Chapter 25 - Wounds need time to heal

Looking at all of the things that were scared all around her tent, I could smile at how much does this girl loves tinkering with stuff even if no one asks her.

"Anyone home ?!"

"You are so nosy."

Raven's voice was heard from inside and judging by how annoyed she sounded, it seems that I'd just woke her up.

"I am not, Tinkerbelle, You are the one that's lazy."

"Didn't I tell you to never call me that stupid nickname?" Raven let out an angry yawn before she opened the tent, inviting me inside.

"So what can I do for you, your highness?"

"C'mon, you are still pissed that I've woke you up?"

"A girl needs her beauty sleep."

"Yeah, yeah. Point taken mam. Jokes aside, I wanted to talk to you."

"Why now? We barely even talked since I've come done here. Either thanks to how busy one of us is or thanks to you, avoiding me as if I was some kind of plague. So I'll ask you again, why now, Leon?"

"I…"

"What? You don't have the guts to tell me? That's not the Leon I have befriended." Raven pleaded, thinking it was almost certainly futile to make me open myself to her.

"You win Raven. I talked to Finn a few minutes ago."

"So you have found out how we broke I assume. Then why did you come here? To make me forgive Finn for what he had said and done to me? That won't happen and you know it."

"I know that, but please believe me when I say that I didn't come for Finn. I have come to talk to you for myself. I like you, Raven."

"Since when?"

"Since the first time, we had met back on the Ark when I was Finn's cell neighbor."

"Who are you and what have you done with Leon? Even though he was handsome and sweet, he wouldn't have admitted that he liked me."

"First of all, screw you. I'm trying to tell you that I like you here and you are joking? Forget about it, it was a mistake in the first place."

I looked at Raven one last time, before turning my back to her, ready to leave her tent. Just as I was about to open the tent an arm grabbed me and before I could react I was engulfed in a soft hug. Neither one of us said anything while I let Raven take me to the bed where she buried her head in my chest for a few seconds before she broke the hug.

Looking at her face, I could see that I wasn't the only one that felt something for the other one. She tried to say something, but no words left her mouth and no matter how much she struggle to let out a sound, nothing was heard.

"I understand, Raven. You need time to recover from that break-up. Don't worry about our relationship, nothing had changed at least that's how I see it. We are still friends and only you can break our friendship."

"Thanks, Leon, and I'm sorry."

"I told you already, Tinkerbelle that I can understand why you wouldn't want another relationship that soon."

"When I will be ready, I'll be the one to ask you out. Don't you give that tasty ass to someone else or else?"

"Loud and Clear mam."

"That's my boy."

After that awkward discussion was blown away, Raven and I continue to talk for a little longer, before I left to help around the camp, while she returned to her job of making more bullets for us and taking all of the gunpowder from Jasper's fireworks that he had made as a joke to lighten the mood around the camp. Unfortunately for all of us, his dumb idea may have spelled our doom.

Meanwhile deep in the forest, inside of a rather big village where Trikru lived, a woman stood at the top of a balcony looking down at her people with a slight frown on her face.

The woman stopped one of the warriors, who had been on guard duty the whole day.

"Do we have any news about Lincoln?"

Anya knew that Lincoln had been supposed to keep watch of the sky children's camp and he was the only one who she knew for sure that he was versed in the art of healing.

The warrior shook his head in denial. "Not that I am aware, seya but I will ask around, maybe someone may have seen him or heard from him. I can even send out a few scouts to search our surroundings for his whereabouts."

Anya nodded with a frown, wondering what might have delayed Lincoln's return. The man was supposed to make another report yesterday and yet there's not even a whisper about him anywhere in the village. Fearing for the worst, Anya just hoped that he had a good reason for his delay or else the commander would get angry.

After she sent the guard away, Anya continued her way through the village in a hurry since she knew that Lexa, their commander and the girl that she had raised, was overseeing the construction of a new gathering hall since the last one was destroyed by an unexpected attack that starts a fire inside the gathering hall, burning the whole building to ashes.

"Is any of the handmaids who accompanied you to TonDC familiar with healing?"

Lexa eyed her general with a questioning gaze, brow raised in silence, making Anya shake her head in response before she responded.

"Nyko left for some herbs and hadn't returned yet, and neither have Lincoln from observing the invaders" "That still doesn't answer why you would need my healers, Anya."

"The boy that Mara saved has a pretty bad fever. We need him alive if we want to make peace with these invaders since he seems to be the son of their commander."

Lexa gestured to one of her guards to go out and fetch one of the handmaids that were proficient in the art of healing. When he saw the commander gesture, the man inclined his head immediately, turning on his heel and leaving the hall without saying another word. At the same time, Lexa already gestured to another guard to come forward.

"Assemble a search party for Lincoln. Gather all the warriors and scout and find him. Dead or alive it doesn't matter."

The guard nodded at her order, before storming out of the room, followed closely by the remaining five guards.

"You worry for Lincoln?" Anya asked, remaining beside the commander with a slightly raised brow. While she had raised Lexa into the woman she's today, that didn't mean that she could act like this with the commander.

"You don't? He's missing for more than one day already, who knows what could have happened to him? He may have been just a scout, but Lincoln is one of our best scouts and I want to know what happened to him."

"I hope he found something important about these invaders."

"He may have only been delayed, but a scout going missing is never a good sign, regardless of its reasons. Some late information could be the turning point in a war, don't forget that, Anya, after all, you were the one who taught me that."

Lexa said in a cautious tone, her expression not betraying any of her feelings on the matter. They still did not know how dangerous the sky kids were and an armed group of them had been trespassing in Trikru land the day before, injuring a couple of Anya's warriors and even killing one unlucky fellow. She would do anything in her power not to underestimate them after what they had done from the beginning and even as of late when they almost burnt down one of her villages with their fireworks.

"And I still believe that scouts win the war while the warriors do the dirty work."

"Then we will have to wait and see."

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