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Clarke falls asleep in the cold and wakes up on fire.
See, it goes like this: you dream of the open air until you’re there, you dream of the Earth until the roots of the trees drag you down. You dream of the pretty girl until she leaves you, you dream of the power until it kills you. You dream that things could be different until they actually are.
She falls asleep after Mount Weather, cold and alone, and wakes up in the past.
*
Clarke wakes up. At first, she’s confused. A fire is hot and crackling nearby, when she had definitely fallen asleep from exhaustion in an empty cave. Maybe Lexa has come, she thinks, but it’s a ridiculous thought. Lexa is gone.
She sits up in her – so comfortable – bed and looks around. She’s in a house like she’s never seen before. It’s a little worn, but it has – a fire, and a television, and electricity. What is this place? Did she die and come to some weird heaven?
“Oh, you’re awake.” A woman comes through the archway from the kitchen, a mug in her hands. “Here, drink this. You were out in the cold for a long time, you must be freezing.”
Clarke accepts the mug numbly, sips without thinking. Stupid, Lexa would say. So stupid. But Clarke is not Lexa. “Who are you? Where am I?”
“My name is Andrea,” the woman says, smiling and sitting at the end of the bed. She has dark blonde hair and soft green eyes. She’s dressed in a comfortable sweater and jeans. She looks so clean, so safe. “We found you not far from here. Did your family leave?”
“I’m sorry?” Clarke blinks. “My father’s dead. I only have my mother.”
“Did he die in the war? I’m so sorry, love. I lost my daughter and husband to the war, too.”
“The war?”
Andrea’s starting to look concerned. “Perhaps you have amnesia. We should get you to a hospital, but – I don’t think they’re taking normal cases anymore.”
Clarke swallows. “Yeah, amnesia, that’s probably it. Refresh my memory?”
“The war began three years ago,” Andrea says. “The Third World War, they’re calling it. Except countries have been threatening nuclear weapons for months now, and it’s only a matter of time. This is Washington DC, one of the top targets. That’s why I asked if your parents left.”
Oh my God, thinks Clarke. “What year is it, if I may ask?”
“It’s May 22nd, 2050.”
Is this a joke? Clarke wants to demand, but she knows it’s not. Maybe she’s dreaming, or maybe this is real. Either way, she’s stuck with it for the moment.
“Is it okay if I stay here for a couple of days? I don’t really have anywhere to go,” Clarke admits, ducking her head.
“Of course, my dear. It’s only me now, you see. Everybody else left the city when they began warning nuclear warfare, but…” Andrea looks out the window at the cold world, the ash falling from the sky. “I would rather die here than die years down the track from radiation.”
“I understand.”
“Imagine it, though… Our beautiful world. One day it will be gone, destroyed by this terrible war. I wonder if anybody will survive.”
“I’m sure they will.”
Andrea’s eyes are bright, amused. “You’re an optimist.”
I am one of the survivors. “They’ll find a way.”
“And I will be long dead by then, my dear.” Andrea smiles sadly and stands. Clarke thinks she’s leaving and feels a slight panic, but Andrea only walks to the fireplace and retrieves a frame from atop it. “This was my daughter. She was an engineer when the war first began. She was only seventeen when she went off, lied to the authorities. They needed the help, of course. She was the best engineer they had, and now she’s dead.”
Andrea passes Clarke the photo and Clarke looks down at her, swallowing. Raven’s laughing eyes look back at her.
*
This isn’t the past, Clarke thinks. This is another world altogether.
She wonders if this is the universe’s way of punishing her.
*
Clarke sleeps in fits, sometimes waking up dreaming of Raven’s screams, Lexa’s lips, the look in Bellamy’s eyes as she walked away. She stays for two days before she says, “I have to go.” The implied: I’m not ready to die. Not yet.
“You are young,” says Andrea. “And bright. I think you might actually make it through this, Clarke. Follow the land north. I hear there’s a group of refugees fleeing the war, led by a woman they call the Chief. She may be able to get you out of this alive, my child.”
“You are too kind.” Clarke takes the woman’s hand. “Yu gonplei ste odon.”
“What language is that? It’s beautiful.”
“Just where I’m from. A small place, not very well known. But it is beautiful.” Clarke presses a gentle kiss to the woman’s palm. “Goodbye, Andrea.”
“Goodbye, Clarke.”
Clarke takes the bag gifted to her by Andrea, pulls her coat tighter around her. She sets off into the snow drifts, leaving the woman alone to die.
*
The city is deserted – terrifyingly so. Once, on her travels, she finds an old carpark. She shouts out and hears her voice come back to her. Then she hears a bang, and sees a shadow, and she runs.
The homeless and dying huddle together, trying to keep warm. Sometimes bombs drop across town, and one day she hears a radio talk about the devastation of the eastern part of town, where Andrea lives.
Yu gonplei ste odon, Clarke thinks, and pushes on.
She runs out of food eventually, but finds some supplies in abandoned supermarkets. Sometimes she hears static-laden news over radios that have been left running like eulogies. She begins to dream of home, of Camp Jaha, of Lexa. Anything would be better than this.
Back home, somebody might put a knife in your back, but there’s little fear that airplanes will drop bombs from above.
Clarke thinks of the missile from Mount Weather and thinks Not anymore, anyway.
After days upon days of travelling, she finds herself just outside of Washington DC. She’s been moving slow, listening to bits of the news, gauging how much time she has left. She’s about two dozen miles out from Washington DC’s centre when they drop the bomb. It destroys everything in the immediate vicinity and scorches the ground alarmingly close to Clarke. The destruction halts several miles from her, far enough that she faces no danger from the actual explosion.
As for the radiation? That’s one thing she doesn’t have to fear.
She wonders if there’s a single person left breathing in DC. She thinks of it like Mount Weather, but on an immense scale. She sleeps in the cold that night, shivering against the chill. Cold, but alive. She’s still alive.
*
She walks until her rations are gone and then walks on an empty stomach for days, thirsty and delusional. She reaches a camp of people on her sixth day without food and with little water.
She sees two people walking towards her and drops to her knees. Hands pull her up, and she hears a familiar voice call out.
“Bellamy,” she gasps. “Octavia.” Everything goes black.
*
This time she wakes up on the ground, but somebody’s draped a blanket over her. She sits up. She’s surrounded by sleeping people. A figure sits by the fire, his hands clutched before him.
“Bellamy,” she whispers.
“How do you know my name?” he asks without turning. “Who are you? You came from DC. We thought everybody was dead.”
“They are. Well, mostly all of them, I think.” Clarke sits down on the log beside him. “I fled. A woman helped me.”
“The radiation should’ve killed you.” Bellamy sighs. “That’s nice. That somebody helped you. Helluva rare thing, nowadays.”
“You helped me.”
“I gave you a blanket. I might have to kill you yet.” It’s a joke, but also not at all. “Who are you?”
“My name is Clarke Griffin."
“How do you know my name?”
“I’m from another future,” Clarke says. “After this war. We lived in a space station before we had to come back to Earth. That’s how I survived the radiation from the blast. You were – are – my friend.”
Bellamy snorts. “You’re trying to tell me you’re from the future, Princess? Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“Well, yes, but.” Bellamy cracks a smile. Clarke says, “I’m not from this future. This is like…I know people here. You, your sister, somebody who’s already died. Her name was Raven. We were all friends, kind of. It’s complicated. But that was in my future, in my timeline. I think this is just the universe’s joke on me.”
“You do talk a lot of bullshit.” Bellamy shakes his head. “But I like you, Clarke. Even if you won’t tell me how you got here.” He stands. “One of our people, Finn, is in a watch tonight. He hasn’t checked in. I should go and check on him.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“I don’t even know you.”
“I know you. And Finn.” There’s a part of her that would do anything to see Finn alive again. “Let me come with you. Please.”
Bellamy hesitates for a moment, then nods. They walk out a little way from camp and follow footsteps into the trees. Bellamy frowns. “I don’t know why he would have taken a detour.”
They find Finn in a clearing, claw marks across his chest. Dead.
Clarke begins to laugh, can’t stop until she’s in tears. Bellamy encloses her in his arms and she sobs into his shoulder.
“I can never save them,” she gasps. “I can never save them all.”
“That’s the thing about war, you see,” Bellamy says, and his voice is gentle. “You can’t ever save everybody.”
*
She leaves the next morning. Bellamy gives her some rations, points her to a nearby lake where she can wash and get drinking water.
Octavia watches her cautiously while she prepares to leave. She doesn’t approach Clarke until Clarke’s just about to leave. She catches her arm and says, “I don’t know where you came from, Clarke, but you made my brother laugh for the first time in a long time. So thank you.”
Clarke inclines her head. “Goodbye, Octavia.”
She smiles, turns slightly when her name is called. Octavia nods once to Clarke and returns to the camp, where a familiar bulky figure – Lincoln – is waiting. Clarke smiles a little to herself and leaves, again.
*
She comes across a town, several days later. It’s been destroyed, but not by a nuclear bomb. Just a regular bomb, Clarke supposes, which isn’t much better. The town looks like it’s been like this a while; windows are smashed and dusty, and decaying corpses litter the streets.
Clarke swallows against the horrible smell of death and searches the houses for food, for supplies. She manages to salvage quite a lot, suggesting that these people didn’t even have time to prepare.
She tries not to think about it too much.
She’s searching an apartment when she finds a smashed photo on the floor. The three people in the photo are grinning at the camera, holding hands. They’re at some sort of beach, Clarke thinks, umbrellas blowing in the background.
Monty, she thinks. Maya. Jasper.
She becomes frantic, running through the rooms – searching for something, anything. In the last bedroom she checks she finds three skeletons, side by side on the bed.
She rushes to the waste bin and throws up her meagre lunch.
*
Clarke has lost a lot of people, and she’s killed even more. But on the weeks after that, as she travels through destroyed towns, seeing few people, searching for a girl she doesn’t even know is still alive, she realises that she’s still got a hell of a lot of her friends left.
She killed a lot of people at Mount Weather. She’s lost her father, she’s lost Finn, she’s lost Wells.
Here’s the thing, though: she still has so many others.
Sometimes Clarke wakes up screaming, thrashing against invisible enemies, and the only thing that ever calms her down is Lexa’s voice in her head whispering You’re safe, you’re safe. And that must say something, mustn’t it?
Lexa betrayed her, but this war is manic. Lexa would never kill an entire city just in the name of power. She would never kill innocent people because she enjoyed watching them burn.
Clarke is fleeing from a war that will catch up to her eventually.
She only hopes she’ll be dead or gone by the time it does.
*
It only makes sense that on her third month of travelling, she finds her mother and Kane. They’re travelling with some other refugees, just like many others she meets on the road. Alive though, shockingly, she’s still alive, but – Clarke’s mother looks at her and sees nothing but a girl running from monsters.
“What’s your name?” Abigail asks.
“Clarke,” she says. “Clarke Griffin.”
“That’s funny. There used to be a politician’s daughter with that name – one of the first to die, which is how it always is. My name is Abigail Kane. This is my husband Marcus.”
Kane nods to her.
Clarke says, faintly, “It’s nice to meet you.”
She doesn’t even stay the night, leaving as the sun sets. There is nothing for her here.
*
It’s five months before she catches up to the large group of refugees moving north.
When she says large, she’s not exaggerating. There are at least two thousands refugees, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder as they flee their cities. Clarke walks amongst them for a while; the party eventually stops at a lake to wash and drink, and Clarke takes her chance.
“Where can I find the Chief?” she asks a passersby.
“She should be at the front on the horse, leading the group.”
It takes her half an hour to push through to the front, and then she’s stopped by bodyguards. She argues, saying that she has to see their leader, and the guards only laugh, saying that everybody has to see the Chief.
“Let her through.”
The command surprises both of them. The bodyguards immediately step back, letting Clarke pass.
“Lexa,” Clarke breathes.
Lexa climbs down from her horse and eyes Clarke with a mix of suspicion and curiosity.
And it is Lexa, in the flesh, and the sight makes Clarke want to cry. She’s dressed in torn jeans and a filthy shirt, so different to the Lexa Clarke knows and yet so similar. She’s wearing a necklace with a feather on it, and it probably means something, and it’s Lexa.
“You are not of my people,” she says. “You travel alone.”
“Yes. My name is Clarke Griffin.”
“To travel alone in such times and survive is admirable - and stupid. People call me the Chief.”
“You don’t have a name?”
“It is not one I go by anymore.” Lexa inclines her head. “What do you need? I have very little to offer you, Clarke, in ways of goods. My people come first.”
Clarke says, “I don’t want anything from you but your ear. Um, not literally. I mean – it’s complicated.”
Lexa’s lips tug up at the corners. “It sounds complicated indeed. Come and sit with me by the river. We shall eat, and you may tell me your story.”
They move to the river, and Lexa, to Clarke’s surprise, offers her some bread and stale cheese. Clarke accepts the food gladly; she’s been stretching her supplies out, and it’s been a while since she’s found a town to replenish them. This Lexa is softer, somehow, like she’s only beginning to build walls to protect herself. She’s still heartbreakingly kind – firm, but kind.
“It is a hard story to believe. I just want you to know that before I even begin.”
“I have seen many impossible things. Tell your story, Clarke.”
“I come from another world that’s 97 years in the future,” Clarke says, knotting her hands together.
“You’re from the future?”
“Not this future, but…kind of another timeline. In my timeline, I know you. I’ve met many people here, most of them dead, who I know from my world.”
“How do we know each other?”
Clarke searches Lexa’s expression for mocking; to her surprise, she finds none. “I lived in a space station for most of my life. My people believed that the radiation would kill us, so they sent 100 lawbreakers to Earth to test the theory. I was among them. And I survived. My people followed shortly afterwards. They call us the Sky People. You’re the Commander of the people on the ground, the descendants of those who survived the nuclear war and adjusted to the radiation like my people. We had an alliance.”
“Had?”
“You broke it. We were to rescue our people from our enemy, but you made a deal and abandoned me. I saved them, but at a price.”
Lexa looks at her, head tilted. “You must hate me.”
“I was so angry. I haven’t seen you since then. So yeah, I did hate you, at first. But.” She looks around her, the destruction of DC playing on an endless loop behind her eyelids. “I have seen worse things. We do terrible things to survive, Lexa, but neither of us could ever do this.” She waves a hand to indicate the pained and tired refugees, the destroyed land surrounding them.
“Earlier, you… you called me by my name.”
“Of course.”
“People call me by my name there?”
“Why don’t they here?”
“My father originally led these people. He was killed by soldiers in an ambush, but I survived. I was not the same, though. I was no longer Lexa, his quiet, fierce little girl. I am the Chief now.” She seems to think about it for a moment, then nods. “I believe you, Clarke. But I still do not know what you want of me.”
Clarke gapes. “You believe me?”
“I have not spoken my name in years, Clarke. Yet you speak it as if you are familiar with it. I believe you.”
Clarke says, “I want to find a way to go back to my time. I don’t want to die here. My people need me.”
Lexa nods. “We will find a way, Clarke. If there is a universe where people can rebuild the Earth, I want you to return to it.”
“You know that you cannot come with me.”
“I know.”
“So why would you help me?”
“Because I believe that there are good people, Clarke, and there are bad. My world is full of terrible people, so I protect the good ones. But I am only one woman, and my body is not strong enough to protect them from nuclear bombs.” Lexa stands. “We will all die eventually, Clarke, but you do not have to. And I will make sure that you do not, I promise you this now.”
She turns and faces the great expanses of scorched land before them. She says, “We travel to a refuge town I have heard of, called Salvation. Will you come with me, Clarke of the Sky People?”
“I’d be honoured.”
*
Clarke doesn’t have a tent, but Lexa gives her something she calls a “sleeping bag” and tells her to pick a spot. The comment’s lighthearted, because Clarke has miles of ‘spots’ to choose from. This Lexa is so different from the one she knows, warm and joking.
Clarke finds out why not long later.
They break off into several groups for dinner, surrounding campfires. Lexa seems to take her role as Clarke’s guide seriously and motions for Clarke to sit beside her. She passes Clarke her rations of the boar they killed earlier that day. She looks up when another woman, brown-haired with a warm smile, detaches from a crowd and comes over to sit with them.
Lexa says, “Let me introduce you to my girlfriend, Costia.”
Costia. All of Clarke’s world comes grinding to a halt. This is Costia. She’s pretty, but not in the way that Lexa is. Lexa has a sharp mould to her, fierce and fanged. Costia is soft, with dark skin and curly hair past her shoulders, eyes a bright green like pools.
“Costia,” says Lexa, “this is Clarke.”
Costia holds out her hand for Clarke to shake; after a shocked moment, Clarke shakes it, nodding in greeting.
“Clarke is a new member of our group. She managed to escape DC’s bombing.”
Costia smiles disbelievingly. “The radiation…”
“That,” says Clarke, “is a long story.”
Costia’s smile widens. “I have time.”
*
So Costia believes Clarke’s story, too, which means both Lexa and Costia in this universe are insane. Clarke wouldn’t trust anybody else with it, not after Bellamy – and Bellamy, the one she thought would have her back, but that wasn’t her Bellamy.
But Costia is warm and understanding, and she looks at Clarke like she knows. Knows what she’s been through, knows everything that Clarke can’t say aloud.
Three days of travel pass. Costia catches Clarke collecting berries one day and wordlessly helps her. They work in comfortable silence for a while before Costia says, “I’m dead, aren’t I? In your universe.”
Clarke is so shocked she jerks and a few berries fall from the basket. Costia picks them up patiently and puts them back in Clarke’s basket, smiling softly.
“It’s okay,” she says. “I could see it in your eyes when you met me. You didn’t know me, but also – there was a strange sad joy.”
“I was happy to see that Lexa had somebody.”
“But not so happy to see that it wasn’t you.”
Clarke looks down, and Costia sighs, lifting Clarke’s chin with a finger. “Clarke, I don’t blame you. In times like this, it’s a comfort to know that Lexa has somebody who loves her as much as you do and would die to keep her safe.”
“I don’t know if I would – after she betrayed me.”
“I think you would. Sacrifice is personal, Clarke, just like betrayal. Don’t you understand? Your Lexa betrayed you to keep her people safe. That doesn’t mean that she wouldn’t take a blade to the gut to keep you safe.”
“You don’t understand,” says Clarke, frustrated. “My Lexa and your Lexa are not the same. When I left? Well, we weren’t on the best of speaking terms. The Lexa I know is cold, bitter, haunted by your death. She’s convinced herself that she has to stop caring to stop herself getting hurt.”
“And that’s why she has you. Promise me something, Clarke.”
“There’s not all that much I can promise you right now.”
“When you return to your universe, find Lexa. Talk to her. You both deserve that.”
“When I return? Not if?”
“You will return, Clarke. I have faith, even if you do not.”
*
Some cold nights Clarke sleeps in Lexa and Costia’s tent, despite her swearing that she’s fine. On those nights she stares up at the way the poles converge to stop the tent falling down around them, thinks about her Lexa and Salvation and broken promises.
*
There is land, there is hunger, and there is another city – small in the distance, then larger. It’s a mess, bombed within an inch of its life, limbs scattered around. Clarke trips over a child’s doll, its hair charred.
When Lexa breaks down with only Costia and Clarke to see, Clarke casts her eyes away while Costia whispers It will be okay, it will be okay, it’s all gonna be okay. But when Costia drifts off slumped against Lexa, it’s Clarke whose eyes Lexa searches for in the dark of the tent.
“Nothing will be okay again, will it?” Lexa’s eyes are sad, and this is terrible, so terrible, because Clarke has become so used to Lexa’s optimism, how she’s so gentle with the world. “She is going to die.”
“Just because she dies in my timeline doesn’t mean she dies in yours,” says Clarke, soft.
Lexa runs a hand through Costia’s hair and sighs. “Maybe it doesn’t. Tell me, is her death quick? In your world, I mean?”
“Yes,” Clarke lies. “Absolutely painless.”
*
When Costia kisses Lexa – in simple ways, like they’ve learnt how to live with each other; at breakfast, before bed, when Lexa says something sweet – Clarke isn’t jealous. She wants Lexa to be happy, to be loved unconditionally by somebody who knows her, perhaps even better than Clarke does.
Even so, Clarke learns to love this Lexa almost as much as she love her Lexa. And maybe Lexa loves her a little bit, too.
The difference is this:
In this universe, Costia makes Lexa look alive. Clarke just makes Lexa look sad.
*
They are on a patrol one day – Clarke, Lexa and a couple of other soldiers – when they hear screams back at the camp. They feel it before they see it – the heat, unbearable, just like when the missile hit Tondc.
Lexa says, “It’s not nuclear, they could be okay, they could be –”
They burst out of the trees onto the clearing, and there is chaos and death, everywhere. Lexa is frantic, searching for Costia, and Clarke finds her trapped beneath a fallen tree. Lexa rushes over and falls to her knees, whispering Costia, Costia, my Costia.
Her eyes are open wide with shock, blood dribbling from her mouth. What’s strange is that she’s face-down on the ground. Clarke sees metal piercing through the girl’s back: the tree hadn’t killed her. When she’d seen the bomb planes, she had fallen on her blade.
“At least she died like she wanted, instead of in terrible pain,” Clarke says quietly.
“I do not need consolation,” Lexa rasps. “Only to grieve. Go and help the survivors. I will come soon.”
“Take all the time you need,” says Clarke, and she goes.
*
After the bomb wipes out most of their number, they’re left with a total of 50 people. Some of the injured they had to leave behind, where they’re safer than where Clarke and Lexa and their group are going.
Salvation is a spot in the distance, then a gate in front of them, and it is still standing.
It is still standing.
Guards patrol its walls, and one of the patrols catches them. They let them in the giant iron door, but the second they say who they are there are shaking heads and sharp words. Clarke is expecting it when they say No, you can’t enter, we’re full, but apparently Lexa isn’t, because she’s disbelieving. They argue, and the guard pulls his gun, and Clarke thinks this isn’t the way she’s supposed to die.
Then sirens begin to wail.
The guard goes very pale. He immediately turns on his heel and flees, through the door and into the forest. The others follow him, the door shutting solidly behind them, and Lexa grabs for it, trying to push it open.
“It won’t open,” she hisses. “It won’t open.”
“The guard had the keys,” says Clarke, and she’s so tired. She just collapses against the door, back against it. The rest of their group are frantic, trying to find a way out, but they both know it’s useless. The only other way out is up, and by the time they find a way up they’ll be dead.
Clarke is so tired.
“Clarke,” says Lexa, sitting beside her and taking one of her hands, pressing a gentle kiss to it. “Clarke, I’m sorry.”
Clarke asks, confused, “What for?”
“For betraying you. For ruining what we had, you know, in your world.”
“That wasn’t you.”
“But it was. Just because I – just because it was not this version of me, it was still me. And I am sorry. I need you, okay? I might not tell you that, but I need you. Most of all –” and her voice cracks on this “ – I am sorry that I could not save you.”
Lexa grips Clarke’s hand tight, and Clarke squeezes back. The planes fly over, and there is blood, there is fire, there is pain. Everything goes white-hot, and Clarke feels Lexa’s lips against her cheek, then a heavy weight on her shoulder.
*
Clarke dies in the fire and wakes in the cold.
See, it goes like this: there’s a bomb falling from the sky and there’s a pretty girl next to you, and she wants to protect you. She wants to protect everybody, which is exactly her problem, and when the bomb is falling she takes off her necklace and hooks it around your neck. Clarke thinks my body is not strong enough to protect them from nuclear bombs and she thinks we will all die eventually, Clarke, but you do not have to.
There’s a pretty girl next to you and you don’t know how to tell her you love her. You love her so much, too much, and this is what ruins you, every time.
*
The wind is like ice. Clarke stands, woodenly, and she aches. She looks down at her body, disbelieving, but her skin is fine, unburnt and unbruised. Just a terrible dream, she thinks, but when she reaches for her neck she finds the necklace there still.
We all die eventually, Clarke, but you do not have to.
Clarke finds her belongings where she left them, eats to soothe a furiously growling stomach, and drinks from a nearby lake. Then she zips up her jacket, pulls on her backpack, and sets off.
She finds Lexa two days later, at a place near the sea where her people have set up camp. She walks into the camp and nobody stops her, which means. Which means that Lexa has told them she is not to be touched, even knowing what Clarke might do, knowing that Clarke has a gun that she knows how to shoot and a heart that is furious over the betrayal.
Clarke’s gun is in her belt, but it’s not loaded. She has looked into Costia’s eyes and promised that she’d talk with Lexa, and talk she will do. No matter how it goes.
Lexa is sitting on her bed in her tent when Clarke storms in, and she looks up and smiles. It seems like a reflex, quickly replaced by an indifferent mask, but then Clarke knows. She says, “You’re never going to believe the week I’ve had.”
“I heard about Mount Weather, Clarke.”
“That’s not even the beginning.”
And Lexa believes, because Clarke describes Costia, her keen eyes and beautiful hair, how she’s kinder than anybody deserves and is so beautiful it makes your heart break. Costia is dead in this universe, and in that one; so when Clarke is finished talking, all Lexa says is, “You met her? Was she happy?”
This time Clarke does not lie. “Things were difficult, but she loved you. And you loved her. It was a little sickeningly sweet."
Lexa’s eyes are too-bright. “I loved her more than I loved anything, and I let her die. I betrayed you, Clarke, and left your people to die. It is unforgivable.”
“Unforgivable, yes,” Clarke says, “but I’ve had months to deal with it. I don’t hate you, Lexa.”
Lexa takes Clarke’s hand, presses a gentle kiss to it. “I am sorry.”
“I know,” Clarke says, sitting down beside her on the bed. She kisses Lexa then, gently, like a promise. “I know.”