Lightning Only Strikes Once - Clexa

Chapter 109: Digging Yourself Deeper

When Clarke wakes up, the first thing she notices is the strange scraping noise, the way it seemingly follows her from sleep to consciousness. She keeps her eyes closed but light presses against her eyelids, light and heat, and for a second she thinks she's back in the cave they slept in. Then she remembers that the cave is destroyed – shrapnel in the walls, bodies on the floor, the entrance half-destroyed. A Raven Special. She's somewhere else. Memory floods back.

Attackers. Gas grenade. Lexa.

Clarke's eyes fly open and she struggles to sit up, desperate to see that Lexa's okay, that she's still alive. That she hasn't bled out or died from complications or just not woken up.

Her quick visual sweep of the alcove they're snowed into stuns her for a second. There's bodies everywhere. Their throats are sliced, the floor wet with blood – not so different to the cave Raven wrecked after all.

"Ai hodnes," Lexa says with a relieved sigh, and Clarke's gaze swings to her fiancée, who's sitting against the wall just behind her. Lexa's left arm hangs limply and she looks worryingly pale and sweaty, but she's okay.

"You're alive," Clarke breathes. She can't see any fresh blood – but then, of course she can't, if Lexa had continued bleeding while she was unconscious she would already be dead. Clarke knows enough about wounds to feel sure that this is only a temporary fix, though – one tight bandage to deal with being completely run through. The second Lexa lifts something heavy, moves too quickly, hell, breathes too deeply, she'll probably start bleeding again.

Lexa gives her a crooked smile. "Sha," she confirms, just as obviously. "I woke from the gas nearly an hour ago, and dealt with the gona."

Clarke resolutely blocks out an unfair nausea at her mental picture of Lexa calmly and coolly slitting the unconscious guards' throats. They were the ones who attacked, and would have attacked again if Lexa hadn't taken care of it, so it was self-defence, in a way. Just like the Azgeda they killed at the lake. But then, when you defined it like that, what couldn't you justify as self-defence?

"They would have died anyway," Lexa says quietly, her green eyes piercing Clarke's soul and apparently reading her mind. "I do not believe they could safely dig out through the passage."

Clarke frowns, taking in the light and warmth she didn't question before. Lexa's managed to find five torches – presumably from the gona she killed – and has lit them all, creating a circle at the edges with them. It's not warm enough to make the snow melt, but it's enough to feel warm compared to what they've been out in lately. "Torches? Fire... ai hodnes, this is a small room. We need to put those out or we'll run out of air."

Lexa frowns. "It will not melt the ice, Clarke. We will not drown. Do not worry."

"No, I mean – look, people breathing uses up oxygen. It leaves carbon dioxide. Fire does the same. If these have been burning for an hour, they must have eaten up a lot of it already."

"And this causes death?" Lexa asks thoughtfully.

"Uh... eventually, yeah," Clarke replies. "We'd get dizzy and breathe faster and then we'd pass out."

"That sounds more pleasant than freezing to death in the dark," Lexa states. "I have seen gona freeze many times and I think I would prefer to keep the torches lit, if that is alright by you?" She raises an eyebrow questioningly.

"Right," Clarke manages to say through the sudden lump in her throat. Lexa's calm assumption that their only choice is in the manner of their death fills her with fear. "Keep them lit, then."

Clarke takes a moment to the little space they're in – as always, searching for a way out. The stone walls stand on two sides, and continue to support the ceiling, though by her estimate it's half a foot lower than it was before – this room had a much higher roof than the passage, but the drop is still noticeable. She can see that it's tilted now as well. The roof is highest over the wooden door, which has now fallen off its hinges from the explosion and is half-covered in tonnes of snow. It's the way to the passage and Clarke understands what Lexa means – she saw the explosion too, after all. The whole passage must have come down. It would take an army to dig out through that and even then they'd probably collapse it on themselves unless they were very careful.