archenemy | clexa

thirty one

On the fourth day, the nurse wears an expression after examining Clarke that Lexa doesn't like at all. (He also looked after Lexa, to make sure she hadn't caught it too, but so far, Lexa has only developed an ordinary cold)

"We're trying our best, but when the illness reaches a certain point, we can't do a lot anymore. I'll send Dr. Jackson, he will make sure that Clarke gets the treatment available, but I might have to ask you out of the tent tonight, so her friends and her mother can spend the night with her, just in case. It's the only thing left we can do for her if the treatment doesn't work."

There's a part in Lexa that wants to get angry, that wants to command all the doctors who already stay up day and night to finally find a cure, to order the treatment to work, but she simply nods. "Okay."

In the time the Skaikru doctor is in the tent, Lexa wanders around searching for work to do, trying to get her mind off this stupid thing that shouldn't bother her, just another death, even one of her enemy- she shouldn't feel sad, she shouldn't feel grief.

Clarke does not mean much to Lexa. Sometimes, Lexa likes to give her the fault for everything. If Skaikru hadn't arrived, if Skaiprisa hadn't arrived, everything would be different. Less death, less destruction, less pain.

So in a way, the destruction- the war, Azgeda leaving the coalition, Costia leaving Lexa, all the death- it's Clarke's fault.

On the other hand, nothing feels as wrong as that statement. Clarke and destruction roll off Lexa's tongue well in one sentence, Clarke and fire, Clarke and death, Wanheda, Clarke and war- all these combinations sound spectacular, yet somehow, something doesn't fit.

There is another Clarke now, raising her brow at Lexa. 'Really?' she says. 'The Commander of Death?'

And that Clarke, Lexa realizes, is right. That Clarke cries about the blood on her hands, that Clarke falls apart in a kiss, that Clarke is nurturing and kind and warm and gentle.

Lexa always thinks of the word 'softness' with the Clarke she gets to know at night. She has thought of golden hair, rich blue eyes, warm skin and an angelic softness in her hug, in her arms around Lexa, and she thought that in that bubble late at night, when no one watches, 'softness' was simple. Special and extraordinary and divine, yes, certainly, but simple too, one layer. That softness, it meant soft furs, soft whites and browns, soft skin, soft hugs, soft gazes- everything that the day isn't.

But now, Lexa figures that that softness might just be as brutal as war. That the power Clarke holds when she looks at Lexa that way is the same power she'd have if she pointed a firearm at Lexa.

Because Lexa knows that she's not soft at all, that she's not gentle, that there's nothing lovely or sweet or innocent about her- she's learned that beside Costia, the most innocent girl the world had known next to the most brutal, and even now that she knows Costia's true nature, she can notice as much as that 'softness' does not come easy to Lexa.

Clarke's 'softness' isn't soft at all. It's rough, it's daring, it's brave, it's brutal, it's strong.

How could it not be? Clarke looks Lexa into the eyes when she's naked, when she's on the brink of insanity, when rage is turning her into a monster, when there's injuries and scars and blood on her, when she wakes up and has screamed and cried proof of her weakness into the world, when she wears no warpaint and when she wears it excessively to cover up the patches of red and her swollen eyes from the nightmares before. She looks Lexa in the eyes when she's bare before Clarke in every way, and she decides to be soft above all else.

She decides to be soft above killing Lexa in that vulnerable state, above beating it out of her or belitteling her like Titus would, above ignoring her when Lexa would have worldlessy accepted that and called it kindness.