Take away his rations.” Miller shrugged. “Let him look for his own food.”
“We’re punishing this man for disrupting our group cohesion and then taking away his ability to benefit from our team work? Counterproductive.” Lexa argued.
“Have him do the menial labor.” Bellamy suggested.
“We’re separating the two of you. You tried to kill him. We’re not giving either of you the opportunity to hurt each other.” Lexa dismissed the idea immediately.
“Banish him.” Pike suggested calmly, stepping forward. At the reminder of his existence, Raven wanted to vomit. “If he can’t participate, if he can’t work with us, then why should he benefit from us at all? Let him find his own way. If we manage to get our way to civilization then we can tell them about him, but until then, what does a murderer deserve? Nothing.”
Clarke marched to stand beside Lexa. “We are living on an island with a fucking terrorist organization.” She snarled, startling Raven. She had forgotten how much of a spitfire Clarke could be. “Banishing him is a guaranteed death sentence.”
“And he killed a man! Perhaps he does deserve a death sentence.” Pike was too calm, and Rashid, like he had been since they met, stood silently behind Pike, giving his solid, steadfast support. “Perhaps it’d be merciful if we ended it now.”
Emori practically growled, marching past Raven and towards Pike. Raven reached out and grabbed her. “You don’t want to do that.” She hissed in the other woman’s ear. “Pike is dangerous.”
Lexa stepped forward, matching Pike’s eerie calm with her own stoicism. “We are not gods. We cannot give value to one life over another, nor take one life for reasons of our own. We cannot choose who lives or who dies. When our lives are in direct danger, then perhaps killing will be our only option. But we have the option here. And I will not allow this group to outright kill Murphy.”
“But you’ll let them indirectly kill him?” Emori demanded, struggling out of Raven’s hold to march towards Lexa. “I’m not saying what he did was right, but we can’t sentence him to die.”
“Why not?” Rashid scoffed.
“He killed Jasper, why does he deserve to live and not Jasper?” Miller argued.
“And how are we any better by sentencing him to death?” Aden cut in, furrowing his brows and staring up slightly at all of the adults around him. “Isn’t the point of justice to restore balance in a society? How can we levy justice if we commit murder ourselves?” Aden tried to cross his arms, but his splint got in the way, so he struggled to hide his fumbling by squaring his shoulders. “How can we claim to say that murder is wrong when we kill him too? It’s backwards.”
“Listen, kid, you’re smart, but this is an important conversation, real life can’t be perfect.” Rashid shrugged Aden’s arguments away. “We’re not here to philosophize, but to levy justice. This man killed someone. Punishment should fit the crime.”
Lexa’s lip curled and Raven got the distinct feeling that this woman could tear these people apart if she’d let herself. She looked like a wolf readying to fight to the death. Raven’s stomach dropped.
“Other ideas?”
Silence. Raven looked towards Murphy, he was pale. He clenched his fists so tight that the scrapes on his knuckles reopened and began to bleed again.
“Those that want to punish Murphy by taking away his rations, move to the left, banishment, to the right.” Lexa demanded through gritted teeth.
Raven shuddered. Emori, Clarke, and Aden all abstained from making a choice, glaring at either side, while Monroe, Harper, and Anya moved to the left. Everyone else moved to the right. Raven darted to the left after making eye contact with Anya.
Lexa’s jaw jumped as she clenched her teeth together. “It looks like we’ve voted for banishment.”
“No.” Emori snapped. “Absolutely not. It’s a death sentence. We can’t just sentence John to death!”
Lexa looked to her teammate, sympathy written across her features. “What are we supposed to do then? He killed Jasper.”
“Not this!”
“Your little crush doesn’t change the fact that he killed a human being.” Pike snarled. “Now, he’ll face the consequences.”
Emori turned back to face her soccer captain. “You have nothing to say about this?”
Lexa shifted. “They voted-“
“It doesn’t matter anyway.” Murphy drawled, stepping through the crowd. “I’ve been on my own since I could toddle, I might as well be on my own now. I’ll be better off anyway.”
Emori clenched her jaw. “I’m going with you, John. You need someone to have your back.”
Murphy didn’t complain, but he did shrug one of his shoulders awkwardly. Silence fell over the group as the two of them gathered their things. Murphy nodded to Lexa calmly, and then stopped before Pike. “You’re an asshole.”
And the two marched off, climbing down the rocks and trekking down the beach, back towards the plane wreckage.