A/N: The Lexa/Clarke/Costia relationship(s) are so full of potential. There is so much emotion tied up in every single interaction between Clarke and Lexa and that only increases if you imagine Costia watching over it all. Please let me know what you think with an ever helpful review! -Lu
Setting: Season 2 Episode 8 (Spacewalker)
Every time she closed her eyes, Lexa saw the raw anguish that had twisted the features of the beautiful Skaikru leader as she'd begged for the murderer's life. It had taken so much willpower to keep her own expression neutral and her eyes blank when all she had been able to think about was the same way she'd begged for Costia's life.
Lexa sat alone in her tent, smoke from the hundreds of burning torches of her army snaking through the cracks on the cool night breeze. She sat on a stool, resting her elbows on the map of the Skaikru camp, her eyes locked on the tangled metal representing the Ark, but her gaze settled much further away.
"I never thought she'd kill him," she murmured, her fingers moving to the blade that had been confiscated from Clarke and now sat open in front of her. She traced the razor sharp edge with a fingertip, marveling at the strength it must have taken to plunge it into the body of someone she loved.
She saved him, Costia corrected quietly. It was an act of love.
Lexa didn't look up as the voice of her dead love filled her mind. She closed her eyes and breathed in, imagining that she could smell the lemon myrtle salve that Costia rubbed into her aching muscles and the juniper that she used to wash the mud from her hair.
"She was lucky," Lexa sighed, opening her eyes again, her shoulders sinking at the reality of being completely alone. She pressed one fingertip into the point of the blade and relished the slight jab of pain it brought.
Somehow I don't think she'd consider herself lucky, Costia said dryly. Lexa couldn't tell whether it was just her dark and odd sense of humour that laced her words or whether she was judging Lexa for what she'd done to the Skaikru girl. Costia would have used all the same arguments as Clarke in an attempt to talk Lexa out of sentencing the boy to death if she had been there.
It only made Lexa's chest clench with frustration once more at the powerlessness of her situation. Why did no one understand that she'd had no choice? The boy had sentenced himself to death the minute he'd sent that first bullet into one of her people. By the time he'd been bound to that pole his death was already written in time.
"She was lucky," she repeated with quiet anger. "She was lucky to save the person she loved from a cruel death. She was lucky to be with him…she was lucky to say goodbye."
Her voice caught on the final word and she pushed herself away from the table, striding across the small space and back again, painfully conscious of the walls that stood in her way at every turn.
You said you didn't believe in goodbyes.
Breathing hard, staring out a torn window at the rolling hills of her sleeping army, she felt the breeze brush against her neck like fingertips. She exhaled slowly and tilted her head, longing for the real, loving, gentle touch.
"I never thought it would be our goodbye," she admitted heavily, her voice raw from the tears that constricted her throat.
No one ever does.
Lexa allowed the silence and cool air to lull her heart back into a normal rhythm before she continued. Closing her eyes for a second, she saw in a flash the tears shining on Clarke's cheeks as she turned from the boy's limp body, her hands stained in his blood. Her eyelids flew open again.
"She will never be able to forget what she did," she said sadly. "Every minute of every night and every day she will hate herself for causing his death. She'll see him in the shadows and in the blinding flash of the sun and her heart will skip as she forgets the truth for the briefest second. And then when she remembers, it will crush her till she's sure every rib in her chest will break and her heart will burst."
Costia was silent for a long time once she'd finished speaking, but Lexa could feel her grief and her pity thickening the air like smoke. Lexa turned from the window and sunk to the ground in a billow of her cloak, squeezing her eyes shut. There was a rustle of air that she could pretend was Costia kneeling beside her and she yearned for the soft touch on her shoulders that had always come next.
She's alive and so are her people. That is what matters. She's strong and she's brave and she'll be able to survive the pain because she did it for her people.
"What if it's not enough?" Lexa whispered painfully.
All she wanted was to feel Costia's skin against her own, warm and laced with a web of scars that told their history together as well as any of the symbols in the Skaikru books. She wanted to feel the lightest touch of fingertips on her body where now there only ever seemed to be armour. She had not felt the touch of another, not even a brushing of arms, since Costia had died and every day Lexa felt as though her skin grew colder and her heart grew darker.
She opened her eyes and took in the stillness and silence of her tent, her sword sitting on the table, her armour waiting on the chest.
"It has to be enough," she answered herself, rising wearily to her feet.