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“Okay, guys. I know everyone’s hot and tired but we’ve got a bit more work to do, okay? Who can tell me our rule when someone hurts us?”
Clarke Griffin sits under the dappled shade of a kessop tree surrounded by hot, restless children. It’s nearing the end of the day’s lessons and Clarke knows that the kids are eager to race each other down to the river and cool off in the water; hell, she’s eager to do the same, although after 82 years (plus 130, she always reminds herself, allowing the familiar tinge of sadness to wash over her) her aching joints aren’t quite up to running. This question will be the last one for today, Clarke decides, lifting a hand to wipe drops of sweat off her forehead.
“Anyone? It’s not a rhetorical question, kids,” Clarke reminds her tiny tribe of natblida affectionately.
Jay, a dark haired little girl who reminds Clarke of Madi, raises her hand. “Blood must not have blood.”
The ache hits Clarke between her left ribs, just like it always does when someone recalls Lexa. Clarke notices it, breathes, lets it go.
"Well done,” she tells Jay, rewarding her with a rare Griffin smile. She surveys the sweaty, exhausted faces of her students and sighs internally, knowing age has made her too soft. “Okay. That’s enough for today, off you go.”
With whoops and shy, grateful grins at Clarke the children rush to stand and run off. All except Jay, who waves her friends away and stands hesitantly by Clarke’s tree stump seat, hands fidgeting nervously in the folds of her shirt. Clarke beckons her closer.
“You listened hard today. Well done. Did you have a question?”
Jay nods shyly. Clarke waits, patient, knowing enough to give the child time to find her words. After a moment of silence, Jay blurts, “Seda, is it true that you were married to Heda Lexa?”
This time the ache is too deep to let go. Clarke allows the pain to sit there, heavy. She gives the inquisitive girl a sad smile, “Her time came before we could be, Jay - but I loved her very much.”
Before she can say anymore, a voice calls to her. “Griffin! Lina radioed. It sounds bad, really bad.”
Raven Reyes, chief engineer, limps into the clearing, arms folded across her chest and brow creased with worry. She clasps a hand to her mouth when she sees Jay. “Whoops! Sorry kiddo. Everything’s going to be fine, yeah?”
Clarke touches Jay’s shoulder gently. “Go and play with the others now. Stay alert, but try not to worry.”
The child nods and skits away. Clarke looks up at Raven. “What did Lina say?”
“Lightkru has the Wolves. Has them chained up, and armoured.”
Clarke closes her eyes and tries to think. Lightkru, their enemy, was weaker than they were - but with the huge mountain Wolves under their control, they would bring a fearsome fight. Clarke doubted her people would even have enough bullets for another battle so soon after the last. She sighs and rubs at her tired eyes. She’d really thought, once, that there’d be peace. Instead, there was simply wave after wave of new enemies, interspersed by illness and loss. Madi, her mother, Bellamy and Octavia, Murphy, Emori, Nath. One by one Clarke’s people had fallen and been buried in the earth of this planet that despite so many years never quite managed to feel like home. Until, of the people she’d known on earth, only three were left - herself, Raven, and Echo. There are days the grief threatens to overwhelm Clarke, to drag her down into the earth with her friends, family, lover. But Clarke knows that although you don’t ease pain (you overcome it), if you fight hard enough to overcome, time takes mercy on you, eases a little of what’s left.
Clarke opens her eyes. Raven is waiting expectantly. “Help me up, Reyes. My joints aren’t what they used to be,” she grins and holds out a hand to her friend.
“Try growing old with my leg,” Raven jokes, assisting Clarke and slowing her pace so she doesn’t leave her behind. “Now get over to the radio tower and command some death on the Lightkru, Wanheda.”
Despite the wartime anxiety, Clarke still enjoys the short walk to the radio tower. Over her life she has learned to accept and fiercely embrace moments of joy however small - and a walk in the sunshine with a friend is definitely one of them. When they reach the radio tower, Madi’s son Heda Quinn is already there. He has a deep crease in his brow and despite his training his lack of composure is visible in his face. “Grandma! Raven. I’m glad you’re here. We have a problem. Lina’s been hurt.”
Raven gasps. Clarke frowns. “How badly?”
“An arrow to her thigh. She stopped replying just before you arrived.”
Clarke nods, picking up a handheld radio from the bench immediately. “I’ll go and pick her up.”
“Clarke!” Raven exclaims. “No. No way.”
Quinn looks worried, too. “Grandma, with all due respect...you’re too old and delicate for a rescue mission. We have plenty of others to send.”
“To the scout’s hiding place?” Clarke scoffs. “Nobody knows the way except myself, Lina, and Mari, and you know Mari had her baby barely a week ago. I’ll be fine.”
Raven chews on her lip, thinking. “She’s right,” she tells Quinn eventually. “I’ll go with her and drive. We’d better leave now, before it’s too late for Lina.”
Quinn flings his hands in the air. “What are we coming to? Sending two old ladies on a rescue mission? No way. There must be someone else.”
Clarke places a gentle hand on Quinn’s arm, the way she would on a child’s. “It’s a simple pick up, Heda. We’ll be back before you know we’re gone. Have the medics ready a bed for Lina.” She picks up another radio and tosses it to Raven. “Try to keep up, Reyes.”
It’s a short but tense journey up to the scout’s hiding place, nestled above the Lightkru camp in the mountains. Raven drums her fingers anxiously on the steering wheel as she drives to Clarke’s clipped directions, and Clarke stares out the window anxiously, afraid of missing the crucial turning that will get them to Lina in time. “There!” she exclaims finally. “At the next pine.”
Raven swerves hard and navigates expertly between thick planted trees and rocks until they find themselves in a small clearing. A crumpled, very still figure lays in the dirt in front of the hideaway, blood trickling from a long arrow embedded in her upper thigh.
“Stay here and be ready to drive,” Clarke tells her friend, shoving open the truck door and running towards Lina. It was so much harder to run these days, Clarke thinks, stiffness in her joints, an ache in the knees. This is what she’s thinking when the arrow hits her, clean through her left shoulder. Clarke hears Raven yell out, feels herself sway and then fall, pain cutting through her consciousness. But she’s so close to Lina. So close. She can get to her if she just -
Pain spears her once more, deep into her stomach. It tips Clarke onto her back, moaning, the long shaft of the arrow sticking up through her shirt. It reminds her of Jasper, of him in the first days on earth, makes her think maybe it’ll all be okay. But it’s not, because Raven is running through the trees towards her, and Clarke tries to scream at her to stay in the truck but it’s too late. Raven kneels beside her and Clarke can’t do anything except pant in pain and watch the blood trickle thickly down over her shoulder.
“Get Lina - help Lina -“ Clarke tries to babble. Raven glances over, sees how still the other woman is, grimly shakes her head. She wraps Clarke’s right arm around her shoulder, reaching under her knees to pick her up. Before she can, there’s the swishing sound of a final arrow. It pierces Raven in her stomach and she crumples, doubles over, screams.
This is when Clarke knows that she is going to die.
Not right away, though. She feels Raven fall to the ground beside her and tries to lie still and appear dead until the danger is passed. It seems to take a long time. Finally, the clearing is totally quiet aside from Raven’s panting breaths. Clarke pushes herself over and drags herself by her good arm over to Lina. She touches her wrist. It’s cold and pulseless.
“Yu gonplei ste odon,” Clarke has time to murmur before she takes a deep breath in, presses on her stomach wound and tries to crawl. She reaches Raven, who is sitting up again clutching her abdomen with both hands. Raven looks up at Clarke, her eyes black with terror. “Clarke. We’re going to die.”
Clarke knows with a terrible calm that Raven is right. “Yes,” she breathes. “But that’s okay. We’ve lived so long, Raven. It’s okay.”
Raven grunts, shakes her head, grinds words out through tight lips. “I am not dying on this planet.”
“Raven, we won’t make it back to camp. I can try to stop the bleeding externally, but you’re bleeding inside. I’m sorry.” Clarke feels far away from the pain now, despite the night blood coating her hands. She wants Raven to feel the same.
But Raven shakes her head. “I built a pod,” Raven gasps. “To go - home. When it was my time. It’s not far. In the - caves. Help me get there.”
“Home?” asks Clarke.
Raven looks at her with eyes full of grief and memory. “Space.”
It takes them a long time to get into the truck. Clarke glances at the radio, then at Raven’s face yellow and blanched, and knows that help won’t come in time. They can die here or somewhere else. And it’s been so long since Clarke saw the stars up close. Clarke and Raven need all four of their hands to steer the truck through the trees, and it seems like it will take hours before they reach Raven’s cave, although if they’d looked at a clock they’d know it was merely minutes. The pain seems to lessen as the blood loss increases, and Clarke feels giddy and strong again, even though her hands are blue tinged and shaking. They finally reach the cave, where the pod sits quietly waiting metres from the entrance. It reminds Clarke of another pod, one she didn’t reach. She lets the ache come, holds it inside her, doesn’t let it go. They leave blood, red and black mingled, on the side of the pod as they drag themselves in.
Raven points to a natural skylight above them wide enough to let the rocket through. “Aren’t I a genius?”
Clarke tries to roll her eyes but her head hurts too much. She points at the blinking screen before them. “Fly the rocket, Reyes.”
Clarke feels the pod begin to lift off the ground as Raven presses buttons and turns knobs. She feels them leave the ground as blood leaves her body. There is no need to wait this time, like there was the time before - there is nobody left to wait for. Clarke and Raven look out of the windows, see the planet fall away beneath them. Clarke watches Raven’s shoulders drop, watches her relax as they leave the planet that didn’t truly belong to either of them.
“This is the first time I’ve taken off from a planet that’s not on fire,” says Raven. “Gotta say...it’s even better than I imagined.”
She tries to laugh, but it turns into a moan of pain. Clarke glances at the pool of blood rapidly spreading over Raven’s stomach, hopes she’ll stay awake long enough to reach the stars. She reaches out with a shaky hand, touches Raven’s knuckles. Raven entwines her fingers with Clarke’s gratefully, their cold hands clutching the joystick. Below them, the planet is becoming a mass of green, red, orange and blue, people and buildings lost in the haze of the atmosphere. Clarke knows that if they want to get high enough that they won’t simply fall back down to earth, that she needs to keep Raven awake. Despite the pain that spreads from her left shoulder to her abdomen, Clarke manages to keep up a running reminiscence, recalling lost loved ones, painful adventures and wonderful moments. When Raven becomes drowsy from blood loss, Clarke pulls from her mind a memory to make her laugh - Jasper Jordan and Monty Green getting them all drunk on moonshine, or one of Murphy’s quips. So to Clarke and Raven, this final ride spans a lifetime. Clarke thinks they do sleep, for a while, or perhaps they merely drift in and out. It takes so many hours. She is so tired.
“We’re running out of fuel,” Raven says eventually. Clarke can feel them slowing, is afraid they’ll begin to fall soon. Afraid that she’ll fall asleep soon, so much of her black blood spread across the floor.
“Are we high enough?” she asks.
“Yep.” Raven looks at her, a question in her eyes. “Are you ready?”
Clarke thinks about the answer. She’s lived so long, it feels like. Too long, she sometimes thinks. No one should have to outlive their own daughter. She has survived war, radiation, pestilence, possession. Clarke thinks of Lexa’s eyes filled in her last moments with tears and conviction - how sure she’d been that her spirit would live on. Clarke breathes out, a long sigh, letting go of the pain. Soon she will be with Lexa in the City of Light.
“I’m ready,” she says.
“Bombs away. Hold on until I say.” Raven presses a button and the pod doors begin to open. Outside is darkness, dark as Clarke’s spilled blood, full of a peaceful cold that pulls at Clarke’s hair and the edge of Raven’s jacket.
“Clarke?” Raven asks softly.
“Yes?”
“Hold my hand?” Clarke reaches once again for the calloused brown skin of her friend’s hand, grasping it as tightly as she can in her own. Both their hands are cold now. Their time is here. It’s a miracle they’ve survived this long, and Clarke’s doctor brain knows this, but another part of her, the ancient and emotional part that is afraid to leave still aches. 82 years (plus 130) and there are still so many things she hasn’t done.
“Hey, Raven?” Clarke says. “We did good, you and me. We did good.”
Raven squeezes Clarke’s hand as tightly as she can and unbuckles her seatbelt, then reaches over and unbuckles Clarke’s. “Just for the record Griffin? I’d pick you first. Any day.”
Clarke smiles, lets the lack of gravity carry her towards the door. “Mebi oso na hit choda op nodataim.”
They take the final step out into space themselves. The last thing Clarke Griffin sees before she dies is Raven’s starbright brown eyes open wide in wonder.
Postscript
Many years later, the city is full of an unexpected and joyful peace. Heda Jay - a self possessed and wise young woman who reminds the flamekeeper of the stories of Commander Lexa - guides her people firmly and purposefully, remembering always that blood must not have blood. On clear nights when the constellations shine above them, the people still tell stories of Raven Reyes and Clarke Griffin. The rocket scientist and the commander of death, who flew to the stars and lived forever.