It's not that Clarke enjoys rubbing salt in open, bleeding wounds. Sometimes she just favors a more aggressive approach, or rather, treatment; sometimes the necrotic tissue needed to be cut away, the edges re-aggravated to encourage the skin to knit back together. Sometimes she's mad and doesn't care how she goes about galvanizing people so long as it works. She clings to the notion of being right all the time because every time she's been wrong, someone dies.

There's always time for regrets later, anyway. If they survive long enough to process them, which is never a guarantee. And oh, the fight...

"I don't —" Clarke pauses here, mind racing through a slog of alcohol like car tires getting stuck in wet cement. Her unencumbered hand comes up, wavering in a so-so gesture as she tries to figure out how to explain herself. Not that it's a hard concept to communicate, just rough to actually admit.

"I don't know how to do that, anymore." How to stop, how to rest. How not to burn herself down like a candle thrown into an incinerator. What if the fight is all we are, whispering in her ear as she sighs into Ava's hair again. "If I don't burn, the rest of them will..."