AN: To the reviewer who pointed out the structure is a little confusing, thank you for the feedback! I've edited the chapter titles so you can see which chapters are flashbacks. Please keep reviewing guys, I absolutely love writing this story and I promise you once we get to the big reveal all of the dreams and flashbacks will tie together. I read this story back last night and I've definitely threw you all a few wry clues! :)

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There was a hazy golden glow to the treetops and the sky basked in lush shades of deep purple that melted into lilac with the rising of the sun. Indra sat on a bit of wood, sharpening her blade against a piece of stone whilst their men stood around talking in low rumbles to another, mostly of the prowess of the newly ascended commander, a few muttered reserved and quiet whispers about her courtship with the farmer's daughter, Costia. Though they did well to keep those words from earshot of the Chief.

"Your footwork needs practice." Indra spoke into the empty hollow that surrounded her with a wry smile as a broken twig stirred her from her task.

A moment passed and though Indra began to doubt her certainty; she held it long enough to finally earn her daughter's concession. Adonis exploded from the shrubbery that ghosted along the higher ground and jogged down the shallow hill with a youthful exuberance. Chuckling and panting and beautiful in all the ways that made Indra hard on her men so they knew her daughter was off limits. "One of these days I'll catch you off guard," Adonis promised her with puffing cheeks and beautiful thick braids that swayed as she moved.

"You have a way to go yet." Indra sighed in that pithy way.

"Mama," Adonis saddled up beside her and unsheathed a short blade from her thigh to sharpen too. "Admit it, you're excited to see Aleksa."

"Heda," Indra eyed her sternly. "Do not suffer me the embarrassment of acting above your station in front of our Heda."

"The day I call Aleksa Heda is the day I marry Nikon." she nodded towards the out of shape elder who forced his bulging belly into the confines of his armour plate and earned a laugh from her mother.

"Wicked girl," Indra tittered and tried desperately to hide the corners of her mouth into a solemn expression. "I don't know where you get your wildness from." she shook her head and couldn't help but chuckle.

"You don't mean that." Adonis flashed her a cheeky glance and her smile pulled up into her freckled caramel cheeks with dimples crowning each end.

Indra leaned in, arm wrapped around her, nose buried to her hair. "I don't suppose I do." she smiled and was grateful that though her daughter was far too big for these things, she allowed the transgressions regardless and never put up too much fuss for her mother's tending.

"I've missed her so much."

"You came back from Polis less than a week ago." Indra reminded her and continued to sharpen her blade.

"It's been so long," Adonis sighed and rested her chin on the knee that she hugged to her body. "So much to talk of."

"I assume you and the Heda will make a day of going to see the casted girl and pretend otherwise." Indra groaned quietly with disapproval at her daughter's friendship with the deformed girl.

"You assume correctly, Mama."

"Adonis," Indra flashed her a trying look.

"Chief," she sat a little taller.

"You are never too old for me to take my belt to your legs." she leaned in and whispered with raised brows.

"That would require you catch me first."

"Wicked girl," Indra muttered.

There was a commotion riding towards them and it was heard in the thumping thuds of the geldings feet hitting the soft mud and the cries for the Trikru chief. The moment passed and with it they transfigured from mother and daughter to leader and soldier with an effortless shift in resolve.

"What say you?" Indra leapt from her feet and marched to the panting and puffing ring leader.

"The Heda's envoy has been attacked a mile from the main gate; a small holding of Ice Nation soldiers are advancing over the hill." the boy wasted no time explaining and kicked his feet into the side of his horse to take off back the way he came.

Indra turned and saw the shift in her daughter; her smile tapered off into a raised snarl and her shoulders grew broader and drawn until her shoulder guards raised up like the hair on a panther ready to strike. "Bring my horse," she growled at the stable boy who lead their horses round to each warrior by the reigns.

"No." Indra grasped her arm and felt the knot in her gut fill the lacuna where she forced and locked her motherhood away when war took precedence. "Go back to the village and ensure the gates are not breached." she said with a calm certainty.

"Mama—" her eyes widened.

"Don't argue!" Indra hissed and grabbed the reigns to the first horse she saw, "Just go." she said sternly and yet somehow pleaded with desperate warm eyes for her daughter to obey her word just this once.

Her teeth gnashed and worked against one another as if her jaws were built on a tectonic plate but she conceded against the will of every fibre of her being and turned the opposite way from the fight and marched back to camp.

"Thank the gods." Indra breathed to herself and dug her feet into the side of her horse.

It was a short ride and there was certainly no time to think. Though none of them needed to, strategy worn and pressed into every nerve ending and neuron, and they were confident of that fact. She passed the clearing and saw the struggle come into focus with arrows that turned from tiny dots on the cusp of the hill into long sharp strikes of lightening that put down their men one by one. Lexa was unafraid, defiant of her own mortality, swinging and plunging her sword into white fur and figures that were so much larger and broader than her own with blood and dirt spattered and blurring into one another across her skin.

Indra kicked her feet once more and her horse thumped the ground with light feet that nearly flew. The ground hardened as she escaped the foliage of the trees and road to where the sun knitted into the sky and beat down on the trapped envoy.

Her blade sloughed through the flesh of the first neck and then the second, and so on until the drumming sound of their final gasps and bodies hitting the floor turned into a rhythm that excited her as it always did.

"Heda," she nodded down at the young commander who cut and claimed her own growing pile. Reinforcements advanced forward and took the fight further towards the hill as the Ice Nation backed themselves into each other.

"Indra," she brushed it off with a gruff nod and sheathed her blade back into her belt. There was a brief noise, a choking sound that came from a gasping body beneath the pile they'd littered the ground with. It caught her attention and Indra watched as the new leader stepped forward towards it.

"If you want me to—"

Lexa took a swiping slice at the neck and there was nothing in her face other than a little exhale as blood spattered on her face and she was forced to wipe it away with her sleeve. She glanced at Indra and the Chief decided against finishing her sentence.

The sound of the retreat horn filled the air and their victory on this day was confirmed as the thumping sound of Ice Nation colts blurred into vibrations that shook the ground.

"Not like Adonis to miss a good fight." Lexa mused and wiped her blade along the material of her sleeve.

"I sent her to protect the gate," she cleared her voice. "And Costia."

The words caught Lexa's attention and she glanced up with curious narrowed eyes and an enduring expression, "Costia?" the Heda dared her to further her expression of such forbidden knowledge.

"I'm sure there will be more fights." Indra shrugged and did well to brush off her comment. She grabbed a loose soft toeing horse that passed her by the reigns to give the commander. "I will escort you back to the village, hopefully before Adonis burns it down."

Lexa mounted the horse and with precision that was with a mere second delay an arrow flew and stuck in the ground where she had stood.

"Ambush!" Indra called to her men and the sound of commotion rang in her ears once again as their snipers sent arrows in the other direction from the trees and Ice Nation soldiers hiding in the south ran forward in waves. "Ride for the trees," Indra ordered the young leader with a furrowed brow.

"No." Lexa rose her chin and her horse trotted softly on the ground. "The commander doesn't ride from a fight." she peered at Indra with calm eyes and tugged her blade free once more.

Indra rolled her eyes and so they fought on, cutting and piling bodies back into a punishing rhythm until the last body fell and the retreat horn blew for the last time. She was blade deep in sinew when it sounded. Heart thumping and blood rushing to her ears she looked up and searched desperately for sight of the Heda she helped raise.

"Look who I found," Lexa appeared a few feet away, grinning, she marched through the long grass towards Adonis and wrapped her in a hug as the darker girl wiped spatters of blood off of her brow.

"Wicked girl," Indra growled under her breath and caught them up though she could finally breathe again now they were in sight.

Adonis was suddenly smiles and laughs and light again; she stretched tall in the sun like a cat arching its back and looked sheepishly between her mother and the agile bladework that put three soldiers so much frighteningly stronger than her dead on the ground.

"What did I tell you, child?"

"Mama…" she tried sheepishly and continued to peer at the bodies she'd made like a cat that laid mice at its master's feet.

"What did I say?"

"What did she say, Adonis?" Lexa smirked. "You better hide your palms before you snitch." she murmured with a chuckle and teased her friend from the days when a few swishes to the hand were enough to make them both break.

"And you," Indra pointed at Lexa. "Do not test me."

"Yes Chief," Lexa glanced away and took the dressing down regardless of her station.

"Sorry Mama," Adonis rolled her eyes and finally relented, she buried her blade back in her sheath and stepped over bodies towards the horse that trotted softly towards them.

"You will be the death of me." Indra grunted and looked around.

A movement caught her eye, the long grass bent and fanned around a shape that shifted through it with a pulled back short length of blade that glinted in the pale wheat, before she could make a noise a body collided with her and took her off balance.

She coughed and reclaimed air that had been winded from her chest as the pile on top of shuddered and groaned a little noise like a dying wild thing.

"Adonis?" she rolled her over and pressed her weight into the fork where blood seeped down the sides of her gut. The commander was running and shouting for healers and no longer calm, her blade had put down the soldier who lurked in the wheat, assured it was.

"I'm sorry," Adonis whispered and pleaded and her green eyes were dim and faded like little stars that began to die under the weight of too many hopes and wishes. "I'm sorry Mama," she pleaded and her throat quivered and tightened.

"You stupid girl!" Indra shook her into the dirt, "Stupid, stupid!"

"I'm so sorry," she gasped and her head rolled backwards and lulled, her thick braids roping around Indra's fingers and her freckles wet with little teardrops that fell from above.

"Get up!" Indra dragged her and took her weight over her shoulders, "Nikon will sew you up," she promised, "Aleksa, hold her gut." she demanded the Heda with a flash of her eyes as they dragged her to her horse.

"Adonis," Lexa said softly and bit her quivering mouth as hot thick red spread into the webs of her fingers at a pace she couldn't slow.

"You're too tiny to be Heda," she grunted with fluttering eyes as her legs and knees started to bend, "I was always faster too." she pointed out with a soft sloping kind of grin.

"Adonis," Indra pleaded as her daughter sunk to her knees. "Get up, Adonis!" she tried to drag her once more but Lexa grasped her knuckles gently.

"She won't make it," Lexa whispered full of regret and bore the brunt of it as waves of wails rolled from the lacuna in Indra's chest and her mouth shuddered and gasped desperately for air.

"That blade was for me!" Indra growled and her eyes were furious.

"N-n-never." Adonis huffed quietly and so it went.

Indra forced the words with as much restraint as she could control, hands shaking, spit in the corners of her lips, eyes red and shoulders caving in. "Yo gonplei ste odon."

"Take care of her," she begged and Lexa nodded and blinked, "I wasn't talking to you." Adonis couldn't help but smile at the idea of her mother ever needing someone to take care of her, "Take care of this one," she put her hand in Indra's and nodded towards her friend. "She's not a Heda just yet." she wheezed a little chuckle that collapsed under the little her lungs had left to give.

Indra pulled her into her chest, arms wrapped around her, nose pressed into her braids and tears running from cheeks on to her daughter's. She wasn't sure whether she held her for a minute or a decade but eventually there was a tiny exhale and then no more, and it was the precise pinpoint of when she felt the change within herself, when the lacuna swallowed everything and all she had to give, until all that was left was stone and fire and moss and gravel.

"I will avenge her." Lexa promised.

"Well then, Heda, you'll have to start with me." Indra whispered and wiped her dewy tears, swearing to herself for all the years she had left there would never be anymore.