Chapter Text
The end is the beginning.
Lexa is astonished, baffled, bewildered, struck by so many emotions she can't differentiate — she’s all the things right now.
Costia is alive and hugging her, Lexa is reciprocating in body alone and even that is half hearted. Her head is elsewhere spinning like a top. She is both angry and joyful. Too much and not enough of either.
As Costia realizes the hug is largely one sided, she sadly and awkwardly pulls away, clearing her throat. Meanwhile, her eyes slowly go from ground to Lexa’s blank stare.
Lexa releases her and her hands shift directly to her side before she backs up and sits down. One hand on her forehead rubbing a migraine that just formed and resting her elbow on the arm rest.
Costia has the time to sit down and rest her hands on the table, unsure of what to do or say at this point. She drums her fingers slowly, on the ornate wood, an old habit. Lexa’ eyes flicker to it in a blink of an eye and back to blank staring.
Costia may not know the young woman now, but she knew her then — This silence could go on for hours as Lexa deliberated the whole situation inside and out in her mind. Whether the other commanders were there or not she did not know. She did not care. Whatever she needed to process, however she needed to process, she’d take. She owed her that much. She owed her more, Costia frowns with her thoughts.
She hardly assumes any of the commander’s former lovers came back to life. If they truly did offer advice, she’d much like to know it herself. For her, seeing Lexa again, twice in two days is too like seeing a love given breath again.
Even if she knows that love is long gone.
And she knows little of the afterlife, or the beyond. She knows only stories made myths through time, and those she can barely remember.
But the darkness of her knowledge is nothing to the darkness that consumed her for so long during capture and followed her after her escape courtesy of her mother.
She hasn’t seen anyone from her former life as Costia, not even Luna, though she had wanted to. She wasn’t sure she’d even recognize this pale comparison to who she was. This shadowed figure who no longer recognizes her face in the mirror.
It wasn’t she who left the tent that night long ago. It was something - someone born from evil hands caressing her skin through bruises and cuts. Extreme pain and severe loneliness and the fear of the unknown grew as the daily torment to her body and soul continued. She broke and let it in, made it fuse its her and give her strength through her torment.
And when she was forced to kill for sport. She eventually came to like it. So much so that when she was released she went hunting for vengeance. Hunting the guilty parties of her and her mother’s torment. It’s how she found her original following of Outkasts.
And while doing their damage where they could, she heard of Lexa’s storming rampage in searching for her, but she cowardly hid, fading into the shadows of a stranger, who she had become.
The Stranger. She spent the next several years in the face of her mother and many others outside their encampments. She could be anyone, feel anything, do anything and walk away with a new face and body.
The darkness the power and torture had done to her soul was tremendous. It was addicting for so long. It ran so deep she even cursed the commander for halting her bloody path through Azgeda, she had resented her for it.
It took years of the hunt and a final realization why exactly that burned so deep. Seeing Clarke during the treacherous storm was a nail in her coffin she had chosen.
It was because Lexa could overcome the darkness, Lexa found the light — was the light. She always had been. And she combined with Wanheda, which was blinding even in a storm.
Costia had embraced the darkness and it took years of self reflection and observation for her to become the leader the people she found required. She finally found her own light.
Found her purpose. And it was away from Lexa, all up until now. It’s becoming ore and more clear to her.
Lexa rubs her face as Costia finishes her tale of finding her leadership and course. Absorbing and overwhelmed. No longer confused but still an ember of anger in her chest.
This woman, it’s true, was not the young girl she loved. She couldn’t be, not after all that. Her story betrayed everything she ever knew or loved about Costia, it was tough to swallow. Understandable, befitting a funeral even to Lexa.
Especially because Lexa had stopped her reign of terror through Azgeda because the Costia she knew would not love the Lexa she would become if she had continued.
Ironically, Costia became someone Lexa could not.
Not like she did.
Not like she loves Clarke.
She blink slowly unsure where to look and chooses the table where she rests her hands now.
‘You okay?’ Raven whispers in her head, worried from outside and hearing all of it per Lexa’s orders from earlier.
’If you could see me you would know clearly not. I need to get out of here.’
’Get her answer and go, we’re right outside buddy.’
”I’ve been leading much like how you lead now,” Costia whispers into the home's silence, emotionally spent from the toil of her tale. “Used your example, and we are beginning to thrive here…”
Heda is about to answer but Lexa quiets her by leaning forward.
”This war could ruin it all, it’s true. But if we fail, all will be ruined anyway.” Lexa tentatively tries to guide her. If she truly was leading by example, let it be this.
All for one and one for all.
__________________
Clarke’s mind lets her have a break for a very short amount of time.
It feels like seconds to her, sound asleep, exhausted emotionally and physically. Safety in the knowledge that Lexa had indeed returned is letting her mind wander to her guilt of leaving Elyza behind.
Now unconscious, she’s left behind indefinitely until Clarke will have the energy to get back and bring her home to them. Which feel like it may take some time to her, tired even in her fog.
It isn’t a tremendous worry, at first, she has for Elyza — the girl was quick witted and apt at survival. With some fine tweaking she would be a warrior that could rival their best.
As such, Clarke assumed she would head back to the farm and wait it out until she came for her. She’d understand, she knew she would if it took a minute. Or five. She wouldn’t venture far from the farm, she’d take no unnecessary risks. Maybe.
In the meantime, while they’re separated, Clarke has work to do. She may be unconscious but she’s now gone to find Elyza in her mind, unable to rest fully. She’s weaving through the veil and finding her door with little struggle she makes her way into her head.
And ‘for fucks sakes’. She doesn’t like what she finds.