Corrupted Constructs

Chapter 23

Clarke stands in the little room next to the interrogation room and looks at Lexa through the one-way mirror. The other woman is sitting at a metal table and one of her hands is cuffed to a bar that's welded to the top of the table. She knows that the brunette can't see her, but shivers ran through her entire body every time Lexa lifted her head, seemingly looking straight at her. Past tense, because the brunette had dropped her head into her arms on the table several minutes ago and hadn't really moved since.

Clarke had been called into the office at 4.30 AM. An ungodly hour, hadn't she been awake all night anyway, aware of what must be happening across the city in Lexa's condo.

She had been told that they had made Lexa sit in that room by herself for a few hours before sending someone in for a first round of interrogations, but Lexa hadn't spoken a word to them. And since this was Clarke's case, it only made sense for Clarke to be the one to do the next round of interrogations. But even though Clarke had wanted to join Lexa in that little room as soon as she had arrived, Chief Pike had forced her to observe the brunette from here for the past half hour, doing that psychological body language evaluation thing.

But finally, he had given her the all-clear and she was allowed to enter the room with Lexa. Something she had dreaded for months.

Clarke walks into the room and the brunette lifts her head.

When green meets blue, initially there is relief, quickly followed by confusion. But when Lexa's green orbs roam over Clarke's body and land on her belt that holds her shiny, gold FBI badge, then move back to meet her blues, she can tell how Lexa's features shift rapidly. Lexa is only stunned for a moment before Clarke sees a deep hurt behind those green forests for the briefest of moments until realization fully sets in. That's when the brunette's tired features turn blank, and her expression gets unreadable. The mask that slips on is a mask Clarke only witnessed when she first met the brunette, and even then, it was never this... Cold. Completely devoid of any emotion.

"Hello, Lexa. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Water?" After a moment of silence, Lexa responds, her voice icy and flat, "I believe I told you only my friends call me Lexa. We aren't that. We aren't anything. That's Ms. Evergreen to you."

Clarke feels her heart squeeze painfully at those words even though she knew she was the one who caused them. And even though she had known from the get-go that this was how things would end.

"Also, I don't need anything from you, and I am not speaking to you without my lawyer," the brunette adds, her eyes moving to stare at the one-way mirror again, where both of them are reflected.

Agent Collins walks in right as Lexa states her request for a lawyer and he walks straight to Clarke, wrapping his arm around her waist and smugly smiling at Lexa. Lexa looks back and forth between the two, a spark of recognition in her eyes, but her features soon turn blank again.

"Agent Griffin and I are here to ask you some more questions," the shaggy-haired agent says confidently.

Clarke shrugs Finn's arm off and she sits down on the chair across from the brunette, where she places her interlocked hands in front of her on the table.

Immediately Lexa's eyes are drawn to the sparkle coming from there. Her jaw clenches even further if possible and she leans back in her chair, trying to gain some distance from the blonde as her eyes stay locked on the sparkly engagement ring that's on Clarke's finger once again.

From the corner of her eyes, Clarke notices Finn amusedly yet impatiently waiting for any new reactions from the brunette.

When Clarke follows Lexa's line of sight and realizes what she is focusing on, she awkwardly pulls her hands away and places them in her lap under the desk.