AN: This one's about healing, when life still refuses to stop. Title inspired by the Florence & Machine song of the same name. Post-S2 finale (diversion from canon), OC Luna. Originally written over hiatus, so won't be conforming to S3 canon.

Soundtrack: (8 tracks (dot com)/ arcanda/ what-the-water-gave-me)—For this chapter: On the Road, Hilmar Orn Hilmarson | Flowering Trees, David & Steve Gordon | Venus in Wastelands, Al Gromer Khan.

WHAT THE WATER GAVE ME

—-X-—

- CH.1 -

'CHESA'

.

Clarke almost tripped when her feet landed on beaten-down clay.

The terrain was as foreign to her feet as the amount of people in her company were to her senses. She hadn't been manhandled, so far. But with the retinue of escorts around her, she still wasn't sure whether she was being treated like a dignitary or a prisoner.

It had been a crapshoot announcing herself at the edge of the city. She was ragged but hardened at this point, and she hoped she at least cut an imposing presence. Everything was a crapshoot now.

But she kept her chin held high anyway.

Clarke remembered shivering one morning when she had looked out over the rolling mountains, tufts of fog plopped on top of their beautiful, fiery leaves.

And realized how utterly fucked she was.

It was threatening to turn from unpleasant and nippy into the kind of cold that sank deep into your bones and stayed there. It had been one of the things that kept Clarke moving, all day, everyday, as much as she could. Sometimes probably in circles

If she hadn't had the extra supplies and bits of clothing she'd scavenged and stolen along the road she would have already been pretty screwed.

The idea of going back to the Mountain, to her mother 'The Chancellor,' then, as now, was not an option. What laid behind her there felt like a death in itself, so much harder to stomach than anything that lay ahead of her on the wild ground. Because it touched her soul. Her ability to breathe. To function. To feel like she inhabited her body, or owned the simple right of being herself.

Maybe that was what she'd really set out looking for.

It hadn't taken long for all of that to play a role in her wandering, maybe more intentionally than she would admit, towards the people by the Sea who Lincoln had once given them directions to.

She wasn't quite ready to hole up in a cave, scraping for survival for the next four, long, winter months. To abandon all potential connection to her people and anything else in the world. To slowly freeze and starve to death. Yet.

She wandered for days through the coastal woodlands in search of those people: Chesa, the City of the Sea. She picked the name off the lips of a swarthy outsider, the same way she'd picked other things off of camps and bodies.

Clarke stuck to the wild since she departed from Jaha. Drifting, with her fractured heart and stoney exterior. It took two long, painful weeks. So alone—all the time, scared, scavenging—either wanting to die, or railing with every cell in her body against death.

The first week had been the worst. She had gone so far as smearing the charred ash from her drop-ship victims onto her face to blend in. She barely slept at all for five days. She only brought herself back from the dangerous edge she'd been skating when the hallucinations, from lack of sleep and food nearly led her off the same cliff as Charlotte. If she hadn't been almost positive it was the same cliff, she may not have cared. So in a way, Charlotte and Wells had saved her; for the time being.

Clarke had never been so alone before in her life. She never would have been able to if she'd tried. It caught her off guard and worked into her veins, like the icy chill of the autumn air that was slowly beginning to swallow everything. Being alone? It was all about survival, every second.

But Clarke became survival. She became loneliness. She beat them into submission and stepped inside of them.

Now they were an electric charge, coursing through her veins; both her very lifeblood and at once an infection. It left a crackling aura in the trail behind and ahead of her that even Clarke could tell reeked of an unsustainable ending with an epic quality.

The solitude had been consuming, weighing down the air she breathed. But in reality, during those weeks that felt like months, she'd already come across many people, some helpful, some harmful. She was steered in a general direction, one collected by subtle questions and observations. She didn't want anyone to know where she might be. Because she was very much alone, and she wanted it to stay that way.

Clarke had circumvented Polis two days earlier. She'd done her best to bypass it after almost bumping right into it by mistake: the trees opening up to that flooring view. It wasn't like it hadn't been seductive when she'd seen it off in the distance over the water, the big gates and old towers sticking up beyond them, like something retrofitted out of an industrial medieval times.

It was more than she'd been expecting. Bigger. And it made her heart ache. It made her feel like a ghost.

She had run into some trouble outside the walls but had managed to wit her way out of it. In the process she'd picked up on the buzz that Polis was under heavy guard and in some kind of upheaval.

All the more reason to stay away.

After tromping through sandy terrain for more than two days, the first sign of Chesa had been what turned out to be an artificial reef on the beach, towering over the low tide in Clarke's path.

It was pieced together from the stacked skeletons of old automobiles, barnacled and green with dripping seaweed. For some reason-though, the arches were nothing more than holes where there had once been glass-it reminded her of the ancient, arched aqueducts she'd seen pictures of in history books. Civilization.

She ducked through it and plucked shellfish out of the tide puddles inside, so stocked they couldn't have been unattended. The scrape marks from harvesting tools gave that away. It wasn't too much farther before she ran into some fishers on the sandy bluffs, armed with almost nothing but fishing tools. One of them bolted for guards the second they saw her.

She had turned the words over and over again in her head since she'd left, cleaning them up like a mantra, never quite sure if or when she was going to use them.

"Ai laik Klark, Heda kom Skaikru." I am Clarke. Commander of the Sky People. She fortified her chest, along with all the venom inside of her, and used the most imposing voice she could summon, probably channeling Lexa. "Ai gaf seigeda-de. Teik ai kom yo heda." I seek the Sea Nation. Take me to your leader."

Clarke peered between the guards that now surrounded her as they drifted into the streets of Chesa, and tried to get a look at it without compromising her posture or appearing distracted. The sights, smells, and sounds—the energy of life—weighed down on her shoulders like a warm smog.

Drums emanated from some obscure place in the city that she couldn't make out. But they weren't war drums. They were lighthearted; almost peaceful. It hit her in a way that gripped onto her bones and stole her attention away. It was the first time she'd heard something like that in a long time. It was almost eerie. The echo mingled with the breeze and radiated throughout the landscape, earthy and playful.

Chesa was smaller, flatter, and more sprawled out than Polis, but overflowing with vitality. It was mostly made of ruinous lumps and repurposed pieces of the past, which had been overtaken and fleshed out by crisp new timber, stucco, and canvas: the humanity acted like some kind of ambitious moss. The city may have been low-lying and humble by the ground's standards, but its raw energy was immense.

Even when they'd barely stepped foot inside—in the height of afternoon activity when the day's work had died away—Clarke had never seen anything like it, never felt anything like it. It may have been the culture shock of people and vitality around her, but it made her heart hammer into her ribs against her will. There was enough cover where the village was nestled beside the sea, that it buffered the icy-wind Clarke had run into on the beach. She was grateful for that. It was getting colder, and whatever was about to happen to her? Here, there was sun in the sky.

A group of children ran by Clarke, and one of them tripped, staring up at her blonde hair. A guard mumbled something curt in trigedasleng to him and the kid ran away with his friend, still shooting her curious looks as he did.

She clenched her jaw against the cool air to keep her gut from churning.

In the beginning, Clarke had thought about going back to Mount Weather: to spend every day, giving every one of the people she'd killed enough of a funeral rite to put them to rest.

She'd thought about it a lot.

Part of her needed to. But even just that thought, of actually doing it, made her mind unhinged. The idea of their raw bodies sitting there rotting with the food on their plates, in it, seeped into her nightmares and in between the trees, following her around.

After one horrible night surrounded by a black plume of death in the dropship, she'd gone back first to the supply hatch she'd found with Bellamy, and then to Finn's bunker—now a tomb—looking for shelter, a hiding spot, and anything she could use as supplies. She'd thought about staying there, but she couldn't take it. Not just moving the decaying, forgotten body of the grounder Finn had killed, and all the images it evoked of Mount Weather. Not just the risk of Bellamy finding her there. But everything; everything that space had been beaten and mutated into. The colored pencils that still sat innocently on the table made it worse.

The metal deer Finn had given her was the one sentimental thing other than her dad's watch that Clarke had on her now. The presence of the deer burned, seething, wherever she kept it. Everything about it was full of weight, sharp angles, and despair.

Maybe this really was what life on earth was like, maybe it had always been an inevitability: you had to grow two separate faces. One was hideous, grotesque and mutated, but there was no way to hide it. If you were lucky it wouldn't kill you; right away.

Clarke wasn't sure she could carry the weight of hers anymore. But since she didn't have another option, she trudged on with it anyway.

When her escorts finally seemed to have reached wherever they'd been marching her to from the fringes of the city. There was a wait at the head of the building they stood in front of. Then Clarke was led into what must have been their central meeting hall.

A woman with piercing eyes sat before her in a lofted chair.

Her gaze ripped through Clarke from the far end of the room as she got nearer: sharp, light, and unbreaching. Her deep, tawny skin was rich with warm undertones, like sun kissed river clay twinkling under a current. There was a glow about her persona, surrounding her. It was only set off by a halo of light from the melted crescent of candles that encircled her on the dais. But it was more than just the candlelight. Something about the woman's presence itself was luminescent.

Aside from the graceful arc of her jawline, her body was absent of hard angles, and doe-like, but she emulated them in the way she held herself.

The back of the throne was a carefully proportioned ark of driftwood that radiated out from behind her in desperate, organic patterns-their surface flat and smooth, and shapes ragged and pitted against the candlelight from being tossed in the sea. Small shafts of light broke through where branches had long since disintegrated. It cast a dramatic shadow around her, like dark beams of liquid mercury. The geometry of the throne itself was embellished by what Clarke suspected were bones from sea animals she didn't recognize.

"So," the woman said firmly, breaking the weight of the silence. Her chin was high and steady as Clarke faced her throne. She must have been about the same age as Anya. "You are Klark. Commander of the Sky People."

"Hi…" It came out of Clarke's mouth rather unceremoniously.

She didn't feel like much of a commander anymore. Especially not the one the Sea Queen was suggesting by the way she was looking at her. Clarke wasn't sure at this point if she looked tough and impressive, or just like a dirty, pathetic stray.

Clarke fortified herself. Not for the steel that had already been hardened into her cheeks and lips, and drilled into the depths of her eyes, in every day that had passed since she'd left Jaha, and probably every day before that-she didn't know where that started and ended anymore-instead, she fortified herself to care. Enough to bother with any of this. To pretend she was still a leader when her heart was withered, burnt out, and done with trying.

As Clarke stood there The Sea Queen appraised her carefully, her chin still held high as she did. The fabrics that clung to the woman were soft and coarsely dyed in colors lighter than the Tree People and their warriors'. Flaxens and blues. The relaxed sense they evoked was cut and chiseled around her lithe frame by a dramatic, hide vest, and adornment that was all weaves, stones, and silvers, her sleeves rolled up carelessly at her wrists.

She cocked her head and then set it back into place. Her eyes glinted with a depth that had the potential to either ruin or solace a person. "My name is Luna."

"I know."

Luna didn't say anything. She just inspected Clarke again, this time more thoroughly. A soft smile wedged itself under the corner of her lips, an easy attitude that was clouded by intrigue. And something else.

Clarke wasn't sure whether it boded well for her future or not.

"I have heard much about you." The light in Luna's gray-green eyes danced in the twinkling candlelight and pierced through Clarke. "There are many rumors."

Clarke stared back at her without saying anything.

"They call you 'dragan'. Because you fly from the sky and spread fire."

"I'm not a dragon."

"No." This smile of Luna's was still subtle, but different. Despite how her chin was still level in the air and her spine still poised and rigid, something in her tone and the subtleties of her expression suggested a shift towards warmth and amusement. "It seems, you are much more beautiful and clever than a dragon."

Clarke was taken off guard. She narrowed her eyes at the flirtation and repressed the impulse to roll them, trying to remain steady. She forced a soft smile back at the Sea Queen instead.

Flattery and humor were better than threats and crucifixion.

Luna's eyes roamed unabashedly over Clarke. There was an intimidating ease in the way she did it, but it didn't quite seem threatening. Clarke wasn't sure if that part bothered her more.

Clarke knew if it wasn't for the steel now permanently set in her bones, in her jaw, and the ferocity in her eyes, that she would have looked like a rough-shod mess. But she was comfortable. She'd had enough time in the wild on the run, clawing out a survival she wasn't sure she wanted, to become hardened. To perfect the worn clothes and gear that clung to her now like armor in all the right places, extensions of her body.

Clarke took a step forward. She ignored the guards who flinched with her movement and pushed spears in her way, and began to unsheathed their swords. She took another step forward, glancing down at the spear pointed in front of her chest and shooting the guard a quick glare.

"I didn't come here to shoot you."

Luna was silent for a long moment, assessing Clarke without relent. She then gave a nod and a little hum. "I see why the the Commander likes you."

Clarke clenched her jaw and tried not shift uncomfortably. "Lexa betrayed me and my people in the heat of war—" she halted, "She's not…here, is she?"

Luna's smile this time was more pronounced. "No. My husband is on the war council. He traveled many times between Tondisi and Polis."

"I'm…" Clarke almost faltered under her gaze, "glad he wasn't in TonDC when it was bombed."

"He was." Luna nodded.

A stone rose in Clarke's throat.

"Reluctantly. We are peaceful people, we do not like to participate in war. But he is one of us who works to keep things that way." Luna's posture relaxed a little but she was still giving Clarke an inquiring look. "He survived the missile."

"Good."

"He says you have a reputation for being both ruthless and compassionate at once. Bearing your compassion on one sleeve and your exploits on the other." She paused, her eyes still boring into Clarke's. "And that the Commander defends you like a cougar its young."

Only when it's convenient, Clarke thought. But she didn't say it out loud. She didn't want to appear small. And until she knew more, she resolved herself to avoid mention of who exactly was still allied with who right now. Politically speaking, she wasn't sure she even knew.

"You have done many big things in a very short time."

"All I was doing was looking after my people." The words were passionless, meant to be off-cuff, but they echoed through Clarke's mind, a mantra crashing behind everything else; accompanied by the gray fog of Mount Weather that threatened to push in around the edges of the room and swallow her.

Luna gave Clarke another knowing smile that simultaneously bothered and comforted her. There was a gentle smugness to it. "Does a healer make a better leader than a warrior?"

Clarke shrugged.

Luna studied her carefully, but her face soon lit in a way that appeared to be relaxed rather than sinister or austere. "Why did you come here?"

"Lincoln sent us when Lexa was first attacking my people and we were going to flee."

Luna perked up at Lincoln's name. She nodded.

"He said you were compassionate," Clarke said, "and a friend of his. That you might help us."

"Linkon is alive?" Luna asked.

Clarke nodded. "Yes. He's one of my people now." She was pretty sure he'd made that decision with Octavia by not following Lexa's retreat.

"I heard many different things and did not know which to believe."

"He's safe."

"Good." Luna nodded at her again. "And what was his real reason for desertion...?"

Clarke found her attitude about Lincoln interesting. It calmed her nerves for some reason. "Having a heart. My people view this as a strength, not a weakness."

"As do I."

Clarke raised her eyebrows at that

But Luna continued before Clarke could question the sentiment. "And you haven't answered my question," she said. "Lexa is no longer attacking your people. Why do you come all this way to the city of Chesa by the sea, Klark Grifin?"

Clarke's mouth fluttered a little. To run away. It bothered her that Luna somehow knew her full name.

"Are your people with you?" Luna asked.

"No," Clarke answered reluctantly, knowing it was a risk to throw away that hand. "It's only me."

She hedged. She was improvising.

"I don't like war either." Clarke reached back to diplomacy, and the cover of words that was now both a weapon and a piece of her armor. "It seems we have that in common." She squared herself and tugged the speech down around her with the last reserves left in her heart. "My people are refugees from beyond the sky. We have a history of being put in impossible situations and doing what we have to, to survive the impossible. Our lives in space were hard and bleak but they were simple." She hoped the effort looked and sounded better than she felt, because with any slack in pushing through it, the words made her simultaneously tired and nauseous.

Clarke punctuated her words by taking an ambling step forward to let them settle in. "I have to believe there's something better ahead for us than eternal war, than fighting. That there can be more to life than that again-than spending every night sleeping with one eye open-always expecting a threat."

She stared back at Luna, who was now paying very close attention: she wasn't just hearing, but listening. "You seek to flee the trees?" Luna asked carefully.

Clarke sucked air into her lungs. She looked at the ground and took her time to answer before looking back up at Luna. "Maybe."

"The Seikru are a part of the Coalition of Nations. What Linkon asked before would have been a betrayal of our own, and brought much turmoil to my people. If luck did not grace you."

"So you would have killed us all?"

"No," Luna said, enigmatically. "But I'm interested in the present and the future, not in false pasts. You seek an alliance with us?"

"Yes."

"Behind Leksa's back?"

"I don't trust Lexa anymore. I do trust Lincoln."

"We are still Leksa's people." Luna added, "Despite what you may have heard."

Clarke scowled. "And what's that?"

"The war that is brewing."

"What war? The war is over—I ended it." A knee jerk reaction gripped Clarke and she became incensed.

"Not your war, Sky Commander. Ours."

"I've..." Clarke looked at her in confusion, "been traveling."

Luna rose from the throne. Her stance was powerful and official as she floated the rest of the way to Clarke. But she didn't have that edge—on the verge of going for the jugular at any moment—that the other grounder leaders Clarke had met all had.

The pomp then all disappeared so quickly, Clarke didn't even catch it leaving. "Come…" Luna gestured a hand at Clarke, then began to walk passed her. "You are welcome among my people, Klark. We can discuss this in private after you eat."

"I—" Clarke was a little caught off guard by the sudden dissolution of formality.

She started to say she didn't need to eat, that she wanted to discuss it now. But when reminded of her hunger she realized she hadn't eaten anything other than raw oysters in days. So instead, she nodded.

Luna's eyes now looked non-judgmental and inviting. "Welcome to Chesa."

_x_

.

_Trigedasleng Translations_

HEADCANONED:

'Chesa' - the city of the Sea People on Delmarva peninsula, east of the Chesapeake Bay (south-east of 'Polis', which you would have to pass to get onto the peninsula by land).

'Klark' - I use the phonetic trigedasleng spelling of names whenever a grounder is speaking, whether in English or otherwise. I find this a helpful characterization reminder while writing...hopefully reading too (also I just find the image of a little cartoon version of Lexa running around calling her 'Klark' adorable.) NOTE: Still on the fence abt italicizing, so let me know if that throws you out, ya?

'Seigeda; Seikru' - ('say-geda'; 'say-kru') The Sea Nation; The Sea People, Luna's people. NOTE: whatever happens in canon, in this U Luna is the leader of the coastal people on Delmarva, whereas the Boat People (Floudakru) inhabit the Chesapeake Bay rivermouths and in large part the bay itself. Seigeda is the trade center, Floudageda is the main transport for supplies (especially to the capitol).