Manifest Destiny: Doktor Griffin
By: Ryu Niiyama
Five years
It had taken nearly five years for the hunting parties of the Trikru Nation to find her. Five years for Leksa to drown in her grief and need for her ai prisa. Five years for the Heda to become a demon burning with betrayal of the loss of her Klark and Wanheda. Her rage had been enough to spearhead the tribes so that she could decimate the Ice Nation. Where Leksa would have been merciful the heartbroken Heda obliterated the Ice Nation.
Many of the Skaikru and Arkkru had moved on, traveling west. The coalition had been nervous at first but the skaiborn didn't attack, they merely…drifted away. The machines of the Skai made it too hard to easily follow and Leksa and the Heda both had no desire to hurt Klark through her people any longer. The other tribes had suggested that the Heda lead a war party and destroy them but after six months with no contact the Heda turned her eyes to the Nation she now had to build alone.
Heda built her Nation, but it felt hollow, empty. The Ark and Skai had left, their camps stripped bare...the hope of uniting Trikru to the blood and family of Klark going with them. Her ai prisa was gone, her clever Klark had slipped away in the chaos and this time she was not found. Her tracks didn't turn up until she was beyond Trikru borders, and with a war on her hands, beyond Leksa's reach. Yet the Heda didn't forget, she would never forget that which was hers and she would never again bury the love of heart. In time, with the ruins of the Ice Nation razed to the ground the Heda was free to send her warriors to bring back her Klark…to return to her, her Wanheda.
The search parties scoured and spread, reaching out like the Heda's hands for golden silk and warm sky blue eyes. Five years and finally Klark would return to where she belonged. But what her warriors bought back was not the shining princess of the Skai. This woman that returned to her had her Klark's beauty and a strength that Klark had always had the potential for, but her eyes were dead and empty. This time when she was presented to the Heda there was no hatred…there was nothing. Leksa wanted to pull her sweet Klark to her and coax her free of her pain but the Heda had to show that Klark would know her place and the Heda would not tolerate dissent. Before the Heda could speak, Klark -this time ungagged- spoke with a voice hoarse and broken from disuse.
"What do you want from me? All you do is take, Heda. You have taken everything from me…if you aren't going to kill me. You are wasting your time." And then she spoke no more. Only silence issued from her broken ai prisa and the Heda could only send her away.
Heda and Leksa both had been shocked, devastated by the emptiness, this bleakness that would not lift from her skaiprisa's dead, darkened eyes. She went to the leader of the warriors that returned Klark and demanded to know what happened. He described that the hunting party had found both the Skaiprisa and Wanheda that day. In a city, whole and clean unlike anything the Trikru or any other nation had built and they called her Klark "Doktor". She smiled and healed and lead a new people that were a mix of Skaikru, Arkkru and others they'd never seen before.
Yet when they revealed themselves the Doktor vanished and Wanheda, the true Wanheda took her place. They'd lost so many warriors to the weapons of the Skai and mountain and Wanheda had been at the front cutting a swath of blood through the hunting parties. Heda wanted to be proud of the prowess her woman displayed but she couldn't reconcile the warrior goddess of the stories to the dead thing in a cell.
Heda pressed further needing to know why Klark had returned to her so broken. There was another Doktor and the warrior hesitated when he described her beauty and that she was never far from Doktor Griffin and they both answered to the same title. The warrior shook his head, assuming it was some Skai ritual he didn't understand, but Leksa felt fear begin to take hold of her heart. The other Doktor fought beside Wanheda and helped tend to their injured, but it was when she fell that Wanheda did as well. The warrior shuddered as he recalled the keening wail that issued from Wanheda as she rushed to the other Doktor's side, but she could not tend to her, could not help her because the warrior had his party press forward to take advantage of Wanheda's lapse of strength. Wanheda struggled to reach the fallen one and it took four men to carry her away from the battle, those horrible cries ringing in their ears. Those four men suffered from nightmares the entire trek back and one ended his own fight before they returned.
"You've done well." Leksa whispered to her loyal warrior, hard eyes flickered to nearby guards and it was the Heda that spoke next. "End his fight." The Heda returned to her chambers and stood on her balcony once more. Her soul thrashed and snarled in pain and turmoil. She had gained her Nation, but it had cost her Klark; she knew of the Skaikru custom to take the second name of a mate. A mate. Another woman had warmed Klark's furs, another woman had shared in her hunts, another woman had tended to her wounds, another woman had shared in her stories. Another woman had taken her ai prisa from the path that she was meant to walk and left her with Doctor Clarke Griffin, with her dead eyes and listless, beautiful body. Clarke Griffin had run away from Leksa and had killed her Klark out of spite.
The Heda's eyes narrowed but inside Leksa howled in mourning for loss of her woman, of her mate. What right did that ghost woman have to steal away her Klark? What did she offer Klark that her Heda could not? That her Leksa could not? But that woman was dead now…no one knew better than Leksa the pain of losing love, but she would pick her Klark up and return her to her rightful place. She would have her ai prisa, so the Heda commanded…so it would be.
