#memoriweek

Knot tying is easy and familiar, and the thing with which Emori focuses on so she doesn’t ruminate on the last couple of hours. The reins of the horse that she calls Gappie, but that Otan refuses to name, are familiar in her hands, as are the handles of the cart. She needs familiarity right now, needs the imprint on the handle that’s worn down to shape of her hand, and the smell of the leather tethers.

“It’s good,” she says to Otan in their language, and he kicks the horse forward. She has to step over John’s arm where it’s limp on the ground before she can hop into the cart, and for a moment she thinks she can see it twitch.

As Otan guides the horse she watches the members of skaikru, ostensibly to make sure they don’t make any attempts to follow, but really she just has her eyes on John. Jaha is kneeling over him now, trying to wake him, but they turn a corner around a dune before she can see if he was successful.

“What’s wrong?” Otan asks, the concern in his voice more in relation to his distrust of the people they’ve just robbed and less in regards to her personal well-being. Before the con he had quite a few qualms, considering how unfamiliar they were with skaikru, and she knows that he probably trusts them less than any one of the clans simply for their unpredictability. That shouldn’t be surprising of course, Otan hates change, hates anything that’s new. She’s glad she doesn’t have to explain how different skaikru are; she doesn’t yet quite know herself how to feel about them.

“Nothing,” she responds easily, although it is of course untrue. She keeps waiting to feel the swell of satisfaction that comes from a good con, but it doesn’t come. Her mouth just tastes like sand.

“Emori…” Otan presses because he knows her too well.

“We should stop soon, take inventory,” she interrupts. Otan turns over his shoulder to look at her, but she only rolls her eyes at his prodding concern.

They stop as she suggests shortly after. There isn’t much tech, although nearly every pack has a gun in it, but there’s plenty of food and water, more than enough to last a couple more weeks and their journey out of the Dead Zone.

Emori splits one of the rations for Otan and her to share for their meal, and Otan is reaching for a canteen when she recognizes it as the one she had drank out of earlier that day.

“Can I have that one?” she asks, more eager than she had meant to. Otan glances at her with confusion, as he has since they reunited, but he hands it over regardless.

“It was an easy con, Emori, what are you so rattled?” Otan asks and it’s clear that she won’t be able to brush off his questions this time. But the problem is that it was an easy con, and she can’t help but wish that it had been harder, had dragged on a little longer.

“I didn’t think that there are people like that,” she says.

“People like what?”

Emori shrugs, trying to explain it to herself and to Otan at the same time.

“They were just so different,” Emori finally settles on. “It was something new, exciting.”

“All people are the same,” Otan says, and he’s right, and she agrees, has no doubt that if she had stuck around a bit longer they would have shunned her too, but that doesn’t change the way John hadn’t so much as flinched when she showed him her hand.

“There was a boy,” she adds, “I liked him.”

She expects Otan to berate her, but instead he looks at her like he finally understands the itch she’s felt on the inside of her chest since she denied Jaha’s offer to work together.

She doesn’t want to know what he likes. She wants to discover him the same way he’s discovering her. He actually knows things now, knows that she’ll laugh when he nuzzles her neck with his nose, knows she’ll blush when he compliments her in front of the entire house, knows she’ll smile when he kisses her on his way out the door to class.

She hates that too. Not the romantic part, but the attachment part. How dare she fall for someone? How dare she feel safe?

All of these thoughts follow her through her Saturday morning. It’s early; the sunrise is warming the kitchen and she’s the only person awake to see it. For the first time in a record three-day anti-caffeine spree, she makes herself a cup of coffee. It tastes like the morning: nice, safe and a little bitter.

There’s that word again. Safe. It tastes sour in her mouth and makes her clench her jaw. It feels like a lie, even though she’s pretty sure it’s not.

She’s not completely convinced, though. She doesn’t think she ever will be.

She sits on the couch with her coffee, across from the TV cart that houses a tiny collection of action DVDs and Monty’s small, rechargeable roomba that he occasionally programs to chase Raven and Jasper around the kitchen. There are dust motes dancing in the sunlight. A clock ticks from somewhere in the house.

After a couple minutes, the door just off the kitchen creaks open, and Raven limps out, reaching for the coffee pot before she even gets to the counter.

“Hung over?” Emori asks before she can stop herself. It’s been too long; she should be comfortable talking to her roommates by now, but every word she says still sinks like a stone in her stomach.

Raven nods. “It’s been too long since I actually drank Monty’s moonshine,” she grumbles. “Usually I just hold a cup of it to be polite, then nurse a beer to keep Luna company.”

Raven, now bearing her own cup of coffee, plops down beside Emori and thumps her bad leg onto the coffee table. Emori looks at the space above Raven’s foot. There’s a tiredness tugging at her she’d rather not explore, but the alternative is a conversation she’s not sure she can handle.

Thankfully, Raven’s not in a talking mood. She stares off into space, eyes landing somewhere to the left of the TV. Emori watches her, the steady rise and fall of her chest, the twitch of her fingers against her leg.

“You okay?” Raven asks after a moment. “I know that fight with your brother was rough.”

Emori feels a lump rise in her throat. “I’m fine.”

She doesn’t sound like it, even to her own ears. She sounds angry and scared and as bitter as the coffee in her mug.

Raven looks at her and raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Are you?”

Emori bites her lip and looks down at her hands. “I don’t know.”

There’s a creak at the top of the stairs. Both girls’ heads snap up and over at the same time. John is standing there, looking mildly freaked out at their synchronicity.

“Morning,” he says after a moment, meandering down the stairs and flopping down between Raven and Emori. Emori leans her head against his shoulder, feeling the worn fabric of his grey sleep shirt against her cheek.

He reaches for Raven’s coffee cup, then, when she smacks his hand away with a disapproving glare, makes a grab for Emori’s. She hands it over willingly, smiling softly at John’s sound of delight when he swallows the warm liquid.

“Morning,” he says again, a special whisper just for her. He passes the mug back to her, brushes his fingers over her knuckles and kisses her forehead. Just like that, all her oxymoronic thoughts of safety and fear leave her. She hates how much she loves being able to snuggle into his side, but she does it all the same.

Raven looks over at the two of them and smiles. After a moment, she struggles to her feet. John looks up at her, then over at Emori.

“I’m not trying to make it weird,” Raven says casually, with one of her rare, genuine smiles not far behind. “I’m just hungry. You want pancakes?”

John grins. “You mean, do I want you to make Bellamy bring us pancakes when he inevitably comes over?”

For some reason, Raven’s chest flushes a deep red. “Um, yeah. Sure.”

Emori lifts her head. “Raven, have you found this house another unsuspecting deliveryman?”

“Or deliverywoman?” John asks, wiggling his eyebrows.

“J, I swear to God-”

The doorbell rings. Raven goes to answer it, relieved to escape this line of questioning. Upstairs, Emori can hear several howls of protest at the sound from Jasper, Monty and Octavia. She feels John’s laughter rumbling through his chest and up to his shoulders.

She’s about to say something when his lips on her skin make her stop short. He kisses her cheek, then her temple, then her hair. “You feeling better?” he asks.

“I’m trying not to think about it,” she answers truthfully. It’s a strange feeling, this honesty. It’s so easy to believe that she is capable of transparency. Sometimes, she can even fool herself.

Raven bustles back into the kitchen. After a moment, she pauses, leans over the peninsula counter and shouts, “Get in here!”

Luna pads into the kitchen, her hands clasped in front of her, like she’s not sure where to put them.

“You could have followed me, you know,” Raven says.

Luna shrugs. “I wasn’t sure.”

“It’s a standing invitation,” John notes.

“Ah,” Luna says, and then falls silent. She perches on the stool between Raven’s room and the back door and watches Raven place a call to Bellamy, presumably for pancakes.

Luna makes Emori nervous. She’s contained, but too much so. She’s like a powder keg; the slightest spark could set her off, but Emori doesn’t know what that spark is. The scars on her knuckles suggest a violent past, a past spent doling out pain. Maybe that’s what Emori senses.

“You alright?” Luna asks her, raising her voice to be heard over Raven, who is succinctly roasting Bellamy for something or another.

“Fine,” Emori says, sharpening her voice just enough for Luna to drop the subject.

John tangles his fingers in the ends of Emori’s hair. To escape the shivers running down her spine, she leans forward to set her coffee mug on the table. Behind them, Monty and Octavia clatter down the stairs. Monty picks up his phone from the dining room table and starts thumbing through it while trying to shield the screen from Octavia’s prying eyes.

“Who’s texting you so early on a Saturday morning?” Octavia asks, dodging Monty’s flying elbow.

“Some square who didn’t party as hard as us, probably,” Raven answers.

“‘Square’?” John asks over Emori’s head. “What, are we living in the ‘60s?”

Monty snorts, but his eyes don’t leave the phone. He starts to type, and Emori clocks the small smile on his face as it grows in size and volume.

“Who are you talking to?” she asks, nearly flinching when her voice makes the room go quiet. John told her once that it only happens because they aren’t used to her speaking up, but it still makes her anxious. She’s used to flying under the radar, to being invisible by her own design.

Thankfully, Monty spares her the awkwardness. “Just someone I met,” he hedges.

Emori thinks about letting it go, but she sees the blush on his cheeks and decides to have a little fun. “Would this be that pretty little blonde you met at the bookstore last Friday? You know, the one you tried to hide from Raven and me when you saw us walk in?”

“Damn it, Emori, you weren’t supposed to tell anyone!” Raven groans.

Emori smirks. John sits up a little straighter and pulls Emori a little closer. “Come on, Green,” he says. “Spill.”

“Her name is Harper,” he says. Raven wolf-whistles, ignoring the slap on the arm from Octavia. “We met at the lab library. She’s pre-med, but for research.”

“Raven looks like she’s about to become a human exclamation point,” John whispers in Emori’s ear. She can’t stop the laugh that bubbles up in her throat.

“What’re we talking about?” Lexa asks as she and Jasper come downstairs. A third set of footsteps follow, and everyone in the room turns to gape at Costia as she makes her way into the kitchen.

“Morning,” she says softly. “May I have some coffee?”

“Damn,” Emori mutters to John. “She’s been here what? Twice? She belongs here more than I do, and I live here.”

John inhales, like he’s about to say something, but then Raven starts questioning whether or not Costia had Slept Over last night (“The capital letters are implied in the tone,” Octavia says) and Lexa starts loudly insisting that Costia just came over really early, all the while Monty just looks relieved that Raven forgot about him. Then Bellamy shows up with breakfast and the whole house dissolves into a quiet kind of chaos-slash-feeding frenzy that abruptly ceases when Raven not-so-subtly herds everyone out into the backyard, leaving Emori and John alone on the couch, curled into each other’s warmth, breathing in the silence.

“That was obvious,” he says drily. Emori snorts and reaches for his hand. He takes her bad hand and runs his fingers over the callouses near what passes for her knuckles. “You want to go out there?”

She shakes her head because she doesn’t. She actually likes this, being alone with him. It’s a strange feeling, this trust in both him and herself.

He runs a finger over the scar under her eye, then shifts so his arm isn’t thrown around her shoulders, but instead resting on the side of her face. She has to look at him now. Damn him.

She remembers standing in his room, chocolate in her mouth, their answer-for-answer game, his fear of touching her, her fear of letting him in. She compares that image with them now, their shy touches and the way his eyes flicker to her mouth every so often, and something warm spreads through her.

“I wouldn’t have been okay with this two months ago,” she tells him. When he laughs, his breath tickles her cheek.

“Me either,” he says, and his eyes go to her mouth again.

She remembers her first morning in the house, how she wanted to bite his lips, and is almost relieved that the urge is still there. He’s so beautiful, blue eyes and sleep-wrinkled shirt, soft hands and careful words.

“Can I kiss you?” she asks.

They’re back in her old apartment and she’s waiting for him to ask, but he’s not, so here she is, tossing back her own fear in favor of something stronger. Love, maybe? That’s too much to hope for. She’d settle for his vague acceptance if she thought it would get her something more than a lifetime of being alone.

“Why are you asking?” John murmurs.

They’re on the stairs and he’s explaining why she terrifies him, why anyone that wants anything from him scares him to the point of hostility. It’s not an excuse, but it’s a reason, a reason she understands.

“Because no one else ever did,” she whispers.

He moves forward and presses his lips to hers. She feels herself gasp, then lets herself sink into the feeling of his hands in her hair and on her waist, his mouth moving against hers, the tentative press of his tongue on her lower lip.

“You belong here,” he murmurs against her mouth. “You belong right here, with us.”

She sighs, reaching up to tangle her good hand in his hair as he kisses her again, soft, then hard, then soft again, as if she’s something fragile, something holy. Her shirt rides up as she reaches for him with her bad hand, and he jerks back as his fingers brush the bare skin of her waist.

“It’s okay, John,” she says, pressing a light kiss to the underside of his jaw. His stubble tickles her nose. “It’s okay.”

They stay like that for a little while, hands roaming under shirts and over skin. Emori realizes that he likes it when she ghosts her hands over his spine, that he lets out a soft groan every time she nips at his mouth. When she finally gets up the nerve to sink her teeth into his lower lip, she’s rewarded with his hands tightening on her waist and his rough, desperate voice gasping her name.

They finally break apart when the back door creaks open and Costia’s apologetic voice announces that she’s just sneaking in to use the bathroom.

“It’s okay,” John says, propping himself up on his elbow (when did they end up lying down?). His voice is still flustered and raspy. Emori feels deeply gratified at the sound. “You can tell Captain Obvious and the others to come back in.”

“He means Raven,” Emori explains to the girl’s baffled expression. Costia nods awkwardly, then disappears into the bathroom.

John kisses her forehead, looking down at her. She smiles up at him.

She remembers his shaking voice: I want to kiss you, and it’s fucking terrifying. I want to fall in love with you, but I’m not sure that I can.

She wonders if it still terrifies him. She wonders if he could ever love her. She wonders if she has managed to trick him into doing so, just another well-done con, or if he chose this all on his own.

Then he kisses her again, grinning like a child, and she realizes that maybe, just maybe, someone actually managed to choose her without any coercion on her part.

The thought makes her want to cry.

Somewhere between cleaning up the kitchen and doing homework, she ends up roped into a grocery shopping trip with John, Octavia, Bellamy and Raven, which is a lot more fun than it sounds, especially since Bellamy seems more and more horrified at the prospect of dragging Raven and John through Target the more time he spends in a car with them.

Bellamy splits off from them the moment they get inside, making a beeline for the books. Raven and Octavia go in search of bread and coffee, and Murphy drags Emori to the frozen vegetables.

“You have to learn to like these,” he says, pointing to the array of frozen green things. “Pick two.”

Emori glares at him. “I’m not a child, John.”

“True,” he says, probably to placate her, “but you do need to eat something even mildly healthy for a change.”

She huffs at him, but agrees, taking out two bags of frozen green beans and tossing them at John, who glares and deposits them into the cart. “Here. Healthy. What next?”

“Want salad?” he asks. Emori wrinkles her nose. “Damn it, Emori, you can’t just eat garbage from convenience stores.”

“Watch me.”

“I’d rather not.” He leads her to the tiny produce section and passes her a bag of lettuce. “Here. Just trust me.”

She lets him lead her around a while more, first to get bread and milk, then to get some chips and salsa. She sneaks a package of cookies and a frozen pizza into the cart, but John pretends not to notice. He does, however, draw the line at a bottle of Coke.

They find Bellamy near the self-checkout stations, thumbing through his phone. The second John sees him, he groans.

“Bellamy, no,” he says as Bellamy looks into their cart, then begins typing.

“Listen, there’s-”

“Bellamy, no,” Octavia says, running up with her and Raven’s cart. “No. No Cartwheel. No.”

“What’s a Cartwheel?” Emori asks John.

“It’s a coupon app that this dumbass insists on using every time we go to Target,” John explains. Behind him, Raven begins another one of her roasts, this one all about Bellamy and his “grandfather-friend tendencies.” Emori can’t help but smile.

As she follows John out to Bellamy’s car with a cart full of food - real food! - and a chest full of laughter, she thinks about all the things she never thought she could have and how close they are to her grasp at this very moment.

It’s nice, but a little disconcerting. It’s nice, but not quite nice enough to make her forget about Otan - not completely.

She stares out the window the whole ride home. It’s just as loud and obnoxious as the ride there, but she can’t find it in her to join in. She looks at John out of the corner of her eye and thinks maybe I should break his heart. Then, maybe I should stop this before it all starts. Then, maybe all of this is more than I can handle, more than I can hold in my two hands, more than I ever deserved.

She wants out. She wants to run. She feels that same flight instinct she’s held onto since the day she was arrested. She feels the same itch that she felt the day Otan first called her, the day she took John to the place where she grew up, the day he kissed her and she actually felt like this life was something more than a hazy dream that would disappear the longer she actually lived inside it.

That’s what this feeling is, she realizes. It’s like she’s living inside a house of glass, and if she touches it, if she dares to think too much, if she dares to settle in and lean back against the wall, the whole damn illusion will shatter and she’ll find herself alone and scared on a street corner or another shitty apartment and this time there will be absolutely no safety net.

“Mori?” John nudges her gently. “You okay?”

He knows. Somehow, he must know what she’s thinking. She blinks, shakes her head, steadies her breathing. “I’m fine.”

She doesn’t look at him. She can’t. She can’t.

“We need to talk,” is the first thing she says when Otan picks up the phone.

“So now you want to?” he snaps. Emori flinches as if she’s been punched. “Where was that last night?”

She hangs up.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” John asks. She’s lying in bed. He’s kneeling on her floor, his cheek against the edge of her mattress. His voice is muffled, but still resigned. “I can tell when someone’s about to run. You have that look.”

She aches. Tears prickle at the back of her eyes. “He was all I had,” she says, because what else do you say to a true accusation?

“I know.”

“I literally owed him my life.” She sits up, props herself on an elbow and meets his eyes. “I don’t know how to feel. And I hate it.”

“I think he’s an idiot for not staying for you. For not coming back for you until it was too late. Family’s family.” He looks down and shrugs. “But what do I know?”

She reaches down and starts carding her fingers through his hair, smiling carefully when he leans into her touch with a sigh. The words I love you well up in her, swift and furious, and she has to gnaw on her lower lip to keep them inside.

“You’re beautiful,” she murmurs instead. He shakes his head. She tugs on the strands of his hair just enough to make him groan. “Yes, you are.”

He looks up at her. His eyes are dark. “Question for question?”

She sighs, sits up, and scoots back so he can climb up and sit next to her. They stack her pillows against the wall and lean back. “Sure.”

“Why are you leaving?”

She blows out a breath. “I can’t stay here. This doesn’t feel real.”

John snorts. “Bullshit.”

She shakes her head. This isn’t coming out right. “This isn’t my life, John. This passivity, this easiness, this pattern of school and classes and having enough to eat - it’s all wrong. It’s not mine.”

“You mean you don’t deserve it?” He sounds guarded, but like he’s trying to understand. Emori will take what she can get.

“I don’t.” She looks up at him, willing him to understand. The ache in her chest only grows stronger. “How long until they realize what I am and throw me out? How long before I’m alone again?”

He reaches for her bad hand and begins meticulously unwrapping it. When she tries to pull away, he holds on tighter. “John…”

“Otan left you,” he says evenly, not taking his eyes off her skin, which is slowly bared to him one scar and scab and flaw at a time. He tosses off the wrap and pushes her sleeve up, turning her palm over so he can brush the worst of the scar at her wrist with his fingers. “That was his choice. Your mom threw you out,” his voice catches on the words, “and that was her stupid, fucking choice.”

He crawls over the bed and kneels near her feet. She’s still wearing her boots: ugly things with the soles wearing out. He unzips one of them and pulls it off carefully. “You did some illegal shit, and, yeah, that was your choice.” He takes off her other boot. “But Otan was right there with you. And whatever happened with Baylis, I’m guessing that wasn’t up to either of you.”

He looks at her, dead in the eyes, and there’s no chance he’ll flinch away this time. Secretly, she’s glad, even as she shrinks under his gaze. Ontari has left him, it seems, and she rejoices in his freedom, however slight and fleeting.

“It’s not your fault,” he says softly, resting his hands on her shins. She tries to look away, but he grips her legs until she turns back to him. “It’s not your fault.”

“John…” She almost laughs, she’s so uncomfortable. His words grate against her ears. She wants to run, run now, run far away before his words shake the glass walls just enough to break them all down.

“It’s not your fault,” he says again, shuffling closer on his knees. He stops and kneels beside her, close enough to kiss her, close enough to reach her. “It’s not your fault.”

“Shut up, John.” She tries for anger, but her voice trembles. She pulls her knees up to her chest. Her eyes burn. Her face is warm. Her left hand weighs a thousand pounds.

“It’s not your fault.” He rests his hands on either side of her face. A single tear falls. John wipes it away. “Do you believe me?”

She lets out a dry, choked sob and shakes her head. “You belong here,” he whispers, kissing her forehead.

“This place is not my home.”

“Hey.” He kisses her nose. “Your home is with me. Okay?”

She lets out another sob. She reaches for him, and he comes to her. He wraps her in his arms and pulls the covers over them both. He lets her cry into his chest for the second time in as many nights and then he kisses her until she’s breathless and laughing as tears dry on her face.