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Gravity \| Book II: Brave New World	By : Prophecy Category: 1 through F > The 100 Views: 1370 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
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I tried to tie my heart down, board up all the windows
Oh but it's too late now, I let you get too close
I know I should take cover, hide inside these four walls
But baby I surrender it all, ‘cause you’re a force of nature
So pull me to the ground and I won't put up a fight
I'm a caution taker, but baby you're a force of nature
And I know I'll be broken when it's over, but I can't help but pull you closer
I'll be here 'till we collide, I don't care if I survive
So crash into me one more time
- Bea Miller, “Force of Nature”

Clarke sat in one of the empty bedrooms. She didn’t feel like returning to her own room after fighting with Lexa again, especially since she was well aware that she’d overreacted, but she was still too upset to apologize yet. She had initially gone into the living room, but the fresh memories of their carefree dancing combined with the presence of the others made the rather large area feel claustrophobic nonetheless. She’d sat for a few minutes before excusing herself, blaming her hangover.

The room was small and bare; completely impersonal, which was what she wanted at the moment so she could think. It was like a blank canvas for her to marinate in the thoughts she chose to instead of the onslaught of familiarity that frequently led to her already chaotic thoughts being even less linear and productive.

Despite what Lexa thought, it wasn’t jealousy over Murphy’s obviously superior kitchen skills that had set Clarke on edge; rather, it was the suddenness of it all and Lexa’s apparent indifference to it. Clarke didn’t want to be paranoid, but it was getting increasingly hard for her to separate legitimate threats and the anxiety her fear produced from one another these days.

She would bet anything that Becca had just loved coffee.

Clarke sighed at herself as she flopped back onto the bed. She was probably right, but she probably also could have approached the whole thing better. Replaying the conversation in her head, she’d practically attacked Lexa about it; a method which hadn’t in the past yielded the desired results, either. Sure, she was scared; Lexa was so blindly devoted to Becca at times that she dismissed any concerns, which was totally unreasonable, if Clarke said so herself.

But there had to be a better way to broach the subject with Lexa than getting pissed and storming out. Oddly, Clarke found herself replaying her conversation with Echo, and it made her feel even guiltier than before.

“Would you rather watch Lexa risk her life trying to save the world, or watch her lose her world and die knowing she might have saved it?”

“It’s only new to to us. The Commander’s life has always belonged to her people.”

Clarke really liked being right, but no matter what direction she came at the current situation from, she couldn’t justify having a fit over a cup of coffee. And maybe Murphy really did just make better coffee than she did, or maybe it was the fancy coffeemaker that did it. Maybe Lexa was right and she needed to back off a little, especially over something as stupid as this was.

Clarke rubbed her face with a groan—she hated admitting she was wrong almost as much as she hated Tang—but Lexa deserved an apology, and she really wanted to give her one.

She was just pushing herself off the bed when static crackled loudly over the intercom, scaring the life out of her. She slipped against the blanket and landed on the floor, missing the first part of Octavia’s message to her fall and the intermittent breaks and static over the line.

“Find yo—to the infirma—eksa ha—cident. Hur—arke.”

Clarke blinked slowly, still mildly stunned from the fall while her brain struggled to fill in the blanks as she climbed unsteadily to her feet. Her body stiffened slightly as the pieces began to fall into place.

“Lexa had an accident. Hurry Clarke.”

Clarke shot out the door.

Clarke didn’t know exactly what she was expecting when she burst into the room, but it wasn’t Lexa laying unconscious in a hospital bed, hooked up to a half dozen pieces of equipment with a saline drip running into her arm. She gasped as she skidded to a stop, not even noticing Luna in the corner, crying as Raven rocked her and whispered into her ear with a comforting tone.

Lexa looked pale, and Clarke was sure her own face must have mirrored hers as she rushed to her side, grabbing her hand, brushing past her mother to do so.

“What happened?” Clarke snapped, her voice strained and distracted as she ran her eyes over the monitors, needing to see Lexa’s vitals for herself.

“Luna found her on the floor in your room. It looks like she had a tonic-clonic seizure.” Abby’s voice was tight, all business as she charted the current vitals onto her clipboard.

Clarke shook her head a little, not understanding. “People wake up after, and she’s not convulsing.” Abby opened her mouth, but she answered her own question, addressing herself quietly. “Sedatives, of course.”

She seemed to snap out of it suddenly, putting on the ‘medical staff’ hat that had so often replaced the ‘personal problem’ hat so often in Abby’s own life.

“What did you give her?” She put her hand out for the clipboard, and Abby handed over the chart unquestioningly.

“One milligram of Ativan, IV push. She won’t sleep long, but she was panicked by the time we got her back here, and I need to do an EEG on her.”

Clarke was reading through the makeshift chart, her face stony and detached. “Do a CT while she’s out.”

Abby put her hand gently on Clarke’s shoulder, her tone hesitant. “Lexa’s already said no to the catscan more than once before this, honey.”

Clarke’s jaw tightened, her eyes flashing as she shoved the clipboard roughly back into her mother’s hands. “Lexa’s not conscious, and after the Ativan, she can’t consent to anything for 24 hours under Exodus law anyway. I’m the closest thing she has to next of kin, and I said to do a goddamn CT.”

Clarke dropped into the chair beside Lexa’s bed, taking her hand once more, her face expressionless. Abby glanced to Raven, who just shrugged and lifted one hand a little. “I uh.. I’m gonna take Luna back to our room, unless—?”

Abby’s lips were pressed tightly together. “That’s fine, Raven. If she has another panic attack, just buzz me.”

Once they were gone, Abby closed her eyes briefly before turning back to her daughter. “Clarke, you know that—”

“I don’t care,” Clarke whispered tersely. “I don’t care. I love her, Mom. And that thing in her head is trying to kill her, I know it is. This is the way to prove it. I don’t care if she hates me for it. We’re doing a CT, and that’s that.”

Abby was back in the lab with Raven while they waited for the computers to finish rendering the scans, leaving Clarke alone with Lexa, who had regained consciousness but was even more out of it than she’d been on the painkillers.

“I do not know what happened, Klark,” Lexa mumbled hazily for the third time.

“I know, niron. It’s okay. You don’t have to worry about what happened.” Clarke lifted her hand to her lips, kissing it reassuringly. She was thankful Lexa’s state of mind was currently too altered for her to notice or process that Clarke’s eyes were filled to the brim with unshed tears she continued to choke back. “You’re safe now, you’re with me. I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.”

Lexa smiled sleepily and weakly squeezed her hand. “My protector.. Yu don shil ai op otaim..”

“Otaim, niron. Ai hod yu in, Leksa.” Clarke leaned forward, kissing her forehead softly. Lexa sighed contentedly, but Clarke frowned and turned her head a little, pressing her cheek to her forehead instead. It was clammy, and her face was paling suddenly before her eyes.

“Ai hod yu—” Lexa’s face froze mid sentence, and Clarke could only drop her hand and watch on in horror as Lexa went into another seizure right before her eyes.

Clarke couldn’t remember what to do—were you supposed to restrain them? Put something in their mouth so they didn’t swallow their tongue? This was basic first aid, but she couldn’t think. An increasingly panicked Clarke leapt to her feet, knocking over her chair in the process as someone screamed for Abby. It took her a minute to realize it was her that was screaming, as Lexa’s slack vocal chords grunted in time with her convulsions.

Clarke didn’t even feel Echo’s arms go around her, guiding her back towards the wall while Abby tended to Lexa. She didn’t hear Echo’s whispered words of reassurance or feel the softness of the shirt she wore as she used it to gently wipe away the heavy stream of tears from her face. Clarke’s body shook, wracked with sobs, and the world seemed to fade away from her.

Echo pulled her into a tight embrace and rubbed her back comfortingly, telling her it would be okay. That Lexa would be okay. That they would all be okay. Echo just held and held Clarke, her eyes closing briefly as she rocked the girl from the sky and lied to her.

And Clarke, who clung to Echo like a lifeline, like she was the only air left in the room, sobbed into her shoulder and gladly accepted the lies like the gift they were.

“No. No way! We just have to find another way to save the world, because it’ll be over my dead body if you stuff her into the radiation chamber after this! Mom!”

Clarke’s face was nearly purple with rage, her eyes still puffy and swollen from crying as she’d watched Lexa seizing just a few hours ago.

“Clarke,” Abby’s face had a strained expression, her voice weary. “We have no choice. She won’t let Luna do it, and Luna won’t disobey her. If we don’t continue to work the Nightblood problem, we will all die, and this is the only way to do it. Her tests all came back just fine.” She emphasized the ‘all’ and Clarke bristled at the implication.

Clarke wasn’t sure what she was angrier about; what Becca was doing to Lexa, what Abby wanted to do to Lexa, what Lexa was allowing to be done to her, or the fact that any of them had to go through any of this shit in the first place. She just knew she was angry about it all, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t unclench her fists; only think about driving them into a wall.

“It is not your choice, Klark. I do not wish to fight about this with you again,” Lexa snapped wearily from her hospital bed.

Lexa, Clarke decided. She was angriest about Lexa’s stupid pride and lousy choices.

“That’s too bad, cause as long as you think you’re gonna do this, we’re definitely gonna fight about it. You’ve already ponied up more blood than is even safe in that amount of time, plus you’ve had two marrow aspirations in the last week, and you just had two seizures in the past hour! Now you want to get stuffed into a box and irradiated?”

Lexa made a tired, dismissive motion with her hand. “You overreact again, Clarke. Just like with the coffee. That.. cat scan, the one I said no to that you did anyway? I know it was just fine. I am just fine.”

“Is that you talking, or Becca?” Clarke asked, but there was no fire in it. She was tired, and scared, and all she wanted was to take Lexa back to their room and hold onto her for the rest of their lives. She was tired of sacrificing for their people.

Lexa scowled. “Enough, Klark. I am quite clear on where you stand, and I am sorry that you are so distressed by all of this. But it is not your choice, and that is final.”

Clarke stunned everyone—perhaps herself most of all—when she put her fist through a cabinet before stalking out of the infirmary in silence.

Somehow, Clarke found herself back in the empty lab, staring at the rad chamber and briefly considering putting her fist through it, too. Instead, she punched a flat computer screen that didn’t break and merely fell over, and then into a mirror that shattered into a thousand angled shards at her feet as she let out a primal scream and continued punching the spot where the mirror used to be.

She punched and punched and yelled in frustration until she felt her voice straining and her knuckles splitting from the pressure of the metal wall the mirror had been hung on.

Clarke glanced at the shattered glass around her feet, rubbing her bloodied fist as the memory of Lexa seizing on the floor played on a loop in her head. There was no way Lexa was coming back into this lab, even if it meant Clarke had to lock her in a closet to prevent it. She’d sooner have the world crumble at her feet than allow Lexa be put in the radiation chamber. Not after this morning.

She knew Lexa would never allow Luna to take her place, either. Luna was not a leader, and Lexa’s pride would certainly get in the way as would Luna’s devotion to the Commander.

Clarke studied her fist, the thick red liquid dripping from between her knuckles, and something suddenly occurred to her.

Marrow.

Luna sat on the exam table with Raven’s arm around her, her hip still numb from the anesthetic Clarke had given her before the aspiration. Clarke swallowed thickly as she studied the glass vial in her hand that she’d taken from Luna, trying not to think about how pissed Lexa was going to be.

Her hand shook a little as she attached the capped needle to it, and Raven slid to her feet and came over. Unexpectedly, she put her arm around Clarke, kissing her temple lightly. “Let me.”

Clarke looked at her unsurely, but Raven’s jaw was set as she nodded. “I can do it. Just show me where.”

Thankfully, Clarke sat on the other table and rolled her sleeve up, wiping the area down with an antiseptic wipe and pointing to the spot. Raven stepped in and started to uncap the syringe when a very angry voice echoed in from the hallway.

“—out of her mind! I will not allow any of this. Why did you not tell me sooner?”

“I’m sorry, Heda. I didn’t know. I only found out when I came to get Abby’s files, and I saw wh—”

“Never mind it now,” Lexa snapped.

Raven’s eyes widened as Lexa, still in her pajamas, stormed into the room through the airlock with fire in her eyes. Octavia trailed her, the guilt all over her face.

“Really, O?” Clarke snapped in annoyance.

“I’m sorry, Clarke. It’s m—”

Octavia was cut off by Lexa slamming her hand on a countertop. “It is her job to tell me when people are going against my direct orders,” she said, with a withering look at Luna.

“Technically your order was for Luna to not give blood samples or spend time in the rad chamber,” Raven said, a little meekly. “You didn’t order her not to donate bone marrow.”

Lexa’s head spun a little, the combination of the seizures and her anger making her unsteady. “Leave us,” she snapped.

“All of us, or just me?” Raven asked, her voice just slightly challenging. Off Lexa’s look, she decided to shut her mouth, and helped Luna into the nearby wheelchair, grabbing a bottle of painkillers before they followed Octavia out the door.

Clarke, who hadn’t said a word the entire time, just continued to stare at her silently.

Lexa slammed her palm on the button to shut the airlock and turned back to her. “I thought we were done with this, Clarke. I thought we agreed that I would be the one to make my decisions for myself.”

“We did,” Clarke agreed.

Lexa gestured around the lab. “Then what is this?”

“Me. Making decisions for myself,” came the firm response.

Lexa grit her teeth, working her jaw slowly. “That is unfair. They’re not the same things, Klark. You making the decision to do this in my stead is—”

“I think they are the same. Sometimes we do what’s best for the person we love, even if they don’t realize it’s what’s best for them. Like hunting them down in the woods and locking them up in Polis tower for their own safety,” she added coolly.

Lexa felt herself stiffen slightly. “That is not the same!”

“Isn’t it? You could have let me decide if I wanted to come back instead of having Octavia tying me up like a dog and dragging me there.”

“You could have been killed.”

“You could be killed! Did you think getting stuck in the rad chamber didn’t have any serious side effects or something?” Clarke was standing now, her voice rippling back and forth between rage, fear, and tears she was trying to repress beneath it all.

“Of course not. But I was born with the blood, and it’s my duty to ensure our people’s survival. It is not Luna’s destiny nor yours to lead them.”

Clarke stepped closer, the anger melting away as she slid her hands over Lexa’s shoulders, her voice softer than before. “You’re my destiny.”

Lexa looked at her unsurely. “Beja, Klark. Do not do this. I wish to be angry with you right now.”

Clarke kissed her neck softly. “But there’s better things you could be doing with me right now.” Her hands stroked gently up Lexa’s sides, carefully pressing her back into the exam table. A shudder went through Lexa’s body as she pictured their first kiss and grew stronger when Clarke’s lips met hers in a near replay of that day. It was as though Clarke had memorized every microscopic detail of that first kiss, the way Lexa had, from the placement of their hands to the movements of their tongues, and Lexa helplessly melted against her.

Clarke pressed her hips into her, and Lexa pressed back eagerly, remembering how the rest of the afternoon had gone that day. Clarke slid her hands down to the backs of her thighs and Lexa hopped as she’d done before, letting Clarke lift her onto the table.

If it was possible, Lexa kissed her even deeper than the first time. Her hands were everywhere; sliding through Clarke’s hair, over her breasts, down her sides to her hips. Pulling her closer, kissing her hungrily and running her toes slowly up the backs of Clarke’s legs.

She let out an involuntary moan as Clarke broke the kiss, cupping her hands over Lexa’s cheeks. Lexa was surprised to see her eyes were glassy, almost as if she were about to start crying. Well, perhaps she had a right to. The procedure wasn’t without risk, that was certain, and Lexa imagined she would feel quite the same way if it was Clarke going into the rad chamber instead of herself.

In fact, that’s why she had ripped out the IV Abby had given her and barreled down the hallway despite feeling awful after the seizures; because the thought of Clarke doing the procedure made her stomach tighten, made her feel sick and panicked. She’d had to stop it, even if it upset Clarke.

She kissed her again, looking somewhat bewildered when Clarke did not respond, and in fact pulled away slightly. She searched the brilliant blue eyes before her curiously, and Clarke gazed back, her voice incredibly soft when she whispered, “I’m sorry.”

Lexa’s brow furrowed, and she cupped her cheek reverently. “Sorry? For what, niron?”

“For this.”

Clarke moved too fast for Lexa to react. She barely realized Clarke had let go of her before Clarke was jamming the syringe into her upper arm. Lexa watched with a mixture of confusion, anger, and fear as she depressed the plunger quickly, forcing the thick black liquid into her body as Lexa looked on, her face frozen in a mask of horror.
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Gravity | Book II: Brave New World