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When she first meets the Fireplace Lady, she’s quite embarrassed.
“Lexa! Stop running around and let me fix your hair!”
But the little pigtailed girl loves this game a little too much. She knows how it’ll end (slap, tantrum, tears), but still she dashes around the tent, under tables, over chairs, until Anya finally catches her and places her firmly on the chair.
“Dammit, Lex. Do we have to do this every day? It’s time to go.”
Lexa just purses her lips, trying not to laugh, waiting for Anya’s inevitable explosion. But Anya just glares in silence, so Lexa gets up and knocks the clock on the mantle to the ground.
“Breaking clocks won’t stop time, dummy.” After placing the broken pieces back on the mantle, she turns back and sighs. “You can’t behave like this with the council. If they want you, it’s serious.”
“The council's always demanding things. What does it have to do with me?”
“We talked about this.” Anya sighs and kneels down, placing one hand over Lexa’s. “It’s a great honor. You’re going to be the commander!”
“I don’t want to be.” In the two days since the call came, Lexa had spent every waking hour alternating between begging, dirty tricks and outright deceit to convince Anya that the Elders read the signs wrong, that she’s not fit to be a leader, that her real destiny is to ride off with Anya to a magical place where the two of them can ride horses and read books without having to worry about conclaves or elders or anything else. But Anya held strong against her ten-year-old logic, and those two days went by too fast, and now they’ve come for her. Lexa wipes away a sudden tear, unsure when (or if) they’ll meet again, and casts an exaggerated pout at her friend, who immediately sighs.
“That puppy dog look isn’t gonna work this time, buddy. You have to go, no matter how adorable you think you are.”
“I hate you.”
“Those are terrible last words.” Anya gets up and runs to the door, then stops, turning around. Lexa doesn’t yet have the words to describe the emotion in Anya’s face, but later, she’ll remember how Anya’s eyes are heavy and wet despite a valiant attempt at a smile. “I won’t see you again until they’re done with you. So I’m going to go outside for a few minutes, and when I come back, maybe you can think of a nicer goodbye.”
Lexa leaves the chair and flops on the bed, frustrated. She plucks one of several knives from her nightstand and twirls it on her fingertips, watching the ivory handle glitter in the mid-morning light. Anya had given it to her two years before, when she took Lexa on as her second. Lexa had complained that the metal was dull and battered compared to the knives of the other warriors and Anya, without saying a word, reached behind Lexa’s head and sliced her braid clean off.
The fireplace roars, rousing Lexa from her reverie. Without even thinking, she flings the knife toward the noise, barely blinking as the thin metal whistles across the room. The knife stops mid-air, and a woman in a tattered blue leather jacket emerges, holding the knife between her fingertips.
“I think this is yours.” She flips the knife so the handle faces outward and offers it to Lexa.
Lexa snatches back the knife and hugs it to her chest, staring hard at the fireplace’s strange castaway. She knows she shouldn’t trust her, that the world is full of people who want to end her life (or so Anya keeps reminding her), but she can’t help but look on with interest at a woman who can stop her knife.
“Where am I,” the woman asks. Her eyes are alive like a sparkling spring sky, though the rest of her face has autumn in its cast.
“TonDC, of course. On Earth.”
“Oh.” The woman circles the room, bending over to inspect each object, every piece of furniture. Lexa looks back at her knife, still amazed that anyone could intercept it. “Another question, then. When am I?”
“2134. Are you stupid?”
“Very possibly.” The strange woman laughs. “And what’s your name, smartypants?”
“Lexa. Commander Lexa.” It’s the first time she’s said it aloud, and despite her fear, she rather likes the sound of it. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” The woman turns away and pulls her scarf down over her head. “Nothing’s wrong at all. Must dash!”
“Wait! You didn’t tell me who you are!” Lexa looks up at the woman and notes the broken watch on her left wrist, held together with bits of string, and the way the woman’s right arm hangs by her side, not quite in the normal way, as though it had been taken apart and pinned back together like one of her wooden dolls. Lexa knows she’s staring, but she can’t help it, she’s just trying to do what she does best - look at surface clues and solve puzzles - but everything about the woman is painfully unfamiliar, and it strikes her that she’s about to be faced with nothing but the unfamiliar, and she falls to pieces.
“Oh, don’t cry. It doesn’t matter who I am.”
“That’s not why I’m crying, you ass.” Lexa wipes her face on her sleeve. “They’re about to take me away from everyone.” Her stuttered breathing regulates as the strange woman gently but firmly grasps her knee.
“How old are you?”
“Just turned ten.”
“Ten, huh? Well you must be very special if they chose you above all the other ten-year-olds.”
“That’s what they tell me.” Lexa pulls open a cupboard and retrieves a blue amulet. “I found this, deep in a lion’s den. They said it’s how they knew I was the one. Maybe if you take it, they can’t make me leave.”
At this, she only receives a sad smile and a gentle hand pushing her hand back. “It’s not mine to take. But let me tell you what. I bet you’re gonna be a great leader someday.”
“You think so?”
“I really do. You were born for this.”
Lexa suddenly throws her arms around the stranger’s shoulder, burying her face for a moment. She pulls back after a moment, embarrassed. “Sorry.”
“Never be sorry for hugging. Hugs are good.” The lady moves toward the fireplace. She starts tinkering with the broken clock. “Someone has certainly made a mess of this. Explains why I’m in the wrong time.”
Lexa blushes. “People can be clumsy sometimes.”
“Don’t I know it?” The strange woman grins widely. “We’ll meet again, little Commander.” She presses a button on the side of the mantle and the fireplace rotates around completely.
Lexa, mouth open, runs to the fireplace. Inside and out she looks, but finds no sign of the odd woman who’d just been standing in her room.
“What the hell are you doing, Lexa?” It’s Anya, back for an improved goodbye.
“Just trying to...never mind.” After a beat, “I’ll miss you, Anya.”
At this, Anya wraps her up in a very long hug, letting her go only when the warriors come and pull her away.
As she rides to her regal destiny, Lexa buries her head in the mane of her dappled grey horse, whispering her fear that she can’t possibly live up to what others expect, that she can’t possibly be the great leader they’ve read in the omens. The horse doesn’t reply, of course it can’t, it just keeps running through the fields, and the simple motion calms her down.
She turns her thoughts to the strange woman in her room, but no matter how hard she tries to remember her, the Fireplace Lady remains just out of reach. After a few minutes of hard thinking, she puts the whole episode out of her mind, chalking it up to a childish daydream. She holds up her head and rides on.
---
The second time they meet, Lexa’s about to assume her role as Commander.
Lexa lights a few candles and falls on her bed, exhausted. She knows she needs to get out of her blood-soaked clothes; Anya would come to collect her soon, to celebrate her victory. She cracks her fingers in satisfaction, remembering the angry faces of the clan chiefs as she dispatched their best warriors. In five years, she had surpassed warriors with 20 years of fighting experience, and she didn’t let them forget it, scratching tiny slits into their arms, just deep enough to leave permanent scars.
A shadow obscures the little candle by her tent-flap, just for a second, and Lexa leaps to her feet, not wanting Anya to yell at her for giving in to her exhaustion. “I need to change. I’ll just be a minute!” But as soon as she bends to pick up a fresh shirt, a dagger whizzes by, slashing a shallow cut atop her left shoulder, and two shadows leap out from under her dining table and run straight at her. One scrapes her arm with his blade, but without even blinking, she tosses him over her shoulder and elbows the other in the face. She snatches the knife from the second warrior, a girl of no more than 13, and wraps her arm around her neck.
“Put your weapon down,” she says to the first warrior. In the shadows he looked like a great bear, a predator, but now, in the light, she sees that he’s just a kid like her, 15 at the most, shaking like a leaf. He tosses his knife on the ground and it clacks away into the fireplace.
“I won’t kill either of you,” Lexa says, lifting the wrist of the girl in her capture. With a swift flick, she slices into the girl’s wrist, a shallow wound that still bleeds like a fountain. “But you’d better hurry. I’d say you have about four hours to get her to a healer before she bleeds out.”
The two intruders run from the room as fast as they can, and Lexa lies back on her bed, more exhausted than before. The attempts on her life had increased of late, but these were the first to make it past the palace guards.
After a few minutes, Anya comes tearing into her room, ripping off the bedcovers and tossing water in her face.
“Hey!” Lexa sits up, her knees cracking as she turns her feet to the floor. She rubs the water from her eyes and glares at Anya. “I thought winning the tournament means I get some kind of reward. A feast, for example. Or a nap.”
“You live. That’s the reward.” Anya continues to move about the room, collecting Lexa’s armor and weaponry. Eventually she stops, yanking the bedsheet out from under Lexa, forcing her onto the floor.
Lexa flails at the mess of sheets surrounding her. “I could have you killed for this insolence.”
Anya’s face turns dark. “You’ve been in Polis for five years and you haven’t ended a single life. I doubt I’d be the first.”
“Is that what this is about?” No one would dare to criticize her openly, but every time she wins a fight, her boot on the throat of her fallen opponent, she feels the audience’s sense of expectation, and their disapproval when she steps away.
“You’re an idiot for leaving those two alive.”
“I wanted to send a message to their Queen. They can’t do that if they’re dead.” Lexa picks herself up and turns up her chin. “At least now I know how they got into my quarters.”
“I was doing you a favor. Giving you an easy way to prove that you’re not weak.”
“They could have killed me.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t deserve to be the Commander.”
Lexa squares her jaw. “So what now?”
“We’re gonna have to do this the hard way.”
“But that isn’t honorable.”
“You’re about to be Heda. Honor’s a luxury. And so’s mercy.”
Anya holds her hand all the way up to the killing field. Lexa keeps her eyes on the ground; a guard straps the the would-be assassins to wooden poles, but she refuses to look at them. She straightens her sword, lowering it again when she catches the reflection of her own face.
They’re close now; her right hand trembles like she’s just a young apprentice. But she isn’t an apprentice, she’s the Commander, so she glides forward, the point of her sword piercing through the girl like a knife through butter. The child’s eyes brighten for a moment before the light goes out entirely.
The crowds roar, screaming for a city-wide feast to celebrate justice being served, but the thought of eating makes her nauseous. In the excitement, Anya takes pity and finishes off the other intruder.
Lexa drops her blood-stained sword on the ground and floats away, pulled from the killing scene by a succession of cheering hands. As soon as she escapes the arena, she waves her goodnights, citing an uncommon tiredness. No one blocks her exit, but they all attempt to pat her on the back, saluting her bravery.
Some bravery , she thinks. Unarmed kids .
When she gets back to her room, she crawls into her bed and breathes slowly through the minutes, until minutes become hours, and hours become daylight. When she sees the sun, she sits up, giving up on the prospect of sleep.
“Hello, little Commander.”
Lexa turns toward the voice, startled, and narrows her eyes at her new visitor. “That’s three past the guards today. I really need better security.”
The woman laughs. “I’m not your average intruder.”
“I don’t know what you are.” Lexa eyes her visitor up and down. She’s wearing the same faded blue jacket, the same worn-down watch. Her hair remains the same length as before; the same faded scar crosses her cheek. “Or what you’re doing here.”
But even as she speaks, Lexa loses interest, unconsciously fingering the cut on her shoulder. It had just begun to scar, but still burns bright and red. Over her long sleepless night, she kept touching it (she would say she’s touching it, when really she’s digging her nails in, reopening the wound) just to feel the pain anew. It’s wet again; the wound bleeds.
“I was a healer, once.” The woman hesitates by the fireplace, then moves in, taking a bandage from Lexa’s side table. “Let me help.”
Lexa, still haunted by the girl she killed, how the light went out of her eyes like a candle going out in a wisp of wind, barely notices as her visitor moves towards her. Her fingertips lightly brush against Lexa’s skin as she wraps the bandage around her shoulder. Lexa sighs for a moment, then she bats off the stranger’s hand. “I am no weakling. I don’t need gentleness.”
“Everyone needs it sometimes.” But the stranger takes a step back. “A long time ago, someone told me that emotions are weakness. That they put other people in danger.”
“Whoever told you that is right. I would give anything not to feel what I’m feeling now.”
“If you didn’t feel anything, you wouldn’t be a good commander. You have to care about your people to protect them.”
“But at what cost? Who’ll protect me when I’m Heda?” Lexa feels a hot ember of resentment as she thinks of those sleeping comfortably in their warm beds, no guilt to trouble them, no responsibility to crush them.
“I’ll come when I can. I can’t always be there, but sometimes.”
And who are you?
Under the tent-flap, the slightest hint of sunshine peeks through. She’s spent just one night hiding in her tent, one night in mourning for the soul she removed from this world, but she knows that hiding won’t stop bitter weeds from growing in the hearts of her people (or hers), that the concrete still cracks in every road in the city.
Lexa shakes off her dark thoughts, draws back her shoulders, and looks straight into the eyes of the intruder. “You know what’s funny?”
“No. But I love a good joke.”
“When I look away from you, I can’t remember your face. Isn’t that strange?”
“Maybe your memory’s faulty.”
“My memory’s excellent.” Lexa steps closer, as if to taunt the lady of the fireplace, but her face becomes blurry, like it’s hidden behind a thin curtain. She takes another step, pulling her dagger from her belt. “Are you even real? Could I kill you?”
But she doesn’t move any closer, held in check by some invisible energy. After a second, the lady from the fireplace steps back and flips her hood up over her hair. “I’d better go.”
“You still haven’t told me who you are. Or why you’re here.”
“I’m a friend. And I’m looking for someone.” Once again, just like years before, she closes her eyes and runs her hands over the mantle over the fire.
“Not me?”
“Not exactly.”
“Cryptic poetry. I don’t have time for that.”
“The person I’m looking for...doesn’t exist yet.”
“And when will they exist?”
“It’s hard to say.”
“Then what can you say?”
The fireplace lady ceases her pacing and lays a hand on Lexa’s face. “I can say that this world will try to break your heart many times over, but you can’t let it. You have a job to do.”
Lexa slumps against the wall. “I know.”
“I’ve gotta go.” And without a backward glance, the lady pulls a lever by the fireplace, and Lexa watches as it carries her off to god knows where.
And though Lexa can’t say she received any specific comfort from her unusual visitor, she finally finds sleep.
---
The third time they meet, Lexa’s almost too broken to fix.
One, two, three, she counts, hoping that the mundane task will help her catch her breath. Four, five, six , she says, beginning to sob. Four, five, six, she repeats. Before she can trick herself to seven, her feet carry her out of the war room, up the stairs and into her quarters. She barely makes it to the bathroom before she begins to throw up, clawing at her face, hoping to purge herself of everything she’d seen in the past five minutes.
The scene keeps replaying in her head: the smug look on the Azgeda queen’s face when she walks into the war room and tosses a duffel bag on the floor in front of her, the rotting smell infecting the air, the tinny cracks of the opening zipper, the dark red flakes blooming through the air, Anya’s sudden recoil, the desperate (and failed) attempts to cover Lexa’s eyes.
One by one, her friends come in to check on her, tentative but brave, but she snaps them back out like they’re rubber bands. An hour or two later, she wakes as if from a dream, releasing her tight hold on the pillar in her bedroom and falling prone on the floor. She looks at her arms, covered in dried blood, and tries not to think of whose blood she carries.
A small, sad hello pierces the silence.
“What took you so long?”
“This is not an exact science.” Her strange friend lies down beside her, lacing her her fingers through Lexa’s. Lexa pulls away almost immediately. “How’d you know I’d come?”
“You tend to show up after the worst moments in my life, like some kind of Devil Godmother.”
“I can’t seem to lock onto happier times.”
“Me neither.” Lexa feels the gaze of the other woman but she doesn’t look back, afraid to find pity. She’s suffered enough pity for a lifetime, and it’s only been two hours. “You know, you still haven’t told me your name.”
“I like the sound of Devil Godmother. Makes me sound badass.”
“And are you?”
“I suppose I must be. You can ask all the people I’ve survived.”
“You’re certainly modest.”
For a moment, Lexa can see a sparkle in her friend’s eye that she hadn’t seen since she was a child. But then, once again, her face goes slightly out of focus, like she’d pulled down a veil that diffuses the light.
“What have you been calling me?”
“My imaginary friend.”
“But you know I’m real.”
“When you’re here with me, sure.”
“And when I’m not?”
“You’re like snow that melted weeks before.”
Lexa gets up and looks out the window. She scans the street until she sees a house with pale blue shutters, or at least she remembers them as pale blue, though now there are only traces of color. The wind and the rain had done their duty, leaving the wood splintered and cracked, rusting the hinges and wearing away the roof.
Her non-imaginary friend steps close behind her and wraps an arm around her shoulder. “Is that her house?”
“It was when we met. She lives here now. Lived here.”
Lexa turns and rests her eyes on a ragged chair by the window. She half expects Costia to burst into the room and pull her down on the chair in so they can look out the window together and listen to the music of the street. She closes her eyes, hoping to hear that music again, but when she doesn’t, she takes a deep breath, moves to the chair, tosses it out the window.
The other woman tugs her away from the window, and Lexa fights her off, shoving her against the wall.
“I’m not gonna jump if that’s what you’re afraid of.” Then Lexa sees that her friend's elbow is bleeding from the impact. She wants to apologize, but can only look on in horror.
“It’s ok, Lexa. It's just a scratch.” She presses down on the wound and the trickle slows. “I shouldn’t have startled you.”
The light outside turns from blue to pink, and then to orange, then to purple. No one breaks the silence, even as the town itself readies for sleep.
“You’re still here. This is the longest you’ve ever stayed.” Lexa’s normally clear eyes cloud over as they turn to her visitor. “Why this time?”
“Because you look like you need a friend.”
“So my devil godmother has a heart.”
The walls of the room, once pulsing with mystery in the light of the fire, now look exactly as they are - dusty and faded and worn, the wallpaper curling from the edges of the ceiling, little details ignored in the daze of infatuation. They were certain the world was theirs to take, so they failed to take care of their little world. And now she’s gone.
“What do I do now,” Lexa asks, voice breaking.
“You keep going. And it’s gonna be difficult.”
“How can it be harder than this moment?”
“Because you’ll realize that her dying isn’t the worst part.”
“Then what is?”
“Weeks from now, she’ll still be dead, and you’ll still be alive. That’s the hardest part. Figuring out what to live for.”
“And what do you live for?”
“I’ll do you the courtesy, just this once, of not offering you cryptic poetry.”
“But not answers.”
“Maybe you’re better off without them.”
“I couldn’t be worse off.”
“Don’t tempt the universe.”
---
Six months later, they meet again, and the encounter is less than friendly.
Lexa runs through the streets, past the house with the pale blue shutters, and jumps a young lady dressed in dappled furs. With a quick swipe, she cuts her throat and then watches the blood drip down the dead woman’s coat. She barks an order to the warriors huffing behind her and walks back to her quarters. She’s infuriated by the Azgeda queen’s persistence in sending expendable apprentices to annoy her, but she can’t bring herself to feel sorry for them. They come to kill her, ineffectual sheep directed by an ineffectual shepherd; their lives are barely worth the oxygen they breathe.
There’s one guard left in front of her quarters; the others had followed Lexa after the assassin. She flings her bloodied sword at him and orders him to fetch Anya. She walks to her window and takes a deep breath, astonished at the continued incompetence of her enemies, and of her own guards. She wipes the blood from her hands and sighs.
“I see you’ve lost your dislike of killing people.”
“Some people are too stupid to live.” Lexa continues to stare out the window, ignoring her visitor. She feels a rough hand on her shoulder and violently spins around, almost knocking the other woman over. “I’m not interested in whatever this is. I have other things to worry about.”
“You need a break.”
“I don’t have time for that.”
“Come with me. There’s always time.”
“Don’t want to.”
“Don’t care.” The visitor picks up a clean shirt from Lexa’s closet and tosses it at her. Lexa sticks out her jaw, but knows she can’t go outside like this, her clothes soaked in blood. “Do you trust me?”
“Not really.”
“Well that’s...honest.”
“You’ve still told me almost nothing about yourself. I think trust is a little much to ask.”
“You’ll thank me later.” She takes Lexa’s hand and pulls her out of the room.
Lexa sighs and goes with it. “Your timing is off, devil godmother.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing terrible has happened.”
“Looks like nothing has happened at all.”
“I’m still alive. Isn’t that enough?”
“Not even close.” Lexa watches as her visitor rolls up her sleeves and begins her little game with the fireplace. "Why can't I ever remember where the goddamn switch is?"
Lexa crosses her arms, prepared to make a cutting remark, but then she notices a small amount of blood trickle down her friend's elbow. She recognizes the wound immediately; six months later, she still hasn't forgiven herself for hurting her friend.
“You know what’s funny,” Lexa says without any trace of mirth.
“Probably not.” The woman continues to dance around the fireplace, searching for god knows what.
"You're bleeding."
"If you think that's funny, I've got some hilarious bruises to show you. Total laugh riot."
Lexa grabs the woman’s arm and turns the elbow up. “I gave you this wound.” The visitor’s eyes dart from side to side, like she’s searching for a good lie. “It’s still fresh, like I hurt you yesterday.”
"I heal slow."
"Don't lie to me." Lexa drops the arm and pulls back. "I'm not going a step further until you tell me who you are."
"Lexa, I promise that you'll find out in time."
"But why can’t you tell me now? You just show up, mouthing platitudes and soaking up my time."
"It's not like your time's being put to any kind of use. Tell me, how many clans were in the alliance six months ago?"
"11."
"And now?"
"...11."
"Then what did Costia even die for? You're still swatting flies instead of building a better world."
"What better world? There's only this. Maybe wherever you came from there's something better, but here there's only this. Let's say I pull the alliance together. What happens next? We will battle some other enemy, form new alliances. It's an endless spiral of futility."
Her friend doesn’t respond. Then, all of a sudden, she takes a step back and hits herself in the head. "I'm an idiot! The biggest idiot the Earth has ever seen!"
Lexa's curious despite herself. "What's the matter?"
She pulls a strip of cloth from her pocket. “Stand still. I need to cover your eyes.”
"Why?"
"You'll be blinded otherwise. Hurry, we don't have much time."
And so Lexa, who hadn't felt anything in six months, feels a sudden thrill.. A small part of her knows that her friend might just be distracting her, but she appreciates the break from the dull ache crowding out everything inside her head. She begins to ask where they are going, but then, for the first time in a long time, she decides to just go along for the ride.
---
Her friend grabs her by the hand and pulls her close. A loud click punctuates the air, and suddenly Lexa's spinning. When she stops, she curls her nose. The air is not like air, in that it's impossible to ignore, like someone took the oxygen and infused it with rancid butter.
But then she's dragged forward again. By the tinny echo of her steps, they're walking on metal. She hears different voices as she steps forward; at one point, she thinks she hears her own. But still they move forward, hands together, until they reach another door. Again, that loud click, and the air turns rich, laced with the scent of lavender. Her friend pulls the blindfold off of her, and Lexa turns around in shock.
It's the same room they'd just left, though it's not the same at all. A shagpile carpet cushions their feet and the walls are decorated with bright yellow wallpaper. Musical instruments circle the room, free of their cases, ready for showtime.
“Where are we?”
“Do me a favor. Just this once, don’t ask questions. Trust me.”
And so Lexa, against her better judgment, takes a deep breath and nods agreement. She walks to the window and is astonished to see that the concrete city she looked at only moments ago had disappeared; green fields filled the scene as far as she could see, punctuated only by dappled brown horses grazing in the gentle spring day.
“Can we go outside?” she asks in a small voice.
Her friend just laughs. “That’s the idea, silly.”
Lexa runs down the stairs, trying to ignore the freakish similarity of this home to her own, though her eyes can’t help but be drawn to the edges of the walls, to spots that should contain cracks from water leakage and the odd earthquake, to white ceilings as yet unstained by nuclear smoke.
But then she’s outside, and with the first breath of the cold spring air, she forgets everything. She blinks at the yellow sun and smiles for the first time in six months. She whispers a barely audible ‘thank you’ to the woman beside her, and runs to the nearest horse, a young buck with fire in his eyes. She whispers in his ears and then leaps on top of him, stroking his mane. She continues to whisper in his ear, even as she spurs him on with her boot.
Then, suddenly, there’s only her, the horse and the sunshine. But out of the corner of her eye, she still sees the woman who’d brought her here, wherever here is, and she feels a sudden longing to understand exactly how they’d come to be in this magical place, but she pushes that longing down and focuses on the majestic creature below her. She pulls his calm into herself, praying that this moment might be enough to fuel her entire existence. At last, fulfilled, she moves the horse toward the house. She flips one leg neatly over the horse’s beautiful mane, turning her knees toward the sun, leaping off the stirrups as though she were flying through the air.
She holds out a hand to the woman standing still by the house, begging her forward. “Come on, friend,” she says.
“I never was very good at riding horses.”
“Then ride with me. Please.”
The woman hesitates, but then she takes Lexa’s hand, and they both ride off for a few minutes of utter abandon before the sun begins to set.
---
Interlude - Years Pass
They settle into a strange rhythm, Lexa and her fireplace lady. Sometimes she’ll appear for multiple days in a row, and then she’ll be gone for a week. And each time, Lexa knows not to ask questions; it’s the unspoken agreement they’ve entered into.
Sometimes they don’t leave the room; they’ll spend hours discussing the events of the day, or the week, or the month, arguing over battle strategy and personnel management.
Other times, when Lexa’s sad, her friend will take her back to that mysterious other world, the one where she can have a moment of peace amongst the animals, riding through green fields without fear of interruption, but still she doesn’t explain where they go or how they get there.
Her favorite moments are the ones where they sit together in silence, one of them reading a book, one of them working away at some intellectual problem. Every once in a while her friend will ask a question about the state of affairs, and they briefly engage before returning to their respective activity. The silence is never uncomfortable; Lexa takes pleasure in having one person she doesn’t have to put on a face for, one person she can just sit near without pressure or worry. One person who isn’t trying to kill her or usurp her power or catch her in some strategic mistake.
Lexa treasures this odd domestic tranquility, and after a few years, comes to expect it. Reality would not fulfill this expectation.
Out the window, there’s a disturbance. Lexa sees her warriors break their carefully designed formation and run around the street like frantic human ants. Lexa empathizes with their fear, but also feels a long-lost thrill.
“What are you grinning at?” It’s her. Lexa has grown accustomed to the random visits of her unusual friend, and has stopped questioning her purpose.
“There’s a new player in the game.” Lexa turns to her friend. “It’s a good thing. Turns out peace is pretty dull.”
“Peace? since when?”
Lexa turns her eyes to the floor and smiles, not wanting to look too proud. “There are 12 clans in the alliance now.”
“You did it? Oh my god you did!” The visitor throws her arms around Lexa, and Lexa feels her cheeks warm up.
“I don’t know why you’re so excited. You didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“So all those conversations about how to beat the Ice Queen at her own game, you had them inside your head?”
“Well I’m still not 100% sure you’re real,” Lexa says, grinning. She turns over her friend’s left arm. “Your elbow’s healed. How long did you wait before coming back to see me?”
“Not long enough. Should've waited for your ego to deflate."
“Oh please. You can’t get enough of me.” Lexa pulls her friend in front of her and takes the opportunity to look her up and down. The blue coat had begun its slow fade into an inky pale blue, and the watch had surrendered its minute hand. Where once an odd golden strand drew attention to the unravelling curls, giving them liveliness and a sense of style, a sea of grey remains. She squeezes her friend’s hand. “Everything ok?”
“Of course it is.” There’s that soft, sad smile again. “Things are moving faster than expected.”
“Even on your end?”
“Especially on my end.”
They don’t let go of each other; her friend steps closer and rubs a knuckle against Lexa’s chin. She looks terribly sad, but for a brief second, Lexa sees something else. Something akin to fire. She’s not sure what comes over her, but she steps closer, closing her eyes, afraid to move any further forward, feeling the ghost of a warm breath on her lips.
Then, suddenly, a troop of voices start clamoring, “Heda! Heda! Heda! Heda!”, and Lexa steps back, breathless.
“They want me.”
“What for?” Her friend won’t look her in the eye.
“To lead them into battle.”
“Then I suppose you need to go.”
Lexa hears the sadness in her friend’s voice, and longs to reach out again, to dive back into that strange moment, but it had already evaporated, and besides, duty calls.
“What battle?” Her friend asks the question with a new darkness over her eyes, as if she already knows the answer.
“Icarus has landed.”
“I know this is ironic coming from me but...cryptic much?”
“Our ancestors sent their best and brightest into the stars, on spaceships designed to outlast eternity. But now they’ve crashed down to Earth, just like the rest of us. I didn’t expect this in my lifetime. And we need to make sure they’re not threats.”
“The Ark.” The woman turns away.
Lexa narrows her eyes. “I prefer my metaphor.”
"Of course you do.” Her friend turns up her lips up, but the smile doesn't quite reach her eyes. “What are you going to do?”
“Their leader claims to want peace, so I’ve sent Anya to meet with her. And if that doesn’t work, we need to be ready.”
“Oh.” She looks as though she’s about to say something, but then she turns back to the fireplace.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’ve got to go.”
Lexa’s surprised by the abrupt goodbye, and fixes her most regal glare on her companion. She almost immediately looks away; the veil had returned, more powerful than before. Where even moments before her friend’s eyes sparkled with mirth, now they are muddy and grey. Lexa blinks a few times, hoping her face would come into focus, but still it remains just out of reach, like an oasis in the desert sun.
“Stay here,” Lexa finally says, a new firmness in her voice. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”
“If you insist.”
And so Lexa runs down the stairs, eyes shining, ready to face her new challenge. She gives a rousing speech, assuring her frightened people that though the world keeps changing, though it offers new threats every day, she, Lexa knows how to survive them. When she’s finished, cheers ring out from across the city, and she rushes back into her palace. She stops when she hears the whirr of the fireplace. Her friend is gone.
---
The Fog of War
Lexa waits for her friend, not knowing that they are only to meet once more. She thinks about the last time they met and wonders if she overstepped. When she suffers the embarrassment of losing three hundred of her warriors to the new invaders from the sky, she looks to the fireplace, missing her friend and counselor.
“You’re the one who murdered three hundred of my warriors.”
“You’re the one who sent them there to kill us.”
When she meets the leader of the Skaikru, she has to take a step back to figure out where she’s seen her before. She eyes her up and down, probably making her uncomfortable, but then she stops trying to remember and forges ahead.
When she mourns Anya’s death, she fully expects her friend to show up, to bring her out of her new pain. But still she keeps away, leaving Lexa to deal with it alone. And though she hates to admit it, she’s gotten used to the pain. Anya’s death burns in her heart, but it doesn’t leave her inconsolable. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t come, Lexa thinks. I’ve become too hard.
Besides, she has Clarke to distract her. The woman had become more than just a worthy opponent to her, more than a highly effective thorn in her side. When she looks at her, she feels a warmth that she hadn't felt for years, though she can't shake the feeling they'd met somewhere before, perhaps in a past life. She longs to protect her, to teach her the hard lessons Lexa had learned over the years, but save her the cost.
They fight their battles together, and each time, they win, defeating the Pauna, the hesitations of her own people, the insufferable incompetence of the Skaikru Council. Lexa has no doubt that they will win against the mountain too, and avenge her people for a century of suffering at the hands of over-privileged vampires.
They argue like they're family, but each time, Lexa treasures the closeness that allows them to fight like this, directing deep verbal truths at each other without politics or artifice. And during one of their tense encounters, for one exceptional, shining moment, Lexa loses herself, and voices something she'd barely admitted to herself, and though Clarke does not respond in kind, she doesn't run away, not because of that, at any rate, and for the moment that's more than enough.
In this particular fight, Lexa surrenders, and when she does, she notices something different in Clarke’s body language, a relaxation, a softness beneath the hard shell. Suddenly, all she can hear is her own heartbeat, pulsing through her head and driving her forward. She tells herself this isn't the time, but her body refuses to listen, and before she knows what's happening, they meet as one, and it's perfect, until it isn't. But then, Clarke utters two words (not yet), and the whole world brightens with hope for the future.
---
They meet for one last time, in the midst of the battle with Mount Weather.
As Lexa runs toward the bridge, the warrior in front of her snaps back and falls, knocking her to the ground. She lies still as more bullets whip past, disturbingly aware of the blood oozing from the other body onto hers. She closes her eyes, pushes the body out in front of her, holding it as a shield, and crawls behind an enormous pillar at the end of the bridge. Once safe, she wipes the blood from her face and gingerly holds out a tree branch. Within seconds, it disintegrates, shredded by the shooters on the bridge. She sees only one way forward: a rough path descending steeply below the bridge.
Lexa covers her face and runs to safety, pausing in shock when she sees a familiar figure in the middle of the dirt road. Soot covers her entire body, but underneath the dirt, she’s still that person, the slender old woman in the blue coat, here once more in the flesh.
“I don’t have time for this,” Lexa says, pursing her lips. “Get out of my way.”
“I deserve that,” the woman says. “But you need to come with me.”
“Need is an interesting word choice,” Lexa says, bitterly. “When I needed you, you abandoned me.”
“You were fine without me,” she replies, a note of sadness in her voice.
“Then why are you here?”
“To give you answers.”
“It’s a hell of a moment for that.”
“I know. But it’s the right one.” She steps forward and takes Lexa by the hand. “I’ll get you back here, don’t worry.”
Lexa turns back to the carnage, beating down the anguish in her heart as she sees the bodies littering the ground. She continues to stare even as her friend pulls her down the path, both gliding forward like they’re in a dream, past the trees, past abandoned shacks, into an old concrete guardhouse. Before she knows what's happening, the world begins to spin.
There it is, that rancid air. But even without the blindfold, everything’s a blur, and she holds her breath and prays for an end to the burning in her eyes. Her vision clears, revealing an endless iron hallway, soot-blackened by the air itself. Along the walls, a series of plate glass windows punctuate the blackness, casting their own lights and shadows into the room.
“Is this hell?” Lexa asks in a small voice.
“This is my world.”
Lexa ignores her, trying not to collapse under the strangeness of what she sees. Her life had been defined by strange new situations, but she’d never seen anything as strange as this - the plate glass windows emit sound as well and light, and the cacophony drives out every logical thought.
She goes to one of the glass pieces and gasps. There’s a little girl, giggling madly as she’s being chased around the room. “Lexa! Stop running around and let me fix your hair!” Lexa mouths the words along with Anya; every detail of that day is still burned in her brain, the day she first met the fireplace lady.
She steps to the next glass, and the next, and sees only herself, a hundred iterations plastered upon the cold steel wall. She continues her silent perusal, stopped in her tracks when she sees her face enveloped in long black hair, two bodies clutching each other in a moonlit room. She looks away - that was the last night with Costia before they stole her and killed her.
“I feel sick,” she says.
“I'm sorry.”
Lexa closes her eyes, unable to comprehend this strange new place against the horrors she’d just abandoned.
“They're time windows, Lex. They’re all locked onto your life.”
“Why?”
“It took me a while to figure that out. To figure out what I was supposed to do.”
Lexa opens her eyes slowly, trying to process. She looks to the person she’d considered her friend, the interloper in her life, hoping to find an answer in her face, or at least an explanation, but she only meets that strange illusion, the one that’s kept her face out of reach for so many years.
“Well don't keep me in suspense,” Lexa spits out, barely able to breathe.
“You’re not going to like it.”
“You think I like any of this?”
“No,” the woman says, shrinking into herself. “Emerson, the guard from the mountain.”
“What about him?”
“He’s going to offer you a deal. You have to take it.”
“What are you talking about? What kind of deal?”
“He’ll give you back your people in exchange for abandoning the attack.”
“A coward’s move. An attempt to divide and conquer because they know they’re bound to lose.” Lexa grins, but her smile fades when she notices the flash of darkness in the other woman’s eyes. “Right?”
No response.
“This the best chance we’ve ever had to defeat them,” Lexa says, gritting her teeth. “I will not surrender.”
“If you don’t, everybody dies.”
“You’re lying.”
“If you do this, Cage Wallace sets off a self-destruct sequence that destroys the entire mountain.” The woman leans in, her face dark. “But before he does that, he fires all the remaining missiles. TonDC. Polis, Camp Jaha. Destroyed.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because this is the world I live in. The world that exists because you don't take the deal.”
“No,” Lexa says. “He has no reason to kill his own people. The plan will work. It’s a good plan.”
“I’m not saying it isn’t! It’s a brilliant plan, and I’m not one to brag.”
Something clicks within Lexa. She moves forward and stands tall, casting a shadow over the other woman. “Show yourself.”
“I can’t do that.”
“If you have any hope of me listening to even one more word of what you’re saying, you’ll reveal yourself right now.”
“Turn around then.”
“No. No more trickery.”
The woman sighs. “If I do this, there’s no going back.”
“And if you don’t, there’s no going forward.”
“You’ve picked a hell of a time to get sassy with me.”
“Dragging this out isn’t going to change my mind.”
The woman sighs. She reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out a long metal tube with a black dial on one end, and a red button on the other. “I found this in the wasteland. I was being chased by panthers. When I pressed the button, they forgot I was there.”
She turns the dial all the way counter-clockwise. “This controls how powerful the effect is.” She pauses before pressing the button. “I’m asking you, one last time, don’t make me do this.”
There’s no response. The strange veil falls away.
“It was you all along,” Lexa says, barely above a whisper. The woman comes into focus for the first time in since Lexa was a child, and though time had done its terrible duty, snatching away the brightness of her eyes, the quickness of her gait, Lexa would know her anywhere. Clarke. Lexa longs to hold her in and bring her a moment of comfort, to bring light to the darkness in her eyes. Instead, she grasps the back of her own neck, nervous.
“How is this possible? How come I didn’t recognize her - you - when the Ark came down?”
“Perception filter with a dash of retcon,” Clarke says. “Parlor tricks so you never saw me quite right.”
“How do I know this isn't another illusion?” But even as she asks the question, she fixates on the watch on the other woman’s left wrist, the same one that her Clarke would never remove, not even to put on armor. The second hand wavers between two lines, and even though the machine is broken, Lexa knows it belongs to Clarke.
She reels back, coming face to face with another time window. She thinks how strange it is to watch herself watching someone else, and worse, to watch her reach out to someone she's being asked to betray. Before they kiss, Lexa closes her eyes, unwilling to tarnish her shining memory with this vision of tiny ghosts through a cracked glass window.
“I’ve spent a lot of time watching that one,” Clarke says.
“It was just yesterday.”
“For you it was. For me, it was...twenty-five years ago. At least.”
Lexa glances at the next glass piece, and then turns back toward the other Clarke, eyes shining, jaws set. “That’s the last one. Mt. Weather.”
Clarke doesn’t respond.
“Is this the last time I’ll see you?”
“If all goes well.”
“Define well.”
“If you do what I ask.”
“So not well for me at all.” Lexa takes another turn about the room, pausing at a window into the first moment she met Clarke, the young woman defiant in her throne room. “This is when you stopped showing up.”
“I couldn’t risk you recognizing me.”
Lexa wipes a tear away. “But if you knew that this is what you’d ask me to do, you could have stopped me from falling for her...for you.”
Clarke’s face breaks at this. “I couldn’t do that, even if I wanted to.”
“Why not?”
“I couldn’t interfere with anything that would bring you to this moment.”
Lexa stares at her in horror. She has so many questions, not just about how this older Clarke came to find her, but how, why, she could stay so aloof, willing to break her. “All this time...every time you visited me...I thought you were there to watch over me. To bring me solace when no one else could. My friend. My guardian. But I was right the first time around. You really are the devil.”
Clarke reaches for Lexa’s hand, but Lexa bats her off, crossing her arms. “Follow me.” The rancid air swirls around them and Lexa struggles not to cough. Clarke waves a handkerchief at Lexa as the air turns more and more foul. The metal clanks beneath them, and a speck of sunlight burns through a broken window. At last they get to the door.
“This is your world,” Lexa repeats in horror. All around, the air shimmers through fire and smoke. The ground before her is scorched and red, and further on it’s almost black. “You said that you last saw me 25 years ago. No fire can burn that long.”
“These fires do,” Clarke replies, simply. “My people are all dead, yours too. Everyone but Emerson, for some reason. He told me he offered you a deal, one you didn’t take. I’m asking you to take it. To save us from this world.”
The smoke infects Lexa’s lung, and she begins to choke. She stumbles back, away from the open door, back into the room with a thousand windows into her life. “If I do what you ask, I’ll lose her.”
“You don’t know that.”
“And what happens to you?” Lexa slouches and looks to the floor, like she already knows the answer.
“I don’t know. Cease to exist, probably.”
“So I’ll lose both of you. You’re killing me.” She feels a hand on her face, and is surprised to see a sudden gleam in Clarke’s eyes, a warm, bright flash that looks an awful lot like hope.
“At least you’ll be alive.”
“But she’ll hate me, so what’s the point of that?”
“She won’t hate you forever.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither do you.”
Lexa folds and unfolds the handkerchief in her hand. She looks at the film of white dust and wonders how it got so dirty in just a few seconds outside. She shoves it in her pocket, another question too trivial to waste time on, like how Clarke even found this place, how she’d survived alone for all these years, how time travel even works. “You know what I don’t understand?”
“I wouldn’t know where to start,” Clarke says, braving a smile.
“You’re the one who holds all the cards. It’s not fair for you to mock me.” But Lexa can’t help smiling back; the devil before her, this future Clarke, is still her friend, still the one who’d saved her soul after so many heartbreaks, even if she’s now the heartbreaker. “I have so many questions, but if we delay much longer, I don’t think I’ll have the courage to do what you ask. So I need you to tell me one thing.”
Clarke swallows and nods. “Whatever you need.”
“Why did you visit me so many times? You could have just skipped to this last moment and showed me what I needed to do. Why bother befriending me? Looking after me?” Lexa watches as tears well up in her friend’s eyes. “Please tell me the truth.”
“Because I was selfish.” Clarke looks straight at her, pleading in her eyes. “I landed in the wrong place once, and then I realized that I never got to know you. You died and I never got to know you. And I wanted to. Desperately.”
“And was it worth it?”
“Every damn minute.”
Lexa nods, tears in her eyes. “I’ll never forget you, you know. Not a single moment. I’ll remember hard enough for both of us.”
She pulls her friend into a warm embrace, and for a moment they fall into it, just standing there and holding tight, but then Lexa opens her eyes and sees a vision of herself and young Clarke, standing by Mount Weather, not thirty minutes before. She knows what she has to do, and her heart sinks.
“It’s time for me to go,” Lexa says, still holding Clarke’s hand. “Help me do this.”
In seconds, Lexa finds herself back at the abandoned guard-house, standing in front of the fireplace. She continues up the path until she can see the bridge again, and then she waits. As expected, Emerson crawls out of the bushes. He tosses his weapon into the bushes and approaches her, spelling out the terms of the deal. Lexa scowls at the coward in front of her, then she turns back toward Mount Weather, taking one last glimpse of everything she’s about to give up. She reminds herself this is what it means to be a leader; it means choosing with your head instead of your heart. She turns back to Emerson, and gives him her answer.