Author's Note: So I've had bits and pieces of many stories on my computer for a while. I will warn you now that the pieces in here may not ever be finished. If they become their own story they will be finished, if just might take ten years. Feel free to comment on which parts you liked or didn't like, as your opinion does matter to me and will make a difference. I felt like I should stop hoarding ideas and share the love. Clarke/Lexa guaranteed.
I'll tie a string around my finger (so my soul will never forget you)
Lexa is seven when the Commander dies. She has lived her life in a world created and maintained by the Commander, was born into it and doesn't understand living without the Commander. None of the people in her village do. They were born into a world created by the Commander and they exist with the certainty that when they die the Commander will continue to cherish what they themselves have loved and built and bleed for. This is the assurance of immortality that the Commander offers; this is the eternal assurance that built the Trigedakru after the bombs. Lexa is seven and has lived a life of safety and certainty when the string appears.
She is young, so young, and the thin red string that stretches from her finger to eternity is wondrous and amazing. Lexa shares her joy with her warrior mentor Anya, her sister, her brothers, her uncles, her aunts, and her parents. She is proud and happy to hold the string, showing it off to all the solemn faces that ask. Holding it makes her chest feel full like she has eaten the world. Her family is less happy, less naïve, and when the group from Polis finally arrive to see Lexa's beaming face and red string her father breaks down into tears. That is not the first hint that Lexa has really seen that says perhaps the red string isn't the best thing that's ever happened to her. The first was how solemnly Anya had looked at her when she'd proudly shown her First. Her mother hugs her, long and hard, before helping her onto a strong backed horse. Her sister won't look at her and her silent brothers don't look away. They are all older than her and though they have never seen this before they know what is happening. Her uncle and Anya lead her back with the strangers. His tattooed face set in stone. "Your fight continues," Uncle Gustus says softly as Lexa cries for the life she knew.
Lexa has seen twelve summers when she realizes that her advisors are wrong. She has lived in Polis for five years, studied and trained under a plethora of mentors. Anya is her one constant. Lexa was Anya's second before being chosen and will remain her second until Anya deems her a fit warrior. Anya is young for a First, but skilled enough that her advisors permit her to continue as Anya's Second. Lexa doesn't complain about the hours of extra practice and learning she has to endure as both Anya's Second and the Commander, it is their way. Anya is the only one to never tell her the lie that all others have. Lexa has come to realize that they, the women and men who train her to be the Commander they need, have eyes full of stone and mouths full of rot.
They lie and lie and it has taken Lexa five long years to realize that they build false hope for things which are impossible. False hope, Lexa decides, is the cruelest of cuts. It stings and burns and breeds more of itself until ones chest is empty and aching. She has watched a hunter tear the heart from a deer and her dreams are filled with blood, the taste of metal on her tongue, and her own empty torn chest.
For five years they have told her that when she is a warrior in true she will go on a quest to find the end of her string. It will guide her, they lie, to the other half of her soul and then she will be complete. Lexa believes them; she spends hours poring over old books and digging through alien memories in preparation. While they make her into Heda she makes herself into something else entirely. She builds her hope in the village she was born in, salvaged from the ruins of an older world and cherished like a newborn. Like Icarus before her she has reached too high and realizes it too late.
The Mountain Men come, drawn by the sounds of what she has built. They take her hope and leave nothing but ash, regret, and the still silent bodies of her family behind them. She gathers them, her family, her people, with her own hands and places them gently onto their pyre. She rubs soot stained hands against her eyes so that she can see through her tears when Anya helps her lower the flame to light wood and flesh on fire. Anya runs gentle hands through the dirty tracks of tears that trail over Lexa's cheeks and solemnly speaks to her. "Let your weakness show your strength." Lexa swallows in the scent of death and regret along with the realization her mentor has approved her life as a warrior.
Lexa is fourteen when she falls in love. She is a warrior true, has been for just over a year now, and her advisors can't fathom why she doesn't follow the string as all Commanders before her have. Gustus, her stalwart uncle, tells her often that he is prepared to journey with her. Anya, her mentor and only other remaining family (even by choice), never does. Lexa decided years ago that the string was nothing but a pretty lie (her hope that it could be anything else has been burned to ashes and tastes like death) and she is determined to love anyway. Costia teaches her that fate is not the only requirement for love and Lexa basks in her lessons.
Costia loves Lexa fiercely, deeply. She never asks, she has not the courage, but occasionally Lexa will catch her eyes slipping down to her finger. Costia is not where her string leads, is not who her soul needs, but she is the home Lexa has found for her heart and Lexa knows she will cherish it well.
The life of the Commander is short and often brutal. The Commander is a bulwark against all that would harm her people and such bulwarks cannot last forever. Though finding the person at the end of the string helps delay this, it is in their nature to be renewed. She is the youngest Commander chosen for the past sixty years and has already lived longer than the others chosen so young. Lexa has lived with the knowledge that she will die young and violently for more than half her life. Costia dies first.
Costia dies and Lexa kills her heart with her. If she cannot have fate and she will not have love then she must have peace. Her people must have peace; what other purpose exists for her? She descends upon the Clans like a hurricane and like a force of nature they bow to her will. In truth, all the Clans once asked the Commander to lead them. In the early years the small groups of survivors that would one day form the twelve Clans looked with envy upon the Commander's chosen people. The Commander's presence guaranteed survival, a precious commodity. Even after the Clans had formed into their own unique societies they remained envious of the immortal security of the Trigedakru. Not that the envy they felt meant every Clan wanted to be led by the Trigedakru Heda.
Lexa does not wage war again, not after the massacre she delivered to the Ice Nation. All the Clans know she is a capable warrior and a fantastic general. They do not question that should she wish it she could destroy a Clan completely. Her legend, of burned hearts and frozen black tears, has already made her warrior's mask a fearsome sight. They whisper tales of how her only tears are the ones that must be painted on. But war cannot win her peace, so she does not war.
Lexa grabs the string, her string, in her hands and thinks heavily upon the idea of peace. She meditates for days, seeking a way. It isn't until she feels her string tighten like a noose around her finger that she finds the way. She tells herself that she did not find the way because of the string, that her destiny did not magically lead her to an answer. Lexa doesn't lie to herself, not really. The string hadn't led her anywhere, it had helped her walk.
Peace requires compromise, requires cutting little pieces of her ideals and desires off bit by bit until she was nothing but the hollow husk of the person she once was. For peace, for the safety of those other girls who run through fields of flowers with the bright laughter of lovers in their ears, for the memory of a girl who gave her whole self in exchange for the small pieces of her heart that Lexa could offer, for the children who's dark eyes twinkle with mischief as they play through shaded woods and sunny streets, for the black clad warriors who stand stubbornly human in front of arrows and swords meant for her, for the sweat of farmers as the toil into the Earth while cursing and praising it in each breath, for the blood of hunters as they grasp at their hand crafted spears and stare the animalistic fury of death in face, for the artisans who's worn hands and eyes full of beauty endlessly seek to remind their comrades that not all of life is just mere survival, for her people Lexa cuts and cuts until only Heda remains. And in the end of it all, for her (the girl they watched become a warrior, the warrior they watched become a legend), they become one people.
There are still fights, the Earth is as cruel as she is kind, and the greatest threat to her people is beyond her. The Mountain has stood for years before her and all have accepted that it will stand for years after. The bandits of the dead lands press dangerously at the life filled flanks of the Coalition. Winter's chill grasp is frozen steel at the warm necks of the Clans. And when Lexa climbs between her furs, long after the sun has dipped it's golden self below the rocks, she is just a woman.
She is a woman with more vision and drive than could be contained in a single self. She is a woman tied by the red string of fate itself to the stars and endless black above her. She is a woman destined for the sky. She is just a woman, so she fights the deadly clutch of winter with roads and trade, with fish from the seas being exchanged for furs from the plains, with the great city of Polis becoming the capitol of government and (more importantly) trade. She is just a woman, so she gathers an army of warriors, hundreds strong from every one of the twelve Clans, and leads them with drawn sword into the lands of death, leads them across blood soaked sand, leads them across the limp bodies of their enemies, leads them to break even the idea of capturing her people as slaves. She is just a woman so she looks upon the Mountain and hates, for her people are being turned into monsters, her people are being hunted like prey, her people are dying and she does not know how to stop it. Lexa looks upon the Mountain and grasps her string tight, hoping for fate to be kinder in the future than it has been in the past. She is just a woman. Fate has its own plans.
Clarke falls to Earth in a shower of Fire, the very Air screams her arrival.