First words have never cut so deep (for you've stabbed me in the heart)
Clarke's words: "So, you're the one who burned three hundred of my warriors."
Lexa's words: "You're the one who sent them there to kill us."
Lexa's words, the one her soul mate will one day speak to her, are the only sign her parents need to know that she will be a leader of warriors. She will send men out to kill, to die. It is her fate and her choice all wrapped up into one neat sentence. Lexa is four, too young to read the words that have formed her life, when they apprentice her to a warrior's second. Anya is nearly eleven and the second of a great leader. One day, Anya will lead in her leaders place and Lexa after her. It is their way and Lexa's parents are pleased that her fate is so clear. There are much worse words and much worse fates to have. They are blessed not to have the fearful words that all parents fear. "Sha Heda" are nowhere on their daughter and as she is their last to have words they rejoice that their family shall find both love and hopefully life aplenty.
Costia's words are light, faded and nearly gone from her skin. She has never heard her soulmate speak them and when she is ten she knows she never will. Winter, and the disease that came with it, was difficult that year and many of the Clans people die from the cold outside and the heat inside. Her speaker was but one of many. Costia mourns for what she may never have, as is the way of their people, and when she is done she sets aside dreams of the life she will not have. When she is older and in love she will feel thankful for the knowledge that as pleasant as the dream may have been, she at least knew it was gone. Lexa will feel no such relief.
For eighty nine years the Commander has born one word on their mark in perpetuity. It is regarded as proof that one carries the Commander spirit, for who else would be called 'Heda'? An ironically self-fulfilling prophecy as tradition quickly develops that the first words one speaks to the Commander contain the title. Even other Clans respectfully adopted the tradition, even if they dislike the Commander she is a powerful person. When she is alone and the night is deep with darkness Lexa will hide from the stars beneath her furs and curl upon herself for what little comfort she can glean and hold hope to her heart. Their tales speak of a golden age, before the bombs, where most people could find their Speaker easily. Even in those golden times there had been people whose Speaker could never be found. Every respectful utterance of 'Heda' feels like another dagger straight to her chest, another nail in the box that held her hope and soon holds only despair.
Costia helps. With Costia (laughing Costia) Lexa feels free. A battle hound released from its leash to frolic in a field of flowers. Costia will never meet her Speaker and it matters less and less that neither will Lexa. Costia helps, until her bloody head stares at her from the ground dead for Lexa's secrets and her love.
Lexa's first instinct is war. She has been trained for war, built for it, since the day of her birth (it is inked into her skin). Her war is great and terrible. She cuts ground from the hands of the Ice Nation and blood from their flesh. Her army moves with unmatched speed and in a matter of days, just a handful of days, she reaps more death than the entirety of her life before. She reaps so much death that she cannot see life anymore, cannot see its purpose or meaning. Friend and foe are just meat to her in her rage. At least, they are until she cuts down another enemy and sees a girl, a child really, fall in her place (she has Costia's laughing grey eyes before meeting Lexa and her same distant dead gaze after).
She locks herself away in her still silent tent, darkness and shame her only companions. Lexa has waged war on people, it is easy. Simple and relatively straightforward war on people is essentially just thinking of ways to kill the parts of them that fight. Their bodies or their spirits it matters not. But war on people has not brought her peace from Costia's ghost. War on people has brought only war, death, and misery. Blood has been spilled to follow down the blood already spilled and Lexa is choking on it.
Lexa has never had the words to explain what having the Commander spirit is like. Costia often asked but Lexa found that it was such visceral experiences that it existed beyond the words people have used to define their world. In the darkness Lexa experiences such a moment of clarity that it feels like the world is laid open before her. She has two options, two paths, two consequences to choose. In the first she wages war until the whole of the Ice Nation lays defeated before her and in her emptiness she turns to the other Clans with bloodied sword and broken soul. In the second she sheaths her sword and wages peace, such peace as her world has not seen, and unites all twelve Clans together in a single purpose.
Lexa allows herself a day of mourning, a day to feel the despair of her necessary sacrifice. She does not mourn for the girl who died from love of her. She does not mourn for the hundreds of people her war has killed. She mourns for what cannot be. In some other world, perhaps, Lexa would continue to wage war. In this other world, her title will become forsaken by her actions and strangers who have never met her will blame her for attacking them. There strangers will speak to her for the first time with the words "you're the one that sent them there to kill us". Words that the peace Lexa chooses to build will never see.
Lexa mourns what she has denied for one full day. Then she puts on her red sashed mark of station, her black tear stained warriors paint, her title of Heda and she makes peace upon the world. Within a year she has united all the twelve Clans. Within a year there is nowhere in the known world she can travel that the people do not shout "Heda" in awe filled voices. She is seventeen and she has chosen her people over her soulmate.
Clarke is born and her parents are incredibly grateful that her mother is Chief of Medical on the Ark. It makes it much easier to hide her words. They type something else, something innocuous, into the medical bay screen when prompted for 'words - fated'. No one may see Clarke's words; in this her parents are in complete agreement. People, babies, have been floated for less. It's not something anyone on the Ark ever talks about, most don't even realize, but one's fated words can be enough that the Council will not risk them being ever spoken. Clarke's words are more than enough, even without context.
Clarke is three when her mother spanks her so hard she can't sit down for a day, all for the crime of showing her best friend Wells her words. It's Clarke's first lesson, but not her last. She's seven and she knows that her father's first question to her when he comes home from working maintenance on the Ark will be 'did you keep them covered?' When she's eight her parents tell her what to say whenever anyone asks what her words are, she repeats the words back to them until she can picture each one in a moment in her mind. At ten they have her draw them over and over again until she can trace them in the dark. They never tell her why. On her twelfth birthday Clarke gets a small hand mirror from Wells as a present. She's smart and been able to read most words since she was much littler but Clarke has never been able to twist her body to read her words. The ones her soulmate will say to her when they first meet.
Clarke waits for her parents to go to bed before sneaking into the small bathroom they all share. She slips out of her too big pajama top and climbs onto the toilet. It is in the most awkward to see place, directly over her heart on her back. Through two mirrors and what felt like an infinitely of waiting Clarke finally, finally, sees them. It takes her a few moments to understand what they say. It takes her no time at all to wish she hadn't. She tries to cut the false words off, the lie on her flesh. Lying in the bed in medical she wonders what fate could be so cruel as to have the first words her true love with ever say to her be "so, you're the one who burned three hundred of my warriors."
It's not until she does the right thing and is confined to solitary that Clarke thinks so heavily on what her words mean. Admittedly, she has spent years not thinking of them so Clarke cycles through many other thoughts first. She is half way through drawing a sprawling charcoal tree when she wonders when the last time someone burned on the Ark was. Fire was surprisingly easy to deal with in space. As with all things it died quickly without oxygen. Clarke thinks she remembers her mom treating someone for second degree burns years ago, but she can't be sure it wasn't an electrical burn. 'Trees,' Clarke thinks as she smooth's out an imagined branch, 'trees burn. Trees and forests and the things in them burn. Spaceships made of metal don't.'
When she was eleven and playing with her schoolmates one of them had accidently hit her in the chest. She'd wanted to breathe, needed it, but couldn't force her muscles to relax enough to draw any of the precious air in. She feels like that now, like she could gasp and gasp for air and nothing would happen. The Ark is running out of air, will run out of air. People do not burn in space, they burn on the ground. Her soulmate claims she will burn people.
Clarke laughs and laughs until her sides ache and tears stream down her face. There will be people on the ground, and she will be one of them. Somehow, that makes the realization that she will kill three hundred people just a little bit easier to bear (except that in the end it doesn't, because Clarke doesn't know anything about life on the ground yet).
They end up where they were always going to end up, where they were meant to end up, staring at each other across a tiled war room floor and the ghosts of three hundred burned bodies. Lexa speaks first, her tone harsh and controlled, purposeful as are all her actions. The blonde, the leader of the Sky people, pauses. Her blue eyes widen, pupils dilating, and Lexa has seen enough shock on and off the battle field to know what the paling of Clarke's skin means. Lexa waits patiently, pleased that the other leader hadn't been able to just shrug the lives (and deaths, so many deaths) of Lexa's people off.
When Clarke speaks her tone is firm. She chooses the words with her heart and knows they are the right ones when the Commanders breath catches slightly in her throat. Clarke nods, barely, and Lexa returns it. It is a silent acknowledgement of who they are, who they were always going to choose to be, to each other and the world around them. Then they move on. They are alike in that they are leaders first and people second. Leaders cannot have fate and destiny that does not help those they lead. Destiny is not for them, it is for other people, for someday, for almost.