Chapter Twenty: Lexa

Chapter Twenty
~ Lexa ~

I could hear commotion before I opened my eyes. Fear and realization hit me. I was back in prison. That was the only reason it could be so loud. I had passed out in the woods. Of course they had found me. I hadn’t gotten very far. Now I was going to pay for what I did. And even worse, I had shown them what I was capable of .
“Lexa,” A quiet fearful voice whispered. “Lex, can you hear me?”
I moved my head slightly. Yes, I could hear them, but why was there a gentleness in their voice? What was going on?
“Lex, it’s me, I need you to wake up. Please, please wake up.”
There was a tingly sensation, and no pain. Just a struggle to breathe. Strange.
“Okay. Time’s up.” A voice that sounded incredibly familiar barked.
“I’m not done,” A smaller voice responded.
“You have to be.” The guy barked. “You’re no use to us if you're dead.”
Before I could stop myself, I snapped. “That was mean, Grey.”
I could feel the relief as it filled the room. I opened my eyes slowly and saw the faces of my friends.
“Lexa,” Will sounded like he was holding his breath.
“Will,” I smiled.
He looked so happy. Like he was going to cry. But I really hoped he wouldn’t because I hated seeing him cry.
“How do you feel?” Jax asked.
“Like I should be dead.” I answered.
That brought a slight chuckle from everyone in my tent and Gracie leaned over and hugged me so tight it hurt.
“Gracie, go take a break.” Jax told her, ruffling her hair. “Come back in an hour, and we’ll go again for another 10 minutes.”
The little girl bounced up and took off to tell her friends what she had just done.
“I didn’t agree to that.” Grey said, his voice sounded shaky and raw.
“You don’t have to.” Jax told him. “Gracie is family to all of us. And so is Lex. Family helps family.”
Grey didn’t answer, but his face had a pale hue to it.
“Are you okay, Grey?” I asked, placing my hand in Will’s.
“I’m fine.” He answered shortly. “I have to go update everyone.”
I closed my eyes and tried to focus on my breathing as he left and Jax followed.
“Where’s S?” I asked after I realized she wasn’t in the tent.
“S?” Will questioned, his brows furrowed in confusion.
“Aspen.” My voice cracked slightly with fatigue.
“She’s out there somewhere,” Will sighed, his eyes not leaving mine.
“Above ground?” My stomach dropped. I thought she was safe. That’s why I had done what I did.
“No, no Lex.” Will comforted. “She’s down here. I just don’t know where.”
“Oh.”
We were both quiet for a moment.
“She saved our lives, Will.”
“I know.” He said softly.
“You’re mad at me, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Let’s not talk about that right now.” He was shutting it down.
“Okay.” I whispered back. “But only because I’m really tired.”
“Rest,” Will told me. “You’ll feel better soon.”
I closed my eyes, but they popped back open after a moment.
“Hey Will?” I enquired.
“Hm?” He responded as he moved to lay next to me.
“Did you see what I did?” I closed my eyes again.
I could feel his confusion, but he played along. “The building?”
“Yea.” I answered sleepily. “I figured, if I was going down, so were they.”
And if he responded, I didn’t hear it, I was already asleep.

When I woke up, Will wasn’t with me anymore. No one was, and I was kind of surprised they’d let me out of their sight. When I was younger, and I got sick, they’d all rotate who stayed with me and who worked. I wasn’t a child anymore though, and things were way more dire than they had been before.
I got up slowly. I could tell Gracie had healed me more, but I was still sore, and I figured it would take some time to feel normal again. I looked around the tent, and I felt myself smile when I finally laid my eyes on the thing I wanted. My backpack. We had all stashed a few things down here forever ago. Usually once a year, we had updated the supplies in them, and I was super glad we did because that meant I had a change of clothes. I just needed to clean off first, but I didn’t want anyone to see me.
I knew a lot of people’s eyes would be on my tent subconsciously. They wanted to know what had happened. Knowing the boys, they would have kept the situation under wraps. There was no need to scare anybody. But they were scared now. And rightfully so. There was little we could do to hide the situation we were in now. There was only one thing left to do, and that meant we had to train like we’d never before. It was all hands-on deck now.
I crawled out the back of my tent and moved slowly between the wall and the tent. I needed to get to where we had put the tubs. I needed to be unseen till I could get rid of the grime.
Finally, I saw the rows of tubs and I smiled. I couldn’t remember the last bath I had been able to take. Lining the walls were the things we had prepped and put down here long ago. Homemade soaps, and tubes to bring water to the tubs, so we didn’t have to go up to the surface. I was proud of the work we had done. But there was more to be done. And I didn’t have time to waste. Maybe one day. Maybe one day, I would get to live in luxury like S had before she chose us. A girl could dream.
Once I was fairly certain I had gotten all the blood and dirt off me, I braided my hair into two French braids and put on my black tank top and black leggings and favorite combat boots. I had hidden my favorites down here because I had known if it had come to this, I would want my best. Lastly I pulled on a sweat jacket, and moved in the open. I was feeling worn out from just getting ready but I had little time to think about it.
No one stopped me as I walked through our camps. No one tried to talk to me. They all knew the severity of the situation. They all just stared at me with wondering eyes about what was next.
I took a moment to breathe when I saw Grey, Will, Jax and S, all hunched together going over something that I had no idea about. They didn’t see me as I approached, and I was glad. They were so absorbed in their work and it gave me a moment to just look at my friends. I would have never thought S would actually join us one day, but my inner child was happy to have a piece of my past that I thought I had left behind for forever.
“We’re running out of food; I don’t know how long we can stay down here.”
“Then let’s not.” I spoke up, finally announcing my arrival.
“What are you doing up?” It was Will, and he looked mad, while everyone else just looked surprised.
“I’m fine,” I told him.
Our relationship was a weird one. Grey and I, well we usually called the shots, and well, Jax was the one who could solve anything, and Will, well Will made sure none of us did anything too dumb. But that also meant he was fiercely over-protective sometimes. It was a balance of him telling me what I could do, and what I couldn’t. And me, only half-listening each time.
“What are you talking about?” Jax asked, moving over so I could have a spot.
“I mean, it’s wintertime. We know there’s going to be bad weather. And I think it’s fairly safe to say as of the other day, they haven’t entered our woods yet.”
“Okay, your point?” Grey snapped.
“We can spend daylight hours above ground. They won’t risk getting lost in the woods, and we’ll set up new sensors at the edge of the woods for earlier alerts. The second there’s an alert, we ask Elias to set the conditions for a storm. And Santana to create an illusion. It’ll give us time to prepare, at least through winter. We can gather food, and train with more space. The village is probably still intact since the fire was just a smoke out, we can use it as a new base. It would be too dangerous to sleep there. But we can use it to work in.”
At first everyone just stared at me, but Jax broke into a smile and put his arm around me. “Lady and gentlemen,” He gestured toward our friends. “Our Lexa is back.”
I laughed and rolled my eyes. Out of the corner of my eye I saw S give a slight smile, but she turned and started to walk away.
I frowned, and after a minute I was able to break away and go after her, except I didn’t know which way she went.
I walked around for a while before I finally found her. It took me a second to catch my breath, but she turned toward me before I was ready.
She just stared at me; her eyes tired.
“S?” I asked, standing up from my hunched position.
“You’re not okay.” She stated in a flat voice.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
“Okay.” She didn’t fight me on it. She seemed far away.
“S?” I tried again, sounding myself again.
“Hm?”
“Thanks for saving Will’s life, and thanks for saving mine.” I told her earnestly.
“It was the right thing to do.” Again, there was no emotion in her voice.
“It was more than that.” I tried to explain. “You did the unimaginable. I can’t imagine how you're feeling right now. I mean, we’re all alive thanks to you.”
This got her attention, but then I realized she was trying to go somewhere.
“Where do you think you're going, S?” I had my edge back.
“Home.” She stated, there were tears in her voice. “I have to go home.”
“You are home, S.” I tried.
“No!” She exclaimed with a sob, her blonde hair falling into her face. “I don’t fit in here. I can’t stay here.”
“You saved our lives, S. Because if you hadn’t come to us, we would have gone to save Will ourselves. We all would have been captured, and sooner or later so would have our people. If you hadn’t fed Will or used your power to make Will leave with you, he would have died. If you hadn’t not given me the full serum, I could have died.”
“What’s the point?” She grumbled. “I only did it because I was scared.”
I sighed and closed my eyes as I prepared to give away my biggest secret.
“Everything I do is because I’m scared S. But we can’t let fear get the best of us. You could have used fear to do the bad stuff your dad was doing, but instead you used it to do good. And S, you did good.”
This time she gave me a small smile. I grabbed her hand and we walked back to the center together. Ready to show fear what we were made of.