This Heart that I Misplaced [narrative for ataraxion]

[savethebullshit]

It’s all fine.

Just forget about it.

Murphy is going to be fine.

He just forgot to let her know he’s going to be late. He’s just off somewhere.

Of course, these methods of denial only worked for a few hours at best. They tied her over until she fell into a fitful sleep and wakes now with fists clenched early in the morning, only to roll over and see his bed empty. Now, after an entire night has gone by without him, she is starting to realize the utter ridiculousness of her coping techniques. She checked to see if he was in the med bay the night before, in case he’s injured too much to contact her. Now, there’s nothing to do. No small way to somehow justify his absence. Anne’s communicator is on the desk. She moves over to it now, climbing clumsily from the bed in her pajamas. Taking it into her hands, she sends Murphy a short text. Somehow, ending it with I love you seems to make everything momentarily better. If it’s the last thing he hears from her…

It won’t be. Don’t think like that.

The text goes through. It doesn’t get returned to her. Murphy is still on the Tranquility. He hasn’t gone home. That just twists her stomach into knots. She knows how things work here. She knows how things are. The damning sound of the text actually sending, going through to Murphy’s inbox, makes her throat tighten.

"So do the same for me, okay? Don't be one of the people I have to bury."

God dammit, Murphy.

Crossing the room, Anne doesn’t bother getting dressed. Slowly, in a rather hideous display of childishness, she sits down on Murphy’s bed for a moment and clutches the blanket in her fists. She can’t stand to see it empty, made, can’t stand to see his head not poking out from under the covers. She crawls under them instead. The space between the blanket and sheets smells like Murphy. It’s easy to close her eyes and pretend he’s there next to her, but when she opens her eyes, he isn’t. There’s only emptiness, and it’s as maddening as it is heartbreaking. Curling into a ball in the warm fortress inside the blankets, Anne lets a dry sob escape. Twenty years ago, maybe more, she used to crawl into the same sort of safe haven to escape the possibility of the monsters in her closet. Now, she’s hiding from a threat far more daunting.

---------


Initially, it had been just a little worry, tugging at the back of her mind, like a worm burrowing there. She’d pushed it out, pushed it away, pretended not to notice it, but it was there. And it’s there still, as Anne stands near the grav couches, hand pressed flat against the wall. The hard surface is cool under her hand, offering a soothing chill against her palm, and she focuses on that instead of on the reality of the situation at hand. She’s known it for a while now, but it’s now impossible to ignore. It’s boring into her consciousness, and no matter how much she tries to fight it, no matter how many times she goes out looking, no matter how many people offer to help look for him with boundless hope that everything is going to be alright, no matter how many times Heather tells her not to assume the worst, it’s still there. And by the moment, as she stands here now at the edge of some turning point, the moments before the moment when there’s no hope left at all, it’s a nagging shout in the back of her head. It sends warning stabs of worry down to her heart.

Murphy is dead.

It’s not as though she has no hope left. Though it’s a nagging impulse burned as deeply into the back of her mind as the thought that she might never see Murphy again, Anne isn’t at that point of simply giving up. Of just slumping to the floor and giving in to the temptation to go to pieces and let herself waste away. If she had no hope, she’d still be slumped in his bed, waiting for it all to be over. Instead, she’s here. In a way, she’s still waiting for it all to be over; the jump is happening soon. If Murphy isn’t dead now, he will be then, and so will she. As much as she knows he would hate the idea, as much as she knows everyone who cares about her would hate the idea, it’s a decision she made a few days ago. When she remembered the jump was coming up.

She’ll wait here. She’ll wait here for Murphy, and if by some miracle he shows up in time, then she’ll get into the safety of her pod. If not, then it’ll just be effective proof that he’s dead. Which is just something she can’t live with. It would have sounded ridiculous and pathetic even to herself up until this past year or so, but a world without Murphy is one she doesn’t even want to exist in. It’s become apparent to her, in ways she can’t even describe, during these long and pointless days of searching and waiting and hoping against all odds that she’ll see him again.

Murphy is something she can’t live without

There’s a crushing sense of helplessness in the fact that she’s done all the searching for Murphy she can, spread the word and gotten people to help and still all she can do is stand here and wait for a conclusion. Anne has shed a lot of tears this week, done a lot of moping and missing him and just being absolutely sick thinking that the last time she spoke to him, the last time she kissed him, really might have been the last time. Thinking back on it now, it feels like wasted time. It feels like taking him for granted. A quick kiss on their way out the door, to their separate jobs and activities. Endlessly briefer than it would have been, if she’d known how the rest of the week was going to play out. If she’d had any idea, she would have bypassed work altogether, would have kept him right where he was and possibly just thrown him down on her bed and distracted him effectively. Made good use of this constant closeness and told him, showed him the things she has no way to convey now.

That’s the sick part of it all, she muses as she stands there, presses her back heavily against the wall and sighs with every ounce of energy left in her being, a heavy sigh that she swears rattles the very air around her. If she’d known it wouldn’t have happened in the first place. She and Murphy would already be in their pods, completely unaware of their monthlong unconsciousness until they woke up sick and sticky and sore after the jump like they always do. But then there’s no way she could have known. There’s no way to somehow blame herself, to turn the hurt into something cold and bitter and ugly and easier to deal with than this heavy and painful grief. For the first time in their long and complicated friendship-turned-romance, Anne understands completely why Murphy functions the way he does. Why he turns things around and pins them on himself, takes it all out on himself. Lets his pain bleed out in the form of guilt and self-loathing until she pushes back, reminds him to let go of it.

It’s because the alternative is sometimes too disgusting.

She doesn’t want to hate Murphy for disappearing. She doesn’t want to hate Murphy for not being right here, right now.

It’s ironic, finally coming to understand those dark and complicated parts of Murphy now, when he’s dead or will be soon, when she will be soon. At the end of a long and treacherous road is that almost comforting truth, that measure of understanding. All at once, none of this seems quite so bitter. It seems like the end of something, the inevitable conclusion that she’s been heading toward for a long time. The road is ending, cut off at the edge of some sheer drop-off that she can’t swerve to avoid, not now.

And now, when she can almost physically feel the impending closeness of the jump approaching, when she can practically smell death coming for her, she closes her eyes and lets the back of her head rest against the coolness of the wall behind her. For a moment, there is absolute stillness, absolute silence. Everything is eerily clear, like she’s looking at the world through a completely new set of eyes. There’s a strange sense of peace in just letting go, in letting the inevitable sink in. As she stands in the stillness of the med bay, a strange thing happens. There is a calm here, the stillness before the storm. Oddly, a tiny smile makes its way over her face.

”Guess I’ll be seeing you soon, dad.”

Comments

[yardbird]

Whatever sheer willpower Murphy is powered on in this moment is an unrelenting one. After all, he had raced towards survival through the depths of seemingly endless labyrinths before, with a howl and a blinding light searing and tearing him apart. He could feel pieces of himself coming undone, his flesh and blood separating from his body. But if it's one thing he could always do, he ran.

Then he has to run again, just like he had so many times before. He races through the hallways in order to prevent the same fate from happening. From the self-annihilation that is just a hair's breadth at the heels of his feet. Only this time the sole factor that had been chasing after him is time. What little of it he has left, anyway. And he is making use of every second. Not just for the sake of those he's long since chosen to live for, but for this little girl whose hand he's holding. For Mary, who doesn't deserve that terrible annihilation, as far as Murphy is concerned.

He can't remember how long it's been. Without his communicator, he can't tell the time, let alone how close towards the jump they were. The last he'd checked though, from what little he could remember when he'd actually been paying any goddamn attention...

Days. He's been out here for days. It's almost hard to believe that he's made it this long.

Actually, he can. It would explain how weak he's gotten. It isn't just from how far he's been walking, running, trying to keep mobile... He needs food, sleep. These are things he needs.

Strange that Mary seems to have push on despite this, like both are unnecessary. Murphy can't tell if it's a front or if she really isn't phased by any of this. The weight of the situation doesn't appear to matter to her, and Murphy doesn't want to scare her with the possibility of what happens if they don't make it.

If this is how it's going to end, he doesn't want that scary thought to be the last thing on her mind. He's seen what happens to people who don't make the jumps. There's nothing left, just jelly. Splatters of blood and gore. It's not what he wants to think about, either, but the fear of it is as real and imminent as a red force ripping him apart. If he's too late, there won't be anything left to pick up.

Murphy doesn't know when things start to seem familiar, or when he can recognize the shape and color of the birds that are his. Someone obviously had wanted to get him lost, or had decided it would be a great idea to copy his own graffiti and spread it all over the place. Suddenly, it was Murphy's markers that had gotten him in this mess. But at the moment, they are actually helping him get home.

With Mary, their survival feels all the more important. For the first time in days, he finds one of the blue lifts. He just about throws himself inside with the little girl in tow. The prospect of familiarity and civilization is a happy one, but only if they manage to make it through this in time.

Just a few more minutes, isn't it? Christ. He still can't tell how long it's been since he heard the announcement, but it should be any moment now. It's time that he doesn't have to waste just laying there until it's jump time.

Civilization and familiarity will have to wait. By the time Murphy and Mary make it to the medbay, everyone's already been lined up.

Shit. Shitshitshit, how much time do they have now?

Time is not a thing that Murphy squanders. He doesn't even bother taking Mary's hand -- he carries the girl in his arms, gets her to one of the unoccupied pods as fast as he can.

By the time she's safe, Murphy still isn't. His legs are shaky as he collapses against Mary's closed and confined gravity couch, catching his breath. His whole body shakes. Adrenaline, terror, and so many other things stagger his body and mind.

Any minute now. Seconds, even. The jump's going to happen, and he'll be out here, a mess of cooked meat that's so torn up it's unrecognizable. Kind of a fitting end for someone like him, isn't it?

But no. Not now, and not like this. Not when he's so close. That's not how he wants to be seen or remembered -- a gored up fucking pile... That's no message to leave behind the people that he's come to care about. Give them just enough to know that he was right here with them when it was so close to that time.

How sad would that be?

Murphy could have laughed at himself, but he can't. He's so weak, and what little fight he does have left in him he uses to push himself up off the ground. Or, he tries to. He tries, and he fails, falling on his knees again. His arms and legs scramble pathetically as he drags himself across the floor, finding at least one empty pod out of the several thousands there already were.

There's a sick taste of iron in his throat, like blood. It hurts as it wears him down. It's that same foul taste that lingers in his mouth when a weight punches him in his chest. He's looking ahead, down the rows of the myriad gravity couches -- to see that there's at least one sign of life that still lingers in this desolate silence.

"Jump!" Murphy screams at Anne. He doesn't care what happens, but he's got just enough strength to yell across the distance until his throat is bloody and raw.

What the fuck is she doing? is a thought that crosses Murphy's mind at first, but then it occurs to him that he already knows. Oh God, he knows what she's doing, and here he is watching her as he's crawling--

"F-fuckin'... JUMP." There's no way in hell that she can't hear him now. Murphy's making sure of that.

God help him if he's going to have to watch this... if this is going to be the last thing he ever sees.

[savethebullshit]

With time ticking down the way it is, Anne is starting to feel what's almost like catatonia, a kind of heaviness in her limbs not from any sort of outside stimulus but because of her internal resolve to just stand here and not move. Seconds tick. She knows by now that Murphy probably won't be showing up.

It's been childish, been ridiculously, spectacularly idealistic to think he was alright. She'd been clinging to hope, foolishly, thinking that somehow she would see him again. Now, it's close to the end. It's about time that she let go of that foolishness. Rather than relief, however, she feels a piercing and crippling sadness at the thought that Murphy no longer exists in this world.

However, she's only taken a few moments trying to hold back tears before she hears a sound. In the absolute silence of the med bay, a sound is a rather surprising thing. Immediately she looks up, scanning the rows of grav couches for some sign of life. And when she finds it, something in her being just stops. More accurately, everything. Time seems to stand still, and she can't even believe her eyes. She actually has to physically close them for a moment and when he's still there when she opens then, it's a shock.

"Murphy?" she asks incredulously, her eyes wide. When he screams, it shakes her out of her stupor, makes her realize just how real he is. And he's crawling across the floor and it's pathetic and depressing and it just kills her inside. Before she knows it, she's hurrying over to his side. It won't hurt anything; there weren't any unoccupied pods where she was standing before, anyway. As she comes toward him and he's still screaming at her, all she can focus on his the absolute relief she feels. Even if she doesn't make it. Even if they don't make it. Though she's going to do what she can to make sure they do.

Kneeling, Anne puts her hands under his arms, hooks her arms around his upper body, and starts hoisting him to his feet. "You're alive. I thought..."

It doesn't matter what she thought. He's alive.

[yardbird]

There's no time. Murphy doesn't know how much time they have left, but he's not about to make a gamble on it when he starts to hear the ship begin to creak.

The only time he's ever heard that sound was when he listened to the one audio of that guy who didn't make the jump. What was his name again? Hotspur? Something like that.

Murphy doesn't take the chance to reminiscence. He's too busy opening one of the empty pods shortly after Anne hoists him onto his feet.

Yeah, he's alive. They can talk about that later, as well as what the hell she was doing out here in the first place. For now--

"Get in."

[savethebullshit]

Anne hears the sound, and she glances above them briefly. Something about it chills her to the very core. When Murphy opens the pod, she just looks at him, and sticks one leg inside. For now, she doesn't move any farther.

"I love you," she tells him very firmly, just in case something goes wrong during the jump, in case she never gets another chance to say it. She's been thinking along those lines a lot lately. Right now, she's so happy to see him she could just collapse in a pile of relief and cling to him, but now is neither the time nor the place. So she settles for giving him a small smile instead before finally getting the rest of the way into her pod. She'd rather stay out long enough to help him into his own, but she has a sneaking suspicion she'd be met with him shouting at her for being stupid and reckless and they'd end up missing the jump altogether.

The way she feels now, the desperation for both of them to make it through this, couldn't contrast more with her attitude from a few moments ago.

[yardbird]

All of this hasn't entirely sunken in yet. For now this must be shock or something. Murphy doesn't know what it is, or care.

The only thing he cares about, the only thing he can even think about is making sure that Anne is safe as well. Right now, she isn't.

Something about her words make his gut wrench for a split second, when he realizes he doesn't even have enough time to utter a word back. If the whining metal is any indicator, it's that his moments are precious and every second counts if he even wants to see Anne again after this is over.

So he simply pushes Anne into the gravity couch, using what little strength he has left to do so. Standing on the outside of the glass, he nods once to her as if to acknowledge her sentiment, before he opens the neighboring pod and retreats inside from the world that comes crashing down.

Funny, how all Murphy can think about before stasis settles over him is a chorus that he hasn't had stuck in his head since he first woke up in this place--

Time is on my side... yes it is...