I need you to understand something, something you didn't hear when we were fighting and the pool ledge got told who is in charge. Something you distract me from fully telling you when we're in private.
It has never been easy for me.
I have known my own heart since I was a child and in equal measure I have known it did not matter. I was born a natblida, and natblida's do not get to feel, to love, to know others in that way. No one. If I had loved men, or if I liked all genders it would not have mattered for a single moment. It was forbidden to me. I was to become Heda or I was to die, and that was that.
And to a Heda, a Commander, love is a weakness. Even lust is. We are to stand alone.
But when I was young I was foolish. I won the conclave, and that was.. that... but after a while I met a girl. She was beautiful. We were fourteen, fifteen, something like that. To me, she was special. To everyone else she was just a village girl until they noticed more and more me taking her hand and pulling her close and loving her. Because she was mine, because of that love, Azgeda took her. She was tortured, questioned, they cut off her head and delivered in a box to my bed where I had laid with her dreaming of the future our people would have.
I had to swallow that grief, that rage, that storm that burned me up inside. I never thought I could get over her. She was my world, second only to my duty to my people. Because of who I was she died and because of who I was I could not avenge her. Instead, I welcomed Azgeda into my coalition of clans, I endured every meeting with the woman who ordered it, I did my job and tried to pretend it did not cut me every time and just accept that Titus had been right. Duty was my only purpose and love, a weakness.
I was a walled citadel from then on out, I saw girls I liked, of course, but none of them mattered, none cracked through my thick walls for even a moment. It was not easy, but I thought it was easier than losing again.
Then one day, years later, well there was another girl. She's your age, give or take. Clarke was... unstoppable. She is a force of nature. She fell from the sky - literally - killed three hundred of my warriors and when I came out to seek justice against her and her people she marched right up to me like I was anyone and not the Heda and took my heart back out the tent door with her when she left. I didn't have a choice. And even then it wasn't easy. Costia haunted me despite my best efforts to forget her, my people's lives always lay in my hands. We were at war on two fronts. Then one, when I made a treaty with Clarke.
A lot more happened, I did bad, unforgivable things to her. I made her into a monster when I should have borne that weight instead. But I loved her, and though I will never have deserved it, she loved me back. And eventually, she forgave me. We got to be together for one afternoon, Ren.
Just one. Because Titus, my teacher, my mentor, my flamekeeper, a man who helped raise me and truly did believe in me. He knew I loved her and he lay in wait in her room to kill her, with a gun, a weapon my people do not use. He lay in wait and tried to shoot her and I walked through the door not long after her and he fumbled or misaimed - I don't know - but he pulled the trigger and he killed me. I bled out, slowly, in Clarke's bed, watching her try to beg and plead and reason her way through as if her will alone could stop me bleeding out like it stopped so many other things.
You know what I didn't think in that moment? I didn't think that I wished I hadn't taken the path I did. That I should have done as my people bid me, that love really was a weakness and I had been wrong to follow my heart even though it was always the hardest thing I did.
I thought that Clarke had been right all this time, that it finally sunk in that life was about more than surviving and here I was choking on my own blood. That I wouldn't trade that one afternoon for a thousand more without her. I wish I had known when I left her at the mountain. When I let her rage about in the woods for months. I wish I had this space with her that you can have, however you chose, now.
Duty is important but it is not the entire world. Especially not here.
Even now, Ren, the other day... it was not easy for me to go out like I did, looking soft and fresh and not geared for war. It wasn't easy to reach for you - or anyone - it wasn't easy for me to kiss you. Every doubt, every dissenting voice against me being myself I have ever known in my life still echoes in my mind but I will not fill my afterlife with regret like I did my life. I cannot. It is hard enough to go on without pretending to be something I am not.
no subject
It has never been easy for me.
I have known my own heart since I was a child and in equal measure I have known it did not matter. I was born a natblida, and natblida's do not get to feel, to love, to know others in that way. No one. If I had loved men, or if I liked all genders it would not have mattered for a single moment. It was forbidden to me. I was to become Heda or I was to die, and that was that.
And to a Heda, a Commander, love is a weakness. Even lust is. We are to stand alone.
But when I was young I was foolish. I won the conclave, and that was.. that... but after a while I met a girl. She was beautiful. We were fourteen, fifteen, something like that. To me, she was special. To everyone else she was just a village girl until they noticed more and more me taking her hand and pulling her close and loving her. Because she was mine, because of that love, Azgeda took her. She was tortured, questioned, they cut off her head and delivered in a box to my bed where I had laid with her dreaming of the future our people would have.
I had to swallow that grief, that rage, that storm that burned me up inside. I never thought I could get over her. She was my world, second only to my duty to my people. Because of who I was she died and because of who I was I could not avenge her. Instead, I welcomed Azgeda into my coalition of clans, I endured every meeting with the woman who ordered it, I did my job and tried to pretend it did not cut me every time and just accept that Titus had been right. Duty was my only purpose and love, a weakness.
I was a walled citadel from then on out, I saw girls I liked, of course, but none of them mattered, none cracked through my thick walls for even a moment. It was not easy, but I thought it was easier than losing again.
Then one day, years later, well there was another girl. She's your age, give or take. Clarke was... unstoppable. She is a force of nature. She fell from the sky - literally - killed three hundred of my warriors and when I came out to seek justice against her and her people she marched right up to me like I was anyone and not the Heda and took my heart back out the tent door with her when she left. I didn't have a choice. And even then it wasn't easy. Costia haunted me despite my best efforts to forget her, my people's lives always lay in my hands. We were at war on two fronts. Then one, when I made a treaty with Clarke.
A lot more happened, I did bad, unforgivable things to her. I made her into a monster when I should have borne that weight instead. But I loved her, and though I will never have deserved it, she loved me back. And eventually, she forgave me. We got to be together for one afternoon, Ren.
Just one. Because Titus, my teacher, my mentor, my flamekeeper, a man who helped raise me and truly did believe in me. He knew I loved her and he lay in wait in her room to kill her, with a gun, a weapon my people do not use. He lay in wait and tried to shoot her and I walked through the door not long after her and he fumbled or misaimed - I don't know - but he pulled the trigger and he killed me. I bled out, slowly, in Clarke's bed, watching her try to beg and plead and reason her way through as if her will alone could stop me bleeding out like it stopped so many other things.
You know what I didn't think in that moment? I didn't think that I wished I hadn't taken the path I did. That I should have done as my people bid me, that love really was a weakness and I had been wrong to follow my heart even though it was always the hardest thing I did.
I thought that Clarke had been right all this time, that it finally sunk in that life was about more than surviving and here I was choking on my own blood. That I wouldn't trade that one afternoon for a thousand more without her. I wish I had known when I left her at the mountain. When I let her rage about in the woods for months. I wish I had this space with her that you can have, however you chose, now.
Duty is important but it is not the entire world. Especially not here.
Even now, Ren, the other day... it was not easy for me to go out like I did, looking soft and fresh and not geared for war. It wasn't easy to reach for you - or anyone - it wasn't easy for me to kiss you. Every doubt, every dissenting voice against me being myself I have ever known in my life still echoes in my mind but I will not fill my afterlife with regret like I did my life. I cannot. It is hard enough to go on without pretending to be something I am not.