There was something stirring in the air and Lexa could sense it. She was perched on a branch of a tall fir tree as far out as she dared to go. The bark beneath her feet was swaying with each gust of wind that passed by. Her eyes scanned the scene below. She could see her village. Her people were miniscule from her perch, they were going about their daily lives: cooking, eating, talking, laughing, arguing, doing all the things that humans did. She spotted another guard posted on the other side of the camp. He was leaning against an ancient tree, a tree that had seen the end of the world, a tree that had watched the people begin to repopulate, a tree that had seen battle after battle. The man perched against the immortal warrior was not seeing anything. He was smirking at a woman, a stupid look upon his face and not paying any attention to the threats that could be invading their borders. Lexa tore her eyes away to keep her blood from boiling over and turned her attention to the opposite direction.

All seemed quiet on that front too, not even the birds were stirring. And still something just didn't seem right. Perhaps it was the nerves. It was the first night that Anya had her patrolling alone instead of following her mentor's every step. It had been a few years since Anya had taken the young Lexa in as her second, and in those years Lexa had learned more than any of the other warriors in the pack. She was deft and light on her feet, easily able to scale the tallest tree in the forest in seconds flat without as much as a creaking from the branches. It was one of the few things that brought Lexa a piece of mind, and one of the few places that she felt accepted and appreciated.

Her family life had never been terrible per say, but she had a tendency to push people away –including her family- which lead to her only truly connecting with her talents. Lexa did not hate her sister, she never had and probably never would, but she did resent the girl. Their mother was one of the few people Lexa had been attached to. Her father was Commander -one of the longest running commanders, in fact- and he spent most of his energy on battles and keeping his people happy, healthy, and at peace amongst themselves. Therefore, he never put much effort into his marriage or into building a relationship with his daughter, at least, not at first. This lead to Lexa trying everything she could to get her father's attention. She began following warriors around and sneaking into up trees to watch them train. Then she would find a deserted clearing and practice the moves she had seen until she mastered them. This was all before she entered her seventh year.

When she turned seven, her mother explained that she was going to have another child. Lexa did not quite understand, especially since she overheard many of the other tribe members say that her mother was too old for child birth and that it would be the death of her. Her mother soothed her worries and fears, and over the 9-months of pregnancy Lexa stayed glued to her mother's side. Her secret, solitary training sessions were put on hold and she did everything she could to take care of her mother since her father was not in the picture. In her naïve, innocent mind-set Lexa believed that since she loved her mother so much, she should protect and care for her with all that she had. She believed that love was a bond stronger than any outside force, and it was that love that created a strong, fierce warrior; love gave her a cause to fight for. That naïve, innocent mind-set was shattered the moment her little sister was born.

The birth did not kill her mother, at least not right away, but it took away everything that made her who she was: it took away her soul. Lexa's mother had disappeared the moment that Willa came into the world, and suddenly Lexa didn't recognize the woman she had once been so close with. The new mother shut herself off from the world. She would feed Willa and hold her, and go through all the motions that came with being a mother, but she did no more than that. She no longer held Lexa in a soft embrace, she no longer inquired about her eldest daughter's day, nor did she show any interest to see her new skills. She didn't even look the same as she used to. Her face was much too pale, her cheeks were hollow and the skin seemed to drape delicately from her bones: side-effects of not eating nor taking care of herself. At first, Lexa tried to help her mother. She would try and take care of the baby when her mother looked too weak to hold her. She would bring her mother her favourite fruit in an attempt to get her to eat. She even tried singing the lullabies that the two of them had sung together before Willa was born, but nothing worked. Her mother would lash out in anger when Lexa tried to take Willa from her. She would let the fruit rot on the table instead of eating it. She told Lexa to shut up and go away when she tried to sing. The healers told Lexa it was an after-effect of having a child so late in life, that it was the baby-sickness and she would be better soon, but it was too late.

Lexa shut herself off from the world for good the morning she awoke to her father bringing the news of her mother's death. Her father stepped up then and tried to become the father-figure he should have been to Lexa, but he remained a stranger to her. He took on the role of raising Willa, but Lexa refused to let him take care of her. She returned to training herself in private, and when her formal training from the tribe began on her tenth name day, she already knew all the drills off by heart. It was then that Anya had spotted her out of the group. She had noticed Lexa's potential and immediately asked the Commander for his daughter to join her Gunakru. Lexa put everything she had into her new job as a warrior, and all but ignored her family when she was in the village. She had pushed away all the children she had grown up with, and rarely said more than she needed to when in the company of her father and sister. Slowly, Lexa became attached to Anya, who happened to be a perfect replacement for the maternal figure she had lost.

"Lexa," The sound of the rough male voice tore her away from the memories and made her spin around in a defensive stance. By the time she realised who it was that spoke, her blade was pressed against the delicate skin of his exposed neck. He smiled and raised his hands, "Don't kill the messenger, little-one. Your shift is over, Anya wants you back in the village to sup with your sister." Lexa lowered her knife and stepped back along the branch, her balance never faltering.

"Sorry, Osiris, you should know not to sneak up on me like that," She sheathed her knife back into her belt.

"You should open your ears more while on watch, I could have been an assassin from a neighbouring tribe, you would be dead right now." He smiled playfully, and leaned back against the trunk of the tree.

"And that assassin would be dead the minute I saw him," she rebutted, eyes narrowing in a stubborn glare.

"And do you think, little-one, that an assassin would call your name before killing you?" A glint of humor shined in his eyes and he chuckled at her, "You did well tonight, go now and eat. Spend time with your family, relax, learn to laugh, it will do you good."

"Send for me if trouble arises," She dropped herself off of the branch, lithely climbing from limb to limb until her feet were firmly on the ground. She was back in her tent within minutes, where Willa was already sitting at the table with food set out for the two of them. Lexa's jaw tightened and she sat silently across from her sister digging into the food. She was eager to finish and get out of the tent and back to her post. "Commander is away?" She asked in their native tongue, inquiring about their father. She had stopped calling him father after Willa was born and looked up to him only as her leader and nothing more.

"Not away, but he is eating with his men, they have plans to discuss," Willa's eyes never left her bowl and for the first time Lexa realised how small her sister's voice sounded. Had she been so awful to her sister, that Willa was now afraid to look at her?

Lexa opened her mouth to say something, to say that she didn't hate her. She wanted to tell the fragile child before her that she looked so much like their mother that simply looking at her broke Lexa's heart all over again. She wanted to tell her that she wished things could have been different had they been born in a different life. But instead, Lexa lowered her own eyes to her bowl and the silence between them thickened. It had been ten years since their mother passed, and while part of Lexa still blamed Willa for the tragedy, age and experience had taught her that life moved on and strange terrible things happened and hanging on to them only lead to defeat. Age and experience had also taught Lexa that the more connections you made with people, the more likely you were to get hurt. And so, Lexa bit her tongue and stopped herself from saying anything that could connect her with Willa.

The silence between the sisters was almost too much to bear, and a few times Lexa saw Willa take a breath as though she was going to say something, but quickly close her mouth and go back to her food. Soon enough, Lexa's bowl was clean and she stood, desperate for a reason to leave the tension. She had one foot out of the tent when the tiny voice shook through her heart.

"Why do you hate me?"

Lexa froze, back towards Willa, and internally flinched at the words. Is that what Willa thought? Had she grown up all those years thinking that Lexa hated her? Had she sat in silence day after day, night after night, afraid to say something that would make her even more despised?

Slowly, ever so slowly, Lexa turned on her heels. She did not let her eyes fall upon her sister until the very last moment and in that moment her heart broke. Lexa had grown to learn that if you did not make friends or love people, then there was no way for your heart to break. But after all the years of trying to keep her sister at arm's length, at trying to avoid a relationship between them for both their sakes, after everything, Lexa's heart had still shattered the moment she saw the tears falling from Willa's eyes and realised that they were there because of her.

"I don't…" Lexa's voice was barely audible so she stopped, debated taking a step forward, then sighed, "I don't hate you Willa."

"Really? You don't hate me? Then why have you spent the last ten years of my life avoiding me and ignoring my very existence?" Lexa saw a shade of red spreading across Willa's face and she wasn't sure whether it was from shame of lashing out –which she so rarely did- or from the pent up anger that was boiling over. "You weren't the only one that lost a mother that day, Lexa, I did too. The only difference is that I didn't get to know her!" Tears were now streaming down her delicate cheeks, and Lexa didn't know what to do, "I have been nothing but nice to you. I have idolized you Lexa. You are supposed to be my big sister, you are supposed to teach me how to defend myself, protect me when the kids pick on me, cause mischief with me behind our father's back. You are supposed to teach me all the things that our mother couldn't because her spirit had to leave. You are supposed to hug me and tell me everything will be alright when father is away to battle and my body is shaking with worry."

There was never a time that Lexa hated herself as much as she did in that moment. Willa was right, of course she was. Lexa was supposed to help raise Willa, and to step in as a mother figure when their mother had left, but she didn't. Instead she had focused on protecting herself. She had blocked out the whole world along with her sister. She didn't know what to say. She didn't know what to do. Was she supposed to magically turn into the perfect sister? Was she supposed to go forward and hug her sister? Was she supposed to yell back?

"You have never cared for me, Lexa. At least you got to have mother there to help raise you, I had no one. Sometimes I think that you would be so much happier if I was gone, then you wouldn't look pained whenever you had to come home to eat."

"Don't you ever say that again," Lexa's jaw tightened and she spoke through clenched teeth. As much as she had tried to stay out of Willa's life, Lexa had still watched the girl grow up. She had felt a wave of relief fly over her whenever she saw her sister alive and well. As much as she tried to keep away, Lexa had still somehow managed to love the child. "Im not pained to see you Willa, I am pained that you look exactly like the woman you-" Lexa cut off her words before she could say them, but she already regretted them.

"Go ahead, say it, say what you have been bottling up for ten years, Lexa, yell at me and tell me that I killed your mother."

"Willa, I didn't mean-"

"No, that is exactly what you were going to say, and its true isn't it? If I hadn't been born then mother wouldn't have died and you would be happy. Don't you think I know that already? Don't you know that I think about that on a daily basis? I see what you have become Lexa, and because of that I wish every day that I hadn't been born because then maybe you would know how to love. If I could turn back time and erase myself from this world for you, then I would do it. But I cant! I can't bring back mother! All I can do is watch you day in and day out pushing people away, and I blame myself. You are unhappy because I took away the first and only person you loved." Willa was on the floor as soon as her last words had left her lips, and her body was wracking with sobs.

Against all her will, a tear escaped Lexa's eye. All of the years she spent pushing people away had taught her exactly when to walk away from a situation, and in that moment her experience was screaming at her to leave before she got too caught up, but she couldn't. Lexa ignored the screaming protests of her mind and let her heart lead her forward. Her fingers were just a hairs-length away from rubbing Willa's back soothingly, like their mother used to do, when an ear piercing scream slashed its way through the camp.

Lexa jolted up right and spun to face the direction the noise came from. Willa had stopped crying and looked up as well, and outside the tent all seemed too quiet. Then the noise exploded.

War-cries, metal slashing against flesh, the twang of arrows being let loose: the sounds of a battle erupted outside of the tent. Lexa turned to Willa, pulling out her dagger. "You stay here, hide, don't let them find you, and if anyone sees you, scream and run and get to safety."

In an instant Lexa was back outside amidst the chaos. She was expecting to find an invasion of another tribe, but it was much, much worse than that: Reapers. They charged in an animalistic way, shouting and screaming and they were stronger than anyone could imagine. One of them came running at her and she noticed him just in time, slashing her dagger at him and feeling her blade slice into his skin. The metallic smell of blood invaded her nostrils, and she ran off to find another foe, leaving the reaper choking on his own blood. The only thing that made the reapers bearable was the fact that they rarely carried weapons with them, so if you could elude their grasp then killing them was easy.

Lexa was taking down her fifth or sixth kill when she heard the familiar scream: a sound that sent waves a nausea through her system. She pressed her blade into her enemies abdomen until it would go no further then she held tight and kicked the reaper off her dagger. He slumped to the ground, freeing Lexa to find and save her sister. When she got to the tent the first thing she saw was a pale, shaking Willa. The second thing she saw was a reaper tearing a piece of flesh from her father's neck.

A loud bellow erupted from Lexa as she tackled the reaper off of her father's corpse. "Run!" She screamed at the frozen Willa, before being punched in the face from the creature beneath her. Lexa's blade evaded her grasp as she struggled to end the beast's life. In another instant the tables had turned and her form was pinned to the ground. The reaper on top of her took a moment to sniff her skin, and that was all it took. Lexa had finally wrapped her fingers around her blade and pushed it up into the creature's gut, turning it slowly until the life left his eyes.

She pushed the corpse off of her, and jumped to her feet. Her eyes scanned the forest around her, and then the ground around where Willa had been standing. When she saw a set of footsteps taking off into the forest she immediately darted off into the same direction, leaving the battle behind her.

The forest was dark, and if she hadn't of grown up in the area, Lexa would have gotten lost or ran into a tree, but this was her territory and she knew it better than anything. The same shriek that had brought Lexa to her sister's rescue before rang through the trees making Lexa stop in her tracks and look around. It only took a second for her to find what direction the sound had come from, and in seconds she was running towards her baby sister. Finally she saw the tiny innocent face, but before Lexa could feel the relief, a new creature stepped into view.

It took the shape of a man, but was covered from head to toe in strange clothing. It's face was hidden behind a clear window, and before she attacked she saw the man inside smile at her. His weapon was far more advanced than any that her people had and before she was able to tackle him to the ground, he pointed his gun at her. A cold, searing pain shot through her arm and when she touched the spot, her blood dripped through her fingers. Everything stood still for a moment as the two warriors stared at each other. Then the man turned to Willa and picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. Lexa roared and charged at him once more, ignoring the new hole in her arm. The man spun around at the sound and smacked the butt of his gun into Lexa's face as she charged at him. The force was enough to knock her on her back, her breath pushed out of her lungs and for a moment she thought her spirit was going to leave her, but then everything went black…