Lightning Only Strikes Once - Clexa

Chapter 110: The Thawing

Lexa's left arm, shoulder, and the whole left side of her torso burn with pain as she forces her way through the hole. It's nowhere near as bad as it was before, though, and Clarke's makeshift bandage seems to help. Now the weakness bothers her far more than the pain. Before Clarke woke up she tried to see if her left arm could still be made to work, but found it could not hold so much as a torch without dropping it, and she cannot even raise it above a certain point. Her right arm is the dominant one she uses, of course, but still... she is used to using both. She is used to being balanced. She is used to feeling strong. Pain can be an asset, sometimes, focusing your mind and sharpening your senses. Feebleness and slowness cannot be.

For a moment after she saw how incapable her left side was, she worried if she would ever be able to fight properly again. The next second she realised how foolish that thought was. 'Ever again' in this case is probably only hours, a day or two at most.

"There's someone here," Clarke mutters to her, glancing around and holding the torch higher as Lexa forces herself to her feet again through pure determination. "I heard a noise."

Lexa stiffens. "Where?" she murmurs. "What direction?"

Clarke shrugs helplessly. Spotting a torch on the nearby wall, she lights it as well, then tries to give it to Lexa so they can search together.

"I am fine," Lexa says quietly. "I can see well in the dark." She needs her right hand for her sword. It is more important than seeing, now that they know someone else has survived.

It is not a surprise, really, that another person survived, now that she looks around – a castle designed to sit under the weight of a mountain is a sturdy thing. There are the odd fallen stones and piles of snow, some still trickling down the sides, and the middle of the ceiling is sagging worryingly, but this area is still quite intact.

By unspoken agreement Lexa and Clarke do not split up. They follow the wall, so that there is one direction they can't be attacked from.

This time Lexa hears it too. A moaning noise. She gestures to Clarke to follow and heads in that direction unerringly. Then stops at a large, fancy table, uncertain where to go from here.

The noise comes again. Clarke gasps. "That door," she says, voice returning to normal volume in her worry. "That's where they had Gustus, where they were torturing him -"

"They cannot have found him again so soon after we separated," Lexa says, but she can hear the uncertainty in her own voice and both of them move too quickly to the door. Clarke is the one to yank it open and they both inhale sharply at the sight inside.

For a second all Lexa can register is that it is a man in the cell, smaller than Gustus (not that this is unusual), and gravely injured. It is impossible to find a piece of skin without a burn or cut, but that is inconsequential compared to the stones that have fallen on him, leaving him facedown, half-covered with rocks and snow and with a visible dent in the back of his head. He has chains attached to his hands but they have come loose.

"The whole ceiling came down," Clarke says, sounding sick.

"No," Lexa says. "This was part of the wall. Someone hollowed it out to make this – this little cell. This castle is old but this room is new, because someone – Nia, I suspect – weakened the wall and ceiling here to create this space."

"Because the actual cells were too far away for her dinner entertainment," Clarke says, her voice filled with disgust.

Lexa stops paying attention. She feels cold – inside, this time, not outside. "It is Titus," she says.

One of his hands is half-buried in the snow, she notices distantly, and is black with Azkwel – ice weakness, the damage which comes from spending too much time too cold. Has that happened while they were unconscious, with nobody able or willing to reach him and light the nearby fires to keep this room warm and help him off the ground so he is not touching the snow? Or has he been here for weeks, punished for Clarke's and Gustus's escape, his flesh gradually freezing away as he waits for help that does not come?