DISCLAIMERS: I own nothing
AUTHORS NOTE: I'm writing this at work. I'm such a productive employee
PROLOGUE – NOT THE FIRST TIME
When Octavia, one of many recurring character as such in these lives, had asked her why, this happened; Clarke didn't have an answer. And after mulling it over for the rest of that life – and the five following it, she still didn't have an answer. She forgets the question in the sixth. And when the question surfaces again some eighty lives later, she and Octavia, who has not changed her name once since this started, are children, playing in the dirt, and her wild blonde hair is knotted and her dress dirty; Octavia says she thinks she and Clarke will be friends for a million years; and Clarke thinks she's probably right.
Nobody ever remembers, except Clarke. And most lives she wishes she didn't. She's thankful that after so many she's apt at forgetting those that are particularly painful. Those worlds were it was kill or be killed. Most are okay. Some are great. She marries or doesn't, lives long, healthy lives; has six kids or none. She adventures deep into Amazon rainforest, or adventures to and from work every day. Not all lives are like this of course – normal and within the laws of the world.
In one, one of the first she thinks, because it's a time that seems so long ago, she was a sailor – a fisherman actually. On board a pirate vessel. Octavia was her Queen. And they were at war with a race of merpeople. It would have been funny had the creatures not been fucking terrifying. They and their crew died together in the most dramatic of ways.
In another, she was attending a rather peculiar school. She and her peers were witches and wizards in training. And some pottery kid was saving the world and making hers a living hell. And worlds later when a book came out describing the exact situation, she couldn't help but laugh.
So no, not all words were the same, law abiding, reality driven that the most common ones were. And maybe not all of them made sense. But all of them were different, and all of them eventually lead to the same paramount; a person. No gender required. They were always the same. Not in looks of course. But the way they held themselves; the way they spoke and moved. That, no matter what world it was, it was always green eyes that were looking back at Clarke.
Green eyes that swept Clarke beneath the seas in the merpeople encounter. Green eyes that led her astray in the world filled with magic. Green eyes that passed by her in the street and then again two days later at the grocery store. Green eyes that said, "If you tell me we've lived a thousand lives together, I'll believe you". Green eyes that perhaps had lived longer and more lives than Clarke ever had or ever will.
Clarke once questioned them, fingers intertwined, lying under the stars while a war raged on the horizon, if they were always destined to meet; if all this repeating and forgetting and falling was meant all for them. The bombs hit before the answer was given. And Clarke had been thrown back, four years old, suddenly hundreds of years wiser. She cried in her father's arms.
So to say that Clarke was the only one that ever remembered was perhaps wrong. The green eyes remembered, albeit in a different manner. They never remembered Clarke exactly, but they knew, without a doubt, that they had lived countless lives before their current. And Clarke, Clarke knew this all had a purpose; believed with every fiber of her body that all this restarting, all this anguish and blood and tears; had to have a purpose. The fact green eyes found her wherever she ended up. The fact that they had died together more times than either could count; meant something.
In this world they are on opposite sides of a battlefield. Clarke is the doctor on duty when he is brought in; dark hair matted with blood. A limp hand is held to leg, applying barely enough pressure to stop the torrent of blood behind it. Even with his eyes shut, Clarke knows they are green. He is the enemy. Clarke should hate him. But instead she yells at the soldiers carrying him in to put him on the table; whether or not they are destined for one another, she is still a doctor, and a patient is a patient.
Orders flow from her mouth as she moves around, a nurse has already cut the man's uniform apart. Clarke grimaces; so few survive this. She removes the matted hair from his face as nurses prep the leg. He is German in this life and Clarke doesn't know his language; but when he opens his eyes and stares up into hers and chokes out what she's pretty sure is their word for help, an explosion sounds both in the far distance and within in her chest.
"I will" she replies.
The procedure takes 4 hours. The man cries before he is out cold. He loses enough blood they waste an eighth of their reserves. Some question her angrily, why would she waste resources on that kind of scum. She replies she's a doctor, not a soldier – and that she will not be responsible for the man's death. She gives them the chance to shoot the man – they decline.
Her unit is pulled back later that week. The German comes with them. Nobody tells the officers. He wakes properly for the first time after they are settled in a remote base bordering the sea. Clarke is checking on her other patients when she feels the tug at her chest to turn around. She can see him feeling above the bandage, he knows the leg is gone.
"Sorry" she says to him as she approaches and the green eyes track over to her. They stare. He knows the word so he nods, albeit weakly.
The next few weeks are touch and go. He doesn't talk. The other soldiers that know of his heritage do not speak of it; they fear an angry surgeon more than they do an angry officer. For once she's glad her reputation precedes her. On the ninth week, after they have been moved yet again, he is up and hobbling around on crutches they stole from the French. He stays close to the medical wing, and hovers, much to her amusement, around Clarke.
He's taken to helping where a lame man can. Clarke thinks it's a thank-you; he can't say it is. She's taken to eating with him in the medical wing, bringing him extra bread from the officer's mess. He learns basic words for her. Clarke favorably remembers being taught a hundred different languages in the same way when the green eyes are not borne of her own. She wishes they carried over.
Two months after that, when he's used to walking around on crutches; the news come that the war has been won. The sound outside is instant and deafening. The soldiers are cheering and yelling and clapping. And he is kissing Clarke. And he remembers. She can see it in his eyes.
His forehead is placed against Clarke's as he smiles. It is different this time. It is loose and uninhibited. It's hers.
"I find you" he says, in broken English, "always" he adds a moment later.
They grow old in this world. He becomes a teacher and activist. She stays in the medical field. Octavia is introduced in the form of a neighbor. In their late eighties they pass together in their sleep. Octavia jokes at their funeral that they were destined for each other. It's not a lie.
In the next life, Clarke wakes at six years old. She has no idea how she died in the previous, but she wakes calm. She has no memory of the horrors of war. When she walks out into the kitchen her parents inform her of the girl moving in next door; dark hair and green eyes. Her name's Alicia. They stay friends for 18 years and are killed in a car accident at 24, the same night Alicia would propose.
She wakes crying at nine. Her mother cradles her. Clarke wonders if the nightmares will ever stop. She spends much of this life and the twelve following it chasing a shadow; a married woman in one, a foreign diplomat in another. They are spies in one world. Well, she's a spy. The green eyes belong to a massive crime ring leader. Their hands kill each other in that one, death gives the green eyes a look of sad understanding. Darkness grabs at them both before more can be done.
And so it goes. Each time is not the first time. It is different but it is still not the first. And it is not the last. Clarke starts writing a journal in one world to try to document all the worlds they have ever been to. Each new page is a new world. She fills 463 pages before she dies, a doctor with green eyes is the last thing she sees – they were not meant for each other in that world.
Clarke cannot help her surprise when she wakes again after a particularly nice life on board a spaceship. She is six and curious. She is told they are the only surviving group of humans. Nobody on the ship she has ever seen has the eyes she's looking for. Her mother mistakes her coming to the med-bay to look at people's eyes means she's interested in medicine. She doesn't say no. She draws in this life too. Murals and portraits and landscapes she's never had the privy of seeing – and probably never will.
She's jailed at sixteen for her father's crimes. He is floated. She has two years to spend mulling over her previous life in her cell. She draws. And draws and draws and draws. And the window that gives a view to the infinite black actually offers her a view of Earth instead. She draws birds and creatures she can remember; they are hazy and they look wrong. And by seventeen she's forgotten everything.
Her pictures become of people she knows instead. And one she doesn't. Her mother visits much in the next few months. She questions Clarke who the person is. Clarke doesn't know. Green eyes stare back at her.
At eighteen she is forcefully boarded onto the ship with a hundred others. Her mother tells her she is a test. She is being sent to Earth. She argues with the others onboard, completely ignores Wells, and when the ship is sabotaged, and she is plummeted to Earth faster than intended, she lets out a word in a language she doesn't know.
When she wakes the doors are being pried open. The sun hurts her eyes. They are not dead though; she thinks halfheartedly. Plans are made to head toward the mountain her mother spoke of. She however stands at the edge of the area they have landed on, staring into the never ending green abyss before her.
Something in her twitches; like a string being tugged at her chest; she pays it no attention.
After all; this is not the first time.