Lightning Only Strikes Once - Clexa

Chapter 79: What You Are In The Dark

It's dark and cold, nearly all the fires extinguished for the night, though Clarke's sure that the one in Nia's bedroom still burns brightly. Her own bedroom doesn't even have a fire. She's decided that if she's caught, her excuse will be that she was cold, so she was trying to find somewhere that has a fire, and thought the dining room would.

For possibly the first time since they arrived here, there's no one with her. Ontari has been following her everywhere, eyes burning into the back of Clarke's neck. She's not sure if Ontari's strange obsession with her is because of what the girl believes about her relationship with Lexa, or if she's just enjoying the control she has over Clarke's life. She doesn't even think there's necessarily anything sexual in it, and there's certainly nothing romantic – it just seems like Ontari enjoys the effect she has on Clarke, enjoys trying to cause her discomfort.

But Nia ordered Ontari to do some extreme training today, pitting her against gona after gona apparently just for the amusement of it, and as a result Ontari crashed pretty early. This is her chance.

She limps as quietly as possible towards the door Gustus is behind, the clack of her walking stick making her wince. Then she pauses, eye caught by something that she hadn't seen before – when the torches were lit, she hadn't been able to see the carving on the grip of the intricately carved bow hanging above the door, since it had been in shadow.

It's a cogwheel. The cogwheel Lexa wears.

It's creepy that Nia has something with that patterned on it, Clarke decides. But then, what about this place isn't creepy? A hidden palace in a mountain, an oppressive ruler, and a tortured guy as a centrepiece. And she thought Cage seemed like a Bond villain.

She pulls the door open as softly as she can. Gustus is slumped against his chains, sleeping uneasily, but he stirs at the noise. His eyes blink open. For a second he looks panicked, but then relaxes as he notices there's no one behind her. Clarke reaches her hands through the bars and manages to loosen and pull down his gag.

"Mochof," he says, voice raw.

"Pro," she says, not sure what else to say. For a long moment she just stares at him. His right hand is still somewhat mangled – well, all of him is still mangled – and he looks even thinner than the last time she saw him. Remembering, she reaches inside her bulky jacket and pulls out some hard bread. "It's not much," she says quietly, holding it out, "But it's something."

She holds it steady as he tears at it and swallows it painfully. He's missing a couple of teeth, she notes, and feels her heart ache in her chest.

"Heda?" he manages to say after he's swallowed all of it. "Do you know -"

"I haven't seen Lexa since they took me," Clarke tells him. "But when they did, she was healthy and safe. I don't know what they've told you, but we took down the Mountain -"

"I can hear things sometimes," he says. "Even through the door. Not much though." He grimaces painfully. "It is good to know the Maunon are gone."

"What she said about Lexa -"

"Is a lie," he says firmly, before lowering his voice again. "Her lie, or her son's lie... it does not matter. Roan could not kill Heda. She is a marvel, and he is a branwada, a weakling, a worm. He is nothing to her and he could never kill her."

Clarke breathes deeply, drawing strength from his certainty. "Yeah. I know." There's a long pause, then she says, "We need to find a way out of here. Do you know where the keys to this cage are? The keys to your chains?"

"The keys to the cage are held by the gona, so they may enter whenever they need to," he says, face twisting. "But knowing the Azplana, she would not keep the keys to the shackles on her person, or give them to her gona. Probably they are hidden somewhere. When they shackled my right wrist again, it took some time for them to find the key for the chains. But that does not matter. You must not try and free me. You must leave without me."