Lexa stands as she straight as she can. Every part of her hurts. She cannot feel her feet or hands, and it is not from the cold. Nightbloods heal faster, but no one can heal quickly from being run through: she's not even sure anyone can survive it. It is a miracle of the spirit that she is breathing, let alone standing, but she will stand straight as long as this miracle lasts. "Has Nia's body been recovered?"
"Sha," the scout in front of her whispers. Then he clears his throat and repeats it, nearly at the same level. "Sha, Heda." He cowers from her whenever she moves, as if terrified by her very breathing, but strangely at the same time seems to try and press as close to her as he can, bowed down as he is before her. Like someone reaching out their frozen hands to warm them on the fire but afraid of being burnt by the fierceness of it.
"Good," Lexa says. Her side screams with agony as she raises her left hand to dismiss him, but she doesn't allow herself to flinch, even when she feels her wound start to reopen. She can't raise her hand above her waist, has not been able to since Assan stabbed her, but it's important that she looks like she can. She is surrounded by gona who only a few weeks ago were her sworn enemies. She cannot allow herself to show any weakness. At the moment, they fear her more than they ever have – her apparent resurrection has caused them to believe her all-powerful. But they will soon realise that the woman they considered divine, Nia, turned out to be nothing more than mortal, and that Lexa might be the same.
Any one of them could decide to try and take control while the situation is still fluid. There only needs to be one fool who does not approve of her decision to name the absent Roan ruler, and their position of safety will become a battlefield.
She glances sideways at Linkon, standing next to her impassively. Well, perhaps it would take more than one fool. But she still does not remotely believe that every gona in this army marched north with Wells because they wanted to improve the lives of their nation. Some will have done this to grab a position of power, or to find weaponry in Nia's stronghold, or even just to steal food. Lexa is willing to bet at least a hundred deserted on the way north with as much food as they could carry, returning to their families and bargaining that no one would remember them in the upheaval, not caring if the gona remaining in Polis were killed when the mission failed.
She is also willing to bet that if they did, Wells never pursued any of them, and perhaps never even realised they were gone. Skaikru are used to consistent food – not a lot of food, but a consistent amount of it. They were fed on the Ark, and have still been regularly fed since they fell to earth. It would not occur to Wells that the food they were carrying would be a worthy reason to risk the revenge of whichever group won the war.
They should return the same way, then, and see if they can discover any who took food and ran. The food must be distributed to those who need it. "Linkon," she says out loud, voice rough.
"Sha?"
"Find the leader of the gona and tell him. We must find deserters on the way back. They should not receive the usual punishment, I think, because they did not harm Wells or our cause. But we cannot allow them to think stealing and desertion has no cost."
Linkon nods. This is probably the tenth thing she has asked him to do for her, and she feels a pang of guilt because he is also injured. Lexa herself can barely stand between the pain and blood loss, but she needs to handle all of this. She needs to do everything she can to ensure that the gonakru do not turn against them while Abby and the others try to revive Clarke. Lexa needs to keep them distracted and busy.
Lexa needs to keep herself distracted and busy. On the way down the mountain she had barely felt her wound even as it bled and bled, too distracted by Clarke's pale and motionless form. If Clarke has died while she lives, none of this has been worth it. She cannot exist in a world without Clarke. She will not. If Clarke is dead, she will tell Linkon to return the Flame to Aden.
"We must locate Gustus," she decides abruptly, mind flinching away from the thought of Clarke's death and settling on other things. Gustus will be able to help Linkon protect Clarke's mother and friends on the way south, and will protect Aden after that. "Gustus and Zion."
She turns to the nearest Azgeda guard now that Linkon is not here to take her orders. Many of them have stayed around her, far enough not to hear what she says but close enough to stare at her with that same strange fearful yet worshipful expression. Most are hunched, half bowed, and some are even completely on the ground, their foreheads nearly pressed against the snow in veneration. This one has come closer than most dare to, but is bowed the lowest, perhaps to show he is no threat. "Have one hundred gona gather wood," she says, loudly enough for him to hear.
He stays bowed before her, trembling, and then crawls forward quickly along the ground to press his forehead to the top of her left boot for half a second, shocking Lexa into immobility. As Heda, she is respected, feared, the commander of many, but an act of such naked and abject reverence is unusual. Then he scuttles backwards as fast as he can, still pressing his forehead nearly to the icy ground.
"Go now," she commands, and he flees towards the main encampment as Linkon reappears beside her. She can hear him calling out. "What is the fool saying?" she asks, quietly enough for none of the unnervingly silent, bowed gona around her to hear.
Linkon tilts his head to the side and listens. "It appears to be... 'she touched me. The Commander touched me. My skin is holy now.'" His lip quirks.
"I see," Lexa says wryly. Another rip of pain makes her gasp and she automatically moves her right hand to her wound. She stops herself just before she touches it, and clears her throat. Linkon politely ignores her moment of weakness. "They seem to have transferred their worship of the Azplana to me," she guesses, trying not to let on even to Linkon that their actions have deeply unsettled her. The greedy pull of their eyes, the naked fear and reverence they show – it makes her uncomfortable, somehow.
"No, Heda," Linkon says, possibly the first time he's openly disagreed with her. "This is an entirely new worship, I think. They believe you were killed in Polis, then killed again here, and came back to life both times. They have heard Trikru legends that the Commander is immortal – I think now they believe them."
"I see," Lexa says again, more thoughtfully. She closes her eyes for a moment. The world is moving in and out of focus. Her wound is bleeding again. Who knew that she had blood left? Black blood stains the snow in Iryala's village, stains the floor of Roan's cave, stains the passages of Nia's castle. Black blood stains Clarke's sash. Black blood stains the backs of her eyes when she closes them and when she breathes it almost feels like black blood is choking her with the weight of pain and fear she cannot let go of. She should be bleeding red, with Wells' warm red blood in her, but perhaps the coldness stabbed through her shoulder turns anything inside her dark.
"Heda? Heda!" Linkon moves to catch her and pull her upright before she falls. "You need to sit, to rest," he says, quietly enough that there is no chance the watching gona can hear. She leans heavily on him and tries to persuade herself to push away and stand straight again. "That wound – it would end most gona's fights. It is not surface, like the injuries on my back, and even after those I required several hours to be able to stand again. If you keep moving about -" he cuts himself off.
"Lexa?" Abby says, appearing beside her as well. She glares at the snow like the cold personally offends her. "Clarke wants to speak to you."
"Clarke?" Lexa says numbly. "Clarke is – Clarke is alive? Awake?" She moves away from Linkon and heads for the tent Clarke is in. He catches up to her after a second and takes her arm, helping her to stay upright and walk straight.
"Lexa!" Clarke starts to struggle off the thin mattress she is lying on, but before she can Lexa falls to her knees and collapses into her niron's arms.
"Ai hodnes," Lexa says, but her throat seems filled with gravel and she knows it's barely comprehensible. "Ai hodnes..." She presses her face into Clarke's shoulder. And finally gives in fully, as she has been wanting to for more than a month, ever since Clarke was taken from her and she did not know if she would ever get her back. Ever since she was casually handed a dark, silken braid, ever since her worst nightmares took form, ever since she realised fully and awfully that Nia was alive and that Nia could still find things to take from her. The feelings that grew as she held Costia's bow, as she realised she had Clarke back but two armies hunted them, as she began to believe that there was no way out alive.
Lexa cries.
It is not like the tears she has cried before, leaving little tracks of moisture down her face, restrained and simple. This is as much like those as an explosion is like a campfire. This is as if she is destructing from the inside. Her body shudders with the force of her sobs, and she can hear the weak, awful noises she is making as her eyes burn with a seemingly endless flood of tears. Clarke strokes her hair and she sobs because Clarke is here, and Clarke is alive, and it seems they get one more chance after all.
Her world stopped when Clarke was taken. She folded up. It felt like her heart was stone in her chest, like her love for Clarke was fire in her veins immolating her from the inside out, like she would never be able to breathe again. It was worse than the sword going through her. It was worse than anything. And then she found her but she knew all they could do was die together, knew it almost from the moment she saw her, in spite of all their plans. Because there were armies and Nia was hunting them and they were weak. For a second when they hid in the cave she thought they might make it south – a long shot, an unlikely dream, but the slight possibility was so seductive she had not allowed herself to dwell on it. The Commander is never promised a future, she is promised death, but worse than death was the promise of Nia getting hold of Clarke once more. A part of her believed that even if they made it south Nia would snatch Clarke away again unexpectedly – she did it once, why not twice?
Eventually, the sobs hurt, slamming through her like every one is a punch, dragging through her throat like barbed wire, burning her lungs with their intensity, and she gradually subsides. Her face is swollen and red and her side is nothing but hot pain and every part of her mask has been washed away and she lies limp and boneless in her love's arms.
Clarke kisses the top of her head softly. With gentle hands, she starts pulling open Lexa's top and the bandages below, and with careless disregard for the blanket presses it firmly against Lexa's still-bleeding wound.
Lexa looks up. Everyone has left the tent but them. Clarke is staring down at her with an expression so full of love that it makes her heart lurch.
"Thank you," Clarke whispers. She turns her face from Lexa for a moment, searching for something, and pulls up a Skaikru satchel Lexa recognises as her mother's medical bag.
Lexa makes a noise that is half-laugh, half-sob. "For what? Are you thanking me for surviving again?"
"Well, that too," Clarke says, and kisses her cheek. "Hold still. I'm going to start sewing this up, that should help a bit with the bleeding. I can't believe my mother didn't do it, she must've known it was risky to just leave it like this. If you don't listen to my medical advice and rest I'm going to tie you down, you know."
Lexa gives her a watery smile. "Is that a promise, Clarke kom Skaikru?"
Clarke raises an eyebrow. "Hmm, maybe. Anyway, what I was saying was, of course I'm thankful you survived. But I also meant... thank you for being strong enough to be weak for me."
Lexa blinks swollen eyes. "What?"
"I was there in the first world when Gustus told you to stay strong, and you were strong before that, and you've been strong since," Clarke continues, voice soft. She pulls back the blanket and starts to smear a clear liquid onto Lexa's wound. "You stand straight and you protect everyone and you manage the world and we all lean on you. But there's these little moments sometimes when you lean on me instead, when you let the mask fall, when I can do something to repay you for it all, when I really get to see you, and they never last long enough for me. The moments when you let me really be your partner, when you trust me to love all of you, not just the strongest parts. When you let yourself bleed and cry and feel. I love you so freaking much, Lexa kom Trikru, you have no idea."
"Clarke -" Lexa starts to say, but she's interrupted.
"I love you when you're ruthless and when you fight and when you laugh and when you give orders and when you cry and when you get this adorable puzzled expression like you're trying to figure something out. I told you once that I wanted the bad as well as the good, but the thing is? I don't think any of that is bad." Clarke gives her another smile and there are tears in her eyes now as well. "You're my lover and my Commander and my friend and my partner and my protector and I can't wait for you to be my wife as well." She pushes the needle into Lexa's skin neatly and swiftly, drawing the ragged edges together.
Lexa catches her breath, the pain in her side disappearing as she registers the word. "Your wife," she echoes, suddenly amazed. They are alive. The future stretches out before them. So many wonderful experiences she never thought she would have, holding Clarke's hand as they receive their bonding tattoos, going on a Skaikru 'honey moon', quiet moments with just the two of them together, returning home to Clarke every evening, waking to Clarke every morning, holding Clarke every night.
"My wife," Clarke says firmly, ties the short line of stitches off deftly, and kisses her again. She rips open some kind of plastic sealed container and presses a thick white square against the wound lightly. "Now turn over, I need to do the other side as well. And then a bandage. And a sling. And bed rest for as long as practical – though I know we'll have to head south soon. A week at least though." She grins down at Lexa. "This is where you say 'yes, dear'."
"Yes, dear," Lexa parrots obediently, smiling back up at her.