Late October 1865
Lexa fell to her knees. The ground was hard. Winter was on its way. It was getting cold. She drew her buffalo skin tighter around her shoulders, clenching her fingers tight around the walking stick she had found.
She was so tired. So very tired. Her injured arm and leg didn't help.
Her horse died when she had gotten separated from the rest of the scouts by bandits. She and another scout were captured and held, dragged along for days before he and Lexa devised an escape. Lexa's leg was injured in the process, shot just above the knee. Her arm was cut in a knife fight with one of the bandits.
In the end, the bandits all died, and so did her fellow scout.
Though most of them died by her own hand, Lexa did not feel like she deserved to be the victor. Not when her friend had died.
Her heart ached to think of him, left dead, without a ceremony.
She shuddered. It was getting cold, and she was far from home. She had to remind herself.
She didn't even want to think about how she had gotten here, but knew when night came, she would be haunted by it. Haunted by what she had done. She wasn't even sure if she deserved to make it home.
The air nipped into her skin. She needed to make shelter for the night. Survival. That's what she needed to focus on.
Leaning against her stick, Lexa pushed herself up, groaning with pain. She would travel, away from the sun as it set, until it was just above the horizon, then make shelter for another night.
Miles and miles away, Clarke watched the horizon. Another day had passed, and no sign of Lexa.
She and Aden spent their day working to harvest the fields with the help of hired hands. She was doing her best to keep her hours busy, but it was always around this time of day, after supper when she would allow herself to watch the sunset, a seed of hope still held in her heart.
Lexa and a large number of scouts left in early summer, headed out for a fort to the northwest. It took too long for news to reach this far, all Clarke knew was a number of tribes were attacking the trails much more aggressively as far as she could figure, in retaliation to a slaughter of their people by a group of soldiers.
She didn't know how to feel about any of it. How Lexa felt about it, she knew, because there were many nights before Lexa received orders to leave when she would sit or lay in silence with Clarke. She would hold Clarke on those nights like a lifeline, or drag Clarke's arms around her. Those same nights, Clarke would be woken up by Lexa tossing and turning, her dreams filled with terrors Clarke could not see.
The conflict could be seen in her eyes in the moonlight sometimes. The pain and the ache was always there. Lexa took Clarke back to her village enough that Clarke was learning how her people viewed other tribes, but sometimes, she wondered if Lexa did not always see them the same way.
"Mnaaa." Clarke glanced down at her feet. One of the cats Aden adopted from the Murphy brewery's many rat catchers rubbed against her leg.
Clarke reached down to scratch the animal. She sighed. Aden had adopted quite the number of animals since coming to them. Fish had puppies with some nearby mutt from a surrounding farm. He begged and begged for a puppy. It was Raven that gave in when the little thing that he brought to show them licked her face, delighted by its adoration.
The cats roamed the farm, the storage shed, the barn built in the last year. Clarke sometimes had to shoo one from her bed at night. She didn't mind them, they kept away rodents from their stores. That was necessary.
Grunting coming up the trail to their farm made her look up from scratching the cat.
"Raven, why don't you just ride a mule around when you're out for a visit, rather than just walking?" Clarke grinned at the sight. Bellamy complained as he carried Raven on his back.
Raven had her walking stick slung over her shoulder. That was another story. One that sometimes made her ache to think of it.
Murphy rarely came around anymore after that night, blaming himself. He and Raven had gone into town for a drink. As they were leaving, they were met by a man seeking whatever they had of worth.
Murphy tried to fight him, wrestling for his gun while Raven ran away in the distraction. The gun went off and got her in the back.
Raven was stubborn, though, and no matter whatever she was told by Nyko, would often get caught doing things she probably shouldn't. Which is probably how she ended up being carried on Bellamy's back to their home.
Bellamy let her down without any gentleness. Raven would have only given him trouble for it.
"I had to bring Octavia what I promised. She's the one who has been moping around for the last few weeks and hardly leaves the farm." Raven admonished him.
Bellamy crossed his arms and frowned at her. He raised an eyebrow.
Raven gave him her best innocent look.
Clarke sighed and stepped in.
"Hey, you know, maybe tomorrow, Raven and I can take a cart and Octavia into town for distraction?" Clarke offered. Lincoln had gone with the rest of the scouts. Octavia was coping in her way. Clarke stayed busy, and when Octavia wasn't busy she was known to shut herself into her room.
Bellamy let out a heavy sigh.
"Probably a good idea." He nodded. "I'll talk to her."
He turned to Raven, leveling her with a glare.
"Ride a mule."
Raven rolled her eyes.
She limped over and sat on the porch. She waved him off.
"I'll think about it."
Clarke and Raven watched him go. Clarke sat beside her friend who wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
"She'll come back." Raven reassured her.
Clarke didn't answer. She watched the sunset, hoping Raven was right.
Nightfall. It was always as nightfall came that the nightmares came. Lexa was holed up beneath a rock. She didn't bother with fire. It was too dangerous of territory for her to put out any kind of fire or smoke. She had to keep a watchful eye out.
The spirits haunted her for a long time. It was her fault, she knew. She was a warrior, but without a warrior's heart. She fought because she was good at it. No matter how much she did it, she could never turn her heart from what she did. From the pain of what she was doing.
It was worse on this latest campaign.
Lexa was tired, but she fought her sleep. When she closed her eyes, all she could see was people like her dying by her own hand. None had her green eyes or lighter complexion, offered by being half-blood, but they were so much like the family she had grown up with in the village as a child.
It was too much for her. In the end, she was killing other "Indians". The soldiers would call her savage. Some often had for being a "Half-breed".
Her eyes closed. She was too tired to stay awake. Her body was exhausted. Her arm and her leg ached deep from their injuries. The cooling air bit into the wounds, she wanted relief so badly. Maybe she would fall into a deep, dark, and dreamless sleep if she just let everything go.
The echoes of screams, memories of fire, the whoops and cries of people that should have been like her own, sent her gasping for air from her sleep. She looked around wildly. Morning had not yet come.
She took deep breaths and closed her eyes. She thought of golden hair like sunlight and eyes like morning sky. Slowly, she calmed.
She groaned as she sat up, left to her own thoughts.
They had been sent with the Army to scout against tribes the United States called 'Cheyenne', 'Arapaho', and 'Sioux'. Lexa knew different names for these people in even their own languages. In her own, the names were often insulting, she admitted, probably because her people viewed them as enemies.
Were they so different? Were they not also, trying to survive in a place no longer recognizable?
Maybe she was overthinking it.
She closed her eyes.
Her mind was foggy. She was too tired to grab exact details. She waited for the sun to come up. She would walk towards it as it rose. She needed to return home. To Aden, to Clarke.
She would do anything to be held by Clarke right about now.
