archenemy | clexa

fourteen

The deal for an alliance comes unexpected, but truly, it does not surprise Clarke.

It's only after Clarke really takes time to work through the deal, through its conditions and its aftermath, that the joy for peace and safety for her people turns into something else.

Exhilaration, perhaps.

The Heda will undoubtedly recognize her. Her face was hardly masked enough, her voice, her name- Clarke's breath is shaky with the rush of excitement she gets from the mere idea of seeing the Heda's face.

The Heda will know that she screamed her archenemy's name at night. The Heda will have this so called 'bonding ceremony' in front of all her own and Clarke's people, and she will look at a face she has seen between her thighs. If that's a Grounder thing, the Heda will shake Clarke's hand, wrap her fingers around Clarke's in the knowledge that only a night ago she came upon them.

Clarke doesn't know how much opportunity for tease this bonding ceremony will allow her, but she is sure that she will exploit each and every one as much as she can allow herself.

That night, she leaves her hair in the exact same way she had it at the Grounder's feast, so that the Heda will be sure to recognize her.

-

By nightfall, the camp is looking better than it has in a long time. Torches are lit neatly. All tents are ready, not too luxurious, not too desperate, but enough to please Gods and keep them where they need to be kept.

Lexa is dressed up appropriately to have a bonding ceremony, but she feels like Anya is making a fun out of dragging it out just a tad too much. She's in a dress, like most of the other times she had a bonding ceremony, but she cannot recall needing to sit in a chair for so long for her hair and paint to be done in the past.

Anya isn't having any of her childish complaints. At least it's Lin who's doing her hair and Lin might have those silent, much-saying smiles (Lexa refuses to call it a smirk, that would be disrespectful of Lin because there is no reason at all to smirk), but at least they're silent. At least she's silent.

By the time she's ready, like all of her warriors who are on their highest guard now, it's long dark. Only the glow of the torches lights up the camp.

There's a cleared space again for food and dancing, also for Lexa and Skaiprisa to clasp their forearms shortly to show the alliance visually, and Lexa observes this part of camp most closely. Maybe because she's tense and this is the spot where she will bond with a Goddess, her archenemy, where she will have to touch her, even if their skin will never touch, even if it's just for a moment.

Maybe because right now, most warriors stand around the banquet and the dancing space stiffly with their weapons at the ready, waiting for the celebration to begin or, perhaps, for a war to begin instead. Lexa's eyes run along their partly masked or hidden faces, but most of them look common and dull, no one catches her eye, no one glows like Lexa knows Clarke would.

She's aware that it's primal and misplaced, her bare desire, her bare lust, now where she needs her brain to work on high focus on something that's not the image of Clarke in her bed, but she can't help small slips when there's no momentary threat.

It's strange, because she was so much more in control when she was with Costia. Which hurts her to think about, but right now life is handling her a row of hardships and this chaos that Costia and Clarke are bringing into her life was bound to become a problem.

Lexa loved Costia, she's quite sure. She loved Costia, but she rarely thought about her sexually if they weren't having sex at that moment. It felt wrong to do so when Costia meant sweetness and innocence and- and all the things she is not, all the ways in which she deceived Lexa. Costia and she had sex, but it was soft, it was a gentle nudge more than a strong, tearing need, something that was quiet and lovely but not so breathtaking, so passionate, so hot, so- so Clarke.