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Clarke is slumbering starfished on Lexa's bed, nestled away from the mercilessly rising sun in soft furs, when she feels the mattress dip and a soft kiss placed between her shoulderblades, making her smile even half-asleep.
Still she murmurs "No," sulkily without rising her head, refusing to be dragged out of bed for hours yet. "'M not 'wake."
Lexa laughs quietly and a tender hand brushes hair off Clarke's shoulder to kiss the curve of the bone there, teeth nipping gently against her skin.
"I've brought you breakfast," Lexa says and that is enough to get Clarke's attention. Her stomach has been complaining noisily for the past half an hour, disgruntled at her for falling asleep without dinner last night.
Screwing her eyes shut against the light filtering in through the drapes around the bed, she turns over, Lexa's mouth seamlessly catching hers in a kiss, her bandaged hand going up to cup Clarke's face, right beneath the cut along her cheekbone.
They're a little worse for wear both of them, but they'll live. As will both their people, without the menace of Mount Weather hanging over them like a threatening shadow any longer. She hugs Lexa closer at the thought, feeling like she did when she first stepped off the dropship and pulled in her very first breath of fresh, un-recycled Earth air - happy and unburdened. Free. It will pass, but for now she will savour it.
Clarke's stomach rumbles again and Lexa pulls back and rolls to the side to retrieve a tray from a side-table, placing it in front of Clarke on the bed with a small smile.
"Is that hot cocoa?" Clarke asks, picking up a steaming cup filled with milky brown liquid. "Where did you get it?"
She has never had it, or anything like it - no chocolate in space, after all - but she's read about it in countless Earth stories and it's been something she's had an irrational longing for ever since.
Lexa grabs a plate from the tray, carrying two smushed pieces of cake. Chocolate cake. "Spoils of war," she says, pleased, as she takes a bite of the cake, and suddenly the cocoa doesn't seem quite as tempting any longer.
There is a small, dark space inside of Clarke where the memories of the day of the final battle will always lurk right beneath the surface, ready to spill forth. She will never forget the screams of the wounded, the sight of all that blood, and the smell of death in the air. The things she did. The things she witnessed the people she loves do. The losses, a sickeningly high body count on both sides. And afterward, the stink of the pyres where the dead was burned.
Sometimes, she wonders how she could ever possibly forgive herself for all that she has done - how she could ever go on. But then she remembers the cages and the men and women captured and crumbled inside, waiting to be used and slaughtered like animals. She remembers that smell too, a miasma of despair and fear and the slow wait for an agonizing death.
She curls her hands around the warm mug and brings it to her lips, blowing softly to cool the drink before taking a small sip. The sweet taste seems to spread, warm and nourishing, into her very bones. She drinks half the cup in two deep gulps, feeling the warmth travel down into the pit of her stomach.
Lexa, who has been watching her closely, leans against her shoulder and kisses her forehead. "It still haunts you," she says.
Clarke turns her face away from her. It has always been like this between them, she can see now, Lexa reading Clarke like an open book. She has never been able to hide from those eyes. Never will.
"I'm afraid," Lexa says, with is a hitch in her smooth voice, small and barely noticeable, but there nevertheless, "that one day you will hate me for everything you now hate yourself for."
When Clarke turns back to her lover, it is Lexa who is looking down, at the half-eaten cake in her lap.
She can still recall it on her tongue, the kiss they shared right after victory was secured standing among the bodies of the dead with the taste of blood not their own mingling between them. What she feels for Lexa, this thing that so unexpectedly took root in her heart, will always be unequivocally wedded to all the horrors of these past few months, a relationship forged in strife and bloodshed.
Clarke drops one hand from the cup and takes Lexa's, twining their fingers together. There is still a thin line of earthy brown rimming her fingernails that she prefers to think of as dirt. "We all did what we needed to," she says, squeezing Lexa's fingers to feel her, real and tangible and alive. "And you were right there, by my side, through all of it." Resting her forehead against Lexa's, feeling her warm breath spread across her lips, she whispers, "I don't know what I would have done without you." What I would be. Where we would be.
Lexa huffs out a laughs, but it sounds brittle, like glass cracking on the edge of breaking. "You would have saved them anyway," she says.
Clarke nudges her mouth against Lexa's and simply breathes her in for a long moment, tasting a faint trace of that chocolate sweetness, with her heart breaking for all that's been lost. She could not save them all. She could not save herself.
She kisses Lexa properly then, hard and desperately. "These last few days," she says, "you're all that's kept me sane." When she looks in the mirror now, she can no longer recognize the girl that she was back on the Ark. The girl who fell from the sky. "You don't look into my eyes and see all that's missing. You just see what I am."
The cocoa has grown cold in her hand, and the quick sip she takes is sweeter, almost cloyingly so.
"You are a great leader, Clarke," Lexa says, "and and admirable person. This war..."
"I know," Clarke says. This war didn't destroy her beyond repair. It didn't sully her, strain her irreparably - but it did alter her. The girl she was would never have found herself here, into Lexa's bed, into her arms and heart. In some way, Clarke grieve for that girl like she does for all those other fallen, but she will never regret leaving her behind, shedding her like an old skin.
"I love you," Clarke tells Lexa, something slotting into place within her just as the words leave her mouth. Lexa swallows heavily, drawing in a deep, trembling breath, before kissing her deeply, hard enough to push her head into the bed frame behind them, her hand immediately going there to soothe the hurt.
Mindlessly, Clarke puts her cup down to let her fingers twine themselves into Lexa's braids and kisses her back breathlessly, breathtakingly.
It is Lexa who eventually pulls back, slowly letting Clarke's lips slip from between hers. "I..." she says and stalls, throat working as she swallows again. "Clarke, I..."
"I know," Clarke says again, because she understands. It's not important, not really. In the end, it's just words. She kisses Lexa again. "Let's stay here, today," she says. "Tomorrow we will figure everything out. We will build something out of this."
"A new world," Lexa says, and it almost makes Clarke laughs with how ridiculously grandiose it sounds, but something about the way Lexa looks at her stops her. "A life."
"Yes," Clarke says, slipping out of Lexa's embrace for a second to reach for the cake. "A new beginning."