“Healing pods only help with acute injuries,” Clarke says. Breathing is a chore. A rattling, wheezing chore. “Nothing’s broken or torn. Medical won’t help.”
“Medical has drugs. The good ones.”
If Clarke goes to Medical, she’s going to have to deal with medics and press and a million invasive questions. On a good day, not an issue. Today, with everything built up inside her and the pain rendering her brittle, she’s liable to snap and say something she can’t take back.
“No. Just—away from everyone. Please.”
She doesn’t have long to pull herself together. Team debrief will start during the post-race press conference in a little less than an hour. She stumbles into the shower in her prep room and runs the water as hot as it will get for several minutes, then flips it to a hair above freezing and stays in the spray until her fingers are turning blue but the pain is somewhat muted. She gets dressed with tiny, jerky movements.
Julian is standing in the hall when she opens the door to go to debrief.
Clarke fights through the tide of conflicting emotions atseeing him, and the battering ram of agony that hit her when she pulled up short in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
Julian has showered and dressed down, in the Chronicle version of the Elemental athleisure clothes Clarke’s wearing. He looks soft and worried, and a little bit like he’s scared she’s going to throw him out. “Are you okay?”
“Julian.”
“There’s footage of you not being able to get out of the ship by yourself after the race.”
“That happens to pilots all the time.”
“You flew with no suspension for half an hour. I’m not here to argue about whether or not you’re in pain, I just—” He tilts his head back, resting it against the wall. The new angle exposes the line of his throat. Clarke makes herself look away. Julian’s got the ceiling covered; she’ll take the floor. “I needed to see you. I went to Medical first and you weren’t there, so I came here. Your race engineer said I could wait for you if I left when you tell me to leave.”
Clarke needs this to be over. She can’t do this, can’t handle being alone with him for the first time since Graham’s wedding, while she feels this raw. “Leave.”
His smile is a ghost of what it should be. “I will, if you can make me.”
It’s a trap, and Clarke falls for it. She manages the two steps across the hall just fine, but when she reaches out to grab his elbow and shove him toward the exit, her back seizes up. She stumbles and loses her balance, tensing in anticipation of hitting the wall or floor, but she doesn’t. Julian catches her, warm hands a shock against skin still icy from the shower. He sweeps her into his arms while she’s hazy with pain, carries her into her prep room, and shuts the door behind them.
He lowers her gently to the floor, hooks his forearm behind her knees, and slowly presses her thighs up toward her chest. Clarke has to trap whimpers behind her teeth, but she knows what he’s doing, so she cooperates as best she can until—there. The muscles of her back release, and tears spring to her eyes at the relief. And at him being here. Helping her. Caring.
She can’t have this. Shecan’t.
She replaces his hands with her own, holding her knees to her chest. “Thank you. You can go now.”
“I’m not going to leave you like this. You should be in Medical. Why isn’t anyone from your team here? How—”
“This is the sort of thing pilots get benched for,” Clarke says through a clenched jaw. She does not owe him an explanation, but if giving him one means he’ll leave before she splinters, so be it.
“With good reason! You have full-body soft-tissue trauma!”
“Do not fucking dare try to tell me that I should accept getting benched when we both know you wouldn’t. It’s pain. I can handle pain.”
He glowers. “If you don’t respect your body’s limits—”
“You don’t know my limits! And unless you got a medical degree when I wasn’t looking—”
“I did a lot of shit while you weren’t looking,” Julian snaps, then jams the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Sorry. Sorry, I didn’t—sorry.”
“No, by all means, keep going,” Clarke says, latching on to the tangent. This is better. This isbad, but at least it gets her off the defensive. “What else did you have time for after you stopped talking to me?”
Julian sets his jaw. “Stop trying to pin everything on me. Ididn’t stop talking to you, and you didn’t stop talking to me, we just—”
“We couldn’t be friends anymore,” Clarke finishes for him, something in her beginning to close off. She’s devastated that this is how it’s turned out, but at least it’s done. It’s over. They can get closure, maybe, and finally move on. She digs her fingers into the bruise on the back of her thigh, the one left by the crystal she walked into during their fight. “We couldn’t then, and we can’t now. Last weekend proved that.”
Julian sees her shutting the door and does his best to kick it open. “I made a shitty judgment call. That doesn’t mean—”
“You overstepped,” Clarke says. Her back starts pinching again. She puts her heels on the floor and drops her knees to the side. The rotation of her spine is agonizing, but Julian’s there with a palm under her bottom knee to support the weight of her legs before she can groan. She allows the assistance only because it’s practical. She has to walk out of here and go to debrief in a few minutes. “And it’s not just one time. What you said to Atreus, how you’ve talked about Elemental to the press, how you talk to me about my contract? I haven’t asked for your opinion on any of it. It’s not your place to—”
