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] One. [
It’s the lack of hesitation that surprises her.
The way she pulls on the trigger, once, twice, without blinking – in spite of the part of her that knows it’s with intent to take a life.
His life.
And she doesn’t even care.
It doesn’t even shock her, doesn’t disgust her. No, because all that disgust is aimed at the bloodied, limping figure sliding to the floor across from her.
And it’s that lack of remorse for what she could have done that surprises her.
Because this isn’t who she is.
But just who she is now – sitting here, bullet in her spine, bleeding out and every breath an agonising lungful – isn’t something she knows either. Because John Murphy’s taken that from her too. With a careless burst of gunfire, he’s hollowed her out to leave nothing but hatred and anger that’s burned so deep, it’s charred through every nerve ending until all that’s left of her is a numb shell sitting on this floor. As numb as her legs. And she doesn’t even want to think about what that means.
“Yeah,” he breathes out into the ringing silence, “I would have shot me too.”
And she recognises it for self-pity, and it only fans the flames.
“How did you get to be such a dick, Murphy?” she spits out, and god, she thinks. Dick. More like a fucking bastard, who should have been dead a hundred times over already. The bitterness seeps deeper, infecting her wounds, and still a part of her screams on silently – this isn’t you.
“I’m sorry for shooting you, okay? Is that what you want to hear?”
No. No, that’s the last thing she wants to hear actually, and so she pokes and she pushes, and she bares her teeth because that’s the only damn thing she can do right now.
She goes for the jugular with the memory of his parents, and mocks his response with an incredulous and spiteful, “are you crying, Murphy?”
“Screw you, Raven.”
And there, she thinks. That’s better, because now there is no remorse as she bites down harder. “Then tell me. I wanna know. How’s a kid who’s loved by his parents turn into a murdering psychopath?”
And this time it’s him who surprises her.
It’s a sob story that’s sadly not all that uncommon. But it’s his sob story, and he just lets the words tumble out of his mouth like he’s held them against the tip of his tongue, scraped up against the back of his teeth for too long, and he couldn’t keep them there any longer.
She’s the first person he’s told.
She doesn’t know how she knows that, she just does.
There’s the glistening trail of tears making tracks through the blood and grime on his face and yet the grief, and the anger, and the self-hatred is still caged there under his skin, and it’s his own special hell that he’s stuck in.
And she can feel it. Can feel her heart softening, because damn it. This isn’t her. But then she feels it again – the searing pain in her back as she shifts just a single muscle, at complete odds with the absence of anything in her legs, and she finds herself slipping on a mask she’ll get well acquainted with in the months to come.
It’s not her.
But it is now.
“Boo hoo.”
][
] Two. [
And the surprises just keep on coming, he thinks with a wry smile.
Heaven forbid he could be given the luxury of basking in his one small win for a minute longer. After all, he never believed for a moment that they would come back for him and Emori. And yet here they are – Jackson and Miller – loading up the supplies and looking at them as if they’re finally part of the same team, asking him to go and get Raven, and giving them all a chance to survive.
But of course, he’s John Murphy, and the universe was designed to shit on him at every turn. To pull the rug from right out under him and let him land flat on his ass, and its Raven who delivers the blow with three little words.
“I’m dying, Murphy.”
And it surprises him just how much of a gut punch those words are. But she doesn’t leave it alone there. No, she grabs hold of his insides and twists painfully as he takes a look around him – at the carefully laid out space gear and the schematics on the computer screen – and realisation hits. Because, of course she is. Of course, she’s planning a one-way trip up through the stratosphere to die alone up in space and return to stardust.
Goddammit, Reyes.
Because, of course, somehow, she’s managed to seep in under his skin and lodge herself there. He’d blame Emori if he could: after all, she weakened his defences and made it all the easier. But he knows that’s not the truth. Because this started long before, with a desperate, thoughtless pull of a trigger that bound him to her, and even he recognises just how fucked up that is.
It makes no sense.
He should be relieved.
She’s a limping reminder of his sins. A physical manifestation of both hatred and self-hatred, and he swallows down the lump at the back of his throat and steadies his voice as he asks a question he already knows the answer to.
“You going to space?”
And somewhere along the way the guilt has warped into a sense of responsibility. A part of him, who for so long has only cared for his own survival, feels responsible for Raven’s.
It’s the butt end of a terrible joke.
He cares.
It surprises him just how much he does.
And it shouldn’t; not really.
Not when Emori’s managed to carve her name on his heart and reminded him how it can feel. Terrifying and freeing all at the same time.
No, it surprises him just how much he cares. And it has nothing to do with Emori, and everything to do with her.
“You have any idea what it’s like to be in pain every day?” she asks.
Yes, he thinks, but it’s not the kind of pain she means. And he has no right to compare.
“When I was space-walking . . . everything was right. I just want that again,” she finishes.
He’s apologised once before.
Sitting in the destroyed, abandoned remnants of their dropship, a bitter anger and hatred burning between the two. She didn’t want to hear it then, and he’s not even sure he meant it then.
But he means it now.
He really does.
“I’m sorry for doing this to you, Raven.”
Her eyes glance down to the brace on her left leg and the guilt is a familiar acid burning its way through him. But then she’s looking back at him, shaking her head, eyes searching his and he thinks he almost believes it as she tells him:
“This is not your fault, Murphy. I can deal with losing my leg. But losing my mind?”
He breathes out and looks away.
He wants to grab hold of her hand and run, because he’s always been a coward and he doesn’t want to leave her.
But then. But then, he thinks, he can’t change what’s happened, can’t undo what’s already been done. Maybe the last decent thing he can do for her is to let her have her final spacewalk and be brave.
“What do you want me to tell the others?” he asks, stepping closer.
And there are tears rolling down her cheeks, and he has them in his own.
“Tell them . . . tell them I floated myself.”
It’s a wet laugh that follows, that disappears as quickly as it comes.
Because then she’s hugging him, surprising him one last time.
She’s warm and alive – breathing in and out in time with him, and though he knows this’ll be the first and last time, somehow it still feels a lot like another chance.
Like forgiveness.
It feels like forgiveness, and he won’t waste it.
][
] Three. [
Eight-hundred and thirty-four days, but who’s counting?
(all of them.)
They go through their phases – every one of them, because they’re all human after all, and they’ve been stuck in this tin can for over two and half years now with only each other for company, learning more about themselves than they ever would have wanted. Days where they just want to hide themselves away, others where the only thing to do is release their frustrations in hysterics of laughter or against each other in a sparring match of physical blows or heated words. And then they collapse and surrender to oblivion and wake up only to do it all over again.
Rinse. Repeat.
And today, it’s Raven’s turn.
It’s a physical kinda itch that dances under her skin, irritating her to no end. She’d already sought out Echo and hit the mats for some training – it’s a necessity up here in space, with a lack of food already compounding the muscle and bone density loss, and in her case, it’s a way to strengthen her leg and not let it get any worse – but for some reason, today, it’s just not enough.
It takes a while for her to figure out. As the splash of cold water does nothing to cool her heated skin and there’s a burning ache building inside her, made worse when she turns a corner and all she can hear are light, breathy giggles, coming from the control room.
And fuck. It’s just what she needs.
The problem with living in such a small space, up in space, with literally nowhere else to go, and no one else but the same six faces day in day out, is that you end up seeing a whole lot more than you’d bargained for. It doesn’t help of course, that four of them are already established couples. They each have their own tales of walking in on each other in various states of undress and embarrassing situations, and for the most part they’ve all become immune to it. But sometimes it just hits her hard. Just how lonely she is.
She reckons Bellamy’s in the same boat. Maybe even has it the worst with nothing but his memories of Clarke and the guilt that goes along with them, to keep him company. Then again, Echo’s not faring any better. Unrequited love sucks hard.
But it isn’t really love that she misses. Her experiences with Finn have taught her that love is just pain in sheep’s clothing, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t miss sex. Or affection, even.
She just wishes she didn’t have to be confronted by it every which way she turns.
She’s ready to scream at whoever it is that’s encroached on her safe haven – because it’s an unspoken agreement that the control room is Raven’s domain – but then the sight in front of her has her stopping still.
Because it’s not Monty and Harper, like she first suspected.
No, it’s Emori backed up against one of the walls, trapped by Murphy’s arms and his body pressing into her, and her weak protests of “John, I really need to get back to running through the simulations, I haven’t got . . .” disappearing into the press of his lips against hers, and she really doesn’t seem to be resisting all that hard.
And Raven knows she’s seen a heck of a lot more than this – this is as PG-rated as you can get – but there’s something about seeing Murphy like this that fries her brain for a split-second. Because of them all, Murphy is the one that is surprisingly the most private about his relationship with Emori – never really talks about it, keeps the PDA to a bare minimum – and this is the freest she’s seen him. That he’s capable of such affection shouldn’t come as a surprise, and yet somehow, she’s forgotten his story. The one he’d spilled freely at her bullish prodding and she’d so openly mocked. And she knows he’d be the first to say he’d deserved it, but three years is a long time, and she likes to think she knows him better now, and she’s in a better place now to feel ashamed. Because that angry, bitter girl, filled with nothing but hatred in place of empathy, is not who she is. And who he is, is the boy that had been born into affection, only to have it cruelly stripped away, leaving him too frightened to ever invite it back into his life.
Until Emori, that is.
Raven can’t bring herself to look away as he kisses a path down Emori’s neck before lifting her hand – the mutated one she still tries to hide away – and presses his lips to it like it’s the most precious thing he has in his grasp, eyes never straying from hers as he does, and she feels something jolt painfully in her chest with it.
And no. Nope. Nuh uh. She’s not doing this.
She clears her throat, loud and obnoxious.
Emori startles at the sound and gently pushes at Murphy, who just sighs in annoyance dropping his head and not looking her way.
“Raven,” the other woman says, standing a little straighter and in the blue-tinged light of the room, Raven can’t see the blush on her cheeks but knows it’s there. “Sorry, we were just-”
“Ever learn to knock, Reyes?” Murphy says, cutting her off and this time he does push away from the wall and looks over his shoulder. His eyes find hers instantly and there it goes again, the painful jolt in her chest.
And it’s not jealousy. And it’s certainly not whatever the hell her traitorous heart or libido (and she hasn’t a clue which one is worse) thinks it is.
She’s lonely, and angry, and so freaking tired of it all, and that’s all there is to it.
“Knock where exactly, dumbass? I don’t see a door anywhere, do you? And since when did the control room become your sleeping quarters? Do I need to draw you another map of the ship, Murphy?”
He twists his lips into a smirk, huffs out a breath but says nothing in response. Instead, he turns back to Emori and says, “I’ll see you later, okay?”
Emori nods and walks back over to her computer, where she’s been working over the simulations Raven left her to do. Spacewalking is no joke, and Raven’s not going to have anyone’s life on her conscience. She’s seen what it’s done to Bellamy and it’s not a road she wants to tread.
Murphy’s heading her way, and she kind of can’t help herself, the way she says with faux regret, made all the more obvious by the saccharine smile on her face, “sorry for interrupting your little romantic interlude . . .”
He scoffs. “Sure you are, Raven.”
She shrugs, and moves to walk further into the room, but then he’s grabbing hold of her upper arm and stopping her there. His grip isn’t painful, it isn’t even particularly hard, but it startles her, and she turns her head in his direction, another snarky retort right there on the tip of her tongue. But it melts away the second her gaze lands on his. His eyes look bluer than blue in this lighting.
If there’s one emotion she can confidently name that lurks there, it’s concern.
“You okay?” he asks, proving her right, and she wonders just when she’d learnt to read him.
She could toss it away with some smartass comment and tease him about going soft, but she can’t get her lips to form the words and can only jerk her head in a small nod.
“Sure?”
She sighs. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just feeling a little tense. You know how it is, stuck in here. I’m just having one of those days, I guess.”
He nods back at her, eyes still holding hers, and then she feels it, the small squeeze of his hand around her arm, as if to reassure her.
As if he understands.
And of all the things that surprise her the most about John Murphy, it’s that.
But then there’s a subtle twitch of his lips, a flicker of something in his eyes and she can’t help but feel a little wary about whatever the hell he’s going to say next.
“You know,” he starts, leaning down towards her, lowering his voice, “maybe you should talk to Bellamy about your uh . . . little problem. Pretty sure you guys could help each other out.”
The accompanying smirk makes his meaning abundantly clear, and . . . eww.
She slaps his arm. “You just had to ruin the moment!”
“Oh, a moment? Is that what we were having, Reyes? Careful, my girlfriend’s literally right there.”
She laughs, as she shoves him hard. “Get outta here, asshole.”
He grins a little wider and walks off with a backward wave, and she finds herself shaking her head, laughter turning into a fond smile.
And just like that, the itch is gone.
][
] Four. [
Day Three.
Well, technically, it’s day two-thousand and who the hell knows how many days? He stopped counting the day Bellamy and the rest of the Spacekru left them behind on the Eligius, and he had to start his tally all over again.
As it is, they’re still waiting. Waiting for any sign from Bellamy about what they should do to the hundreds of sleeping murdering psychopaths they’re living in precariously close quarters with.
Murdering psychopaths.
He’d been called one of those once. A long time ago.
He swallows the words down, and the memory that goes along with them.
It’s not one he can forget easily.
Not when he’s only got himself to blame.
Sure, the limp isn’t as pronounced these days. Maybe she’s just gotten better at masking it. But every now and then he’ll notice the slightest grimace on her face, the hand that absent-mindedly reaches down to massage her leg and a phantom ache, and he feels those same twinges of guilt he’ll never be rid of. Even if she has forgiven him.
Raven’s never said it in so many words, but he knows her. And Raven is probably the most selfless person he knows. Case in point – their predicament right now is one hundred percent Raven Reyes. The woman just doesn’t know when to give up the self-sacrificing schtick and one of these days it’s going to get her killed. And he also knows that had it been Monty, or even Bellamy, who’d chosen to stay behind, he wouldn’t have made the same decision. So, yeah. Their predicament? Raven Reyes’ fault. One hundred percent. And he certainly doesn’t regret it, but he can’t say the same for her, and he wonders.
“Do you regret it?”
It’s silent except for the soft sound of her breathing beside him.
They’re sitting slumped up against a console in near darkness; the observation window is directly in front of them with only a slight curve of the Earth visible and just endless black space, dotted with starlight above it for them to admire.
He hadn’t been lying when he’d said it was quite the view.
“Regret what?” her voice is a low murmur, and he can hear the exhaustion.
“Staying behind?”
“Do you?”
He huffs out a soft laugh. “I’m the one asking the question, Raven. Stop dodging.”
She shakes her head, and the movement brings her a little closer. She pulls her bent knees up to her chest.
“No,” she breathes out.
That doesn’t surprise him. It’s her next words that do.
“It’s not like I have anyone down there waiting for me.”
He looks down at her, but her eyes are fixed on the window, reflecting starlight.
“You know that’s not true, right? There are a lot of people who care about you.”
And somehow, she hears the self-pity, even though it’s unconsciously done.
“And there are people who care about you,” she bats back.
This time he shakes his head.
“What?” she prompts, as if he should know, “Emori? Bellamy? Monty?”
He laughs, and it’s not without a trace of bitterness. “Emori hates me. And she has every right to. Bellamy just feels sorry for me, and Monty and everyone else – well, they just put up with me for six-years cos they had to. You all would have floated me if you had the chance.”
She falls silent, and he thinks well, that answers that then. And damn, he’d be lying if he said it doesn’t hurt.
He fights the urge to get up and leave, but then finally he hears her shift beside him. “You’re wrong, Murphy.”
It’s the anger behind those words that throw him.
He doesn’t get to say anything else though, because she’s asking him again. “Do you regret it? Do you regret staying behind?”
He doesn’t have to think about it. “No.”
“Why?” There’s a certain sense of urgency to her question, as if she’s desperate to make some point to him.
He blows out a breath but doesn’t answer.
She finds it anyway in his silence.
“Oh okay, so you can care about me, but I can’t care about you? Is that how it works, huh?”
And the words are like a vice grip around his heart and he doesn’t believe them for a second. He can’t. And so, he does what he always does – builds a wall around him and fires back with arrows aflame with mockery and snark.
“Gotta say that’s pretty presumptuous of you, Reyes. Not that I’m not flattered . . .”
But Raven’s not playing. Not this time. “I’m not wrong.”
He stretches his legs out in front of him, and sighs. “How can you?” he asks. “After,” he stumbles for the words, “after, everything I’ve-”
“Because I forgave you a long time ago, you idiot. I didn’t realise I had to spell it out for you, jeez.”
The corner of his mouth lifts, and he turns to look back down at her, and this time she’s looking right at him with a smile on her face. And goddamn, Raven Reyes.
“Just cos I admit, a tiny small part of my cockroach heart – wait, do cockroaches even have hearts? –” she punches him on the shoulder with a huff of laughter – “does care about you, don’t flatter yourself by thinking I stayed behind for you. Like I told the rest of them, with Emori trying to land that thing, it was strictly a survivor’s move.”
She pats his leg. “Sure it was,” she grins, before surprising him once more by settling against him and letting her head drop on his shoulder, her eyes once again on the view outside their window.
He freezes at the unexpected contact, can feel her lips curve into a smile as he does.
“Relax,” she says. “My neck’s just killing me. I promise I have no plans to jump you, you are so not my type.”
“You wound me, Reyes.”
“Suck it up.”
He chuckles and shakes his head, before falling quiet.
And they stay like that for the rest of the night. Side by side.
It’s the last moment of peace they have.
Because it'll all go to hell in the morning (not that they know it).
But for now, they have this. And it's enough. More than enough.
][
] Five. [
Raven doesn’t know how it happens.
She’d been positive that the programme she’d rigged up was supposed to prevent this kind of thing from happening, but somehow, they’d managed to hack into the system from the ground and here they are.
Surrounded by hundreds of angry, blood thirsty and murder hungry psychopaths - outnumbered, and with nowhere to run.
“Crap,” Murphy mutters beside her.
“That’s an understatement.”
“What do we do?” he asks her, as the battering against the metal doors gets louder and louder and it creaks ominously with the weight of whatever they’re using to break it down.
They’ve cornered them into one of the cargo bays, and they’ve already ransacked the crates searching for anything they can use to get themselves out of here, but there’s nothing.
All they have is their smarts and it’s kind of what’s led them here, to this moment, in the first place
Raven, as a last resort managed to remotely hack the system, opening the air locks in one of the sections of the ship, floating at least fifty of their people. Still, fifty down and two-hundred and fifty more aren’t the best of odds, but it’s something, at least. It does, however, mean she’s managed to mightily piss the rabble off. And they’re gunning for them with no sign of backing down.
“We should just surrender,” Murphy says then.
She turns wide eyes on him. “What? No!”
“Look, Raven,” he turns to her, eyes wild, breath heavy, and just as scared. “We have to trust Bellamy got our SOS. That he’s gonna work out a plan with Diyoza-”
“With what leverage?” she hisses. “Our leverage is gone!”
He laughs then, and it’s almost hysterical. “Damned if I know! But all I know is we should have died a hundred times over already. I mean, hell, Clarke’s alive, and we thought she died six years ago! So, what’s one more death sentence to a cockroach?”
She shakes her head. “And what about me?”
“I’m not gonna let anything happen to you,” he says with a vehemence that shocks her, and leaves no room but to believe him.
She doesn’t know what to say to that.
Doesn’t think she can say anything, because there’s a lot that’s been left unsaid between them. Years and years of words she should have uttered, and words she never should have.
And so, she breathes in, and breathes out, and says;
“Alright then. Let’s do this.”
He nods. And for a moment, she thinks maybe he’s braver than she gave him credit for, and he’ll say what she can’t.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, he grabs hold of her hand and squeezes once before letting go.
She doesn’t have time to think about what it means.
Because the doors open then, and the last thing she remembers before being knocked out is the sight of John Murphy stepping out in front of her with his arms raised like some ridiculous, selfless, self-sacrificing hero.
And she’s surprised by just how much she hates it.
][
] + 1 [
Murphy can’t remember much of what happened aboard the Eligius.
Doesn’t remember the moment the cavalry came to their rescue, or how the hell they’ve managed to find their way to the ground, but he recognises that stench the minute consciousness creeps up on him.
It’s the unmistakeable smell of their precious charred and rotten Earth.
And there’s blood, too.
His, of course, and despite his best efforts, hers as well.
He doesn’t have to open his eyes to know it’s Raven who’s sitting there beside him, hand clasped around his.
He remembers the grotesque leers and wandering hands, and he’d wanted to kill every single one of those bastards there and then, and so he did the only thing he could do. Pissed them off the best he could with his smart mouth and careless attitude and made them believe he had nothing to lose.
He remembers the first knee to the gut that squeezed every last atom of air out of his lungs and left him choking. He remembers the countless vicious punches to his face and the familiar taste of blood in his mouth, dripping down his chin, and onto the floor.
He remembers hearing Raven’s screams – each one more desperate than the other.
“Stop!” she’d pleaded in breaths that were nothing but sobs. “You’re killing him! Stop. Please stop. Please stop. Please. Please.”
He remembers locking eyes with her, vision blurred red with tears, sweat and blood and remembers trying to tell her, it’s okay.
Remembers the way she’d shaken her head and wouldn’t look away and remembers how it was then that he finally believed her when she’d said she’d cared, and for a moment he couldn’t feel a thing.
He’d lied, of course.
Because he remembers.
He remembers everything that happened up there.
And it’s how he knows she probably hasn’t moved a muscle since they’ve been rescued, that she’s stayed glued to his side this entire time. And that underneath it all, Raven Reyes is just one massive bleeding heart, and he still doesn’t know how he got so lucky to have a part of it bleed for him.
When he does finally open his eyes, it’s to Raven hovering over him, like she’d known he was awake all along.
“Surprise,” he chokes out on a cough, throat dry, tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. “I’m still breathing.”
“Colour me shocked, Murphy.”
His grin turns into a grimace, as his eyes run over the nasty gash above her eyebrow and his fingers follow.
She swallows.
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault, Murphy. I can deal with a few scars. But losing you . . ?”
He breathes out, remembering a conversation from long ago, a smile playing on his lips as he thinks about just how far they’ve come.
“That's not gonna happen, Reyes."
"No?"
"No," he grins, lopsided though it is with all the swelling and bruising marring his face. "Cockroach, remember?"
She laughs.
"We survived," he says. And there's no awe. No surprise. It's as if he'd known all along.
“Yeah,” she smiles, a hand running through his hair, and he’ll blame the multiple concussions, but damn she’s beautiful. “Yeah, we did."
End.