in which a girl with a heavy burden tries to find her way through the trials and torments of the earth they've come home to.
OR
in which she must rebuild.
EMBERS
JOHN MURPHY
DEATHLIES 2016
DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN T...
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F O R T Y
As the days passed, Murphy was getting better, much to Althea's relief. In fact, it warmed her heart to see him helping others who had gotten sick thanks to the biological warfare of the grounders using Murphy as their weapon. He was going from patient to patient helping them with water, keeping them hydrated.
Althea helped too, despite Clarke and Murphy's arguments against doing so.
"You'll get sick too," Clarke told her, but Althea shook her head.
"If I was going to get sick, I would've by now. Don't start worrying about me now, Clarke, it's too late for that," Althea replied with a bitter expression and picked up a wet cloth to begin her aid.
"She's not going to back down, you know?" Murphy said to Clarke, watching Althea as she mopped the brow of a sick boy. He looked up at her like she was an angel and, in Murphy's eyes, she was.
"She never used to be this stubborn," Clarke responded, crossing her arms across her chest and watching Althea just like he was. Only she looked on with distaste. She didn't like the new Althea. She was too argumentative for her liking. "She was always the sweet one."
"Things change, Clarke, and she's one of 'em so either deal with it or get out of her way," Murphy said to her with a sense of pride in his tone.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means she's not going to bow down to you like the rest of the idiots here."
-
"You're looking a lot better today," Althea says with a soft smile. A smile that looked at home on her lips that Murphy remembered so well and desired to feel again. It curved like the crescent moon: bright and bold and most definitely beautiful, infinitely so. The struck through the gloom like a beacon of hope. Outshining the stars without even trying.
"I told you, I'm a survivor," He replies, returning the smile. As they both sit with their backs against the wall, her fingers slip between his and she gazes at him as if she still couldn't quite believe he was real.
"I know." She speaks quietly, keeping them away from the ears of the sick and the dying. "I know."
"If I wasn't sick, I'd kiss you right now," Murphy tells her with a smirk and a glint in his eyes that Althea had missed badly. A part of her heart caves in and her stomach flips.
"Don't you think I would have gotten sick by now if I was going to?" She asks and he raises an eyebrow.
"I don't think risking it is a good idea."
"I do," She shoots back, but they're interrupted as another member of the hundred is carried in, sick and with blood on their face, painting them red like murder. Murphy was oblivious. He was still looking at Althea in utter awe and wonder. She truly was one of a kind.
"Bellamy?" She whispers, scrambling to her feet to see for herself that it was him and not just a lookalike, but it was him. It was definitely him. In one rugged movement, he rolls to his side and vomits, puking up blood. It soaked his lips crimson. It made him look weak and helpless.
Reaching back, she grabs onto Murphy's hand for comfort as she watches Bellamy confess his fears to Octavia, his beloved sister: the one he would die for.
Althea sinks back down beside Murphy. The cool metal harsh against her back and her shoulder pressed against his. She brushes her fingers over the back of Murphy's hand, taking comfort from him in the simplest of things. Maybe that was all anyone needed: comfort. She seemed happy to live off it and he was too.
Her eyes were locked on Octavia and Bellamy as she mopped at his forehead, smiling down at him as he fell asleep.
"You're worrying about him, aren't you?" Murphy asks her and she turns to look at him. Her hair was in her face, he brushes it away and tucks it behind her ear, just like he'd seen her do so many times before. He had it memorised, but she did it much better than he did.
Althea's fingers squeeze around his hand. "Of course I am." Her bottom lip quivers slightly, cracking her in two. The brave face she'd held up for so long was breaking and she hated that. She never wanted it to fall again: too much effort went into the façade for that to occur. Breathing in, she says, "I don't want him to die."
"Thea, he tried to kill me. Doesn't that mean anything?" Murphy's eyes narrow slightly as he speaks in his paranoid, accusatory tone that Althea hated to hear. It was like a blanket of ice: cold and unforgiving. Betrayal was its name and bitterness was its curse. "It's like you don't even care." He rips his hand from her.
"Stop," Althea begs, her voice a rasp. "This isn't fair. You know I care."
"Do you care about me more than you care about him?" He gestures aggressively towards Bellamy's sleeping body, which eerily likened to a corpse. Althea looks over to him, stunned by the terrible way that had overcome him and freezes. At her lack of a response, Murphy lets out a breathy laugh. "I didn't think so."
"You're impossible," Althea tells him without a hint of a lie. "Listen to yourself. He's sick, of course I'm going to worry about him. He could die." And suddenly she grips tightly onto his forearm, her fingers digging into his skin, not painfully but forcefully. "But you're a bitter man, John Murphy. I don't care how strongly I feel for you, if you kill him I'll never forgive you."
Her eyes were dark and serious, nothing like the girl he'd heard produce the purest laughter only moments ago. It was unnerving to look into her eyes and see such cruel honesty. Like dark feathers of a crow, her eyelashes curl and the intensity of her green eyes that seemed to swirl with gold and brown. They flicker over his face: from his eyes, to the bruises, to his lips and back to his eyes.
She releases his arm when he nods stiffly, leaning her head back against the wall and letting her eyes fall closed, but she did not sleep until she felt him move from beside her, away.
Even now, his aura over powered her. It had been forgotten how strongly the aura affected her, but there was something else biting at her. It bit at her until she fell asleep, sinking into the depths of her own mind.
