Chapter Text
The war tent smelled of pine smoke and damp leather, a scent Clarke had learned to associate with these meetings. She pushed through the flap with more force than necessary, letting it fall shut behind her with a satisfying thwack. Bellamy had cornered her on the walk over, warning her - again - not to let the Commander push her around. As if Clarke needed the reminder. As if she hadn’t spent the last three sessions holding her ground against impossible demands.
The tent was empty.
Clarke’s jaw tightened. She dropped the stack of maps onto the makeshift table and crossed her arms. Typical. Make the Sky Girl wait. Remind her who held the power here.
She paced to the far side of the tent, then back. Her boots left prints in the dirt floor, a nervous pattern she’d traced a few times by now. The air inside was warmer than outside, heated by a small fire pit in the corner that sent shadows dancing up the canvas walls. Clarke watched them flicker and twist, trying to ignore the tight coil of tension in her stomach.
It wasn’t nervousness, exactly. More like anticipation. The kind that came before a difficult negotiation, when the stakes were high and the outcome uncertain. That was all this was. All it had ever been.
The tent flap stirred.
Clarke turned, ready with a cutting remark about punctuality, and found the words dying on her tongue.
Lexa stepped inside with that predatory grace she seemed to carry everywhere, her war paint stark against her skin, those green eyes already locked on Clarke like she’d been tracked from the moment she left camp. She wore her usual Commander’s regalia - leather and furs, knives strapped to her thighs, her dark hair braided back in that intricate pattern Clarke had once made the mistake of starting at too long.
“You’re late,” Clarke said, proud of how steady her voice came out.
Lexa’s mouth curved, just barely. Not quite a smile. “I was ensuring we would not be disturbed.”
Something hot flickered through Clarke’s chest. She stamped it down, hard. “The guards-“
“Are under strict instructions to remain outside. No one will come within fifty yards of this tent.” Lexa’s gaze traveled down Clarke’s body and back up, slow and deliberate. “Unless you’ve changed your mind about our arrangement.”
The word “arrangement” hung in the air between them, clinical and detached. That’s what they agreed to call it, three weeks ago when this thing between them had started. An arrangement. Practical. Temporary. A way to burn off the stress of keeping their people from killing each other.
Clarke lifted her chin. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You are.” Lexa took a step closer. Then another. Her movements were unhurried, almost lazy, but there was nothing lazy about the intensity in her eyes. “Though you seemed angry when you arrived.”
“I’m always angry when I come here.”
“Yes,” Lexa said softly. “I’ve noticed.”
She was close enough now that Clarke could see the faint scar above her left eyebrow, the one she’d asked about exactly once before Lexa had shut down that line of questioning with a kiss that had left Clarke’s knees weak. Close enough that Clarke could smell her - leather and woodsmoke and something else, something earthy and wild that made Clarke’s pulse kick up despite herself.
“We should -“ Clarke gestured vaguely toward the table. “The hunting borders. We need to discuss -“
“Later.”
Lexa’s hand came up to cup Clarke’s jaw, thumb brushing across her cheekbone, and Clarke’s breath caught. This was always how it started. The pretense of negotiation, the careful dance of hostility, and then - this. Lexa’s touch, gentle and possessive all at once, making every coherent thought in Clarke’s head scatter like leaves.
“We have an hour,” Clarke managed, even as she leaned into that touch, helpless against the pull of it.
“Then we should not waste time talking.”
The kiss was inevitable. Clarke told herself that later, when she was trying to make sense of how quickly she surrendered, how easily she let Lexa back her against the tent’s support post. It was inevitable because they always did this, had been doing this, and it didn’t mean anything beyond stress relief and the simple fact that Lexa was - objectively - attractive and skilled and apparently just as desperate for this as Clarke was.
Lexa kissed like she fought: strategic, overwhelming, relentless. Her mouth moved against Clarke’s with a hunger that should have been terrifying, would have been terrifying if Clarke wasn’t matching it with her own. Clarke’s hands found Lexa’s hair, tugging the braids loose because she learned Lexa liked that, liked when Clarke unmade all that careful control.
“Your people think we are discussing strategy,” Lexa murmured against Clarke’s throat, her lips tracing the line of Clarke’s pulse.
Clarke’s head fell back against the post. “We are.”
She felt Lexa’s smile against her skin. “Of course.”
Fingers worked at the zipper of Clarke’s jacket with practiced efficiency. Although it was almost too dark to see with the dwindling fire, Lexa had mapped every piece of Sky People clothing Clarke wore, had learned how to navigate zippers and clasps and buttons with the focused intensity she brought to everything. The jacket hit the ground. Then Clarke’s shirt. The air was warm but Clarke shivered anyway when Lexa’s palms slid up her ribcage, thumbs grazing the underside of her breasts through the thin fabric of her bra.
“We’re negotiators,” Clarke breathed, even as her own hands tugged at the buckles holding Lexa’s leather pauldron in place.
“The best negotiators.” Lexa’s teeth grazed Clarke’s shoulder, making her gasp.
They’ve developed a rhythm to this, over the past three weeks. A pattern. Clarke would arrive angry - genuinely angry, usually, about something Bellamy had said or some new demand from the Grounders or just the constant, grinding stress of trying to keep a hundred delinquents alive on a planet that wanted them dead. Lexa would arrive controlled, that mask of Commander firmly in place. They would circle each other verbally for maybe five minutes, keeping up appearances for themselves if no one else.
And then they would collide.
Clarke got Lexa’s pauldron off, then the buckles at her shoulders. Lexa’s hands were already working Clarke’s belt loose, fingers deft and sure. They’d learned each other’s bodies with the same intensity they’d learned each other’s negotiating styles - carefully, strategically, looking for weaknesses and strengths, for what made the other gasp or shudder or grip tighter.
The furs Lexa wore fell away and Clarke’s hands found warm skin, the lean muscle of Lexa’s back, the sharp wings of her shoulder blades. Lexa was all controlled power, disciplined strength, but Clarke had discovered she could make that control fracture. Had learned exactly where to touch, how much pressure to apply, what words whispered in Lexa’s ear would make her breath hitch.
They moved towards the pile of furs in the corner - Lexa’s idea, brought in after the first week when they’d both agreed the ground was too uncomfortable. Clarke went down first, pulling Lexa with her, and Lexa settled over with a familiarity that should have been alarming. Three weeks. They’d been doing this for three weeks and already Clarke’s body knew the weight of Lexa’s, knew how to arch into her touch, knew the sound of Lexa’s breathing when she was close to losing control.
It was just physical, Clarke reminded herself as Lexa’s mouth traced down her sternum, as clever fingers unhooked her bra and discarded it. Just a release. Just two people burning off tension in the most efficient way possible. Lexa’s tongue circled Clarke’s nipple and Clarke’s back arched involuntarily, a soft sound escaping her throat. She felt Lexa’s satisfied hum against her skin, felt the possessive press of fingers into her hip.
“You’re too smug,” Clarke gasped.
Lexa lifted her head, eyes dark and heated. “You like it.”
Clarke opened her mouth to deny it, but Lexa chose that moment to slide a thigh between Clarke’s legs, pressing up with deliberate pressure, and whatever Clarke has been about to say dissolved into a moan. Lexa’s smile was sharp and knowing, and Clarke wanted to kiss it off her face, wanted to remind her that Clarke could make her just a desperate, just as undone.
So she did.
Clarke rolled them, using the surprise to her advantage, pinning Lexa beneath her and claiming her mouth in a kiss that was more teeth than anything else. Lexa made a sound low in her throat - pleasure and challenge mixed together - and her hands gripped Clarke’s hips hard enough to bruise.
“Careful, Clarke,” Lexa warned, but her voice was rough, strained.
“Why?” Clarke dragged her mouth down Lexa’s throat, finding that spot below her ear that made Lexa’s breathing go ragged. “Afraid you’ll lose control?”
Lexa’s fingers threaded through Clarke’s hair, tugging her head back so their eyes met. For a moment, something flickered across Lexa’s face - something raw and unguarded that made Clarke’s heart stutter in her chest. But it was gone as quickly as it appeared, shuttered behind that cool mask.
“Never,” Lexa said, and pulled Clarke down into another kiss.
They moved together in the fading firelight, shadows dancing across skin, the sounds of the camp outside muffled by canvas and desire. Clarke let herself get lost in it - the slide of skin on skin, the way Lexa’s hands felt mapping her body like territory to conquer. She let herself stop thinking about the hundred responsibilities waiting outside this tent, about the alliance that was always one wrong word from shattering, about the impossible pressure of keeping people alive.
Here, now, there was only this. Only Lexa’s mouth on her breast, Lexa’s hand sliding lower, fingers finding the waistband of Clarke’s pants and pausing - always pausing, always asking without words.
Clarke lifted her hips in answer and Lexa’s smile against her ribs felt like victory.
The clothes came off in stages, efficient and practiced. They’d learned to be quick when necessary, to make the most of their stolen hour. Clarke’s pants and underwear joined the growing pile of discarded items. Lexa’s leather pants proved more complicated, as always, and Clarke helped with the laces, fingers fumbling in her eagerness.
“Impatient,” Lexa observed, breathless.
“Shut up.”
Lexa laughed - actually laughed, low and rich - and the sound of it did something dangerous to Clarke’s chest. She ignored it. Focused instead on getting Lexa’s pants off, on the reveal of more skin, on the way Lexa’s breath caught when Clarke’s fingers finally, finally slid between her thighs and found her wet and ready.
“Oh,” Clarke breathed, some stupid, pleased part of her lighting up at the evidence of Lexa’s desire.
Lexa’s eyes fluttered closed, head falling back. “Clarke -“
Clarke loved her name in Lexa’s mouth like this, rough with want. She stroked slowly, teasingly, watching the way Lexa’s throat worked, the way her fingers curled into the furs beneath her. The Commander, utterly undone by Clarke’s touch. The power of it was intoxicating.
“Look at me,” Clarke commanded, and Lexa’s eyes opened, hazy with pleasure.
They looked at each other as Clarke touched her, as Lexa’s breathing quickened and her hips began to move in rhythm with Clarke’s hand. There was something almost unbearably intimate about it, about holding Lexa’s gaze while bringing her apart. Something that felt like more than just physical release.
Clarke pushed the thought away and kissed her instead, swallowing Lexa’s gasps, feeling the moment Lexa’s control finally shattered in the way she tensed and trembled and Clarke’s name became a broken sound against her lips.
After, they lay tangled in the furs, skin cooling in the warm air. Clarke’s head rested on Lexa’s shoulder - when had that become their default position? - and Lexa’s fingers traced idle patterns on Clarke’s arm. Outside, the forest was alive with evening sounds: birds calling, branches creaking, the distant murmur of the stream that ran past the clearing.
Finally, reluctantly, she pushed herself up. The mood turned awkward quickly, as it usually did afterwards. Clarke’s fingers worked methodically at the fastenings of her jeans, not quite meeting Lexa’s eyes across the dimly lit space as she also dressed. The fire had burned low during their…meeting. Lexa was barely visible where she stood on the other side of the tent.
“Your people are still taking more than their share of the hunting grounds,” Clarke said, her voice steady despite the way her pulse still hammered in her throat. She pulled her shirt over heard, the fabric catching briefly on her disheveled braid. “Bellamy’s getting pushback from the others. They’re saying the treaty isn’t being honored.”
By the time she turned back around, Lexa was already dressed, standing near the tent’s entrance with that infuriating composure she always seemed to slip back into so easily. Her war paint was smudged slightly - Clarke’s lips had done that, though neither of them would acknowledge it. “Your people hunt like children stumbling through the forest. They scare away the game for miles. My warriors take what your people’s incompetence costs them.”
Clarke’s jaw tightened as she reached for her jacket. “Then maybe your warriors could teach instead of taking. That’s what an alliance means, Lexa. Cooperation. Or did that get lost in translation?”
Something flickered in Lexa’s expression - amusement, maybe, or annoyance. With her, it was often hard to tell. “I will speak to my hunters,” she said after a moment, her tone carefully neutral. “But your Bellamy should control his people’s complaints before they undermine what we have built.”
“What we’ve built,” Clarke repeated, and hated how the words tasted like ash in her mouth. What had they built, exactly? A fragile peace held together by necessity and strategy meetings that always seemed to end with Clarke’s back against something solid and Lexa’s mouth hot against her neck? That wasn’t building. That was…something else entirely.
She shrugged into her jacket, fingers moving to fasten the front buttons. The leather was cool against her overheated skin, grounding. She needed to get back to camp before someone noticed how long she’d been gone. Again. Raven was already giving her knowing looks, and Octavia had made a comment last week that Clarke had pretended not to hear.
“Clarke.”
Lexa’s voice cut through her thoughts, sharper than before. Clarke looked up and found the Commander staring at her with an intensity that made her fingers still on the buttons. There was something different in her expression now - something that looked almost like shock, though Lexa never looked shocked. Lexa was always controlled, always calculating.
“What?” Clarke asked, suddenly aware of how exposed she felt despite being fully clothed now.
Lexa moved closer, and Clarke’s body responded instinctively, a flush of heat that she immediately tried to suppress. This was supposed to be simple. Physical. A release of tension that had nothing to do with the way Lexa’s presence seemed to fill every space she occupied, the way her rare smiles felt like victories Clarke hadn’t known she was fighting for.
“You mark,” Lexa said quietly, her eyes dropping to Clarke’s collarbone where the jacket had shifted. A thin stream of light from the partially open tent flap illuminated the patch of skin just below her shoulder. “I did not see it before.”
Clarke’s hand flew to her collarbone, covering the mark instinctively. Her soul mark. The one she’d had since birth, the one she usually kept carefully hidden beneath her clothing. In the rushed fumbling of their encounter, her shirt must have been pushed aside enough to expose it.
“It’s nothing,” Clarke said quickly, tugging her jacket higher. Her heart was suddenly racing again, but this time it had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with the look on Lexa’s face. “Just a birthmark.”
“It is not a birthmark.” Lexa’s voice was steady, but there was something underneath it that Clarke couldn’t quite identify. “It is a soul mark. I know the pattern.”
Clarke felt her stomach drop. Of course Lexa would recognize it. The Grounders took this soulmate nonsense seriously - she’d heard them talk about it, seen the reverence with which they treated the concept. On the Ark, soul marks had been…different. Acknowledged, certainly. People talked about them, hoped for them, but they’d been practical too. Space was limited. Resources were scarce. You married who made sense, who you were compatible with, who could help you survive. Soul marks were romantic fantasy, the kind of thing people dreamed about but didn’t actually expect.
And Clarke had never expected anything from hers. Had never wanted to.
“Lexa -“ she started, but the Commander was still talking, her words careful and measured in that way that meant she was trying to be gentle. Lexa was never gentle unless she thought the situation required it, and that made everything worse.
“Soul marks are sacred,” Lexa said, taking another step closer. Clarke resisted the urge to step back.”They bind two people together across time and distance. When two marks match -“
“Stop.” The word came out harsher than Clarke intended, sharp enough that Lexa actually paused. “Just stop. I don’t want to hear this.”
Lexa’s brow furrowed slightly, a rare break in her usual mask of composure. “You do not understand. If your mark matches another’s-“
“I said stop.” Clarke was moving now, gathering the rest of her things with jerky, agitated movements. Her maps. Her knife. She needed to get out of this tent, needed to get away from the look in Lexa’s eyes and the way her carefully controlled voice was trying to explain something that Clarke absolutely did not want explained.
“Clarke.” Lexa’s hand caught her wrist, not hard, just enough to stop her frantic movement. Her skin was warm, calloused from years of sword work, and Clarke hated how aware she was of every point of contact. “You are afraid. Why?”
“I’m not afraid.” The lie felt obvious even as she spoke it. “I just don’t believe in soulmates, okay? It’s a nice story, a romantic idea, but it’s not real. People choose who they want to be with. They choose based on compatibility and shared values and…and practicality. Not because of some mark they were born with.”
She could see Lexa processing this, the slight tilt of her head that meant she was trying to understand a perspective fundamentally different from her own. “For my people, soul marks are not merely stories. They are truth. Destiny.”
“Well, I’m not one of your people.” Clarke pulled her wrist free, and Lexa let her go. The absence of her touch felt like cold water, shocking and unwelcome. “And I don’t believe in destiny. I believe in choice.”
“And if the mark has already chosen for you?”
The question hung in the air between them, heavy with implications that Clarke refused to examine. Because if she looked too closely, if she let herself think about what Lexa was suggesting - that they might be matched, that this thing between them might be more than just physical release and political strategy - everything would change. The careful distance she’d maintained, the walls she’d built between wanting and needing, between physical and emotional…all of it would crumble.
“It doesn’t matter,” Clarke said, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Whatever you think you saw, whatever you think it means - it doesn’t matter. This doesn’t change anything.”
Lexa was watching her with those impossibly green eyes, and Clarke could see the questions forming, the arguments. The Commander was nothing if not logical, and clearly she thought this was something that needed to be discussed, analyzed, addressed. But Clarke couldn’t. She couldn’t stand here in this tent that smelled like them, like what they’d just done, and have a conversation about soulmates and destiny and all the things she’d spent years convincing herself didn’t matter.
“I have to go,” she said, moving toward the tent flap. “My people will be wondering where I am.”
“Clarke, wait -“
But she was already pushing through the flap, stepping out into the cool evening air that hit her overheated skin like a slap. The Grounder camp sprawled before her, warriors moving between fires, the sounds of evening settling over the clearing. No one paid her much attention - her presence here was common enough now that it barely registered - but she felt exposed anyway, like everyone could see the panic clawing at her chest, the way her hands were shaking slightly as she adjusted her bag.
Behind her, she heard the tent flap move again, knew without looking that Lexa had followed her out. But Clarke didn’t turn around. She couldn’t. If she looked at Lexa now, with this new knowledge sitting between them like a live wire, she didn’t know what she’d see. Didn’t know what she’d feel.
And that was the problem, wasn’t it? She’d gotten too comfortable with knowing. With understanding the boundaries of what this was. Physical. Strategic. Uncomplicated by the messy emotions that got people killed, that made them weak, that made them vulnerable in ways that Clarke couldn’t afford.
She’d watched her father die because he’d chosen truth over safety. She’d learned, again and again, that caring too much was a liability. That love - real love, the kind that poets wrote about and people died for - was a luxury she couldn’t afford.
Clarke had already lost too much. She wouldn’t lose herself too.
“Clarke.”
Lexa’s voice was closer now, and Clarke forced herself to turn, to meet those green eyes with something approaching composure. The Commander stood a few feet away, her expression carefully neutral again, but there was something in the set of her shoulders that looked almost uncertain. Lexa was never uncertain.
“This conversation is not finished,” Lexa said quietly.
“Yes, it is.” Clarke straightened her spine, channeled every bit of authority she’d learned from her mother, from her father, from the impossible weight of leadership that had been thrust upon her too young. “We have an alliance, Lexa. We have meetings. We have…this.” She gestured vaguely between them, encompassing everything they’d been doing in that tent for weeks now. “But we don’t have soulmates. We don’t have destiny. We have choices, and I’m choosing not to discuss this.”
She could see the argument forming in Lexa’s eyes, the desire to push back, to explain, to convince. But then something shifted in the Commander’s expression, a careful shuttering that Clarke recognized. Lexa pulling back behind her walls, the same walls Clarke was desperately trying to reinforce in herself.
“As you wish,” Lexa said finally, her voice formal in a way it hadn’t been since the first days of their alliance. “I will not speak of it again.”
The words should have felt like relief. Instead, they sat in Clarke’s chest like stones, heavy and uncomfortable. But she nodded anyway, gripping the strap of her bag until her knuckles went white.
“Good,” she managed. “I’ll send word about the next meeting. We still need to discuss the sharing of medical supplies.”
“Of course.” Lexa’s face was a mask now, unreadable. “Until then, Clarke of the Sky People.”
The formal address felt like a door closing, like all the careful intimacy they’d built - however fragile, however complicated - had just been locked away behind protocol and propriety. Clarke told herself it was better this way. Safer.
She turned and walked toward the edge of the camp, feeling Lexa’s eyes on her back with every step. The forest beckoned, dark and deep, the path back to her own people familiar enough now that she could walk it in her sleep. Behind her, the Grounder camp continued its evening rhythms, fires crackling, voices murmuring in Trigedasleng, the sounds of a people setting in for the night.
Clarke didn’t look back.
The walk through the forest should have cleared her head, but instead, her thoughts spiraled with each step. She kept seeing the look on Lexa’s face when she’d spotted the mark. The careful way she’d spoken about soul marks being sacred, about destiny. As if the universe had some grand plan, as if Clarke’s choices didn’t matter, as if everything she’d been telling herself about keeping this simple and uncomplicated had been built on a foundation that was already crumbling.
Her hand drifted to her collarbone, fingers pressing against the mark through the fabric of her jacket. She’d had it her whole life - an intricate pattern of lines and curves that looked almost like a constellation, or maybe a geometric flower. Her mother had called it beautiful when Clarke was young, had told her that someday she might meet someone with a matching mark, someone meant for her.
Clarke had been seven years old, and she’d thought it sounded like a fairy tale.
By the time she was seventeen and watching her father get floated for trying to save them all, fairy tales had lost their appeal.
The Sky People camp came into view through the trees, firefight and makeshift structures that still looked temporary despite weeks of occupation. Home, or the closest thing to it. Clarke straightened her shoulders, smothered her expression into something neutral, and stepped out of the forest.
Bellamy spotted her first, standing near the central fire with his arms crossed. His eyes tracked her approach with that protective intensity he’d developed since they’d landed, since they’d realized Earth wasn’t the paradise they’d hoped for.
“Clarke,” he called out, and she could already hear the question in his voice. “How’d it go?”
She crossed to him, grateful for the familiar ground of tactical discussion. “Fine. Lexa agreed to talk to her hunters about the territory disputes. We’ll need to send someone to train with them, learn their techniques.”
“Great,” Bellamy said, though his eyes were studying her face a little too carefully. “You okay? You look -“
“I’m fine.” The words came out too quickly, too sharp. She softened her tone. “Just tired. It’s been a long day.”
He didn’t look convinced, but he let it go, turning back to the fire. Clarke stood beside him for a moment, staring into the flames, trying to let the familiar sounds of her people wash over her. Conversations and laughter, the clang of metal as someone worked on reinforcing the fence, Jasper’s voice raised in some story that was probably half exaggeration.
Normal. This was normal. This was her life, her people, her responsibility.
Not destiny. Not soulmates. Choice.
“Clarke!”
Raven’s voice cut through her thoughts, and Clarke turned to see her friend approaching with that particular expression that meant trouble. Or questions. With Raven, it was often both.
“We need to talk about the radio equipment,” Raven said, but her eyes were doing the same thing Bellamy’s had - searching Clarke’s face for answer to questions she wasn’t asking out loud. “Some of the parts are degrading faster than I thought. We might need to trade with the Grounders for different materials.”
“Okay,” Clarke said, falling into the familiar rhythm of problem-solving. “What do you need?”
As Raven launched into technical details about conductivity and shielding, Clarke let herself sink into the conversation, let the logistics and practicalities crowd out everything else. This was what she was good at. Fixing things. Finding solutions. Leading her people through impossible situations.
Not dealing with soul marks and the way Lexa’s voice had sounded when she’d said “afraid”. Not thinking about green eyes and careful touches and the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the universe had plans that Clarke hadn’t accounted for.
She’d figure this out. She always did.
She just had to keep choosing the practical over the possible, the logical over the emotional, the safe over the terrifying unknown of what it might mean if Lexa was right.
If they were matched.
If destiny was real after all.
But as she stood there, listening to Raven’s analysis and feeling the weight of leadership settle back onto her shoulders like a familiar coat, Clarke’s hand drifted once more to her collarbone. To the mark hidden beneath fabric and determination.
And deep in her chest, in a place she refused to acknowledge, something ached.