A few days later, Nyko returned here to Arkadia, but I've been holed up in my room for a while now, still feeling out of sorts after our discussion about Lexa. I've spent months hating her, and refusing to let any other feelings about her in, but my resistance only lasted so long, and apparently it's crumbling around me as happier memories flood my mind and I weaken.
The necklace around my neck was a gift from her, and I haven't taken it off since I was thirteen years old. I kept it on even when filled with rage for her, because it reminded me of the betrayal I felt. But for the past few days I've found my fingertips tracing the shape of the pendant unconsciously like I used to every time I felt a rush of love for her when she tucked stray strands of hair behind her ear or looked down at the ground while she laughed gently at something I'd said.
And when I think about her, I'm reminded of the fact that I never told her how I really felt. I never told her that when we spent days laid around in her room, a tangle of limbs as she read aloud to me from an old book she had found in her parents house about dragons and fairies, that it had taken all my energy not to kiss her. I had always known that she would never love me that way, not after Costia. But I tried telling my heart that, to no avail. I love- loved, Lexa more than my own life.
They found Clarke. But whoever has her managed to get away with her still as his prisoner, and Bellamy's sporting a pretty good limp. The way Bellamy is determined to get Clarke back makes me envious, it's how Lexa should have been about finding me.
A knock comes at my door, and after an invitation from me the door swings open to reveal Nyko. I haven't spoken to him since I stormed out of the medical centre in Mount Weather. I look down at the floor, a little ashamed of the fact that I took my anger about Lexa out on him when he was only just recovering from near death.
"Hey little lion."
"Hei Nyko." I respond, looking up sheepishly.
Hello Nyko.
He smiles at me as he crosses the small room I've claimed as my own in the three months I've lived here. He sits down on the bed next to me and affectionately knocks his fist lightly against my cheek. Nyko also knew my brother, he and Lincoln were two of Zico's closest friends, and I was always trailing around after them as a child, asking to join in with their combat training and sometimes they even humoured me.
"How are you holding up kiddo?" He asks me and I can't hide the truth from him, it's exhausting pretending to be strong around everyone else and I just don't have it in with me today. I sigh, and twirl a strand of hair around my fingers whilst I try to find the words to answer him.
"You ever heard of a Nightblood who flinches at gunfire and conflict? A Nightblood who can't handle entering the place where she almost died without feeling like her insides are on fire? A Nightblood who feels fear and lets it stop her, not propel her forward?" I say, and it turns out the words that I found hit the nail on the head pretty well.
Nyko tilts his head to the side as he considers this, and then smiles at me, which only makes me frown. There is nothing smile-worthy about the person I am at this moment. There is not much worth smiling about in relation to me at all, actually.
"A Nightblood can feel fear, Kleio. You're the strongest little lion I've ever met." He falters, as though he's got something else to add but then he closes his mouth, clearly thinking that it's not something that I'd want to hear. Somehow, I think it's probably about Lexa. I roll my eyes at him calling me strong, I've never felt weaker.
"I'm heading back to our people for a while," he says when he realises I'm not even going to pass comment on what he's said. I'm stubborn, and he knows that well enough not to press any further with trying to make me feel better about myself.
I frown sadly, and curse at myself for locking myself away when I could've spent some time with Nyko. "You should come with me, see your family, I'm sure they will be overjoyed to know you're alive."
I'm pretty convinced that overjoyed is an overestimation of how my family would feel about my living state, but I can't say that I think they'd be disappointed to see me. I doubt my father would even notice I'd been gone, but I know that my sisters and mother at least will have missed me at least a little. I play with the idea of returning home, but I know that I couldn't stay there for long. It isn't 'home' as such anymore. It is where my family live, but I don't feel like I'd fit in there anymore but honestly I haven't fit in there since we lost Zico.
Finally, I nod. "Okay, I'll come with you."
Nyko knows better than to let his triumph show on his face, and he nods at me as he stands. "We'll leave in the morning." He presses a light kiss to the top of my head before he leaves, and closes the door quietly behind him where I'm left to think about the impending reunion with my family and what that means.
It means I'm going to have to face Lexa sooner than I anticipated, because as soon as my family know I'm alive it's only a matter of time before it gets back to the Commander.
I start to pack up some things, I don't have many possessions here, just things that I have collected over the last three months but I make sure to leave a few behind to ensure that Octavia believes I will return. I know she doesn't plan on spending much more time here in Arkadia if she can avoid it, but I know that she doesn't intend to leave without me. I put together a small bag of clothes and a few daggers Indra brought me, and then I leave what I plan to take with me at the foot of my bed and head out to find Octavia.
Walking through the corridors of this place freak me out a little if I really think about the fact that this ship was part of an enormous space station that was floating around in the sky. That people lived in it, lived in the sky. It baffles me, and I shake the thought away before it really gets to me.
I'm about to push open the door that will lead me outside, I almost always head to the stables first when I'm searching for Octavia, but a voice comes from behind me, saying my name.
"Clio, I heard you're leaving us." Bellamy. I turn to face him a little clumsily, stumbling over my own feet and he laughs. "Well, if you're able to stay upright that is."
I frown at him childishly but ignore his tormenting, "I'm don't plan to be gone long, luckily for you. Wouldn't want you to miss me too much." It's pathetic, really, that part of me hopes that he will feel my absence whilst I'm visiting my family and the capital, but I try not to focus too much on that silly little desire. I've no time for my feelings any more, after the trouble they've been causing me.
He glances down at the floor for a moment, and when he looks back up at me there's something in his eyes that I can't quite put my finger on, it almost seems like worry. Relations between the Sky people and the 'grounders' as they call us have been the closest to amicable since the Arkers came to Earth, and I don't have a kill-order hanging over my head like Lincoln does - so this trip back to my family guarantees as much safety as possible in the world that we live in, or it would if Azgeda hadn't attacked a Trikru unprovoked, that is.
"Just be careful, okay. I mean, Octavia needs someone like you in her life." It is worry after all, and I can't hide my surprise, my eyes widening at Bellamy as he speaks and he tilts his head to the side a little when he realises that I'm taken aback by his concern, "Hey don't look at me like that, you know you've become a part of this strange little family."
"I thought you all didn't mind me too much, but I wouldn't have gone as far to say I'm one of you." I had my own shit, and they had theirs. Only a fraction of the things we had all been through were things we had been through together. I'd only known the Arkers for three months, but Bellamy was right - they were the closest thing to a family that I had currently.
"Well, you are pretty vexing most of the time, Lio." He taunts, punching my arm lightly before he steps forward and wraps his arms around me in a hug. "I mean it, be safe."
"Mebi oso na hit choda op nodotaim." I say in my native tongue as our hug ends, and then smile, "May we meet again." I've been trying to teach him trigedasleng, regardless of how reluctant he is to speak our language. It took me three weeks to convince him it was a good idea, because one day it might just save his life.
He nods, and smiles crookedly at me, "May we meet again, Clio."
The ride to the outer villages surrounding Polis takes us most of the day, but we're not pushing our horses on as such, just enjoying being out in the wilderness. Nyko's still sore from his run in with an Azgeda warrior, so as soon as we mounted our horses I suggested a steady journey, made up some excuse about being too tired to rush to save him from having to ask that we take it steady.
We're about twenty minutes walk away from the village I grew up in when I realise just how close we are. Blue petaled flowers seem to suddenly spring into view, covering all of the ground except for the path that weaves its way through the floral surroundings. The trees overhead become more interspersed as we walk on, until eventually they bring us to a clearing of wooden huts that stretches further than the eye can see and in the distance, the largest tower in all of Polis comes into view. The Commander's headquarters.
I pull my gaze away from the tower and focus straight in front of me instead, as familiar faces come into view. Friends of my parents, a friend of my sister's, the woman who tutored me about edible and non-edible plants when I was a child, and then Eziah, my sister. Her mouth drops open and she simply stares at me, icy blue eyes wider than I've ever seen them.
"Kleio?" She asks in disbelief, and then her body springs into life and she's running at me as fast as she can as I dismount from my horse. Eziah barrels straight into me and knocks me to the ground in a hug and all I can do is laugh, I have never seen my sister like this - had I been blindfolded I would've expected this behaviour from Nova, but never Eziah.
Her face is inches from mine and she is grinning widely at me, "Are you really here? Is it really you?" She's pinching and prodding my cheeks, nose, arms trying to make sure that she's not just dreaming and then she sits back and lets me up from the ground, only to hug me tightly again. "Wait 'til Nova sees you!" She exclaims, taking hold of my hand and dragging me away, I open my mouth to complain but Nyko has already taken hold of my horse and is leading it with his behind us, a chuckle shaking his form, I have no excuse.
We're not far from the house I used to call home, it's been well over a year since I was last here, even before I was taken it had been a long time since I had returned to the place I grew up. As soon as I was old enough to leave this place, I packed up my things and stayed at Lexa's side. There was too much of Zico here, I always seemed to catch glances of him around corners, a flash of his bright blond hair or something in my peripheral vision only to find I'd imagined it. At sixteen, I was too tired to feel my heartbeat race when I thought I saw him and so I left, and I haven't seen a single trace of him since. Maybe he was haunting me here, trying to get me to leave like we had always talked of doing. I may have only been eight when he was taken, still a child, but Zico had been the first person to honestly, truly care about me, and for that I would never stop missing my brother.
I notice the faces of people that we rush past are all staring at me, and it's a peculiar feeling to have them all watching me as Eziah pulls me through them going about their daily business. It'll have been no secret about where I was, I'm sure that my family were given endless supplies of food to comfort them in their time of loss. But people surviving the Mountain Men is unprecedented, and I wonder about the others that were saved. How were they treated when they returned to their homes, their families? Did people stare wide-eyed at them, mouths agape like they're doing to me now?
We reach our parent's house, and Eziah pauses at the door before we go in to press a kiss to my cheek lightly, "I can't believe it." She says quietly, shaking her head to herself as she pushes open the door and we step into the house I spent the majority of my life in.
At first it's almost deathly silent in the house. My mother in the corner washing a pot in a big wooden barrel filled with water, my father sat in an old comfy chair, snoozing quietly and little Nova curled up on the floor drawing flowers - lost in her own little world, like always.
Eziah clears her throat and my father wakes, and my sister and mother turn their attention to us stood in the doorway. The pot in my mother's hand clatters to the floor, creating a loud metallic din as it bounces around and I don't even have time to say anything before Nova is wrapping her arms around me and smothering me in kisses like I used to do to her when she was little.
I hadn't really been looking forward to being here, but the way my sisters have reacted to me forces the widest grin across my face in months, and I start to laugh. Really honestly laugh, and without realising it straight away, I've started to cry. I notice when Nova is wiping at my eyes with a sad smile, "I never thought I'd see you again Lio."
"I never thought I'd see you either," I say, and then I fall apart in the arms of my sisters, crying for the first time since I left the Mountain.
Naturally, it takes nearly an hour for me to calm down and be able to speak in full sentences without hiccuping from all the crying, and I'm not sure what caused it. Relief, I think. Relief to have made it out alive. I don't think it felt like I had really survived my time in Mount Weather until I stepped through the doors of this house, because Arkadia has felt like some very bizarre dream. By the time I've managed to stop crying, with Nova sat at my feet, one of her hands linked in my own as she refuses to let go of me with the fear that if she lets go I'll vanish into thin air, I tell my family everything. Everything that I have experienced in the past six months, and they tell me things that they have heard about the Sky people and ask me if they're even human at all. Do they look like us? What language do they speak? What is the Ark like? How did they sustain life up there in the sky?
Eziah was sent outside about five minutes into my water-work fiasco to fetch Nyko in, but he gracefully declined our hospitality and said he would visit me tomorrow, give us time to catch up.
The entire time I'm talking, my father does not say a word, barely registers any emotion on his face and I wonder whether it is because he wishes Zico had returned, rather than me. Probably, but I spent time trying to gain his affection when I was younger, and soon learned it was much easier to leave him to his own devices. Somehow, the moment I stopped chasing my father, he paid much more attention to me than he had before. But the word "much" was perhaps a stretch. The only thing my father paid attention to was a drink in his hand.
But today, he surprises me. When we all fall relatively quiet, he stands from his chair and places a hand on my shoulder lightly. "Mounin Kleio."
Welcome back, Clio.
Eziah can't hide the shock from her face, no matter how hard she tries to. I have always loved her inability to hide her true emotions from her face, her blunt and honest nature is unfaltering and I'm glad she hasn't let it slip.
We enjoy a family meal, cooked by Nova and my mother, and by the time we're finished eating I'm yawning and struggling to keep my eyes open. My mother leads me to my old bed, in the same room as my sisters', and she pulls the furs up over me and runs her hand over my hair, her eyes full of disbelief still, despite me being here for several hours now.
"My little lion, I should never have doubted your strength would bring you back to us." She whispers, and her eyes fill to the brim with shining tears. Happy tears, that spill down her cheeks when she smiles at me. I am too tired to lift my hand up to her cheek, but I smile back at her sleepily.
"Ai gonplei nou ste odon, nomon." I hear myself say as I drift away.
My fight is not over, mother.
A/N: Hello, yet another apology about being terrible at updating but I've been super busy and struggled to find the time to get anything worthwhile done but finally an update (and some motivation!). Thank you for reading, and reviews would be greatly appreciated. I plan to update with chapter five in about two weeks time (6th June to be precise is my personal deadline!) so check back then! xo