Quick note: First, thanks to everyone for their comments, their favorites, and yes, even their follows. Second, after a car accident, I am temporarily out of work while my faithful stead gets unfucked so I can go back to delivering things. This does mean more time for video games, but on the flipside, less time for getting paid. With that in mind, it'd be supercool if you went to my under the name Seriousfic and pledged a little something so I have some money for rent, food, hookers, the usual. You'll get bonus material on my projects like deleted scenes, commentary, what have. But if you don't want to, that's fine. Enjoy the story.

"Why are you here?"

Clarke didn't wince at the question, didn't particularly acknowledge it, only eyed Lexa something like she used to. She was getting used to having Lexa look at her, but showed the same disinterest in Lexa as she did in most things.

"Do you care?" Clarke replied, and saw frustration in the set of Lexa's jaw.

"I care that you'll leave."

"I don't have anything to go back to."

"Your mother. Your friends."

Clarke shook her head. Lexa knew they were alive.

If they were dead, then Clarke could face them.

"If you're going to go, then go," Lexa insisted. "Don't wait until it'll be worse. Just go."

Now Clarke looked at her. Really looked at her. Not blank, not apathetic—tired, but still there. "I don't want to."

Lexa stepped closer. She'd been handling Clarke with kid gloves: keeping her distance, waiting, watching, letting Clarke be instead of do. But she was a doer, and Lexa didn't want the other Clarke. She wanted Clarke to do something to her, even if it was hate her.

"You mean nothing to me next to the lives of my people. I betrayed you. I'd do it again. Accepting that is one thing, ignoring it is another!"

"It doesn't matter," Clarke insisted, some wan light in her eyes, seeing the irritation in Lexa, not knowing what to do with it.

"It does matter! I betrayed you! It should matter!"

"Have you been to the Mountain?"

Lexa hasn't. She hasn't wanted to know. It's quiet and she likes it quiet.

Clarke told her everything. Dead men, dead women, dead children killed because they weren't hers. People still alive that she couldn't look at because all she saw was what she did to make them safe.

It came out like bile, Clarke choking on it, having to spit up particular bits more than once, Lexa just listening, slowly comprehending. Clarke passed breathlessly between trying to recite what had happened, from beginning to end, and gagging on the final result. She kept coming back to it, running away from it, pulling back to it. All the bodies. Broken and lifeless so her friends wouldn't be. She choked on it until she'd finally explained what she'd done in full, why she'd done it, what she'd felt, and then out came the deluge.

She seemed to remember every corpse. The look on their faces, the way their bodies had fallen, who they'd been holding as they died, who they'd been reaching for. Every detail spilled out of Clarke until there was nothing more to say and then she was just heaving sobs, trying to tell more where her memory had failed her, trying to bleed more when she'd been sapped dry. So she just exhaled like it hurt, thinking of what she'd done, had tried to describe and couldn't, trying to voice more of her guilt but there was nothing left to push out of herself.

Lexa wasn't disgused. Didn't think she was a hero. Didn't pity her and didn't thank her. "If you were where Cage was—if it were your people in the Mountain—would you have taken the bone marrow? Harvested children?"

"No." Clarke said it immediately. "Of course not."

"Then it's not your fault." Lexa held her, more tentatively than she hadbefore. Clarke had let Lexa grab her, allowed her touch when Lexa was trying to bring her out of her exile inside herself—squeezed her hand, caressed her cheek, even kissed her like she was a fairy tale princess under a spell. This was the first time Lexa felt like she was holding all of her. "You're not the kind of person who broke the world, Clarke. You just have to live in it."

As Clarke turned her head, her lips brushed against Lexa's cheek. "Live in it with me," she whispered in Lexa's ear.

"I already am."