[hatch log / mission: hyrypia] the winds that will be howling at all hours

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: New Hosts & EVERYONE
WHERE: Station 72; Hyrypia - Naerstone House
WHEN: DAY :002 - :003
SUMMARY: New hosts hatch on the Station, are briefed, then make their way to Hyrypia to join the rest of the hosts… while they attend a very important history lesson.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. Need a warning added? PM this account please!

STATION 72
DAY :002

NEW HATCHES
YOU WAKE UP are are suddenly changed. --No. That's not right. You're you and there's no suddenly about it. It's been a while, hasn't it? It feels like waking up from a very deep, extended sleep or surfacing up from the darkness of some wine dark sea. Nothing is different and everything is because right there in your own head there's something both familiar and strange. You know intuitively that you've been unconscious for more than just a blink of the eye.

But here you are, a small miracle of the multiverse: lying in a small, faintly hexagonal chamber with a gentle white light emanating from the surrounding walls. If you were injured during your escape, those injuries have been healed. If you were anxious or frightened or distraught, those feelings have been calmed. There's something peaceful about waking up here - like you belong. That feeling persists even as you find the tube running from the base of your neck to the compartment's rear wall.

But once the tube's disconnected? Things get loud. A wave of emotion fills that peaceful void - fear, uncertainty, relief, a sense of purpose or loneliness or anxiety. A matching dread. An easy comfort. Maybe some of these emotions are yours, but they can't all be. After the initial sensory overload, the mental buzz elongates: stretches out into a murmur like the sound of a party happening behind a nearby closed door.

You can sit up - barely -, and shift out of the pod. There’s a ladder at your feet and a little cubby just before it with anything you brought with you as well as a set of crisp, loose-fitting white clothes; while your injuries are healed, whatever you’re wearing is in the exact state it was before. Maybe it's time for a change? Drop down the ladder to the floor of the Nesting Deck and you’ll find you’re not alone.In fact there are lots of you and none of them are the strangers they should be. Some even seems like people you've known for a very long time.They are as familiar as this place you've never been is.

Welcome to Station 72. Beyond this room it's quiet and still, feeling for all the world like a hollow shell.

--Or it does until a voice separates itself from the white noise in your head:


BRIEFING
THE VOICE IN YOUR HEAD isn't really a voice at all. It's the warm tang of camaraderie, tinged with a flash of impatience like ticking hands on a clock face and a flicker of wonder: a falling star. It says:

( My, you're all very fresh aren't you? Unfortunately, the multiverse waits for no spring chicken. Once you've figured out which way's up, won't you all join us? )
Join 'us' where is the question. And yet, once you're ready to meet the owner of the voice in your mind, your footsteps simply lead you there naturally. Two strangers sit in a small circular briefing room - a tall being covered in short brown fur with a rigid demeanor, and a pale alien with yellow washed frills at her jaw and throat who is smiling cheerfully.

"Hey there, sunshine," says Rhan, her frills humming as she speaks. "Why don't you take a seat so we can get started?"

[ooc note: please see here for the catch-all briefing thread]


THE STATION
WITH A LITTLE UNDER 24 HOURS before it's time to make the trip to Hyrypia, this is as good an opportunity as you're going to get to familiarize yourself with Station 72 before you leave it. There's plenty to see, but a distinct lack of people to make conversation with. It's lonely and quiet and there's a sensation of dust gathering even where there is none. Maybe studying the briefing files on your databank and going over your mission kit is the most proactive distraction, but if not? Well there's plenty of places to get lost...

HYRYPIA - NAERSTONE HOUSE
DAY :003

MEETING
A SINGLE SHIP LANDS in a field the color of burnished gold, returning to the place it had until late the night before occupied. It's carefully inserted beside dozens of other spacecraft bearing more than faint similarities, though each has its own unique aesthetic. When the gangplank drops, the loud engines powering down, it reveals--

New hosts. Seven fresh faces - obscured as they are in layers of intricate fabric - are led down the gangplank by Rhan There to greet them is a number of other hosts - any who answered to the sweet crystalline ring of Collector’s voice in their heads hardly a half hour earlier, speaking with certainty born of truth:

( Rhan and Siva’co are returning. Shall we see what stories they have to tell? )

Despite the solidarity that both combined groups provide, there's a feeling of eyes here. A number of guards along the edge of the shuttle field are watching the reunion like hawks. Better perhaps to return to the apartments where they'll be able to speak in private and teach the new hosts what it is that has been learned since their arrival. --Or explore, for those who prefer not to rest. Naerstone House's grounds are vast and they are almost entirely open to the parties of the pilgrims to explore.

THE PERFORMANCE
AS THE SINGLE RED SUN of Hyrypia dips low on the horizon there is a long, low, mournful sound. A deep bell-- or a horn? Or maybe it's something else entirely, but the call is heard and answered as any nearby servants inform the guests of the house:

“There will be a performance of the First Journey in a quarter turn. All guests are invited to attend.”

There's no mystery as to where the event is occurring. A steady trail of guests and servants lead out past the Veranda into the central garden where a number of pillars have been mounted and a large tiered platform festooned with with numerous draped curtains and abstract representations of trees and mountains - a great stage - now sits. The stage is surrounded by numerous low settees and tables, piles of thick cushions and richly colored rugs around which guests can be found clustered, lounging while sipping thick, syrupy drinks.

Each table is illuminated only by a single glowing orb at its center. Otherwise, as the sun sets it pitches the garden into darkness as even the castle itself has been left unlit. There are no lights in distant windows or on Naerstone House's high walls; these small orbs and the glitter of stars in the black sky might very well be the only points of light in the whole universe.

The allotted time passes and the performance begins. A sun rises over the stage. It's a much larger, more intricate glowing orb and reveals a number of players dressed far more simply than the Hyrypians the hosts have met. They wear complex machine masks upon their faces that shutter into different expressions as their hands flitter across their faces: dramatic caricatures to accompany the droning sound of their singing voices as they unfold the tale at the center of the performance - the one which drives this pilgrimage and for the Nest's very presence in the universe at all. It's the story of lost Rabadoceans coming to a planet near barren intent on brutalizing them - about loss and hardship until finally a single player separates from the rest. The orb of the sun over the stage turns, it's mechanical face shifting and resetting to indicate the passage of time as the very central platform of the stage begins to turn so that this lone player might walk. And walk. And walk through deserts and scrub land, through dark woods and dark caves, against the wind and with it. Through it all, the orb over the stage slowly lowers until at last this lone player can take it in their hands.

It cracks like an egg and brilliance streams from it. Braziers catch fire in the darkness. The garden illuminates itself. Every light in Naerstone House comes to life.

With that, the silence of the crowd breaks. There is applause -- each culture in its own unique fashion -- and then there is a rise of chattering conversation as the guests are served several small dishes and talk about the show they’ve just seen - and whatever possible clues it might give to the pilgrimage they themselves would soon be undertaking.

---

((OOC Notes: This is the hatch log for all new hosts as well as the evening's performance. Feel free to make your own logs and posts additional to this if you care to. You can find a more detailed overview of the host hatching process HERE and additional setting information about the Station HERE. Please be sure to review the MISSION: HYRYPIA ooc information. If you have any questions, please hit up either the mission's question thread, the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages!))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[wrackful]

( I had a scan. I can show you how to do them, back up there. )

[The memory rises for her, the first scan a 3D rendering on a datapad, native to Concordia. He'd looked at it, over and over, enough times to memorise the details: the symbiote an almond shaped mass near the brain stem, the image - the scanner - not designed to examine it closer, but there, if fuzzy, the signs of it sprouting.]

( She said she could cut it out without killing me. But it's too late now, even if she was telling the truth, and it'll be too late for yours by the time we're anywhere they even know what brain surgery is. )

[The image shifts as he talks, fades into another, a different place, the Station's strange lighting. Two thin rods held a few handspans apart, a model between made of thin white lines like strands. And darker, as though a dye had been applied, the almond now a nexus within a tangle of thin tendrils reaching, starting to spread forward into the rest of the brain.]

( It grows, Clarke. All the time. It's like some kind of... screwed up brain plant. )

[For all that he called it a bug. But that had fit with the idea: symbiote, parasite. He'd imagined something like a crab, to begin with. Something in one mass that could be killed and removed. But nothing was ever that easy, and suddenly the cloud that's been gathered to him all day condenses, pressed down into something identifiable, heavy and black. Anger. Defeat. Grief.]

( I haven't found another way. And those two... )

[A look over the seats at Bellamy standing guard at some other Host's elbow, Lexa seated, recognisable in her posture alone. Bitterness swells, but in the moment all he can remember is Clarke's tears in Polis, and he swallows the worst of it back down.]

( Let's just say I'm the only one actually looking. )

[otrazhenie]

[ It's so strange being that close to Damon, knowing what she knows, what he doesn't know, feeling what she does. It's complicated and yet it's so simple. This is Damon, the one thing she can trust in her new life, and she finds a semblance of peace in his nearness. It's a peace that deepens as he moves them, settling them on the bed, and she sinks into it as the exhaustion of the past few days wraps around her. ]

I'm not fine now.

[ It's a quiet admission, an echo of what she'd told Sam earlier, and as the words slip out she feels like she's adrift in the middle of the ocean, no land in sight. She's clinging to a piece of wood trying to stay afloat, but her arms are so tired. ]

[polyphonos]

[She stares at her, bright eyes in a paper thin face. She comes in the shape of a frail, thin woman but the sensation of her in Lakshmi's grip is an animal - a snake beginning to uncoil. A heavy banded body turning over to wrap at the woman's wrist.]

Is it? [As if she's genuinely asking. Unblinking.] Are you certain?

[Has it ever been just hers? Or has she always been bound by the responsibility she has to something else - someone else - a nation and a world which needs her to be coerced by the force applied in her direction? In what way does anyone not bend to meet the world they find themselves in and against? There's no fight is the enemy isn't acknowledged and clearly, clearly, this woman desires to set her teeth to that which stands to threaten her.

Is this really so different from that?]

[polyphonos]

[If she-the-thing-behind-her is aware of that horrible chill passing through him now (it must know, doesn't it?), there's nothing in her face to indicate it. There's no shift in the shape of her mind in the room. No green thing or delicate flower or thorn studded branch shifts in the garden. It's quiet and peaceful and nothing ever changes.]

Cathaway. [As if that much is obvious; hasn't he been listening? They just had such a nice introduction.] She is the part of us who arrived in this body. The part of us that lives closest to this place still.

[If this is an aggregate of something different, something larger, then she is the thread which moors it here.]

[polyphonos]

[His mind opens like an egg, something oily and dark slithering free of it. She reaches after it, the fringe of her expanding like lungs behind ribs to touch it. To sink pieces of herself into the shape of it. Cathaway takes a meditate sip from the cup. The tea is pleasantly hot, reminds her of heavy spice on her tongue and the Prince's fingers in her silver hair--

She sighs, longs to indulge herself in what he's offering her, but instead she sets the cup gently at her knee.]

We've never known the Enemy to look the same twice. Whether they're shape shifters or really so varied, we cannot say. What we do know is that they desire something and we believe that something is both beyond us and threatened by our presence in the multiverse. As such, our Enemy has deemed it fit to eradicate us. The symbiote. To destroy our presence in the multiverse so it can pursue... whatever it is that it desires most.

[How long has she been here? Not just Cathaway, but the collected mind which rides behind her thin face and the narrowness of her body. Should it be disturbing that she knows so little?

Probably. It certainly disturbs her.]

And they are merciless. We have never known an Agent to face them directly and live.

[ryohji]

Then what does that make you?

[ he latches on, quickly despite the revulsion that threatens to have a lesser man vomit and run. this, perhaps, is what he'd been getting at all along. to trim away the fat, to question the thing-or-one he was speaking to, the thing-or-one that introduced cathaway for the second time, to question his mind's invader, to question himself. ]

Tease them apart for me.

[shri]

[ She keeps herself still, nothing in her changes, her back into the wall, her legs curl under her, her fingers curled in loosely, the ties at her wrists, kept tightly. They are raw, just slightly where she tests them constantly. But her eyes slide over Asuka, predator slow in that stillness. Because what's up with that. ]

How do you mean?

[shri]

[ What is she?

The contact is so much. That bond of fingers around her wrist, as delicate as a shackle. Held tightly and feather light. The way it doesn't have to be more to be a threat. It is already everything it has to be, and is so much more than that. Twice as damning. ]

If I did - [ a world, a nation, a home, her whole body cut up and sewn into the ground. Her blood is not holy because she is queen, it is because she is jhansi ki rani and she had laid herself into that earth, that dirt, so it may be all the more fertile. ] - it was never by a creature such as you.

[ And the wise thing to do would to not be to put her hand into a lion's mouth, but she didn't get so far by ever being wise, so much as determined. She turns her wrist inside that shackle, testing it. ] Do not think I will not burn myself for the effort of setting you to flames.

[wille]

[ The question then: is the intent to smile equivalent to having acted out the smile? Is it worth more, even, when measured in terms of such things as authenticity? ]

Rustin. [ Her handshake is nothing to write home about. Formulaic. Common. ] That's not a very nice thing to say to someone.

[ The imagery he uses is so passive, lifeless, and she has the mind to want to feel offended. Does that mean she is or isn't? She takes one unnecessary step closer as she presses her mind against his, like the tension on the surface of water, breaking to show him the height of summer with the blare of shrieking cicadas overhead, the layer of humidity over one's skin, the mild salty scent of the sea carried on the wind. See? See how many of her lights are on? ]

It just takes a bit of time and practice.

[deployed]

( Me neither. )

[ There's a flare of grim humor, followed by an echo of adrenaline, hands at his throat, blank-faced combatants crowding through burst-open doors. ]

( If we can't deal with this diplomatically, we'll have to do something extreme. )

[ Blow up the planet. Possibly die. You know, the usual. ]

[deployed]

[ Gina's face flickers in his mind. She'd cupped his face like this once, told him to come back to her safely. He hadn't seen her again after that. She'd died, because he had believed the place he'd left her in was safe. No one had blamed Bellamy, but he blamed himself. He still does, even as his shoulders relax and his mind casts back to Waypoint and their mad dash through the city to escape it. ]

The tournament wasn't what I expected.

[ And Bellamy had been confused and resentful of each new event. But the prize— ]

It was an egg. It hatched while Noctis and I were holding it.

[ Ooze baby rises in his mind, and he looks around the room immediately, wondering if it's trailed him in. ]

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ It's like watching them throw gasoline on a fire, both thinking that it's water. And maybe it'd be what'd put out their own flames, but it's only fuel for the other, and Sam can see the bridge between them crumbling.

Damon makes himself more vulnerable than Sam's ever seen him with someone else before, and Sam has to fight the urge to wrap his own shields around Damon. He itches to curl the wings of his mind around the three of them, block them off from the rest of the Nest and protect them until they can figure this out.

But he can feel the burn of Misato's fury, and he doesn't have to see inside her mind to figure out what she thinks of Damon opening himself up to her. They're speaking different languages, trying to go about the same thing, only he's pretty sure Misato's already closed herself out of this attempt.

And then she lumps Sam in there. His brows furrow, taken aback - she's never misunderstood what he meant that badly, never thrown resentment and anger at him that sparked from something he didn't say. From things he did say, sure, but she's never decided for him what he was saying and stopped listening.

Of course he'll teach Elena how to shield, that's not really a question when he's already offered his help to her - but his focus shifts from Misato and Damon fighting to what's going on with Misato. ]

It seems like you both want to be understood, that's what I meant. Don't put shit on me that's not there, have I ever tried to tell you what you should want?

[ Has he ever done anything but try to understand her perspective, offer his own, reach a middle ground where they could and move on where they couldn't? She can't deny that - or, well. She can. But she'd be lying, either to herself or to him, and that'd tell him something about where her head's at. ]

[skaikru]

( clarke is staring straight ahead at the staging area, but her gaze is unfocused. hazy, shifting, glued to the projection of those bitter memories. the three dimensional scan in particular draws her attention, a map of tendrils wrapped tight like ivy around passive plant life. she's reminded of the bite of the flame as it had drilled into her neck, painfully aware of the rough and gnarled scar tissue that had healed over along her vertebra while she slept. but this wasn't the same; this wasn't technology they could hack, nor a simple tumor that could be removed. not at the size and growth rate.

it's hard not to follow murphy into his despair. harder not to ask questions neither of them would likely have the answers for. how long until they ceased being their own persons? until the symbiote started to impede on their memories and sense of self? until they lost where one conscious ended and another began? ripping herself from that path of thinking is a physical affair; demands she exhale sharply, and readjust her posture. sit up straighter and readjust her attention, honing in on the waves of misery rolling off murphy like a waterfall. her own sorrow is temporarily waylaid. )

( Hey. If we can fight it, we will. )

( there's no plan of attack to be shared here. clarke doesn't know where they'd start to finding a solution for their parasitic companions, but her tone carries conviction. they'd scraped through life as it was, narrowly surviving every curveball earth and space alike had thrown at them, and this was just the next one. what she lacks in terms of ideas, clarke more than makes up for in the palpable determination to this find one.

if feeling the dedication in her thoughts isn't enough, she's raising a hand to grasp his shoulder, squeezing lightly. )

( We'll figure this out, too. )

( like always. )

[skaikru]

( .... yeah, aloy, that was a little weird. that rounded the conversation right back around to the decidedly turbulent emotional waters between them that were lexa, and clarke is again faced with the distinct impression that there's something intense there, but doesn't feel like it is her place to pry.

luckily, this is the one instance in which she seems capable of choking down her curiosity; of skating over emotional rips that threatened to shake the tenuous pleasantness of their conversation, and smoothing right back into idle small talk.

after a bit of an awkward beat, of course. )

( So how long have you been here? )

oops lost the notif for this one, sorry!

[otrazhenie]

[ Endless. Because she could live forever now. She's not as indestructible as Elijah and his siblings, but there are fewer things that can hurt her now, and if she's careful not to let others know her weaknesses... Well, look at Katherine. Centuries old and still surviving.

I can't be like Katherine. The woman who has the same face as her, the same fate, the same Petrova blood that linked them as doppelgangers. She can't be as vicious and self-serving as Katherine, she can't disregard all others in favor of looking out for herself. Look at all the harm she's caused in that long life.

Even Stefan and Damon have killed needlessly, without care or appreciation for human life. Can she really live on knowing that eventually she might end up doing the same thing? But then she remembers Jeremy, her little brother who's all alone now that Alaric is gone, and she can't give up. One day she'll get back to him, somehow, and she has to live for that day. ]

No, it doesn't, and it's not going to be.

[ She's not going to be like Katherine, or like Stefan. She's going to be Elena and she's not going to give up. That determination rises up inside her and she backs away further from her approaching broodmate. ]

[deployed]

[ The way their minds have linked had inevitably lead to some understanding of Lexa. Familiarity was inescapable. But they had both been courteous, and apart from a few slips, they had managed to keep their minds contained. (As contained as Bellamy ever was.) Bellamy recognizes Lexa's recitation as a willful display of vulnerability. It's for the best that they're fully robed. Bellamy thinks that makes this easier for her, because surely it couldn't be easy to tell him any of this. It's not easy for him to hear.

With some effort, he lets pass the first, ill-advised urges that present themselves. This is not the moment to defend Pike, to deflect and fall into the well-worn argument about whose actions had been justified. They've reached an impasse, and it's not the point. The point is Clarke. Bellamy takes a breath, sets aside the memory of Charles Pike, the dread that looking out onto the blockade had sparked in him and focuses on Lexa broaching the topic of her own death.

Of course it had changed Clarke. Losing Finn had changed Clarke, and she had dealt with it by throwing herself directly into the mission at hand and then coming apart in once that mission had been resolved. Bellamy suspects the pattern would have repeated, if Clarke hadn't arrived here and if Lexa hadn't been on hand to circumvent it. ]

( She has changed, ) [ Bellamy acknowledges, stalling while he tries to find an answer, to give Lexa something concrete. ] ( She needs you to be close to her. It's what she wanted before we came here. )

[ He lifts the memory of Clarke and the flame for Lexa's perusal. Clarke had kept it to close, tucked alongside her heart, opening it to look at as if she were seeing Lexa's face. Surely Lexa herself would be better, but he understands the point Lexa is making. What would Bellamy do, if Gina emerged from the pods? ]

( Clarke will get through it. The mission will help. It'll give her something to focus on while she gets used to this. )

[ Aka gets used to her love interest being alive again. ]

[sizeofyourbaggage]

( She's pretty damn good at being enlightening. ) [ There's a healthy dose of amusement right back, and something a little more than fondness on his side. He adores his youngest broodmate, but not because she's his broodmate.

He's more than willing to try to see if all of them can try to figure out something about the Nector and the Seconds - but his interest is caught in the way she talks about the new arrival from her world. ]

( Yeah? If that means we finally have a decent medic team, hell, I'll take it. What's her name? )

[polyphonos]

We are the aggregate consciousness of her and other hosts like her - hosts which have grown close enough to the symbiote and the nest that they're pieces of for the edges to blur, as it were. We're still her. We're just also lots of other things as well.

[From her seat on the stone bench, she offers him a bland smile. The disturbance in him tastes like something coppery and bitter in her mouth. Cathaway raises her chin by a degree, the sheet of her silvering hair dripping forward across her shoulder.]

It might be easier to show you.

[Her hand turns in her lap. She offers it out to him palm up, long fingers at easy angles.]

[polyphonos]

[She doesn't doubt it.]

We would prefer it if you didn't. There are creatures here that don't deserve that kind of harm.

[Her hand at Lakshmi's wrist is very light indeed-- so light that there, the vice like sensation of it might pass, ceding once more to just an old woman's long fingers and the soft scrape of her callouses.]

Surely you understand our urge to see them secure.

[Cathaway unpeels her hand from Lakshmi's wrist a finger at a time. She tips her face back by a degree - fixes the woman with a look that's both more direct and infinitely less penetrating - and raises an eyebrow: Are you finished?]

[shri]

( Let's try diplomatic to begin with then? Esclataion is quite exhuasting. )

[ Because she really can't get on any kind of horse over those kinds of stakes, and she tries to be blunt about what she's done, what she's capable of. ]

[huntsmachines]

[ Aloy isn't the most socially adept person, but even she can feel that awkward hitch the conversation takes. Mentally, she kicks herself for a moment over the way she brought the conversation back around to that rather unfortunate topic. She swallows. Thankfully, Clarke seems ready to simply move on, though part of Aloy wants to spill her emotions onto someone, anyone. She feels as if she might burst. ]

( I'm not sure. Without the sun on the station it's hard to tell. We've been on the planet a few days. )

yaaaas prettiest and angstiest wallpowers ever

[bracchium]

[Sorry Shiro, Bucky is not a natural when it comes to casual conversation, not anymore at least. Maybe once upon a time before HYDRA sharpened him into a blade. The question brings back an age-old defensiveness, like a struck nerve,] ( 'm fine. )

[redheadcarrier]

Is that the only reason you want to kill them?

[ Asuka eyeballs Lakshmi, daring her to yell or get offended. ]

Just to get revenge?

[ She's treading on thin ice. Then again, when isn't she? ]

[adamance]

( She will. We never had the opportunity to be close. Nothing will stop that now. ) [Those brief, fleeting minutes back in Polis had been nothing compared to what they both wanted. Their reunion here had been a reminder of that fact, too desperate to be close to one another to allow anything to sink in. But she recalls Clarke's tears and Clarke's guilt; she recalls the sound of Titus' voice in Clarke's head, reminding her that it was her fault that Lexa had died. Even if Lexa doesn't agree (she doesn't; she can't), she knows it'll take more than words to make that ache go away.

All she can do now is promise to live. It's the least she can manage and the least she can do knowing about the long road ahead.]

( The problem is that you aren't here for my sake or Clarke's. Or not only that. ) [Lexa knows that Bellamy's selfishness is a fleeting thing, at least by now. He might not admit it, but she's also not naive enough to believe that he'd come to her without some motivation aligned with himself. She knows that there's a part of him that will be apparent to Clarke. It's possible that it's a sentiment that will be shared in turn, but the arrival of Lexa may make that more difficult to comprehend.]

( Having her back in your life will be difficult, Bellamy. You care for her. )

[Lexa considers cutting off any defenses to that by heading them off at the start. But she chooses not to; maybe he won't bother to conceal the truth from her.]

[adamance]

( Clarke. ) [The name resonates with warmth and care. She had once told Titus that Clarke elevated herself. Lexa's mind probably helps her to the highest pedestal of all, however.] ( She's the leader of her people and one of my ambassadors. She's uniquely suited to this mission. We need leaders among us who will take decisive action. She'll be ready for that. )

[Never mind that most of her remarks here are coated in Lexa bias. For one, Clarke isn't technically Skaikru's only leader, but Lexa has treated her as if she was for ... a while.]