So, I love you,
Because the entire universe conspired
To help me find you.
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
1.
You're at a wedding. You're scheduled for deployment in 36 hours and you're at a wedding. You let your mom talk you into coming, let yourself be coated with one last shred of normalcy before you have to leave for your third tour.
It's… nice.
The ceremony is nice, your dress is nice, your date is nice. Everything is just so damn nice. In two days you'll be elbow deep in soldier's gut, but for now you drink champagne and pretend your skin doesn't crawl when your date touches the small of your back.
Your mom watches you from the other side of the room, and you down your drink in one go, the bitter aftertaste of the champagne scrapes at the back of your throat as you excuse yourself and leave the table. Your mother's gaze follows you, mouth curled in disapproval as you flee to the restroom.
You're wondering if you could leave without her noticing. You still have to finish packing and to be honest you were looking forward to sleeping in your bed one last time, when it happens.
(It goes like this: you feel her first, then she sees you; your world stops.)
She comes out of the restroom, glass of champagne in hand and thoughtful smile on her lips. She sees you, and freezes mid-step. Her eyes are green, her dress is green and now your world is green, too.
"You're here," she says, her cheeks tinged with pink and her eyes glazed over and you know she's had one drink too many.
You look and look and look at her, and you wonder if you've seen her before. You feel like you have, but it just can't be. (You'd remember someone looking at you the way she's looking at you right now, like she's spent her whole life out of pace and you're setting her rhythm right again.)
"Have we met before?" you ask, and she looks and looks and looks at you, her eyes are campfires by the forest and trees greener than you've ever seen and for a moment you can't breathe quite right.
"Maybe, in another life," she says, and she smiles like she's in on a secret joke, the tilt of her lips familiar in a way that you don't understand, but that, somehow makes perfect sense.
.
You stay. You follow her to her table, she's tipsy and a bit shy but you think it's charming.
You talk and talk and talk, you don't know her but you feel like you might want to. (You're leaving tomorrow and this time you might have a reason to come back.)
.
Later, when she kisses you and slips her number into your pocket, you pretend not to notice the way she holds onto you, like she's been drowning all her life, and she's just found her lifeline.
"Don't forget me again," she says, and you don't understand how you could forget about her when she's all you want to remember.
.
Eight months later, when you're back again and your heart's a little bit heavier and your soul a little bit dimmer, you find a crumpled paper in one of your jacket's pockets.
(378) 400-1234
May we meet again
You call her.
2.
The first time you see her in this life, you're 16.
You are messy blonde hair and love handles and she's gangly limbs and scrapes on her knees from crawling to her feet on the lacrosse field.
She crashes into you on her way to the locker room and you fall to the ground from the impact. You think it's only fair you fall to the floor the same moment you fall in love with her again.
"Careful there," she says with a smile as she offers you a hand, and you let her pull you up and relish in the thought that you met her early in this lifetime, you'll have time.
.
She's got a girlfriend. You're 16 and you remember loving her in each of your lifetimes, but she's got a girlfriend. Dark hair, dark skin, kind eyes and a bright smile.
It's alright, though, you know she'll come around. You're not cocky, (even though you've seen the way she looks at you, when she thinks you're distracted and she can't quite help herself), but you've been there; you know how inevitable it feels, to find the person whose heart sings in tune with yours.
You don't pursue her, you don't pressure her. You befriend her.
You take root in her life and take whatever she'll give you. You expand around her, and you grow up together.
.
The first time you kiss her in this life, you're 19.
You're drunk and dancing and happy, and you forget that she doesn't love you, not like that. (Not yet.) You swallow her gasp and hold onto her, until she's kissing you like she remembers all the lives spent spelling her love for you against the roof of your mouth.
The next morning you hear her groan her pain as she wakes from where she's laying next to you, her cheek wrinkled from where she was drooling on your shoulder and her forehead scrunched up in confusion.
"What happened last night?" She asks, and your heart falters and cuts your breath short.
She doesn't remember, and you do. (You remember everything.)
.
It always hurts, you're not going to deny this, to see her smile that smile at someone else. (You remember her kissing her way down your spine, like your skin was the canvas of the universe and she was drawing constellations with her lips.)
But she's happy, and you will not take that away from her.
.
The first time you kiss someone else in this life, you're 22.
You're tired and lonely and vulnerable, and he kisses you with your back pressed to the counter of the bar. The edge digging into you is a distraction from the knowledge that he's not who you want to be kissing at all.
But you're 22, you're tired and lonely and vulnerable, and she's not ready. It's not that you're scared to go after what you want, you know that, though she might not know it yet, she wants you too. Still, you're 22 and she's not ready and you have time.
So you let this boy kiss you like he has any claim to you, like your soul wasn't welded to hers across time and space, like his chapped lips on yours are meant to be anything more than a distraction.
But then he's being pushed off of you and shoved to the side, and you know it's her even before you can see her. (Somehow, you always know.)
You ask for an explanation and her answer is a clenched jaw and a stubborn shrug.
"I suppose I never thought it would hurt this much," she says, her eyes steady as she looks at you with a resolution you hadn't seen in her yet, not aimed at you, and you furrow your eyebrows in confusion.
"To see you with someone else and know that you're not mine."
You don't know how to tell her that hers is all you've ever been.
.
She breaks up with her girlfriend because she's nothing if not fair, and you feel like it's finally time for you, like your life together it's about to start and she's ready to fill the holes left inside you by the space she used to fit.
.
The first time you die in this life, you're 23.
Car accidents are tricky things, and you think you could've gone through this life without feeling so much pain condensed in a single moment. But then you think about her, and the thought of leaving her before you've even had a real chance hurts more than your bones breaking on the impact with the ground.
You took your time and gave her space, but now you're bleeding on the asphalt and she's never going to know that you were made from the same star, and that you love her.
Oh, you love her, and you wanted to tell her, but she was happy and there was no rush and you didn't know you were running on borrowed time.
You close your eyes and promise that you'll learn your lesson. You pray she'll find you soon in the next life, too. (You pray she'll know you loved her like it was the only thing you'd ever known.)
.
When you wake up, the world is white.
You can't feel much, but you feel her. She's hovering by your side, staring intently at the monitor on the wall as if the peaks of your heart-rate hold the meaning of the world.
"Hey," you croak out. The word is sandpaper on your throat but when she turns to you, trembling lips and eyes big with wonder, you think you'd get into a thousand car accidents for her to keep looking at you like this.
"I love you", she says, rushed and panicked, like her heart is a cage too tight and she couldn't keep it in anymore. It's baffling, really, what hearing her say it does to you in every single lifetime; it heals the cracks around your heart and you feel it finally beat right.
"About time," you say, and she laughs and laughs and laughs.
You breathe, fill your lungs with the sound, and smile. You relish in the thought that she's ready now.
You have time.
3.
You fall on Earth. You crash. You survive.
Some of you die, this brave new world demands sacrifices and Wells' necklace burns around your wrist as a reminder of the price the best of you have already paid.
You make friends, you make enemies. You meet the Grounders. They're rough, rugged, and ruthless and you start a war you can't possibly win. You lean on a boy with long hair and an easy smile, you think you might love him, until you meet Raven, and learn of a new kind of betrayal.
You fight tooth and nail to lead your pack of trembling pups with a lot of bark and no bite, and you survive. You fight, you bleed, you kill.
You survive.
.
They try to lock you inside a mountain. The walls are hard and the floors cold, but your friends are alive and clean, sharing chocolate cake with pretty girls and not dying. You suppose worse things could've happened.
You're wrong. You lie, you steal, you escape. You find the Grounders, they're locked in rattling cages, piled one on top of the other, like livestock waiting to be butchered. They're hanging upside down from the ceiling, like animals left to bleed dry from the holes inside their arms.
You find Anya, her eyes hollow, her veins dry and her bones frail, but she stares you down and you escape together. You jump together, you bleed together. And then she bleeds alone, at the hands of your people; they've tumbled down from the stars and crashed on the flimsy resemblance of peace you had barely managed to put together.
.
They push you inside a tent, Grounders lined up on both sides like sentries to guard the throne at its center, and the girl sitting on it.
"You're the one who burned 300 of my warriors alive," she says, her eyes are ice and her voice is steel, and you don't understand the coil of answering warmth you feel low in your stomach.
"You're the one who sent them there to kill us."
.
(When you're alone in her tent and she offers you your people's safety in exchange for a murderer's life, she looks at you like you're a ghost from a past she isn't quite ready to relive yet. You'll play the part, if that's what's needed. Still, the way she looks at you doesn't change, like she's waiting for you to remember something she knows you never will.)
.
You kill the boy you thought you might learn to love, plunge a knife into his heart and now you carry him on your wrist too, charring your skin with the added weight of his blood staining your hands.
But his sacrifice is enough, your people will live, and you, too, will survive.
.
Then, slowly, things change. Something inside you shifts.
Preparations for the war to come keep you busy, and you spend more time with the Commander, with Lexa, than you do with the people you're trying to keep alive. She's quiet and hard around the edges, but at times you catch her staring at you, in the flickering glow of candlelight, longing in her eyes and walls down, and you feel like you're missing something. (You feel like you've been off balance your whole life, and she might just know why.)
You talk and you fight and you learn, you face conspirators and mutant gorillas and missiles fired from mountains that raze villages to the ground. You survive, together.
She's discipline and diligence and duty, and when she kisses you, you expect it to be iron and blood.
It isn't.
She kisses you like she's asking for permission, gentle and tentative, like she can't quite believe she'd get the chance to. You kiss her back because, though you've never been a woman of faith, her lips taste like hope.
.
She betrays you.
.
You take the Mountain; carve out pieces of your soul and scatter them on the ground as offerings to whatever pitiless gods are laughing down at you, and your people survive.
Clarke Griffin is dead; Wanheda lives.
.
The next time you see her, you're chaos and rage and spit, driven into a frenzy by months of simmering guilt and isolation.
You feel her presence every time she steps in front of your chambers and hesitates. She doesn't show her face for a week. You want to kill her, you try to kill her, you are going to kill her. (You won't kill her.)
You hate her. You hate that she knows you, you hate that she's right, you hate her sad, sad eyes and the way her voice breaks against the knife you hold to her throat. She looks at you with nothing but regret and longing, and you hate her for it.
You hate yourself more.
.
You forge a reluctant alliance. Your heart is guarded and you do not trust her, but it's what your people need, and you've run far too long from the duty thrust upon you the moment you landed on this untamed world.
You don't trust her, but she drops to her knees and looks at you like she's been living underwater and you're her first breath of air. You don't trust her, but her eyes are steady, and you know her heart is true.
"If you betray me again-"
"I won't."
.
She keeps her word.
She compromises herself, risks her position and her heritage to impose from on high a peace you know the Grounders do not approve of. They plot and conspire and back her into a corner, and she steps onto the arena, ready to risk her life, for the peace. (For you.)
Roan is strong and trained, striking blow after blow after blow on her sword. Each blow is a grip closing on your lungs, tightening around your throat, cutting off your breath. But Lexa is unyielding and unrelenting and so alive, and you see her bleed black blood for your people's sins.
She steps out of the arena, bloodied, beaten and bruised, but victorious, and you want to hate her.
But you don't, you don't hate her at all.
.
Later, when she comes to you barefoot and quiet, and she looks at you like it hurts but looking away would hurt her more, you wonder if she was always meant to make you feel like this. Like you've lived your life pulled apart at the seams and she's the only one who can help you fill the space left vacant by the pieces of yourself that seeped through.
.
Your people are murderers and killers, who butchered an army ready to give their lives to protect the sky, and you feel the bile rise from your stomach as you look into Lexa's eyes and ask her to let them live.
She's barely contained fury and trembling ire as she calls upon the twelve clans for an army that will wipe out every last trace of your people, and a part of you wishes you didn't have to stop her. But your duty comes first, and that is a lesson she taught you the hard way.
She's angry and you know her heart is broken for the sea of lifeless bodies littering the outskirts of Arkadia your people left to rot as a warning, and you swallow down the nausea as you do your best to make Lexa understand.
But you know her now, you know how she works and you know what to say.
You tried it once before, when it was a shot in the dark and you were desperate to save the life of a lost boy. (You took that life instead, and left a piece of yourself attached to that post.)
Jus nou drein jus daun.
.
"Do you believe in soulmates, Clarke?" she asks you once, her voice soft in the low light of her room. You don't always see eye to eye in the matters of spirituality, but you respect her beliefs.
You don't have an answer for her, but as she looks at you, eyes unwavering as she swallows down her feelings like she does whenever her heart speaks louder than her head, you think that you don't mind the thought of having your soul entwined to hers.
You'd be okay with the idea of the universe bending out of shape just to let you find her again.
.
She's risking everything to change the legacy carried on by a century of Commanders who sat on her throne before her. To give her people, and your people, a future in which you can thrive and blossom and live.
She's putting everything on the line, and you know it's not just for you, but while you might've been a lot of things, you've never been naive, so you realize the part you played in her decision.
Her life and your life are at stake, and your people manage to fuck everything up once again. They've pushed and pushed and pushed and now the situation is beyond salvageable. So she gives you the only thing she can: she gives you time. To go back, and try to stop your people from starting yet another war they are not remotely prepared to win.
.
She tells you to go, but asks you to stay, and you're tempted. Oh, you're tempted.
When you go to say goodbye, you find her in her room, hair down and armor off. Her eyes are sadness and ache and resignation, she knows you've made your choice. She stutters her love for you and clutches at your arm, and you're not ready to let her go.
You kiss her, and you wonder if it's possible to love someone the way you love her when she trembles against your lips. Her tears taste like salt and regret and yearning for something that you are just starting to get a grasp of; they speak of soulmates and reincarnation and love lost in the creases of the universe, and you think that, maybe, for a while, you could let yourself believe her.
.
("I thought I wouldn't find you this time," she breathes against the back of your neck when she thinks you're asleep. "But you brought down the sky and found me, instead.")
.
Later, when there's nothing left of her but the blood staining your bed, you feel life trickle out of you at the steady rhythm of your beating heart, like all the warmth is seeping out and you're pumping cold iron in the hollows of your veins instead.
You steel yourself and your weary bones. You'll wipe your tears with the blood of her enemies, you'll protect her legacy, and the peace she gave her life for.
You'll see her again, you know this now. After all, death is not the end.
4.
At the edge of the end of the world, there aren't a lot of things you're certain of anymore.
Your name is Alicia Clark, you're 17, you're surviving. That's just about it.
As you look at the zombies surrounding the SUV you're perched onto, you wonder exactly how long will those things stay true.
.
It's not clear how you got into this situation. You got separated from the rest of your group as you were raiding a pharmacy, and climbing on the car seemed like the smartest way to avoid getting eaten alive. In retrospect, you guess you might have not thought it through. One of the zombies groans wetly as it tries to reach you, white bone shining through the holes that were eaten off its face.
"Ugh," you recoil in disgust and scoot further away from its reach. You lay on your back and stare at the sky above you. It's tinged with orange and beautiful in a way you don't remember from before. You think you might be in shock, you don't understand why you're not freaking out about being stranded alone and surrounded by walkers trying to eat you. It'll start to get dark soon, and while you're moderately safe from them, you're not exactly thrilled to spend the night on the hood of a car in the middle of who knows where.
You're worried about your family. You hope they found somewhere safe too. You can't even consider the fact that some of them might have gotten hurt, or worse, but then you hear it. The rumble of a motorcycle roars clear in the air, and you rise on your elbows to look for the source.
(It goes like this: you feel her first, then she sees you; your world stops.)
She wears ripped black jeans and leather jacket, blond hair in the wind and aviators on her nose, and she's coming your way like a hurricane.
She takes off her sunglasses and your eyes meet; she smirks, and you feel something inside you settle, like you've been floating aimlessly all your life and you've just found your anchor.
"Need some help, gorgeous?" she asks as she slows her bike to a stop, her Australian accent impossibly charming even as you scowl at the pet name. The zombies smell fresh meat and you watch silently as she hacks them off one by one, her grip on the machete sure and steady and she doesn't flinch when stagnant blood splatters on her white t-shirt.
There's something annoyingly familiar about her that you can't quite put your finger on, like that fleeting feeling of deja vu at the back of your head that you can't grasp but that just doesn't seem to leave you alone.
"Thanks," you say when she's done cutting zombies down, and you keep your eyes on her as she hums a reply.
"No problem, you're way too cute to end up as zombie snack," she cleans the machete on her jeans and looks at you. "Name's Lex, Elyza Lex," she adds. It's cheesy and ridiculous and you're as unimpressed as you're amused, but she smirks again, like making you smile was what she wanted all along. You roll your eyes to cover the flush you feel rising from your neck and pretend you can't taste your heartbeat in your throat whenever her eyes meet yours.
"I'm Alicia Clark," you say, and she looks at you with something akin to yearning, and you don't know what you do with it.
.
You mount on her bike and wrap your arms around her; she's stiff for a moment, still against you as she holds her breath and looks at you over her shoulder. You freeze and start to let go, but she holds your hands against her stomach and starts the motorcycle without a word. (Still, you see her swallow hard, you feel her hand hot and heavy against your own, her grip a little too long, a little too tight for it to be casual.)
You're not entirely sure getting on a motorcycle with a complete stranger as the night approaches fast is one of the best ideas you've ever had, though you're positive it's not one of the worst either. So you hold on tight and bury your face against her back. The leather of her jacket is warm and soothing and she's solid against your front.
.
She takes you to her safe house; it's nearby and you make her promise to go back and look for your family in the morning. You don't know why you trust her, you don't know what you're doing here, you know it's stupid to let yourself be so vulnerable, but something about her just pulls you in.
The safe house is a one room apartment on the first storey of a building, above what used to be a Chinese restaurant. There's a stack of clothes on a chair in the corner and a pull-out couch that takes up most of the room. Above the makeshift bed, a broken infinity symbol is painted on the wall, four dots interrupting the continuity of the black lines just before they overlap. It resonates with you in a way you can't explain, and you feel her watching you quietly from the doorway as you turn towards her.
"Did you do that?" you ask her, because you don't know what else to say, and because you want to know. She contemplates her answer for a moment, then nods.
"What does it mean?" And you don't mean to pry, but it's the end of the world, you don't have to be polite anymore, and you need to know. The symbol imprinted on the wall calls to you, and something inside you is calling back; it itches, like a barely healed scab, just begging to be scratched open again.
She studies you, pursuing her lips in thought, like she's deciding whether or not you're worthy of that answer.
"Death is not the end."
.
Though her rations are scarce, she doesn't hesitate to offer you her food and she feeds you. ("Eat, you're gonna need the energy," she says, the innuendo as clear as day and you almost choke on the water you're drinking. She just laughs.)
You sit at the foot of the bed, your side pressing into hers and you can feel her gaze burning into the side of your head.
"Didn't you mother teach you it's rude to stare?" you ask without turning, and you feel more than hear her chuckle.
"My mother didn't teach me a lot of things," she starts. Her height gives her a vantage point over you and you have to tilt your chin up slightly when you look at her. "But I did pick up some stuff along the way," she shrugs, and she's so damn attractive you're almost mad.
Her gaze doesn't falter as it holds yours, and she smirks. Her voice is warm honey as she leans closer: "If you ask nicely, maybe I can show you." Her eyes focus on your lips and you swallow hard, turning forward because you need to look away.
"Some things are better left a mystery."
"Harsh."
It's your turn to shrug and smirk as you concentrate on chewing your stale bread.
"You'll come around," she says, and she sounds so convinced that it makes you scoff.
"You seem awfully sure of that," you reply, and though what you expect is some kind of suggestive retort, what you get is a huffed laugh and a silence heavy with something you're not sure you get.
"You remind me of someone," she adds after a while, a small smile on her lips as she looks down, and you wonder how big her heart has to be, to go from overt innuendos to quiet and wistful in the hollow space between two heartbeats.
.
You end up sharing the bed, too. You're too stubborn to sleep on the floor and she's too much of a jerk to pass up on the opportunity to tease you. ("If you wanted to get in bed with me, all you had to do was ask, babe." You don't think you've rolled your eyes that hard in your whole sullen adolescent life.)
You lay with your back towards her as you stare at the wall opposite to you. You're wide awake and you're hyper-aware of every single spot where her body touches yours. You try to rest, but every time she shifts your heart kickstarts, like even the slightest touch is enough to hot-wire your nervous system.
You feel her sitting up, and you force yourself to keep a steady breathing pattern.
"I dream about you in both worlds," she says after a moment, it almost startles you, and it's clear you're not meant to be hearing this. "When I'm asleep, you're alive and breathing and you hold me like you were never meant to let go," her voice is soft and you can't help but think you're intruding on something you were never intended to be a part of.
"When I'm awake, I see you." She's silent for a moment, and you hold your breath. "It only took a fucking zombie apocalypse for me to find you," she laughs, and it's bitter and wet, like she tried to stifle the sound but ended up choking on it instead.
She's quiet now, and you wonder who she's talking to, you wonder why she feels so familiar, so inevitable to you. You know the answer is just below the surface, only just out of your reach.
Then you feel it; the whisper of a touch against the middle of your back, fingertips barely grazing you through the layer of cheap cotton of your plaid shirt. Still, you feel it, gentle and tentative, tracing a shaky path down your spine.
You inhale sharply. Her touch awakens something inside you you don't know how to explain, but that threatens to overwhelm you, like your skin is two sizes too small to contain what you're feeling and it's tearing up the stitches holding you together.
You swallow dryly and turn towards her, and the look on her face makes you falter. She looks at you like she can't quite believe you're real, like she never wants to look away, and you can't breathe.
"Who are you?" you ask, eyebrows scrunched together as you shake your head in confusion, because you don't understand. "Have we met before?"
She smiles then, the curve of her lips as soft as her eyes. "Only in my dreams," and though it sounds like a cheap pick up line, it isn't; it can't be, not when she looks at you like your heart beats in a language that only she knows how to speak, and you don't understand, you don't understand, you don't understand.
.
You don't sleep. You spend the night sitting up on the bed, listening to Elyza breathing quietly next to you. She's out cold and you don't know how she does it because your own heart is humming like a bird in your chest, and you can feel the blood rushing to your ears. You stare at her; she's laying on her side, her front towards you. She's beautiful in a way that makes you ache, she's unbearably captivating and you don't know what to do with yourself.
"Didn't you mother teach you it's rude to stare?" Her eyes are still closed and her voice startles you.
"Christ," you swear under your breath and quickly avert your gaze. "Fuck, Elyza."
"That can be arranged," she adds, amused, eyes twinkling with mirth as she looks up at you. You meet her gaze with a steady glare.
"I liked you better when you were asleep."
"So you could creep on me?"
You groan and cover your face with your hands, she laughs and the sound is round and full and rich. She sits up and pries one of your hands from your face, and you pretend not to notice that she doesn't let it go.
"C'mon kid, lighten up a little," she says, bumping her shoulder with yours.
"I've known you for like five hours and you're already a pain in my ass." You realize that was entirely the wrong thing to say when a slow, downright filthy smirk spreads on her lips.
"If that's what you're into, I'm not gonna kinkshame you."
"Oh my God," you groan again, and you try to pull your hand back.
She doesn't let go.
.
The end of the world is not exactly how you had pictured it, and, to be fair, there's still very few things you're sure of.
Your name is Alicia Clark, you're 17, you're surviving.
You're also sitting on the back of Elyza's bike, holding onto this girl who's somehow stormed into your life all the way from the other side of the world, like she was meant to find you all along and a zombie apocalypse wasn't enough of a inconvenience to stop her.
The thought alone is all-consuming and exhilarating, and you're excited and hopeful and terrified all at once.
Maybe, after all, your life can be about more than just surviving.
A/N: This was my way to cope with everything that happened, thanks to fullyajar for holding my hand and betaing this thing.
Comments/thoughts/complaints, hit me up!