Four days into Clarke's stay in the lighthouse, and Murphy thought that the worst she would do was hide the billiard balls and talk nonsense at him for a few hours. He woke up first and started making breakfast. MRE's so they didn't use up the dried goods too quickly, so opening vacuum sealed packs which is harder than it sounds.
In the middle of pouring a glass of water, a shriek startled him into dropping the glass and pitcher, shattering the glass on the kitchen floor. The pitcher was some form of plastic and survived, though the water from it pooled around Murphy's bare feet. There were shards of glass everywhere, and Clarke was still screaming. He tried stepping backward but slivers impaled his arch and heel. From there he jumped as far as he could and caught a small granule in his other foot. He hopped a few feet farther away and then hobbled to the bedroom, leaving a trail of blood the whole way.
He found Clarke searching the room while pausing in her wails long enough to breathe and nothing more. It took several minutes but Murphy figured out that she was screaming words. They were just drawn out. "I will find you."
Touching her got him punched in the face then shoved into the mirror so hard it cracked. "Well this is going to be a bad day for the breakables." He cursed under his breath before screaming just as loud as she was. "What are you looking for?"
"The lever." She tried to leave the room but he threw himself in her way. "I have to find the lever before they kill my mom and Raven and everyone." The shrill calmed down a bit, but she was still loud. And then she fell to the floor, sobbing and scratching at her arms.
Murphy shoved a wedge into the top of the door so she couldn't open it and then limped into the bathroom. He needed to get the glass out of his feet before he could do anything about Clarke.
He got all but one sliver out when Clarke crawled into the bathroom. She got one glimpse at his bloody feet and started screaming again. "Too late! I'm too late. They killed you. They killed my Murphy!"
The last shard would have to wait until she let go of his legs. She hugged his legs tight enough that his toes started to tingle. "Clarke, I'm fine. I just stepped on some broken glass."
When she didn't let go, he worried that she'd gone from cracked to shattered. He sat on the toilet, while Clarke sat on the floor hugging his legs. Since talking to her didn't help anything, he pet her. It seemed inane but what else was he supposed to do?
Her tears soaked through his pajama bottoms and her arms loosened. Blood rushed into his lower extremities bringing a deep ache with them. Clarke looked up at Murphy. "Don't die."
A flood of affection filled him and he rubbed her chin with his thumb as he held her jaw. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Will you help me find the lever? I need to save the others too. But I don't want to kill the kids. They're so small and helpless. Pulling the lever will kill them and not only the bad guys. I can't kill the kids. Or babies. Can't kill the babies."
She continued to ramble about killing children, and John took the opportunity to tweeze the last bit of glass out of his foot. He needed peroxide and bandages but there wasn't much left of either. Soap would have to be enough.
"Now what to do about you?" he mused to himself. He got the sick feeling that Clarke had done something she thought unforgivable to save the people from the Ark. Whether or not it was really killing children he didn't know, but he had an unusual idea on how to make her feel better. "Hey, Clarke, let's find the button, the button that only kills the bad guys and leaves the innocents alone."
"A button? There's a button that can do that?" She crawled out of the bathroom in search of the button, and Murphy limped after her. What he didn't think about was that there were thousands of buttons in the lighthouse, many that shouldn't be pushed at random.
All the lights were on, the stereo, the television, the blender, the oven, and the computer before he made it out of the bedroom. He noted that wedges in the tops of doors didn't stop her. He went around turning everything off and tried to find a way to turn her off of the search for the right button. "Clarke! This is the button." He pointed to the one broken remote. "This red button here."
Clarke snatched the remote off him and pushed the red button. "It didn't do anything."
"Because it made the bad guys from where you were leave your friends alone. We're miles away from there so you couldn't see it happen. But I know it did. Your friends and family are safe." He relaxed when she smiled.
As the fog of her confusion lifted, her face crumpled. "No. It didn't help anything. They've been dead for months and months. I killed them. There was a pregnant woman, and all those children. I couldn't look at the infants, but I know they're dead too." Her legs wobbled and Murphy caught her and eased them both to the floor, as he saw her feet were freshly bloodied from walking through the kitchenette. "Murphy? What's wrong with me?"
"Right now, your feet are shredded from broken glass."
"That's not what I'm talking about and you know it." Clarke's face pinched with despair. "Just say it."
He sighed. "I'm not a doctor but it sounds like schizophrenia. My one neighbor on the Ark had it, and you've been acting a lot like him."
And the clarity disappeared. "You're funny. I'm fine. I should check your feet make sure you got all the glass out."
"I already got it. We need to fix your feet though."
"They've got spiders in them. They're in there wriggling around. My mom never showed me how to de-spider feet." Clarke stood up and walked with ease to the couch. "I'm going to sit here nice and still until they go away."
Murphy shook his head and retrieved the tweezers and a soapy rag out of the bathroom. When he returned, he said, "I'm a spider specialist."
Clarke picked her feet up and rested them on the coffee table. "I'm so glad that one of us knows how to get rid of spiders."
Most of the shards and slivers were easy to get out, but others took some digging because her feet were still healing from the busted blisters. As he wiped her feet and scratched arms with the soapy rag, he said, "I've got to clean up the spiders in the kitchen. I need you to stay right here until I'm done. Can you do that?"
She nodded her head with a solemn trust in him. "Promise."
As Murphy cleaned the floor, he muttered, "I'm going to regret taking her in. She's going to be the death of me. I can see it now. The only two people to find comfort after the apocalypse die in an over the top murder suicide, so they aren't so comfortable anymore now are they?"