You fell from the sky onto my ground

“Clarke?”, Lexa nudged her the third time. The blonde simply mumbled something in her sleep, probably along the lines like of not to disturb her, shooing Lexa away and turning over and coiling around the pillow. Lexa found it to be very endearing and in the diminishing red glow of the distant skyline, the picture that was painted in front was her eyes, a sleeping Clarke in her couch with no worry, no wrinkles on her face, so childlike made Lexa clench from within.

 She waited for some time before but the blonde was sleeping like the dead. So Lexa knowingly called Fluffy over who without a moment’s notice started draining kisses on his second beloved. Saying those were simple kisses would be putting it mildly, he was licking her face as if there was no tomorrow.

Clarke felt something wet on her face and to say she was greased out was an understatement, the moment she fluttered her eyes open, she greeted by a face splitting smile of Fluffy with slight of saliva drops on her face still evident. Her eyes then caught the chuckling sound that came from the other end of the couch to see Lexa, who was stifling with laughter.

“Welcome to the land of the living, Clarke”

Clarke took in the blanket had lay on her that was probably put by Lexa. Clarke eyed Lexa’s outfit a simple t-shirt with yoga pants as she bent over to put shoes on.

“Going somewhere?”

“Yes, it’s been a while since we went for a walk together. And I also don’t want him running up and down the house restless."

After a beat Lexa asked, “Would you like to come as well?”

The happy grin had reflected on Clarke’s face was an answer enough.

Van Cortlandt Lake itself was the largest lake in the Bronx, was surrounded by wonderful hues and several large turtles could be seen in the water, Lexa’s voice brought back Clarke to pay attention to Lexa. Somehow within a passage of mere 12 hours, Clarke had found herself in Lexa’s attire and like before she couldn’t ignore but inhale in Lexa’s being.

 Apparently, Van Cortandlt Park was the only one that Lexa found to her liking. The long trails, the ranges, reds, and yellows lit up by the sun made for a walk suffused with color.  They have been walking for quite some time  now and though Clarke often noticed Lexa touching her knee, she didn’t voice her thought. Not yet, at least. When they reached some sort of a huge clearing, a supposed golf course or so,  Lexa bent down and took off the cuff from around Fluffy, who leaped in happiness.  Since the time Clarke had seen her, she had never seen Fluffy in collars and seeing a free spirit being restrained didn’t seat well with Clarke.

She didn’t realize if she had said if out loud when Lexa spoke out, “ People don’t take it kindly when” Lexa put her hands in the air to quote the words, “ “an unrestrained untamed hooligan” runs them over, so I use it nowadays when we are out”.

“Nature here is somewhat presents a Utopian picture of a perfect idyll, don’t you think? The endless paving trails, the spacious green. This valley, right in the middle of the park, between the forest and the lake is well protected from the inner noises and fuss. It’s peaceful.”

Lexa lay in the grass that was soaked just a few minutes ago under the morning blaze. It was a simple picture but maybe it was the simplicity of it that made Clarke breathe. She didn’t know what happened to that Lexa she knew?

The Lexa is front of her was calm and composed but the one thing they both shared in common was that they each pretended that they were made of steel. She had so many questions to ask, but she feared what if she wasn’t ready to hear those answers. She was thinking to hard as she stared into Lexa’s closed eyes which popped open only to stare back at them.

“Your thoughts are too loud, Clarke”. Yes, Lexa still said her name with an extra roll on the “r” and still it made her run chills down her spine.

“I didn’t congratulate you on your success. You indeed outdid yourself, Clarke. “, Lexa smiled almost proudly at her, “You have made your paintings speak for you. You should be proud. I’m sure your father is as well.”

Yes, she had been told that countless times now but none of those compliments made face flush red or maybe make her eyes wet. Yes, he would be proud. It’s always extraordinary that how the simplest ordinary things said by the people you care about can make you melt from within. Yes, somehow Clarke still cared about her but that didn’t mean she wasn’t angry with her.

“Or so they.” Clarke replied almost non-committedly.

“Anya told me you didn’t know interviews. What is it that do you exactly?”

“I’m more of a journalist for the Times and occasionally I write pieces for the paper as well. I never had done interviews before and taking your interview, I should say that if was a chance that I didn’t make. I had just returned from Corsica when the Editor told me your said interviewer had some last moment emergencies and they needed a good reporter out there since it was the Trikru Gallery, so there I was.”

“You have yet to ask me Clarke.”

“Are you ready to tell me? About how you got…how this happened, about everything or…”

No, Lexa wasn’t but she knew very well that she was sitting beside a ticking bomb. It’s like there’s food stuck in your throat, you can’t digest it nor you can exhale it out, that lump in your throat, that was what she felt right then. Sometimes, Lexa thought she didn’t deserve to be happy, what exactly was happiness?

“No. But patience was never you.”

“It still isn’t.”

Clarke had so many years resentment inside of her. She had planned these sentences she would bombard her with if she met her one day, why she left her like every good thing in her life, why lie about it, but words were a funny things, they tend to betray you right at the moment when you needed them the most.

“I know I have to no right to ask, it’s not like we made promises to each other but you left me, Lexa.”

“We were something, we were friends Clarke”, Lexa insisted, her hands reaching out to Clarke who pushed them away. We were more than friends, Clarke.

We were more than friends, Lexa.

“ You didn’t have any qualm leaving behind a friend, did you?”

Clarke words were cutting through her and what made it worse was they were true. No bond, no relation can be formed if its roots of honesty is already tainted.

“I’m sorry”

“Stop saying it. You are not. A sorry can’t fix it now.”

“I know. Why are you even pressing this? It’s a been a long time, people change, Clarke.”

“ Yes, but you left me with white lies” and a hollow inside “ I met Costia the other day, turns out the Earth is indeed round and funnily she added quite a few interesting details.”

A long sigh escaped Lexa. She didn’t know what to say and in the pregnant pause that followed, Clarke was getting vividly desperate.

Clarke was already getting up but she was held onto by Lexa, “You trusted me once, can’t you do it again. We were friends once, can’t we be again?”

“I can’t promise you anything. Not until I know if I can even trust you. And I don’t know if I can.”

That wasn’t an exact no. Lexa could work with it. For now.

The walk to Clarke’s hotel was in radio silence. Clarke took the reins of Fluffy’s chain and Lexa followed both of them a few foots back. The entrance to her hotel was already in view and this time Lexa matched steps with her, “Have you gone sight-seeing?”

Ok, so amidst all the topics that had been inhabiting her mind, this wasn’t certainly one of them. Clarke hadn’t. It’s not like she couldn’t, she just didn’t go except for the Metropolitan Museum and that little stroll in Central Park.

So yeah, she had been in NYC more than a week now and she hadn’t gone sight-seeing. Clarke’s lack of a response was enough to let Lexa know that she hadn’t.

“I can take you, if you don’t mind of course? NYC is a picturesque city but to enjoy it the fullest, you need the right pair of eyes through with. I can take you tomorrow if you are ok with it and maybe we’ll catch up a bit?”

Clarke was caught a bit off-guard by her proposal. Maybe Lexa was trying to make amends indeed, but Clarke didn’t give her a straight away answer. She could see her fidgeting with the hem of her shirt,  she making Clarke uncomfortable. She never wanted that.

So Lexa added quickly, “It was just a suggestion, you definitely don’t have to. I’m just gonna….” And Lexa was already backing her steps with Fluffy, when Clarke jumped towards her, “Ok”

“Ok?”

“Yes, ok I’ll go but you don’t have to ----“

“I want to. So be ready around 10? I’ll pick up.”

It was 9 hours to 10am and to Clarke it seemed like a northern star, so away. How could she even live with this anxiety? Clarke was in her pajamas as she found herself knocking on Lexa’s door.

Lexa, limped in her walking aids as she opened the door but Lexa couldn’t say she wasn’t shocked. Clarke was anything but patient. Without so much so a “Hi” or a “Can I come in?”, Clarke felt a wave of courage surge in her as she sauntered into the room and seated herself in the seat the overviewed the almost empty sky.

Lexa sat in her armchair almost opposite the blonde as she took in the astute portion of the artist in front of her who was mindlessly nuzzling and quite possibly caressing Fluffy’s tummy.

“Why, Lexa? Why?”

Actions speak louder than words, let it does sound cliché but it was true but what was truer was Clarke found words more intimidating than actions. She found that a single, a smile word can be one’s undoing.

Lexa took in a deep breath yet again as if summing up whatever courage was left in her. It was indeed going to be a long night.

“From the beginning?”

Clarke dismissed the question almost as if it hadn’t been asked, of course she wanted to know from the beginning.

“Ok, so from the beginning it is,

I was 16, yes, 16 when I was first diagnosed with cancer. Osteosarcoma to be precise. I was scared shitless and I knew Indra was too but she had to keep a tough front in front of me. We visited the doctor almost every day but he didn’t recognize it first. The pain grew and so did Indra. I thought that maybe it was my time to go, meet my family but she refused to go down with a fight and boy, we fought. It was hard, just the two of us, you know, just us against the world. We moved to NY and the oncologist we saw there told us that it was a benign one and it could be removed with ease. Yes, with ease. And it was removed.”

Lexa dwindled the contents of her bourbon, she liked the way it burned in the throat and slowly, almost in excruciating slow pace warmth insides. She had never feared the pain but it was the pain of hope that had burnt her time and again. She was staring so intently at the drink, that she missed the way Clarke was staring at her, as if trying to see her inner core, peeling all those layers of concrete from above her.

 “All was going good, up until 4 years ago. I had just gotten a very good job at the NY’s publishing house and I thought, why not a trip to Grand Canyon? That’s when I first fell ill. And it all felt down-hill from there. No one wanted a sick person at work, no matter their academia and no mother wanted their sick child at work, no matter how much that child wanted it.

The main goal of surgery is to remove all of the cancer. If even a small number of cancer cells are left behind, they might grow and multiply to make a new tumor. To lower the risk of this happening, surgeons remove the tumor plus some of the normal tissue that surrounds it – I can even recite those words now, it’s become a reflex action, now.

Our oncologist said this was a malignant one and was spreading rather slowly hence it couldn’t be operated just about yet, but it was growing. You know the rest of the scenario, the doctors, the check-ups, the sickly appearance, the over-sized bills, the hospital rooms, the silent tears, the pity rooms and the sound of breaking dreams…. The chemotherapy started, wished I often missed and soon enough drinking became a friend and spending every day like it’s your last became a norm. I almost had drunken myself to death, you know.  I was so tired of seeing Indra worry, she had always worried about Uncle and now she was worrying about me. it was hard to live even with Fluffy around. And then came you. “

Gulping up her drink, Lexa looked up to Clarke, meeting her ocean blue eyes a she emphasized, and then came you. The moment the held each other’s eyes, it was almost like a battle of wrath, but if watched carefully it was more than just anger. It was sadness, anger, resentment and sadness. The moment came out of the blue and it also broke the moment Lexa got up to refill her glass.

“You fell from the sky onto my ground and hit me like hurricane Katrina. You were broken and maybe that’s what drew me into you. Two broken souls, who would have ever thought that.  I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but those little, silly, unimportant things you did and that line of yours, life should be more than about surviving, made me actually want to live.”

The mirthless laugh that spilled out of Lexa’s, caught Clarke off-guard, “It’s so silly, it is not? Life had been the greatest battle for me and I suddenly wanted to live it. Huh. “

“I started attending my therapy sessions again and it was going better for a while and just out of the blue, my condition started deteriorating. I was getting weaker and weaker, my hair was falling off, rather exponentially slower, much to the surprise of my doctor and I was so tired half the time. So when I heard that you were back from that victory of yours I came to visit. And maybe, that night was the beginning of the end. The tumor was creeping up my limbs, spreading exponentially and surgery had to be done immediately.

The months that followed were too painful. I had two surgeries and they promised that the third would be the final one. They said, they would salvage my leg, you know but bloody “complications” arose and to remove it all they made me an amputee.

I was broken, I felt empty, I felt abnormal, I felt not me. Indra and Costia, they pulled me up each time I fell but I just couldn’t. The physiotherapist said I wasn’t trying, I wasn’t trying hard enough and somehow along those lines that’s how I met Anya or Anya met me.” 

 Anya as in Anya Trikru was your physiotherapist? Lexa could almost read the shock on Clarke’s face.

“Yes. She was rather very harsh. She knew I wasn’t giving my best, I knew I wasn’t giving my best so one fine day she took me to meet a fellow cancer. The man was apparently having his fourth brain surgery even though there was a chance that he come out dead, but he was taking it anyway for he didn’t want to miss even that slimmest of chance to come home to his wife daughter.

He told me that they might have cut a leg from my body but they didn’t cut my soul, that it was still mine, still intact like it was 10 years ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? why didn’t you? I could have helped. I would have helped you. You know that, don’t you?”

Clarke stood up from her seat and moved across to seat right next to Lexa.

“Yes you would have, that’s why I didn’t.”

“What? Don’t give me riddles, I want answers.” Clarke needed her answers, it was owed to her.

“I’m giving them to you. What more do you want me to do?” Lexa almost snapped at her. “ Yes, you would have helped me but couldn’t have. You had your college, your friends, your dreams, and you think you could have managed a dead weight on your shoulders. You think you could have managed the screams in my chemotherapy, my horrendous mood swings, the weights of me, broken? You say that now, but you wouldn’t have. Indra didn’t. It wears you out slowly, it would have worn you out slowly and I would never wish that upon you. To see that light in you gone.”

“Yes, I might have failed, hell I would have failed but at least I could have tried. I wanted to try and don’t you dare make my decisions for me. I was never the naïve kid you think of me to be.”

“Clarke……”

Clarke’s voice raised an octave,

“Don’t. You should have told me. You owed me that decency at least instead of running and leaving me behind. Do you know the pain of being the one left behind? Do you? To be lied to, when all the while I thought we were friends, something even more but you didn’t. It hurted and it still hurts.”

And Lexa’s voice shimmered down an octave, almost a plea.

“I’m sorry, I ---- “

“You ran to Costia instead, your confidante, I believe? You made me think I was something to you, something more than a friend but I was just a warm body wasn’t I? If I made you live, why did you let me think … why not ever contact me? I called you so many times, I looked for you almost everywhere. “

“Do not belittle my pain here, Clarke. I lost too. ”

“Well, I lost my heart, I fell for you, Lexa Woods, too hard, too fast and I would have helped you to the utmost of my abilities if you would have let me and now it feels like I don’t even know you. “

“Clarke, I’m ………”

The door of her apartment slammed shut.

Clarke was too hot on her heels, screaming and shrieking ghastly and ever so minimally in the restraint of her mind that she nearly didn’t hear the cry of pain from behind her. Seeing Lexa sitting on the concrete wooden floor barefoot, with her walking aids sprawled on both sides, made Clarke run to her in a heartbeat. She immediately pulled up Lexa by the waist, without any protests from her, constantly asking her, if she was ok, if she had a sprain on any cuts. Even the mumbled no’s didn’t stop Clarke from her interrogation.

Laying on the couch, Clarke took a superficial look to satiate her mind that the brunette wasn’t indeed hurt. Lexa rolled her eyes, “ I do have survived worse, Clarke.”

“Yes, I forgot you are always an asshole to the people who give a shit to you.”

Clarke would have bantered again to prove her point but the crest-fallen look on Lexa made her insides turmoil in knots from which she would never get out.

“I… I shouldn’t have ran out like that, Lexa. I’m sorry…..”

“No, Clarke, I’m sorry, I’m so very sorry…..”

Clarke fell down on her knees and pulled Lexa upfront by the collar of her oversized shirt in a bones-breaking tight hug and somehow halfway, both had started crying in each other’s embrace, slightly out of agony but mostly out of the sheer loneliness of each other’s company.

“I missed you so much, Lex.”

“I missed you, Clarke”

Clarke snuffled her tears on Lexa’s shirt, “I thought…… “ I had lost you forever.

“You didn’t.”

Clarke lay curled on the floor on the verge of dozing off, her head settled on Lexa’s thigh who unconsciously ran her fingers through her mop of hair. They were both stuck in the silence of their own reverie when certain grandfather’s clock tolled one.  Clarke was already up but she somehow didn’t want to go to her hotel, not when she found the floor to be surprisingly so comfortable with a certain brunette as pillow, but even so she didn’t want to lay an assumption. Her eyes crept up to the front door, dancing to and fro between Lexa and the exit.

“Stay the night, Clarke.”

Stay. The. Night. Three small words when put together they would hit you with more momentum than you actually give yourself credit for. Three words that made every thought in Clarke’s head halt,

“Ok. “