[open]

[wrackful]

CHARACTERS: Murphy & OPEN
WHERE: Various around the Station.
WHEN: DAY :042 - :045 (see headers for specifics).
SUMMARY: Some misc downtime stuff and nightmares.
WARNINGS: Nightmares/memories of violence, death, gore.

( SCAVENGE | DAY :042 )

[The ship they'd stolen to get off of Shril looks out of place in the Station's hangar. It isn't elegant or sleek, or has any of the geometric lines which would put it in keeping with the honeycomb textures around it. Dark, aged and patched in places with newer metal, the bulbous shape of it more resembles a vegetable than anything else. It didn't match the store it had been built into, either, but the links were all too clear if examined for a moment. People coming to a new place, building a business and a life out of the shell of what they'd been before, but still keeping it. Remembering it.

Murphy doesn't think about it. If he did, he'd have to think about how that family were destroyed now, torn apart by Murphy and the group he'd led through their store, through them, to this ship. To survive, he tells himself, but that stopped making it less bitter to swallow a while ago.

It doesn't make him feel bad about searching the innards of the ship. Thievery had been easy, and he'd rather make what they'd done worth it than leave what might be useful stuff to rot over some misguided idea like respect. The ship is full of stuff, alien items varied from the bizarre to the mundane, and it turns out "useful" doesn't apply to a lot of it. Hunting through definitely isn't boring, though, and he's been at it for a few hours by now, the odd clatter or crash echoing out from the ship's open door. There's a slowly growing stack of items by the door: a small pile of books, two pairs of boots with a stray solitary companion, an embroidered case holding rows of tiny silver balls, and a large framed painting of a six-limbed alien reclining on a green-sanded beach.

The last is balanced pride of place, and almost definitely there to screw with people.]

( COOK | DAY :043 )

[He still hasn't dug through the whole of the ship, but he's rescued every book he's come across so far. Most of them don't interest him on first look, set aside to probably be dropped on Bellamy at some point, but two had been recipes. Pictures of food. He'd flicked through idly just to see what the meals looked like, but after stopping at a few, realised the instructions hadn't sounded that difficult. Simple stages to follow, point A to B to C, and a decent reward at the end.

The ingredients he'd found in the kitchens hadn't been exactly the same as what was pictured, but they seemed close enough. There's something soothing in the process: cut things up, combine, apply heat. What's simmering on the hob right now isn't quite the same colour as the dish in the book, but it smells good. It tastes good, too, when he stops to check, and the low sense of surprise spreading outwards from him isn't because it's all alien. It's at his own success.]

( RUN | DAY :044, MORNING )

[Running laps is not Murphy's idea of a good time. The opposite, really. But as much as he'd dug his heels in when Annie and Bellamy had first pushed it on him, the logic behind it was sound. Train now, survive later.

That still doesn't mean he enjoys it, and this morning Bellamy's tolerance for his constant mental complaining has worn out. He's opted for a checkpoint system, timing how long it takes Murphy to do each loop through the corridors and past him. It doesn't work to inspire, though, and right now Murphy's taking a breath. Hands braced on his knees, he's dripping sweat, chest heaving, totally unfit and looking it. Feeling it, too, and what had truly been intended as just a breath abruptly turns into a full break.]

Screw this.

[He spits, and then drops, ungainly, to sprawl out on his back on the floor. Bellamy will come looking, eventually. Right now he doesn't care at all.]

( DREAM | DAY :042 - :045, NIGHT )

[Awake, Murphy's control is strong. It has been from the start, some kind of intrinsic understanding regarding his own mind and how to keep it removed from others. Memory and emotion pierce that, often, closeness with some leeching through in smaller ways.

Nights are different. Especially since Shril. His nightmares are the same from the ground, following him here, but they bleed outwards now. Pain, fear, loss, death. Dark trees with warpainted warriors stalking amongst them, sickness spitting blood from a dozen young faces, stifling desert heat and the stomach-knotting tension of death waiting underfoot, a cloaked priest with raised fists, a woman splattered with black blood sat on a throne with a child's head in her hand. The visions mix, blur, sometimes don't come to shape at all. But they come every night. There's never been any freedom from them.]

[[NOTE: I haven't written up set specific nightmare scenes for this one, but I can craft something more solid for anyone who tags in on it!]]

Comments

[wrackful]

[It sounds like an accusation. A tactic that Murphy knows all too well, that the best defence is a good offence. It fits into the rhythms of things, with Bellamy - he's better than Murphy, always, so of course this would be Murphy's fault. He nods, once, the corners of his mouth pressing downwards.]

Yeah, well, I can't. [Gaze flat, but he doesn't shy from owning his faults. He never has.] She's my brood.

[All of it, the last piece of it, and he wasn't strong enough against that. Against the draw of it, against the screaming pain his symbiote had fallen into when the others had sheered away, the edges of those wounds still pulsing raw if touched for too long. He takes a step back, reaching to hit a place on the wall, not bothering to tell Bellamy to stand before the table starts retracting back into the wall.]

Maybe when you're down to one, you can see how well this thing lets you block any of it out.

[deployed]

[ Apologies don't come easily to Bellamy. They aren't something he vocalizes, they're something he acts on. But there's no way to act here, wrong-footed and aching in the medical bay, his own anger so close at hand. ]

You should have told me.

[ Even though that's an unrealistic thing to expect. If their positions were reversed, Bellamy can't be sure how he would even begin to explain being so bound up in the Nest. It's what they had both been determined to avoid. ]

I thought it would help. All of us can feel how hungry she is.

[ And by that logic, Murphy must have felt it the most. Parceling out motivation is likely not going to help, but Bellamy talks anyway. His discomfort in their setting is still obvious, impossible to ignore after Murphy's pinpointed it in such incisive terms. ]

[wrackful]

Right. Should've told you how I get to feel my undead elf broodmate's endless cursed hunger all the time.

[Dry, easily emphasising how ridiculous it sounds, both in itself and in the implication he should be telling Bellamy crap like this anyway. Not to touch how he didn't want to acknowledge it himself, the constant gnaw of it at the back of his head, the rise and fall of it when Seviilia got riled or got it under control.

He reaches to take the rods out of the arm, now stood alone with the table gone. He clips them back together, separates them again. White strands of light pull from between them, spilling and looping out as he slides them back into their places on the arm.]

How about how I also get to feel when she eats? All the tiny gory details. [He turns to look Bellamy dead in the eye again. Behind him, the strands continue coalescing into the shape of Bellamy's body, laid out as he had been on the table.] Do you want those too?

[deployed]

[ What Murphy's doing with the medical equipment should be impressive. Bellamy can't fully ignore the spectacle of it. The recreation of his body on the table registers with muted shock, but his focus on Murphy doesn't waver. ]

I didn't want you to feel that.

[ Except it's more complicated, or so Bellamy thinks. It's bigger than him being hurt, and Murphy feeling as if it were at his hands. Bellamy has been hurt at Murphy's hands. And he's hurt Murphy, more than once. The territory between them is fraught with the damage they've done to each other. Foolishly, Bellamy had thought Murphy's walls were stronger than his own. He'd expected Murphy to have blocked out whatever happened between him and Seviilia. ]

I thought it would give you a break if she got to eat.

[ All benefit, without any of the consequence. When he says it aloud, it sounds ridiculous. ]

[wrackful]

And I was supposed to just be good with that anyway.

[Whether he felt it or not. Of course he was supposed to be good with it. John Murphy, selfish bastard, should have been happy that he'd gotten a break from Seviilia's hunger. Maybe even happy that it was Bellamy being beaten up for it, the way Seviilia thought he would be. He can't even pretend like there isn't a part of him questioning it, wondering why the hell he'd gotten involved, stopped it, denied both he and Seviilia the benefits.

But that's what has him feeling so exposed right now, anger curling defensively over the spaces cracked open by the actions he'd taken instinctively. There hadn't been thought in it. In the moment, only the option to protect Bellamy had occurred.

Stupid, and apparently worth just as little as it had been back at the camp in those early days. Because even for all of the talk about knowing Murphy was better, Bellamy had still expected the worse.]

[deployed]

[ It's not selfish. Bellamy would bleed for any of the people he cared about. It felt like such a small thing to do, to give Murphy some relief from Seviilia's hunger. ]

I wanted to help. [ Bellamy repeats, hands clenching and unclenching uselessly. ] There wasn't any other way to help either of you.

[ And he hadn't thought ahead to the aftermath, what Murphy would make of him while he was healing. It hadn't felt important. He hadn't realized it would feel like this afterwards, with Murphy hunched over, raw with anger. Bellamy's betrayed him again. It's not the first time, but Bellamy had wanted to do something good, rather than cause a different kind of pain. ]

[wrackful]

Then don't.

[Lexa was right. The thought comes unwelcome, but Murphy has no room to deny it. Here was Bellamy, doing something stupid, putting his life at risk for Murphy, the way Murphy had been sure he never would. And Murphy, rushing in to put himself between him and a threat without a single second thought.

The revelation doesn't feel good. It feels like the bottom of his stomach dropping out, like a chasm opening up beneath both of them. He doesn't know how it's happened. He doesn't know how to stop it. In the moment all he has is frustration, anger, hopelessness, resentment at Lexa being right hardening it all the edges. Resentment at Bellamy being such an idiot that this has happened at all.]

Just how hard is it for you to get this through your head? If your only way is volunteering to get beaten to a pulp, then you don't do it.

[deployed]

And just let you suffer?

[ Unknowingly proving Lexa's point, though this shouldn't come as a shock. Not if Murphy had been there for Mount Weather, to watch as Bellamy took on a suicide mission because no one could see another way to give their people the advantage they needed. His voice is rising in spite of himself, defensive even as he feels Murphy's trepidation and resentment crash into his awareness. ]

Let you live with that when I know there's a way to fix it?

[wrackful]

Fix it. [Repeated flat, shooting straight past incredulity and into sheer disbelief.] You were a five minute snack, Bellamy, what were you going to do, go back to her every day?

[Except he knows the answer as soon as it's out of his mouth. Of course Bellamy would. It only highlights how absolutely ridiculous the whole situation is, that Murphy can lay out a totally moronic course of action like that and it be the one Bellamy was going to take. He has to laugh, the sound short, grim and dry, one hand lifting to rub the ridge of his thumb over his nose.]

Well, you don't get to. [Turning away, turning back to the glowing reconstruction of Bellamy's body.] You don't get to switch my suffering out for yours. [Playing martyr, again.] She isn't going to touch you again.

[He's made sure of it. Seviilia, at least, he can trust to listen to him.]

[deployed]

[ There's something very final about that statement. Bellamy understands what Murphy had brokered with Seviilia. He understood why. But inaction has never sat well with him. He likes it even less now, with Murphy wedging it between them like a condemnation. He looks past Murphy to the shimmering duplicate of his body, frustrated objections swimming in his mind before he comes up with something to say. ]

Well? Is anything wrong with me?

[ It's nothing worse than what he's lived through on Earth, what he'd slept off on Concordia. Bellamy's patience for allowing Murphy to play doctor has stretched to the breaking point. ]

[wrackful]

You mean except your total lack of survival instinct?

[Bellamy leaving an opening like that made it almost too easy, but that didn't mean Murphy was going to let it pass by. Not that he waits for any kind of reaction before he starts answering seriously, reaching to touch fingers gently to some of the strands making up the scan's arm, exerting enough pressure to turn the scan sideways and then back over the other way. Cathaway is a shift in the back of his mind, murmurs of memory rising, a running translation taking what he's seeing and turning it to understanding.]

Bruising. Ribs and trachea are the worst, but there's a ton of others. [He turns to look at Bellamy again.] You'll be sore, but your symbiote'll have it cleaned up in a day or two.

[A couple of days which would likely be more comfortable with his ribs wrapped, but Murphy doesn't bother suggesting it. He already knows Bellamy will say no, even if he could currently stand to stick around long enough for it.]

[deployed]

So like I said, nothing serious.

[ Bellamy's tone is flat. There'd been a point, possibly before Murphy had invoked Mount Weather, where Bellamy would have capitulated to more than just a scan. But the aftermath of the argument and the bristling tension between them shunts Bellamy's mood into stubborn reticence. His arms cross as he watches Murphy inspect the scan; he's ignored the ache in his body since he picked himself up off the training room floor. A few more days is nothing. ]

I'm going to lie down.

[ Which is clearly a signal that the conversation is over. Bellamy doesn't wait for a response before he starts moving towards the door. ]