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Who: Clarke Griffin (

adamance)
When: Circa the intro log, just after the explosion.
Where: On the edge of the explosion.
What: Reunion times, CW (the TV network ...) drama, and leadering on probably.

Too caught up in what had been absolute confirmation of this not being death—and then beginning the rituals of survival—she hadn't seen Clarke emerge from her pod. Part of this is why she never ended up with scraps of metal before the explosion, and why she's later lamenting her loss in that arena. Just the same, she has other spoils: the sap-colored remains of the plant that had grown tall and tried to smother anyone who approached. She carries them gingerly as she returns, setting them in a hidden spot once she takes to the ruin of pods and embers scattered around.

Just as had been remarked before: Lexa has been at the scene of this before. But here's the filler point, the point that's necessary to mention: Lexa had been just beside Clarke, scarf wrapped around her head. In the distant, through a haze of smoke and people scattering, she sees Clarke again, and finds herself puzzled by her appearance.

After shoving a few deliberate sticks over her destroyed plant, she begins to cross the way to Clarke, stepping around points that seem unstable. Lexa can only assume what she looks like after that: a person who should be dead, a person returning from flames. The Spirit still lies within her, giving her life. (It hadn't been taken just yet.) When she comes to stop before Clarke, there's some relief in her eyes, even if it's unfair to both of them. She had already been taken from her people, and now Clarke is in the same position. It's unfair—and yet, there's still the remnant of their words before they kissed, the thoughts of not owing anything more to their people.

(Even here, Lexa feels as if she owes them. She owes her.)

"Clarke," she says, trying to do her best to make it clear that she isn't some fabrication, some illusion brought forward by fumes and whatever else. "I told you that my spirit would live on. I want it to be clear that I hadn't meant this." She is alive, even if she hasn't figured out how or why.

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Clarke's been trying to be productive while falling down a mental spiral of what do I do for however long she's been here. She hasn't even tried to make friends just yet, focusing on her own survival for the time being, and in fact she's so wrapped up in her own world that she's almost forgotten there are other people around.

Well, that is until she hears her voice.

Lexa's right to speak clearly, to convince her it's not just in her head, because her first thought is that it's the heat. The heat is getting to her, making her hear the voices of dead loved ones. Her dad'll be next, maybe Finn, but it makes sense that it's Lexa first - the freshest one, the one that hurts most right now.

But it's not the heat, as Clarke finds out quickly, turning around and letting the rest of Lexa's words sink in.

"Lexa, oh my god," she says, like the air's leaving her chest all too fast. She takes a few steps to close the distance between them but doesn't dare reach out and touch her yet. "How...?"

To a degree, she imagines that she's fortunate that she recalls her death so vividly: she recalls the moments in which her fight had ended, ready to live on and guide the next Commander. If she didn't, if somehow she had experienced the same lapse of memory that she's now experiencing of her time after her death and waking in the prod, Lexa knows that her approach to this would be different.

But she knows loss and grief, no matter how much she once claimed to be distanced from it. She had felt the greatest loss finally sated the moment she threw her spear at Nia's heart.

There is a slow, tenuous step as she's aware of the heat, both from the flames and the desert air. "I don't know," she says, and admitting that she lacks knowledge of something is as difficult as it's ever been for Lexa. She doesn't know. Certainty is something that she's exuded every step of the way. Clarke has been one of the few who's challenged that certainty to great success. "But I am alive. Whoever brought us here saw fit to ensure that my fight goes on."

"Yeah, I can see that," Clarke says, looking down at Lexa's exosuit and then back up at her face. She's still clearly in distress. Everything about this situation is distressing, and now she has to deal with the mixed relief and fresh grief of having Lexa standing here in front of her. It's like seeing her in the City of Light, but this time she knows they're both flesh and blood - well, that's as far as she can tell.

This still could be a really bad dream, right?

Regardless of whether it's a dream or not, Clarke finally breaks down and wraps her arms around Lexa's shoulders, pulling her in for a tight hug. "I missed you so much," she says, "I'm just happy to see your face again."

Though there is some thought in the back of her mind of where they are, and the people surrounding them at all angles, Lexa is aware that these people are not her people. Titus had taught her to be self-conscious about these things, and it will be a long time before those lessons fade. Her mind presses forward, not allowing her to free herself from the opportunity of this hug, to finally be able to give Clarke something back that she hadn't been able to offer on her death bed.

It feels like comfort—and it doesn't take long for her to recognize that it goes both ways.

"I can say the same myself," she offers. The words are awkward, knowing that she died, knowing that she had been comfortable with the idea of her death. But still: there had been no part of Lexa that wanted to abandon Clarke. She had set up various gambits to protect her even if she died. There was no way to guess how it would actually happen. "I never meant to leave you so soon." At least now she can say this, instead of offering the same false consolation that was meant to comfort her and all the Commanders who had come before her.

Clarke pulls back, forcing herself to smile and nod. "I know," she says. It's the truth. If nothing else, by the time Lexa was in her deathbed, Clarke knew she would never have left her on purpose. They had come to that understanding at least.

But enough about that. Clarke doesn't need that reassurance right now. She never doubted Lexa for a moment after she died, and maybe that was because she got so caught up in the whirlwind that A.L.I.E. created, but that just highlights the bigger problem here.

"Lexa, I have to go back," she says. "I don't know how we got here or why, but I have to get back home and help save everyone."

Though there may be some inclination to take advantage of the time they have together (time that they lamented that they may never have together, hours before Titus' stray bullet struck through Lexa's midsection), Lexa stands back and is quick to attention. While she would like to say that she would gladly return to her people, she doesn't know if that's possible. What if what's maintaining her life is this suit, and without it, she will bear the same wound she had before?

Even without the ache of the injury, she can't help but wonder. Still, she has seen enough to know that it would be risky to part with this suit.

"Our people need you," she says, asserting it with absolute confidence. Some of their people may not accept this on both sides of the proverbial aisle, but this belief comes to Lexa rather easily. "Has Chancellor Pike taken advantage of the power vacuum after my death to wage war?" It's something that is so clear to her now. That end result makes the most sense, which is what happens when she lacks the bulk of the necessary information.

God, she can't believe that was their biggest problem so recently as Lexa's death. "Yeah," she says, unconvincingly. "That's... one of the things that happened."

She starts to think about telling the whole story, about how they got from that to Clarke entering the City of Life and killing A.L.I.E. once and for all, but it's a lot and a lot of the pain is so fresh right now. She's visibly distressed by the time she actually manages to think of something to say, shoulders curling forward and brows knit together.

"Maybe we should find somewhere to sit. There's so much to tell you."

The distress is both apparent and palpable. As someone who's spent a great deal of time staring at Clarke's face to examine her every emotion (emotions that Lexa had gotten very good at hiding most of the time), she sees it almost immediately. Her neck straightens, eyes heavy as she looks at her, and when she finally requests to sit, Lexa's hand catches her elbow quickly. There's a part of her that wants to keep touching her, but she doesn't want to overwhelm her, either.

"I want to know everything." Part of that is to know what Clarke has gone through. In Lexa's mind, Clarke has become elevated—in part because, as she had told Titus once, she elevates herself. And part of it is because even here, even knowing that she's died, those are still her people. She can't rid herself of her worries for them, even as she separates this current situation from her other life.

She motions in the direction of where there is some slightly elevated ground so that the two of them can sit.

Clarke lets herself breathe until they're sitting down, and after another moment's pause to collect her thoughts she begins to tell the whole story. Starting with Titus giving her the Flame, Ontari's massacre of the Nightbloods, and her journey back to Arkadia only to find it overtaken by A.L.I.E.. The words come out fast as she moves from one action to another, trying not to dwell too long on each thing in case she can't finish the story. She talks about Raven figuring out that the Flame is also the key to defeating the AI, and going to find Luna and how A.L.I.E. found them even there, and then discovering Polis having been taken over by A.L.I.E. as well. Her voice shakes when she talks about using Ontari's blood to take the Flame herself to go into the City of Light, about how Becca led them to the kill switch so she could finally put an end to it, and how after all that she only felt like she had a moment before she ended up here.

She takes a deep breath and looks down at her hands. "The thing is, when I was in there... A.L.I.E. showed me why she did it. She showed me that there are nuclear plants all over the world and in six months everything's going to be covered in radiation. That's why I have to go back, so that I can help put a stop to it or at least help save my people and your people..."

She turns pleading eyes up toward Lexa like she's searching for forgiveness for the fact that she wants to leave when they've only just been reunited.

It's a great deal of information to absorb. Lexa's face falls at the appropriate points: Titus giving Clarke the Flame, Ontari slaughtering the Nightbloods (Lexa realizes now that she should have called for her death, that she should have insisted that she stay where Lexa herself could keep an eye on her), and the mention of Luna. The condition of her people worries her, even without the threat of the world burning all over again. Only at the end does she manage to pull it together, but there's a familiar glossiness to her gaze that she can't (and has never been able to) defeat.

Her eyes meet Clarke's squarely. "You will go back." There is some certainty in that, and maybe it's because Lexa believes that Clarke is a person who could and would do whatever possible for her people. "They're our people, Clarke. I believe you'll make it there." It's not the first time she's corrected her about the "our" people facet. It won't be the last.

There is, however, a "but," and one not centralized on her desire to keep her there. Lexa believes that goes unspoken. Almost as if she needs to gather herself, she looks out toward the ruin of the pods. They're clearly what brought them there, but however it happened, there's no chance that they'll be able to return. "But for now, we need to focus on where we are. We need to ensure that you're alive to return. That means we have to work with these people." If these words were to anyone else, it would be different and therefore condescending. In Clarke, her words are forceful but meant to be comforting. They're also meant to refocus her. She knows how relentless Clarke is once she sets her mind on something, almost to the point of self-destruction. They've only had such a short time to know and love one another, but Lexa admires that in her.

She just fears that it might be the very thing that hurts her here.

Lexa says what she knows is true, but she still doesn't want to hear it. In her mind there's a quick way home. They were dropped in this place so casually and given all these resources to survive; she can't imagine that whoever is responsible is already so far out of reach that they can't just reverse it right away. This all feels so intentional which means someone somewhere can make it right. She just has to find that someone.

But Lexa's right. There's no way to find that someone, no way to even know they can reverse it, and so they can only move forward. They can only focus on surviving and solving this mystery and that means working with the people they landed with. Clarke holds Lexa's gaze as long as she can manage and then her resolve breaks and she looks down at her hands.

"I'm scared," she says. She wants to go home.

Lexa struggles with comfort, but she takes it on as if it's a duty for her right now. There are swirling uncertainties in her mind (ALIE, a name that's so familiar, and everything about the Flame being what she knew and somehow felt she had been denying for so long). By focusing on Clarke, she can forget herself. She can put aside the fact that she died in such a manner, taken out by a bullet and a gun that Titus would not have used under any other circumstances. She can put aside the reminder that her people were hurt in her absence, that Aden would never be the Commander even if he was strong and brave and had such an easily set jaw when it came to his future responsibilities.

For now, it's Clarke alone. Titus would admonish her for this. He would remind her that she should think of survival. But she had already decided that she was allowed to care for Clarke. She was allowed this.

She is allowed this.

Her hand reaches out for one of Clarke's, and it's apparent that there's some trepidation behind the action. It's because of Lexa's lack of familiarity with physical comfort and affection in recent years that she struggles, but she holds on just the same. Words escape her at first, so she just holds on. When the words finally come to her, she says, "I doubt you're alone." It's not that Lexa isn't afraid. It's that the demonstration of fear is something that's been trained out of her to the degree that she can barely fathom it.

"But I'll protect you here, Clarke. I'll make sure you get back to our people." It's a sentiment that she shared in the City of Light, though obviously she's unaware of that now.

Clarke always felt like there were cultural differences between them, but they could always connect on a basic level. The grounders never seemed like a touchy-feely people in general and Clarke never would have presumed Lexa would be any different. She knows Lexa's not overly affectionate but it just makes her appreciate it more when it happens.

She squeezes Lexa's hand and covers it with her other one, still holding back tears. All of this is so overwhelming and it's a blessing to have someone here she can trust and confide in.

"I missed you so much."

"I know what it's like to miss you. It wouldn't have taken me long to do the same here." It's hard to deny that her period of betrayal had been anything but a mistake for her, and one she quickly realized. Even before Clarke had forgiven her, she had come to realize the error of her ways. Now, she can admit it with ease, though Clarke putting a knife to her throat first had been the means of breaking the initial facade ...

"Not so much that I'd ask for you to be here," she adds, just to make it clear. "But we are a force together. I believe we can only help ourselves more easily this way." More clearly: Clarke is a force, and Lexa knows how competent she is herself. Her belief in Clarke can shatter anything, and it's unlikely to fade soon.

"You're right," Clarke says, nodding and offering a small smile. She does feel reassured and focused with Lexa here, and having spoken to her now. It's still an awful situation, but she does believe that they can get through it together better than she ever could alone, and she really is grateful for that at least.

Her smile fades as she looks away, though. "I'm not sure about these people, though. Do you think they're all from Earth?"

"I have my doubts about that," she says slowly, recalling how some of them have approached this situation. More than that, their way of carrying themselves has been ... with some unique attributes. "Some of them are powerful. I saw a man dismantle a plant just by thinking about it. It stripped his suit of its power, but he seemed to act as if it was commonplace."

As much as her people can err on the mysticism side of their belief system, this is something that she's unable to find a rational explanation for. Strength is one thing, being born to be a leader is one thing, but this ...

She's fairly certain this doesn't come from their world.

Clarke heaves a sigh, looking worried. "So, some of them might be aliens. I lived in space and I never even dreamed of going to other planets," she says, turning to look at Lexa again. "Whoever did this has technology way beyond anything we've ever seen on Earth."

There's a moment there where she stares forward, which looks like Lexa is spacing out for a moment, but it's really her interfacing with the other Commanders. Clarke is likely to recognize it for what it is, as she's done it herself (albeit temporarily). "The closest we had in our world was what the first Commander brought to my people." The knowledge is distant and uncertain, but she knows that it lines up. "Even then, she didn't know of true life outside of our planet. As far as I can tell." From what she's telling Lexa, from what she's gleaming—if this turns out to be the case because of dystopian tropes, the chip is too damaged to provide the information.

"But what I've seen doesn't line up with genetic impurity. It must be something like that."

Clarke lets all those words sink in for a while. Genetic impurity. Some of these people seem far more than human, but at the base level they're still the same. Are they from the future? Are they from some other planet that just happens to have created beings just like humans on Earth but with those minor differences? Clarke doesn't want to wonder anymore.

"This is so much more than I've ever had to deal with," she says quietly.

"Perhaps. There may be nothing that I can say to help you with these feelings." In part because Lexa herself struggles to express them. "But I would ask for no one else to weather this with me, Clarke." It's a statement that is both terribly romantic, but speaks to the responsibilities they've taken on before.

She believes in her. Quite sappily, even.

Clarke smiles in spite of all her anxiety, looking at Lexa's face properly and appreciating for the millionth time how important she is to her. She can't help herself at this point; she leans forward to lean her head on Lexa's shoulder, nuzzling into her neck just a little without being too presumptuous about how close Lexa is willing to get while people can see them.

"I feel the same way."

Lexa's years of training are the cause for her being self-conscious about this. At the same time, she recalls the ceremony where Clarke had to lower herself to her knees in front of her, and she knows exactly what her people thought of that. Still, she offered her fealty in return in privacy, well away from the roving eyes of anyone in Polis—even Titus himself.

(She knows now that this had been one of her better ideas—though she obviously wishes she never had the confirmation.)

As such, though there is a moment of mental hesitation, she mentally acclimates and adjusts. There's no part of Lexa that doesn't desire the closeness here, and she turns her head to breathe in deeply. The smell of burning candles and rustic surroundings are absent at the moment, replaced by the remains of the pod explosions ... which is hardly giving her a chance to really experience the closeness of being near someone she loves. (Even if she hasn't said the words yet. Someday, someday she will.)

"We will survive this," she says, and dips in to press her lips to the top of Clarke's head. "And remember that life is more than about that survival, as well." A callback to some of her final words, but purposefully stated. What lies ahead will be difficult, but this remains true, even if she only realized it in the last few weeks of her (previous) life.

Clarke has to squeeze her eyes shut again when Lexa kisses the top of her head, imagining again what they could have been if Lexa hadn't died that day. She would have been happy to stay in Polis or travel with Lexa once peace had been established and the skaikru were safe, to be her sounding board on strategic matters and to be the warm arms she came back to when she didn't want to think about said strategic matters anymore. Part of her knows she wouldn't have been able to stand such a passive lifestyle, but another part of her really wishes she had the chance to try it anyway. It would have been close enough to the action, surely, and she's seen so much already.

She'll never get the opportunity to find out, so it's useless to wonder, but wonder she does. Clarke sighs heavily, her breath shaking a little on the way out. "Thank you, Lexa," she says. And she means everything.

From Lexa's perspective, it would almost be impossible to dream of a Clarke Griffin who could be idle. That had been part of the problem, and part of their difficulty in saying good-bye. What if Clarke had left before they had connected that day? Lexa knows there's a chance that she would have lived; Titus' concerns were, undoubtedly, made worse because of her willingness to keep Clarke there longer, to hold her there when she needed to be gone.

To make it clear that all of Skaikru needed to adhere to her rule, not just "most of Skaikru minus the woman Heda loves."

But they would never be in that position, never would be able to know what a slightly different path could offer them. They only have this: a stolen life in a place that neither would ask for from one another. It is what it is, which is a haunting and constant reminder for the two of them.

"You're welcome, Clarke." They will have to get up and tend to other people's wounds. They will have to see what comes next. And they will, because that's how the two of them handle things.

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