Chapter Text
Letter 1
September 15, 2016
(one month post break-up)
Lexa,
People always say that once you’ve found your true love you should never let them go, that no obstacle is too great to overcome. Those people are either naive or they’ve never been in a long distance relationship. But maybe there is something true to what they say, because I will never let you go. I never could. Hence why I’m writing this letter.
You fell asleep while on the phone with me for the last time ever just over an hour ago and the finality of that thought is what is keeping me awake. The finality of you asleep in our bed while I am in my childhood bed. You were right though, it’s not fair to either of us that we keep calling each other. We’re broken up and now we’re just delaying the inevitable. I guess old habits die hard.
I’m trying not to think about the way your hair is still damp from showering, clinging to your neck. When you wake up, it will still be slightly wet. It’ll be curly and bushy and you’ll swear as you try and fix it. You’ll blame your dad for your genes, but you’ll be glad you look so much more like Robert than Kimberly.
Eventually, you’ll get ready for the day and continue on. You’ll continue on with your life. You’ll start press soon for your movie. You’ll start recording your new album soon. Then you’ll go on tour again. You’ll be amazing. People will love you more and more each day.
Please let them see you. Let them see past Alexandria. Let them see Lexa. Let them know that you’re not just some abstract figure. You’re a girl still learning to live her life. Still learning to trust and to love. You are more than anyone knows. Don’t be afraid to be yourself and to let others in.
Just because we aren’t together, that doesn’t mean I will ever stop caring about you. I never had the chance to tell you this, but I believe in soulmates. I believe that people can fall in love multiple times, but there will always be that person that holds a part of your heart forever. You are that person for me. And I hope you know that. And I hope one day you will read this and that we will have found each other again. In the meantime I will wait. And I will live. And I will love from afar.
Love From Virginia,
Clarke
PS: I know the plane tickets are a birthday present from you. Thank you.
Clarke Griffin sat on her bed in her still-unfinished apartment as she went through the contents of the bag that had stayed by her side for the four years she’d traveled around the world. It felt strange that the four years that had changed her entire view on the world could be condensed into the contents of one backpack, but really, Clarke knew that the letters were more than just tales of her adventures wine tasting in Italy and getting lost in Austria. The letters folded into individual envelopes each held the promise Clarke had made to the woman she loved.
Six years ago, Clarke Griffin had borrowed a phone from a stranger and had dialed what she’d believed was her best friend’s phone number. She’d dialed the wrong number and it had been the best mistake she’d ever made. She’d accidentally dialed the number of another girl, a girl with whom she’d spent hours on the phone with over the course of two months before she finally met her in person. A girl who turned out to be the famous singer, Alexandria Woods. Clarke and Lexa had spent the following months falling more and more in love, getting engaged just under a year after they started dating. They were engaged for four months when the stress of Lexa acting on location halfway around the world got to be too much and they’d ended their relationship. It had broken both their hearts.
The couple had made a promise though.
Clarke had promised to write letters to Lexa for as long as she still loved her and the hundreds of envelopes in her backpack were proof that her love had not died. The status of the envelopes, however, was proof that Clarke wasn’t the most organized person in the world.
For four years Clarke had traveled the globe, writing letters whenever she felt the need to tell Lexa something. She would write a letter, seal it in an envelope and date it before hiding it away in the backpack. Needless to say, the hundreds of letters were not organized in the slightest.
Sitting on her bed with the hundreds of letters surrounding her, Clarke felt slightly overwhelmed at the task at hand. She knew that she had to organize the letters chronologically. She’d gotten lucky the night before when she’d found the first letter right away and read it over the phone.
She’d read it to the woman who still had her heart. The woman who chance had forced her back into contact with. And now she had twenty-four hours to make sure they were all organized.
Not yet ready to begin the task at hand, Clarke withdrew her phone and opened to her contacts, flipping to the contact that had been updated the night before with its new number. Lexa Woods. Her contact photo had been the same for five years, a selfie Lexa had taken holding up the engagement ring Clarke had given her the week after Lexa had proposed to Clarke.
Clarke’s finger hovered over the text message button for several moments before she swiped away from Lexa’s contact and opened up another instead. She found Octavia (Blake) Forest’s phone number and dialed it. The woman picked up on the second ring.
“Look who finally feels bad about screening my calls all day yesterday,” the woman huffed. Clarke thought she could hear the sounds of a screaming child in the background.
“Is that my godson in the background?” Clarke responded. “Because it sounds like you’re ignoring the cries of a precious child just to hear potential gossip.”
“He’s fine, I just put him down for his nap and he wasn’t too happy about it. He’ll be asleep in minutes I’m telling you,” Octavia explained. “And wait, what is this about potential gossip? Are you just taunting me because my contact with anyone over the age of twenty months is limited to my husband who complains non-stop about dirty diapers?”
“He complains about them because you refuse to change them,” Clarke laughed in return. Both Lincoln and Octavia were still working, despite having an twenty-month-old and a seven-month-old, but somehow Octavia had managed to work her schedule as a personal trainer around her children’s bathroom schedules.
“It’s not my fault that the boys seem to shit around him more than me,” Octavia deadpanned in return. “But that’s beside the point, I need to know. Gossip? How is New York? How did the meeting about that mural go?”
“Funny you ask,” Clarke laughed into the receiver. “You’ll never guess who the mural is for.”
“Who? Is it someone we know? Someone famous? Was it one of the Real Housewives of New York? Tell me!”
“Costia Crewe and her wife, for their daughter,” Clarke explained.
“No. Fucking. Way.”
“Do you normally swear in front of your children?” Clarke asked, disapprovingly.
“Meh,” Octavia responded. “The little one can’t understand and the other one is used to it by now. Which you’d know, if you ever visited. But again, not the point. That’s crazy. So how’d it go?”
“It was fine actually,” Clarke admitted truthfully. “Surprisingly, it wasn’t awkward at all. Her wife also seems really sweet. But, actually, that wasn’t the weirdest thing that happened to me yesterday.”
“There’s something weirder than finding out that your new client is your ex-fiance’s ex-girlfriend?” Octavia scoffed.
“Yes,” Clarke affirmed strongly. “I uhmm…” Clarke paused, unsure of how to break the news to her best friend. “I sort of accidentally called Lexa.” There was silence on the other end of the line, causing Clarke to turn to rambling. “Before you ask how I could possibly accidentally call her, I swear there’s a reason. You see Costia switched your phone number with Lexa’s in my phone after I said I had to call you back, so then I went to call you back last night and instead I called Lexa.”
“Okay,” Octavia finally responded calmly. “What did you say when you figured out it wasn’t me?”
“Well, I didn’t actually figure it out right away, just because I went right into a rambling speech before she could even get a word in.”
“Naturally.”
“But then the conversation flowed, and oh my god, O, it was like I was twenty-four again and talking to her for the first time.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“It was the best possible scenario for me calling her seemingly out of the blue. We only talked for probably two minutes before we hung up.”
“You’re right, it did get weirder,” Octavia confirmed.
“Then I called her back about five minutes after we hung up.”
“Clarke Elizabeth Griffin! What the hell?! Why did you do that? And please don’t try and pull some nonsense on me that you’re still in love with her. You literally haven’t spoken to her since the day you broke up five years ago.”
“So that’s the thing,” Clarke spoke awkwardly. “That’s not entirely true.”
“I swear, I don’t even know who you are.”
“It wasn’t for that long though,” Clarke insisted. “We just sort-of spoke almost every day for a few weeks following the break up.”
“I honestly don’t even know why I’m so surprised. You guys were always so gross.”
“I guess,” Clarke sighed. She wasn’t used to speaking about Lexa with other people. Her friends and family knew better than to bring the girl up to her.
“So you called her back and then what?” Octavia prompted.
“We talked for a while. We’d uhm…we’d sort of made promises to each other to write letters to one another and not send them for as long as we still loved each other. It turns out neither of us actually stopped writing them. So now, I’m meeting her in person for the first time in almost five years tomorrow and we’re exchanging our letters and mine are all totally unorganized and I need to organize them and I’m freaking out because I don’t know if I’m ready to see her again, but at the same time all I want to do is see her again, but I’m scared. What if this whole letter thing was a stupid idea and we’ve just been living in denial for five years?”
Octavia quickly interrupted Clarke’s rant, having heard enough. “Okay, Clarke, here’s the thing. All I heard in that is that you and Lexa wrote love letters to each other over the course of five years despite not actually talking to each other in that time. Oh! And you never told me about them.”
“Uh, yes?” Clarke questioned cautiously.
“I swear you’re not even a real person,” Octavia huffed. “Either of you. You’re just a pair of idiots who don’t know how to exist without each other, even five years later. I’m hanging up now.”
“But!”
“Goodbye, Clarke.” The phone clicked and Clarke sighed. She knew going into the conversation that Octavia most likely wasn’t going to take any shit from her.
Having successfully distracted herself from the task at hand for a few minutes, Clarke realized she couldn’t put off sorting through the letters any longer and got started.
The next morning, Clarke was more nervous than she’d been in years. She was even more nervous than the time a friend she’d met on the road had convinced her it was perfectly safe to go to the site of an active volcano. It wasn’t.
She changed her outfit four times before she chided herself for being so ridiculous. She wasn’t going on a date. She was just going to meet up with her Lexa. No, that wasn’t right. Lexa, she was going to meet with Lexa. All they were doing was exchanging the letters, letting each other know what they had been doing for nearly five years. That was it.
She knew it was a ridiculous thought, but Clarke wondered if Lexa would recognize her. She knew she would, of course, but when Clarke came home after four years abroad her friends and family had all remarked on how different she looked. Of course, when she asked what about her was different, nobody had really been able to put their finger on it.
There was her hair of course. Traveling so often without knowing when she’d be able to shower next, Clarke had opted to cut her hair short. She’d channeled her inner Anne Hathaway and had a friend give her a pixie cut. It had been a little short at first, but once she’d moved back to the States it had grown in just enough that she kept getting compliments on it. She’d also finally admitted to the fact that her eyesight wasn’t the perfect 20-20 vision she’d claimed it was and had gotten glasses. Everyone had liked her glasses, but nobody had mentioned the fact that her glasses were eerily similar to Lexa’s, only dark green instead of brown.
But those were the obvious changes. Both Abby and Octavia had insisted there was something else, but neither could figure it out. Other than the tattoo that Clarke had hidden from sight, she wasn’t sure what they could have been referring to.
After finally settling on an old pair of jeans and a shirt she thought might once have belonged to a second or third cousin back in England, she grabbed the basket in which she’d organized all 656 letters in the order in which she’d written them. There were more than she’d expected. She knew there were weeks that she would write a letter every day, but there were also weeks during which she didn’t write Lexa a single letter.
Not wanting to risk the subway with her open-air basket, Clarke decided to walk to the place where she’d be meeting Lexa. It had taken them a while to decide on where would make the most sense to meet. Neither had wanted to worry about paparazzi, but the thought of returning to the apartment they had once shared was too much for Clarke.
Lexa had been the one to suggest the bookstore. She explained it was a place she’d found by accident several years previously. The store sold mostly second-hand books and other odds and ends. It was always quiet and Lexa had rarely ever seen another customer. In fact, she’d joked with the owner that she was keeping the store open herself with the amount of time she spent there. There was a small reading room in the back where they wouldn’t be disturbed.
Having finally gotten used to the layout of the city again over the past few months, it didn’t take long for Clarke to find the place. It was called Polis Books. Clarke liked the name, she wondered what its origin was.
When she pushed open the door to the small store in Soho, a bell chimed and she was greeted by an older woman with a kind smile.
“Welcome to Polis Books,” she greeted her. “I’m Vera. Let me know if there’s anything I can help you with.”
“Thanks,” Clarke grinned. “I’m just…I’m supposed to be meeting my friend here.”
“She’s back in the reading room,” Vera gestured behind her to a door.
“Thanks,” Clarke smiled in return. She took a deep breath before walking in the direction Vera had pointed her towards.
The room was small, but cozy, decorated with comforting colors. Bookshelves lined the walls and large plush chairs cluttered the room. Caddy cornered in the far back corner were two matching green chairs. Lexa sat on one of the chairs bouncing a leg nervously. She looked up as soon as Clarke walked in.
Clarke paused and Lexa’s leg stopped moving. Her bright green eyes bore into Clarke, still as striking even behind the girl’s glasses. She wore her hair in a long French braid that wrapped around over her shoulder. Her hair was longer than it was the last time Clarke had seen her. She quickly tried to remember the last time she’d seen Lexa on a magazine. She knew it was some time recently, but her brain was short-circuiting. All she could think about was the way Lexa’s brown leather jacket hinted at the strong arms it encased, the soft smile growing on her pink lips and the crisp, identical envelopes sitting in neat piles on the table in front of her.
Clarke wasn’t sure how much time passed, but she suddenly became aware that she was still standing in the doorway. She took a step forward and took a hand out from under the basket she was holding, she gave Lexa a little wave as she said, “Hi.”
Lexa’s smile grew and she immediately stood up. Clarke picked up her pace as she crossed the room. She placed her basket down on the table, careful not to disturb the piles Lexa had placed her letters in. The two looked at each other awkwardly before Clarke opened her arms.
Tension appeared to leave Lexa’s shoulders as she wrapped her arms around Clarke in return. The blonde sighed into the hug. Their embrace lasted just a beat longer than one between friends.
“You look really good,” Lexa finally spoke and Clarke nearly died at the sound of her voice. It was just as she’d remembered it.
“So do you,” Clarke responded honestly. “You look the same.” She subconsciously reached and took the end of Lexa’s braid between her thumb and forefinger, gently caressing it. Realizing what she was doing, she pulled her hand away and looked back up at Lexa. “You look the same in a good way. I mean. I mean you don’t look thirty at all, you still look twenty-five.”
Lexa laughed and Clarke began to wonder why it was she’d let herself live so long without hearing the woman’s laugh. The brunette then took her turn to speak. “You don’t look the same,” she laughed.
“I know,” Clarke grinned in return. She gestured to her hair then glasses as she spoke, “It’s the hair and glasses. I have contacts, but I usually only wear them when I’m painting.”
“No,” Lexa shook her head. Clarke looked at her in confusion so she clarified, “I mean yes, it’s the hair and glasses, but that’s not why you look different. You hold yourself differently. You’re standing straighter. I don’t know, I’m not sure I’m even making any sense. You just…you look more confident.”
It took all of Clarke’s will to not let her jaw drop open. She had managed to convey in a few words what Abby and Octavia must have been trying to figure out for months.
Lexa offered Clarke a tentative smile than gestured for her to sit. Clarke took her seat.
“So how are we going to do this?” Lexa asked.
“Well we could just give each other the letters and read them on our own, then after we’re done we can decide if there’s…if we want to…if we want to keep talking,” Clarke attempted to articulate her thoughts.
“We read our first letters over the phone,” Lexa stated. “And I know there are a lot of them. I wrote over six hundred, but I was thinking maybe we can read them to each other.”
Clarke looked into the girl’s green eyes, noticing how open they were, how there didn’t seem to be any walls up. The sight shocked her slightly.
“Okay,” she nodded. “So, our second letters then. Do you want to start?”
“Sure,” Lexa nodded. She reached toward the pile of envelopes closest to her and picked the one off the top. She carefully unsealed the envelope and unfolded the note from within. The brunette cleared her throat and a blush slowly crept up her neck as she began to speak, “Clarke. If you took the plane tickets I sent you, then you’re thousands of feet in the air, halfway across the Atlantic Ocean right now…”