#nursemurphy

Regardless of the reasoning, she’s still knee deep in battle. Or mud and bodily fluids, but “battle” sounds a little more romantic. A typical Friday night for her and the warriors amongst the Sky People. What’s not typical is that these Grounders aren’t retreating. The longer that this battle wears on, the slower Clarke’s reactions get, and the more convinced she is that they meant it when they said they would fight to the last herd beast.

Clarke’s knuckles are beginning to show their pain even through the high of fighting, and she desperately needs a weapon. She dodges under a broad swing of an axe and drives her fist up, the sharp edge of the rock slicing into the bottom of her attacker’s chin. It doesn’t knock them out, but it does surprise them enough for her to jump to the side and scan the surrounding area for… There, a sword that must have been knocked out of someone’s grip and abandoned in favour of another weapon. Or in favour of dying, but Clarke knows that thinking about death on the battlefield is a dangerous game to play.

She leaps at the sword, not graceful or heroic, merely attempting to be effective. Unfortunately, her chemical-addled mind fails to take into account the mud beneath her feet and the fact that if she misses, there’s a very pissed off axe-wielding enemy behind her. Of course her feet slip and she falls just short of her goal. She scrambles forward to grab it, dirt working its way into places that it was never meant to be. And just as her hands close around the hilt, her leg catches on fire.

Clarke rolls over with a shout that verges on a roar, her leg wrenching the still embedded axe from the grasp of its owner. Her new sword strikes true in her rage, wedging itself deep into the person’s neck and slipping from her increasingly uncooperative hands. She glares at the offending appendages for a moment before her mind decides to clue her in on why they’re not working right, and why she feels like her head is filling with feathers.

The axe. Clarke’s gaze lights upon the weapon, still in her flesh. Well, half in her, she supposes, considering the way it’s currently prying her calf apart given its leverage against the ground. That explains the fire in her leg. The blood explains the fact that her vision is rapidly going dark.

The last thing Clarke thinks before passing out is Who’s going to take care of the injured now? I can hardly walk around to check up on them. And then she doesn’t think of anything half as coherent for a very long time.

--

Clarke hates fever dreams. Even when she’s having them, she knows them for what they are, and it pisses her off. Being helpless, at the will of the combined forces of her subconscious mind and physiology, it just annoys her. Of course, that’s after the mind numbing terror of watching demons claw at your flesh.

When Clarke was a kid, she’d been sick a few times. Her parents had always sat with her and coaxed her through the worst of it, but she knew that couldn’t last forever. So Clarke is really careful with her own health, but hey, she couldn’t predict that axe blow. She doesn’t expect anyone to sit with her and care for her. Honestly, Clarke finds her delirious mind wondering if she’s not dead. Who would have been able to stop the bleeding and bind her up?

But, as fever grips her mind properly, Clarke’s fairly sure that she’s not dead. Because if she were dead, she’d either be in heaven or hell. The nonsensical torture does speak of her own personal hell, but there’s one catch that keeps her from that conclusion: on occasion, when the dreams are bad enough to wrench screams from her dried throat, someone sits with her and cares for her. She doesn’t know who, just that they have cool hands and a soothing voice, and something about her trusts them.

Time has no meaning to her, accelerating and droning on seemingly without reason, but when Clarke’s wits return to her, she finds herself in the infirmary with a few other slumbering forms. She feels distinctly grungy, so it’s definitely been a few days. At least someone had thought to clean the blood off of her, she doesn’t have the distinct itch that it gives her whenever it dries on her skin.

Just glancing around the room and inspecting her leg - quite well bandaged, Clarke finds herself wondering who did it - tires her out substantially. Much as she might want to get up and check on the others, she knows that she has to rest to recover from the wound and what was probably an infection. So Clarke begrudgingly lays her head back down, and sleep, devoid of any memorable dreams, claims her almost instantly.

The next time Clarke wakes up it’s to someone touching her leg. She groans in discomfort, even their quite gentle touch causing her a lot of pain. Serves her right for her clumsiness.

“I know you have to do this, so just ignore what I’m about to say, but fuck you.” Clarke grumbles, eyes clenched shut as nimble fingers manipulate her dressings, changing them quickly. She hears a light chuckle, presumably from the owner of the hands, and her eyes fly open. She’d been expecting to see Bellamy, or maybe Nyko if they’d managed to work out a trade with the Grounders for some of his experience. But standing over her, looking exhausted but satisfied, is none other than John Murphy.

“Murphy!” Clarke exclaims in shock, jerking slightly with her leg remaining still in Murphy’s grasp, “What the hell are you doing here? Where’s… whoever’s in charge?”

“Don’t move.” He says it quietly, almost as if he’s speaking to her leg as he readjusts it to get the tension on the bandage right. He raises his voice slightly to address her, his eyes never straying from his handiwork. “I can answer both of those questions in one sentence: I’m here because I’m the one in charge.”

Clarke’s still slightly groggy mind attempts to reconcile that data. Murphy, in charge? No way has he actually been responsible for taking care of all of the casualties after the battle. Although he was usually hanging around Clarke, trying to help her out in order to get back in her good graces. Had he honestly payed attention to what she’d been doing? A look at the bandage on her leg implies that he had been, it’s really well done.

“No one else knew where to start with your leg.” He sits on a stool next to her cot with a sigh, laying her leg down carefully. “Believe it or not, I do actually like learning things. So I took what I knew from watching you, and I did the best I could. After Bellamy saw me stitch you up, I guess he just assumed I knew how to deal with everything. He dumped me in here and told me to shout if I needed anything. Lucky for me, you were the worst injured out of everyone. How did you managed that one anyway?”

Clarke feels her cheeks heat with a slight flush. God, of course she would be the most incapacitated from one misjudged jump. “I was, um, he hit me and I rolled over?”

“How did one of them hit you in the calf, though?” There’s a little curl to the corner of Murphy’s mouth that speaks volumes to Clarke. He knows that she’s embarrassed by her injury, and he’s also not going to give up until she tells him the full truth. Dammit.

“I was trying to grab a sword and I slipped, okay? I shouldn’t have to explain myself to you.” Normally the second sentence would have carried venom on it, but Clarke somehow can’t bring herself to hate him or even be angry with him right now. Maybe it’s the fact that he cared for the people she should have been looking after, maybe it’s that he payed attention to her work. Whatever it is, Clarke sees him slightly differently.

“So the princess is human after all, who would have thought it.” Murphy smiles and pats her on the shoulder as he rises. “Well, humans who have injuries like that need rest, I’ll leave you to it.”

And he does just that without further comment, leaving Clarke thoroughly confused. Surely Murphy hadn’t been like this a few days ago, just mildly sarcastic and actually semi-helpful. She couldn’t possibly have been holding a grudge strong enough to blind her to every aspect of humanity in him, could she? But she watches him tend to the others, carefully giving small sips of water to Harper and checking her head bandages, and Clarke is forced to face the concept that she may very well have been blinded by her own prejudice against the man.

Clarke knows that she should sleep, but at the moment she’s far too confused to do that. Murphy had learned from her of his own accord, something she’d had to force Bellamy to do with a lot of bribery and grumbling. Murphy had voluntarily cared for everyone, when he owed them little to no loyalty. He’d cared for her, and probably been the one to soothe her during her fever. And she still can’t quite believe he’s the same person as before the battle, even though there’s no way one person could change that much in such a short period of time.

Okay, so maybe she can reconcile those facts with the man before her. She’s willing to accept that she may have been wrong about him. But what Clarke doesn’t understand is why she trusts him. In her fever state she had trusted him enough to be soothed by him, and now that she’s awake there’s another stranger manifestation of it: she hadn’t been flinching away from him.

Ever since Finn had died at her hand, Clarke hadn’t been much of one for physical contact, certainly not casual touches. But she hadn’t jerked her leg from his grasp earlier. Sure, that could be blamed on her knowing that it could mess things up, but she can’t use that excuse for when he’d touched her shoulder. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t really noticed it if she’s being quite honest. And thinking back on it doesn’t give her the nausea that most memories of people attempting to comfort her with hugs and the like do.

Clarke turns her head fully to look at him as he inspects a bandages around Jasper’s stomach. There’s nothing menacing about him in that moment, no indication that he’s murdered people in the past. But really, haven’t they all? Just because it wasn’t Sky People, does that make her more innocent than him? And maybe that’s why her body doesn’t reject his presence. Murphy owns his sins, doesn’t deny them or rationalize them like everyone else does. Clarke tried to, but in the end she just had to accept that she murdered Finn. No one else wants to admit it, but… Maybe Murphy would understand her.

“Hey, Murphy?” She waits for him to acknowledge her with a questioning “Hm?”, not wanting to break his concentration. “Do you think I murdered Finn?”

Murphy goes still, and Clarke’s worried that she may have pissed him off. God, that was a stupid move. Maybe she can blame it on the pain, or residual fever or something. But when Murphy turns to face her he doesn’t seem mad, more conflicted.

“Do you want the truth, or is that going to make you hate me?” That question in and of itself is answer enough, but a part of Clarke needs to hear it.

“Truth. I’m a big girl, I can handle it.” Murphy walks over to stand by her, and sits on the stool again. He hunches over and folds his hands near her on the cot, not quite touching her.

“Yeah, you murdered him.” Clarke knew it, but it still feels like a punch to the gut. Oddly, though, a weight seems to lift from her chest with the blow. “But you know what?”

Clarke shakes her head, a sudden lump in her throat preventing her from speaking. She’d thought she had come to terms with this, but apparently not. No, of course not. How could she ever come to terms with murdering the man she loved? Murphy’s hands shift slightly and he lays one over the back of hers, not holding it, just providing a physical tether for her.

“We all die eventually. Take it from someone who killed for a terrible reason, death is death. No matter whose hand it comes from or why, it would have come to them anyway. And it doesn’t have to define you, if you don’t let it.” He smiles at her then, a real smile, one she’d never seen on his face before. Since when did Murphy get all wise?

Clarke doesn’t respond, because she doesn’t have anything to say. He had a point, though. She’d absolutely been letting Finn’s death rule her life. Avoiding people, withdrawing from her role as leader, being riskier in battles. It had all started after his blood had stained her hands. But looking at Murphy, who had managed to nurse her back to health even though she’d gotten him hanged once, and he’d killed people under her protection, she knows he’s right.