Lightning Only Strikes Once - Clexa

Chapter 111: A Gut Feeling

Eventually the gona are so close to getting through that Clarke can see tiny fragments of light through the snow. She thinks about moving Lexa away and dealing with them on her own, since she's worried how Lexa will be able to cope when she's so severely injured, but Lexa pulls herself upright with a wince before Clarke can decide. Maybe she was never sleeping at all, just lying still and waiting.

Then Lexa latches onto Clarke's arm, pulling her to the side of the growing hole.

"You want to surprise them?" Clarke mutters as quietly as she can.

Lexa shakes her head and gestures towards the top of the hole. Clarke squints and is just able to make it out. Wooden supports, made out of pieces of bedframes, she thinks. Blankets at the top stretched between the supports to help prevent the ceiling from collapsing. They've shored up their own passageway. "Like the pauna," Lexa says, just as quietly, and Clarke understands suddenly.

Since they're to the side, they're outside the flood of light coming from the newly-opened passage, piled snow between them and anyone's line of sight, probably nearly invisible to people unused to the gloom. Clarke obligingly presses against the wall, making herself as small as possible, and waits as the hole is widened and widened. From this angle, all she can see is the ever-growing pool of light. Then it's becoming brighter and brighter.

The room lights up fully as several gona step into it. Clarke waits, nerves thrumming, as more move outside. She can see the first one clearly now, holding his sword out and looking suspicious. When his gaze starts to wander towards them, Clarke grabs Lexa's right wrist and yanks her towards the tunnel. She slashes at the gona closest to the mouth of it and he yowls, causing all the others to turn around, but it's already too late.

Lexa and she move quickly through the tunnel, pushing at wooden supports as they go. Clarke takes the time to stop and kick one of the most central ones out of alignment, only to be pulled away by Lexa only moments before great chunks of ice and snow from the ceiling start to smash where she was standing. They have to throw themselves the last two feet as the whole thing comes down.

Clarke lets out a pained moan as chunks rain down, striking the lower part of her legs, and claws herself forward as quickly as possible. Then she shrieks in agony as a particularly large, hard piece of ice hits her still-swollen ankle, probably breaking it again, and breaks down into mindless sobs. Lexa's yanking at her again, pulling her further away, and Clarke manages to overcome her pain and help with the task when she hears Lexa's own sobs of pain as pulling Clarke's weight reopens her wound. Clarke can no longer even tell that the sash she used as a bandage is blue, it's too drenched in fresh black blood. So much that she can barely believe that any is left in Lexa.

As quickly as it started the collapse of the ceiling stops and Lexa slumps to the ground, moaning. Clarke wonders dully if the gona died in the snowfall or are now trapped in the other room, then gives up on thinking about it and collapses next to Lexa. Her ankle is shrieking with impossible pain, so much so that she can't really move at all. The break's more severe than it was before, a distant voice in her mind notes. Much more severe. Being broken again so violently when it was still healing – she wonders if she'll ever be able to walk again. Purple spins in front of her eyes and she pitches to the side and throws up everything in her stomach.

Then she rolls over so that she's on her back, and sees the other occupant of the passageway.

The little part they're in is blocked in on both sides, a lone hold-out against the collapse. There's a door to the side which still seems to work, judging by the person coming out of it, though from what Clarke remembers of the place it leads to the smallest room, her former room. Because of that for a second she can't really comprehend Nia emerging from it.