fragile | clexa

chapter thirty seven

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Lexa thought everything was alright when she fell asleep.

No, not alright. Perfect. Or pretty close to it.

God she slept like a baby with Clarke in her arms, the feeling of kisses lingering, the comfort of the bed. But when she woke on that bed a few hours later, still sleepy and dreamy, the space next to her was empty. Empty and cold.

Lexa's head lifted up and she searched around the room for any sign of Clarke. Maybe she was drawing a bit?

No. No, Clarke wasn't in the tent. Clarke wasn't, and neither was her wheelchair.

Lexa almost fell out of bed, hitting her head at her nightstand and clumsily rushing to get on her boots. She pulled a robe over her nightgown, brushed through her hair while hurrying past her guards outside and stumbled into the still sleeping town.

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Clarke had woken early. In fact, she might have never slept more than a little bit of a nap that night.

She had gotten into her wheelchair after a while of staring at the ceiling, rolled over to the bathroom to take Lexa's task and wash her own face as far as she could. Clarke changed, rolled back, waited and waited but Lexa slept like a stone.

So she decided to go for a bit of a walk. Or a roll, in her case. Since the new wheelchair carried her everywhere with little effort of her arms, she could sit all the time and the pain in her legs was completely gone. Which, regarding her damaged nerves shouldn't be exciting, but Clarke just loved the wheelchair too much not to love her missing nerves too.

With that comfort on wheels, Clarke was able to discover areas of TonDC she had never even gotten close to before. Ecstatic, she even rolled herself outside of the town gates and slowly once around the wooden protection wall of TonDC. The forest was just starting to light up a bit with dawn, the air still crispy but already smelling of summer.

God how Clarke had missed that.

She stopped at a somewhat higher spot, overlooking TonDC just a tad, and took a breath there.

It took Clarke a long while to realize her face muscles were hurting. Hurting, because she was doing nothing but dumbly smiling into the air and with a happiness- was that happiness she felt?- she hadn't had in a long, long time, she leaned back and focused on why she had actually gone on a walk. To clear her mind.

To... somehow figure something out. Old Berta had said if she felt overwhelmed but she couldn't or didn't want to talk to anyone, she should go on a walk. That was before Clarke had gotten the possiblity of actually getting out of TonDC alive and well alone, in her little chair.

She didn't know where to start though. There didn't seem to be anything logical left, everything was messed up, mixed together, and the thought of Lexa made Clarke feel too many things at once. Her heart just clenched with that feeling once, and then started beating like crazy, like it needed something, wanted something but could do no more than pounding in Clarke's chest to ask her to get it.

Like a newborn screaming because of hunger or tiredness, and the parent learned to read their baby's need. Clarke couldn't read her heart's need.

Her heart's need. Clarke thought, her eyes followed a bird through the dim air, and her fingers started playing with the wheels of her chair.

Her heart's need. For once, Clarke's first thought didn't include Jaha, Finn, the other slaves, her owners. For once, Clarke didn't think of my heart isn't allowed to have needs. It simply didn't matter if it was allowed or not, if Jaha would approve or not, if a whip would add another red mark onto her back or not. Her mind, yes, of course, that one Clarke was able, or at least had been able, to remotely control.