STAY [CLEXA]

Chapter 6

The floorboard creeks and down she falls, crashing to the earth with a sickening crunch. Amidst the cries of desperation, a singular scream can be heard, erupting from a throat as soft as snow...

The sweat that clung to her body wasn't as bad as the previous night. It was the heat that she truly hated. The worst thing about the new world was the heat. It made her feel delirious. She always felt so hot after a vivid nightmare. Being close to Lexa should have calmed her a little, right? Her new friend was probably the only person on earth who could truly make Clarke feel safe. Instead, the nightmares had intensified since Clarke arrived in Polis.

She clawed at her top and ripped it off, desperate for the breeze of fresh air. She reached up, turning her body the full one hundred and eighty degrees. Flicking the latch of the window up, she pushed it out gently, sighing softly as the cold winter air splashed against her pale flesh.

"Clarke?" Lexa whispered through the silence of the night. The darkness was concealing, but the soft twinkle of starlight was enough to gently light up Clarke's side of the room. "Are you okay?"

She fully came into view. The concerned look on her face made Clarke feel sadder than any nightmare ever could. "Yeah, I'm perfectly fine, Lexa. Go back to bed."

The pale illumination of Lexa's face lit up brighter with concern. She slid into Clarke's bed, as she often did late at night. They sleep in the same room, but their separate beds felt more like a formality. Lexa gently pushed the covers further away from them in order to maximise the refreshing feeling of the midnight breeze. Clarke didn't try and stop her. Secretly, she had wanted her to come. She always did.

"No," Lexa began, "talk to me, Clarke. I don't like seeing you like this."

Clarke sighed deeply, the weight of the world hanging on her shoulder. Oh, what she would do for just a little bit of that pressure to be relieved.

"My nightmares have been getting worse recently," the young woman filled Lexa in.

Lexa nodded with sadness. "I had gathered that. What do you dream about?"

Mostly you, went left unsaid. "I dream about a lot of things." She didn't want to lie to Lexa, so she didn't. She merely left out a portion of the truth. "I sometimes replay old memories - bad memories. The possibility of new ones - horrible future events. Lexa... I thought that I was doing okay. I thought that all of the stuff that happened with Ice Queen was past me. I thought that losing you - the sadness I felt at possibly never seeing you again - and the pain... well, I thought it was gone. Combined with the whispers, the unfair constant jibing and all the rumours of an uprising... Lexa, I think it's just become too much for me to handle anymore."