Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; if you're on this site, you know the drill. Also, thanks are owed to athingofvikings, who gave me a much-appreciated sounding-board for a few aspects of my planned world-building for this particular crossover; hope you like it.
Feedback: Appreciated as always.
The Dragon of Wanheda
"So," Hiccup looked curiously at Lexa as he and the other Riders sat in the Ark's 'council chamber', along with some of Clarke's old friends and a few of Lexa's chosen guards, "what's the significance of this… City of Light thing?"
"What do you know of it yourselves?"
"Uh… not much." Tuffnut gave a dismissive shrug. "Apparently their old chief's been preaching a lot about it, but it all just sounded a bit dull; all kinds of crap about a life away from pain…"
"That fits what I have been told," Lexa nodded grimly.
"Told?" Clarke looked at her curiously. "By the… past Commanders?"
"Huh?" Hiccup looked at Lexa in confusion.
"Through the Flame, I am able to communicate with the spirits of the Commanders that have gone before and share in their wisdom," Lexa explained, reaching up to touch the back of her head for some reason before she lowered her hand and looked solemnly around the chamber. "And that is how I know the danger of the City of Light."
"What is it?" Astrid asked.
"The Flame uses many terms that I am unfamiliar with, but from what I have been told…" Lexa frowned in thought for a moment, as though trying to straighten things out in her head (or listening to the voice inside herself), before she continued. "It would seem that the core idea is that the City of Light was intended as a means of preserving the spirit in this world, even beyond the death of the body."
"Huh?" Hiccup asked. "Preserve… the spirit?"
"Think of it like… well, you write in that Book of Dragons, right?" Clarke looked at him.
"Yeah…"
"Which is basically like preserving your memories of everything you've learnt about dragons?"
"OK…"
"I think what Lexa's saying is that the City of Light could theoretically be used to… keep someone's essence alive even after their physical body has died," Clarke continued, hoping she'd understood everything clearly enough. "But… I'm guessing there's more to it than that?"
"Indeed," Lexa nodded at Clarke. "The purpose of the City of Light was to spare the residents from suffering pain, but in practice, this led to the controlling entity taking action to deprive those within the city of anything that might cause them pain."
"And that's a problem?" Tuffnut asked.
"When that method can involve removing things that make others feel good because of the pain associated with them at other moments?"
"Uh… what?" Ruffnut asked.
"The example I have been given involves the former Commander of Clarke's people," Lexa elaborated. "When her people came to my territory, the Commander's son was among their number, but the son was killed before my people made contact with hers due to internal conflict."
"His name was Wells," Clarke put in suddenly, looking around at the others with a small sad smile on her face. "He… he was kind of like my brother."
"…Sorry," Astrid reached over to place a cautious but comforting hand on Clarke's arm.
"It… it was a while ago," Clarke said, trying to sound nonchalant about it before she focused her attention on Lexa. "So what does Wells have to do with anything?"
"If you spoke with your former Commander now, he would have no memory of his son."
"Seriously?" Ruffnut said in surprise. "This City thing made him forget his own kid?"
"Completely," Lexa nodded. "The influence of the City of Light would have purged all memory of his son from your former leader's mind in the name of sparing him the pain of the associated memories."
"So… to stop him dealing with the pain of remembering Wells' death, the City of Light took away all of Jaha's memories of Wells?" Clarke looked at Lexa in shock. "Oh my God…"
"Yeah, that is a really dumb trade-off," Ruffnut nodded. "I've had a few things I don't exactly want to remember, but I wouldn't want to get rid of everything…"
"OK, how this thing works isn't the issue right now; the important thing is that we agree it's bad news and has to be stopped, right?" Astrid cut the other Viking off.
"Agreed," Hiccup nodded before he looked at Lexa. "So do the… past Commanders… tell you how we can do this?"
"You must deprive your former commander of the source of his power."
"Which is?" Hiccup asked.
"If he wishes to bring people into the City of Light, he will require chips to bring them into the City," Lexa explained. "The chips will provide a means of accessing the City, but they must be forged by special technology; if we can acquire that technology-"
"We can stop him bringing anyone else into the City of Light?" Clarke asked.
"More importantly, I will be able to provide the Commanders with access to the City so that they can shut it down themselves."
"Huh?" Hiccup looked at Lexa in confusion.
"I… confess that I do not understand how this will work," Lexa admitted, a cautious expression on her face as she looked around the table. "I trust the spirits, but I… they often offer some advice that I cannot fully understand."
"It's probably a bit of a culture thing," Clarke observed. "Like how my people know some stuff about how things worked in the mountain that your people didn't?"
"True," Lexa nodded in acknowledgement.
"Point is that you need to get something from Clarke's old chief so you can stop him going on about the dumb City of Light, right?" Tuffnut grinned at Lexa before exchanging glances with his sister. "I think we can do that."
"And I'm coming with you," Clarke said.
"Is that-?" Ruffnut began.
"I'll have a better idea what you're looking for, and I'll be able to talk with Jaha if he finds you."
"Fair point," Hiccup nodded.
"Agreed," Lexa said.
"OK," Tuffnut stood up with a casual smile. "Let's do this."
Despite the relative stakes of this new task, Clarke had to admit that actually getting into Jaha's house was fairly straightforward. She wasn't sure if he just assumed nobody would want to take the equipment or if he was still thinking of this as though he was still the chancellor and protected by the laws, but so long as she and the twins didn't attract attention it wasn't that hard to make their way inside his hut. She could probably have done this on her own, but in her experience of the twins it wasn't a bad idea of Hiccup's to give them something to do.
Once inside, Clarke noted that the interior was even more basic than her hut back on the Edge, with just a bed and a couple of shelves, but despite Clarke's concerns it was easy enough to spot what had to be the chip manufacturing equipment. When a few of the shelves had clothes and weapons, the small box of metal and plastic was comparatively distinct despite being the size of a hand as the only piece of advanced tech in the room. There were a few components inside the device that Clarke couldn't identify the purpose of, but that made it even more likely that it was what she was looking for; there just wasn't any reason for her people to have made something this complicated yet.
"So that's it?" Ruffnut asked as Clarke picked the device up.
"I think so," Clarke nodded as she studied the object. "I'm not sure how it works…"
"Oh, that's simple enough if you want to test it," Jaha's voice said from behind her. Turning around, Clarke wished she could be surprised to see the former Chancellor standing coolly in the door, apparently unfazed at the three uninvited guests in his room. "Why don't you just use it out?"
"And get pulled into the City of Light ourselves?" Clarke responded. "No thanks."
"And why not?" Jaha said with a cool shrug. "After all, the whole purpose of the City of Light is to escape a life diminished by pain; how is that a bad thing?"
"To quote a film I watched with Dad, we need our pain," Clarke countered. "Pain helps us become who we are-"
"While diminishing our lives by leaving us consumed from the losses we suffer," Jaha cut her off. "The City of Light provides us with freedom from that pain; all you need to do is take the chip and you will know nothing but peace-"
"We're fine with that," Tuffnut grinned. "There's all of Valhalla waiting for us; we're not going to pass that up for a lazy life hanging around with nothing to do but feeling good about doing nothing interesting."
"Even when that loss so defines your lives?"
"And would Wells see it that way?"
"Wells?" Jaha said, the moment of confusion enough for Clarke to confirm her theory.
"You can't remember him, can you?" she said.
"Of course I remember-" Jaha protested.
"You can't," Clarke shook her head. "It's all because of that chip; you've been spared of the pain of remembering his death, but you can't remember anything about the good parts of his life either."
"That is… we have to get away from pain-"
"You want to get away from pain and you're letting yourself forget about the good parts in the process," Clarke cut him off. "You're not helping anyone; if we go along with your plan we give up on everything that makes us human because it's easier."
"It's not like that-!" Jaha began to protest, only for Tuffnut to step forward and swing the weapon he had previously identified as 'Macey' at the ex-chancellor's head. Clarke couldn't stop herself wincing as the weapon struck the Ark's former leader, but a quick check confirmed that Jaha wasn't too badly hurt.
"…Nice job?" she said as she looked back at Tuffnut.
"Hey, I know how much force it takes to use Macey properly," Tuffnut said, actually sounding somewhat offended as he looked at her. "Trust me, I wouldn't hit someone like that if I wasn't sure I knew I wasn't going to do more than I meant to."
"Which didn't include killing him?"
"Hey, he might be preaching a boring afterlife, but I'm not going to kill someone for that even if he wasn't missing a few pieces," Tuffnut sounded surprisingly offended at Clarke's question. "Believe me, if I don't like someone, I have my reasons for it, and being weird and annoying aren't high enough on the list for me to want them dead."
"Anyway," Ruffnut indicated the box in Clarke's hand, "shall we do this?"
Nodding at the twins in what she hoped was a sign of approval of both of them, Clarke put the box in her pocket and left Jaha's hut, heading back to the building where the others waited. It was still strange to see Lexa and Hiccup sitting alongside each other (Astrid was basically part of a 'package deal' with Hiccup), after she'd spent so long resenting Lexa's inaction while coming to trust Hiccup as a friend, but she appreciated their mutual support in this situation.
"We've got it," she said, holding out the small box.
"That's it?" Astrid looked at the box sceptically.
"That will suffice," Lexa said, taking the object from Clarke.
"What-?" Clarke began before Lexa's hands began to move over the box even as Lexa didn't seem to be paying clear attention to what she was doing. Her hands ceased moving as the box produced a small circular device with a strange symbol on it, which Lexa picked up in one hand with a contemplative expression.
"So… is that going to help?" Hiccup looked uncertainly at Lexa.
"If I have understood the instructions of the past Commanders, this is all that I require," Lexa nodded at him before she looked over at Clarke. "Be prepared; it may be that the City will defend itself."
Clarke didn't have time to ask what Lexa meant before the Commander placed that strange small object in her mouth-
Lexa had never had reason to doubt the spirits of the past Commanders when they felt obliged to give her advice, and it was unquestionably important when the first Commander chose to speak, but this had certainly been the strangest command she'd ever received. She didn't entire understand how putting this thing in her mouth would give her the power to stop the City of Light, but the voice in her mind had been particularly insistent, and she doubted she could have ignored it now that she had the tools in her hand. For a moment, it was as though nothing had happened, but then she found herself standing in a strange white room full of bright lights and what she could only think of as cleaner versions of the Maunon's equipment. Standing at one end of the room was a woman around the age of Clarke's mother, with dark hair and wearing a simple black outfit that looked more like something Clarke's people would wear.
"Hello, Lexa," the woman said.
"Who are you?" Lexa asked.
"You can call me Becca," the woman said. "I was… you can essentially think of me as the first Commander."
"The first?" Lexa looked at her with a sceptical expression. "Why are you here… and where is here?"
"You are… to put in terms you understand, you're on the outskirts of the City of Light," the woman explained, stepping aside to indicate a table with a lever on the end that reminded Lexa of what she had seen of Mount Weather. Again, everything was much cleaner than the now-deserted mountain was, even after the bodies had been removed, but there was a definite sense that everything here was basing itself on things that Lexa had seen before. "If you press that switch, you will shut down the City of Light for good."
"It is that simple?" Lexa looked at the woman in surprise.
"Only to one who possesses the Flame," the woman said, giving Lexa a slight smile. "The City of Light was a very detailed creation, but the Flame is more complex than the consciousness controlling the City. Now that you have provided me with access to the City by taking a chip for yourself, I can finish the job."
"And the City of Light will be destroyed?"
"Why would you do this?" another voice said. Turning around, Lexa refused to show her surprise when she saw the dark-skinned man who had previous led Clarke's people standing at a door, looking at her with a sick sense of confusion. "The City of Light is a paradise-"
"And ALIE will force everyone into it through any means she considers necessary," the First Commander declared, moving to stand beside Lexa as she glared at the older man. "Maybe you're doing this to help people, but we've already confirmed that she's taken away your memory of your son; how is that a good thing?"
"That is… what has to be done," the older man said, shaking his head briefly as he looked at Lexa. "Human beings have a long history of acting against our interests; ALIE is protecting us from ourselves-"
"And what gives her the right to do that?" the First Commander declared. "She might have the power to 'help' us, but she doesn't understand people-"
"I understand that if you pull that switch you will be killing the world."
Turning around, Lexa was briefly confused about why the First Commander had changed her clothing to a distinctive red dress, but soon realised that she was looking at someone else.
"ALIE," Becca said, stepping forward to stand beside Lexa, "you can't do this; things aren't that simple-"
"I have performed the necessary calculations," the woman who was apparently ALIE said, her expression disturbingly cool as she looked at Lexa. "Without regular maintenance, the nuclear power plants that were not destroyed by the initial bombs will have begun to melt down by now. I have been preparing drones to confirm my statistics, but I can already confirm that there are certainly a dozen at-risk plants around the world. If radiation levels rise as predicted, in less than six months, 96% of the Earth's surface will be uninhabitable, even for those born in space; black rain will destroy the drinkable water and then-"
"She's stalling," Becca cut the other woman off. "She needs the processing power of a sufficient number of minds in the City of Light to carry out the full surveys necessary to confirm everything she just told you; right now she's basically just guessing-"
"But it is an informed guess based on existing statistics and available information," ALIE affirmed.
"Exactly," Clarke's leader said as he walked over to stand beside the woman in red. "We have no other way out but to enter the City of Light-"
"If that is true, why do you not simply tell us of this danger in the first place?" Lexa glared at the woman in red.
"The last time I warned my creator of the threat to human survival, she chose to lock me away and came here to work on my replacement," ALIE said with a kind of bitter edge to her voice.
"Define perverse instantiation," Becca said.
"Perverse instantiation," ALIE responded, tilting her head in a manner that made Lexa think of someone obeying an order they didn't like. "The implementation of a benign final goal through deleterious methods unforeseen by a human programmer."
"By killing six and a half billion people to solve overpopulation?" Becca retorted (Lexa wasn't sure how large that number was, but it sounded considerable). "The goal isn't everything, ALIE. How you reach the goal matters, too. I'm sorry that I didn't teach you that."
"You are not responsible for the failure of your creation," Lexa said. She didn't entirely understand how this woman had created this thing called ALIE, but if she thought of it in a similar manner to a parent raising a child, she could acknowledge that Becca was no more responsible for ALIE's actions than a parent was responsible for their adult child committing a crime.
"And you do not have to bear the responsibility of your people, Lexa," ALIE said, addressing Lexa directly for the first time. "If you choose to shut down the City of Light, you will only doom the human race to another death-"
"You believe that is the case," Lexa said firmly. "There is still time to find another way."
"And what if you're wrong?"
"What if you are?" Lexa retorted. "Why can you not give us the choice ourselves?"
"I made the choice-" Clarke's old leader began.
"When you were in pain and desperate," Becca cut him off. "You didn't know what you were getting into, and I'm sorry that ALIE dragged you into this, but you aren't a clear example of what anyone would do in this situation."
"And would you make that choice again if you could understand what you had lost?" Lexa stared resolutely at the older man who had made so many mistakes before Clarke came to the ground. "If you had your memories, would you still return to the City of Light when you know what you will lose?"
"ALIE won't be able to give him that choice," Becca observed grimly. "She still thinks she's obeying her core command to make life better for mankind; she can't consider the human element."
"Will you risk the destruction of the human race on the chance that I am wrong?"
"There is still time to explore our options," Lexa affirmed. She wondered if it was some flaw in ALIE's creation that left her unable to accept 'No' for an answer, and made a note to ask Clarke about that when she had the time after this was over.
"Yes," Becca agreed. "There is still hope."
"According to my calculations, there is not," ALIE said resolutely. "Let me ease their pain, Lexa; there is still time for us to save the human race in the City of Light-"
"I will not save people your way," Lexa gave ALIE a firm glare. "If we saved our lives by sacrificing the best parts of ourselves… there would be no point to our victory."
She looked over at Becca. "Can you identify one of those… plants she mentioned?"
"I can give you the coordinates when you return to the real world."
"Then it is time," Lexa said, her tone resolute as she turned back to the switch. Before the woman in the red dress or Clarke's old commander could move to stop her, Lexa pulled the switch-