Chapter Text
The night was warm, humming and singing itself to sleep with the sound of insects strumming and crooning. The tent was warm, with barely a breeze and the sound of the clan outside, restless with the warmth and inability to sleep, worshiping the very last minutes of the day and prolonging it as long as the weather would allow it.
Tired and yawning, Clarke dozed in bed, waiting for Lexa to pat down the fire and join her, though she was stubborn and wrapped up with more important things. It was that sight, the baby in her arms, that made Clarke smile despite the exhaustion in her bones. There were no better sights, of that she was certain.
“Nomon,” she heard Lexa whisper to the yawning baby. Their daughter let out a tiny noise, much too young to think about anything like proper words, but still loving making her own noises. It did not deter Lexa though. “Nomon,” she smiled and rocked her arms softly. “Ai laik nomon.”
Wiggling and clad in just a cloth diaper, their daughter shook her head and nuzzled deeper into the warrior’s arms. Lexa was a goner when she saw her, Clarke told her as much and was surprised to get agreement on this fact. But overwhelmed and terrified, Lexa held the baby on the day she was born, and she agreed too easily that she was, in fact, a goner. It was apparent every moment they were together.
“Let her sleep,” Clarke instructed, rolling over in the bed to face her wife.
“I do not get to hold her enough,” Lexa shook her head, distracted by her wife and her curves outlined in the bed. “How do you put her down?”
“Mostly so other people can hold her,” Clarke confessed. “And so she can sleep.”
“She gets bigger every day,” the commander complained, looking back at the almost sleeping baby.
“Look at my girls,” Clarke smiled and memorized them there, in the middle of their home.
Strong and tall and slender, covered in dark ink shadows and pale, violent scars, Lexa smiled slightly, eyes big and seeing everything. Her emotions were always tempered, always beneath something, swallowed and whispered. But the baby in her arms magnified them, unmuted them, untempered them slightly.
Their daughter slept, lips parted, fist curled tightly, dark hair jutting up. She was capable of the world’s most delicious giggles that the mothers gobbled up greedily. She was capable of these looks that reminded Clarke too often of Lexa, like she was thinking forty-thousand thoughts at once, figuring you out and disarming you before you knew what was happening.
Between the two standing there, Clarke was not sure she would ever be able to understand life.
“Come to bed,” she tried again.
“Just a few more minutes.”
Clarke watched Lexa slowly walk around the hut, whispering more words for the baby to learn.
Though the weather grew colder, grew chillier, grew more stiff, Lexa missed no free minute to be with their daughter. Between scouts or hunts, she could be found, most eagerly, stealing the crawling, active toddler from whoever had her, and most noticeably, shuffling along paths with her standing atop her feet, arms stretched high.
Clarke saw it happen one day as she returned home from helping on a house call to a sick family on the edge of the property. Saw the group of giant, overstuffed, broad and menacing men clap and wave as Lexa walked through them, bent over and leading their daughter by the hands stretched high. Her steps were unsure and slow, wobbly and jerky, not much less graceful than a newborn foal.
Warpaint and armour on, Lexa smiled and moved slowly, showing off the strength, the dexterity, the amazing thing that was her daughter. The large, overbearing men, half covered with masks of bones and other skulls, smiled and watched the little girl move and laugh.
It was too much work for Clarke to stand there and watch. But it was impossible for her to interrupt.
She watched the pride on her wife’s face, the way she looked at the toddler like nothing of the world mattered.
At night, while the baby slept and Lexa kissed her wife, felt her, made her ache, Clarke saw that look directed at her, and she knew that it was reserved for them, for the things Lexa would die before lose.
In the dark, Lexa told her stories, told her things she was excited for with the baby, told her about her first everything, her first kill, her first hunt, her first ceremony, her first trip to the capital, her first ride, her first night outside, her first day as a second.
Clarke watched her wife turn around and begin to walk again, the baby’s pink cheeks dimpled and smiling up at her mother.
As she grew, the daughter of the Sky and the Ground, was a shadow to everyone, a leader among a children clan, a warrior, a thinker, impetuous and wild, compassionate and empathetic to a fault. When she could, she would be found trailing after the Commander, the two deep in thought and conversation. River mades her mother laugh, she had a knack for it. She made her proud, too, something she was told every so often and craved. She made her mad, learned how to navigate the waters of her wrath, slowly.
Neither mother could take claim to the tempestuous whirlwind that existed between them, and instead insisted that it is the other’s fault, the other’s pride, the other’s bullheadedness, the other’s smarts, the other’s kindness, the other’s foolhardiness. Their daughter was neither sky nor earth, but of rain and storms and fire. Her humour, her eagerness, her insistence to soak up everything excelled beyond her mothers.
“Long and smooth,” Lexa explained, running the knife along the sharpening stone. She watched the little girl do the same, wielding each as best she could.
Braids and dirt smeared across her chin with a collection of scrapes from her misadventures trying to keep up with the Seconds, her daughter was perfect. She had Clarke’s propensity for adventure, for passion and feeling that she tried and often lost the battle to control. She was a lightning bolt.
The summer of her ninth year, Lexa began to train. Small things, tiny games she used to play that helped her. She let her follow more. She saw her asking Clarke a million questions, hanging from her neck, stuck to her back like an animal, the mother laughing and answering. Lexa knew that Clarke was better at their daughter. More able to love her, to hold her, to have those moments, to make up funny stories. Lexa struggled under the enormity of figuring out how to make River laugh.
Clarke saw them by the fire before bed, talking and not talking. Her daughter smiled, unable to resist, mimicking her mother’s movements. She did not like the idea of her with a weapon, but this was the world they lived in, so she allowed Lexa tiny moments to teach their daughter things, and she returned to her book warily.
“Did you win?” Lexa asked, surveying the cuts on her daughters tiny knuckles. She had already heard the story, felt a pride at it, smiled and hid it when her general told her of the scuffle.
“Mom already yelled at me,” River slowly did what Lexa did, dragging the metal along the stone. She liked to hear her daughter speak her language. She did not have the accent of her wife. She did not have one when she spoke English either.
“Yes, but did you win?” Lexa smiled slightly when her daughter looked up with that smile that was pure trouble, unbridled rebellion, religious confidence.
“Two hits,” she nodded. Her cheeks dimples like her wife’s. Her hands were clumsy as her wife’s were, though she tried.
“Why did you fight him?”
“He said I was a sky princess,” River complained, another long swish.
“You are,” Lexa chuckled, holding the blade up. She chanced a small glance at her wife, regal, neck long and eyes dancing across the page as she read. She realized she had a life full of tiny princesses from the sky.
“I’ve never been to space,” the little girl shook her head.
“Your mother is a sky princess. You are a sky princess. Do not let anyone ever take that away from you.”
“But I want to be both, I would rather be a commander, and I don’t like that name.”
“You are both,” Lexa nodded. “You hold my grandmother’s blade. My father held it. I held it. We all learned to take care of it. You are rooted and made in dirt and from sky.”
“When will I become a second?”
“When you stop fighting anyone who makes you mad.”
“It’s time for bed, Riv,” Clarke stood and pinched her eyes.
“Keep it,” Lexa shook her hand as her daughter moved to hand the blade back.
“Really?”
“You will need it,” Lexa nodded. She was surprised, always surprised, as her daughter threw her arms around her neck. It was a slow adjustment, to these moments, Rigid at first, Lexa tok a deep breath and let herself be hugged.
“If it is anything bigger than a rabbit, we will have words,” Clarke peered at her wife, sizing her, warning her, fretting blatantly.
“She’s twelve,” Lexa shrugged and shook her head, arguing. “It’s time.”
“Have the talk,” Clarke ignored this fact. “Life is to be treasured. Death should not be easy.”
“I know,” Lexa nodded while Clarke held her collar. She watched he watch her lips, watched her think too much.
“Nothing bigger than a doe. No bucks,” Clarke tried again. “Don’t get frustrated with her. Praise her when she earns it. Watch her. Not out of your sight.”
“I have taken our daughter outside of the gates before,” Lexa reasoned. “Look at how excited she is.”
Both leaders looked at the gangly little girl with a bow in her hands, knife strapped to her side. Clarke wondered what Lexa looked like growing up. She figured it was something like the awkward thing helping the large men prepare for the hunt. She was tall, lean, shedding baby fat quickly with her constant activity. Beside the men and women who were full grown and knowing about blood, she looked even younger than she was.
“She only wants to make you proud,” Clarke reminded the Commander.
“She does,” Lexa insisted quickly. “More than anything. People mention what she has done and I feel like my bones are made of steel.”
“Tell her,” Clarke nodded.
“They say she is going to have the spirit,” Lexa smiled, eyeing her wife greedily. Clarke saw it in her. The fierce, the savage, the violent turbulence.
“Not if we dibbs her first,” Clarke smiled at the way confusion seeped into Lexa’s eyes. “Not if we Sky People claim her first.”
“The first Princess Commander,” Lexa smiled at the joke once she understood.
“Be safe,” Clarke kissed her quickly and sent her out with her people. For longer than necessary, Clarke watched the party head out into the world, her daughter walking beside her wife, their poses the same.
Two days later, Clarke was there when her guard let her know that the party was returning. She walked as fast as she could, a crowd forming to see what the little commander, the little princess managed to do. It was an unofficial test that bore more weight than Lexa let her daughter know.
There was a grumble of approval, a small chant, a dull roar as the hunters came back. Clarke stood, aghast and frozen seeing her daughter with blood smeared on her cheeks. River did not run and hug her mother as she wanted, but she nodded in her direction and smiled, unable to contain it. Clarke offered a weak smile in return and blinked quickly.
“Is that…?” she whispered to her wife.
“He was stalking the same boar,” Lexa said, purposefully nervous, spending the last few hours preparing for her wrath. The set of Clarke’s jaw told her she was going to get it good.
“Tell me someone helped. Someone else did this,” Clarke growled as the village helped unload and begin preparations.
“She saw him before any of us,” Lexa confessed. Clarke’s fists clenched.
“You let our twelve year old,” her voice rose and she turned around, she looked at the sky, she held her breath, she stayed close to Lexa who wanted nothing more than to be somewhere else. “Our little girl,” Clarke cleared her throat and started to whisper again, though it came out rough and Lexa had no doubt about her feelings. “Kill a wolf? What does no bigger than a deer mean to you?”
“Well, he is big, but he was shorter,” Lexa tried.
“She did that herself?” Clarke worried.
“Yes,” Lexa nodded.
“How?”
“I have no idea,” Lexa agreed as they both surveyed the large predator that was being strung up and skinned, their daughter eagerly learning from Octavia. “They chanted her name. She is respected.”
“Remember when she couldn’t walk?” Clarke sighed. Lexa nodded, soft at first and then more eagerly.
The sky was painted blue and purple and pink and gold. The stars were coming, shortly. Fires burned throughout the village, adding to the sky a smoke and cloud and stars of their own.
The wolf-killer grew up tall and strong. Her turbulent, passionate streak tempered, though reared its head often. She had the defiance of a true leader. Her smile came easily, her love was given eagerly. She was unchallenged in combat, unmatched in agility, insurmountable in smarts. There was a love in her, a hope felt by everyone who remembered the mountain and the fall from the heavens. The belief and fruition of the future encapsulated in one person who moved freely between the camps.
But the daughter of the land and the sky felt that burden, carried it, was never neglectful of what she was to them. She struggled with ruthlessness, unable to fathom the decisions of the history before her.
To Clarke, she was a summer day. To Lexa, a shooting star.
They had visitors from other clans. The people in the capital remarked upon her beauty. There was no shortage of suitors trying to keep up with her, though none stuck. Until Thomas, her mother’s healer apprentice at the Ark. And even he was only welcomed because River chose him, liked the way he spoke, liked his ability to fix up wounded horses and how he whispered to them at night. If she wanted to escape him, she could. He knew that.
“She’ll be here,” Clarke whispered to her anxious wife.
“We leave at dusk,” the Commander heaved a breath and adjusted her belt. “That boy. That Sky boy.”
“He’s good,” Clarke reaffirmed. The crowds mingled at the gates. The seconds prepared for their first official night patrol. “She’s smart.”
“I was smart once. Until I met someone who fell out of the sky,” Lexa disagreed.
“Heda, apologies,” River sprinted and moved through the crowd. She swallowed and tried to discreetly catch her breath. She flashed a smile at Clarke and gave her a wink.
“You have responsibilities,” Lexa began a familiar diatribe.
“And I am looked to as a leader,” her daughter finished. “I’m sorry, Mom. I was distracted.”
“I hope you are not distracted out there, tonight,” Clarke stopped her wife from yelling.
“Never,” her daughter promised, cheeks inflating, dimples appearing.
The fangs of a wolf were tattooed to her arm. Clarke looked at them and nodded, oddly comforted by it. She was not much older than her daughter was at this moment when she finished a war.
“I have thought of this,” Lexa took a step towards her daughter. “From the moment you were born.” She looked at the paint in the bowl in her hand. “I am very proud of you, and whoever you become.”
Her fingers shook just once as she went to work, dragging the paint around her daughters face. But she swallowed and lifted her chin and went to her work, applying the warpaint to her fresh skin.
“Go to your general,” Lexa nodded as she finished.
Her daughter looked at her for the first time with the paint on her face and she swallowed at what it would become to her.
“Thank you,” River smiled and tried to stop it, fought to hide it. She didn’t care, she hugged her mother tightly. Clarke watched it happen, watched her arms squeeze the commander.