love is weakness
It is one of the nights they have run out of things to argue over in the strategy tent when Clarke begins -- only begins -- to understand just how ruthless Lexa is. Ruthless, above all, with herself.
This is one of the few times that Lexa has offered her wine and talked, a little, a very little, of topics other than war. The conversation has turned to grounder culture, and to the coalition that Lexa commands. Clarke has learned a little from Lincoln, and from the individual gona of Lexa's army: to survive down here, she needs to know everything she possibly can, and she hasn't hesitated to ask questions of the handful of men and women who're willing to answer them. (Not just about politics, but about food, hunting, farming, preserving, healing -- she doesn't understand, not really, why her own people are so reluctant to accept the fact that the grounders know things they might not. Apart from Octavia, but Octavia's found a place on the ground that she never had on the Ark, so that's not at all surprising.)
"The Ice Nation is part of your coalition," Clarke says, cautiously. The wine is sharp and sour and sweet all at once -- she's still not used to the way things taste, here on the ground, the bursts of flavours on her tongue, so different than the processed algae of the Ark or the rare treat of Farm Station vegetables. It makes her head a little fuzzy, though not as much or as quickly as moonshine. But she wants -- no, she needs -- to understand. "And their queen? I thought you said --"
Lexa's jaw tightens a fractional amount. Clarke is coming to realise that the Commander betrays her strong emotions with the tiniest signs of tension, easy to miss: on the surface she's all calm, level, perfectly controlled. "Their queen is the one I told you of, yes. The one who killed Costia. You are surprised, Klark of the Sky People, that I make peace and common cause with my enemies?"
Put like that, Clarke really can't argue. Her people have benefited, are benefiting, from Lexa's willingness to do just that. But -- "I thought blood must have blood. Isn't that your way?"
Lexa's shrug is an infinitesimal roll of one shoulder. "We were at war when it happened," she says, matter-of-fact. "Such things happen in war. The Ice Nation lost, in the end, and the queen was compelled to swear her fealty to me and enter the coalition. Had I pursued a personal vendetta instead of allowing Nia of the Azgeda to sue for peace, many more of my people would have died. I would have overextended my forces and weakened the coalition, perhaps fatally. A leader cannot afford to set vengeance for the dead above their duty to the living, Clarke."
She says it with the same complete acceptance that she had when she spoke of her own death, when they faced the pauna. Clarke didn't understand, not then. She doesn't, now. How can Lexa be so calm? It's unnatural.
But she doesn't know how to pierce Lexa's calm, make her admit she feels something. She's not even sure she wants to.