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It’s been four days since Clarke and Bellamy woke them up, and everything’s still a blur.
Raven thought back to those first minutes, remembered opening her eyes and there was Clarke, smiling down at her. They had hugged right away, of course, even though they both knew they needed to clear the air between them. But in that first moment of seeing each other, when they finally had a quiet opportunity together, there could be nothing but genuine happiness after such a long time.
“Bellamy and I need to talk to you, but first we have to wake up a few more people. Will you get Murphy and Emori while I wake up Madi? After that when you’re ready, meet us on the bridge.” Clarke had asked for her help, and across the aisle she could see Bellamy pushing the buttons that would wake Echo, and he turned and sent her a tired smile. She’d nodded, and Clarke walked a few cryopods away to start the process for Madi, while Raven grabbed her brace from the floor and leaned forward to push the keypad buttons for the pod next to her own, where Murphy was sleeping.
Raven stared through the glass at him, and thought back to the desperate panic she had been feeling during those last moments on Earth, waiting to find out if the rest of her family was going to make it onboard and knowing that she was going to be in the position again of having to take off without them.
When the procedure was complete and he started to wake, she knew her eyes were a little teary when she admonished him. “That was cutting it too damn close this time, Murphy, even for you.”
He started to grin, but then sat up and must have felt a twinge in his injured shoulder, because it turned into a groan instead. “Yeah, I might be getting too old for this.”
“That makes two of us.” Raven patted his shoulder gingerly, then turned to work the keypad right above Murphy to wake Emori. “Listen, Clarke woke me up and said that she and Bellamy want to talk to a few of us. Emori’s the last one and then we can go freshen up and head to the bridge.”
And then they’d eventually gotten cleaned up and used the facilities, and when they’d all arrived on the bridge, Bellamy had revealed that awful, amazing video from Harper and Monty. It would be a moment frozen in Raven’s memory forever, exactly how it had played out. She’d been standing almost in the middle of the screen, with Murphy on her right and Emori next to him. Echo had been on her left, with Bellamy beside her. Clarke and Madi had been cuddled together in the chair just beyond them, close enough to see but a little separate from her Ring family.
She’d known almost right away, of course, that something was very wrong. Clearly Monty and Harper weren’t with them, but she’d had no idea of the real explanation. Raven had instinctively reached for Murphy’s hand and leaned closer to Echo to put her other arm around her, and it had been just like that, all of them linked together, that they had learned that their friends, their family, had loved and lived and died while the rest of them slept unknowingly for one hundred and twenty five years.
As they’d tried to absorb the utter shock of these realizations, Bellamy had explained that he and Clarke had been woken up two days before by Harper and Monty’s son, and then Jordan had come out to meet them. To say that Raven was overwhelmed was an understatement. All of her friends seemed pretty numb, but were doing their best to keep it together as they met him for the first time. She didn’t think anyone managed not to cry - he looked so much like his parents and it was both terrible and beautiful to have him there with them.
In a display of kindness so much like Harper, Jordan had gestured to Madi and Clarke and asked if they’d like to go with him to the kitchen to prepare some of the rations and water from the ship. And so Raven had found herself with just the remaining members of her Ring family - Bellamy, Echo, Murphy and Emori - as they all comprehended the truth of what had happened and did their best to accept it.
Clarke and Bellamy had given them that day to be together, just their own small version of family, and they’d told stories and cried and did their best to make Jordan comfortable. Eventually most of them fell asleep in a common area of the ship and the next morning, Bellamy told them that they needed to work on a list of essential personnel to wake up first and get started on making plans for how they would go down to the planet and who would first do so. He, Clarke, Madi and Echo had all begun working together on lists, on preparations, on plans for where everyone would sleep and how long the rations would last. Emori volunteered to go with Jordan to learn some of the specifics of what Monty had done to upgrade the ship, in order to make sure things were running properly.
Raven supposed she should try to help, but she couldn’t muster the energy. Apparently neither could Murphy, because they both just seemed to float around the ship in a fog. Sometimes it felt too painful to be alone, but other times it felt too painful to be with the others, especially when it felt like some of them were just moving forward so quickly. Logically, Raven knew they all had their coping mechanisms, but there was no way she could focus on anything, and for once she just allowed herself to fade into the background and be led instead of actively involved.
So now here she was, four days after the life-changing wake up, hiding out in a small storage closet among shelves of towels and blankets. It felt like there was so many people around now, everything was loud and too bright. The rooms had been divided up by gender, so even at night she wasn’t alone, and despite being surrounded by people she did genuinely care for, it was hard to get any privacy. Bellamy had told her that Shaw had been on the list to wake up early, and she’d gone with Bellamy to the cryo chamber to help wake him up, but she had felt so disconnected and fuzzy, so she’d urged him to go with the other newly awakened group to hear the explanation of what was going on without her. She’d wandered around the ship, half-heartedly exploring, and when she’d opened the door to this dark room, it had seemed as good a place as any to finally get some quiet.
Raven might have been in there an hour, maybe two, she didn’t know or honestly care, but suddenly the door opened and the light was turned on, making her scowl.
“Get the fuck out! And turn off that light!,” she barked.
The voice that reached her ears seemed more amused than annoyed. “That you, Raven?”
She squinted up and saw Murphy stepping further inside the small space. “Yeah, it’s me. It’s too loud everywhere, I’m trying to get some peace and quiet. Sorry I yelled at you, I thought it was someone random.”
Murphy takes a good look at her. It’s clear none of the former residents of the Ring are doing great, but Raven looks especially tired, and he knows that she’s been grieving more privately, like he has.
“You don’t have to be anywhere for awhile, right?,” he asks. “Clarke asked me to bring some extra blankets to the med area, but once I do, I want to show you something.”
“No, I haven’t volunteered to do anything, so I don’t have anywhere I need to be. I’ll go with you.” Raven slowly gets up, blinking at the bright lights but grabbing a stack of blankets to take along.
She lets Murphy go into the med area without her, deciding she’s not up for any kind of reunion with Abby just yet, and when he’s finished, he walks along with her down some of the corridors on the Eligius IV.
“Remember when we were up here before, alone, before the prisoners all woke up? You were busy at the monitors a lot, so I explored this place pretty extensively. I had meant to show you this then, but we got a little distracted when they all woke up and suddenly wanted to kill us, and there wasn’t enough time to make it here.” Murphy watches the hallway closely, making sure no one else is around.
“Yeah, two hundred and some murderous prisoners sure did put a damper on our fun and games.” Raven deadpans, shaking her head at him.
He turns, a pleased look on his face. “Hey, you made a joke. You are in there somewhere.”
Raven sighs, knowing he’s only trying to help. “I’m just… having a hard time wrapping my head around all of this. It’s so much.”
Murphy looks over his shoulder and when he sees that they are alone, he pushes open a door to another storage area, and grabs her hand to pull her in quickly, shutting the door behind her and giving her a one-armed hug. “I know, it’s overwhelming. I’m feeling pretty fucked up about it all myself. I can’t believe… well, I can’t believe a lot of this shit, honestly. Here, slide over this way a little.”
In the pitch black closet, he leans against her side and reaches above her head for something, and hums under his breath in success when he finds it. In the next moment, a flashlight shines around the space, and she can see he has that along with a screwdriver in his hands.
“Can you fucking believe I left these here over 125 years ago and actually remember doing it like it was what, three weeks ago? And this flashlight still works, crazy.” He turns and points the light towards one of the shelves along the bottom of the wall. “Look at this shelf - it’s got bins on the bottom but it’s got a little secret.”
Murphy pulls the bins out and gestures for her to bend down. She can see in the dim light that there’s a panel behind the low shelf, held in by screws. It had been completely hidden by the bins, and she wouldn’t be able to see it at all if she were still standing straight.
“How’d you find this, Murphy? It seems pretty deliberately hidden. Where does it go?”
He scoffs a little in some remembered joke. “Let’s just say I get by with some random luck in a lot of things, okay? It was a complete accident that I found this. Lemme open it up and we’ll go in.”
He works one of the top screws loose and she can see that it must not be attached on the bottom, because now that only one corner is screwed to the wall, the panel swings open. “Look, once we go in, we pull the bins back onto the shelf behind us, and no one knows it’s here.”
Raven’s impressed, although she can’t imagine anyone coming to look for them in this strange spot anyway.
Murphy turns around and assesses her, a thoughtful look on his face. “It’s not a long way to where we’re going, but it’s in the ventilation system so we’re going to have be quiet. Unfortunately, your brace could make you noisy if the metal scrapes against the floor. I’d rather not give this place away just yet, if we don’t have to. See if you spot any cloth in here.”
They pull open some of the bins and go through them, but it’s mostly equipment and spare parts.
“Figures neither of us has a jacket today.” Raven remarks, as she looks down at her loose long-sleeved shirt and pants, and Murphy is wearing almost the same thing.
“I’ll just say I got blood on it or something, and I’ll get a new one when we come back.” Murphy pulls his shirt over his head, and she can tell by the grimace on his face that it must not be easy getting it over his injured shoulder. He hands her the shirt, but she’s focused on the two large white bandages on his bare chest, one along his shoulder and one along his side.
Raven sighs. “You know, you really shouldn’t be crawling through ventilation shafts right now, anyway. Look at you, you almost died. You should be in bed resting. Come on, let’s go back to the med facility and…”
“And nothing!” Murphy interrupts. “Hey, you’re not the only one who could use a distraction, okay? I wanna show you this and then if you need it while we’re up here you can take advantage of it. We can trade off or something. Let’s just keep going, alright?” And he’s looking at her pleadingly with those eyes of his, and she can tell that he needs this as much as she does, so of course she gives in.
“Fine,” she huffs, and starts wrapping his shirt around her brace to cushion all the metal pieces. “But you better tell me if it starts to hurt.” She looks at him warningly and he can’t help but grin.
“Yes, deal, deal, you’ll be the first to know. Now come on, you follow me. Reach back and pull the bin onto the shelf behind you and pay attention, I think there’s two turns.”
Raven does what he says and fits herself into the tight box of the ventilation shaft after him. It’s close quarters for her, so she knows he’s having a tougher time of it, trying to be quiet, when his shoulders rub along the side walls with every movement. He was right about it not being too long, although they do make two turns that she’ll need to remember. She’s pleased to see that his shirt wrapped around her brace works exactly as planned and she does a better job than Murphy at being silent as they move along.
They come to what looks like a dead end, but Murphy slides something down low and a panel opens in front of him, and he crawls out onto the floor, Raven following close behind. They’re in a dark space, sort of a room, and she can’t quite get a grasp on how big it is yet due to the lack of light.
“So when we were here before, after I found this place, I looked on the ships map to try and figure out where exactly it was. From what I could gather, it looks like this room is actually fitted within all the cryopod equipment. Like literally built within it, hidden. So it’s not on a map. Best guess is that it was made as a last ditch escape for the captain or something, to send out a distress call or hide if the ship was taken over.” Murphy’s moving around, shining the flashlight up and down along one wall until he spots the switch and walks over to flip it.
The room is illuminated, and Raven can see that Murphy is exactly right - this is definitely some kind of bunker for one, maybe two, people. It’s got a low ceiling and in one corner is a chair and desk with a couple of computer consoles and various displays and monitors, and farthest from her is a long cot with a few pillows and some blankets folded up on it, pushed against the wall. There’s quite a few storage cabinets along the remaining walls, and one comfortable looking chair next to an open shelf that’s crammed full of books with another lamp on top. Raven’s eyes widen at the sight. The room is on the small side and rather sterile, but it feels kind of like an oasis of calm compared to the main area of the Eligius.
“Murphy. You are a damned sneaky genius! I can’t believe you found this place!”
He laughs at her tone. “Yeah, I was surprised about it too. Those cabinets over there are mostly full of rations, couple blankets, some weapons, that kinda thing. I checked it out when I found it before. You wanna see if you can get any of those monitors to work?”
Raven nods and heads over to the desk. She gets it up and running pretty quickly, and turns to smile at Murphy only to see him putting sheets from the cabinet on the bed. She can access literally everything from this location, including some of the ships cameras. Raven pulls up one of the external camera views of the planet with two suns onto the display, and it sort of looks like a window with a view now.
If she had imagined it herself, she knows she couldn’t have dreamed up a more perfect space to escape to, and Murphy must guess at what she’s thinking.
“Better than that storage closet, right?” He grins at her knowingly.
“This is literally perfect, I can’t believe it. Thanks for telling me about this.”
Murphy nods, and swings his hand towards the wall panel. “Like I said, I meant to show it to you 125 years ago.” He smiles briefly, then she sees it fade as he’s remembering. “If you want to stay here and get some rest, I’ll come back in a few hours to wake you up.”
“Well, you know, if you don’t have anywhere to be, you could stay, too.” Raven suggests.
“I thought you wanted to be alone,” Murphy looks at her in surprise at the invitation.
“Yeah, but, I meant away from other people, I’m used to you,” she shrugs.
“Alright, how ‘bout you sleep and I read?” Murphy gestures his head towards the chair and bookshelf, and Raven grins, realizing that he’s probably pretty anxious to get his hands on them.
“Of course. You turn on that lamp and I’ll turn off the big one. You think we can get away with three hours or should we make it two?”
He looks thoughtful for a moment, then sighs in frustration. “Better make it two. It’ll probably look suspicious if we’re gone longer than that.”
Raven nods and turns out the light, and is glad the lamp near Murphy is dim. She sits on the cot and takes her shoes and her brace off, and climbs under the blankets. It’s much quieter than the room she shares with the others, so she’s hoping she can fall asleep easily.
“Hey, Murphy?...Thanks for staying,” she calls out quietly.
“You’re welcome.”
Raven wakes up slowly, curling her body deeper under the blankets as if to stave off the inevitable. She feels comfortable and warm and the last thing she wants to do is get up, but her head shifts towards where Murphy was sitting and she has to suppress a giggle at what she sees. His right elbow is on the padded arm of the chair, propping his head up in his palm, hair sticking up in every direction, and the book he was reading is still open in his left hand. But Murphy is clearly asleep, his face illuminated in the hazy glow of the small lamp.
Slowly, she gets up, straps her brace on and walks over to the computer station. “Shit,” she mumbles. They’d been in the captain’s room for almost four hours now, definitely enough time for them to be missed. Raven can’t bring herself to be that upset, though. That was probably the longest stretch of sleep she’d had since she’d awoken from the cryopod.
She moves towards Murphy’s chair, and carefully picks the book up out of his lap and sets it back on the shelf, and then can’t help the impulse - she puts her hand on his head and gently makes an even bigger mess of his hair to rouse him. “Murphy, hey. We overslept, wake up.”
He drowsily blinks up at her, and she laughs again at how confused he looks. “You fell asleep reading and you forgot to wake me up. We’ve been here almost four hours. At the very least we’re going to get a lecture about not making people worry. You ready to go?”
Murphy groans and stretches, then freezes suddenly with a wince of pain. “Aww, crap. I think I just tore whatever Abby and Clarke did to close me up.”
Her eyes widen in panic and she bends over him carefully to examine the bandage on his bare shoulder, which seems fine. She can’t fully see the bandage on his side, so she moves in front of him to get a better look. “Shift over so I can see your side.”
When he does, she drops inelegantly to her knees and leans forward between his legs, delicately lifting the white cloth and tape covering his wound. “Damn it. It’s bleeding again, and not just a trickle either.” She holds the cloth more firmly against his side, and even though he grunts in pain, she doesn’t let up on the pressure as she glares at him with disapproval and feels her anger build.
“When are you going to fucking learn, Murphy! I knew it, I knew I shouldn’t let you crawl around in those vents! But no, I let myself be swayed by your stupid face, and now look where we are! You’ll probably end up bleeding out right in front of me and won’t that be a fucking fantastic way to end the last couple of days!” Raven swipes at her eyes furiously as the fresh tears start to spill, knowing that she’s overreacting but unable to help herself.
She feels Murphy’s concerned gaze on her and his hands lift to her shoulders in comfort, then drop to rub up and down her arms. “Hey,” he insists, “I’m not going to die, it’s just a little blood. I’ll be fine, I promise.”
“No! No, you don’t get to fucking promise me you’re fine!,” she spits. “Nothing’s fine! I’m not fine! Do you have any fucking idea what it was like, knowing that you and Bellamy, and Monty and Emori weren’t on the ship and if I didn’t take off, everyone, fucking all of humanity would die? And I had to think about what I would tell Harper or Echo if I left you there? For six fucking years I thought about what I did, every day, leaving Clarke behind, and that would have been nothing, nothing compared to what killing the four of you would have done to me.” She’s crying uncontrollably now and Murphy’s got a stricken look on his face as he slides down off the chair to his knees and wraps his arms tightly around her.
“It’s okay to be mad, Raven, it is, just let it out.” His hand cradles her head and tips it onto his shoulder, then strokes her hair softly, and fuck, that makes it worse because now she’s got permission to break and it just makes her cry harder.
“I am fucking mad at you,” she sobs. “I think I was going to let us all die...rather than go through that again, I was thinking about just letting us all burn up. If Clarke hadn’t radioed that you’d all made it, I might have done it...” She gulps in air and wonders brokenly, “what kind of selfish person does that?”
“No, you don’t ever get to question how good you are,” Murphy argues forcefully. “You save us all so much, you take on so much responsibility for everything and everyone, you’re allowed to be sick of all this shit! If anybody got to decide when it was all enough, it would be you.” He pulls her closer and his voice is hoarse when he speaks near her ear. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry we put you through that. I was so tired, I just couldn’t keep going…if Monty hadn’t… I wouldn’t have made it if he hadn’t carried me.”
Raven sniffs into his shoulder, still crying but feeling drained after her outburst. “You almost reneged on our deal.” She kneads her fingers more firmly into his back as she thinks about him giving up, and shakes her head in an attempt to derail that thought. “I’m so grateful Monty saved you, but of course he did. We’re family. You never should have told them to leave you there - none of us would have done it.”
“I never got to thank him.” Murphy mutters harshly. “I got surgery, they put us all in cryo and I wake up and he’s fucking dead, Raven.”
“I know, I can’t...it’s awful…but, Murphy, Monty knew, he did. When Clarke took you over to where they were putting the injured, I thanked Monty, Emori thanked him, Bellamy thanked him… he knew how you felt, I promise.”
They kneel uncomfortably on the hard floor, pressed together in silence, both of them feeling wrung out. Raven hasn’t released the bandage on Murphy’s side this whole time, intent on stopping the bleeding, and she can feel the pins and needles settling into her hand, but she’s not ready to move just yet.
She wants to tell him one more thing, now that she’s confessing her darkest thoughts. “I’m having trouble being around him...around Jordan. Every time I look at him, he just looks so much like them and I feel so… so cheated, I guess. We never even got to see Harper hold him, we missed everything. I feel so hostile around everyone lately, it’s scaring me, but I’m just so angry.”
Murphy lets out a choked sound of miserable laughter. “Believe me, I know how you feel. One minute I’m glad he’s here and the next minute I want to trade him for Monty and Harper and I hate myself for it.”
“They wouldn’t hate you for it, Murphy. They’d understand - I understand. Do you think this is going to get easier, are we going to adjust to this?” Raven’s been lying awake at night, thinking about this, and she still hasn’t come to a conclusion.
“It fucking better get easier,” Murphy growls. “I’m so damned exhausted.”
Raven sighs. “Yeah. Me too, Murphy, me too.” She pulls back from his embrace slightly to peer at his bandage, which is now soaked through with blood but seems to have slowed. She wipes her wet face with the sleeve of her shirt, and knowing she cried all over his shoulder, she scrubs the fabric along his skin to dry him off too, and when she finishes, she looks up at him through her damp lashes to find him staring at her intently. His hand wraps tenderly around one side of her neck, his thumb brushing against the last of the red welts there. She gives him a wry grin and he shakes his head at her in frustration.
“No, it did not escape my notice that you found your way back into that fucking shock collar,” Murphy chastises her with a frown.
“Well you got yourself shot twice, so I get to be the more exasperated one this round. Now come on and help me up, this position is horrible for my leg.” She watches him struggle a bit to get to his own feet, less graceful due to being careful not to reopen his wound, and he reaches for her with both hands and pulls her up.
They each take a few moments to put their shoes back on and Raven wraps Murphy’s shirt back around her brace before turning off the computer display. He grabs the flashlight and turns out the light, then gestures to the panel. “You go first, I want to make sure you know the way.”
So she crawls inside stiffly and shows him she paid attention, and it isn’t long before they’re back in the equipment storage closet. He flicks the flashlight off and stows it back on top of the bins, then listens quietly at the door before pulling it open.
Raven squints a bit in the bright light of the hallway, and she decides to walk with him to make sure he’s going where she wants him to. “You are going straight to the medical area, right?”
“That depends, I guess.” Murphy replies slyly.
“On what?” she demands.
“On whether you’re feeling better,” he lifts one shoulder at her sheepishly, and she can’t help but roll her eyes affectionately at him.
She expels out a breath in exasperation but reaches over to squeeze his hand. “You know that I do. And you know I appreciate it, too.”
“Yeah, I know.”
They walk the rest of the way to the med facility in silence, and the halls are pretty empty at this time of night, but when they get close, Raven can see a light shining through the window set into the door. Murphy starts to push it open and she turns to walk back to the room she’s assigned to sleep in when she hears him softly call her name, so she spins back around to see what he wants.
“Hey, Raven. Tomorrow me and my stupid face are going to get you to tell me why you’re avoiding Abby.” And there’s a quick glimpse of his smug smirk before he’s inside and out of her reach.
Damn it! She hates when he gets the last word! But she can’t help the amused smile that spreads across her lips.