"Welcome to your new home, Lexa." Clarke stepped through the double doors of the villa, arms sweeping to encompass a gorgeous plaza. Marble columns wrapped around an open-air court, with a fountain burbling cheerfully amidst a tiny jungle of greenery. Benches were sporadically placed on the walkway that hemmed the courtyard, subtle and unobtrusive but still lending a welcoming air to the place.
Looking up Lexa could see the sky visible, sun shining through the open ceiling and making the marble glitter in the light. It was the most beautiful room Lexa had ever seen. She fell in love with it instantly.
She looked back at Clarke, the blonde grinning at the wide-eyed expression she wore. "I take it you approve?" There was no hesitancy in her voice. She knew the villa was stunning, and she knew Lexa would like it. Lexa felt a tug in her gut; Costia had had that same easy confidence.
Lexa shook the thought off. She put on her most earnest expression and looked at Clarke seriously. "This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen." Her eyes began roaming once more, drawn irresistibly back to the beauty surrounding her.
She flinched when Clarke touched her shoulder gently. The blonde didn't remark on it, just gestured ahead and said, "Come on, there's a lot more to see." Lexa eyed her curiously. The girl really was just a bundle of contradictions, someone who had bought her as a slave yet didn't want her to be a slave, who loved the slave fights yet touched her with such gentleness. It was confusing. Very, very confusing.
Clarke turned them down a corridor, passing two doors before halting at the end of the hall. The room they entered was, once again, gorgeous. The walls were a dark blue, light wood furniture scattered around seemingly at random, and plush golden carpets covering the marble floor. Lexa found herself captivated by the art on the walls, though.
Almost all of it was done with charcoal, obviously by the same artist, and every piece was exquisite. There were some landscapes, forests and rivers and sunsets and fields, and there were some of people, few of whom Lexa recognized. She saw one she thought was the Chancellor, and another of a woman who Lexa vaguely recognized, but the majority were of a man that she had never seen before.
She looked back at Clarke and revised her opinion.
She had never seen him in person, but she could see him in the line of Clarke's jaw, the curve of her lip, the arch of her nose. "Your father?" The question was asked tentatively, still unsure of Clarke's request for openness.
The blonde sighed behind her. "Yes. His name was Jake. He was killed six months ago."
There was no real anger in her voice, only a resigned hardness, but Lexa turned anyway. "I'm sorry, I didn't know."
Clarke chuckled softly. "How could you?" She looked intently at Lexa. "I told you to speak your mind and you did. You asked a question – an intelligent question, I'll add – and I answered you. I like questions. In fact, I heavily encourage them. If we're going to have the type of relationship I'd like, then total honesty is going to be a necessity on both our parts."
Well that isn't unnerving at all.
Warily Lexa moved to sit at one of the small tables, momentarily distracted by a half-finished sketch lying flat. It depicted one of the gladiator battles, a horseman versus a spearman. Clarke had captured the exact moment when the spear had entered the horseman's side, managing to make it both gruesome and beautiful. The terror on the horseman's face, the naked relief on the other's, all laid out as plain as day for the viewer's eye.
She glanced up with an eyebrow raised. "I knew you liked the slave fights, but this… This is gorgeous." She stroked a finger along the horse's tiny muzzle, eyes forever stuck in a desperate roll.
Clarke beamed, taking the chair opposite her. "I try. I've had a lot of practice, if you couldn't tell." Lexa snorted. Clarke paused, cocking her head slightly to the side. "How did you know I like the slave fights?"
Lexa gestured vaguely at the blonde's body. "It's obvious, really. You give it away quite easily."
Clarke stiffened. "Now I know that isn't true. I have been working on self-control for most of my life, I know there's no way you could read a thing from my face."
Nodding, Lexa hurried to reassure her. "Oh, not your face. Your face is fine. Better than fine. Nice, even." She paused, blushed, and hurried on, ignoring the slight smirk pulling at the corners of Clarke's lips. "Your body language shows it. It's not something you can control easily. You were tensed up, leaning forward, clamped down on the armrest of your chair, and that was just in the ten seconds I saw you talking to the Chancellor. When you got down to the barracks, too, you were still worked up. Flushed, heart pounding, pupils blown. Obvious, if you know what to look for. Which… I do." She trailed off awkwardly.
Clarke was studying her with the most intense look she had ever seen. Swallowing, Lexa forced herself not to fidget, feeling uncannily like a mouse being surveyed by a hawk who was unsure if it was hungry.
Suddenly a smile broke through the blonde's examination, lighting up her face like starlight. "Oh, Lexa my dear, you and I are going to have so much fun together." The blonde bounced slightly in her seat then sobered. "Tell me, Lexa. What do you have that makes life worth living?"
The brunette gaped at her, taken aback by her demeanor and the unexpected question. "I'm… sorry?"
"What do you have to live for? Why do you wake up in the morning, what is your reason for being? Why didn't you let that man kill you in the Arena?" Clarke was giving her that look again, the one that made her feel like her very soul was being weighed. It was unnerving, but something in her made her feel like the answer she gave now would change the course of her life.
She didn't answer immediately, wanting to give an answer that was more than just fluff. Thinking back on the last few days, she realized the answer was obvious, if sobering. "Revenge." She closed her eyes, unwilling to look at Clarke and see her reaction. Lexa knew that it was pathetic, the stuff of clichéd stories and tragic Greek heroes, but it was honestly all she had left. She would find the men who had slaughtered her family and she would kill them in a way that would send shockwaves through even the most hardened soldier's heart.
Light fingers brushed her cheek, startling her eyes open. Clarke had moved closer to her, looking at her in a way that held no judgment or scorn, merely understanding. "When I found out why my father had died, who was responsible, I went a little mad. I locked myself in my room and raged for days, and once the anger had left my system I swore to myself that I would make his killers pay." She grinned ruefully. "It's been more than six months and I haven't gotten very far."
Lexa frowned. "Is that your way of telling me that revenge is a useless endeavor? That I should abandon it, let my sister, my lover go unavenged?"
Clarke shook her head. "Not at all. What it is is my way of telling you that you have to be smart about it. The only way to truly succeed is to plan. Now tell me your story. If I am able, I will help you."
Lexa hesitated, thought what the hell, and told her everything.
Clarke's face betrayed nothing, but internally she was raging. One of the only things her father had left in her was a visceral hatred for rape. She could justify and accept nearly every other crime, but rape was merely cruelty for cruelty's sake, and it disgusted her. Hearing the story of what had happened to Lexa's lover made her sick, but at the same time it made her more certain that she had chosen well. The brunette would do anything and everything to destroy the slavers, that much was obvious.
A question lingered in her mind, though. Pushing aside the more brutal details of the story, she grabbed one of the loose sheets of paper and drew a series of quick sketches. "You said they had crests on their sleeves?" Lexa nodded. "Was it one of these?"
The other girl examined the paper carefully, and when her eyes widened Clarke had her answer. "That one." Lexa pointed at one of the more basic crests on the page.
Clarke grinned humorlessly. She was familiar with that particular company of mercenaries. Her plan was coming together so nicely, she could swear the gods had a hand in it.
"That particular emblem belongs to a mercenary company that calls itself the Bronze Foxes. They are solely employed by Chancellor Jaha, nominally to bulk up our border patrols, but in practice their main work comes from stocking the slave pits. They are brutes to a man." She scoffed. "Not a single one of them can think beyond his own interests, and their commander is the worst of the lot."
Lexa's eyes had narrowed once more. "Why are you telling me this? I'm bound to you, now that you've bought me. Telling me this is just cruel." Her arms crossed in front of her, defensive in a way that Clarke needed to soothe.
The blonde left her seat to kneel in front of Lexa. She saw the brunette's eyes widen in shock at her position and took her hands. "I'm telling you this because I want you to have all the facts before we continue on from here." She paused and took a deep breath. This was it; this was the point of no return.
"I want to overthrow the Chancellor, and I want you to help me."
That was it. That confirmed it.
Clarke was absolutely insane.
She had to have misheard her. "I'm sorry, can you repeat that?" She had to have misheard her. There was no way that this girl, this strange, puzzling blonde girl, was actually proposing high treason.
Clarke smiled. "I want to topple Jaha. He is a corrupt, egotistical man with no understanding of the intricacies of politics and no stomach for hard choices. He will drive this country to ruin, and he knows it, but he does nothing. He doesn't care about his country or his people, he only cares about his own comfort." Her eyes hardened. "He killed my father to protect his throne. That is an offense that I will not let stand."
She looked at Lexa imploringly. "Help me bring him down. You can take your revenge for Anya, for Costia, you can put an end to the entire system that brought about their deaths. Help me change the world, Lexa. Help me remake it."
Lexa's mouth opened and closed soundlessly, struck dumb by the magnitude of Clarke's words. It's not possible, she thought, it could never happen. But when she looked at the blonde, she saw possibility.
Carefully, she asked, "If I were to help you, and if by some miracle we succeeded – who would take over? You?"
"Yes." There was no hesitation, no sense of uncertainty. Clarke meant it completely, and somehow Lexa was okay with the thought. She had no real loyalty to Arcam anyway, if it burned she would not mourn. Clarke could not be worse than some of the mad kings who had reigned in Lignum's past. Somehow Lexa thought she might not be very bad at all.
Still, she didn't want to seem too eager. She raised an eyebrow. "This is a very bold proposal, you realize. What's to stop me taking it straight to the Chancellor, earning my freedom?" She wouldn't, she thought they both knew that, but appearances must be maintained.
Clarke smirked. Lexa's stomach jolted. "For one thing, he'd have you executed for betraying your mistress. For another, he would have you executed for lying. If you want a third, you will be leaving this conversation a free woman no matter what your answer is."
That was a surprise. Lexa had in no way seen that coming. Not for the first time, she thought that Clarke Griffin was absolutely insane. A madwoman with fire in her eyes and the stars in her smile, talking of treason with promises of vengeance and victory woven as if from steel.
"I…" There were no words. This mad, beautiful girl had stolen them all, turned them to dust and blown them away with the force of her conviction. What could she say in the face of such iron certainty? Clarke had absolutely no doubts of what she spoke. Lexa didn't know what else to say but, "Yes. Yes, Clarke Griffin, I will help you overthrow the Chancellor." With that pledge she felt something inside her shift, felt Clarke wind around her very soul and anchor herself there with chains of stardust.
Lexa's words caused something fierce to build inside her, a roiling burst of heat that started in her chest and quickly grew to encompass her whole body. The sudden conviction behind her words, the feeling that the other girl had put her entire being behind that pledge, that was new. No one had ever truly believed in Clarke before. Even her father had coddled her, afraid that the world would be too much for his little girl. Here, now, this small, fierce woman, this hurricane made flesh, was pledging her life to Clarke.
The feeling was intoxicating, a high that Clarke had never felt before. If every moment with Lexa feels like this, I'll never get anything done again. The thought was idle, crossing the surface of her dazzled mind before vanishing into oblivion.
Lexa was watching her, green eyes staring into her with a sun-sharp intensity. It left Clarke breathless, exposed before that bright gaze. She wanted, suddenly, wanted Lexa to find her worthy of following, and just wanted Lexa.
She couldn't do anything about the first, but the second…
That she could do something about.
Slowly, carefully, she reached a hand up, curling it around Lexa's cheek. The brunette's eyes shuttered, lids dropping slightly and head leaning into the caress. Clarke used that caress to draw the woman down towards her, other hand going to rest on the outside of Lexa's thigh. Her eyelids fluttered gently, and slid closed completely at the first brush of lips.
It was an incandescent kiss, gentle and soft, almost chaste, but the feel of Lexa against her skin left trails of fire in their wake. Clarke burned, completely and suddenly, lit aflame by this perplexing woman. Clarke had kissed many people in her life, men and woman alike, had even bedded a good number of them, but never had she been as consumed by one kiss as she was now.
A sharp breath left Lexa's lips and then she pulled back sharply, eyes wide. She lifted shaking fingers to her lips, staring at Clarke in shock. "I… You…" Words escaped her once more. Blinking fiercely, she appeared to draw her jagged edges back together, composing herself admirably. "You say you want this, us, to be based on trust, do you not?"
Clarke nodded, then answered verbally when her silent gesture didn't seem to be enough. "Yes, more than anything."
Lexa grimaced. "Then trust me when I tell you that I'm not ready, not yet. Costia died not a week ago, and I met you only hours past. I cannot be with you with my heart, and I will not be with you with only my body. Can you accept that?"
Clarke examined her carefully. She seemed stoic enough, but her skin was pale and her hands trembled minutely. It seemed she had been pushed to the very limits of her endurance, quite understandably. It had been a very long day for her.
She nodded. "I can. Now, let me give you the gist of what I need from you, and then it will be to the baths and to bed for you." She waited for Lexa's acknowledgement before continuing. "All right. What I need from you is the appearance of a slave. Though you would be allowed to leave at any time with freeman's papers, and though I will draw you a wage which we will discuss later, I need you to pretend that you are my body slave. It will keep people from questioning us. A noblewoman and her personal slave attract no attention, however a noblewoman befriending a freed slave is absolutely out of the question. You understand?"
Lexa nodded. "You swear to me that I can leave if I choose?" Clarke dipped her head. "And you're willing to treat me as an equal in private?" Clarke nodded again. "Then I accept your terms. May we hold off on any more discussion? I believe that fatigue from today's events has begun to catch up with me."
Laughing, Clarke stood up and held out her hand for Lexa to grasp. "Up with you, then. Clean yourself up, then sleep. A healer will be waiting once you get out of the bath. Your bedroom is through here, it's attached to my own. The bath is through that door."
Lexa grunted and stumbled off in the indicated direction, body finally betraying its weariness to the world. Clarke stood for a moment and contemplated the closed door. This… she had not expected this today. Her plans had been vague, formless things before, but upon seeing Lexa fight, they had crystallized into something tangible, something real.
She laughed. This girl inspired her, and Clarke had no idea why. Why she saved her, why she freed her, why she let her set terms to their… what. Relationship? Partnership? Whatever the phrase, one thing was certain. Lexa made her lose control in a most unusual way. For the first time in a long, long time Clarke didn't know what the future held.
At least she'd have her hurricane with her when she found out. A girl forged of sunlight and iron could only make things fun.