Emori was fairly certain that John was headed down a dark road.

It wasn't the road he'd been sprinting down when they were in the Ring together, at least. He probably still mostly felt useless, but at least now, everyone was kind of useless, because no one had any idea what to expect from Sanctum and its population, so how he felt was no different from how anyone else felt. That was probably his only saving grace. But she could take that. She could work with that. That panicked shout, the way he'd curled into himself when he'd jolted awake and tumbled off the table, skittered back as if he was trying to distance himself from some hungry predator... that was the John she had fallen in love with. Even though she'd been terrified for his life, she found her chest twisting with pleasure. There you are, her subconscious voice had said. I've been looking all over for you.

This dark road was something else. As she sat beside him in the commons, watching Jordan try desperately — and fail spectacularly — and succeed because he was failing, because it was cute — to flirt with the Sanctumite girl, Delilah, she kept track of how many shots John was throwing back out of the corner of her eye. He was definitely trying to forget whatever he had seen when he'd died. Hell? Emori wasn't sure she believed in such a thing... but John had been shaking in her arms when she'd held him just after, and she couldn't discredit that he'd seen something during his death.

Well... she could work with the drinking. It had just started, after all. All he needed was someone to take his hand and remind him he wasn't alone.

And she felt terrible for it, because obviously dying had scared the shit out of him, and she hated to see him suffer — but at least this brush with death had made him her John again.

As he knocked back another shot, Emori slid her hand along his thigh, resting it at his knee and squeezing it gently.

He looked over at her — held her eyes for a moment — and then, she could see the ghost of a smile at his lips. Not anything tangible, not really. But the slightest upturn of the corners of his mouth, just enough that only someone who really loved him would know that it meant he was going to be okay.

He set his empty glass down, patted her right hand with his left, and then rose from the barstool he'd been sitting on. "Well," he said, "as much fun as all of this has been, dying kind of makes you really fucking exhausted. So if no one has any objections, I'm going to go take a nap."

No one had any objections, because no one was really paying attention to Murphy, as usual. Everyone had some idea or another about what to do to convince the Primes to let them stay on Sanctum, so of course the fact that Murphy had literally shuffled off of this mortal coil and almost done so permanently was of no real interest to them. He was beginning to think his title of "cockroach" was both a blessing and a curse — good to live through everything, of course, but Christ, did it ever suck at making people feel even an ounce of sympathy for you.

Emori began to rise to come with him — but he placed a hand on her shoulder and guided her back down.

"It's okay," he said, flicking his eyes up to the rest of their friends — or, rather, the people they had come to think of as their family, through better or worse — even Clarke, who was kind of on everyone's shit list right now, aside from Bellamy. Obviously. "Stay for a while. Play with the other kids, yeah?"

He kissed the top of her head. Her chest blossomed with warmth, that he would see the home she'd made with their family and encourage her to stay inside it. Even if it still wasn't his home, not the way it was hers.

She said, softly, "Thank you, John."

He was already walking away. "Don't get used to it," he called without looking back.

The Sanctumite boy that was assigned to show them to their temporary quarters was going on and on about the history of Sanctum and the dangers and the rituals and blah-de-freaking-blah, but John had long since tuned him out. His eyes flitted around the compound, taking in every potential threat, every potential danger. None of those giant poles around the compound, so no more of the radiation shields that had killed Shaw. Made sense, since the Sanctumites — at least most of them — weren't radiation-proof. Wouldn't want to be accidentally wiping out your own population, after all. The plants that surrounded the compound were beautiful, but there was probably no way to keep them from producing the toxin that had started the psychosis, not without hundreds of years of breeding, anyway. At least they were safe for the moment. The general population posed no threat, not with those hippie-ass outfits... but Murphy found his skin bristling anyway, some unseen force in him coiled into itself, ready to defend his life at a moment's notice. He had a feeling it was always going to be like that, now. Now that the cockroach had actually died. Now that the universe had proven to him that he wasn't immune to death, just highly resistant to it.

The alcohol had dulled his senses enough that he didn't realize how close the two of them were walking to the pond. At the sight of the sunlight sparkling off of the water, he flinched back, and then angled his body away from it as they continued on so that he wouldn't have to look at it.

"You're going to love Sanctum," his escort was saying, blissfully unaware of all of the tells Murphy was sure he was giving off. Good god, these people had lived in comfort so long that they'd lost their basic survival instinct. Murphy couldn't even begin to imagine it. He wassurvival instinct. "It's really incredible, what you can nurture out of the land when there's not wars being fought over it every single day. And apparently, back on Earth, people used to have to get jobs to keep their houses and afford to eat. That's what Russell Prime says, anyway. It sounds terrible. Here, as long as you're doing your share, which can be anything you want, as long as it can help Sanctum in some way, you'll get fed. And no one's ever been kicked out of their home. Except when the Red Sun happens, I guess, but that's not really—"

"Christ," said Murphy, "you got an off button somewhere, kid?"

His escort turned nearly entirely pink from top to bottom. It was honestly impressive to behold. "Er, sorry! I'm just so excited to meet someone who's actually from Earth. I never have, obviously."

"Yeah, well, I'm not from Earth, either." He turned his gaze skyward — somewhere up there was Eligius IV, only his home in that he'd been present there for one hundred and twenty-five years, and somewhere much, much farther was the splintered remains of the Ark, which had been a house, but never a home. "So if you wanted someone to trade stories around the campfire with, you're better off talking to Echo or Emori. Someone who was there before everything went to shit. Again. For the third time." They had slowed mostly to a crawl, and his escort was now facing one of the buildings, which looked from the outside somewhat modest, like a motel room, but without the grunginess one would typically associate with such a thing. Instead, it burst with color — a passionate sunrise orange-pink, with sporadic red flowers painted across the bottom, and something that looked eerily like the field of solar panels above, though of course the painting was missing the solar panels themselves. He knew the inspiration was probably the thought of what the ocean looked like before the apocalypse, but as the person who had painted it had never seen it, it ended up looking more like the Dead Zone than anything else. Fitting. He jerked a thumb at it. "Is this casa del Murphy?"

"Er, yes — this block is temporary housing for all of you while the Primes talk with Clarke and figure out if they're going to let you stay. But I think they will," he was quick to amend, "because, like, if you're in trouble, and you're not trying to hurt us, then why wouldn't they let you stay?"

"You'd be surprised," Murphy muttered, and then shoved his hands in his pockets and strolled off towards the building. God, the buildings in this block were all so close together. If he heard Echo and Bellamy having sex from the next room over he was pretty sure he was going to kill himself, Hell be damned.

The door was slightly ajar, which made sense, because someone had probably just been in to get it set up for he and Emori. Without removing his hands from his pockets, he shouldered into it.

His eyes took a second to get used to the relative darkness. Which was probably most of the reason that he didn't see his attacker when they... well, attacked.

The back of his head smacked against the wall, and he saw stars. For a moment he couldn't make sense of where he was, and then his brain righted itself again, and suddenly he could feel warm fingers on his throat, crushing it, his windpipe so tight he could only manage a stupid wheezing whimper, and there was a knee pressed against his groin, thisclose to pulverizing his privates into smithereens. And, though it seemed a ridiculously trivial complaint, it was so hot in here, god, Christ, why was it so fucking hot...

Oh, right — the most pressing problem. Not being able to breathe. He lifted his hands out of his pockets and scrabbled at the hand pinning him to the wall by his throat, but it was like an iron vise; he couldn't move it so much as a millimeter. He reached behind him, flailing, trying desperately to find something against the wall with which he could fend off his attacker, but his fingertips only met smooth wood, and he doubted he would have been able to find the strength to do such a thing, anyway. Blackness was rapidly creeping in around his vision.

"Oh, noooo," said a smooth voice from somewhere in front of him. It was missing most of the human part of its inflection, which was something you normally didn't notice in a person until there was an absence of it. It sounded like this person was reading these sentences from a source rather than saying them itself, or like it had just been taught that you could speak through your mouth at all and had not quite mastered the art of sounding human, despite it coming inherently to most humans. It made words sound like they were solid objects it had tried to grasp for that had instead fallen through its fingers. "Don't go away. I want to see this face a little longer."

And then he saw its face. It had moved into his sight line, and what breath he did have (which wasn't much) was taken away.

He gasped out, "Let... ngh, go—!"

It didn't, but its grip relaxed marginally on him, allowing him a pitiful amount of air that he nevertheless sucked greedily at. His mind was swimming; he couldn't make thoughts happen.

Then, faster than his mind could process, he was being thrown across the room, as if he weighed no more than a rag doll facsimile of himself. When next he could understand what was happening, he found himself sprawled across the bed that had been so carefully made up for he and Emori, color rushing back into his cone of vision desperately, his limbs a twisted mess. Of course his first thought when his brain cells were oxygenated enough was to bolt for the door, but the intruder had already thought of that; it shoved the door shut and locked it in one fluid motion, placing itself directly in the path of the door... and Murphy was not so foolish as to try to run for it anyway. His mind was now working once again, and he was running through his options at hyper-speed.

He took the person before him in. It was lithe, awake, alert, at the peak of physical health, it seemed like. It was staring down at him, its eyes sparkling with interest, as if seeing him like this had been its goal all along. Its fingers were curled halfway into claws, in the way of someone who was naturally used to claws and was still learning fingers. Though it wore a red qipao, studded through with golden trim, it didn't seem to be hampering its progress any, as it moved athletically regardless, and with no concern for keeping up any sort of professional appearance. Even its hair was healthy, curled into double buns at the back of its head, with long dark hair falling out of the bottom of both buns and trailing down its shoulders and back, glossy and magazine-voluminous.

Murphy was kind of absolutely fucking screwed. He was still exhausted, a little from lack of sleep, but a lot from being dead. If this person didn't want him going anywhere, he wasn't going anywhere.

He raised his eyes to its face. A heavy smattering of somehow-multicolored freckles — blue and red and pink, like a newborn stellar nursery — decorated the area just below its eyes and over the bridge of its nose, like the trademark butterfly rash of lupus. But somehow that wasn't the part that made Murphy's heart skip several beats.

What did that was its eyes.

It had two irises, two pupils, in each eye. Somehow. One of the irises in each eye was red, and the pupil inside it glowed yellow, like looking down a tunnel towards blinding light at the other end. The other iris was a burning gold, with a dark red pupil instead — not the color of blood, really, but more akin to the color of the red giant in the binary star system above them.

Murphy swallowed, had to lick his lips before saying anything, dry with xerostomia as they were. He held one hand up in front of him as he did so, a stay back warning, although nothing was going to stop this person if it decided it wanted to advance on him, so the gesture was more symbolic than anything. "Radiation," he reasoned, because what was happening in this person's eyes was a mutation if he'd ever seen one. He was reminded faintly of Emori, growing up having to fend for herself in exile, all because she had been born with something she had no control over. He remembered her in the kitchen at Becca's place, how she had been fury and rage and hellfire personified, because it was all she knew. While Sanctum seemed like it was radiation-free, or at least at an acceptable level for the people who had endured solar radiation from a young age like the 100 — and presumably the Sanctumites — had, he couldn't say the same for the rest of the planet. If this person had been living elsewhere and had come to Sanctum seeking shelter, if it had been cast out because of its mutation, then its behavior made sense. It was a survivor, just like he and Emori.

Though he was still terrified, the animosity began to slip away. "Hey," he said, "hey, I understand, alright? I'm not going to hurt you, I promise—"

The being snorted, and then burst into laughter, in the explosive sort of way that made it obvious it had not been planning to do so and was taken entirely by surprise at Murphy's attempt at reassurance. All he could do was watch it, confused.

"John Murphy," it said through peals of laughter, "you couldn't hurt me. Not even if you tried."

Murphy's heart skipped yet another beat. Panic raged at the forefront of his mind, making it difficult to think of anything else. "H-How the fuck did you know my name?"

At this, it cocked its head, much like a fox might upon trying to understand something far beyond the realm of what a fox could understand. It said, "You don't remember me."

"Wh... What..."

Before he could say anything else, it was on the bed, hands splayed on either side of him, uncomfortably close, the tresses of its hair nearly tickling his nose. It gazed into his eyes, and he could see the firestorm in both of its own. The firestorm that was all too familiar. The firestorm he had been having nightmares about every time he closed his eyes since it had happened. He'd been trying to be understanding of Emori and her newfound home with the others, yes, but he'd also known that he would spend at least the first few attempts at sleep jolting awake in hypnic jerks, probably screaming, the sheets drenched with sweat. He hadn't wanted her to have to deal with that. He'd hoped she would stay in the commons long enough that his body would eventually force him to sleep, shut him down against his will, in an attempt at self-preservation.

And it had all been because of...

"Y-You," he said. "You're the... You were there..."

It watched him, centimeters from his face.

"But how is that even— How is that— You're the—"

"You've seen a lot of things stranger than that," it said. "I know. I've seen them." It lifted one hand and gently pressed a claw-finger against his forehead. "In here."

John Murphy said, "Well, fuck."

We are going to be safe.

This thought propelled Emori across the grounds of the compound, making her feel as if she was walking on air. Finally, after all this time. They didn't have to worry about getting in over their heads because there were people who had taken care of everything already. They didn't have to worry that there was some kind of danger they hadn't anticipated; the Sanctumites had been here for two hundred years already and, if their preparation for the eclipse was anything to go by, they knew this place and its dangers and had already overcome them. Now, the only thing standing between them and this sanctuary was Clarke — and while Clarke in the midst of war could mean death for even the best among them, Clarke at peace was downright pleasant, at least to authority figures if not to her own friends, who, understandably, were going to need some time to forgive everything she'd done to get them here. (The ends might justify the means, but the means still very much sucked shit.)

Now all that was left to do was wait.

She was trying very hard to listen to her own escort, who was bringing her to the lodging she'd share with John, now that they could reliably be called 'together' again. (Not 'in love'; she had always loved John, even on the Ring when he was so infuriatingly morose she wanted to toss him out into space.) The problem was that there was just so much to take on. She had never known a place so colorful, so green-and-pink-and-red-and-blue. It was a far cry from the Dead Zone, and similarly far from the black-and-gray sterile environment of the Ring. She breathed in deep — now that the toxins had cleared, the air tasted soft and sweet. She wanted nothing more than to run into one of the fields of flowers that surrounded the commons and let herself fall into them, laughing the afternoon away, her vision full of petals and a sky so vast and so blue she hadn't known such a blue could exist until this moment. Maybe she could get some of the Sanctumites to accompany her and John and the rest to that lake again, now that the eclipse was over. Warmth fluttered up against the inside of her chest as she remembered how thrilled she'd been to splash around in the lake with him, how it had seemed like there wasn't a thing that had ever gone wrong or could ever go wrong again. To have a whole afternoon to be able to experience that feeling... what a dream.

Oh, there she went. Spacing out again. She was pretty sure her escort had asked her a question, because they were now watching her expectantly as if waiting for a response.

She couldn't even begin to pretend she had heard any of what they had been saying, so she didn't even try. Instead, she said, "Thank you for accommodating us. It seems like it's been forever since we had somewhere we weren't being hunted. Is John in one of these buildings?"

Her escort pressed their lips together, obviously trying to tamp down any irritation that she hadn't been listening. They said, "That one. The one with the red flowers on it."

"Thanks!" she said, and power-walked away, her cheeks burning, trying very hard to forget the entire interaction.

Mercifully, the walk to the apartment was short. She slipped through the door and closed it behind her, pressing her back against the wood, feeling safer — as she always had — now that she had a barrier between her and the situation, even if the only danger present was the danger of embarrassment.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the sight of a bloodstain on the wall adjacent. It wasn't much, nothing indicative of a grievous injury, but it wasn't nothing, either. It was about head-height, which was odd.

As her eyes adjusted to the dark, a very strange sight greeted her.

John was on the bed. But there was someone else on the bed also. This other person was relaxing into the nest of pillows behind them. One of their arms was around John, holding him tight across the chest, while the other was half-resting atop his head, with its fingers buried in his hair, playing with it absently, as if he was nothing more than a pet it was indulging by stroking its fur. Its A.L.I.E.-white legs were criss-crossed underneath of John so that he was sitting in its lap, although from the way he was half-slouched it didn't look like the pose was all that intentional on his end — more like he'd been forced into such a position and was trying to make himself as comfortable as he could while the being behind him dictated his posture. Its double eyes (and, like, what the fuck was going on there) were watching her — studying her. She felt as exposed as if she had been flayed alive on a dissection table.

Her heart beat rapidly. She managed, "...John?"

In his trademark can't-be-assed deadpan voice, he said, "Hi, Emori. Meet the fucking red sun eclipse."

The eclipse smiled into John's hair.