Eight Million Stories In The City of Lights (Patreon)

Clarke ate the wafer and immediately felt sensory overload. Euclidean geometry was gone, Newtonian physics, all her orientation, her sense of continuity. This was a fever dream flowing straight to her brain, no time to get her bearings, just sheer and sudden awareness, jumping around in her mind like she was inside a broken machine.

But she didn’t care. There was Lexa, right as she’d left her on the floor under Polis, but not bleeding, not dying. Lying there, half memory, half new. All the things she’d forgotten, restored. All the things she’d missed, returned.

“Clarke?” Lexa asked, right where Clarke’s memory had left her, like a chalk outline at an old crime scene. “How is this possible? What are you doing here?”

“The same thing you are,” Clarke said thoughtlessly. She still couldn’t believe it, couldn’t process this—

And suddenly they were back in bed, holding hands as they had during their one moment together, Clarke staring at the tattoos on Lexa’s back. She looked higher, searching for the scar on the back of her neck, but here it didn’t exist. Not in the City of Lights.

“You’re dead?” Lexa asked. Sadness warred with the joy she’d expressed, seeing Clarke again. As happy as she was to be reunited, she didn’t want Clarke’s life to be over. Who could want that for someone they loved?

“No. It’s all… so complicated.” And Clarke could barely care about it, not when she could take Lexa back in her arms, and she did, and it felt just like it had before, just perfect. “All this Nightblood stuff… it’s an AI. And there’s another AI, but we stopped her, it, and now we’re trying to use its… access to interact with the AI in Polis, the Nightbloods…”

Clarke blinked. Something was wrong. Just like back in Polis, all those years ago, there was something she was missing, something that had to be dealt with. Maybe they just couldn’t be together without something trying to pull them apart.

“How’d we get here…? We were down in that dungeon…”

“It’s the City of Lights,” Lexa explained. “Not the world of the living. We can go anywhere, any time—all memories are shared through the Nightblood…”

They were on the Ark. Clarke actually gasped—the strangest sense of nostalgia, being on the thing when it was in space. The place was hell, she knew, but it’d been her home back when life had been simple, and she couldn’t help but associate one thing with the other.

Lexa, wearing her armor, strode down the corridor, marveling at the metal, the layers upon layers of repairwork and salvaging, everything both shockingly advanced and impossibly ancient. It was surreal, seeing her in clothes that were next to new compared to the hand-me-downs of the memories swirling around her… people Clarke hadn’t thought of in years. The citizens of her childhood.

“This is your home?” Lexa asked. The shades ignored her, too busy being memories to realize they were being relived by more than one person.

“I have no home,” Clarke replied. “No people—nothing.”

“I worried about you, when we couldn’t be together anymore.” Quite a way to refer to yourself dying. “I knew it would be hard—“

“But then, what’s easy?” Clarke finished.

“We were.”

Even with Lexa grinning, Clarke didn’t want to think about it. She decided to try—feeding a destination into this computerized afterlife that was allowing them to speak. “So, you can go…”

“Anywhere,” Lexa said, and they were in the cell where Clarke had spent her last year on the Ark, staring at the mural she had painted. “It’s beautiful. Is that how you saw the ground?”

“Yes.” Clarke had no eyes for it when Lexa was there. God, the sight of her breathing… “I didn’t know the half of it.”

“You still don’t,” Lexa said, and she jumped them.

Clarke had heard about these places—beaches. She’d never actually seen one, though. Not like this. Not so beautiful. The waves tall as towers, crashing down so loud and so violent that Clarke actually cringed… Lexa taking hold of her, reassuringly, holding her as the water sprawled down the brown sand, a blanket of foam drawing itself up to the paler dunes, then sweeping back. Clarke watched it in awe.

“You’re hardly dressed for it,” Lexa said, and suddenly Clarke was wearing… well, not much. Something to cover her breasts and something to cover her nether regions, but not a lot of either.

“Lexa!” Clarke cried, shocked, jerking her hands to cover herself unthinkingly, netting a single laugh from Lexa.

“Something I saw from before,” Lexa said. “You have no record of your people wearing such things?”

“That was a hundred years before I was born!”

“And you never wore them again? Pity.”

“It got pretty cold on the Ark,” Clarke explained. “Looking fancy was reserved for the third or fourth layer of clothing. What’s gotten into you?”

“I’m dead, Clarke. I’ve fulfilled my duties as Commander. And I don’t want anything clouding our time together. I want to see you smile. I want to see you laugh. I trained myself not to miss much of my old life, but those things turned out to be… essential.” Then Lexa looked at her and it was the Commander’s eyes, shadows literally over them. “Do you need something, Clarke? Have you come here to save your people, to stop some threat—“

“I came here for you,” Clarke interrupted. “Nothing else. I’ve done enough for the Thirteen Nations.”

Lexa blinked happily and the eyes were just hers again. “Thirteen?”

“Pike’s dead.”

Clarke liked to see Lexa smile too. “And the peace holds?”

“For as long as it can.”

Lexa paused. Shook her head and they were back in Polis, Lexa sitting at her throne. “Then why are you here? Don’t they need you—“

“I don’t need them,” Clarke said quickly. “Kane’s in charge, Aden’s the Commander… they see a future. Out there, all I see is the past. The blood.”

Lexa’s smile was sad. “There will be more asked of you, Wanheda. There always is.”

Clarke jumped them. Lexa’s room, the candles burning down softly. They stood on the carpet where Lexa had kneeled to her. “I’ll be there when they need me. I know that’s what you’d want me to do. It’s the path I chose. But this is what I want. You.”

They jumped back to the Ark and it was almost like fleeing. At a window, they stared out at the Earth.

“It doesn’t seem so big,” Lexa said, putting her hand on the glass to demonstrate. Her palm could block continents from view.

“Everywhere you’ve ever been is just a tiny part of that marble. It’s not even on the side facing us.”

“All we’ve suffered, just for—“ Lexa held her fingers apart. “That much?”

“For our people. And they know how much we’ve sacrificed.”

“I was right not to want to talk about this. It only pulls us away…”

Mount Weather. The control room. No. Clarke wasn’t sure if Lexa jumped them or if she did it, but they were back on the Arc. In her room, her real room, not her cell. Lexa sat on the bed.

“Did this burn up when it fell or is it still there?”

“I actually never checked,” Clarke said, sitting down beside her. “My mom would know. She’s sentimental that way.”

“A good healer,” Lexa agreed with a nod. She looked at the walls as if unable to believe that they’d once contained all of Clarke. “I should’ve visited Arcadia. I should’ve come to know this for myself. It’s a part of you.”

“What did we just say about regrets?” Clarke moved over, bumping her shoulder into Lexa, and couldn’t have been more surprised when Lexa leaned her head over, resting it on Clarke. “It’s not the same, anyway. In space, there were… the engines and the reclaimers and the recyclers, life support, machinery… then on the Ground, there’s sunlight, wind, you hear the animals, you can even hear the plants grow…”

Back on the beach. They sat at the end of the surf, letting it tickle their feet. Lexa’s head still on Clarke’s shoulder.

“I like it better too,” Lexa said. The surf licked at her boots. “Mind if I slip into something more comfortable?”

“Go right ahead.”

“Would you care to do the honors?”

“What’s to stop me from dressing you up like Batman?”

“Who?”

“Just forget it.” Clarke concentrated. It was a strange sensation, thinking things into being—weird and wobbly and dizzying, like she was exercising some unused muscle in her mind. But she could do it. Lacking the will to do what was necessary had never been her problem.

Just the fact that she fucking used it.

“Clarke!” Lexa squawked in surprise.

“Yes, Heda?” Clarke replied.

“This is not swimwear!”

“What is it then?”

“Nothing!”

“Haven’t you ever heard of skinny-dipping?”

The waves rushed in to claim them, wash them clean, invite them into the depths…

Afterward, they lay on the beach. Clarke was aware that they should be cold, with the sun setting, their bodies wet, the wind blowing over them. But they weren’t.

She didn’t want to get dressed. She didn’t want to jump anywhere else. She held onto the sunset like she could commit it to memory.

“We could go back, if you wanted,” Lexa said. She was holding Clarke’s hand again. “Bring the sun back up… watch it lower. Or swim under the moonlight, or in the morning. Whatever you want.”

Clarke laughed. She almost sounded hysterical to herself. Bitter. “It’s funny. I get here and… I promised myself I would just be happy… just be yours… but I can’t stop thinking.”

“It’s who you are, Clarke. It’s what I love about you.”

“There are others here?”

“The other Nightbloods. Past commanders, past conclaves…”

“How many?”

“Too many to count.” Lexa turned over onto her side. Smiled to herself as she took a handful of goopy sand and dumped it on Clarke’s belly to play with. “The Nightblood is strongest in myself, and other Commanders, but it’s in all of us. All the Alliance. I’ve seen Gustus, even…”

“Lexa… is Costia here?”

A tent, a throne, a bed, a box. They stood there, Clarke in her clothes, Lexa in her armor.

“The Nightblood is strong in some… weak in others… Costia’s blood almost ran clear…”

“Lexa, I’m so sorry.”

“I knew.” An empty bed. Ruffled sheets. The smell of sweat and sex, of love. Somehow you could just tell. “I knew that when she had passed on, I would not see her again, even in the City of Lights. So it should’ve been someone else. But it couldn’t have been. It could only have been her.”

Clarke put her hand on Lexa’s shoulder, but Lexa wasn’t ready to be touched. The forest now, meters between them. For a moment, Clarke was confused, but then she remembered that Lexa didn’t see the woods as she did. Not as miraculous, not as territory to be conquered even, but as something dark, mysterious. Too deep into them, outside her own turf, and she invited attack, predators, Mountain Men, the weather, the mist…

Clarke let Lexa breathe for a time, then she jumped them to the landing site. They’d spruced it up pretty nicely before the Grounders attacked.

“I should’ve come here,” Lexa said. “I should’ve looked at what you were building. I trusted Anya to handle it, but she didn’t understand… this wasn’t occupied territory, this was your home.”

“It was your land,” Clarke said. “Your backyard, practically.”

“No regrets.”

“No regrets.”

“Did you worry, though?” The beach, but Lexa still wore her body armor. She looked desperately out of place. “Were you afraid of sharing me?”

“No,” Clarke answered promptly. “I just didn’t want you to be alone.”

“I was always alone. I was the Commander.”

“Until you knelt to me.”

“Until I knelt to you,” Lexa agreed. The sun finally set. “There’s something I must admit to you, Clarke of Skaikru…”

Darkness. Not the cold, frightful dark of the Ark during a blackout, but the darkness Clarke had become used to on the ground. Softly furred with moonlight, alive with the noise of crickets and wind, dangerous, thrillingly dangerous, but at the same time, comforting. There was no vacuum to keep out, no need to horde air. Just an oasis of peace that stretched as far as the light of the fire, the boundaries of the camp… the reach of your lover’s arms.

Clarke heard a muffled gasp. She scanned the darkness, saw Lexa beside her, then saw her on the bed. It was much like the one the box had been on. A camp bed, furred and feathered, lugged along by faithful servants, soft and fit for a queen.

And there was someone else with her beneath the blankets.

“Keep doing that!” Lexa whispered, trying to sound commanding, coming off as merely urgent. “I’m so close, I’ll—!”

Clarke couldn’t see exactly what was happening under the writhing blanket, but the soft sounds—little hitched sighs, hushed urgings, needful moans—left no doubt what Lexa was close too. Then Clarke heard a familiar voice.

“Not long now, Heda,” Anya purred, as Lexa sucked her breath in quickly, the wood of the bed under them making its own groans. “I have served you most faithfully tonight… most faithfully indeed…”

“Anya?” Clarke gasped.

Anya and Lexa—the other Lexa—didn’t seem to hear. They just… kept going.

“Love is weakness,” Lexa, her Lexa, said. “But everyone has needs. Anya taught me much. After I was with Costia, I never wanted to feel that way again. But there was still the tension, the black moods… Costia had broken them, but then, all I had was Anya… it wasn’t love… it was respect… friendship, pleasure… I don’t know what it was. But we kept doing it… thank you for trying to save her, Clarke. She told me—“

“She’s here? This isn’t just a memory?”

“It is a memory—a memory of when I first came here. I needed to be comforted, I needed to be soothed and Anya was still… a very faithful servant.”

“That’s not her serving you,” Clarke said. “She’s… God, Lexa, you can tell just by looking at her—“

“She was Unit Leader, I was her Commander. Then we came here… I was her Second, she was my Second, it all got mixed up. I’m hers, in a way. Not the way I was Costia’s, not the way I am yours, but she made me me.” Lexa rubbed at the scar that was no longer on the back of her neck. “I feel I have a part of her in me, some days… as deep as could be.”

“If she’s a part of you,” Clarke said, “then I love her.” She smiled. “I always thought she was kinda cute…”

“And I…” Lexa stepped close, “have been wanting to do this again… since we stopped doing it the first time.”

Lexa kissing her never seemed to stop. Like the City of Lights, it just jumped, becoming lips at the corner of Clarke’s mouth, at her cheek, her chin, her throat, down, lower, sucking on Clarke’s neck as her hands busied themselves at zippers and buttons…

Clarke closed her eyes, starting to concentrate for a jump right out of her clothes, but Lexa stopped her with a nip of her teeth. “No. I want to.”

Clarke’s body swam with remembered sensations as Lexa undressed her, finally, for the second time. All the half-recalled pleasures returned; they’d just been waiting to be summoned back up. She shivered with anticipation, gasping as her breasts were exposed.

No sooner were they in sight than Lexa had dipped her head and kissed them, moist lips brushing each tingling nipple, tongue catching them in hot laving. Lexa pulled a rigid nipple into her mouth, sucking as she pulled Clarke’s clothes away to billow to the floor, somehow managing to pleasure Clarke’s breasts and totally strip her at the same time, until Clarke stood naked, blackly argent in the moonlight through the tent’s porous walls.

Her nipple was deep inside Lexa’s mouth, the Commander sucking it hard, her tongue fluttering and lapping. Clarke couldn’t stop herself from clutching Lexa’s head, bringing that sucking mouth harder against her breast, smashing them together, trying to stuff the roundness of her breast completely into that suction, get more of that wonderful warm, wet tightness that Lexa produced in her.

She felt Lexa’s hands down her back, fitting to her naked ass, the back of her thighs, fondling them, making them alive with sensation. And, oddly, Clarke felt someone’s gaze on her ass, watching as Lexa spread her cheeks, exposing her to view.

Clarke turned her head around, unintentionally exposing her pulse point for Lexa to suckle at. She saw the bed again. Anya was still there, but the remembered Lexa had left.

“Are you, you?” Clarke asked.

“Yes.”

For no particular reason, Clarke’s response included a nervous giggle. “Were you watching?”

“And listening. It was entertaining. I touched myself.”

Lexa continued kissing, undressing Clarke. Anya watched that too. “Ask her if she’s still doing it.”

“You know I am.” For the first time, Anya’s voice broke, sighing with a little shiver. Clarke’s eyes were getting used to the dark. She could see between Anya’s legs, the slender fingers moving back and forth… “You know how good it feels.”

“Do you want her to stop?” Lexa asked, now directed at Clarke, her voice suddenly serious—the Commander.

“No,” Clarke said. “I want her to get a closer look.”

They fell onto the bed, Lexa locking herself firmly to Clarke’s body, her sex wonderfully soft against Clarke’s own. It was just like what Lexa had been doing with Anya, Clarke thought dizzily, and she could feel a pressure caught between their bodies, pangs of need as her clit and Lexa’s touched. Her long legs raised up and curled around Lexa’s slim body, drawing her closer, rubbing them together harder.

It was incredible, indescribable, all the wonder and power of the first time they’d been together, none of the awkwardness, none of the lingering mistrust. Only the wanting, the desire, the desperate need to be back together, back in that moment they’d shared. Their breasts moved against each other, nipples brushing nipples, and Clarke locked her legs around Lexa’s thrusting body, feeling Lexa’s cunt stroking against hers, slippery, liquid, another rumble deep inside as their clits touched…

“We’re really doing it,” Clarke thought, said. “I really have you…”

She wiggled and rolled back on her shoulder blades, moving herself against Lexa with welcoming, sinuous motions. They were coiled in each other’s arms, their mouths welded together, everything in their bodies blissful and tender. Clarke would’ve thought she’d feel urgency, fire, but while her need for Lexa was absolute, it developed slowly. The mere fact of being kissed by Lexa, being held by Lexa, being in Lexa’s eyes and her arms and her words, it was so much more gratifying than simple sex could be. She didn’t want hard and fast, or even slow and tender, she just wanted Lexa.

Clarke pushed back against the plunging motion of Lexa’s groin, gasping aloud as they ground together. She wasn’t sure what felt better: the joining of their flesh, that had been so perfect before, or the feeling she was only beginning to savor, the feeling of being wanted and loved and reclaimed. No, she knew what it was. It was being so wonderfully free.

She wasn’t Wanheda. Lexa wasn’t the Commander. They were making love because that was what was in their hearts, not for any other reason. Not for Lexa’s people or hers, her duty or Lexa’s—all that mattered now was each other.

Joined, they churned together harder and harder, bringing themselves inexorably to their shivering climax. It was sweet and piercing, fulfilling and warm, every bit what Clarke had felt the first time and still more. Beyond the pleasure, beyond the knowledge that she’d pleased Lexa, there was a feeling of serenity. She was at peace. She was finally safe.

Maybe that was why Clarke suddenly felt tired. A good tired, a hard day’s work tired, a feeling of exhaustion and comfort and quiet. The bed was warm and soft, cradling them, lulling them. She clung to Lexa, holding the slim body close, thinking it incredible how a thing could feel so delicate and yet be so powerful. She could rest now. Lexa was her rest.

Somewhere beyond, lingering in the air like the warmth of someone who had left, Lexa was with Anya. Their moans, their gasps sounded like music. Clarke could read the notes, catch the rhythm. Clarke felt absurdly thankful to the other woman. Anyone could touch Lexa, please Lexa—maybe not as well, with as much feeling, but they could do for her what Clarke had done. But only Lexa could let Clarke rest, and Clarke knew it was only her that could do the same for the Commander. They were more than lovers. They were the peace both had wanted so badly from the world.

“I feel like I could sleep for a year,” Clarke said. “You?”

“No,” Lexa replied. “I’m not letting you go… not this time. This time, I can give you all the pleasure you deserve…”

She took mercy on Clarke though, not expecting her to move, letting her lie on her back and opening her legs for her, getting between her thighs, darting her moist tongue closer and closer and closer… Clarke feeling a light touch along her slick opening, then a stronger probing that tingled down into her legs. Then, she felt lightning.

And Anya was on her knees, positioning herself over Clarke’s face, steadying herself with hands gripping the headboard. She spread her legs. Lowered herself to Clarke’s mouth.

“Eat me while my Heda eats you,” Anya insisted. “Show me how you deserve her…”

Even in the near darkness, Clarke could see every detail of Anya’s sex, every drop of moisture, every tremble of her labia. The tiny nubbin of her clit quivered faintly, glistening as brightly as the folds around it…

Clarke kissed lovingly at it, trying to do as well as Lexa was doing with her. Anya trembled with a slight moan, her bare ass writhing over Clarke’s face, her sex pressing down on Clarke’s open mouth… Clarke felt Lexa spearing her tongue into her sex, lips sucking wildly, then tongue thrusting, a brutal rhythm that contorted Clarke with pleasure. She did the same to Anya, licking and sucking and kissing as best she could, tasting Anya’s slick juices as they graced her lips.

Clarke was oversensitive after Lexa’s pleasure, stimulated further by the taste of Anya, the heft of her straddling Clarke’s face. It took no time at all for her body to flare up again, and with her mouth clasped to Anya’s cunt, she writhed on the bed, her hips bounding wildly against Lexa’s weight as she came.

Anya moaned low in her throat, grinding her dripping cunt into Clarke even harder, her thighs jerking taut around Clarke’s ear. “I’m coming too!” she panted. Her words became Trigedasleng, rough and needy: telling Clarke to suck her cunt, to make her come, to lick it in all the right places and shove her tongue in deep. She kept going until the unfamiliar words had totally blended with her grunts and groans, a continuous, guttural announcement of her ecstasy.

Anya’s orgasm was like throwing fuel on Clarke’s fire. Her body jerked and strained, thighs tightening around Lexa’s head so hard that she thought she might be smothering the woman. She sucked frantically at Anya, darting her tongue all over the dripping wetness she’d created, making the mighty warrior tremble and mewl.

Anya finally lapsed back into English: “I’m through,” she breathed, rolling herself away from Clarke’s mouth, letting gravity do most of the work of tearing her down to the bed.

“I think I’m still coming,” Clarke said and, smiling, Lexa pulled her lovely face out from between her thighs.

“Good,” she said, before the smile became a kiss. “Your taste is divine. I want you to feed me more of it…”

“You may just kill me,” Clarke gasped, her breasts rising and falling with her rough breathing. She glanced dreamily at Anya’s body, not realizing what she’d said. By the time she did, Lexa was climbing into place beside her—as if she and Anya were sentinels, arranged to protect Clarke from the slightest fear.

“To die for you,” Lexa said, “isn’t a death at all. Rest now. We have years yet to be together. You have not begun to see the City of Lights.”

Closing her eyes, Clarke wasn’t surprised to find herself rapidly asleep.

This wasn’t like forcing rest on herself to recharge an exhausted body. It was more like trading one dream for another.

But this dream she never had to awaken from.