When Lexa wakes, everything is pain. For several eternal seconds she is awash in it- each new wave crashing over her, rocking loose any grip she has on herself or her surroundings. It takes time and a straining effort before she can drag herself back to the shore of self-awareness, cataloguing the pain and naming it to gain some control over it. Lexa starts small- the bruises and cuts on her knuckles, her skin pavement burned. Her nose hurts, the pain of the break radiating up around her eye sockets, even the flutter of her eyelids grating. The dull, aching pulse around her shoulder. The waves of nausea as her head throb the sense of spinning wild in the darkness. The breath-catching pain around her ribs that comes with every inhale.
She doesn't know how long it takes to make peace with each part of her body, to acknowledge the damage and push past it. Once the physical pain is under control, once Lexa regains the ability to recognize her own thoughts, to hear them over the cacophony of hurt, there is another injury to acknowledge.
"Say it! Say that you killed her!"
It was like the beating she'd taken had cracked her open, spidering a thin but deep fissure in the many layers she'd put between herself and those memories, a canyon that exposed the various strata of reasoning she'd used to assuage her guilt.
Nia's boot finds her ribs again, despite Lexa curling in on herself. She hears Indra and Nyko yelling, their words strangely far away, the only sound she can focus on is Nia's vicious demands.
"I won't stop until you say it!"
Costia had made her own choices. Lexa couldn't have known what would happen. It couldn't be Lexa's fault because if it was how could she stand to go through another day.
"You killed my little sister and you're going to pay for it!"
Nia's next kick finds Lexa's temple and she can feel the impact like lightning coursing through her skull, a shatterglass of pain.
All those reasons, all those lies, just so much dirt unearthed to get to the core of it- that Costia was dead because of Lexa.
"It was my fault!" Lexa finally yells, because it's true, because it was time to admit the betrayal, because what is there left to prove, lying on the asphalt, bleeding?
For a moment that knowledge transfixes her, a single point of pain in her body that everything swirls to coalesce around. It is more terrifying than the physical pain, worse even than the moments that she lay curled on the pavement, waiting for the next kick to come. Lexa's control falls away, and she can't hear her thoughts over the blood rushing in her ears, the breathe caught in her throat coming out in a hoarse whine.
Lexa waits for the next blow, almost welcoming it, but it never comes. She looks up from the arms she'd thrown around her head to create a protective cage around herself to see Nia, standing tall and panting, red hair stringy with exertion.
Nia spits, and Lexa can feel the hot foam of it on her skin.
"I should kill you for her," Nia says.
"Lexa? Are you okay?" she hears a bleary voice ask, a hand suddenly at her arm, a warm touch on her skin.
Clarke's presence, the concern in her voice, somehow makes it all harder, and Lexa makes a strangled noise that doesn't sound human even to her own ears, like the despair of an animal in a trap.
"Lexa! I'm here, what do you need? What can I do?"
Clarke's hands are at Lexa's face now, running a thumb across her cheekbones and smoothing back tangled hair, and Lexa can feel the fear in Clarke's touch, the worry for her. The weight of her care makes Lexa want to recoil, unworthy of it.
Lexa pulls her uninjured arm up, tugging Clarke's hand away from her face, trying to break the contact, only to feel Clarke's lips on her bruised knuckles, a kiss at each scrape on her palm, one pressed firmly at the pulse in her wrist.
"It's okay," Clarke whispers into her skin, "You're safe here."
At Clarke's assurance the storm hits, and the caged whine in Lexa's chest becomes a sob, the burn in her eyes now tears, the tension in her body turned to a shaking she can't stop.
"I've got you. I'm here," Clarke says, pulling herself up onto the couch next to Lexa, the pain that comes from being jostled worth the feeling of Clarke's body against her, the sharp throb in her ribs a fair trade for Clarke's arm across her, holding her tight. Lexa sobs and Clarke breathes into her ear, whispering her repeated phrase, a steady mantra; I'm here, you're safe, I've got you.
The words blur together into a soothing rhythm and Lexa doesn't know how long she shakes and cries, how many minutes or hours they lay together, close as bodies allow. It's only later she seems to return to herself to realize that the sobs have become a steady stream of silent tears, the shaking turned into an intermittent shiver.
Clarke still murmurs in her ear, and the mantra has turned into a string of babbling endearments; sweetheart, flower girl, dear one.
For a moment Lexa feels embarrassed, sure this stream of consciousness is meant for a brain that isn't registering it, that Clarke means it only as a generic comfort, and Lexa's quiet tears turn to soft gasps as, against all evidence, the fear that Clarke could not truly care for her overwhelms her.
"Shhh," Clarke says, and kisses her ear, "I'm here, Lexa."
"I am sorry, Clarke," Lexa finally manages. Her voice is reedy and hoarse and she can taste the blood in her mouth still, "You don't need to do this."
"Enough, Lexa," Clarke says, "Just let me hold you."
Lexa lets her, quieting her thoughts, trying to give herself permission to take comfort in Clarke's touch, in her words, even if the rational part of Lexa's mind knows she has not earned it. The pit that has opened up in her heart, the one that leads to Costia, remains open, but Lexa feels as though she's backed up from the edge somewhat, no longer in danger of tumbling down into the depths of it, never to climb out again.
"Do you need anything?" Clarke finally asks, once Lexa's breathing has evened out.
The question doesn't register as quite literal for a moment, and Lexa spends a solid minute thinking about exactly what her soul might be lacking before her mind makes the connection that Clarke is asking about less metaphysical needs.
"I am very thirsty," Lexa croaks, her voice cracking from the recent tears.
Clarke nods, "I'll be right back."
Clarke's shuffle off the couch hurts Lexa's ribs, and leaves her feeling bereft, but Lexa pushes away those feelings as unearned. Clarke stands and stretches, and then lets her fingers linger on Lexa's arm before she leaves, padding off to the kitchen in the dimness of the late night, early morning blur.
Lexa takes a moment to study her surroundings, trying to stave off the emotional and physical waves that still push against her like slowly diminishing ripples.
She's in Clarke's living room, though Lexa has only a vague impression of how she got there. Pale blue walls, an immaculately steamed carpet, and precisely placed white furniture with perfectly folded knit afghans. Lexa realizes with a sinking sensation that her bloody and ragged body is nestled on one such pristine white couch. Lexa knows this is a summer home, but there is still a white brick fireplace dominating an entire wall. The room gives the feeling of being a show house- staged somehow- prepared for drama but not actually to be lived in.
When Clarke returns she brings a tall glass of water and a banana. She kicks at something on the floor, and Lexa cranes her neck to look down- there's a pillow and a nest of blankets between the couch and the coffee table.
Clarke helps Lexa sit forward to take a long drink, and then settles back onto the floor, cross-legged in her mess of bedsheets. Clarke has dark circles under her eyes and all the things Clarke has done for her in the past few hours make Lexa's cheeks burn with shame.
"I'm sorry," Lexa says as Clarke begins to peel the banana. Clarke gives her a warning look and Lexa thinks she had better specify, "I fell asleep after what you told me about your father. That was...rude of me."
Clarke's cheeks color as she abandons the banana to put her head in her hands, tussled yellow hair falling over her fingers. Her voice comes out muffled, "Don't be. I should be apologizing to you. I can't believe I did that. What a dick move."
Lexa furrows her brow, then regrets it- whatever was holding her split eyebrow together hurt at the pull.
"Why was it a dick move?"
Clarke turns her attention back to the banana, ripping off the last of the peel as she speaks, "It was a dick move because I was distracting you from your pain by making you focus on mine." Clarke begins to rip the soft flesh into chunks, the intensity of her focus mashing the fruit more than anything, "It was a dick move because we don't even know eachother that well, and I shouldn't have put that on you." Clarke digs at a brown spot near the end, her hands now mostly coated in banana paste, "It was a dick move because your friends were there and my mom was there."
"Clarke," Lexa manages to interject, and Clarke momentarily pauses in her mangling of the banana.
"Yeah?"
"Please stop saying dick move."
"Sorry," Clarke grimaces, "Want some banana?"
Lexa surveys the mostly pulped fruit on the coffee table, "Not particularly."
"Too bad. You should eat some anyway. It's a super food."
"Alright," Lexa says, and she can feel herself smiling.
Clarke seems to sense that actually feeding Lexa the banana would embarrass her into oblivion, so she places the least mashed portion in Lexa's uninjured hand and simply stares at her accusingly until Lexa finally puts it in her mouth. Lexa chews slowly, and decides the banana was probably a good idea; her last meal hours and a beating ago.
There's a moment of awkwardness; their bodies having been so close together before it's like they're unsure what to do with them now they're apart.
"Do you want to watch TV, or something?" Clarke asks, fidgeting.
Lexa nods. She doesn't really, but everything hurts too much to fall asleep, and it is as good an excuse as any to stay up with Clarke.
Clarke grabs a remote from the top of a stack of magazines artfully arranged in a spiral, and Lexa has to stop herself from rolling her eyes as a panel above the mantelpiece slides back to reveal a massive flatscreen.
Clarke channel surfs for awhile, and Lexa catches Clarke giving her surreptitious glances every now and again, as if Clarke is trying to gauge her interest level on the sly.
"Whatever you want to watch is fine, Clarke. I'm not picky," Lexa finally tells her after she catches her staring again.
"Fine," Clarke says, "X-Games it is."
They tune in just in time to watch a particularly brutal wipe out involving a ramp, a bike, and a rider all heading in different directions. Clarke 'oofs' at the fall and even Lexa catches herself making a sympathetic grunt at the bad landing. The fall is replayed several times, slowed down and zoomed in on until the repetition makes the destruction look almost intentional, like a strange choreography.
They watch in silence, the volume turned low so that the commentating is just the silhouette of language- recognizable as words but without substance. Clarke huddles in her makeshift bed, Lexa lays stiffly on the couch, inches and miles away from each other. Lexa doesn't understand how they can have these moments of connection, these times where they seem to know each other longer than the few weeks they've actually spent together, and then suddenly spiral away into this desolate separateness; how grief and a history that should have long since healed keeps peeling them apart, like they are caught in different currents and the effort of working against them is exhausting.
Lexa watches Clarke in the flickering blue glow of the television, watches as light begins to come through the windows, bringing the room to a palette of blues and grays; colors that are weak, but gentle, and kind to Clarke's pale skin, to the downturn of her mouth, to the line of her neck and chest as she sighs.
Lexa keeps watching, measuring time in the way that the colors in the room brighten, how the pale light changes intensity, making everything more solid. The brightening catches the gold in Clarke's hair, casting every detail of her in sun, from the soft movement of her eyelashes to the outline of her artist's fingers as she plays with a loose thread on her shirt.
It's as an afterthought that Lexa realizes that the pain in her body has receded during her observation, like her focus on Clarke numbs the hurt.
At some point the channel has changed to a weather report, and Lexa dimly registers that today is supposed to be sunny, all trace of the calamitous thunderstorm from last night passed over them, moved on to some other small mid-western town while they are left in its becalmed wake, ready to repair the downed powerlines and pull the fallen branches out of the streets.
"I'm grateful you told me about your father, Clarke," Lexa says, and she sees Clarke startle at the sudden sound of her voice. "You had nothing to apologize to me for."
Clarke swallows and looks down, her brow furrowed, every change easy to catch in the sunlight she eclipses.
"I could say the same to you," Clarke says, looking up at Lexa, blue eyes beginning to lighten with the day, "for whatever it was you were trying to apologize for." Clarke reaches out tentatively, strokes one of Lexa's bruised knuckles, "You don't deserve this."
"It was my fault," Lexa says. She'd meant for her words to sound detached and rational , but, almost certainly due to exhaustion, she can taste how bitter they sound coming out.
Clarke's face darkens, a look between anger and disgust, and she looks away as she shakes her head, "Jesus, Lexa. No, it's not."
"I'm sorry, Clarke, I meant-"
Clarke's eyes flash darkly as she turns them back to Lexa, "Just don't talk like that. I don't know if it's you being stoic or you're trying to brush it off so you don't worry me, but just don't."
Clarke holds her gaze until Lexa nods slowly, and Clarke's stiffly held shoulders fall.
"I don't know what happened, but when Nyko carried you in like that I was fucking terrified."
Lexa opens her mouth to apologize again, but changes her mind, "I'm glad they brought me here. I'm glad you were here, Clarke."
Clarke softens, "Me too."
"I should tell you what happened," Lexa says, and her chest hurts with the weight of knowing what would have to be dredged up to tell this story, "I owe you that."
"You do," Clarke agrees, "but not on an empty stomach. Can I make you breakfast?"
Lexa smiles, and the weight feels lessened, not like it's any less heavy, but like it's better supported, like it's not something she carries alone.
"I would like that," she says.
"What can I make you?" Clarke says, returning the smile.
"I will eat anything but bananas, Clarke."
