#trash!verse

trash!verse au | the early days

trash!verse au | broken

clarke fights and is beaten, and starved, and left out to suffer in the elements. clarke submits, and is clothed and fed and sheltered and kept warm and comfortable. lexa goes from being a malevolent tyrant to a benevolent leader. clarke fights, and is tied to the back of lexa’s horse and made to walk until her feet bleed. clarke submits, and is given a horse of her own and a traveling cloak to keep her dry in the rain.

x x x

when they get to polis, lexa brands her. and it’s just. it’s a tender moment, at least. clarke lays herself out over lexa’s lap and tries her very best to relax and not focus on the iron being heated over the coals. lexa makes it easy, too. because she’s rubbing her back and sifting her fingers so very gently through her hair.

“we’ll go on ‘three’” she’d say, voice soothing and low as clarke buries her face into the couch cushion and ignores the shifting spark flare of the fire as lexa lifts the iron.

before it comes down though, the hand on her back presses between her shoulders, pushing her down, and lexa’s voice goes firm and hard, “don’t flinch, it’ll mess up the lines.”

“yes, heda.”

she screams, but she stays still. she follows orders. she behaves.

lexa calls her sweet cloying pet names while she cries. it burns, but there is a cool soothing salve applied afterwards and maybe they just stay there for a bit. lexa sitting on the couch and clarke laying across her lap, trembling with the pain of it all but still pressing into lexa’s touch when it comes.

trash!verse au | captured

“so,” the commander says, leaning forward, her head cocked to the side, “you’re the one who burnt three hundred of my warriors alive.”

she doesn’t want to die today. she really really doesn’t. so she doesn’t flinch away when fingertips touch against her chin, when the faintest scratch of nails brushes against her throat.

there is something in her eyes that makes her nauseous. uneasy.

she’s never felt more like prey than in this moment.

“how underwhelming.”

the commander sounds…disappointed. bored, almost. she tuts softy, pats against clarke’s cheek once, twice, before leaning back.

“i’d like us to be friends, clarke, and i imagine that you’d like very much not to be fed to my dogs, yes?”

Conflicted hatesex ? And Clarke ‘offering herself up’ for cunning reasons? Kkdjudidjsjdjdk and Lexa just takijg advantage of it??? This fucking TRaSh warlord

The arkers being completely in character stupid as hell?

I feel like there’s this perfect balance of trashy Lexa being a quite angry brutal warlord for good reason and taking all Skai grievances out on Clarke (wasn’t she the leader huh?) and Clarke NOT forgiving her for that treatment and the very very very long road of possessive and terrirtorial protection impulse turning into genuine fondness fed also by a duo appreciation for and exasperation with Clarke’s character and on Clarke’s part a growing appreciation for Grounders as people, lexa as a person and herself in good graces but still so damn stubborn and cunning and CONFLICTED. Like. Sure Clarke submits because shivering bruised out in the frost is Hell but also because she starts to understand. She starts to Get it not just through sheer torture or conditioning (even if that postive/negative reinforcement affects her on an impossibly fundamental level and she hates it) but because she sees everyday life for Grounders, she sees people, she sees how they love Heda and how Heda loves them back and she sees how impossible it is to escape Lexa’s power at the same time. She gets that submitting IS the only option for survival whether it comes to herself or to her people. While Clarke is still straining at the bit i like to think Lexa appreciates it about her once she gets over her anger and stops seeing Clarke as the representative of all the damn grief Skaikru rained down. Bc Clarke went through some straight up torture and intimidation and now heavily enforced servitude and she KNOWS Clarke isn’t a warrior and it necessitates some serious strength to keep being so stubbornly fighty at such treatment. The challenging is also really dumb so it’s a bit amusing and once she establishes she can use Clarke for more than information and THEN she establishes that Clarke’s rather smart and likable if she’s not being a superior little shithead she gets a little fond. So anyway i think at one point Clarke is broken in a way, but she’s broken out of her stubbornness, out of defiance for defiance’s sake. But also like. She doesnt know whether anybody has survived of her people, and it hollows her out and she really DOES break (when she realises she’s probably too late to help the Delinquents in the mountain?) Becomes rather empty eyed. The performance of submission ground into her and she justified it bc she IS cunning and she Got that she’d have more options if she went along but as the days go on true despair and abandonment creeps in and that fire becomes a glow in the depths of the wood. And in a way i want Lexa to be kind of like: hm. That’s a little bit of a pity actually. But also, finally jfc. But when she’s finally informed that the Ark came down and everything has gone to shit (as said, Lexa doesnt tell her until Abby is right in front of her pleading for Finn’s life) Cunning kicks back in bc her people and Abby let’s be real and this is the moment Lexa realises Clarke’s worth and that she can use Clarke’s devotion to her people and that Clarke knows that lexa knows that Clarke will use her understanding of the situation to get Skaikru to submit. This is the moment when Lexa decides to essentially let Clarke protect her people but according to her own game. But in a way they work on an acceptable (less pointless death yawn) result jointly and it’s horrible lol. BUT bldjkdkd i mean Clarke like, freezes? Maybe? She thought Abby died on the crashed exodus ship. Does she feel a stab of hot shame at her position or only ice ice cold fear at the way Abby tries to position herself as Lexa’s equal, the way she tries to get to Clarke but is immediately stopped by Gustus’ bare blade, the way she grows demanding and angry and disrespectful? Does Clarke clamp down immediately on the impulse to get up off her knees and fall into her mother’s arms because she knows that would damn them both ? Even as she feels an unbearable mix of relief and pain that Abby is ALIVE and the bitter realisation that her mom cannot save her from this either. That she must save HER. Does she immediately understand what Lexa has intended for her? Hostage, pawn, example of the broken enemy, a brutal power play. And Clarke cannot deny that she isn’t? Self-loathing? In combination with an understanding of what is expected of her, she keeps her head down. She doesn’t respond to any of Abby’s calls for her. It is only when everything escalates, when kane and Abby try to argue or negotiate, when Abby asks what awaits Finn and Lexa explains and Abby calls it barbaric and Lexa gets ACTUALLY angry that Clarke speaks up and pleads to Abby to give Finn up. Please please. And she tries to COMMUNICATE what horrors await them if they don’t and how generous Lexa is being but Abby only sees her advocating savagery and slavery and she doesn’t understand it and she feels sickened by how she doesnt recognise her daughter how wrong she seems maybe even physically because Clarke’s been marked. And she is just so stricken. And while Lexa lets Clarke speak she doesnt let Abby reply. She lays out the ultimatum and somehow Clarke orchestrates Finn’s death before they start gouging any eyes out bc i cant take that shit being done to Finn. And you know what Clarke accepts thats the end of her maybe she explicitly says to transfer the punishment to her so skaikru still have a chance (would she be that selfless??????? After having been tortured before????? Am i overestimating her? That girl is UNHEALTHILY devoted to her people and those she loves, she cannot stand their suffering, and they had JUST been returned to her world after days of complete despair) but maybe it’s just some public v painful non too permanent damage torture because she’s basically Lexa’s now and she’s definitely still got a use. Abby definitely gets to watch. Anyway is that realistic?? Would Lexa just horribly discipline her instead of transferring the punishment? I bet Clarke would slide some words back at her from how Lexa was like: you’re responsible for your people now, responsible for them surviving (through submitting to me). Clarke would be trembling shivering though she’d just crumple and curl in on herself bc she can now IMAGINE what it’s like to have her tongue cut out with hot tongs but she still did it. She still mercy killed Finn knowing what awaited. Maybe Lexa has her cut up but not so far as to kill her. And then. Cut up again. Ok….

Anyway