To say that the lazy enjoyment of the day's ride, and the anticipation of seeing the bunker, had been utterly ruined by the yong pauna's violent interference would be a significant understatement. What's worse, to Leksa's mind, was how sullen and silent Klark had become when their flight had come to an end. Oh, she had shown them to the bunker, as promised, even helped them find another intact ruin that the horses could be stabled in for the duration of their exploration, but it was obvious that her mind was elsewhere and her emotions were in turmoil. Within minutes of their entry into the bunker, she had withdrawn into a deeper part of the complex and locked the door behind her, leaving even Niylah behind, something that had broken the blonde Trikru's heart and left her anxiously pacing as she tried to figure out a way to ease her domina's obvious pain. A task that could at best be called 'difficult' given the distance and the barricades now separating them from one another.
"Of all the damn things to have happen…!" Kostia hissed softly, eying Niylah even as she made sure to keep her voice down, consciously trying to avoid distressing her friend even more than she already was. "Did you see Klark's face? She's furious!"
"More heartbroken and guild-ridden than furious, I think, thought she's definitely angry." Ontari argued, just as quietly, running a hand through her hair. "I may not know Klark quite so well as the two of you, especially you Kostia, but I think it's obvious to all of us that she takes her responsibilities to people around her very seriously and has a strong moral compass. Abandoning the guards to save her own life isn't sitting well, and the fact that it was only necessary because she asked to take a trip outside the city must be eating her alive."
"It wasn't her fault, she had no idea a yong pauna was in the area. She didn't even know that they existed to begin with, which was perhaps a mistake on our part. She knows about the maunon, and she's heard us mention bandits plenty of times, but I don't think we ever got into anything more than that, and we should have." Leksa sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose and silently cursing herself for not having more guards, and more scouts for that matter. Yong pauna were not subtle creatures by any stretch of the imagination, and a scout cordon would have spotted the signs of the beast, if not the beast itself, long before they would have run into. But she had allowed herself to break protocol, wanting to keep Klark comfortable and to keep things calm and quiet in Polis, and it had cost those guards -at least some of them, she doubted that they would all be able to escape the pauna- their lives.
"I know that, we all know that, but convincing Klark of it is another matter entirely. And…" Kostia hesitated for a moment, glancing at Niylah again -or to the door beyond her, perhaps, at the door Klark had vanished behind. Sighing, she continued. "I think the apparent callousness of the decision has reminded her in all the worst ways of her people's leaders. Having others die because of your own mistakes or callous disregard. She's angry at us for leaving them behind, but she's probably angrier at herself for being like them. Which she isn't, of course, the situations aren't remotely comparable, but I'm afraid she's not really thinking about it right now. Just feeling."
"This situation could go very badly wrong, Leksa. This was probably the worst way possible to remind her of the realities of leadership, especially here on the ground. The last thing we can afford to do is let her sit and fester in her bad emotions." Ontari warned in a tone that bordered on anxious, and Leksa resisted the urge to growl at her sister in aggravation at her statement of the obvious.
"I'm aware, but unless we figure out a way past that door, there isn't very much that we can do to about it. We certainly can't force the door open, either, so she has to open it from the inside, which I doubt she will do in her present state of mind. We need to get in to help her, but she needs to be helped before she's willing to let us in." she retorted, running her hand through her hair, finding herself in a classic -as the Old World would have said- 'Catch 22' and supremely unhappy about it. An idea occurred, and she looked up again and raised her voice sufficient that everyone could hear her. "Wait…if this place is from the Old World, and if it's anything like similar areas in Polis and elsewhere, there should be an 'emergency manual over-ride' hidden somewhere, in case the tek stopped working and they needed to make the door function. It will be somewhat-hidden, especially in a place as wealthy as this, but it shouldn't be too far from the door itself."
"Then let's find it!" Niylah's voice was perhaps louder than was necessary for this amount of space and how little distance was between them, but Leksa wasn't going to hold that against her, and she doubted Kostia or Ontari would either. Certainly not under these circumstances! Besides, she had the right attitude about the situation, and the three palace-dwellers moved to join her at prodding and tapping at the walls in search or their new-found objective.
It took nearly fifteen minutes of searching before Kostia let out a soft cry of triumph, drawing all eyes to herself. Her fingers had found a seam in the wall, nearly invisible despite the pristine surface of the wall leaving little in the way of evidence to follow. With nimble fingers, she pried open a small panel, revealing a simple lever mechanism, covered in alternating black-and-yellow stripes, crimson letters shining faintly above it that confirmed it was in fact the emergency override.
"Got it!" she crowed excitedly, wrapping her fingers around the handle and looking over at the rest of them. "Should I...?"
Leksa nodded, then almost immediately held up a hand to stop her. "Wait. Once we open this door, we need to approach carefully. Klark is hurting, due in no small part to what we -what I- did, and cornering her may only make things worse."
"I should go first, then." Niylah said, her voice soft but firm, her eyes almost stern. "She may be angry with all of us, but I'm..." she hesitated, searching for the right words to say, before finally settling on, "...I'm less entangled in the decision that was made. I'll try and mediate."
Leksa considered Niylah's words for a moment before nodding reluctantly. "Very well. But be careful, remember not to take anything harsh she takes too deeply to heart. When people are hurting, they can lash out at those they care for most. Don't let it ruin what you have together. Kostia."
Niylah nodded a bit shakily, even as Kostia pulled the lever down with a firm yank, the mechanism responding with a grinding noise that spoke of decades of disuse. The door, previously sealed tight, slid open with a reluctant hiss and thunk. Visibly steadying herself and taking a deep breath, Niylah raised her shoulder high and stepped forward across the threshold.
"Domina, we're coming in." she called out, voice soft but carrying across the distance, and as they entered the room, the two Chosen and Kostia could see that it was quite the distance. The room was large, very large, easily able to accommodate dozens of people at least, with a vast array of furniture and artwork and…well, it was obvious that the Old World had shared many interests with the new. Which was interesting, remarkable even, but not as remarkable -even if that seemed a callous word to use, under the circumstances- as seeing Klark of all people practically huddled in one corner of the room, knees drawn to her chest and face buried in her arms.
"I wanted to be alone, you know. That's why I locked the door."
The quartet winced at the sound of her voice. It wasn't even angry anymore, or sad. Just…empty. Drained and bordering on lifeless, rough and gravely from grief -and doubtlessly plenty of self-condemnation-laden ranting-, and speaking to a level of deep emotional exhaustion. None of them had seen her like this before, despite all the emotional states that they had witnessed -more than a few, to say the least, in many different physical states as well-, and it was worrying to say the least.
Niylah approached cautiously, each step measured as if walking on thin ice. Which, really, wasn't too far off the mark, in a metaphorical manner at any rate. "Domina, please... we're worried about you."
"Worried about me?" Klark's voice cracked as she finally lifted her head. Her eyes were red-rimmed, face blotchy from crying, and there was a darkness in this sky-blue orbs that could only be described as stormy. "Those guards are dead or dying because of me, and you're worried about me?"
Kostia and Ontari exchanged concerned glances while Leksa remained perfectly still, watching the interaction with the intensity of a predator – or perhaps, in this moment, with the caution of prey. None of them talked, they hardly even shifted, afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing, somehow, to make the situation worse.
"It wasn't your fault," Niylah said softly, kneeling a respectful distance from Klark, clearly wanting to draw closer but aware that it might not be recieved particularly well at the moment. "The yong pauna—"
"Was only a problem because I wanted to see some ruins!" Klark's voice rose suddenly, echoing off the ancient walls. "Because I was curious. Because I was bored in the palace. Because I was going insane with all those people and noises and smells and questions and doubts and I couldn't take it anymore!"
The last few words were nearly shrieked, the pitch and volume causing winces just as much as the content they carried, and Niylah visibly rocked back on her heels, clearly struggling to figure out how best to respond to that. Leksa started to move forward, her body shifting as her stance changed, but Ontari got there first, moving forward to join Niylah.
"Klark, please listen to me." Ontari said, her voice gentle but firm as she knelt beside Niylah. "What happened today was terrible, yes, and it had nothing at all to do with the fact that you needed to get out of the city or to explore more of the world. But you must understand something about our world that perhaps we failed to properly explain."
Klark looked up, her eyes narrowed with suspicion, but at least she was listening, which was progress, and Ontari took that fact as permission to continue.
"Death walks with us every day on the ground, from the maunon or the storms or the massive, mutated beasts that roam this world. Those guards knew the risks when they took their oaths, were willing to lay down their lives in service of those oaths. The decision to retreat was not yours – it was Leksa's. And it was the right one."
"How can you possibly say that?" Klark demanded, her voice cracking. "How is abandoning people to die ever the right choice? How is letting others fight a hopeless battle just so I can get away alive the right thing to do?"
Leksa finally stepped forward, her movements measured and deliberate, but her eyes were so very soft. "Because sometimes the only choice is between some dying or all dying. The yong pauna wouldn't have stopped chasing us. We were too close and it was catching up too quickly to lose interest and let us be. And so our guards did their duty so that we could do ours."
Klark scoffed, opening her mouth to shoot something vitriolic back, but Leksa cut her off with a sharp swipe of her hand.
"I can see the words on your lips: 'hiding behind duty while we let people die', 'a pretty speech when you're not the one dying.' I've heard them before, from others. But it is a duty for people in our position to live, Klark. If they hadn't drawn it off, something that they did without any orders or threats on our part, might I remind you, we all would have died there. The Heda and the only Chosen that currently exists, along with the leader of all scouts in the Coalition, dead in a single moment. The best, the only, hope for your own people's survival, dead alongside us, and what would have happened then? What would have happened with the Clans with Ontari and I gone? Who would have spoken for your people, helped them integrate with ours, prevented them from slaughtering their own people in their desperation to preserve their dwindling resources?"
Klark was silent, eyes widened somewhat as she started into Leksa's own, not having considered the implications and cascade effects in the throes of her emotional upheaval.
"That's what duty is, Klark. It's not doing the things that you love, or agree with, or that make you happy. It's doing the things that you hate, the things that keep you up at night and cause you to wake up screaming. That's the burden of leadership, the burden of authority." Leksa's tone was quiet, but intense, unrelenting for all the understanding that was thickly threaded through it. "You hate it, it tortures you? Good. The sign of a good leader is making decisions with terrible consequences, recognizing that they are terrible, but realizing that they are necessary and doing them all the same. The sign of a monster is making such a decision when its not needed, and not being haunted by it."
"Not to say that you should cling to mistakes or to the consequences of your actions." Kostia added a bit hastily, worried about how Klark would follow that particular thread of logic and what conclusions she might end up arriving at. "What Leksa is saying isn't that you should become mired in the past, torturing yourself over it, but that you should accept the grief, grow from it, and move past it with the determination to do the best you can in every circumstance possible. The middle-ground, as it were."
Klark's shoulders slumped, a shuddering breath escaping her as she absorbed their words, considered them. For several long moments, the only sound in the bunker was the faint hum of ancient machinery and their breathing, their heartbeats thrumming in their ears and the tension humming in their veins.
"I've spent my whole life watching leaders make choices that cost lives, always the lives of others and never of themselves." she finally said, her voice barely above a whisper. "My father died because of one of those choices. I was imprisoned because I knew too much. Every day, someone suffered because resources were too scarce, because oxygen was running out, because the Council decided who deserved to live."
She looked up, her eyes meeting Leksa's. "I swore I would never become like them. I swore that I would never see human lives as expendable. I swore that I would never let myself use duty as an excuse to stop caring about individual lives."
"And you haven't, Klark. How you are feeling right now only proves that point, and I doubt that is likely to change." Kostia said gently, moving closer and kneeling beside the others. "There's a difference between making hard choices because they're necessary and making them because they are expedient. And even when you have to make hard choices, it's how you feel about them, how you react to them, that matters. Care about those individuals, Maker knows the rest of us do, but don't let it consume you."
Again, Klark was silent for a long moment, but it was a less-charged silence than before. Less fraught and tense, and when she finally spoke, her voice was steadier, if still raw with emotion.
"I keep seeing their faces. The way they just…shouted for us to run and turned back. They knew they didn't have a good chance, but there was…no hesitation, no fear, no regret or anger. They just…accepted that they probably wouldn't escape, knowing they were probably going to die for it."
"They did, yes," Leksa acknowledged softly. "And they chose it anyway, and they did so because it was their duty. Because they swore an oath, they meant that oath."
Klark's eyes drifted between the four women surrounding her, their faces etched with concern, and she felt something inside her begin to shift. Not healing, not yet, but perhaps the first acknowledgment that healing might be possible.
"How do you bear it?" she asked quietly, directing the question primarily at Leksa. "How do you make these choices and still sleep at night?"
Leksa's expression softened further, and she finally closed the remaining distance between them, kneeling directly in front of Klark and taking her hands in her own. "Some nights, I don't. Some nights, the faces of those I couldn't save visit me in my dreams. Most of them, as I saw them in the moments of their death. But I bear it because I must. I bear it so others don't have to, so that my people suffer only what they absolutely must."
Klark nodded again, clearly not entirely convinced but not quite so torn apart as she had been earlier, and after a moment a flicker of a smile creased her lips and her posture relaxed into a less-emotional cross-legged position.
"Well, I suppose I've been a bad host, haven't I? Here I dragged you out of the palace and into the woods to see my bunker, and I haven't even given you a grand tour yet. We ought to start with the library, hadn't we?" she said, in a deliberately, determinedly-bright tone. One that, when combined with the expression on her face, made it quite clear that she had reached the limit of her tolerances for this particular subject at this particular time. To wit…
"Yes. I was promised hundreds of pristine books from the Old World, Klark. Big promises, that I insist you fulfill." Leksa agreed, rising to her feet and offering the beautiful blonde her hand, which was accepted after a moment's contemplation. As Klark rose, their arms threaded over each other, until they were in what could only be called an embrace, if one that was only somewhat intimate.
"Lexa…" she murmured, leaning forward to press her head gently against her chest, the taller brunette's arms holding her close. "What were their names?"
There was only one reason for her to ask that question, and Leksa gave a soft, sad hum.
"Ryker, Adria, Tomas, Eska, Charlo, Marto." she listed their names softly, and Klark nodded briefly against her breasts before stepping away, smiling once again, a little bit less emptily than before.
"I'll remember their names." she said simply, before turning and heading towards the door.
####################################################################################
"How much longer until the drop-ship is ready?"
Those were the words that greeted Raven and Octavia as they walked into the Council Chambers, summoned once again to meet the Ark's governing body in it's entirety, and she arched an eyebrow even as her companion scoffed and rolled her eyes.
"Well, it's just lovely to see you too, Chancellor. I hope you're having a pleasant day here on…" Raven's tone was sickly-sweet and her overt, courteous formality, mocking him with every respectful syllable, and he cut her off with a chop of his hand.
"Save it, Reyes, I don't have the time for your cheek today, there's too much to do. Answer the question: how long until the drop-ship can get you safely groundside?" he bit out the words, and she huffed, folding her arms under her breasts in aggravation as she considered the question, glancing briefly at Sinclair.
"Another week, at the most." she responded, before her eyes narrowed. "I don't suppose you've come up with a workable plan for getting Octavia and I off of the Ark without causing a riot? Because without as as a go-between for the Skybox kids, things could get pretty tense. And that doesn't even include the issues that would come from the two of us disappearing in the first place."
Jaha shot her a look that suggested he was very much not in the mood for her attitude either, but before he could snap back, Abby cut in, her voice measured and diplomatic, though all present were more than familiar enough with the Director of Medical to recognize the tension and stress in her tone. Unlike Jaha's glaring and growling, the idea that they were upsetting Clarke's mother was enough to make both girls settle down a bit with some uncomfortable twinges of guilt.
"We've been discussing that very issue, girls. The Council has been formulating several possible approaches." Abby's eyes flicked briefly to the Chancellor before returning to the two young women. "But we want your input, especially given how well you've handled keeping things together with Clarke's…friends."
Octavia scoffed, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. "You mean how we've kept the kids from staging a full-on revolt over you all disappearing their idol while you wait for her to save our collective skins? Yeah, we've been real helpful. You're lucky that they trust us so much, or things wouldn't be going quite so smoothly."
"That's enough, Ms. Blake, thank you." Kane said sharply, though there was something in his eyes that suggested he wasn't entirely unsympathetic, and from the way they briefly cut towards Jaha, he might even be on their side and trying to keep the Chancellor from doing anything stupid. "Whatever your personal feelings, we need to focus less on animosity and more on saving our people. Which is what Clarke would want you to do, correct?"
Neither of the girls looked happy about that particular comment, but took the point to heart regardless, falling silent completely, Raven making an irritable gesture of permission.
"Thank you. Now, handling the Skybox kids will be easy, given the very same influence that you've used to keep them under control so far. If you tell them to keep themselves under control, for Clarke's sake and at her request, they'll believe you and they'll follow through. It will be much harder to cover for your absence when it comes to everyone outside of the Skybox, and we have a few options there. First, we tell everyone that you were sent to the Skybox, Octavia, and that you've been put on extra punishment duty, Raven. That has the fewest potential points of failure, given your respective reputations and home lives."
Which was an impressively delicate way for Kane to say 'because your brother is a self-isolating social pariah and her mother is a constantly drunk provider of company that starved her own child to trade more heavily in the black market.' Not that Kane was supposed to know about that of course, since if he knew about it he would have to do something about it, but it was just one of 'those things'. At any rate, his point was a relatively valid one. Octavia was known for being a firebrand, so it was perfectly believable that she would at some point push the Council too far. It's not as if the average citizen knew anything about the Council's various deals with Clarke, after all, so they might not see it as terrible out of the ordinary. As for Raven, well, it wouldn't be outlandish for her to get herself into some trouble and get extra shifts and assigned tasks in the deepest, darkest parts of the Ark, not outlandish at all. After all, it had happened before, and punishment duty was half of the story used to cover up her work on the Exodus pod already, so it would just be more of the same.
"Not terrible. Not great, but not terrible. What are your other options?" Raven drawled, waiting expectantly and wondering what else the Council would come up with. She didn't have the highest hopes, but maybe they would surprise her by showing some cleverness, cunning, and wisdom in the effort.
They didn't.
They suggested faking the girls' deaths, which wasn't the worst idea, but it wasn't the best either. Too many ways it could go wrong, and frankly most of the room agreed that the general public would assume (correctly, as it happened) that their supposed deaths in an engineering accident or sudden decompression was actually a coverup for something else. Something nefarious, no doubt, which would entirely defeat the purpose of trying to keep things from spiraling out of control in the first place.
The suggestion of the girls having some sort of 'medical crises' that necessitated them being cloistered for care would have been a decent idea, if they weren't on the Ark, where people who would prove to be too great a drain on medical supplies and resources were quietly and 'humanely' euthanized. And if their 'crises' weren't so serious as to result in euthanization, then they couldn't possibly be so serious that the girls had to be cloistered. So that idea, likewise, was discarded.
Then it was suggested that, perhaps, they told everyone that the girls had volunteered to travel to some of the other defunct orbital habitats and satellites, like the old International Space Station, to search for resources to recover or evaluate it for integration into the Ark. Unfortunately, that exact thing had been done some years prior, and the Council of the time (understandably, it must be said) had made quite the production out of doing so, for the sake of morale. It would stink of either desperation or a cover-up to the people, neither of which the Council were particularly thrilled by.
On and on the suggestions went, most of them complete garbage, before Octavia's patience finally snapped.
"Enough! Jesus Christ, these are all garbage! Have any of you consider just being honest for once in your fucking lives?! Are you really so afraid of Clarke being more popular than you are -that ship has already fucking sailed, by the way, in case you missed it somehow!- that you're going to try and string out some insane conspiracy to cover everything up! Just let Raven and I explain to everyone what's going on and they'll leave you alone!" she shouted, throwing her hands up as she voiced her frustration at volume.
Silence fell across the Council chambers, heavy and stifling. The Council members exchanged glances, some uncomfortable, others calculating. Abby's face had gone quite still, while Jaha's jaw was clenched so tightly it looked painful.
"You don't understand the complexities of governance, Ms. Blake," Jaha finally said, his voice tight with barely-contained anger, and no small amount of contempt. "The moment we admit that we've sent Clarke to the ground—"
"The moment you admit you exiled her, which is exactly how people will see it, no matter what you tell them. Which is why it has to be us." Raven interrupted, her voice sharp.
"The moment we reveal the truth," Jaha continued as if she hadn't spoken, ignoring the rolled eyes at the word 'truth', because God knew even following Octavia's suggestion wouldn't be entirely truthful, "we open ourselves to questions we cannot afford to answer. Questions about the Ark's sustainability. Questions about what happens if we can't go to the ground."
Kane leaned forward, his expression thoughtful. "Perhaps Ms. Blake has a point, though you may have one as well. We will have to enhance Clarke's reputation, I think, but we can easily frame this as a decision Clarke made for the sake of our people, one totally disconnected from the status of the Ark itself. Some falsified information about how the bombs used in the Final War had a specific half-life that we're just past the end of, and people could easily believe that Clarke would be willing to risk her life to see if Earth is safe." he drummed his fingers on the table, ignoring the expression on Jaha's face at the suggestion of making Clarke more popular than she already was. Shaking his head, he gave a wry smile and a shrug. "It even has the novelty of being mostly true, for that matter. She did make this decision for the sake of our people, and she is willing to risk her life to see if Earth is safe. And it doesn't cost us anything, since if the girls succeed, the entire Ark is going to know that Clarke was the one to find out Earth was survivable anyway. So we boost her popularity now, or we do it then, and doing it now heads off a lot of potential trouble."
The Council members exchanged glances again, this time with more consideration than dismissal on most of their faces. Abby was the first to nod slowly, her eyes meeting Kane's with something like gratitude. Gratitude, and something else, something small and warm, a flicker of a spark, though it was gone before anyone could really take note of it and wonder at it's presence.
"Marcus is right," she said quietly. "We can't keep hiding behind half-truths forever. The Ark is dying—we all know it. And if we try to cover up Clarke's mission completely, when the truth inevitably comes out, the backlash will be catastrophic."
"And what happens if the ground isn't survivable?" Jaha demanded, his voice tight as he slapped the Council Table with his right hand, palm cracking loudly in the quiet of the room. "What happens when we've built up hope only to have to crush it? When we've made Clarke into even more of a martyr than she already is?"
"Then we're in exactly the same position we're in now," Sinclair said, speaking up for the first time. "Except perhaps with more time to come up with alternatives. Maintaining the status quo isn't working, Thelonious. It hasn't worked for years now. Careful action and hedging out bets isn't going to solve this problem, not anymore. It's time to take a risk and hope that things fall in our favor."
Jaha's jaw worked silently for a moment, the muscles in his neck visibly tense as Sinclair's words hung in the air. The engineer wasn't known for speaking up often in Council meetings, which made his intervention all the more impactful at the times he did speak.
"Fine," the Chancellor finally said, his voice clipped, his expression so blank that it was immediately concerning. "We'll do it your way. But I want a carefully crafted message. We don't mention the Ark's life support issues. We present this as a planned scientific expedition, with Clarke volunteering because of her unique qualifications."
Raven snorted. "Her 'unique qualifications' being that she volunteered and you wanted her out of your hair?"
"Being that she has extensive knowledge of Earth Skills, medical training, and leadership abilities," Abby cut in, her voice sharp, eyes narrowing slightly. "All of which are true. Look, you two will work with Marcus and I to write something up that makes everyone happy, alright?"
"Fine, fine. When should we announce it? The day of, the day before?" Octavia asked, and there was a moment of silent consideration.
"Put that aside for now. We can worry about the speech once we're actually sure the pod is ready. Count your chickens when they've hatched, and all that." Cline, Head of Agriculture and someone who involved himself even less than Sinclair did, chimed in patiently.
"Agreed." Kane voiced, rising to his feet in an effort to bring the meeting to a close before things spiraled unpleasantly. "The pod will be ready in a week. We'll reconvene in three days to finalize the announcement, which gives everyone time to draft their thoughts. Octavia, while Raven helps Sinclair finish things up on that side of things, I want you to help me pull the supplies together and pack it as small as we can so it can fit. Abby, can you make time for a quick refresher on first aid?"
"Of course, that shouldn't be a problem. We can send them along with a couple of primers as well, basic first aid pamphlets that can help them deal with the most expected issues that they might encounter." the Head of Medical agreed promptly, getting to her own feet, and Thelonious Jaha could only watch and seethe as people who were her nominal subordinates dismissed themselves and walked away from the table he was meant to command. And worse still than their dismissal of his authority was the fact that he couldn't do a damn thing about it, not until he knew how the potential return to the homeworld was going to play out.
But if purges did become necessary, he knew exactly who would be on that list.