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the way is long (but you can make it easy on me)
.
until the night falls we’re the only ones left / i bet you even know where we could go / & when it all fucks up you put your head in my hands / it’s a souvenir for when you go
—chvrches, ‘the mother we share’
//
Her armor is always sliding off her shoulders.
Lexa’s the smallest kid you’re in charge of training. Her class is mostly six year olds, although there are one or two boys that are older. But Lexa is enthusiastic and surprisingly strong, very fast—and really, really bright.
She’s also always laughing, limping off the grounds, too-big armor and tiny limbs and dragging her sword, missing a front tooth with freckles stretching atop her nose. You watch her hold out a flower to a girl around her age that isn’t in training to be a warrior, and they kiss on the cheek.
The fourth week you have her, she beats you in your strategy game. The fifth week you have her, she beats your first, and two days later she beats the top player in Polis.
You’re only thirteen, but you know that a new commander will be chosen within the next few years.
You’re only thirteen but you know Lexa—tiny, smiling, laughing Lexa, with bright eyes and tangled hair—will be in the running.
Your heart sinks because, whether or not she passes the tests—most don’t—being Commander is a death sentence, and Lexa is so very alive.
//
When Lexa is eight she very nervously sits by your side after training and says, “You know Costia?”
You nod—she and Lexa are kind of a package deal whenever you’re not training. “Yes, I know Costia.”
Lexa fidgets. “I want her to be mine,” she says, and you try not to smile, because she rushes out with, “because, Anya, we have made all sorts of plans for the future, like a small house here in Polis, which I think will be possible because I can train people like you and maybe not even have to go to war very often, and Costia’s mother is the lead healer, so Costia can become an important healer too—and, we want two children and maybe a dog?”
You nod—you’re nominating Lexa for further inspection for being tapped for the final commander testing tomorrow with the elders—but she’s a little kid, and she doesn’t need to be scared yet.
“I think that all sounds very achievable, Lexa.”
You both spot Costia walking toward the arena with a bouquet of clumsily picked flowers, dark skin almost glowing, and Lexa grins. “Really?”
“Yeah,” you say. “And, for the record, I believe Costia will want you to be hers as well.”
Lexa pops up from her seat and pats you on the back once with a very excited “Thank you,” and jogs off, boots scuffed, to tackle a laughing Costia in a hug.
It’s not realistic at all, but you’ll let them have what they can for now.
//
When Lexa is officially tapped for testing she’s nine and a half. You know by now that there’s nothing you can teach her strategically—she’s the best strategist, already, in all of Polis—and she’s gotten a little taller. She’s still really small, though, and although she’s strong and quick and focused, you’re worried about the physical portions of the test. You help her train as much as you can, until she’s laid out on her back, scratches bleeding, heaving breath, tears in her eyes.
Only once does she ask to stop, and you do. You sit down next to where she’s lying back on the cold ground.
“I’m going to die,” she whispers, staring up at the night sky, “aren’t I?”
“Do not be afraid, Lexa,” you tell her. “Death is not the end.”
She sniffles next to you—it’s a non-answer in the worst way, and Lexa is brilliant, even for a little kid, so you know she understands—and says, “Okay.”
You lie down next to her and tell her soft stories about the constant recycled presence of the materials of the universe in all natural creation, and she ends up falling asleep.
You sigh and situate her over your shoulder eventually, because she doesn’t really wake up enough to do anything more than grumble. You carry her back to her room in the orphanage and she snuggles into your neck before you put her on her bed, take off her boots, and pull the blankets over her.
You smooth back her hair and you want to apologize for the star stuff you are sure is somewhere in her, but you can’t.
She snores once and turns over on her side in a little ball, and you let her enjoy whatever comfort she has for as long as she can.
//
You sit with Costia and her mother, Sina, both of whom you know pretty well by now, because of Lexa and because you get hurt somewhat often—you’re quickly on your way to being a leader of your own group of warriors, with five kills scars, so you’ve had your fair share of small injuries. She’s always been gentle and you can see where Costia gets her intelligence and goodness from.
Costia looks at you before you sit down and she is terrified, though, because Lexa is, like always, tiny and trying to secure her armor tighter, because it’s slipping off one shoulder. You’d buckled the straps as tightly as they’d go, but still—she’s a little kid.
She excels at the hours-long strategy portion of the tests. Half of the twelve children in testing are weeded out through this; they’re the lucky ones, because they will not lose their lives. Lexa, however, is the best.
She passes her English exams perfectly, which makes Costia and her mother smile. Lexa struggles with translations, you know, of long phrases, but Costia has perfect English, so you’re sure they’ve helped her prepare.
The crowd is quiet already but they become more subdued when Lexa and one other boy—big and powerful and handsome—identify the proper relics from past commanders.
They’re the only two left, which is how these tests, or so you’ve heard, usually go. The physical portion is next, and it’s different every time.
But you watch Lexa bravely dash off into the woods, small sword unsheathed, and you stop yourself from crying, because that is an honorable image to have of her as your last.
//
Only: Lexa does not die. In the middle of the night, you—and the rest of the crowd—hear some trampling through the woods. You expect it to be the boy, but then Lexa—small, determined, brilliant Lexa—stumbles her way out of the trees. One of her eyes is bruised shut and she’s holding her stomach—there’s blood seeping through her fingers—and her other hand looks badly burnt. There’s blood almost everywhere, and she’s soaking wet and shaking.
But she’s alive.
Sina rushes forward with a few other healers, but Costia stands very, very still next to you.
After they get Lexa situated on a stretcher—the crowd is silent—Costia looks up at you and says, “She’s the commander now, isn’t she?”
You look down and nod solemnly. “Yes, she is.”
//
Lexa’s fighting hard to stay awake when you see her the next morning. She’d had to have surgery on her stomach—something about an ruptured spleen—and bandaged up everywhere else. Sina told you that it’ll take Lexa a little while to recover, but that none of her injuries will be limiting in the long run. Her hand is the most worrisome, because it was burnt down to muscles and tendons and bone, but she was able to graft some of the skin from Lexa’s thigh onto it, and it should be able to heal. You’re sure Lexa's in a significant amount of pain but when you sit down next to her she doesn’t show it.
“The other boy,” she says, and her small voice is weak and rough, “what did—is he—”
“He was found dead an hour ago,” you say.
Lexa closes her eyes for such a long time you’re sure she fell asleep, but then she says, “Anya?”
“Yes?”
“I am the new commander, then?”
“Heda,” you say, and your breath catches a little bit, because Lexa—small, good, laughing Lexa—is about to be steeped in war. “You are.”
//
Lexa does not change much. She becomes your official second, which is an honor you would’ve never imagined. She gets better at being serious in public, and her English translations get slightly less dramatic, but when people aren’t watching her at ceremonies or meetings, she’s still Lexa.
When she’s twelve she sits next to you after a skirmish that had gone perfectly for you and says, “Costia kissed me last night.”
You’re sure they’ve kissed for years, but you understand the difference.
You smile into the campfire. “Did you kiss her back?”
“I did,” Lexa says. “There is nothing I have wanted to do more.”
You turn to her and the flames are dancing in her eyes. Her cheekbones and jaw are becoming sharper; her hair is more manageable—she can put the braids you’d had to teach her, time and again, in now just fine by herself.
“It is well deserved,” you say, and you don’t want to think about the average life span of commanders when she grins into the light.
//
Lexa does not cry when you give her her first kill scar—she is fourteen and still so full of an innocence that is slowly being stripped away—but she does clench her fists and press her eyes shut tight when you press the branding iron against her chest.
You know how much it hurts, but she doesn’t flinch away.
You don’t say anything—there isn’t anything to be said in this situation; she is built to bring death—and you just guide her to her bed before placing the iron back in its spot by the fire. It smells like burnt flesh and Lexa looks like she might be sick, so you just sit next to her.
Not too much time passes before Costia bounces into Lexa’s quarters—Lexa is back from battle and not in the healers’ building, which means she is alive and okay, usually. Costia’s face falls when she sees Lexa, and you stand and nod silently on your way out. Costia brushes her hand against yours once in a small show of understanding, and out of any two people, you are sure you are the ones who love Lexa the most.
You wait outside of Lexa’s door for a few seconds, to make sure they’re okay. You hear Lexa choke on a sob and say, “I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to kill him.”
Costia shushes her.
“He was going to kill me,” Lexa whispers. “I had to but I didn’t want to.” Her voice is very small. “It hurt, Costia. It hurt.”
“I know,” Costia whispers.
You walk away with a weight lifted from your shoulders and a sinking pit in your stomach.
//
Costia’s head is sent to Lexa in a box and you watch all of the youth—the laughter, the too big armor, the bright, clean skin without kill scars and tattoos, the loose teeth and bright smiles—drain out of her in a second.
All of her advisors clear out of the room quickly and silently while Lexa just stands there.
She’s sixteen years old; she has asked you about consent before she and Costia were together; she has come to you in tears after their first fight. The only secrets Costia has ever known of Lexa are the rattles of her spine, the pops and clicks of her joints, the peaks and dips and juts of her skin, the number of freckles on her cheeks and the burn scar on the palm of her hand and how thin her wrists will always be.
Lexa has been yours to take care of—and you have failed, because as soon as everyone is out of the room Lexa sinks to her knees and weeps.
//
She stops smiling and her peace is of an unforgiving kind.
//
She sends you to deal with the Sky People because you are her most trusted warrior and because Lexa does not want to take senseless lives.
You have taught her that much.
//
You tell her of Clarke—hair like the stars and eyes like the sky, young and stubborn and much like Lexa herself—and there is maybe a flash of something that overtakes Lexa’s face for a brief moment before she says, “Kill them all.”
//
You don’t, and Clarke fights bravely by your side after that, even if she hits you and kidnaps you back.
She reminds you a lot of your commander—your Lexa.
//
There is not much pain after a few unbearable seconds.
Clarke is not at peace with death, and you think that might be good for Lexa.
You hope they will come to know each other, to conquer, maybe even to fall in love. You still believe Lexa can again.
For some reason, you trust she will.