Prompt: Your soulmate's first words to you are tattooed on your body.
A six year old Clarke Griffin is turning around, trying to read the tattoo on her back with the mirror in her room. She pulls her long blonde hair off of her back, holding it up on the top of her head as she cranes her head around to read the lettering, as she does every afternoon while her parents are at work. Clarke squints her eyes beginning to read the letters aloud as she jumps from the front door closing.
"Clarke? Abby?" Jake yells, walking in from a long day at work. He walks Clarke's room to find her seated on her dresser, her back to the mirror, and her hair in her hand atop her head.
"Clarke, honey. What are you doing?" He asks, chuckling at the sight.
"I was trying to read my tattoo, Daddy," Clarke says, letting go of her hair.
"Well, why don't we see what it says," He exclaims, picking her up to read the lettering that appeared on her birthday. "You're the one who burned three hundred of my warriors alive," He says aloud, not thinking about what the text says until he places her down on the floor.
"What kind of soulmate is that?" Abby asks from the doorway. The front door clicks behind her. Jake prays nightly that it's just a stupid game, that clarke really won't actually burn 300 warriors alive.
On Clarke's eighth birthday, she meets Wells Jaha.
"Hi, you must be Clarke. My dad told me all about you," Wells says, holding his arm out. Clarke takes his hand confidently before shaking it, and in turn, introduces herself.
"Hi Wells, I'm Clarke. Would you like to see my drawings?" Wells' eyes light up as Clarke says these words. He looks down at the tattoo on his forearm, knowing now that he's met his soulmate.
At the age of Fourteen Clarke branches out and starts meeting new people. As she talks to them and continues to get to know them she silently waits for someone to say the words that are etched into the skin on her back, but nobody does.
"This is so stupid," Clarke exclaims, throwing her paintbrushes across her room one afternoon. "I'm never actually going to meet the person I'm meant to be with, am I?" She yells, causing her mother to enter the room.
"Clarke, please," Abby starts, picking up the shards of glass from the vase that once held her paintbrushes. "You'll meet the person you're meant to be with one day."
"Really Mother? Please inform me on when that will happen, because I've already met everyone on our side of this fucking metal death trap and no ones first words to me had been you're the one who burned three hundred of my warriors alive. Who am I kidding, who on earth would say something as absurd as what my tattooreads."
"Clarke, don't lose hope just yet. You'll find your soulmate." Her mother reassures her, placing a hand on her shoulder before turning to throw away the shards of glass that rest on her hand.
Clarke forgets all about her soulmate when Wells betrays her and her father is floated. She only remembers her tattoo when she's in the dropship, waiting to depart for earth.
"Hey, you're the traitor who's been in solitary for a year," Finn says, floating in front of Clarke's face.
"You're the idiot who wasted a month of oxygen on an illegal spacewalk," Clarke retorts, pushing back the slight sorrow she feels after finding out that the attractive boy in front of her isn't in fact her soulmate. Clarke takes a minute and assumes that she doesn't have a soulmate, or that this is just some cruel joke, and she pushes the idea of having a soulmate behind, focusing on staying alive for as long as she can.
It's only when she sees Finn's tattoo on his chest-so you're that Collins boy that my mother is always talking about; the name's Raven, and it's a pleasure to finally meet you- that she knows she wasn't his soulmate either.
Clarke remembers the tattoo again when the grounders start coming for them. She thinks of her tattoo only briefly at times, once when she spots bellamy's tattoo on the edge of his shoulder where it simply reads Bell.
"What's up with your tattoo?" She asks, looking for an explanation. Bellamy smirks, looking over at her.
"It was Octavia's first word," Bellamy responds, grinning from ear to ear as he silently remembered the encounter.
The war is coming and she tells raven of her plan to blast off. As Raven turns away, Clarke catches a glimpse of the tattoo on her ribcage. Hello there, beautiful; I'm Finn... And you are? Clarke smiles to herself, knowing that Raven's soulmate is Finn. Her thoughts of finding her own soulmate are interrupted when Bellamy speaks up.
"Barbecued grounders, I like it," Bellamy announces. Clarke's head nearly explodes at the thought. Oh god, I'm actually going to burn 300 warriors alive. It'd be funny if the situation wasn't so damn terrifying, she thinks, leaving the tent she was in previously.
Clarke pulls the lever and 300 people are dead. Bellamy and Finn are missing, and 47 of the delinquents are captured by god knows who, but all Clarke worries about is the possibility finally finding her soulmate, and she just waits for the moment she finally does. She escapes the mountain, finds the five missing delinquents, and witnesses Finn kill eighteen innocent people.
"I found you," Finn exclaims, sending a shudder down Clarke's spine, and all she can think about is finding her goddamn soulmate.
When Clarke appears at the Commander's tent for a meeting, she's greeted by a tall, muscular man. She silently hopes he's her soulmate. He finally speaks up.
"If you so much as look at her the wrong way I will slit your throat." Gustus whispers, striking fear into Clarke, just as he had hoped to. Clarke takes a deep breath, still hoping to find her soulmate amongst the grounders, and steps into the commander's tent, unbeknownst of what to expect. As she walks closer, she can see the young girl who has ordered men to kill her people since they landed on the ground, and yet she can't think of anything other than her youth and beauty. Clarke loses her ability to speak for a fraction of a second, only wanting to say things like holy shit fuck, she's hotter than I imagined.
"You're the one who burned three hundred of my warriors alive," The Commander says, spinning the dagger's blade against her gloved hand. When Clarke finds her soulmate in the grounder commander, she thinks that it's almost a cruel joke. She swallows hard before saying anything.
"You're the one who sent them there to kill us," Clarke replies, attempting to maintain her strong, leader-esque demeanor. There's a sly grin on Lexa's face for a split second as she raises her head, finally meeting eyes with Clarke. The Commander's emerald eyes glisten as she screams internally.
When Lexa had kissed her, she was still feeling the remorse from killing the first person she had slept with on the earth. Clarke wanted her to feel as if she had just killed the person she was meant to spend her life with because she didn't know that she was, in turn, the Commander's soulmate. Little did she know, in twenty four hours- exactly two weeks before Clarke's eighteenth birthday- her soulmate was going to rip her heart out with four words. May we meet again.
It's not until two months after Clarke's eighteenth birthday that she finally sees Lexa again. They begin with catching up, making small talk, before Clarke finally gets to her point.
"You had done what I would have, back at the mountain," Clarke starts, placing her hand upon Lexa's. "And I did what you would have," She finishes, locking eyes with the Commander that sat before her, the fire that was lit next to them Illuminating the taller girl's features, bringing a gold color to her emerald eyes.
"And what was that, Clarke?" Lexa asked, brushing a curl out of the blonde's face.
"Saved my people," She replied, looking down at the logs that burned in their makeshift fireplace outside of the Commander's home in Polis, made of stone and elegantly carved wood. Lexa lifted Clarke's chin, forcing those blue eyes to meet her green ones.
"You did what was right, Klark kom skaikru," Lexa said, looking between Clarke's eyes and lips.
"I forgive you, for walking away back there. You saved your people, and that's what was right for you at the time," She swallowed hard before continuing. "What are you going to do now that the mountain has been defeated?" Clarke asked, swallowing hard before locking her gaze onto Lexa's pink lips.
"I'm going to use my heart, and not my head," Lexa replied, quickly crashing her lips against Clarke's as the smaller girl wrapped her arms around the Commander's neck, her legs snaking around the taller girl's waist. Lexa picked her up in one swift motion, carrying her into her home before kicking the door closed behind her. Lexa placed Clarke down upon her bed of furs before pulling away. Clarke began to tug at the hem of Lexa's shirt, trying to pull it up over the girl's head.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Lexa asked, receiving a nod from Clarke who pulled the Commander's shirt off before removing her own throwing them against the wall behind her.
It was then that Clarke saw her own words upon Lexa's left pectoral, just above her heart. You're the one who sent them there to kill us. It was then, and only then, that she realized she had found the one person who she was meant to spend the rest of her life with.
