destroy the middle, it's a waste of time

[heda]

WHO: Lexa & Clarke
WHAT: Unexpected reunions
WHEN: Wintermarch 20something
WHERE: Emprise du Lion
NOTES: Mild(??) to moderate(????) violence, language, discussion of massacres, I don't know probably nothing

[ Lexa isn't looking for Clarke. Maybe she was at first, just a little. As she made her way down through the hills, circling around the Red Templars' strongholds and hunting grounds to approach Sahrnia from the west like the traveler she's pretending to be. As she trekked through the snowy trails and snuck past quarries and cages maybe she looked. Maybe she checked for blonde heads, scanned for that bright telltale hair among the dead or the soon-to-be. She doesn't expect to find anything, and she doesn't. Even if Clarke is alive-- and that is far from certain-- she would hardly linger here of all places. She is either dead or months gone.

In the village there is plenty to see. Inquisition forces arriving en masse, setting up their tents and their standards, sending out scouts here, hunters there. The tavern is packed with them, and it's there that Lexa slips into the crowd, covers her hair and changes her posture and ducks into the warmth and the noise and lets herself turn invisible. She watches and she listens and maybe she drinks, just a little. Just enough to keep warm and keep up appearances, not enough to get soft or let her tongue slip. But just enough that when she's leaving one night and shrugging her cloak more tightly around her and she sees a flash of pale hair out the corner of her eye, she thinks maybe she's just seeing what she wants to see. For a moment she thinks of what Titus would say, or Indra. She follows anyway.

As soon as she catches up enough to see her back she's sure. Through the heavy clothes, through the snow flurrying down into lashes and the edge of her hood, she's sure. It stops her heart but not her feet and she follows, sticking to corners and shadows, recalling lessons on stealthy pursuit she hasn't had to use in years. (Anya wouldn't approve of this, either.) When Clarke reaches a cookfire on the edge of the Inquisition camp Lexa hangs back well shy of its glow, watching from the gloom beneath overhanging beams, the ribs of a hollowed out building. She should turn around and leave. She has assured herself that Clarke is alive. It should be enough.

She watches, and when she is as sure as she can be that there is no one else nearby she steps out into the firelight. ]

Hello, Clarke.

Comments

[levered]

[ For a moment Clarke is very still.

She had been still before, too, staring into the fire. Being able to usher flames into existence at her fingertips doesn't make them any less hypnotic, when it's dark and she's tired, cold, sore from being knocked down onto ice and struck with a shield. Turning numbers over in her head. One saved for each one killed. She's still several people short, but she can already guess that it won't be enough, when she gets there. Two saved, maybe. Three.

The difference between still and very still, for the record, is breathing. For a moment she stops. She hasn't restarted when she turns to look at Lexa where she's standing on the edge of the light, and she doesn't say hello. Her expression, shadowed with her back to the fire, is only mildly alarmed, mildly irate, a little searching and a little disbelieving. But in her chest and her throat the repressed urge to start screaming makes it impossible for anything else to pass, even air. ]

[heda]

[ Lexa misinterprets Clarke's silence as shock alone, seeing what she wants to see in the pause and the search and the only muted anger. She'd feared worse-- even expected it-- but some little corner of her had hoped that if Clarke lived she would understand. And that's what this looks like, at least in that first moment.

She steps forward, air catching in the gray-green cloak covering her hair and pushing it back, droplets of melted snow catching the flickering light among braids as she closes the gap to a few yards. Her eyes drop, scanning Clarke more carefully now that she is near enough. ]

You look well. [ Relatively, at least. She's not dead or coated in blood. ]

[levered]

Well, [ Clarke repeats.

She isn't dead. She isn't coated in blood.

She's still wearing those gloves.

But the word comes out like she's spitting it at Lexa's feet, short and furious and astonished that she dared. That astonishment keeps her still for another second or two, eyes narrowing in increments. She doesn't notice the light catching in Lexa's hair like sparks, but if she did, it would at most serve as inspiration to light her hair on fire.

Or, not quite her hair. Clarke does step forward, twice; fire does spring out of her palm as she rears her hand back low at her side; she does throw it at Lexa like a handful of mud, with just as much scorn. But in the end it's only aimed for her cloak, even though she's raising her voice now, almost shouting, ] I'll kill you.

[heda]

[ Lexa realizes her miscalculation as soon as Clarke speaks, but the vehemence of her reaction still catches her by surprise. There ought to be guards here to drag Clarke away as soon as the threat begins, but the shadows she has allowed to accompany her to Emprise have been left behind in the tavern and it is just her and the furious mage as the hem of her cloak bursts into flame, quickly licking up the flimsy cloth.

Lexa stamps on it, grinds it into the snowy ground beneath the sole of her boot and looks back up. She has not retreated so much as a step and she doesn't now, either not afraid of death or not afraid of Clarke. Instead she fixes her eyes on Clarke's, the first good look at her she has really gotten since they parted months ago.

Maybe well wasn't the word after all. ]

[levered]

[ There's no more fire (magic is to serve man) but there is Clarke, coming forward as soon as she sees that Lexa isn't going to disappear, burn away, step back—Clarke follows the fire she'd thrown across the snow to shove Lexa's shoulders with both hands. It's a push firm enough to knock down someone who doesn't have solid footing, but no firmer.

If her eyes are welling up, it's entirely out of anger. ]

You—

[ For the moment, that's all she has. That and a choked-off noise. ]

[heda]

[ Lexa takes the push. The force of it rocks her, and she steps back with one foot to brace herself, but that's all. She has a knife at her hip, the metal on the hilt dully aglow in the firelight now that her cloak has been disarranged, but she doesn't reach for it as Clarke moves into her space. She keeps her chin up and her face still, determined to make clear that she is not afraid, despite Clarke's power giving her the upper hand in this moment.

Instead she looks at her, close and careful, watches her anger flare and her eyes get wet and her voice falter as Lexa searches her for the girl she left behind. She doesn't find her. And it hits her straight in the gut, a sick, sinking feeling that sucks anything defiant out of her, because she did this. She cannot take it back-- wouldn't if she could-- but it doesn't make staring the result in the face any easier. Not when it's Clarke. ]

I'm sorry.

[levered]

[ You're sorry, Clarke could repeat; she could have the whole conversation that way, probably, echoing anything Lexa says with added skepticism and rage, while Lexa looks on with a cat's intelligent, observant, unfeeling impassivity, except--

Clarke knows her. Not well, or not as well as she hoped, but well enough for those two words to feel weighty instead of flippant. It's not enough. It doesn't matter that she's sorry. But Clarke doesn't shove her again, standing there with one hand still caught on her shoulder where Lexa refused to fall out from under it for the second it takes her to blink the almost-tears out of her eyes.

She drops her hand. She doesn't step back. She might need to shove her again in a moment. ]

What do you want?

[heda]

[ There's a moment that hangs suspended between them-- and then Lexa steps back. It's not far enough to create the gulf that it feels like ought to separate them, or to find the yawning pit that part of Lexa wishes would swallow her up, but it's something. Her brow furrows and lips part like she's going to speak, but instead she gives a little shake of her head and steps back again. ]

Nothing. [ Her voice is steady and clear but she says it quietly, eyes dropping away. She shakes her head again, and reaches to pull the hood of her cloak back up, rough cloth dotted wet from the snow. ] When you return to your people, know that you can travel safely through my lands. [ That's all, it seems, and with another step backwards she turns to go. ]