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Summary: Octavia does shoot Ilian; Clarke follows her and they end up in that cave together. Also, Clarke is not sappy whiny Clarke, she's still Wanheda. With season 3 hair.
Huddled across the fire from Clarke, shivering, half naked, Octavia reached her hand into the flames.
Clarke knocked her hand away from the fire and moved around to sit next to her instead of across. "Stop it."
"I just want to feel something!" Octavia shouted at her.
"You do feel something, Octavia, or you wouldn't be so desperate. You just don't like what you feel."
"Maybe." She reached for the flames again.
Clarke grabbed her wrist this time and body checked Octavia to the ground, pinning her hands above her head. "I said stop it," she insisted. "Skairipa doesn't put her hand in the fire to feel something. There are better ways to hurt yourself that won't render your hands useless."
"Such as?" Octavia brought her knee up to slam Clarke in the stomach, then pushed the other girl off her and sat up.
Clarke grunted and rolled with it, regaining her equilibrium quickly and sitting once again beside Octavia. "About a million things."
"Are you being deliberately vague? Not to mention, Wanheda, you left camp after you got your little nickname and lived on your own in the woods. Don't think Niylah didn't tell me about the time half your back was practically clawed off by a panther."
Clarke smirked at the memory. "The scars are awesome."
"I see that."
"When the storm is over--"
"I want to fight."
"What?"
"I want to fight," Octavia repeated, raising an eyebrow.
"Well when the storm is over--"
Octavia interrupted again. "Now. I want to fight now."
"What, me? You want to fight me?"
"Yep. Skairipa versus Wanheda. It'll be legendary."
Clarke folded her arms across her chest, thinking it over. "No weapons. We can't afford to stab each other when we can't get medical supplies."
"Fair enough." Octavia sprang to her feet. "Do you think our clothes are dry enough?"
"Well I'm not sparring in my underwear so I hope so."
Octavia snickered and picked up her shirt, feeling it for any residual dampness from the black rain. "Shirt's good," she said, slipping it on.
Clarke checked her clothes as well and got dressed once she determined they were safe.
Octavia pulled on her pants, socks and boots, but left her jacket to dry some more.
Once they were both dressed they moved clear of the fire and the makeshift clothesline, further into the cave, and dragged and kicked small rocks and branches out of the way so they could roll on the ground unobstructed.
"Not gonna pull your hair back?" Octavia questioned, tilting her head with a wicked grin. "That's fair game, then."
Clarke scoffed at her and got into a ready stance. "You think pulling my hair is going to give you the advantage? Come on, Skairipa." She rolled her eyes.
Octavia moved into her own stance, popping her neck and flexing her fingers. "Let's do this."
They circled each other for several seconds, then Octavia launched herself head first into Clarke's stomach, taking Wanheda to the ground.
Surprised by the random head butt, Clarke laughed at herself for being caught off guard and grabbed Octavia by the back of the neck, slamming her face into the dirt as she rolled them over, sitting astride Skairipa's back.
Octavia growled and spit out a mouthful of dirt, then bucked Clarke off of her with a powerful surge of her hips and executed a roundhouse kick to Wanheda's jaw.
Clarke spit blood and got to her feet, readying herself for the next attack, and deflected a right hook, bringing her own left hook to the side of Octavia's dirt-stained face.
Octavia absorbed the blow and returned fire, grabbing Clarke by the throat and shoving her against the cave wall.
The jagged rocks were hell on her back and Octavia's grip on her throat was bruising. For a moment she forgot they were sparring and just stared, stunned, her breathing labored.
Octavia never forgot she was fighting, but the look on Clarke's face knocked her down a peg and she let go of her friend's throat. "Where'd you go?"
Clarke absently stroked her throat, pulling in a few full breaths and stepping from the uncomfortable wall. "Reminded me of something," she said flatly, turning away.
"Being choked?" Octavia threw at her, clearly amused. "Reminded you of what?"
"Nothing," Clarke said darkly.
"Wanheda," Octavia said disapprovingly, stepping up to Clarke and reaching around her from behind, fingers closing over her delicate throat once again, strong hands pulling Clarke against her. "Did Lexa fuck you like this?"
Clarke gasped, struggled briefly against the hold but quickly gave in, melting into the younger girl. "Sometimes."
Octavia let go of her, satisfied she'd gotten a true answer and not some placating bullshit, and she stalked off to sit by the fire again.
Clarke took a few minutes to herself to breathe and think, then joined her.
"Lincoln was always so gentle," Octavia offered after a long, tense silence. "I couldn't get him to do anything like that. Or to let me."
Clarke's head shot up from where she'd been staring at the dirt, her eyes slightly wide. "You tried, though?"
"All the time," Octavia sighed, flopping backwards onto her back. "I guess looking back it was really sweet of him, but at the time it was frustrating that he was always so careful with me. I was breakable on the ark. I'm not breakable on the ground."
"No, you're not," Clarke agreed. "Evolution is supposed to take millennia, but you've managed it in a year."
"So have you," Octavia pointed out. "You didn't get where you are by chance. You worked for it. You changed for it."
"Most people think I regret that."
"I see how your eyes light up when they call you Wanheda," Octavia smirked. "Commander of Death. And you are, Clarke, you really are. Someone had to be and you stepped up."
"That'll look awesome on my resume."
"You already have a job, Wanheda." Octavia sat up and stared at her. "Why haven't you notched your kills?"
"Are you kidding? I don't have enough skin. Literally."
Octavia laughed. "What if you counted each mark as five?"
Clarke made a face at her. "Ten and I'll consider it."
"Deal."
--
They slept on furs by the fire. Octavia started screaming in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, ripping at her clothes.
Clarke was on her in a flash, holding her wrists, trying to wake her up. "Octavia. Octavia!" she shouted, shaking her until the other girl's eyes flew open.
Octavia held her breath, eyes darting around in a panic. When she realized searing, burning pain wasn't encompassing her entire body, she exhaled slowly and tried to relax. She wasn't soaked with acid rain. Her clothes were safe, her skin was intact, Clarke was... sitting on her. The haze of the dream gave way to the haze of reality, and Clarke's weight on her thighs was grounding. She carefully extracted her wrists from Clarke's grip and guided one of Clarke's hands to her throat, eyes shining with haunted desperation as she forced Wanheda's fingers around her racing pulse. "Please," she whispered.
Clarke's heart started racing, pupils dilating as she flexed her fingers, then tightened them at Octavia's plea. "I won't kill you," Clarke whispered resolutely, "if that's what you're after."
"No," Octavia breathed. She shifted beneath Clarke, her hand finding its way into her leather pants. "Just choke me. Bring me to the edge. I want the edge."
Clarke leaned down to put her face right over Octavia's. "The edge is sharp, Skairipa. Don't stumble."
"I don't stumble." Octavia arched into her questing fingers and into Clarke's hand, which finally, deliciously squeezed. The look in Clarke's eyes was riveting and she couldn't look away.
"Do you really trust the Commander of Death not to let you fall over the edge?" Clarke hissed, power surging through her blood.
"It's a long way down," Octavia agreed. "I don't fear death, Clarke. I fear living."
Clarke's eyes hardened, then softened, then wavered somewhere in between as she stole a kiss from the girl beneath her.
Surprised, Octavia held still, stopping the motion of her hand. She allowed Wanheda to kiss her, if only to shut them both up. Clarke's lips were impossibly soft; Octavia marveled that they could still be so soft in this harsh climate. The taste was sweeter than she would have thought, mixed with a tinge of whiskey. She knew Clarke secretly indulged. "I knew you were a whiskey girl," she murmured when Clarke's lips lifted.
"I also have a stash of pot in the woods," Clarke said dryly, leaving Octavia to wonder whether she was serious.
"Oh yeah?" Octavia asked, gasping when Clarke's grip tightened a little more and made breathing somewhat of an effort.
"Your hand stopped moving," Clarke observed.
"You kissed me."
"And?"
"I don't know." Her voice started to get raspy from the wheezing it took to fill her lungs now. She cried out when Clarke's free hand replaced her own. "You don't have to do that," she said hoarsely.
Clarke slipped her fingers inside, decreasing and increasing the pressure on Skairipa's throat in equivalent measures.
Octavia groaned. The walls of the cave crept in on her, darkening the edges of her vision and blurring the center. "Clarke..."
"You're addressing the Commander of Death," Clarke hissed.
"Wanheda," Octavia amended the appellation. "Fuck."
Clarke stroked her slowly higher, until she felt the first stirrings of twitching muscles, and then thrust hard and bruised her grip all at once, watching with equal parts fascination and satisfaction as Octavia came undone.
Octavia screamed her release into the night, and by the time she had fully come back to herself a few moments later, Clarke was across the fire again on her own furs. Thank God they were both warriors; they could fuck in the middle of the night and it wouldn't be awkward in the morning.