Lightning Only Strikes Once - Clexa

Chapter 76: Afterlife

"Alright," Raven says, looking tense. "Anya says it's sorted, she's spoken to Roan and he'll do what we've asked, he'll go along with it when Indra announces that he's guilty and has escaped – though I still have no idea why you trust him. This plan will probably get him killed. You know. Along with the rest of us."

"I trust him from the other world," Lexa says calmly. "I believe he wishes his mother gone more than he wishes her to be in charge. I have promised him a throne. He might not know where she is, but if he travels north alone, Nia will find him quickly. And if he tells her the lie, she will embrace him, but if he tells her the truth, she will kill him. I do not believe he will choose honesty over life." She looks sideways at Raven. "And you did not need to volunteer to have a part in this."

"I know." Raven sighs in a very martyr-like way. "But apparently I've become addicted to these road trips. Besides, if I'm there I might be able to dilute some of the stupidity. Anyway, I've set up the device. We're good to go."

"Excellent," Lexa says. She straightens her top. It looks clearly bulky to her, the plastic and metal against her skin sitting uncomfortably beneath the fabric, but she hopes no one else will notice.

"'Excellent', she says," Raven grumbles, falling into step beside her. "Let me tell you, between the two of you, you and Clarke have taken twenty years off my life with your insane plans. At this rate my last words are going to be 'is that really a good idea?' Why do I have to be the cautious one? I just want to blow things up. Does that sound cautious to you? 'Excellent'. Sure. I hate you all."

Lexa hides a smile. "You worry too much, Raven kom Skaikru."

"I worry – I worry too much? You're injecting an unknown substance into your already creepy alien black blood," Raven says. "Sure, maybe you'll become Captain America. Or maybe you'll die."

"That is the plan," Lexa points out calmly. She steps out in front of her people, gathered for her speech, and positions herself carefully in front of them. Abby is in the front row, eyes anxious but hopeful. Indra and Anya's people are dotted everywhere, the most trusted towards the front, the rest around the edges and at the back. "People of Polis!" she calls out. "I stand here today because I know rumours have been rife about Azgeda. They are not attacking. They are not a threat. They are -"

She almost hears the noise of the arrow flying through the air, burying itself exactly over her heart. Raven's work is good, Lexa notes in one small corner of her mind as she falls backwards – her device hit exactly where she claimed it would, and the noise of it clanging against the metal Lexa wears beneath the plastic and fabric is covered by her cry, as intended. The medical bag Abby taped below her top bursts in a spray of black, drenching her top with dark blood immediately, dark blood collected from her Natblida as well as her. A lethal amount of blood loss, had it not come from so many.

Lexa wonders if her scream was not convincing enough. Any further noises of pain would be drowned out by the reaction of the crowd though. One of her people is above her, about to try and put pressure on it, but Abby yells at him, "Get back, I'm a doctor, a fisa! I'll handle this! Find whoever fired at her!" Abby leans over her and injects her in the neck, her hands shaking. "Okay, Lexa, just breathe," Abby tells her.

Lexa considers pointing out that the plan involves her not breathing. However, she is suddenly unable to talk or move, the strange substance, the paralytic, moving through her blood. Her breath starts to gasp and then everything's dark, though she can still hear the screams of the panicked crowd for several seconds until it fades into a dull roar and then nothing at all.

She opens her eyes to the inside of a dark, underground room. Octavia is staring at her, frowning. "Oh good, you're alive." She says casually.

Lexa levers herself upright with a groan. Her whole body hurts. "You were concerned, Octavia kom Skaikru en Trikru?"