AN: Song for this chapter is 'To Make a Portrait' by Message to Bears. Hope you enjoy.
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- CH.9 -
' THE WORLD IS DARK '
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"Les-ka!" The body of the boy came crashing into Lexa's hip and curled around her.
Lexa looked down at Wren with an unreadable expression. "Leksa," she said simply, and gave him a firm pat on the head, keeping her hand there.
"Heda," Luna corrected further. The sky had only just shifted in favor of the new day above the hard-packed, dirt streets of Chesa. They stood together away from the bustle, across the street from the overhang of the outdoor canteen.
Wren looked up at Lexa and giggled deliberately, mischief in his smile. "Leska..." He skipped around her.
"Your child is willful, Luna."
Luna smiled proudly. "Yes. He will cause trouble."
"Do not encourage him. He encourages himself plenty."
Wren jumped up in front of Lexa with his arms up, motioning to go on her back.
"Not now, Ren. Go," she said cooly.
Luna moved closer to Lexa's side as Wren skipped off, rolling his head in disappointment, but complacent. She lowered her voice. "Were the herbs I gave you strong enough to sleep?" They spoke with the distinctive aura and serious expressions of leaders: heads bowed close, voices low, and eyes on the sparse city around them.
Lexa lied, and nodded, as she watched Wren disappear down the road from the corner of her eyes. "Muchof." Thank you. She needed as much sleep as she could squeeze in right now, but it was hard-coming, and there was never enough.
Luna followed Lexa's gaze down the street and stared at Wren for a moment, before shifting the Commander's attention away from wherever it had wandered. "Have you been able to speak to Klark at all yet?"
Lexa spoke slowly, brooding and distracted in thought. "Yes."
Luna's brow quirked. "And…?"
Lexa only shook her head, the entirety of her answer. She was distinctly lackluster and distracted this morning; a puppeteer who had begun to lose interest in animating her own body. She stared back down the street where Wren had disappeared again. "Even if it was possible…She would need time. That we don't have. The fact the Sky Commander is willing to meet to discuss diplomacy is a favor in itself. I can only offer her people the restitution I can, and hope she does not decide to turn against us."
"Heda…you think Klark would do that?"
"I think she will do whatever is best for her people."
"Is it wise, to let her leave…?" Nothing about it was wise.
Lexa restrained the movement of her lips from surrounding eyes, so as not to draw attention. "I will not hold Klark against her will."
Luna was swallowing words. Many of them.
It was noticeable enough that Lexa looked up at her, and signaled her to speak.
"None of the possibilities that come from her leaving here are good—if she is seized and taken to Islin she will either be tortured to death, or ally with them. Heda, you cannot even get scouts through Trigeda territory alive right now, you think that—"
Lexa's hand popped up to silence her, she scowled, still not looking at Luna. She was hoping to find some way to keep Clarke from leaving on her own volition, so that wouldn't be a problem. She was also hoping Clarke's people weren't in part responsible for that blockade. "Does she know yet that the Ice People have also occupied the area surrounding Skaikru?"
"If she does, she has not said anything."
"If we can convince Klark they are a threat, she won't ignore the value of common interest." Despite the recklessness Clarke seemed to be on fire with, Lexa hoped she would be reasonable once she was informed.
"And if they're allies?"
"You know as well as I do, Azgeda is a threat to her people whether they are allied or not." Lexa watched, across the slow, morning bustle in the street, as Clarke approach the hall they'd arranged to meet in this morning.
Clarke shot her a dismissive glare from afar.
"Let us hope it doesn't come to that," Lexa said.
Clarke crossed her arms and set in outside the entrance to the hall, still glowering.
"Do not let her out of your sight, Luna." It was more of a prayer than a command.
.
When Luna and Lexa approached, Clarke waited without greeting for them to enter the meeting she moved to follow after them, Luna paused in the door, effectively cutting her off.
"Before we start, Klark. I need to show you the supplies for your trip in case adjustments need to be made." She motioned for Clarke to follow her. Lexa scowled at Luna suspiciously from the interior of the room, but did not follow.
Once they were in the alley beside the building, Clarke turned to Luna, awaiting a direction to follow.
But it was quickly obvious Luna had no intention of doing what she'd suggested. She was promptly in Clarke's face."If it were up to me you would not be permitted to leave this city. But it is not."
Clarke gave her a questioning, if not combative look.
"That the Commander outranks me is a given, and she refuses to hold you against your own will."
Clarke's mouth, which had been opened to say something, closed.
"Even if it is for your own good. She will try to explain to you why that is the case. You would be wise not to be vindictive and to listen." There was a hardness in Luna that Clarke hadn't seen before. The natural warmth and comfort that had been there, even after Clarke had threatened Lexa, had slipped away entirely. Luna stepped towards her, her voice piercing. "What did Islin tell you, when you shook her hand?"
Clarke's lips parted in question and she scowled back into Luna's eyes, which were drilling into her, closer to her personal space than she'd even come in the bungalow the other night. "What?"
Luna didn't say anything, her expression just became a little more distant as she continued to scrutinize Clarke. She pursed her lips, before she spoke. "Kostia was not kidnapped."
Clarke blinked at the name being brought up again.
"She was invited, as a peacekeeping ambassador."
Clarke's eyes widened a little but she kept her jaw firm, staring back at Luna.
"They cut pieces from her body. And her spirit."
There was cultural implication in those words that Clarke didn't fully understand.
"Until there was nothing left. And they kept her alive long enough to witness it." Luna's words pressed, and went further under her breath, aware they may be interrupted at any moment. "What Islin says to your face, and does when it suits her are two different things. Rumors about your attachment to the Commander are enough for her to publicly cut you open and play with your insides while you watch—on only the chance it will make the Commander squirm before she is executed herself. The fact Lexa's sentiments are genuine only makes that worse. If you or your people have made some kind of agreement with Azgeda, now is the time for you to speak. The Commander will give you an out."
Clarke wanted to trust Luna. Every impractical talent of perception inside her raged to trust Luna—and that's exactly why she didn't. She knew Luna's power lay in her charisma and way with people. She hadn't come to command among the brutal grounder culture for nothing. Clarke knew Luna's interest in the coalition, and she wouldn't put it past her to be specifically talented at manipulation. References from Lincoln or not, the Grounders were in desperate times amongst themselves.
"If you think using fear, to manipulate me into siding with the Commander is going to work, it isn't. I'm not afraid of Azgeda."
"That is the problem, Klark."
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"Are you aware Azgeda has your people surrounded?" Lexa had, apparently, already learned that approaching things directly from the matter of Clarke's own safety was counter-effective.
But the two intense pairs of scrutinizing eyes now attached to Clarke in the meeting hall were enough for her to temper herself before she reacted. "I was not."
"How long have you been traveling?" Lexa asked in the same curt voice. "You were alone?"
"I fail to see what that has to do with the standing relationship between our people." Lexa was at war, and there was carefully styled face-black streaked down her cheek bones this morning.
"If you have been negotiating with Azgeda, and they sent you here, it has everything to do with the relationship between our people."
The paint set off the whites in her eyes even in the dim room, and it only made the twisted knot in Clarke's gut tighter, reminding her of the last time they'd 'negotiated' on the battlefield, when the delicate line of her jaw was messed with splattered blood. "No alliance has been made between Skaikru and Azgeda that I'm aware of. But you've already done a pretty good job of convincing us to side with them yourself."
"It doesn't matter."
"Sorry?"
"They are a danger to your people whether you ally with them or not."
Clarke's eyes darted away, unimpressed.
"You don't believe me?
Clarke remained firm and silent.
"You have no reason to back them, Klark. They are more dangerous to you as allies, it gives them opportunity to infiltrate your advantages. I know I haven't given you reason to trust me again—"
"Undertsatement."
"Relying on the Mountain to crawl into and hide, is a mistake. We grew up at war with these people. You don't know how they operate, we do. You have the chance to turn your weapons against them and help me stop this coup before they turn Polis into a battlefield and it escalates into an ongoing bloodbath. I know you may think that will serve you, but Azgeda will not exclude your people from their exploits."
Clarke didn't say anything, pressing Lexa to fill the silence herself.
"I am not asking for a standing alliance. I'm asking you to help me keep peace,for all of our people. You may not like it, but it's better than the death that will come to your people's door if I fail."
She continued to look away from Lexa with dismissive humor.
Lexa added, "Don't let your feelings cloud your judgement."
Clarke kept her jaw firm and bit down the urge to scoff and shake her head again. She was beyond bitter.
"I owe your people restitution—and they will have it. Islin is a despot. If she takes control it will plunge all twelve clans into turmoil, which your people will be caught in the middle of. You know siding with me in this is what's best for them."
"Do I? Islin hasn't betrayed me before."
"She will. Intentionally. And with what she—" Lexa cut herself off. She gritted her jaw. "Klark. For you to personally seek her out is—" Lexa swallowed her words again. She took a step forward, and her voice dropped to a pressing hiss, "You have not seen what she does…she will hang pieces of your body from the trees to be eaten by animals."
Clarke pressed towards her. "I'm not your dead ex-girlfriend," she bit without mercy.
Lexa recoiled.
The story about Costia was a bramble in Clarke's head now. She resented Luna for putting it there on purpose. It wasn't hers to bear. Lexa betrayed her. "My people have no reason to have anything to do with yours. Or the ones you've lost control of. We have missiles. We have acid fog. We don't need an alliance to keep you away from us."
"You've said you've taken the Mountain." Lexa was all commander again. "How?"
Clarke's gut was already knotting up at the mention. She stepped back and turned away from them.
"Did you disarm them?" Lexa pressed. "Are your forces thinned from occupying it?"
Clarke had no answers for her. Her throat weighed inside of her, gravity slowly giving her a crushing kind of vertigo, as Lexa looked at her expectantly, eyes beaming through her warpaint.
"Can you reach it through the Azgeda blockade?—"
The nightmares that had followed Clarke through the forest seeped in, weighing on her shoulders, inside her chest, quicker than she'd expected. They sucked the air from the room, and began to strangle any capacity she may have had to deflect Lexa's interrogation with it.
"How do you know the Mountain People won't retaliate?"
Lexa had no idea.
She was admonishing Clarke like an inexperience warleader.
Clarke tried to swallowed, her heart as tight as her jaw was. "It's under control..." Her back was still stubbornly turned to them, eyes darting absently. She tried to get a handle on the constriction in her chest and how fast her heart was beating, to regain control and think, but most of her effort was going in to tamping down the tightness constricting her throat so she could even speak.
"People who are conquered do not remain obedient to you unless you give them a reason to be."
The weight was constricting in Clarke's chest, crushing her. She tried to grab onto it and tear it open but was losing. "I said, it's under control…" The gravity of everything that had happened was ringing in her ears, set off by the sooty smell of the grounder's space, and Lexa's presence looming behind her.
Lexa stepped forward, and beared down on her, "The Mountain People—"
"There ARE no more Mountain People!" Clarke snapped, whirling to face Lexa with ferocity.
She really snapped.
"I killed every last one of them—" Everything inside of Clarke crashed out of her into the room. "There are no people in there—" She got in Lexa's face. "That Mountain is full of hundreds of festering bodies—the children, our allies—I pulled a lever and watched them writhe around on the floor while their skin melted off—because YOU, left! And you KNEW that's what I would have to do. Did you think I wouldn't DO it?Don't you fucking patronize me you weak, double crossing, coward."
Lexa pressed back, stunned. But Clarke was closing on her without restraint, and Lexa wouldn't have been able to say anything if she'd tried.
"They made me watch while they strapped my mother to a table and drilled into her to suck the marrow out of her bones while she was still awake—that's how they were killing my people, my friends, and all of that happened because of YOU. You want me to fight your war now? The only reason I would even think about it is to walk away in the middle of it, and do the same thing you did to me. How DARE you even think about asking me to fight for you—"
Lexa's lips fluttered.
"—I don't have weapons." The anger in Clarke's voice cracked to emotion and its volume began to waver. "I don't have the Mountain. I don't even have my people anymore, I left them, without even saying goodbye because I couldn't bare to fucking look at them after what you forced me to do to keep them alive. The only reason I came here, was because I wasn't ready to freeze and starve to death out there alone. And I had nowhere else to go, OKAY? I ran away. They don't even know where I am—I don't HAVE anything for you!"
The room crackled weakly in Clarke's silence, her chest rising and falling. Lexa and Luna stood frozen, gaping at her. Lexa's mouth occasionally fluttered in search of words but it was only met with air.
Clarke swallowed and did her best to shoot Lexa a glaring look, but she couldn't see through the tears stinging her eyes. She wasn't able to hold back what was coming next anymore. She turned away before it came out, and fled the meeting hall as quickly and violently as she could.
-x-
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