[Lexa recalls the act of her people slashing their knives through Raven Reyes' skin, and the look on Clarke's face as she desperately sought the clues to stop what had been happening. She had readily accepted that while Clarke would not endanger the alliance her people had with Lexa's, there might be others who would be willing to do the same. It turned out that she had been wrong. Now, her knowledge of Raven lies primarily in her expertise, so what Bellamy offers to her unwillingly is new, largely departed from the "useful" definition that had given her agency in Lexa's mind just before.
She lingers over the thought, quiet, recalling the difference between Clarke and her knife sliding up into Finn's rib cage, and Raven screaming across the field, held back and emotional, everything bared to everyone else. Lexa sees people by how she defines them, because she maintains a curious, and often unhealthy, distance. She tries her best to focus on Raven, only Raven—
—except her thoughts stray as she reaches the jewelry. As her handmaiden, Costia had put on this and more for her from time to time. A memory of Lexa and her alone before a mirror flickers in her mind, silver, but dirtied chain hanging loose around Lexa's neck before Costia's head tips lower to kiss the side of it.
Lexa's eyebrows pinch together as she does her best to focus, to even bring her memories to Clarke, a place where things are somehow safer, but all she can consider is how silver would look better on her than it ever did on Lexa.]
A ring and a necklace. Not silver. [It isn't as decisive as she'd like, but it's clear that she needs to jerk away, to leave behind the heaviness of these thoughts when her mind is eager to stray at a moment's notice.]
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She lingers over the thought, quiet, recalling the difference between Clarke and her knife sliding up into Finn's rib cage, and Raven screaming across the field, held back and emotional, everything bared to everyone else. Lexa sees people by how she defines them, because she maintains a curious, and often unhealthy, distance. She tries her best to focus on Raven, only Raven—
—except her thoughts stray as she reaches the jewelry. As her handmaiden, Costia had put on this and more for her from time to time. A memory of Lexa and her alone before a mirror flickers in her mind, silver, but dirtied chain hanging loose around Lexa's neck before Costia's head tips lower to kiss the side of it.
Lexa's eyebrows pinch together as she does her best to focus, to even bring her memories to Clarke, a place where things are somehow safer, but all she can consider is how silver would look better on her than it ever did on Lexa.]
A ring and a necklace. Not silver. [It isn't as decisive as she'd like, but it's clear that she needs to jerk away, to leave behind the heaviness of these thoughts when her mind is eager to stray at a moment's notice.]