Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Luna's eyes hadn't left the sea for the entire length of their boat ride. Not even when Murphy tripped and nearly went sailing over the edge - in Raven's defense, she hadn't actually meant to trip him, she lay the blame for that entirely on the universe, which seemed to hate Murphy almost as much as she did.

Still, Luna didn't take her eyes off the water.

Raven caught occasional murmurs from her lips, too low to make out clearly and, even if she had been speaking at an audible volume, Raven knew she wouldn't be able to make heads or tales of the Trigedasleng.

She'd never bothered to learn. Had never really been all that interested in anything to do with Grounder culture, or Grounders in general. She was beginning to regret that.

"What's she saying?" Raven asked Nyko, after her curiosity had gotten the better of her. He'd been Luna's shadow ever since they'd shown up at Arkadia's gates and, like Raven, had been watching her closely for the length of the boat trip, though he'd granted her some distance early on, which Luna seemed appreciative of. To be fair to Nyko, everyone had been watching Luna closely - he was just the only one doing so without any hint of suspicion or urgency.

Raven had noticed that some of the others looked at Luna like a piece of meat, or the prophesied holy grail - which was, at best, uncomfortable and, at worst, dehumanizing.

She knew Luna had noticed, had seen her shift beneath the stares, something like irritation in her eyes that bordered on reproach. Raven pretended she didn't see the building desperation there, like an animal that was aware they'd been trapped and that their chances of dashing to freedom were growing smaller and smaller by the second; soon they'd be withered down to nothing.

The point was: there was none of that in Nyko's eyes.

Only concern.

He might just be the only one on this damn boat who remembered Luna was an actual person - and one who'd just lost everything to boot.

Even Raven couldn't attest to that.

Her prayers were riding on Luna just as surely as everyone else's.

But she hadn't forgotten Adria, either. Or the others.

No matter how much she'd have liked to.

"It's a prayer for the dead," Nyko said, keeping his voice low. His gaze didn't leave Luna, though she had determinedly turned away from them, refusing to acknowledge the boat's other passengers. She looked almost ready to jump into the sea and make a swim for it.

Raven wouldn't blame her, but her body was poised to spring forward nonetheless. To stop her.

"Something native to Floukru, I think," he continued. "I haven't heard it pass the lips of any other clan. But I've heard it far too often in this last week."

Raven remembered grimly that Nyko had been present for much of Floukru's demise, whilst she had just played audience to the final act.

She could also recall the body bags back at Arkadia, the ones they'd set on fire. Nyko's suggestion, though Luna had possessed final say.

There'd been no large body of water to send them off into but cremation was a tradition for many Grounder clans, apparently, and everyone from Floukru had belonged to at least one of them at some point. A compromise.

Given this, the sea seemed almost to be mocking them with its presence now. If they'd come here sooner, those bodies might have been able to have had a proper send-off, one they'd earned.

But that hadn't been feasible. They'd needed to wait for Luna to heal before making the journey, and they'd also needed to prepare better, make sure things wouldn't fall apart back at Arkadia if they left it for a short time (ever a possibility).

They had to focus on the living, not the dead.

Like always.

"How many died?" Raven asked, before she could think better of it. He'd said they'd lost over forty on the way, but more could easily have died earlier, before Nyko had even entered the picture. From her research, she knew that radiation sickness generally proved fatal within three days, but that could vary and tended to only happen if a person had been exposed to 3,000 rads. Raven suspected the dose from the irradiated fish would have been lower, in which case the sickness could have progressed over weeks - for some it took months, but they knew Luna and her clan had still been healthy when they visited the oil rig so. . . no longer than two and a half weeks. The fact that there tended to be a latent stage where symptoms disappeared for a time and a person got 'better' probably would have cloaked them all in a false sense of security, too. By the time the symptoms returned and worsened, it would have been too late to do anything.

It was a miracle any of them had managed to make the journey to Arkadia at all in such a state.

At what point had they decided that this wasn't just your regular case of food poisoning or the flu and that they were in dire need of outside help? At what point had Nyko realized that he couldn't be the one to provide that help? Before or after people had started dying?

How big had Luna's clan been? It was only newly formed, after all, surely that meant its size had to be small. Maybe four dozen? Less?

But Nyko's expression was grim. "Too many. I never thought I'd live to see almost an entire clan wiped from existence. Now it looks like I might live to see the end of all of them, if this doesn't work."

"Which it will," Raven huffed. She'd had enough of the doubt and naysaying from Jasper.

It had to work. There wasn't any other option.

He smiled at her. "Yes. It will."

Well, at least that was one vote of confidence - and she liked Nyko better than most so that made it a good vote. Plus, they were going to need him for Luna Handling. It had become glaringly obvious within a matter of days that Luna didn't trust a single one of them and there was no way that wouldn't prove problematic in the future. She liked Luna well enough and, even if she didn't, the idea of forcing her to do anything would be, well, horrifying but she also knew that the future of mankind was more important than one woman.

Still, if push came to shove, she wasn't sure she could bring herself to make Luna do anything. That smacked a little too much of Mount Weather and Raven bore too much of the pain of her time there to stomach replicating their crimes.

There had to be a line, somewhere, that they couldn't cross. Didn't there?

She just prayed it would become visible to her before she stepped over it.

Sucking in a breath, Raven banished those thoughts from her head.

No, it was a good thing Nyko was here. As long as he was, Luna seemed willing to hang around.

She clearly thought well of him. Perhaps even considered him a friend.

"Have you known her long?" Raven asked, hoping he might be able to give her more insight into Luna's character. The more she knew, the better prepared she'd be for whatever came next.

(she tried very hard not to think about the fact that, the more she knew about Luna and how she worked, the easier she'd be to manipulate)

"Sometimes I was called upon by Heda to act as a healer in Polis. My patients were most often the young novitiates there. Luna was one of them."

Raven's eyebrows flew up. "Huh. So you've known her since she was a kid?"

"Yes. But that does not mean I know her well. All the people who knew her best are dead now. And she has changed a lot since then regardless. We've only ever crossed paths rarely in the aftermath of her fleeing the Conclave. She knew she could come to me for aid, but she would not endanger me further to ask for more than that."

So that explained why Luna sought out Nyko, of all the healers available, when her clan had gotten sick. That conveyed a certain level of trust, considering she'd probably returned to being a fugitive after Lexa died. Raven wouldn't pretend to understand the whole Grounder politics of it all but she'd pieced together enough from Clarke and Octavia to figure out that what Luna had done - fleeing her Conclave, whatever the hell that was - hadn't exactly been 'legal' in her world. Clarke had said that Lexa protected her but Lexa was dead now so Raven could only assume that such protection had been rendered null and void.

Not that anyone had time right now to bother with a fugitive nightblood when the End of Days was literally right on their doorstep. Add to that, the near civil war breaking out over leadership in Polis and Luna was probably the last thing on anyone's mind.

Except theirs.

But that wasn't exactly true, either.

It wasn't Luna on their minds but her blood. The salvation it offered them.

Raven was broken from that current of thought, though, when she saw Luna reach into her pocket and pull out a parcel of fabric. Slowly, she unwrapped it, revealing the pile of hair within.

Raven swallowed. She'd seen Luna carefully attend to each person before their funeral. How she'd slowly, meticulously crafted a braid into each of her fallen people's hair before cutting it away. A keepsake, Raven had to guess, and a rather morbid one at that.

She'd lingered on the child's hair the longest. Had woven and rewoven that one braid what had to be at least twenty times, trying to get it perfect, to do the girl justice, before finally relenting and permanently separating it from her body.

Raven had felt guilty for watching. Like an intruder, invading a moment that wasn't meant for her.

And, well, she had been. 

Just like she was now.

Nyko noticed her interest. "It's a custom carried out by many clans, including mine."

Pretty morbid custom.

"Was Luna Trikru, too?"

Most of the people they encountered seemed to be. That or Azgeda.

And, well, Luna had to have belonged somewhere before she'd formed Floukru. That could benefit them. Even though her clan was gone, if she still had a trace of loyalty to another one somewhere. . . well, that might motivate her enough to want to help them.

Not that she had decided not to help them.

But Raven was far from oblivious to how reluctantly that help came.

Nyko trampled her hopes. "No. Her father was, but Luna was born in Polis. She had no clan before Floukru."

Raven grimaced.

The woman really had lost everything.

She refocused on Luna once more as she leant over the edge of the boat. Shit, was she about to-

Raven tensed.

But nothing happened and beside her, Nyko remained unmoved.

In the next moment, Luna retrieved one of the braids, tossing it into the waves.

Oh.

She repeated this process four more times, growing slower and more reluctant with each throw.

When she got to the last braid, she stilled. Fingers hovering over the soft yellow hair, Luna hesitated. Raven tried not to see the tremble in those fingers, how pronounced it must have been if she could notice it from this distance.

A minute passed.

Ultimately, Luna folded the fabric back over, concealing the braid from view and pocketing it once more.

Raven knew exactly who that braid had belonged to, felt the beginnings of nausea rise up in her stomach.

Kids shouldn't die.

They just. . . they shouldn't.

And sure as fuck not in such a slow, agonizing way.

Which was why they had to stop this. Before every child everywhere suffered the same fate.

Raven was glad she'd never been religious. She wouldn't have been able to make peace with her god after witnessing all the things she had, seeing the utter dispassion with which the universe watched all its cruelties come to pass.

"Luna has always had a complicated relationship with her blood."

Raven snorted. "Yeah, I picked up on that."

"Convincing her to see it as the miracle we do will be difficult. It has only ever brought heartache into her life."

And now here they were reducing her to little more than that blood.

Great.

Raven sighed.

Give her the old days when all she had to worry about was getting a pressure regulator.

"There is no reason for her to believe that this time will be any different." Nyko drew closer to her, lowering his voice. "You need to be gentle with her right now. She's fragile."

Raven could think of a lot of words to describe Luna and fragile wasn't one of them. "I think you might be underestimating her there, pal. I'm not going to pretend that I know her or anything about her but she strikes me as someone who can take a lot."

Jasper had told her enough about what happened on the oil rig with A.L.I.E. to feel confident of that assumption. And what little interaction she'd had with the nightblood had left an impression that Luna was anything but fragile.

Nyko remained grave, though. But maybe that was his default expression. "For us, the world is about to end. For her, it's already ended."

Well, that was. . . grim. And kind of heartbreaking. But Raven couldn't afford to pity Luna right now. Other things mattered more.

It seemed that other things always mattered more.

"I've seen her like this only once before," he continued when Raven said nothing, intelligent enough not to mistake her silence for assent. "Trust me when I say to take care. She's lost much. What she needs now is kindness. Give her that, and she will return it."

That wasn't exactly bad advice. It probably held true for most people, not just Luna. And Raven wanted to be kind, she really did. She just didn't know whether she could afford to be.

God, this sucked ass.

Nyko must have seen the internal conflict playing across her face because his gaze turned stern. "If you want her help, you will give her this."

Well, hell. "Nyko, I don't have any plans not to be kind. But if you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly the one in charge of this whole operation. You'd be better off saying all this to Abby."

He nodded. "Probably. But you're the only one who has asked me about Luna. So you are the one I am telling."

Raven decided that it was probably best not to say that her curiosity when it came to Luna was entirely self-serving, born out of seeing the nightblood as a potential problem - and her brain was helpless to resist those. She was trying to get as much information as she could, factor in all the variables in the hopes of coming to a viable solution that would work for all of them, including Luna.

She was analyzing.

But if Nyko was choosing to think that her interest was born out of genuine care then it probably wasn't in their best interests to correct him.

Even if it made her feel like pure shit.

He smiled, squeezed her arm briefly before turning and heading in the direction of his fellow Grounder. Enough space had been granted for now, apparently.

Luna's gaze broke from the sea briefly at his approach, glance skating over the direction he'd come from and landing on Raven with something like suspicion, before returning to the water once more. He whispered something low in her ear and laid a hand on her shoulder.

She shook her head, muttered something back and Raven was just close enough to pick up the aggravation in her tone.

She wasn't egotistical enough to believe they were talking about her but she couldn't say her thoughts didn't stray there enough to make her feel uncomfortable. Raven turned away, content to leave Nyko to Luna Sitting for now. She had a feeling he could do a much better job of it than her.