Lexa is thirteen months old. She’s sitting near the fence outside her family’s humble shack. Her parents are nearby, showing her older brothers how to milk the family’s goats. Her big green eyes are full of curiosity and wonder. She’s a mama’s girl, but she loves hearing her daddy sing lullabies, and loves when her big brothers pick her up and swing her around. At just over a year old, her family is secure, happy, and her future is known. She will grow up and become a goat farmer, just like her parents.
Lexa spots some wildflowers a few feet away. They are interesting and she wants to grab them. She wants to try to walk like her family does. She pulls herself up on the fence, rocking on unstable, chubby legs. She steadies herself before talking a few cautious steps forward. She giggles in delight at her new accomplishment, before falling face first. She screams for her parents. Her mother rushes over and picks her up, bouncing her and cooing words of comfort. She doesn’t notice the blood running down from the cut on her daughter’s leg. But her father does. He stares at it silently, transfixed, as it trickles down her tiny leg in what seems like slow motion. Lexa stops crying, just as her father is wanting to start. His daughter’s future, once so simple and certain, has been turned upside down.
Lexa is seven years old. She’s climbing her favorite tree. It’s her favorite because she can climb higher in this tree than any other. She’s pretty sure she’s climbing even further than she ever has, and she’s determined to reach the top. “What are you looking for up there?” her brother, Dars, yells. “Her destiny!” yells her little sister, Lila. Their mother, Asarai, yells in a voice more harsh than she ever used to use, “Stop saying crazy shit like that Lila, we don’t need a prophetess in this family, a nightblood is more than enough for us!” She softens her voice and kneels down by her youngest daughter. “Your sister’s destiny is to go to Polis and train. Perhaps to become commander. Yours and your brothers’ is to stay here, continue raising goats. That’s all there is.” Lila repeated a mantra she’d been repeating since she had words “My sister shall rule the earth, but her destiny is in the sky…Besides Mama, I’m gonna die before then.” Lexa looked down at her family members and started climbing down the tree. Her destiny could wait.
Lexa is nine years old. Her sister is lying in their shared bed. Lila’s skin is flushed, and she’s coughing, a deep, rough cough, that’s painful just to hear. Lexa holds her hand and tries not to cry. Lila has never been healthy, Lexa has always had to carry her if ever they had to travel very far. She never grew as much or as fast as other children. She had gotten strange bumps under her skin her whole life. But for a few weeks, Lila had been getting worse and worse. Lila points to a cup of water on the nearby table, pleading with Lexa with her big brown eyes. Lexa gets up to grab the cup, but her father, Harot, grabs her wrist to stop her. “You’re not giving that to Lila, are you?” he says. “She’s been coughing, she’s thirsty.” Lexa replies. “Don’t give it to her.” He orders. “But shes’s thirsty! She’s my sister, and I love her! I don’t want her to cough anymore, why do you? Why don’t you love her, why don’t you love any of us?” Her voice is full of innocence and indignance. Harot knows that his daughter is a natural lover, always wanting to help others and spread the love everywhere she goes. He also knows that these qualities, which might have served to make her a wonderful friend, partner, mother, will not help her in the life she is destined to start soon. So he doesn’t tell her that the fluid will only go into her lungs and make her cough more. He doesn’t tell her the Lila won’t survive the week either way. He doesn’t tell her that it absolutely breaks his heart to watch his little girl die, or that it breaks his heart twice over to watch Lexa do everything in her power to hold on to her sister. He says something he hopes will turn his daughter into the woman she will soon need to be. “Love is weakness, Lexa.”
Lexa sleeps with her sister in her arms. At some point in the night Lila finally stops coughing.
A few days later Lexa tries to climb a tree. She only makes it a few feet off the ground before her body feels too heavy to continue. She lays down on the branch and stares up at the cloudy sky. Perhaps her father was right. She’s never felt so weak.
Lexa is fourteen years old. Gone are the days of milking goats and climbing trees. Long-gone is her childhood, her innocence, simplicity or certainty. She woke up with black stains all over her night dress and sheets, and searing pain in her abdomen. But she knows this pain is only her body’s way of pushing her to try harder. If she can fight with this pain, she’ll fight that much better without it. She wants to stay in bed for a few hours, but that hasn’t been an option for her since she arrived in Polis years ago. She gets up and starts preparing for a day of fighting, physical training, strategic training, and English lessons. She goes down to eat breakfast with the other nightbloods. Though they are currently her comrades, she knows they will one day be her competition, so they keep a distance from each other. Still, she’s quite fond of them, and would like to be friends with some of them. She’d like to be friends with anyone really. But she knows better. There’s no room to make friends when you’re training to be commander. Its like her father taught her, love is weakness.
Lexa is nineteen years old. She wakes up from another nightmare. She swears she can still smell the rotting flesh of Costia’s head at her bedside. It’s been months but she can’t shake it. “Love is weakness.” She tells herself. Nevermind that every time she closes her eyes, she sees Lila and Costia. Never mind that Lexa feels everything so deeply, but nothing deeper than love. Never mind that she longs for human connection each and every night. She glances out her window at the moon. She wonders what Lila meant about her destiny being in the sky. She tells herself Lila was a fanciful little girl who died before she was old enough to have logical sense. Before she was old enough to learn that love was weakness. Lexa closes her eyes and wonders when she’ll really learn it for herself.
Lexa is twenty-one years old when she learns that people have fallen from the sky and set up a village. When she meets the commander, she remembers her sisters words first. Perhaps the sky people have something to do with the destiny she had always talked about. She remembers her father’s words second.
Lexa is twenty-two years old and Clarke is laying beside her, slowly waking up from a long sleep after a longer night of making love. “Can you get me some water babe?” she asks as she stretches. “Of course, sweetheart” Lexa replies. She gets up and fills Clarke a cup from the pitcher and hands it to her. She watches and Clarke takes a few sips before setting the cup down and resting her head back on the pillows. She motions for Lexa to join her and she does, laying her head against her chest and wrapping an arm around her. “I love you, you know.” Lexa says. Somehow, it never fails to make her heart flutter when she says those words. Clarke replies “Of course, I love you too” before drifting back asleep. Lexa decides that even if love is weakness, this is her destiny. And even as her muscles relax and sleep overcomes her, Lexa knows she’s never felt so strong.