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The first time he sees him Murphy knows he’s someone important.
(Because it’s not John anymore. Hasn’t been John since he got locked up; and it stopped being Johnny when his dad got floated but, hell, it’s sure as hell a step up from you which was what his mom loved to call him until she died. Murphy fits him, he thinks, ass planted firmly in his seat as another John introduces himself. John’s too clean. Too nice.
Murphy doesn’t want to be nice anymore.
What the hell has he ever gotten out of it? )
And the first time he sees Bellamy Blake he knows. He isn’t a prisoner (guard uniform) and he knows someone who’s dumb enough to voluntarily get aboard a ship plummeting to earth on his own accord has to be a fucking lunatic.
Someone’s good side he wouldn’t mind being on.
The first time he sees her, though, Murphy knows she’s going to fucking annoying.
Pretty blonde princess that has that bastard’s son at her heels like a love struck puppy. She has no issue standing up to Bellamy Blake. From his spot he can’t even tell she comes up to his fucking chin but there she is, telling him that opening the door is dangerous (does she expect them just to sit in the fucking drop ship until they starve?).
Blake doesn’t listen to her. He hugs his sister (siblings; fucking brilliant) and lets her be the first person on earth in a fucking hundred years.
Princess doesn’t look too happy about that and Murphy knows she’s not done being trouble. She’ll do everything in her power to make sure that piece of shit Jaha and his fucking followers are happy when they come down, even if it means taking away their freedom.
So, the first time Bellamy comes to him and gives him an order (more like an idea, right? take off the bracelets, let them think you’re dead) he obeys. He’s manipulating them, Murphy knows, some ulterior motive that he can’t figure out right now. He doesn’t want rules. He doesn’t want the Ark and the assholes inside of it to come down here and ruin their life (again).
It makes standing at Bellamy’s side feel natural.
--
The first time he sees them as a we (a very tense and temporary we) is when they’re searching for that kid with the ratty hair and goggles who got fucking speared through the chest (a god damn pointless endeavor if he has anything to say about it, which he doesn’t). Bellamy wants Clarke’s bracelet, Clarke wants Bellamy’s gun, Murphy wants to see something happen, Finn and Wells want to see what’s under Clarke’s clothes and thus a team is born.
He sees it, just barely. If Clarke was a little bit worse or Bellamy a little bit better, they’d work together well. He can see it in the angry determination on both their faces (but for very different reasons) and Murphy’s thankful they don’t get along. He listens to Bellamy, Jaha Jr. and SpaceWalker listen to Clarke, and they find Goggles strung up like the fucking Messiah of Christians past.
He expects Bellamy to drop her.
He’s got a hand around her wrist and he hasn’t pulled her up and Murphy knows she can’t weight that much and he wants to wait and see if Bellamy pulls her up or lets her go. Wants to see if the man with the gun could actually kill someone.
(wonders if he could kill someone.)
But he helps Finn and Wells pull her out instead.
They look at each other, just briefly, and Murphy sees it in her eyes; she knows he almost let her go. That he thought about it. It’s the first time, Murphy thinks; the Princess looks scared of Blake.
(good.)
They save Jordan only to have him moan in pain for days on end (it reminds Murphy of his mother drunk and laying in her bed, moaning her father’s name, begging to have him back).
He hates it. He wants to kill Jordan and end all their fucking misery.
Princess’ henchmen don’t let him. What a fucking surprise.
Bellamy and Clarke come back with Atom’s body. Bellamy looks like he’s seen a ghost. Octavia looks broken.
It’s Clarke he pays attention to, though. She doesn’t look haunted or broken, she just looks there. Not like the death meant nothing but, like she knew how to handle it. Like it had become a part of her instead of taking a piece.
That’s the first time Murphy thinks that, maybe, it’s not Bellamy Blake he should fear.
--
The first time he realizes Clarke Griffin is a bitch and Bellamy Blake a fucking coward is when the blonde stands in front of him (in front of the whole fucking group) and accuses him of killing Wells. He’s not a good guy, he fucking knows this. He doesn’t go to sleep at night pretending he’s the knight of their camp (leave that to SpaceWalker).
But he’d be damned if he went down for something he didn’t do.
(he remembers his father dying and being scared and angry and his mother blaming him when he didn’t do anything but get sick.)
But Clarke’s good at exciting the crowd and all those people Murphy pissed on (metaphorically and literally in one case) comes back to bite him in the ass.
He’s terrified when they drag him, gag him, tie him up, and drop the rope around his neck. It’s the first time he feels terrified of every single person in that fucking camp and that’s when he hears Clarke pleading with Blake, her plan to call him out having seriously fucking backfired. He still hates her but at least she’s trying to stop it.
She tells Bellamy he can stop it and there’s hope. For a split second Murphy feels hope. He hasn’t betrayed Bellamy. He’s been good. Done what he’s told. Maybe he’s been a little shit while doing but, fuck, that’s second nature for him.
He thinks he says his name. Begs it, maybe.
And it’s when Bellamy Blake kicks the box out from under him anyway he realizes everything he knew about the older male was a fucking lie. He wasn’t strong. Or brave.
He was a god damn coward. One that gives into the crowd and hangs an innocent man.
It’s the little girl.
He wants to laugh when Finn jumps to his rescue (like he said; knight in shining armor this fucking kid). Maybe he would if his throat wasn’t so raw. Maybe he would if the anger isn’t so strong. Instead, all he wants to do is kill Charlotte. They were so eager to hang him right?
Justice and all that bullshit.
Maybe he jumps the gun. Maybe he goes a little crazy.
They tried to kill him, you know. An innocent guy. So he’s fucking pissed. So he wants a little fucking justice. So he’s not surprised when no one wants to hang the psycho little blonde girl. Hell, he isn’t even sure if he can as he’s chasing her, Finn, Clarke, and Bellamy through the woods. He can’t think of much past the anger.
He’s a desperate man when he grabs Clarke.
He feels nothing when Charlotte jumps off the edge.
He witnesses Clarke and Bellamy come into their roles as leaders by being their first fucking cause. It seems right in some fucked up sense of the world. He left that drop ship thinking he should fear Bellamy Blake, lived in that camp thinking maybe he should fear Clarke Griffin and now, here he sits at both their mercies.
Bellamy wants to kill him, Clarke talks him down.
(and that’s when he knows who really leads them all).
He feels like a dead man when they banish him.
--
He wasn’t far off. Doesn’t get far off either before the Grounders find him and grab him and drag him back to their camp. They beat him senseless before one even utters the first question. They cut him, hit him, drag him some more.
At one point he convinces himself Bellamy did kill him and this was Hell.
And when they do ask it’s while he’s choking on his own blood (and, honestly, at this point he wonders how he can still have blood in his body to choke on) and he wants the pain to end so badly he tells them everything. He tells them where they’re from, who leads them, what their defenses are, their weapons, if they can fight or not.
He realizes it was stupid to think they’d stop when they rip off the first finger nail.
And when they lock him up for another night (he loses count early) he looks up at the sky and thinks about Bellamy fucking Blake and everyone at that fucking camp. He finds peace in imagining how he’d kill each and every one of them if he ever got the chance to. Promises whatever God is out there that, if they give him a second chance, he’ll do it. He’ll give himself justice.
He comes up with a plan. Find Clarke or Finn; they have the biggest hearts and they’d be the easiest to manipulate.
And with every nail the Grounder pull off he thinks about shooting Bellamy, stabbing him, choking him, or punching his stupid fucking smug face until there’s nothing left but bone and blood.
He no longer fears Bellamy Blake or Clarke Griffin.
And he’s no longer unsure if he has it in him to kill someone. He knows he does.
It keeps him going.
--
He doesn’t second guess the unlocked caged. He runs. He runs until his legs can’t carry him any farther and then he runs some more. It’s when he sees the torches of the camp and hears voices that he lets himself fall, collapsing on the ground.
Murphy doesn’t expect them to take him in. Hell, he expects them to shoot him then and there but, they don’t. They drag him in and when Bellamy storms in to kill him Clarke steps between them. He can’t help but sag in relief and he knows what to do.
He figured out a long time ago who was really in charge.
Keep on the princess’ good side and the king won’t touch him.
He honestly has no idea the Grounders planned to use him as biological warfare (fucking genius though) and he hopes this disease doesn’t kill any of the people he already claimed. He fights through it (he has to, he thinks, to get himself justice). He fights through the blood in his throat (again) and the fever. He helps Clarke take care of everyone else, even tries to help Bellamy and it works.
Clarke doesn’t trust him, no, she’s not that stupid. But they keep him around.
Bellamy hates it and it makes Murphy feel all that stronger.
And when he has his hand over Connor’s face, watching him struggle, he feels absolutely nothing.
--
Jasper Jordan fucks up everything. Murphy had no intention of moving this fast. He had wanted to take his time but Jasper walks in and there’s no way to play it off because the annoying fuck is too smart. So, he gets the gun first and closes the door and waits for Bellamy to give himself because he knows he will.
A long time ago he said either Bellamy Blake would make Clarke Griffin worse or she would make him better.
And when the drop ship doors open and he trades places with Jordan, Murphy knows which one it is.
He expects to get the upper hand, Murphy doesn’t let him and, suddenly, stuck in the drop ship where he first saw Bellamy Blake, high and mighty, he realizes he knows exactly how he deserves to die. So, he makes him tie the belts together and toss it over a beam, and for the first time in a long time, as Blake defiantly pulls the noose over his head, his heart beats faster for something other than fear.
Being good never worked out for John Murphy. Being good worked out for men like Bellamy Blake and Finn Collins. Finn who was good from the start and, Bellamy, who had someone there to bring out the good in him. Murphy was neither of those, had neither, and he wasn’t sure if he ever wanted it to begin with.
(what has it ever gotten him? dead father, dead mother, tortured, used as a weapon.)
For the first time he was in control.
So he yanks the rope.
And Raven fucking Reyes ruins everything.
--
Raven fucking Reyes who is dying from his bullet.
He sits beside her, ignores the way she spits fire at him. He expects it. He doesn’t blame her. It’s not remorse he feels (or maybe it is and he just doesn’t know how to catalogue it) but here he is, beaten to a pulp again, tortured again and somewhere between this and that he realized that being good never got him anywhere but being bad sure as hell hasn’t either.
He also knows he’s going to die and maybe it’s too little too late but he tries to help Raven anyway and tells her something he’s never told anyone.
It doesn’t hurt when she patronizes him. Nothing hurts anymore.
He’s been a fucking dead man since he first got the flu.
Maybe, he thinks, if he lives this time it’ll be different. He won’t be good or bad.
He’ll just be Murphy.
--
Just being Murphy earns him locked up with the man who hates him the most. Just being Murphy earns him being shoved and yanked until SpaceWalker finds it in himself to cut the fucking ties around his wrists. He’s used as bait for a Grounder (given a couple of fucking rocks) and, still, Murphy feels nothing.
He plays nice. Does as he’s told (sarcasm unavoidable, I’m afraid).
He could run any time, he realizes, but doesn’t bother.
Instead he argues with Bellamy, looking to see if there was any of the volatile man he met on the ground still in there. Finn pulls the trigger, Bellamy stares, and Murphy realizes that whoever Bellamy used to be was gone. Murdered. Dead.
He knows it’s Clarke Griffin’s fault. He can taste it in the back of his throat.
He also knows it’s her fault there’s that crazy look in SpaceWalker’s eyes he’s never seen before.
And he knows that if this was the first day on the ground and Bellamy was like this and Finn was like this, whose side he would choose. That he would pick the chaos in Finn’s eyes before ever taking a chance with the unnamable element that was in Bellamy’s.
So, when those seatbelts snap he grabs both ends without thinking and as the weight on each end threatens to yank his arms out of their sockets he realizes he feels something again for the first time in a while. It hurts like hell, too. Like two huge fucking grounders are trying to rip him apart from either side.
(like he’s being tortured again).
He closes his eyes, grits his teeth and pulls. He pulls with the others under Bellamy and the girl are on the edge of the cliff and he watches Bellamy’s eyes shift from the belts, to his hands, to his face and everything that lies between them goes unspoken.
That’s when he realizes what he saw in his eyes before. What he saw as Bellamy went over that edge to save some girl he would have never bothered with before.
It’s bravery.
(and it’s about god damn time).
--
When he finally sees Clarke again it isn’t a happy occasion.
Bellamy goes back with the girl (mel, he thinks, maybe?) and the wounded Monroe. He leaves Murphy with Finn, gives him a gun, and tells him to watch his back and as his fingers brush over the metal of the gun and the warmth in the spots that Bellamy’s hands had been clutching it he decides to do just that.
He should have seen it coming. In retrospect, maybe he did. Maybe a part of him recognized the slow undoing of Finn Collins (maybe because he had seen it in himself). Maybe he ignores it because it’s SpaceWalker and even though he’s already spilt innocent blood there’s no way in hell he’ll do it again. Kids, old people, mothers—
Finn’s the knight, remember? Murphy’s the monster.
That’s how the story goes. That’s how it’s supposed to be.
But he sees it a little too late. When there’s no chance in saving Finn. When, before the trigger is ever pulled, there’s no chance in saving the Grounders.
It happens so fast but he remembers yelling. He remembers yelling Finn’s name, the Grounders yelling for each other but, more than anything, he remembers the absent look on Finn’s face as the gun shoots off each round.
Lifeless. Dead.
(finn looks like him.)
And then there’s Clarke, Bellamy, and Octavia, the former two just staring in horror as Octavia runs to the healer’s side.
I’ve found you. He sounds insane.
It’s the first time Murphy feels pity.
Clarke shakes her head and it isn’t until Finn steps toward her that she steps back. Just one step.
(right in Bellamy’s direction.)
There’s fear in their eyes as they look at him. Fear and shock. Murphy wonders if his face holds the same emotion (has it ever?) because he finds himself at Bellamy’s side without realizing it, the male tense and ready to intervene if Finn comes too close to Clarke.
(a protectiveness he’s only seen him have with Octavia.)
Murphy fears Finn, he realizes. Pities what love has twisted him into but fears what he’ll do, nonetheless. But he doesn’t want to be around Finn. Doesn’t want to trust him or be at his back.
He doesn’t want to follow anyone he fears. Doesn’t want people to follow him out of fear, either.
Bellamy’s hand finds Clarke’s shoulder and, just like that, the shock wears off and the two spring into action, Clarke moving to the wounded, Bellamy moving to take Finn’s gun (who doesn’t even fight). They work in an unspoken unison, like two people who were meant to lead together.
He doesn’t fear either of them but he does trust them. He trusts that, if he deserves it, they will trust him too. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s that simple. Maybe it’s not about good or bad.
Maybe it’s about trust.
He can do trust.