Archive of Our Own ^beta

The slanted light of the moon is barely enough to see the entrance of the small hut - a withered and unimposing thing set recessed into the side of a hilltop. A hang of willow leaves and gnarled pieces of windswept branches litter the dirt path leading up to the place, giving the little structure an air of being forgotten by time; abandoned to only the whisperings of its ghosts.

Body still humming with the lingering adrenaline from her escape, Clarke watches her boots as she slinks along, stepping in calculated moves that skirt each shaft of moonlight that filters through the forest canopy overhead. She only pauses for one final look over her shoulder to check that she truly hasn't been followed before making her way up to the lone window of the house. 

Cobwebs and grit mush together into a sickly yellowed film that clings to her shirt sleeve when Clarke scrubs at the window to take a squinting look inside. The glass is pocked with broken splinters that spider out from along the trimming, but still it holds steady enough in its jam to not fall through. Her eyes strain against the darkness. Search in vain for some sign of life or movement. It seems nothing more than an endless void that defies the glow from the moon, the inner workings of the space nothing but a blanket of black beyond the barrier of rippled glass. 

Clarke gives up and pulls back just enough to take another sweeping glance of the window. She idly wonders through her inspection if the people of the clans had at one point rediscovered the art of glassmaking, or if this ramshackle hut was simply some sort of forgotten time capsule that had been left unscathed from the time Before. Before the bombs and the chaos and the end of the old world itself - she wonders if this place has survived as many wars as she has.

Another check of her map, another once over of the rudimentary sketch of a melting willow standing alone among a riot of underbrush, makes her nod that this has to be it. With that thought, whatever this place is - and regardless of its origins - that is good enough for her. 

She ignores the sudden rumble of her stomach and stuffs the paper back into her pocket and goes about shifting aside the debris that blocks the doorway, moving slowly and meticulously as to not make too much sound. The door cooperates with the aid of her knife and a third bump of her hip, springing open in a cloud of dust potent enough to choke her. Clarke staggers a few steps inward, only bothering to let her hand drop to the butt of the pistol strapped to her hip on instinct as her eyes make a quick circuit of the room. 

A single room. Unassuming. Barely more than a square turned into a home, all divided only by the suggestion of designated corners consisting of a rudimentary kitchen, a lone bed at the opposite end, and a table plunked between two chairs that serves to fill up the remaining space in between. 

Clarke holds her breath and scans each speck of shadow for signs of movement. The rushing thwump of her own heartbeat muffles the song of frogs and crickets as stale air and earth float by in moonlit particles. 

All else remains still.

She eases the door shut with her elbow and makes a direct cut across the room, footsteps silent in the powdering of dust that coats the floor. Her pack falls with a thunk onto the table that rattles on uneven legs, kicking up another plume of dust along with it. A quick glance around the floor has Clarke coming up empty in her search for some sort of a wedge that would've helped keep it level at some point. She takes the map back out of her pocket and folds it tighter, slipping it under the splintered leg bottom to keep its wobble silent. 

Her first order of business is setting out the few candles she'd actually thought to bring with her, using only one of her precious few matches to light the first before sharing its flame with the others. The room sits in a glow that flickers with each creak of old wood as the house resettles on its foundation under the new addition of her weight. She checks her surroundings, happy when the light barely touches the corners of the single room that makes up the entirety of the forgotten house. Nothing conspicuous. Nothing too easily seen at a glance from the outside looking in—

A tap against the door barely breaks the silence of the night for how soft it is. The sound makes Clarke's stomach swoop with elation and a wonderful sense of dread. Instinct has her snatching up her knife and resting a hand on the pistol at her hip. She slips away from the table as the door eases open, fading back to the edges of the shadows and preparing to sink even further into the darkness depending on what comes through the door.

Her heartbeat pops like gunshots as Clarke holds her breath. Watching. Waiting. Feeling the barren pit of her stomach rumble in a jolt of queasiness that has nothing to do with it's lack of food.

But the fingers that wrap around the wood have her sighing in instant relief. 

She knows those fingers.

Intimately.

The hinges whine in protest at being shaken yet again from their slumber after such a good long sleep. Still, they obey, and twist enough to allow a head of intricate braids to ease past. Clarke's heart jumps to her throat when the head turns and surveys the candlelit room, eyes as dark as the kohl mask that surrounds them sweeping from one corner to the next, before landing squarely on her.

A flurry of emotions wash through Clarke at the silent stare that seems to stretch far past dawn. Her heart fills to the point her chest aches at just the sight of her. Here, and solid, and so real in a way that makes Clarke's hands prickled with the want to reach out for her after far too many nights of only existing in her dreams. It feels as though days pass in the static silence that hangs between them in the cramped space of the room.  

It is the commander who breaks the moment and slips the rest of the way inside, of that there is no doubt. Her shoulder guard, sword, and dagger strapped to a lean thigh scrape against the wood as she squeezes herself in through the gap - all the trappings that mark this meeting as business. 

Clarke's heart deflates and sinks.

The door shuts with a thump that echoes in Clarke's ears long after it's settled in its frame. The sight of her causes some piece of Clarke to uncoil in a shaky release of breath, like a spring let loose from its point of tension just to wobble and fall riotously still. Dark eyes stare at her in silence, reminding Clarke so vividly of her first weeks here on the ground, carrying the memories of alliances born and shattered in the deathly quiet of night. Of trust found and lost, of promises made and broken, back when she'd gone toe to toe with the foreboding commander of the blood and somehow lived to tell about it. 

The depth of those eyes seems endless against the burnished amber of the room's candle light. But… Despite looking every bit as menacing as she had in those early days before Clarke had seen the girl beneath the warrior, Clarke can't help but search for the tenderness she knows is patiently waiting underneath. And she thinks she sees it - just a shadow through the facade - in the minute drop of armored shoulders and the way an elegant throat flexes with a swallow as Lexa takes another step in.

"You came." 

Lexa's voice is so small it leaves Clarke straining just to hear, but oh. Oh the memories of those words, uttered so painfully familiar, feel like a steel knife slicing right down to the heart currently doing somersaults in her chest. 

The hand holding her knife drops back down to her side as Clarke drags her fingers through the mess of her hair, and she lets out a humorless laugh. “Of course I did. Where else would I be?”

The thought of anything else twists like snakes in the pit of Clarke's stomach, and the question that laces the words feels almost like a slap to the face. Lexa had asked her to meet here. After so many weeks of one-way messages being delivered and left unanswered, the slip of scroll with a crudely sketched map next to a date and time had felt like a lifeline. 

After everything, in what universe would Clarke have entertained being anywhere else?

Lexa's eyes scan her face, trace her shoulders, fall to her feet and back up. “You're well?”

Horrible, unimaginable thoughts race through Clarke's mind. Thoughts of crying, of collapsing in a relieved, exhausted heap at the Heda's feet. Thoughts of crossing the room and flinging herself against the commander's chest just to feel the strength of those arms cradle her close and make things simpler again. It's a humiliating collection of scenes that play through Clarke's head in the seconds that they stand there simply watching each other. Neither moving. Neither breaching the chasm that divides them. 

All Clarke does is lean heavier against the wall behind her. “Yes, I'm… I'm fine. You?”

Lexa's chin dips in the mere suggestion of a nod instead of answering, but Clarke hopes that she is reading the lines that flex along the edges of dark eyes for what they are: a chip in the armor of Heda. A crack in the warrior's facade. An acknowledgment that, maybe, beyond duty and blood, Lexa had been as nervous for this meeting as she was.

Whatever the emotion is, it's gone as quickly as it had come when Lexa draws herself up and falls into that second-nature stance of a queen ruling from the steps of her throne. 

Even in the absence of her halo of antler horns, the effect sends a shiver down Clarke's spine. 

Lexa's hands tuck neatly together at the front and her shoulders set, and she nods toward the paper laden table between them. “Your last correspondence suggested you have news?”

The tap-clunk, tap-clunk of Heda's boots against the hut's neglect-brittled flooring as she steps to the table is enough to startle Clarke from her staring. Apparently the time for pleasantries is over. She loops her way around to stand beside the commander as Lexa takes in her every move with that cool, detached gaze she seems to have down to a science. 

It's unnerving— No. Rather it is… Disarming. Penetrating in how it cuts Clarke clean down to the bone. That constant sensation of Lexa's eyes on her, taking in Clarke's every minute act and twitch of her face as she upturns the rest of the contents of her bag and gingerly unclips her pistol and sets it all in a neat pile on the table. 

Lexa doesn't waste a moment before stepping in just as close. Gives Clarke her undivided attention in the coolness of unblinking eyes and that face that gives away nothing. Clarke had forgotten the exact flush that inches up her neck whenever she feels that weighted stare on her: In a crowded council meeting, across a village bustling with life. Far too often than is strictly necessary: exactly three damn inches from her own face. 

In the beginning, Clarke had wondered if such blatant disregard for personal space was simply a Woods Clan quirk. A learned disregard for niceties or perhaps a habit born from years at war, an ingrained practice to keep heads low in a huddle together as battle raged on around them. But in the proceeding months on the ground - weeks spent among the greater population of Polis along with the months of slinking about the trading post - Clarke's learned that particular lapse in Skaikru etiquette is most definitely a ‘Lexa Thing’.

But whatever the distance or cause, Clarke finds herself entirely too aware of herself whenever Lexa's eyes land on her. Which does nothing to help steady her hand as she lays out the newer sketches of Arkadia she'd painstakingly prepared in the days prior. Nor does it make her find the specific page she'd marked in her journal any faster. Flashing past sketches of hands draped across furs, collarbones bruised by fervent lips, past drawings of tattoos committed to memory put down on paper without pause.

“So, things are… progressing,” Clarke says more to buy her time than anything. She sets the journal down and slides the nearest candle closer to better read the script of her own writing. Lexa leans her hands on the table next to Clarke's as she looks over the pages. Clarke only lets her eyes dash to the inch of space between them before continuing on. “The, um, the first month was basically a lost cause because I was stuck in solitary—”

“Your messenger informed me,” Lexa interjects in all but an expelled breath, tight lipped in its delivery, but adding nothing more. 

Clarke nods at that, knowing she herself had been the one who made sure the information was delivered as quickly as possible. Because three nights into her confined stay at “home” had been all it took for Lexa's, admittedly dramatic, words of ‘You've been living with their enemy. If it were me, I would kill you on the spot’ to begin ringing continuously in her ears. Knowing her own tendencies to always brace for the worse, the decision had been easy. So with little more than a scrap of sketchbook paper and chip of charcoal from the remnants of her drawing set, Clarke had smuggled the word of her predicament with Octavia - the only one she had faith in to wriggle her way in and out of the Ark without detection - to pass the whereabouts of her status along. 

Still, Clarke rolls her eyes at the unnecessary coldness of her tone.

“Right. And, as you also know,” she says with a pointed edge to her words, “these last few weeks have been… um, difficult. But I am making ground.”

It feels like a race against the clock explaining what she's been doing the past few months since they parted ways - convey in carefully selected tidbits of information how the days trickle by only inches or miles. Nothing in between. It sounds feeble to her own ears, the lack of tangible progress to show the commander undoubtedly growing impatient with the ever troublesome Skaikru, but Clarke barrels on with each lack of response from Lexa whenever she dares to pause for breath. Doesn't give the Heda time to point out the finer points of her lackluster coup, thus far. 

She leaves out any glimpses into her days that her better judgment tells her to keep hidden. Ones that allude to exactly how precarious the situation is behind the Ark's heavily gated walls. Like the fact that she had to run for her life the second she crossed the Skaikru boundary - that sneaking past the commander's own kill-order guard wasn't the thing that had spiked her adrenaline, but rather the trigger happy guards set to walk the parameter. The ones collared with a kill order of their own. 

Every glance at the commander leaves Clarke grasping for another sentence. Something more to prove that this time hasn't passed in vain. But it all feels empty under the scrutiny of the woman standing at attention beside her, not a twitch of muscle or bend of brow giving any of Heda's thoughts away. She's just staring. In that arresting way only Lexa seems able to do. Eyes a midnight slate wiped clean of emotion, brittle in their vacuum of light - iris and pupil so cloaked in the shadow of her war paint it's hard to discern between the two. 

A near quarter mark of the candle burns in rifts of her fumbling vibrato and drops of spilled oily wax, when the air becomes more stifling at Lexa's sudden shift closer - near enough Clarke can feel her body heat slice clean through the cold that nips through the slats of the hut. 

“My mother is useless and Kane is more worried about making sure someone won't sneeze wrong before actually organizing a damn vote,” she thunders on in a dizzying flurry of frustration. “It's like pulling teeth with either of them, so every decision feels like two steps forward, one step back. But I swear, Lexa, you have to believe me. My people—our people, they're getting—”

“Have you slept?” 

The question lands like a punch just below the ribs, the softness of Lexa's voice feeling almost violent. 

Clarke's lungs hiccup at the skim of a glove-clad knuckle against her cheek. Makes her sway on the already weak bend of her knees. She'd almost forgotten such tenderness actually existed in this world among the suffering and anger of her days in Arkadia. 

Her eyes flutter closed as she leans into the touch and aches for more. More of her warmth, more of her comfort. More Lexa in any form. But fear holds her steady, head swimming with a question of whether such wants are as welcome between them as they were before. She feels her chest pound out a vicious rhythm as the taut line of her spine uncoils and dissolves. It's only in that trembling release of breath that Clarke realizes just how tense she has been all along.

The table wobbles under Clarke's hands when she gives up the fight of clinging to the last shred of her decorum and sags her weight onto her palms. She opens her mouth to assure the commander just how ‘fine’ she truly is despite the display, but—

“Not much,” is all Clarke can manage, far too honest in the exhaustion and hollow ache that twists in her belly. “I try. When I can, at least, but…”

The knuckle against her cheek slips down to bend a delicate hook around her chin and curls inward, turning her face with it. Grey-green eyes darkened in shadow and half-spent candlelight take their time with her, searching for everything Clarke doesn't have the energy to say. Time expands and contracts to the razor point of a knife. Plunges itself into her most vital, beating organ in those few moments when Lexa simply holds her there. Waiting. Giving her every chance to pull away. 

“Clarke,” Lexa whispers in an exhale that sounds like it's been held since the day Clarke had left her standing there in her room. She is so close Clarke can measure the exact flutter of her lashes as she warms under the chilled puff from her lips. In her silence, Lexa inches closer, leaning down enough to bring her forehead to Clarke's. Barely close enough for the touch to tickle against the fine hairs of her skin, but Clarke feels its burn everywhere. “Breathe.”

Fingers fan out along her neck as Clarke sucks in a lungful of air she didn't realize she'd been missing. They cup her cheek and slip to her jaw, and weave into the curls that cling to Clarke's skin. The tenderness of Lexa's touch makes her list forward, pressing fuller into the steel-softened woman propping her up, trusting Lexa to accept even more of her burdens as her own.

“I don't really sleep much anymore. It doesn't feel—... It's too hard sleeping there now,” Clarke admits in a brave moment of weakness. 

It feels like a weight slipping off her shoulders just saying that truth of it out loud. But the guilt of it lingers on her tongue all the same. Because how can she explain that the stale air and metal of the Ark's inner workings that used to give her a sense of peace and safety, doesn't anymore? How can she explain that despite her duty and her unyielding love for her people… none of it feels like home. How can she explain that between the darkest hours of midnight and the breaking of every dawn, feelings of home come in memories of incense scented furs, and a breeze that winds itself through the balcony of a certain tower?

Most nights she pushes the feeling away. Stares at the rust-lined rivets and peeling paint of her quarters on the Ark, chastising herself for just how far she's drifted from being the girl who crashed down from the stars. 

It feels like sloughing through the drag of cold waters and quicksand when Clarke pulls back to meet the worry that clouds Lexa's eyes with a wry smile. 

“The war drums beating twenty-four seven don't particularly help.”

There's something endearing about the guilt that creeps into the edges of Lexa's stare. “It's strategic.”

Clarke scoops up Lexa's hand when she sighs and lets her touch drop away, unwilling to break all contact just yet. Not now that she's been given such silent permission. Not after so many weeks without it. 

“I gathered as much. Is the strategy to drive everyone insane? Including me?”

The shadow of Heda's eyes slant downward, seemingly fascinated with the way Clarke's hand holds hers as she speaks. “Not… entirely.”

“Lexa—”

“I need your people to see what being part of the coalition means,” Lexa cuts her off, quiet but firm. The tenderness with which she suddenly laces her fingers through Clarke's is starkly at odds with the frustration that bleeds into her words now. “All that most of them know is what they have heard from your chancellor, or from decisions made before they were counted among my people. They take no time to consider things beyond their gates, but now we are there too, and they cannot look away. They can see the strength in our numbers and the unity in which we fight and survive. They can see with their own eyes the safety that comes from being one among us.”

It's annoying that an argument doesn't immediately spring to Clarke's mind, even as the more stubborn pieces of herself howl out a tinny echo of revolt. But her exhaustion keeps her quiet. The higher reasoning within her, too. All the pieces of herself that have heard the misgivings of so many of her fellow Skaikru, and still she knows that what Lexa is saying is… not technically wrong.

“Yeah, and the dangers of being against you,” Clarke tacks on just for the hell of it, sighing as she untangles their fingers and turns to lean back on the table. “I understand that, Lexa, I do. But I'm not exactly sure if psychological warfare is the right tactic given the circumstances.”

The shuffled thunk of Lexa's boot as she steps closer is enough to pull Clarke's attention back to her. “While a show of strength is a factor, that is not the only goal here, Clarke. And I believe you know that.” 

Again, the lack of obvious points to needle at or undermine is infuriating, because what Lexa says is true. Because the sea of warriors that stretch off in the distance does do so much more than stand guard over the lines of the blockade.

The first flood of the kongeda infantry that had erected the initial boundary of the kill-order came in a wave of tents, fanfare, and wind-swept coalition flags. Axes and hammers had split through the surrounding trees like warm butter to make room for the large temporary settlements, each dotting the forest eye-line with the colors and symbols of the twelve clans. At every angle from the watchtower's view from the Ark, the only sight that mingled within the sea of forestry was warriors of the coalition converging in a united front. Floukru beside Sankru. Yujleda shoulder to shoulder with Ingranrona. Azgeda camped closest under guarded Trikru eyes. 

It hadn't taken long for the second wave to join them. And then a third right on its heels. Even warriors from the Capitol join their ranks - faces covered in familiar streaks of warpaint, ones that Clarke had spoken to personally within the beating heart of Polis itself peppered throughout the encampments to stand vigil among the festivities. All bringing with them a level of noise that Clarke knew meant the warriors must have been given explicit orders to be as loud as humanly possible. The weeks that had followed had been nothing but an unending cacophony that surrounded Arkadia on all sides. 

Each day the forest filled with the sounds of relentless training from each settled camp; the singing clash of swords and the whistled-thump of arrows, blotted only by seconds of eerie silence between rounds. But the nights. The nights were somehow even worse. A fresh hell rising with every setting sun. Because after a full-day of training the warriors are allowed to rest at ease under a canopy of stars, making the air swell in a clattering of music and laughter that mingles with the steady beat of the war drum. Each night the forest echoes with the roar of their freedom, as the salty perfume of fermented beer and slow roasted meats hangs heavy in the noses of Skaikru.

The fighter in Clarke understands the strategy for what it is: a mindfuck on all fronts. An unambiguous message to the village of invaders-turned-kru, sent directly from Heda herself. 

It's a truth simply waiting to be accepted:

You're either with us, or you're against us. Flourish beside us, or wither inside your cage. 

It's an effective strategy in terms of messaging, if not polarizing in its delivery. Though, to be perfectly honest, at the core of Clarke’s frustration is the fact that she hadn't exactly been prepared to deal with the fallout of yet another political pissing match to begin the second she'd slunk back to the place she'd once considered home. 

So, yes, she very much understands it all.

That doesn't mean she has to like it.

Lexa reaches out in a tentative touch and picks Clarke's hands up again from where they'd fallen against her lap in defeat. She rubs her thumbs in soothing circles over the knuckled ball of Clarke's fist. “I'm not trying to make things more difficult for you. Our agendas are the same, Clarke. And I think, given time… They will see it too.”

“Yes, but when you called for the blockade I was expecting, like, a sentry or two. Not a couple thousand warriors practicing their knife skills and having ragers outside of their tents every night.” 

If Clarke squeezes Lexa's hands back a few hundred pascals tighter than strictly necessary, the commander has the grace not to show it when she speaks. “Patience had been the plan. Initially. I had every intention of waiting Pike out and leaving you to handle this in your own way. But then we—” Lexa stops with a rough swallow. “After everything…” 

“What?” Clarke urges, and feels her heart twist at the flex of Lexa's jaw.

“I admit, after you left, I felt… inclined to hurry the process along. I do want to give you time to work within your ranks, because I trust you, and I know how capable you are. But also I—” Lexa falters again. Gives the barest shake of her head, her eyes staying glued to the hands held within her own as she visibly forces herself to speak. “Selfishly, I want this conflict finished as soon as possible.”

Clarke can't help the tremble that laces her smile because she knows. She knows. And it's nothing to lean into Lexa in the moment. To press in against the soft hollow of her cheek and dip closer to kiss the corner of Lexa's mouth. To feel Lexa turn into the touch just enough for Clarke to brush the adorable tip of her nose. 

She wonders sometimes, in the quiet of such moments, if Lexa really understands exactly how precious she is. Just how beautiful and gentle, beneath the death and the loss and the weight of her blood soaked crown.

Lexa sighs into Clarke's touch, her breath a warm relief to the cold air that spurs Clarke's hands to grip tighter. 

Her nose bumps against Clarke's again, seeking more, as Lexa whispers,

“Polis is lonelier without you.”

It's hard for Clarke to keep it together when yet another piece of her heart turns to shrapnel, jagged and deathly in its destruction. It makes old wounds sting like new as she adds the confession to the mountain of sins she cannot fix for them, for anyone, by sheer will alone. Because she would. So many pieces of her scream in duty-bound rebellion with how much she needs Lexa to know that she would do anything to erase the pain of her absence - to wash away the nights spent apart and spare them both. 

She would, if only she could.

Clarke hugs her. There's really nothing else for it. There's nothing that feels as right in that moment more than surging closer, stretching her arms to loop around Lexa's neck and pull her in. 

“I'm here now,” Clarke says, and seals her paltry offering with a kiss to the column of Lexa's throat.

She ignores her captive's flustered start at the tenderness and tucks into Lexa. Any worry for how she clings more than she means to is left for another day as her arms tighten at the burst of that familiar scent that is entirely Lexa; all forest greenery mixed with the clean scent of her sweat against skin that carries lingering notes of some floral sweetened soap. 

The coil of muscle softens into a mass of Commander-shaped jelly when Lexa sags against her, knees seeming to buckle with how fiercely she folds into the hug. Her arms cinch around Clarke's waist so tightly it nearly lifts her onto the tips of her toes; hip bones pressing to hip bones, ribs crushed to ribs. 

They hold each other in the creaking silence of the hut so long Clarke's feet pool in pins and pricks, offering little else more than sniffles buried into coat sleeves and armor and the syncing of juddered heartbeats. The buckles of Lexa's coat dig into Clarke's stomach and the pommel of her sword knocks rough against her hip, but she can't bring herself to care. Not when she's this close. Not when every press of Clarke's lips to Lexa's throat is mirrored against her own, tender in its supplication. 

The hands that hold her feel restless against her back. Constant in their moving, gentle in their caress. They rub languid circuits from her shoulders to the tops of her hips, as though Lexa can't quite control the need to touch her as much as humanly possible, and it's only when Clarke opens her eyes just to see that face again, that she loosens her hold and slowly, so slowly, inches herself away. 

Lexa doesn't let her go far. Keeps Clarke right where she wants her with a dig of fingertips against leather and spine, temple resting against temple and cheek against kohl smudged cheek, as she fills all the spaces Clarke has missed her touch. Heat traces over her skin in Lexa's shaky exhale as the snuggle-inclined warlord nuzzles closer, drifting the plumpness of her lips along Clarke's chin, across her mouth, until Clarke doesn't know where one breath ends and another begins. Eyes sparkle under the hang of lashy, hooded eyes when Lexa sways further into her.

“May I?” 

The vulnerability of it stings with just how small she sounds - as though she still doubts this. As though Lexa has no idea that the memory of her mouth, and her taste, and the sweet bite of her teeth were the only things that has kept Clarke sane in her misery for all of these weeks. 

Clarke's mouth tugs into a smile at the question. Even more as their lips brush when she speaks. 

“Please.”

The word is barely out before Lexa is the one surging forward in a tidal wave of emotion, taking Clarke's mouth in a kiss so blisteringly gentle it makes her rock on the heels of her feet. Her lips mold to Clarke's on a sharp inhale, one that liquifies into a sigh of relief; it's the same relief that ripples through Clarke's chest like an electric bloom of confetti. 

Clarke chases her mouth. Bends and reshapes herself to the mold of Lexa's body every time she dares to pull back even an inch for a gasp of air. It's too dizzying being this close to her. Reclaiming her. Letting their lips slant together in more configurations than she can keep count, each one letting Clarke relearn the taste and feel of her. 

She tries and fails to let Lexa set the tempo. Entirely too enamored with reacquainting herself with how soft and luscious those lips are for it to be anything but a lost cause. How could she be expected to control it when Lexa makes this sound. This sound, so feminine and so devastatingly fucking light. Not a whimper or a moan, but something in between, and it only makes Clarke need to hear it more as she cups Lexa's cheeks, keeping her close, keeping her steady, as she changes the angle to dive back in. 

The first brush of tongue makes Lexa whimper, and Clarke feels the tremble of Lexa's lips on the next breath she takes - feels the way it makes her hands turn greedy. She mumbles a curse around the lush bottom lip caught between her teeth when palms slip down, smooth over her ass and grab her. Their hips bump with restless intent and Clarke is barely able to pull her attention away from the languid sweeps of Lexa's mouth long enough to feel the nudge of a knee against hers. She stumbles just enough to let them fall open. Just enough for a muscled thigh to press in tight, answering the rocking of her hips that Clarke hadn't even noticed through the fog of Lexa's kiss. 

But then the world feels empty and life loses all meaning and she's not even being dramatic because the taste of those intoxicating lips is wrenched away without warning. 

Clarke pants in a rush of oxygen that, honestly, she could've lived several more minutes without. She makes a frustrated sound and opens her eyes to see just what the hell happened. “What? Why'd you stop?” 

Lexa's eyes flash with the flicker of forgotten candlelight, staring at her with pupils dilated so wide Clarke yearns for the luxury of getting lost in them for hours. 

“Because you're tired,” Lexa says, thick and full of want, though much more in control of herself than Clarke thinks is particularly fair. 

And Clarke is having none of it. 

“I'm not tired,” Clarke rushes out in a seamless lie, stealing another kiss of those addictive lips just to prove her point. Another when Lexa looks like she's going to argue, just to shut her up. “Really, I'm fine. I'll sleep when I go back.”

Determined and unyielding, and apparently immune to Clarke's skills in the art of deception, Lexa ignores her bid for a return to making out. Instead the hands on Clarke's waist turn her and guide her backward. Coaxing her. Urging her in shuffled steps toward the corner and the lump of old furs that make up the hut's solitary, and suddenly glorious looking, bed. 

Even at her manhandling, Clarke refuses to go quietly into any sort of good night, instead letting her fingers wander up to the intricate braids that halo Lexa's head and tangle there, toying at the bands that hold the lattice design together. She doesn't bother to smother her grin with each tug and unwinding of their binding, watching those beautiful curls spring loose and fall free around Lexa's shoulders, one by glorious one. 

The hands on her hips squeeze yet again as that masked gaze flits between Clarke's eyes, her chin, the bruised pout of her lips. 

“You should lay down.” Lexa's voice sounds distracted when she speaks from deep in her throat. “Stay here tonight. Go back at dawn. Because you… You need to sleep.”

“Well then I think you need to sleep with me,” Clarke answers quickly, in all her brilliance, dropping another hair binding along the way. Entendres doubled or not - landed or not - she's pretty proud of herself for that one, and hopes the bite to her lower lip conveys as much. 

And while a faint piece of her thinks maybe she should be a bit less shameless, perhaps feel a bit bad for just how rapidly her focus had shifted away from the safety of her own people to more personal affairs, Clarke honestly can't bring herself to care.

Because the truth is, she's expecting a retort. One of Lexa's whip-sharp rebuttals that leaves her smarting with damaged pride. Something along the lines that she really should leave Clarke to her rest. A dismissal in the form of some Heda-related plans of more taxing importance she must attend.

But as they stutter to stop a mere arms-length from the bed, the argument doesn't come. Lexa just waits as Clarke finishes pulling the rest of her hair free from its braids and twining, and she waits as Clarke runs her nails through the knots and frizz that bursts free. She waits and she waits and she doesn't rush the girl from the stars for one second, only lets her eyes drift closed when Clarke sifts through the mess of her curls and scratches soothing lines over her scalp.

They stay closed when Clarke takes the medallion from her forehead and places it on the windowsill. Doesn't open them until Clarke turns back and cups her cheeks in her palms.

As much as Clarke has grown to appreciate all the regalia and trappings of Heda in their darkly appealing allure, there's something different - something more sumptuous and ruinous - in peeling away the layers and seeing Lexa emerge from underneath. Because while Lexa is always Heda and the commander of this world, these moments spent caressing her hands on this girl with ghosts in her eyes and sunshine sprinkled among the earth tones of her hair, it all leaves Clarke feeling like a commander of gods.

Lexa stands steady through it all in her infinite calm. Her adoring patience. Eyes never straying an inch from Clarke's face, when she speaks, it's in a whisper barely loud enough for Clarke to hear. 

“I never had any intention of leaving you tonight.”

It feels like the period at the end of a sentence written so many weeks ago when Clarke slips her hands through the lush mane of chestnut and tilts her chin up into another kiss. 

The earth itself feels like it quakes with the force of Lexa's tremble and the sharp intake of her breath. Her lips press to Clarke's mouth with all the blister of a freshly applied brand, hot and unforgiving in their want. She kisses as though she wants Clarke to feel the bruise of it for hours, fingers drifting over her neck, down her shoulders, tracing her arms. Clarke can't manage to be quite as graceful in her own need, finding herself grabbing at Lexa as though she'll disappear into thin air; as though one false move, one touch too hesitant, and she might just wake up from this dream alone back in her jail cell of a bedroom. 

The sweet slip of Lexa's tongue as it licks into her mouth spurs Clarke forward. Her fingers tangle at the buckles of the commander's coat and resort to giving them a violent yank, earning herself a kiss sweetened with a smile and a wonderfully awkward click of teeth. 

“I got it,” she huffs against Lexa's lips, impatient but far too prideful to be outwitted by a damn grounder coat. 

Lexa doesn't argue. Only kisses Clarke fuller one last time before pulling back to give the hands  fumbling at her fastenings some room to work their clunky magic. She stands silent as Clarke finally figures out the labyrinth of buckles and straps, her face a relaxed canvas of amusement when the coat is nudged free from her shoulders to pool at their feet. 

Clarke only just holds herself back from kicking it across the room.

Because she's determined to be less frantic this time around. Less desperate in the motions of seeking out skin when she undoes the ties of Lexa's shirt. The nights locked in solitary had allowed for a miserable amount of introspection, far too much time on her hands spent playing and replaying their afternoon together in her head. Memories mixed and melded with fantasies confined to her room on the Ark, all of them sunset-burnished and devastatingly sweet. Sweeter than she had been. All blurring together into a picture of a day when Clarke was allowed to take her time with Lexa. To savor her. To make every touch of her count. 

That doesn't stop her from fisting the front of Lexa's shirt and reeling her back in all the same.

They meet in a collision of teeth and vibrating laughter, though it's more Lexa's mouth that tastes delicious with amusement than her own, Clarke is sure of it. But as fun as this is, Clarke has plans. Ones that involve far more touching and far less clothes that refuse to cooperate. 

As if reading her thoughts and content with what she finds, Lexa calms enough to sigh and melt into the kiss that Clarke refuses to be distracted from. They only part long enough for Lexa's shirt to be pulled over her head, only smile in a fleeting glance as Clarke smooths down the mess of her hair before bringing their lips back together. Her dagger and sword follow in rapid succession, neither bothering to make a show of it when Lexa toes off her boots as Clarke uses her new found mastery to rid her of her belt. 

She kisses down Lexa's neck and drags her tongue across collarbones that seem to have been crafted to fit snugly against the seam of her lips, and she hooks her fingers into those ridiculously tight pants and tug them down too. There's a delicateness to her every movement and touch, in the way she traces the slopes of Lexa's thighs, her hips, her belly. In the way she smoothes her palm from the flex of Lexa's throat, down the valley between her breasts. 

Because she needs Lexa to feel exactly how much she has wanted this. Just how much she'd craved her since the second she'd shut the doors to her tower room. 

When the loops and knots of equally tight underwear actually obey her for a change and the final scrap of clothing falls away, Clarke stands and admires her work. And, oh, Lexa truly is something remarkable. A kind of beauty that is timeless, and hard to define. Supple curves and pure, lean muscle complimenting the slim build of her frame. A panther of a woman confined to such a delicate, lethal body. 

Before Clarke can begin to decide what to do with the miles of sun-bronzed skin now deliciously on display, Lexa lowers to her knees and proceeds to do the same. Nimble fingers pull the boots from Clarke's feet and take a moment to press kisses to each of her ankles for good measure, eyes closed as though in worship. She urges Clarke to lean back as she undoes her belt, the cavernous pools of her irises pressing out to the edges when Lexa glances up and holds her gaze as she drags the pants down the slope of Clarke's hips. 

The floor creaks under her shuffle when Lexa leans in between the spread of Clarke's thighs, palms smoothing along Clarke's ribs and upward. Clarke's lungs stutter when Lexa's mouth drips kisses over her belly button and hands brush the underside of her bra.

Lexa's lips part and her brow ticks up in a riot of emotion—confusion and hunger clouding her gaze when it drops to the piece of clothing she only dares to touch with her fingertips. 

“This is…”

More pleased with her effect than amused at Lexa's sudden glassy-eyed stare, Clarke leans back on her fists and pushes the bow of her chest out with a smirk. “I thought you might enjoy it.”

The flex of Lexa's jaw sends a jolt between Clarke's thighs so strong they quiver with the effort not to clamp tight around her waist. 

“You wore this for me?” 

Clarke's lip tucks between her teeth as she gives a slow nod, because yes, she had chosen this piece with this exact moment in mind. While bindings were far, far more comfortable, nothing quite beat the visual impact of one the Ark's synthesized bras. And when she'd dressed that morning, she'd been banking on that fact entirely. 

With anyone else, Clarke would've kept the secret of her desire to herself. Would have played coy and aloof in the machinations of her seduction. But she wants Lexa to know that the memories of them together still fills her mind too. That yes, she had thought of what meeting her would mean for them both, and had fantasized about how this all would play out. 

The way Lexa's eyes darken sends a shiver up Clarke's spine; pupils dilating further at the revelation of Clarke wearing something simply for Lexa's pleasure. 

Lexa's body strikes with the precision of a warrior as she lifts up off the floor and catches Clarke's lips in a kiss along the way. Her hands grab Clarke's hips and squeeze, lift, guiding Clarke to lay back across the bed as she crawls up the length of her. 

Her mouth feels possessive in the way she kisses Clarke without a shadow of the hesitance that had colored their first afternoon together. Where before she'd allowed Clarke to set the pace - to take her and claim every last piece Lexa gave to her so freely - now it's her tongue and teeth that seek Clarke out. 

Lexa licks into her with a whimper that melts to throaty moans, her bite stinging Clarke's lips just to kiss them better again. It's a heady experience. Feeling Lexa like this - the intensity of her want put so flagrantly on display. Clarke wraps her arms around Lexa's shoulders in a needless attempt to keep her close, because Lexa doesn't seem to have any plans of drifting too far. Her weight rests on an elbow as she lets her hand drift wherever it pleases. Tracing Clarke's ribs. Tickling her belly. Smoothing over her neck just to cup the flushed apple of her cheek. Her body settles into the heat between Clarke's thighs as though they've laid this way thousands of midnights before, tucked safely together as pieces of the same puzzle tend to do.

The heat of Lexa's mouth paints kisses across the line of Clarke's chin and she drags her teeth down the column of her throat. Sweeps of tongue warm the skin of her collarbones along the way, her mouth feeling worshipful in its exploration as it maps the expanse of her; obeisant even in its conquering march south. The idolatry of her lips makes Clarke smile through a moan when she feels a nip at the crest of her breasts. Her back bows as hands slip under her and tug at the clasps of her bra, nails scratching and palms firm against her spine as Lexa—

As Lexa huffs and clambers back up onto her elbow. 

That beautiful face scrunches up into a rather dignified looking pout, and Clarke feels another tug at the clothing still set stubbornly in place. 

“Is this some sort of chastity device?”

It takes a moment for the fog of kiss-swollen lips and cheekbones and those damn immaculately sculpted jawlines to clear enough for Clarke's brain to catch up; to understand exactly why Lexa was glaring down at Clarke's chest as though her breasts had personally offended her. She snorts despite herself - despite the fairness of Lexa's predicament - because in the stumped little warlord's defense, the last time she'd had Clarke in this position, she'd only been conquering the measly forces of a standard Grounder bandeau. 

Underwire and double-hook clips are a far more loathsome foe entirely.

The ridiculousness of the moment is accentuated all the more by the failed conqueror looking so thoroughly put out. It has Clarke smothering a smile behind the tips of her fingers. A shake of her head is all she can manage before she lifts up enough to kiss the frown on Lexa's lips. 

It's unsurprising that her pout is sweeter than any sugar. 

She hums against Lexa's mouth and reaches back to undo the clasp herself. “There,” she says, her teeth gently digging into the fullness of a candied bottom lip. The straps fall loose over her shoulders as Clarke pulls away with a pop. A cold gust of wind slips through the slats of the hut, its chill tightening her nipples despite the heat of want in her blood.

Her tongue flicks the dip of Lexa's mouth. “Let's try that again.”

Something close to a whine catches low in Lexa's chest and Clarke feels its vibration pool between her legs. The conquered bra is drawn down Clarke's arms and tossed somewhere over the end of the bed with a fleeting scowl, and then those hands are back on her so quickly it makes Clarke's head spin. It's difficult to catch her breath in the onslaught of Lexa's touch, all caressing palms and the tickle of fingers raking nails over the bend of her ribs. 

Lexa cups her breasts and visibly revels in their weight, slack-jawed and eyes turning flat at the way they spill over her hands. The feel of her touch back on Clarke's skin makes her shiver. Makes her bold. Makes her hips buck when that wet, warm mouth finds her nipple and laps ingreediy strokes. Lexa's answering hum is feral, something possessive from deep in her belly. The reverence of it all is almost enough to make Clarke want to fling her head back just to hide her blush. 

Because this Lexa is brazen. Arrogant in how her thumb replaces her tongue as she moves to mouth the fleshy underside of Clarke's breast hard enough to leave a bruise that will have Clarke preening in the cracked mirror in her room for days. This Lexa is unabashed with her want as she kneads and takes and takes. Reckless and devout, her movements only spurred onward by each and every one of Clarke's sounds of pleasure. 

Clarke had only seen this side of Lexa in glimpses. In tugs of hair and teeth on lips that stung with the salt of freshly fallen tears. Fervent kisses that served to mend so many half-healed wounds between them, melting into hands that took and gave and fucked with breathtaking precision; every touch sparked with the intensity of the knowledge that they were loving on borrowed time. 

The feeling that somehow in making love to one another, it was merely the beginning to their end.

Determined to rewrite all of the pain of that afternoon with a softer addendum to their story, Clarke cups Lexa’s face and drags her down until they land in a graceful heap, moving in shuffled bumping of lips and limbs up the length of the bed as Lexa tries her best to never relinquish the grip on her prize. Even in the awkwardness of their lust-addled movements, Clarke moans into the heat of Lexa's mouth, chest bowing into the familiar unrelenting pinch of thumb and forefinger that pluck her nipples. 

The chap of Lexa's lips kisses like the sands of an ocean’s tide, the supple grit of them a foundation strong enough to build castles upon before dissolving to slip through her fingers in a wet, warm rush. Clarke finds solace on Lexa's tongue and remembers so vividly her own once attempted destruction of this girl. All the times she'd wanted to be fierce with her. To hurt her. When her anger and hatred had screamed out whimpers to make her pay. 

All she wants is to be gentle with her now. 

Clarke flips Lexa onto her back and smiles down at her. Kisses her once in apology for the strength of her handling. Lexa's shock smoothes into a calming breath even as the muscles of her neck strain under Clarke's fingers when she gives chase, twisting upward just to make the kiss last for another second longer. She takes the time to gather her hair to lay over one shoulder so it fans out in an untamed spray of curls across her skin. 

It's an image so close to the afternoon when Clarke had let herself indulge in everything she'd held back for so long. 

Her thigh slips between Lexa's legs and her tongue between plump lips. She licks into the velvet of Lexa's mouth, kissing her with the energy of every midnight-shaded daydream that's kept her company on so many sleepless nights. Each pass of her thigh draws out more slick and more pretty sounds, Lexa's appreciation smearing across her skin. It only spurs Clarke on more. 

She hadn't realized how much she missed this feeling. How powerful she feels touching Lexa, holding her, the panted breath in her ear mixing with the rogue sounds that Lexa lets slip past that facade of control. And it's been too long to make a production of this, more interested in getting Lexa naked and underneath her to waste any of their precious time. 

Even in the heat of the moment and with the scent of Lexa's arousal filling the air, Clarke wishes in a hollow twist of her heart for a day - someday - when the world isn't intent on pulling them apart.

Faint groans of her name and curses mumbled in trigedasleng play as a backdrop to Clarke kissing along Lexa's neck and down her chest. She ghosts her lips over deep pink nipples and leaves teeth marks on the under swell of her breasts, and she wonders if there's something cosmic in how perfectly every piece of this woman seems to fit in her palms. 

“Fuck, you feel good,” Clarke groans. She drags her lips over the pebbled skin of her nipple and smiles at the sound of another gasp. “So much for getting any rest.”

Face flushed and jaw slack, Lexa stares glassy-eyed and dazed in the rush of her arousal. Clarke thinks she's all but beyond the ability for words, when—

“You're a difficult woman to negotiate with, Clarke,” Lexa says in a ragged breath. “How else did you think I planned to make you sleep?” 

Clarke's teeth pause in their teasing of a particularly scrumptious patch of thigh. She releases it with a stinging bite. “Are you sure you want to get sassy with the girl who's about to eat you out?”

The sound of Lexa's mouth snapping shut is all that is needed. 

Nodding her agreed, ‘Alright then,’ Clarke spreads Lexa's legs wider, unrushed but impatient to immerse her every sense in Lexa. She runs her hands over faded scars that dot her knees, remembering the last time she'd seen them and how they'd stood out more starkly in the golden light of the tower. Remembers how deeply Lexa had blushed when Clarke had slowed enough to kiss every one.

She kisses those marks with a sweet sense of familiarity now. Adds her own marks scattered among them.

Her lips map the terrain of preciously knobbly knees and trek south for the more supple give of Lexa's thighs. She hears the pleas of her name and obeys the hands pressing down on her shoulders, settling on her stomach to brush her nose along the patch of freckles waiting for her there.

Clarke's so entranced by the sight and earthy scent of her that she almost misses the feel of Lexa's hands on her head. Hands that gather up her hair and coax it back to one side, half twined in those ungodly long fingers to hold it in place. 

Lips kiss-plumped and parted around the draw of ragged breath, Lexa stares. Hungry. 

“I want to watch you.”

That's all it takes to have Clarke wrapping her arms under her thighs and hooking them over her shoulders. Lexa moans, letting herself be draped and spread open. A trickle of arousal drips down the length of her folds, so gorgeously swollen and open for her, and the fist in Clarke's hair tightens when she can't stop from muttering, “You are so beautiful.”

The first flick of her tongue has Clarke's eyes nearly rolling back in her head because, fuck, she had missed this taste. This scent. She collects a dribble of slick on the tip of her tongue and traces upwards and up more, making lazy circles around the bundle of nerves that peeks out from its hood. 

She moves with the sway of Lexa's hips. Doesn't bother to control the way she bucks against the drag and flick of Clark's tongue, instead luxuriating in the sloppy way Lexa chases the sensation as she fucks herself against Clarke's mouth. 

“I can't believe how wet you get,” Clarke pants out when she pulls back to get a proper breath, letting her fingers take over and rub the length of Lexa's slit; massaging her lips and spreading her open just to watch her writhe and clench. “I dream about it. Thought about being inside of you just to get off.”

She doesn't have time to second guess her confession when Lexa chokes out her name with a jerk of her hips and presses Clarke's mouth back where she needs it. Her fingers rake through the sweat-dampened threads of Clarke's hair. Fist them tight enough to burn. Clarke's nails dig into the give of muscled thighs at the rough treatment and earn her a low hiss. 

Lexa's teeth flash in a wanton smile, looking drunk with pleasure as Clarke traces down to the tight ring of her entrance and laps up another dribbled taste of her.

The pounding in Clarke's center begs for its own attention, already so wet just from feeling Lexa dripping down her chin that the idea of touching herself to relieve the ache is almost too tempting to bear. But she ignores it, dulling the need with a few mindless ruts against the bed as she smoothes her hands over Lexa's hips and the trim arch of her waist.  

It's messier than their first time. Less desperate, but somehow more intense. The distance and time of missing this woman spurs Clarke on to taste and savor. Her hands palm at the pert roundness of Lexa's tits as she switches back and forth between lazy kitten licks to her clit and slipping inside to feel that clinging heat suckle around her tongue. 

Lexa grows impatient at the teasing, her whines shooting through Clarke and landing molten between her thighs. It's what has her pressing down on Lexa's mound as she curls her tongue inside, massaging with intent as she feels Lexa start to tense up. 

If watching Lexa reign over her subjects in sash and throne is a sight of pure inspiration, then holding her as she comes in a simple bed of furs is nothing short of a revelation. The way her hips jog against Clarke's mouth when she takes her clit in her mouth and sucks. How her chest flushes a brilliant red when she's close. The way her thighs squeeze tight around Clarke's head as she laps an unrelenting rhythm against the pulsing tip, holding her steady, pressing her mouth harder against the dripping heat of her cunt as Lexa gasps in broken bits of trigedasleng.

Something in Lexa's eyes - in the way she watches Clarke's mouth working against her -  feels almost like a challenge. A promise that as long she keeps touching her exactly like this, nothing can ever touch them. Nothing exists beyond them, and the four walls of this old drafty room. 

Clarke holds her gaze and licks up the length of her. Flutters her tongue against the sensitive tip as she slides two fingers inside, hard. Deep. Curling against silken walls that clench around her.

Lexa arches off the bed at suddenly being so full. Her head drops back with a gasp of Clarke's name. All at once, she stills, going taut in a ripple of muscle and sinew. The orgasm crashes through her in waves as she shudders out a moan and spills over Clarke's fingers in a hot, wet rush.

Clarke only lightens her touch when Lexa collapses and melts back against the furs. Content to watch every echo of pleasure wash over her. She barely grazes Lexa's clit with the pad of her thumb to make it last, feeling breathless at how Lexa has never looked more beautiful than this moment; blissed out and entirely spent, eyes closed and chest glistening with sweat as she moans through the final pulses of her orgasm.

Snaking her hands along the toned plain of Lexa's belly, Clarke has to bite her lip to keep from groaning at the flex of muscle beneath her touch as Lexa works to control her breathing. She continues up and up more, smoothing her palms over still-sensitive breasts that arch into her touch. She smiles at Lexa's hiss and relishes the pebbled feel of nipples grazing her palms. Massaging and cupping to help ground them both as she crawls up and captures her lips. Lexa's groan is filthy when she pushes past Clarke's lips and laps greedily at her mouth. 

Clarke idly wonders if she would have worked even harder at the beginning for a lasting kind of peace if she had known the exact pleased little sounds Heda makes at the taste of her own come on Clarke's tongue.

Sweat cooling along her back and aching with so much need she thinks another stiff breeze through the hut might tip her over the edge, Clarke doesn't even realize she's shivering until—

“Are you cold?” Lexa pants, barely pulling herself away Clarke's lips enough to ask the question before she's leaning back in for another kiss. Whatever her answer was going to be is decidedly rather mute when Lexa doesn't wait for an answer, just blindly reaches over the edge of the bed and snatches up her coat.

The next thing Clarke feels is a blanket of skin and warmth is draping over her as she's rolled onto her back and pressed firmly into the furs. She swallows a yelp of surprise and struggles to keep up with Lexa's lips and sweet, searching tongue as the swiftness of the move startles a laugh from deep in her belly. Because suddenly every breath smells of fire and leather, and rich grounder perfume. 

When Clarke gasps at hands gripping her thighs and spreading her open, all at once she recognizes the scent. Realizes it's the heady notes of Lexa's bath oils that she'd become so familiar with in her weeks in Polis.

It's the scent that had lingered till sunrise the evening a freshly bathed and bed-ready Lexa had actually dared to visit her room.

Just the memory of that night and the vision of this battle worn Heda looking so beautiful and human in her doorway, has Clarke kissing back with more urgency. The contrast between then and now sets Clarke's teeth on edge. Remembering just how soft she had looked - hopeful yet unassuming, and entirely willing to yield to Clarke's every whim - and now feeling the bite of her, feeling the power behind her hips as Lexa settles between her legs and slides against her with an unforgiving thrust. 

Lexa hovers over her on shaky arms, hair tumbling over her shoulder in a messy cascade that curtains them from the outside world. Clarke bends her knees and lifts her hips to feel more of her, her moans turning desperate and breathy as Lexa grinds in long, languid rolls of her body. 

They shiver at the feel of their slick mixing, dripping, the heady scent of arousal filling the air between them as folds slip together and turn Clarke into even more of a shuddering mess. Lexa leans up on her palms and stares down hungrily at the sway of Clarke's breasts with every thrust. It's a sweet unyielding torture the way Lexa's heat grazes against the tip of Clarke's clit. Her whine is needy when she grabs for the swell of Lexa's ass and squeezes, urging her to push harder, to fuck harder, grasping desperately at her enough to leave bruises. But it's beyond Clarke to soften the grip or muffle her sounds. Not when her entire body has ached for this since the second she'd shut the doors on Heda's bed chambers.

The next kiss is just as hungry, just as desperate, and Lexa shifts to rest her weight on one elbow. Her thigh is pressed tight against Clarke core before she even senses the change in plans and, fuck, Lexa seems determined to kill her before the night is over. 

She twists her mouth away just long enough to pant for Lexa to lift her hips and spread her legs wider too. Because the first stroke of her fingers makes Clarke moan with just how wet Lexa is, feeling the pool of arousal and comes in soaked, wiry curls against her fingertips. Lexa's hips squirm in search of more friction. A more steady touch to help her get off as she rocks shamelessly against the pads of Clarke's fingers to draw out the pleasure of every brush against her clit. 

Clarke's other hand finds Lexa's cheek and holds her there, coaxing and silently pleading with Lexa to look at her. To stay with her. To pour herself into Clarke as she dips lower and thrusts in deep, smooth strokes. Something terrifying and wonderfully warm blooms in Clarke's chest when she nods in unspoken understanding. When she lets her body become loose, uncoiling herself in shifts of limbs, until her every movement follows the flow of Clarke's own.

She leans down to kiss Clarke again, the rush of it only made more maddening at how Lexa's nipples brush her own with every sway of her body. Clarke can barely keep her focus. Skin on fire and body aching for release. Holding Clarke's gaze as she pulls away from the kiss, Lexa brings her fingers to her lips and slowly sucks the length of them. They pop free with a glistening smirk, and she slips her hand between Clarke's thighs. 

The stretch of her fingers is better than Clarke remembers. The way she reaches places Clarke can never seem to in her fantasies, the way she drops her hips to add power ever thrusts. Clarke's toes curl and her nails bite into the skin of Lexa's shoulder, because despite how eternally gentle Lexa is at every moment, she can't remember being fucked quite as thoroughly as this. 

The angle is awkward and her wrist aches with every shallow thrust of her own she can manage, but Clarke would rather let the world burn than change one thing about that moment. She tries valiantly to match Lexa's pace. Struggles to keep looking into the blown depths of her eyes even as her own roll back in her head every time Lexa's fingers curl inside of her.

Lexa dips lower to suck hot, open mouthed kisses along the length of Clarke's neck. Watching Lexa come has more than left Clarke needy, ready, so painfully close to the edge. She feels it build and tighten low in her belly as Lexa's kisses turn desperate, all lips and panting breaths. The strokes of her fingers lose sense and rhythm as her body begins to shake. And oh , god yes, Clarke can feel the moment when she loses it; when the live wire of Lexa's body succumbs to chasing the sparks of another shattering orgasm. It seems to catch her by surprise when she collapses into Clarke with a keening whine and jerk of her hips. It presses long, slender fingers impossibly deeper, pulling a gasp from Clarke's lungs as she watches in wonder as Lexa comes undone all over again. 

And it's enough. It's more than enough, because Clarke could come from just her sounds alone. But the way her palm presses just so, the way her touch twitches against her wall and sends Clarke spiraling over the edge after her. 

Their moans and twitches have barely subsided when Lexa snakes her arm between their bodies and covers Clarke's hand, keeping her seated so deep that each weak throb of her release coats her fingers. It's intimate. More intimate than Clarke can remember ever feeling with one person, and the emotion of it sits heavy under her ribs.

In the quieting of panted breaths and the sated calm that comes after the rush, Clarke expects Lexa to roll away when she finally releases her, just as she had that first afternoon in her bedchambers. But this time… This time, Lexa surprises her. As though it's her life mission to keep Clarke guessing in the wake of her every move. 

Where she had anticipated a welcomed wash of cool air against her skin, the heat only intensifies as Lexa adjusts in a graceful huff of knees and elbows to lay carelessly across Clarke's front. Her head tucks into the curve between chin and a well-kissed shoulder, hand splayed out on the rise and fall of Clarke chest and hips settling back between the spread of Clarke's thighs. 

Clarke freezes, unsure of exactly what to do with the intimacy of the contact. It takes her a few breaths to collect herself enough to return the gesture, bringing hesitant but delighted hands to rest on the blades of Lexa's shoulders. 

In this moment, tucked safe and warm beneath Lexa's weight and tracing the lean muscle of her back, Clarke never wants to stop touching this girl. Doesn't want to relinquish this closeness, this claim. Her palms smooth across delicate shoulders that somehow carry the weight of the world, trace the lines of her tattoos and drape, over ribs that protect the most precious heart Clarke has ever known. 

The touch earns her a lazy moan, a subtle shift that locks all their pleasantly sweaty pieces more firmly into place. It helps the sweeping tickle of her fingertips along Lexa's spine feel more mindless, more thoughtlessly affectionate, as arms slip under her shoulders and squeeze her like a once-lost teddy bear that had somehow found its way home.

“Ai mema yu we.”

Words so quiet Clarke can barely hear them over the pounding of her own heartbeat are murmured into the skin of Clarke's neck. Lips dot a single kiss to the hinge of her jaw, only for the tenderness to be hidden - rubbed away by the brush of a nose. 

Clarke's fingers tangle in the loose curls fanned across Lexa's shoulders and stay there. “I've missed you, sentaim.”

The attempt to interweave dialects feels clunky on Clarke’s tongue and it immediately makes her flush with regret. She can speak trig decently well, and what she lacks, she makes up for in questionably earned confidence. While her fluency has skyrocketed even beyond what she’d learned in those months relying on the patience of Niylah and a few begrudging but helpful regulars that hung around her trading post who preferred most of their dealings with outsiders done strictly below the table, beyond that, the sentiment of her word's deeper intent is not an entirely surprising revelation. Or at least Clarke doesn't think it should be. 

Still, it earns her a tensing of muscles. A sudden buzzing that locks up the lean frame still wrapped around her in a koala hold. She only lets go when Lexa lifts up, working to keep her face as relaxed as she can despite the acceleration of her heart. 

The charcoaled eyes of before have softened to a riot of pine needles and winter moss, flecked with hazy gold and blue. They flick between her own. Unreadable. Boring into her as though Clarke is the only thing that exists in the world. 

When Lexa kisses her it's somehow more tender than any of the ones that came before it. Reverent and achingly slow. Seemingly deliberate in its intent, Clarke lets her lips fall open at the first whisper of Lexa's tongue, curling into each massage and stroke. Loses herself in the luxury of how it lacks the fervency of when they fell into bed, but none of its yearning. Deliciously, none of its tempest.

Lexa pulls back with a satisfied hum when she's apparently tasted her fill. All lazy blinks and pouty lips tugging up at the edges, as though either too pleased or too sated to fully commit to the effort of an actual smile just yet. 

She's close enough Clarke thinks she could waste an entire lifetime counting and recounting every last freckle that peppers her nose.

“Your accent is getting better.”

The praise makes Clarke light up with a goofy grin. Because as fluent as she may be, she knows the patchworked dialect still gets tangled in translation and often trips out over her tongue. “Yeah? Are you saying I could practically pass for graun-de at this point?” she says with a wag of her brow.

“I said getting better,” is Lexa's delicate but pointed answer to that. 

Her poor excuse for a smile doesn't waver an inch, though. Not even with Clarke's lighthearted tap to the back of her head. 

“I've been teaching some of the kids as much as I can, I'll have you know,” Clarke relents when her scowl has exactly zero effect on Lexa as she continues looking at her with equal parts amusement and affection. “Octavia has too, but Pike keeps even closer eyes on her and Lincoln. So. It's been difficult. Plus, some are just dead set on pretending like nothing they do will ever have to change. It's like they want to pretend we're all still stuck up in space forever… But as more people see how hopeless this all is, more are starting to come around. Just… slowly.”

“Changing minds can be a slow process,” Lexa eases as she picks up Clarke's hand and tangles their fingers. “It takes as long as it takes, but I have faith in you.”

The memory of those words both stings and pops just under her ribs. “Sometimes I think you have too much faith in me.”

Where Clarke expects instantly sweet consoling, she is met with only twinkling grey-green eyes and a rather grave nod. 

“I have been told that a time or two.” 

Clarke chokes out a laugh and pinches at Lexa's shapely behind. “Wow. Okay. I see. So, the commander has developed a sense of humor while I've been away.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Lexa says in that same bland, emotionless affect. “I've always been funny.”

The urge to buck the smartass off of her wars heavily with the urge to roll them both over and smother this precious woman in a hug. Just because she can. Clarke splits the difference by taking Lexa's face in her hands and shutting her up with a sound kiss on the lips, peppering a few more around the cracks of her smile as well. 

She's halfway to initiating another round of their reunion celebrations when her stomach grumbles in a rather pitiful gurgle that dies in a whine. The Heda-tongue currently doing very un-Heda type things in her mouth slows to a stop, barely giving Clarke's lips one last flick before Lexa pulls away with a muted pop. 

“Was that your stomach?”

Clarke nods, face plastered with a scrunched smile. “Yeah, sorry, ignore it.”

Lexa does not ignore it. “Did you skip your afternoon meal?”

“No, we don't— It's fine. Just come here.”

When Clarke slips her hand around the back of Lexa's neck and tries to tug her closer, Lexa doesn't budge an inch. She doesn't do anything more than continue to stare at Clarke and wait for more explanation, her face a blank mask that conveys nothing beyond a patience that reads like she has all the time in the world. 

As much as Clarke generally loves a good staring match with this particularly beautiful set of eyes, she's smart enough to know when she's fighting a losing battle. In the end it is unsurprisingly her who throws up the white flag of surrender. 

“We don't eat lunch anymore, alright?” she huffs. “We do a light breakfast and then dinner. And before you start, yes, I missed that, because otherwise I would've been late getting here, and I didn't want you to think something happened. But I should be back by morning and I'll eat then. So can we just—”

The relaxed slant of Lexa's brow dips in question. “Is there a problem with the rations I send?”

Halfway on a mission to reclaim those kiss-puffed lips, Clarke gives her a slow blink. “The… what?”

“The rations,” Lexa says again, slower, as if the speed of her calculated cadence was the problem, and not the fact that she's speaking in riddles. 

“What are you talking about? You don’t send rations to Arkadia.”

Lexa sits up, taking all of the coat's heat with her. The line of her tattoo curves along her spine as she twists and pins Clarke in place with the intensity of her stare. “Of course I send food, Clarke,” Lexa says with a sharpened click to her name. “You and the rest of Skaikru would starve without it.”

“We are starving,” Clarke balks. “Which is why, again, I ask, what are you talking about? When has it ever been protocol for you to send rations to an enemy, Lexa?” 

Her stomach gives another gurgle of hunger. 

She really wishes they'd stop talking about food and just go back to the damn kissing.

Lexa's jaw ticks in a show of irritation. “Skaikru is not an enemy,” she says as though this was a point of distinction she's had to make several times before. “They're a people who have fallen under the grip of a poor leader, but that does not mean I intend to punish all of them for the guilt of a few. The goal is, and always has been, to show your people that standing with the coalition brings strength. Security. Warmth, and full bellies. As it is, your stores are dwindling, are they not? And without your Farm Station, your crop should be nearing its end. Without the rains, you barely have enough water to sustain yourselves, and your guns have scared off most prey within your boundaries. Is that not true?”

Clarke doesn't have time to contemplate how surreal it is hearing names and pieces of the Ark rolling so effortlessly off Lexa's tongue. She doesn't have time, because the only thoughts that trickle through her mind are of how painfully true every word of it all was. With the Ark positioned as it is within the boundary, effectively everything beyond their gates was lost. Their reserves were running out faster than anyone had anticipated and none of them had quite figured out what to do to stop it. 

The truth was as ugly as it had always been inevitable: no matter how efficient they were at stretching their supplies from so many years in space, it had always only been a simple matter of time.

Even now, in the few weeks sequestered within the prison of their tin can of a home, she has seen with every piece of her own broken heart the slimming of her people; the eyes growing sunken within their sockets, the stomachs that rumble with no readied relief, the lips that yearn for gulps of water rather than sips - caked in forest dust and too-thick saliva that shrivel and cracks and bleeds.

Clarke nearly startles when a finger brushes along the bend of her cheek. 

She hadn't even realized she'd shed a tear until she felt the chilled slick wiped from her skin.

Lexa settles back at her side and kisses it warm again. “I understand, Clarke, I do. I know how quickly thirst and hunger sets in. That is why these rations are not meant to be enough to live comfortably, but they are enough to keep everyone within your camp alive. Or, they should be enough. But if I sent them nothing, they'd starve before they could ever see what it truly means to be one of my people. And when this chancellor is unseated,” Lexa adds with a solemn finality to her words, “they will still be my people. I have never lost sight of that.”

“Our people.” Clarke corrects absently even as she stretches upward to kiss her appreciation soundly on Lexa's lips. But still, the statement gives her pause because — “Wait, no. Lexa. If you're sending rations, then where the hell are they going?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that we're not getting them. Are you sure your army is actually delivering them?”

Lexa's eyes and chin twitch downward in a nod. “Each week a personal envoy of my own choosing leaves supplies just beyond the boundary line of Arkadia and reports back to me. And they are collected by a few of your warriors, every single week. I would be informed if they were not.”

All at once, the realization hits Clarke like a steel-toed boot. 

“Pike.” Anger mingles with her exhaustion as Clarke bunches the furs in her fist and slams it against the bed. “He's taking it.”

“I am… aware,” Lexa says, somewhere between statement and question. 

“No, Lexa, I mean he's taking the food and keeping it. Or destroying it. Or,” she hesitates and lets her mind work it out logically instead of riding the rageful wave of adrenaline. “Or he's giving it only to his guard."

Lexa's brow dips into something more severe. “He's not spreading it out among the people.”

“No,” Clarke snaps despite it not sounding remotely like a question this time. “I'm guessing he's keeping it all for himself and his fucking henchmen.”

“How would he be able to do that without anyone noticing?”

“Because he doesn't exactly allow people to stand around and idly chit chat with his guards these days. He's not stupid, he knows there's people who never supported him or this fight with the coalition. Even more now with the kill order. I'm guessing the idiot is expecting some kind of attack and thinks he's being strategic by keeping only his gunners and fighters fed in case of full on war. Not to mention I'm sure it's a very attractive way to keep himself in their good graces.”

“And your people are fine with this?” Lexa asks in a dubious curl of words. “Or would be fine with this, should it come to light?”

“Hardly. But how can I tell them? They're starving, it would cause a riot. Or worse. These are the same people who used to willingly float their own neighbor over a stolen slice of bread.”

“Which means—”

“Which means when they feel cornered or cheated, they're even more dangerous,” Clarke says, tired and entirely pissed off. “So yes, if they caught wind of it, they'd be enraged, but then Pike and his guard would be just as unforgiving. If they found out and turned on him? Think about it, Lexa. If he willingly massacred a peaceful army sent to protect him…”

“He'd willingly massacre his own people in the event of an uprising to keep his claim to power,” Lexa finishes for her. Her gaze darkens even as she speaks in a sigh, “One day I will kill that man. And I will enjoy it.”

The words have Clarke humming a non-committal agreement because at this point, she is beginning to feel the same inclination; the realization that if Lexa doesn't kill him, she probably will. 

Also. Declaration of bloodlust and thrilled intent on murder aside, Clarke finds the display unreasonably attractive. 

Not that she was particularly keen to admit it at the moment. Because, priorities.

“Okay, well, slow down there, Batman. What are we going to do to fix this until then?” Clarke asks, letting her sense of duty supersede her abnormally high libido, but only just barely. 

She bites back a smile at the furrowed brow and unfocused look that glazes across Lexa's face - the one she gets anytime Clarke says something she doesn't quite understand. And she knows in that moment when all this is said and done, when their people are truly united under the coalition, that at some point she'll have to sit the woman down and explain a few more Skaikru phrases for Lexa to add to her arsenal of gonasleng.

Hopefully that conversation will go smoother than the ‘go float yourself’ debacle had.

“Lex?” She tries again to pull the woman back into focus.

“Hm? No. I'm… I'm not entirely sure,” Lexa says with a few measured blinks and a shake of her head that clears the haze of confusion from her eyes. “If what you suspect is true, I can't see another way to get the supplies that deep within Arkadia's boundary without alerting him to the fact that someone has a connection to the outside.”

“We could always just keep going through Niylah,” Clarke says after a moment of thought. “Well  Niylah and O. Although it'll have to be a slower process. I'll have to ask Ni if she's okay with storing some of it at her post and making trips throughout—”

Lexa interrupts in a tight voice, “The messenger? What makes you think she'd be willing to go to that kind of trouble?”

“She will. We—” Clarke hesitates for only a fraction of a second. “Just trust me. She will.”

“She will?”

“Yes.”

“And you're sure of that?”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“Because we're… friends.”

That damned eyebrow raises in a slow arch. “... Friends?”

Clarke's gaze narrows. “Yes, Lexa, we are friends. I trust her. She helped me a lot when I needed it while I was… away. And she showed me hospitality when I—”

“Hospitality.”

“Alright, are you just going to keep repeating everything I say only with attitude?”

Lexa stares at her for a long moment, her eyes flat and unreadable in the dimmed light of the hut. She gently dislodges Clarke from her shoulder when she moves to sit up, her lips tightening and turning to stone as she goes. 

“I see,” Lexa breathes softly with a flare of her nostrils. “You… And the Azgedon.”

Clarke flops back onto her own side of the furs in a pointed show of her feelings about the suspected direction of this conversation. “She's Trikru, Lexa.”

“Her mother was Azgedon.” 

“And? She is loyal to Trikru.” She watches Lexa continue to sit hunched over her knees, fingers flexing into loose fists and her posture brittle. “You see that you're acting ridiculous, right? You do see that.”

Lexa's gaze slices toward her like the tip of a blade.

Clarke concedes with only a slight roll of her eyes. “Alright, fine. Let's say she is Azgedon. By your own words, they're all your subjects. Which means they're just a clan like any other now without Nia's interference. And has Roan shown you any reason to mistrust him since the fight?”

“I keep Roan on a tight leash,” Lexa clips out through a tick of her jaw. “Which is more than I can say for you with your confidant.”

Annoyed at venom that drips from Lexa's words and officially over this indirect dressing down of her choices in companions - platonic or otherwise - Clarke grabs the stubborn mule of a woman and yanks her back down onto the bed in a heap of boobs, arms, and sex-mussed curls, and straddles Lexa's waist, just to poke her square in the chest.

Hard. 

“You have no right to be acting like this,” Clarke fires back. “At all. What I did after the mountain is not something you are allowed to comment on, much less judge me for.”

“I'm not judging you for anything, Clarke. I'm sure your Azgedon was perfectly hospitable.”

“Are you seriously going to try and be jealous right now, Lexa? After everything?”

“I am not jealous.” Lexa's look of reproach is somewhat shot to hell by the disheveled state of her. 

That, and the way her hands squeeze possessively at the fullness of Clarke's hips.

Clarke sits back and waves a hand along the expanse of herself. “Lexa. I am naked. And on top of you. And you're sulking. How can you even—”

It startles Clarke all at once, because it's easy sometimes to forget just how deceptively strong Lexa is. All lanky limbs and delicate fingers and ears roughly a half size too small for her head. But when Clarke sucks in a breath when Lexa sits up and lifts her in a twist of wiry muscle to resettle her more securely in her lap, it's a move that certainly helps Clarke to remember exactly who she’s dealing with. Because it's the commander's eyes that burn bright in the halo of candles that surround them. It's the commander's grip that palms her ass and pulls Clarke flush against the toned lines of her belly.

“I do not sulk,” Lexa says through a cage of teeth from somewhere deep in her throat. Her breath turns heavy and her eyes glint like knives, beautiful and lethal. 

By all rights and accounts, Clarke knows she should be indignant at the ridiculous display.  By all rights and accounts, Clarke knows she should read Lexa a detailed and bullet-pointed rundown of how none of this was any of her business to begin with. That her behavior was beyond out of line given literally every fucking thing in their past. 

And yet, the tiniest tremble that shakes itself across Lexa's bottom lip makes all of that anger crumble. 

Clarke drops her forehead to rest against Lexa's, holding her gaze. She twists her face only far enough away to elude a seeking kiss— 

“You don't have any right to be jealous.”

“I'm not.”

“Then stop being jealous.”

“She had you. ”  

“You have me.” 

Clarke doesn't wait for Lexa's response, doesn't chide her for the outburst, only moving with the emotions that swirl inside her. Both the anger at having her decisions questioned and the affection she feels for this ridiculous woman, because it's taken her a long time to move past that period in her life and make even a fraction of peace with the things she has done. It's taken months to forgive both Lexa and herself enough to give herself over to this.

And quite frankly, she's not going to let a certain hot-headed commander's bruised ego go and ruin it. 

She bends and kisses the bridge of Lexa's nose, kisses the furrow of her forehead, and seals the truth of it all with a kiss to the freckle on her lip. 

“You have me,” she echoes again, ready to say it as many times as it takes to get it through this brilliant idiot's head.

Her words are nothing more than a whisper, but they seem to land as heavily as a shout. The way they make Lexa's chest heave with emotion is a thing of beauty; a mix of adrenaline and despair and pure adoration. 

Lexa's hands hold Clarke no less possessively, no less claiming, but the shift in her is palpable. All the fight goes out of her in the rush of a juddered exhale as she drops her head to Clarke's shoulder and hides there. 

Clarke strokes through her hair and patiently waits for Lexa to collect herself. Presses her face to the crown of Lexa's head. Holds her back just as tenderly. 

“I'm sorry, Clarke. I could never be angry at you for finding solace when you needed it,” Lexa muffles against her after a few moments of simply breathing her in.

“I know,” Clarke soothes. “She helped me at a time when I was barely holding it together.”

“... You care about her.”

Her voice is small. So small it makes Clarke ache.

Clarke tries again, just as softly, “I do. But it's not— It was never… Lexa, you have to understand. I wasn't even very kind to her back then. I used her, really. And I hate that I did that, because she didn't deserve it. But she still showed me kindness when I was… When I was lost, and angry. I just needed a friend, Lex. Because I was trying so hard to forget—”

Clarke cuts herself off with a rough swallow, choking back the ‘you’ , the ‘them’ , the ‘everything’ that gets lost among more emotions than she can put into words in that moment. 

She feels Lexa nod against her in understanding of all the things that don't need to be said, and sighs when those arms hug her tighter.

“I will always regret how my decisions affected you. And it pains me to know how much time we— That I lost,” Lexa amends. “But what pains me most is knowing someone else had to comfort you, because I couldn't. Because I was the cause of your pain, too.”

The scent of fresh forest and sunlight sinks heavily into Clarke's lungs, breathing in her own acceptance and tasting its bittered notes on the back of her tongue. Because she knows Lexa doesn't regret the choices for what they were. For why they were made. She knows Lexa would make them every time, again and again and more, if each time she thought the outcome meant the safety of her people. 

And Clarke, in the darkest parts of herself, cannot truthfully say her own decisions would ever be any different. 

Clarke sighs again and pulls back enough to look at her. She takes that perfectly lovely face into her hands and holds her there, making Lexa see her, feeling her heart trip at the hope tinged in sadness that shines through. 

“She still wasn't you.”

Full lips clamp together to stifle their tremble as Lexa gives another jerky nod.

The hand at Clarke's back holds her steady, the other cradling her head, as Lexa twists and gently lays her back on the bed with all reverence of handling something precious. She settles on top of Clarke like a comforting weight, grounding her to a moment that suddenly feels too good to be true. But the press of her breasts against Clarke and the heartbeat that knocks underneath, the supple give of her lips as she kisses Clarke as though they have all the time in the world for this, it all reminds Clarke that she's here. That they both want this. That, maybe, the dream of their someday is more than just a story she tells herself in the quiet of her bed.

Clarke loses track of time as they kiss without hurry, as though their lives involve no more pressing matters than touching, and tasting. Nothing more profound than finding new ways of drawing out sounds and sighs from the other. Neither push for more, content in lazily making out like a couple of teenagers with no responsibilities to the world and nothing to lose. 

And then Clarke's stomach decides to betray her yet again.

Their lips freeze mid-kiss at the sound of its gurgled rumble. Clarke's eyes slide open with an embarrassed apology rising to her tongue, only to find twin pools of green sparkling back from a mere inch away, already open and scrunched at the edges with amusement. Lexa kisses her twice more in languid pecks, before pushing off.

The next half-roll of Lexa's eyes comes as no shock, but her sudden rising from the warmth of the bed certainly does. Clarke is left scrambling to catch the tossed aside coat when Lexa stands and steps over the littering of clothes on her way to the door. She ignores Clarke's whispered shouts of her name when the door is flung open in a twang of hinges, before Lexa - naked as the day she was born - walks out of the hut without so much as a backward glance.

Several minutes pass in perfect silence as Clarke does nothing but frown at the closed door, hand still clutching the commander's coat against her breasts to ward off the renewed gust of evening air. She's only beginning to contemplate retrieving her pants to give chase to the nude escape artist when the door creaks open and Lexa slips back in. 

Just as seemingly unbothered as when she left and just as wonderfully naked, Lexa kicks the door closed behind her in a hollow rattle of wood against the frame. She retraces her steps across the cabin, now balancing an armful of fabric that looks dangerously like—

“You had a blanket this whole time?!”

Lexa doesn't bother to answer her yelp. Only continues on toward her without an ounce of hitch in her steps. Sending Clarke a smile that is so entirely ‘Lexa’ when she's particularly pleased with either Clarke or herself. It's the one that twinkles in the recesses of her eyes long before it ever reaches her lips, the familiarity of it in that moment causing something warm and gooey and distinctly precious to flop about the better part of Clarke's belly in graceless somersaults. 

So much so she lets out an “oof” of surprise when the inner workings of the stack in Lexa's arms are none-too-delicately toppled into her lap - a few apples rolling in disarray alongside a bound satchel of nuts and seeds, and a lambskin water bottle that sloshes in a cold slap against her arm. The bed groans under the added weight of Lexa lowering herself back onto the furs as she fluffs the blanket out over the both of them in one fluid motion. 

Even with a bite of chill still clinging to the fabric, warmth engulfs Clarke's lower half immediately. A pleased shiver rockets through her limbs as she rolls over and melts herself back into Lexa's side just to leech even more of the glorious heat from her body. “Oh my god. I can't believe you had us smooshed under your coat when you had this with you the whole time. This whole time!”

The lift of Lexa's brow is as haughty as it is attractive. More so than it rightfully should be on either count. “I don't recall you seeming to mind it at the time.”

“Not the point. You're just lucky you're like a personal space heater,” Clarke grumbles as she digs the cold of her nose deeper into the shoulder of said heat source. 

“Natblidas tend to run hot,” Lexa says absently, shifting through the landscape of coat, blanket, and skin to snatch up an apple that had fallen down near Clarke's thigh. The fruit sits invitingly on the tips of delicate fingers when Lexa holds it up Clarke's lips, giving an indulgent hum as Clarke chomps into it with a single crisp crunch. The juice that trickles over her chin is licked away before Clarke can manage it herself. 

A cheeky smile is all she gets when Lexa nips a more dignified bite for herself. They take their time and eat slowly. Trading bites of seeds and fire roasted nuts between apple sweetened kisses that taste all the more decadent on the bow of plump lips. 

“Where are we, anyway?” Clarke asks around a mouthful of fruit as her eyes stray to the corners of the dilapidated hut.

Lexa is quiet for a long moment, only the steady crunch of her chewing and the rise and fall of her breathing peppering the silence. Her fingers trace swirls and broken patterns along Clarke's shoulders, along her back. She leans down and hides her mouth against the crown of Clarke's head in a delicate smoosh of lips.

“This was my Nomon's home. Since before I was born.”

The lulling vibration of her words travel through Clarke's body like a whip, though it takes longer than it should for the meaning of what Lexa's just said to take hold; her brain relaxed from too much sex, her heart calm from too much Lexa.

“Your mother lived here?” Clarke whispers against her collarbone. 

She feels the tip of Lexa's chin rub against her head when she nods. “I tracked it down shortly after my ascension. With the other novitiates all—... When it was only me, I often found the tower too big to be comfortable. I began looking for some sort of place of my own. Some root of who I was before. So I asked Gustus if he knew where I had come from, and he brought me to these woods… I didn't remember it on my own, since I'd been taken to Polis when I was barely three summers.”

Clarke shakes her head in disbelief. Horrified at herself for having never fully considered when nightblood children were selected for training. For slaughter. Horrified at the fact that, despite all she's seen on the ground up to this point, the answer still manages to surprise her. “Three? That's—You were so young.” 

“It was the normal age,” Lexa says as her fingers start scratching soothing paths through Clarke's hair. She offers Clarke another bite. “I was training to be a warrior, but also a leader. One that an entire nation would one day look to for answers. So as every natblida before and since, I was collected shortly after I was fully weaned from her breast and was able to eat on my own. Or so I was told.”

“But you don't… You don't even remember her? Or here? Or—”

Clarke can't bring herself to ask about the fate of the home's owner. To find out what had caused her to leave this obviously once-loved refuge to fall in such disrepair...

“Not really, no," Lexa murmurs. "Nothing beyond glimpses of memories that I'm not sure are real.”

Clarke swallows around the lump that sits high in her throat. “Like what?" 

“Flashes of moments. Things I feel as though must be memories, but I can't be sure. Hazy images of a woman laughing or playing that I believe must be my mother… A memory of laying in a small bed, and feeling—Feeling afraid of the darkness. Calling out for her.”

Clarke turns her head enough to catch Lexa's eyes and smiles in soft understanding. 

So many nights in her time in Polis she had found herself wandering the upper corridors in restless fits of energy, spending hours aimlessly roaming the halls to fight off the need to sleep. Because sleeping meant dreaming and dreaming meant nightmares, and too often Clarke found herself waking up to the echoes of screams. And so many of those night's wanderings led her back and forth past the commander's quarters— 

She remembers how the flickered glow of candles always shone under the cracks of Heda's door.

Clarke presses a kiss to her not-entirely-fearless warlord's shoulder. “Anything else?” 

“Only that the same woman came and comforted me,” Lexa says with an answering kiss to Clarke's forehead. She takes another nip of the apple and offers the last bite to Clarke, before dropping the spent core next to her boots. “That's all I have of this place, or her. Other than that, my earliest memories are of being in Polis and training under Anya.”

Clarke feels her chest tighten at the mention of the woman, so many regrets and gratitudes bubbling just under the surface. Still, the image of a younger and even less patient Anya and her gangly, stoic charge at her side is enough to have Clarke snorting out a laugh. “And what was that like? I can just imagine Anya as a mentor must've been a treat.”

“She was… Anya was… Anya had a particular way about her,” Lexa finally settles on. 

“I remember,” Clarke says on the end of world-class scoff. “Explicitly, and repeatedly, which is saying something considering I only knew her for a few days total.”

“Oh yes,” Lexa says in a delighted little purr. “You did receive a taste of her training style yourself, didn't you.”

Clarke leans up on her elbow to level her with a deeply unimpressed look. 

Because she had not sat in Lexa's room in the quiet afternoon following lunch, sketchbook and charcoals momentarily forgotten at her side as she'd shared the story of the foreboding mentor in question slapping mud in her face just to be ridiculed like this.

It had felt like a reprieve from the chaos of her life. That pocket of time spent tucked away in the sanctuary of Lexa's chambers. How each visit there for some hollow reason or another had begun to stretch longer and longer, until the point where Clarke knew she hadn't really needed a reason to be there at all. She just was. And Lexa had welcomed her into her space without question or comment. Had only left the door open behind her with the understanding that Clarke was always allowed to follow her if she so wished.

And follow her in she did.

Which is exactly why she remembers that particular afternoon with such clarity; the quiet before the storm of Titus letting the chaos of the world spill back in. Before she'd spent the better part of an hour watching Lexa nap as she'd mindlessly sketched. When they'd sat in easy company with each other, trading stories of life on Earth and in the stars; of battles lost and won. Of her regaling the odd series of events leading up to their meeting, in which Lexa had listened to the tale in a fit of poorly concealed mirth, fingers draped uselessly over her smile as her eyes danced and chest vibrated with laughter. 

It was a happier memory sprinkled in among the anger and tension that had shrouded their every interaction. A memory that still made Clarke smile to herself in the dead of night when she yearned most to return to that life in Polis.

Still.

She had not shared that encounter to have it bandied about quite like this.

But apparently in the company of a naked and sated Heda, a girl couldn't get an ounce of respect around here. 

“I don't see what's so funny.”

“No it's not,” Lexa soothes, wetting her lips and blowing out a quick breath to help stifle her own chuckling. “The important thing is, she didn't kill you.”

“She tried to! More than once!”

“I'm fairly sure she tried to kill me a few times, that was just her way. The fact that she didn't speaks more to her feelings than anything else. Trust me. Anya did not waver in her convictions, so if you're alive, it's because she was never entirely sure she wanted you dead to begin with.”

“That's not as comforting as you think it is.”

Lexa merely smiles, reaching up to brush a curl of hair behind Clarke's ear. “Anya was a complicated person, but she was also the smartest person I've ever known. She was brave, and cared for me when she herself was still a young gona, but she taught me more than I could have ever repaid her for. Not just about being a warrior, but about life and being a leader. I owe much of who I am, to her.”

“You loved her,” Clarke says as the realization hits her and her heart squeezes at the loss all over again.

Lexa's grin is somber when nods. “Yes. I wasn't meant to… But I did.”

And oh, oh the wave of love and shame that washes over Clarke in that moment. 

“I wish I had gotten to know her longer,” she tries through the thick sludge of emotion pressing sharp against her windpipe, suddenly determined to hear as many stories about the wise and fearless woman who had ultimately died by her side. 

Because she could never make up for the loss of Anya, nor the blood that stained her people's hands, but if she could, Clarke would carry her memory with her always. Would continue her legacy of protecting and caring for her past sekon with all the power she could. 

“Tell me about her.”

Lexa's grin fades as quickly as it had come, falling into something more pensive as her eyes turn thoughtful. Distant. 

She lets out a sigh and Clarke knows, feels in the tightening of her chest, that she's pushed too far too soon. Knows exactly what's coming when Lexa reaches for her hand and intertwines their fingers.

“Perhaps another day?”

Just the idea that Lexa believes they'll have other moments like this has Clarke leaning up to steal a kiss. 

“Promise?” Clarke whispers against her lips.

Even Lexa's smile tastes indulgent. “I promise.”

“Okay.” Clarke kisses her again, once, twice more, before resting her chin back on Lexa's chest. “Okay. Whenever you're ready.”

“Okay. Now. What was your message? From before? I'm afraid we—,” Lexa pauses to trailed her eyes down the length of their nude and sex-sated bodies, “ distracted each other before you could relay your thoughts.”

Clarke accepts the unsubtle change of subject even when it washes over her with all the comfort of a bucket of ice. 

Breathing out a quiet, ‘Right,’ Clarke isn't sure whether to the thank or curse her former self from an hour ago, because for all of the planning she'd done leading up to this moment, not once had she thought to mentally practice her appeals while laying naked and pressed against the commander's body.

“Should the time come, if… If no other options are open to us. Would the coalition be open to taking in defectors?” She swallows against her own nerves and rushes on at the uptick of Lexa's brow. “Or, refugees, really. I can't say for sure if there even would be any. Right now things are so tense it's hard to— But, Lex, I'm telling you. People are getting tired of this.”

“Do they not still blame me directly for their suffering?” Lexa asks with a shrewd tilt of her head. 

“Not all of them do,” Clark answers as honestly as she can; the same truth wrapped in a complex tangle of half-lies that always seems to mark so many decisions made between them. “But, even if some do, the people who do understand deserve some kind of hope, don't they? The ones who see how wrong we've gotten things, they should be able to come back and find safety with the clans, shouldn't they?”

Then, so quietly Clarke can barely hear it above the wind that ruffles the leaves just outside the window, Lexa asks, 

“Would you be one of those people?”

Clarke feels her mouth pull open to answer, flexing under the weight of the words she wants so desperately to be able to say. The breath of yearning promises and lies that taste far more comforting than somber truths dies in a choked sound that sits thick in the back of her throat. 

Nothing between them is ever easy.

Lexa nods as though she expected nothing less. So solemn in her acceptance it makes Clarke's chest ache, because she knows Lexa understands without ever needing her to say it. 

This plea is for her people. So much of Clarke's existence is wrapped up in them. Any deals for safe passage back into the asylum of the greater coalition territories were never made with the thought or intention to benefit her. 

Because despite being as stubborn and outmoded as so many of her people seem insistent on being, and as much as that home no longer even felt like her own, they were her people. Her clan. And she could never leave them behind. 

Not for something as trivial as her own safety. 

Certainly not for her own happiness. 

Clarke catches Lexa's hand and brings it to her lips. Kisses the faded scar that slices her palm; the one that mirrors the scar on Clarke's own. She sends every unspoken apology that she knows isn't needed or desired, and hopes that this woman - who holds her entire world in that very palm - knows that in another life, another world, another million scattered existences, she would choose her in every one. 

“Have you ever considered taking on the role of chancellor?”

Clarke shifts to glance at Lexa more fully. Needing to see the mossy sheen of the eyes she can practically feel watching her just to know if she's being serious. “Have I what?”

“Have you ever truly considered it?” Lexa asks as easily as if they were discussing the weather. “Taking on the role of chancellor? Becoming the leader to your people that they deserve. That you deserve to be.”

“I'm an awful leader, Lex,” Clarke says with a sigh so deep it makes her ribs ache. 

“You're not, Clarke.”

“No, I am. I may be good in a crisis, sure, but look at me . My people are sitting there, camped out in a half-dead spaceship, starving and scared and—and—… And waiting on some miracle to drop itself on their doorstep or something. And here I am, having sex with their perceived enemy. Extremely good sex at that, which somehow makes it seem even worse.” Clarke lets her head slump to the side with a chuckle, eyeing Lexa's profile beside her. “Not exactly what most would consider chancellor material, I'm guessing.”

Lexa's still for a long moment as she takes in the outburst in equal silence. Only the rise and fall of her breaking the tranquility between them. 

Her lips purse as she gives something close to a thoughtful hum, before finally looking over to Clarke.

“Well... I would not recommend putting that in your speech when the next vote comes up.”

A scoff explodes from Clarke's chest that does nothing to drown out the amused sound of Lexa's surprise when she rears up onto her knees, grabbing Lexa's wrists and pinning them right over her head. “You are an ass, do you know that?”

Not even bothering to struggle against the hands pinning her in place, Lexa smiles through the last breaths of her laughter as her face settles into something entirely more fond. 

“You're as good as any leader I've seen, Clarke. Better than some who've led clans for more summers than you or I have been alive,” she says as her lips tip into a smirk and her eyes twinkle with pride, and unwavering affection. “You challenge your people, yes, and your decisions may not always be as popular as you'd wish, but few leaders have that luxury.”

Clarke concedes her death-grip at the wiggle of Lexa's fingers under her grasp and gives up the show of her affronted scowl. Begrudgingly, because apparently denying Lexa things was just not something she’s very good at anymore, her hands slip up until their fingers intertwine in a halo above Lexa's head. She lowers down onto her elbows and brackets Lexa's thighs between her legs, presses the naked expanse of herself to Lexa's body just to feel more. 

“What matters is that you care,” Lexa continues, giving the fingers laced between her own a comforting squeeze. “You are loyal to them above all else. And despite what they may think in their moments of anger, there's nothing more they can rightfully ask of you.” She strains her neck upward to press a lingering kiss to Clarke's lips. “Or, that you can ask of yourself.”

There are so many things Clarke feels in that moment. Emotions that bubble in an effervescent kind of shimmer just below her breast. Words that sit heavy on her tongue and refuse to come out. 

But she feels them.

Stars above, she feels them .

But the remnants of Lexa's childhood home are decidedly not the place to say them. 

Lexa will always deserve better than that, Clarke knows. 

Instead she kisses Lexa with all the gentleness she can never seem to convey in her words. 

“I don't know though,” Clarke murmurs when she pulls back. “If I became chancellor, that would mean I'd be expected to be at Arkadia full time.”

“It would,” Lexa says on a shaky exhale when her eyes finally slide back open. “But, you'd be surprised just how long peace negotiations can take. How… closely I'd have to monitor the transition of power.”

Clarke nods along just as seriously. “Is that so?”

“Yes,” Lexa says, imperious and devastatingly somber as her eyes trace the line of Clarke's neck down to the dip of her chest. “It would likely require countless trips to Arkadia to check in on the clan's welfare… Hours of closed-door meetings with their new leader.”

“Closed-door, huh? Is that protocol?”

“Merely to ensure the finer points of re-integration are thoroughly understood, of course.”

“Oh of course.” Clarke catches the fullness of Lexa's bottom lip between her teeth, biting just hard enough to hear her breath hitch before soothing it with her tongue. 

“So, then,” Clarke says, hesitant as she breaks the kiss, but unwilling to leave this subject unfinished, “what do you think? What about members of Skaikru who may want to leave?”

“If you become chancellor? I'd assume they were fools.”

“No, I mean… I mean now. When I go back, in the morning, if I were to tell a few of them that there was a possibility that they could escape. Possibly find refuge with Trikru… What would you do?”

“If there were those that wished to defect—” Lexa pauses on a sharp inhale, her smile falling. Her eyes snap shut as she takes a moment, Clarke seeing the war between Heda and Lexa flitting so clearly across her face.

When she turns to look at Clarke again head-on, Clarke's stomach sinks all over again.

“If there were those who chose to leave and surrender themselves to my army,” Lexa says, monotone. Slow and precise, and concerningly devoid of emotion, “I would accept them. But it would be with the understanding that upon their capture, my warriors would have no choice but to declare them prisoners of war.”

Clarke rears back like she's been slapped. “Lexa! That—You can't—”

“What I cannot do, is go back on the kill order, Clarke. Not after everything that has happened.”

“So, what? You just expect my people to go from one prison to another? How is that fair?”

“What would you have me do?” Lexa asks, still infuriatingly calm. “The order dictates any Skaikru over the line is breaking the blockade.”

“They're not— They wouldn't be crossing the line though. They wouldn't be breaking the blockade, they'd be surrendering to you,” Clarke says through her mental reeling, because what the hell are they even talking about? “You're acting like you can't show them any mercy in this.”

“The same mercy your warriors showed my peacekeeping army when they shot them in their beds?” Lexa retorts in that detached tone that always serves to drive Clarke fucking crazy. 

Flashes of Indra's flinches, hisses, and groans of pain, the blood that seeped through her armor and soaked Clarke's hands… The memory of that field and its thick stench of gun smoke and death makes Clarke look away. Forces her to swallow against the lump of shame that threatens to choke her.

Lexa doesn't bother waiting for Clarke to find an answer. “You are asking me to go back on my own orders. Orders meant to serve you and protect you, when my people already hunger for a more swift kind of justice—”

“You mean for vengeance.”

She ignores the needling remark without missing a beat. “I cannot suspend the kill order, but I can bend it to fit a new situation. As of now, what you're asking would draw more anger from the other ambassadors, and even more unease among all of my people. As Titus has said—”

Clarke scoffs. “Fucking Titus. He wants us dead, Lexa, me included, so I wouldn't exactly consider his input on this impartial. Titus is just—”

“Titus is many things, but about this, he is right,” Lexa says, softer now. Much more Lexa than Heda in the weariness of her sigh when she catches Clarke's eyes and holds them. “The coalition is fragile, Clarke. And I cannot give them any more reason to doubt their safety. If I were to allow members of Skaikru to walk freely while the blockade still stands, they would view it as allowing wolves to roam among them.”

“Oh, come on,” Clarke nearly growls. “Your people are hardly sheep. If anything, they're—”

“Savages?”

The featherlight word drops from Lexa's lips with the weight of a hammer. 

But it does exactly what it's meant to do: slices through Clarke's anger and indignation like a white-hot blade. 

Because of course that's where Lexa's mind would go; an accusation levied against her people more times than Clarke could count. 

An accusation once levied from her very own lips more times than she's inclined to recount.

She remembers so vividly the first time she had thrown the word in Lexa's face with such carelessness in the name of her own self-righteous hurt. She remembers how the breezeless air of that night had smelled of fire, blood, and leather as she'd been consumed by her own heartache. But now, in this moment, the thing she remembers the clearest in her mind, is how Lexa had looked as she'd absorbed all of Clarke's desperation.

How beautiful she had looked as she'd carried the burden of Clarke's anger; timeless and otherworldly in the glow of moonlight and torch-flame.

“No,” Clarke whispers, infusing the word with as much feeling as her body can manage. “No, your people are not savages, Lexa. I wasn't saying that…”

She catches Lexa's chin with the tips of her fingers to stop her from looking away. Lexa's lips are warm when Clarke kisses them again, just to seal in the truth of it. They don't kiss back with the same fervor as before, but Clarke doesn't mind. She hadn't expected them to. All that matters is that Lexa doesn't pull away, that she tastes all the unspoken words that have always lived in their silences.

“I'm not saying you should let them walk around armed. Okay? I wouldn't even want them armed,” Clarke says when she rests her head against Lexa's, and lets her finger trace the shell of one delicate, tiny ear. “I'm saying, maybe let them find a home among your people. Let them see the world beyond our gates. Your world… Just like I did.”

Lexa's eyes drift closed at the touch. She turns her head and presses a kiss to the bend of Clarke's wrist. 

“Alright,” she whispers against Clarke's skin. “Alright.”

“Wait. Really?” Clarke breathes as she pulls back and feels her heart restarting with a violent thump. “You will? You'll let them go?”

“If,” Lexa stresses, “after some time within the encampment, they were to pledge themselves as Trikru and denounce Skaikru's actions and leadership… If they were to accept continued monitoring by myself and my personal guard, if they accepted being taught to live by our ways, and learned to thrive as one of our Clan's own…” 

She turns to look at Clarke more clearly, and lowers her lashes in a whisper of a nod. 

“Then, yes. Under those conditions, I would accept them into our clans.”

It's not… ideal. 

Certainly nowhere near the unconditional welcome back into the stronghold of clans she'd been hoping for, and an even worse sales pitch to take back with her to Arkadia. But between starvation within the metal walls of their crash-landed tomb, and a chance at truly starting over the way they had dreamed about for nearly a hundred years stuck up in space, Clarke would take the latter without a moment's hesitation.

She's just not entirely sure her less diplomatically inclined people will readily do the same. 

“You'd take care of them though, right,” Clarke finally says, still bristling at the idea of sending her weakened people looking for safety into the hands of an encampment full of resentful and possibly vengeful warriors, and entrusting their safety under the banner and brand of ‘prisoners of war.’ “While they were locked up. You'd feed them. You'd treat them well. You'd—You'd protect them, right?”

“I thought the entire point of you sending them to me was for their protection.”

“I mean protect from some of the more,” Clarke says haltingly as she searches for the right words, “ mistrustful among the clans. I realize some of your warriors probably lost people they loved when we—I just don't want to send my people into a trap when they think they're going somewhere safe.”

And oh, the irony of that statement is not lost on Clarke, nor is it seemingly lost on Lexa, if the way brow crooks upward is any indication.

“A prisoner of war is subject to a clan leader's discretion. Considering your ship is well within Trikru lands,” Lexa says, not even bothering to hide the pointed undertone of her words, “they would fall under Trikru leadership. Indra is loyal. She would defer judgment in this delicate of a situation.”

Clarke nods slowly. “Okay. Your land, your discretion. Meaning…”

Full lips tip up in a haughty grin. “As I told you, Clarke. Skaikru is not an enemy.”

Clarke's eyes fall closed as a wave of relief crashes over her. It's still not a nearly the ideal offer she'd have loved to bring back with her, but in truth, it's more than she could've realistically hoped for.

Which is why Clarke leans down and kisses her gratitude right onto Lexa's mouth. She kisses her acceptance of the conditions and her promise that come what may, she'll adhere and support it. She kisses her simply because she enjoys that cocky little face.

Truth be told, if all their brokerages of peace end up like this, Clarke thinks there may never be lasting conflict between their clans ever again. Not if she can help it.

“Thank you,” she whispers against Lexa's lips. “Thank you.”

“I wouldn't thank me quite yet. You still have the task of actually convincing them to surrender themselves,” Lexa sighs when the kiss ends. She takes a moment to lick the taste of Clarke from her lips in a thoughtful sweep of tongue and runs her fingers along the thigh tossed over her hips. “Until that time comes - should it come - we have to keep them from starving to death.”

“I'll send word to Niylah about the supplies as soon as I get back.”

“Tell me again why you cannot simply use Okteivia?” Lexa says. Coolly. “She is more than capable of handling this on her own. When you return, tell her her orders are to go—”

Clarke interrupts with a snort and a wide-eyed stare. “Her orders?’ Her orders to do, what? Exactly? You have met Octavia, right? Because very, very few people can order Octavia to do anything, and unfortunately I have never been one of them.”

“Then tell her the orders come from me.”

“Hah. Yeah. I'm sure that would go over about as smooth as a punch to the face.”

“You ask me to accept Skaikru refugees without question, and yet you believe she, out of everyone, would disobey me?”

“What I believe is that Octavia isn't any bigger of a fan of yours these days than she is of mine,” Clarke says as delicately as she can. “She's still angry about the kill order, Lex. And Lincoln's banishment, which she's convinced is ultimately responsible for why he's locked up. Believe me, other than staying in Indra's good graces, the only reason she's helping me now is because she thinks I'm all that's stopping you and your army from declaring full-on war with Skaikru.”

Lexa seems to consider her words for a long stretch of silence. 

Any objection to Octavia's theory stays notably absent. 

“Fine,” Lexa finally relents in a prim sniff. “Since there are no other options available, at all, apparently… We will continue to use your Azgedon.”

“Oh my G— Lexa.”

“Yes?”

A child. She was a child. The commander of twelve-but-sometimes-thirteen clans was once again sulking like a goddamn child. “She is not, nor has she ever been, my Azgedon. And she's not even Azgedon!”

Lexa does nothing but stare blankly up at her from the furs.

“You have to let this go.”

“... I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You're telling me you've never slept with someone you regretted? Or just for comfort in a bad moment? You expect me to believe you don't have some—some harem of Polis women throwing themselves at you? All willing to warm your bed at the snap of your fingers?” Clarke scoffs at the very thought of it, considering Lexa's position of power.

Not to mention the obscene prettiness of her face.

Clarke feels something twist inside of her at just the thought of it, white-hot fire boiling its way through her veins at flashes of Lexa writhing, Lexa moaning, those plump lips curling around a whimpered string of other women's names…

She never said she wasn't a hypocrite. 

But Lexa seems immune to the tension coiling in Clarke's belly when she only deigns to spare her another mild look of distaste. 

“I have only had two lovers in my life, Clarke. I could never trust that kind of vulnerability with just anyone. I can't trust they wouldn't try to use that kind of connection as leverage against me.”

Clarke pauses and thinks over so many questionable moments between them. “Okay. But you trust me, though? I mean, you've napped around me and let me be in your inner space from the beginning. You've always trusted me, before we were even,” she finishes with a wave between their very naked bodies.

Lexa lifts one shoulder in a lazy shrug. 

“You're you.”

And just… nothing about this woman is fair. Not one bit. 

Clarke shoots her a dirty look that fails miserably against the goofy grin stretching across her face. “Was part of your Heda-training learning how to be charming when people are mad at you or something? Nightblood Flirting for beginners? How to be a smooth-talking Commander in hostile company 101?” 

The dying candlelight reflected in Lexa's eyes makes them twinkle with silent laughter. “Unfortunately, no. Though the principles do seem to aid in diplomacy... From time to time...”

“Yeah I'll bet.” 

Lexa leans up and plucks a kiss from Clarke's lips. “Only with beautiful women who fall from the sky, I assure you.”

Frustrated that she can't seem to hold onto her anger - or even one single harmless stab of jealousy - long enough to feel any kind of righteous triumph, Clarke simply gives up the fight for the upper hand on this particular topic, conceding the battle to win the war by choosing to dedicate her remaining energy toward more fruitful pursuits instead. 

“You are a very good kisser,” she moans, stealing another taste for good measure before moving her lips along the sharp line of Lexa's jaw. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

Lexa hums. 

“My harem.”

Clarke lifts her head and blinks in surprise, mouth falling slack as one grey-green eye peeks open.

Tiny ears turn a brilliant shade of red and the heart under Clarke's palm pounds harder when she can't help but smile, shaking her head and wondering exactly what the full force of the Kongeda would think of the fact that their Heda is a regular comedian.

Clarke sighs, at a complete loss for words with how many different things this woman can make her feel in one stolen evening together. “You are just so…”

“What?” Lexa grins when she trails off. Looking every bit as though she already knows the ending to that sentence, and is all too pleased about it. 

Clarke only tucks herself back into that safe space under Lexa's chin. She wraps her arm around Lexa's waist and relaxes into the rhythm of her breathing, letting her eyes drift closed as the week's of exhaustion finally settles in. 

“I've just really missed you.”

Sleep overtakes Clarke without her even noticing. Too comfortable in the rise and fall of Lexa's breathing, too safe in the snug cradle of her arms. She drops off somewhere in the twilight between sated hums and kisses being pressed to the crown of her head, all the worry that generally plagues her nights slipping into visions of low hung eyelashes, faded tattoos, and sun-kissed braided hair. 

She's still somewhere in that hazy limbo of unconsciousness when the feel of something brushing against her mouth draws her out of the twilight fog of sleep. 

It's nothing more than a light tickle. 

The pad of a finger grazing across the bow of her lip.

“Clarke…”

“Shhh. Sleeping.”

The finger moves to trace the frown scrunched into her brow instead. “We should get up,” that wonderful voice tries again. “The sun will be rising soon.”

Clarke gives a grunt of protest. “Fuck the sun.”

“Ever pleasant,” Lexa sighs, though softens it with a kiss to her forehead. “But we do have to get up.”

“You get up.”

“I'm afraid you'll have to get up first.”

“And why's that?” Clarke asks with another sound of sleepy dissent.

“Because you are on top of me.”

Clarke burrows deeper into that sweet spot where shoulder meets neck. “Mmm, I know. S'good.”

“Clarke—”

“Ugh. If you're that committed to ruining this, then just move me off. God knows you're more than strong enough to push me away.”

The grey shaded green of Lexa's eyes turn softer when Clarke turns to level her with scowl, and full lips tug up at the edges.

“No… I'm not.”

The hand resting against Clarke's lower back tenderly strokes along her skin as though to prove her point. 

In the end Clarke relents, but not without a few choice words of complaint thrown in. They dress in mostly silence, a quiet broken by the ruffle and clang of belt buckles on wood and the odd pause to lean for just one more kiss. It feels so different from that afternoon that seems like a lifetime ago. A different existence entirely as Clarke helps Lexa wrap herself in the stretch of her bandeau and ties the laces of her boots. Their lips meet in mutual offerings of affection, smiles shared and hands only half-helpful in their pursuit to do up buttons and buckle clasps, instead of Clarke dressing alone next to a distractingly naked Heda still lounging in her bed. 

The only words spoken between them as they re-don the trappings of their stations in life are when Lexa scoops up Clarke's discarded bra from the floor and thrusts it at her, letting it dangle by one strap on the end of her fingertip with the air of its existence being a personal offense.

“I don't care for this,” she needlessly elaborates, as though her grimace wasn't conveying her distaste in spades. 

Clarke plucks the garment free from her finger and puts it on. “Really? I don't recall you seeming to mind it at the time,” she says in a very intelligent rendition of the commander herself.

There's a certain satisfaction in the way Lexa ignores the jest as her eyes dip down toward the abundance of Clarke's newly pushed up cleavage and get stuck there.

“I… I will send along some wraps with the next delivery.”

“That won't be necessary, Heda.”

Clarke keeps her face the picture of innocence when Lexa's gaze snaps back up at her sultry tone.    

Apparently nonplussed at the teasing, Lexa reaches down and grabs Clarke's shirt from the floor and tosses it in a lump right at her face. “Then I will keep a fresh supply in my room at the tower for when you return. Ambassador.”

Smile tempered but heart still galloping away from her like an idiot, Clarke nods and slips the shirt on without argument because, yeah, she thinks that would be more than okay. The idea alone of Lexa not only planning for her return to Polis, but envisioning a lengthy stay requiring many changes of clothes, is enough to have Clarke needing a moment to collect herself so she doesn't kiss her stupidly charming face off.

She's only just finished doing up the laces on her boots when Lexa pulls a familiar tin and a pocket sized mirror from one of her coat's inner pockets. Clarke hops up from where she's perched on the bed and makes her over. She takes the tin from Lexa's hands and gives her a soft smile when she blinks those bright, doe eyes in silent question. 

“Let me,” Clarke murmurs, fingers already dipping into the mixture and carefully scooping out a fair amount onto her fingertips. She sets the tin on the windowsill and takes Lexa's chin in her palm, adjusting her until she's bathed in the waning light of the moon as she begins retouching the mask she had so thoroughly undone. 

Her fingers work deft and swiftly. Precise in their every movement even when Lexa freezes under her touch. Neither speaks as Clarke smudges along the slopes of her eyes and stretches the wide bands along temples, and darkens the shadowed bend of her brow. Lexa's eyes flutter closed when she moves onto her cheeks, so engrossed in perfecting that somber fierceness of razor-sharpened tears, that she only notices Lexa's stopped breathing when she's finished. 

She takes a step back to admire her work, tossing in a smile at the ominous effect when eyes that shine more grey than green in the low light of dawn open back up for her.

“Not too shabby, if I say so myself,” Clarke says in triumph and clicks the lid back onto the tin. “Now, the braids.”

Lexa holds a hand up when Clarke goes to reach for her. Her mouth opens as though to speak, jaw sluggishly working around things that seem to bubble and die just below her throat.

Clarke frowns. “What? What's the matter?”

Another beat of silence passes as Lexa seems to think better of whatever she wants to say. Instead she merely stands there and stares at Clarke, face impassive despite an emotion thundering behind her eyes that Clarke can't quite decipher. 

It feels like a very bizarre eternity before she lowers her hand and nods. 

Still frowning in confusion, Clarke takes the ties Lexa had collected from their earlier undoing and follows her to the bed. She takes her time with the intricate design, twisting and connecting each piece in place exactly how she's memorized it from day one. She's sure it's not as precise as whomever normally does the Heda's braiding on any given day, but considering the countless hours Clarke has traced the design in her sketchbook, she's certain it's as close to perfection as she can possibly get.

All that's left is the medallion that she picks up from the ledge of the window, handing it over for Lexa to fix back up on her own.

Reaching up, Lexa catches Clarke's hand over her shoulder and turns into the touch, and suddenly Clarke feels like that well-loved teddy bear once again when Lexa brushes a kiss to her knuckles. 

Without another word, Lexa rises and steps behind Clarke. She doesn't bother to address Clarke's frown before reaching and sectioning out the loose curls away from her temple pulling them back. Amused and more than okay with this development between them, Clarke stays steady as fingers deftly twine and weave her hair in a steady rhythm on one side and then the other, until it all feels tight and secure without a wisp left dangling in her face.

Clarke reaches up to feel the design Lexa had chosen for herself when a hand brushes the locks to the side, and a warm pair of lips press against the sensitive spot just above the dip of her shoulder. She reaches back and runs her hand along Lexa's neck to keep her there a moment longer. 

It's worth it when arms slip around her waist and tug in an answer as Lexa drapes herself along Clarke's back.

“Thank you.”

“Pretty sure you're the expert hair braider here. I should be thanking you,” Clarke jokes as she lets go to twist her head enough to see Lexa over her shoulder. 

Lexa's face is inscrutable as her eyes trace Clarke's features. Relaxed and soft in a gentle look that could almost be a smile if you knew her well enough, one that feels like it's saying things Clarke will spend years trying to understand. 

The moment breaks on Lexa's sigh. “I have to go,” she murmurs, finally stepping back and letting Clarke face her completely. “Indra will be expecting me by midmorning at the latest.”

Clarke frowns and her chest squeezes. “Indra? You're going to the front line?” 

“I needed some sort of an excuse to slip away from Polis, didn't I?” Lexa asks with a playful flit of an eyebrow. “I suggested a check-in with the warriors personally; present a morale boost among our forces to help stave off their boredom from such an uneventful campaign. And with your… refugee proposal, I assume what was originally going to be a quick meeting with Indra, will now take up much more of my afternoon.”

Clarke's face scrunches ruefully. "I sure have a knack for making your life more complicated, huh?”

“You do seem especially gifted in that arena, yes.” The mighty Heda of thirteen clans’ ears turn a delicate shade of pink. “But I like complicated.”

The muscles of Lexa's throat flex in a thick, heavy swallow as she lets her smile fall, suddenly turning serious. 

“You will be careful?” Lexa whispers, sounding like each controlled word physically pains her. 

Clarke's grin turns more earnest as she reaches up to adjust the collar of Lexa's coat one final time. “Of course I will. When am I ever not?”

The attempt at levity lands as gracefully as a brick with the way Lexa's jaw tightens and her hand falls to the pommel of her sword. She grips it like a lifeline. “I need—I want to remind you that I am always here for you, Clarke. Blockade or not, I don't—...”

“I know,” Clarke promises, quiet in her conviction when Lexa can't seem to decide on how to finish her thought. “I'll send word if I need help. I kind of always like hearing what you have to say on something anyway.”

The sound that jumps out of Lexa is somewhere between laugh and a scoff. “I can tell by how little of my advice you take.”

“I listen to your input!”

“Name two instances.”

Clarke shrugs that off after coming up blank because… details. “Okay, well. Believe me, there's plenty of times at Arkadia that I want to know what you'd think or have to say on something… I miss talking to you. I still look for you in a crowd, Lexa. Even though I know you're not there, I—I still find myself wanting to reach out for you.”

Emotion blooms heavy along the edges of Lexa's stoic facade as commander. Her body seems to flex with a steeled control to make her stand still. To hold herself in place. 

Her armored chest heaves even as she nods in nothing but a dip of lashes, and wets her lips.

“Then,” Lexa says through a shaky exhale, “I can trust that if you do need help, you will send word? Immediately? You won't wait?”

Clarke's hands reach for her cheeks and hold her, careful not to smudge the freshly applied kohl. She wills away the sting from her eyes and lets herself fall into the mossy green ones that shimmer with life, and remind her so intensely of everything she loves about Earth. Hips press against hips when Clarke sways up to kiss her pouty lips, her chin, her perfectly lovely nose. The tendrils of black do well in hiding the heat of Lexa's blush that Clarke can feel beneath her fingertips, but it's the nervous gleam in the rounded set of her eyes that always gives her away.

“I'll be careful, Lex. And if I need anything, you'll know. Okay?”

“Swear it.”

Clarke nods. “I swear that I will do everything - everything - in my power, to make sure we meet again.”

Lexa squeezes the pommel of her sword until her knuckles turn white, the leather binding squeaking under the punishment of grip and glove, and her eyes bore into Clarke with a renewed current of fire. 

In the next second she is close - so close Clarke nearly startles on the spot. Her hand slips along Clarke's jaw and moves to cup the back of her neck. A gentle tug has Clarke meeting her halfway in a kiss deep enough that it makes Clarke feel as though she is floating. 

“Ste yuj,” Lexa breathes when they break, her head pressed to Clarke's as she lingers there. She tips only so far to brush their noses in one last vow of intimacy that Clarke will never grow tired of feeling. 

The cold rushes back in when Lexa steps away and straightens to the full might of the commander once more, but its bite does nothing to cool the burning in Clarke's chest. Because Lexa takes her hands and looks at her as though she is magic. As though Clarke and Clarke alone carries the secrets of all galaxies and every last star above within the confines of her woefully mortal skin. 

“Fight your war, Clarke. Make him pay for what he has done to our people. And when you are victorious, as I know you will be,” she says, proud, arrogant, “... return home to Polis. To me.”

Clarke can feel herself smiling not unlike an idiot in the swooshing wake of Lexa's dramatically flowing coattails. She watches the commander step to the door and open it, extending the arm still clinging to her hand like a lifeline, not quite ready to let go just yet despite duty demanding it.

Lexa holds her eyes as she pulls back in inches, her fingers gliding over Clarke's palms to the tips of the pads of her fingers, before gently dropping away. With one final grin over the swell of her armor, she's gone, slipping out just as silently as she had come in. 

Leaving Clarke to the silence of the hut, and the buzzing of well-kissed lips. Ready to face the sunrise of a new day.