Malus offers to bring them along to Prison Station with the food, but Lexa declines. She doesn't want them to look like they have a crowd of people helping them – the plan is for them to stagger, bedraggled and weak, into the village. Presentation matters. So instead, they go as a small, huddled group, while the others remain in the village. Lexa is well aware that Anya, Linkon and Zion are all unhappy with this, but it cannot be helped.
"You know, after we're done with Prison Station, I'm burning these," Octavia says darkly, plucking at the Skaikru clothes she's wearing. "I already burned the ones I had to wear into Mount Weather. Why do all these plans involve me dressing up like we're still on the Ark?"
"Hey, you didn't have to come," Raven points out. Just like the rest of them, she's smeared in dirt and shivering. Lexa wants them to look as pathetic and powerless as they can.
"According to Malus' directions, we will get there soon," Lexa says quietly. "John, walk in front. Remember, you will do most of the speaking. Make it clear this was your idea." This is for two reasons – firstly, John has the best reason for wanting to be here, to be with his father. Secondly, because John is the one Lexa wants Diana to be watching closely. The rest of them need to be able to move around more freely.
It is odd to walk into a little Azgeda village and suddenly have guns pointed at them. Lexa raises her hands, widening her eyes and letting out a little whimper. There are also several Azgeda gona, raising spears and swords.
"Hey!" John steps forward, his scowl deepening. "My name's John, John Mbege, I'm from the Ark. I was part of the original 100 who got sent down. I'm here to see my father -"
"John?" a deep voice comes from behind them. Turning, Lexa sees a man lower his gun, his face splitting into a smile. He looks a little like John but with a couple of noticeable differences, one being his dark eyes where John has green. Another is that he looks like someone who smiles often, laugh lines etched deeply into his face, unlike his gloomy son. "John!" He moves forward and embraces John, who stiffens slightly as soon as they are touching. "I thought you were dead! Oh, it's so good to see you again, my son, my boy -"
A blonde woman steps out from a nearby house. "Mbege," she snaps, flicking back a strand of hair from her face and narrowing her eyes at the group. "Get back."
After a second, he obeys, taking two steps back, but he looks at her like she's crazy. "This is my son," he says, clapping John on the shoulder. John flinches at the touch again and Lexa forms her own conclusions about their estrangement. "Chancellor, I thought I'd never see him again."
"I thought I'd never see anyone from the rest of the Ark again," Diana Sydney comments, hazel eyes evaluating them one by one coolly. "Aren't you Raven Reyes? I'm surprised to see you without Abby Griffin, I thought the two of you were partners in crime."
Raven shrugs, face sour. "That was while we wanted the same thing, to get down here." She spits on the ground. "Now we're down. She's part of the Council and I'm just a junior mechanic. Stuck working eighteen hours a day in return for enough food not to starve."
"When I told her I was getting the hell out of Arkadia and coming to find our people, she asked to come with me straight away," John tells Diana. He gestures to Octavia. "Octavia came because she didn't want to be trapped in Arkadia anymore."
"I lived all my life in one cell or another," Octavia says fiercely. "I'm sick of that. Being surrounded by hundreds of people who don't let you go anywhere... I was done with it."
Diana looks at her. "You're the Blake girl," she muses. "Your brother betrayed me, you know."
Octavia shrugged. "Actually he didn't. He told me all he said is Shumway gave him the gun. According to Clarke, the Council knew straight away you had to be behind it. Then later on I found out that was bullshit, too. Jaha set it up, had Clarke accuse you. I'm sick of their fucking game playing." She touches the still-livid scars on her face with a hand that shakes. "Their games haven't brought me anything but pain."
"And you brought a native," Diana observes coolly, her eyes sliding to Lexa, who shrinks under her gaze.
"Moba," Lexa says weakly, bowing. "Ai – ai – sorry -"
"Her English isn't great," John talks over her, as planned. "Name's Saska. She helped guide us here."
Diana looks at Lexa. "And why would she do that?"
"Her people think she's weak or something," Raven says angrily, pulling Lexa upright and wrapping a protective arm around her. "Just because she didn't want to go charging into Mount Weather. Let's be honest, no one wanted to go in there, but just because she said that, her boss guy -"
"Fos," Lexa says very quietly.
"Right, her First or whatever. He kicked her out," Raven says, looking at Lexa affectionately.
One of the guys with guns chuckles, and not in a nice way. "You become a grounder pounder, Reyes? And here I thought you were all about the Spacewalker."
"Oh, screw you, Hogan," Raven growls, pushing slightly away from Lexa.
"No, come on," the guy called Hogan says. "You visited him every time you could, and I remember some of those visits getting pretty conjugal." Raven flushes as the guards around snicker. Hogan grins, clearly pleased with himself, and spreads his arms melodramatically. "So where is your Spacewalker now?"
"Screwing someone else," Raven spits out the words furiously. "Thanks for reminding me." The hurt in her voice is very real. "And if you mention Finn to me again, I will rip out your -"
"Enough," Diana Sydney says coldly, and Raven subsides. Diana eyes her. "I suppose your defection makes more sense now," she comments. "Abandoned by someone you risked everything for." Lexa gets the feeling that she's just drawing out the moment because she enjoys Raven's humiliation about Finn. She had no reason to like Diana Sydney to start with, but her petty enjoyment of Raven's pain makes Lexa's dislike grow quickly.
"We came because we were sick of working our asses off so Kane and the others could schmooze with the Grounders and pretend to be royalty," John says, his face darkening with anger. He doesn't seem to be warming to Diana either. "You always used to promise you'd help working people. That's us. We're a package deal, though, all of us, we promised to stick together. Reyes is pretty good with tech crap, I can use a gun, Blake's willing to do whatever, and Saska just wants to not be an outcast anymore. We'll work, just so long as we get treated right. We were hoping you'd treat us right."
Diana's gaze falls on Raven again. There's no doubt which one of them she wants most. Lexa realises that means that they can't have figured out the nuclear missile yet, and feels relief roll through her body. Then Diana's gaze moves to John and his father. Lexa thinks she can read her emotions there as well – she doesn't want to alienate one of her guards by sending away his son. Diana doesn't bother to look at Octavia or Lexa, though, apparently deeming them irrelevant.
Good.
Diana smiles, and Lexa thinks it's her attempt to seem warm. "Of course you can all stay. The Grounder girl might be more comfortable in one of the villages around here, but if you're a 'package deal', then I'm not going to refuse sanctuary to some of my own people just because they've made a strange friend."
"They can stay with me, Chancellor," John's father says eagerly, turning his beaming face on them. "Since my house is one of the largest. At least until we find somewhere else for the girls to sleep. It's amazing to have my son back after so long." He cups John's face in both hands and looks into it. "You still have your mother's eyes, boy," he says, tears in his own eyes.
John flinches at the mention of his mother. "Yeah," he says gruffly, trying to move his face away. "Eyes don't exactly change."
For a second there's a flicker of pure anger in his father's expression, and his hands tighten on John's face so that the boy lets out a little huff of pain. Then Mbege lets go and smiles again. "I suppose not," he says cheerfully. "Come on, then. Is that all you have? Oh, you must be freezing, poor things." He continues to chatter warmly as he leads them to the house he's in, but as charming and welcoming as he is, Lexa can't forget that moment of rage he showed. She tags along behind the others.
That night they 'settle in', as Mbege calls it. They have an expansive meal of meat and Azgeda plants. An Ice Nation woman from a different village than Iryala's enters once, to replenish the stock of wood for the fire and give them some warm furs, but otherwise they just get to listen to Mbege's chatter until they're sent to bed shortly after it gets dark outside.
"You need rest," he says paternally, surveying them, and then guides them all into separate rooms. Lexa's is the smallest, and the only one without an actual bed, just a heap of furs on the floor. Perhaps he thinks she'll be most comfortable there, though surely he can't believe that Grounders simply do not have beds, given he's sleeping in a bed that belongs to one of her people.
Lexa finds the house unnerving. She has stayed in other's houses before, of course – as Heda, quite frequently one of the houses in a village will be cleared out for her when she visits. Generally the occupants have volunteered to do this, though, and even consider it an honour. She always thanks them, as well. Sometimes when she can she even leaves a waterskin of good fayowada, a nice dagger, a pretty carving, or a small basket of food from another part of the country. Not as payment, simply as a display of gratitude. The Commander does not live off her people – she lives for them. To be staying in a house that was stolen from the family who built it makes her uncomfortable.
But they are here to get it back for them, she reminds herself. Once they have taken the missile back, Nia will not protect the Skaikru anymore. She will not care if they live or die. In her eyes, they will have failed her utterly with their incompetence. Of course, now that she knows Nia did not trust Prison Station enough for them to know her location – if she did, she would not have left some of her gona here – the first step is to take out the radio . That way, the gona Nia left here will need to find her to tell her that the missile has been taken.
They will not be careful with their trail, because they know the Skaikru cannot track them. But they must know Nia's location, since they are her most trusted people – they would have to be trusted, to have been left with the missile, to be entrusted with guarding it and learning its secrets from the Skaikru. So they will know where Nia is, and they will go there, and Lexa will follow them. However she can.
And she will find Clarke.