Chapter Text
Clarke takes them to a brightly lit dining hall to talk. Everything in it looks weird: like any other dining hall, he has been to but off somehow.
For one it's - like everything else in this skaikru Citadel - very brightly lit. The walls painted a soft pastel green with pale pink accents and decorated with pictures of weird looking women in what might, possibly, be considered alluring poses.
Roan doesn't think they're very seductive. Yes they are big breasted and round hipped, but still, they look all wrong, with too big eyes and clad in unpractical clothing, sitting unnaturally on top of different contraptions. Some of them are pre-Praimfaya tech. The king has seen their skeletons, abandoned and repurposed, but he doesn't actually know what they are or what they do.
A busty server woman in a ridiculously short skirt, white button down top and an apron that must be more symbolic than practical accompanies them from the door to one of the empty tables at the back of the dining hall.
They walk past a counter displaying all sort of.... Roan guesses it's food of some sort. It looks squishy, colorful and as unnatural as the women painted in the pictures. Some of the tall, round stuff has been decorated with faux flowers.
The checkered floor doesn't groan like wooden floors tend to do, nor does it feel like stone. It's slightly sticky, softer than stone, slicker than wood.
The boards of the tables are made of a smooth grayish material, the legs are of smooth metal. When he slides into the booth, the pale pink upholstery of the bench turns out not to be leather or cloth, and the king decides it's most definitely not to his liking.
The busty woman spreads waxy paper - and how easy it must be to come by paper that they use it instead of tablecloths? - in front of the three of them and sets a small packet containing knife, spoon and a three-pronged utensil he has never seen before.
Clarke orders something to drink and turns to him once the girl has disappeared off through a green door behind the counter, swishing her hips exaggeratedly.
"So, tell us."
Explaining his predicament should be easier than it turns out to be: he died and went to the wrong afterlife. Yet, Clarke and Bellamy stare at him from across the table like he's deranged.
Roan is not a person prone to fidgeting, but their nearly open-mouthed looks make his fingers itch for something to do.
He plays distractedly with the three-pronged eating utensil next to the knife and spoon the busty server has brought folded inside a flimsy, nearly see-through cloth that apparently passes for a napkin among skaikru.
The woman reappears while the two skaikru leaders are still trying to process his easy explanation. "What can I bring you guys?" she asks with a wide smile, showing off white teeth - no wonder she smiles so easily or paints her lips in such a bright color. It's extraordinary for someone of her station, even if she's relatively young.
Clarke manages to pull herself together and order something for her and her knife. The servant turns to him, her smile still in place.
"I'll have the same as her," he says, even though he has no clue what he just ordered.
There's a menu scribbled on a board behind the counter - skaikru must have astounding education systems if even the lowest classes know how to write and read - but he can't understand half the words in it.
The woman nods her head, repeats their order to make sure she has everything right and then swishes off through a green door behind the counter.
"Let me see if I got this straight," grumbles the Natswis. "You come from another world?"
"Yes. The world of the living." Roan nods his head. Clarke and Bellamy exchange a look.
"And you know us?"
"I knew your living counterparts."
"So we are dead?" Clarke arches a disbelieving eyebrow.
"That's the only explanation I can think of."
It bothers him, how many people have died. Did Luna truly go through her plan of condemning all of humanity to death?
"How did we die?" asks Bellamy, Clarke throws him a disapproving frown.
"I don't know exactly how. I know only how I died: in single combat against Luna kom Floukru."
Another disbelieving look is exchanged between skaikru. Roan fights the urge to groan in frustration.
"The world was ending. We entered a conclave to decide who got to survive."
"How?"
This will only derail them from the matter at hand. "There was a bunker and thirteen clans."
"Couldn't you share?"
Roan chuckles darkly at that. "We could have. Should have, probably. But, alas, my people's ways are different from yours."
The waitress comes back carrying a huge tray and sets plates heaping with food in front of them. "There you go," she says, eying him in a very unsubtle manner. Roan stares right back with a smirk, and the girl turns a bright red and hurries away.
"Ok, so. We're all dead. How come we don't remember anything of this apocalypse?" Clarke asks, always the pragmatist.
"Yes, shouldn't we all have like... been born and, I don't know, live our lives?"
Roan shrugs.
"I never was one to dwell on religion," he admits. "The land of the living always held more interest for me than the land of the dead."
Bellamy stabs his food with the three-pronged eating utensil and shoves a bite into his mouth. Chewing carefully. The frown on his face indicating he's taking the time to think. Clarke's dipping a piece of pale bread into the bright yellow yolk of an egg. At least Roan hopes this is an egg.
He examines his food. It doesn't look real: Vegetables are not this crisp and brightly colored - not the edible ones, at least. The flesh smells funny and glistens red and brown. There's also something small and yellow beneath his eggs, and Roan's not sure he wants to know what that is.
Carefully he picks up the three-pronged utensil and touches it to the food. He tentatively stabs a small red berry and brings it to his nose.
It smells very faintly of oil and something that reminds him of the wild tomatoes that grow in the valleys in Ouskejon Kru territory.
It doesn't taste anything like the wild tomatoes that grow in Ouskejon Kru territory.
"Why do you remember your previous 'life?'" Bellamy's face is one of deep concentration, and Roan didn't expect it to be the Natswis the one he managed to convince first.
Clarke rolls her eyes.
"I don't know." Maybe he'll lose his memories the longer he stays in this strange afterlife? Roan hasn't lost any memories, and he doesn't remember that being part of the things Falimkepers said would happen in the afterlife.
Then again, he was supposed to be in the feasting halls of his forefathers, so...
"This is ridiculous," decides Wanheda shaking her head. But is interrupted when Roan nearly chokes on the small bit of flesh he's taken to his mouth.
He spits it out nearly instantly and quickly slaps Clarke's three-pronged contraption out of her hand. "Hey!"
"It's poisoned" he growls, sitting up and studying the place in search of the perpetrator on the attempt on their lives.
Both Clarke and Bellamy eye the offending utensil warily. "It tasted ok to me," she says slowly.
"That is not how meat is supposed to taste," he snaps.
"But if you're dead, why do you care if you get poisoned?"
He whips his head back to her, something in his neck pops loudly. She's staring unimpressed at him, but her words give him pause.
That could be it! The path out of this afterlife and into the right one. He can nearly hear the wind's song through the treetops.
Roan grins at the two skaikru, who seem to come to the same realization he has. Clarke's skin goes bone-white, Bellamy starts to rise from his seat.
"No. Roan..."
The king smiles at them. "Your assistance has been much appreciated, my friends."
Bellamy launches himself at him but he's even slower than he was back when he was alive and Roan's han was already on his knife. He plunges it right into his own heart.
It's considerably less painful than being stabbed multiple times and drowned in burning water.
Roan hears the rushing of blood in his ears hiding the screams of the people around him. Wanheda comes into view, pale face haloed by the harsh lights of this tavern. Her grim face is the last thing he sees before he's plunged into darkness once again.