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There’s blood in the webs and nooks of her hands. There’s blood and it isn’t her own. It’s sticky, the skin beneath refusing to peel away each time she stretches out her fingers. She stretches them and brings them back together, again and again, stuck in the repetition. The events fit strangely in her mind, they are disjointed, snipped and stitched together in the wrong order.
“I came as quickly as I could.”
Clarke hears the explanation, the footsteps, the quiet pause. Lexa has never been a noun. She’s a verb. She’s in motion, a state, an occurrence, an action. Lexa is a doing word. The blood in the webs and nooks of her hands is all the more jarring for the fact that Lexa is still, unmoving and so static that it takes a moment to remind herself that she is still there.
“You are not to blame for this, Clarke. I cannot imagine how you must feel — but you must not blame yourself.”
When she was a little girl Mom pointed to the big blue thing and promised she would have a daughter of her own someday, and her daughter’s daughter would get to live down there. In some tiny way they would too, in some insignificantly small and incomprehensible way that was even beyond the imagination of a five year old girl with charcoal constantly under her fingernails and fairytales stuck in her belly.
Clarke should be in space still.
She should be stuck inside an air pocket orbiting through the void. These troubles, these impossible decisions, these horrific burdens, these belong to her grandchildren.
“Please let me take you somewhere else. This isn’t… This isn’t where you need to be right now, Clarke. Let me take you somewhere safe.”
The insignificant and the incomprehensible didn’t become clearer slowly over time. It hit Clarke in the gut. It winded her. It crawled inside her open mouth and wrapped itself around her vocal chords and squeezed until she couldn’t tell them to stop. They floated an entire family for hiding a tiny baby with tightly curled fists and a thick mop of golden curls in the bedroom drawer. Seven years old, and she watched Mom stand there and let it happen. She stood right there, choking, weeping, terrified and suddenly capable of understanding the insignificant and incomprehensible, because it was enough to make a murderer of Mom.
Their grandchildrens’ grandchildren are all that matters.
Without them, their existence, her existence, is meaningless.
“I cannot let you stay here, Clarke.”
She wasn’t born. She was made. An instrument. The drying blood between her fingers sticks and pulls, and Clarke can’t stop the repetition. She reaches out with the other hand and places it over Mom’s still chest, rubbing and squeezing her shirt, mindlessly trying to stir her like a child. She will not stir.
She wasn’t born. She was created. She was implemented. Clarke is a weapon, a loaded gun pointed in the face of extinction, a womb to carry humanity through a war with time. She was never built for this earth.
She should be in Space still.
“I can’t let you stay here with the body. Please, let me take you somewhere. Let me make arrangements for your mother to be tended to.”
Mom is an arrow. A sword. A thing forged with singular purpose — ensure the continuity of humanity. Like all things forged in fire, she is strained and littered with torsions and twists. Somewhere, humanity no longer meant humanity.
The survival of their people is all that matters.
Their grandchildrens’ grandchildren is all that matters.
There is a cratered entry wound on Mom’s forehead. Clarke put it there. She put it there and still she can’t look at it. She catches a glimpse in an effort to avoid Lexa, and a single glimpse is all it takes to make her whimper and scream hollowly, endlessly, hysterically, like a lamb being lead to the slaughter.
She was going to kill the council.
She was going to kill Lexa.
She was going to bomb Polis and kill thousands of mothers and their newborn babies with their tightly curled fists and mops of golden blonde hair.
Because Skaikru must be the only government if their grandchildrens’ grandchildren would ever have a world to call their own. Skaikru must lead.
“Clarke, I’ve got you, come here, I’ve got you my love. It’s alright, I’ve got you.” Lexa says and moves urgently, becoming a verb once more.
She grabs Clarke’s flailing arms, weathers the fists that pummell and beat her chest, slips a hand around the back of her blonde hair and cradles her. She becomes a series of events in her own right.
Mom hid her reasoning behind the veil of the greater good, argued and shouted and twisted the idea that they must do these things to end the bloodshed — to lead a better world, a fairer, kinder, more civilised world. She said it until Clarke saw it in her eyes — Mom believed her own lies.
And she didn’t want to kill her. Clarke screams that much into Lexa’s shoulder. She screams it and screams it and screams it until there is blood in her throat. She didn’t want to kill her. She didn’t want to kill her. She didn’t want to kill her. She didn’t want to kill her. She squeals it hysterically like a lost little girl. She didn’t want to kill her. She didn’t want to kill her. It becomes a dry mindless chant as the Heda carries her home. She didn’t want to kill her. She didn’t want to kill her. She didn’t want to kill her. It drained into a teeth-chattering whisper as the Commander, anointed by conclave, highest of her people, hushed and rocked her while the rushing sound of hot water filled the bath.
She did want to kill her mom. She tried to reason, she tried to be a tool, she tried to be the thing she was created from birth to do… but Mom had the radio. She had the radio and she was moving it up to her lips and-
She didn’t-
She didn’t want to kill her mom.
She had to.
“I know.” Lexa hushes her, all gentle calloused hands and nuzzling nose. “I know you didn’t want to.” She reassures quietly and pulls a blood-soaked shirt over her head, freeing her piece by piece.
The water is hot. It’s steaming, nearly boiling even, and still not hot enough. It immediately turns Clarke’s skin pink with the searing heat and yet it’s not enough to stop her teeth from chattering. She pulls her knees up to her chest, tucks her chin on top of them and stares vacantly at the wall ahead.
Lexa’s hands are gentle. They take one of Clarke’s and dip it under the water, blistered fingers rubbing between the webs until the water blooms with brown and red. She cleans and cleans, reverently and quietly, kneels there right beside the bath with her shirt rolled up to her elbows making the stickiness go away.
Mom’s body hit the floor and the ring, that ear-splitting gunshot ring, it’s still rattling inside her ears. Clarke is still trapped in the moment. It repeats over and over again. The gun goes off, the ear-splitting ring cracks through her entire body, and by the time she opens her eyes…
There’s nothing but blood.
She reaches for her mom, sob stuck in her throat, fingers sticky and dirtied by the scarlet pool.
There’s nothing but blood, and now she bathes in it.
“I…I… h…have to g…go.” Clarke stutters urgently, lurching and trying to stand from the misty-current of iron. “I…I… c…can’t be here.” She cries.
Lexa wrestles with her, the water sloshes and explodes over the side of the bathtub and the Heda finds herself soaked and dripping with the torrent of it. Still, she wrestles, she wrangles, she hushes, she doesn’t stop until Wanheda is stuck in the vice of her arms. “It’s okay, it’s alright.” Lexa says dumbly, her dripping forehead pressed into the crease of Clarke’s temple. She croons it quietly. “I’m here, I won’t leave you.”
“I killed her.” Clarke ached with a breathless kind of whisper as her limbs were squeezed into her chest.
She cannot fix this. She is the Heda, the de-facto King, the book stops with her concerning all earthly matters and still Lexa cannot right this wrong. It doesn’t stop her from trying, and she will try endlessly, without reservation, for as long as it takes.
For as long as it takes.
“I love you.” Lexa whispers it as the thrashing starts up, as fingers curl themselves and try to scratch her slim pale collarbones out of their sockets. “I love you.” Lexa hushes and traps two hands again.
She clambered in the bath without a thought for her clothes. Trousers still on, shirt still around her elbows, boots on her feet. Lexa cared for none of it and sat herself in the bath, wrestling and holding and tending to the shattering girl in her arms. She hushed her with those long melodic humming hushes that warlords shouldn’t be allowed to possess. Slowly Clarke calmed down, barely, but enough to collapse against the Heda’s chest and sob into her neck.
She cradles the lost little girl on her chest, quiet and pensive in her thoughts. Clarke remains silent, and yet still, Lexa knows she’s chanting it quietly in her head. I didn’t want to kill her. I didn’t want to kill her. I didn’t want to kill her. She sees each desperate wail contract her pupils like clockwork.
“I love you.” Lexa whispers it quietly, again. The water carves around her hand as she wets the cloth and resumes her duty — slowly dragging it around the back of Clarke’s neck and the long dip of her tricep. She makes the blood go away. She washes her clean. “Not today, not tomorrow, but soon it will hurt less. I will protect you until then, Clarke.” Lexa grumbled it quietly to herself.
There was no reply, just nothing that could be said. Lexa didn’t mind that. In fact she prefered it, because the thought of Clarke blaming her right now desiccated her heart and clenched at her throat. But Clarke said nothing and the silence was maintained, save for her hiccups and whimpers.
Two slim pale arms drag and tighten around her waist. A nose burrows into her neck. Lungs that are incapable of drawing in enough air press further into Lexa’s chest. Clarke does all of these things and clings on while the washcloth makes the stickiness go away.
“I love you.” Lexa says it again, calm and certain.
Clarke just nods and wraps her arms tighter.
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