Ground Down

Chapter 25

Lexa paced in her tent with one hand on her sword, the other on her forehead, and the skins placed on the floor slipped under every step like she was trying to walk floe to floe on a frozen lake. The radio lay silent on her table as though it were growing in her peripheral vision in sync with the speed her thoughts were spinning at and her predecessors dragged their fingernails along the inside of her skull as if to etch their urging into the bone. They had disagreed with her choice to give Skaikru three days, still disagreed with the just about 24 hours left, loudly, and that she had removed herself from her captive to get her shit back together had apparently sent them over the edge. Lexa massaged her temples. Part of her had been glad Titus had remained in Polis for reasons of being lectured, but, right then, she wished for his council. 

Anya had stayed behind in Westmount. Lexa paced the other way, reached for the cup she had left half empty on the table and let back go to prop her arms up on the wood and glower at the radio instead. Next to its plastic shell, the model of her position and her army's position and Arkadia's position spread its uniform colour out like a warning flag ochre against the night sky. She found the position of her tent among the little structures. Her predecessors wanted her captive beheaded at least and violently displayed at best. For blood-related reasons. She wanted that radio to crackle to life and shout into it that the transmission time window she had set had been over for hours. Octavia should be coming back presently. 

Lexa spun around on her heel and threw the entrance to her tent open before her guards got a chance to react. Rain splattered hard into her face, thick curtains of liquid moved by irregular gusts of wind that left them hanging over dawn promising to break like morning fog above the forest, she had to blink to adjust to the sight. Arkadia's artificial lights sat strangely mute yet bold in the distance, like a lighthouse too far off to see it turning. A picture taken with the camera moving and the motion visible on the shot because everything dragged. Down by the foot of the hill, a group of her warriors fought over a recently extinct fire, she put her arms behind her back to watch them shove and bully each other until somebody noticed her and they all suddenly got along again just fine. 

Indra positioned herself next to her with a quiet outbreath. Eager to get a break from their captive, she supposed. 

"How's Ontari?" Lexa asked, side-eyeing her mother tilting her head back for a very loud eyeroll. 

"Wet."

Matter of course, considering the weather. She supposed if she had been sitting on her butt in the icy mud-bath the ground had become for hours, she would be cranky, too. Maybe she should have allowed her mother to gag her before she had decided she needed a break. Lexa pinched the bridge of her nose. 

"Has she said anything else?" 

"No. She keeps insisting Nia sent her and that Nia will follow and that Nia cut her-" Indra let out a calming groan- "She riles the guards up."

"She is unformed." 

Her mother agreed with that with a chesty hum. 

"She is spoiled, too." Lexa narrowed her eyes at the line she could trace between the glow of Arkadia's watch towers in the distance. The electrified fence. She did not want to deal with Nia. Or Ontari. Especially not in combination. "Did Westmount get hit?" 

"The base got hit-" she nodded, put her hands behind her back in much the same fashion as her- "no casualties, the bunkers hold."

"Damage?" 

"Structural."

Lexa nodded, the weight of her shoulder guard less biting on her frame, took her eyes off the fence to cast them along as far as she could see through the rain, from fire to fire, smiled at a group of warriors using their downtime to train each other in hand-to-hand combat. A young porter watched with rapt attention. She had been young like that once, watched like that once, hands around her little wooden sword, eyes drinking in her big sisters' fluid movements and her little brain trying to comprehend and understand and store the instructions. Felt like a lifetime ago.