ontari is born in the winter. to snow and starvation and desperation. it’s all she knows for her early years.
she’s small and her hand bleeds black from play fighting too hard. she’s brought into a cold room with a woman sitting on a chair, swarmed with furs and blankets and bones around her head like a crown.
ontari thinks she’s in trouble for fighting and spilling blood but the woman takes her hand and squeezes her palm until the black liquid bursts up through the wound once more.
she never goes home after that.
the woman is queen of her lands and ontari learns that she is the only natblida in the nation. she is special. she is destined for greater things. and those things need her to grow into the kind of person that her queen can see in her. strong, ruthless, blood thirsty-
queen nia knows that one day a commander will rise and seek better things for her people. and that will bring more power to the position. and that one day nia will need ontari to take that for herself. it’s a thought she dwells on while her advisors offer plans with no merit and ontari begins warrior training.
ontari is the key to her people’s ascension. a commander from the ice nation. imagine what that would mean; to have a commander so loyal to nia that she would do whatever she asked.
ontari with those wide eyes, beauty beyond her years, and bloody knuckles that shake when nia lectures her on all of her inadequacies. ontari who only wants to serve her queen. unlike her son.
(years later, ontari’s disgust for roan becomes so evident, her hatred that this bastard has taken the throne in the light of nia’s death-)
because where was he when ontari was learning to be a warrior; where was he when she was standing by nia’s side; where was he when nia marked her face with her scars for the first time, branding her personally-
the years of fighting and freezing and cutting down men twice her size, all in nia’s name, all for her- all to be a commander for the ice nation. what her queen wants. what she deserves.
a leader for all people. hissing whispers and a hard hand gripping the back of her neck, forcing her eyes on the stone floors and listening to the way things will be until ontari feels sick with anticipation of the day she can do it for nia.
(a trikru girl becomes commander and though ontari has never met her, she hates her).
nia knows that her time is coming and things need to start to move. three years into lexa’s command, guards drag a weaponless girl through the snow to the queen’s hall and ontari listens to her scream for four days.
(a girl goes in. a box comes out).
ontari thinks nothing of it until the commander’s army is at their door with fire and steel and ontari feels true betrayal for the first time when nia kneels to the show of force.
begging for their lives like dogs and the commander crushes them under her heel until they join the coalition.
a coalition that brings peace and makes nia wait until the skies start burning and falling to the ground. until lexa shows her weakness once more.
ontari thinks there’s nothing special about clarke kom skaikru, this wanheda, but seeing her get so close to nia makes the blood dripping over her face at her failure all the sweeter.
she should have seen it coming; lexa ripping her queen from her. lexa letting that bastard become king.
but lexa is dead and all these children think that they will stand in her way-
that’s why her rage overcomes her at the sight of wanheda in the conclave hall. if not for her, if not for her people-
it’s a promise, an inevitability, ontari threatens, ‘you and every last member of skaikru will die’; one that she has imagined so much in the days since leaving polis.
and yet, though clarke knows that ontari is capable; and she will know just how much by the end of the night, clarke looks to welcome the thought. there’s a deadness in her own eyes that match ontari’s own and maybe in another world, they would bare this pain together.
pain is all that keeps them alive.
and ontari will be all too happy to put an end to clarke’s.
janainaart
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn
titsay
jbbartram-illu
izzy806
stormborns
