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CHARACTERS: Murphy & OPEN
WHERE: Red Coast
WHEN: DAY :028 - :032 (see headers for specifics).
SUMMARY: Seviilia goes into a coma, Murphy is left as the last Elnath
WARNINGS: Most likely mentions of past violence and death.

NIGHT, DAY :028 | OUTSIDE THE BARRACKS | CLOSED TO LEXA

[It's late. Most of the other hosts are asleep, and Murphy was heading that way himself when he'd caught sight of the ocean again. The change in the water had already been pretty during the day, but now with no other light to compete against the bioluminescence, it's even more beautiful.

No other light, that is, except the bonfire. Where the brish might be alien to him, the fire lit high in the cliffs has a sharper tug of recognition: the grounder encampment outside Camp Jaha, waiting for Finn's execution. He doesn't let his thoughts stray too far that way, but there's a sense of foreboding all the same. The village is waiting for something, an atmosphere which is almost too quiet, heavy, and even as he stays watching the swirls and eddies of bright colour out in the water, he can feel it pressing down. He doesn't know that he wants to see what they're waiting for.]

DAY :029 - DAY :032 | THE BARRACKS | OPEN

[It isn't a vigil. He doesn't sit at Seviilia's bedside to watch over her, make any hopes or prayers about her wellbeing or recovery. He occupies a space opposite her bunk, hunkered down against the wall, and it's more about not really having the strength to leave. She'd torn a hole in him. All his broodmates had, one by one, but Seviilia had been the last, and now there's no one left to try and hold the edges closed with. The remnants of her ice in him are already fading, but after the first day what's left doesn't even really feel like pain anymore. A numbness, instead. Fatigue carved bitter down into his bones.

He's been left alone again. He really shouldn't have expected anything different.]

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[ Asuka finds him and Seviilia relatively quickly. She's trying to act like she's not worried, like she's not missing the feeling of Seviilia's mind, but there's a turbulent mess of emotion underneath the surface that's too difficult to hide. It's in the way she walks and the alarm and tension that seizes her shoulders. The ice-cool feeling of Seviilia has gone.

She already misses it.

Then again, isn't this just another in a long line of disappointments?

She stares at her 'sleeping' form for a few long moments of silence. ]

...why do they put these things in our heads if they just end up knocking us out anyway?

[ Said aloud. Not directly at him, but close enough. ]

[ For a moment, she'd had such a collection of pretty monsters. Each one useful to her in the shape of their claws, each one fed from her hand. Each one has toppled away from her. All the things that were maybe to be strong, made weak. She wonders what it is underneath their dark tenacity that breaks. And will they return, renewed?

It doesn't matter. She won't wait for them. Grief and pining are things she's had her fill of. She comes, less to say goodbye to the beast who had once feasted on her misery, and more to make and observation of John Murphy. Will he break next, as well? Would that trouble her? ]

Hello, John.

[ She has not the undead chill of a deathlord, but neither is she warm. Her thoughts kept back behind a curtain of snow. ]

[It is as she said it was to Misato, though she only realizes now how true that was: she was preoccupied. Lexa is not a woman whose mind doesn't remain on the mission at hand. But recent circumstances have brought her to that mindset, and have even forced her to reconsider her preconceived notions of herself.

At the end of the day, everything falls into the idea of trust. Clarke had once thrown Lexa's inability to trust in her face. Now, she wonders if there was any truth to that. Those she's trusted have often turned against her for their own gain, or what they perceive to be her gain. But then, her existence now demands a different kind of trust out of her.

She doesn't mean to end up where she is, but there's something about the ebb and flow of the sea that reminds her of Luna (and how she trusted Luna to not pull a coup the same way that Ontari eventually did). That Murphy's there is only incidental, but she recalls how he had been alongside her at the beginning of this "preoccupation," too similar in how they can perceive the world to trust. Lexa knows that it's Bellamy's influence that makes her want to trust him. She knows that it's her own actions that prevent that sentiment from being returned.]

I'd ask what you think of all of this—["this" being a more general term]—but I realize you may think that's privileged information.

Edited 2018-01-07 18:12 (UTC)

[ Seviilia's absence is impossible to miss. Bellamy had just moments to register her slipping away before Murphy's reaction had slammed into his consciousness. Pain crests as it becomes clear what's happened, and there's nothing Bellamy can do to remedy it.

He can't pull Murphy from Seviilia's side. He tries once, before recognizing the futility of trying to peel Murphy away before he's ready. Instead of starting an argument, he visits. He drops in with food, gauges Murphy's mood, then retreats. The right time to draw him out will come. Bellamy just has to be patient.

But his patience wears out, predictably. Bellamy turns up empty-handed, crouches in front of Murphy to block his view of Seviilia on the bed. ]

Murphy.

[ Bellamy's braced for the pushback before he's even gotten started. ]

Come on. You can't sleep here again tonight.

[It might not seem it, but he's paying attention to anyone who comes in, who comes close. Something a little protective in it, but not so much for Seviilia herself - there's her swords to worry about. The magic kill-you-if-you-touch-them swords. He doubts that's suddenly turned off now she's asleep.

So he's watching closely enough to see it in Asuka, as she walks in. Can feel it, even if it's only an echo next to the ache opened up inside him. She'd known Seviilia. Liked her.]

Better odds. [He answers, dry, not moving from his position propped back against the wall. He doesn't know if she knows he's there, or if she was talking to him, but that isn't going to stop him answering.] Throw enough darts at the target, one of them's got to hit bullseye.

[ That reminds her a little too much of what they'd been doing with the Evas and the pilots. Put enough of them together and you'd get your 'ace'. The one who could save the world. Look how that had turned out. There's a flare of anger from her - a little bit of pain and frustration. She can't really talk about what Seviilia meant to her, because she doesn't really get it herself. People are hard. ]

So they put us together, make us get used to each other, and then make us finish this stupid thing alone. Great.

[ She doesn't quite say she misses Seviilia. Doesn't quite say that she's sad, but the feeling is there. The inference. And the emotions certainl aren't hiding all that well, either. ]

It's so typical. [ She doesn't say of what, though. ]

[Tucked in the corner, leant back against the wall, Murphy responds only by lifting one hand up from its position propped on one upright knee. A lazy half wave, no effort to do more. She's focussed on him, which means she's likely to try something like Bellamy had, get him up and out of here. He doesn't bother saying anything to ward off the attempt. It isn't going to work either way.]

[It's almost funny, how Lexa seems to turn up whenever he's least expecting company. It isn't like they deliberately avoid each other - impossible, really, with how they still clustered together in sleeping arrangements. But one-on-one conversations are rare, and usually deliberate on Lexa's part.

This one's already started out in the same vein. Trying to make a guess at how he's going to react and why. Considering how they'd somehow landed on the same wavelength in trying to tear Bellamy down, he'd think she'd be better at it.]

Yeah, nothing about me's ever been privileged.

[Still looking out over the water, a small, sharp smile at his own wordplay. Not that she'd be able to see it with the veils in the way. He turns to face her.]

You could just ask and find out.

[If she'd ever take a risk like that.]

[It was inevitable that Bellamy would try again. Murphy had known at the time that his first attempt was a matter of conceding, rather than Murphy winning the argument. But that was only because Bellamy hadn't pushed hard enough to realise it wasn't a choice.

Now he just looks at Bellamy, mouth tugging, flat amusement. He doesn't move.]

I've slept in worse places.

[Much worse.]

[The unusual thing about Murphy is that Lexa always has the impression that she's the one who's set them on this deliberate course, when she's fairly certain that it's him. They are both at odds. There have been times in which she's considered apologizing for what her people did to him. "Apologizing" would be the correct term here; Lexa knows that Murphy would see the lack of guilt in her. The overture itself would be meaningless. Maybe it's the lack of guilt that's the issue. Maybe it's that he perceives her in a light that she takes no care to abolish. Doing that with Clarke is one thing. Murphy hasn't earned that from her.

(In that, she is indeed very privileged.)

Perhaps they're at odds because they're too on guard to trust someone who takes up a similar stance in so many situations. That's probably wise.]

Do you think we should continue on as we have been? [A different question. But it's the question she wants answered.]

I know.

[ They both had slept in less than ideal conditions. It's even possible to argue that in this place, on this mission, was a less than ideal place to sleep. But they have beds. Murphy doesn't have to stay here, curled on the floor by a sleeping, unresponsive Seviilia. ]

I'm not letting you sleep here. You can't do this anymore.

[ Bellamy says this fully aware that dragging Murphy out kicking and screaming isn't conducive to sleep, but Bellamy can't let this stand for another night. ]

Edited 2018-01-17 03:15 (UTC)

[The flat of his expression only turns more unimpressed at Bellamy's words. Sharper.]

Right. [He nods.] You're letting me.

[Tone turned dry and derisive. He lifts a hand, lets it fall.]

You know, I don't remember going back to doing what you tell me to do.

[ She arranges her cloak around her carefully as he comes to sit down. Truthfully, she doesn't much care what he does, one way or another. He's free to grieve in whatever way he deems best. ]

What do you think of it?

[ Being the last of a brood. ]

[It's a different question. A more directed one, shaped more for a yes or no answer than the open response 'what he thought of all this' might have been. She might have done it deliberately. Right now, he doesn't much care to try picking that idea apart.

The should catches a wry tug in his thoughts, though. What should be happening rarely means much, in his experience.]

Haven't seen an alternative.

[They should be organised. They should have a plan, someone leading if only in keeping tabs on what was happening, what information they still needed, where to look next. But he'd seen more than just Lexa's attempts at anything like that fall at the first hurdle. Which meant fumbling through till they made it or all died was all that was going to happen. He shrugs.]

Unless we just head back to the station, but you wouldn't be able to get everyone to agree to that.

[The obvious path of survival, and people would argue on that, too.]

[He doesn't need to ask what it's typical of. He knows well enough. He'd been used to loss and loneliness well before this, most of his life shaped by it, carved through. The pure plain fact of this, away from the pain in his head, wasn't any different. He shrugs.]

Universe sucks like that.

[A beat, and a wry, bitter tug of his mouth.]

Sorry, multiverse.

Think of what?

[His throat's dry, voice rough, watching her impassively. He's stuck like this, which means he doesn't have anything else to do except think, and there's a lot to think about. But that's only when the pain eases back enough to let him.]

[ A fight would be a relief. It'd be a change from the near-silent, subdued vigil he's been keeping. Bellamy doesn't waver, mind nudging along the edges of Murphy's to silently implore while Bellamy stands his ground. ]

You need to sleep. And eat something. You're not going to do either of those things here.

[ Bellamy doesn't need to be told Murphy isn't sleeping properly. He's felt it. And it's exacerbated Bellamy's own insomnia. He catches Murphy's wrist, squeezes it lightly. ]

Sitting here isn't going to change anything.

[ It hadn't changed anything on the Nesting Deck, when he'd stood outside the Darkling's pod and tried to will him back to consciousness. No one ever responded, as much as they might wish it. ]

The loneliness, the empty space.

[ Would she call it loneliness, when she so emphatically didn't even want her broodmates to return? Yes, that part still applied, it had its place. ]

We know the alternative. I've been accused of being too hasty for turning to it. [Destruction of this world. Lexa knows that she hadn't pulled the lever at Mount Weather. Her only involvement there had been leaving Clarke to make an impossible decision, after days upon days of railing upon her for needing to do precisely that.]

That's not just the Commander in me who wishes to move there. Of a people like mine. [Before Murphy says it—if he intended to say it?]

We'll slip up more than we have already. It's a matter of time. And that's assuming we haven't been revealed already in our ineffectiveness.

Multiverse. Universe. Is there really a difference?

[ She doesn't seem to think there is. It's all part of the same thing. It's all the same shit. She walks over and after a moment, she settles the tips of her fingers against Seviilia's forehead. She' been strange and weird and cold, but she'd actually seemed to care in her own weird way. And now she was gone. ]

I feel like I'm the universe's shittiest treadmill sometimes.

We haven't. We'd be dead already.

[He doesn't say it like it's a matter of opinion or theory. Simple, plain certainty rings through the words. Cathaway had shown him her fear, told him the future she'd seen for this mission. There wasn't any leeway, any space where they could screw up but still have a chance to survive, if not fix it. Being found out, that was an absolute.

She should understand that. It was how Grounders operated, most of the time. Like thinking killing everyone here was their best option for getting out of this. He can't argue that she's wrong on the mission going sideways. He's expecting the same. But he hasn't been worried about the morals of the genocide option for a while.]

And that alternative isn't an alternative, by the way. Everyone's been too busy accusing and justifying about it to think about whether we can even do it. [A slight tip of his head, corners of his mouth pressing down beneath the veil.] I don't know about you, but I haven't seen any nukes sitting around up on the station.

[And nothing so far on the surface that'd do the same, either.]

Edited 2018-01-27 10:55 (UTC)

[One's way, way bigger than the other. But he'll grant her it hasn't changed much, existing in it, except his perception of how big everything was. All the extra space was just filled with the same crap.

It's a chord of understanding ringing between them, but something about hearing his sentiments out of another mouth just makes it feel weighted. Dragging downwards. Even like this, knocked to the ground by the pain of the hole ripped inside him, he can't help the instinct to brace. To try and pull upward, instead of just letting them both fall.]

"We press on." [He says, after a beat of silence, watching Asuka reach out to touch Seviilia. He moves one hand, a lazy, small gesture that flickers in Seviilia's direction.] She gave me that.

[Gave because it hadn't been a matter of told. She'd been in his head, in his memories and her own, the torn up landscape of his mind churning around the grief he felt for Emori. She'd helped him start to rebuild. Ironic that if she hadn't, he'd probably be even more of a mess over her being gone.]

Don't touch the swords. [Skipping to this dry, pragmatic warning for the blades he'd laid on Seviilia's body, hilts tucked under her crossed hands.] They're magic, they'll rip you apart or some crap.

[Silence, for a long moment, just looking at her. There's no disguising what he's feeling right now, open in his eyes. Pain. A ripped open chasm of it, the loss and loneliness she's talking about. And an incomprehension on how he could even answer that question.]

What does it matter what I think? It's just there.

[This might be bigger, vaster, torn through the webbings of the bug in his head. But the feeling's the same, and he can no longer remember a time it hasn't been there.]

I'm not trying to change it.

[His tone doesn't shift, doesn't lose that edge. Bellamy might be right about sleeping, about food, but he still has no idea why Murphy's here, like this. Murphy doubts he really wants to know, keeps the brittle frame of his walls in place against Bellamy's nudging, even if he doesn't pull his hand free from the other man's grip.]

I've lost all of them now. Do you seriously think I don't know there's nothing we can do about it?

[Maybe it had always been an inevitability. Cathaway didn't know why the comas happened, who they'd hit next or why, anything that could be done to prevent them. Maybe it was just a matter of time before Murphy went, too.]

[ If she falls, she falls. But she can't, really. She's already hit rock bottom once before. She knows what happens. She knows how it ends. It's not something she wants to go back to or revisit, so she has no choice but to keep moving and try to drag herself out. She purses her lips.

"We press on."

Right. ]

Yeah, she said something similar to me. Not like we have much of a choice, though, right?

[ Her hand lingers and then she pulls it back with a little huff of breath. ]

Don't worry, I'm not stupid. I'm not gonna touch her rune bullshit.

[ Bellamy wants there to be a way to change it. But he knows there's no way to get in between Murphy and the blunt pain of having lost a broodmate. And he knows it's not just any broodmate. Seviilia has been Murphy's last broodmate. It has to be more difficult for Murphy to let go after having clung to each other in the absence of the rest. ]

Please come back with me.

[ The plea is accompanied by unconscious pressure as Bellamy tries to wind his way back to Murphy the way he'd done in prison. Murphy's pain is different now from what it has been then. It's a ghost of the memory of desperation and loneliness. Bellamy wants to cushion Murphy against it. ]

You have us. [ But the last thing Murphy's going to want is a reminder of Clarke and Lexa right now. ] You have me.

I assumed it was suggested as an option because it was available. If we can be rescued from various different versions of our own universe, then I assumed that the next would be possible. [Assumptions. Lexa's unaware of the phrase that's connected to those assumptions, as it hasn't been said to her or around her during her time here. Then again, her confidence typically leans on the need for an assumption before she switches gears. If anything, that's the Grounder way.]

You think that the means doesn't exist. Even if it was originally suggested as an option. [That's not stated as an accusation. To Lexa, and in her mind, it's more like a revelation: why would Rhan produce an idea that can't be accomplished? To create tension? Problems? Create desperation among those that would be opposed to it? Motivate them?

Truthfully, it's not unlike something she'd do, but perhaps on a much larger scale.]

[A fight would've been easier. Murphy's expectations run along patterns of Bellamy telling him he's wrong, arguing, attempting to drag him out of here. Instead Bellamy says please, asks him so openly, nothing but the desire to help in his mind where he's pressing against Murphy. He doesn't know what to do with it. He searches Bellamy's face, uncertainty open and vulnerable in his eyes, and his walls stutter, buckle in.

The pain isn't the same. It isn't a howling, present cacophony of memory tearing him into panic. Instead there's just an emptiness. A vast chasm of it, an edge of his mind that simply sheers off into pitch darkness. Empty, entirely, but the weight of it had driven him to his knees, kept him pinned here, whole body aching as it was crushed. Slowly learning to bear it again, to find enough strength to stand for longer than a few minutes at a time.

And then: doubt. Too late to keep Bellamy out, but blooming all the same, defensive disbelief. Bellamy couldn't mean it. Bellamy would fall asleep too, or just turn away, leave him, and the blistering fury of Bellamy's expression on the cliff where they'd all left him cuts to Bellamy's anger in the tent after the autopsy. An inevitability that Murphy would do it, eventually. Something deserving being abandoned over.]

Could always give up. [He shrugs.] Some people'd say that's a choice.

[But she's not stupid. Just stubborn, belligerent, combative. He can recognise those pieces in her, has to wonder if she'd be the same as him. Gun pressed to her head, prepared to take a quick death over slow starvation, dropping it from a sheer inability to pull the trigger.]

But it sucks just as much.

[ There's something hauntingly familiar in hat. The decision to just... give up. The knowledge that it might finally end some of the pain, that maybe it would be better to be nothing than to feel like nothing. She flinches slightly, as if struck. ]

I don't want to give up.

[ Slow death by starvation and dehydration. She'd tried that. Once. ]

[Murphy shrugs.]

You say suggestion, I say mentioned in a maybe example once and never brought up again by the people who'd know where the big "launch bombs" button is.

[Whether it had been intentional to stir everyone up or a casual turn of phrase taken way too literally, he couldn't say. He hasn't spent much time or thought on the senior hosts. They haven't been all that present, and he's been distracted.]

Cathaway thinks--

[He doesn't get any further. Whatever the thought was, it's gone. He's buckling, falling to the ground as a hole rips open inside him. Impact ringing his head empty in shock, his next breath a desperate, choked gasp of air.]

[ There's no way to blot out the emptiness in Murphy, but knowing that doesn't stop Bellamy from wanting to try. As Murphy lets him in, Bellamy lets his mind intermingle with Murphy's. It's dangerous to do this. It's exactly what he's warned newly arrived members of the Nest against. But it's easy to do with Murphy. He draws Murphy in to him, palms burning as he reaches to take Murphy's wrist. ]

I mean it.

[ Sincerity alone can't guard against all the things he can feel weighing down Murphy's thoughts. He can't dispel the doubt. His own face reflects back, twisted up in anger, and sparking up guilt in the pit of Bellamy's stomach. ]

You don't have to feel this all by yourself.

[The shock of separation from one of the other Hosts is something that she's accustomed to by now. She's been here the longest in this "batch"—she's felt her own brood slip away one by one since the very beginning, forced to create a void within her where she can't sense anyone around her. She has felt alone, without direction, for weeks, for months—a feeling that she doesn't welcome and she actively resents. She recognizes the loss of someone in the Nest now (loss but not death; they are separate things).

Lexa moves swiftly, hand falling on Murphy's bicep.]

( She's still here— ) [But barely. Not alive but comatose, with a major unknown factor as to whether she would ever return.] ( Focus on what can be. ) [As if that would help.

It may not help.]

Yes, and it will remain. Even should they awaken, you will remember.

[ Is that why she had rejected Steve when he had come back. Why she would go on to reject Sam? ]

Would it make you happy again, if they arose once more?

[She's still here means nothing against the convulsing pain of his symbiote that howls she's gone. He's managed - through luck, more than anything - to hide the effects each loss of his broodmates has had on him, but there's no chance of that here. Seviilia can't brace him through the worst of it. He can't climb into one of the pods and let the Nest soothe his brainbug quiet. Lexa's grip on his arm is a touch he'd normally shrug out from under, but right now it's a desperately needed point of contact, and his hand comes up to grasp her elbow without thought. The only thing he can focus on.]

[Familiar, again, and the corner of his mouth twists in a bitter kind of smile. He half wonders what Seviilia would say, seeing them talking. If she'd known this commonality too.]

Then you've chosen. Might as well own it.

[You're right. I am a survivor, he'd said to Jaha, however many months ago that was now. A lifetime. But he'd taken it and he'd made it his.]

[All of Bellamy's dogged certainty, and he never tries to defend himself against the things that spill out of Murphy's head. Out of his mouth. Just this steadiness, this sincerity, winding in closer through Murphy's mind, pulling in that warmth of contact, forcing back the ache of loneliness with his sheer presence. Murphy has to close his eyes for a moment, has to breathe past it before he's overwhelmed, days of nothing but distance and the void where his brood should be.

The emptiness hasn't gone. But his palms are striped with the heat of another bond that doesn't shake loose, Bellamy's hands warm around both his wrists.]

( Yeah. I do. )

[Looking at Bellamy again, the prickle of tears burning at the back of his eyes. Feeling the ache of the absence inside and knowing he's the only one who can feel it for his brood. The last one left. But he doesn't try to pull away or push Bellamy out. Cathaway had told him to find others, the first time he'd gone to her with the pain. Maybe this is what she meant.]

Guess so.

[ She's not... bitter, exactly. Just resigned and a little angry. ]

And everyone else who gives up - I guess I just have to remember them. Right?

[ The contradiction rises in Bellamy's mind so clearly. No whispering across the bond between them before the urge towards action crystallizes in its wake. If he could, he would physically push away all the pain and loneliness swirling in Murphy's mind. But all he do now is reel Murphy in towards him.

In this position, the hug is slightly awkward. Murphy's hands are still clasped, and Bellamy doesn't let go until he can get his arms around Murphy's shoulders. He shuffles in and crushes their bodies together, letting Murphy tuck in close. He's here. There's no more clear expression of that than this action. ]

Edited 2018-02-22 21:42 (UTC)

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[open]

Day 029

Just Ilde Things 030

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day 32.

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cw: attempted suicide

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slithers in to leave a hug