A/N: Thank you for all the follows! It's very encouraging. Please review, I welcome all feedback. If you don't like something tell me and I will do my best to fix it. If you want to see something specific happen in this fic let me know! This chapter will focus on some other characters and expect to see some more of Murphy in this fic. I really like his character this season and even though all the characters have amazing development, his is one of my favorite stories. Thanks to all for reading!

Chapter 4

Raven's leg was killing her. She had taken to laying on her side and sleeping all day. She could hardly bear to do anything else. They gave her two meals a day and water, so she wasn't starving, but she was hardly living either. She slept most of the time, and stared at the door in silence the rest of the time. No one had come back to scratch at the door since the first time. She was starting to lose hope that it had been there at all. Perhaps she had imagined it after all. Her eyes drifted shut again. She knew Clarke and Bellamy were coming for her. They had to be.

Echo was starting to think that coming on this mission had been a huge mistake. She was locked in a room with all the other defectors. The collar around her neck was starting to itch. It had been nearly a week since she had left and she was no closer to getting Raven out, finding Murphy and Emori, or getting a back door open for Monty. She felt hopeless. Nothing could happen before she freed Raven. Raven was the key to all of this. She had to get her out. She knew where they were keeping her, but had no idea how to get into the cell or how to get her out of it. She put her head in her hands.

She was tired and sore. They had not let the defectors out of this room since yesterday. They were virtually prisoners. Echo was starting to think that Octavia had been right. The defectors would have been better off staying with Wonkru, however insane their leader was. She shook her head. Nia had been a merciless leader. Lexa had been a ruthless leader. Octavia was something else entirely. Echo could see the way people were bound to her in the way they walked, talked, even breathed. Octavia was more than a leader to her people, she had become God. In a way Echo admired the girl for what she had accomplished. She had held together fifteen-hundred people made up of thirteen clans for six years and had only lost four hundred of those people. Some would call that a miracle.

She had done the impossible, but now she was doing something harder. She was trying to keep her people together with fear when their world had been opened up to them infinitely. She would need more than fear to keep her people together now. She would need her brother. Echo shook her head. Octavia needed Bellamy, but she always pushed him away. She needed her brother and she needed Clarke as well. The people would follow those three to the ends of the earth. They already had. They needed to band together if they wanted to survive Diyoza.

Echo spit, just thinking of that woman. She was the worst kind of fake. She had no morals, no values, nothing had worth to her. She cared for nothing, and therefore no one could hurt her. She proclaimed peace, but her history said otherwise, and history was as good an indicator of future behavior as anything else. She wasn't just cunning, she was cruel. Echo had served under many rulers, but none of them had been cruel. Each of them had believed with everything they were, that every action they took was for the benefit of their people. Diyoza had no people. She had soldiers. Expendable soldiers.

Echo couldn't stand the woman. Every time she saw her on the ship she wanted to end her, but she knew that wasn't her mission. She was here to get their defenses down. She was here to usher an army in. She still wasn't sure how she felt about that. Was now really the time to be going to war? It seemed like possibly the most ill-suited time to go to war, but it seemed like there was little choice.

Octavia would not back down, and neither would Diyoza. They needed a peace-keeper and frankly Kane was doing a piss-poor job. He had sold out his leader, which Echo could never condone. It was the worst kind of treason. She didn't agree with Octavia, but Octavia wasn't her leader. And even so she would never sell her out to Diyoza.

They needed a real peace-keeper. One like Bellamy or Lexa. She knew that if Bellamy and Clarke worked together they could broker a peace deal. They had done it before. She had faith in their leadership skills. She had little faith in Kane. He was too embedded in the situation to see clearly. He needed this peace deal to work because it was keeping him and Abby alive. He had betrayed his own people, hoping they would want their freedom more than they feared Octavia. He had lost that bet on many counts.

Echo knew that she could not afford to lose. Bellamy was counting on her. Clarke was counting on her. Everyone in Wonkru was counting on her. She couldn't afford to mess this up. She thought of Bellamy and his reassuring smile and she sighed deeply. She missed him, but she also knew she didn't need him to complete this mission. She could do this on her own. She balled her hands into fists.

She stood and slipped the USB up her sleeve. Raven needed her. She was starting to walk towards the door when it slid open all of a sudden. A young man with a wild look in his eye walked in and gripped her arm.

"Act calm." His words were anything but calm. She spoke out of the side of her mouth, infusing her words with every bit of ire she had left in her.

"I'm always calm. Who are you?"

"Shaw." He dragged her out of the door and looked from left to right. "You're friends with Raven right?" Echo refused to give anything away until she knew more about him. She only stared at him. He released her wrist and stopped. "I need your help. I can help you get Raven out, but I need you to get me out of here too. I have a plan." He looked at her expectantly. Echo crossed her arms over her chest.

"I'm listening."

Raven heard movement. She sat up slowly, feeling every vertebrae in her back crack. Laying on the metal floor of this tin-can was doing horrible things to her back. The door of her cell opened softly. She was amazed something so large and heavy could move so silently. Somebody slipped in, dressed all in black. They kneeled next to Raven and put hands on both sides of her head.

"Raven?"

"Yeah?" Raven asked. "Who are you?" They pulled the mask off their face.

"Raven it's Echo."

"Echo? Took you damn near long enough." She said, forcing a smile to her face. Echo laughed.

"I'm sorry. I wish I was here to say I was breaking you out now, but I can't yet. Shaw has a plan." Raven shook her head.

"Echo don't trust him. He had a plan to help Murphy and I too, but he double-crossed us."

"Trust him? Of course I don't trust him. I'm using him. He's going to help me get the back door implemented in the system and then we're getting out of here. I swear. Be ready."

"I've been ready for days." Raven said with as much bravado as she could muster. Echo smiled.

"Hang in there. I'll get you out as soon as I can." Then Echo was gone, and Raven was left alone again. She laid back down. She might as well sleep while she still could. She smiled to herself. She had known Bellamy and Clarke would get her out of here. They had come back for her when the world was ending, the least they could do now was get her off of this ship.

Murphy was holding a swath of his shirt to McCreary's chest. The crimnal had been badly wounded in the explosion. Murphy cursed himself. Their only bargaining chip was going to die. Emori was out in the woods looking for anything that might stop the bleeding. McCreary wasn't even conscious enough to be of any use. Murphy could feel his pulse slowing.

"Emori!" He yelled. They needed this man, however vile and awful he may be. "Emori he's dying!" There was no response.

Murphy probed the wound with his finger. McCreary groaned in pain. Murphy could feel something in the wound. Probably a piece of metal or something. He tried to grasp it with his fingers, but only succeeded in pushing it farther into McCreary's chest.

Emori ran into the cave holding some moss in her hand.

"Here! Put this on the wound." Murphy stuffed the moss into the wound and McCreary cried out. Murphy and Emori watched the wound hopefully, but within seconds the moss was soaked with blood. Emori cursed and pressed her hands against her head.

"What are we going to do? He's our only way into the camp." She pointed at him frantically.

"I don't know Emori, I'm not a doctor!"

"Well what can you do!" She exclaimed angrily. He sat back against the wall, and looked at her with narrowed eyes.

"Really? Right now, you want to get into it."

"When do you want to get into it John?" The way she said his name made it very clear to him that he was nowhere near forgiven.

"Maybe after our only hope isn't on death's door." He said, without spite in his voice. He pushed himself off the ground and kneeled by McCreary's side.

"There's something in the wound. I think we'll have to get it out before we can stop the bleeding."

"Okay let me see if I can get it." He scooted over so she could kneel next to him. She pulled the moss out and started fishing around in his wound. "Go find more moss. It grows on the shaded side of oak trees." Murphy nodded and left the cave. He tromped through the woods, face impassive. He kicked a bush and was rewarded with a foot full of thorns. His boots were hardly meant for the woods. They were meant for the ring. They were meant for that ship that he thought he was going to live on indefinitely with Raven.

He looked for oak trees, and ventured deeper into the forest. He was confused. And exhausted. Emori had kissed him the other night and she still hadn't said anything about it. It had been a nice kiss, but if they were both honest that had been all it was. There had been no fire in that kiss.

He was a survivor. Survivors didn't make good companions. He had never let anyone mean enough to him that he wouldn't be able to survive without them. Perhaps that was the root of all his hardships with Emori. He knew that he could survive without her. And she knew that he could too. She had tried to save him from that kind of life, but he wasn't sure it was something he could be saved from, or wanted to be saved from anyway. She had tried to make herself mean enough to him that he couldn't survive without her, but people couldn't change that easily.

He had always been a survivor and he wasn't sure he could just forget that part of himself. Not even for Emori. He was better on his own, where he couldn't hurt anyone. Emori knew it too. They hadn't been together for years now. If there had been love, it was gone now. He was tired of trying to fix himself or have other people fix him. Some things just couldn't be fixed.

Perhaps if their came a time when he didn't have to fight to survive he would be able to change. But as long as there was imminent danger he would never be more than a survivor. And he wasn't ashamed of that.

Finally he found an oak tree and scraped as much moss off of it as he could. He made his way back to the cave as quickly as he could without seriously injuring himself in the underbrush. When he returned Emori was holding her hand to McCreary's wound. He presented her with the moss. She put it in the wound and it blessedly stayed green.

They both let out a breath of relief and sat down against the cave wall. They sat in silence for a while before Emori spoke.

"That kiss was a mistake." Murphy pressed his lips together in his usual smirk and nodded.

"Yeah."

"We're no good for each other John. I need something you can't give me."

"And what's that?" He asked, in his characteristically sarcastic drawl.

"I need to be needed. I need someone who will love me as much as I love them. You don't need anybody." He sighed deeply. His next words didn't come to him easily, but he knew that he had to say them. She deserved that much.

"I'm sorry Emori. I never meant to hurt you. I fully intended to love you the way you wanted to be loved, but I'm starting to think I can't."

"That you can't love or that you can't love me?"

"We're different kinds of people Emori. You're a fighter. I'm a survivor. There's a world of difference." She sighed.

"I know." There were no words left to say after that. He was relieved. He felt like the air was clear now. It was better they had this talk now, rather than later. He was no good for her. He probably wasn't good for anyone. The only person he was good for was himself. That was the nature of a survivor.