Lightning Only Strikes Once - Clexa

Chapter 35: Good Cop, Bad Cop: Grounder Style

"You'll let me live if I tell you?" the man says, looking at Clarke nervously, clearly hoping for some kind of support. She suspects in a normal interrogation he'd be holding up much better, but the Grounder's beliefs about Heda are working to their advantage. He looks at Lexa like she's more demon than person.

Clarke shrugs. "Perhaps," she says, glancing at Lexa. "I'm not sure."

"We could leave him at the nearest village, I suppose," Lexa says, looking unimpressed with the idea. "Have them put him to work for his crimes. Perhaps at a smithy or something. They could chain him up. That way we could know he would not run back to his master."

"So that's a few years of your life gone, but you'd survive," Clarke says to the assassin. "If you stay loyal to whoever sent you, though, we will have to kill you. But why would you stay loyal to someone who sent you here to die? When we're offering you a chance at life."

"Of course you could lie," Lexa says casually. "We interrogated your friend before he died, the one with the bow." Their first outright lie, but he was unconscious at the time and has no way of knowing that. "He insisted on telling us lies."

"At the beginning," Clarke corrects her, keeping her face even. "I think the last name he said was the truth."

"By then it was too late, unfortunately," Lexa flips the knife in her hand, catching the hilt over and over again as she twirls it in the air. The man watches like he's hypnotised. "I do not like being lied to. I suppose if your first answer matches what we now believe to be the truth, I might be persuaded to let you live." She stops playing with the knife and instead moves it so it is pressed lightly against his cheek. "Or you die. Slowly."

The man tries to stare at the knife as it traces down his cheek, so that his eyes are rolled to show nearly completely white. "Roan," he chokes out. "Prince Roan sent us."

Lexa looks at Clarke, surprise in her eyes. Then she turns back to the man. "Interesting," she says coolly. "And why would your former Prince do such a thing?"

"Heda – I – I don't -" the man babbles. Lexa presses the knife in, slicing a shallow cut dangerously close to his left eye. "I think – I think he hoped that – that the Azplana would be blamed -"

Clarke raises her eyebrows. Even more interesting. Although she almost grew to like Roan in the previous world by the end, it doesn't sound completely outside the realm of possibility. He had hated his mother, and he'd asked Clarke to assassinate Lexa. A mission which caused the deaths of both of them... it wouldn't benefit him, though, as far as she could see. "His own mother?" she asks, just to get the man's opinion.

"She – she has turned against him – put out a kill order -"

"A kill order," Lexa echoes, brow furrowed. "And why did she do that?"

That didn't happen in the other world, Clarke's sure. Why would Nia want her son dead now? What possible gain was that for her? Or had Roan made some move against her?

The man's eyes roll in his head again. He doesn't seem to know what to say. "I don't – I don't -"

With a sigh, Lexa slams the hilt of the knife into his head, sending him to unconsciousness once again.

"Lexa," Clarke scolds, "Head wounds can be dangerous."

"So can assassination, Clarke," Lexa says, showing no guilt at all, and Clarke drops the matter . She doesn't care too much about the health of a man who just tried to kill them. "What do you make of what he said?"

"I think it was the truth," Clarke admits. "It sounded like it, anyway. But why would Nia put out a kill order on Roan?"

Lexa frowns. "I do not know, Clarke. Perhaps she thinks I am here to depose her, and wishes there to be no possible replacements. Even exiled, Roan is the most obvious choice of successor – in fact, especially exiled, since due to that I would be more likely to place him in charge. If I killed Nia and placed Roan in charge, as I did in the other world, few would object."