Clarke woke with a start and a gasp, the images of familiar nightmares still flashing across her vision. Her heart pounded in her chest. She sat up quickly and pressed her palms hard against her eyes with an exhale that came out in an aggravated hiss. Clarke rubbed her eyes firmly and fought down the bile rising in her throat. She groaned at the churning of her stomach and the vivid images that still flashed in her mind's eye. Then she heard some shuffling and a light clink, and opened her eyes to the darkness of the room. She glanced over to the other side of the bed expecting to find Lexa, but the other girl wasn't there.

Beyond the door that led to the main room, open just a crack, she detected a faint light. Then Lexa appeared as the door creaked inward, a candle in one hand, two glasses held delicately in the other, and there was the glint of a bottle in the crook of her elbow.

She was plainly unsurprised to find Clarke awake and sitting up when their eyes met briefly. Lexa noiselessly paced around to Clarke's side and Clarke shuffled to the middle of the bed, her stomach still aching and her mind still not quite in the present. Lexa set the candle down on the nightstand along with the glasses. The cork came free with a low-pitched pop and Lexa poured two healthy measures of the amber liquid. She steadily returned the cork to the neck of the bottle and set it down gently. She took a glass in each hand and sat down on the bed by Clarke's knees, handing one to Clarke.

Clarke took it. She had been watching Lexa's hands - their sure, flowing movements. She had been using them as a distraction from the pangs in her stomach. But she finally looked at the brunette's face and even in the low light found it to be more haggard and weary than she had ever seen it. A sense of alarm took over Clarke and she watched Lexa take a tiny sip of the liquor and swallow it. Lexa stared at the glass that rested precariously in her own somewhat slack fingers, and Clarke thought she might drop it, might fall asleep as she sat before her.

"Did you sleep at all?" Clarke only just managed to vocalize the words above a whisper. Lexa breathed deeply, lifting her chin as her eyes rose to the blank wall in front of her.

"An hour or two, yes." She responded. The blonde peered into her own glass and studied the contents. She idly wondered what had woken Lexa, if she herself had woken her with fitful sleep, and how long she had been awake before this moment.

"I promise it is not poisoned." Clarke heard Lexa say, and she looked up to find the green eyes glossy with tiredness, languid, burdened. A breath left Clarke's nose, a ghost of a laugh, and she blinked lightly several times at the alcohol. She vaguely wondered how her stomach would feel about it, but she raised the glass to her lips. An impulsive thought came to her, and for a split second, Clarke wished Lexa was lying. She imagined them both collapsing, dead upon the soft furs.

The whiskey burned, warm and spicy, down her throat. Lexa watched her, and it seemed her eyes could not help but study Clarke's face. Then Lexa lifted her feet to rest on the frame of the bed, and her forearms rested on her thighs. Her glass was held aloft in the fingers of both hands between her knees and her eyes fell to fix on the floor in front of her as she took another sip.

Clarke could feel the hush of the night outside the building, and Lexa's movements made no sound, save for the falling of liquid into her mouth. In the time Clarke spent in a solitary cell on the Ark, she oscillated between allowing a deafening silence as she drew on the walls - and pounding on the the walls, screaming in protest. There was no in-between. And in that moment, Clarke didn't know if she wanted to throw herself out the window or if she wanted to see Lexa fly into a fit of rage, or a fit of despair, or… a fit of anything. Clarke wasn't sure Lexa even knew how to - if she allowed herself to do such a thing.

Clarke felt a shiver run down her spine, the terror of her dreams threatened to infect her mind and body as it had when she was alone in the woods. She drank from her glass before asking her next question.

"You have them too?" Clarke's voice was full, full of curiosity, of yearning, and… what she feared would turn out to be commiseration.

Lexa nodded and took another sip of the liquor.

"Drink," Lexa said, calmly, "it will help you sleep."

"Does it help you?" Clarke asked, not entirely trusting that Lexa believed what she said.

There was a long pause, and Lexa sighed deeply, in a way that Clarke had never heard before.

"Sometimes." And that was Lexa's only response. Simple, but honest. Clarke took another mouthful and reacted with a quick exhale, smelling the alcohol on her breath. Lexa also took another, larger sip and lowered her head. She seemed to be examining the threads of her shirt, then her eyes closed and her jaw clenched.

"Clarke?" The whispered question was barely loud enough to hear, but it was desperate. It was anguished. Clarke shifted under the furs, leaning forward slightly. Her hands gripped the glass in her hand harder than she really noticed.

But Lexa seemed unable to voice the words in her head. Clarke felt the air in the room, thicker even with their couple short hours of sleep, and felt herself succumb to fatigue again. Her body wanted to melt into the pillows and the fur, but her mind was awake. She accepted that Lexa's thoughts would go unspoken. The brunette only swallowed thickly, eyes still shut tight.

"Why don't you have more kill marks?" Clarke asked. It had waited in the back of her mind. She had wanted to ask when she first saw the branded skin. Clarke sensed that Lexa could have answered more quickly, the answer evident in her expression as her eyes opened, but something halted the brunette.

"When one becomes Heda, one stops receiving kill marks." Lexa said.

"How many kill marks do you have? From before?"

"Forty-two." Lexa responded so quickly, so sharply, that Clarke visibly flinched.

"How many would you have now?"

And Clarke could not tear her gaze away from Lexa. If Lexa could have stared daggers, the wall in front of her would have caved in. She clearly didn't want to have this conversation. Lexa took another sip from her glass and her eyes were heavy. It was a long moment before she responded.

"More than three hundred. Not counting the people in TonDC or the Mountain." Lexa's voice was dark. Clarke realized all at once that Lexa had not killed that many people in a ring of fire, or by reversing fatal flows of air. Lexa had killed hundreds of people in civil wars, in battles of swords and daggers and spears - in hand-to-hand combat. Lexa had, literally, the blood of hundreds on her hands.

Clarke felt her stomach drop like a boulder as she thought about what kind of nightmares must haunt Lexa. Involuntarily, Clarke moved to sit at the edge of the bed next to Lexa, one leg dangling over the side of the bed. Lexa stiffened and her back straightened. And again, Lexa's expression went blank as Clarke saw the mask return. Clarke's hand rose toward Lexa's shoulder, but just as her fingertips barely grazed over her, Lexa stood and walked toward the dresser, facing away.

Clarke felt the tug again, her heart contracting painfully in her chest.

"Lexa," Clarke wanted her to turn around, wanted her to know that they both felt the same thing. They both struggled with their past actions. They both tried to hide it from the rest of the world, from their people, and Clarke knew Lexa tried to hide it from her, too. Clarke wanted her to know that she cared. Clarke had loved her once, had been afraid of how much she felt for the young leader after so little time. She wasn't ready then, and she still wasn't ready. But she didn't want to lose Lexa either. She didn't want to - couldn't - lose the Lexa she knew before, the one that let herself be open and honest with Clarke.

"You showed me what you felt once. Why are you trying so hard not to show me now?" Clarke pressed, but Lexa remained eerily still.

"Depending on what your council says tomorrow, I cannot promise that I will not have to leave you again. I must put my people before myself." Lexa said seriously. Clarke got up and walked over, standing by Lexa's side so she could at least see the girl's profile.

"I know," Clarke nodded, "But you aren't fighting for nothing. You have to admit that you feel, that there are people you love. Sooner or later you'll die behind that mask if you don't." Lexa frowned, and a flash of fear rose in her eyes and quickly disappeared. Clarke trembled with the itch to touch Lexa, to grasp her arm and urge her to relent. Lexa drained the last of the liquor in her glass and stared at the floor. Seeing her this way made Clarke's heart pound uncomfortably in her chest.

After a moment, Lexa looked back up at her, and her eyes roamed over Clarke's face. Clarke saw so much sadness and so much pain in those green eyes. Lexa looked hopeless, lost. She looked like she wanted nothing more than to collapse into the blonde's arms even though her back was rigid and her head was held high. Lexa simply gazed at her, searching her eyes. Clarke's shoulders slumped and she felt her throat bobbing, threatening to give way to tears. Her lips pressed together and she collected herself. She reached out and gently took Lexa's fingertips in her own, and Lexa didn't flinch away this time.

"Not yet." Clarke said confidently, and this time she was saying it for Lexa more than herself. Lexa gave a shaky, understanding nod before turning to cross the room, setting the glass down on her nightstand. Clarke's hand felt empty as soon as Lexa took her fingers away. She looked down at her own drink before finishing the last of it. She set the glass on the dresser and turned around. Lexa had closed the door and got under the furs, lying on her back again. Clarke returned to the bed as well and settled on her side, but faced Lexa instead of the wall. Her arms lay limp in front of her. Clarke replayed the whole conversation in her head as her eyes stared into Lexa's long brown hair.

"You didn't put out the candle." Lexa said. Clarke didn't move. She looked to Lexa's face, seeing that her eyes were also still open. Clarke remembered that Lexa brought the candle in when she brought the bottle.

"You were already awake. You heard me wake up." Clarke said, her voice tired and quiet. Lexa blinked in affirmation.

"You sounded upset. I thought the drink might help." Lexa spoke softly, without judgment, as if someone had done for her what she did for Clarke. Clarke eyes fluttered closed and she took deep breaths, trying to relax, but her muscles were tensed and her chest felt tight.

"I'm afraid to go to sleep." The strained whisper left her lips like a confession. The air was dead, and Clarke wondered if Lexa might not speak, might let the silence speak for itself.

Lexa's hand dropped to the furs between them and lingered there for a second before slowly reaching out to rest on Clarke's forearm.

"I'm here." Lexa said. Her voice was tender and assuring. Clarke felt the weight of Lexa's hand and focused on the feeling of it as her muscles gradually relaxed, and she drifted off.