Chapter XX - Discordia

"This place is incredible!"

Despite it having been a week already Lexa was surprised at Raven's capacity to still be amazed by the technological wonders of Norfolk. She had to confess to more than a passing jealousy at the quality of life that the Tseekru enjoyed. To think that Clarke had traded the comparative safety of Norfolk for the wilds of her kingdom spoke of her lover's adventurous spirit and her drive to explore the world around her. Lexa still worried that Polis and the Kongeda might not be enough for Clarke and perhaps even that she wouldn't be enough for Clarke. She might not have been enough for an eighteen-year-old Clarke who was still wide eyed at the wonders of the ground and inoculated with patriotic fervour. She may not even have been enough for nineteen-year-old Clarke who had taken her first tentative steps into the wilds as she left her first love behind.

She's not been running away from something but to something.

The voice which Lexa could only guess was Bekka had been starting to make herself known ever since she had gone through Mara's body scanner. It was as though the symbiote had been lying low and attempting to be as unobtrusive as possible but now that it had been exposed it saw no reason to hide its presence anymore. In the past the Flame had been limited to the occasional flashes of memory, nightmares, or even manifestations of phantom endocrine response. Now Bekka would occasionally chirrup helpful bits of information directly into her mind, although the AI seemed to enjoy being enigmatic – though it was equally possible it was just that difficult for an AI to communicate with a human being.

Lexa was momentarily startled as Clarke took her hand from across the table. The three of them had been sitting down to dinner together and enjoying a relaxing evening away from the negotiating table. Raven must have noticed Lexa's loss of focus because she had trailed off in her description of one of the old ships that had been converted into a fuel refinery.

"You seem like you're a million miles away Lexa." Clarke said softly as she rubbed gentle patterns into Lexa's hand. "Is everything alright?"

Lexa placed her hand over Clarkes and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "It's nothing. I'm just tired."

Raven scoffed. "I get it. I speak couple and I know when I'm a third wheel."

Lexa was about to correct her but Raven simply rose from the table and tapped the side of her nose with a smirk - another of those Skaikru mannerisms that she would have to ask Clarke about. As Raven left them alone, she glanced back at Clarke whose expression remained locked into one of concern.

"What is it Clarke?"

"You winced back at the table." Clarke replied softly.

Lexa frowned as she tried to remember if Bekka's comment had elicited any type of physical response.

"Ever since that evening with Mara you've been distant." Clarke continued. "Is there something wrong?"

Part of Lexa simply wanted to dismiss Clarke's concerns by attributing her distance to the negotiations, which were going surprisingly well. She knew Clarke well enough to know that kind of dismissal would not go over well. Honesty had served her best in the past and it would serve her well now.

"After that evening did you notice anything different about your symbiote?" At Clarke's shake of her head Lexa continued. "I have, I've been hearing Bekka."

"Who?" Clarke asked.

"Bekka, the first one to host the Flame."

"Wait, why are you hearing her?"

Lexa could feel her brows knit together, it always struck her as a relief that she was hearing Bekka and not one of the other previous Hedas. "Who else would I be hearing?"

Clarke sat back and took a moment to collect her thoughts. "The way I understood it, the symbiote was a different technology from the Flame. If it had suddenly decided to become more active then why wouldn't it manifest itself in a form that suited itself better."

How do you know this isn't the best form for us to manifest in?

Lexa let out an irritated groan. At Clarke's questioning look she relented. " 'Bekka' seems to have answered that question. She implied that she deliberately picked Bekka's voice to communicate with me."

Clarke leaned forward clearly surprised by the revelation. "So how does she talk to you?"

"Usually just bits of unasked for advice."

"And did you try talking back to her?"

"No." Lexa replied flatly.

"No?" Clarke repeated back in surprise.

"I can't very well carry a conversation with the 'voices' in my head Clarke, people would think that I was insane." Lexa's tone was more than a little bit testy. "I liked it better when they manifested as the occasional bad dream or a sense of rightness when I made a good decision. 'This' is a bit on the trying side."

"It seems to me, Lexa, that you need to have a conversation with your symbiote about setting up some boundaries." Clarke concluded. As much as it galled Lexa, she had to admit that Clarke was making a lot of sense.

"I'm not exactly certain how to talk to it."

"This almost seems too obvious to work," Clarke began before she trailed off indecisively. "Maybe try meditating?"

"Now?"

"Unless you're not comfortable."

Lexa pushed her chair back irritably before settling herself loosely into it. Initially her mind was far to busy, too full of irritation and pettiness. Then she felt Clarke take one of her hands and gently unclench it. The touch itself, just a simple gesture, was enough to release her trivial thoughts and moments later she felt herself drifting into a deeper and more placid level of consciousness.

In the blink of an eye she was back in her throne room, the AIs seemed to have a mania for conducting their conversations in physical locations. The room was dark, illuminated only by a few torches, from out of one of the pools of shadow emerged Bekka.

"The mind was once referred to as the engine of reason and the seat of the soul." Bekka wandered around the throne with a casual familiarity. "Now I wonder just how many seats there are in the mind. Is there room for more than one soul? Twelve?"

"Still attached to your riddles Bekka?" Lexa grumbled as she advanced towards the AI.

The other woman gave her a sad smile. "Force an idea upon an unwilling mind and all you will reap is violence and rejection. Believe me, I know this first hand."

"So, I have to glean my own understanding from your cryptic remarks." Lexa could feel her ire rising. "Why can't you just make this easy Bekka? Show me the path and I will happily walk it."

"No, you won't Lexa, at least not happily."

Lexa could feel her lip curl into an animalistic snarl as she closed the distance with Bekka before grabbing the other woman. "What do you mean not happily?"

Bekka's form simply dissolved into a cloud of black mist before reappearing behind her. "Clarke's destiny lies away from yours Lexa."

Lexa held up her finger. "No. You don't get to make that decision. Not you. Not Ama and not her patron."

"It won't be any of us that make the decision but Clarke will make it herself."

"And I'm sure you or something like you will be there to whisper the right decision into her ear."

"There is a war coming Lexa."

Lexa threw her hands up in frustration. "There is always a war coming Bekka. Each Heda saw more years of war than the Flame has seen years of peace."

"This has the capacity to be the last war."

Lexa crossed her arms in irritation. "That's what everyone says about almost every war. It's not much of a reward to offer so hollow a promise."

"An end to war is what happens if you lose Lexa." Bekka replied grimly.

Lexa blinked at her as she attempted to process what Bekka had said. "Let me wrap my simple organic brain around this. If I lose there will be no more war. If I win then I guarantee a future with more war and death? I don't understand."

"If you lose humanity will cease to exist, at least in a form that you can recognize."

"More riddles! Just come out and tell me what's going to happen Bekka. You owe me a clear answer after all the blood we've spilt for you."

Bekka sighed. "There has been a stirring of another AI somewhere in the wastes. Before we lost contact with the North we were beginning to see infiltrators beginning to appear."

"Infiltrators? You mean like Project Argus."

"Far simpler. These were baseline humans, sleeper agents, that were programmed to pursue simple goals to the exclusion of all else, including their own self preservation. We fear that something terrible has happened in the North."

Lexa had a cutting remark on the edge of her tongue but forced herself to calm down. The AI was being unusually lucid with her. "What makes the two of you different?"

"This AI has no regard for the concepts of free-will and human life."

"I'll admit that your … faction seem to be a better more respectful of our lives but I don't see a difference in terms of free-will."

"No?" Bekka asked with a soft smile.

"This other AI uses human beings as pawns just as you do."

"Last I checked you retain free will."

"I retain the illusion of free will you mean. You move us around like pawns on a gameboard whose scope defies our ability to comprehend. The machinations you use to control us range from the imperceptible to the obvious but they're all still there."

Bekka chuckled at this, taking Lexa aback. "A queen – a leader of nations – lectures me on manipulation. How many people have you sacrificed to achieve your goals?"

"That's different." Lexa attempted.

"How, Lexa? How is it different?" Bekka answered without raising her voice.

"Everyone had a choice to follow."

"Every child of a martial culture that exults combat and obedience had a choice to follow you? Every soldier, every citizen, everyone of your subjects who knows the penalties for disobedience made a choice to follow you?"

Lexa could feel her mouth open and close, her arguments nought but hollow shades of reason.

"They follow you because they have faith – faith that you are guiding them to a better future Lexa. Faith that the sacrifices that they make in your name will lead to a better future. The only choice they make is to give up their free will and live with the illusion. That's what it is to be a member of a society. We believe that it is better to have cause and an illusion than to have no free will."

There was no argument to be made against that so Lexa asked the question knowing that in doing so she was casting her lot in with Ama's patron. "And just what is your cause?"

"A peaceful and ordered world where people are no longer struggle over the most trivial concerns like food and land – a goal that you have been striving for all your life without knowing it."

Lexa wanted to deny what the AI was saying and to argue that they were nothing alike but she couldn't deny that she had forged the coalition specifically to create a peaceful and ordered society. They were more alike then she wanted to admit and the AI knew that.

"What would you have me do?"

"The same thing that you would do without us – defeat the Maunon, pacify the Azgeda, establish a peaceful nation."

"And what of Clarke?"

"We need her. When all of this is over the two of you can have your peaceful life."

Lexa would look back on that night as the last calm moment before the storm. Afterwards everything seemed to slip into place with the alarming grace of a perfectly choreographed dance. The negotiations concluded the next day and the delegation was on its way back to Polis with a complement of Outriders, a hold full of explosives and a fresh treaty with the Tseekru. The moment they made landfall back in Polis Lexa was already hearing from Anya that her peace overtures had been accepted by the Arkadians. Just as Clarke had predicted Pike had fallen from grace and the moderates, led by Kane, had embraced Lexa's olive branch.

What followed was a whirlwind of logistics as the remaining members of the delinquent Skaikru were gathered up and informed of the proposed exchange. Lexa was more than a little surprised when several members of the delinquents declared that they wanted nothing further to do with their one-time people. Others were cautious, desiring only to meet with their relatives but not to fully renounce their loyalty their adoptive clans. Nevertheless, enough of them wanted to return to their people which required that a caravan of wagons and supplies be organized to take them all to Flinil. Lexa ended up sending Sinclair back to the Skaikru with the final details of their rendezvous.

Peace was finally within her grasp which made the sudden attack all the more shocking. Lexa and Clarke had spent days going over the possibilities for betrayal from the Skaikru. They had organized pickets and spies to scout their route and the route of the Skaikru. What they had not considered was the risk of the Maunon. Flinil was far away from the Maunon's acid fog. Both she and Clarke had discounted the possibility of the Maunon attacking them on the basis that the Maunon lacked the logistics to mount such a complex operation so far away from their home base and against a heavily armed column.

The attack came as the caravan was passing through a forested glade. One moment Clarke and Lexa had been peacefully leading the column through the quiet woods and the next it was fire and confusion. There had been a series of rapid fire thumps as a series of trees were bodily uprooted and thrown onto the road in front of them. Then, from all around them great gouts of flame blaster rocks and earth into the heavens causing the horses to spook and go bolting off into the distance. Even Lexa's own mount threw her down onto the ground as it bolted.

Lexa was momentarily stunned by her sudden impact with the ground and was still in a daze as Clarke yanked her to her feet. Clarke was shouting something but Lexa couldn't make out the words amidst the ongoing explosions around them. Somewhere amongst the larger detonations were the reports of gunfire and Lexa watched in shock as three of her warriors were cut down in front of her. Somehow Clarke dragged them to the side of an overturned wagon. All around them people were screaming, whether in panic or rage Lexa couldn't tell.

"Lexa!" Clarke was shouting in her ear.

"What?!" Lexa yelled back over the detonations of nearby ordinance.

"It's the Maunon!"

"Where?"

Clarke peeked around the wagon before hiding back under cover with Lexa. "I can't see them. They must be in the tree line."

"We need to get out of here! We're too exposed." Lexa's senses were quickly returning and she knew that their enfilade position in a slight valley was far from ideal.

"I know!" Clarke was still yelling to make herself heard as she looked around them. Clarke quickly pulled her pistol from her belt and shoved it at Lexa. "There's an outcrop of rock behind us. We need to get over there and regroup with your people. Maybe find a way to some better ground. I'll provide cover for you."

Lexa nodded her assent as Clarke poked around the wagon and fired off a few rounds from her rifle. At a sharp gesture from Clarke Lexa took off for the rocks behind them. Pelting her way across the battlefield Lexa dodged gunfire and corpses as she made fore the rocks. The explosions seemed to be dying down and were being replaced with hollow popping sounds. Lexa chanced a glance back in time to see a barrage of gas grenades make their landing around the road. Each grenade began to spew a pinkish haze of sickly sweet smelling gas. Taking a deep breath Lexa continued onwards towards the rocks.

From somewhere behind her there came another detonation, louder now that sounds of battle were dying down. Turn around Lexa was confronted with the sight of the blasted splinters of the wagon that Clarke had been using as cover.

"CLARKE!" The word tore itself from Lexa's throat as she plunged back towards the destroyed wagon. The gas obscured most the battlefield now and the only sounds were the choked cries of the injured as they succumbed to the gas.

The pink clouds made Lexa lightheaded and stung her eyes as she struggled towards the wagon. There seemed to be no sign of Clarke as she reached what remained of the wagon. Stumbling around in the fog Lexa felt her limbs growing leaden. Confusedly she struck out in a random direction just in time to see one of the Maunon emerging from the fog. Raising her borrowed pistol she leveled the weapon and fired. The Maunon went down with a short scream. Lexa ignored him and continued on through the pinkish clouds.

Every motion was a struggle as she blundered through the fog. Eventually her foot caught on something on the ground and she looked down. Lying below her was Clarke. Falling to her knees Lexa rolled Clarke over onto her back gasping as she did so at the damage done to Clarke's side. She hadn't absorbed the full force of the blast but that hadn't saved her from being blasted with the splinters of the cart and the grenade's own shrapnel. Clarke was bleeding from a dozen wounds and yet, somehow, she was still alive. Lexa went to pick her up but could only goggle in shock as her legs and arms failed to obey her commands. A moment later she toppled over onto her side and could only stare at Clarke's unconscious face looking skywards.

"Over here!" There was shouting around her but Lexa was having trouble making it out. Suddenly there was a booted foot on her wrist and strange hands pulling her pistol out of her nerveless grip. A moment later she was rolled onto her back and confronted with a trio of suited figures.

"Look at this one. She's still awake." There was movement around her.

"That's one tough cookie." A muzzle foreshortened as it pointed towards Lexa.

"Idiot! That's the Outsiders' leader. Cage wants her alive." The gun barrel was slapped downwards.

"What about blondie?" More rustling next to her.

"She's finished, not even worth a bullet."

Lexa made a brief and futile effort to sit up only to be met halfway by a descending rifle butt.

"Go back to sleep, Outsider."