Warning: graphic violence, mention of child abuse, implied forced pregnancy - NOT any of our characters.
The degree of force is about the same as you would see in the context of arranged marriages (those in which the participants don't have a say)/women being married off with the expectation that they will produce children; as is seen throughout history, particularly in political marriages, and still to this day. It's a duty and not everyone who experiences it will view themselves as having been forced but when you have that kind of pressure and expectations on you, it's hardly consensual. It's something that I only briefly touch on in this chapter but will be expanded on during some of the worldbuilding I do in p2 of this fic, because it has a significant purpose in the nightblood system.
A/N: So I'll be using two versions of flashbacks in this fic. The first you've already seen, that's when I use Past and Present to signal when a flashback ends and starts. The other kind appears twice in this chapter, and flows better with the story. There'll be no break as such to signify the flashback and that's because it's in Luna's POV and she's remembering it in realtime, so it's happening within the context of the chapter/present moment. I'm hoping it won't be too confusing.
"Compelled to become instruments of war, to kill and be killed, child soldiers are forced to give violent expression to the hatreds of adults."
- Olara Otunnu
The familiar texture of the bone needle in Luna's hand was comforting and with each passing of it through a loop she felt the tension bleed out of her. This needle was another gift from Adria's bag, though Luna recognized it as belonging to herself and knew the child had included it in her hasty packing for her sake.
She'd always been thoughtful like that.
Luna had found some snouspia about forty minutes from the mansion after her chess match with Raven. She'd needed some time to herself - out of the prison-like confines of either building - to clear her head and sort through the many feelings their conversation had managed to evoke. The ones related to her brother were well worn and easily dealt with - Luna let them pass through her unmolested, content to leave them be. Her grief over Nyko, however, was still raw and she'd needed the added help of fresh air to breathe through them. And, of course, she was newly awash with a wide range of conflicting emotions in response to the fact that Raven now knew the truth about her. In many ways, it was a relief but there was also a swirling of apprehension in her gut, accompanied by the heavy weight of loss.
She couldn't deny that it had been refreshing to be granted a certain level of anonymity with someone. Most of what Raven knew about her, she knew because Luna had told her. That was rare. Whilst most people had no real understanding of who she was as a person, they still possessed the knowledge of her history - that was hard to avoid when you'd ascended into infamy at only thirteen. Everyone knew about her brother, knew what she had done to him, even if they never spoke of it. That made things easier in a way. It dispensed with the necessary step of having to tell them herself. But she'd felt lighter during her conversations with Raven, without the added weight of her past bearing down on them. She'd only ever experienced that with Derrick and Adria. Derrick, who'd been so far removed from their people's politics and affairs that he hadn't even known there was a new Commander to begin with, let alone the events that had brought about her ascension. And Adria, still so young when she came into her care, had possessed only the vaguest of details about the Conclave - and none specific to Luna's own. But refreshing or not, it was no more than an illusion and she'd wanted Raven to know the truth.
She'd wanted Raven to know her.
Few people did.
All of them were gone now.
(but perhaps that was the price.
The price of knowing her)
Luna's fingers clenched a moment around the needle. She took a breath and threaded it through the last loop of the figure-eight she'd made, checking to ensure the resulting shape was the same size as the ones she'd made previously before pulling tight to make a knot.
The small nets she was working on - one for her and one for Raven - weren't strictly necessary, they could easily fish without them, but there was comfort to be found in the process of making them. A comfort she sorely needed right now.
Luna would have preferred to use spreading dogbane - it tended to achieve better results - but the snouspia would suffice. The plant was strong, flexible and didn't kink. It just wouldn't last as long. Then again, that wasn't a problem she need concern herself with. Not even spreading dogbane would be able to last through praimfaya.
In spite of that last bitter truth, Luna was feeling optimistic about the coming venture.
Fishing would be a good excuse to get Raven out of the lab - hopefully for a full day - made easier by the fact that she had already offered to come along. Luna suspected that she hadn't entirely thought that through, in terms of how long the task would take her away from her 'duties', and she wasn't in a rush to enlighten her.
It would also be a relief to do something that had been routine in her old life. To break away from the surreal reality she inhabited now, surrounded by foreign elements. The Sky People appeared at home - both in the lab and the mansion - not seeming to mind the stark lights, sterile surfaces, and unwelcoming atmosphere. Both buildings were clean and functional - the mansion succeeding at also being quite comfortable - but they were not places to live. They were not homes. They were mausoleums, built to honor and preserve a dead and forgotten past.
Luna missed the oil rig, which her people had made their own, a dwelling that bled life and character.
And she missed the sea.
She missed hearing the crash of the waves as an eternal backdrop to her days and nights, the chorus of sea birds as they flew overhead or nested upon the rig, and the delighted cries of children when, in those rare moments, a pod of dolphins danced through the air.
She even missed the Tower, though she could admit that she was in no state to bear the memories that walked its halls right now.
That was the home of the Commander-
and it had no place for her.
In truth, it never had.
But still. . .
She missed it.
Just as she missed everything else from her childhood. Even the things that hurt.
Some days, especially those.
"Before you mentioned something about being 'old enough' to compete in the Conclave. How old is old enough?"
Luna hid a grimace at the question.
Not old enough.
Not old enough at all.
"Eleven." She set the snouspia aside, wanting to give this conversation the full attention it deserved. Whilst she was more than adept at multitasking - her training had ensured that - it wasn't her preferred state of being. She wasn't a novitiate anymore, nor was she the Commander. There was no need to make things more difficult than they had to be. "Though, if you're a girl and you've had your munblod before then, you're also considered of age."
"Munblod?"
"Your period."
Raven raised a brow. "Little antiquated."
"Extremely." But so many of their traditions were. Not that old always meant bad. Sometimes there was wisdom in ancient views that couldn't be found in those newly born.
But this wasn't one of them.
Its existence came as little surprise, however, when her people placed such importance on reproduction. If pregnancy and childbirth weren't so harmful to a person's health - even carrying the risk of fatality - she suspected that young girls would be encouraged to fall pregnant the second they got their blood. But her people were practical if nothing else - at least in most things - and exposing a significant portion of their population to premature death and morbidity flew in the face of that. The months of pregnancy were also inconvenient when you relied upon women to make up half of your defense force. Most withdrew from fighting by the third trimester, though that wasn't always an option. Due to this, many strived to have no more than one or two pregnancies, some partaking in none at all, though often enough nature took its course - contraceptive methods weren't always effective and some had no knowledge of their existence in the first place.
They'd had no place in the Tower. Luna had only heard word of them years after she'd left - from poor Nyko, of all people. Much to her chagrin.
In truth, she'd known embarrassingly little about what went into making a baby. Though that wouldn't have saved her if the Conclave had been even a year later.
Luna's own mother was only fourteen when she had her, the age all nightbloods were expected to start trying for children - if they were still alive and not possessed by the duties of Commandership. An attempt to strike a balance between not endangering the mother's health by inflicting pregnancy too early, and the knowledge that most nightbloods didn't survive past twelve, let alone make it to their twenties where pregnancy was considered to be much safer.
In some ways, the arrival of her Conclave when she was just thirteen had been a blessing.
The first time she'd awoken to a dark stain on her bedsheets, she'd panicked. Her limbs had seized up and for one traitorous moment she'd spiraled through a collection of half-formed plans to hide this catastrophic change in herself.
Until that day, Luna had been oblivious to her fear surrounding the Conclave. All her life, she'd known the trial was inevitable and had accepted it as such. Some days, she even longed for its arrival - if only to cancel out the torturous limbo she found herself in. Spending every moment of your existence waiting for such a terrible and momentous moment was almost as excruciating as the moment itself.
But she hadn't known she was afraid.
Hadn't known that she dreaded that moment's arrival.
Not until she was shaking, stomach turning at the sensation of sticky wet heat, clotting her thighs.
It seemed there was nothing in life her blood did not decide.
Costia had taken her hand, held it tight as she led her over to the grand basin that served as a bath for the novitiates. The rest of the dorm had still been sleeping, except Sol - always so attuned to her every move, every shift in mood - and Lexa, who noticed everything. Costia had ignored their concern and guided Luna into the bathtub, drawing the curtains shut as she poured in the near-boiling water - already prepared, as always at this time of day - and set to scrubbing her clean.
Dazed, she'd watched the normally clear liquid cloud over with black death as her life bled out of her.
It wasn't an unusual sight. Baths were a routine occurrence after a fight or punishment and Luna was used to washing away the blood of her friends and herself.
But this was different.
This time she hadn't been fighting.
This blood brought with it consequences.
"The Commander is strong," Costia said briskly, working her fingers through her hair, separating the tangles as only she knew how. "His spirit will fight on for many more years. This won't change that. This won't change anything."
Luna closed her eyes and allowed herself to be comforted.
She'd been right, as it turned out.
The Commander's spirit didn't leave until three years after that day.
Only, by then, she'd come to realize that was a curse and not a blessing.
If he had passed on within the first months after Luna had gotten her blood, she would have been forced to enter the Conclave.
But her brother, not yet eleven, and Lexa, only nine, would have been spared.
Likely, Luna would have died, not yet at the peak of her strength and skill.
But she also wouldn't have been faced with the ultimatum of killing the ones she loved most in order to survive.
Sol and Lexa would have lived. For however many years it took until the new Commander reached their end.
Even if they hadn't, Luna wouldn't have been forced to kill either one of them. She would not know what it was to drive a knife through her brother's ribcage, to hear the gurgle of blood bulging up his throat, out of his mouth, see-
Perhaps her munblod had been trying to save her from that ordeal, but fate hadn't ordained to assist it.
Luna pulled away from the memory of gentle hands in her hair, Costia's unfailing assurance, and centered herself with the feel of cold metal under her palms, the smell of freshly cooked meat permeating the sterile air.
Raven was waiting for her to continue.
She exhaled, pushing down the sense of loss. It had been years but she still felt the edges of the hole Costia's death had carved out in her life. "The reasoning is that if you're old enough to bear a child, you're old enough to lead."
Raven grunted. "And kill." Her tone was acidic, eyes flinty, and Luna knew she was still struggling with all that she'd been told about the Conclave.
It was a new experience. She'd never met anyone who had been shocked by what her people expected of their children.
"We start killing long before then." Luna shrugged and reached for the plate she'd discarded before first confronting Raven, her stomach too queasy to tackle it at the time. Even now, it protested at the smell that drew closer and closer, begging her to abandon this course of action. But Luna knew she needed the strength.
She hadn't yet regained all she'd lost from the radiation sickness and the regular depletion of blood wasn't helping her efforts to do so.
Raven stopped short, frowning at her words. "How old were you when you first killed someone?"
Luna blinked. "I. . . I don't know."
No-one had ever asked her that before.
"You don't know?"
"I can remember it. I'm just not sure of my age at the time."
Her memories rarely worked in a linear fashion. She never forgot a thing but often she failed to locate where a recollection stood upon the wheel of time. The years weren't as important as what happened within them. Sometimes, things got scrambled, rearranged.
"It was right after we each got a mentor," Luna said thoughtfully, "which happens around nine years of age."
She could be sure of that much. The ceremony had taken place months before the arrival of her first blood, perhaps even a year before.
And after it, they'd brought a retinue of prisoners - traitors - into Polis and lined them up in the square for all to see. The Fleimkepas had led the novitiates out of the Tower when the sun was just starting to sink below the moon, and instructed them to each pick a prisoner.
It would have been kinder if their victims had been assigned to them - if that choice, at least, was taken out of their hands - but the Fleimkepas had been insistent that this responsibility, also, must rest with them.
One day, they would hold the fates of so many more in their hands. Their lives, their deaths - and everything in between. A single prisoner could not compare to that, but it was a prudent place to start.
The square was crowded with her people, throngs of men, women, and children clustering for a view of what was to come. Public executions were not an anomaly but this one was ceremonious. It marked an important transition in a novitiate's life. Until that point, they'd been allowed to keep their hands relatively clean, but no more.
And citizens from every clan had gathered to witness the momentous occasion.
Luna clenched the trusted blade in her hand - her favorite - gripping it for strength as her turn drew closer. She and her brother were the oldest of the novitiates so they went first, Sol taking up the mantle before her.
She watched - both nervous and calculating - as her brother drew his blade across the throat of his chosen prisoner. Her mouth twisted; it wasn't how she would have done it. They weren't in battle, their victim was strung up, incapable of fighting, which meant they had a plethora of options available to bring about death.
The slicing of the throat was a messy, slow affair. At least, in the way he'd elected to do it.
She saw Sol's face pale when he realized this, staring at the sea of blood that poured out of the man as he continued to remain upright, eyes full with the clarity of life.
He hadn't applied enough pressure with the blade. Luna suspected he'd missed the trachea.
Patiently, she waited out the minutes as the blood steadily poured until the man began to sway. At last, he passed haltingly into unconsciousness but Luna could still make out the faltering rise and fall of his chest.
A few more minutes elapsed and then things were still.
Sol made his way back to the group, blade gleaming with the shiny red liquid that had always been absent from their training sessions - nightbloods bled black - and Luna stared at it, empty of feeling, almost transfixed.
It was her brother's hand brushing against hers as he passed - a brief show of support, or perhaps he'd been in search of comfort himself - that jolted her back into herself.
It was her turn.
Gripping her knife, she stepped forward, scanning the row of prisoners before she landed on a young woman, only just out of the cusp of childhood. Luna wondered what she'd done to end up here, what action had been so terrible that death was the only remedy. But such thoughts weren't hers to have. She was not Commander yet, she had no leave to discern whether or not someone was deserving of such a fate or to wonder at their crime. She had one duty right now and that was this.
The woman's long, knotted hair covered her face and it was this more than anything else that turned Luna's feet towards her.
She reached out and grabbed that hair, angling her face into the desired position. The woman didn't resist, not even out of instinct and Luna wet her lips, hesitated.
What if she did it wrong?
"Luna!"
The Commander's bark stole her trepidation and she took a breath before striking out with all the strength she had. Her blade slashed along the side of the woman's throat, deep enough - Luna knew - to sever the thick artery she could see there, pulsing through the skin. She clutched the hair harder, turned the head again, and did the same to the other side of the neck.
Blood sprayed out, hitting Luna in the face.
She blinked, heart racing as her own blood throbbed, the sensation almost heady. Her limbs shook, a thrum of energy singing in her veins and she felt like she did in the thick of training, when a blow had at last gained her the upper hand.
She exhaled, working to rid herself of the intoxicating feeling as she watched the woman become limp and still. She wasn't dead yet but she'd passed into unconsciousness within seconds.
Her pain had been limited, Luna could be confident of that.
For a time, all she could do was stare.
Humans had the power to create life. But they could bestow death so much more easily. Almost too easily.
She hadn't known it would feel like this.
Luna turned away, forcing her jelly legs to carry her back to the throng of novitiates. She kept her gaze turned from Sol, deliberately positioned herself away from him, knowing he would see the thrill on her face, sense the change in her.
He never missed anything - not when it came to her.
But she wanted him to miss this.
Luna drew away from the memory, clenching her hands that had begun to tremble with adrenaline.
She wished that the sensation was horrible, that the memory of her actions was enough to make her lunch riot in her stomach, but it wasn't.
She hadn't felt bad that day.
Far from it.
And that was the most horrifying part.
"'Mentor?'" Raven's brow furrowed and Luna was grateful for the reprieve. Her question presented a lifeline in the sea of memories and she grabbed it eagerly.
"At around nine years of age, we each get a mentor. Warriors that have proved themselves as loyal and intelligent, possessing skills that far surpass their peers. Sol's mentor was Gustus. A capable warrior who'd served as bodyguard to three Commanders already." A burly man, body masked with tattoos, walked through her memory, and as he turned, she saw him bend over Costia, smiling indulgently as he allowed her to work complicated braids into his beard and adorn it with brightly colored flowers. "But I heard he was executed as a traitor this year."
A shocking revelation and one she still scrambled to understand.
The man she'd known was no traitor.
But then, neither was the girl who'd known him.
Not then.
It seemed life had swept them both away to impossible shores.
Raven grimaced. "Yeah, we met. Didn't exactly hit it off."
Luna eyed her, waiting for Raven to elaborate. She didn't, but the tight pull to her features and the way she'd suddenly grown tense - despite her best efforts - said much.
She filed the tells away, making a note to circle back to this at a later date. "You wouldn't have been the first. Gustus got along with few people and liked even less. But he was unique in that his loyalty was always to his charges over his clan. He could be extremely. . . protective." An understatement. She'd seen what he'd done to those who had threatened - or had the potential to threaten - those in his care. "He was always good with children, though. He had no patience for adults, but the children he liked. He used to sneak us treats all the time." Her mouth curled at the memory, the way her friends' faces had lit up with glee every time a tiny morsel was presented. Lexa, normally so subdued, would quake with pleasure, pretending that she didn't feel the excitement radiating from her tiny body. Gustus was one of the few who had looked at them and seen children instead of gods. "In a way, it made sense. His wife and children were slaughtered by a rival clan and he never formed a new family. I think he saw his charges as a kind of surrogate. He was determined to love and protect us, as he hadn't been able to do for his own children."
She hadn't thought about Gustus for years. Not until Lincoln had told her of his demise and, later, when Lexa had made an unexpected appearance in her life, searching for a solace that Luna hoped she had been able to provide - at least, in some small way. His death had saddened her, just as Anya's had. However, neither had been of any surprise. With their duties and the lives they led - death was all that could be expected. It was the manner of his death which she'd found so shocking, the reasoning for it.
But she knew the loss had shaken Lexa. Far more than the younger woman had been able to admit, even to herself.
"Lexa's mentor was Anya. They were. . . very close."
Lexa, who hadn't had a family since she was three-years-old, attached herself to Anya like a fly to honey. Luna knew that she'd viewed the woman almost as an older sister and she'd seen those feelings reflected in the hardened warrior who had come to be very protective of her little charge.
Luna had been sorry to hear of her death. Knew the grief it must have awakened in her former friend who she doubted had ever fully recovered from the blow of losing Costia.
There were very few people that Lexa allowed herself to care for and she had lost almost all of them.
Luna understood well the devastation of that.
"And yours?" Raven asked, face twisting at the mention of her childhood friend - as she'd noticed it always seemed to. There was a story there, one that she knew better than to poke at just yet.
Raven had set her own plate aside now and she was pleased to see that it had been picked clean.
"The Commander," Luna answered.
She raised an eyebrow. "Is that even allowed? Feels like favoritism."
"It is. But it's not uncommon. Most Commanders have a favorite, a novitiate they focus more attention on than the others. Nyko told me that Lexa mentored Aden."
He'd been just a toddler when Luna last saw him, stumbling around the Tower's nursery. Now he was ash. They all were.
She hesitated. "Technically, nothing is decided until the Conclave. But the Commander and Fleimkepas always have an idea of who they think will ascend - who they want to ascend - and that influences things. They put their efforts towards that person, shaping them into the best possible candidate."
Her father had been the Commander in her early years but his spirit had fled before the time had come for her to receive a mentor. She wondered sometimes whether he would have picked her. She knew he'd admired her ruthlessness, just as the Commander after him had. But he'd also strived to keep a distance between them, likely for the sake of whatever remained of his heart.
He couldn't afford to become attached to her. To develop the feelings that a father should possess for their daughter.
It had been a mercy, in a way. She'd felt very little when death finally came for him.
Raven grunted at her words. "Doesn't seem fair."
"It's not. None of it is fair. But. . . there are certain qualities that are desired in a Heda and not all the novitiates have those qualities, no matter how skilled they are at fighting. So the Fleimkepas and Commander focus their attention on those who do, and do their best to hone them into the most accomplished fighters they can be. The Conclave is just a final trial in a long line of tests."
In a way, the weaker nightbloods were never expected to ascend. They functioned more as cannon fodder, an obstacle for the more worthy novitiates to overcome in order to prove themselves. They were a test. A sacrificial offering. All of the novitiates became attached to each other - indeed, it was encouraged - and the final test arrived when it came time to kill one another.
To kill the weak.
If you could. If you had the heart for it.
(life had proven more than once that she did)
But beyond this, it didn't matter how skilled a nightblood was, or how worthy they were to lead. None with the blood could be barred from entering the Conclave. So the Fleimkepas rounded up as many as they could and did their best to shape each and every one of them into an acceptable Commander, even the ones they didn't believe would ever ascend.
They preferred to plan for every eventuality.
Her mind wandered back to the boy - Oli - who had suffered from what she now understood to be seizures.
The boy who she'd awoken one morning to find staring dead-eyed at the ceiling, the rank smell of death clogging up the dorm.
Luna still wasn't sure if that had been the sickness or. . .
It was punishable by death to kill a nightblood outside of a Conclave. But she couldn't see the former Commander or Titus taking the risk of any with such an affliction ascending to the throne.
The people would have viewed him as weak and a weak leader would not be followed. It would have put the entire system in jeopardy. Likely, he would have been assassinated early on which meant that the nightbloods being cultivated to replace him wouldn't yet have had the chance to reach ruling age. Either, they would have had a child on the throne - at the very least, a younger child than what they were used to - or the clans might have descended into civil war - as they were seeing now in Polis with the precarious status of Roan's leadership.
No. Titus wouldn't have allowed it. Though, whether he'd had the chance to act or if the illness had simply beaten him to it would forever remain a mystery.
"Ontari was. . . an anomaly," Luna continued. One she was shocked to find out about. "Pains have been taken over the last few generations to ensure that no-one who ascends is unfit - or dangerous. But none who possess nightblood can be barred from the Conclave. Titus' hands were tied. The system is complicated and not without blindspots."
And many, many flaws.
That was how the Dark Commander had come into being and why the Fleimkepas had consequently turned all their energy in the years since to preventing such a horror from ever befalling their world again.
Nia hadn't cared for their fears.
But that was far from surprising. Everything Luna knew about the woman, all the encounters she'd had with her, left the impression that she'd been a queen without care for her people, only herself. Greed controlled her every thought and action.
And she'd spread that darkness to Ontari.
Luna's heart ached for the child that had found her way into Nia's cold care, who'd been warped and twisted by her hand - much as Luna had been warped and twisted by the Fleimkepas. But where they had striven to ensure that their charges retained all the humanity they could, Nia would doubtless have ripped out whatever traces of such she could find in Ontari.
The process would have been brutal, Luna had no doubt of that.
Costia - always the worldly one - had told her all she knew about how Azgeda crafted its most formidable soldiers, its royal guard.
It was a horrific process.
And Nia would have been no kinder to the nightblood she saw as her sure ticket to ultimate power.
Luna watched Raven a moment as she took in her words. "You couldn't understand why I so easily accepted your actions against Adria." Raven blinked, thrown by this veer in the conversation. "Do you understand now?"
She hoped so.
It was one of the main reasons she'd told her about the Conclave in the first place - and what she'd done to her brother.
She'd seen that Raven's guilt was still a burden for her and with everything else she had to carry, Luna had craved to lighten it. At the very least, she'd wanted to disabuse Raven of the notion that she was deserving of judgment - at least from her.
When she still didn't speak, Luna pressed on. "I can make the same decision you did, Raven. Easily. Too easily. It's what I was born for. But every time I've made it in the past, I've lost a part of myself. And I've worked so hard to get those parts back. But some will be lost forever." She took a breath. "Not making those choices is how I hold onto what parts I have left. But I won't judge you for something that I've done myself, especially when I know exactly how painful living with such a choice is." Luna's mouth curled in the semblance of a smile, though there was a bitter taste on her tongue. "Actually, I've done far worse. At least Adria would have died with whatever path you took. I don't have that comfort."
She'd robbed far too many people of their futures, of their options. The consequences of her actions were absolute, of that there was no doubt.
"So, what?" Raven's face scrunched up, not looking entirely happy. "You gave me a free pass because you've done worse? Not sure it works like that."
Luna shrugged. "Probably not. But it would have served neither of us for me to focus on such a technicality." She looked down. "Perhaps my response would have been different if your actions had harmed Adria. If there'd been any hope of saving her. But they didn't and there wasn't." It wasn't that simple, but her mind and emotions were a complicated chaos that even she struggled to parse through most days, moreso now. "Judging you wouldn't have gained me anything, Raven. It certainly wouldn't have brought Adria back."
She sighed, still not looking pleased but resigning herself to Luna's way of thinking. "I guess not."
Guilt was a complicated beast.
She thought of her first victim, the first time she had been forced to make such a choice.
It was funny. Luna could remember how it felt to slice that rabbit's throat more clearly than she could bring to life most of the people she'd killed.
She'd cried afterwards, in the safety of the novitiate's dorm, blanketed by the hold of Costia and Sol. They'd wrapped around her that night, protecting her from the darkness.
She hadn't cried so heavily again until the day she ran a knife through her brother's chest.
She'd been alone with her tears then.
Alone for days.
In the haze of shock, a part of her had thought that was right. That it was no less than she deserved.
But she'd still caved to Nyko's touch when it came, breaking in his arms.
Just because you thought you were undeserving of something, didn't mean you didn't desire it, that you could stop yourself from reaching out to accept it.
She extended a hand, placing it upon Raven's - as she'd done to her earlier.
Raven flinched slightly, looking up at her with wide eyes.
"I know you think that you deserve my anger for what you did to Adria," Luna started, "But it's not what you need. And it's not what I want to give."
Moral complexities aside, this she was sure of.
This was all that had mattered to her in the moment Raven told her the truth, and it was all that mattered to her now.
Luna would not let the darkness ruin whatever light she still contained, and she wouldn't let it ruin Raven either.
"Do you understand?"
Raven hesitated, eyes drifting back down to their hands. She took a breath and turned hers over, allowing Luna's to fall into it, for their fingers to tighten around one another. "Yeah. I understand."
Luna smiled.
It was a hard line to walk between compassion and contempt, hope and despair, grace and retribution, anger and serenity.
It always had been.
At least for her.
As a child, she'd been ruled by the darker side of things. Especially anger.
She'd done much in the years since then to stifle that part of herself, to channel those impulses into something more constructive, to grow outside the constraints of her darkness.
She thought she'd succeeded but. . .
She could feel it again. Hungry. More ravenous than it had ever been. Worse, a part of her yearned to give into it, to succumb to the dark.
Luna wasn't prepared to do that.
But the struggle was harder than it had ever been. Her anger was colder now, it lacked the fiery passion of her childhood. When she felt its tendrils grab hold, branch out inside her, her blood cooled, became as frozen and still as empty space.
It was harder to resist.
Perhaps because it was less an emotion and more a way of being. She didn't feel anger, she was possessed by it. It became the lens through which she viewed the world, the buds on her tongue with which she tasted life, and the ears with which she heard the cries of others. And this new anger was a stranger to her, pulling back her skin and making itself at home inside her bones.
She felt it less around Raven, though.
Not at first. But. . .
The memory of watching the gun become limp and useless on the ground, discarded for the sake of her freedom, clung to Luna. When the darkness rose, she closed her eyes and focused on that image, the same way she'd once focused on Nyko's hazy form settling in front of her, his arm wrapping around her, tethering her to the present; the weight of a blanket around her shoulders, driving away the cold. The memory of his kindness had seen her through many winters, had given her hope when there was none to be found.
And then Derrick. . .
She had so many ghosts living inside her head now and their acts of kindness no longer felt comforting but oppressive.
Raven was still alive, though.
For now, at least.
For the time being, her actions still possessed the ability to ease pain rather than strengthen it.
So Luna held onto them.
And to her.
She doubted Raven truly understood what it was exactly that she'd done that day. The significance of her action.
It was hard to comprehend what it was like to be given a choice when you'd been swimming in them all your life.
Luna had been forced to fight hard for the right to choose, to wrench that power out of the foundations of a world that refused to give it to her.
And she valued it more than anything else.
Even peace.
Because there could be no true peace without the freedom to choose.
That was what she believed. The one thing she would never doubt.
She squeezed Raven's hand and hoped that it provided some small payment for the gift she'd been given.
The returning squeeze she got back suggested that it might.
"We fight, we fall
Duty calls, it calls
Say we choose
But it's no choice at all
Duty calls it calls
Mercy, peace and justice
Cherish and protect us
Battle born they send us
Covered in our noble blood."
Noble Blood by Tommee Profitt & Fleurie
A/N: Something that always struck me was how open both Lexa and Titus were about how they - or Lexa at least - favored Aden and expected him to succeed her. Like at one point she straight up tells Clarke as much, in front of Aden. That to me suggests that such favoritism was common and perhaps a normal part of the nightblood process. It could also - and this is what I've decided to do with this fic - have factored into the confidence Luna had about her chances of winning the Conclave. There were other factors involved - which will be mentioned - but it would make sense that, if she had been favored by her mentors as the most likely successor, then she would come to share that belief. Personally, I also feel that, having succeeded in killing her brother - the hardest person in the world for her to kill - that would also have supported such a belief (if she could kill her brother, then she could kill anyone). We also know that, even after years of not fighting, Luna was still an extremely talented fighter - able to take down several people, using their own weapon, when she was still weak from being tortured. She also held her own against Roan and Octavia, who were both skilled warriors. So she was probably an even more talented fighter back when she was training every day.
so some more Trigedasleng terms I invented for this fic.
snouspia = a plant which is used to produce fibers (from snow-sphere)
so snouspia is just a plant I made up based on real plants that exist in our world. It gets its name from the flowers it produces, which are tiny and white and collect together in umbels (so in the end they look like white spheres).
laifbrina = period [technical] (from life-bringer)
munblod = Period [slang] (from moon-blood)
So I came up with two words for period (there's a word in the Trigedasleng dictionary but it's not canon and I'm not very fond of it so I decided to come up with my own). And it made sense to me that there would be more than one term used because we use lots of terms for periods/menstruation in our own society. Throughout history, a lot of terms/slang for menstruation have involved the moon because it occurs monthly and the moon also has a monthly cycle. So that's where I got munblod from.
