Ai Hod Yu In
Chapter 27
The return to Polis seemed a lot quicker than the ride to Arkadia. Madi slept most of the way there, and Clarke and Lexa spoke quite a bit on the ride. There were still a million things that both of them had to worry about as leaders of their people, but they decided to instead worry about other things for the ride at least.
"When I was a little girl, my dad and I would get together with Jaha and his son Wells and we would watch old soccer games. We know what the results were, but we'd sit there pretending we didn't and cheer our teams on. It was the most fun we had together," Clarke admitted to Lexa eventually, wanting to focus on something that didn't involve each of their individual people.
"What is soccer?" Lexa asked, cocking her head to the side as she looked at Clarke. Clarke giggled a bit, smiling and trying her best not to freak out. Her people were just barely allowed to live, and here she was giggling like a young schoolgirl with a crush. It was disgraceful, and yet it felt nice to not have to think about anyone but her and Lexa and perhaps even Madi right now.
"You don't know what soccer is? It was a sport from before the bombs went off. I don't know why I always assumed you would remember that as well," Clarke said, "There were two teams who had to try to kick a ball into a net and prevent the other team from doing that as well. I tried to learn the rules once, but there was only so much I could practice in space and the rules didn't really make sense without understanding how the game was played."
"Were the children playing any good?" Lexa asked her curiously, and Clarke's grin only grew.
"I'm sure children played it as well, but the games we used to watch were with adults only," Clarke responded.
"Why would adults waste their time with such foolish games? Should they not be working?" Lexa inquired.
"The best part is that I'm pretty sure that that was their job. People were played to play games like that all the time. In space, we were hardly allowed to have plants but in the old days people were paid to waste time. It's amazing," Clarke was sure she had the same dazed expression she had often when speaking of sports. She knew she would not have been any good at them, but the fact remained that she wished she could have tried them before all those who knew how to play them, really play them, were wiped out.
"What a waste. Should they not have been doing more important things?" Lexa was judging those who were long dead. It was kind of hilarious, actually. She was so sure that these people deserved judgement. Perhaps they did. They were, after all, the ones who ended the world.
"Maybe they should have. I don't know. They are long dead, though. Can we really still judge them?" she asked.
"The dead are gone, and the living are hungry." Lexa said.
"Exactly," Clarke remarked.
"What did you do when you found out you were pregnant?" Lexa suddenly asked, taking the conversation in a completely unexpected route. Clarke wished she didn't have to keep lying about Madi, but the questions would never end. She would just have to continue her story for as long as she could and hope that if anyone found out that one day they would forgive her.
"I freaked out, of course," she said, spinning her tale, "I was in Mount Weather when I found out, and I was determined to escape then. The whole thing seemed too good to be true, and if I was going to have a child then they needed to be safe. As safe as possible, at least. I did some pretty risky things, but I knew that I couldn't take any chances. I didn't even know if Finn or Bellamy were alive at that point, really. I just knew that I had to do my best. That I had to get out."
"You never said anything to me, back then. Why?"
"I didn't say anything to anyone. I suppose I was too scared to. I would have eventually, but then… Well you know what happened. At that point, I went to see if I could find somewhere that might be able to tell me a bit more about child-birth on Earth. For all I knew at the time, everything could have gone wrong. I was actually going home when Roan caught me," she admitted. The lies kept piling up, but she couldn't just refuse to answer. Not when Lexa had just spared her people, had just decided to live by a new code because she asked it of her.
"I'm sorry," Lexa told her, reaching her hand out to Clarke. Clarke took it for a moment, squeezing it before she finally released it.
"It's not your fault. You didn't know everything and neither did I. We both have changed, I hope for the better."
"I think it has to be for the better. We continue moving forward, even when nothing else feels right," Lexa responded. The commander took a moment to study her before she continued. "And this… It feels right."
"Yeah," Clarke admitted. "It does."