Sacrifice (#Wattys2016)

Chapter 20

Title: Sacrifice

Relationship: Clarke and Lexa (Clexa)

Author: ArshuK

Beta: Lowiiie

"Lexa, I deserved the truth. You should've told me." Clarke says softly.

"I couldn't, not after everything you had to suffer because of me." Lexa argues.

"I didn't know you were suffering too. I wasn't aware that you lost a close friend. I wasn't aware that you had to end her life." Clarke whispers, her eyes trained on her hand. Guilt was slowly making its way into the Hedatu's heart. She hadn't been there when Lexa needed her the most. She was so lost in herself that she didn't bother knowing what Lexa had been going through.

"I am used to this, Clarke. I have learned how to cope with guilt, regret, pain. Everything." Lexa tells her gently. She knows Clarke. She knows where Clarke's line of thought must be going towards.

"When?"

"Pardon?"

"When did you learn all of that Lexa?"

"Probably when I was 10 winters old. I had lost my best friend to the Mountain, and also had to take several lives that year. Some for reasons I wasn't even told by my mentor. I couldn't sleep in the beginning but it got better then...not the nightmares, but I learnt to differentiate between them and the reality. I learnt to not pay heed to them."

Clarke's heart breaks for Lexa as she hears that. She does not approve of the image of a little Lexa learning all these hard lessons, lessons Clarke was just starting to learn. During all her musings, she covers the both of them in the blanket of silence.

"What happens now?" Lexa finally asks, exhaling a breath she didn't realize she was holding.

"Honestly? I don't know." Clarke automatically answers.

"Well, what do you want?" Lexa asks, the hope and fear visible at the same time in her eyes.

"What I want is to erase the past few months." Clarke does not only want to erase what happened at the Mountain, she wants to erase her mistakes too...especially one particular mistake. She cannot even look at Lexa as she thinks about it. There's an old saying that goes 'better ask for forgiveness than permission' but whoever told it wasn't faced with the weight Clarke was carrying, the shame of her guilt, because to ask for forgiveness one must forgive themselves first. And Clarke isn't sure if she ever could.

"We can do that, if you want that." Lexa replies, a smile forming on her face.

Clarke just shakes her head sadly and truthfully replies,

"I wish we could. But I can't even look at my own people now. I can't look at my friends, my family without feeling the guilt tearing me apart, I can't look at you without thinking of what I did or of the deal you made, choosing your people-"

"I did it for you." Lexa says without realizing that she did and her eyes look away, guilty now.

"What?"

Lexa sighs. She cannot keep it to herself anymore; her real reason for taking the deal. Clarke had given her quite some time (more than 3 months) to deduce what exactly made her take the deal.

"I obviously was aware that if I took the deal, a lot of lives would be saved by sacrificing a few but I also knew that if I took the deal, I would be sacrificing you literally and I couldn't do that. So I altered the deal a little and made the Mountain Men promise your safety by choosing your life over my friend's. I didn't really think they would agree but once they did, my decision wasn't that hard to make. You were protected as part the deal and that was among my top priorities. Maybe my sole priority." She utters the last part closing her eyes. Absorbing the truth herself.