Chapter Text
The box had been burning a hole in Lexa’s pocket for three months, one week and two days. She’d picked out the ring with Octavia’s help back in January at an antique jewelry shop in Brooklyn. Octavia had proved to be immeasurably helpful, as Clarke had told her exactly what she wanted, and Octavia had narrowed it down to three Victorian Era rings. Each of the rings had similar settings, though one was a diamond, one was a ruby and one was a sapphire. Because the rings were antiques though, they all had stories behind them. The only thing the jeweler knew about the diamond ring was that it came from Massachusetts and was made in the early 1900s. The sapphire ring came from around the same time and had been sitting in the same antique shop since the 50s. The dealer’s father had sold it once, only to have it returned several weeks later. Both Octavia and Lexa weren’t willing to risk that bad luck.
The ruby ring, however, was a new addition to the dealer’s collection and had come with pages worth of documents, outlining its history. It had first been made in 1880 in England, commissioned by a man using a stone that had been his mother’s. The ring had then passed down to the couple’s only grandson who, before being shipped off to fight in World War II had proposed to an American nurse he’d met in London. Left infertile after the war, the man married his fiancé and the couple adopted a young girl who had been orphaned in the war. The girl had always admired the ring, and in a fashion that was very out of character for the 1970s, she proposed to a boy she’d known since high school. The couple had spent their lives traveling the world, never settling down nor ever starting a family of their own. He’d died of a heart attack in September, and she’d followed three weeks later of a stroke. The jeweler had been her childhood friend and she’d left him the ring on the condition that it be sold to a woman who would be proposing.
After hearing the story of the ruby ring, both Lexa and Octavia knew it was the perfect one, and the jeweler knew that Lexa perfectly fit the contingency laid out by his childhood friend. While the ring was perfect, finding the perfect moment to propose was why the box had stayed in Lexa’s pocket for three months, one week and two days.
Her first instinct was to propose the night she came home with the ring. Rip the bandaid off, so to speak. Lexa had dropped Octavia off at the train so she could go back out to Long Island where she was spending the weekend with Lincoln’s family, then she’d picked up Chinese food from their favorite take-out place, only to find Clarke crying in their apartment. The gallery she was supposed to be showing at, had decided to go with another artist instead of her.
Clarke had been upset for a few weeks, and as cliche as it sounded, Lexa thought that maybe Valentine’s Day would be the perfect proposal date. That was, until they got to the restaurant for their reservation, only to wait an hour to be seated. Then their food was cold and they were starving. Neither woman dealt well with being hangry, so they fought the entire night. It was the first night Lexa slept on the couch in their entire relationship.
When Lexa was promoted to lead prosecutor on what was bound to be a well publicized case, she thought maybe in the excitement she could propose. But as soon as she told Clarke about the opportunity, she realized her mistake. It had been months since Clarke had had any art shown in a gallery and was having trouble even painting anything new. Lexa had been flaunting her success without really paying attention to how it would make Clarke feel. Clarke told Lexa she was proud, but her eyes appeared dead when she told her so. So Lexa kept putting off proposing, still checking on the box that stayed in her coat pocket, unsure if she would ever get the chance to use it.
Soon, April came and it seemed like things were looking up. New York City was finally warming up and everyone seemed to be in better moods. Lexa was busier than ever with her case, hardly seeing Clarke at all, but when she did, the blonde’s hands were always covered in paint. It seemed like Clarke was getting inspiration again. At first they thought it was a joke when Octavia called them on April 1st to say that Lincoln had proposed. It hadn’t been. Lexa and Clarke argued the whole night about whether it had been appropriate for Lexa to laugh when Octavia first told them. That night Clarke slept on the couch.
Tax day came and went, and Clarke made a point of saying that she would be getting a good tax return by barely making minimum wage for the year.
April 22nd was a Wednesday and it was beautiful. Lexa had closed her case the previous Friday, and she’d won. She’d taken the day off of work and it was the day she was going to propose.
That morning, Lexa woke up early and got bagels and coffee for Clarke. Clarke was slightly hungover from going out with Raven the night before, something she’d started doing more often, and it was well in to the afternoon by the time she got up. Lexa didn’t mind though. It gave her the chance to catch up with her older sister, Anya, who was cleaning out the attic at their family home in Connecticut. The home she had moved back to after their Uncle Gustus, the man who raised them, had died suddenly of a brain aneurism the year before.
Lexa tried to convince Clarke that they should go for a walk. It took a lot of convincing, but she finally got the artist to agree to take a walk around Central Park. Maybe it was cliche, but at this point, Lexa wanted to get the ring out of the box in her pocket and on to her girlfriend’s finger.
A bird shit on Lexa’s head as they walked in to the park, causing Clarke to make fun of her for attracting shit. The statement would ordinarily have caused Lexa to laugh and nod in agreement, but Clarke’s voice had a particular snark to it and Lexa was already stressing. So they started to argue.
“It’s just a little bit of bird shit Lexa, get over it,” Clarke rolled her eyes after Lexa had huffed enough about it.
“Well I’m clearly just attracting shit these days, and this argument just comes with the territory right?” Lexa quipped back.
The argument grew more heated and suddenly all their grievances were being aired at once. It no longer had anything to do with the bird, it seemed like they were arguing simply for the sake of arguing.
“Maybe if you actually spent more than three hours a day at home, we wouldn’t be having this argument,” Clarke spat.
“Maybe if you actually got out of the apartment during the day instead of just to get trashed at night with Raven, you would be so sleep deprived and constantly picking fights with me,” Lexa retorted.
“I’m sorry I dropped out of med school because of YOU and YOUR insistence that I follow my dream or whatever. I’m sorry I’ve been such a disappointment to you and your stupid ass lawyer friends.”
“I only spend so much time with those stupid ass lawyer friends of mine so I can make partner in the next five years. If I’m going to be supporting you and your art stuff, I need to spend time working on my cases and actually doing something worthwhile.”
As soon as the words left Lexa’s mouth, she knew she’d taken it too far. She watched as hurt crossed Clarke’s face briefly, only to be quickly replaced with deathly anger. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen Clarke so angry. Not even when the driver in Wells’ accident got away without being charged.
“Clarke,” Lexa breathed, sticking her hands in her pockets, feeling the box and even more sorry about her words.
“You know what Lexa, I don’t want to be a burden to you anymore. You don’t have to worry about supporting my stupid art shit anymore, because I can’t handle this dance we’ve been doing for the past three months. I can’t handle us anymore. We’re done.”
All Lexa could do was watch Clarke. She knew Clarke was waiting for her to say something to negate everything. She could see the pleading look in her blue eyes. But instead of winning her girl back, Lexa said in a calm and collected voice, “Okay.”
She watched as tears began to fill Clarke’s eyes. She watched as Clarke turned away from her and walked away. She stood there, near the entrance to Central Park for what seemed like an eternity, until she felt her phone vibrating.
Lexa took her phone out quickly, hoping it was Clarke calling her, only to see that it was Anya, wanting to know how the proposal went. Lexa knew she couldn’t go back to the apartment she’d shared with Clarke for the past five years, there was only one place she could go, so she walked the blocks to Grand Central Station and called Anya back as soon as she’d boarded a train.
After picking Lexa up from the train and seeing the look on her sister’s face, Anya didn’t press Lexa to talk about what had happened. She knew her sister well enough to know that whatever it was that had happened, wasn’t good. Anya wasn’t even surprised when Lexa spoke barely three words to her. Or rather one word, repeated three times. Lexa had said “thanks” when Anya picked her up, when Anya placed a plate of dinner in front of her and when she said she’d put new sheets on Lexa’s old bed.
It had been years since Lexa had slept in her old bed. The few times she’d returned home, she’d stayed in the guest room. When she’d come home during college, her old room had held too many painful memories, and once she’d started dating Clarke, her old twin didn’t cut it.
Lexa didn’t even bother to put on pajamas. She simply stripped down to her underwear and lay on top of her duvet, too drained to crawl under the covers. She pulled the ring box out of her coat pocket and withdrew the ring, clutching it in her fist as she looked over at the photo that still sat on side table.
The photo was from the week before she’d graduated high school. It was taken at the beach when she and Costia had skipped the last day of classes. Costia’s bright red hair was whipping around in the wind, intertwined with Lexa’s own wild curly hair. They both had happy smiles on their faces. Neither knew of any heartbreak. Even though Lexa’s parents had died when she was young, she’d never really known them and didn’t really consider losing them a heartbreak. The photo was a snapshot of that innocence, that ignorant bliss. At that point neither of them knew the tragedy that would be coming to them in less than a week. Neither of them knew that Costia had less than a week to live, and that Lexa’s heart would be shattered before the end of the following week.
If Costia had never been murdered, then Lexa wouldn’t be in her current position, she reasoned to herself. If Costia had never been murdered, then her heart would never have been so tragically destroyed, and she never would have met Clarke, and Clarke’s life would have been so much better.
Lexa turned the ring over and over in her hands as she whispered, “I wish I had saved you Costia,” before she fell in to a deep sleep.
The beeping of an alarm clock startled Lexa out of her slumber. She groaned and was momentarily confused as to where she was. She knew she was squished against a wall by something, or someone. She opened her eyes and realized quickly she was in her childhood home and the memories of the botched proposal came back to her. She turned over in bed to turn off the alarm, only to find another figure reaching out to do so. The other person in bed with her had been why she was squished against the wall. The figure the turned around and faced her.
Lexa’s stomach dropped as she looked at the face she hadn’t seen in ten years. Costia smiled and said, “Happy Graduation Day” before leaning into the brunette and placing a soft kiss on her lips.