Clarke and Lexa watch the ashes among the final tree limbs emit shimmering heat waves into the air. The space between them is small, but defined. Clarke's eyes are glassy as the warmth from Finn's pyre laps against her skin.
His bones were burned with those he'd slaughtered. Slaughtered in her name. She blinks back the stinging, but no tears fall.
Lexa's own eyes are fixed on the ashes of her murdered people, but she has other deaths on her mind.
"I lost people special to me too." Clarke doesn't reply or look away from the site, but she listens. Lexa doesn't know why she feels the need to comfort this girl, but does her best anyway. Even if it meant talking about... them.
"The first was a girl I grew up with. Costia." At this, Clarke looks over at the Commander standing stiffly at her shoulder. The brunette warrior speaks evenly, as if reciting from a book.
"I ascended as Commander when we were 16. Costia was always by my side, and she made bearing the burdens of a warring people lighter. By 17, she was dead." Lexa's composure falters, and she struggles to keep her voice steady.
"She was captured by the Ice Nation, whose Queen believed she knew my secrets." Clarke swallows. She knows how stories like this end.
"Because she was mine..." Lexa's gaze goes stoney as she pauses.
"They tortured her," Clarke looks to Lexa.
"Killed her. Cut off her head." The brunette stares straight ahead, but if one were to look into them, pain would be saturating her green eyes.
"I'm sorry." Clarke murmurs. Revulsion swirls in her stomach. These people know little of mercy.
"I thought I'd never get over the pain. But I did." Lexa almost chokes on the lie, but her expression is smooth. Clarke flinches at her next words.
"The second was a girl from the sky." The blonde whips her head around. Disbelief has her pale and wide eyed.
"What?" Lexa looks unsurprised at her outburst and shuffles her boots.
"I met Y/N when I was 19, and she was 17. She said she escaped her home in the stars before she was killed." Clarke is momentarily shocked out of her mourning. She remembers the event Lexa speaks of.
"Three years ago, a prisoner from the Skybox escaped in a pod retrofitted to get them to earth. They never released the name..." She whispers. Lexa nods, braids dipping.
"A hunting party found her unconscious in the...pod. Anya sent for me and I took her back to Polis to find out more." Her face twists.
"We became closer than I had anticipated, and within months I was determined to keep her safe. I failed her too." She hesitates a long time before glancing at Clarke and resuming her story. Clarke can only listen, frozen in place.
"One night when a meeting I was in ran late, an assassin slipped into our quarters. He was sent to kill just me, but upon finding only a sleeping Y/N, he killed her out of spite. Cruelly." She swallows before continuing, and Clarke can barely contain her horror.
Lexa's voice drops lower, and she seems haunted by her next words.
"Her screams echoed through the tower. I raced to our room to find her strewn all across our floor. I was still finding pieces of her for days afterwards." The Heda's voice cracks, and Clarke's heart wrenches for this girl who's suffered so much.
"How did you get over the pain?" Clarke asks numbly. Lexa looks down.
"I didn't." She breathes, almost inaudible. Clarke catches it.
"The people I love die, Clarke. So I don't anymore. I can't." The blonde raises a brow.
"What, love?" Lexa only nods, face solemn. Clarke looks away. Green eyes study her, dull curiosity behind them.
"I could never do that." Lexa clenches her jaw, warpaint fierce. Life had given her no choice. Hadn't it? Inside, all the dark sharp pieces of her thoughts tore into her mercilessly. She could have protected them better. The faces that haunted her dreams. Costia, Y/N. She could have saved them, if she'd known. But no. Dwelling on the past does nothing but weaken the mind. Telling Clarke about them was a mistake, she decided. Forging an alliance wasn't worth reliving this.
"You have to recognize it for what it is: weakness. Or you put the people you care about in danger." Lexa says sharply. Those two deaths weighed more heavily on her than those she'd taken at the Conclave. Clarke only shakes her head.
"Love isn't a weakness, Lexa. It's a strength. Love gives you the strength to keep going after you've lost everything." Blue eyes meet green, and the Commander looks as if she'd been slapped.
"Loving them is what got them killed." The Heda rasps. Her heart is beating wildly as her emotions threaten to overwhelm her.
"Loving them is what destroyed them. And me." Her eyes darken. Clarke feels fear run her through, just for a second.
"So I got over it. And I kept going. Love is weakness." Her tone is harsh. Clarke watches her turn on her heel and stride away, but not before glimpsing a single tear slip down Lexa's face.