Chapter Text
Lexa sat stiffly at the center of a long table. Anya, to her right, leaned away from her in conversation with her neighbor. Gustus, to her left, seemed to be racing his warrior brothers through the better part of a deer's hind legs. Overall, the sixteen-year-old was not enjoying the feast as much as she knew she could have been. She chewed slowly. Letting her jaw clench methodically helped her think. Despite a lack of hunger, she continued to bring greasy strips of meat and spoonfuls of soft yams to her mouth.
Lexa gazed down the length of the table in one direction and then the other, considering the leaders who had gathered here - whom she had gathered here. She choked the flare of pride that rose in her chest at that thought.
The four clans who were not attending the feast weighed on her mind and made quick work of that flare.
Beyond the heads of those seated across from her (Luna kom Floukru, Indra kom Trikru, and a young warrior named Tristan) she watched her army dance off the stress of another clash with the Mountain. Tomorrow they would send their fallen brothers and sisters to the sky in flames. Tonight they celebrated for them. The whoops and hollers and off-key singing of the survivors of an uncertain day filled the enormous tent. A group of the army's drummers - the youngest in the room at seven or eight years - stood in a swaying, stomping circle around the fire at the center of the crowd and banged out a syncopated rhythm on their normally pragmatic instruments. The space was full of music and drink and heat and heartbeats and life. Lexa looked over them all coolly.
A young warrior covered in tattoos that marked her as Floundkru stepped out of the dancing crowd and laid a hand on Luna's shoulder. Lexa watched the exchange out of curiosity. The other clans, while culturally similar, had distinctions that she needed to learn in order to call herself their Heda. This young warrior, for example, greeted Luna with a familiarity that no member of the Trikru would ever approach Lexa with. The girl leaned in enough to speak softly so only Luna could hear. When Luna nodded in acknowledgement, the girl stepped back. She looked up and met Lexa's eyes as Luna turned to speak to Lexa.
"Heda, my warriors are curious to know how the Commander of Eight Clans will commemorate victories." Luna's eyes sparkled with amusement and maybe also a touch of the ale she'd been nursing. "Forgive me if Trikru customs are different, but in the East we have a tradition after battles..."
Lexa's face remained impassive. She glanced briefly at the warrior who stood waiting for an answer to the question Lexa was sure she had prompted, and back to Luna, before shifting in her seat to lean forward. "Tell me about your tradition."
"In our clan, we recount the battle won in song or poetry. It's usually quite a show, although I admit I've only ever been a spectator. The most creative of our warriors are chosen to tell the story of the battle, and it grows into epic improvisation." Luna paused, as if remembering. “Sometimes it is more… eloquent than other times. The purpose depends immensely on the events of the day, so the stories are either respectfully put together to commemorate the sacrifices we’ve made, or just thrown together to make us laugh. There is merit in laughter, don’t you think, Heda?” she added at Lexa’s subtly skeptical expression.
“It is important to give the people something to live for, yes.”
Luna looked at her appraisingly for a moment. “It is important to have something to live for.” She paused. “If I may, Heda. Leader to leader. It is impossible to inspire others when you struggle to inspire yourself.”
Lexa was aware of a shift around her. The Floukru warrior was no longer waiting on her for an answer but watching Luna with humble eyes. Anya had paused her conversation and was pretending to study her drink. Gustus had slowed his devastation of the deer carcass and was slowly setting a piece of bone down on his plate, as if deciding whether anyone needed a reminder that despite his reputation for fairness and reason, most things could be transformed into lethal weapons in his hands.
The noise in the room continued. Beyond the small circle at the center of the table, drums beat on, the crowd danced, and seated leaders chewed and talked and laughed. But within it, Lexa had a choice.
“Tread carefully, Luna,” she warned, wishing not for the first time that she could have more of these inter-clan conversations without being surrounded by people who felt the need to protect her. “But continue.”
“When I was a child I loved to hear stories. These things are common for us, as perhaps they are for you. Mothers and fathers set their children to sleep with legends - heroes to look up to. These are things to live for, to dream, to become. Those legends turn into horror stories told around tiny fires. Fear reminds us of our instinct to live. And jokes pass the time while we work. Joy soothes us and becomes the place we wish to always return to.”
Lexa nodded. “Do we not experience all those things in reality?”
“Speaking only for myself, reality is often disappointing.” Luna waited for Lexa to respond, but she seemed content to digest the thought. “Disappointing... or at least, uncontrollable.” Lexa blinked slowly and broke eye contact. “My point, really, is that the thing I live for is not the way I survive, and as a leader-” (Anya shifted warningly) “-I have found it incredibly important to know what I live for, so that I can inspire others to do what is necessary to survive.”
Lexa gazed across the sloped ceiling of the ceiling of the tent as Luna finished. She felt Anya relax slightly as she considered whether she needed to respond. This distinction between life and survival was useful, she decided. Luna was a thoughtful and wise leader. What she lacked in tactical skill she made up for in sheer humanity. It wasn’t something that Trikru were accustomed to teaching in children, this reliance on mutual connection. It wasn’t something that Lexa had experienced in another person she could immediately think of. It intrigued her.
“Surely storytelling is not a reason to live for every person in your clan?”
“Of course not. To each his own reason.”
From a very young age Lexa’s entire existence had been learning or doing war. Victory had been linked so thoroughly in her training and in her culture to the greatest reward that she didn’t frequently look elsewhere for satisfaction. But satisfaction found her occasionally in old books of science and history, the diagrams and charts pulling her into knowledge that expanded her understanding, and sometimes (in moments that she tried to deny herself for the feeling of weakness into which they dissolved) she wondered whether she could have made a life from those books if she hadn’t been called to lead so early.
She had been called, so it didn’t matter.
Because the Trikru were constantly at war, war had to be means and also reason for Trikru warriors. Victory had to be reason enough to keep fighting. The adrenaline of battle and the thrill of dominance were their motivation. It was easy, coming from where Lexa came from, to dismiss everything else. It would have been easy to accept what she was taught and to lead as her people expected her to, to lead them through endless wars with neighboring clans and cycles of mutual destruction. That would have been the path of least resistance, especially for a queen called as young as Lexa had been. But Lexa had been given a seed of an idea before she had been called - quite accidentally, as these things happen sometimes - and it consumed her when she was given the opportunity to make that idea into a reality. So for the sake of her half-formed idea, she resisted the expected.
Every day in pursuit of this idea she felt younger and younger. Everything she learned seemed only to lead to more questions. Every clan leader she met with could have proved her a fool over and over if she tried to pretend superiority. And on these days, when she had to navigate a meeting with a new culture, she learned exponentially - mostly how much she had still to learn.
It made sense, in a way, that physical combat was her comfort. Some days she felt it was the only thing she excelled at.
She hoped that perhaps one of these clans had the secret to fighting the greatest enemy: the one in the mountain. In any case, it would make them stronger to have one enemy than be surrounded by enemies. Lexa knew that there was something hypocritical about her wish to finish their struggle with the mountain. When Anya or Gustus asked her explain her reasoning beyond the defeat of the Mountain, she could not describe any vision for them. What happens after war, if not another war to fill the void? Even during brief times of peace throughout Trikru history, fights broke out due to apparently boredom. Aggression (and its sister, defensiveness) was sown into their cultural and personal being. Basically, when pushed to explain with any definitiveness, Lexa could never say whether the ultimate purpose of the coalition was to continue war indefinitely or to attempt to end it completely. The fact that her purpose was undetermined even in her own mind had actually helped her convince each clan leader that joining the coalition was the right option for them. The possible outcomes were numerous, and at least one of them was likely attractive to every leader.
“Is this a popular idea, in the Floukru, that each person’s means of survival are not linked to their reason for it?”
“Unfortunately in trying times it does happen that way, yes.”
Lexa didn’t completely understand the answer. In trying times - times of war? All times were wartimes, it was the state of life. She felt small or naïve. She felt young. She didn’t like the feeling, and began to doubt that the amusement in Luna’s eyes was not as benevolent as her initial instinct had determined. It’s hard to tell when one is being made fun of, Lexa knew, with an age difference of at least ten summers and the walls cultural difference build. Anya and Gustus had relaxed, so surely she wasn’t being tricked? Lexa considered that the safest way to continue the conversation was to shift focus and save herself from possibly looking like a fool.
She looked to the warrior who had stood listening behind her leader through the interchange. “And you, warrior. Do your means of survival and your reason for it match?”
“For me, sometimes they do, Heda. Sometimes they don’t.”
“When do they?”
“In times of peace, I teach the children in my village to read and write. That is a reason. And when the seeds of our crops first push up through the soil that tries to protect them from the light - I find that beautiful, and I think beauty is a reason.”
Lexa sat still as stone, watching the girl as she finished speaking, watching her lips close slowly as she decided she had answered the question completely. Lexa had to close her eyes. Eyes still closed, she asked, “And when don’t they?”
The girl didn’t answer immediately. Accustomed to prompt responses, Lexa opened her eyes. The girl’s steady, calm gaze had been broken. She was studying the plate at Lexa’s place and her brow furrowed. “Well. Also in times of peace, I feel anxious for… I’m sorry, Heda, I can’t find the word. The repetition of days and nights becomes unsatisfying to me, though. Cyclical. Robotic. I find I can’t find beauty in things that I previously could.” She looked at Lexa again, and this time Lexa found the strength to hold her gaze with an unaffected expression. Mostly.
“What is your name?”
“It is Costia, Heda.”
“Thank you for your frank answers, Costia.” The girl nodded. Lexa looked at Luna, who had been pushing her food around her plate, half-listening to the exchange as if she’d heard Costia’s answers before. “Luna, what would it take to make this… commemoration?... of our next battle?”
Luna’s mouth quirked into a slightly surprised smile. “Only to announce to my warriors that it will be, Heda. The ones who will want to perform will do the rest. It is for their own pleasure.”
“Do so.”
---
Lexa knew better than to let her drink control her night. She'd learned about that long ago. But she also knew that an intentional loss of some control could allow truth to shine in a way it could not in the blinding light of sober days. So after Costia bowed and returned to the crowd to let her superiors continue what would quickly become an irrelevant conversation about the advantages of leading by force or reward, she kept an eye on the young warrior’s path through the dancing crowd, waiting for her head to figure out why her heart felt compelled to have her in her sight.
After a while (meals were being finished, people began leaning back in their seats, some of the younger warriors - mostly Trikru boys - had left the dance floor swiftly to be sick outside, and either returned or not) the conversation with Luna slowed comfortably until they sat together in amicable silence. Lexa continued to watch Costia interact with a very young Trikru boy who had become fascinated with the patterns of her tattoos, and she laughed at him kindly and began to point out the parts of the pattern that determined their meanings to him, and Lexa wanted very much to be able to hear what she was telling him. It became clear that her heart was beginning down a dangerous path.
When Costia glanced up from her conversation with the boy as if she’d felt Lexa’s eyes on her, and Lexa looked away so quickly that she knew there was no way she hadn’t been caught, she worried that a better metaphor for her heart’s current position was the top of an avalanche, or the beginning of a mudslide, or a boat when it’s being pulled into a faster, rockier part of the river than you can navigate.
By the time Lexa’s curiosity overcame her fear of being caught looking again, Costia was walking away from the boy and (to Lexa’s horror) towards her. Internally panicking, Lexa tried to think of something to say - before remembering that a warrior of such low status would never just walk up and address her uninvited. But then why-
Costia approached Luna and spoke quietly into her ear. Of course, Lexa, berated herself. Costia would have plenty of reasons to talk to her queen. Perhaps she had a unique position. She wasn’t Luna’s personal guard; Lexa knew those two - Ambost and Cal, young reliable warriors. Costia could be many things, but before tonight she hadn’t been any closer to Luna than all the rest of the Floukru army.
Luna nodded and Costia walked away. Luna leaned forward and looked conspiringly up at Lexa.
“I have to turn in for the night, Heda.” Luna paused with her mouth open, as if deciding how to say what she wanted to say next. “If I may be frank: talking with you tonight has soothed many of the doubts I had about this coalition. I’m very much looking forward to fighting beside you tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow… perhaps someday we will be free to do more than fight, eh?”
“Perhaps.”
Luna smiled and nodded, and stood to leave. “Goodnight, Heda.”
“Until the sun, Luna.”
Lexa watched her cross the large space and join Costia who had waited for her at the entrance to the tent. Costia acknowledged Luna, then, Lexa thought, definitely didn’t imagine, she looked across the tent at Lexa before turning to walk out beside her queen.
She suddenly felt like she’d drunk too much too fast. She leaned in and spoke quietly to Anya.
“Anya. Would it be improper for me to leave?”
Anya scanned the raucous room. “No, but you may want to do it discreetly.”
---
Outside the glowing, vibrating tent at the center of their camp, Anya walked with Lexa to her sleeping quarters. Her guard, Ryken, was likely already there. As they walked, Lexa tried to rewind her mind to before Luna’s exit.
“What did you think of the Floukru Queen?”
Anya had watch Lexa warm to the woman and knew that her direct answer would fall on deaf ears, but gave it anyway to protest the indirectness of the question. “I think she relies on tools that do not guarantee her success, but somehow she has made her life.” She was met with expected cold silence. “Lexa. You are a person who decides how you feel about a person within moments of meeting them. You don’t ask me what I think of this woman to refine your opinion. What are you asking me?”
“I wonder if all the Floukru are like that.”
“Possibly. They see less war than we do.”
Lexa was quiet after that. When they arrived at Lexa’s tent, Anya entered first and turned to face her. She put a finger beneath Lexa’s chin. In any other company the motion would have been apprehensible, but alone they were only themselves, and Anya could read the worry hidden beneath Lexa’s calm expression. “You began to unite the clans for the good of the Trikru, Lexa, but I assure you, your goal is greater now.” Lexa met her eyes but said nothing. “I see the way you attend to all eight clans, the way you learn their customs, their traditions, their language, even…” She paused to mutter something about the strangeness of the Ayelkru. “If you think you brought eight clans together for anything other than the good of them all, you need to remember how it was before. You need to remember. War may not have touched the Floukru much lately, but it has and it would again.” Lexa finally dropped her gaze to the ground, unable to deny the truth of the last statement.
Anya’s mouth tightened into an apologetic smile. She squeezed her shoulder goodnight and left her to her thoughts. Lexa watched the tent flaps fall closed behind her former mentor, and considered that she might never be done needing her advice.