Once upon a time
1. the joker
Madi was crying out loud, that night, tears rolling down her cheeks following her long brown braids as her eyes were shut and her voice a cracked howl in the dark. There were no sparkles, that night, no moonlights or shooting starts, just a deep and gloomy obscurity caging the world in its claws, a prison of silent hours lost in wishes of something more, lost in the hopes of something better.
Her throat hurt for the neverending screaming and the echo of her voice was continuosly coming back to her ears, witness of the pain she was accusing the world for. She was a child, but since when the Praimfaya had destroyed Earth, she wasn't a child anymore. She was a survivor, a little nightblood on the edge of getting crazy, abandoned on the battlefield of what for the most had been the end of the world. She lost friends, she lost family and she probably lost herself too, her innocence, her being a cheerful 9-years-old kid along with her people, now ashes in the wind.
It was a dreadful night, that night, and the memories of the past were blooming in her head like flowers in spring before a warm hand caressed her shoulder, turning her around and dragging her little body against something, against somebody.
She immidiatly recognised Clarke's warmth and smell, her touch and gentleness _not that there were so many people around_ and like everytime she had catched her in one of her crisis, she suddenly felt better. It wasn't some kind of magic spell or witchy trick, it was just that sometimes, when the reality of what had happened was too real, the simple contact of a human body could make her feel loved, once again: it made her feel at home.
Madi looked up at the sweet face over hers and managed to slightly smile back, before lying down on the grass and trying to catch on the flow of her sobs. She left out a long breath while turning on a side, now locking her gaze with the girl next to her. She waited a moment, then spoke with eyes still teary but now finally shining again.
"Tell me a story about the guys that fell from the sky" she said quietly, every word a whisper in the night.
"The guys who fought the world and inherited the planet before being forced to come back to space again"
Clarke Griffin smiled and even though it was dark as hell and there was nothing to smile for on that savage Earth, Madi still thought she had the most beautiful smile she had ever seen.
She got up a bit, sitting on that greenish field, her gaze lost in the magnificent emptiness of space _or in what they could imagine there was over that unmoveable cloud, at least_ and took some deep breaths before starting to talk.
"Tonight's story is about a boy, a young boy always wearing glasses and enjoying the beauty of life. A boy whose laugh was the brightness of the day, whose partying spirit was the soul of the night. A joker, we could say"
Madi stared at her with burning desire, her demons now fallen asleep.
"He fell in love the first day here on Earth: probably with the magic of nature, surely with a playful girl whose name recalled the old commanders. It was then he crossed the line for the first time: on the road for our supposed destination he dove into a fresh river and emerged on the other side braver than ever, stronger than never. However, was captured soon later; he managed to get on the other side but unfortunately it was not the right side, the one we had hoped for at least. It was a battlefield fierce as nothing, cruel as few".
Madi interrupted her with a scared expression, trying to guess the continue of the story "And, and did you rescue him? Did he die?"
Clarke stopped to talk for a moment, the reality of that sentence so stucked in her memory. Did he die? When she carried on the story Madi coulnd't see it, but her eyes got tearier as the regrets of the past were fighting in her mind.
"He didn't" she reassured her "We saved him soon after and discovered the grounders had healed his wounds. We managed to bring him back home and in some days he was the same as ever, maybe a little tougher with scars covering his body, a little afraid, but he was still the source of the joy flowing around the camp. Once I had an appointment with the men of the forest and he was chosen as one of the guards that had to protect me from a possible trap, for a probable counter-attack and he kept on talking about how good he had been for ages. Nobody could hear that story anymore after he had been spreading news about Jasper the hero for weeks"
She laughed a bit, remembering.
"He was so innocent, so pure".
"And what happened next?"
"What happened next? That's a good question" she waited, catched her breath before going on "I was next. I destroyed him"
"You?"
"Me, yes. Does it sound odd? Do I look that good?" she asked her.
Do I look that fake? She asked herself.
"You are good" She replied, giving her the illusion of a world without sins, of a world without guilt.
"You are, my little natblida. Anyway, I happened next. There was a war and we were captured, caged inside a mountain, inside a bunker. It seemed like heaven, everything was so perfect, so peaceful that we couldn't believe we were still on that planet that had treated us so bad. But I couldn't fall under that spell, I didn't believe such a good place could exist. And I was right, we weren't at home, we weren't welcomed as guests, but as experiments instead. They wanted to exploit us for our ability to reject radiations and after having managed to escape, after having discovered their plan, I tried to stop them and I succeed. The point is, my little natblida, we always have to pay a price to achieve something, every step we take, every decision we make has consequences and Mount Weather had terrible ones"
Clarke looked up at the sky that didn't seem willing to let any start shine that night.
"He had fallen in love in that mountain. Among all that hypocrisy, he found the road to happiness, he found a way to live. And I have taken life from him. My decisions costed that much. I killed him along with other innocents in order to save the fourty-one that fell from sky with us and were made prisoners, guinea pigs, for they way they were, for the blood that run trhough their veins, for the air they could breathe.
I sent him to the other side."
"It was red, Mount Weather, it was a red grave no one escaped alive. We all died there, in a way, we all did, even though he have never understood that. It wasn't the best choice we made, but it was the only one we could make back then, the only one we had with so little time and so many of us to save"
A tear escaped her eye as Madi looked up to lock their gazes.
"We?"
She kissed her forehead, feeling the preciousness of the tresure in her hands.
It was not the right time.
"That's another story, my love, for another day" she whispered.
"Time to sleep now"