Despair
Drums echoed in the distance and began to sound closer as Clarke regained consciousness. Her mouth was dry and her lips completely chapped from dehydration. She had no way of knowing how much time it had been since she had been captured. She didn't remember when was the last time she'd drank. Or eaten. She wanted it to stop, all of it. The sempiternal pain. The sleeplessness until she was either knocked out or passed out from exhaustion. She wanted her life to be over.
She craved her own death.
But then she remembered. Soft kisses, warm hugs. Someone to lie with in bed during the cold winter days and to bathe in the freezing river water in summer. Somebody to love and be loved by. And only then, when she remembered Lexa, she fought to live. One more minute, hour or day, it didn't matter as long as she died trying to see Lexa just one more time.
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Lexa gave a strong kick, throwing the Azgeda man out of the great hall's window. Everyone in the room turned around to look at her while the man screamed on his way to the ground.
"That is my message for them. No one questions my strength, nor my loyalty. You all better remember that."
Lexa hadn't ever been hated by her warriors. They might've liked her more or less, or even opposed her opinion, but never hated her. She was a loved leader, even amongst those who didn't like her decisions. Yet that day, she made them feel fear for the first time.
Rumours had spread ever since Clarke had gone missing. Their relationship was soon known by everyone in town, and with it the theories about Lexa's current state proliferated. Some said the girls had never been in a romantic affair, and that it was simply physical for both of them, said rumour being the least dangerous of them all. Others believed there had been a romance but Lexa had quickly got over it and was searching for Clarke because of her strategic mastermind, but the vast majority of Polis believed, and wasn't too wrong, that Lexa was being driven mad by her worry and heartbreak.
She didn't sleep at nights, drowned and suffocated by her own memories, and she barely could stand the meetings during the day, given the fruitlessness of all her efforts to find Clarke. Every fight between her subjects seemed silly to her, and she quickly dismissed them after proposing a solution none of the parts liked. Lexa's heart hardened with time, as did the measures she took to set an example of those who disobeyed her. She kept the town and clans going as well as ever, and trained the new Natblidas that came, but she couldn't fool anyone.
Her eyes, that looked sad when Clarke had first disappeared, had changed their expression, mirroring her feelings.
She wasn't sad at nights anymore.
Her sorrow had turned to rage and her tears into bloodthirst.
It seemed there would be a war after all.
A creepy, dark smile that would freeze anyone's blood in their veins worked its way to Lexa's face.