#so going back to the pre-leadership days and looking at what cleon was like when she was just herself was really fun

[asthedeathoflight]

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Hi guys. Today I was reading Metal From Heaven by August Clarke and was suddenly seized by like I don't know some kind of fucking spirit. So I went home and I wrote this in essentially one sitting, with a break for dinner in the middle in which I was still kind of writing it on my phone.

CWs for this fic for depiction of a panic attack from a POV character, and also the fact that it is rated M for lesbiaM.

~ ~ ~

People wonder - aloud, even - at how it was that Ajax had come to join the Warriors. If it was in a moment of violence, or bravado. Ajax tolerates the younger girls’ wild speculation and knows the truth will never live up to the legend. The place where everybody gets it wrong is that they expect her to have joined the Warriors as Ajax. Ajax is a Warrior. Ajax has always been a Warrior. Ajax has always been a Warrior. But she didn’t come to the crew as Ajax. There was a girl, once upon a time, who Ajax remembers now in fits and starts, and the story of how she became a Warrior isn’t worth telling to anyone who wasn’t there. And almost everyone who was there is gone. 

The girl who would one day be Ajax became a Warrior in a tense, quiet conversation in which she did not speak at all. She stood near a wall in the tiny, dingy office above a butcher shop and stared sightlessly past where the woman who had maybe always been Cleon spoke with steel in her voice and fire in her eyes. Ajax could never look at her when she was like that. Cleon like that was like the sun, like something that was too much of what Ajax was meant to look at, so much of what Ajax had been made for that she was poisoned by it. 

Cleon was leaning over the desk to speak urgently to the woman behind it, quiet like the ocean was quiet, like she knew her power and didn’t care if you heard her coming. 

Something changed in their conversation. The woman Cleon was speaking to sat back in her chair, scraping a hand along her jaw thoughtfully. She wasn’t safe to look at either. She was rough-hewn like a boulder or an unpaved road, and her shoulders and hands were broad and square. She had a moth-eaten wool cap pulled over her dreads, even inside - no use paying for heat in a building where most of the inhabitants would spoil at room temperature. Her name was Daedalus, and looking at her made Ajax feel a little bit like throwing up, like the spinning feeling of having taken a hit before the pain came. 

So Ajax looked at the wall past them, where it was yellow with smoke residue near the ceiling, and tried to hear their words without understanding them. She had always been shit at not saying everything she felt with just her face, and Ajax wasn’t sure how she was feeling at the moment, so she couldn’t afford to give any of it away. 

Cleon continued intently for a few moments, leaning her weight on the desk for just a second, and then Daedalus nodded slowly. Cleon rocked back on her heels, breathing out like the venting of a steam engine; like wheels spinning slowly to a stop. “Okay, great,” she said, and Ajax had lost whatever rare focus was allowing her to let the conversation slip over her without sticking. 

“Okay,” Daedalus echoed, more gruffly. “You better have meant all that shit. I don’t take kindly to exaggeration.”

Cleon nodded fervently, and Ajax made a mental note to have her explain the bargain she had made on Ajax’s behalf. Oh, Ajax was sure she worded it for both of them, but Ajax was faster and stronger than her. She would shoulder most of it. Cleon didn’t have a choice about that. 

The door to the little office swung open, and a woman stepped in without waiting for any acknowledgement from Daedalus. She was wearing a threadbare bathrobe and a silky little slip of a nightgown and carrying two mugs of coffee. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” she said with a jazz singer’s husky contralto. 

 As she entered the office she passed through Ajax’s eye line and caught her eye for a moment. She winked. Not safe to look at. Ajax moved her head to look up at the buzzing, flickering overhead light instead. 

“You’ve got perfect timing as always, Twitch,” Daedalus rumbled. “We were just finishing up.”

“How’s the latest litter of strays?” Twitch asked. 

Ajax blinked at the light, and the imprint of it glowed blue-green on her eyelids. It hurt just a little bit. She let the discomfort swallow up any other sensation. 

“Eager,” Daedalus replied.

“Aw,” Twitch cooed. “Patriotic. Cute.”

Ajax could hear that Cleon was smiling when she spoke. She could almost see that smile, cheerful and happy to help and unimpeachably angelic. Her Girl Scout smile. “Just doing business, ma’am.”

“Only one kind of business here in Coney, girl. Don’t go forgettin’ that.”

“Of course not,” Cleon said, a little bit sharper. A little bit more cat-with-the-cream. “Sir.”

Ajax failed to duck away from the chill that ran through her. Her body came back online all at once, without her permission. She dropped her gaze from the light down to the room, barely seeing anything except what she needed to - the door, Cleon’s back, the skeptical upward tilt of Daedalus’s eyebrow. 

Cleon’s hands were clasped behind her in parade rest. Her fingers twitched once in the moment of silence, but Ajax couldn’t imagine it had shown on her face. A heartbeat of silence in the room, and then Daedalus threw her head back and laughed. 

“Christ,” she said, chuckling, “You’re something else. Okay, run along. We’ll be in touch.”

And in the release of the imminent-danger feeling in her body, Ajax became aware that she had missed something. Daedalus, not just a facial expression and proximity to an exit. She sprawled back in her chair comfortably, mug of steaming coffee in one hand. Twitch had come around to stand on her other side , both hands around her mug, standing in the corner formed between Daedalus’s body and the chair and the desk. Daedalus’s other arm was hooked comfortably around her waist beneath the bathrobe, fingers splayed over her hip.

Daedalus and Cleon finished having some kind of silent exchange Ajax wasn’t privy to, and then Daedalus turned to Twitch in a way which plainly signaled the end of Ajax and Cleon’s relevance to the conversation. As Cleon was turning to her so they could go, Twitch leaned down and kissed Daedalus on her still crookedly-smiling mouth. Casual, easy, like parents on TV. 

Ajax wasn’t frozen. Frozen implied an external force that she could strain against. It was just that, suddenly, there was nothing for her to move. She was dropped into cold water. There was no relationship between Ajax and any moving part of her body. Cleon noticed her not leaving. She rolled her eyes and grabbed Ajax by the hand and tugged her towards the door. Whatever had been left in the shell of Ajax that she had abruptly vacated followed obediently behind her, down the stairs and out to the street and back to their apartment. She could feel Cleon’s fingers between her own more like pressure than warmth. 

Cleon fumbled with their keys one-handed when they got to their door and Ajax watched her without seeing, without being able to just goddamned move and let her go so she could open the door. Cleon exhaled in relief as she dragged Ajax across the threshold and shut the door. Her inhale bubbled up and over in her until she was giggling uncontrollably as she bent over to unlace her boots. Ajax stared at her mutely, the ice water slowly draining from her. 

“Holy shit,” Cleon whispered to herself as she straightened up. “Holy shit!” she said again, louder, gleeful. “Holy shit, we did it!”

She stomped her feet and rubbed her hands together a little bit like it was cold, like she did when she was excited. She kicked her boots off to land vaguely next to the coat hook and took a few steps further into their apartment before she noticed that Ajax still hadn’t moved. She turned back to her, still grinning - vicious, giddy, victorious. Whatever she saw on Ajax’s face made her stop. 

What had she seen on Ajax’s face? This was the problem with being Ajax, a problem she had inherited from the girl she was before. Anyone looking at her could tell how she was feeling, but Ajax’s perspective was all wrong. She couldn’t see herself. She didn’t know. 

Cleon’s eyebrows drew together in concern. “Hey,” she said, “Hey, what’s wrong?”

Something was wrong? Yes, yes, Ajax realized, something was wrong. The cold water was gone from her and she could feel the raw ache of ice on her insides, a feeling that could have been fear or anger. But oh, how Ajax’s body loved anger. 

“Did you know?” Ajax’s voice was hoarse to her own ears. Not hoarse like Twitch or Daedalus, with time or cigarettes, but hoarse like it was after she’d broken in a moment of weakness and started to scream. 

“Know?” Cleon still looked a little confused, like she wasn’t sure what was going on. Like maybe they were still kids, and Ajax had just skinned her knee. 

“Becca, did you know?” Was it still Becca, then? In their apartment that afternoon, Ajax doesn’t know what to call either of them. They would climb out of that time-between when Daedalus finally called, Cleon leaving Beck Waters in a closet like an old coat and Ajax leaving the girl whose name she sometimes no longer knows in a grave. 

“Is this because of me?” she had demanded, and the vice grip of the glacier had caught her around the ribs. “Because I'm not -” She'd choked on the words, then. “I'm not like that. I'm not like them.”

Realization came to Cleon like dawn, like pity, and in the futility of that moment Ajax had never hated anyone other than herself so much. 

“Ajax,” Cleon says in her memory, and her lips make a different shape. The sound scraped across her in that moment and she shook with the sudden collapse of all her failures, with the sudden snap of a lie. 

“Nooo,” Ajax had said, a lost and animal sound. Where was anger when she needed it? “No, no, no.”

She couldn’t breathe in. She raised her arms to ward off the blow that would not come, forgot the years since she had been small enough for anyone to hit her from above. She couldn’t hear Cleon’s soft footsteps over the sound of her failure to breathe. She put her arms over her face, instead, to protect herself from having to see. 

She felt Cleon’s hands on her shoulders, felt how they were steady over the shaking thing she could hardly recognize as herself. 

“If this is about - I’m sorry - I didn’t mean it, it was a mistake, please -” Ajax could hear herself speaking, beginning unforgivably to dissolve into sobs. “Please, I didn’t mean it, I’m not like them.”

And the lie scorched her throat on the way out. 

The world melted around her and she felt Cleon’s hands on her face, her careful soft fingers wiping away the tears that were spilling from her like blood from a wound. Ajax felt that kindness in her like venom, like briar in her airways. Her chest heaved and no air came in. Cleon tried to draw her in, to press Ajax’s face to her shoulder, but Ajax could only see Daedalus’s broad bicep tucked comfortably into the curve of Twitch’s back. 

She struggled in Cleon’s arms, shoved and fought against the encroaching gentleness without any of the strength she had clawed from her body. She was small and weak and helpless, and the last time she had allowed herself to be overtaken by the softness and heat of Cleon’s body she had nearly ruined them both. 

“Please, please,” she begged, “I can’t. I can’t - I can’t-”

Cleon’s thumb traced little circles along her temple and the wanting jolted through Ajax as a pain too big for her body, rising and falling in waves as it kicked and screamed to be heard. 

“You have to breathe,” Cleon said. As Ajax’s vision refocused on her she looked stricken, looked like it was her heart threatening to collapse into a black hole. There were tears wavering at the corners of her eyes. “Please, for me, you have to breathe.”

And Ajax’s only hope for salvation was some kind of self-immolation but she was too wicked and bruised for martyrdom and she could never deny Cleon anything, not even to save her. 

She breathed rabbit-fast and shallow and broke to pieces as Cleon put a hand on her chest, over her heart. The pain was nothing in the face of how completely Cleon held her then, how utterly at her mercy Ajax was. Even the wanting she surrendered to breathing as Cleon breathed, their foreheads pressed together. For a moment between the person she was and who she would become, Ajax forgot what it meant to fight altogether. 

When Ajax went limp in her arms like shaken prey, Cleon exhaled a shaky breath. “God,” she said, and she sounded like she might cry. “God, I’m so sorry.”

“No,” Ajax protested, and she felt like a child who was just barely learning how to speak. “No, I’m sorry,” she reminded Cleon.

But Cleon hardly seemed to hear her. “God, I should have known, I should’ve been stronger, I’m so sorry.”

Bathed in the soft light of having given in, Ajax could only sit up enough to look Cleon in the eyes - they were on the floor? When had they started sitting on the floor? “This is all my fault,” she said gently. “It wasn’t you, it was me. And it was a mistake. You said you believed me.”

She put her hand on Cleon’s jaw in unconscious mimicry of Cleon’s earlier gesture. She could feel the kickdrum of Cleon’s heart. 

Cleon winced, like the words were an accusation she couldn’t deflect. “I should’ve been stronger for you,” she murmured, almost to herself, “I shouldn’t have let you carry it alone, shouldn’t have let you think -”

Very carefully, Cleon reached up and moved Ajax’s hand away from her face. She pressed her thumb into the center of Ajax’s palm, and her hand spasmed under the pressure even as Cleon held her fast. 

Cleon closed her eyes and took one deep breath in and out. When she looked at Ajax again, the specter of the scared girl begging her to breathe was gone. “I’m like that,” she said calmly. Resolutely. “I’m like them.”

The words were just noise. Ajax couldn’t make them make sense. 

Cleon must have seen it on her face, must have known she was beyond words right then. Or maybe she saw the breaking dawn in her of a new kind of desire. Ajax had always been a cage-creature, accustomed to the weight of slamming doors in the face of wantings for freedom. The feeling of wanting something right across from her, something she could have, was alien. She hardly could have recognized it for what it was. But some ancestral monster woken in her body must have known, because when Cleon leaned in, Ajax was already reaching for her to drag her closer. 

For a moment, Ajax was a totally new kind of animal, an animal that had never been anywhere or anyone except here, shoved up against the doorframe with another body on top of her, breathing in another body’s air. 

“I thought I’d die,” Cleon whispered into her mouth, “God, baby, I thought I was gonna die if I never got to do this again.”

Ajax wasn’t totally sure the imminent threat to her mortality had passed. She arched up into the weight of Cleon above her until Cleon kissed her again. 

Cleon kept wanting to pull back to talk, and Ajax kept feeling like she would suffocate if Cleon wasn’t kissing her, so they worked out a kind of compromise where Cleon kissed her in between every other word and Ajax tried really hard to comprehend language. 

“I’m so sorry,” Cleon said, breathless and with a giddiness that belied her words. “I’m sorry, I was stupid, I was waiting for you.”

Cleon laughed at Ajax’s expression of consternation as she tried and failed to parse this new sentence. She kissed Ajax on the nose, and then the temple. She settled herself higher in Ajax’s lap, with her cheek pressed to the top of Ajax’s head. “I thought you needed more time, I thought - I thought this would help, I thought knowing we weren’t alone would help.” 

Time. That was the thing that was forcing Ajax to experience the interminable interludes between Cleon’s mouth being on hers. Ajax hardly needed more of it. She made an impatient noise. 

Cleon laughed again and put a hand in Ajax’s hair to drag her head to an angle where Cleon could kiss her again. That was another sensation that Ajax could not consciously understand but which the ancestral monster of her body understood intimately. The first time, Cleon had felt like a wilderness, swallowing her in newness and uncertainty until she had gotten lost and pulled back in horror at what she had done. 

On the floor of their apartment, Cleon handed her back the memories of a life she had forgotten, the trembling and hunger that Ajax suddenly couldn’t believe she’d ever been able to turn away from. 

Ajax was unsteady as a lamb as Cleon guided her to her feet and lured her one step at a time across their apartment. She navigated the doorknob to her bedroom from behind her with one hand still gripped in Ajax’s braids, which was good because Ajax wasn't sure she could have managed it even facing the door. 

When Cleon’s calves hit the edge of her bedframe she kicked out her foot and tripped Ajax and spun her around in a move that temporarily jostled the circuits of Ajax’s brain long enough for her to have her first coherent thought in what felt like hours, which was that she needed Cleon to teach it to her. This momentary clarity was immediately derailed by the thought that teaching it to her would probably involve Cleon demonstrating it on her again. Maybe even more than once. 

And then her back hit the mattress and Cleon was pressing her down into the bed that had been Cleon’s that morning and became theirs long before Ajax’s brain managed to come back online. 

~ ~ ~

Ajax came to herself in pieces that week and the weeks that followed, not like recovery but like new construction. She stood in the wreckage of the girl, the smoking ruin of someone she was already forgetting how she’d ever pretended to be. 

Twitch was smoking behind the counter when Ajax finally went back. She flicked ash to the ground and smirked. “Little lamb,” she drawled, “I almost don’t recognize you.”

And that was a kind of mercy, a kind of allowance for becoming something new. Ajax hoped nobody who had ever known her before would ever recognize her again. 

Ajax grinned and held out her hand. “I don’t think we’ve properly met.”

Twitch put her hand in Ajax’s, long fingers just brushing Ajax’s palm, and Ajax remembered the twinkle in her eyes, the knowing wink. Bold as anything, bold as the person she would one day be and was already becoming, Ajax brought Twitch’s hand to her mouth and kissed the backs of her knuckles. Her skin was cool and smooth and smeared with just a little bit of blood. 

Twitch’s smirk broke into a smile. “So,” she said, “I hear you’re calling yourself Ajax now.”

Ajax’s grin broke wider like a break in the clouds. Ajax could care less if anyone recognized her, because she finally did. 

~ ~ ~

This fic is dedicated to @alexihollis and her fic where Ajax has internalized homophobia. That fic is foundational to my understanding of Ajax as a character and it was the blueprint for this fic.