Work Text:
It’s been a year.
To the day, even, Clarke notes bitterly as she looks at the calendar on the wall. It’s makeshift, one she crafted herself. On pieces of parchment (now withered and yellowed by time), Clarke had scratched out twelve months, 365 days, starting on that day. Each day had been signified by a crudely scrawled number penned in dark black ink. With each passing day, that same dark black ink had been used to draw a line through the numbers.
As Clarke stares from her bed, lined with all of the furs she could salvage from her previous quarters, her eyes rest with uneasiness on the final number on the parchment.
Time’s up, she thinks to herself. Her throat constricts automatically at the thought, and she fights the urge to groan in displeasure. Five days is the longest she’s gone without crying, now, and she isn’t intending to break her streak anytime soon.
Yet, sometimes, the things most unintended still happen anyway.
As if on cue, a familiar figure strides out from the shadows, seemingly materializing from nothing. Her long brunette hair is braided in the same intricate manner as always, though the usually tight and pristine strands seem to be fraying now. Her dark pants cling to her still-muscular form, and her simple yet beautiful shirt reveals tanned skin on her shoulders. As Clarke’s eyes make their way upward, they fall upon plump yet pursed lips and striking emerald eyes cutting through the darkness.
This is a sight that Clarke has become very accustomed to, but despite the familiarity, it still makes her heart flutter with something she can’t put into words. She sits up slowly and draws the furs away from her body, shivering slightly at the cool air of the spring night. Goosebumps prickle at her pale skin, but she doesn’t bother trying warm herself. The chill reminds her she’s alive and still going.
“Clarke.”
That voice. Sweet and intoxicating, low and gentle only for her.
“Lexa.”
Lexa raises her chin slightly at the sound of her name, her hands resting folded against her front. She twiddles her thumbs absently.
Clarke sighs and pats the spot on the furs next to her. Her throat tightens even further as Lexa approaches her, gliding and graceful across the dirt floor of the tent. She moves swiftly as she sits poised in the space Clarke has provided for her, folding her hands in her lap.
For a moment, they simply look. They drink each other in, memorize for the thousandth time all of the little details that no other person might notice. Clarke counts the speckles of gold in each of Lexa’s eyes, commits to memory the curve of her nose. She makes certain that there isn’t a piece of Lexa that she doesn’t know by heart. She wants nothing more than for Lexa’s entire being to be ingrained into her mind until her last breath.
As Clarke suddenly becomes aware of the passing of time, she’s drawn from her trance and brought back to her painful reality. She opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. Instead, the tears that she’d been trying to keep at bay begin to well in her eyes against her will. She lets out a quick breath and looks down, unable to hold Lexa’s gaze any longer.
“We don’t have to do this, Clarke.”
Clarke’s brows furrow tightly as she draws her lip into her mouth, her eyes squeezing shut. Tears drip down her cheeks now, but still, she silences the cries that threaten to burst free from her chest. It’s not time for that yet. She can’t break now, or she’ll never be able to do what she has to do.
Lexa’s eyes are unyielding, burning into the side of her skull. It makes Clarke’s heart grow heavier, the rush of anxiety in her chest heightening even further with each passing moment.
“I can’t do this with you watching me,” she whispers, not trusting her voice. Even her whisper is strained and cracked, gravelly with restrained emotion. She takes a breath to steady herself, bracing her hand on her knee. Her thumb rubs across the bony knob in an attempt to comfort herself, knowing full well that she can’t reach to Lexa no matter how badly she wants to.
“Why must you do it at all?” Lexa pleads, scooting closer. Clarke flinches, and a sob breaks free when she realizes what she’s done. Still, she keeps her distance. She widens the space between them, and takes all her willpower not to close it when she sees the way Lexa’s hand trembles as the brunette draws it back.
“I can’t stay, Lexa. It’s hurting us both and you know that,” Clarke says firmly, resisting the urge to flinch at the sternness in her own voice. Her words come out much harsher than she means them too, only adding to the guilty clawing at her chest.
Lexa sighs, and from the corner of her eye, Clarke catches the way the brunette’s head falls in acceptance of what they both know to be true. The denial had worked for a while, it really had; but reality had caught up to them. It had caught up to them several times over, and Clarke knew that this had to be the last time.
When a quiet sniffle sounds from the woman next to her, Clarke’s head snaps up instinctively. The second she looks up, she regrets it, for both their sakes.
Lexa’s eyes are full to the brim with tears, a sight Clarke has unfortunately begun to know well. The brunette worries her bottom lip anxiously, trying desperately to stifle the tears and keep them from falling. Still, as usual, her efforts are to no avail. Droplets trail down her rosy cheeks, dripping down her chin and onto her hands below her. She hurriedly wipes them on her pants, but makes no effort to dry her face. They’re past hiding now.
“I’m still here, Clarke,” Lexa insists. She’s normally the rational one, always had been, but Clarke knows that all rationality is gone now. On this subject, Lexa’s judgement and ability to rationalize truly is clouded by her emotions. Clarke bears the burden of being the rational one so that for once, Lexa doesn’t have to.
“You aren’t, though,” the blonde says brokenly. “You touch me, but I can’t feel you the same way. You speak to me, but sometimes, I can’t hear you. Sometimes, Lexa, I can’t even see you. You’re a shadow.”
Lexa is silent as she finally looks up to meet Clarke’s eyes again, and Clarke bites back the cry that presses against her lips at the sight. She takes a deep breath, filling her lungs with the cold air surrounding them now, and draws upon the last of her strength to say what she knows must be said.
“I can’t love you in the dark.”
Lexa gulps hard and nods, her gaze falling again as tears well in her eyes once more. Still, her face remains stoic and expressionless despite the dampness covering her cheeks and the way her lips quiver ever so slightly. She remains completely still, not even breathing as she lets her eyes fill in silence.
“We can’t keep going like this. It will destroy us. We will both be kept from ever moving on, Lex, and the longer we ignore that the worse this is going to get.”
Lexa nods again, curtly, and Clarke sees it. The shift in her eyes, the way her shoulders slump ever so slightly, the twitch of her nose. She’s getting close, far too close, to breaking. Tonight, Clarke realizes, she simply can’t handle it. She can’t bear to see it, because every tear Lexa sheds makes this harder. If she breaks, Clarke isn’t sure she’ll have it in her to leave even when she knows it’s the only choice she has.
“Please don’t ask me to stay,” the blonde begs quietly. Her voice is garbled and wet with tears and it’s truly a miracle that Lexa can understand her at all. She sighs and looks down once more, tracing the pattern of her pants in an effort to distract herself from the woman sitting next to her. Her vision is too blurry to make out much, but she swears she sees an infinity sign in the fabric. The blonde nearly laughs in exasperated disbelief, knowing that now her mind was just playing tricks on her. She blinks hurriedly, wanting to rid the image from her mind.
There’s a heavy silence between the two of them for a solid few minutes, and Clarke can’t stand it. The weight of it is crushing her and threatening to break her resolve even more. She searches for a way to break the silence, to convey everything she wants Lexa to hear. Finally, she finds the right words.
“You have given me something that I can’t live without,” she assures, looking up. Lexa’s truly crying now, her hand over her mouth to hide the way her face contorts with tears as the hot droplets fall freely over her hand. Her eyes have become a bright harlequin that makes Clarke’s heart flutter with the only good feeling she’s had all night. It’s a welcome distraction from the ache in her chest, and she holds onto the moment for as long as she can.
“Don’t underestimate that, okay? No matter how much you want to doubt it...please, Lexa, don’t,” Clarke begs. Her breath hitches as she forces out the next words. “I can’t leave if you don’t know how much you’ve given me.”
“I know, Clarke,” she promises, her voice muffled and gravelly from behind her hand, “I know. I always will.”
As the wind howls outside the tent and the temperature continues to drop, the passing of time becomes all too real again. There isn’t much of it left. It’s like watching an hourglass, Clarke decides. Helplessly watching an hourglass and knowing that you can never flip it over again, no matter how badly you wish you could.
“You know I’ll always mean every word I said,” Lexa says, her voice steadier now than before. Clarke sits up, pulling herself out of the slumped position she’d taken before.
“I know. And every word I’ve said, I’ll always mean, too,” she replies. Her hands are shaking as they rest in her lap, but she wills herself to be stronger. She clenches and unclenches her fists subtly as she can. Lexa’s too observant, though; she catches the action and places a gentle hand over Clarke’s.
Still, as always, it’s as if it were never there at all.
“How do we know this is the right thing?” Clarke whispers, feeling her resolve slipping again.
This time, it is Lexa who sobers and finds rationality. She sighs and lets her thumb run over Clarke’s cracked and dirtied skin, lingering only for a moment before she replies.
“Haven’t we always said that life is about more than just surviving?”
Clarke swallows back the lump in her throat and nods, not trusting herself to speak.
It’s getting time, now. They both know it. As if by an unspoken understanding, they scoot closer across the furs, their bodies touching in the only way they’ve known for a year now.
It is with a heavy heart and misty eyes that Clarke realizes she can still feel Lexa’s breath on her lips, after all this time.
It’s an intoxicating feeling, one she can’t resist, and she surrenders to it nearly instantly. Their lips crash together with gentle fervor, both moving tentatively as if they were afraid that in one breath, the other would be gone.
They kiss for quite some time. Finally, as Clarke realizes the passing of time, she slowly pulls back and meets emerald green eyes one last time.
She holds her gaze for only a moment, but she hopes Lexa can read the thousands of words contained in that single moment.
The second passes before Clarke even realizes that it’s gone. She nearly hesitates, wondering what else to say, what else to do. It doesn’t feel enough. No number of words, kisses, or lingering touches will ever feel like enough. Nothing will give them the closure they’re seeking, and somewhere, somehow, Clarke knows she is going to have to find the strength to be okay with that.
Reluctantly, she stands, forcing herself to tear her eyes away from Lexa’s. She stares at the flaps to the tent, her fingers still wrapped around Lexa’s. Tearful eyes fall to the small table to the right side of the passage to the door. It’s wooden, miraculously in good shape still despite the weather it has endured, and comes up to Clarke’s waist. Atop of it is a singular candle, the one source of light in the room. The flame teeters in the evening wind blowing through the tarps closing in the space. It’s already so close to blowing out, so close to turning into nothing but a wisp of smoke. Above it hangs the calendar, every day but one scratched through.
With a hard swallow and a deep breath, Clarke walks forward. Her fingers release Lexa’s, and that alone almost kills her. Still, there is no greater ache than the one she feels as she leans down to meet the candle’s flame, eye level. She watches it for a fraction of a second before her lips utter crushing words, barely audible to anyone who wasn’t listening.
“May we meet again.”
She blows out the flame in one quick breath and walks out of the tent, never daring to look back.
It’s only a short trek from the tent outside of Arkadia’s walls to the room where her mother has taken up residence. No one bothers her, or even so much as looks in her direction as she walks, and she’s grateful for that. One word, one look would break her resolve, and she knows she simply isn’t strong enough for that yet.
When Clarke reaches the door, she knocks thrice, three quick raps on the metal door that make her knuckles sting. There’s hardly a moment’s wait before the door opens. Abby stands in the doorway with ruffled hair and tired eyes.
“It’s March 3rd,” Clarke whispers, motionless. The heaviness is almost too much to bear, now.
“It’s March 3rd,” Abby replies.
Neither of the two move, afraid to set off the breakdown and the grieving that is surely coming. Instead, they allow a few moments of silence between them, communicating only through their gaze.
“How do I exist in a world without her in it?”
Abby sighs sympathetically, her eyes gentle and understanding. She doesn’t reply for a moment.
Finally, after a few more moments of silence, she speaks.
“You learn to live again, not just survive.”