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"How'd you get to be such a dick, Murphy?"
And you wish you could answer Raven.
In fact you wish you knew the answer, because there have been far too many moments in your like where you wonder that, too. Because, yes, you’re well aware that you are a ‘dick’; an indignant asshole with brash and overbearing personality to match. You’ve known it since you were six years old and you felt the dire urge to punch the dark haired boy sitting next to you in the face for simply stealing the crayon you’d wanted to use.
Pathetic, yes.
But it’s not as if you are ignorant of the fact, no matter how much bravado you attempt to push across it always lingers in the back of your mind. The idea that some, many of the things, which you have executed have been complete and utterly foolish and monovalent. That many of the actions and sins you have committed have helped aid people into pushing you into the antagonised of the story.
You are aware of who you are, of what you are and what you have done.
And you feel like, overall, that deserves something; the fact that you are able to acknowledge and accept it. It makes a different from most of the teenagers (you refuse to call them your people, the right they had to be that lost long ago) you have spent an atrocious few months with. A bunch of kids who have deluded themselves into believing that they are ‘good’ people, have tried to take comfort in the idea that every wretched thing that they have done has been for other people so it cannot make them a bad person. The refuse to accept the mistakes they have made, that their sins can easily be compared to yours, their kills as deplorable.
The word bullshit can’t cross your mind fast enough when you think of the majority of them.
So Raven can call you a dick as much as she likes, because the word doesn’t hurt you anymore. The moment you accepted the fact, it’s like you became repellent and intolerant to the insults spewed your way.
Because thicker skins, better the chance of not letting the world destroy you, right?
"I'm sorry for shooting you, ok? Is that what you want to hear?"
And you say it because you know it’s not, know it’s the last thing she wants to hear while you’re lying the drop ship pale faced with the wound in question looking like it’s going to tear her apart in any second. But you say it anyway, let the words fall from your lips before you can stop them, because it’s better than facing the equivalent.
It’s easier to answer a question with a question than admit that you “don’t know”, easier to think about someone else's pain then your own, easier to open up someone else 's scars and prod at someone else 's wounds.
And oh how malicious that sounds, discourteous words from a discourteous mind, you suppose.
But, while you are unaware of who exactly Raven Reyes is, you haven’t spent enough time in her presents to be able to analysis her from top to bottom, it’s easy to tell she is thicker skinned compared to some. From the gun that she almost shot you with without a second thought, to the stoic expression from her face, you can tell that she wears her armour just like you do.
So you say it, remind her of the wound on her side, because you’re certain she can take it.
(Or maybe it’s because for the first time in your life you mean it, the fact that you are sorry. Maybe it’s because the fact that you shot a girl you’re barely know, a girl that arrived well after everything that had happened to you accord, and the guilt eats you up as if it starved.
You don’t think about that though, it’s easier not to.)
"Let me guess. Mommy and daddy didn't love you?"
And you want to scream at her, want to scream and cry and yell, because karma has come back and bitten you in the ass and allowed Raven to reopen your scars and poke at your wounds.
You want to tell her that they loved you, by god you’d be an idiot to not know that they loved you so much.
You want to prove it her, want to prove to her that your parents loved you and cared for you and cherished you and that it wasn’t their fault that you grew up the way you did. Because they did everything right, every single thing to raise a child when you were living up in fucking space was executed correctly.
You can remember the way your dad read to you; a shelf full of fairy tales and historical events and ragged literature like Shakespeare all lining the shelves of your room when you were child. You remember the sound of his voice when he spoke the words, the way the words would fall from his lips and fascinate you like poison falling into your bloodstream. You remember the times he would read to you when you couldn’t sleep, curl up next to you and stay until your breath slowed and your heart bet became tranquil.
And you can remember your mother, the person she was before everything changed and became dull and dark. You remember the sparkle of her eyes and the way a smile would form on her face, slow and enduring as if she knew something no one else did. You remember how people would tell you that you had her hair colour and her nose and sometimes her personality; stubborn, callous and unpredictable.
You remember all of it, and you want to shout it to Raven, scream the words so that everyone within a five mile radius will know.
But you can’t, you can’t let the words out while your throat feels full and smothered and blocked up with every breath you take, like a rock had been lodged into your throat. And you know you need to reply, need to answer so that she will stop looking at you like you are one of the animal’s one earth tainted by radiation.
"No, they loved me."
It’s all you can say.
Because it’s true, oh so very true.
Because you refuse to let people believe any differently, refuse to have people believe that your parents were horrible, horrendous people who are at fault for how you became, because they aren’t, god knows they aren’t.
You refuse to let people blame your mother, refuse to let them have their memory of your parents tainted by what happened to her after your father was gone.
You’ve already let your memory be tainted and stained beyond repair yourself.
"Are you gonna cry, Murphy?"
And no, no, no, no you are not going to cry; refuse to let yourself cry because crying is weak and only children cry and your are 17 (18, maybe? Days on the earth have blurred together too much to allow you to remember trivial facts such as dates) years old now, you are no longer a child.
You aren’t to cry because you have faced hanging and banishment and torture and you have faced it all with a dry face and a burning rage ready to explode like a volcano inside of you, and you refuse to let words of all things break you.
You refuse to let yourself cry, refuse to let anyone see you cry, because the world and everyone in it does not deserve anything from you anymore, let alone your tears.
"Screw you, Raven."
Because you won’t cry, won’t give her the satisfaction of it.
And anger, oh anger and hostile tones and cruel words are things you know and things you welcome like an old friend.
Because the world and the people occupying it do not deserve anything from but anger and hostility and cold burning rage.
As they say, you give what you get.
"No, tell me. I want to know. How does a kid who's loved by his parents turn into a murdering psychopath?"
She’s poking again, at the scars and bruises, prodding at them harder than before like she is aware that she almost opened them up. You supposes she earned it, you cocked a gun and fired and she ended up with an open wound on her side so it’s only fair she is able to reopen one of yours mentally.
But you can only wish she choose another wound.
This is one you do not wish to tell her, to tell anyone, because this is one that only 5 people know and four of those people are dead and gone like dust in the wind. And you’d hoped it would stay that way, that you would be the only one to remember the story and the facts and harsh reality of how one minuscule moment of your life flipped everything upside down and fucked you up for life.
(Your won’t use the psychopath, won’t let yourself believe that the things you have done were the acts of someone unstable. Because control is something you have already lost enough off and if you let yourself believe that your brain, the one thing you can control, has lost it as well would destroy you)
You wonder for a second if you can deflect, turn the tables back on her and let yourself crawl under her skin until she gives up.
But you can’t.
Maybe it’s because it’s your fault that she’s stuck here, your fault she can’t drag herself form the floor and out the door, your fault that she looks like she knocking on deaths door.
(Maybe it’s because of the guilt your refuse to admit)
Either way, you feel like you owe her the chance of one open wound.
After all, Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.
"He gets the flu."
Flu. It was a simple way to put it.
It was the headache pounding at every inch of your brain and turning it into a puddle of mush, every splash of light and every sound echoing throughout the room forcing you to clench your fist as if it would help the feeling to transfer. It was the dizzy, unbalanced feeling you felt every time you tried to get back onto your feet with aching and stiff limbs, before collapsing back down to the bed. It was the clog in your throat and the scratchiness of your voice and the way your mouth felt like dry, as if it was stuffed filled with cotton. It was the sickness bubbling up inside your stomach and the bile spilling out of your throat far too often to be healthy, the heaving so pronounced it felt like you were about to throw up your lungs.
Flu, you feel, was a simple way of sugar coating what you will really feeling.
But flu or not, it had shaken your parents like nothing else ever had.
" His father steals medicine that turns out wouldn't help anyway."
Lie, in some senses.
It had helped you a small amount, the pills sliding down your throat helping to stifle the feeling of sickness and pain that had been filling your bloodstream for the past week. You had felt a sense of relief as they had slid down your throat and only a few minutes later, the drossy ache of your body had started to disband like helium whooshing out of a balloon.
Truth, in the other sense.
It hadn’t helped him at all, when only a mere few hours later the guards had come marching into the chamber. Had come marching in with nothing but a gun strapped to their hip, and had marched out with both your father in one hand and a small, half empty, bottle of pills in the other.
It was irony, really, that the one thing that was used to help a person feel better had done the exact opposite. That the medicine your father had stolen, had only helped you internal and had turned everything into a mess, into shambles, externally.
"Gets floated for it,"
You can’t expand on that, even if you wanted to.
You hadn’t been their when your father had been floated on account of both refusal as well as of the knowledge that they may not allow you to be there. You were a young boy with a ruthless glare and spontaneous burst of anger, you wouldn’t be surprised if they believed you would go on a fit of violence the minute you stepped into the room.
You wouldn’t deny it either.
Instead you’d hurled yourself up into a corner of the ark, somewhere dark and isolated and empty (somewhat poetically matching exactly how you felt, irony was cold in that way) and attempted to stop the building panic in your throat. You had tried to stop thinking about your father, the one who read you books and taught you had write and spell and had raised you from your first breath, being nothing but an empty shell floating in the sky outside. Tried to stop imagine your father’s lifeless body out in space, taunting you, blaming you for his execution. And the more you had tried to stop yourself, the more the thoughts had flooded your brain and submerged your mind and the more the your breaths had turned unsteady and the faster your heart begin to thump in your chest.
The last thing you remembered was the thought that your clammy skin and trembling bones would be an expansive contrast compared to your father’s cold skin and still bones.
"And his mother, she starts drinking pretty heavily after that."
You had tried to block out that moment as well, the thick scent of liquor that had filled the room and the empty bottles that had surrounded the floor. Despite the amount of times “you look like your mother” had spewed from people’s mouths, it was clear that you had your father’s eyes. The first time your mother had since you since his death, she had barely been able to glance at you for a second before a bottle cap had been opened and the neck had been held at her lips.
Avoiding the chamber that had occupied became a common occurrence after that, the ghosts that had been left in their and the spilled liquid that tainted it took up enough space as it was.
You had spent most of your time in the ark after that with Mbege, the only person you had been able to form some sort of friendship with and person number three who had held the story in the palm of his hands.
(Person number 3 who had been ripped from your life without a second thought.)
He’d been something to lean onto, something strong and sturdy to support you when you felt like you were about to be sucked out into space like your father had. He’d hadn’t question you when you asked to be called Murphy and had refused to answer to the name John (because it was the name that your father and mother had chosen, and one was dead and gone while the other was drowning her brain in a sea of toxic waste, and you didn’t want your name to be constant reminder of that), had calmed you down when your lungs started to cave in, drag you away when he saw the clench of your fists and the narrowing of your eyes, let you into his chambers during the days where you mother would drink until she could spew nothing but insults from sick drenched lips, stayed with you in the dead of night when you couldn’t sleep without seeing your father’s gaze cold and empty.
And it’d helped, being around someone had been a good distraction from the fact that your mother had been letting poison ooze into her body and soak her inside and soil her soul.
It had been a good distraction right up until the last minute.
"And last words she says to him before he finds her in a pool of her own vomit."
A pool vomit, it was like a visual representation of the soul that had been slowly dribbling out of her body from the moment the guards had dragged your father out of the room.
A pool of vomit, which had formed a stench and had made the room even stronger than any drop of alcohol that had spilled on the floor before it ever could.
A pool of vomit, surrounded by both empty and half empty bottles with liquid dripping out that reminded you of the half empty pill bottle that had started this mess.
"Is that is that he killed his father."
It’s not like you hadn’t been thinking it, hadn’t been wondering it since the moment your father had brought you those pills right up until you stepped in a vomit filled room with dread filling his stomach.
Because oh you had been.
Had been thinking constantly about how your father stole those pills for you, because you had gotten sick and your damn immune system had been too damn stubborn enough to heal itself quickly. Had remember that while it was your father’s hand that had touched the bottle and feed you the pill, it was your fingerprints that had ghosted over it. Had remembered that it had been your father who had brought him to life, while it had been you who had handing him over to death.
You’d acknowledge the fact that it had been your fault, had accepted that your father’s death was on your hands.
But coming from your own mother had felt worse.
Coming from your mother as she lay on her death bed, the words being both the last words she ever spoke to you and the around, had hurt more.
The words falling from her lips, spilling your sins and filled with resentment and laced in venom had felt like a punch to the guts.
The words coming from your mother had only made the guilt worse, made you place a tick over the thought in his brain and the guilt in his chest.
Because after all, if your mother had spoken it in her last breath, it must have been true.
Because after all, mothers know best, right?
"Boohoo."
One words laced in sarcasm and humour.
Yet when you looked at her, looked at the way her eyes dropped from the face the minute you looked up you, you felt some sort of understand radiating of her. Some sort of understanding of the feeling of lose and guilt and desperation and loneliness that you had explained in a simple few words.
And it felt like that story had done something, no matter how short and brief you had spat it out to the girl in question. It felt as if the two of you had stepped into some sort of understand, crossed some sort of line that you couldn’t uncross again.
Boohoo, indeed.