while i'm still looking for a job and am currently still a useless person, i figured i could update this fic asap. in any case, wish me luck on finally getting an income, yeah?

now, read, ponder, and enjoy!

"Alexandria Woods, I swear to god –" Her mother cut herself off as she strode into Lexa's office, hauled her up from her chair behind the desk, and pulled her into a tight hug. "What is it with you and not coming home? And Gus wasn't with even with you!" Storme whisper-shrieked into Lexa's ear.

The younger woman blinked at the sudden tackle. If this had occurred before Niylah, before Clarke, she would have flipped her mother on her back and had her foot on the queen's neck before the woman could even utter a word. But now, all she had to do was take two deep breaths and smell her mother's shampoo and remember that there was an exit and it was right there.

Lexa hugged her mother back and patted her back in reassurance. "I texted Lincoln."

Storme, thankfully, released her daughter from her motherly grasp. The princess might have been healing, but it was a slow process. Her susceptibility to close contacts only extended so far; the only person she could handle prolonged full body contact with was…well, Lexa was certain that she could try for a bit longer when she and Clarke met again.

The queen groaned in complaint as she rolled her eyes. "Your brother is barely home now. He's always out too but at least he comes home!" she said pointedly, not letting go Lexa's arms.

Lexa had a vague idea as to why Lincoln was barely home. It seemed they held each other's secrets. She couldn't help but inwardly rejoice at the idea of Anya being so out of the loop for once. Well, if he was withholding her secret as he had promised, she could do the same.

"I texted Anya too."

"Your sister has a wedding to prepare for. And she has many more matters to attend to, being the first in line and all that. I only knew you'd be absent from dinner last night because Gus called his wife and Penelope came over to inform us! And then he came back this morning without you!" Storme complained, exasperation apparent in her tone and tight eyes. "Honestly, since when did your father and I raise such irresponsible children?"

"Hey, I'm responsible!"

"You told us about becoming a soldier after you signed up for the army," her mother deadpanned.

Lexa opened her mouth but found no words to properly retort. Well, the woman had been won numerous international debate championships, among others, before she became Queen Storme the First – Anya had been the only child to inherit their mother's smart mouth.

"Okay, fair," she deflated.

Her mother released a noise of knowingness and satisfaction before she looped their arms together. And before Lexa knew it, her mother had handed her the cane and they were walking out of her office together and walking down the hall, offering occasional nods to the passing by staff.

Lexa had to momentarily mourn at the thought of having to return to her mountain of work tomorrow morning. That was the price of not bothering with work for two days. Then again, it was worth it, considering how she had spent her last two days. She would happily face piles of paperwork if it meant 48 uninterrupted hours with Clarke Griffin.

"So where were you?"

"I had business," Lexa evaded.

"A business that requires you to stay out all night?"

"It was last minute."

"Should I be worried?"

"I'm fine, Mom."

"The last time you did something last minute, you shipped off to Afghanistan for your first tour."

Okay, yeah, her mother was never going to let that go. To any stranger, it would sound like the woman was holding a grudge against her daughter – a grudge that lasted a little more than six years. But it wasn't; it was far from a grudge.

No parent would like for their children to go off to a warzone for years, not knowing how they were holding up and always on the edge, scared of receiving unfavorable news in the form of uniformed soldiers knocking on your door with their hats removed. Any parent would have been hysterical, biting off their nails, emoting.

But for six years, Queen Storme had had to remain composed, be the elegant matriarch of the country, proud that her daughter was one of the many brave soldiers fighting for this country. Inside, the daily reminder that Lexa wasn't home, was off somewhere in a war-torn country, sleeping next to lethal weapons and operating said weapons, facing off insurgents and terrorists. The rulers of this country had to deal with the thought that their child was risking her life every day, and it was highly likely that they would never see her again – and they were not allowed to show it.

Lexa could still remember the looks on her parents' faces after she had woken up from the long surgery upon landing back in her homeland. She could count with two hands how many times she had seen them so vulnerable and transparent with their emotions – that was one of those times. Her mother unabashedly broke into hysterical tears when she saw Lexa open her eyes; her father had tears clinging to the edges of his eyes, holding onto his wife and clasping his daughter's hand like a lifeline.

She pulled the two of them to a sharp stop, right in front of a rather large painting of her great grandmother. Ignoring the piercing gaze of the woman that her father had once described as the most rigid human being he had ever countered, she patted her mother's hand looped through her elbow and offered a smile that was as reassuring as possible.

"I'm retired, Mom."

Storme locked onto Lexa's eyes, as discerning as ever. "But you want to, don't you?" she whispered, her voice pained and low. "You want to go back."

Those words sounded like a lightning strike, terrifying and loud and so much like a gunshot. Lexa had to stop herself from jumping in place. Instead, she stood there, frozen and entirely wanting to be anywhere but here right now.

She would have said yes one month ago. That she wanted to go back to the hell that she had come back from – at least the gunshots were real; at least when she woke up in cold sweat, she wasn't the only one; at least when she started awake from her sleep, there were real combatants attacking outside their doorstep; at least she would have a reason for her current state of messed up fucking state of mind.

One month ago, she couldn't talk to anyone, or she couldn't bring herself to talk to anyone. It was her burden to bear alone. Until one night one month ago, she ran into the doctor who literally kept her life from hanging on a thread. And everything changed. Sure, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. Nightmares were still there, but she could sleep through them now. She was swimming regularly. She met a girl, a fantastic and wonderful and fabulous girl.

"No," she told Storme. Her sister was getting married. Her brother was, possibly, hopefully, dreadfully, falling in love. Her parents were right there, still alive and still the best models of love in Lexa's life. Clarke was a few miles away, doing her doctor things while also taking time away to text Lexa in intervals. And they were all here for Lexa, unwavering in their care and support. "I don't want to be anywhere but here, Mom."

Her mother inhaled, shivering and weak. "You promise?"

Lexa released their arms from one another and wrapped hers around her mother's shoulder. It was awkward, given that the older woman was taller than her – whoever said that children would always be taller than their mothers were lying – but she tried anyway. And she pressed a kiss to Storme's temple.

For someone who had never been a very tactile person, much less so after her honorable discharge, this was as much of a promise as the Woods matriarch could get from her beloved daughter.

The sun was already climbing down the horizon, emitting an orange glow that spanned over the edges of buildings and covering the meager humans with its power for a few more minutes until it could serve them again in twelve hours. She had never been fond of orange as a color, but she supposed it was only because she considered a color so majestic that it only fit the sun.

Lexa would love to capture this moment forever, be it via photograph or drawing. The gigantic and incredibly hot star hovering over the hospital building, almost threatening in its presence, casting the most majestic glow over its expanse, while Clarke walked out of the building, hair pulled up into a ponytail, dressed in a blue button down shirt with four buttons undone and a pair of sweatpants.

Lexa wanted to look at this forever.

But alas, the veteran had not a single artistic bone in her body. She was good with submachine guns and knives and policy papers, but asking her to do anything artsy at all would be a bad call. Hell, she once had a tutor who resigned because her handwriting was too chicken scratch for him to decipher.

Men, so damn weak.

"You're getting very brave these days," Clarke commented, trying to sound tough but failing as her smile widened.

The brunette hummed and returned with her own smile. "I don't know. I guess sleeping with a pretty blonde doctor does that to me."

Clarke's eye twitched a little. She lifted her hand to tug the bill of Lexa's cap higher for better access as she leaned forward to capture Lexa's very prepared lips. They remained there for several prolonged seconds, with Lexa's back leaning against a wall and Clarke leaning into her – just two girls kissing each other outside of a hospital, no big deal, not like one of them was the princess of the country or something.

One of the brunette's hands curled softly behind the doctor's head, and the other held firmly onto Clarke's hip. She slotted one knee between Clarke's legs and was not ashamed in her firmness to place it exactly where she knew would elicit the most virile response from her companion. Just as anticipated, Clarke jolted slightly and drew back, panting, pupils blown, and a chastising frown at the bridge of her nose.

"I'm not sure the people will do well to their princess conducting public indecency," she managed between gulps of desperate air. Still, her hands never left Lexa's waist and she didn't exactly step back to get away from Lexa's thigh. The princess counted that as a win. "You're doing this on purpose."

Lexa glanced shortly at the lips she already missed terribly and then back up at the eyes that she missed equally. "Am I?"

Clarke scoffed and reached up to help readjust Lexa's cap, then she untangled herself from the mess of limbs that Lexa had deliberately dragged her into. Note that the brunette definitely did not whine in complaint at the loss of contact, and it definitely did not get cut short when Clarke bravely slid their hands together and their fingers locked together.

Her heart beat a wild pang against her chest at the weirdly comfortably intimate contact and she looked down at their joined fingers – pale against tan and one more riddled with calluses than the other. She looked up at Clarke again, and found herself staring at an unfamiliar doubtful look on Clarke's face.

Lexa smiled and squeezed her hand before tucking their hands into her jacket pocket. Then they started walking out of the perimeters of the hospital, where Gustus was dutifully waiting, puffing on his cigarette. Lexa paused in her steps and stared at him as he nonchalantly pushed away from the streetlight he was leaning against, still smoking.

"How many sticks have you had today?" she questioned.

Gus raised his brows and had the audacity to smirk as he pointedly looked at Lexa and Clarke's hands before looking back up at her.

She felt her mouth open as the disbelief started to take hold. Next to her, Clarke snorted and quickly hid away her mirth by covering her own mouth, willfully tilting into Lexa's weight as she hid her face from the giant bodyguard. Lexa threw the doctor a look that translated her incredulity at the blonde's obvious betrayal.

Narrowing her eyes at her bodyguard, she looked at him in a way that told him they would be having a discussion when they were alone.

"Stop laughing," she chastised Clarke as they started walking again.

Clarke, instead of obeying – because no one listened to Lexa anymore these days, apparently – just snorted louder. "I'm sorry. I just can't believe you got blackmailed by your bodyguard."

"It wasn't – that wasn't blackmail!" Lexa exclaimed, sending a dirty glance at Gustus behind them.

Clarke hummed. "It looked like blackmail to me."

Lexa huffed. "To blackmail a princess is treasonous."

"Doesn't change the fact that he did, in fact, blackmail you."

Lexa held on tighter to Clarke's hand in her jacket pocket. She nudged into Clarke's shoulder and pouted. "This is wrong on so many levels. Where is the respect?"

"Like I said, I've seen your innards."

"Still not sexy."

One of her legs was just inserted into the pair of jeans that had been resolutely abandoned at the apartment door when Clarke finally stirred from her slumber. The edges of Lexa's lips extended at the sight, but she didn't pause in zipping up her jeans and looking around the room to look for her bra.

Clarke released a long moan as she stretched in her bed, the blanket falling down below her chest at her movement. Hoarse and bare and so fucking sexy – Lexa wanted very much to strip down again and pounce on the blonde, but the clock on the bedside table glowed with the numbers to indicate the time, reminding Lexa of the secrecy of this relationship and her parents were probably keeping watch for her return.

"Oh," Clarke voiced as soon as she was conscious enough to comprehend what Lexa was up to. "Wow, were you planning to just sneak out like that?" It came out meant as a tongue in cheek comment, but Lexa, who had become so attuned to Clarke's mannerisms, could hear the hint of insecurity.

She clipped on her bra and picked up her discarded flannel shirt from the floor, smiling at Clarke while simultaneously enjoying the way the full scope of the moonlight, unhindered by the blinds, cast over the blonde. Truly, Lexa wasn't sure she had ever seen anything so beautiful. Once again, she would really love to have some kind of artful bone in her body.

"You were out like a light," she said as she started to button up her shirt.

"And?"

"I was going to leave you a note."

"A note, huh?"

"Stop it," she admonished as she started tucking her shirt into her jeans. "You know it's not like that."

"Sorry," Clarke muttered, pouting a little. She had pulled herself to sit against the headboard of her bed, the blanket pulled up to her chest. Lexa stood across the room, just a few feet away from the foot of the bed, and let the woman take her in. "Usually, I'm the one sneaking out at night."

Lexa narrowed her eyes, feeling the unpleasant flare of jealousy flaring up in her chest. "Usually, huh?"

Clarke grinned. "Was that what I sounded like?"

"What?"

"All…jealous."

"I wasn't jealous."

"Uh huh." Clarke took one long look at Lexa and hummed appreciatively. "Have I ever told you that you are very pleasing to the eyes?"

"Well, you did say something to that effect the first time we saw each other again at the park," Lexa remarked mischievously, smirking.

"Okay, get out." Clarke emphasized her point by flinging a point in Lexa's direction, though it bounced against the chest a few feet away and bounced back onto the carpet.

"Awful aim, Dr. Griffin."

She took note of the framed letter sitting on the mantel over the chest, moving over to pick it up and have a closer observation. She stared at her own penmanship, still stark and blue over the paper that she had requested from one of the entourage that her brother had brought along that day.

At that point in her military career, Lexa had already begun to get nightmares. Hauntings from her dead colleagues. Sleeping pills helped, but those things made her overslept more times than she deserved. The habit of taking walks at night to stay awake definitely had not only started when she came back to Polis. It wasn't a big deal, that habit; her comrades had been doing the same thing. The base was always swarming with quiet soldiers shaking from their own ghosts at night.

That night was probably the only night she could actually drift off to sleep without meaning to, and without any nightmares to boot. She could easily attribute that to the morphine, but she was quite certain that Clarke's presence played a huge role in that. And then she had been awoken rather rudely by her brother and his entourage of medical and military officers marching in, ready to take her home regardless of her protests.

She was lucky that they even let her delay their departure by writing that letter and making sure that the boss at the hospital would deliver it to Clarke. Lexa would have loved to get to see Clarke again before she left – she made that pretty clear in the letter – but hey, the memories of the doctor would suffice for now.

"You have a way with words," Clarke commented.

When Lexa turned around, she was already dressed in a loose shirt she dug up somewhere with a pair of panties. She sighed in disappointment. Well, good thing too, since she definitely would never leave if Clarke had gotten out of bed naked. She placed the letter back where it belonged and picked up her cap from the floor, tugging in onto her head.

"I have to go."

Clarke nodded. "Be safe."

Once she was close enough, Lexa surreptitiously reached out, curled her arm around Clarke's waist, and pulled their bodies close together. The blonde heaved a surprised yelp that was so low in her throat that goosebumps rose over Lexa's skin.

She cradled Clarke's cheek with a hand and went in for a long and lasting kiss. The same kiss that had her toes curling and the bumps on her skin more visible. She made sure to swipe her tongue over Clarke's lower lip and elicit a dirty moan from the blonde before drawing back with a satisfied smile but still hungry lips.

"Consider that my note," she cheekily said.

Clarke huffed and groaned at the same time. "You are the most unfair person on the face of the earth."

"As if," she said, retreating out the bedroom door as she walked backwards. "You're the unfair one with that face."

Lexa walked out of the apartment with Clarke's surprised laughter ringing in her ears.

The coffee this morning was decent. Good, even. Then again, for someone who had spent a little more than six years drinking bitter dredges from a thermos, she couldn't complain. She'd take any coffee over that which she had to drink in the army.

Rachel was waiting outside the office while she was ruminating on bad coffee and heading over from a hearty breakfast with her family. Yes, she had made a point to finally start joining them for breakfast and get the day going. Niylah had rightfully pointed out that ditching her family during breakfast wasn't the best idea if she was trying to actively rebuild their bond. So she started to join her family after her swimming session instead of slinking away to have her own breakfast in her office.

It was great advice. She enjoyed getting to sit at the table and engage with her family without talking about work. Getting to see their grumpy faces in the morning and tease them about it. Sharing secret looks with different members whenever they thought of an inside joke. That was probably also why the coffee tasted good this morning.

However, unlike the usual peppy Rachel that often had Lexa wondering whether she made the right choice in hiring the girl, this Rachel seemed jumpy and maybe even scared, dare Lexa observed.

Lexa slowed down and narrowed her eyes at her secretary, suspicious and worried at the same time. She leaned on her cane. "Is everything okay?"

"Good morning, Your Highness."

Even that came out squeaky and completely out of character. This had Lexa narrowing her eyes into slits. "Yes, good morning. Is everything okay?"

Rachel bit her lower lip for a moment, eyes flitting about, landing on the empty armor at the opposite wall, then back at her superior. "I just want to say that I followed your instructions and told him everything you said. Verbatim. As you told me to." She swallowed and shook her head. "So it's not my fault, Your Highness."

"What isn't your fault, Rachel?"

The young girl sighed and handed over the newspaper tucked under her arm. Lexa didn't exactly have to search to find what exactly Rachel was talking about.

There she was – a photo of her in fatigues with a submachine gun slung over her shoulder, her hair pulled up into a tight bun as per regulation, leaning over a strategy table along with the other soldiers in her unit. She recalled this very moment very clearly. It was just a month after she made Commander, and they were preparing to invade an insurgent base to the north of their base.

It was the first time she ever had to take control of an op and ensure its success. Safe to say that she was appropriately nervous for the op. The good thing was that it was carried out successfully – they managed to take out the insurgent group without hurting the civilians. In fact, the next morning, she and a few other men from her unit had joined the kids in a game of soccer.

But that wasn't the point of this article. Somehow, just by seeing that photo in large print, almost taking over two thirds of the page, she already knew who made this happen. And not even the memories of this op could assuage her anger as she took in the headline.

Princess Lexa Considering a Visit to Libya for Service Day

As she read the article, her fingers tightened over the edge of the paper. Her brain scanned the incorrect words, the false conjecture, the fake claims, and the quotes that she didn't even remember speaking, all printed out neatly and nicely on the first page of – she glanced up – Polis Sentinel.

Once she had read the last word of the article, she snapped it down and sent a glare at her secretary, who cowered away. To save Rachel the fear, she redirected her glare towards the empty armor. Every bit of her wanted to swing her cane at the thing and topple it over. But that would be pointless – and it wouldn't do her condition any good.

As the two of them stood there, Lexa considered her options – the best way to navigate this mess without giving into a public questioning or create chaos for the relationship between the monarchy and the government. She might be the princess, but she had learned enough about this country's governance to understand that her role in the government only went so far. If she wasn't the monarch, she had no say, basically.

Well, she wasn't supposed to have a say.

She straightened at that, glanced down at that increasingly irritating photo again, and started marching down the hallway, her limp more prominent in her rush. Regardless, she had to fix this. She had to find the man who had the power to fix this.

After all, she had promised her mother that she wasn't going back. And Lexa had lived her whole life keeping her word. A few lies told by the irresponsible Minister of Defense Department were not going to change that.

One thing for sure: she was going to need barrels of coffee.

what? there has to be drama at some point