okay but being raised on the ark, clarke’s attachment to the physical form of a person after death has to be less than the way we–modern (american-centric) we–are attached to it. a body is just a body and when it’s dead it gets launched into space, the final journey to the ground.
there are no graves to visit, no plaque on a wall where their ashes are stored, nowhere to leave flowers or sit quietly and talk, nowhere specific to go when you miss them and want to feel closer to them.
instead, mourning comes in the spaces where loneliness tends to creep in, where memories of lost love ones filter through the every day-ness of life. like a bench in central park where someone met their wife for the first time, people on the ark miss their loved ones in earth view windows and corners of the mess, on the nights when movies are shown across the ark or during the unity day celebrations. mourning is less about the body, less about “this person is here, in the ground, and my grief is attached to that” and more about “i miss who you were when you were here”
(clarke never got to sit at her father’s work station, never got to imagine his presence there, around her, his laugh and his smile and his big hands squeezing her shoulders as he told her a story. instead, she remembers him in the cramped quarters of her jail cell and tries to trace his face on her walls.
abby, though, would sit there sometimes. missing jake, missing clarke, imagining their voices filling her home with life and love and laughter again. abby mourned him in the mornings and at night, mourned clarke in the downtime during work, mourned her family in the darkness of her bed.)
clarke doesn’t need to spend time with lexa’s body because her grief is private and untethered. her grief is not for a body. instead she carries enough moments and memories to grieve over for a lifetime. lexa’s small, shy smile, the warmth of her skin, the smell of her hair, the gentle brush of her nose, the tentative touch of her fingers, the way she would say clarke’s name (how she’d breathe it, snap it, bite it out, gasp it, cry it, let it slip through her lips covered in tears). lexa’s soul might be in the AI, her body might be ritually burnt, but lexa’s memory is imprinted in clarke’s skin, in her mind, and wrapped tight around her heart like a fist.
(that’s not all true. she has the unfinished drawing of lexa folded up in her bag, that book that lexa had been reading–”take it, clarke, it’s my favourite”–a red scrap of fabric lexa used to tie off a braid in her hair, the stub of a candle she’d swiped from lexa’s room. these things she’ll carry with her, too. breathe in the smell of the beeswax to remember the warm, sweet smell of the late afternoon when they made love. rub the fabric against her cheek to remember the softness of lexa’s brown hair. read the book until she’s memorised every word. carry the picture in the pockets of her jackets until the edges are worn and she has to protect it from falling apart.)
grief is not attached to a body, and mourning has legs. clarke carries lexa everywhere she goes, and in the quiet spaces, lexa’s smile and laugh and the gentleness of her touch seep in through the cracks, and clarke curls herself around them, just for the chance to hold onto lexa for a little while longer.
stormborns
snowghoul
andulkaphoto
germansingergirl
janainaart
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
