So I finally decided to start the slow process of translating all my fics - or the most recent ones at least. All mistakes are mine, if you see something that's wrong please let me know so I can change it. And if someone wants to be my beta... You'd be doing me a big favor and I'd be forever grateful :)
Based on Adele's song, "All I Ask".
Clarke's POV.
ALL I ASK
It matters how this ends, cause what if I never love again?
Octavia's words resonate in your head like bouncy balls out of control. At least ten minutes have passed since the young warrior left your room, but what she said still echoes and knocks against the walls of your cranium with so much force that you lift your fists to your temples, pressing them in an attempt of calming the pulsing that gives you the impression that your head it's about to burst.
She told you to stay, didn't she?
We need you.
If you're not there, you're not the person I thought you were.
It isn't, by far, the first time that you're in conflict with yourself. Since you stepped on the Earth, you've been constantly debating in search of the best solution, the one which causes less pain, the one that means less death.
It isn't easy, it's never easy. What it is, is exhausting.
You've become exactly the kind of person your mother begged you not to become: someone so worried about satisfying other people's needs that they forget about their own needs. And it's true, you're always trying to please everyone, no matter how much you have to sacrifice or the effort you have to do to get it done.
You're so focused on achieving other people's happiness that you don't realize that it's costing you your own happiness.
You've done everything for your people. Everything you could and then, some more. You've given up everything for them.
You've lost a piece of your soul with every action needed to guarantee their safety. Burning three hundred grounder soldiers when they tried to besiege your dropship. Running away from Mount Weather, but always thinking about coming back and saving your friends. Killing the guy you were in love with so that you could make an agreement with the grounders' Commander. Massacring innocent people trying to rescue what was left of the original one hundred.
With each death, with each drop of blood that stained your hands, you felt less and less human. But you kept going because it was what it needed to be done, what you needed to do as a non-official leader of the sky people.
You're already used to the war between your heart and your head, your emotional side versus your rational side. It's a war that the human being has been battling since the beginning of times; and you, because of the peculiar circumstances of the era in which you're living, suffer it every single day.
Stepping in one direction means choosing one side of the scale, and trying to find balance, you found out a long time ago, it's only a delusion. There's no balance when it's your life and the lives of people you care about what it's at stake.
Right after Lexa's order, you knew this old battle was coming. That's why you're pacing in your room, basically doing a groove on the floor with your boots, even if it's only for the number of times that you're repeating the same path.
If you follow your heart, you know what you have to do. You stay in Polis, with the grounders, with Lexa. Her betrayal wouldn't matter anymore, nor the broken alliance or the failed attempt at making the sky people the thirteenth clan. Pike wouldn't matter, nor Bellamy or the madness that they're causing. You wouldn't care about disappointing your people, nor Octavia. Your heart is telling you to, for once in your life, let yourself be selfish.
Your head, though, is more rational and it's seeing the whole picture. It's seeing that, if you stay here, Pike it's going to do something worse and even you couldn't convince Lexa of not making him pay for his acts. This new motto of "jus no drein jus daun" isn't going to last much longer now that even the grounders are acting up against their Commander. You have to do something before things escalate more.
One side of you pulls in one direction and the other side lashes out in the opposite direction and you can only stay and wait until you break. Because you don't know what to do. The temptation of forgetting about everything and give in to your feelings it's so strong, but at the same time, you know that it's only something temporary and that you would soon regret staying at Polis.
You stop your pacing abruptly, almost like if the solution had a physical form and you had collided with it. You would regret staying in Polis. It's taken you a lot to realize that, but now you can see it clearly. The regrets would eat you alive because want it or not, as much as you've sacrificed for your people, you're willing to keep giving the devil parts of you if that means that your people it's going to be safe. And staying in the grounder side of the blockade won't help your friends.
Instead of feeling relieved, you feel rueful. You have your answer, the ending of your internal battle, but it's not what you wanted. It's like when you can't choose between two things and they say you toss a coin, because in that fraction of a second that it's spinning in the air, you know which side you want it to land on. You had hoped for tails, and gotten heads.
With a sigh, you give in to your destiny. While your head fills with pride for being the winner, you chain your heart inside a cage to make sure that you're able to carry on with what you have – must – to do. In the end, hadn't Lexa taught you that the head always must triumph over the heart?
You feel your confidence grow stronger with that thought and you leave your bedroom without much more than a glance to the guards permanently posted outside your door. They are supposedly there to protect you, but sometimes you have the feeling that they are there to make sure that you don't try to run away or plot against their Heda.
You quickly walk down the corridor, fearful of taking too long and losing the determination that has taken control of your body and makes your blood roar in your ears.
You don't allow yourself one moment of doubt when you arrive at the French doors of Lexa's bedroom. You lay a hand on the knob and push it down without waiting for an invitation from the brunette. You know that, if you have to wait for her to invite you inside, you might reconsider the situation and change your mind. You need to act now.
You eye the bedroom with slight desperation in search of the regal form of the Commander, but you can't find her anywhere. You wander more into the lounge, waiting for Lexa to come out and fight back the intruder. You're almost wondering if maybe she's at a secret reunion that you haven't been privy of when you hear light steps getting closer from behind the wall that – you suppose – separates the main room from the bathroom.
Lexa emerges with her brown locks pushed to one side of her neck, her hands still intertwined in the strands of hair that she had been freeing from the intricate set of braids that keep them together during the day. As soon as she sees you standing in the middle of her room, she stops dead in her tracks and stays frozen in place. Her hands slide down until they rest on both sides of her body.
It's like she already knows what you came here to say.
The atmosphere changes and gets heavier. You deflate, and you're not so sure anymore that you've made the right choice.
"When do you leave?" asks Lexa, confirming your thoughts. With just one glance, she's known. Just one glance.
In the end, there's only one motive for your visit, and you're both aware of it. There's no need to say it out loud.
She gets a little closer, cutting inch by inch the distance that's keeping you apart, both physically and emotionally. With each step, your mind it's more blurred and you aren't sure about anything anymore, not even who you are. The Commander's green eyes talk to you and ask you to, please, reconsider what you're about to do. But that plea it's veiled with a resignation that, increasingly, covers more and more space.
"Now," you answer, surprised at how firm your voice sounds.
She nods. She seems to understand that it's something that you need to do more than something you want to do. She seems to understand how much it has taken you to get to this answer and that, the moment she says or does something to try and convince you otherwise, you'll fall back in that endless vicious circle. She seems to understand that you're tired of fighting and that you just want everything to end already.
But it's not just that she seems to understand, it's that you know, deep down, that she does. Even if it's only because she feels the same.
You decide that, if this is going to be your farewell, you have to make an effort on your part too. So you approach the brunette until you're also next to the wall and the sun rays warm the left side of your face.
"I'm sorry," you whisper. Because it's true. Because you'd like to be able to do something else, be able to be selfish; but as long as your friends need you, you can't think of yourself.
"Don't be. You have to go back, they're your people," she retorts almost immediately.
She's making it easier for you. She's giving you green light, giving you her consent in case that it helps to ease the pain. And you wish with every part of your being that it was enough, that her support could heal the burning that you're feeling in your chest. But it isn't. It doesn't.
It's never easy going against what you desire the most.
"That's why I—" she stops abruptly before the next words fall from her lips.
You look at her green eyes, glossed behind a curtain of tears that she's fighting to hold, and you don't need her to say those three words to feel them echoing through you. Each part that they touch starts to sting wildly, you almost have the urge to scratch them or blow over them, but you can't possibly reach those spots.
And it's baffling the devastation that three words can cause. I love you. People say it so carelessly, and yet, here you are, suffering the mess that those three words leave behind them, the chaos in which they leave you, the pain that they bring to you.
"That's why you are you," corrects Lexa. But it's late. The damage is already done and both of you are very aware of it.
But you appreciate the effort. Her finesse when dealing with that subject that is a thorn in both of your hearts, it moves you. Causes something inside you to stir and revolve against the chains with which you have it restrained and help you to keep it under control. Your heart's no longer happy with watching the game, it wants to fully participate.
Before you realize what's happened, it has already toppled over your head and taken the reins.
"Maybe someday you and I will owe nothing more to our people." The promise implied in your words floats in the air between the two of you. Stitches with hope wounds freshly done. Caresses with love Lexa's cheeks. Brings new tears that cover those green eyes that you're so good now at deciphering, and that oblige Lexa to blink to dissipate them.
"I hope so," she whispers back with a little nod. Again, it's more important what you don't say than what you do say.
The brunette breaks the eye contact that you've kept since you locked eyes at the beginning of the conversation. You answer a little later than her, still confused and hurt; but, eventually, you lower your sight too and you see that Lexa has offered her extended arm as her last farewell.
"May we meet again."
Three months ago, she said goodbye to you with the exact same words. Three months ago, she left you alone at Mount Weather's doors with a wound putrefied by the poison of her betrayal. With your heart broken into little pieces. With your throat constricted by an iron knot and tears burning in your eyes.
Today, you feel the same, even though the circumstances that are causing your leaving are radically different.
You try to form a smile that shows just a bit of the security you felt about leaving. The key word is: try. You try because you're not able and your smile breaks, and falls, and dies at your lips.
You allow yourself one single moment of weakness, even though you know that it's going to be your downfall. Even though you know that it's going to destroy you.
You use the hand that it's interlaced with hers to pull her into you, your eyes already fixated on her lips. You want the last kiss, a proper goodbye, a way of sealing your promise.
You feel her slight surprise in the way that her mouth takes her time to adapt to yours, in the seconds that go by without her returning the kiss. But her hand weaves through your hair as she pushes her lips against yours, searching for more – and you kiss her back, meaning to keep it short and soft.
You waste all your strength trying to get away from her. And when you search her face with your eyes, trying to convey it in your memory, preserve it like that, just as it looks in this moment, a glint in her right cheek catches your attention and your breath gets caught in your throat.
A tear.
Why is Lexa crying and you are the one staying strong? She's the rational one, you are the emotional one. She's the Heda; you're just a teenager that, without knowing how, ended up leading her friends. She thinks that love is a weakness, and you think that love makes you stronger. She doesn't feel anything – theoretically –, while you feel everything.
And it is Lexa the one who's crying, not you.
But her tear breaks you. Her tear is what makes you fall apart.
It's then that you ask yourself if you don't deserve to be selfish, even if it's only for a while. It's then that you ask yourself if you don't deserve to pretend that the hour that you have left with Lexa isn't just an hour, but an eternity.
There's no tomorrow for the both of you, but who needs a tomorrow when you have a now.
It's all you ask for: to have the present.
So you kiss her again and you channel into the kiss all the despair that you feel scratching at the walls of your stomach. And she kisses back with the same emotion, conveying her pain with each breathy sob lost in your mouth, with each shiver of her body beneath your fingertips.
Because you're thinking that this is your first night together, and she's thinking that it's the last.
Your hands act on their own volition and they slide from Lexa's nape to her neck, where a knot keeps her t-shirt up. She doesn't stop you and you don't even know if she's aware of what you're doing or if she's so lost in her pain and in your lips that she can't feel anything else.
You let both strips of fabric fall and her shoulders are discovered. While you lower your hands, your fingers caress the newly exposed skin and you marvel at how fast it covers with goosebumps.
You realized a long time ago that you're Lexa's weakness.
You still remember the exact moment when you came to that realization, just when you were accusing her of leaving her people to die at TonDC.
"Not everyone. Not you".
In that moment, it might have looked like a purely political move, but you saw further from that. You found out that, even though she proclaimed that she didn't feel because love was a weakness, she did feel.
She felt for you.
And if you had any doubt left, you didn't have to wait too long to find out that you were right.
You were able to get her to make an alliance with the sky people when no other grounder would, not even with the promise to rescue all the people that the mountain people were kidnapping to bleed them to death. You were able to get her to rethink her perspective on life, to truly risk living and not to conform with merely surviving. You were able to get her to kneel before you.
The Commander of the twelve clans would never kneel before anyone; and yet, Lexa had done it for you, to assure you that she would never betray you again – in that moment you realized that you weren't the only one whose heart was broken that night at Mount Weather.
When you put a knife to her throat with all the intention of ending her life, she didn't do anything to defend herself. Moreover, she apologized for having caused you so much pain, for turning you into a shell of yourself.
When you asked her not to retaliate for Bellamy and Pike's massacre of the grounder army, she listened to you and changed years of grounder tradition in spite her people's discontent.
When she announced the blockade, Lexa swallowed her pride and asked you to stay. The Lexa that you'd first met at a tent outside Camp Jaha, sat at her wooden throne while playing with a dagger, that Lexa wouldn't have cared about what were you going to do as long as you didn't cause problems to any of the twelve clans.
But, just like you had changed and evolved, Lexa had also experienced some changes: she had allowed herself to feel.
So you set as your goal to alleviate some of the sufferings that you know that Lexa is still feeling in her heart. Because feeling is never easy.
You take advantage of the fact that, when she's with you, she forgets that she's the Heda of the twelve clans and she's just a girl. Unique and incomparable, but a girl, after all.
She trusts you with her life. She lets herself be guided by you, advised by you, comforted by you.
Spinning both of you until Lexa's back is to the bed, you push her shoulders softly so that she's aware of what you're planning to do and she can stop you if she doesn't want to keep going. But she doesn't do anything. So you move, cautious and precise, giving her another soft push to sit her on the bed. The brunette breaks the kiss and she looks at you, and you swear that you've never seen so much fragility.
As if a simple breath stronger than usual would be enough to shatter her.
But you're not going to let her shatter, not if it's in your power to avoid it. You stop yourself for a moment to engrave this image in your memory, this moment where Lexa has let all her walls down and she's emotionally naked before you.
Vulnerable as ever.
Beautiful as ever.
Her look steals your breath away and you hover over her so that Lexa is the one who keeps you breathing. You let your fingers trace irregular shapes in her impossibly soft skin, enjoying the shivers that travel up the brunette's spine. You dive into her mouth, your tongue draws a map of every corner; your teeth mark her lips to let everyone know that, for just one night, she's yours.
Your hands tangle in silky brown tresses, searching more depth for a kiss that, if it were for you, it would never end. But both of you need air, so you detach your mouth of hers enough to let your lips roam over her sharp jawline.
And you lick, and you bite, and you kiss every inch of skin that it's at your disposal because you've been wanting to do just that since you saw Lexa's neck exposed. You feel the brunette pulling at your shirt, her fist closed around the fabric with so much force that you think you've heard some of the threads snap.
You raise your arms above your head and Lexa quickly takes off the offending garment, getting rid of it without a second thought. You shiver when her hands caress your naked skin, when her nails dig into your back after you bite the area where her pulse point crazily beats under your lips. Like the desperate flapping wings of a bird.
Clothes stop being an impediment. You throw them in all directions, focused on discovering even more parts of Lexa's body that, so far, you've only seen in your imagination, behind your closed eyelids in vivid dreams.
You need to feel both of your skins caress, melt in each other until you don't know where your body ends and where begins hers. Be one every second that goes by while you're together, discovering each other, experimenting each other, engraving in your minds the other's body until you know by heart how she smells, where are her weak spots.
How her kisses become more urgent or softer as you quicken the pace or you slow it down. How her hips lift from the bed to find your hand. How her body writhes under yours when your expert fingers pinch and caress. How her stomach twitches when your tongue traces a path on it and plays with her navel.
There's a fire inside you that vibrates in your veins, it burns you in an unbearably bearable way. It's a sweet torture that gives you more strength. Blurs your mind, intensifies your senses to the point that every moan and grunt that you tear from Lexa's throat sounds amplified and echoes through your ears' walls.
And they sound so much like some kind of celestial music that you're always looking for new ways of making sure that the brunette keeps making those sounds that add more heat to your body.
But you don't care. You don't care if you burn. You don't care because you're not thinking about you, but about Lexa.
You're focused on getting her to be the one that burns from inside out. You want her to melt of pleasure in your arms while you hold her to keep her whole. To keep her from breaking into one million pieces as a result of the violent tremors that travel up her muscles.
You want her to sleep peacefully, knowing that the first thing that she'll see when she opens her eyes will be your face. Your messy hair. Your shiny and content eyes. Your body flushed with hers by a thin layer of sweat, the only witness of your night of loving each other.
You whisper words in her ear, you yell her name with a raspy voice, you caress every inch of her body and you paint again every stroke of the tattoos that decorate her skin. You make her promises with your lips, promises that it's better if they are not said out loud, but that they must be made. You intertwine your fingers with hers while your bodies follow a primitive dance, they undulate and press in just the right places to take you both to the stars and make you fall on the mattress with sighs of pleasure.
You memorize the even heave of her chest with every breath. The ink that curves and writhes in an intricate design around her biceps. Her long and slim fingers locked between yours in a loose hold. You trace all the scars that break her skin and they recite their history in quiet murmurs against your fingertips.
And you watch Lexa's relaxed face when she finally gives in to the fatigue. Your eyes explore every freckle, her sharp jawline, the curve of her cheekbones, the shadows projected by her long eyelashes. You take notice of the glow of her skin under the sun, how that same rays caress lips that still show signs of having been thoroughly kissed.
And you are suddenly aware of something that you had been denying, for your own good, since a long time ago. You love Lexa. You love her with all your heart. You love her like you were never given the opportunity to love Finn. And that kills you because you can't be with her.
That's why you were so fixated on taking with you a good memory of her. You want this to be the way that you remember Lexa in the future: peaceful in your embrace, with marks on her neck and collarbones that spell your name. You want this to be the image that pops up in your head every time that her name comes up in a conversation.
Because, what if you never love anyone the same way you love Lexa?
THE END