All Sisters Have Their Troubles
The crew spent the next few weeks without really hearing from the medical intern. Between residency and her other work, Clarke would work for almost 60 hours at a time. If she wasn’t at work, she was sleeping. If she wasn’t sleeping, she was trying to find a safe place to park her car. The medical bills from her brain surgery and then helping Anya after her accident had completely wiped the prospective doctor out of her house and most of her belongings. She had kept a few things that she absolutely cherished and could not get rid of; whatever would fit in her trunk.
The fact that the four of them didn’t get to see the girl for a month was not for lack of trying. They (usually Octavia or Raven) would often reach out to her to ask her to come over or go out with them, but she was always busy with work. Finals were coming up for Octavia and Raven so they were preparing for that as well, meaning they didn’t have very many opportunities to go out anyways.
This break from things gave Lexa the time to deal with everything she found out about her ex-girlfriend’s circumstances. She had spent months after Clarke left her trying to get in contact with the blonde, but she had been adamant in ignoring everything. It wasn't until almost the second anniversary of the split that Lexa finally decided to back off. She was completely settled into her life with Octavia and Raven at that point and she was secure at the Grounder Law Firm with Gustus and it was clear that Clarke wasn't ready to talk to her yet.
The fact that Clarke was still in contact with Lexa's sister and that her sister knew how horrible Clarke’s conditions had been since they split had her livid. She had begged them all to find out anything they could about her ex, to see if she was alive and safe, to see if she was okay, to see if Lexa would be able to at least talk to her, and her own sister had been the one to hide that information from her. She spent so long trying to figure out if she wanted to confront the blonde soldier or just leave it.
About two weeks after Clarke was at their apartment Anya called Lexa and said she had another one-week break. She would be coming off of the base and wanted to let them know she would be coming by. Octavia and Raven spent a lot of time trying to help Lexa figure out whether or not she was going to confront Anya, but they all knew that no amount of preparation would actually prepare her for seeing her sister again after everything.
Anya showed up on the Wednesday night of Spring Break and it didn’t take long to figure out that Lexa was having difficulty dealing with her sister. They were all excited to see her, obviously, since she had been on base for the last few months. They didn’t have the convenience of being able to talk to her as regularly as they used to since she had moved up in rank. These days that she had off base were really the only time they were able to talk to her anymore.
They made dinner and spent the night hearing stories from the base. Anya would ask questions about what had been going on in their lives and Octavia and Raven had lots of stories about classes. Lexa would always manage to avoid the questions by either leaving the room to get something or bringing up a story from her two flatmates. It didn’t take Anya long to figure out that something was going on, and she had a feeling she knew what the problem was.
Clarke had called Anya a few days after running into Lexa in her apartment all those months ago. They had had a long conversation about how Clarke was going to handle seeing Lexa again, what she was going to tell Lexa and her flatmates about herself, whether or not she would be able to handle being back in their lives officially, etc. They had even spoken about whether or not Clarke was going to mention that she was still in contact with Anya. The soldier had a feeling that Lexa now knew.
Anya had been lucky enough to catch them on the tail end of their spring break. The law intern still had to go to work during the day, but Anya was able to go out with Raven and Octavia on Thursday and Friday. Lexa met them out for drinks Friday night and Anya knew she would have to talk to her sister soon. The green-eyed brunette was closed off and quiet the entire night, throwing a few snarky comments at her throughout their conversations. Lexa had never been much of a drinker so the other three girls were able to drink as much as they wanted, taking advantage of the time since none of them would be free again for a while.
Saturday afternoon, the three hungover women finally woke up to the smell of coffee. Anya and Raven ended up in the younger brunette’s bed while Octavia was in her own room. All three of them had glasses of water next to them when they woke up, along with a piece of charred toast. They were always grateful to live with a person like Lexa on days like these – she knew a shit ton about dealing with a hangover.
Raven and Octavia gathered enough energy to go to the library and start working on final assignments they had for their classes. They had asked Anya if she wanted to come with them, but the soldier had declined, telling them it was about time she had a conversation with her little sister. The two brunette students locked eyes and hoped beyond all hope this conversation didn’t get too bad for the two sisters.
Lexa walked into the apartment that evening to find her sister on the couch alone, plates of Mac-n-Cheese sitting with cups of Sprite. She had spent the day walking all over the city, trying to figure out how she was going to start this conversation with her sister. Standing there now, seeing grey eyes looking back at her expectantly, she had no idea what she was going to do.
Anya watched her sister stand in the doorway, staring at her for some time. Eventually the younger brunette started walking towards her slowly. She opened her arms slightly, giving Lexa the option to either sit in her embrace or on the other side of the sofa. She sighed when the younger girl snuggled into her arms, resting her head on Anya’s chest and circling her arms around her waist. She felt the way her sister released shuddering breaths and felt tears lightly seep into her shirt. Anya pressed her lips to the head of hair under her face and rested her own head there.
Lexa let herself be held by her sister, wishing she could stay like that forever. All of the emotions she was feeling towards her sister were rushing out in her tears and she couldn’t stop them. She still hadn’t completely processed the fact that her sister had hid so much from her and lied to her face for all these years. She didn’t know how to confront her about it either, knowing that her sister only ever did things she felt would be in Lexa’s best interest. Lexa burrowed her face further into the older blonde’s chest, calming down slightly as she felt Anya’s fingers running through her hair.
Anya sat up slightly as she felt her sister start to disentangle herself from her arms. Lexa turned away from her slightly and wiped at her face. Anya reached forward and grabbed a napkin, holding it out for her sister who took it with a sheepish smile before blowing her nose. Neither girl was usually particularly emotional so Anya hadn’t thought to get tissues.
They looked at each other for a minute after Lexa had successfully cleared her face of tears. They studied each other’s faces, trying to see which one of them would start talking and how.
Anya decided to take the leap and spoke softly, “You can ask any questions you want to, and I promise to answer them as honestly as I can.”
Lexa watched her sister’s face for a few more seconds, trying to sort through all of her own thoughts. There were so many questions that she wanted to ask the older girl, but she couldn’t bring herself to attack her with words. Ever since her last night with Clarke so many years ago, she did everything in her power not to let her words get away from her.
She hoped with everything she had that she would be able to control herself.
“How could you hide all this from me?”
The broken whisper made its way to Anya’s ears and she felt a pang in her chest, hating that she had brought that out in her sister. “I don’t know what all Clarke’s told you,” she said slowly.
Lexa’s breath hitched slightly. She hadn’t realized it until that second, but she had been hoping that her sister would say she had no idea what she was talking about. She had hoped that Anya would say that she had never lied to her or hidden anything this big from her. The fact that she knew what Lexa was talking about immediately tore away that last shred of hope that she had desperately been clinging on to.
“You knew. You knew where Clarke was this whole time and you knew what she was going through and you didn’t tell me.”
“It wasn’t my place to say anything. She asked me not to tell anyone.”
“Even once, in four years? You couldn’t give me a single hint that she was still around? Or that you were still talking to her? Or that she was back living on the streets? For fuck's sake, Anya, she almost died!”
“Lexa, none of that information was mine to tell. She asked me explicitly not to tell anyone, and there was no way I was going to betray her trust like that.” She looked into hard, broken, green eyes and said, “Tell me truthfully, honestly, if I had given you a single bit of information would that have been enough for you? Would you have been able to handle knowing that she was still in the city and not gone looking for her? Knowing she’s been living in her car for 3 years would you have been able to pass a parking lot at night and not think about whether or not she was sleeping there? And what would you have done if you knew about what happened? She begged me not to tell anyone she was in the hospital. After everything that girl has been through, she deserved to have someone actually listen to what she wasn't saying."
Anya softened a little bit, "Lexa, I didn’t tell you these things because I wanted you to be able to move on. I didn’t want you to spend this whole time looking everywhere twice, thinking you saw someone who didn’t want to be seen.”
“Yea well I haven’t moved on, An. It’s been five fucking years and I haven’t moved on.”
“You should, Lexa, you really should. She’s not the same Clarke she was when you guys were together, and she’s not the same Clarke she was before we met her. Everything that happened at the end of your guys' relationship broke her more than we could possibly imagine. Things happen and people change and I don’t know if either of you would be able to handle trying to get back together again.”
Lexa felt all of the breath leave her lungs, trying to process what her sister was really trying to say. She could tell things were different with Clarke, but she hadn’t thought about what all that might mean for the two of them. She hadn’t consciously thought about trying to reform a relationship with the medical intern, but hearing Anya talk like this she realized she had been hoping for it. Lexa would never forgive herself for what happened with Costia, or for letting Clarke walk out of their apartment that night, and she just wanted another chance to make things right.
Anya had always been their biggest supporter, saying that they were soulmates and meant to be and whatever other cheesy lines she could come up with about them. If Anya was now saying that they wouldn’t be able to handle being together, something serious must have changed in her ex-girlfriend. Lexa loved Clarke with everything in her and she couldn’t stand thinking about letting her walk away again.
Their last conversation raced back into Lexa’s head. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the story Clarke told all of them, talking about the words she had carved into her own skin again. That had been almost five years ago – who knows what else the girl had done to herself during that time. She felt tears fill her eyes again as she thought about the two newest words on her ex-girlfriend’s hips: “Despicable. Monster.” She looked back at Anya.
“She got into a fight and has permanent brain damage now. She’s living on the streets again. She started carving words into her skin again after we broke up, and you knew about it. I spent years, years, doing everything I could to make sure she would never feel the need to hurt herself like that again, and I’m the one that made her start again - ”
Anya interrupted, not letting her sister continue with that kind of thinking, “No way. You cannot blame yourself for anything that Clarke has been through in the last four years.”
“Anya, she told us that she thought about leaving because of how she reacted to Wallace showing up again. She said that me kissing Costia was the final thing that pushed her to think that she didn’t deserve me or love; that all of it made her think she was despicable and a monster. You can’t possibly tell me it had nothing to do with me. You can't tell me that I'm not at all responsible for her current situation.”
She raised her voice to speak over Anya’s interruption again, “You can’t tell me that I had no right to try and help her through that again. You can’t tell me that I shouldn’t have tried to help her with that. You should have told me what she was going through!”
Anya hadn’t heard her sister yell at her like that before. She couldn’t deny the fact that her sister was making legitimate points, though. God knows she could have used her help while dealing with everything Clarke was going through. Thinking about all the times she had failed to help Clarke in the last four years she felt herself get more aggressive as well. “I couldn’t tell you anything because she told me not to, Lexa. She asked me not to say anything and the last thing she needed was the only person left she felt she could trust telling her secrets to the person she was specifically trying to avoid.”
“You still shouldn’t hide things like that from me; I’m your sister!”
“SHE’S MY SISTER TOO.” How they ended up in a screaming match was beyond both girls. Anya jumped up from the sofa with her exclamation and stood there, chest heaving, hands burying themselves into her own hair and pulling, eyes wide and tear filled, looking down at her sister. She could see the stricken look in the green-eyed brunette's face, but she couldn't bring herself to calm down. “She’s my sister, too, Lexa, and I couldn’t take away her last shred of hope. The Clarke that called me three days after she left you, terrified of all of the people around her, shaking in fear because she hates crowds didn’t have anyone else she felt she could go to, needed someone that was completely in her corner, she was my sister. Lexa, you’re my sister and I love you, you know that. But Clarke’s my sister too. She was my sister that day you brought her to spend lunch with us and she didn’t say anything on her own for weeks. She was my sister the first time she told us what was happening in her foster home and spent the next three nights with us, terrified that that shithead Jaha would find her. She was my sister when Mom and Dad spent months trying to get a fostering license so she could actually be our sister. She was my sister when you two finally got together and every day after that. She was my sister when I got a phone call in the middle of the night that she had been taken to the hospital in critical condition and had to spend three days next to her bed, wondering about whether or not she would ever wake up.” Her voice had slowly trailed off to a whisper, but the conviction behind her words never wavered.
“Lexa, she’s my sister too, and I love her as much as I love you, and nothing can change that. It broke my heart to see her going through all of the things she went through during that time. When she told me what she had cut into her hip, God, I felt like she used the same knife to stab me in the heart. She said those words, and she really believed them, and there was nothing I could do. I had no way of spending enough time with her to make sure she didn’t hurt herself and she absolutely refused to let me help her get a place to stay. There was nothing I could do to help her in the ways I wanted to, the least I could do was keep my word and not betray her trust.”
Lexa watched her sister break down in front of her. She hadn’t seen her sister cry like this in her life – not even when their parents died. She knew it was wrong of her to minimize her sister’s relationship with the blue-eyed blonde. Lexa felt the tears making their way down her own face, and stood up from the sofa. She saw the way Anya’s shoulders were shaking as she paced and she felt horrible for making her usually strong and stoic sister cry.
Anya turned around only to find herself wrapped in her little sister’s arms. That feeling caused the dam to break even further and sobs made their way through her body. Anya cried for all of the times she had failed to protect her little sisters. She cried for the pain that they both had to go through. She cried for the shit that Clarke had had to go through in her life. She cried because she knew she should have done more to help Clarke, but she still didn't know what to do. She cried for the pain Lexa felt after her girlfriend left and the fact that she couldn’t do anything to help her.
Lexa let the tears run down her own face as she felt her sister start sobbing even harder. The law intern had been determined not to let her words mess things up again and she had failed, again.
“Anya I’m sorry. God, I'm so sorry. I know how important she is to you, and I shouldn’t have expected you to betray her confidence like that.” The green-eyed brunette pulled back to look her older sister in the eyes, wiping the tears off her face and allowing a soft smile to spread across her own, “I’m so sorry that you had to deal with all of that alone for so long. But you cannot possibly imagine how grateful I am that Clarke wasn’t alone. Knowing that she had someone like you by her side this whole time makes my heart a little lighter.”
Anya laughed then, choked and throaty, but amused all the same. "Excuse me, did I just hear the ever conceited Lexa Woods apologize for something?"
Both of them started laughing at that.
That was the sight Octavia and Raven walked in on: Anya and Lexa in each other’s arms, tears on both of their faces and emotions swirling around them. There was still tension in the room, but it was significantly less than it had been. The two brunettes felt slightly guilty for eavesdropping, but it had been difficult not to hear. They had arrived at the tail end of the sisters’ discussion/argument and had heard the girls yelling at each other from outside in the apartment building hallway. They had never heard either of the Woods sisters get so ferocious before, and they were slightly concerned about the condition the apartment would be in when they walked in.
“Oops! Sorry guys, are we interrupting something? We can come back later…?” Raven tried to play it off as though they had no idea what was going on. She understood how therapeutic a good breakdown could be, but she also knew that Anya would be uncomfortable showing so many emotions around others. She didn’t want the soldier to be uncomfortable with Octavia and Raven witnessing her breakdown.
The two sisters separated quickly, trying to give off a sense of normalcy. Obviously their friends had already seen them hugging and the tears on their faces, but they could at least act like everything was dandy from here on out.
The four girls ate pizza that night, and everything really did seem to go back to normal. The yelling between Anya and Lexa had been cathartic enough to release everything pent up between the two of them and they had both been able to deal with whatever had caused their earlier explosion.
They talked with Raven and Octavia all night, about whatever they thought the absent blonde wouldn’t mind them knowing about. Lexa told them about stories from when they were younger, shenanigans they got into with Indra and Lincoln. Anya told about how the younger three of the group always tended to get into trouble and Indra and Anya had to bail them out. Lexa told them about how it had taken Clarke forever to open up to all of them and be able to actually have fun. Anya told them all about how Clarke’s recent medical needs, coupled with her own accident that Clarke had insisted on helping, had drained her bank accounts and taken her out of her home.
“She decided to become a paramedic while she was still in medical school, hoping she would be able to make enough to pay off the bills. She had to give that up when she started her rotations, though,” Anya explained to them all somberly, “She sold her apartment and practically all of her things to pay off her own costs and mine – or, at least, whatever the military wouldn’t cover.” She chanced a glance at her sister, hoping the younger brunette was ready for what she was about to say, “She tried to join the army in the hopes that she would have some help with the medical bills, a place to live, and a steady income. She wouldn’t have had to worry about paying her way through the rest of school, either. The brain damage disqualified her, though, and she's never going to be able to enlist.” She looked away from everyone else, remembering the night she had found out the next bit of information, “She started taking up odd jobs that she knew would pay well to help out. I was at a military party once and, obviously, I didn’t expect her to be there. But there she was, parading around as some ranking official’s arm candy. I confronted her about it later, trying to figure out what the fuck was going on, and apparently she had taken a job with one of her ex-foster fathers, Thelonious Jaha. The man runs an escort business and he paid hella money. I tried to convince her to stay the hell away from him and everyone he kept for company and she agreed to find other jobs. She refused to tell me what other jobs she worked, but she managed to pay off all of my medical bills early last year. She hasn’t saved up enough to finish her own or be able to afford an apartment yet.”
The three other girls sat there silently, looking at Anya and hoping she would jump up and say it was all a joke. Anya must not have known that Raven and Octavia knew about Jaha about as much as Lexa did. They all knew that Clarke's foster fathers had been into illegal businesses - other than, you know, abusing the children in their care. Thelonious Jaha, in particular, was a pimp and a drug dealer with connections in every underground business in the area. The only reason he had ever managed to get a fostering license was because he had money and powerful connections. He owned the City of Light Pharmaceuticals and had practically all of Los Angeles County in his pocket. Besides the drugs, he was able to hook up hotshot guys with girls if they ever wanted. One of his executives, Nia Winters, happened to head the Azgeda Fight Club.
Lexa felt like she was going to puke. The idea that Clarke was so desperate to survive that she lowered herself to working for Jaha broke every last barrier Lexa had around her heart. She would do absolutely everything in her power to get Clarke back into a place where she could live life, live for more than just to survive.
Octavia felt a chill run through her body. She had heard horror stories of what went on in Jaha's house when she was younger. She knew all about what kind of a disgusting man he was and the conditions that he kept his people in. If Clarke was willing to put up with his shit, then they needed to come up with something to help her. No one deserved to have to deal with his shit and, from what she had seen and heard, Clarke deserved nothing but the best that the world had to offer.
The night took a somber turn again after that. All four women sat in the living room, thinking through all of the information they had received. Anya was hoping that she hadn’t broken Clarke’s confidence irrevocably, knowing that the girl might never trust anyone again if she had. Lexa was terrified thinking about what all her ex-girlfriend had been through in the last few years. She wanted so badly to be able to talk to her and help her through all of it.
Raven and Octavia shared a knowing look. They both knew that they wanted to do something to help the girl out, but they didn't know exactly what they could do. Lexa and Anya had been a part of their family for the better part of four years, but neither Octavia nor Raven knew anything about this part of their lives. They hadn't even heard of Clarke's name until she showed up and saved their asses seven months ago. They were at a loss as to what they would really be able to do to help.
Octavia spoke first, “Bellamy has a friend, Gina, who works as a manager at an apartment complex. I can try and see if there’s anything we can do to help Clarke get a place there.”
Anya and Lexa both turned to look at the blue-eyed brunette. She seemed serious about her offer to help the absent blonde. Raven looked sincere as well. None of them had serious jobs, though, and Anya’s military income wouldn’t be enough to take care of everything she needed and an extra apartment. Lexa’s internship didn't pay enough to cover a lease on two apartments. Between the four of them, they were only just able to pay off their own expenses and none of them could figure out what they could possibly do to bring one more person in.
They all went to bed dejectedly, none of them having come up with a plan on how to help their newest friend. Thoughts about what they could possibly do would plague their minds for many days to come.