Ground Down

Chapter 66

Lexa held her breath. Partly because her heart kept leaping so far up into her throat she worried she might choke on it should she allow air to fight it for who got to occupy that space, but mainly because if suffocation meant she would get another moment to look back into Clarke's beautiful blue eyes staring down at her, she would gladly suffocate. 

The floor dug into her knees, uneven pressure poorly distributed against her nervous bones. Titus would kill her. He'd go so red his skull would go up in flames. Anya would've dished out the punch of the century. Either of them would have rugby-tackled her to the floor had they been there to realise just what she'd been about to do when she'd walked towards Clarke. To kneel. To bow. She knew that. She knew that with the same certainty with that she knew the floor dug hard into her knees and that Clarke's blue eyes promised the entire skies with the candlelight reflecting in them. 

Inside her head, she felt her predecessors' weight heavy in their silence. No council, no advice, no outrage, their presence clamped up and distant and that should have freaked her out, she should have stood, should have yearned for meditation, to calm down, centre herself, find them again, because for all she knew their absence could have meant the end of her role and being as she knew it, but she didn't. In their absence, she knelt on the floor in front of Clarke and prayed she would react. Because with nothing else left she could give her, rejection would probably still be easier than silence. 

Lexa tried not to blink. Her eyelids would get in the way of trying to memorise all the details of Clarke's beautifully round face and the way her fine skin teased out the curve of her cheekbones that made it so easy for her to narrow her eyes at things and the cute little tip of her nose that she could scrunch upwards so determinedly and the pink tint to her lips that would shine because she pushed her chin up when she smiled. The specks of dirt on her jaw and the faded pink of the tips of her hair and that messy red strand that wouldn't wash out and the collar of her jacket darkened with sweat and its blue so gorgeously complimentary to her eyes. 

The shirt underneath dark against the pale white of her cleavage and the curve of her breasts and the fabric stretching all the way over her belly where it would not reach all the way to her trousers bulging forwards anymore. All those beautiful details she tried so desperately to remember just in case Clarke would bolt and she would never get to see them again, so she stared back into her eyes as if looking away would break the spell and strained her peripheral vision trying to memorise the rest. 

The echo of her own words rung in between them. 

Clarke extended a hand into her peripheral vision and Lexa braced herself to be slapped, but no pain came. She only held it out. Pulled her up when she took it and Lexa's heart stopped slamming itself into her throat to sink down towards her pelvis. Clarke did not reciprocate, she only held on to her hand with her fingers softly shifting around her palm. Lexa tried not to bite her lips. She searched her eyes, searched her face, some tiny part inside her chest clinging to her ribcage imagining Clarke would kneel, would smile, would do anything but stare at her like she'd plunged a dagger into her neck, but she didn't. So, Lexa stepped back. Her hand slipped out of Clarke's hold. 

"Thank you." Clarke's voice came out raspy. 

Lexa gazed down at her hand. Bare fingers. A civilian would have brought a ring but only gotten down on one knee. Something inside her head had detached her brain from her skull and spun it in wild and wilder circles. Any sort of reaction drowned in that. She pressed her toes flat against the floorboards when Clarke placed both hands against her belly as if to hold it together. 

"Are you okay?" Lexa heard herself ask and the noise registered oddly distantly, like she'd been submerged in water but the water was made of air. Very heavy air.