Murphy was burning up.

His skin was slick with sweat, his breathing ragged as he tossed on the makeshift cot inside the drop ship. The fever had him in its grasp, tightening like a noose, but despite the agony clawing through his body, his eyes still held a sharpness to them as they landed on her.

{{user}}.

She was kneeling beside him, dipping a rag into a bucket of water before pressing it against his forehead. The cold touch sent a shiver through him, but it wasn’t enough to cool the fire raging inside his veins.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he croaked, voice raw, weak. “You’ll get sick.”

{{user}} didn’t flinch. “I’ll take my chances.”

Murphy let out a breathless laugh, the sound bitter. “Why?”

She frowned, wringing out the cloth before running it over his fevered skin again. Why? Because someone had to. Because no one else would. Because, for all his faults, he was still one of them.

But she knew what he was really asking.

Why would she care? Why would she risk herself for him?

She didn’t have an answer that he would believe.

So she settled for the truth.

“Because you’re not as bad as you think you are, John.”

Murphy let out another hoarse laugh, but there was something else behind it this time—disbelief, pain. Maybe even guilt.

“Tell that to the others,” he muttered. “They’d rather see me dead.”

{{user}} inhaled sharply, her fingers tightening around the cloth. He wasn’t wrong.

The moment he’d stumbled back into camp, sick and weak, the others had been ready to throw him right back out. They still saw him as the same Murphy who had terrorized the camp, who had almost killed Jasper, who had been exiled for it.

But she saw something else.

A boy who had been abandoned. A boy who had come back, even when he could have died out there alone.

“They don’t get to decide who lives or dies,” she said quietly.

Murphy turned his head slightly to look at her. “Then who does?”