Work Text:
Murphy doesn’t like the dark.
Both times the grounders have captured him, it has been during the night, when he was exhausted and weak and couldn’t see them approaching through the dark woods, couldn’t hear their silent footfalls on the leaf littered ground until it was too late and they had him in their grip, pressing daggers against his skin that drew blood if he so much as twitched.
That isn’t the only reason he is afraid of the dark, but it is the primary one. He associates the dark with the grounders, with his torture and nightmares. Even the darkness of his own tent at night unnerves him, and sometimes, especially after waking up from a nightmare, he thinks he can see the vague figures of grounders waiting for him in the shadows, waiting for him to fall back asleep so that they can take him again.
He has spent many restless nights trembling underneath his thin bed covers, trembling from his nightmares and in fear of the grounders- of his memories of the grounders - lurking in the shadows, ready with their knives. Knives that were often burning hot as to burn his skin and painfully aggravate already open wounds.
Some nights his fear and nightmares get so bad that he panics and hyperventilates, but he still makes no effort to find anyone who might be able to help him through it, help him through the nights when his nightmares overwhelm him. People notice, though. They notice the dark circles under his eyes and how he seems to grow paler and more sleep deprived by the day. They never comment on it, but Murphy always catches their stares and sidelong glances at his almost ghostly complexion.
Sometimes he thinks he has become a ghost. A ghost of scars and bad dreams, dreams that would cause children to wake up screaming in the middle of the night and teach them to fear the monsters under their beds for the rest of their lives.
But he is a survivor; or so he tells himself, on the especially bad days when he is so tired that he can barely drag himself out of his makeshift bed. His fears and night terrors are his own problem, and no one else’s. He’s opened up to very few people before, and it has never ended well. Why bother trying in the first place? He is an outcast, someone the entire camp considers a traitor. When he is assigned to work detail, no one ever asks him if he’s hungry or thirsty or if he needs break. He works until his much-too-long shift is over and a guard relieves him from duty. He works until his arms are shaking and he is overheated and his mouth is parched as dry as a desert. No one cares for him.
Occasionally, he wishes he had gone off with Jaha’s group to who knows where, but then he thinks they’re probably all dead at this point. A morbid thought, but one that Murphy knows may very likely be true. At the very least, he is sure that not everyone in the group will survive their so-called-journey to the “City of Lights.” He was sure of that from the very start, and even as much as he despises most of the people in Camp Jaha, at least he is relatively safe behind the walls of the camp’s electrified fence. Walls he has since vowed to leave as little as possible.
The entire camp may hate him, but he doesn’t mind that so long as he is safe from the grounders and in no danger of banishment, which is why he tries to cause as little commotion as possible. The quieter he stays, the less people notice him, and that’s the way he wants it.
Unfortunately for him, it was his “good behavior” that landed him on the hunting party Kane assigned in the first place. A hunting party led by none other than Bellamy Blake, the exact person Murphy had been avoiding for weeks. Murphy tried to argue with Kane and get him to assign him to some other work duty, but Kane (who was rather confused about why Murphy wasn’t pleased at getting the chance to leave camp) was set in his decision. The hunting party was to leave only an hour later that day.
And so now he’s stuck on a hunting team that will probably be away from camp for several days, which means camping out in the woods overnight. In the dark, where there are grounders. There is no way that could possibly end well.
Of course, he isn’t going to be alone on the hunting trip. Bellamy and several others will be there too, carrying guns and spears, but Murphy doubts any of them would try to protect him if the grounders did attack, if they took him again to carve even more crimson constellations into his skin. As if the scars he received from the last two times don’t create an entire fucking galaxy already.
He is afraid, afraid of the world outside of Camp Jaha’s fence. He paces around the inside of his cramped tent nervously, sweat beading on his forehead. He has already decided that he will not sleep at all during this hunting expedition into the forest, because he doesn’t think he could stand waking up screaming from nightmares in front of the others, especially Bellamy. He doesn’t want them to see him whimpering like some pathetic, wounded animal, doesn’t want them to see his weakness and vulnerability to the dark.
He glances at the tattered rucksack crumpled on the floor in a corner of his tent. He had been given it awhile ago, he can’t even really remember what for, and he wonders if he should take it with him. But really, he has nothing to pack. He has a few extra pair of clothes, some strips of dried meat he smuggled away from dinner a couple of nights ago, and a knife. That’s all.
He ponders about taking the knife with him, but it’s short and dull and most likely useless in a fight, so he decides to just leave it. He’ll probably be given a spear or something to hunt with anyway, but that thought makes him frown, wondering if they trust him enough to even give him a hunting weapon. He supposes they do, if Kane decided to stick him on the hunting team in the first place, and they have to give him a weapon to hunt with since that’s the whole point of the expedition.
After a few more minutes of pacing around his tent, he finally sits down on the edge of the bed, wringing his hands together over and over again. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, attempting to calm his rapidly fraying nerves. Every time he goes out on a mission with the others, something goes wrong. Someone gets hurt or even killed and everyone ends up blaming Murphy. Why should he think that this hunting trip would be any different?
But he knows that he can’t get out of it, and so he simply sits on his bed and stares blankly at the ground, bouncing his leg up and down anxiously until the flap of his tent is pushed open and he looks up to see Bellamy standing there.
“You ready to go, Murphy?” he asks expectantly.
Murphy has to bite his tongue to stop himself from retorting with a sharp no, and instead only nods in response. He gets up from the bed, brushing off his sweaty palms on his worn jacket, and walks over to where Bellamy is waiting. Past the flap of his tent he can see the two others assigned to the hunting party nearby, Harper and Miller. They’re both carrying a handcrafted spear; Bellamy’s the only one among them who has an actual gun.
Murphy wishes he had been given a gun. He’s always felt safer, more secure, with his fingers wrapped around the handle of one, ready to pull the trigger. But that’s something that will most likely never happen now, considering there’s no way they trust him enough to let him have that dangerous of a weapon. A small, almost useless knife? Yes. But a gun? Absolutely not. The only way he’d be able to get his hands on a gun is if he stole one, and if he did that they’d find out and banish him from camp again, leaving him at the mercy of the grounders.
And that’s something he can never allow to happen, not again.
Bellamy leads Murphy over to where Harper and Miller are waiting, and without warning Miller shoves a third spear towards Murphy, who flinches a bit at the sudden movement before rather cautiously taking hold of the spear. Miller, noticing how Murphy flinched, raises a questioning eyebrow at him, and Murphy glares back in response. Miller is seemingly unfazed by Murphy’s glare, however, and simply shrugs at him before turning away.
It is early afternoon, and almost everyone in camp is busy at work. Murphy sees people inspecting the electrified fence for breaks and defaults, people chopping lumber wood to build fires with, he even sees someone skinning what looks like the wild boar yesterday’s hunting party had brought in. His stomach twists uncomfortably at the sight of the knife slicing through the boar’s skin and he looks away hastily, squeezing his eyes shut for a few seconds. He hopes he’ll never get assigned to skinning duty, since he’s fairly certain he’d throw up if he had to cut open and peel away some poor dead animal’s skin.
As they approach the gate to leave camp, Murphy’s grip on his spear tightens. He hasn’t left the camp in weeks, and in no way wants to now. He supposes he could fake being sick, tell Bellamy or Kane that he feels feverish and nauseous or has a migraine, but then they’d probably drag him to Abby and she’d say that he is fine and perfectly fit to go on the hunting mission, so it wouldn’t even be worth the trouble.
Kane is waiting by the gate with his arms crossed as they approach it, striding over towards their little hunting party to have a word with Bellamy.
“You’ve got two days out there until you need to come back,” Kane says, taking on that commanding-yet-almost-fatherly leader voice of his. “Don’t split up, and try to avoid contact with the grounders if you can. You know the truce between us and the Trikru is uneasy. If and when you catch something, you are to bring it back here immediately. Do you understand?”
“Yes, absolutely,” Bellamy replies, and there’s an impatient undertone to his voice that causes Murphy to smirk, one of the first few non-neutral facial expression he’s made all day.
“Right, now get out of here,” Kane says, waving a signal at the guards for them to open the gate. A moment later the gate is swung open, and Murphy is following Bellamy, Miller, and Harper out of the camp’s protective boundaries and into the wilderness.
He takes up the rear of the group, and hopes that no one notices how often he glances behind him, watching as Camp Jaha’s fence grows farther and farther away, or how he’s holding onto his spear so tightly that his hand has begun to ache. He’s just got to stay calm, that’s all. Just stay calm and everything will be fine, or that’s what he keeps telling himself, repeating it over and over in his head until he begins to believe it.
But Murphy never actually begins to believe it. If anything, his nerves get worse once they reach the forest. At least out in the open he can see everything around him, but in the woods all he can see is trees and foliage and undergrowth, where any number of things could be lurking. He looks around warily, his pulse quickening every time so much as a leaf or frond of bracken rustles.
“Where are we going first?” Harper asks, and the sound of her voice is reassuring. It distracts him, even just momentarily, from the noises of the woods and anything that might be creeping around in the undergrowth.
“The creek,” Bellamy answers. A couple of crows begin to caw loudly somewhere nearby, and Murphy flinches again, startled, but no one appears to notice. “The animals go there to drink and cool off during the hottest parts of the day, so it’s a good place to start.”
And so they head to the creek. Bellamy leads the way, since he is the only one who knows exactly how to get there. The woods are shady and there’s a slight breeze, but the air is still hot and humid and everyone in the hunting party soon find themselves sweating profusely, clothes sticking to their damp skin and their grip on their weapons turning slippery as moisture coats their palms. The mosquitoes are quite merciless as well, and Murphy thinks he’s probably gotten ten bites in less than five minutes.
Sometimes he really, really hates earth. This is one of those times.
It takes about fifteen minutes to reach the creek, and despite it being at the hottest point of the day, Murphy sees not one sign of any animal activity. He wants to complain, make some snarky comment about Bellamy’s hunting skills or whine about the heat, but decides to keep his mouth shut. The one thing that could make this day more unpleasant that it already is would be getting into a fight with one of the others because he “insulted” them, or annoyed them with his “bad attitude.”
The one good thing about the heat, though, is that as Murphy’s level of crankiness increases, his anxiety about being away from the camp lessens. He finds himself focusing more on swatting away mosquitoes than on his fear of being out in the woods. In fact, he is so focused on the mosquitoes he doesn’t notice the deer cautiously emerging from the woods until Harper grabs his wrist, presses a finger to her lips in a shushing motion, and points to the deer. He falls motionless instantly, and she releases his wrist.
All four of them are crouched behind a thick patch of ferns, and the breeze is blowing towards them and not towards the deer, so she doesn’t see or smell them as she steps delicately over to the edge of the creek. Bellamy is already drawing his gun slowly, careful not to make any noise, when from the trees not one but two little fawns trot out after their mother. One immediately dashes out in front and jumps into the creek, quickly followed by its sibling. Their mother glances around warily a few more times before dipping her head and beginning to drink.
As Bellamy raises his gun to shoot, Miller practically swats it out of his hand.
“What the hell, Miller?” Bellamy hisses, and Murphy tears his attention from the family of deer to watch the interaction between the two men instead.
“You were going to shoot that deer,” Miller hisses back. “She has young fawns that’ll die on their own, and that’s three less deer in these woods. We have enough trouble finding game as it is, and the more fawns that reach adulthood, the better.”
“Plus, you know, Bambi,” Harper adds in a whisper. “Didn’t you guys ever watch that old movie when you were kids?”
“I did,” Murphy says, earning surprised glances from the others. “What? I was a kid once too, you know. And I do not condone shooting the mother of two poor little fawns.”
“You sure seem to condone killing two of your own people,” Miller snorts, but before Murphy can think of a retort he adds, “But despite that, I agree. Bellamy, you don’t want to be the hunter that kills Bambi’s mother, do you?”
Bellamy sighs. “I never saw that movie, so I have basically no idea what you all are talking about. But you make a good point, Miller, about there not being enough full grown deer in these woods,” he says, picking up his gun from where it had fallen to the ground. “We can let the mother deer live, but if we don’t catch anything else after this, I’m blaming you.”
“That’s fine with me,” Miller says, and the group then falls silent to watch the deer and her energetic fawns for a few more minutes until something spooks them and they disappear back into the trees, leaving behind a trail of hoof prints in the damp mud beside the creek.
Murphy wonders what it was that spooked them, but the woods are silent except for the sound of a songbird warbling nearby and the rustling of leaves, and nothing else appears from the trees to drink from the creek. Perhaps the mother deer just finally noticed the four humans hidden behind the patch of ferns, or that songbird startled her for some reason. Still, Murphy inches a bit closer to Harper, his anxiety beginning to spike again.
They watch the creek for a little while longer, until Bellamy gets up and declares that they’ve been there long enough and should try looking for game somewhere else.
They all stand up, but Murphy stumbles a bit, his vision going fuzzy for a split second. His lack of sleep combined with his nervousness and the heat must be making him dizzy. No one notices him stumble except for Bellamy, who gives him a slightly concerned look and begins to rummage through the pack slung over his shoulder until he pulls out what looks like a canteen, unscrewing the lid and handing it to Murphy.
“Drink,” Bellamy says, and it sounds more like a command than an offer.
“I’m fi-“ Murphy begins, but Bellamy cuts him off.
“You’re dehydrated. Just drink,” he says, and so Murphy narrows his eyes and grabs the canteen from him, taking a long swig from it and relishing the feeling of cold water sliding down his dry throat. He then hands the canteen back to Bellamy, who gives Murphy a satisfied nod before walking over to rejoin Harper and Miller.
Murphy follows, and the four of them continue on through the woods, rather aimlessly now. Admittedly, he feels a lot better after drinking the water, but he’s still overheated and his skin is sticky with sweat and he wishes that the deer hadn’t had fawns, because if they could have taken her down then the hunting expedition would have been over and they could be back at Camp Jaha before nightfall. But now it seems like they will most likely have to spend at least one night in the woods, and Murphy is dreading it.
They walk through the woods silently for hours, and the only animal they come across is a lithe red fox, which darts away through the undergrowth and disappears before Bellamy can even draw his gun. By the time the sun has begun to set they’re all tired and hungry, and as the forest begins to grow darker Murphy almost subconsciously drifts closer to Bellamy until they’re nearly walking side by side.
When the group finally stumbles across a small clearing in the trees, Bellamy decides it’s the perfect place to settle down for the night. After they gather up as much dry wood as they can for a campfire, Harper lights it, since apparently she’s the only one out of the four of them who actually knows how (she’s assigned to quite a few hunting missions and has mastered the art of rubbing two sticks together to start a fire, she says.)
Once everyone is sitting around the warmth of the fire, they realize how hungry they really are. Thankfully, Bellamy had packed strips of dried meat along with the water, as well as some sort of dark red berries that Monty approved safe for human consumption. Divided between the four of them it isn’t a very filling meal, but food resources are limited and it is enough to keep them satisfied, at least until morning.
The shadows of the trees lengthen as dusk settles over the woods, and the sky seems to grow darker with every passing minute. Murphy grows restless as night approaches, and he finds himself jumping at even the slightest unexpected noise. He keeps a hand on his spear, curling and uncurling his fingers around it anxiously. His limbs are heavy with exhaustion, and he wants nothing more than to lie down beside the fire and sleep. But sleep brings nightmares, and nightmares bring screaming and panic. And what if the grounders attack while he’s asleep and take him again? No, no, sleeping is not an option.
Harper, however, is already fast asleep, sprawled across the forest floor with her head resting on Miller’s lap. Miller himself, sitting with his back against a tree, appears to be close to falling asleep as well. Bellamy has agreed to take watch during night, so he won’t be sleeping, but when Murphy glances over at him he’s not scanning the darkening woods vigilantly, and is instead staring at Murphy with an unreadable expression on his face.
“What?” Murphy asks, meeting Bellamy’s gaze with a glare.
“You should sleep,” Bellamy says simply. “I want to get an early start tomorrow, and right now you look about ready to collapse.”
Murphy nods once in what he hopes looks like a gesture of agreement. He can pretend to sleep, sure, if it will keep Bellamy from pestering him. Why Bellamy even cares about how much sleep he gets, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know why he bothered to offer him water earlier, either. No one usually pays this much attention to him, and it feels strange. Bellamy should treat him like dirt like everybody else, but he doesn’t, not anymore. It confuses Murphy, it even makes him a little bit suspicious, and although it almost seems like Bellamy is trying to get closer to him, he still doesn’t trust him. Perhaps he is afraid to trust him, to trust anyone, because the last time he put trust in someone he ended up with a noose around his neck.
Murphy makes a big deal of yawning widely before lying down on his side, as close to the warm light of the fire as he can get, and partially closes his eyes. After a few moments he begins to slow his breathing, in an attempt to make it look like he is really sleeping.
As the woods grow darker and darker around the clearing he fights back his fear and the sleepy urge to close his eyes completely, but despite his best efforts not to actually fall asleep, Murphy is simply too exhausted to keep himself conscious and soon enough the flickering light of their little campfire lulls him to sleep, his half-open eyes sliding shut and his body relaxing against the hard ground.
His dreams are okay, for a little while. But then the nightmares come; they always do. They bring distorted memories of pain and fear and images of fresh blood dripping from burning hot knives, images of scarred over wounds being torn back open and melting once again into deep cuts. He may have escaped the grounders in reality, but it seems like he will never escape them in his dreams. And that thought weighs down on him constantly, the thought that he will never escape the pain and scars that the grounders inflicted upon him.
The nightmares go the way they usually do. The muffled voices of grounders question him, digging their knives a little deeper into his pale skin with every word spoken. And Murphy does not answer, or at least he tries not to, only screams and struggles against the ropes binding his hands and feet. He can feel his own blood coating his skin like some sort of gruesome paint, warm and sticky as it seeps from his wounds. In his dream state he cannot distinguish nightmare from reality, and he thinks that he is truly back with the grounders again. He believes they will torture him until he’s dead, from blood loss or starvation or sickness or maybe all three.
In the nightmare a grounder approaches him, wielding a knife that is burning red and orange with heat. Smoke curls from along the edge, and Murphy knows how much it will sear when it meets his skin, knows that the cut will be deep. And although he realizes that there is nothing he can do to stop it, he still pleads and twists his body as far away from the looming grounder as he can, unbidden tears falling from his bloodshot eyes.
But the burning knife never meets his skin. Instead, he suddenly feels hands gripping onto his wrists, pulling him from his nightmare. He panics in his sleep-induced daze, thinking that the grounders have captured him again even as he dreamed of their torture, and a harsh, gasping sob escapes his throat as he attempts to yank his arms away painfully. The hands release Murphy’s wrists instantly, and he opens his eyes at the sound of the familiar voice that follows.
“Murphy- hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.”
Bellamy.
The exact person who Murphy had hoped wouldn’t see him in this position, trembling violently and crying out in his sleep while curled up on the forest floor.
But in this moment, he can’t bring himself to care about that. He is terrified, terrified of his nightmares and the grounders and the darkness of the forest surrounding him. His breathing is labored and uneven and his heart is pounding wildly in his chest, and he so desperately wants someone to protect and shield him from the grounders he sees lurking in the shadows of the trees. Grounders that some part of him knows are not really there, but still cause him to shake and whimper in fear.
Bellamy seems to realize what is happening, because he sits down beside where Murphy is lying on the ground and tentatively places a hand on the boy’s back. Murphy leans into the touch, squeezing his eyes shut so that he doesn't have to look into the shadows of the forest and see the vicious things waiting there.
“Nightmare?” Bellamy murmurs, and Murphy is unresponsive for a few moments before giving a shaky nod. His breathing is still coming in rough, uneven gasps and Bellamy wishes there was something he could do to help. He’s comforted other people after nightmares before, but he isn’t sure how to go about doing that with Murphy.
Murphy is so vulnerable in this moment, and all Bellamy wants is to lie down beside him and wrap his arms around him. But he doesn’t want to do anything that might scare him off, and he’s seen how Murphy flinches away from physical contact.
But after a few more moments of watching Murphy shiver like he is freezing cold- despite it being a fairly warm night – Bellamy can’t stand it anymore, and he lowers himself down so that he is laying on his side next to Murphy. He expects Murphy to move away from him, and is instead pleasantly surprised when Murphy actually shifts his body closer to him.
“You’re okay, you’re safe,” Bellamy says softly, and Murphy wishes he could believe him; he wants to believe him. But his trust in Bellamy shattered the day the crate was kicked out from underneath him, and it feels as if those shattered pieces of trust have lodged inside his ribcage like shrapnel, piercing a little deeper into his heart with every brutal, bruising fight between him and Bellamy. He wants to trust Bellamy, he really does, and he wants Bellamy to trust him. But he doesn’t know if that will ever be possible, what with all the revenge and bloodshed that lies between them.
But Murphy pushes those thoughts aside, because he doesn’t care to think about them right now. He can feel Bellamy’s hand on his back again, and no matter if they trust each other or not, Bellamy is actually trying to comfort him, which is more than any of the other people at Camp Jaha have ever tried to do for him. He can’t remember the last time anyone has ever shown this much concern for him, and at this point, he doesn’t care who it’s from.
Although he would never admit it, covers it up with dark humor and sarcasm, he wants someone to be concerned about him. He wants someone to care about him. He wants someone to actually give a shit about his well-being. And maybe, just for this moment, Bellamy can be that someone.
And so Murphy does something that takes Bellamy completely off guard. He rolls over on his side so that he is facing Bellamy, his eyes still tightly shut, and buries his face in the fabric of Bellamy’s shirt.
Bellamy blinks in surprise and for several seconds is simply too shocked to react. The shock wears off quickly, however, and after regaining his senses he carefully wraps his arms around Murphy’s trembling body. Murphy doesn’t protest, so Bellamy holds onto him a little tighter, murmuring quiet words of comfort until his breathing begins to even out and his trembling lessens, until it’s no more than the occasional shiver. He runs his fingers through Murphy’s messy, knotted hair, untangling the knots as he does so. He wonders when the last time Murphy even attempted to brush his hair was.
He’s grown... well, somewhat attached to Murphy, despite Murphy having been avoiding him for the past few weeks. They’ve beaten each other and tried to kill each other in the past, but those violent fights have since stopped and Bellamy would rather never be the one to hurt Murphy ever again. In fact, after seeing what Murphy’s nightmares do to him and having a fairly good idea that they’re about the grounders, he feels guilty. Guilty for banishing Murphy into the woods alone and defenseless, guilty for ignoring Clarke’s pleading not to hang him when he had a chance, guilty for always believing that Murphy is the bad guy.
The boy in Bellamy’s arms is no bad guy, not really. A messed up, sarcastic asshole who has made some bad mistakes, yes, but not a bad guy, not an evil villain or someone who has been consumed by anger and revenge- at least, not anymore. He’s been broken and bent out of shape and changed by everything that’s happened since the drop ship landed on this godforsaken planet, just like all the rest of them. And yet because of his mistakes he’s been labeled as the outcast, a traitor, someone no longer worthy of anyone’s time or concern.
Bellamy has mentally resolved to try and get closer to Murphy, to show him that there is someone who cares about him. And he knows it won’t be easy- hell, anything that involves Murphy is never easy - but he’s going to try. And he supposes the best place to start is with the nightmares.
“Do you have them a lot?” Bellamy asks, tucking his chin against Murphy’s head. “The nightmares, I mean.”
There’s no reply for almost a whole minute, and Bellamy thinks Murphy must’ve fallen asleep. But then comes a barely audible, “Yeah,” which is muffled by Bellamy’s shirt and Murphy’s croaky voice.
“I h-have them almost e-every night,” Murphy continues after a moment, and something in Bellamy’s chest twinges at the way his voice shakes.
Murphy had decided to never open up to anyone again, after how poorly telling Raven about his parents had gone. But he feels warm wrapped in Bellamy’s arms, and exhaustion is beginning to replace his fear and panic. His sleepiness clouds his better judgment, and right now he doesn’t even particularly care what Bellamy thinks of him, so he tells him more.
“I can barely s-sleep anymore,” Murphy murmurs. “It’s too dark at night, it scares me. The grounders scare me. Being out in the woods like this scares me. I’m so tired of being scared all the time, Bellamy. I just want it to stop.”
Bellamy isn’t quite sure what to make of this confession. He didn’t expect such an honest answer from Murphy, and he certainly isn’t going to tell him to simply “slay his demons while he’s awake,” considering how terribly that has gone in the past. But as he is attempting to think of an actual reply something catches his gaze, a little flicker of light just at the edge of the clearing in the trees where they were camped down for the night.
Curious, he lifts his head and squints through the darkness, until he sees another flicker of light... and another... and another.
They’re fireflies, Bellamy realizes. But not any ordinary fireflies, considering these don’t just glow yellow or orange. Some of the fireflies glow a bluish green, others glow pure white, one glows a bright crimson red... They’re beautiful, really, speckling the dark trees in brief flashes of color. Bellamy stares at them, transfixed, until Murphy tugs at the sleeve of his shirt to gain his attention.
“What are you looking at?” Murphy asks quietly. He’s stopped trembling completely now, and his breathing is steady and even, so the worst aftereffects of the nightmare appear to be over. But he’s obviously still on edge, and Bellamy can detect a faint wariness in the tone of his voice.
“Open your eyes and look for yourself,” Bellamy says, and then hastily adds, “It’s nothing bad, don’t worry.”
Reluctantly, Murphy turns over in Bellamy’s arms and slowly blinks open his eyes. At first he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to be looking at, but then several of the fireflies all flicker at once and his eyes widen in surprise. He’s never seen anything like them before, even during the nights when he was cast out in the woods alone. Some of them have started flying closer towards him and Bellamy, but they seem to be staying away from the warm glow cast by the dying flames of the campfire, as if they’re afraid of the light.
“What are they?” Murphy questions, watching as the strange bugs flash an array of colors in the darkness. He doesn’t particularly like insects, but he has to admit that these are very pretty, and they make the shadows of the trees seem somehow… less sinister.
“Fireflies, I think,” Bellamy replies. “Or some radiation mutated version of fireflies, anyway.”
“Oh.”
They watch the fireflies flicker gracefully through the air for several minutes, until Bellamy glances over at Murphy and sees him blinking rapidly, trying to keep himself awake, only for his eyelids to immediately begin drooping again.
“You know,” Bellamy says, thinking of an idea that might help Murphy fall back to sleep- an idea that may not be entirely truthful, but an idea nonetheless. “Back on The Ark I read somewhere that a long time ago, people used to believe that fireflies were the living version of dream catchers. Sometimes children would catch them in jars and keep them beside their bed, and they would steal away their nightmares.”
“Well, they haven’t been doing a very good job in my case,” Murphy scoffs.
“Maybe it only works when they’re flashing,” Bellamy suggests. “But I guess we’ll never know if neither of us are going to sleep the rest of the night.”
“Are you telling me this to try and get me to sleep?” Murphy asks, narrowing his eyes at Bellamy in suspicion.
“Maybe... is it working?”
“Maybe,” Murphy murmurs, allowing his eyes to close. He moves closer against Bellamy, the warmth from his body inviting, and Bellamy wraps his arms around him tighter. Despite how hard the ground is underneath him and how dark the forest is, he feels comfortable and safe. In fact, he feels safer than he has in a very long time.
“Just sleep,” Bellamy says softly, beginning to gently run his fingers through Murphy’s hair again. “I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.”
Murphy is already beginning to fall asleep, slipping into the calm oblivion that is unconsciousness, when he whispers three words so quietly they’re barely audible. Even so, Bellamy still hears them.
“I believe you.”