Lightning Only Strikes Once - Clexa

Chapter 1: Well This Was Unexpected

It's a mistake, a foolish one. She climbs the tower. It's no one's fault. It's a mistake.

Oh, Clarke could blame a whole train of events. She could blame her horror at Wells' death, her tears at Finn's; she could blame her guilt at the deaths of everyone within Mount Weather. But the truth is that everyone has a breaking point. And for that breaking point, there's always someone to blame.

And the person she blames is Lexa.

It's easy to blame Lexa – her now-pointless love for Lexa is a fire in her heart, burning through her skin and charring her bones, cooking her from the inside out. It's nothing like the childish warmth she felt towards Wells, her brother in all but name and his poorly hidden feelings. It's nothing like the hormonal influx of kissing Finn, a boy she never got the chance to completely know and now thinks she wouldn't have liked if she did. And nothing like sharp-eyed Niylah, who was comfort and a brief pause, but never would have been anything more than brief to her.

Lexa was hers. Lexa was like her. Lexa was the one who made the world pause. It takes as long as it takes, that's what she would tell Clarke. Lexa would tell her to wait out her grief.

But then, Love is weakness, she would also tell Clarke. And Lexa is the person who sacrificed everything she had, everything she was, for love. Abby sent her husband – Clarke's father – to his death. Bellamy betrayed her without a second thought and aided the death of hundreds. Finn slaughtered innocents for her, without ever asking if that was what she wanted. I did that for you is the anthem that haunts the past few years of Clarke's life.

But what Lexa did for her? Lexa saved her people. Lexa saved her. Lexa wanted to make the world a better place.

Clarke no longer thinks it deserves that.

So she stands on the top of the tower. A couple of floors below, Lexa died. Clarke bowed to Lexa, Lexa bowed to Clarke. Clarke spat on her once. Why did she do that? Her anger at the time seemed all-encompassing. Could it have felt that way if she didn't love Lexa so very much?

Clarke closes her eyes. It's a long drop, inches away from her feet. The wind is fierce. Rain is starting as she stands there, splattering her face, running down her cheeks like the tears she seems to have run out of. All she needs to do is lean, and gravity will handle the rest.

She leans. She pulls back.

She will not do this, not now, not to Lexa's memory. Not to Lexa's dream. Clarke reaches her black-blood-stained hands to the sky, letting the rain start to wash them clean. She will survive. She will not die today. Ai gonplei nou ste odon.

The lightning takes the choice out of her hands. She's lit up before she can scream.

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"Prisoner 319, face the wall."

The voice is emotionless. The command is heartless. Clarke is in a grey world, with grey walls. There's a picture of a tower in darker grey against the grey. It isn't Lexa's tower, but for a second she thinks it is.

She drew that. A long time ago. Didn't she? Shit, what's going on? Is she back in Arkadia? Did she faint? Did the lightning make her pass out? Did Pike put her back in her cell, now that it's crashed to the ground again? Is this torture?

"What?" she says, faintly. Lost. Alone. Where's Lexa, Octavia, her mother? The lightning? Where is she?

"Hold out your arm. Your watch. Take it off."

The note in his voice is unfamiliar to her, after so long, but after a moment she can place it. Dismissiveness. As if she's not Wanheda, Clarke kom Skaikru. No one has dismissed Clarke in a long time.