archenemy | clexa

twenty four

Lexa wants to believe this is Clarke's fault, but somehow, deep down, she knows it's not. She knows it's her own responsibility alone. She's let something mess with her mind and it's backlashing.

The nightmares come back the next night. And the night after that. And after that.

Lexa wakes up bathed in sweat, terrified, frozen of fear, burning of shame. She doesn't know how she can manage to feel nothing in the real world but be so afraid of something that does not exist. It makes her shame double.

For three nights, Lexa makes it. She's quiet enough not to wake Clarke accidentally and prideful enough not to do it on purpose. She's drawn to the idea, by some devilish instinct meant to ruin herself. Expose herself in such a terrible darkness to the person she hates so deeply.

On the fourth night, she's pushed to the edge. She can't do it.

Clarke wakes up by a cold hand on her shoulder that makes her reflexes kick in at once. She realizes she threw her arm at Lexa a few seconds later and feels like relishing the opportunity of hitting Lexa with a perfectly fine excuse. Just before she can, she sees Lexa though, and any satisfaction about the hand that accidentally shot back into Lexa's face is gone in an instant.

Lexa looks at her with big, in the dim light dark eyes that are full of fear like Clarke has never seen them before. Her hands are back to herself, shielding her body like she's half-expecting Clarke to hit her again, defensive instead of offensive for once, like a child that thinks it's going to be beaten. Clarke sits up quickly. "Don't wake me up like that," she says, although there is no bite behind her words.

"I'm sorry." Lexa actually says I'm sorry without hesitating at all, quickly and regretful and like she means it more than anything else. "I'm sorry. I- I don't know what I'm doing."

"Why did you wake me up?"

Strangely, Lexa's eyes fill with tears. Clarke hasn't seen her cry once in battle, or talking about her ex-girlfriend, or hearing a good warrior died in battle. It seems that among all terrible things she's learned to shield herself from, nightmares are her weak spot. Her Achilles heel.

"I lied," Lexa says and actually looks terrified about it.

"About what?"

"I needed it. I needed your comfort. I need it now. I need you, Clarke, I'm so sorry-"

"What do you need?" Clarke cuts her panicked rambling off softly, preventing Lexa to entirely disappear in her shell of anxiety again.

Lexa seems so torn about asking for help, so ashamed for needing it, that it appears to Clarke saying 'I need you' exhausted all her resources of expressing her needs. She can only extend her shaking hands. For a moment, Clarke doesn't know what she wants Clarke to do with them. All she can think of that even in this state, they're still beautiful, still so gracefully strong that it slows Clarke's thinking down.

"Do you want me to hold them?" Clarke asks when she catches up and Lexa gives the most timid nod. So Clarke lets her own fingers slip into Lexa's, feels their calloused spots meet and their soft skin connect, feels Lexa's shaking go down the slightest bit.

"Thank you," Lexa breathes. A tear rolls down her already blotchy cheek.

Yet the hand-holding, despite calming down Lexa a little bit at first, has the opposite effect as intended after just half a minute at most. Lexa grows more panicked, eventually looks at Clarke like she expects something, and Clarke softly furrows her brows. "What do you need?"

"I'm sorry, I've been holding them for so long and I don't- it's not..."

"It's not helping?"

"No! I mean yes! It's not working fast enough though, I'm keeping you up and-"

"I have time. It's okay, you can hold them as long as you want to. Do you need more? Do you want me to hold you?"

Lexa looks at her like she just suggested to burn down their own camp, kill every other politician and reign over the world as a married couple. "What?"

"You don't have to," Clarke reassures her quickly. "It's just an offer."

"You- how... I mean I can't- I'm not allowed to- would you mention it?"

"Never."

"Okay," Lexa gets out shakily. "Are you sure?"

"Of course. We've had sex, Lexa, it's not like I've never touched you."

For the first time ever, Clarke sees Lexa blush without anger. Had this been any other situation, Clarke wouldn't have been able to suppress a tease. "It's okay," she repeats instead and lies down too. She opens her arms in a way that invites Lexa to come as close as she's comfortable, in the way she wants.

She turns away from Clarke to that her back faces the blonde and, feeling the rigid body only slowly relax, Clarke slips her arm snugly around Lexa's elegant, muscular torso. She covers them loosely with the blanket so that Lexa can tug it as close as she needs, and when Lexa still struggles to relax after a while longer, Clarke begins to brush her thumb over the spot its resting on. Lexa tries to suppress a sigh, but Clarke doesn't miss the way she falls asleep after a few minutes only.

-

They have a kind of double life from then on. Or perhaps, it's not a double life but rather their never-mentioned secret.

At day, things are different than they are at night. The days are full of war and hatred and anger. They play their roles of well-respected and feared leaders, they banter like usual and avoid each other the rest of the time.

The nights though- they're the softest thing Lexa has ever known in her entire life. She realizes the irony in that, that her archenemy would show her what the word 'soft' means in the middle of war, in one of the most difficult times for the coalition, but she can't deny it.

Costia was soft, too. She was soft until she wasn't anymore. She was soft because she didn't yell and she didn't hurt Lexa. She was soft because she said 'I love you' and she made Lexa a bath on special occasions.

Lexa won't pretend she never loved Costia. She won't pretend that she doesn't believe Costia was generous to Lexa.

Just that slowly, a terrible idea seeps into Lexa's mind. She begins to think that perhaps (besides the fact that obviously, Costia never loved her at all, was working for the enemy and has had a boyfriend all along) Costia ignoring the few nightmares Lexa had had with her present wasn't the greatest act of kindness.

It had been, at that time. After Titus had yelled and Lexa had been beaten for repetitive weakness such as that, just giving Lexa a small smile and leave her to sort it out meant to world to her.

Maybe it was better, too, because it made Lexa feel less weak than Clarke does. Yet, Lexa cannot lie; she, Heda of the 11 clans, brutal warrior and feared leader of a people perceived as 'harsh' by the Gods, likes those nights more than anything.

They're so simple. It's like Clarke couldn't imagine it any differently, although to Lexa, it's everything. She doesn't get to hear low, gentle voices often, be touched, be held, and now that she's had a taste of it she'll gladly take the woman she wants dead as a source for it.

And then one day, Clarke turns Lexa's world upside down once again, just like she's been doing it ever since Lexa's known her.

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