a/n: it's funny because you can pinpoint the exact moment that this went from fluff to aggressive denial of 3x07
The commander shuffled her feet nervously on the scuffed floor as she waited for Clarke to arrive, looping the line over and over again in her head like a well-planned battle strategy, hoping to whatever otherworldly force still remained that Octavia was being serious when she meant that it would "win her over." What did that even mean, anyway, winning someone over? Was there a game involved? Lexa didn't know, but that wasn't stopping her from standing in that room as Clarke approached and the heda, the commander of all twelve clans and arguably one of the most powerful people within a thousand hectolexas, blurted out the world's most terrible pickup line.
"Did it hurt?"
"What?" Clarke looked like she was about to check one of her own wounds.
"When you . . ." this was a terrible idea there's probably a group of sky people ridiculing this outside the tent right now, why did- ". . . fell from, er, heaven?"
"I fell from space," Clarke replied, with a completely deadpan expression. She stood there for a moment, awaiting some kind of reaction before bursting into laughter. Lexa blinked. "Oh, god, Lexa, did Octavia tell you that one?" The commander nodded, looking down at the floor. She couldn't help but think that she must have looked like one of those animals that used to exist on Earth - raccoons, she recalled, with sheepish expressions and soulful eyes on a backdrop of scribbled grass. Raccoons were forgotten as Lexa realized that Clarke was still laughing. She was beautiful when she laughed, really, the way her eyes sparkled and the way she tilted her head back, and for a brief moment Lexa wondered if this was what it would be like to live as a normal girl on a normal Earth with someone she loved, if this was what living before the world ended was like. It would be nice, Lexa thought, to exist without the near-constant fear of being murdered, without knowing how short her time was as the spirits of the previous commanders restlessly paced inside the chip in her neck. She was no fool, and perhaps the knowledge that she would almost certainly die young kept her sane, but nothing could stop her from hoping. Hope was a dangerous thing, for sure, but it was also what seemed to keep her human as Clarke laughed at an ill-advised pickup line.
Hope was something dangerous, but it was also the only thing that kept life worth living.
a/n: i'm going to punch jason rothenberg in the face