Mama Murphy
If there ever was a case of deceiving looks, I think best example was Mama Murphy. I do not know what her name was, before that, and she did not seem to care. It just was Mama Murphy. At first I thought, 'old woman', until she started. Started talking, started... showing.
I had never met a Seer before. I wonder still if they are all like her.
"It's warm."
It's warm.
It was such a trivial trio of words, a simple description that something wasn't cold, or even lukewarm. It was something anyone could say of anything, and it would normally have not even warranted a raised eyebrow, much less the uneasy, almost chilling effect those three words, spoken by a kindly-looking, elderly woman, had on him.
Her previous words, words he'd only barely paid attention to as his mind cleared, now came back again, as if to rebound within the walls of his skull. Martin stared at the old woman, hard, uncertain and with something he couldn't even himself identify. It wasn't fear, nor was it anything remotely like a happy thought.
It was simply a deep, boundless confusion.
"It's not warm."
His voice cracked as he spoke the words, yet he knew, somehow, they were false. Even if he'd not noticed whether or not the lodestone was warm when he'd last touched it, and though the amount of magicka he'd spent to survive the ambush would have been enough to drain it, no doubt... he still felt, somehow, that it was warm. That maybe its reserves had been deeper than he'd expected, or that maybe it hard recharged somewhat while he'd been unconscious... But she could sit there and tell him, with such certainty, that the stone was warm.
But if she sensed any of his thoughts, Mama Murphy did not let it show. She simply watched him, like a stone guardian, her smile never wavering or faltering in its apparent, borderline senility. And yet, the eyes. The eyes were sharp, sharper than any he'd seen yet. Sharper by far than Piper's, and so much more like something beyond what he could tell from looks alone. Something about her eyes had him at a far greater unease than even waking up with just one leg.
"Why does it matter if it's warm?" Martin reached out, beckoning for its return, but the old woman made no motion to deliver.
"It matters more than you could possibly fathom, kid," Mama Murphy rasped, her voice somewhere between melancholia and laughter, "And not at all. Most... I suppose no one else, really, would understand. They wouldn't feel it. But you feel it, and I feel it. It has... been so very very long since I felt it last."
"What do you mean?"
"How did you end up here?" Still the smile persisted, curious and soft and yet all at once like something deeper lay behind it.
"The Minutemen saved us." Martin felt something falling into place, though not as much as he'd have liked. Too much here still seemed like it evaded his understanding, "You... you knew. You knew we needed help, where we were... how?" And the word she'd used came back as well, something he'd scarcely noticed at first, "What... is the 'Sight' you speak of?"
"It's a gift," she said the word as easily and with as much spectacle as had she described the color of his shoes. Or, shoe, now. He would only need one. Small silver lining, "Just as yours."
"My... gifts are not... commonplace here," he ground the words out, unsure suddenly just what the old woman actually knew. One on hand, there was nothing she ought to know of him, but on the other hand, she'd known about the ambush and sent Garvey and his men off to their rescue, "Neither is your 'Sight', I think. I've heard of nothing like it in the Commonwealth."
"You haven't been here that long either, kid," Mama Murphy chuckled.
Something about the way she said it made his mind halt, if just for a moment. It was like a trolley coming to a grinding, screeching halt, with all passengers holding on for dear life. And somehow, she could tell. He knew she could, her eyes and posture changed almost as fast as his own understanding.
"...Who are you?"
"Just an old woman," and so much more, he'd no doubt. Murphy smiled still, yellow teeth showing in the dim light, "I am no one special, kid. Just another child of the Commonwealth. It is rare to meet someone actually special. Someone like you."
Martin held his tongue now. It felt as if she toyed with him, and he could not muster up the energy to bite back. More than anything he wanted to see Piper, the Robert, and then he wanted to sleep.
"You're a man out of place, I know. Far from home, further than most ever think of being," the old woman's voice was a slow rasp, like a Skooma-addict's, yet coherent and clear. Somewhere in another room, maybe adjacent to the one they were in, Martin could hear voices. No laughter, but voices still. Lowered, maybe by the walls or intent, "You didn't mean to be here. There's lots you didn't mean for, but they happened anyway, and now you're in a new place, somewhere foreign where the air's different and nothing's as it should be. Somewhere..." old lips curled as if tasting a thought, "...uncharted. You tell those who ask that you come from a different land, that you come from across the seas... You let them draw their own conclusions and take from them what you can. You make yourself a man you are not."
"You know where I am from."
It wasn't a statement, so much as a question that bordered on the disbelieving. No, actually it was wholly into disbelief. Murphy didn't reply at first, in fact she barely reacted at all to his words. She simply maintained the same expression of mild bemusement, and a hint of sympathy, as if he was some sad case.
"...I have an idea," she finally said, slower than before, "Stories, mostly. When you get to my age, you're lucky if you remember half the things your gramps told you. I grew up thinking they were just that. Then somewhere along the way, the Sight appeared. All of a sudden it made all kinds of sense, but the storyteller wasn't around anymore by then..."
Martin processed what she'd said, or at least he tried. It seemed impossible. But, no more so than his own arrival here, he supposed. Only the probability of it all, that he should meet someone else, was so far beyond reasonable that it seemed to him more a daedric jest than mere coincidence.
"How long ago?"
"...I don't know, kid," Murphy sagged a little, suddenly seeming older and far less sharp. Far more like an ordinary, elderly woman, "It was my grandmother who came here, sometime long, long ago. Somewhere out west. Never met her myself, all the stories I heard was from my grandfather, that she came from a people as dark as Preston. There was sand, lots of it, and tall spires and palaces..."
"Hammerfell," Martin breathed the word almost more than he dared speak it, a feeling like an electric current passing along his spine, "Was...dali se vikaše Hammerfell?"
Murphy watched him for a few moments, her eyes and face scrounged up as if trying to process an old riddle. It struck him with shame that he'd spoken Nibenese to her, as if she'd have any idea what he was saying. It had been a fool's hope, no more reasonable than when he'd first met Piper and done the same. Less, actually, for at least he'd not known where he'd been back then. Mama Murphy already had told him that at most she had some old stories.
It had been an exercise in unreasonable optimism.
"I'm sorry, kid," the old woman finally spoke, having perhaps sensed his own hesitation to do so now, "I'm sure you might have hoped I would understand you. But, I've never been there. I've never even met anyone from there."
"Do not apologize," Martin sighed, "I knew you would not, I think. I was..."
"Happy," Murphy said with a small smile, "I didn't need the Sight to tell. You've been thrown into this strange and foreign land, and suddenly here's someone who understands at least a little of how you feel, and where you're from. Someone else from home. And if there's one other person, why not two? Or three?"
Despite himself, her words made him start to wonder. Indeed, here was living proof that others had come here too, from home. Even if she was merely a descendant, there was still power in her. And if one could come here, why not more? Maybe there were more, but like himself they lived mundane lives now, hidden away in broad daylight. Or maybe they simply lived somewhere entirely else, so far away that even were they here, in this world, it made no difference at all to his situation.
"You know, I grew up with stories about mages, people who could... do impossible things," the old woman continued, "My grandfather mostly told them. Didn't believe them, most of the time. It all seemed too... fantastic, back then. When the Sight came to me, though, that's when I started to believe."
"Are you a Seer?"
"That's what they called it. I suppose it's as good a name as anything," Mama Murphy shrugged, a weary expression coming over her, "It doesn't really matter what they called it. I'm Mama Murphy, seems far more practical to just go by what people call me instead. What do they call you, hmm?"
"What do they..." Martin paused, frowning at the unexpected question, "Martin. I... thought you knew?"
"Not your name, kid," she snorted, the sound like crumpling paper, "What you do. What you are. The people who know what you can do, what do they call you? What are you?"
"I'm the doctor in Diamond City," he replied, feeling somehow that it wasn't what she meant, "I'm the... Piper called me the... 'Wasteland Magick-Man', once..."
"Wasteland Magick-Man?" It wasn't derision on her face, but Mama Murphy looked anything but impressed. Her eyes fell to the stone still in her hands, thin fingers caressing its gleaming surface, "Look, kid, we're all here for a reason. I'm not gonna tell you what yours is, Heavens know I aint't cut out for that kind of speeches anymore. But, you have a gift. A unique gift I'd dare say no one else in the Commonwealth has. Not just in what you can do, but in what you know. Green fields, farms, thriving cities, industry, medicine, order..."
She was a Seer. Of course she'd have read his mind by now, even though he'd not at all felt her intruding. Then again, he'd never dealt with Seers before. Maybe it wasn't even a spell, just something they did as naturally as breathing.
"...order in the Commonwealth," she coughed, "W-wouldn't that be a thing?"
"...what are you asking me to do?" Martin scoffed. The way she spoke it made him out as far more important than he'd any wish to be, "I am to bring the Imperial Heartlands to these wastes? I never asked to be here, I wish I'd never come to this hell-..." He bit the words back, for if he'd uttered them he felt they'd sully the few good things in the Commonwealth too; it's people.
It was bitterness that drove his words, he knew. Bitterness of being brought here against his will, of being dragged into a world where the very air was death, and magic all but choked out. A world that had now taken away a part of his physical being,
"I cannot do what you ask. I just want to find a way home."
And take Piper and Natalie with him. They deserved a better life than here.
"And if you can't take them with you?" Mama Murphy asked, then at least seemed to have the decency to realize she'd trodden too close, averting her eyes, "Look kid, I didn't mean to... to go there. But you came here alone. What if you can only go back alone?"
There was a lot he wanted to tell her, in that moment. Very little of it remained polite. Most polite of all indeed was that he kept silent, hard eyes on her old ones. Frustration still boiled, and the old wood of the bedframe creaked in protest as his fingers grabbed them, hard enough to turn white.
"You have a gift, kid," Mama Murphy finally continued, though the words sounded tired now, like a stale repetition of a failed attempt, "You could do a lot of good for a lot of people."
"He already has!"
Neither Martin nor Mama Murphy, for all of her apparent ability to read his mind, had noticed Piper emerging through the door. He hadn't even noticed it opening, but it was clear she'd been listening for some time.
His elation and relief at seeing her safe, unharmed and alive, found itself battered at the sight of her face. There was a large, blackish bruise over the right side of her face, and one eye was covered up beneath gauze and bindings. What hair protruded from the bindings was a lot shorter than before, only a hand's breadth longer than his own, and seemed like it had been cut by inexperienced hands. Her lips bore old blood and cracks.
But it was still Piper. She was alive.
"Martin has already done a lot of good for a lot of people," she continued, turning the old woman's words back on her, "He's saved people who'd have died otherwise. He's given people hope for something better."
"I'm not trying to make him do anything he's not up for," Mama Murphy shrugged. She seemed entirely unimpressed with the younger woman's tone, "He has given you hope, for a better future. I don't need the Sight to tell. But how much more could he do if you didn't have him hide away what he is? If he stopped being afraid of his own identity?"
"Who are you to ask something like that of him?" Piper snapped, "There's more than enough people out there who'd kill him as is. You want him to be even more of a target? Look what happened already!"
There was a look of both regret and revulsion in Piper's eye when she gestured at the stump of his left leg. He'd never seen her this upset, not even in the tunnel when they'd found the raider camp. This time, that gaze had been turned on him, and in a bizarre way it lessened his own outrage and grief at the loss of his leg, and instead filled him only with the same feeling of regret and shame.
It didn't make sense to him, what Mama Murphy had asked. The Commonwealth, even being the hellish ruinscape it was, was still more technologically advanced than the Empire. Even the subterranean settlements and townships, huddled in the underground as they were, could boast electrical appliances and lights. What exactly could he offer? An idea of a better world? It'd be worth all of nothing to people that cared more about getting through the day, or were content with the world as it was.
All he had was his magic. And he'd already seen what that was worth when confronted with firearms.
"I am not afraid of myself," he said then, turning the two women's faces back to him. Both watched him now, Piper with concern and Murphy with the same, seemingly-knowing stare. Like she already knew his mind. In truth she likely did, being a Seer, "I am a mage. I am a son of the Empire. I am Nibenese and Tamrielan. I know what I am."
"You're also just one man," Piper said, turning her uncovered eye on the old woman, "The Minutemen couldn't save the Commonwealth, now you want Martin picking up the pieces?"
"It's not about what I want, kid," Mama Murphy shook her head, a slow movement that didn't quite obscure the wry smile on her lips, "It's what'll happen. I've seen it. The Sight isn't always... easy, to understand. But I've seen you. There are... knights about you, stern faces turned to smiles. One of them isn't what he seems..."
"I'm... so lost right now," Piper muttered, her indignation seemingly vanished, replaced by utter confusion, "Martin?"
"She's a Seer," he muttered, though for all that he knew that, her words were still a mystery to him. Knights? He'd seen nothing in this land to suggest there was such a thing as a knightly order, "A descendant of another from my homeland."
"That's...huh, okay," Piper scratched her head, the part not covered by bandages, "So, what's it mean?"
"She can see the future, to some extent, I believe," Though he'd never before encountered one, so all he had to go on was hearsay and old stories, "Though I don't know how accurate it is. Supposedly, it is everything between visions and feelings..."
"Sounds vague and unconvincing,"
All he could do was shrug. She wasn't wrong, it was vague. Seers weren't regarded on par with regular mages for thát very reason. Mostly. It largely depended on who controlled the Cynod or the College of Whispers.
"Yet, you want to believe it, don't you?" Mama Murphy hummed, a gab-toothed grin appearing on her face, "A brighter future. One you can help bring about. It sounds almost too good to be true, doesn't it?"
"That usually means it is," Piper snorted, "Commonwealth's never kind to optimists."
"But you're still an optimist, all the same," the old woman hummed, wiry fingers tapping against the lodestone's surface. Martin felt as if he could see it spark, "Part of you still believes things can get better. You have seen what he can do, in the tunnels."
Piper visibly stiffened. Martin felt his own irritation with the old woman grow.
"Ah, I'm sorry, kids..." Mama Murphy sighed. She held out the lodestone like an offering of peace, one which Martin greedily took. It was as if in that same moment, some of the sharpness vanished from the old woman's eyes, and Martin had a feeling he'd just taken more than merely the stone from her, "It's... been a long time since I had one. I forgot how... hard it can be to keep out."
"Of our minds," he said. The old woman nodded, eyes still lingering on the gleaming stone. Piper muttered something under her breath, too low for him to discern, but the look she sent the Seer was not a friendly one, "What do you mean it has been a long time?"
Mama Murphy sighed.
"Serpentstones don't last forever. Use them too much, eventually they up and crack on you. I had one, years ago. Tried my best to go moderate with the use, but..." she chuckled, a dry, rasping sound, "...when there's a Deathclaw ripping apart your caravan, you kind of tend to forget about moderation. I couldn't throw spells around like you can, never learned it. But I... was, I think, good with making bullets pack a much harder punch than they should. Pour a bit of energy into the bullet, pull the trigger, watch the fireworks."
"Enchanting. You're an enchanter?"
"Was," she muttered, "Poured too much into that last bullet. Broke the Deathclaw, but broke my stone too."
"This is all going way beyond me," Piper muttered, now loud enough that he could hear, "So, this old lady, she's from- her family's from Tamriel? How many more are there? You're a mage too, right? Martin said most people had some potential."
A series of quick, sharp knocks came on the door. It opened before anyone could say a word. Mama Murphy, deprived of the stone, now seemed as surprised as they were themselves. Preston Garvey emerged from the doorway, hat in one hand, musket in the other.
He looked even worse than he had in Diamond City.
"Josh said you'd be up," it wasn't exactly a greeting, but Martin felt like it could be, "How's the leg?"
"...a little shorter than I remember," Martin snorted, "Sturges, will he come back with the rest of it?"
"He's putting the last finishes on it," Garvey nodded, entering the room fully. It felt like darkness entered with him, and sorrow. Martin owed him his life, and Piper's and Robert's. In truth he owed Mama Murphy too, but had forgotten entirely, "Sorry we couldn't get there in time."
"We're alive," Piper shrugged, "Lots of folks aren't, though."
"But it's more than if you had not come," Martin added. It felt like Piper's words might worsen the man, "I'm alive to complain at my leg."
"Can't tell if that's sarcasm, but I'll take it," the Minuteman said. He frowned, hesitating almost, before he spoke again, "Josh already... told me, about your little conversation. It won't leave my lips, don't worry. Whatever you... are, you're a good man. That's really all I care about."
"It's appreciated," Piper sighed. It seemed like the tension left her. Martin found it was not so kind to him, though. He knew eventually they would need to settle on things, and not just whether or not he should attempt to conceal his magic, "I don't know how we can ever thank you, you know, for pulling us out alive."
Martin felt a pang of his conscience at her words. They hadn't been the only ones to make it, nor even the only ones brought here. In his elation over Piper's safety and the shock of his own injuries, he'd forgotten Robert. Again. It left a sour taste in his mouth.
"Ro- MacCready, the guard that was with us, he survived as well. Josh said he was here," he asked more than stated, hoping for quick nods or other affirmation. Instead he got a moment's worth of confused looks, before Preston seemed to recognize the name, "So, he is safe?"
"He's here, and safe," the bark-skinned soldier nodded, "Actually he's helping the Longs in the cafeteria. It's why I came, figured after everything you'd probably want something to eat."
Martin didn't know what Longs were, but in the moment also found he didn't overly care. On the long list of things taking up his mind right now, the identity of 'the Longs' was far below the average. Top of the line was a missing leg. Then Piper and Mama Murphy fighting for the second place. Then Robert. Then, wherever this place was and why the Minutemen were here.
And somewhere down the line, just above 'the Longs', he also idly wondered what a 'cafeteria' was.
A/N: Writing the usual lengths of chapters is a long process, and it got me thinking. Maybe better to make the updates shorter, like this one, but also more frequent. You know there's too long between updates when even the writer has to reread the previous chapters to remember what happened :3
