The Best of Times, the Worst of Times
A group of warriors circle Nia, laughing as she attempts an arrhythmic dance.
Clarke huffs in exasperation. “She wasn’t like this, you know. Not until you ripped us away.”
“She wasn’t like this before, either.”
“Is that why she’s still alive? I’ve been trying to figure out how you can look at her without sticking a knife in her throat.”
“The same way you can look at me, Clarke. Besides - weren't you the one who told me I couldn't go around killing people just because I feel like it?”
“So you didn’t ignore everything I said.”
“I didn’t ignore anything you said.” She blushes, and before Clarke can respond, she changes the subject. “How did you end up with her?”
“I...I don’t remember how I got there. I left Camp Jaha, and I was doing ok on my own. Foraging for myself, steering clear of just about anyone. Trying to heal.” Clarke notices Lexa look her in the eyes for the first time since she’d arrived in Polis. “A snowstorm landed, and I found the abandoned zoo. You know the one.”
Lexa nods.
“Well, it turns out it wasn’t so abandoned. There was this...giant bear….I killed it, somehow, but it bit me. I saw the wound festering, and I started to run, and then I kept running. The next thing I remember, I was in Lilith’s house. She took care of me for weeks; I was sick as a dog. Barely knew where I was. Then I woke up. And she still took care of me.”
Lexa nods, urging Clarke to continue.
“It wasn’t always happy; we fought like...the way I used to fight with my mom.” Clarke laughs at a memory, then lowers her voice. “But she kept me safe.”
A bright cackle interrupts their conversation. Nia is thrusting a bottle of liquor in the face of one of Lexa’s warriors. “Come on now! Another drink will help raise your spirit, and hopefully your skirt too.”
Lexa glares at Nia but refrains from comment. She grits her teeth in torment. “I’m glad ---”
Clarke softens. “Glad about…?”
“I’m glad she kept you safe.” Lexa fixes her eyes at a tiny beetle crawling on the ground. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
“You are?” Clarke smiles like the wind had just blown a warm breath through her arteries. Then her smile drops. “You left me --- you left my people to die.”
“I know,” Lexa says. “And I can’t change that.”
“Would you though?” Clarke picks at a blade of grass, gently tearing it into two. “If you could.”
“When you spend too much time in the past, you lose yourself, Clarke. It can swallow you up like a black hole.”
Clarke’s flicks away the shredded grass. “So you haven’t even thought about it.”
Lexa sighs. “That’s not what I said.”
“But you won’t answer my question.” Clarke shifts her eyes back to Lilith, who’s licking at an empty flask, probably trying to protect herself from the black hole of her own past. “And so we’re stuck.”
“You’re not a prisoner, Clarke. You can leave whenever you want.” Lexa speaks calmly, though her eyes cloud over like she knows that being ‘stuck’ has nothing to do with geography. “But you should give ‘here’ a chance.”
“Why?” Clarke shivers at the intensity of Lexa’s stare.
“One man in his time plays many parts.” Lexa springs to her feet and pulls Clarke up.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Lexa turns around and dazzles Clarke with a smile so bright that she almost forgets the frustrating conversation they'd just had. “You’ll see.”
---
EVENING
Clarke feels lighter than she has for days; part of it is the glass of mead by her side, steadily refilled by one of Lexa’s inner circle, but part of it must be the air itself, the sweet summer air spreading from her lungs to the rest of her body. A parade of lights stretch from their table all the way to the abandoned skyscrapers at the far end of the city.
“It’s the last day of spring,” Lexa says. “When the city sparks back to life.”
“I can’t imagine it ever slowing down. It’s beautiful.”
Lexa turns away, but not before Clarke sees a gentle pink flush on her face.
“I told you that Polis was special.”
“You told me lots of things, Lexa. Forgive me for believing approximately none of them anymore.” But she says it without malice. For the first time on the ground, Clarke sees a different way of life, different even from the gentle peace she found with Lilith. With Nia.
All of a sudden, a deep bass drum booms throughout the town square. A clownish man with uneven braids kneels beside Lexa and whispers something in Trigedasleng. She nods in response, and rises up. “You must excuse me,” she says to Clarke. “The show’s about to begin.”
What show? The lights begin to flash, and the whole audience gets up and clanks their plates in time to the bass drum. A flock of birds dash over the city, probably scared by the avalanche of noise. Then, as suddenly as the flashing started, darkness overtakes the town. Light returns, but only to a raised platform at the end of the square.
The clownish man stands to the side of the platform, carefully directing his cast of characters into their places, then standing back. The cast freezes in place for a few minutes before he steps in and rearranges them into a new configuration.
In the middle of the third setup, Clarke realizes that each scene is taken from old paintings. She barely has time to process the sights in front of her, like Indra posing as Napoleon, face still taut like she’s at a funeral, before the lights shift, moving the scene from European expressionism into Mughal eroticism. In each scene, the actors barely change their costumes. Well, she calls them actors, but they’re just the people of the city, some of whom she’d seen before.
The lights change again, and out walks Lexa, her hair lifted above her in a complicated bird’s nest, her body enclosed in rich brocade and fine embroidery. Lexa stands in front of the tableau and begins to speak, but Clarke can’t pay attention to a word she says. She looks to the frozen bodies behind Lexa, at muscles glistening with the effort of holding so completely still. She remembers the first time she saw the scene they’re recreating; her father, casually flipping through her history and humanities textbook, lighting up on one particular page.
He told her about the myth of Marianne, of how she carried the flag of liberty and justice through a vicious battleground, how her robes remained stark white despite the blood and guts spilling all over the field. How, long after she died, she remained a symbol of hope and goodness despite the many atrocities committed in her name.
As Lexa raises her hand, white flag and all, sparking thousands of cheers throughout the city, Clarke wonders how history will view Lexa. More than that, she wonders how history will see her.
---
“Cluno! There you are!” Nia swings into view, her arms moving at a velocity not quite matched by her legs.
Clarke swears softly, wondering how she spent so many months with Lilith without picking up on her incomparable talent for bad timing. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees two of Lexa’s crew reach for their daggers.
“Please, Clarke. Don’t give up on me. You saw that I could be more than this. That I could be smart, and peaceful, and...kind."
Clarke takes a long sip of the mead by her side. She wants to tell Lilith that she won’t give up. She wants to tell her that she knows there’s more to her than what this world has made her into, that she can look at Nia and still find Lilith, but the words just don’t come out.
Lilith falls to her knees and the guards pull her up and out of the city square, yelling threat-like promises to Clarke that they’ll get her home safely and make sure she stays there.
Clarke turns away. There, at the bottom of the hill, is Lexa, gliding past the streetlights in robes so white they’re almost blinding. Here comes her Marianne, floating above the wreckage of the recent past, still finding a way to be graceful in the best of times and the worst of times.