Chapter Text
Dark eyes advance toward you, glazed over and showing no sign of life. This person, still walking, still breathing, still staring is somehow undeniably dead and after all this time, you still struggle to wrap your head around the thought.
Repulsive gurgling noises sound from the walker’s throat, and its mouth hangs open as it approaches you. Long black hair hangs around its face, and a name tag reading “Leah” is attached to the front of its waitress uniform. You find yourself wondering for a moment what her life was like before she died.
You aren’t given much time to think, however, because it suddenly lunges at you, its decomposing and grimy hand already closing into a fist as it reaches for your throat. You let out a yelp and back up, legs barely holding your weight. The last time you were this close to a walker was when you saw Susan reaching through the fence in the backyard, and you are no closer to acceptance that this is reality now than you were that night.
Your knees shake as you’re backed into the table, walker approaching closer and closer until you can almost feel its hot, putrid breath. It smells of blood, grime, and death. You don’t know how to describe what death smells like, but this is it.
You should run. You should grab the paper towel rack on the table behind you and use it as a weapon. Hell, you should grab a chair and throw it. You’ve got enough adrenaline coursing through your veins to do it. You should scream. You should cry, even. But you can’t do anything, because you’re frozen where you stand.
The walker is inches away, now, and your eyes fall shut. Your eyebrows furrow and you grip the table behind you as hard as you can, the sharp edge of it nearly drawing blood. Your knuckles ache, and you hold your breath.
You’re suddenly pulled roughly by the arm out of the way, and you’re dragged into what appears to be a supply closet. The door is closed hard behind you, and immediately, she pulls shelves in front of the door to barricade it.
Elyza collapses against the barricade, chest heaving. You can see her shoulders shaking, and you can barely breathe, because she’s never looked like this before. She’s always been the strong one, the one who kills a walker without a second glance, the one who knows what to do without even thinking about it.
“Elyza?”
She looks up at you, eyes full of concern and worry and...fear.
“Leah…” she says, trailing off. Her eyes dart from side to side, never settling on any one thing. You recognize the signs of panic and kneel down in front of her, resting your hand tentatively on her knee. She’s shaking like a leaf, and you shudder at this new side of her.
“Do you know her?” you ask quietly, looking at her intently in hopes that she’ll meet your eyes. She doesn’t, though.
“She’s my ex girlfriend. She did some shitty, shitty things, but that’s...that’s my Leah,” she says. Her voice shakes and her breathing becomes more labored. You put your hands gently on her shoulders and Elyza doesn’t shrug you away. Your hands trail up her neck and you hook your fingers in her hair, thumbs resting in front of her ears. Finally, she meets your eyes.
She looks so broken and afraid and you want nothing more than to take it away, but you know that you can’t. Instead, you simply wait for her to speak, and she does.
“Can I say goodbye?” she asks, as if she’s scared of what you’re going to say. Your heart aches for her, and you don’t blink as you nod simply, hoping your sincerity can be conveyed through your eyes.
She nods back, then takes in a deep breath of air to steady herself. You stand and hold a hand out to her, and she shakily takes it and pulls herself off the ground. Your gazes never break for a second, and you don’t let go of her hand right away.
Instead, you pull it slowly to your lips and place a kiss to the back of her palm, letting your lips linger on the slightly rough skin for a moment that feels suspended in time. Elyza swallows hard and nods to you again, seemingly unable to do anything else.
You help her pull the shelves away from the door, and when it’s finally free, she takes a deep breath as she rests her hand on the handle. When her eyes reopen afterward, she opens it slowly and you follow her close behind. She’s learned not to argue with you when you follow her out into a dangerous situation, and you’ve learned to compromise and stay behind her the whole time.
She unhooks the pistol on her waist from its hilt and pulls it up slowly, taking careful steps toward the main area where the walker - Leah - surely still resides. Sure enough, she appears a moment later, head titled to the side and mouth hanging open as the same familiar growling sounds escape it.
Those dark eyes make you shudder again, but before you can think about anything else, Elyza puts her hand out. You’ve learned that this means for you to stop, and you do. You still behind her and watch as she takes a few more tentative steps.
Leah’s attention is caught by the movement in the corner of the room, and she looks right at Elyza. Elyza doesn’t budge, and but she keeps the pistol aimed straight for the walker’s head.
“If you can hear me, I don’t hate you,” she says, her voice shaking again. Her arms quiver as though the pistol weighs too much for her to handle, but still, she keeps it up. Her knees are locked to ensure that she can support her own weight. You want nothing more than to put your hand on her shoulder, to comfort her, but you know that you can’t. You stay still and watch on instead.
“I know I said I did, so many times, and you did some really shitty things. But I don’t hate you, Leah. I don’t,” Elyza continues. You can’t see her face, but you’re fairly certain that for the first time you’ve ever been around for, she’s crying. Your heart is pounding in your chest as you listen.
Leah is inches away from the barrel for the gun now, and you wonder if Elyza is going to be able to pull the trigger.
“I’m sorry,” the blonde whispers, her voice strained with emotion. “Your fight is over.”
A shot rings out, and it sounds like something has exploded inside your head. You can’t be sure, but you think you scream as you fall to the ground, slamming into the wall in the process. Images flash through your mind, almost too fast for you to make sense of them, but finally they slow.
War. So much war. There’s blood soaking bright green grass, and you feel your heart ache as you stare down at it. A shooting star, you think, but you know that’s not it. A dropship, a spaceship of some sort. Fire. An empty, deserted subway.
Elyza.
Only, it’s not her. You know it isn’t. This woman’s name is Clarke, and you’re not sure how you know that, but you do.
“Can I say goodbye?” she asks, and suddenly, she’s standing next to a boy tied to a post, her hand bloodied and holding a blade as his chest bleeds profusely.
Image after image races through your mind, and suddenly, you hear a shot ring out again. A man, who you somehow know as Titus, stares at you in shock, and you look down. There’s a hole in your stomach, and black blood pours from it.
Clarke screams something to you - your name.
“Lexa!”
Things blur together, and you feel darkness beginning to erode your vision. You’re staring up at Clarke, and she’s crying. She’s bawling.
“I don’t want the next commander. I want you!”
You feel lips press to your own, but you can’t see anything. You should be afraid, but you aren’t. You’re not scared at all, because death is not the end. The darkness takes you over entirely, and you let it.
When you open your eyes, Clarke is shaking you. She’s saying something, you know, but you can’t hear her. One name keeps repeating through your head and it won’t stop.
Clarke. Clarke. Clarke. Clarke. Clarke.
“Alicia? Alicia! I’m here. Who is Clarke? What are you talking about?”
Suddenly, reality rushes back to you. It’s not Clarke who’s shaking you. It’s Elyza. Elyza Lex, the girl who shoots walkers and never lets herself feel it, who always knows how to take the reigns on any situation, who never lets anyone see her weakness. Your mind grasps at the thought that Elyza is much like Lexa - you - but it’s too much for you to process. You sit up hurriedly, nearly blacking out again in the process. Elyza gently leans you up against the wall, her blue eyes staring at you, staring into your soul.
Your heart screams Clarke, but you know it’s not her. A sudden sadness, deeper than any you’ve ever felt in your life, washes over you. It fills you, cuts to your very core, and a sob rises in your throat before you can stop it.
Elyza doesn’t question any further and instead pulls you into her chest, and you breathe in as deep as you can as tears stream down your cheeks.
“Alicia, it’s okay. It was just a dream. It was just a dream.”
But it’s not. It’s not a dream. Lexa is dead. In that life, you are dead. Clarke is still alive, and you’re grateful. But Elyza remembers nothing. She remembers nothing of the life you had before. Nothing of the love you had before.
---
Life goes on as normally as possible. Elyza continues killing walkers, you keep standing behind her when she tells you to, and you try your hardest to forget everything. The flashbacks never stop, though. Every day, something happens to bring back something new. When you push a blade through a walker’s head for the first time, you remember the way it felt to kill Gustus after he betrayed you. When Elyza watches on and tries to hide her repulsion as she burns a building full of walkers to the ground, killing every walker inside of it, you remember the way Clarke spoke of Mount Weather and the three hundred some people inside. Every time, there’s a part of you that wishes she would remember, but there’s a part of you that hopes she never does because you don’t want Clarke to die.
You get your second wish for a long time. You’re just Alicia Clark, a scared teenager in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, and she’s just Elyza Lex, and she doesn’t remember anything.
Until one day, she does.
---
For the first time in weeks, the two of you come across a house with hot running water still running through it. When you turn on a faucet and the heat of said water washes over your cracked and dirty hands, you swear you could have cried with happiness at the sensation.
You offer to let Elyza shower first, knowing without question that a hot shower is the only thing the two of you want. You haven’t bathed for days, let alone in hot water from a shower head. Elyza, of course, denies your offer, and throws a towel at you when you try to protest. You roll your eyes at her but can’t help but smile at her stubbornness. That smile nearly falters when it reminds you of Clarke, but you don’t let it show.
You haven’t brought up what happened that night since then, and she doesn’t ask. You hope that she thinks it truly was only a dream. Though you can’t forget it completely, you’ve started to. You go hours, sometimes even a day without thinking of that life, because you’re so wrapped up in this one. Sometimes, however, you’re overcome with missing her. Clarke.
You soon learn what it feels like to truly be in love with somebody. You loved Matt, yes, but you were never in love. This love you feel for Clarke overwhelms you, fills you, mends the broken pieces inside and makes you feel like everything is going to be fine, even when it isn’t. You don’t allow yourself to think about the fact that you’re in love with a woman, because that fact feels so small in comparison to the strength of said love.
As hot water washes over your shoulders and the tub beneath you turns a nasty shade of brown, you’re once again overcome with missing her. You run your fingers through your hair, even find some shampoo, and try to focus on anything else except her. It only works for moments at a time, because the blonde steals your thoughts time and time again. She invades them, making her presence permanent.
A sudden click pulls you out of your trance, and you still immediately. Soap runs down your forehead and into your eyes, and you breathe in sharply at the sting that follows. You look up only to rinse the soap out, but quickly focus your attention on listening.
There’s a second click, telling you that whoever has intruded on you closed the door behind them. You pause for a moment, confused. Elyza would never just walk in on you this way, you’re sure of it. But, no walker would be coherent enough to open and close a door.
Your intruder doesn’t move or say a word, so you assume it’s Elyza. You hurriedly rinse the soap out of your hair, grateful for the high pressure of the water pouring from the showerhead. It takes only a minute or so to rinse the soap completely out, and you shut off the water as soon as you’re done.
“Elyza?” you ask, your voice barely above a whisper. You clear your throat and wait for a response.
When you don’t hear anything, your heart begins to race. You will it to be still and peer out from behind the curtain slowly, not sure that you’re prepared for what would happen if a walker were to be standing there.
Only, it isn’t a walker. It’s Elyza. She’s holding a towel out to you, and there’s an expression on her face that you can’t quite identify. This does nothing to calm your nerves, but you grab the towel from her hand and step back into the shower to wrap it around you.
Once it is securely around your torso, you open the shower curtain again to face Elyza. She’s seated on the closed toilet seat, eyes staring straight ahead. It reminds you of the look on her face after she saw Leah, but this time, she’s eerily calm. Her breathing is steady, but the fear in her eyes is still evident.
Your mind begins to race with all the possibilities you can think of. Your family is dead. Your family has been turned into walkers. She found someone she knew, and they’re a walker again. She’s been bitten.
You kneel down in front of Elyza, your hair still dripping wet onto your shoulders. You don’t care, however. Your only focus is the stupefied blonde in front of you.
She doesn’t meet your eyes, and you don’t force her to. Instead, you wait.
“You were dead.”
You raise an eyebrow, confused. Had she been napping and had a bad dream while you were in the shower?
“I’m right here, Elyza. It’s okay. It was just a dream.”
She looks up, now, and your heart stops for a moment. Somehow, you could swear that it isn’t Elyza staring back at you.
You shake your head to rid yourself of the thought and will yourself to focus on the blonde.
“You were dead. You had a bullet in your stomach and you were bleeding, and I tried to save you, but I couldn’t. You were dead.”
Your stomach flips. The coincidences are too eerie, but you don’t want to allow yourself to think that.
“I’m here,” you say, resting your hand over Elyza’s. It’s warm, and it shakes even while it sits on her knee.
“That’s what I said when you called my name while you bled out on my bed,” she responds, voice shaking now. Her once steady breathing is ragged.
You swallow hard, and don’t respond at first. A question, an insane one, pops into your mind. You know you shouldn’t ask it. You’re afraid of any answer you might get in return. Yet, it stumbles from your lips before you can stop it.
“What did I call you?”
Her lip quivers now, and she takes in a breath of air and holds it. You know. You know the answer before she says it, and still, you aren’t prepared when it she breathes it out.
“Clarke. You called me Clarke, Lexa.”
Your knees give out now, and you can’t breathe as your head falls onto her lap. You manage to rest your arms over her thighs in a pitiful attempt to brace yourself, but Elyza wraps her hands around your arms to keep you stable. You remember the way those same warm hands felt as she tried to stop the bleeding, but the furs beneath you continued to turn black.
“How did you die?” you whisper, your voice breaking at the words. The realization that Clarke is dead hits you like a freight train, and your eyes well up with tears.
“Titus finally did what he meant to do that night.”
You don’t know how to identify what you’re feeling. You decide that you’re feeling three things all at once that combine into this strange, unexplainable emotion that you didn’t know existed.
One third of you is so, so happy. Elyza remembers. She remembers everything, like you do, and you can feel in the way her thumb runs across your hand that the love you feel for her - for Clarke - has been remembered too. She feels it, too. Finally, after all this time, Elyza remembers.
One third of you feels completely and utterly devastated. Clarke is dead. That woman, the woman you loved more than you ever thought possible, more than Costia, even, is dead. Much too soon, you presume, as well, by the hands of the same person who killed you.
One third of you is so, so angry. Titus. He swore to you as you took your dying breaths that he would never again attempt to harm Clarke. He seemed so honest, so true to his word. Yet, he betrayed you. Just as Gustus had. You know that he meant well, both of them, but you’re not sure you’re ever going to be able to forgive him. And it feels so strange, to not be able to forgive someone who doesn’t even live in the same world as you do.
“I’ll kill him,” you mutter, your voice guttural and feral in the same way it was when you were Commander. You feel that same anger course through your veins, but it vanishes the second Elyza slips her fingers into your still soaking hair.
You look up, now, tears still streaming down your face. You’re surprised to see Elyza in much the same state, and your chest burns with yearning as you realize just how much she looks like Clarke right then.
“Alicia,” she says, her voice thick with emotion. She swallows it down and takes in a shuddering breath. “He doesn’t exist here. That life...it’s gone. It’s over.”
She laughs a wet and humorless laugh that turns into a sob, and it brings a fresh set of tears to your eyes as she tries to pull herself back together.
“And it’s so strange, because I miss you so much, Lexa. I miss you so much,” she says, and her voice breaks off again. You move before you can think and you pull yourself into her lap. You swing your legs over hers and pull her into your chest, fingers immediately tangled in dirty blonde hair.
“I miss you too, Clarke,” you admit, your own voice cracking as you do so. This mix of two personalities, two entities within you is hard to keep up with. The Lexa in you feels weak and ashamed of the tears, but the Alicia in you wants to cry until you can’t anymore.
“Listen to me,” you say, gently pulling back. You hook your hand behind Elyza’s neck and gently pull her chin upward toward you. She meets your eyes, her own blue ones full to the brim with tears. Devastation and pure, undeniable love mix into a raging sea that hits you in waves as she stares at you.
“That time is gone. I’m right here, okay? That life is over. We will always be Clarke and Lexa, and in our next life, we will also always be Alicia and Elyza,” you say. A thought occurs to you, and you chuckle, a real one this time.
“Alicia Clark and Elyza Lex. Seriously. If that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is,” you say, a true smiling gracing your lips. Elyza smiles, too, just enough to show her teeth. Her arms tighten around your middle, and you let them.
With your free hand, the one that isn’t locked behind her neck, you reach up and wipe away her tears. Fresh ones spill over, but you don’t mind. You wipe those away, too, and lean down before you realize what you’re doing.
Your eyes fall shut and you gently press your lips to hers, tentatively at first. Elyza responds immediately, and her lips part slightly so that you can draw closer to her. She lets out a breath of air and you can feel her melt into you. Memories of yourself and Clarke run through your mind, and you let them, but you allow yourself to stay present at the same time.
The kiss feels as natural and normal as breathing, and you can’t remember a time in this life where you have felt so at peace.
Elyza pulls back first, and you can feel her shaking slightly.
“Are you okay?” You ask, afraid you’ve done something wrong. She opens her eyes, and they’re full again with tears.
“Now I know what you felt like when I kissed you,” she says, and you remember. You smile at the obvious role reversal that this life has brought you two and push a strand of blonde hair out of your lover’s face.
The two of you sit in silence for a moment, and suddenly a grin spreads across Elyza’s cheeks. She looks down slightly, then looks back up at you. You raise your eyebrow in confusion, and her grin turns to a smirk.
“In case you haven’t noticed, you still haven’t put clothes on,” she says, and you’re amazed at the way she can be snarky and teasing with tears streaming down her cheeks.
You roll your eyes, but you can’t help the smile that comes to your face.
“And she’s back,” you tease, earning a gentle slap from the blonde whose lap you still have not moved from. You stand carefully, ensuring that the towel does not fall off, and sniffle. You look upward and run your thumbs across your cheeks.
Elyza snorts, and you glare at her out of habit. A feeling of lightness creeps into your chest, and the painful longing slowly but surely begins to wear away.
“What?” you inquire, and she’s giggling now.
“I’m sorry, it’s just...the thought of you, but Lexa-you, wiping tears off your cheeks in such a teenage girly way, like full on Commander gear, war paint and all…”
She breaks off into another fit of giggles, and you roll your eyes again. You grab for the nightshirt you had brought in with you from the counter and snap it at her, eliciting a laugh that comes from the depths of her chest. Your own chest rages with love and affection so warm that it feels as though it might mend the ache that your past life left behind.
“I’m going to shoot you,” you tease, letting the towel fall from around you. You should feel panicked, exposed, but you don’t. Elyza doesn’t react at all, and you hope that she feels just as at ease as you do as you pull the nightshirt over your head.
“Too soon,” she pokes back, and you smile.
You’re not sure that any amount of time will ever heal the pain of what happened in the life before. You do know, however, that so long as you find Clarke, Elyza, or whoever she may be in every life that follows, you will be okay. You pray that, until the end of time, the two of you will find each other. You will look into her sea blue eyes that never seem to change from life to life. And you will know. And you will say to each other, “I remember you.”