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Time is the enemy of memory.
After weeks turned to months and months faded into years, Lexa’s recollection of Klark kom Skaikru is of the girl she wanted to love, with whom she shared one golden afternoon before she rode to her death. Lexa was up and dressed when Klark left, but she found some task to keep her from the edges of her tower so she wouldn’t follow Klark’s progress until she was beyond her sight.
When word came of Klark’s death – murdered, although it was called execution of a traitor – Lexa spent a day debating with herself. Klark worked so hard to convince her that justice and vengeance were not the same things, that violence did not always have be answered with violence. Lexa had forgiven Skaikru many things in recognition of Klark’s victory over Maunon, but she could not forgive this.
Her ambassadors, jealous of Klark’s influence and Skaikru’s technology, cheered when she announced her decision. Lexa felt Anya and Gustus at her shoulders, whispering their approval that she finally made the right decision about Skaikru.
Still, Lexa had doubts. She kept them to herself as she rode before the warriors marching to the Skaikru camp. Indra kom Trikru, the sole survivor of Skaikru’s massacre of sleeping warriors, rode with her even though her wounds weren’t healed. They didn’t speak, but both bowed their heads as they rode past the killing field.
They stopped in the cover of forest. Warriors silently surrounded the camp, archers invisible in the trees, the rest hidden in ground cover while Lexa waited for her scouts to report. When they did, she closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, fixing in her mind the image of Klark in her bed, smiling down at her. When she opened her eyes, Lexa gave her orders, and scouts ran to deliver them.
Hours later, in the darkest part of the night, Skaikru’s greatest fear arrived. A piece of fence in the dark section was pulled down. The stealthiest warriors killed the guards and opened the gate. As she ran toward the opening, Lexa kept her eyes down. She did not want to see Klark’s head mounted, a warning to both Skaikru and Grounder.
Skaikru received in return what it gave. There was no fight, only slaughter in their beds of those innocent and not. After, there was one small pyre, and Lexa stood at it alone. When there was only ash, Lexa scooped some into a small tin and pocketed it, then returned victorious to her capital.
While her people celebrated, Lexa looked through Klark’s sketchbooks. The same flower was in all of them, and she chose one of the drawings and sent for the woman who placed all of her tattoos. She sat silently for hours, welcoming the physical pain, the repetitious tapping of the design as her skin absorbed Klark.
Alone later in the bed that still smelled like them, her thigh burning with the new design, Lexa cried silently and vowed she would not love again. She would not put another at risk. Love is weakness, she recited to herself. To be heda is to be alone. Heda belongs to her people as her people belong to her, and cannot belong to only one.
She kept those lessons for herself as time passed. Her charges did not need to learn them. The peace she brokered between all the clans continued to hold. Lexa led her people to accept the changes she and Klark discussed. It was sometimes tortuously slow, and Lexa lost count of the number of times she personally stepped between arguing clan leaders, her presence demanding that they use their words instead of weapons.
It wasn’t a weapon that killed her, but illness. Lexa was tired after spending two thirds of her life as heda, and refused the many treatments offered. She died on an afternoon much like the one of her favorite memory, smiling at the dream or memory of a golden haired girl waiting at her bedside.
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