Chapter Text
The stories of Clarke's memorial were almost as prolific as the legend of the woman, herself.
Set beneath a sky as bleak as the hearts of those who now saw one additional star burning above them, the ceremony had drawn thousands of people to the center of Polis, all guided by their desire to pay tribute to the fallen Mountain-Slayer, the legendary savior of their people.
It was said that Anya had delivered a powerfully moving eulogy to the large crowd, full of emotion many didn't think her capable of expressing - or even possessing, in the first place. Raven and Bellamy stood right behind her the entire time - Bellamy with his torn back still healing, most likely permanently scarred now -, tears streaming unhidden down their faces as they attempted to keep themselves together in honor of the girl who'd sacrificed herself for all of them... Gustus and Indra flanked the Sky People, scanning the crowd for any anarchists or rogue dissenters, all the while attempting to stifle the surprising amount of sorrow working against them as Titus stood unmoved, impassive beside them - satisfied, even.
Lincoln had supported Wells's body weight with his own throughout the entirety of the ceremony, fearful that the boy would collapse if the warrior moved away from him, needing the support nearly as much as the other boy. Octavia stood by his side, her arms wrapped around a trembling Belou next to Nyko, his arms protectively shielding Zenya, the foursome unable to do anything but stare straight ahead, do their best not to allow their grief to show too plainly...
Meanwhile, Maya had watched slightly back and away from the stage, the smallest of the children from the Maun-de cradled in her arms, another holding her hand while the rest waited by Thomas's bedside in the clinic. They'd all sworn fealty to the Commander upon their entry to Polis, placed in temporary housing and adorned in the basic clothing of the apprentices for the time-being. No one but those at the very top knew the true identity of the newcomers, and they were told not to speak to anyone until they'd been trained in the Grounder ways. It'd been a given that they'd attend the service for Clarke, pay tribute to the girl who'd saved them - it was only right, after all...
Anya had taken the place of her Commander who'd watched on from the back of the stage, expression devoid of all emotion and eyes ringed with circles as dark as the many torturous nights where sleep had mercilessly evaded her. Lexa had apparently refused to take part in the ceremony, citing her desire not to overshadow the Mountain-Slayer's legend as her reason for staying in the shadows - though only a handful of those closest to her knew the real reason, and had more-than-willingly taken over the proceedings in the hopes of sparing the girl from more agony.
The memorial was truly beautiful - historic, even -, an unprecedented amount of disparaging clans gathered together to mourn the loss of a prodigal savior, a tragic martyr. Even representatives from Azgeda intermingled - though they carried a secret that darkened their eyes to an impossible degree, a lie so delicately balanced between circumstance and fraud that could undo everything around them...
Beneath the veiled beauty of every petal blooming on the white roses covering the stage and carried in the hands of onlookers, though, was a festering sort of sickness - a blackness that settled at the very roots of the flowers, unseen and unheard, withering within the soul of a single person, the one who would always come to bear such things...
Lexa was nothing but a shell of a person now, wholly unrecognizable down to the very reflection she cast to herself - a prime example of what happened to a person when their entire universe was rendered uninhabitable, their tether to life, itself, severed by a ruthless knife rusted with the blood of innocence and peace.
Memories of oceans as blue as the most precious of sapphires, a soul housed in the greatest of depths, a home built on the lips of one who brought meaning to a four letter word most humans spend their lives hoping to define... They had become the ghosts that haunted the Commander's every waking minute, all whilst her own emerald soul - as broken as the glass torn from the panes of holy temples long-gone - wandered the earth in search of its lost mate, pleading with the highest of powers to never have to return again....
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One Year Later
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Clarke watched from her usual place to Nia's right as the woman cut the tongue from a man who'd dared to speak out against the public lashing of his daughter that had taken place the day before. The blonde's expression was blank, unfeeling, familiar numbness taking the place of undesired emotion as she watched yet another life fall to ruin before her eyes.
It had become almost second-nature for her to tune out the suffering of those around her, creating a devastating amount of cognitive dissonance in her brain as she'd been forced to defy every value that had ever been instilled in her - every instinct that told her to care, protect, do something... She'd had to suppress that part of herself a long time ago, and part of her wondered if, in that same process of suppression, she'd actually managed to destroy that piece of herself, altogether. At this point, she wouldn't be the least bit surprised...
"Take this fool from my sight," Nia spat, motioning dismissively to the man who lay crumpled before her, blood spewing from lips parted in pure, soundless agony. The guards at the back of the court moved immediately to obey their Queen, roughly hoisting the man up by his shoulders and dragging him back down the aisle and out of the room.
Clarke clenched and un-clenched her jaw for a moment, arms clasped behind her back in a stance that most likely appeared impassive to the casual observer - though it barely managed to conceal the storm of fury constantly brewing underneath, always on the verge being unleashed as of late...
Nia moved to sink back down on her thrown, swiping a hand down her face as if exasperated to have to deal with such nonsense.
"You will take care of the next ingrate who dares to interrupt my peace, seken ," Nia commanded, not even bothering to spare Clarke a glance as she spoke. "I'd like them to be strung up in the marketplace for all to see from now on... I am tired of their filthy blood staining my tiles."
Clarke closed her eyes for a moment, fighting the urge to scream as her throat worked painfully.
"Of course, ai kwin - as you wish," she answered after a beat, voice empty, echoing, completely separated from herself now.
She'd gone so long without a heartbeat, after all...
Before another word could be spoken from either one of them, Ontari suddenly burst through the doors at the back of the court, stride quick and purposeful as her expression worked to contain her displeasure. She stopped at the base of the steps leading to Nia's throne, inclining her head respectfully towards the older woman.
"My Queen," she began, a strange undercurrent slipping through, "another one of the Commander's messengers has made an unexpected visit to our lands... I barely managed to convince him to wait outside for my return, as he seems to have been instructed not to accept anything less than a formal audience with you this time..."
Nia made a sound of disgust in the back of her throat, obviously angered by the persistence of the leader she so thoroughly loathed.
Clarke, on the other hand, was now fighting against the powerful racing of her heart and the painful constriction of her throat that always seemed to occur at the mere mention of the Commander, more excruciating than anything she'd ever known. Perhaps it was simply her body's way of showing that it recognized the formal title by which her heart and soul were more publicly known...
"That is the fourth intrusion she has made into my territory this week, alone," Nia noted through gritted teeth, gripping onto the armrests of her thrown with white knuckles. "Does she really believe that I will continue to allow such petulance to go unanswered?!"
Ontari shared a weighted glance with Clarke, both girls seemingly of the same mind when it came to this particular issue - though, they despised each other in every other possible way...
For all intents and purposes, Nia had answered, usually sending the poor messengers back with a missing limb or disfiguring burn. She'd refused every single one of the Commander's attempts to begin some type of correspondence over the past few months, and - though it did not seem to be enough to warrant an all-out war, as the queen and her subjects had remained startlingly compliant with the laws they typically defied in the wake of the Maun-de's fall otherwise -, the attempts seemed to be increasing in their persistence.
"Seken , attend to your rounds as usual. I will not have our routine interrupted by the whims of a child masked as an exercise of power," Nia spat out, motioning dismissively to Clarke, the blonde inclining her head in acquiescence almost immediately. "Ontari, bring the messenger in as soon as Klark has gone... Let's you and I show him just how pleased we are that he has come to see us, shall we?" Ontari grinned menacingly, matching that of her Queen's as they prepared for yet another "correspondence" with one of the Commander's messengers.
Clarke simply grit her teeth in disgust, slipping through the hidden back door of the court and out into the chilled night air, hugging her cloak a little closer to her as the wind blew it about. Her steps were silent as she made her way across the empty marketplace, the moon high up in the sky and reflecting off of the snow in her path. The blonde made her way to the tree line bordering the marketplace on the left side, slipping through the darkness like a thief in the night.
After a few more minutes of silent trekking, Clarke finally found her favorite perch - a gathering of boulders that sat atop a hillside overlooking the largest village within the boundaries of Azgeda , their unofficial capitol. She settled in, removing the dagger from her belt and twirling it between her fingers, scanning the outskirts of the village for any sign of intruders, any lone bounty-hunters for hire sent to gather reconnaissance on Nia and her subordinates. In the past five days alone, Clarke had killed seven of them, and the volume of these rogue hunters sent to stalk them seemed to be increasing by the hour. Roan had his theories on who was sending them - the Commander being at the top of the list -, but Ontari was convinced that they were either Blue Cliff or Trikru , two of Azgeda's worst enemy clans. Over the course of the past month, they'd seen more stealth attacks of this nature than for the rest of the time Clarke had been in Azgeda , altogether. It was as troublesome as it was fascinating, and the blonde found the carefully-crafted soldier within just ached for a chance to be on the front lines of an expedition employed to figure out what was going on - if only so that she could get out of Azgeda for awhile...
As she continued to scan the village lit by torches reflecting off of the snow, the various huts and shops settled between the ruins of a forgotten city now re-purposed for the use of the fierce warriors under Nia's command, Clarke became lost in thought, wondering when, exactly, the cold and desolate landscape had begun to feel like home... Not her true home, of course - the one she often saw in her dreams, cloaked in soft light and housed within the depths of emerald stones so rare, so lovely, the one she could only pray still existed...
No, this home was found in the kind eyes of the villagers she would pass during her rounds, in the interactions with the people whom she now knew to be completely misunderstood and misjudged - swept into the same category as a Queen who was neither loved nor revered by her people. These people were real, and they were good ...
They treated Clarke like a goddess, a being of divinity sent down to save them all - and, as far as they were concerned, she'd already done so once before. She was the Mountain-Slayer, after all, and the fact that she acted as the central village healer simply fed her local reputation as a saint - a saint shrouded in utmost secrecy, of course. Clarke didn't mind, though, would've done anything to be able to attend to these people in such a way, clinging onto some semblance of normalcy from what felt like a past life. She helped them far more often and far more kindly than Nia ever would've been able to, and for that, they worshipped the blonde - which, in Nia's mind, simply re-affirmed the woman's assertion that Clarke's presence by her side would lead to somewhat of a golden age for Azgeda , a time in which the people somewhat respected her authority solely for the sake of being able to benefit from the Seken Kom Haiplana. Clarke hated how perfectly things had turned out for the Nia so far...
In addition to the benefits reaped by the Queen while within the confines her own kingdom, the woman had also been able to look forward to being seen in some semblance of a positive light in the eyes of the rest of the clans. This was due to the fact that, under Nia's orders, the warriors of Azgeda - the only ones allowed to leave the kingdom - had begun cooperating with the Commander since the time of Clarke's memorial. They did not resist their Heda's orders as they normally did, instead offering to assist in whatever training exercises or visitations that seemed to require more manpower in supporting their Heda . Though it seemed to appease the members of the Coalition who normally held such a high level of hostility for the problematic clan, the blonde knew that it was all a lie - a facade intended to keep the attention away from Azgeda , divert the collective gaze from looking north...
Very few knew of the real reason behind Azgeda's sudden and collective change of behavior, many citing the change as a result of the newfound peace achieved in the aftermath of the Maun-de's demise. The Commander had only required the presence of the clan leaders within her Coalition once since that demise, the meeting taking place during the annual festival honoring the date during which their Heda had united them all together in the first place.
The festival had occurred roughly a month after Mt. Weather's destruction, and Nia had shocked every last person present by kneeling before the Commander she was known to hate with every fiber of her being and swearing fealty to the girl, claiming her motivation to be a renewed sense of faith in the leader whose reign saw the fall of their greatest enemy - as wholly false as the forced smile she wore upon her face the entire time...
Lexa, for her part, had apparently accepted the fealty without so much as a flash of acknowledgement sparking across her deadened features, resembling something of a pale corpse upon her throne that day - a shadow of the woman she once was. The Commander's appearance at the festival, in the first place, had thoroughly surprised - and concerned - those closest to her, as the girl had spent most of her days hidden away in her chambers, her soul-crushing grief rendering her fitfully ill most of the time, a leader now hardened to every emotion the world sought to inflict upon her... Luckily for her, though, the fall of the Mountain had granted the Commander reprieve from a large part of the more demanding aspects of her position, and the time of peace had provided her with a space for her all-encompassing despair - a time she hadn't had previously to mourn the loss of her last love. (Though, for anyone who knew her well enough, it had appeared that Lexa had allowed herself to be completely consumed by the depth of her despair this time, easily overpowered by the loss of, perhaps, the truest love of her entire existence...)
When she did attend to the various day-to-day activities required of her as Commander, Lexa seemed nothing more than an empty shell upon her throne, hearing the pleas of many through ears still ringing with the sounds of an explosion, her own screams rattling constantly within her mind...
The real reason for Nia's sudden compliance, though, was Clarke, of course - the girl she'd spent a year trying to remake in her own image, whose role in the Commander's change of demeanor was wholly unknown to her. The blonde had been kept mostly in the shadows for the first six months of her time in Azgeda , beaten and bloodied until she no longer saw a point in screaming anymore, as it would have occupied her time as much as breathing did...
Clarke had resisted at first, as any human might thrash and scream as the noose was place around their neck, the floorboards removed from beneath their feet.
Due to the fact that both of the blonde's legs had been healing for the first couple of months in Nia's captivity, that time had been used for what the Queen had unaptly called "mental rehabilitation" - or, as Clarke referred to that particularly torturous period of time in her training, her mind's undoing...
She'd been moved from the small room that'd contained her original sickbed to a dungeon-like cell underground, a windowless hell hole with chains on every wall, a single rock-hard bed devoid of bed furs tucked into the corner. The Queen's guards had immediately chained Clarke to her bed, carelessly dumping her there to be left in solitude for the foreseeable future, her only company that of the elderly man who would bring her three measly meals a day and check the progress of her injuries.
Even that small ounce of human treatment had tapered off eventually, though - the elderly man ceasing his check-ups after what felt like only a few short days -, and Clarke had soon found herself having to resort to scratching hash marks into the wall beside her bed with chewed off and bloodied fingernails to keep track of the time. Clarke had been subjected to solitary confinement before - that wasn't the problem... No, what'd truly left her in a state of near mental-incapacitation was the amount of time she'd been left alone with her own thoughts, free to torment herself over every little thing she'd ever done wrong, without knowing when it would end . There was no sentence, no set time-frame after which she knew she was going to be set free, and it had positively eaten away at her...
By the 50th hash mark on the wall, Clarke was legitimately talking to the ghosts that paced the small dungeon cell beside her, recalling the most simple of anecdotes from when she was a child that, in her degenerated state of mind, had seemed far too good to be true - even as mundane as they were... Her personal hygiene had gone out the window, having to roll around in her own filth for days on end without being able to move from her bed more often than not, her legs still weakened but relatively healed. She'd been wearing the same soiled nightgown that she'd woken up in with Echo by her side, and the thing had been tattered to pieces by that point, nothing but rags hanging off her gaunt frame. The two meals given to her by a mute handmaiden - a woman whom Clarke had tried to engage in conversation with at first, desperate for anything, but had given up on when she realized the woman's affliction - were just enough to keep her from passing away from malnutrition, but not enough to get her out of that state of weakness one feels right before fainting from desolate blood-sugar levels.
All in all, Clarke couldn't recall a time when she'd ever felt less like a person, and it'd worked exactly like Nia had wanted it to...
By the 60th hash mark, Clarke had been quite literally beating her head against the stone wall, a gash forming in her forehead slowly but surely as she whispered old lullabies to herself beneath her breath. She was broken, pathetic, rocking herself back-and-forth on her bed as the eyes of hundreds of souls glared at her from the darkness all around her. She'd pleaded with them so many times - asking for retribution, absolution, anything - but they never responded, simply retreating back into the dark to wait for another moment of the blonde's peace to disturb, to ruin... It'd always been so dark, and Clarke hadn't had fresh air in so long that she couldn't even remember what it tasted like - couldn't remember what the sky looked like as the sun set, as the stars dusted the vast expanse of the universe for miles...
That was when they'd known it was time.
When Clarke had started tasting the blood from the gash in her forehead, that was when they'd stepped in. Nia, Roan, and two of the guards had come in, unshackled Clarke from the wall - barely even sparing a thought for the blonde's condition - and carried her out of the dungeon. It'd been too good to be true, and Clarke had been forced to find refuge in blackness, in a state of being far less torturous than the one that seemed to be her permanence now...
The next time Clarke had woken, she'd been completely disoriented, coming back to consciousness in a second-floor room in what appeared to be the ruins of an old merchant's building from Before, nothing in the room but a white sheet in the middle of the floor. Though she'd been shackled once again, she hadn't been able to help the cry of relief that'd loosed from her when she'd noticed the clean clothes that'd adorned her freshly-bathed frame - a long-sleeved tunic and soft pants, closely resembling the uniforms of the apprentices in Polis.
Clarke had quickly learned that her comfort was temporary, though, as the very next moment, Nia was entering the room with Roan by her side, a fearsome warrior the size of a giant flanking them both, Echo slipping into the back of the room to watch in silence, lips forming a hard line... It was then, in that moment, after Clarke had reached her human breaking point, that the Seken Kom Haiplana's real training had begun...
Clarke had read little snippets about the study of psychology from Before, about the various disorders and methods of classifying people and their personality types - the ins-and-outs of human behavior. Unfortunately for the blonde, though, she'd must've skimmed the section on conditioning and "re-programming," as Nia had liked to call it, and she found that she was utterly powerless against it...
Following the single ring of a small silver bell crafted from the village's metal smith, Clarke would immediately be subjected to immense physical pain at Nia's hand - anything ranging from the complete removal of a fingernail to a white-hot brand of the Azgeda symbol into the bare skin between her shoulder blades, always in the same place, never quite allowed to heal completely. She'd received little to no medical attention afterwards, and she knew she'd bear a permanent scar on her back in the shape of the clearly-defined symbol for the rest of her days... By the fifth day of this brutal sort of conditioning multiple times a day, Clarke was nothing more than a slave to the bell, dropping to her knees and folding in on herself at the mere sight of the damned thing. Even still, the queen insisted on continuing with this phase of her training until it got to the point where Clarke would become a trembling, crying mess anytime Nia's hand would go to her belt, terrified that the bell would be there somehow - even though she knew every single detail of the case it was usually kept in...
At that point, not only was Clarke near-deranged from her time of malnourishment and self-inflicted inner turmoil in round-the-clock solitary confinement, but she was also now a much more pathetic and unstable version of Pavlov's dogs, subordinate to an inanimate object, and she hated herself for it...
The next phase of her "re-programming" had, in many regards, been on par with the level of brutality of the first phases, though Clarke found that she'd actually preferred this part to anything that'd happened prior - a sign of just how far gone she'd become... For, in this stage, she'd officially begun her formal training as a warrior - only, this training was vastly different than anything she would've experienced under Trikru guidance, and it'd simply reinforced her dwindling state of mind even further...
Before she'd been able to begin fight training, Clarke had been chained up to a post in the center of the village marketplace, subjected to the frigid climate day-in and day-out as various Azgeda warriors came at random intervals to either strike her with their fists or cut into her skin with small knives, never quite doing enough damage to permanently scar her but leaving just enough of an open wound for it to sting. She'd been told that the more she screamed, the longer she'd be kept chained up, so she reconciled herself not to make any sound at all - ever .
Nia was impressed with her seken , to say the least, often observing the blonde from the shadows to watch the visible hardening of a girl she'd originally seen as so incredibly weak into an impenetrable statue.
It was during that particular phase - during the moments when Clarke was afraid that her still-weakened legs would give out beneath her at the amount of physical and mental torture she'd been forced to endure, chained to a wooden totem like a wild animal - that something had finally snapped within her. That something had been building inside of her for weeks now, bubbling and churning below the surface of her skin like the waves of a hurricane, and it was nearly as permanent as the aligning of her soul with its mate had once been...
Gone was the wide-eyed innocent girl who wept for those she lost and begged for the solace of green eyes and gentle smiles. That girl was long-dead, erased from the Earth along with the souls of hundreds of others brutally ripped from this life with the press of a button, never to return again... In her place was a soldier, a being as cold as the air that bit into her skin like the lash of a whip, a creature of deadly fury and brutal instinct.
A being now completely in survival mode.
The moment Nia had seen it - seen that tether that'd snapped deep within the depths of oceans now frozen over from within - she'd grinned maliciously from the shadows, ready to begin the final phase of her seken's training: combat.
From that point forward, Clarke had been trained as any other warrior of Azgeda before her, as fierce as the most deadly of mercenaries from the very start... She was woken every morning at the break of dawn, immediately dressing and hurrying out to join the ranks as they completed their morning jogs through the hills, building endurance and muscle for the purpose of increasing their overall stamina in battle. Then, she'd usually get paired off with Ontari or Roan for private training and sparring under the watch of the Queen - Echo never too far away, providing the blonde a strange comfort in the midst of unfamiliar chaos -, punished with the ringing of the bell or the lash of a whip when she'd make even the smallest of mistakes, the tiniest of errors in her stance. As much as the blonde hated to admit it, though, the constant threat of punishment made her learn that much faster and soon, she got to a point where even the most seasoned of warriors couldn't disarm her, couldn't even dream of getting close enough to take a shot at her.
Clarke grew stronger and faster by the day, all lean muscle and instant reflexes, much healthier as a result of the strict diet routine of the Azgeda warriors, providing their bodies with all of the necessary nutrients while simultaneously preparing them to survive in even the harshest of conditions with regimented eating schedules. She was healthy and stable for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, and she wasn't about to give it up by doing something reckless or selfish in any regard - like trying to escape....
It was all about surviving now...
Clarke had become the most renowned warrior in all of Azgeda within the span of months, known as Seken Kom Haiplana to the greater public, her true identity kept a secret due to the fact that only seasoned warriors could leave the kingdom - though Nia's subjects never would've said anything to begin with out of fear of retribution... Clarke was ruthless, fearless, and unbeatable. Making mistakes was not in her nature anymore, a well-oiled machine trained to follow orders and execute to perfection.
She operated as an impenetrable shell of her former self, having completely blocked out any thoughts that might deter her from her purpose as a mindless soldier. She couldn't even entertain the thought of escaping, partly out of a strange sense of duty to the people of Azgeda and partly because she felt as if she'd be unrecognizable to all those she used to know and love, and she didn't know if she could handle that... So much had happened in the span of time that she'd been gone - the arrival of the Ark to the ground being one of them, though Clarke had no way of knowing whether or not anyone had survived or anything else, for that matter -, and she found that she could no longer imagine herself in the same place she'd been before, thinking the same thoughts and having the same conversations...
There was also the matter of the ghost that seemed to have taken the place of her shadow as of late, all brown hair and soft green eyes that held the stories of an entire existence now completely separate from herself - an existence she longed to be able to fit back into more than anything else, but didn't know if she could anymore...
That was another issue entirely, though. Clarke couldn't allow herself to dwell on such things for longer than a fleeting minute every now and then, afraid that anything more would cause fissures to form in her otherwise unbreakable shell. She'd been able to stay focused so far, though, and she would continue to do so until fate provided her an alternative...
All I can do now is survive...
A fter eight months of brutal training beyond anything Clarke would've ever been able to imagine, she'd finally been sworn in as the first Seken Kom Haiplana in nearly half a century. The ceremony had been held in the main marketplace in the dead of night, drawing the entire kingdom out to watch as the markings of Azgeda were cut into Clarke's cheeks and forehead, her braided hair given a single blue streak from a concoction made by some of Nia's handmaidens.
The Queen had watched on proudly from her throne set upon an elevated platform at the center of the stage, her eyes reflecting the torches that burned brightly around the marketplace in a grand circle. The woman was wholly convinced that she'd officially become the master of the universe, the conqueror of the hardest-fought of battles - the woman who'd managed to re-shape a legend in the palms of her hands and craft a completely different tale modeled after her own twisted vision.
Roan, for his part, had been exceptionally satisfied, as well, his eyes dancing with mirth as he'd stood beside a fuming and loathsome Ontari, the girl rendered a jealous mess in the wake of Clarke's symbolic rise to power. To the blonde's dismay, though, Echo had been suspiciously absent that night, and Clarke had searched the entire perimeter of the marketplace at first in the hopes of spotting the girl amongst the crowd. As soon as she'd realized the warrior was nowhere in sight, though, Clarke had simply turned back to face Nia as the woman had risen from her throne, the blonde's new dagger in one hand and her own sword in the other.
Clarke had then dropped to her knees, literally and figuratively swearing herself over to a life of emptiness and bloodshed, of duty and sacrifice to a faulty cause...
An existence crafted solely out of a need to survive.
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"Clarke, wake up! Get dressed and come quickly!!" Echo's urgent voice roused the blonde from her typically restless sleep, too short-lived to ever be considered healthy. "We must hurry!"
Clarke sat up immediately, kicking her legs over the side of her bed and eyeing Echo standing in the doorway, eyes wide and incredibly nervous. The blonde's own eyes narrowed as she took in the sight of the girl who'd somehow become her only friend in all of this - a constant presence and a kind of solace as Clarke had been put through the ringer -, the warrior much more pale and agitated than usual.
"What's going on?" Clarke asked calmly, wholly unbothered in her state of lingering grogginess, taking her sweet time in walking over to the wardrobe on the far side of her room and rifling through the contents slowly. Echo hurried over to her, looking dramatically perturbed now.
"You don't understand, Clarke," she stated hotly, grabbing the blonde by the shoulder so they now stood face-to-face in front of the open wardrobe. "Nia is going to kill him - the man Ontari found lurking around the border during her rounds early this morning... She's going to kill him, and it could mean war ."
That got Clarke's attention immediately. For, they'd all known that it was only a matter of time before Nia crossed the line, before she made it so that the Coalition had no choice but to act against her. Everything leading up to this point had been a silly game - Nia's little form of rebellion in the form of maimed messengers and requests for audience with her Heda left unanswered -, but this was different.
Murder was different.
"I'll be there as quickly as I can," Clarke promised her friend, Echo nodding curtly in response and turning on her heels to hasten out of the room, all but slamming the door shut behind her.
Clarke took a slow, deep breath, centering herself as she normally did before yet another long day spent either maiming or killing innocents at the queen's every whim. Yet another day spent loathing every part of herself, despising everything about the cold and hardened soldier she'd become.
Surviving ...
Clarke quickly changed out of her loose sleep clothes, slipping on her usual form-fitting black pants with leather stitched into the knees below a black long-sleeved top that buckled in several places across her chest and over her shoulders, knife holsters stitched into the outer fabric of the forearms. She laced on her dark leather steel-toed combat boots and fastened her fur-lined and hooded navy blue cloak that dusted the floor, as much as part of her now as her own limbs.
Clarke then made her way across the room and into her bathroom, turning on the ancient faucet and bending to splash ice-cold water over her face, barely even flinching against the pain. Catching sight of her own reflection as she straightened back up, she slowed, staring into eyes that no longer looked like her own, too dulled and grey of a blue to truly belong to her anymore...
Her cheekbones were much more defined, her jawline sharper as a result of the leaner frame she now sported, muscles toned and tight as that of any warrior's should be, her hair framing her face in waves that fell past her breasts with braids and blue streaks scattered within. The tribal markings across her cheekbones and above her eyebrows had healed into rather ethereal looking white scars, as permanent as any other feature on the blonde's face now, and Clarke couldn't help the little spark of pride that flared in her chest at the sight of them.
If there's one thing she'd managed to remember from her mother's teachings when she was little, it was that scars were never supposed to be seen as ugly, unattractive, or even sad. They were a gift; a physical marking for all to see, a symbol of a person who had walked through hell all alone and had managed to emerge victorious on the other side, a person now born again - a survivor ... Clarke would wear the scars proudly for the rest of her days, just as she would the brand that remained prominent between her shoulder blades - signs of brutality survived, torment ended...
One torment ended to begin another...
Remembering the task at hand, Clarke moved back into action, striding purposefully from the bathroom to grab the multiple knives and daggers - never having been presented with an actual sword for whatever reason - from her bedside table and tuck them into the various sheathes on her person.
With that, Clarke hastily made her way from her room, clomping down the stairs of the ancient ruins she now occupied -what must've been a government building at some point. Making her way through the front door at a near-run, the frigid morning air hitting her like a tiny needles poking into exposed skin. The blonde simply huffed in annoyance, walking purposefully towards an event that could change everything for Azgeda ...
The moment Clarke burst through the back door to the queen's court, her heart nearly stopped.
Kneeling at the bottom of the steps before Nia's throne was a face the blonde hadn't seen in what felt like decades - had thought she'd never see again, frankly -, nearly unrecognizable now as blood dripped down his face in streams from a deep gash at his hairline and a long cut above his eyebrow framing a right eye almost completely swollen shut. His handsome face was now left a grotesque mask of gore, blood intermingling with sweat in the untrimmed beard he sported, his dark hair long and pulled back into a bun. He sported the dark and layered garb of the Commander's warriors, and Clarke was thrown.
It can't be...
"Jax?" Clarke rasped in disbelief, voice a harsh whisper in the weighted silence of the large room.
Several heads all whipped around at once to look at her, noticing her arrival for the first time as her voice seemed to echo off of every surface. The court was unsurprisingly sparse of people - Nia most likely having ordered everyone but her best warriors away -, and Echo was standing beside Roan towards the back of the room, two guards standing watch by the main doors and one by the back door Clarke had just entered from. Nia stood before her throne, glaring down at a kneeling Jax whose hands were tied together in front of him, a scowling Ontari pressing a dagger against his throat and holding him by the back of the neck - as if ready to slit his throat at any moment now.
At the sound of his name, Jax's one good eye had darted over to lock onto Clarke, uncomprehending at first but then lighting with a flurry of emotions that flashed through them as recognition dawned across his features. His jaw dropped open, body jolting as if physically taken aback, and he paled beneath the blood and cuts marring his features as if he were looking upon a ghost - which, as far as he knew, she was...
"C- clarke ?" he whispered, her name heavy on his tongue as if it might cause her to disappear should he say it any louder. He involuntarily moved towards the blonde, hissing loudly as Ontari's dagger immediately bit into the skin of his neck, drawing blood.
Clarke moved slowly to stand beside Nia's throne, unable to look away from Jax as the man's eye now scanned her face wildly, frantically trying to understand.
"You know this traitor, seken?" Nia spat, eyeing Clarke from the corner of her vision as her mouth turned downwards, clearly fighting off the urge to gnash her teeth.
Clarke was simply stunned, her heart rate spiking as her breaths became labored, the air around her seeming to condense and press into her skin like a tangible fog.
This can't be happening...
" You will answer me, seken! Now!!" Nia shouted, momentarily snapping Clarke out of her revery as the blonde looked to her, eyes wide and slightly apologetic. Jax was looking between the two women with a bit of understanding lighting his gaze now, lips forming a tight line as he clenched his hands into white-knuckled fists in front of him.
"I-I... His d-daughter was one of my patients back in Polis," Clarke stammered, looking desperately to Echo and Roan at the back of the court, both warriors wearing grim expressions now. Clarke couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so out of her depth...
"He's just a stable boy - "
"Just a stable boy?!" Nia cut her off incredulously, taking an aggressive step towards the blonde who remained unmoved, standing her ground and finding an odd comfort zone amidst the hostile treatment from the queen now. "Do you not see the markings on his face?! That worthless branwoda is a defector, seken - a coward who should have been strung up and slaughtered along with his useless wife many years ago!!"
At the mention of his late love, Isabella, Jax growled fiercely, jerking forward as if to launch himself at Nia but immediately halted by a blow to his throat by the end of the dagger handle from Ontari, the hit causing the man to double over in a fit of bloody coughs. Clarke stepped forward almost instinctually, brows creasing with worry as she blindly made to help the man, but she stopped herself short, swallowing thickly as she worked through her desire to go to him. She couldn't allow herself to succumb to emotions now; it would do neither herself nor Jax any good in their current situation...
"I caught him snooping around the southernmost boundary of the village, ai kwin," Ontari spoke up, clearly annoyed that such a production was being made out of all of this. "He bears no message of any kind, and he refuses to state his purpose in our territory beyond that... I say he should be hung."
"Now, let's not get too dramatic here," Roan interjected suddenly, coming forward slightly with Echo on his heels, both exceptionally apprehensive now - attempting to appeal to their queen. "We all know what will happen if you kill him, mother, and I, for one, don't fancy starting a war that we've all worked so hard to avoid up until this point over one measly traitor - "
"Enough , Roan!!" Nia cut her son off harshly, holding up her hand as if to halt their forward progress. It seemed to work, as he and Echo stopped immediately in their tracks, glancing sideways at each other to share a weighted glance.
Clarke couldn't move, couldn't think, couldn't breathe ...
This can't be happening...
"I will not tolerate such insolence in my court... This man is a scourge on the landscape of this kingdom, lesser than even the lowest of scum on this earth... He must be dealt with accordingly, and, if the Commander feels that my actions warrant her starting a war that she cannot - and will not - win, then so be it. We will be at war... Let her try to defeat me now."
Ontari was grinning maliciously as she grabbed Jax by the hair, yanking his head back to more fully expose the column of his throat as the man winced, and Clarke couldn't breathe, could barely hear anything as the blood roared relentlessly in her ears...
This isn't right... I can't just stand here and let her do this... I can't let this happen...
I refuse to let this happen.
"Stop!" Clarke called out, voice surprisingly firm, stepping closer to Nia as the woman looked over at her, eyes ablaze now. "He's innocent. They're always innocent, ai kwin . He bears no threat to us like this, and I-I can't let you do this - I can't let you kill him... I won't."
Ontari scoffed, rolling her eyes as if witnessing the petulant whining of a child to its mother. Roan and Echo were frozen, looking between Clarke and Nia as if waiting for a tether to snap. Jax was breathing harshly, good eye glued to Clarke as if silently begging her not to risk herself any further for him.
The air around them was nearly suffocating now...
Before Clarke could even realize what was happening, she was suddenly collapsed on the ground in a fetal position, crying out at the harsh sound now ringing through the air.
The bell...
It was like the sound of metal snapping bones, knives puncturing organs, women screaming for their slain children... Every evil in the world, every waking nightmare, morphing together into the high-pitched and ear-splitting keen of a single ringing bell, and Clarke was powerless against it - the impenetrable and unbeatable warrior nowhere to be found within her.
Nia bent down beside her, leaning over to whisper in Clarke's ear as she continued to ring the bell above the blonde's head, causing the girl to writhe and scream beneath her.
"Do you wish to be strung up in the center of the village again, seken? To have warriors cut into your skin with blades dipped in venom, perhaps?" Nia hissed menacingly into her ear, gripping Clarke by the throat as she writhed, digging her fingernails into the pliable skin on either side of the blonde's neck hard enough to draw blood. "Rest assured - you will be punished accordingly for this little outburst soon enough... I will not tolerate such behavior from you, Klark , and if you wish to continue fighting with two hands in the future, I suggest you quickly learn your place ... Am I understood?"
Clarke hadn't realized that the bell had stopped ringing until that moment, and all she could do was look away from the woman as Nia stood back up, nodding and fighting back bile from rising in her throat as her vision continued to swim.
How could such a merciless soldier still be so pathetic - slave to an object?!
As Clarke turned over to meet Jax's terrified gaze on her, time suddenly came to a brutal standstill, the world around her stopping mid-rotation...
T his was not her. This numb, cold, and ruthless shell of a human being...
This was not the girl who used to stand on her father's feet as he spun her around the room to the jazz music of Before, the girl who would beg random passerby in the hallways of the Ark to pose for her so that she could draw their likeness. This was not the girl who'd memorized the constellations modeled after Ancient Greek mythology for the sole purpose of rubbing her knowledge in Wells's face, the girl who used to laugh until she cried at the old re-runs of cartoons the Ark would show while curled up in between her mother and father... This was not the girl who'd landed on this planet more than a year ago, the girl who'd been dragged from her pod wreckage by two children who spoke a foreign tongue, who'd been introduced to the ways of clans and warriors that'd seemed as ancient as time, itself - who'd found a new home in the culture whose people had welcomed her with open arms and warm hearts.
This was not the girl who'd discovered a newfound sense of life and purpose on the lips of the greatest love of her existence, the purest of souls that'd provided her such comfort and solace as her mate, in whose embrace she'd have happily stayed in for the rest of her days...
This was not her...
She was Clarke Griffin, daughter of Jake and Abigail - kind, intelligent, compassionate, and true. Though an entire lifetime of blood and suffering - of murder and torment - had seemingly separated her from the person she once was, she was still Clarke ...
She was still Clarke, and she was not going to let this happen.
Time seemed to start back up as Ontari began to cut into Jax's neck, and Clarke rolled over and up onto her feet in a blur of movement.
" NO!!"
With a fierce cry ripping out of her chest, Clarke moved to grab onto the handle of the dagger sheathed on her right forearm, loosing it free and throwing it with brutal force and deadly accuracy, watching it hurtle end-over-end through the air and bury itself to the hilt in Ontari's left eye socket with a sickening crunch. The girl's body hadn't even dropped to the floor before Clarke was pivoting on her heels to face the opposite direction, loosing the other dagger on her opposite forearm and launching it through the air and into the throat of the guard a few steps behind her with such force that it knocked the man's body back and pinned him to the door.
Barely a breath later, Clarke was turning and launching herself off of the steps, breaking into a run as the two guards who'd been stationed at the main door came forward to face her. Neither of them even had the chance to grab their weapons as Clarke came at them full speed, though, the blonde immediately going for the guard on the right. When he was nearly two feet from her, she jumped mid-run, using her forward momentum to rotate her torso expertly as she brought her right leg up and around to make contact with the man's jaw with the steel-toe of her boot. His bones snapped with an audible crack at the impact of her boot as he stumbled sideways, dropping to his knees a little ways away from her as she used the opportunity to launch the smaller knife that'd been sheathed at her waist into the chest of the other guard to stop his progress towards her.
Bending to pick up the sword the first guard had dropped as she'd kicked him, Clarke moved forward as the second guard stumbled back, her knife buried to the hilt in his chest, wasting no time at all to plunge the other blade straight into the man's heart with her left hand, turning away from him immediately as his corpse collapsed into a bloody heap on the floor in front of her. Walking back to stand behind the guard who still remained kneeling a few feet from his dead companion, a dazed look on his face now, Clarke grabbed onto both sides of the man's head, staring blindly ahead of her as she snapped his neck without so much as a hint of hesitation.
She barely spared a glance at the positively stunned figures of Roan and Echo in her right periphery as she stepped over the dead guard and began stalking towards the throne, both warriors seemingly frozen now as Clarke allowed her wrath to come unleashed...
Jax had scooted towards the left wall and away from the melee, watching with an awed expression on his bloodied face as Clarke bent down to remove the dagger from Ontari's skull, never slowing in the pursuit of her target as she made her way up the steps now, eyes locked onto Nia's. Blood was roaring in her ears so loudly, the air so thick around her and her vision so tinged in red as it was, that Clarke couldn't even hear the ringing of the bell anymore - couldn't see it, either, her eyes locked solely onto Nia's like deadly beams of fury. The woman's eyes were widened with impossible fear, seemingly just as stunned as Roan and Echo in the wake of Clarke's storm of vengeance.
The blonde watched in satisfaction as the queen stumbled backwards, unaware of how close her throne had been under the weight her seken's murderous glare, and Clarke knew she had her chance.
In one fluid motion, Clarke brought her leg up to smash her knee into Nia's chest, sending the woman hurtling back into the seat of her throne, the wind knocked from her lungs with brutal force as she slammed into the wooden backrest. Synchronized with her next heartbeat, Clarke brought her left fist up and connected harshly with the woman's cheek, feeling bones snap beneath her knuckles as she immediately moved to do the same on the other side of Nia's face. Unleashing every ounce of strength she had on the queen now, Clarke whipped Nia's head from side-to-side with each punch, one-after-the-other in succession until she felt the skin of her knuckles crack and tear after a particularly ruthless blow - exactly the warrior Nia had made her to be...
Halting her movements and leaning back to admire her handiwork, breathing harshly, Clarke was maliciously pleased to see Nia's face now wholly unrecognizable, mangled and dripping blood from every orifice, the woman's right eye having been punctured on Clarke's last punch, a heartbeat barely obvious at the base of her throat. Not wanting to waste another moment, Clarke reached forward and grabbed onto the hair on the top of Nia's head, pulling the woman forward so that her lips brushed against the woman's left ear as she whispered one final message:
" Yu gonplei ste odon, ai kwin."
Moving so that her arm was fully extended where she held Nia away from her by the hair, Clarke threw the dagger up and caught it so that she had it more firmly by the handle in her left hand. The next moment, she cut straight across with the blade still covered in Ontari's black blood, decapitating the queen with one swift slash of her blade.
Clarke dropped the head immediately, stepping back as it fell to the floor in front of the throne with a sickening thud, Nia's body following not longer afterward. She simply stared down at the dagger in her left hand, watched as intermingled red and black blood dripped off the blade, the adrenaline that'd been roaring through her body now slowly washing away with every pump of new blood through her veins...
Time moved like murky water around her, the air growing thicker still with the smell of copper... Clarke was having somewhat of an out-of-body experience, coming off the peak of her adrenaline high - unseeing, unfeeling... Too much...
What did she just do?
Suddenly, the sound of slow clapping echoed through the room from behind her, and Clarke was forced back into the present instantly, whipping around to gape at a slowly-approaching Roan and Echo, the prince... applauding her now, for whatever reason..
"Bravo , Clarke," he congratulated her drily, ceasing his applause as he and Echo came to a stop beside the dark blood pooling from Ontari's body. Roan stared up at Clarke with an expression tinged in wry amusement, lips forming a hard line as he studied her, Echo seemingly unable to meet the blonde's eyes as she stared down at Nia's dismembered corpse.
"That was quite the show..."
Clarke simply gaped at him, unable to process anything as her body began to tremble a little with the after-effects of her adrenaline rush.
What had just happened?
"I was beginning to think I'd have to do it myself, if I'm being honest with you," he continued, quirking an eyebrow as he shrugged a little. "I knew you'd crack eventually, though. I've seen it building in you for weeks now... Everyone has a breaking point, it seems."
He glanced sideways at Jax, shrugging again as the other man met his gaze, eyes darting wildly between Clarke to the prince where he sat against the wall. Clarke was nearly hyperventilating now, the blood of those she'd killed covering her hands.
What had she done?
"Wh- what the hell are you talking about?" Clarke inquired flatly, fighting off the slight trembling of her voice as she swayed a little on her feet, staring into Roan's nonchalant face in grave confusion.
The prince chuckled lightly, shaking his head a little as he glanced at the carnage all around him.
"Did you really think that I planned to let my mother use you as her own personal puppet for the rest of your life?" he asked her incredulously, stepping up onto the bottom step leading to the throne, eyes never leaving Clarke's face. "Not a chance in hell... I let her have her fun with you, train you, make you into the warrior I knew you could be - but not for the reason you think..."
He stepped up to be level with Clarke now, towering over her as he continued to appraise her, voice almost clinical as he explained himself.
"You see, I planted the seed in my mother's head for a much different purpose than she believed - not because I thought that you would help make her that much more revered amongst our people... No, I made her believe that she needed you as her seken after I heard the stories of how you interacted with the people of Polis, saw the fire that burned in your eyes when you came to me in the dungeons..."
He placed a surprisingly gentle hand on her shoulder, looking down into her eyes with excitement and promise now shining in his. Clarke didn't like where this was headed...
"You are a natural-born leader, Clarke. It may as well be in your blood... And now, you will lead."
Clarke's heart plummeted, shaking her head furiously as she tried to understand...
What the hell is he talking about?
Roan's grip tightened on her shoulder, a crooked grin now spreading across his face.
"As per Azgeda compendium and old law, should the ruler of our realm take a seken at any point, that person will surpass the bloodline and become next-in-line to the throne should anything ever happen to the acting King or Queen... Well, something clearly happened, and here we are."
Clarke was stunned, still somewhat uncomprehending as she gaped at the man, floundering.
"Th-that's bullshit , Roan, and you know it," she stuttered out, eyes wildly darting between both of his, searching for any hint of a lie. "You can't possibly have known that I'd - "
Clarke cut herself off, gulping down bile as she glanced at the queen's body, still oozing thick blood. The prince simply shrugged, seemingly unbothered.
"Of course not... I couldn't possibly have planned every single thing that'd happened over this past year, but the overarching plan remained the same," Roan informed her casually, shrugging once again. "Like I said, I would've killed her myself if you hadn't taken the initiative - if only to prevent that damned war..."
"Roan is right," Echo spoke up for the first time, coming up to stand beside the prince as she looked into Clarke's eyes, emotions swirling deep within the depths of her own. "Nia was never fit to rule our kingdom. She was vile and cruel, and she never cared for anyone but herself... Roan helped me see past my blind loyalty when he saw how much your treatment bothered me, and I - " She swallowed, seemingly struggling to find the right words as she looked at Clarke with the impossible gentleness of an old friend - a sister, even...
"I believe you will make a wonderful queen, Klark ... I will stand by your side no matter what."
Echo's words stirred something deep within the blonde, and Clarke sucked in a sharp breath as tears began to prickle at the back of her eyes.
Is this really happening?
"Excellent! Now that that's settled...," Roan turned away from Clarke, clomping down the stairs and heading towards the main doors to the court with a surprisingly cheery demeanor as he stepped over the slain guards. "I'll take care of the handful of idiots still loyal to my mother, and then I'll make the announcement to the rest of the village, let it spread through the rest of the kingdom..."
Clarke's world was spinning now, Echo still watching the blonde closely as she continued to stand there, gawking after the prince, unseeing...
This can't be happening...
" Oh, and Clarke?" Roan turned around to face her once more, holding the handle of the door as another crooked grin spread across his features.
"Welcome to the ruling class."