Chapter Text
It was Lexa’s sister Anya’s idea for her and Willow to spend the summer at Lake Polis. After the one year anniversary of the car accident Anya had brought up to Lexa the fact that she still hadn’t been up to the lake house that had been left to her in the wake of her wife and in-laws’ deaths and that it would probably be beneficial for Lexa and Willow to spend some time together away from TonDC and their apartment that still held the ghost of the woman that best kept their family of three together.
It was in a moment of weakness that Lexa had conceded that she could probably work from home like she had been doing most of the past year that lead to her current situation, trying to figure out how she got so damn lost listening to the directions Apple Maps was giving her while her daughter sat in the backseat on her iPad watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants through headphones. Lexa knew she probably shouldn’t have gotten Willow the iPad for Christmas, she knew that while Willow had been wanting one for ages that Costia had believed she should wait until she was at least twelve to get one, but the rules changed when you were nine-years-old and you lost a parent in a car crash. The rules change when your remaining parent doesn’t know how to deal with the loss, or deal with parenting without her wife. The rules change when watching her open the iPad Christmas morning puts the biggest smile on her face that she’s had since the accident and results in her hugging you and admitting to the fact that she knows Santa isn’t real.
So even though Willow had probably been spending too much time on her iPad, Lexa was glad for it. Or at least, she was usually glad for it as there were many times when she just didn’t know how to talk to her daughter, but lost in the middle of nowhere was not one of those moments.
“Willow will you PLEASE take those headphones off? I need you to read me these directions,” Lexa looked back at the ten-year-old who was fully engrossed in her movie and ignoring everything she was saying. Careful to keep one hand steady on the wheel and her eyes only momentarily off the road, Lexa reached in to the backseat and yanked Willow’s headphone cord out of the iPad.
“Hey!” Willow complained, “What was that for?” Her voice was shrill and full of annoyance.
“You were obviously listening to that too loudly,” Lexa rolled her eyes and tossed her iPhone back at her daughter, “I need you to look at the map and read me the directions, I can’t look down at them while I’m driving.”
Lexa didn’t have to look back to know that her daughter was rolling her eyes while unlocking the phone. “You’re lost, aren’t you?” the tween sassed.
“I’m not lost,” her mother huffed back.
“Mama never got us lost,” the girl in the back whispered under her breath.
“What was that?” Lexa quipped back quickly.
“I said take your next left,” her daughter returned.
Lexa knew better than to reprimand her daughter and continued to follow her directions as they started to lead them to signs for Lake Polis. For not the first time that day she wished Costia was there. Even after a year there wasn’t a day that went by that Lexa didn’t wish for Costia to be alive. She wished it for every possible reason. She missed Costia with all her heart. She missed the way she could light up a room with her smile. She missed the way she always knew what to do when Willow was upset. She always knew what cereal to buy at the grocery store and how to pack their daughter’s lunch. Now that she was gone though, their home was rarely filled with smiles, Willow was upset more often than not, Lexa had purchased the wrong cereal on multiple occasions, and their daughter was buying lunch at school.
As they drove through the small town of Polis, Lexa started to recognize landmarks such as Reyes’ Mechanics where she’d gone after her windshield wipers stopped working during her visit, the dive bar where she and Costia had watched crazy townies get way too into karaoke and the fortune teller’s where they’d both been told of finding love where they weren’t looking.
“No more movie,” Lexa spoke sternly as she watched Willow go to plug her headphones back in to her iPad.
“Why not?” the girl whined.
“Because we’re almost there and you should be looking out the window, taking it all in,” Lexa sighed. She loved her daughter, despite all her recent pre-teen angst, but she wasn’t cut out to be a mom. In fact, she never wanted kids. Costia was the one who always wanted them. Costia had been an only child and had hated every moment of it, meanwhile Lexa had her older sister Anya and twin brother Lincoln. She’d never expected to have kids, but she was never able to say no to Costia. They’d compromised on one kid though. And even though Lexa had never wanted a child, she’d immediately fallen in love with Willow and the way she had completed their family. She may not have been perfect at the parenting thing, but she did love her daughter.
As they pulled up to the house where Costia had spent her summers, Lexa tried not to think about the vacations she and her dead wife had taken there. Before Costia’s parents had moved from the city to the lake full time three years earlier, Lexa and Costia had spent many weekends vacationing at Lake Polis, particularly during their college years. It had been harder to get away after Willow was born and had only managed a handful of vacations. Lexa doubted that Willow even remembered the house at all.
Lexa parked the car in the gravel driveway and searched around for the key to the house, which she should have put on her car keys, but had forgotten to.
“Do you think the swing is still on the back porch?” came a quiet voice from the backseat.
Lexa turned around to look at her daughter whose dark eyes shone with just a glimmer of the tears she refused to shed. “I’m sure it is,” Lexa offered the girl a reassuring smile.
“You and Mama used to sit on it and talk after putting me to bed, but my bedroom was right there and usually the window was open to let in air, so I could always hear you,” Willow spoke wistfully. She must have been only five the last time they had come, but Lexa remembered well the hours she would spend with her wife after putting Willow to sleep. They would talk about everything and nothing on that porch swing, content to just sit with each other as they looked over the lake.
“Maybe after we unpack we can scoop out some of that ice cream that is undoubtedly melting in the back as we speak and eat it out on the swing,” Lexa gave her peace offering.
“Before dinner?” Willow questioned incredulously.
“Sure, why not,” Lexa laughed back, causing a smile to erupt on the younger brunette’s face. If they were going to be spending three months together, just the two of them, without school and playdates and work to break up their time together, Lexa knew that she would have to find a way to connect with her daughter. And seeing her face light up again at the mention of ice cream, Lexa saw her first way in. In the year since Costia’s death, Lexa had watched Willow retreat in to herself and try and act older than she was, so maybe the key to connecting with her would be to remind her that she was still a kid. A kid who still had a mom who loved her, even if it was hard for her to show it some times.
“Ophelia Abigail Collins! What did I tell you about using my lipstick and putting it on your brother?” Clarke yelled up to the sheepish looking blonde at the top of the stairs, who simply shrugged in response. Clarke huffed and grabbed a tissue before kneeling down and rubbing the young boy’s face who clung to her leg. “Jacob, I know your sister might tell you that you have to do something, but if you don’t want to you can just say no.”
“She said that I had to,” he pouted in response.
Clarke sighed and gestured for Jacob to go back to watching TV in the living room while she walked up the stairs to talk to her daughter. The blonde child was slowly backing in to her bedroom.
“To be fair, he said he wanted to wear it,” the girl explained as she noticed her mom following her in to the bedroom.
“You can’t keep using your brother as a doll Fia,” Clarke sighed. It wasn’t the first time Ophelia had been bored and made Jacob either pretend to be her servant and fetch snacks for her, or do his hair and make up.
“It’s not my fault there’s nothing else to do here. Why can’t we live in town with Grandma and Grandpa so I can see my friends easier?” Ophelia continued to pout.
“You know your friends are always welcome to come over. And now that summer is here I’m sure they’ll come over even more often. Aunt Octavia and Uncle Lincoln will be here for the Memorial Day barbecue on Monday, I think even Uncle Bellamy and Aunt Echo are planning on coming as well,” Clarke spoke. Every year Clarke hosted a Memorial Day party to mark the start of the summer. She’d started the tradition the year she’d left Finn and moved in to her old family home on Lake Polis and this would be her fifth year hosting it.
“Can I invite my school friends to come too?” Ophelia asked, “Because I don’t want to be around babies all day.”
Clarke’s best friend from high school, Octavia and her brother Bellamy were both married and had kids, but Ophelia was older than all of them and often got annoyed by the younger children, something Clarke was well aware of. “Of course you can sweetheart,” Clarke responded, ruffling up the younger girl’s hair. She then turned more serious as she remembered why it was that she was reprimanding her daughter in the first place, “But if you keep tormenting Jacob, there will be repercussions. Got it?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Fia sighed, her arms crossed across her chest. “Can I go outside and play now?”
“That’s fine,” Clarke nodded, “Just don’t go in the lake until I come outside. I need to clean up your brother and finish cleaning up the syrup you two got all over the counter at breakfast.” Clarke knew that she was letting her daughter run the household, but sometimes that was easier than trying to control her. And she was always worse after she came back from her once a month weekend trips to stay with Finn. Ophelia smiled as she gestured for her mom to leave her room so that she could change in to her bathing suit. “And if you’re going roller blading, don’t forget your helmet and knee pads.”
After leaving Ophelia, Clarke told Jacob that he could go play outside as well while she cleaned up. It was just after she had finished scrubbing syrup off the wall and vacuuming up Eggo waffles off the floor, Clarke was spent. She swore it was easier back when the kids were five and two and not ten and seven. It was when they were five and two that Clarke had left her cheating husband, and even that first year alone proved to be easier than it was now.
Clarke’s dirty, greasy blonde hair was up in a messy bun and she sweat prickling her brow when Ophelia and Jacob both came running in to through the kitchen door, or in Ophelia’s case, roller balding.
“What have I told you about roller blades in the house!” Clarke exclaimed, exasperated and nearly at her wit’s end.
“Mom! There’s people in the Crewe house!” Ophelia exclaimed, steadying herself against the kitchen counter so that her feet didn’t run away beneath her.
Clarke looked down at her children, both excited. She hadn’t seen them both smiling at the same time, over the same thing in a long time. “I guess someone finally bought the house,” she gathered. The house had stood empty for just over a year, ever since the previous occupants, a couple her parents’ age, had died in a car crash. She couldn’t remember the details of who had inherited the house, as the couple’s daughter had died along with them. She knew that someone had come to check on the house a few weeks after their deaths, but even while she’d been talking to the woman about it, she hadn’t been paying attention. It was easy to forget things that didn’t actually relate to her or her family.
“I think they have kids!” Jacob added, a bright smile on his face as he bounced on the balls of his feet.
“Oh yeah?” Clarke asked, putting down the sponge she was holding to give her children her full attention.
“Can we go find out?” Jacob asked, a look of optimism on his face, hopeful of the fact that he could have a playmate for the summer other than his overbearing sister.
Clarke glanced out the still-open kitchen door to where she could see the side of her neighbor’s house. “Okay,” she nodded before turning to rummage through the kitchen cabinets. Her children watched in confusion until she managed to pull out a not-yet stale box of black and white cookies. She emptied the cookies on to a kitchen plate, hoping they looked at least a little bit home-made. “Alright, let’s go,” she nodded.
The older blonde saw her daughter look at Clarke’s outfit, but at that point there was really no hope. Clarke’s hair was a greasy mess and the t-shirt she was wearing with running shorts had a handful of stains of unknown origins, but the last time she had spoke to someone who’d at least hit puberty had been the pimple-ridden teenager at the grocery store two days previously. Her social skills weren’t exactly at their prime.
At the last minute, Clarke remembered to put on her flip flops and followed Ophelia and Jacob out the door. She sighed as she watched Ophelia rollerblade on her neighbor’s lawn, likely destroying the grass, but decided not to start that battle. They made it to the front door, ready to knock, when they heard a voice coming from just behind the door.
“I’m ten years old! I don’t need you to watch me in the water, I know how to swim!”
Clarke chuckled and looked at her daughter, it was the same conversation she had with her own daughter on a regular basis. She was already pleased though that there seemed to be a girl her daughter’s age at the house.
Only moments after knocking on the door it was opened by a young girl. The girl had messy dark curls and angry chocolate brown eyes set against caramel skin, a light in frustration. The young girl looked up at Clarke before turning her head to reveal hair that desperately needed to be tamed as she looked back in to her house. “Lexa! People are here!” she yelled.
Clarke heard the sound of bare feet against the floor as a figure rounded the corner. As soon as Clarke observed the woman who arrived in the front hall, she became immediately self-conscious of the way she was dressed. The brunette who approached her was not wearing day-old gym clothes, but rather tailored pants and a silk blouse. Her hair was pulled neatly back in to a bun that looked nothing like Clarke’s own messy bun.
“Hello?” the woman asked.
“Hi,” Clarke smiled cheerfully, “We’re from next door and didn’t realize anyone was going to be here this summer until my kids mentioned seeing a car. I’m Clarke, Clarke Griffin. And this is Ophelia who’s ten and Jacob who’s seven.” She gestured to her children individually as she introduced them.
The brunette offered Clarke a polite smile as she responded, “Pleasure to meet you Clarke. I’m Lexa and this is my daughter Willow.” Clarke briefly registered the fact that Willow had called Lexa by her first name as well as the fact that the two looked nothing alike, but didn’t dwell on the matter. “This was my in-laws’ home and it seemed prudent to put it to good use.”
She heard Jacob whisper to Ophelia asking what prudent meant, but Clarke kept her focus on Lexa as she registered what she was hearing. She’d forgotten that Costia, her neighbors’ daughter, had been married. She’d known Costia better as a child, but after middle school she hadn’t kept up with her at all other than through brief interactions with her parents when they were neighbors.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Clarke finally responded, not entirely sure what to say. She saw Willow shuffle and look to her feet uncomfortably while Lexa offered Clarke a stiff smile.
“Thank you,” Lexa nodded as her eyes shifted to the plate of cookies that the blonde was holding.
“Oh!” Clarke perked up, “These are for you, a welcome to the neighborhood cookie plate.”
“She got them from the store,” Willow added, much to Clarke’s embarrassment, an embarrassment that she failed to hide with the blush of her cheeks. “That’s a good thing though, she’s not good at making cookies.”
Neither Clarke nor Lexa spoke next, but rather the other ten-year-old. “Lexa stinks at cooking to,” Willow said with a smirk, “I’d never want to eat her cookies either.” At that, everyone including Lexa and Clarke started laughing, though Lexa’s laughter appeared slightly more forced.
“I’m sure you’re still busy moving in and everything, but how would you guys like to come over for dinner?” Clarke offered, “We can order pizza.”
Lexa was nearly about to politely decline the offer when her daughter spoke for her, “That sounds awesome!” she grinned. And at the genuine smile, Lexa knew she couldn’t deny her daughter. Besides, maybe if Willow made a friend in Polis then Lexa wouldn’t be forced to spend so much time with the girl who clearly hated her.
Clarke observed the way Lexa watched Willow’s response, and saw the way her bright green eyes softened with Willow’s smile. She could tell that there was some tension between Lexa and Willow, that much was obvious, but the minute change in Lexa’s gaze with Willow’s smile that there was real love there. Clarke wondered if those green eyes were always so telling, or if Clarke had caught the woman in a rare moment.
“Does seven work?” the blonde asked after several beats of silence.
“Yes, that sounds good Clarke,” Lexa responded, and Clarke smiled at the way the woman spoke her name and at the sight of those green eyes meeting hers.
Oh god, she thought as she smiled goofily, I really can’t be trusted around attractive people. Not when I’ve pretty much been around only kids for five years. This is going to be a long summer.