Chapter Text
Most people like to think that when you walk away from something or someone, that someone will come looking for you.
When you live in space in a metal tin can, there is nowhere you could go to get away.
But Earth is a big planet, which is good, if you don’t want to be found.
The mountain, like it had done at her hands, had fallen off the pages of Clarke's mind. Maybe she pushed it off. She did not know. She only knew that her soul had been stripped to the core again and again and again. It had started with her father being floated and discovering her mother had been the one to turn him in. It continued with Well's murder, Charlotte's suicide, killing 300 grounders, Finn's murder spree, executing Finn, and then was followed by just allowing a missile to fall on Tondc and then killing 300 mountain men, women and children.
It took its toll, finally. It ripped away any emotion she had left. The result of having your emotion ripped out of you wasn't like walking in a dream as some would think. It wasn't like watching yourself through someone else's eyes either. It was like being dropped into a void that held onto you and filled your chest with nothing instead of with breath. It held onto you and the motions of living were easier to make, even alone in a forest. They became routine, a pattern, a comfort and a safe place where you finally noticed two contradicting things about time. The first was that it seemed to stop. The second was how fast it seemed to speed by. Days out here could pass in the blink of an eye. Turning to weeks, turning to months.
She hunted in her forest. Stepping quietly now over cold, frozen, yet familiar, ground. No longer thrashing aside branches and making noise. She stopped and pressed her back to the bark of a tree when she finally spotted her prey, a large buck stripping bark from the base of the trees. Clarke held her breath. To save bullets she had become okay -yet not terribly skilled- with a bow. At least enough to feed herself. Quietly, watching the deer, she reached over her back for an arrow.
Did she miss the people back at Camp Jaha?
When she thought of them, it was like part of a distant past. She knew they were there. She knew she loved them. But they seemed more like pages from a cherished book that she remembered but lost somewhere along the path that brought her to where she was in life. Did she care about what Lexa did at the mountain?
No.
Not in the sense that some might have thought.
When first left her standing there, the pain was unbearable. Maybe that was when she finally started to break. She had put everything on the line for that treaty. She had killed for that treaty. She had let people die. But at the time it happened, she didn’t have time to dwell on the betrayal. She had to act, to save her friends in the mountain.
And after, during the first few days out here alone on Earth, amazingly enough, Clarke didn’t even think about what Lexa did. She didn't think about it because she had greater scars by then to carry and she knew deep inside that, just like she had done inside that mountain, Lexa also did what she had to do. Clarke had seen it after all, hadn't she, in the events leading up to what happened at the mountain; Lexa told her she had let the woman whom killed her lover to live, for the greater good of her people. Lexa had let a missile land on one of her own villages, for the greater good of her people. So why, for one minute, should she have thought that Lexa might have chosen differently with her? Was she that special?
The answer was a resounding no.
And in hindsight she should have seen it coming.
The answer was also that she should not have been so blindsided by her desperation to save her friends as to trust the girl whom had once ordered her dead and also her friends dead without even batting one beautiful green eye.
But she couldn’t blame Lexa. She couldn’t even blame herself.
Like Lexa had no choice but to turn on her, Clarke also had no choice in the beginning but to trust and listen to the grounder Commander and to try and make it work between their people. Because even if they had done it without her, Clarke never would have been able to come up with the choice she had made in that mountain without Lexa. The possibility she could do it was never on radar. It wasn’t there until it had to be.
But she wasn’t going to thank Lexa for walking away, either. There was just no way she could do that. In fact, in a different sense, she had walked away too.
And right now, for dinner tonight, she was going to have that deer.
Clarke focused on it. She pulled back the arrow and --
--a dark skinned hand wrapped around the wooden shaft. Clark blinked only once and that was the sum of displaying her surprise.
“Don’t make a sound.” Indra’s voice, whispered, just at her ear. Clark would have expected to feel her heart start to race. She would have expected something. But the muscle in her chest knew only how to beat out enough blood to keep her alive anymore and that was all. She glanced at Indra’s eyes, beside her, so close to her face. She glanced ahead again to where the deer sensed them and bolted. Clarke lowered her bow in frustration and turned to the General to glare at her, “why?” she asked, not caring about the warning.
Indra, just stayed locked as she was. After a second she said, “you will come with me.”
“No,” Clark said to her, “I don’t take orders from you. I don’t take orders from anyone.” It had been ..two months? Maybe? Since she had walked away. This was the first she’d seen anyone from her life back then. And it figured it would be Inda, “what the hell are you even out here for? Don’t you have people to push around?”
“I’m looking for you.” Indra replied, “now, come with me.”
“Why should I?” Clarke demanded.
“Because if you don’t, Lexa dies.” Indra answered.
And the words slammed into Clarke like bricks. She didn’t understand what she was hearing. She could not have. She asked in confusion, “what?”
“If you don’t come with me right now,” Indra repeated, “Lexa dies.”
Clarke found her voice, "why do you think I care?"
In return, Indra just gave her that hard, cold look she was used to seeing on the General's face. The look that challenged her to lie and say she did not.
Clarke wished she could lie, as she stared back. But even the mention of Lexa's name had made her heart do something other than pump blood. It twisted. It turned. It beat like it only ever did for the girl that was both her greatest enemy and greatest ally but also the only one who understood who she was. It beat like it only did for the girl whom she both hated, and part of her, somewhere, knew she might have started to love. It beat like it did only for the girl whom had promised everything to her right before ripping it all away from her. It beat like it did for the only one whom ever made her feel like she was really and truly alive.
It struck her then that Indra, one of Lexa’s most trusted generals, was actually referring to her Heda by her first name. Indra never did that. A quiver, a tiny shake, of dread and anticipation started to work its way up Clarke’s frozen, empty frame as she realized she had heard Indra right the first time. Licking lips that had gone dry was a mistake; because it made her remember that fateful kiss she’d shared with the commander like a burst of light so blindingly white that it burned. But of course it would because that moment was seared forever in her memory as hope for a future that could never be had, by them, or by their people. Clark finally asked, “why?”
“She is a traitor.”
Traitor. Clarke’s mouth silently formed the word. The grounder’s had another word for it, “Natrona?”
“Yes.” Indra grunted, “at least you learned well.”
Clark snorted in dry amusement. She studied Indra, “how could she be a traitor? Which one of you thought that one out?” she asked, because while she could come up with a lot of names for the grounder’s Commander – traitor was not one of them. But when she didn’t get any answer except for Indra’s signature icy glare Clarke changed her question, “okay who then? Who would be dumb enough to try and kill Lexa?”
“Me.” Indra answered bitterly. That set Clarke back, because she hadn’t been expecting it. Indra saw the shock and lifted her chin a little before adding, “and the rest of the Commander’s Generals.”
Clarke felt her eyes narrow on Indra, “why?” she demanded under her breath. It wasn’t making any sense, “you guys worship the ground she walks on.”
Indra stared at her for several seconds after that, “not anymore.” She said at last. She scanned the trees around them and looked back at Clarke, “and we’ve said too much in the open, out here. Come with me Clarke of the Sky People,” Indra took a single, and Clarke guessed final, step toward her, “now.”
“Okay.” Clarke answered, shouldering her bow. She agreed because of that damned kiss, because of Lexa's stunning eyes, because of so many things but mostly because of the aching tug of fear starting in her chest at thinking of Lexa actually being dead. The grounder general started away and Clarke started after her. They hadn’t gone far, swiftly and quietly through the frosted over trees, stepping on stones and exposed branches to not leave footprints, before they came to a pair of horses by a stream. Clarke stopped only at the sight of them, and watched as Indra swung up onto her Horse. She looked across at Clarke in near exasperation and glanced at the other horse beside hers, “you still know how to ride?”
“Yes.” Clarke stated, and moved quickly and got on the Horse.
Indra nodded at her, then turned her animal around. She took off through the trees. The horse Clarke was on followed impulsively at a breakneck pace after Indra’s. And all Clarke could do, was just hang on. She wasn't ready to feel again. She really just was not. But why else was she on this horse? Riding to save Lexa? Because it was Lexa. No matter how much she had conflicting thoughts about that, no matter how wrong or right it was. It was like a force of nature they were always pulled together or pushed apart. It was nothing they had control of. From the second they had met it was nothing they could stop. And she felt the pull.
Clarke did not want to feel it. She didn't want to feel anything. But with only those few words uttered from Indra, she knew she already was.