[ Lexa frees her people from the mountain and then rides almost directly to Polis. There is much to be done, arrangements to be made, a coalition to secure and a truce to celebrate, but if she were honest-- she's not-- she also just does not want to be there anymore.
It's a day or two after her arrival in her capitol that she learns Anya did not die in the explosion at Clarke's ship after all, but is among those freed from Mount Weather's cages. She had not thought to question her death, had just added her to the list of those she has loved and sacrificed, a list that no longer has any names un-crossed-off. (Once, Anya would have slapped her upside the head for feeling sorry for herself, but even she has not dared lay a hand on her in years. Sometimes Lexa misses it.)
The Commander does nothing so dramatic as trash her rooms or lock herself away for weeks to cry, but she is scarce when not on official business, even more reserved and tight-jawed than usual those first few days, and by the time Anya arrives and is escorted to see her there is a knife dug into her map table, little flags tipped and scattered around it like debris after an explosion. Lexa is throwing a small scroll into the fire where several others are crackling into ash, each the size of a scout's field report. Everything else is perfectly neat and in order as always.
She doesn't expect this particular visitor and so turns with a snarl in her tone as the door opens: ]
[Fragility is not a state of being that Anya knows.
She has been injured. What warrior hasn't? She has been injured badly, the kind of injured where the healer will not let you rise from your pallet. She has laid in the thin dirt and looked at her own blood turning it to a mud, and she has looked at her own bone cutting through the flesh of her arm, and she has bit down on a strap of leather while they pulled an arrow from her shoulder and poured hot sour wine over the hole left behind, stuffed it full of herbs mashed under the rocks and bound it up, clean, to leave only a puckered pale scar behind. And she felt all of these pains without crying out. Laudnes, this is something she knows well. And survival.
It isn't the injury that honors you, and it isn't the pain, and it isn't the scars to count in bed, a notch in your flesh to tell where you have been. The honor is in the survival. The living after.
But fragility is like sickness, and sickness, Anya has never worn well. Pale like a baby dipped in milk, scored and carved and spindled like all the rest. The layers of her clothes help to give her more shape, and the sword strapped to her back makes her feel filled in again, a warrior of the grounders and not a blood bag in a cage.
A warrior, she stands in the door of the heda's quarters, this warrior who was once her second. A face she knows well even under the trappings of the commander. A face that tells too much; even if Anya does not know what is written there she sees that there is something written, something Lexa thinks of. Hotly, she is thinking, and the firelight glows in her eyes.]
I will go, if it is better that I go.
[She does not smile when she says the words. There is formality in them, deference, obedience. Familiarity, too, coded deep, but not in the way she stands or the way she holds her face. It is more gaunt than she would like. She hardly recognized herself when she looked in the polished glass this morning, to paint the dark around her eyes for strength.]
Edited (im going to jump out a window) Date: 2016-02-03 09:49 pm (UTC)
[ Lexa is composing herself as she says it, finding it easier to wipe her face clean when it is surprise rather than frustration. She sets down the one little scrap of paper remaining and advances, coat swishing about her legs until she stops near enough to offer a hand in greeting, reached for her forearm. It is an unusual gesture, from the Commander, but not so strange. A common enough way to greet a comrade after long absence; the commander just doesn't have many comrades. ]
I was told you died in the fire with your warriors.
[She grips back at the commander's arm, firm and familiar. Once she threatened to cut off this arm, but that was a very long time ago, to a second who was not yet a true warrior. When she looks at Lexa now, it is not quite with pride, but something very close.]
No, commander. The Sky People closed their door to use their fire, but not before I was inside. I was taken into the Mountain with them, or I would have returned to you, to tell you of the battle. And for punishment.
[She dips her head, chin to her chest.]
My three hundred warriors were killed in our war with the Sky People. Their deaths were good. My survival has no honor.
[ Lexa's grip is firm despite the brittleness of the bones beneath her fingers. She would not dishonor Anya by acknowledging it, but she does not squeeze, just holds for a moment before releasing. Her hand lifts into the air, forestalling and dismissing this with a flick of her wrist. ]
Enough. There is no dishonor in surviving as long as you fought beside them. The Sky People had weapons we could not have anticipated.
[ She steps away then, back to her table, where she begins collecting the fallen markers into a pile in one cupped palm. ]
[She still tastes it: bitter shame, at the back of her throat. Formally, with the wave of a hand, her commander has put away the dishonor, and anyone who holds this loss against Anya can be challenged. But she will still remember it, like a wound that seeps blood inside. Three hundred or three, they were her warriors.
To Lexa, though: she nods. And she is grateful. When the commander goes to her table, she does not follow except with her eyes, watching the precise movements, the scatter of the tokens around the towering knife.]
And what comes next? Your treaty was wise and has saved many of our people's lives. The land around the Mountain was bad for hunting, and bad for living. We leave it to the Mountain Men, and what few remain of the Sky People.
[ To her supposed generosity Lexa has no reply. They were her warriors, too. She was the one who sent them, who ordered Anya to attack, who elected not to avenge those deaths.
She doesn't answer the question right away, but turns to look over her shoulder and raise her hand again, this time to the guards by the door. ] Leave us. [ They do, and the heavy doors swing shut behind them.
To Anya she adds, with a gesture toward the several chairs at sides of the table: ] Sit. [ She may be thinking of her health, but it is said like an order, not like pity. She does not join her, leaning on her palm on the table's edge instead. Her fist has closed around the pieces she collected, little yellow bits of wood peeking out between her knuckles. ]
The Mountain has fallen. [ she tells her, and her head tips slightly toward the fire, all trace of the messages she burnt gone now ] The scouts report no survivors.
[Anya sits. Because she is ordered, yes, but she is grateful too, and more grateful that her pride will keep. Sitting, she makes look easy, even if the sore ache deep in her muscles makes a protest, and it's just as the soreness eases when Lexa reveals what she knows.
For a moment, she looks as surprised as she ever does. On the edge of the chair, one hand gripped at the edge of the table. Her eyes a little wider, before they narrow. She doesn't follow Lexa's gesture toward that fire but watches her face.]
How?
Edited (SNEEZES EDITS ON YOU just kidding now i'm editing just 2 edit) Date: 2016-02-04 01:59 am (UTC)
[ How? Lexa hesitates. To see her pause and consider her words is not so strange; she is often careful, always conscious of appearances and the weight her words will be given. Now, anyway. She was not always, and is still generally looser with her tongue when in private with Anya than in most situations. But it isn't strange, that she pauses now.
What is strange is how still her face is, too still, too deliberate. This isn't what she looks like when she's angry, or pleased, or threatened. This is what she looks like when she's hiding something. Most people can't tell the difference. To most people, this is how heda always looks. Calm, self-possessed, inscrutable. Most people haven't known her since she was a child. (As much as she was ever allowed to be a child.) ]
Clarke. [ She says, tone even, word measured, all too carefully. Like she doesn't trust herself to just say it. Isn't sure what it might sound like if she did. ] Their leader. She knew of a way to-- [ This little hesitation is less suspicious, a glossing over of complicated science she only half understands herself. Things that don't matter, says the flickering movement of her fingers. ] --poison them, by letting in the air. After we made our truce, she used it to rescue her people.
[Even if Lexa was looking at Anya, she would not be looking at her. There is something else that she thinks of, something that she would hide. And if Lexa were looking at Anya, she would not see that Anya has realized this, because Anya is good at keeping her face as smooth as a still pool, when it suits her. She is the one who taught this to Lexa, who pinched her cheek when she frowned in thought.
Such a thing is unthinkable now. Anya only looks at her commander, and if she looks like one of the big cats that stalk the desolate forest places--quiet, watchful, waiting--well might Lexa know that look, on Anya. But she isn't really looking.
Clarke.]
I have met their leader. Clarke, of the Sky People. And this clever trick, that you name hers, surprises me.
[ Lexa nods, a slow and steady acknowledgment, both that of course Anya has met her and that the trick is, in some sense, surprising. But definitely what happened. She keeps her eyes on the table, drifting across the hulking shape of the mountain, jutting up to dominate the otherwise flat landscape of the map. Only the tower they sit in now is half so prominent. ]
She did what had to be done to save her people. As I did.
[ Lexa unclenches her fist enough to begin picking the little yellow markers back out, dropping them into a box at one corner of the table, the imprints lingering in her palm. She digs out other pieces (white ones, always used to denote the Ice Nation) as she adds, a shade more quietly. ]
It was not the plan she wished to follow, but our truce left her no choice.
[Between them and the Mountain, between them and the Sky People, these paths are very long. War pushes all things closer together. A truce puts back the distance, a moment of extra breath in a fight that never ends. On a map, a markers represents warriors--ten, twenty, three hundred--and it is easy to bargain with those lives, all reduced to a single token. A good commander will make these sacrifices. A great commander will see the warriors, not just the token, and make these sacrifices anyways.
All leaders know this. All commanders. It is a lesson learned hard, but a lesson learned. Lexa is looking at the tokens but she is not seeing warriors, or Ice Nation, or Mountain Men or Sky People.]
And your truce. You were left no choice.
[Too direct, too questioning. To second-guess a commander is not wise. Under the paint and carefully held features, Lexa is still Lexa, at times easy to see and at times more difficult. Anya doesn't flinch in anticipation of Lexa's reaction. Only watches, with that same quiet.]
No. No better choice. Hundreds if not thousands of our warriors would have died trying to take the mountain if I had refused their offer. And we could not be certain of success. It was not worth the risk when they could be freed without fighting.
[ Lexa says this evenly. She's had to say it before, to her generals, to ambassadors, to herself. It was the right choice. Maybe past commanders would have gone for glory, but Lexa can't value that over actual lives, not just for its own sake, not when the risks are so high. Her mission was to free her people from the mountain, and she did it. That is all that matters.
And yet here she is, leaning over the table to begin placing markers along borders and routes. Ice Nation outriders. It could be harmless. It could be the opposite. ]
We will need to meet with Skaikru's leaders. They cannot be allowed to take the mountain for themselves.
[ Lexa's nod is as spare as ever, a lowering of her chin without need for more. She doesn't quite lift it again all the way, stretching to reach across and drop another figurine into place. ] They should see it. [ She has always been proud of the capitol, of the impression it makes on those visitors-- especially dignitaries-- seeing it for the first time. The way the tower dominates the landscape, the obvious prosperity of the citizens: they do as much to remind visitors of her power as any gesture she might make herself.
As for Clarke...she isn't sure why Anya mentions her, and casts a sideways glance toward the other woman before she gives a tiny shake of her head. She turns back to the board, fiddling with trees, picking one up and turning it between her fingers. She isn't really looking at it, gaze focused on the map like she is trying to stare through it. ]
The scouts watching the Sky People have been unable to locate Clarke since the mountain. It will likely be her mother and Marcus Kane. Kane has always sought peace. If there is an obstacle to a truce it will be Abby Griffin.
From killing with fire, to forging a truce. Skaikru works quickly, and learns quickly.
[If she thinks something amiss with making a truce with the people that killed their people--Anya doesn't say it, or even hint at it. Blood might answer for blood, but what the commander says is what is done.]
And if there is an obstacle, it will be broken down, or it will be removed. This is the way.
[She trace the trajectory of Lexa's gaze in one glance. Sightless, unfocused.]
Clarke Griffin killed my three hundred warriors. She took me prisoner. When I was taken into the Mountain, she thought she could rescue me. But it was your treaty, with the Mountain Men, that saved my life. I owe that to you.
The mountain would never have offered a deal if not for her. Skaikru disabled the acid fog to allow our army into range. They destroyed the dam and opened the door. The army is mine but it was her plan.
[ Lexa stops just short of snapping the tree between her fingers and sets it back down, tossing the last few tokens back into their box. She draws herself back up straighter and crosses the room, pouring wine into a cup. She lifts a brow at Anya in silent offer, and drinks before she says: ]
They will be easier to manage without Clarke present. They will be angry, but they lack her cunning.
[Heavy food and drink has turned her stomach lately, soured in her mouth. Anya nods regardless. She will take a sip, or two, no more. She will keep doing this until her stomach no longer rejects anything she would put in it. What is weak can be made strong again.]
Then you are glad that she is lost.
[No. She isn't. Anya answers that for herself, but waits all the same.]
[ No, she isn't. Lexa busies herself pouring wine for Anya and delivering the goblet, drinking again from her own, one arm crossing beneath her chest. ]
She would have made a strong ally. She was angry when I left her at the mountain, but she would have understood. She would have done the same if they had offered the deal to her. The others are easier to mold but Clarke would have brought us more.
You do not know her. [ And Lexa did, is the implication so clear it barely qualifies for the name. ] Clarke is special.
[ It sounds how it sounds, she hears it as soon as it is too late to take the words back. She refuses to flinch from it, and instead turns to face Anya straight on, raises her chin the way she does when she knows she is about to hear something she doesn't like, and is bracing to remain calm in the face of it, daring the speaker to rile her. ]
She would understand what we're doing here. Our goal. She would have helped achieve it.
['Special'. Anya doesn't challenge that word, or question it. She takes another sip of wine and sets the goblet down on the floor, shifts back in the chair so her elbow is leaned on its arm and her chin is in her hand. Considering Lexa, narrowly, the same way she would consider a map.
It's not a challenge, but it speaks for itself, as much as the careful closed look of Lexa's face does.]
You know her.
['Know' goes right along with 'special'.]
You think you could have swayed her mind? You are convincing. You have great power. You can-- [can, aren't now, but can] --show great control. But if you know her, she knows you.
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carisma_sensei
no subject
Date: 2016-02-03 09:15 pm (UTC)It's a day or two after her arrival in her capitol that she learns Anya did not die in the explosion at Clarke's ship after all, but is among those freed from Mount Weather's cages. She had not thought to question her death, had just added her to the list of those she has loved and sacrificed, a list that no longer has any names un-crossed-off. (Once, Anya would have slapped her upside the head for feeling sorry for herself, but even she has not dared lay a hand on her in years. Sometimes Lexa misses it.)
The Commander does nothing so dramatic as trash her rooms or lock herself away for weeks to cry, but she is scarce when not on official business, even more reserved and tight-jawed than usual those first few days, and by the time Anya arrives and is escorted to see her there is a knife dug into her map table, little flags tipped and scattered around it like debris after an explosion. Lexa is throwing a small scroll into the fire where several others are crackling into ash, each the size of a scout's field report. Everything else is perfectly neat and in order as always.
She doesn't expect this particular visitor and so turns with a snarl in her tone as the door opens: ]
What?
no subject
Date: 2016-02-03 09:38 pm (UTC)She has been injured. What warrior hasn't? She has been injured badly, the kind of injured where the healer will not let you rise from your pallet. She has laid in the thin dirt and looked at her own blood turning it to a mud, and she has looked at her own bone cutting through the flesh of her arm, and she has bit down on a strap of leather while they pulled an arrow from her shoulder and poured hot sour wine over the hole left behind, stuffed it full of herbs mashed under the rocks and bound it up, clean, to leave only a puckered pale scar behind. And she felt all of these pains without crying out. Laudnes, this is something she knows well. And survival.
It isn't the injury that honors you, and it isn't the pain, and it isn't the scars to count in bed, a notch in your flesh to tell where you have been. The honor is in the survival. The living after.
But fragility is like sickness, and sickness, Anya has never worn well. Pale like a baby dipped in milk, scored and carved and spindled like all the rest. The layers of her clothes help to give her more shape, and the sword strapped to her back makes her feel filled in again, a warrior of the grounders and not a blood bag in a cage.
A warrior, she stands in the door of the heda's quarters, this warrior who was once her second. A face she knows well even under the trappings of the commander. A face that tells too much; even if Anya does not know what is written there she sees that there is something written, something Lexa thinks of. Hotly, she is thinking, and the firelight glows in her eyes.]
I will go, if it is better that I go.
[She does not smile when she says the words. There is formality in them, deference, obedience. Familiarity, too, coded deep, but not in the way she stands or the way she holds her face. It is more gaunt than she would like. She hardly recognized herself when she looked in the polished glass this morning, to paint the dark around her eyes for strength.]
no subject
Date: 2016-02-03 10:09 pm (UTC)[ Lexa is composing herself as she says it, finding it easier to wipe her face clean when it is surprise rather than frustration. She sets down the one little scrap of paper remaining and advances, coat swishing about her legs until she stops near enough to offer a hand in greeting, reached for her forearm. It is an unusual gesture, from the Commander, but not so strange. A common enough way to greet a comrade after long absence; the commander just doesn't have many comrades. ]
I was told you died in the fire with your warriors.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-03 10:34 pm (UTC)No, commander. The Sky People closed their door to use their fire, but not before I was inside. I was taken into the Mountain with them, or I would have returned to you, to tell you of the battle. And for punishment.
[She dips her head, chin to her chest.]
My three hundred warriors were killed in our war with the Sky People. Their deaths were good. My survival has no honor.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-03 10:44 pm (UTC)Enough. There is no dishonor in surviving as long as you fought beside them. The Sky People had weapons we could not have anticipated.
[ She steps away then, back to her table, where she begins collecting the fallen markers into a pile in one cupped palm. ]
You will be needed for what comes next.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-03 11:03 pm (UTC)[She still tastes it: bitter shame, at the back of her throat. Formally, with the wave of a hand, her commander has put away the dishonor, and anyone who holds this loss against Anya can be challenged. But she will still remember it, like a wound that seeps blood inside. Three hundred or three, they were her warriors.
To Lexa, though: she nods. And she is grateful. When the commander goes to her table, she does not follow except with her eyes, watching the precise movements, the scatter of the tokens around the towering knife.]
And what comes next? Your treaty was wise and has saved many of our people's lives. The land around the Mountain was bad for hunting, and bad for living. We leave it to the Mountain Men, and what few remain of the Sky People.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-03 11:17 pm (UTC)She doesn't answer the question right away, but turns to look over her shoulder and raise her hand again, this time to the guards by the door. ] Leave us. [ They do, and the heavy doors swing shut behind them.
To Anya she adds, with a gesture toward the several chairs at sides of the table: ] Sit. [ She may be thinking of her health, but it is said like an order, not like pity. She does not join her, leaning on her palm on the table's edge instead. Her fist has closed around the pieces she collected, little yellow bits of wood peeking out between her knuckles. ]
The Mountain has fallen. [ she tells her, and her head tips slightly toward the fire, all trace of the messages she burnt gone now ] The scouts report no survivors.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-04 01:58 am (UTC)For a moment, she looks as surprised as she ever does. On the edge of the chair, one hand gripped at the edge of the table. Her eyes a little wider, before they narrow. She doesn't follow Lexa's gesture toward that fire but watches her face.]
How?
no subject
Date: 2016-02-04 07:17 pm (UTC)What is strange is how still her face is, too still, too deliberate. This isn't what she looks like when she's angry, or pleased, or threatened. This is what she looks like when she's hiding something. Most people can't tell the difference. To most people, this is how heda always looks. Calm, self-possessed, inscrutable. Most people haven't known her since she was a child. (As much as she was ever allowed to be a child.) ]
Clarke. [ She says, tone even, word measured, all too carefully. Like she doesn't trust herself to just say it. Isn't sure what it might sound like if she did. ] Their leader. She knew of a way to-- [ This little hesitation is less suspicious, a glossing over of complicated science she only half understands herself. Things that don't matter, says the flickering movement of her fingers. ] --poison them, by letting in the air. After we made our truce, she used it to rescue her people.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-04 08:29 pm (UTC)Such a thing is unthinkable now. Anya only looks at her commander, and if she looks like one of the big cats that stalk the desolate forest places--quiet, watchful, waiting--well might Lexa know that look, on Anya. But she isn't really looking.
Clarke.]
I have met their leader. Clarke, of the Sky People. And this clever trick, that you name hers, surprises me.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-04 10:35 pm (UTC)She did what had to be done to save her people. As I did.
[ Lexa unclenches her fist enough to begin picking the little yellow markers back out, dropping them into a box at one corner of the table, the imprints lingering in her palm. She digs out other pieces (white ones, always used to denote the Ice Nation) as she adds, a shade more quietly. ]
It was not the plan she wished to follow, but our truce left her no choice.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-05 03:25 pm (UTC)All leaders know this. All commanders. It is a lesson learned hard, but a lesson learned. Lexa is looking at the tokens but she is not seeing warriors, or Ice Nation, or Mountain Men or Sky People.]
And your truce. You were left no choice.
[Too direct, too questioning. To second-guess a commander is not wise. Under the paint and carefully held features, Lexa is still Lexa, at times easy to see and at times more difficult. Anya doesn't flinch in anticipation of Lexa's reaction. Only watches, with that same quiet.]
no subject
Date: 2016-02-06 08:44 am (UTC)[ Lexa says this evenly. She's had to say it before, to her generals, to ambassadors, to herself. It was the right choice. Maybe past commanders would have gone for glory, but Lexa can't value that over actual lives, not just for its own sake, not when the risks are so high. Her mission was to free her people from the mountain, and she did it. That is all that matters.
And yet here she is, leaning over the table to begin placing markers along borders and routes. Ice Nation outriders. It could be harmless. It could be the opposite. ]
We will need to meet with Skaikru's leaders. They cannot be allowed to take the mountain for themselves.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-07 01:41 am (UTC)She releases her hold on the edge of the table and sits back in her chair.]
Clarke destroyed the mountain. So she will be with their leaders.
[js. Before this can be construed as anything more than just a comment, she goes on:]
You will invite them here, to Polis?
no subject
Date: 2016-02-07 02:33 am (UTC)As for Clarke...she isn't sure why Anya mentions her, and casts a sideways glance toward the other woman before she gives a tiny shake of her head. She turns back to the board, fiddling with trees, picking one up and turning it between her fingers. She isn't really looking at it, gaze focused on the map like she is trying to stare through it. ]
The scouts watching the Sky People have been unable to locate Clarke since the mountain. It will likely be her mother and Marcus Kane. Kane has always sought peace. If there is an obstacle to a truce it will be Abby Griffin.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-07 06:12 am (UTC)[If she thinks something amiss with making a truce with the people that killed their people--Anya doesn't say it, or even hint at it. Blood might answer for blood, but what the commander says is what is done.]
And if there is an obstacle, it will be broken down, or it will be removed. This is the way.
[She trace the trajectory of Lexa's gaze in one glance. Sightless, unfocused.]
Clarke Griffin killed my three hundred warriors. She took me prisoner. When I was taken into the Mountain, she thought she could rescue me. But it was your treaty, with the Mountain Men, that saved my life. I owe that to you.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-07 06:35 am (UTC)[ Lexa stops just short of snapping the tree between her fingers and sets it back down, tossing the last few tokens back into their box. She draws herself back up straighter and crosses the room, pouring wine into a cup. She lifts a brow at Anya in silent offer, and drinks before she says: ]
They will be easier to manage without Clarke present. They will be angry, but they lack her cunning.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-07 04:20 pm (UTC)Then you are glad that she is lost.
[No. She isn't. Anya answers that for herself, but waits all the same.]
no subject
Date: 2016-02-07 06:14 pm (UTC)She would have made a strong ally. She was angry when I left her at the mountain, but she would have understood. She would have done the same if they had offered the deal to her. The others are easier to mold but Clarke would have brought us more.
[ And she's much prettier. ]
no subject
Date: 2016-02-08 12:44 am (UTC)More?
[Another sip. She still doesn't set the goblet down.]
She is clever, and she has cunning. And she is willing to make sacrifice. But I would not take her with me, in battle, and I would not trust her.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-08 03:07 am (UTC)[ It sounds how it sounds, she hears it as soon as it is too late to take the words back. She refuses to flinch from it, and instead turns to face Anya straight on, raises her chin the way she does when she knows she is about to hear something she doesn't like, and is bracing to remain calm in the face of it, daring the speaker to rile her. ]
She would understand what we're doing here. Our goal. She would have helped achieve it.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-08 02:58 pm (UTC)It's not a challenge, but it speaks for itself, as much as the careful closed look of Lexa's face does.]
You know her.
['Know' goes right along with 'special'.]
You think you could have swayed her mind? You are convincing. You have great power. You can-- [can, aren't now, but can] --show great control. But if you know her, she knows you.