WILD HEART • COMMANDER LEXA [1]

ix. MOURNING

Erica had remained in her place, hugging her knees on the ground in the Commander's tent.

She couldn't think, breathe, speak, or move. She couldn't do anything. She almost didn't notice when a bloody Clarke came in, sitting down next to her and trying to scrub the blood off of her hands. Finn's blood.

The thought made Erica feel nauseous, she didn't want to look.

The Griffin girl began to sob, harshly wiping her palms with a cloth. Her breathing was uneven, letting out short gasps for air as she tried to catch her breath.

Erica turned to her, taking the rag from her hands. "Clarke,"

Her voice was barely above a whisper, cracking and weak. Clarke didn't look up at her, she only stared at her blood soaked hands, letting out another sob.

Erica wanted to hug her, she wanted to help her, but she couldn't move.

Abby and Kane came in, coming to the girls and attempting to calm them down.

Neither of them were functioning properly, recent events had turned both of the girls into shaking messes.

Erica's face had a blank expression, as if her emotions were too strong for her brain to communicate her feelings to her features. She sat there, unmoving, tears slipping from her eyes.

"They- they would have tortured him. I had to- I. I had to." Clarke panted. "What did I do?"

"Its okay," Abby wrapped her arms around her daughter, squeezing tight.

Erica wished she had her mother right now, but she knew she was probably dead. Callah Parker, married to Howard Parker, was an extraordinary woman. She was from farm station, and she was the reason Erica loved nature and art as much as she did.

Erica still had fond memories of herself as a child, flipping through picture books of plants and flowers as her mother braided her hair each morning, or her father's random pop quizzes, to see if she had retained any of the information they would feed into her tiny little head.

Her parents taught her to be gentle, they taught her how to love.

After a few moments with them in her head Erica realized she had been so distracted with the idea of survival that she had hardly thought of them since landing on Earth, and again she was overwhelmed with guilt.

She searched for them during the first few days of reuniting with the other sky people, but they were gone, missing along with the rest of farm station.

Erica hadn't spoken to them since the tearful day Bellamy was pardoned by Jaha, and she almost couldn't remember what their voices sounded like.

The blonde would give anything in the world to have her family at that moment, but Kane would have to do.

The man wrapped his arms around her, stroking the back of her hair and shaking his head. "It's okay, you're okay,"

The poor girl couldn't move, and she could hardly muster up enough strength to hug him back as he cradled her like a child.

The curtain was ripped open, and the Commander's right hand, Gustus, looked at the two girls.

How weak they must've looked, pathetically crying on the floor.