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Clarke watched the look on Lexa's face as she bit off a hunk from the freeze-dried soy bar, hesitated, and then slowly chewed a couple of times. "No...good?"
She received only a blank look. Lexa hadn't swallowed yet.
Clarke winced. "Sorry..."
"It's food," Lexa said, trying to be pragmatic and hide the livid look on her face. "If it has any kind of nutritional value, it's good." She kept chewing and finally got it down, but as she did her face soured. "You are sure it's food...right?"
Clarke stifled a laugh, despite herself. Despite the situation. It was still just nice to be in Lexa's company. Really, despite everything. Which startled her.
They were forced together by circumstance right now on the road, in hiding. Whatever amends Lexa had already attempted, Mount Weather was still bitterly entrenched in the back of Clarke's throat, not nearly as firmly as it had been before. A functional rapport had settled in at this point between them in favor of survival and practicality, however reluctant it was on Clarke's side. And the silence of the woods, the sounds of nature, and the welcome rest, dampened the bitterness for a moment with Lexa her only present company.
All of those things had slowly worked their way into Clarke over the past couple of days. Pushed along by the significance of Lexa's gestures in the context of their current political situation, and the way she'd carelessly saved Clarke's life on the way out of Polis, and shrugged it off without a word.
"I guess I'm used to it..." Clarke ate her own rations, content. It was actually comforting to her in multiple ways. "It's what I grew up on."
Lexa shot her a pitiful, apologetic look that said everything she didn't, and Clarke had a hard time stifling another laugh that was trapped behind her lips. "Hey," she said with a shrug, taking another bite of her soy bar, "I lived off this stuff for 18 years. I'm still alive."
Lexa looked down suspiciously at the bar in her own hand, another bite still shut in her mouth. She shrugged it off as best she could and soldiered on through her 'meal,' as Clarke poked at the fire in silence.
This was the first time they'd allowed themselves to truly settle into the inevitability of each others company. There was nothing else to be done except make it the rest of the way to her people's camp, nothing to strategize or plan, and a weariness from the physical exertion of their trek thus-far, pushed the fuzzy, resolved affinity between them along, however tainted with animosity or heavy feelings it may have been.
It was slipping away. Despite Clarke's better judgement. She was having a hard time holding onto it, and that left only the raw feelings lodged in her chest.
"That was an experience," Lexa said monotonously, finished with her meal, as she laid down, covering herself in her blanket.
The more time Clarke spent in Lexa's presence, the more she was beginning to catch on to a subtle, sarcastic sense of humor, that it seemed most of the time Lexa intended to enjoy privately. It was the person under the crown. Clarke hated a little how endeared she was to that person, it had snuck up on her. And its teeth had sunk deeper into her than she was comfortable with, if she thought too hard. "Big, bad Commander...can't even handle a crappy little soy bar?"
"Shof op, Skai Heda," Lexa said lightly from her bedroll, back turned to Clarke.
Clarke stared at her, amused, until Lexa looked her way.
She only shook her head at Clarke; a suppressed smile tweaked the corner of her lips, and settled back into her bed roll.
Clarke smiled to herself as she did the same. A heavy silence passed between them, staring at the stars, and Clarke wondered if the weight she was feeling in the air meant Lexa was also still awake, or if it was only in her head.
"I am grateful," Lexa said out of nowhere, affirming the former. "For the provisions." She was burrowed into her bed past the flames, and Clarke couldn't see where she was looking. "And your kindness...Food is food. Finding and preparing it takes energy and time...that we cannot afford right now."
Clarke was now wondering if it was in her head that Lexa sounded nervous. She turned her head to try to look at her through the fire.
Lexa gave her a fleeting look through the edge of the flames, her voice becoming more approachable. "I am the one that owes you. Restitution."
"I know," Clarke croaked. Her gaze fixed back on the sky, her tone and her silence itself dismissed wrongdoing, though she wished it didn't. "You were right. You did what I would have done."
"You gave me your food. It's a gesture of good will I don't deserve right now."
"You don't..." Clarke said, "as the Commander of the Grounders." She sighed heavily. "But you're not just the Commander of the Grounders."
Lexa flinched at this, turning more fully towards Clarke in an attempt to get her eyes. "What am I?" There was a struggle in her voice when she said it. She was staring intensely at Clarke.
Her previous words echoed through Clarke's mind: 'Not everyone. Not you.'
"Just another person," Clarke swallowed the thickness in her throat, "that I wish I didn't care about." Her voice was cold and monotonous.
It was only partially true. Lexa wasn't just another person.
She was still staring intensely at Clarke, half sitting up now. Clarke squeezed her eyes shut, blacking out the stars in the sky above them. "Can I ask you something?" she said as an afterthought.
"Yes."
Clarke blinked, her eyes shifted as if this would fortify her, then she stared at the sky again, her voice smaller. "Did I ever, really, mean anything to you?" A warmth vibrated down through her chest as she spoke, one full of hope and nerves that she wished would just stop. Hope—anticipation—wasn't something that had treated her well; it was a thief she had no reason to trust anymore.
"Or was it all just..." Clarke sighed and squeezed her eyes shut again, knowing she didn't really want to know the answer, "some fleeting moment?...Passably cute?" she said the last part lividly and got more bitter. "Maybe gonna die? Laying on your game, the night before a big battle?"
"Klark..."
The pull in Lexa's voice revived the vibration in Clarke's chest and she chastised it, hopeful anyway for something more real and worthwhile in this stupid fucked up world. She slowly turned her head to look at Lexa's eyes.
It may have been a mistake.
Lexa was staring intently at her, the depth there hammering down an open doorway to her soul in the rhythm of a heartbeat.
"Doubt my actions," Lexa said. "The positions I have put you in. The things I have done to your people—" her voice became uncharacteristically airy, "but do not ever doubt the way I feel about you. You did not mean anything to me," her voice got smaller, "you meant everything. You still do."
Clarke's lower lip fell as she stared at Lexa through the licking flames.
Lexa still spoke in that hushed voice. Like the Commander inside of her might hear and get angry. "It threatens to consume every part of me."
Clarke's chest constricted to an unbearable pitch, fluttering through her body like she was weightless.
"That is all the more reason why I must..." Lexa choked and her eyes flicked up to the sky and shut again. "Because of who I must be...I cannot make the gestures for you that every fiber of my heart wishes I could make."
It was a confession that stung on the air and filtered through Clarke's skin, making its way into her chest. A bitter kind of ache, that dug deep and stuck there.
Clarke paused for a long moment, her mouth dangling, sense pounding at her skull and filtering in.
She fortified herself and got up, and gathered her bed roll.
She walked around the fire. And began to place it down next to Lexa. She could tell by the stunned, disoriented look on Lexa's face that for a moment she thought Clarke was leaving, stomping off somewhere away from her. Clarke laid down and stared at the sky for a moment again, before she sought Lexa's hand under the blankets.
A rocket of relief burst through her fingers, into the rest of her body, when she found it.
When Lexa swiped a soft trace of her finger over the edge of her hand, Clarke turned and rested her forehead tentatively against the side of Lexa's arm, finding a cocoon of security there.
It wasn't perfect, it was threadbare and delicate, but compared to the ravages everywhere else around her it was huge.
"I was hoping you'd say something like that..." Clarke whispered, choking a little as she did, because it was true. The tears pooling at the back of her eyes began to escape to gravity and trickle down the side of her face before they were fully formed.
"Klark..." Lexa sounded dizzy.
"Don't," Clarke whispered. "Just...show me."
_X_