[or: costia falls in lexa for a very long time. lexa always loves her back. costia/lexa from costia’s point of view. // ao3.]
//
we have not touched the stars (which brings us back to the hero’s shoulders)
.
and a gentleness that comes, / not from the absence of violence, but despite / the abundance of it. / i’ll give you my heart to make a place / for it to happen, evidence of a love that transcends hunger. / we’ve read the back of the book, we know what’s going to happen. / the fields burned, the land destroyed, the lovers left / broken in the brown dirt.
—richard siken, ‘snow and dirty rain’
//
You meet Lexa because she pushes down a boy who was trying to take the ball you were playing with; she steps in front of you between the boy—who is much taller than her—and just shoves him aside.
You smile a little, because then she turns to you. Her eyes are green and grey like the forest, and she’s missing her front top teeth, and she has a smattering of freckles across her nose.
“Are you unharmed?” she asks; you’re to speak only English at school, and her accent is terrible, her words clunky. She’s shorter than you, slight; her clothes are a little dirty and ripped.
“Yes,” you say. “Thank you.”
She offers her hand. “I am Lexa.”
You take it; her small palm is soft and her skin is light against yours. “I’m Costia.”
She grabs the ball out of your hands with a smile that crinkles around her eyes and then races off teasingly. You laugh and run after her.
//
You make a best friends pact two days later. Lexa brings you a bouquet of all different sorts of flowers before school, and her cheeks turn pink when she hands them to you, shuffling her feet. During lunch you sit behind her on the ground and tuck a few of them into her hair, which is very soft and very tangled.
She turns around after a while and says, “Are we, um—” she scowls and shuts her eyes and you think she’s forgotten the word in English— “friends?” she gets out eventually.
“Yes,” you say.
She sighs in relief.
“We’re best friends,” you tell her, and her smile is the best thing.
She scrambles around to face you, sitting up on her knees. She brings one of her hands to her mouth and spits in it, and you crinkle your nose.
She looks at you expectantly for a few moments before you spit in your hand too and then shake hers. It’s gross but Lexa looks very happy.
When she lets go you immediately wipe your hand on her shirt, and she tries to scamper away from you, but you smear your spit on the fabric anyway. She looks down at her shirt and then scowls up at you angrily, but you just stand up and grab her hand. Lunch is over and you have to go back inside now. She laces your fingers together and you squeeze once.
The flowers are still in her hair.
//
“My parents were killed,” Lexa says. Her voice is soft and her eyes are shiny with tears and the festival lights around you. You wandered off a little bit from the main party, and you found a little dark soft patch of grass and sat down with Lexa.
She lies back and you follow.
“They were out gathering some things for me, new clothes and shoes, and some Reapers killed them.”
She’s quiet and her voice is rough. You squeeze her hand.
“Our village was destroyed, but I hid and the few who survived came here.”
“Lexa,” you say, “I am very sorry.”
She nods and sniffles.
“My father was killed in battle, before I was born,” you say.
“I’m sorry too,” she says.
She turns toward you and squirms over a little in the grass so that she can press her head against your chest, and her tears are silent and warm. You bring your arms around her and you are both so small but she makes you feel strong.
//
You get separated the next time school begins; Lexa gets chosen for the group of warriors, and you get to learn healing. Lexa holds her chin up high and waves to you from across the field while she goes to her new classroom, and you still have English and mathematics lessons and breaks with her, so it’s not so bad.
It’s easier to pay attention in class, at least.
//
Lexa is meant for summer, you think. She laughs loudly one day when you meet by the river in town, hands you a clumsy daisy chain. She scampers into the water and then splashes you; it’s cold and you didn’t really want to swim.
But you wade in and smile sweetly and then tackle her. She falls back and you both go all the way under, come up spluttering and laughing and she hugs you for a long time.
“You are my favorite thing in this world, Costia,” she tells you very softly.
You squeeze her a little tighter; she’s thin and lovely and she’s yours.
//
You spend night after night under the stars in your yard when it’s warm. Lexa is wildly smart, you think, and she can name all of them. You tell her little stories about them, tales of brave adventures, of falling in love just to make her laugh.
And because, if they are written in the stars, maybe you can both believe the endings.
//
Lexa’s marks in English are absolutely horrible, but she doesn’t seem to care, because she gets to move up four mathematics classes. Once she starts training more, fall coloring the leaves around you, her knees and palms are always scraped.
But she seems happy, and you meet her after sparring sometimes. She grins and kisses your cheek and you try to push her off of you because she’s sweaty. You both laugh and her leader, Anya, usually glares, but you think she’s just kidding, because she doesn’t tell you to be quiet or anything.
“Anya is so cool,” Lexa says one night. Sometimes on weekends the orphanage lets her stay over at your house; your mom is the lead healer in Polis, so it’s nice and big and you have the space, and your mom really likes Lexa.
“I guess,” you say, because at the mention of Anya, your stomach does a weird clench.
“Costia,” Lexa says, then rolls toward you, touches your arm lightly. Her eyes are your favorite color in the moonlight.
“I just don’t see why she’s so great.”
“She’s a warrior!” Lexa whispers adamantly.
“Whatever,” you say.
“Hey,” she says, “you know—you’re my—you’re mine,” Lexa says. It’s soft and earnest and honest, and when you meet her eyes, they’re wide open.
It settles something inside you, and you nod. Lexa smiles and you scoot closer so you can hold her while you fall asleep.
She is very small, and she lets you.
//
You plan your future together; you draw up contracts and everything: you decide on a small house near the center of town. You will be a healer and Lexa will teach strategy and mathematics and maybe even have a position on the war council—she doesn’t really like fighting, she admits to you in the middle of the night, and she thinks that there could be really smart ways to avoid it. You want two children and a cat.
Lexa is quiet and shy and laughs a lot; Lexa smells like flowers, and those nights, staying awake is just like dreaming.
//
During winter, Lexa is cleaning her armor when Anya finds you waiting by the fire.
She sits down next to you.
“You’re Costia?”
You nod.
“You know Lexa?”
You sit up as straight as you can. “She’s mine.”
Anya laughs hard, then waves her hand. “You guys are, like, eight.”
“I’m nine,” you say.
She shakes her head and sobers quickly. “Do you know about commanders, Costia?”
“Like, the past ones?” You learn about them in class sometimes.
Anya shrugs. “Kind of. But more—do you know a new one is going to be called to lead our people?”
You turn to her with wide eyes. “Are you getting called?”
“Me? No,” she says, and you start to get a little confused.
Anya sighs and lifts her chin to where Lexa is almost tipping over carrying her armor and a heavy wooden sword.
“Did you know she’s better at strategy tests than everyone in Polis, even the head of the war council?”
You knew Lexa got to take strategy tests with the generals, so it’s not surprising.
Anya turns toward you seriously. “Costia, it is my understanding that Lexa has no family?”
You nod.
She sighs. “I am nominating her to be tested to be the commander, Costia.”
You grin. “This is a great honor,” you say, but the look on Anya’s face is very sad, and your heart sinks, “right?”
Lexa skips up to the two of you then, and Anya sighs, then nods. “Yes,” she says, “a great honor.”
Lexa kisses the top of your head and then plops down to sit between the two of you clumsily, holding her small hands up to the fire.
You remember from class, maybe, that testing to be the commander is sometimes very, very dangerous. You look over at Anya, who is frowning at Lexa, and you want to cry.
//
Lexa misses the next day of classes and then knocks on your door that evening, just after dinner. It’s the hardest snow of the year outside, and you’re surprised when you open your door and she’s there. Tears are almost frozen on her cheeks.
“Lexa,” you say, and your mom hurries her out of her threadbare, wet furs and in front of the fire. Lexa wipes her nose on the back of her sleeve, and your mom hands her a bowl of soup and some bread, then sits down next to you.
“Lexa,” she says, “what’s wrong?”
Lexa sniffles and puts the bowl down, and when she looks at you, her eyes are terrified. “I have been nominated to be tested to be Commander.”
Your mom freezes next to you for a moment. “That is an honor, Lexa,” she says after a while, and you cannot look at anything other than the bowl of soup on the floor.
Lexa squares her chin and nods. “Anya told me this morning; I was informed of the components of testing later on by the council.”
You finally look up at your mom, whose hands are shaking and whose jaw is clenching. Lexa’s lower lip starts to tremble again and your mom scoots forward on the floor and gathers Lexa into her arms. She starts to cry—hard—and you feel like you might be sick.
You don’t look away from the bowl of soup on the floor.
//
Two days later, you are building a snow person with Lexa at lunch, and she quietly says, “I am going to die.”
You still. “You—you are not—”
She holds up a hand and sighs. “In the spring, I am going to die. In the tests.”
You scoot closer to her and shake your head. “Lexa,” you say, and you wait for her to meet your eyes. “You will be the next commander, and it will be a great honor.” It feels like a lie, so you add, “And I will be very proud of you.”
She bites her bottom lip. “I am sorry,” she whispers.
You shake your head and hug her. She holds on tight.
She doesn’t cry.
//
The night before Lexa’s test, you hold her in bed. You have helped her for months with her English; she studied for hours and hours with her strategy and mathematics tutors; she spent days at a time in the forest with Anya, training as hard as possible, coming back with cuts and bruises your mom always bandaged gently.
She trembles when you tug her closer and you cry.
“Ai hod yu in,” you say, over and over again, until she falls asleep.
//
The next morning you help her braid her hair and you hold her hand while Anya puts some warpaint around her eyes. Lexa is small and thin and so brave, you think, and your mom and Anya hug her before they walk out of the little tent you’re in.
Lexa looks down and scuffs her toe in the dirt. “Costia,” she says, “will you miss me?”
When she looks at you, her eyes are big and green and you want to tell someone—anyone—that she shouldn’t have to do this. Lexa picks flowers and likes to lie out in the sun after swimming; she helps you try to care for injured animals you find in the forest sometimes; the armor she has is far, far too heavy for her shoulders.
Lexa is young.
Lexa is so, so kind.
She wipes the tears away from your cheeks as you nod.
You bend down so quickly and press the smallest of kisses to the corner of her mouth. When you pull back a moment later her smile is sad.
“I love you,” she says.
You nod and tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. “I love you too, Lexa.” She takes a deep breath so she doesn’t cry and you feel so angry and so sad and like someone is trying to rip your chest open.
“May we meet again,” you say.
She squeezes your hand. “May we meet again.”
//
It is very late and you are almost sure you’re dreaming when Lexa—small, thin, overwhelmingly kind Lexa—stumbles out of the forest, bleeding and hurt but alive.
Very much alive.
Your mom gasps next to you and Anya’s hands knot together, and you don’t know how to believe that she’s not dead, that she’s here in front of you, breathing and beating.
Your mom rushes forward and barks out a lot of orders in Trigedasleng, and you stand still with Anya, who seems shocked too. Lexa wasn’t predicted to survive—she is wildly clever and Anya is a brilliant warrior already, so physically she is well-trained—but Lexa is small.
Your mom is situating Lexa on a stretcher, and you watch another healer put his hands on her stomach, and you watch Lexa hold up her hand, which is misshapen and blackened, and you watch your mother smooth back Lexa’s messy, tangled hair.
You look up to Anya, who you think is crying, but it’s raining, so you can’t really be sure. “She’s the commander now?”
Anya swallows. “Yes,” she says, and looks at you. “She’s the commander.”
You feel like the world is opening up to breathe life into you but also to swallow you whole, because she is your Lexa, and you do not want war to take that away.
But she is here, and when Anya pushes you forward gently with a little smile and nod, you walk to the stretcher and kneel down, ignore all of the blood and burns and wrap her in the gentlest hug.
“Hi,” she mumbles.
You laugh a little, and Lexa presses a sloppy kiss to the side of your neck. “Hello.”
Your mom squeezes your shoulder and you pull away from Lexa, who smiles as much as she can with one of her eyes swollen shut and a split lip.
You’ve thought to before, loosely and fleetingly, and it solidifies more now: she’s beautiful, and she is very alive.
//
You hear her scream for twelve minutes while you wait outside of the healing building, but then Anya walks out briskly and spots you.
She looks up at the night sky once and blows out a breath, then puts a hand on your back and leads you away from the doors.
You go without a word and without fighting, because Anya could easily carry you away, but also because you cannot stand to hear Lexa in pain any longer.
Anya takes you to her parents’ small house, and she rattles off a quick summary of Lexa is Commander and they hug her before she grabs a bottle something and a loaf of bread and strides out the door, motioning for you to follow.
It’s stopped raining, and it’s almost dawn. You follow Anya up a small hill and sit down next to her on a log when she stops. She takes a drink out of the bottle and you wrinkle your nose because it smells awful; she grimaces then puts it down at her feet.
“You’re too little,” she says, “to have any of that, sorry.”
“It smells terrible anyway.”
She laughs a little, rips off a piece of bread and hands it to you. “It tastes terrible too.”
You nibble on your bread.
“She will live,” Anya says, propping her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand. She looks out over the tips of light spreading over Polis. “Her hand was badly burnt, which is why she was—why she—” Anya shakes her head. “She will live.”
You stay silent and still as the sun rises, the words filling your chest with the same warmth.
//
It takes three different surgeries over the next week for Lexa’s hand to start to heal. She isn’t coherent or awake for most of the time, but you stay with her as much as you can. Your mom tells you that she has a fever, that her stomach had been hurt and it was hard to heal something like the burns on her hand.
But you go with your mom early in the morning on one of your weekly days off from school, exactly a week after Lexa’s test, and she’s sitting up in bed, tiredly eating a bowl of oats.
Your heart speeds up a lot when you see her awake, and she puts down her spoon with a big smile when she sees you.
“Costia,” she says, then frowns when it comes out rough and very quietly.
You laugh and sit on the side of her bed, glance at your mom questioningly—she nods gently—before you situate yourself better beside Lexa.
The hand that Lexa burnt is wrapped up in a lot of bandages so you can’t hold it, but you grin anyway and pat her leg.
“Let her sleep when she needs, Costia,” your mom says, then turns to go help her other patients.
You look at Lexa critically—the bruises on her face are mostly faded, and she looks very tired and very thin, but her eyes are the same. You feel something break inside of you a little, and you fight back a wave of tears.
“If you had been so sad to see me you need not have come, Costia” she says, and your eyes widen and you scramble back a little before you see Lexa fighting a smile, and you sigh when she starts to laugh delightedly.
“Lexa,” you say, and she shakes her head.
“Heda Lexa,” she tells you.
You stare straight at her and say, “Lexa,” simply, and she swallows before shrugging and resuming clumsily eating her breakfast.
You smile and lean into her shoulder.
“Thank you,” you say, and you mean it for a lot of things, but mainly for being here. For being yours.
“You’re welcome,” she says simply, and you know she understands.
//
After six weeks her hand has healed. She has a big scar that stretches all the way across her palm, up between the skin between her thumb and forefinger, and you catch her looking at it with disdain on a number of occasions while you’re busy playing all kinds of pretend in her new quarters. Lexa likes playing people in the stars best, because your legends have it that there is a large floating world out in space. You don’t really believe those stories, but Lexa does, so you always go along with the little stories she tells.
Sometimes her eyes go hard and scared when she’s back after training, tired and sweaty, and you desperately want to clutch at her and make sure Lexa—you Lexa, just Lexa—comes back to you.
She stares at her palm and swallows and then squares her shoulders when you hold it and asks you to be another girl among the stars with you.
You always say yes.
//
You spend a few days making her a soft leather glove. Her hands are a little smaller than yours, but you’re pretty sure you got the size right. You put a few little silver stars on the top of it, and when you give it to her, she grins and kisses your cheek.
“I like your hands,” you say, and she rolls her eyes. “But I thought maybe this would help with training and things.”
She flexes her fingers a few times and wraps you up in a hug.
“You are the very best thing in this world, Costia,” she says.
//
“They tell me I have past lives,” she says. “You know, I identified the relics during my test.”
You nod. You’re sitting with Lexa on the little hill Anya had taken you up, watching the sunrise. It’s simple and quiet and your knees are pressed together.
“I dream of them sometimes,” she says, “but I am not sure if I dream them because they were real or because I want to be comforted in death.”
You clench your jaw, because sometimes Lexa talks of death like it is inevitable for her soon, and maybe it is stubborn blind hope on your part, but you refuse to believe it.
“Maybe they are just dreams,” you say.
Lexa smiles sadly and her eyes are all sorts of colors in the sunrise. “Yes,” she says, “maybe.”
//
Lexa is Anya’s official second, which you’re all relieved by, you think. When she’s eleven, after a very poor attempt to poison her at a feast, she’s appointed a kind of bodyguard named Gustus. He is big and serious at first, but once the days wear on, he makes you and Lexa laugh a lot by performing little magic tricks, pulling coins from behind your ears, finding ribbons in your pockets.
He’s kind to Lexa and he’s kind to you, only winks when the two of you try to sneak past him to go play in the field you bury the small birds you sometimes find with broken wings. It is your place, and things in life are changing with Lexa—she is never Lexa to anyone but you; she is Heda, and you get to play less, and there are a growing number of scars across her body.
But with you, when you still can, she sneaks off to the field, Gustus following behind you but not close enough to hear any of your soft conversations. You always hold hands, and you’re both almost twelve, and you wonder what Lexa is to you.
You play tag and house and she’s serious about your future; you can live in the commander’s quarters when you are older, and you can have a glorious future together. You know that most commanders don’t live long, because war is deadly and no amount of healing can fix that sometimes, but Lexa says it so fiercely you do your best to believe her.
“I will wage peace,” she tells you, quiet and solemn, staring at the stars.
“I believe you.”
She smiles softly, and her jaw is hardening, her cheekbones starting to be more prominent. She is beautiful.
“Do you think they have peace among the stars?” she asks.
“Yes,” you say, “I think they do.”
She nods and turns toward you, the grass soft, flowers blooming all around. “Ai hod yu in, Costia,” she whispers.
For some reason, tonight, it tugs somewhere below your stomach, and you hold her tighter.
Gustus wakes you both hours later, because it is not fit for the commander to sleep in fields of flowers.
//
You find Anya in the hall outside of the war room, and Lexa is still inside, nodding seriously while a general points to some spots on the map. She has to stand on her tiptoes to see the map.
“Anya?”
“Costia.”
You take a deep breath and sit down next to her on a small bench. “I—Lexa—um, well.”
She smiles softly and you think she’s trying not to laugh.
“Am I allowed to love her?”
Her shoulders slump and Anya is tough on Lexa, although you are sure that Lexa is her favorite person. But Anya is kind and smart and you trust her more than anything.
“Yes,” she says. “And she is allowed to love you back.”
You feel tears prick at the back of your eyes and you swallow and then stand. “Thank you,” you say.
She nods.
Lexa walks out of the room, trying to look as tall and imposing as possible, but she grins when she sees you, slips her hand into yours.
When you walk off together to have dinner no one says a word, and you bend and kiss Lexa’s shoulder.
//
A few nights later, you wander out to the field, because it is summer and warm and lovely. You are both twelve now, your birthday celebrated in your house with a few friends and a very clumsily prepared cake by Lexa, who gave you a—probably stolen, but you just laugh—gold pendant of a sparrow; her birthday was celebrated with a large feast, where she stood proud and strong, armor squared and her hair wild and her eyes hard, gloved hand on the hilt of her sword, black warpaint around her eyes, bleeding down her cheeks.
Everyone says it—she is the best Heda we have had—and you know it to be true.
You know Lexa is yours in the way she is everyone else’s, but you know she is yours like no one else can understand.
She is in a soft white nightdress and clumsily tied boots tonight, though, as are you. You weave flowers into her hair and she makes you a crown. When you lie back the moon is orange tonight, a blessing.
She sighs and turns on her side toward you, brings her still-small hand to trace your eyebrow, then your ear, down to your mouth and nose.
You look at her lips, and you do not know what you are to one another anymore, but it is not the same as you were when you were younger.
You have kissed a few times, but not like when you lean forward and press your lips against hers.
You pull back quickly and she looks at you like she might cry, but then she kisses you back.
//
You kiss sometimes, soft little ones that bloom—like the bandits on the horizon and like the sun in the morning and like the flowers in spring—over the next year into tugs on her bottom lip with your teeth and marks on her jaw.
When Lexa is thirteen, she gets her first tattoo, an intricate design on her right forearm. You sit with her while the ink tears into her smooth skin that bleeds for hours. You help your mom bandage all of the little gashes and scrapes she brings home with her from battle, so you know her scars, the remnants of scattered threats of war.
Lexa had been excited for her tattoo until after she got it, apparently, because you sit next to her and admire it, but then her lip trembles.
“What’s wrong?” you ask softly, because you are alone in her room and she is just Lexa.
She swallows. “We do what we must,” she says softly, and you know she never wanted any of this, never wanted the heavy weight on her small shoulders.
If you could take it away, you would.
“I think it looks great,” you say, and she smiles at you sadly but still in thanks.
She nods.
“Let’s get ready for dinner?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”
//
Lexa is away more and more, fighting bandits from the Ice Nation. You are terrified every time she runs off to save your people, and you spread her warpaint and then kiss her softly.
“Promise me,” you say, and your chest aches.
“I promise I will come back,” she says, and you kiss her again.
//
She does, every time, with black eyes and a broken nose once, with prisoners and Anya’s proud smile. After battle she takes you out to the field, every time, and picks flowers.
“There is a—poem?, I think they are called?”
You smile, because Lexa still tries to get out of English lessons as often as possible. You nod.
“A poem,” she says with a small smile, arranging the blood red poppies in her hands into a little bouquet, “that says, Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.”
“Yes,” you say, “called ‘One Small Star’.”
She turns toward you. “Yes.”
She sighs and hands you the bouquet. “I will wage peace,” she says—she tells you this a lot, like you need to hear it; you suppose you both do.
“I know,” you tell her, every time.
She lies back. “I would despise English lessons much less if all words were that beautiful.”
You laugh and kiss her. You forget to carry the poppies back with you later that night.
//
One day, when you are fourteen, she comes back from battle held up by Anya’s strong arms on her horse, limp and with closed eyes, blood everywhere, one leg quite obviously at the wrong angle. You are immediately terrified and immediately angry, because she promised.
Anya carries her quickly into the medical tent; “She’s alive,” she keeps repeating softly, as if she needs to hear it herself.
Your mother bustles around, checking Lexa’s pulse and her breathing. Anya says, “She was crushed by her horse,” quickly and you want to throw up, because you have seen many large men die from this, and Lexa is still so small.
Anya strides out into the hallway and you think you hear something crack, so you follow, because you cannot watch your mom try to save Lexa right now.
There is a hole in the wall and Anya has bloodied knuckles. You sigh and lead her to another room, where you ready some salve and bandages.
“There was nothing I could do,” Anya tells you, like you both need to hear it.
You nod, hold her hand still.
“Her horse spooked; I got her back as quickly as I could.”
“She will live,” you tell her firmly.
Anya clenches her jaw. “She will live,” she says.
You finish bandaging her hand and when you are calm enough you walk back into Lexa’s room. There is blood on the floor from a small tube in her chest—her lung must have had collapsed. Your mom asks for help setting her broken leg, and you do. Her breathing is shallow but even, and you stitch up the wound on her head, just in her hairline, then wrap it in bandages.
Her injuries aren’t that bad, really, and in two months, you know she will be fine.
In this moment, you are all very, very lucky.
//
Lexa complains for a few weeks and is, in general, a terrible patient. You catch her on multiple occasions hobbling around on her splint instead of using crutches like she knows she’s supposed to.
But she’s funny and lovely and quiet, and she sleeps more than normal, taking little naps in the afternoons when she can. It’s a period of respite for both of you, soft touches and kisses and whispers of a future you are becoming less and less sure you will be able to have.
But Lexa is sure, and Lexa is certain and wild and fierce, and Lexa is the commander. If anyone can will something into being, you think it is her.
//
On her fifteenth birthday, Lexa gets another tattoo: two interwoven lines from the base of her spine all the way up to the nape of her neck, mirroring each other’s twists and turns intricately.
It’s beautiful, and she stays perfectly still, even though her back bleeds and you’re sure it must hurt.
But Lexa is used to being hurt; Lexa is always hurt. You trace over a little, shining scar on the top of her wrist, and she smiles at you from the table, her head turned in your direction.
You both know what her tattoo means, and eight days later, when you hesitantly, adamantly push up her shirt and unbutton her pants, she smiles and kisses you and says, “Yes,” softly.
You spend hours kissing her scars, learning her, mapping her beneath you. She cries when she tenses around your hand, and she is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen.
She kisses you hard and soft and touches you with sure, steady hands that are used to holding knives, swords, to shooting a bow, to being anything but gentle.
But Lexa is the gentlest person you know, and she touches you like she will break if she pushes too hard.
Maybe you both do, just a little.
//
Two weeks later, you find Lexa sitting on her bed, her shirt off. Anya is walking out of her room, and there is a fire roaring, and everything smells like burnt flesh, and you know.
Lexa isn’t crying, but you can tell she’s about to start crying. She hadn’t actually killed anyone—before today, because there’s a small, blistering scar on her chest. Anya squeezes your shoulder and you nod once, and then you sit down beside Lexa, take her hand.
She leans into you and then chokes on a sob. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to kill him.”
Your heart breaks and there is a surge of anger inside you, because the world should not be this harsh to someone this lovely. “I know,” you whisper.
“He was going to kill me,” she says. “I had to but I didn’t want to.”
You swallow and nod because right now you cannot cry.
“It hurt, Costia. It hurt.”
You have felt men die beneath you—never at your own hand. “I know,” you repeat.
She sobs once more, but then she is quiet and still and after a few minutes you put a small bandage over the blistered mark. You kiss it, then you kiss her, and you lead her by the hand to your field.
She lies down, her head on your chest, and you tell her stories of girls in the stars, kiss the top of her head. Her tears are warm and silent and very still, and her shoulders are still small.
“You are so good, Lexa,” you say.
She swallows and eventually nods. “Because of you,” she says. “I am good because of you.”
//
On her sixteenth birthday you get very, very drunk together after the huge annual festival, and you dance for hours, laugh and kiss and eventually wander off to her room when it gets late enough.
You are both too drunk to have sex, so you just kiss until you fall asleep.
It is the youngest you have felt in years.
//
Two days later, she sits down with you at a simple dinner in her private room and says, “We are going to war.” Her jaw clenches and she looks frustrated and sad and like she has somehow failed.
Your heart sinks, because she might not come back from this, no matter how many times she promises.
“I am sorry,” she says.
“No,” you say. “No.”
She sighs and nods and picks at her food.
“You will come back,” you say, “because I am not giving you a choice.”
She laughs and smiles up at you and they are the saddest things you have ever seen. “Are you ordering the Commander?”
“Lexa,” you say, brow raised in challenge.
She rolls her eyes, and you feel a little lighter. “Ai hod yu in too, Costia.”
//
You are just outside of the walls collecting some herbs for poison antidotes and then there are horses and you wake up in darkness, far away.
It is cold and there is snow and you are terrified. You are dragged to a palace of cold blues and silvers—nothing like the warm red of Lexa’s sash or the green grey of her eyes you love.
They ask you of your Commander’s plans—about war, about battle. As they break your bones you do not know how to tell them that the only secrets you know about Lexa are that you met her when you were both so small. You do not know how to tell them that your commander buried small birds after she tried to mend their wings, that she has freckles across her nose in the summer, that her eyes are the color of the earth.
You do not know how to tell them that you never discussed war with her, that battle was never on your tongue, because she tasted like mint and berries and she kissed you as gently as bloom in the spring. You do not know how to tell them that she was supposed to die but she didn’t. You do not know how to tell them about the holy offering of past lives in the scar on her palm, how the weight of your has been burnt into her skin for years.
They are going to end your life because you have fallen in love with her.
You are never going to kiss her again; you are never going to help her wash off blood and warpaint and return to you time and time again.
“She will kill you all,” you say, and you know it to be true, because Lexa—your Lexa—will never exist again.
You do not know how to tell them that you fell in love with a girl who loved mathematics and hated English lessons, who swam for hours in the summer, who has lost more than anyone ever should. You do not know how to tell them that her rage and her terror will fill her and she will grow taller and stronger and she will be deadly, because she is wild and clever and she will miss you more than any amount of their blood will atone for.
You do not know how to tell them that you fell in love with a girl who had the gentlest hands and shoulder blades like wings, a girl who whispered your name in the middle of the night like smoke and said I love you every morning.
They are going to kill you and you do not know how to tell them that the secrets you know are too precious to say aloud, because you fell in love with a girl with tangled hair who believed in a life among the stars, a girl who only ever wanted to wage peace.
You do not know if you believe in reincarnation and this is not a happy ending but maybe loving the commander means dying for her too. You will; your final secret sees you through: you fell in love with a girl who only ever wanted to give you flowers.
You fell in love with a girl who loved you back.