you might be wondering how i managed to whip this one out so fast. well, my dog who's been with me for the last 12 years had recently passed away, and because of the lockdown situation, i couldn't be with her in her last days, so right now, the grief is very strong.

but i need a distraction, and what's a better distraction than writing a fic, right? yeah, so with that in mind, i should also warn you that there's a lot of texting in this chapter. also yeah, i'm not okay at all.

now, read, ponder, and enjoy, i guess

"There's something else I need to tell you."

"Nope."

Clarke turned away from Raven, cupping a cup of precious coffee in her hands as she deliberately stared at the black screen of the television. Objectively, she knew that it would be more convincing if she had actually turned the thing on, but Raven and Octavia knew her so well that they'd see right through her.

"Clarke, it's important." Her best friend shuffled over on the carpet to sit right in front of Clarke, who was situated on the couch. "You'd probably hate me more if I don't tell you."

"I probably won't," the blonde shot back, shifting her gaze to her darkened reflection in the coffee.

Currently, Clarke Griffin was nursing a hell of hangover from too much alcohol and not enough sleep. She was also getting kind of lightheaded with her concentrated efforts to just wipe out the headline she saw this morning and go on with her life. She had avoided her phone since she saw missed calls from her mother and Wells this morning, but they didn't know that she was off for the next two days.

Never had Clarke ever been so grateful that she didn't have to go back to work. These two days would serve to be important; she had decided that she would take the next two days to recuperate and recollect herself. After this, she would return to the hospital and everything would be normal. She was determined to cut away all emotional baggage that she was lugging around with her – it was not conducive to her job or herself.

The truth was she did feel a little betrayed when she read through the news, because part of her was wondering how Lexa could move on so quickly after claiming to have loved Clarke so much. But after she had her coffee and took some aspirin, she became rational enough to understand Lexa had every right to move on – after all, Clarke was the one who initiated the breakup in the first place. So the one who didn't have any right should be her.

She recalled learning the truth about Costia Greene some time ago and thinking that she would love to meet the woman in person so that Clarke could give her a dressing down for missing out on a great woman like Lexa Woods. Meet Clarke Griffin, everyone, the biggest hypocrite in all of Polis. Lexa had every right to move on, and since Clarke was the one who had to force the princess to move on, it only seemed right that she had to let things go herself eventually.

Well, she was expecting to have some peace while doing that, but Raven had insisted on staying with her, as if Clarke would break at any second. Octavia had reluctantly allowed herself to be chased back to work after making coffee, because Clarke honestly could not take one more second of their smothering, no matter how grateful for them she was.

"It's about…her," Raven pushed on.

"What else is there about her that you can possibly tell me?" she snapped, her thread of patience growing thin.

Raven gulped and scratched the back of her neck. "Well," she started, hesitantly, "Octavia and I lost sight of you for like two seconds last night, and you went hiding in the bathroom. And we kind of forgot to confiscate your phone." She narrowed her eyes a little and looked away from Clarke sheepishly. "So, uh, you…might have…" She stuttered, scratching the back of her neck again.

"I might have…" Clarke prompted, raising her eyebrows. But before Raven could continue, it all caught up to her. Her eyes went saucer wide and she straightened on the couch, the coffee sloshing all over to stain the couch and the carpet. "Oh no," she hissed.

"Uh, yes."

Clarke placed the cup on the coffee table and leaped from the couch, almost stepping on Raven in the process, and pretty much sprinted to her bedroom to grab her phone. Her fingers fumbled and she mistyped her passcode twice, but eventually, she managed to find her call log and gasped at the first name at the top.

"Oh no," she whimpered, Lexa's name large and jarring on her screen. This was a nightmare. She swiveled around to find Raven propped against the door panel, her expression a mixture of a wince and bemusement. "What did I say? What have I done?" she exclaimed in a state of panic. Fuck.

"Honestly, I don't know what you said. The club was really loud," Raven replied, edging into the room."

"Oh my god, what the fuck did I do?"

"Hey, hey, Griff, hey." Raven clasped onto Clarke's forearms and shook her a little to get her to focus. "You need to calm down, okay?" The blonde started shaking her head viciously, her hand trembling. "No, you need to calm down. It's a drunk dial. Everyone makes that mistake at least once in their life."

"I need to call her," Clarke decided.

"No." The Latina snatched the phone and stuffed it in her back pocket. "Clarke, you already called her once and it could have been a disaster. Calling her again is not a good idea." She steered the blonde towards the bed and sat her down, holding on to her shoulders for good measure. "You know, I've heard that when you wanna get over someone, you only have to get under –"

"Raven," Clarke snapped, shoving her friend's hands away and propping her forehead in her hand.

"Right, sorry, but don't call her." Raven sat next to Clarke and gingerly fished out the phone. "Maybe just start with, like, a text?"

Staring at the phone, Clarke started composing words in her head that didn't sound too needy and desperate, but she supposed her voicemail probably sounded the most desperate and neediest she had ever been, even though she could hardly remember anything she said. Nothing in her head sounded like the right message for an ex-girlfriend with whom she was still painfully in love with.

Her chest heaved with a sigh and she took the phone, flipping it in her hand. Honestly, it would be great if she could just flip the phone out the window and forget it ever existed. But she couldn't, because this phone had photos and videos and a contact number that would always serve as a connection to Lexa, one way or another.

Only more than a week ago, Lexa had made her promise that she would never walk in again after walking out for the last time. She wondered if drunk-dialing her and subsequently texting her would be a breach of that two-person contract. She wondered if Lexa had heard the voicemail. She wondered what she said in the voicemail. She wondered whether that voicemail would make Lexa hate her more than she did now.

Clarke (12:34p.m.): Hey, I know we're not supposed to talk to each other again, but I just wanna apologize for last night. I was drunk and out of line, sorry.

Lexa (12:46p.m.): I think I prefer it when you had horrendous text speak.

Clarke (12:46p.m.): ure probs the only 1

Lexa (12:50p.m.): There you go

Clarke (12:51p.m.): i cant b sure if ure mocking me or wat

Lexa (12:53p.m.): I said I prefer it, didn't I?

Clarke (12:54p.m.): well anyways, like i said, im sorry for…u knw

Lexa (1:00p.m.): Don't be. You were drunk. I liked it.

Clarke (1:02p.m.): rite, well, hope ure doing better

Lexa (1:02p.m.): You too, Clarke.

Something changed after the texts. Something small; something minuscule; something that didn't really change much; something entirely too big and too important and too hard to ignore.

Raven would never let her forget the way she had jumped and squealed at the top of her lungs when Lexa's reply came in only minutes after her own, a simple and well collated reply to a text that she spent over twenty minutes suffering a migraine over. In fact, Raven filmed it and shared it with Octavia – she would have shared it with the rest of their friends had they not been the only two people in her life who truly knew the depth of her relationship with Lexa – so it was definitely one for the books now.

But things changed. After more than one week of radio silence, sadness and reminiscence, one awkward encounter in a hospital basement, and a drunk voicemail, Clarke and Lexa kind of…rebuilt communications. It wasn't much, not really. And Clarke had really thought that the conversation would have just ended there and they'd go on with their lives, until Lexa texted her randomly again one morning.

Lexa (6:04 a.m.): Did you know McDonald's delivers to the palace? Wild.

Clarke had just taken a quick shower after an emergency surgery and was wrapped up in a towel when she saw the text. And she would deny this to anyone who asked, but she definitely slipped and fell on her ass once she saw the person responsible for the annoying chime. And she would also deny this, but she felt kind of exposed reading a text from her best orgasm giver wrapped in nothing but a towel.

She didn't read the message – please, she wasn't entirely technologically inept, despite Raven's persistent taunts. She just stared at it and deliberated on whether Lexa was high off pain meds, but she also knew Lexa had built up quite the tolerance after her stint in the army. She then wondered if Lexa was still too sleepy in the morning, and recalled that Lexa was kind of an anytime person. In the end, she decided she wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Clarke (6:12 a.m.): i feel bad for the deliveryman. imagine delivering mcd bfast 2 a princess. i might faint if i wre him

The text bubble showed up and disappeared and showed up and disappeared. The sequence went on repeat for quite some time, so much so that she left the phone on the bench and started putting on her scrubs to get back on duty. She had a feeling that Lexa had something witty in her mind, something dirty, because it was definitely what Clarke was thinking as soon as she sent that text.

The deliveryman might have delivered breakfast to a princess, but Clarke fucked a princess. Multiple times. A variety of positions. Many places in her apartment and outside her apartment, for that matter.

But it was too soon. Too fresh for that kind of teasing. Perhaps it would always be too soon and too fresh.

Lexa (6:16 a.m.): Well, security told me he wanted to know if the palace was haunted, and she promptly asked him who did he think ordered the meal in the first place

Yeah, Clarke would take that. She would take that over forever of nothingness. She would take whatever could be given without smudging the lines. She would take Lexa in whatever capacity she could get.

Lexa (8:12p.m.): Did you know that Wells is my childhood friend? Well, kind of. I think it counts.

Clarke (8:13p.m.): WAT

Lexa (8:20p.m.): His dad tried to matchmake us when we were kids. I was already out, mind you.

Clarke (8:26p.m.): i cnt blieve he didnt tel me this b4 hold on 1 sec im gonna kill him

Lexa (8:26p.m.): This country doesn't condone homicide, Clarke

…

It wasn't forgiveness, either from her or from Lexa. The history was too thick in the air that it would be impossible to just wave everything away from a few text conversations. Every time Clarke composed a text to Lexa, it would be with heavy deliberation and careful teetering over the alphabets to make sure they didn't cross the line of acquaintances. And she could feel in reciprocation, through the stilted language of her texts, lacking the carefreeness that used to be the essence of their relationship.

…

Clarke (3:09 a.m.): this man jst came in w glass in his eyes n i cant blieve its the simplest case this shift

Lexa (3:16 a.m.): Well, you saw my innards and you were still attracted to me. That says something, I think.

Clarke (3:18 a.m.): y r u awake lexa woods ure injured ffs go 2 bed

Lexa (3:19 a.m.): I was until a rude bitch woke me up with a text complaining about a man with glass in his eyes

Clarke (3:20a.m.): wow kbye then ive got a man to remove glass from

…

Whenever there was a text, she leaped on it like a hungry hyena. Raven and Octavia had started looking at her differently, but she didn't exactly tell them that she had started talking with Lexa again, if this could count as talking. The texts were not often and had never really expanded into the other day, but it had been a week of staggered texting, and Clarke, well, Clarke just wanted to hear Lexa's voice, even in typed words.

…

Clarke (1:10 a.m.): jst realized that cowboys go yee haw n ninjas go hee yaw

Lexa (5:43 a.m.): I can't believe you saved my life twice

Clarke (5:54 a.m.): its the 36 hr shift i swear

Things still hurt though, because things always hurt. Just like how Lexa was a princess; like how the royal family would always be under scrutiny; how they were under more scrutiny due to the impending wedding of their beloved Princess Anya; how that meant Lexa's life was under heavier scrutiny as a result.

And that meant the headline she saw that morning was only first among many. Clarke had always only relied on two media outlets in this country and avoided other tabloids. And since meeting Lexa, she'd also sworn off Polis Sentinel.

But it was like her phone was sentient or something. Because the more she thought about it and the more she avoided seeing it, they just kept showing up. The palace issuing statements, theories about the princess' supposed relationship with Costia, recaps of their past together, and even more recent sightings of Lexa herself hanging out with her ex-girlfriend.

Lexa herself didn't release any statements or say anything to the media, but these outings with Costia seemed deliberate, like extending a figurative middle finger to the Polis Sentinel in particular. And it still hurt, because Lexa loved Costia once; who was to say she won't again?

And who was to say Clarke had any right to even be sad about it?

Her phone buzzed on the table, and Raven and Octavia shared a look – it was a look that they always shared whenever they were about to do something mischievous. Clarke narrowed her eyes and, thankfully enough for her reflexes, reached out to grab the device before Octavia could make a break for it.

"Is this healthy?" Raven asked, waving a fork in her direction.

They rarely had lunch breaks together, so now that an opportunity had arisen, the three of them had gathered in the cafeteria to fill up their stomachs before going back to inevitably busy work. Well, busy work for Clarke and Octavia; Raven had only stayed behind to grab a bite with them.

It had been two weeks since Clarke and Lexa started texting again. And while her best friends initially didn't know who she'd been texting, they'd quickly figured it out, because according to them, no one made her smile like that, not even when she'd first gotten an offer letter from Silver Hill after returning from Libya.

"It's just texting," Clarke proclaimed, shoving the phone in her pocket without really looking at the text.

"You're literally vibrating," Octavia observed, squinting at her. Clarke picked up her utensils to stop herself from fidgeting. Damn them for knowing her so well, because she really did want to just bolt out of here and see what Lexa had to say in private. "Is this healthy?" Octavia echoed Raven's sentiment.

"It's just texting," Clarke repeated, rolling her eyes.

"Yeah, with the girl you were hopelessly in love with." The blonde looked down at her phone and purposely shoved a huge spoonful of salad into her mouth. "Wait, my mistake, still hopelessly in love with," the nurse corrected.

Clarke looked up just in time to see Raven nudging Octavia in the ribs with her elbow, so violently that the woman actually started coughing on her lunch and almost choked on it. Once she regained her composure, Octavia just nudged Raven back, which kind of pulled the two of them into a nudging war, eliciting yelps and curses so loud that they started attracting their colleagues' attention.

The two of them were too absorbed in attacking each other to notice, so all Clarke could do was shoot the rest of the room an apologetic smile and a shrug, because they were Clarke and Raven and Octavia. And this trio was kind of known for their unconventional antics, in or out of the building, which was kind of an embarrassing reputation to have, given that they were considered newbies here.

"Will you two stop it? We're at work!" Clarke chastised, reaching out to smack both of them on their shoulders. "You guys are like children."

"Wrong. I have too much sex to be a child," Raven immediately offered, and Octavia immediately choked on her food again.

"I don't wanna know," Octavia said between dry coughs. She redirected her attention to the blonde and pointed a fork at her. What was it with them and forks today? "What I do wanna know is how you're supposed to move on when you're still in contact with your ex. Lincoln told me that his sister's been…brighter recently, but he still hasn't figured out why yet – bless his sweet adorable soul – and what I do wanna know is how you're supposed to move on from each other when you're still in contact with each other."

Clarke froze at the inquiry, because it was exactly the kind of inquiry that she wanted to avoid since they found out who she'd been texting.

When she broke up with Lexa, it was because she was certain that she didn't have the emotional capacity to endure the situations Lexa would put herself in because she was dutiful. She already lost a father; she didn't want to become her mother. And while she'd never seen firsthand how the palace or the royal family worked, she'd heard enough from Lexa to grow more than a little afraid of getting involved with the whole thing.

Plus, she still wasn't sure she had it in her to forgive the King and Queen of Polis, though they were inarguably the most lauded monarchy in centuries of this kingdom's construction. They were good leaders, but they had yet to show her that they were good parents. And she knew that she didn't have any right to intercept or even judge them, but their daughter was the love of her life, so there.

As she was devising ways to deviate the conversation away from her love life, her pager beeped, along with Octavia's. Well, she could easily say she'd never been so grateful for a trauma. She abandoned her food and leaped out of her seat with Octavia.

"Duty calls," she chirped and practically hopped out of the cafeteria to get away from Raven and Octavia as possible.

The thing was, even after having broken up and understanding that it was the best decision she could make for herself for now, she also understood that there was no moving on from Lexa woods. Not for a long time. Not ever. Not completely.

Lexa (12:34 p.m.): It's not like what they say, you know.

Clarke frowned at the message as she sat on her couch and nursed a cup of late-night chamomile tea. That one case that had gracefully interrupted her brief get together with Raven and Octavia had abruptly extended into many, a whole fuck ton, so much so that she only got to go home two hours after her shift was supposed to be done.

Things had become so busy that she completely forgot about Lexa's text, until she came home and took a long shower to wash off all the sweat and bacteria and remembered the things Lexa had once done to her in this very bathroom. And now here she was, reading a cryptic text from her ex-girlfriend and wondering if the princess had sent it to the wrong person.

Clarke (9:09 p.m.): sry had bz day at the hosp. also, wat?

She tried to think about who said what, but came up blank. She turned on the television to take her mind off of waiting for Lexa's reply, but Ted was only being a typical asshole and she didn't want to recall how disappointed she'd been when she saw the finale of the show. Fuck Ted Mosby, was the point.

Lexa (9:13 p.m.): The papers.

Clarke (9:13 p.m.): im confused

Lexa (9:15 p.m.): It's not an old lovers' reunion.

Oh. Oh. Clarke blinked at her phone rapidly, Robin fading out in the background. She looked up and out the window, staring at the cat that had found itself in a tree and staring right back at her. She brushed her hair back and acknowledged the pounding of her heart and the relief on her shoulders.

She cleared her throat and went back to her phone.

Clarke (9:16 p.m.): i see
Clarke (9:16 p.m.): u dnt hv 2 explain urself 2 me yknw

Lexa (9:19 p.m.): I know, but I also feel like I have to, for some reason.

Clarke (9:19 p.m.): im glad tho

Lexa (9:19 p.m.): ?

Clarke (9:20 p.m.): glad u hv a friend amidst all these

She worried her lower lip and watched as Lexa read her message but didn't say anything back. Her thumbs hovered over her screen. When she looked out the window, the cat was still staring at her, as if challenging her to stop being a fucking coward.

Oh, fuck it.

Clarke (9:22 p.m.): n mayb that it's not an old lovers' reunion

She could just attribute it to exhaustion and chemical fumes getting to her brain if anyone asked, anyway.

idk when the next update will be - maybe next week, maybe next month, maybe next year. i don't know, i'm grieving