The canvas of the tent had gone from black to grey without Lily noticing the exact moment it changed.
She had been watching it happen — or not watching, exactly, more blankly staring the gradual change of lightening. Her eyes were open and her mind was somewhere else entirely. She had not slept. She was not sure she had even tried, in the proper sense of the word. She had lain down because Bellamy had insisted, but she had not closed her eyes because it was easier than explaining that doing it made it only worse.
When her eyes were closed she saw the dark sky lit orange again.
She saw the cloud rising — dark smoke, fire at the base of it, and the explosion. She didn't want to think about it, but her mind kept going back there in the way a tongue returns to a sore tooth. She would get somewhere else in her thoughts and then she would be back there, watching it from the clearing, her hand finding Bellamy's arm before she knew she had moved.
Marcus, she had thought. That single word, simple and declarative, arriving before anything else.
That had been hours ago. She had been lying here for hours.
He was going to be on the first ship, she kept talking. The image of her father's face in the screen flashed once again. And then she would close her eyes to not think of him, but she'd seen the explosion again.
She had been doing this for hours. Starting the thought and running it until it hit the wall of what she didn't know, and then starting again from a different angle, looking for the place where it resolved into something she could hold. But it didn't resolve. It just kept moving in the same circle, wearing a groove into her, and she was exhausted from it and still could not stop.
He's dead.
The thought arrived with a flatness that surprised her. And that frightened her more than sharpness would have. She felt the tears burn at the edges of her eyes and she pressed her fingers against them.
You've been angry at him your whole life, she thought. And now what?
She didn't have an answer. She had spent seventeen years watching Marcus Kane make hard decisions in the name of order and feeling the particular fury of someone who understood the logic and hated the cost of it. She had stolen medicine for Grace and landed in the skybox and been dragged to the dropship while she screamed his name, and he had stood there like stone. She had every reason to feel nothing.
But she did not feel nothing. She felt something large and formless that she didn't have a name for, the kind of feeling that came from a long history that had never been resolved, and now it would never be resolved. Whatever she and Marcus Kane had been to each other, whatever it might have become, that was over. And she had never—
She stopped herself again. Pressed her palms flat against her thighs.
Outside, she could hear the camp beginning to move. Low voices. Purposeful footsteps. The particular sounds of people preparing for something.
They're getting ready, she thought.
She thought about Clarke's face last night, how it changed after the explosion. Clarke had tried to run toward it, and Bellamy had to physically blocking her, his arms around her from behind as she struggled, and Clarke making sounds that Lily had not been able to fully hear and had been grateful not to hear. Bellamy speaking into the top of Clarke's head.
"We can't go now," Bellamy had said.
"I have to go," Clarke had tried to get free, but Bellamy hadn't let her.
"We can't go alone," he had insisted. "We need to organize a rescue party. Hey," he had said making Clarke look at him. "We'll go at first light, but we need more people."
Lily had stood very still through all of it, frozen in a way she recognized. She had already felt that... when her mothe had died. The stillness that came when too many things were happening at once and the mind simply could not keep up. She could not stop her mind from thinking about Marcus and the fact that he had just crushed on the ground before her eyes.
And after hours, Lily was mentally still in that moment.
She sat up, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes, and made herself breathe.
The canvas had gone from grey to pale gold, that was the color of the dawn.
She reached for her shirt, her jacket. Found her boots and started pulling them on. She was tying her shoes when she heard the flap of the tent move.
She didn't turn. She knew the sound of it — the particular way it shifted, the weight of the footsteps on the earth outside.
"Hey," Bellamy's voice came soft, almost careful.
"Hey." She kept her eyes on her laces, trying to keep her voice even.
"We're moving out in ten minutes." He said quietly. Lily nodded her head.
"Yeah." She finished with the first boot and started on the second. "So I've heard."
He was quiet for a moment. She could feel him looking at her, and she kept her hands moving, kept her eyes down. Only the feeling of his gaze was enough to make her tear up.
"Sure you don't want to come?" he asked at some point.
She had known the question was coming. They had briefly spoken about it last night. She remembered him asking if she wanted to help organize it. She remembered shaking her head. She remembered her eyes burning. She did not remember if he had told her to lie down or if she had simply gone, the two things blurring together in the fog of those hours.
She stood up, smoothing her shirt against her sides, still not turning toward him. "No. I..." She cleared her throat. "I think it's better for me to... to stay here."
"Don't you want to know if your dad was on that ship?"
The question landed the way she had known it would if she had let herself anticipate it, which she had been working hard not to do.
"It crashed," she said putting her jacket on. Her voice was flat. "Whether Marcus was there or not, I cannot know."
"You said he would have been on the first ship to land."
"I don't want to go, Bell, alright?!" She turned to him sharply, and then when she met his wide gaze she felt the tears came before she could stop them.
"God," she said, covering her face with her hands. "I'm so sorry." She let out a sob.
"Hey." He crossed the tent in a few steps and his arms came around her, steady and unhurried, the way they always were when she needed them to be. She pressed her face against his shoulder and felt the tears she had been not-crying all night finally go somewhere.
"It's alright," he said. "It's alright. You don't have to come."
She nodded against him, not trusting her voice.
His hand moved on her back, slow and patient. "I'll be back later. Keep an eye on the camp."
She pulled back just far enough to look at him, scrubbing at her face with the back of her hand, and nodded again. He looked at her for a moment, and then he leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead, warm and brief, and let her go.
She listened to his footsteps toward the entrance.
"Be careful out there," she said, her voice coming out thin.
He turned in the gap of the tent flap, and she saw him take her in, standing in the middle of the tent with her hands at her sides and her eyes still red. Something moved through his expression. Then he was gone, and the canvas settled behind him, and the camp sounds closed over his departure like water.
She stood there for another moment. Then she went to find something to do.
The work helped, like it always helped; giving her hands something to be and her mind a narrow track to run on. She started in the medical tent.
, going through the supplies with a methodical attention that did not require her to think about anything beyond what was in front of her. Inventory. Restocking. Checking the infusions she had left steeping overnight. The willow bark that needed another hour. The plantain paste that had set properly and needed to be transferred.
She worked through it all twice.
By the time she had finished the second pass, the camp had settled into its reduced morning rhythms — fewer people, the clearing quieter without Bellamy's presence at the center of it, the wall guard rotation going on without the usual oversight. She did what she could. She spoke to Miller about the patrol schedule, walked the wall once to check the new section Bellamy had reinforced, came back and found something else to do.
She thought about Marcus again, and she made herself stop, and then she thought about him anyway.
They little memories of him were bitter. Because when she thought of her mother, Lily remembered how she brushed her hair, and how they would laugh and wander when she spoke stories about the Earth. She remembered them reading together and walking through the corridors of the Ark hand in hand.
But with Marcus she had nothing of that. She remembered him across the hall. Or talking quietly to her mother at their door. She remembered him telling her not to cry as she brought her things in the Alpha Station. And she remembered him leaving her alone in the cellar he had given to her. She had no warm memory, not a smile, not an hug or reassuring words. And yet here she was, unable to stop thinking about his death.
She pressed her fingers against her eyes and made herself move.
The afternoon settled around her. The clearing was warm in the particular way of late summer afternoons, the light coming through the canopy at a low angle, throwing long shadows across the ground. She collected the dried mallow and yarrow she had hung three days ago, stripped and sorted them with hands that did not shake as badly as they had in the morning. She made a new batch of the antiseptic tincture, slower than usual, letting the attention the process required fill the spaces where the thoughts wanted to go.
By the time the light had begun to warm to amber, she had been moving through the camp for the better part of a full day and had managed to be useful for most of it.
They had not come back yet.
She had been tracking the light, the way it moved across the camp. First light, mid-morning, the high flat white of noon, the drop into late afternoon. She had not looked at the east wall as often as she had wanted to, which was to say she had looked at it constantly, every pass through the clearing catching her eye with the hope and the dread of seeing a group emerge from the trees.
They had not.
She was at the fire, adjusting one of the pots, when Octavia appeared at her shoulder.
Lily looked at her. She had been aware of Octavia moving through the camp all day — that particular quality of movement that came with the kind of anger that had nowhere to go, careful and too-controlled, speaking in short answers to the people who spoke to her and avoiding the ones who didn't.
"Hey," Lily said.
Octavia said nothing for a moment. She was looking at the fire with her jaw set in the way Lily had learned to recognize as the Blake default setting for strong feeling. "When they get back," she said finally, "tell my brother I'm still furious with him."
"Or you can tell him yourself," Lily said carefully.
The girl let out a breath as she shook her head. "It's pointless talking to him." Then she turned to go away.
"Octavia." Lily turned from the fire. "Be angry at him when you know he's safe."
The other girl's eyes moved to her face. "I'll be angry at him forever for what he had done to Lincoln, and for starting a war."
Lily looked at her properly. Looked at the line of her jaw, the brightness behind her eyes, and understood what she was actually seeing.
"Alright..." Lily said, more quietly.
Octavia turned away, and that was when Lily felt it — the particular sting behind her own eyes that she had been managing all day, the thing she had been pressing down since that morning in the tent. Something in her face must have changed, because Octavia turned back.
"What's wrong with you?" Not unkind. Just direct in the way Octavia always was.
"Nothing." Lily pressed her lips together, getting up before her eyes started to water again.
"I'm going to go get some plants. I'm running low on a few things." She reached for her knife, looping it onto her belt.
"What? Now?" Octavia asked with a confused frown.
"I need some flowers that bloom at night," Lily explained, "Evening primrose. Their just outside the wall."
"Are you sure?" Octavia asked observing her and Lily nodded her head.
"Yeah," she said pointing at her back "It's really close, I'll be visible from the guard post. Don't worry."
She didn't wait for Octavia to respond.
Connor at the gate looked at her with the expression of someone who wanted to argue about it, but Lily insisted and after some minutes of arguing, he finally let her go.
The air outside the wall was different in the evenings — cooler, the particular cleanness of late day in the forest, the light coming from low and sideways and turning everything warm. She moved a few yards out, crouching near a stand of plantain with little yellow flowers. It had grown thick in a patch of disturbed earth near the base of the wall. She pulled a strip of cloth from her pocket and began to harvest.
Her hands moved, and her mind went.
She let the tears come this time, because there was nobody to see them and she was tired of managing them. They came slowly, the way they did when the well had been almost emptied already — a few at a time, rolling down to her jaw, cooling against her skin. She pressed the back of her wrist against them without stopping the harvest.
Stop crying, she said to herself. There's no reason to cry.
But it was no use, for some reason more tears went down, hot against her cheeks. And she closed her eyes.
Then suddenly, Lily heard footsteps coming from behind her.
She turned with her hand already on the knife, the motion automatic, and then she went very still.
Jake was standing a few yards away, his hands raised, his expression carrying something careful and afraid.
She stood up slowly, the knife in her hand, trying to keep her hold on it stead. "Don't come any closer," she said.
He stopped his steps, his hands still up where she could see them. "I didn't want to hurt you." His voice was quiet, and almost trembling as he observed her. "I know that doesn't mean anything."
Her eyes quickly scanned him to be sure he was not armed, that he was really there just to talk. "And I should believe you?" she asked, feeling her legs tremble.
He let out a breath, taking another step. "Look, I'm sorry—"
"You can be sorry without walking toward me." She watched him stop, the knife in her hand still pointed at him.
"I had—" He swallowed. "That night. I had eaten those berries." His jaw shifted. "I was — I was frightened. I was not thinking right. I am—" He stopped to take a breath. "I'm sorry I scared you."
"You didn't just scare me," she said. Her voice was level, which surprised her. "You almost killed me."
"I know." His eyes were bright. "And I'm so sorry. I just—" He pressed his lips together. "I miss my parents."
That words hit her more than they should have, she knew. But she could not help but to close her eyes.
She thought about the things she had been thinking about for the past twelve hours. She thought about Marcus in the wreckage of an Exodus ship, and the conversations they would never have. And she felt stupid for thinking that their relationship would have ever changed. She knew who he was.
Marcus had been one of the reason why they had all suffered. Each one of them.
Try to be kind, Lily, her mother's voice rang in her mind.
She did not wipe her eyes when tears went down her cheeks this time.
"I know that I can't ask for your forgiveness," Jake said almost carefully. "I just wanted to thank you. For not reporting it."
"Yeah, well..." Lily said with a nod of her head, looking at him properly. "I don't think you need to thank me for that."
The silence between them was a different kind than it had been before. Not the deliberate ease he had been constructing on the walk to the berry patch. Something stripped and quieter and—
They both turned at the same moment.
The sound came from the eastern tree line. Not a clean sound — not the purposeful footfall of a group returning, nothing organized or deliberate. Something ragged. Uneven. A weight landing wrong with every step, and underneath it a breathing that was wrong in a specific way that made Lily's hands go still.
"Grounders?" Jake said.
"I don't know." Lily whispered, still looking at the dark woods.
She moved toward it before she had consciously decided to. Her knife was in her hand and her heart was in her throat and the shadows between the trees had the particular thickness of late evening, hard to read, shapes becoming other shapes. She pushed through the outer edge of the undergrowth when she saw a dark shape.
He was on his feet — barely. He was upright in the way of someone who had decided to stay upright through force of will rather than structural capability, his weight shifted wrong, one leg favoring the other. But when she saw his face, Lily's eyes widened.
"Murphy," she breathed.
Murphy's face was covered in cuts and blood, swollen by bruises. His shirt was torn, dried blood dark on the cloth. And even as she registered all of it, she saw his eyes find her face and go strange with something she recognized with a shock as relief.
His knees buckled.
"Oh my God, Murphy—" She was already moving, already reaching him as he went down, her hands finding his arms, trying to slow the fall. He groaned — a sound that was mostly air, almost nothing — and she got one knee under him, her hands against his chest and his arm, getting him down to the ground instead of against it.
"Hey." She got her face in front of his. "You have to stay awake, alright?" His eyes were trying to focus. "Stay with me." He groaned again, and she saw the fear in him through the pain — that animal readiness of someone who did not know if this was safe and could not yet afford to find out.
"Jake." She didn't look up. "Help me get him to camp."
"But..." Jake said stuttering, "He's been banished."
Lily turned to him, with wide eyes, "He's hurt. What is he going to do in this state?"
Jake didn't move. She could feel his hesitation from six feet away. Lily turned to look at Murphy again, his breath ragged, his eyes doing everything to keep themselves open.
"Fine," she said firmly. "I'll bring him in myself if I have to."
She got Murphy's arm over her shoulders, pressing her own shoulder up under his, trying to take the weight while keeping herself from being pulled down. He made a sound that cost him, and she felt the full weight of him for a moment before she found her footing.
Then she heard Jake let out a long, frustrated breath, and he appeared at Murphy's other side.
"This is a bad idea," he said.
"I won't leave him out here alone." She got her feet under her. "Come on," she said before they started to make their way towards the fance.
"Don't shoot!" she shouted as the wall resolved out of the dark ahead of them, torchlight glancing off the top. "Don't shoot!"
Octavia's voice came from the top of the barricate, sharp and alert. "Lily?" It didn't take too long before the girl ran outside, with Connor and Eric behind her.
Then Lily saw Octavia's eyes widen too, "Murphy?" she said under her breath.
"I need to bring him inside," Lily said firmly, not slowing down.
"Lily, you can't!" Connor excalimed, his eyes glaring at Murphy, "Bellamy said—"
"I know he's been banished." She argued, not quite believing that they were even having that conversation. "You can't seriously consider leaving him outside. Look at him."
Murphy made a sound between his teeth, and she felt Jake shift on his other side, redistributing the weight without being asked. She was grateful for it.
"Get out of my way, Connor," she said before gesturing Jake to follow her.
The camp was at its evening rhythms — fire, voices, the smell of food — and then it wasn't, because Lily was walking through the middle of it with Murphy between herself and Jake and the voices went quiet and she heard the whispers beginning and she did not stop, did not slow, kept her eyes on the medical tent.
She heard the gasps. She heard her name, twice, in voices that were not calling to her but to each other. But she kept walking.
Inside the tent, the light was steady, and she could finally see him properly. She settled him onto the surface she used for patients, as carefully as she could, and he hissed through his teeth at every shift in position, his hands going out as though looking for something to hold.
"Easy, easy," she said putting her hands on his shoulders, trying to calm him down. "You're inside. You're safe." Once Murphy seemed to calm down as he layed on his back, Lily took a breath before looking up at Jake.
"Thank you." She said letting out a breath.
He met her eyes. "I hope you know what you're doing," he said, and it did not sound unkind, and then he was gone.
She turned back to Murphy.
Up close and in lamplight, the damage was worse than she had read it in the dark. The cuts were not random — they had a particular deliberateness to them, shallow and numerous, the kind that were about duration rather than depth. Those were not wounds from a fall, it didn't take a doctor to see that. And as she touched his forehead his temperature seemed to be high.
She reached for the cloth and the bowl of water.
When she moved toward his face, his hand shot out and locked around her wrist. She felt him seize it — the grip trembling, but present, real, the grip of someone not entirely sure where they were.
"It's alright," she said quietly, not pulling back. "Murphy, It's alright."
His eyes moved around before he found her face.
"Lily?" His voice was wrong — thicker than it should have been, the consonants working harder than usual.
"Yeah, it's me," she said with a little nod, her hands shaking at seeing how scared he was. "I'm going to clean these wounds, alright?" She watched his grip on her wrist ease, not letting go but releasing pressure. "You're going to be fine, I promise."
She began to work.
He drifted in and out. When she moved from one wound to the next he would sometimes flinch back into alertness — eyes wide, body tensing, the particular animal readiness of someone who had been hurt enough times that their baseline was threat — and she would speak to him quietly until he came back to where she was. She noticed his hands and had to look away for a moment before she could continue. Two nails missing, the skin around them raw and dark with bruising.
What happened to you? She thought with dread. But she didn't dared to ask. He was frightened enough as it was.
The water in the bowl turned red as she worked. There was so much blood that she had to changed it twice.
"You're dying to ask me the question," Murphy said. His voice was clearer than it had been before. When she looked up he was watching her, observing her face closely.
"You should be resting," she said as she kept cleaning his wounds.
She looked up at him. A shaky breath moved through her before she could stop it. She thought about the last time that she had saw him. The mob, and then Charlotte, and Bellamy hit him and left him in the woods. She didn't want for him to be left there, and now, seeing all those wounds, she felt her eyes water once again, and her lips twitch. But she did all she could to not cry.
"What happened?" she finally asked, despite herself.
The silence lasted long enough that she thought he wouldn't answer.
"The Grounders," he said and Lily looked up at him. "They took me to their camp." His voice was flat and careful in the way voices got when the thing they were describing was too large to look at directly.
"They did this to you..." she said. The words came out as a whisper.
He didn't answer. But he held her gaze, and she held his, and in the space between them was everything that didn't need to be said about what that meant.
The tent flap moved.
Connor came through first, and then Eric, and before Lily could say anything they had already moved past her and grabbed Murphy by the arms, hauling him upright. Murphy hissed sharply in pain.
"What the hell are you doing?" Lily was on her feet immediately. "Let him go!"
Connor's eyes found hers and held them with a hardness she had not seen directed at her before. "He's a danger to us all." He didn't loosen his grip on Murphy. "We'll take him to the dropship, where we can keep an eye on him."
"Connor, you can't do this!" She stepped forward.
"You couldn't take him back to camp, Lily." His gaze was flat and unyielding. They stared at each other across the small space of the tent, Murphy between Connor and Eric, his face tight with pain he was trying not to show.
"He still needs medication," she said, her eyes never moving from Connor. "His got fever—"
"He'll survive." Connor nodded to Eric and they began to move toward the entrance.
"Lily..."
Murphy's voice made something tighten in her chest. He was looking at her from between them and Lily made some steps following them. Before they took him out of the tent.
Lily bit her lips, just before she threw the cloth in her hands on the ground.