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There are times like now, when Clarke is alone on this Earth, truly alone, that she lets her mind wander. Without much for distraction, much for obligation, she lets her mind wander without restraint. It had been rare throughout Clarke’s lifetime, for her to have either the privilege or the opportunity to let her mind wander. To let herself wonder. To let herself hope. To let herself dream.
part i: wonder/love is weakness
“Love is the ultimate expression of the will to live.” – Tom Wolfe
Now though, she lets her mind wander, and herself wonder. She wonders about the fate of her people. The human race, save for Clarke and her companions, have achieved transcendence. Clarke understood what that meant, though she would never be able to fully experience what it entailed. Sometimes, that knowledge pained her greatly. Other times, Clarke found humor in the fact that her continued and desperate attempts to save her people—the definition of “her people” eventually expanding the include all of the human race—would result in herself being the one person not worthy of salvation. Sometimes, the irony left a bitter taste in her mouth that made her want to scream. Scream at the top of her lungs, so loudly that someone other than her friends might finally hear her. So hard, that she can finally feel like something other than the butt of a joke.
Clarke had saved the human race, but at what cost? Had she saved her people at the cost of her person? Herself? Her loved ones? Clarke understood and accepted that the conclusion of the human race would ultimately outweigh the losses she had experienced, but knowing that did not make the losses nor the experiences any less difficult.
Her father was long dead, her mother now as well. Her first friend, Wells. It had felt like a lifetime ago that her best friend had walked and died upon this Earth—though of course, it had been longer than that by a hundred years. Clarke wonders what Wells would think of the person she had become. The person she is now. Clarke wonders if the person she once was, all those lifetimes ago would still be recognizable to the person she is today. If the person she once was is still somewhere inside her.
She thinks of Finn, of Bellamy, and of all the people she had loved and had lost. She thinks of all the people that had died by her hand, died in her arms. More than any other person however, Clarke thinks of Lexa. Clarke thinks of the girl whom she held as she took her last breath, bleeding black from a bullet that was meant for her instead. Clarke wishes it hit her instead.
There are times when Clarke wonders if people’s love for her was the thing that brought each of them to their fates. She wonders if letting people love her was the same as sentencing them to death. After all, the dead could not, and did not transcend. Even now, as the last of those who love her choose to stay with her here on Earth, they have effectively chosen certain death over eternal life.
Wanheda. Perhaps there is no other name more fitting.
There is a distant memory. A familiar voice in her head that whispers the words, a warning, “love is weakness”. And Clarke finally lets herself wonder if the sentiment is true after all. If Lexa, and all of the commanders before her, were right all along. The Judge had referred to the human race with the words “emotion-driven species”, in humanity’s final moments. It was that simple truth, that was used to explain the Judge's appearance to Clarke, taking on the form of her greatest teacher, her greatest failure, her greatest love.
Despite knowing that it does not matter, knowing that there is nothing she can do to change the past, nothing she can do to change the future, Clarke cannot help but wonder if humanity would have met a different fate if not for being emotionally driven. If not for love. Knowing that she is not capable of not loving, does not stop Clarke from wondering it all the same. In times like these, there is little to do besides wonder.
Surrounded by her loved ones here on Earth, surrounded by love, knowing that she is not the only person to have chosen love, does not stop Clarke from needlessly wondering still.
Clarke wonders about transcendence, and those who did transcend.
Never in a million years would she would ever admit it out loud, but there had been times in her life when Clarke had resented her daughter. Not for anything of Madi’s own doing, and never for more than a fleeting moment, but she feels it all the same. Clarke loves Madi more than any other person she had ever loved, but she resents Madi in the way the girl sometimes resembles the Commander that came before her. It's in the way she acts, the way she speaks, the way she thinks. Her mannerisms and her philosophies all carry something distinctly reminiscent of Lexa in a way that hurts for Clarke to be around. Clarke so often resents the manifestations of her past lover in the living being of her daughter.
Clarke might have Lexa’s memory, and Lexa’s heart; but Madi has Lexa’s spirit, Lexa’s soul. Clarke resents the fact that Madi will always have a piece of Lexa deep within her, inaccessible to the rest of the world, when she herself must settle for just a memory. Most of all though, Clarke resents that Madi will have the opportunity of spending eternity with that piece of Lexa always with her.
Clarke will never have an eternity of anything, but she does get a lifetime. And shouldn’t that be enough?
part ii: hope/life is about more than just surviving
“Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.” – Madame de Stael
This lifetime, Clarke had never been one to hold on to hope. It was worthless to her. It was futile to hope. She simply could not afford to allow herself to become filled with a sense of hoping that might never be fulfilled. The possibility of hoping opens her up to a possibility of disappointment. With humanity having ended, she supposes that there is little reason for her to hope now.
She hopes anyway. It isn't exactly as if there would be much in the way of disappointments now. So Clarke allows herself to wonder, and she allows herself to have hope. Just because for the first time in a very long time, she finally can.
When the Flame, the Spirit of the Commander, was removed from her daughter Madi, it had left fragments of the previous hosts’ consciousnesses within her being. When the Flame was destroyed, it destroyed the spirits of the past commanders with it. What it did not destroy, however, were the fragments of the spirits left within Madi’s own consciousness.
The fragments left behind, were more than simply memories. They were pieces of spirits which left behind, became entwined with, and entirely inseparable from Madi’s own.
Unsure of what that might mean for the remnants and fragments of Lexa’s spirit, Clarke holds onto the hope that whatever was left of her lover had managed to find some form of peace.
When the comatose Madi managed to transcend alongside rest of the human race, she had done so with those fragmented spiritual consciousnesses still inside her. Fragmentation, much like death, was incompatible with transcendence. Partial transcendence was not possible, and thus many of the smaller fragments, what was left of the spirits of commanders less connected to Madi’s own spirit, were lost completely. Other fragments, ones she held closer to her own being, were able to remain transcended as long as Madi herself remained in transcendence.
One fragment though, the one Madi held closest, the one most protected by her own mind and spirit, was left nearly entirely intact. Intact through the destruction of the Flame, and intact through the process of her transcendence.
Unlike those other fragmented spirits, this particular spirit was left so undamaged that it would be able to separate itself from Madi’s spirit, becoming its own autonomous spiritual entity. As its own independent and consciously aware spirit, its transcendence was not predetermined. This spirit, like all other transcended human spirits, had the ability to choose to return to their mortal life on Earth if it so desired.
Clarke, on Earth in her mortal form, with her wonderings, and hopings, and dreamings, would have been entirely unaware of this possibility. In this current moment, so completely unknowing and unaware, she sits atop a small hill, overlooking the shore of a sandy beach, watching as the waves crash steadily onto the shore.
Earth, a hundred years after the last human apocalypse, is once again lush and full of life. This was a small miracle in itself. It was something which Clarke had never hoped for, never anticipated. She had never thought she'd ever walk this earth again. At times, she still found herself filled with a particular sense of bewilderment and astonishment as she took in the vastness of the world around her. Human race notwithstanding, life remained abundant on the planet. The lakes and oceans, the forests and plains, the Earth was full with vegetation and teeming with life for as far as the eye can see.
Life is about more than just surviving, but for the last of the human race, survival was no longer of concern. Upon forgoing transcendence, it became their naturally given right. It is in this moment that Clarke allows herself to think the thought: Lexa would’ve loved this Earth. Clarke so desperately wishes that Lexa could be able to be here to experience it with her. Life, without the responsibility of survival.
But wishes and hopes were not the same thing, in that hopes were dreams that remained possible, and wishes were dreams that were not. So, it is with that in her mind, that Clarke does not think too much when she sees the silhouette of a familiar figure in the distance, standing still near the water.
Since Lexa’s passing, there have been countless times when Clarke sees, or thinks she sees her late lover. The girl’s final promise of “I will always be with you” remained unbroken. Clarke sees Lexa in the City of Light, and she sees her image upon humanity’s judgement. She sees Lexa in her dreams, and in the corner of her eye in brief moments when she tires. She sees her in her friends, and in her daughter. She sees her in stolen moments when she closes her eyes, and the memory of Lexa bleeds into every essence of Clarke’s being.
A hundred years had passed since Lexa had died, but Clarke still sees and remembers her so vividly that it physically pains her when she thinks too hard. It makes her clench her fists, and her jaw, and her eyes and her heart. She sits there now, knowing that the figure should disappear the moment she blinks. Yet when she does, her vision does not waver, and the figure still remains unmoving, standing in the distance. It is only then, that Clarke decides to approach it.
Clarke may now be a person who allows herself to hope, but she does so with limitations. She does not allow herself to hope freely. She may no longer need to concern herself with survival, or to concern herself with protecting her life, but it was still necessary for her to protect her mind and her heart. She does not allow her mind to wander; to wonder if, to hope that the person in the distance is Lexa.
As she closes the short distance between them, it becomes clearer yet nonetheless inexplicable, how closely the figure resembles her memory. The person stands with her back to Clarke, and unlike in the City of Light, and unlike the realm of the Judge, this iteration of Lexa’s physical form is one that does not wear her full battle armor. Her hair is laid in simple braids, rather than complex ceremonial styles.
Dressed in a simple cloak, with loose strands of hair being gently blown by the breeze, this is a version of Lexa that only exists in Clarke’s memory.
Hearing Clarke’s approaching footsteps, the figure moves. It is the movement that causes Clarke to realize and accept that the figure mere paces in front of her is real, and not a figment of her mind’s wanderings. When the figure turns, Clarke sees that its face is bare, and without the signature war paint she was become so accustomed to seeing.
Then the figure finally speaks, and it’s with a soft “Klark,” that Clarke finally allows herself to wonder if and to hope that it is in fact Lexa.
It is with the same certainty that Clarke knew that the Judge was not truly Lexa, that Clarke knows that the figure in front of her, is. It is in the way the real Lexa would say her name with the click of the k, and a clip on the r, distinctly accented from a person whose mother tongue is Trigedasleng.
The Judge, manifesting itself from Clarke’s memory, was unable to replicate the way the real Lexa said her name. Clarke herswlf could not replicate it in her dreams nor her memories, She had never learned to speak the language with any level of proficiency, and so when her brain formed the memories in her head, it were not always with an exact accuracy. When the figure repeats herself, it is truer to life than anything that could possibly be conjured from Clarke’s own memory.
“Clarke?”
Clarke feels her heart pounding in her chest, her vision blurring slightly at the edges, her view tunnelling, and she blinks, hard. Once, then twice, as the vision of Lexa in front of her remains ever so intense. Ever so real. There are tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, and she wills herself to speak. Her voice cracks with emotion, coming out strained, and broken, and barely above a whisper.
“Lexa,” she breathes out finally, on the verge of tears.
The two women stand facing each other on the beach, with barely a few feet of space between them. The Earth is vast, and the universe even more so. After all this time, all this space, the physical proximity was almost too much to bear. It felt like lifetimes ago that Clarke has been this close to Lexa, and now she was just in arms reach.
Clarke becomes increasingly and acutely aware of that fact as Lexa’s steps toward her, closing the distance.
Slowly, and then all at once, Clarke allows herself to be flooded with a sense of hope. Enveloped by Lexa’s strong embrace, Clarke holds on tightly, arms wrapping around her body. When the two break apart, Clarke finds herself reaching for Lexa’s face. She holds her with her hands on the girl's cheeks, fingertips brushing along her hairline, clutching at her as if she was afraid the girl might slip through her fingers and disappear if she let go.
She can feel the heat of life beneath her palms. When Clarke last embraced Lexa, it was the Judge. Though visually identical, the mere the physical form of a memory distinctly lacked the feeling of life. Clarke knew it wasn’t the real Lexa before she even heard the words “I’m not her, Clarke”. This Lexa was living, breathing.
“It’s really you,” Clarke whispers, disbelieving. “You’re here.”
Lexa kisses her, in response. Passionatelt, but unhurried. The kiss is soft and vulnerable, filled with a hundred years’ worth of longing, and a lifetime’s worth of love. Clarke can taste the salt on Lexa’s skin, feel Lexa’s fingers cradling the nape of her neck, and the wetness of her own tears on Lexa’s cheeks.
When Lexa finally pulls away moments later to catch her breath, she gently wipes at Clarke’s tears with her thumb. “I’m here,” she whispers.
Clarke can feel Lexa’s breath against her own as she repeats herself once more. “You’re really here.”
Although her memory of Lexa was intense and always faithful, that alone could not prepare Clarke for how beautiful Lexa is in person. The sharpness of life is something that just suits her so much better than a muddled memory. She looks just as Clarke had remembered, with soft features, and warm eyes the most brilliant shade of green. Clean of war paint, her is young and alive. With the slightest hint of a smile on her lips, and the twinkle of adoration in her eyes, she looks just as Clarke remembered, but somehow so much more beautiful than her mind could feasibly comprehend at once.
Beautiful, beautiful, Lexa is here. Lexa is here, and alive, and here in her arms, and Clarke can barely believe it.
“I’m really here Clarke,” she says. “I’ll always be here.”
Here, with her. Clarke doesn't need Lexa to say "I love you" for her to know it's what she means. She's known that and never doubted it, even when the words were never spoken.
It’s not an “I’ll always be with you,” like the last words they exchanged. The last promise she gave. It’s “I’ll always be here”. Here, with her. A new promise, a new beginning. A promise of a lifetime. Clarke won’t get an eternity with Lexa, but she’ll have a lifetime, and that itself is enough. It’s all she had ever wanted.
part iii: dream/may we meet again
“Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third.” – Marge Piercy
It's a dream Clarke has had many times before. It's a recurring and yet consistently heart wrenching nightmare if losing the love of her life. She wakes up in bed, and Lexa is next to her. Golden beams of sunlight illuminate the girl's bare skin, and she appears as if she were glowing with life.
The glowing girl remains in her slumber, with a slight smile on her sleeping face. Then, her eyes shoot open, and the gaping wound that forms in her abdomen begins to bleed a thick black blood. She stops glowing, and it goes dark.
In the dream, just as in life, there is nothing Clarke can do to stop the bleeding, to stop the loss.
Lexa always dies in Clarke’s dreams, just as she did in life. And Clarke always wakes alone, with her heart pounding in her ears, and tears welling her eyes, as she is forced to relive the loss of the love of her life.
This time, once again, Clarke wakes up in bed with Lexa next to her.
The sun hangs high in the sky, and soft rays of sunlight still gleam golden. When Lexa opens her eyes, she does not bleed. Instead, she smiles.
“Hey,” Lexa says.
Clarke realizes this is not a dream. She is here, with Lexa, and both of them are alive.
She reaches out to touch Lexa, tucking a strand of the girl’s hair behind her ear. “Hey yourself,” she says softly. Lexa doesn't stop glowing.
It’s still difficult for Clarke to believe that she and Lexa were both alive, and both on Earth. For all of Clarke's time without Lexa, which at this point, was far shorter in comparison to her time with. She could not help but lament how little time she had with the person she so loved. She thought the world was cruel, but never thought that she would ever have the chance at more time. She had never dreamed that such a thing could be possible. She had never let herself hope.
But now, Lexa is here, with Clarke, and both of them are alive.
Clarke wants to sear this memory into her brain until she realizes that she won’t need to depend on the memory of Lexa anymore. She now has the opportunity to experience the reality of having Lexa next to her every single day for the rest of this lifetime. The opportunity to live and love in the moment. Life, without the responsibility of survival.
“Do you remember,” Lexa asks, “when you said, ‘maybe someday, you and I will owe nothing more to our people’?”
The memory is one that Clarke savored. “May we meet again,” she responds, just as Lexa had responded in her memory.
Lexa smiles thoughtfully. “When I said that ‘I hope so’, I never thought it would actually happen.”
“That’s the difference between hopes and wishes,” Clarke says. “Hopes are dreams that can come true.”
“And wishes?” Lexa asks, pressing a gentle kiss to Clarke’s lips.
“Wishes are dreams that can’t.”
“Then,” Lexa says, “I suppose I have nothing left to wish for. All my dreams have come true.”