Leaving Home
Song : One Day by Alex Hedley
Thursday morning, and Lexa’s phone was buzzing on her night’s stand. She growled, grabbed her phone, and left the room. Ayden had spent the night on the couch with her, and she didn’t want to wake him since it was still early. She looked at her phone. Titus was calling. Lexa rolled her eyes at the time; 6am. What the fuck did he want at that time?
“Lexa Woods”, she said on the phone.
“Sorry to disturb you this early Heda”, Titus immediately apologized, “but you need to get here quickly”.
Lexa frowned. What was going on?
“What is it, Titus? I told you I wasn’t going to come to work for a day or two”, she growled. She didn’t want to leave Ayden and Clarke on their own here; what if something happened when she was away?
“It’s better for you to come here Heda”, Titus said again, “it’s complicated to explain”.
“Tell me”, Lexa snapped.
She didn’t like Titus, and now that he was making mysteries about something apparently important, her patience was limited.
“Did you see today’s newspaper Heda?” Titus asked instead.
Lexa frowned again, and went to her post box, taking the newspaper from it. Since she was basically the owner of the newspaper, she always had one waiting for her in her post box.
Her eyes looked at the first page, and Lexa gasped when she read the headlines.
“Titus, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Call for an urgent meeting”, the brunette ordered.
She hung up the phone and rushed into her apartment, to find a worried Ayden looking everywhere.
“Yexa, I thought you left”, he said with his bottom lip slightly shaking.
“No, I just went to check the post box”, Lexa answered, taking her coat.
She saw Ayden frown, of course. She threw the newspaper on the counter.
“I have to go to work for an hour, maybe two”, Lexa explained while she took a piece of paper and a pen, “I won’t be long I promise”.
Ayden slowly approached her, tugging at her t-shirt.
“Yexa, are you leaving us?” he asked.
Lexa’s heart broke at the sound of his voice. She knelt at his eyes’ level.
“Listen to me. You’re in my home Ayden, I’m not leaving you, I have to go for a while, but you can wait for me here, and when I’ll be back, maybe we could cook some pancakes for breakfast?”
Ayden’s eyes widened, and he clapped his hands.
“Pancakes with maple syrup Yexa?”
“Obviously”, Lexa laughed at the boy’s reaction.
Ayden then nodded, and released Lexa’s shirt.
“Ok buddy, this is for your mommy when she wakes up”, Lexa said giving him the piece of paper she had wrote a note to Clarke on, “You’ll give it to her?”
“Yeah I will!” Ayden nodded, taking the note from Lexa’s hands.
Lexa smiled, and got outside, Gustus’ car already waiting for her. Of course Titus had sent her driver to pick her up, and if Lexa wasn’t in such a rush, she would have ignored him. But she needed to go to work really quickly, and Gustus would do the job quite fine.
Ten minutes later and Lexa was rushing into her office. Of course Titus was there, the newspaper on his hand.
“What the meaning of this, Titus?” Lexa snapped.
On the newspaper, we could read “Lexa Woods running for Mayor, winning the homeless people with sweaters”. Below the headlines, there were pics of Lexa; we couldn’t properly see the faces, but Lexa knew that picture had been taken when she had given the sweater to Ayden, and another one had been taken when she had been talking with Clarke while Ayden was playing football. Lexa was seeing red.
“Why is this piece of shit telling I’m running for Mayor, Titus?” She growled.
Titus bowed his head. He had helped and taught a lot of CEOs, but Lexa was still intimidating.
“We talked about this Heda, and...”
“No we didn’t talk about it! You said to me some people would vote for me, and I told you I didn’t feel like it!”
Lexa was fuming. A month ago, Titus had informed her some people would have wanted her to run for Polis’ Mayor, because she was the most influent woman on the whole city after all, and if someone could change things, it would be her. But Lexa hadn’t really agreed to the idea; being CEO was already too much for Lexa most of the time –even if she always looked like she was handling this perfectly- she couldn’t be both CEO and Mayor of the city.
“Did you give that information to the press, or not?” Lexa asked, tightening her teeth.
“No Head I did not”, Titus answered, “I didn’t talk about it with anyone, except...”
He stopped talking, like he had figured something out, and Lexa noticed it, as Titus was lowering his head in what looked like shame.
“Who did you talk about this with?” Lexa growled.
As Titus wasn’t saying a word, Lexa got closer to him.
“Answer me”.
“I talked about it with Nia”, he confessed, “when she came to the meeting you missed”.
Lexa’s eyes widened. Of course he had talked to Nia about it, and she was a hundred percent sure Nia White had been the one to tell the press.
“Why?”
“She engaged the conversation, and wanted to know if you were going to run for Mayor”, Titus answered, still bowing his head not to meet Lexa’s look, “and I told her you were thinking about it”.
Lexa sat at her desk, taking her head on her hands. She was figuring Nia White’s entire plan. It was a great move, telling the press Lexa was going to run for Mayor, because now she would have big trouble denying it. And Nia knew being Coalition Corp.’s CEO was a lot to handle, and that Lexa wasn’t probably capable of doing both. She wants me to screw everything up by having too much stuff to handle at the same time, Lexa thought. So she can take my place.
“If I may ask Heda, who are those people?” Titus carefully asked.
Lexa’s eyes widened when she remembered the people on the picture. Clarke and Ayden. Their faces were blurred, but Lexa knew it was them. Who else could it be anyway?
“They are friends of mine”, Lexa sighed, not wanting to give away more information to Titus, especially if he was going to tell Nia White all about it.
Titus nodded, and thought well not to add anything. Lexa was clearly pissed, and he didn’t want to upset her more than she already was.
“Is everyone here?” Lexa asked, talking about the people waiting for her in her meeting room.
Titus nodded again, and the both of them entered the room.
On Lexa’s loft, Clarke was beginning to wake up, feeling a little thirsty. Like the morning before, she had to take five minutes to remember where she was. At Lexa’s.
She sat herself on the bed, taking a look at her surroundings. Lexa wasn’t here, neither was Ayden. Clarke frowned, not hearing a single noise from the living-room. She got up, and walked into the living-room. No one was here, and Clarke frowned even more. Then, she heard a small voice talking from another room, at the opposite of the one she had been sleeping in. She silently approached the room, and smiled when she saw who was inside.
Ayden was lying on his back, playing with the covers and his feet, building a tent or something, making small noises with his mouth.
“Hey honey”, Clarke gently said.
“Mommy!” Ayden jumped out of the bed, throwing himself at Clarke, who laughed when her son hit her full force.
“Did you sleep well?” Clarke asked him. She hadn’t noticed when he had gotten out of bed.
“Yeah”, he said, “I slept here with Yexa and this bed is nice!”
Clarke frowned. Weren’t they in Lexa’s bedroom when she fell asleep?
“You slept with Lexa?”
“Yes!”, Ayden confirmed, “you were putting your hair on my face and it was tickling me! So I got up and came with Yexa!”
Clarke was surprised her son had slept with Lexa, because he wasn’t like him to sleep with someone else than his mother, but she didn’t add anything else about that subject.
“Ayden, where is Lexa?” she asked instead.
The boy’s eyes widened remembering something and he pulled Clarke towards the kitchen, handing her the piece of paper Lexa had given him an hour earlier. Clarke curiously took it, and began to read it.
Clarke if you wake up,
I went out to go to work for a couple hours, I’ll be back soon.
Lexa.
Clarke was almost glad Lexa left a note at her attention, but then she spotted something on the counter. She took a look at it, and Clarke gasped, the way Lexa had done it before, reading the headlines on the newspaper. Clarke recognized Ayden and herself on the pictures, at the exact moment Lexa had gave her son a sweater.
Clarke’s head was spinning while she was reading the headlines for the thousandth time. Lexa Woods. She hadn’t recognize her, but now that she had seen her real name, she almost face-palmed herself for not knowing who Lexa really was. Octavia and Raven had talked a hundred times about Lexa Woods, and anyone in the city knew her face. Why Clarke hadn’t recognized her the second she had seen her? Right now, her heart was aching. All that Lexa had done for them had been about pity. Maybe it had been to win votes for her campaign. Suddenly, the blonde was feeling sick, but not because of her fever.
She angrily took the pen Lexa used and wrote something under Lexa’s words. She spotted her bags in a corner of the living-room, and tossed Ayden’s and her dirty clothes into the bags.
“Come on Ayden put your shoes on”, she said.
Ayden frowned, not understanding why he had to put his shoes on. Lexa had said it was ok to walk bare foot. Seeing that Ayden wasn’t doing what she had told him to do, the blonde took Ayden by the hand and sat him on the couch, putting the shoes on his feet.
“Mommy why do I need shoes? Where is Yexa?” Ayden said a pout on his lips.
“Lexa is gone and we have to go home now”, Clarke snapped, clearly angry towards the brunette.
Clarke tried to reach Ayden’s hand to make him go the front door, but he pulled away, putting both his hands behind his back, taking a few steps away from her mother.
“Mommy we can’t go”, Ayden whispered with a teary voice. The boy knew something was wrong, because ten minutes earlier her mother had been happy, and now she had that angry face she was making when Finn had done something wrong.
Clarke tried to reach him another time, but he suddenly ran away from her.
“I don’t want to go!” Ayden yelled into the apartment.
The blonde was on the verge of screaming. She just wanted to go out of here as fast as possible. She didn’t want to owe anything to Lexa, and her son was making things extremely difficult.
Ayden ran around the whole apartment, and came back to his mother with the note on his hand. Clarke almost face-palmed herself. Ayden knew how to read, and he had obviously read the note Lexa left and the words Clarke had written under it, even if he probably didn’t understand all the words. He looked at his mother, his bottom lip shaking.
“Mommy, Yexa is coming back. She is a good person. She said we would eat pancakes. We can’t leave”.
Clarke gritted her teeth together to keep herself from yelling at Ayden.
“Ayden, we can’t stay here. We don’t know Lexa. She doesn’t care about us. She pities us.”
“That’s not true”, Ayden began to cry, “and she likes me”.
Clarke knew Lexa would be back soon, and she didn’t want to be there when Lexa would come back. She put her bags on her shoulders, taking Ayden’s hand in hers by force.
“Ayden. Lexa is not your mother”, Clarke said, “I am. She is not your father. Finn is. You know that. And now we have to go back home”.
Ayden’s eyes widened in fear.
“No, mommy please, no, I don’t want to see him”, he cried even more.
Clarke was about to explode. Ayden had always be an easy child, why was he making a big deal out of this now? She took him in her arms, heading outside, banging Lexa’s door behind them. Secretly she hoped Lexa would be back soon, because she didn’t want somebody to come through the unlocked door and rob her.
She quickly disappeared at the corner of the street, praying they wouldn’t meet with Lexa. Clarke stopped once she reached the corner, taking a second to look back, with a very confused Ayden sniffing and crying in her arms. Maybe she shouldn’t have run. Maybe Lexa was really trying to help them. Hell even Ayden trusted her, him who didn’t want to talk to anyone except of her mother. Clarke sighed. She would have used you for politics and God knows what else, Clarke tried to persuade herself. But she wasn’t fooling anyone, not even herself; there was something buried deep inside, which was making her feel like leaving home. But she shook her head, because she didn’t even know where home was anyways. Finally able to move, she began to head toward their house, a hint of regret deep within her. Farewell Lexa, she thought.