Lightning Only Strikes Once - Clexa

Chapter 75: Passive-Aggressive Warfare

"So then you destroyed the Jeeps?" Clarke widens her eyes, visibly impressed.

"Uh huh," he tells her proudly.

"You're so clever," she breathes wonderingly, and he inflates slightly, full of self-importance. What a moron, Clarke thinks.

The man with her is one of her old guards when she was in Prison Station, and also one of the ones she knocked out the other day. However, he's also relatively young (mid-twenties), blushes when she smiles at him, and found it easy to forgive Clarke after an effusive apology and some blatant flirting. As a result, he's become her most useful source of information about the village they're in. She knows pretty much exactly how far they are from the border with the Trikru (too far), exactly when Nia is expected to get here (too soon), exactly how much progress they're making on the missile (very little), and exactly what happened the day she was taken.

The last information is more for her peace of mind than anything else – from what she's gotten out of him, she's pretty confident that most of Arkadia is alive and healthy, and that they'll have managed to figure out exactly what happened in order to tell Lexa. The gas grenades left there will have clued them in to the Ice Queen's involvement, and the dead guard she left (who almost no one here seems to be mourning, suggesting he didn't treat his co-workers much better than his prisoners) will tell them about Diana's involvement. So they'll know that the two are working together.

"First, we had to leave some hair where we found you," the guard continues. He shrugs at her expression. "Yeah, I don't know why, either. Queen's orders apparently. Just some braided black hair. It was weird, but we did it anyway."

Clarke inhales sharply, but manages to force down her rage. It isn't hard to figure out whose braid it was, and why the Ice Queen had it left there. She was taunting Lexa. This is useful information, because it tells Clarke that Nia at least suspects that Clarke and Lexa are in a relationship. If she's convinced of that, then Clarke will find it much more difficult to persuade Nia that Clarke will side against Lexa with her. More difficult – but not impossible. Clarke has experience manipulating people, and whatever Nia thinks she knows about Clarke, Clarke knows more about Nia. She's met her, after all, in the other world she knew Roan and Nia and Ontari, even if only briefly. She has their measure. Whatever they've heard, they still don't have hers.

But she's not sure the information this knowledge gives her is worth the anger and pain it also causes her, knowing that the fucking Ice Queen left one of Costia's braids for Lexa to find like they're doing a demented scavenger hunt. She knows how much Lexa loved Costia, how much Costia haunts her still, how much this reminder will devastate Lexa. How the implied threat towards Clarke will devastate her more.

She won't be a head in a box, used to break the strongest person she knows. The metaphors Monty used for hacking apply to Lexa too – she's a rock with one fault line. She's metal with one weak point. Clarke's nightmares are the Mountain and Lexa dying. Lexa's nightmares are Costia being tortured by Nia, sometimes with Clarke replacing Costia as the victim. Nia wants to literally make Lexa's worst nightmare come true, hitting her fault line, her weak spot. And unless Clarke can find a way to manipulate her into believing that Lexa doesn't care about her, Nia might manage to do it.

She could face being tortured to death. Face it with utter terror, sure. But still face it. She can't face doing that to Lexa.

Another soldier sticks his head inside the hut. "The savages are here to pick up Prisoner 319," he says coldly, looking at Clarke like she's some kind of disgusting insect. He was the driver of the truck on the way here. Apparently he didn't appreciate being knocked unconscious and then pushed into the snow. Which is probably understandable, but Clarke still feels no regret at all. Even if she couldn't get away, at least she made them suffer, and it almost brings a smile to her face to think about how long it must have taken to get the truck upright and moving again.