Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Between woes and passion, survival and sanctuary, you find yourself above the sheets and underneath a warm body, hands sliding down your torso, lips kissing up your neck, and you keen at the feel of her worship, and you try your best not to compare her lips to another pair that you remember all too clearly for only one shared kiss.

Her lips were gentle, questioning—these lips are not.

They beg and they push and they're hot with a ferocity to seek pleasure without love, and you convince yourself that this is what you want, what you need, because it distracts from the truth.

Another thing that distracts from the truth, disrupts the moment, disturbs the liquid atmosphere—a knock on your door.

She pauses above you and opens her eyes, and you're met with brown instead of green, and you sigh. You're not disappointed, you try to tell yourself; you're relieved it's not her.

(Dreams, not nightmares. Fantasies, not reality.)

Your head is spinning, high off of expectations and false joy, too much drink, and of course, herb—a leafy green herb that you roll up and smoke; makes your head dizzy; makes your thoughts expand; makes your inhibitions wild; makes time slow down.

You're cold above the sheets without her slick, hot skin on top of you to keep you warm. You shiver, stare aimlessly at the ceiling, and then the door creaks open.

You hear a gruff voice, "Sorry to disturb you so late at night, Eden, but Jenko has ordered a meeting for anyone who wishes to attend..."

The messenger's voice tapers off and fades away, and you're mesmerized by the sound of the wind as it blows past your open window.

Eden comes back in no time, slow time, and she informs you of the late night arrival of a wanderer; a lost traveler, she says—a young woman of the night who is seeking refuge, a hot meal, and aid for her injuries.

This does not happen often, as The Garden is not a place known to most. It is well-hidden, rightfully so, meant to protect the innocent villagers who want no part in the Grounder politics of Heda's rule.

(You do not blame these people for staying away. It is why you are here, to begin with—to end with.)

Eden slides underneath the sheets beside you. "It was a night much like this when you first arrived." She means chilly despite the season, overcast despite the daytime sunshine. It's an atmosphere that creates tension, a sticky humidity rising in the air.

Goosebumps form on your skin. You hum to acknowledge her, and then mumble, "I should attend the meeting."

"You're high," Eden points out.

You nod—this is true, but, "I'm also the only healer in the village."

This wanderer needs aid, for whatever injuries she might have attained throughout her journey. When you are high, you are lost, but you are diligent, direct, decisive.

You are—

"You are so good," Eden whispers at your ear, and you smile because you're happy, and you're high, and maybe because it feels good to be above your worries, above your fears, above the clouds, above above above.

//

You stumbled upon this place by accident.

It was all up to chance, all one mighty coincidence that led you in this direction, over that hill, under this bridge, behind that structure, and inside this cove that eventually brought you to a village just off the Eastern Shore, a village of sweet dispositions, of passionate life, of welcoming lovers—a place to start over.

After a full year of trekking through the woods, of living day to day on nothing but pure hatred for this world, you relearn what it means to really live and love, and that is to be happy; smoke herb, drink cider, dance, eat, have sex, and then, the next day...

...do it all over again.

//

You've always been curious, even at two in the morning on a chilly, overcast, and humid night. Eden treads beside you, her footsteps heavy, as she's never had to worry about demons or ghosts in the forest.

(You envy her experiences, as she envies yours.)

On the edge of the village, near the ending sea, dozens of villagers gather around a bonfire. You breathe and inhale the saltwater rush of the ocean, and you relish in the sound of the waves as more and more civilians watch and wait, and there she is, someone whispers, and Jenko helps walk the staggering traveler out.

Her face is covered with a black headscarf, nothing but her eyes on display. You sink into the familiarity of her gaze, that greenish hazel stare darting amongst the audience on high alert, watching and waiting and ready, eyes highlighted gold against the unruly flames of the fire.

An uneasiness forms in the pit of your stomach just as the wanderer unwraps her headscarf to reveal her face. Your breath gets stuck in your throat, and you think you're dying.

(You once heard that in your final stages of life, you see the face of the one you love, or perhaps the one you hate.)

(Your faulty memory fails to remember which.)

But you are not dying—your life is not at risk, though your heart might be; your peace of mind; your pleasant night's sleep. Dying, no, but you are seeing a piece of your past, one you imagined you'd never have to experience again.

But there she is, as regal as ever, even when donned in a disguise of peasantry, even with a busted lip, a bloody nose, a black eye, and a hunched shoulder. She can barely stand; you can tell by her quivering legs and unsteady limp.

Tears flood your eyes before you can will them away, and Eden nods and whispers, "I feel for the lost traveler too. What a poor soul."

Your tears are hot as they race down your cheeks. You feel for her, yes, but you don't know what it is you feel, exactly; hatred, betrayal, animosity, resentment—perhaps all at once, rushing back to you as if it's only been a few days since you last saw the back of her head when she left you and your people to die.

But there she is, as bloody as you last witnessed her—just as terrifying, just as lonely, just as desperate for understanding.

(Your heart is breaking. Apparently once was not enough.)

These villagers amongst you believe in life, in happiness, in growth and prosperity. This woman—no matter how young, how innocent in appearance—believes in war, battle, fighting, a means to an end, sacrifice.

She kills. She condemns her warriors to death. She sacrifices the innocent and betrays those in which she claims to care.

You are more than certain that Jenko will deny her entry and banish her from these lands forever and ever.

But he doesn't.

Amongst quiet whispers and noisy mutterings, Jenko tells her to speak for herself, and so she forges a dreadful story about who she is—a Wastelander from the Dead Zone who cared for her deformed sister. She tells of an attack on her home—how that sister was killed by a group of dastardly thieves in the desert, which is the reason she has fled to a sanctuary that will grant her a life of peace.

You itch to call bullshit, to yell it out of the crowd where you stand. She's a liar, you already know. Time can't change that.

(An eternity couldn't change that.)

She is a liar, but the villagers welcome her with opened arms, and you collapse within yourself. Cheers surround you, as all these people know is celebration and happiness, but suddenly all you can hear are war chants. All they know is love and acceptance, while all Lexa knows is blood and torture.

Your people are naive, completely unaware of the fact that this is Leksa kom Trikru, ruthless leader of war and sacrifice; a horrid way of life that these villagers despise so, but as you glance around, the predicament becomes abundantly clear—the villagers don't recognize her at all, as they've perhaps never before seen the Commander's face.

"What is your name, child?" Jenko asks her, once the raucous cheers have died down.

Lexa says her name without a second thought, faster than any honest soul could ever answer. She whispers it, only loud enough for Jenko to hear, but you can read lips, and her response is clear.

"Bekka kom Desertkru!" Jenko repeats in his booming voice, opening his arms wide, almost as wide as his infectious grin. "Welcome to The Garden!"

//

There was no religion in space, only science; facts, odds, numbers, statistics. Religion leaves room for hope, and why have hope when even nature itself, the very thing that's supposed to sustain life, lessens your chances at survival?

Here, on the ground, you find the hope you once thought didn't exist. You find religion in freedom. In release. In waves of ecstasy.

You find tranquility. You find yourself.

But you also find darkness; small pockets of dread, of destruction, of dismay, hidden deep within green, charcoal shadows.

You find Lexa.

(Or maybe she finds you.)

You stand outside of the infirmary hut, and you try to stop your nervous feet from pacing. You watch as other villagers slowly return to their homes for the night, envious of their good night's sleep, as nothing for them has changed in the past hour.

Your life, however, has just been turned upside down, for perhaps the hundredth time since you first arrived on the ground.

With a strangled sigh, you pull the flap aside and enter slowly, and your eyes take in the candles first, flickering gently as they highlight the room in a dim gleam.

But you can't wait for long.

You can't hold back.

You've always been drawn to her, moth to flame, and your eyes meet hers. Her expression changes rapidly, as you knew it would, but not like this—she looks terrified, her eyes suddenly wide, desperate, and teary.

She holds your stare, a mixture of disbelief, relief, and maybe even horror coloring her features. "Clarke," she breathes, practically choking on your name. "I thought you—"

She tries to stand, much too quickly for a person in her haggard state of health, and she crumbles to the floor in pain. You almost reach out for her.

You almost take her into your arms.

(Almost.)

You're a healer, but you fight against every natural instinct in your bones to help.

She groans in agony, teeth clenched around her bottom lip to try and hide the sound of her weakness, but you hear everything—her pain; her sins; her guilt; her betrayal. You can see her weaknesses, clear as the night sky.

More tears threaten to fall, but you take a deep breath, your heavy chest expanding, and you silently watch as she climbs her way back onto the table.

The sight should fill you with delight, to see your enemy struggle so.

(But it's hard to watch.)

She sits, hunched over with a hand grasping at her torso. Before even accessing the damage, you already know she suffers from broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and possibly a sprained ankle.

She stares at the floor now, waiting. She is silent once again, even though it is obvious how much pain she is in.

Her dark rags are drenched in blood. The copper stench tickles at your nostrils, but you withhold the urge to vomit. "Undress," you say, and her eyes snap back to you. A beat of silence, and then she nods, that slow tilt of her head that replace most people's response of a simple yes.

(You used to find the movement endearing; now it only reminds you of a time when everything didn't hurt so much.)

You wait, but she doesn't undress. She only continues to stare at you, and you stare back, waiting, until her wariness becomes clear.

You turn your back to her and wait some more—mostly silence, and then shuffling of clothes, low hisses of pain and groans of displeasure as she tries to maneuver, and you can't take it. No matter what you thought, her pain brings you no satisfaction.

She continues to struggle even as you turn around. She doesn't see you approaching through her purple eye, and she jumps when you lay a gentle hand on her hunched shoulder. You want to say let me help you, but words fail.

(They always do around her.)

After a moment's hesitation, she allows you to assist her in the removal of her clothing. With every rag removed, a new bruise, gash, burn, or thick slice of skin is revealed. You try your best not to cringe at the sight of each screaming wound, but it truly is a wonder how she is even still alive.

Once she's sitting in nothing but her dirty bindings, you make a mental checklist: she'll need ice, alcohol, bucketloads of salve, multiple stitches here and there and even right th—

"Death is really not the end, Clarke," Lexa whispers a little louder this time, her voice full of wonder, but you're quick to hush her.

"I go by a different name now," you mutter between clenched teeth, but she only nods again, slowly, trying to understand, so you add, "You're not the only one who wishes to start over."

You want to ask why she is here. You want to ask what really happened. She is the Commander. She is Heda. She is ruler. And she once took great pride in that, up until you came along and turned her pride into what it really was—shame.

You want to challenge her like you once did, but you are not who you once were, and you refuse to believe that she is too.

Her eyes follow you around the room as you collect what you need. "I do not wish for that," she says, breathing heavily through her bloody nose, around her cracked ribs. "One can never escape the sins of their past."

You withhold the urge to scoff, despite the truth in her words. It seems that is so, seeing as you might never be able to escape her. "In three years, you haven't changed one bit," you say, and then pause in front of her beaten and broken body to add, "How disheartening."

//

Days go by, and Lexa heals as only Lexa can—stubbornly. Her black eye is clearing up slowly, her limp is getting less noticeable, and there is little to no sign of infection.

You give her something for the pain, but the drugs can only do so much for the crumpled mess that is her body; a warrior's body.

Despite her broken bones, dark bruises, and deep wounds, she is still strong, her wiry muscles on full display whenever you enter the infirmary to clean her cuts, check her stitches, or change her bandages.

The only time you speak to her is when you're informing her of her condition. Besides those instances, you remain silent, as does she. You have nothing to say to her—not after three years; not after she deserted you on a mountain with nothing but an iron will to rescue your people from a horror that she feared just as much as you did.

But Lexa is stubborn, hard-headed. She must think herself a goddess, an all-powerful being who can heal overnight, for she pushes herself beyond what she can do.

You can't admire her resolve, her strength. You can't be moved by her will to live, her tenacity and courage.

(You can't.)

If you did, you'd only fall back into her trap, the same trap that left you alone in the wilderness for a year with nothing but a cold heart that took The Garden two years to thaw out.

//

Eden watches you, just as Lexa does, but it's different, somehow.

While Lexa has always stared wondrously, Eden stares worriedly and mentions that you have been acting peculiar. Others say the same, people you have come to know and love, to trust even more than Raven, Bellamy, Octavia, and your own mother.

You've known these people for two years, way longer than you've known Lexa, but she still knows you better. She doesn't question your anger because she knows. She doesn't question your silence because she knows.

(Your resentment. Your pain. Your sadness.)

She knows it all too well, and you want to hate her for it, but here in The Garden, there is no room for hate.

//

Eventually you cross paths with her. How could you not? This village is small, not big enough for the both of you.

She ventures out of the infirmary now, despite your recommendation to rest. There is no other way to heal broken ribs than time and patience, but there is never enough time, and Lexa only has patience when it comes to leading her people, not herself.

You are sitting against a tree along the border of the village, near a narrow stream that Lexa is stumbling down now. You pause in your sketching and watch her, finally able to witness her true movements when she doesn't know you're around.

Minutes go by as you remain quiet and watch her stubbornly try to retrieve a bucket of water from the stream. After her fifth failed attempt, you speak up and say, "You'll pop your stitches trying to carry that bucket."

She startles, dropping the quarter-full bucket on the ground beside her. You want to laugh, but you don't. You let it burn and simmer inside, and you turn that momentary glee into annoyance when Lexa responds with, "If I do not pull my own weight and contribute to the whole, I will be cast aside and left for dead."

"This isn't Tondc, Lexa," you sigh, closing your eyes as you rest your head back against the tree trunk. "You won't get ostracized here for displaying what you might call weakness."

Lexa picks up the bucket and only continues to struggle. She doesn't listen to you, not anymore. When you tell her to stay in bed, she limps around the infirmary instead. When you tell her not to pick at her stitches, she scratches at them. When you tell her to keep her shoulder in a sling, she removes it and holds her arm up herself.

"People die everyday from starvation and war and radiation, Clarke," Lexa says, huffing when she accidentally drops the bucket again, "but all you do is get high, drink, and gorge yourself with food."

It's no shock at all that she's been watching you. She's always watching you, even now as you pick up your piece of charcoal and continue to sketch out the trees in the forest.

"I am living," you defend calmly.

"You are wasting away your potential on a modern day beatnik lifestyle," she exasperates, as if weary of your leisurely activities, as if you have better things to do than be happy, as if there is nothing more to life than struggling for something you already have.

How dare she come to you, you think—a place where you've lived peacefully and freely without her—and criticize your way of life, just as she had three years prior. You are the one who should be exasperated. "It shouldn't surprise me that you'd rather fight needlessly than live in peace."

"I have fought all my life, Clarke. Fighting is all I know," Lexa says, but she sounds exhausted.

You almost advise her to rest, but you know she won't listen to you. "You don't have to fight anymore, Lexa," you say instead. "Not here."

Lexa looks at you, still broken, still pretending she's not. "No matter where I am, Clarke, my fight will never be over," she says, and you'd accuse her of being overdramatic if not for the morbid truth in her words.

//

She says you don't need cider and drink, but you like the gritty haze. She says you waste your potential smoking herb and indulging in bodily pleasures for no other gain besides orgasmic satisfaction, but you do it anyway.

If she doesn't have to listen, neither do you. If she doesn't have to follow your orders, you don't have to follow hers.

She is not your commander. She commands no one here, no one but her own demons that rest heavy on her shoulders, full of regret, full of hardships, full of the need for a redemption story.

How did I end up here, reads all over her face, as she watches you from afar, as you take Eden into your arms and lead her back to your hut.

You know she's watching, and you hope it pains her to see you with another, with anyone who is not her.

//

Before the Ark, before the end times, before the radiation, children believed in a jolly old man named Saint Nicholas. The whole idea surrounding his existence is absolutely absurd, but the hope that it gave children every year is not.

Jenko is that hope, here in The Garden. Children look up to him. They trust and believe in him, and they listen to his guidance, no matter how ludicrous.

Some may say we follow blindly.

But we are all just lost sheep, searching for a shepherd to lead us home.

Jenko is that fearless shepherd, and he approaches you one afternoon in the supper line to say, "You are close to Bekka."

"I wouldn't say close," you murmur, moving up in line when it starts to drag forward.

Jenko moves along behind you. "You may not think so, but she's drawn to you," he reveals, as if that's something you haven't already known for three years now. "She needs you."

Lexa needs no one but herself, and she makes that abundantly clear every time you try to help her stand or eat or do anything that won't put her through anymore pain than she's already in.

"Bekka is healing fine on her own," you lie.

"Her outer wounds are healing, yes, but there is something deeper within that is also damaged," Jenko says, serving himself a hearty spoonful of squirrel casserole. "It can be healed if we teach her our ways, but she will only listen to you."

You find it hilarious that Jenko thinks Lexa would ever listen to you. If she won't take your medical advise, there is no way in hell she'd ever take your spiritual advise.

"There is something special about this one," he adds, moving ahead in line to dump some cabbage from the garden on his plate. "She shares a name with the first commander, you know. That means something."

Yeah, it means Lexa sucks at coming up with aliases, and you smile at your quick wit, but Jenko must take your rare grin as a sign to go on.

"We all understand pain, but only some of us can balance our pain with love. Meet her in the middle," Jenko advises, adding a potato to his plate full of food. "She will be waiting for you there."

//

Lexa saw you with Eden, but she doesn't say so.

She has too much pride to ask why her, to wonder if you love her, to inquire how deep your affair goes.

Today, the silence is deafening as you clean her wounds and change her bandages. The air is thick with words unsaid, promises broken, feelings unrequited.

You fill the stuffy silence to help yourself breathe. "If they discover who you really are, you'll be banished, you know."

Lexa ticks her jaw and breathes through her nose. "Will they see me as you do? As a ruthless leader who spills blood?"

She is testing you, challenging you. She wants to know how you see her without outwardly asking how you see her. She doesn't want you to know how much your opinion of her matters.

(You know anyway.)

(But you don't give her the satisfaction of knowing too.)

"These are not your people, Lexa," you say, wrapping a dry cloth around the raw slice in her side. "They will not understand."

She blinks away from you, her attention focused elsewhere, but you know her mind is still on you, on your fingertips as they trail down her torso and press into her ribs. You know she feels pain. You know she wants to wince or cringe, and you wish she would. Not for your own gross satisfaction but for an indication of her progress.  

"Did you ever?"

You glance up from the bruises on her bare stomach and narrow your eyes on her. "Did I ever what?"

"Understand," she says, and she's looking down at you, her eyes clearer and greener now that the purple bruise encircling her left eye has turned yellow and mild.

You sigh and retract your hands, and she slumps forward, subconsciously chasing after your touch. The movement makes you want to cry, to hold her in your arms, to soothe her physical hurt as well as her emotional pain.

You understand. You understand more than anyone, but, "I wish I never had to."

//

You watch her around the village, how she tries to assimilate into society as a normal person, but she is not normal, and it's clear she's having a hard time learning how to do things that she never had any use for.

Lexa was trained to fight, to lead—not to milk cows, count chicken eggs, fill bags of grain, and definitely not to live for herself.

She gets frustrated at times, and you move to help her before catching yourself and returning to your own duties.

(You have others to heal, including yourself.)

She doesn't talk to many besides you. She eats alone, never dances with the rest of the villagers, passes on herb and cider, and then, at the end of the night, when everyone else is heading home with another person or two, Lexa goes back to her hut alone.

You don't want to, but you feel for her.

You may not understand every aspect of Lexa, but you can understand loneliness.

//

You don't mean for them to meet.

You don't mean for Lexa to meet any of your friends here. These are your people. This is your life. She has no right to cross your boundaries and enter your circle.

But you unintentionally give her the right. You allow her to eat with you, to work with you. You offer her drink, and you accidentally crack a smile when she takes a sip and crinkles her nose at the taste.

Eden approaches, two cups of cider in hand. She gives one to you and then shoots Lexa a wary look as she sits down on the log beside you. Lexa doesn't move, doesn't even look in Eden's direction, and you feel trapped, crushed between two heavy weights, one pulling you down and the other tugging you upward.

(You're uncertain of which is which.)

"Eden," you say to her, and then gesture to Lexa. "This is Bekka."

Eden nods in acknowledgement. "The lost traveler."

Lexa doesn't say anything and you don't expect her to. Eventually, Eden must grow uncomfortable with the silence; she clears her throat and then gets up to join the rest of the villagers in their nightly ritual of celebration and dance.

Somewhere along the way, you've gotten used to Lexa's inability to express herself through words—her silence speaks louder than anything she could ever say aloud.

Rare hesitation, and then Lexa side-eyes you. "Eden?" she says, and it's not so much an inquiry as it is a wondrous musing—maybe even a question of judgement concerning your choice of late night company.

"She's safe," you explain, tampering down your usual defenses.

Lexa looks down and stirs the cold porridge in her bowl. "And I?" she asks, but you don't know how to answer that, so you don't. "Eden is safe, Clarke, but The Garden has serpents, distractions. Do not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, or you will see the truth."

You can't help but roll your eyes. "That is only historic folklore."

"Is that not what they will say of us, one day?" Lexa says, and it almost sounds like she's teasing you. You look over at her—there is a tiny smile on her lips, barely there, but then it's gone. She sighs, her eyes glancing up to take in the night sky, the shining stars that you used to call home. "Are you happy here, Clarke?"

You look around and wonder what happiness even means. "This place is a utopia compared to what I left behind," you whisper beneath the music, the beating drums in the distance as you watch your people stomp their feet and shake their bodies.

Lexa watches them as she always does, with confusion and misunderstanding. She doesn't get why your people celebrate—all she can see are the horrors of the world. You want to show her something more than the blood of war, death threats, struggles for power.

(You want to show her joy. You want to show her freedom.)

But Lexa will only see what she wants to see until she is truly free. "Utopias do not exist, Clarke," she says, peeling her eyes away from the gyrating bodies dancing around the fire—and perhaps she is right, about utopias and existence, but this is the closest you will ever come to one. "Utopias only ever work to distract from the real destruction of the world."

"You want to talk about the real destruction of the world, Bekka?" you say, slightly fed up with her 'woe is me' attitude. You take another gulp of cider and it feels good as it burns all the way down. "I had nightmares about you for two years straight. Since coming here, they've ceased, but just recently, they've begun again. Yet only when I am wide awake."

You look her in the eye, and you force her to understand your meaning. Lexa looks haunted by the very thought. "My presence here has been hard on you."

"You think?" you spit back at her.

"It pains me to know that my being here causes you distress," she whispers, refusing to break eye contact with you, "but I cannot lie and say that the discovery of your safety in The Garden has made me unhappy."

"This isn't a second chance, Lexa," you tell her, because it isn't.

Lexa flares her nostrils and breathes, "I know."

She whispers it, absolute and accepting, and then she stands, her bowl of unfinished porridge in hand. You stare up at her as she stares down at you like you're something she wants but can never have.

"Another chance would be my utopia, Clarke," she says, "but utopias do not exist."

//

Her bruises are disappearing. Her broken bones are mending. Her busted lip is healing. She is returning to the warrior you once knew, the one you met all those years ago in a glorious tent, sitting upon a mighty throne.

Today, instead of a throne, she sits on your operating table and clenches her jaw shut as you carefully redo one of her popped stitches. She doesn't say a word, just steadily breathes through her nose and focuses her attention on the wall.

"Does this hurt?" you ask.

"No."

Though her response is predictable, you still wonder what she's thinking; what's going on in that calculating mind of hers.

(You wonder if she's thinking about you.)

(You wonder why you even care.)

"It's okay to admit that it hurts, Lexa," you assure her, offering up a tentative smile. "It would actually be helpful if you exhibited pain so that I knew whether or not to up your meds."

Lexa's grip tightens around the edge of the table. "Your drugs make my head heavy, my thoughts unclear. I do not want anymore."

"Not even recreational?" you tease, but Lexa—always so strict, always so serious—doesn't find your joke very amusing.

"There is a difference between living peacefully and living carelessly, Clarke," she says, and you almost roll your eyes. "You have adopted the latter lifestyle in order to heal. We both have wounds—mine are just more visible."

You take a long look at her marred skin, at old scars that have replaced even older wounds. Even when healed, they are still visible—always visible. "Brutal survival is not living," you counter, to distract yourself from the feel of her skin against your fingertips.

"I know this, Clarke."

You're skeptical, rightfully so. "Do you?"

Lexa nods. "It is the reason I am here now," she says, glancing down at your working hands. "Tell me, why are you here?"

You've asked yourself that same question hundreds of times since you decided to make this place your home.

Throughout the years, you've considered going home to your mother, to Raven and Bellamy, to Monty and Jasper, but then you close your eyes and see the agony of painful deaths; you smell the burning flesh of innocents, of mothers and children; you hear cries of terror, screaming out for you to help, please help, but you can't—you can't ease the pain because you're the one causing the pain.

You live in peace, outwardly, but in your head, all you see is mayhem.

"My people are better off without me," you sigh, pausing in your task to look up at her. "Did you realize the same?"

Lexa remains as steady as always when she says, "I did not willingly leave my people, Clarke."

"Then why are you here?"

You're expecting a roundabout response, similar to what Lexa told Jenko and the rest of the villagers, but what you get is the immediate truth. "A group of rebels in Polis overthrew me as Heda," Lexa reveals, pressing her lips together when your hand slips on one of her stitches, "and tried to steal the Spirit of the Commander in my sleep."

You freeze, and when you look her in the eyes, you see her differently for the first time in weeks. Her bruises have a new meaning, and her struggle to survive is not disguised by pride but by a necessity to carry on.

You didn't know why she left Polis, why she was  even here in the first place, and you tried to tell yourself that you didn't care, but you do care.

The painful clench in your chest when you fully understand her aches, the devastation of unwillingly losing who you are—you understand, and you care a great deal more than you originally thought you ever could.

"An uprising? But w-why?" you stutter, grasping for answers. "I've seen the way your people look at you, Lexa. All they have is respect and love for you."

"My ambassadors, my generals, even Ti—" She stops herself and turns to face the wall again. "I presume it were those closest to me behind the coup after disagreeing with my unapologetic regime of blood must not have blood."

Your eyes narrow on her, almost disbelieving, because the words jus drein jus daun, you remember all too clearly, the rapid chant in your ears, growing in numbers and rage, a chant led by none other than the young woman sitting before you.

Her change of heart catches you off guard, but for once you're hopeful that she's starting to meet you in the middle, as Jenko prophesied she would. "You changed your stance?"

Lexa lowers her eyes. "It is a very long story, Clarke," she says, but you're not going to be brushed off that easily.

"So what did you do? How did you get away?" you ask in a rapid fire, but Lexa only shifts away like this isn't something she really wants to talk about in depth, and you can understand that to some degree—after all, who would want to relive the moment they thought they were going to die?

You don't think Lexa's going to offer up anymore information, but then she halfway answers your questions with haunted eyes and a steady voice. "After just narrowly escaping an assassination attempt, I fled with Indra, Octavia, and Lincoln."

"Where are they now?" you wonder, your nerves on high-alert once you hear Octavia's name mentioned.

"I got separated from them during a raid on our camp." Lexa's jaw works rapidly, frustration and anger clearly building up after suppressing her rage for weeks. "We were on our way here to the Eastern Shore, to what I thought was a deserted village where no one has lived in decades. But it has been weeks and they have yet to arrive here."

Indra; Lincoln; Octavia—names you haven't heard in years, and suddenly you're worried for them. You can only imagine how Lexa feels. "I'm sure they're fine," you say, trying to offer comfort in the only way you know how.

But Lexa only shakes her head and then pushes herself off of the operating table. "That is not something you can be sure of, Clarke," she says, turning to face you. "We can never be sure of anything in this life, not even death."