Chapter Text
“Lexa, we’re not just your bosses, we’re your friends.” Lincoln says. “At least, I hope we are.”
“Of course you are.” Lexa says, standing to one side as he flows around the kitchen, adding the final touches to dinner. It’s fascinating for her to see him like this. When they were teenagers he lived on a diet of burgers and fries, mounds of ketchup the closest he came to anything healthy. Now he’s expertly slicing, shredding, seasoning and doing other processes that might as well be magic to an array of fresh and brightly coloured vegetables that she mostly recognises.
Before she can ask him why he’s getting philosophical, Octavia walks in. “Is he down?” Lincoln asks.
“For now.” She replies. “For once, he’s actually sleeping like a baby. Oh, hi Lexa, sorry, I’m still not used to having guests here.”
“No problem. Thanks for inviting me.”
“It’s good to catch up with you properly.” Octavia says. Lexa can sense something in her voice and she’s sure there’s a brief glance between her and Lincoln as she helps him add the finishing touches to the food.
“We saw each other at the office on Friday. It’s not like anything’s changed with the company since then.”
“That was the company founders meeting with Ms Woods, the CEO. This is friends - family - spending time together.” Lincoln says, bringing two steaming bowls to the table, Octavia following him with a third. The food looks incredible, glistening pieces of salmon almost floating on a bed of what looks like hundreds of different leaves, shoots and grains. She breathes in the steam, trying to work out the different aromas that are combining there.
As she tastes the food she almost forgets her suspicions of a few moments before, until she looks up and sees another glance pass between the two of them.
“It feels like I’m missing something here.” She says. A thought strikes her and she quickly looks around the table, checking it is only set for three. “This isn’t another attempt to set me up with someone, is it?”
“It’s not.” Lincoln says, but his face is still serious, not laughing at the misunderstanding. “It’s…” He looks to Octavia for support.
“We were going to wait until after we’d eaten, but there’s no hiding things from you, is there?” Octavia says, sighing. “It’s Clarke.”
Lexa’s heart skips a beat as all the flavours in her mouth turn to ash and her stomach does a flip. “Clarke?” She says, the name catching in her mouth as she says it, hardening the sound of it.
“We’re still in touch with her.” Lincoln says. “And I told her you were living in London now.”
“Is - does she live here too?” Lexa asks, not sure if it’s with hope or dread.
“No. But she’s in Britain.” Octavia says, then she stands up from the table to pluck an envelope from a rack by the door and placing it down on the table in front of Lexa. “She sent this.”
It’s a simple small white thing with Lexa written in clear handwriting on the front. She knows she should shrug and say she’ll leave it for later, but her hands don’t respond to that knowledge and they’re picking it up, tearing it open and unfolding the plain square of white paper inside.
Lexa,
If you want to talk, this is where I am. If you don’t, I understand.
Clarke
There’s an address underneath, and even though it’s carefully written out it takes Lexa a moment to decipher and understand.
“You all right?” Lincoln asks, and she’s aware she’s been looking at the paper without doing anything else for a while.
“Yes.” She says, calmly, knowing what’s going to do without having to actively decide it. “But one question - how do I get to Wales?”
The answer turns out to be driving and trusting in a rental car’s GPS to navigate her there, allowing her to fix her concentration on keeping on the left of the road, interspersed by occasional moments of doubt that have her wanting to turn the car around and go back. It’s been six years since she’s seen or heard from Clarke Griffin and that terse note shouldn’t be enough to have her driving for hours along increasingly narrow roads. She’s only been in Britain for three months, ever since Lincoln and Octavia persuaded her to become the CEO of their rapidly-expanding fitness company, and she’s barely driven a car while she’s been there. So why, she asks herself, is she putting herself through this nightmare of twisting roads and confusingly bilingual road signs?
Because there hasn’t been a day in the last six years you haven’t thought about her.
They’d almost never met. A delayed flight back from a conference meant she’d turned up late at Lincoln and Octavia’s engagement party, wondering if it would still be going, literally bumping into the similarly just-arrived Clarke as she stepped into the venue, their coats somehow getting tangled together as they took them off. By the time they got to the bar, she’d discovered that she was a surgical resident fresh off an unexpectedly extended shift and an old friend of her cousin’s fiancee. By the time the sun came up the next morning, glaring through undrawn curtains into Clarke’s apartment to wake them both up, they’d discovered a lot more about each other.
They’d had an amazing three months together, frantically finding shared free time in their packed schedules as they built careers alongside their relationship. That both of them were willing to put that effort in, alongside how good the time they spent together felt even when it was a ten-minute breakfast interception as she headed to work and Clarke headed home after a long night, told Lexa that this was the woman she’d been waiting for.
Then one of Clarke’s patients died and everything fell apart. Lexa had tried to support her and be there for her, even as she could feel Clarke closing up and pulling away from her.
“I have to go, Lexa. I can’t be here - I can’t be me any more, I can’t live with it.”
“Clarke, please. Come inside, we can talk. I’m here for you. I l-“
Clarke’s lips were pressed to hers before she could finish saying it, but it was a raw and hard kiss, teeth clashing, wide-open eyes filling with tears.
“I’m not the woman you met, Lexa. I can’t be her. Someone died, it was my fault and I don’t know how to deal with that.” She breathed raggedly, and Lexa could never forget the pain she saw in those blue eyes. “Please, don’t wait for me.”
Lexa had tried to do as Clarke asked, and on some days she’d almost persuaded herself she’d succeeded. She’d picked herself up and moved on, got herself back out there working hard and meeting new people, but then a memory would resurface and she’d wonder where Clarke was now and she’d know whoever she was with at the time deserved someone who wasn’t distracted every time she glimpsed blonde hair on someone just a little bit shorter than her.
“Cos, I’m sorry. It’s not you, it’s-“
“Lex, don’t. I know it’s not me, but I don’t even think it’s you, really. It’s her, isn’t it?”
She could only nod.
“It’s fine, Lexa, it really is. We had a good time, nothing’s broken. But I need someone who thinks about me the way you think about her.”
Then Lincoln had come along with his job offer, and she’d thought that getting away from New York and all its memories might be the key. London had felt good, while the job and discovering a new city kept her busy enough that she almost didn’t have the time to let herself get distracted by memories. But only almost.
The navigation is telling her there’s less than ten miles to go, but as the previous ten miles took an age to drive, constantly slowing to pass through clusters of two or three houses that were scarcely big enough to count as villages, she’s not relaxing as the end approaches. Rain’s started falling, starting as just the occasional scattering of drops like standing under a tree shaking in the breeze but now turned into thick, heavier ones that land with something close to a thud on the roof of the car, promising an imminent downpour. By the time it comes, the road has widened and straightened and she glimpses a sign with a name she recognises from the letter, she’s suddenly in a small town, lights shimmering through the rain. There’s taller, older buildings here, made of heavy stone and ornate frontages, a few other cars on the wet streets as people scamper into doorways looking for shelter. She passes through it, seeing the distance count down, less than a mile now, following the car’s instruction to turn off onto a downward-sloping side road at the far edge of the town where buildings thin out and countryside returns.
You have reached your destination, the car informs her, and she finds a space at the side of the road behind a battered old Land Rover to pull up and park, picking up the sheet of paper from the passenger seat. Gwaelod Cottage is the first line of the address written there, and Lexa peers at the low building opposite to see if she can see a sign there, but the rain’s now too hard to see with water flowing down the window. She can tell there’s a light on there, and decides she might as well ask for directions there if she’s managed to come to the wrong place.
She exits the car quickly, checking up and down the road for cars before dashing across it. There’s a low metal gate set in a stone wall, a short pathway leading to the cottage’s front door beyond it. She pushes at it, but discovers it’s latched, then when she finds the mechanism, it’s creaking and sticky, grinding on the stone as she pushes it open, not noticing that the front door has opened and someone has come outside.
Lexa’s soaked by the rain now and as the gate finally swings clear, she moves towards the cottage, remembering the promise of shelter under the archway over the door. She’s twisted round, not expecting the situation to have changed, that there’d be someone coming out from the cottage to help her with the gate, their approach muffled by the rain and the creaking of the gate. Lexa walks right into her, both of them slipping on the wet path, flailing and grasping at each other but only succeeding in a combined loss of balance, falling onto a soft and rather wet patch of grass that fills the space between the wall and the building.
She lies there for a moment, winded and catching her bearings, the other figure pushing herself up to her feet then leaning down to offer a muddy hand.
“Hi Lexa.” She says, and Lexa sees Clarke Griffin for the first time in six years.