fragile | clexa

chapter thirty seven

Clarke only remembered gasping for air but never getting any, her fingers digging into the wheels, the muscles in her arms working far past capacity.

Out. She needed to get out.

There was a distinct 'go to your tent section honey', several calls of her name and then her wheelchair didn't move anymore. Panicky, Clarke tried to push it further, further, away from the tent.

Octavia was holding onto the back of it, so the more she tried, the worse her panic got. "Clarke," she heard again. "Clarke."

And then Octavia's eyes met hers, her wheelchair had spun around and she was just trying to push herself through the back of it. "Clarke," a sob.

It might've been that sob, those teary eyes of Octavia that stilled Clarke's body. Pants passed her lips as she stilled, stiff against the back of her wheelchair.

Octavia, Clarke tried to push into her brain.

Octavia, Octavia, Octavia.

Octavia wasn't one of the bad guys.

Was she sure though? Could she be?

Octavia didn't ever cry.

Why was she looking like she was about to then?

Why was Octavia there?

"Clarke," again, but it sounded like fog somehow reaching Clarke's mind. "Clarke, please, talk to me."

Octavia was crying.

Octavia really rarely cried.

Clarke had made that observation before. What was going on? Why was Octavia there?

Clarke had also questioned that before, but she couldn't remember. Her brain felt like it was heating up with every of the thousand thoughts speeding through her head per second.

Lexa was still there in her head, the kiss, the kisses, the cuddling, the insecurity in those green eyes, but the magic had gone. At once, the soft angel clouds that had been that kiss, fogging Clarke's brain, turned into a hammer falling down on Clarke's chest again and again and again, every time with more force. Maybe Lexa had always been that hammer, just without a grip. Maybe the grip was Octavia now, the reality behind everything, pulling Clarke's mind back where it belonged.

Into bottomless panic.

Clarke couldn't see Octavia clearly anymore. She was shaking- or was it Clarke's wheelchair that was shaking? Was it the whole world that was shaking? It must've been.

"Clarke, please, breathe," a voice said and Clarke noticed it attempted to be soft, but any gentleness was shaken out by the trembling of the voice. It wasn't how Clarke remembered Octavia's voice.

Clarke couldn't remember Octavia's old voice at all in fact.

She couldn't remember anything.

She wasn't supposed to remember anything.

That was the last of the beforehand seemingly endless thoughts passing Clarke's head. It just reached her consciousness before said consciousness turned into a deep, full black.

-

It was when Lexa came back from her fruitless search for Clarke, devestated and feeling guilty more than anything, that her guards told her that the woman she had been searching for was in the healer's tent.

Lexa's heart skipped two beats, if not more. Maybe it had stopped all along.

Her fingers gripped the hem of her shirt, nervously and anxiously tearing at it. She didn't think she'd survive it if Clarke had had another incident with someone, something.