Lightning Only Strikes Once - Clexa

Chapter 105: Worst Hike Ever

Clarke stumbles forward until she can't pull Lincoln's stretcher any further – Assan must have dropped his side – and then she turns to see what's happening.

What meets her eyes is pure chaos. Assan and Lexa are slashing at the closest gona, the ones who made it across, taking advantage of their surprise. The gona seem to have given up trying to keep them alive and are fighting for their lives and losing. Behind them their comrades scream to each other and to themselves and to the sky. Some of those in the water thrash uselessly but are dragged down in moments, while others just sink immediately, paralysed by the cold and weighed down by weapons, armour and soaked clothing. Some were lucky enough to be on stronger parts of the ice, but most of these were still knocked over as the ice cracked – and the cracks are still spreading as desperate gona try and yank themselves onto the intact parts. A few are frantically trying to reach shore before all of the ice gives way. The cracks aren't just between where the bombs were but instead branch off like lightning to head towards the weakest parts. At this point the lake is a series of ice islands barely managing to stay together in the frigid water.

"Help them," Raven bellows to be heard over the screams. She limps towards Clarke, eyes fierce and snapping, then pushes Clarke aside to grab onto the stretcher. "Now! I'll deal with Lincoln!" She leans against the weight of it. For a second Clarke thinks she won't be able to shift it at all – Lincoln weighs quite a bit, and she's pulling up a hill – but then she manages to drag it an inch and just keeps pulling.

Clarke joins the fight against the gona staggering up the side of the lakeshore by cutting one's throat, splattering herself with his blood. The next one is soaked and freezing – it's no effort at all to stab him in the stomach and move to the next.

Seeing them up close, Clarke notices that few of them are wearing even as much clothing as Assan is – because he's from the very north, she realises, used to this climate. He owns clothes specifically designed for the coldest of the cold, the clothes they're all wearing right now. Because the gona are from all around Azgeda territory, some don't have the same warm clothing. Most look underfed due to the food shortages. Some are clearly village hunters, if that, and don't know how to use their weapons, as if they've had even less training than Clarke.

Very few make it to the shore. Many of the ones that do are so frozen by the water and out of it that stabbing them feels more like saving them from a slow death by hypothermia. Others don't even try to attack but just crawl or stagger away to the sides, trying to hide from the people who used to be their quarry.

Something about it makes Clarke cold. It's a success for them, a resounding one, but at the end of the day all these people were doing was obeying their leader. Some are warriors, but most are just villagers, and she's sure they wish they were at home with their families instead of called up to scour the Azgeda territories and journey to the frozen north at Nia's order. Their culture values loyalty so highly that the majority of them probably never even realised there was a choice. They're dying, coldly and painfully, for a woman who will care less about their deaths than about their failure.

What's her death count up to now? How many hundreds of people just died?

Soon the attack stops – everyone's drowned, or frozen, or run. Lexa and Assan disappear silently to scout the sides, see how close the others are, check if they're being hunted or if the enemy has too many injured and dead to mount any kind of search.

Clarke can't help them. She feels exhaustion swamp over her, a numb tiredness that nearly blocks out the bone-deep cold. The dead are ugly, somehow unreal, piles of corpses like broken dolls, bodies littering the water impossibly still and silent. There's almost no blood, since what little was shed has already frozen into hard scabs. Somehow that makes it less real but more disturbing.

"Clarke," Lexa's beside her, suddenly, voice impossibly soft. "Ai hodnes, it is done, it is over. They are focusing on their injured, but many still remain. We must use the time we have been given to get as far ahead as we can."

Clarke blinks at her, unable to really focus. The last gona she stabbed must have been a Seken, he looked young, horrifyingly young. His body is nearly blue with the cold. From the look of his clothes, he was from the south, he probably never expected to go north, never expected to die like this. "Em gonplei ste odon," she murmurs.

"Clarke," Lexa says, more insistently. "They are helping their injured. We must do the same. Linkon needs you. Come on, Clarke."

This time it gets through to Clarke, as Lexa must have known it would. She has a patient. She has to help her patient.

She staggers over to Lincoln. He's half-awake and still hazy and unfocused from the sedative Clarke gave him, pale under his dark skin from the blood loss and pain. He's on his front on the stretcher since most of his injuries were on his back. Raven's beside him, holding his hand, speaking to him in a low voice. From the anguish on her face Clarke knows exactly what Raven's saying.

Lincoln looks up when Clarke crouches beside him as well. He manages a smile. "So you have saved me again, Clarke kom Skaikru."

She smiles back, but it feels brittle and fake. "For the moment, anyway."

"I am starting to believe Sky People are especially dangerous to you, Linkon," Lexa comments.

"Sha," Linkon says. As Clarke and Raven watch, horrified, he detaches his hand from Raven's and holds it out to Lexa, who helps pull him up to his feet. Judging by his wince, it's reasonably painful. "But my first injury helped us to make the first alliance between Trikru and Skaikru, when I brought Clarke kom Skaikru to you. If my second saved the life of Raven kom Skaikru, so she can help to bring down Nia, then I consider every scar worthwhile. Octavia admires scars, you know."

"Lincoln -" Raven says uncertainly. "I did say -"

"That you are worried there will be no return trip," Lincoln says, admirably composed. For a second, sad resignation shows in his eyes, but he quickly banishes it. "But if we do not come back, then when our people come to find our bodies – as they must, since they will need to find the Flame – well, then she will know. If I could erase all of this and return to her, I would not. At least I will die for a reason, a cause. I will die doing what is right. Octavia will have that to comfort her."

Clarke wants to tell him that knowing that is very cold comfort, that it doesn't make the pain sting less, but she would be lying. Immediately after the loss it doesn't matter, of course, but months later – well, months later, you look back and feel a small twinge of warmth along with all the pain, and pride and love chokes you for a moment. Senseless deaths are the hardest to survive.

"You probably shouldn't be walking," she says instead. "You're still quite injured -"

"I can manage," he assures her.

"Assan," Lexa says, as the Azgeda man appears. "Many survivors to the east?"

He shakes his head. "Very few," he reports. "And no signs of Zion kom Azgeda or Gustus kom Trikru. Perhaps they were caught by the explosion."

"Unlikely," Lexa says crisply, even as Raven pales and opens her mouth. "They can move much quicker than we can. If they did not realise we were also on the ice, they probably believe the plan went as originally intended. They will be to the north. We should head north as well. If we can reach Nia before any of the survivors, we may be able to surprise her – provided they do not still have the radio. How far is her hideout from here?" She directs the question at Clarke.

Clarke struggles to remember the time spent racing through the whirling snow, Gustus next to her on Snowball, pulled along by Roan. It had been – what, a couple of hours, maybe? But they're not going to be able to move nearly as quickly. "Maybe four hours' walk," she says hesitantly.

Concern flashes in Lexa's green eyes, but she simply says, "Then we should get going."