It was all Raven's fault. It had to be. That's what was running through Clarke Griffin's mind as she slowly blinked, staring straight up at the blank white ceiling tiles above her. There was a dull, throbbing, ache at the back of her head and a stabbing pain behind her left eye. Little white spots were dancing on the edge of her vision, and she felt a wave of nausea hit her as she tried to sit up.

She had been in some states before -and most of them had been Raven's fault, in one way or another- but she had never woken up from a night out in a hospital bed before. This was a new low. One which neither her best friend, nor her parents, were likely going to allow her to forget in a hurry.

Fighting through the nausea, as well as a newly discovered pain in her ribs -Just what the hell had she been doing last night?- Clarke finally managed to sit up against the lumpy pillows that were propped up behind her. The dimly lit room swam in and out of focus for a few seconds, until the blond was finally able to focus on the chair beside her hospital bed. Her mother, Abby, was curled up in it. Even while sleeping, her face was etched with concern. It made her look older somehow, like she'd aged years overnight.

Clarke felt a sharp pang of guilt at the sight of her mother by her bedside. Just how much had she drunk to end up in hospital? What the hell had happened? And where was Raven? She wracked her brain, trying to fight through the heavy fog that seemed to be lingering around inside her head. It was hard to think. She couldn't quite remember why they'd gone out. Hell, Clarke wasn't even entirely sure what day it was.

The information was there, somewhere at the back of her brain. It was buried under the throbbing pain of her headache and the disorientating dizziness that had settled over her since she'd sat up. The harder Clarke tried to chase after the memory of the previous night, the further it seemed to slip away from her.

Eventually, with a heavy sigh, she gave up trying. Slumping back against the pillows she went back to staring at the ceiling, sure that her mother would fill her in soon enough. Clarke wasn't going to forget this night in a hurry. She just hoped Raven - wherever she was - was suffering just as much as she was.

Clarke didn't have long to wait before the door to her private hospital room opened. The strip lighting of the corridor outside assaulted her already sensitive eyes, forcing her to close them over as her father slipped into the room. "Clarke?" He'd noticed she was sitting up and came straight over to her bedside, discarding the two Styrofoam cups of coffee that he'd just been out to fetch. An expression of pure relief washed over his grizzled face. "You're awake… oh, thank God!"

"You had us worried there, Kiddo." Jake Griffin placed a tender kiss against his only child's forehead, carefully avoiding the angry red welt on her left side. There was no anger or malice in his voice, just genuine concern. It made things all the more unbearable. Clarke finally stopped fighting and gave in to the tears that had been threatening to fall since she opened her eyes. No matter how old she got, Clarke Griffin would always be a daddy's girl.

"Hey, hey, it's okay! It's okay." Jake comforted her as she buried her face into his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her gingerly, wary of hurting her. Dressed in a hospital gown and swamped under the clinically sterile white blankets, she looked lost and frightened; and above all else, fragile. The doctors had already prepared Abby and Jake for the worst. To see Clarke awake, to hear her talking and see her moving, it was more than Jake could have hoped for three days ago.

"I'm so sorry, Dad!" Clarke sniffled into his shirt. "I'm sorry for doing this to you and Mom. It won't happen again, I swear it!"

"Clarke, sweetie, do you remember what happened?" Jake pulled back, holding Clarke at arms length as he searched her expression for any hint of clarity. "The crash?"

"Crash?" Clarke choked out. "What crash?" She knitted her brow into a scowl, trying to make sense of what he was saying. She hadn't been in any kind of crash… Had she? Frowning only made her head hurt more, so Clarke gave up on that and just flopped back down against the pillows again. There were machines in the room that made unnatural and unrelenting noises. The constant beeping was grating on her last nerve, making it impossible to think, and the dense fog that had settled over her mind still wasn't showing any signs of lifting.

"Clarke." Jake's voice took on the same kind of patient tone that it had adopted when her paternal grandmother had died. At six years old, Clarke hadn't been capable of understanding concepts like death. Jake had spoken slowly and calmly, explaining to her why she couldn't go see her Grams anymore.

At the time Clarke had thought she was being punished for something. It wasn't until she was much older that she realized that her grandmother 'going away' meant that she had died. "You were in an accident. You hit your head. You've been here for three days. The doctors weren't sure…" He started choking up, cutting himself off. "It doesn't matter. You're awake now. You're going to be okay."

"An accident…" Repeated Clarke. She was still trying to process what he was telling her. She'd had her license for less than a year, but she was a careful driver. She didn't speed. Didn't go through stop signs. Raven was always calling her an 'old lady driver'.

The thought of crashing her car, and -even worse- not remembering it, was a terrifying one. "Was I hit by a bus by any chance? Because I feel like it." She groaned, shifting in an attempt to ease the pain in her ribs. Her shuffling was all in vain. The pain only seemed to get worse.

Jake smiled, looking down at her hand as he played with her hospital bracelet. He shook his head lightly as he carefully sat down on the edge of her bed before grinning up at her once more. "Only my daughter would make a joke at a time like this."

Clarke groaned lightly as the white spots in her peripheral vision seemed to be growing, the heachache gave a powerful lurch causing her to raise the heel of her hand to press lightly against her left eyebrow. "Yeah, well, the apple and all that."

Jake got to his feet and made his way to the window, drawing the blind down further. Returning to her side, he laid his hand gently on the arm she held to her head, and kissed her head. "I'll go get a nurse."

"And some morphine!" She called after him as he waved his hand behind him. Abby had jumped slightly at the sudden outburst; her eyes opened wide as she instantly moved to the edge of her seat, her hand held in the air above her daughter's leg.

"Clarke?" Abby spoke softly, her eyes roaming over the new position her only child sat in. For three days she'd sat, paced, or laid in the hospital bed alongside her daughter begging for her to wake up and speak to her. The whites of her eyes were still tinged pink from tears that had come and gone periodically over those days. "Baby, can you hear me?"

Clarke groaned, fighting another sudden wave of nausea. "I take it back. Not a bus." She sank down slightly and covered her arm over her eyes. "Much worse than a bus."

Tears began anew as Abby rose to her feet and surged forward to wrap her arms around her daughter. Instantly the blond hissed as the pain in her rib exploded. Abby's worried mother brain reacted a moment later as she quickly pulled away, her hands up in a surrender pose. "Oh, baby, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Clarke shook her head slightly as she attempted to stifle a groan of pain, the white spots exploding behind her closed eyes as she tried to powerbreathe through the pain. She heard a rustle of fabric. Her father returning with one of her doctors to find his daughter's face scrunched up and his wife wringing her hands as tears streamed down her face.

"It was an accident," Abby sobbed into her husband's shirt. "I was just so happy-"

Jake spoke softly to his wife as the young doctor made his way past the couple and to Clarke's side. "Tsk, tsk. Abby, I know it's difficult giving me control but you don't have to make Clarke pay for it." His eyes sparkled as he grinned at her.

Abby looked between her colleague and husband, mouth agape for a moment before Jake chortled slightly. "Give her a break, Jackson, she was asleep when Clarke woke. Hell even I struggled to not drop the coffee." Jake jutted his chin in the direction of the bedside table.

"Clarke, on a scale of one to ten-" Dr. Jackson began as he attempted to check the dilation of her pupils with a penlight.

"Ten," Clarke hissed. "Ten. It's a ten."

Dr. Jackson turned to the IV pump, picking up the syringe that she'd carried into the room with him, popped the cap off the top, and tightened it onto a valve of the IV tubing attached to the back of her hand. "Alright, you should feel some relief pretty quickly."

It took several moments before Clarke felt her eyes growing heavy once more. She wasn't exactly sure what was given to her -Did the doc even say?- but it was quickly covering the white spots with a dull cloud.

"Mm, Mom?" She said softly, reaching her hand out as she forced her eyes open. Abby turned slightly in her husband's arms; the sight made a snort erupt from her daughter as a goofy smile spread over her face. "You guys are floating."

Dr. Jackson smiled, his arms crossed over his chest as the trio watch the blond examining her hands. "Reminds you of college, doesn't it?"

Abby returned to her seat as Jake sat at the foot of the bed while Jackson excused himself. The pair could see that Clarke was fighting against her heavy eyelids. "Sweetie, you need to rest. Don't fight sleep."

"I've been sleeping for three days." Clarke mumbled. However, whatever her parents said after that, she wasn't sure. The pain medicine had gone into full effect and sleep claimed her.

"Can you go pace somewhere else?" Raven let out a heavy sigh, rolling her eyes at her house mate's back. "You're supposed to cheer people up when you visit them in hospital, not piss them off."

"Sorry." Lexa Woods finally stopped pacing in front of Raven's bed. Instead, she stood wrangling her hands together; which was almost just as bad.

"Ugh. Just go see Clarke already!" Raven huffed out. "I love you babe, but we both know you'd rather be visiting your boo than me."

"Jake's going to call me when he and Abby leave to get a change of clothes and a shower." Lexa didn't even try to deny that she would rather be by Clarke's bedside. She'd been able to sit in with her girlfriend a few times since the accident, but most of the time her parents were with her, and the nurses had kicked up a fuss about too many visitors.

As a surgeon working at Mt. Weather hospital, Abby Griffin would have been more than capable of having a quiet word with them about letting Lexa stay; but Lexa was convinced Abby was the one who had asked the nurses to get her to leave. She blamed Lexa for the accident that landed her daughter in intensive care and a medically induced coma for three days now.

Lexa hadn't been at fault. A drunk driver had jumped a red light and crashed into the passenger side of the car, plowing right into Clarke and Raven. Lexa had given a blood sample to check for alcohol in her system, which was standard practice according to the police detective who had requested it, but Abby had put two and two together and came out with five. She'd been cold and distant whenever Lexa was in Clarke's room, and the atmosphere had gotten too much.

Lexa had been the bigger person, voluntarily leaving so that Clarke's parents could sit with her. It had killed her to walk away during Clarke's hour of need, and the guilt was still gnawing at her insides as she started pacing in Raven's room again. "She thinks I was drinking, Raven! She actually thinks that I would endanger Clarke's life like that!" Lexa threw her arms up in the air. She was the type to talk with her hands, and tended to gesture wildly when she was riled.

"She doesn't know you as well as Clarke and I do, Lex. She'll come around. You'll see. Once the blood test comes back-"

"Why should I have to prove myself to the likes of her?" Lexa snapped, even though she knew the answer. Abby was her girlfriend's mother. If Lexa wanted any kind of future with Clarke then she was probably going to need Abby and Jake onside. That was if Clarke ever got around to telling them that they were dating; or even that she was bisexual.

The three of them had been on their way to the Griffin household for dinner - with Clarke planning to finally introduce Lexa as her girlfriend - when the reckless driver had smashed into them. Lexa had been left relatively unscathed. She'd walked away from the crash with a stiff neck and a ringing in her ears. Clarke hadn't been nearly so lucky. She'd been jostled like a rag-doll, her head smashing violently off the window and knocking her out. The paramedics that had attended had talked about traumatic brain injury and swelling, and all manner of things that had made Lexa's blood run cold.

Raven had only fared marginally better than her childhood friend. She'd been conscious after the crash, but she'd also been seriously injured. Raven had been leaning forward in her seat when the crash had happened. She'd been teasing Clarke about one thing or another, laughing and joking one minute and then screaming the next. Lexa could still hear her cries for help when she tried to close her eyes.

A chunk of twisted metal from the door frame had punctured deep into her spine. It was a miracle she hadn't been left completely paralyzed. As it was, she'd ended up being rushed into surgery to have the impacted metal removed. The surgeons had ended up taking her spleen out too. Raven was facing months of painful rehabilitation to be able to walk again, not to mention numerous potential infections.

"I'm sorry." Lexa sighed. She felt bad enough without adding 'snapping at Raven' to an endless list of things to feel guilty about. "I just… I feel so helpless." She admitted what was really bugging her. It wasn't a feeling that Lexa was used to. She wasn't the type of person to just stand around waiting for something to happen. She was used to taking charge and standing her ground, but that was hard to do when she was trying to hide the fact that she and Clarke were together from her parents.

She couldn't demand to be allowed in to see her. As far as Abby and Jake were concerned Lexa was just a friend to Clarke. She was just a girl their daughter had met in her freshman year of college. One she'd moved in with - along with Raven - at the start of their third year.

"Just go see her." Said Raven. "You know you'll only wear a hole in the floor if you don't; and my insurance sure as hell won't cover the cost." She managed a half-hearted attempt at a joke, and neither of them mentioned that it was the Griffin's that were actually covering the cost of her care.

Raven's mother was a junkie who had walked out on her years ago, and the identity of her biological-father was anyone's guess. Abby and Jake had practically adopted the girl when she'd been in her late teens, giving her a place to stay until she graduated and moved off to college along with Clarke. "You're right." Lexa nodded resolutely.

It had been hours since she'd last been in to check on Clarke. A CT scan had revealed the swelling on Clarke's brain had gone down significantly, so her doctors had been talking about weaning her out of her coma. It could still be hours or days until she woke up, but Lexa wanted to be there when she did; whether Abby had something to say about it or not.

She had barely crossed over to the door when it opened from the other side. Lexa jumped back, startled as Jake appeared in the open doorway. "Clarke?" She felt her heart hammering in her chest at the sight of her girlfriend's father. Jake looked as worn out as Lexa felt. There was at least two days of stubble on his chin and he'd been wearing the same sweatshirt for three days.

"She's fine." Jake reassured her right away. Like his daughter, he was a hands-on kind of person. He placed a reassuring hand on Lexa's arm. "She woke up."

"Thank god!" Lexa felt some of the tension in her shoulders evaporate. "Can I go see her?"

"Her doctor gave her something for the pain. It's best to let her rest right now, but I'm taking Abby home for something to eat and some sleep. You girls can go visit Clarke in a little while. I'm sure she'll be happy to see you both."

"Thank you, Mr Griffin." Lexa wasn't anywhere near as close with Clarke's parents, but the few times she had met them she had been more comfortable in Jake's presence than in Abby's.

"Lexa, we've been over this. Call me Jake." He said, wearing something akin to a knowing smile. Not for the first time, Lexa wondered if maybe he knew more about her and Clarke's relationship than they though.

"Yes Mr- Jake."

"Bye, Pops!" Raven called out after him, waving cheerfully as he turned and gave her a mock salute. Clarke wasn't the only one on some pretty powerful pain medication. The second the door shut behind Jake she started trying to sit up in bed. "Right, Commander, your mission -should you choose to accept it- is to steal me a wheelchair.

The room was empty when Clarke opened her eyes again. Blinking several times, she tried to clear the remainder of the sluggishness from her head. The white spots were finally gone; however she felt as if she would have a massive hangover later.

Tentatively she pulled herself up, returning to a seated position. The ache in her side was constant but manageable. Sighing, Clarke allowed herself to melt into silence as she thought about the conversation she'd had with her father; starting with the facts.

She had been in a car accident. The accident had been three days ago. It was in that moment she groaned; those were the only facts she knew. Raven.

The last thing she remembered was Raven excitedly screaming out of the passenger window as they pulled up behind a green Dodge at a classmate's house. It was the last party before they'd all start buckling down to study for finals week. Two and a half weeks was all that remained in her high school career.

"Oh, the luck of the princess."

Clarke's attention immediately found the doorway. Raven sat in a wheelchair, her left leg kept straight with the help of a metal brace.

"Oh my God," Clarke said, shifting briefly before the ache in her side stopped her. "Are you okay?"

Raven paused, unconsciously glancing over her left shoulder before speaking. "Doorframe twisted, punctured my back. Leg brace and hours of painful rehab are my immediate future."

"You were in the accident." Clarke finally realized. "Was anyone else hurt?"

"Typical Clarke; you're in the ICU and worried about everyone else." Raven grinned as she wheeled herself the rest of the way into the room.

Clarke watched as the woman behind her also stepped further into the room. She quickly drew her gaze back to her best friend; it had only been a few months since she'd accepted a part of herself she tried to deny since her first day in AP Art during her sophomore year. The day she'd developed a mad crush on her table partner, Zoe Monroe. It was a secret she'd never spoken of.

Monroe had been cute but the brunette orderly to her left, whose action of moving the chair closer had gone unnoticed by Clarke, was beautiful. With her clouded, groggy head, Clarke had to concentrate twice as hard to keep her gaze fixed on her best friend.

"Anyway, the guy that hit us failed a breathalyzer test like three times over; he sobered up and went straight to county lockup. Third offense, I heard." Raven stated. "Lexa, she's got some scrapes and bruises but since we absorbed the impact-"

"Wait, wait." Clarke said, holding a single hand up to interrupt. "Who's Lexa?"

Raven paused at the question before looking over the blond's shoulder directly into bright green eyes.