#effortlessly-opulent

It takes a long while for Clarke to even touch the fragile sticks of graphite. And when she finally does, she feels how the black carbon crumbles so easily beneath her fingers. She wonders morbidly if her father is out there in the black abyss disintegrating and crumbling just as easily in the freezing void.

When she eventually gets the courage to pick up the graphite stick and drag it across the metal wall of her cell, the only thing she can think to draw is her father. It doesn’t even take effort on Clarke’s part. Every feature of Jake that she can remember - his kind eyes aged with wrinkles, the way his hair flopped to the side with a tilt of his head, the way his outreached hand calls to Clarke as it had all her life - comes alive on the rough metal canvas.

She finishes the drawing within hours. It is to scale, almost too lifelike for Clarke’s liking. She’s terrified that one day all those details about her father will evaporate, and so she’s driven to immortalize him somewhere, anywhere, even if it’s just in the corner of a prison cell. It hurts terribly every time she looks at her father, but she savors the ache. Her chest has been far too hallow as of late, even when it dulls in Lexa’s presence.

On really bad days, she curls up underneath her father’s portrait, her hand reaching to graze over the sketch of his outstretched hand, trying desperately to draw on the comfort he gave so willingly in life. Sometimes Lexa finds her like this, and almost every time she sits down next to Clarke. She barely touches her, and if she does it’s just a quick graze across the back of Clarke’s hand. But she sits close enough for Clarke to find comfort in her presence. Sometimes she stays for only a few minutes. Sometimes she stays for hours. Some days they talk, other days they sit in comfortable silence. But always, Lexa never fails to bring Clarke a sense of serenity even in her grief.

Lexa doesn’t know who the man on her wall is. Clarke hasn’t told her. It’s not just the pain that keeps her from telling Lexa. A part of her is fearful that should she start to talk about her dad, it would be far too easy to let slip the terrible secret that got her father floated and her locked up. Nonetheless, it claws at her, especially when she can feel Lexa’s presence strong and solid beside her. She yearns to lean in and rest her weight onto those padded shoulders, to unburden herself onto this girl with sad eyes and quiet strength that just begs for Clarke to trust her. She resists, though not without difficulty.

Lexa is nothing if not persistent in her own discreet way. After Clarke insists on multiple occasions that she really must stop bringing her little treats and presents, Lexa just nods and comes in the next day proffering another tiny square of synthetic chocolate. It nearly drives Clarke insane. Her own life may very well be damned, but she sure as hell is not going to drag Lexa down with her. Nonetheless, Lexa persisted, and Clarke relented. She likes to reason that because no one else came to her cell but Lexa, the likelihood of anyone discovering Lexa’s acts by the time she reaches Clarke’s cell is unlikely. It definitely isn’t because of the little flutter of her heart when she sees the brunette’s soft smile and bashful look each time she presents her spoils.

Clarke doesn’t stop drawing. Thanks to a seemingly endless supply of graphite pencils, she begins to fill the walls with her sketches. In the beginning, there’s not much rhyme or reason to her sketches. Whatever pops into her head at the right moment ends up somewhere in her cell - the view she had of earth from her old room window, a few carved pieces from her chest set back home, her interpretations of the Amazon forest before the bombs - they all end up on the walls and floor of her cell. Her drawings eventually develops a trend of portraying whatever is occupying her mind, a trend that seems poised to get her in trouble.

At first Clarke denies it. I mean, that pair of eyes she just sketched could belong to anyone really. Yes, not everyone can pull of that soul-piercing gaze, but it certainly could belong to more than one person, right? But as more and more sketches of a wry smile from full lips, a cascade of wavy hair, and a guard uniform with a distinctly feminine figure appear in scattered patches across her walls, Clarke just altogether stops reasoning her way out of this.

A pair of intertwined hands appears on the wall above her cot. Long slender fingers of one hand are gracefully linked with a slighter hand, and Clarke can’t deny where the inspiration comes from. Clarke finds it strange how little Lexa touches her. At first, she assumed the girl was giving her space while she grieved. But she’s noticed that whenever Lexa does indulge and brushes up against her skin, her eyes flash with guilt. It’s a bit tragic really, because it is the exact opposite for Clarke. In the brevity of a second, Lexa’s touch conveys safety and comfort in a way that Clarke has been starved for these past few weeks. Clarke wishes that she could just reach over one of these days and finally make that drawing a reality, but the fearful look in Lexa’s eyes anytime their touch lingers makes her push it down.

One day, it’s no longer just patches of Lexa that pop up on Clarke’s wall of wonders. Again, it only takes a few hours, but before Clarke knows it, Lexa in all her quiet glory appears on her wall right next to the entwined hands. Clarke manages to capture that effortless resilience in Lexa. Her face is set in that rigid, almost infuriatingly calm expression, and yet the softness of her lips, her hands, and her eyes are preserved in detailed strokes of graphite. And that hair - those glorious brown waves pealing down her shoulders in an almost uncharacteristically soft manner that contradicts the militant padded uniform it splays across...

Clarke is so caught up in getting Lexa just right that she barely react to her cell door opening. It’s only when she turns around to find Lexa frozen at the entrance staring at herself does Clarke realize she’s been caught in the action. The brunette’s body is tense as if she were poised to either run inside to Clarke or flee away.

“Uh...” Clarke stammers, mentally kicking herself because there is absolutely no reason to be embarrassed by her situation. None at all. No reason. “It’s not finished yet.”

And it’s true, the sketch isn’t finished yet. Clarke isn’t quite done adding the details of wavy braided hair, she hasn’t quite gotten the shading right around the neck, and she’s not sure she’s captured the brilliant shine in those wide eyes. But none of that is enough to cover up the very obvious fact that Clarke has drawn a very large, very lifelike, very flattering portrait of Lexa all from memory. If Clarke isn’t the shade of a tomato right now, she is certainly close.

Lexa is staring at her, projecting intense emotions Clarke can’t quite decipher. But she thinks that behind her stoic facade she can read the hints of disbelief, of curiosity, and maybe - Clarke hopes - of joy. It lessens the excruciating embarrassment that is flooding her cheeks.

“Oh that’s - I mean it’s - um,” Lexa struggles, her cheeks starting to look awfully rosy under the harsh fluorescent light. “It looks great, Clarke.” Her eyes have been trained on anything but Clarke, but she lifts them to lock with Clarke’s eyes as a bashful smile graces her lips. “You’re very talented.”

Clarke feels like her heart is about to beat out of her chest after all the rush of embarrassment - and now excitement - she feels. The adrenaline urges her to fidget, which only makes it all the more difficult to remain in this standstill with Lexa.