Chapter Text
Sunday was not a productive day for Clarke.
She couldn’t tell how much time passed, even if she had been checking the time every fifteen minutes.
But she definitely wasn't doing that.
For most of the day her phone stared at her from the coffee table. Sometimes there was a half-empty wine glass next to it. Sometimes nothing.
She could do this.
It wasn’t hard.
Just dial ten numbers and press a green button.
Except, Hulu.
And Netflix.
And her DVR.
Then lunch.
Dinner.
Check-ins with her mother.
Pictures of her daughter in various stages of playtime.
Where did Abby find a pink tutu?
Ten numbers.
.o.o.
Monday came and went.
Madi’s laughter kept her alive and out of her head.
Clarke had developed a tendency over the last ten years an uncanny ability to overthink, an unfortunate habit which meant that action and inaction were both signs. She drowned in it, constantly reading between the lines of what the people around her did and didn’t say.
How could she not?
For years after losing Wells, she couldn’t comprehend how she found Octavia. Why the girl picked her out of the hundreds of other girls their age she could have decided to sit with that day, why her?
Was there something in Clarke that was appealing to be around? Or did she scream sadness in a way that she couldn’t hide, was it pity?
Clarke felt her head twitch to the side in a twinge, unconsciously being pulled from her own thoughts when Madi ran up to her Monday night, freshly changed into her new pink striped nightie - one of the multitudes of things Madi had been returned to Clarke with when she’d picked the toddler up from daycare.
The look of panicked exasperation on the poor worker’s face when Clarke had arrived shortly after 3 PM would have been funny if she hadn’t known first hand how scary Abby could be when the older woman set her mind to something. If that thing was somehow storing six bags of toys and clothes alongside the silly pink ladybug roller that Madi had left with, so be it. Clarke also counted no less than three extra teddy bears among the haul.
With a heavy sigh and a frustrated bite to the lip, Clarke apologized profusely to the teacher and school manager, though she knew she couldn’t promise it would happen again. Abby was uncontrollable.
There were times that Clarke had wished she’d had the power to force her mother out of her life, but she wasn’t that strong. There would always be a part of Clarke that remembered the woman who soothed her as a child, encouraged her to get back up when she was knocked down, taught her to fight for her convictions. It was just hard, to reconcile the loving picture in her memory with the controlling, iron-fisted woman in reality.
Which is why she shouldn’t have been surprised when shortly after Madi had begged for the story of the dancing princesses to be read for a third time, half asleep in her protests, that there was a knock at the front door. It was soft, tentative and unobtrusive. Like the person on the other side didn’t want to be there. Clarke looked at the sleepy five-year old she sat next to, and brushed the girls wild chocolate curls away from her forehead with a kiss goodnight. The small whines and whimpers stung in the back of her mind as she turned off the light and shut her daughter’s bedroom door tightly.
The rule of threes has always been predominant in Clarkes world.
Jake Griffin. Wells Jaha. Aurora Blake.
Lexa leaving. Bellamy’s rejection. Octavia’s words.
Bellamy finding her was the debatable beginning of this new third. Jasper’s death.
Clarke saw the third in front of her when she opened the door.
The woman had her back to Clarke, had apparently changed their mind after long enough at the door with no response and slowly began the walk back to their vehicle. A long dark ponytail swayed between the woman’s slumped shoulders towards an old truck parked in the street, lightly illuminated by a flickering streetlamp.
It was now, or maybe never.
Clarke had a decision to make.
.o.o.
Meeting Raven had been a devastating experience for Clarke.
After all, no teen dreams of the moment they find out they’ve been used. No little girl wakes up one day and imagines that their whole life will be complete if only they could just be the ‘other woman.’
Finn had been a surprise to her.
Freshman orientation at a state school, just another small dig at independency from her mother and her money if you asked Abby - but to Clarke it was a chance to keep her found family. This is what Octavia could afford due to the discounted rates for in-state tuition, and this is where Bellamy would… where Clarke was sure he would eventually return now that his sister wasn’t at risk of being removed by Child Protective Services. This was the place she would never have to look herself in the mirror again and see the scared teen she’d been for the last three years. Never again.
Clarke never expected to sit in that crowded auditorium next to Octavia and meet a stranger’s eye through the crowd. To feel seen in a gasp of emotion she hadn’t felt in… she could never act on. But this time?
Clarke had felt herself flush with excitement as she turned to whisper with her friend, giggling. She put the brown eyes out of her mind, and she definitely didn’t think about how they reminded her of a similar pair that haunted her dreams.
The boy ended up being in a couple of her gen-ed’s. She saw him on campus frequently, and somehow her eyes would find him in a crowd, even if she wasn’t looking for him. His name was Finn. Finn Collins. He’d introduced himself like James Bond, and if that hadn’t been endearing she didn’t know what was.
He made her laugh, kept her mind light and off of the sadness that creeped in daily.
Octavia liked him, liked flirting with him and teasing him to get a rise out of Clarke. They would laugh about it, how the boy was just what Clarke needed.
Fun.
Clarke fell hard and fast with the first person since Wells to make life feel effortless and she saw a future where there was only light.
He fit in with Octavia easily, and people flocked to him - he was blissfully unaware how easy he made friends, and how thankful that Clarke was he slotted herself and O into his circle. How his friends became hers with little to no thought or question.
It was fifteen times easier than the wheedling from Bellamy’s seemingly only friend John Murphy, who talked to Clarke because it annoyed the older man. To get a rise out of him.
She deserved easy.
It was blissful.
He asked her out in the fall, the leaves just starting to struggle free from their branches. He told her he loved her two weeks later. Clarke felt free.
And it all came crashing down after their first Christmas break.
The two girls had returned to campus high from the bittersweet joy of the holiday, a break from classes brought the misery of what the passage of another year without a loved one brings and the absence of new friends a teen is always sure will be there forever. But it also brought clarity, and an understanding that while she couldn’t say if she loved Finn back yet, she thought she could. And that was a beautiful thing.
Their reunion was fantastic, and Clarke could say goodbye to stupid the stupid social concept of virginity. It didn’t matter. And it had been perfect - all awkward fumbling and laughter. Trust.
Gone the next morning when a stranger appeared at his dorm room door.
Clarke was still half-asleep in his tiny twin, back angry from the too small space being crammed with double occupancy.
He’d answered the knock lazily, in just sleep pants, but Clarke would never forget the way he froze, his entire body tense as two arms flung around his neck.
Sometimes easy wasn’t good. Sometimes it hurt.
He’d chased Clarke across campus for the rest of their second semester.
Excuses.
So many excuses.
How he really did love her. That this other person was so far away. That he’d thought the distance would be cause enough for their relationship to end. How was he supposed to know she would follow him.
It didn’t matter.
Heartbreak comes in threes.
Clarke isolated herself for weeks in the aftermath. How could anyone look at her the same way once they knew. She had destroyed a relationship. Her new friends would inevitably hate her, Octavia would finally see that she wasn’t worth the time she’d invested.
When she finally mustered the courage to go out outside of class times, it was to an annoyed Octavia Blake showing up at her door.
“Alright. Enough sulking over arrogant jackasses who aren’t worth the water to cry. We’re over him now.”
Choked smiles between them, and everything felt healed.
Clarke dumped the boy, and slowly gained the girl.
Raven Reyes was an engineering student, a brilliant mind and became an even better friend.
.o.o.
“Raven, wait,” Clarke felt her voice escape her before she knew it, she sounded distant, quiet in the raging sounds of the fall night.
The woman in question turned over her shoulder, head turned sharply at the sound of the voice in the darkness.
Clarke couldn’t hear the whisper of her name on the other woman’s lips, but she could see the motion in the dim light. Could see her face start to contort, and there was no missing the tears start to fall down her cheeks.
And Clarke definitely couldn’t stop herself from running to take Raven into a deep embrace, both women clutching onto the other. Raven’s words flowed over her as they were repeated.
“I’m so sorry.”
They weren’t fine.
But it was a start.