AN: Thanks to everyone who read the first chapter, I hope you liked it! Moving on with the story, with a bit more background into Clarke's life as well as some new players! A big thanks to my beta Liz, for all her help :) And I obviously don't own anything relating to The 100.

Chapter title from "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes" from the movie "Cinderella" because, well, Princess…

2

A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes

Clarke shifts her hold on the bag full of snacks before reaching out to knock on the door in front of her.

For a moment, there's no response, then barking starts up inside the apartment, followed by footsteps and, finally, the click of the lock opening.

"Hey, Griffin," Zeke greets her, moving aside to let her into the hallway.

"I come bearing gifts," she replies, handing him the bag before closing the door behind her and unbuttoning her coat.

Lola's jumping up and down excitedly a few feet in front of her – the little French bulldog knows she's not allowed to jump at people, but that doesn't stop her from imitating a rubber ball, bouncing up and down whenever she meets someone.

"Thanks, I'll take this into the kitchen," Zeke says. "Rae's in the living room, you know where it is."

Clarke hums her agreement as she hangs her coat up and toes her boots off. "Come on, Lola, let's go see what Mommy's up to."

The dog barks once, excitedly, and then takes off in the direction of the living room. A slight commotion tells Clarke that she probably runs head-first into the coffee table, as usual, before scrambling onto the couch.

"God, you're annoying," Raven's voice meets Clarke as she enters the large, open space with amazing views of Jersey City to the right and Ellis and Liberty Island straight ahead. She doesn't want to think about what Raven and Zeke must have cashed out for this place when they moved in almost two years ago, even if she knows they can obviously afford it – the benefit of being able to save money for decades is that it has a tendency to accumulate. And Raven's always been a whiz at picking out up and coming companies to invest in, something that's benefited both Raven herself, Clarke and their friends over the years.

"Gee, nice to know I'm welcome," Clarke teases, slumping down on the huge, U-shaped couch next to her oldest friend.

"I was talking about the dog, babe, like you don't know that." Raven leans over and smacks a wet kiss on Clarke's cheek. "How are you feeling?"

Clarke steals the remote from Raven's hand and opens Netflix. "I'm good. You?"

She flips through the new movies, trying to find something all three of them might actually enjoy.

"I'm fine…" Raven replies a little tentatively. "So you're not still agonizing over that Transfer? I know you can sometimes get a little obsessed."

"The Transfer…" It takes a moment before Clarke realizes what Raven's talking about. Right. The Transfer. The one she was recovering from when Raven called earlier. "Yeah, no, I'm fine. It was a little rough at the time, heavier stuff than I've had in a while and the memories got to me, but it passed pretty quickly."

"Right…"

Clarke focuses intently on the screen, reading the plot of some new action movie without really taking in the words, to avoid meeting Raven's eyes. The truth is, the Transfer this morning hasn't crossed her mind since her close encounter with a car and subsequent rescue. Her mind's been returning to brown eyes, freckles and a teasing smirk all afternoon, if she's being honest. Which she's not particularly keen on being with Raven at the moment.

"What do you think of this one?" she asks, nodding at the screen, in an attempt to distract Raven.

Not that she expects it to work.

"Fine. But getting back to the fact that you're avoiding something…"

Clarke sighs and forces herself to turn from the TV to face her friend. "I'm not, though. I'm sorry if I worried you, it was just a rough Transfer but I'm fine now. There's no need to talk about it."

Raven watches her intently for a moment before her eyes light up as if she's figured something out. Clarke's seen it before, usually when her friend is tinkering with something mechanical that Clarke would be afraid to touch and finally solves whatever problem it was she took the thing apart to fix. She calls it the lightbulb moment. "There's a guy!"

"Raven…" Clarke sighs.

"Girl?"

Clarke knows that the battle is lost so she decides to surrender with at least some grace intact.

"Fine. There's sort of a guy, but just barely. I was on my way home from the park earlier and someone bumped into me and pushed me into the street, right in front of a cab…"

"Shit, are you OK?"

Clarke nods and squeezes Raven's knee reassuringly.

"I'm fine. Someone grabbed my wrist and pulled me back, out of the way. This guy, a delivery driver… I don't even know, it was just this… moment. You know?"

Raven wags her eyebrows suggestively. "Nice. So did you get his number?"

"I didn't even get his name," Clarke replies. She's been jumping back and forth from cursing herself for that oversight – if nothing else, he could have been good for one night or even a couple of weeks of amazing sex (she just has a feeling that he knows what he's doing in that department) – and being relieved that she at least doesn't have to resist the urge to reach out to him, since she can't. Because there's a nagging voice at the back of her mind that keeps insisting there's no way she would be able to let him go if she did get him into bed, or into her life in general… "It was just one of those chance meetings, I guess. Ships passing in the night or on a busy New York street in the middle of the day or whatever."

Raven's quiet for a moment before speaking again. "You're really hung up on this guy, though. Like, in a way I haven't seen you before. And you met him for all of, what, five minutes?"

"I'll get over it," Clarke says with a shrug. "It was just instant attraction or something."

"Love at first sight."

She rolls her eyes. "There's no such thing and you know it."

"God, you're so un-romantic," her friend complains. Considering her analytical nature, Raven really is surprisingly romantic. "This could be fate, you know. One of the great loves of your life. And you're not even going to try to find him?"

"Even if I did, it wouldn't be some epic love story," Clarke replies. "You know I don't get involved with Norms for more than something brief. There's no happily ever after in this scenario."

"He's a Norm? Number?"

"Didn't see it, he had a baseball cap on."

"So he could be a Keeper, right?" Raven notes.

Clarke shakes her head. "He would have seen that I was, though."

She doesn't know all Soul Keepers in the world, of course, there are tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of them, she's not really sure. But she does know all who are stationed in and around New York at the moment, at least well enough to recognize them. They have quarterly get-togethers in a community center in Brooklyn. He could be new, she supposes, but even so, there's an unspoken rule that you acknowledge another Keeper when you meet them, even if it's just in passing on the street. If he was one of them, he would have said something when he realized that she was too.

"So what?" Raven insists. "It's been ages since you had more than a quick fling, and there's obviously something there, even I can see that. Why not make an exception?"

It's not like she's wrong.

Clarke has had a total of two long term relationships in the past century and a half – three if she's using the term lightly – which she can admit isn't much. Neither of them were easy, for different reasons.

She met Lexa the second time she was stationed in New York, in 1913, and they were a couple for twenty-five years until Lexa suddenly decided to go to Australia, even going so far as to request an early reassignment, without discussing it with Clarke.

New York had been progressive even back then, but two women were still not accepted as a couple in most circles, and they had been forced to keep their relationship behind closed doors. After they left New York, it had gotten worse, the people in the smaller cities they were stationed in suspicious of two young, single women living together, and rumors started up before long whenever they moved. Neither of them cared what people thought, really, but it still wore on them both, and affected their relationship as well.

Now that she has some distance to both Lexa and her own feelings for the woman, and can look at the situation with neutral eyes, Clarke can admit that they had been drifting apart for months, maybe years, before Lexa's sudden departure. They've crossed paths a few times since – she knows Lexa has long since settled down with a woman she met in Europe in the sixties, Costia – and they can even carry civil conversations when they need to, but Clarke knows that they will never be friends, even if they at some point find themselves in the same city for an extended period of time. There's just too much baggage there.

Her next long term partner had been Wells. They first met way back in 1885, through Raven, but didn't begin their romantic relationship until the mid-fifties, when they found themselves stationed in London at the same time, both in the country for the first time and not really knowing anyone else in the area. They were accepted by most of their British acquaintances, but when they returned to the US and Houston seven years later, they quickly learned that an interracial relationship was frowned upon at best in that part of the world. After Wells was attacked by some men in their neighborhood on his way home after dark a few weeks after their move, they realized that they couldn't stay there and were quickly relocated to New York. The tolerance was much higher here, but they still caught looks when they kissed or touched each other in the street.

Their relationship ended amicably in the early seventies, when they realized that they had just developed into different people who didn't fit together romantically anymore, and they're still very close friends, keeping in touch regularly and spending time together as often as they can when they're in the same area. Wells has been in Europe for a couple of years now, though, so they've mostly been skyping lately.

She's had a couple of shorter relationships since, all with other Keepers – Niylah's the one who lasted the longest, and even that was just two years and never really got serious.

But Clarke has always been very insistent on not starting anything long term with someone who isn't a Soul Keeper. She's had one night stands and even short flings, but never more than a few weeks, a month, tops. She's never let herself fall in love with a Norm, because she doesn't want to put herself through the heartbreak that a relationship like that would inevitably lead to, one way or another.

Raven, on the other hand, had a couple of longer relationships with Norms before she met Zeke in the late eighties. Being with a Norm has its problems, which is the main reason Clarke has always avoided it, but there's no rule against telling them about Soul Keepers, and somehow, Raven's managed it. She and Finn were together when Clarke became a Soul Keeper and their relationship lasted for over forty years, until he died a few weeks before his seventieth birthday. Clarke saw first-hand what that did to her best friend, and had actually been extremely surprised when Raven introduced her to Wick, another Norm, in the forties. They were together for around twenty years before he eventually ended the relationship, having a hard time with people thinking Raven was his daughter when he turned fifty and she still looked twenty-five.

"I just… it's not a good idea," Clarke says, snapping back to the present. "And it's not like I could find him even if I wanted to. This is New York, it would literally be like looking for a needle in a haystack."

Raven's eyes narrow in a way Clarke knows means trouble.

"You said he was a delivery guy? Which company?"

Clarke shakes her head. "No, Raven. Please, just let it go."

"Let what go?" Zeke asks as he enters the room, carrying a tray with a few bowls filled with the snacks Clarke brought and two glasses which Clarke suspects – and hopes – contain his delicious fruity cocktail.

"She met a guy," Raven replies, and Clarke rolls her eyes.

"For, like, two minutes. And he's a Norm, you know I don't do Norms."

Zeke sighs. "Just leave her alone, Rae. If she doesn't want to go for this guy, you can't make her."

"Fine." Raven huffs as if it's a huge sacrifice for her personally. "Don't come crying to me the next time you're lonely and horny."

"No, the next time I'm lonely and horny, I'll go to a bar and pick someone up who can help me take care of that," Clarke shoots back before sticking her tongue out at Raven, who throws a potato chip at her in return.

"Yeah, yeah, you're an independent woman who don't need no man or whatever."

But thankfully, Raven lets the subject go as they settle in for the movie, and after a while, Clarke finds herself relaxing.

-100-

She ends up staying a little later than she had intended, Raven putting on another movie when the first one ends, but she doesn't have a Transfer until early afternoon tomorrow, so it's not like she has to get up at the crack of dawn or anything. And she knows she needs to unwind now and then, get out of her head and just be. Raven's always been the best way for her to do that.

When the end credits of the second movie start rolling across the screen and Zeke's low snoring fills the room, though, she stretches and gets up.

"I should head home," she says.

Raven yawns and pushes herself off the couch as well. "Sure you don't want to spend the night? Guest room's all set up as always."

"Nah, you know I prefer waking up in my own bed. Besides, Bas will kill me if there's no food in her bowl in the morning."

At the mention of the cat, Lola growls low in her throat and Raven laughs. "Stupid dog. OK, let me at least walk you to the train, she needs to go out anyway if I want to sleep later than five tomorrow."

"Fine."

They stroll along Battery Place at a leisurely pace, Lola sniffing every single street lamp and post before deeming one of them acceptable for doing her business against.

"So, about the Halloween party," Raven says after a couple of quiet minutes. "First off – there will be absolutely no backing out, I will personally drag you here if I have to, and you know I mean it."

Clarke rolls her eyes. "No need, I'll be there. Who else is coming?"

Raven's parties have a tendency to turn huge and slightly out of control, and Clarke prefers smaller gatherings where she only has to interact with her friends, people she already knows, and maybe one or two new faces. Big crowds full of strangers she's never met before have always made her a little uncomfortable, despite Raven dragging her into them regularly through the years.

"There will be people you know, don't worry," Raven assures her, probably realizing what she's thinking about. "The usual suspects will be attending, of course, plus some people I've invited from the museum and Zeke's friends from work."

Raven works as a volunteer at NYSCI, the science museum in Flushing, which is perfect for her scientific mind, and Zeke helps out at a charity that runs community centers throughout the city, offering disadvantaged kids a place to hang out after school to keep them out of gangs and off the streets.

"So what you're really saying is that this will turn into one of your regular monster bashes?" Clarke summarizes.

Raven shrugs. "Possibly. With emphasis on the monster part. Do you have a costume?"

"Shit, no," Clarke realizes. "And it's probably too late now to get anything better than slutty nurse or something."

"Well, you're in luck," Raven says. "I happen to have a spare costume."

Clarke narrows her eyes suspiciously at her friend. "What type of costume, exactly?"

"You'll just have to show up a little early to find out. I promise it's better than slutty nurse, though."

"Fine." She figures she can just bring a black dress and some red, liquid lipstick and claim she's a vampire if Raven's costume is too much. Vampires are still cool, right? She's almost positive they are.

They reach Bowling Green and pause at the entrance to the subway.

"Take a cab from Borough Hall?" Raven asks.

"You know Brooklyn is perfectly safe," Clarke argues, rolling her eyes. Sure, the area has had its up and downs since she bought the top floor of an old building with views over Manhattan before the end of the Second World War and turned it into an apartment, but Clarke loves the neighborhood, which is the reason she's kept the place, even if she's only lived there for about fourteen years in total. "And I have my pepper spray, I can take care of myself."

"I know you can, babe. OK, at least text me when you get home, so I know you're not lying bloody and beaten in a ditch somewhere?"

"Kind of hard to find a ditch along my route," Clarke teases. "But I will, promise."

"OK, night." Raven gives her a one-armed hug, her other hand holding the leash and preventing Lola from taking off into the street – the little dog seems to have picked up an interesting scent and is whining and straining to follow it. "Love you."

"Love you too."

The train's only half-full, it being after midnight on a Monday, and just as she knew, her walk from the station is uneventful. She pauses in front of her building for a moment, admiring the lit bridges on either side.

When she finally unlocks the door to her apartment, nudging Bastet inside with a foot to keep her from dashing out into the hallway, she lets out a long sigh. She always loves coming home, no matter if it's after a few hours at Raven's like now, or after twenty years of being stationed somewhere else. This is home, the one place that's been a constant in her life for over sixty years, no matter how many other places she's lived.

She sends a quick text to Raven – Home now, loser – getting a poop emoji in return, and grabs some ice cream from the freezer before making herself comfortable on the couch, cat stretched out along her left thigh and purring up a storm, to watch the lights in Manhattan twinkle across the water. Yeah, this is why she loves this place.

-100-

Despite her promise to Raven to be at the Halloween party, Clarke almost backs out when she gets into the elevator on Wednesday night.

She's just not a party girl, she never really has been. Sure, she's had her share of fun at The Viper Room, CBGB and Studio 54 through the years – usually dragged along by Raven, but still. She danced all night at Woodstock and saw The Beatles in Liverpool back in 1960, when they were still called The Silver Beetles. She can have fun.

Right now she'd just rather take the train back home and spend the night on the couch with Bas, watching reruns of So you think you can dance and eating her weight in popcorn. She's allowed to want that.

But she knows Raven, and knows full well that if she doesn't show up in the next half hour, she will first get a bunch of annoyed text messages, then a call and finally a personal visit during which she will be wheedled and convinced and, if all else fails, physically dragged to Raven's apartment.

Really, it would be such a hassle, and she'd end up at the party anyway. Might as well go voluntarily and save herself the trouble.

So, instead of riding the elevator back down and heading home, like she really wants to, Clarke takes a deep breath and gets off on Raven's floor.

As usual, her friend has gone all out and even decorated the hallway – there are fake cobwebs here and there with dangling plastic spiders, silhouettes of bats taped to the walls and spooky laughter coming from somewhere.

The door opens almost before she can knock, a huge smile spreading on Raven's face.

"You came!"

"You did threaten me with bodily harm if I didn't, so here I am…"

"That's the spirit. Come on."

Clarke barely has time to kick off her boots and call a hello to Zeke, who she spots in the kitchen, before Raven grabs her by the arm and pulls her along down the corridor leading to the three bedrooms.

"Take your clothes off," Raven orders before going into the huge walk-in closet in the master bedroom.

"You know, Rae, I'm flattered, but not with your boyfriend in the other room," Clarke shoots back, but obediently starts unbuttoning her shirt.

"Yeah, yeah, you wish." There's some rustling and then Raven's voice again. "Are you done?"

Clarke looks down at her underwear, which is all she has left on. "Depends on how naked you want me."

"I'll take that as a yes. OK, close your eyes."

"Seriously?" Clarke sighs, but does as she's told again. She's learned long ago that the fastest way to get out of a situation with Raven is to just play along. "Fine, they're closed, let's get this over with."

There's some more rustling, the sound of the closet door closing and then something is placed on Clarke's head.

"Ta-da!"

She takes that to mean she can open her eyes again, so she does.

"Really, Raven?"

Her friend is holding up something that is most easily described as a replica of Cinderella's ball gown – the entire dress is a beautiful powder blue, the bodice covered in thousands of tiny, glittering stones, even on the narrow shoulder straps, and the skirt layers and layers of tulle, at least four feet in diameter. Before she even reaches up to touch what Raven placed on her head a moment ago, Clarke knows it must be a crown of some kind and, sure enough, it's a silver tiara with stones matching the ones on the dress.

"What's wrong with it?" Raven asks innocently, looking between Clarke and the dress.

"It's huge, for one!" Clarke complains. "I won't be able to move."

"It's actually a lot lighter than it looks," her friend insists. "At least try it on?"

Clarke sighs but holds out her hands for the dress. She knows from experience that the best way to get Raven to let something go is to show her it's not actually a good idea. Not that she's been able to do that more than a few times during their long friendship, but she's absolutely positive this will be one of those times – she'll look ridiculous in the dress.

Thanks to the shoulder straps, she can keep her bra on, which she supposes is something. She pulls the zipper down and steps into the dress before lifting it up and maneuvering her arms through the straps.

"Zip me up," she says, turning her back to Raven and pulling her hair over one shoulder.

"See?" Raven says when she's pulled the zipper up. "You look amazing."

Clarke reluctantly turns to the full body mirror next to the closet door to take in her reflection.

It's… mesmerizing, really. Raven's right, she does look amazing, the dress hugging her in all the right places and accentuating her natural curves. But still…

"This is not a Halloween costume, Rae, it's a dress for a… a debutante ball in the deep South or something," she argues. "A masquerade at a castle in a faraway land."

"Come on, Halloween's a night for being someone you're not… haven't you ever wanted to be a princess?"

She actually dated a prince once, for all of five minutes – it was the summer after Grace Kelly married the prince of Monaco and somehow – she can't really remember, but she has a strong suspicion Raven was involved – Clarke had found herself on a huge yacht somewhere off the French Riviera. She's pretty sure the prince had thought she was some famous Hollywood star. The fling had fizzled out quickly when he found out that she wasn't, and she, in turn, realized that he was nothing more than a spoiled brat who was making the most of being the second son of a king with not many responsibilities but a lot of money, free time and pretty girls falling over themselves to be the next conquest on his arm and in his bed.

"I don't know… what's the other costume? You said you had two, right?"

Raven disappears into the closet again, emerging a moment later with something black and shiny.

"Catwoman."

Clarke shudders. "I am not wearing that."

"Those are your options, babe."

"Actually…" Clarke rummages around in the big purse she brought, grabbing the dress and red lip gloss. She even found a pair of fake teeth in a bathroom drawer, not that she can remember when she used them. Probably at another of Raven's Halloween bashes.

"No," Raven says before she can even explain. "Princess or Catwoman, take your pick."

They stare at each other for a long moment, a silent stand-off that Clarke knows she won't win. And, just like she knew, she's the first to cave.

"Fine."

"Yes!" Raven crows, throwing a hand in the air. "I'll fix your hair and make-up, trust me, you'll look like a million bucks when I'm done with you."

And, Clarke has to grudgingly admit when she's finally allowed to look in the mirror again 45 minutes later, she does. Raven's curled her hair, so it's hanging in ringlets halfway down her back, nicely accentuated by the silvery, sparkling tiara, and done a natural but striking make-up with smoky eyes. She also adds sparkling earrings and a matching necklace that pulls attention to Clarke's cleavage – not that it really needs any help, her boobs are definitely more on display in this dress than she's used to.

"Damn, Griffin, you clean up nice," Zeke compliments her when she comes into the living room where he's getting the bar in one corner set up.

"You say that like it's the first time you've seen me out of sweats or something," she replies, gratefully accepting the shot glass he hands her and downing it in one go. Tequila. Not her first choice, but it'll get the job done. "Keep 'em coming."

He laughs but fills her glass again and she knocks the second one back too.

Soon enough, people start arriving – first through the door is a group of Soul Keepers that Clarke's close to, which she's grateful for, since it means she can hang out with Harper and Maya instead of being dragged around by Raven and introduced to everyone she doesn't know.

She switches from shots to regular cocktails after her third tequila – she wants to be pleasantly buzzed, so she'll forget that she doesn't really want to be here and can have fun, but not so drunk she won't remember what happened when she wakes up tomorrow. It's a fine line but she's mastered it over the years. It probably helps that her tolerance is much higher than Norms, so it takes a lot to actually get her really drunk.

Harper's boyfriend, Monty, and Maya's boyfriend, Jasper, initiate a game of beer pong in the kitchen an hour or so into the party, and since Clarke and Raven are the reigning beer pong champions in their little group, they of course have to defend their title. Murphy happily takes on the role of trash talking both teams, but nobody pays him much mind since they're used to him by now.

She's in the middle of a great run – she hasn't missed a single shot yet and has only had to drink twice, despite being more than a little tipsy by now – when a familiar voice makes her miss the entire table.

"Well, well, Princess. Fancy meeting you here."

AN: I would say sorry for the cliff hanger, but I'm really not ;) Also, just a quick note on Clarke's past relationships – I decided to skip the Clarke/Raven/Finn love triangle in this fic because it just didn't work with the story, hope nobody's too disappointed by that!