Chapter Text
“Tell me what you want to do. Tell me how to help and I’ll do it, okay?” Finn looks at her from under bangs that always seem in need of trimming. Hands in his pockets, and just the hint of a shy, concerned smile. Wary but hopeful since Clarke called him out of the blue after ghosting him for weeks.
“Okay.” Clarke pushes him back onto her bed, a hard shove in the centre of his chest. He bounces slightly. “Take your pants off.”
She fucks him into her mattress. Barely wet, barely there, but grinding into the burn, desperate to feel something. Bites instead of kisses. Fucks him until his eyes roll back in his head and he’s calling her name, panting loveyouloveyouloveyou until it loses any meaning. She’s using him. He must know that. And yet here they are again. Finn comes with a groan, and Clarke rolls off of him, rolls as far away as she can in a queen size bed, feels nothing but cold and sticky and disgusted with herself.
“Clarke?” Finn’s hand, tentative on her shoulder, warm through the t-shirt she didn’t bother to take off. “Clarke, are you…?”
“Don’t,” she forces out. “Please. I can’t right now.” Can’t turn over and see Finn’s wounded puppy dog eyes that she used to find so fucking charming. Can’t hear about how emotionally unavailable she is. Can’t listen to another lecture about how she really needs to talk to someone, a professional perhaps?
Finn flops backwards onto the bed beside her, lets out a defeated sigh. Does he know he’s already lost her? “Fine.”
Clarke grabs a couple of tissues from the bedside table, tosses the rest of the box to Finn without turning, and sets about cleaning herself. “I’m tired, Finn. Just…I’m sorry, can we just go to sleep?”
~~*~~
Of course, sleep doesn’t come. Clarke shifts like a slowly spinning gyre – things fall apart, the centre cannot hold – turns over and around for hours. Foetal position, flat on her back, on her stomach a pillow clutched to her face, finally on her back again, staring at the blotches of different coloured darkness on the ceiling.
Finn snuffle-snores into his own pillow. Clarke knows with a gnawing certainty that it was a mistake to call him, selfish and self-destructive. That for all his faults Finn cares about her in a way she’s no longer capable of caring for him. For anyone.
It’s been almost a year since her dad died; eleven months and twenty-eight days in fact. Clarke’s taken to ticking them off in her head, marks scratched on a prison wall; one more day survived, one more day she won’t have to live again. But it doesn’t seem to get any easier. Clarke’s aware she’s not the only one hurting, grieving - they all loved Jake Griffin – but Raven, Finn, Octavia, even her mom all seem to be getting on with their lives somehow, while she can barely function.
A car passes on the road outside with a wet swish and a brief wash of light. In the glow Clarke sees her shelves of text books and novels, the sketches and photographs covering her room, some framed, some simply tacked in place. Mementos from another life, pickled in a jar of formaldehyde and labelled - over. Today was no different from most others; no more or less miserable. An 8am organic chemistry class, which Clarke must have been insane to take. A test she probably flunked. Lab time. Lunch with her mom, awkward conversation over spicy burritos; neither one quite able to look at the other. Her mom insisted on paying. An afternoon of dissection, a little quality time with Fred, the cadaver Clarke’s been working with all year. Naming him is probably weird, but not weirder than anything else in her life these days.
And yet today is worse. Clarke’s eyes sore and gritty from lack of sleep, her tongue pasted to the roof of her mouth, her stomach lurching with a nameless terror no meds seem able to control. It’s the same as every other night but heightened. Each individual fibre of the sheets irritates her freezing-burning skin. The walls are closing in like a scene in a movie, the ceiling threatening to crush her. The sky will fall and nothing she can do will prevent it; it’s already happened.
The bedside clock blinks 2.47am. Clarke can’t stand it anymore. Finn snores louder, one arm flung over her. Why the hell did she let him stay? His hand resting heavy and possessive on her hip makes her feel so alone, so empty she wants to crawl out of her own skin. Fuck. She peels the hand off herself and rolls out of bed. Finn grunts but doesn’t wake, just pulls Clarke’s pillow against his chest and settles.
Clarke picks her way over the detritus of her bedroom floor; pads barefoot through the quiet apartment and into the communal lounge. Orange light filters in from the street, flickering like fire as the curtains sway in the night breeze. Clarke could pretend the whole city is burning down, then at least she wouldn’t have to deal with any of this anymore – work, other humans, her own brain. There have been times during the last few months when all she wanted was for everything to stop, for it all to go away forever. There have been times when she was so exhausted by her own existence she would have given almost anything to make it end. As a pre-med she knows enough about drugs, about human anatomy. There’s no easy way really, no pleasant way, but she could have done it without too much mess. Simply gone to sleep and not woken up.
Much as Clarke longs for rest at times like these it’s not an option. Her mom would never recover from another loss so huge, and her friends…well, they’d be pissed. So, Clarke sinks into the overstuffed sofa and considers her less terminal choices. A bottle of really bad tequila somebody left after a party, a bottle of Polish vodka with some kind of grass in it, or bourbon…wait, Raven finished the bourbon last night. Alcohol doesn’t mix well with her meds anyway, and Clarke hates tequila hangovers. She could binge watch Netflix and meld with the sofa until the cushions finally eat her. Depression nap through tomorrow, she has no new papers due and her shift doesn’t start until late. But the shaking rage is in her bones, the black despair engulfing her.
Fuck it!
Sticky notes are as much as Clarke feels equipped to deal with. She creeps around the dark apartment like some fucked up Santa, determined not to wake anyone. She leaves a garish orange note on the bedside table for Finn; two matching neon green for Octavia and Raven, stuck to the stained chrome coffee machine; and a standard yellow one beside them to be passed on to her mom. A few sentences scrawled on each. Not much but it’s all she can manage, doesn’t want them to panic when they find her gone, call the cops and report her missing. It would have been better to wait until spring break at least, but Clarke fears destroying things if she stays an hour longer. She doesn’t expect they’ll understand. Understand how scared she is of everything, of herself most of all. She can’t ask any more of them.
Packing has never been Clarke’s strongest suit. To her credit she remembers to put on pants, then throws a random but comprehensive selection of travel supplies into Daisy’s trunk – pats the old blue car fondly as she climbs in – and off they go.
~~*~~
Driving out of city limits, the suburban sprawl giving way to wide open country either side of the interstate, Clarke can almost imagine her dad is with her; sharing in the relief of being free of expectations and responsibilities; shedding the façade of being a proper grown up for a little while. She tunes the radio to a classic rock station and sings along to Bon Jovi.
Oh, we’re half way there. Woah-oh livin’ on a prayer.
It’s what he would have wanted.
As one station fades out or turns to a phone-in or the news, Clarke tunes to another. The miles pass as she drives into the night. The world flows over and around Daisy’s chassis, a distant thing, while inside Clarke is wrapped in a chrysalis of familiar scents and songs from her childhood. She’s avoiding news reports, they’re all the same anyway – continuing state of unrest, international war on terror, illegal immigrants, political tensions running high, another tragic school shooting…and now the weather. Clarke knows in a distant way that she should be concerned, should be able to care; but she’s so mired in her own misery she’s got no energy left for worry or outrage. She retunes the radio with aggressive desperation until Fall Out Boy blasts through the speakers. Her skin still smells like industrial strength disinfectant and death and empty sex. Why the hell did she decide to enter a profession where she’ll be surrounded by pain and loss all day? What a naïve idiot she must have been to believe she could help people; make her parents proud.
Fuck. Fuck it. Fuck it all.
It’s only when she makes a sudden swerve off the interstate and plunges into the unknown – an angry car horn blaring behind her because she really should have signalled – that the crippling weight inside her chest eases a fraction. The other life, the other Clarke, are left behind, travelling south on I-95; but this Clarke, she’s on an adventure.
~~*~~
Clarke dabs the break and rolls Daisy to a gentle halt at a junction. It’s been maybe an hour since she last saw another car, and even the lights from houses are few and far between. Out here the sky is vast and full of stars. If it wasn’t for the electricity and telephone poles dotting the roadside, Clarke could almost pretend she was in another century. Given enough of this perhaps she could expand past the grief and rage that seem to be all she can feel. The ache of a loss too raw to process. Clarke turns off the radio, cracks open the window and lets the quiet fields and chirping crickets lull her for a moment. Breathes in the fresh night air. She knows that her mom, her friends find it hard to be around her, don’t know what to say, don’t know how to speak to her without causing her to lash out or simply walk away. The shame of what she’s become rises hot in her throat.
She’s wondered during the last year if she had always been this way, the seeds deep inside her just waiting for the right conditions to sprout and grow. Little Clarke, so bright, so intense. Too quiet or too loud, too boisterous or too timid, too friendly or too withdrawn. Always too much of something packed into that puppy-fat mess of scraped knees and My Little Pony hair slides; never really fitting in. But Wells had been there since the first day of kindergarten, always steady when Clarke was not. And after – after Wells was killed – her dad had been there to help her keep all her disparate pieces from flying apart. He’d loved her without reserve, risked her jagged edges and slowly Clarke had healed. But he’s gone, and Clarke is a broken mirror, seven years bad luck and a bloody hand for anyone who comes too close.
The low rumble of Daisy’s engine ticking over is a small comfort. This was her dad’s car, his first, paid off over years of grunt jobs as he worked his way through college. He had cared for it like a beloved pet, oil covered and grinning in faded coveralls as he tinkered with the engine; combing the web for replacement parts as they aged and wore out. He refused to part with it, regardless of her mom’s exasperation and cajoling at the fact they had a much newer and better car sitting in the garage. The day Clarke got accepted into her first-choice college, he gave Daisy to her.
“Take good care of my girl,” he’d said, eyes shining.
“Which one of us are you talking to, dad?” Clarke joked, swinging the keychain on her pointer finger.
Her dad had glanced between her and the car, before wrapping his long arm around her shoulders and squeezing gently. “Both of you,” he said.
Clarke pats the dash affectionately, glances at the empty passenger seat, then back out at the pool of illumination cast by the headlights on the dark road. “Left or right, captain?” she mutters. Waits for a reply that doesn’t come.
Of course, if life was as it should be Clarke would be nine years old again, proudly riding shotgun, bouncing in her booster seat, straining against the seatbelt in her excitement; and her dad would be the one asking the question. In a perfect universe he’d be the one letting his small, brightly blazing daughter take control of their fate for a few hours of escape and fun.
Clarke rests her forehead against the worn leather of the steering wheel, breathes hard through her nose and fights the tears that threaten to overwhelm her. “Such a fucking idiot, Griffin.”
She sits back and gives the engine an angry rev. A startled rabbit bursts from cover in the bushes and dives away, zigzagging left along the edge of the headlight beams, cotton-tail bobbing. Clarke sighs. “Left it is then.”
~~*~~
Clarke is lost.
Perfectly, magnificently, magnanimously lost in the middle of nowhere. And that’s exactly how she wants it. They can just brand terra incognita over her tired broken heart and leave her here. She’s infiltrated the endlessly winding arterial road systems that flow through this huge, fuck-up country. She’s in it’s bloodstream now. Clarke piloting Daisy like that miniaturised ship in The Fantastic Voyage; or like some tiny furious virus. Or perhaps the country is in her bloodstream and she’s going to die of it? America – always proves fatal. Whatever. For the first time since the funeral her outer state seems to mirror her emotional one; it’s a weird kind of relief. Maps and GPS and even reading road signs be damned. There’s no plan, but if there was it would probably just be – drive completely at random, far far away until things make sense again.
Morning is breaking. In what must be the east the sky begins to tinge blue and purple, a bruise creeping up the horizon. In the surrounding woods, birds are chorusing so loud Clarke can hear them even over The Cult.
Sweet soul sister, keep on pushing till the dawn…yeah yeah yeah. Sweet soul sister, forever dancing on and ooooooonnn.
She should be tired. She is tired, and yet she’s also wide awake and more present than she has been in weeks. The trees give way to more rolling country, farms, a field of sleepy cows swaying as they graze. Colours seep into the land. Mist rising as the ground begins to warm. The last chill of night receding as the day takes a breath. Clarke takes a breath too, deep into her diaphram where it always aches.
Cruising a straight stretch of road, Daisy vibrating like a purring cat, Clarke spots a human figure in the distance. They’re far away, little more than an accent mark on the horizon, standing very still silhouetted against the sky. It’s curious, unexpected to see someone out here in the ass end of nowhere. Everything’s probably fine, but Clarke needs to check. As she comes closer she slows and pulls to a halt but keeps the engine running just in case.
A woman stands at the crossroads. Hands hidden deep in the pockets of her long black coat, face tilted up towards the sky, watching the last of the sunrise. Loose waves of hair stream well past her shoulders, and the bulky pack slung on her back gives her the outline of a very attractive snail. Clarke immediately curses her brain – stupid stupid brain – and tries again. At first this woman appears made of contrasts, a charcoal sketch both more and less real than her surroundings, starkly beautiful. But the fresh sunlight outlines her in gold and softens her edges.
Slowly, Clarke becomes aware that not only is she staring but being stared at. Assessed. The woman’s expression appears neutral, yet somehow still manages to be unnerving.
Clarke lowers the passenger window, leans across and pastes on her most reassuring smile. “Hey. Good morning.”
The woman’s face remains passive, but perhaps something flickers behind her black rimmed glasses. “Hello.” Her voice is lower than Clarke expected.
“I was just…um, wondering if you need any help?”
The woman’s posture relaxes a little, her lips twitch into the briefest of smiles. From a distance she’d seemed to loom large, but close to her build is slight, the vulnerability behind her steadfast expression almost painful to look at. “I was about to ask you the same question,” she says.
Clarke lets out a laugh. It’s such an unfamiliar action she fears her throat might rupture. “So, do you need a lift maybe?”
“Oh.” The woman takes a rapid step back, frowning, scanning every inch of Clarke and Daisy with laser focus; although that may just be the sun reflecting off her glasses.
Clarke stays still and silent, afraid a wrong move may make this woman bolt. There’s no way for her to know for sure, but she senses something wrong, something wounded in this stranger; someone running just as she is. She waits until her idiot anxiety crawls up her throat and tries to form words. “I…”
Whatever blundering thing she was about to say is interrupted.
“Alright.” The woman gives a shallow nod. “Thank you.”
“Okay? Great. Jump in! You may need to give the door and extra tug,” Clarke warns her as she swings the pack off her back. “I really hope you like loud guitar bands.”
~~*~~
As it turns out Lexa’s not exactly chatty.
During the last twenty minutes of bumping over potholes, and humming along to music of questionable merit, Clarke has learned only three things about her new travel buddy: her name, that she’s travelling to no fixed destination, and that she keeps her hands hidden.
Okay, four things: she has the ability to stare silently out of the window with an aura of zen-like calm that’s driving Clarke bugshit.
After twenty-five minutes, the sun fully up and traffic beginning to appear on the road, Clarke’s wondering if Lexa has simply fallen into a catatonic state. “You’re very quiet,” she blurts.
Lexa turns to face her and blinks once. “That’s an astute observation, Clarke.”
Shit. Now Clarke feels like a total dick. “Sorry. I don’t mean it in a bad way, just…it’s okay to talk if you want to. I would kinda like it if you did actually, help to distract me from, well – me.”
“I’m not…” Lexa makes a small frustrated noise. “I have nothing to say.”
“It can be anything. Doesn’t have to be deep.”
Clarke waits.
Lexa sighs in a long-suffering way.
Clarke stares at the road ahead and tries to resign herself to silence.
“I like the colour – of your car,” Lexa says quietly. It sounds like the admission of a slightly sordid secret.
“Thanks,” Clarke says, smiling encouragement.
“The teal, it’s nice.”
“Yeah, I like it too. The car’s called Daisy. My dad named her before I was even born.”
Lexa hums in acknowledgement and seems about to lapse into silence again.
Clarke scrambles for a new topic. “You know, my mom always warned me not to pick up hitchhikers.”
Lexa shrugs, hands still embedded in her pockets. “Well, strictly speaking I was not hitchhiking, so your mother has no need to worry.”
The words are sincere but wrapped in a kind of bone dry humour. Thing number five: Lexa can be funny. The realisation warms Clarke, so of course she has to go and ruin the moment.
“You’re not, like, some kind of crossroads devil are you?” she asks.
“What?”
Clarke can sense Lexa’s confused glare without even looking. But now she’s started digging this metaphorical grave of embarrassment she feels compelled to shovel the full six feet down.
“Because,” she says, “I met you at the crossroads, all mysterious, like in the stories. And maybe you’re going to offer to give me my heart’s desire – make me the greatest blues musician in the world – in return for my immortal soul?”
“You want to play the blues?” Lexa’s voice is as deadpan as her stare.
“No. That was just an example of something the devil might offer, hypothetically.”
“Oh. Okay. No, I’m not the devil.”
“Just thought I should check.”
A beat. Clarke imagines how it would feel to lie down and pull cool earth over herself. Lots of it.
“You sound disappointed, Clarke,” Lexa observes.
“No, I don’t.”
“Now you sound defensive.”
“I am not defensive. Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Being disturbingly insightful.”
More awkward silence. Clarke reviews the stages of decomposition. Soothing. “I’m sorry,” she says finally. “I seem to have forgotten how to talk to people.”
Lexa nods. “That’s alright. I don’t believe I ever knew how in the first place.”
“Can we start over?”
“Of course.”
“Hi, I’m Clarke Griffin.”
“Lexa Woods.”
Clarke offers her hand across the stick-shift, but Lexa doesn’t take it and after an uncomfortable second, she withdraws.
“So, are you?” Lexa asks.
Clarke startles slightly. “Am I what?”
“The devil.”
“No. I’m a fricking pre-med student.”
“I do not believe the two fields are mutually exclusive,” Lexa says.
“Are you laughing at me?” Clarke asks, full of mock offence. “I…oh my God. You are laughing at me. You are quite strange, Lexa Woods.”
“Likewise, Clarke.” Lexa shakes her head, stares out the window, then back at Clarke. Her voice is soft when she asks, “What are you so eager to sell your soul for?”
Clarke grips the wheel, bites the inside of her lip till she tastes blood. “You can’t sell something you don’t have.”
~~*~~
It’s not that Clarke’s an addict or anything, but she’s begun to crave coffee. Perhaps a macchiato, or a caramel latte with a couple extra shots. The problem with being totally, magnificently, magnanimously lost is that she has no idea where the nearest coffee shop is.
“Lexa.”
“Yes, Clarke?”
“Do you have any idea where we are?”
“No.”
“Okay,” Clarke says as they pull up to the STOP sign at the next junction. “Left or right, captain?”
Lexa looks perplexed. “I’m not…why did you call me that?”
Clarke breathes and listens to Daisy’s engine idle. She could, probably should brush this off and move on, not risk giving away a piece of herself. But something about Lexa’s presence makes her want to share, more than she has done in the last year. There are no other cars around, they have time.
“It’s kind of a game me and my dad used to play when I was a kid,” she says, half-smiling into the memory. “Both my parents worked a lot, it could be tough. I was…it hurt, to have so little connection, so little control. Sometimes when dad got time off, when mom was at the hospital and it was just us, we would go on these crazy adventures where we’d pack the car and just drive. He’d let me pick the road. We never knew where we’d end up; that’s what made it fun.” Clarke’s eyes are stinging, her voice cracking, but she continues. “He would call me captain to let me know I was in charge, y’know?”
Lexa is silent, assessing for a moment. “Did it make you happy?” she asks.
“Well, yeah. I was a really bossy kid.”
“I see.”
“So, left or right?”
“Right.”
~~*~~
A little further on, heading down a broader stretch of road, scrubby bushes either side, they pass a black painted Amish buggy going in the opposite direction. It’s the kind of thing Clarke’s only ever seen in movies. Her heart lifts for a second. The single horse is a shiny chestnut mare, deep brown eyes and a white blaze across her nose. She clip-clops steadily, her harness jingling like sleigh bells. The driver is an old man in a dark jacket. A weathered face sandwiched between a wide brimmed felt hat and a curly white beard that half covers his chest.
“Oh my god,” Clarke exclaims. “It’s Amish Santa. Lexa, look!”
Lexa makes a non-committal sound and sinks lower in her seat, as if suddenly overcome by the weight of her own head.
As they pass, Clarke slows Daisy to a crawl so as not to frighten the horse. The warm animal scent wafts through the window, along with earthy sweetness from whatever produce is in the back of the buggy. Clarke experiences an odd jolt of nostalgia for a life she’s never known. When she checks the rear-view she sees the number plate and reflectors. The combination of old and new seems incongruous somehow.
“C’mon, Lexa,” Clarke says a couple of minutes later. “Even you have to admit that Amish Santa was pretty cool?”
“Indeed,” Lexa says. But she remains slumped, looking away.
“Right? Seriously. Do you think he has all the presents stashed floor to ceiling in one of those big red barns?”
“Perhaps.”
“Amish Santa knows if you’ve been naughty or nice, Lexa,” Clarke sing-songs. “Have you been naughty or nice?”
“Enough, Clarke,” Lexa snaps.
Clarke shuts up. Stung, chastened. She slips a gear by accident, the car jerks. “Sorry,” she mutters.
The silence stretches until Clarke wants to scream.
“You did well,” Lexa tells her eventually, quiet, like an apology. “You did well with the horse. You were kind. Sometimes people throw stones.”
“What? Why? That’s terrible.”
“It is,” Lexa agrees. “I’ve never had the opportunity to ask about their motives.”
Clarke glances at Lexa’s solemn eyes. “Shit,” she says. It’s the most eloquent thing she can think of.
“Other times they drive too close and clip the back wheels, or speed past the horse to make it panic and run. But mostly they just throw stones.” Lexa’s jaw works, tenses. “A while ago a baby died. She was riding home in her mother’s arms. Sleeping. A rock hit her in the head. She was only six months old.”
It’s too much. Clarke pulls the car over and turns off the ignition. Grips the wheel till her knuckles turn white, stares out of the window. Teeth grinding. She will not cry. She will not fucking cry at all the pain and evil in the world. Not in front of Lexa. Maybe not ever again.
“Clarke?”
Clarke nods. Glares at the road and the sky and the pretty spring flowers in the verges.
Lexa shifts in her seat. “I spoke out of turn. I shouldn’t have told you that.”
“I’m fine,” Clarke manages, “Just…angry. Not at you, I promise.”
“I believe you, but -”
“When I was…” Clarke swallows, starts again. “When I was little I thought that being good was enough. It’s how we’re brought up, y’know? Work hard, do the right thing, get a gold star. I thought that it would keep us safe. You do the right thing and the world is kind. Hugs and puppies all round. So fucking stupid. And then…”
“And then?” Lexa prompts.
“You learn better. You learn it was all a lie.”
“Yes.”
Clarke bows her head, closes her eyes. “I don’t know how to live in this world anymore,” she confesses. It’s little more than a whisper. “All the random cruelty. The hypocrisy, the pointlessness, the injustice. God, we’re so fucking dumb. Humans are so fucking dumb…No offence.”
“I cannot ever know how you feel,” Lexa says, “but I do know what it is to lose people you love. The pain never leaves, but it does get easier to carry.”
“When?” Clarke says, it comes out as more of a whimper. “It’s been eleven months and twenty-eight, no, twenty-nine days now, since my dad died. When does it get easier?”
Lexa reaches over, lays her hand on Clarke’s forearm where it’s braced against the wheel. It’s warm, comforting, familiar somehow. Clarke breaks out in gooseflesh. Shivers into the touch.
“It takes as long as it takes,” Lexa says.
A bitter laugh escapes Clarke’s chest. “Yeah.”
She darts a look over at Lexa, meets her gaze, her green eyes shining with shared pain and the weight of understanding. It’s a look too heavy to hold. Instead Clarke glances down to the hand still resting on her arm. Lexa’s knuckles are bruised the colours of a stormy sky, swollen and crusted with dried blood. Lexa jerks her hand away after a second, hides it back in her pocket. Now when Clarke catches her eyes the expression is closed off, almost daring her to say something.
Clarke sighs and crosses her arms, wraps them around her torso. “It hurts,” she says. “It just hurts so fucking much. But at the same time, it’s like I can’t feel anything, like nothing feels real anymore.”
“I know,” Lexa says, distant, thoughtful. “I know, Clarke.”
~~*~~
The gas station coffee is terrible. Chugging gasoline straight from the pump would probably be more pleasurable. Clarke buys a second cup from the vending machine in the tiny shop and goes to find Lexa.
She’s leaning against Daisy’s hood, soaking up the pale spring sunshine and staring along the empty road. They’re parked beside the two decrepit, rusting gas pumps, grass growing around the bases. Faded signs above showing long out of date prices.
“Hey,” Clarke says.
Lexa startles for a moment before regaining her composure. “Hello, Clarke.”
“Here.” Clarke holds the steaming Styrofoam cup out to her.
Lexa declines with a small smile, a polite shake of her head. “Thank you, but I don’t like to drink coffee.”
“That’s probably for the best,” Clarke admits, withdrawing the offending cup.
“Are you feeling better?” Lexa asks.
“Yeah, but I think I should stop driving for a while. Even the caffeine isn’t going to keep me awake much longer, although I think it may have destroyed most of my taste buds.”
Lexa looks slightly downcast, scuffs the dusty gravel with the toe of her boot. “Then I should let you rest. I believe there’s a small motel out back. You have been very kind, Clarke. Thank you for the lift.”
Lexa’s already opening the back door of the car, tugging out her backpack, before Clarke can find words to protest. Clarke sees the way she winces as she grips the straps.
“Woah. Wait.” On a reflex Clarke reaches out, but stops before actually touching Lexa’s shoulder, lets her arm drop to her side. “I mean, you don’t have to take off if you don’t want to. You could stay. Keep travelling with me for a while?”
“That’s tempting but I really should…” Lexa’s foot scuffs the gravel again.
“Lexa.”
“Yes?”
“I saw your hands…your knuckles.”
Lexa’s eyes narrow, she hefts her pack onto her back.
“I don’t know what happened, and I promise not to ask,” Clarke hurries on, “not if you don’t want me to. But, please, will you at least let me patch you up? Make sure nothing’s broken. It’s my responsibility as an almost doctor. Then at least if you still want to go I won’t be worried about you getting a nasty infection.”
Lexa purses her lips, stares off to the side, fighting some inner battle. “Giving me treatment will make you feel better?”
“Yeah, it will.”
“Very well.”
~~*~~
Wilhelmina, the friendly fifty-something gas station attendant, bustles them into the motel and tells them to – just holler if there’s anything they need.
As Clarke drops her bag by the door with a thump, she still can’t get over her shock that this place even has a motel. It’s a backwater long since bypassed and forgotten by the rest of America, one of thousands whose names will eventually vanish from the map. The room looks as if it hasn’t been redecorated since 1975 – probably the last time anyone stayed here – but at least it appears to be clean. The twin beds have quilts with mildly psychedelic designs, and in a vase on the table between them there’s an arrangement of artificial flowers. Lexa carefully sets down her pack before bending to sniff the flowers. She jerks back with a disgusted expression and stalks off, shoulders flexing. Clarke is reminded of a cat pretending it didn’t just do something embarrassing.
Clarke stifles a chuckle. Lexa spins and raises and eyebrow. They regard each other across the room. It’s strangely intimate for people who only met a couple of hours ago. Clarke shrugs and looks away first, busies herself with her phone. She so doesn’t want to turn it on, but if she ignores it there will be – dramatic pause - consequences. As soon as the network connects Clarke is bombarded by a chorus of buzzing and dinging that sounds like a swarm of angry wasps attacking a xylophone.
Lexa glances over, frowning, but says nothing. She eases out of her long black coat, hangs it on a hook behind the door and pays great attention to straightening it.
Clarke is suddenly grateful for Lexa’s taciturn nature. She scrolls through her phone.
Finn: How could you break up with me by sticky note?! This has to be a mistake!!!!
Mom: This is terribly irresponsible. What about college? What about your job? I’m covering for you as best I can. Do not pick up hitchhikers. I love you.
Octavia: seriously, wtf dude? Your mom and Finn keep calling me. They’re worried. I’m worried.
Raven: if you don’t come back I’m taking your stuff. Also, be safe you shithead.
Clarke knew it would be like this but –
“Fuck,” she growls.
She paces as she listens to increasingly worried voicemails. They make her feel guilty, which in turn makes her feel small and sick and angry.
Lexa clears her throat, shifts in her chair, but doesn’t look up from the dogeared book she’s produced from somewhere. “I don’t mean to intrude, but is everything alright?”
“Yes, it’s fine…I mean it isn’t but…yes.”
Lexa gives a shallow nod. “Okay.”
Clarke flings her phone onto the bed; bites the indents in her already bitten lip, drives the heels of her hands into her temples and presses, circles, tries to remember how to breathe. She may or may not be making a low growling noise in her throat. It’s better than running headfirst into a wall, repeatedly, which is what she wants to do. She lunges to grab the clunky remote from beside the TV, flicks through the available channels before settling on something innocuous; then turns back to Lexa, whose gaze hasn’t left the page during the whole procedure. “Okay, your turn,” she says.
Lexa looks positively alarmed. “Don’t you need to answer your messages?”
“Your hands…”
“My hands will still be here,” Lexa tells her.
Damn it. Clarke fires off four quick dismissive replies then turns off her phone.
Duty done she waves the travel first aid kit at Lexa, tries to lighten the mood. “Time to tend to your wounds, captain.”
Lexa huffs, marks her place with an old receipt and lays down her book. “Please don’t call me that. I have never, and will never be in military service, Clarke.” She deadly serious.
“Sorry, I’m just playing. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“I’m not offended.”
“Fine. C’mere then, honeybunch,” Clarke beckons, one finger crooked.
Lexa stands. “Is that supposed to be better?”
“Infinitely…snookums,” Clarke drawls, leading Lexa into the small bathroom.
Lexa rolls her eyes and sits gingerly on the side of the tub. “I’m beginning to regret my life choices.”
Clarke nudges aside the complimentary soap and shampoo arranged on a little table, puts down her first aid kit and sets about scrubbing in. Plenty of lather, hot hot water and the Happy Birthday song twice through in her head because she’s never been able to lose the habit. That done, she sits down on the fluffy pink cover of the closed toilet lid, so that she’s on a level with Lexa. “Alright,” she says, donning her best reassuring professional demeanour, “I need to check your hands now. May I touch you, Lexa?”
Wordlessly, Lexa offers her hands.
Clarke gets to work. Her whole life may be falling apart, but this is something she knows, something she excels at. Lexa’s knuckles are a mess. Bruises, dried blood, grazes beginning to scab, no longer bleeding but seeping a little clear yellow liquid, and there’s grime in the creases of her skin. Clarke probes and presses, gently testing; nothing seems to be broken. Lexa’s hands are narrow, beautiful, with long delicate fingers that could equally well belong to a concert pianist or a renaissance sculpture. Short nails and callouses on the palms, she’s likely used to manual work, but examining Lexa’s hands brings Clarke no closer to knowing who she is or what happened to her. Clarke sighs and checks for splinters, anything that might expand in water and cause further problems.
Lexa endures Clarke’s examination with fortitude. Nostrils flaring slightly, eyes trusting.
“Normally,” Clarke says, “I would advise you to go and get an X-ray and a tetanus shot, but I have a feeling you would ignore me.”
Lexa makes a non-committal noise.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Clarke says. “Just hop up for me and put your hands under the faucet. We need to clean them.”
Cold running water, medium pressure, to cleanse the cuts and abrasions and to help reduce the swelling. Clarke supports first one and then the other of Lexa’s hands as she gently helps to wash away the more stubborn patches of blood and dirt. The water running into the basin turns pink and then clear. Clarke becomes semi hypnotised by the way her thumb dips between Lexa’s knuckles, smoothes over the tendons that run down the back of Lexa’s hand and into those long fingers. Lexa seems caught up too, pupils dilated and breathing shallow. But - no, Clarke isn’t going there.
After five minutes or so the water has done as much good as it’s going to. “All done,” Clarke says, turning off the faucet. She grabs a fresh towel and pats Lexa’s hands dry. “Sit down again, please.”
Lexa sits watching Clarke as she lays out what she needs on the little table.
“Nearly done,” Clarke tells her, sitting her ass back down on the plush fake-fur of the toilet seat. She applies a liberal coating of antibiotic cream, covers it with a non-stick wound dressing, and finishes by wrapping it, firm but not too tight.
Something about this quiet, strange girl has worked its way under Clarke’s skin. For the first time since her dad died she’s feeling things other than numbness, rage or grief. Instead an odd kind of tenderness has sneaked under her defences. She finds she doesn’t even mind, but is suddenly deathly afraid of losing it.
“All done,” Clarke says, relinquishing Lexa’s hand.
“Thank you, Clarke.” Lexa gives her fingers a slight experimental flex and seems pleased with the result.
“Take two of these every four hours,” Clarke says, handing Lexa a packet of anti-inflammatory painkillers. “You’re going to have to be careful for a while so the damage can heal properly, but my verdict as an almost medical professional is, you’ll be fine.”
Lexa nods and offers Clarke a fleeting half smile. “You truly are very kind.”
“Not so much. In fact, I think a bunch of people would disagree right now. It’s just you’re easy to be kind to.” Clarke stands and busies herself repacking the first aid kit. “I’m gonna shower and get some sleep, but you’re welcome to stay.”
Lexa’s eyes widen. She begins to stutter something.
“There’s enough space for both of us,” Clarke tells her, heading back into the main room. “You’re safe. I promise.”
Lexa follows. “Only,” she says, considering, “if you let me pay my half of the bill.”
“There’s no need.”
“There is. I insist.”
“I have enough cash. It’s fine.”
“No. I can’t stay unless you let me pay my half.”
Clarke crosses her arms and faces Lexa full on. “Are we seriously arguing about this?”
“Discussing, not arguing.”
“Are we arguing about whether we’re arguing?”
Lexa tilts her head to one side. “No.”
“You’re really very stubborn.”
“It has been said.”
“Okay. Okay, I will take your money,” Clarke says, throwing up her hands in defeat. “Happy now?”
“I am.” Lexa nods once, returns to the chair in the corner, retrieves her book and pushes her glasses up her nose. Settles.
“Great...” Even though Lexa’s not looking, Clarke turns away to hide her smile. She runs her hands through her hair – ugh she desperately needs a shower, but it can wait. She flops onto the bed nearest the door, the lumpy mattress embracing her tired body. It would be alright to just stretch out here for a few minutes, right? Just rest her eyes. Recharge. Work up the energy to wash and change. She won’t fall asleep; can’t even remember the last time she did sleep.
Clarke’s awareness drifts. The slightly musty scent of old carpet and lavender air freshener. Her dad laughing. A clock ticking somewhere. The creak of bedsprings. The occasional quiet turning of a page. Just a few minutes…
At some point Clarke wakes to semi-consciousness. Her shoes have been removed, the sheets draped over her, tucked to just below her chin. The room is dark but for the dim light from outside. The bed opposite hers is empty, and for a sickening moment she thinks Lexa must have left after all, or maybe she imagined her. Then she hears quiet murmuring. She blinks her exhausted eyes into some kind of focus and sees Lexa. The woman is all in shadow, kneeling facing the wall, head bowed; body half hidden by the corner of the other bed. From her posture and the regular rhythm of her words, Clarke assumes she must be praying. It feels like an intimate thing, a thing Clarke isn’t meant to intrude on, so she closes her eyes and keeps her breathing slow and even. Before long she’s fast asleep again.
~~*~~
It’s a beautiful morning. Clarke takes her meds and foregoes the terrible coffee, in favour of buying way too many energy drinks from the gas station, along with a couple of bear claws and some muffins and trail mix; because you never know when you may have a sudden urge to go hiking. Well, never – the answer is never - in Clarke’s case, but still.
Wilhelmina is ridiculously perky for a woman awake and working at this hour of the morning. The little shop is barely a step up from a shack, but she presides over it with pride. When it comes time to pay, she beams at Clarke and Lexa over the counter and insists on showing them not only pictures of her three grown children, but her five grandchildren as well. She’s so overcome when Lexa compliments her beautiful family that she reaches over and squeezes her cheek. Lexa allows it. Clarke almost gapes.
Even Daisy seems to be in a buoyant mood, her tail positively wagging as they bounce over potholes. Clarke knows it’s silly, possibly a bit unhealthy, to anthropomorphise the old blue Focus so much; but it helps her feel a little closer to her dad, and so she does it anyways.
Clarke and Lexa take turns playing ‘pick a direction.’ Clarke studiously avoids calling Lexa, ‘captain.’ The woman is as laconic as ever, but her expression is perhaps more open, her occasional comments seasoned with a kind of wry humour that makes Clarke smile despite herself.
They drive through a town that could well date back to the founding fathers. Old red brick houses with ivy bearding the walls. In the centre the local market is setting up, traders unloading their wares from vans and pickups. Toting huge crates of vegetables or fresh brown bread on their shoulders.
Clarke sings along to the whole of Bohemian Rhapsody. Lexa appears perplexed, disturbed and intrigued by turns.
More rolling fields and thickets of trees give way to denser woodland ahead and mountains in the distance. Lexa relaxes into her seat, lets her right hand trail a little out of the open window, long fingers moving sure and graceful, exploring the air stream. Clarke finds herself stealing glances at her travelling companion whenever she can without crashing. There’s a curious fascination in the curly wisps of hair around Lexa’s temples, the sharp lines of her profile, the old old eyes in a young face. It’s a good face, pleasing to study, aesthetically; which is what Clarke’s doing.
After an hour of peaceful travel, they stop for breakfast. Lexa excuses herself and disappears behind some bushes. Clarke leans against Daisy’s warm, dusty hood, munching a bear claw and taking in her surroundings.
Across the road a large group of birds perch twittering on the sagging telegraph wire. Starlings perhaps? Clarke’s not much good at birds. A long-ago memory returns to her, little Clarke clinging to her dad like a sleepy koala while he sang. How she loved the way the sound vibrated in his chest.
Like a bird on a wire. Like a drunk in a midnight choir. I have tried, in my way, to be free.
A sudden noise of electrical distress rips apart the peaceful morning. Ten feet away the black box near the top of a telegraph pole sends out a shower of firework sparks and bursts into flames. Most of the birds escape but a couple of sleek speckled bodies plummet and hit the ground. Another flies for a couple of seconds, tailfeathers flaming like a horribly unsuccessful phoenix, before it too plunges to earth. The scent of charred feathers is sickening.
“Holy shit. That’s probably not good.” Clarke drops the remains of her breakfast and yells, “Lexa!”
Lexa stumbles out of the bushes, rearranging her clothes. “What?”
Before Clarke can answer, a blinding flash fills the sky as if the sun just exploded.
Lexa lets out a yelp of shock.
Clarke reels back a step, flinging her arm across her eyes and swearing. “Get down,” she screams. “Down, now!” She flattens herself to the road, hears Lexa hit the ground beside her. Panicked breathing. Scuffling. There’s a low boom in the distance, right at the edge of her hearing; a shudder in the earth below her body.
Lexa is saying something fast and urgent, but it isn’t in English.
Clarke lies still and counts under her breath. “One – one thousand. Two -one thousand. Three – one thousand…Seven – one thousand. Eight. Nine. Ten – one thousand.” Her heart is still trying to explode from her chest, but she doesn’t think she’s going to pass out anymore. “Lexa, are you okay?”
“Yes. What’s happening, Clarke?” Lexa’s voice is shaking.
“I’m going to try and check,” Clarke tells her. “Just a sec…” She sits up groggily then gets to her feet. She has to blink the white dazzle out of her vision before she can get her eyes to work at all. When she can see again she almost wishes she couldn’t. Far off on the horizon a mushroom cloud is blooming in the sky. “Oh God.”
Lexa is on her feet now, righting her cockeyed glasses and squinting at the horizon. “What is that?”
For a millisecond Clarke is amazed that Lexa has lived this long without knowing what an atomic explosion looks like. Then she realises that’s the least of their worries. “That,” she says, “is very very bad.” Her mind supplies a half-remembered piece of seemingly useless information. She closes one eye and holds her left thumb up alongside the ominous cloud. It measures perhaps a fraction bigger than her thumb – that means they could be in the fallout zone.
“We need to go,” Clarke says.
There is a second violent flash of light. Clarke and Lexa fall into each other as if compelled by gravity. They cling, swaying, desperate, arms wrapped around each other, faces hidden against each other’s shoulders. This must be how they die. Clarke braces for the burning pain, holds Lexa as close and as hard as she can. In this last second, she longs to give comfort as well as receiving it. Lexa shakes in her arms. Clarke murmurs reassurance against her coat collar; breathes in the warm sweet scent of her hair, of the side of her neck. They wait. The blast wave doesn’t come. Slowly, Clarke raises her head, stares around wide-eyed with terror. This time the mushroom cloud is behind where they were facing and further away.
“Fuck fuck fuck.” Clarke pulls back far enough to see Lexa’s face without letting go of her.
Lexa’s mouth is set in a grim line, her eyes brimming with tears.
“Lexa, we need to get out of here. Get to shelter.” She enunciates with care; her mouth feels disconnected from her terrified brain.
The wind blows. The world is skewed all wrong. Lexa makes no response.
“Lexa!”
A shudder. Lexa comes back to herself, blinks. “Yes.”
“We have to get in the car right now.”
They both fall into Daisy and slam the doors so hard it makes Clarke’s ears ring. Inside nothing has changed. Outside everything has. Miraculous the way the world can shatter in an instant – a gunshot, a diagnosis, an atom splitting apart; of course, it’s not the kind of miracle anybody wants. Clarke hits the ignition, but it fails.
Lexa sits braced in the passenger seat, bandaged hands in her lap, muttering to herself.
Clarke tries the ignition again. Again. Daisy makes awful grating, squealing noises. It sounds like a mechanical creature in pain. Clarke winces. For terrible seconds the engine chugs over, almost starts then sputters, dies. “Come on Daisy. Come on girl, please,” Clarke pleads. “Please.” Clarke’s reptile brain is on red alert, screaming at her to run, but she’s stuck, trapped. She’s calling on favours and superstitions and a god she no longer believes in as she leans forward and whispers towards the engine. “Daisy…we have to keep each other safe, remember? Come on.”
Finally, finally the engine comes to life.
They drive.