fragile | clexa

chapter seventeen

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Clarke's heart left her body when she woke up lying in Lexa's bed and the woman sat in front of her painting.

Her heart left that entire world when she properly realized for the first time what she had painted. Last night had been a mess and blur of memories and various things on her mind and candlelight, but fuck. That was Lexa on the painting. And the forest in the background consisted of almost only her eye color.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck fuck.

She kept quiet, mortified that she'd been carried away so much to paint that and that Lexa now fucking saw it.

The woman turned around after a while and jumped when she saw Clarke sitting on the bed, nervously chewing her lips and fiddling with her hands. "I'm sorry," was the first things she rushed out when their eyes met. "I shouldn't have. I'm so sorry."

Why did she keep fucking everything up?

"Oh my God Clarke. This is insane. How haven't you told me you're a godly artist? Look at how well you did this- this everything! In one night? How long were you up?"

Clarke blushed, she was quite sure. "Oh um- thank you. I did not look at the time. I am very sorry if I misrepresented you, I did not quite pay attention to what I was painting."

"You didn't pay attention and this was the result?"

"I was a little lost in my head," Clarke admitted. She hated that she had been.

Lexa just nodded and looked over to the painting once again. "Are you tired? You must be. Did you have bad dreams?"

Clarke shook her head. Strangely. she hadn't. Just an exhausted, empty sleep.

"Are you tired?"

Yeah, Clarke was insanely tired. More than usually. She nodded shyly.

"Okay. Try to sleep again, I'll be in the bathroom but if you need me, you can just call."

Clarke nodded again and let out a breath she hadn't known she had been holding when Lexa was gone.

She shook her head and curled back up in the furs, looking over her shoulder once to check if anyone was there to correct the way she laid. No slave was supposed to curl up, she reminded herself, though Clarke fell asleep before she could move back into any rigid position.

-

That day, after Clarke had reassured Lexa she was okay with it, they went to get that surgery on her leg. Clarke was scared, of course she was, but she got to lie on that chair again with Lexa sitting in front of her and that made everything acceptable.

Also, Lexa held her hand again. Clarke didn't know why she would be calmed by the touch instead of being freaked out, but she laid there looking at that green that was all over her painting too, Lexa absentmindly rubbed her thumb over Clarke's skin and for a moment it was okay that her leg was being cut open.

She had to lie for a week at least after that surgery, the healers said and any visits with Artigas were erased from the probably not existing schedule. Everything was. What was she supposed to do lying?

At least she got to lie in Lexa's bed instead of the healer's tent.

So what Lexa and Clarke did after the blonde woke up the following day from those making-you-sleepy medicine she had gotten, was simply sitting and lying on the bed. Lexa was sitting and Clarke lying, to be exact.

What bothered Clarke was that she could not properly move her arms either or really sit up, so Lexa had to feed her. Not that Lexa made it weird, she just sat next to Clarke at the bed every now and then and fed her spoon fulls of light soup, but it was taking her time and effort and- it just bothered Clarke how she sat there with that patience and care. It made her feel weird.

And then sometimes she would sit and read something to Clarke and of course had to regularly change her bandages too. She didn't get why the Heda cared that much. It would have been insanely nice already to send a guard, but no, Lexa herself was sitting in that tent in TonDC just for a slave?

Lexa never seemed to mind. Clarke wondered how she did that. By the time she was allowed to walk again, Lexa had taken off her bandages fully, carried her into the bathroom and let her take a bath while getting new clothes.

"If that's okay with you I'll have a closer look at your body today," Lexa said when she came back into the room and Clarke stopped in her movement of making a tiny wave into the water of the bath.

"Okay," she said, not sure what to think of the situation.

"Yeah?"

Clarke nodded. Yeah. That was okay. That was the whole point anyway, Lexa looking at her body. No reason to freak out.

-

Clarke got a little more afraid when she was only dressed in underwear and chestbindings before Lexa wanted to 'look at her body'. She didn't even know what that meant.

"Tell me to stop Clarke," Lexa said and then sat her on the edge of the bathtub with a cloth and a bowl of water and some other stuff Clarke couldn't see. It made her even more scared. Tell her to stop with what? "Okay?"

"Okay. I'm just going to check the injuries and clean your body, but tell me if it's too much."

Lexa started by cutting her toe nails. That was odd and certainly not what Clarke had expected, but Lexa did it anyway and then washed her feet. Her body unconsciously squirmed with the ticklish contact of the cloth at the underside of her feet.

"You okay?" Lexa asked and Clarke nodded.

"Tickles," she said and caused Lexa to smile a little.

Then, Lexa washed her legs, skipping her recent surgical injury and the cuts that weren't full healed yet up to her thighs. She used some of that good smelling soap- strawberry and maybe mint- and focused on getting the skin completely clean before applying ointment to Clarke's injuries and some other cream to the rest of her skin. The same went for her stomach, her shoulders and arms and then, Lexa leaned up to treat Clarke's neck carefully.

The finish touch made her face, and when Lexa was done with that, she put bandages around each of the not yet healed injuries to keep them clean. "Are you badly hurt beneath your clothing?" Lexa asked and Clarke shook her head. She didn't think she was and she didn't want to find out.

"Okay. I talked to the healers again and I know it sucks because you just laid on the bed for a week, but you'll need to lie down for two more hours today. The back of your throat um- has been treated pretty badly and we need to fix that, yeah?"

Clarke nodded. She got proper clothes over her now much cleaner, softer skin and then laid down on the bed, letting Lexa pour something into her mouth. "Just close your mouth and try to keep it as long as you can before swallowing slowly."

That repeated a bunch of times. It was something sweet, thick, and after a while, it stopped the burning and made her throat feel- soft? Probably not the right word, but that was how it felt.

When they were done, or Lexa decided they were, she got to clean her mouth with fresh water and then eat some bread for dinner.

"Is swallowing better?" Lexa asked and Clarke nodded. Yeah, swallowing was okay. Her skin felt better too.

"Thank you," she added with a dip of her head.

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