Hahaha, this chap was really fun to write!
It was several days later before she felt like bringing Clarke back into the loop. Lexa had needed the reprieve to further mend her heart and mind. In the interim, she had mindlessly gone through the motions, allowing events to play out as they had done that first day. The pauna barely frightened her at all by this point and she now knew the most effective way to subdue and potentially kill it. This may or may not have been a good thing, for assuming she did manage to break this curse, she would probably be overly confident against the next one she encountered. And as anyone with any sense knew, (or had dealt with Clarke) underestimation was the bringer of self destruction.
"Here's looking at you, kid," said Lexa to Clarke that morning after dressing.
Deftly, she dealt with the inevitable 'freak out' and proceeded to 'fill in the blanks.' If nothing else, this time loop was teaching her a variety of whimsical, though often apt, expressions. She particularly liked, 'fight fire with fire'. It was of a similar nature to her own peoples' war cry.
Once Clarke mulled that all over she said, "So what do you want to do today, Lexa?"
"I would like you to teach me how to use your gun." Clarke's eyes widened. "I would offer you in kind with a weapon of your choice," Lexa smirked slightly to hide the pain, "but there seems little point."
Clarke gave her a compassionate look in understanding. "I thought your people were forbidden from touching our weapons, let alone firing them?"
"In the past that may have been true..." she shrugged.
"But now you don't really care. And you're curious."
She tilted her head in acknowledgement.
While Clarke set up the target practice some distance from Tondc, Lexa put on war paint for the first time since entering this place. As she observed herself in the mirror shard she found lying around in the house, she immediately felt more powerful and like she had a sense of purpose, rather than aimlessly doing whatever she could think of to fill the days and occupy her mind.
With that accomplished, she checked on Clarke's progress and found that the girl had been patiently waiting for Lexa to finish. The targets were bits of wood on tree stumps at increasingly distant ranges. She could barely make out the last one on the horizon of this old wood harvesting field.
"Okay, so I'm no expert at this, I only learned after coming to Earth, but anyway, I've found that there's really not much to it. You basically just point and shoot. Oh, but you have to make sure you take off the safety first or nothing will happen."
"Safety?"
Clarke held the gun sideways and pointed to a little button. "You push this one so that you can fire by pulling the trigger." She twitched her finger against the protruding metal piece. Then she pointed to another button just off to the side of the first one. "This one makes the clip eject." Clarke demonstrated, catching it quickly before it fell to the ground. She held this object horizontally. "These are the bullets. They're spring loaded in the clip. Every time you pull the trigger, the next one automatically gets pushed upwards until you're out." She inserted the clip back into the gun until it clicked. "There's only maybe seven rounds...bullets in here, I don't remember...and I snuck another clip from the supplies, but altogether there's still not many bullets to practice with, so take your time aiming." She turned to the nearest target. "There's a tiny bit of recoil, so be prepared for that." Clarke fired at the target once, her hand shuddering ever so slightly backward. The deafening noise sent the broken piece of wood flying. Clarke collected another as replacement and handed the gun over to Lexa.
As if using her sword, she took a wider stance than Clarke, levelled the barrel at the wood and fired. The shot went completely wide and missed the mark altogether, causing a slight explosion of dirt instead.
"That was good," said Clarke patronizingly. "Try again."
Lexa did, over and over until the clip was finished. On the last shot she finally managed to chip the wood. It didn't even fall over. To make matters worse, her ears were ringing horribly and she felt on the verge of a headache. Lexa tightened her grip on the boisterous weapon, resisting the urge to toss it at the wood, at least that way she would probably hit it.
She didn't understand why she was so incompetent at this activity. She had trained almost her whole life with various different weapons, had keen eyesight, could reliably hit small moving targets with her dagger, was considered by many to be exceptionally skilled...so why on earth couldn't she hit a stupid piece of wood ten feet in front of her?
"This instrument is defective," she glowered at it as if it had done her a grievous wrong.
She looked to Clarke who was clearly trying her best not to appear amused.
"I think maybe you're trying too hard. Just relax. Take a deep breath and then fire."
Clarke tossed her the next clip. Lexa ejected the empty one and loaded the new one in, or tried to; the stupid thing wouldn't go in all the way and click like it had done for Clarke.
"The bullet points need to be facing the barrel."
Embarrassed, Lexa turned the clip around and shoved it in without once looking at her mentor, feeling as dumb as she had when she was seven and Anya had begun her bow and arrow training, and Lexa had held the bow the wrong way and consequently notched the arrow tip pointing towards her own head...
Determined to do better this time, she did as Clarke said and was certain to hit the target. She pressed the trigger and nothing happened.
"Every time you reload, the safety resets. Sorry. Forgot to mention that."
Lexa clamped her teeth together, pressed the button and the clip fell out and bounced off her boot. She hastily retrieved it, made sure it was facing the right way and stuck it in again. She pressed the other button, and the clip stayed put.
Once more she followed Clarke's advice, doing her best to relax. This was easier said than done now that she had made an utter fool of herself in front of the girl she probably loved, or was very close to loving.
Somehow she willed her emotions to comply so that the next shot hit the damn piece of wood.
Clarke clapped condescendingly. "Nice one!"
Lexa took aim at the next target, a little further out. Three shots later and she hit that one too.
Clarke clapped even more condescendingly. "Looks like you're getting the hang of it."
After the remaining bullets were expended, she still hadn't managed to hit the third target, barely twenty feet away...and unmoving. For such a disgraceful display, Anya would have disowned her as her second had she been here.
Lexa calmed herself and waited for the ringing to stop again before turning to face Clarke. The girl looked like she wanted to make all manner of snide comments but refrained, and instead smiled patronizingly and patted Lexa on the shoulder in the most condescending way yet.
"So I could try to steal another clip of ammunition from Byrne's stash, but I'm getting the strong feeling you don't want to do this anymore."
Rather than respond, or throttle the girl, Lexa stalked off without her.
The next day, Lexa made the same request and they went off to shoot the same pieces of wood in the same place. Since she didn't make all of the same embarrassing mistakes as the first time, she managed to do better on this second attempt. Still, she was far from accomplished and it bothered her to no end that Clarke was without any effort.
They kept going out there every day until Lexa was just as proficient as she was with her dagger, maybe even more so.
In rapid succession, and with pinpoint accuracy, she obliterated all of the targets, even the farthest one away that she could barely see.
"Wow!" exclaimed Clarke in disbelief. "That was amazing, Lexa! I can't believe how fast you picked up on this!"
Lexa just smiled slyly, inordinately pleased with herself for impressing her teacher to such an extent.
That is until Clarke became suspicious.
"You know, you were almost too good. We haven't done this before, have we?"
"I'm a highly trained warrior, Clarke," she replied breezily. "And according to you, there's nothing to it," she added condescendingly.
Clarke made a face but didn't question her word and they headed back to Tondc, Lexa already dreaming up their next activity together.